Pentimento

He always looked so polished. Adorned in one of many velvet or suede sports jackets, buttoned shirts and color-coordinated ascots. Pithy shoes and rebellious socks. It was one thing to teach at the most prestigious school this side of the Mississippi, but it was another thing entirely to do so with such prestige, such noticeable grandeur. It was due in no small part to this visage that the ensuing tantrum caused such an uproar.

Dr. Henrik Chorttel had, in fact, an entirely different history than the one he let on. He was, in a past life but a life wholly lived by him, a vagrant. A brute. A irreconcilable drunk who rallied against the forces of Western intellectualism and the dark gravity of empiricism. As it turns out, a mid-life heart attack and the loss of a beloved niece tilted the scales in favor of reason. Without losing his fiery skepticism, he lunged headfirst into the world he sought to tear down. He became engrossed, acclaimed. Published and respected. The person he was slowly being consumed by the person he is, the outburst merely a fading pentimento of his tortured past.