AEgypt by John Crowley

application, but no junior faculty position was offered to him at Noate.
    Taken by surprise—not because he had labored to be hired, for he had not, but he had taken it for granted that this future would be offered him as a matter of course and had never seriously considered the possibility of any other—Pierce packed his books and his black suits and the notes for his thesis with an unsettling sense that his luck had, for the moment, run out, that perhaps nothing, nothing at all, would happen next. The parrot was sent to live with Pierce's father, Axel, in Brooklyn until Pierce settled down, and there it remained, year after year, in the south-facing window of Axel's apartment, whistling, staring, disparaging. Pierce took temporary jobs at private schools, worked summers at a bookstore; he plugged, occasionally, at the damned thesis; and at the annual mass meetings of the academic association to which he retained membership he continued, along with hundreds (so it seemed) of fresher faces, to present himself to be looked over by the varsity scouts for whatever faculty positions were available. He felt caught out—lost sweetheart discovered at a slave market—when once in the midst of an immense ballroom “reception” Frank Walker Barr put a hand on his shoulder, and invited him for a drink.
* * * *
    "Specialization,” Barr said when they had seated themselves on the cracked leather banquette of a paneled hotel bar, the professor's choice. “That's the great problem for scholars now. More and more about less and less."
    "Hm,” Pierce said. Barr before him was a series of rough ellipses, slope-shouldered torso, round bald head split by his wide grin, small almost browless eyes behind oval glasses. His hands encircled the pale cone of a dry martini, with an olive in it, which he had ordered with ritual care and was drinking with slow relish.
    "Understandable, of course,” he went on. “Even inevitable, when so much new material continually surfaces, new methods of investigation are worked out. Computers. Amazing how the past continually enlarges, instead of shrinking with distance.” He lifted the glass. There was a gold wedding band imbedded deep in the flesh of his ring finger. “Still,” tiny sip completed, “little room now for the generalist. Unfortunate, if that's where your talents lie."
    "As yours do,” Pierce said, lifting his nearly drained scotch to Barr.
    "So,” Barr said. “Any nibbles? Offers you're considering?"
    Pierce shrugged, raised eyebrows, shook head. “You know,” he said, “when I was a kid I sort of thought that when I became a historian, what I would do, what historians did, was practice history—the way a doctor practices medicine. Maybe because the uncle I grew up with was a doctor. Have an office, or a shop..."
    "'Keep thy shop,'” Barr said, “'and thy shop will keep thee.'” He made in his throat the famous Barr chuckle, plummy, chocolaty. “Ben Franklin."
    Pierce drank. In the dark of the bar, his old mentor was unreadable. Pierce was fairly sure that Barr's kindly but justly lukewarm descriptio (couldn't call it a recommendation) was chiefly what had kept Pierce from moving automatically into a slot at Noate, and thrown him on the open market. “How,” he said, something—not the drink—warming his cheeks suddenly, “would you do it? Practice history. If there weren't Noate."
    Barr considered this a long time. The drink before him seemed to glow faintly, like a votive lamp before a Buddha. “I think,” he said, “that I would take some job, some job I was suited for—my father was a tailor, I worked for him—and I would listen, and discover what questions people asked, that history might answer, or help to answer, even if at first they didn't seem to be historical questions; and I'd try to answer them. In a book, I suppose, probably, or maybe not."
    "Questions like..."
    "Questions that come up. I remember there was an old woman who lived over my father's shop.