by Jo Hamya
* * *
Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself is the end. To burn always with this hard gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. Failure is to form habits; for habit is relative to a stereotyped world. I laid myself out on the floor; contemplated the ceiling and allowed myself to be pissed off. Even Pater had made his impressions in a permanent room. Here I was, having walked circles in it, looking at Ghislane, who, with her song of a name, could dispense herself anywhere there was a radio or a phone.
I lay on the floor until I heard a knock; stiffened—but it was my neighbor, nudging the door open with his shoulder until I tipped my chin. I watched, critically, his big strides in. He gave me a once-over and concluded, Tea?
I raised myself up on my elbows and shot back, Do you ever drink anything else? Could we do orange juice, just to mix it up?
He put the kettle on anyway. The Renaissance fell into his line of sight as he did and he picked it up.
So this is the Pater chap.
Mmm.
Lovely of you to take the time. Go on. I still want to know all about him.
I went back down on the floor and mumbled, It wasn’t for you, I was trying to see something.
He didn’t take offense. I told him what it was I had been doing, and he finished making the tea. He placed a cup delicately by my side; stretched himself out next to me on the floor, balancing his in both hands on his stomach. Finally, he said, I don’t get it. I looked at him, and he went on—You’re the one who sleeps here, not her. Pater’s long-dead. What difference does it make who lived in this house before?
Well—I looked back up at the ceiling—that blue plaque outside probably added an extra hundred quid to our rent for a start.
I’m pretty sure the university did that.
I went on as though I had not heard. Ghislane seems to have found a new way to impress herself on a space that doesn’t just rely on the physical. She filters herself into places via Instagram. The photos she puts up are perfectly posed; they’re an overall representation of her taste and personality laid onto a profile that works as an overall microcosm of her self. And it works so well, she can do it with anything, even with photos of settings which clearly don’t belong to her. Our house, for example. She uploaded this ridiculous photo where you can see her looking beautiful and quoting Pater in front of it, so it looks like she’s far more familiar with it than she really is. See? I thrust my phone at him until he put his tea down and accepted it. We lay side by side. He had his arm in the air and Ghislane’s Instagram hovering above us. He squinted at the gray glow of assorted pixels.
Impress herself on a space, my neighbor repeated with deliberate slowness. So because she took a picture of the house, she now lives here? Should I be cutting her a key?
Listen—I went up on my elbows again and made sure he could see the irritation on my face. Take your bastard tea and get out. But he took this as a joke. Okay, he said when he’d finished laughing, in the first place, it’s your tea we’re drinking, but let’s say what you’re proposing does matter. Clearly you’ve got a nice grip on how important Pater is to this place. So you’re fine, no? Take a photo of the house. I’ll be the first to congratulate you on living here, too.
I grabbed my phone; went to sit up properly out of frustration, but in so doing knocked over the mug he had placed next to me. I scrambled; ran to the toilet for tissues. When I got back, I found him just the same, watching the stain soak into the carpet.
For fuck’s sake, I snapped, and shooed him away so that I could clean the mess. He laughed again. Look, you’re already ruining the place, he said. It’s definitely yours now.
The tissues kept disintegrating before they could properly soak up the tea. I gave up using them and fished the T-shirt of my pajama set from out under my pillow. I was on my knees and he was stood two paces away, watching me attend to the patches of umber blossoming from out of the carpet into my clothes. It’s not mine, I said. It’s not mine because I don’t know how to do the thing Ghislane does. And now I’m going to have to pay for this stain out of my deposit. And you’ve made me ruin my fucking pajamas.
I looked up at him. He sighed. It’s okay, he said. I get it. The limbo between terms gets me a bit funny as well.
I.V.II
On the eighth of October I set an alarm that went off at 5:45 a.m. the next day with a sharp peal. It split me from my bed. I saw the room come into light with the first article Twitter hyperlinked onto my screen and learned that workers’ rights were to be diminished even in the event of a deal. This article proposed the creation of a common rule book of rights, breaches of which could be dealt with by a supranational court. This article proposed that the deregulation of workers’ rights was an opportunity for the UK to match, if not surpass, other nations in the creation of new ones. This article failed to tell me what my soon-to-be stripped rights were, and so it was impossible to worry in a way that wasn’t vague. It was hard to feel specifically outraged. In any event, the establishment of a supranational court was a far more interesting theory to mull over because it seemed to me, as I lay in bed and philosophized in the aftershock of my alarm, that no one was above borders or nation, or some kind of entity they carried with them in lieu of home. A judge still had a passport, paid tax, at some point returned to a house plotted upon a piece of land. I finished, pushed, with the upward swipe of my thumb, the article away, and put the radio on; I spooned coffee grains into a cafetière.
When it was done, the sound of an ironically titled daily bird program on Radio 4, Tweet of the Day, swam back into the room: a voice like sandpaper soothing wood into a level plane reported not on sound as news, but on sound as natural phenomena. It told me I was listening to larks’ songs recorded from Spain. I pressed the plunger down on my cafetière and felt idyllic. Five short tones and a final long one signaled the beginning of the Today program and set me back to work. A plummy, rich voice warbled in and out of focus, and on each hour, the Greenwich Time Signal carved the occasions of that morning into distinct parts. To them, teeth cleaned, a hot towel passed over pores, rolled nylon flat over thighs. I transposed the room into a bag. House key, fob, vanity mirror, shawl, tissues, set text, lanyard, Vaseline lip therapy, a sheaf of notes. I left the house and listened to it all rattle under my arm.
* * *
Ghislane did not appear in the Bodleian, the English faculty library, nor its dark wood and glassy building. Over the course of a few weeks, I recognized those students she had pointed out at the department party, who now seemed like pale creations without her estimations of them, given over a glass of champagne and driving them on. Eventually I tamed the little impulse that asked where she was. Then, for a while, things became the same. The days shortened. Dust fell on routine. I transcribed manuscripts and learned how not to fall asleep in front of online databases. I ate shop-bought vegan wraps with bad chipotle and an abundance of starch. I kept spare change for coffee. In the morning, the wake-up radio beat out pips of time before the same road, the same load under my arm as I went—eventually I could have done it in my sleep. Eastbound path through the park towards the faculty. Four hours later, down Holywell Street, until I hit Broad Street. And the papers to look over. And lectures to sit in on, then hear translated in another seminar. I stopped craving candy for dinner. Only the fire drills carried out by the college accommodation office disturbed the peace: irregularly done and with the siren, occasionally, an accompanying knock on the door, at which point the house was timed for the efficiency of its evacuation. It was the only time I ever saw tenants other than my neighbor—once a month, with sleep in their eyes, in boxer shorts or slogan T-shirts and their arms wrapped around their chests for warmth, averting their gaze from each other’s pajamas.
When October was done, November ceased to exist. Shop windows dressed to look like living rooms with a centerpiece tree and wrapped presents underneath obscured time’s flow. On walks home, I kept to the shade around Christmas lights which cast the
ir glow over street markets selling hot chocolate to passersby. Gingerbread men and thick wool socks affected coziness. To all this, I expected snow, which did not come, but frost set over the building’s roofs and windowpanes: the city, beatified, and tourists in ill-suited shoes, trying not to skid.
I worked. Between seminars and on my lunch breaks I became obsessed with an oil painting by Turner, hung landscape in the Ashmolean. It was dated 1810 and showed the High Street, looking west: University College on the frame’s left and the spire of St. Mary’s rising above everything. Each cobblestone and window was exact. I took a photo of the canvas and carried it to the High Street—held my phone up so that the beadles, the scholars in their gowns, were suddenly thrust into present day. Then I took a photo of the High Street as I knew it and held it up to the canvas the next time I saw it; lined it up so that it filled the painting’s frame. I went back, from week to week, holding up photos with varying lights, kinds of weather, shifting casts. I considered asking my neighbor whether he would take a picture of me on the High Street so that I could later crop the photo and insert myself into Oxford, 1810—but embarrassment prevented me from doing so. I did not want to be thought of as sad, or vain.
I worked. I had disputes with my supervisor on his students’ tutorial essays. He took these lightly; I did not. He laughed good-naturedly over a paper on archive and the environment, and what to do with all the world’s paper once climate change brought us down to bare necessities. It said: eat the rich for fuel; vote which literature goes into bunkers by popular rule. I argued strongly for one he disliked on the difference between what the American literary domestic was and the UK’s notion of home. In America, everyone was always searching for home. Who could lay claim? Huck Finn and Jim floating four walls on a raft down the river, picking up grifters as they went; Nick Carraway marveling at the summer bungalow he was newly able to rent. America’s foremost piece of literature was its constitution, which tied its politics inextricably to its land—the question of who owned it, and who had tilled it; the disparity between the two. In England, only myths, only fictions defined the land: Chaucer’s pilgrims and their tales; Wordsworth, spinning his prophecy to open vales. In England, there was no question of home: depending on who you were, it was either always there, or not. It all worked by empire, by assumption. An orphan girl could advertise and inherit another woman’s burnt trove. Orlando found nothing different within themself in the same mirror, hung within the same ancestral abode. The rest went unmentioned. I emailed him to say I thought this deserved high praise. I’m uneasy about essays which come down strongly on one side, he replied. Few essays make such expansive arguments with rigor. Dialectics create more intelligent arguments: ideas are better served when they are complicated rather than cheered or booed as at a football match. I replied, of course, and stared, suddenly deflated, at the screen.
I worked. I found a girl Ghislane had pointed out to me at the party crying quietly in a Starbucks on Cornmarket—burnout, anxiety, SAD. I asked if she was all right.
The country’s going to hell and I can’t finish my essay, she said. How do I know what matters when I can’t get a look-in? Marking criteria were too vague, and, besides, didn’t I know? May was holding private meetings with backbench MPs. The pound hit a twenty-month low—what use was an English degree now that fake news had eliminated the meaning of words anyway? The vote was delayed, the tick on her word count wouldn’t grow. There was general bewilderment that it should all be going this slow. She crumpled in her chair—I just feel I’ve fallen behind on my personal self-care.
Relax, I said. Keep yourself healthy. Take long walks. Take a bath with oils. Find a Boots and take Bach Rescue Remedy. Perhaps it should have occurred to me to say, Take responsibility for the degree you paid for and chose, but before I thought to, confidence was partially restored. After she left, the words hung uselessly in the air.
I worked. In the evenings, my neighbor interrupted me with news updates and jasmine tea: he had a new girlfriend, or so he thought. She was Czech, he couldn’t quite tell. He was sleeping with her, but he couldn’t quite tell—what was the deal with women now? When she said things, he was convinced there was subtext, but every time he asked her for it, she looked at him confused, and made him feel mad. I soaked my mouth in warm, fragrant water which absolved me of the expectation of response—he was free to talk on end. He wasn’t on Twitter, he said, and real time didn’t seem to be a fast-enough pace to keep up with changing social codes. Should he open doors for her? Should he take it for granted that she would come and go? Should he text her, and ask her to let him know? Even the waiters didn’t know which way the bill should go if they went out for lunch. One time, the thin white strip tucked discreetly into leather was waved back and forth over them, as though their server sensed this was not yet a relationship of equals and equilibrium. In the end, it was decided he should pay for rented use of knives and forks, of linen, now stained with overcooked pork. And she, my neighbor groaned, half smiled, half bristled, as though it were ludicrous that he should pay, but he may as well now, all the same. It was the most confusing and expensive relationship he had ever known, and yet he was a willing participant in its misery.
I worked. I went to an advisory session on mental health and well-being. The world was a difficult place, the internet even more so. I had found the equivalent of a lonely hearts column in Oxford, a Facebook page called Oxlove, and another for the airing of grievances, Oxfess, and wasted hours a day going through them. Why is every girl here a basic white girl??? Even the brown ones; and beret man, feel free to chirpse on Monday, will be wearing silver boots (below, tagged, a number of men pictured in berets and omg is this you?); and definitive ranking of Christmas sandwiches, if u rate the M&S one, ur a Tory; and To the incredibly kind girls who picked me up off the floor on Bridge Thursday, you’ve restored my faith in humanity; and TRIGGER WARNING MENTAL HEALTH—I just don’t see any point in going on; and we live in a society; and zero-hour contracts and low wage is pretty much the norm, last week I saw the homeless guy outside college disappear and no one noticed; and ugh, can someone explain why middle class is a dirty word, like it’s my *fault*; and, y’all will like memes about having zero in your bank account and then go back to the Home Counties to your five-bedroomed house owned outright by your parents, I hate you all, y’all have no idea what it’s actually like to struggle. Stay off the internet, the mental health adviser advised.
I worked. My mother kept interrupting to tell me I never called; to tell me I never came home; to ask whether I wanted to join her and my father on holiday for a month. I told her I could not take that kind of time off work, and I was still settling in. I needed that month to make my new life stable, but would wait and see whether I could go home for a week sometime soon. She told me I’d go into an early grave. I said, well, that’s how it was these days, and subsequently received a chain of WhatsApp messages. This was not what she expected from any daughter of hers; could I not just take the damn holiday, it’s not like I would even have to pay for it; why could I not at least pretend to be grateful, and by the way, this was my father’s view on the matter, too. We did not speak over Christmas. When she got back in touch to tell me they had returned to the country safely, something had changed. She asked me about my life in the same forced, dutiful tone of voice I used to ask about her trip.
I worked. In the literary journals I researched, advertising overtook articles and declared property for sale. Escape from Brexit for the tranquility of rural Ireland. A book lover’s home with shelving and a study. Two adjacent traditional cottages in County Clare, sleeping five, plus seven acres, but handy for Shannon airport and the wild Atlantic coast, for €285,000 or equivalent. Below that: Calm German writer looking for a room in New York City. My novel caused a scandal in Germany. NYC is my exile.
And in the New Year, there was a TV film—Brexit, with bad wigs and a dramatic score. It was criticized by those who watched it from a streaming service offered by Chann
el 4. The events of 2016 played out over again. Twitter became a country divided. The times were already a costume drama. You could get used to anything if it was administered in the correct dose.
* * *
I began to have strange dreams over this period. The news bled into them. Perhaps it was a natural side effect of listening to the radio first thing in the morning and reading my Twitter feed at night—but they were disappointingly sedate. In one of them, I met an amalgam politician, a composite of centrist, start-of-the-decade neoconservative ideals, and he was not so unreasonable that I felt I could decline his invitation to breakfast. He led me with overblown courteousness to the hall of his former college, where we settled on a bench in the middle of the room. You sit, and I’ll choose for you, he grinned, and bounded off. He returned with two trays laden with small pots of Bonne Maman jam, boiled eggs, butter, bacon, then held a finger up and disappeared once more. When he came back, it was with a rack of toast and a coffeepot. He took his phone out of his pocket and placed it, screen-up, on the table. I imitated him. Finally, he sat down.
Now, then—he surveyed me over the table—you look like . . . those, I think. He pushed two of the small pots of raspberry conserve towards me. He buttered me a piece of toast and set it down on my plate, where it went ignored. He didn’t seem to notice or mind. Having done his due diligence towards me, he piled his plate with bacon and began cutting up another square of toast into thin slices with gusto. When this was done he took another plate, set his knife above it, and sliced the head off of an egg. Yolk slopped up from over the rim of the shell. The mess took thirty seconds to make. I poured myself a cup of coffee. I asked the burning question my dream self apparently wanted to know.