“It’s a five-minute walk across campus if you cut past the water fountain, you big baby.”
“Your car is the devil.”
“You’ve been watching too many movies.”
Maybe it was because they were late. Maybe it was the early morning air, or the banal patter and Steven King references that distracted him, but Alex didn’t notice the whole woman in his way until he had already collided with her. His vision adjusting to the sunlight from behind the photography department, the next thing Alex knew, he had just run over a woman dressed in a nun’s habit who carried a stack of papers while smoking a cigarette. And the day was only just beginning.
The words were out of his mouth before he knew much of anything besides the knee-jerk reaction of “oh god, we’re stopping for some reason and I’m late for my first fucking lesson”. Which was a pity, because those were his exact words.
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. Didn’t see you there, my fault as well.”
“Such an idiot. Look at your papers.”
“Really, it’s fine.”
“We were just in a rush, and I didn’t notice you and—”
“Hey.” She looked up, straight into his eyes, and he saw that hers were the kind of watery blue usually reserved for sapphires or crystal ponds or the souls of the rich and happy. They blasted out of her tanned, thickly set face and seemed to burrow their way out the back of his skull. It was the kind of blue that, quite simply, kills indiscriminately. He caught his breath as she said,“ Calm your tits, dude. I’ve been manhandled worse than that by guys uglier than you first thing on a Monday—stop apologising.”
As he gathered the last of her newly randomised notes, the two got to their feet. Charles Cranston stood by and watched, his hand in front of his mouth and his eyes crinkling at the edges, clearly amused by the mysterious nun sassing his best friend.
“Well, um, it’s a pleasure to disorganise you, I guess?”
Silence greeted him, given tempo by the shuffling footsteps of Eden Grove lab rats shunting past each other on their way in and out of the glass-fronted doors. The three of them milled around there a second longer without a word to split between them.
“Great!” interjected Crink, bringing the impasse to an end almost as suddenly as it had begun. “My friend here will be sure not to harangue any more sisters on his way to the class we’re late for, won’t you Alex?”
Blinking from the nun to his friend and back again, Alex slid out of the moment and back into focusing on the matter at hand. “Yeah. Sorry again.”
“It’s no big, really,” she said, softly, though not in a way that implied anything smooth or relaxing. She had a strong Australian accent, and the kind of tone perfected over years spent babysitting bratty kids. Understanding, firm, and entirely in control.
The two friends took off at speed, in the next minute, rocketing towards the central campus building and pushing their way through a growing throng of Rhodes students, as the first day of first semester began to take shape. Alex crested the top of the Eden Grove hill, turning to look back down the brick driveway, at where he’d run into the woman. She was still there, a fresh cigarette in her mouth, papers bundled under her arm, staring back at him from across the crowd.
–
“And you just bowled this woman over?”
“Like a napkin in Pamplona.”
“A firkin’ weird napkin in Pamplona.”
Julie rubbed Alex’s calf under the cafeteria table, surrounded by their friends and the milling crowds of the Rhodes student body. She was happy to see him after a morning being studious and quiet. He was her boy, and lunches with him always injected a shot of energy back into her day.
Which is why it was a bummer he seemed so distracted today. “How about we talk about something a little more pleasant, shall we?”
Alex reached for a fry and, finding the paper plate empty, kicked Crink under the table.
“Ow! Jeez, sensitive about our deep-fried snacky foods much?”
“Just looking out for your health. Stolen junk food clogs arteries. Not to mention my foot clogging your ass if you keep ganking my lunch, you mooch.”
“You’re a poet, my friend,” Crink jeered, sticking out his tongue at Alex. “So, did you figure out what it was you couldn’t remember earlier?”
Ruth turned back to the table from her rucksack, which she had propped up on the bin where she was rifling through her notes. “What’re you missing, dude?”
Alex sighed. “It’s nothing. I dunno... You know when you go into the kitchen to find something and you realise you have no idea why you went in there?”
“I never go into my kitchen without knowing what I’m going in there for.”
“Crink, you go into every kitchen but yours.”
Crink smiled, more fries in his fingers that he’d gotten from God knows where. He lifted them to his mouth as he said, “Ruth, you just get me.”
Jules ran her hand up her boyfriend’s arm as Alex sighed.
“It’s just frustrating, is all. I can already be such an airhead, I just hate feeling like I’m missing something and I don’t even know what it is.”
“You’ll remember it soon, babe,” she said, leaning over the table to kiss Alexon the nose.
Crink got up from the table and slung his satchel over his shoulder.“My friend. The dumbest smart man who ever lived.”
“Where are you going, dude? I thought the anthro dawnie was the end of your day?”
Crink stood at the head of the table, limp in his hoodie and skinny jeans, smiling down at his friends. “I’ve got a sociology lecture I need to audit before lunch.”
Ruth groaned, exasperated. “He’s targeting some poor defenceless first-year for his disgusting, ginger-haired sexcapades.”
Julie chuckled. “It must be summer.”
“You’re all so funny. Now,” Crink said, as he spun gracefully back around the garbage can and flung up a peace sign, already walking away from them, “if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to meet Ashley from Stellenbosch outside New Hall. I’m walkin’ her in.”
-
“Your job is stupid, and the things you do sound like pre-primary arts projects,” Alex joshed his girlfriend as they walked up the bicycle path towards Eden Grove in the late afternoon. Truth be told, he’d been making fun of the names for the different newsroom processes since they’d gotten back. He understood none of it, and he couldn’t help but think she might be too good for him for putting up with it like she did.
“So, I’ll catch you after paste-up—whatever the hell that is—around nine?”
Julie rolled her eyes at him. “You think you’re so clever.” She pouted as they neared the admin office, kicking listlessly through lawn clippings as she took drags from her cigarette. “But yeah, after we’ve got the layout from Margaret, we’ll paste quick-quick and I’ll missed call you. Who’ve you got for history this semester?”
“Same as last term of last year—Prof De Villiers has us for world history and something called Gaia theory.”
“Gaia theory? God, that department needs to stop letting its hipster detritus write their own syllabi. When I saw your mom last year, I promised her you were getting an education, Alex.”
They were standing under the stop sign that split their paths from each other, hers to the paper and another evening shift chasing her elusive business guru, his to history. Alex tagged Julie’s shoulder with a mock pout, and she smiled. There, surrounded by the wooden scaffolding of jacaranda trees and quiet, red-bricked walkways, with the sun pulling away from another evening of blue twilight, they were in the prime of both their youth and their love.
“Hey, if I’m going to carry on this charade of being a productive student, guys like Albion De Villiers and their love-era Woodstock coursework agendas are the only chance I have for keeping up with bookworms like you.”
“I’ve never heard of De Villiers before. Is he a transfer?”
Alex cocked hi
s head. “No man, he took us for a whole semester in first year. Um, also not to mention last term?”
Jules blinked slowly at him and puckered her lips inwards.
“De Villiers, dude. You’ve seen him. Rides a bicycle, talks in open-ended sentences? ‘All right, class, the McCarthy era’s chief export was? Stern looks and persecution. That’s right.’”
Julie laughed, shaking her head slightly.
His voice fluttered. She had to be joking. They had literally just spent a jitterbug’s worth of cafeteria coffees bitching about him a month ago? “Oh come on, I’ve only spoken about him a dozen times.”
“Sorry, babe. You talk a lot, but that’s a bell that isn’t ringin’ much, I’m afraid.” She leaned in to kiss him on the cheek then checked her wrist before turning to leave, as Alex frowned, alone now on his street corner.
“Catch you after paste-up,” Julie called over her shoulder as she disappeared between passing cars while she crossed Somerset Road in the early evening traffic. She seemed to leave, to Alex’s mind, a trail of sharp, new questions, glittering like razorblades in the frail sunlight.
–
There were more people here than Alex had seen in a long time. As he sat near the back of Eden Grove Blue, bodies of different shapes and sizes filed in along the rows in front of him, shambling listlessly to some silent rhythm as they found their seats. It was the same every year—first day, students turned up to every class possible, made registration, took notes, paid due diligence, and sussed out how much of a percent of the year’s classes they needed to catch in order to make mandatory attendance. Depending on the class, a good sixty-five percent of the year usually ended up being all open seats and ghosts in the register when that folder of loosely bound papers came up a mostly uninhabited aisle.
As he emptied the contents of his satchel onto his desk, he thought about the strange goodbye he’d had with Jules. It was so unlike her to space on the details of his life. They both knew so much about each other. Knowing, for sure, that he’d talked the man up to her on various occasions made her blank reaction to De Villiers’s name seem odd. Still, with her job at the paper, and her own life, classes, tuts and assorted departmental pit crew to deal with from four different departments, it’s not like it was her job to keep track of all his shit. He knew this, and that it probably meant nothing.
He smiled and shook his head. The simplest answer was usually the right one. He had probably spoken to Julie about some other lecturer. He couldn’t even remember specifically when he would have mentioned De Villiers.
Alex looked down into the front row, the last of the students filing in from the corner, and onto the face of a young man in a tweed jacket, scribbling in a notebook. It was easy to spot a new TA, not only because they inevitably occupied the same front, far-right auditorium seat of bootlickerdom every term, but because of the look of academic undergrowth. Like they had this whirring cloud of knowledge spinning ’round and around their peripherals, just waiting to be snatched out of the air like quails, to smear deftly across the whiteboard and illuminate all of their fledgling academic issues. And there they were—stuck watching someone else do it instead.
Alex sank into the comfort of the class ahead, deciding not to worry about Jules. What could there possibly be to worry about? He was being stupid. They waited for De Villiers to enter.
“The beauty in chronology, and by extension, history, is in its straightforward nature.” A new voice echoed upwards, above the general buzz of the lecture hall. Alex craned his neck to see where it was coming from, surprised, the next instant, to find it was emanating from the notably short TA, speaking in a voice much larger than implied by his mousy appearance, now rising from his seat and turning to the class.
“A factor, in which, is also contained its deadly hook. For those of you who are new to this class, I am Irwin Walker, this is world history three-oh-one, and this semester, we will be looking at propaganda, and the falsification of history by governments.”
Alex turned to Stewie McElroy, his project partner, who was sitting two seats to his right, and whispered, “Didn’t we have De Villiers for first this year?”
“What? What was that, dude?”
“It’s easy to see a linear path in history. One need only look at the teachings of Plato and the Greeks to see that...” came Walker’s voice.
Alex pressed McElroy, slightly louder: “De Villiers, dude. Did I read the timetable wrong? I can’t seem to find it today, but who is this guy?”
Stewie turned back to his notes with a smile on his face. “None of your jokes ever made any sense, dude.”
“What?”
McElroy gave Alex a look that was half annoyance and half I-said-look-we’ve-got-Walker-why-are-we-still-talking? What he said was, “I’m not sure who your sources are, broseph, but you were clearly misled, so get to note taking and roll with this brave new world, yeah?”
“Yeah cool, I will, Tony Robbins, but who is this guy? Dude looks like a TA and shit. Have you had—”
Walker’s voice shot out from the front of the class. “You, there in the back! Give me your best, on-the-spot excuse for why you would talk through the beginning of a third-year lecture, and then get the hell out of my class.”
Alex let his head sink, as the realisation of his folly descended over his eyes like a black bag in a kidnapping. He let out a slow breath from between puffed-out cheeks, and turned towards a sea of eyes all turned towards him, headed up by the arched eyebrows of the man he’d never seen before today. He became acutely aware of a swelling of hot blood building up in his cheeks and earlobes as the silence grew into a deafening cacophony.
“Would you believe me if I said I love your jacket?”
–
“And he full-on threw you out?” Ruth couldn’t stop giggling, splayed out on the grass in the university courtyard, while Alex jammed thumbtacks into notices on the four large bulletin boards outside the Jacaranda computer labs. Her voice tinkled with high-pitched mocking.
“Yeah, well it was my fault, but he did snap a little hard.”
Watching him from the corner of her eye, Ruth pulled out a Camel and lit up, exhaling as she said, “It’s just so unlike you, Alex. I mean, not that I care, but you’re the one in the back of that fucking class giving everyone else a hard time, telling them to shut it and whatnot. I’ve audited that shit with you, man. You’re insufferable. Please don’t tell me you’re having some kind of midlife crisis.”
“I’m twenty-three, Ruth.”
“Yeah I know, I’m just saying I’m not going to co-sign the insurance on a cherry-red Chevy if you’re just going to waste it on divorcées, sunshine.”
Alex smiled, rolled up the last of his posters and sauntered over to sit by his supine friend while she stared up at the varsity shingles and bay windows through her massive sunglasses.
“I’ll let you take it out on weekends.”
“Ugh, and drive it around Grahamstown? Thanks, I’d rather gag on the exhaust pipe.”
They lay there on the half-growth of the soft varsity grass, Alex staring up at the sky, Ruth broken from her reverie by the introduction of some awkward, long-standing post-adolescent issue. The issue was wearing Converse today. She drummed her fingers on the belt loops on her jeans. Her feet pointed inwards towards each other, her legs straight as railway sleepers, pushing away from her body, like they wanted to run away as fast as possible,
This issue, his hair was messy today. It was always messy, flat against his head in some areas, stuck out in awful angles that swooped and swirled in others. She looked over at him, maintaining a mock nonchalance practised over years then resumed a careful study of the varsity architecture.
After a few beats of sunshine, Alex mumbled, “Know what you can do instead of asphyxiate on car fumes?”
Ruth responded, a wobble in her voice she wasn’t sure was audible to anybody else but her. She hoped he hadn’t. He never did. “What’s that, Capp?”
More of that warm
silence followed, like a second helping of porridge. Another pause, ephemeral and gorgeous, was punctuated at its end by Alex bursting into a round of childlike snickering. “You’re such a freak, Ruth Bungalow. Get your mind out of my pants,” he choked, between laughs.
“Oh my god, Alex, please.”
“You’re such a perv. What, you think because you’re graduating from South Africa’s premier English and drinking academy this year, you get to come onto every guy that offers you a hot meal?”
Ruth rolled her eyes, to which Alex responded with diplomacy that could only be acquired after knowing someone for many years. “Spaghetti and meatballs, Tuesday at my place, you chode,” he said, shoving Ruthie and simultaneously rolling over and away from her to watch the passers-by from underneath his shades.
Smiling, more to herself than anyone else, she let out an overdone sigh and exhaled. “Well I guess I can slot your stupid dinner in, Van der Haar. Just don’t skimp on the sauce.”
Alex recoiled in mock horror. He rolled onto his side, the grass nodes pressed against his face, and exclaimed through a smile full of teeth and fresh air, “We’ll get the right sauce, dude. Look who you’re talking to.”
-
Even in the summer in Grahamstown, the sun always seemed to set early. Listing through the heavy wooden doors that welcomed students into Rhodes University, a flickering, mottled shadow of the solar cycle stretched through the glass-case history, nearly clanking up and down the halls. It fell through windows, this amber twilight, as deliberate and commanding as the day.
It wrested the grass away from Alex and Ruthie, as it did with thousands of students every day with lives to return to. People with things to do, and places to be. A shrill, crisp evening, brought about by a steady, marching end to the godface of day.
-
Later, plates were warmed in the ceremonial way of meals with close friends, as Jules lit candles around the house, and Crink chased the cats off the couch. The blank slates of the windows seemed drawn at their black, cold edges, as Alex threw a Lemonheads album onto iTunes and the house lit the front lawn up with mahjong slivers of warmth. Glasses were passed and topped up as tongfuls of tomato, tagliatelle and ground beef drifted over plates and between hands. Inside this town’s pocket, a crash helmet filled with old letters and in-jokes, laughter and derision and love, from lover to friend to beloved; inside of it all, nestled as he was into the backdrop of the supposed best years of his life, Alex shifted in his seat.
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