“What’s up, chicken butt? You look saaad.” Crink’s voice came in from Alex’s right, as if on cue, in a Droopy Dog impression he’d had since they were kids. He smiled, then inverted into a Pagliacci frown to add visual salt to the wound of his sad impersonation. Across from them at the table, which was laid out with bowls and forks and mugs that didn’t match and place mats that didn’t match the mugs, Jules and Ruth were talking first-semester nothings, neither one paying any attention to the boys.
Alex sighed and replied, slightly under his breath, “You and I grew up in each other’s pockets, Crink. Pretty much every memory I have of being a kid is of pretending to be an astronaut with you, or throwing Ninja Turtle figurines at each other.”
Crink laughed like an old man with a mouthful of peppermints watching Dinner for One. “Yeah, or that time you made nunchucks out of your mom’s boyfriend’s work socks so you could give them to Frank as a birthday present? And she grounded you for three weeks.” His laughter petered out slowly, in beats.
Then Alex asked, “You ever think, even with all of the stupid play-acting and messing around we did as kids, that maybe being an adult makes even less sense?”
Crink swallowed a sip of wine and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, then got up from the table and motioned for Alex to follow him outside while the girls chatted. “What do you mean?” he asked, under the single buzzing, moth-filled light on the front stoep.
Alex paused again, ran his fingers through that untamed mass of hair that had plagued him since playschool then spoke. “Well, like, take today, man. I had that weird feeling all day, you know, about misplacing something.”
“Yeah, so? We lost tons of shit when we were kids. Nothing to get bent out of shape over.”
“No, listen, that’s the thing. Later on, I was on my way to Prof De Villiers’s lecture with Julie, and everything’s normal, right? Only, when she goes to kiss me goodbye, she says the damndest shit.”
Crink frowned, then motioned for his friend to continue.
Alex breathed deeply. “Well, she’s got to go to paste-up, right, and I’m splitting for—”
“Hold up. You said ‘De Villiers’, right?”
Alex stopped short. “Yeah?”
“Isn’t she the one who takes organic chem? What the hell were you doing going to a biology lecture?”
The lights out on the balcony didn’t dip, but to Alex, right then, they might as well have gone out entirely. Charles Cranston, his best friend of fifteen years now, had read a lot of his compatriot’s writing over the years. For the Christmas play in Sub A, Alex’s teacher had allowed him to write his friend, playing “Crink, the Snowkid” in the pageant, a throwaway poem about the unique snowflake. When Crink needed to convince Stacey Stauffmeyer to take him back during the Grade 8 summer holiday, the letter he read to her from her balcony while Alex held the ladder underneath him had been written by the same man steadying his perch. And, two weeks ago, Crink had told Alex that the two thousand words he’d written on “The Face of History” were going to make “that chump De Villiers” choke on every bad mark he ever gave Cranston in first year. They’d talked about it. Alex was going to snap a shot of it in class if he could.
And he knew, looking across at him, that he didn’t know a god damned thing about De Villiers. Nothing.
Standing there on the balcony under the flickering power saver bulb, Crink had no idea who Alex meant. Alex didn’t need to press the matter. He was all there, not awash out in the middle of the ocean, like when they’d smoke dope at Cath Margolis’s house and he’d become lost and paranoid and convinced of ugly things inside of his own mind. There was nothing so simple to save this. There was no point to this conversation anymore, and Alex was terrified by what that meant.
What could he say to him, now, that wouldn’t be cruel, confusing or nonsensical? He smiled weakly at his old friend, and wished, suddenly, that Frank were here instead. That he had someone nearby who remembered what he remembered.
Alex blinked and, after a long pause, involuntarily croaked, “Are there any fritters left inside, buddy?”
Crink turned to him. “Sorry, did you say something?”
The cicadas outside whirred loudly. “Nothing, dude. Let’s get back inside, it’s freezing out here.”
6. “Freaks and Ghouls”
Varsity annual general meetings are an annual excuse for societies to ply their members with cane mixers and themed revelry—from punch, pirates and pizza at the Live Music General, to the International Club’s Zorba passport throwdown that sees large collections of mostly French foreign exchange students throw milling, Camel-cigarette-speckled shadows around the Gaol Pub lawn. It’s technically a chance for new presidents to be elected, budgets to be celebrated or mourned, all things depending—a wrap, of sorts. What they amount to, though, is largely living rooms decked in denim-clad legs and newly bought Jay Jays T-shirts, hand-drawn banners in seedy bar backrooms, and impossible amounts of home-made green, purple, and red punch, ladled from hand to Coke bottle to DJ booth, balcony, parking lot, braai area and backseat.
Crink had been bugging Alex to come to the Pool Society AGM for weeks. He’d said no for almost as long. He hated himself for being outlasted by that asshole, who wasn’t, it must be noted, anywhere to be found right now. It was the reason Alex found himself standing next to a five-litre punch bucket in the Rhodes swimming pool club house, surrounded by polo shirts and B.Acc conversations about RAs and home loans, contemplating the meaning of the word “begrudging”.
He was also, he was discovering, by this stage somewhat drunk. He was across from Claudia, the anthropology TA, manoeuvring dixie cups into pyramid positions with his free hand as he took sips and listened to her bash out points from her treatise.
“See, the problem with being a relativist isn’t the moral grey areas it creates.”
“It isn’t?”
“Naw man, just look where you are. Your ethics are what you construct them to be, and that’s unavoidable. You live in an age where you have instant access to the makeup and backstory of nigh on any civilisation you could want, including the hitherto unexplored bottom of your own. And you’re telling me that you honestly believe your morals are the right ones? Or that there are any right ones? You know how history works: You can see it, both behind and in front of you. How little credit are you really giving yourself, Alex?”
Alex smiled and casually dunked his glass back into the bucket. “Okay, so what does cultural relativism actually ruin about witchcraft?”
“It’s the condescension it creates! The idea that we don’t believe in anything anymore, and that believing is childish. We’ll never understand anything if we don’t embrace the unknown. Nothing scares us. Shit, the half of my dorm that aren’t atheists are Fox-NBC-pagans, bringing themselves before no temple before that of the flatscreen. And they take it out on the believers. The people with the bravery to believe, because bland has become the new chic.
She took a sip, pointing at Alex to wait while she did so. “Take the afterlife, for example...”
“I don’t believe in life after death.”
Claudia smiled. “That’s the fucking point, though, isn’t it? You’re not scared of what happens to you after death. You think you’re brave, choosing not to believe in God. A spiritualist, man? A traditionalist, someone who truly believes? They don’t have any of that pride. They know, without one iota of doubt, that there is something waiting to uplift or burn them up forever after they die. They don’t second-guess whether we’re on a journey past the grave to somewhere. They live their lives waiting for it, like a thunderstorm.”
Alex shrugged and stepped back to admire his plastic cup architecture. “Just because they’ve done it for years doesn’t mean that it means anything. I’ll give all due respect to the belief, and toss in my approval for the conviction, but denial stretches deep as oak roots, my friend.”
Claudia rolled her eyes, as Alex gestured to the students milling around them. “You do
n’t think these people have room in their lives to be insecure about death?”
“What’s there for them to be insecure about?” she replied.
Alex looked down into his glass, partly because it was nearly empty again, “Now look who’s being condescending.”
His pocket sent out a pulse of shuddering vibrations. A phone call. Alex reached in and pulled out a yellow-green screen with Cynthia’s name flashing across it. “Sorry, gotta take this.”
Setting his drink down as he moved outside to the pool, Alex answered. “Pookie! This is an unprecedented surprise.”
Crying cut into his ear from the other end of the line. Something was wrong. “Cynth? Cynthia, is everything okay? What’s wrong?”
There were three more distinct sniffles from the phone before she replied, wet-nosed and miserable: “Clark did something...”
“What did he do?”
“Well, he said he did it, but...but... Alex, he microwaved Bella!”
Alex had to stifle a laugh as his little sister explained how their brother had just told how her he microwaved the evil out of her Twilight movie poster. He’d been threatening to do it for months now. “I’m sure he’s just hidden it, Cynth.”
“He said it went to be with Jesus, Alex!”
This time the laugh got half out. Alex stopped himself short, though, remembering that the distress in his sister’s voice, though unwarranted and childlike, was sincere. This situation, funny as it was, would have to be remedied quickly. “Okay, Cynth, well then we’ll need to respond in kind.”
“I don’t wanna be kind, Alex. He hurt Bella.”
“All right, well then here’s what you do. I want you to go to Clark’s bedside cabinet and take his guitar tuner.”
A shocked silence from the other end of the line. “But...but I’m not u’sposed to go into Clark’s stuff.”
“And if you do after today, there’ll be grave consequences, but right now you need to take appropriate action, sis. Go into the cupboard while Clark’s out and grab his tuner.” More silence. “The little black box with the glass and the moving stick inside. Take it and hide it in the best place you know.”
“What do I do when he asks me where it went?”
Alex smiled. “Tell him it’s gone to be with Bella.”
Cynthia’s sniffles slowed down, and Alex circled the emptied practice pool with his head cocked to the side. “You gonna be okay, little sister? Want me to come over there and crack his face?” He could hear her wiping her nose from the other end of the line.
“He broke my poster, Alex.”
Alex sighed. Clark might’ve been a little cruel at times, but he wasn’t heartless.“I guarantee you, he didn’t. Go to the back of Mom’s stationery cupboard. On the third shelf. It’s where he used to hide his parent-teacher-meeting invites from Mom. If I know him, you’ll find it there.”
Alex ducked into the pool house after the call to find Claudia gone. As he weaved back to the bar area through a throng of half-bearded barista stoner types and red-haired philosophy maidens, he passed Crink in the drinks room, macking on a woman Alex knew for a fact was gay. He paused for a second and considered his responsibilities to his friend, to save his pride or at least stop him from saying something truly stupid to this poor woman, before he realised what he was doing and stopped himself.
Situations like this called for a soft touch. As he waved a half-hearted goodbye over his shoulder and looked back to see his friend’s hand resting on Maddy from L Society’s knee, he figured it would make for a funnier story tomorrow if he found out on his own.
Stumbling slightly on the front doorstep and throwing on his coat, Alex breathed in the Grahamstown valley air and checked his watch. 11:35 PM. Still early—this student kick had always outstripped his own stamina, and he was definitely a little sleepy now. Time to head home and—
“Alex! Hey Alex, over here!”
Waving agitatedly from under a streetlight across the road and a couple of buildings down from him, Ruth was standing next to some girl Alex couldn’t make out in the light. He crossed the street to where the two were turning back to each other, and bounced up the last few steps to where they were, play tagging his friend on the shoulder, as her new partner turned to him and smiled.
“Oh shit!” He exhaled as he locked eyes with the smoking nun from the day before.
“Eloquent as always, Alex,” Ruth said. “Punch good at the Pool Soc party?”
“Rancid and more potent than alcohol should be in good conscience, thanks for asking.”
“Alex van der Haar, I’d like you to meet—”
“A girl I thought was a nun when I accidentally knocked her on her ass two weeks ago?”
Ruth stopped, her body running up against an invisible wall as much as her words did. She looked from one of them to the other, realisation coming on in staccato bursts. “So you’ve already met?”
“No introductions, but we exchanged the requisite pleasantries.” The girl from outside Eden Grove smiled from Ruth to Alex. “Alex, I believe?”
“Those holy vows only apply to your dress sense in the daylight hours, sister?”
“The habit doesn’t work in soft lighting.”
“Speaking of habits, do you make it one of yours to keep your name a big secret?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“I wasn’t expecting I’d have to.”
She laughed softly, a melodic flutter from her throat. “You go into a lot of your introductions with these loosely related social rules, Alex?”
Ruth coughed, wedging back into the conversation. “Alex, this is Sheila.”
And there it was. Alex put his hands up in mock surrender. Sheila put hers up in mock barbarian victory. The three slipped into a rhythm almost instantly, pulling their jackets tight around their shoulders, kicking stones out of the pavement. They talked away the next few minutes, shrouded, as they were, under the cone of a campus streetlamp. Alex wasn’t sure why, but he made it a point not to spend too much time looking directly into Sheila’s watery blue eyes.
“So you’re an exchange lecturer, from Down Under?”
“G’day mate,” Sheila teased. “The accent wasn’t givin’ us enough clues, was it?”
“This is an international campus, Sassypants,” Alex responded.
“Anyway, when you saw me, I was about to give my first computer studies practical. The nun getup...”
Ruth raised an eyebrow. “That was a real reference?”
Sheila smiled down at her shoes, took a drag on her cigarette and stomped softly in the cold night air. “I find teaching aids help the class remember the lectures better.”
Alex was surprised to find himself cocking his head to the side. “You want kids to pay attention to your class and your go-to gimmick—”
“Teaching aid.”
“Teaching aid...is a nun’s habit?”
Ruth butted back in, “Seriously? Like a nun? On campus and whatnot?”
“Hey, my methods get results.” Sheila laughed, her hands spread out, palms out in front of her.
Alex sucked in his lips, making eye contact with her for a second longer than he’d have liked, before looking down and saying, “And bonus points for subtlety.”
“Says the man who shoulder-barged a nun to the ground two weeks ago. Where were you headed to in such a hurry anyway, Chuggs?”
“Anthropology.” Alex beamed.
“Oh wow, and you gave me crinkly-brow for my teaching aids.”
“Yeah, yeah. Three years into my degree, I feel I’ve more than defended my minor on enough street corners, Sister Act. Anyway, Crink and I were running to get in early for Beynon’s day one lecture.”
“Seems legit, hippie.”
“Wow, and the claws come out.”
Ruth punched Alex in the arm, smiling. “Empowered women who don’t stand on ceremony bother you, Van der Haar?”
Alex frowned in mock pain. “Just the ones who lammie my arm, Ruth Jerry.”
&n
bsp; “What’re you covering in anthropology at the moment?” Sheila asked.
“Witchcraft and tribal belief systems,” Alex said, accepting a cigarette from Ruth’s pack and rapidly lighting it to get his hands out of the cold.
Sheila smiled slightly.
“All right, smirky,” he said, dragging deeply and shoving his hands instantly back into his pockets. “Be as dismissive as you want, but it’s actually really interesting stuff, I was just talking to someone tonight who took it to fifth year. We’re covering religion in general this week, and the similarities between mythologies across cultures.”
“Check out Zeitgeist over here.”
“Right, I’m gone.”
Sheila and Ruth cooed, “No! Stay!” in unison, grabbing the elbows of an Alex who was already turning in his tracks, spinning him around to face them as Sheila lit another cigarette of her own.
“So, Alex. Are you religious? Is that why this appeals to you?”
“I’d say sceptical agnostic.”
A chorus of groans rolled out from the two girls as Alex hung his head in mock shame. “You chickenshit.”
“I know, right?”
Sheila blew out a plume of smoke. “What is it about religion that inspires you to such indecisiveness? In this age of the internet, one would think you’d have an abundance of strong opinions on the matter to help make your mind up.”
“The philosophy’s just as convincing the other way, you know,” Alex responded.
“If you want to resort to wordplay, sure.” Sheila sounded suddenly serious. Why did this intimidate him so much?
“Which is all the Bible really is,” Ruth chimed in.
Sheila climbed on board, smiling as she turned to face Alex with Ruth standing at her side. “Yeah, that sounds about right, coming from a college-level apologist, man. You don’t have anything better?”
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