Fall (25 page)

I had so irrationally focused on the look on Fall’s face when I declared myself to her. I was obsessed with trying to determine what I meant when I said that I owned her, how I must have looked to her. My mind presented such a fevered kaleidoscope of imaginary problems. I was afraid of what she might say to Julius. I was afraid of her not understanding and therefore not loving me. If I allowed myself truly to ponder her disappearance it was only to feel some sort of relief that embarrassment and disappointment might be postponed. I can see now that I was too proud to acknowledge how much the perception of others meant. Anger was my defence.

I slowly stopped thinking of Fall as someone who could hurt me. And it remained inconceivable, at least imponderable, that she couldn’t return at least some of my love; that she couldn’t see my adoration, my perfect appreciation, and at least nod back at me, at least smile slightly and say, “There’s promise.” A person can’t lie in the sun and not grow warm.

I was too involved to note the changes that took place to every corner of the room, every room in the school, all the minds that drifted past each other between classes. Some people talked about her. Hysterical groups would form for a time like birds for a nightly feed. If I walked through the downstairs common room and saw the sniffling red faces of Jess and Sarah and some random sensitive boy, I would know that there had been discussion of Fall. Where
is
she? Always the same emphasis.

There’s nothing more oppressive or repellent than collective mourning. People don’t want to admit that they don’t know how to confront something incomprehensible. It’s easiest to copy a neighbour.
That random sensitive boy knew nothing about Fall but he sniffled like everyone else. The greater truth was that few people properly cared. The schedule of school went on, the walls didn’t move, exams went forward.

The common remark was that someone so popular, someone so beautiful, would never run away. “She just wouldn’t,” everyone said. But I knew her. I had a sense that her not needing to be loved might prompt a fugitive impulse if she felt too much love from others. Julius’s notes to her, certainly, seemed constrainingly fulsome to me. And who knew what went on with her at home? Perhaps between Julius and her mother she felt she had no space for herself. She had to get away.

This was the sort of thing I had wanted to say to her. I understand you, Fall. I knew that you were so much more than a beautiful, popular girl; that a beautiful, popular girl could still possess an aching, solitary soul. As much as I knew that Julius loved you, and knew certain sides of you, I also knew from scores of nighttime conversations that there were things he didn’t see. That low note in your voice which to him meant nothing but sex, to me meant a momentary perception of the gravity of life. Of course you were beautiful, but your beauty came from subtle appreciation of the tissue beneath the skin, the rich red world of cells and salt that drives our bodies to unpredictable and inevitable sadness.

In the closet, in my nest of human cloth, I dreamt of skinless people, a world of living meat, clinched in a wounded hug and, finally, understanding. We would truly feel the cold, we would truly know each other.

And when I climbed out, to go to class, to go to dinner, I felt a new sort of want. I wanted you to take me away from that world of pretense and progress, of people claiming to know each other, lining up for exams mumbling formulas to themselves. Giving, gathering, manipulating answers in order to get ahead, elbowing each other while pretending to care: Where
is
she?

I pined. Julius kept me informed. Julius’s previously endearing hyperactivity turned into something more worrying. His searching eyes were suddenly afraid of what they would find; and there is something about that shift from curiosity to fear that drives other people away unless they share your fear.

“I think they think I did something to her,” he said.

The lead-up to exams before the Christmas holiday was always a paradoxical time. Quiet was required and quiet wasn’t possible. Many were nervous about exams, but on the other side of exams was the first chance of the year for most to go home. The real world of parents, old friends, familiar weather, and comfort, which had all become a dream over the past several months, was suddenly growing more visible.

Prep was extended by an hour and Masters were more strict about certain rules, but there was universal restlessness. The drama of Fall’s absence made our little room unendurable.

I found ways out. People were often permitted to study together, and seniors were usually left alone. Ant and I pretended to work in the library, but we occupied ourselves elsewhere. Sometimes we sparred with each other. Ant liked to provoke me by taking “mock” roundhouse kicks whose breeze had a kick of its own. My nose was still very tender, so I lost patience quickly and I generally had him on the ground. “Fuck you’re strong,” he would say in the manner of the politely injured. He had such a stupid red face.

I suppose I was growing belatedly mischievous. That term had awakened things in me that I had concealed according to the custom of the quiet and the loud. Sometimes character only emerges when it is publicly acknowledged that one can have character. Until that recognition it exists as a constant germination, some sort of dark, relentless involution.

Beware the silent ones, my father used to say. He had that knack of making clichés seem like weighty and original truths. I’ve often thought that quiet people are the most interesting, not because they can have thoughtful responses but because the louder world has generally suppressed them into some sort of perversion. All that
time under the earth, they’re bound to present something unusually shaped when they emerge. I know so well the anger that builds in silence.

I had such a hunger for aggravation. That pre-exam atmosphere of anticipation and urgency was a nursery of irrationality; and somehow Fall’s disappearance seemed like an opening rather than the looming black wall that it seemed to Julius. There was some part of me that felt she had gone out into the world, she had found a path of her own, there were unknown places which she went to discover and I would somehow follow her to them.

People would have late-night showers to relax themselves. Ant and I would throw pails of cold water on them. We regularly doused people in their sleep. Sometimes Ant or I would let go of the pail so it hit their heads after the water.

I found myself with a particular loathing for a few of the younger students. Edward, primarily, but there was a kid named Carlos, one year below me, who came from Barcelona and had a laugh like a burst of insults. He always showered with what appeared to be half an erection, and he had one of those obscene uncircumcised penises whose smegmaed eyes constantly leer through their hood with an oozy wink. It made me think of Bavaria and how little good can emerge from a meat-loving culture.

I went into his room during one of my spare periods, while he and his roommates were in class. I closed the door behind me. I wasn’t particularly nervous. Other people’s rooms can feel so full of possibility. All those strange objects so familiar to their owners. The posters of Barcelona, buildings with a fleshy dimension that Carlos could never communicate to his roommates. Whose photo is that? Whose books are those?

The possibility of strangers’ rooms increases, though, when you cease trying to learn about their occupants and wonder what you can
do
to them. The memories evoked by that poster would acquire a new poignancy if I tore it.

I looked around. I tried to determine what belonged to Carlos. There were three toothbrushes at the sink. One was sitting in a mug
that read
Catalunya Ràdio
. I took that toothbrush and went back to my room.

I thought about lines, what makes one person from head to toe more beautiful than another. I thought about the bodies I’d seen on beaches in Sydney, tanning, heated like encaustics on the surface of my mind. I summoned them. I summoned perfection. This head like my father’s box full of slides, the lines and colours, bent and warmed, bodies on the beach and the tension of a scrum.

I ejaculated on the toothbrush and brought it back to Carlos’s room, dropping it back in the mug.

There wasn’t much time before my first exam, and when I fetched my books I felt that lifelong nervousness. Algebra, particularly, was a worry.

I’
M GONNA FIGURE
it out. If everything in this dark street with the lights is life and the wind on my eyes cold and gentle. If her tight little hand through leather and wool and the side of her face are my friends. If her own secret street looks like mine, but, like, lower ’cause she’s shorter. I’m gonna figure it out.

I’ll figure out this second but it’s gone. I’ll figure out the second after this second it’ll settle into my eyes. I’m gonna keep my eyes open for the wind and cold surprises and she’ll look at me and laugh.

There’s beer and gas-pump tequila and a flower in my throat. There’s the stem of a flower on the top of my heart and my secrets blow out with my breath and when they’re out I don’t know what they are. I don’t know what I want. I’m feeling it all and I don’t know what it is.

Where we going she says.

Who knows.

Maybe she likes my smile. Maybe she’s thinking about my smile. Maybe I shouldn’t be thinking about my smile it’s vain. Maybe she’s undressing that guy from his coat, no way I’m buff and delicious.

That’s pretty she says.

The dress I say.

The top she says.

There we are in the window and I’m looking like my dad and my mom who’s gone and in me. The store looks warm and golden.

I want a top like that for the winter she says.

It is winter.

Yeah.

I think I had a shirt, same brand as that I’m saying.

You did she says. Dark blue.

She knows my shirts.

Clothes don’t last I’m thinking.

You were cute in it.

I love her.

I’m gonna buy her that whole store on this day in ten years because I’ll have a job. Happy anniversary I’ll say.

We’re quiet.

I forgot to buy you a present I say. I’ll buy you one every year. Later.

I bought you one she says. Maybe you’ll get it tomorrow.

Nice I’m thinking.

We’re walking and her arm’s in mine.

I’ve never been older or happier I’m thinking. I like the warm in this jacket. I like that crunchy salt under my shoes, there’s a guy who sprays it all over the street and I never want to be him.

Lay down your future now dad says. You’ll be surprised how much of your future you can determine at your age.

I’m laying it down, crunch crunch.

I’m gonna figure it out.

It’s nice just walking she says.

She’s wearing more perfume and I’m not sure I like it but she’s a woman tonight and I’ll make myself love it.

It’s really nice just walking I’m thinking and I said it. It’s so fuckin nice this calm right now. I’ve never felt older. I’m not gonna tell her I’ve never felt happier.

There’s one perfect thing I wanna eat and drink and fuck. I’ll keep my eyes wide open.

I love how it warms up before it snows she says.

It’s warm in my jacket I say.

Maybe I should come in she says.

We’re stopping.

We’re hugging.

My tongue’s on the bed of her tongue.

I wanna go to William’s and fuck her with years on every side like she’s a woman in perfume but I’m not saying anything. My tongue’s on the bed of her tongue.

Mmm she says.

We’re walking.

I’m holding my cock through my pocket and everyone can see it but nobody’s around right now. My cock is my thigh’s warm friend, squeeze hi.

The wind’s in my eyes and I’m gonna figure it out. Tears on my cheeks and my cock in my pocket and I’m gonna figure it out. These are all new lights and corners. I can feel it. It’s all new but it was there before. I’m almost there I can feel it. There’s a middle of everything and I’m gonna figure it out.

There’s an eye. There’s a green eye of Fall. There’s a city in the middle of nowhere.

There’s a country in the middle of nowhere.

There are lights like these and colours like these and all the colours brighter when you’re closer to the middle of night. And night right in the middle.

There’s Fall’s green eye. And colours of blue and yellow and brown and jungle animals all inside the green, and right in the middle is the deep-blue black looking back and taking in. Fall’s pupil’s up ahead, in the middle of that street. I’m so fuckin close.

You’re walking too fast.

I’ll run and I’ll be in the middle.

You’re walking too fast she says, Jumping Bunny. Take it easy.

I wanna go somewhere I’m saying.

Slow down she says. It’s early.

I want a hot dog I’m saying. Something with meat and bread and mustard.

Sounds like a hot dog she says.

Where do you wanna go I say.

Stop she says.

Stop.

Open your mouth she says. Wider.

She puts her lips inside mine.

I love you she says inside my mouth and she blows it down to my belly.

It’s only nine o’clock she says.

M
Y LOWEST MARK
was an A-minus that term. I was destined to ease into university like a train into a station.

In all honesty I cannot remember exactly how Julius performed in his exams. Not very well, I think. And there were no final results for that whole year for either of us because neither of us made it through.

Christmas exams ended earlier at St. Ebury than they did for other schools in the city, allowing most of us to fly away to our distant homes. Fall had been missing for only two weeks when I left for Sydney.

It was customary to have a Christmas party for the boarders near the end of exams before we all departed. We drew names from a toque at the end of Chapel one morning as we all filed out, and were obliged to buy a present for the person whose name we drew.