Look Back (Part 2)

“What’s with the ruckus here?”

“Luke’s doing one of his bits again.”

“God, why does he have to be so obnoxious all the time.”

“Right? Like just stick to your lane dude, no need to try so hard.”

“Heh, fine by me to be honest. Not like we have anything better to do in these classes.”

“Yeah I guess you are right.”

“Not gonna lie, the cringe bits are usually quite entertaining.”

“You are goddamn right about that.”

“Oh look he’s priming up. Here we go, shush shush!”

“Gather ‘round, one and Sundry!” Luke Rogers smiled with his usual charismatic self. The crowd shifted and the buzzing hive that was the class quieted down into low murmurs and shuffling feet. “On this unusually chilly afternoon, within the confines of this-”

He clasped his hands together, his arms crossed one arm over the other. Thinking hard?

“Stop with the Eva pose, you pretentious twat!” Someone shouted from the back. A bubbly laugh echoed through the crowd.

“Of this frankly claustrophobic study hall.” Luke paused for dramatic effect.

“Today, we will delve into the wondrous realm of storytelling, where wit, humour, and subtle gestures intertwine to paint vivid tales of human foibles and universal truths.” The crowd groaned at the standard opening for every performance of his.

“Can he be any more obnoxious?” Someone else this time.

“The stage is set, the atmosphere charged, for an afternoon of mirth and enchantment!” Luke continued, paying no heed.

“But remember…” He lowered his voice. “This is a tale of fiction that isn’t meant to bear any semblance to real events. All names spoken are made up. Every character, a piece of fiction. Any coincidences or similarities to real events are just that, coincidental.”

He smirked at the end. The 6 idiots sitting around him tried hard to hold a straight face.

“Now then” He looked around the class. “Welcome, one and all, to this extraordinary Rakugo performance.”

So began his tale.

—

It was a cold Thursday afternoon when she talked to me for the first time.

Sedulous like she was to her looks and academia, Ashley Clarke was the very picture of a model student. I admired her. I respected her. She was my muse and I wanted her. Like a cage of silver wire in which a captive cricket sings- I wanted her locked up forever. Just for me.

I sat on the bench furthest back, close to the back door of the class. I was happy with it. It allowed me to watch her visage, her exquisitely crafted physique in wonderful clarity. Ah, she was perfect. Clear, smooth skin; symmetrical facial structure; her high cheekbones flushed with light makeup; Her big brown eyes adorned with eloquent eyelashes. Her long delicate body, supple and sinewy as a stretching cat. Her hair, a lustrous blonde knot in a stylish Chignon. Like a sculpture, crafted by an artist most indulgent. An eternal beauty.

That morning, I was reading my first-edition copy of ‘À rebours’, better known as 'Against Nature’. Joris-Karl Huysmans’ words had changed my world, altered the way I looked at everything. Its fin-de-siècle premise had only worked to reinforce how true to life the almost philosophical-treatise still held up. Something I had initially dismissed as this static, effete precursor to ‘Dorian Gray’, a work so deeply entrenched in the vanished aesthetic of the late nineteenth century. Oh, I couldn’t have been more wrong in judging this absolute aesthete of a work of fiction.

And then she was there, looking over my shoulder. I jumped, trying desperately to hide the book. Put it out of sight. Out of mind. I took a deep breath and looked at her. She stared back at me with a peculiar look and I immediately looked away, my eyes on the floor. I couldn’t bear to show her such nervous excitability in my demeanour.

Her soft, breezy voice greeted me.

“Michael Davis?”

“Huh?” That was indeed my name. “What is it?”

“You don’t know?” What could she be talking about? I couldn’t imagine she had any reason to be interacting with me.

“The class monitor is absent today.” I drew blanks. What did that have to do with me? Still, I thought hard, there must be something I was missing. Ashley couldn’t possibly be mistaken.

“You are the assistant monitor, right?” Was I? I couldn’t remember. I may have put my name down in order to stop the homeroom teacher from getting on my case for not participating in any clubs. I couldn’t remember a day when anyone had asked me to do my job though. I just wanted to be left alone after all.

I suppose that made it all the more fitting that today was finally the day.

“Ah, yes! How can I help you?” I tried my best to emulate a cheerful and enthusiastic voice.

“Can I trust you to give out all the handouts to the absentees today?” She smiled. If I wasn’t already looking away, I don’t think I could have from that terrifying force of delicate beauty.

“Y-yeah. I mean, are you sure you want me to?” Thoughts of it being a pain to do were quickly overpowered by the overwhelming sense of giddiness I felt at her asking me to do something. Anything.

“You will do just fine.” She put down a stack of stapled notes- lecture notes and assignments from today. “I am sending you the names and addresses on text.”

There were at least a dozen or so in there. Just the seasonal flu? I suppose it was only natural that the pathetic vegetation that sprouts up, with great difficulty, would wither away with the physiognomy of the weather.

“You aren’t in the class group?” She asked. A hint of restlessness in her voice.

“I… never got added?” Frankly, I didn’t know we had a text group for the whole class. But I suppose that was just par for the course.

“It’s fine, I guess. Do you have a mail address?” I nodded and gave her my ID.

“Okay. Done.” She sighed loudly, “That’s a massive load off my shoulder. Thank you so much!”

Her sense of elation made me unreasonably happy. Of course I was happy to help her out. But I didn’t say as such, I simply nodded and watched her leave. A spring in her step, limpid happiness on her face.

I wish I had been conscious of such an epoch-making moment.

After the rambling digressions of our history class ended with prose discussion in language verbose enough to even rattle me, I found myself walking along the 31st highway. The stack of notes in my bag and me gazing at the list of addresses on my phone. I sighed as the light of the setting Sun cut through the autumnal sky like a deep gash. Painting the clouds a dark, red acacia.

In another hour or so, I had visited most of the houses- a particularly concentrated spread around Beaver Street. With only the final house to go, I turned towards South Avenue as it bent around to Walnut Street. The street was a dead end, a bridge over the Quehenna river ending in a rather derelict looking parking lot. Was this the right address at all?

Even still, I kept walking. She couldn’t possibly have been mistaken. Perhaps it was just one of those miscreants writing the wrong address to create problems for the people in charge. That only served to make me angry as I charged ahead without abandon. And then as dusk set in, I found myself alone with not a single soul in sight. In that very vacant looking place with nothing but dust and junk around to keep me company.

I spotted a few unmade camp-beds full of fleas and fireplaces with their embers long gone. The society of time had gone about its business quite well. I suppose the final copy of notes would have to stay in my bag a while longer.

And then I heard voices. All around me. Approaching fast.

If this was a story, then without intrigue or action, it had suddenly put on stage a very hapless boy in his teens quaking at his knees, shivering like he had seen a ghost. Looking around frantically like a cornered animal in search of its predator. In another moment the boy would find himself constrained, his hands and legs in a deadlock as he gets lifted up in the air. Shouts of panic and confusion drowned out by the overwhelming laughter and taunts of the dozen or so people shrouded in the darkness.

He finds himself scared. His thoughts finding purchase on the lines of ‘À rebours’.

This realist novel, this slice cut from the heart of Roman life, completely unconcerned, whatever anyone might say, with social reform or satire, with no need of a carefully worked-out ending or a moral.

He hears the sound of soft grass and a gradual incline. They are going down. Down to the river bank, he soon realises.

These strained verses, sombre and smelling of game, full of terms from everyday speech, words whose original meaning had been distorted, appealed to him, interested him even more than the nevertheless ripe and already verdigrised style of the historians, the letter writers, the compilators and grammarians.

“Alright, are you guys ready for this?” A familiar voice in his ears met with the shout of similarly familiar ones.

“I am still not sure we should be doing this Sam.” Sam? Wasn’t that…

“Oh it’s all in good fun, isn’t it?” A resonant voice he recognized quite well.

“But even still, this is going a bit too far isn’t it? What will we do if he can’t-”

“Not really the time to think about that anymore, is it? Besides, you were the one who started this after all.” The others laughed. “Don’t you forget that now.”

He refused to connect the dots. He refused to believe this was anything but his delusions. She couldn’t possibly be involved in this. Yeah, surely they were just forcing her to play the part. Of course, she was even trying to stop them. That’s right. And then he found himself being swung like a pendulum. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left.

And then he was flying.

He detected a stupidity so inveterate, such a detestation for the ideas so dear to him, such a scorn for literature, for art, for everything that he adored, so deep-rooted and anchored in such narrow minds, exclusively preoccupied with swindling and money making, accessible only to that base distraction of mediocre minds, politics.

In another moment he was drowning. He felt like giving up. Wasn’t this enough? But his body disagreed. His survival instincts overriding the thoughts in his mind. He pushed and struggled. His body, a mass of flailing limbs and sheer panic. Soon, he found himself breathing air again. His panic slowly subsiding, he looked at the river bank.

They were pissing.

A line of boys urinating into the river, exactly where he had been thrown in. The flushed, yellow hot liquid flowed downstream and now was all around him. He failed to comprehend what this meant. Why? He found himself staring at them as the dozen or so of them burst out laughing. Uncontrollable, mindless laughter. So overpowering. So loud. It echoed through the riverfront.

He hated, with all his energy, the younger generation, that class of frightful louts who feel the need to speak and laugh at the top of their voices in restaurants and cafes, who knock you off the pavement without saying sorry, and who, without even an excuse me, without even noticing you, ram the wheels of their youthful flight against your legs.

The moon peeked through the clouds to shine a light on the riverside. A soft aglow that for a moment lit up the faces of the congregation. As Michael Davis got out of the river, his body, mind and pride defiled forever, he spotted her. She stood there laughing. Her ever beautiful face painted the prettiest shade of grey as she laughed with them. At him.

In that moment, he felt an indescribable urge to tear apart the cage of silver wires and clip the wings of every single cricket in it as they died a slow, excruciating death. Maybe then. Only then, he thought, it might compare to the flame burning his soul from within.