Читать книгу Paradise Rot - Jenny Hval - Страница 9

THIS IS HOW I remember my first day at the university: my shadow slipped between big stone stairs, benches and fountains. Groups of students who already knew each other were everywhere. They talked loud and fast and showed each other books and schedules. Among these sounds, my booted steps were inaudible.

On campus the tall brick buildings shut out the rest of town. Some had spires that looked like the City Hall clock tower. On a large lawn outside the library the student societies had put up tables and colourful banners. Join the Christian Student Organisation, one of them said in cramped handwriting. University of Aybourne Queer Society was painted on another in vivid rainbow colours.

‘It’s No Diet Day,’ a girl shouted after me outside the main building of the biology institute, Earth Sciences. She had dreadlocks and a rainbow-patterned T-shirt.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘No Diet Day,’ she repeated. ‘Today we celebrate the fat!’ She then handed me a sweaty chocolate muffin from a plastic tray. ‘No Diet Day,’ I repeated to myself. I continued to replay snippets of conversations that I overheard around me while I walked to the Earth Sciences department and until I got to the lecture hall door.

The hall was a huge auditorium, filled with students. I walked between the benches looking for an empty seat. The rows slanted steeply towards the lectern at the bottom, and on the second row from the front someone finally scooted over to offer me a seat. Behind me I could hear the rustle of paper: hundreds of students leafing through information sheets from folders titled New Bachelor of Science Students – Welcome Session. One of the professors was then introduced, and he started to tell us about the university regulations, about the bachelor’s degree and about biology studies. I jotted down new magical words in my notebook: tutorial, prerequisite, curriculum, research thesis. Then I noted some academic terms: cell theory, homoeostasis, endothermic. I silently mouthed the new words, and hung on every term I recognised and almost recognised.

During the induction day I became increasingly aware how unprepared I was to study in English. After the welcome session we were divided into small groups and asked to introduce ourselves. While I waited my turn I noticed how all the students’ voices went up on the last syllable in every sentence. Everything they said sounded like a question: My name is Alistair? Or I’m Catrìona? From Aybourne South? It sounded like they didn’t know their names or where they lived. When it was my turn, my voice was stiff and rusty. In short spurts I told them my name and where I was from, but every pause was too long and the syllables too short. The language grated on my throat. The words were wrong: Norway was not a country I’d been to, and it felt like a lie to pronounce my name as Djåoanna. And even before Johanna, when I said, Hello, my name is, I couldn’t help but think of other names, from pop songs and films: My name is Luka, I sang to myself, My name is Jonas, gurgled behind my tongue when I said, ‘Djåoanna, Djåo.’ When I finished, I was almost certain that I had said something else, a different name, something wrong. I suddenly knew nothing about myself, nothing seemed right in English, nothing was true.

There was only one first-year at the Faculty of Science who wasn’t from the area. She was German, and when she introduced herself as Fran-ziska-from-Ham-burg, I recognised my own stiff delivery at once. Her voice had a depth that made it more confident than mine. It sounded calm and shockingly serious in comparison with the light question-inflections coming from the other students. Franziska and I walked out together after the seminar. We were both a couple of years older than most of the students, and she seemed happy to meet someone else who wasn’t a native.

‘Where do you live?’ I asked.

‘I live down on South Beach, with my brother. He’s been living here for a couple of years, so I was lucky. Where do you live?’

‘I’m looking.’

‘Did you see many places?’

‘Yes, no one wants me yet though.’

‘Most people probably want someone they know, or someone who can’t just run off. You know, back to another country. That’s what my brother says anyway. But there’s a place on campus with listings. I can show you before I go.’

It was late in the day. Most of the students had gone home. The listings were hanging in the window of a café at the far end of the campus. Lots of handwritten notes formed a city map of index cards, showing the way to abandoned apartments, dusty bedrooms and old cars. Some included colourful drawings of cute cats or lively explanations for why a new tenant was needed. ‘Are you our dancing queen?’ it said on a note stuck in the middle, and another one read, ‘Desperately seeking YOU! (If you love cats.)’

One note stuck out, on the edge of the clump. It had no drawings, puns or patterns:

ROOM AVAILABLE IN LARGE W.HOUSE.

SHARE WITH 1 F.

.QUIET.

There followed an address and a phone number. The word QUIET, closed in by a full stop on either side, had an emphasis I liked. Quiet worked for me. I couldn’t imagine the other girl, only large rooms, unfurnished and uninhabited. And when I rang from the phone box by City Hall, the girl didn’t have a voice either, only a mechanical one from the phone company:

You have reached the answering machine of … Car-ral … John-ston. Please leave a message after the tone, or hang up.

While I listened to the mechanical voice, I saw a boy step through the City Hall garden, pass the sundial and head towards the phone box I was in. He was extremely skinny and an oversized windbreaker hung loose around his upper body. I stepped out of the phone box and started to walk down the street when I saw him turn towards me. He looked at me for a moment before he lifted his hands and put his index finger in a hole he had made with the fingers on his other hand.

‘How much?’ he asked while he continued to move the finger in and out of the hole. I felt myself become hot and cold at the same time, turned and started to walk the other way while I heard the boy laugh behind me. Then I heard another sound: the sound of someone retching. When I turned around the corner I saw him heaving into a bin. Afterwards he walked to a bench and sat there, calm and smiling, while he wiped his mouth.

I picture my own body that afternoon, between the archways along City Hall. I imagine, more and more people between me and the boy, more and more houses that become more and more blocks, more and more songs on my Minidisc player. It doesn’t help: inside me the boy continues to put his index finger through his hand, slowly but firmly, as if he is poking it inside my body, and then he retches again. I can’t get rid of the finger, the sound, the image. It’s as if I’m the throat that makes him vomit. Long after I’ve returned to the hostel, I still see him behind my eyelids, stood by City Hall and becoming smaller and smaller, throwing up again and again.