Small Circle of Beings (21 page)

Instead he was shambling around these dusty grounds. Over weekends there was too much time. He threw stones at the trunks of trees. He stood at the gate and looked out at forbidden soil beyond.
If you climbed onto the big rock there and stretched, you could see the buildings in the city. They were stacked together like the funnels of some insidious engine beneath. Light shone off their
windows.

Shell came to know the names of the other boys with whom he shared the dormitory, but learning their names only made them less strange; it did not make friends of them. In the shower at night he
stood in a waxy thicket of flesh, trying not to tremble. The air was drumming with mist in which he could hear voices calling, but which, for all his roaming, kept him lost.

The dormitory was a long room with windows set into the walls at regular intervals. There was a bed beneath each window, and a tall green locker beside each bed. The floor was tiled with neat
red tiles; the walls were clean with paint. When Shell had first arrived he stood in the doorway, his suitcase against his knees, and looked. It took a moment before he saw the others –
figures sitting on the beds, leaning against lockers. But they had no substance against the white paint; they wavered as he looked at them. And, as far as they were concerned, he was ghostly too.
They barely glanced at him where he stood. They barely glanced up with their soft white faces.

Shell took a bed at the end of the row, because he liked the wall on one side. He didn’t unpack his suitcase. He lay down on the bed and looked directly upward with his eyes. There were
faint grey marks in the ceiling that might have been made by water once. In their foggy patterns there seemed to be the contours of a face that never quite became solid; whose face he didn’t
know. Why it should be here, swirling just below the surface of the ceiling, he also didn’t know. But he lay and searched for its elusive features. As he lay and looked, he could hear a thin
and distant sound. There was a courtyard outside the window behind him; in this courtyard were four steel racks used for drying clothes. Although they were bare now, these structures were turning
and turning in the wind, with high perpetual screaming in his ears.

‘Like dyin’.’

He heard the voice, but wouldn’t look. He didn’t want to talk.

But the voice persisted. ‘Don’tcha think …?’

There was a boy on the next bed. Their eyes met. Although Shell looked away, it was too late.

‘Hello.’

He looked back again to find this other one reaching out a hand. It could be for no one other than himself. He sat up. Wanting to claw at it, Shell shook the hand.

‘Hello,’ Shell said.

‘I’m Rick.’

He waited.

‘I’m Shell,’ he had to say. Blood was fierce in his eyes.

‘I’m also new here,’ said Rick. His voice was too keen; it carried in the quiet.

The rest were staring at them. Even if he didn’t look, Shell knew they were staring. As now –

‘You mustn’t be scared,’ Rick was telling him. His eyes were rolling. ‘It’s not a bad place. I’ll help you if you … if you need help. I will,’ he
finished desperately.

Rick’s lips, perhaps, carried a trace of foam. Anyway, Shell was able to lie back on his bed with a quite definite sneer. The absurd, anguished boy on the next bed was forced to do the
same. His breath still sounded, though, quick and shrill.

It comforted Shell to have the friend he required. And so soon. Certainly he was no longer afraid. Grief is stronger than fear, maybe; and he had good cause for grief. He was, of course, an
orphan. By the time a stern figure appeared in the doorway with a list of names in his hand, Shell Fynn had ceased to be daunted by this strange room and these strange boys. His skin had mottled to
the gentle shade of the blanket upon which he lay. He was no longer visible to the naked eye.

In time, he wrote:

Dear Mom and Dad

I am in a dorm with twelve other boys. I don’t know all their names yet, but one of them is – Rick. He sleeps in the next bed to me. The beds are hard. Also the seniors push us
round. I am a skiv, that means I have to work for one of the form fives. I have to make his bed and polish his shoes. But I don’t mind really.

He is quite nice to me.

I am lonely here, I wish I wasn’t here. I cried last night. Please write soon. The teachers are okay, mine are anyway. I will write again next week.

In fact he hadn’t cried the night before. In fact it was Rick in the next bed whom Shell had woken to find sobbing into his pillow. He got up and padded across the cold floor.

‘Rick,’ he said. ‘Rick. What’s the matter?’

But he was snorting and snuffling. Shell could see his shoulders heaving. He sat on the bed and touched at him. He put a hand on his back.

‘Rick,’ he said. ‘What? Rick?’

Rick rolled suddenly over and stared. Shell withdrew his hand.

After a moment, Rick said, ‘I hate it here. I don’t wanna be here.’

But he’d stopped crying. His face in the near-dark was wizened and wrinkled. He was about to crumble.

There was a silence. Then Shell, amazed at how easily this came to him, gathered Rick up in his arms. For a very short moment there was an awkwardness between them, then Rick went slack, as
though instantly and completely asleep. He brought up his hand and with a curved thumb plugged up the circular hole of his mouth. Shell held this head against his chest, the rough hair like grass
against his palms. He rocked. ‘Quiet,’ he said, speaking on a low electric hum that soothed them both. ‘Shhh … quiet now … quiet …’ They rocked together
in the fine blue moonlight that came drifting in like spray. Nobody else was awake, but it was a sight that would have alarmed them if they were: the swaying pair on the bed, bound together in this
bizarre embrace.

As he rocked, Shell too felt a kind of sleepy calm closing over his sight. He was holding in his hands all that was weakest and most despicable in himself. He could conceivably expiate himself,
it seemed.

The boarders were required to participate in at least one sport a term. Shell signed up for cross-country running in the afternoons. Every afternoon at four a little group would assemble on the
athletics track. Golden light came from the sky at this time. The fields and trees were washed in it, becoming foreign, English. Shell felt serene.

They ran six kilometres each day. Sometimes, accompanied by a master, they would leave the school grounds and jog through the surrounding suburbs. By the time they returned to school, the day
was beginning to taper. The forms of objects – fences, poles, walls – were dark on the air. Shell put on his tracksuit and walked towards the tap, the smell of grass in his nose. Rick
fell in beside him. ‘Good run,’ he said.

‘Ja. Okay. You’re quite fit.’

‘Naah. I got cramps. I got a cramp here.’ He pinched at his thigh. ‘I hate running,’ he said.

‘So why d’you do it?’ Shell looked sideways at this skinny boy with short dark hair. Rick had a slight lisp. His head was shaped like a lantern, and looked like it might break
as easily.

‘I have to,’ Rick said.

They bent in turn to drink, cupping the water and slurping. Shell stood afterwards with a trickle going down his chin. He laughed suddenly, for no reason clear to himself. Perhaps it was just
the day, fading so gently. The sound of a train carried from over the road. He felt moved to mutter: ‘I thought I was gonna hate it here. I thought it was gonna be horrible.’

Rick glared. ‘It is. It is horrible here. Y’don’t like it – the boarding-house?’

‘It’s okay,’ Shell said.

‘Don’t you miss home?’

‘I don’t think about home.’ He rubbed at the water on his chin.

‘Your mother and father …’

‘My mother and father were killed.’ Shell wasn’t looking at Rick; he was staring out over the cricket field to the grandstands. So was surprised to turn back to this horrified
face, mouthing on mumbles. Rick could hardly speak. Shell smiled in alarm and reassured: ‘I’m only joking. Not really. They’re alive.’ He started to walk up the tar in the
direction of the hostel.

They ran together every day. Shell didn’t have breath to talk, but it was pleasant to have Rick gasping alongside.

There were often times, even when he wasn’t running, that there was nothing to say. They walked in the school together. Or sat on the steps out front drinking coffee.

‘What do you want to do when you leave school?’

‘I don’t know.’ The question didn’t penetrate Shell. He sucked on a piece of grass. ‘It’s far away.’

‘Not so far. Only four years.’

‘Then army.’

‘My brother’s in the army,’ Rick said. ‘He’s at Upington.’

He sounded proud. Shell said: ‘So?’

‘I was just saying.’

Rick could be irritating.

They went walking up on the hill, throwing pine-cones between the trees. Their hands became sticky.

‘I haven’t ever had a friend before, Shell,’ said Rick. ‘You’re the first friend I’ve ever had.’

Shell was touched and scornful. He swung at a cone with a broken branch. Their collision sent the cone in a long spinning arc. It crashed into bushes.

Rick persisted. ‘We must of known each other in another lifetime. My mother believes in things like that. We must of been friends before.’ He groaned with happiness at the thought.
‘You mustn’t tell anybody, Shell, but I’ve got an undescended tes-tikkel. That’s a secret.’

‘A what?’

‘Look.’ And Rick, after glancing around carefully, pulled open the front of his pants to show him. Shell was amazed.

‘Does it hurt?’

‘Yes.’ After a moment, he conceded: ‘No. Not really.’ He closed his pants. ‘I told you a secret. Now you tell me one.’

But Shell was throwing pine-cones again, as if he couldn’t have cared. ‘I don’t have secrets,’ he said. Even his voice was careless.

‘I don’t know anybody like you, Shell.’ Rick was moaning. ‘You stare at people. You frighten people.’

Shell had an urge to hit at the head of this miserable boy who was his friend. He would have liked that too; to see Rick’s head flying between the trees.

‘Shell? I get so lonely sometimes. I don’t like to be with people, they don’t feel like they’re really there … I don’t like people. They can do things to
you, people can.’ He was grabbing at Shell, although his hands were at his sides. His voice was keen and thin. ‘We’re two of a kind, Shell,’ he said. ‘You and me. Two
of a kind.’

Shell was likely to agree, but never aloud. He looked at the other, standing under the trees with his eyes blinking. It was a pitiable creature, this skinny, lisping Rick. ‘You’re
silly,’ Shell said. ‘You say silly things.’

Rick was hurt. ‘I only
meant
…’ he said. He was about to bawl.

‘Let’s go back,’ Shell said, before he could. ‘Let’s go back to the house. It’s getting late.’

It was a slow and easy time, after all. Shell didn’t mind the roads and trees as much as he thought. When eight weeks had passed, they were allowed to take their first
weekend off. But it was a long way home and Shell wasn’t sure that he wanted to go. His mother and father were expecting him; they’d written to say how much they looked forward:
…
We miss you most at night, Shatsi, when we’re all together here
… Perhaps for this reason, Shell was compelled to write:

Dear Mom and Dad

You were right after all, this place is good for me. I hate it here but I am enjoying it. There’s always something happening here. The things we do. You wouldn’t believe. But
I’m sorry, I won’t be coming home on the fifteenth after all. I have a friend, Rick, he is in the dorm with me. I am going home with him on the fifteenth. He lives in Pretoria, only an
hour away. I am looking forward to it.

Rick and me are two of a kind. He is nice, but he can make you angry. He says he doesn’t believe in angels, but he believes in devils. You wanted me to have a friend.

Rick’s mother was old. She was as shrunken as a grandmother, it seemed to Shell. She was thin, with the kind of thinness that revealed her skeleton under skin and clothes. She had grey
hair in which you could see the last traces of a splendid black. When she fetched them at the bus-stop in Brooklyn, she wore a white garment that could have been a robe. Her fingers carried rings
as bright as scabs.

It was a strange weekend. Rick lived in an outlying suburb, in a house that belonged to no suburb at all. The garden was dense and overgrown and appeared not to have been touched by a
gardener’s hands. Inside, the rooms were crowded with bizarre items of spiritual significance.

There were drapes that were full of moons and wands and shapes. A crystal ball – it truly was – stood on a table in the lounge. A thick, cloying scent hung everywhere like fog.

‘My mother,’ Rick explained, ‘is a spiritualist.’

His father lived elsewhere, alone. Perhaps he drifted somewhere in the house, but he seemed an unnecessary presence in the process that had produced Rick and his home. Only Rick’s mother,
with her heavy robes and flat shoes, was everywhere. She found Shell on Saturday night on the back lawn.

Abruptly, she said, ‘Rick – you must treat him well. He’s weaker than you are.’

‘Yes,’ Shell said.

‘Good,’ she said. She walked away towards the house, with her white robes following. He could hear her footsteps after all.

He and Rick did very little that weekend that was of significance to a mutual dependence. They sat about and read comics. They drank sour cooldrink from glasses. But it was enough to be there;
to lie in separate beds across the room from each other. The wind could be heard outside. Rick had trusted Shell with knowledge; of his barmy mother, of their house full of occult crap. So that in
a way those two days were a resolution. Not of their friendship, which was only a reason at best; but of the cruelty for which Rick hoped. They did in fact need each other.

On Sunday night they returned to the hostel. While they waited in the dorm before chapel, Rick just out the shower, a towel around his waist, Shell turned where he lay on the bed, turned, to the
others where they sat or stood, in those same attitudes of perpetual waiting he recalled from his first arrival. He pointed at Rick an accusing finger.