An Ounce of Practice

by Zeilig, Leo;

  Viktor was really good at this remote fucking – it had the tidy intimacy, the mannerisms and control that spoke to his deepest habits. He could be whatever he wanted, generous and poised, perfectly in control, without the danger of feeling too much or being too implicated in actual human interaction. He was a purveyor of laconic imagery, of the perfect text message. He may not have invented social media, but he was its most adept user.

  So his SMS texts to Anne-Marie, his declarations of desire and want, were effortlessly compressed in a few suggestive, brilliant understatements. What an incredible lover he was, in this game of virtual existence.

  Sex had been almost entirely driven out of his relationship with Nina; he still desired her, but he didn’t want to be disrupted by sex. So he masturbated in the bathroom, over the toilet, kicking Rosa’s stool aside, to memories of their lovemaking. And now to fantasies of Anne-Marie, brought to life through her texts, by their sexting.

  But in his effort to bring all the force of his incomprehension to his fists, he was now hammering repeatedly at his relationship with Nina. He could feel the force of the blows, the vibration from his own beatings, shuddering through him.

  In the middle of a steamy text exchange with Anne-Marie, Nina responded to him on Facebook Messenger – his laptop was open, the message flashed up. Darling, take your time. I am playing with Rosa and I have your favourite pudding in the oven. Don’t work too hard. N xxx

  Viktor’s stomach twisted; he felt sick. He put the phone down, leant forward to the keyboard and typed: I am working. Please don’t put pressure on me to return. Can you put Rosa to bed for a change?

  There was a delay of a few minutes. His concentration was total. He tapped furiously to Anne-Marie, I kneel down and unzip your skirt.

  Nina responded: I don’t understand. I was telling you to take your time.

  Viktor responded quickly: Please, leave me to teach.

  Nina’s response came quickly: Leave you? You don’t realise how that hurts me. You are everything Viktor, do you understand? EVERYTHING.

  The room was dark, his movements slight – holding the phone in his hands to communicate with Anne-Marie, leaning slightly forward to answer Nina on the computer.

  His phone buzzed. Anne-Marie had replied: I tilt my head back and inhale deeply.

  Viktor typed quickly, without hesitating or searching for words: I slowly pull down your skirt and run my hands over your panties.

  He reached for the keyboard of the computer. I hear what you say but feel the latent threat in it and it makes me worried ...

  My god Viktor, where is the threat? Nina typed.

  Viktor replied, You question our relationship.

  A moment later Nina’s reply came. You are everything Viktor, I am being honest. I’m not just saying nice things, this is serious. Can you handle those feelings? Rosa is asking for you.

  His fingers stumbling on the keyboard, Viktor wrote: I can handle them if I know they are not being dangled or pulled away. You do upset me.

  I can’t help it.

  We can always help it. You pull away or make the love and commitment conditional. I’ll do the same to you, you’ll see.

  Why do you want to stay angry with me? Nina responded.

  Anne-Marie was lying on her bed, her bare legs crossed, the window in her bedroom open, letting the echo of car doors slamming, children shouting, the smell of cooking spiral slowly into her flat. She typed calmly, amused: I run my hands through your hair. I trace your face with my fingers.

  I am not angry, Viktor answered Nina.

  What must I do? Please. Nina asked.

  I am not angry.

  I’m worry that you pull away.

  We are not doing so great at communicating these days, he wrote.

  What do you mean?

  Viktor didn’t respond. Leaning back on his chair, deftly, effortlessly, he tapped on his phone: I slowly pull down your panties.

  Nina messaged again. You have my H.

  Thanks, and you mine – for what it’s worth.

  Mine beats only for you and Rosa. You don’t have a V though and you have that as well.

  Anne-Marie answered. I push myself towards you, you kiss me and touch me. You use your tongue.

  What’s a V?

  Come on, sweetie. Surely it’s not only my heart that you have.

  Sitting back again in the chair, Viktor stretched his arms out. The light in the room came on. He texted Anne-Marie: Gently I run my hands up your naked back. I reach your breasts.

  Then he reached for the keyboard and typed. Vitriol? Your Victimhood? Viagra?

  Closer.

  Valium?

  It’s not Valium. Are you that far away from my Vagina?

  Anne-Marie swallowed, dried one of her hands on the cover, and replied. I want to see you. I tell you to stand and we kiss. I take you to the bed.

  Keeping up the pace, understanding the game, Viktor tapped quickly to Anne-Marie on the phone keys: I want to be inside you. I want to feel you on me.

  Nina typed back. You haven’t seen it much lately. Maybe you can get reacquainted with it later in the week? Tonight?

  Viktor was silent again. He rubbed his hands on his trousers, picked up his phone and focused. The excitement gripped them both. Anne-Marie ran her free hand across her breasts, along her stomach and slowly down. Then she slipped two fingers back inside the soft cotton of her underwear and rocked her hips forward.

  Why no answer to my suggestion?

  I know how you like to plan your V action, so maybe we could schedule something for the end of next week if you have a slot available.

  Don’t worry ... if it’s too much hassle for you ...

  Anne-Marie had answered, I am wet and ready for you. I want you now.

  It’s true, I have been feeling unsexy, sweetie, Viktor typed rapidly on the computer.

  Nina responded, I feel sexual when I’m around you, we create an energy between us that feeds my libido.

  Viktor answered, feeling an ache in his back, I have no libido at the moment. No libido, as in none.

  His mouth was dry with desire. He dropped a hand into his lap and stroked his erection through the thin cotton of his trousers. With his other hand he wrote quickly, I pull you onto the bed and move slowly onto you.

  When are you coming home?

  I am trying to teach but I keep getting messages, god knows what my students must think. He typed this slowly, with his right hand.

  Let them go. Come home.

  Viktor was silent.

  Nina messaged again. Sweetie, are you okay? When are you leaving? I love you so, so much.

  Not long now. I will leave in ten minutes.

  Then I am sending all my love and signing off. There can be a sweet absence of words for once, until I see you.

  Viktor pushed the laptop away, tilted on his chair, and started to compose his next message to Anne-Marie.

  Chapter Ten

  The torn clouds spread across the week and separated the outbursts, turning their peace into a no-man’s-land. Nina and Viktor dug into separate trenches until the clouds broke, but soon enough the downpour muddied the fields again. Viktor became convinced that there was no more hope that the fields could recover, that he could lay down a bed of grass, give them, at least, a place to plant their feet. Instead they disturbed the ground, kept the earth ploughed and sodden by their fights.

  ‘The moon has a message for me.’ Nina looked up at the almost full yellow globe in the clear, starless sky.

  ‘A message for all of us, surely,’ Viktor answered.

  Still gazing at the moon, Nina was quiet. ‘No, I think it has a meaning for me. I need to understand what it is trying to say.’

  Viktor walked ahead to the stairwell and started to climb. ‘Maybe the whole universe is trying to tell you something. Perhaps we are all here to help your spiritual journey.’

  Nina didn’t reply. On the landing of the first floor he looked down at her from the closed window. She
was standing in the same spot, her face beatific. The moon too was radiant. Viktor almost believed that they really were communing – the moon and Nina. Maybe she was right and the moon, full and expectant, shone for her benediction and enlightenment. This sickness isn’t even narcissism, he thought, it’s a deeper affliction that she sees in everything she reads, every random constellation of trees, clouds, animals, a hidden meaning trying to reveal itself to her. Why can’t she be a proper spiritualist in a church, Viktor thought, where at least some of the teaching requires a selfless commitment to others?

  ‘Viktor, do you think I am psychic?’ Nina shouted from the kitchen.

  Rosa was in bed. Nina brought in bowls of pasta, tomatoes and bacon and wedged herself into the foam embrace of the sofa’s arm. Viktor sat in the other corner, his legs bent under him. The TV was broken, so they watched DVDs on Nina’s computer, placed on an upturned cardboard box.

  ‘Can we speak first? I feel as though we haven’t spoken for days.’ Viktor had wanted the words to come out sympathetically; instead he sounded angry.

  Nina leant forward and folded the computer closed.

  Viktor spoke nervously. ‘How was your day? I wanted to see how you were feeling about the interview tomorrow.’

  ‘You remembered.’

  ‘Of course I did.’ Viktor was annoyed.

  ‘I feel tired. Like I want to eat.’ She indicated the bowl in her hand. ‘I want to watch an episode and then sleep early so I am ready for tomorrow.’

  ‘Are you prepared? Do you want a mock interview? Christ, I really want you to get it.’ The interview for the promotion would also make Nina’s job permanent.

  ‘Well, we both need proper jobs, Viktor.’ Nina reached forward for her food.

  ‘Just the thought of more doubt and worry about the rent, or having to move again. It’s destabilising. Hard to write. The job would change that.’

  ‘Thanks for the support.’ Nina spoke with irony heavy in her voice. She cradled the bowl.

  ‘Anything else?’ Viktor asked.

  ‘No. Nothing. You?’

  ‘I think I made a breakthrough with the thesis. I moved chapter nine to chapter five and removed chapter four. The argument with Foucault, his analysis of 1968 from Tunis, I can turn that into an article.’ Viktor was eager to say that he had taken an important step towards completing the PhD – from becoming to being. From finishing to finished. He wanted to explain to Nina what he meant.

  Nina coiled the pasta round her fork and forced herself to continue. ‘So I spoke to my sister. She had just got back from seeing a psychic. She’s made an appointment for me.’

  ‘You’re going to see a psychic?’ Viktor felt offended.

  ‘Yes. I have seen psychics before. This one is recommended.’

  ‘But you don’t know anyone who is dead.’

  Nina ignored him, filled her mouth with spaghetti, bit off the strands, let them fall into the bowl.

  ‘I’ve seen a medium on many occasions. Four times, I think. The last time she taught me how to tap.’

  ‘Tap?’

  Nina sighed loudly. ‘I’ve told you, there are pressure points. It’s called the Emotional Freedom Technique. Tapping with the fingertips to input kinetic energy on the head and chest while I think about a specific problem, and as I tap I make a series of positive affirmations about my life.’ With the fork resting upright in the bowl, Nina demonstrated and tapped two fingers on her wrist.

  Viktor’s laugh was cruel. ‘You can’t be serious.’

  Nina breathed in deeply, put the bowl down and looked at Viktor for the first time. ‘Open your mind.’

  Viktor bristled. ‘My mind is open, too bloody open.’

  Nina sighed again.

  ‘It sounds like bullshit.’ Viktor put his feet down, adjusted his position and turned to Nina. He didn’t know where his anger had come from.

  ‘And you sound like someone who doesn’t understand what you’re talking about.’ Nina spoke calmly.

  Viktor’s chest heaved, his mouth dried. ‘You are so uncritical. Is there nothing that you doubt or question? You sound like a hippy airhead. Psychics and the Emotional Tapping Technique. Does anything go?’

  ‘I don’t need this, Viktor.’

  ‘What is it with your family?’

  ‘Viktor, stop.’

  ‘Anything goes, I suppose. Wizards, witches, psychics, tarot, unicorns – it’s ridiculous.’

  ‘And your family?’ Nina screamed, finally breaking. ‘Isaac, Sonia, Amy? The most egocentric, small-minded idiots I have ever met!’

  ‘At least we know about death.’

  ‘You don’t know about anything Viktor, except yourself. No, you don’t even know yourself. Standing quietly in the corner of life, content that you are breathing and thinking.’

  Viktor dug his phone out of his pocket and began scrolling angrily through his timeline, ignoring her.

  Nina got up. The bowl crashed to the floor and broke. Her eyes were wet. ‘Fuck off, Viktor.’

  Viktor kept scrolling, his head down. Nina’s friend Jo had posted a photo on her timeline. A naked woman, her arms out, head upturned, long purple hair blowing in the wind, around her the coils of a dragon’s tail: May you flow in beauty tomorrow, Nina, and what is right for you come about. Sending you love and calm strength tonight, so you can rest and communicate with fluidity and your warrior spirit and soul can flower in your interview.

  Viktor dropped the phone into his lap, brought his hands to his face. When he came into the bedroom, Nina was on the floor sobbing, half hidden by the bed. ‘Sorry, Nina. I was an asshole. I had an awful day. I took it out on you.’

  ‘Fuck off. You are a bastard. Leave me alone.’

  ‘No, I won’t leave you alone, because then you’ll blame me for leaving you alone.’ Viktor walked round the bed and saw Nina, her dressing gown open, her breasts exposed, her leggings pulled down below her knees. Lying on the floor next to her was the carving knife from the kitchen.

  Viktor shouted, ‘Shit, no, Nina!’

  Later they lay next to each other in bed, both impatient to make even a false peace so they could sleep.

  *

  Viktor thought how astonishing it was that we are expected, in a single life, an average one like his, like Nina’s, to accomplish so much. He could feel Nina next to him, their legs touching, her body already trembling gently in sleep. Had he really achieved nothing at all? Maybe the only lives that came to a decent conclusion were always going to from the beginning. Viktor thought about his mother and father and their busy, normal lives, unwavering from the beginning, while the others, the rest, would remain lost, despite the futile efforts to change the course of events, to change themselves.

  How easy it is for us to make mistakes, yet so difficult to correct them, Viktor thought. How many years to change, to right an error? Five, ten? Ten years to leave a damaged relationship. Twenty to recover. Viktor thought of all his past mistakes, all the times he had hurt Nina, the things he’d said, the indecision, his cowardly inability to act, to be. To correct these mistakes, how long would he need? Thirty years? More? Two lifetimes? He pulled the cover over his chest, exposing his feet. We need some sort of machine of rolling correction, a Department of Private Memories and Mistakes, to draw out the lessons from our short, flawed lives. As Viktor slipped into sleep he felt certain that he could not be clear any more about anything.

  *

  In the morning, with Biko speaking and instructing almost in his sleep, the students took their positions at the university. Some were posted to nearby schools, others in townships further out of the city. But only the students at the university came out. Four thousand students attempted to access the approach road from the campus that would have taken them to the city. Instead they were viciously beaten. The students, running for cover, were chased across the campus into their halls. The corridors in one residence – nicknamed Baghdad – were covered in blood. One window of a ground-floor room overlooking the courtyard
was broken, only the jagged glass left. Students running from the military police hid in rooms and corridors; the police fired tear gas canisters into the rooms. In one room, the canister ignited the mattress, adding flames to the toxic fumes. Riot police in the corridor stopped two students, comrades who had been recruited by Biko to the Society of Liberated Minds, from leaving. Struggling to breathe, one student broke the glass in a window; his head now partly exposed, he was repeatedly hit by police wielding batons in the courtyard. As he was beaten, caught in the broken window, unbelievably – a story that heartened and impressed Biko – he had shouted again and again, ‘Ahoy, comrade!’ and ‘Qina Msebenzi Qina!’ He did not die. By the end of the day, within four hours of the student rising, forty-five students had been admitted to hospital. The full calamity – the utter fucking catastrophe – of the day was clear.

  Eleanor’s understanding of events was the most devastating. Beside the students in hospital, there were no arrests – the one student the police had genuinely sought, whose name they had sung as they swung their batons through corridors, across heads, was called Biko. Now Biko was on the run. Bruised, pacing the room with its cheap foam mattresses lining the walls, Eleanor sucked the pain through her teeth. The others, some with their heads in their hands, their shoulders slumped, lay curled on the floor.

  Biko stood as normal by the door, holding it closed with his shoulder: ‘Carry on, comrade, you were saying?’

  Eleanor stopped pacing, swallowed, breathed in. ‘Open the window. I am dying in here,’ she said, bringing her arm to her forehead to mop her brow.

  Biko moved to the window, unlatched it and pushed hard on the frame. The darkness helped them all, hid them in their failure and pain. Biko was grateful, to each of them, to Eleanor.

  ‘I have told you, we couldn’t get away from the soldiers and police,’ Eleanor said. ‘They shut down the access from the library. We couldn’t get round them. In the end we walked into them, we had to and we knew what was coming – there were ten of us, five women. They ordered us to get down and lie on our stomachs and then they started beating us.’ She sucked the pain again through her teeth, filtering it, making it bearable.