Ishmael and the Hoops of Steel

by Michael Gerard Bauer

  ‘Just keep talking, P-bud,’ Razz said. ‘Eventually, just on the law of averages, you’ll accidentally say something that I understand.’

  ‘We were doing a titration experiment, Orazio.’

  Razz stared blankly ahead.

  ‘Well, anyway, at the end of the analysis,’ Ignatius continued, ‘we had to compare our results with someone else. Maude was working at the bench beside me so I asked if I could see her titration curves and she said yes.’

  ‘What! You’ve only just met and already she’s showing you her titration curves! You don’t waste any time, do you? You da man, Prindabuster! You da man!’

  Ignatius looked confused but kept going.

  ‘Anyway, I examined hers and then she had a look at mine …’

  ‘Oh my god, cover your ears, Ishmael!’

  ‘… Then we talked a bit while we washed out our pipettes and burettes …’

  ‘Stop it, man! There are children present!’

  ‘… And that’s how we met. At the end of the course we exchanged emails. Last weekend we went to the Da Vinci exhibition at the museum. That’s where I asked her about coming to the Semi-formal. She said yes again.’

  Ignatius linked his spidery fingers together and smiled at us.

  ‘Excellent work,’ Scobie said as Bill and Ignatius exchanged a dangerously off centre high-five and I managed to hide my ‘Oh-my-god-even-Ignatius-has-got-someone-to-take-to-the-Semi-so-what’s-wrong-with-me?’ face behind a cheesy grin.

  ‘Prindabundle, you rock! I was wrong about you, dude. You are smooth, man. Super-smooth! You are so smooth they could lay you down and use you for a golf tee.’

  Ignatius thought about that for a second and then held aloft the infamous objection finger.

  ‘Or,’ he said, ‘I’m so smooth … my coefficient of friction is zero.’

  ‘P-buddy,’ Razz said with glazed eyes and a shake of his head, ‘you are the undisputed king of geek humour.’

  Ignatius obviously thought so too. It took quite a while for him to control his fit of hissing laughter. When he did, Razz turned his attention to James.

  ‘Well, that’s me and Sally and P-buddy and the Titration Queen. What about you, Herr Scobmeister – got a fraulein lined up?’

  Scobie shifted in his seat. His mouth did a bit of a twist-a-thon and his cheeks were dabbed with two pink blobs.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Razz said with an ever-widening smirk. ‘What am I thinking? Of course Scobes has someone lined up. Someone’s hot little sister, perhaps?’

  Scobie’s cheeks laid down another coat of crimson.

  ‘Aha! I thought as much. Scobes and Prudles back together – The Return of the Brainiacs!’

  Scobie glanced my way. ‘Well, actually, now that Orazio has brought it up, I was thinking … as long as you were all right with it, Ishmael … and your parents agreed … and of course if Prue wanted to in the first place … that maybe …’

  ‘I’m sure Mum and Dad will be OK with it. And it’s fine with me,’ I told him. (Except of course for that bit where now even my little sister who was only in Year Ten had a partner for my Year Eleven Semi-formal while I didn’t. I could almost feel the big capital ‘L’ sizzling into my forehead.)

  ‘And we all know that Prudles will be raring to go,’ Razz said. ‘Cool! So we got Sal and Me, Mr and Mrs Chemical Analysis and the Mensa Twins all signed up. That just leaves you, Ishmael. You got any ideas yet?’

  The spotlight swung round and fell on me. Great.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Ah, about how to reverse the disintegration of the polar ice caps, of course,’ Razz said brightly before adding with an impatient sigh, ‘About who you could invite to the Semi-formal.’

  ‘I haven’t really thought much about it.’

  Liar.

  ‘Anyway, there’s plenty of time to work something out.’

  Liar.

  ‘Besides, I’m a bit like Bill, I don’t even know if I really want to go to the Semi or not yet.’

  Pants on fire!

  ‘Don’t be stupid, man, of course you gotta come. And don’t worry, dude. There’s still time. I’ll figure something out. Rest easy, because the Razzman is on your case, working his magic.’

  As I stared at the ridiculously over-confident face before me, I couldn’t help thinking how Razz’s ‘magic’ often had the potential to go horribly wrong and when it did, I usually ended up being the one who got sawn in half. As it turned out, it wasn’t me, it was the Razzman who was headed for trouble. He didn’t get cut in two or blown up or anything (not literally anyway), but he was about to get king hit with ten straight days of after-school detentions.

  And it was all because of Bilbo, the Bard and the Melancholy Dane.

  28.

  WINDY PERSPIRATION OF HORSE BREATH

  Scobie was really the one who started the whole thing rolling. After all, it was his idea to use the room we’d pre-booked for possible fourth term debating finals meetings, to work on our Hamlet orals together. For the orals we had to choose a passage from Hamlet, perform it in front of the class, explain it in detail and then analyse its relevance to the overall play and to society today. A piece of cake! Except for that bit about performing the passage in front of the class, explaining it in detail and analysing its relevance to the overall play and to society today. That part was going to be tricky.

  Anyway, we all thought Scobie’s idea about practising together was great. Mainly because James was the expert on Shakespeare and we would be able to pick his brains. At first we concentrated on the performances. We didn’t have to use props and costumes if we didn’t want to, but we had to know our lines off by heart. As I predicted that afternoon at the bus stop, Razz struggled a little with this.

  ‘What extract are you doing, Orazio?’

  Razz flicked through his play book then placed it in front of Scobie and pressed it flat.

  ‘That bit there, Scobes. Hammy talking to his mum.’

  ‘OK. Fine. I’ll read a couple of the queen’s lines to lead you in and then you start.’

  Razz set himself up and posed with a steely gaze. Scobie and I were down the back of the classroom to check volume. Bill and Ignatius were up the front. Prindabel was prompting and Bill was finishing off his lunch. Scobie started reading.

  ‘Thou know’st ‘tis common; all that lives must die. Why seems it so particular with thee?’

  Suddenly Razz leapt forward and angrily smashed his fist down hard on Bill’s desk. The rest of us jumped. Bill spilled iced coffee down his chin.

  ‘SEEMS, madam! Nay it IS! I know not “SEEMS!” ‘

  After the initial shock passed, we were all pretty impressed. We waited to hear more, but Razz stood motionless out the front like a very cross store dummy.

  Prindabel’s whispered voice crept in from the side. ‘‘Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother …’

  Razz sprang into life like someone had released the Pause button. ‘Yeah, that’s right, I know, I know, don’t tell me, don’t tell me. ‘Tis not alone this stinky cloak, good mother.’

  ‘Inky cloak, not stinky cloak,’ Prindabel interjected.

  ‘Inky? You sure? What’s he got ink on his cloak for?’

  ‘There is no ink,’ Scobie said patiently. ‘His coat is black – the colour of ink. He’s wearing black because his father, the king, has died recently, remember.’

  ‘OK, OK, OK. I got it.’

  Razz steadied himself and focused.

  SLAM! His fist hit Bill’s desk again. We all jumped again. Bill dropped his iced coffee into his lap.

  ‘SEEMS, madam! Nay it IS! I know not “SEEMS!” … Ummmm … Aw, yeah, it’s not just my inky cloak, good mother or … um not just my umm … is it something about his pants?’

  Prindabel shook his head. ‘Nor my customary suits of solemn black.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Nor my cassowary shoes of swollen cats.’

  Ignatius jerked his head up from his play book but Scobie signalled for h
im just to keep going.

  ‘Nor windy suspiration of forced breath.’

  ‘Ah yeah, of course. Nor windy perspiration of horse breath.’

  Scobie held up his hand to Ignatius like a traffic cop.

  ‘Orazio, have you even tried to learn any of this?’

  ‘Yeah, of course – sure, Scobes.’

  ‘That’s not how it seems.’

  SLAM!

  ‘seems, Scobie! Nay it is! I know not “seems! “ ‘

  Bill dried his face with his shirt sleeve.

  ‘Orazio, we appreciate that you’ve nailed that first line, but what about the rest of it?’

  ‘I tried, Scobes, but how can you remember something that doesn’t make any sense to you?’ Razz grabbed the play book from Ignatius. ‘Like, what’s “windy suspiration of forced breath” anyway?’

  ‘Heavy sighing,’ Scobie said.

  ‘Yeah, OK, I started off with an easy one, but what’s “the fruitful river in the eye” or “the dejected havior of the visage”?’

  ‘First one’s tears and the second one is a sad face. Look, Orazio, Hamlet’s just explaining to Gertrude that he’s not putting on a show or pretending to be sad by sighing and crying and wearing black. He’s saying that he doesn’t merely seem sad, he actually is sad. His sorrow is real. All those other things are just like accessories a person could wear to make themselves appear sad. They are the “trappings and the suits of woe”. It all ties into one of the major themes of the play – appearance versus reality.’

  ‘Yeah, well, Slattery should have explained all that to us.’

  ‘I think you’ll find he did,’ Scobie said.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Anyway, why pick that passage in the first place if you couldn’t understand it?’

  ‘Well, we had to choose one that was at least ten lines long, didn’t we? This one’s cool ’cause it’s only got eleven.’

  ‘That’s all right then,’ Scobie said. ‘For a minute there I was worried you didn’t have a good reason.’

  Razz took a break after that to work on memorising his lines and the rest of us had our turns. Ignatius was next up doing a pretty fair job as the ghost of Hamlet’s father, ‘Doomed for a certain time to walk the night’. Razz considered this an excellent choice because he said that Ignatius wouldn’t need much make-up to play a dead person. I followed Ignatius with the Claudius guilty speech. At least it was something I could relate to. I think I went OK. Nowhere near as good as Scobie, of course, who was word-perfect and as brilliant as always with the classic ‘To be or not to be’.

  The last one up was Bill. He was playing Polonius in the scene where he gives advice to his son Laertes. Bill started off well.

  ‘… Give thy thoughts no tongue,

  Nor any unproportioned thought his act.

  Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

  Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

  Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.’

  ‘What?’ Razz interrupted, looking up from his lines and completely breaking Bill’s train of thought. ‘Who has this guy adopted and wrapped up in heaps of steel?’

  Scobie threw his head back and muttered something at the ceiling. Bill, as always, didn’t seem to mind that much.

  ‘It’s just Polonius telling Laertes that if he finds really good friends, then he should hold on to them and keep them close. That’s what “grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel means”, doesn’t it, Scobie? Sort of like they’re so important you should tie them to you with the strongest thing you can find.’

  Scobie nodded.

  ‘Carbon nanotubes would be better,’ Ignatius said.

  Everyone looked at him.

  ‘Carbon nanotubes. They’re these tiny particles that they think might be hundreds of times stronger than steel. If you wanted something really strong that would be the material to make it out of.’

  ‘Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of carbon nanotubes,’ Scobie said. ‘I think perhaps we should stick with the original text just for the present. You want to take it from the top, Bill … before I scream?’

  ‘Scream? I KNOW NOT “SCREAM!” ‘ Razz shouted.

  On his second go Bill made it right through without forgetting a word. He was good too, especially when he got to the last part.

  ‘This above all: to thine own self be true,

  And it must follow, as the night the day,

  Thou canst not then be false to any man.’

  Bill really put a lot of feeling into that bit. When he finished we gave him a burst of applause. I guess I wasn’t the only one who could relate to their chosen Hamlet passage.

  We had three more practices in the few weeks after that. Razz got a lot better at remembering his lines once Scobie explained them all to him. But in the end it wasn’t the acting part of the Hamlet orals that would cause Razz grief. It wasn’t even his presentation.

  It was Bill’s.

  29.

  DON’T DISTURB THE PIRANHA, DUDE

  We had one more practice together before the Hamlet orals commenced. We’d all run through our talks a couple of times over the previous sessions. All of us, that is, except Bill.

  Bill was fine with his Polonius speech but was having trouble with some parts of his analysis. In our last practice session he was finally going to try a full run-through. The rest of us were spread around the room. Razz was sitting beside me with his head propped on the back of his chair and his body stretched forward in a straight line at an angle of about thirty degrees to the floor. His eyes were closed. He could have been asleep. Or in a coma. Listening to other people talk took a lot out of Razz.

  Bill got under way. His explanation of the passage and its importance to the overall play was good. Then he went on to the very last part where he tackled the issue of the relevance of the extract to society today. He looked up from his sheets of paper and hesitated a moment before continuing.

  ‘I feel that the major relevance of Polonius’s speech to society today is found in the line, “To thine own self be true”. Even though in many ways the world today is more open and tolerant than it was in the past there are still many areas where people are discriminated against or persecuted because of their beliefs, background or culture, or for just trying to be true to who and what they are. This can be seen particularly in the issue of sexual preference.’

  Beside me Razz raised his head slowly off the back of the chair.

  ‘For example, many gay men and women today are still unable to be true to who they really are because of the prejudice and discrimination that unfortunately still exist in today’s world. I can personally relate to this …’

  Beside me a body catapulted forward like it had been expelled from an ejector seat. Razz snatched Bill’s speech from him and his eyes did high-speed laps back and forth across the page. Then he stopped and looked at Bill in horror.

  ‘Are you mad, Bilbo? You can’t say this!’

  ‘Why not? It’s true.’

  ‘Lots of things are true, man. Like Ms Heckenvaal’s got a backside the size of a small country, but if you’ve got any brains at all you don’t say it out loud.’

  ‘What, so I should go around hiding and pretending I’m something that I’m not?’

  ‘Now you’re getting the idea, Billy Boy!’ Razz said, jabbing his arm. ‘Just till the end of Year Twelve, man. Then you can jump out of a cake in a tutu if that’s your idea of a good time.’

  ‘Why should I wait till then? I’m not ashamed of what I am.’

  ‘It’s not about being ashamed. It’s about self-preservation, dude. You think my Uncle Georgiou got around in his Show Tunes costumes when he was at school? Billy, listen to me. School is like … like crossing a big stream, OK? On the other side of the stream is life after school and that’s where you’re headed, see. But first you have to get all the way across the stream safely. Are you with me?’

  ‘I think so,’ Bill said, looking about as convinc
ed as the rest of us.

  ‘Cool. But here’s the thing. In the stream – which, remember, is really school – there are these flesh-eating piranha. Not heaps of them, but enough. So Billy, all I’m saying is, while you’re crossing the stream – don’t disturb the piranhas, dude. Just wait till you get out of the stream and then you can find a nice safe pool where you can splash around and practise your synchronised swimming moves as much as you like.’

  ‘Well, thanks, Razz I’ll be sure to keep that in mind next time I’m in the Amazon.’

  ‘No, Bilbo. You don’t understand. See, it’s not a real stream or real piranha, it’s actually …’

  ‘Yes, I get it, Razz. But you guys know and it didn’t make any difference.’

  Razz draped an arm around Bill’s wide shoulders.

  ‘That’s because we’re all wonderful human beings. But sadly there are some people in our happy school community here at St Daniel’s – the ones with calluses on their knuckles from too much scraping along the ground when they walk, for example – who are different. Geez, Billy, you should know that. Remember how Bagsley and those other guys gave you a hard time for being overweight? How do you think they’d react to your latest status update?’

  ‘It’d only be some.’

  ‘But it’d be enough, man, same as the piranha.’

  ‘But what about being true to myself?’

  ‘Look, I know everyone thinks old Shaky is some sort of a god or something, but let’s just get real for a second. If big Willy turned up here at St Daniel’s and started spouting all that flowery language and thee-ing and thou-ing all over the place, I’d give him less than one of Prindabel’s nanoseconds before he’d be experiencing the joys of a head flush in the Senior toilets. I’m trying to help you here, man, that’s all. So I’m telling you as a friend, Billy, don’t do it.’

  Bill raised his confused face and looked around the room.

  ‘Scobie, what would you do if you were me?’

  I think everyone else in the room knew what James ‘No Fear’ Scobie would do. What we wondered was what he would say to Bill.