‘Nearly,’ Jim told him. ‘It’s actually pronounced “fo-netic.” And what it means is, the way a word sounds when you say it out loud, rather than the way it’s spelled in the dictionary. This first semester together, we’re going to study how to pronounce words correctly, and I promise you that this will help you tremendously when it comes to expressing yourself, not only when you’re writing but when you’re talking, too.
‘Do you know how many times I’ve seen my students write, “It’s a doggy dog world,” when they really mean “dog eat dog?” And “taken for granite” when they mean “taken for granted?” And “prespire” instead of “perspire?” And “nucular” instead of “nuclear?”’
Arthur put up his hand and said, ‘I don’t see the problem. If the person you’re talking to understands what you mean, like, what’s the difference?’
‘The difference, Arthur, is that you have to make yourselves a life in this world, whether you like it or not, and this world is totally hard and totally unforgiving. OK – maybe your friends understand what you mean when you say “a blessing in the skies” when you actually mean “a blessing in disguise.” Maybe your brothers know that “sose” means “so as”, and that the Heineken Remover is what you give to somebody in a restaurant when they’re choking. But nobody else in this totally hard and totally unforgiving world knows that. And they won’t show you any mercy, believe me.
‘You understand what I’m saying? I’m here to give you the ability to talk sense, and to write sense, and to make something out of your lives. This is your last chance, before you go out there. I’m your last chance. If you don’t listen to me, if you don’t do what I tell you to do, you’re going to leave this college like helpless little lambs, and the rest of the world will pick on you, like buzzards, and rip you to pieces.’
‘Shit, man,’ said T.D. ‘You makin’ me feel seriously scared here. I thought college was where you s’posed to come for reinsurance.’
‘So you should be,’ Jim told him. ‘The world is a very scary place, and you don’t even know the half of it. Especially if you say “re-insurance” instead of “re-assurance.”’
Arthur howled with laughter and slapped his knee and said, ‘See, bro! You need that phone-tick stuff so-o-o bad!’
Jim went over to the stationery cupboard, unlocked it, and took out a sheaf of lined paper. ‘OK, class,’ he announced. ‘I’m going to give you a little warming-up assignment to prepare you for the days and weeks of drudgery that lie ahead of you.’
‘Oh, no,’ said T.D. ‘Here come de drudge!’
Jim pointed a finger at him and said, ‘That was good, T.D. A very good wordplay. If there’s one thing that I always encourage in Special Class Two, it’s playing with words. Making up jokes. Thinking of double meanings. Finding new ways to describe things. Now let’s see if you can play with enough words to describe what you would do if you unexpectedly inherited one million dollars.’
Elvira’s hand shot up. ‘Buy myself a Ferrari!’ she said. ‘A purple Ferrari, to match my nail-polish!’
‘Are you kidding?’ said Leon, curling his lip. ‘You could buy yourself at least five Ferraris for a million dollars.’
‘OK, then, I’ll buy myself a purple Ferrari and a red Ferrari and a pink Ferrari and a green Ferrari and a black Ferrari with glittery bits.’
‘And you wouldn’t think about giving any of that money to charity?’ asked Teddy. ‘You wouldn’t give up just one of your Ferraris so that some children in Africa could have some clean water to drink?’
‘I don’t know, maybe. So long as it wasn’t the purple one.’
They all sat down at their desks and Jim walked up and down the aisles, handing out sheets of paper and ballpens to those students who hadn’t brought their own. He had reached the back of the classroom when the door opened and Maria Lopez walked in, carrying her gold vinyl bag over her shoulder. Jim felt a tingling jolt, as if he had been Tasered.
‘Maria?’ he said.
‘Yes, sir? Is this Special Class Two?’
She looked perfectly well. No lacerations, no blood. Her black hair was tied up in braids, just as it had been yesterday, and she was wearing the same bronze satin blouse and the same jeans and the same multi-colored necklace of wooden beads.
‘Yes, this is Special Class Two,’ said Jim. He looked at his wristwatch. ‘You’re a little late. Eleven minutes, to be exact.’
‘Muchas apologias, señor. My brother, he was supposed to give me a ride to college this morning but at the last minute he said he could not do it.’
‘OK,’ said Jim. ‘It’s Maria Lopez, isn’t it? Why don’t you sit right down in the front row, Maria, next to Janice?’ He nearly said ‘Sticky’ but managed to stop himself.
Maria sat down, and as she did so, Jim turned his head toward Kim. ‘How are you feeling today, Maria?’ he asked her, without taking his eyes off Kim. ‘Fit and well? Ready for a hard day’s English?’
Maria looked puzzled, because she didn’t really understand what he meant. But she nodded and said, ‘Sí, señor. I am ready.’
Jim laid a sheet of paper on the desk in front of her. ‘I have my own pen,’ she volunteered, holding it up to show him. Still he kept his eyes on Kim, and Kim continued to stare back at him. They were like a mongoose and a snake, sizing each other up across a clearing in the jungle. Neither of them had to say anything. Both of them knew what had happened yesterday, although Kim had the advantage of knowing why it had happened, and what was going to happen next.
‘Right!’ said Jim, loudly. ‘You have thirty minutes to write down what you do if you were given a million dollars. Don’t worry about spelling or punctuation – not today, anyhow. If you want to buy a yacht, but you’re not so sure how to spell it, I’d rather you wrote down “y-o-t” than change it for something else that you think you can spell, like “SUV.” I want to see what you’re good at, but I also need to see what you’re having trouble with. I want to get an idea of who you are and what you want out of your life.’
He sat down, opened up his bag, and took out The Memory of a Goldfish. He had left his Hot Tamales wrapper at page 27, but when he opened it up, he realized that he hadn’t actually read this far. Even though he could remember coming to college yesterday, and sitting here with this book open in front of him, he couldn’t remember anything that had happened in the last three and a half pages.
‘I woke up. When I opened my eyes I discovered that there was a woman lying next to me, with her arm resting on my chest. She had coppery hair and white skin and more freckles on her face than stars in the sky. She exuded that strange smell that red-headed women often do, half metallic and half animal. I lifted her arm away and sat upright, and said, “Who are you? What are you doing here in my bed?”’
Maybe he had read this page, and maybe it had subconsciously inspired him to have a dream that Summer had been lying next to him, when she hadn’t been there at all.
He turned back a page. ‘“I think I’ll go down to Madam Georgina, and ask her to tell my fortune,” I said. But she said, “I don’t agree with any of this mumbo-jumbo”’
That was so close to the lyrics of the Robbie Robertson song that he had been playing in his car on the way to college that it was eerie.
He looked around the class. They were all writing with intense concentration, although some of them were writing very slowly, and mouthing the letters out loud as they wrote them. The only student who wasn’t writing was Kim Dong Wook, who was staring at him with that same suggestion of a smile.
Jim felt suddenly very cold, as if all the blood had drained out of him. Outside the window, he could see Mrs Daumier’s drawing class, sitting on the grassy slope, but a large cloud must have slid across the sun, because the slope was almost in darkness.
EIGHT
Jim was sitting in the faculty lounge at lunchtime, talking to Walter Armbruster, the history chair. Walter was a bulky, wide-shouldered African-American, with grizzled gray hair and a taste for jazzy
silk neckties. As usual, he was complaining about the sandwiches that his wife had made for him.
‘She knows I hate turkey. How long do you think we’ve been married? Seventeen years! And she still makes me goddamned turkey. Worse than that, turkey with cranberry sauce!’
‘Maybe she’s trying to punish you,’ Jim suggested. ‘Think about it: is there something you’ve done to upset her? Maybe you forgot your anniversary. Maybe she’s lost some weight and you haven’t noticed.’
Walter opened up one half of his sandwich and inspected its contents. ‘Look at that. It’s not even fresh turkey. It’s pressed. It probably contains more preservatives than Tutankhamen.’
Jim picked up the other half and took a bite. ‘It’s OK. It doesn’t taste like turkey. In fact it doesn’t taste of anything at all – so what’s your problem?’
‘Well, you’re welcome to it,’ said Walter. ‘One more turkey sandwich and I’m calling a divorce lawyer. What’s wrong with pastrami now and again? Or a little Swiss cheese? But what do I get? Goddamned turkey, every goddamned day. Yesterday, turkey. Today, turkey. And guess what I’ll get on Thursday?’
Jim said, ‘You didn’t come to college yesterday, Walter.’
Walter blinked at him through his thick-rimmed eyeglasses. Then he said, ‘No, I didn’t, did I? I went to the Watsons next door, for a barbecue.’
But then he rubbed the back of his neck and said, ‘Was that yesterday? Or was that the day before? I have the strangest feeling that I did come to college yesterday. But I couldn’t have done, could I? The fall semester only started today.’
‘Do you think you might have been here yesterday?’ Jim asked him.
‘How could I?’
‘I don’t know, Walter. But I have the feeling that I was here yesterday, too.’
Walter gripped his shoulder, and squeezed it. ‘You know something, Jim? I think you and me have been in this teaching game far too long. The kids have got to us at last, and we’ve finally lost it. Next stop the funny farm.’
‘Well, maybe you’re right,’ Jim told him. ‘But I still think that something seriously weird is going on.’
‘Something seriously weird such as what?’
‘I’m not sure. But it’s like the days aren’t behaving themselves. Somebody or something is playing around with time, or playing around with our perception of time.’
‘Say, what?’
‘I can’t explain it, Walter, not yet. But I do have an idea what and who is causing it, although I don’t have the slightest idea why.’
‘White man speak in conundrums,’ said Walter. ‘Listen – do you want this other sandwich, because I sure don’t. I’d rather go to the commissary for meatloaf and green beans.’
‘You’re kidding me. Do you have some kind of a death-wish?’
Jim took Walter’s sandwich and went to sit on the patio outside. He saw three of his own students sitting on the grass nearby – Georgia and Judii and Grant. Georgia was staring at Grant wide-eyed, her lips parted, as if he had just arrived from heaven by way of Muscle Beach, while Judii was applying bright-red lip-gloss and pouting at herself in a hand mirror, which intermittently flashed as it reflected the sun.
A few yards further away, under the shade of the cedar tree, he saw Patsy-Jean and Billy sitting on the circular bench that surrounded its immense gnarled trunk, and Kim sitting on the ground in front of them, cross-legged, straight-backed. Whatever Kim was saying, he was using the same karate-style chopping gestures with his hands that he had been using when he was talking yesterday to Maria, and both Patsy-Jean and Billy were leaning forward and listening to him with rapt attention.
Jim watched them for a while, and then got up and walked up the slope toward them, eating the last of his sandwich as he did so. Actually, Walter was right. The pressed turkey filling was disgusting. He threw the crusts across the grass, and two quail immediately fluttered down and started pecking at them.
He approached Kim and Patsy-Jean and Billy and said, ‘How’s it going, guys?’
Kim looked up at him, one eye closed against the sunlight. ‘Hello, Mr Rook. We talk about our future lives – which paths will unfold ahead of us.’
Patsy-Jean said, ‘Kim says that in Korea they actually have ways of seeing what’s going to happen to you in maybe ten years’ time.’
‘That’s right,’ said Jim. ‘I heard about that, too. Doors open and doors close, don’t they, Kim? Or is it the other way around? Close, open – open, close. Whatever it is, you guys need to be cautious. It’s tough enough, living your life one day at a time, without knowing what’s going to happen before it’s happened.’
‘Would you not like to see what you will be doing in ten years’ time, Mr Rook?’ Kim challenged him. ‘Or maybe thirty years’ time? Or forty? Or fifty?’
By the way Kim was looking at him, even with one eye closed, Jim was sure that he knew exactly what he had experienced last night – how he had woken up to find himself old and arthritic and incontinent, and how he had been visited by that spooky woman in that smoky veil. Maybe Kim himself wasn’t capable of manipulating time, shuffling the days like a deck of cards, but Jim was convinced that he was acting as an agent or a channel for some influence that was. Kwisin, perhaps, the fox-demon that had appeared in his bedroom, or some spirit even more terrifying.
He said, ‘As far as I’m concerned, Kim, ignorance is bliss. If I’m going to be healthy and rich in fifty years’ time, that will be great. If I’m going to be sick and poverty-stricken, then I don’t want to know about it, not yet. What’s the point of worrying about something I can’t change?’
‘There is always one way to change it, Mr Rook,’ said Kim.
‘Oh, really? And what’s that?’
‘Everybody has choice. Everybody has free will.’
‘How can you say that, when you believe that our lives have already happened, and that every day is simply waiting for us to come along and experience it?’
‘We all have the choice not to go further,’ Kim replied. ‘To close one door, but not to open the next.’
The bell rang. Students reluctantly began to pick themselves up from the grass and amble back to their classes.
Jim said, ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying, Kim. What do you mean, “not to go further”?’
‘Simply that,’ said Kim. ‘If you do not like what you see on the other side of the door, then you have the choice not to go through it. Not to go further. To stay forever in the same day.’
‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’
Kim stood up. ‘I have to go to class, Mr Rook.’
Jim almost snapped at him not to be so goddamned impertinent. It was his class, after all. But he knew that he needed to stay in control, and not allow Kim to needle him.
‘Sure,’ he said, checking his wristwatch. ‘You don’t want your teacher giving you a hard time for turning up late, do you?’
That afternoon, he read out the essays that his new class had written on ‘What I Would Do If I Unexpectedly Inherited A Million Dollars.’
Jim called them ‘essays’ even though most of them were only three lines long, and five of them were written in block capitals without any punctuation, while one of them had even been written in text-speak. ‘I wd pa drs 2 keep me 6Y 4eva. Life s Hrd n sux bt dth stinx.’ (‘I would pay doctors to keep me sexy for ever. Life is hard and sucks but death stinks.’)
Out of all of them, Leon had the most fluent handwriting, and it was joined-up, too. ‘I would take my whole family on a trip to Israel. When I got back I would buy my own apartment and invest in a half-share of my cousin Levi’s comedy club.’
‘That’s a very generous thought, taking your family to Israel,’ said Jim.
‘Yeah, but I’d leave them there. They suck. All of them. Especially my grandparents.’
Billy wanted to move to Oregon and open his own riding stables ‘someplace near mountins with snow on the tops and fresh air.’ Ella dreamed of buying �
�1000s & 1000s of dress’s & julre & like that & do a tv show like Paris & be a *’
Janice Sticky, to Jim’s surprise, had ambitions to open her own unisex grooming salon on Rodeo Drive, while Teddy planned to travel all over the world and write about ‘bizarre customs’ such as Maasai wife-sharing rituals and ‘frogs blended in a Mixmaster with white beans and honey which Peruvians drink instead of Viagra.’ Georgia would invest her inheritance in producing a movie, so that she could ‘get freinds with A-listers such as eg Brad and Aneglina and Matt Demon and be on the cover of OK magazine every week.’
Arthur wanted to run an exclusive VIP nightclub and own a gold Humvee, or maybe a pair of Humvees, one gold and one silver. T.D. had ambitions to start his own record label, Top Dime Disks. Maria said she would like to buy a beach-house somewhere in Baja, and two Afghan hounds, so that she could live in ‘idolic peace.’
When he came to Patsy-Jean’s paper, however, and read what she had written, Jim glanced up at the clock and said, ‘Hey – we seem to be over-running our time here.’
‘Hey, sir, you didn’t read mine yet,’ Grant complained.
‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry. I’ll have to finish discussing these some other time. Before we finish this afternoon, I want to read you a poem and I want you to come back tomorrow and tell me what you think about it.’
He went back to his desk, opened up his top drawer, and dropped their papers into it. Patsy-Jean’s was on top. In thick black capitals, she had printed: IF I HAD $1 MILLION I WOULD PAY SOMEONE TO KILL ME.
He locked his drawer and picked up his poetry book. He found the poem that he wanted to read to them, and then he stood in front of Patsy-Jean’s desk. He looked around. He could see that Special Class Two were growing restless. It was their first day back at college, and they were already tired and mentally ragged. It was always harder to teach them to concentrate than it was to teach them the rudiments of grammar.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘This is a very short poem, but that doesn’t mean it makes no demands on your brain. It’s called “Beyond the Horizon,” and it was written by a young Russian poet called Kiril Vasiliev in 1957.
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