Pandora Jones: Admission

by Barry Jonsberg

  ‘Prison?’ Pan had to gasp the word, because her lungs were burning once more. I need to get fit, she thought. There is no alternative and this pain is a reminder of how far I must travel.

  ‘Sure. There are wide open spaces. We can go wherever we want. Trouble is, there’s nowhere to go. There are different kinds of prisons, Pandora. I reckon this is one. And I’ll tell you something else. Put me behind a door and I have to open it. Doesn’t matter if there’s nothing on the other side. I need to see for myself.’ He glanced at her. ‘Loosen your stride, your arm movements are all over the place, and don’t get me started on the way you hold your head. I could help, if you like. I know squat about most things, but running is what I was born to do.’ He accelerated smoothly.

  She tried to keep up but it was hopeless. Even with a burst of speed she couldn’t prevent his form shrinking ahead of her. She stopped, put her hands on her knees and waited for her breathing to slow.

  ‘Take me with you,’ she yelled after him. ‘When you go.’

  He didn’t turn around. But she heard a faint tinkle of laughter drift towards her.

  Chapter 8

  Breakfast was a simple chunk of hard bread covered in a thin layer of something vaguely resembling butter. Pan nearly broke a tooth eating it, but she persevered. She was learning from Wei-Lin. Don’t leave anything on your plate.

  The two-hour session after breakfast was given over to physical activity. Pan joined a group of students working on clearing rocks from the paths leading to and from the canteen. Cara was one of them. There was no wheelbarrow available to shift the stones, so they piled them up along the edge of the paths, leaving a trail of packed earth and making the definition of the paths more obvious. Pan worked close to Cara and noticed the New Zealand girl chose only the smallest stones and took an age to carry them to the perimeter.

  ‘Not exactly stimulating, is it?’ said Pan, wiping sweat from her brow and smiling, but Cara merely averted her eyes and scoured the ground for a suitably small stone. Pan shrugged and picked up another rock. It’s going to take time, she thought, to win this girl’s trust.

  Even in the chill of the morning it was sweaty work, and after an hour Pan was hot and flushed. She looked up to see how their work was progressing and found the small area they had cleared rather dispiriting. At this rate it would take years to have the paths totally free of rocks. Then again, time was something they had in abundance and she did feel some sense of accomplishment in the physical activity. It was almost as though she could feel her body growing stronger, despite her weariness.

  At nine-fifteen they stopped and drank from a pail that another student had filled with cold, clear water. Pan noticed that everyone else – with the exception of Cara – had a cup attached to their fatigues by a short length of string, and she resolved to find one for herself. It was the same cup, she imagined, that they took to the showers.

  Then it was time for the first formal classroom lesson of the day. She took out her timetable and checked the classroom number, though she’d found the place the previous day when she’d been walking with Nate. Hut 43. Literature and Philosophy with Professor Goldberg. She made her way there and joined a thin stream of students filing in. Not just my group, then, she thought. With over four hundred students at The School, she imagined, the classes, by necessity, had to be large. Nonetheless, she was pleased to note that Cara had followed her, albeit lagging a few metres behind.

  The classroom was depressingly austere. Rows of battered and stained desks were lined up in front of an old-fashioned blackboard, a teacher’s desk just off to the blackboard’s right. There were probably sixty chairs. A man, by far the oldest she had yet seen at The School, sat at the front, his feet up on the teacher’s desk and a dog-eared book in his left hand. He had to be in his seventies at least. He peered at the students over gold-rimmed glasses as they filed in and found a place. A few chose to stand at the back of the class, but Pan found a seat right on the front row. She smiled as Cara slid behind the desk next to her. Pan glanced over her shoulder. Despite the crowded room there were a number of unoccupied places in the front row. The way of schools all over the world, she thought. The desks in the front row are always the last to be occupied.

  Her eyes suddenly filled with tears and a lump came to her throat. It was unexpected and almost absurd, she realised, that the sight of a classroom should ambush her emotions in that way. Is it because this is a reminder of what has been lost, she thought, or an affirmation that human nature does not change, even in the most extreme of circumstances? She forced the tears back and swallowed hard. There was danger in thinking too precisely about such things. It could open up a chasm through which one could easily fall.

  When everyone was in place, the room fell silent. The teacher ran long, gnarled fingers through the tangled mat of his beard and spoke.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘I notice that we are even more packed today than yesterday. Even to my admittedly feeble intellect – the product, I hasten to add, of advanced years rather than genetic predisposition – this can only mean one thing. We have new students joining us. A blessing, of course. I extend both my welcome and my sympathies to you, and implore you to embrace your studies – if for no other reason than to distract you from the horrors you have endured. The rest of the class must forgive me if I cover old ground for the benefit of our latest additions. My name is Menachim Goldberg and I am the Principal.’ Then he laughed. It was a surprisingly youthful laugh and nearly infectious. Pan felt her lips twitch. ‘Though one suspects that has little to do with my skills and education and all to do with my advanced years. Plus, I am the only qualified teacher at The School and I suppose that counts for something. As does being, perhaps, the oldest human being left on this planet. Even if I am not, when I look out at your metaphorical sea of youthful faces, I feel I must be. Call me Professor Goldberg, sea of youthful faces. Or Prof, if you prefer. Goodness, taste those fricatives. Prof if you prefer.’

  He coughed a couple of times – thick, rheumy coughs. Images from Pan’s dreams flashed through her mind, but she banished them with an effort of will. The Prof continued running his fingers through his beard. His eyes were watery and glistened in the dim light that infiltrated the small and filthy windows of the classroom.

  ‘I am your teacher for Philosophy, Religion and Literature,’ he said. ‘An immense body of knowledge, whose size is matched only by the extent of my ignorance. However, we must make do, in this brave new world.’ He coughed once more.

  ‘New students,’ he continued when he had the coughing fit under control. ‘We are currently engaged in analysing one of the greatest works of literature – some have convincingly argued the greatest work of the imagination – in the history of humanity. I refer, of course, to Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Some of you may have heard of him. We are reading the text and discussing it. Or more accurately, I am reading it to the class, for we have only one copy. I have requested a full class set, but as yet it would appear that generators and drums of gasoline have taken priority over educational resources. ’Twas ever thus, my friends.’

  The initial silence had given way to a low hubbub of conversation among the students. Even at the front, Pan had difficulty hearing what the Prof was saying. Maybe he couldn’t hear that the students were talking. Maybe he didn’t care. Whatever the reason, he proceeded as though he had their full attention.

  ‘Unfortunately, I am unable to recap what has transpired in previous lessons. Tempus fugit, you see. I suggest you talk to fellow students, who will almost certainly be delighted to bring you up to date with the details of the Prince of Denmark’s melancholic journey thus far. Splendid. Time to start our lesson. We have reached the point where Claudius and Gertrude are discussing Hamlet’s apparent madness. Gertrude describes Hamlet’s mental state as, “Mad as the sea and wind when each contends which is the mightier.” An image, obviously. Could one call this pathetic fallacy? I leave that to you. But the important thing is that the turmoil
within the mind is here being compared to elemental forces of nature. Destructive, certainly, but also – and this is the significant point, I think – part of natural flux. Even when our minds are dislocated, we are still a part of nature, subject to those forces, though we might suppose we are, somehow above such things . . .’

  Pan turned her head. Out the window, a grey sky, low cloud shrouding a mountain face, the moving specks of birds finding thermals. The scene was at once comforting, familiar and terribly alien. A piece of screwed up paper flew from somewhere at the back of the room and hit Cara on the neck. She flinched but didn’t turn around, keeping her eyes fixed firmly on the Prof. The student sitting on the far side of Cara was asleep, head resting on splayed-out arms. In fact, as Pan glanced around, she saw that many students had fallen sleep. Others talked among themselves, while a tiny minority paid attention. Wei-Lin was one, and Pan was pleased to see her. She couldn’t see Nate, though she imagined he was there somewhere. The Professor’s voice droned on and after fifteen minutes Pan too was fighting the pull of sleep. She tried not to look at her watch, but after what seemed an eternity she couldn’t resist. They still had an hour of the lesson left and they had only covered a few lines of dialogue. It might have been more interesting if they’d been able to follow in their own books, but as it was, it was difficult to focus.

  Someone behind her loudly cleared their throat. The Prof didn’t look up from his book.

  ‘Hamlet, of course, is the diametric opposite of what we could call modern man, who acts without thinking, whereas our tragic hero, as we know, subsumes action beneath the cerebral. He . . .’

  ‘’Scuse me. Prof?’ The voice was loud and harsh, unmistakable. Jen.

  Pan was tempted to look over her shoulder, but forced herself to keep her eyes to the front. Out of her peripheral vision she saw Cara stiffen in her seat.

  The teacher glanced up and raised a grey eyebrow. ‘Did someone wish to make a point?’

  ‘Yeah. Me.’

  ‘Excellent. Pray do so.’ He narrowed his eyes and squinted through his gold-rimmed lenses. ‘I don’t believe I know you, do I? Are you new?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Then welcome. Your point, new student?

  ‘More of a question, really,’ said Jen. Pan still didn’t turn around. ‘Why are we studying this crap?’

  There was surprised laughter around the classroom. Professor Goldberg put the book on his desk, interlaced his fingers and rested his chin on the prongs of his thumbs.

  ‘This is a question I have encountered before, new student. Many times.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ said Jen. ‘But it’s the first time I’ve asked it.’

  ‘Perhaps you will allow me to answer your question with one of my own. Do you not feel that the study of Shakespeare, the greatest writer the world has ever known, is, in itself, a subject worthy of you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What if I argued that in the works of Shakespeare and, in particular, Hamlet, there is enormous insight into the human condition – the essence of being alive and human? An essence we must keenly understand if we are to survive and thrive. What would you say to that, new student?’

  ‘I’d say you were talking bullshit.’

  There was more laughter. Professor Goldberg sighed.

  ‘Another familiar response, unfortunately.’ He stood and grimaced. ‘Leaving aside the intellectual poverty of your response,’ he said, ‘tell me: how would you prefer to spend your time?’

  Jen stood and walked purposefully between the lines of desks. Even as she passed, Pan did not turn towards her. Cara, she noted, did the same. Jen sat on the teacher’s desk, her back to him, and grinned at the rest of the class.

  ‘No offence, Prof,’ she said without turning to address him. ‘But this is the kind of crap that belonged in the old world. It is not useful. Out there . . .’ she waved vaguely towards the window, ‘. . . are the ruins of civilisation. What we need to know is how to survive among those ruins. How to be strong. How to hunt for food. How to protect ourselves from anyone or anything that tries to destroy us. What if, Prof, there are other survivors, people who have stocked up on guns and are prepared to defend their patch, their families? What are we gonna do, Prof, when we come up against a bunch of mercenaries out there in the real world? Guys with automatic rifles and no qualms about using them. Quote poetry? That’s gonna help?’

  ‘An interesting point, new student,’ said Professor Goldberg. ‘And you make it in a way that shows me you are more than just a collection of over-developed muscles.’ Pan stifled a laugh. ‘Is there anyone who would like to counter her point? Make an argument in favour of Shakespeare? Or are we all of the mind that he is dead and buried, both literally and metaphorically?’

  There was silence. Jen’s intervention had stopped the chattering. Pan turned and surveyed the room. Everyone was awake and paying attention. It was clear from the body language that most students agreed with Jen. Pan should have kept her mouth shut. She knew that. But her hand was up before she could think all the implications through. The Professor smiled.

  ‘Ah, yes. Another new girl. You are another new girl, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Prof. Pan.’

  ‘Excellent. And your thoughts, new girl.’

  ‘Prof, I . . . I think there is more to survival than physical strength. Or fitness. We have to have fit minds, as well . . .’

  Jen got to her feet. She wasn’t smiling now.

  ‘I wasn’t saying we shouldn’t have fit minds, Pandora,’ she said. She pronounced the name as if it left a toxic taste in her mouth. ‘We just don’t need this bullshit . . . this poetry. Because it has no practical application. It’s a waste of our time. We need real skills.’

  ‘And I’m not saying we don’t need practical skills,’ Pan said. ‘I’m suggesting there’s room for both. Let’s take your mercenaries scenario. Does it matter who wins? Us or them? If we are all intent on the destruction of human life, rather than the preservation of it, what kind of new world will it be?’ Pan had not planned to say any of this, but her confidence was growing with each word. ‘We’ve been through so much. This is a new beginning. But if we are to be the best we can be, then we also need to take with us those things that make life worth living. Otherwise the future is savagery. And we are not savages. At least, while we have the choice, we shouldn’t be.’

  Jen’s face flushed. Her biceps clenched as her fingers gripped the sides of the desk. She opened her mouth to speak, but the Professor was on his feet.

  ‘Bravo, new girl!’ he cried. ‘Bravo, indeed. Yes. Savagery versus humanity. Chaos versus civilisation. Excellent. Excellent.’ He turned to Jen ‘Think, new student. Think. Is it true that the pen is mightier than the sword?’

  Jen stormed back to her seat, her eyes fixed on Pan. Terrific, thought Pan. Just what I need. An enemy with muscles the size of punching bags.

  ‘Tell you what, Prof,’ said Jen when she reached her seat. ‘It would have to be a hell of a big pen.’

  Most of the students laughed.

  ~~~

  Wei-Lin was not pleased at lunch. Jen sat to her right and Pan sat opposite. They didn’t so much as glance at each other.

  ‘We are a team,’ said Wei-Lin. ‘Let’s act like one. We have to be able to depend on each other.’

  ‘Says who?’ said Jen. ‘I thought you were our mentor, not our superior?’

  Wei-Lin sighed.

  ‘I am only your mentor, Jen,’ she said. ‘I have no authority over you. And as your mentor I would advise you two to find some common ground.’ She pushed her bowl to one side. Pan was surprised to notice there was still some pale soup left in it. Jen leaned over and took the bowl, emptied it into hers. Wei-Lin spread her hands. ‘We need to get on with each other,’ she said. ‘Help each other. We need to work together.’

  Jen pointed her spoon at Pan. ‘She was the one arguing. Maybe she should have kept her mouth shut.’

  ‘Maybe we should all shut our mouths,�
�� said Nate. He turned his head slightly and gave a small private wink to Pan. ‘Normally, as soon as I open mine, I stick my foot in it. I’d sooner put food there.’ He grimaced. ‘Even this food.’

  Chapter 9

  ‘Don’t ever, ever, make the mistake of thinking I am your friend.’

  The instructor, a woman in her mid-twenties, paced up and down in front of Pan’s group. They were inside a large, windowless building close to the foot of the steps leading to the Infirmary. The only illumination came from the double doors, which had been left open to admit a pale curtain of sunlight. Pan stood with her hands behind her back and tried to relax, but a muscle twitched in her right leg. Memories of past physical education classes at her old school drifted through her head. They had rarely worked out well and she had no confidence that this session would be any different.

  The instructor was dressed in running shorts and a singlet that showed off stringy, yet powerful, muscles. Her dark hair was swept back from her face, secured in a bun at the back of her head. Her voice was measured and she gazed at the floor as she paced.

  ‘I understand you’ve paid a high price of admission to be in this School. We all have. But I cannot be your friend if I am to fulfil my duty to the students in my care. And what is that duty? To make you fit for survival in a hostile and unforgiving new world.’ She glanced up and then returned her gaze to the floor. ‘I am your instructor and this class is fitness and survival. You will call me Miss Kingston and you will obey my instructions. There are counsellors here who will listen to your problems, give advice, offer support. If you want warm and fuzzy, go to them. Do not bother me.’

  She stopped in the centre of the line and raised her eyes. Slowly, she examined each student in turn, her hands clasped behind her back.

  ‘I am not interested in your personal problems,’ she continued in the same impersonal tone. ‘I don’t offer advice or support unless it concerns fitness and survival. I doubt you will find my methods pleasant. But you know what? That is something else I’m not interested in.’