8.35 a.m.
The Space Explorers game. Explain “Space.” (Perhaps a diagram of the Earth and the other planets going around the sun – get them to name each one). Explain “Explorers.” (First person in a new land – Columbus, Kupe, Burke and Wills – “In a new land, shooting is necessary” [1]). You are landing on a new planet, which you are surveying for possible settlement. What do you take with you? Make a list – starting with space-suits, oxygen, food, water …
Unfortunately, the ship starts to leak air as you approach the planet, and you are unable to repair it in flight. One of you will have to be sacrificed for the others to survive. Who should it be? Think of reasons why it shouldn’t be you – choose a suitable candidate in your group, and explain why they should die …
What are you looking for on the new planet? What would be most useful to a new community? Farmland? Water? Animals? Forests? Mountains? Valleys? Perhaps a crater, an abyss, ravine … [new worksheet].
She’s playing that song again. The sappy one. Ace of Base. I remember years ago there was an Abba song – more of these Swedes – which had a video with Annafrid looking up from a kind of depression in the ground. “Breaking up is never easy, you know,” she confided. The next shot was of the whole group leaning sideways in a yacht (fuck knows why). Perhaps it should be a shipwreck, rather than space exploration – easier to explain. Perhaps the Ace of Base song was inspired by the Abba one.
I am standing here in my ravine … [2]And perhaps not. In any case, I am standing here in my ravine …
•
The Ravine
Ever since he’d gone out of his way to see it the day before, the ravine had been in his mind. Walking or sitting, swimming or driving – always ready to pop up again. That was what they called it thereabouts, apparently. It even had its own mark on the map – a set of contour marks, and beside it, in tiny spindly writing: the Ravine.
He had thought of many witty things to say about it to Cathy as he drove up the meandering, unsealed road which afforded the only access. But there was no Cathy to say them to any more, of course. Not since the accident. There was a name for that, too, now: “the accident,” and a series of places to write it in – replies to letters of condolence, forms, cards.
•
8.45 a.m.
The Teachers’ room. There are ten desks arranged in pairs around the walls. Each one has some iconic representation of its principal inhabitant pinned above it – Star Trek posters: Captain Kirk for Phillip (“So, Phil, you, me, some of those Aussie Rules boys in their tight, tight shorts …”), Mr Spock for Tony (“Of course not, Captain, Vulcans don’t fart”), random beefcake for Brian (“Stud-muffin of the month”). What else? The Spice Girls, Jean-Paul Sartre … For me, Diego Rivera’s Day of the Dead in the City.
There’s a whiteboard at the back with appointments and bookings scrawled on it: Video Rm, Thurs 26th PM, Int / 4.30 p.m. Margaritas, drinkies. That last is from our fearless leader, the DOS of DOS’s, the Cameron Diaz of Academe, ironclad Catherine herself (gotta change that name in the story – all the others, too. Better not mention Ace of Base, either – they might sue me for the rights). Return to DOS, as they say. Only, this time, not the computer operating system but the D. O. S.: Director of Studies.
More realia – the “Geek of the Week” section:
- I will can make fiery atmosphere any time by sing!
- TV drives you more stupid than you already are
- My English is lusty
- Last night I watched “X-files.” It was very fright so I went sleep with my parents.
Well? Quite right, too. Most of them strike me as remarkably sensible sentiments, even if eccentrically phrased. Of course, there’s also Chomsky’s:
- Colourless green ideas sleep furiously
which is downright frightening. “Annihilating all that’s made / To a green thought in a green shade.” [3] You are thinking too deeply, as my German teacher used to say – thinking too deeply! Fuck off and die.
- I like exist alone. I don’t lively, but I as one goes alone get better everything.
•
It was a brilliant late-spring day, and the spirals of dust turned up by the little Mazda must have been visible for miles. If there was anyone to see them, that is, but he rather doubted there was. The hills were brown and arid, and the skeletons of long-dead trees dotted them like the undisposable remnants of a fire-sale. White, rotted, silent trees.
The car, too, was white originally, but it would be a kind of yellow-ochre by the time it finished its bumpy ride across this ripple-road. (That’s what you call it when the stones have bunched together into a series of ridges which bump a car up and down exactly as if it were in the wrong gear.) The temptation was to keep on changing down into second, but this he resisted. He knew objectively that his speed was right for the conditions.
There was scant warning of where to stop – just some gravel in a semi-circle beside a low clay bank. There were a couple of picnic tables over on the scrubby green grass. Beyond the bank, as he found when he got out to look around, was the ravine.
•
8.55 a.m.
No time to lose, now. It’s party-time. Lesson-plan city. Get down. Warmer – “What are you going to do in the weekend?” Good thing it’s Friday today. Then some grammar exercises while I check over their homework. What was it? Oh, yes, “My Ambition.” That should be a laugh: “My ambition is to sleep all the time and watch Korean videos;” “My ambition is to get good job when I come back home to Japan.” You never know, though. There might be something stranger. My ambition is to fall into a hole and die. My ambition is to stop feeling so lousy all of the time. I don’t like exist alone. Perhaps he’s right, though: as one goes alone get better everything. I don’t lively, though; I don’t lively at all.
Cathy’s come out now from her bolthole – foxy Cath, Supergirl – “Let’s do it to them before they do it to us!” Tape-recorder (“sound bad” embossed on its label like a badge, the green badge of cowardice); text-book, for what it’s worth; board-markers, blue, black, red (the black ones always run out first); notebook for scribbling in if I get the chance; paper for the game later on.
“Good morning! How are you this morning? Tae-Hyun? Kenji? Karl? What do you think of this weather? What are you planning to do in the weekend?”
That is brilliant stuff. No other word for it – brilliant.My AmbitionI will live near the river, and every day, I will enjoy fishing. My house will be made of wood. I’ll make the house myself. I want to have a dog and live together. The dog will be brave and gentle and he’ll have a good brain. If I’m attacked a bear, “No problem” my dog protect me. I’ll have a fireplace in my house. I’ll look at the fire and drink an expensive brandy.
by Kenji NakazakiThis is my ambition.
•
“How very unimpressive,” was his first thought as he tried to take the whole of it in. The sun was hot – there was not a cloud in that aching blue sky. He was feeling rather dry and parched after the long drive. It looked deep and cool down at the bottom, but no doubt the texture of the rock down there was as brittle and friable as these sandstone buttresses which threatened to crumble if you looked at them. Moving his hand along the edge, having prudently knelt down first for the purpose, he could feel the little squares of stone dissolving into shards and rattling down into the impenetrable regions below.
“I hope there’s nobody down there,” he said out loud, and quickly got to his feet as if to dissociate himself from this silly piece of vandalism. How deep was it? Probably no more than seventy or eighty feet. If as much. It was difficult to judge with all the late-afternoon shadows.
The gash left in the landscape was undoubtedly large, though – perhaps as long as a football field and very nearly as wide. He could see why it merited its place on the map, though he doubted that many tourists would choose to visit it.
Perhaps it would look more spectacular in the rain. Or snow, for that matter – of course, it seldom snowed this far north. The place must be a dreadful hazard to animals, which no doubt explained the extra reinforced wire fences he had seen on his way up.
Cathy would have thought … What would Cathy have thought? He had known for some time that his mental image of her was bound to grow dimmer over time – the grief counsellor had done that much good, at least – but it was her face he had counted on losing, not the tone of her voice or the kinds of opinions she would probably have come out with.
•
12.15 p.m.
“Olga, would you like to come to the pictures with me some time?”
She blushes red, red as a beet. For so self-confident a girl, surprisingly red. Perhaps she hadn’t expected so untoward an assault in her centre of power, standing by the xerox machine: “You mean, as friends? Because I wouldn’t be interested in anything …”
“Oh yes, just as friends. It’s just that … I’m new in town, and I don’t know that many people, and I thought that it might be fun some night to …”
Both statements true, and yet both lies as well. I am newly back in town, but I was born and brought up here. I don’t know that many people, but that’s because until three, no, two months ago I was totally wrapped up in just one person.
“I’ll get back to you on that one …”
Yeah, sure. Colourless green ideas sleep furiously, and so do fruitless dates:
I like exist alone. I don’t lively, but I as one goes alone get better everything.
No, I don’t like it, but the frightening thing is seeing that I can exist alone.
•
Time to get back in the car and drive. It would, he felt, be the all-nighter this time. He felt no reluctance to leave the little picnic area at the edge of that great gaping hole, but he found himself wondering, with a strange insistence, if he would ever go back there.
“Will I ever see it again?” seemed a rather portentous way of putting so trivial a question. Well, probably not. There was no reason to turn aside again, and if anyone were ever to ask him about it, he now had the full low-down.
“Ah yes, the ravine … went there in the Spring of … Of course, that was just after … Not a lot to see, but … Blah, blah, blah … forest giants.” And so on. Just like in a Russian novel: In the summer of 18–, in the town of N–, a tall, immaculately-dressed young gentleman might have been seen approaching a rather dingy hostelry on the banks of the R–. On the banks of the Ravine. He could feel the speech forming on his lips like bile as he drove along.
But that wasn’t it – not all of it, anyway.
•
2.35 p.m.
Afternoons are conversation; mornings are textbook and grammar. Most Fridays there is an activity, but the more serious students invariably elect to stay in class. What strange, strange topics of discussion come up in those two hours – superstitions, relationships, phobias, ideals, plans for the future, or for world conquest.
I would like to go to Mars. “Would you, do you think, Kenji?”
“No.”
“Why not? Don’t you want to see those red, open plains?” Those dusty hills in the distance. The Earth rising above the horizon like a swollen blue moon.
“I am very scared to fly.”
“But you’ve been bungy-jumping.”
“Yes, but I am very fright.”
“I was very frightened.”
“Yes, I was very frightened.”
“But you did do it.”
“Yes. There was Chinese girl in front of me. They push her. I say I am man, so I do not need push …”
“A push.”
“When I was twelve years old, I go hiking with my friend. My friend’s name is Oshi. It rained, so Oshi don’t want to go. But I was children, so I imagined having an accident in mountains and say that it’s exciting and thrilling. I decided to go and my friend followed my opinion. And then we walk and walk for two hours. At first the path was very wide, but then it got narrower and narrower. We noticed that we had chosen a wrong way and thought we should go back.
But I said if we go back, we were defeated by nature. Oshi opposed my opinion because it’s dangerous for us. But I decided to go and he followed me. And then we went and went and cleared the very heavy slopes many times with our clothes dirty. But it got darker and darker and we got tired. We thought that we would really have an accident and imagined a lot of people would come looking for us and at last we would be found dead. We imagined that our teacher say to students ‘Don’t become such a silly boy.’
We prayed God to help us.
We went and went without talking. Oshi get angry and quarrel each other. Suddenly Oshi screamed light. We forget quarrelling and ran and ran toward the lights. After all we went back to a different destination. We learn the courage to go back.”
“That’s an amazing story, Kenji. What do the rest of you think? Hyung-Kyung? Karl?”
“I think I want go Mars too!”
And I? I want to learn the courage to go back, to run and run and run towards the lights …
•
Was the ravine his friend now in a way that the sea no longer was? The sea which had been pre-empted somehow by Cathy’s dying wish, to have her ashes scattered there? He had been so exasperated by her sometimes – her sentimental weakness for views and seascapes and tasteful arrangements. The ravine was none of those things, that was for sure.
But it was no friend of his. It was no friend of anyone’s. It was just a big black hole – a meaningless feature of the landscape which had been artificially dignified by having a road built to it by some enterprising local.
Had he been meant to see it, perhaps? Was there a God, or a Fate up there pulling strings to make sure he came this way and got the message – whatever that message was? Perhaps it had got garbled in the transmission.
•
4.30 p.m.
Descriptions (This person is …)
This person maybe intellegent.“They’re all of me! The game was just a disaster. They were supposed to be guessing who the descriptions were of, but only Karl managed to do it right.”
This person goes to the bar about twice per week.
This person speak English very well.
This person looks a little bit lonely.
I like style of this person’s shoes.
The person looks like tender.
But I wonder if it is really or not.
The person wear glasses.
Sometimes the person is very funny.
The person is often friendly but sometimes feels like very shy.
The person’s nose is very high.
The person has a brown hair.
He is very kindly and friendly. Everyday he wears difference quite nice dress. He always wear a pair of nice glass. I think he is more tolerant person. Sometimes he likes sociable, but a lot time he keeps his life alone. He is very knowledge.
“It’s a pretty munted idea, actually. You’ve got to explain it to them properly before you start.” Words of wisdom from the Director of Studies, dossing down at the end of a hard day. Uno, dos, tres …
“They are quite interesting, though, you’ve got to admit. They all say I’m shy, and they all think I’m lonely.”
“Well, aren’t you, you big girl?”
“I suppose so. I didn’t think I was so obvious about it, though. At least Dorothy admires my shoes.”
“Have you heard from the bitch lately?”
Wood tables, underground. A jug of Speights for me, a pitcher of salty Margaritas for Cath. The other teachers will be here soon, probably. Some of the students are drinking at the other end of the table, laboriously explaining things to one another in language-school patois (“We go Saturday.” “Where?” “Boat.” “Boat where?” “Harbour.” “No. Where go?” and on and on and on).
“Not for a month, actually. And that one wasn’t very nice.”
“You know that one of the girls has got a crush on you, don’t you?”
“No. Who?”
“Michelle.”
“I don’t think I know her.”
“She’s quite a fox, you know.”
“You’re the only fox for me, Cathy. You and …”
“I can’t say I’m too flattered to be lumped in with that cunt. Anyway, Michelle …”
•
He gunned the engine a little and increased his speed. At this rate he might be able to catch a couple of hours of sleep and still be back in time to avoid morning rush-hour. The streets would be green and quiet and no-one would be awake. He would be able to walk up to his own front-door and sneak in like a ghost. There would be things waiting for him there – furniture, clothes, books. Nice things, friendly things. Videos to watch, CDs to listen to. Everything the heart could desire.
“Everything except the ravine,” he said out loud, and laughed a little at the thought of it opening up in the middle of his living-room floor – the new living-room, of course (the other one had been burnt to ashes in the fire); that new living-room which should be totally free of old associations and bad memories, the counsellor had told him.
After a while he stopped laughing and drove on.
Notes:
[1] Stephen Spender, World within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender (London: Readers Union, 1953), 44.
[2] Ace of Base, "Ravine": lyrics by Jenny Bergren. The Bridge (1995)
[3] Andrew Marvell. "The Garden." Complete Poems. Ed. Elizabeth Story Donno. Penguin English Poets. Ed. Christopher Ricks (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), 100-102 [101].
Pander 6/7 (1999)[2/7-4/9/97]
[3102 words]
[Published in Pander 6/7 (1999): 18-20;
Monkey Miss Her Now (Auckland: Danger Publishing, 2004): 19-30.]
•
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