Black Chalk

Finally fate intervenes to save me. The batteries in my flashlight fail halfway through a woeful game of Buckaroo. Darkness has fallen outside, it transpires, so I jump off the bed and run into the living room intending to turn on the lamp. But something hits my toe and a split second later I hear the sound of breaking glass and feel a stabbing pain in the sole of my foot. I hop across the room and fumble for the lamp. When finally my fingers find the light switch, I see in the middle of the floor four empty glasses and the icy slick of a single broken glass. Blood is seeping from my foot.

I hop back to the bedroom and begin fumbling around for the game Operation. When finally I find it I return to the lamplight of the living room where I use my teeth to gnaw away the tweezers attached to the board. I grimace and then proceed to tweeze a large shard of glass from my foot. Due to my shaky hands, the procedure proves rather difficult and takes some considerable time.

And then with a great sense of relief, my foot hurting like hell, I remember my painkillers. I hop on my good foot into the kitchen where I see all my mnemonics untouched and in place. So it seems I have achieved nothing today. No water, no food, nothing at all. (Perhaps this explains the shaky hands.) I snatch up a pill but hesitate to pop it in my mouth, staring at this little blue caplet as if there is something wrong. And then I shake my head briskly, my mind cloudy, my foot stinging and throbbing. Quickly my painkillers become the first achievement of the day. And thus, soothed by my meds, I lie on the bed and close my eyes, holding my sore foot and thinking of all those losses. Thinking that, after HELL ONE, this day of defeat is a second poor omen. I have to be better than this. I must grow stronger.

XII

XII(i) They spoke of nothing but Game Soc all the way back to Pitt. When they passed through the lodge they saw Mark wandering down one side of front quad, yawning and wearing socks but no shoes. He had on a pair of headphones plugged into a Walkman that was clipped to his belt. When they approached him he pushed off the headphones and let them hang from his neck.

‘Mark, there’s no tape in your Walkman,’ said Jolyon, pointing.

‘Oh dear,’ said Mark, ‘is it that obvious?’

‘And the play button isn’t pushed down either,’ said Jack.

‘It’s worked so far though,’ said Mark.

‘What are you doing awake so early, anyway?’ said Jolyon.

‘Can’t sleep,’ said Mark. ‘I thought a walk might help. But there are some people round here I’m not so desperate to talk to.’ He unclipped the Walkman and waggled it.

‘Would a Hemingway daiquiri help more?’

Mark blinked serenely in the sunlight. ‘Indubitably,’ he said.

XII(ii) Mark was the cleverest person at Pitt, Jolyon had told Chad. Chad wasn’t sure how Jolyon had judged this. Jolyon said the cleverest people were never aware of their genius but Mark seemed barely aware of anything. Always groggy, a voracious sleeper.

Jolyon had taken Chad on a mission of mercy one evening to awaken Mark so he wouldn’t miss dinner a third night in a row. They eventually roused him, Jolyon having to resort to stealing his covers. Mark had been sleeping for sixteen hours straight.

He then yawned his way through dinner and subsequently drinks in the bar. In Jolyon’s room that night he had catnapped between hash tokes and sips of gin rickey. Mark’s lips made small murmurous movements while he napped. Perhaps, thought Chad, he was reciting equations, formulating new theories in his sleep. Mark studied physics. And like all of them in their circle, his area of study came in some ways to define Mark in the collective thoughts of his friends. Physicist, genius, mad scientist.

His hair stood in vertical coils, the effect somewhere between untamed bush and bedsprings. And he had a nose ill-suited to lethargy, it being pronouncedly aquiline. Whenever Mark’s eyes began to droop, his gaze would drift down the slope of his nose and settle for a moment on its tip. And finally, with a gentle flutter, the eyelids would shut.

XII(iii) In his room Jolyon apologised for false advertising, he blamed his poor memory. It was not the right day for Hemingway daiquiris, the ingredients for Singapore slings were already arranged on the coffee table.

Chad listened in awe as Jolyon then discussed physics with Mark. Although Jolyon was studying law at Pitt, his knowledge encompassed everyone’s choice of subject. Chad had heard him talk often to literature students about numerous obscure novels, which Jolyon always appeared to have read more of than they. He spoke knowledgeably with PPE students about politics, philosophy and economics. He chatted breezily with chemistry students about Mendeleev and the aesthetics of the periodic table. No topic seemed beyond him.