Black Chalk

They did not have to wait long. There were three visitors to the urinals before the arrival of someone who needed to use one of the stalls. It was a first year called Colin, studying medicine. He was whistling the Beatles. Dee had wanted every last scrap of detail, but Chad wasn’t sure which song. ‘Was it Come Together?’ she would later joke.

Chad had a small mirror. By holding it in the space beneath the wall that separated the stalls, he could ensure that Jolyon acted the role properly. He had forewarned Jolyon about this, the information delivered in a thoroughly businesslike fashion.

When the stall door opened, Jolyon was sitting there with jeans gathered around his ankles and his underpants stretched beneath his parted knees. The magazine was resting in his bare lap covering his flaccid state, his penis shrunken and ashamed. They had chosen a magazine called Asian Babes and behind its cover, Jolyon was pumping his arm. He pumped and he pumped and he pumped. He didn’t look up. But he did hear that Colin had stopped whistling.

Chad, having ascertained that Jolyon had acted the role sufficiently, tilted his mirror and saw on Colin’s face the appropriate shock and disgust. And then Colin recoiled, throwing up his hand to shield him from what he had already seen. ‘Fucking hell, Jolyon,’ he cried out, ‘lock the fucking door next time, for fuck’s sake, man.’

LVI(v) The news spread quickly around Pitt.

Over the next few days, Jolyon was shouted at outside lecture halls, jeered from the bar, spat on several times, called a racist many hundreds of times, a pig, fascist, wanker, porn junkie, misogynist, porno pimp, ‘Tug’, sex fiend, Nazi, paedophile and, by Nadia Joshi, chairperson of the Asian Students’ Association, a crypto-Klan Paki basher.

Mark suspended his tailing of Jolyon for a short time, not wanting to be associated with such a vilified character, the taint of ‘racist’ perhaps the very worst to be marked with at Pitt. He walked into Jolyon’s room to tell him as much and also to express his admiration for Chad and Dee. He suggested it would soon be necessary for him to step up his own game, although he also continued to employ his sleep-deprivation tactics. Jolyon, wide awake at two o’clock one night, had discovered that the window tapping was achieved by use of a drawing pin pushed into the end of a bamboo cane.

As his notoriety swelled, Jolyon spent more and more time alone in his room, waiting for the tap tap tap and the music like a splintering earth. He lay on his bed feeling the weight of Pitt’s hatred for him being piled on his chest like vast slabs.

Jolyon had never taken any pleasure from that fact that he was universally adored at Pitt. He had felt only the vague impression that, yes, he was mostly liked and being liked was probably better than not being liked. But the sense of being hated was a sickness infecting every cell of his body. Love was something that had vanished without leaving its mark on Jolyon. But being hated was a feeling he would never shake. A feeling that gathered and calcified. And formed its thick mass at his heart.

LVII

LVII Dee is curled up on my sofa, no more tears for now.

I am opening cupboards I have opened two or three times already. The cupboards are empty, their contents strewn across the floor.

It’s not here, Jolyon, it’s not here.

It has to be, I say, picking up a rug, throwing it into a corner.

It’s not here. It’s not here!

Dee, you’ve been coming to my apartment, do you remember –

Don’t you dare! Don’t even dare try to blame me, Jolyon.

No no no, Dee, no blame. Your memory’s so much better, maybe I left it in the same spot every day. My hands fly all around me, pointing and waving, finally gripping the back of my skull.

You’ve lost it, Dee shouts, quickly sitting up, her sandals loud on my floorboards. The only thing I cared about, Jolyon. Gone.

Was it in here? That’s all I need to know, I say, moving in circles now, trampling photographs, memories. Maybe I took it with me when I went out walking, I say.

What do you mean took it with you? Dee cries. You mean it could be anywhere in New York?

No, I don’t know. I’m not saying I took it. I don’t know. I don’t . . . My nose is throbbing, the floor is a mess, my life scattered, misplaced. I fall back against the wall and slip down to the floor holding my hands to my face.

And then I hear Dee standing above me, her voice raining down on my shame. Unless you find my poems, Jolyon, you will never, ever see me again. Never. If I see you in the park by the Christmas tree at six one night then I’ll know you’ve found them. Otherwise, don’t bother, you won’t see me. How could I forgive you, Jolyon? Why did I ever forgive you?

I look up at Dee expecting to see anger on her face, thinking that I must meet her gaze. I deserve her rage, my punishment. But she doesn’t look angry, she looks immensely sad, Dee looks as if I have broken her.