Paradise Rot. Jenny Hval
I followed the tracks to the nearest stop, noting the trash on the pavement, a discarded juice carton and greasy pages of newsprint. My blurred reflection appeared in shop windows beneath unfamiliar English signs: Newsagent, Chemist, Café. When the tram came, that too bore a name I did not recognise, Prestwick Hill.
The carriage was half-full. Two rows of seats lined its sides, facing each other. A large inebriated man sat at the back, alternating between snoozing and babbling to himself. Every time he fell asleep, he slipped a little further off his seat. When he wriggled back into position, his oversized and low-riding trousers slipped a little further down his hips. He wasn’t wearing anything underneath. The other passengers pretended not to notice. A few teens were chatting quietly, a girl read a magazine intently, and others stared out the window. I picked up my guidebook and turned the pages, but I couldn’t concentrate. Like everyone else on the tram my attention was on the man and his trousers. Sometimes people would exchange quick glances, and when his trousers finally slipped past his hips and down his thighs, an uncomfortable sense of solidarity formed in the carriage, one common heart beating quickly and awkwardly. No one looked at the man, and yet everyone saw at once a flaccid red limb protruding from his crotch like a parched tongue. Agitation spread between the seats; our bodies started to itch and sweat. I looked around, and everywhere nervous glances met my own. Finally, two newly arrived men went over to the man, helped him put on his trousers again, and threw him politely out at the next stop. I saw him rave through the high street, carving a wide path in the crowd. The passengers in the carriage exhaled. They could return to themselves, disappear into their enclosures. I was alone again.
I got off the tram by a little park between big office buildings in the centre of town. The fog had finally lifted. Thick clouds were rushing far above my head, much higher and faster than the clouds at home, as if Aybourne were in a deep gorge. I had no plan and no map, so I sat down at a café and ordered what seemed easiest to pronounce. When my tea reached the table, they had put milk in the cup without asking, so much that the tea was completely white, but I didn’t say anything. On the street outside, autumn rain had begun to fall. Between the businessmen with umbrellas and newspapers over their heads, the asphalt was dotted, dark grey and then black and gleaming like snail skin. I pulled my knees up in front of me on my chair, as if I sat in a little lifeboat drinking my white tea. I tried intermittently to read a newspaper, but my English wasn’t up to it. Instead I watched the cars and listened to the rain through the open door. I listened to footsteps and to raincoat fabric rubbing against skin and cotton when people sat; to strange heavy coins that jangled over by the counter and cups clattering against saucers.
When I returned to the hostel that afternoon, a tall Asian girl stood by the counter. She looked confused. The receptionist tried to explain how to check in. ‘You need to sign your name here, please,’ she said with a sigh, but the Asian girl didn’t look like she quite understood. ‘But I have a room, yes … From the university,’ she said. A boy in a suit with an American accent tried to help, but the girl didn’t understand him any better, and she looked tensely down at the counter. I tiptoed past them, happy to see other foreign students. There were more in the communal area: two girls from Montreal playing cards and a pair of siblings from Madagascar taking turns to use the phone. Later in the night I heard all four of them arguing loudly in French, and when one of them slammed a door, the floors creaked. The matted grey-blue carpet sent heavy dust clouds into the attic air.
Throughout the night an icy ocean wind blew through the cracked window, and I woke up the next morning feeling like the cold had sunk into me, turning bone to wood and skin to sawdust, making me like Pinocchio. When I stretched, my shoulders creaked, and I put on several layers of thick clothes before leaving for breakfast.
The food in the breakfast hall was slippery and fluid: silky soft white bread slices that dissolved like candyfloss in my mouth. Glutinous jelly-like jam without seeds and of an uncertain berry flavour. Butter, smooth peanut butter, honey, milk, Marmite and ketchup. Soft rice puffs and soggy fried eggs. I remember everything at home as being textured: whole-wheat bread with hard crusts and coarse liver paste, the feeling of grains and fibrous meat swallowed with black tea, the whole lot going down your throat like wet gravel. Here, I chewed and only the sugar crunched. I sat poking a wet fingertip into the sugar bowl and then sucking on it, crushing the sugar crystals between my teeth.
The foreign students too were smooth and gleaming. May, the Asian girl (Chinese as it turned out), had thick shiny hair. David, the American boy, had a freshly ironed shirt neatly tucked into his trousers, and Ella and Lauren, the Canadian girls, smiled with straight white teeth. They spoke of their travels, the weather and each other’s cities in slow polite voices:
‘We’ve done Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, so pretty, Indonesia, Bali, awesome, and soon we’re going to South America …’
I had barely recognised them when I entered the breakfast hall, as if their faces had been wiped clean overnight along with the plates, eyes and lips scrubbed clean of honey stains and breadcrumbs.
May and I spoke a little after the others had gone out shopping. Her handshake was soggy and her skin felt smooth like the peanut butter on the white bread in front of me. She had served herself a huge plate of Coco Pops, a large mug of hot chocolate, a glass of milk and some bread.
‘European food,’ she said and smiled, while she used a spoon to scoop out a massive wad of butter from the butter dish, spreading it unevenly on the slice of bread. ‘I love milk,’ she continued. I smiled back at her and put my knife in a jar of peanut butter.
‘You like …’ May struggled to find the right word. ‘… Club?’
‘Club?’
‘Dancing …’ She slurped her cocoa.
‘Ah, nightclub,’ I said. ‘I don’t go out much.’
‘OK, yes. I like.’
‘Really? Do you go out much at home?’
‘Yes, me and friends. Dancing, singing …’ May tried to squeeze her spoon into a small pack of jam where it wouldn’t fit.
‘It’s easier with a knife,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ she said and blushed.
The university had left big envelopes in the reception, containing welcome letters, a map of the campus and information about the different trips and social events in and outside of Aybourne. The events had funny titles: ‘You Talkin’ to Me?’ was a class in conversational English, and ‘Fish’n’Chippin’ Aybourne’ was a fishing trip. The first event was called ‘Tackle the Town’. I hadn’t got round to checking what it was yet, but the other students at the hostel seemed so excited that I came with them. Alice, an American lady from the foreign exchange office, picked us up, and we got the tram down to a huge stadium where we watched a rugby match between two local teams. Alice showed us to our seats and said informative things like Here you see the Aybourne Dragons’ supporters with their green and white scarves, and of course an Aybrew ale, that’s our local beer. The students all went to the kiosk, where we bought our own Aybrews and little pies. My pie lay in my hand, lukewarm and dense. It looked like an inflated yellow beer cap.
‘What’s in the pie?’ I asked Lauren, one of the Canadian girls.
‘Kidney and brown sauce,’ she replied. I deposited the little kidney gently on an empty seat. Then we went back to our places and tried to find out which team was winning.
‘This is not like ice-hockey,’ giggled Lauren. She pointed out towards the pitch. ‘Look at those tiny shorts! They’re almost naked, yummy!’
Next to me, May smiled. I thought of the man on the tram, and wanted to tell her about him, but didn’t know what word to use. Penis, dick, cock? On the pitch men were throwing themselves at other men, and Alice waved her arms, yelling things like And here you see a maul … a maul is … Every time someone got a knee to the crotch or a foot to the chest, a shudder went through the audience, and I could feel that same shudder go through my own body, feel it lifting us for a moment before we slowly sank back into our seats.
After