Stronger Than Lions - 2. Preludes and Fugues

Classes ended and I made my way to the dining hall. St Francis Collegiate was one of the old-fashioned boarding schools in Cape Town, and had equal numbers of day scholars and boarders. Day kids like me—at our own risk of salmonella—could eat lunch with the boarders if we had after-school activities. Senior year had a lot of potential salmonella on the horizon, for I discovered that I had music lessons and swim practice on alternate days, Monday to Friday.

I was happy to see Rob and Bella at one of the tables. To our mutual dismay, we’d all been put in different classes, so I hadn't seen them during the first morning at all.

‘Hey stranger,’ said Rob as I approached them.

Rob Jordan and Bella Carmichael were my only real friends. We’d known each other since primary school—three happy geeks together, Bella with her orthodontics and Jesus sandals, and Rob with his salamander complexion the result of hours spent in a dark bedroom married to an Alienware gaming system. We loathed the cool crowd, and they loathed us back. None of us came from rich families: we happened to attend St Frank’s because we were residentially zoned for it or, in Rob’s case, received a discount as his father was a former teacher.

My friends had been great during the summer. They'd given me space, but would still abducting me for ice-cream and trips to the movies when they thought I’d become too maudlin.

'Where were you guys at break?’ I plonked down the day’s slop of unidentifiable stew and tragic salad. ‘I was looking for you all over.’

Bella took a demure spoonful of soup, frowned, and set down her spoon. ‘There was a Virginia Woolf crisis.'

"Crisis?" I looked at Rob, who shrugged at me and returned to his comic book.

"I finished The Waves over the holidays and couldn’t find To The Lighthouse in the library. I took Rob with cause the computers were offline. He knows the Dewey Decimal System backwards and then he realised the fascists have decided to put the Classics in the NON-fiction section.’

I groaned a little. Bella was always reading something at least fifty years old. She was currently in a ménage-à trois with Woolf and Aldous Huxley.
We chattered, Bella telling us about her Christmas away in the Drakensberg and Rob updating me about the latest game releases. I was arguing with him about whether StarCraft or David Braben’s Elite was the best space strategy game ever created when I noticed Chris entering the dining hall. He walked about lithely and confident. And yet he looked neither arrogant nor intimidating. It was not the swagger you found in the average St Francis alpha male jock.

I hoped he’d notice me.

Whoa. Why on earth did I want him to come visit super-shy me?

My hopes were dashed in any case. A low-lying cloud of girls had already formed around him, checking him out, cheerleading moths attracted to the jock flame. Soon he’d be assimilated into the cool collective, join the rugby team and be just one more potential bully to avoid.

Sure enough, he sat down with them.

‘Who’s that?’ asked Rob. ‘You’re staring.’

‘Oh, that’s Chris. He’s new. Met him in my history class.’

‘Meh,’ snorted Rob through a mouthful of the sloppy stew. ‘I see the Pom Pom Posse have already snookered him in.’

‘Yup,’ I said. ‘So predictable.’

‘He’s quite a specimen though,’ said Bella, looking up from the battered copy of To The Lighthouse. ‘I mean, in an uncomplicated surfer boy kind of way. I know I prefer my men dark and poetic, but still.’

‘Your men?’ asked Rob, snorting. ‘Oh! You mean all those morbid English poets you have a permanent crush on. Aren’t they a bit mouldy though? I didn’t know necrophilia was your thing. I mean it would take a while to dig them out of the grave for starters.’

‘Screw you, Jordan,’ she said, whacking him over the head with the Virginia Woolf. ‘I was just saying he looked kinda cute in spite of myself. It’s a pity, really. Those peroxide vamps will soon suck whatever brain cells he had right out of him and he’ll be reduced to being a walking pair of gonads.’

I couldn't help sniggering.

After lunch, I made my way to my piano lesson. The music department was in a separate building, housed in an old stable which was part of the original farm the school was built on in the 1860s. Mrs Georgadis’s teaching room was a tiny little nest with a Yamaha upright. Through a little window one could see the back of Table Mountain looming in the distance.

One of the things I love most about my city is the fact that there’s this huge mountain planted in the middle of it; you see it from any corner of the metropolis. It has a thousand different moods—from the waterfalls that erupt out of the crevasses during the rainy winters, to the clouds billowing over Devil’s Peak like candy-floss while the rest of the city roasts in a slow summer oven. This afternoon a searing blue African sky stretched in a wide yawn above it.

‘Come, Caleb, you can daydream later. Go with the Bach.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said, and launched into the Prelude. I’d pretty much aced it over the holidays. The real challenge was the fugue that followed directly after it. Fugues were always scary things for me. Canons on steroids, their melodies call, answer and dovetail each other in mathematical dances that hurt my brain. They sound effortless, so logical is the counterpoint, but I’d known early in my studies that they are of the most taxing works for a pianist to master.

My fingers were already aching from contorting themselves around the first twelve bars of the fugue when it was time to go home. It was four o’clock, but the January sun was still screaming down on my back as I made it to the bike shed behind the cricket pitch. I’d survived the first day of Matric without too much drama so far.

The shed was spookily empty as I entered it.

Then I saw my bike.

It was leering at an odd angle. Someone had bent the front wheel at nearly ninety degrees and, as an afterthought, scratched “FAGGOT” on the top tube.

I tried to fight the swell of blood rising up towards my face.

‘Fuck.’ I clenched my teeth. I just knew it was Frank Arliss or one of his cronies.

Sure enough, he stepped out of the shadows. Ed Healy and Jason Weiss were with him, two more of my regular tormentors. They’d obviously been waiting to see my reaction.

‘Hey pissface,’ said Frank with a sneer. ‘What’s the matter? Someone hurt your tricycle?’

‘Surprised you haven’t started crying yet, fag-ass,’ Jason chimed in, while Ed just glowered at me.

In many ways, Jason was even scarier than Frank. Tall, clever, built and mean, he was one of the prefects, and Arliss & Co. enjoyed absolute immunity under his Mafioso gaze. They particularly liked terrorising the first formers. While hazing had officially been prohibited at the school since the Major took control in the nineties, we all knew it still happened.

I stared at them, shaking, not sure how much was fear and how much fury.

‘What are you staring at, MacLeod? Do you like what you see?’ said Frank.

‘Mmm, maybe he should come here and get some,’ said Jason, widening his sneer so he looked like a Jack-O-Lantern.

‘That’s a good idea.’

Before I could back away Frank had grabbed me by my shirt and stuffed my face into his armpit. I remained very still, expecting the worst, feeling oddly calm. ‘Yeah, smell that man-musk,’ he continued, tightening his grip around my neck.

‘Leave him alone,’ somebody growled. Surprised, Frank let go of me. I staggered back and managed not to fall.

It was Chris. He had somehow materialised and was walking straight up to us.

‘So what’s going on here?’ he said, arms folded.

‘Nothing,’ said Jason, his voice bored.

‘Me and my little friend MacLeod here were just mucking about,’ said Frank.

‘Ja. Right.’ Chris turned his head towards my bike. ‘If that’s what you call it. Because it looks to me like you’re just being an arsehole.’

‘It’s nothing,’ I murmured, but they all ignored me.

Jason and Frank lost their smile. Ed just glowered as before. Frank walked right up to Chris, his face cold. Chris mirrored his stance, nonplussed.

‘Stay out of this, new boy,’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘You should tread carefully when you’re on new turf.’

‘Or what?’ said Chris gently. ‘Maybe you should muck about with someone your own size. Or... fuck about? If that's what you like and they want it too?’

Chris’s voice had become dead calm, and its effect was unnerving. He gazed at Frank, as if he were concentrating on a spot between his eyes. It confused the bigger boy, who backed down.

‘You’re a freak,’ Frank snarled. ‘I’m watching you, new boy. Let’s go, dudes.’ And as suddenly as they had arrived, my tormentors skulked off.

I'm not sure how long I was staring into empty space, because Chris was now right in front of me, locking his gaze onto mine.

‘You okay?’ Chris said. ‘Did those fuckers hurt you, bud?’

‘Huh? No.’ I fumbled for my stuff and patted my hair down for the second time that day. ‘I’m okay,’

'Bru, that wasn’t cool. Hope you didn’t think I was fighting your own battle, but I just don’t like that kind of stuff.’

Had someone put magic mushrooms in the lasagne? No-one had ever rescued me from one of these situations, and certainly not a jock. Usually I’d just silently endure the many humiliations, often with a giggling audience to boot. I subscribed to the code of denial among all the uncool—just suck it up and don’t say anything. Else it would just get worse.

‘Earth to Caleb,’ he said, bending down slightly and putting a hand gently on my shoulder. The deep green of his eyes was a bit freaky.

‘Oh. Hi. Um. Thanks?’

‘No worries, bru. They really did a number on your bike though. Fuckers.’

I’d forgotten all about it. Chris squatted down in front of my bike and shook his head.

‘Jesus, what fuckin' arseholes.. But it doesn’t look like a write-off… hmm... a bit of paint and some elbow grease… I could sort it out for you.’

‘No, please, you’ve been so helpful already.' I was squirming inside and it was all I could muster to not scream out why are you being so fucking nice to me? Was he pitying me? Oh God, please no, I couldn't have someone pitying me.

‘You don’t need all this bullshit on your first day,' I said after corralling my bucking thoughts.

‘No, dude! It’s cool. I love fixing things. At least let me give you a lift home. It’s not looking like she’s rideable right now.’

‘Okay,’ I blurted out. ‘If it’s not too far. Will your folks mind?’

‘I got my own wheels, bru,’ he said with a smile, whipping out a set of keys from his pocket.

‘Awesome,’ I said, brightening. ‘So you have your driver’s licence already?’

My eighteenth birthday was still a couple of months away for me.

‘Bru,’ he smiled. ‘I’ve been legal since last year. I’m a repeater. Special circumstances.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to… I just assumed.’

‘No worries. Come, let’s unchain your bike and put it in the back of my Jeep.’

Like a lost puppy, I followed him through the avenue of pine trees to his car.

It was just one day in, and Matric year was turning out to be a very strange country indeed.