First Things First, page 3
My own hair is brown, very dark. Many people have tried to convince me that it’s black but they are wrong. Because my hair is so dark though, you would have no trouble drawing a line between it and my skin—if you wanted to. It would be easy to sketch an oval around the edges of my skin—if only to hold my face together.
Charlotte frowned and almost looked up from the page but the words were coming quickly now and she did not want to stop. She could have been talking aloud as she wrote the last paragraph but she hadn’t noticed. She could have been twisting one strand of hair between her fingers as she wrote but she hadn’t noticed.
There is a problem though: sitting there behind your back, I cannot know for sure just how old you are. You never seem to turn your head so I can see your face. I can see though that you are young—you hold your back very straight—so very straight that the discs must by now have formed a ruler of bone through the centre of your body instead of just a spine. Do they grind one against the other when you bend over? I can’t imagine you ever bending over. I’m being silly now, I realize. You must bend over sometimes—if not now, surely tomorrow or the next day. I will not be there when it happens. You are so white, so thin and I couldn’t bear to see your spine come snapping open as you bend, sticking out through your skin like the broken ivory shaft of an ostrich feather.
Yet still I do not know how old you are. Are you Nineteen or perhaps Twenty-One? If you would stand up, rise and leave the lecture, go perhaps down to the washroom or to the coffee machine in the basement; then I could see your ribs. I know, even without seeing them, that they must be laddered, protruding, very distinct. I could Number them just as the biologists Number the rings of a tree and then I would know just how long you have lived. It is important that I know—you will never be this old again. There is one thing though that I am certain of: you are not Twenty. You cannot be, because I am Twenty and we are not at all alike. You are a man and very thin; your elbows are sharp and the bones at the base of your neck will not be harnessed by the collar of your shirt. I am more like a series of curves. My mother has often warned me that I should go on a diet, should grow hard and thin-legged, should peel away these curves around my bones. She does not understand that there can be no virtue, no salvation in bones and chiselled knees.
The chair in which I sit for the class we share was not made for a body like mine—I am too soft. I slide out of it unless I brace my elbows against the desk and push the small of my back through the space between the back and the seat of my chair. If I were to sit half as straight as you do, I might disappear. I cannot see your stomach from where I sit behind you but I’m certain that it’s flat, tight-fitting, nailed to the bones of your hips. It does not rest upon your thighs when you lean forward to write in the pages of your notebook.
Charlotte resisted leaning forward to see what would happen. She thought instead of the days she had spent sitting in class behind the young man. She admired his concentration—not once had she seen him fidgeting, doodling, watching the clock. He paid such strict attention to the lecture that often the back of his head seemed to ripple and twitch with tension. He made her feel guilty without knowing he had—made her feel guilty for watching him instead of their professor, Dr. Hydan. She decided not to mention this right away, not wanting him to know her shortcomings too soon. She wrote instead of the class, hoping to amuse him perhaps with her quick observations hoping that he would recognize her words as the finer truth.
I have noticed that you hold your shoulders very carefully in place, much as our own Dr. Hydan does. He struts there across the front of the room, parading, yet ever careful that his shoulder blades do not accidentally come unhinged. He lounges against the edge of his desk, leaning slightly forward, eager and intent. Each day he comes to the crisis of his lecture, to the crucial point. He asks, very timid at first, “Do you understand? Does anybody understand? For God’s sake, put your hand up if you understand!” Just at the last, his voice cracks and he hoists the bulk of his body up onto one corner of his desk. He dangles his legs like a little boy perched on the edge of a swimming pool.
He dabbles his toes against the tile and laughs because, as always, no one has put up their hand. It is a ritual which he has created.
Undaunted, the smile is deep in his face as he says, “Well, don’t worry about it if you don’t understand—I never did either—I still don’t. Irrational numbers are impossible to understand—pure nonsense, you know that. But it doesn’t matter—Mathematics is just a pack of lies anyway.”
He grins and lowers his voice just a little. “Learn how to count from one to ten, memorize a couple of formulas, and you’ve got it beat. You’ll pass the exam. That’s all that counts in the end anyway.”
He keeps talking, moving on to the next set of equations to be unravelled, but at this point I stop listening. Sometimes I pretend that Dr. Hydan is speaking ancient Greek—which I don’t understand. It does not help for very long—I do not need to hear his voice to know what he is saying—he says the same thing every day. While he speaks, I watch all the bodies below me (all except yours) shaking their shoulders with laughter. They all love Dr. Hydan—to them, he is such a funny man; he is their favourite friend. They think that surely he must be a very good man because he laughs with them, not at them. And he is honest too, isn’t he, admitting so freely that even he doesn’t understand?
Dr. Hydan himself must believe that he is being honest and he is proud of himself for that—many people seem to feel that honesty is the greatest virtue, the surest way to heaven. But he cannot be honest forever about a lie which he thinks is the truth. There are many things beyond a2 + b2 = c2 which young Dr. Hydan will never understand.
He loves to write on the blackboard, covering it with Numbers which he does not understand. Have you ever noticed that he laughs as he writes, quite certain that they will be meaningless in the end? He coughs through them as he teaches, quite certain that it will make no difference to the universe. Dr. Hydan does not know that he should teach them from his knees, that he should pray before he speaks of the Numbers of the world. He does not know that the very word itself should be captialized like God or Buddha or the Dalai Lama. He speaks of the Numbers only in small letters and he has never stopped to think that I may have seen through his disguise.
Shaking the fingers of her left hand, clenching and unclenching them to free her cramped muscles once again, Charlotte stood up and walked around the room. She opened the window to release the built-up cigarette smoke, to refreshen her mind. There was another man whom she wished to write about but this would be more difficult, harder to explain. For a moment, she wondered if she were being foolish: why write this letter at all? Perhaps the young man to whom she wrote would be no different than that other one—perhaps he too would only laugh at her words and toss them off as nonsense. Charlotte thought, for a single breath, that she could hear that laugh and then the sound of a wad of crumpled paper, her letter, dropping into an empty metal garbage can. She dodged her own face in the mirror on the bedroom wall as she walked back to the chair at her desk.
Then the words began to come again, demolishing her doubt with their easy speed.
Dr. Hydan is not, of course, alone in his failure to find the universe behind those chalky Numbers on the blackboard. Once I thought I was in love with another young man much like our professor. I watched him—his name was Scottie—for several weeks before I decided that I would love him. He was, like you and me, a Mathematics major—two years ahead of me in the course. I watched him to be certain that he didn’t laugh or cough as he read through the pages of his textbook. I had to be sure that he did not turn the pages carelessly, that he did not curl the corners as he read.
Scottie was a serious young man despite his name, and when I was sure, very sure, that he too was in love with the Numbers of the world, we began to see each other sometimes in the evening. Often we would study together and he would read aloud from his Mathematics textbook. But he did not understand why I got so angry when he stuttered or rushed through the words.
Sometimes, Scottie would draw Numbers for me in a white sketchpad he carried and I have never yet known another man who knew the shapes of the Numbers so well. Once I invited him to my house for the day, a Sunday. He came, of course, and he brought his sketchpad with him because I asked him to. He wanted to leave it in the back porch but I made him bring it into the living room. My mother served us tea and cinnamon doughnuts which left white crumbs in Scottie’s moustache. We laughed as I helped him pick them out. Once his face was clean again and I’d made sure that his fingers weren’t greasy or wet, I brought out my own white sketchpad. I too had drawn the Numbers but Scottie didn’t know quite what my sketches were—not until I told him. He knew the Numbers very well, as I said before, but only by their shapes. He could not find them in my drawings at all. He wanted to discover “1,” “2,” “3,” and “4” and he could not understand the circles and the pyramids and the universe which I had drawn. I had completed One Hundred sketches by then and Scottie asked me, strangely, “When are you going to stop?”
I told him, “Never. Numbers cannot end.” You know that.
Scottie laughed and took another doughnut from the plate before he left. He forgot to take his sketchpad with him, but when he came by later to pick it up, I closed my eyes and said, “I don’t have it anymore—and besides, you don’t look like an artist to me.”
The sketchpad was up in the cupboard above her book–shelves even now, but Charlotte did not think of that—she never looked at it anymore. The cupboard was crowded and stacked with papers and books, abandoned now beside the sketchpad. Often, lying awake at night, Charlotte thought she could hear the pages shifting and rustling into the dark.
She tapped her pen now against her forehead, trying to decide how the letter should end. The tip of the pen was silver—it felt cold against her skin. She wondered when the room and her flesh had grown so fevered and warm. Doodling her way to a fitting conclusion, she thought again of the class with Dr. Hydan, remembering something she had noticed only that afternoon.
I had not noticed before today that you were right-handed. Perhaps, had I known it sooner, I would not have written to you at all. Tomorrow, after class, when you stand up and take your books under your arm, I’m quite certain that you, like most people, will put your right foot forward first. You will leave your left to tag along behind the rest of you very much like a careless Number left hanging down below the line. I will be watching for it and you will be making a mistake.
I always put my left foot forward first. It might take a conscious effort just at first, if you are to change your ways; but it would be well worth it. You may thank me someday. In the end, your left foot will always take you farther if you give it the lead. It will take you to forever. You must, of course, realize that this is the very reason why it has been so long neglected. The people in the world, the powerful people who decide these things, are afraid. They do not know where the left road may lead us. Have you not always been cautioned to do the right thing, to keep to the right, to proceed only when you have the right of way? The people in the world, our world, are afraid of a great many things.
That is why our Dr. Hydan so fiercely erases those Numbers from the blackboard each day as the class shuffles out of the room. Perhaps he too is afraid of what they may do if he leaves them alone for long.
Charlotte
THE CLIMB
(1975)
Are you sure you want to do this?” Saro did not look at her as he spoke; his voice was cautious, probing.
Several yards behind him, Mae took a single step backward and focused her face upon the stretch of cliff before her. She leaned back upon her heels to see the top and the cords of her neck tensed briefly with the strain. The side of the cliff was green, vivid and uneven with a growth of bushes and small trees; the top was flat and grassy, spotted with evergreens and mud-coloured boulders.
“Yes, Saro, I’m sure.”
Saro paused for a moment and then spoke quickly, “We could stay down here and go for a swim with Neil and Julie—if you want to.” The last few words came more clearly to Mae’s ears, as if he had raised his voice. “Or we could always go back to the camp and help Susan and Bill clean up the yard. We don’t have to climb the cliff, you know.” Saro did not turn as he spoke, but stood apart from her, stiff, poised for the climb.
Mae hesitated at the defensive snap in his voice and the tension which had appeared in his shoulders. “No, Saro, we don’t have to do it—but I want to.” Mae watched his shoulder muscles relax in relief—that was what he had wanted to hear. He had given her one more chance, one last chance, to back out. She had refused it just as he had hoped she would. Perhaps he had known all along what her answer would be, but Mae ignored the emptiness which might have underlied his gesture. Afterwards, if she should complain about having to climb all that way, Saro would be able to toss her own words back at her in self-defense.
“Well, okay then; let’s go.” He turned to her now and smiled; he pulled away to begin the climb. The decision had been made: they would make the climb. And, as Saro had wanted, Mae had made the final decision. Mae could not yet understand this need in him to be absolved, this need to feel self-righteous, his refusal to be responsible for what they chose to do together. Was he thinking ahead to some unforeseen catastrophe for which he could not afterwards be blamed? Mae wondered but the question remained unspoken and unanswered.
“Well?”
“Yes, yes, let’s go. I’m anxious to get started. Very anxious to begin.” Mae spoke quickly, moving forward in an effort to close the gap of grass which still lay there between them. She needed to repeat the words to assure him that she was sincere, that her impatience was equal to his own: she did want to climb the cliff.
Saro spoke suddenly, as if he had not heard her: “Too bad the rest of them wouldn’t come. We could have had a picnic at the top.” His words seemed to come from somewhere near his right shoulder and they reached her ears in faded waves. Mae nodded her head in agreement, concentrating now upon the first few feet of the climb, forgetting that he could not see her face. She knew that his regret was genuine, but her own was a lie: she was glad that they had come alone. She supposed that Saro did not realize this but she was not anxious for him to know.
Before they left the cottage to come down to the cliff by the lake, Saro had invited the other four, but they had all refused, laughing deep in their throats. Neil had asked, “What do you want to climb the cliff for? There’s nothing up there—it’s not worth the trouble.”
Mae had started to explain that there was something about climbing, something about the rising motion of her body and the pulling muscles in the backs of her legs there in the midst of so much unanchored air . . . something that drew her breath more deeply back into her lungs, that forced her eyes to see much more clearly, to see so much more.
Saro cut off her voice with his own: “To prove something, I guess.”
“What?” Neil asked.
“I don’t know.” Saro grinned and turned away. He looked out the window of the cottage, pretending to be intent upon the lake where an orange motorboat hopped across its own waves like a rabbit.
Mae grabbed at the quick note of shame which shadowed his words: a pungent tenderness rushed in, choking away the initial disappointment she had felt at his ambiguity. Saro was painfully vulnerable to what they thought of his ideas, yet they did not realize how he needed their approval, if not their adoration, to continue. Mae knew that the three young men had been friends for several years; she had known Saro for only a few months—why did she see so clearly that which they had not yet noticed? A granite grain of violence hardened in her stomach and the muscles of her arms. She wanted to push them away, all away, back from his feelings too easily shown. She walked stiffly to the door and jerked it open, waiting for the violence to wash through and out of her body—she knew that it was too fierce, too private to remain within her for long. She waited for Saro to come to the door and step outside.
Yet still he held back from her, as if determined to answer them. Proding him into action, she said, “Come on, Saro.”
He turned his face towards her, angry. His eyes were cool and appraising, gliding up her smooth white legs, up to her tightly held smile. For a moment, Mae understood that he hated her for rescuing him.
Once outside, walking across the wooden porch, Saro brushed his palms across his denim thighs and began to whistle. He walked ahead of her, thinking now only of the sun and the climb ahead. Mae heard chipmunks rustling beneath the planks of the steps; although she could not see them, she believed in their little brown bodies scurrying away out of reach at the hollow sound of their footsteps. She wanted to call out to Saro, to make him return to her side and be still, to force him to listen to the sound of the little round lives beneath them.
But Saro was out on the road to the lake now. He scuffed his feet through the gravel as he walked. The sound of his shoes grating on the dry stones warned her to hurry, not to speak. She knew he would not wait. His arms swung at his sides and the wind blew his hair back from his face. Mae saw that his temples were pale, much lighter than the skin across his forehead.
