One student had constructed a world that was just Star Wars. It was completely identical to Star Wars, only all the characters had old Welsh names.
Another student had made watercolor illustrations to accompany a story written by his girlfriend. We weren’t allowed to see the story, because the girlfriend was really shy and lived in Minnesota, but it appeared to be about a half-naked girl who lived alone on a beach. One watercolor, captioned “I wish you could take me along,” showed the girl on her knees in the sand, gazing up at some birds. In another, she was tying palm leaves to her arms (“They looked just like feathers”). A third showed her lying in a heap at the foot of a cliff.
Kevin and Sandy, Chinese American identical twins who were doing premed, each did a series of dark, expressionistic woodcut prints. Kevin’s were illustrations of Against Nature, and included a view from below of the jewel-encrusted tortoise crawling in front of a fireplace, casting a huge shadow on an Oriental carpet.
Sandy’s prints were all of churches. “What’s the story here, what’s the world?” Gary asked. Sandy said the story was that the churches were in Hungary. That was their world. Gary said it wasn’t enough narrative to just be in Hungary. He said that wasn’t actually a narrative. Sandy said he would add some narrative before the next class.
Ruby, a broad-shouldered half-Chinese girl from Arkansas, had made a video called A Bone to Pick. It opened with Ruby standing in a kitchen holding a big papier-maché bone. “I found a bone, Dad, so who could I pick it with if not with you?” she said slowly. She had an amazing face, with a droopy unsmiling mouth and asymmetrical bangs.
The next shot showed a small Asian man in a yellow shirt, in poor focus, standing in front of a building. He seemed to be smiling and shaking his head.
“Is it a wishbone, Dad?” Ruby asked. “Should I have it looked at by a doctor? A paleontologist?”
Ruby explained afterward that the video was about her anger toward her father. “In an ideal world,” she said, “my dad would have gotten on a plane and, you know, actually participated in something I care about. But of course he’s too much of an asshole. Anyway, one day I found this old guy walking around Central Square, who looked kind of like my dad. My friend who helped me with the filming wasn’t around, so I had to tape that part myself. I was pissed off at first because the guy refused to talk. I gave him ten bucks to read the lines I wrote and he just stood there shaking his head and smiling. Then I realized it was actually really symbolic of my relationship with my father, and that made it a stronger video.”
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I was supposed to meet Ralph for dinner. I got to the cafeteria early and stopped at the computer terminal. I had one new email. It said to chip in two dollars for someone’s birthday cake. I still had time to kill, so I pressed C to start a new message and then, just to see what happened, I typed Varga into the recipient box. Magically, the email address appeared, and the full name: Ivan Varga. That was Ivan.
I thought a moment and started to type.
Ivan!
When you receive this letter, I will be in Siberia. I’m quitting college, because questions of articulatory phonetics no longer interest me. I will live and work in Novosibirsk on the collective farm Siberian Spark. I know that you will understand me and that it will be better this way. I will never forget you.
Yours,
Selin (Sonya)
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Dinner was navy bean soup in bread bowls. “I don’t think Lucky Charms work,” said Ralph, pouring himself some Lucky Charms from the cereal dispenser.
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Svetlana and I had planned to go to tae kwon do, but she didn’t come to the meeting place. I thought about not going, but that would mean I usually went only because Svetlana did, as opposed to out of some pure, disinterested interest in tae kwon do. In fact I had no such interest, but I knew it was wrong to do things just because other people did. Other people couldn’t be the reason why you did anything.
More than half the students were still on vacation. I was the only beginner. While everyone else practiced their forms with the short instructor, I went to a side room with the tall instructor, William, to learn about kicking.
William explained that a lot of people thought the roundhouse kick was in the knee, but actually it was in the hip. “I want you to really think about your hip,” he said. I said I would, but it was difficult to think about anything when the room was so small and his body was so large, the long, heavy, dark-haired arms and legs inadequately covered by the white uniform. When his huge long bare foot shot out to kick the bag, I felt I should avert my eyes—though I also felt I should pay attention, because he seemed genuinely concerned that I learn how to do a roundhouse kick.
“More pivot in the hip,” he said. He made a motion as if to correct the position of my hip, but without touching me. That was the philosophy of tae kwon do: full power and no contact. “I want you to imagine you’re at one on a unit circle,” he said. “Your hip is the sine and your knee is the cosine. The cosine is stable at one, like your knee. To make a big difference in the cosine, you have to do some crazy thing that let’s not even think about, you’d hurt yourself. But a teeny little difference in the sine, and you’re really cruising around that circle. See what I’m saying?”
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I went to Svetlana’s room after class. She was sitting on the floor looking pink and inflamed, holding the beige desk phone in her lap.
“You didn’t hear?” she said, raising her streaming eyes. “Joseph Brodsky died.”
The news had reached her that morning, and already her subconscious had had time to incorporate it into a dream, because she’d taken a nap after lunch. She dreamed they were sitting cross-legged near the fountain outside the Science Center, she and Brodsky and some others, in a circle, passing some kernels of corn from palm to palm. There was a faint ringing noise and the sky was the color of ash. The fountain had dried up. They were praying for rain. The sky was darkening, but the storm didn’t come—instead it was a solar eclipse.
I picked up a book that lay facedown on the floor—. That was To Urania, in Russian. I opened a page at random. I recognized approximately one word in each line: “here,” “your,” “probably.”
I went back to my room and sat at my desk to check email. When I saw Ivan’s name in the in-box, I felt a jolt and realized I had been hoping all day that he would write to me. The subject line was: Siberia. I read the message several times. I couldn’t seem to understand what it was about. The individual words and even the sentences made sense, sort of, but taken together, they seemed to have been written in some other language.