Tangible

He came in the morning. We were down by the river, its muck watching us, making sure we didn't drown. The outskirts of our town were marked by a crescent moon of white waste bent and twisted around the few houses that had been built after the ones in town. Someone sniggered when he passed us, and his gaze flicked to her instantly, irritably, exact. She cowered underneath it. 

We were told of his arrival the day before. He was from the university in the city, a professor, perhaps. The teachers recommended we be on our best behaviour. Like us, they were desperate for an escape out of the smothering arms of our town. It was too late for them so they breathed through us. Dying patients and their ventilators. 

When the school bell started tolling, we said our goodbyes to the water and trudged our way up the banks. The town was small enough for this to be allowed. There were not many places we could go, besides the river, or home, where we could be found easily, should we decide to skip a class. No one did, though. There was nothing to skip it for.

The hall wasn’t real. Or at least, it wasn’t a real hall. The building was concrete, with enough space for the twelve staff members and the hundred or so learners, but it was no different than any other room. It had no stage, no microphone, nothing to allow itself to be defined as a hall except the faded print on the door that read School Hall. It was trying to be something it was not, the same way the river pretended to be clean or the teachers pretended to be happy.

Even though it wasn’t a real hall, it had seats facing one way, or at least, seemingly facing one way, facing towards the man who had come in the morning; the man who would come that night. He spoke of a scholarship that had been put aside for students in our town. Some of his words were unknown to us, not because we were less educated than his usual students but because words like liberty and dorm and campus seemed intangible; made-up. I understood one thing though, although his mouth never formed the words, it was the only thing he really said: you can leave this place. 

His eyes met mine as he spoke. Years later, I realised that he had not sought me out the way I believed then; that there were many others with the same dire need who had acquainted his eyes too. The match between hope and logic was never a fair one though. Especially when fate was the referee.

We were invited to meet him at the guesthouse where he would spend the night if we were interested in applying. He did not say which guesthouse and we did not ask because there was only one, and it was unnamed. What was the point in naming something that did not have to be distinguished? 

So we went that night: flocked to him, eager as cattle into the arms of their butcher. We thought very little and knew even less. When he sent the boys home, our gazes drifted to each other, not due to suspicion but rather embarrassment. We did not know what affirmative action meant; only saw it as a way to step outside the crescent moon; a term that lulled us forward, like baby teeth in a dentist’s knowing hands.

The man explained that he sponsored the scholarship himself. He provided tuition and accommodation fees in exchange for assistance, he said. This was followed by a cackle and a wink - assuming soldiers on his face, expecting us to know why they were aiming their guns right at us. We did not understand war then. I don’t even understand it now.

“In order to select the right candidate, I will have to conduct private interviews,” one of the face soldiers said. This made sense to us, or at least, we pretended it did, the way the non-real hall pretended to be a hall or the teacher pretended to be happy or the river pretended to be clean. We lined up outside the room he had booked, enviously watching the girl in front enter with him, wondering whether she had a bigger chance because she was first.

They closed the door behind them. Had it been a different time, or a different town, had we not been defined by the white waste of the crescent moon or the school gates that were never locked, we would have said: no, leave it open. But the white waste did define us, and the gates’ key was long lost. 

When it was my turn, I thought of the muck in the river, the way it was not there to keep me from drowning. I ignored the man who had not just come in the morning, but also that night. After he had finished, he smiled and offered to pull up the zip. As if he had not been the one to rip it open.

I motioned to leave but his fingers closed around my elbow. His calluses were hard, not those of someone who taught all day; not even those of someone who gripped a pen too hard. Hope beat logic again. Fate did not intervene. “Would you do this again?” he asked. I thought of the pain between my legs; the need to shower that was so severe that it almost pushed up through my throat, like bile. At the same time, I thought of the hands of the town around my neck: how it gripped and gripped and gripped until there was nothing left. I thought of dorm and liberty and campus and how badly I wanted to make them tangible. And I said, “Yes.”

Our shoulders were slouched when we left the guesthouse. That night I believed the scholarship was mine, as strongly as I believed that I now understood what affirmative action meant. Intangibles could become tangibles within seconds. Yet, when the man who had come in the morning stood at the front of the room that pretended to be a hall and called out another name, I was not surprised. He did not ask my name after he had drowned me. What was the point in naming something that did not have to be distinguished?