There are always some people who look strangely inappropriate in the mundane, urban, environment of Midgard City. Apollonia Gogol was one of them. Reclining on a luxurious couch in an Ancient Roman Palace, standing on an altar at an Ancient Roman Temple of Juno, or staring down haughtily from an exhibit in the “Ancient Mediterranean Art” section of the Louvre Museum, she would have looked right at home. Standing against the wooden staircase leading up to the Biology Lab, on the fading evening of February the fourteenth, about an hour and fifteen minutes after the Valentine’s Party was scheduled to start, a mildly irritated expression on her chiselled features, her perfect classical beauty made her look rather like a snowflake in Chennai, the land of my good friend Siddhu W – hopelessly out of place.
“Apollonia,” I said, nodding at her, “what are you doing down here?”
We weren’t what one might call bosom buddies, but I’d run into her often enough at Prefect Meetings to be more than a casual acquaintance.
“Taking a breather, Jormund. I hate it in there. All that bad dancing. Whatever happened to the classical forms? The harp music? The long, white robes? Maybe I should go home. But why are you so late?”
“Don’t even ask. I meant to drop the house keys off with the neighbours, but the blighters weren’t home, and I had to wait until the Queen Tigress arrived before I could get away. Anyway, is Arabella very upset?”
Something like a sly smile clouded her perfect face.
“No, just in a state of shock.”
“Shock? Whatever for? It’s hardly something to be in shock about. I told her I’d run a little late.”
“Nothing to do with you, Jormund. It’s Joshhound.”
“Eh? What did he do? Try to kill himself?”
Her next words were uttered with the sort of relish with which Juno must have informed Jupiter that his son Hercules had killed himself in the funeral pyre on wearing the poisoned tunic given to him by Deonaira.
“No, he proposed to her.”
If Juno herself had popped down from Mount Olympus and slapped me with a raw fish, I could not have been more surprised. The school buildings seemed to have popped out of their foundations and commenced a vigorous tango around me. I think it was the tango, at least, though I wouldn’t swear to it. About three minutes later they stopped the tango and began a gentler waltz.
“What did she say?” I asked in a low voice.
“I don’t think she’s said anything yet. When I left she was still near-comatose. Do you want to go and see?”
“Yes! You damn well bet I want to go and see,” I said. With the initial shock having passed, and the school buildings having resumed their proper places, I had only one thought: to separate Joshhound’s limbs from his torso. Given that he outweighed me by about twenty pounds, this wasn’t likely to be a very practical course of action, but I wasn’t feeling very practical at that moment. I had just about put my foot on the first step when Apollonia tapped my shoulder and held out her arm. Not knowing what else to do, I took it in mine and we walked up the stairs together at a slower pace than I’d have liked.
The stairs open out near the end of a long corridor. Towards our left were the Biology Lab and the Prefect’s Hall. On the right were the Chemistry and Physics Labs. The Party, as I think I’ve mentioned before, was in progress in the Biology Lab. Apollonia and I made our way towards it; the last door on the left. Even standing outside, it was easy to tell that something was wrong. Instead of the sounds of revelry and bad party music that characterise such bashes there was an eerie silence, broken at intervals by the sound of a girl crying.
Taking a deep breath and gathering my courage for what I knew might be a violent fight to defend Arabella from the despicable advances of Joshhound Prawnson, I placed my hand on the door and pushed it open.
The tableaux that met my eyes was…well…interesting.
The Biology Lab is one of the largest rooms in Midgard-Hebrides High School. The door opens at the bottom left corner, into the section where the rows of desks are lined up for the regular lectures. Towards the right are the laboratory tables for the actual experiments, and behind is the balcony that opens out over the basketball court–cum–cricket pitch. The party was concentrated in the lecture area; the desks had been moved to form a closed area leaving the centre, a space of about fifteen feet by twenty to serve as the dance floor. At the top left corner two desks had been laid facing each other where a DJ sat with his equipment and collection of disks.
The DJ was silent, as he pretended to fiddle with the knobs on his mixer. The revellers were standing at the other end of the dance floor talking to each other in hushed tones. On the seat next to the DJ, a girl sat crying copious tears.
It was Rita Stringthing.
At the other end of the dance floor from her, a muscular bloke with a face like a chimpanzee was clasping to his ample chest a petite girl bearing a striking resemblance to Kylie Minogue, who clearly wasn’t resisting.
For the second time that evening, the surrounding objects engaged in a well-choreographed dance. Only this time it was the wooden desks, not the school building and they did the quadrille, not the tango. With a muffled cry on my lips I disengaged my arm from Apollonia and staggered to where Pete-Pete was standing,
“Did she?” I asked in strangled tones.
“Yes,” he said in a tone that mixed disbelief and disgust, “it took a while but she did. I can’t believe it. Joshhound!”
By this time the clasping couple seemed to have become aware of my presence. Arabella stepped backwards out of the ape’s embrace and gaped at me in open-mouthed horror, presumably not entirely caused by the fact of my overbearing ugliness. Joshhound cast a wary eye upon me and stepped back a little, adopting a defensive posture. A few of the guys, including Raul the rugby-player and Pete-Pete moved closer to us, ready to separate us if the fight got too violent.
“Jormund…I…it’s not what it looks like,” I heard Arabella say, “I didn’t plan for this to…don’t do anything silly, you two!”
It was my turn to ignore her this time. I advanced on Joshhound with as menacing a look as I could muster. Pete-Pete tried to pull me away, but I brushed him off. Raul told me to reconsider the matter, but I ignored the gentle giant’s advice. The distance between us must’ve been about ten feet, when, to the astonishment, I’m sure, of everyone present, the music started at an eardrum-blasting loud volume.
“What the…!” I said, turning towards the DJ, to find myself looking into the jet-black eyes of Apollonia. It was evident that she’d told the man to start the music. As the strains of “Mr Vain” crashed into the collective conscious of the sixty-odd people gathered there, a few stray couples stepped onto the makeshift dance floor. Others started swaying gently. The trickle of dancers quickly became a strong current and I found myself being brushed on all sides and pushed backwards. A soft hand slipped into mine and led me to the side of the room. I watched in stupefaction as Apollonia dragged me towards the secluded corner where Rita and the DJ were seated. Ironically, though this was where the unholy cacophony originated from, the speakers themselves were placed some distance away, making it the quietest place in the room.
Keeping her hand in mine, Apollonia patted Rita gently with her free hand, and said in a low but clear voice,
“I know you feel terrible right now, Rita, but do go home and think about it. Three hours ago he was crying like a baby about his card to Pashiella having been rejected. And now he’s making out with the girl he knows was dating his friend. You’re a sensible girl, Rita. There’ll be someone better. Hell, it can’t even be that difficult to be better than him.”
The amount of contempt that she concentrated in that word ‘him’ would be impossible for me to condense into mere words. You needed to have been there.
The crying girl looked up and wiped the tears from her eyes.
“She was my best friend in the whole world,” she said between sobs, “it’s that which hurts, Apollonia.”
The haughty face of the Juno-esque beauty softened for a moment.
“That I cannot do anything about, sweets. Leave it to time.” And with an affectionate caress of the weeping girl’s cheeks, she turned to look at me.
“Well, Jormund?” she said.
I’d been through a lot in the last few minutes since I’d seen her stately figure standing by the railing of the wooden staircase when I’d turned the corner from the Rounders Court. But I had regained a measure of equanimity, or at least enough to answer her with a relatively even voice,
“Well, Apollonia?”
“Want to walk me home?”
I shrugged, and nodded. We slipped out of the Lab almost unnoticed and went down the stairs, at a measured place, while she placed her arm gravely in mine, rather in the fashion of those people you see walking down the steps to County Balls in movies based on Jane Austen novels. We continued on our way out through the school gate, me staring at the setting sun trying hard to quell the pain in my heart. Apollonia stared at the ground as we walked; what she had on her mind I don’t claim to know.
When we reached the main road, she let go of my arm and pointed westwards, in the direction of the beach.
“That way,” she said softly.
“Isn’t your house over that way?” I asked, pointing north.
“Well,” she said, pausing for a while as we crossed the road, before adding, “It is St .Valentine’s day – no, that’s blasphemy, it’s Februata Juno’s Day – and all that, so I thought we could, you know, take a long walk along the beach, exit at the Mosque, take a right and walk through the Food Lane and take a left and stop at the Juice Bar and take a right to go to my house.”
I’d never heard of anything as stupid – it was the equivalent of going from New York to Boston via Seattle.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Apollonia, that’s the longest possible way…oh.”
Yes, sometimes the piercing light of realisation penetrates even the thick skull of Jormund Elver. For a moment I thought the surrounding traffic lights would commence the foxtrot, but they mercifully desisted.
“You don’t have to, I mean it’s up to you,” she said, lowering her gaze, “It’s just a beginning, that’s all.”
There come times in a man’s life when he feels overtaken by events around him; when he realises things have gotten out of his control and that the best course of action is to stop thinking about it and go with the flow.
I pursed my lips, took the perfectly-formed hand that she had offered in mine and walked determinedly towards the Beach.
****
“Apollonia,” I said, nodding at her, “what are you doing down here?”
We weren’t what one might call bosom buddies, but I’d run into her often enough at Prefect Meetings to be more than a casual acquaintance.
“Taking a breather, Jormund. I hate it in there. All that bad dancing. Whatever happened to the classical forms? The harp music? The long, white robes? Maybe I should go home. But why are you so late?”
“Don’t even ask. I meant to drop the house keys off with the neighbours, but the blighters weren’t home, and I had to wait until the Queen Tigress arrived before I could get away. Anyway, is Arabella very upset?”
Something like a sly smile clouded her perfect face.
“No, just in a state of shock.”
“Shock? Whatever for? It’s hardly something to be in shock about. I told her I’d run a little late.”
“Nothing to do with you, Jormund. It’s Joshhound.”
“Eh? What did he do? Try to kill himself?”
Her next words were uttered with the sort of relish with which Juno must have informed Jupiter that his son Hercules had killed himself in the funeral pyre on wearing the poisoned tunic given to him by Deonaira.
“No, he proposed to her.”
If Juno herself had popped down from Mount Olympus and slapped me with a raw fish, I could not have been more surprised. The school buildings seemed to have popped out of their foundations and commenced a vigorous tango around me. I think it was the tango, at least, though I wouldn’t swear to it. About three minutes later they stopped the tango and began a gentler waltz.
“What did she say?” I asked in a low voice.
“I don’t think she’s said anything yet. When I left she was still near-comatose. Do you want to go and see?”
“Yes! You damn well bet I want to go and see,” I said. With the initial shock having passed, and the school buildings having resumed their proper places, I had only one thought: to separate Joshhound’s limbs from his torso. Given that he outweighed me by about twenty pounds, this wasn’t likely to be a very practical course of action, but I wasn’t feeling very practical at that moment. I had just about put my foot on the first step when Apollonia tapped my shoulder and held out her arm. Not knowing what else to do, I took it in mine and we walked up the stairs together at a slower pace than I’d have liked.
The stairs open out near the end of a long corridor. Towards our left were the Biology Lab and the Prefect’s Hall. On the right were the Chemistry and Physics Labs. The Party, as I think I’ve mentioned before, was in progress in the Biology Lab. Apollonia and I made our way towards it; the last door on the left. Even standing outside, it was easy to tell that something was wrong. Instead of the sounds of revelry and bad party music that characterise such bashes there was an eerie silence, broken at intervals by the sound of a girl crying.
Taking a deep breath and gathering my courage for what I knew might be a violent fight to defend Arabella from the despicable advances of Joshhound Prawnson, I placed my hand on the door and pushed it open.
The tableaux that met my eyes was…well…interesting.
The Biology Lab is one of the largest rooms in Midgard-Hebrides High School. The door opens at the bottom left corner, into the section where the rows of desks are lined up for the regular lectures. Towards the right are the laboratory tables for the actual experiments, and behind is the balcony that opens out over the basketball court–cum–cricket pitch. The party was concentrated in the lecture area; the desks had been moved to form a closed area leaving the centre, a space of about fifteen feet by twenty to serve as the dance floor. At the top left corner two desks had been laid facing each other where a DJ sat with his equipment and collection of disks.
The DJ was silent, as he pretended to fiddle with the knobs on his mixer. The revellers were standing at the other end of the dance floor talking to each other in hushed tones. On the seat next to the DJ, a girl sat crying copious tears.
It was Rita Stringthing.
At the other end of the dance floor from her, a muscular bloke with a face like a chimpanzee was clasping to his ample chest a petite girl bearing a striking resemblance to Kylie Minogue, who clearly wasn’t resisting.
For the second time that evening, the surrounding objects engaged in a well-choreographed dance. Only this time it was the wooden desks, not the school building and they did the quadrille, not the tango. With a muffled cry on my lips I disengaged my arm from Apollonia and staggered to where Pete-Pete was standing,
“Did she?” I asked in strangled tones.
“Yes,” he said in a tone that mixed disbelief and disgust, “it took a while but she did. I can’t believe it. Joshhound!”
By this time the clasping couple seemed to have become aware of my presence. Arabella stepped backwards out of the ape’s embrace and gaped at me in open-mouthed horror, presumably not entirely caused by the fact of my overbearing ugliness. Joshhound cast a wary eye upon me and stepped back a little, adopting a defensive posture. A few of the guys, including Raul the rugby-player and Pete-Pete moved closer to us, ready to separate us if the fight got too violent.
“Jormund…I…it’s not what it looks like,” I heard Arabella say, “I didn’t plan for this to…don’t do anything silly, you two!”
It was my turn to ignore her this time. I advanced on Joshhound with as menacing a look as I could muster. Pete-Pete tried to pull me away, but I brushed him off. Raul told me to reconsider the matter, but I ignored the gentle giant’s advice. The distance between us must’ve been about ten feet, when, to the astonishment, I’m sure, of everyone present, the music started at an eardrum-blasting loud volume.
“What the…!” I said, turning towards the DJ, to find myself looking into the jet-black eyes of Apollonia. It was evident that she’d told the man to start the music. As the strains of “Mr Vain” crashed into the collective conscious of the sixty-odd people gathered there, a few stray couples stepped onto the makeshift dance floor. Others started swaying gently. The trickle of dancers quickly became a strong current and I found myself being brushed on all sides and pushed backwards. A soft hand slipped into mine and led me to the side of the room. I watched in stupefaction as Apollonia dragged me towards the secluded corner where Rita and the DJ were seated. Ironically, though this was where the unholy cacophony originated from, the speakers themselves were placed some distance away, making it the quietest place in the room.
Keeping her hand in mine, Apollonia patted Rita gently with her free hand, and said in a low but clear voice,
“I know you feel terrible right now, Rita, but do go home and think about it. Three hours ago he was crying like a baby about his card to Pashiella having been rejected. And now he’s making out with the girl he knows was dating his friend. You’re a sensible girl, Rita. There’ll be someone better. Hell, it can’t even be that difficult to be better than him.”
The amount of contempt that she concentrated in that word ‘him’ would be impossible for me to condense into mere words. You needed to have been there.
The crying girl looked up and wiped the tears from her eyes.
“She was my best friend in the whole world,” she said between sobs, “it’s that which hurts, Apollonia.”
The haughty face of the Juno-esque beauty softened for a moment.
“That I cannot do anything about, sweets. Leave it to time.” And with an affectionate caress of the weeping girl’s cheeks, she turned to look at me.
“Well, Jormund?” she said.
I’d been through a lot in the last few minutes since I’d seen her stately figure standing by the railing of the wooden staircase when I’d turned the corner from the Rounders Court. But I had regained a measure of equanimity, or at least enough to answer her with a relatively even voice,
“Well, Apollonia?”
“Want to walk me home?”
I shrugged, and nodded. We slipped out of the Lab almost unnoticed and went down the stairs, at a measured place, while she placed her arm gravely in mine, rather in the fashion of those people you see walking down the steps to County Balls in movies based on Jane Austen novels. We continued on our way out through the school gate, me staring at the setting sun trying hard to quell the pain in my heart. Apollonia stared at the ground as we walked; what she had on her mind I don’t claim to know.
When we reached the main road, she let go of my arm and pointed westwards, in the direction of the beach.
“That way,” she said softly.
“Isn’t your house over that way?” I asked, pointing north.
“Well,” she said, pausing for a while as we crossed the road, before adding, “It is St .Valentine’s day – no, that’s blasphemy, it’s Februata Juno’s Day – and all that, so I thought we could, you know, take a long walk along the beach, exit at the Mosque, take a right and walk through the Food Lane and take a left and stop at the Juice Bar and take a right to go to my house.”
I’d never heard of anything as stupid – it was the equivalent of going from New York to Boston via Seattle.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Apollonia, that’s the longest possible way…oh.”
Yes, sometimes the piercing light of realisation penetrates even the thick skull of Jormund Elver. For a moment I thought the surrounding traffic lights would commence the foxtrot, but they mercifully desisted.
“You don’t have to, I mean it’s up to you,” she said, lowering her gaze, “It’s just a beginning, that’s all.”
There come times in a man’s life when he feels overtaken by events around him; when he realises things have gotten out of his control and that the best course of action is to stop thinking about it and go with the flow.
I pursed my lips, took the perfectly-formed hand that she had offered in mine and walked determinedly towards the Beach.
****
12 comments:
'Mr. Vain'... cacophony alright!
How is it that I've read Parts I, II and III before and not IV. Im guessing this is when you, i mean your mouse deleted your blog?
But I must say, so very nicely written j.e. And as enjoyable as its been reading your recent posts for the second (or 3rd time), it was nice to read somethin new.
Very nice.
thanks a lot archster, i'd about given up on getting comments from people :( feels nice to hear something nice, on a depressing midgard day.
Depressing?!? why so j.e.,?
No sign of desdemona ? :)
and at least uve got ur stat counter moving. I have neither comments nor hits. (I belive my stat counter is incapable of keeping count, or so i tell myself)
desdemona's absence had nothing to do with it!!!! i refute all such charges and insinuations!!!
(voice in head: methinks the gentleman doth protest too much)
finally got to peep in....well a nice conclusion i must say....of course far better than the crap i dish out in the name of serious writing n make ppl sink into the depths of melancholy.....
desdemona's absence has nothing got to do with the mood of elver.........but her presence is:wink:
On having referred to (and linked) your fabulous IV Part series in my previous post, the people I used to work with had a decidedly more cheery day at work. They gathered around the computer, gorging themselves with munchies intently reading your post. I hear that by the time they reached the end of it, they even gave you a standing ovation. :)
All this from the very people who despite my persistent pleas, just about skim through my blog, refusing to say nice things about it. And on occasion have tried to talk me out of blogging.
Hmmmpppff!
:rolling eyes:
tell me bout it archster!....u still considering your blog as nondescript elver?!
*Ouch*
I am either embrassed by the adulation or the butt of a joke :)
And proud of the fact that I can still form coherent sentences at 2:40 at night in the NM Library.
Mighty Sea-Serpent, you have been tagged.
I can see that NM is keeping you busy, so not to worry. The tag involves minimal effort. Especially for you.
whut O!!!! I wonder... The Elver seems to weave a tale of a weave woven by master weavers. My O my....
@tdr:
and if that makes no sense, blame it on the oriya collection
@archster
your stuff was brilliant. my propensity for verbosity means that i shall probably not be able to do a very good job. still, let's see.
Post a Comment