2003-12-12 - 7:07 p.m.

1.

She enters the classroom; it is empty. She goes to his desk and looks under it. There is a History textbook and a pair of shoes. She opens the textbook; looks for evidence of his handwriting. She will play amateur graphologist; the loops of his letters will tell her something about his personality. There is a line written on the margins in pencil: "The Bolshevik Revolution was." The letters become more untidy near the end of the suspended sentence; it is obvious to her that it was written by someone who was falling asleep. She feels somewhat slighted, since History is one of her favourite subjects. But in the next instant, this vague threat of incompatibility becomes an opportunity. She could lend him her notes, perhaps even study with him; he would be grateful, and gratefulness is a short step away from love. She leafs through the pages, finds more of his handwriting, studies them, realises that they are inscrutable: inkflow and nib pressure, letters linked and unlinked, where does he obtain his stationery, are they cherished presents or stock supplies, does he take notes out of disinterested obligation, random stenographic records of his teacher's droning voice, or do they inscribe sudden bursts of understanding? She doesn't know how to articulate this desire to scrutinise his scribblings, so we shall do it for her: the handwriting of the beloved is a code. It is a code that is unbreakable, but the act of deciphering brings one closer. Before she leaves, she re-ties his shoelaces: flat and symmetrical, a pair of gift ribbons. There are now two knots on his shoes made by her hands; this, too, is a kind of code. They will remain until the time he removes his shoes from under the table, tugging loose her handiwork with indelicate ignorance. The ciphers will be unravelled: on one shoe with a sigh, another with a sob, but neither of these would reach his ears.

2.

He first saw her at a bus-stop near his home. It was drizzling at the time, and against the dusky watercolour outlines of buildings and the smudged haloes of streetlamps her figure stood out like something resisting the erasure of the world. He eyed her from one end of the bus stop, noticing how the light from a posterad outlined her profile. At times, she would look in his direction, which he knew was only the direction of approaching traffic, but he also allowed himself to entertain the belief that she was waiting for something more than the arrival of her bus. As a matter of fact, he was seduced by the idea; everyone was waiting for his or her bus, but unlike real buses, the buses we wait for have no numbers, no fixed routes, and we choose them according to our own set of intuitive criteria: for example, whether they stop in proximity to where we stand, whether they overtake us or stop short, the distance we would have to walk to be admitted entry. The next day, he found himself at the bus stop again, at around the same time; locating himself at the same spot he had stood before. But the weather was conspiring against him—there was no sign of rain, the chosen background against which she had first chosen to reveal herself. He chided himself for banking on the hope that she would be a creature of habit—punctual, predictable, when he himself had cancelled a basketball match with his friends to re-enact a stillborn encounter. What benevolence could be born from such asymmetry? He waited for about 40 minutes, and then boarded a bus with the same number as the one he had seen her take. He took a seat right at the back, beside the window, which was where she had sat. He gazed outside as the bus travelled to its unnamed destination: at HDB blocks, flyovers, overhead bridges, a church, a community centre, clinics, well-stocked provision shops and ill-named hair salons. He was dazzled by a row of fruit stalls whose produce were illuminated so intensely they looked radioactive, almost smelt the fetid odour rising from an inky canal, and the only time he heard sounds overwhelming the insuperable bus engine was when they passed a construction site. He fell asleep gradually, and as the bus neared its terminus he had a dream. The girl was speaking to him from the far corner of the bus stop, although her lips were not moving. She said, ‘You’ve exceeded my stop, you silly boy, you’ve gone too far.’ It was only when he woke up, stumbling into a bus interchange, that a reply occurred to him, ‘Not as far as the distance between us.’

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