Building 46 by Massoud Hayoun

Author:Massoud Hayoun
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781850773467
Publisher: Darf Publishers
Published: 2022-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

8. Three’s a Crowd

三P之舞会

At first Sam was worried to return to the Forbidden Records Room. He was afraid that Little Chen was watching from the overhead cameras on the sixth floor. But as time passed, as Sam kept passing the Forbidden Records Room to go to the toilets, it became clear that Little Chen was either not always there or not revealing himself.

Ms. Yi required that her pupils ask to use the bathroom. For Sam, this was degrading and nonsensical. For the first time in his life, Sam felt himself to be an adult, living independently. But for four hours every weekday, he was required to submit to Ms. Yi in order to leave class to use the bathroom. When Ms. Yi agreed, it was with exaggerated and infantilising disapproval. It was preferable that the students use their lunch hour to relieve themselves. Maybe this was because Ms. Yi lived her life around the Chinese language, its dissection and transmission to foreign minds. In Chinese, a euphemism for urination is 小便 - xiaobian - literally, a minor convenience, and the euphemism for defecation is 大便 - dabian - literally, a large convenience.

Class ended at 2 p.m. on Friday, and Sam genuinely needed to relieve himself. Ms. Yi looked at Sam disapprovingly as he dashed out of class, knocking a small Russian girl out of the way, and apologising in English as he made his way out the door. Sam barrelled down the hall, always a bit dark and cool on either side of the classroom, because all the natural light emanated from the classrooms in the middle of the building. It originated from the windows in those classrooms, facing the courtyard. There were lights in the hallways, but they were off in the daytime and frequently at night either because the building management was negligent or because they were thrifty.

As Sam approached the bathroom, he heard a rhythmic clapping that sounded like a North African folk song. CLAP-clap-CLAP-clap-CLAP-clap, but without the usual older North African woman yell-singing well wishes for newlyweds. With his backpack slung over one shoulder, Sam burst into one of the stalls, lit by more windows in the bathroom, frosted with dust, grime, and mould. The door to his stall would not lock. After he relieved himself, he noticed that the sound of rhythmic clapping had continued throughout. It was coming from somewhere in the bathroom. Sam washed his hands, and then he began to inspect the other stalls. There was no one there. Behind a single, unpainted, unadorned concrete wall were the showers. There, in the shower room, in plain view, a tall, chalky-white, blond young man stood behind a squat, paper-white brunette young lady, her hands planted firmly against a concrete wall. Fornication.

A live show. The clapping had been the sound of their colliding flesh. The man turned and saw Sam had discovered them, but that caused little more than a hiccup in the rhythm of the clapping. It was not that Sam’s presence excited

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