The Author's Cut by Owen Marshall

Author:Owen Marshall [Marshall, Owen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780143774846
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2013-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

BLUNDERER

That night I had gone back to work quite late. The campus never completely dies, but it had by nine o’clock reached a point of feline somnolence: the trees black fur against the paler sky, a few office eyes glowing yellow, and from no distinct direction the subdued purr of air-conditioning exhalation. My walk on the bank path, passing in and out of the more intense shadow of the willows, was a familiar one. Mallard ducks were in small clusters on the grass bank, and clattered uneasily as I went by. The humanities and media studies block forms one of the darker quads, but campus topography is second nature to me. Perhaps a gardener’s trolley, or a Papua New Guinean man trap, was set on the neat asphalt path, but we manage life by evaluating risk.

On the second floor a window was lit: that of Alan Scadding. No doubt he was pushing on with his book. A work on post-glacial landforms, specifically pluvial deposits. He’d be putting the hours to good use, while I drifted in one of life’s more persistent eddies. He’d be rattling up the pluvial word tally, or sending ingratiating messages to those people who might be helpful in the future. A born distance networker, and assiduous in working a room.

The green, electronic eye of acceptance winked at me when I wielded the swipe card. I didn’t bother turning on a light at ground-floor level, or for the stairwell. A glass wall at the top of the stairs let in a fading glow, which glinted on the illustrated posters advertising forthcoming academic courses, as if they were theatrical productions coming to the city. Hist 307 The Johnny Reb Story: A Southern Perspective on the American Civil War; Media Stud 222 The Peter Jackson Phenomenon: A Personal Impact on World Cinema; Geog 312 Cometh Global Warming; Fem Stud Fashion and Sexuality.

And in defiance of departmental regulation, the more urgent and personal concerns of students were there too, sometimes obscuring the course posters themselves. Two female flatmates wanted, or a buyer for a 1988 Honda Accord as and where is, people interested in aromatherapy, AGM of the Hispanic Society, a mountain bike and a second-hand copy of The Youth Age, by Voltain and Spruiker for sale. And all sprouting the little scissored tufts with the contact telephone number, or torn edges where these had been.

I did light the corridor that gives access to my office, so I could see to use my key. The door has a pinboard for student messages on which I display cartoons that prove I’m not a teacher of unbending solemnity. Students these days resent any distinction, any formality. The vice-chancellor was told to shut the fuck up just a few days ago, while escorting a group of Chinese dignitaries through the library. It occasioned laughter in the common room, but it was the rueful laughter of a lost cause.

Once inside the room, I turned on the small lamp beside the computer, and the dragonfly of coloured glass that formed its shade cast rainbow lozenges across my desk.

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