In the room where the round plastic clock twitched every minute on the wall, the guidance teacher cleared her throat and said:
‘I think we've talked enough about your schoolwork for now. It's obvious to me where your academic strengths lie’ — she lowered her voice slightly — ‘and I should tell you that I've read some excellent reports from your teachers. At the same time, I think it's clear which subjects you are less interested in, and probably won't want to pursue in future. Of course, all this is very important. But to my mind there's something even more important — something we haven't talked about at all.’
She paused for a moment of dramatic effect.
‘In your own words, what do you really want from life?’
The boy on the other side of the desk didn't answer immediately; the clock had time to take another of its identical steps before he began:
‘I want the sun dancing on an empty sea. I want the stink of a crowded slum in June. I want the bareness and pride of a mountain peak, the opulence of a fertile valley. I want to walk along a beach in winter, when the sand reflects the pale sky. Then I want to return in summer and share the sun with thousands of people. I want to run through a concrete city with danger pounding in my heart. And I want to lie down in a mountain meadow, letting peace overwhelm me like a fear.’
Long before the boy had finished talking the guidance teacher began to smile and sift through a pile of leaflets. She did these things discreetly — not wishing to make him self-conscious, and besides, enjoying the innocence and colour of his imagination. When he was quiet she said: ‘I think you're exactly the kind of person who should take a gap year before going to university. I went on one myself and I can tell you, I had the time of my life. I did charity work in India but you can go anywhere in the world. These — she indicated the leaflets she had gathered together and tapped level against the desk — will give you all the information you need about organisations for young people to work and travel abroad.’
She no longer made any effort to restrain her smile. It was a delight to talk to such an earnest young man, particularly one she was confident of being able to help. But as he took the leaflets, the boy did not return her warmth. He had a hurt look in his eyes, as if his words had been misunderstood.
‘I want to make my soul into an empty vessel,’ he announced, ‘so I can fill it with experiences of every kind. I want to know the distant extremes, the black hood of terror and the shining liquid of joy. I don't want to be one thing or another, or not for long. That isn't what matters. I only want to follow the patterns of my own emotions as they unfold, like the progress from the muted light in autumn to the naked green of spring.’
A fine adjustment took place in the teacher's smile. She couldn't help feeling that her suggestion had been slighted, that the boy was trying to distance himself from her commonplace ideas. And a parallel change occurred in her perception of his words: whereas before they had sounded bold and fresh, they now struck her only as pretentious and naive. But she sensed it would be harmful to interrupt him.
‘I want the thing I call myself to crumble into a thousand different sensations, each as separate from the others as the islands of an archipelago, but as much a part of a whole. I want to dose my mind with every form of intoxication, to alter not only my perceptions but the being with which I perceive them. I don't want to plan my life. I don't even want my life to be my own. I want the decisions I make to be as natural and inevitable as the flow of a river towards the sea.’
The guidance teacher left a long silence after his monologue. She was conscious of the clash between their dictions and wanted neither to puncture his grandiloquence nor to belittle her own sensitive but straightforward manner. Eventually she said, ‘maybe you should have a look at this,’ and handed him a pamphlet about young people and the use of drugs. Though she was careful to not show any sign of disapproval — after all, she was there to guide, not to judge — as he unfolded the printed pages his expression was one of profound sadness.
‘Tell me,’ she said, after a pause, ‘how are things at home?’
The boy looked confused. ‘Fine,’ he answered, as if the question had never occurred to him before. ‘Everything is fine at home.’
‘Good. I'm glad to hear that. And how are things otherwise in your… private life.’ She smiled in a way that was designed to let him know both what she was talking about and that he needn't be ashamed to answer her.
‘I don't have a girlfriend,’ said the boy, blushing.
‘Well I wouldn't worry about that,’ said the teacher, ‘plenty of time for you to meet a nice young lady.’ Feeling a little more than consolatory, she added, ‘I don't think you'll have any trouble where that's concerned.’
The boy looked at her eyes for the first time since the interview began. Then his gaze moved around her body, jumping from point to point.
‘I want women!’ he exclaimed, as much to his surprise as hers, ‘and lots of them. I want to touch the naked bodies of every different nation, every different race. I want to experience the hot flush of submission and the cold fury of control.’ (His surprise had given way to gleeful abandon.) ‘I want to play with the idle rich, splashing in their swimming pools, rubbing suncream into their pampered skin. I want to fuck the dirty poor, grinding them ever deeper into the filth where society has dropped—’
‘Well,’ interrupted the guidance teacher, ‘I'm afraid you can't always get what you want.’ She closed the sheaf of papers in front of her, held together by a paperclip in the top left corner, and gestured at the clock on the wall. The boy looked up and understood that his interview was over. As he collected the leaflets and brochures she had given him, she added several university prospectuses to the pile. ‘Goodbye,’ he said, as he hurried to the door. ‘Goodbye,’ she called after him.
She had five minutes before the next interview began. She would have liked to take a break, walk out to the edge of the playing fields and let her eyes linger on the open grass that led down to the houses below, catching the breath and twitter of spring, trying to remember what it felt like to be young. But she still had to read the teachers' reports for the next pupil; and the clock had already moved forwards once.
