Jo Walton - Among Others

“I’ve been reading about Plato too,” I said, because he’s in The Last of the Wine of course, and Socrates too.

“Reading about Plato?” Sam said. “How about reading Plato?”

I shook my head.

“You should read him, but always keep arguing with him,” he said. “Now, I must have some Plato in English somewhere.” Then he started moving piles of books, with my father helping him. I would have helped too, but I couldn’t move with Chairman Miaow asleep on my knees. He had Plato in Greek, and Polish, and German, and I realised as he muttered his way through the piles that he could read all those languages, as well as Hebrew, and that even though his English was funny and quite strongly accented and he lived in this little rented room, he was an educated man. Seeing my father help him go through the piles, I saw that they were fond of each other, though they didn’t do much to show it. “Ah, here,” he said. “ The Symposium , in English, and a good place to start.”

It was a slim black Penguin Classics volume. “If I like it I can order more from the library,” I said.

“You do that. Don’t be like Daniel here, always reading stories and no time for anything real. I’m the opposite. I have no time for stories.”

“I have a friend in school who’s the same,” I said. “She reads science essays for fun.”

It turned out that Sam has read some of Asimov’s science essays, and also owns a book he wrote about the Bible! “It’s a Jewish Atheist book about the Bible, so of course I own it,” he said.

When it got dark, my father bustled up and insisted he’d take us out to eat. We went to a place quite near by, where we ate little pancakes called blinis with smoked salmon and cream cheese, which was absolutely delicious, perhaps the most delicious thing I’ve ever had. Then we had lovely dumplings with cheese and potato in them, which would have been the nicest thing I’d had for months if they hadn’t come after that lovely salty salmon, and then another sort of pancakes with jam inside. Everyone there knew Sam, and kept coming over to say hello and be introduced. It was a bit embarrassing at first, but I soon got used to it because Sam acted as if it was normal. I saw that he lived among these people as if they were family, he lived in community with them.

I like Sam. I was sorry to say goodbye. I wrote down his address and gave him mine in school. I wanted to talk to him about being Jewish and what Sharon had said, and about my thought about being a rice Jew, but I didn’t want to with my father there. He made it awkward. It’s easier with Sam. For one thing, I don’t have to feel grateful to him, and for another, he doesn’t have to feel guilty about me.

We drove to this hotel. It’s not a patch on the one where we used to stay in Pembrokeshire. It’s very anonymous. We’re sharing a room, which I didn’t expect, but as he went down to the bar almost at once, I’ve had the place pretty much to myself. The clocks go back tonight, so an extra hour of sleep!

The Symposium is brill. It’s just like The Last of the Wine , though earlier, of course, when Alkibiades was young. That must have been a great time to be alive.

I’m on the train, the big intercity train from London to Cardiff. It goes indiscriminately through countryside and towns, running along its inevitable rail. I sit in the corner of the carriage and nobody takes any notice of me. There’s a cafe car where you can buy awful sandwiches and horrible fizzy drinks or coffee. I bought a Kit Kat, which I am eating very slowly. It’s raining, which makes the countryside look cleaner and the towns dirtier.

It’s also great to be wearing my own clothes. I was yesterday too, but I didn’t notice so much. But sitting here, on my own, looking out of the window, it’s really nice to be wearing jeans and my Tolkien t-shirt instead of that awful uniform.

It’s funny, I write this whole thing mirror, so nobody could read it, but I want to write this next bit double mirror or something, in case, upside-down as well as backwards. The notebook locks. I’m lucky I can write mirror by just using my left hand. With all the practice I get, I’m almost as fast as I am right-handed.

Anyway.

Last night, after I finished writing in here, I read for a bit ( World of Ptaavs , Niven) and then put the light out. I fell asleep, but then later he , my father—I really should call him Daniel, it’s his name, and that’s what Sam calls him—Daniel came in, putting the light on and waking me. He was drunk. He was crying. He tried to get into my bed and kiss me, and I had to push him away.

I know I said I was going to be pro-sex, but.

In one way, it’s nice to think that somebody wants me. And touch is nice. Also sex, well, there is no privacy in school, so, but I’d had a chance the night before. (How long does it take? Masturbation is five, ten minutes tops. It never says, in books, how long. Bron and the Spike were at it for hours, but that was exhibition sex.) And I know from Time Enough For Love , which is very explicit on that, that incest isn’t inherently wrong—it’s not as if it really feels as if he’s family. I can’t imagine wanting to with Grampar, ugh! Ugh!!!

But with him, Daniel, it really is just the consanguinity thing, because we’re strangers really. And that just means contraception, which I would want anyway. I’m only fifteen! And it’s illegal, I think, and it wouldn’t be worth going to prison for. But he seemed to want me, and who else is going to want me, broken as I am? I don’t want to be depraved, but I suppose I probably am. Anyway , I said no before I thought about it, because he was drunk and pathetic. I pushed him away, and he went to sleep in the other bed and snored, loudly, and I lay there thinking about Heinlein and that Sturgeon story in Dangerous Visions , “If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?” Great title.

This morning, he acted as if it had never happened. We were back to not looking at each other, eating floppy bacon and cold fried eggs in the breakfast buffet in the hotel. He gave me the trainfare and another ten pounds for books. Even if I use some of it for food and busfare, I should be able to buy ten books at least. He’s very odd about money, sometimes acting as if he has none and then just handing it out like that. I have to go back to Shrewsbury next Saturday, because I have to be in school next Sunday night. But that is a week, a whole week away. He’s going to meet me in Shrewsbury station. And Auntie Teg is going to meet me in Cardiff station today. I rang her from Paddington. Meanwhile, I am between, between everything, between worlds, eating a Kit Kat and writing in here. I like trains.

Half term is not the same time here as it is at Arlinghurst, everyone here was off school last week. Typical. So Auntie Teg is teaching, and all my friends are in school. I got here last night, ate one of Auntie Teg’s cheese pies, and fell asleep straight after dinner.

Today I went into Cardiff and bought books. The thing about Lears is that it has American books. Chapter and Verse is very nice, and I always go there too, but they don’t import. Then there are a number of second-hand bookshops. There’s the one in the Castle Arcade, the one on the Hayes, and the one by the casino that has porn in the back. I think I’m the only person who ever buys the books from the front. They always glare at me, as if I wanted to go into their stupid back room and buy their stupid porn. Or maybe they don’t want to sell the normal books from the front because now they’ll have to get more? I got The Best of Galaxy Volume IV for 10p, and it has a Zelazny story in it.