Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones Page B

of long-distance affection for a few she habitually observed. There was a boy – she called him Leo – who was always alone. He had light brown hair and a thin angular face, and he always stood apart, moving in small, autistic jerks to the sound of his clamped-on headphones. Music was either his singular passion, or the device by which he excluded himself from others (or recognised their exclusion) in a socially plausible way. Leo always wore the same clothes – a sweater with a hood, tattered jeans – and did not smoke. His narrow body was restless, driven by music only he could hear, pounding directly into his eardrums. There was something pitiable about him, something lost.
    Alice also liked to observe ‘the lovers’, whom she called Gisele and Sylvain. They spent much of each break together, against the wall, embracing and kissing. Their kisses had an intense prolongation and a gorgeous succulence. When they disengaged, they stood close together, the planes of their bodies still touching, their arms still entwined. The other students seemed to respect the relationship and did not interrupt or intrude. Sometimes Alice saw Sylvain joking with the others – his possession of Gisele gave him a certain swagger – but mostly they were interlocked, alone in their own way as Leo, listening to his music.
    Among the students there was also a conspicuous girl. Shewas popular, and laughed loudly, in a way Mr Sakamoto would like. She wore what appeared to be layers of rags and had spiky purple hair. Her confidence was wonderful to behold. ‘Arlette’ seemed to attend school only infrequently, but when she did, she was highly visible, attracting others, making noise, slipping between groups, linking them with her own intentions. The students around her talked on mobile phones and sent text messages to each other. They were all in a circuit of voices and signs; they were their own community.
    Alice thought about her students, back at the university in Australia. They would now be attending lectures and writing essays. Feigning interest, nodding, pretending to have read the text. She did not miss her teaching. What she missed was contact with youth, with those who practised an assertion in the world that they took to be theirs, who saw their cities as intelligible territory, written for them, replete, awaiting, charged with intensities, who lived knitted in uttermost, secretive ways.
    When Mr Sakamoto had said goodbye after the movie he had held up his hand to the side of his face, with the fingers curled and the thumb extended, making the shape of a telephone.
    â€˜I’ll call you,’ he’d said as Alice began moving away.
    â€˜I don’t have a phone,’ she had replied with a grin. ‘I’ll call you. Tomorrow. At the hotel.’
    It was only later that she realised she had never seen anyone of Mr Sakamoto’s age make the telephonic shorthand gesture. It was an action only young people performed. It was a code of twenty-something stockbrokers and fashion designers. Of cool baristas and film students and girls-who-wanted-to-be-models. Mr Sakamoto belonged to times other than his own; the habits of his body displayed forms of appropriated youthfulness. Perhaps the telephone had unfixed him, made him radically contemporary.

    â€˜Tell me exactly how Bell’s telephone worked.’
    â€˜Well,’ said Mr Sakamoto, ‘there is first of all the medieval principle of rays in emanation …’
    â€˜Seriously,’ she insisted.
    â€˜Two things, that’s all. Number one: electromagnetism. Electric currents generate a magnetic field around themselves. The stronger the current, the stronger the field. You send a current through a coil of wire, and the iron core of the coil is magnetised. The current can be varied in strength and the electromagnet can vibrate a flexible iron diaphragm and create a sound, any sound, even a human voice. Number two: