Alva and Irva - Edward Carey [38]
His name was August Hirkus and he spent such long hours in the library because he was sure that when he grew up he was going to travel the world. He was solemnly preparing himself for his departure from Entralla which was, he said, ‘the most insignificant, piffling, little zilch of a spot, where nothing happens, where everybody speaks one of the most obscure languages in the world just so that the rest of the world will not understand them. But the life of August Hirkus,’ he said, ‘will not be wasted in such a place. I will be someone, but to be someone,’ he said, ‘I have to be somewhere first. It’s impossible to be someone here,’ he said, ‘everyone here is a complete no one because this place is an utter nowhere. Yes, first I’ll go somewhere, and then, after a while, I’ll be someone. What about you?’
We just stared, too amazed at August Hirkus, at this boy who could see his future so clearly. He looked disappointed. ‘Christ!,’ he said, ‘a couple of Entrallans, that’s what I’ve got here.’ He closed his library books, pushed out his chair, but before he was quite up, and hurriedly, so I wouldn’t lose him, I spoke. ‘I shall travel to Gaalkacyo, Mudug, Somalia, and to Jinan, Shandong, China. I shall walk down the Avenue Brugmann in Brussels, and the Avenue Insurgentes in Mexico City. And Ramses Street in Cairo. And the Zagorodnyy Prospekt in Saint Petersburg. And the Khiaban-e Akbarabad in Tehran. And Waterworks Road in Brisbane.’
I could have gone on. I was only just beginning. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘you can come.’ We went outside to the library steps—Irva came too, even though she wasn’t invited—and we smoked our first cigarette (sharing one of August’s cigarettes between us, coughing and smiling). That was how it started, soon we spent more and more time with August, who we learnt was, or so he told us, a difficult child. He was frequently getting into trouble, frequently arguing with his mother, and almost always ignoring his sister who was not a difficult child, who was in fact a very easy child, who made her mother proud, who was swimming captain at her school, who knew many different chunks of the Bible off by heart, and came top in divinity, who had many friends and a voice that was considered exceptional. August, however, rarely sang and could barely swim, he had no interest in the Bible (except to hide his sister’s), he had no friends at school. He told us how he would be rude to the teachers in the classroom, that he would ask questions that deliberately embarrassed them. He rarely saw his father, except when he wanted money. He frequently skipped class and was on occasions caught shoplifting; once he was seen dropping stones from a bridge onto a train track. He liked to buy canisters of car paint and scrub out street signs and whenever the word Entralla appeared on posters or signs throughout the city he would write above it the word FOR and beneath it the words READ NOWHERE. He asked us if we’d seen his graffitied signs, we nodded even though we’d never seen them. The Entrallan police, August told us, had a file with his name written on it, just about him, a file that, he said, grew thicker almost every day. I loved him! I’d do anything for him, he was the most astounding person I had ever met. I’d spend hours with August searching through maps and travel guides, sitting so close together, with Irva, a table away, watching us. August and I would have long discussions on the various merits or downfalls of certain famous hotels throughout the world. And it was whilst we were sitting on the marble steps of the Central Library that August said he was able to tell