March 1976
“Do try to make friends with him,” Cyril Dragon had begged Leo when Reza first arrived. Leo had mistaken this for some selfless yearning to see them both less lonely, but soon enough he had seen that it was all for Reza and only Reza. It was Reza whom Cyril Dragon wanted to see happy and Leo had been reduced to a device that might help him achieve his aim. But what a fine lesson Leo is teaching his teacher now. Oho oho! You thought you could with surgical precision excise one boy and replace him with the other. Exit Boy A, enter Boy B? Watch me snatch your prize away from you.
From the window in his office Cyril Dragon sees them every afternoon playing with the goats. Scratching the animals’ velvety flanks. Gathering handfuls of grass to feed them. One day Leo kneels to peer under the billy goat and soon both boys are kneeling and giggling. They look away and giggle then peer again and giggle some more at what they have found. Cyril Dragon smiles to see them but it is not a smile of sweet recognition. It is a smile of wonderment: So that is what it looks like to have a friend! A smile of awed discovery. It trembles like the wings of a butterfly fresh from the chrysalis.
So believe me when I tell you that it is in the spirit of a naturalist that he begins to shadow them. Not a spy. Not the jealousing villain of the piece. He simply wants to observe, to catalogue and classify. The habits and predilections of juvenile male pairs. Their favoured trajectories and territories. Here is where they turn off to throw stones into the waterfall. Here is how they wade fearlessly into the water even on the mistiest chilliest of days. Here is how they horse around and giggle and splash each other almost like girls—in fact if there were girls in the vicinity behaving in this manner these very boys would hardly be able to stop themselves from mocking and jeering.
Here is how they pluck dry grass from the ground and roll it up in small rectangles of paper. Here is how they light them with matches they got from don’tknowwhere.
The sight of the two small boys coughing and sputtering on their handcrafted cigarettes gives Cyril a tiny jolt. He turns and strides unseen back down the trail. Silent as an owl. Light in his bones but heavy in his heart.
He has been at his desk for what seems like hours when out of the corner of his eyes he catches—far down below at the top of the trail where it meets the stone steps—the movement of the boys’ return. Singing and swinging twigs and branches through the high grass. He follows their approach. On the top step they stop. They bend to study their ankles and knees and shins. They twist to look at their calves. What are they searching for? Leeches? Scratches? Cuts? Whatever the case they appear delighted with their finding or not-finding.
He tells himself again: It is not as though there was a competition. Leo has not actually taken anything from you. Just because they are friends does not mean you cannot still win Reza’s heart. Why then is he unable to shake this sense of defeat?