Background
Background
Chapter One The Tutorial
Monday morning, 08.15. Lecture Hall C, DeVilliers Building. Oliver, leap years from the discussion around him, stared at his hands. They were brown, dark brown. They were as brown as the sleek, wooden conference table on which they rested. With the exception of his fingernails, it was as if they blended in with the earthen texture of the wood. The sheet of paper before him was bright white. In contrast to its endless blankness was written, in neat and small handwriting, the last line he had jotted down. It read: "what the hell am I doing here? He continued to write: You are welcome to my world. I know you might hesitate, because on the outside I...but his thought was broken up. Dr. Carol Woodburn, his lecturer in Introduction to Literary Analysis, parted his mental trip like a rat attracting the attention of an owl in the middle of the night. Wearing a two-piece grey suit, and with dirty-blonde hair cut just above the shoulders, she looked quite the professional.
Mr. Egbert, she called to him in a high pitched voice, Would you mind explaining to the class why you choose to be off in dream world, instead of respecting the ideas of your peers, your lecturer, and, she stamped her green-veined red nailed fist on the table, Stellenberg College for affording you the right to expand your horizons? Peering over her silver-rimmed spectacles, Dr. Woodburn heaved heavily, like one about to have heart spasms, and awaited his response. Leaning forward expectantly, she sucked in the air through red-painted lips.
Sitting directly opposite her, at the other end of the conference table and in the middle of the entire tutorial group, Oliver became aware of how blue her eyes were. Clear through her specs, he could see that they were as blue as an ocean in a soap advert on television. They were so blue that for a moment, he closed his own chocolate coloured eyes and pictured himself standing beneath a mountain waterfall, feeling the cool water cascade onto his skin. Shuddering slightly, as if truly being splashed by chilly drops, he smiled to himself. When he opened his eyes, he looked around to discover that all of the eleven other English Honours students were facing in his direction, tilting their bodies slightly towards him in anticipation of his next move, all the while staring at him. Some appeared to inspect every pore of his skin; it was as if he was incubated in a giant microscope, and these people were digging into him with their eyes. Their eyes: It was then that he noticed that each and every student in the tutorial room had blue eyes. As he slowly scanned their faces, from left to right, from female to male and male to female, he noticed that though this one had brown hair, this one had curly curls, or that one had long black horse like hair, or that one had blonde or red hair, every single individual around him, including Dr. Carol Woodburn, had blue eyes. Again, he locked in on her eyes from where he sat he could see floral patterns embedded in their blueness, but he did not hear his instructor speaking to him. Momentarily, his hearing had been stunted. It was if he was stunned into a far away state.
