Fall Read Online Free

father wanted him to integrate with the students at St. Ebury as much as possible—to become part of the culture.
    His father’s time in Canada may be remembered for its curtailment. And he was unusual in some ways. A widower—a single ambassador in the days when the probity of being single no longer existed. He was outspoken, but as I look back through articles I kept he was also frequently misquoted and misrepresented. Perhaps I’m inclined to sympathize. I was a stranger to him, but was essentially responsible for his departure.
     
    I am reading an article at the moment that says there are men listening to the noises of submarines. The men are in England, the submarines in the Arctic. The men are Canadian, the submarines Russian and American. I can see the men wearing earphones, straining their ears to hear muted signals; sounds bouncing off the ocean floor, telling secrets they do not mean to tell.
     
    I remember every night, every detail. The early days of love. There was a strange quiet on the third night. Prep was at 7:30 and there wasn’t a noise for two hours except of pages turning and pens dropping on desks. Two hours later the lights stayed dim, and most boarders started getting ready for bed. All the new students were yearning for a routine, trying to keep the strangeness from growing. If they could be quiet, do homework, keep to themselves, go to bed, they wouldn’t have to be so aware of how odd it was to be living witheighty-four friends and strangers—they could pretend they were on their own. One mood could settle on everyone.
    Julius propped up his algebra book first, stared at it like a possible enemy, let it rest again, open, copied some problems, worked for half an hour. He sighed. He stretched and yawned a silent roar. He closed the algebra book, took down
Philosophical Analysis
from the shelf above his desk and opened it for the first time with a sort of delicate ceremony. He blew out his cheeks, turned a page, looked at me, closed the book. He took down Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales
, in the modern English version that he wasn’t supposed to read.
    When prep was over he turned to me and said, “Farts can be funny things to write stories about,” and then he farted.
    He disappeared until it was time for bed, and then, back in the room in the dark, he said to the bunk above, “Australia?”
    “Yeah.”
    “What’s it like?”
    “Bright.”
    “But you’re Canadian, right?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Diplomat’s kid. Same here. American.”
    “I know.”
    “Were you there this summer?”
    “Winter. It’s upside down.”
    Julius was quiet for a while, like he was figuring something out.
    “So in Australia I’d be on the top bunk,” he said.
    “That’s right. And your pants would be over your arms.”
    “Right.”
    There were long silences in those rooms sometimes when one would wait to see if the other was falling asleep or was thinking of something to say.
    “I saw a picture of Australia once,” said Julius. “A beach. And sky. And a girl.”
    There was another long silence.
    Everyone was in their bunks, suspended on different planes in the dark, conversation going upward, from the bottom bunk to thetop, to the roof. Sometimes there would be understanding. Sometimes the one on the top would roll to the side, look down at the bottom and say, “Really?” Sometimes we were corpses in drawers, dreaming up.
    “Can a woman ever really be on top in Australia?”
    “I know one who was,” I said to the roof.
     
    I’d been working out for over a year. By that September I could bench-press 225 pounds. Julius later said that when the bar was halfway up, my eye would open and swell, open and swell, like something that kept trying to be born. He never shied away from it. He said “shit” in a tone of admiration when I held 215 pounds above my head. The military press, weight pushed high, arms up straight in heavy victory. Once, he said, “You should see yourself.”
     
    In the first