Adam's Peak Read Online Free PDF Page B

consideration to the bestarguments in support of the other side. The most convincing arguments are often those that show they understand their opponents’ position and can reasonably refute it. You have the potential to be an excellent writer. Keep up the good work.
    It was a long way off what he wanted to write, but it would have to do. At the bottom of the page he wrote “B+” then reached for the rest of the essays in his knapsack. As he shifted position, Adam’s letter crinkled in his pocket. He decided to save it till Aunty Mary had gone to bed.

    LATE THAT EVENING , after chicken dinner and more marking, Rudy slouched at the desk, tapping his pen against the cover of his diary. Mosquitoes hovered around him, but he was too tired to bother lighting a coil. Too tired to write, really, but it was something of a ritual, his nightly communication with Clare Fraser—begun on a cold Christmas day back home and carried out ever since. He told her about his afternoon, about reading Kanda’s essay and missing his bus stop, then he left his diary in his bedroom and went to the shower shed in the backyard. The green plastic enclosure was dimly lit by a pair of bulbs fixed to the back wall of the house. Overhead the black sky was pierced with stars. Rudy hung his sarong over the door and turned on the water. It fell from the broad metal shower head, straight and heavy and warm, like a monsoon downpour. He backed into it, watching a rupee-sized spider scurry across the concrete floor, reached for the soap, and lathered his hands. Eyes closed, he masturbated with dull frustration, a desire for release of some kind. He thought of his ex-girlfriend Renée’s muscular thighs and prodigious breasts, of the girl in Kanda’s essay, walking by herself early in the morning, of Clare. He came easily. Relieved, if only temporarily, he rinsed off then stood still under the spray in the shower’s green light. At the faint sound of the dining room clock striking eleven, he turned off the water and hurried to dry himself before the mosquitoes moved in.

    In the bedroom he put on a T-shirt, an ancient souvenir from the Toronto Jazz Festival, with gaudy splashes of turquoise and pink. His sarong was covered in red and gold elephants.
    â€œA real fashion plate you’ve become, machan,” he heckled his reflection in the wardrobe mirror. Turning sideways, he sucked in his belly and straightened his shoulders, ran his fingers through his damp hair and cursed at the amount that came out. He considered doing some sit-ups while the air was cool, then he remembered Adam’s letter.
    He imagined what it would say.
    I think we need to talk about our relationship, Rudy. I’ve tried to connect with you, but it hasn’t really worked, has it. What have you got against me? I don’t think I’ve deserved your coldness
...
    The more Rudy imagined, the more real the words became, until he felt he knew the contents of his brother’s letter precisely. A vague memory came to him. He was twelve or so; Adam was still little. They’d built something together in the backyard. It was a rock sculpture of some kind, but it all fell apart. What he remembered most clearly was picking up one of the rocks and throwing it as hard as he could. But he couldn’t recall what his target had been.
    â€œJesus Christ,” he whispered.
    Leaving the letter in his trouser pocket, he unknotted the mosquito net hanging over the bed. He made his way around the mattress, tucking the net underneath, leaving a small gap through which he finally crawled. Safe inside, he reached his hand out to switch off the bedside lamp then tucked in the rest of the net.

2

    T HROUGH A GAUZE OF CLOUDS Clare glimpsed the grey-white landscape, cut through with ruler-straight roads and patched with rectangular roofs. She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. On the headphones Gilles Vigneault was singing “Mon Pays,” but