White Man Crawling

Rosewater

24 Rosewater He was not exactly camp, not visually anyway; but he saturated himself with the sweet scent of roses, a scent that remained in the classroom even when he wasn’t there. I didn’t mind; in fact I rather enjoyed it; it seemed to have a calming effect on the more rowdy boys. His nickname was Rosewater. I had known he was gay. In the third term of his second year at school he had written me a deeply embarrassing composition entitled ‘To Sir with Love’. I doubt if anyone else beyond his intimate friends knew, since, in his culture, homosexuality was taboo. It was a colonial thing, a white thing; it was unAfrican. There certainly wasn’t anything effeminate about the way he threw a discus or put a shot. And, while he permeated scrum after scrum, ruck after ruck, maul after maul, with attar of roses, it was not thurification which won him, two years running, full colours for rugby in a rugby-obsessed school. He looked macho, behaved macho, talked macho... but he smelled of rosa damascena. He carried it around with him in a plastic atomiser, the kind gardeners use to spray insecticide on plants. He used it sparingly in cooler weather, but when it was hot - and it is hot most of the time in this part of the world - he sprayed it all over him and all round him. Our incense-bearer. It happened when Rosewater was in his final year at high school. He was a senior prefect and captain of the athletics team; he was one of the school’s best academics. I’ll never forget that night as long as I live, and I’ll never know what, finally, pushed him to do it. Later, much later, come to think of it, I was reminded of Auden’s lines: About suffering they were never wrong, the Old Masters: how well they understood its human position; how it takes place while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along. How art informs life! I was probably doing one of those mindless things when it took place. Forty years now, a man among schoolboys, 25 a lower case old master; eating the leftover wing of a chicken filched from the cook matron’s pantry; or opening the window of my single room in the hostel to let in a fresh supply of sewage-and-deodorant, socks-and-chlorine, floor polish-and-orange peel scented air: the redolence of boarding school; or, yes, just walking dully along. Why not me? Why this aromatic golden boy? I happened to be on duty. There came a breathless banging on my door. Two or three juniors, whimpering like puppies. Sir, Sir! Come quick! It’s Rosewater. He’s dead! In the bath! He’s dead, Sir! Please, Sir, come quick! It’s ‘quickly’, not ‘quick’! Don’t you know the difference between an adjective and an adverb? What do you mean he is dead? If this is one of your sick jokes.... No joke, Sir. It’s true. Please.... When I found that he was indeed dead in the bath, as I groped for the slightest sign of life, the jugular, the carotid, the mutilated wrists; and as I too began whimpering like the juniors cowering behind me, I was struck by something almost numinous. The characteristic smell of Rosewater had metamorphosed into a sight incarnadine, which gurgled away as I pulled the rubber plug. ...