It was still early in the semester, a chilly October morning, when Radix first met Bilicki. He was sitting alone in the cafeteria, not yet sufficiently secure to approach and join teachers at their tables. As yet he had made few friends. Class schedules, the paperwork, the still foreign procedures all kept him moving, and restricted him to an exchange of passing courtesies with teachers. The lunch period in the cafeteria was the only available time to cultivate friendships.
Bilicki came up to his table with a brown bag from which he removed a sandwich and an apple, and he said, "Mind if I sit here?" looking around as if he didn't relish sitting anywhere else. Radix looked down at his food tray and tried not to appear unsociable.
"Is that all you're having?" he said, pointing his fork at Bilicki's apple and sandwich.
Bilicki nodded. "When I started here," he said, removing the plastic wrap from his sandwich, "I was tempted by the French Fries, you know how it hits you the minute you walk in? Like you're walking into a McDonalds."
"I know what you mean," Radix said.
"And you're so famished, you think, that's exactly what I need now, some of that good-smelling stuff. After awhile your stomach starts working like a cement mixer."
Bilicki spoke as if measuring each word he released. He looked around in a vaguely contemptuous manner. Radix chewed and studied him: the pony tail, the hair brushed straight back exposing much forehead, tired-looking eyes, his thoughtful way of chewing. This man, he concluded, had endured several tours of duty in the building; he was no doubt and expert on cafeteria food, bowel action and any school issue he cared to talk about.
"My problem is not with the food," Radix said. Then perhaps out of a need to unburden his new teacher estrangement he plunged into an explanation.
He was still struggling, he said, with the start of day routines, the class schedules, the way things were arranged in the building. Coming from an island where everyone woke up round about the time the cocks crowed, and breakfast lunch and dinner were more like rituals in sync with the movement of the sun, he found it hard getting up at 5.00, having his first meal at 5.30, still dark outside, then again at 10.30 which was his assigned lunch break until the work day ended. He'd had to make some adjustments, but this unusual eating pattern was playing havoc with his stomach.
Bilicki kept chewing in a way that suggested his sandwich and apple needed as much sympathy and attention as Radix' story. Thinking perhaps he should not have opened up after so brief an an acquaintance, Radix fell silent.
They met again the next and the day after, Bilicki with his paper bag, Radix persevering with the cafeteria menu. Their conversation warmed up, bit by bit Bilicki expanded. He talked about the school, the teachers, policies he detested, what he loved about teaching. As the weeks went by they anticipated meeting each other during lunch period. The table they sat at became their table, their spot.
(from "Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!", a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 