Wildlife by Fiona Wood Page B

more insistent. And so Sibylla with very pink cheeks, and not looking at all happy, dropped them an awkward curtsy, which I am pretty sure she intended as ironic. But it wasn’t received that way. At least it shut them up. They had been baying for attention, and she satisfied that hunger. Or maybe what shut them up was the teacher coming in and saying,
right, good morning, okay now, have we all read and enjoyed
Othello
?
The round of groans that elicited was depressing.
    Sibylla, sitting behind a tight smile, took a while to settle down, surrounded by such unwelcome attention. Holly basks in any reflected “kudos.” She does not mind Sibylla’s discomfort at all. The odd wolf-whistle and snicker was still filtering out.
    Michael, from my math group, was watching Sibylla carefully; he was anxious, not sure what he could or should do.
    The limelight was soon taken off Sibylla when the teacher, it’s Ms. McInerney, asked for our first impressions, overview comments. Michael threw her a curveball. He speculated that Iago was impotent in his relationship with Emilia and had sublimated homoerotic feelings for Othello. Surely, he said, only such extreme passion could motivate Iago to manipulate Othello to the point where he actually murders Desdemona.
    This caused an uproar. Ms. McInerney, who doesn’t know any of us yet, wasn’t sure whether to take the comment seriously, or consider it to be an intentional distraction. She’s young and new, and was nodding her neat blond bob up and down with the surprised look of someone who thought she was going paddling but found herself in the squad lanes. Annie yelled out, Thanks for nothing, why should I read it now that I know she dies!
    The more loathsome jocks were in ecstasies of gay put-downs: You faggot, Cassidy, only a gay like you would think Iago is gay, etc. Sibylla looked concerned for Michael, but I was starting to think he had concocted this just to take the heat off her. Michael defended his position by citing specifics from the text, which increased the jeers hurled in his direction. Ms. McInerney was staying afloat, trying to shush everyone and put Michael off without putting him down.
    She ended up threatening all of us with withdrawal of the week’s house Milo rations. This created an instantsilence; Milo is like gold around here, a tradable commodity. Once everyone had simmered down, she told Michael we would be going through a more orthodox reading of characters and text in the first instance. Iago is bitter because he is overlooked for promotion to lieutenant in favor of Cassio, and so decides to trick and trap, to punish his general, Othello.
    She adds that she would be more than happy to explore further themes or interpretations in which any one of us was interested as we progress with our study of the play.
    Noted: Michael checking on Sibylla. It was a deliberate distraction.
    Noted: Ben’s failure to stand up for Sibylla.
    Noted: Holly’s constant, preening need for attention.
    Yes, I am smally interested in spite of myself. Is this an early symptom of
Testing New Reality
, Fred? I know that wouldn’t bother you. But it feels wrong to me. It feels like I’m cheating on you.

27
    There is a mystery smell in Bennett House. Like someone’s not showering. How can that be? Everyone does time in the bathroom. So, is someone just running waterand standing next to the shower fully dressed and still stinky? Or has Illawarra House learned how to bottle body odor and sprayed it around to get back at us for the flour-bombing?
    Smells are constantly on the agenda up here.
    Good smells: lemon-scented gums and peppermint eucalypts with which the grounds are artfully “natively” landscaped.
    The air in general—out hiking or running—is crystal clean. It makes me realize how happily complacent I have been with breathing in toxic city air. I can’t wait to get back to it. I’ve adapted. It’s my natural habitat. But the clean air is certainly a pleasant place to