The Season of Migration by Nellie Hermann Page B

kitchen. “If his own father cannot teach him, who can?” But schooling at home was no better—long afternoons in the front room at the parsonage, his father hovering over him, the smell of wood chips drifting off his clothes and enveloping Vincent, a reminder of his father’s presence even when he couldn’t be seen.
    How could anyone stand it? How could he be blamed for slipping out of the parsonage when his father left for church, through the path in the garden hedge and out into the heath beyond? More and more he fled the house, sleeping for whole afternoons in patches of sun in empty fields, lying down next to fallen birds’ nests and rising without knowing how long had passed, stumbling home, only to find his father had gone to bed, his fury at Vincent’s delinquency present, for Vincent, in the silence that greeted him when he sneaked quietly in the front door. After three years of it, three years of his father’s checking his homework when they had finished eating dinner and then sitting next to him at the same table in the morning, his father’s constant presence next to him, judging him, shaking his head, saying, “Try again,” try again, try again, neither of them could continue.
    The last day was in the summer, and the front room, which was dim and close and normally cool even in the summer, was sweltering. Vincent wore a short-sleeved shirt and his father had taken off his jacket; Vincent was trying to focus on multiplication tables, but the numbers were dancing and forming patterns and pictures and he could not make them sit still. He was sweating. Was it fear or was it the heat? “Which is it, Vincent?” asked his father. “What is the answer?”
    How could he tell his father that the numbers would not lie still? Perhaps he should guess—perhaps a wrong number was better than telling his father the truth: that when he looked down at the page, he saw the numbers as a waterfall, the twos and threes falling over the sixes and fives.
    He said a number. His father stood still for a moment, looking at the floor, and Vincent wondered whether it was possible that he had guessed correctly. But then his father erupted.
    â€œNO!” he shouted, and then turned from Vincent to the mantelpiece, composing himself, his shoulders rising as he took a deep breath. “Vincent,” he said slowly and softly without turning around—Vincent knew this tone was reserved for his most angry moments—“how do you ever expect to learn if you do not try?” He took a breath. “You are a smart boy; I know this. But you seem determined, just DETERMINED”—he paused again as his voice grew louder, forcing his tone down—“determined not to apply yourself. I do not know what we can do with you. I’m afraid I’ve done all I can.”
    He left the room then, abruptly, Vincent still sitting at the table with the waterfall of numbers and their checkerboard companions. He was trying to see them clearly; it was they that would not lie still.
    And then came boarding school. His first night, he lay in the unfamiliar bed with its stiff starched sheets and pictured his family at home, all of them sleeping soundly, the sound of the clock in the main room ticking through the rest of the house. As he drifted off to sleep, he began to feel that he was still in his bed, and that Theo was there beside him, and that the ticking that he heard was in the room with them. All was quiet; all was familiar and safe and warm. But gradually he began to be aware of his body beneath the blanket next to Theo; it was not the body he knew, the gangly limbs, long and floppy and awkward, but something much smaller, much different from that, much more foreign and confining. He tried to move his arms and his legs, to feel his torso with his fingers, to roll over, but it was all wrong. He was cramped and tiny; there was no heft to him. He tried to stretch and felt