internal and external

[helenic]

Outside the skies are impossibly bright, the air sultry and fragranced by roses; flowerbeds; the smell of cut grass. The pollen makes me sneeze, but walking through Kenny Court each morning the heat and perfume of summer never fails to make me smile. Downing is all perfect green lawns and bright colonnades, and I'm in sandals and skirts with my headphones on. Each time I step into the sun I think holiday; exploring French towns with my parents; drowsing by a pool; smoking lazy joints in Leicester; reading novels on the beach. Anything but this. But instead I compose my mind and skip up the sandstone steps to the library, where I am spending twelve hours a day. 11am until 2pm, 3pm until 6pm, 7pm until 10pm and finally 11pm until 2am. Plato's Ion, Lysias 1, Euripides' Hippolytus, Odyssey IX and X. A text a day and I still have nine to go; my exams start in a week. I share a table with Ali and Will Dobbin, a rugby-boy classicist in the second year with stereotypically public school good looks. The slight hysteria of last-minute revision is a great catalyst to friendship; I find myself conversing easily with people I've never spoken to before, even the popular girls from H staircase who always used to terrify me. Intimate 2am conversations in the library with strangers, anything to diffuse the all-pervasive panic.

The library is large and airy, and the water cooler dispenses conical white paper cups. (If you can balance them on their end you are, officially, a true library whore: I managed it two days ago. ) I sit with my legs draped barefoot over the arm of the chair and the book in my lap, twirl my pencil between my fingers, sharpen it compulsively every five minutes, gnaw the end. I'm always hungry and am getting through about two litres of diet coke with lemon each day. The caffeine has started to affect me in strange ways - two days ago I downed three red bulls in a late-night panic and within half an hour they'd sent me straight to sleep. The Greek echoes in my head and after each line I stop and stir restlessly, sigh and make eye contact with Ali, who raises her eyebrows in mock despair. Sometimes I reach a state of intense concentration and translate five pages in an hour, but more often the going is slow, frustrating, and seemingly endless. My average is more like two pages an hour and my dictionary is worn with thumbing. Laughter from outside carries through the open windows, but inside it is silent apart from the quiet rustle of pages and whispering. The sunlight filters palely through the white blinds and it is altogether still.

In the evening it is cooller and easier to work, and I usually go faster, eager to reach the end and leave as soon as possible. When I finish early I could always start the next text while I'm on a good run, but I never do. The quad seems vast in the darkness, amber lights casting shadows beneath the horse chestnuts, and the pillars of the chapel seem to stretch up and up forever. Outside the air is balmy like a Mediterranean night, and inside I'm listening to the Cocteau Twins and reading Tuesday. It's strangely tranquil for 3.13am when caffeine won't let me sleep, although I know I have more long hours ahead of me tomorrow. I just want all this to be over but there's a perverse pleasure in it, somehow, in unravelling the language to the point where I'm almost thinking in it. Iain and I were lying in bed together earlier and I was stroking his hip, where the skin is stretched like taut silk over the bone, and caught myself admiring it using Greek syntax in my head. And I laughed, because it was either that or cry.