The fountain of youth

Many years ago, I stared over the water of Lac Leman at the Jet d’Eau arcing high overhead. I was on a boat in the middle of the lake in the middle of Geneva, mercifully on a warm summer’s night. It could get very cold indeed at certain times of year, never mind if it was actually supposed to be hot and sunny at the end of June, and the chill seeped damply into your bones, took up residence and never really moved out. It was, in fact, the night of the Graduation Ball, the dance that signified the end of a certain innocence, the time when a student is pushed through that tesseract that divides adolescence from adulthood, sort of like Harry Potter had to cope with on Platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross station in London. I, like all my friends, classmates and assorted strangers on that cruise, had been through a gruelling time with the roster of written exams, practicals and orals that made up the International Baccalaureate and was ready to do anything except study…except that I was too tired and mindless to manage more than a sweet and brainless smile at anyone who looked even vaguely familiar.

It was getting later and later and Anne, my best buddy at school, and I wanted to get home – I was staying over at her house that night, or what was left of it – and sleep the deadened sleep of the righteously educated. But we were stuck on that boat until at least 4 am, the time scheduled for us to float back to the pier and disembark. The music on the boat became dark and slow and steamy and couples could be seen as single, oddly-shaped silhouettes. Most of us were single, some of us were flirting desultorily and a few of us were non-drinkers, stone-cold sober in a sea of less than coherent almost-adults carefully babysat by teachers with no interest in the proceedings except to keep a supply of condoms, mouthwash and Dramamine close at hand.

The night was, like Geneva itself, a rather dull place to be. Until the moment when there was a clamour of loud voices, a shrill shriek and a splash that split the quiet moonlight. Someone had fallen off the boat into the lake. We all rushed to the rail-side on the various levels of the small ship and peered into the darkness. With typically Swiss precision, spotlights came on, a wee launch sped to berth alongside and the would-be-diver was fished out, swearing wildly and vowing revenge. If only anyone knew how he could beat himself up…after all, he had fallen in after overbalancing on a chair on deck, trying to serenade his girlfriend with Billy Joel’s You’re always a woman to me, which played endlessly on the jukebox in the school lounge back on shore.

Geneva is not the most exciting city in the world – I say that with a certain diplomacy only the Swiss can teach. While the day-lit streets bustle with the elegantly dressed business-person carrying snazzy mobile phones and Vuitton briefcases, clumps of djellaba-draped Arabs peer into store windows glittering with vast arrays of very OTT diamonds and backpack-laden students run for trams and buses through many lanes of traffic – dark-glassed limousines with diplomatic plates, sleek sportscars growling restlessly at red lights and lycra-sheathed bicyclists backpedalling in special lanes, at night little moves beyond an occasional stray dog or a rare vagrant looking for a warm grating. Around 10 pm, the roads are clear, the night is quiet and there is nothing to do, unless you are visiting a friend or hopping from diplomatic bash to diplomatic bash. But for me it was home, a place I lived in for a while, a place that has memories that go beyond an arduous school term, adolescent angst, a crush on an English teacher who made me read Lorca and Achebe and too many pain au chocolats downed at the corner bakery.

Many years after the Graduation Ball, I stared over the water of Lac Leman at the Jet d’Eau arcing high overhead. I was on a boat in the middle of the lake in the middle of Geneva on a warm summer afternoon in July. The famous fountain ran red, coloured in protest of the situation in Darfur, Somalia. And Billy Joel played retro over the cruise-boat sound system. There was room for excitement; the American tourists on board demanded it, the floral clock on shore indicated it was time for it. We all waited. But, with the precision engineering of the well-trained Swiss who insisted on making sure nothing untoward happened, no one fell overboard.