Shirley Leaves London for the Nature Absorption Academy

Shirley’s departure from London for the Nature Absorption Academy begins not with confidence but with accumulated disappointment. A private ritual at her table eventually turns indecision into a firm choice: she will leave, and she will do so now. The journey takes her by bus and then on foot to the academy, where the grand, carefully composed landscape offers a stark contrast to the diminished life she is leaving behind.

Disappointments Before the Departure

During October, November, and December 2013, Shirley feels let down from several directions at once. Paco Lopez, the Spaniard who had promised her the world, spent a week going home with her every night for sex and homemade food. Then he took a worn engagement ring from his pocket, said goodbye, and thanked her. The abruptness of that ending sits alongside other reversals: her employer dismissed her rather than a cafeteria worker who had been there only three months, and the diet that promised to help her lose ten kilos seemed instead to produce the opposite result.

Wanda’s silence is another part of this accounting. Despite her grand promises, Wanda Phinn had not sent even a postcard. Shirley was concerned for her friend during the first month of her absence, but that concern eventually faded. The brief, resigned thought that this was simply her life captures how little she expects from any of these disappointments. Her decision to leave grows out of this accumulated dissatisfaction, rather than from a single quarrel or a sudden invitation.

Solitaire Becomes a Decision

Shirley’s thoughts about whether she could leave her current situation displace, for a time, the reality of how miserable it has become. She sits beside a table covered with oilcloth, next to a gas heater, and shuffles greasy playing cards. The game she chooses is a demanding form of solitaire; its difficulty gives its outcome extra weight for her. She makes a private rule: if she completes a game, she will seriously consider leaving.

When she completes it, the decision does not arrive all at once. It opens another sequence of questions. Should she tell Wanda first, or contact the Nature Absorption Academy? Should she take the sensible course, or simply pack her bags and say goodbye? After spending half a weekend completing game after game, Shirley becomes sure that she will go. The remaining uncertainty concerns timing: whether to wait or leave now.

The seventh consecutive completed game settles that question. Shirley takes the run of successes as confirmation that she should leave her present life immediately. The cards do not supply a practical plan; rather, the ritual gives her a way to move from imagining departure to acting on it. Its repeated, tangible outcomes provide the decisive pattern she has been waiting for.

The Journey and Wanda

As she travels, Shirley worries about how the people at the academy will receive her. She expects the friendly people she met in London to welcome her, but is less sure about Wanda. Their friendship may already be over, and Shirley imagines that her arrival could interrupt Wanda’s routine with unwanted talk about the old days. She does not expect an uncomplicated welcome. Still, the possibility that Wanda made the leap to the academy becomes a reason Shirley can imagine making one too.

Shirley also remembers her own part in Wanda’s connection to the academy: she was the one who introduced Wanda to Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi’s world. That recollection gives her a claim on the history between them, but it does not resolve her doubts about their present friendship. The journey therefore carries two distinct expectations: hope of acceptance by the community and apprehension about the one person there whose response matters most personally.

From Kalmar Central Station, Shirley takes a bus toward the island as far as she can, then continues on foot. This final stretch makes her arrival the result of a journey she has chosen and completed herself, even as she remains unsure what awaits her at its end.

Arrival at the Academy

The first sight of the Nature Absorption Academy is far grander than Shirley anticipated: a cluster of newly built houses appears to lean toward the sea. White buildings rise beneath pyramid roofs inlaid with colored glass; solar cells glisten on several roofs, and enormous windows open the buildings to their surroundings. From the road, the complex seems large enough to make other necessities feel irrelevant. Shirley, who has seen little like it, perceives the landscape as charged with currents, combining exotic growth, human workmanship, and mysterious signs.

A large enamel sign identifies the place as Nature Absorption Academy Ebabbar. Beyond it, a speckled tiled path leads toward smaller houses and two pavilions joined together and facing the water. Their newly painted signs appear in several languages and describe the space as the academy’s communal heart. In the reception area, people dressed in white move quietly across the floor and nod to Shirley in a friendly manner. Their apparent composure contrasts with her self-consciousness: she straightens her flower-patterned dress and smooths her blouse, trying to look decent amid what she experiences as stylish purity.

Significance of the Departure

The move is a genuine break with Shirley’s unsatisfying London life, but it does not erase the disappointments that prompt it. Her choice is made through a private game, while the destination is presented through an imposing public setting of new buildings, ordered spaces, and welcoming gestures. That contrast gives the arrival its unsettled quality: Shirley has acted decisively, yet the questions that accompanied her—especially whether Wanda will welcome her—remain open. The academy’s scale and apparent serenity promise a different life, but the first scene of arrival establishes only the threshold, not what Shirley will find beyond it.