Stephen J. Williams

Category: Prose

  • Thingward ho!

    Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. 

    — Ludwig Wittgenstein

    You admire and envy, don’t you, those people who can wear any crumpled, disorganised, unplanned mess, and still manage to appear attractive? You are at a party, say, and two male figures, in unpressed, unmatching formal attire, Bollé sun-glasses and designer stubble, let themselves in. It is not clear they have been invited, since no one appears to know their names, but they add to the still small crowd that touch of studied desuetude and are allowed to stay, for decorative purposes.

    Or perhaps it is a club or bar …

    Little constellations of self-proclaiming stars gather in every nook and corner, competing for the attention of any earthling with a telescope. There are a few dresses sewn together with things sparkling at the blue end of the spectrum; a few others announcing their social awareness with autumnal and earth-motherly oranges and browns. (I am referring mainly, of course, to places reserved, by unspoken agreement and the certainty of embarrassment, for people over thirty, since, being too ugly, too old, and too well-heeled, I would not be welcome anywhere else.)

    Go any Friday or Saturday night to the streets of any major city and see how sartorial decisions follow occupation or preoccupation.

    Young women in creations with fluffy shoulders and considerable padding can be seen accepting invitations to study at the School of Hard Cash. They are not prostitutes. Like many young women these days they have been confused by feminism. If one, by chance, happens to sit at your table in a café, obviously because there is nowhere else to sit, and you get to talking, you might eventually ask what it is she looks for in a relationship. She will begin by telling you she wants someone to support her, rich, tall, strong, handsome, as well as sensitive—not a ‘yobbo’—and end by saying she would like to have a career. You might think, as I did, of objecting to this contradictory selfishness; but at least Simone and Germaine have taught her one good thing.

    Recent survivors of Grammar School, now, perhaps, settled into a job somewhere close to the stock market, declare their aspirations to achieve the karma of serious money in tuxedos with satinised lapels.

    During the day these same new recruits can be seen dressing down in Country Road and Sportscraft, or up, if they are regular readers of Arena, in something that convincingly imitates Jean Paul Gaultier (when at work, minus the designedly torn jeans) or Hugo Boss. The shoes will have been bought (that is to say, in the future perfect, on credit) at a shop frequented by people with less important things to worry about than money.

    They need a face and body to go with all this, of course, because without those the effect is rather like cooking porridge up as soufflé. Though having both the face and body which make Gaultier look at home, there is no need to wear him for the purpose of attraction.

    The new recruits know it is not at all fashionable to be too fastidious. For $300 anyone can get an adequately tasteful double-breasted suit with more buttons than NASA; and if you do this you had better have plans to live on the moon. Seriously and ambitiously fashionable people know the immoderate effort and expense which must be endured to achieve the effect of relaxation.

    … And that is the nub of the modern fashion problem, the veritable crotch of sartorial philosophy. For the sufficiently well-to-do, a shirt, jacket, pair of pants, shoes, and a few accessories, visible and invisible, are asked to carry the weight of a terrible cultural and personal problem—to be visual proof that the wearer is, in just the right degree, ‘thingwardly aspirational’, but also, down deep, where it really counts, a spiritually and psychologically balanced ordinary guy. Clothes do not make the man: they turn man into art.

    An artfully clothed body is popular culture’s version of a mystery novel with the last page torn out. So long as the body keeps its mouth shut, and has no distinguishing marks, the dénouement of its promised satisfactions can be delayed while the reading goes on. Perfect fashion imagines undressing and, when it is lucky, or irresistible, carries its plot with it into the bedroom.

    The thing is to keep the mouth shut, if it is likely that what is going to come out of it does not precisely match, or exactly compensate for, the artifice of one’s clothes. There can be no reason, surely, for the expense of even an attainably cost-moderate Country Road image if the shortest conversation convincingly demonstrates the model is in a state of permanent emotional anaesthesia. If you have created the impression of being management material you must not natter like an intellectual twinkie. To be an unemployed Shakespearian actor with matching wardrobe is a socially acceptable misfortune, but you must not talk about it endlessly. Dressing for sex is, by definition, attractive. Verbal bonking is not.

    So, beyond all the things which hang on the surface, much deeper and more important, there is the ultimate fashion accessory, which must be tailored and worn most carefully. —Not art-print boxers. I am thinking of speech, the sound a body should make a short while after thinking, the physiological antonym of wind.

    You cannot imagine how pleased I am to make this discovery. It is only a personal discovery, though. There is nothing here I can patent or bottle. It is true that I am ugly; no one has been cruel enough, yet, to tell me this outright, but facts of this sort are known inwardly and should be admitted. Also true is I can, with some concentration and planning, turn out a phrase to make Arctic hearts melt, delivering it with conviction.

    The more expensive fabrics of chatter are not necessary to achieve good effects and, in fact, these days, they can be a hindrance. In the fashions of speaking, as in everything else, quality and originality are important. (A little cribbing is OK, to gain momentum, but steal from the best.)

    If you are, like me, one of the unfortunate multitudes for whom wit and charm must compensate for a paucity of attractiveness, you will be pleased to discover, if you haven’t already, that skill in their fashions can be learned, and memorising a few, simple rules of thumb will set you along the right path. Practice and more practice will enable you to play any part, to be, at a moment’s notice, the common bird admiring peacocks and the one they all want to take home with them, or Oscar making yet another American debut.

    Keep these points in mind as you set out to develop your verbal wardrobe …

    As with suits, so with words: you will be assessed by clarity of cut and shape of line. The speakers at the cutting edge of verbal fashion are always cutting out when too many others have cut themselves in.

    Stream of consciousness is the Hawaiian shirt of conversational arts. Make sure your partner has one packed before you don yours.

    Satire is proper and fair only among people capable of comprehending it, otherwise you’d might as well be wearing art-print boxers.

    Sarcasm is verbal pugilism: it is best to let other people do it, while you take bets.

    It is important to avoid clichés and any terms you have learned from newspapers, television, or in the workplace. For example, at very boring parties someone is bound to start talking about the economy and they will use words like ‘trickle-down effect.’ This is really the most insulting concept in economics. To most people it sounds rather like being pissed on from a great height.

    Avoid truth and morality at almost all costs. These are the two most destructive forces in human relations. Besides which, they are a little like reigning monarchs: no one planning to have a really good time ever invites them to parties.

    Self-deprecation is in most cases a more effective strategy of endearment than egotism, but you must try not to be too convincing.

    Prepare and memorise about half a dozen casual and witty remarks which can be easily transposed for use in different situations and among people of different political (and even sexual) persuasions. For example, in the wealthier suburbs of our major cities, it is quite proper to begin a conversation with a remark that, “The New Right’s idea of entertainment is sneering at breadlines”, but if you have any ideas of laying your pre-eminently fashionable interlocutors it may be necessary to add, “—The Government’s idea of entertainment is making them.” Don’t be embarrassed about wanting to bet both ways: in the bedroom everyone pays lip service to Glasnost.

    And as you reach for your Nautilus Vocab Expander, remember that it is only fashionable to be blonde by will if you have the audacity to show the roots. Words are the clothes, but the way you wear them on the tongue will show you either as a work of art or a bread pudding.

    Then it is only necessary to color co-ordinate mouth with wardrobe. In many cases this is easy. Dressing in Country Road or Sportscraft you only need murmur nostalgically about life on the farm and express vague alarm at any harsh turn in the conversation. In Gaultier you are expected to be more aggressive and darkly witty, and the effect of such clothes is completely lost without some sullen and misanthropic complaint about the complexities of life. Wearing Yves St Laurent is an overture to talk which is mostly serious and always sensitive.

    Matching inward and outward appearances, word with deed, mouth with wardrobe, you are fit for any conquest and thingward ho! But one more thing …

    If you are ever cornered and asked to explain exactly what it was you meant by what you said, and suspect yourself of saying nothing and meaning less, remember Dr Seuss— “I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. My clothes say a mouthful, one hundred per cent!”

  • Description of the struggle

    It is true the movements can sometimes go according to a formula and this is when they are least satisfying. In their defence, though, remember how the mind works when it is alone, grinding from scene to scene. Touch me there. And now here. Then there. Tick. Tick. It is necessary, somehow, to act as though the other were present in your dream and also dreaming. You are neither completely free nor in any way constrained. Finding one who is imprisoned there is, because of that, all the more terrifying. That “one” — of which there are many forms and faces — does not see the real features of the face or form with which it is confronted, but remodels them in the image of the dream before the action began. The whole procedure is rigid and precise — it could be said ‘scientific’, ‘experimental’, ‘repeatable’ — and cannot be repeated exactly, even once, without risking boredom. Many men and women are willing to take this risk. A small variation is introduced into the action. It may not be a variation of action exactly, but a variation of the attitude with which the action is performed. I do this now, imagining that so-and-so is doing such-and-such. Does that feel better? The life of the dream and the life of the action play at endless comparison and assessment — afterwards, that is. It is destructive to bring the force of memory into the play of your movements. To be present, engaged and unselfconscious is important, and almost impossible. Desire and love compete with each other. I want it this way, and that, then this. — Or — It is this way, and that, then this. You cannot take out wanting altogether, hoping to be left with a pure action. The wish guides you toward pleasure; without desire you have no identity, your ‘I’ disappears and falls out of your body as you say …am nothing. This is the struggle and the essence of struggle. What either one wants, at different times, is to be free of this struggle, to find the moment, several moments strung together, when the struggle disappears and ease and freedom take its place. An ‘I’ announces itself in a shout, not at the end of the action but at the beginning, where it is least expected and most clear. Then, it must be said, the sense of struggle does not leave either one entirely — for without it there is no reason to proceed — but is suppressed and becomes the platform of a noisy, messy construction. Both of them talk endlessly. A rule is invented which can be more or less easily broken and replaced by another rule. Thousands of small objects and motions pile up one on top of the other. The hand goes here. “Balance it just there. It is going to fall!” The whole, stupid structure can fall in a heap of laughter and the ‘I’ must announce itself in a shout again for the construction to continue. The play proceeds in waves and froth, swelling and crashing, one disaster and joke after another, crude, violent, farcical. (The one thing it is not — when it is itself, and what it should be — is silent. Silence takes the action, by force, to a place entirely enclosed by the desire of one or other of the participants and where movement is confined by studied schedules and policies. When the struggle is silent it takes the form of the simple wish to shout, to announce the presence of meaning. — But it is precisely this sound which is forgotten by rigid desire, alone with itself in a noiseless oblivion.) (There are also modulations, musical, recuperative and quiet, in which the struggle allows a different kind of silence. It is easy to become lost. As an example, I refer you to the Aria (Cantilena) from Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 by Villa-Lobos, where, from the beginning, voice and strings work in contrary motion but give confidence to each other, and each learns the other’s part. Voice and strings have the opportunity to speak a long melodic sentence, a sentence without words — ah — endlessly wandering and climbing and soothing. In the middle, when the music appears to have stopped, exhausted, and for a moment does, in fact, stop, both parts then discover the same text — a series of difficult, straining notes, repeated and sustained, slowly descending and then ascending — in which speaking is agony. Near the end the contrary motion of voice and strings reappears, the music expressing only the desire for release by asking the voice to sing with its mouth closed — by humming — mmmm… ) So much energy is expended in the struggle, in the falls and repetitions that are its progress, that the mind becomes drunk with chemicals released into its blood, and it is because they are drunk that each one has no fear to die. They do not know whether the struggle will fail and they will die or succeed and they will die. Knowing is the first thing to die and they are both stupid with love and desire. (…until the very end where both motions play the same, new part. The singer takes a breath before the last note and, with the teeth still closed, forces air into the head on such a note as makes the skull resonate, like a finger on the wet rim of a glass, and “ravishes human sense.” )

  • Dog day

    Do you have to wrap that stuff in so much paper?” one of the brothers said.

    “If you want to drink from broken glasses, no”, answered a woman’s voice from the kitchen.

    “Hey, when are we going to start putting the stuff in the truck? It’s ten already.”

    “Soon. Soon. As soon as the bows are on the boxes.”

    “Bows?”

    “Yeh, I think so.”

    Jocey walked into the room with a stack of plates in her hands. “I don’t care. Take them all now and we’ll see what happens. Why you had to move the furniture first I’ll never know. Sitting on the floor for two days, it’s been painful.”

    “I asked you what should go first last week and you didn’t have any suggestions. Just like a woman.”

    “Oh, how’s that?”

    “O, woman, so womanly. You can never — ”

    “You’re only like this because your brother’s here.”

    “Now, now. Leave me out of this, please.”

    “Yeh, go on. Leave him out of it!”

    The brother at the door squatted, bending his knees around the width of one of the boxes and prising his fingers between it and the carpet. It turned out to be the heaviest of the boxes, the one with A to Q of the New World Encyclopaedia in it. The elder brother pushed down the flaps of the box containing plates and picked it up. When he was half-way down the driveway of the house the other man was just then opening the back of the truck.
    It looked too large. Though the floor space would be barely sufficient for what had to be put in it, the ceiling was fifteen feet high. It would be mostly empty when they had finished.

    “God, she’s so fussy.”

    “Can’t be helped. Joan’s like that, too.”

    “They’re all the same. Sometimes I wonder why I did it.”

    “What?”

    “Got married, of course, you twit.”

    “It’s not so bad.”

    “My dog’s more friendly.”

    “Oh, come on … ”

    “Really!”

    “I like her. She’s always been nice to me.”

    “I noticed.”

    “What does that mean?”

    “I notice how nice she is when you’re around.”

    “She was like that before.”

    “Before marriage everything is nice … Your dog’s been making a hell of a racket.”

    “Had strangers around?”

    “Nup.”

    “We’ve trained our dog. He shouldn’t bark at nothing.”

    “It’s both of them. Noisy when they’re together.”

    “Let one out in the front for a while then.”

    “OK.” He slid the box containing plates down to the back of the truck and then jumped down to the road. “Drive this thing up closer to the house will you? And I’ll get the gate open.”
    Tom started up the truck and manoeuvred it backwards along the driveway, and Mike released the Dobermann into the front garden.

    “Have to travel to get to see you now.”

    “It’s not that far.”

    “Still, it won’t be the same.”

    “Don’t get sentimental about it.”

    “I’m not. It’s just that it’s really going to be the first time we’ve lived even in different suburbs. It’s strange.”

    “It’s not strange. It’s normal. Stop being queer.”

    “Thanks a lot.”

    “That’s OK. Any time.”

    “Jocey, I really don’t understand why you’re moving. I mean, it doesn’t seem to have anything going for it. It’s further from Mike’s work. The house is smaller. There’s nothing wrong with this place. I can’t see anything wrong with it. There isn’t, is there? Is it haunted, or something?” Jocey was looking out the kitchen window with an expression that was a little cold, a little aloof, as though there were a performance in the garden, one too obviously intended to inspire pathos. “Oh! The place is haunted!”

    “No. Not with ghosts, anyway.”

    “With what, then?”

    “Who knows? With Mike and me, I suppose. I was just thinking about the people who are going to live here after us. I can’t imagine anyone living here after us, after Mike and me. Not living. Screaming, I can imagine. Or dying. Or murdering. But I can’t imagine anyone putting together something like a life in this place, in this particular house, in that garden.”

    “You are in a bad way.”

    “I’m in a great way. It’s a bad marriage I’m in. You know, it’s really funny, I like murder mysteries … ”

    “Yes. You like murder mysteries.”

    “I can sit all evening at that bench with one of them, a different one each night. Mum says they’re trash; ‘escapist’ she calls it. But they’re not, because I set them all here. This place is full of suspects. Mike’s half of them and I’m the rest.”

    “I think I know what you mean, but … ”

    “We don’t like each other any more.”

    “That’s terrible.”

    “I’m not really sure that it is. Not terrible for me, anyway. After all, Mike is treating me the way he treats everyone. That’s fair, I think.” Jocey wrapped cutlery and kitchen utensils into tea-towels. Joan stacked arm-fulls of linen she was moving from a hallway cabinet. “I haven’t answered your question, have I?”

    “I don’t know.”

    “I like it here. We’re leaving because we like it here.”

    “I’m going to make a cup of tea. Want one?”

    “Yes, thanks.”

    “Doesn’t sound like a very good reason.”

    “With any luck we’ll have destroyed everything before we have any children. Then make a clean break.”

    “You’ve talked about that?!”

    “Hardly.” The electric kettle began to rumble. Joan looked at it, thinking for a moment it might say something she could understand. She searched the benches for milk and sugar. “Milk’s in the fridge.”

    “Tea?”

    “Oh, I don’t know. It’s a blue thing. Try in that box over there.”

    “Blue? Here it is.”

    “It should be blue, of course. Tea’s a blue drink. And gin, but I’m too young for that.”

    “Have you talked about that?”

    “Mike prefers non-verbal communication. Grimaces. Shrugs. Silence. Grabbing hold of me like a piece of furniture to be moved when I’m in the way. Maybe we shouldn’t have married so young. There was no need to.”

    “Milk?”

    “Yes, thanks.”

    “What are you going to do?”

    Tom’s great Dogue de Bordeaux stepped up onto the back porch and looked through the kitchen window at the women talking. The wrinkles between its eyes and a mouth that hung down at the sides of the face made the animal look always perplexed. Taller than the Dobermann and more muscular, this dog, nevertheless, seemed to Jocey more lovable and more human. “Is there sugar in this?”

    “No, sorry. Here it is.”

    “What am I going to do?” Jocey’s head swayed a little side to side, like an unbalanced gyroscope, unable to find an answer. “What am I going to do?” She looked out through the window again. The dog was still watching her, as though he, too, were waiting for an answer to appear on her lips. “You know I appreciate having you to talk to, Joan. We’re like sisters. It’s us against them, I think. The women against the men. They’ll kill us if we don’t stick together.”

    “All of them?”

    “Mike and Tom.”

    “Oh, no, Jocey, that’s not right. Tom wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

    “You don’t think they’re alike, then, that they don’t stick together?”

    Joan felt a knot forming in Jocey’s words, one she feared she would not be able to untie, and it made her angry. The brothers were not at all alike, but Joan wanted to give some explanation. “They’re brothers.”

    Jocey stirred her tea then sipped it quietly. “The dog is watching us”, she said, as it turned its hindquarters to her. The head started its dizzy, rolling movement again. Joan thought she might cry.

    Tom had moved quietly into the kitchen doorway and watched the women sitting in the sun beside the window.

    “I must’ve married the wrong one, then.”

    “You and Mike finished, are you?”

    “No. Just come in to see what’s happening.”

    “We’re having a cup of tea. Want some?”

    “No, thanks.” Jocey was taking no notice of them. Tom mouthed a soundless word and tilted his head, signalling Joan should follow him out.

    “I’m going to see how they’re getting along. Back in a minute.”

    Tom looked back from the front door into the living room to see that Jocey was not following them. “What did you say to make her like that?”

    “Nothing!”

    “If Mike had heard that he’d have killed me. It couldn’t be nothing.”

    “I asked why they were moving.”

    “That’s all?”

    “Aren’t you curious?”

    “No. Jesus!” Tom exclaimed in whispers. “Mike already thinks his wife likes me more than him. Don’t make it worse, please.”

    “She does!”

    Mike stopped for a moment near the truck and looked at his brother standing in the front door of the house. The Dobermann ran across the lawn from the street with a ball in its mouth. “Good boy!” Joan looked over Tom’s shoulder at the dog sitting at Mike’s feet. “She does what?!” He threw the ball away again and walked past the two at the door to pick up another box. “What does she do?”

    “Oh, nothing.”

    “Who are we talking about?”

    “A neighbour of ours.”

    “Oh.”

    Tom followed him into the living room, leaving Joan at the door to stare into the dog’s black, almond eyes. She walked to the back of the truck. “It’s going to be empty!”

    “Might’ve done better with a ute.”

    “I want to get it over in one.”

    “Whose dog is this?”

    “Oh, that’s the photo I gave Mike when he said he wanted a dog. You’ve still got it! Framed it and all!”

    “Nice looking dog, that.”

    “You think so?” Joan asked. “I think they’re a bit ugly.”

    Mike stopped to stare into Joan’s face, waiting for her to look up and notice his attention. When she did, he said, “ — Just like women.”

    “I’m sorry you couldn’t show it, Mike.”

    “Not your fault. Nobody’s really.”

    “It was a terrific looking pup. Still looks fine.” Tom attempted conciliation. Mike’s dog had developed an hereditary fault, its hocks crowing visibly. He’d been sold a dud, but one he liked, nevertheless, perhaps more because it was now useless for showing.

    Unwelcome or uneasy inside and outside the house now, Joan walked on the front lawn, pretending interest in the progress of the garden.

    “He looks terrible. The hocks are shit.”

    “That’s not much of a problem.”

    “I’m not saying I don’t like him.” The brothers sat down on the porch steps, elbows on knees.

    “This truck is big. We’re only filling the bottom of it.”

    The Dobermann stuck its head and forechest between the brothers’ shoulders, then sniffed at Mike’s ear. “Life’s like that.” The dog walked through the front door of the house into the living room and put its square muzzle into several boxes.

    Jocey, still in the kitchen, had begun to wrap glass bowls and small jars which she kept on the sill. One of them, containing clear green marbles and eucalyptus oil, neck blocked with a cork stopper, she opened sometimes to cover unpleasant smells. She poured out the oil into the sink, ran hot water into the jar to clean it. Hearing paws patting on the linoleum floor, she turned and said “Hello, stupid” to the dog. It stood up, knuckled feet resting on the edge of the kitchen bench. “Shoo! Go on. Get out of that!”

    Jocey watched low, grey cloud move above the garden, moving apart, turning the day overcast to bright in a minute. A sheet of light entered the room, striking Jocey’s breast, passed her and fell to the floor. The dog lapped it up, lying on its back in the magnified heat. Jocey looked into the garden thinking how quickly its mood had changed, everything in it unmoved but suddenly luminous, green, and felt trapped by its life like a potential suicide opening the door on her own surprise birthday party. “Damn. That’s really ruined my depression.”

    Roused by her voice, the dog patted across the linoleum to sniff at Jocey’s legs. “Oh, piss off! You’re as bad as your master.” The dog persisted, pushing neck and withers between Jocey and the sink cupboards, getting stuck there until Jocey stepped back to complain again. Circling quickly, it stood up, forelegs at Jocey’s back and shoulder, muzzle in her neck, and red penis poking at her thigh.

    Mike stiffened when he heard the sound of breaking glass and Jocey yelling “Stupid…,” “Rotten…,” “Mongrel!” He thought, and didn’t think, noticed himself concentrating on those sounds, repeating and reducing them to exactly the feeling they intended. They were no longer glass or word but an expression that could be read plainly on his face. The dog ran out the front door, but he took no notice of it. It was Jocey he wanted. Where was she? Where is the stupid, rotten bitch? He did not walk straight through the house to the kitchen, where the sounds came from, where he knew she would be waiting for him. He walked into the living room and looked at the floor as though he were looking for evidence or for something lost, knowing that he would find nothing. He stood there for a moment and looked at the blinds covering the window which faced the back garden, and the spears of light they sent into the room. He wanted her to come out and look into the dog’s face, chase it down the street, to scream, now, while he was there. “Where are you, you bitch!”

    Jocey, though, would do none of that. She was already calm, exhausted. “Your stupid dog tried to fuck me. I can’t believe it. It stood up and tried to fuck me! Stupid thug. Now look what’s happened. That beautiful jar with the marbles. I’m not going to find another one like it.” She bent down to pick up a marble, and searched, crouching, for others. “These will be OK, anyway. I can’t believe it. Do you have to let that thing in the house?” When Jocey stooped to reach near Mike’s feet he thought he might kick her. He took a step back from the kitchen door and looked at her head. He could do it. It would be easy. The anger was written in red strips across his face; in clear, vivid stripes of light on his red face. Tom’s dog barked in the back yard.

    “Get out of the way.”

    “It’s your dog’s fault. The stupid thing.”

    “Get out of my way.”

    The absence of anything meaningful to say had paralysed them both, replaying, in this moment, the scene which was their daily life together.

    “I can’t believe it.”

    “Let me out.”

    Mike gripped Jocey’s shoulders, lifted her up straight, and moved her aside. He walked out the back door and Tom’s dog rushed towards him. He led it off the back porch down into the garden and then to the gate. Jocey watched them from the window as they left the back yard to join the others.

    The dogs barked together.

    No one spoke a word but got on with the business of moving boxes. Mike and Tom moved back and forth between living room and truck. They moved more and more quickly, urgently emptying the house. Joan moved more slowly, slipping across the path of the busy brothers like a pedestrian through fast traffic. She stopped and laughed at them quietly, and then, embarrassed, thought they must have heard because the yard was quiet, too. The dogs were silent. “What’s happened?” Joan asked.

    The dogs were there, standing on the street, completely still.

    “What’s going on with them?”

    The brothers stood together, looking quizzically on the quiet scene in which the dogs also stood together like statues left in the middle of the road. The black dog moved first. Tom’s dog ran second. They seemed to spring into a chase of something hidden in a neighbour’s garden, but nothing could be seen there.

    Mike, Joan, and Tom moved out onto the footpath and looked across to the garden of the neighbour directly opposite them. The dogs had gone.

    “That’s strange. What are they doing?”

    “Shsh!”

    Since they could not see anything beyond the row of low bushes except the row of higher trees, and not even anything of the house beyond those, except the roof, they waited with their ears more open, staring blankly into the leaves.

    Next came the sound more musical and human than they expected, shrill and feminine and clear, a voice half wailing and half singing. It was not the cry of physical pain, but the tuneless singing of someone terrified and sad.

    Mike crossed the road, looked up at the house, and decided to go in. He did not see the dogs anywhere in the yard. The voice had stopped its strange song, leaving Mike to listen to his own thoughts. He wondered if the dogs could have attacked the old woman or her husband. No, it is not that. He sees the old man standing at the door, walking backwards, turning, not sure how to move. Closer, almost at the door himself, he sees the old woman raise her hands to her head, open her mouth, and release an odd note.

    Beneath the note he heard the low growl and grunt of the two dogs, and then saw them, down at the floor in the middle of the old couple’s living room, tugging at a bloodied bundle. Mike shouted a command at the top of his voice and, when it appeared the dogs might not willingly give up their prize, moved toward them threateningly, with his hand raised, repeating the command to stop.

    The dogs ran and Mike followed them out of the house. He watched the dogs closely, shepherding them back to his own territory where Joan and Tom waited for an explanation. He held his lips tight together, concealing the laugh in his throat. “It’s all right,” he said, and his teeth showed.

  • ‘Red streamer’

    The Palace Hotel is nothing more than an ornate shoebox thrown on a hill. Bushes have had their hair cut. Trees are tall and lean. The lawn is green felt. There is a driveway snaking elegantly to and from the entrance. I am standing on the lawn in the middle of the dream of luxury. A car drives up. Two Americans step out. I know the woman but not her name. Her daughter is with her. We exchange a few words and decide I will take a photo of them standing in front of the shoebox. She leaves the camera with me as she drives off with her daughter to park the car somewhere out of sight. I frame the palace façade in the viewfinder of the camera, trying to get the right angle. The light is diminishing quickly. The woman and her daughter come back by foot but as soon as they reach me it is dark. There are no lights anywhere. The moon is out. There are no stars in this part of the country. “Why are there no lights?” we ask. We wander around, arms stretched out in front of us, trying to find an entrance or an exit. We are frightened and asking ourselves, “Why are the windows blocked so that no light comes through them?” We find an entrance and go inside. Inside is a great hall decorated with little more than a few plush chairs and sofas. Middle-aged and old people are sitting and standing around the room. No-one talks. A woman in grey breast-coat and knee-length skirt, very prim and proper, hair bunched tight to her head, obviously a complete bitch, enters the hall. She says something about breakfast being served at 5-30. I immediately think that this is an odd time to have breakfast: too early, or too late, depending on which way you look at it. “What sort of dump is this?” the American woman says just before she and her daughter run out the door into the darkness. They obviously don’t want to have breakfast at 5-30. I run after them to fetch them back. Outside the palace there is no reference point. Someone’s voice calls out to me. I think it is a man’s voice but actually it is only a rasping whisper coming from the trees that line the façade of the palace. I reach out to grab whomever is there. I get hold of it. It may not be a person at all. Is it a dog? It runs away from me and I am falling over. I slip and fall to the ground, legs up in the air and my right arm being pulled down between my legs towards my feet. I’m horizontal. Whatever it was I grabbed has turned into a long red splash, lighting the road and lawn beside the palace. It stretches out across the lawn like a red streamer. The sky is lightening suddenly into an icy sea blue, the form of the palace and the color of the lawn becoming visible. Though I tried to hold it, the red streamer curls and twists, climbing into the air. Breakfast is being served.

    This dream-story was first published in The Ninth Satire. It is included among dream reports because it was originally a dream. In later years I abandoned attempts to turn dreams into stories and concentrated, instead, on finding a way of writing dreams that allowed them to remain, more obviously, what they were.
  • The black king

    The black king

    The house has been quiet for more than a year. Parties, not wild but happy, used to distract the whole block, and several of the neighbors did not shy from joining in a celebration they knew nothing about or did not quite understand. The man in this house was an open neighbor. He did not have a history, nor did he seem to create any that could be seen from the street. Amiable and talkative when he stopped at a fence to say hello, and often seen carrying a face that was all smile, he was to some people eminently approachable, and to others plainly weird.

    But women liked him. They liked him perhaps because he was conscious of not letting his eyes drop to their breasts and hips, or perhaps because, when he spoke, ordinary words would reveal an emotion.

    The house was different. Unchanging. Weather and years had no effect on it. So, when he disappeared inside it, he was no longer a neighbor but a secret.

    I don’t want to imply that the house was severe or gloomy. It was nothing like that. When he arrived, I think it was eight years ago, he stripped the ugly paint off it, planted evergreens front and back, and put startling pink azaleas in pots under the sills of the front window. On tables beside windows which faced the other street-the house is at a corner-he grew obconicas mainly, friendly flowers that I don’t like because when they are perfect they look artificial. From either street it was possible to see the rooms. They were sparsely furnished but painted in warm colors, and each of them differently. The picture of the house had been completed eight years ago and it never changed. A house should be a process, accumulating life. Parts of the garden should die, others flourish. Paintings, photos, tables and chairs, should move. Neglect should inspire unfitness of its looks, at least occasionally. And then, probably, there should be more than visitors. A family should scar it, graze the skin. A little mending and changing is good for a house. In this house, though, there was none of that. The house seemed inconsistent with the man. It had the rigidity of a silence intended to end argument and change. A picture of stability which could be happiness.

    Through most of this time I never spoke to him. That was not willful. The opportunity never arose; though it could also be said I never made one. When we first met I was one of the team whose work would be to care for him during the last few months of his life.

    “I’ve seen you”, he said and eyebrows lifted to form an irony.

    “Yes, I live close by.”

    “It must be strange. Is it allowed?”

    “We talked it over. I don’t think there will be any problems.”

    “If I’d known I could have invited you up for a meal”, he said, in that manner that was to become familiar, talking as though there were no more chances to do or to plan. For a moment I stumbled on the thought of objecting vigorously.

    “You still can.”

    He laughed, surprised to find he talked about himself in the past tense. “Yes, of course, though you may have to cook if I feel like shit.”

    “I’m not that bad a cook, really. You may be disappointed.”

    In the first half of the last year the house was noticeably closed. Window shutters locked a month at a stretch, the canary yellow car disappeared, and the grass, what small area of it there is, grew too long. He was in hospital while the burglars moved in.

    I am told that when he was in hospital he was a different man completely. The place reminded him of his dependence on other people and the truth of his illness. Why would a perfectly able and competent person be in hospital? He hardened against the forms of help and incessant prodding and testing which are natural (or at least unavoidable) in hospitals, so that it seemed to the staff he was normally unfriendly, plaintive, and terse. They were glad to get rid of him when it was decided he could stay at home, or, rather, that there was nothing more that they could do for him.

    In his house he could be difficult, too, but here at least there was time for him to explain what he wanted and didn’t want, and the team considered it part of its work to make these adjustments—within reason.

    With some people the problem is an excessive willingness to be helped; these people want servants who will turn dying into a style of luxury. —That’s what I’m told.

    In the first weeks he would allow us little more than to drive him to appointments with his doctors, for tests at the hospital, or to visit relatives. He was uncomfortable driving when he discovered his vision could suddenly blur. For a long while he relied on friends, those who were not afraid to visit or, rather, to wait through the long silences or bouts of crying that could erupt at almost any moment. If it was not plain fear that kept some away, the uncertainty of dealing with certain death restrained the rest from visiting. It was to provide relief for those people who had helped most that we were here.

    Elizabeth was the first of us to notice his passion for chess. Among the books in his library was a section devoted to the game, and in the living room an old cabinet contained at least a dozen sets of men and boards.

    “Everyone says that. Without fail, it is always the first thing you hear.”

    “No, really, I think I know the rules, but I’m sure I’m no good at it”, Liz replied. “I like board games, though.”

    “I like them less now.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “For some reason people always advise a new opponent they are really no good at the game”, he said, setting up the black pieces on his side of the board. “They think of it as an intellectual game. The mind goes on the line.”

    “No reason for you to worry, if you’re good at it.”

    “I suppose not”, he said with some anger.

    “Well, we can just play. You don’t have to talk about it”, Liz said.

    In the middle-game he started to talk again, looking at the board. “If I castle, plant a knight in front of this position, and play safely, the defence works itself out. I wouldn’t need to force a win. Draws can be very satisfying. It’s not at all like life; there’s too much art in it.”

    “Competitive, too”, Liz offered, struggling with his cryptic messages.

    “With you, unfair competition.”

    “I’m easy!”

    “All of you together, it’s unfair.”

    We learned not to be so rigid in our scheduling and we let him arrange us around him, realising that eagerness to help could destroy the will. It was unfair.

    But this, like everything in the last few months, also changed. At first, he wouldn’t allow us to do the laundry. He persisted with this ban longer than anything else, for reasons that must have been quite irrational because he didn’t mind at all that we did the ironing. In the meantime, we restored the house when he wasn’t looking, repaired the garden, and potted plants. The picture of the house got better as he deteriorated.

    He never forgot about the washing completely. His body would not allow him to forget. During long periods of diarrhoea he lost weight into his bedclothes and trousers; and when the problem wasn’t diarrhoea he would be throwing up every meal. We became adept with buckets and towels. That was easy enough. It was much harder to cope with his embarrassment and sense of degradation. When he felt this most acutely it wasn’t strange he wouldn’t talk to us, answering with shrugs, grimaces, and nods, instead of words. Moods fluctuated with his body, though, and when he felt better, he talked more.

    Twice he asked to speak to meetings of volunteers and it was during these meetings we heard what he thought about us.

    “I hate every one of the people, every one of those volunteers who come into my house”, he said. “I hate seeing my clothes neatly pressed. I hate having the bed made for me. I hate hearing questions like ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ ‘Do you think you will be able to have some dinner tonight?’ ‘Would you like to see your mother tomorrow?’ So I swear and curse. I think that if I hate everything that is happening to me enough, if I am angry enough, it will all go away. Stupid. What’s amazing is that these people decide they are not going to give up on me. Anger makes me feel better. It keeps me going.”

    At the start of summer his mother arranged a birthday party, gathering all the reluctant, complaining family at the house. She wanted us to be there, too.

    It seemed to me the more light came into the house the worse he looked, the easier it was to see those purple blotches which had appeared on his face.  —No, not really the light. It was seeing more of his family made me realise how divisive and frightening illness could be. Mother watched everyone keenly, afraid that at any moment someone would let a taboo word loose like a bullet in the air. Sister hugged him too quickly, and careful not to let her lips touch his face. Elder brother’s wife and child had conveniently found other duties with a mother-in-law. All this healthy prejudice and fear made him look ill.

    I winced with embarrassment whenever someone took up their duty to make conversation.

    His cousin, Tom, arrived like a change of weather, strode into the living room with a large, brown-papered parcel, and larger smile, planted himself on the sofa, and kissed the thin, sick man on the lips-leaving some of his smile there.

    “Sorry about the paper.”

    “Oh, god, not another one.”

    “Who did you say was the chess player?”

    “John. Over there”, he said, looking at me.

    “Good. I’ll beat him first then.”

    “Not if I have anything to do with it”, I said, accepting the challenge.

    The brown paper tore open, revealing a new chess board and heavy, wood box.

    “That’s the last thing he needs”, the elder brother moaned.

    “Yeah, I know, aren’t they wonderful?” Tom replied, opening the box and taking out two of the pieces. “Come on, we’ll set them up on the table in there.”

    Tom and I played chess, on the table with the obconicas. Brothers and sister talked, I thought too eagerly, with Liz and Mary, the two women on the team. Perhaps they thought if the conversation with the women lapsed they would have to speak with the men. With the women they could simply be grateful, but the men were another matter. They would have to ask, “Why are you doing this?” or “What are you really doing this for?” Tom, though, felt no need to avoid any of us.

    “He told me you live near here.”

    “Yep. Just down the street a bit.”

    “You didn’t know him before?”

    “No. We’d never met.”

    “Well, he likes you. I mean he likes you more than the others. Not that he isn’t grateful to all of you, but he likes you the most.”

    “I don’t understand that at all.”

    “He says you say what you think and you wouldn’t let him win at this”, Tom said, nodding at the board.

    “I don’t beat him anyway.”

    “You will, though… You know he uses the game to keep watch on himself.”

    “No?”

    “He doesn’t care about the Kaposi’s and the rest of it. Well, that’s not right: he does care. He just doesn’t want to go off his head as well. He couldn’t stand that. He’s afraid he won’t be able to think.”

    “Oh, I see.”

    “He’s got a nickname for you.”

    “Does he?”

    “Yeh.”

    “Are you going to tell me?”

    “Guess.”

    “I’ve no idea.”

    “The black king. That’s what he calls you. Silly, isn’t it?”

    “I hope so.”

    “Well, you’re not doing too well today. I’m going to win, I think.”

    “It does look bad for me.”

    “So why are you doing this?”

    “Helping, here?” I asked, to make sure I would answer the right question.

    “Of course.”

    “Lots of reasons. Just to help, for a start. Then, so he will know he’s not alone, I suppose.”

    “What about you, though? What do you get out of it? And if you say ‘satisfaction’ I’ll hit you.”

    “No … To tell the truth I don’t know yet.”

    From its first days everyone thought that summer would be particularly hot and mulled over hot synonyms like an incantation. Scorch, blaze, and the rest.

    A week after the birthday party another heat began. Mary telephoned one morning and waited at the gate for me as I ran down the street. We may have committed some indiscretion, or maybe one of the family had trusted a neighbor. It was just as likely that gossip and guessing had, for once, converged on the truth and spread like fire to the surrounding houses. On the footpath a great slash of red paint spilt from a can underlined the four letters of my neighbor’s new name, written with a thick, bold brush. I was astonished and Mary was crying. “That’s not all”, she said.

    “What else!? What else could the bastards do?”

    She took one hand from her face to point at the letterbox which was filthy with excreta.

    “Does he know?”

    “He can see from the window, John.”

    “Please, you go inside, Mary. I’ll get rid of this.”

    For a moment I thought of cleaning it, but really I wanted to kill, and might have except there was no one to lay my hands on. I settled for a sledgehammer, taking a swing at the box to knock it off the fence in one blow. There was nothing to do about the paint. Hosing down turned the red slash into a red blur, but the word was already dry and could not be moved. It stood screaming on the footpath for days and was never removed entirely.

    There were more important things to worry about. Our friend joked about the shit. “You know, you are too quick to condemn my neighbors. It could have been a very agile dog, or that big cat a couple of doors down.” Or he joked about my sledgehammer. “I’m lucky I still have a house the way you people behave!” I think it was resignation that released this humor on us, turning everything terrible into laughter. Weeks of humid, breathless heat, which I enjoyed, suffocated him. “It’s all right”, he said, “this heat now and no hell later will suit me fine.” He flatly refused to return to hospital. No one there would understand his new jokes.

    He died the night of the promised change, just to show that life really can imitate the weather. Tom tells me that Liz made all the calls when it was clear he would not last. Tom knocked on my door and said I’d better come. He didn’t need to say why. I knew it would be like that.

    Large, cool drops of rain crashed on my glasses and shirt as we ran down the street. The house, which had been sealed tight against the heat all day, was uncomfortably still and warm. As soon as he entered, Tom cried out, “Oh, for god’s sake, open the bloody windows!” It was dark, too, and I stood, sweating, in the shadows of the hall that led to the bedroom. Now, I thought, if only the doctor and nurse will not come. I wished for them not to come so there would be no more injections and orders, no more parody of medicine. I stood outside his door and wished he would die. Liz went from window to window, almost in a panic, as though opening them would save him. I hoped and wished and knew that nothing would.

    “Richard, it’s me—Tom. Do you want anything? Johnno’s here. Do you want to see him?”

    Tom put out his arm to call me into the room. It was Tom calling, though, not the man in the bed. Except that his ribs moved under the single, light sheet, he was dead already, and I doubt he could hear Tom spluttering about a game and that the black king was here.

    I sat behind Tom on Richard’s bed. I put my arms around Tom’s arms and chest to stop his fidgeting and prodding. While he sobbed, I closed my eyes and wished again.

    Then, while the house cooled, before the others came, there were no more questions, only answers.

    Originally published in Outrage, September 1988, and then in Imaging AIDS, Artists Against AIDS Exhibition, 1989, and Fruit: An Anthology of Australian Gay Writing, edited by Gary Dunne, 1994

  • A tall unmarried house-buyer

    Between the ages of 17 and 21 he was devout, and considered taking holy orders.  Before that were several years of recreational drugs, “Grass mainly”, and afterwards, the steep decline of devotion into the present.  He says there is a theory in psychology that the image of ourselves is moulded slowly by the way in which other people treat us and react to us; and also that he always thinks of himself as ordinary.  But he looks down on everyone, talks slowly, because no one can look him straight in the eye.  Taking no notice of his family, except to telephone every now and then to keep in touch, he is a little surprised and frightened that his lover finds them so disagreeable.  The step-father sells sun-glasses.  The mother is a social worker.  The step-father can spend hours giving instruction in the new technology of his product and the vagaries of the sales market; there is no division between the life of his work and his private life.  During business hours mother discusses the horrible details of a child’s abuse, knowing that the world is painful and dirty and, for some people, without hope, and after hours switches on a Pentecostal fervour in which she imagines her son surrounded by religious ornament.  She writes a letter saying what she would like for her birthday: “a cassette recording of you reading the book of Isaiah.”  The son refuses, with a knowing laugh his mother cannot hear.  “They’re all weird.”  “You’re the only normal one, are you?”  “Yep.”  There are very few people he does not like, finding something likeable in all of his fellow workers except one.  His politics and hobbies are social.  Hard-working member of the local branch of a democratic and socialist party, he brews beer at home.  Examples of it turn up at parties, restaurants, the homes of friends, anywhere it is acceptable to be seen with a bottle, and sometimes places where it is not.  Hobby, politics, and the local cricket team, define him as a social being.  Three thousand miles from his parents’ home, even further from most of what he remembers, he has fitted comfortably into an unknown city, as if no place would be alien so long as there were people in it.  Distance and change should have made him wary.  He remains unmarried, but lives with a small and quirky woman.  In their bedroom is a framed reproduction of a painting by Bonard.  It shows a girl inelegantly lumped, face down, in a messy bed, sleeping.  The painter must have known her very well, and must have loved her, less in the way some artists love each last painting than how, for others, there could be no limit of attention, or paint, lavished on unguarded poses.  The girl isn’t always tired, but she does enjoy her sleep.  They will buy a house, a study of desuetude, the only kind they can afford; and take the bed with them, and re-paint it.

  • Man in loft

    (Bach, Emerson, Shakespeare, Schopenhauer, Mirabeau, Foucault)

    “I have been taught to identify the mad, and to say ‘This person is mad and should be avoided,’  or ‘That person is not like us.  He must be mad’; though the lesson I have learned, in fact, is that people we wish to avoid are, consequently, mad, or that people who do not choose to be, or cannot be, like us, are mad.”  “You have to be schizophrenic to understand what it is like”, he says.  “If I were to describe what goes on in my head you’d think it was crazy.  When I am thinking it, it is very real.”  In our first conversation he tells me “I love music.  Classical Music.  And pornography.  That’s all.  Just classical music and pornography.”  Inside his flat there are clothes on the floor, along with a lot of dirt.  It is not possible to wash yourself clean in the bathroom, though the bath itself is clean.  “I clean the bath.  The bath is clean,” he says.  He plays the guitar, and then the mandolin, and then the banjo, and I notice there is a violin in a case on the floor of the living room.  —But he does not get to the violin: suddenly there is no more music and it is time for pornography.  “You’ll like this”, he says, as if by affirmation it would be true.  A woman whose breasts are clearly too large for her costume gazes through a window.  He goes to the record collection and asks, “What would you prefer—Shakespeare or, I know, yes, this will be great, Emerson.”  He shakes with excitement.  He takes out the spoken word recording of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poems.  The woman who was gazing through the window is lying on a sofa, masturbating.  “Thy trivial harp will never please Or fill my craving ear; Its chords should ring as blows the breeze.”  Yes, Ralph—of course.  There is an invisible world.  He introduces me to a friend, also schizophrenic, but one who, unlike him, refuses to take his medication.  John was a mathematician, and is still brilliant.  Now he is Jesus.  We sit in a café with Jesus, and I ask “What makes God laugh?”—immediately having to mask my wonder at hearing a precise and reasonable answer.  There is a more perfect world than the one in which we live.  Inevitably, he will refer the woman he wants to love, by way of introduction to the disciplined and misogynist world of Arthur Schopenhauer, to a bifurcation of that world into the mundane and the transcendent.  In the commonplace part he is only one of many.  By a choice which appears to be not entirely conscious he keeps the windows of his flat covered day and night, day after day, and always.  Lonely, only early in the afternoons, when he is tired of practising a difficult piece by Bach, he says to himself, “Now, what shall I do with my penis?” and, in the absence of the woman whom he loves, it is time for pornography.  The exceptional part meets the ordinary and, here, anything is possible.  He takes the opportunity to improve Shakespeare.  Once, in the asylum, he had read that “Such civil war is in my love and hate That I an accessary needs must be To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.”  Years later, in the afternoon, in a nausea induced by less than two milligrams of Cogentine, he remembers “As a necessity my needs must be To that sweet thief which hourly robs me.”  Which is taking what from whom?  Desire steals a part of everyone.  There are moments I feel he is about to say, “The world is my idea”,  and he would, as he did the moment the windows were closed and covered, look up at the sky, thinking to fly there, panic, look around him for something to hold on to; or he will, looking down at his feet, believe the world to be just a ball which will stop turning if he stops walking.  “You should read Jean Paul’s Selina to see how a mind of the first order tries to deal with what he comes to think nonsensical in a false concept which he does not want to relinquish because he has set his heart upon it, although he is continually troubled by absurdities he cannot stomach.”  He decides “I cannot love anyone” but has set his heart upon it.  One woman tells him, “You sound like a text book.  You think too much.”  These words come out of the mouths of people who love their own oppression, who have become insensible after having administered to their bodies a sufficient amount of pleasure (tennis once a week, nightly television, cheap but effective wine, a modicum of Faith).  You cannot utter such words to a man who has lived in another world, where infamous excesses are committed upon the very person of the prisoner; … vices which the propriety of modern times does not permit us to name.  In a word, you cannot say something so stupid to a man who has been mad with Desire.  The next time his psychiatrist asks “How are you feeling today?” he gives my reply: “I shall instruct my madness to be proud, For psychiatrists are proud and make their clients stoop.”  A small, typed sign is stuck to the door of his flat; it says, “Psychoanalysis: device allowing pigeon to enter but not leave loft.”

     

    Originally published in Overland, no. 120, 1990.