Hollow Earth

by John Kinsella

  147.

  Twenty-two years old. Escaping to London, to Bloomsbury, to a ten-pound-a-night room. To the other side of the sphere – other sides, in so many ways. He’d been through rehab, gone to a brothel, started a relationship with the girl he’d hooked up with, been dumped after a week, started on the hard stuff again when he received a small inheritance from an auntie (his second of four inheritances), gone back into rehab, come out and caught a flight to London, to ‘break the chain’. And he would walk from near Russell Square station, down via the theatres to Trafalgar Square and the galleries. He’d lost five stone during his addiction and now weighed seven and a half. His walk took him past a leather and PVC bar where strong men had their feet up on table rungs, drinking pints. It was summer. It was summer but he was cold and walked around rugged up, but sober. He greeted the fellas each time he passed. He found them interesting enough and felt like having a chat. He said, G’day, but they just watched him and looked out past him into the crowd of passers-by. This went on for three weeks until one day he woke in his tiny room, pissed in the handbasin, felt the sun come in on his penis, and said, I am alive. He left the hotel in a T-shirt and jeans for his walk. It was eleven in the morning. He felt good. He walked past the bar, thinking, today I will join them!, and said, G’day, and one of the fellas said in a low, disturbed voice, Get a long-sleeved shirt on, mate, you look disgusting. And then he felt his bones sticking out, his collapsed body. And then he fell through into Hollow Earth. Hard to hear a story over and over again. But from a single folktale so many versions come. And we make do with them as we will.

  148.

  Zest had begun to understand, or to think she understood. The absent father. Out the door one day, then never seen again, only heard over the telephone three or four times over three years then silence. Why are we performing a role for him, Ari? Ari, who had become addicted to the agitation prompted by rubbish films on aeroplanes, said, You mean like Nicholas Cage always jerking his neck to one side to command a sense of imminent lunacy mixed with commitment, of anger mixed with high dudgeon, of zeal mixed with unpredictability, of emotion mixed with I don’t give a damn so watch out? Sort of, said Zest, who was beginning to appreciate the loose saying, the open reply.

  149.

  Manfred, I have connected with a hacker who calls himself HLH (aka Mendacious) – have you heard of him? asked Ari. I have visited him in ‘the embassy’ where he is holed up, surrounded by the palace guards. He is very fond of looking at my breasts – he likes their colour, the way the nipples look inward. He says the only way a tyrant can be beaten is by inserting a greater tyrant in a position of absolute power. He goes on about deep mines of information, and says that at the core is the truth that will set him free and allow him to rule in a justice in his own image over all the world which he calls information. He is very quick on the keyboard and it doesn’t have to be qwerty. ‘Förlorad’ is out of copyright, I know, but even if it wasn’t he wouldn’t hesitate to free it to the world. He knows the deepest secrets. Might he be a useful ally in our search?

  Well, HLH is selective. He will hand over info to save his own skin, and then he will bust open the corrupt reservoir all at once. He looks at things askew and likes his own skin a lot. His skin is very white, and I’m being figurative here. He enjoys wielding power and has an insatiable curiosity and he likes to win. He also prefers not to be executed and is certainly not a watertight container. He could be the tool of annihilation and the tool of resurrection all in one. His ego blindsides his ego and he steps where he will incite. We are grateful for many of his revelations, but he is selective and will serve the thieves and the oligarchy where it suits him. He is pragmatic and ambitious; women seem to be no more than avatars to him.

  Easy to set up, readily sets up others, has nuclear compulsions which he sees as egalitarianism. If he taps into our Hollow Earth code the path will be found, but a floodgate will open and the interior world will be drowned. It has to be in his own image, above and beyond.

  Well, Manfred, he suggests they’re onto us. Watching us, listening in. There are files. He will arrange to leak them.

  Then, Ari, their liberty will become Hollow Earth’s doom. A fatal conundrum.

  He says, On the other hand, if they’ll let me out for a round of links golf I’ll lose the files.

  Hmm, twenty years ago I bought crack from a young lord who now sits on one of the defence committees. I’ll make contact. Keep visiting, keep sharing your breasts with him.

  He is quite primal, Manfred. I have to make the limits very clear or he goes to town. Ari, too, was taking to easy sayings. She smiled as she said it.

  150.

  What am I trying to build then rebuild out of so few pieces with so few characters with so few experiences? Manfred asked himself. Zest and Ari were gone, and for how long he had no idea. He stood outside the Tate Modern watching a juggler near the wall that held down the flat flowing Thames. It is controlled now, he thought. And St Paul’s beckoned him. I was there for Occupy, he said, but nobody heard him. The art inside was too assertive for that – his activisms were as nothing.

  151.

  Making his escape from the Front National he scrambled through the mountains, taking shelter in a goat shed after two days and nights without rest. Nearby, a mine of torbernite crystals – a tiny aperture, and crystals that belonged to both worlds.

  152.

  A pregnancy. A birth. Responsibility.

  Sharing a triple room always meant three in the bed the little one said. As he pulled at the sheet and blankets to cover his chest, Manfred’s hand slipped free and whacked him in the jaw. Ari was in the bathroom and he could hear her spluttering him out into the toilet bowl, and Zest was asleep on her stomach next to him, sub-stirring with the blanket movement. She didn’t wake when Ari called out, I am going to sleep in the single bed tonight. Manfred was suddenly dozy, or knocked out, and let it drift, thinking as he went to sleep that they all spent too much time in hotel rooms and on people’s couches; that for people who in their different acclimatisations loved being outside and in familiar places – the wheatbelt and Hollow Earth both so far away – it was strange to make of such places a semi-permanence. But he did not subscribe to the deluded anthropologist’s notion that they were ‘non-places’ – no, not at all. They too were conduits and their sameness was deceptive. On this warming thought, with a sore jaw, he did a proverbial fall into unconsciousness. He dreamt of interiors and exteriors. The smell of banana skins, hollowed avocado shells and the powder of corn chips left on the table – the remnants of the quickest of evening meals – permeated his dreams. Strangely, it was the smell of Hollow Earth. This ‘non-place’ was alive with possibilities, and itself as well. It was all places.

  *

  Hollow Earthers cannot get pregnant unless they want to get pregnant. If they desire a baby, fertility is triggered and a female (or a male who has changed by choice, their body converting over a few years without surgical intervention; diet and ‘desire’ – no surface usage of the word equates – are adequate stimulus) produces a lining in ‘her’ womb and releases a series of fertile eggs until one catches hold of an offered sperm. Ari was aware Zest had made herself receptive in this way, that she was leaving the drugs alone, that she wanted to be pregnant. Ari was happy to step aside. Ari also knew that the birth would likely help in finding the true path to returning to Hollow Earth as it would create a fusion, a synthesis of the two worlds. The baby would be a transitional object. That seemed harsh, but Ari knew Zest would adore... no, love... the child in its own right (she paused before letting ‘thing in itself’ slip through), so there seemed little danger of moral compromise.

  *

  We’re no closer to finding a way back, Zest! Every opening closes before we can complete the transition, every hole fills itself before we can pass through. You should have discussed becoming pregnant with me first. But why, Manfred? You know how it’s done in Hollow Earth and you know the decision is the bear
er of the child’s alone. Why do I need to ask you? It will be difficult, Zest. We have little money left and I don’t want anything more to do with the drug world, especially now. We have to settle in one place for a year or two, we have to arrange for you to see a doctor on a regular basis, and we need to prepare. Ari will look after everything. Ari is more obsessed with drugs than ever. She will keep us, nurse me, and be there. She has synced with me and with the foetus. Our baby – and it’s all our baby – will guide us back home. As the orbs of its eyes form, they will see the inside of me is Hollow Earth – they will see it entire and complete, and they will be born into this world with a vision of the other world. Already I can sense its developing awareness, and Ari and I will dream it with knowledge, with its traditions and history. And you will provide it with the knowledge of this world after it’s born. It will understand very fast – faster than surface children. It will absorb and process and reprocess all you tell it, all you think. As parent, you will provide it access to who you are and what you have been. You make it sound like a Messiah, Zest. No, I am not saying that. Not at all – the baby will be of both worlds, that is all. Axis mundi.

  *

  A birth in a clean room by a river, with the city, Cowtown, glimmering nearby. The football stadium central to all, a game on, and cars being turned over, burnt. State versus state. Everything was blown with light – the walls were like mirrors but weren’t mirrors. Time had folded and space fed Escher-like on itself. The baby learned of Escher as soon as it saw its surface parent, Manfred. It was born eyes wide open, seeing all – no time of adjustment, of coming into sight. Ari, The Deliverer, sticky with green afterbirth, cut the double cord and tied the twin centres of the universe. Already they leered like distended eyes. It’s a girl-boy, said Ari. Wonderful, said an exhausted Zest, who gathered the child to her breast immediately. Born in America, Manfred said. It will be an American citizen. It’s a good thing Hollow Earth isn’t on the banned country list yet. Levity as an addiction in itself, Manfred, quipped a jubilant Ari, who was off her face but fully functional. The IRS will pursue this kid forever wherever he goes.

  153.

  Manfred is digging a hole down in the sandy creek that runs through the salt. He is tunnelling to the other side of the earth, his uncle’s .22 rifle leaning against the remnants of a chimney and a fireplace, the last standing pieces of a house abandoned to the salt fifty years earlier. Salt crystals climb everywhere but not out of the sandy creek. Digging, he hits water, and there’s salt there, but liquid salt. Phhwooottttt. Phhhwooottt. Airforce trainer jets zap past overhead. They will see him digging, finding a way through. He digs visions, the sun an arc welder joining the metal of the rifle with a piece of iron sticking out from the chimney – a hook of sorts. He has a bucket and is trying to bucket the salty water out onto the downstream of the glinting, searing creekbed. But the sides of the hole collapse. It is cool around his hands, he takes them gloved with silt out of the excavation and they dry and stick. They itch. The contents of the world are irritants, irritating. He hears a truck in the distance – he knows Kevin will be in the truck with his dad, carting the last of the harvest to the bins. Harvest finished three days ago for Manfred’s family. A good year. Kevin will want to ‘do things’ when their harvest is finished, but Manfred prefers his own company, much to his uncle’s bemusement. But mainly Manfred is afraid of his feelings for Kevin, who he thinks he might love. But Manfred can’t love anyone but his absent mum, who is searching for the key, searching for both of them. Manfred is staying with his uncle for six months. He catches the school bus from the old turned-on-its-side rainwater tank that was used by his uncle’s daughter, Manfred’s cousin, before she drowned in a dam.

  Kevin catches the same bus – they secretly held hands once though they risked being beaten to a pulp by the footie boys, who were always grabbing each other anyway. Manfred was afraid at the school with York gums all around, but said little. His mother was far away, searching for something she promised to bring back from Easter Island or Greece or Guatemala. A way out of it for us, Manfred, please trust me. He did. He only trusted her, though he quite liked his uncle as well. Two blokes in a house, said his uncle, is a messy business. Manfred had no idea what he meant. Manfred’s auntie, had ended up in hospital after the loss of her daughter. A hospital by the river down in the city. It’s a glorious old building with wonderful views, said his uncle. It’s a good harvest this year, Manfred.

  Then the dry comes.

  Long-range forecasts said the dry would go on and on. And, in fact, it would be years before another good harvest. And through all the dry, the saline water burbled beneath the dry creek bed, and salt crystals latticed the old chimney. Manfred didn’t fire his uncle’s .22 that day, or any other day after. The salt latticed the butt, the trigger, the barrel. It staunched the powder, incapacitated the detonators. Between the drying world and the other side of the curve, the sphere, was a salty silty water working its way round granites and ancient rocks that would disturb biologies if released.

  154.

  But Manfred’s mother was in Egypt, not Europe or the Pacific or Central America. She was far up the Nile, searching for a stone she’d read about in a popular book about extraterrestrials influencing earth cultures. She had worked for two years in a town library to save the money to make the trip, which she was doing on a shoestring. With a scarf covering her head, and in long skirts, she made her way to where she’d been advised not to go. She got messages home when she could.

  155.

  Piton de la Fournaise. The Cocos–Keeling island atoll. Entry points, but difficult. Like digging in the dry creek bed of the salt paddock? Holding the baby and walking to and fro trying to ease its colic, he thought back to being in those Indian Ocean places. A hint of a way through? How much money do we have? he called gently over his shoulder to Ari, who was drawing with crayons – pictures of her childhood places. Twenty thousand left from my last deal. Ari had not given up – in fact, she had become thoroughly entrenched. She was always strung out – aggressive and constantly threatening to undo them all, to contact the Big Miners, give them the inside running on Hollow Earth. Then she’d get paranoid and contrite and swear off the drugs and the drug trade forever. Zest and Manfred insisted that if she was to stay with them (this infuriated Ari), she was to stop. Not much money but enough – and I notice you’re willing to spend such dirty money. And that’s it if your ban on things continues – not that you’ve got any say over what I do! But you’re happier being out of that world, aren’t you, Ari? I mean, you’re looking a lot better now you’re off it. It’s true that the crap in my head is easier to handle, Ari has to agree. And you’ll continue to agree, Ari – it’s fucking immoral to sell that shit. I wouldn’t say too much, Manfred, and if Zest hears you swearing in front of the baby there’ll be trouble. The baby wailed and Manfred sang ‘Ten Green Bottles’ all the way through, moving up and down, to and fro till it calmed. So, Manfred, what are we going to do about money? We need to go to Australia where I can get work, he said. That will take all our money – and it proved a dead end before and we’ll be right back in the scene. Australia is a big place, Ari. Doesn’t matter, the threads run all the way through. Things will find us. You mean that you’ll find them, Ari. Or we could fly to La Réunion and plunge into the volcano and hope we find ourselves back in Hollow Earth, said Manfred. Or we could return to Ireland and wait till the thinnest time of the year and see if the passageway on Mount Gabriel opens and if it does splash down with baby! Now, said Manfred, studying the baby’s pulsing fontanelle, that’s a plan. And I know a few farmers around there who’ll give me work picking stones from their fields and pay me cash in hand. And we all have friends there. It wasn’t such a bad time after our emergence into the surface world, was it? We could manage if we’re frugal and stay away from the shit.

  156.

  There was a zone of Hollow Earth known as the vacuum, which was considered mystical yet dangerous. Anything that went too c
lose was sucked into it. From a rocky outcrop at a safe distance, you could look in: it was like the other side of a mirror. The black of the reflective surface. All the wastes of that part of Hollow Earth were pushed to the periphery of its influence, and were gradually drawn in. The storytellers said, The land recycles everything and gives it back in ways we don’t completely understand.

  157.

  Godzilla! Mothra fought with ... ? Gamera? Which atomic weapon awoke the monsters? Manfred worried about this at his grandparents’ place. He worried about it a lot. Which alien cut through Gamera’s shell? Mothra come again from the egg left over? He went over it with Ari and Zest again and again. Stoned or straight, he told them. Even after the birth. Why are you saying all this? asked Zest, sleepy with the baby at her breast, turned in to the centre of the bed, it being fiercely cold beyond the warmth of the blankets and their bodies. I’m testing my memory – I’m worried my brain is dissolving. I am trying to remember because I thought about it so much when I was young — I fear I am losing contact with who I was, what occupied my thoughts. And then, trance-like, a doggerel look of self-parody entered Manfred’s eyes, swirling like whirligigs, and he started chanting (almost) something from the slush pile of his memory, his past life: