by David Cohen
So the town hall remained the only halfway-decent space. Pilgrims unable to get actual seats occupied the aisles, giving the proverbial finger to health and safety regulations. Before one performance, a dispute broke out over one of the disabled-parking bays. When the inspector came to investigate, she was confronted by two cars with their respective front ends partially inside the bay, both drivers refusing to budge. She then observed that, while each vehicle displayed a disability parking permit, one of the permits had ‘a homemade look about it’, insofar as it lacked an ADPS serial number and, indeed, everything else except for the familiar symbol. When questioned, the driver admitted that although technically speaking he suffered from no form of impairment whatsoever, he now ‘identified’ as disabled and was therefore entitled to park there.
That was a sign of things to come. Many of the pilgrims who had descended on Des chose to remain there, setting up camp in the caravan park off the road into town. None of them were disabled in any medical or legal sense of the word, but I couldn’t help noticing that they too had started displaying the symbol on their vehicles. Some went a step further, wearing the image on badges, homemade but professionally laminated and hanging from lanyards like so many staff ID cards.
Meanwhile, I’d begun to realise that I no longer occupied a central role in Duncan’s career. There was now a hard core of acolytes – Morag Gamble was the most conspicuous – who accompanied him wherever he went, and who were happy to attend to his needs. Needless to say, they weren’t ‘technically’ disabled, but there was a certain aggressiveness in the way they wore their lanyards. Spurred on by the writings of Cameron Blythe, whose weekly columns now did little else but rhapsodise about the ‘game-changing genius of Duncan McMath’, they fought hard to associate themselves with this revolutionary musical phenomenon. Despite it all, Duncan still hadn’t learned any new songs.
One afternoon, driving home after a weekend camping trip with my son, I noticed something unusual at the turn-off to our town. A sign that had stood there for years:
WELCOME TO DES
now read:
WELCOME TO DES (EXCEPT FOR ABLED PIANISTS AND OTHER ABLED MUSICIANS)
I drove straight to Duncan’s house. Morag Gamble opened the door.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Is … ’
‘He’s having dinner. Any chance you could come back later?’
‘I’ll be brief. Is he alone?’
Morag fingered her lanyard. ‘For the moment.’
I followed her into the living room, where Duncan sat at the wooden coffee table he’d made back when he had hands. He was sucking up a health drink through a straw. Until then I’d never seen him eat anything but tinned soup.
‘What can I do for you?’ he asked magnanimously as I took a seat. Morag perched herself on the arm of the couch and rested her hand on Duncan’s shoulder. He went back to sucking up his drink.
‘The sign,’ I said. ‘Have you seen it?’
‘If you mean the one at the turn-off,’ Morag cut in, ‘it had Duncan’s full approval.’
‘Shouldn’t we be putting this kind of thing to a vote?’
‘We did – an informal one, anyway. Almost everyone was fine with it.’ Morag seemed to have taken on the role of Duncan’s spokesperson – in addition to preparing his meals and no doubt performing more intimate duties I preferred not to know about.
I looked at Duncan. He had, in the course of the discussion, put his feet up on the coffee table. He was wearing a pair of what looked like custom-made shoes, clown-like in their exaggerated length. I wondered where he’d got them.
‘Actually,’ he said, still sucking at the straw, ‘the pilgrims added that extra bit on the sign. The vote was to make it official. I mean, after all, if we removed the sign and put up a new one, they’d probably just change that too.’
‘So now the only musicians we can have in this town are disabled ones?’
‘We prefer not to use that term anymore,’ Morag replied. ‘It makes us feel marginalised.’
‘And yet you find it quite acceptable to use the term “abled”?’
Duncan removed the straw from his mouth. ‘Well, if we didn’t use it, the sign wouldn’t make much sense.’
‘How many musicians are we going to get here with that sort of restriction in place?’
‘It’s quality that matters, not quantity,’ said Morag. ‘Anyway, we’re planning to establish a music school right here in Des for musicians who are … for home-grown talent.’
I looked to Duncan for confirmation.
‘It’s the least I can do,’ he said.
Late that night, I drove out to the WELCOME TO DES sign with a tin of white paint. As I erased the parenthetical addendum, a car displaying a homemade disability parking permit drove by. It skidded to a stop fifty metres up the road and started backing up. I managed to finish the job just as two irate pilgrims emerged from the vehicle. Dumping the paint and brush, I leapt back into my car.
When Cameron Blythe alluded in his weekly column to ‘the philistine elements behind the defacement of our sign’, I knew I couldn’t stay in Des much longer.
A few days later I saw Duncan at the bank, accompanied as usual by Morag.
‘I see you’re not wearing the hooks anymore,’ I remarked.
‘Morag thinks it’s wrong. Shows lack of pride in my stumps.’
‘Did you hear about what I did to the sign?’
‘I heard something.’
A few moments passed while I waited for Duncan to continue.
‘Well?’ I said. ‘Any thoughts on the matter?’
‘I try not to get involved,’ he said. ‘I don’t judge you for it, but I can’t tell other people what to think. I just play my music – that’s what I’m here to do.’
I wasn’t sure if ‘here’ meant here in Des or here on earth. I suspected the latter.
Morag patted his shoulder. ‘We’d better get going, muffin. Rehearsal time.’
Duncan smiled at me. ‘You’ll be happy to know I’ve almost perfected that new song.’
I left Des shortly after and have had no contact with Duncan since. But I do know that Duncan is no longer the only pianist of his kind in Des. Sometime after I moved away, the concert hall that had been planned for so long was finally erected, only now it is known as the Duncan McMath Academy of Music. Here, any aspiring musician who is or who identifies as disabled (although they prefer not to use that term) is given special tuition based on Cameron Blythe’s philosophies, summed up on a silver plaque in the courtyard.
Art and suffering go hand in hand
The plaque is set into the pedestal of a bronze statue depicting the academy’s founder. It’s an abstract piece, commissioned by the Des City Council. I’ve seen photos in the newspaper: a giant disembodied pair of twisted legs hover, seemingly in midair, above a disproportionately small row of piano keys. The first thing you notice is the grotesquely elongated toes. It was made by a sculptor who, in an act of extreme devotion, sawed off his own left arm before embarking on the project. He’s now a rising star in our town.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Barry Scott, Tess Rice and Penelope Goodes at Transit Lounge. Extra-special thanks, as always, to Simone.
Earlier versions of some of the stories in this collection have appeared in the following publications:
‘The Hunter’ (under the title ‘Regarding the Ibis’) in The Big Issue Fiction Edition, 2012
‘The Virus (Travel Notes)’ in Australian Book Review online, November 2010
‘On the 345 to Aspley’ in Bumf, July 2015
‘The Case of Nathan Gant’ in Meanjin, vol. 73, no. 1, 2014 ‘Woodcutter’ in Meanjin, vol. 63, no. 4, 2004 (under the title ‘The Mad Woodsman’) and Readings and Writings: Forty Years in Books, Readings, 2009
‘Carlos’ in Flashers, Seizure Publishing, February 2013
‘Pioneer’ (under the title ‘The Pioneer’) in Indigo, no. 3, Summer 2009
‘Tony’s Farewel
l’ in Wet Ink, no. 15, Winter 2009
‘Lament of a Bus Stop outside the Benrath Senior Centre’ (Runner-up, 2016 Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize) in Overland, no. 226, Autumn 2017
‘Washing Day’ in Mini Shots, Vignette Press, 2008
‘Shrinking’ in Space: New Writing, no. 1, March 2004
‘Look for the Silver Lining’ in Etchings, no. 11, 2013
David Cohen lives in Brisbane, Queensland and is the author of the novels Fear of Tennis and Disappearing off the Face of the Earth. The Hunter was shortlisted in the 2015 Dorothy Hewett Award for an unpublished manuscript.
