by Rodney Hall
He is watching three women who sit on rickety chairs seeking shelter from the sun. Unaware of him, they pass a baby from one to another. Happy. How can they be happy? Don’t they know life is cheap? Haven’t they been taught yet? The two old ones take turns. They have wise eyes and scarfed heads. The treasured child with imperturbable aplomb adjusts its line of vision to contemplate one face then another. And now it is restored to its mother, accepting this with the same soundless trust. The oldies persist, competing for attention, waggling work-worn fingers, pouting their kissing lips, tongues clucking, bedded smiles deep in wrinkled cheeks. Each takes hold of a tiny foot to feel the toes through the wrappings. There’s a partly ruined wall between the street and the courtyard where they sit, but nothing screens them from the enemy soldier lurking under the last intact archway. He breathes their contentment and gives it back as blue arabesques of cigarette smoke that stand in the still morning air. And now a shopkeeper emerges to stack the morning’s supply of flat-bread on an outdoor table. The inviting aroma goes public. Far above, at a remote altitude, four military aircraft rip the sky open and dwindle out of sight. (F18 Super Hornets: ours.) One of the grannies glances up. Then without warning she aims the same distant gaze directly at him . . . the observer. Her steady scrutiny shows no fear. Her withered face stern. Or is it simple? She gives nothing away. Anyone can guess the terror and grief she must have suffered during this war, yet her expression is not that of facing the enemy—she watches as she might watch a hatching dinosaur egg.
Memories having set Adam’s heart pounding, he takes a lopsided clarifying look around at his things. The open laptop. His unsupported body bent crooked on the couch where he has been dozing. Now to pay the price. He eases cramps and seizures. Cautiously flexes his fingers—one by one—and rotates wrists. Panting, he turns his attention to his legs. If they hurt less it’s only because they are farther away. The epicentre of pain nestles at the base of his skull. He drags the Contraption close and lifts himself into its embrace. With agonizing slowness he juggles the fastenings and gently engages the control pad. Reassuring power. The limbs responsive to the least attempt at movement. He focuses on not knocking anything over. Upright, spine imperiously corrected, the arm supports rise and stretch. Skin crackles and his body registers pains deep in the unhealed patchwork of flesh.
The shutter blinks, the page turns, and all is new.
Out in the sun. He has already negotiated the ramp. Yao is with him. Next thing they’ve walked the whole way down. Even to the gate. This time he achieves the impossible, actually crossing the road. Breathless he stands at the brink, propped up by his frame, the illusion of a perpendicular man. And with his friend at his side he steps into the park for the novelty of it. Underfoot the lawn is soft and treacherous. Trees rise around them as stilled fountains of energy. A stopped world.
Bridget survives all day. She has made it till now. Walking, walking, walking as darkness falls, she completes a circuit of the block, up the gentle slope of individual houses each in its garden patch, toward the somewhat ridiculous little block of four terraces where she lives. Here and there a television flickers. To her left the whole sky is stained dirty orange by the city lights. She chooses the middle of the road, passing a fence where a heap of leaves burns. Wild sparks swirl, a gusting tree of smoke stands ghostlike against the darkened sky. The glowing heart of the fire is a deep tunnel full of popping embers from which something flies up like a wing, tilted and frantic. Desolate emptiness closes down around her when she realizes there is a woman tending the fire. The silent witness, pitchfork in hand—though a neighbour—is a total stranger.
The cone of light from a single overhead lamp shivers like a gong. Eyes wide open. Night, night, the eternal slow motion of night. He brings up his blog and writes: were we the terrorists. us with our shells and bombs. our enforced democracy. He feels a growing respect for newspaper correspondents to whom words come readily. Even the much-despised tourists frequenting the shabby bar of the al-Rashid Hotel who fire off photographs and compare notes (while an empty taxi with the motor running mumbles to itself), witnessing every novelty as somehow connecting them to the birthplace of civilization. Not to mention warriors like Lloyd Farrell.
The door slammed and the missile hit.
After the explosion he concentrated on the sole surviving function of his willpower, clinging to life. Right from the moment of regaining consciousness embedded with shrapnel—balled up in a steel cage filled with fire, neither flat out nor sitting up, neither fully facedown nor on his back, when the mashed flesh might have belonged to anyone and the contents of his numbed brain leaked from one ear—secret lucidity flashed inside his skull with terrifying brilliance. Shut down.
By now his jar of blood will be aboard an aircraft crossing the ocean to reach the third world. A wind gets up and buffets the house. Is he conscious, or is he dreaming? Both. He tries out his good ear by listening to an ancient piece of music, just singers without instruments, a strange composition by a man who murdered his wife while she was in bed with her lover . . . and for a moment imagines he can hear dark compulsions sinking in freefall. Enough is enough. Bridget had a lover.
So, what of Adam’s own murderer?
When it came to the point Adam’s own murderer botched the job, despite being armed with the staggering power of modern weaponry. No doubt (whoever he is) he lies asleep right now, ignorant of his failure, on the far side of the world.
They are together.
Satisfied for the present, Adam twists his trunk so he can read the clock. But what it says means nothing.
There are new studies of the power of mind over body, quite eclipsing the power of the mind over Contraption! Adam seeks out these theories and examines them for every last crumb of hope. This is not just a matter of instructions, this goes to the core of how instructions are generated. The results are in. A damaged brain can clearly remake itself. The neurotrophic factor corrects what damage it finds—or at least bypasses the problem. And, if specific functions can be reassigned from one segment of the organ to another, this may open a way forward, a way previously thought impossible. Old assumptions about fixed circuits and irreparable damage are disproved, the analogy with hard-wired computers being declared simplistic and, in point of fact, wrong.
He has his own proof because by sheer willpower he sends fresh blood to extremities he cannot yet reach with his hands. Rare blood. And when mental exercise sets a network of prickles crimping his scalp with tiny punctures even the Contraption is alerted.
He grits his teeth. An act of grace takes place.
The brain is a universe investigating a universe. He dips into the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. He stands with Leonardo under a window in the Bargello while the great man sketches the dangling body of Bernardo di Bandino—one of three conspirators tried and hanged for murdering Giuliano de’ Medici. It’s 1479 and Leonardo sidesteps the big issues, the crime itself, the nature of life and death, ambition or power, the merciless ruler and his enemy within. Instead he simply takes note of the textures and colours of the clothes worn by the corpse: a tan-coloured small cap, a black serge doublet, a lined black jerkin, a blue coat lined with fox fur, the jerkin collar covered with black and red stippled velvet, and black hose. This, from the genius who knew more than anyone, before or since, about observation and invention. The final page offers an enigmatic summary: Movement will fail sooner than usefulness.
Adam inhabits his world.
Darkness fills Bridget’s glass bowl on the windowsill—a specimen flask of the perfect. He questions the vertigo in which he floats. Also the supposed neutrality of space. Just for an instant his body no longer aches. Is this what joy feels like? Is this what death feels like?
He comes to the conclusion that, beyond the wielders and victims of authority, lies a greater mystery . . . because how is the imagination itself reborn in each new generation? Is it kickstarted from scratch by the n
ew crop of infants? Does it happen when they utter their first word? He gets it: astrophysics and the Taj Mahal both begin with ‘Mama’. This is what holds the fabric together and gives it value. In the beginning was the word: the most important tool we ever acquire. And so it is when the end approaches. He himself as proof. Dazzled, he holds his idea in mind. Ruined though his body is, he still has the power of the word. Why did he never know till now? This and more.
While we are alert to the tyranny of foreign cultures we are mostly blind to our own.
After a sleepless night Bridget tiptoes through her house, filled as it is by the radiance of a new day. Nothing strikes her as quite where it ought to be. Even Adam himself is transformed by sleep, prone on his prop-up bed, naked head hard as marble and ponderous as a Roman emperor. The loose gown has slipped off his shoulder to reveal the striations of scar tissue quilting his chest. A pulse ticks under his jaw and the thickness of his neck astonishes her.
‘Poor lamb,’ she whispers.
No lamb was ever like this.
Bridget shifts the Contraption to make room for herself. She perches her weight there—not quite sitting—as if ready to leave. She is close enough for her thigh to cushion his ear (the deaf one) and next thing he rolls slightly in his sleep, sensing her support. The heat of their bodies shared. Her hand finds its way to his cheek. So, for the first time since his return . . . and voluntarily . . . she leaves it there . . . she does not withdraw. Still he sleeps. Perhaps he dreams.
He is in her safekeeping.
She leans close for what her sense of smell can tell her. But it’s too antiseptic to be intimate. Meanwhile she is free to test her intentions, she allows her hand to discover his ear, his nape, his collarbone. What am I doing? she asks, though there’s no obvious answer. ‘Never mind,’ she murmurs. And bends over him. With tender caressing fingertips. Surely he will wake? Now she takes his head in both hands. She lifts its weight off the cushion—crusted skull and hot core—and the sensation is somehow cosmic. She holds him. Her tears erupt. She kisses him. Enough is already enough. Setting the head back where it belongs she surrenders his nightmare to the embrace of things.
Trembling she stands.
How little substance there is to the self. She is a small creature in from the wild. She ought not to be expected to obey civilized rules. She musters the courage to face captivity. She needs all her strength to keep herself from the recurrent dream of running, running, running. The alternative is a penance of humble routines. Helping her invalid to undress, washing him, guiding spoonfuls of mush from plate to mouth and celebrating the activity of his reconstructed bowels. Who can she rely on to give her strength? She knows, she knows.
She watches her husband’s eyes—under closed lids—knuckle from side to side, blindly searching.
dear yao, this email may be one thing too many, now i see you most days anyway. and thank you for that. us aussies are an awkward mob when it comes to personal stuff. we dodge the bullet by calling it bullshit. but the thing is, i can’t keep hurting bridget. she needs her freedom. my one wish is that you might help.
adam
ps. the wanker’s going with my plan. stage 2. to put a bomb under the system.
Thirty-nine minutes after he began to type he finishes. But this time he isn’t counting.
His tumbler is filled with the perfect opaque whiteness of milk, no less mesmerizing than the opaque redness of blood in the sterilized flask.
‘Yours is so particular,’ the nurse explains familiarly, now she feels they are beginning to know one another, ‘the Australian Air Force is on standby for this.’
He wonders if his own life once depended on an international search for supplies.
‘At least. It’s a thing. I seem. Good at.’
The possibility of sarcasm is discounted. The nurse has no room for nuance. ‘Beg pardon, Mr Griffiths?’ She remains busy, positive, bolstered by facts. ‘Now let me take off your . . . okay. There, you see?’
She packs the flask in her cooler.
The nurse has gone. She has made off with enough of his bottled blood to keep some stranger alive. The milk stands on the lunch tray untouched, a blowfly scouting the rim.
Snoozing through siesta time Adam thrusts his hand (miraculously complete with four fingers and thumb) deep into a baggy pocket found to be full of coins. Oh, he has been punished with whips and thumbscrews for making a mockery of the legal profession—but the high court upholds his appeal in the nick of time—in his sleep, thrusting, thrusting this restored hand deep in his huge pocket . . . a pocket somehow filled with squirmings. Then, like bees from a hive, tiny rioting birds fly free above the judge’s head.
Justice and the law.
At least the captured Iraqis being tortured in that Samarra library knew what they were suffering for—the pain was their proof.
‘You were miles away,’ Bridget says.
Already another bone particle of the past works its way to the surface, emerging as a lump of soreness at the base of his neck.
‘I once watched. Some women. In Iraq.’
‘Women?’ the question sounds sharper than she intends.
‘Old women. Two of them. Plus a. Young mother with. Ar. A baby that they. Shared around. Sitting in the ruins. Casual as you like. Sort of contented.’
The substance of this is the baby (and not the gold-crowned infant of Ryan’s postcard) so Bridget knows what he means. Their marriage has just ended. Hard to explain how she can tell, but there it is. He has reached into himself to release her by giving away all hope of a child of his own. He has found the right image. Clear as a suicide note. Quietly and casually he is saying goodbye. A moment of the spirit that defies analysis. His delicacy takes her breath away.
‘You’ll tire your voice,’ she says harshly, as the best she can do.
‘It’s fucked. Anyhow.’
He sees in her eyes that she understands. Whatever it costs her, she will honour the gift. Dear unfailing courageous Bridget. Just how she will claim her freedom remains to be seen.
‘What?’ he asks playfully, picking the mood.
She collects her strength.
‘You know, mostly I feel so lost I can’t tell the difference. I mean, between right and wrong.’
There it is. The final nail. She has named her way out. All that remains is to decide when to take it.
Zac can no longer delay confessing his failure. He reports back to his friend the Minister. Surprisingly she cuts him short, her varnished nails drumming on the desk, as if she feels no obligation to hide her displeasure.
‘So he says no?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Well, we guessed as much. According to our sources there’s already a second public appearance planned. Disgusting sight. To include the full investigative catastrophe this time. More film clips—all unsubstantiated, of course. Aimed at plucking the public heartstrings. And he’s in contact with a book publisher, too. We know everything. He plans to dictate it. They’re talking a lot of money.’
‘Surely not?’
She dismisses Zac without ever having invited him to sit down.
‘Tell him he’d better toe the line, pronto, or we’ll take back the equipment he stands up in.’
‘I will.’
‘At the end of the day, no one can complain that I didn’t try my best,’ she observes wisely.
Morning. Bridget feels a great weight lift. Adam has understood—she no longer needs to feel trapped—and there are several possible solutions. Progress is palpable. Pallid garden flowers bob and dance for the risen sun. Meanwhile she has agreed to forgo her morning run so she can walk in the park with Yao and Linda instead. She waits. Abstractedly she stares down into their overgrown garden, having noticed a small dog lapping at the puddle of water fed by a leaky tap. And before she can gather her wits things begin to happen beyond
her control.
*
In the world’s most liveable city (according to criteria laid out by an anonymous panel of town planners and lifestyle aficionados), in a typically liveable suburban street—which, thanks to the park along one side is possibly the leafiest corner of that liveable suburb—four terrace houses stand a little above their neighbours on an outcrop of rock. These narrow Victorian properties, as anyone with the least interest in real estate would know, are nonetheless eminently modest. Outside one of them a ramp leads up from street level to a shallow verandah and a porch where the front door stands open. Here a young woman, completely unaware of being watched, rests her forearms on the railing. In the glorious dawn light a couple of high-flying clouds go bowling across the sky. Parrots rob the trees, ripping at the bark. But she seems not to notice. She is preoccupied with long creeping shadows being thrust diagonally across her neighbour’s garden by the rising sun. Only her wristwatch winks.
