‘Apocalypse Now?’ he said. Tentative, trying to prolong the moment, bridge the gap.
‘Yes.’
It wasn’t clear if she was answering his question, or just addressing her caller. She was already past him, leading him back the way they’d come, past the corpse. It had split in two. The feelers had stopped moving.
***
Sammi left him on the wrong side of the last set of doors, still talking to the voice at the other end of the phone. ‘If they open the dam then the first two levels are going under. We need to know. It’ll take us—’ her voice cut off as they swung closed.
Burleigh leaned against the balcony. It was raining hard now. A grey wall of it, with the wind picking up it was driving in under the concrete structures of the library forecourt. The trails of mould glistened, guiding the overflow down the sides of the stairwells and the concrete bulkheads. Used to take the sunshine for granted. Up on the island the rain would come and then the sun. A cycle that defined the tropics. Green and steamy under those blue, blue skies, surrounded by that blue, blue sea.
These days everything stank in the city. His towel smelt, the bathrooms stank, elevators reeked. Everything damp and fungal. Cloncurry blew dust and swam in mud, the rains came in and left just as fast. The sun and the wind turning the silt to a fine red dust that entered every crevice and orifice. The mine at Isa had gone under. A toxic pool that shimmered in the heat with all the colours of the rainbow all that was left. He used to drive out there. Sit up on what used to be the lip of the pit and watch the colours change as the sun tracked across. Nearly 300 clicks there and back but something to do on a day off. Drink the beer ration. Drive back at night, spotlight the roos, playing chicken with the big ones, daring them not to move, as he accelerated. Should’ve been dead a hundred times but at the last minute they’d always leap out of the way leaving him drenched in sweat, heart racing, feeling like he’d just come in his pants.
Kind of like how he felt now.
The thrill of the near miss.
He started back down the stairs, back into the corner of bright colours and crouching monks. The rain blew into the exposed stairwell, slicked the stairs, and spattered his cheek.
***
Sammi had called it ‘the display’, but it was a living display. Four monks, red robes, sitting cross-legged around the large blue square with the complicated design, circles within it. One monk sat at each side, bent double at the waist leaning into the centre, the light bouncing from their bald brown heads. There was maybe half a dozen men and women, sitting cross-legged on mats, watching. Burleigh stood behind them. His back ached. Pain stretched out from his knees down to his heels. He changed his weight from one foot to the other. Uneasy. Glancing over his shoulder.
It was the noise. He only became aware of it slowly. A rasping sound, metal against metal. It resolved into a syncopated pattern. Insect like. Felt like it was boring into his skull. None of the watchers seemed affected. They were uniformly peaceful. Beads passing through their fingers, a gentle clacking underpinning the rasp. Burleigh skirted around the edge of the acolytes, stepped in closer to the monks. The sound grew louder.
One of the monks sat upright and the grating metallic rhythm changed, like one tree in a choir of cicadas had suddenly stopped. The monk stretched, his arms raised above his head. In one hand he held a long thin metal funnel, in the other a metal rod. He twisted to one side, supple-spined, picked up a small glass jar and poured a stream of bright green sand into the funnel. He turned back and bent again into the centre of the circle. The sharp metal rhythm filled out once more. Burleigh pressed closer, saw that the monks all held funnels, and from each a fine sand fell in fluid lines and curves of brilliant colour. Sand flowed like liquid along the chalked outline of the intricate design, coaxed out by the rapid movement of the monk’s metal rods along the serrated ridges of the funnels. The rasping no longer ground into his head, instead it cradled the constant stream of sand, and when it ceased, abruptly, at some unseen signal and the four monks sat up, Burleigh felt as if a part of him had stopped as well.
While the monks had tea Burleigh shuffled behind the platform. Silk and embroidered wall-hangings hung between wooden rods. Deities, according to the helpful signage. Monsters, draped in skulls and skins, fearsome faces, of fangs and blood, some balanced on one leg clutching their consorts, waving weapons from their many arms.
The print on the diagram of the mandala was small. The letter forming a soup as Burleigh squinted at it. He reached into his pocket for his glasses, the case flopped open, empty. He swayed in front of the board, trying to bring the words into focus. Making out only random pieces of things that made no sense. He murmured the words, ‘Mount Meru . . . vajra circle . . . purifying fire.’
‘You like mandala?’
The monk was as small as a child but his eyes were those of an old man. Unlined face. Could be twenty or fifty.
‘I . . . um . . . what’s it for?’
‘Purify. Heal. He is Medicine Buddha.’ The monk smiled, curled his fingers inwards and waved the back of his hand towards the coloured sand image.
Burleigh looked again. Swirls and circles of colour, a vase at the centre. ‘Where? Where’s the buddha?’
‘This Medicine Buddha, text, dharma, see sacred parasol in the middle, that is dharma, medicine. And these around it, eight lotus petals and eight begging bowls, then . . . ’
The monk’s accent was pure Bollywood. A sing song of memorized text and religious jargon. Medicine Buddha. Healing. Processing. Purifying. Jesus saves. That’s what they’d written on the white-walled church where the women had sung on Sundays, up on the island. Burleigh looked behind him at the monsters leering from the silken wall hangings. Flames and pain and blood. That’s where all the purification eventually led. Moths to flames.
From a distance, the sand patterns growing from the centre of the board looked like a drawing, coloured in with pastels or crayon, but up close the sand was not flat. The design had shape and substance. The parasol rippled, the blue waves splashing from the top of the bowls had crests, each single grain of sand, placed just so, creating detail and depth. The sand had substance. Control made it beautiful.
‘And, when you’re finished. What are you going to do with it then?’
The monk made a sweeping gesture with his hand.
Burleigh frowned, shook his head. ‘What?’
The monk repeated the gesture, a grand swirling gesture with his hand. Then pointed to a vase on a podium, a blue willow pattern. Burleigh blinked and saw it on his grandmother’s big side dresser. Never filled with flowers. A hairline crack in the body meant it no longer held water. It sat in the same spot on the dresser, hiding the water mark it had made.
Burleigh repeated his confusion. A taller, younger monk joined them. He spoke his English with a hint of an American accent overlaying the Bollywood.
‘We destroy it. Sweep it away. Into this.’ He lifted the vase off the podium, turned it gently between his long brown fingers. ‘Pour it into the river, send it to the ocean. The mandala is like life. Transitory. Impermanent.’
Burleigh saw the grains tumbling, the vibrant distinct colours collapsing together into a muddy ruined mess and began to cry.
The monks didn’t turn away. They didn’t look embarrassed for him, or ashamed. They smiled. The small one turned to the young one with the American accent and nodded, then beamed at Burleigh.
‘You get it,’ said the young translator. ‘That’s what he said. Maybe you were kadampa master in your last life.’
***
Burleigh sat hunched up in a chair watching the monks controlling the sand as they built their world of mountains and gods and purifying flames. His breath rasped along with the strike of their metal funnels. Around him people shuffled into the library, backpacks, the occasional blanket and pillow strapped to overnight cases. They’d stop, stare at the sand flowing from the monk’s fingertips. Sand clinging to wet hair. Refugees from places that had alr
eady gone under. He held himself tighter. His wet clothes stank. He stank.
The vase hovered above the four bent heads of the monks, the naked crowns almost touching. She’d told him the story, his gran. Let him touch it, turn it in his hands, while she told him the sad tale. The mismatched young lovers, the daughter of a wealthy Mandarin and his servant, who ran away on the eve of her wedding, stole a boat and lived happily ever after until the spurned groom caught them and killed them. Her old finger traced the story as he’d turned the vase, there were the doves, the Gods had taken pity on the lovers and transformed them into the birds of peace. The blue lines against the white, the story of love and hope and tragedy. He’d cried.
Next show and tell he’d carefully smuggled the vase to school. Proudly retelling the story. His classmates entranced until one, a boy whose parents owned an art gallery, stood up and told them it was a fake, a story made up to sell vases. Marketing, that was all. Just marketing.
Something red flashed past. Burleigh caught it in the corner of his eye. When he turned his head he saw her. A little girl in a red dress. She was stuffing things into the the large pockets, grabbing at the air, grabbing at the ground, grabbing at nothing, stuffing her pockets with nothing. He went to stand up, she skittered through the crowds, he swayed, his legs uncertain, and heavy.
It was cold. Burleigh shivered and sat down again. He’d just rest awhile. He sniffed.
Smoke.
He could no longer stand up, his body was heavy, refusing to obey. He swung his head heavily from side to side, no sign of fire. No sign of the purifying flame, no sign of smoke. But he smelt something curling, chemical and acrid, into his nostrils.
Just like the day on the island. The day after the coroner had said it was an accident. A fall. An unfortunate chain of events. He hadn’t even had a chance to unpack before they burnt the place down. The police station. The houses. That was when it started for him. The first of the lies.
He’d thought it was enough. To say what he’d said. He didn’t say what he’d seen. He couldn’t, he hadn’t been there. And he couldn’t say where he’d been. But she’d seen him. Looking at her. Outside the house, outside the window of the bathroom. All he’d heard were the sounds of the fight. The anger and the thump of bodies.
They’d burnt them out at night. The cinders like fireflies skipping through the dark night sky, the wind and currents eddying them ever upwards. Figures in the darkness, howling rage, him locked inside with the rest of them, but an outcast. The coroner had sent them all the statements. His didn’t match the script. He’d skulked outside, not seeing things.
‘Weak as piss.’
They’d huddled in the hospital, no electricity, just the flame of a kerosene lamp highlighting stony faces, and a little girl with black eyes sitting on her father’s lap, watching him across the dark space. He stared into the flame of the lamp. Moths battered themselves against the glass that housed the purifying flames.
The rasping stopped.
***
Burleigh was still propped up in his chair, a half circle of monks around him murmuring mantras when Elroy found him. He was stone cold. Outside the sand swirled and beat against the windows like moths to a flame.
Exquisite Corpse - Krissy Kneen
Ella opened her notebook. It was new, pretty, there was a pattern on the front. Birds flying, their beaks touching, trees draping their branches over a calm pool. It was the same pattern as the one on the vase. The vase sat on the edge of the desk, so close to the Librarian that when she lifted her hand and swept her hair over her shoulder, the tip of it, dark, straight, catching the light, just touched the edge of the little blue house on the clean white surface. Willow Pattern. It was written on the very back of the book in black print. The paper in the notebook was harsh against her hand. Ella liked the plain black notebooks better, the ones with the leather covers and the paper that was soft as skin. The only reason she chose this book was its connection to the vase, and in turn, the vase’s proximity to the Librarian. Ella’s Librarian.
Her Librarian smelled like flowers, gardenia. It was her hair. That hair fell thick and when it pooled on your hand it was as heavy as breath. Ella smoothed the front of the notebook, remembering. She had a flower hidden in the inside pocket of her jacket, woollen and damp. Although she’d sprayed perfume on her neck before leaving home, the perfume was cheap and the rain washed all trace of it away. All she could smell now was the damp wool, like a wet dog, and a hint of rose from the bud in her pocket. Red. The colour of an open vein.
She glanced up just as the Librarian swept her hair from her face, the neat, cut strands touching the empty vase. Ella watched as the woman twisted her thick locks back as if tying them with an elastic band. But when she relaxed her fingers, the hair fanned out over her shoulders, long enough to sweep the edges of the book in front of her.
Later Ella would ask about Wilhelm Reich. She had it all planned. She would relate it back to Freud, a question about the link between the two psychiatrists. The Librarian knew a lot about Freud. Last weekend she was reading a book about him and the Surrealists. Ella had walked slowly past her desk and there was a picture by Hans Bellmer. A wooden girl in pieces, a doll, her head turned sadly towards the ground, her body taken apart and put back again in the wrong order. The sculpture looked like her Librarian, with her long dark hair. But the picture was only a sad, imperfect version of the woman. Afterwards, Ella had stood in the bathroom just outside the Special Collections room. She had stared in the mirror. Ella looked more like the woman in pieces than the Librarian: Ella was growing her hair out and she was an odd collection of body parts. She reached her hands up to touch her own lowered eyelids. When her hair grew longer she would dye it darker. She would buy a straightener, some kind of product to make it shine. She would ditch her dark-framed glasses for contact lenses, tinted bright green. Then maybe …
‘Hey, Sammi.’ Her Librarian’s voice was a bright bell. The note of it caught Ella’s attention and she glanced up to see another woman in the same red and black uniform. Another, lesser librarian, pretty, but not as beautiful as Ella’s Librarian. Sweet-faced, young, her breasts straining against the buttons of her shirt. This new woman, Sammi, stood too close, one hand resting on the woman’s shoulder, and Ella felt her jaw tighten.
‘Crazy, huh?’ Sammi nodded out past Ella to the long stretch of windows, the grey curtain of water beyond them looking as if the river had been turned on its side to flow down out of the sky. A wall of water. The thunder of it.
‘They’re talking about the water. The levels rising. They said they might evacuate.’
‘I’m getting a coffee,’ Sammi said, touching that thick mane of hair.
‘I’ll come.’
‘Bring your brolly.’
Brolly. Ella felt her teeth creaking against one another. She would never use the word ‘brolly’, an ugly, nonsensical word. Her Librarian would never use the word. Ella’s hand was poised over her notepad, a pencil gripped between her fingers. The rough paper beneath was blank except for the finest of lines tracing out the places she should put her words. She watched from under her lowered lashes as her Librarian stood and stretched, her limbs unfolding. A flash of pale skin between her knee-high socks and her short black pleated skirt. She wore flat-heeled shoes so polished they caught the dim glow from the fluorescent lights and amplified them. Her skirt flicked prettily from side to side. Ella wished she could walk like that, a sweet swing of the hips, an easy grace, and then the doors swept open and they were gone.
***
Ella watched the rain. There was so much of it. A vertical river, an avalanche of wet, the sound like a great beast huffing towards them. She could see that the banks were breached. An army of white foam soldiers spewed up against the boardwalk with a force that would sweep away cyclists. The sound of it alone made her heart crawl up in her chest. She looked down to see a large ant scaling the leg of her table, skittering in a strange stop-start spiral pattern. Panic. This is wha
t panic looks like, Ella thought. The sight of the ant seemed to calm her. She settled even more when the doors peeled open and her Librarian spilled through. There was a trace of red on the woman’s cheek, lipstick, a farewell kiss. The ant finally made it onto the table and walked circles around itself till Ella lifted her willow-patterned notebook and rested it gently on top of the creature. She pressed down with the palms of her hands. There was a tiny click, the sound of its body popping beneath the weight of her notebook, and then silence.
She put the rose in the vase. She checked to see that no one was watching, shielding her action with the bulk of her body. She lowered her head, pressed her lips gently against the soft velvet of the petals. Whispered, ‘Know this.’ A kiss, the slip of a tongue. Ella turned and sat back down at her notebook.
***
Her Librarian gathered her papers. She didn’t even look at the flower, a perfect rose, fragrant, the petals just beginning to part, a bud at the very moment before flowering. The woman glanced up and around the room. Special Collections, the quietest part of the library, was a sanctuary, a church for the studious and the homeless. No students with barely disguised hip-hop buzzing their headphones. Ella liked it when her Librarian was on duty in this room. Apart from a foul-smelling man in one corner, his coat flecked with food and vomit, and an old woman in a lavender jacket and white gloves, flicking through a volume of collected newspapers, they were alone.
She watched as her Librarian packed her books into a simple leather satchel. She glanced around the desk, the clean pale wooden surface empty of almost everything. Ella held her breath as the woman paused, her brow furrowed. She raised her hand, rested her red lacquered fingernails on the petals, touched her lips with her fingers as if taking a kiss from the flower and then breathed in. The scent of it entered her lungs, something from Ella, some part of her love, ingested. Ella felt her eyes filling with tears. Why was she leaving now? Why didn’t she stay? She had her question prepared, written carefully in the back of the notebook. I need to find some information about Freud’s relationship to Wilhelm Reich. And then, underneath this, the prompts: Marxism, 1920s, character analysis. She had it all there, on the tip of her tongue. She had rehearsed answers to the questions that her Librarian might ask, Yes, particularly in relation to neuroses and sexuality. No, not the stuff about Orgone energy. That is too late, the 1920s, specifically.
Willow Pattern Page 5
