A Man Melting

by Craig Cliff

  ‘I guess things have changed since we were eighteen.’

  ‘I can’t get over the size of his head. That mane. I think I’m going to grow my hair.’

  ‘The RBS will love that.’

  Perhaps it was the age difference, but Penny quickly grew tired of the incessant conversations about the differences between home countries and laughter about accents. Whenever there was a question like, Do you have snakes in Holland? or Do you have Dr Pepper in England?, and it inevitably expanded into a general survey of the existence of snakes or Dr Pepper in the known world, Penny would be called upon to speak for New Zealand.

  Once, when Lucy, one of the M&S girls, asked how they pronounced pasta in Scottish, Penny replied, ‘Look! Outside, it’s Africa.’

  Despite, or perhaps because of, her behaviour, the other girls on the tour looked up to her. She was worldly and tough. A go-getter with a PhD. They came to her for relationship advice.

  ‘You two are so sweet,’ Sally, the other M&S girl, said once. Penny had been hassling Leo about his obsession with lions. ‘I want a relationship like yours.’

  When they made it to Victoria Falls at the end of the first week, Penny signed up to bungy jump. She didn’t want to jump, but everyone else was going that afternoon. It wasn’t peer pressure, just a fear of being alone.

  As they strapped her feet she heard Lucy scream a hundred metres below, but Penny wasn’t scared. She stood on the edge of the platform, stared straight ahead as instructed and jumped on ‘three’. Falling head first, she didn’t scream, just shut her eyes. After what seemed forever, she was jerked back up. With her eyes closed it felt like when you are falling asleep and, in your half-dream, you go over a bump and your body acts it out.

  ‘Did you like it?’ Leo asked when the boat brought her back to land.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You didn’t even make a sound.’

  Later, as she helped prepare dinner, her hand holding the potato peeler started to shake. Leo was off taking photos of the sunset over the Zambezi. She looked at her hand and thought, Did I do that?

  At her job in Edinburgh they made her type up agendas for meetings she wouldn’t go to and minutes from meetings she had not attended. All it took was the same first name as someone from her tour to cast her back to Africa. Even when the name Jane appeared (it seemed to be the first or last name of every candidate whose CV she had to photocopy) it pulled her back there. She remembered the turmoil before their departure through her memories of Africa. That one flare-up, that one proper argument with Leo, seemed to occur in both places, Edinburgh and Africa, the way you hear the sound of a body twice when you run over it.

  Ba-dump ba-dump.

  Forget it forget it.

  ‘I’m sorry, Pen. I don’t know what I was doing.’

  ‘Oh. Yeah. Right.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

  ‘Do you ever?’

  Had she argued with Leo in Africa? It felt like it. It felt like they had been constantly at eacoh ther’s throats, but she knew they hadn’t.

  Feelings and knowledge. Two very different things.

  As she filed timesheets, she thought, How can I have felt so little for so long and have so little knowledge?

  Their first night on Zanzibar, there was a strange sound in Penny and Leo’s room. It was the first time in over two weeks they hadn’t slept in a tent. She had been looking forward to a mattress thicker than a slice of bread. But this noise. It was worse than the I think so uncertainty of the drive times or the origin of the meat they were eating. Animal, vegetable or mineral, she didn’t know what was making the noise. She wasn’t even sure where it was coming from. Inside the cabin or outside. Inside or outside the mosquito netting slung over their four-poster bed. Inside her head or outside of it. She lay on her back, trying so hard to be still that the strain of her stillness began to hum in her ears. She wondered if Leo could hear the sound. If he was even awake. She didn’t want to ask him in case he was awake and could hear the sound but didn’t know what it was either. Mystery loves company, she thought. I don’t want a flippin’ mystery. I just want to know the sound, to give it a name, and fall asleep.

  No such luck.

  She decided that, instead of ignoring it, she should describe the sound as best she could. That by drawing parallels she might cross over into the truth.

  Like a man endlessly peeling oranges.

  Like scratching a calloused heel.

  But the sound seemed to move and change every time she tried to articulate it.

  Like opening the perforated edges of a payslip.

  No. Not anymore.

  Leo rolled over to face her. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re sighing a lot.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Can you hear that noise?’

  ‘I was hoping it was in my head.’ She rolled onto her back again.

  ‘Where’s it coming from?’

  ‘I don’t know. What do you think it is?’

  ‘Bats? Cockroaches?’

  ‘Someone grating nutmeg?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said with a smile in his voice. ‘Or someone slowly pulling apart Velcro?’

  They were silent for a long time, both of them lying on their backs.

  ‘Do you want me to get up and have a look?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Even if it’s a rat gnawing on our bedpost, I’ll be disappointed.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. Before, he would have said something like, I don’t understand you, but he was always giving way now, though he didn’t understand her any better.

  She continued to lie awake, taunted by the indecipherable sound that wasn’t coming from anywhere in particular. Leo drifted in and out of sleep. She felt guilty for being awake, for disrupting him.

  Shortly before sunrise, at the coldest point of the night, Leo said, ‘Talk to me.’ In the darkness, his words boomed. ‘Talk to me. Tell me what’s on your mind.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I don’t know I don’t think so maybe I’m not sure. Penny, adrift in the mists of Africa: before, during and after.

  She thought, How careless I have been.

  ‘Please, Penny. Say whatever it is you’re thinking.’

  She thought, The window has closed.

  ‘You need to talk about this Jane thing.’

  ‘It feels so far away,’ she lied. ‘It’s just this sound. It won’t stop. It’s driving me crazy.’

  She was at the photocopier, duplicating the agenda for the recruiters’ regular Monday afternoon meeting, when she received a text from Leo: Starbucks Castle St 12.30?

  He had slotted right back in at work after their month away. He was on the committee to organise the Christmas party, had a clear line of sight to his next promotion and could take his breaks whenever he wanted.

  They took the only free table, one up the back covered with several tables’ worth of uncollected mugs and side plates.

  ‘I feel like a seagull,’ she said.

  He looked confused.

  ‘Seagulls live at the dump.’ She waved her hand over the refuse on their table.

  ‘See, I always thought seagulls lived by the sea.’

  She didn’t say anything.

  ‘So, how’s your day been?’ he asked.

  ‘I stared so long at a wall planner that it Magic-Eyed into a herd of zebra.’

  ‘That boring?’

  She sipped her macchiato, began to fiddle with her gloves which sat on the only uncluttered part of the table.

  ‘Hey,’ Leo said, placing his hand on hers, ‘it’s just temporary, right? I’m sure you’ll be a high-powered consultant soon.’

  ‘I was thinking of maybe working for the Fringe again.’

  ‘Selling tickets? You did how many years of study?’

  ‘I know. I know, I just —’ She pulled her hand from beneath his. It felt so light, the negative weig
ht of his hand lingering on hers. She reached under her chair and gave him the present.

  He unwrapped the video game and placed the paper on the pile of plates.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, looking her in the eye.

  She nodded.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  ‘It’s your birthday.’

  ‘Pen, it’s just work, right? There’s nothing else, y’know —’

  ‘Weighing me down?’ She pictured herself carrying a sack of Are you okay?s and What’s up?s and stepping onto a set of bathroom scales. ‘I’m fine, Leo. I’m fine, I just have to get back.’

  ‘Already?’

  She got up, and he rose to kiss her, planting it on her cheek.

  On Zanzibar she had managed to fall asleep before Leo’s alarm went off, enough time to dream about her grandfather and a certain faculty member having a sword fight, the clash of the weapons echoing the unplaceable sound.

  Penny and Leo were the last of their tour group to be seated at the restaurant where breakfast was being served. The place was called Fat Fish — not very breakfasty, she thought — and the dining area of the restaurant stuck out over the sea. She recognised the view from one of the tour brochures Leo had shown her.

  A waiter placed plates of sliced pineapple and melon in front of them and said something that sounded like, ‘Shoes?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Penny asked, rubbing her eyes as if the sunlight reflecting off the sea was the problem.

  ‘Yes, two thanks,’ Leo said. As the waiter returned to the bar, he explained. ‘Juice.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Rough night, Penny?’ one of the Australians asked.

  ‘Those termites sure made a racket, didn’t they?’ It was Martin, the retired policeman.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said one of the Dutch girls, and turned to her friend. ‘Termieten.’

  ‘I know what termites are!’ the friend said, and this set the whole table off, everyone talking about the termites without the least bit of surprise in their voice.

  Penny looked across at Leo and he shrugged.

  She mouthed, ‘I’m so tired of these fucking people.’

  When she got back to the office, everyone else was still at lunch. She felt obliged to mind reception, though the phones weren’t ringing. Out of boredom, she picked up the date stamp. She enjoyed using it every morning on the mail, the sound it made, the excusable force required. She pushed the top, slowly this time, so that the stamps rolled around to reveal the negative of the day’s date, wound the date back a few days, and stamped this date on the receptionist’s jotter pad. She fiddled with the date again, this time stamping her last birthday. She wondered if there was something like this stamp she could use to roll back her life. This time she would take more of an interest. Really keep her finger on the pulse.

  She scrolled the numbers around again, and stamped 30 Feb 11. An impossible date. Soon, the receptionist’s jotter pad was covered with impossible dates.

  87 Sep 57

  32 Dec 32

  00 Jan 69

  That night, she lay awake as she had many nights since returning to Edinburgh, trying to winnow a sound from the silence. Hoping for a mystery, for an edge to her life. But the only sounds could be explained away. Ambulance. Drunken revellers. Rain against the window.

  When there was nothing for the longest time, she couldn’t bear the silence so she asked, ‘Did you hear something?’

  Leo groaned. He rolled over onto his back. Listened.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Me neither,’ she said.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Late. Early. Both.’

  ‘Do you remember that night on Zanzibar?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ Penny said.

  Parisian Blue

  In Kampong Som, Megan enjoyed a strange form of celebrity. She was not the only white person, but the others came in hand-holding pairs or giggling, uncountable packs. Perhaps, she wondered on her first day, the lack of females travelling alone was a fluke. A seasonal quirk. She had been to rougher places by herself, after all. But in Dar es Salaam or Khartoum people weren’t surprised — they were perhaps a little offended, but not surprised. Here she stood out.

  Causing a Stir, she thought as she rustled through the dusty streets in sarong and sandals, having fallen into the habit of thinking in subject lines suitable for her group emails.

  Bruges the Hard Way

  Trains, Planes and Auto-da-fé

  Heart and Seoul

  This was after leaving Tessa in tears on the lawn in front of the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, and losing custody of their travel blog, Megan and Tessa’s World Tour.

  World Tour? Back when they set up the site, still at work on the North Shore, Asia wasn’t in their plans. But here she was, alone in a Cambodian beach resort — closer to last resort than luxury resort — being followed by local children wherever she went. They didn’t pester like the touts: the young men who either knew nothing about personal space or pretended not to. The children seemed oblivious to her lack of money. Perhaps this was just inexperience, but Megan preferred to think of it as unsullied good nature. She walked around the streets of Sihanoukville, past the Americans in cane furniture sipping lattes, past the Australians buying fabric from movable stalls, past the French people applying sunscreen before braving the beach, trailing her entourage of ankle-biters and urchins two arm-lengths behind her like a benevolent Pied Piper.

  At night, however, she was alone. Veasna, a friend she’d made in Phnom Penh, had hooked her up with a private room for only four US dollars a night. There were many of these one-favour friends in her wake; she faithfully added each to the email group for her weekly updates, but never received anything in return.

  The nights passed slowly, but she couldn’t bring herself to plan more than one day in advance, nor could she fathom returning home any time soon.

  From Phnom Penh, three nights in Kampong Som seemed like plenty. Enough to escape the boiling-pot-of-pasta humidity, read a trashy book and figure out where to next. But on the third day, instead of sitting in an internet café and sorting her next steps, she sat on the beach with her entourage, teaching them to say, ‘My oh my, what pleasant weather we are having.’ In return, the children taught her, ‘Knyom chmoah Megan. Coh louk chmoah oy?’ Every time she said this, a different child would shout their name and the rest would giggle with their hands over their mouths.

  It was the low season. Extending her stay at the hostel was simple. Everything was simple. It began to feel as if she had found a middle ground between travelling and home, a word which had become synonymous with settling down. Even before parting ways with Tessa, she didn’t know what settling down meant for her. No generic pictures came with this frame. And now — alone, out of work, of no fixed address — everything was so far from settled it was like the milk-and-two-sugars murkiness of Bangkok’s Chao Phraya. Perhaps, like the river, this was her natural state.

  On the fifth day, her Single White Female novelty began to wear off: the children lagged a little further behind; the local women lost their concerned expressions, though they hadn’t yet found the courage or the desire to wave back.

  On the sixth day, not a single child trailed behind her. She’d become like the stray dogs the locals never saw. But this was okay, too. Able to walk the streets at her own pace, she could feel the freedom, physically. As if the children had been woven into her French plait — now more of a Cambodian plait: beautiful but structurally unsound — and overnight someone had taken scissors to her hair. She felt empowered, a reverse Samson, though two hours later she was drinking at a tourist bar on Serendipity Beach to avoid being alone.

  Subject line: Drinking Angkor with Australians

  At sundown the patrons drinking to pass the afternoon left in search of food, and were replaced by a new shift of tourists looking to pass the evening. She remained at the bar, eating nuts one at a time from a packet comped by the barman.

  A guy sat down next to her. After half a beer h
e introduced himself as Vern. He looked Cambodian but sounded Australian.

  ‘So, you travelling alone?’

  Megan nodded. ‘You?’

  ‘No. I’m with my mate and his girlfriend. They’re having an early one.’ He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Third wheel, huh?’

  ‘My parents —’ he said, but stopped. ‘I was born in Australia, but Stu and Janna thought I should come with them. Be their guide.’

  ‘Can you speak Khmer?’

  ‘Like a four year old. I took to answering my parents in English once I started school.’

  ‘Knyom chmoah Megan. Coh louk chmoah oy?’

  He smiled, offered to buy her another Angkor. She accepted.

  He wanted to know about the places she’d seen. She told him in no particular order.

  ‘And you’ve been alone this whole time? Man.’

  She swallowed the impulse to correct him, topped it with another gulp of beer. Not talking about Tessa had become a way of punishing her. Megan tried not to think about how she might feature, if at all, in Tessa’s travel stories and the explanation for her early return to New Zealand.

  She bought the next round, asked Vern about the places he’d seen. He said he had nothing to tell. That this was his first time out of Australia.

  ‘But what’s it like coming to the country of your parents’ birth for the first time? What’s that like?’

  ‘I don’t know. I know I’m supposed to feel something, but I’m not feeling it yet.’ He placed his hand on hers.

  She did not withdraw her hand but said, looking into his eyes, ‘No, thank you, Vern.’

  He looked at their hands, still touching, his mounting hers, then back up at her face. Then why don’t you move your hand? he seemed to be asking.

  Megan took a swig of beer using her free hand, then another to finish the bottle. ‘It was nice talking to you, Vern.’