I found great pleasure in just looking in the window at the rows and rows of old books, dusty and tattered, that bore familiar names and evoked visions of worlds I was still to enter.
An old man with spectacles owned the shop. He, too, was dusty and shabby, like the cover of a discarded volume no one wished to buy. He wiped dust from the covers of books by rubbing them against the sleeve of his coat before handing them to me. He then returned to his corner desk where he sat hunched over his latest purchases, turning the pages and reading while I made up my mind.
I was told he had a son who helped him in the shop but I had never met him. I met him a few weeks after Arthur’s return. I walked into the shop brightly, happy in the thought that in a moment I would own Conrad’s The Nigger of the Narcissus which the old man had put aside for me.
A young man leaning on crutches confronted me from behind a table laden with books. He had pale, hollow cheeks and a thin, bitter mouth. The hands that grasped his crutches showed every bone, and the hands were white.
His chest was sunken. He leaned heavily on his crutches, taking all his weight from his withered legs so that his shoulders were ominously hunched.
We looked into each other’s eyes. We did not move, we just looked, and we stood like that for what seemed a long time. His look was one of recognition. It was a look that claimed for us both the same despairs, the same vices, the same defeats. His was a look that joined us in dark aims and desires like that which passes between two homosexuals at a first meeting. His eyes were dark peep-holes into a furnace. Defeat, defeat, defeat . . .
He pushed a book towards me—a book on sex. And then he spoke, his lips twisted into a bleak smile that acknowledged a kindred refuge: ‘This is what you need.’
A strange bewilderment was passing through me. It was as if I’d been warned that I was going to die. I was looking at the book on the table but I wasn’t seeing it: I was seeing his eyes. I turned and walked out of the shop, without answering him.
I returned to the boarding-house where I went to my bungalow and sat looking at my face in the mirror. It gazed back at me without resentment, making no attempt to present a countenance that would comfort me. Its gaze was steady as it waited patiently for my judgment.
I examined it ruthlessly, seeking in its contours and in its expression some evidence that suggested the face of the man in the bookshop. I imagined that I could already see the tragic lines of acceptance engraved upon it. And the eyes—were they palisades of deceit behind which a whipped mind lay whimpering?
With the thought, the image in the mirror changed. Its jaw tightened, its eyes looked fearlessly out at me—my father’s eyes—and I was at peace with it.
I turned away and sat on my bed with my head in my hands and considered what I should do.
What did I want from life? I wanted to be loved, to be a man with men, walking side by side with them in equality, experiencing all they experienced, living like them, loving like them, working like them. I wanted to be accepted as a normal man with all a normal man’s privileges, not as a cripple with the restrictions that so many people would place on me because of my disability.
I was a member of a minority group as were Jews, Negroes, Aborigines. There were unwritten laws of behaviour for such people that did not apply to the majority. The behaviour of one minority member was regarded as typical of them all. Each member carried with him the reputation of his brothers. A man robbed by a Jew proclaimed that all Jews were thieves. If he was robbed by an Australian only one man would suffer his wrath. A drunken Aborigine was proof that all Aborigines should be denied strong drink; a drunken white man bore the responsibility of his drunkenness alone. A cripple making love to a girl was evidence that all cripples were victims of lust; the healthy man was envied his conquests.
I realised I would be subject to rules of behaviour regarding girls that were never applied to physically normal men. Normal youth blundered through its sexual experiences viewed by the tolerant smiles of the majority; crippled youth sought such outlets under the gaze of hostility and distrust. Such attitudes tended to drive the cripple back to isolation. A solitary existence preserved your reputation even though it harmed your mind.
I would have to be constantly on my guard to preserve my claim to normality. A sad expression on my face would be regarded as reflecting the influence of my condition and would inspire pity. On the face of a physically normal man it would go unnoticed. It would never touch the heart. In company I must present a bright face if I didn’t want to be regarded as a pathetic victim of my affliction.
I observed the rules but resented them. I resented them since I was aware that all mankind suffered from handicaps though society censured only those that impeded its selfish aims.
I thought of my fellow-boarders: Mrs Birdsworth was the victim of an unhappy marriage; Mamie Fulton believed boys avoided her because she was fat; Mr Gulliver was only happy when he was the centre of attention.
At Smog & Burns, Mrs Smalpeck was the victim of greed and ambition; Miss Bryce had no purpose in life; Mrs Fraser had a vindictive mother-in-law.
The burdens of all these people did not bow their heads since society respected and accepted them. Their handicaps did not affront it.
The scores of people I had met on the streets were all handicapped. Some had mental defects, some defects of character. They were victims of broken homes, lack of education, stupid parents, greed and lust and a society that made possible the conditions producing them. Handicap after handicap—some acceptable to society, some discreetly ignored, some regarded as pitiful, some regarded as repellent.
Those with obvious handicaps were under a disadvantage compared to those whose handicaps were concealed. There were crippled minds as well as crippled bodies but one was hidden, the other displayed. The man whose life was devoted to the making of money suffered a far greater handicap in his search for happiness than I did, but how many people believed this!
I had sometimes thought that if the people with crippled minds had to have the visible supports of those with crippled legs the streets of Melbourne would be loud with the tapping of crutches.
I thought of the kindness and unselfishness displayed by so many people I had met. That these qualities manifested themselves more amongst the poor than amongst the rich convinced me that my search for a recognition of equality in potentiality must begin with them. My handicap did not disturb those who suffered many handicaps.
As I thought of these people, I began to realise that my tendency to cast the blame on others for what I regarded as rejection by people of my claim for equal right, was wrong. That I should be rejected was largely my own fault.
It was natural for people to shrink from deformity in others at a first meeting. Did I not feel the same myself when I saw other cripples? It was within my power to remove this attitude in others by first of all removing it in myself. Arthur’s remark about the hang-dog look was true.
I had met many cripples, talked to them about our kindred problems, but I had never met one who suffered directly because of his affliction. Their complaints were always directed against the attitude of people towards them, their treatment by society, the conditions that prevented their getting work and thus achieving independence. They believed that even though people were friendly with them these people still considered the cripple as not being part of their world.
Did I believe that? The cripple in the bookshop believed it, was resigned to it. I now knew it was not true. When a person could not surround himself with friends it was his mind that was at fault.
As I sat on my bed facing what I had felt sure was a bleak and lonely future, I knew that this future was mine to make of it what I willed. It was so easy to lay the blame for my own inadequacies of mind on to factors I could not control. It was comforting, saved my pride and was an excuse to give up the fight and drowse my life away in a winter sun.
All men must fight their weaknesses to attain a rewarding life. A resolve to experience all the h
appy and lovely things of life brings with it the knowledge that such a state is only possible when it is shared with people. But in the seeking a conditioning process is launched and this develops a character in which joy in living is a permanent feature.
My body was crippled; I must prevent my mind from reflecting it. If my mind could rise to such heights that its attendance by a twisted body was incidental and of no consequence in its development, then people would accept me as an equal. They would recognise my victory and I would be accepted by them without patronage, without pity and with respect. What I gave to life is what I would receive from it.
But to achieve this state of confidence that would enable me to take my place beside people unnoticed, accepted, seemed too great a task for the character I had become.
I remembered standing in a square of light before a café door in Fitzroy wondering whether to enter. The light was a refuge from the lonely darkness around me, a darkness that hid narrow alleys and unpainted houses divided from the street by veranda fences smoothed over the years by the folded arms of women. I stood there enveloped in the smell of steak and onions and buttered toast.
I wanted to enter but I was afraid of the eyes of those who sat at the tables. It was a café in which all the patrons knew each other, a place where one could sit for hours watching those who came and went, and my entrance would have lifted every head.
I took a breath and walked in. Along the walls were cubicles divided from each other by the backs of the forms that faced the tables. People in one cubicle could talk to those in the next or hand a bowl of sugar across the low partition to anyone who asked for it.
I sat in an empty cubicle. The cubicle across the table from me was also empty.
The proprietress of the café was a Polish woman. She had broad hips and wore a short skirt that gave her the appearance of a bell. She did not address the patrons as individuals; her remarks were to them all.
‘Are you all served now? Who wants more toast?’
She rested her hands on my table and smiled at me. ‘You would like something, eh?—Toast? Steak and eggs? No?’
‘Toast,’ I said, then added: ‘Could you make the tea strong?’
She raised a hand in the air as if taking an oath. ‘Ah, yes—strong! You see . . .’
While she was away in the kitchen preparing my order a family of Aborigines entered the café. The father, a handsome man with a mop of wavy, black hair, was carrying a baby across his shoulder. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up above his elbows, revealing his coffee-coloured arms. He was smiling.
The mother was a thin woman with a timid manner and was dominated by a desire to efface herself. She held her head down, contracted her shoulders, stooped a little to render herself less conspicuous. She walked in as I had done.
Two little children, a girl and a boy, clung to her skirts. So great was the shyness of the little boy that he walked backwards, gently pushed by his mother into whose skirt he had buried his face.
The little girl had placed her fingers in her mouth and walked uncertainly, moving closer to her mother as the bright lights of the café fell upon her.
They sat in the cubicle in front of me so that the father’s back was towards me though only his head and shoulders could be seen above the back of the form. The baby was facing me as it rested upon his shoulder supported by one of his arms.
She had fine, wavy hair, dark eyes with curved lashes, and skin that had never known the harsh touch of wind or rain. One plump arm, deeply creased at wrist and elbow, hung down her father’s back. The other was raised to her mouth. She sucked her fist contentedly.
She was so beautiful that I felt a longing to take her in my arms. I wanted her to be mine.
She slowly withdrew her fist from her mouth as if, in the discovery of me, some apprehension had come to her and she sought reassurance in my eyes. I smiled at her. She received this offering with uncertainty, her wet and shining fist poised above her father’s back awaiting her command.
My stillness had nothing to offer her. In a quick decision she raised her fist to her open mouth but her sense of direction went astray and it came to rest against her cheek. She turned her head till her mouth found the clenched hand and she sucked it happily.
I was disappointed. I leaned across the table and said softly: ‘Hullo.’
This unexpected greeting amazed her. She quickly withdrew her fist and looked at me with wide-open eyes, waiting, yet dreading a little, further evidence of my intentions. I raised my hand up and down, waggling my fingers like a butterfly in flight and this entranced her. She slowly smiled, then grew serious, then smiled again. She became excited, and jerked up and down upon her father’s shoulder.
I reached over and gave her my finger to hold. She grasped it eagerly and shook it up and down. Thus united we kept smiling at each other and moving our hands in a random fashion across her father’s shoulder.
She tried to put my finger in her mouth but I resisted, and she stopped smiling for a moment to question me with her eyes. I brought my face close to hers, and raised my eyebrows and said: ‘Wow-wow, wow-wow.’
She reached out her wet hand and grasped me by the nose, to which she clung tenaciously. Her father moved and she released her grip. He turned and looked at me with a linking smile of understanding.
‘She loves you,’ he said, then turned away again.
I walked home from the café drunk on the wonder of his words. For weeks I clung to them, feeling I had received a decoration. It gave me pride and strength and confidence.
Herein was revealed to me the way I was to follow. I had to prove to myself that I could be loved. It did not matter that the way would lead me along paths frowned upon by the respectable, condemned by convention. My problem was peculiar to myself. In all the world it had never been posed before in just this way, with just this man, under just these circumstances. The solution might be wrong for all other men but it would be right for me.
‘Never leave anyone any the worse for knowing you,’ Arthur had once said. That was my creed.
I wanted to write books that meant something. I could never do that while burdened by lack of confidence, a sense of inferiority, a sense of being different from other men. Anonymity amongst the people was what I had to achieve, a merging with them.
And I had to experience love as they did. I was sure that behind a man’s achievement was the love of a woman. Before I could establish myself as a writer I must first of all establish myself as a man. The knowledge that a woman could love me would release me from the bonds that bound the cripple of the bookshop and that even now were tightening around me.
From now on I would no longer be an observer of life; I would be a participant. I would fling myself into the torrent in which all men struggled.
I left happy, uplifted, inspired. I rose from my seat on the bed and stepped out of the door of my bungalow to breathe the night.
I looked up at the full moon. I was hemmed in by fences, by the peaked roofs of houses, by thrusting chimneys, but away above them where the moonlight was untouched was the place for my soaring spirit. In a lovely dream I sped upwards on wings. I rolled and dived and met the flood of light as from a welcoming sea.
And, beside me, her hand in mine, drenched by the same beauty, inspired by the same love, was a girl I had not met and did not know. Together we looked upon the cities and the people and the bush to which we belonged.
How bright was this night!
This Is the Grass Page 18
