Demons
Page 15
‘The team knows what I’m going to be, they just don’t know how I’ll look. Or why.’
‘Is Chris picking you up for this?’ Mum asked.
‘What do you think?’ I asked them. They were already aware that we’d broken up.
‘I’ll tell you about it one day,’ I’d said to them. ‘About that and other things as well. First I’ll get school out of the way.’
‘Sure you can wait?’
‘Yes,’ I’d said. ‘It’s not much longer now.’
‘I’m driving myself,’ I said to Dad. ‘Come with me if you want.’
‘Well,’ said Dad. ‘I wouldn’t mind . . .’
‘No. I think this is one thing Andrea needs to do on her own,’ said Mum firmly.
I arrived at the university. Not early. Not late. Just in time to walk across the paved courtyard into the lecture buildings, have a loo stop (got a few funny looks), go across the scuffed wooden floor, up the stairs to the entrance of the tiered lecture theatre where the Classics Competition was being held.
Chris and Becs and Ro were in a nervous huddle
outside with Ms Shapiro and the others of our class, wondering where on earth I was, thinking I’d changed my mind and wasn’t coming.
I didn’t expect we’d win, but it would be a victory of sorts.
Of the classics class only Becs knew that Chris and I had split up and she was keeping quiet about it. No need, she’d said, for everyone to have such a juicy piece of gossip right at the end of the year.
However, they all knew I was going to dress up as one of the women revellers in The Bacchae, one of the worshippers of the god Dionysus, one of his woodland priests.
I smoothed down my black trousers and jacket, adjusted my white dog collar so it didn’t feel too tight around my neck and then I stepped over to join them.
STRANGE MEETING
‘I saw in the paper that The Bacchae’s on tonight.’
“No kidding. I didn’t know that.’
‘No reason to, not so soon after you’ve come back. It’s being performed in a night club, with a dance party after. Interested?’
‘Only if it’s in the original Greek.’
‘You geek,’ I say.
We stand up to go. ‘A way of starting again,’ says Chris. A question, or a statement?
‘It won’t be another start for us,’ I say. ‘It’ll be a way of finishing.’
Chris’s face falls. Tough luck. Tough love.
‘But I thought . . .’
‘Next Thursday, after graduation, I’m booked on a flight to London and Ireland,’ I say. ‘Chasing a few ghosts.’
‘I see. And after . . .’
‘Who knows,’ I say. ‘I’ll open the bag of winds and decide where I want them to blow me.’
Graffiti
Chris got it wrong.
A gentle breeze often turns into a strong wind.
Definitions
Religious studies at uni came in useful in more ways then one. It taught me eschatology. It told me that Christopher comes from the Greek word Khristophoro. It’s a word of two halves, Khristos, by definition, meaning ‘Christ, the anointed one” and pherein, by definition meaning ‘to carry’.
So, Christ-carrier.
But, in reality, a person who actually never existed. St Christopher, who carried Christ across a raging river, was struck off the official list of saints. Turns out he was a story. A myth. An allegory.
But his story is still around today and will last as long as all stories last.
So what does all this prove, Chris? That you never were? Of course not.
You did exist, and I existed, but it was in a different time and a different place, that’s all.
For a short time we were like a miracle. And maybe, in your own way, you did carry me across a river.
Keep the faith Chris, whatever yours is.
I’ll carry mine.
Sorry Gran. Like I said to you at the cemetery I’m not a big-C Catholic at the moment but I am still ‘catholic’. Part of the universe. Maybe even part of your universe of saints. And, somehow, we’ll go on
forever and, somewhere, we’ll meet again.
Epilogue
Without me noticing, Mum and Dad have returned. They sit down on either side of me.
‘Andrea,’ Dad says. ‘They’ve made the boarding announcement.’
It’s as if I’m rising up out of deep water.
‘What?’
‘Time to go,’ Dad says.
I shake my head, trying to clear it, not succeeding very well. ‘I didn’t hear them say.’
‘You were away with the fairies,’ says Mum.
‘And the leprechauns.’
‘Don’t forget the angels,’ I say. ‘And the demons.’
‘Come on,’ Dad says. ‘Up you get.’
We all stand up together. We hug. We cry.
‘I can’t believe it,’ I say.
‘Neither can we,’ says Mum. ‘Our little girl. Off on her big OE.’
‘Mum,’ I say.
‘Get going,’ says Dad, ‘before we change our minds.’
‘You what?’ I begin. But of course, it’s a tease.
We put on brave faces. We move apart.
That’s what life is sometimes. Moving apart. Moving away. Moving on. But everything goes in circles, I like to think, and the ends of the loop will join up again one day.
Still, I can’t help it. In the final seconds I look round wildly in case Chris is there. He is and he isn’t. I see him and I don’t. All the ghosts of my life are suddenly crowding around me, trying to press close, to touch, to pull, to become part of me again. I push them away. You’ve had your time, I tell them. You
built me but I’m doing the rebuilding. See how you like the new construction.
Then the ghosts drift away and I move on. Closing the gaps.
15, 17, 22.
Now.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Creative New Zealand for a grant that enabled him to work on this book.
The translations from the Ancient Greek are by the author, with the exception of the last quoted line from Euripides’ The Bacchae. That irresistible phrase, ‘joyful mysteries,’ comes from T. A Buckley’s 1850 translation of the play. See: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Eur.+Ba.+235&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0092)
The Bacchae was performed in a local night club several years ago. I didn’t see the production but would like to thank actor, translator and Associate Professor of Classics, Robin Bond, for the inspiration.
Last, but not least, my thanks to HTK.