by Murray Bail
The androgynous zones of…marriage.
They surrounded the redhead. Both she and Gerald were handing out printed sheets: a glossary of terms, of endearment. A kind of love dictionary. It could be folded and kept in a pocket (or under a pillow: extraordinary the partners who find trouble expressing themselves). The nouns and adjectives were printed in an ornate style but were easy to read. Non-words and harmless white lies and whispered obscenities are essential—aren’t they?—for the successful marriage. New words, including nicknames and adhesive pet nouns which were demonstrably inaccurate and yet perfectly apt were listed in alphabetical order. A penetrating new language is required, solely for the requirements of love. It can be as private as you like.
Holding the paper close to her eyes Sasha tried a few out on North. This was no time for jokes. ‘Kinsey’s Twentieth-Century Dictionary,’ he’d begun to crack, to dismiss. ‘Good God, they might have crossed some of those out.’
‘Don’t be a prude,’ said Sasha; and she held onto his arm as she read out more words. ‘Listen…’
And in the half-dark, in a corner, Sheila trembled as Violet still held her hand, as warm as a sparrow’s now, and touched her cheek, so understanding. It had been all of a sudden: almost all engulfing. Sheila could have cried, could have cried out. A glance showed Violet’s experience. She was unsmiling.
Brass beds, water beds, electrically driven models (circular; Made in Germany), and the inevitable sturdy four-poster, and bed of roses. There were double sleeping-bags and camp-stretchers; and a small but hypnotic collection of stained mattresses. Bloody sheets from Sicily had been randomly selected the morning after and were preserved between sheets of glass; enough to make Atlas flinch; factual and historical to the others.
Sasha wanted to know all. She wanted to participate. ‘Where did you meet one another?’ she asked. The question flew with the spirit of things and like the lasso settled on Mrs Cathcart. For the first time they heard her laugh. It was generous and unexpectedly high—a girl’s.
‘Oh I saw him at a friend’s wedding. He came with friends on a filthy motorbike. I said to myself, what a silly little man, and he kept blowing his nose. I wouldn’t care if I never saw him again.’
‘You were proved right there,’ Doug had to nudge. He winked at Sasha and Louisa, enjoying himself. All listened in an interested congratulatory way.
‘He’s been good to me,’ Mrs Cathcart returned to firmness, ‘We have a family,’ she said simply. Her mouth and jaw suggested early economic hardships. Sasha and Louisa had their heads inclined, measuring Mrs Cathcart’s echo. All Doug could do was keep glancing at the others vaguely grinning, ‘There you are…so…Well!’
They had to find Gerald and the redhead. These two had turned not one corner but several. Broken with irregular, spaced doors and alcoves the corridor resembled an out-of-the-way hotel: purple carpet lay underfoot. Glancing over his shoulder—at the passage, empty—Gerald cleared his throat. With an ease which suggested she had done this before the North American put Gerald’s hand down her front and onto her powdered breast.
‘There now. That’ll keep you warm.’
And yet that part of the building was definitely overheated, perhaps deliberately. Not only to Gerald: others had complained.
She had large rough nipples and five minutes passed before the others came.
‘Gotcha! There you are!’ Garry shouted. ‘Here they are.’
‘We have an annual congress,’ the redhead resumed quickly taking the handle of a door, ‘where every aspect of marriage is thrashed out.’
They followed as she pushed open the door.
It was a small motel room. It had a green TV set, drawn curtains and two horizontal suitcases by the mirror with their lids raised. A lamp in the corner illuminated a champagne bucket and—
HEY!
Rapid twisting movement on the bed.
‘Oh excuse us. I am sorry.’
A young man with his bride had turned, glazed. The pale legs around his waist froze.
Kaddok stepped back onto Gerald’s foot. Retreating backwards the others fell into the corridor, a pack of cards.
‘What’s up?’ Garry demanded. He wanted to see.
‘My mistake,’ murmured the redhead, gently closing the door. ‘Ask one of the others,’ she smiled.
It was then difficult to know whether it was real or merely an accident planned by the institution.
Her smirk spreading, adding two and two, Garry wanted to hear it. Nothing—nothing is sacred any more,
‘Never mind,’ Louisa told him. She was pensive for the woman disturbed. In the dark she had glimpsed the young man’s moustache.
Garry kept on. He wanted it all.
‘It was someone’s room,’ Louisa sighed. ‘They were making love,’ she murmured, and frowned, ‘when we barged in.’
Ah. Garry smacked his forehead. ‘The poor bastard!’ Then he turned over her choice of words. ‘They were making…love…’
‘God,’ Sasha wheeled around, ‘you’re crass. When will you grow up?’
Scientists are saying we are essentially machines for the propagation of our genes. Nothing more or less. So it is said. The Institution of Marriage implies there is more.
Dust sheets in the next room were removed; Gerald gave a hand. Gradually, they revealed a classic nuclear family at leisure: kneeling in front of a gas-fire, playing Monopoly. The smooth-faced mother and father with their offspring (boy and a girl), were the equal of anything by Madame Tussaud. It looked like a Sunday night. Dad in a real cardigan held a pipe. So convincing was the setting they felt compelled like all good travellers to stand a while, searching for inaccuracies.
‘The living room is a cave,’ Phillip North pointed out. ‘There’s the fire. Take away the decorations which seem anyway faintly self-conscious.’
The hearth fire held the family in a circle of approximately four yards diameter. Central heating, said to be a sign of civilisation, has been largely responsible for the disintegration of marriages, of traditional family life. It encourages each member to sit in distant rooms, alone. The subsequent fall in communion, communication, family warmth, is a cause for concern. Consider this before installing C.H.
‘We don’t have that as a problem,’ Doug laughed. ‘Where we come from it’s as hot as blazes. You need fans.’
As hot as Hades.
‘We had a fire in the lounge,’ his spouse cried out. She looked at the other women, telling them.
‘The Parsees,’ Kaddok threw in for no apparent reason; and kept searching. In fact he didn’t finish it.
Under perspex on an unstable pedestal a gum-pink toothbrush lay horizontal, like an avant garde sculptural object. The institution rightly saw it as a valuable trophy, one possessing vague sexual undertones; it summarised the act of sharing, important in any Western marriage. This toothbrush had been shared by a married couple for seventeen years (donated by the Knudsens, 31 Dakota Ave, Algonquin Is., Toronto). It spoke of intimacy, barriers finally down. There was nothing more to say.
In another room the wraps were ripped off without ceremony.
Several wheelchairs (at first glance, the first horseless carriages) established the point that—ideally—the healthy partner too becomes geared to the chair: and so there was some embarrassment here, side glances at Gwen Kaddok. She certainly seemed a shade more solemn, even quieter than usual.
Joint cigarettes, joint bank accounts, joint interest in sports, hobbies and magazine subscriptions: of little interest.
Sheila and Violet stayed outside.
Then came a group of crudely carved stones, about knee-high, a dozen or more in rows. Compelling in their simplicity or in their lonely arrangement they radiated a kind of…demanding silence. Again certain modern sculptures sprang to mind: what was that art museum on West 53rd Street? Such comparisons however were superficial. Lifted from the outskirts of villages in Northern India these were monuments to those faithful and virtuous Hindu widows who’d
thrown themselves on their husbands’ funeral pyres, were suttee stones. The ultimate testimony to marriage.
Opinions and objections broke out.
‘I can’t believe that!’
Moving among them they touched the stones. Each one—representing a life—provoked violent images in full colour; and Violet yawned.
‘They must have loved their husbands…’
‘It was their tradition.’
‘It’s ridiculous. Degrading.’
Banned in India from the days of the Raj, sutteeism is still practised today. Yes: on good authority. Paragraphs occasionally appear in the Times of India, Bombay. Whatever one may think, they stand as the supreme monuments to uxorial devotion; interesting word uxorial.
‘What does the institution feel?’ North asked. ‘Is it right?
‘Of course, yes and no,’ the redhead replied. ‘Some of the older, more traditional members approve.’
‘How silly,’ said Gwen.
‘Anyway, you’re asking a moral question,’ Gerald interrupted.
‘We’re pleased to have them here,’ the redhead insisted, patting his arm. ‘They make a wonderful valid general point.’
Outside the last door but one: they were checked by a rotting stench, and the few who ventured in pressed handkerchiefs to their mouths. In the middle of the floor stood a standard garbage bin. It had its lid slightly askew. The banal object had assumed a queer ominous power.
Now the point was, the point was—
Who puts the garbage bin out at night? A pedestrian question, to be sure, yet it lies at the heart of the institution. The unpleasant, regularly spaced chores can suddenly crack the finest relationship asunder. Here the rotting scraps which included fish had been randomly collected on a regular basis to demonstrate the problem.
‘It can cut both ways,’ the redhead told them. ‘Some folks find this a lyrical task, epitomising their devotion to their partner. They come to adore the filthy lid and handles.’ She beamed like a Chinese cadre. ‘I always carried it out for my husband.’
‘That’s a man’s job,’ Mrs Cathcart insisted. ‘I never have, unless Doug was sick.’
The redhead glanced at the others and turned to the last door.
About to turn the handle she stopped. Voices could be heard: single syllables, from a man. A woman’s jagged sentences entered rising. Straining outside they had difficulty deciphering the words. The woman began crying. The man shouted: impotence. They were yelling, both of them now, and Louisa turned away,
‘I can’t bear this,’ she said. She confided to Gwen, ‘I stopped arguing long ago, I give in. Otherwise it can be too much.’
‘It doesn’t get us anywhere,’ said Gwen understanding. ‘They’re difficult; stubborn is the word. I sometimes feel sorry for them.’
‘Yes…’ Louisa glanced at her. ‘Yes…’
‘We had our arguments,’ North answered Sasha, ‘Not many; I think we were too lazy.’
Sasha wanted to know more.
Caricatures of mothers-in-law. Haw, haw: the interfering old warhorse is evidently another universal. Four rusty chastity belts, c. 1460. One had the key jammed.
Leaning on Phillip North’s elbow as they entered a large light-filled room Sasha kept pointing and whispering at things, in many cases unnecessarily. Virtually unnoticed Violet and Sheila brought up the rear.
To Gerald’s dismay—his grimace at North—the walls were lined with small photographs. They had been collected from all over the world. Beginning along the top were newly marrieds and descending in the rows below marriages which broke up after One Year, Five Years and Ten—so the far edges formed a jagged hypotenuse.
At intervals a small printed card interrupted the photographs:
OF THE ESTIMATED 100 BILLION PHOTOGRAPHS IN EXISTENCE A GREAT PROPORTION ARE—NOT UNNATURALLY—RECORDS OF MARRIED LIFE. IT IS THE NICEST THING TO RECORD THOUGH NOT ALWAYS.
‘Only a selection,’ the redhead piped up. She had to yell for they were dispersed around the long walls. ‘We have the rest on microfilm. We believe we have just about every marriage in the world after 1950.’
A Honeywell computer link-up would locate a name among the four walls and mark it with a flashing light. It could retrieve a broken marriage from the many thousands in ‘storage’ and in no time at all place the victim’s photograph in the appropriate row, marking it with a flashing light. Film stars were much in demand. Hidden among the statistics were many famous names. Only the United States with its resources and resolve could have pulled all this together: land of so many promises.
The redhead stood behind a special hooded keyboard and arched her eyebrows. ‘All right now, gang. Who’s been divorced?’
Violet Hopper raised her hand and watched amused as the freckled fingers typed out her name: flashing lights appeared in two, three, four separate places around the room. It drew whistles and catcalls.
‘Violet,’ Sasha laughed, ‘you should be ashamed.’ Violet had joined them to inspect her own photographs; Sasha could have hugged her friend, she was having such a good time. Only Mrs Cathcart remained in the middle, holding Doug’s sleeve when he made a move, and let out two tremendous sighs.
The photographs showed Violet cheek-to-cheek with her former husbands, and in the first—the light indicating Married Five Years—she must have been scarcely nineteen. At that time Violet was taut-faced, already rueful. The husband gazed straight at the camera, but she turned to one side slightly, looking away. Oddly enough, as Sheila remarked, three of her four men had moustaches and were fleshy-faced. Her husbands looked remarkably the same.
‘I suppose I’ll be up there soon,’ Louisa remarked, though the one who heard, Gwen Kaddok, earnestly shook her head.
‘Anyone else?’ this redhead called out on one foot. ’No? Well, give us another name. A friend or relation. Anyone want any dirt on a politician?’
Standing beside her Sheila whispered, ‘Hammersly, Frank Hammersly.’
Instantly two lights appeared.
‘What are you bothering with him for?’ Violet asked. ‘Listen to me.’
But Sheila had gone up and squinted at Hammersly and his first mistake, a pleasant face with a crooked front tooth. As a young man, Frank Hammersly had a country boy’s jug ears.
‘He’s no good. I know it. Believe me.’
‘But Violet, he has been nice to me. I can’t imagine how I seemed to him. What must he be thinking?’
The walls lit up with the busted marriages of Australian architects, secretive aunts, randy male friends of some, and Hofmann’s father. A good half hour passed before the redhead closed the ‘switchboard’, saying for their benefit, ‘That was fun. That was fun.’
All along there had been nothing new; though perhaps something had been set in order, confirmed, or set in motion even. The institution would always remain. ’I didn’t see much to photograph,’ Kaddok complained. ‘There are no surprises in the institution of marriage,’ said Mrs Cathcart satisfied. ‘What did you expect?’
At the exit a small portable chapel had been installed. Ceremonies can be quickly performed for couples overcome. Sliding screens guarantee the ambience of each denomination. But on the other side, a walnut confessional with purple curtain and scratched step had been placed for marriage counselling, thereby harshly balancing the overall favourable impression provided by the institution.
But the redhead didn’t seem to notice. ‘Come again!’ she said to each one as they shook her hand. She planted a kiss on the side of Gerald’s neck, sending colour up to his ears. One of the stags was on its knees, but still fighting back. And Sasha held onto North’s arm.
This was the time of the Primaries and rejoicing at the freeing of ‘Enterprise’ in South East Asia; wild rejoicing; crash landing of that lazy Jumbo at Kennedy International Airport (thirteen survivors); concern expressed by the committee of crack metallurgists at the hairline fissures round the ears—around the ears of the Statue of Liberty (‘that’s perlooshun’); world
bantamweight title fight at Madison Square Garden (the boy from Ghana, on points); snow, sleet and slush. Monday. This day was proclaimed national holiday. Strange how the streets and the tremendous straight avenues of Manhattan had been drained of vertical figures, collisions and purpose: then little left to stockade the razor wind off the Hudson. Shadow slabs, tall silence, that stretch of distant avenue blocked by a slow hump. Violet Hopper mused, as if on stage: the city made a person aware of time, of its slow white volume, and how they were loose particles briefly within it. The gradual accumulation of confusions was now revealed, there temporarily being no other confusions to distract. The congestion had gone. It felt similar to jet lag.
They turned to each other.
‘We don’t speak very well. Have you noticed how the Americans are so descriptive and confident? Our sentences are shorter. Our thoughts break off. We don’t seem comfortable talking, I don’t know why. Have you noticed we make silly quips, even when someone asks the time? I caught myself with the bus driver yesterday.’
‘You mean us, Australians?’
Borelli agreed. ‘We’re embarrassed. We’re not as confident as we look. We speak in jerks, or we’re over-familiar. The quips you mention I think might be connected to our geographical location, and our land emptiness.’
Louisa laughed. He could talk, yet he so rarely remained at the table.
‘Possibly,’ said North looking at Borelli, Sasha seated beside him.
‘We’re not bad,’ Doug called out. ‘I’ve known a few who could talk the leg off a chair.’ He turned to his wife. ‘You’ve met Clem McCagney at work.’
‘But I think quips keep us going. Being so far removed and relatively alone,’ Borelli went on, ‘we seem to need encouragement. Quips help us along; things aren’t all that bad. It’s as if, in Australia, we’re all in hospital. There’s a lot of quipping in hospitals.’
