Wish

by Peter Goldsworthy

  8

  Like many of the fat, I love to drive; wheels offer a freedom and mobility that legs can never match. Wheels are a kind of compensation. And also a kind of sanctuary: a warm cocoon, often filled with music. Like the sea, they provide a good place to think. Things often come to me, driving.

  I tried to place the half-familiar face of Clive Kinnear as I drove away from that first lesson. Friend of a friend? I had no friends apart from the Deaf. My former friends had turned out to be Jill’s; friends after the divorce she seemed to have been granted custody of all our friends, if only by the friends themselves, choosing up sides. Had I seen him on television? A celebrity face? Stella’s loose smile also itched somewhere inside me, but the more I strained after those memories, the deeper they hid, knocked a little further out of reach with each clumsy mental grab.

  I set the problem aside. The night was warm, I was weary, I drove with the windows wound down. The humid air rubbed my face like balm, the ocean awaited me, cold and refreshing, I could think of nothing but immersion. A red light halted my progress at the top end of Jetty Road, at the bottom end the moonlit ocean glinted like beaten metal; I revved the motor impatiently.

  FREE-RANGE CHICKEN

  The words, painted on the plate glass of a corner butcher shop, somehow caught my eye and the connection was made instantly: Clive Francis Kinnear.

  The lights changed, a car tooted behind me, I turned the car into the kerb, and sat there, stationary, thinking. More keys were turning, more doors opening, a chain of associations. I remembered a television news item from some months past: the picketing of a chicken-battery somewhere in the Hills. Vague images came back to me of flour bombs, torn fences, activists chained to the axles of freezer-trucks.

  ‘Animal liberation,’ I had translated to my father, watching with me at the time, prodding my back with his foot.

  First, the two-horned Animal Hand:

  Then the see-through sign of bound hands, unshackled:

  He had laughed an angry hyena laugh. ‘Animals themselves,’ he signed. ‘Hairy, shaved-not, washed-not.’

  Content with his lot, comfortable with the life he had made for himself, without help, or charity, he had no time for fringe opinions. Or for people, or animals, who might need help.

  My mother gave him a disapproving look. He corrected himself, jokily: ‘You right, Mother. Unfair to animals. Animals keep clean.’

  He laughed again, this time even she joined in, a pair of hyenas, guffawing out of tune.

  I’ve set down my parents’ signing as a kind of pidgin English, but of course it was more than that. Far, far more. I could never do it justice in English—the nuances, the shadings, the movement—so perhaps it’s best to settle for this: a transcription of the physical hand-shapes, rather than a full translation of their freight of sense. That would be a re-creation, a new kind of poetry.

  We had watched the news a little longer. The screen was filled with skinny vegetarian types in torn jeans and Indian smocks and Rasta dreadlocks, shouting and chanting. My father waved a handful of his usual opinions. It was the same rent-a-crowd he had watched storm an American satellite base the day before, he claimed. The same crowd that had chained itself to trees in a Tasmanian rainforest the week before that.

  I ignored him as best I could, more interested in the news than in his editorial. Clive Francis Kinnear had been the odd face out on that screen: an older, calmer talking head in brown academic habit, clean-shaven among the beards. I had been impressed by the way he refused to raise his voice—he lowered it, if anything, to gain attention, to make people lean forward and strain to hear his words.

  I remembered this, also: he had been at pains to distance himself from some of the actions committed by his followers, although he was careful to add that he fully ‘understood’ their anger.

  My father had made the sign for ‘saint’, sarcastically, tracing a halo with his forefinger above his head.

  The halo-sign came back to me as I sat in my car outside the Jetty Road butchery. It seemed a perfect fit: St Francis of the Animals.

  I pulled out into the traffic again and drove home. My parents were still up, sitting each side of the kitchen table; my mother pretending to read a book, my father poking a screwdriver into the innards of the toaster. They maintained the pretence for several minutes as I fossicked for supper in the fridge, but I knew they had been waiting for me. My mother’s patience gave way.

  ‘Good first lesson?’

  ‘Great!’ I signed back. ‘Feel great!’—two Good Hands welling up from the stomach, exploding out from the heart.

  A slight exaggeration for her benefit, but not much. I was weary, but also happier than I had been for many months. Sign, as ever, had lifted me, and brought out the best in me.

  She smiled, immensely relieved.

  ‘Work tomorrow?’

  ‘Work whole day. Morning—Deaf Clinic. Medical translations. School—afternoon.’

  ‘Busy, busy,’ she signed, a simple carpentry mime, a sawing and chopping of the hands.

  My father, head down, half-watching from under his brow, nodded with gruff approval. Over the years I had chipped away steadily at whatever love he had once had for me, sometimes intentionally, mostly not. Growing too fat to play sport was merely the first of many disappointments. I had married the wrong woman, then compounded things by leaving her. Neither of these last two life errors he could forgive, especially the second.

  His interest in the outcome of my first lesson was mostly self-interest—now that I had a secure job, I might find my own place to live. He turned his attention back to toaster repairs; I ate my supper in Sign silence, aware of a growing awkwardness in the room, despite my mother’s reassuring smile. I remembered that I still had a question to ask.

  ‘Sign A-S-P-A-R-A-G-U-S how?’

  She looked surprised: ‘You hungry still?’

  I shook my head: ‘You teach me sign.’

  She glanced to my father; he shrugged and set down his screwdriver and wriggled his fingers, the sign for finger-spelling.

  She shook her head firmly; finger-spelling English was always her last resort. She pondered for a moment, then made the sign for French or France: the tweak of a stylised moustache.

  ‘French sign?’ I asked.

  ‘Perhaps. Look library—tomorrow.’

  Awkwardness filled the room again, stilling our hands, turning our arms to lead. I felt out of place, a cuckoo in a small cramped nest.

  ‘Swim,’ I signed—using my preferred shape, the fish-tailing of the Flat Hand:

  My mother furrowed her brow and raised her own Flat Hand, the cruising dorsal fin that I had long learnt to ignore. I pulled on my wetsuit in my bedroom—a rolling action, akin to the application of a condom—then had to face them both again as I waddled out a few minutes later, carrying flippers and goggles.

  My father set down his tools and made the sign for seal, two flippers flapping together, derisively.

  ‘Arf, arf,’ I barked, loudly, but only of course to myself, and left them sitting together: two small neat people in a small neat house, most comfortable, finally, just with each other.

  9

  I arrived early at the Institute the following Wednesday. St Francis was already seated in the front row; he waved a Flat Hand as I entered, and added the letters of my name: ‘J.J.’ He was wearing the same brown habit of corduroy, the same white running shoes and ginger toupée. His hands were the hands of an old man, gnarled and blotched. Their shapes looked slow and stilted, but precise, and carefully rehearsed, the Sign equivalent of a synthetic computer voice.

  Stella stood at the back of the empty classroom, fixing a video camera to a tripod. Her black dog Binky was lying at her feet, adoring. She was wearing the same jeans and work shirt, but her hair was loose on her shoulders; the effect was to broaden her wide face even more.

  She smiled warmly, and waved the broad Thumbs-up salute: ‘Hi!’

  Their different characters was clearly w
ritten even in those beginner-greetings: Clive’s hands coolly methodical, textbook-exact; Stella’s less precise but more generous, more open, more flamboyant.

  ‘Asparagus,’ I said aloud, and showed her the French sign: a witty penis-variant.

  She laughed huskily, her hands copied mine.

  Other class members trickled in. Some signed hello; one or two greeted me in English, then remembered, and covered their mouths—Oops!

  I demonstrated the official Oops-sign: the fist banging the forehead, a more formal version of Stella’s improvisation at the first lesson. Smiles all round; a more relaxed class.

  Am, I chalked on the board. Is. Are. Were.

  I obliterated the words with a duster, a single broad wipe. No verb ‘to be’ in Sign, I wanted it understood.

  Clive watched intently; Stella nodded from behind her video tripod; the rest of the class looked more or less blank.

  I chalked two further phrases on the board: the English I am a teacher, and its Sign equivalent: Me…teacher.

  I added a second, more emphatic version: Me teacher…true.

  Awkward looking, written out in English, but spoken with the hands anything but. I signed the phrase, fluently—then more slowly; I gestured for each member of the class, in turn, to rise and sign, inserting the shape for ‘student’ in place of ‘teacher’.

  The deft hands of Stella and the precise hands of Clive stood out from the rest. They were both quick learners, surprisingly quick for adults. The brain is a language-sponge, some claim—it learns language with ease. That’s what it does, it’s hard-wired for words, for grammar. Under a microscope it probably even looks like language, has the same anatomical shape. The problem is, the wiring gets faulty with age. Or the sponge is too soggy, saturated with junk memories and ancient history, unable to soak up anything new and fresh.

  Clive and Stella might not have had the fluency of children but their hands were as intelligent as the hands of any beginner-adults I’d seen.

  I found myself talking mostly to them, a class within a class; a teacher, two teacher’s pets. They followed me effortlessly through a maze of basic grammar, word orders, pronouns.

  At lesson’s end they approached me again. The rest of the class quickly evaporated, but they were both still brimming with questions. Already they attempted to say, or ask, as much as possible with their hands.

  Using my own hands I invited them to the common room for a drink; repeating the invitation, slowly, several times, but eventually getting through.

  Clive looked at his watch meaningfully but Stella ignored him: ‘Can I smoke?’

  I nodded; she shouldered her video camera bag, lit a cigarette and followed me downstairs, inhaling deeply. Binky followed, lurching from step to step.

  Several tables were occupied; people were chatting in rapid Sign, a blur of hands punctuated by an occasional hyena-laugh, or too-loud spoken phrase, its consonants bevelled smooth. Miss-The-Point was sitting at a far table, alone; he glanced up and waved, hopefully.

  We stood at the counter; I offered my guests the usual choice. The jiggling-bag mime of tea:

  The fist-grinding mime of coffee:

  A slight misnomer, since the coffee was instant, but Stella beamed with the pleasure of another new discovery, and furiously ground her fists. Clive rotated his more sedately. The sign was still new to me, also—a borrowing from American Sign that had gained currency in my absence. I had stuck stubbornly to the old Auslan ‘C’ for coffee for some months, but resistance was futile. No one remembered, or understood.

  I hoped that Miss-The-Point wasn’t watching.

  I demonstrated the milk-mime; Stella laughed—a small explosion of smoke—and shook her head; Clive followed my example, more slowly. Sugar—the Good Hand at the lips—more shaking of heads. I spooned out the coffee, tapped three cups of water from the urn. My guests were distracted, watching the various small groups huddled around gesturing hands as if around the flames of a silent, flickering fire.

  ‘It’s a beautiful language,’ Stella murmured in English.

  ‘It can be ugly,’ I told her. ‘It can be anything it pleases.’

  She touched her camera bag. ‘Would people mind if I videotaped them—for Eliza?’

  ‘You could ask.’

  ‘How can I ask?’

  ‘You could ask me to ask.’

  She laughed. ‘Maybe not tonight. They look…preoccupied. I wouldn’t want to intrude.’

  I lifted the coffees onto a tray and added a plate of ham sandwiches from the cabinet shelf.

  ‘Would you like something to eat?’ I said, then added: ‘We have vegetarian meals.’

  Clive stared at me, surprised.

  ‘You know our work?’

  ‘I’ve seen you on television, St Francis,’ I said, cheekily tracing the halo-sign above my head.

  A small risk, but I was feeling more comfortable in their company. They both laughed—the first real laugh I had heard emerge from Clive’s prim mouth.

  ‘Don’t believe everything you see on television,’ Stella said.

  ‘Perish the thought.’

  She selected a cheese sandwich; they both followed me to an empty table, as far from Miss-The-Point as possible. I passed out the coffees; we sat, and sipped.

  ‘Clive’s books are his real work,’ Stella said.

  ‘I must read them.’

  ‘All good bookshops have them,’ he said.

  Stella added, timing-perfect: ‘And a few of the bad.’

  It seemed a practised joke; the performance of a double-act, a tag-team. Stella took a bite from her sandwich then passed the rest under the table to Binky; Clive’s attention wandered again, distracted by the signing at a nearby table. His lips moved, barely perceptibly, as he caught snatches of a phrase, and made the translation into English.

  I said: ‘Ah…About your daughter…’

  ‘Eliza,’ he reminded me.

  ‘Eliza. When will she begin classes?’

  ‘We’re working on it.’

  ‘She’s…eight?’

  They both nodded, I pressed on: ‘The first years of language acquisition are crucial. She should immerse herself in Sign as soon as possible.’

  An invisible current passed between them; Stella finally spoke for both: ‘She is very shy, J.J. Maybe a classroom is not the right environment. We hoped—we realise it’s a lot to ask…’ She paused and took a deep breath before continuing. ‘We hoped that you might consider taking her as a private student. Tutoring her.’

  ‘For a trial period,’ Clive added.

  I was flattered, but there were strict rules about such arrangements, proper channels.

  ‘Jeremy Hinkley, the Director, takes the Advanced class. He’s sitting over there. I could introduce you.’

  They looked towards Miss-The-Point; he smiled and waved; they turned back to me.

  Clive said: ‘You wrote the textbook.’

  ‘Years ago. It’s out of date.’

  These days I try to keep it quiet: Sign for Beginners, a primer of basic hand-shapes I wrote—or mostly sketched—in my twenties. To call it a textbook was to invest it with false authority, it was little more than a stapled pamphlet, albeit a best-seller in the Deaf world, briefly.

  I said: ‘Johnston’s dictionary is far more up-to-date.’

  He insisted: ‘We want a teacher, not a dictionary. We’ve been told that you are the best qualified.’

  Stella smiled, and signed: ‘You good teacher…true.’

  More flattery, but I was susceptible. Separated from my wife and daughter, alienated from my parents, I was more in need of love than flattery—but beggars can’t be choosers. The company of friends, the small verbal lovebites of their flattery, these at least provided a surrogate love, a temporary sustenance. Especially when their flattery agreed with my own self-flattery. For surely I was a good teacher—my best student had clearly learnt that day’s lesson in Sign grammar.

  ‘Congratulations,’ I signed to Stella—my
left hand shaking my right hand, more a self-congratulation.

  She caught the irony and laughed.

  ‘It’s short notice,’ she said, in English. ‘But why don’t you join us for a meal on Saturday night? We could work on you over dinner.’

  Clive turned to her sharply, the invitation had clearly not been canvassed between them.

  ‘I’d like that,’ I said, before she could withdraw it.

  ‘And your—partner, of course,’ she added, more a question than an invitation.

  I found it easier to answer in Sign, grasping my ring finger.

  ‘You’re married?’ Stella interrupted, pleased with herself.

  I shook my head violently, and finished what I had been about to sign, plucking that imaginary wedding ring from my finger, and tossing it aside.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, not knowing whether to laugh or sympathise. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I shook my head: ‘Don’t be.’

  Clive looked at his watch again; this time Stella acknowledged the hint. ‘We should be off. Saturday night, J.J.?’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it. And meeting Eliza.’

  Another barely perceptible exchange of glances passed between them; Stella spoke again: ‘That might not be possible, J.J. She goes to bed early.’

  ‘Shall I come in the afternoon?’

  Clive rescued his wife: ‘I don’t think that’s appropriate at this stage. She has a strict daily routine.’

  Stella added, brightly: ‘Come at seven. We live in the Hills, it’s a bit hard to find. You have a car?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I’ll fax directions to the Institute tomorrow morning,’ she said.

  10

  I didn’t sleep well on Friday night. The night was hot; a mix of anxiety and anticipation added several more degrees to my mental weather. I don’t make friends among the hearing easily. I blame my size, the social barrier of fat. I find social occasions—occasions that don’t have some kind of inbuilt, pre-stressed structure—near impossible. A classroom is fine, teacher–student roles are clearly defined and demarcated. But drop me into a party and I’m lost. People look past you, look through you, when you’re fat. A strange thing: somehow you embarrass them.