The Boy Who Could Keep a Swan in His Head

by John Hunt

  “Sometimes you get a little burned in the fullness of the light.”

  “Actually you look a little whiter than normal.” Inexplicably Phen began to look on the ground for confetti.

  “Don’t close the blinds entirely. You’re man enough to take the brightness. Sometimes it’s got to hurt to illuminate.”

  Phen didn’t know what he was talking about yet instantly felt offended.

  “It’s just a space that wasn’t there before,” said Heb.

  “What is?”

  “Death. You get to choose how you fill it. Deliberately not remembering isn’t a good start.”

  “I’m not deliberately not remembering.”

  “Good. Don’t be one of those people who never buys lilies because they remind you of your father’s death. Buy lilies all the time because they remind you of your father’s death.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s how you keep the empty space filled. And that’s how you remind yourself the space you take up isn’t forever.”

  On today of all days Phen didn’t feel like being lectured to.

  “My mother said before my father died he saw people in his room. They were floating. His eyes followed them around. I heard him talking to them through the door. Was that you?”

  Heb shook his head slowly. “Those are fetchers. Usually family. They come to explain what happens next.”

  “Afterwards he asked for the ‘Moonlight Sonata’ and had a bowl of soup. We had to turn the volume to full so he could hear it in the bedroom.”

  “Beethoven.” Heb flicked the tails of his jacket over his chair and straightened his bow tie before beginning to play the piano. As his hands floated across the keyboard, the bedspread gently rocked from side to side on his shoulders. Phen waited for the sound effects, but none came. The finger movements seemed meticulous, the head bowed in concentration. Behind the sunglasses there was no way of telling if the eyes were open or closed. The silent music seemed to reinvigorate Heb. He played on and on, finally allowing his thrashing torso to bring the piece to its full and complete climax.

  “First movement.”

  “So?”

  “You, sort of, heard it the way Beethoven would’ve. He was going deaf when he wrote it.”

  Phen had kept his school blazer on as a respectful reminder of the day and had presumed, at the very least, Heb would’ve been more sensitive to the moment. Was it too much to ask for angels to understand the need for sympathy and compassion? He wanted a deep, even mystical sharing of sorrow. Something that would lift him above his pain and grief. Something that would explain how his father could bounce around in an ill-fitting box, get burned to no more than the leftovers in an ashtray, while everyone else politely nibbled sausage rolls and sipped tea. Instead he’d received a silent sonata. The grey mist that had begun to fill his head turned to red.

  “The heck with you,” he said.

  “The heck? I don’t know what that means.”

  “The hell with you.”

  “Oh.”

  Phen took off his blazer as he stormed away. Not satisfied that he had expressed his anger to its full extent, he searched for the worst word he could find. He thought of “swine”, “bastard” and “rogue”. Ridiculously “cad” and “scoundrel” also flicked through his mind. Eventually he found the word. It was so horrible and vile he couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud or even pronounce it correctly. Despite that, by the time he reached Duchess Court, he was still calling Heb a sunt.

  19

  Incandescent

  /in-kan-des’ent/ adjective

  Being on holiday without a father was hard. Phen now wore Mr Lansdown’s cross retrospectively. Maybe it was a little late but he still had a mother and he didn’t want to take any chances. The more he tried to fill the empty space the more it drained away. He tried music and replaced Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” with the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun”. He finally broke his five-rand note, went to the OK Bazaars record bar and bought the single. The melancholy introduction and the devastation caused by that abode in New Orleans spoke to his soul. It had been the ruin of many a poor boy, and Phen loved singing at the top of his voice that God knew that he was one. Sitting on the carpet in front of the Grundig, he played it again and again as he shouted his hurt to the world.

  The flat was now an empty space too. His mother was back at work and his gran had retreated to Ivanhoe Mansions “to get her breath back”. The main bedroom still had hospital smells and a circular mark on the parquet where the oxygen cylinder had stood. Now that the curtains were always open you could see the thinnest crust of dirt running along the top of the skirting board. The Salvation Army had come to collect his father’s clothes. Phen had let them in and shown them to the wardrobe. His mother had insisted on keeping one smart dark suit. It hung spaciously from its lonely hanger and spun in a slow circle when you opened the door. By mistake, his slippers had been left behind. Tufts of the fur lining still stood upright even though there were no legs for them to climb.

  All the pills were thrown into the toilet. The capsules tended to float and needed a second flushing. They happily bobbed up and down, reflecting their many colours before yielding to the swirl. No one knew what to do with the hypodermic syringe. Made of glass and metal, it seemed to have some inherent value. In the end it replaced the sunglasses underneath the Fiddler on the Roof programme. The steel needles were placed in an empty Eno bottle. The stumpy flask was then wrapped in black masking tape before it was dropped into the dustbin. This was to ensure it would be of no use to scavenging hippie drug addicts.

  “Now that the deed is done,” Mairead had explained, “it’s pointless hanging about.” She’d spring-cleaned a number of times and washed all the bed linen twice just to be sure. It was only after all the activities had died down that Phen realised there were some things you couldn’t scrub away. No one sat in his father’s chair in the lounge. No one lay on his side of the bed. His shaving brush stayed upright and defiant in the bathroom cabinet. Although their fingers moved around it every morning and night as they reached for the toothpaste, no hand had the courage to lift it and put it in the bin. Likewise the Chums annual now lay in the bottom of his cupboard, impossible to open.

  Phen tried to go to his other worlds. He pulled Seven Pillars of Wisdom out of his father’s bookcase and stared at the charcoal sketch of Lawrence of Arabia on the cover. The desert stayed still. His mighty warriors sat silent and unmoving on their camels. Le Carré’s spy did not come in from the cold. Even his war comics remained on the page. He reread The Dark Terror, one of his favourites. The paratroopers dropped behind enemy lines were brave yet distant. When Jim Robson burst into the room to save the captured Professor Rennard, the startled look on the German’s face was genuine, just not gripping. The speech bubble told Jerry to freeze or he’d be dead. “Himmel! Englanders!” was the reply, but Phen could take it no further. He stood in front of the bookcase and stared at the vacant bed. Did death take all other forms of escape with it? Was it so final and powerful it buried everything else? Would the rows of books against the wall be not just his father’s, but also his, epitaph? Here lie father and son. Rest in pizz.

  The tape recorder was lying in exactly the same position, half hidden under the bed. Mairead’s spring cleaning had given “the machinery” a wide berth. She’d declared it futuristic mumbo-jumbo. He thought about plugging in the microphone. The two reels were still threaded, stopped midway in whatever tale they’d been telling. He just had to press Record and his voice would take over the story. He could interrupt mid-sentence and tell it his way. He could even wipe everything out and start from the beginning. He just didn’t know what to say.

  There was only one way to resolve this once and for all. The pen was in his Oxford stationery tin and a full prescription pad had been left behind by Dr Klevansky. He took his time, slowly making notes of thoughts that had been in his head for too long. He wrote calmly and clearly. The long
list of degrees behind Dr Klevansky’s name forced him to reread his sentences and check his spelling. Pal sensed they were heading for the park and waited patiently at the door. If Heb was still there, it was time for a showdown. “Enough of this bullshit,” Phen heard himself say. He liked the adult sound of the sentence and repeated it to Pal.

  They found him engrossed in a Drum magazine. It stretched across his face with only his forehead showing. Phen had to clear his throat twice before the eyes and nose appeared. A stalemate ensued when the magazine didn’t drop any lower. They looked at each other, waiting for the next move.

  “You still talking to me?”

  “Business,” said Phen, holding up his paper and pen.

  “I’m just reading about a town without a soul. How Fordsburg was bulldozed to a new place called Lenasia.”

  Phen would not allow himself to be detoured. He sat down on the bench and flipped open the pad. “I have a school project I have to hand in on the first day of next term. An essay.”

  “What’s the topic?”

  “What I learned during the school holidays.”

  Heb folded the magazine in half then took off his sunglasses. He stuck them deep into his hair. While his blue eyes stared down at Phen, his glasses scanned the horizon. Phen would not be distracted and kept his finger on the first line.

  “What does heaven look like?”

  “You want it to be a place?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Do you want it to be?”

  “I asked first.”

  “If you want white fluffy clouds and beautiful blonde women playing golden harps, you can have that. If you’d prefer a giant Scalextric track – it can be a thousand times bigger than the one in the window at Hutson’s Toys – you can have that too. Personally, I prefer a magnificent shallow bowl that stretches across the universe. It’s perfectly woven with every colour ever made and each colour is an individual note in the most beautiful piece of music ever heard. And as you move to the middle, it gets better and better.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when you’re at the centre, equidistant from all sides, there is nothing except absolute silence.”

  Phen wasn’t sure what to write down. His pen remained poised.

  “Heaven is exactly what you need it to be. That’s why it’s heaven.”

  Phen moved on to his next question. “Do you get different kinds of angels?”

  “Yes and no.”

  Phen sighed and tapped his pen against his pad.

  “Angels are angels. However, they are assigned different tasks.”

  “Like?”

  “I’ve already mentioned fetchers. Another example would be guardians or witnesses.”

  “What do they do?”

  “They watch and offer assistance, if possible.”

  “If possible! Can’t angels do anything and everything?”

  “Not if you want to stay human.”

  Heb fell silent. A struggling Phen doodled on his pad, pretending it was helping him think. He drew a ladder up the side of the page.

  “You have free will, so angels can only point and suggest. They can’t force you to do anything. Angels can’t do frontal lobotomies. It’s not part of the code.”

  “Code?”

  “Like traffic circles, it pays to follow the signs.”

  “I’ve seen your wings at night. Why don’t I ever see them during the day?”

  “It’s also not in the angels’ code to give pigeons heart attacks.”

  Heb pointed to the flock that queued impatiently to drill holes in leftover French loaf. It protruded from a brown-paper Fontana Bakery bag. There were tiny eruptions as flakes of crust burst into the air.

  “Of course angels also want to avoid cardiac arrest among the general population. The whole thing works best incognito. Wings are fine for paintings, mausoleums and monuments, but a little impractical in the field.”

  “You’re undercover?”

  “You could say so.”

  Phen checked his list. He’d put an exclamation mark behind question four.

  “How do you qualify to become an angel? Do you have to have lived a perfect life?”

  “Not quite. Look at it this way: if all angels had perfect lives, how could they help someone who was having a not-so-perfect one?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I once watched a school swimming gala. The boys were about your age. The winner was a terrific swimmer. Broad shoulders, athletic body. He came first by five lengths. Stood on top of the podium and held the cup up high. The boy who came last suffered from muscular dystrophy. All he could do was paddle away like a dog. Halfway through, everyone thought he was going to drown. He paused, exhausted, then kept on going until he reached the end. Now, which of those two boys is best qualified to help someone who’s terrified about getting into the pool?”

  The pen stayed motionless. Like the French loaf, Phen’s mind was having holes picked in it. He drew more steps in his ladder.

  “Could you explain that again?”

  “Let’s look at this a different way. We are all everything and its opposite at the same time. We are scared and courageous. Good and bad. Sad and happy. Deep and shallow. It’s just that angels have learned which side to turn to the light. They’ve worked out which to illuminate and from that choice everything else is decided. I’m an alcoholic who doesn’t drink alcohol, so I can help people who do. It’s that simple.”

  Phen wasn’t so sure. He looked down at his notes again.

  “Number five.” He hoped by saying the number he’d show some semblance of control. “Are all angels white?”

  “We come in all colours.”

  “Even black?”

  “Of course.”

  “Isn’t black evil? The serpent in the garden of Eden is always black.”

  “And the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb is always white. Colour is on, not in. It doesn’t matter. First you are a human. Then a man or a woman. Only after that are you a colour, a religion or a nationality. Be honest, be kind. Kindness always has purpose. The rest will sort itself out.”

  “Then why does the bench we’re sitting on say it’s only for whites?”

  “Because those people have turned the wrong side to the light.”

  Heb grabbed a microphone and began to tap his foot as he searched for the rhythm. He turned the empty park into a nightclub and began to acknowledge patrons at different tables. He pointed at them individually as he tried to sound like Dean Martin.

  Before you’re black, white, yellow or of cappuccino hue,

  When you’re brand new,

  You are, you are, you are just you.

  Before Christian, Buddhist, Muslim or Jew,

  Better believe it,

  You are, you are, you are just you.

  Before agnostic, atheist, animist, nihilist too,

  That’s right, folks,

  You are, you are, you are just you.

  While Heb searched for a fourth verse, Phen stood up and walked away. He was tired of this singing angel. The pigeons were in such a feeding frenzy they let him get up close. It wasn’t just the bread they were attacking. A large round of salami was being thrown in the air as different beaks pecked at it. It spun and turned like the pizzas at Bella Napoli before they were put into the oven. A robin took advantage of the chaos. It swooped in, stuck its head into the bulbous end of the loaf, feasted, and flew off. Phen watched it disappear into the mauve haze above the mine dumps; it was already late afternoon. By the time he’d returned, the lower angle of the sun had forced the sunglasses back on and the singing had stopped.

  Phen consulted his pad again.

  “If you’re an angel and you can be a human, can you be anything else?”

  “Form, like colour, is just an outer layer. It is irrelevant.”

  “But can you change … into other things?”

  “What difference would it make if I said I could be a dog, or, say, a pigeon?”


  “If it’s the dog that walked me to school or that rock pigeon that’s always around, that came to my concert and then came to the church, it would make a difference.”

  “Why? In form it’s still just a mongrel or a clump of feathers. You decide whether it’s an angel or not. It’s up to you to see past the exterior and decide. My saying so doesn’t make it real. You believing it does.”

  The sun was beginning to set. The shadows lay far behind them. The black trunk of the jacaranda stretched across the park, up and over the parked cars and across Primrose Terrace. The wind blew up his too-wide shorts and puffed them up around his hips. He flattened them by putting his hands in his pockets. As a second thought, he also pulled his white tennis socks up from his ankles to his mid-shins. They wouldn’t stay there long, but momentarily made him feel more businesslike.

  Question number seven was the only one he’d written in capitals. It was the last question yet it had always been the first, and perhaps the only. He took a deep breath and turned to face Heb more squarely.

  “Why didn’t you help my father? All I could do at the end was read to him – badly! No help whatsoever.”

  “Massive help. Forever. Your father didn’t want you to read to him. He wanted you to hear the words. His death is a gift. It’s opened a space you can now fill. How you fill it is up to you. He was giving you clues.”

  “Adventure,” Phen heard himself say. “No ordinary Arabs these,” he continued in his mind, “but fearless and daring …” He saw the tears run down his father’s cheeks again and watched as they leaped from his chin onto the flannel top.

  “You could’ve done something.”

  “Angels aren’t in the business of forcing themselves between the little hand and the big hand.”