A Many Coated Man

by Owen Marshall

  So is there noise and somewhat methodical movement? Are there the heavy sounds of the driver’s filled glove, the footwork of them all on the landing with the salt water glinting as a dark oil underneath, the pleasant fragrance of the driver’s after-shave, the frothy burst of Slaven’s breath through his own blood? Yes, he lies dealt with soon enough and the driver kneels and takes his Cyma gold watch and the wallet from his jacket.

  ‘I’d break a few fingers, but his hands seems pretty much useless already,’ the driver says. His high, bird’s eyes are sharp even beneath the wharf. The solid man takes one of Slaven’s hands and turns it from side to side.

  ‘Burns,’ he says. ‘Burns is what these are. Poor bugger.’ The driver slips the watch onto his own wrist and passes the wallet to his friend.

  ‘Let it be a lesson to him’ he says, as they walk back up the stairs and through M.F. Products.

  Under the wharf it becomes darker and cooler as well. Slaven regains consciousness and lies with his eyes and his mouth open, resting, and checking with small movements and messages which parts are okay. Nothing seems to be broken, but any movement brings pain. His face feels immensely swollen. He has become an elephant man. The greatest mistake is to cup his hands and take sea water from the rising tide to wash blood from his face — sharper pain than anything the driver dished out to him. The small mussels clustered on the hardwood piles are almost all submerged, the patches and strips of light from above the wharf slide and undulate like photographic paper on the surface of the swell. The dinghy is higher in relation to him, nodding and veering on its rope. The sound of a simple, repetitious diesel as a cray boat comes in. Drifting, querulous gulls. Though Slaven can smell and taste nothing but his own blood, the waterfront fragrance is always there, compounded of fish scales, refrigeration fluids, ozone, salt, rust and tarred rope, poor food, sneakers, mussels and the farts of god-forsaken creatures in the depths of the sea.

  There is a place in the hills where no one wins farmer of the year; high up where the road is still unsealed and has bulges on its length occasionally so that if you’re unlucky enough to meet something coming the other way it can be decided by eye contact and gross tonnage who will back down — and then back up. Much of the land has beaten its proprietors and so is given over to pine forest and if the stands are immature the pruned branches are rust filagree beneath the velvet green of the firs. The farm houses are weatherboard and the sheds mainly shot. The dogs are kennelled in a gully head where the mutton bones go to die and the white leghorns flap up into nooks of the equipment shed to roost, where they mute on the harnesses and the post-hole digger which have no other use. There are boxes and bags of apparently unused seed, but the birds and the mice have long since been in and all can be winnowed away. There’s a tractor seat cover made from possum pelts and stirrup pumps that have never worked and refuse to start doing so now. In the shearing shed the wood is richly stained with fleece oil and dags and a little blood and sweat. A track winds over the gorse-covered top of the gully to the manuka country beyond and slopes of pigfern rooted over by the namesake, and screes of serpentine rock which make a cheap fence because the sheep will hardly cross and a high pond or two which you’d never know were there, but the stock tracks wind their way to them and the mallards which can be covered with a couple of guns. Pretty much dry country most of the time and the hack still better than the farm bike, but there are days when the cloud comes in, the gorse and briar glisten almost as much as the serpentine, the manuka stems gradually darken as the rain seeps through, the pigfern is bowed down by the weight of the drops it bears.

  There are ridges and faces and gullies and spurs that don’t appear on maps. They’re given names by the family who have to climb them and when the people go they take away the names. There’s a place where beech were sledded down to make their first houses and there’s a place in the creek, a small falls, where the biggest boar was stuck whose tusks hang over the shearing shed and glint in the evening sun. No matter who does the muster, no matter how keen the dogs, there are a few old woollies on every place that never come down to the yards. But you know all that.

  Kellie and Marianne Dunne arrange for Slaven to be admitted to Burwood. There is no strict medical justification, but Dr Dunne, like many in her profession, is not convinced that all medical practitioners have equal skill and also she wants the opportunity to see how things are with Slaven in other ways. After all the genesis of the CCP policies and the Slavenisms which are now heard everywhere, lies in those first talks in her hospital — Miles Kitson, Aldous Slaven and herself. Just a day or two then, so that she can be sure that his injuries have no complications and in this time she will appraise his mental health and hear of Western Springs, of the amazing growth of the CCP and the meeting with the Prime Minister. Even a celebrity needs reassurance following an afternoon beneath the Lyttleton wharves. ‘Some people don’t like a prophet. I told you that when you were here,’ says Marianne. She inspects the nasal passages with the flexoptic and gives him a scan in case of more deep-seated damage. Stitches had been necessary below his right eye and in the corner of his mouth on the same side. There is fracture and compression of his cheekbone. ‘Most of the discomfort will come from your mouth and the bruising and you’ll find that the neck muscles are very sore. You didn’t get kicked lower down?’

  ‘No. Just a feathering, the driver said.’

  ‘I’ll be able to have a better look when the swelling subsides, but you’ll heal surprisingly quickly. Don’t be alarmed by the spectacular discolouration as it happens. Burns are a different matter. There’s a far more complex response from the system to burns. You can’t just sew things together with burns.’ Talk of burns leads Marianne Dunne on to look at Slaven’s hands. He likes to feel her touch. She always does the same quick, professional things, like a seamstress checking a garment join, care and pride combined. She bends the fingers back from the palm to check the tension of the new and grafted skin, the time of renewed blood suffusion. She follows the raised lines and checks the muscle replacement at the base of the thumbs. ‘Are you doing the exercises?’

  ‘When I have time.’

  ‘Make him do them,’ she says, turning to Kellie, ‘otherwise he’ll end up with hands like a fish eagle’s.’

  And his mind? What grafts and seams and fractures are there? He may resemble worse than a fish eagle; some creature that takes flight only in the internal sky. Even Marianne Dunne knows precious little of that. She has read Esterhaub and Browne of course and the more recent studies by Langbein in Sydney, but her professional responsibility lay with the outward signs of searing. Even now there is little understanding of how electro-convulsive therapy does the trick, although still used for the very elderly because unlike the drugs it has no side effects. The psychiatrist Hans Berger established much of the early knowledge of the brain’s electrical activity, but the realisation of his increasing mental illness drove him to hang himself in 1941. Ugo Cerletti was the first to undertake experiments with shock treatment on humans. In April 1938 the police brought to his clinic in Rome a madman who could not even be identified. Cerletti gave the man a brief shock and the man jolted, fell back on the bed and began singing. While Cerletti conferred with colleagues about a second treatment, the man said clearly, ‘Not another one. It’s deadly.’ But he was given another one — 110 volts for 1.5 seconds — which brought on a typical epileptic attack from which he slowly awoke, peaceful and smiling.

  Maybe it has been beneficial, that accidental charge while Slaven was painting his house. Extra connections could be made, new pathways, shortcuts even, stored treasures of the subconscious spilled to the light. There are parts of the brain which by physical stimulation have been proved to hold exact recollection, of which conscious recall is only a dim precis, and activation of the visual cortex will result in a visual sensation, phosphene, even in the totally blind. Slaven has read of people who have had their life again: every colour, every word, every random scent of the passing wi
nd, every ache of their deepest grief and the most individual and piercing joys. At the cost of probing the brain of course.

  ‘Things have been done inside, of course,’ Slaven tells them. ‘A lot of myself I’m not in touch with anymore, but there’s new possibilities in return.’

  ‘Such as?’ says Dr Dunne.

  ‘Not this last business, but the accident, the shock. It must have been close to a complete meltdown upstairs, you realise that.’

  ‘Are you still having the syncopations and the loss of emotional identity?’ asks the doctor.

  ‘Some odd effects persist,’ says Kellie. She has discussed them with Marianne Dunne and Mr Garrity before, as well as with Slaven. The singing and the marching, for example. Slaven can sometimes be found marching on the spot, his knees lifting quite high and a look of pride and resolve on his face. He might continue for ten or fifteen minutes at a time if not interrupted and has no recollection of it afterwards. And sometimes at night she is woken by him singing Half Moon Bay — softly, brokenly, with the tune gradually being flattened out as he repeats the verses over and over. Occasionally one of a series of movements in a routine physical activity is omitted; the motor syncopations that Marianne Dunne refers to, so that Slaven might take out his handkerchief, but not raise it to his nose as he blows mucus on to his top lip and chin.

  Not often you understand, and for Slaven blips of consciousness which pass with virtually no recall. Set against the sustained power of understanding and expression they are nothing, surely. Such things will almost certainly disappear of their own accord as the brain recovers from trauma. Just circuitry problems, the jocular Mr Garrity has assured them, though even Garrity can make no guarantee.

  Dreams however, Slaven can certainly remember, not for any Freudian topics or events, but the association of certain colours with intense emotions. A Van Gogh yellow for instance becomes a whole world of pathos and he wakes with tears free on his face. A high-sky vellum blue stiffens his cock. Purple crystals glow with the malign intent which drives him to an awakening with his limbs jerking in an act both of escape and denial. As Garrity told Kellie and Marianne Dunne though, it was most unfortunate that Slaven went through the Lyttelton thing so soon after his accident. ‘It’s set you back again,’ says Marianne.

  ‘You’ve got to start taking more care of yourself,’ says Kellie.

  Cardew claims that the police are doing little to track down the driver and his mate. He’s sorry for his father he says, but emphasises that the greatest threat is to the standing of the CCP. He argues that the situation has been partly created by allowing the organisation to become too closely identified with Slaven personally rather than the principles for which he stands. It would have an element of plausibility from any source other than Cardew. His father’s charter points are to Cardew completely negotiable, as is the faith of all the Coalition’s supporters, as is the fortune of all in life except himself.

  Cardew’s title within the organisation is Financial Assistant, his job specification to help Kellie with the financial side of the administration and his resolve to assist as much money into his own pocket as he is able. Everything in life is a scam as far as he is concerned, from the Government down. Cardew sees no essential difference between his father’s Coalition for Citizen Participation and a second-hand car yard.

  It’s not easy though. Kellie runs a tight ship despite the range of her responsibility and Slaven runs an open executive structure with full disclosure and consultation policies. And the old gasper, Miles Kitson, provides expertise from his management team from time to time as a favour. Corruption doesn’t thrive in the open, at least not at the stage of germination. Cardew wants a more close-knit, family business. One that is of course entailed and he has his supporters from amongst those in the CCP most opportunistic and from those outside who see change to their advantage.

  At Slaven’s first appearance following the Lyttelton attack, he suffers a mild convulsion while addressing a combined local bodies seminar in the Pocock Lounge of the Civic Administration Block. His face strikes the lectern, his notes are dislodged and flutter in the air briefly after he himself has reached the floor. Cardew is present at Kellie’s insistence and takes his father’s place as speaker while Slaven rests. His theme is not, however, a greater bureaucratic responsiveness to public opinion, but an appeal for official ratepayers’ institutions to contribute to the Coalition’s funds. His reception is less than rapturous.

  So Slaven must cut down on his commitments for a while. It’s the advice of both Garrity and Marianne Dunne. ‘It’s what I’ve been saying,’ Cardew tells his mother. ‘We’ve got to take more of the load off him by playing a bigger part. He’s the last one to want some sort of personality cult. You know that and it only makes him a target.’

  ‘Who else can make it work? Who else can speak like that?’

  ‘Yea, well, there’s that, but the organisational things, the policies and the supervision should be left to you and me, mum. We’re the ones who understand him.’

  ‘You feel you’re that close then?’ says Kellie. Cardew has the grace to let his eyes slide away.

  ‘I reckon I’m closer than Thackeray Thomas, Eula, or Sheffield and that lot.’

  ‘God help us,’ says Kellie.

  Cardew goes out soon afterwards to the Hello Dolly Escort Agency and then a motel complex with a Maori theme. He shags on the second floor by a window level with carved figures on a pole. He can see from his fixed examination what a sham it is. The pole has long cracks which show pale wood beneath the stain and the eyes are white plastic instead of the true irridescence of paua shell. ‘What a have,’ he says above his partner of the moment’s rise and fall.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ she replies.

  The Chairman of the Coalition’s Wellington branch rings him later that night, saying he has heard that Slaven isn’t well, that there’s been an unfortunate incident. The movement as a whole has to be safeguarded he says, there are people just waiting to pick on anything suspect, to discredit the principles for which the Coalition stands. All the work, the commitment, the faith, the political capital gained, can be lost so quickly. He tells Cardew that some influential members are concerned that Slaven hasn’t had enough rest since the Lyttelton affair. A rest for a while, the Wellington Chairman says, an opportunity for others to run with the ball. There’s a group who would like to talk it over with Cardew; just a quiet discussion for the moment. There’s a room booked at the new hotel in Island Bay, built by the Koreans. The Chairman is so glad that Cardew appreciates their concern.

  Something of drama should follow perhaps. We think that evil of necessity comes with a heightened significance, don’t we? That triviality is erased by betrayal, and boredom incompatible with cruelty and malice. It’s not so though. Cardew and the Chairman meet with Messrs Pollen, Marr and Aristeed in the Chairman’s suite overlooking Island Bay and they move cautiously towards agreement that Slaven is best taken into professional care. For his own sake, for the Coalition’s sake, for the sake of Cardew, the Chairman, and those represented by Messrs Pollen, Marr and Aristeed. Mr Aristeed has a bad hip and from time to time he gets up and walks around the chairs of the others for a little respite. Mr Pollen speaks very highly of the Beckley-Waite Institute and gives a brochure on it to Cardew. The essential point emerges in regard to Cardew that a close family member will have to agree, almost certainly sign something to that effect, says Mr Pollen and the Chairman murmurs something about resolution and imposing oneself on reality. Mr Pollen says that there are excellent medical people who know what’s required for Slaven’s well-being and are prepared to say so, but nevertheless there is this about a close family member, and some record of Slaven’s little problems since the fall and the power line will be helpful. Mr Aristeed stops limping about the room and says that his hip is unbearable. Before he leaves he shakes Cardew’s hand and says he’s convinced that a secure convalescence is the best thing for his father and for the CCP, just until Sla
ven is strong enough not to be his own worst enemy. There are media hounds who crucify people just to keep their hand in, he says.

  Cardew sits with the Chairman and Messrs Pollen and Marr for another hour or so and they talk about the amazing success of Slaven’s Coalition. Cardew says that what’s needed next is a corporate financial structure with the emphasis on subscriptions, donations, pledges and endowments. No doubt of it exists in the minds of the others. The Wellington Chairman thinks that he’s had a small bucket of ice sent up, but can’t find it. Mr Marr isn’t much older than Cardew. He leans towards him and tells him that as soon as Slaven goes to the Beckley-Waite for a spell then they’re in business for sure. No doubt of it at all.

  These are a few of the other things that are said in the hotel in Island Bay, though not necessarily in the same order, or with the same intonation that you, or I, would use.

  ‘Mr Aristeed is a former Minister of Community Equity. No one knows more about minorities. Ramon, Ramon, come and meet Cardew Slaven. It’s his hip. It gives him absolute hell.’