Just Relations

by Rodney Hall

  Keep going then, the man inside advised him.

  How many years did we say there were?

  Seventy-four.

  Should I start on my chest before I look?

  Seventy-four is a long time when you come to consider it.

  Yes, I think it would be best to work on the chest now.

  You’re making a nice clean line there; things wouldn’t be so simple if you had body hairs.

  I never did have, he said proudly. (The blade gave out a sound which filled him with horror, a faint sibilant whistling, as it sliced through skin and flesh.)

  Can you feel the blood running down your legs?

  It tickles a bit and my feet feel sticky, but I haven’t looked yet.

  Mr Ping stopped what he was doing. He stood alone in the bathroom of his house, wearing nothing but his underpants, arraigned before the large mirror he had once installed for his vanity. Finally he looked up to see what had been accomplished so far.

  It’s an awful shock I know, the man inside him apologized hastily.

  O God. What am I doing?

  You’re doing what you have to do, and not too badly, except the cuts could be a shade deeper if that can be managed.

  It’s so shiny.

  Better start with your stomach before it gets too messy and dripped on.

  I don’t think I can go through with this, I’m feeling sick.

  Answer your own question, Ping. When I asked you before what there was to see, you replied, the years nothing but the years.

  I understand, already that’s forgotten.

  The blood, the blood.

  I understand.

  Just cut a little deeper, not so much as to really hurt though.

  I don’t care if it does hurt. I only care about whether it will work.

  Keep cutting, it’s a question of faith.

  The razor trailed with a gentle almost lazy motion over his wrinkled abdomen, the old sagging skin producing berries of blood startlingly young and fresh.

  You see, said the man inside Mr Ping. The blood doesn’t age, watch the blood come young as it ever was.

  I was betrayed you know, he said as he punched at himself with his knuckles, before slicing the skin delicately.

  You really have a case.

  Nothing else has gone. I’m fit as I ever was. Look at that for shape, proportion. You can feel me anywhere and not an ounce of fat or softness. Just this hanging skin.

  You look like something not properly made with that skin. The razor decorated it with a swirling red line. Mr Ping set to work on his arms.

  Got to be a bit careful of the big veins though, he said.

  You could make it a work of art. You could exhibit what you’ve done. In the city they’d pay to see you.

  What if I leave my face alone?

  There’s no point in doing anything if you leave your face alone. That’s the worst part as it is.

  Mr Ping’s bare feet puddled in the rucking bloody folds of the towel. He looked up at the mirror.

  I’m pale, he said.

  Then he stroked the blade across his cheeks. Harder, so it bit into the flesh. He dragged it up round the side of one eye socket and across his forehead, back and across the lips so that the warm flesh opened out and something mysterious was happening inside him.

  I think you’ve done a good job.

  Yes I think I have, said Mr Ping.

  He stood in front of himself, engulfed in a howl of fear and horror. At that instant he recalled how his wife had come to the open door a few months previously: Mrs Ping had risen from her afternoon rest, woken by a premonition, she had stood there and watched through the bathroom door, watched him inspecting his body and face, watched him inwardly weeping for what he had been. Their eyes had met in the mirror. In her look he could see at last what the mirror was trying to show him; he could also read the compassion she felt for him; angrily he saw that she did not hate him; worse, that she understood, that watching him touch himself and pinch at the slack skin she’d recognized what he felt for his own body: disgust. She who had lived all these years with the insult of his self-love, the pampering of his own physique and skin, had now witnessed his disgust, his admission that age had defeated him, that he’d become grotesque. On that day Mrs Ping said nothing as she returned where she had come from, carrying with her the dreadful load of what she knew, the burden of her freedom, her victory, her sympathy for him, and the knowledge that he did not deserve it.

  She was exultant, said the man inside him.

  She got what she wanted, he agreed bitterly.

  Giving her such a victory as you did.

  Who’s to care, said Mr Ping. She’s dead now.

  She would never have been able to watch this.

  I never wanted it to be like this. That’s the trouble, he said.

  It’s been a crime against you all these years, keeping you in hopes.

  Now Mr Ping suffered afresh at the hands of his own narcissism for he could not resist the fascination of staring at himself, the hideous tatters of skin, the streaked gluey blood. Just as self-love had once stripped him ridiculously naked and wrinkled in front of the wife who was martyred to what he’d been. Standing in the bathroom, Mr Ping thought he heard noises in the house, as if somebody moved stealthily. He listened with concentration, unable to tell whether the breathing was his own or not. Who could it be anyway! The idea absurd. No one knew he was up here. No one had been in the house since Mercy’s death. Only himself, endlessly with himself, with his decaying flesh and his rancid thoughts. The sound of movement came again; plainly the house creaking in the midday sun. He turned his attention to the mirror. The voice inside him seemed to have died. He felt ridiculous, a mutilated scrawny old man imagining he’d been talking to himself (which he probably had). It was not Mercy but Felicia Brinsmead who could claim his greatest moments anyhow. Felicia who was once beautiful as the morning, a year younger than himself and half a head taller, she, the loveliest woman he’d ever seen, had kissed his feet and praised him, hadn’t she?

  His body was shivering. As the shivering began he felt himself wrapped in a lightning flash, the agony zigzagged around, every nerve burnt by a freezing charge. A man on fire. He ought to have been afraid. But instead he accepted this as proof: he knew it had been done now. Very slowly his slashed face crept into an excruciating lopsided smile.

  At last, at last, he breathed.

  You’re free then? the man inside him asked anxiously.

  It’s been prison.

  You’ve set yourself free alright?

  Free. I’ve thrown it off.

  Aren’t you sorry for what you’ve done?

  No. I’m glad thank you. I’m relieved.

  How will you face the people in the street? They’ll ask.

  The cattle? Mr Ping replied with a sneer. Those cow people? A sharp thud came from the bedroom. No doubt about it this time. It had to be some large animal or an intruder. Mr Ping hobbled into the passage, dried blood cracking along his legs. He threw open the bedroom door. There stood Bill Swan, arrested halfway from the wardrobe to the window, clutching a black tin cashbox. Billy gaped at the sight of that bloody naked figure.

  – Can I help? he asked.

  – What are you doing?

  – Stealing this box, Mr Ping.

  – Why don’t you look at me?

  – Stealing a document, that is.

  – Why don’t you look at me?

  – I just came for one thing. I’d have returned the rest safely.

  – Haven’t you seen an old man naked before?

  – I wasn’t stealing it for myself.

  Mr Ping hobbled in, steadying himself against the bed, his feet making curious suckings on the floor. He reached for the cash-box, took it and placed it on the oilcloth-covered table. Still working with one hand he juggled the tiny key into its lock and threw open the lid.

  – Take what you came for, he said in his nasal Australian voice. Bill Swan stepped forward, sorted
through the papers in the box, extracted a manilla envelope and held it up as if for approval. Bright red fingers grabbed at his wrist and held him. By an immense effort he did not resist, nor attempt to free himself.

  – This, said Bill Swan.

  – Tell me, Swan, have you ever seen a freed man before?

  – …?

  – A man who was not free before. A prisoner?

  – No.

  – What did you want with that envelope?

  – It’s the history Mrs Ping wrote out.

  – I know what it is. You haven’t answered me. He let go of the boy’s arm.

  – We were afraid for what Mrs Ping wrote here, in case it would be lost.

  Mr Ping sank to his knees, teeth chattering violently. He knelt, trying to think what he must do. Shook his head. Hopeless. And rolled unconscious on the worn lino. Bill Swan considered the alternatives. But there was no easy way, he knew. He lifted the old man up, small and light as a child and, after a momentary hesitation for the fate of the bedclothes (which were immaculate), stripped off one blanket, laid him there and covered him up. He was breathing alright. With an unthief-like confusion, the young man looked for the kitchen and barged right into the bathroom instead. Blood was everywhere, blots dribbling down the wall and the long mirror, a trampled mess of it partly sopped up by a towel, footprints of blood leading out through the door. Bile gushed into Billy’s mouth. He spat into the washbasin. He stooped there, rinsing his mouth, hands trembling, bewildered by such depravity, something so impossible to imagine. But there were things to do; he found the kitchen and carried a tumbler of water into the bedroom. The free man, who had now regained consciousness, lifted one hand to help guide the glass. Bill propped his head up and helped him drink. Disgust must have been written on his face as he did so because that is what Mr Rupert Ping saw and that is why he smiled a piercing, grateful smile.

  – It’s not bad son, he said. I’ll be alright after a bit of a sleep. You can tell anyone you like. They’ll see for themselves soon enough.

  Billy backed out of the room.

  – Bill, Mr Ping whispered and his eyes indicated the manilla envelope which lay forgotten on the bed. It’s for Miss Brinsmead, he whispered. He rested there as if asleep, feeling the dry blood sewing his body back together again, that clumsy patchwork of skin, he felt the threads being drawn. He was so tired. He knew everything was alright now. Young Swan could be heard walking out into the yard, coughing. For a while there was nothing else. Gradually the cold ebbed from him, as a terrible ache took its place. He felt aged beyond anything imaginable. There was nothing to be heard now: no human, not even a dog, not even a cow. Then one blowfly seesawed into the room through the open window. Mr Ping lay listening to it smacking into the walls.

  Lovely blood, he said.

  The blood came young as it ever was, the man inside him confirmed the fact.

  Four – The Doubter

  She was packing, yes packing, and that’s all there was to it. No matter what anybody said, let them put it in their pipe. The decision had been made, thank heaven. Come here Susie and help me a moment darling it’s just a bit too much for me to manage alone while Daddy’s out with the stock. Especially with Fred forever asking are we going to need this in Goulburn and are we going to need that in Goulburn, so I hardly know what to answer. Thanks darling yes I’m alright now. Are you? Well don’t worry about me for another half hour at least, I shall be getting into the lowboy and clearing that lot out. Take Freddie with you will you?

  She was packing. She had been a force in the town, no doubt she would be missed. But she didn’t congratulate herself. Though she knew her worth, she wasn’t vain. She was the kind of woman you could find packing in almost any part of the country, in tin shanties out in the semi-desert with her face set on the comforts of a border town, or in the wealthy suburbs of Adelaide you could find her ready to shift her possessions into the luxury suite of an ocean liner bound for Acapulco and a life of glamour. You could find her in Brisbane mopping the sweat from her forehead and reading newspaper reports of a cool change in Sydney, in Bathurst you could find her kissing her mother goodbye with anguished tears because the old lady might never live to see them all again once they got to the supermarkets of Campbelltown, you could find her on Norfolk Island going to Tasmania, in Tasmania bound for Melbourne or Perth, in Perth stepping on a plane for Canberra, in Canberra hustling her husband to get a diplomatic posting to Japan.

  Elaine was packing. A force within her compelled her to pack. The twins had been sent ahead for the sake of their careers. But what had gone wrong she didn’t know though she knew she must set off in person and see to it. They needed her after all. Anyhow this had always been the plan: she and Eric and the younger children would follow. Pete and Dave were to rent a house big enough for them all. The great thing was to get away. Away, out from under, free of what was expected of you all the time. There had to be more to life than this. Had to be. Whitey’s bloody Fall. It was the stagnation that depressed you and gave you headaches. Never mind about risk, no, never mind how the furniture stood round open-mouthed like a lot of friends seeing the real you for the first time. It’d make you laugh if you weren’t so nervous. With the children upset and all. Not that they have any friends their age, but Merv is attached to Grandpa Ian’s budgerigar, Fred’s got this thing he loves and Susie’s got that. And so it goes on. Mum’s in tears of course, so’s Auntie Doreen. Even the mad Brinsos at the shop looked as if they’d have something to say when they heard.

  Elaine McTaggart was packing for the sake of the future. One day she’d had a revelation: there’s nothing to stop me leaving. She flung open the cowshed door on brilliant careers for her children. The twins could be pilots, and spacemen had to be born somewhere so why not at Whitey’s? Susie could be a filmstar. Merv might make a doctor, with the free schools and universities. And Fred, you never knew, why not a knight? An education gives everybody an equal chance.

  She was packing their old clothes. But as soon as they had new ones, out these’d go and no mistake, taking their memories with them, on to the rubbish heap. She was excited. Once her mind had been made up she could be cheerful about the insecurity, she’d have risked moving that very day and without any place to go. Just the whole of Australia! she told herself with a laugh. It’s all for the future. She was a ball of courage and the envy of her cousins. What was good for her and her children was good for the nation; money and progress. You can’t stop progress, Mother, the world has to go round. Which it does, thanks to America. Of course we’ll write. Will we need this in Goulburn? Not again! There was Fred in the doorway with, my God, what’s that thing? No, love, I don’t expect you’ll find much use for a dingo trap in the city, whatever this Goulburn is like.

  She was packing and her thoughts came back to the subject of Susie, always to Susie because the moment Susie was born Elaine predicted they’d have to move: one girl, the first girl in twenty-seven years, the only girl in that plague of boy children. Yes, how she’d lived in terror of her little darling being molested. The great hulks of teenage boys around the place with their tongues out and their eyes bulging lifting up Susie when she was no more than five or six and throwing her to each other, a game a game a dreadful game, black and brooding, throwing her and catching her, wolves with a morsel of deer, and her squealing at the delicious daring, the fun the panic, from these huge clutching hands to those, those to those. At one time there were three dozen prospective husbands. Oh yes you couldn’t miss the way they watched her wondering what made her a girl. But where was the use in saying it was only natural? Cold comfort that would be when the time came for them to pack-rape her. You could say this was only natural too. What wasn’t natural if it came to the point? Well what wasn’t natural was something else, something she wanted no further proof of, thank you all the same. It was this. She’d passed the twins’ room one night when she couldn’t sleep and swore blind she’d caught sight of activity. Activity she didn’t ever wa
nt to know more about. So urgently did she not want to know, she hadn’t gone back to investigate, instead she’d kept on her way till outside, till she stood in the cold kitchen, already a collaborator, her mind electrified with messages, directives to get them out of here before it was too late, before anyone in the town could guess. Because after all, were they to blame, with no girls their age closer than the Yalgoona gossips, no women younger than herself? And never would she dare hint a thing to Eric or he’d kill them for sure. You only had to hear him on the subject of the television to know. It must not happen to Fred or Merv. Never. Yet she was so proud of the twins, such handsome young men and such champions at sport. They weren’t cannibals were they?

  Elaine was packing and thinking about that strange woman coming here to live. Why would a person? Unless she was hiding out, on the run. The rest of the town could believe her cock-and-bull story, but anybody could be called Lang. And not a week after the Vivien creature had arrived young Bill Swan was in at Brinsos asking for gelignite so the whispers had it. Now what would he want gelignite for? And Elaine saw them together with her own eyes, the jezebel hanging on to his body like a leech and speeding away down hill on his motorbike. The very day Mrs Ping died, Mrs Ping who was so kind to Elaine and never went anywhere else for her eggs. And Mrs Ping’s house no further than a couple of hundred yards up the hill from where that woman lived. Also when Elaine had taken Uncle Swan aside to have a quiet word with him, he’d gone mad at her so she thought he was going to hit her, and said some dreadful things. In any case he was such a trouble to talk to at the best of times with his deafness. Not to mention his nasty habits. Whitey’s Fall was the place to get out of.

  So yes, she was packing, shutting from her mind the relatives she loved. No good stopping in this hole, this dead end, nothing would ever happen here as long as that bloody dirt track remained the only way to get into the place. Nobody in their right mind would drive up for pleasure. She’d grow as old as her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother without anything waking the town up, and then perhaps she’d die in this very same house so she’d feel like suffocating. Oh no, not her, not this cookie. To be cramped in here with the hopeless furniture, flies buzzing in and out and cattle mooing on the hillside and that blasted wind blowing the grit in your tea, paralysed on that bed (she thumped it). You’ve got to have a sense of humour her brother said the other day and she freely admitted hers wasn’t the sharpest, well there’s more to life than a sense of humour. Oh yes she enjoyed a good joke when there weren’t so many worries. But she would never make another Bessie Collins: but then Mum hadn’t roused the energy to get out for the sake of her kids.