Janette Turner Hospital Collected Stories

by Janette Turner Hospital

  At the top of the falls, we collapse. We lie on the flat wet rocks. We do not speak. Our clothes give off curls of steam that drift up into the canopy, and creepers trail down to meet them. We float into sleep, or perhaps it is merely a long sensuous silence that is sweeter than sleep. I dream of flying. I have languid wings. I can feel updrafts of warm air, like pillows, against my breast feathers.

  “Mmm,” I murmur drowsily at last, “I love this heat. I could lie here forever. How come the water’s so cold, when it’s so hot here on the rocks?”

  “I’m not even going to answer that, Philippa,” Brian says lazily. “It’s such a dumb question.”

  “Piss off,” I say. I inch forward on my stomach and peer over the lip of the falls. I can’t believe we have climbed them. I watch the solid column of water smash itself on the rocks below. I feel queasy. I can see four years of high school shredding themselves, all the particles parting, nothing ever the same again. “Where do you reckon we’ll be five years from now?” I ask him. I have to shout. My voice falls down into the rift and loses itself in spray.

  Brian crawls across and joins me. Side by side, we stare down ravines and years, high school, adolescence, childhood, we’ve climbed out of them all. There is just university ahead, and then the unmapped future.

  “Where will we end up, d’you reckon?”

  “Not here,” Brian shouts. “We won’t be in Brisbane.”

  “But even if we aren’t, we’ll come back. Let’s do this every year for the rest of our lives.”

  “Not me,” Brian says. “After uni, I’m never coming back.”

  The shouting takes too much energy, and we crawl back to the relative hush of the flat rocks ringed with ferns.

  “So where will you be?”

  “I don’t know. Cambridge. Japan, maybe. There’s some interesting research going on in Tokyo. Wherever’s best for the kind of physics I’m interested in.”

  “What if you don’t get into Cambridge?” I ask, although I know it’s another dumb question. It’s like asking: what if you don’t get to the top of the falls?

  Brian doesn’t bother to answer.

  “I’ll probably still be here,” I say.

  “No you won’t.”

  “You’re such a bloody know-it-all, Brian.”

  “I know you and me.”

  “You think you do.”

  “Philippa,” he says irritably, with finality. “I know us well enough to know we won’t stay in Brisbane. You’ll end up somewhere extreme, Africa, Canada, somewhere crazy.”

  “You’re nuts,” I say. “Anyway, wise guy, wherever I am, you can bet I’m going to stay close to water.”

  “Yes,” he says. “We’ll both be near water.”

  In the dream, I am at the end of my dock, reading, when I notice the most curious light over Wolfe Island. The whole island seems burnished with gold leaf, and there is an extraordinary clarity to things, to individual trees, for instance, as though each detail has been outlined with a fine-tipped black brush. I can see vines, orchids, staghorn ferns against the tree trunks. I can see that Wolfe Island has gone tropical, that it is thick with rainforest, that lorikeets and kingfishers are flashing their colours on the St Lawrence banks.

  Then I note that there is a suspension bridge, the catwalk kind, with wooden planks and drop sides, the kind sometimes strung a hundred and fifty feet up in the rainforest canopy to allow tourists to see the aerial garden running riot up there. This bridge starts at the end of my dock and crosses the river to Wolfe Island, but it is submerged.

  What catches my eye first are the ropes tied to the end of my dock, just below water level. I lie flat on my stomach and peer down. I can see the arc of the bridge, little seaweed gardens swaying on its planks, curving down and away from me.

  There is someone lying on his back on the bridge, or rather floating with it, just above the planks, just below the rope side- rails. It is Brian. His eyes are open but unseeing, his skin has the pallor of a drowned man, algae spreads up from his ankles, tiny shell colonies are crusting themselves at all his joints. Seaweed ferns move with him and around him. He looks like Ophelia. There with fantastic garlands did she come …

  “Alas, then,” I say to him, “are you drowned?”

  “Drowned, drowned,” he says.

  No one would be too surprised by the fact of my dream. First I see a man in a canoe who reminds me of someone I know, and that very night I dream of Brian. A canoeist in a storm is at risk; I dream of death. There is a simple logic to this sequence of events; anyone would subscribe to it.

  Nevertheless, I woke in a state of panic. I woke with the certainty that something was wrong. I hadn’t seen Brian for, I had to count back … well over a year, it must have been. It was always hit or miss with Brian. Luckily, childhood friends had a slightly better chance of making contact with him than ex-lovers or his ex-wife, but no one alive could compete with the sharp scent of a new hypothesis. I used to picture him literally living in his research lab, Melbourne or Tokyo, either city it was the same. I used to imagine a railway bed tucked under the computer desk. The last time we met for dinner in Melbourne he said, sometime after midnight: “My god, the time! I’ve got to get back to the lab.”

  “You sleep there?” I asked sardonically.

  “Quite often,” he said.

  On principle, Brian never answered his phone. He kept it unplugged (both in his lab, and at the home address he rarely used) except for when he was calling out. I knew this. Nevertheless I called, Melbourne and Tokyo, both; and of course got no answer.

  I sent faxes and got no response.

  I called the secretary at his research institute in Melbourne. “Professor Leckie is in Tokyo,” she said, “but no one has seen him for weeks. We still get his e-mail though, so he’s all right.”

  E-mail! I never remembered to check mine, I used it so rarely. I plugged in the modem on my computer, keyed in my password, got into the system, and opened my “mailbox” on screen.

  There was only one message, undated.

  Philippa: I’m going away and wanted to say goodbye. Remember the falls! Those were the good old days, weren’t they, when nothing could stop us? I often think of you. Of us back then. Pity we can’t go backwards. Take care. Brian.

  I sent a message back instantly.

  Brian, I typed onto my screen. Had a disturbing dream about you last night. Are you okay? I miss you. Take care. Philippa.

  Back then, on the day of the message on my screen, the order was still beyond question for me. First the man in the canoe, then the dream, then the message. I began to be less confident of this sequence after the letter from my mother in Brisbane. Not immediately, of course. But a few weeks after the letter, I had to make a point of reminding myself that the terrible thunderstorm weather had begun in late August, that my mother’s letter was postmarked September, and that I could not anchor (by any external proof) either my dream or my e-mail to a date.

  I bumped into Brian’s mother in the city last week, my mother wrote. She says something’s the matter with Brian, some nervous- system disorder. I think she said, something quite dreadful, there was some Latin-sounding word but I can’t remember. She said she flew down to visit him in the Royal Melbourne, and he looked like a skeleton, he’d lost so much weight. He’s not taking it well, she said. He’s never been able to tolerate any kind of interference with his work, not even his marriage, as you know. She’s terribly worried. He refused treatment and checked himself out and flew to Tokyo, can you believe that? You know he used to phone her once a week from wherever he was? Well, he’s stopped doing it. She’s quite depressed and quite frightened. I thought maybe you could get him to phone her, poor dear. Or maybe you’d like to write to her yourself? She must be awfully lonely since Mr Leckie died. We thought perhaps we should invite her for Christmas, but it’s hard to tell whether she’d enjo
y this or not. Maybe you should write to her, Philippa. You know her much better than we do.

  Every day I would begin a letter in my mind.

  Dear Mrs Leckie: Remember when Brian and I used to go on rainforest treks and get home hours later than we planned? You used to worry yourself sick, and my parents too. But we always did show up, remember? Brian’s just off on another trek, he’s lost track of time, that’s all …

  No. Begin again.

  Dear Mrs Leckie: Brian’s gone on a journey, as we always knew he would, from which (both you and I have a hunch about this) he might not return. He carries everything he needs inside his head, and always has. In his own way, he misses us. I promise I’ll visit when I’m in Brisbane next year. How is your frangipani tree? Remember when Brian and I …?

  I never sent these unwritten letters.

  I began to ask myself whether I’d imagined the man in the canoe. Or whether I’d dreamed him. Or whether I’d dreamed the e-mail message which had vanished into electronic ether without a trace.

  For my night-time reading, I followed records of lost trails. The Relation of 1673, for example, written by Father Claude Dablon: He had long premeditated this undertaking, influenced by a most ardent desire to extend the kingdom of knowledge … he has the Courage to dread nothing where everything is to be Feared … and if, having passed through a thousand dangers, he had not unfortunately been wrecked in the very harbour, his Canoe having been upset below sault St Louys, near Montreal …

  In Brisbane (two years ago? three?) on the verandah of the Regatta Hotel, a mere stone’s throw from the university, a jug of beer between us, Brian said: “D’you ever get panic attacks that you’ll burn up all your energy before you get there?”

  “Get where?” I asked.

  “I shouldn’t even answer that, Philippa. God, you can be annoying,” Brian said. “Get to where you wanted to go.”

  I couldn’t concentrate. I stared across Coronation Drive at the Brisbane River. I could never quite believe that the present had inched forward from the past. “Look at those barges,” I said. “I bet they haven’t replaced them since we were students. They’re decrepit, it’s a miracle they’re still afloat. I could swear even the graffiti hasn’t changed.”

  “It hasn’t,” Brian said. “We come back younger because we’re in orbit, that’s all. Brisbane gets older, we get younger. A clock on a spaceship moves slower than clocks on earth, don’t you know that, Philippa? If we went on a journey to Alpha Centauri, a few light-years out, a few back, we’d come back younger than our great-great-granchildren. Got that? And we’ve moved light-years from Brisbane, haven’t we? So it figures. The trouble with you arty types is you don’t know your relativity ABCs.”

  Dear Mrs Leckie, I could write. Brian’s in orbit. He’s simply lost track of time, it’s all relative. We could go backwards, and swing on your front gate again. We could unclimb the waterfall. We could go back through the looking-glass and watch the future before it came.

  I sent out daily e-mail messages to Brian’s number. Past calling the future, I signalled. Brisbane calling Far Traveller. Please send back bulletins. I miss you. P.

  I tried to goad him into verbal duelling: Which clocktime are you travelling on? Please report light-year deviation from Greenwich Mean.

  Every day I checked my “box”. There was nothing.

  I called Brian’s secretary in Melbourne again. “When you said you were still getting his e-mail,” I asked, “how often did you mean? And where is it coming from?”

  “You never know where e-mail is coming from,” his secretary said. “Actually, we haven’t had any for several weeks, but that’s not so unusual for him. Once he went silent for months. When he gets obsessed with a new theory …”

  “How long has he been ill?” I ask.

  “I didn’t know he was ill,” she said. “But it doesn’t surprise me. We’re always half expecting all our researchers to drop dead from heart attacks. They’re all so driven.”

  I think of the last time I saw him, in Melbourne. “Why don’t you slow down a bit?” I asked. “How many more prizes do you have to win, for god’s sake?”

  “Prizes!” He was full of contempt. “It’s got nothing to do with prizes. Honestly, Philippa, you exasperate me sometimes.”

  “What’s it got to do with then?”

  “It’s got to do with getting where I want to go.” I could hear our beer glasses rattling a little on the table. I think it was his heartbeat bumping things. He couldn’t keep still. His fingers drummed a tattoo, his feet tapped to a manic tune. “I’m running out of time,” he said. I would have to describe the expression on his face at that moment as one of anguish.

  “You frighten me sometimes, Brian. Sometimes, it’s exhausting just being with you.”

  Brian laughed. “Look who’s talking.”

  “Compared to you. I’m a drifter. Wouldn’t it be, you know, more efficient, if you just, even just a little, slowed down?”

  “When I slow down,” he said, “you’ll know I’m dead.”

  Between the soup and the main course of a dinner party, my mind elsewhere, I heard these words: that birchbark canoe that washed up … and police inquiries …

  I had a peppermill in my hand at the time, and I ground it slowly over my salad. I took careful note of the sharp pleasing contrast made by cracked peppercorn against green leaf. I looked discreetly around the table. Who had spoken the words? Had they been spoken?

  I could hear Brian say irritably: “Honestly, Philippa, you never verify things. You live inside this vague world of your mind, you make things up, and then you believe they’re real.”

  “But so do you. You make up a theory, and then you set out to prove it’s real.”

  “There’s the crucial difference,” he says. “My hypotheses are verifiable, one way or the other. I chase details, I nail them down. I won’t stop until my theory is either proved or disproved. If I can’t do either, I have to discard it.”

  “Same with me,” I say. “I put riddles on one side, and come back to them. I do realise the birchbark canoe could have been a figment of my mind and my bedtime reading. I’m checking around. What’s the difference?”

  “I’m not even going to answer that question,” Brian says.

  “But don’t you ever come back to your discards?”

  “Of course I do. Some problem sets have been passed on for generations. The trick is, you have to approach from a new angle every time. Half the battle is how you frame the question. Unperformed experiments have no results.”

  “Exactly,” I say.

  And over the candles on a dinner table at the other end of the world, I hazarded cautiously, flippantly: “Did someone just say something about a birchbark canoe, or did I imagine it?”

  Seven pairs of eyes stared at me.

  “Sometimes, Philippa,” my husband joked, “I swear you put one part of your mind on automatic pilot, and the other part is god knows where.”

  “It’s true,” I said disarmingly. “So did I hear something about a birchbark canoe, or didn’t I?”

  “The one washed up on the ferry dock,” one of the guests said. She waved a ringed hand and smiled, courteously tolerant. (“Bit of a flake, isn’t she?” I could imagine her saying to someone later. “Where does she get to, between the crackers and the cheese?”) “The one the police are making inquiries about. I was just telling everyone that I’d had to go down to the station and make a statement. And John did too, didn’t you, John? Didn’t you see him? Yes, I thought so, I was talking to Milly on the phone. So that makes two of us. I mean, who saw the canoe when there was someone in it. Paddling.”

  “I saw him several times, as a matter of fact,” John said. “Came within ten feet of my boat once, when I was fishing. I waved – well, it’s customary – but he didn’t wave back. Funny, I only ever saw him paddling upriver. Bea
utiful canoe.”

  “The Burketts,” someone else said, “the ones who live on Howe Island, you know? – they said there was a hunter camped there most of July and August. No one knew where he was from, and no one was very happy about it, but that’s who it must have been. I mean, they said he had a birchbark canoe and it’s not as though you see them every day.

  And then he just up and disappeared. The Burketts gave the police a full description and they’re putting out a trace, you know, for next of kin.”

  “I expect they’ll find the body eventually,” John said. “I wouldn’t mind buying the canoe, she was a real beauty. I suppose she’ll go up on police auction sooner or later.”

  “Won’t they have to hang onto it as evidence until the body is found?” someone asked.

  “I expect so,” John said. “Yes, I expect so. Still, sooner or later. The police boats are out dragging every day.”

  “I hope they don’t find him,” I said.

  Everyone looked at me.

  Sooner or later, I think, evidence of one kind or another will cast itself up: a dream, a letter, an item in the newspaper. Every day, I read the “Police and Fire Watch” column in the local paper. Every day, I am relieved that no body has been found. Of course this is ridiculous, and I know it. There’s a name for it: sympathetic magic.

  And there’s that other matter too, for which Brian had a word: synchronicities.

  What do they mean? I ask myself. What do they mean?

  In the evenings, I read of doomed voyages.

  The Relation of Christophe Regnaut concerning the martyrdom and blessed death of Father de Brébeuf … captured on the 16th day of March, in the morning, with Father Lalemant, in the year 1649. Father de Brébeuf died the same day as his capture, about 4 o’clock in the afternoon … I saw and touched the top of his scalped head …

  The Relation of 1702: Father Bineteau died therefrom exhaustion; but if he had had a few drops of Spanish wine, for which he asked us during his last illness … or had we been able to procure some Fresh food for him, he would perhaps be still alive. Father Pinet and Father Marest are wearing out their strength; and they are two saints, who take pleasure in being deprived of everything … But they do not fail to tell me and to write me that I must bring some little comforts for the sick … For my part I am in good health, but I have no cassock, and I am in a sorry plight, and the others are hardly less so …