by Stephen Orr
‘Ready?’ Bill asked.
The tour began. A bust of a patient with tertiary syphilis. ‘Gummatous syphilis,’ Bill explained, as Annie soured. ‘Now, Flora, we’re looking at a cast of an elephant man. Horribly deformed, which is a characteristic of this stage. Maybe you’d like to feel?’
She nodded, so he guided her hand onto the bust and she explored the face.
‘Nasty business,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
She turned to Annie. ‘See, that’s what comes from philandering.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Pokin’ around where you’re not welcome, or where are you are, which is probably worse.’
Annie got it, but wasn’t about to admit it. You got jiggy, and stuff happened, and you ended up looking like the Elephant Man. She couldn’t see how this affected her. She didn’t even like boys. Will Carey, perhaps, but he was smart and wore glasses. But most boys were dopey, and watched Transformers, and only cared about hamstrings.
Bill showed them another model he’d bought from a scientific supplies company. A brain, shrunk, cut in half to show the grey matter. ‘Now, Flora, Annie, one of the worst things you can get is neurosyphilis. This is when the spirochetes—you remember those, Annie?—enter the central nervous system, the brain, and so forth.’ He indicated a poster, then remembered. ‘Flora, I’m showing Annie a model brain, diseased, and an illustration of what comes after that.’
She seemed satisfied with this.
‘Now, Annie, you gotta understand, a man needs to stay in charge of his mind, doesn’t he or she, Flora?’
‘Yairs.’
‘Neurosyphilis can lead to blindness, and madness. Two hundred years ago thousands were locked away in asylums, just cos of our friend Treponema. Shouting out all day, banging their heads against walls.’
‘But haven’t they got pills for it now?’ Annie asked.
‘Indeed they do, but I guess it’s easier not to catch it.’
‘But if you do, you’re not gonna go mad?’
‘Well …’
‘So why have you made a museum?’
Bill wanted to take her by the collar, lead her out back, throw her to the pigs, but realised Flora would hear. ‘That’s okay if you live in a rich country, Annie, but millions the world over don’t have access to antibiotics.’
‘So why don’t you make a museum there, or help them?’
Bill took a deep breath. ‘I’m too old for that. Just do what I can, Annie. Show people.’
‘You could raise money for medicine and send it there?’
‘How do you know I haven’t?’
‘Have you?’
Bill could feel his nostrils flaring. ‘Shall we move on?’
Flora was led by her granddaughter.
‘Initial diagnosis is difficult,’ Bill said. ‘Blood tests are the best way for the newly infected. Here we see a variety of posters from all around the world, urging young people to get tested. Here, Spain, 1936, and if I translate it, “False Shame and Fear may Destroy your Future”. And I suppose, if you think about it, that applies to the pride of man.’ He smiled at Annie again. ‘How we have fallen in the eyes of the Lord, but refuse to be tested, to submit, to fix the problem.’
Why are you looking at me? Annie thought.
‘Now, Flora, this poster shows a young man and woman looking down at the ground …’
Annie didn’t get it. ‘Mr Redman?’
‘Yes, Annie?’
‘What’s this place really about?’
‘How’s that?’
‘The end of the world, or syphilis?’
‘Both.’
‘And that’s why there’s pictures of Jesus everywhere?’
‘Yes.’
She read: ‘… “the Lord smote Nabal, then he died”.’
Bill waited.
‘Cos he had syphilis?’
‘Possibly.’
‘He didn’t?’
‘He might’ve. That’s the point. This is a museum of plague, as described in Revelations. I thought that syphilis was the most relevant to our times.’
‘Although, you’re saying it’s about the end of the world, but no one dies from it anymore?’
‘It’s a sign.’
‘So why don’t you have a cancer museum?’
‘I’ve only got one shop, Annie. And like I said, I’m an old man in a wheelchair. There’s only so much I can do. Which is why it’ll come to people like you, to carry on.’
‘What?’
‘The message.’
‘March 2012?’
‘Yes.’
Bill wondered what Flora was thinking. Why wasn’t she supporting him? At least in a syphilitic, non-Apocalypse sense. Maybe that’s how it was with blind people. Maybe all of their senses were stunted.
He was feeling tired. Guessed that might be enough. ‘I like to finish over here,’ he said. ‘Prevention and treatment.’
Flora shuffled over, as though she knew the way. There was a model of a naked man sitting in a barrel of water, and Bill told them it was mercury infusion, and how they used to think it’d help. But it didn’t. A booklet on a table. Billings. An example of wrong-time and right-time, a thermometer and a chart where you wrote down your temperature every day. Annie studied the objects. ‘What are these for?’
‘Knowing,’ Bill said.
She didn’t get it; didn’t care.
Bill said, ‘Here, Mrs Bly. Just showing Annie the Billings method.’
‘Does it really work?’ Flora asked.
‘Ninety-five per cent accurate.’
‘Righto.’ Though she knew it wasn’t true. Could see her dad coming in from feeding the pigs, taking off his shirt, kissing the back of her mother’s neck.
‘Mind you, there’s only one effective way to stop syphilis.’ He explained what the Catholic Church had to say about sexually transmitted diseases. ‘If only people could be strong.’ He could see Flora’s hand shaking, but she didn’t say a word.
‘You okay, Mrs Bly?’
‘Yes.’
‘Strong?’ Annie asked.
‘Resist the urge.’
‘What urge?’
Bill couldn’t see how this was his job. Nanna had brought her, and Nanna could tell her. But Flora didn’t say a word. Her hand was tensing and relaxing on her cane, and the scratched name: Bert Bryars.
‘Don’t you agree, Mrs Bly?’
‘Sorry, Mr Redman?’
‘Abstinence. It’s very simple. But some people just don’t get it, do they?’
And then, he fancied, she clenched her teeth.
‘Mrs Bly? You okay?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Some people just don’t get it … but given time, Mr Redman—’
‘Bill.’
‘Bill. Given time they come to see.’
‘Yes,’ he said, sure he was making progress. ‘They see, don’t they? The light, the flash at the very End. And hopefully, they’re ready, eh, Annie?’
Flora Bly tapped her way along Dalrymple Street. Annie said, ‘We’re going the wrong way.’ Tap, trip, stumble, walk, faster and faster, away from town, back, down an alley, as Annie pulled on her sleeve and pleaded. ‘Nan!’
Flora was determined. ‘If it comes to it, and I murder him …’ She passed through a gate, into a paddock on the edge of town. Right across, through the stubble. Could smell smoke, but didn’t stop. Annie tried to turn her around. ‘Nan, there’s a fire!’
A farmer on his tractor called: ‘Get out of it!’ He’d lit a stubble fire, and it was burning towards them. Flora kept going, and then they were up to the flame front, and her dress was on fire. The farmer ran over with an extinguisher and put her out and called her a madwoman and led her back to the road. And all the time, Annie was wondering, What had really happened at the syphilis museum?
They headed into town. Passed beneath the Brandenburg gate. Six columns towering above Commercial Street, plinths, and four Diggers in a chariot. Should never have been b
uilt, most agreed. But Vermes was mayor at the time, and he’d lost two sons. Finally, Annie stood in front of her. ‘Nan, you gotta slow down.’
Flora stopped. ‘See, that’s what comes from sleeping around.’
‘What?’
‘Disease. That’s why I took you, Annie, so you could see what might happen.’
A couple of shop-girls walked past, and seemed surprised, but Annie didn’t care. ‘Look, here’s a café. They got buns, Nan.’
They went in and sat at a plastic table with empty pepper and salt shakers and a couple of flies licking juice. Flora caught her breath. Annie waited. ‘Funny sort of place,’ she said.
‘Were you paying attention?’
‘Yes.’ But she knew it wasn’t about spirochetes, Snowy Mountain versus Desert, Jesus as Lord, March 21, or any of that stuff. ‘Why was he so strange?’
Annie noticed her nan’s tight fists. Studied, again, the grey skin, the deep wells that were her absent eyes. Wondered whether she could really see her.
Flora had calmed. ‘Catholics are the worst.’
‘How’s that?’
‘There were nine of us.’
‘Who?’
‘Us kids. But only five survived.’
Just over fifty percent. A pass, a C, but her parents wouldn’t be happy with that.
One of the shop-girls came, and they ordered, and Flora rallied. ‘You listen to what he said, Annie?’
‘Yes.’
‘Remember it. All of it.’
Annie thought she might as well try. ‘Did you have syphilis, Nan?’
She didn’t get angry. ‘No.’
They waited silently. The milkshakes came, and the flies moved on.
The following day Flora returned to Syphilis. Knocked, waited, then Bill let her in. She entered cane-less, just like a sighted woman, no stumbling or feeling her way. Carrying a box.
Bill was surprised to see her. ‘Come in, Mrs Bly, please.’
They returned to the lounge, and he switched the urn to high, and they sat and ate more stale biscuits. Flora could hear the pigs grunting, and said it reminded her of the farm, her mum and dad and brother Bertie and sisters and horses and sheep and fox-dead lambs on cold winter mornings. Bill said he’d just given them a bucket of old cabbage leaves cos by God, pigs loved cabbages. Then he said, ‘I’m surprised to see you back, Mrs Bly.’
‘Flora.’
‘Maybe I gave you some food for thought?’
‘Maybe.’
‘And Annie. Clever thing, eh? I think we mighta made an impact. This is just the thing, Flora. If parents, church, science, everyone, come together, the moral standards …’ He stopped, realising he was getting preachy.
Flora wasn’t really listening. She was watching her dad lead her mum into their not-so-private bedroom. She could see the look of horror on her mum’s face. Like she knew what this meant, and what would come of it.
Then she opened her box, and said, ‘I’ve brought a few things for your museum, Bill.’
Bill. Good sign, he thought. ‘Well, that’s fantastic.’
She produced a diaphragm. ‘I thought you could put this out, to show people.’
He just looked at her.
Then she reached in and found a banana, and a condom she’d stretched over it.
‘And this?’
‘No, that’s not my mission, Flora.’
‘Your mission?’
‘“Responsible men can become more deeply convinced …”’
‘Ssh!’ She leaned forward, silencing him. Indicated her broken eyes. ‘Can’t see: blind. Can’t hear: deaf.’
He didn’t know what she meant.
‘I wanted to ask you, Bill, if you’d consider …’ She produced foil-wrapped pills. Hormones to fool the unwary.
‘This is why you returned?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘But I assumed … the girl?’
‘This one is called an IUD, and it’s very simple to use.’
Bill just shook his head. ‘My museum has a very clear purpose. On March—’
‘I know, Bill, but I’m not asking a terrible lot.’
Yes, Bill was disappointed, but it wasn’t the first troublemaker he’d had.
Flora waited. Thought. Decided. ‘I’m a reasonable woman, Bill. Do you have a copy of the Humanae Vitae?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d like to discuss a few passages.’
Reasonable, he thought. He wheeled himself out to the kitchen and searched the drawers. Nothing. Then into his bedroom, and a sort of improvised library of religious documents, Pollyanna and Kafka. Not there. He stopped to think. ‘It’s here somewhere,’ he called. He opened his wardrobe, leaned forward and retrieved a box of books. Searched through. No. He knew he had it, and perhaps she could be convinced.
Then he heard pigs. Pigs. From … inside? Louder, squealing, grunting. Louder. ‘Flora, you there?’
He managed to turn around, wheel himself back out to his museum, and saw pigs. His remaining landraces, rooting around in the biscuit jar, the kitchen, the toilet, all over the place. ‘Get out!’ He could smell solvent. Looked around. Saw his curtains billowing out of the window. They combusted. Immaculately. Burned. Consumed the ceiling, walls, the wood of the old shop.
‘Shit! Flora!’
No time. He manoeuvred his chair around the pigs, tried to round them up, but it was a big job, even for a sure-footed man. They ran away, squealed, and the fire consumed more of the room. Specimen jars exploded and pustules trailed across the floor. He coughed, tried to cover his face, but the syphilitic smoke was growing. He tried the pigs one more time. ‘Go on, get out of it!’ But even with the smoke and fire, they wouldn’t leave the museum. Posters caught, flared, and the elephant man started melting. He took a breath, but there was nothing to take. Formaldehyde fumes and the urn exploding tea and coffee water on the rug.
Squeals, as pig became bacon. Flora stood beside her granddaughter on the footpath on the opposite side of the road. She could hear sirens, but knew it was too late.
A few neighbours were using garden hoses, but there was point. The place had gone. No surprise really. A small crowd was gathering. Flora heard someone say, ‘I hope he’s not inside,’ and the response, ‘Probably best if he was.’
Bill had painted ‘21 March’ on the front window, and that was burning too. The last squeal of the last pig. And then the roof fell in.
As the fire engine arrived, and unwound its hoses, Flora took Annie around the shoulder. She’d sent her for ice cream, and when she’d returned, the girl had found her nan standing on the footpath, looking across the road. She’d said, ‘Isn’t that smoke coming from the museum?’
Flora said, ‘There’s one type he didn’t tell you about.’
Annie looked up. She still suspected she could see her. ‘One type?’
‘Congenital.’
‘What’s that?’
‘That’s when yer dad’s a philanderer, and he comes home, and he …’ She stopped, realising Annie knew enough.
‘Go on.’
They watched the water working on the flames, but the old shop had gone.
‘Anyway, it’s when a mum’s got syphilis, and as the baby comes out, it gets on her eyes, and all them billions of spirochetes, Annie.’
She waited.
‘And it gets so bad so quick the baby goes blind.’
Annie knew she could see her. Could see everything, despite her blindness. The way down the hall, the few steps, the gate to the hutch, back inside, the box, the bottle of thinners, the matches—all of this was simple if you knew how. She just ate her ice cream. She liked watching fire. Flames were best, but they couldn’t last forever. Like an A-bomb flash, soon gone, and forgotten. And when it was all over, the smouldering begun, she smiled with recognition as the wheel of the upturned chair turned because the men had kept it oiled.
Eventually her nan looked at her. ‘Pity,’ she said. ‘He was a decent fella. All the Redmans we
re. Even Bill’s father, a doctor—he used to come to our place. Always telling Mum what she should and shouldn’t do, what was right, and wrong. And she believed him. Like his word was gospel.’
The Shack
IT’S A SMALL HOUSE WITH BIG WINDOWS: possum eyes staring out across the Murray. An old engine on a tree stump. A box of kitchen utensils, a vacuum with a split hose and a frypan the retarded boy (now a man) burned his arm on in 1969. Inside, Frank Harris, a man who, at seventy-five, has already shrunk to the size he was at fourteen, lies awake on a camp-stretcher. He wears a singlet and shorts covered in fish scales, and blood. Looks at his watch and mutters, ‘Christ!’ Wipes sweat from his forehead and starts to cry. Then, just as suddenly, stops. ‘Christopher,’ he says, noticing a hole in the wall where his son once hit it with a hammer.
After four or five hours of sleeplessness (he doesn’t count any more) he sits up and tries to breathe. He steadies himself on the stretcher and takes a deep breath. Reaches over and picks a mask off the floor. Checks the tightness of the tube that joins it to an oxygen bottle sitting in a cradle beside his stretcher. Turns a valve and the oxygen flows. Places the mask over his face, tightens the elastic around the back of his head and breathes again.
He can feel the gas in his lungs. Sucks it, again and again. After a few minutes he feels clear-headed; his hands and feet tensing and relaxing; his legs and arms ready to move. He sits up, but then slouches.
He wonders if there’s any point.
Switching off the oxygen, he removes the mask. Coughs and spits onto the old lime carpet. He can almost feel the fibres in his lungs. The clumps, the masses that clog his alveoli; each growing, swelling, bursting and releasing more cancer into his bloodstream; cells gliding through his arteries, capillaries and veins, coming to rest in his brain, liver, spine—any of the eight places they found before they stopped looking.
Frank clears his throat and spits again. This time it hits a wall, and he can see blood mixed with old mucus.
Despite the fact that he no longer cares about dying, he reaches for the mask again, holds it over his face and breathes deeply. Looks across the room, and his eyes settle on the couch where his son slept for twenty-nine years.
Until he built the shack on the river at Morphett’s Flat.
It’s a leather couch that has split open from a series of creases that now sprout white cotton tendrils. There’s a chain bolted to the floor and, attached to this, a leather shackle that he purchased at a XXX shop in the city. It’s covered with bite marks where Chris, in the middle of one of his turns, would work at it until his gums bled. Over the years he managed to lose three or four teeth.
