He did not need any direction to find Paint’s house. He opened the car door. He put the suitcase on the pavement. Then without one smile, or without any signal which might have exposed the slightest attachment, he slammed his door and started his engine. The car drove down the street. It made itself vanish behind a corner of night. It was gone.
Then Persia stood alone in the street with the suitcase at her feet. Adrian, she reminded herself, was just an ordinary person who had never done anything beyond living an ordinary life, with no special virtues and no secret vice. He was plain and present. There was nothing more about him than about any other person. He woke up, he slept, he lived and he died. He was entirely mortal, entirely a facsimile, entirely just another Australian. Therefore it was the more confusing to see yourself mourn, to persuade yourself it was uncalled for, and yet to continue mourning with a greater and stronger depth.
Then Paint opened the front door and the light fell out of it like unsupported posters. He had the most open joy which was poured on his face. But he saw that as much as he was grateful that she was confused, and therefore put away his own rejoicing so that she would not be made more low because of his own height.
So he jumped into the air like clowns, and pulled his mouth down, and clapped his feet together like Mexican beans in hats. He shook her hand, and pulled her up the steps into one of his rooms, which he unlocked first. Light rose and fell like balloons on strings. The room was large and bare. In the middle of the lino was a music stand with a pile of ruffled books on the floor beside it. On top of the pile of books was a pile of paper plates. There was also a violin in an open case under the window.
‘Paper plates? Aren’t they magnificent? I have composed some music about them. It has the feeling of eating and obtaining sustenance, and then crumpling and disposing.’
‘I suppose that’s life.’
He picked them up and began throwing them into the air so that the dim room was filled with their whirring shapes, pale blue bats in an unsettled cave, chopping and slicing apples of space.
‘Now I givea da concert. Sita please,’ he said, and bowed a deep formal doubling of his body while plates fell all about him, and trembled in piles as they settled on the floor. With much cracking of his wrists and pulling of his fingers and waving them around as if they were important sausages to be hung above delicatessen counters, he stopped and removed the bow from its case, tightening it by screwing the end, all the time clicking, shuffling, sticking out his backside, scratching his head and generally being ridiculous.
Having completed the adjustment of the bow he lifted the violin from its case with much lip work and muttering like madmen labouring over picks with sweat in their hair, glancing across at Persia from time to time (who sat watching and grinning) pulling down his mouth and rolling his eyes. He tuned the strings one to the other, by drawing the bow across them and tightening or loosening the nuts. For all his folly and foolishness his ear managed its work undistracted.
When he had concluded all preparations and was ready at last to play, he spread his arms wide for silence, and turned his head about, repressing his imagined audience to hushed speechless anticipation. Then after much poking and rearranging and coughing and apologizing, as he searched for a comfortable position under his chin, he stopped again, and began to rifle through the music, sending sheets spraying all over the room so that the air was littered again.
He ran around a bit grabbing at sheets from out of the spaces, jumping like first grade footballers, still muttering and swearing and rolling his eyes so that Persia began to laugh because there was no other alternative.
When he did again begin to draw out his first note which trembled and squeaked and provoked a fresh attack of extraordinary faces all directed at his one and only listener, the laugh changed its pattern, and was a pretence of amusement, crying privately underneath for all the muddle of living.
And he danced his dance, and the fiddle music came, neither bad nor brilliant, and it was a fool’s dance with bells and harlequin hats, and a painted smile.
Chapter 7
Because he had wanted it, and because it was most logical to use a body while it was young and full of vigour, Persia gave up her job and went on the holiday.
The clutch of the car was slipping, and they were uncertain about ever arriving. They sped along river flats where cows carried heavy bellies, and sugar cane was in places. Tumble-down weatherboard homesteads on stilts told of floods which had been and would come again.
‘We’re coming to a crossroad,’ Paint said, ‘I wonder which way we go.’
There was a sign, and they put their faith in the sign, and the car gathered itself again, after it had slowed and left bits of itself over the road behind in gas and burnt fuel.
Even if he had been incapable of the ultimate act, his holding and touching perhaps could have been sufficient if they had been explained. But although in every other way they matched, this was the only subject they had not discovered together, and which they could not venture upon.
You could not give yourself to a complete and unconditioned love until you could know it was wanted. Because it was too lavish a gift, like giving silver to someone you hardly knew who did not know where to put the monstrosity or how to dispose of it, and had to hold on to it, with discomfort and perhaps even misery, because of no other alternative.
So there did lie in Persia a heavy longing to know how Paint was with her, and if she was anything worthy of consideration, and in what way. And if she was, then she could open all of herself. But until this complete exchange was made it was necessary to hold onto herself and be under control. He was so close it only needed the stretching of an arm to reach him, and yet he had forbidden it.
They looked out the window a bit at the green weed on the river and the bird with long legs which waded through. The wheels continued going despite the irregularities of the engine.
It was easy to remember the Saturday morning when it had been busy and Adrian had perhaps discovered the same thing about a woman, who had happened by chance to be the same woman as Persia.
They came at last to the township on the sea which began and went on forever, confining the cluster of houses, flats, and shops to the depression behind the rearing cliffs. Paint had found a house through a friend of a friend. It was wooden and falling to pieces. They took in their suitcases and flung them down on the squeaking bed.
‘We will stay here forever, if you like,’ Paint said, because each house was settled, and knew its mission on earth, and the sea and the land had decided their boundaries long ago, so that all wars had ceased.
‘It would be easy to degenerate and never return, to stop and never continue,’ Persia said. She stood on the verandah, which was corroded into the earth with ants and beetles.
‘We will go and look at the beach,’ Paint said, and they went to the beach which was long and clean and deserted. They drove over a sandy track which wound through the shapes of roots and was with leaves and shadows. There were sand dunes and gnarled branches and the endless blue water which foamed and grovelled at their feet although it was far more travelled and extensive than they could ever have hoped to be. And because Paint was there, and looked too, his looking made a sight have beauty, for if he saw and understood and catalogued, then it was worthy of consideration.
They ran into the water which came upon them and wet their jeans up to the knees and they were only in the world with no other person. Everything had been created for them, and the most perfect of it collected and laid at their feet for them to use or discard as they pleased. There was endless selection so that you could not choose between where to go and where not to go, and where to look and where not to look. The land had always been especially preserved and put aside secretly for this time of worshipping.
They walked across the flat clean sand which had been licked of all smut so that it was wet as puppies and as new. And there were shells and scraps of seaweed from out of the ferment of ocean, cast u
p from deep caverns and tentacles. And they were forever talking as their feet went and left behind imprints of themselves which followed themselves, and they were forever finding more about themselves for there was no other person to explore, and no other person to hinder them, and no other person to interrupt.
‘I’ve lost all my ambitions,’ Persia said, and kicked a shell. ‘They were useful to me once,’ she added.
‘Then I’m glad I have helped you discard them.’
‘Now I will never do anything promising.’
‘You will be much happier not trying.’
‘Perhaps I could have added to the world. You’ve stopped me ever knowing.’
‘The world is not worth adding to. It is better left alone.’
They went to the wrecked ferries which had been on their way up the coast to Singapore, when they came loose from their tow lines in a storm.
‘No amount of dredging could remove them,’ Paint said. ‘The locals didn’t know whether to be angry at their mess, or pleased at their tourist attraction.’
The magnificent waves rolled and wretched on the hull where once night lights and streamers foamed over the cruising harbour beneath. They walked into the cabin. Salt wept from clogged windows, the engine room was filled with still green ooze. The door swung and banged. Sea and earth together waged and warred, two old tousled lovers fighting for booty, sands hooding the tilted cabin—the sea pounding the setting bolts. Between the great scenery of ocean and earth were caught these few corroded sticks and funnels scrawled with initials, held lop-sided, pitted, in some blue semblance of time, compelled to pursue decay on the lonely great grand beach.
*
‘We will never go away,’ Paint said as they walked through the jail which was a fortress of hewn rock on a wave-lashed promontory. The sun was going down through the iron bars of the gate. Empty cells stared with ghost eyes which reflected the rich red night.
‘We will have to go some time. Your friend might want to borrow his house.’
‘Among people we might lose each other in a crowd.’
‘I cannot feel that this is an end in itself,’ Persia answered.
Paint put his head in the old stone oven and pulled at a weed. Perhaps in the city some person some day would give an unasked solution in the course of conversation, and Persia would understand, although the reason was not important—only its outcome. And even that was not important unless it threatened to come between them.
*
There was a lighthouse on a promontory which they went to see one afternoon. They climbed up a steep cliff path and tousled brush tossed in rough winds. Below the sea went forever blue into the ends of other continents which it made by resigning them. They knocked on the door of the lighthouse for admission. Behind them labouring up the path was an elderly English couple who had arrived in the parking area a moment later, and opened their car door a moment later, and climbed out of it a moment later, and even walked up the path a moment later, each of them trying not to be the same as the others and knowing that they were, and had followed the path of many other people who had come the same way to see and to worship and to go away cleansed.
‘I wish the man would come,’ Paint said, and pretended to be a shipwrecked sailor dying, and slid slowly down the door with his elbows against it, while the English couple still labouring up the hill stared in amazement at his antics.
He waved at them, and rolled his eyes and crossed his legs, and they smiled back tightly but politely.
‘He won’t come,’ he called to them. ‘I think he’s listening to the race results.’
But at last the man did come and open the door, and was bearded with bright dark eyes, and smooth brown skin.
‘I was listening to the race results,’ he said.
Paint was busy penetrating his face with his cold eyes.
‘You have a lovely spot here,’ he said. ‘Do you live in the lighthouse?’
‘No, in the township,’ the man said as he led them up a winding iron staircase, the English couple following behind.
‘Do you like living on the coast?’ Paint asked, scrambling to keep up with the man’s strong brown muscles which pumped from a pair of loose shorts.
‘The sea has always fascinated me. It’s my stars.’ Outside through port-holes, there were glimpses of its hard blue skin.
‘Really? Do you believe in the stars then?’
The answer was unimportant, for on this day, at this moment, halfway between the summit of sky and the earth of the cliff, Persia looked at Paint, whose hair was blown backwards by the wind, and realized completely and fully and without any doubt, and yet for no reason and with no background briefing, that he was nothing more than a young man who had been her friend. It happened, suddenly she could finish her life more soundly without him, and that although he had opened up all areas of the world, and all thought, to be so absorbed in some other person, and to forget all that had been shared between them, was to make an ending.
The lens of the lighthouse was fashioned in amber crystal. It turned, and the sun was jealous of its turning and its light. Paint began writing notes on pieces of torn paper, as though all words from the lighthouse keeper were too important not to be recorded. The man flashed his white straight teeth. From his brown smooth skin and his brown smooth hair he was dimples and charm and was of crabs, and sand, and broad waves.
Persia tried not to belong to Paint, the way he scratched his ear and muttered and scribbled. They went out onto the railing and were above the world, above the clouds, kings of the sea with pitchforks and crowns, high princes in pomp and wind. And their clothing whipped about them, and their hair was lashed to their foreheads, and they were blown clean, and inside out, by the wind which had come from the unending beach and which passed on to the next unending beach. And Paint and the lighthouse keeper leant side by side, their elbows on the railing, and held a long conversation with close faces, while all their words were blown and whipped down the white tape of sand far below, so that Persia was forgotten, and unimportant to him.
*
In the car on the way back to the decayed house of the friend’s friend, it became apparent to Persia that there was a great urgency to see Adrian again, and that it had to be organized immediately. Because Paint had exchanged names and addresses with the lighthouse man, and failed to introduce Persia, and become so absorbed in discussions on the speed of light, that she had been caused to stand in a biting wind for half an hour while Paint plied the man with a trail of useless questions. And Persia was afraid that Adrian would be gone to some other place, or with some other woman, that he would have sifted among crowds and moved away, to never be found again. For Adrian had set her in the right way, and put her into some semblance of order.
‘Could we leave tonight?’ Persia asked. They bounced through forest over sand lumps.
‘We could stay just a few more days now that we’re here.’
‘I have to go back.’
His eyes were screwed against the going sun. His skin was white and bluish. There were some freckles from the sun and in parts his locks were greasy like worms from corrupted soil. His circle had gone.
At the house when they arrived back Persia said, ‘I will begin packing immediately.’
‘There is that dog again,’ Paint said.
The dog was a tattered Samoyed, whose fur had become so locked through neglect, that it could hardly move. It had followed them sometimes on walks, and wheezed and panted so strongly they had feared it might lie down and die.
‘I might ask the lady at the shop about it,’ Paint said.
‘I will pack while you’re gone,’ Persia said.
‘Come with me?’ Paint asked. ‘We can’t leave until tomorrow anyway.’
‘Alright then,’ Persia said, and looked at the suitcase which belonged to Adrian, and still bore his marks, although invisible.
They went down the street and the dog limped after them. Its tongue dripped a path of saliva. Its legs m
oved as if they had no joints. Its coat had set on it like cement.
‘Even if it belongs to the local member, I’m going to shave it naked,’ Paint said.
In the grocery shop the lady took an instant love on herself for Paint. She gazed over the counter at him although she was seventy. She said Paint was kind to care about the dog which had been left behind by some holiday makers once.
‘Look it was that lovely when it first came. It bounced around and its coat was like silk.’
Then the shop woman’s husband also came out and fell in love with Paint and gave him a new type of cigar to try, and Paint pretended to be impressed although the only thing he ever had smoked was grass.
And the evening came down more and more, and they all went on talking and laughing. And the woman insisted on showing Paint her finches, which were bright petite jewels in the twilight in among ferns in the caged square of tropic. And they wandered through the garden which was thick with specimens, spotted, striped and fronded, and it went on and on, the looking and talking.
But at last they shook hands at the gate and told Paint he was to come back and see them again, and if he ever wanted any finches he could have some free. And they gave him some cuttings of a spider plant, which he carried in a crushed soggy paper bag.
Then he went to the hardware store to buy some scissors. But the hardware store did not have anybody serving so they had to stand for about ten minutes coughing and stamping until a man in the back room who was eating his dinner and listening to the news came out, rubbing his hands on a tea towel. All the time Persia thought of the suitcase and how she would pack it, and how she would ask Paint to drop her off at Adrian’s unit. And the hardware man did not have any scissors which would be sharp enough, although he did show them some pinking shears and some nail scissors. So they went down to the chemist and had to wait until three other people were served first. And one of them was a lady who could not decide which cleanser would be the best for her skin.
The Beginning of Everything and the End of Everything Else Page 10
