Finally Paint bought the most expensive scissors with the last of his money, and the chemist gave him a free tin of Pal and did not make him pay the last few cents which he did not have, and told Paint where the fishing was best. And Paint listened as though he was really interested in catching big fish, even though he was a vegetarian.
Then they walked back to the house with the dog following them, and had to go slowly in case it had a heart attack just as salvation was at hand.
‘I will cut off his fur tomorrow before we leave,’ Paint said.
‘Couldn’t you cut it off when we get back to Sydney?’
‘He’d smell us out of the car. He needs a bath.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ Persia said, and thought of how Adrian would be cross, but later smile.
So when the next morning came she had to shake up Paint to wake him. It was the first time she did not think about how they were each in a separate bedroom at night. The dog was lying on the front verandah and Paint fetched his expensive scissors and began cutting. The fur was very thick. As he peeled back the first layer of blanket, nests of fleas were exposed together with rashed pink skin.
‘It’s a crime,’ Paint said, and was angry, and loved the dog and was given entirely to its restoration.
Persia sat down beside him and watched him at his work with the scissors. She did not know whether she loved him, hated him, or was indifferent to him. First she would think how everything in his face was made particularly for her own pleasure, and was perfect in fashioning, so that she could not stop looking at how he was constructed with such exact beauty. And then she would notice how his neck was too short, and she would become annoyed by his neck being too short, and because of the shortness she would decide she had never loved him at all. And then she would begin to think that he did not like her because of his absorption in the dog, and if he did not like her she did not like him. And then she would think if it was so easy not to like him because he might not have liked her, there must have been nothing in her own love anyway. And then she would change entirely and all those ideas would be discarded, because she knew even if he loved other people and forgot her and trod her into the earth, still she would look up to him from under the trampling, and adore eternally.
So that she thought all these things in the course of a few moments as the scissors worked through the thick matter of hair. And through the progression of the cutting, she wanted so much to touch his body that it was a sickness, and then she decided she did not want to touch it at all, and then some walls broke and flooded so that it was of utmost importance to kiss him immediately, and then she remembered that he did not believe in touching and a kiss had once almost horrified him forever.
At lunch time he was still cutting and had only finished one side. The scissors were becoming blunt, and there was sweat running down his forehead.
‘Please can we go now,’ Persia said.
‘It’s cruel to leave him as he is,’ Paint answered, and was right, because the faeces had set under the tail into balls so that it could not even cock his leg, and would have died if Paint had not cared.
So he cut all afternoon too, and Persia sat watching the balls of fluff blow across the lawn and stick on twigs of shrubs. And in the end of the day the dog, although patchy, could afford to lick its saviour without pain of being hindered, for he was shorn, and pink, and bathed.
That night Persia lay awake until the next morning was trying to come against the opposition of the dark. She planned how she would be humble and soft and beg forgiveness, no matter how Adrian was angry, for she would deserve it.
The next morning the dog bounded, and Paint said, ‘Now we will go.’ So they packed their cases and loaded them into the boot, and the dog sat in the back and farted and salivated. And Persia felt spoilt and unctuous because she could not make herself be grateful for everything Paint had given her.
The car broke down on the way and they had to spend three hours in a park in Newcastle while it was repaired. Paint paid by cheque, and hoped it would not bounce too quickly.
At last they reached the outskirts of Sydney where it was traffic time, and clogged, and the dog was stamping on the seat and threatening to poo.
‘You can just drop me off at his unit,’ Persia said, and was not sure whether she had said it before because she had thought it so much. And she knew that as she spoke everything was ending in simple words, in the traffic clot, among suburban soot.
‘So you are going back to him,’ Paint said.
‘Perhaps loving somebody is the inability to be indifferent to them,’ Persia answered.
‘Is it because of the lighthouse man? Did I offend you?’
‘Nothing offends me. I asked too much.’
‘Nobody can own anybody completely,’ Paint said.
‘I had thought they could.’
‘But you will not own Adrian either.’
‘I know,’ Persia answered.
‘But you like him the most?’
‘I like you the most. I will not laugh so many times again in my whole life.’
‘Then why?’
‘Because he can control and channel how I should best be. And because I can live with him more easily than with you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I am like you, and have discovered the last thought of your heart, and know too well your pain or your suffering, and must suffer too, and because I want what you want, and would be jealous of your achievement. And because I want the centre, and you want the centre, and it is not possible for us both to stand in it together.’
Then Paint, who also doubted her reasons, which were perhaps excuses for a faded exploration, stared ahead through the windscreen which was smeared and sticky with late sun, in this, their last progression together. He did not say anything. He had never said anything.
Soon they were at the units. Paint stopped the car in the courtyard. Because of the mutual decision he had become again just a man with a face which dropped and hung, like swings.
‘Come and see me some time,’ he said.
‘Yes, I will,’ Persia said.
‘I’ll look after the dog,’ he said.
‘I’m glad,’ Persia answered.
He slammed the boot and handed Persia her suitcase.
‘Thank you for the holiday,’ she said, ‘and for looking after me.’ They stared at each other with both grief and exhaustion.
‘That’s alright,’ Paint answered.
‘I’m glad we went to that place,’ Persia said.
‘Yes,’ Paint said.
They had lost their contact. It was gone.
‘I hope it’s alright with Adrian,’ Paint said.
‘Yes,’ Persia answered.
‘Alright then,’ Paint said, and climbed back into the car, and did not pull any faces or make any expression which might have been funny. He put the car into gear and drove out of the parking area. The car bounced a bit over the gutter, and then was gone into the street.
Persia went into the foyer and pressed the button for the lift. She was exhausted and swinging, as though after great debates under spotlights in studios over several days, with nothing but a glass of water to sooth hot throats. For with Paint she had thought twice in everything, once for herself, and once for him, and his scrutiny had never relinquished, so that she had been always under command, and careful of her steps.
The lift doors banged open. Persia picked up her suitcase and walked down to the end of the hallway. She knocked on Adrian’s door. After a while it opened, and he stood there, as doctors in white coats, peering through instruments. He wore the same ravaged sports coat he had worn most days of their time together. He was familiar in structure only. His face had gone away and he stood like congregations caught by boring services, proud and strange.
‘I have come back,’ Persia said.
‘I was waiting for you to do so. Come in.’
Then she knew to be away from Adrian was to not be yourself, because to
be with him was the only way not to be lonely. With all other people you were still on your own, and he only could be so that he was right beside, and inside.
To be without Adrian would have been to have no significance. Nothing was important if he did not know it, and his ideas were necessary to hold you up, no matter how tight they may have been. And if he was not there, and you thought about how it would be if he was there, you could do nothing, and no limb would move because of the weight of the thought which he filled. So there could be no enjoyment without him, and no full minute, and nothing else was worth looking at. Everything he said for all time Persia would remember, because everything was made real by him, and to be without more of his saying or thinking would have been directionless, without purpose.
He stood back and she passed across his line, into his sitting-room, where she sank into a chair.
Adrian, standing above her, said, ‘I hope you have discovered yourself by now.’
‘I have discovered nothing, except that I missed you.’
‘I presume you have decided to marry me after all.’
‘Yes.’
‘Because if I’m to take you back, you’re to perform your duties.’
‘Yes. I will do that.’
‘So have you thought about it fully?’
‘I think about everything, but arrive at decisions accidentally.’
‘I won’t ask you why you came back, or what you want. I really don’t want to know. I only wish for an assurance that it won’t happen again.’
‘I will try,’ Persia said.
So then Adrian picked her up from out of the chair where she had sat with her head in her hands, and he put himself around her, so that they were weary sealed flesh, which had agreed, partly from convenience, and partly from confusion, to avoid any peripheral disturbances in future, so that their life could remain as much as possible, passive.
Chapter 8
After they had been married the way it was correct to be married, with a white dress and white tablecloths and white napkins and speeches, Persia tried for happiness with a house among gardens, in a row of gardens, where there was rich green culture, and pruning, and caterpillar spray. So that it was necessary for her to have a child to fill some of the loose hours and rooms which lay about.
The child was clustered, and full of growing, and importance. It sat solemnly, packed into itself, knowing of progression, being still so close to birth it could understand many mysteries it would never be able to express. The child was in all ways smooth and rich, with the soft skin of full food and clean sheets, and spacious rooms.
It had been hard to believe the child could in fact appear, and when it had, it was too late to return anything which had arrived. The child made the most terrible demands, so that every thought Persia made had to be stamped with its approval, although it never asked for anything, and merely sat, round, smooth, and innocent, accepting devotion like royal kings who thrived because it was their due.
The child was something that could never be understood even when it did assure you of its reality by continuing to exist. The birth, having been so incomprehensible and heavy with ritual agony, was not explained by reading physiology books.
However, the child had appeared with blood and wet juice in a white sterile room quite by chance from her own interior folds, already full and perfect in painted detail like microscopes on old masters with no flaw, and it had been wrapped in white cloth, and secured in a hospital trolley, and given a name as though in fact it was present, and because it moved, unlike teddy bears. So she had accepted it as a surprising gift, and taken it home from the hospital, feeling at any moment they would hand her a card demanding return to its rightful owners.
The boy was surrounded with his rich donations of playthings, safe within defined areas, because he was a baby, to move between points of cots and chairs. And he was enrolled for a rich school with wide flat playing fields and brick buildings, so that he would be among other rich, and see only rich skin, and every boy at midday would open a lunch box full of chosen nourishment wrapped carefully by loving mothers. And at school he would safely see only his own kind, and he would learn vestiges of mathematics and history, and sit for prescribed curriculums, so that he could be called educated, and could be assured of jobs, because of the name of his school. And if it had been important for him to know of weeping, or loving, or hating, or to have seen poverty, or grief, or murder, they too would have been included in extra-curricular activities, and shown on film in the school projection room. But mostly it would be important that he should never question his own direction, and that he should pass through all the same established rules as his parents had done, because if his parents had done them, then they must have been right.
*
‘I am going to live in Redfern,’ Persia said.
‘You have a responsibility to your family,’ Adrian answered.
‘That’s a very selfish thing to do, Persia,’ the mother said, placing the silver serving spoon back in the casserole. All around were the grand accoutrements of a grand life, glowing and burnished on side-boards and walls. The table was lavish with embroidery and good food.
‘Why is it a selfish thing?’ Persia asked.
‘Your first obligation is to your family,’ the mother answered.
‘It will not hurt my family in any way. I’ll take Abercrombie with me, and Adrian has looked after himself before now.’
‘You’ll expose him to disease and violence,’ Adrian said.
‘He’s just as likely to have his head kicked in on the football field.’
‘But they have diseases.’
‘You have never yourself been afraid of diseases. You wandered through India and wallowed in the filth.’
‘That was different.’
‘Why? Because it was in a different country?’
‘There’s nothing you can do to help them.’
‘I know that. But at least I can see.’
‘Persia, if you must go, you can go,’ Adrian said, and pushed back his chair, and was consolidated. ‘But people will worry about you. You must know that.’
‘Yes, and I’m sorry for their worry. But I can’t be responsible for it, especially when it has no cause.’
‘You must be very unhappy,’ Adrian said.
‘Our life is so insular, and yet there’s everything within our reach.’
‘You’re only thinking of yourself and your own enjoyment,’ the mother said.
‘No one will be hurt.’
‘There doesn’t need to be any poverty,’ the mother said. ‘Look how hard your father worked to give you all that you have.’
‘I want to experience,’ Persia said.
‘You are a stubborn, difficult child,’ the mother said.
‘Then I am glad you reared me to be that way,’ Persia answered.
‘You were always wilful right from the start.’
‘I only want to see. Is that being wilful?’
The mother sighed across the table at her son-in-law. They shrugged. The fine, surly woman between them concentrated on her wineglass, turning and turning it round over the same circle of cloth with her bony strong hands.
*
Persia had two keys. One for the front door, and one for her room. She had come in the grand shining car, driven by Adrian, parked in the kerb among derelict Holdens. Her leather suitcase stood on the footpath, some torn newspaper blowing against it. There were tins and stained Kleenex and broken bottles in the gutter. There was soot on all windowsills. It was Sunday morning, and all shutters were still bolted against the bright coming day.
To choose a place to stay in Redfern you simply drove around until you found a sign, to rent, stuck up on a board in a window.
Abercrombie, small and clean, in his shorts and T-shirt, his fingers already poking into the germs of cracks, carried his toy truck and cardboard suitcase.
‘Will you come in and see the place?’ Persia asked Adrian.
‘I
don’t want to know anything about it,’ he answered.
‘Alright,’ Persia said.
‘Then I will go,’ Adrian answered.
They kicked a bit at nothing. A truck went past. They were spilled with exhaust.
‘You are making it be like a separation,’ Persia said.
‘You don’t know how you’re worrying me,’ Adrian answered. His face was tight and welded.
‘Goodbye then,’ Persia said. She tried to kiss him but he would not take the kiss.
‘I will ring you up,’ Persia said. ‘I wish you would stay too,’ she added.
But Adrian drove away in his big car, and its boot bounced like rich buttocks under silk. Then Persia opened the door, and pushed her child before her into the dark stinking hall. It was quite still. A stairway ascended to two upper floors. The shredded carpet was littered with stains and empty stubbies.
Persia went into her room. She put the suitcase on the bed. She hung up her clothes in the wardrobe which was white-wood and stained with the fingers of many lives. There was a laminex table and a sideboard with a mirror above it. She took out a bucket, went down to the kitchen, filled it with water, and wiped down everything in the room with disinfectant while the child watched. Then she unpacked the plastic plates, the cutlery, the tin-opener and the food supply she had brought with her.
When she emptied the bucket in the sink a girl in a crushed nightie with make-up thick in her eyelashes and her hair in strings of knot, passed, staring.
‘Hello,’ Persia said, and smiled.
But the girl did not smile, or answer. She simply continued onward in her own direction, and passed into her own dark area behind a door which she slammed after her.
Persia’s arrival had awakened the house. Above, the roof trembled from footsteps passing over a higher floor. There were sounds of the front door opening and closing, of feet passing down the stinking carpet. They were awakening, perhaps from some debauchery of the night before.
So Persia took her child by the hand and walked the streets of Redfern. And this was of all times in her life, the most real and particular time. Because now suddenly she was among the vivid slums, and saw everywhere in it from her own eyes her own perceptions. The coloured houses, joined one to another, the littered path, the heavy exhausts on the traffic-thick road, the open doorways leading into open lives, all were details of completed artistry.
The Beginning of Everything and the End of Everything Else Page 11
