The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist's Solution

by Lisa de Nikolits

  “I am here for you,” I said and I had never meant anything more in my life.

  “Ta,” he said, and his eyes were wet. He wiped his nose and attacked his food. “You had a good chat with Sean today I take it?” We were both glad to change the subject.

  “He’s certainly got some interesting viewpoints,” I said, and we managed weak smiles. “Transhumanism, eco-eroticism.”

  We both laughed. “I’ve never wanted to know too much about that last one,” Jason said. “Sweet kid. He was a lawyer when he came here. He was passing through, on his way to see the Twelve Apostles, which I still have to take you to see, and then he stopped in at the shop, just curious. He’d been a tattooist since he was about fourteen, but his family forced him into law which he hated. I had an opening and he never left. He went back to art school in Melbourne for a while, about eight years ago. He’s really come out of his shell. He was very prim and proper, Sean was. He went to all the best private schools, and now, he’s got a flower for a girlfriend. His family disowned him, which didn’t seem to worry him too much. He worked hard to lose his posh accent, and sometimes I can’t understand what he’s saying. I still rely on him for legalese when I need something done or when the government threatens to shut down my website.”

  “Does that happen often?”

  “Fairly regularly. I’m under constant surveillance they tell me. In cyberland, not here. Not to worry.”

  “Sean said you met Sid Vicious?”

  “I saw Sid,” he corrected me. “My God, he was so beautiful. Bloody Nancy. He stabbed her, you know? And his mother? I heard she gave him the lethal dose; did you know that? The theory was that she knew he’d never be able to cope in the nick. Who’d kill their own kid? But it was Nancy who put him on the path to ruin. She introduced him to heroin, and she got him hooked.”

  “I know,” I interrupted his rant. And I did know, and I felt the same.

  “Just think. All the life we have lived while Sid’s been dead. Stupid bugger. He was only twenty-one. I was a pretty boy back then too, young and unscarred. Now look at me.”

  I had looked. And I had seen. Jason was a craggy cliff of scars and dents and tattoos.

  “When is your birthday?” I asked, and what I meant was, would he even see another one in?

  “In four months,” he replied. “I’d love to go out with a bang. Not an explosive bang, mind you, but a bang nevertheless. And let’s not forget, “‘Dead anarchists make martyrs, you know, and keep living for centuries. But absent ones can be forgotten.’ Is anarchy making a bit more sense to you? Have you read more of my book?”

  “I have read more, and yes, it’s making more sense, but I wish I could get a practical handle on it. Find the crank to make it turn in this world, instead of it just being some abstract ideal. Abstract ideals are no good for stocking the pantry. You know, I used to be a punk too.”

  Jason burst out laughing. “No,” he shook his head. “You never were.”

  “I was,” I insisted. “I just remembered. Actually, so was Margaux. All kinds of memories are returning to me. Living with you is like being in a flotation tank or under hypnosis or something.”

  “You just remembered?”

  “Yes. I had red-and-black tartan trousers with zips all over them and safety pins, and I used to dye my hair black. I used to spray-paint anarchy signs everywhere even though I didn’t know what it meant. I used to play bass guitar too,” I added. “And I used to draw. I wanted to go art school. I wanted to be a graphic novelist at night while I worked in an ad agency during the day.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “My father,” I said. “He pretty much hit the rebel out of me. I truly had forgotten most of that until now. I didn’t forget that he used to hit me, but I forgot about my punk stage.”

  “You’ve given me an idea,” Jason said thoughtfully as I looked at him. “I have decided I must go out with a bang. You’re right, I must make a statement, a practical, tangible touchable thing to make a stand. My website isn’t enough. I need to do something big, something the world will see and take note of and remember. You see, all your practical talk and your punk rocker reminiscing has led me to great things!”

  I was filled with misgiving. “What great things?” I asked reluctantly.

  “Well now, sunshine, don’t rain on my parade. I don’t know that yet! But the first step has been taken. The idea has been had, and once it’s been had, it cannot be unhad! I’m going to celebrate my birthday punk-style! Even if it’s not on my exact birthday. Who knows, I probably won’t be around for that.” He paused and his face lit up. “Sid’s birthday! Let’s do it then! Moves the timeline up but nothing we can’t handle. 10th May! Genius! But the first thing I’m going to do is order myself a pair of those trousers. Would you like a pair too?”

  “Hell, yes,” I said.

  “I wonder what we can do,” he mused. “It can’t be graffiti. It must be beautiful, a work of art. We need to do Sid proud.”

  “Sid is dead,” I pointed out. “He won’t know.”

  “I’ll be dead soon too. And Sid will know. The dead do know. Don’t be such a cynic. We’ll have to go into Sydney though, meet some people. I’ll take you to the Black Rose, show you around. I’ll set up a meeting, and we’ll take a trip.”

  “You can’t take me to Sydney!” I was horrified. “Margaux’s there. Everybody’s looking for me.”

  “You don’t look anything like you used to,” Jason said. “You’ve gotten skinny. Anyway, I meant to say, I’ve got a gift for you.”

  He vanished into his bedroom and came out holding a passport. “Here you go. Meet the new you. I officially anoint you Mr. Liam Lemon.”

  “Oh seriously?” I asked. “Liam Lemon?” I opened the passport. The guy did look like me. Or I looked like him, whichever.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “Off the back of a truck, where do you think? Stop asking me questions and say thank you. You can do a lot with a passport. Get a whole new life.”

  “A whole new life,” I echoed. “As Liam Lemon. I’m not sure I’m ready for that. From Lyndon to Liam. You stuck with the L at least.”

  “Take it or leave it,” Jason said. And he looked out into the distance. “I never wanted to be one of those tossers who said to himself, ‘Where did all the years go?’ But Lyndon, where did all the years go?”

  “It’s Liam,” I replied. “And the hell if I know.”

  21. MARGAUX

  THE MORE I THOUGHT about what Lyndon had done, the more I wanted to rip his balls out. I hadn’t realized how angry I was. It was true that I had sent him a measured, calm reply, but now I wished I had been more honest and spewed some of my vitriol. But who knows, Mr. Ex-Punk Rocker might have intercepted the reply. I wondered if my email had even reached Lyndon. Perhaps it hadn’t. No, Mr. Ex-Punk Rocker would have passed it along.

  “Anger is unseemly,” I used to tell Helen. She’s always had a temper, and I wondered if she had inherited it from me. I reasoned that was why she hadn’t had a long-term boyfriend in years. And whenever I made my “anger is unseemly” comment, she’d look at me calmly, and reply, “Letting things eat you up inside is worse. You’ve got a lot of anger in you, Mom, you just don’t let it out.”

  Of course, I denied it. I was happy with my life. “Nonsense,” I’d reply. “My world is very serene.”

  That made Helen laugh. “Fine. Serene. But one day, you’ll let it all out, and then, beware world.”

  I hadn’t remembered our discussions until now, and the reason I was thinking about them was because I was staring at my laptop, back in my room at Tim’s hostel, and I was furious over Lyndon’s silence. He didn’t even have the courtesy to dignify my gracious email with a response. I thought I had sounded so rational, so balanced, even kind. I thought that would guarantee a reply from him, but there was nothing.

&nb
sp; I wanted to pound my keyboard with my fist, but it was a move I knew I’d regret. “You’re cutting off your nose to spite your face,” I had told Helen along with other clichés. “You rush through your life burning your bridges. A man in passion rides a mad horse. You’re like a bull in a china shop when you’re angry.”

  “Mom, I’m assertive, not angry. There’s a big difference. I stand up for myself.”

  “And all your hard work will go out the window, and for what? Life’s about playing the game, Helen, that’s all. We don’t like some of the rules on the playing field, but if you don’t do what you need to, you’ll lose.”

  “So, I should let Professor Danner accidentally touch my breast when he gives me back my essay? I should let him brush his crotch along my arse when there’s more than enough room for him to pass around me in a room? Is that what you are saying?”

  “I’m saying, don’t poke a stick at a sleeping wolf.”

  “Mom, you’re full of ridiculously old-fashioned sayings. And he’s not a sleeping wolf, he’s a very awake, on-the-prowl wolf.”

  “Just don’t rock any boats, Helen,” I said, and she laughed.

  “That’s what you always say, Mom. Acquiesce, be gracious, be ladylike. For God’s sake, you’d think we were in the fifties Your mother really did a job on you. I bet your home was full of woman’s magazines telling you how to be kind to your man when he’s had a rough day at work, how to never bother him with your silly little problems, and how your opinions were actually irrelevant and useless.”

  She wasn’t wrong. My mother was the epitome of ladylike support when it came to my father and his rages. He was a man, therefore, it was quite all right for him to express his anger at his job, his boss, taxes, the broken car, the endless money that needed to be poured into the house, school fees, unreasonable people he had to deal with, bad drivers who shouldn’t be allowed on the road, and the stupidity of politicians. But I had never once heard her express anger about anything. I had learned my lesson well—anger was unseemly.

  My father shouted when his team lost at a football game and in summer when his baseball team lost and in winter when his hockey team lost. There was a seasonal sports game for his every anger while I sat upstairs in my bedroom, listening to him shout at the television season after season, and dreaming about my future home where peace would reign. Where my husband and I would have civilized, adult conversations. My life wouldn’t be determined by a sense of righteous injustice at the vicissitudes doled out by an invisible hand, seemingly by random whim.

  I watched my mother’s jaw clench as she nodded in agreement to some outrage, and while she nodded, I noticed that her eyes were far away. Even our family holidays were exercises in anger: anger at bad breakfast toast, inferior coffee, knives that were not sharp enough, overpriced restaurants, and shabby motels. There was, it seemed, a reason to be angry about everything. And yet, I was the one who had to go for therapy! That in itself was reason enough to make me spitting mad. No wonder I scored my arms and wanted to break things. I had been conditioned.

  By the time I left home, my mother was riddled with a cancer she’d not told any of us about, and my father didn’t seem to notice I was gone. He didn’t notice that my brother had also left—my brother who had refused to engage in the testosterone-driven anger games, which rendered himself irrelevant in my father’s eyes.

  And when my daughter shouted at her first doll and ripped its head off for being stupid, pincers of terror gripped my bowels, and I bent down and gave her a first lesson in the dangers of unseemly anger. And I hadn’t done too badly. I helped Helen harness her temper, get through school, keep friends, have a boyfriend, get through university, and find a job.

  It hadn’t been easy. Take the Professor Danner incident, for example. I had told her that in my day, you shut up and managed the situation. You accepted that he was a man in a position of power and so what if he touched you a bit. It wasn’t like he was actually raping you, and final exams were just around the corner. “Suck it up,” I’d said. “Keep your eye on the bigger picture.”

  But Helen told him if he ever touched her again, if he so much as patted her on the shoulder, she’d report him to the dean. And she told him that if her final grades dipped at all, she would take the conversation she was recording, to the dean. Recording a threatening conversation! Why put yourself in such a potentially damaging situation when she was so close to the home plate? It was incomprehensible to me.

  “That’s just Helen.” Adam shrugged when I tried to discuss it with him. Adam was never an angry boy. He was simply born wounded by the world.

  And Lyndon laughed. “She should be studying law,” he said, “not accounting.”

  “I just think she lets her anger compromise her,” I said. “How will a man stay married to her? How will she ever find a man?”

  “I don’t think Helen cares about that too much,” Lyndon replied. “Besides, you seem to see her as a fire-breathing dragon. She is very level-headed and calm. She just doesn’t let anyone get away with any crap.”

  I had thrown my hands up in fury. Why couldn’t I get support from anyone? I was trying to look out for Helen. Helen’s anger had, ironically, made me storm off to spend time on my own more than once, and Helen teased me, saying I was a passive-aggressive angry shopper—that whenever she or Lyndon or anyone annoyed me, I retaliated by shopping. Of course, her comment made me even more angry.

  “I’m trying to create a lovely home environment for all of you,” I retaliated. “Don’t you want me to cook something delicious, or buy you two nice clothes or keep a nice house?”

  Sometimes, I wanted to rip down the curtains I had sewn, or smash the lovely, fluffy, perfectly browned-in-all-the-right-places dinner soufflé I had made, just pound it with a ladle so the egg and cheese and flour spattered against the windows, floor, and walls as if thrown by a demon. But what was the point of doing that? Dinner would be lost, money would be wasted, and then I would have to clean up my own mess. It would be cutting off my nose to spite my face. What I didn’t understand, was why I was so angry. Why did I want to grab a fistful of soufflé and throw it at the wall? Why did I want to smash a glass in the sink and then cut my thumb, already imagining myself sucking on my wound, tears welling up in my eyes? Where did all that anger come from and why couldn’t I make it go away? I was happy; I had everything I wanted.

  Lyndon had done so well in life, and my children, despite Adam’s hurts and Helen’s over-feisty nature, did just fine too. My house was lovely, and our dinner parties were impeccable social successes, even if they were given a helping hand by my friend Xanax. I was fit and trim, sculpted by cardio at the gym, and life was good.

  And then I had the idea for this trip. I had thought it would be the answer. My guilty secret was that I was tired of trying to keep a good house and I loved the idea of getting rid of it all. I’d leave at the top of my game and never have that pressure again. No more parties, no more soufflés! The relief was enormous. We would get rid of everything, be young at heart, free, unencumbered by baggage. Lyndon had never appreciated everything I had done, he hadn’t acknowledged all my work, so I thought, fine, let’s just sell it then, and see how you feel Lyndon, when you don’t have this home. Then you’ll see just how much work I did. Then you’ll appreciate it, but by then it will be too late.

  It occurred to me now, as I sat on the saggy old hostel bed in Sydney, that I was the one who had cut off my own nose to spite my very own face.

  I had lost my home, the one I’d built, the one that no one noticed but me. I’d lost out. But, I asked myself now, had I really? Maybe I wasn’t angry because no one noticed my beautiful new curtains but because I was furious with myself that the sum total of my contribution to the world was curtains, soufflés, champagne-coloured taps, and a marble countertop for the kitchen island.

  I was glad it was gone. The monument of my life’s work was an insul
t to me. Yes, I had wanted Lyndon to feel regret when he realized it was gone forever, but deep down I had also known that he wouldn’t really notice or care.

  I dug the bristles of my hairbrush into the palm of my hand and stared at my computer on which there was no message from my husband. I looked over at my cellphone, charging on the little desk Tim had brought in for me to use as a makeup table.

  “It was me,” I said to the phone. “My anger caused the Virgin Mary to turn black. I was so angry when I saw the message and what it said that I caused this to happen. My anger opened the portal so Nancy could find me because I am just as angry as she is. I have been so angry all my life, angry with everything, just like my father, but I suppressed it. Although I didn’t really suppress it. Helen knew it was there. Lyndon knew and probably so did Adam. The only person who never knew I was still angry all that time was me. And now that I do know, so what? You see, there is no point to anger. Even if you admit to it, so what? It doesn’t change things a bit. It just makes things worse.” I was talking to myself out loud. And I suddenly felt deflated.

  It didn’t help that a long, empty day lay ahead. Graham was going to do some research on Nancy, and I was going to meet her later that evening. But in the meantime, there was nothing I needed or wanted to do.

  Tim and Janet would still be asleep. There was nothing left in goddamned Sydney that I felt like doing. I was sick of the city. It was nothing more than a glittering, sunlit prison. I didn’t feel like writing to Helen or Adam. There wasn’t anything I could add about Lyndon, and Helen had never been one for small talk, and Adam would just make it all about him and find something to complain about.

  I looked at my laptop. I might as well do some research on insane asylums although Graham pretty much knew all there was to know. While the colourful spinning ball of death tried to find Google, I picked at the cuticle of my thumb until a tiny bead of blood welled up and I sucked on it, finding release in the pinprick of pain.