Hollow Earth

by John Kinsella

  135.

  They never really get inside the land they describe. Sure, they scape it, these colonial novelists and poets who think they’re decolonising the text, but they skate over the top and appropriate a few sentiments and observations made by others whose land it is, or who accept the wanting of the land for them and their respect. A protest is easy made from a space that has already been rearranged, the habitat deleted – to go home to the kitchen, to a drink from a fridge. All these photos, all these images we drink and drench ourselves in. I am, and I know in reading the mental images, the screen projections, the magic sketchbook of exposure from drug addiction – I know that whatever Manfred imagined he saw and experienced, there’s no photography in Hollow Earth, no mechanical images, no capturings in such lights. The Underworlders documented so they could filter and alter images, to sell a different seeing. That was the first photography – the grand lie, the undoing of all the pictures, the makings of representations that compelled Hollow Earthers to communicate by gesture and thought, to make their ‘paintings’ in the minds of friends and families. Telepathy is a notion, a desire of advertisers and PhD students of the surface. Surface-wise. It is the technology back-engineered from Roswell, and that is all. No, full picture transference – drawn by hand to display in another’s thought processes. And thus the images Manfred saw and will always see. Their biggest gift but he can never really understand. The Australian film renaissance fed on what we might hope to see: those landscapes battered into submission, the eerie haunting rocks and desperate trees, clinging on, markers of an abundance they don’t want us to see was there, and is there to some who know how to look beyond ‘landscape’.

  136.

  The Robber Baron had this jealousy thing going on from an early age. He smiled at those whose lives he coveted, and smirked behind their backs. He quickly understood the value of gossip, especially non– social media gossip that could then be converted into social media gossip – he was adept at this from the moment he could operate a phone. His family facilitated his every ambition, and crushed his enemies without his having to ask. But he was everybody’s friend, and inculcated, infused and inserted himself into every social group he thought might be of use. And he loved to eat. To eat ‘fine things’. He wasn’t much of a reader, but he did adore cookbooks with lush photos of dead animals partway through the cooking cycle – that withering, almost still alive stage, but becoming translated into something less offensive. Might he have been the child Zest came across in the last bookshop in the city when, walking past the cooking section, she heard him yell to his mother browsing the tattoo books, Mother, I want this book and I want it now! And that picture is what I wanna see on the table tonight. But the Robber Baron never did grow up in that part of the world. Though with the spatial-temporals all awry, Zest might wonder or did wonder or would wonder. The Robber Baron’s fondest childhood memories were of killing and gutting and cooking big fish with his father – they used the Weber. It was a man thing, which his father told him to cling to in a time of shifting allegiances. You can’t trust a man to be a man, boy. I advise you to be sympathetic on the outside to the gender realignments, but inside know that power is yours for the taking. The Robber Baron, wherever and whenever he was, took this advice to heart. The inside of the world would be made very different from the outside of the world.

  137.

  Did Ari half-think of taking a kilo of crystal meth back down to Hollow Earth? Of taking the chemistry with her? All necessary ingredients being obtainable with a little small-scale industrial application? She said to Zest, The crystals are so murky beautiful. The clarity, Zest. And Zest worried not because of what she heard said and thought-read, but because of the blank in Ari’s mind that followed. A blocking-out, then a deletion. But it would not come to pass, the crossing back over, the going down through the mouth – the reverse polarity would prevent it. A return will wipe the slate clean, Zest reassured any who could listen. And indeed, a hundred mediums within 100 kilometres of the surface curve did pick up something along those lines, attributing the fragments and sibilance to the lost loved ones of their respective customers. We must find a cave of quartz, said Ari, that will be the true way back. A pipe of crystals, like the one on display in the fossil shop in Tübingen. Is that where they were now? Ari had done yet another deal via Boog, and they were travelling (again) on the profits. It’s filthy money, said Zest. Manfred just smiled his supercilious smile, going along for the ride.

  138.

  Why are they wearing horned helmets and singing that upsetting song?

  It is Fasnet and the neo-Nazis have come out. It inspires them, calls them back.

  Back from what?

  From biding their time, from watching refugees with eyes of hate. It makes them proactive. They gather strength in the rowdy gathering.

  And look at the witches and ghouls. I prefer them. Maybe they know a way through, a way back.

  Yes, they are preferable, but demons will never offer the way through readily.

  I think they have noticed us – all the parade. If we don’t move they will encircle us. Quick!

  No, wait, wait. They may open a portal back home. This might be the way through.

  It’s not us they’re surrounding, it’s these fountains. Fountains of the White Rose –

  they are hope. They are deliverance. They are a portal through a history of massacre and hatred.

  139.

  Mahler’s 3rd Symphony and we are walking in the woods, wandering the surface world, wandering the environs of my imagination with caveats and disclaimers provided by Ari and Zest, thought Manfred. It has propelled and compelled us there – here. In our minuscule community of three. Trees marked with plastic ribbons for extraction, this working over of the myth. And over there, the firing squad shot the last of those they hated. Then there were only them. The trees witnessed, and now they must be removed, turned to dwellings in which the witnessing is nurtured and made absorbable around the smoking hearth. Brute reality. The harbingers of the Underworld, not a way through for us. Listen to the great tits singing on low branches, hear the hunters breathe heavy-quiet in their smug hides on the edges, waiting for the pigs to emerge in this early morning light into the open fields, snouting the ground, turning over their fates. It is almost summer now, and Fasnet so far back, Candlemas having been and gone, and other sacred and festive days. The gondolas are on the river around the island, and the fraternities are vomiting up their beer. Genitals are itching and developers pulling off little coup on little coup to keep the expansion going. Medieval timbers are struggling to comply. A juggler pauses before the Rathaus, strangely trips on the cobbles, and then moves on to his spot, slightly but persistently embarrassed, alongside the Stiftskirche. Today, despite the promise of sunshine and a balmy temperature, will not be a good day for juggling. Mistakes will be made, and the flowing audience will not laugh, or will laugh at the wrong moments. The juggler’s name is Peter. Peter von Koblenz. He is a refugee from Syria who has been beaten, spat upon and ridiculed for taking the job of a ‘true German’. He says, in proficient German learned over a single year, that he is not Syrian but German and that his name is Peter and that he is over six hundred years old and has seen the horrors of history. He has the audacity to say that he is not proud of being German, that to confess to such a thing is purely to acknowledge that he shares the collective guilt of the Volk, that he too should be held responsible for the descent into murderous hatred. But I know we should start from now, he says, throwing red balls out of shadow into light, the balls suspended like spheres that cannot be compared to suns or planets, but objects forged by internal forces. I have seen the death squads, I have seen the bad murdering and the good murdering and I am here to juggle for you. I have been silent in the Black Forest, I have yelled from the Lemberg in the Swabian Jura, I am thorough, I am a part of the classical thrust of the poets, a thrust into mystical lands of conquest. I am a German Muslim, and this church tower smiles down on me. I des
igned it as a gift to you. An opening to the ways of God. Listen, listen to it speak. I do not worship there, but you should. And not have your ministers supply the death squads with alibis. Hear my juggle, watch me move my hands with nothing in them. Nothing is within my grasp. And that is the truth. And yet, and yet, our trio think at once, we are still here.

  140.

  Et quacumque viam dederit fortuna sequamur.

  141.

  There are no earlier surface layers or levels or relevant or comparative stratigraphies in Hollow Earth that correlate to the geology of the surface with its thin-crust perceptions. You would understand its interiority as Hadean, which means you’d understand little of its life and the actual correlations that arose. The human influx is later, and the clock, if we go by that, has gaps measuring in the billions never mind the millions of years. No ascents or descents are vertical, as said. To force that is to force the drill psychology of the Underworlders. Inevitable? Manfred was gaining clarity, and convincing himself that he was speaking with authority. He lectured to the mirror in the hotel room. He quoted sources. He quoted from journals. He debated with himself over the beauty of Cordelia – ‘impossible to describe’ – and believed himself original, or, at the very least, channelling his mother.7

  142.

  Hi-vis accountability blurred in the dust storm kicked up by the ammonium nitrate fuel(led) explosion, a chunk of the mountain converted to chunks the groundeaters could spit into the haulpaks. This is the way through to the essence of time, said the owner, visiting to gloat and get his/her rocks off. In the flush of scrapers and wheel loaders, the crushers and bucket loaders, the hammers and rippers, flesh seems so optional. But the urine-tested workers, all off their faces on opportunity, handled the machinery their own production had helped make with a love that was of the cradle, of the grave, of the smallest particles (yet to be defined) of the cosmos. They were opening the singularity and dreams of four-wheeler thrills merged with ‘just paying the bills’, and made the destruction so human. Elsewhere in the mined land, a pit had been dug so deep that even the desert looked like the Flood in its lower reaches, the water never stopping, the effluvia the ectoplasm. And did the community of Zest and Ari, so shallow in their surface manifestations, so characterless, so without the depths and heights of the human condition, sense an almost breaking through? The crust of the sore lifted? The powder monkey hopped with glee and presented to the boss, the big enormous bloated engulfing BOSS, muttered gratitude for the opportunity to express herself, to be one with the Big Bang. To which the boss uttered, We are all cosmologists in the mining industry – the sky hears our works and shudders.

  143.

  Manfred was a rock hound as a kid – he relocated and geolocated via geology. His rock-hounding was vigorous, though he had to leave behind each collection in the country of its origin (largely). Like his schoolfriend in the coastal town in Western Australia – Django – Manfred for a time slept next to lumps of blue asbestos and was exposed to enriched yellowcake. Red lead was (also) part of his dust mote imagination, and he tested gold and talc rock with his teeth. Both loved fool’s gold, pyrites, more than anything else. Both had amethyst pipes in their collections, both polished rocks in tumblers making glorious gems. Both gave girls polished tiger’s eye, hoping it would launch their love lives, but it didn’t. Both had had written on their school reports on more than one occasion: ‘vivid imagination’. It was not intended, in either case, as a compliment. One difference: Manfred was far more obsessed with old red sandstone than Django was. A relative had given him a slice, inherited from an ancestor who had travelled from Schull to Busselton, in the colony of Western Australia, in the time after the Great Famine. Manfred thought it was petrified blood that had flowed in sheets, accreting over the centuries of English occupation, and even further back to the annihilation of the others. It bothered him – he kept it in a drawer, out of the light. He feared the light would activate something he couldn’t manage. As he was an orderly child, everything was in its place with a label, and such a force let loose would lead to a mental collapse. But the mental collapse/s came anyway, the old red sandstone still in the drawer out of the light. He was sure it wasn’t the cause, ever. Once, in England maybe, an old man gave him a lump of stalagmite broken away from a deep cave where water had stopped running. It was smooth and Manfred thought he could see some kind of creature buried deep inside it. He resisted smashing it open with a hammer. He carried it in his pocket from country to country, for which he later felt guilty.

  144.

  Hjyterspectal fasperryt castsit crysstel pasiblid, ø pesyhü lossést ≠ gyttynnm haster berrt larr larr larr rest haster larr larr larr haster gyttynnm ø gyttynnm haster berrt larr larr larr rest haster larr larr larr haster gyttynnm = ‘Immanis pecoris custos, immanior ipse’, which is not to say such an image cannot be cast, because it can. But it has no relationship to a reality. Manfred laughed out loud when he read it, then chastised himself for being so knowing. You cannot walk into the circle and be part of it without being invited, he reminded himself.

  145.

  Photography and reciprocity bothered Zest. She couldn’t connect the life she was experiencing with the images she was being shown. Colour is the vaguest aspect of truth, she said. Even with the potential for infra-red, I so often choose not to go there. It just creates more ambiguity. I like the tactile edges of things, the inside curves.

  146.

  When the men working on the roof of the new house next door wolf-whistled Manfred’s mother he clapped his hands. Did you hear that, Mum? he asked. His mother had her back to the men, hanging clothes on the Hills hoist. Yes, darling, she said. They sounded like swamp birds, he said. It’s called a wolf-whistle, his mother said. Is it a nice whistle? he asked. Well, it’s complicated, Manfred. Then one of the men yelled out, Hey, lady, your kid can come through that hole in the fence and play in the pile of yellow sand we’ve got out the back of this build, if you like. She pegged a sheet at one end and ran her fingers to the centre to add another peg. She said quietly to Manfred, You stay in our yard, Manfred. Why can’t I play in the sand, Mum? I have to ask your father, she said.

  *

  The yellow sand had gone hard, and it took him a while to excavate a hole in the side of the small mountain to insert his Matchbox cars. Mrrrrmmmm … rrrrrrr. He used a Ferrari to dig another hole – a second garage. He carved a road between the two, a cliff-top highway. Vrrrrrrr … arghhhh … the car plunged down the yellow mountainside. Hey, boy, what’s your name? yelled a sandy-haired bloke – one of the swamp birds – from the half-completed roof. I’m Manfred, he said, what’s yours? I’m Joe and my mate here is Terry. Manfred looked at them, thought over their names, half smiled, and went back to his cars, which weren’t part of a game. It was serious. Accidents could happen so easily. Then he heard another swamp bird whistle – he looked up, and Terry and Joe were looking over the fence from up their tree. Manfred looked through the large hole in the fence and saw his mother unpegging washing from the line and dropping it in the basket on the rough buffalo grass lawn that made him itch. It wasn’t the same washing, it was different washing. Today’s washing. She was washing everything in the house – spring cleaning, she called it. It wasn’t a game, it was serious, and as a garage caved in a bit he felt a little sick in his stomach for the misery the drivers of his Matchbox cars would be feeling. Sand all over the place, the roof of their world falling in.

  *

  Hey, lady, yelled Joe. We’ve gotta gift for your boy. Can we give it to him? She’d never seen them off the roof, but the roof was finished and they were at the hole in the fence. She’d been doing a lot of washing so she could keep an eye on Manfred playing on the sand pile, without seeming as if she was keeping an eye on them. She unconsciously brushed her dress down, one she’d made herself – there wasn’t much money spare and she saved by making clothes for herself and the boy. She walked halfway to the fence and saw Terry down below Joe’s elbow, looking through at
her, his poorly shaved face like a chewed toy. Behind them, in glimpses and fragments, she could see the sand pile, Manfred, and the flash of a golden Lamborghini, a car that had been lost and found in the excavated and collapsing mountain a dozen times over the last few days. She said, I guess not … I should ask my husband but he won’t be in till six. We know, lady, we see him go off … but never come home, said Joe, without anything dodgy really intended. He just said it, not really knowing why, but he didn’t regret it. Nah, you can decide, lady, you don’t need his permission. We don’t bite. But you whistle, she said, quick fast. No disrespect meant, lady, you just look good from up there. We don’t mean nothin’ by it. It’s just part of the trade – you know, we’re kind of trained in it. A bird’s-eye view, added Terry. Shoosh, said Joe. Joe here reckons you’ve got character, lady. A bit of spark, out there hanging the washing – like you won’t take no rubbish from anyone. He’s a real joker, is my mate Terry – take no notice of him, lady, said Joe, who went on seamlessly, We’ve bought this space gun for him – it makes pulsing sounds, and if any spacemen come after him, he’ll be able to deal with them. I don’t like guns – toy guns, any guns, she said. Nah, this isn’t a gun gun, said Joe, it’s just a space toy. Make-believe. Manfred was making gasping noises as another Matchbox plunged to its doom on a crumbling mountain road. Well, I suppose it’s okay, she said. And then Terry was by Manfred handing him a plastic weapon that looked like bubbles joined together. He was pulling the red trigger and it was going wooyoowooyoowooyoo … There, gotcha, said Terry. Manfred stared at him, then past Joe through the hole in the fence to his mum, who was standing on the itchy green lawn, hands on her hips, studying him. Is it okay, Mum? he asked. Yes, it’s okay, said his mum. But she had that look on her face she had when his father was too kind to her and she knew it would only get worse, get bad, from there on in. Down in the swamp where the birds are loud and can’t be seen, down in the swamp where Manfred and Mum go when Dad is angry, where they go to feed the ducks which make quacking noises that can get a bit ‘shirty’ if they don’t get enough bread but are never frightening, down in the swamp where the spacemen are, where Daddy said, If you leave me, Dora, I’ll drown myself down there and they’ll never find me.