Hollow Earth

by John Kinsella

  Emerging from the amniotic fluid, folks, the ultimate dentata,

  The beast with glands on fire, folks, it’s the very last Godzilla.

  Like Ash in Evil Dead, folks, fighting the archetypal mother,

  divide and conquer fear, folks, it’s the very last Godzilla ...

  Attacking Hong Kong, folks, who’d barrack for the monster?

  It’s better red than dead, folks, it’s the very last Godzilla.

  If history repeats itself, folks, can the director be a killer?

  Encouraging cultural mayhem, folks, it’s the very last Godzilla.

  It’s no use hanging out on the beach, folks, the red sky’s turned nuclear,

  And lifestyle is losing relevance, folks, it’s the very last Godzilla.

  So what if the critics tell us, folks, we’re sure to get something better,

  It will never be the same, folks, it’s the very last Godzilla.

  158.

  Red tape. The enemy of development. Bureaucracy. The enemy of the citizen’s personal freedom. So say the developers, the Big Miners. The slippage – torment of the (radical) artist. How to stop the exploiters and not be exploited. But it’s not a paradox, said Zest. They want us out of the country and yet we cannot leave. That block of forest was cleared for a new development before permission was granted. The developer said, It will come through, I was assured it would. Verbally. What more do you need? So the only wrong was not waiting for the final stamp, the signing-off? Not because the forest should have been conserved in itself, that it was the home of a woodpecker that has no other home. Of insects rarely seen. And yet our baby is called An American and our opinion is unwanted. We can be imprisoned for overstaying, for being seen to create an American where Americans already are. The monuments legislation is bulldozed and the companies can love the government and all can traffic in soil and cells. It’s a cell-off.

  159.

  Given their abhorrence for ‘money’, the Robber Baron would introduce cryptocurrency to the internment camps of Hollow Earth. They have to be able to pay for their own necessities, he said. He received many likes, including from internees.

  160.

  Ari couldn’t quit, and she couldn’t help augmenting their meagre kitty with ‘earnings’. Manfred and Zest demanded she seek help, and when they refused her financial offerings, she felt an embarrassment no Hollow Earther had ever felt before. So strong and disturbing was it that Zest felt shaken in her own psyche, and their shared psyche fractured. She sensed that others from their community in Hollow Earth would know something was seriously wrong.

  *

  The rehab program, being voluntary and anonymous, attracted those who wished to slip through the planks. Ari sat next to a woman who wore a hijab and said that meth was destroying her and her family. She said she did not believe in jihad, but when she was angry she screamed psychotically aggressive things in His name, and she was ashamed of this. Mostly, she wanted to believe and live the way her mother had lived but the wider community wouldn’t allow it. They suspect me, she said, and when I’m high I want to take them on, to destroy it all. It’s not me. He does not want that of me. Who is He? asked a woman who was scratching furiously, and looked asleep vivid awake strung out. Another woman in the group who was a devout Catholic said she’d covered up for an abusive priest because he’d nurtured her addiction through sympathetic confessions. Her problem was booze, and she couldn’t afford it. Another woman said to Ari, Why, dear, you’re shaking like a leaf … and you’re slightly green – are you withdrawing? I don’t know, said Ari, I think it’s because I fear the violence I have become part of. I have sold drugs as a vengeance against the brutality of this world and in doing so I have made it more brutal, more lost. The older woman who steered the group said, That’s it, Ari – admitting you have a problem and have done wrong is going a long way to moving on and fixing up the damage you have done. Ari didn’t say so, but she doubted everything she was hearing, including what was coming from her own mouth. But she knew there was no way out. I need to dissolve myself, she said too loudly, making those around her shudder and then reassure her. Do you have faith? asked the Catholic woman. I don’t know, not really, said Ari. I just have what was gifted to me when I was made. When the only woman in the group who had not yet spoken did so in a language few would ever have heard even in fragments, Ari responded: I too have latched on to the only thing I could find that made me feel like I belonged and yet sent me as far away from this earth, this place, as I could manage. You understand me? said the woman. Of course, said Ari, all languages are one and the same to me [Other than Irish?]– it’s an insensitivity I developed in this superficial existence that renders me capable of profiting from the misery of others. There are no tools available for me to pity you or for you to pity me. The woman asked Ari what psychiatric drugs she was taking, and she did so without sarcasm. And then she said, all the other women staring at her: In here, people only tell as much as they want to tell, and often more than they wish. The woman paused, smiled, then added, I think you are neither male nor female, of here and not of here. And Ari said, Whatever I am, I can still fuck up real easy. Yep, same here, said the woman in her special language. Rue∂wøy ey–oûz twestta, said Ari, and the woman knew, and smiled, and she and Ari were both saved, and some of the others in the group were too.

  161.

  Un-American. Un-Australian. Un-Irish. Un-German. Un-British. Un-Danish. Activities. Lead-poisoned American condor.

  162.

  What’s the worst embarrassment you’ve ever suffered, Manfred? asked Ari. Why do you ask, Ari? Because I want to understand what powers work behind making someone feel so vulnerable. It’s merciless out there, Ari. I know, said Ari. I do not like my sobriety. She picked at the frayed denim of her jeans, bending her leg so the white strands yawned and then closed the lips over her knee. These jeans, she said, they were torment for someone – I have understood this much about capitalism. It doesn’t add up – the rich seem not to profit enough if someone hasn’t suffered in their making! They are old jeans, Ari. They were new once. Well, I suffered embarrassment constantly at school, right from my first day. My skin burnt with shame. How so? The teacher asked me if I needed the toilet within a half-hour of my starting school. In front of the other kids. I said, No, Mrs S. [who would become the great-grandmother of a prominent Antipodean Underworlder], no thank you. Well, you’re a funny colour, boy. I don’t want you wetting the chair and making my nice clean classroom smelly.

  163.

  Why is Ari asking me to piece my life together for her, Zest?

  It’s her way of finding a place here in case we can’t go back. It helps keep her away from the drugs.

  She needs a hobby.

  We are her hobby.

  I can’t believe I said that. We will start growing organic vegetables and selling them to local businesses wherever we eventually settle.

  The baby will show us the way back – I haven’t lost hope.

  Of course not. Nor have I. Just good to have a back-up plan and one that doubles as a hobby and life support. I have developed an amoeba-like character. Do you know, there are actually scientists who eat swans and call themselves creative?

  Why would they do that?

  Because it’s privilege and it makes them feel special. Head on a plate as proof, with the Queen’s approval.

  Dead mute swans ingested make them vocal? And here in Ireland?

  Many English came here in the seventies seeking an alternative life. Some of them remember. A guidebook writer – an English migrant of the decolonised – ate a dead swan just to see what it was like, to connect with his origins. All of these parts, except for the heights, the mountains, where their influence was diluted with rain and dustings of snow. They just wanted the copper and the language.

  I love birds, said Manfred, and yet, when I was a small child, after my father left, I destroyed a clutch of quail eggs. I don’t know why. I didn’t want to hurt anything. There was a ma
n who liked my mum and I didn’t like him. I didn’t want another dad. He’d been a friend of my father’s, I remember that. Mum talked about it later, even years later, and I blocked me ears and said, Nahnahnahnahnahnah! really loud for a long, long time. Even after Mum had left the room. There was Rick and my father. And there was Mum.

  164.

  the hollow ways

  – Thou would’st have said chronology, Trim, said my uncle Toby; for as for geography, ’tis of absolute use to him; he must be acquainted intimately with every country and its boundaries where his profession carries him; he should know every town and city, and village and hamlet, with the canals, the roads, and hollow ways which lead up to them; there is not a river or a rivulet he passes, Trim, but he should be able at first sight to tell thee what is its name – in what mountains it takes its rise – what is its course – how far it is navigable – where fordable – where not; he should know the fertility of every valley, as well as the hind who ploughs it; and be able to describe, or, if it is required, to give thee an exact map of all the plains and defiles, the forts, the acclivities, the woods and morasses, thro’ and by which his army is to march; he should know their produce, their plants, their minerals, their waters, their animals, their seasons, their climates, their heats and cold, their inhabitants, their customs, their language, their policy, and even their religion.8

  165.

  Manfred loved birds. He’d loved them since he could remember first seeing them. And that was in his playpen – cuddly birds orbiting overhead. And now he was seven and visiting a man – a ‘family friend’ – who had birds in a cage. Birds that flew and also birds that ran on the ground. Their wings don’t work very well, said the man. They are quail – different types of quail. Those ones over there in the corner of the aviary are sitting on eggs. White eggs speckled with chocolate. The boy liked chocolate a lot. And see, they can share a cage with budgies and finches and canaries. Blue budgies perched overhead. Now, I’m going in to put seed in the feeders and to change their water. You can watch. First I go through the outer door, then I close it, and then I go through the next door. That’s like an airlock in a submarine. The boy looked at him and blinked. It’s so if a bird escapes, it only escapes into the space between the doors. It’s a safeguard. The boy knew not to blink again, so he nodded as the man disappeared inside the first door, becoming chequered with light through the wire squares, like the beautiful birds that were all flapping or running around. The man was filling the cage now and saying soothing things to the birds up and down which were ignoring his words but angry and frightened by his being in there with them. In the little world without sky. Then the man was finished, and outside, and speaking to him like he was four, not six, almost seven. He could read and he knew plenty of big – substantial – words. I will go back up to the house to talk with your mother now, and you can stay and talk to the quail.

  *

  But the boy carefully let himself out of the aviary, doing the same as the man had done, and saying, Goodbye, birds! and waiting till he was out of sight, followed the man to the house, opened the flywire door carefully, went into the kitchen, and listened. The man and his mother were in the next room, the lounge room. That’s where Mum had been when they’d gone out, Manfred and the man, to see the birds. She was drinking a ‘cuppa’. That tea must be cold by now, thought Manfred.

  It would be a sensible arrangement – the boy needs a father, said the man. Oh, how’s your cuppa?

  It’s fine – I made myself a second cup while you were showing Manfred the aviary. No, he doesn’t need another father. He has one.

  I don’t think so. You know he looks at people funny-like.

  What do you mean?

  I mean, I could help him through these difficult times.

  He’s fine. You just say that because you can see his father in him. How can you be so jealous? I mean, Rick, he’s been gone two years and you hadn’t seen him for three years before that – you didn’t know him anymore, not really. He hasn’t called you and we’ve barely heard. He’s gone. He doesn’t care. He’s a bastard, but he’s still Manfred’s father.

  I was his best friend. I guess I’m still his best friend.

  Yeah, at school. And I was your girlfriend before I was his girlfriend, and so on and so on. Same old, same old, Rick. I want to make it clear, I’m not going back to you, and we’re all grown up now, and you’ve been through a marriage and divorced and ‘water under the bridge’ hardly works as a metaphor in these circumstances. You managed marriage for two years, Rick – it hardly instils faith in your ability to commit.

  Never liked the way you tried to make spells with words. Always something of the witch in you.

  No, Rick, just not the basketball team.

  Well, anyway, I am there – here – if you need me.

  As long as you don’t try the ‘And you’re still a beautiful woman’ bit you used at Hilda’s party last week. I’m here because I want the boy to meet his father’s old friend. To help him find out who his father was.

  Well, happy to be of service. I’ll tell the boy he looks strapping for his age, that he’ll likely end up as tall as his old man.

  *

  The boy walked out backwards, his hand going to the latch of the flywire door as if he had eyes in the back of his head. He kept creeping backwards down the steps and through the yard without missing a beat. He turned and jogged to the aviary. Nothing will get out if I close one door, then the other door. We’ll all be inside – me, the quail and the budgies and all, all inside the big nest, the hollow. We will be inside the world. With water and seed, with air and dirt. We’ll be together, said the boy. Said the boy unto himself. And then he saw the nest within the nest as the quail was off, nervous, bailed up in a corner, fretting and head bobbing, angling to get back to the eggs. Eggs are empty, said the boy, there’s nothing in them and nothing can come out. You should forget about your nest and your eggs, yell-cried the boy. And feathers rained up around him.

  166.

  Zest hadn’t slept properly for days and was irritable. Her nipples were cracked and sore, and the sight of Ari was too much for her. Manfred was going on about eco-friendly nappies, and this and that about the baby, but she could tell he’d rather be anywhere but there. We’re all stuck with each other in this ghastly world, she repeated over and over. They eat animals, they kill each other, they wreck their environment, and think they care for their children. Christ almighty! she said. Zest was taking a great interest in Christ, but also in other spiritual figures. Late at night when Manfred had fallen into a stupor of tiredness, she’d wake him and say, In one of those religious texts will be the answer, the way out, the way back. I doubt it, said Manfred, who’d been rock-picking in farmers’ paddocks of late for less than the minimum wage. I’m feeling as if gender is forcing its hand, he said to Zest, simultaneously wishing Ari were still sharing the bed so he could roll over and, permission being granted, climb onto her.

  167.

  When the rooks called down the chimney he thought he was falling through the vent to Hollow Earth. Today, when I am rock-picking, I will climb to the portal on Mount Gabriel, as I do every couple of days, and see if it’s showing signs of giving way. That membrane. His boss, always suspicious, asked if Ari was Zest’s sister. Neither of them look very well. And is the baby baptised? And, Is it a boy or a girl? Nobody knows. You haven’t taken it in for its check-up. And, Where was it born? At home? Was there a registered midwife? It was born in America? Really, said the man, I have a brother in America – in Milwaukee – he’s a scientist. He says climate change is a trick designed by the EU to stop the Irish farming cows.

  168.

  Before being evicted from Ireland for overstaying their three-month tourist visas by four months, they were interviewed by the local immigration officer at the Gardaí station. Have you spent time with the puffins during the warm weather at the end of the Sheep’s Head Peninsula? Have you drunk water that’s seeped out of the turf? Have you w
itnessed the giant rising up from its sleep? Have you read the poet’s lines carved into stone and looked out on Bantry Bay? Have you slipped down Knockboy in icy weather, driven vertically – almost – to Barley Lake and seen bog cotton antlering out of the cut turf? Have you see choughs? Are you responsible for the spread of rhododendron? Are you rhododendrons, rootstock and flowers? Are you to be grubbed out and burnt? Are you economic migrants? Are you threatening the Irish way of life? We’ve been colonised already, thanks. And now our diaspora is different – they all look home. Contradictions? I don’t think so. We are too witty for that. Blowbacks? Rebels of the Wicklow Mountains? What’s with the green skin? That baby looks peaky – not getting anything out of our medical services. Yes, I do have a son and a daughter living in Australia. And another in Canada. Why do you ask?