Garbage piled in the lane, sweet smells. Cabbages rot in a box. Spilled drink on the asphalt, leaking black beads like jellied eyes gazing back at him. He sniffs and kicks it. Then lights a cigarette and sucks in smoke. They get the echo, pleasure, but want air, life, other drugs. His toes crushed inside sneakers, moving on the spot. Whiff of old vomit.
He pinches it, half-smoked, and pockets it, then heads off walking. They try to hold to form to shape themselves inside him, fill his lungs. This sense of direction. Addiction. If they could only find the mechanism.
Day soaks into evening. Clouds bluster up and shutter the light, gold and pink thrown over like a blanket, sparking charcoal. Everything’s full of sensation, and nothing makes sense. They feel the pressure drop, the charge change against his skin. He glances up at a looming thundercloud. By the time rain hits, he’s breathed them out, no wiser.
Others cluster. In the wet there is a surplus of nearness. Everyone is moving. Body against body, summer-loose. The warm of rain on skin that doesn’t shiver. They feel the absence of craving with as much pleasure as its satisfaction. The crowd pushes together in a slender shelter, all intimate discomfort. They are grateful for human incaution. Here, she watches the dramatic lightning, the city subliminally rainforest, lush and dense and penetrable, its lungs filling all around them. She flinches, breathes with its breaths. Huddles under the awning of a shop in an angled street, sweat mingling with rain and slinking down the hair into the collar. Habitually afraid. She sees a wall where a fig’s roots have dropped like a stepladder and entered a crack in the cement, nourished by the water below.
The place is porous. The steam in the city’s undercarriage, its dank odours, ancient creeks, the air itself moist and alive, like the inside of an animal. She turns away, closes her eyes, puts her hands to her ears and waits.
They share her breath. The atmosphere sustains them both.
Still here. Must be a reason.
Feel her heart tapping away in the dark, the body’s resistance. Her fear.
Just one small breath. In, then out again. They don’t want to hurt her.
The living don’t know what they have, or what they risk.
SYDNEY
Adam was not sleeping well. Heat had been soaking into the walls for days and now it seemed intent on crushing him. Whenever he drifted off he felt the pressure mounting in his chest and then the weight of his body sinking, falling, until the acceleration woke him.
When he got up sometime after midnight, the house was filled with a ripe, sweet smell. He went down to the kitchen for a glass of water. Someone had bought lilies, creamy white Oriental lilies with speckled centres from which long parts protruded, yellow and brown and sticky with pollen. They stood on the kitchen counter in a tall jar that had once held passata and still wore half its label, torn at the edges. The scent of the flowers was too much, but he didn’t move them. The windows were open, but the air was still. He would accommodate the feminine indulgences of his household with good grace. He was a man who could live among women uncorrupted. He filled a glass with water, drank it at the sink, turned the glass upside down in the drainer, and went back to bed, where he counted his breaths until he could sleep.
The next night, the house seemed unusually quiet. He got up, sweaty and clumsy and dehydrated, and made his way downstairs, one hand on the wall. The wall was damp and as warm as a person. The lilies had dropped mustard-yellow powder on the counter, and one of the thin stalks from the centre of a flower had fallen. He used to know what the parts were called. The persistence of the label on the jar irritated him. He was tempted to wash it clean, but the flowers were too fragile to be moved; their heavy petals would not survive being lifted now. He let them be. Someone would take care of it in the morning.
The scent was ripening, losing its innocence. Beneath it, the house’s natural must was amplified by moisture: damp, dusty carpet, acrylic paint, someone’s cooking lingering years after it had been eaten. The tart of compost, and the darker scents of mould and mice. Decades of disinterested landlords. He paused at the foot of the stairs, looked down the hall, thinking of nothing. There were no lights under the doors. The boxes and coats in the hallway just shadows. Everyone had gone out, or gone to sleep. He wasn’t certain which. Adam exhaled slowly, and counted the stairs to his airless room. He was doing well. He would prove to himself that he was capable of overcoming this. With daylight came the hint of a breeze, and a sense of himself as ordinary, restored, a little foolish. He needed to pee but he didn’t get up. His kidneys ached. He felt there ought to be rewards.
After all it was only to himself he had given his word. He hadn’t spoken aloud, or made promises. If anything, this resistance was making things worse. There could be permanent damage. It was impossible to get something out of your system by holding it in.
Thursday, Adam had an essay due, so he stayed in the library until it closed, walked out under the chitter of flying foxes, made his way home through empty backstreets. The warmth did not oppress him, the few cars and people he saw out did not demand attention. He thought of a line he had copied out of Sontag: to photograph someone is a sublimated murder. He still didn’t get it. His shadows long and short and long again under the streetlights, the route so familiar he did not have to think. The keys were warm in his hand. The house was empty.
He did not want to have to pull an all-nighter, but the heat and the lack of sleep had made his thinking sluggish all week. So he lay in his room with his laptop on his stomach, bothered by mosquitos, searching online for quotes to fill out the word count. When he heard the others come in just before midnight, he switched his light off. They were all returning from somewhere together. He listened out for Yun’s soft, slightly accented voice between the women, and its presence warmed him. Their tone seemed oddly conspiratorial. He typed on in the light of his screen, propelled to sudden focus.
As he read over what he had written, Adam heard their doors close one by one, the house fall still. Only then did he remember the vigil. He was surprised that he had forgotten it. It was all they had talked about all week. He had even thought the flowers might have been bought for that purpose, but they were still in the kitchen. He could smell them now, the ripeness turning.
He should have gone with them. They should have asked him to come.
There was no-one else around when he came down to make breakfast. The flowers were still there, heads penitent and browning. The newspaper was spread on the counter below them, open to a colour photograph from the night before. Enough people to have an effect. Signs, the lights of their phones held aloft. Flowers in a pile. They had gathered where she had walked across the university grounds, since the police would not let them near the scene. He supposed the colleges wanted to look like they were doing something. A brown clump on the text turned out to be pollen; he flicked it away but it had stained the page.
Most of it was about a man who had created a disturbance, yelling insults at the women, trying to pick fights. Police had removed him from the scene, but it didn’t say whether he’d been charged with anything. There was no photo of the guy. No discussion of suspects. Adam thought he might save the article for his media class, make up for the slightly lacklustre assignment. They would talk about the discourse, the language that circumscribed the act. Inevitably someone would bring up masculinity, the continuity of violence, and then he would have a chance to distinguish himself. He would mount a defence. But why should he have to? He decided to leave it on the counter.
He made coffee and sat beside the flowers to drink it. He wasn’t allergic, as far as he knew, but his eyes itched. Sleep deprivation, probably. He moved the jar away from his face, and the water sloshed, releasing an unpleasant odour. The water was brown, the stems inside it fuzzy. The scent was almost entirely rotten now. He did not feel it was up to him to deal with it.
‘We should chuck those in the compost,’ said Marita, entering. Her eyes were re
d. He met them warily.
‘Are you allergic?’ he asked.
She shook her head, moved past him to the fridge.
Adam was still staring at the flowers when Kate joined them. ‘I hate those fucking things,’ she said. Her passion surprised him.
‘I thought you bought them,’ he said.
‘Me? No.’ She did not look at him.
‘How was it?’ he asked, but too quietly; neither of them responded.
Marita had made tea, and she settled herself on the furthest stool. Kate was on her knees, rummaging for something in the bottom drawer. She tugged out a plastic bag and stood up. Adam hoped she was about to dispose of the lilies, but she stopped at the open newspaper and pressed the text down with one finger.
‘Is this the article,’ she asked Marita, who murmured meaningfully. Adam understood that they had already discussed it, come to their own conclusions. He made an effort anyway.
‘It seems like they were more interested in that dickhead,’ he began. ‘What sort of a person –’
‘Didn’t see you there,’ Kate said, unnecessarily sharply.
Adam sat back. ‘I had to hand in an essay this morning.’ He controlled his voice, felt his eyes slide away from hers regardless. Yun stepped into the kitchen, and he turned to them gratefully, his heart quick under his t-shirt.
‘Anyway, it was for the women, really,’ he said. He drank the rest of his coffee, which had gone cold, and set the cup on the counter.
‘I went,’ Yun said, pulling the paper towards them.
‘You’re different,’ Adam said. It was the wrong thing to say, but Yun seemed to take it lightly; they sighed, a half-smile directed to the page.
‘So they keep telling me,’ they said, and pushed the paper away without reading.
‘It would have been good to see a few more blokes there, I thought.’ Marita began tearing the page from the newspaper, one hand pressed into its weakened spine.
‘It’s not like I was avoiding it. I didn’t want to be in the way.’ Adam wanted to bring up the essay again, but it seemed cheap now.
‘You’re not in the way,’ Yun said. Their look was kind. Something was definitely there, like a sudden increase in oxygen. He was sure he was not imagining it. But in another moment, their face became remote, unrecognisable; they closed their inner self away. There were only ever glimpses, too brief to be sure of anything. He wondered if they meant to confuse him. If it was some kind of defence. His own restraint was weakening, releasing warmth out from the core. He smiled at Yun, but they were already turning to the window.
He had gone three nights without going to their room. But there was no way to reveal his restraint, to have it commended. There would only be judgement.
‘The men have to step the fuck up,’ said Kate.
Nobody answered her. That breath of clear air had left the room; Adam smelled only rotting flowers, stale coffee, old dust.
‘I have to go, I have a virology class,’ Yun yawned. Adam’s eyes were itching; he had to stop himself from clawing at them. As they left the room he sneezed twice instead of speaking. A third sneeze came but it stayed inside, like a seizure that would not release.
‘I didn’t know you were allergic,’ said Marita. She was folding the page into a tiny square before him. ‘You should have said.’
‘I’m not,’ Adam said. His voice felt distant. ‘But we should get rid –’ and the third sneeze shocked through him.
‘Tomorrow,’ Kate began, but didn’t finish. It was unclear if she was taking responsibility for the flowers or changing the subject. She was at the window now, looking out at the day. He watched her muscles shift beneath the loose clothing. Her hard-wound strength. There was something wrong with him, he thought, something subtly rearranged that he should try to put back in order. Not enough sleep. At least his eyes were no longer stinging.
After the women had left the house, he remembered the party.
Probably the others had discussed it without him, come to some decision last night. Maybe they had decided it was not disrespectful after all; maybe they thought it demonstrated something, a refusal to be reduced by violence. Adam was concerned about having strangers in the house. People could be unpredictable. There was a creep around, someone predatory. He would be the one to keep an eye out, he decided. Ask people who they were, and who they knew. If it went ahead, he would protect them.
On deciding this, he picked up the flowers, jar and all. A whole petal fell from them, landing silently on the bench. The water was rancid, swampy. He carried them outside without breathing, walked to the back corner of the yard, and tossed them over the fence into the neighbour’s overgrown garden. Then he added the jar to the recycling bin by the back door. These little acts were met with no reward, only a subtle change in the air: distant thunder, one questionable touch of rain on skin.
SHIVER
A strong young man, heavy backpack, gauzy hangover, hauling uphill at dawn. Pleasant daze in the forebrain. Sniffs at the spritzed air of the city, blinks in the fresh light after rain. And steps into a laundromat, humming a tune. He shoves his clothes into the machine and rattles his backpack for something that turns out to be tobacco. He leaves the bag and steps outside to smoke in the strong sun. They find the flaw that lives in him. The blood knows it and is drawn there. A packet of cells the size of the pellet of lint he takes from his pocket when he counts his coins. He lets the pellet fall onto the cement. The one in his intestine won’t be dislodged so easily. The smoke floods him. The mouth moves greedily, hands rolling. The pellet glows. The music has gone dim.
He squints between streets at a glint of sea, the elusive jewel the city keeps washing and promising. As he inhales, they speculate as to how the nascent tumour clings. They feel an affinity, a private pact with it, knowing it is there. Drawn to it, they make attempts to press the place. Would like to move it. Finally one cell divides, another argues. Did they affect it? It’s hard to say. Too small a change to measure. And watching, of course, there’s a quantum difficulty.
He turns to peer at the bag inside, is reassured. Holds the attachment in his chest. Then looks at the display on the machine, where red numbers tick down slowly. His reflection in the window ruddy, youthful. Much too young to be sick, but older than they were. There is no justice in the body. He sucks at smoke, apparently without sadness.
He doesn’t know what’s growing in him. It fascinates them.
In the eucalypts above him, the high white grind of cicadas.
No justice in the body, but plenty of laws. They could cling the way the pellet does, if they knew its rules. They could get its strength, use it to claw their way into him and hold on. Reason through him from the data available. This burn at the fingertips. This pain. They do feel stronger for it.
He pushes the door in, reflects the gleam. They want to break the glass, feel blood run down his wrist, and own it. They want to stay.
He tosses the smoke out onto the road, and they tip into air.
A woman, richly insulated, too much ache to find one place. Knuckles, thirst, electricity. Bent toes. A rifling of categories, of possible causes. She thinks with her whole self, it feels like, every muscle deciding. Drags her whole self forward by the arms. Her huge power pushes at a flimsy door, pauses on a stair to catch the breath.
They are strong in her, familiar. They try to resurrect what they remember: the ghost of an old self-possession. But there is too much interference. They recognise pleasures, pains, urges, shames, protests and complaints overlaid, the disharmonious noise of living beings. Too much information. They pick out a single stimulus: poor circulation in the fingers, which are not slender like theirs were but clutch this timber railing just as coldly. The tips are numb, and connected, something sprung across the shoulders, in the bones. There, where she twists and flinches. The question violence asks, which is continuous. The question of when.
<
br /> They can’t differentiate themselves from her at all.
The body was only ever this. All of it, uncontained, overflowing, never enough. She leans on the railing, tightens her grip. Her rings pinch the fingers, cold silver on the warm grain. They are strong. They can make a little room in her. They can move these fingers if they concentrate.
So they concentrate.
Knuckles. Electricity. Attention.
Power.
They feel the heart give way above them. That sharp reaction across the shoulder. Feel her heave and start to go. Her whole body fresh in the rush of the last moments, a rush of life that might have been their own. Cold sweat. Fall, falling.
Time stops. They remember something obvious, so obvious it mocks them. They would laugh, given control of a mouth, lungs, a warm and delicately chambered larynx, the right muscles, the pressure of air. Laugh at wanting to stay in one place, knowing what they have always known.
Bodies die. It’s what they do. Not justice. Law.
Bodies die, and this one is about to go, with them inside.
What did they expect?
They reach for the experience. They skim the surface of her sudden awareness. The chest pain dissipates, the mind recalculates. Attention closes in and opens out. They sense the edge of a great awakening; always too soon, and much too late.
Then they’re disoriented. Little hard heartbeats in a tighter chest. The stress of congestion. Neat vibration as he speaks or cries out, the voice returns him to his breath. His eyes clear to the sight of her lying on the ground. Hand against his face, phone, he makes a call, whispers to himself and speaks, approaches her, stops a metre back. He does not want to touch her. Just a body, dead now. But they’re still here. His bird-chest racing.
Only now do they wonder what they have done. Whether they pushed too hard, or in the wrong place. Whether she set them free, or they escaped. Maybe he inhaled her last breath; maybe they hurt her.
The Airways Page 8