When I think of this walking stick, I see my brother, a kind of Don Quixote tilting against the inevitable. And the silveriness, the way its surface was traced all over with delicate arcs and swirls and flourishes and dots, this was quintessentially my brother: my brother the aesthete, the man who created order over chaos.
There was all the force, though, of our background lying there unspoken. He was, or wanted to be, a gentleman simply because our forebears weren’t. My ancestors were self-created people, a fine enough distinction when you think of it. But my brother wanted to be a gentleman, perhaps to please that woman who now resided several floors above him—that woman stripped of any distinction whatsoever, even her golden ring.
I can remember standing at the windows on the ninth floor of Auckland Hospital. By this time an entire floor had been given over to AIDS patients—and because the condition was terminal, Ward 9C always had a special air the moment you walked into it. Sometimes, without anything seeming to be different, it hit you like walking into a wall where a door had once been. Other times there was a curious lightness of being. Nurses down the end of a corridor would be doubled over laughing, or they seemed to have just finished a joke. People seemed permanently on the outer edges of emotion—either laughter, or sadness, or relief that someone in pain had just been released.
I was looking out the window too because my brother wasn’t talking to me. Like many people who attempt suicide he was resentful. I used to stand there, feeling the injustice of it all, aware my mother was only several floors above, still alive by some miracle—I too had heard the roaring black. I understood the irrationality of it all, too. I, who had become a pessimist very early on in life to cope, I think, with the unendurable stresses of our family, became at this odd point in my life an optimist.
I knew my brother would more than likely die—I had to accept that—but I still felt we could make our peace with each other. For this to happen, however, it was utterly necessary for our mother, the core of our love, to survive.
I would visit her, once she was out of intensive care I would visit her up in Ward 15. It was always a shock, in a way, to see her without any of her characteristic defences, or disguises if you will. I had always seen her wearing make-up, with the jewellery which came from her beloved mother—the carefully chosen raiment of the middle class. Now I would turn up and stand around in the big public waiting room while someone went to get her. The lino was always so shiny that when she appeared it was as if she floated towards me. No longer a Primavera, which is how I had always seen her. Now her face was scrubbed of make-up, her hair was lank and uncombed, and there was not even a wedding ring on her finger. It was like finding her in a refugee camp.
Which I guess it was. The hospital, that floor was a refuge for the dispossessed—those who have been evicted from the home in their minds. She was outside her body. I used to visit both my mother and my brother, each day. I stopped doing anything else. My mother had reached such a negative vision of herself that she thought, subconsciously, I would leave her behind. We would sit and talk. She might show me, for example, the jersey she was knitting—much as a child at kindergarten would show you some finger painting. Then her manias would return, and she would recede before my eyes until I knew I would have to leave this strange woman behind. I always kissed her cheek and she would stand by the lift and wave to me, convinced, I could see from her face, that she would never see me again.
Downstairs to my brother. A chilly reception. But then, a sudden gift. He had bought me a beautiful Deco wristwatch. He and I knew it was a companion, brother to a watch my stylish father had had, when he was a leading sportsman in the 1920s—when he used to turn up in small towns, and give ‘exhibition runs’. He had been glamorous, my father, once. With shaking fingers, so delicate in the touch, my brother strapped the watch on my wrist. I knew he was making amends—though the immensity of the rapprochement was such that this simple description can give very little idea of the hidden meaning.
It was on the night of my brother’s suicide attempt, I think, that the silver-topped malacca stick went missing. It was never found. In fact it took us several days to even realise it had gone. By then it was too late. We had all entered into a democratic system in which there was no room for silver-topped canes. That world was over. It disappeared without comment.
My mother began to improve a little. The day I came across her helping another patient to make pikelets I began to scent that she might get better. She had always been a tireless organiser of other people. She was gutsy, energetic: in some way, I like to think, the strength of my peasant ancestors fought back.
That day I watched her for a little while before she was aware I was standing there. She was helping a young woman pour a pikelet mixture onto a tray, both of them moving with the slow muffled dance of the tranquillised. She caught sight of me, paused, seemed not to recognise me, then the percussion of memory hit. She winked—a quintessential manoeuvre, the secret signal that all would be well. When she came out for me to kiss her on her cheekbone—like a young lover hurrying to an appointment—I had a sense she just might be all right.
But I don’t want to force this into a false sense of closure. This isn’t one of those narratives of joy. She wasn’t all right. Not for a long time. I used to go and see her and talk to her about how she would be better soon, and would be shifting into her new townhouse. A look of abject fear would tighten her features. ‘I’ll never get better, Pete,’ she would say to me, shaking her head. Her pupils had become pinholes of terror. She seemed to sweat a kind of acrid smell—probably from the tablets she was taking. Her skin looked jaundiced and under the terrible imperium of that fluorescent light—a light in which every flaw is revealed, and exaggerated, as if for a doctor’s scrutiny—she seemed like someone else, someone I had almost difficulty in recognising.
Just as, in these new circumstances, she had difficulty recognising me. Was it that, in this bedrock period, we were having to come to terms with who we actually were? Just as my brother and I were never going to be the heterosexual professionals my mother had so much desired, the ones who would deliver to her daughters-in-law, grandchildren, so we were having to accustom ourselves to the fact our mother was not a powerful woman, the core of our family’s survival. We were each individuals, vulnerable, ‘at risk’—damaged by the fact we had been so hard on each other.
This was the point really. All our lives we had spent such energy on trying to be special, to over-achieve—to hide from what we were.
Now we had to face the reality that we were just like everybody else.
Or rather, more to the point, we could not hope to be like everyone else.
This was something we had to attain to.
That is one of the things I used to think about as I stood on that ninth floor of the Auckland hospital, looking out the window. I had got used—I thought—to the idea that my brother would die. I had no idea it would change the rest of my life, demarcating everything with the severity of a knife gouged through flesh, leaving the raised ridge of a scar. Sometimes I might fondly feel for this scar, almost as if to identify myself; at others I saw it as a stigma of something which never should have happened. When he did die, it seemed he exploded out from this earth like a rocket, combusting in the air so that the very sky seemed full of his pollen. This pollen falls forever slowly—some days I see it and some days I don’t, but it’s the air I breathe, my essential oxygen. At the time, as I stood at that ninth floor window, my brother still alive, barely talking to me but probably looking silently at my outline, I felt only a sense of battered wryness. For I was looking down on a town in which I had been a child, I could see so many of the streets we had driven along, to go to the Domain, to visit the Museum, I could see flats I had lived in when I was a university student, the window of a room where I had once made love, I could see all the streets and houses and the odd thing was, at that moment, they all seemed to have resolved into a singular path, which had led to one place, which
was where I was standing: the crossroads, I guess, of my life.
(1999)
Barbara Anderson, ‘Fast Post’
—I’ve been thinking a lot about death, says my friend Sooze holding out her glass for more wine.
—Death, says her lover Bryce not wanting to commit himself.
—Why death, I say though of course I know. It’s the sort of thing Sooze does.
My lover Cam doesn’t say anything. He regards death as unacceptable for thought or talk. Cam is not interested in abstracts. His back is bent, his elbows jut beyond his knees, his hands hang dejected as he stares at the floor.
We are at Sooze and Bryce’s bach. Her parents’ really, but Sooze and Bryce live there because their last flat folded and they can’t find anything because they have no money so they can’t find anything. Cam tells me they don’t try. I can’t comment on that but it’s nice for us. We pile into the Skoda after work on Fridays and slip out to the coast in the slow lane. We take food and wine and we lie about and talk and drink a bit. Maybe go for a walk. We read a lot. There aren’t many people you can read with. Most people say—Yes great, and you drag out your paperbacks and start. Then they tell you bits from their books.—Listen to this, they say then they read it and you have to listen perforce. Or else they read for a bit then lie on their backs and say—Aaah, and you know they’re bored and want to do something else and will suggest it soon, so you keep your head down and try and read your Barthelme faster which is unsettling because you can’t do that.
It’s not like that with Sooze and Bryce. We just read. Their son Jared who is measured in months not years lies around with us though of course we keep him in play. We more or less take it in turns. When it’s Sooze’s turn she props Jared up surrounded by cushions and holds one of his pudgy hands while she reads and kisses a dimple at the bottom of a finger occasionally to fool him. He doesn’t mind.
—Death, says Sooze again staring at the sea.
—What about it, I say.
—Well what do you think about it, says Sooze. She wears a large sweater with a design loosely based on aboriginal rock carvings. The zigzag lines which go up are green, the zigzag lines which go down are orange, the small stick figures are red and the background is black. The aboriginal paintings I like best are the x-ray ones which show what the animal has eaten in situ.
—Or don’t you, she says.
—Of course I do, I say.—What do you think I am.
—I don’t, says Cam.
Sooze is incensed.—Why not.
—What’s the point, says Cam.
—There’s no point, says Sooze.—Except that it’s inevitable.
—Right, says Cam so don’t think about it.
—So doesn’t it interest you?
People like Sooze think people like Cam are not as intelligent as they are. People like Cam don’t care which would really surprise people like Sooze if they could believe it, but they never would so by and large it works out all right. People like Cam know about the shifting mud which can bury abstract thought and often does.
Enough, Cam thinks, is enough, and reality will be more than.
Bryce has made his decision. He puts out one finger and corkscrews a piece of Sooze’s hair around it which doesn’t work as it’s straight. He picks up her hand.
—Why hon he says. It’s inevitable. No problem.
—What interests me I say, is why doesn’t it worry us, I mean.
—It worries me says Sooze removing her hand.
Bryce really wants to know. He snatches both her hands across the table as though he’s going to drag her into a square dance.—Why! he says.
—I mean when you think, I say quickly, that for thousands of years the best minds all over the world have fussed about life after death ….
—And if you were a best mind and didn’t you were burnt, interrupts Bryce.
—… so why don’t we care, I say.
—I do says Sooze.
—But you’re a scientist! says Bryce.
—Ha ha says Sooze who teaches it.—Oh it’s not that she says.—I don’t mind about death of the body.
—‘Change and decay, in all around I see,’ roars Cam who was a choirboy.
—What worries me is the spirit. The human consciousness continues Sooze.—Where does that go?
There is a pause. Cam inspects his jandals. Abstract thought has the same effect on him as pornography. He doesn’t see the point and it’s depressing. Cam is a builder. He wears short shorts at work, the front of which are hidden by a leather apron so heavy it looks like a costume prop for a medieval film. In it he keeps the tools of his trade to hand.—We’re getting there he says, dropping onto his heels from a great height to hammer the floor. I still feel glad when I see him swinging up the street.
—It doesn’t go anywhere hon says Bryce.—You’ve got to accept that.
—I can’t says Sooze.
—That’s why people invented religions I say.—Because they couldn’t accept the death of the spirit, see.
—Well nor can I says Sooze getting up to go and check on Jared.
The sun is sinking but no one gives it a thought. Bryce tops our glasses then reaches up and scratches about with one hand in a top cupboard.—We had some corn chips somewhere he says coming back empty-handed.
Sooze also comes back and flops onto her chair. She puts both hands up and combs the fingers back through her hair. It looks better; the trapped air fluffs it up for a bit though the result was unintentional.
—OK? I ask.
Sooze puts her hands together and lays a sleeping head on them.—OK, she says.
I change the subject.—How’re things going in the flat world I ask.
Bryce leans back tipping his chair, maintaining balance with one hand. Suddenly he is behind a large table top with desk furniture, a rock-a-bye blotter, an embossed leather folder, a paper knife.—We’ve been approached to house sit a place in Khandallah, he lets slip.
—Great I say.—I like ‘approached’.
—Sounds as though they’re on their knees says Cam. He removes a speck from his beer with his smallest finger.
Sooze smiles. She knows about Bryce but it’s OK.
—Yes she says.—Aunty Gret was on the lookout.
We know Aunty Gret. She paints. She gives us muddy water colours called Zinnias or Dahlias at Christmas and is a good sort and gets on with it.
—We haven’t seen it and all that. I mean they haven’t seen us and then there’s Jared.
—Jared’s flat on his back says Cam.—What can he do tenant-wise?
Sooze smiles.—Some people. Kids. You know, she says.
—Some people. Houses. You know, he says.
She puts out a finger and circles the vaccination mark on his bicep which dates from our overseas time. He flexes just for fun.
—What about Voltaire says Bryce untipping his chair.
Oh God.
Cam’s bicep flops.—Who he says.
Sooze turns very slowly to stare at Bryce.—What about him she says.
—Well he didn’t get burned.
—Of course he didn’t get burned snarls Sooze.—He was too late wasn’t he. For burning.
—He was exiled though wasn’t he I say.
That’s the trouble. We don’t know anything. Just snatches.—Have you got an Oxford Companion I ask.
Bryce yawns.—Not here.
—Pears?
He shakes his head.
—Voltaire said that if God didn’t exist it would be necessary to invent him I tell Cam, as though the man is a new pleat for third form clothing instruction which I teach.
Cam likes it.—Good thinking, he says.
But Bryce won’t let it go.—What did he think happened to the human spirit after death he says.
Cam bends down to pick up Jared’s plastic rattle from his feet, examines it carefully, shakes it a couple of times and places it on the table out of harm’s way although there is no harm.
&nb
sp; —I reckon this Fast Post is a rip off he says.
And then we are fighting about Fast Post. Bryce says it’s essential. He has a letter from Levin ordinary post which took five days. He slams the table, the rattle rolls onto the floor.—Five days he says.—From Levin. Give me Fast Post!
—That’s what they want you to do. Cam is very angry. His mouth tightens, the skin around his lips is white. When he is eighty he will have deep lines, not fine bird track wrinkles like some old men.—Pay twice as much. It’s a con!
I don’t post much and I know nothing about it but that doesn’t stop me.—We should boycott it! I cry.
Bryce wants to hit me. All of a sudden we are hating each other, snarling and snapping at each others heels, circling around the ethics of Fast Post.
Sooze is not interested in Fast Post. She has taken the lasagne from the fridge and put it in the oven. She has prepared the salad but has not yet tossed it. She has chopped the chervil we brought and removed the Bleu de Bresse from the top of the fridge where it has been ripening. Sooze presses it between the slats of its small wooden cage. She seems pretty happy with its condition as she releases and unwraps it. She rinses her hands and shoves her hair back before curling up on the divan to clutch a calico patchwork cushion she made years ago. The design is called Cathedral Windows, not easy.
—What I do believe she says over the cushion top, is that two thousand years ago a really good man lived and died and if we could all live according to his commandments ….
Bryce has had enough. He is on his feet, a tormented big cat loping the few steps from door to table, swinging in rage to confront her.—God in heaven! he shouts.—What’s got into you!
—I can’t stop thinking about death, Sooze mumbles into the cushion. Cam is determined to help. He leaps up from the table and sits beside her, pulling the cushion from her face.
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature Page 123