An Astronaut's Life

by Sonja Dechian

  Sonja Dechian is a writer, editor, and radio and TV producer. She has co-edited two collections of stories about the Australian refugee experience, Dark Dreams and No Place Like Home (Wakefield Press).

  textpublishing.com.au

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  Copyright © Sonja Dechian 2015

  The moral rights of Sonja Dechian have been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  Earlier versions of some of these stories were published in Kill Your Darlings (‘The Race’ and ‘The Architect’).

  Photograph of Francis Crick, taken in 1990 at the Salk Institute, reproduced with permission from Marc Lieberman.

  First published in 2015 by The Text Publishing Company

  Cover and page design by Imogen Stubbs

  Cover image by Paweł Jońca / Offset

  Typeset by J&M Typesetting

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Creator: Dechian, Sonja, author.

  Title: An Astronaut's Life / by Sonja Dechian.

  ISBN: 9781922147929 (paperback)

  ISBN: 9781922148926 (ebook)

  Subjects: Short stories, Australian.

  Dewey Number: A823.010804

  This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

  CONTENTS

  After Francis Crick

  The Race

  Charles Darwin’s Revenge

  The Architect

  Nights at the House

  The Falling

  The Foreman

  Incurable

  An Astronaut’s Life

  For my parents,

  Erica and Peter.

  AFTER FRANCIS CRICK

  When you open your eyes for the first time in seven months, it’s not like you imagined. Your legs hurt. Maybe your blood is pooling in them because you’ve been lying still for so long. It’s crossed your mind a few times—what it would feel like to be in a coma. You had it wrong, though. Your eyes don’t flutter open, there’s no moment of dreamily waking. Just a jolt of pain and you’re back.

  Two women by your bed cry out with joy. They start to sob. One of the women is your mother, which is something of a comfort. She’s clutching at your hands, then at her face, then at your wife. Your wife, Melinda is also crying and clutching, but she’s doing this more carefully. She is, by the look of her, five or six months pregnant, which is surprising because the last time you saw her she wasn’t pregnant at all, not that you knew of, although you could still have amnesia. So you just say, ‘You’re pregnant?’ and the sound of your voice, your cracked and wounded voice, makes the two women clutch one another and cry even more.

  You have to admit their joy is catching, despite everything. So when Melinda nods and kisses your cheek and says, ‘Yes, yes. We’re having a baby,’ it feels good, despite the hurt in your body.

  They let you rest.

  Later, Melinda is alone beside you. You try to say something, but it doesn’t come out.

  ‘You’re awake, sweetie?’

  You look over at her and blink.

  ‘The doctor says you should rest up. It’s normal if you can’t talk. We’re just so glad you’re back.’

  You nod. You’re back.

  ‘We’re having a boy,’ she says. ‘A little boy, that’s what this is.’ She pats her stomach. ‘Do you remember?’

  She leans in and puts her face to yours, as if to look in deep and read your mind.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she whispers.

  You close your eyes.

  After a few days the pain recedes and you can talk more. Your mother sits by you while Melinda is at work.

  ‘She shouldn’t be working so much, pregnant like that.’

  Your mother tucks the sheet tight against your chest.

  ‘Not your fault, of course. You’ve been unconscious. Not your fault, but you did marry a woman who won’t listen.’

  You come to Melinda’s defence. ‘Wasn’t it her idea, all you did?’

  ‘It was. Yes, it was her idea, the reading,’ your mother concedes. ‘Bit disappointing you don’t remember a word of it, but we still did it, which is really what the point was. The reading, not the reward.’

  ‘That’s true,’ you say. ‘And I appreciate you doing it. I’ll probably remember. It’ll come.’

  ‘Anna Karenina, that was my favourite.’

  ‘You read me that?’

  ‘Yes, thanks for noticing.’

  ‘Mum, I was in a coma.’

  ‘Ever read any Dickens?’

  ‘Maybe. A bit at school?’

  ‘Well, you have now. Three books by Dickens. As if Dickens makes people wake up from comas better than someone else. What’s wrong with Stephen King—is he no good for comas?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why didn’t you just read me Stephen King?’

  ‘Why? Because Melinda. We had to stick to the schedule. Very big on schedules, that wife of yours.’

  ‘I know. I remember.’

  ‘You don’t even know the half,’ she says, as though you left her alone with Melinda for seven months while you were on holiday.

  When you have time alone with the doctor, you ask him about the problem you’re having relating to your family.

  ‘Is he having communication problems?’ the doctor says.

  He never speaks directly to you. For some reason he addresses every sentence as if to a nurse or assistant, even though there’s no one else in the room. Apparently this is okay with your family because he’s the expert, and experts are necessarily eccentric.

  ‘No, just a general sad feeling,’ you say. ‘Confusion.’

  ‘But physically, with the rehab? No more pain? Not so tired?’

  ‘No, it’s all okay. Just the sadness.’

  ‘Sad is okay. Confused, not so bad. We can get him something for that.’

  ‘No, I’m all right with it.’

  ‘He’s all right with being sad,’ the doctor says, and writes something down on your chart.

  ‘What I’m confused about is the dream. When I wasn’t here, I was
there. In the dream.’

  ‘What did he dream, then?’

  ‘It went for months. I dreamt a whole different life—woke up, went to bed. Every detail.’

  ‘He dreamt a life? Who was he in this life?’

  ‘I was me.’

  ‘Not so fantastic.’ The doctor writes another thing down.

  ‘No, but I didn’t know any of the people who are in my actual life. I was the same me, but I had a whole different existence, different memories, and I had this great energy, a purpose. I was with working with a friend on a very important project. My friend, Francis Crick.’

  ‘Father of modern genetics?’

  ‘Yes. You know about him?’

  The doctor writes one more thing on your chart and then leaves.

  Francis Crick’s home was a mansion. At least, it was compared to your house, and each day for seven months you woke in his guestroom on the second floor. It was the darkest room you’d ever slept in, with thick maroon curtains that blocked the morning light so you wouldn’t wake until Francis knocked at your door. Most days he’d be up at dawn, despite his age.

  ‘Are you awake, my friend? I have something important to discuss with you.’

  At the time none of this seemed weird. There was such a sense of urgency about the work. You’d head down in your robe and join Francis by the pool. Your morning juice was served in a big round glass with a tiny paper umbrella and a slice of pineapple.

  ‘The claustrum,’ Francis would say. ‘The key to human consciousness?’

  You’d nod and take notes. Francis might talk like this for hours, or he might interrupt himself.

  ‘Whatever happened to your face?’ he said one morning. ‘You seem to have slept in a hammock.’

  ‘Just creases, from my pillow.’

  ‘Rough night?’

  ‘I dreamt I was a jockey,’ you said. ‘Tiny, four feet tall. My horse was called Cricket. She was fast, but blind. I ran her everywhere, shouting directions—“Left! Right! Jump!”’

  ‘Wonderful! That’s me. I’m your blind horse, aren’t I?’ Francis liked to lean in close and put his hand on your shoulder.

  ‘I’m pretty sure it’s the other way around.’

  ‘Either way.’

  ‘I see what you’re saying.’

  With Francis you could sit in silence for an hour or more, just watching the water in the swimming pool and the way it reflected rainbows or lapped against the steps.

  ‘Ah, my friend,’ he would sometimes say, dipping back into his thoughts.

  At night you’d stay up late, typing Francis’s notes and yours and trying to tie all of it up, his genius and your dedication to his genius, into a coherent product—an explanation for human consciousness. Francis would sleep curled on the great leather sofa behind you. Now and again he’d stir and make a long sigh as he drifted off once more. You’d look over and smile at the vulnerability of his crumpled shirt and feet in socks, the glint of lamplight on his eyebrows, the twitching of his mouth—in unison with his mind, most likely. His brilliant mind that never rested.

  Of course, you knew it couldn’t last.

  You don’t feel ready to go home, but the doctor insists it’s for the best.

  ‘He is making feeble excuses for his fear,’ the doctor counsels. ‘The world is best met head on and with a can-do attitude, so please, go home and enjoy your family. The man who is happiest in a coma is a selfish one.’

  So you go.

  Things settle quickly into a routine. You pace your return to work with a day here and there, and in your spare time you renovate the back room into a nursery. The sanding and painting are meditative and you appreciate the time for contemplation.

  One night, the nursery almost complete, Melinda shuffles in to admire your work.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ she beams. ‘Remember, happy families are all happy in the same way. You remember that?’

  ‘No. What?’

  ‘From the book. Anna Karenina?’

  The reading again. She won’t let go of the reading.

  ‘You know I don’t remember.’

  ‘Try? Try harder.’

  ‘I’ve tried my very hardest. The hardest I’m ever going to try, and I don’t remember anything you said to me. I was unconscious.’

  You’re holding the tiny paintbrush, the one you’re using to highlight the foam on the waves you’ve painted across the cupboard doors. You gesture with it as you continue talking.

  ‘And, if I do remember anything about that quote, it’s probably from before.’

  You and Melinda have divided your life together into ‘before’ and ‘since then’. In your conversations there is no coma. There is only the reading and your stubborn lack of memory of the reading.

  ‘So you do remember something?’

  Melinda is eight months pregnant and she’s still at work. It’s a growing point of conflict between you and your mother. Pregnant women who have husbands should be allowed to rest. Husbands who have pregnant wives should work extra hard to make a life for their family.

  Your pregnant wife is still in her work clothes, her face tired and lined, stockinged feet no doubt aching.

  ‘I don’t remember anything.’ You wave your tiny paintbrush. ‘All I remember is something from before. All unhappy families are unhappy in their own way.’

  ‘You do remember!’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You don’t even know if you do or not. You can’t say exactly where that memory came from.’

  ‘Then what difference does it make? You’ve obviously misunderstood its meaning anyway.’

  ‘Can’t you just appreciate something? Can’t you just say, “Maybe I do remember, maybe your reading saved me”? Just maybe. Give us maybe?’

  The us, of course, meaning Melinda and your mother, whose differences seem forgotten in the face of your continuing refusal to recall.

  ‘Maybe you should leave me alone.’

  Later, you hear Melinda on the phone to your mother. You’re out on the patio, sanding your sister-in-law’s old cot. You don’t listen because you know the theme of the conversation: He wasn’t like this before. It’s as if the other you, the one from before, grows larger and greater with each night that passes. And you, the ‘since then’ you, can only become colder and sadder in his shadow.

  After a while, you realise you’ve pulled a muscle in your shoulder so you stop sanding and go in. Melinda is already in bed and the house is quiet. You head into the study, a tiny cupboard-like room that holds a chair and some books and an old filing cabinet. You sort through the books. Melinda has left them to jog your memory. You pick up Anna Karenina and read the first line and console yourself that Melinda has barely remembered it herself. There are some others in the pile: Great Expectations, To the Lighthouse. William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. You can’t believe they read that to you while you were in a coma.

  You turn out the light and head down the corridor to bed.

  Late at night, Francis’s wife would collect him from his place on the sofa.

 
‘Come, my darling,’ she’d whisper, then look at you as though to say: Again? Is this necessary?

  ‘We’re on the verge of something,’ you told her once. ‘He is. It could be huge, change the world.’

  ‘One world-changing discovery isn’t enough for a man?’ she said.

  ‘But can you imagine? If we understood? His theories about the mind?’

  Francis woke and shuffled out, his shirt creased and belt undone. His wife slipped her hand around his waist.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she whispered.

  In Francis’s absence the urgency of his work was only greater. The weakness that overcame him at the end of each day, and the hint of some illness he had not confided, only heightened your sense of purpose. Francis never once woke to find anything less than a complete version of his notes, typed with footnotes and annotated for review. In his quiet home, into the early hours of the morning, you worked to piece together the questions that remained and the pathways that might emerge; that might take you to a more complete understanding of the human mind.

  By the time you undressed for bed your body was heavy with fatigue. In the darkness of your second-floor room you’d slip into sleep even as your clothes fell. Under the covers you slept solidly, hardened against the nighttime doubts that plagued regular people. You’d wake soon; Francis would be waiting.

  You start back at work full-time. You don’t want people to think you’re not trying. By people, you mean Melinda and your mother. No one else seems to think there’s a timeline for recovery. In fact, most other people expect a coma should have changed you. You should be more spiritual now, or more adventurous. Instead, you make painstaking efforts to appear exactly the same as you were before.

  At lunchtime on Tuesdays you drive to your mother’s to organise her medication because the labels are too small for her to read. You sort pills into a tray with a section for each day of the week. She resents it, every time.