The Green Bell

by Paula Keogh

  One night, I’m sitting in the day room writing in my notebook when I look at a patient leaning against the wall. I notice his hand going back and forth repetitively from his forehead to his nose to his mouth to his chest. As I watch, I realise it’s not me who is looking. It’s the mind behind the eyes that’s doing the looking. And I’m not my mind.

  I see that the mind has no identity. It’s an abstract thing, disconnected from me, with its own agenda. Glacial and remote, it takes note of every detail. It is utterly foreign. Extraterrestrial. It sees the bone structure beneath people’s faces, the glinting light on the scissors in the nurse’s top pocket, the dregs in the coffee cup. But the mind will not disclose to me the meaning of what it sees.

  I can’t understand what anything means.

  *

  As the days of waiting circle around one another, fragmentary memories of Julianne emerge. I glance up from my dinner and see her on the chair opposite, looking at me with a half-smile, and a rush of joy or pain – I can’t tell which – tears through my chest. Another time, coming into my room, I see her bend over to pick up her bag, and I notice the delicacy of her hands and the softness of her hair as it falls across her face. Sometimes I hear her say things like ‘pass me that book’ or ‘let’s take the bus’. I’m upset by these visitations, but as soon as she disappears I want her back.

  Seeing and hearing Julianne external to myself challenges my belief that I’m her and brings on a new series of anxieties. Without her identity, who am I? If I’m not my mind and I’m not Julianne, where have I gone?

  In the day room, I think of Julianne as she was the first time I saw her. The memory erupts full-blown, and I’m transported back in time. I’m twelve years old, sitting at my desk at the back of the first form classroom. Julianne is standing still and alert to the side of two nuns: our headmistress, Sister Clare, and our form teacher, Mother Aloysius. Wearing the brown uniform of her previous school and holding her head at an angle, Julianne has the look of a deer that has just stepped out of a forest into a clearing. There is a sense of space around her, a quiet poise, and I’m curious. When Sister Clare introduces her as the oldest of six children and French on her mother’s side, Julianne looks out the window and frowns. She’s in another world; her eyes are distant and squinting slightly, as if she’s thinking of a problem she needs to solve.

  Back in M Ward the classroom retreats, but Julianne is still standing in front of me with the same thoughtful look. I’m unable to bear the sight of her, so much herself, so real and present that I want to shake her, wake her up. I also want her to go; she doesn’t exist. But when she leaves, I’m desperate with self-reproach. Where? Where, ma chère amie? Tu es un pomme, je suis une poire, tu es trop drôle, disparu, disparu. I beat my chest hard with my fist until my ribs ache. A nurse comes, gives me water and pills, and helps me walk along the corridor to my room.

  *

  The next day I’m in ‘death’s dream kingdom’ again, almost blind from the cold and the loneliness. I’m a mannequin-ghost haunting the ward, my skin pulled tight across my bones, careful not to let my eyes give anything away. Sitting back on a couch in the day room, my legs crossed, I lift my cigarette to my mouth, take a drag, then exhale slowly and look around through the smoke. My eyes see everything, every little thing: the servitude of the chairs as they wait at the tables, so patient and receptive. The weight of the shuffling bodies as they move across the floor to the kitchen alcove. The light grazing the green lino. And all the angles that cut into the space around me: ceiling, walls, windows. Sharp and decisive. Too much information. No meaning. No pattern.

  I’m numb and deeply sedated. The noise inside my head has grown less strident, and the hallucinations of war are less explosive. But I still can’t convince myself that I’m alive.

  There are rules for everything, and everyone except me knows what they are – how to arrange your face, when to say certain things, what to do when someone looks at you. These rules enable people to act without having to think it through. But no intuition or knowledge emerges to direct me, so every interaction is fraught. I have become a thing that can’t see the connections between things. I write in my notebook:

  energy of ages

  boring holes in my skull

  where eyes would be

  if only I could see

  My mind is white and cold. I’ve lost my soul. I am a moth. I’m no one.

  That night I slip out the door of the ward and make my way through the hospital grounds to the shore of Lake Burley Griffin. Gum trees and pines loom in the darkness along each side of the track and, ahead of me, reflections of hospital lights shine like pieces of broken crystal on the surface of the water.

  I’ve lived my life and now it’s over. This is where it has brought me, face to face with yet another death. I know it for what it is, and I’m ready to embrace it fully. I’ll be Ned Kelly in Nolan’s painting, turn my back on this world and ride into infinity. I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want this life to end. I want to become sky. Become nothing. I pace along the path next to the stone wall on the lake’s edge with only one thought in my mind: to drown, to do something that will make sense of it all. No longer dead as Julianne, I’m now dead as myself, and I can’t bear it for even one more night.

  I stand motionless on the edge of the lake, imagining how it will feel to let the dark water close over me as I sink to the bottom: the peace, the quiet, the letting go under the weight of the water. The fantasy grips me, and I lose touch with myself entirely.

  Then a water rat runs across my foot. I’m wearing sandals, and the sensation of claws on my skin is revolting. The shock of it brings me back to the reality of the night.

  I look again into the water, but this time I gauge its depth. It wouldn’t be that easy to drown. I’m a strong swimmer. The instinct to save myself, to rise to the surface, will take over. The shore is right here.

  There’s no way out after all. I turn around and make my way back to M Ward. I’m worthless, pared down to nothing. I’ve come to the very end of possibility.

  2

  Make Love Not War

  It’s midnight and I’m sitting in the semi-darkness of the day room. Traces of the day’s failures and worries cling to the shadows. Near the door, a fluorescent light flickers and buzzes like a trapped insect. The other patients are asleep, and the few staff working the graveyard shift have retreated to the nurses’ station. I’ve been here since the last visitors filed out the door, trying to deflect the noise in my head by writing in my notebook. Breathing in and out. Hanging on.

  The door swings open, and three people spill into the room. A tall young man falls to his knees. He’s pitched forward with his head down as though carrying a weight on his shoulders. I recognise the scene immediately: it’s the Stations of the Cross, the ninth, ‘Jesus Falls the Third Time’. In the dim light, I see two orderlies in white bend to take his arms and help him up. There’s a formal tenderness in their movements, an unhurried attention that the young man’s body seems to respond to despite its weakness. With the orderlies supporting him on either side, the three move slowly into the corridor, a hessian bag trailing along the floor behind them.

  The young man has long hair, a frizzy mass that curls over his shoulders, and he’s wearing jeans, a loose shirt and boots. His arms are slung across the shoulders of the orderlies, and his feet stumble, unable to bear his weight. As the trio passes by a wall light, I see that the young man’s glasses are broken, hanging at an angle halfway down his face.

  I watch as this odd procession makes its way along the corridor and out of sight. I go back to my notebook, disturbed, wondering if this scene was real.

  *

  A couple of days later, I’m in the day room with the other patients, eating breakfast. We slouch in and out of the kitchen alcove, making coffee and toast, and pouring cereal into bowls. No one is properly awake. No one speaks. With the clutter of cutlery and music from the radio in the background, we drift in a half-sl
eep, our movements automatic, each mind a cocoon. I’m sitting alone, spooning Weet-Bix into my mouth while trying to ignore the whispers that appear in my head like erratic blips on a radar.

  When I notice someone standing opposite me, I look up. It’s the Stations of the Cross man, silhouetted by the light from the window behind him. I’d begun to believe I imagined him, but I see now that he’s definitely real, and very thin and tall. Smiling in a slightly unfocused, lopsided way.

  ‘Mind if I sit here?’ His voice has a higher pitch than I expected, and it makes me think of delicate china.

  I look away, surprised and wary. I’m no longer used to being approached or addressed so directly.

  He folds his long body into a chair opposite me and introduces himself as Michael. I stare at my soggy Weet-Bix while he launches into a good-natured commentary on the cereal options in M Ward. Leaning forward in his chair, he’s happy to keep talking in spite of my silence. ‘I’ve been staying on a farm just past Tharwa,’ he says. ‘A place called Caloola. Sheep country. I’ve been helping with the lambing, doing odd jobs. It’s a refuge for city junkies.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ I say, at length. I have no idea how to respond.

  ‘I’m coming off heroin. It’s been a bad scene. I’m here to get help with the withdrawals.’

  ‘I know,’ I say, although I don’t. What I mean is, his weakness the other night now makes sense. I check out the door. Even though he’s across the table, he feels too close. I want more space between us.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I say as I continue eating. I have no idea what day of the week it is, what month. My mother told me yesterday I’ve been here just over a week, but I feel as if I’ve never been anywhere else. What is a week? How would you explain time?

  He looks away and is quiet for a while. Eventually the silence is interrupted by a patient at another table humming loudly. ‘That’s the guy in my dorm who sings in his sleep,’ Michael says. ‘He’s not bad. I’m thinking of putting together a band he can front.’ His eyes are teasing, and he’s leaning forward even further, smiling.

  ‘The Nocturnals,’ I murmur, liking him now.

  ‘Lead singer, Insomnia,’ he says.

  ‘Mania on drums,’ I reply.

  Michael giggles, a high rippling sound, and pulls his fingers through his wispy beard. I stare at him and see that he’s an elf, a tall elf.

  ‘So, what’re you in for?’ he asks.

  I watch him reach for a piece of toast and wonder if there’s a crime I can name, some felony that can explain it all away.

  ‘I’m dead,’ I say.

  ‘What does that feel like?’

  I look sideways, my mind a blank. ‘Ash,’ I say at last. ‘It feels like ash.’

  ‘Sounds bleak,’ he replies, leaning back in his chair. He strokes his beard again and looks around the room. ‘So this is bardo country,’ he says, as though to himself. ‘I should’ve guessed.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, recognising the allusion. ‘Death’s dream kingdom.’

  I’ve read The Tibetan Book of the Dead and know that the bardo is the realm where the soul goes after death, a state of transition before rebirth. Michael’s reference is like a revelation, turning a key in my mind: of course, I’m in bardo country. In this valley of dying stars. I’m waiting to be born again.

  This strange man sitting opposite me seems to understand what it’s like to die. Now it’s important that I talk to him. I sit up and push my hair back from my face.

  He coughs once, then again. Suddenly his whole body is given over to a fit of harsh, racking coughs. He turns on his chair and heaves with the effort of coughing and the need to gasp for breath between each attack. I look away until they subside, feeling his discomfort. ‘Chronic bronchitis,’ he explains. His eyes are watering and his face is grey. ‘I need to take the cure.’

  An ironic smile invites me to make light of his predicament, and I find myself smiling in response.

  ‘Hey, listen to that,’ he says, his arm gesturing towards the stereo. ‘It’s Vivaldi. Want to come and listen?’

  I have my own recording of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons in my room, and I take this as another sign that I need to work out who this man is. I leave the table with him, and we find a place on the floor next to the speakers. He sits cross-legged opposite me and takes out a box of unfiltered Camels from his shirt pocket. He offers me one, but I prefer my own and roll myself a cigarette from my tobacco pouch. We sit there listening to the music together, sipping our coffee and smoking. I look at his hands. They are long and freckled, and, in contrast to the fragility of the rest of his body, they give the impression of strength. Brown tobacco stains smudge his fingertips, and a silver ring on his little finger is engraved with some sort of crest.

  Sitting so close to the speakers with the sound turned up high, I sense his profound attention to the music. I think of his first appearance on the ward, and an uncanny feeling of intimacy surfaces. I’m aware of myself tuning in to him, listening through his listening. The static and noise inside my head gives way to the sound of violins, and music fills the room like a flock of small birds, dipping and weaving. I close my eyes and sink into myself. For the first time since I’ve come to the ward, I feel my breath as my own.

  After the music stops, Michael smiles at me as if we’re both in on a secret. He stretches out his legs and leans back against the wall, quiet and relaxed. I roll another cigarette, and we begin a conversation that’s wide open and frayed at the edges, easy to drift in and out of. During one of the pauses, he reads a record cover. I note his wayward hair, his fine features, and the rimless glasses askew on his face. It occurs to me that I’ve seen him before, in a Rembrandt painting of a youth with a soft beard and a narrow, birdlike neck. We begin to talk of poetry and our favourite poets. He adjusts his broken glasses and tells me that his full name is Michael Dransfield. He says he’s a poet.

  It makes absolute sense, but such a claim, such audacity: ‘I’m a poet.’

  With this statement – straight to the core of his being, without ego or pretence – something falls into place for me. I believe him utterly and look even more closely. He seems to have the sensibility of a poet. He is perceptive and responsive, and he listens to music as if it’s coming from deep inside him. I want to read his poems.

  *

  After lunch we go into my room, closing the door behind us, and I’m grateful for the privacy. I have been given a room to myself because I’m restless at night and pace the ward. The room is just big enough for an upright chair, a single bed and a bedside table attached to a narrow wardrobe. There’s also an easy chair next to the window that looks out to the brick wall of a storage building. Clothes are scattered around, and my cream-and-maroon portable record player sits on the floor next to a pile of records.

  On the bedside table, a vase of sweet peas finds a place among a few books: collections of the poetry of T.S. Eliot and Judith Wright, and a book of Japanese poetry that Julianne gave me. I find their presence comforting, although I can barely read them. The medication I’m on affects my eyes, making it difficult to focus. I have to squint to see text, so it’s impossible to read more than one short poem at a time.

  I sit on my bed while Michael examines my books and records, holding them up close to his eyes as he reads the titles and skims through pages. He opens the book of Japanese poetry and reads the inscription aloud:

  This lovely afternoon,

  Time hanging heavy on my hands

  Comes a visitor like a jewel out of the sands.

  Pour ma chérie, Paula, meilleure amie pour la vie, love, Julianne.

  Michael looks at me and smiles. ‘Who’s Julianne?’

  ‘A friend,’ I say. ‘From school.’

  My words feel like a dismissal. Like rubbish being thrown away. Michael says nothing. I look back at him, standing with the book in his hands and the question still in his eyes. In the silence between us, I long to
hear myself say something true, words that would end my isolation.

  The room grows large with absence. As if from a distance, I see Michael arrange his long frame on the chair by the window and start reading the book. Gradually my breathing becomes less of an effort, and grief recedes back to where it has lain since Julianne died. I’m relieved that Michael is so immersed in the book that he seems to have forgotten I’m here. His body is a geometrical puzzle of limbs, and sunlight shines through his hair, forming a lacework corona around his head. With his glasses and his smile, and his moustache and wispy beard, there’s both a shininess and featheriness about him. When he moves, he has the grace of a long-legged water bird, a heron or a crane.

  The door opens, and a nurse appears. ‘What’s going on in here?’ she says, standing with one hand on her hip and the other on the doorknob. I jump, startled, and immediately feel guilty and defensive. But Michael just gestures towards the nurse, as if bestowing a blessing on her, then turns to me and rolls his eyes. We recognise that although we’re voluntary patients, our time on the ward will be monitored.

  With the door wide open now and noise from the corridor in the background, we begin a conversation. The fine tones of Michael’s voice are punctuated at times by a high, nervous giggle. I’m aware of his frailty and his cough, and I watch the way light and shadow play across his eyes as he speaks. We talk about poetry and listen to Bob Dylan and Vivaldi, and I am freed for a while from the violence of the noise.

  As we talk, Michael and I seamlessly enter each other’s worlds. There’s an underwater quality to the room and to our conversation, as if we’re submerged in a deep stream, a meandering flow of language that carries us along. With Michael, there’s no need to translate or decode; the energy of ideas bursts through in a play of open speech. We’re swimming together, rising on currents, gliding through clear water. An exhilarated cutting loose. And somehow also an anchoring, each with the other.