“Can I get some pasta or something?” I said. (It was way past lunchtime.) He turned and looked at the woman and she nodded.
“You want a pasta Napoli?” he said.
“Sure.”
I figured the old Italian couple had run out of things to say to each other. I worried about that. To tell you the truth, I was worried about ending up with a husband. I was worried that I’d soon get tired of him. Once I’d heard all his opinions and stories, then what? Couples must just stop having conversations after a while—conversations that sweep you up and make you bleed or bend or fizz up and blur the lines. You only get dribbly little insipid moments of speech about the nice soup, or the poppy seed you’ve got stuck between your teeth. This was what I’d thought about me and Harry Jacob. What if it got boring? I imagined the kind of conversations a couple like me and Harry might end up having. It went like this:
“Do you like it?” says she.
“What?” says he.
“Do you like the soup? I put chili in it,” says she.
“Yeah. It’s nice.” He puffs on it and scoops some up in a spoon and wonders, what next? What’s after dinner?
She notices he has spilled some soup on his jumper. She feels slightly irritated and reaches for the salt.
“Hey, darling, how old you think I am? Huh?” said the old man as he plunked a bowl of pasta in front of me.
“Fifty.”
“Sixty-three.” He thumped his chest triumphantly and laughed.
chapter twenty-three
I left the restaurant and walked along the street, thinking of the concert and the Thin Captain and the rightness of it all. I was rolling out. I wasn’t even limping a bit. Actually, I was feeling like a cat. I was all kind of luxurious and nonchalant; I was made of satin. I was slinky and smoothed out and nothing could get a grip on me, nothing.
I was slipping up against the night with my burning big heart, like a happy singing boy. It was as if something had arrived inside me, the way a letter slips inside a letterbox, only it wasn’t a letter, it was a glorious new knowing, a revelation, and it belonged entirely to that moment. It may sound obvious, but what I knew only in that moment, and never in the same way since, was simply that nothing mattered. I knew it then, and so it was true then. Simple as that. I could just keep wandering and it wouldn’t even matter where I went. I was just a slip of air, shaped like a girl.
Usually everything mattered so much.
There was a small boy in a red shirt and shorts walking too. He was chubby and his shirt was tucked in. I watched him throw a stone fiercely at a group of pigeons on the pavement. The pigeons burst into the air, fluttering up like an explosion. The boy walked on, pushing a red Popsicle in his mouth, little sausage arms swinging triumphantly.
I found a beautiful yellowed ginkgo leaf and pinned it in my hair, but it broke a little. I had half this beautiful leaf in my hair, and the sky was glowing like a pumpkin, so I was feeling special. The lights of bars and cafés were painting the night like an invitation. I was wanting to say “yes.” A tall dark gypsy woman stood by a table on the street. She charged a dollar for a question. She had something that glittered. She definitely did. There were little gold disks sewn on her butter-colored scarf to make the glittering, and she wore a long swishing skirt. For my question I asked about love, but I didn’t necessarily plan to believe her. I just wanted the thing that glittered, the way of belonging to the low night street.
The gypsy woman took my hand. She said, “You are blessed with luck, you will always be protected. Are you an artist?” I shook my head. “Your heart,” she said, “is well-linked to your mind. You must honor both, but you must stop loving the dangerous man, you must love the family man.”
I wanted to ask her how you can tell who is dangerous and who is a family man, but I’d only paid for one question. Anyway, I thought, a family can be a dangerous thing to have.
There was an old man pushing a big stack of plastic rubbish bags on a trolley. He was wearing white sneakers and a brown suit. He looked tired and the bags were gleaming in an evil way. I knew the city had a dark gray heart. The buildings were porous and hungry, standing so close and narrow. Life had smudged its dirt and love all over the inside and the outside of them. You got the feeling that every corner was alive and beating and curious. You’d only have to look at it, to press your heart into it, and it could pound right back at you.
There was a poster on a wall, half ripped up, with a great word written on it. Der Fensterputzer. I figured from the picture that it meant “window washer” in German.
Der Fensterputzer.
Der Fensterputzer.
Vroom vroom.
There was an old yellow dog waiting outside the supermarket. I got close to him, I got close and stayed with him a while. He had a worried look, so I was whispering to him. I was saying, “See, you don’t have to worry, nothing matters.” The yellow dog didn’t seem convinced, so I changed tack. I tried philosophy. I said, “Imagine how much worse it would be if everything was known, if everything was clear and reasonable like the red plastic clock in our kitchen? Just think how that clock must wish it could improvise, or make a guess, or lie in the sun with not a plan in the world.”
The yellow dog suddenly wagged its tail and stood up, and I was just thinking that dogs were the most philosophical beings in the world when I saw that he was wagging at a girl, not my philosophy. The girl was bright and brimming with blondness. They were a good pair, she and the yellow dog, both large and pedigreed. She was wearing a mini and a pink boobtube that said disco queen, so she was naturally showing a lot of the kind of skin that tanned people have. It was top-notch skin: skin that looked like polished pinewood furniture. I stood up as she untied the dog. Pedigree, I thought to myself again, that’s what she has, because of the strong legs and swinging ponytail. And just as I was forming the word in my mind, the disco queen smiled at me and said hi. She said it so nicely that I felt immediately ashamed of myself for thinking pedigree, and I tried to make up for it by smiling like an angel. She didn’t seem to notice either way, and you could tell life was easy for her. She and her dog bounced off in their good yellow glow. “I’m not a bad person,” I said to myself. “I’ve simply come out of left field. I’m a stray and, anyway, whatever I am, I’m not it yet. I’m still becoming.” In fact, I’d always believed that I was once a horse, because I loved to run down a hill. And Eddie was a fish. He was a swaggerer, if you know what I mean. Flimsy but lovable.
Oh, the piece of dark summer sky; it told nothing.
I walked off in the same direction as the yellow pair. I don’t know why, I just did.
Pedigree Disco Girl went into a takeaway chicken shop. I hid in a nearby bookshop and waited for her to come out. She took an awfully long time, and I was beginning to think she possibly wasn’t an exciting enough prospect. It wasn’t that I was interested in Pedigree Disco Girl, it was just that I was in the mood to live someone else’s life. Someone’s easy life. I figured that you couldn’t possibly make mistakes when you’re following someone else’s path. Even better, you wouldn’t have to make a single decision. Maybe you could even learn through imitation, how to live easy. It was an experiment in being a dog. Dogs just go along without doubting a thing.
I picked up a book so as not to look suspicious. It was a large book with a dark painting on the front. Inside, it was full of paintings, mostly of the ocean or a river at night. I was just looking casually, noticing the paintings, when a strange thing began to happen. It happened slowly and deeply and almost mysteriously.
First the paintings started to look back at me. They were getting me involved. They were stirring me up. There wasn’t much in them: the odd eerie blues, the smoky night sky and the body of water lying large and gentle, and the sense of something else, a boat or a figure, or the light of some distant land, a bridge. But none of this was clear; it was as if it had been painted with mist or darkness or music, not paint. And it was this vagueness that called to me, becau
se it was soft and possible, and there was room for you within it. Nothing was distinct or outlined in the painting, as if nothing really had a certain place at all, and somehow this seemed true, and the truth of it wasn’t intended, but only hummed, only there in a blurred and hovering way, only there like a sad distant melody. I guess what I saw in the paintings wasn’t something you could see with your eyes. It was some other part of me that was seeing it. It was like music, how you hear it through your ears, but somewhere else in you receives it. I was getting the soft singing of those pictures; they were singing my own heart’s song. I knew that mist around me and I felt myself standing in it, just being there, like a lamp in a dark room. Maybe you need the darkness deep around you, just to show you how to find your own light.
I was so overcome with that soft mist, and the me inside it, that I completely forgot Pedigree Girl and my brief life as a dog. I just wanted to keep the book, wanted to be able to look at those paintings always. The price was almost as much as the horse money, and I thought how people would think I was mad to spend thirty-five dollars on a book. If I bought it there’d be no money left for accommodation, but I wasn’t feeling like I needed a bed as much as I needed those paintings. I was approaching the counter even as I argued with myself, so I knew I was going to buy it anyway. Even if I found reasons not to, I still would. I felt guilty and giddy all at once, and smelled the book a couple of times before they put it in a bag. It was the very first book I had ever bought for myself. I told myself I’d done a good thing, I’d bought something that would last. The book was better than the silver shoes.
I put the book in my backpack and walked along the footpath that wound by the beach and led to the Esplanade Hotel. I was in that special cat-mood again, and I felt inspired in an uncertain way. I walked past Luna Park and it didn’t let out one single snort. “Good sign, Mannie,” I said to myself, in a plucky way. I was back on track. The book had done it. I let the sky fill my head with its large ideas.
I almost didn’t want to get there, because it’s so much more fun when you’re on the way. But before I could stop it, the Esplanade Hotel loomed in front of me, white and grand but also shabby, like a big white-toothed grin with fillings. There was a spreading stairway leading inside and red swirly carpet that looked like internal organs. I stood a while and an odd clutch of thoughts came into my mind that had nothing to do with the course of events so far. I remembered how once I had dyed my hair black, but it only made me look worse and the dye stained my fingers.
I went directly to the bar and ordered a red wine. I didn’t like standing on the carpet of internal organs, so I sat on a stool. It was only eight o’clock. That meant I’d be there for three hours before the band came on. At least I could see out the big windows. The sun hovered over the horizon like a huge luminous plate, the color of red coals. Around it the sky was doused in pink. People were watching it, stopping to comment, saying, “Look how beautiful,” and then wondering how best to fit such beauty into a size that they could use, how to tuck it into their hearts or add it to their store of significant observations. Sailors on the large boats that lumbered along the horizon were probably leaning on their mops, remembering who they’d sailed away from: a sad-eyed girl; a stooped, sweet-smelling mother; a batch of sleeping children. A sunset is like autumn in that way. It’s the sinking away of light. It makes you take hold of a feeling and rock it in your arms, as if otherwise it might diffuse into the long stretch of past that falls like a dark shadow behind you. I met a lot of people while I sat there. Because of my dress, I suppose. There was this pudgy solitary lady, who was slightly balding, in a red tracksuit. She had a bag of green beans and a sensitivity to chemicals. She was sitting at the other end of the bar but she kept edging closer and asking me questions. Her name was Ellen and she complained a lot. She said, “Have you ever seen an okapi?” I said, “What’s an okapi?” She said it was an animal with big ears that lived in America. “I’ve never been to America,” I said. “Well, I have and it was terrible,” she said. I wished she hadn’t come so close; I was getting intolerant again. Next, she wanted to know why I was drinking alone.
“’Cause I’ve had a hard life,” I said, slouching down close to the bar, like a bitter old tough guy.
“Ha!” She laughed and thumped her fist on the bar. “Who hasn’t? Don’t think you’re so special.” Already I was thinking Ellen was sour. She was shriveling my air. Worse than that, maybe she had a point. There was this old guy with baggy blue eyes but I could tell he wasn’t about to involve himself, so out of desperation I said, “Hey, what’s your name?”
“Clarence,” he said.
“You ever been to America, Clarence?” said Ellen.
“Nuh. But I used to drive tractors.”
“Tractors!” screeched Ellen. “What’s that got to do with anything?” I sighed and said I wished I could drive a tractor, which was a big friendly lie. I never once in my life felt the urge to drive a tractor, but I wanted to say something encouraging to Clarence since I felt responsible for dragging him into Ellen’s sour orbit. Clarence, I could tell, was another one of those happy people. I was watching him the way I’d watched Pedigree Girl, to see how he did it. But he was just drinking beer.
Two workmen came along and stood leaning on the bar next to us. One of the workmen started talking about a documentary he’d watched on television the night before. It was about Cézanne. I said, “Hey, I’m gonna study art.” I was thinking of my new book, Nocturne. Suddenly I fancied myself as an artist, but as soon as I said it I felt like a big faker again, so I tried to frown the faking away. The workman didn’t even notice that I was showing off. He just raised his eyebrows and said, “Are ya just? Well, did you know them paintings were a sexual thing?”
I asked him how. “How were they sexual?”
He said, “The mountains, they were breasts.” He didn’t turn or lift his head at all. He was holding a pot of beer in one hand, and with the other he made the shape of a breast in the air.
“What utter bullshit!” said Ellen, and she stood up and grabbed her green beans and walked away. I didn’t care that she’d gone. I was worrying that art was more complex than I thought, and maybe I wasn’t going to be an artist after all.
There was a man in the corner laughing. Harvey. He looked like he was growing there, actually. He was a man with a wide flat nose, and his eyes were just two dark moons disappearing behind a great mound of cheek. His body, large, round, and motionless, lost beneath the years of sitting still, one hand continually reaching for chips, the other holding a glass of beer. He looked to me as if he were holding his arms to the world: giant, soft, fat arms that expected nothing, just to go on without stopping, without starting. I would have liked to be still enough to enter Harvey’s softly continuous world, a rolling-on-and-on kind of world, which would keep holding him on his bar stool, while one hand reached like a lever for chips. He said he lived in a boardinghouse in St. Kilda.
“They’re gonna go. Developers,” said the workman who’d made the breast in the air. He was referring to boardinghouses. “We just made some into apartments.” He bought me another wine. I accepted it since he was just being neighborly. I was feeling woozy. I was thinking about what I didn’t know:
To be a blade of grass.
To have a position in the world.
To be still.
The word for apple in Spanish.
The length of time it would take Manon Clarkeson to become a tree.
How I’d lived so long without becoming a certain shape.
“The big question,” said Clarence, the happy man, “is whether they’re going to be able to sell it, anyway.” He was talking about the pub. There were developers wanting to put slot machines in it. Harvey was against it. The workmen didn’t seem to care.
The big question, I thought to myself, so as not to lessen the importance of Clarence’s big question, was whether you are able to say yes. There was always a tiny adventure waiting for you. Between the beginni
ng and the end, between one pair of arms and another…Between breaths, phone calls, hours, meetings, destinations…Between saying hello and then good-bye again…
I could hear that the music had started. “Give me more red wine,” I said. “I have to go.”
chapter twenty-four
The Gershwin Room was crowded. I’d been in the front bar for hours, so the room was beginning to spin. It wasn’t really how I’d imagined. I could hardly see the stage. The air was black and hot, and the carpet was sticky. I’d taken off my silver shoes. They were dangling from one hand, my wine was in the other. I was finding it hard to balance, but I kind of liked the darkness. You could be anyone in there. It was as if you could slip out of yourself, you could imagine yourself as better, deeper, more true. I could see parts of the stage; the sea of heads in front of me kept moving, so I kept moving too, from one tiptoe to the other, and in this boatlike way I caught glimpses of my Thin Captain. He was wearing a purple shirt with lilac vertical stripes. His hands were wrapped around the microphone and his feet were crossed, so that I kept thinking he might tip over. A big bit of hair fell in front of his eyes. Every now and then he jerked his head back to flick the hair away. I wondered why he didn’t just push it back with his hand. He sung in this kind of jagged and jumpy way, like he had a pain, or an electrocution, but you could tell it was just the pain of rock and roll that he was channeling. Actually, I wasn’t that convinced about the pain of rock and roll. In fact, I was most in love with him when he was just turning around and asking the guitar player a question. All that jerking and shouting and grunting made me feel like he was wanting to slam the sound of his voice right inside you, as if he didn’t trust you to hear it otherwise. I admit I was prepared to forgive him anything, but generally I never like it when something yells at you for attention. I like seeing things that aren’t asking to be looked at.
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