White Turtle

by Merlinda Bobis

  The Wind Witch

  1.

  Girl with windmill

  forever

  2.

  Woman with tiny bottle

  perfume

  3.

  Mother and crying baby with cassette recorder

  lullaby

  4.

  Man with oxygen tank

  muscle

  5.

  Boy with sail

  horizon

  6.

  Chef with spice shaker

  aroma

  7.

  Grandmother with snuffbox

  rest

  8.

  Woman with empty hands

  confidential

  9.

  Man with nothing on

  confidential

  10, 11, 12, etc., etc.,… It was a long list with a long journey back, as it was passed from hand to hand from the end of the queue, which was now at the entrance of Kings Cross train station, until it got back to the girl with the windmill and was finally handed over to the hands waiting inside the blue, cotton tent in front of St John’s Church in Darlinghurst. A long queue indeed, and it was still lengthening, so the inhabitant of the tent wisely abandoned farther listings, at least for the moment, and decided to commence the business which everyone had “enlisted” for.

  All would have a chance, such was the assurance from the tent. Thus the tedious operation, of each newly arrived petitioner filling out the list and passing it on to the next person, was shelved for an hour or so.

  The street was in chaos, traffic was blocked, curious drivers and pedestrians had stopped and forgotten where they were going, coffee shops were packed with even more curious clients who decided to have multiple cups of coffee until the action began, and the yet curiouser police gaped like everyone else, refusing to break this procession of petitioners. Chaos, yes, but benevolent chaos. Elbows were not as sharp, bodies leaned against one another and generously allowed others to squeeze in, cars did the same, no one honked, voices played a range of timbres, from curious-doubtful to curious-awed, all primed with excitement, but not quite agitated or impatient, even if it was a very hot day. Thirty-six degrees and windless, almost everyone thought so, at least.

  “Number One, please.”

  Nothing special about the announcement from the tent. It sounded more like a call in a take-away joint, with the same tone and attitude that told you, your order is ready, come and get it, yes, that drone that you only half-listened to—but not this time. All ears were straining to capture the weight of each word, syllable, vowel, consonant, for it must have more weight than it sounds, shouldn’t it, especially on this occasion.

  “It’s a she—it’s a she—it’s a she—” The crowd’s first discovery about the tent’s inhabitant, upon clearly hearing her voice, rippled the air so quickly, that, as it travelled the street, it sounded more like a hush, an urgent demand for silence which was instantly heeded.

  The girl with the toy windmill stretched herself and shuffled her shoes, as if she were bracing herself for a race, clutched her toy even tighter, breathed in, and walked into the tent.

  Rebecca, that was her name, heard about it last night, the only night when she forgot to close her window before going to bed. Maybe that was why she found out, though she never actually saw the source of the advertisement which was blown into her dreams:

  WIND-WISH, WIND-GIFT! YOUR HEART’S DESIRE BY AIR. BRING A BOTTLE. 8:00 A.M., ST JOHN’S CHURCH, VICTORIA STREET, DARLINGHURST.

  A funnel of wind, from some source that blurred in her dream, wrote out the ad, disappeared, then rushed back to complete it with a P.S. BOTTLE NOT COMPULSORY. ANY RECEPTACLE WILL Do. And, of course, there was also the fine print which she did not bother to read.

  Eight-year-old Rebecca brought her toy windmill and her heart’s desire. Ever after. That conclusion of all the fairytales that her parents had read to her. Ever after— yet the story always ended, its reading was always finished, her parents always closed the book afterwards, kissed her goodnight and turned off the lamp. Forever? She wanted it real, she wanted proof, perhaps in the endless turning of her toy windmill beside the lamp. She wanted nothing less than infinity to grace her bedside table.

  It was a surprised kind of laughter, like short exclamations and queries combined—“Ha!-ha?-ha!”—followed by similarly toned bursts of air—“Prrp!-prrp?-prrp!”— insistent plosives that seemed to rev, but in a delicate way, a miniature fugue which teased the crowd into pronouncing a host of speculations. Eventually, most concluded that it was, of course, a very brief conversation between the girl with the windmill—and SHE! By now, everyone had begun thinking of the inhabitant of the tent in terms of capital letters.

  Emerging, as if from a blue veil, the windmill would not stop turning like its laughing bearer who whirled through the astonished crowd—what’s with her and what’s with HER?—as if in a frenzied waltz up Victoria Road, past more coffee shops, past St Vincent’s Hospital, and all the way to Oxford Street.

  “Number Two, please.”

  The tiny bottle was straightforward; the woman was, too, though there was something ambivalent about her lips. One end tilted upwards, the other down, as if she couldn’t quite decide whether she’d smile or cry or, perhaps, pout, who knows. She was wearing a yellow slip and mauve sandals. Her lips were mauve as well. Around her eyes, well, a greenish-yellow-mauve eye-shadow that reminded one of a fruit’s various stages of ripening. Marina was unhappily in between these stages, so when the fan at her writing desk whirred her the ad about wind-wishes and all, just as she was about to drift off to a siesta, she was instantly inspired to bring her own bottle.

  Marina longed for the perfume of words. And each scent has to be precise, she thought, so that it can never be mistaken for another. Word: Scent: Source. Marina argued in these terms. A true word should be like perfume; the bottled fragrance must instantaneously conjure the actual flower. And if you had the true word for everything in life, then you could write. And all your readers’ noses would be inevitably enticed, become preoccupied, hopelessly engaged and challenged, even embattled as they were led through a maze and into a smelly truth that is like no other.

  “Number Two—?”

  “Coming, coming,” Marina muttered to herself as she lifted the flap of the tent.

  It grew very still and silent, a condition which contaminated the length of the street. Even breathing was arrested, until the blue cotton began to billow, as if, on that still summer’s day, a gust of wind had erupted from the pavement, but only at this chosen spot.

  “Gardenias.”

  “No, mildew.”

  “Apples!”

  “Wrong, sweat!”

  “Oh, sweet basil…”

  “Apricots, yes, yes.”

  “Mother’s tears!”

  “Fish entrails?”

  “I think, jackfruit…”

  “My God, corpses!”

  As the billowing began to subside, noses were seized, entranced, assaulted by the smells of everyone’s dream, despair, desire, damnation, but only very briefly, because the olfactory feast ended when Marina emerged, triumphant with all these conjured scents bottled at last. She looked around, bowed gracefully towards the crowd, practising how great writers might do it, and slipped the gift into her pocket.

  Not comprehending the full meaning of the two successful miracles, but seeing the almost beatific delight on the faces of Numbers One and Two, most of the audience came to a personal decision—passers-by, drivers, coffee-drinkers, gawkers, even a policeman, searched themselves for anything that could contain wind, perhaps a plastic bag, an empty bottle of wine, an electric fan, a balloon and, heavens, even a condom, any possible dream-receptacle, as they jostled each other towards the queue which was now crawling towards the far end of Potts Point.

  “Number Three?”

  A dance with its own accompaniment. The mother swaying, jigging and humming to hush her crying son. Petra and little Pietro intimately performing
together one of the oldest shows in the world. The longest running production they’d ever had, for neither had slept for three days now, because Pietro was extending his tantrum and poor Petra had just exhausted all means, both medical and mythical, to contain her baby’s anguish. So when she saw the writing on the wall behind the stove—the beef goulash had steamed the ad there— she scoured her fogged mind for the best medium that would do justice to a gift of the wind. Breath. Notated breath. Song. Lullaby! And what better thing to contain it than a cassette recorder.

  Number Three disappeared into the tent. Those who have not yet enlisted their own desires waited for more reason to join the queue.

  “Puuuuu-huuuu-huuuu-huuuu-uuuuuuuuut-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t…”

  A most liquid, languid violin wail, or was it more like a closed-mouth sigh, with a hint of vibrato at its tail, like the golden curlicue from sleepy and silent little Pietro’s nape. Hugging both peaceful baby and playing recorder, Petra walked out of the tent, away from it, and never looked back.

  “Number Four now, please…”

  Anyone would think the man was going diving or, perhaps, had a medical condition that kept him strapped to an aquamarine oxygen tank which matched his lycra singlet and shorts. Excelsior, oh, yes, that was his name, had arrived running at eight sharp and had been running in place since then. It was about ten by this time, and exceedingly humid. In fact, he had already sweated a little pool at his feet, but he grinned at everyone anyway and waved before jogging into the tent. He was fit all right, enough muscles evenly distributed to the right places.

  No one knew though that he, indeed, had a condition, and the daily two hour gym work could not alleviate it. It was something about his left bicep and pectoral. They were no doubt packed and sculpted to perfection, but at the end of each day, just before he went to bed, these parts would collapse, sag, behave like a balloon that had lost its air; it seemed as if the core of that left breast was losing its conviction to appear robust at all. This, of course, was enough reason to miss gym today and queue for the wind-gift which was promised by the ad, which had materialised from the fumes of his Porsche when it conked out on his way to a costume party two nights ago, how embarrassing.

  “Omigod, is this it—?” Shock-horror, that was how he sounded to the waiting petitioners and the again growing crowd. While most of the original gawkers began queuing up, including the coffee shop owners themselves, several journos had started to arrive, in dribs and drabs, with their cameras, microphones and little notebooks and, of course, mobile phones. Apparently, someone from the queue had rang someone who also rang someone who believed this “aberrant event”, that was how the last someone put it, was big, big NEWS!

  “I’m not sure I want—really—?”

  Have you ever heard someone huffing and puffing while reciting an unintelligible nursery rhyme, with all but the consonants disintegrating at the end of each line? Well, that was the response to Excelsior’s query, or how the next person in the queue likened it to.

  The exquisite percussion generated by the inhabitant of the tent, that was Excelsior’s more informed perception, lasted about fifteen minutes, a long wind-transfusion it seemed, well, what with the size of his oxygen tank, so that several people in the queue had begun making impatient noise—

  “I love it, it’s the greatest—the most ingenious, hilarious—but I’m not giving away anything—” he winked at the boy with the folded sail behind him, while patting his left bicep and breast, bicep and breast, bicep and breast, keeping time with his sprint away from the site of his conversion and, of course, from the journos who were hot on his tail.

  Number Five did not need to be called in. Izhiguro, the eight-year-old boy, literally stormed the tent, nearly knocking it down with his eagerness. The journos wanted to rush in as well, but the whole queue booed them and demanded that they wait for their turn—

  “Queue up, queue up, queue up, queue up!” The chant was an ejaculatory roar of longing bodies snaking along Darlinghurst, through Kings Cross, to Potts Point and echoing even in Elizabeth Bay.

  Longing. Let’s keep track of the crux of this occasion, lest we miss the point. Heart’s desire+Wind-Gift= Relief, Satisfaction, Satiation, Completion, Culmination, all of the above, all achieved by air, by some wind-magic bestowed by the inhabitant of the blue tent.

  Longing. The cops had begun to shift uneasily in a battle between duty—they were supposed to remain indifferent to the action in order to control it—and personal desires. Or was it not their anxiety, which began to surface when the journos started the rounds of interviewing, note-taking, shooting, etc., etc., yes, their anxiety at being adjudged guilty of longing like anyone else on the street and, worse, at having their own longings documented? The police were not used to stating the most intimate details about themselves; they only took statements.

  One by one, the men in blue began to behave themselves again, but with much inner struggle, mind you, to detach themselves from this chain of blatant, unadulterated, unashamed display of vulnerability.

  “Queue up, queue up, queue up—!” the chant persisted, taking on a tune, as if the streets were composing the testimony of their yearning.

  “Whooooooooo? Whooooooooo? Whooooooooo?”

  That silenced them. The owl-query, as one radio reporter described it, was actually the noise made by HER peculiar wind-gift for Number Six, the boy with the sail, but everyone took it as a personalised interrogation.

  “Who, me?”

  “Yes, you!”

  “Not me—”

  “Then, who?”

  The deflecting or denying of any obvious vested interest, in this queuing up to petition for one’s heart’s desire, quickly travelled through the line of bodies like an electric current short-circuiting, for the queue’s conviction had indeed began to fray, the community of want disintegrating into each individual’s awareness that his or her private wiring had been mercilessly exposed, and was now being documented and may end up on evening TV or some cheesy tabloid, God help us.

  “Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo?”

  The query followed Izhiguro who had just left the tent, his sail suddenly unfurling, blown open by a query, yes, and lifted, yes, oh, yes, raised off the ground, both sail and boy, and blown up, up, full steam ahead in his dream to sail towards the horizon, for that was his wish, remember?

  Number 5. Boy with a sail horizon

  That was what he had listed and had been listing daily in the diary which he had kept in his lunch box ever since he learned how to write.

  Then the first helicopter arrived, manned by what looked like a SWAT team. Again, someone had rung someone who had rung someone that “we have a situation here” and the police could not contain it—an Asian boy had been abducted by a recalcitrant wind!

  Uncertainty settled in. The queue began to break up just as Number Six nervously entered the tent, right foot advancing, left foot retreating, as a camera was trained on him the whole time, closing up on the spice shaker in his hand. On the late news that night, it would appear as incriminating evidence of his unwavering allegiance to “palatory-olfactorisation”, that was how Chef Pierre called his motive, his dream-project to trap all possible aromas that would make every mouth of every nationality water—oh, to mix this multitude into the ultimate spice in one bottle!

  But in the tent, Chef Pierre was horrified and grievously offended. “No, you won’t, heaven forbid!” He came out, waving the spice shaker about, his face a repository of the collective contempt of the world. “Not in this bottle! Never in my cooking—how dare you, you presumptuous stinker?” He screamed at the inhabitant of the blue tent and stomped as far away as possible from the scene of the aborted sacrilege, so he told everyone later when he finally confessed about what really happened inside. “How dare, mon Dieu—how dare—!”

  “Yes, how dare you—”

  “Come here—”

  “And cause traffic—”

>   “And trouble—”

  “And distress—”

  “And hope—”

  And expose it. This was actually what everyone, who had left the queue for fear of being confirmed vulnerable on TV, in the papers, on radio or just in the eyes of the next person, wanted to accuse the inhabitant of the tent, but they were all afraid to expose themselves any further.

  So the gift-giving or the wind-gifting, whichever way you saw it, was dutifully intercepted. So everything returned to normal. So the pedestrians and the drivers remembered where they were going and moved on. So the coffee-drinkers went back to their cups and the coffee-makers cranked up their machines again, and the police resumed their jobs, and the SWAT team look-alike rescued the abducted boy at last.

  But, sadly, Numbers Seven to Nine never had their day in the tent, although they did have their own day in court, for, yes, she (now diminished to lower case) was prosecuted by all the people who queued up (except the lucky Numbers One to Five, who were granted their wishes before all were enlightened), by the coffee shop proprietors and clients, the oglers, the pedestrians and drivers, by the police and eventually by the state—and all allegations of inciting hope, so she can trespass on everyone’s “privatest matters” (for that was how it came to be written), and all punctilious denials that the same matters ever existed were duly documented by responsible journalism, vanguards of our decency, thank God, they saved us from making total asses of ourselves!

  But what was the clincher? The hallmark incident that incensed the crowd into condemning her whom they had begun to regard as their blue-veiled fairy godmother, well, for the time being, really—?

  Now, we have to know more about the inhabitant of the tent, shouldn’t we, and what actually transpired behind that mantle of secrecy. I must say this would be much more illuminating than dragging through this page the “confidential” matters of the woman with empty hands (Number 8) and the man with nothing on (Number 9), so I leave them to your imagination—