Names for Nothingness

by Georgia Blain

  If Caitlin wanted to talk she usually went to Liam. Or at least that was what she used to do, before he began to withdraw, a slow retreat into himself that had only become noticeable in the last year or so. He had become so enclosed within his own world that she found it hard just to sit and tell him about Fraser in the way she would once have done.

  So, she turned to Margot.

  She would catch the bus there sometimes after school and sit in the kitchen while Margot made her jewellery, strange twisted brooches and rings that were striking for their sheer impossibility of form rather than for any kind of beauty.

  When she showed Margot the book Fraser had given her, Emptiness and peace towards a spiritual prosperity: a new world order, Margot had, as Caitlin knew she would, borrowed it and read it, underlining certain paragraphs and making notes in the margins.

  ‘What did you think?’ Caitlin asked when she eventually returned it.

  It reminded her of certain nihilist philosophers she had studied. ‘I can show you who I mean,’ Margot offered, looking absent-mindedly at the overcrowded bookshelves behind her.

  ‘It’s how I feel,’ Caitlin said. ‘About the world. And when I met him, it was as though we had known each other before. I don’t know how else to explain it.’

  ‘Sometimes it is like that,’ Margot said.

  Caitlin could see Margot thought the conversation was about a crush, and she wanted to correct her but she didn’t know how. Instead, she found herself saying what she had been wanting to articulate for some days now. ‘I don’t want to finish school,’ and she did not avert her gaze as she spoke. ‘This is what I want.’ She tapped the book, there on the table, her voice now lowered to a whisper.

  Margot was silent for a moment. ‘Oh,’ and she attempted to gather the words she wanted into a cohesive group of sentences. ‘You don’t have long to go,’ she said. ‘You really don’t. And it is so much harder to go back a second time. I have read the statistics, and I saw Sharn trying to do it, when Liam first brought you all back. She exhausted herself. She really did.’

  Caitlin looked at the table.

  ‘I know it seems hard now. But it really is for the best, my darling. And when you’ve finished you can go off and explore, you can get involved in wonderful new ways of looking at the world, you can be an adventurer of the mind.’ Margot reached for her, stroking her arm with a slightly trembling hand.

  ‘I don’t fit in,’ Caitlin told her, surprised at the tears that were forming. ‘And it wasn’t until I met him that it felt okay to admit it.’

  Margot drew her into her arms. Caitlin could smell the sweetness of the perfume Margot always wore, and she was aware of the awkwardness of their embrace because they did not often touch each other.

  ‘It will get better,’ Margot promised, and she wiped Caitlin’s eyes for her as she pulled away, slightly embarrassed now. ‘Just try. Just for a little longer.’

  And Caitlin promised her she would.

  WHEN CAITLIN FIRST STARTED SPEAKING, she was four years old. Although she had not uttered a word until then, she had a complete vocabulary with an accompanying knowledge of sentence structure stored, secret, waiting until she was ready to use it.

  All that day she talked to Liam as though she had always talked to him, telling him what she wanted for lunch, where she wanted to go that afternoon, the books that she wanted him to read to her, and the games she wanted to play.

  Her questions were endless. Why was the dog barking, why did the birds live in the trees, why did some houses have chimneys while others didn’t, why did he drink coffee, did he like it, why? There was no limit to the knowledge she seemed to want to acquire.

  Later, when he tried to relay the wonder of the day to Sharn, she kept asking whether Caitlin had given him any kind of explanation. She could talk. She had clearly been able to talk for some time, but she had chosen to remain silent, and Sharn did not understand.

  ‘I wish I had been here,’ she said.

  Liam had rung her, trying to reach her all morning and afternoon, finally tracking her down as she left the office for night school.

  ‘Come home,’ he said, ‘you have to come home.’

  She did not know what had happened. The urgency in his voice alarmed her and she wanted him to tell her, but he would only say that it was a surprise.

  ‘What is it?’ she demanded as she closed the front door behind her, waiting for the announcement of some disaster.

  He said nothing.

  It was Caitlin who spoke – ‘We’ve got spaghetti for dinner’ – the ordinariness of her words betraying the significance of the moment to such an extent that Sharn did not even skip a beat as she asked Liam, once again, to tell her what was wrong.

  ‘But I don’t like garlic in mine,’ Caitlin told her, and it was only then that Sharn stopped, her eyes widening as she realised what it was that she was hearing.

  When? She mouthed the word, not able to speak it out loud as she looked at Liam.

  ‘This morning,’ he told her, both of them now staring at Caitlin.

  Caitlin just took another mouthful. ‘I helped Liam cook it,’ she said, and she nodded towards the pot. ‘We saved some for you.’

  Sharn had not expected this. She had grown used to Caitlin’s silence. She had been told that whether or not Caitlin talked was, quite simply, up to Caitlin, and she had come to accept that Caitlin could choose to remain silent for the rest of her life. (Is it my fault? Is it something I have done? She had never dared say the words out loud. She had hardly dared to recognise they were there, inside her.)

  She knelt on the ground, her hands resting on Caitlin’s shoulders, but Caitlin only pulled away.

  ‘Why?’ she asked, looking from Liam to Caitlin, the single word encompassing so many questions. Why had Caitlin never spoken before, why had she chosen now to talk?

  Later, Liam would hold her and tell her that it was all right, that this was good, that she should be happy. ‘Why can’t you just let yourself rejoice in this?’, and she knew that he was right, she had to let go of the guilt.

  Now, as she knelt by her daughter’s side, she felt only confusion.

  Caitlin turned back to her bowl. ‘I’ve got no garlic in mine. But you’ve got garlic in yours,’ and she nodded once again at the pot, her complete lack of interest in responding evident as she dipped her finger into the sauce and then traced a pattern across the table. ‘Look, a circle,’ she said, and they both just stared dumbly at the squiggle she had drawn.

  ‘Didn’t you want to before?’ Sharn asked, not able to give up, to be put off, although it was clear her questions were pointless.

  Caitlin just started humming.

  ‘Did you feel you couldn’t?’

  Caitlin still did not answer.

  Sharn bowed her head. Liam put his hand on her shoulder, and she turned towards him, the pressure within her easing slightly at his touch. She sat, slowly. Her intake of breath was audible as she stopped herself from hurtling onwards, taking a spoonful of Liam’s pasta while Caitlin watched.

  ‘Why are you eating Liam’s?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She was crying now.

  ‘There’s some for you,’ Caitlin told her.

  ‘I know.’ Sharn brushed at the tears with the back of her hand.

  ‘I’ll get it for you,’ Caitlin said, and Sharn could only nod, could only thank her with a smile as she tried to stop the flow of tears enough to ask Caitlin to tell her what she had done today.

  FRASER KNEW HOW TO LISTEN. From the moment Caitlin met him, she was drawn to the way in which he seemed to understand her.

  Lying together in his room, Caitlin stared up at the ceiling and wondered at their coming together. The afternoon sunlight through the window formed small squares of white across the yellowing plaster, and with one eye closed, they sparkled, bright diamonds of light.

  She was not at school again, and this was, for Caitlin, no small transgression. She had never broken rules, finding it easier simply
to go with what was expected than to assert any form of identity. She did as she was told, worked hard enough to do well and had enough friends to escape any form of comment or concern. But she was never really there. As she told Fraser, ‘I absent myself, and I have done it for so long that I no longer even know who I am.’

  Lying on the mattress next to her, he kissed her down the length of her body and told her how beautiful she was. She shivered under his touch, and even if it was not exactly physical pleasure that she felt, she was so overwhelmed by the fact that a person of his apparent wisdom could want her company that nothing else really mattered.

  The first time she had slept with him had been after a meeting. She had told Liam and Sharn she was going out with a friend, only to catch the bus to the house where he was staying.

  She sat on the floor with the others, listening to readings from the teachings. There was no sign of Fraser, despite her having told him she would be there, and as the meeting drew to a close, she headed for the door, unable to deny the disappointment she felt.

  It was Jacinta who stopped her. Fraser was waiting for her, she said, and she directed Caitlin past a further hall to a small room out the back.

  He had looked thinner than she remembered, almost gaunt in the softness of the evening light, the size of his eyes exaggerated in the planes of his face.

  ‘I’m glad you came,’ he told her, and she replied that she, too, was glad to have come, that the teachings had been brought to life for her when she heard them read out loud.

  ‘Ah,’ and he smiled, ‘then you should hear them read by the master. It is then that they transcend words, it is then that you breathe in wisdom.’

  He had recently learnt that his request to live on the community land had been approved. ‘I am going to devote my life entirely to Satya Deva,’ he said. ‘I will be living beside him.’

  The room in which they were sitting had a mattress in a corner, and he suggested that they go and lie on it. ‘It’s more comfortable than the floor,’ and he held her hand within his own.

  She sat on the edge and he remained standing, the expression on his face barely visible in the darkness of the room. She stood up again, thinking that perhaps she had misheard him, when he turned towards her and began to undress.

  Caitlin had only ever kissed a boy before and even that had been brief and of little consequence. She had done it because she felt it was expected of her. She had been at a party and a game of spin the bottle had begun, and rather than refusing to play, she joined in, hoping that the bottle would not point to her. It had, and she kissed Michael Clarke, whose breath smelt of stale beer and cigarette smoke, and whose hands groped at her thighs while his tongue roamed thick in her mouth. She pulled away, and shortly after told her friends that she needed to get home, hating herself for having participated in an experience that she had known she did not want.

  Out in the hall, as she searched for her coat, she heard a friend of Michael’s talking to him. ‘Caitlin, hey? Frigid or what?’ And she had vowed never to betray herself to such an extent again.

  But this was different.

  As Fraser unbuttoned her shirt, he told her that it would be better this way. ‘There is no connection like flesh on flesh,’ he whispered, and he smiled as he pulled her close to him. ‘Now we can really talk.’

  She tried to tell him that she had never done this before but he shushed her with his finger against her lips.

  ‘Each experience is just that,’ and he kissed her eyelids with a tenderness that felt both infinite and restrained. ‘A first, new, an experience. We never do anything twice. That is the true wonder of life.’

  He told her to trust him, to let him lead the way, and she had, the softness of the evening dark broken only by a crack of light under the door, the creaking sound of the other devotees’ footsteps the only sound in the stillness of the house.

  It hurt and she felt, for one awful moment, ashamed and vulnerable.

  ‘Open your eyes,’ he whispered, and she had.

  ‘I’m still here,’ he told her, and she wanted to believe he was.

  There was a knock on the door and he reached for his pants, pulling a threadbare blanket over her body as he called out to the person to come in.

  It was Jacinta, her expression unreadable in the darkness as she said he was wanted, and he had kissed her once, briefly, on the cheek as he told her he would see her again soon.

  The next time she went to a meeting, he was not there. She sat with the others and listened to Jacinta, and the words she spoke enveloped her in a calm, a sense of completeness and peace that had always seemed out of reach. As the readings drew to a close, the woman next to her asked if she would be attending the spiritual awakening weekend, and Caitlin told her she knew nothing about it.

  ‘But you must,’ the woman said, and she had shown Caitlin the leaflet, ‘if you are truly serious.’

  The cost was five hundred dollars. Caitlin held the leaflet in her hand and waited for Jacinta to break away from the small group of devotees who had clustered around her so that she could lead her to Fraser.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she had eventually asked, giving no indication of their having met previously.

  Caitlin said that she was waiting for Fraser.

  Fraser was busy, and Jacinta turned back to her conversation with no further explanation.

  It was not until another week had passed that she saw him again. He was waiting for her in the back room, but this time he did not kiss her, he just took her by the hand and told her that he had someone he wanted her to meet. His name was Kalyani, and he was very close to their master. He had left school to devote his life to Satya Deva as a server, and Fraser led her down a corridor to a larger room, lit only by candles, in which a young man dressed in white was packing food into several large crates.

  ‘Caitlin,’ and when he smiled at her, she thought she had never seen such beauty. His skin was golden, dusted by pale freckles. His thick auburn hair shone in the candlelight. His eyes were a deep sea green flecked with grey, and the hand that he held out to her was cool and strong. ‘I have heard about you,’ he said, and he rested his palm against her cheek for one brief moment.

  He told her that he was taking supplies back, and Caitlin glanced briefly at the crate closest to her, which seemed to be filled with chocolate.

  Kalyani laughed. ‘He has a fondness for sweet things. And I am the one who procures them.’ His eyes sparkled as he looked across at Caitlin. ‘Fraser says you are only new to our community.’

  She nodded in response.

  ‘But he believes you will one day join us,’ and he jerked his head to indicate the direction of the land where he lived, and where Fraser would soon be going.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Caitlin smiled.

  ‘I remember when I was summoned.’ He laughed again. ‘I remember how honoured I was. I had no hesitation, none at all. It was as though my life prior to that moment had simply been a dream, and then – puff – it was gone.’

  Fraser put his arm through hers and she followed him, past his room and out to the front door, where Jacinta waited to let her out into the warmth of the evening.

  Uncomfortable at the prospect of being overheard, Caitlin said nothing, although she did not understand why she was being made to go so soon after seeing him again. He looked into her eyes and smiled, seemingly oblivious to the fact that every word they spoke was audible to Jacinta.

  ‘I am on a purification program,’ he said, ‘until tomorrow,’ and Caitlin felt foolish for having allowed her desire for his physical attention to be so glaringly obvious. ‘You must come to the weekend,’ he added. ‘I hear you haven’t enrolled.’

  She told him she couldn’t afford it.

  ‘It is only money,’ and he shrugged his shoulders at its very insignificance.

  ‘I will try,’ Caitlin promised.

  ‘And come and see me, in the morning.’ He leant closer to her.

  ‘I have school,’ she said.
r />   His smile widened. ‘So?’

  She glanced at the ground, the corners of her mouth turning upwards gently as she lifted her head and looked back at him.

  ‘Good girl,’ and he squeezed her hand in his own, the pressure of his fingers gentle on her palm.

  And it was not so difficult, she had found, to pack her bag and seemingly head for school, only to take the bus in the other direction; to trace Liam or Sharn’s signature onto the bottom of a note that explained her absence; to withdraw from her life as it had always been and to take her first steps into a new world: not difficult at all.

  But she could not stay this way, one foot in the past, one in the present. As she lay in Fraser’s room, the afternoon light warm on her skin, she knew this, her certainty in this knowledge only increasing with each visit she made to the house. She stared up at the diamond patterns dancing across the ceiling until the knock on the door roused her. She had to get home, and he had work to do.

  She let herself out, crossing the street to catch the bus home, and wondered what story she would tell if anyone were to ask her where she had been, which they wouldn’t.

  She could lie, she supposed, or she could tell the truth, and she knew that she would opt for the latter. I have been in peace, she would say.

  And as she imagined what it would be like to utter those words out loud, she smiled to herself.

  I have been in peace.

  IN THE YEAR AFTER THEY LEFT SASSAFRASS, Caitlin and Liam would often drop Sharn at work and then drive off to spend the day together. Caitlin was not yet at school and Liam had not had many jobs, only a couple of very short, poorly paid ones.

  Sharn would watch them go. She did not know what they did all day, couldn’t even imagine how they made the hours pass, but they both seemed perfectly happy.