Names for Nothingness

by Georgia Blain

  ‘For what?’

  She does not reply, and they sit, miles apart, in silence.

  ‘For not being good enough.’

  In the dimness of the room, he can only stare at the ceiling, his eyes unblinking as he looks at the moths clustering around the light.

  It is some time before he realises she has hung up, and as he puts the phone down, he turns to where Essie sleeps, silent and peaceful.

  Christian is in the next room. The light is still on, a sliver of white around the edge of the doorframe, and Liam knocks softly. ‘Can I come in?’

  He is lying on top of the bed, dressed only in a sarong, and reading a guidebook. He is continuing his journey with no definite plans as to when he will return. He looks up at Liam and puts the book to one side.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Standing in the doorway, Liam realises that the intimacy they shared in the car has gone. They are two men who do not know each other, and who will probably never see each other again. He had come to the room wanting to talk, but now that he is here, he just wants to be alone, and he asks Christian if he will listen out for Essie while he goes for a walk.

  It is a warm evening, still and clear, and high overhead the stars appear to spin through the darkness of the sky. Liam lies on a park bench and looks up. He is relieved to be out of the cramped confines of car and hotel room, and he stretches his whole body out, letting each tired muscle relax.

  He does not know what he will find tomorrow. There is a part of him that is fearful it will be as Sharn described, and that he will drive out there to discover he has made a mistake; that he will be forced to return with Essie, forced to face Sharn, who will tell him she told him so, words she readily uses each time he fucks up.

  He remembers her telling him how she stood outside the gates, still wet from the night before, and called out for someone, anyone, to come and open up. No one answered her, and she felt like a fool, shouting out into the silence, her demands unheard.

  When she eventually noticed a group of people in the distance, she shouted again, louder this time, but they gave no indication of being aware of her presence. She got into the car and sounded the horn, the noise obscenely loud in the quiet, but still no one came.

  Eventually, she gave up. There was, she had told him, nothing for it but to climb over the gate.

  Lying on the park bench now, Liam can see her, walking down the path she described for him, her head held high, her chin tilted upwards, only her eyes giving away her vulnerability.

  She was halfway to the house when she saw someone approach. He was dressed in white and his robes fluttered, like a butterfly’s wings, against the deep green of the garden. When he came close, she saw that he was young, and beautiful, impossibly beautiful’.

  He told Sharn that his name was Kalyani, and she, too, introduced herself.

  He asked her what she was doing there. Did she know that it was private property, sacred grounds, and that she was trespassing?

  As Liam remembers Sharn’s tale, he is aware of a deep sadness settling, grey and heavy, in his stomach.

  The park in which he is lying is lit by a single streetlamp, and he gets up and walks, slowly, back to the gate. He can see the pub at the end of the street. Only one window is illuminated. It is Christian’s. He is waiting up for Liam to return.

  ‘You know,’ Sharn said, ‘he looked so serene, so gentle, that I began to apologise. I began to feel that I was doing something profane, simply by being there.’

  Liam crosses the road, her voice a constant in his head and heart. Everywhere I go, he thinks to himself, it is as though she is here with me.

  ‘And I said I was sorry. I told him I had a daughter, Caitlin, and that I wanted to see her, that was all. I just wanted to see her.’

  He lets himself back into the pub, his entire being exhausted.

  ‘Thanks,’ he calls out as he knocks on Christian’s door, but there is no answer, just the sound of his snoring, deep, peaceful, from the quiet of his room, and he crawls into his own bed fully dressed, too tired even to take off his shoes.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Sharn wakes in the flat with the full glare of the morning sun in her face. She had not shut the curtains when she went to bed, exhausted, the night before.

  She turns slowly and looks at the clock. It is just after eight.

  She wants Liam.

  The phone is on the floor next to the bed and as she picks it up, she remembers their conversation the previous evening, the words blunt in her consciousness. She asked him to tell her it was over. She grimaces at the memory. She pushed it, finally, to the edge, and left it there for him to send it shattering to the ground below.

  But he hadn’t. Not quite. And now that it is there, precarious, ready to fall, she wants only to save it.

  She gets up. Her head is aching and her eyes are tired and sore. This morning Liam will be taking Essie to Caitlin. She knows that much, but after that she has no idea where he will go or what he will do. It is the land beyond her tracking radar and it is vast, wild and terrifying.

  She has to do something. It doesn’t have to be like this, she just has to act fast enough, and she stands in the middle of their bedroom, wondering whether she should simply go. The idea moves from being an impossible one to a feasible course of action within a matter of seconds. If she leaves now, she can catch him, they can make this decision about Essie together, they can work it all out; it will be okay.

  For one moment she does not move. The numerous possibilities unlocked by this plan have frozen her into complete stillness, and then she acts. She opens her cupboard, grabbing T-shirts, jeans, a dress; it doesn’t matter, she throws everything on the bed, before pulling down an old shopping bag from the top of the wardrobe.

  She calls work, knowing she will get the answer machine, and the message she leaves is brief, her voice calmer than she feels. She rings the airport next but all flights are booked. She tries State Rail. There is a train north at ten o’clock.

  She locks the flat behind her and steps out into the cool of the autumn morning. It is peak hour and several buses go past without stopping. She is about to hail a taxi when one finally pulls over to take passengers.

  She is the last person on and she has to stand, pressed in against a group of school kids and an old woman who grumbles that no one is giving up their seat. Her bag takes up too much room and she tries to stuff it into the rack above one of the wheels, but it topples out and lands on the old woman’s foot. Apologising, Sharn attempts to move further back into the bus, but there is no space.

  The traffic is heavy and she looks at her watch anxiously. She has enough time, she tells herself as the bus crawls slowly up the hill, it is all right, and at each stop more people pile on, bodies pressed against bodies, the engine groaning with the weight of the load.

  When they get to Central Station she does not know where to go. She has not caught the country trains for years and she stands for a moment, dazed by the array of signs directing commuters to different platforms, different lines.

  She calls Liam before she does anything. The first phone box she tries takes cards only, the second is broken and the third works. She dials his mobile number and there is, as she expected, only his message bank. She does not even know if he will be able to retrieve her call or whether he will be out of range, but she tells him she is coming.

  ‘I’m about to get on the train,’ she says, and then, hesitating for one instant, she tells him that she loves him.

  ‘Just wait for me. At the pub in town.’

  She hangs up, suddenly uncertain as to whether she is doing the right thing after all, because she does not know if he will want to see her. She imagines him now with Caitlin, and she flinches.

  ‘Look with your own eyes,’ she had said, and that is what he would be doing. Seeing, hearing, as Liam sees and hears. He is not her. The world is a different place for him. He will not understand, and she is suddenly scared of the conclusion he will draw, the gaps he wi
ll fail to fill in. She did tell him the truth. She did not tell him everything, but she did tell him the truth.

  An old drunk is sitting on the ground behind her. He has a placard near his feet: ‘Suffer the little children’ scrawled in black across dirty cardboard. As she steps back from the phone box, she kicks it by accident, sending it flying, the coins that have been tossed onto it scattering in its wake. She bends to retrieve them, and he reaches out and seizes her wrist, his breath sour in her face as he asks her if she has a couple of dollars, ‘for a coffee’, he says, his eyes sly as he meets her gaze.

  She doesn’t answer. She just reaches into her pocket and takes a note, not even aware that it is a twenty, and presses it into his hand as she hurries off in search of the platform before she changes her mind.

  SHARN HAD WAITED IN THE GARDEN as Kalyani instructed. He would not be long, he told her, but she could not follow him.

  ‘We have our rules, you see,’ and his smile was gentle, ‘the way in which we like to live, and I cannot just bring you into the house.’ He looked down at his crisp white robes and then across at her damp and dirty clothing.

  She sat on the grass and watched him retreat into the distance; brilliant, like a single summer cloud against the sharp blue sky.

  This is where she lives, Sharn thought to herself. This is the place she has chosen, and she was so tired she could not even understand that one simple concept. All she wanted was to lie down and sleep, the morning sun soft against her face, the stillness of the day a balm against her skin. Lorikeets fluttered to the ground next to her, glossy reds, pinks, blues and greens, and she watched them, their sharp beaks pecking at seeds in the grass. They came so close, she wondered whether they were tame, and she reached out to touch them but they scattered, a blur of colour, before settling again.

  In the distance she could see others now, figures draped in white, and she did not know if they were aware of her presence. They gave no indication of this, but she felt so visible, bedraggled and alone on the lawn, that it seemed they must have known she was there. They were walking towards a garden at the side of the house, five or six of them, and although she was too far away to hear if they were talking or not, there appeared to be no communication between them. One or two carried garden tools, hoes, spades; the others carried baskets, and Sharn watched them disappear around the side of the house, out of sight, leaving her alone once again.

  The house itself appeared to be empty, although she knew it wasn’t. She looked up to the windows, hoping to catch a sign of life, a flash of white, a face, but there was nothing. And then it did seem that she saw someone, leaning out and looking down at her, but she could not be certain. The light danced, sharp and quick, and her eyes were tired, leaving her unable to trust what she saw.

  She picked at blades of grass, pulling them up as close to the root as she could and sucking at the fleshy white sap, the juice fresh and sweet. She remembered Caitlin once asking her why people didn’t eat grass, and she had told her that they just didn’t.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she had said.

  All her questions. When she had finally started to talk she had so many questions, and Sharn had snapped at her once when she was tired, telling her that it had been easier when she was silent. ‘God, how I miss that peace,’ she had said, and as she remembered those words, she looked down at her sandals. They were covered in mud, blackened by the dirt. She looked at her hands. They were no better. She wondered what her face was like. She could feel the knots in her hair and she tried to comb it with her fingers, to straighten it out before tying it up with a piece of elastic she found in her pocket.

  And so she waited, and it seemed that she waited for an interminable length of time, but she had no idea, really, how long it was that she sat there. She just did what he had asked her to do, without question, until gradually she began to wonder why she was simply obeying. Perhaps he had no intention of returning. He may have thought that she would eventually give up and leave, that she would grow tired of waiting, and walk away. Surely not.

  It was getting hotter. The sun was climbing higher in the sky and the stillness was no longer calming, it was sticky and uncomfortable. She was thirsty and hungry. Ants crawled up and down her legs and she brushed at them angrily. Her skin was burning in the heat and she stood up, thinking that she would find some shade, but then she became anxious that if she moved he might come out to find her gone and she would only be left waiting, all day and all night.

  It was ridiculous. She didn’t know why it had taken her so long to realise how ridiculous it was. There was no reason she couldn’t just walk up to the house. There was nothing to stop her, nothing but herself, and she turned to see if anyone was watching, if anyone would step forward and tell her to stay. But no one was in sight.

  On the verandah her footsteps were loud, her sandals clattering against the boards. She coughed a couple of times, the sound grating in the silence, and then she knocked on the door. It swung open in front of her.

  The hall was empty. A wide staircase ran up the middle towards a landing, where it branched off into two, one half leading up the eastern side of the house, the other up the west. Light streamed in from a single northerly window, illuminating the entrance, and she stood beneath it, uncertain as to which direction she should take. As she tried to make up her mind, a woman appeared, also young, also beautiful and also dressed in white. She seemed to have no idea Sharn was there. Her head was bowed to the ground and she appeared lost in thought, absent, so far away that she did not even notice Sharn’s presence until she had almost walked right into her. She looked up, startled. She stepped back. She looked down again. And she did not utter a word.

  ‘Wait,’ Sharn said, and the woman glanced up quickly, furtively. ‘I’m looking for my daughter. For Caitlin. Can you tell me where she is?’

  The woman did not respond, she just turned and walked away, and Sharn followed, almost chasing her down the corridor as she asked her to slow down, to tell her where she should go.

  It was Kalyani who stopped her from clutching on to the woman’s robes and pulling her to a halt. He stepped out from a side room and laid his hand across Sharn’s arm.

  ‘Perhaps you should come with me,’ he suggested, and she was surprised, once again, at how foolish she felt in his presence, as though she had been too hasty, too loud, too inopportune in her actions.

  He led her to a seat by the window. Apart from the two chairs, the room was bare. An intricately patterned parquetry floor that shone like honey in the sunlight and elaborate plasterwork on the ceiling were the only adornments to what was otherwise a completely unembellished space.

  ‘You must understand,’ Kalyani said, ‘that this is a community,’ and he leant forward and smiled his beautiful smile. ‘We have our own way of living. At the moment all our members are in meditation practice,’ and he touched her hand gently with the tips of his fingers. ‘It is simply not possible for you to see your daughter today.’

  ‘When can I?’ Sharn asked.

  He looked out across the lawn. ‘We will talk when our practice comes to an end.’

  He stood as though to indicate that he would take her to the door and she was about to follow, to once again do as he had instructed without question, when she, too, glanced out the window and saw them, the five she had seen earlier, returning from the garden.

  She could not tell whether it was Caitlin, she really couldn’t, but she felt her breath tighten, an acid panic rising in her throat as she followed her retreating back with her eyes, her name coming out of her mouth, low and sharp in the silence. As she leant forward to bang on the window, to rattle the glass loudly, he reached to stop her.

  ‘Come,’ he said, but Sharn brushed his hand aside.

  ‘This is ridiculous. She is my daughter. I have driven for days. I want to know when I can see her. I want to see her,’ and Sharn’s voice was so loud in the vastness of the room that it seemed as if she were shouting at him,
yelling with a force powerful enough to disturb his composure.

  He stepped back, and it was the only indication he gave of any alarm, of any awareness that the situation may have slipped out of his control, but it was enough.

  ‘I will get the police,’ she said. ‘I will tell them you are holding her against her will.’

  His cool green eyes did not falter in their direct gaze. ‘On what grounds?’ And he smiled as he continued to speak, giving her no chance to respond. ‘There is no need for this panic. There is no need for anxiety. Does it seem as though anyone here is being held against their will? I am simply asking you to respect our way of life, to understand that this is a time of retreat for us, and during this time it is simply not possible for you to communicate with your daughter.’

  ‘Come,’ he said, and he could see she was hesitating on the brink of doing as he asked, ‘I will get you a cup of tea, you look tired, something to eat, and then I will take you back to your car.’

  As she sat, she told him her car would not start, and he asked for the keys. ‘Someone here can look at it for you.’

  She handed them over to him.

  ‘You would be surprised at the range of skills we have.’ He looked back at her from the doorway. ‘Lawyers, artists, mechanics, even merchant bankers,’ and he headed down the corridor, his words floating out behind him as he disappeared from sight.

  He was not gone for long this time, only a few moments.

  ‘What is this place?’ she asked as he poured her a cup of herbal tea.

  She let it rest on the floor at her feet, but she ate the bread he offered.

  ‘Our home. This is how we want to live our lives. In peace. Without desire.’

  Sharn stood up and walked to the window, her back turned to him as she spoke. ‘Then why the padlock on the gate? Why no communication with friends or family?’

  ‘There is no one stopping us from contacting people in our past. It is a matter of individual choice.’

  She did not move.