Freedom from the bitterness
that tore my eyes from wit-er-ness
Nowhere left for me to run
I speak to you my mother tongue
Korman-shezzi-para-do
Huma-seva-goona-go
Ririputa-ba-ti-hey
Dona-mata-ni-fo-bay
Ed finished and sat back wordlessly. ‘What do you think?’
Alison paused. ‘Did you make up your own language at the end?’
‘It’s my mother tongue.’
‘But did you, you know, make it up?’
‘Well, it was already inside me. It is the language of my soul.’
‘But not like an actual language?’
‘If you mean is it recognised as an official language, then no.’
‘So you just made up the sounds as you went along?’
‘I let them out from where they live.’
‘Sure.’
He stared at her expectantly.
‘I . . . I liked the way you rhymed witness with bitterness.’
He nodded and waited. Alison sighed. This was one of the most annoying things about Ed – his constant need for validation. He was the neediest anarchist she had ever met.
‘It . . . I don’t know. I liked the sounds . . .’
Ed gave her a dismissive look. ‘That means nothing. You’re not even trying.’
‘Ed! It’s like ten lines long. What do you expect?’
Ed sighed. Alison did too and glanced over at Oliver, who was still chatting with the tall man but kept sneaking quick looks their way.
‘Ed, I reckon it’s time we left.’
He looked at her hopefully.
She quickly corrected herself. ‘Me and Oliver, I mean. I’m just going to call a taxi and then we’ll probably head off.’
Ed stood up. ‘Hey, would it be okay if we split the taxi?’
‘Sure.’ Alison fought back a smirk. She knew Ed and there was no way he would end up paying anything.
There was a minor confusion with seating and somehow all three of them ended up in the back seat, with Oliver wedged between Alison and Ed. Oliver was just about to climb into the front when Sera’s cousin Betty got in the passenger seat and asked if she could get a lift into town. Oliver sat back awkwardly, obviously avoiding Ed, and the taxi pulled away from the house.
Ed turned to Oliver and stuck out his hand. ‘Ed.’
Oliver stared mutely at the hand. ‘I know. I met you before.’
‘And who are you?’ Ed asked.
Oliver looked affronted.
‘Oliver. Alison’s boyfr – partner. Her partner.’
Ed leant forward and grinned cheekily at Alison. ‘You didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend, Coops.’
Alison shrugged. ‘Oliver’s a writer. Like a proper published writer,’ she replied. ‘Ed is an artist,’ she told Oliver.
‘I prefer to think of myself as a creator,’ Ed interjected.
‘What do you create?’ Oliver asked.
Ed laughed dismissively. ‘What do I create? What do I create, Coops?’
Alison had spent several months with Ed and she still had no idea what he created, other than drama.
‘I create the sublime,’ Ed said. ‘And the unspoken. And the dangerous.’
Oliver shot a look at Alison but she pretended not to notice. Criticism of Ed reflected badly on her, as she had once dated him.
‘That sounds . . . nice,’ Oliver replied.
‘And what do you create, Oliver?’
‘I’m a writer. I create words,’ Oliver said, then hesitated. ‘Well, I mean, I don’t create the words. I use ones that already exist . . .’
Ed waited.
‘I write about the world,’ Oliver continued hastily. ‘And what it means to be human. And how we’re all magnificent flawed creatures who don’t often get it right.’
Alison took his hand and squeezed it, pleased with this answer.
Ed looked at him like he’d just thrown up on his own lap.
‘My first book did really well,’ Oliver added. ‘It won a prize. I met the premier.’
Ed smiled. ‘I create work that tells humanity to get fucked and wake up to the trauma that begins with birth and ends with death and that can only be assuaged by the fall of the capitalist autocracy,’ he said. He turned and stared at Oliver. ‘What are your books about?’
‘Oh, you know . . . stuff . . . people.’ Oliver gazed directly ahead out the front windscreen and pretended to be distracted by the traffic.
Alison looked out the window too.
The last time she’d been in a taxi with Ed, they’d been going to the Great Wall. Rather than catch a bus with all the other tourists, Ed had decided they would take a cab to a less popular section of the wall, farther away from Beijing. It had cost a lot to pay the return fare – almost $200 Australian dollars – but, as Ed told Alison, money was a transitory thing that meant little more than the value ascribed to it. Alison had pointed out that this value was $200 but Ed had looked at her sadly and asked her at what stage in her childhood the music had died. The section of the wall the taxi delivered them to was old and worn and almost vertical in its ascent up the mountainside. Unlike other sections that had been rebuilt to allow tourists to easily, and safely, walk along the wall, this part looked like it might crumble away in a light summer shower. It had indeed showered that morning, so the smooth, worn bricks were incredibly slippery. Alison had slid trying to climb the rather steep incline and scraped the skin off her knees. Ed forged ahead and, instead of offering her a hand up, pointed out that thousands of workers had died building the wall and that their bodies were buried beneath its foundations. Alison muttered that she wanted to bury Ed’s body with them as she hoisted herself up and kept struggling. They had climbed for what seemed like an eternity but was more likely half an hour or so. The sun was at its peak and bore down on them, burning Alison’s neck. She had almost tripped again when the wall finally levelled out. Alison paused, panting for breath, and looked around. It was spectacular. Ahead she saw the wall stretch out endlessly, working its way up and over, around and above the curves of the mountains. It looked like a delicate paper lantern draped over the lush green of the hillsides. Small guard towers divided it into sections, and no matter how hard she strained, she could not see its end either ahead or behind her. It took her breath away, and when Ed stood beside her and put his arm around her she had leant into him and wished the moment would last forever.
‘It’s so perfect that if I died right now I wouldn’t care,’ Ed breathed into her ear.
Her eyes welled up and she nodded. And everything bad about Ed had wafted over the mountains and out into oblivion.
The taxi stopped in the centre of Honiara town to drop off Ed and Betty. Betty waved and skipped away to meet a friend. Ed leant casually through the open window. He reached across Oliver and took Alison’s hand.
‘It was so good to see you, Coops. Let’s catch up when I get back.’
Alison nodded. ‘Of course. You too.’
Ed held her hand a moment longer, gave her a wistful smile and then headed off. As the taxi pulled away from the curb, Oliver glared at Alison. She blushed.
‘What?’
‘What’s Coops?’
Alison looked at him blankly. ‘Oh that? It’s just a nickname.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘Coops. As in Coopers. As in the beer. He used to tease me for drinking it.’
Oliver gave her a disdainful look.
‘What?’ she said.
‘He’s . . . a bit . . .’ Oliver trailed off and made a supremely unimpressed face.
Alison grinned and took his hand. ‘I know. It’s crazy though, isn’t it?’
‘What is?’
‘Him turning up. Like, of al
l the places in the world . . . I mean, literally . . .’
Oliver tensed. ‘It’s not so crazy.’
‘What do you mean?’
Oliver straightened, preparing himself.
‘I did it.’
‘What? You did what?’
Oliver took a deep breath. ‘This. Ed. I wrote this first. This morning. I wanted to prove to you that I am doing this. That I did those other things too. That I did them for you. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t something political or predictable. Nothing that I could have assumed or gathered from the newspapers. So I wrote about Geraldine’s ex-boyfriend turning up out of nowhere, and then Ed appeared. Ali, I did this.’
Alison frowned at him. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said, but her voice revealed her uncertainty.
Oliver pulled the piece of paper from his pocket. ‘Here. This is what I wrote this morning before we left home.’
Alison read through it. It described a picnic Geraldine and Colonel Drakeford had attended with Mary and her husband that had been crashed by Ludwig, Geraldine’s old flame. She stared at the piece of paper for a while before she looked up at him.
‘Ludwig?’
Oliver waved this away with his hand. ‘It was the first name that popped into my head.’
‘But why him? Why Ed appearing out of nowhere?’
Oliver shrugged. ‘It was the first thing that came into my head.’
Alison glanced at the paper again. She looked like she might burst into tears.
‘Why him, Oliver? Why Ed? Why would you choose someone who hurt me? Why would you bring him back into my life? What did you think would happen?’
Oliver hadn’t really considered this. ‘I . . . I don’t know. I . . . I didn’t really think it through. And he’s going out to the islands anyway. But see, this proves that I’m right. Alison, I think what I’m writing is somehow influencing our lives.’
‘Do you expect me to actually believe that?’
Oliver pointed to the piece of paper in her hand. ‘How else do you explain that?’
She threw up her hands in frustration. ‘I don’t know! I don’t know. Obviously I don’t believe in magic – I’m an adult. Magic is something people make up to explain things that have far better explanations. And there is obviously a far better explanation for this.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as this all being a giant coincidence.’ She looked at him, her face a mix of frustration and pity. ‘Do you think it’s magic?’
Oliver shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I don’t want to. But I write these things and they happen. Things happen so I write them. I don’t know if I’m writing this book or if it’s writing me.’
Alison smiled wearily. ‘Wanker.’
‘Fine. Why don’t I just kill off a character and we’ll see what happens?’
Alison hesitated. ‘Don’t.’
‘Why?’
‘Just don’t, okay?’
‘So you do believe it?’
‘No, but just don’t, please.’
She turned away and refused to say anything else for the rest of the trip home.
Alison lay in bed that night clicking the fingernail of her thumb against that of her index finger, something she did to rein in her anxieties. Now that Ed wasn’t actually standing in front of her, the absurdity of what was happening had finally hit her. Ed was there. Ed. As in Ed who had been the first person she had ever been convinced she loved. Ed who had gathered her up in his cyclone and then dumped her in the middle of a flattened town when he was done. No, that wasn’t true. She had jumped ship first. She had awoken early one morning and watched the sun rise over the busy workers stacking wooden crates of fruit beneath their tiny top-storey rest house room in Nanning. A young boy, barely into double digits, had struggled to lift a large crate of persimmons and been assisted by a young woman with a baby in a sling on her back. Alison watched, mesmerised, and then she turned to Ed, sleeping spread-eagled and naked on the bed, and knew things did not look like she’d pictured them. Ed had awoken to find her dressed and packed and she had prepared herself to give the dramatic and beautiful speech she had been rehearsing in her head. Instead, she had said, ‘I’m going,’ and burst into tears. Ed had sat there naked and unmoving, tracing one fingertip across the tattoo of Nietzsche on his right thigh. She had waited, self-consciously staring at her trembling hands, half-hoping he would try to convince her to stay, because that would be much easier than trying to find her way to the airport alone. But he didn’t. As she slung her pack across her back and headed out the door, she heard him sigh. She turned, even though she knew she shouldn’t. ‘I’ll write a poem about this one day,’ Ed said simply. And that had been the last she saw of Ed. Until today.
Before Alison left China she had spent three days alone in Shanghai. Really she just wanted to hang about feeling sad until her flight home, but the backpackers hostel was full of loud Americans trying to get it on with beautiful Germans and the only books on the communal shelf were Edward de Bono’s Lateral Thinking and a copy of The Pelican Brief, both of which she had already read at other backpackers, so she forced herself to go out and wander the busy streets. One day she walked along the Bund, looking at the crumbling grand old British colonial buildings on one side of the river and the rising space age towers of modern China on the other. The buildings played hide and seek in the smog, startling each other with their sudden presence. Her mind had strayed to Ed and the events of recent days, and it was in this slightly bewildered, melancholic state that she stumbled upon the old Jewish quarter of Shanghai. She stopped to take her bearings, confused at the giant synagogue in front of her. Around her Shanghai went about its daily routine and she sat down on a small brick wall opposite the temple. She stared at its perfect curved domes and the worn Star of David above the entrance. A tiny aged Chinese woman hurried past her pushing a trolley laden with an assortment of cheap plastic sandals. Alison looked from the old woman to the temple and suddenly realised that the world was an incredibly big place and she did not for an instant understand most of what went on in it. She thought about Ed, who she understood least of all, and about everything that had happened. She hadn’t wanted it to end like this, but what other choice did she have? So she acknowledged that things with Ed had not worked out, and the next day Alison had boarded the plane that would fly her first to Kuala Lumpur and then onwards back to Australia.
When Alison went to bed that evening, Oliver sat up in front of his laptop, cracking his knuckles one by one. Part of him felt like he should stop writing. This part was anxious and worried. It wasn’t sure if he was the puppet master or the puppet in this strange game. It wasn’t sure if he was setting himself up for disaster, if it would all go spiralling out of control. But as he read through the story – the parts he had written and put his all into – it dawned on him that there was a part of him, a big part of him, that didn’t care. It was a good story. It was the story he had always wanted to write. It was the story he was meant to write.
He left early the next morning to meet Rick for coffee and to discuss the potential imminent explosion of the Ocean Head Liners, which was the current name for the band. It had previously been the Solo Men, Jam Man and the Shazam and, for one brief moment, the Salubrious Case of Edmund Barton, which had made no sense and for which no one officially took responsibility. Oliver sat in El-Shaddai café nursing a latte and waiting for Rick to bound through the café door. He was also hoping to discuss the Ed problem but he knew this would have to wait until after band talk. The problem with the band, as Rick saw it, was too many big personalities clashing for dominance in a musical partnership that depended on cohesion. The problem, as everyone else saw it, was Rick, but Oliver was too much of a pacifist to raise this. The Rick-Boris feud was gathering momentum each day. At their last rehearsal, Boris had sabotaged Rick’s decision to instigate a thirteen-minute guitar solo in the middle of Bruce
Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’ by hiding Rick’s electric guitar jack and then playing the drum line from Boléro loudly until Rick stole his snare and went and sulked in the garden with it. Clive and Junior had watched in amusement and suggested to Oliver that the three of them go get a drink instead. They had left Rick hiding in the bushes with the snare pretending not to see them.
Oliver glanced at his watch. Rick was late. He checked his mobile. There was a text from Rick. It read:
Cnt cm. Dying. @ hosp. Pls cm. Mn.
Oliver caught a bus to the Number Nine Referral Hospital and found Rick in emergency. He was pale and sweating and had sprawled out dramatically across the floor, despite there being a dozen or so empty seats. Rick looked up pathetically.
‘Ol-dog. It’s malaria. I’ve got it. It’s going to go cerebral and I’m gonna die,’ he groaned.
Oliver looked around and noticed a young woman at reception. He walked over to her.
‘Is he okay?’ he asked, motioning to Rick, who had curled up into a ball and was rocking gently.
‘He’s fine. He’s seen the doctor and we gave him some medicine and told him to go home. He won’t,’ she added.
Rick started muttering to himself.
‘Can you admit him?’ Oliver asked, knowing that Rick’s infamous stubbornness meant that if Rick didn’t want to leave, Rick wouldn’t be leaving.
The young woman shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, but all the beds are full. And we need them for people who genuinely require them.’
They both looked at Rick, who was now chanting softly to himself.
‘He’s welcome to stay there, but he’d be better off in bed.’
Oliver sighed. ‘Thank you.’
He went back and crouched beside Rick.
‘Hey mate, what are you chanting?’
‘Mantra.’
He listened closely. It sounded like Rick was saying ‘Don’t die’ over and over again.
‘Do you think you might like to go back home to bed?’
The chanting didn’t stop but Oliver saw the tiniest of nods.
‘Have you got your car?’ he asked.
The Bit In Between Page 15