The Lucky Galah

by Tracy Sorensen

  At last, it is time for the bubble helmets that decisively mark them out for the otherworld – deep sea, deep space – a world hostile to mammalian bodies. Danger and failure has been imagined and reimagined countless times and converted into lines and lines of printed rules and routines. Like Girl Guides, they must Be Prepared.

  For three hours their blood is purged of nitrogen so they will not get the bends. As daylight dawns over Cape Canaveral, they climb into their white transfer van. They take the elevator to their capsule, looking down at the massive metal body of Saturn V.

  In the capsule, the astronauts, rendered helpless by their clothes and accessories, submit themselves to more hands, hands that are attaching their suits to the capsule itself, battening them down.

  The rocket shakes and thunders and suddenly, irretrievably, it leaves the ground. Shock waves radiate out in great circles through air and land. The astronauts’ eyeballs press back into their skulls. Their opposable thumbs, their nimble fingers, are encased uselessly in gloves. The rocket ship easily punctures the membrane between earth air and outer space; it closes over behind them. They are alone in the dark and silence.

  For thirty-five minutes, the three men are alone in space, without ground contact. And then the Dish spots them as they arrive on the horizon in line of sight of the red dune at Port Badminton. It locks on. Evan, at his console, is also locked on. The trackers follow the spaceship until it goes down below the horizon on the other side. On the second orbit around the earth, it is up to the team at Port Badminton to transmit the command:

  GO for TLI

  Time for Trans Lunar Injection. It is the Dish’s job to beam this out from the lonely sand dune on the edge of town, out into outer space. The Dish is doing the thing it was built for; after this, its life will be a ruin. It is like a male spider that is eaten by the female immediately after mating; this mating moment will annihilate him but it is all he wants to do. It is now two hours, forty-four minutes and sixteen seconds after lift-off.

  Dish: GO for TLI.

  Lunar Module: Roger.

  The spaceship makes a burning break out of earth orbit and injects itself into lunar orbit. The three men are now on their journey to the moon. The Port Badminton trackers smile and give each other the thumbs up. They get coffee, go to the bathroom.

  For three days, the humans of planet earth wait and listen.

  A nine-year-old boy in Castle Hill, Sydney, is in hospital, about to have an operation on his eye. He imagines the surgeons snipping the red tissue that surrounds the eyeball and pulling it out so that the optic nerve is stretched and taut. The Moon Landing and the image of his own eyeball at the end of a length of a long soft stalk will be forever associated in his mind.

  The Dish swallows columns of digits, rows and rows of angles and measurements and, because there are human beings in that metal capsule, chatter. Chitchat, chitchat. The Dish records all of it, memorising all of it. The astronauts talk about scissors, and a tissue box, and going to the toilet.

  Armstrong: Having any luck there, Michael?

  Collins: You don’t need to take – you’re not taking your scissors over there?

  Armstrong: No.

  Collins: I’ve got . . .

  Aldrin: I’m going to have to take a leak here. Yes, I guess I’d better take that pocket – and the purse. Tell you what – how about putting those tissues in that box that’s got that spare camera in it?

  Armstrong: Okay.

  Aldrin: It’ll be right handy on your side over there. Now where did the tissue box go?

  Armstrong: You want to see if the computer agrees with that mission timer?

  Aldrin: I did already.

  Armstrong: Okay.

  Aldrin: Can you hand me that purse and the – that bag of mine – and the checklist? And if you’ll take me off of suit power.

  Armstrong: Okay. SUIT POWER is OFF; AUDIO is OFF. Whoops – sorry.

  Evan Johnson listens in as Neil Armstrong pilots the Lunar Module down to the moon’s surface. He listens anxiously as Armstrong flies over bumpy-looking rocks, looks for a nice smooth landing spot. With ten seconds’ worth of fuel left, he touches down at 20:17:40 Universal Time on 20 July 1969.

  The Lunar Module’s insect legs are now perched firmly on the moon’s surface.

  Houston: It was beautiful from here, Tranquility. Over.

  The Sea of Tranquility is now the astronauts’ address.

  Galahs fly over Port Badminton, screeching about and discussing the Moon Landing. Little corellas, crows, chiming wedgebills – birds unable to tune themselves into the Dish – are unimpressed. They simply go about their business.

  The astronauts are supposed to sleep for a few hours, but they can’t settle. They beg Houston to let them out early. Houston agrees, sending television stations around the world into a frenzy of rescheduling.

  Susan Kelly is studying all the chewing gum stuck to the bottoms of the wooden seats. There is so much of it, at least one hardened smear under each seat, sometimes four or five. Some bits have been layered over older bits. An adult says, ‘Don’t touch that, it’s dirty!’ Susan mutters, ‘I know!’ She wasn’t going to touch it, she was only having a sniff. She clambers over strangers’ legs to get away from the fold-up wooden seats. She is off to tell her mother about the chewing gum.

  All by itself up on stage at the Memorial Theatre is an ordinary household television set with long tapered wooden legs and little knobs on the back named Vertical and Horizontal Hold. There is a grey extension lead snaking off through the heavy velveteen curtains. Incredibly, images of the Moon Landing will be sucked down from outer space and into this television set.

  Jo Johnson, sitting cross-legged on the floor with her school group, knows all about it. She tries to tell her companions the story, although she realises as she goes along that her technical knowledge is more patchy than she’d like. Evan has explained how there is no microwave link between Perth and the eastern states. Sporting events, progress on the Sydney Opera House, announcements from the federal government in Canberra, are taped and flown across on daily flights.

  But something special is being rigged up and patched together for the Moon Walk. The coaxial cable that has been making its way north from Perth has now reached Port Badminton. It normally carries information one way, from the city to the outposts, but for this occasion, there will be a temporary inversion. The information will go from Port Badminton to Perth, carrying the live images of men walking on the moon. For this task, trucks have hauled television equipment to Port Badminton, spilling it out on the red dune to be connected by a team of technicians. They work furiously to ready the equipment, join it up, test it. A cable runs from the red dune down to the telephone exchange, where it is plugged into the coaxial cable at a spot between two Australian Broadcasting Commission vans. A man from the ABC sleeps under the stars next to his van, guarding the link.

  In Perth, there has been a run on television rentals; people crowd the counters to pick up their sets and carry them out to waiting cars. A primary school orders thirty sets, one for each classroom. People make arrangements with friends and relatives to gather around the screens. Sets will be running in shop windows and people will crowd the footpath to catch a glimpse.

  The signal on the homely television set in the Memorial Theatre arrives in a slightly different manner. The technicians have set up a one-off microwave link directly from the red dune to the aerial on the television set.

  ‘Anyway,’ says Jo, deciding to forgo scientific explanations, ‘my daddy is talking to the astronauts. He can hear them and say things to them.’

  The other children are not particularly impressed by this. The space race is quite normal to them; what is far more interesting is the television itself. In just a few years’ time their families will stop playing cards at night, or singing around poorly tuned old pianos, or reading books, becaus
e television will supply a superior variety of entertainments. In the meantime, there is nothing but a generalised yearning for television. To know about it – to glean titbits – but to be unable to see it for oneself is frustrating. The little screen in the Memorial Theatre is white and glowing, showing that it is alive, if not yet able to create meaningful pictures.

  The Memorial Theatre is full of milling, talking townspeople, some sitting in the rows of heavy old joined seats, others standing around the edges of the room. Everyone is talking about the moon and astronauts, although sometimes, like people at a funeral or wedding, they stray from the subject of the day and talk about other more ordinary things. A run-over cat has to be put down. A heavy fridge was hard to move and the floor was disgusting underneath. Someone is saying, ‘Have you ever heard of a philodendron?’ And the other person is saying, ‘It’s a plant.’ Then there are the shy people, saying nothing at all, looking nervous. Lizzie and the Old Patient are among these, sitting quietly side by side, studying the snow on the television, wondering if shapes are forming there or if it is just their own eyes playing tricks. Every fourth or fifth adult is smoking, keeping an eye out for something they can use as an ashtray.

  A new line of uniformed school children enters the theatre and is directed to the floor at the front. The children heighten the carnival atmosphere with their excited chatter. They look at the snowy glowing screen. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see an advertisement for lemonade or a Spirograph set? Groups of children do hour-long shifts before the luminous screen, relinquishing their places when the next group marches in.

  Up on Red Range, another small television set has been set up especially for trackers not directly connected to the work at hand, various tracker wives and a smattering of small children. This set, too, is all snow, but people continue to gaze at it, and try to manage their bladders.

  Crowie is ushered in to have a look. He is standing beside Linda, attractive tracker wife. They shake hands and have an amiable exchange but there is an amused twinkle in Linda’s eye that isn’t quite right. She seems resistant to being impressed by him. He hadn’t realised, until now, that she didn’t like him – her husband was always so friendly. His eyes slide from Linda down to Stella, tracker daughter, soft and sweet in white leather sandals. Stella points at the television set and says in ringing tones: ‘My daddy’s receiving the signal.’

  ‘What a clever daddy you’ve got,’ says Crowbar, tousling Stella’s hair. She hates it when people do that. As he walks away, Stella pokes out her tongue at him. Linda gives her a little shake and says: ‘Stella! Don’t!’

  Susan Kelly emerges, blinking, from the dark Memorial Theatre and heads for her mother’s skirt. Marjorie is standing behind an old wooden trestle table covered in a faded blue gingham tablecloth, laden with lamingtons on plates. An urn, energised by a long extension lead, is being kept on a constant rolling boil and members of the Country Women’s Association are selling cups of tea, five cents each. Marjorie has not been in this picture theatre since she saw An Affair to Remember on the night of the ’60 cyclone. ‘That feels like a million years ago now,’ says Marjorie.

  As the day progresses, the lamingtons disappear and sweat circles form under Marjorie’s armpits. The floor inside the darkened theatre comes to be dusted with specks of desiccated coconut and cigarette butts.

  Crowbar comes and goes between the theatre and the red dune, mixing business in town with checks on how things are going on the moon.

  The houselights are turned down, as they are for the weekly movies. There is a shushing and silence. The indistinct image on the small glowing screen, it is whispered, is the Lunar Module. Soon, an astronaut will appear.

  At 12.56 pm local time there is an audible ‘ah’ from the crowd in the Memorial Theatre. Marjorie – the ladies have left their urn and are now standing inside the theatre – stands with a half-eaten lamington in her hand, her bulgy eyes bulging, her mouth open, a silent continuation of her ‘ah’.

  The Dogger, a few feet away, is pointing his rifle at Armstrong’s bulky form, like an assassin. He could pull the trigger and shatter the television set, but doesn’t, because all he wants is a good look, and his rifle sight makes an excellent monocular. Other shooters have taken up the idea, creating a scene that could be alarming, but isn’t, because everyone understands what they are doing.

  Later, Neil Armstrong will say that he felt himself in a timeless place, standing in the Sea of Tranquility, with no changes to mark time passing.

  There is silence. There is not a peep out of the children. Breath is being held. In the darkness, Jo, unseen, is radiant, smiling, her hands clasped before her, her face upturned and gently lit.

  ‘That’s one small step for – man, one giant leap for mankind,’ blurts Armstrong out of the static.

  Someone shouts, ‘Hooray!’, a thin little lone voice, and this is immediately joined by stamping of feet and whistles and then shushing and quiet, because there might be more.

  And up on the red dune, they’re shouting, stamping, cheering, too, in relief and triumph, and people all over the world are doing the same.

  ***

  There. I have given you a story of the Moon Landing. A storyteller likes to please her audience. You are probably mammalian, enjoying tales of mammalian adventure. And I’ve enjoyed telling you this one. I’ve enjoyed sifting through the material at my disposal, shaping this, dispensing with that, inventing interior scenes and plausible dialogue.

  But now I want to tear it to shreds. I want to dig my beak into it, hard, tearing at its fabric, creating nonsensical strips of words, parts of letters.

  Back in 1964, they made up a list of ten thousand tasks they’d need to complete to get men to the moon. Let me interfere with these tasks. Let me at their flowcharts with beak and claw. Let me shriek maniacally through the failure to launch, the fire, the tiny helpless ambulances, the blackened, twisted corpses encased in melted metal and broken wire.

  I sit here, unheard, underestimated, as you play your story over and over and over again. And I join in, and help you tell your story, because I want your attention. Let me learn your words and repeat them so that you might smile at me and give me a biscuit.

  I make myself sick. I sit here, with my clipped wing, celebrating your story of flight.

  I sit here, biscuit crumbs on my beak, in jealousy, rage and shame.

  I loved Harry Baumgarten, but he preferred his own kind. He took his eyes from me – those X-ray eyes that saw bird bones and did not judge – and then laid them upon Evan Johnson, tenderly. He loved Evan Johnson, not me. Evan could fly. All in a day’s work, he could change into a bulky white suit and go to the moon and come home in a twelve-seater van.

  According to the Isotropic Fractionator at Charles University in Prague, birds have twice as many brain cells gram for gram as the average mammal. The pink and grey galah has about one and a half billion densely packed neurons. If they all fired at once, the explosion could be seen from space.

  TWELVE

  The Fall

  The day after the Moon Landing is a Tuesday. It appears to be an ordinary Tuesday. Time simply proceeds, not pausing to savour the moment. Seconds and minutes and hours pass, one after another. Evan Johnson is back at work with new problems to solve; Linda goes shopping. She walks up and down the aisles of the small supermarket, one of only two or three customers. It’s almost perfectly quiet. She selects a box of cornflakes, a tin of tomato soup, a tin of sardines, other things. At the checkout, she picks up her big brown paper bag of groceries, tossing back her hair. She’s the carefree type you might see in magazine advertisements for tampons or soft drink. It is easy to imagine her running up out of the surf in a bikini.

  Linda Johnson walks out into the strong sunlight. Out beyond the seawall there is the Indian Ocean, where dolphins and humpback whales and giant silver fish move effortlessly through their liquid world. Children are at school,
adults are at work, old people are sitting on chairs near their back doors, drinking tea.

  Here is the war memorial where the townspeople gather each Anzac Day and think about a man and his donkey bravely ferrying the sick and injured through the gunfire. Stella Johnson wonders what happened to the donkey.

  Something that has been at the back of Evan’s mind now begins to move forward, clearing its throat, saying ‘excuse me’ as it makes its way to the front. There is something fishy about Stella’s birthdate. Something very fishy indeed.

  But Evan is back at work with his tired, elated colleagues and for some days this fishy something remains lost in the crowd.

  ***

  ‘Aunty Lizzie? Are you there, Aunty Lizzie?’ It’s the grandniece.

  She barges in through the back door and goes straight past me, before I have a chance to collect myself. I shriek at her from my perch, but she is already in Lizzie’s room.

  I hear her voice, muffled now.

  ‘Aunty Lizzie, what’s going on, are you all right?’

  She comes out again almost immediately, tapping at her mobile phone.

  ‘Ambulance,’ she says, and gives the address.

  ‘What’s wrong with Lizzie?’ I shriek, but it doesn’t come out like that.

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ she says, not even looking at me. ‘Fuck’s sake.’

  I notice her round belly. Hatching more relatives.

  She goes back into Lizzie’s room. Silence.

  Why do I not step down from my perch, waddle across the floor to that slightly open door, go and see for myself?

  It’s because I’m full of dread. I can’t even shriek, now. I feel my tongue moving against my bottom beak, but no noise is coming out.

  A minute later, there is the wail of a siren. Two uniformed paramedics come in, carrying things, dangling things. They bustle past. One notices me on the way through and says, ‘Hello, cocky!’ I shout at them to hurry. I listen to them bumping and struggling in Lizzie’s room before emerging with her lying tiny and still on the stretcher with an oxygen mask over her face. The siren starts up again and wails into the distance.