Isabelle the Navigator

by Luke Davies

  I stand up under the jet of water. I lean my hands against the wall and my head droops, languidly, in the onset of pain as the water cascades over me and another contraction begins. Then a great strength wells up in me, beginning as a tingle in my feet. I feel uncomfortable and turn, reach out to either side of me and clasp the handles so that now I am standing in the position of crucifixion. I arch my head upwards, then roll it around my shoulders, feeling the luxuriant strain on the muscles in my neck. I push my chest forward, leaning outwards from the metal grips.

  I start to hallucinate. In less than a second a new world opens out and I am somewhere richer than any dream. I am the figurehead of a ship slicing its way through a vast ocean, heaving and indigo and ink blue and emerald green. My head tilts back into the onrush of wind. The spray of the shower is the salt spray whipped up from the incision that the prow makes and borne aloft on the currents of air. I am the figurehead, carving through that world; the me giving birth knows the pleasure of being transported for an instant from pain. Swordfish are speeding through the water, silver streaks keeping pace with the ship. They leap from the whitewash, powerful arcs. Holding onto the handles I lean forward as far as I can balance, lean into the speed and the beauty of it all, and breathe deeply the wild salt air. From behind me I hear the rustle and flap of the great canvas sails being hammered by the wind. Soon, helped by the midwife and Michael, I will move out of the spa and onto the bed in the birthing room next door, and Thomas will be born. But for now I move forward on an endless sea, at the prow of a ship. At sea there is always a horizon, beyond which can be anything.

  Acknowledgements

  MANY THANKS FOR MANY REASONS.

  For accommodation and hospitality during a period of flux and a great deal of travel—

  In Sydney: Steven Betts for Hall Street and, more importantly, friendship; Nick Trevallion; Andy Harding and Louise Bell; Marty, Gisele, Adele and Mark; Chris Noonan and Glenys Rowe for the greatest apartment in the universe, on the Ben Buckler cliffs; Mum; Jane Gleeson-White. On the NSW North Coast: Jane Healy; Jane Simpson and John Habib and family; Uncle Pat; Anne and John Simpson; Cassie, Jan and Luke at the Bales. In Paris: Suzie Longbottom; Franck Michel; Janet Christea; George Hayim; Rupert and Charlotte Ball-Greene; Nathalie Rafal; Chloe Fox. In Dublin: Michael West and Annie Ryan.

  In London: Guy Halliday; and the wonderful Geraldine Aron. In the USA: David Hackworthy for New York, and his generosity and friendship; Dan Hennessy for Los Angeles; Albert, Lisa and Maria Sulprizio for Los Angeles. In Spain: Lluis and Cesca Llobet at the Centre d’Art i Natura in the Pyrenees. Elsewhere: Shelley Perkins, for the Marriott connection, and for being a friend.

  Regarding the book itself—

  My thanks to the Literature Fund of the Australia Council, in conjunction with the Australian Ireland Fund, for a three-month Writer’s Residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre for the Arts at Annaghmakerrig, County Monaghan. And to the Literature Fund, in conjunction with Insearch UTS, formerly known as Insearch Language Centre, at the University of Technology, Sydney, for the Writers in Asia Partnership Program which awarded me a three-month residency in northern Thailand. Particular thanks to Michael Fay, former Director of Insearch, for his dedication, support and belief in the Program. And to Andrew Coyle of the Australian Centre in Chiang Mai, for his generosity and kindness.

  Some of Tom’s strange ramblings about science draw upon information found in Fractals: the Patterns of Chaos by John Briggs, from which comes the ‘dissonance and harmony of nature’ quote in the chapter ‘Volcano’. In the same chapter, the ‘holy man Gosala’ passage draws upon the Samannaphala Sutta 54 as paraphrased in Eliade’s History of World Religions.

  Thank you for kind permission to reproduce part of ‘Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening’ (p. 199) from The Poetry of Robert Frost edited by Edward Connery Lathem copyright 1923, © 1969 by Henry Holt and Co., copyright 1951 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

  The prose translation of the Apollinaire poem ‘Sous le Pont Mirabeau (p. 154) is the author’s.

  Special thanks to all those involved at close range as the drafts progressed: Jane Gleeson-White (once again), my agents Gaby Naher at Jill Hickson Associates and Fiona Inglis at Curtis Brown, and to Sophie Cunningham, Christa Munns and Annette Barlow at my publishers Allen & Unwin. To Breeze Delian. To my editor Sandy Webster, for her sublime skills and her uncanny ability to find the thin novel trapped inside the fat novel’s body.

  To Gisele Menge and Bernard Cohen, for patiently listening in Paris to my reading aloud of the first chapters—now happily non-existent—I ever wrote for this book. And for being polite, I guess. To Mille Jensen for listening, in Chiang Rai, to the chapter ‘Love Calls You by Your Name’, which does still exist.

  To Darren Wensor of the Little Athletics Association of NSW, for information about believable high-jump records for nine-year-olds.

  To the great people at Dashing Printing in Bondi Junction— may we continue to do good business for years to come.

  To John P (‘Jack’) Lockwood, volcanologist extraordinaire, of Hawaii, who kindly checked the chapter ‘Volcano’ for basic technical details. (And check him out at .)

  To Bobbie McDonald, whose story of Marine Island inspired young Isabelle’s version in the chapter ‘Meat Truck’.

  To Graham and Lynley Rayner for helping me with crayfishing and Abrolhos Island details in Geraldton, Western Australia. To Deborah Robertson for Fremantle, and the road trip. To Jimmy and Bronte Younger for the house in Kalbarri, and to Jimmy for his patience with my sea-sickness (an illness to which Isabelle, of course, never succumbs!) the day we went out from Geraldton.

  To Etgar Keret, wonderful writer and true genius, for allowing me to use his ‘algorithm of wandering’ idea in the chapter ‘Birds That Are Fish of the Sky’.

  To Dr Robert Muller and Dr Geoffrey Bradshaw for help with some medical and psychiatric details regarding Tom Airly.

  To Dr Paul Payne, astronomer extraordinaire, of the Sydney Observatory, for explaining the scattering of blue light by air molecules.

  To Julia Leigh for reminding me of the great Barry Lopez quote used at the beginning of Part Two.

  To Sister Jenny Neilsen, of Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, for explaining—in more detail than I probably wanted!—the possible physical effects on the body of impact with a moving truck.

  To Sophie Russell in Paris, for telling me a strange story that somehow morphed its way into ‘Zooming’.

  To Sarah, who first told me about hallucinating while giving birth.

  To Dad.

  To Jeremy Fitzgerald, who set the example, walks the walk.

  And to Christina Alves, ship’s captain, of Lisbon, some of whose strength and beauty is in this book.