Owls Do Cry

by Janet Frame

  —That’s a lovely colour,

  or

  —I like that shade, it’s like Mag’s dress, only deeper,

  or

  —You can get that colour now, in that stuff you don’t have to iron,

  or

  —What lovely flowers! They just make you realize, don’t they?

  All the people turning their heads backwards and forwards like dolls.

  So Toby spent the day looking, next at the Sound Shell, where bands played, and then at the Zoo where the polar bear wore an old yellow fur coat, and his eyes were runny and red as if he had a cold. All the animals seemed to have sore eyes as if they had been looking too much in the daylight, and Toby wondered if perhaps his aunt and uncle and his two cousins and himself had red eyes with all their looking, and he said to his cousin,

  —Are my eyes red?

  —Don’t be silly, she said. Your eyes are only red when you’ve been crying or something like that.

  And then Uncle, who was interested in history, took them to watch the tuatara. They stood half an hour waiting for it to move, but it seemed to be asleep, and the house where it lived was stuffy, and the girl cousin wanted to go to the lavatory, and so did everybody but nobody had liked to say. So they went down under the monument, the women in the women’s side and Toby and his boy cousin and his uncle in the men’s side. The floor was stone and covered with a slimy green moss. There was a tap that kept dripping and could not be turned off. And there was a small window that couldn’t be seen through; it was broken and patched with wire-netting, and Uncle said it had been smashed by juvenile delinquents, there were many of them, he said, in the city.

  Toby asked what they looked like, and what language they spoke, and if they dressed like people, and did they live in burrows or what. And Uncle said, with the same voice he had used for saying,

  —Second-growth bush, my boy.

  —You are ignorant as yet, Toby. The city is a terrible place.

  30

  So he walked all night, carrying his suitcase and overcoat, up and down the streets of the city they called a jungle. At first when he arrived there, he saw few people – a policeman walking along trying the door-handles of shops; motor-cyclists with leather jackets and goggles, crowded outside a milk-bar; a woman, Chicks, tall and dark and pale with the colour washed from her face and her eyes tired, standing outside the Post Office in front of the letterboxes with their obscene and magnified mouths. And Toby thought of the story about the soul flying from the body, and then, from everyone who passed he watched their soul fly out and into the letterbox, and them walk away spiritless and unknowing. And he saw a little boy who looked up at him fearfully, thinking,

  That man has a bag of lollies in his pocket for me, and a mask made of black silk, and a ray gun, and a space-ship parked quite close, invisible, ready to kidnap me to the moon or Mars. And the child backed, terrified, when Toby addressed him,

  —Hello, little man, are you lost?

  Then it was the dead and wet and street-shining time before the pictures finished, and there was a tall man wearing a black silk coat as wet and shining as the street, and he was walking from nowhere to nowhere. He was a hotel night porter on his way to work, to spread out his newspapers in the hotel pantry, and empty the shoe polish and brushes from the box onto the paper, and carry the shoes from outside the doors, remembering which, to be polished, with his pale immune hand hid for two or three half-minutes within each bulged and empty nest of leather; to climb inside the lift, then, with the gates shutting their iron teeth behind him; and sit in the safe shut box, on a wooden stool, to wait and be rung for, all night, till the boiling of the first egg in the morning for the early breakfasts, and the flipping under the door of the first newspaper; and the cook arriving for duty and peeling up her sleeve and saying

  —I have red elbows. Look, I have red elbows.

  All evening Toby walked the streets. And the people of the city who had been held inside theatres and halls by some kind of elastic, corseted there, came flying out, burst and undone, upon the footpath at ten or eleven o’clock; lying down and picking themselves up in one movement so that their falling seemed more of a dream; scurrying then for trams and buses and ferries, the women fatted and furred, with baskets of fruit, cherries or grapes hanging from their ears; the men escorting, rich and prosperous, but not all; nor all of the women with a garden in their face.

  Toby watched the same tall and pale woman walk near him, and he said,

  —Chicks.

  She stopped and said,

  —I’d choose a better name if I were you, otherwise nothing doing.

  —Teresa, then, said Toby. Only it’s just my sister.

  —What an exciting relation. Are you waiting for her?

  —No. I found her dead and I don’t know what to do.

  —Call the police or the doctor, and wipe away all fingerprints from your eyes.

  —My mother died not long ago.

  The girl, Marjorie, thought, Oh what a little country boy with his bag and raincoat, come up to the city from the farm, to see the sights and be shown the places, scared and wanting his mother and sister. She smiled to herself. And I’m the same. Dressed for my part and speaking tough since I worked at the factory.

  She thought, I’ll have to do the work, and said

  —Come for fish and chips, in here, and we can talk.

  And she led Toby into the restaurant and they sat at a small table covered with glass, and underneath the glass two paper doilies stained with equal parts of Worcester and tomato sauce. And they ordered fish and chips and coffee for two, and a crimson waitress put before them, after twenty minutes, two narrow slices of bread, two balls of butter printed with a fancy pattern and two plates of fish and chips; also two cups of coffee that looked, Marjorie said, the colour of the Waikato in flood.

  And then she said,

  —I work in a factory, you know, making stockings. I started off at the woollen mills, and then went to the chocolate factory but it made me fat, so now I’m at stockings. When I’ve enough nylons for my box I’m going to work at Eudora Underwear.

  She leaned forward to Toby, cupping her hand over her mouth to make sure no one else heard her whisper,

  —I’m going blind. Can you tell I’m going blind? Next year, or the year after I shall tap with a white stick and make baskets.

  And Toby, standing by himself, or walking along the streets, looking in the shopwindows at the radios and washing machines and carpets and jewels and books and clothes and toys, and the unspeaking lonely shadows of people, saw the girl, Marjorie or Fay or Chicks or whatever had been her name, walking arm in arm with a sailor; and he thought, I wonder. What if I had spoken to her? What if I had spoken to her. He saw them vanish in the dark.

  And then he remembered, from his dreaming, that on his return from this holiday in the city, his mother would not be at the station to meet him, to ask if he had taken any fits, and remembered to give his ticket to the guard, and not got out at the wrong station or put his head out of the window, or spoken to strangers; and he was glad he had not spoken to the pale dark girl, for his mother was not long in the grave, she was locked up under the earth, and she could never bear to be locked, even in clothes or cheap beads tight about her neck, and would unbutton the top of her dress and unclasp the beads, more easily to breathe and be free.

  31

  August the Something

  Really, I never seem to know the date since I began my new diary after I lost the old one. I cannot understand what happened to it. Tim teases me and says he has it hidden and reads it and enjoys it; but I know he is merely teasing me. I remember it was after Toby left that I lost it, and Toby left so suddenly, why the children could have been burned to death that night and us been in the Evening Star as an example of parents who leave their children alone at night. And I don’t know whatever Toby did to the sitting room carpet, for it is spoiled for always, the mess he made of it.

  We go south next month.
I cannot contain my excitement, nor can the children, who have asked and asked about the house and I have answered and answered their questions till I am tired.

  —Where is it, Mummy?

  —Where mummy used to live when she was a little girl.

  —But where?

  —On an old rubbish dump.

  (I like to give accurate answers to the children’s questions)

  —What’s a rubbish dump?

  —It’s the sort of place where all kinds of nasty things are put, that nobody wants.

  —Do they put children there?

  —No, child. Anyway, it’s filled in and you shan’t see it.

  —You mean it can’t come up as a ghost because our house is on top, like putting the cork in a bottle and holding it tight?

  Later

  I read this page to Tim, and he is amused at the children’s questions. Dear Tim.

  By the way, I believe they are going to perform some kind of operation on Daphne, to make her normal.

  And now I must read a chapter from my book, Cry the Beloved Country, which describes the negro question in South Africa.

  32

  DAPHNE

  There is a place in the south called Arrowtown where the light is frozen pale gold upon a street of poplars whose leaves are pale gold for ever, ready to fall, yet never falling; nor do the trees move; nor the clouds, heliotrope to snow like the berries acmena flora bunda from their twig of sky. And the houses there are blurred like smoke shaped from a yellow and blue fire; the people scarved and cloaked with yellow and blue cloud. And if you listen, in that street, you hear nothing, nor do the people there move, nor can you ever walk there unless you break the glass and climb through, bleeding, a crazed myopic figure, to the picture hanging upon the wall of the dayroom where Daphne lives.

  The picture is called, ARROWTOWN IN AUTUMN, WITH THE REMARKABLES.

  The Remarkables are mountains.

  But half-imagined only; with the patients fastening their dream upon the picture and creating beyond the yellow and blue cloud their frozen slope of thought whose blizzard, emerging from the stillness, cut from snow-block of day-after-day dreaming, will blow like swans or arrows flying from the yellow and blue cloud’s mouth to whip or sing in the demented night of four walls and the dead bulb of milk behind wire; and the eyes of the world from hour to hour staring through, amazed at the white storm and not knowing why.

  And in the morning the pink people come to unlock the door, and struggle through the snow to the frozen bodies that are heaped on little trollies decorated with flags red and white and blue and a beryl stone, and wheeled to the rubbish dump, to be scattered amongst the toi-toi or burned.

  33

  At first when the world changed its colour and form and Daphne was taken to Arrowtown in autumn, with the Remarkables, there was a woman with grey hair and a coiled face like wire, and sand-stone eyes, who led Daphne from the ambulance in the door to the bathroom where a trough had been scooped from a side of one of the mountains, and lukewarm water poured in.

  —You must have a bath, the woman said. Get in.

  Her name was Flora Norris, and the wire of her face had been stolen from the wires of wreaths of poppy and nasturtium laid on the grave of her imagined lover, twenty years ago. She was matron of the hospital, Chief of the Remarkables, except for the tribe that wore coats of snow and raided, every morning, the poplar world and the blue and yellow cloud of people. But Daphne did not know of that. She sat in the bath, and rubbed her finger over the sand-stone eyes of the matron. She shivered, and lay down in the trough, and took in her hand a little cake of cream that smelt like washday and the sheets bubbling in the copper.

  —Don’t eat it. Wash with it, Flora Norris commanded.

  Daphne rubbed the cream over her body to soothe the raw skin where the sand-stone had grazed and hurt. And then the woman poured a waterfall from an enema can, over her hair and said

  —Now get out and put this nightie on.

  But first,

  —Any scars? she said. Any operations? Let me look.

  She grazed Daphne’s body again so that the washing with cream had really been no help, but she did not find the scars the pine needles had sewn; so she pulled something square and striped, with arms out, like an empty scarecrow waiting to be filled, over Daphne’s head; and the pink woman who helped her led Daphne to a row of compartments, like horse-boxes, with swinging doors and room to look over and under, and said, sharply

  —Do you want to go? Well hurry.

  She poked her head over the door while Daphne sat on the seat. And then,

  —Ready, said Flora Norris. Use that piece of apple-paper to wipe yourself.

  And then,

  —Quick now, into bed with you.

  And then she smiled and the wire round her face melted and trickled down her neck inside her white uniform so that it tickled or speared, and she thrust her hand down to fetch it and replace it, and undo the smile.

  —Remember, she said sternly, everybody is trying to help you. It’s up to you to co-operate and pull yourself together.

  Daphne lay in bed, nearest the fireplace; with rubber, like a doormat, spread underneath the sheet; and Onward, Onward, written across the bottom of the quilt. And the little old Mother Superior, passing with a basket of linen, towels and sheets and pillowcases for tomorrow; the Irishwoman, with the zipped fur boots and the sea eyes and the black and grey beard, came close to Daphne’s pillow and whispered,

  —Hello, and why don’t you speak?

  —Leave her, the nurse said, arranging and counting and marking Daphne’s clothes.

  —Leave her. This is Daphne. She is too ill to understand what you say.

  And Daphne, listening, thought —Oh, what a whopper. There is nothing in the world the matter with me, except that I have been bathed in a trough and dipped under a waterfall and the pine-needles picked from my scars so that they bleed invisible blood. Oh, what a whopper. I will show her immediately that she is wrong.

  And she folded back the bedclothes and dangled her foot on the slippery brown mirror that was spread like a floor across the room and, leaping from her bed, she hurried out the door and into the passage. Now where?

  But the nurses, touching and folding her clothes in their suitcase, called out

  —Get her! Get her!

  And five shadows appeared, so that she was put in a little house on the side of the mountain; and she cried to be let out, only to stand on the doorstep and look over at the world and the gentians and the snowgrass or to see if God were saying

  Blessed are the meek and the poor in spirit.

  But the five shadows whispered outside the door, and a sixth crept by, and suddenly they opened the door and seized Daphne and carried her to another house on the side of the mountain; there were many houses, all small and made of snow and iron; but this one was strong, with no light, and a smell of straw, and in the corner a round rubber vessel like a top hat upside-down, or a homberg that a cabinet minister may wear; only it was a chamber, and one of the shadows said,

  —Use it, Daphne. We want a specimen.

  And all the time outside the sheep were sitting on the lower slopes of the mountain, and the blanket of snow higher up, and ducks rising, like rainbows, from the black pools of the valley.

  34

  And Daphne lived there alone for many years, amid the assault and insinuation of sound in days unshining and nights without darkness; first the farm cries from the hill, the lariat of surging animal talk whipped in and out of the morning mist; the ear strangled in a noose of bark, crow, cry; and scream from the other farm, the down-place with its row of stables rich with steaming manure from imbeciles and the long-dead mad plotting their daily treasure in the small mountain room of four corners and a wooden pocket window. And the struggle to take hold of time between the slat-shadows of an unreal sun, for there the day is day but never.

  And the whistle, the hooter, sounds at some hour like the scream of the mill, and Dap
hne remembers the poplar mornings and their tall slain shadow with the blood seeping through the coverlet of leaves, and the pearls of ice in the heart of cabbages for kings and queens; and the sticky shine of a snail’s track; and the desolate ragged sky, comfortless, like a cheap cotton blanket that would not warm and the wind poked through. And the mill girls going on bicycles, chased by the south wind to their rooms of blindness; but not here, Daphne, here at the hour of the hooter, the door outside the mountain hovel is unlocked, some other door of a brick house holding the idiots and maimed and the dwarves with their crepe faces and parchment eyes, and these people move into the yard; they jabber, jibber and are quiet; they know what you say to them; they know, they are understanding, so they must work; and off they skip and limp and crawl, with bundles of soiled clothes under their arm to the laundry; all day with the hiss of steam like snakes in their ears; ironing, folding, hanging out the clothes; feeding and being crushed, their heads and the bones in their heads, under the mangle that is time, taking the sheets of earth they lie between and the pillow-cases of dream they rest their hearts on. They are tired and tireless, their faces are hot, and they roll up the sleeves of their print smocks and sit all together, with their wine and loaves of bread in the centre; and at mid-morning they drink their wine and break their loaves of bread, and are satisfied. And the men tell stories, and walk in the doctor’s pyjamas, smiling and shaking hands and bowing because they are Gods in flannelette; but all is not peace; for they quarrel and scream and fight for the last loaf of bread and the last glass of wine till the overseer comes back from her cosy corner, her mouth floured and moist with hot scone; and the hooter sounds once more and the mangles begin their revolutions of pitiless greed; and the wine and bread spill from the jibbering jabbering and quiet mouths, and they die till the midday renewal of the feast, in the brick house on the side of the mountain. Daphne hears them returning shuffling, whimpering, like dogs to their kennel; and then the silence of grace,