Portable Curiosities

by Julie Koh

  Ralph twitched.

  ‘It isn’t humanly possible to swim from here to another country,’ said Ralph as One resumed her freestyle. The camera stayed on him as he concentrated on winding up the fishing line. ‘She’s delirious from the swim. Delirious from the swim,’ he repeated over and over to no one and everyone and himself.

  He maintained this conviction until the day she really did jump into the ocean to swim far, far away.

  One had left Two a note sticking out of his Freud.

  Some things just can’t be fixed, it said, and Ralph is one of them.

  When Two discovered that One had swum away from home, he refused to leave his room for weeks.

  His life, he knew, had been ruined by scrawny arms. If he had been stronger and better with a paddle, One might have decided to take him with her.

  He had always assumed they would make a break together, in one defining moment when the past would drop cleanly away. But now he was stuck here, alone, on this great fucking island continent, a failed disciple of the Ralph Method.

  Two spent all his time watching an old Hollywood farce on repeat. The plot of the film involved a gumshoe who was hot on the trail of an international double agent in a purple cape and waxed moustache. A dashed line on a cartoon map tracked for the audience the movements of the villain from Belize to Cairo to Saint Petersburg to the East Siberian Sea, where the line finally petered out and was replaced with a big white question mark.

  And Two, in the darkness of his room, would begin to cry, no longer knowing the whereabouts of that one person who would have put her hand on his shoulder at a time like this.

  *

  On the day the taxi arrived to take his father to the nursing home, Two was already fifty. Decades before, he had made what Ralph had declared to be The Most Irrational, Economically Humiliating Career Choice Possible For This Historical Moment. He had become a poet.

  To pay the rent, he worked six days a week at the country’s fastest-growing gym chain. His job was to make phone calls to individuals who had signed up in shopping centres for free gym trials. Sometimes he managed to arrange for them to come in for a personalised introduction to their local branch; other times he was told to shut his face, you Indian call centre freak.

  Two worked nights on his poetry and had chronic injuries from typing, so that he went around with his wrists permanently in bandages. At first, his colleagues at the gym thought he had been overdoing the wrist curls, but given his demonstrated lack of interest in physical activity, as well as his enduring inability to achieve any of his annual performance targets, they later came to believe that he was such a failure in life that he couldn’t even succeed in committing suicide.

  Two was visiting Ralph in the nursing home when Ralph asked, as he often did, what had become of Two II.

  ‘Council worker,’ said Two. ‘They pay him to get chewing gum off the footpath with a putty knife.’

  In reality, Stefan had given up lying for marbles and now worked in a glass tower, lying instead for thousand-dollar dress shoes to go with his thousand-dollar suits.

  ‘What have you been up to?’ asked Ralph.

  ‘Funny you should ask,’ said Two. The reason for his visit was to announce to Ralph that he had had a piece accepted by the arts magazine Human Waste. The magazine’s point of difference from other underground publications was that it was printed on recycled toilet paper and came in a roll.

  Two unwound the magazine to square twenty-three, on which his poem was printed, and showed it to Ralph.

  ‘It’s only eighteen words long,’ said Ralph.

  ‘Twenty, if you include the title.’

  ‘How much did they pay you for it?’

  ‘A six-pack of blank toilet rolls.’

  ‘So, a third of a roll per word,’ said Ralph. ‘They got a good deal there.’

  ‘But,’ said Two, ‘what if this poem is the answer to the meaning of life?’

  ‘Is it?’ asked Ralph. ‘Is the answer in this line about the difference between spiral and flat pasta?’

  Two saw his point. But what they both failed to realise, like all those who miss the secret of the Universe even though it is right under their noses, was that the answer lay in the enjambed line about the extra virgin olive oil.

  Ralph, on his own initiative, conducted hourly tests of the nursing home’s emergency call system.

  ‘Just confirming response times are on the bleeding edge,’ he would explain when staff arrived.

  He was on pills to regulate his heartbeat, pills to thin his blood, pills to reduce his cholesterol levels and pills to strengthen his bones. He was on pills to regulate his anxiety, pills to numb his depression and pills to make him sleep. His legs had given way completely, everything sounded to him like he was stuck at the end of a padded tunnel, and he peed every time he sneezed.

  Two became acutely concerned about all that was not going on in the old man’s brain. Ralph’s mind had begun to forget everything at an accelerating rate. In the space of a day, he had lost the ability to read the difference between three and nine o’clock. Once, he had even gone missing from the home and was found outside a chess convention attempting to bully a table lamp into taking him back.

  The nursing home’s resident psychiatrist was sent to observe Ralph’s conversations with inanimate objects. Ralph assumed the psychiatrist was his PA and ordered her to send for Razza to be old and sick in his place, because Ralph didn’t have time for all this crap.

  Ralph’s mind deteriorated to a stage where there was no way he would even be able to pick his nurses out of a line-up, which later became a problem when one really did need to be picked out of a line-up for putting Ralph’s Culturally and Linguistically Diverse roommate, Anastasio, in an acid bath.

  Two visited every morning. He would retie the shoelaces of Ralph’s sneakers, switch on Ralph’s hearing aids and whisper in his ear: ‘Let’s go.’

  He would haul Ralph into his wheelchair, spin it around and run him up and down corridors at unnatural, dizzying speeds.

  Then they would rest. Two would spoon porridge into Ralph’s mouth as they sat outside under a hexagonal pergola, next to a shrivelled woman with crimped hair who was convinced she was inside the command centre of an Unidentified Flying Object and had been sent to beg the alien-Two for mercy on behalf of the human race.

  The porridge would dribble down Ralph’s chin while Two talked to him about speed. About how fast Freud had come up with his theories, even though they were the work of a lifetime. About how you can only truly appreciate how fast a car is going by watching from the side of the road, rather than having your foot on the pedal.

  And every day Ralph gripped the seat of his wheelchair and felt like throwing up, but he managed to force a smile as he waited for this young stranger’s little romantic scene to be over. The boy, after all, was wearing bandages on his wrists, and Ralph knew to be careful with suicidal fools.

  Ralph couldn’t stem the bleeding of his heart but he didn’t know why. All he knew was that he had on his getaway shoes but there was nowhere left to run.

  *

  Ralph was dying.

  Two sat on a metal chair next to his bed in the nursing home and on the radio Ella Fitzgerald was singing how she couldn’t give him anything but love, baby. Two wasn’t sure Ralph could hear her. Ralph’s eyes were open and unseeing. An infection was in his brain and there wasn’t a pill for it. His head jerked from left to right to left to right all day and all night.

  *

  Two woke from the warmth of the sun on his eyelids. He shifted in his chair. First he saw the window he forgot to close in the night. Next he saw his father, motionless. He crept up to watch Ralph’s chest for movement.

  There was nothing.

  Two felt like a little boy standing over the cage of a dead bird, knowing that this was a calamity that could not be fixed. He wondered if his father had been too hot in the night from the extra blanket Two had used to tuck him in, or if he had been too
cold from the winter chill breathing through the window.

  Maybe in the end, he thought, everything is about temperature, not speed. He supposed that, if Ralph had chosen this as his arbitrary philosophy, Two might have been raised in a climate-controlled chamber, or even warm in an oven like a loaf of bread.

  He laughed.

  A nurse who had run in to attend to Ralph was horrified that a son could be sniggering at a time like this.

  Two didn’t notice her in the room.

  Sand was drawing away from under his feet, sucking him below to the seabed and into the heavy folds of the ocean. The weight of all that water was sitting on his chest and in his throat.

  Somewhere up above, nurses and doctors and more nurses were trying to talk to him. He couldn’t hear any of it. There was too much water between them.

  The water scared him. He was the little boy again with the weak arms, crying to Mary and Moses and Allah and Ganesha and the Monkey God to take it all away, to drink up the sea because he couldn’t breathe.

  Then he saw Ralph lying next to him, still shrouded in blankets.

  Two stopped struggling.

  He rested his hand on Ralph’s shoulder and sat by him for the longest time until there was no water anymore, just the two of them and the open window and the winter air.

  The more Two watched, the more he realised that this dead body had little in common with his father. Whatever made Ralph Ralph was no longer in this room.

  When the bed had been cleared and Two was sitting wordless under the pergola next to the UFO Ambassador, a nurse put an envelope in his hand.

  ‘It was under his pillow,’ she said.

  ‘Ah,’ said Two. ‘The list.’

  *

  Two is standing on the cliff where Ralph used to beat his chest.

  He has come here to cross off Ralph’s final, unwritten item and to burn the list, leaving its ashes to vanish with the wind.

  But when he opens the envelope, the list isn’t there.

  In its place is the defaced jack of hearts.

  Two holds the card to the light to see it better. Then he sets the jack down against a rock, so that its one blue eye can look out over the ocean.

  He steps back and regards it with a smile.

  A win-win combo, he thinks.

  Following the jack’s gaze across the water, Two squints at the rising sun.

  He puts his fingers to his mouth and gives a sharp whistle that he imagines One can hear somewhere out there.

  Once he is done, Two takes himself to the local pool to swallow salt water and weep salt water and be his own saltwater system.

  Then he floats on his back and spreads his alien tentacles over the world.

  Slow Death in Cat Cafe

  A cat cafe in Strathfield, in the state of New South Wales, is seceding from the Australian nation.

  The owner of the cafe, a balding Chinese man, declares his intention to secede over a loudspeaker while I’m sitting on the blond wood floor of his establishment eating a slice of Meow Meow Mud Cake.

  The man wants to transform the cat cafe, called Cat Cafe, into a micronation called the Republic of Cat Cafe.

  He has a list of justifications, which he reads out.

  First, he objects to local council’s obsession with hygiene, in particular its draconian ban on the presence of cats in areas where food is served.

  Second, the international community is in dire need of a nation that exists solely for the benefit of cats, to protect them from the vagaries of human nature.

  Third, people everywhere are crying out for an imagined Community of Cute in the midst of a world gone mad.

  The owner folds up his list and declares the Republic of Cat Cafe to be the greatest utopian project in the history of mankind.

  ‘Is this a marketing stunt?’ I ask. ‘I mean, to create an actual nation you’d need your own territory, right?’

  I’m pretty certain that the land on which this cafe stands, in the busiest part of Strathfield, is territory that Australia is unlikely to give up any time soon.

  ‘I pay the rent,’ says the man. ‘Renting is basically owning.’

  Although wobbly on his territorial claim, the cafe owner has thought of everything else. He’s surprisingly well-prepared. He has a cartoon flag and coat of arms ready, both emblazoned with the motto ‘Community of Cute’. He has boxes filled with hot-pink Cat Cafe passports and newly minted Cat Cafe coins.

  The national anthem, in Japanese, is a bouncy super-cute pop song. The owner plays it on the sound system as he trots around the cafe introducing the members of cat royalty, one by one.

  ‘Princess Mittens, Lady Mumbles, Duchess Ragamuffin …’

  Once he’s done, he turns to the humans in the cafe.

  ‘You are all citizens of the Republic of Cat Cafe,’ he shouts. His shout is positively Hitlerian.

  ‘Will we have to pay taxes?’ I ask.

  ‘We’re a tax heaven.’

  ‘How are you going to defend the Republic? Do you have an army?’

  ‘I am the army,’ he shouts.

  He strides to the front door and locks it. He takes a large knife from the kitchen and installs himself at the cafe entrance.

  ‘You’re either with us or against us,’ he shouts. ‘I henceforth declare a state of martial law.’

  ‘Can you really enforce cuteness using violence?’ I ask.

  I realise I’m the only citizen in the cafe asking questions. The Republic’s population comprises me, in funereal black, and a bunch of other Asian girls in pretty polka-dot rompers. They’re regulars and appear to be untroubled by the owner’s crazed proclamations. They like the idea of hanging here for free – a newly declared perk of citizenship – so are on board with the whole project. Besides, the three hours they’ve already paid for, flying by at a rate of eighteen dollars an hour including complimentary drink, aren’t up yet.

  ‘From now on,’ shouts the owner, ‘tourists will be required to apply a week in advance for a visa to visit the Republic of Cat Cafe.’ He holds up the self-inking stamp he intends to use on foreign passports. The stamp is in the shape of a cartoon cat wearing a military uniform and a handlebar moustache.

  ‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘You can’t secede right now. I’m meeting a friend. How’s he going to get in?’

  ‘But you’ve been waiting here for hours,’ says the owner.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Sorry to break it to you. But you’ve been stood up.’

  It only dawns on me now, after two slices of Meow Meow Mud Cake and three Longhair Lattes and a Cutiepie Cupcake and a large bowl of Napoleon Nachos, that Michael, my best friend, might not be coming.

  The owner and his knife settle down on a stool by the front door. Activity in the cafe continues as normal.

  This is my first time here. To get in, you have to leave your shoes at the door. It’s a bright space with a skylight, and the walls are decorated with cat murals in pastel colours. Attached to the walls are baskets and play equipment for the cats. Plush cat houses and cat-sized four-poster beds lie scattered around the floor. The cafe soundtrack is a mix of bossa nova and Yo-Yo Ma, with a slow jazz cover of ‘My Favorite Things’ recurring every half-hour or so.

  The cute Asian girls with their dainty pink feet pursue the cats around the cafe, trying to get the perfect photo.

  ‘Lady Cookie,’ they coo. ‘Lady Cooo-kiiiie.’

  When in need of a rest, they return to their assigned coffee tables. They sit on cushions on the floor, drinking tea, pecking at desserts, taking selfies. They snap themselves wearing cat ears and cat masks, doing peace signs. One girl takes at least a hundred photos of herself hugging her pouting face against a pillow that has been digitally printed with the face of a Siamese cat.

  After exhausting their selfie options, the girls ask me to take photos of them with the cats. I oblige, keeping their faces out of frame. The results confuse them.

  Having watched everyone for the past two hours, I have come to
the conclusion that, secession or no secession, the cafe is a special kind of hell for cats.

  It isn’t that I even care about cats: I have zero interest in them. It’s just that they clearly aren’t having a good time.

  None of the girls seem to notice that the cats keep trying to get as far away from them as possible. They’ve abandoned their play equipment and beds, and are waiting near the door, in the hope that they can make a dash for it. The girls creep up to the cats and squat over them, shoving their iPhones and full-frame DSLRs in their faces.

  ‘Hey,’ I tell the owner. ‘You want to secede from Australia? These cats want to secede from your cafe!’

  He responds by pressing a button on a remote control. An instrumental version of ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ starts playing.

  If the Cat Cafe is hell for cats, it’s some sort of suspended reality for sweet young girls. They’re all so distracted by the cuteness of the cats, they don’t even realise that they – like everyone else ever born – are slowly dying.

  This is how they are passing their allotted time, drinking tea and eating cake in a place that reeks of cat.

  I sit here in the newly announced cat republic thinking about the first time I met Michael.

  I was at university, in the first lecture of a unit called World Politics.

  The lecturer was introducing us to neorealism, a theory of international relations first expounded by a man called Kenneth Waltz. The lecturer had a sonorous voice and a Scottish accent. I was entranced.

  ‘In this course you’ll be learning about several theories of international relations,’ the lecturer had said. ‘But the most seductive one by far is Waltzian neorealism. Why? Because of its stunning parsimony. What do I mean by parsimony? I mean that this theory is a veritable striptease. Right before your eyes, it strips the complexity of international politics down to one determining factor: the anarchic international system.’

  He paused for effect. ‘And what do I mean by the anarchic international system?’ He paced two steps to the right, then two to the left. ‘Imagine, if you will, the Hobbesian “state of nature”. The great man, Thomas Hobbes, argued that before the modern nation-state came into being, there was a state of nature where all men were at war with each other. Why was this the case? Because no man had security. There was no higher coercive authority like the state to which a man could agree to give up his freedom in return for security.