by Alex Shearer
“How about this guy, Louis? This guy in the uniform? Does he look like he might have a tumor?”
“No. He looks like he might not have a brain at all.”
“Don’t cause trouble, Louis.”
“How can I? I’m an invalid.”
The security guard approached with politeness and reserved hostility.
“Everything all right here, gentlemen? There a problem here at all?”
“Yeah,” Louis said. “The food’s pricey.”
“We’re okay,” I told the guard. “We’d just forgotten something. But we’re okay now. My brother’s just a little unwell.”
“I’ve got a big bloody brain tumor. Or rather, I haven’t,” Louis said. “It’s been taken out. So I’ve got a big bloody hole instead.”
“Can you point me toward the pizzas?” I said.
“Next aisle,” the security man said. Then, “Is he okay?”
“We’re fine,” I told him. “Louis—you coming?”
We moved on and got the rest of what we needed. Louis had no interest in what we were getting at all. He was keeping his eyes peeled for brain tumors.
“Louis, if you find someone who looks like they definitely have a brain tumor, what are you going to do? Say hi? Swap experiences?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Birds of a feather and strength in numbers. If you’re interested in boats, you hang around with guys with boats. Same thing. Like a club.”
“Louis . . .”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
We waited in the line to pay for the groceries. I noticed that Louis was intently studying a man’s head.
“Louis,” I hissed.
“What?”
“If you keep staring you’re going to irritate people.”
“Him,” he said. “Him. Definitely.”
“You can’t know that, Louis, not from the back of his head. They had to give you a scan, remember? You can’t just tell by looking.”
“I can. Wait until he turns.”
The man turned side-on, ready to bag up his purchases.
“There, see.”
He had a large elliptical scar on the side of his head and his hair was shaved.
“You believe me now?”
“He might have been in a fight or something. Or had an accident.”
But Louis just gave me one of his smug and satisfied I-knew-I-was-right looks. I found his patronizing attitude rather irritating and always had. Funny how people can do that. Even at a time when you ought to be forgiving them anything and putting up without complaint with everything they can throw at you; even when you know that you’re going to feel bad that you weren’t more tolerant and patient and accommodating; even with all that—they can still get on your nerves.
I look at the people in the supermarket too now, and I wonder if they have what I have—or if I have what they do—and what traits and concerns we might hold in common.
I wonder who’s happy and who’s lonely and who’s sick at heart. I see the men and women with young children and wonder how tired and exasperated they are today. Or I see the expectant woman and wonder how happy she is, and how apprehensive. Or it’s the lovers, all wrapped up in each other and themselves—and who can’t remember that, if they once experienced it, and who wouldn’t give some substantial savings to feel that way again?
I wonder how irritated people are with each other, or content.
But, unlike Louis, I don’t think you can tell easily. I think most people go out well-disguised. You don’t know the half of how they feel inside. Most of them just look normal and ordinary. Like you. Like me. Maybe.
21
Interlude
To my left was an opera singer, and to my right was an acrobat. The acrobat was a foot juggler, so we have to make the joke. No, she did not take her feet off and juggle them. What she did was to lie on a small ramp onstage and use her feet to juggle objects and keep them in the air—things like hoops, balls, small barrels. And she was very adept.
She was small in stature, not slim, but compact. She was in the seat by the window; the opera singer was by the aisle. I was stuck between them. We were eight miles up in the sky and eleven hours’ flying time from Singapore.
I hadn’t been able to get on the Internet to grab an aisle seat with some extra legroom for myself, so, the flight being full, I took what I was given, and that was what I got.
In the rows behind us were various other artistes—more acrobats, tumblers, trapeze artists, high-wire specialists, a guy who did a routine involving two ropes and a lot of bathwater.
They were headed for Australia, the same as me, going to put on a show at an arts festival there. With the exception of the opera singer, they were German. The singer was American, but she too lived in Berlin. She had married a German, she told me, but it hadn’t worked out, and after seven years they had divorced.
I guessed she was in her early thirties, but it was hard to tell. The captain had turned the lights down by now, and the porthole blinds had been closed. People had eaten their tray meals and drunk their wine and were settling down for the night, or watching movies with their headphones plugged into their ears.
As we flew, she told me a little about herself, about the small town without ambition that she had come from in the American heartlands; of her large collection of siblings and their problems and difficulties, and how she was the only one to fly the coop; of how her brothers and sisters were also divorced and separated, though her parents were still together; of how they had financial problems, and she helped out when she could.
But work was hard to get. Singing opera was a hard and competitive and often unappreciated business. She had known some lean years and had been thinking of giving up singing and finding something else, when this had come along—singing with this troupe of acrobats in this show. She punctuated the acts with another kind of entertainment. The show was doing well and had been positively received around the globe. But she only had a short-term contract for a limited run, and what then?
All the same, her mind, she told me, was in a good place, and so was she. She was thinking positive, because that was what you had to do. Those who thought positive would be successful, she said. You make yourself what you are. You make your own chances, your own luck.
How about ill people? I said. How about people who are born disabled?
That was due to their conduct in a former life.
So they were still responsible for their misfortunes? I asked.
Yes, she said. They were.
I asked her about people with brain tumors and if they were responsible for them. She felt that they probably were, due to their negative thinking and not being in a good place.
But don’t we all die? I asked her. No matter how positive we think.
Maybe not, she said.
Then she told me that she had been touring in New Zealand once, and the stress of all the performing had taken its toll on her, and she just needed a massage. So she called a masseur, and he came to the apartment she was renting, and he gave her a back massage and she felt somewhat better for that. But a few more concerts, and the pains came back. So she called him again.
This time, during the course of the massage, he asked if she might be interested in any “additional services,” which he sometimes offered. She got angry at this, because the masseur had already told her that he was married.
“What about your wife?” she said.
But he just said that his wife was in the same line of business.
She told him to go. So he went.
She related this story to me with some heat and indignation, but I didn’t see why. What, after all, did she expect? She had asked him back a second time to a place that she lived in on her own. He maybe thought that what he was offering was what she wanted—her whole object in
asking him back?
By now most of the reading lights were out in the cabin and many of the screens were dark. Being a trained singer she had good voice projection and as a result maybe talked a little loud. Just as she began to tell me something else, a woman leapt to her feet four rows away and came down the aisle.
“Can’t you keep your voice down?” she demanded. “There are people here trying to sleep.”
Without waiting for an answer, she returned to her seat.
The opera singer made a face.
“I guess we’d better keep it down,” she said.
The conversation petered out. She didn’t ask me one question about myself. But then performers seldom do.
As I was dozing off, I became aware of the acrobat on my right, moving in her seat.
“You want to get out?” I asked, getting ready to move. But she smiled and shook her head, indicating I should stay put. Then she stood up on the armrest, hopped over me to the next one, hopped over the opera singer and landed on her toes in the aisle.
She returned to her seat more or less the same way, just in reverse.
It must be good to have skills in life that actually come in useful.
* * *
When I got to Singapore I discovered that I didn’t have the necessary visa to let me fly on to Australia. But a man at the boarding gate got me one online, for forty dollars. Some people restore your faith in human nature, and usually while the opposition is simultaneously undermining it.
For this leg of the journey I had an aisle seat, but when I arrived at it, I found someone sitting there.
“Excuse me, but I think that might be my seat.”
I showed the woman my ticket.
“Yes,” she said. “I have a ticket for this seat here.” And she pointed at the one on the inside. “Maybe you might prefer to sit there.”
“No thanks,” I said. “I’ll stick with mine.”
Reluctantly and with ill grace she moved, conveying with looks and muttering that I was not a gentleman.
When I told Louis about it, he said, “You should have sat on her lap.”
But he was always there with the lateral thinking. Though I don’t know that the seat belt would have gone around us both.
22
Good News
I had to clear the books out and empty the wardrobes of paint-spattered T-shirts and ragged shorts. There was little fiction on the shelves. Louis seldom read it. Out of his collection of hundreds of books, maybe ten were novels. The rest were technical, or how-tos—how to build a boat, a canoe, a xylophone, a guitar, a table; how to work with stained glass; how to do metalwork; how to take an engine apart; how to build a house from straw bales.
And then there were the biographies of men who had sailed oceans in homemade dinghies, or who had lived on rugged farms, or walked up Everest in their old shoes. And there were books on Zen and Buddhism. He had eclectic interests; he just didn’t like made-up stories much, and why did he have to? Why should anyone? It’s all lies anyway. And while much fiction is said to contain some inner and relevant truth of how life is, a lot of it doesn’t, and just holds many false depictions of reality. Not that there’s anything wrong with escapism—until escapism is all you’ve got.
In books, there are men who solve the cases and fathom the clues and bring order and justice to the world, and while they know how to take a beating and even a brief hospitalization, they always make a comeback and are ready to go to work again in up-and-coming sequels. And while it’s good to read about them every now and again, they don’t seem to square with anybody you meet while you sit in the hospital waiting area, and the consultant still hasn’t seen you yet, though your appointment was for an hour ago.
The guys who walk down the mean streets and solve the cases never have those problems. They deal with the things that fiction can fix. And that doesn’t include tumors.
* * *
I was bagging things up and putting them out on the deck, prior to throwing them into the back of the ute and driving to the dump.
The front half of the Queenslander house was rented from Bella by a young couple, Tony and Beth. They had a yappy dog that Tony was always shouting at, telling it to be quiet and to behave itself. Tony was taciturn and unfathomable and sometimes surly. Louis believed he had offended him somehow, but I think he just didn’t know what to say to him.
So I was out on the veranda and suddenly there was Tony, out on his veranda too, right next to me. It would have been impolite to ignore him, so I said, “Hi.”
“Hi,” he said.
“Just clearing stuff out here,” I said.
“Right,” he said.
“Holiday today?” I asked, for it was midmorning on a weekday and he usually worked. He put up and took down For Sale boards for real estate agents. Or he turned them into Under Offer boards. Or Sold boards. Though he told me once that his heart and ambitions lay in aircraft maintenance, only it was too late for that. But as he was still in his twenties, I couldn’t exactly see why, but maybe didn’t know enough.
“No,” he said. “I’m taking the day off. Beth’s inside. We’re very upset.”
“Oh?”
“Tykie got run over last night.”
“What?”
“Nobody’s fault. He slipped the leash and ran out into the road. The driver was upset too, but it wasn’t his fault.”
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
“We loved that little creature.”
Really? I thought. Because you shouted at it a lot. But maybe we all shout a lot at the creatures we love.
“Well, I’m very sorry to hear that, Tony.”
“I mean, I know it’s not like losing a brother—”
“No, no—it’s still—you know—a living thing.”
“Anyway, we’re taking the day off.”
“Of course.”
“I’d better go in and see how Beth’s doing.”
“Yes, of course. Sure.”
He went inside. I carried on bagging things up and putting them out on the deck in boxes and shopping bags. Things for the Salvation Army to the left, stuff for the dump to the right.
As I brought some more books out, I heard footsteps. Two women, one middle-aged, one slightly younger, were filing up the steps to the veranda. I noticed that each one carried a thick book with a black leather cover. They were well but soberly dressed. They had a healthy, wholesome look about them. They were well-fed verging on plump, but by no means obese.
“Good morning,” the middle-aged one said as they advanced. “We’re here this morning with the Good News and—”
“Can I stop you right there?” I said. “This isn’t a good time, I’m afraid. My brother just died and I’m clearing out his house here, since I have to go home soon.”
They held their Bibles tightly. Maybe this contingency hadn’t happened before as they did their rounds, spreading the Good News and the pamphlets and telling anyone receptive enough to listen all about Jesus.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the older woman said, and it seemed she probably did most of the talking and the other one was there for observation and backup. “We’re very sorry for your loss. Maybe we could call back another time.”
If she says she’s going to pray for me, I thought, I’m going to lose it.
She didn’t. She just turned and they retreated back down the stairs.
But they hadn’t finished yet. They walked along the path and came up the stairs to Tony and Beth’s place, and they tapped upon the door.
“Look, I . . .” I started to say. But something stopped me. I don’t know what.
They tapped on the door a second time and Tony came to open it. He didn’t look so great—stubbled and even hungover.
“Yes?”
“Good morning,” the same woman said, and they both gav
e him smiles. “We are here today to spread the Good News. Have you heard that Christ is risen and that—”
“Our dog got killed last night,” Tony said. “It was run over by a truck. No one’s fault. It just happened.”
The two women looked embarrassed, but more than that, a little suspicious too. They glanced across at me, maybe looking for signs of faint amusement and well-stifled laughter and guffaws. Perhaps they thought we’d seen them coming and had stitched the stories up between us. But, in the circumstances, they could scarcely call us liars.
So, “We’re so very sorry to hear that. So sorry for your loss. Maybe we can call again another time.”
The expression on Tony’s face made the answer to that question a negative. He closed the door and went back inside.
The two women looked back across the veranda at me, and I think I maybe shrugged. Then down the stairs they went, and back out to the street, and they kept on walking. They didn’t try any other of the neighboring houses. Maybe they didn’t think it would be a good idea. Maybe they didn’t think it was worth their while.
Religion is something for the living. The dead already know the truth. Faith isn’t something they need now. They have the hard facts. They just don’t come back to tell us, that’s all.
23
Masks
Louis was going frantic, looking for something.
“What is it, Louis?”
“It’s the bits and pieces.”
“What have you lost?”
“The—bits and pieces.”
“Is it the cooler bag?”
“It’s the—you know—bits and pieces.”
“Which particular bits and pieces? Which ones?”
“You know. You know. The—bits and pieces.”
He got angrier, more frustrated.
“The drugs? Is it the drugs?”
“Yes. The bits and—”
“Which ones? The chemo?”
“No.”
“Anti-nausea?”
“No.”
“Anti-inflammatory?”