A Fraction of the Whole

by Steve Toltz

  And then, on my second reading, I found a quote that was so frighteningly to the point, I actually shouted “Ah-ha!” which is something I’d never said before and have never said since. It was this, on page 101:

  Pascal notes that during the French Revolution, all the nuthouses were emptied. The inmates suddenly had meaning in their lives.

  I closed the notebook and walked to the window and looked down at the twisted roofs and roads and the city skyline, then moved my eyes to the sky, to the clouds dancing on it. I felt as though I had drawn a new and fresh source of strength into my body. For the first time in my life, I knew exactly what I had to do.

  ***

  I caught the bus to Eddie’s and trod a narrow path winding between expensive jungles of fern to the front of his sandstone house. I rang the bell. You couldn’t hear its call from the outside. Eddie must have made a lot of money himself from strip clubs- only rich people can afford to mute like that; the silence is due to the thickness of the door, and the more money you have, the chunkier your door is. It’s the way of the world. The poor get thinner and the rich get chunkier.

  Eddie opened the door, combing his thin hair. Gel dripped off the comb in large dollops I could smell. I cut straight to the point.

  “Why are you always so good to my father?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re always offering money and help and kindness. Why? Dad says it started the day you met him in Paris.”

  “He said that?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I don’t understand- what is it you want to know?”

  “This generosity of yours. What’s behind it?”

  Eddie’s face was strained. He finished combing his hair while searching for the right words to answer me.

  “And while you’re answering that one, answer this: why are you always taking photographs of us? What do you want with us?”

  “I don’t want anything.”

  “So it’s just plain friendship.”

  “Of course!”

  “Then you might be able to give us a million dollars.”

  “That’s too much.”

  “Well, how much can you get?”

  “Maybe, I don’t know, a sixth of that.”

  “How much is that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, Dad’s been saving, and I don’t know how much he’s got, but it won’t be enough.”

  “Enough for what?”

  “To help him.”

  “Jasper, you have my word. Whatever I can do, or give you.”

  “So you’ll give us a sixth of a million dollars?”

  “If it would help you and your father.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “I’m not the one in hospital, Jasper.”

  I suddenly felt bad about harassing Eddie. He really was a rare person, and clearly their friendship meant a lot to him. I even got the impression he thought it contained a deep spiritual quality that was in no way lessened by the fact that Dad occasionally hated his guts.

  When I went back to the hospital, Dad was strapped to a bed in the same olive-green room. I peered over him. His eyes rolled around in his head like marbles tossed into a teacup. I bent over and whispered in his ear. I wasn’t certain he was listening, but I whispered myself hoarse. Afterward, I pulled the chair up next to him and put my head on his rising and falling stomach and fell asleep. When I woke, I realized that someone had put a blanket over me and a croaky voice was talking. I don’t know when Dad had started his monologue, but he was already in the middle of a sentence.

  “…and that’s why they said that architecture was like reproducing the universe, and all the old churches and monasteries were attempting the divine task of replicating heaven.”

  “What? What’s going on? Are you OK?”

  I could see only the odd shape of his head. He was straining to hold it up. I stood, turned on the light, and undid the bed straps. He turned his head from side to side, trying out his neck.

  “We are going to construct a world, Jasper, of our own design, where no one can come in unless we ask them.”

  “We’re going to build a world of our own?”

  “Well, a house. All we have to do is design it. What do you think of that?”

  “I think that’s great,” I said.

  “And you know what else, Jasper? I want this to be your dream too. I want you to help me. I want your input. I want your ideas.”

  “OK. Yeah. Great,” I said.

  It had worked. In his sandstorm, Dad had found a new project. He’d decided to build a house.

  V

  Per his instructions, I brought Dad every book on the theory and history of architecture I could find, including weighty tomes on animal buildings such as birds’ nests, beaver dams, honeycombs, and spiders’ burrows. He took the books with delight. We were going to build a container for our moldy souls!

  Dr. Greg came in and noted the piles of architectural literature. “What’s going on here, then?”

  Proudly, Dad told him the idea.

  “The Great Australian Dream, huh?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I said, you’re going to pursue the Great Australian Dream. I think that’s a very good idea.”

  “What do you mean? There’s a collective dream? How come nobody told me? What is it again?”

  “Owning your own home.”

  “Owning your own home? That’s the Great Australian Dream?”

  “You know it is.”

  “Wait a minute. Haven’t we merely appropriated the Great American Dream and just substituted the name of our country?”

  “I don’t think so,” Dr. Greg said, looking worried.

  “Whatever you say,” Dad said, rolling his eyes so we both could see it.

  ***

  A week later I went back. The books were open and pages torn up and scattered all over the room. When I entered, Dad held up his head like a hoisted sail. “Glad you’re here. What do you think of manifesting the symbolic paradise of the womb, a house huge and glistening, and we’ll bury ourselves inside where we can really rot in privacy?”

  “Sounds good,” I said, moving a pile of books off the chair so I could sit down.

  “Tell me if any of these say anything to you: French chateau, English cottage, Italian villa, German castle, peasant simplicity.”

  “Not really.”

  “But geometric simplicity, OK? Fundamentally simple, uncluttered, loud, pretentious, and gaudy, without being dispiritingly tasteless.”

  “Whatever you like.”

  “Above all, I don’t want anything angular, so maybe it should be round.”

  “Good idea.”

  “You think so? Do you feel like living in an orb?”

  “Yeah, that sounds fine.”

  “What we want is to blend into the natural surroundings. An organic synthesis, that’s what we’re after. And inside I think two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a dark room, not to develop photos, just so we can sit in the dark. Now, what else? Let’s talk about the threshold.”

  “The what?”

  “The portal into the home.”

  “You mean the front door?”

  “How many times do I have to say it?”

  “Just once would be good.”

  Dad’s eyes narrowed into thin slits and the edges of his mouth curled downward. “If you’re going to be that way about it, we’ll just scrap the whole design. What about living in a cave?”

  “A cave?”

  “I thought we agreed we’d live in a uterine symbol.”

  “Dad.”

  “Well, what if we live in the trunk of an old tree, like Merlin? Or wait. I know. We could construct platforms in the trees. What do you say, Jasper- are we tree-dwellers?”

  “Not especially.”

  “Since when don’t you want to live in leafy sensuality?”

  Dr. Greg had come into the room. He was ogling us like a Supreme Court
judge watching a couple of neo-Nazis wash his car at traffic lights.

  “Dad, let’s just have an ordinary house. Just a nice, normal, ordinary house.”

  “You’re right. We don’t need to go over the top. OK. Which do you prefer? A cubical ordinary house or a cylindrical ordinary house?”

  I sighed. “Cubical.”

  “Have you ever seen the Tower of Samara in Iraq?”

  “No. Have you?”

  “OK. Here’s a structural dilemma we have to overcome. I want to hear the echo of my own footsteps, but I don’t want to hear yours. What can we do about that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “All right, then. Let’s talk ceilings. Do you want high ceilings?”

  “Of course. Why would anyone want a low ceiling?”

  “To hang yourself. OK? Hang on a sec. Let’s see…” Dad rummaged through his books. “Tepee?”

  “Come on, Dad, what’s happened to your brain? You’re all over the place.”

  “You’re right. You’re right. We need to focus. We need to be sensible. We need to be logical. So let’s be logical. What are the objectives inherent in the design of a house? To meet your physical needs. Eating, sleeping, shitting, and fucking. That translates to comfort, utility, efficiency. But our psychological needs? The same, really. In fact, I don’t see why we should separate ourselves from primitive man in this. Our goal should be to exist in a consistent climate and to keep out predators.”

  “Great.”

  “Just remember that the form of our habitat will inflict undue influence on our behavior. We have to be smart about this. What about an igloo?”

  “No.”

  “A house on wheels! A drawbridge! A moat!”

  “No! Dad! You’re out of control here!”

  “OK! OK! Have it your way. We’ll do something simple. The only thing I insist on, though, is that the ideology behind the design of our house should be the old Italian proverb.”

  “What proverb?”

  “That the best armor is to keep out of range.”

  This idea was clearly backfiring. Dr. Greg looked on quietly through these brainstorming sessions with half-closed, judgmental eyes. Dad had become luminous with ideas, but he’d made the undesirable leap from manic-depressive to obsessive-compulsive.

  Meanwhile I decided to play along and be a good provisional orphan, so I returned to the house for lost children. It made sense, because if I played truant they’d be lying in wait for me every time I visited Dad in hospital, and breaking into an insane asylum is just as difficult as breaking out. I also had to return to school. Mrs. French drove me in the mornings, and throughout the school day I scrupulously avoided telling anyone about Dad’s meltdown or about how my father and I were now living in separate homes for cracked eggs- talking about it would have meant surrendering myself to reality. I just went on as if it were business as usual. Of course, returning from school every afternoon was a nightmare, though as it happened, absolutely everyone at the house neglected to sexually abuse me in any way, and nothing of interest occurred there except I eventually gave in to my gnawing curiosity and listened to everyone’s stories, which were far worse than mine. In this way all the abandoned children robbed me of self-pity. That’s when I really bottomed out. Without being able to feel sorry for myself, I had nothing left.

  And worse, every now and then the fools at the hospital granted Dad access to a telephone. I’d answer it and suffer through a conversation like this:

  My voice: “Hello?”

  Dad’s voice: “Here’s a spatial dilemma: how to arrange the house so that at the same time it is comfortable for us but discourages guests from staying more than forty-five minutes.”

  Mine: “Not sure.”

  Dad’s: “Jasper! This is to be a hard, practical exercise! No messing about! Something that reflects my personality, no, my dilemma, my lie, which is, of course, my personality. And the color. I want it white! Blindingly white!”

  Mine: “Please, can we do something simple?”

  Dad’s: “I couldn’t agree with you more. We want something simple that can be eroded by the elements. We don’t want anything more durable than we are.”

  Mine: “OK.”

  Dad’s: “Open living space. No. That discourages human intimacy. No, hang on, I want that. I want…”

  Long silence.

  Mine: “Dad? You still there?”

  Dad’s: “Bullfighting ring! Gothic cathedral! Mud hovel!”

  Mine: “Are you taking your medicine?”

  Dad’s: “And no mantelpieces! They always make me think of urns with ashes in them.”

  Mine: “OK! Jesus!”

  Dad’s: “Which do you prefer, a porch or a veranda? What’s the difference, anyway? Wait. I don’t care. We’ll have both. And I’ll tell you something else. Ornamental detail can go to hell. We are the ornamental detail!”

  Then I’d hang up and curse myself for sending Dad down what I thought was another ruinous path. These conversations certainly did not prepare me for the abrupt change that was about to follow.

  ***

  One day I visited the hospital and was shocked to see that Dad had arranged the books into a neat pile. All the pages of erratic designs had been thrown away, and when I sat down in that eerily organized room, he presented me with a single piece of paper with a shockingly normal design for a shockingly normal family home. No moats, drawbridges, igloos, or stalagmites. No bullfighting rings, indoor slides, trenches, or underwater grottos. It was just a normal house. The construction was clear and simple: a classic boxy structure with a central living space and several rooms arranged off it. I might even go so far as to say it summed up the national character, right down to the veranda on all sides.

  He had finally seen his situation clearly: to build his house he must get out, and to get out he must convince the powers that be that he was once again mentally healthy and fit for society. So he faked it. It must have been a strenuous period for him, putting all his energy into pretending to be normal; he did this single-mindedly, and talked about the Great Australian Dream and interest rates and mortgage repayments and sports teams and his employment prospects; he expressed outrage at the things that outraged his countrymen: taxpayer-funded ministerial blowjobs, corporate greed, fanatical environmentalists, logical arguments, and compassionate judges. He was so convincing in his portrayal of Mr. Average that Dr. Greg swallowed every droplet of bullshit my father sweated out for him, swelling with triumph at the conclusion of each session.

  And so, four months after he entered the hospital, he was released. Dad and I went to Eddie’s house and secured his loan, which really consisted of Dad saying, “So you got the money?” and Eddie saying, “Yeah.”

  “I’ll pay you back,” Dad said, after an uncomfortable silence. “Double. I’ll pay you back double.”

  “Martin, don’t worry about it.”

  “Eddie. You know what Nietzsche said about gratitude.”

  “No, Marty, I don’t.”

  “He said a man in debt wants his benefactor dead.”

  “OK. Pay me back.”

  After we left Eddie’s, Dad tore his design for his dream house into pieces.

  “What are you doing?”

  “That was just a hoax. That was just to make those bastards think I was normal,” Dad said, laughing.

  “But you’re better now, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah. I feel good. This house idea has really got me back on top.”

  “So if that was a hoax, where’s the real design for our house?”

  “There isn’t one. Look. Why bother fucking around with building your own house? That sounds like an enormous pilgrim’s headache.”

  “So we’re not getting a house?”

  “Yeah. We’re just going to buy one.”

  “OK. Yeah. That sounds really good, Dad. We’ll buy a house.”

  “And then we’re going to hide it,” he said, smiling so proudly I finally understood why pride is on
e of the seven deadly sins, and such was the repellent force of his grin, I wondered why it shouldn’t be all seven.

  VI

  According to him, it was an idea that arrived in one piece, completely formed: we will buy a house and hide it in a maze. The idea came to him during a psychological game of word association with Dr. Greg.

  “Health.”

  “Sickness.”

  “Ball.”

  “Testicle.”

  “Ideas.”

  “Complexity.”

  “Home.”

  “House. Hidden in a labyrinth of my own design that I will build on a large property in the bush.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I have to go back to my room for a while. Can we continue this later?”

  And why did he get the idea in the first place? Maybe because labyrinths have always been a facile metaphor for the soul, or the human condition, or the complexity of a process, or the pathway to God. I discounted these as being too profound, and if I know one thing, it’s that men don’t do things for profound reasons- the things they do are sometimes profound, but their reasons are not. No, I must have inspired this whole ridiculous plan by making a gift of that silly book of mazes. The failure to complete a child’s puzzle infuriated him so that it lodged in his brain, and when the idea for designing and constructing a house came in, it either merged with the idea of the maze or wrapped around it, somehow fusing so that the two ideas became one.

  “Dad. Can’t we just get a house like everyone else and not hide it?”

  “Nah.”

  No one could talk him out of it, not me or Eddie and especially not Dr. Greg, who learned the truth when Dad went back for a checkup. He told Dad in no uncertain terms that a labyrinth wasn’t the Great Australian Dream, which is quite right, it isn’t, but in the end no one objected too strongly, because no one but me really thought he would actually build it.

  We went looking at properties out of Sydney in all directions, and each time he dashed out along the property lines, exploring the bushland, nodding his head approvingly at the trees and the space and the potential for solitude. The houses themselves seemed to be unimportant to him, and he took only a cursory look through them. Colonial? Federation? Victorian? Modern? He didn’t care. He only required that the house be surrounded on all sides by dense bushland. He wanted trees and bushes and rocks fused together, bushland so dense that even without the labyrinth walls, the natural landscape would be almost impassable.