Tell it to The Dog

by Robert Power

  ‘I knew a poker player in Kunming …’ says Cheung with no hint of a smile. ‘He was Mongolian.’

  PSYCHIATRIST

  At the moment the German tourists are gunned down outside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Dr Sayed Alcott is discussing the plans for his new rehabilitation clinic in Heliopolis, on the outskirts of the city. It is to be an exclusive facility for the addicted children of the wealthy and powerful: politicians, military leaders and businessmen. His architect is poring over the floor plans and the designer is showing the good doctor the range of fabrics selected for the wall hangings. Decades of elite private practice and the privilege and largesse associated with his role as president of the Egyptian Psychiatric Association have made Dr Alcott a very rich man. This new facility is to be the pre-eminent resource in the Arab world and will cement Dr Alcott’s reputation and wealth. How could he even imagine that tomorrow the Minister for Health will demand his head? (For it will transpire that it is one of the guards at his hospital who accepted the bribe that allowed the patient out for the weekend.) Within a week Dr Alcott is in jail, where he will be held for four full months to be interrogated and brutally tortured. (For surely there was a terrorist plot behind the slaughter.) A year later, stripped of his property and wealth, positions and status, he will be sent to a desert hospital to work as a junior doctor. Within two years he will be a broken man, and his heart, shattered and crumbled, will stop and he will fall down dead, to be found in a darkened corridor by the night nurse at the end of her shift.

  Yet now, as he runs his fingers over the lines of the architect’s drawings, imagining the tiles and the marble pillars, the frescoes and the lofty belvederes, how is he to know any of this?

  PAINTINGS

  Canvas and stretchers, oils and acrylics, linseed and turps. A brush, a paint-streaked easel, an open window. Poised. Ready to make a mark.

  A man standing on a step, naked, looking into the near distance. A rotund figure on a camel carries a Catalan flag, while behind him a monkey and a rat hold a huge whale hanging from a pole. A top-hatted figure offers flowers to an empty chair; in his other hand, a cracked looking glass reflecting the refracted face of a rosy-cheeked girl who peeks in from the window. Icarus rises; Icarus soars; Icarus falls. The You Yang Ranges at sunset. Barwon Heads from Ocean Grove. Mrs April comes to life to walk from the page to take the tiger baby for a promenade by the lake, to fly her kite, to juggle. Cathedral Grove in the middle of Vancouver Island. Sunny days, romantic days in Salcombe, Devon. ‘No escaping it / I must step on fallen leaves / to take this path’. And there, on the wall, the young Apollo, golden-haired, magnificently unprepared. Up on the ridge, in house number 25, in the forest clearing, the seven blue tigers, on the banks of the Amur River.

  CAR KEY

  Jack’d got into the habit of stealing cars to get home, always drunk, sometimes in a blackout.

  It all started when he locked himself out of his powder-blue Mark I Ford Cortina. A man on a Honda moped slowed down when he saw Jack trying to open the driver’s side window with a twig (in those days you really needed a metal coat hanger). Jack was contemplating smashing the glass when the moped rider stopped and said, ‘Any key’ll open a Ford.’

  He used his own to unlock the door.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Jack, not knowing back then how he’d end up using this nugget of information.

  Jack’d promised his wife not to drink and drive anymore and went to the game on the train. But the drinking got out of hand and he ended up somewhere deep in the country. He was alone and it was well into the early hours. He remembered the moped rider and decided to put the theory into practice. Just like his key had opened Jack’s car door, so Jack’s Ford key opened the first car he came across. It worked a treat in turning on the ignition.

  From that day on, a pattern developed whereby Jack’d take the train or bus to a social event, drink himself stranded and then steal a car to ride home. He’d use his socks to wipe fingerprints from the steering wheel, door handles and gear stick. He’d even memorise the numberplate in case he was stopped by the police. Normally the cars would be reported and picked up in a day or two. But on the couple of occasions when they stayed in the side street, Jack called up the police station and told them a car had been left unattended with the door open. He felt it was the least he could do.

  Last night was different. Instead of turning off the motorway to the road that led him home, he took a notion to keep driving to see his old drinking friend Dermot, who had moved to Cambridge with his girlfriend. His car for the night was a soupedup Ford Escort, which he’d taken from outside the Ferry Boat Inn, off Tottenham High Road. Inside was an elaborate control console that defeated him. Consequently, he drove the two hours to Dermot’s without headlights and unstoppable windscreen-wipers that intermittently scratched across the dry glass. He’d given up pressing random buttons, feeling strangely comforted by the animated company of the wipers.

  By the time he got to Dermot’s house it was just before dawn. He banged on the door but there was no answer. He shouted his name, but there was no response. So he went around to the garden and forced open the back door. He heard the frame splinter but didn’t think he’d done too much damage. All was quiet inside, so he figured they must be away. Making the best of it, he snuggled down on the sofa and fell fast asleep.

  He felt the shake of the hand on his shoulder, but the face that greeted his waking eyes was not that of Dermot’s. The police uniform gave it away. Behind the officer stood a sheepish Dermot.

  ‘Oh …’ he said, ‘it’s a friend!’

  Later (after the arrest and the detention at the local police station, the officer’s threat to set the car owner on Jack in the cells, the call to Jack’s wife and her ‘go to hell’ in response), Dermot told Jack he’d thought he was a burglar, and, on account of his youth in Belfast during the Troubles, he was terrified of bumps in the night. He was sorry and Jack told him not to be. Not much bothered Jack in those days. Certainly not this.

  So, after Dermot had told the policeman that Jack was a friend, he asked Jack about the car that was parked (illegally) on the kerb outside.

  ‘My colleague has run a check. What’s the registration number?’

  ‘ABH 245B,’ he recited, drunk as he still was.

  ‘And it’s yours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘My girlfriend’s?’

  ‘And her name is?’

  ‘… Margaret?’

  ‘Nice try, you’re under arrest.’ And out came the handcuffs.

  Jack’d like to say that he learnt his lesson, but that wasn’t how he operated at that time of his life. Rather, he held a position of rightful indignation at the fates conspiring against him. Hadn’t he been unlucky that Dermot and his girlfriend had knocked themselves out with too much dope and that Dermot’s IRA phobia had made him call the police? And hadn’t he got the car registration number spot-on? So the very next Saturday, as if to redress the balance of natural justice, and finding himself marooned and alone outside the rugby club in Braintree, Essex, he felt for the key in his coat pocket and looked up the road for a lift back to town.

  BLOOD

  He has already cycled over one hundred kilometres when he sees it glistening on the roadside. As he whizzes past he realises what he has seen is a blade, a knife. He cycles another hundred metres or so then stops. He must do the right thing. He rides back, close to the verge to avoid any oncoming traffic. And there it is: a long kitchen knife, with what looks like dried blood on its tip. He doesn’t touch it. He dials triple zero on his mobile phone.

  ‘There is a knife,’ he says, ‘on the roadside.’

  The police officer asks him for the location. He spots a road sign.

  ‘Between Marshall station and the junction of Grubb Road,’ he says. ‘On the left-hand side.’

  ‘Wait there,’ says the policeman.

  ‘I’d rather not,’ he says. ‘I’m meeting my wife.’

&
nbsp; ‘Be better if you do,’ the other replies.

  But he cycles off, sure that he has done enough of his civic duty. An hour later his phone rings and another policeman asks his name and says: ‘Why didn’t you wait?’

  ENGRAVING ON THE BENCH

  I see it as a garden. That special place that is reserved. The place in hell. That special place in hell that is reserved for those who purposefully live their lives in sadness. And there is a solitary bench in that garden – Dante was there, and he once engraved my name on that bench. It was once waiting for me. Where no winds blow, where leaves lie on the gravel paths. The bench in the garden in that so solitary space. But I relinquish my claim. Not for someone else, not to let someone else take my place. But no longer to apply, not for this position. The bench will fade and the engraved memorial wear flat and indecipherable. That special place reserved for those, even in hell, who purposefully live their lives in sadness.

  PILGRIM’S PROGRESS

  The Hotel Beirut in Heliopolis has two guards. One is a large man in a lounge suit who sits in the lobby all day long. The other is a teenager in a tatty uniform, propping himself and his machine gun up against the wall outside the hotel. The President has decreed all hotels in Cairo should have guards to protect the tourists. Back in London, a week before our departure date, we heard the news on BBC radio of the riots and murders in Cairo.

  We were sitting in my kitchen, drinking tea.

  We listened in silence and then you said: ‘Whatever happens, I want to go.’

  You, who had never, not in this life at least, left the British Isles. Nothing would deter you. Not the letter from the travel agent offering us a substitute trip of our choice, anywhere in the world. Not the press release from the Foreign Office, nor the lurid stories in the papers of burnt-out hotels, slaughtered tourists and rampaging army conscripts.

  When we arrived at Cairo airport to be greeted by tanks in the car park, soldiers and a night curfew, you accepted it all as if part of a homecoming, a royal reception.

  So, as you sit in the lobby of the Hotel Beirut, chatting to the guard in the Arabic you are acquiring by the minute, it is as if this were the land you were born to. As I always knew, as we both always knew, since you took me as a child, lay me on the bed and whispered into my ear stories of the pharaohs, colonnaded temples and sphinxes under desert sands.

  But now, as we enter deep into the body of the pyramid, descending the steep stairwell to the burial chambers, you begin to breathe in short gasps.

  ‘It is not the effort,’ you say, ‘not the effort of the walking,’ as you tug at the collar of your blouse.

  You struggle for air and lean against the cold wall. It is dark but I can see the anguish on your face.

  ‘Someone help!’ I shout, and one of the guides rushes to your aid.

  ‘I have to get out,’ you say, ‘I am being suffocated.’

  The bearded man, dressed in a powder-blue djellaba and sandals, takes you by the hand and, without a word, leads you gently back up the steps. I watch the two of you ascend, your silhouettes, stark and bold against the light from the opening above. You place your hand on his with such ease. As if it is your right. To be led out of a pyramid by a noble Egyptian man into the bright Egyptian sunshine.

  By the time I join you, your guide has given you a glass of water to drink. I know what you will say. You look up at me, the look of a long-deceased woman of the Nile, as old as the desert, as sure as the sands.

  LIGHTHOUSE

  That day. A walk to the river. Not to any lighthouse. And did you collect the stones that filled your pockets, as you walked? Did you choose any special ones that took your fancy? Or were they already selected, their strange and special function to fulfil? And were they a few large stones, or an assortment of pebbles and rocks? All ballast. All to weigh you down. As if you were not already weighed down enough. Walking into the water, clothes, stones, shoes, coat (greatcoat, no doubt), sodden and laden. Deeper, deepest. And was it really the stones that ensured your drowning, that insisted you stayed beneath the surface? Away from the air. Hardly. No lighthouse to brighten your way, to steer you away from the peril of the muddy, muddied waters.

  THE SHEEP WHISPERER

  Walking the Wicklow Way, the soil of my birthplace underfoot. The wayfinder is the little yellow man with his ceilidh, painted on a post. He, a most welcome sight, guides me down a country lane. Thick brambled hedgerow flanks the path, hiding the fields beyond. The sun’s out after a day of rain (not the gentle Irish rain of lore, but torrential, unrelenting waterfalls of water). But today is sunshine and warmth. Brightness bouncing off the leaves. The wetness sparkling. As I luxuriate in the promise of summer, there comes a rustling in the hedgerow. Not of foliage bending to the breeze, but something much more urgent, more bestial. And then the flash of an animal scrambling to keep its footing on the bank that rises up from the lane. Peering through the hedgerow I see it’s a lamb, frantically trying to barge its way through the wire fence to its mother in the field. The ewe looks on as her offspring staggers backwards then tries again to force his head through the barrier. For all I can tell this may have been going on for hours, as the lamb is clearly exhausted. I’m a city boy, but I sense his distress. Lurching forward I grab the lamb by his hindquarters and haul him out of the brambles. And there he is, in my arms. Me the shepherd without the crook. Will he struggle? Will he relieve himself? But no, he seems glad to be plucked from his thankless task. Trusting in his saviour.

  He’s bigger, more solid and heavier than I’d imagined. The fence enclosing the field is too tall, so I have no choice but to walk on down the lane until I find a gate. There’s something strangely profound about carrying this animal in my arms. The action of sharing distress. Of coming to the rescue. At the bottom of the lane is a barred wooden gate. I haul him over the top and let him down gently, his forelegs making ground as I stretch doubled over to ensure he makes a safe landing. In an instant he is off across the field, heading towards his mother who waits impassively in the distance.

  At the end of the lane is a pub called ‘The Dying Cow’, named two hundred years previously when it was the site of a shebeen. The story goes that once back then the police came by and caught the occupants making illicit liquor. One of the quick-witted distillers said they were brewing it for their sick cow that was near to death’s door. This day I order a coffee and tell my lamb’s tale.

  ‘Another fifty yards,’ says the barmaid, as if the stones of the pub itself were speaking, ‘and you would have run into the sergeant on his rounds and got arrested for sheep rustling.’

  MH17

  It was two weeks after the AIDS conference. We were all still shocked by the terrible news of our Dutch colleagues who had died in the tragedy. Our new team members from Port Moresby were in town for an induction and I was about to welcome them at a morning tea. Tony was standing next to me.

  ‘I was at Liam’s memorial service on Sunday,’ he said.

  When I looked nonplussed he added: ‘Liam Davison.’ My furrowed brow was a clear signal.

  ‘He was on the flight … with his wife.’

  Then the realisation sank in for me. I hadn’t read much of the detail of the news at the time. It was all too immediate and there were many events and memorials at the AIDS conference. But I recalled that a well-known Melbourne teacher had been among the victims. Liam’s wife, as it turns out. And Liam to me? He was on the judging panel that shortlisted my manuscript in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards that circuitously led to my publishing deal and my dream coming true. I read and was beguiled by Liam’s own fiction. Once we met for coffee and he agreed to launch my first novel. I have a video of the kind and encouraging words he spoke on that night at The Avenue Bookshop in Albert Park, Melbourne.

  ‘No,’ I said to Tony, looking down at the slice of cake in my hand. ‘I didn’t know that Liam was on that flight.’

  SUBURBIA

  Is it a blue-bin day or a red-bin day? (Blue for recycling;
red for garden refuse.) Standing in the schoolyard, the ladies who would soon be lunching, each one blonde, each one slim and beautiful. Standing in a huddle. The talk of renovations to self and property is interrupted by the latecomer. ‘What a morning! What a drama!’ Mrs Latecomer hurtles into the huddle; the blonde heads move aside to let her join the circle, the sanctum. ‘I’m late,’ she squeals, her blonde-haired third-grader having been shuffled into her classroom just before the second bell. ‘You’ll never guess why.’ She shrieks, excitement all-pervasive; jaws drop. What news? A project manager with the wrong measurements? A plumber with a left-threaded tap? The bell rings and the remaining children scuttle to their home rooms. The ladies stand wide-eyed in anticipation. ‘Well,’ she says breathless, ‘I was ready to come out on time, but I couldn’t find my new sunglasses! I had to wear my old ones! Look! Look!’

  THE INCIDENT AT THE RESTAURANT BY THE CANAL

  Sounds of washing up. Clatter of plates and laughter at the end of the shift. But something more tonight. Something slightly unusual. Sidewalk, alley, crimson against an oil spill in a puddle by the lamplight. Lemon juice on the air. The door from the hotel kitchen, open, letting out the steam and white fluorescent light. There in the half-shadows, to be stumbled over. Later on. To be revealed with the dawn and evaporating rainwater. A distinctly human stain to be baked on the cobbles by a rising sun. Easy over with a tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.

  THE GETTING OF STRIPES

  Men think they know. They make their stories to suit their own pride, said the tiger to the cobra. They say they gave us all names, that they saved us from the flood that was sent to rid the world of evil for their sake. And then they tell stories of how they gave us our attributes, our markings, our character. My stripes, your movement. In the distance the sound of the tractor and the chainsaw burred against the noises from the treetops. Sensing an approach and an intrusion, the tiger bade farewell to the snake and each made their own particular way further and deeper into the welcoming folds of the forest.