I couldn’t concentrate. I stared across Coronation Drive at the Brisbane River. I could never quite believe that the present had inched forward from the past. “Look at those barges,” I said. “I bet they haven’t replaced them since we were students. They’re decrepit, it’s a miracle they’re still afloat. I could swear even the graffiti hasn’t changed.”
“It hasn’t,” Brian said. “We come back younger because we’re in orbit, that’s all. Brisbane gets older, we get younger. A clock on a spaceship moves slower than clocks on earth, don’t you know that, Philippa? If we went on a journey to Alpha Centauri, a few light-years out, a few back, we’d come back younger than our great-great-granchildren. Got that? And we’ve moved light-years from Brisbane, haven’t we? So it figures. The trouble with you arty types is you don’t know your relativity ABCs”
Dear Mrs Leckie, I could write. Brian’s in orbit. He’s simply lost track of time, it’s all relative. We could go backwards, and swing on your front gate again. We could unclimb the waterfall. We could go back through the looking-glass and watch the future before it came.
I sent out daily e-mail messages to Brian’s number. Past calling the future, I signalled. Brisbane calling Far Traveller. Please send back bulletins. I miss you. P.
I tried to goad him into verbal duelling: Which clocktime are you travelling on? Please report light-year deviation from Greenwich Mean.
Every day I checked my “box”. There was nothing.
I called Brian’s secretary in Melbourne again. “When you said you were still getting his e-mail,” I asked, “how often did you mean? And where is it coming from?”
“You never know where e-mail is coming from,” his secretary said. “Actually, we haven’t had any for several weeks, but that’s not so unusual for him. Once he went silent for months. When he gets obsessed with a new theory …”
“How long has he been ill?” I ask.
“I didn’t know he was ill,” she said. “But it doesn’t surprise me. We’re always half expecting all our researchers to drop dead from heart attacks. They’re all so driven.”
I think of the last time I saw him, in Melbourne. “Why don’t you slow down a bit?” I asked. “How many more prizes do you have to win, for god’s sake?”
“Prizes!” He was full of contempt. “It’s got nothing to do with prizes. Honestly, Philippa, you exasperate me sometimes.”
“What’s it got to do with then?”
“It’s got to do with getting where I want to go.” I could hear our beer glasses rattling a little on the table. I think it was his heartbeat bumping things. He couldn’t keep still. His fingers drummed a tattoo, his feet tapped to a manic tune. “I’m running out of time,” he said. I would have to describe the expression on his face at that moment as one of anguish.
“You frighten me sometimes, Brian. Sometimes, it’s exhausting just being with you.”
Brian laughed. “Look who’s talking.”
“Compared to you, I’m a drifter. Wouldn’t it be, you know, more efficient, if you just, even just a little, slowed down?”
“When I slow down,” he said, “you’ll know I’m dead.”
Between the soup and the main course of a dinner party, my mind elsewhere, I heard these words: that birchbark canoe that washed up … and police inquiries …
I had a peppermill in my hand at the time, and I ground it slowly over my salad. I took careful note of the sharp pleasing contrast made by cracked peppercorn against green leaf. I looked discreetly around the table. Who had spoken the words? Had they been spoken?
I could hear Brian say irritably: “Honestly, Philippa, you never verify things. You live inside this vague world of your mind, you make things up, and then you believe they’re real.”
“But so do you. You make up a theory, and then you set out to prove it’s real.”
“There’s the crucial difference,” he says. “My hypotheses are verifiable, one way or the other. I chase details, I nail them down. I won’t stop until my theory is either proved or disproved. If I can’t do either, I have to discard it.”
“Same with me,” I say. “I put riddles on one side, and come back to them. I do realise the birchbark canoe could have been a figment of my mind and my bedtime reading. I’m checking around. What’s the difference?”
“I’m not even going to answer that question,” Brian says.
“But don’t you ever come back to your discards?”
“Of course I do. Some problem sets have been passed on for generations. The trick is, you have to approach from a new angle every time. Half the battle is how you frame the question. Unperformed experiments have no results.”
“Exactly,” I say.
And over the candles on a dinner table at the other end of the world, I hazarded cautiously, flippantly: “Did someone just say something about a birchbark canoe, or did I imagine it?”
Seven pairs of eyes stared at me.
“Sometimes, Philippa,” my husband joked, “I swear you put one part of your mind on automatic pilot, and the other part is god knows where.”
“It’s true,” I said disarmingly. “So did I hear something about a birchbark canoe, or didn’t I?”
“The one washed up on the ferry dock,” one of the guests said. She waved a ringed hand and smiled, courteously tolerant. (“Bit of a flake, isn’t she?” I could imagine her saying to someone later. “Where does she get to, between the crackers and the cheese?”) “The one the police are making inquiries about. I was just telling everyone that I’d had to go down to the station and make a statement. And John did too, didn’t you, John? Didn’t you see him? Yes, I thought so, I was talking to Milly on the phone. So that makes two of us. I mean, who saw the canoe when there was someone in it. Paddling.”
“I saw him several times, as a matter of fact,” John said. “Came within ten feet of my boat once, when I was fishing. I waved – well, it’s customary – but he didn’t wave back. Funny, I only ever saw him paddling upriver. Beautiful canoe.”
“The Burketts,” someone else said, “the ones who live on Howe Island, you know? – they said there was a hunter camped there most of July and August. No one knew where he was from, and no one was very happy about it, but that’s who it must have been. I mean, they said he had a birchbark canoe and it’s not as though you see them every day.
“And then he just up and disappeared. The Burketts gave the police a full description and they’re putting out a trace, you know, for next of kin.”
“I expect they’ll find the body eventually,”John said. “I wouldn’t mind buying the canoe, she was a real beauty. I suppose she’ll go up on police auction sooner or later.”
“Won’t they have to hang onto it as evidence until the body is found?” someone asked.
“I expect so,” John said. “Yes, I expect so. Still, sooner or later. The police boats are out dragging every day.”
“I hope they don’t find him,” I said.
Everyone looked at me.
Sooner or later, I think, evidence of one kind or another will cast itself up: a dream, a letter, an item in the newspaper. Every day, I read the “Police and Fire Watch” column in the local paper. Every day, I am relieved that no body has been found. Of course this is ridiculous, and I know it. There’s a name for it: sympathetic magic.
And there’s that other matter too, for which Brian had a word: synchronicities.
What do they mean? I ask myself. What do they mean?
In the evenings, I read of doomed voyages.
The Relation of Christophe Regnaut concerning the martyrdom and blessed death of Father de Brébeuf … captured on the 16th day of March, in the morning, with Father Lalemant, in the year 1649. Father de Brebeuf died the same day as his capture, about 4 o’clock in the afternoon … I saw and touched the top of his scalped head …
The Relation of 1702: Father Bineteau died there from exhaustion; but if he had had a few drops of Spanish wine, for which he asked us during his last illness …
or had we been able to procure some Fresh food for him, he would perhaps be still alive. Father Pinet and Father Marest are wearing out their strength; and they are two saints, who take pleasure in being deprived of everything … But they do not fail to tell me and to write me that I must bring some little comforts for the sick … For my part I am in good health, but I have no cassock, and I am in a sorry plight, and the others are hardly less so …
I read also of survival against all odds.
The Relation of the First Voyage made by Father Marquette toward New Mexico in 1673: … his Canoe having been upset below the sault, where he lost both his men and his papers, and whence he escaped only by a sort of Miracle …
I check my e-mail every day, I send out messages, I wait. I spin theories and discard them, I shuffle sequences as I might shuffle a pack of cards.
The joker comes up every time. Any riddles for recycling? he grins. Any letters for uncertain destinations? Any unperformed experiments to go?
I’m not even going to answer that, I say.
OUR OWN LITTLE KAKADU
There must be, by Maggie’s reckoning, upwards of fifty chooks running loose, but who would know? When she steps carefully between pineapple rows to test the fruit cones, she puts her foot on at least a dozen eggs. First comes the soft crunch, then the streaky corona-squirt of ochre and snot, then the ooze between her toes. The soles of her feet squelch against her sandals, she is practically skating on slick. Hah, she thinks. Walking on water, tiptoeing on eggshells, what’s new?
“He took an axe to the chook house months ago,” her mother said on the drive from the airport. At the stop light, her mother had lifted both hands from the wheel, palms up, and raised them toward the roof of the car, beseeching someone, something, to bear witness.
“Jug’s violent again?” Maggie was startled. “I mean, physically violent?”
“Not toward me, no, no. Not at people. Not even at your brother. But there’s something … he feels violent, yes. He’s against anything being penned in now. Against pruning. You should just see the passionfruit. I could rip miles of it off the laundry shed if I thought I’d get away with it. It’s taking up all the clothesline space, I have to hang half our underwear on trees.” She clasped her hands together, the interlaced fingers pressing the knuckles white. “Well, he’s never done anything by halves, has he?”
“Juggernaut by name,” Maggie said.
“You can say that again. I never know what it’s going to be next. I’m terrified he’ll decide mowing’s forbidden. We’ve had two pythons on the verandah already, and god knows what’s living out there in the bus with him.”
“Mum, the light’s green.”
“What? Oh.” The car leaped forward, stalled, rallied. “You don’t know what it’s been like, Maggie. Chooks roosting in the laundry, in the bananas, in the vegetables, in the –”
“Mum, mind the –! Would you like me to drive?”
“I had a smashed egg in my hair last week. They’re laying on the rafters in all the sheds, you never know what’s going to fall on you. Not to mention chicks hatching wherever you happen –”
“Mum, pull over. You’re upset. Let me drive.”
“I’m not upset, I’m scared. He won’t talk to me, he won’t talk to your brother, he’s started drinking again, he does say things to his mates at the pub when he’s pissed, and there’s talk, there’s plenty of talk, but nobody can make sense of it. Nobody knows what happened. That’s why you had to come back, I’m counting on you.”
“Oh yes,” Maggie said drily. “We’re famous for getting on famously, me and Jug.”
“That’s the point. You’ll strike sparks. If he gets mad enough, he might blurt out some clue.”
“Doesn’t Ben strike enough sparks?”
“It’s weird. They’re totally silent with each other. Anyway I can’t get your brother near the place now, I have to go to him and Liz. And this is a taboo subject with them. Look, I wouldn’t have dragged you back from Melbourne for nothing.”
“I think I was looking for an excuse to come back anyway.”
“Yeah? The girl who couldn’t wait to get out, couldn’t wait to shake the dust –”
“Yeah, well.”
“Melbourne people are so up themselves, I did warn you.”
“Yeah,” Maggie laughed. “Made a bet with myself you’d say ” I told you so’ before we got home.”
“And wasn’t I right? Didn’t they give you the pip?”
“Yeah. Well, you know, there’s all kinds. I’ve got some good friends. It’s just … I don’t know … You can’t even talk about Darwin down there. You might as well announce you’ve come from Mars.”
“They give me the pip.”
“Whew, I’d forgotten how sticky –” Maggie eased her damp shirt away from her skin and leaned out the window. She wouldn’t forgive her body if it had switched allegiance, adjusted to Melbourne chill, lost the knack for wet heat.
And then they passed under the familiar tangle of mango, frangipani, bougainvillea, and she cried, “Hey! You can’t see the house at all’.’
“I told you. Pruning’s not allowed, no cutting back, nothing. What we’ve got here is five acres of new-growth jungle with room to walk sideways round the house. Our own little Kakadu.”
Between the half acre of pineapple rows and the house, Maggie can see flashes of yellow, bits and pieces of the bus. It is almost entirely covered by passionfruit vine, though at the four points where its axles rest in the earth, pawpaw trees rise in thick spiky clumps. He must dump the seeds there, Maggie thinks; it’s some new geometric ritual, the compass points of whatever this latest obsession is. He could live on pawpaw and passionfruit without leaving his rusty cocoon, she thinks. He could just reach out through the windows and pick. The light inside must be green now, like under water. He’d love that, Jug would, odd fish in his tank (shark in angelfish clothing? dolphin in sharkskin?), jugging it down, jug jug, tanking up in his tank, probably having a whale of a time, driving them all round the bend. As usual.
She sees now what was impossible about Melbourne. It was having to explain this, him, Darwin, all of it, any of it; trying to explain it without having to endure how quaint, how awful, how bizarre, how exotic, how horrible, how –. She couldn’t bear to expose her perfectly ordinary strangeness, her loony family’s ordinary Darwin madness, to people who knew so very little. Everyone’s a bit troppo up there, aren’t they? they would laugh, nudge, nudge. The Top End’s a bit over the top, wouldn’t you say? I could scratch you, she would think, and you wouldn’t be one sweat layer thick. But she’d learned to do it herself, play the clown, betray a memory here, the self there, one drink, two, it was easy, pile the accent on thick, get the laughs. Besides, only two years earlier, let’s admit it, she’d been frantic to flee, frantic, indecently keen to put as much distance as possible between herself and her own little haywired Top End bubble.
I can’t breathe here, she’d said.
She breathes the damp air, sluggish with pineapple musk, fran-gipani, white gingerflower. I’ll drown here, she thinks. I’ll never get away. I’m just part of this blissed-out vegetable world, slumping into the Arafura Sea. We’re all drugged. We’re all troppo.
Hallelujah! as Jug would have said.
She steps on another egg.
The whole bloody garden must be protein-enriched, she thinks. It seems to be doing wonders for the pineapples. Almost every plant has a plumed cone at some stage of ripening, and when she looks down the throats of not-yet-fruited clumps, she sees the telltale blush of things underway. How sexually blatant plants are, she marvels. She twists four ripe fruits from their serrated nests and cradles them in her arms. Squashing eggs as she goes, scratching her legs on the pineapple swords, she makes for the bus.
“Jug?” she calls tentatively from the door.
It was a school bus once, long ago put out to pasture, deregistered, bought at auction, on whim, for a song. Maggie thinks the most telling census qu
estion in Darwin might be this: how many deregistered, de-wheeled vehicles are slowly listing into your five-acre lot? The Darwin average, she suspects, would be three. Beyond the pineapples, beyond the bananas, the mangos, the vast overgrown lawn, the avocados, somewhere down among the compost heaps, there are, she surmises, four earlier family cars now all but invisible, bleeding rust into jasmine that has run amok.
In Jug’s bus, all the seats have been removed. There’s a galley kitchen in the driver’s niche, a bunk where the back seat used to be, a chemical lav in one corner, a hinged lift-up table along the side, a couple of armchairs spilling stuffing. Everywhere there are cobwebs with watchful spiders as large as poached eggs at their hubs. Chickens, eggs, ants: the floor seems busy. A harmless carpet snake, thick as a forearm, has coiled itself neatly into a chair.
“Jug?” There’s no answer so she climbs in. She sees him lying on his back on the bunk at the rear of the bus, arms folded behind his head, staring at the ceiling. He is wearing khaki boxer shorts and a singlet, nothing else, and the bus is ripe with the smell of unwashed male. Light comes through the passionfruit leaves, amber green. “Four pineapples,” she says brightly. “Real beauties.” She puts them into the miniature stainless steel sink. “Mum says you’ve given up on roads and bridges and gone into vegies and fruit. The market man, the green-fingered genius, she says.”
Speak, you stubborn old bastard, she wills him. She can feel the usual dual pull of rage and protectiveness. For a big blustering man, he looks unexpectedly frail, and she is alarmed by the sight of his skinny legs and bare feet. His face and shoulders and arms are like old leather, but the legs and feet – trousered and shod throughout his respectable years as a civil engineer – are as pale as the skin of young children. She feels embarrassed to see her father this way. It’s like seeing some soft creature with its shell peeled off. Improper. She lifts the lid off his icebox and takes out two cans of beer, watching him. She peels the tab off one can. It makes a slight hiss, and brackish foam bubbles out and spills over her hand. She sees his eyes swivel in her direction and she walks down the bus: “Mum tell you I was coming home?”
North of Nowhere, South of Loss Page 9