When I Saw the Animal

by Cohen, Bernard;

  ‘Wow.’ She had teared up a little, one escaped down her face, and she made no effort to disguise it. Revealing emotions is a sign of strength, anyway.

  ‘It was like a series of You Won’t Believe What Happens Next. It was amazing, and there was no way to share it because everyone was acting impulsively.’

  ‘But you just shared it,’ she said.

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes. Kind of stream-of-consciousness.’

  Geena Davis was eating pancakes, and her companion taking notes – a journalist, most likely.

  Near Miss

  A crash, an echo, the steady background drone of insects with punctuating, arrhythmic birds carrying some harsh melody.

  He had not recovered from the drive. His ears still hummed with the sounds of the road – well, that was normal – but moreover he was still shaky and still actually shaking from the near miss, the swerve away from the looming vehicle with that glimpse of the old man’s terrified stare caught in the sunlight. In the rear-view mirror he had seen the trailer swing out into the road behind him and back again, a sick metronome proffering the chance of death, though no one had died. He saw in the rear-view the other car pull across to the side. The old man must have been shaking too.

  He thought for a moment to stop, turn around, check on the old man’s condition, but he was a little angry, or very angry, hard to tell. What could he have said? Are you recovering from putting me at risk? Can I suggest you stay seated and do not restart the car. Why were such drivers still permitted? It was best that he had not stopped. The confrontation could be played out in his mind without having to subject a living human to his Gestalt moment.

  He had driven a little further but pulled over at the point marked Rest Area and stared for a long time through the windscreen, through a barbed wire fence, at the intense green field in that late afternoon light. He wasn’t even thinking about luck. He took a couple of gulps from his water bottle and thought it tasted delicious. Afterwards, he was conscious of slowing his car, staying a few kilometres per hour below the speed limit. Another hour – it would usually have taken him thirty-five minutes – and he took the old gravel road off to the left, just past the lumberyard. As it wound its way through the hills he opened his window to admit the scent of the eucalyptus forest: faintly minty, he thought, but really the finer points of scent were beyond his capability. The blunt aspects, that all the air that had been in the car when the old man almost killed him had now been replaced by new, non-killer atmosphere, this he comprehended. And he drove more slowly along here than he ever had before.

  Tomorrow, Niamh would arrive and the near miss would have faded from his consciousness. He tried to think of Niamh now, tried to conjure up her scent, but his mind kept pulling him back to that moment, the swerve, glimpse of the trailer swinging out in his rear-view.

  He was moving again now, drawing out of the Rest Area, but so slowly that perhaps he could have run faster. Tomorrow, the image might lose its insistence. Driving was, in some ways, a constant spate of near misses, all the roads tightly packed and everyone losing concentration with great frequency. No one could possibly remember them all, the feints into wrong lanes, brakes applied just in time, vehicles hurtling through yellow-turning-red traffic lights, pulling out to see around impossibly parked trucks only to find other trucks advancing at speed. It was a wonder there were so few accidents, perhaps some evolutionary watchman trait, a quirk whereby in the species only a small proportion lost concentration at any one time, leaving all the others to look out for them or to stay out of their way. Is this something Niamh would have said? She would have found words of comfort from somewhere, most likely. Niamh was good in a crisis. He tried to replace the flashbacks with images of her, or to insert Niamh into every scenario: there she was, driving a little yellow car, stopping after an accident to offer assistance. She was the police officer. Ha! The thought of her uniformed was ludicrous enough to break in.

  Even at this speed, he was making progress. He passed the doll mansion, as he and Niamh had named it, a dwelling comprising a rectangle of old planks and corrugated iron with pink stripes painted here and there, flywire instead of glass for windows, though compensated for by a couple of skilfully rendered trompe l’oeil windows and a pair of less artful Doric columns either side of a crappy old door, or an antiqued mock-original entrance boasting (as a real estate agent might put it) an arch of plastic dolls. The doll mansion marked one kilometre to go, and shortly after he pulled up beside his own little shack, climbed from the car and sat heavily on the ground. He was surprised by how weak he felt, needing some sweet tea perhaps. The shack itself was a bit more than the name suggested: three rooms, a generous and well-made veranda around three sides, running water. There was even mostly reliable electricity and a couple of years earlier he’d brought up a good mattress.

  Heaving himself back to his feet, he pulled a couple of bags of food out of the car boot, carried them into the kitchen, leaving them on the floor. Inside the shack, it was chilly, so no urgency to refrigerate anything. He switched the fridge on and removed the wedge, which was supposed to prevent mustiness.

  Back outside, he made his way to the top of the slope in the southern corner of the yard and sat on a log to catch the last of the afternoon sun, its heat on his face amidst the chill of the forest rising with the mist from the valley floor. Orange beefsteak fungus grew in clumps around the base of a blackened stump. The moss at his feet had gone to seed. Further away in the forest there was a creaking sound, a cricket or if he was lucky it might have been a gang-gang cockatoo and he might catch sight of it. When Niamh arrived they could take the path, which followed an old watercourse into the valley, from the southern side of the property. The southern side of his estate, as she insisted. He hoped his hearing would have recovered fully by then; he felt a little muddy inside, not pleasant, and although it wasn’t the kind of discomfort he would mention to Niamh, he hated feeling that he was holding back – better to have nothing to complain about in the first place.

  In the distance a dog yapped, a day early for it to have been warning of Niamh’s arrival. He had a sudden image of her at twenty, striking and confident, as they’d leaned against the sun-warmed cement university wall. That instant. He had been so taken with her, gripped. He remembered the moment of thinking, there in the patch of sunlight: aah, so this is love. How could two people kiss so slowly? The feeling of her through all those winter layers of clothing and sumer, as it was said, is icumen in.

  As if, he thought to himself, as if he hadn’t stayed in love with her, that feeling – however it happened – that was beyond attraction. They had all been so beautiful, he knew in retrospect, the blanket of beauty that was youth, but she was still as beautiful. Yes, that look she had, oh my God, differently beautiful now apart from that look, that’s true, and she was less harsh in her judgement and her expressions of it. As was he. But still, he wondered if they would contest everything this visit as they had on the last, arguing as vehemently about the issues on which they agreed, one or the other trying to find distinguishments between their mutual adoration of a certain movie or nuanced distinctions in their contempt for some political statement or other. Would he feel obliged to make declarations? Oh Niamh, as if he hadn’t said how he felt and, intermittently, rarely coinciding, she had.

  A blowfly roared by like a motorcycle, that’s how he phrased it to himself, the thing veering around the mountain roads of the air, a motorcycle through the blind spot, and he was back to recalling the image of the fear in the old driver’s eyes. Dammit, there it was again. He tried to let the picture go, or to force it out of his mind by turning the views to instrumental purpose, watching the coils of mist moving across the valley. Cicadas picked up their chanting all at once, last chorus of the day, in response to some shift he couldn’t pick out. That last slice of crimson sun dipped another degree behind the forested ridge to the north-west and was gone from hi
s yard. He pulled the jacket tighter. Around him, the Australian bush took on its twilit duotone, greys for the earth and sky, shades of orange at the horizon. He walked across to the undamaged car, pulled his bag from the back seat, and one last box of fruit. He would put the shack in order, creating an impression of himself as newly organised, latterly matured. Imagine what she would make of that misrepresentation.

  The little house cooled substantially at night and he stacked his usual meticulous fire, struck the match against strips of dry newspaper, which took immediately. Here he was, mesmerised again, willing the heat to fill the little room, shifting the twigs a little, leaning in to direct his breath at the fire’s base, having faith that choosing the correct angle would cause the fire to strengthen as always, conscious of faith despite the fire always taking, so skilled he was. And there it went, flames searching for a grip around the heavy log he’d laid on top. These were the moments when he didn’t mind the solitude and for a moment he almost regretted having asked Niamh to join him and especially the self-weakening way he’d asked her so that they both felt the weight of the anticipation. He threw a few small sticks in; the fire had caught well and there was no purpose other than to watch them burn away, olive-tinted leaves catching in an instant, leaving an outline of glowing points before falling away into ashes. How would it be this time tomorrow, building the fire but with no monopoly on it, he and Niamh taking it in turns to play with it or duelling for the right to turn a branch? Would she kiss him? Should he kiss her? What if, after all this time, the attraction felt only nostalgic, the desire a memory of the desire he’d once experienced? He had no answers to these. What if he took one look at her and felt everything all again? That was a better question to contemplate.

  He dragged his bedding down beside the fire and lay on his side, staring into the pulsing coals. After a while he slept.

  Niamh floored it around the semitrailer, pulled back in. The car shook, this noisy old bastard. Here she went again, Andre and his hilarious Folly, the Estate. He was the most sentimental human she had ever fallen in love with, and slow-moving too. Such arms in which to enfold, his bear hug and his repartee, one then the other. The wine bottles clicked together behind her seat. She intended to stay there for some time. I’ll be out of contact till I’m back in, she had written, and I’m fine so relax. At twenty-five he’d decided on the bush block – all decisions made at twenty-five are the correct ones, he’d said. How right he’d been, though neither of them really knew it. We should live together up there, he’d said. What about life, she’d replied. Bring it, he’d said. A mere two decades later, they were still mid-conversation, and just now she was thinking maybe, maybe.

  She took the turn-off, wound her way along the unmade road, passed the doll mansion. There he was as she pulled up, standing out the front of his Folly, grinning like a fool. She shoved open the car door, already laughing, and he started laughing too, and he strode forward to pull her out of there and inside.

  Part II

  Lingua Franca

  Sin titulación

  My mother got whacked in the ear with a small fish and now she’s hard of herring. Translate that into French, M. Blanchaille.

  She folded the piece into a small envelope, wrote his address on the front, no return address, stuck a stamp on, wandered around the corner to the postbox.

  Ella fue horneada

  She received a postcard with a URL scrawled across it in green ink, barely legible – strangely, the obverse depicted a birthday cake. She typed the address into her browser. A message on the screen flashed greenly on and off at her: Don’t go to too much blinking trouble, Señora Pestaña.

  Fucsia profondo

  Across town, he received a pot plant from a floral delivery firm. The pot was plain – terracotta – and the plant was a maidenhair fern with a nursery label tied to it with dark pink cotton. The label read: There are enough bald statements in the world already, Herr Herausfallen.

  She laughed from time to time, thinking of his German-illiterate face, enlarged by hairline recession.

  Un sexto de vida

  Once again with the aging process, he thought, the one thing I cannot mitigate. They had known each other a long time. He sighed. He clicked. Niente. The internet was on the blink and on the nose. He had to repost his riposte. The longer it goes, the longer it grows, the less she knows. Non è così, Signora Setto?

  No se arrugarse

  Señor Pliegue, who bothers whom? read the newly sprayed red graffito running along the corridor outside his office. And it continued, smaller, in black marker pen: Shall we not meet near the butcher’s or the bookshop? I’ll be one turn ahead.

  She was

  allí.

  Further Notes to the Monkey Problem

  After the title, Hamlet, and preceding a faultlessly typed manuscript of that play, a monkey had typed a clear, concise foreword explaining productive methodology.

  We have often heard Ferdinand de Saussure lament the dearth of principles and methods that marked linguistics during his developmental period. Partly in tribute to him and partly as a salute to Professore Vetano, the pioneer of this program, I offer this foreword to my current translation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

  As so many have argued, and eloquently, ‘Writing is not something that can be taught.’ We have discovered that it is an entirely random activity, its randomness checked only by the calligraphic limitations of the keyboard. Nevertheless, a certain intentionality may be imputed in that, within those parameters, no monkey’s practice was otherwise delimited by teaching or other discipline. It follows, then, that what we were undertaking was indeed ‘writing’ and this ‘writing’ was of an exceedingly pure species. We were untaught as James Joyce himself was untaught. He had only the tools of the craft before him, produced without the premonition of greatness. Joyce had greatness thrust upon him in what became his epoch. This has become known as our epoch, the epoch of the Monkey House.

  Six months ago, Vetano told me I was lucky. I do not deny it. I am lucky to work in such an environment; I am lucky my patrons are so supportive of myself and my colleagues; I am lucky that, of all the monkeys in the Monkey House, I was the one to produce Hamlet; and I am lucky Vetano’s research assistant, Mr Juredovich, discovered my work and published it for all the world to share and enjoy. I am lucky, but if I were not, another monkey might have received the glory or, perhaps, the work would never have been written. This discussion holds no interest for me. I have done what I have done and, if I have done it without pride, then I am modest or else incapable of pride, unlearned in folly.

  One of the major criticisms directed against our practice is that it is not ‘artistic’. Now, while I do not hold that ‘any monkey can be an artist’ (Bonzo, ‘k;vbip’ [unpublished manuscript], c. 1923, p. 18,622), I would argue most strongly that our practice is an artistic one. What chance is there, for instance, that this work will be discovered within my lifetime? Many great works produced within the Monkey House have been consigned by their authors to the garbage heap, lost to history and to eternity. Many great authors have died, undiscovered and never to be discovered. This is what ‘art’ is, a breath of air in a gewitter of activity. Our workshop environment is that thunderstorm, the rates of production incredible. And we work hard, always seeking that gust of genius, that Truth, that fleeting chain of characters which overflows with meaning.

  Now to the production of Hamlet. Critics have asked, as critics will, what a monkey would know of Denmark. I have seen Vetano respond angrily, shouting, ‘Have you read this work? Have you?’ I have only sympathy with the Professore’s position but shall here attempt a fuller reply. If a critic were to ask me what I know of Denmark, unless that critic were a monkey, I probably would not understand. If I were to understand, the critic (unless a monkey) would not understand my reply. Now suppose the critic did understand my reply and I spoke not about Denmark, but about something quite different. A re
sponsive critic would search for connection, for metafora, for the meaning in my response. Yet this is not the criticism I have received. And why? Because intelligence is not imputed to me. If I should type not of Denmark, does that mean I know not of Denmark? It does not. I know of the arms of my love yet type not of them. Or perhaps I know not of them. Either way there need be no relation between experience and product. I do not pretend to write autobiography. I am not the King of Denmark, nor am I an historian of the Danish Royal Court. All I ask is that this work be considered as it stands for you, the reader or performer. I did not think on you when I wrote; now you must not think on me.

  Lastly, ten thousand monkeys took part in Vetano’s literary program. Their participation provided me with the support, the incentive to continue. As I saw them rewarded for their efforts, so did I redouble mine. I learned much from them, and I am privileged to believe that some of them have learned from me. It is to these monkeys, my colleagues, that I dedicate Hamlet.