When I Saw the Animal

by Cohen, Bernard;

  I knocked on Deputy Principal Glass’s door.

  ‘This new class, either we’ve got off to a bad start or we’re continuing badly.’

  ‘That sounds right,’ said Glass.

  ‘Some refuse to sit at desks.’

  ‘So let them stand,’ said the deputy. ‘What difference could it make?’

  ‘When standing, they seem to listen less.’

  ‘That’s not possible.’

  ‘What do you advise?’

  ‘Carry on as you are. Or don’t.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, as expressionlessly as possible.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll find your own way through.’

  ‘Sure.’ I allowed a small amount of warmth into my voice.

  ‘Or not.’

  Perhaps I had been smiling. I felt the expression sag down my face.

  Day Fourteen, Part II.

  I knocked also on Principal Flederman’s door.

  ‘Come.’ For some, it is important to save on prepositions. I entered. ‘Ah, Semmet. There you are. I hear all is going well.’

  ‘Oh good,’ I said, curricular articulation evaporating.

  ‘Delighted to hear it. That class has been a tricky one, at times. But they’re good kids, deep down.’

  ‘Yes. I guess they are.’

  Given my designation as Teacher, I had been surprised to observe the extent of my own learning. To summarise, it comprised the element of increased acceptance and the element of inversion of expectation, the element of decentred architecture and the element of tolerance, the element of dynamic social reformation and the element of isolation. The children’s learning comprised negotiation, blanketing and rhythmic chanting. None of this was noted in the curriculum documents or annexes.

  I began to prepare the test papers.

  Waltzing Matilda

  Brown-bound menus offer the usual egg and chips, sausage and chips, steak and chips choices.

  One of four uniformed police at the next table stands up and begins to sing operatically.

  ‘We don’t need the fucking requiem,’ shouts his colleague. ‘Just get on with what you’re saying.’

  ‘Amen,’ says another.

  ‘Amen to you too, you unappreciative buggers. I was merely trying to illustrate a sense of the solemnity of his crime and to prefigure his tragic end. But if your foreshortened attention spans will only bear the abridged version, that’s what I’ll give you,’ says the singer. ‘Okay then, there’s wool and blood all over the fucking camp. His trousers are red from the thighs down. He’s red-handed too, you could say. And his rucksack’s practically still trembling with the poor creature’s rigor mortis. The grazier’s tut-tutting from his horse. Robbie and Tom – know them? – are no doubt gearing up to give him a bit of a hiding on the way back to the station, and I’m the one who sticks to the rigmarole.’

  ‘Constable fucking Procedure,’ mutters the shouter.

  ‘You got me right. So I tell him, “We’re going to arrest you for the sheep, you silly coot.” He stands up and he’s looking like he’s going to come quietly. I’m thinking, there’s a first time for bloody everything. Nice and easy, hands forward ready for the cuffs. World needs more criminals like that, if you ask me, head bowed, fully cognisant of the crime and his likely incarceration.’

  ‘Dead set, mate,’ says the amen-er. ‘Next thing you’ll be inviting him to the Christmas barbecue.’

  ‘A feller like that, and he admitted anything at all,’ agrees the first opera-hater. ‘Miracles in our lifetime.’

  ‘Ha! Not fucking likely. No cooperation actually happened. Instead he says, “Okay then, haul me in from here, bloody coppers,” and he jumps into the bog. No help from us, I swear, much trouble as that stupid bugger has been over the years.’

  The fourth begins to laugh. ‘That what you told the coroner, is it?’

  ‘What do you think, John? “Yes, Your Worship, whilst we had no part in the unfortunate man’s actions, and had indeed taken all care to prevent self-harm on his part, we had previously consulted on optimum launch angles and velocities.” Wouldn’t have minded too much, but of course I wouldn’t do it. All my friends’d agree to that about me. In fact, many have in earlier circumstances. Besides, as you know from your own extensive training, such courses of action are against the rules. I don’t have a rule-breaking bone in my body.’

  ‘The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks,’ says John to the other two, who laugh briefly.

  ‘Well,’ admits the storyteller, ‘we might not have stood by in entire and unreserved idleness.’

  More laughter.

  ‘And the stains on his trousers did require immediate rinsing. But let’s agree he pretty much propelled himself. Say 70 per cent self-propulsion. Or at least 60. Anyway, I genuinely liked him, despite his deep-seated recidivist criminality.’

  ‘Yeah right,’ says John.

  ‘John, I was a broken man afterwards. I wept for weeks. I loved him like a brother. You ask anyone. Ask his bloody mother.’

  ‘Right,’ says John, smirking. ‘I might do that.’

  ‘Sure you will. Dig her up and ask her. And while you’re spading away, I’ll visit that other accident-prone feller’s widow out by the dam, see how well she remembers you. Very nice that one, in all her mourning.’

  John adds a syllable to his previous utterance: ‘Right-o,’ and continues, ‘Got me there.’

  ‘Thought I did. But listen to this: the old bugger’s hardly in the swim for one second and he straight up disappears. Never refloated. No bubbles, not a single fart.’

  ‘Aw,’ says one of the others. ‘That’s very sad.’

  ‘Crying shame, isn’t it?’ continues the first policeman. ‘Grazier, name of Marston, Mr Marston to you, turns around and trots off without a word. Remaining three of us, grade-A coppers all, staring like frillnecks at the flat brown surface. Nothing there, and Tom’s panicking straightaway. He’s shaking like a baby and he says, “Jeez fellers, what’ll we do about this?” Then Robbie – you blokes know him?’

  John assents, but the others shake their heads.

  ‘Big, slow fellow, but smart and about as level-headed as a school boater, decides, “No corpus delicti. Looks to me a lot like nothing’s happened here.” He says, “Hang on,” and puts his ear near the ground. “Nope. Nothing. No cavalry.” Tom gets excited about this method, squeaks out, “No corpus, no forms!” and Robbie says, “Amen. Requiescat in pace,” and I’m saying, “Anyhow, homo ovi fucking lupus.” Three of us never breathed a word to anyone and no one ever asked. Probably no one missed him.’

  ‘Straight in, no splash?’ asks the fourth.

  ‘Straight in. What a fucking hero. Makes me want to weep.’

  John interjects, ‘Weeping’s orright. Just don’t fucking start singing again. Nellie bloody Melba.’

  All laugh.

  Fire in My Brain, That You’d Like to Put Out

  The advertising screen at the front of the bus is on silent. Image after image of laughing consumers, but nothing to be heard above the engine. Every sequence transforms a purchaser into an owner, all without adding a decibel. How can it be ‘on silent’? I ask my neighbour. Why not just ‘silent’? Why not ‘on silently’? No comment. I judge that my neighbour does not wish to participate in this conversation. If you can spend it, why not? mouths an owner of things on the screen.

  Along the way, we pass mostly temporary buildings. They have, though, permanent fences.

  I photocopy buildings in my head – almost every one is full-sized. This is something to be proud of, though I have been asked not to speak of it. Some of the fences are also fitted with swinging gates. I could take the buildings from my head and unfold and demonstrate them for you. I’m guessing you don’t want me to do that as you have previously asked me not to. Along the way, at each bus stop, holes in
trees are exactly the gauge of children’s fingers, and on the bus some people can’t stop speaking and others never start. It is easy to think of the fire as dormant in underground (underskull?) lodes or nodes but it is very hot in my head and because of the fire’s persistence, I have come to think of myself in geological terms.

  If you can spend it, why not? mouth the owners of things on the screen at the front of the bus and conversants overlay or reflect that philosophical terrain. Clarification: the owners of things on the screen – the owners are on the screen with their things. The things are not shown unowned on the screen.

  Some of the things which are not on the screen are in my head. Fire is not a thing. The bass by the time it reaches me has been bleached or blanched of all musicality. Clarification: conversants – those who are conversant fit either the true definition of those who are knowledgeable or the logically consistent one of those who converse. Who can tell which fits whom? Sometimes black looks red to me because of back-lighting.

  ‘If you had a really dumb kid, would you send it to private school? I mean, really dumb. Wouldn’t it be a waste of money?’ So says one of the passengers behind me to her companion. Those on the bus could say anything. You dream of marbled kitchens and you dream of not being on a bus or of buses not being on roads and you don’t know how to imagine children because you’re the owners of things (advertisement). Is nobody else saying or has nobody else said this to conversants on a bus? Perhaps the people who will not say it are those who are silent, or perhaps those who cannot stop talking will reach those words eventually. The driver hears the same words literally-I-mean-seriously-count-them a thousand times a day from disembarking passengers, manages half a nod every time. Thank you. Record-setting freak in the driver’s seat. Children are like people but they have a lot of questions and don’t know the difference between copying and inventing. The fire will break out again and although it would be better if it never returned I think that if it never returned I would kind of miss it or perhaps I am already missing it even though it has not yet left.

  After a short time I am outside and I don’t know the two men I am standing near but I copy them in my head but not full-size. I can unfold them if you wish.

  ‘So they put the stent in and I started smoking again and it fucking clogged up again.’

  The men shake or shook or will shake their heads. Bad luck follows some people like their own dogs. Scratch bad luck behind the ear. Wait while bad luck pisses on a gatepost. Feed bad luck from a can and even bad luck seems well cared for. Some people choose their own dogs. One man exhales a dense, narrow cloud and they maybe head maybe west, maybe into the afternoon sun and at the same time away from the morning sun.

  Since the fire started, I haven’t smoked at all – one shouldn’t burn the midnight oil from both ends or whatever the wicking expression is. I and all my pollutants were internalised much before, but I can’t remember the details and it’s normal not to remember details, said a woman on a radio to someone else but for my benefit and the benefit of all others who can’t remember details or whose brains are smouldering in ways as invisible as a woman on the radio. Mm, said the other person.

  The two men in the street and the two conversants on the bus pass each other but not sequentially.

  Lesser bridges of Sydney and surrounds include A.W. Bewley Bridge and Gordy Wilson Bridge and Skye Winter Bridge. I have also seen several bridges which share names with children of people I know. People recall the names of roads but not of bridges. This is only a tendency, meaning don’t go listing all the bridge names you remember – this won’t disprove anything or prove nothing. Or the legions of road names you forget. It is unlikely I will forget or remember more than I already do. I fear flames will interfere with my vision by means of flares or flare-ups or flare-outs. Flames cannot touch the copies so it can be inferred that the brain or head is segmented.

  Someone is crossing a road and someone is on a bridge maybe crossing and maybe standing still. No more details because silhouette. The one moving passes the other though it might be the other way round or the moving one might pass through the other because since the start of the fire I’m not dealing very well with time. For example, sometimes the chair along the path appears red and sometimes it appears blue, and it is perhaps two different chairs or one chair which is acted upon by an unknown colourer or by two or more colourers in conflict or collaboration with one another.

  Look at all the little sticks poking out of the ground. Is it muddy or dry or is there a sequence of one followed by the other? You cannot help me too much because once you start I won’t be the same person I was and you will be helping someone else who may or may not wish for your help. If I am calling for your help you should give the help quickly and at the end remind me of the details of what you have done, but I won’t call out for your help. I didn’t mean to cause anyone to be enslaved but we all do it and so have all my friends and acquaintances and enemies, and I don’t know whether or not it is due to fire catching as the bus travels through differently populated administrative divisions.

  New metaphor: pneumatophore. We are not transactional as a species, despite the projections of people on screens at the front of the bus. We are predators and prey and we are like mould and glass. There used to be mosquitoes which resembled clouds and now the mosquitoes resemble rays of grey light. No humans are sad for the mosquitoes, and all the religions make excuses for them, such as religions advertised on the screen at the front of the bus. Frogs may be sad for the mosquitoes, but in selfish ways.

  A man is inhaling through a tube which is poking out of him and he takes it out and puts it back in and inhales and takes it out, though sometimes he may omit one or more of these steps. He is a funny man and he is walking on the street. I should not laugh although he is funny with the broken-off pneumatophore. He may be funny and angry or they may be in sequence but which is up next I cannot tell from his gestures with the cycle of take out and put in. The conversants on the bus are no longer discussing the children they don’t have and the schools they won’t send them to. They are looking through windows they carry in their pockets.

  I am inside and outside at the same time, like a dead person who loves to be places and also to look at places from a distance. I would like to be happy and being on fire limits the kinds of happiness to those kinds which survive being burned. I would like to be happy in a fireproof way. Wishing is good for adults and children.

  The bus has begun to rise. Ascending mountains causes sunsets. I say this because of intimacy. Intimacy emits heat which proves it is cooling down over time. There are no patterns for the fire which sometimes seems dormant and sometimes descends the stairs between the feet of a huge sandstone sphinx amidst verdancy and sometimes puts out its light so slowly that puts out could mean either emit or extinguish.

  The conversants on the bus continue to age. One now possesses at least one child, but the child is so intelligent in the conversants’ judgement that the previous or future question as to school choice will not be or has not been tested. The bus passes from one administrative division to another, possibly at the crossing of an unnamed bridge, and the passengers do not feel any different. A smoking man crossing a bridge continues to smoke and he doesn’t care whether he needs a new stent or if stents can be renewed, perhaps by being photocopied and unfolded. I am or was or will be with a doctor who says that stents can be copied in a new way and that one should not smoke on bridges. The doctor speaks more slowly than conversants on the bus. Conversants on the bus have several children and they stop conversing with each other and they’re only talking to their children who are asking one or two questions over and over and the questions seem to me too ordinary even for children, and they must be asking as a way of reinforcing the wellbeing of the adults. I am outside so cannot suggest they ask about names of bridges, but I am inside so can point out bridge names as we pass and one conversant says thank you even if in that person’s
judgement I’m not the person who should discuss bridges and also says nothing about the fire, possibly out of politeness or because of poor observation.

  I am understanding the rule about saying one thing precluding saying another thing. When children say there are no rules they want that to be the rule.

  At night I am visited by a long list of nocturnal animals but during the day no animals visit – have the diurnal creatures taken a set against me? Is the sun enough fire for them and the flicker in my irises too much? The possum does not come when I call her name but if she is already there neither does she run away. If I have fruit I give her fruit because she does not care for conversation or does not regard me as conversant. I would like to go through some aspects of the future because we are already living in the future, I try to say to her but she prefers to be given fruit. I know so much about all the places named Buccleuch. The children do not know to ask about it. By now the men on the bridge have finished their crossing. None of the children goes to private schools and they are all staying on the bus. The bass sound has not regained musicality. All is winding up. A wind blows the bass away and exposes the underside of leaves. The fire inside me feels like the end of the world.

  The Lander

  They were five, four rising impatient and a fifth, sleeping, perhaps immune from the deferral eating at the other four. Kolominsky glanced at her watch three times in a row as though to ascertain the exact moment at which grumbling would become permissible. Their sense of waiting was exacerbated by an intrusive buzzing, and by Kolominsky insisting that the angles defined by the buzzing thing’s paths and ricochets were in fact disease vectors.

  The thing itself, dazzlingly red and blue with a thick black stripe across its face like a parody villain, spun around to face Vandenberg. She swatted at it with a glove, which she had drawn dramatically from a clandestine pocket in her jacket’s upper arm, and propelled it the length of the table, straight at Clements.