Fresh Fields

by Peter Kocan

  That was part of the way that life toyed with you, he reflected. If the world was completely bleak and barren it would all be very simple. You would just grit your teeth and struggle to the end as best you could. Everyone would, and no-one would have any illusions. It would be like the life he imagined Eskimos have—knowing nothing but ghastly horizons of ice and snow. Never having had meadows and orchards and songbirds, they didn’t miss them. But if you allowed them a glimpse of those things, they’d never again be content with everlasting ice. They would be going through the motions of their old true bitter lives, but the thought of the meadows and songbirds would be eating them away, ruining them as Eskimos without giving them the new things in any measure.

  That was the insight Diestl had tried to drum into him. The youth understood the point about the strudel. If you think about the strudel—about sitting in some beautiful cafe in Vienna, with Strauss waltzes playing—you are finished as far as the long road of your destiny is concerned. That’s what the world wants: for you to glimpse enough of the orchards, enough of the strudel, that you’ll be snivelling for it ever afterwards. And yearners and snivellers are no threat. They get stepped on and can’t do a damn thing about it. And Delia was a walking orchard, a living plate of strudel.

  A phrase suddenly popped into the youth’s mind. The beautiful knife. The most beautifully made and decorated knife is the one most likely to cut you, because you are drawn to touch and handle it. The most delicious berry is the one most likely to poison you. The most desirable witch is the one most likely to do you evil. He decided to call this the Principle of the Beautiful Knife. He felt he’d gained a new level of understanding. He reminded himself to tell Diestl about it.

  By the time he and Delia had finished their transaction, he was in the Diestl mood. He stared blankly past her and said nothing. He felt the solid weight of the Schmeisser and imagined what a burst from it would do to that room and all those knick-knacks of wisdom and sensitivity. She had asked him about his star sign and was chatting pleasantly about whether Earth or Water was his best element. But then she sensed that he’d got very distant. Her flow of talk began to peter out. He left without saying anything more and went out to the garage room and lay on the bed and stared coldly at the ceiling for a long time.

  SO HE kept to himself in his room. He always peeked out into the yard before venturing across to the toilet, or if he was on his way out. Mostly he came and went via the backyard gate that connected to the lane. Delia was in the backyard a lot. She did washing for the tenants for a fixed amount per load, so she was often in the laundry at the back of the house, or hanging the washing out. When she did washing she put a big apron on over her billowing robe and tied her flowing hair back and wore rubber gloves of a bright yellow. The youth thought of this as the Working Witch outfit. She also tended a herb garden in a corner of the backyard. Other times she just hung about there with Sunny, the two of them side by side on a couple of deckchairs.

  The youth would stand with his eye to the crack of the curtain and watch her as much as he could. Whenever he was watching her he would find himself feeling more alive and happy and somehow grateful to the whole scheme of things. But then he’d think of the Principle of the Beautiful Knife and begin to feel bitter and imagine unslinging the Schmeisser and injecting a burst of reality into it all. Despite his caution he occasionally came face to face with Delia. She would smile at him and say hello, or ask how he was getting on, and he would give a curt nod of the head or a half-wave of the hand to acknowledge her. It would have been rude not to acknowledge her. The youth wasn’t one for outright rudeness. Neither was Diestl. No, you remain polite, as long as it doesn’t endanger you, and as long as you also make it clear that you don’t care. In fact you make it clear that the extent of your not caring would stun people if you chose to reveal it fully. You are walking a different road and have nothing in your heart but the endless ruin of the world.

  One day, when he was watching Delia chat with someone in the backyard, his hand accidentally brushed the curtain. He saw her glance across, her eye caught by the movement. She knew that he was there watching. He felt he could never face her again. She now knew that his pretending not to care was just a pathetic act, and that he actually cared so much that he skulked at his window with his eyes bulging for the least glimpse of her. But then he got enraged. Who was she to despise him? He paid good money for his room and he had a right to glance out of his window once in a while if he wanted to. He had a right to the view from his window without her being in his line of sight every two minutes, just as he had a right not to be tormented by Mabuly Wuly nonsense. He felt like storming and shouting that he’d leave, that if he’d known he was going to be stopped from looking out his own window he would never have come there.

  But he did nothing except keep more out of sight. He was going to have to leave anyway, when his month was up. Then he’d be homeless on the street again, and there’d be no Delia to look at.

  He began leaving his room first thing in the morning and not returning till after dark. He spent his time wandering the city and suburbs, or at the State Library, or in the Botanical Gardens. He kept away from the State Museum, because of the pushbike thing, but he discovered the Technological Museum in another part of town.

  The Technological Museum had wonderful things in it. Above all there were the Viking swords. There were half-a-dozen of these in a glass case, blades corroded, and the hand-grips rotted away, but otherwise they were the same as when the long-dead people had carried them. Beside each sword was a printed card giving some facts about it, like the period it was from, where it had been made, where it was found. They were all earlier than 1066 and the youth stared at them in wonderment that they had existed when King Harold was alive.

  There was one in particular. The card said it was probably Norwegian and that it had been found in Yorkshire. Stamford Bridge was in Yorkshire, the youth reflected, and it had been the Norwegian Vikings that King Harold had defeated there. It all tied in! The youth began coming every day to look at the swords and let his thoughts and feelings run loose. How sad and heroic it all was. He had read in Year of Decision that the Vikings’ big mistake had been in not guarding the actual bridge more carefully. When King Harold’s men came to cross it, a single Norwegian warrior had stood against them. He had been so brave that the Anglo-Saxons remembered his deed for generations. This sword from Yorkshire could be the very one that lone hero had used.

  The youth wished he could talk to someone about this. Did the museum authorities know what a sacred treasure they might have here—the very sword that had defended the bridge for those few glorious moments? The more the youth dwelt on this, the more anguish he felt. He had to speak up. This was something incredibly important to the whole world, and he was probably the only person who’d ever thought of it. He would gaze into the glass case until the emotion got too much. Then he’d go into the toilet and wash his face and dry it with a paper towel, then return to the display for another while. Once a uniformed attendant came into the toilet and saw him half-sobbing over the basin. The youth tried to pretend he was coughing, but the attendant gave him suspicious looks after that.

  One afternoon the attendant came over to him and asked, “No school today?”

  The youth understood it wasn’t a friendly question. It meant, “I don’t like the look of you. What are you doing here?”

  He made an effort to look and sound normal. He said that he’d left school last year and was a jackeroo in the bush, that he was on holiday in the city, and that his hobby was learning about the Vikings and their swords and stuff. The attendant was a heavy man and wore an expression of contempt. The youth had an awful feeling that he might not be speaking properly, that the words might be coming out as gibberish. He sounded normal to himself, or half-normal anyway, but his mouth felt like it was working strangely.

  The attendant’s expression became more hostile and he seemed to be look
ing the youth up and down, taking note of his shabby appearance. The youth felt he had to assert himself, had to make it clear he was a proper person with important information. He forced himself to look the man right in the eyes and to speak very clearly, although his mouth still felt as though it was moving in a peculiar way.

  “Who’s in charge of the swords?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “The swords.”

  “What about them?”

  “Who’s the person I should speak to?”

  “What?”

  “The person.”

  “What person?”

  “I need to talk to someone.”

  “What about?”

  “I need to talk to them about one of the swords.”

  “Talk to who?”

  “That’s what I’m asking.”

  “What are you asking?”

  “I need to talk to someone.”

  “Yeah, I reckon you do. But this is a museum. There’s no-one here to tell your troubles to. Don’t you have a family? What about your local minister? Come back when you’ve got yourself sorted out.”

  The youth left the area where the swords were. The attendant followed him until he was on the stairs, then stood and watched him descend. “You aren’t on mara-u-ana, are you?” the man called. The youth did not reply. He reached the entrance lobby and went out into the street.

  It was late afternoon and he felt too downcast to do anything but go back to his room. He crept in through the garden gate without being seen, then lay on his bed and thought about how stupid he’d been. He’d made himself conspicuous. He’d hung about in the museum in a way that the attendant couldn’t help noticing. He’d let his emotions get out of hand. He’d broken every one of the basic rules. Diestl would disown him. The worst part was that he was barred from seeing the swords, now that the attendant had marked him out. To return would be like walking into the cross-hairs of a rifle sight. The whole principle of survival was to stay out of the cross-hairs, to keep a bit in the shadows, a bit indistinct, a bit side-on. Diestl had taught him that, but apparently it hadn’t sunk in. The youth was angry and disgusted with himself. It was proper that he was barred from seeing the swords. That was his fitting punishment. But he felt he deserved something more physical and immediate too. He stood up and got a heavy wooden coat-hanger from the wardrobe and hit himself on the shin as hard as he could. It hurt a lot, and for a long time. He thought maybe he had cracked the shinbone.

  The next day he bought a TV magazine because it had an article about Grace Kelly. There was to be a festival of her films on one of the channels. It wasn’t a very interesting piece, and the photo of her was a poor-quality one hardly worth keeping, but there was something else at the back of the magazine. It was a half-page advertisement for the Technological Museum. At the bottom of the panel were three small pictures. One was of a robot, another was of a ship’s sextant from Captain Cook’s time, and the third showed the six Viking swords in their glass case. He took the magazine home and carefully cut out the little picture of the swords and pasted it into the White Book. He threw the rest of the magazine away, including the bad picture of Sweetheart.

  It seemed to him that fate had sent the picture of the swords as a consolation. He was sure it was because he had accepted the need to be punished and had hit himself with the coat-hanger. It had really hurt, that was the main thing. It hadn’t been just a pretend hit. Fate knows when you are only pretending.

  The youth felt more cheerful. He reflected that even if you’ve made a serious mistake and behaved like an idiot, as he had with the swords, you could redeem yourself by doing the appropriate thing, and that fate could accept that you’d made amends and were sorry. It made you feel you had a bit of leeway. You could make a mistake now and then—as long as it was just once in a while and wasn’t too serious—and it wouldn’t necessarily be the end. The thing was, fate knew you were on your empty road through the ruined world. It knew you had a destiny, and fate was always on the side of those who had a destiny, as long as they themselves kept faithful. It wasn’t the odd stupidity that angered fate against you, but unfaithfulness.

  With this more cheerful outlook, the youth had more energy for walking, and for looking at people and things, and for thinking how stimulating a place the world was. He sat for hours on park benches or on bus-stop seats, gazing into the sky. Cloud formations now struck him as especially interesting and somehow stirring and calming at the same time. They were these huge, beautiful, slow panoramas moving endlessly over the world. They were witnesses to all the dramas of human fate. No doubt they’d been rolling over Stamford Bridge that day and had seen the lone Norwegian barring the passage for those few moments before he was overwhelmed. No doubt that Viking’s whole life had been going down the long road towards that point. And fate had helped him reach it because it was meant to be. And so the very people who killed him remembered his courage and his faithfulness, and wrote it down in their chronicles.

  Yes, the youth felt better about things than he had for a long while.

  WALKING NEAR Telford Square one evening, on his way home, he paused to look into the window of a shop that sold fishing rods and penknives and tents and tomahawks and various other outdoor things. It was a very small shop, and the window display looked flyblown and faded, as though it hadn’t been changed for years—the cardboard price tags were bleached and curled from the sun, and even the fishing rods and penknives looked as though all their freshness had gone. The youth had never been into that shop, but he often paused outside it. It was just the sort of window display he liked. It was settled and predictable. You approached it with the comfortable feeling of knowing what was there. You could always see the shopkeeper inside, behind his counter. He was a fat man who wore a woollen beanie in red-and-black football colours. The red-and-blacks were Ronnie Robson’s team, the best team in the world. The youth had got interested in the idea of football again, now that he was feeling more cheerful. He kept telling himself he must start going to the games, to support Ronnie and the great red-and-blacks.

  As the youth turned to walk on, he saw a rifle hanging up in a corner of the window. He turned back. He’d never noticed the rifle there before. Maybe he’d missed it because it was up high. Or maybe it was a new addition to the window. The rifle had a neat, compact, chunky appearance. He thought he should buy it. Not right now, this minute. He hadn’t nearly enough money. But sometime. He would buy it sometime. The youth had a very strong feeling that he was meant to buy that rifle, that it would still be there whenever he came for it, and that this moment of his first seeing it was somehow profound. He glanced up at the clouds lit red by the setting sun. He thought that perhaps at this moment they were looking down at him particularly.

  He had no idea why he felt so strongly that he was destined to buy the rifle. He just knew he should, and would.

  He sensed Diestl beside him, nodding gravely in confirmation and saying, “Yes.”

  THE YOUTH’S new confidence even extended to his attitude to Delia. He began to come and go from his room a bit less stealthily. He would use the front gate and this meant going along the disused driveway at the side of the house. It meant passing the window of Delia’s lounge room, and because of the gravel on the ground it was hard to walk past in silence. A couple of times she was in the lounge room when he passed and they exchanged glances and she smiled at him. Another couple of times he came upon her and Sunny together in the backyard, lolling on the deckchairs on the grass. Delia called to him to join the conversation. Sunny needed to talk to as many different people as possible, she said, to improve his English. So the youth stopped and talked a little. He mentioned the cotton-chipping and Delia asked him to tell them more about it because it sounded so fascinating. The youth noticed that Delia reached over and touched Sunny lightly on the thigh and that Sunny responded by placing his hand over hers for a brief moment. It looked so c
asual that maybe they were hardly aware of doing it. But there was something powerful and exciting about the two of them together, the youth thought, the beautiful witch and the golden-skinned young man from a land of spices and temples and cobras and elephants. The youth couldn’t think of anything else to say just then. They seemed to have gone into another mood where talking wasn’t needed. He figured he should leave them and go into his room, but he was feeling a tingle from just being near them. It was as though the two of them together created an energy greater than either of them had on their own. Or maybe it was him. Maybe he was just so aroused by Delia that he was extra-sensitive to any flirty, lovey stuff that she was part of. Right now he felt so stirred and tingling that he was even excited by the thought that Delia knew he’d been watching her from behind the curtain that time. He had hardly ever felt that way before—of being so stirred that you want it to be gross and shameless and for the person to be completely aware of it.

  The strange thing was that Delia didn’t really arouse him all that much. At least he didn’t think so. Her flowing robes and dark hair and amulets and ankle bells weren’t really his cup of tea. Glimpsing the outline of her breasts that first day had been nice, but so would have been a glimpse of any woman’s breasts. It was the gold-flecked green eye make-up that had got his attention. He had never met anyone who had green butterflies startle on her face whenever she blinked. But that didn’t mean he was keen on her as a general thing. She wasn’t like Sweetheart in the slightest. She had none of that cool containedness, none of the Ice Maiden about her. Of course there was that other darker side of Sweetheart now, the Tunnel of Love thing, but the youth tried to keep that out of his mind as much as possible. No, it was hard to imagine Delia in jodhpurs and high polished boots, or in a fencing costume with rapier poised, like in that superb photo of Sweetheart he’d pasted in the White Book.