Drift

by Brian Castro

  Strangely enough, Emma’s letters gave me life. The startled energy of the mad. And thanks to British Post, teasingly delayed in Dickensian instalments. I harboured suspicions, of course, that they were Ainslie’s. Some bizarre torture she had invented to keep me interested. One day she will come back to me like a Capistrano swallow. Fallacious as that may be, I gave myself credit for vanity. My self-confidence rarely peeps.

  But then you couldn’t blame me, for suddenly in the mail came five credit cards, shinily embossed with my name, each debited to her account: A. Cracklewood, upon checking. I wasn’t a bank Johnny once for nothing. There were conditions. I had one expense for each, one wish limited to ?1,000. In effect, ?5,000 to pursue a whim. It was the normal patron’s grant, generous, over-generous, though I didn’t raise a finger to my flat cap; no Ma’am. Ainslie had taught me well. There was always the greater obligation of a return gift which bound us more closely than a marriage, which tribal people knew, trying to outdo each other in gifts until the ultimate destitution of one or the other. We the civilised, call it consumption… the rich give in order to decree debt, to accrue interest. Nothing so refined as mere obligation.

  Consumption. I have a pain in my chest; there. Just to the side. Sometimes it stretches into my back and it becomes painful to breathe. I take shallow breaths, feel faint, fall. The doctors in London said it wasn’t consumption; something pleural nevertheless. Mounting up. Perhaps an intercostal virus. Not wanting to live, I let myself be drawn.

  Gravity. Drawing me down. From the plane I could see a kind of hole in the sky; a glaring, icy sun.

  Tasmania.

  Madness in its name.

  13

  In London, when I saw a crowd, I joined it. When they threw bricks through train windows I clapped. When I heard a band or chanting Hare Krishnas or even the toneless singing of shameless or desperate buskers, I stamped my foot in time, shook, danced, until the police moved me on. To be connected to the stream of life; otherwise to melt, to unload the till, reveal the drift I carry with me: deliquescent clocks, thawed stress, rage enough to kill. The other things formed a solidity, kept me in touch with being. Yes, to sling a rope across, that was my mission; to walk myself over the liquid abyss. Then over the hill. No, they didn’t include me in The Best Of British Novelists. If you look at their photos they’re all so pretty and young. Mere babes.

  In Hobart I walked the other way. Kept back even from those milling about for luggage in the rain. I covered my ears, closed my eyes. There were no crowds, bands or slogans. So close now, I would receive no more letters. I went straight to the Sheraton, booked in, cocooned myself in glass and kept my drift intact. It was a dangerous weight and I knew it.

  Registration.

  Name: Byron Shelley Johnson.

  Origin: Hammersmith, London, England.

  Card: AmEx. Slightly bent.

  Description: Dark. Seemly through a glass. Probably of melancholic disposition until there’s drink or women. Suspiciously overweight. Something pressing him down, the duty to be jovial.

  I know. First thing I did was to go to the health club. Not to exercise, but to stand on the scales. I thought the plane trip, a sedentary marathon, would have trimmed off some poundage through nervous exhaustion, fear of flying, the terror of inane conversations. I thought I was free, rolling plugs of Ohropax into my ears, but heard the caterwauling of children and the commotion and the stupid excitement of travellers. I heard the dull pulse of a tired erection in my temple, watching the hostess strap herself into her seat. Mea culpa. I prayed for reprieve.

  I’ve gained five pounds. I went to the sauna. A woman lying on a bench took one look at me and left. After three minutes the heat became too much. Somebody vomited in the shower. Back in my room, I finished off the beers from the fridge, watched the day come to its end in cold drizzle slanting over the docks, the Derwent calm and black and the brooding sky hanging low. Hobart was a picturesque town. Hard to imagine how once it reeked with huile de baleine, the nauseating cologne of blubber trying out the noses of the foreshores. Took the place of homesickness, I suppose. Replaced forever the scent of the Thames.

  I didn’t want to drink, but kept drinking. I unpacked my camera and sat by the huge window taking close-ups of boats for over an hour and then upon further focussing, suddenly discovered the glint of something strange. Screwed on my telescopic lens then and found someone else, I could see him quite clearly, backing away, possibly with a night scope directed at my window from the Harbourmaster’s tower. I quickly drew the curtains.

  There are those who yearn for death, but who remain completely unconvinced by it. They carry the shadow, but mercifully, the simulacrum doesn’t smell: no seasoned corpses; fishy blood; the acrid tar of human suffering. But there is another kind whose fear of death is so great, they act impulsively. Get it over with silently. To be silent, and thus to pass the baton on. There’s the rub. You need a clear mind. So this chafing passed soon enough. The alternative, folly, wasn’t apparent at first. The blending into glass and carpet, into elevators and armchairs, the gourmet consumption and the long lug of afternoon-chasing, the slow-paced leavenings of alcohol; all this deferred the reckoning. I’ve come this far down. I burp for the salvation of my soul.

  Nagged by privilege, my third credit card pathetically worn, I looked out at the black water and the crayfish boats moored tightly against each other. Out there, beyond the shrouded bays and granitic points, the Nora was nowhere in sight. Having already sailed past Shouten Island and the Freycinet Peninsula, the brig was heading for Eddystone Point and mutiny. I can smell it in the crayfish. Seasmell. Out there, an invitation to tempt the limitless. Dizzy again. Reach for the marmalade.

  14

  I am WORÉ. WORÉ is woman.

  WORÉ waits in the night to be given away. Waits to appease. Our men and the white men. But when they come it is not like a betrothal. Like a storm instead, while we hide behind windbreaks feeble as our hearts and they kill our brothers and bind our hands and feet, the first time in our lives we have known physical restriction. The first time, this kind of fear, not felt in nature. No, not the fear of pain or illness. A fear like a burning torch thrust into us. In the way that we killed sea elephants, putting firesticks down their throats. And then I knew why they had taken this long journey from across the water. They have come not for seals, but for us, taking our skins, turning us pale when they cut into our buttocks with their sharp knives, flaying us, feeding us, pushing themselves into us, toying with us, healing us, dressing us, teaching us, selling us, beating us, forcing us to hunt, exploding us, marooning us, stroking us, plaiting our hair, feeling us, giving us firedrink, whipping us, reproducing us, painting us, making us happy, making us sad, making us something else, opening us to ourselves.

  But I am still WORÉ. And WORÉ is woman, who is stronger than man.

  But for the moment WORÉ is the beloved of McGann.

  McGann comes down into the bottom of the winged fireboat and chains me to the wall, then puts a rope around my neck and tightens it, choking me until I cannot struggle, a muttonbird caught at the mouth of a burrow and I cannot flap my wings to make the fireboat go out of my life, out of my life my heart struggles to fly, too late, too late, I have lost WORÉ, the little girl they said I was, the beloved of McGann, for I have made him angry and cruel, but suddenly I’m gasping and the air comes into me again, and again, life returns. Suddenly McGann is touching me very softly, whimpering and moaning and falling to the ground. The fear is familiar, when he has released me. I’m still here, WORÉ.

  Breathe now. Twelve seasons old and too young yet, to be killed.

  15

  The territory of the other. Not verboten, I assure you. I carried Emma in my heart.

  I knew my destination, but for a while, Hobart was congenial. I rang my mother. She was still alive.

  My legs are swelling, dear, she said. Ronnie and Millie next door’ve gone to the football. Having a quart of milk stout. You look after yourself
and don’t get home too late. Hobart… is that up near Hertford? Don’t be too long, and mind those trolley-buses when you come up the Edgeware Road.

  Each day, the warm sun bursting through the ozone hole, briefly, before the clouds. Wet air infuses; wood or stone absorbs. Then the reverse. People taking off, putting on. Flesh creeps. Totally unpredictable, the weather. That was the word all the guide books used: unpredictable. I liked Hobart for all that. Hilly streets, flowery gardens, healthy girls on bicycles, tight rows of roses all prickly underneath, tidy generations, false pedigrees, the neat pursuit of decency, the over-reaction to it. I liked it for all that, though it could have done with whores, porno houses, all-night bars and a smattering of indifference, pretence, high-brow drugs, low-brow passions, the throb and hum of semi-lunacy, arrogance and violence. It used to be that way. But then of course it had the unpredictable.

  Mr Johnson? Mr Byron Johnson?

  I had, until now, carefully cultivated anonymity. Don’t be unkind. A recluse strikes bargains with the mirror. Well, now and again the reflection of public interest. All those faces in the glass. Get a looksee. Him the fella what writes all that dirty stuff? Check the diary; look in the laundry basket. You always remember the first time. Surprise that a woman would be interested in me because I wrote. They’re all romantics until they read the stuff. The reality: bump and run. She swivelling and circling, hips made for that. Sorry darlin'. Didn’t give you ‘arf a chance did we? Ha! Noted down. Too much mascara. Cheap, but lovely for all that. A kindness refinement takes an eternity to learn. They were all lovely women, the ones who didn’t read. Important to stay in love. Not to revert to the cradle. No need for admiring eyes then.

  And now it was a waitress. Attractive. Rusted pistons of the heart sucked at ancient sump oil. I was sitting by the bar nursing a cold cognac.

  There’s a gentleman over there would like to speak to you.

  Disappointment. Apprehension. Resentment. I turned. He was standing at the desk, his back to me, reading the register. Hunched with menace, perhaps even familiar with this procedure. Pin-striped suit. As he turned, peered over a pair of half-moon glasses, his face ruddy, hair silvered, chin weak. Years of fine wines gathering around the eyes. Never did any street work. No plod then. Watched me approach, expression curious, intent. We shook hands. Hands soft.

  Mr Johnson? I’m Deakin, from Immigration. (He produced a plastic card bearing a photo). Could you spare a few minutes?

  Taking me by the elbow to the lounge.

  I didn’t care for this pushing and shoving. I took it only from women. Once, standing outside Harrods in the drizzle and searching for a health club in more salutary precincts, a policewoman nabbed me by the elbows. Pinned thus, I examined her breasts with my latissimus dorsii. Perfumed. Not just laundrysoaped like nuns. She had wanted to know was I not with that gang of shoplifters who’d made off with a dozen hip flasks. God, no, I said, speaking backwards to her, my mouth an inch away from hers smelling of mint, such discipline and grooming, I’m a weightlifter, not a shoplifter, ma’am. Search my hips for them if you please. She declined, released me with a warning. Difficult to feel sensual and censured at the same time. I suppose I was a big lad for sixteen.

  I have to make a few inquiries about your stay in Tasmania. Your holidays. You’re on holidays, aren’t you? Deakin asked.

  I had been told to expect this kind of thing. They kept records, computerised and beamed all over the world. Even if they didn’t read my books the Secret Services focussed a telescopic eye on me. I wrote in earnest, a book before last, I think, about an explosion. Yes, once the toilets blew in the stock exchange, the City was in the shit. All those long-lunched bellies and wine-filled bladders had to be held and massaged for a block and a half until relief in a damp tube station. Some were so frightened they did it then and there. Yes, I’d sent a clockwork train up the sewer-line laden with gelignite. A week or two after publication it really happened. It became a celebrated copy-cat crime. It became a notorious case of fiction inspiring fact, of mistaken identity, of confusing writer and narrator, of misreading explosions, exploding misreadings, whatever. The book had something of a cult following. Universities commissioned lectures on coincidences and connections, and smaller explosions, some the size of fireworks, became regular undergraduate pranks. My publishers defended me, but the police still believed I was IRA.

  Holidays from what? From terrorism?

  Deakin laughed uncomfortably at this, adjusted his half-moons. He was theatrical, embarrassed, egotistical. Camped it up. Waved his fingers under his chin. Dubious, this mannerism.

  Deakin: Oh no. Nothing like that. We simply need an itinerary. We, ah, we like to follow up on, ah, passport irregularities.

  B.S.J.: Irregularities?

  Deakin: Well, we, ah, the Department, understands that you haven’t been issued one in the last five years.

  B.S.J.: Is that a crime?

  Deakin: Ah! It could be the result of one, yes. (Self-satisfied; astonished; both at once. Rain outside, filtered softly through the trees.)

  B.S.J.: So you think this is a forgery?

  Deakin: No, but perhaps it’s been altered?

  B.S.J.: Hardly. The photo doesn’t even look like me. I’ve changed in five years, a divorce thrown in. If I was a forger, I’d use a recent photo.

  Deakin: Oh, no. They’re very clever these days. Change their looks, their names, their skin, even their personalities. Impersonators with the psychologies to match. May I keep this for a while? (Ample pockets. Hong Kong tailor.)

  B.S.J.: Be my guest.

  Deakin: Oh, no. You’re the guest. We just want to make sure you’ve been invited, you know, a persona gratis.

  That last phrase was hardly necessary. Deakin was a prat. Private schoolboy regaling you with Latin from the sidelines.

  Tell me, he said, lighting up a cigarette. The smoke he exhaled smelled differently to that which came from the cigarette… presumably carrying some pulmonary component. Tell me, he said again, do you use many words in your writing?

  I took this as impertinence, though for a split second Mozart came to mind, rebuked for too many notes.

  Verbiage, Deakin suddenly jerked his chin towards the ceiling as though he had smelt garbage, tells you rather more about someone than they would like to admit. A slight overreaching, perhaps. Aspiration which springs from lack, need, whatever.

  Like a drink? I ventured, signalling the waitress. Deakin obliged and reached into his pocket.

  Which sometimes makes for a good lexicon, he smiled, slavering, though it took me a while to recognise his obsession.

  Shakespeare, he intoned, used about twenty-four thousand words in his plays… different words… there was no evidence of alcoholism… whereas Beckett…

  He let that hang, as if to illustrate his point.

  We study vocab and usage in the Department, he said.

  You mean linguistics, philology, that type of thing?

  Oh no.

  He suppressed a smile and eyed my drink. He was an alcoholic, no doubt about that; alcoholics always try to resist the first drink.

  We study the language of terrorism; notes, letters, phone-calls. They are rather less minimalist than Sam Beckett, far more interesting, of course, although Beckett was capable of a few bombs. Take Waiting For Godot… that’s a threat if ever there was one. No, terrorists have a vocab of about fifty to a hundred words. There’s always a pattern.

  Count me out then, I said.

  Oh, no, Deakin sighed, saddened that I wasn’t playing any longer. Not yet.

  I laughed. He didn’t take kindly to that.

  We had a note about your arrival, he continued. What about your itinerary?

  In order to avoid further word-play, psychological analysis, meticulous tedium, I foolishly took out Ainslie’s map. Unfolded it and unglued the chewing gum which once held it to the wall of one of her apartments. I was hoping a picture would rescue us from another thousand words.

  Let’s
see… Deakin said, and pounced with a finger, his pin-striped sleeve shooting up his forearm.

  You’ve circled Cape Grim. What is it about Cape Grim which interests you? He was smiling.

  Love.

  Ah!

  Deakin wasn’t smiling any longer. I was fumbling for an explanation. I stuttered. A gulf appeared. I didn’t think I was suffering another memory lapse. I knew memory lapses led to the disruption of order, when the hero makes a faux pas, takes a false step, losing his memory when he stumbles, catching his foot in a hole. Yet I needed to expose the till, to break new ground, a desire for which I had no explanation. I was afraid of that. Still, it was a foolish thing not to have remembered to bring another map… put them off the scent… but sentiment, you see, always leaves a trail, like perfume.

  It’s the clean air, I said. It’s reputed to have the cleanest air in the world. Comes all the way from South America, filtered over a thousand miles of ocean without a single landfall, purified of all that garlic and violencia and bodies dumped from helicopters. (Yes, Cape Grim had an air-monitoring station, a sort of high-tech sniffer, a snoz keening out of the cliffs to measure purity, getting first snuffle at virgin winds). I want to go there, I said. Clean out the bellows. I pounded my chest with my fist. Coughed. Felt the heaviness within.

  Deakin pressed out his cigarette. Ah, he said, the poles of purity. They regulate confusion. We have a duty to distil our heritage, you know.

  He grew silent and despondent and stared balefully at Ainslie’s red texta mark circling that north-west corner.

  Tell me, I asked, why is it called ‘Grim'?