The Bath Fugues

by Brian Castro

  It was then that I took to straying even further. Each morning I cycled to escape Marie and raced up and down the hills, but kept returning in the afternoons, sometimes to her father’s château, since he paid the bills. The old Marquis and I conversed in tongues. He slid along a rolling ladder hooked before his books and threw down selections aristocratically. I stood on the lower rungs propelling him with one foot as on a scooter. He had a hooter strapped around his neck which he blew upon for me to stop and while we paused, I scavenged the splayed volumes for the old man’s evening reading. He hardly spoke about his daughter except to mention Marie had always chosen lovers badly. She tossed a slice of bread to them and believed they would be eternally grateful, he said to me. Most of all she wanted them to suffer, at least share a portion of her pain. I thanked him for this advice.

  Marie had always wanted to see Australia and since I was Australian, she hung onto me, though our relationship had all but ceased. I was not one to cling, since she was incurably insane. In her father’s library I spent hours reading Montaigne for ballast. Happy to have a foot in each camp and a travelling companion who paid for everything, I carried her bags from airport to airport while my hands grew calluses.

  It was not long before I introduced her to Walter Gottlieb. She liked older men, ex-priests, intellectuals. And that, they say, was that. A quick divorce. Glad to get her off my hands, though there was no recourse to any money. She was much taller than Gottlieb and they walked awkwardly together whenever it rained, the ribs of his umbrella poking her eye while she chattered about death. I imagined her stature impressed him. She dragged him around like a teddy bear. I saw neither of them for some years. That was my second liberation.

  In Sydney I painted a little, taught part-time and published modestly – some tiny introductions and mini-biographies of wellknown jailbirds like Genet. My publisher, George Brezinsky, was also a libel lawyer. He drew a line down the centre of a blank page. On one side he wrote Nervous and on the other, Crazy. He tapped his pad with his fountain pen. I think you’re heading for ulcers, he said to me. Orgasmic black ink spurted onto paper. I saw swans on a lake and a castle emerged from a deep blue mist. Brezinsky excised five characters from my Brief Lives (I). It stayed on the bestseller list for three weeks. Such brevity was important. I was driven by a contempt for writers − hating their hypocrisy and inauthenticity – the fact that they desired publication above all else and cared nothing for the preservation of friendships – the fact that they had never lived. Those still living would have sued. In the process of writing, I was filled with such immense self-loathing that only in censoring my own insights and revelations could I have been redeemed from their company. I had material for another two books.

  Gottlieb read of my success. He wrote to Brezinsky for my current address. He wanted me to be godfather to his children. He was almost fifty, with twin girls of three: Blixen and Blimunde. I could not refuse. I didn’t know they were at that age. Brezinsky, who knew everything, said he and Marie had adopted them. I did some calculations. The pregnancy must have been proleptic. I felt somewhat sad, I think, for myself, almost the same age as Gottlieb, to be drifting thus, into and out of other people’s lives, lampooning them without reason, with not even one illegitimate child who might have taken my name.

  I visited them in Double Bay. It was then that Gottlieb invited me to rent their East Wing. Marie looked terrible. She’d grown much rounder, and for one so wealthy, wore third-hand frocks from a Paddington charity. She and Gottlieb seemed happy enough. She was a stranger to me now, and she seemed guilty in my presence. I didn’t wish to remember our intimacies, but after a drink or two I discovered she might still have had a hankering, which surprised me.

  7

  That was my first thought, upon regaining consciousness in that cold creek bed somewhere off the Putty Road. I was shivering. I was bleeding a little, a slight gash at the temple. I was thinking of Gottlieb, finally in his bathrobe. His face not only reflected trauma, it signalled the end of his responsibility to me as friend. It released him from guilt. I thought I saw half a smile, obviously from fear. I had caused his child’s death. It was my fault now. Why then, after the event, did he still allow me to rent half his house?

  A thin stream of muddy water was dribbling over the rocks. My body stung. Along with the ache of my depression, which came abruptly with consciousness, I felt disoriented. My heart was beating irregularly. Coughing, wet, heavily wet, I sat down on one of the large smooth stones. A kingfisher fluttered and then hovered. The secret lives of birds. I don’t know how long I’d been unconscious. A pleasurable calm had come upon me. I recalled one thing: I had already mentioned this; it was simply a matter of realigning my life, of measuring triangles and distances, of constructing a grid. But at that moment there was uncompassed existence, spread-eagled on the riverbed; I was swallowing up the treetops, the powder-blue sky, the flitting bird. There was a voluptuous sweetness and a soft slumbering. I recalled saying aloud that the present tense was all I had. I’m asleep. I debated this with Gottlieb once. The present tense, I said, is the tension of pleasure. I’m dying. We have no torment upon its real approach; that only comes with grammar, but to exclaim is the experience of release. Gottlieb said the present was only unawareness.

  I had written to him from Paris, of the need for a spare bicycle. Not a new one, but an other; in steed of, as Montaigne had said of the Roman cavalry, whose riders always rode with their right hand holding the bridle of a spare horse, upon which they could jump when the present one grew fatigued. A spare bicycle too, should be within reach to provide continuity, for a bicycle deteriorates like the body and is prone to falling, since that is its natural state when not being ridden. An impossible machine except in motion, its every attempt is to keel over. I have fallen countless times. It is only in motion, when the mind and body are in equal harmony that one can do philosophy, for mere intelligence cannot save you from falling, but together, a mind mechanised and a machine anthropomorphised, can have the effect of producing understanding and insight. Falls happen because of a lack of self-awareness, Gottlieb used to say. But cocooned inside oneself on a bicycle, at speed, seeking the path of least resistance in the perpetual present, one could be aloof, obsessed, inaccessible and thoroughly aware.

  There was a law in Montaigne’s time where noblemen who owned horses were not allowed to travel on foot, so they conducted all their business and pleasure on horseback…their women sat backwards, astride their laps for hasty assignations, this reverse cantering bringing laughter and orgasm; quite rightly…there was no time like the present…and one should never have to get off for the sake of hunger, or an itch, or postcoital practicalities…though Montaigne wrote that in warfare men did dismount, not least because if the horse was frightened, its rider would be carried away.

  The business of life is consciousness, but to persist like a machine, like a bicycle which marks time and yet moves swiftly, like water running over rocks…that is the way my mind has taken me these last years, I was saying to Gottlieb after I had broken a hand in a fall, and I saw him rush over for a pen and paper, not having seen him move so fast since his stroke…since flight, I said, is my natural state. I am never here. I used the tense of death. There is no greater freedom than to be journeying on a bicycle, or, as one who has adopted a mode of travelling which others would call vagrancy, is there any further fall. Gottlieb offered to buy me another bike if I felt the need for a spare. No! I objected, unless it be a Swift circa 1928. It had to be absolutely identical.

  I didn’t hear the car approach. I saw it quite suddenly, pulling over in a cloud of dust. A Range Rover. A woman getting out. Green scarf, sunglasses, straw hat, which she removed and tossed back through the open window. Fine, soft hair like winnowed hay. She stood on the edge of the road. Was I all right? Nothing broken which cannot be mended, I said as would an archaeologist. That reassured her. She came closer. Climbed awkwardly down the bank while hanging onto the branch of silky oak. With som
e sadness, I noticed a flash of beauty in her smile. She was about forty, with an olive complexion and a lurching gait. Broad-shouldered, full-breasted, swivel-hipped. Involuntary, her smile; cruel for me. It broke upon her face like a Melbourne spring which easily darkened into showers. I had done with the idea of finding myself attracted and was disappointed to rediscover it was not an idea. The heart is an ancient muscle. It learns very little voluntarily. I reassured myself that concern by others for me came not from the attractive or the well-heeled; it arrived broken and deformed. The ugly, it seemed to me, always had more compassion. Unjust but true.

  Closer. Her sunglasses defended her. I avoided proximity, a long sufferer from emotional sclerosis. I feared more the passion and the pain which came in waves, the surf of her smile which touched me here and there. Her eyes, when she pushed up the shades, reflected a blue eternity which guaranteed the loss of everything; my freedom, my art; for I had already begun denuding myself, lowering barricades, fearing still the crack to come, the flood of agony called lust, and I knew that only he who was beyond it could ride a bicycle, for a bicycle guaranteed balance, equanimity and flight. For example, I returned to Gisela, my third wife, after six weeks of riding through the Auvergne. Six weeks, I figured, would jinx the hex of the ternary. I saw, through the light of the upper bedroom window, a looming male form, bouncing, trampolining. Six weeks was all it took. Gisela’s flushed face rose at the other end of this gymnast’s calves, ectoplasmically. I was surprised. I was aroused. By her enthusiasm; her contortion; my own release. I dreaded the return of lust; saw it approaching with unequal power, the roar of a hailstorm, the blackmail of it. I had freedom finally. I balanced, tiptoe, in the shrubbery and then rode off forever.

  Would you like some coffee? The woman held out a hand. She was tall. Maybe it was an introduction. I bowed, more from vertigo, and said I was Jason Redvers, claiming descent from Richard, Seigneur de Reviers, First Earl of Devon. My fluorescent sash was missing. I was Portuguese-Chinese; from Macau. No! she said, she was holding out a hand to help me up. I was still concussed. Her hand was warm and moist. I tried to exert as little pressure as possible. I realised my hair was wet, long, I looked Columbian; pre-Columbian. Her soft limb was useless as an aid, but my heart seemed to revive from slumber and I swung giddily onto the road. She had run over the back wheel of the Swift and it was twisted like a potato crisp. I’m sorry about your bike, she said. She helped me wrestle it onto the roof rack, adjusted her glasses over her hair. She seemed shortsighted and squinted at the warped wheel. She brought out a thermos. Her eyes smiled without giving up their secrets and they presumed much. Eyes recollected in tranquillity. You could say she had the face of a movie star, beauty diluted, a faded Dietrich underneath the lamplight. Inside the car I smelt Thé Vert, by L’Occitane, Marie’s favourite perfume. And tobacco. There was a huge Alsatian dog in the caged rear compartment, suddenly thumping around like a bear. I hadn’t noticed it until now. It was drumming its tail against the window. I closed the door. Odour of raw steak. The dog’s panting made me frantic. That’s Rajah, she said. He’s just a cuddly bear. We drove along the dirt road tasting of dust. I swallowed some coffee. Either blood or sweat trickled down inside my arm. The dog was curious, nosing the back of my head through the grille. We passed a woman in jeans and a white T-shirt holding a longbow. I was starting to hallucinate. A colony of women. Amazons. The huntress was angrily driving a cow off the road, wielding a branch. That’s Miranda, my rescuer said, pulling a face. She took out a packet of cigarettes. Smoke? No thanks. She tapped one out on the wheel. Wedged it between her lips and pushed in the lighter. I stole Miranda’s husband, she said. Just for one night. She lit the cigarette and smiled crookedly when she exhaled. Miranda’s never forgiven me. She lives in town. In fact, she hates me. A sniper. I think one day she’s going to shoot me from afar…

  I was still in some kind of delirium. I doubted my existence; there had been a metamorphosis; I was a stag in this world of women. But because I was not myself, I said, in order to complete her sentence, I would stand before her like a shield. She looked over and smiled sweetly. My aches erupted. She was luscious.

  The Rover agonised uphill. She shifted gears from first straight into fifth. I’m Fabiana. She held out a hand and the car, over-geared, lurched from rock to rock. She drove only with one hand, urging the Rover on like a team of horses; the other she waved about, explaining the vegetation, pointing out the boundaries. The car spewed smoke and dust. I told her my name, which I had some trouble remembering. I wished to sink into her expressive arms. Charmed, she said, and considered my hesitation. Hardly, I replied. No, I mean it, she said. (What was it she really said?) It’s rare to meet a cosmopolitan. She tugged a little harder at the wheel on the bends, ash from her cigarette spilling onto her lacey bra. We arrived at a cream stone bungalow beneath a stand of pines. The plaque on the wall said Barringila. Dogs appeared out of nowhere. Packs of them. All sorts. There must have been twenty. Tails whipping. There was no barking, just some false yawning, a scratch or two. Dogs are sensitive; dissimulators; they can fall victim to madness. They leapt up, scratching at the door. Out of the way. She spoke firmly to them from her window. She eased the car over to the side of the house and did not apply the handbrake. I got out. The dogs could smell blood and they lunged at my arm, obsessively licking. Out! Fabiana cried. Stay! She seemed pleased by the sight of blood. I was apprehensive, looking out for people who might appear; men in overalls, barefoot children screaming, shotgun-toting youths. But the house was silent. We stepped onto a cool verandah. Cane rocker. Smells of paint, stone, pine. The dogs were disinterested now, hot and sleepy, slinking off towards shade, settling down melancholically under a tree, panting and watching, half-lidded. She opened the door, took off her shoes. I followed. My socks had holes. I pulled them off as well. It was dark inside and I squeaked to the window and could see a green tractor beyond and smelt dead flowers and saw corpses wheeled past in caskets, my memory of Gottlieb still fresh as they lowered him into the ground, the soil dark and wet beneath. He was my only friend. Walter Gottlieb. I was remembering names. Bookshelves. Taps. Funereal drumming of dripping water. Soft explosions of ignited gas. Fabiana’s toenails painted blue; I was looking at a painting, swirls of blue, a figure, a woman seated. Fabiana putting on the kettle. As she walked past me in bare feet I noticed she was so much taller than me, and she walked with a kind of lurch and sway, seductively, vertiginously. The coffin of a baby grand in one corner. Sit down, she said and returned to the kitchen again, just checking on me. Good to be checked on. I’m a stranger, I have no means to get back to the city, I was about to say, but I heard the gas go off and she yelled, for she was a long way off…on second thoughts, do you want some whisky instead? Returning with a bottle of Dimple and two glasses and she poured, then settled herself into a deep sofa, her feet rising as she sank so I was looking again, at the twins painting rocks with blue nail polish, her feet so fine, the skin alabaster, nails blue, Blimunde sliding beneath the surface, and Fabiana wearing a black silk top so she’s obviously gone and changed and here I am. I asked about the paintings instead. European landscapes? She nodded. Whisky warming my belly. Things leaping about inside my head. I remarked lightly that she shouldn’t give alcohol to accident victims since it could kill them. It’s okay, she poured another for us immediately and I sensed the woman was capable of murder.

  I used to take trains in Europe with my bicycle lodged in the last car and sometimes they would uncouple half the train and I’d have to make my way back miles to fetch the bike, I was saying to Fabiana, and she was listening in the same way Dr Judith did, though with the doctor I was aware of my past, since I had a record, having had several episodes as a fugueur, and had lived under different names in different places and had already been classified and diagnosed by a Parisian psychoanalyst, who told me I was living three lives, which surprised me because I thought he would have uncovered more. So I told the story of stopping at train stations because they
looked good, had nice flowers, were clean or because there was mist settling at dusk, with snow-capped mountains behind, or I’d seen a family sit down to supper in the soft glow of a weak electric light and felt comforted, at home. This vicarious joy became more powerful as I felt the urge to paint. I didn’t wait for reality to arrive, since I knew it always came, a kick in the belly at the end of my money at the end of a dark road where thugs inevitably lurked. It was called being an artist. I was protected by a shell, I said, born with a caul; Fabiana was leaning forward, looking rather clinical. I said I had always found money by going to the Australian embassy or the consul-general or wiring the arts council, and they seemed to agree there could be a kind of standing loan in small instalments providing I brought results. But of late, there had been too few results. Fortunately, I was found by Marie de Nerval, who convinced me that I should paint over the paintings of others, after swabbing them down with turpentine. That way, she said, the ghosts of the past were always present.