Strange Attractors (1985)
Page 6
plants: the gradual clothing of the land by Rhynia, Asteroxylon and
other Psilophytes; the appearance of the scale trees, their advance
in the Devonian forests along with club mosses and horsetails; the
growth of the vast Carboniferous forests dominated by fronded
pteridophyte giants beneath which ferns arose in green gloom; the
rise of conifers, cycads, ginkgos, tenanted now by increasing num bers of birds; and at last the arrival of flowering plants and the yearly blazes of spring down through Cenozoic millennia — he
walked lost in visions which sun, solitude and the sighing of the
wind rendered as vivid as the dawn of day.
A step in any direction
©
TIMOTHY DELL
John Hargreaves let the wind push him into the centre of the town.
Even there the title of desert held some meaning. There was no
one. Two rows of houses looked across the track at each other. Some
had verandas. Some had patches of grass and flowers. Nearly all of
them were identical under poorly-maintained facades of gardens
and paint. Fence boundaries showed where the dust of the desert
was supposed to end.
W hen Hargreaves looked back down the track he could see the
desert. It was flat. Ahead, the same desert stretched out till it shimmered and lost all detail. Mirrors.
He looked up and saw that the sun stood directly overhead. His
feet were in shadow. He made himself the mirror, and tried to think
of both directions as the same. He turned around. And then back.
He had to do this for some time to maintain the illusion, and to fix
it within him. The two ends of the town became one, their superficial differences blended. The desert was the same anyway.
Eventually he had stored within him the sight and feel of a town
that was only half a town, and himself as the cause of its reflection.
He liked it, and called it a memory. He looked forward to the time
when he could recall it in another place and regain the feeling of this
place. He didn’t go to the other end of town to see if anyone was
there.
Hargreaves thought about the time. Perhaps if it was midday the
people would be in their houses eating. He was hungry. He thought
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Tim othy Dell
about the date. W ith this and the time he could locate his entry into
the town precisely. Asked about it, he would be able to make the
memory real in the mind of the hearer. He waited in the centre of
the town, reinforcing his memory.
He opened his ears.
No sound, other than the m urm ur of the desert as the wind
pushed its surface about. W ithin this m urm ur he slowly became
aware of a grating he could not identify. He recalled the image and
sound of other winds and sandstorms. There had been no rough
edges to those sounds.
He remembered the bare timbers on the sides of the houses at
the end of the town. He added the look of the timbers to the sound
in the wind to form an image. The particles of sand rubbed up
against the painted sides of the houses and took the clean white
paint with them on their journey and the timbers were slowly
revealed like the skeletons of sheep he had seen in the desert. The
wind never ceased; it always came from the same direction. Sometimes it would grow stronger and rage for a while and then settle and gently move again. The tim ber was painted on a day of lesser
wind, and the process of erosion repeated. He imagined the sight of
this event, and ran it over in his mind several times, the paint
appearing magically when the boards were clean.
Hargreaves waited.
He saw that he had made lines in the smooth sand of the desert
when he turned about. He made three circles with them. The town
became his as he combined the sounds and the sights and the feel of
the wind grating and the sun overhead and the town bounced back
from this spot. He was the centre of the symmetry, and it was
enough to wait with it. The wind cleared his face of hair. He forgot
about being hungry.
W here the track joined the horizon a minute point of disruption
appeared. Behind it dust boiled. He liked the way the point of disruption seemed not to move, though the cloud expanded in the wind. He waited, patient, knowing that it must come through the
town. It grew.
The origin expanded to become several trucks. They were large
vans with brightly coloured sides that even the desert could not
fully disguise. He wondered about the need for the reds and greens
in the yellow tones of the desert. He thought them outrageous in
the barren expanse of the plain; he disliked and tried to disregard
them. Now he could hear them. Loud and violent. They crushed
A step in any direction
45
the road. They began to threaten the town.
Hargreaves remained where he was, hating the trucks for destroying his peaceful symmetries, determined to stay in his place if they tried to enter.
They slowed, as if seeing him, at the edge of town. Stopped,
panting, there, at the first line of houses. The dust in the wind overwhelmed the trucks, and moved down the town. Hargreaves tried to see how the cloud would meet its twin and disappear into it. The
trucks ticked at him, cooling.
He felt the machines as a solid threat. Now they both waited. In
time he saw how the paint had cracked, how it had dulled in places.
The wind cleared. He smiled at them, as though these events were
his victory. They grew silent, impeding his view of the desert.
There was no pattern in them.
A horn blast shot from beneath the hood of the lead vehicle and
ran, screaming, around the town. He winced at the discordant
volume of it; but silence came. Again he smiled.
He began to hope that the trucks would leave now. They intruded on his vision of the town and the desert. He liked to keep his memories pure.
A door opened beside him. A man came out. He looked at John
Hargreaves and then at the trucks. Another blast came, and then
all the doors opened and people came from them. From their
silence came laughter and greetings. They came from behind and
scuffed his circles. The trucks were surrounded by the inhabitants
of the town, who shook hands with the drivers, and others who
came from the backs of the trucks. The wind blew on Hargreaves
and on the inhabitants of the town and on the machines. They soon
came to loud life again and moved around the end of the town, the
people following. The dust settled. John Hargreaves felt he should
leave the town. His foolish gesture of defiance would not make a
good story. His circles became small and ridiculous. He stood in
the ruin of them until the sun stretched his shadows across the miles
of his walking. Now7 there was no dust. Only the wind.
The bar below him yelled in drunken male tones. The circus had
changed the town. Children had emerged from the houses and run
in the street with their dogs. The patterns they made refused to
mesh with those of the sun and the desert and his own stepstepstep
as he traced the wind-lines in the sand. T hat first explosion of life
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Timothy D ell
had settl
ed now, and become instead a forced gaiety. The townsfolk
still clung to a myth of the city. He wondered at that. The heat had
made the make-up run on the faces of the clowns, and the elastic
bound noses had slipped with sweat and made their faces lop-sided
and ugly. John Hargreaves couldn’t see how the townspeople could
keep their myth after seeing such evidence. He struggled with it,
hoping to find something that would explain their behaviour.
The bar below him yelled. The drivers had congregated down
there; some of the men from the town also. They’d invited him for a
drink, but his own feeling of foolishness and a residue of his hate for
the trucks held him back. He no longer had the words to talk to
them. The words had been burnt out in the desert where meanings
came from millennial movements.
The bar yelled. It came loud and ugly. It made him restless.
Eventually he decided to go into the dark of the street.
It was cooler here, but the noise still arrived. The lights from the
hotel destroyed the power of the stars. John Hargreaves decided to
go and see the circus. There was nothing else to do.
They had set up in a place marked ‘Oval’. He could distinguish
nothing that should make this place any different from the surrounding desert. Four poles stood at one place near the tents of the circus. The stars were pointed out by the poles, but the brighter
arc-lights dimmed them. The circus lights had a focus, the tents.
The poles were white, the central pair taller, as though they had
been there longer and grown more. He noticed that they leaned
towards each other. He followed the line of them to their meeting
place, hoping to find a star there. With a small movement of his
head he found he could place a star in the imaginary apex of the
poles. Hargreaves felt that this sight was one he might wish to recall
in the future. He made sure he could remember the scene by
tracing the lines over and over.
The tents huddled in the centre o f ‘Oval’, in the protection of the
lights. They appeared two-dimensional. He circled around them,
looking for the entrance. His shadow multiplied and stretched in
the halo of lights. It was an effect totally unlike that of the sun.
Nothing. He toured once more. The area seemed closed. John
Hargreaves felt he had a right to go anywhere in the desert. He became frustrated that this place was closed to him.
A clown emerged. It went past him, seemingly oblivious. John
A step in any direction
47
Hargreaves followed the figure as far as the poles. Beyond them
were the trucks from the morning. The clown went into one of
them. Its footprints could just be detected in the sand; they made
small shadows that were regular, not like the small dunes of the
desert. He followed them to the entrance, a fold. It was obvious
now. It was hard to understand how he could have missed it.
Inside was a large area, larger than the outside dimensions
seemed to allow. Closed stalls ran around the square with canvas
awnings reaching in. It was silent. There was no wind.
The surface had been cleared of stones. It was raked into tiny
parallel furrows that reached from the entrance to the far wall of
tents. The lights cast an illumination that admitted of no high
spots, an eerie but pleasant effect giving everything the same
intensity.
He imagined his footprints crossing this area, perfect in the virgin sand. He watched his feet crush the perfect furrows. The sound was loud in the silent square. It stopped when he reached the far
side and stepped onto the canvas floor of a shooting gallery.
The light made the footprints appear drawn, not impressed. In
the desert they were always deep with shadow. In the rocks nonexistent. For the first time he saw how he moved in the desert.
These prints were alike and yet different. They were clean. Even,
he thought, beautiful.
There was no way to return without destroying what he had
made. The tents made a wall he could not pass. He wanted the line
of steps to be an enigma to the first arrival of the morning. He
grinned as he considered the reaction of that person, whoever it
might be.
The square was now a story to be told. How the person arrived
and told friends about the footprints. Inexplicable. Hargreaves
crossed to the edge of the stall. A few feet away was another canvas
floor. The sand in between was also raked. Perfect furrows, not to
be harmed.
The line stretched out. He closed his eyes to capture it, finally.
Childlike, he urged his body to cross the distance, pushing from
within. He felt childhood dreams blend with this new memory. His
hair shifted in a gentle wind.
At the exit he turned and looked at what he had made. He saw
himself as the first arrival. One set of footprints reaching out. An
enigma. One that would make a good story.
Hargreaves turned to leave. A voice laughed from the shadows.
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Tim othy Dell
An old man came out. A grin had pushed his features to the top of
his face, the lines of age exaggerated grotesquely. The old man
stood and laughed at John Hargreaves. He let his eyes travel along
the one-way line of footprints and he laughed harder. His eyes saw
John Hargreaves jum ping from stall to stall, around the edge of the
square, and tears ran down the lines in his face.
John Hargreaves felt he could explain. The old man, however,
seemed content to laugh. To say anything now would make it
worse. He concentrated on the story of the footprints. The old
man, in response, took a rake from the shadows. Hargreaves hurried from the tents, abashed. In his mind he saw the old man remove the prints from the sand.
At the hotel men drank. Later they carried him to his room.
His body sweated into already dark-stained sheets. The sun
showed the ceiling cracked like the dried lake beds in the desert. He
tried to tell the ceiling about the desert. All that came was the
memory of the old man. The lake beds of his memory all had the
imprint of an aged, laughing face.
He hated the old man. Hargreaves’ small memories were fragile;
the mockery of others could destroy them.
He preferred the small memories. He liked the circles in the sand
because that was a thing only he could have seen. A thing that his
mind had collected; had thought worth collecting. Others would
accept the arrival into town, but not the detail of a grain of sand
falling when he placed his foot down in the desert. He had tried to
tell them, wanted them to share his memories. Always, though,
they would rather talk of the harder images from the city. O r the
circus. Familiarity breeds reality, he thought.
John Hargreaves considered himself a realist, illusion having
been burnt out in the desert. The laughter of the old man returned.
The desert was still an attraction. It wasn’t time yet, however. He
had to wait with the depression of the town and the unexpected
circus. He didn’t look inside for the feeling that was the desert. The
fear that it might have gone was strong. Memorie
s, unclear and
unclean with the old man.
He went to the window and thought of a water-hole. Dusk.
Birds. A stone falling. Waves moving across the surface. He no
longer knew if it was a collage, an actual happening, or pure fantasy. It no longer mattered. The peace of it arrived before the face
A step in any direction
49
returned. The shock drove him out of the room. The face moved
like an after-image of the sun on the walls of the corridor. He strode
outside and let the new sun burn his eyes. Some calm returned.
At his feet were lines drawn by a child. It was the rough face of a
clown. With the sun still in his eyes he drew a crude house, chimney
smoking. Then a lake. A child’s scene. Then people. Then laughter. The men from the bar were looking at him bending over the dirt, scratching. John Hargreaves quickly straightened, brushed
over his drawings, and left with accusing eyes on his back.
The circus was the only place to go. Perhaps now, in the day, it
would be changed.
Alongside the trucks he found animals. A lion gazed from its
cage. Next to it monkeys lay, dissipated by the heat. Sometimes
their eyes blinked. They seemed complacent being boxed. H a rgreaves wondered how much they understood of him standing before them, free. He smiled his knowledge of them to their cages,
telling them that he would remember them. The monkeys remained still. He went to the tents.
He found the old man keeping the house of mirrors. They recognised each other. In a tense moment of fear Hargreaves saw the old man smile with a gentle humour. Hargreaves moved forward holding out money. It was declined. He felt a sudden bond with the old man, this act both an apology and an acceptance for the night.
Inside he was repeated many times. At one place he saw his
image expanded down a tunnel of mirrors. Only one face, but a
multitude of edges extending beyond the light of the tent’s interior.
A thousand arms rose with his, the centipede of his legs rose with
precision. The old man’s face receded from his mind. Instead came
the memory of his entry to the town.
A line of him had come into town, each figure a separate instant
in time. He knew each step. They were like the steps in the desert.