Wish

by Peter Goldsworthy

  ‘Linguistically,’ she said, ‘I think we find it more natural, more acceptable, to eat fish.’

  I wasn’t with her; she expanded. ‘Cow becomes beef, pig becomes pork. Deer becomes venison—anything to hide the truth, to pretend we picked it off a tree, like fruit. But fish stays fish. We feel we don’t need a euphemism. We’re comfortable with the bald fact.’

  I had read Clive on this same subject. Part of the fight for Animal Rights, he had written somewhere, was the fight to call a spade a spade.

  ‘We seem able to accept it, emotionally,’ Stella said, increasingly prolix. ‘We don’t need to distance ourselves. We can cope.’

  She sipped at her wine, then burbled on, thinking aloud. ‘Or is it because fish is the only meat we still routinely kill ourselves? In person. What’s the point in pretending fish-meat is something else—giving it a new name—if you yanked the hook out of its mouth with your own hands and watched it flop to death on the jetty?’

  ‘You mean there might be limits to our capacity for self-deception?’

  Stella chuckled. ‘You and I are going to get on famously.’

  The phone rang in the next room, she rose, a little unsteadily, and answered it. I couldn’t catch the sense of her words, but her tone was playful, intimate. Clive was reporting from a transit-lounge somewhere, I guessed. I refilled both our glasses with wine, then carefully separated another thick flake of fish from the spine.

  ‘Clive sends his best wishes,’ Stella said, returning to the room.

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Clive is always fine.’

  This time it wasn’t so much the hint of mockery that I found disconcerting, it was the dislocation in tone. Only a few moments ago she had been chatting to him fondly. I fumbled for small talk.

  ‘No jet lag?’

  ‘Clive doesn’t believe in jet lag. He believes it’s all in the mind.’

  She drained her wine, shook out another cigarette and bent to light it. Her personality seemed to hang on her as loosely as her generous flesh: a mix of thick skin and soft heart, joky irreverence and puppy-eyed sentimentality. I watched her refill her glass for the fourth or fifth time and suspected that all of these disparate selves were equally soluble in alcohol.

  Yet another self revealed itself as we parted for the night, in the hall outside the bathroom. She leaned her face into mine without warning, and kissed me wetly and drunkenly on the mouth.

  ‘Sweet dreams, Sweet-Tooth,’ she said, and wobbled away in the direction of her own bedroom.

  21

  Wish woke me at first light; I surfaced through a thick hangover to find her fingers wrapped about mine, moulding them like puppets, putting words in my pliant hands, Sign ventriloquism.

  ‘Up time,’ I found myself signing. ‘Tickle Wish.’

  I tickled; she hooted, rolling on the bed with me. My head ached; my bladder was about to burst. Outside, rain was falling again; liquid gurglings on the roof and in the gutters. I rose, and headed for the bathroom, locking Wish outside the door with difficulty. An absurd coyness? My feelings were not the issue. To feel shame or embarrassment in her presence, even a pretence of embarrassment, was to grant her a certain status and dignity. I might appear happily naked before a dog, or a cat—but not before Wish. I showered, towelled myself dry, and poked my head through Stella’s half-open door. She was snoring gently somewhere in the darkness.

  Wish was waiting in my bedroom, turning my wetsuit inside-out, absorbed.

  ‘Look wall,’ I signed.

  She seemed puzzled, but complied; I dropped the towel and pulled on fresh clothes. I made the porridge-spooning sign for breakfast; she signed back, insisting: ‘I cook breakfast.’

  We walked down the stairs, hand in hand, but as we reached the ground she dropped my hand and sniffed the air, suddenly alert. I followed her into the kitchen; even I could now smell the lingering stench of last night’s fish. Wish sniffed her way about the kitchen, dog-fashion. She rapidly located the scraps bucket and stared intently into its depths. Finally she reached in, and gingerly lifted out the fish-skeleton by the tail.

  The head came last, intact, soft-eyed; she stared at the final piece in the puzzle, horrified, then dropped it back into the bucket.

  ‘You eat fish?’ she signed, urgently.

  ‘Most people eat fish.’

  She knew this, surely—but seemed unable to comprehend the simple fact; I realised again how sheltered her life had been.

  ‘Fish eat fish,’ I signed. ‘Big fish eat little fish.’

  At this she fled from the room. I heard the front door open, and slam shut; I opened it again, and stepped out onto the verandah. Wish was already halfway up the nearest tree, and was soon sitting on the platform of her tree-house, a bleak black bundle, her long arms wrapped protectively around herself. She stared down at me from across those arms; I stood at the edge of the verandah, and held my hands out into the rain, trying to explain.

  ‘Fish eat people,’ I signed. ‘Sharks eat people.’

  No response; the Flat Hand dorsal fin was probably unfamiliar. I used something more immediate: big-fish-with-teeth.

  She stared down, immobile. For a moment I considered climbing the tree myself, then finally those long arms unwrapped themselves and reached out into Signing Space.

  ‘Bad fish eat fish.’

  ‘All fish eat fish,’ I signed, emphatically. ‘Big fish eat little fish. If not—they die.’

  I used her own terse sign, the hand gone belly-up.

  ‘You eat animals?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Which animals?’

  ‘Cow. Sheep.’ I signed slowly, trying to avoid the shapes of any of the animals that were grazing in the outer paddock, in full view of the treetops.

  ‘You eat me?’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘Why eat those?’

  What could I say? There was no simple answer to her simple logic. Except that it was a learnt logic, a human logic—it had nothing to do with the natural law of the rainforests of central Africa. I tried to appeal to her emotions instead, to that part of her, that part of all of us, which is more purely animal, and pre-rational.

  ‘Come down. Hug me.’

  She shook her wet head. ‘Sad thoughts. Me sad inside.’

  Stella appeared at the door, blear-eyed, tousle-haired, wrapped in her quilt.

  ‘What’s all the commotion? What’s the matter, J.J.?’

  ‘Wish found the fish bones.’

  She smacked her forehead. ‘Shit! I knew I should have buried them.’

  ‘I tell Saint,’ Wish was signing, high up in the drizzling rain. ‘Saint eat fish—not.’

  ‘What’s the sign for fink?’ Stella asked, amused.

  I suspected that Clive would be less upset, than thrilled. Or perhaps that’s not quite the right word for the emotional range of the man. He would at least have been gratified. Pleased. Wish was speaking on behalf of animals, even speaking on behalf of fish. Her reaction also offered new insight into her perception of self. Either she regarded herself as animal rather than human, or she regarded all animals as human. In this she clearly differed from other apes raised in human families, all of which—all of whom—believed themselves human.

  ‘Does she know the sign for promise?’ I said.

  ‘Cross your heart?’

  I nodded, and stepped further out into the falling rain: ‘I promise,’ I signed. ‘I will eat animals again—never. I promise.’

  I repeated the shape pleadingly, until, at last, she began to descend, crossed the grass between us, and hugged me, soaking me even more than the rain.

  She was almost herself for the remainder of the afternoon, cooperative, alert, interested in the day’s lessons. Only the sight of her evening meal, the sight of food, reminded her of the previous night’s crime.

  ‘Not hungry,’ she signed, abruptly.

  For the first time we sat at the table with her, something I had long been urging, and to which Stel
la, prodded by the fish episode, had finally agreed. We both made a great show of relishing our own vegetables; still she refused to touch hers. She went to bed early, refused also to hear—and watch—a bedtime story. Her aquarium bubbled steadily on its shelf; her accusing glance in that direction reminded me how stupid we had been.

  ‘Too sad,’ she signed. ‘Crowds of thinking.’

  She hugged me but refused to hug Stella, who, unfairly, was taking the bulk of the blame. A fine moral distinction: was preparing meat a greater crime than eating it? I finally left her lying in the darkness, listening to her favourite middle-of-the-road music on the radio, soothing movie themes, slow sad ballads.

  Downstairs, Stella was pulling on her overalls. Calving problems at a local dairy, she told me. She apologised for leaving me alone—there was no alternative. If she didn’t attend, some butcher-cum-midwife would botch the job. I made myself a toasted cheese sandwich after she had left, and retreated upstairs to an early bed, grateful for the reprieve from another night’s drinking.

  22

  A different Wish woke me the next morning, again at first light. One hand held a tray of breakfast, the knuckles of the other were pressed against the carpet, balancing herself. She set the tray in front of me: orange juice, cereal, bun, jam. Plus a single rose standing in a slender vase—a setting she must have seen in a book. My cannibalism was forgiven; she sat on my bed, helping herself, clearly hungry, to the food as I ate, tickling me from time to time.

  Stella poked her head in the door, relief written on her face. Wish acknowledged her presence, if without enthusiasm. Things were almost back to normal; the holiday mood created by Clive’s absence was restored. I rose and tugged back the curtains. The rain had finally ceased, the sky had cleared, the early sun was shining above the eastern edge of the valley.

  Stella, wedged into overalls and rubber boots, clomped off into the fields to check her flock after breakfast, followed by her dogs; I sat outside in the rose garden with Wish. Back to basics: reading, writing, arithmetic. In the afternoon the three of us, and the three dogs, watched a movie, a 1950s musical, soaked in the sugary kind of music that Wish preferred. As she closed her eyes and rocked her head in time, I realised that the main sense of those sweet songs was in the melodies; the words needed no translation.

  As the final credits screened, Wish asked to watch the movie again, using her signature sign of crossed-fingers, the shape of hope.

  Stella shook her head and signed: ‘Supper time.’

  We ate together, sitting at the dining table, Wish requesting three extra helpings of fruit. I recalled once more the lines of Clive’s: that a visit to the abattoirs might put most people off their dinner, but they will usually manage a hearty breakfast.

  After dinner, I shared again her one-handed teeth-clean, and another unembarrassed piss. I sign-read her a sequence of stories, and sat with her till her eyes closed and I could detach my wrist from her tight grip.

  Stella was sprawled on the sofa downstairs, watching the news on television, putting the last lick to a lumpy, hand-rolled cigarette. She mostly smoked tailor-mades; this was cannabis, at a guess. Clive’s absence seemed to have magnified her excesses: the late rising, the drinking, the television. The fish. Perhaps it was merely holiday spirit, a moral equivalent of wearing thongs and shorts and not bothering to shave.

  ‘Come and sit here,’ she said, patting the sofa.

  She gently pushed her dogs aside, making space; I eased my bulk between them. We drank wine and talked of Wish for a time; I allowed the cigarette she forced on me to smoulder between my fingers, before passing it back.

  Clive rang from New York at nine; after that we talked of him.

  ‘He’s a very special kind of person,’ Stella said. ‘He’s a living national treasure, for Christ’s sake. But sometimes it’s nice to have a little private space.’

  She settled her head comfortably against my shoulder. The three dogs watched, jealously; Binky, the smallest, growled, softly, and inserted herself between us.

  ‘You’re very warm, J.J. You glow.’

  There’s a lot of me. Lots of metabolism. I make a lot of warmth.’

  ‘Clive’s not a warm person,’ she said.

  I felt uncomfortable discussing her husband in his absence, it seemed a breach of trust.

  ‘Of course I miss him when he’s away.’

  I waited for the implicit ‘but’.

  ‘But he sucks it out of me, J.J. He’s not warm. Not—demonstrative.’

  Again I said nothing. She eased Binky off the sofa between us, swung her legs over the end of the sofa, and rested the back of her head in my lap.

  ‘Do you mind, J.J.?’

  I was too surprised to answer. The heavy pressure of her head aroused me, my first erection for some time. The feeling was unexpected and exciting, I had been dead from the waist down for several years.

  ‘You pleased to see me?’ she asked, and laughed.

  My pulse flared, my cock shrank instantly, scared off, just as it had hidden too often from Jill in the last years of our marriage.

  Oblivious, she returned to the subject of Clive. ‘He’s no good at Sign, is he?’

  ‘He’s okay.’

  She repositioned her head. I half-expected her to turn and plump my belly like a pillow.

  She said, jokily: ‘Cuddle Stella, Sweet-Tooth?’

  I draped one arm awkwardly around her.

  ‘I get so lonely when Clive’s away,’ she said. ‘I need human contact.’

  Her big loose body had been loosened even further by alcohol and cannabis, made pliant—but the eyes that stared up at mine had a residual hardness that alcohol had not yet dissolved.

  ‘You know what I really need, J.J.?’

  My heart lurched—pure anxiety now, not a trace of sexual excitement.

  ‘I need relief,’ she said. ‘All this pelvic congestion. Here—see.’

  She took my hand and planted it between her thighs. I felt myself shrivelling, growing ever smaller. There is an awkward English verb, to detumesce. The sense is much more economical in Sign, and much more eloquent: a droop of a stiff arm.

  The bleating of the phone saved me, miraculously. Stella rose and answered it, a veterinary colleague, apparently, seeking advice. Despite her drunkenness she managed to give it, or at least fake it. I sneaked off up the stairs under cover of shop-talk: heartworm, active and passive vaccines, immune proteins.

  I peeked through Wish’s bedroom door as I passed: she lay sleeping on her back, splay-limbed, open to the world, trusting.

  I closed my own bedroom door. There was no lock. Stella knocked and entered as soon as I had climbed into bed. She came and sat on the edge of my bed, and rested her hand on my thigh. My cock shrank even smaller, retreating from her fingers.

  She laughed, and withdrew her hand as if it were all too much trouble.

  ‘It’s only sex, J.J. It’s not as if I’m asking you to kiss me.’

  ‘I haven’t made love since Jill and I split up,’ I said, apologetically. ‘I haven’t even had the interest.’

  ‘It’s just habit, J.J. The less you have the less you want.’

  ‘I’m very tired.’

  She smiled, drunkenly tolerant. ‘We don’t have to make love. Just cuddle me. I need a little affection. A little tenderness. Is that too much to ask?’

  ‘I can manage that.’

  She deftly peeled off her clothes and was naked within seconds. I tried not to stare as she climbed into bed but her breasts were huge, stretched pendulous by their own weight, semi-autonomous in their movements. I had seen nothing like them in the world of small dainty women I had grown up in, and married into.

  The polite sign for breasts is opaque, made with a single Flat Hand. Size can be indicated, tactfully, with two Good Hands—but when I think of Stella I think solely in the vernacular, an extravagant double-handed cupping, considered vulgar among the Deaf.

  ‘Let’s modify the rules, J.J. We can cuddle, we ca
n play with each other, but no actual penetration.’

  Her speech was slurred, but her words sounded oddly logical, carefully thought-out. My cock retracted completely, on the verge of becoming a vagina. Then, miraculously, I was rescued again: Stella fell asleep without warning, mid-sentence, draped half across me, snoring slightly. I eased my leg from beneath her heavy thigh, and lay sleepless at her side, thoughts tumbling. The situation was too familiar, the last months of my failed marriage too immediately past. Tears seeped into my eyes, threatened to clog my throat. The puzzled questions of Wish came back to me, fingers probing a tender wound. I had loved Jill enormously. Where had that love vanished?

  Stella stirred around midnight, reached into my groin, and murmured, mostly to herself: ‘I don’t think it was meant to happen, J.J.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Not your fault.’

  I turned my back to her, facing the wall. I sensed that she was still awake, and screwed my eyes shut, but I couldn’t shut out her movements: the rhythmic shifting of her weight, then the quickening jiggle of the mattress and of her breathing—and, finally, the small, suppressed, plosive gasp of air between her lips.

  She lay still after this self-release; soon she was snoring gently. I must have joined her in sleep, when I next opened my eyes, light was filtering through the window; a glow of red digits in the far corner of the room read, blurrily, 5.55. I slipped from the bed, careful not to disturb my companion. I pulled on my clothes, hoping desperately that Wish had not yet risen. Too late; her room at the end of the passage was empty. There was still a slight possibility that she hadn’t peeped through my bedroom door, and a marginally smaller possibility that she had, but made nothing of it: two adults enjoying a friendly consenting cuddle, even if one of them was naked. I searched the rooms downstairs, then poked my head out through the front door, screwing my eyes up against the morning glare. No sign of her in the treetops.

  I turned inside, and mounted the stairs. Stella was still asleep, snoring softly, unrousable.

  My bladder was making the usual morning demands; I headed for the bathroom—and stepped back again at the door, dumbfounded. Wish was squatting on the tiles in front of the full-length wall-mirror, her arms and shoulders lathered with shaving cream. A pair of scissors sat open-jawed on the tiles; scissored hair had been shed onto the floor all around. My disposable razor was gripped tightly in her right hand; she was in the process of shaving her left shoulder.