The Best Australian Stories

by Black Inc.

  ‘Fainting’s a loss of consciousness. Maybe it’s a sign of not coping … you know, not being conscious enough. Like a lack of consciousness.’

  ‘I thought we were talking about goats.’

  ‘Well what kind of life is a goat going to have? I’m telling you, these goats are onto it.’

  ‘We could get one, make it happy.’

  ‘My friend Sarah had a goat, she said it was all very cute until it got big and started clomping around the house, over the floor boards at all hours, clomp clomp clomp. Can you imagine us with our fainting goat in the lift?’

  ‘Yes. It would be cute.’

  ‘It would not be cute.’

  ‘Ella Bird … goat owner!’

  But she was not smiling.

  ‘It would be something,’ he said very seriously.

  Ella put down her book. ‘They say the Victorian women fainted because of their clothes. I say, sure, but they were expected to faint. It was part of the job description. Their doctors gave them time prescriptions. Like a schedule for the day, broken down into tiny increments: when to knit, when to brush their hair, when to shit, well, you know, when to take tea. Now they have to give out drugs because we already have time prescriptions. We give ourselves our own time prescriptions, so doctors had to get inventive to keep up the power base and stay ahead. They had to go chemical. The Victorian women were like some kind of porcelain doll and there was a lot, I imagine, that couldn’t be assimilated. So you pass over it, let that moment slip away unregistered. It’s a coping mechanism. Like sleeping. Snooze buttons are society’s modern, acceptable answer to fainting.’

  Dan looked at her, his eyes widened a little, like they did when he was going to kiss her, only he backed away ever so slightly.

  ‘You’re not going to stab me, are you?’

  Ella looked out the windows to the dark bricked wall of the neighbouring building. The rain blew hard against the glass.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘All right then.’ He flopped back against the pillow and his chest lifted, like he was waiting for it.

  In Formation

  Karen Hitchcock

  For Oscar

  My husband told me he’d become a Lacanian psychoanalyst in formation. For a moment I thought he’d joined a team of marching psychoanalysts. But ‘in formation’ only meant he’d started the training.

  To become a Lacanian analyst in formation is a complicated process. The analysts have a meeting to decide who can start formation, then they decide, and then there’s a ceremony.

  I go to the ceremony. It is held in a small French bistro in the city. Five nervous men, two nervous women and my husband are all made analysts in formation. There are complicated speeches, then drinks. Everyone says ‘Yes? ’ at the end of their sentences with an upward inflection, and a sort of French accent, although most of them grew up in Melbourne.

  Everyone wears black, nothing but black. I wear a green dress and a red feather boa. I wear the boa because it matches my red lipstick, but halfway through the speeches I look out of the corner of my eye and see endlessly stony faces and a field of matt black, and I am suddenly unsure why I have worn such a non-black accessory. I slowly unwind my boa and push it deep inside my satchel. I hope nobody will notice. I hope nobody will assume, extrapolate or draw conclusions about my character. I hope nobody will read me based only on my red feather boa.

  After the speeches, my husband introduces me to the fully formed analysts one by one.

  He says, ‘This is my wife.’ And each of the analysts looks at me from their half-open eyes, smiles a half-smile and then doesn’t want any more information.

  If they had asked, I could have told them that I illustrate children’s books. But maybe they could tell just by looking? Maybe they could see the ink stains on my fingers? Maybe they were so good at analysing they no longer needed to ask for information?

  I smile and smile and smile. I smile until my face feels like an earthquake.

  *

  My husband tells me that Lacanian psychoanalysts still love Sigmund Freud, that He’s still the great granddaddy. He says Lacanian psychoanalysts are exactly like Freudian psychoanalysts, but with minor renovations: they are French instead of German; they use terminology from linguistics and structuralism instead of biology; and instead of fifty minutes they offer an excruciating consultation time that can vary from one minute to five hours.

  Lacanians, he says, are Freudians with extensions.

  They are Freud with a glittering new games room.

  *

  My husband’s sister sends him a plastic Freud action-figure from America, to congratulate him on becoming a Lacanian psychoanalyst in formation. She writes in her letter: I was so glad to hear! I’ve told all my friends! My brother, the Freudian-Lacanian psycho in formation! (Whatever that means, bro!)

  The Freud action-doll is made of moulded plastic and stands six inches tall. He holds a cigar in his fist and wears a black suit. The only movable part is his jaw. You can grab hold of the plastic moulded beard and make the mouth open and shut. I do that a few times and say ‘Yes? ’ over and over in a falsetto French accent. My husband plucks Freud from my fingers and carefully stands him up on a pile of books by our bed.

  *

  Apparently, to become an analyst you need to undergo a complete psychoanalysis.

  My husband’s analyst is a bombshell who wears Issey Miyake and no lipstick. I see her give a lecture; she is short and fierce and plays intricate games with language.

  She makes my husband tremble visibly and when I ask him what is wrong, he says that watching her is like falling from a mountain. I look at him as if he has asked for a divorce, and he pats my knee and says, ‘Don’t worry, it’s only my transference.’

  He holds up his finger and says, ‘Resistance would be useless.’

  *

  I brush my teeth that night and I glance over at Freud. He is lying face down on top of the pile of books.

  I snigger and say to my husband, ‘Hey, did you notice? Freud has fallen.’

  My husband turns and sees. He gets out of bed and says primly, ‘No, he’s only been knocked over by the cleaner.’ And he picks Freud up gingerly and puts him back on his feet.

  ‘Thank you, son,’ I say in a high-pitched Viennese accent.

  My husband doesn’t find that funny.

  *

  In the morning I turn Billie Holiday on loud in the kitchen and, while I wait for my bread to toast, I squint my eyes and sing into my fist. I scream, ‘Lady sings the blues, and she’s got it bad.’ I play the trumpet solo on my knife. I use my breasts as drums.

  For the vocal finale, I turn around and swoop down with my mouth close to my fist and see that my husband is standing quietly by the kitchen door, with his palm on his chin and his eyes staring at me with their lids halfway closed. Usually he would laugh and kiss me, but he doesn’t smile or move or blink, so I quickly close my mouth, stand up straight and brush down the front of my orange skirt.

  *

  Now that my husband’s a psychoanalyst in formation we have to go to dinner parties with psychoanalysts. To pass the time at these parties I play spot-the-defining-feature-of-an-analyst’s-house, and I notice the following interesting facts: all the analysts have one Egyptian painting with lots of side-on eyes; they all have one room with Persian rugs on the wall and a mantelpiece cluttered with artefacts. The older ones have short-haired, orange dogs. Their music is minimalist and atonal. By the dining table, there is always a gigantic painting that looks like an explosion of blood. No one ever serves chicken or cauliflower. After dinner there is always a box of fat, brown cigars.

  There are other things about analysts: the women have black and white hair and never wear lipstick. The men wear black suits. The conversations have many pauses. And they all nod an awful lot; none harder than the analysts in formation.

  I start to see our house with new eyes and I make the following observations: I made all of the art in our lounge room between form one
and the end of university. We do not have any dogs or rugs or mantelpieces or blood explosions. I own four different-coloured feather boas and six felt hats and twenty-five lipsticks. None of my clothes are black. None of them are Issey Miyake. My husband has secretly bought an Egyptian eye painting and hung it in his study over the couch.

  That night, I watch the Freud action-figure from the corner of my eye and wonder what he would think about me. His mouth is closed, his face is completely blank and his shadow, cast by the moonlight, is massive against the wall. And I wonder what he would think about my husband’s elegant analyst.

  *

  At the dinner parties, the analysts either tell true, third-hand anecdotes about Lacan or they talk about books. But they only ever talk about three books: The Purloined Letter, Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake. I figure they are caught in a rut, so at one dinner party I go, ‘What about that Raymond Carver story where he visits his ex-wife and then, when he leaves, he walks away from her through the street and the pavement is covered with fallen leaves. All these leaves, he thinks, so many leaves; leaves and leaves and leaves; someone ought to do something about all of these leaves.’ My arms and palms are outstretched; I pause and look around the table.

  Everyone is staring at me, frozen, like two rows of plastic dolls.

  I hear a cricket chirp.

  ‘It’s really great,’ I peep.

  My husband clears his throat. ‘So,’ he says to the table of immobile analysts, ‘That character Dupin from The Purloined Letter is pretty clever, yes?’ Everyone nods and starts chewing and drinking and moving their fork up and down again.

  I look to the right and the left and then pick up my napkin and slowly deposit my cherry-red lipstick there, the way I was taught to do with gristle. Then I stare down at my plate.

  At home, in bed, wearing a tiny golden silk slip, I flick through their pale Lacanian journal. I get through one full title: A Graphic Representation of One’s Original Autre, or, Imaginary Axes Along a Really Long Signifying Chain. Then, my head suddenly hurts, and my husband’s eyes are closed, so I turn out my lamp and lie awake, staring at Freud in the moonlight. I imagine he is standing guard over that mountain of books, like Moses on a hill.

  Why did I have to say anything? I ask Freud in my mind. Why did I open my goddamned mouth?

  Freud stands regal. My husband snores.

  *

  I go with my husband to a psychoanalytic conference in Adelaide. At the airport he buys me a bottle of Issey Miyake perfume. I stand there and smile like Doris fucking Day.

  On the first day of lectures, he waits for me by the hotel door. I approach him wearing my gorgeous, beaded 1920s dress and my olive-green pointy shoes. My husband does not look pleased. He stares at me with his mouth half-open and can’t take his eyes off my favourite boots. I look down too, then I look up at his face, and on the way there my eyes notice he is totally and completely covered in solid-black wool clothes. I look down at me again: the points on my shoes grow pointier, the green greener, the dress louder, the beads swishier.

  My shoulders slump. I go, ‘Oh … I’ll be back in a minute.’

  *

  At home I remember nothing about the conference except for the following:

  1. Someone used the word identificofetishisationism seven times, in a twenty-minute lecture.

  2. My husband still went wobbly in front of his analyst.

  3. I didn’t get to wear my favourite boots.

  I look at the stupid Freud doll and narrow my eyes.

  *

  My husband starts staying out until midnight, at seminars that are only for the Lacanian psychoanalysts in formation. He says that he has to attend them all or else he’ll get kicked out of training. When he comes home his eyes are distant and dreamy, he has cigar stains between his fingers, he hums to himself atonally.

  Apparently, he stops liking the feel of my soft silk slips.

  One night in bed he tells me, ‘There is no such thing as Woman.’

  I would say, Well, that would account for it then, but he has already turned over and started snoring.

  At home, alone, for the sixth time in a week, I don’t feel like singing. I don’t feel like dancing. I don’t feel like cooking or reading or drawing. The only things I feel comfortable in are my husband’s old, black jeans.

  I pass Freud in the bedroom and accidentally kick him off his books.

  *

  When we eat dinner together now, instead of telling jokes and stories and feeding each other mouthfuls of food, my husband gives me nonstop lectures about how the unconscious is structured like a language, about how from the moment the human subject speaks it becomes fractured and marked by a gaping, unfulfillable lack.

  We go to another party and, just to see if my husband will notice, I decide that I won’t utter a word. The entire night I communicate with movements of my head and my eyebrows. I only open my mouth to pour in some wine, or poke in some food. I shake my head politely when I am offered a cigar. I nod my head politely when the conversation turns to projective identification in the postmodern cinematic experience. I raise a wry eyebrow when they discuss the subject’s desire for the phallus.

  I drive us home, as my husband cannot focus. He looks out of the passenger-seat window and he murmurs, ‘I am where I am not.’

  I would say, No kidding, Bucko, but I am on a language strike.

  *

  The analyst-forming seminars continue and my husband stops eating at home.

  On Sunday, the one day when there are no seminars, my husband shuts himself up in his study and smokes dozens of cigars.

  I knock on his door at lunchtime and ask if he wants some chicken soup.

  He looks out bleakly, through the smoke. He says, ‘There is no relation between the sexes.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say quietly and close the door.

  In the corridor I remember how five weeks ago my husband used to hate cigars and love my chicken soup.

  I leave trails of wet tissues across the lounge room and up the stairs, but he doesn’t follow them.

  *

  I am home alone again, in my husband’s old, black jeans. I am staring at the wall above Freud’s little plastic head.

  ‘Oh, fuck this,’ I say and I take off the jeans and throw them in the garbage. I put Billie Holiday on really loud, wrap my body in my four feather boas and dance around the bedroom.

  I fill the bath with ice-cold water and push Freud in face down. I hold him there and curse. When I lift him out, the water flows right off his back. So I hurl him across the room. He soars through the air in a slow-motion somersault, utterly unperturbed, his cigar held aloft, his moulded beard unruffled. He lands with a plop on our bed. I jump on him and twist my boa around his neck but he doesn’t choke or splutter; he stays a calm, plastic pink.

  I realise that Freud is completely indestructible.

  I sit him up on the white pillow next to me in bed. In admiration I lend him half of my blue boa.

  Freud and I sit there in the bedroom and wait for the moon to rise. We feel really comfortable together.

  At ten minutes to midnight I put Freud back on his mountain, hang up my boas and slip on my silk.

  My husband comes home. Dreamy and distant, he tells me that love is simply an illusion. He says, as if concentrating on something in the distance, ‘It is simply an offering of something that you do not have.’

  I remember that the last thing he offered me was his analyst’s perfume. I struggle to maintain the connection, it seems to be important and my husband might even find it interesting, but finally, all I can say is ‘oh’ and he shakes his head and soon starts snoring atonally.

  *

  The following night there’s not a scrap of food in the house so, on impulse, I pick Freud up and slip him into the mobile-phone pocket in my satchel. I take him to the supermarket and I feel comforted to have him along. When I’m choosing my grapes I say, ‘Freud, what do you think about these?’ and I lift the satchel’s flap and ho
ld a bunch above him. In the yoghurt section I consult him about whether I should buy strawberry or vanilla; in the meat section he advises me to choose the sirloin in preference to the fillet.

  Then, Freud absolutely insists that I buy myself two big blocks of my favourite chocolate.

  Then, instead of going home, Freud suggests that I take him to my favourite restaurant and afterwards to the movies.

  Freud, let me tell you, turns out to be an absolute barrel of laughs.

  We play an incredibly violent Japanese video game, then we walk along the deserted beach. Freud lies on my palm with his legs sticking out over my fingers.

  On the beach, I hold my palm up high and twirl around slowly so he can see the ocean of black ink and the far-off sparkling horizon. Very softly, very smoothly, just like Chet Baker, Freud hums me a song.

  When we get home my husband is sitting on the edge of the bed looking nervous.

  ‘Where on earth have you been?’ he asks me like a housewife. ‘And, do you have any idea where my Freud has gone?’

  I smile at him really sweetly and flutter my eyelashes as if they are butterflies, ‘Why, Freud’s been out with me.’

  My husband looks really confused when I pull Freud out of my satchel, kiss him on the forehead and put him back on top of his mountain.

  I yawn and say, ‘I’m totally exhausted now and I’m going straight to sleep.’

  *

  The next night I put on my favourite green pointy boots and take Freud to jazz at the gallery. I can tell that Freud really likes my style. I put him in my top pocket and we look at all the paintings, then we sit by the musicians and talk and talk about everything you could imagine and more.

  I discover that Freud is a very intelligent man.

  And Freud, for that matter, thinks that I’m clever too.

  I can’t explain why, but after we drink a bottle of red wine he develops a heavy South American accent, stands up on the tablecloth and starts to talk about Juan Davila. But he knows I don’t mind, that I’m really rather flexible.

  We get home late and I nod at my husband’s worried face and say ‘Yes? ’ with an upward inflection.

  I make a feather-boa nest on top of the pile of books and lay Freud gently in the middle, so he’s sure not to slip. I say, in a singsong voice, ‘Sometimes a feather boa is just a feather boa. And sometimes it’s something else.’