The Boy Who Could Keep a Swan in His Head

by John Hunt

  Mrs Smit, just returned, visibly stiffened as she forced her back against the wall. Her bell-shaped hair, stiff with hairspray, scratched against the paint.

  Miss Delmont had, in the meantime, commandeered a chair, spun it around and sat on it the wrong way round. She looked like a cowboy with her legs straddling either side and spoke to her audience briskly. “Let’s keep it simple. Come up to me one at a time. We’ll talk and then I’ll decide which part you get. I’m the casting director … impress me!” No one moved. “I said casting director, nothing about juvenile cannibalism.” Still no one moved. Daphne Delmont placed the back of her wrist onto her forehead. She began to weep.

  “Crazy,” said Jimmy the Greek as he walked towards her. “Even more crazy than cavalry sailor man.” Daphne stopped crying immediately and burst into a huge smile. Soon everyone was queuing to see her.

  Phen was last in the line. He noticed most people left the chair cheerful enough, although a number of boys wanted to play Puck because it sounded like a really bad word. He tried to be casual and acknowledge the general happiness in the room, yet he couldn’t absorb it. The closer Phen got, the drier his throat became. He did more “how now brown cows” and added “the rabbit runs round the ragged rocks” to his repertoire. However, the moment he stood opposite her, his mind emptied and his mouth filled with sand.

  “So, Mr Bogart, you like the stage? You a greasepaint and footlights man?”

  Phen opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

  “You like to strut your stuff on the boards?”

  Phen couldn’t even get his head to nod or shake.

  “Enjoy a little stagecraft? Been to a pantomime?”

  His mouth opened again, more in the way a fish gasps when pulled out the water.

  “Movies? Drive-in? Books?”

  He shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly.

  “I like the theatre because you can be someone else. You can be free of yourself. Dream. Laugh. Give your head a little holiday. Don’t you think who we’re always told we have to be should occasionally get a vacation?”

  His lips twitched. It was enough for Miss Delmont as acknowledgement of his confirmation.

  “Therefore I would like to give you a critical part in the play.” She raised one hand as if to push down the cold horror rising through Phen’s body. He looked up to the cross. It was still empty. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream is essentially an outdoor play. Nature abounds. Forests and glades – that sort of thing. And in the centre of all this I’d like you. I want you to be the tree that all the action happens around. Silent but gnarled. Full of wisdom, observing everything.”

  “B-b-b-books,” he finally said. “I like books.”

  “Excellent! I’ll take that as a yes then.”

  10

  Patina

  /pat’i-na/ noun

  Phen walked home with a spring in his step. He even played a little hopscotch on the new paving outside the Ambassador Hotel. His first day back at school had not been as bad as he thought it would be. The Leb had spread a new mood. It was like sitting with a gangster in the class. De Sousa had shared his sandwich with him and Visser had let him sign his cast. Most importantly, the weight of his role in the school play had been lifted off his shoulders. Life was good. He had his haversack on one shoulder and his blazer on the other when he rounded the corner of O’Reilly and Catherine Avenue. There, sitting on the pavement, much like the black dog earlier in the day, was Heb Thirteen Two.

  “How was school?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay is good.”

  “Not in the park?”

  “Just bought some milk.” He offered Phen the opened carton. “No germs, promise.”

  “No, thanks.” Phen wiped his upper lip. Heb Thirteen Two took the hint and rubbed the white moustache off his face.

  “You were right about the play. I’m a tree.”

  “Excellent.”

  “That’s exactly what Miss Delmont s-s-said.”

  “And a fine piece of timber you shall be.”

  “I’m going to be gnarled and full of wisdom.”

  “Perfect casting.”

  Heb Thirteen Two stood up and offered the last inch of milk once more. “It’s good for your bones.”

  Phen shook his head and watched him stroll off. “Where you going now?”

  “Back to the park.”

  “Can I come?”

  “Public space.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  They lay in the shadow of the small willow tree, even though the park bench was in the shade too. Phen used his haversack as a pillow and Heb Thirteen Two used a rolled-up blanket he’d pulled from behind the Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow bush. Neither felt the need to talk. They spent most of their time just staring up at the clouds. These ones were more friendly than those that swept across the cover of his new history book. They weren’t pitted with grey and didn’t seem to be in a hurry. At times they’d pause to let the sun through and Heb Thirteen Two would be forced to close his eyes.

  “You need sunglasses. My grandmother says staring at the sun can make you go blind … There’s a new boy in our class, Adan Karim.”

  “Not Adam?”

  “Adan. He’s a Leb. He’s not very big but everyone is scared of him. Even Mrs Smit.”

  “He thinks he’s tough, so he is.”

  “Visser is much bigger … no one’s really scared of him.”

  “Because he doesn’t think he’s a tough guy.” Heb Thirteen Two pointed to the middle of his forehead. “It’s who you want to be that counts. It’s all in the mind.”

  Phen nodded. It felt like the mature thing to do.

  “Watch out for people who want to manicure what’s in your head. Trim your soul this way and that. Blessed are the curious for they shall have adventures. And hallelujah to those filled with imagination for they shall avoid the constipation of small minds.”

  Phen lifted his head off his haversack and watched Heb raise his hands. He then blessed Phen with a series of crosses, stars, exclamation marks and something that looked like the very curvaceous frame of a woman’s figure. Both arms now tired, he fell back again and stared at the sky.

  “The clouds are saying the same thing.”

  Phen returned to his previous position and tried to listen.

  “Hear it?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not paying attention then. Is there any shape a cloud can’t be?”

  “No.”

  “I rest my case.”

  Phen wrestled himself up on one elbow again and tried to stare through Heb’s shut eyes.

  “Imagine if clouds were only allowed to be circles or squares. Maybe you’d make a good triangle or parallelogram. Maybe you wouldn’t have any sharp lines or corners at all. Maybe you could be shaped like the inside of a seashell or a leaf.”

  “Vernon MacArthur says I’m shaped like a stick man. A s-s-stuttering s-s-stick man. He said my neck’s so thin I can only eat s-s-spaghetti.”

  “That’s just outside stuff. Don’t let them leave their dirty footprints in your head. Let your mind develop its own patina. Protect the space between your ears; it belongs to you.”

  “My mother says I always have my head up in the clouds.”

  “There are many people with their heads up much worse places.”

  Heb Thirteen Two pulled his hat lower to protect his eyes and gently placed his arms across his chest. He stretched his long body and pointed his toes to the mine dumps that ringed southern Johannesburg. When the wind came up, the yellow sand whipped off the distant mountains like foam leaping from huge waves that threatened to advance, yet never did. Phen had looked up the meaning of “gnarled” in the dictionary before he’d left school and now realised it perfectly described the hands that lay across the paisley shirt. They seemed much older than the man’s face, attached from another body. While Phen watched, the fingers began to strum gently on the intricate pattern. He wondered which tune was swirl
ing in his head.

  “The times they are a-changing,” he warbled in reply.

  “Bob Dylan.”

  “Not bad for a man who sings through his nose. Not the normal shape of a superstar. I’m sure a number of people, all who claimed to know better, would’ve told him his best contribution to singing would be to stop doing it.” He continued:

  The line it is drawn

  The curse it is cast

  The slow one now

  Will later be fast

  As the present now

  Will later be past

  The order is

  Rapidly fadin’

  And the first one now

  Will later be last

  For the times they are a-changin’!

  Thankfully he mumbled-talked-sang and stayed flat on his back. Phen looked around but couldn’t see anyone within earshot. The fingers did a final crescendo then fell silent.

  “Can I ask you what you did, you know, before this?” Phen addressed the body as a whole. It seemed impolite to question a face with its eyes shut.

  The chest heaved, indicating the answer carried a great amount of weight. Air escaped through his nose for an impossibly long time. “I’m not sure I can remember them all. I’ve been a farmer, a soldier, a sailor if serving slop down below makes you a man of the seas. It certainly didn’t make me a cook. I remember running Ye Olde Tavern. I can see the Tudor beams. Forgettable office jobs came later. There’s something about sitting in a cubicle that turns a man’s spirit anaemic, bloodless. Geometric mummification. I’ve been a salesman. A dance instructor at Arthur Murray. I’ve hawked trinkets of all kinds, but never, I think, myself. I’ve sold vacuum cleaners. ‘Madam, your carpet is begging you to let me inside and give you a demonstration.’ And jukeboxes. ‘One coin, sir, and Elvis Presley himself will ensure your customers can’t help falling in love with you.’ Most recently I’ve been an alcoholic. I’m still one, except I don’t drink any more.” The eyes stayed closed.

  “So the dancing and singing comes from the dance studio and jukeboxes?”

  “Maybe.”

  “My father was also a farmer a long time ago; it didn’t work out. Now he’s sick. He’s not an alcoholic. He takes a lot of pills and injections, though. My gran says he likes the injections too much. She says sometimes the cure can be worse than the illness. He used to read all day, then his eyes got so bad that it became my job. Now that’s stopped as well. I hate tape recorders.”

  “The march of technology.”

  Phen suddenly saw all the components of the Philips STÉRÉO CONTINENTAL “401” breaking into their individual parts. Led by the two reels, they formed a long column and began a victory parade towards his bedroom. He didn’t really know what was in the machine, yet he imagined sprockets, screws, dials, switches, seals and flat metal frames all being trailed by yards of electrical wiring. Right at the back, the microphone still attached to its black cord tried to keep up.

  Now it was Heb Thirteen Two’s turn to lift himself up on his elbow and stare at Phen. They were like two bookends with nothing between them.

  “Do you know what ‘impaled’ means?”

  “Think so.”

  “It means to be speared, spiked, skewered, transfixed. Yet time moves around and through you whether you like it or not. You can’t peg it down. Hammer it into the ground. So why try impale yourself on the here and now?”

  Phen didn’t even pretend he understood.

  “Imagine you just stood here, in the park, for the rest of your life.” Heb indicated Phen should stand up and move a few yards away. “Just wait there.”

  “I am.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Wrong! Everything is happening. You’re happening. You’re getting taller, bigger. Your nails are growing. So is your hair. Soon you’ll get that stuff under your arms, on your chest and in a few other places. Your balls will drop and your voice will break.”

  Phen opened his stance slightly.

  “And look around you. The grass, the flowers, this willow. Nothing is just staying the same. The clouds are different to how they were when you first stood up, the sun has moved across the sky. Even the children’s pool over there will have a ripple in it that wasn’t there before, because the wind’s just changed direction. And that’s only in the last few seconds. Imagine when day turns to night? Summer to winter?”

  Phen watched an old lady shuffle to the bench behind them and slowly sit down. She took out half a loaf of bread from her shopping bag and dug her fist into it. Once she was finished punching it she pulled pieces out and threw them up in the air. Half of it landed back on top of her but she didn’t seem to mind. Within seconds the doves and pigeons were all around her. One landed on her shoulder and was told to behave. She coaxed it down with a crust, cooed and tutted to them all, calling her favourites by name.

  “Nothing stays the same. Nil, zero, zilch, nought, nix, nada is permanent. Everything waltzes around us. A one and a two … and a one and a two. I’ll lead.” Although Phen rebuffed the request to be his partner, Heb turned the park into a ballroom and spun around it by himself. With arms outstretched, he chose to dance in a wide circle. He disappeared behind the jacarandas and popped up on the other side of the acacias.

  By the time he returned, the old lady was smothered with pigeons. The largest one had landed on her lap. Phen couldn’t work out if she thought this was acceptable behaviour or not. The bird was being scolded so gently it stayed there and pecked at a button on her jersey. She let out a ticklish giggle. Her legs widened as she laughed. Phen was embarrassed to see her stockings only went to just above her knee. Once there, they were folded back in a thick band like his school socks. Eventually the bird flew off. The old lady waved and watched it disappear into the blue. She stayed staring long after there was nothing to see. Sighing heavily she asked herself if there was any bread left and replied that it was all gone.

  “Just remember the Three Times Truth and everything will start to make sense.”

  “Three Times Truth?”

  Heb drew a large three in the air, paused and added a matching X. Phen wasn’t keeping up. He stored the words in the hope that he might later make some sense of them.

  “You like going to the movies?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your favourite?”

  “Lawrence of Arabia.”

  “So, First Truth, the screen is full of Peter O’Toole’s face as he says hello to Sherif Ali played by what’s-his-name.”

  “Omar Sharif.”

  “Second Truth is the next shot, that shows both of them on screen but you can see Omar Sharif is pointing to something.”

  “Third Truth, a wide panoramic shot showing thousands of tribesmen on camels galloping towards them.”

  The old lady began to flick individual breadcrumbs off her skirt. She licked her fingertip and dabbed at those refusing to leave.

  “You need all three to understand what’s going on.”

  “Suppose so.”

  “We judge too quickly on the first truth.”

  It seemed they’d finally run out of things to say to one another. The old lady stood up, clutching her shopping bag, and waited. She looked at both of them, needing confirmation that it was all over and she could leave. Phen took his cue from her and fiddled unnecessarily with the latches on his haversack. Heb Thirteen Two was no help at all. He just stayed standing in exactly the same position and looked up at the sky. They were all equidistant from each other in a kind of triangle and no one wanted to break the symmetry.

  Eventually the old lady patted her hair as if saying goodbye to it and began to shuffle away. Her slippers flattened the grass with each step. Phen watched from the corner of his eye as her dual trail inched towards the park gate. The bent grass reflected the sun, silver and strangely wet. He put his blazer on as slowly as he could and lifted his bag in stages to his shoulder. Heb Thirteen Two moved to the recently evacuated bench, sat
down in the middle, and tapped his hat to make sure it was secure. He then spread each arm wide in an ambiguous style. The fluid movement, like the wings of an enormous bird, could be interpreted as either claiming ownership or inviting camaraderie. As Phen turned to go, he saw one finger on the top slat beckon him over. The invitation was both gentle and irresistible. The gold mines, more mustard than yellow now, miraged in the late afternoon.

  “First Truth: at ten thirty this morning a black Humber Imperial with a silver roof roared to a stop outside number twenty O’Reilly Road.”

  “Doctor Weinner’s car.”

  “The driver, at some haste, lifted his black doctor’s bag from the passenger seat and charged into Duchess Court.

  Second Truth: an hour later this same gentleman emerged with an attractive but tired-looking woman.”

  “My mother.” Phen didn’t want any more truths. He tried to remember if there actually was a scene in Lawrence of Arabia where Omar Sharif points to thousands of tribesmen galloping on camels.

  “The doctor and your mother proceeded to have a long discussion outside on the stairs of Duchess Court. They did not see, or possibly chose not to notice, a man nearby in a felt hat. He waa sitting on the pavement trying to open a bottle of Mrs Ball’s chutney which he’d found in a nearby dustbin. There were still a few inches left at the bottom, but the lid had set hard.”

  Phen stared in front of him. He remembered the tribesmen on camels attacking the port of Aqaba. The big Turkish gun was pointing the wrong way out to sea.

  “Rheumatic fever, when not picked up as a child, can have long-lasting effects. You get damage to the heart valves and atrial fibrillation scar tissue. Your father might have had a heart attack. He’s too sick so they can’t take him to hospital to operate. His lungs are the main issue, can’t take the anaesthetic. They’ve added to his medication and a specialist is coming tonight.”