by William Lane
Things were no clearer to Barnabus. A waitress had finally appeared, however, and he had to put his mind towards ordering.
Afterwards, Bruno paid. No one had paid for Barnabus’s meal before.
Looking out the window of an upper room of The Word, Kenric saw a man with fleshy thighs and red face rotate out of a car and rise up on the concrete below. The man slammed his car door, wiped his brow with a handkerchief, and walked uncertainly, looking about as he went, towards the warehouse door.
‘Ramsey’
(Showerproof )
Kenric, somewhat indisposed at that moment, sighed.
Antonia silently ushered in the visitor, pointing to a chair outside the makeshift office. Mystified by her silence, Ramsey nevertheless took the seat, where he stayed for some minutes, glancing about in growing perplexity. A pair of middle-aged hippy lovebirds passed him in silence.
‘Look here,’ said Ramsey, getting up and going behind the partition, where he had last seen Antonia, ‘what’s going on in this joint? What’s the game?’
But Antonia, who had been in this situation before, was nowhere to be seen, and Ramsey found only an empty office-space, with the phone off the hook.
‘Kenric?’ Ramsey called, ‘Kenric!’ he bellowed, ‘are you here? It’s me, Ramsey! Your old mate!’
The warehouse echoed.
‘Stuff this,’ muttered Ramsey, and his words sounded uncomfortably loud in his ears. He strode the length of the warehouse and, passing between a few bamboo screens, entered what he discovered was a large kitchen area, almost a canteen, where two men, one middle-aged, one younger, ate at a long table. They waved to him but said nothing.
At that moment Ramsey heard a door open above, and metal stairs began to jar and clatter; it was his old colleague, Kenric, hastily coming down the steps. Tucking in his shirt with one hand, zipping up his trousers with the other, Kenric finally raised a hand in welcome, before putting a finger to his lips. Reaching the kitchen, he took the confounded Ramsey by the arm and led him outside.
Seeing them pass, Antonia resumed her place in the office, and, bored by the silent day, began to clear her desk. She threw in the bin a letter addressed to a ‘Mr K. Kendall’.
‘What’s going on here, Ken?’ asked Ramsey as he and Kenric walked by the highway. ‘What have you got yourself into, mate? Have you all taken a vow of silence or something? Are you going to talk to me? You just get dressed, mate?’ asked Ramsey, squinting at Kenric. ‘But you look different.’
Kenric thought he would take Ramsey to the cafe over the road. As they went, Ramsey told him news of The Firm – it had folded – had Kenric heard? Yes, The Firm had gone under, and Quick had gone into rehab in its final days, after taking too much of that white powder. ‘But he’s out again,’ added Ramsey, ‘and has taken up some completely new venture, or so I’ve heard. A bit like you, maybe. It’s not advertising. It’s meditation or something. Meditational healing. Some such game.’
‘Where does that leave you, Ramsey?’ asked Kenric, as they waited at the lights. He could see Connie and Tess over the road at the cafe.
‘Well, that’s why I’m here, Ken. I haven’t forgotten you, mate, let me tell you. And in the troubled times at The Firm, I often thought of you. Ken got out at just the right time, I thought. Now listen, I’ve got a bit of a proposal for you. I’ve decided to go out on my own, but I want you with me. Ready for a new venture in advertising?’
‘No.’
‘Hear me out, Ken. The good namers never lose that certain something – you’ll still have it, let me tell you, I know you will.’
Topnotcher
Avoid
Disappointment –
‘Now, Ken, I heard you’d started your own business out here – all those people in that warehouse your employees?’
Before Kenric could answer, the pedestrian signal turned green and they began to cross. ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t go to the cafe,’ Kenric said to Ramsey, ‘I can see some other members there.’
‘Who?’
‘The other people I live with in our community.’
‘I never heard of a workforce that lived together. That’s keen,’ said Ramsey, as they walked towards the McDonald’s on the corner, ‘then again, I always knew you were different, Ken, and I suppose if Quick can take up meditational healing or whatever it is, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at – at – but look, Ken, let me tell you, you’re wasted out here, mate. A jingle-maker of your class should be at the centre of things – the centre, not the periphery. All your products sell, still sell; your work is out there. Now, we can work out a deal, you and me – I’ll be happy, you’ll be happy.’ Ramsey began to lick his lips and talk louder as they entered the McDonald’s. ‘This is the deal: you’ll do the jingle – full creative control – and I’ll look after all the other stuff – I’ll run the business, and I’ll pay you as you like. I know you’ll be reasonable, money never seemed to interest you much. You know me, Ken, I’m on your side … they still talk about you, mate, around the traps – the dreamer, the wordsmith – the one in a million. A legend. The one who could sell anything … they always used to ask after you at the little Spanish joint too, the one on the corner, before they sold up. They wanted you to come back and do whatever it was you’d done there before. I don’t know what you got up to, but they sure remembered it. Including that waitress – what’s her name? There were a few lookers in that joint.’
Ramsey sighed, and turned his attention to ordering at the counter. For some reason, it was Ramsey’s sigh that gave Kenric the full measure of the extent he had travelled since his days at The Firm.
‘These young ones,’ lamented Ramsey, as he chomped down on a Big Mac, and shovelled fries into the side of his mouth with unconscious dexterity, ‘there’s one over there behind the counter.’ Ramsey cleansed his cheek of a mayo dab. ‘Like I said, turns out you got out of The Firm at just the right time, mate. Things got even weirder after you left, let me tell you. In the end they had to get rid of Quick – Pursey and Quest and the others had to team up, tell him it was time to go. What a scene! Strange days. But they had to sink the ship to get rid of the captain. Did I say he’s started a spiritual rejuvenation centre? I think that’s what it’s called – meditational healing, that sort of thing. Healing meditation.’ Ramsey kept repeating variations of this phrase, as if by testing the words enough he might begin to understand them. ‘So what’s this business you’ve got yourself into out here in the sticks, Ken? What’s the set-up? Earn much? All those people about the place – who are they exactly?’
‘It’s not a business, Ramsey. People join The Word – that’s the name of our community – in the knowledge that the world is composed of language, created by language.’
‘Right. Really?’
‘Yet what we can articulate is limited, and is only a small percentage of what we know and what we would wish to say. At The Word we join together to help one another become more conscious of what we already know, so that we can better articulate the world.’
‘Shit. Christ.’
‘But we already know so much more about language than we realise – think of our innate knowledge of grammar; when we speak, we speak perfectly well – right?’
‘Yeah, okay, I’m with you there,’ said Ramsey, in a prepared-to-give-it-a-go voice, as he started on a side order of apple pie.
‘Yet we cannot explain or identify to any real degree the grammatical concepts we use every time we speak – concepts such as subject and predicate, and the quite complex ideas to do with time inherent in tense, and so on –’
‘Grammar?’ said Ramsey, with horror. ‘Look, mate, I never got that stuff –’
‘Yet we already know these things, our speech proves we already know. And we instantly recognise multiple echoes in every word, although it takes some thought to articulate the echoes.’
‘I see, I kind of get it – it’s subliminal stuff, like subliminal advertising; that was your thing. But how much do you
earn?’
‘The Word is not an economic enterprise –’
‘It’ll be about money in the end, mate,’ said Ramsey, with the relief of finding solid ground. ‘If it’s a good idea, and it sounds like you’re pretty sold on it, and I trust your judgement, always have, you should be able to make money out of it. Do you charge for classes?’
‘No, this is about an idea –’
‘You should copyright these ideas. You know, you’re sounding more and more like Quick all the time, mate, let me tell you. You never know, he might hear about your business model – and steal it. Look, I never understood how you sold things,’ said Ramsey, sucking his Coke loudly through a straw, swishing the ice cubes, ‘but I want some of it. I haven’t forgotten.’
‘What sold was the attached illusion.’
Ramsey might not have heard. He could not choose between a Smoothie or a frozen Coke for dessert. And he was becoming increasingly absorbed by that girl behind the counter; he found he wanted to talk about her breasts, not grammar.
Connie took over the kitchen after lunch. Although silence was still in effect inside the warehouse, and no words were spoken, a fairly consistent clattering and banging and thumping from the kitchen could be heard well into the afternoon, punctuated by Connie’s exclamations. Tess helped her prepare the dinner for half an hour or so, then opted out, exhausted by Connie’s mute prescriptions. With evening the others began to drift towards the source of the cooking scents, while Connie, covered in flour, a shrunken-looking apron clinging to her trunk, moved from fridge to bench to sink to table to oven and back again.
With dusk came Maria, and they were all present.
‘Let me get you some water, Maria,’ said Kenric, breaking the silence; at much the same moment Connie snapped shut the oven door on two bread-and-butter puddings, and they all began to talk at once. It was good to fill the silence that had surrounded them.
‘You are going to wath up tonight,’ said Judith, pointing across the table at Justin. After a day of silence, the first words they spoke had the most weight.
‘Don’t blame us boys for the cockroaches infesting the place,’ said Justin, taking off his glasses, revealing small, sunken eyes. ‘It’s the mess in Connie’s room that’s attracting the roaches, and the roaches bring the rats.’
‘How do you know about Connie’th room?’ asked Judith.
‘She leaves the door open – I can’t help but see in as I walk past. And it stinks in there.’
‘It does not!’ cried the women.
‘Is this a truth-telling session?’ asked Barnabus, looking around the table.
‘This isn’t truth-telling,’ said Tess, ‘it’s ordinary conversation, which should include telling the truth.’
‘It doesn’t often,’ said Robert, who was opening wine bottles.
A meaty odor from the warehouse’s meat-packing days had begun to pervade the kitchen.
‘I think we need designated times for truth-telling sessions,’ said Krystal decisively; she had been wanting to say it. ‘We should have a schedule on the wall. I find it an extremely helpful exercise –’
‘You were absent from the last,’ Justin noted.
‘It was the first time I have ever, ever missed one –’
‘He doesn’t care,’ said Robert, drinking, ‘don’t mind him, Krystal.’
‘But you can’t deny we’ve been neglecting some of our routines lately,’ persisted Krystal. ‘Apart from the tongue-talking, which was just wonderful, there’s a feeling we’ve been drifting this last month or so. Teddy agrees with me on this.’ Ashram Teddy nodded gravely and stroked his chin. ‘I miss the grammar studies,’ continued Krystal – a succession of groans rose about the table, ‘and it’s been weeks since we did dictionary readings – root word knowledge is a must for our enterprise. And I have discovered more omissions from the Macquarie Dictionary: no “pelage”, no “pleiad”, no “epithalamium”, no “viz” – what does that say about language in this country? “B-double” is missing. I used to be a preschool teacher in a past life, and some of my colleagues had to teach English in primary, and I learned from them this sort of thing is most telling. The loss of language means our world is literally shrinking.’ She consulted a page in a notebook. ‘No “pericope” –’
‘I must admit I think about words in different ways since my time here,’ said Barnabus. ‘It’s as if I can actually see them and feel them now, whereas I kind of took them for granted before, and they were sort of invisible to me.’
‘Words have distinctive shapes, colours and textures,’ Robert intoned.
‘And Kenric taught us that, like shells, if you hold words to your ear awhile,’ Barnabus continued, ‘you hear something unique to each word, the memory of the word’s own inner ocean. I remember you saying that, Kenric, I’ve got it written down in my book.’
‘I’m keeping a notebook too,’ said Krystal, ‘I remember –’
But Barnabus had not finished. ‘I try to explain all this to the people I meet around the place, and they just don’t get it. They don’t get the ideas. I find it so frustrating, trying to explain to people just what we do here at The Word. They think it’s a church, or they think it’s a business, when it’s neither, right? Even my mum doesn’t get it. I was trying to tell her only last night what we do, the amazing things that get said, the progress we are making in understanding the power of language. But she just didn’t get it, I could tell. And they don’t understand the meaning of the Word here in the western suburbs, either. Are they all really dumb or something?’
‘Well, let’s move from the western suburbs!’ Teddy exclaimed energetically. ‘I keep saying we should move up to the North Coast – we’ll get a hearing there, the energy is completely in the positive on the North Coast for the kind of work we do at The Word. We’re out of place here, we’re too far ahead of the mainstream. I want to do more tongue-talking myself.’
‘I don’t think we will,’ said Kenric, ‘it’s –’
‘Here we go, shoosh, everyone, hark to the words of wisdom,’ exclaimed Justin, holding up a hand. ‘Kenric knows best, after all: no tongue-talking. Got it?’ Judith tittered. ‘Meanwhile, Kenric, you sit there in judgement,’ continued Justin, ‘but you won’t join in. No, you’d rather sit in silence, thinking yourself so mysterious and wise. I heard you call yourself “esteemed teacher” the other day when you were talking to Maria, and you referred to us as “acolytes”.’
‘What I said was ironic, Justin.’
‘Ironic?’
‘Yes, that is, I told the truth by telling its opposite. You overheard me expressing my doubts to Maria.’
‘Oh, there’s an exercise for us, Krystal!’ cried Justin. ‘Let’s tell the opposite of the truth to tell the truth!’
‘That could work,’ said Maria, smiling.
‘How would that work?’ asked Krystal anxiously. ‘I just think procedures that were succeeding well enough are being unnecessarily ignored. I’ll make up a chart, if everyone agrees, and put it on the fridge. As none of us knows Latin or Greek or French or Anglo-Saxon, I find the root word sessions essential and fascinating; to learn a word’s source, the meanings it gathers through time –’
‘The echoes,’ said Teddy, nodding.
‘– and its echoes. Another thing, I think we all would do well to start keeping notebooks that contain our best insights, a compilation that could become our common book. Barnabus has already started writing one, and so have I.’
‘Lionel always said, don’t let things get too big, so that they have to be codified,’ said Maria.
‘Oh, it needn’t be a big book,’ said Krystal. ‘I just find so much gets said, and so much truth gets spoken at The Word – but then I can’t remember it the next day. Like with the tongue-talking – which I definitely want to do again, it was such a transformational experience –’
‘I am so sick of cooking!’ Connie suddenly screamed. She flung her apron over the table, so that it landed over some of
their heads. Everyone flinched. ‘All I do is cook for you all, and all you do is eat and eat, while you talk and talk! And no one thanks me! No one noticed the rice pudding last night that was so perfect – someone said it was too nutmeggy, when it was perfect, I know it was! I cook very good food, but who here notices? I’ve taken on board all your dietary requirements, and I cook irresistible dishes despite being handed a very limited budget. Often I have to make do with the second-best ingredients, yet I get by – but no one notices. And no one helps me with the shopping. It’s not easy, cooking for a dozen or so people every night, half of them men with bottomless appetites. You men are just like children, not thinking where things come from or knowing what they’re worth. The fridge door gets left open. The vegetables nearly spoiled last week – I had to change my roster and cook up all the vegetables before they went off. Don’t blame me if I haven’t been able to keep fresh the few vegetables we have left. And people are forever spilling things in the fridge so that it smells – it stinks because they don’t bother cleaning up. And we need another fridge – one fridge for the food is clearly inadequate. But you don’t listen to me, because I’m only Connie the cook. And Justin keeps opening my yoghurt and taking spoonfuls, don’t blame me if the yoghurt doesn’t taste so fresh tonight –’
‘We hear you, Connie,’ said Kenric.
‘Justin does that to my yoghurt too,’ said Krystal, ‘and he –’
‘Even as a child I had to cook, it was a Catholic family of ten children and I was the eldest girl, and all I can remember is making food and cleaning it up –’
‘We hear you, Connie!’ yelled Kenric.
‘Don’t you tell Connie to stop!’ cried Judith, turning on Kenric. ‘Don’t tell us not to talk –’
‘I never said that. I was trying to make her hear what I said –’
‘We can talk as we wish,’ said Judith angrily, ‘and that’s the only reason I stay on at this place, because it is a place that questions the very thing that constructs and maintains our society – language. Living here we have an opportunity to study the illusions we unwittingly or wittingly endure and perpetuate through language – I believed in our project. But things are changing here, changing for the worse. I said it loud and clear at the last truth-telling session: the men are taking advantage of The Word – they are not washing up. They say they will do it, but then they do not. They eat the food and drink the wine, but they do not wash up. So nothing has changed since I made my point. What’s the point in telling the truth if everyone can see it but no one acts on it, even when it is plainly spoken? Could I have said it more clearly? There is no point in talking if people do not want to hear.’