The Pages

by Murray Bail

  Erica tried to soak it up and at the same time pick up sheets to save.

  ‘This is terrible, I don’t know what to do.’

  Most of the pages were ruined.

  ‘Oh who cares? And anyway what has wonderful “philosophy” done for you?’

  ‘Sleeping with your strong, rich-with-words, always attentive father for one,’ Erica almost shouted. ‘And what has psychoanalysis, therapy and all the rest of it done for your life? Has it made you a better person?’

  Erica felt she had lost control.

  ‘I’m going to start screaming.’

  Already Sophie was asking herself whether the accident was willed. The subconscious is said to be responsible for many such interventions. Outside, in the sunlight, bare-skinned in her skirt without a blouse, like an island woman who had been forced by missionaries into wearing a brassiere, she wondered if and when – and how – she should confront her father. Who seduced who? Then why should it matter – so much? Sophie paused and thought of going back. Helping Erica clean up would too easily be seen as giving support.

  A complete and utter disaster: it went directly against her principles, her beliefs.

  Erica had a dogged loyalty to fellow-thinkers, whoever they were, whatever the quality.

  She had her head down using her fingernails to separate the wet pages and place them on the floor to dry; and as they dried she saw the brown stain had wiped out the urgent additions in Mediterranean blue and the page numbers in ink too. The terrible incident – it was an accident! – had left her feeling wrung out. She still couldn’t believe the suddenness of it. She was going to have dreams about this. A man’s life work ruined; made a mockery of; and in one movement the very reason for her being there, in the solitude of the philosopher’s shed, ruined.

  Because Erica had done nothing wrong she could not bear to face the others at lunch. To Lindsey, she would soon have to explain and apologise. As for Sophie, Erica had no idea what she would say to her now – exactly what expression should she keep on her face?

  By three o’clock Erica was still in Antill’s chair, surrounded by the damage.

  There was the other Antill, Roger, and she heard him come into the shed.

  Without turning she said, ‘I’ve had a truly terrible morning. And it began so perfectly.’

  Roger stood still surveying the mess which was a country flood in miniature.

  Before he could say anything she said, ‘I am sorry. Look at it. Did Sophie tell you?’

  ‘I haven’t seen the others,’ he said.

  ‘Ruined. Unreadable. I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘What about all them?’ He went over to the shelves and turned a few pages. ‘It looks like philosophy to me. How about this? Life is the intruder on thought.’ Roger Antill laughed, a soft, internal, stifled laugh of appreciation. ‘That sounds like my brother. And you could say that’s what’s happened here. What was it – weak coffee?’

  Still with his back to her, he flipped over some of the other pages.

  ‘There’s plenty for you to make an appraisal. Something out of all this could be worth printing into a book.’

  ‘I haven’t taken a close look over there yet.’

  ‘Wesley putting his thoughts on paper wrote furiously. He used to sit here with his boiled eggs.’

  Roger Antill still had his stockman’s hat on; plus shirt of faded broad-check pattern, blue and black-blue, sleeves rolled up.

  ‘I’ve lost count of the schooners and cups of tea, vases of Lindsey’s flowers and what-not I’ve made a mess of in my time. Not long ago it was a drum of sheep dip on the front seat of the car. It went everywhere.’

  Erica listened. Occasional male kindness came across as different from the kindness of women. It was a practical, offhand kindness. There was always the slightly puffy, rough-skinned slippage of her father’s hand – lasting assumptions held in the palm of a hand.

  Walking amongst the drying pages he reached across the table and found one of the few readable ones,

  ‘Let’s see what Wesley’s got to say.’ His eyes followed a few lines, then cleared his throat.

  ‘“In Zoellner’s bookshop in Amsterdam, along Rosemarijnsteeg, where I had earlier lost my temper and was forced to leave, I met and became friends with Carl and George Kybybolite – the extravagant, insistent individuality of Americans and their surnames – brothers from Chicago. Their education was formal. They were big men in untidy clothes. Both had loud and confident voices. They were a double-act; each finished the other’s sentences. When they heard my reason for being in Holland, and my background of farming in Australia, it was Carl, the quicker of the two, who called me “the Cartesian bore”.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ Erica acknowledged. ‘That’s very funny,’ she sparked up. Though she still felt gutted.

  ‘Not bad,’ Roger turned the page over, ‘I’d like to read more. Wesley did take himself seriously. When he came back, and set himself up here, he had nothing but blank pages, reams of the stuff. Early on he wanted to show me what he had written. I’d take a deep breath, and say to him he had too many ideas running off in every direction, in each sentence. To show what I meant, I’d point to the sheep in the yards: they’re made to go through a narrow space, one at a time, not all at once. “Thanks for that,” my brother said. He was sitting in that same chair looking at me. “I’m going to bear that in mind.”’

  Erica moved from the table.

  ‘What I suggest we do now,’ he almost put his hand on her hip, ‘is, I go and make you a cup of tea. Leave all this. It’s still going to be here tomorrow.’

  22

  — I REALISED in Germany with R, or even before in my London years, when I avoided all thought-thinking – my incessant movements were to avoid thinking – and following the visit to Amsterdam, where I deliberately placed myself in the midst of a philosophical city, I realised after the visit of R, and the unwanted experience of tragedy, it was necessary to build on what I had learnt and to make up for lost time. How old was I then? Forty-three. What did I know? How could I describe what I had learnt?

  It is very easy to become sick and tired of ‘philosophy’. The very word is enough to send a normal person running in the opposite direction.

  The ambition to supply the answer to everything is a form of madness. It can lead to the kissing of a broken-down horse on a street in Turin. The lives of the philosophers. Those who went to extreme political positions. The suicides. One is supposed to have died from ‘malnutrition’. Their silences, et cetera. ‘I do not wish to know if there were men before me.’ Unquote.

  Philosophy is not necessarily a safe occupation.

  All day sitting in a chair, alone. The process of venturing into the outer limits of thought can produce – it is only natural – psychological distortions well beyond any eccentric behaviour.

  But then my brother, Roger, running the sheep station in New South Wales, faces dangerous situations every day of his life, in all weathers. Tractors end up rolling over onto the farmer; branches from the Brittle Gum break and fall onto them; head-ons with trucks, stray stock and trees are common on country roads; Roger broke his collarbone off a horse; he is probably now riddled with melanoma.

  In Europe I wrote regularly to Roger, and my sister, Lindsey, who has the long face, and although my brother only occasionally replied I felt the need to write more frequently the longer I was away. I realise now my letters and postcards were nothing more than the banal descriptions of another tourist. I assumed it would be the only thing of interest to them, the only information they could handle, nothing more than descriptions, easily digested. ‘Berlin has been largely re-built since the war. It is a city of many small courtyards, gardens and greenery. It is late September and everybody is in shirt-sleeves.’ If they had seen through the ordinariness of my messages they didn’t let on. After many years away, doing nothing of a practical nature, their belief in me was deep and true.

  On the morning following my return I sat
them down in the kitchen and explained what I would like to do. It would depend on them. The word ‘sacrifice’ was used quite easily. I wanted two undisturbed years to complete my philosophical work. It could go to three. Lindsey sat looking at me, already nodding encouragement, while Roger kept getting up for a glass of water, or taking a look out the window at the weather, and sitting down.

  I have always had trouble working out who I am. All I have is a faint idea of what I am not.

  In an effort to avoid the simplicities I complicate my thoughts and speech.

  ‘If that’s what you want,’ Roger said from the window. ‘I’d say you know what you’re doing. You’re onto something, are you?’

  No sooner had they agreed than I removed their permission from my mind.

  — Finally, I left England (October 3, 1988). By then I felt separate from the majority of other people – because I had moved my thoughts well away from their thoughts. And living in a foreign place, such as England, is already to experience daily a double-separateness. I had in the winter returned to libraries, attracted by the central heating, and began re-reading. It was necessary to begin all over again. Those years in England without reading and without thinking had done no harm at all. I felt fresh. I was ready. The sight of people in Hyde Park resting in rented deckchairs left a poor impression on me. I remember at the Ritz end, a middle-aged man in a fine hound’s-tooth and a carnation in the lapel attempting to get out of his deckchair, the trouble he had extricating himself, like a nation trying to regain prestige, or a thinker trying to get out from under the weight of the past. There and then I decided it was time to leave England and the sensible, comparatively decent English, and, before returning home, subject myself to Europe.

  If I had stayed in London another week I would have stayed for the rest of my life.

  On the ferry to Calais with very little luggage I felt an eagerness verging on the ecstatic. Only rarely have I experienced this. It was mid-morning. I had the day spread out before me, as if it was being opened by stage curtains. Within a few hours I’d be stepping ashore on a strange land, performing on a strange stage. And I saw my remaining life spreading outwards, and beckoning with hints and promises of clarity.

  I opened my notebook. When the ferry began pitching and rolling, which frightened some of the girls into shrieking, others going quiet, I concentrated on my thoughts. Traversing liquid that separates the land is curious when considered dispassionately. We are on earth and making the best of it. (I thought I might begin from there.)

  Facing me sat a neat, silent couple, holding hands. He was old enough to have a purple face; she, hardly twenty. I soon found out he was deaf.

  He was a pig farmer from Somerset. He was going to inspect some French pigs, and was taking his new wife along for a break. ‘I don’t fancy leaving her behind. What do you say?’

  As I looked at her, she smiled a fraction and remained looking at me. What is going on here? Either she is as innocent as her complexion, or else she is marrying for convenience. As the purple-faced farmer told me in a loud voice everything I needed to know about pigs and their intelligence, I could not help trying to unravel what attracted me to the women I had known, in many ways different from each other, when others did not possess the power of attraction at all. Any thoughts I may have had of a philosophical nature were hampered by this, along with the steady build-up of solid information on pigs and ham coming from the farmer, and disturbed still further by the unshakeable gaze of his young wife. She had never been out of England before, she confided, in fact, only out of the Somerset district for one afternoon.

  ‘In France you’re not going to know the name of things,’ I pointed out. It sounded as if I was offering translation services. I remember feeling light-hearted.

  The farmer didn’t appear to notice.

  ‘It’s business in Germany, I expect?’ They both looked at me.

  ‘I’d like to see for myself the white swans,’ I explained.

  Swans – that was a mistake. Even the slightly plump, pleasure-loving wife began laughing as the farmer switched his information-flow to his experience of swans, followed by geese.

  The ferry ploughed on descending into the troughs, banging and rattling. I realised I had never been on open water before. It was raining. Nothing much to see.

  If I happened to be passing through Strasbourg early in the week, it was agreed I would call on them; which I did, out of extreme curiosity, and on the second day spent an afternoon alone with her, Gretel, in my hotel.

  — The philosophers have been unsatisfactory in the examination of the emotions. To be expanded upon later.

  Already I forget the blasted name of the former fishing village near Collioure, the one where I had a cheese sandwich in the square. I sat in the sun and began writing to Roger and Lindsey. The postcards here showed painted wooden boats pulled up on the beach.

  To Rosie, I wrote a letter of several pages. I described the ferry, and my encounter with Gretel, and left it at that. Often I thought of Rosie. What I could not fathom was her informality. Even when being kind, or loyal, or passionate it was done without reason, as if she would give the same to others. In this letter I said how much I missed her, and wished she were here. ‘Braque spent his summers in this fishy village, which meant Picasso probably did too,’ I wrote knowingly.

  Men in the square were happily playing boule in the face of their fast-approaching deaths. (My initial thoughts.) And yet they were engrossed. Friendship played a part in the game. They all knew each other. Their skill, and undoubted pleasure at their skill, gave precision to their friendships, and drew me into watching them.

  At the next table was a Greek in a white shirt.

  ‘Many moustaches,’ he nodded at the players.

  He was right. They all had moustaches. And when I turned I saw he had a black one too.

  In front of us the local fire brigade assembled for a parade. As they formed up in lines the ill-fitting uniforms became all too apparent – trousers above the ankles, like those worn by shearers’ cooks – and brass buttons missing. An implacable figure who looked to be the local mayor gave a short speech, and as he did members of the brigade winked and stuck their tongues out at people they knew in the crowd. Stepping forward for presentations a thin-necked one played the clown.

  ‘The only fire they’ve seen would be from their cigarette lighters.’ Another pessimistic Greek.

  A band started up. The fire brigade marched off.

  In the evening the Greek was at the same table. He recommended the sardines.

  He came from Melbourne. Now he was a waiter on a cruise ship, and lived in Piraeus. It had become necessary to take a holiday. He’d left the wife and kids behind in Piraeus. As marriages go it was okay, but he was dog-tired. To save washing up on the ship, he said later in the evening, they would toss the dinner plates over into the Mediterranean.

  ‘The ocean floor’s covered in the bloody plates.’

  This was something to tell Lindsey, my easily horrified sister. I even thought of waiting until I returned – to see the look on her face.

  To give proper homage to philosophy I had been planning to return home via Athens.

  ‘It is the arsehole of the universe. There is nothing to be said for Athens. It is ugly, dusty, crowded – a bloody mess. What do you want to go there for? It is a ruined city.’

  The Parthenon stands above the shambles as an example, a rebuke. Clive Renmark at the lectern had said as much. The ancient philosophers looking down would recoil. How a city of ideals became a graceless dump. Everybody out for themselves. The wisdom of the greatest of philosophers is consumed, whittled away, ignored, cast on the rubbish tip like everything else. Their ideals of proportion and harmony not only ignored, scorned. A friend had told the postman, Lyell, the same thing.

  Every night the Greek ended up pissed. That was all right. More difficult was the man’s encroaching pessimism. It reached out to most things he saw or touched, and sitting there alongside
it was all too easy to join in.

  Early in the morning I left on the bus. In Toulon, I wolfed down a breakfast of bread and jam, coffee in a bowl. I then strolled over and studied the map on the wall of the railway station.

  My method of wandering in Europe had returned to being haphazard, hardly a method at all. Depending on mood, chance encounters were to be seized upon. Otherwise, what is the point – in living? So I thought then. If and when I was onto something with my thinking-notes I would stop and stay in one spot. It also allowed me to collect letters from Rosie, and my hard-working brother and sister. (For all the familiarity it is hard to reduce the distance between brothers.) In Europe I developed the insistence on second-floor corner rooms. It got to the stage that if there was not one available I’d move to another hotel. From two angles of a corner room I could look down at the traffic and pedestrians, and across at the lighted windows opposite. I felt at home – and in a strange country.

  At the Kunstmuseum in Basel I stood for hours before Holbein’s rotting (my opinion) Christ. Eventually the attendant got up from his wooden chair and joined me, and after a respectful silence asked me what I liked about it.

  ‘It’s a landscape. The elongated composition – the yellowing body – a land suffering, a drought landscape.’ I rattled on, ‘I know land like it. It’s got nothing to do with Christ.’

  Later, at a museum specialising in 20th-century art, I came across a painting of black lines on grey by Mondrian, done in 1912. I stepped forward to read the label: Eucalyptus. I reared back. It was the last thing I wanted to see. Here I have travelled thousands of miles by plane, rail, bus, ferry and by foot, only to be presented in Switzerland with a painted version of something common I had left well behind. What would a Dutchman know about eucalypts? I imagined the artist with a brush in his hand. Mondrian was trying to make a virtue out of the tree’s untidiness – branches and dead sticks hanging and drooping, or else shooting out all over the place. It was a pretty poor imitation. I remember on a train in England a Frenchman telling me the problem for the landscape painter was deciding what to leave out.