by A. S. Patric
Franz and a large group of people gathered around the Swimmer. Franz asked a gentleman with a monocle next to him what was happening. The man replied that the Swimmer was going to swim across the Danube, from one bank to the other. When Franz shrugged, the man with the monocle explained that the swimmer would swim below the water, without coming up for air. It was over seventy metres wide at this point of the great river and he would usually carry something in his mouth when making his crossing. He had been known to carry a man’s silver pocket watch, a blue robin’s egg, and once he’d even carried a wedding ring over and back—at which point a gentleman had proposed to his prospective bride.
‘What’s in his mouth today?’ asked Franz.
‘Nothing. Today the Swimmer is going to go all the way to the other side—and return—without coming up for air.’
‘That’s impossible,’ said Franz.
‘I know,’ agreed the man with the monocle. ‘It’s impossible.’ He smiled.
More people gathered to watch the Swimmer prepare. The smallest of the children took turns patting the whale on the back of the Swimmer’s bathing suit, gently, as it seemed to swim below the deepest ocean. Those who could already read mistakenly assumed the Swimmer’s name to be Jonah, but he and his costume still filled them with a sense of wonder.
‘How is he going to prove he went to the other side and back?’ asked Franz.
The man with the monocle looked surprised by the question and couldn’t answer it. Franz kept asking people until a young man with a very new, shiny top hat said that he had a white balloon shaped like a star attached to his waist, which he would release when he got to the other bank.
The Swimmer folded the scarlet robe that had been keeping his legs warm and politely asked a red-headed girl to hold it for a little while. People began to clap. As he made his way deeper into the water the applause grew louder. It petered out when he was fully submerged. The Danube was dark today and nothing more could be seen of the Swimmer.
People began to estimate how long it would take him to cross from one side of the river to the other. They looked for the white balloon that was sure to bob up soon on the distant bank. They did not spot it for all their eager searching. This fact was eventually dismissed, one man who had the bearing of a judge pronouncing that it would be as difficult to see as a snowflake landing on the water—picking out a white balloon on a river so busy with boats, fishing floats and ducks.
They all waited.
‘But it’s impossible,’ said Franz.
‘Yes, it’s impossible,’ people assured him with expectant smiles on their faces.
The gathering stood by the water for fifteen minutes before everyone began re-forming their original clusters of family and friends. They continued to talk as though they were all still part of an audience, if only for a few moments longer. They speculated on how long it was possible for a man to hold his breath. What was the outer limit for a fellow with good lungs, and then for someone who had trained for such endeavours as crossing the Danube or especially deep-sea diving? They had real professionals doing that kind of breath holding. Conversations ranged over the things men found below water, from sponges and pearls to sunken ships and treasures.
The children also dispersed from the water’s edge after a while. The red-headed girl placed the Swimmer’s scarlet robe on the rock he had sat on, breathing deeply, just a little time before. She asked her father whether a sponge was a type of fish and what kind of creature produced a pearl. Perhaps they were a special kind of egg. She asked if there were sunken treasures in the wide, deep Danube as well.
Franz hadn’t coughed for the whole time he was waiting for the Swimmer to cross the river but he now pulled out a handkerchief and began coughing. He carried a number of handkerchiefs. Franz could feel his lungs struggling, tired from a battle that had been raging for months. His eyes were closed as the coughing fit went on and on. Franz opened his eyes and saw spatters of blood soaking into the white fabric resembling an image of a surfacing leviathan.
HUNGRY MOTHS
I know Truth is somewhere near. I can smell her perfume on the shirt I wore last night. Smudges of lipstick on the glasses we used. I’m sure there’d still be a taste of her in the bead of wine at the bottom of the glass over there on the window ledge.
We must have been leaning out. I remember drunken songs in snatches—stuff that doesn’t make sense anymore. I think we threw some books outside as well, to watch them flutter down on their broken wings. Just a few books that I wasn’t going to read, but my memory is a bit hazy. I’m distressed to see that my bookshelves are all empty. I had been intending on keeping some of them for the rest of my life.
The roar of traffic is loud through the open window and whatever remains of them outside must have been shredded to the smallest fragments of paper. I’m not sure even a word would have survived on that relentless road. Millions upon millions of cars pass, day and night outside—ceaseless now that the gates of the underworld are open again.
There’s the dress she was wearing, still draped over a light stand, so she can’t have gone far. Holes through the fabric of her gown (a shade of red she described as the colour a closed eye sees looking up at summer skies during high noon), puncture marks like a machine gun has swept across it.
I should have told her how hungry my moths are this far away from the sun.
NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING
she finds a spot in the car park after a few maddening minutes of circling graffiti on every available surface not reading any of the spray painted words listening to the radio and trying to stay calm the economist in the studio saying that australia has to be about the future and that means asia and the politician on a telephone feed replying that a global meltdown means global problems and the way forward has to be with a global mind frame turning the car off and enjoying the way she can kill their voices carefully getting out of her car stepping away gingerly because she turned her ankle friday hopping off the tram moving through a chaos gallery of public explosions graffiti artists have a few milliseconds of attention to play with then again there’s a limited permanence high exposure audience in thrall if only for brief moments of parking being stopped in that one concrete space later she will remember this is the first instance of the words hive mind appearing before her a tag that’s what it was called graffiti artists used tags instead of names maybe there is an honesty there it didn’t matter who their father was or what name mother chose limping away from her car to the bookstore with a joy division song playing memory doesn’t show everything who knows what’s in there no words or title only the first line ian curtis intoning so this is permanence so this is through her mind again permanence which might have been a declaration of pain yet makes her feel as little anguish as graffiti so this is permanence is just a resonating sequence of syllables rising and subsiding in letters that require a brief hiss at the beginning and ending limping along like a gimp wincing with every step keeping the expressions minuscule doesn’t show emotion in public if she can help it which isn’t always true because she laughs out loud on her mobile when speaking to a friend so the ankle is as much a secret as she can make it hobbling along an inconvenience rather than an agony needing a book because she didn’t want to move yet moving because she needed that book it’s too hot out here there are too many people liable to bump or mill about on the footpath she gets through without needing to say excuse me excuse me excuse me please this is not permanence soon enough she’ll be back home with her book and she will get into her comfy armchair and not move again for hours within the bookstore it’s the christmas rush there’s no time for browsing people brushing past swearing under breath wanting to shove barely containing themselves emitting some kind of frantic sound from their hectic minds dogs could hear it or smell it if they let dogs in here they’d be barking their heads off as animals often do in horror films in the presence of something unholy picking up a book she needs to rest her ankle it’s a pocket of calm maybe no one wa
nts books from the cultural studies section this time of year for presents for friends or family for a kris kringle the female eunuch probably hadn’t ever found its way into an xmas stocking but germaine greer would cackle if she was to hang pendulous from the family mantel wishing she could make those kinds of friends with writers she enjoys and has come to know as if they were eternally present at birthdays being unwrapped or when there’s time enough to curl up with them on an armchair such welcoming faithful dutiful loving spectres like greer or curtis singing about permanence and hanging from his neck almost twenty four years old and that song about permanence is called twenty four hours she now recalls one of those songs she’s listened to hundreds of times never catching all the lyrics yet she can hear his voice so this is permanence she imagines ian curtis still hanging from a beam decades later a final guttural song recorded in a purgatory studio the lyrics never emerging played over and over in the endless pendulum of his feet swinging free of time below perhaps that is true for everyone and not just her and this ghost pain comes with the illusion that it will never end even when it’s something as stupid as a twisted ankle and the worse the pain the more convincing the illusion of permanence but she still doesn’t feel sad for him it’s only a song attached to a few random biographical details seeing a book on the shelf picking it up for no other reason than it says hive mind on the cover she will later point out in an email to her friend edouard that this is the second instance in a total of three for the day writing that she can’t remember seeing the words applied to people in general as if it’s a recognised phenomenon or common term maybe it is now it had been made official by some pseudo crypto jungian rejigging the collective unconscious with a bit of sociology psychology history in the cultural studies demimonde emerging on youtube radio television coaching america’s newest magazine gloss sweetheart through her latest paparazzi breakdown putting the book back as a total mind numbing fucking irrelevancy in any case giving up on the idea that she might hunt through the biography section for dad’s christmas gift to get that particular farce over and done with limping to the book by jim shepard she wants to buy hating the cover but knowing shepard is one of the few writers who can give her that literary transport that she needs right now the tyranny of epiphany a tiny bubble in her mind popping among a billion other bubbles especially wanting to be jim’s friend as with germaine but probably not poor grand mal ian and just chat about music movies books or the weather polar bears preferred on the south pole it wouldn’t matter what they talked about really and she is sure that jim would like her at least as much as a facebook friendship allows he might correct her playfully about polar bears being only on the north pole and penguins living on the south pole never the twain paying for jim’s ugly book getting out while the going was good feeling lucky not to have had an xmas rugby style scrimmage at the counter limping along a temporary cripple stopping to rest by the wall next to the car park sweating panting thinking about the time she saw betty cuthbert in a wheelchair at an awards ceremony with videos playing on big screens of younger days how permanent that is for the golden girl winner of three gold medals for australia breaking sprinting records with that open mouth sucking in air and national noise and love and the pain is so bad that she can barely hobble to the car thinking that 100 metres in a breath over 11 seconds in 1956 still seems so so so quick recalling jason from human resources paid only $36 on ebay for a gold medal from berlin 1936 the nazi olympics hopping the last few metres on one leg to her car as though this is a gruelling olympic event with the medal metals for victory being tin or lead or rust and the winner is raised by a curtis rope rather than asked to step up on those three steps for the honour of listening to some stadium muzak getting into her car not with a yell of victory but with a squeal in the privacy of her cabin as her foot knocks against the doorframe the radio announcer says well I wouldn’t have said it was hive mind but we’ll all have to decide for ourselves laughing at his own joke and then going to a song that had nothing to do with anything
FULL-SCALE
She was a ballerina when she was seventeen, until she destroyed her knee. She was a whore for three years in her early twenties (but she has told me about neither of these things). I’ve found a picture that was taken of her dancing—from a full-scale ballet.
MINERVA BLUES
Minerva looks exactly like a fly these days. That’s what happens when no-one prays to you—diminishment and disgrace. Even so (and it’s certainly a credit to her former dignity and prestige), the goddess does not drone or buzz as she flies through my window. She whistles a tune called ‘Emily Dickinson Blues’, and I hum along for a few bars, before I swat her into a splotch of ink-black insect afterlife.
You can’t kill divinities as easily as this, I know, but there is a brief moment in which I feel Olympian. I lean forward and peer into the entrails of the dead fly and the cosmos reveals its secrets. And yes, everything is very, very clear, but I have already forgotten the lovely tune Minerva was whistling only a few moments ago.
I have spent years trying to recall how it goes, and live with my windows wide open—even at the height of summer. Mosquitoes of Mesoamerican lineage leave a Braille of bites across my flesh but I cannot read Aztec or Inca. All I know is that they were once high priests who had surgical tastes for the human heart.
I gather with these late-night whisperers of blood hunger, out by a street light that never sees any traffic. I suppose it has been put here for people like me, wandering around half-naked, on overly hot evenings. A moth flutters down from the yellow plastic illumination and tells me it used to visit the moon when its best friend was Mercury. Now we can’t hear the stars and we can barely even see the constellations. I let the moth rest on my shoulder. Later, it tells me about the many ways civilisations reach their natural ends.
I shoo the moth away and know that I will soon forget. My memories are too many and so they turn themselves into fireflies. They drift away in a mass—resembling the cosmos swirling into the opposite of infinity. I should have found a jar and filled it with these lights (kept a few recollections), but it’s too late.
The street light casts a low yellow glow, yet now there’s nothing else. I cling to the pole and listen to a joke the hungry mosquitoes tell about how the only difference between Ovid and Michael Jackson was the glittery glove. They tell this joke again and again and again. Eternal repetition is a favourite punishment in our part of the underworld.
THE INTERIOR
A few raindrops spray across the windscreen, but it’s not quite raining. I open my door and step outside. Port Phillip Bay is very near and the wind off the water races over the bitumen of the car park, gusting a chill upwards.
She sits within the interior warmth of her car. She’s on her mobile, talking, and smiles at me. We have been friends for so many years, the world has changed popes, presidents and prime ministers. We remember the last days of revolution and together we watched global warfare gathering on the horizon— catastrophic storms imminent for over a decade. The oceans were full of fish and everything seemed limitless and possible. We saw babies born and talked about first words and steps and consulted each other on how to impart the knowledge of death, so it wouldn’t be bitter or fearful. We watched movies with film stars now dead or grown old and living in obscurity somewhere in the hills of California. There was music and bands in bars—and there were mistakes we made that we daydreamed about with hangovers for hours afterwards some Sunday mornings. There were books we forced upon each other because they would change our hearts and minds in integral, utterly necessary ways. She is looking at me with our histories written on the same pages, sitting in her driver’s seat with her seatbelt still on, talking into her phone, and smiling at me with that long, loving friendship. But we don’t know each other. We have never met.
I close my car door and walk across the bitumen to get my ticket. I return to my car and place my ticket on the dashboard. There’s another spatter of raindrops and soon it will come down in a torren
t of ice-cold Melbourne rain. When I pass the car window beside me, I don’t look over at her again, sitting within the warmth of the interior.
THE PROFESSIONAL MOURNERS
It’s been a long time since Leni knew who she was. Since she could look around herself and understand where she was, and what world this was. Because no-one ever knows what a finely crafted box of precision mirrors the brain is until it’s dropped. Until your hear the rattle in every thought, you will never know how many reflections there are in just that one name—Leni.
But she was born Magdalena Goode. No middle name. Which was a strange choice by her parents, wasn’t it? She felt like there was something in error about her through primary school. She had no secret name. One to be embarrassed about. Or one that had a story to it. No crack to fall between—the family name and the school name. It was just Magdalena Goode, until everyone forgot it was Magdalena Goode and it just became Leni. Leni, and her secret name became the whole thing. Somehow hidden within plain sight.
A man comes and goes. Adjusts her blankets when they don’t need adjusting. Her hair over the pillow. His palm on her forehead. She knew his name but it’s gone now. Now she knows him by his shadow. His smell and the sound of his breathing. It’s the space his body takes up in the air above her bed. When it comes and goes.
They spend hours together and neither can bridge the gap of a few millimetres. Words get lost in the fibre of flesh and the clutter of bones, or just get trapped in those pink murmurs of separation. Mouths empty of everything but noise. But he goes on sharpening his tongue and looking for a way to cut through to her buried heart … which never was a thing hidden in her head like it is in him.
Leaving the hospital room and returning, as though he was escaping and being recaptured in this cage where she is the bait. This man who lifts her hands to his whispering lips, as if he could pray with her palms but not his own.