A Short History of Richard Kline

by Amanda Lohrey

  Over the weeks that followed he began to experience a subtle change in his outlook. For one thing, he found he was becoming less judgemental. There was the occasion on which he had to listen, yet again, to friends talk obsessively about the renovation of their cottage in the Dordogne, and for once he listened without irritability. The property was not a cottage but a ‘sheepfold’ and accessible only by a rocky track of two kilometres. It was, they intoned, the perfect retreat (as if, he remarked later to Zoe, the Australian continent was too noisy for them). He, who was impractical and had never so much as driven a nail, even managed to ask them a few questions. Was there drinkable water? Were the tanks they planned to install local or imported? How were their French lessons going?

  ‘You were very congenial tonight,’ said Zoe as they drove home. ‘Since when did you develop an interest in water tanks?’

  He shrugged. ‘If it makes them happy …’ To the rest of their friends and acquaintances it would make far more sense than his own eccentric path. Who was he to pronounce on anything? The more time he spent with Sri Mata, the more aware he became of how little he knew, really knew, as opposed to all the knowledge he had acquired so easily since boyhood. At its core this peculiar new state of unknowing was generous; he might even describe it as, well, loving.

  On the fifth Sunday he decided to sit to the side of her peetham, because he liked occasionally to open his eyes and glimpse her in profile: the coiled bun of her blue-black hair; the curve of her nose; the composure of her rounded shoulders; the white cotton of her shawl ruffled by a mild breeze. This, he told himself, was the image he would call to mind at the moment of his death.

  For now, he marvelled at the perfect poise with which she sat, straight-backed and with no visible movement, for an hour. Except that now and then she would observe, or in some way sense, that one of the meditators had nodded off; then she would pick up a small pebble from a handful she kept in a brass bowl beside her and throw it, with unerring aim, at the forehead of the lucky miscreant. These stones became treasured items among the devotees, though it had not as yet happened to him. Nor did he yearn for any token. To be there in her presence was enough.

  He found that each Sunday morning he drove to these meditation events with questions in his head, and on each occasion these questions evaporated in her presence – either that or an answer came to him during the meditation, though always in a form that he could not put into words, and that could only be described as the deepening of a spiritual intuition that grew in and was nurtured by her presence. If afterwards he could recall these questions, they ceased to seem important, to have lost their charge, as if the meditation process was a liquid solution in which such cerebral irritants were dissolved. It reminded him of Martin’s idea of the laboratory of the self; in his Sunday-morning state he was a beaker of fluid that filtered out the dross, and Sri Mata was the flame. Which is not to say that there weren’t times when he wasn’t restless, when thoughts from work didn’t intrude, or anxieties, about Luke especially, but he focused on his breath and returned to his mantra. In her presence it seemed all too easy. He was a child at the breast. And in time he became complacent; everything, he told himself, is fine as it is.

  But then, one morning, she ambushed him. He felt himself being drawn up into a vortex as if at any minute he might leave his body and not return. Death was only an instant away; he could drop the sheath of the body without fear or regret, for it was not death as he had until then imagined it; rather, it was like boarding a train, and she was there, in the carriage, inviting him to sit beside her.

  I could let go, he thought, let go now of everything. Ah, but no, no, it was not possible, and he felt a hot wave of panic shimmy up his spine. No, I’m not ready for this, he heard himself say, silently. Not now. Not yet. I am not a monk. I have my wife and son to look after. Would you have me abandon them? He opened his eyes and stared at her, motionless on the peetham. Her eyes were closed, her stillness uncanny.

  One Sunday, after she had risen and turned towards the door of the villa, she hesitated, turned back to the peetham and stooped to the brass bowl to pick out a pebble. Then she looked at him and held out her hand.

  Taken aback, he glanced around. What was the meaning of this gesture? The meditation was at an end and he had not fallen asleep. Moreover, he had never seen her do this, offer a pebble to a devotee after meditation. Nor was he sure at first that the pebble was intended for him, but her gaze was so direct, and prolonged, that there could be no doubt, and as he reached out to take it, brushing her cool fingers lightly, she said, in her deep-throated and heavily accented English, ‘For your friend.’ And before he could in any way respond, she had turned away and was walking in her quick, matter-of-fact stride towards the house.

  He stood there, in shock. He hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about. What was for his friend? Well, the pebble, of course, but what did that small stone signify? And what friend? He headed for his walk around the streets of Strathfield, his usual stroll after meditation, fingering the stone in his pocket, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger, turning it over and over until at last it came to him. Martin. Martin Coleby. She meant Martin. How did he know this? He just knew.

  But Martin was in New Zealand – at least, he had said he would be remaining there for several months, and perhaps indefinitely. Was he meant to post the stone to him in the mail? Perhaps that was it, not that he had a forwarding address, but it should not be difficult to discover the location of Martin’s centre in Auckland. And when the stone arrived Martin would know what it meant.

  He returned to his car and was not far into the journey home when it occurred to him that Martin might be in Sydney. Perhaps he had returned and she was directing Rick to renew contact, to resume their dialogues and the teaching Martin had been so generously willing to offer him. By the time he reached Parramatta Road he had resolved to ring Martin the next day, and then corrected that thought. Martin would have given up the rental of his little terrace house and the old number would be disconnected. He drove on, past the turn-off in Camperdown, but the pebble in his pocket was like a hot coal that burned into his thoughts. Finally a voice arose in his head – or, to be more precise, reverberated in his chest, like a struck gong. It said, ‘Go now. Go to Martin’s place.’

  He doubled back to the turn-off and drove through the labyrinth that is the back streets of Newtown. It was just on noon when he parked outside Martin’s house and knocked on the front door. Silence. He knocked again, louder this time. No-one home. On impulse he tried the door. It was unlocked. He pushed it open and glanced into the front room. There, slumped on the floor in front of the couch, was Martin. His eyes were glazed in a dark stare, his shoulders were hunched; he had both arms clutched around his chest and his breathing was hoarse and shallow.

  In his account to others of the events that followed Rick was mindful of not addressing the most remarkable aspect of his improbable intervention. He let it rest with whomever he was speaking to, left them to make of it whatever they chose. In that first moment he had knelt beside Martin, who by now was almost rigid, but he felt that Martin recognised him. ‘It’s Rick,’ he said, uselessly, and fumbled for his phone.

  In the ambulance he sat opposite the paramedic as they hurtled their way along Missenden Road to the Royal Prince Alfred. The medic was a woman in her mid-thirties with cropped black hair and muscular forearms. When she had arrived at the flat he had helped her raise Martin’s t-shirt up around his neck so that she could apply the nodes of the ECG machine. Twelve nodes: he had counted them. She had asked Martin a series of questions but he had just stared at her, appearing to have lost the power of speech.

  Rick had said almost nothing, but after they settled Martin in the ambulance, still upright, still in some feverish zone of his own, he had looked at her and, pointing to his own chest, mouthed the words, ‘Heart attack?’ At which she had given an almost imperceptible shake of her head and murmured, ‘Don’t think so.’ Already she had
rung ahead to the emergency unit, and before long they were at its doors and Martin was assisted into a wheelchair. The triage nurse signalled for him to be pushed into a resuscitation bay and Rick followed behind, into one of those curtained cells lined with machines. They lifted Martin onto the surgical bed and he winced with pain and looked deathly pale. A nurse began to set up an ECG and a young Indian doctor appeared, bleary-eyed with fatigue.

  Rick felt in the way. There was only so much room in the cubicle and he was taking up too much of it. He asked the nurse what would happen next and she told him, brusquely, that Martin would be given tests, including blood tests, and it would be several hours before he could be moved to a ward. Was there anything, Rick asked, that he could do?

  ‘Are you family?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, best to advise them.’

  It sounded ominous.

  He walked out through the doors of the emergency bay, out into the sun, and hailed a taxi on Missenden Road. He would return to Martin’s house, which he had absentmindedly left unlocked, not that there was anything worth stealing, and he would look for Martin’s mobile, or an address book that might give clues as to family.

  Once inside that dark space, the first thing he noticed was that the kitchen was almost bare. It told him that Martin could not have been back long, had not had time to settle in, or even to clean up, for the cockroaches had run rampant, their black dots of excrement scattered like malignant seeds.

  In the bedroom he searched through Martin’s things. There was an empty suitcase, some clothes hanging in a cupboard, a makeshift altar set up on a stool with a red silk cloth the size of a table napkin, a framed photograph of Martin’s teacher and a glass mug filled with water and a single red geranium. On the floor was a thin futon mattress and beside it a small address book.

  He seized on this with relief and looked under ‘C’. The first name listed was a Susan Coleby and next to it a number with a Blue Mountains prefix. He rang the number but no-one answered.

  He pocketed the address book and took the photograph of Martin’s guru, with the intention of placing it beside Martin’s hospital bed.

  Then he rang Zoe and told her he would be late.

  In the foyer of the hospital he re-dialled Susan Coleby’s number. This time a woman answered.

  For almost two hours he sat by Martin’s bed in the emergency department, where they were waiting for the results of blood tests to establish whether Martin had had a heart attack. On present indications they thought not. Rick asked if he could wait until Martin’s sister arrived and they said yes, and brought him a chair.

  Martin was propped up in a sitting position with pillows on all sides, unable to lie down because the pain in his chest was excruciating and could only be relieved if he sat upright. In his own way he acknowledged Rick’s presence, but, though conscious, he appeared to inhabit some internal space into which no-one could reach, a point of concentration, or pain, that could not or would not admit distraction.

  It was just after six in the evening when Susan Coleby rang to say she was only minutes away. By this time a bed had been found for Martin in a general ward and Rick was sitting beside it. He said he would wait there until she arrived.

  When Susan entered, white-faced and breathless, Martin was asleep, still propped upright in the only position that gave him ease. She stared for a moment at the pale figure in the bed, and moved to drape the stiff hospital sheet around his shoulders. Then she turned to Rick, and asked what he knew, and he told her the little information he had been given. Martin had not suffered a heart attack; he was afflicted with a severe form of pericarditis, a condition in which the membrane sac around the heart became inflamed and filled with fluid so that it rubbed abrasively against the heart muscle. ‘It makes a creaking sound,’ he said. ‘That’s how they diagnose it. That and the ECG and the fact that he can’t lie down.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘They say it’s most probably caused by a virus. They think he’s had it for a while and neglected it. Probably thought it was pleurisy, or bronchitis.’

  ‘Typical.’ She was angry, and sank into a chair on the other side of the bed. ‘Typical,’ she said again, and gave a deep sigh. ‘Have they given you a prognosis?’

  ‘They’ve given me very little because I’m not family. If you go to the nurse’s station and tell them who you are they might find you a doctor.’

  Susan was gone for some time. Everything in this place, he thought, was agonisingly slow. He was tired, and his back ached from sitting on hard plastic chairs. For five hours he had been a visitor in a human refuge of daunting wounds. In the brightly lit dungeon of the emergency room he had sat beside the dozing Martin and observed this strange otherworld of crisis, its strict hierarchies, its methodical protocols. The medical staff looked weary, as if they had been up all night, and he overheard a nurse saying it had been a tough weekend. Only the paramedics looked fresh: they were positively jaunty, strutting around in their fluorescent-striped uniforms like pirates who were looking forward to their next raid. But the disturbing thing had been the young man in the bed next to Martin’s. Only a thin curtain separated them and Rick had eavesdropped on the conversation being conducted on the other side.

  It soon became clear that the young man, a student, had razored his wrists. You’ve done this before, said the nurse, curtly. Yes, he replied. Do you have any razors on you now, any sharp instruments? Yes, he said, he had three razors in his wallet. Rick heard her call an orderly and tell him to remove the wallet from the boy’s jacket. Rick listened with a taut, sick feeling, listened to the boy, who was softly spoken and polite. Thank you very much, he kept saying. Sorry about this. Thank you. No, he didn’t hear voices. Yes, he had seen the uni counsellor. And the nurse, so matter-in-fact, sharp even. Your jacket’s covered in blood, she said, you’ll have to soak it in cold water when you get home. Then she walked off.

  When, some time, later she came to check on him, the boy asked if his friend could come in from the waiting room and sit with him. Yes, she said. The voice of another young man was soon heard, and for the next forty-five minutes the stricken youth described in great detail a problem he had been having with a software program he was developing, and his friend listened and made sympathetic noises until Rick had an impulse to fling back the flimsy blue curtain and shout at them both in exasperation. Instead, he sat quietly and meditated on the boy. He was glad Martin was asleep.

  Where was Susan? He was hungry; he’d had enough. He stood and looked out the window at the busy road below, and heard her voice behind him. ‘It took them a while to find a doctor,’ she said. ‘It’s hectic out there.’ They were optimistic, she began. The tests showed a chronic condition of inflammation and excess of fluid around the heart, now in an acute stage. Martin had developed an arrhythmia and had trouble breathing. He was running a high temperature. He would need strong doses of anti-inflammatory drugs and complete rest for up to three months, possibly longer. She sighed. ‘He hasn’t been the same since he had the tumour removed,’ she said. ‘It was a rare one. Most people die of it, but not Martin.’

  ‘How long will they keep him here?’

  ‘On present indications, two weeks.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘He will live with me. After he’s discharged.’

  Rick was relieved. His mind had played out the options for Martin’s convalescence and they were few. And Susan inspired confidence. He had already decided he liked her, liked her blunt way of speaking. She was a short, wiry woman in her early fifties with a strong physical resemblance to Martin and the same natural reserve.

  On two occasions over the next fortnight they had coffee in the hospital café and he learned that Susan was divorced, with two adult children who lived interstate. She was the bursar at a high school in the Blue Mountains, where, luckily, as she put it, she had long-service leave owing and would take it in order to care for her brother. He said he imagined it would
be onerous for her to be a full-time carer without assistance, and asked if arrangements could not be made for a private nurse to come in and occasionally relieve her. He said he would be happy to contribute to the cost.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but we will manage.’

  He liked that ‘we’. Perhaps she had inherited her stoicism from the Major.

  Most evenings he visited Martin on his way home from work and, oddly, he looked forward to these visits. Martin was in a four-bed ward with three much older men, one of whom coughed incessantly, but it didn’t matter for he was enclosed in a deep exhaustion and not inclined to speak. He had lost weight, was pale and skeletal, his eyes both dark and dulled. The medication made him nauseous; on several occasions his blood pressure plummeted to dangerous levels and he fainted, though never when Rick was there. Rick did not linger on these visits but would sit beside him for fifteen minutes and meditate.

  One evening, as he sat with his eyes closed, he recalled with a sudden jolt how he had once sat by his brother’s bed, and it was as if a familiar current had surged through his veins. History repeats itself, he thought, and said it to himself again: history repeats itself. But with repetition the words lost their charge. No, it did not; it did not repeat itself. It could not, because he was different now, and this was different, and he thought of the pebble Sri Mata had given him. He had made no mention of this to Martin, imagining that in his current state he would not have cared how it was that Rick came to knock on his door that Sunday morning. Perhaps he had not even registered the uncanny coincidence of Rick’s being there. Nor had Susan. As she knew nothing of his history with Martin, she had not thought to ask about his presence.

  But there were some things that Martin did seem able to acknowledge. On Rick’s first visit he had glanced in the direction of his guru’s photograph. One of the nurses had moved it out of the way, to a shelf on the wall, and Martin had looked over to it, then back to Rick, and smiled ruefully.