The Disestablishment of Paradise

by Phillip Mann

  As they got deeper they experienced the phenomenon of hearing the echo of their own feet. It always sounded as though something was following them. And it always stopped seconds after they did. More than once Hera turned round, and then Mack would stop and turn round and shine his torch up the passage. And they would laugh to one another, being careful not to shine their lights in the other person’s eyes. At such times they would check to see that they were both all right and not getting too tired or hungry or thirsty or in need of a pee. And they would share out nibbly things such as the hard blue seeds of the thunder bush which Hera had gathered that morning before they set out, after letting Mack explode it. These had the flavour of aniseed and could be chewed for hours before they became bitter. And there were monkey nuts, which Mack had climbed for and thrown down for Hera to catch in her hat. Such little treats made the time pass more quickly.

  And so they went on.

  Down and down and down.

  Hera’s helmet light failed. They replaced the batteries, but the replacements didn’t work. They must have been flat and Pietr had not disposed of them. Hera reached out for Mack’s torch but it slipped in the transfer and dropped, and the bulb broke. So then they were down to their last torch and got ready to use candles. They made jokes about being old-fashioned.

  Gradually the floor levelled. They both felt it.

  Now they started to come to boggy patches where water had seeped in from the outside. They had to wade through mud, but undeniably they were coming to the end. It was twelve hours since they had started. By the time they emerged it would be night.

  And the last part was the hardest. Isn’t it ever so? They had to cut and fight their way out. Thick bushes filled the last hundred metres of the tuyau and had grown across the opening. These had to be cut through. Sometimes they were up to their waists in soft ooze, advancing only by inches as the heavy wet branches gave way. Much of this work fell to Mack and he was glad of it. He would cut a path through and then come back and carry Hera like a frog on his back.

  Finally they felt their way up a bank, the air fresh and sweet, and at the top they were on dry land. The night was dark. No stars or moons shone through the heavy clouds. Their last torch showed only the trees around them.

  Hera had a vague memory of something that Pietr Z had once muttered when they were out walking, something about a tuyau mouth just off the path. Perhaps this was the one he meant? In which case . . . She pushed forward through the trees and shone her torch. There it was, overgrown now, but no mistaking it. ‘Hey, Mack,’ she called. ‘We must be close to where the three ways meet. One to the sea. One to the plantation and one to Redman Lake. We’ve come a long way. We’re halfway home. It was worth it.’

  Mack came stumbling through the trees, dragging the packs.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ declared Hera. ‘We’ll sort it all out tomorrow. Let’s make camp here.’

  They cleared a small area and pitched their tent. A candle wedged inside one of Hera’s boots made it seem like a home from home.

  While Mack went for a pee, Hera spread out the sleeping bags and a few things to eat.

  Standing outside, they stripped off their muddy clothes, hung them over branches and crawled into the tent just as they were and snuggled into their sleeping bags.

  ‘Welcome home. Have we done well, or have we done well?’ asked Hera.

  He leaned across and gave her a kiss. ‘I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You’re a bloody marvel. Thank you, Hera.’

  ‘Aye, but could we have done better?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, we could have brought a corkscrew to open this.’ From her backpack Hera produced a small bottle of wine. ‘Courtesy of The Courtesy of MINADEC. I thought we deserved at least one treat.’

  ‘Give it here.’ Mack had it open in a moment, and they lay back, crunching seeds and drinking from the bottle.

  When it was half finished, Hera leaned back. ‘Do you want the bad news or the good news, Mack?’

  ‘Give us the bad news.’

  ‘A man’s work is never done.’

  ‘So what’s the good news?’

  ‘It’s the same. And now you’re going to set a new record for the longest kiss in history. It starts at my knees and it doesn’t finish until you reach my ears, and I’m sorry about the mud, but you’ll just have to get to like it.’

  ‘I’m partial to a bit of mud.’

  ‘Well there you are then. And then it’s my turn. But don’t blow the candle out.’

  In the soft light of a candle, a tent can seem as large as a cathedral.

  PART FIVE

  Michelangelo-Reaper

  34

  Reaper – Mack

  It was in the still dark dead of night that Mack woke Hera up, dragging her back from a dream of horses. She lit the candle and his face looked terrible. He was staring at her. ‘Hold me, Hera. Hold me tight.’ It was the voice of a man drowning. And she threw her arms around him and pulled him down onto her and said ‘It’s all right, Mack. It was just a dream, whatever it was. I’m here.’ And she tried to rock him. ‘Put your arms around me. I’m here.’

  He wanted to make love and, while Hera would have preferred to lie still and comfort him, she was not going to risk seeming to reject him, so she welcomed it. It was frantic. He threw himself at her as if trying to use passion to blind himself, or her, to his nightmare. Looking back, Hera was able to say that it was the kind of love a man might make when he is going to abandon a woman. A last frantic gift of guilt. But of course she did not know that then, and she bound him to her, her arms around his back and holding him inside her, binding him with passion and hoping that he would feel her love and draw strength from that. And when he came, he sobbed and shuddered, and that was when she held him tightest, trying with her body and her love to say that for which there are no words, or ever could be. And she would not let him go when he wanted to withdraw. She whispered things that only lovers say and he stayed in her.

  The medicine worked. He became still. She could feel his heart beating and there was sweat on his brow. He became still and soft and rested and finally dozed. That was when his weight became uncomfortable, but she was able to slip out from under him without him waking. She wiped his brow, and she wiped herself. And she looked at him and thought how noble he looked in repose. She thought of poor Shapiro. He had never looked noble; he had looked exhausted and dry and bony. But Mack? And she saw the slightest of smiles. One kiss, and then the candle was blown out and a last wry thought: I’ll be sore in the morning. She draped his arm over her and went in search of sheep, not horses.

  In the morning, when she stretched and squirmed round on her back, the tent was light and the roof was patterned with the shadow of branches. Mack was not there. Her first thought was that he was out having a pee or perhaps, if she was lucky, he might come tapping at the tent with a cup of something warm and a joke about women who couldn’t take it. She groaned. She was too tired to start thinking up smart replies. But then with a rush she came to herself. She remembered the night and sat up. The bed was cool beside her. He had been gone some time. ‘Mack?’ No answer. ‘Mack!’

  There came something like a spatter of stones thrown hard against the tent wall, and she saw their little shadows run down the tent to the ground. The shock of that got her moving.

  ‘Mack.’

  She stood up too quickly, and almost fell over when she caught her feet in the sleeping bags. Seconds later, down on her knees at the tent door, she was pulling at the Velcro ties, but the flap wouldn’t open. Something was holding it from outside. She gave it one almighty heave; the fabric opened and she found herself facing the dark green spiky leaves of a Tattersall weed and a small blue flower just about to open. Naked as she was, she squirmed round the branch and climbed out into the small clearing she and Mack had stamped out the previous night. Tattersalls ringed the space. Perhaps they had been there last night. She neither knew nor cared. They were here now.r />
  Mack’s clothes were gone. She hopped in a circle as she tried to get her legs into her pants. She pulled on a top, still wet and a bit muddy, and then her meshlite overall with the zip up the front. Her hair got caught in the zip. She unzipped, pulled it free, re-zipped and then tied her hair back with a band. Boot was horrible and wet on her bare foot. And where was the other? In the tent with the candle. She pushed the branch out of the way and retrieved the boot. Forget socks. And all the time, even while she fastened her boots, she had an eye on the Tattersall weeds. There was one drooping that must have just scattered its seeds. Was that to wake her up? It was a thought. Hell, how could one know what the Tattersall weeds were about? Helpful one minute, threatening the next. And she was listening, all the time listening. Hoping to hear a step through the trees, a breaking of branches, a whistle, anything to say Mack was near or coming back from a morning stroll.

  More organized now, she picked up her small backpack, which contained, among other things, their medical supplies and her own few treasures. Then she grabbed Pietr Z’s stick and used it to push aside the Tattersalls. She barged through the branches that barred her way, jumped down to the path and looked around. No sign of him.

  They had camped at a place where the small path turned quite sharply as it descended from the Scorpion Pass, which led to the sea. Only a hundred metres further down the path she could see the junction where the three paths met and where one of Pietr Z’s silly signs was still in place. She ran down to the junction, and came to a place where the forest opened up. There, between the path that led up to Redman Lake and the path that led down to the plantation, a hill rose sharply, with a concave depression at its centre. Between its two arms, all the trees seemed blighted and bent out of shape. Some had withered, some had lost leaves. All had been leached of their colour and bent to conform to a pattern. She gasped when she saw it. It was the worst thing she could have seen: a whirlpool, a spiral, a vast curve of energy which travelled up the concave sides of the valley, over the top and so came back down inside itself. It was like a seashell: the unmistakable evidence of a Michelangelo-Reaper.

  The only one way in was a dark arch that opened immediately opposite her. But follow that path and she would eventually come to the centre, the place where all the turning stopped. Hera remembered. She knew what she would find living there. Sitting in state, with its leaves raised like folded hands, would be a Reaper, but not like the little one that had played with her. This one would be big, really big if the size of its energy pattern was anything to judge by, and old too, presumably.

  It had kept itself well hidden all these years, like a sleeping trap awaiting its time. There would be a stream nearby too – and yes, when she looked, there it was, meandering out from under the trees no more than a hundred metres from her, and then wandering beside the path that led down to the umbrella tree plantation. It had not been there before and was presumably the creation of the Reaper.

  Had Pietr Z known the Reaper was here all the time and kept quiet? Of course he had.

  Hera could see the marks on the dewy brevet where Mack had walked. The path led straight to the Reaper’s door. Before entering that passage, Mack had removed his overalls, the ones which Hera had sewn for him, and had hung them on a branch. A sign for her?

  A movement caught her eye. Something in the valley was changing. At the dark centre of the Reaper’s hold a mistiness was gathering, and the air wavered and distorted like the air above a chimney where a fire burns but without smoke. She watched, her hand to her mouth, as up through the dark hole there grew a spiralling shape. It was at first like the tip of a black feather, with every plume distinct and perfectly traced as in an etching. As it rose it turned, and as it turned so its shape expanded. The feather pulled apart and re-formed slowly into a sphere, and that became something that Hera recognized as an eye. It was ill formed and clumsy but, as she watched, it became more precise. An eye with lid and lashes . . . Not a quick eye, but a surprised eye, or a wondering eye. Even as it turned she saw something of Mack there. But it was gone as the eye pulled apart and re-formed and became a hand – square-palmed with stubby fingers, firm and hard. It turned before her, slowly getting larger.

  At this moment something shook Hera. It was as though a warm wind had blown right through her and she felt a sound inside herself like the breaking of a musical string. She sank down onto the soft green brevet and watched, all fear suspended. The world beyond the Reaper lost colour. Everything became monochrome except the changing shape in the air, and this gained colour and life and concentration as though warming. Hera was now – whether she liked it or not – within the sphere of the Reaper. She was no longer just seeing with her eyes, but with her imagination too. She was participating. No longer passive. She watched the hand open and close. The fingers flexed in the air and made strange complex shapes. The possibilities of the hand were being explored. For a moment it was a pianist’s hand poised above the keys, and then a working man’s hand. She recognized this. A hand for all seasons that could caress and wipe and become a hard fist when the need arose. She knew that hand too, and had held it many times. Even the little chip on his thumbnail was there, where he had damaged it on the boat.

  The shapes were getting larger and swifter, growing with confidence, folding and unfolding through one another. They were high in the sky, turning and tumbling and changing with the speed of thought – no sooner done but thrown away. Many were abstract. Shapes and stains. But most were body parts, detached, but not in a bloody way. Reduced to form and line and texture. An ear became a toe became a nostril became the bulging biceps of a man with an axe. Everything was being explored, just as Hera would explore something exotic and strange that dropped from the sky, holding it up to the light and then shaking it to see if it rattled. Or . . . thinking differently, thinking of the Reaper through its other name . . . as a sculptor might explore the balance and form of a naked woman kneeling – changing the angle of the head, adding, taking away – before finally shaping his clay into a Madonna.

  She was waiting for it, wondering, but despite herself she was shocked and pleased when the giant phallus, filling the sky above the valley, unfolded. What an odd thing it was, looked at this way, from a strange and unconventional angle. Ungainly and accidental-looking. An add-on. A single rose on a stripped tree. And what would the Michelangelo make of that? she wondered. Could it understand the organ’s many functions beyond plumbing? Its slow erection and the blinding light that accompanied the movement suggested that Mack, in whatever form he now existed, was revealing all. But then again . . . Irrelevant thoughts teased her. Where, she wondered, would he find a woman to tame that?

  Irresistibly, following the evolution, the phallus transformed to become his face. A surprised face, as well it might be. But what a composition! The hair, the eyes, the curl of the hair above the ear . . . The abstract and the real, holding together. The face was caught at a moment in time. Hera remembered the expression on Mack’s face when she had confronted him at Monkey Tree Terrace and Dickinson had stamped on the ground laughing. So there was history too. Their history. Mack’s history. A puzzled young boy. A grave-faced older woman. The Reaper was into his mind now, peeling him open. What more could be shown? Faces, faces, faces in all attitudes and emotions. She didn’t want to watch. This was too private. We all deserve our darkness. This was becoming painful and dangerous. Hypnotic. Compelling. Hera began to lose her sense of who she was as the images twisted and coiled in the sky above. She wanted to look away – some intimacies should only endure the moment of their creation – but she could not look away.

  But then, as though the artist had suddenly wiped his canvas clear, all images vanished save one. The last adjusted slowly, and Hera saw her own face staring down at her, with hair tumbling all over. She saw herself as Mack had seen her. Laughing as she teased. Crying briefly and then open-mouthed in ecstasy at the moment of climax. The Michelangelo, faithful recordist, humble archivist, saw the truth of them both.r />
  The image grew until it filled the sky. It stretched across the horizon, killing the sunlight.

  There came a moment of total stillness . . . and then the face began to break up. The centre could not hold. And yet one more image managed to assert itself, just briefly. Hera could not make sense of it. She had to lie on her back to look up at it. It was like a tree, but with three trunks which grew into a complex knot, and at its top she could just see the tip of a gleaming silver blade-like flower. The tree held its shape for a few seconds and then began to waver in the air, and to revolve like something on a potter’s wheel. And the faster it turned, the more quickly it contracted, centrifugal energy in reverse, vanishing like a column of water down into the dark chamber of the Reaper. Until . . . finally there was nothing.

  In the sudden vacuum Hera shivered and curled up on the damp green of the brevet. Then the warm breeze passed through her again. It was the Reaper withdrawing, its energy spent – and she lay for a few moments still. Then she sat up. Colour returned to her world. The blue of the Tattersall weeds. The patterned deep green of the brevet. The sky. The clouds. How unreal and empty everything looked after the tumbling brilliant images. But she was back in the real world, the world she knew. What she had seen was now only present in her memory, though undoubtedly alive in the world of Paradise.

  Hera scrambled to her feet, picked up her backpack and, without hesitation, ran towards the dark entrance to the Reaper. She was remembering the story that the Reaper, after it had devoured its victim, returns the corpse and hangs it on a tree or some such.16 She did not know the truth of the tale, but she wanted to know. Moments later she was under the trees. As she ran along the incurving path she found more of Mack’s clothing. His vest. His boots. And finally his shorts. She could imagine. She had felt the grip of a Reaper on her mind. It would have forced him, stumbling, caught between the need to walk and the need to pull his clothes off. Plants could not understand clothes.