‘We’ve been to a maze,’ Otis interrupts. ‘Remember?’
I do. Less than a year ago, day-tripping through the Sunshine Coast hinterland, we had happened across a maze, a winding twisting configuration of yellow-leafed hedge set incongruously amidst a gloomy rainforest. Kaz had been reluctant but I had urged us onward and inward, only to find that the maze was thick-walled and surprisingly difficult to negotiate. After an initial burst of skylarking enthusiasm we had, under my leadership, become lost and frustrated.
‘It was cool.’ Milo stretched his arms and back.
‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Otis. ‘It was stupid, and scary. I thought we were going to be stuck there forever.’
‘Mum got us out though. She knew the right way, didn’t she?’
‘Yes,’ I nodded, remembering Kaz’s small gurgle of triumph as she had spied the entrance to the maze and guided us towards it. ‘Yes, she did.’
Now listen carefully. Scientists have long agreed that there are black holes in the Universe — places where gravity collapses and everything inside disintegrates. Well, the Mazes were worse than any black hole. There were about a thousand of them, all scattered a third of the way towards the Mother Star. If you took a wrong turn, if you relaxed, took a little nap or got lazy and went slightly off-course, you would get trapped in the Mazes. You would be ripped away from your journey and flung into a never-ending Maze where powerful forces would pick you up and throw you randomly in a zillion different directions — along lines, around curves, over corners — until the end of time. You could do nothing, just allow yourself to be tossed around like confetti in a cyclone, beyond forever, until you were wild-faced and angry and totally, utterly insane.
The rose leopard knew that she had to avoid the perils of the Mazes so she did a very clever thing. Before she left on her journey, she quickly visited the Keeper of the Deserts and asked him for two handfuls of sand that she could take with her. The Keeper (who had long been a trusted friend) obliged and even gave her coloured sands ’violet, orange, deep olive green — for good luck. She thanked him, gathered her magic cloak tightly and began the journey.
The Universe is pretty much a silent place so she knew that she was nearing the Mazes when she heard a thousand strange sucking noises, like swamp-mud monsters begging for a feed. The Mazes of Madness were hungry! She stopped, took a pinch of sand in her fingers, and threw it in front of her.
To her right, the sand floated harmlessly in the atmosphere. But to her left, the tiny particles were quickly gobbled up, only having time to give a quick screech before they disappeared forever.
The rose leopard stepped right then threw out another pinch of sand.
This time the right-side was gobbled and the left side stayed afloat.
She moved left.
And that’s how the rose leopard successfully got through the Mazes of Madness, by throwing out coloured sand, swinging left, swinging right, leaping forward, rolling down, but always travelling towards the Mother Star — until she reached the second hazard.
Which can wait until tomorrow night. Because now I am back in my study, back to the photo album, back to sticking pictures in, captioning, creating piles of possibles, probables and rejects, and wondering all the time if I am not creating a wrongful impression — because isn’t that what photo albums do? Reconstruct a life-span of happy highlights — parties, romances, joyous get-togethers, people in synchrony — but never the bad times? Who ever dared take snapshots of the mundaneness? Who ever dared capture those occasions where you’re drab and bedraggled, friendless, or fucked-up and feeling like your existence is worth no more than a coloured bead on an abacus?
All of which prompts this thought: Looking back on what I have written so far, I wonder if I have not given an impression of Kaz and me together which is fundamentally accurate but also generously tinted. I mean, not so much rose-coloured as touched up, gifted some subtle hues by the gentle-handed artist who is innately, unthinkingly affectionate towards his subject. Because, to be frank, there were imperfections. There were disruptions. There were times when we snarled and scratched and scraped at each other like feral cats and there were times when we lashed each other with meat-cleaver words that left deep, weeping, unfathomable wounds.
I remember one such time, around two years before Kaz died. We’d been ill-fitting for about a week, circling each other warily, our occasional attempts at conversation making us sound like frustrated children banging jigsaw pieces into the wrong place. I still don’t know how it started; sometimes in a relationship these things just blow in, like cold gusts of wind during an otherwise glorious day. Anyway, whilst I was certain that this whatever-it-was — disparity, I suppose — would eventually pass (love, lust and the needs of our children being the great modifiers that they were), a pale and non-communicative Kaz was less convinced. So it was no surprise when, after a night of muttered grievances and pulling the sheets to her side of the bed, she woke up one morning and insisted on some home-grown therapy.
‘We are ill-fitting,’ she said. ‘There is a solution,’ she said. ‘We should open up to each other, completely and honestly. We should each tell the other what it is that most annoys. We should begin our sentences with candid clauses such as “I hate it when …” or “I dislike the way …” or “I was really angry that time you …” ’
‘Kaz,’ I said from the bathroom, ‘I’m sorry but this is claptrap. It’s fatuous and juvenile, straight out of Cosmopolitan’.
She glared at me, rammed her toothbrush back into its holder.
‘So,’ I continued breezily, ‘where’d you find this … theory? In the recipe section? Beneath the obligatory questionnaire — Dick Size: Does Your Man Measure Up?’
‘Vince, don’t patronise me. Soul-baring is supposed to be good for all relationships. Psychologists say it’s about reconnecting. Starting all over, falling in love again.’
‘Bunkum.’
‘No, truth. Come on, Vince, it’ll be cleansing.’
‘Kaz, you oughta know — I’m beyond cleansing. In fact, I’ve always felt that life would be a much happier, simpler process if everyone ignored cleansing and learned to accept their natural, perennial dirtiness.’
‘See, you’re doing it already. I hate the way you turn everything into a sappy aphorism about how we should live our lives. As if you’d know.’
‘Hm … Just this or that in you disgusts me; here you miss, or there exceed the mark.’
‘And that’s another thing. Don’t quote poetry at me! I hate that stuff, all that English Lit. pretentiousness, as if remembering a few lines of some maudlin dead-white-male crap makes you somehow impressive —’
‘As I hate hell, all Montagues and thee —’
‘And as for perennial dirtiness — what a wank. You’re a moral vacuum, you know that?’
‘No, in ethical terms I am realistically unhygienic. Come on, Kaz, we both know that we have faults. I’m arrogant, you’re hot-headed. I dribble when I’m drunk, your feet smell. So what? We cope. We live with the inconsistencies, don’t we? Geez, we get by.’
‘You forgot some. You pee in the shower. You pick your nose in the car when you think we’re not looking. You adjust yourself — constantly. Last Easter, you got up when you thought I was asleep and stole some of Sara’s chocolate.’
‘True enough. But it’s like peeing in the shower. I only did that once, and the judge released me on a plea of temporary insanity.’
‘There you go again! That’s something else that pisses me off. I hate the way that you refuse to confront things. I hate it! You’re never head-on. You’ve capitalised LAISSEZ-FAIRE. It is soooo frustrating!’
‘Now you’re gibbering.’
‘No I’m not. Vince, who disciplines the children? Who rings up and complains when the Council forgets our bin? Who organises the pest control man? Who makes school lunches every day, and is totally compromised by Jelly Cups and Pizza Shapes and apparently nutritious Muesli bars which look like desiccated
turds?’
‘We are all victims of advertising, my love —’
‘Who makes fifty bloody phone-calls just to get quotes for new curtains? Who washes and irons and pays the bills? Who organises our goddamned lives? Me — all the time, me! You’re so bloody wrapped up in your world of crappy, unfinished, pseudo-literary stories, so frigging smirkingly self-contained, you do nothing!’
‘Gibber gibber gibber.’
‘Nothing nothing nothing!’
‘Kaz, is this becoming a serious argument? Are you turning our cleansing — dubious as though the concept may be — into full-scale warfare?’
‘What do you care?’
‘It’s just that … well, I have an appointment with my gynaecologist at four.’
‘Not funny. Never funny. Why don’t you just fuck off?’
‘Kaz?’
‘Go on, fuck off. You’re incapable of taking anything seriously. I hate it. Hate it, hate it, hate it! You know, sometimes — no, often — I think that you’re demented’
‘Only demented with love, my sweetness.’
‘Don’t call me that. It’s patronising, again! You’re always patronising me. You treat me like a stupid little girl, like this simpering cot-case who just happens to have tits and a warm place for you to park your penis.’
‘Sorry, sugar-plum. Kaz, this cleansing — it’s actually a bit of a turn-on for me. Honesty makes me horny.’
‘And don’t touch me, especially not there! Or there! Oh, and that’s another thing. Don’t shove so hard.’
‘Pardon?’
‘When we’re having sex, you moron. You forget I’m there then you shove like a piston and grunt and gasp and your breath stinks and it hurts then you come and roll over and don’t give a shit, and I’m lying there with bruises and all this soreness, and wondering why the hell I just put up with that, why the hell I just put up with being treated like something inanimate, nothing more than a convenient hole for your shoving fucking satisfaction.’
‘Jesus! Is it always that bad?’
‘Yes … no — sometimes. Sometimes it is. When you’re drunk, especially — so that’s most of the time, isn’t it? I mean, how often do we have sober sex? It’s a joke.’
‘Now I am sorry.’
‘You should be! Look, just piss off, Vince, will you? Go on. Go write a poem about modern men being emasculated and misunderstood. Go and bleat truisms on behalf of the burgeoning masculinist movement. I don’t want to talk any more.’
‘Kaz, please, this was supposed to be cleansing. How come I feel so soiled?’
‘You just don’t get it, do you? You never ever get it, never.’
‘I’m sorry, okay.’
‘Just go, Vince. Go!’
So I went.
Sometimes we tiptoed around the frictions. Sometimes, maddened and hurting, we blasted each other. Sometimes we sat outside — together but apart, married but lonely — our thoughts popping and bubbling but refusing to break surface, refusing to be free.
You’re not perfect.
I’m not perfect.
Neither am I.
Nothing is.
Perfection is unattainable. Illusion.
Then, shall we let it go?
Does it really matter?
Is this whole thing a mistake?
And love, is this love? Or a façade?
Or just the way things are …
Sometimes, most times, we did what most couples do. For days on end we avoided any discussion of us, and then we smiled heartily in public and pretended everything was okay. And we both assumed that not mentioning the disruptions was part of our mapped togetherness, a blueprint for what we envisaged as sixty years of shared wisdom.
Late night stillness, glass of cushion-soft burgundy, Mendelssohn gracing the CD player. The phone rings.
‘Sorry for calling so late,’ Stu says, too cheerfully. ‘Just wanted to see how you were getting on?’
‘I’m fine,’ I tell him. ‘Actually, I’ve got a bit of a story happening.’
‘Good!’ His exultation seems genuine. ‘Can I ask … what it’s about?’
I stretch, plonk my feet onto the coffee table.
‘It’s a … sort of a kid’s fantasy thingummy. Lots of dark and light. Magic. Quests. That sort of stuff.’
‘Goooood! Huge market, Vince. I mean, we’re talking HUGE here! Mega. I can see it now: stalking trolls, dark lords. Mm, hidden jewels, muscular sabre-masters with weird Scandinavian names. Sounds great. Can I have a synopsis?’
I do not hesitate.
‘No.’
‘Oh. Um, can I ask why not?’
‘Because —’
‘Because?’
‘Because here, now, it’s the story that matters, Stu. The story is what matters. I don’t think … I don’t want the whole business this time. I don’t want products and market-faces and sales appeal and editorial massage. None of that. I just want to tell the story, okay?’
‘Just tell the story?’
‘To my kids,’ I say to him. ‘Okay?’
And then he does an amazing thing, my agent fair and foul, and I want to pucker my lips through techno-space and plant a BIG kiss on his BIG shiny forehead.
‘Good idea,’ he says. Exactly like that, cool and clean and disarmingly casual. ‘Just tell the story, Vince. Sometimes that’s better.’
Yeah, I whisper, though probably to myself only. Sometimes it is.
Four
The rose leopard knew that she was through the Mazes of Madness when the strange sucking noises began to fade, and then disappeared altogether. Because she was heading towards the Mother Star, the whole of the Bright Universe seemed even brighter, as if someone had simultaneously flicked the switches of a million lamps. She continued to move forward, still wrapped in her magic cloak, but all the time she could sense the Swicks somewhere around her. She couldn’t see them of course, but there was a coolness despite the light, an occasional clammy wetness, like a poltergeist had just licked her cheek.
She knew that there would be other hazards because every Universe in the Spectrum is filled with them — mazes, holes, carnivorous planets, comet attacks — but she did not know for certain what they would be. It was only when she heard the tell-tale sounds — small, light, tinkling — that she realised what was happening. Remember, as I told you before, the universe is silent. Travelling amidst the stars, away from the birds in the gardens, the wheezing mountains, whooshing rivers and echoing deserts, the only thing you might hear is the thumping beat of your own heart and the rise-and-fall of your own breath.
‘Unless, of course,’ said the rose leopard to herself ‘you are attacked by the Songmasters.’
The Songmasters are tiny specks of live dust. They swirl throughout the Spectrum in groups of a quintillion or more, barely visible except as a vaguely yellow, sometimes glittery patch. In the brightening light, the rose leopard could not see them at all — but she could hear them, and this is what made the Songmasters so dangerous.
As they swirled, they sang. They sang notes that were pitched so high, notes that were so achingly beautiful, that none could resist listening to them. Their songs were weird but they were seductive too: the music entered your brain and slid around inside, danced merrily with your blood, entranced your mind. It became louder and louder, the pitch increased, the notes soared and soon you were ruled by the Songmasters, held within their music as surely as any mortal imprisoned by rings of titanium. Before you even realised it their songs had total control of you, and suddenly you were tumbling haphazardly, bewitched and besnaggled by the wondrous tunes, tumbling, swirling, falling until you ended up lost at the Bottom of Nowhere, which is a thousand times worse than Hell or anywhere else for that matter.
Now the Songmasters were all around. The rose leopard could hear their singing, a strange blend of noises, like scraping harps or coughing choirs. She could hear the whistles of birds, the cries of the dying, the cracks of falling trees, the psss-snap of burning f
ires, the swish and lash of new rain, the drumrolls of returning winds, the howls of dervishes: all coming from the Songmasters. She tried to keep moving but the songs had left her numb; her mind was screaming because of the intensity and power of the music. She felt dizzy, as if she had no balance — she stumbled, regained her feet awkwardly, strained to travel on.
‘What can I do?’ she thought. ‘Their song has taken me over. How can I stop it? How can I keep going to the Mother Star?’
And the Songmasters came closer and their seeping music filled her even further. She began to despair that her journey was nearly over, that the Swicks would strangle all light and the Bright Universe would be destroyed because of her failure — when suddenly there was something else in her mind, something which challenged the presence of the Songmasters, a fresh goodness that could only have been powered by the Enlightenment.
It was a vision. It had started as a series of indistinct lines, then gradually the lines took shape and texture was added until soon her mind’s eye was gazing upon the face of Sibyl, the wisest of all Eternals.
‘Rose Leopard,’ Sibyl whispered. ‘Keeper of the Gardens of Replenishment. You must continue. You must …’
The rose leopard concentrated fiercely. The vision of Sibyl became stronger, ushered the Songmasters’ tunes into the background, if only for a moment.
‘You must use the cloak,’ Sibyl urged. ‘Use the cloak to defeat the Songmasters.’
Then Sibyl’s eyes flickered like the last flames of a night bonfire, and as the vision slid away the rose leopard knew that Sibyl had finally filtered into the Void. She was saddened but determined now to beat the Songmasters. She considered the Eternal’s advice then, in a moment of clarity, she managed somehow to pull the cloak from behind her. She could feel herself beginning to fall as she twisted the cloak into a thick scarf, then wrapped it around her head, as tightly as she dared. The cloak went over her ears — once, twice, three times — then she tied it and dropped her arms to her side, exhausted by the effort.
The songs were gone.
She could still see the Songmasters — there was an uneven patch of yellowness just nearby — but the music, those brain-splitting tunes, had been blocked out by the magic cloak around her head. She could feel her strength returning, her mind recovering, and as she once again moved towards the Mother Star, she offered a silent thank you to her benefactor, the brave and very wise Sibyl.
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