The Chantic Bird

by David Ireland

  If I was a big sort of thing watching the world, I’d have a big rubber ready and I’d rub out all the nasty ones in the world and the stupid ones.

  The trouble is, I can see that even nice people have nasty kids, and there’d soon be just as many nasty ones to rub out.

  When I got up, I’d only been in bed a few days, but just the same I was wobbly on my feet. It was so hard to get any pace up that when I walked out onto the verandah of the kids’ ward—there were no nurses around, I could be doing all sorts of things for all they cared—when I swayed out in the middle of a crowd of kids I nearly got included in their game. It was only a very simple game, I could probably have done it first go. But there was something about the feeling of nearly being a kid again that I didn’t take any reprisals against them when I got shoved round a bit.

  There was excitement that same day. One of the older kids was in a very filthy mood and a lot of the younger ones were playing near the toilets and one must have had his finger round the corner of the door jamb, because when this kid slammed the door in his bad mood, the edge of the door took off the top joint of the kid’s finger. Some people just can’t look after themselves. I wouldn’t leave a finger in a place like that even if there was no one around. The kid was yelling very loud, much louder than when he was playing and the others were gathered round him in a circle looking at the stump; I saw the finger-bit on the floor and picked it up and gave it to one of the kid’s friends and she tormented him with the sight of it and when the nurses came and the sister, she hid the piece and showed her parents that night. They didn’t show proper appreciation so she put it in a match-box and sold it to one of the others for half a dollar and a bar of coconut rough.

  I had a rest on my bed after about twenty minutes, whatever was the matter with me left me pretty tired. It was no use asking the doctors; they liked to be one up, they wouldn’t tell me what was the matter or what they were looking for. If I’d had a few quid it would have been different, but when you’re in a public ward you take what they dish out.

  Another brother of mine had spent a lot of time in hospital, I remember while he was in once and nearly dead I sort of stole his mate and that left him with no one to visit him. Why was I always doing bad things like that? The brother that died, he was taken in with bad pains to the very same ward I was in, only a year ago, but the doctor must have been a nut, he opened him up with a vertical cut and all that was wrong was appendix. You’d think they would have found the leukaemia in his blood then, but it’s hard to spot if they don’t even take blood tests.

  Next time I got up I felt a bit better; there was a lot of fun to be had with the stray dogs that used to come in the park at the back of the hospital. They’d get some scraps here and there and I used to get some goolies ready, then scare them, and as they ran away, usually in a wide circle ready to come in the grounds again, I’d toss a rock high up in the air away on before the dog. With good aim, you’d see the rock high in the air, and the dog running along underneath in a straight line. The curve of the rock would come down to intersect the straight line. It was hard to actually hit a dog like that, but if you landed one just before or just behind, you’d get a result. And if you had a bad shot and went to one side of the dog, you’d have a fair chance of seeing him side-slip on his neck. They’re easily startled.

  The other patients used to get a bit disturbed, most of them were animal-lovers. They hated other humans. They’d nuzzle any old dog, but would they nuzzle any old stranger? No, sir. Once there was a beautiful shot going begging and I ran out to grab a rock. But I’d been sitting down for hours and I ran out very fast, without taking any breaths beforehand. After forty yards I had to stop, hunched over. My ticker wouldn’t go. Then with a big effort, it gave a great thump as if it was blowing up a balloon with not enough air. For a while, although I was breathing, my chest felt as if I wasn’t. I felt as you feel when you hold your breath, starved of air. Even though I was breathing. It’s a wonder I’m still alive. It was easier when I hunched over, if I tried to straighten up I felt bad still.

  What with all that, I had to think up something to show the world I was still there. They have ramps at both ends of that hospital; one down to the entrance, from the wards, and the other right through the other end to the theatre. Both ramps might have people on them at visiting, so I waited until after.

  From the servery the stainless steel trolleys are wheeled out into the big corridor to wait for someone to take them round the wards. I detached one and took it to the top of the western ramp. You should have seen it sail down that covered porch. The rubber wheels were a big help and the weight of the plates on top and the food underneath. Lucky the front door was propped open—they have no air conditioning—for although the thing lost a few dinners going down the front steps, it kept most of the plates and knives and forks until it went off the gutter out front. If I was an engineer I would have written a letter to the people who made those trolleys and said what a good precision job they made of the bearings and the axles.

  But they wouldn’t appreciate my letter; I didn’t have any bit of paper saying I was an engineer, so I couldn’t have an opinion. The trolley stopped when it fell over in the gutter, the plates went furthest. Lucky there was no one crossing the corridors in its way; it didn’t even hit a car or anything, but a blue metal truck roared up and tried to get by the plates. You should have seen it, the driver tried to pick his way through it very slow out of respect for the hospital, but he didn’t actually want to get down and pick them up. I don’t blame him. The plates crunched slow and very loud.

  One of them snapped with a sound very like the tuning fork the teacher had when I was in fifth class. I don’t mean the sort of sound, I mean the same note. You’d never believe it, but I was a soprano once. Old Mr Hocking or Pryce with a y would disown me now, but they thought a lot of me then and my voice like a bell, as Hocking said.

  When I got back inside I got my collar sort of neat and parted my hair and the nurses ate out of my hand. If I’d come back in the room untidy they would have hated me and they’d probably have accused me of the trolley bit. It’s amazing how easy you can lead people on by your appearance.

  I passed the exact door I tore my leather coat on one night when I’d visited my brother. It was a Yale lock with the latch out and I was in a hurry to get home. I suppose I was always in a hurry to get visits over. I wonder if he ever knew before he died how I hated visiting him? I never even contradicted the house doctor that Monday morning when he told me and my other brother that it was no use giving him another transfusion. Without actually saying it he made us think the poor kid would never leave the bed anyway, never be able to get on his feet again. So we didn’t stick up for a few more weeks of life for him. We just let him die like a dog, like the doctor wanted. I suppose they wanted the bed. They’d been pretty good to him, letting him go home weekends and the bed still there for him on Monday mornings. When he waved goodbye and I was at the door his face was so white it reminded me of when he was a kid. When he was a baby he lay on his back for thirty months and he was white as the sheets around him. But no one ever wondered if there was something wrong. He bled for a week when he got a tooth out, so some wisdom in Ma got her to teach him to look after his teeth so he wouldn’t have any more out.

  I settled in my bed. I was pretty tired, my eyes drooped. A kooka was on the verandah sill, his cocked head very still. I sat up in bed watching him, then when he pushed up into the air and flew away his windy wing flap startled me.

  What with all that exertion I started on my old trick of getting sore eyes; I’m sure they were full of gravel and sand, they were so dry and irritated. I fell back on the pillow and shut my eyes and imagined I was in the bush looking down on a cold jutting rock, there was a great singer standing on it, don’t ask me how he got out here to this dead hole of a country, so I made him sing a very sentimental song that I’d heard come from an opera called the ‘Girlfishes’. I still seem to hear it now, and anytime I
want my eyes irrigated I imagine that song, and it works. I’m very sentimental really. I can listen to a sad thing or something sentimental about someone’s kid, and the tears bubble up in my eyes. I can even imagine I’m listening to someone, in fact it’s better that way; with someone around, I have to think continually if they’re about to clobber me, or something. After all, I’d do the same if someone was silly enough to shut his eyes with me around.

  The bed got more and more comfortable, my eyes didn’t sting any more and my head travelled back to Bee. Last time I was at the house she was on about the weather. Usually nothing ever worried her, but she carried on about what the scientists were not doing about the weather.

  ‘If they want different weather for Sydney, or any other place, why don’t they make it by putting up mountains and making more lakes. They can do it with their silly big bombs. They could make weather traps.’

  I couldn’t talk for a little while. Bee didn’t usually say more than a few words, she was wound up that time. I asked her why she got so het up about weather, but she must have thought she’d said enough. She wouldn’t say any more, only that she’d been reading some books. It made me wonder, that sudden belt of talking, if the weather was what she was really worried about. Maybe she was worried about the kids. Or me.

  What did Ma and my old man think they were doing? Did they get together some cold night when they were too tired and miserable to do anything else? Was it a last resort, before they cut their throats? Were they desperate? I’m glad I don’t know. I don’t really want to find out I’m the product of something so casual that I nearly didn’t happen.

  Poor Ma. When she couldn’t get us to do what she wanted by asking, she thought she could hurt us by hurting herself. She never woke up that it was impossible. No one who looked at us and heard us talk would ever think we’d suffer to see anyone in pain. Even a mother.

  The verandah creaked with the sun leaving it, just like it creaked mornings with the sun getting under its skin. The plastic sheeting under me, in case I wet the bed, creaked too.

  Pretty soon nothing creaked. I was far gone in a dream. I was surrounded by this tree, full of prickles, this prickly tree had its arms round me so I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t call out for help because there was a great thorn under my chin and others on all sides of my head, in fact the more I looked round to explore the dream, the more thorns I found lined up on me. Some people came round the tree and I tried to signal them to get me out, but no matter how I moved I came up against these needle thorns. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, all I could do was move my eyes from side to side. That saved me. There was one man looking right into the tree, right at me, but it was dark and all he could see was a darkness. I was moving my eyes from side to side, trying to let the light flash on them, when I saw what they had in their hands. They were out to get me. Some had shotguns, some had mattock handles, some had axes, some knives, some just rocks. And now I looked closely they were all in uniforms. What had I done? I must have done something pretty terrible this time, but I couldn’t think what it was. I was stiff with fright, and woke up soaked. Sweat ran down the back of my head. The top of my back near the neck was all water, I was water everywhere.

  I guess you could say I went to water. Nurses were round the bed when I woke, and there was a screen. I couldn’t even see any of the nasty patients, or the dying ones. I quieted down right away so they wouldn’t give me any needles to put me off. After dark they went away and took the screen. I was shaking and had pains all over me, but I went out. I knew I was the same person, with the same strength, no matter what condition I was in; all I had to do was prove it to myself.

  What if that thing was happening to me now? The thing I always felt was just round the corner for me. Perhaps it was a sickness. I tried my strength on a fence, one of those wooden fences white with enamel paint. I had to dig my heels in at the edge of the concrete footpath and push with everything I had against that fence. It worked. I broke the fence and woke the people’s dog, but I walked on pretty happy, because it showed I hadn’t lost one bit of strength; I was only sweating because I was sick besides. I hate the sound of dogs barking, so I trotted on down the street to Edgeworth David Avenue and I was so happy I still had my muscles that I lifted the front end of a small car parked outside the corner shop so that the back was up to a street tree and the front nestled in behind a lamp-post. Whoever owned that would have to get help, unless he was strong as me. I had to breathe extra hard, though, but that’s not hard to understand when you remember I was sick.

  I walked back to the hospital, I didn’t want to go home and give Bee or the kids whatever germs I had. The shivers got me before I got to my ward, it was hard walking, so I forced myself to trot again. That always made me feel better. Unfortunately I trotted into a wall just where I thought there was a long empty room. They carried me back inside.

  That was nice of them. I asked them to carry me very carefully, so they wouldn’t break the bubbles. I was carrying a trayful of bubbles. The tray was about a foot wide and the bubbles were about two inches round, but the bubbles kept expanding, I had to keep my hands on them to try to stop them getting too big and beyond me. I tried to contain them. It was hopeless. They got bigger and bigger, they slipped through my fingers, they forced my hands wide apart, they were going to expand to the size of separate worlds. The tray was yards wide and I was way above them and much bigger, myself, to try to master them, but it was no use. No matter what way my dream twisted and turned and grew and tried to cope with the expanding bubbles, which were now like great balloons big enough to carry a man into the air, no matter what I did, the bubbles forced me back.

  I came awake fighting for breath, although at the back of my mind I knew I wasn’t really suffocating.

  ‘Open the doors!’ I howled.

  ‘Open the doors and I can breathe!’ I kept on like that very loud for a long time until they had to call the house doctor and he tried to talk me out of it—he didn’t want anything like this getting to the ears of the local Board—but in the end all the doors in the hospital were opened. They tricked me, partly, because I know for sure that one door was closed without them telling me, but I must have been too tired to insist; I let them kid me. I went to sleep peacefully. It was great being able to breathe.

  Maybe I’m only alive when I’m dreaming. I don’t know. But I could see our old goat plain as day in my dream, butting the little old fibro toilet down the yard, and I could hear Ma inside yelling help! I ambled down to pull the goat away and tie him up a bit further on where he could nibble the blackies in peace and on the way down the steps a terrific wind blew up and knocked next door’s toilet flat with only the pan standing. Black and shiny and squat. I know those things happened weeks apart but, dreaming, they both got in together.

  Sure enough when I rescued Ma, it wasn’t Ma. It was Bee. So we went out all dressed up—no car so I had to take the train—and they held us up at the ticket office. Some old woman trying to get a ticket for his cat. He was tweedy and old and so was the cat. He should have shoved it in a shoe box with a few holes for air. I started to tell him this, but the words changed into asking Bee why she didn’t hang around more at home with her legs up like the girls in the magazines, but she took no notice and helped me onto the train, telling me to mind my step for I was now a small kid in white socks and short pants. We got to the ceremony in Sydney, they’d cleared the traffic off the Bridge and all the important people were there sweating in their dark clothes and all the workers were there and all the kids were there but they had light summer things and were quite comfortable.

  It turned out there was a war starting and they had the ministers and priests blessing the flag, then blessing the soldiers’ bayonets and rifles—it took an awful long time—saying prayers and more blessings for the jet fighters and the navy ships and all their vehicles and all the servicemen and everything. At last they wheeled up a huge big bomb and blessed that, only they called it a device. Nuclear device.
However the bomb was too much and the Bridge broke and everything sank except the children, who swam to shore. Luckily Bee was a small kid now, like me, and when we got to shore all we could see of the ceremony was a small piece of paper floating around in the harbour breeze. I knew without catching it, that it had the bomb formula written on, you know, the E equals MC squared bit we learned at school. Unfortunately one of the kids, his daddy must have been a general, rescued it and tried to drum up a bit of a procession with it, holding it up as if he’d found the holy grail. It was only paper, after all.

  Then somehow we were in the sportsground with millions of other kids. One of the kids whose daddy was a minister before he sank, had taken over from his old man and organised a religious service. Talk out your troubles, he boomed over the PA system. So the kids all obeyed and talked out their troubles to each other, except no one listened, so they were talking to themselves—the row was tremendous. Sit and think, boomed over the mike, so everyone sat and thought. The leader’d had enough. But while it was quiet with only the noise of millions of kids breathing, the general’s son grabbed the mike off the other kid and yelled: Make the army your Korea! There were too many leaders for me. The big people sinking hadn’t changed a thing. Soon some bosses’ sons would get kids to follow them, other kids would take refuge in the army, everyone would be looking for someone to lean on, no one wanted to be his own boss.

  I turned to go. I was about to ask Bee if she wanted to go, but she was only another sort of thing for me to lean on, so I was glad when I looked down and found she’d turned into a magazine and I was carrying her under my arm. But magazines were only another sort of thing to hide in, so I gave her to some little kids who looked lost.

  The sound of a mower woke me, the sort a man sits on, and I woke up thinking of my old man and how his constant companions in his last years were the Bible and Yates Garden Guide. Don’t ask me why that got into my head after my crazy dream.