Underdog

by Tobias Madden

  She spent the day in her room with the swan, only leaving to shuffle to the bathroom, the swan waddling behind her like a shadow. The purple-black circles under her eyes helped Marlowe convince her mother that she was too ill to go to her morning lectures, too sick to do anything but curl up, unmoving, on her bed, watching the swan with eyes as liquid and red as its own. As night fell, the swan ducked its head beneath a wing. Taking this as cue that she was finally allowed to move, Marlowe stood up. Immediately, her vision went black and she swayed, slumping back down on the bed as a wave of nausea crashed over her.

  She had done nothing all day and it had been exhausting. She wanted to eat, but when her mother obligingly brought her some toast, the food stuck in her throat and turned her stomach further. Her mother looked at her through eyes narrowed with worry but left her to sleep—after all, sleep was supposed to be the great healer of ills.

  Marlowe lay heavy and stiff as a log in her bed—the mattress too soft, the blankets too suffocating, even the presence of her tiny stuffed frog, Gerald, was too much. The swan pressed its weight into her calves, heavy and hot in the close, humid air. It was as if the swan was trying to absorb her into itself. Finally, finally, Marlowe slipped away into sleep only to wake again, unable to breathe, the swan’s ember-bright eyes an inch away from hers. She tried to shift the thing, but her fingers slid on its soft feathers, unable to gain a purchase. Finally, she gave up and, gasping and exhausted, watched the dawn creep across her bedroom. It wasn’t until her alarm rang at 6.30 a.m. that the swan slowly inched its way down to the end of the bed.

  Warily, Marlowe pushed herself upright. She watched the swan as she carefully put one foot down and then the other. The swan didn’t even blink. She was so tired it took every effort to move, but without the swan weighing her down, even that felt like practically no effort at all. It did not move as she opened the door, though when she later climbed out of a scalding hot shower, it was sitting on the pile of clean towels by the sink. It simply watched with its unblinking eyes as she dried herself.

  The swan did nothing but watch her all day. Marlowe did not see it move but whenever she glanced out of the corner of her eye it was there—on the dining table as she made toast, in the backseat of her car as she drove to uni, in her lecture halls and tutorials—though it did nothing but make its presence known, fixing her with its burning gaze and sending chills up and down her spine. Marlowe held her breath, waiting for it to strike, but her fears were unfounded. This went on the next day, and the next, and the next, until Marlowe began to think that the first day had simply been an anomaly, that the black swan that haunted her every movement was just a new pet she had somehow picked up.

  Then it was Saturday, and Marlowe had a party in the evening. Her best friend’s friend had invited her, and it was expected to be a standard house party with lots of people crowding in the kitchen, all of them talking over one another, little food and lots of alcohol. Marlowe had been looking forward to it. She was hoping for a meaningless make-out or two, maybe even something more if she could swing it. She hoped she would be able to hide the swan from everyone as well as she hid it from her family. Explaining a large, coal-black swan to a bunch of drunken bogans would be difficult at best.

  Marlowe had all day until she had to get ready, and she spent much of it reading. Upon moving to get up, however, she was being held down by the heavy bulk of the swan. When had that happened? She poked it with a finger.

  ‘Move,’ she ordered. It just ruffled its feathers and glared at her. ‘C’mon, not this again, I have places to be.’ The swan didn’t move. When Marlowe pushed it again it bit the inside of her wrist.

  ‘No no no no no no.’ Marlowe tried to hold back tears but they spilled all too easily from her eyes as she sucked at her oozing wrist. She glared at the swan on her lap. How dare this… this thing keep her from her life. It filled her with a rage that stuck in her throat and made her gag. Before she knew what she was doing, she struck it with her book. It made a satisfying thwack, so she did it again and again and again.

  The swan did not respond. It did not react as she threw the book aside and used her own bare hands to beat and claw at the silent thing, pulling oily black feathers free of its wings and wringing its delicate neck.

  Finally, panting and spitting feathers from her grinning teeth, her fingernails torn and bleeding, Marlowe stood triumphant over the battered corpse of the black swan that had haunted her for a week. She grinned as she stepped over it and cleaned herself up. She grinned as she dressed for the party, met up with her friends, and drank and danced and flirted.

  Marlowe was having the time of her life and couldn’t get enough. A cute Asian girl with spiky hair pulled her into the shadows and kissed her. Marlowe fell in love with her a little bit. She spent the rest of the night glued to the girl’s side, smiling a softly pleased smile. The girl let Marlowe rest her chin on the top of her head, making the both of them laugh.

  For an instant, the crowd parted and Marlowe stiffened. Trance-like, she moved through the crowd to the other side of the room. She faintly heard the girl call out to her but the sound went unheeded. Every one of her senses was focused on one thing—the night-black swan perched on the end of the stair banister. With a light touch, she stroked its perfectly formed head and sinuous neck. Its feathers were soft and glossy and unmarred by gore. Marvelling at its very existence, Marlowe picked it up. It was heavy and all too real in her embrace. She could feel its heartbeat resonating with her own, and for a moment, she loved this perfect thing. Gently cradling the swan in her arms, she left the party without a word. She hadn’t gotten the cute girl’s number.

  Marlowe slowly grew used to the swan’s eternal presence. Day and night it was there. Sometimes it held her down in the middle of the night and she woke up panting and gasping for air. More often, however, it simply sat, and watched, and waited. To keep it at bay, Marlowe would feed it her own blood from her chest, like a perverse Madonna and Child. Occasionally, the swan demanded more of her, eating into her flesh, but mostly it was satiated with what she willingly gave. Yet, eventually, Marlowe couldn’t imagine her life without her swan in it. She would say goodnight to the world and sit up in bed with a cup of tea and the swan on her lap, and would wonder at the way the light glistened on its feathers like petroleum, how the thing was simultaneously the most beautiful and most terrifying thing she had ever seen.

  Marlowe met a girl at university and they fell in love. The swan disappeared for a while; Marlowe wasn’t sure if she missed it. Her grades rose and she went out more often, but underneath it all remained a lingering fear and a desire for her swan to return. Without realising, it had become a part of her—as much as she loathed the thing it turned her into, she didn’t know who she was without it. After living this way for a year or so, Marlowe and her girlfriend decided to move in together.

  One day, the swan came back. All Marlowe’s revulsion for this intruder returned in a wave. ‘Why are you here?’ she yelled at it. ‘What do you want from me?’

  Tears streamed from her eyes and she wrapped her arms around herself as if to let go would be to let herself fall apart. She was glad her girlfriend was at work over the Christmas holidays. Glad there was no one to see her like this.

  Marlowe screamed and swore at the swan but it remained impassive. The longer the swan stared at her, the more enraged Marlowe became.

  ‘I hate you,’ she sobbed, collapsing next to it. ‘I wish you would die.’

  As always, the swan said nothing back. It did not move as she wrapped her arms around it and cried into its oily wings.

  Slowly, her sadness died, replaced by a frenzied restlessness and the need to do something, anything. Marlowe held the swan’s wings pinioned to its sides, even though she knew it would not struggle, and threw it in the oven. The acrid scent of charred feathers and the sweet smell of poultry flesh filled the sweltering apartment, nauseating her. After an hour, Marlowe pulled it out again and set it on the dining table where she
had laid out silver cutlery and the fine china she had inherited from her grandmother. She ate the whole bird down to the bones, which she then broke open to suck out the marrow. Mouthful after mouthful stuck in her throat and made her gag but she pressed on. She ate and ate but was not sated.

  Marlowe became a vegetarian that day and could not abide the smell of meat ever again. Her girlfriend couldn’t stand the change.

  ‘It’s like you’ve suddenly become a completely different person,’ she said. She moved out the week after. Marlowe had plenty of company, however, as the swan spent every night curled up with her.

  Rubbish piled up in the halls, dishes in the kitchen. The swan would hold Marlowe down for days at a time, letting her up for work if she was very, very lucky, but mostly she had to call in sick. She was never hungry and would feed the swan her own dinner. Unappeased, the gluttonous creature ate a hollow spot into her stomach just above her right hip, but she woke up whole—Prometheus and his eagle had nothing on Marlowe and her swan.

  Marlowe woke to springtime sunrise and the soft loo-loo-la-loo of a lonely magpie. Something had to change. The swan allowed her to shift its body just enough for her to stand and make her way to the bathroom, where she picked up her razor. She kept her eyes locked on the swan as her long, brown locks fell one by one to the ground. She fed them to the swan and felt lighter. It slept at the end of her bed that night. The next day, Marlowe pushed open the door to her apartment and waded through an avalanching mountain of junk mail. She didn’t go far, only to the local shops to buy ingredients for dinner, but it was something.

  On the walk home, the bottom of her grocery bag broke.

  ‘No, no, nonononono…’ Marlowe muttered, holding back tears. I finally go outside… She gathered up the food within reach and held it close to her body as if it were the most precious thing in the world. Oily black wings brushed her cheek, just out of sight, and for a moment the whole world trembled. Marlowe was afraid to let go even to reach for the oranges that had rolled farther away. She didn’t have to. As she watched, a hand reached down and picked one of them up before holding it out to her. Marlowe looked up into the eyes of a familiar face. She was older, and her hair was long, rather than spiky, but Marlowe remembered her. The woman smiled down at her and Marlowe felt a wave of warmth flood through her, strengthening her. She accepted both the orange and the outstretched hand, and climbed to her feet.

  ‘Hey, I think we met at a party a few years ago,’ the woman said. ‘Marlowe, right?’

  Marlowe winced as she remembered the woman was friends with a boy she no longer talked to. Sometimes that’s how life went.

  ‘Would you like to get a drink sometime?’ the woman asked.

  Marlowe smiled.

  ‘I would love to.’

  This time, she got the cute girl’s phone number.

  The cute girl’s name was Alia, and she was an ornithologist. Marlowe spent their first few dates in a state of abject terror, certain that Alia would find the swan and Marlowe would be revealed as the fraud she was. After a year of hiding the swan from Alia’s searching gaze, Marlowe realised that, like all the others, she was not able to see it, ornithologist or no. What Alia could easily see, however, was the effect the swan had on Marlowe.

  ‘There’s something you’re not telling me, and it’s keeping us apart.’ Alia looked at Marlowe pointedly over the half-unpacked boxes strewn around their newish apartment. Marlowe had known this day was coming. Her secrecy had been the source of numerous fights between them, but for some reason, Alia had stayed. Marlowe took a long time to respond, weighing up her options and trying not to shrink under her girlfriend’s scrutiny. Finally, she took a deep, steadying breath and told Alia about the first time she had seen the swan, and how it had haunted her ever since. The story broke from her like a wave, a cathartic release of pent-up feeling.

  ‘Swans don’t drink blood,’ Alia said when Marlowe was finally silent.

  ‘What?’ Marlowe could only stare in surprise; she had expected almost any other reaction.

  ‘It’s not good for them, and it’s clearly not good for you. Greens like spinach, or even a little bit of rice would be better.’

  Marlowe looked at her through narrowed eyes. ‘This isn’t your problem to fix, you know. I was doing just fine before you.’

  ‘Were you?’ Alia merely cocked an eyebrow, leaving Marlowe to duck her head in embarrassment as she mumbled her reply.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You don’t owe it any part of yourself,’ Alia urged.

  ‘But it is me, I don’t know who I would be without it!’

  ‘You’d be amazing.’

  Marlowe shattered. Sobs racked her body and Alia just held her, quiet and still, unaware of the hissing swan mere feet away. Unaware that at this moment her presence was all that held Marlowe down to the earth.

  The next morning, Marlowe snuck out and bought some spinach. Hesitantly, she held a leaf out to the swan, who only eyed it with disdain before snipping at the inside of her elbow. Tears dripped from her eyes in love and failure as, resigned, Marlowe gathered the swan in her arms and held it close. The following day, she tried again, with the same result. The day after that was more successful; she threw a handful of leaves to the swan rather than going to it herself. The swan didn’t move, but when Marlowe came back later the spinach was gone, and the swan didn’t come any closer to her.

  Over the next few weeks she succeeded again and again, her resolve growing stronger with each success. After she fed the swan, it would keep its distance, no longer waking Marlowe in the middle of the night, or holding her down when she had to go out. Until, one day, without warning, it wouldn’t let her move. Marlowe fed it everything she had and still it wouldn’t budge.

  Alia was distraught at Marlowe’s backslide, and Marlowe doubly so to see her girlfriend so upset. Then, two days later, everything was normal again. The swan accepted a few rice grains and kept away, though not out of sight. Marlowe couldn’t look at it for fear the spell would break and it would come for her again.

  That evening, Alia sat Marlowe down on their couch.

  She’s going to break up with me, Marlowe thought, instinctively reaching for her swan—her only constant companion in life.

  ‘Will you marry me?’ Alia said.

  The swan remained with Marlowe for the rest of her life. Sometimes it went away for months or years at a time, but it always came back. As she grew older, Marlowe loved it less, hated it less. She accepted it and would welcome it back into her life like an old acquaintance, but not as a friend or an enemy. Sometimes, however, she couldn’t let go of their shared history and, late at night, she would hold the swan close, long after Alia had gone to sleep. But every morning she would try and let it go again.

  When Marlowe was very old, she sat up one night to listen to the song of crickets while her wife slept quietly beside her. It was a warm night and she lost herself in thoughts of long ago. She looked up as the swan flew in through the open window on whisper-quiet wings. A sense of peace flooded through her as it settled onto her lap.

  She remembered when she first met the swan, and marvelled that she had ever been so afraid. Marlowe glanced down at her hands with their frail skin like crumpled paper. She never could have imagined having hands like these all those years ago.

  Marlowe smiled.

  ‘I won, you know,’ she said softly, and the swan dipped its head—the only acknowledgment she had ever seen it make. ‘I won.’

  According to Chinese cultural principles, the practice of sharing an enjoyable, harmonious meal during the wake of a funeral helps to reinforce the family’s connection with the deceased, ensuring that the spirit leaves the body both happy and sated. Providing a proper selection of food allows the departing spirit to have a safe journey to the heavens and provide protection to their family on earth.

  Wagga

  As I wove through the strands of waist-high panicum weed, the sun began to settle behind the golden hills of
endless patchwork farmland. The grass tickled my exposed knees and poked at my ankles. A distant ‘moo’ swept past me on the breeze but was soon drowned out by the chatter of cicadas and grasshoppers, their constant noise filling the empty, open field. I bounced up a little as my Ong helped to readjust my bag, relieving me of the pocket of heat that had started to settle across my lower back. My feet followed the worn trail of dirt as the grass became shorter and shorter, leading us to a small creek that meandered through low-hanging branches. I slumped against a flaking tree trunk as my Ong pulled two nashi pears from his backpack and handed one to me.

  The air was thick and oily, heavy with the pungent scent of sesame and garlic. The old ventilation system whirred and clunked in the background before coming to a sudden stop. My father walked over and smacked the grimy plastic housing of the fan with the wooden handle of his cleaver. The fan groaned in protest and went back to work.

  I ducked through my father’s legs to reach my Ong’s, hidden under his navy-blue-striped, batter-smeared apron. His legs were strong and sturdy like tree trunks. He carried me back and forth to the refrigerator as I clung to him like an infant monkey.

  At the river near the tree trunk, I crouched beside my Ong and splayed my fingers in the water, watching them sweep back and forth through the ripples. It was cool and clear, flowing gently, hypnotically. We sat in silence, sharing each other’s company as we crunched into the pears and slurped to catch the sweet juice dribbling out of the corners of our mouths.