An Open Swimmer Read online

  A letter from Rome. There was a trip after the first ‘breakdown’.

  . . . will be home in May to see you all and show you what an immaculate conception is all about. Do you know whether businessmen are supposed to have more prostate trouble than other middle-aged men? Look it up in your Biol. for me, will you? There must be some excuse for it.

  People here are entertaining in this city. Really, my boy . . .

  Then, something from hospital marked August ’76. Not the mental hospital; a private hospital by the river.

  . . . Your poems, my lovely man, are well-meant, but lacking in truth. I know what it means to have my insides torn, and it’s not like those words. Replace ‘collapse’ with ‘mutilate’ . . .

  . . . Means? Why the preoccupation? Irrelevant. Sounding like your father when young. Means are painful delays, ask my doctors. Ask the saints. Don’t fuss so . . . Let’s not have ideals, let’s surrender to the men of Ends. Hence the joke at business luncheons about getting your end up. They are ends in themselves. END HEADS. Eh? . . .

  After the quick move to Heathcote:

  . . . Repetition is a good device. Good God, it’s a real enough pattern! He would have been a crazy beautiful baby Latin. Sean, my loving son, would be mostly unmoved. He has decided that he is of illegitimate origin which explains your confusion. He has been convinced, of course. A beautiful foreign bastard brother shouldn’t bother him, then. Curious the minds of boys that are men and men that are boys. Why are they never people, though?

  Jerra read a few sentences from the months that haunted him. Was he mad then? Madder than her? He sighed and read.

  It’s beautiful when it happens. O, of course. Of. Course. Do not be afraid, my Jeramiah. I think you always wanted . . . yes. This is indestructible! We are!

  At the bottom of the page were two stanzas plagiarised from Sylvia Plath’s ‘Lady Lazarus’ (he only discovered its true origin in a tutorial at Uni). It froze him still.

  The second time I meant

  To last it out and not come back at all

  I rocked shut

  As a seashell.

  They had to call and call.

  And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

  And there was one thin envelope, puce, with cambric pigmented texture, that he would not open. It was postmarked February 1977, when Jerra was away on the boats, trying to forget and grow up and do and please and forget. It was something he neither needed now, nor wanted to refresh his memory with. He promised to let go. His problems and everyone else’s. Maybe Sean was right.

  ‘You gotta live,’ he told himself lamely.

  Jerra went out – back into town – wandering.

  Smoke twisted on itself, rising and falling in the dimness. In one corner, near the open, gutless Wurlitzer, a table was free. Jerra bought a burgundy and sat, glancing at the initials carved into the piano. A guitarist was hunching into a long, slow blues, his head above the clouds of smoke.

  Lord it’s a mean ol’ world

  When you livin’ o’ ba yoursel’;

  If ya caint get the one that you lovin’,

  Then you gotta put up wi’ somebuddy else.

  The wine was warm; he’d never drunk it before and it hardly wet his throat as it went down, each bitter swallow. The blues moaned to a tortured finish, and Jerra clapped, alone, self-consciously. The guitarist nodded, and mumbled about Walter Jacobs as he tuned, squinting at the ivory tuning keys.

  A chair burped on the boards.

  ‘Anyone sitting here?’ She had long hair, a glass of port and a leather shoulder bag.

  ‘No,’ he mumbled. ‘Siddown.’

  Hair and bag swung down into the seat across the table; the sort of chair they pop out a hundred at a time, with that rugged, individual look. The slide whined on the strings. Elmore James.

  Wennawekupinnermornin abelieveadus’mablooz!

  Next to him, the freckled hand beat time on the pine table. Port jiggled, a rosy quiver in the shapely little glass. There was a fingerprint near the rim, quite clear. The guitarist stuttered, calling his baby back home. She smiled lightly, rolling a cigarette, and Jerra drained the bitterness from his glass as the guy believed his time weren’t long and sent ’is babe a tel’gram.

  And they both clapped at the finish, Jerra feeling less foolish. It was a good old song.

  ‘This is a smooth little joint,’ she said while the guitarist was tuning again.

  He smiled, looking around at the beards and batik.

  There were lines under her eyes, and dusty freckles on her forehead and cheeks that made it difficult to guess her age. She might have been older or younger than him. Older, he thought, noting the weariness and the way she held the glass with her thumb poking over the edge, like shearers he had seen in those cruddy little pubs out east.

  Another blues. It swayed on itself, building and falling, chunka-chunka-whine-wizz, glass slicking up and down the fretboard.

  ‘Muddy Waters,’ she said into his ear, as if he didn’t know. Still, he thought, it was nice. He smiled and nodded, lured under by the swirling rhythm. The wine was swilling around inside him as he stomped his foot. Again, they clapped, together and alone. There was a break. Jerra bought a port, holding the little eyedropper glass awkwardly, and sat back, not minding the smoke so much. She smiled and sipped.

  . . . Do you understand these letters? You show no sign of understanding me, sometimes . . .

  ‘Well,’ she asked, pulling back a swirl of hair with short little fingers. ‘What do you think of him?’

  Jerra licked the edge of the glass. The port was warm and sweet; it reminded him of neat Ribena.

  ‘He’s not bad, actually. Plays better than he sings.’

  ‘You want a smoke?’ She had small hands.

  ‘Don’t smoke, thanks.’

  ‘Good idea,’ she said, as they all said, blowing a stream from the side of her mouth.

  She talked about smoking and health in general; she was a vegetarian, concerned about the toxins in meat and the garbage people devour following the mindless instructions of television advertising. Jerra agreed, listening uncritically, curious about jasmine tea, Rajneesh and Poona, but paying more attention to the fine powder of freckles on her skin.

  ‘Do vegies eat fish?’ he asked.

  ‘They do now.’

  ‘You mean they didn’t once?’

  ‘But it’s okay now.’

  ‘It’s in this year, then, is it?’ he said, making an attempt at dry sophistication.

  . . . I didn’t know you were quite so advanced . . .

  She hit him on the shoulder with the back of her hand. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation.

  ‘What’s so special about fish?’ she asked, looking about.

  ‘Dunno,’ he admitted. ‘I just can’t imagine anyone not eating fish.’

  ‘Some people don’t like it, you know,’ she said patronisingly.

  ‘That’s ’cause they can’t be stuffed picking out the bones.’ He laughed, self-conscious; it seemed a bit of a hopeless comment. ‘No, I s’pose they don’t like it, some people.’

  ‘Really coming up with some gems, aren’t we?’ She cuffed him across the shoulder again, brushing against his old corduroy jacket. He felt like grabbing her hand and feeling the little fingers, freckled prawns, wriggling in his palm.

  ‘You ever done any?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fishing.’

  ‘Yes. As a girl. A few years ago, yes.’ She laughed. ‘Of course I couldn’t guess that you do a bit yourself.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Ever since I could sit up and hold a line.’

  There was a pause during which Judy appeared restless. Jerra fidgeted.

  ‘Did you like it?’ he asked at length. ‘When you went, I mean. Fishing.’

  ‘Yes. Yeah. Sure.’ She looked at him, mildly curious.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Why did you like it?
What was the best thing?’

  ‘The best thing?’ She plucked at her skirt which flowed in dark ripples to her ankles. She squinted, mouthing, and Jerra watched, almost annoyed by the way she took her time. ‘Well, I always fished from a boat – a big one – with my father and brothers. Canal Rocks, Hamelin Bay, places like that, catching skippy and herring with handlines. All those tangles.’

  ‘Skippy, yeah.’ He would have liked to hold one shivering in his hand, now. Not in a boat.

  ‘I think the best thing was when you pull them over the side into the bottom of the boat, and then take the hook out.’

  ‘The hook?’

  ‘I was taught to hold the fish against my leg. Like this, see? My old man was pretty good at it. When he was younger. Like this,’ she said, pinning the small leather bag to the side of her thigh. ‘Hold the fish with your right hand, and unthread the hook with your left.’

  ‘Well?’ He didn’t know whether she was telling him how to do it, or if she was merely reciting something.

  She held the bag flat against the gathered skirt.

  ‘Power. The moment you take the hook out and hold that fish in your hand, you have a lot of power.’

  Jerra smiled.

  ‘At that moment, you decide the future of that fish, whether to put it in the bag, or throw it back. Life or death. Like . . . political masturbation.’

  Jerra laughed, blowing all the air out, holding his legs, like when he’d taken an elbow in the guts playing back-pocket for the school. Then he was sorry. Sean used to say it, anyway. Some of their port had spilled with his rocking.

  ‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing. Really.’

  ‘Well?’ She could have been hurt. Or pretending, that little freckled forehead crinkling.

  ‘Something wrong with that theory.’

  She plopped the bag on the table, careful of the stain.

  ‘The power bit, or the idea of masturbation?’

  ‘The power bit, I think.’ He had to smile. He watched her finish her port, tipping it in little sips with her fingers around the edge of the glass and her thumb up.

  ‘Sorry about laughing.’

  ‘Okay. Not all that serious.’

  ‘It was a bit off.’

  She set the glass down carefully on the table.

  ‘Well, you did ask me.’

  ‘I did that, orright.’

  ‘Anyway, I have to go,’ she said, easing the bag onto her shoulder.

  ‘Coming here tomorrow?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ she murmured, sliding her glass around the table.

  ‘We could talk some more. About fishing. And I could think some more about your theory.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  The freckles disappeared when she stood up. They were so small.

  . . . Do not be afraid, my Jeramiah

  Jerra’s hands were numb on the wheel as he pulled into the rutty dirt patch. He switched off, looking at the STAFF ONLY sign with the footprint in the middle. There were tears of dew on the frosty blisters of paint. The engine was cooling with that clicking that people made when they slept on their backs. He slammed the sucked-in door of the VW extra hard; it was getting a bit tough to close. A car started somewhere, a grinding whirr of starter motor, a brief fart, and silence. It started the second time, wheezing, the choke out six feet. Sixty feet, he thought.

  He pulled his coat off as he went in through the back door that connected with Al’s house. The dunny was between the shop and the back door, probably a security measure; he wondered if they had the septic on, or if they ever emptied it, though he never dared find out. A generation of thick turds packed into one confined space, behind that peeling door. Even the paintwork felt it. It was a relief to escape into the stench of sweets and cold meat pies.

  Al met him at the Coke fridge, rubbing his hands on the apron that was stiff with filth. His hands were blue.

  ‘Two mornings, an’ not late, eh? I don’ belief it.’

  ‘Said I would be on time, didn’t I?’

  Al didn’t look much like an Italian. It was the moustache, Jerra decided; he didn’t have the moustache. And he was probably taller than five one. He could have been forty, he might have been fifty.

  ‘Pies in the oven,’ Al said at his blue hands.

  Jerra separated the frozen pies and piled them onto the tray. Could have dropped one and broken a toe.

  Then there were the sausage rolls, the pasties, and then the frozen red frankfurters he dropped like pink fingers into the big scummy pot. Rosa came in as he was piling up the mountains of potato chips in their loud orange packets.

  ‘’Ello, Jerra,’ she said, finding something in her teeth as she crossed to the till. ‘Big test today.’ She laughed. ‘Sat’dee makes yer or breaks yer.’

  ‘Can’t wait.’

  Al was watching, cleaning his hairy ear with the rubber end of a pencil.

  Rosa was fat, a distended, turgid hot-dog about to burst its red skin. Her hands often strayed over the open boxes, smelling of the hard sweetness of lollies. Jerra pretended not to notice.

  At nine Al went out the back to read the paper on his stinking dunny. Jerra heard the noises that disgusted him.

  Rosa began at him again. She thumped him on the shoulder, and he could feel her mouth stinging his cheek.

  ‘Two years of Uni,’ she said laughing, ‘for this?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Dad took me outta school when I was thirteen.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Said it would be better leaving to work for him, than go on with school and end up on the dole.’

  ‘Hmph.’

  ‘Maybe he was right, I dunno,’ she said, sucking something red, round and sweet. Her dress seemed to belong to someone else. Like the bags they put the fruit in, fruit always soft and a bit bruised.

  ‘Reckon I shoulda gone on, you know.’

  ‘Yeah?’ The pies were softening. He wondered if they really were roo meat. They stank like it.

  ‘So many oppertunities.’

  He felt the pastry warming, the juice melting out of the meat. They probably picked them up off the side of the road, he thought, smiling.

  ‘No opportunities, really.’

  ‘Oh, carm on,’ she said, scratching. ‘You don’t appreciate what you could of had.’

  ‘Arr.’ If the customers only knew why they tasted of duco.

  ‘No. You could of done somethink.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I dunno. There must of been somethink. Yer mad if yer can’t find somethink to do wuth yourself.’

  ‘I have. I work here.’ He unbolted the door. The bell clunked.

  ‘Arr, yer mad. You must be stupid, or yer haven’t looked.’

  ‘How the hell would you know?’ He slammed the liquorice allsorts onto the Laminex. ‘Shit, Rosa, what would you know?’

  Rosa fiddled pasties onto a tray, thick steam rising into her face. She lifted the damp hair out of her eyes. Her face was pink.

  ‘You’re weak as piss, Jerra.’

  The bell clonged, a turd hitting the water. He braced behind the counter.

  The deli was on a street corner. There were houses neatly spaced along the street, and in the next street there was a school. A street or two down, there was a factory that made doors. As lunch time neared, the mountains of potato chips crumbled, the milkshaker screamed without stopping for a breath, and aniseed balls scattered and clattered as more black-toothed children, smiling through their gaps, came and went on the lino that gripped their thongs, tacky with Coke.

  Al scowled at all the customers, young or old, slamming their pies down on the counter in their brown bags, rattling the lollies into little white bags with careful underestimation, baring his teeth to the children humming and hahing over two for one, three for five or how much can I get for two cents. Jerra knew it didn’t matter a damn to Al, who gave them all the same and said he wished he was a dentist.

  They worked under the tinn
y snaffle of the transistor that perched high on the back shelves. Jerra poured the thickshakes, watching the stuff unwind and settle like castor oil. He sorted ham and salad, sneezed wrapping curried egg, and slapped the beef and pickle together. He felt the coins, hot from the customers’ hands, and cursed the twenty-dollar notes passed over, with Kingsford Smith smirking, for a Mars Bar or chips. All day. All day. All day. Then wiping the Coke from the floor, and scraping the coagulated sauce from the counter.

  He gave the old Veedub a kick, feeling the notes in his pocket, and spun her out of the dirt patch, hopping it off the kerb with a chirp.

  ‘Why doesn’t anyone tell him the truth?’

  ‘It’s between Sean and his Dad,’ said his mother, pegs between her teeth.

  ‘Someone’s gotta tell him!’

  ‘He wouldn’t listen, Jerra.’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t,’ he admitted.

  ‘He thinks his father’s right. That’s all he’s got left.’

  ‘And it’s worse than nothing.’

  She bit on the pegs, shaking her head.

  ‘And he doesn’t want to find out, Mum. Why doesn’t anyone want to find anything?’,

  ‘They get old,’ she said spreading a heavy, gently steaming sheet on the line, holding it with an elbow and pegging one end. ‘And Sean’s got old too soon.’

  ‘No. It’s giving up. No one gets old too soon.’

  ‘I figured it out,’ he said, putting two ciders on the table.

  ‘What?’ She seemed distracted.

  She was wearing jeans and a quilted coat; the same stuff they made the old sleeping bags out of, he noted. Her boots were freckled with mud. A singer was howling about a big brass bed and the smoke poured on itself, boiling to the low ceiling. A different singer, all beard and eyes.

  ‘Your theory.’

  ‘Oh, that.’

  ‘Yeah. I figured it was wrong because there was a . . . what do you call it? . . . a variable. The fish.’

  ‘Eh?’ She glanced at him over her glass.

  ‘The fish. You said you had power over it; but it’s not really true. Put him in the bag. Fine, he’s dead; you scale him, gut him, eat him. But if you throw him back there’s no guarantee he’s going to live.’