Renmark
Rosa sits opposite me at the table, facing away - side-saddle on the short bench, her dark curls falling one way, just one shoulder favoured with the weight of her hair. The swaying, the rising and fall, mirror the curves of her head, its elegant, youthful, lilting moves. She gazes absentmindedly at Clive in his cot to her side. I flick the paper to contrive a movement of her head towards something else, but it stays put, and rests in free-fall. I drop my eyes back to the paper, not part of her now. A few blocks of text hover on the page, glazed, and lay undisturbed, a few more, then I stop and look up again. Her head is down now, in that curiously overt, introspective way - she has left her daydream and wants to be seen to be daydreaming now - I know the difference, I am cunning this way. I glance at the boy as he dozes indifferently and decide it would be good to have her eyes away.
“They say he may be Nordic... His features...”
She looks up and seems pleased this was directed her way. A child still - I can see the wall through her rib-cage.
“The Somerton man. Norwegian, they say”
I knew a Norwegian once, or at least a Norwegian looking one, and it seems like him, it must be him. He was a soldier, and by my side or thereabouts in those wet, hot lands. I remember him sweat like us, and fall the same way we fell, be a loving home to those piercing, siren swarms. His white Caucasian neck ageing quick with the red-brown burn, thickening because it needed to, a wet ham joint ready for its turn, ready to go. Well, weren’t we all! ...and did I see him lying there, apart? No, because he dressed up nice and felt like lying down, and that spot on the beach is far away from our green and beautiful, humid surrounds, where we tried to fight so well.
“Have you seen the photo? ...Though you may be better off not... I think I know him”
From Renmark. It was green and beautiful there, the paradised fields of fruit, row on row. God’s hand is in this work, the orchardist knows - his warm damp land and soil, and the abused river at the centre of it all. The Norwegian was there too - I'll recall his name in time. We worked parallel lines, at the same rate. There are never-ending views in this country, some make the head bow or force sight away, some mean you’ll not last long if you can't escape, but, caught alone, the repeated, regular lanes of that place - so much good! - are piled so high and wide that the good itself is pushed away. No horizon line, the same limitless lanes each way and the uneventful sky, atom dust or galaxy-high - your notched edges and wrong insult this rigid, scaleless trap. Get back to the Norwegian and his centre-parted hair, keep your eyes on his face through the gaps in the leaves and the sweet air.
He was at Nadda too, that scrub maze - he found me there, after my afternoon nap, and I'm grateful for this. I was annoyed at first, because I liked it there, it was warm and comfortable, and a dream of clear, mountainous air was broken by his Scandinavian face, his recognisable call, his gentle touch on my shoulder and the crisp, blistered skin layer.
“Wake up now, it's the best thing to do”
“It's not too late for food and... Your axe is still with you I see! Let's get back shall we”
I'll do the same, return the favour, touch him gently on the shoulder to avoid a scare and repay his words of kindness over so many a year. Karl... Karl! Let's get back shall we? Ah yes, that's his name, I'm sure I'm right. Karl Gudmonsson is the one lying down, this good friend of mine - we fought in tropical and desert climes, saved eachother’s lives more than once before and walked green, god-favoured lanes in Renmark even before the war. I must see him quickly, and show the truth - I think some people, for a reason I cannot know, are saying he is from some other foreign land, but this can't be true, for the man is Karl, he is not from Wales or even England, that confusing place! An Englishman named Carl with a K - no it cannot be. I must visit him in his shirt and tie and closed eyes... tensing though, somehow, as if he is hanging upside down - maybe they did, for he was never as puffed up as that, not holding his breath and waiting to die.
“I'll take the bus down the coast, down Military Road... Although... I could wake early on and walk - it can only be two hours or so...”
I become agitated and stand up quickly, move to the windows and crane my neck to the side to peer through the narrowed frame. I can see the sea from here. I catch Roma looking at me, and I shift my eyes but keep my face on the sea. Both her tiny pale hands are on the table, clasped - her index finger distractedly flicks the webbing of its twin - what can she be worried about that silly girl? She doesn't say a thing! I reply with the same, simple nothings. She traps me in this - my unthinking agitations have changed, through her absent, silent gaze, to an awkward pause - I'm stuck with the end motions of their stuttering forms. I stay by the window to show that I'm formulating a plan, when I know I have one anyway - I'll be up early, claiming a trek, then go somewhere safely far and take the bus to Somerton Town. That way I'll have time to walk around, sit in the spot where he laid down, remember the long orchard shade and the wandering shadows that formed on our arms. My deception pleases me and I play at being calm - I smile at the morning light, look back to her and change the subject to something unattached. Yes, I'll visit him once more, cool and calm.
--
I follow the man four paces behind, trying not to match step. His shoulders drop to the left, just so, as if ducking under a shelf - low, flat strides he floated on, seemingly trying to hold his eyes at a fixed height. The hips and below were all that moved, even the arms in tow were unusually still - weakly interacting halves of composite craft! His split form wound down the dark and lime green hall, the sparsely placed lights showing barely anything at all, save the old wooded panels like splintered bark, soon ready to fall. A sight to see, maybe - a dust cloud in this forlorn grid and its unmoving dead air would be like a frozen, small war in hallway lights, photographic time transferred to life.
The more I see the back of this man, the more I have to fight his style of walk, I hold my shoulders straight just in case and bounce high, low, high, to show that I'm not. The more I think of it, the more I'm enjoying this walk - there's not much of it, of course, and we’re heading for a frozen corpse, but the clean and dull decay of this place and my knowledge of a secret thing to make me the one who solved it right is enough. These are the times when I feel less dead myself, when I can, I think, switch between layers and peek out, see the view around and about - from darkened cell to windowed room, with a view to roll up and eat just out of grasp.
“This way please. Watch the step”
His uniform is ragged and he seemed annoyed, but my army pension keeps him polite. He said as I arrived I'm the one hundred and fifty-first one - one hundred and fifty truthless before the truthful one! I understood his weary eyes, I have those eyes too - I showed him my card and he raised them to mine, placed both tan hands flat on the page and dropped his brow, then back up - an almost imperceptible forward dip of the skull. Two tours. I'm sorry to take your time, I say - he looks back to the form.
“The paper mentions us again today, mentions the lady we had in yesterday. You'll forgive me for earlier? It's becoming quite strange”
I gesture it's nothing, ask the lady’s name - he swivels the paper a neat turn, shifts it my way - Thompson? Funny, the man you have there is Thompsen, you have my word...
He reaches for the door - a different one now, metal I think, with a curved chrome handle I've seen before. It's a windowless thing - I suppose it has to be - and there are two distinct clunks as the handle is pulled up. A slide and a snap, then a weightier fall of some mechanism probably sat in the wall - come in! it seems to say, I have something for you. The words pass me by and head back up to where we’ve been - I turn around to catch them move but all I see are the spheres of evenly spaced lime green, not quite touching, interrupting the straight hall with their swollen and diffuse forms. The man stands calm by the door, handle poised, with a look that equates to mine in his shaded eyes. I stand too, hold his patient gaze, and it seems as though we could stay this way forever - there is wisdom in this wait, I'm sure there is wisdom in silence and nothing while we wait.
I think I know now what I'll see. It peaks around the corner at me, from a distant place. I can't quite make it out but I know it's there. It's the haze at the far line of those green lanes. The indeterminate edge of those Arab sand plains - it calls me then as now and I pause before I move, but I know that I will keep going on. The door fans out as I pass through and the cold air is like a thick layer scared to leave, I feel it move from my leading leg to the back of my head. It's a soothing, cool balm on my face, but it soon moves my mind to realise that I'm home again - this is the inevitable way, the warm is not even real... not real at all. The cold swallows my all, and I feel a hole open up in my forehead - the skin and bone peel back fine and dry, there is no bleeding in this room. The fat organ exposed recoils at first from the fluorescent light but soon adjusts and aims its narrow beam at the white cloth in the near-centre of the room, draped over curious peaks of toe and belly and head - as it hangs still on the edge, the arm is suggested for a tiny part of its length. My forehead hole lets in the rigid, freezing air, and the pink brain starts to struggle, and tremble away - it knows its path though. The man mumbles something - this way? but the increasing shudders make my ears dull and fade. It knows its path and I follow slow, arcing towards the peaked sheet and its glowing shape.
The man curves around the opposite way and meets me at the flat metal table where my friend lays, it's funny, I think, that they found him this way - politely preparing himself for this room and the day I would come and see him, and give them his name. It's a nice thing to do, to know the rigour coming and be as thoughtful as you, to be aware of how you'll look as a corpse, to think things through. I smile an endearing smile his way, aim it at the face and its draped, white shade - my brain through its window of peeled skull case looks intently as well but the unease and increasing vibration of its pink flesh alarms, it shakes loose a bitter, metal taste that filters slowly through my nose and throat like metal filing dust. The spit thickens and seals my tongue slow with a gluey and useless clicking paste, but this stupid face stays set in the previous shape. They seem to exist in different states and I look at them both in astonishment - what this makes for the man to see must be a sight and he seems to be thinking that something isn't right - motions the corner of cloth he has raised back to the clear metal table edge and makes to step back round to the door, his eyes fixed on mine. I manage to raise a hand and force the features of my split face to reform calm. I think I say I'm fine but the gummy air in my ears and around makes only my heartbeat and sick stomach loud - they both work fierce to an awful time and heat up my insides, bring the temperature driving up and sweat to my broken brow. It sits and freezes in its place, plasma soup in a shell of ice. The open brain makes its nauseous signal louder and louder now, it seems, shines its straight beam to the covered face of Karl... Karl Thompsen in his polite sleep. The man, now back facing me, moves his mouth to shape something I cannot know, but it seems from his moves and eyes that he is asking me if I'm alright, or do I want to carry on or something along those lines. I nod, and quickly withdraw the full move, trying not to let my brain fall out, and he reaches for the cover again - the corner by the head - he sends a final look in a questioning way and as I agree he adds a hand and pulls the sheet down. The beam snaps off and the view reframes.
Oh grace no. A fragment passes and with a click my gluey tongue is wet again, too wet, the spit starts to pool under it, a pool of oily sick warning, and I gulp it back - no time to breathe. I see a thin grey mask of face shape but no face is there, heat and cold co-exist, but at the place where they meet... my forehead snaps shut with an icy crack, I feel my eyelids twitch as it does and look to the man to check this is real, but he doesn't move at all - the lights start to dip low from the edge of the room to the faceless grey and as they do, the mask starts to slip and fall. The cold is my home and I'm being shown the way back there. So slowly though... I can't take this withering, crushing pace, the dark gets ever close and I worry that it will end and I'll be left in the dark and cold with... The mask drops to the floor, quiet and slow, and I'm clear about it all now. I feel sleepy, shut my eyes and go.
Renmark - Plastic is part of a larger work in progress.
No comments:
Post a Comment