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The Art of Travel

September 21, 2011 by Professor Rollmops

This is the transcript of a talk I gave on Alain de Botton’s “The Art of Travel” for my creative writing masters, c. 2005.

Alain de Botton has made a name for himself writing popular philosophy. In a review of de Botton’s best-selling Consolations of Philosophy, in the Independent, Christina Hardyment wrote: “Singlehandedly, de Botton has taken philosophy back to its simplest and most important purpose: helping us to live our lives.” In The Consolations of Philosophy, de Botton considered the works of six great Western philosophers – Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche – and drew from them ideas he found of particular value and relevance to modern life.

This was a theme he had already explored in depth in his earlier publications, Essays in Love, published in 1993 when the author was only twenty-three years old, The Romantic Movement, 1994, Kiss and Tell, 1995 and the best-selling How Proust can change your life, published 1997.

Philosophy, poetry and theory do not normally attract popular attention owing to a misguided conception that they bear no relation to the practical and exist solely for the gratification of intellectuals commonly derided for their social disjunction. What de Botton succeeds in doing so masterfully is to reveal the simplicity and humanity of much philosophical writing, poetry and theory by putting it into the context of personal experiences which are familiar to all of us. At the same time, whilst locating material parallels for these ideas in the quotidian, he avoids making them appear mundane or banal. The high brow becomes palatable by removing its intimidating veneer, but without cheapening or ridiculing the evident seriousness with which much of these ideas were initially produced, except where were they were, to some degree, designed to be amusingly provocative.

In the Art of Travel de Botton examines themes in the psychology of travel; how we imagine places before we have visited them, how we interpret places upon arrival, and how we shape our recollections of places upon our return.

As is the case with How Proust can Change your Life, The Art of Travel is really a collection of essays. The text is divided into five parts under the thematic rubrics of Departure, Motives, Landscape, Art and Return. Each of these parts is further subdivided into chapters with subtitles such as On Anticipation and On Travelling Places. On the title page of each chapter, de Botton provides a sort of itinerary for what is to come; a handy list accompanied by thumbnail illustrations not only of the place or places he intends to discuss, but also the guide or guides through whose eyes or with whose thoughts he will consider the place or places. Thus, in the first chapter, On Anticipation, de Botton considers his own locale, Hammersmith in London, and his impending holiday destination, Barbados, through the eyes of Joris-Karl Huysmans. In his 1884 novel, A Rebours, Huysmans’ “effete and misanthropic hero”, the Duc des Esseintes, attempts a journey to London. He makes it as far an English tavern near the Gare St Lazare, where, after a meal of oxtail soup, smoked haddock, roast beef and potatoes, two pints of ale and a chunk of stilton, he is overcome by lassitude.

“He thought how wearing it would be actually to go to London, how he would have to run to the station, fight for a porter, board the train, endure an unfamiliar bed, stand in queues, feel cold and move his fragile frame around the sights that Baedeker had so tersely described – and thus soil his dreams. ‘What was the good of moving when a person could travel so wonderfully sitting in a chair? Wasn’t he already in London, whose smells, weather, citizens, food and even cutlery were all about him? What could he expect over there but fresh disappointments?’”

De Botton applies the lesson of contrast between anticipation and realisation to his own experience of a holiday to Barbados. The promised lures of a travel brochure with its palm trees and spotless beaches are soon darkened by a cloud of anxieties. Shortly after arrival, fretting about concerns he ought to have left behind, de Botton notes that:

“A momentous but until then overlooked fact was making its first appearance: that I had inadvertently brought myself with me to the island.”

He adds:

“My body and mind were to prove temperamental accomplices in the mission of appreciating my destination.”

In the chapters that follow, de Botton continues with this clever interspersing of accounts of real and imagined journeys with personal, anecdotal accounts of his own travel experiences. The tight and entertaining summaries of the thoughts and ideas of his guides make clear and immediate the experience of these writers, artists and thinkers. The anecdotal accounts make even clearer just how quotidian are the concerns of many of his guides, and are further enriched with photographs of his own personal spaces and acquaintances.

He applies the techniques of the anthropologist and ethnographer in examining social artefacts and extrapolating from them about the society they represent. In describing the exotic nature of an overhead sign in Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, he writes:

“A bold archaeologist of national character might have traced the influence of the lettering back to the de Stijl movement of the early twentieth century, the prominence of the English subtitles to the Dutch openness towards foreign influences and the foundation of the East India Company in 1602 and the overall simplicity of the sign to the Calvinist aesthetic that became a part of Holland’s identity during the war between the United Provinces and Spain in the sixteenth century.”

De Botton’s analysis of cultural artefacts extends to an exceptional empathy with the subject matter of artists. His chapter On Travelling Places which includes a study of places of transit such as services stations, airports and roadside diners, is a masterful combination of art appreciation, focussing primarily on the twentieth-century American artist, Edward Hopper, and extrapolation with personal, anecdotally driven musings.

In Chapter 4, On Curiosity¸ de Botton describes his first experience of Madrid, to where he travelled in order to attend a conference. Having been advised of Madrid’s many attractions, he finds himself overcome with an intense lethargy upon arrival.

“And yet these elements (ie. the sights of Madrid as described in his guide book and assorted brochures) about which I had heard so much and which I knew I was privileged to see, merely provoked in me a combination of listlessness and self-disgust at the contrast between my own indolence and what I imagined to be the eagerness of more normal visitors.”

He contrasts his own lack of enthusiasm with that of his guide to the chapter, the German explorer and Botanist, Alexander von Humboldt, who was driven by a powerful urge to visit foreign lands. The chapter serves to establish the difference between the known and the unknown – von Humboldt’s explorations take him to uncharted places, whereas de Botton feels overwhelmed by the seemingly meaningless level of detail available to him through his guidebooks. The philosophical point of the chapter is to establish an understanding of what lies at the heart of curiosity and the degree to which it is personal and contextual.

De Botton writes:

“In the end it was the maid who was ultimately responsible for my voyage of exploration around Madrid. Three times she burst into my room with a broom and basket of cleaning fluids and at the sight of a huddled shape in the sheets, exclaimed with theatrical alarm, “ola, perdone!”

De Botton not only contrasts his attitude to Madrid with von Humboldt’s attitude to South America, but also highlights their respective realms of exploration. Again, the ideas he explores are firmly rooted in highly illustrative personal anecdotes, and the success of his anecdotes lies not merely in the ideas they are designed to illuminate, but in the level of personal detail he provides. He appears wholly honest with us, occasionally pushing the envelope of self-deprecation to the point of humiliation. He informs us of the flavour of a packet of crisps he ate in Madrid, tells us of a hair he found attached to the sideboard of his bed in a hotel in the Lakes District, and describes the sound of the timer on a microwave on a train.

In many ways the core to de Botton’s philosophical approach in The Art of Travel can be found in his chapter on Ruskin. He focuses on Ruskin’s ideas of the importance of “seeing” and “appreciating”. Ruskin worked keenly to promote the teaching of drawing in nineteenth-century Britain, believing that drawing would teach people to have an eye for beauty and to appreciate detail, thus making them happier by enriching their everyday experience. For Ruskin talent was an irrelevance – it is not ability as an artist that matters, merely the attempt to draw that is important, for, Ruskin argues, drawing teaches us to see.

“A man is born an artist as a Hippopotamus is born a hippopotamus; and you can no more make yourself an artist than you can make yourself a giraffe. My efforts are directed not to making a carpenter an artist, but to making him happier as a carpenter.”

His aim was to teach people to spend time to appreciate the detail and complexity, or indeed, simplicity that made something beautiful, and to notice beauty in things that might not be obviously beautiful. Ruskin was fervently opposed to people who travelled and looked, but did not see. He wrote:

“No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, happier or wiser.”

In many ways de Botton’s intention mirrors that of Ruskin, though he is hardly about to suggest that we take a sketchbook with us on holiday. Rather, he impresses the importance of remembering how rewarding it is to appreciate things with the eye of a sketcher. He is equally keen to make us “see.”

“The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things.” Your own viewpoint will fix feelings far more solidly than any vista: “If you have to rank how happiness comes about,” he argues, “beauty is a worryingly weak ingredient, in terms of shifting mood.”

This key injunction to learn to “see” underlies every major idea presented in The Art of Travel.

Despite the apparent variance between many of the places and the historical figures upon whose thoughts de Botton draws in The Art of Travel, each selection of place or person is so apposite as to seem almost inevitable. His combination of personal, anecdotal detail with equally personal anecdotes from his subjects ensures a specificity and intimacy that engages. It is only in his chapter on Provence, aided by Vincent van Gogh that one feels his point is rather laboured. It still holds our interest but lacks the charm and economy of his writing elsewhere in this book.

De Botton’s works have been bestsellers – selling in the many hundreds of thousands in many different territories over the last eleven years. He has written and presented two TV series based on The Consolations of Philosophy and Status Anxiety. His work has also been characterised as ‘popularisation,’ yet his books are in fact attempts to develop original ideas (about, for example, friendship, art, envy, desire and inadequacy) with the help of the thoughts of great past thinkers. There is much that is original and, indeed, amusing in his application of the ideas of the people upon whose thoughts he has drawn. As stated above, his “popularisation” does not come at the expense of intellectual integrity and he thus avoids the lowest common denominator as a benchmark for his relativism. De Botton has been described as a “Mass-market metaphysician,” a term which could be misconstrued as a pejorative, but is not intended as such.

For an aspiring writer The Art of Travel is almost as frustratingly neat as it is delightful to read. The end result is a book of theory and philosophy that reads with the ease and accessibility of a travel guide. It comes effectively to constitute a companionable treatise on Romantic aesthetics.

It has been said of de Botton that his musings are akin to an accessible W. G. Sebald, equalling his gravitas, though perhaps falling short of the depth of Sebald’s personal reflections. De Botton’s strength lies not only in the quality of his writing, which, for its complexity, shows no signs of impenetrable flabbiness, but in the powerful ideas to which we can all easily relate. His scope covers all aspects of travel, from the quotidian journey to the bus-stop, to international flights and expeditions to unknown regions. Essentially de Botton’s purpose in writing The Art of Travel is to promote further the importance of applied philosophy as a way of enriching life.

Posted in On Writing, Pseudo Academia | Leave a Comment »

Sunset Burlesque

September 20, 2011 by Professor Rollmops

It’s been a while since I took my camera out with me regularly, just as it’s been a while since I wrote a lot of poetry. Between 2003 and 2007, there was a period when I never left home without my camera. I had carted a little film number around for years, but things really picked up with the purchase of my first digital at Stansted airport for a trip to Venice in February 2003, en route to Rome, where I was living at the time. It was a sexy and very portable 3.2 megapixel Minolta with a 3x zoom and a wholly inadequate chip, c. 100 meg – I really can’t remember, though I do still have the thing in a drawer somewhere, its circuit board fried in Gatorade. It was a wonderful camera and the sheer delight with which I pointed it at things cannot be overstated.

In 2004, back in Australia, I really thought I’d hit the big time when I upgraded to a 4 megapixel 10x zoom Olympus, purchased en route to New Zealand. I loved that camera, and dreamed of seeing it displayed in a glass case in the Museum of Me, which I intended to build in the megalomaniac bachelor future to which I’ve since abandoned looking forward. Irrespective of the future existence of said museum, my father’s forgetful abandonment of the camera in a bottleshop in Prague in 2008 has rather put paid to these plans. Still, it took some magnificent photographs of which I remain very proud and which now constitute the High Romantic Era of the inter-Cambridge years, also known as the first incarnation of Cornieworld: 2005-06.

Judge for yourself:

http://on.fb.me/Sydney2003-2006

This was a splendid period of endlessly seeking photographs. I often took a bus into town or hung around before and after work, looking for shots. At night I would take my tripod with me, armed with a couple of hefty bifters, and prowl the streets of Glebe in search of gold. I was especially fond of dusk, and made many a mission at this magic hour to shoot the royal blue skies that emerged in extended exposures. I tried to capture the sentiment of those times, when I was also writing an absolutely stupid amount of poetry, in an ineffectual poem, which has long since languished on the scrap heap. I include it here for its attempted evocation of the restless, and overtly melodramatic yearning that gripped me.

Late afternoon

This late afternoon’s neither open nor closed,

though most of the day is gone and I’m yet to feel

proud. I stared through the morning as through a picture

window, running an hour late for nothing

and already that sickness, that sinking.

Luncheon came with just a few short lines.

The sun on the palm flower (soft as the flesh

of a sapling stripped by a child’s

tepid inquisition) was hypnotic; milky

smooth as an albino root.

Speckled doves rattled the leaves;

dry, resounding clicks with every branch-hop.

Foliage fell, winking down the sunned backs

of traffic-hardened terraces

through mottled streaks of blaze. Come four o’clock

I’m typing into warming gold and expectation spoils

these clutched-at scraps. Calling, the low sun urges

its partisans, drives me to grab my camera for this brief

hour – hasty magic, when so far north of south.

Go shoot tired vistas, hoping copper light will tweak

their tune. I need to be three places at once: the light-

rail viaduct, the sunken ferry, the bridge

like a leggy woman pissing – that mongrel pylon

never lets me win. In the park trying to work

out how my heroes made it. One low

cloud wiggled like a swung dash across

the rending sunset; an overexposed, sylphid burlesque.

My hands already clammy with that pallor

born of going home, restless to head out again

and squeal in the interrogation of the moon.

___________________________________

In early 2006, in preparation for my return to England, I upgraded again and bought myself Canon 350D. Before leaving I carried it with me everywhere I went, including taking it to work every day, with two hefty lenses. I didn’t mind the weight of it so much, though it was bulky and awkward. I suppose I felt not a little windswept and heroic, and, armed for the first time with a 300mm lens, became quite obsessed with “sniping” people at a distance.

I’d like to think I got some grand results, and once overseas, put it to good use on many trips. Yet it was here that I also slowed in my quest. I lost the habit of taking it with me every day. I got tired of the weight and bulk of it and, increasingly, left it at home. There were certainly many bifter-fuelled missions wherein I rode my bicycle for hours on end seeking shots, and when I travelled overseas I shot like a man possessed. With less regular practice it took me a little longer to warm up, yet, when I went on holiday, I was pretty quickly inspired by the exciting subject matter and took some of my very favourite photographs in this period.

http://on.fb.me/RecentWork1

http://on.fb.me/PhotosBCornford

When I returned to Australia in 2008, I upgraded again to the Canon 450D and bought myself an L-series 200ml lens. It is this camera that I am currently using, though I would dearly love to upgrade again and spend ten grand on lenses. That megalomaniac bachelor future seems more distant than ever, though the bachelor part is, shall we say, in full swing.

And so! Having recently moved back to Glebe, to a studio from the back window of which I can see the old flat in which I wrote the above poem and where I dwelt during the High Romantic Era of the inter-Cambridge years, I have once again been inspired to write bucketloads of poetry and cart my camera about with me. It’s a wonderful feeling, as though I have returned to complete some long-unfinished business, and, so far, I’m pleased both with my output and dedication. It’s two in the morning, and really I ought to be in bed, but ABC Classical FM is having a bit of a Bach special, and after a long day of writing, conditions are ripe for hammering the keys still further.

Yet, I have digressed too far, for the purpose of this piece was merely to introduce a few photographs of a rather unique sky I spotted on Saturday afternoon. It seems almost unreasonable to be excited about these photos, considering the subject matter was presented to me complete, and by chance, and I certainly had no hand in it other than being in the right place at the right time. I had gone to Chinatown – pork buns are my weakness (sung to the tune of a certain Kate Ceberano song) – but the clouds, which later proved to be so enthralling, were a hindrance. I was hoping for conditions such as those which prevailed when I took some photos in Chinatown a while ago. Namely, these, for example:

But such was not to be. And so, I took the bus home, all bunned up as it were, and when I hopped off just past the footbridge, found myself quite mesmerised by the following:

Fingers crossed, there shall be plenty more to come. And on that note, I shall bid you good night!

Posted in Memoir, Photography, Sydney | Leave a Comment »

Ashes and Diamonds

September 17, 2011 by Professor Rollmops

This is the half-finished (now rounded off and polished) first chapter of a science fiction novel I began sketching some years ago, entitled “Hotel Paradiso.” It was inspired by a number of long and involved conversations with friends and colleagues at Cambridge about how much awareness of the past the human species might retain were it to survive for millions, even billions of years. I doubt, for example, that in the year 5,793,657,349 they will be focussing on Germany between the wars in history faculties around the galaxy…

The heavy black ship drifted through the barren dark. Across the vast silence of limitless death its engines burned a lost roar. Ranged along its bulky hull, tiny windows shone like torches pointed across an immense cavern. Their power was rapidly swallowed by the emptiness; their minuscule warmth, much less even than that of the engines, made no impact on the one Kelvin expanse of eternity.

The ship knew where it was going, for its occupants – a bipedal, carbon-based form not entirely unlike ourselves – had instructed it to move into orbit around an ancient planet. The planet had long since ceased to receive any warmth from its dead sun, which, were it shining still, would have illumined a red soil, here and there fused by great heat into fields of glass.

Deep inside the hull, in the ship’s museum, warm orange light illuminated an extensive archive. Beneath a frescoed ceiling, painted with scenes of ancient forests, of suns and stars, of a world out-of-doors, of ruddy, bipedal beings playing, swimming, surfing, or sitting cast in thought, were rows of computer banks, storage shelves, display cases, brackets, niches and cabinets, stretched through the ship for almost two kilometres. This was the heart of the University of the Empyrean, one of thousands in the sprawling, skulking civilisation of Homo Superior.

Even now, as the ship moved into orbit around the heavy, sullen orb, negotiating with the gravity of the crushed white dwarf, a lecture was taking place. It was given in a language of which we cannot hope to have an understanding, so many were the years through which it had evolved, so many were the contexts, so many were the worlds, indeed, galaxies that it had traversed, that the vocabulary, grammar and tones bore little relation to the dialects to which it traced its origins, billions of years before, on a planet lost in mythology. The basic sense of it is given here.

“Naturally,” said the lecturer, “any study of a period as ancient as this one is heavily dominated by conflicting methodologies. It is why, as ancient historians, we emphasise the development, above all, of the faculty of interpretation. Our evidence is so limited, so much has been lost which could have illuminated our understanding of the very early origins of homo superior, and indeed, our evolution from the Homo Sapiens and Homo Sapientissimus…”

The amplified voice was crisply resonant in the gallery of students and fellows. They sat attentively, looking not so much for revelations as confirmations of their common purpose.

“With only several hundred Earth texts surviving, and mostly in later translations from the publishing houses of Mars and Europa, you know as well as I do what a paucity of evidence we have for constructing the chronology of human social evolution on Mars. With five hundred million years of habitation, commencing with the first mission in the year thirteen billion, seven hundred and three million, four hundred and eight thousand and fifty-three, little was preserved from the earliest period of settlement.”

“However,” and here the lecturer, Professor Julian Rollmops, tapped his elongated middle finger against the air as though knocking on the door of an important point, “you will all be familiar with the ancient Homo Sapiens novel Moscow Gherkin on the Rocks, with its wealth of anecdotal evidence about the Hotel Paradiso, founded two hundred years after the initial Martian settlement. It paints a picture of a time that witnessed the first true flourishing of the economic potential of the Martian colony, which had, for so long previous, languished under the cost of overheads, the logistics of communication and transportation, the absence of sophisticated culture and cuisine and the consequent inability to attract colonists to the slow-growing, insular, claustrophobic frontier mining society. Though we cannot be certain that the incidental information is entirely accurate, we do have proof that the Hotel Paradiso did exist, for, owing to the popularity of the novel as much as the hotel itself, it was preserved as a cultural icon, a vast artefact, celebrated as the gateway to the golden age of Martian settlement.”

Professor Rollmops cleared his throat and adjusted his adrenaline level. He was excited and nervous, but over all, proud to be delivering what amounted to a pep talk preliminary to the exploration phase of a long-dreamed of project. It was well-trodden ground and his audience were all too familiar with the details. Once they were on the surface, however, or under it, for that matter, every so-called fact enumerated here would be open to conjecture.

“We know this,” continued Professor Rollmops, “because the hotel is inventoried in the famous document, Grand Marineris 793. If the accepted dating is correct, this originates in the twenty-seventh century of Earth years. The monograph, a pivotal examination of ‘gender blending’ amongst the wealthier colonists, displays a sophisticated use of academic reference, a most impressive awareness of several Earth dialects, and, judging by the scale of the bibliography, it gives tantalising hints about the culture of detailed research which existed. But I digress. What is significant for our purposes is that it pinpoints the exact location of the hotel and indicates that having been decommissioned, it was encased by surrounding developments and came to form a sort of subterranean museum, the structural integrity of which, according to Olympus 137, was still intact some two thousand years later. Whether we can hope to find anything after five billion years is anyone’s guess! But, ladies and gentlemen, fellow scholars, that is precisely why we are here.”

The room hummed with muffled murmurs of interest and one man began to clap, before thinking better of it.

“Sol was a main sequence star in the G2 spectral class. At the end of its lifecycle, in the shedding of its outer layers – still barely visible in the fading remnants of the planetary nebula – and subsequent loss of gravity, both Earth and Mars were pushed into more distant orbits and their atmospheres slowly but surely stripped. Exactly what, if anything, survived on or beneath the surface, is anyone’s guess. The loss of so many ships in the flight to the moons of Saturn and subsequent Titanic War has left us with only a piecemeal understanding of the final Martian evacuation. Fortunately, however, it is only twenty-three thousand years since the last ship is estimated to have departed from the dying system and I personally am hopeful that we shall find some astonishingly well-preserved archaeology. Our scans and models of gravitational dynamics indicate next to no asteroid bombardment, despite the planet’s acquisition of two new moons. Or, rather, two replacement moons, after the expulsion of Phobos and Deimos.”

Professor Rollmops leaned forward, placing both his elbows on the synthetic wood lectern, as though about to deliver an aside. Instinctively, the audience leaned forward, joining him in this greater intimacy.

“Indeed, I am very hopeful that, what is, for the moment, an almost non-existent chronology outside the framework of a vague mythology, will soon be transformed into a sophisticated understanding of the history and culture of this latest phase of outer Sol system settlements.”

There were murmurs among the audience, and shuffles not of restlessness, but warm approval. As the keynote speaker, at this, the last lecture series before the archaeological exploration got underway, Professor Rollmops was tasked with reminding all of their mission and raising spirits appropriately. He was not so much here to inform and instruct, but to motivate; to celebrate.

“We have, of course,” Professor Rollmops continued, “the well-known reference from Phobos 652, regarding the final evacuations from the planet Earth, and the then very great mythological significance which it entailed. The parallels drawn between the long-remembered destruction of a place called Troy, and exile from an abundant garden, are a tantalising glimpse of, we can only assume, even more ancient Earth myths whose significance, again, we can only assume, had acquired a purely academic currency for the fleeing Homo Sapientissimus.”

Across the audience heads nodded sagaciously and Professor Rollmops was pleased to see them so poised for his coup de grace.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “How proud and, perhaps, surprised, our long dead ancestors would be to know that now we have returned from exile after so many troubled millennia!”

This comment brought spontaneous applause from several audience members, and once it was underway, the rest joined in. “Bravo!” they cried. “Hoorah!”

A few stood in their seats, and soon the entire crowd was on its feet, caught up in a wave of nostalgia and destiny to which only an intelligent species that has somehow survived and replicated itself successfully, never quite losing touch with its origins, over a time-span of five billion years, is privy.

Professor Rollmops, himself overwhelmed with the historical significance of the moment, found himself choking back tears.

“Yes, my esteemed colleagues,” he croaked. “We have come home at last!”

Posted in Novel Excerpts | Leave a Comment »

Published Poems

September 13, 2011 by Professor Rollmops

From Antipodes,  December 2005:

 

Veronika on the Gold Coast

You must have wondered

at your sentence; to be sent

from Köln to the Gold Coast

to learn the clarinet. A boy

soon asked what ‘that thing’ was,

but you knew boys everywhere

were dumb, though here

brain death was endemic.

 

You did love the beach

until it was a prison

and you fancied the boys

until they spoke of engines;

you were sweet and serious and even

loved the heat and sun

until you knew it never stopped

and no one ever seemed to take an interest.

 

It was not arrogance that made you

laugh in a shopping mall of glass

where the minister for culture

had erected a plastic David,

but rather, sadness and fear

that you might soon dissipate

to become as hollow as their cars,

or vapid as the burning sand.

 

You were shown the “big” things;

a pineapple, large as a house,

a banana, long as a boat

and perspired

in their shadows, blinded and wet

belying your years to think

how small was all this empty size,

and how lost is rootless modernity.

__________________________


From Meanjin, 66.1, 2007:

 

Budapest

I rode into town from Vienna

to be welcomed by your arms flung wide

by the glistening to hasten the thawing

of my heart strained across this divide.

 

We buried our love in our shoulders

to inherit the scents we had lost

to revisit the tricks of your pelvis

in a room stained by poverty’s cost.

 

I’ll see that your legs remain parted

on this street where the concrete has died,

with my heart in the throat of your beauty

I will drink to the clench of your thighs.

 

The musk lingers far into morning

where we carry our love like a bird

found lost in the thrust of migration

o’er the frets of this musical world.

 


Shutting Traps

i

I feed magpies on

hot mornings

with their chests puffed

on the clothes-line –

they sing in echoes of squeaky

swings, slow as wind-chimes on water lapping

limescaled walls in an underground cave,

or a lost cry from the past.

I make them earn

their meat

 

ii

Loving her was like loving a magpie

if she squawked too much

I wished her ill,

but when she sang

small metallic pipes hummed

softly, a low triangle left ringing

in an empty odeum.

I rarely, if ever

let her sing

 

iii

You magpie cunts

you drive away the bulbuls

and give the kookaburra shit

then walk into my kitchen

past couldntgiveashit cats

and when I’m fed up with your crap

on my clothes,

you hop and say ‘how dare you

defy my insolence’

I will wait and watch

and crush you

in the slamming door

 

iv

When she left me

I stopped trapping mice

so no more

but after

maybe

I shall set traps

for the younger birds

who venture too near

too beautiful

 

v

Caught one the other day

and that’s just

the beginning…

______________________

 

From Sentinel Poetry Online, 48, November 2006:

 

Gaza drowning

i

In the morning more gunmen,

black-clad and with weapons

raised to prise some credit

in this lottery of warlords; smiling,

 

cheering and firing

guns. Yet this was something else,

for only a day ago the massive tanks

– pesticidal spaceships – rolled out,

 

leaving the scraps to the oven hatred

and the safety of home-grown thugs.

Yesterday the rubble and helping

Asif’s father take bricks in

 

a half-dragged cart; dusty white

with glistening, tanned-skin streaks

of sweat. You heard at last

the beach was free, but the hours ran

 

in the fight to boast this liberty.

 

ii

Today the sea is free again,

they say it will now always be;

that constant thing, the only thing

 

free of the smashed and half-built

and raw, free of the ruins

that litter the shore

unblemished as a tile

 

and wet as a wound,

it beckoned

this parable of endurance beheld;

it glittered

 

as though damascened, such wealth

lived only in dreams in siege-saddened rooms

where unslaked generations brood.

 

iii

To the beach for the one thing

they handed you pure,

an ablution to mark the still birth

of a land; down the long, pitted road

 

to the long-forbidden sand.

Asif was there with you, his hands

smooth from lime and his smile

encouraged you into the brine.

 

Playfulness surged in the spray

of his joy and discarding your shirt

you followed this boy

to the salty delight, this border

 

now gone, you flailed you arms

and the dust came away

and ducking your head, you pushed

under waves, mere ripples they were

 

yet soon you were far

from the shallows and feeling

a tug underneath,

you thrust up to clutch

 

at an ocean of breath.

The weight of your body

the screams of Asif,

the disordered panic

 

as your lungs filled with sea.

Half-submerged, dripping, afraid

and unsure, Asif stood waiting

til he saw you return

 

buoyant as ever, you came up at last.

 

 

Wasn’t it you?

Wasn’t it you who approached me

down the aisle of a supermarket?

Back in town, I guess,

from some unimaginable failure.

 

Wasn’t it like you

not to let me touch you –

a stroke of your back as a prelude

to placing my arm about you?

 

Wasn’t it you who said that we might

just as well be together again,

since you were here now and since

I had spent six years pining?

 

Wasn’t it you who knew slowness

must govern this strange recommencement,

this unlikely coupling of something

long dead with a dream?

 

Wasn’t it like me

to cling to these night hopes,

to lie still expecting

that really we might have loved on?

 

 

The Anchor Pub, Cambridge

Upstairs at the Anchor, young Eddie,

distracted whilst pulling a pint, loses

his eyes in the brass of the taps.

Therein, staring back, he finds himself

giant-armed, flanked by his comrade

and haloed with scattered hangings:

a photograph of Al Capone, ladies

taking tea at The Orchard, rowers

lowering their tubs, heifers

grazing in the boggy dew

and a timely rescue from a waterlogged

steam-ship foundering in a storm.

 

Along the racks and shelves are jugs

and busts; Nelson skulking dusty beneath

a penny farthing; Mozart beside

a bedpan and clock; Beethoven

topping a broken barometer

pitching askew to a staggered deck

 

and ever on in, come the customers…

 

“This one,” says Tom, “she’s a delicate fawn

shot by a crossbow on a frosty morn

sublime in her sorrow, gorgeous, torn,

evanescent as she pales to lifelessness.”

 

“Here’s our moody porn star again –

overworked and glum as a college

porter, be-jowled by scratchings and lager,

he spat himself into sports casual.”

 

Eddie throws his eyes out the window.

Below, the river, splayed

and wet as a spent horse, shrieks

with unseen children, bellows

with drunken men

and, on the patio, as on the bridge

swarms a gaggle of lusty young beauties,

all here to taste the merry delights

of his beloved England.

 

And he, stuck behind the bar,

with a would-be poet, sore.

 

 

The Room of Kings, Barcelona

You arrived before me, tired from Buenos Aeries,

lean with a dancer’s strength,

and when I saw your bags beside the narrow beds

I’d booked from England, I apologised

for the humidity of this cupboard,

four flights above those human canals

of the old quarter, stained like a rectum.

“This is the room of kings!” you said.

 

“Ah yes.”

We shook moist hands

and went to the beach of rough and dirty

sand and sea

that frothed with warmth and garbage.

The afternoon was copper-hazed and stretched

towards a smog horizon; something in its

smoky glare spoke of a faded postcard.

 

The colours by night won us over;

soft umber pools between pitted arches,

olive fronds, sagging, pointed,

and fountains, seeping, margarine grey.

In Placa Real we sat drinking and listening

to ragged Dylan and Marley songs

while the super-strength lager

turned our stomachs, growling.

 

At midnight we fled the demanding

hookers, back to “la Sala de los Reyes”

though the streets still screamed with drunks.

From above, below, in an ugly show,

the cleaners hosed and shouted

and the rubbish men made karate sounds, tossing

bags and bins with evident hatred

for whoever dared to sleep.

 

Furiously a man called for Davide, his dog

and out the next-door window, an American

yelled back at the street then lit

a hashish joint which he dangled,

taunting passers by.

I rested my elbows

on our shared pane, and smoked shoulder

to shoulder, hoping for a knockout punch.

 

At four-thirty the delivery began;

the supermarket shutter below

banged like a wrecking ball of shivered tin.

I heard you groan, lying, wincing,

tortured by this thrash and bubble, sweating

this molten night through. The air

pressed close in a pillow smother

and through it  we squeezed laments.

 

“The room of kings indeed,” you breathed,

exasperated.

_________________________________

 

From PN Review,  176, July-August, 2007:

 

Soldier’s Cup  (On a visit to the Tunnel Museum in Sarajevo.)

Three thousand journeys daily through the slush,

but for the grunts and gasping, slupping hush.

 

Through water, knee deep, driving goats and sheep,

all tired of asking how long they must keep.

 

The moon haunts winter like an undead sun, snow falls on the ruins…

 

The tunnel ran eight hundred metres long.

Down Sniper Alley death was quick to come.

 

Out came food and blankets, weapons, life;

their fearful, angry hopes received a spike.

 

Water freezes, soil stiffens, fear stays ever warm…

 

The scenery had turned a deadly note.

as shells and rockets shouted from the slopes.

 

At this end, sandbags, trenches, ducking men;

the snipers culled, but could not find their den.

 

No trains come, trams and buses hide, the cars race round the pits…

 

In Leningrad they said the tears would freeze;

a war less total still affords no ease.

 

The food was scarce and soon the pipes ran dry

It was their solemn duty not to die.

 

Libraries burned, civilians fell, defenders had few guns…

 

Beneath the streets the rudiments hung on

the schools and kitchens, prayers and stirring songs.

 

The Sarajevans set their jaws and fought

against the cleansing of their every thought.

 

“We could not leave, why should we go? We could not let them win…”

 

With throat in check, his caveat is blunt;

his house and land once formed the battlefront.

 

He shows us footage of this longest siege

The silence hangs on us a while. We grieve.

 

Bent and pushing, wounded seeping, Atlas comes to each man’s heart…

 

Along the chilling tunnel breaths puff hot;

the trolleys cut their wake, the fodder coughs.

 

The bearded, grimy heroes lift and lug,

the women shoulder with them, no less strong.

 

“How could they let this happen here? We Muslims knew well why…”

 

We watch them coming up with fighting aid;

sleepless, ready, stone-set, frightened, brave.

 

A lady, proud and crooked, tips a quench

into a cup while waiting by the trench.

 

A soldier steps up, fraying like a rope.

She hands the haggard man a mother’s hope.

 

 

Mistras

The roots are smooth as the stones

over which they coil into a backdrop of mist;

ringing this saintly hill suspended

above the fields of Sparta.

 

The sun hung radiance on the frosted edge

of this morning and vaselined the chalk white roads.

The orchards hummed with insects of cotton light;

particles in a filmy, smeared bliss.

 

Such spacious peace exists beneath

the monastery washed in a halo glare; walls

brushed by dipping reeds, gentle in the absent

breeze, blushing into windless silence.

 

There is a tuft of holiness spent in the huddled brick;

the miniature churches, baked and bleached,

are steeped in mysticism so sleepy in myth,

they evoke mere wistful dreaminess.

 

How war could find its way here is not plain

and yet, this ruin overlooks another:

buried Sparta with barely a monument,

fertile through the year with hardy grass.

 

 

Best left

She made me stress the honesty I’ve only sung in bursts.

I wish that I could long sustain the strength within my thirst.

 

There’s hope inside the fresh idea of every nascent love;

the goal of endless novelty exhausts the promised grove.

 

We met when I was everything for nothing yet was done;

as soon as I get settled in I’ll loath what I become.

 

Is she here now for all the things I promised on the way?

I spent the sunshine at the stalls that fed me til today.

 

She was a love, an energy that never courted guilt;

she came without the ruin field beneath what I had built.

 

I longed her til I knew that she must never let me near,

for Aristotle’s shapes are only flawless as ideas.

 

 

Photo of Venice

Maroon undulations, crests of copper, steel blue deeps

slicked with bronze and mercury blanched;

this might be an artist’s impression

of the gaseous oceans on a lurid sunset Titan.

 

Into these palazzo reflections juts the nose of a vaporetto

and below, large in the corner, rises

the crowned black S of a gondola moored, seemingly

to the lens. An old woman told me to take

 

this photo; a New Zealander who made me tea

while I hovered, locked in a towel for an hour

from my room, as the sunrise grew without.

__________________________________

 

From Westerly, 54.1, 2009:

 

First Harvest

I saw my first harvest today

– it was all dust and sunset.

On a byroad to Grantchester Village

in a leonine August, I halted

my bicycle. Wheels still, saddle-seated,

air like a malty basket;

in its belly plumes of chaff.

Lengthwise and widthways

the land spread, ruched, in low undulations.

On the one side, the grass green and trodden, full of cattle;

from the other blew a dry, oily meal wind

– the husk and raw of severed wheat.

 

Yellow sky, yellow field. A far off machine

– like a child’s plaything – rolled its scythe;

funnel pumped seed into the dump.

Closely huddled were the waiting fecund heads,

their fattening done. As the broken

stalk and stem-stump wake expanded,

I was minded of a rending imperfection.

How even the agents of ruin

are picturesque.

Posted in Poetry | 2 Comments »

Rain

September 11, 2011 by Professor Rollmops

This is a chapter from a novel I wrote between 1998 and 2004 entitled Et in Antipodes, Ego. It was intended to be something of a romantic epic, but lacked sufficient gism to make it readable. Too long and slow, the romantic elements were based, at times quite painstakingly, on personal experiences from the period prior to its conception. The story centred around Edward Cockfoster and his uncovering of a literary controversy whilst writing a PhD on the fictional Australian author, Bryce Chapman. His unexpected, serendipitous success with his research contrasted with the failure of his relationship with the Cambridge-bound Pandora.

Whilst containing some, if I may say so myself, quite beautiful moments, there was too much pedantic and pedestrian detail which could only be described as self-indulgent. With the first draft running to 140,000 words, it was terribly overwritten, yet at the time I was too precious to take the axe to it in the way that was necessary. In retrospect, it was good “marathon training”, but not something I intend to go back to, having moved so far away from its characters, themes and sentiment. This is the fourth-last chapter, wherein Edward finally sees a light at the end of the tunnel.

 

Rain

Edward met Felicity at her house at eight and they walked around the corner to the local church. He had worn his only suit for the occasion, a dark blue pinstripe over a pale mustard shirt. Felicity wore a ballooning white skirt, a pale blue blouse and dark blue cardigan; her long black hair hung flat to the top of her bottom.

It promised to be a difficult sitting when they saw the uncushioned benches. Felicity curtseyed to the alter and slipped by, the hem of her skirt brushing Edward’s shin; the cotton half catching then springing away from his trousers. He slid along the bench after her.

“This is nice,” said Edward, shrugging.

The service began soon afterwards and Edward stared ahead, thinking only of the girl beside him. Neither he nor she was Catholic, but as students of Latin, this had seemed a curious excursion. It was not long before Edward was overcome with drowsiness, induced by the soft fragrance of Felicity. The slow rhythms of the Latin washed over him, spoken by an Italian-accented speaker with a cadence and elision usually neglected by unimaginative readers. The words hummed in the solid wooden pews; a language come back from the dead.

Amidst the press of Italian families, Edward and Felicity moved hardly a muscle. Forced close together, the fabric covering their upper arms touched lightly. The contact filled Edward with such a sensual languor that he was afraid of moving and breaking the spell. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Felicity was transfixed, though he did not know by what.

When at last it was over they stood up quickly to leave. It was just after eleven and they emerged into a mist of light rain.

“Well…,” Edward trailed. “That was kind of interesting.”

“I was pretty disappointed actually. It wasn’t as medieval as I’d expected.”

“Vatican Two is to blame.”

They began to move off under the dripping trees in the direction of Norton Street.

“What’s the point of Catholicism without the incense, mystery and chanting?” said Edward. “They’ve lost their schtick.”

“I know. And, hello, guitars and cow bells? Whatever…”

“Say no more.”

They hurried through the rain to Bar Italia, a busy, informal café; worn tables, ice-cream counter, movie posters and a bohemian crowd. The clash  of plates and clink of spoons reverberated on the wet-footprinted tiles.

They ordered a fettucini melanzone and salata caprese to share. They drank tea and coffee and laughed about the service. When they had finished eating Felicity suggested going on a walk around the neighbourhood.

“It’s raining,” said Edward.

“But I want to get wet,” said Felicity.

She led him through the streets in her ballooning white skirt; small in stature and perfectly proportioned. All she lacked, thought Edward, was a wand trailing stardust. They came to a wide grassed pavement behind which lay railway tracks upon an embankment. Along the line of the fence an array of towering trees and flowering shrubs hung their branches to form bowers. In their romantic communal enthusiasm, the local residents had set up wooden benches, constructed from old wood, and painted with a fading assortment of blossoms.

They stood talking under an arched trellis until Edward decided to brave the wet bench. He wiped off the top slick and sat on the damp wood.

“You can sit in my lap, if you like,” he joked, putting his elbows up on the back of the bench.

“Alright,” she answered. “I should have known better than to wear white.”

“I’m sure the church-goers liked it. They love to fantasise about virgins.”

“Well don’t you get any ideas.”

She sat on his lap and he adjusted her weight until they were comfortable. Although he tried his hardest not to place his hands on her with obvious intent, the merest touch communicated more than he had intended to learn: the neat roundness of a thigh, the inward curve from hip to waist; hands where they might be in a more ardent encounter.

Felicity sat in Edward’s lap until his bottom went numb. They talked and talked and when she enthused about her favourite poets, Edward’s suffering increased tenfold. She too was a fan of the romantics, and after a time he could bear it no longer.

“I am dying to kiss you,” he said.

“What?” she said, genuinely surprised. “Oh no, you can’t say that, it isn’t fair.”

She twisted in his lap and looked at him.

“Why? I’m sorry,” he said. “But it’s the plain, simple truth.”

Edward leaned back to give her more room, relaxing his hold on her.

“But… This is such bad timing. I’ve just started seeing someone.”

“Oh? Really? I know. I mean, I didn’t know, but I should have known. That you must be, that is.”

He bit his lip.

“Someone like you would be, I guess. I wasn’t sure.”

She sat stiffly.

“You shouldn’t have said it.”

“That I wanted to kiss you?”

“Yes.” She turned her eyes away and moved further towards his knee. “It’s been a month now. It’s just turned the corner towards something more.”

Felicity stood up and so did Edward, she walked away a few feet and turned to look at him, smiling.

“I still want to kiss you,” Edward said. “Maybe it’s not too late.”

She looked at him pityingly, moving about on the spot.

“This is so unfair. It’s so confusing.”

She giggled nervously. She walked in a circle, looking up and then around, laughing when their eyes crossed.

“You know, I had a dream about you the other night,” she said. “You came to me in a Latin lecture and handed me an envelope. Inside there was a card with a heart in it, a simple heart cut out of paper and coloured in with red pencil. I hoped you were going to turn up after class, and then you didn’t, and I realised how much I wanted you to be around. That was Wednesday.”

“Well here I am!”

She laughed again and let her voice trail off in a frustrated whine, walking away again and turning to come back.

“It’s just such bad timing all this. No one should have to make this sort of decision.”

“So there is still a decision to be made then?”

“Oh, please, Edward, no, no. Don’t keep on about it.”

“I’m really sorry. Honestly, I should never have said anything. I wouldn’t have said a thing if I knew there was someone else. Something you said gave me hope. I thought you were just out of a relationship.”

“I was. I am. But then I met this other guy. He’s in third year. Undergrad.”

Never demean the opposition, thought Edward, just keep hoping.

“Studying?”

“Science.”

They were both standing, facing each other, twisting on their feet and half smiling.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know. I always pick the wrong time.”

“It’s hard to get the timing right. Things just happen when they do.”

“Are you in love?” he asked.

Felicity began to nod, then slowly stopped. Gradually her head began to shake.

“Not yet. But there’s nothing wrong. Everything is nice with us. Maybe I will be.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “It just seemed so right here. Normally I don’t have the courage.”

She looked up slowly from the wet ground with mischievous eyes.

“It is right, and I want you to kiss me, but…”

“Perhaps I should try anyway?” Edward’s heart was pounding beneath his breastbone. All about him water was dripping. He could hear and smell and taste the world so well.

“I guess you could try,” she said, faintly.

Edward advanced rapidly, afraid of a change of heart. He put his arm around her waist and drew her in, and she placed her hands, a little cautiously, upon his shoulders. He closed his eyes and she closed hers, and their mouths came together in an awkward, mistimed kiss. Their teeth clashed. He kissed her again and she responded, but their mouths seemed not quite to fit, and they broke away, both feeling disjointed.

“Mmm,” said Edward. “Your face is even more beautiful up close.”

She skipped away from him.

“I thought our first kiss would be better than that,” she said. “I imagined you kissing me the way Ewan McGregor kisses.”

“How so?” asked Edward, a little shocked at the critique.

“I’ll have to show you,” she said, and she came for him, taking his face in both her hands and tipping her own face to one side. He tipped his head the other way and their lips met and this time they got the kiss right, full mouth sucking full mouth, their lips softer, more pliant. Edward warmed from his brief shock and Felicity seemed more enthusiastic now.

Once the kissing had begun it acquired its own momentum, moving forwards to familiarity and then to a sort of immediate necessity. Edward picked her up in his arms and held her there, kissing her further. Her small body was almost weightless and so he held her for minutes until he felt sure something larger must come of this.

An hour later she led him into her back yard and snuck him through the window into her bedroom.

 

 ********

Edward reached Parramatta Road at a trot, his coat flapping. With his breast thrust out, sloughing the wind, he might have warbled like a proud robin. The rain came on in clinging beads; undecided drizzle that reminded him he wore his only suit. It had been put through the motions this night and dawn, blessed and baptised then hung from a bed-post.

He swept under the tired awnings and faded signs, slowing to pace down the pavement. In the light spread evenly by the bright grey sky, he saw and loved this dirty, great road. Bereft of cars and with its bitumen black and clean, the run-down shop-fronts and two-bit businesses pooled forgotten glories.

He smelled her in the humidity of his warming body; her scent rising from his shirt as he thrust his arm out for a taxi.

“Good morning,” he said, settling in; relishing the soft neatness of the door’s closure. The driver smiled at him, happy simply to drive. Edward rested his hands on his knees and sighed. In the taxi, all he could smell was her. He could not stop smiling, despite his exhaustion. A vision of her naked form hung behind his eyes. Had it really happened? Had they really lain together, right through to the wet sunrise? Tired in the chest, his limbs just a little numb, he flowed home unhindered through lights that stayed green.

How he longed for a hot cup of tea. How lovely then to shower and towel, and simply to be so alive at dawn.

Posted in Novel Excerpts | Leave a Comment »

On Sadness: True Seeing*

September 10, 2011 by Professor Rollmops

“Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular.” – Johnathan Franzen, How to be Alone.

When you’re sad, you see things as they are. It’s a blessing and a curse, because whilst there’s nothing as refreshing as the truth, when it’s ugly it only compounds the problem of feeling sad in the first place. Sadness not only takes the sheen off things, but it also takes the screen off things. It denies us the levity required to accept things that we have tolerated rather than enjoyed. When its cause is sudden, and its magnitude is great, it pulls away the carpet that hid how cold the floor was.

This effect has many repercussions, some of which, if coupled with sufficient will, are positive. In the short term, however, it magnifies the sorrow. If we are unhappy with our job, then the work becomes intolerable. If we are unhappy with our home, then the place seems unbearable. If we are unhappy with our life in general, then even the most everyday situations can become awfully difficult, especially when preoccupied with the source of our depression. These peripheral circumstances, which cease, in the thick of things, to seem peripheral, can, however, be addressed, even though it might not be possible to address the original source of lament. Depression provides us with an excellent opportunity to become pro-active and to make important and necessary changes that we have delayed for too long. The only problem is, of course, finding the strength, positivity and determination to take these necessary steps when feeling so deflated.

This ability to see the truth in things also applies to human relationships. In situations where a dispute or disagreement has jeopardised a relationship, where we have neglected someone or paid insufficient attention to their concerns, we can more easily see the significance of this. Without the security of things being ostensibly well, when depressed, our egos deflate and petty points of order upon which we might have stood become so glaringly trivial as to seem repulsive. The sources of displeasure, of frustration that were present previously, seem as nothing to the possibility of losing the relationship altogether. The onset of a deeper sadness can cause us to see just how foolish we have been in handling aspects of a relationship, and how much more easily certain situations might otherwise be or might otherwise have been negotiated. It must be seen as a chance to remember, so fiercely, the example, as to prevent its repetition in future.

Sadness can, of course, be as selfish as it is selfless, especially in situations where two people are involved. Sadness can cause us to fall into ourselves, from which point of view it is difficult to perceive things through the eyes of others. We can too easily monopolise grief and see our own troubles as paramount over those of our friends or partners. We can hurt those around us with the inherent egotism of sorrow, just as easily as we can sympathise with them. And sadness can be a great source for sympathy. Just as we see the truth of our own lives, so we can see the truth of others. We can find a great deal of empathy in sadness, for we detect it so much more readily in others. Even if they cannot see their truth, when we are depressed, and utterly disillusioned, in the most literal sense, we can see through others. The fraudulence of things becomes most readily apparent.

One of the principal troubles of a heavy depression is that it becomes nigh impossible to enjoy oneself. In the case of the loss of a partner, when grief for their absence is the source of depression, it is hard to enjoy anything because the only perceivable source of happiness is their presence. Everything acts as a reminder of the person’s absence; the inability to share the experience with them makes it cold; the heightened desire for them to be there makes their absence more urgent and hurtful. Every guilty pleasure becomes a crass mockery of the fulfilment we crave from their company.

Time, and its passing, presents a dreadful dilemma. When a crisis is fresh and the rawness is absolute, the spirit is completely abject. Time passes awfully slowly and each day can seem interminable, yet we long for time to pass so we might be on the other side of things. Day one, day two, day three after a tragedy, without sleep, unable to eat, feeling sick in both head and stomach, wanting nothing but to curl up and cry out in agony, unable to do anything to alleviate the cause of the sadness, full of self-loathing, loneliness, and finding everything in one’s life abhorrent, in such a state, time is not your friend. It must pass for the healing to take place, it must pass so that distance can accrue between the cause of suffering and the present one inhabits, yet it crawls more slowly than ever at such times.

It also takes a long time to resolve problems and make changes. It can take months, for example, to find a new job, to find a new house. It can take months to bring about changes in oneself, of habit, attitude and outlook. And whilst we wish time would simply pass, that we might find ourselves six months into the future, sufficiently buffered from the source of hurt, time also acquires an urgency, a preciousness that it lacked when we neglected it. Where once it seemed alright, even delightful, simply to do nothing, when in the thick of an urgent depression, where one feels a very great need to change things, to change oneself, all time becomes of the utmost importance.

Recently, battered by a devastating break-up, once through the first two weeks of hellish torment, I wanted more time each day to write job applications, I wanted more time to read, to write, to watch quality cinema, to listen to classical music, to read poetry, write poetry, take photographs, meet new people, meet with friends. Time became something that must be spent well, always, with purpose, with energy, because doing things to improve the depressed mood and unhappy situation was the only way forward, the only apparent possible way to lay the foundations of a future happiness.

Not only did it seem to me that time must be well spent, but I found it especially difficult to enjoy anything lacking in depth. Deeply depressed and distraught, I was unable to stomach what I would call “popcorn” entertainments. Television radiated an unbearable artifice; all sport seemed not merely futile, but appallingly populist and anti-intellectual; popular music that had once cheered or stirred me, now seemed glib and insignificant; computer games that had so appealingly rendered a genre, now seemed so awfully genre. Almost everything acquired an aspect of irrelevance. I could no longer stomach the theoretical physics articles in the New Scientist, which I read every week, so baselessly speculative are some of them. Where is Occam’s Razor in theoretical physics, I ask you?

Feeling no artifice in the self, it was nigh impossible to stomach artifice in anything else. It is a strong recommendation of psychologists that one should seek fun entertainments when depressed. This strategy is no doubt successful in many instances, for lifting the mood is paramount when depressed and comedy, or any other light-hearted distraction, is one of the best means of going about this. “Popcorn” works to shore up the spirit against heavy moods. Yet, when I tried to take pleasure in amusing trivialities, I found they were not powerful enough to distract me from my thoughts. Indeed, they seemed unpleasantly frivolous. It was far better either to exercise, read a good book, or immerse myself in a symphony.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So it was that as I dropped the popcorn in the aisle, the quality entertainments grew once again in stature: great literature, great art, live performance, art-house cinema, classical music, opera and intellectual radio programs. Not that I had neglected these things entirely by any means, but, when plunged into a gloomy mood, they acquired an almost intense relevance as carriers of truth in art and emotion. Such thought, philosophy and talent have gone into “the canon”, that it offers the comfort of sitting at the feet of wisdom. I needed to hear intelligent voices; to be moved again by powerful art and ideas, to remember how much there is beyond the self.

It was thus in the great work of others that I found satisfaction; beauty, honesty and integrity, such important fundamentals when trying to lay the foundations for self-rehabilitation. Great art can teach us not only how to improve ourselves, but also how to forgive ourselves. It broadens our perspective and sympathies by teaching us about others, directly and indirectly. The meditative quality of a lengthy piano concerto; the range of moods in a symphony; the intense engagement with the emotional circumstances of a character in a film or novel; the overwhelming satisfaction of beholding a beautiful painting; all these works speak directly to emotion and require no artifice. They move us before we have time to think, but then we think, for we are moved, and it is, more often than not, a philosophical, reflective train of thought.

There are, of course, other more scientific avenues for rehabilitation; medicinal and therapeutic. In my own case, reluctant to go down the medicinal route, I took the advice of trusted friends and began to see a psychologist. I had always doubted the usefulness of such consultations, as I seemed to spend most of my life ruminating on myself and identifying my issues. Yet, it occurred to me that whilst I knew what was wrong with me, I wasn’t entirely sure what the best solutions were. Perhaps a psychologist could lend some assistance on this front.

Speaking with a psychologist is certainly an interesting experience. On one level, it’s nice to seem so important as to be worthy of discussion : ) On another level, being assessed by someone trained to rationalise and contextualise emotion and character is pleasantly reassuring. However well we think we might know ourselves, it is hard to see the wood for the trees much of the time, and to hear an intelligent and informed assessment of the big picture is an opportunity to replace the image of the self in one’s own head. It is a little like working with an editor to improve a narrative.

To know that we are, as Neitzsche said, Human, all too human is something of an unwelcome relief. To learn that anything learned can be unlearned, that one can in fact, with discipline, change habits of thought and behaviour, however long established, is, however, genuinely reassuring. People who have always driven on the left-hand side of the road, can, within days, drive comfortably on the right. People whose response to frustration is to become angry, can learn to prevent the anger developing. People who have a fear of talking to strangers, can, through practise, approach people without the irrational fear that their approach is an unwelcome intrusion.

Yet, all this requires a lot of energy and effort and many will, through the weight of their depression, lack that energy. Perhaps, in their instance, some form of medication would be beneficial. Perhaps, also, in such cases, they would do well to seek levity in light-hearted entertainments. I can only speak of my own experience, where quality art and psychotherapy have been immensely beneficial – as indeed, has writing. The process of creation provides an outlet, a means of channelling emotion, though regaining the concentration required to practise any art is a hurdle in itself. Each person must tailor their response to themselves and to the source of their unhappiness; yet perhaps the best starting point is to see depression as an opportunity. Clearly, things must change, and the sooner we seek to make those changes, the sooner we might find some form of emotional equilibrium once more.

Again, I reiterate, I can only speak from my own experience, and enough has been said on that front already.

adieu.

*True Seeing (Divination) Reversible

Sphere: Divination
Range: Touch
 Components: V, S, M
Duration: 1 rd./level
 Casting Time: 8
Area of Effect: 1 creature
 Saving Throw: None

When the priest employs this spell, he confers upon the recipient the ability to see all things as they actually are. The spell penetrates normal and magical darkness. Secret doors become plain. The exact location of displaced things is obvious. Invisible things become quite visible. Illusions and apparitions are seen through. Polymorphed, changed, or enchanted things are apparent. Even the aura projected by creatures becomes visible, so that alignment can be discerned. Further, the recipient can focus his vision to see into the Ethereal plane or the bordering areas of adjacent planes. The range of vision conferred is 120 feet. True seeing, however, does not penetrate solid objects; it in no way confers X-ray vision or its equivalent. In addition, the spell effects cannot be further enhanced with known magic. The spell requires an ointment for the eyes that is made from very rare mushroom powder, saffron, and fat and costs no less than 300 gp per use. The reverse, false seeing, causes the person to see things as they are not: rich is poor, rough is smooth, beautiful is ugly. The ointment for the reverse spell is concocted of oil, poppy dust, and pink orchid essence. For both spells, the ointment must be aged for 1d6 months.

From the Dungeons & Dragons – Players’ Handbook.

ps. “If you end up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.”

– Frank Zappa

Posted in Memoir, The Odyssey of Life | 2 Comments »

Last Smoke in Venice

September 7, 2011 by Professor Rollmops

This short story was first published in Wet Ink #22, March 2011.

This is a mix of fact and fiction, involving elements from four visits to Venice. Conspicuous by its absence, however, is perhaps my favourite Venetian anecdote, wherein, forgetting my key on the way to the shower, I was locked outside my hotel room at 0600 AM in nothing but a towel, for two hours. Three wonderfully adventurous octogenarian Kiwi ladies made me cups of tea and kept me company the whole time, which made up for not being able to photograph the sunrise, sorta. As to cigarettes, I took my last drag in New York, in April 2007 and don’t miss them at all.

Last Smoke in Venice

I had to give up. Again. I swore I’d never smoke another cigarette after the age of thirty on pain of cancer and, being superstitious, I believed it. For many shining months I didn’t have so much as a single drag. It was tough when waiting for trains. It was tough when drinking, tough after eating, tough with my afternoon coffee, tough when emerging from a film. In the end it was just too tough. After eight months, like a dog returning to his own sick, I found myself back sucking grime.

The truth is that I was already suffering from cancer: cancer of the discipline; cancer of the willpower. If I couldn’t control something as simple and straightforward as an addiction to a deadly poison, then what hope did I have of achieving anything worthy? I needed to find the strength, or perhaps the romance, for a ceremonial act of excision; the cigarettes had to go once and for all.

Travel was a serious problem. Every time I gave up smoking it would be a holiday that brought me back. It’s nigh impossible to resist cigarettes on the road. My resolve had failed in Tokyo, in the Balkans, in Italy, Spain and Greece. Wherever the smokes were plentiful and cheap, and whenever I was in a festive, campaigning spirit, out came the wallet and in came the poison.

Then it hit me. Perhaps I could turn the problem on its head. Perhaps I could make a journey just for the sake of quitting; pick somewhere special – new and exotic, or even an old favourite – go there, smoke myself silly until, in a chosen moment of unmatchable glory, I polished my final gasper.

I was excited by this idea. It was also a good excuse for another holiday, and I immediately began to think about where to go.

Four weeks later I flew into Bergamo, having decided on a forced march across northern Italy as a prelude to the glories of the Venetian lagoon. In five days I travelled through Como, Milan, Brescia, Verona, Mantua, Bologna, Rimini, and Ravenna, smoking all the way. On the night before I set off north for the floating city, I went out skulking. In the grey exhaust side streets, before a rainy fortress, I met some hooded men and bought some hash.

The following day was lost behind curtain rain. I took my time. At Ferrara I changed trains in a fish-tank world, fearing the worst for my visit to Venice. I was banking on sunshine for high-contrast, black and white photography, and of course, for plenty of outdoor smoking. Thankfully, as the train rattled across the causeway, the sun returned; shining low through departing clouds. The winds flicked raindrops like mounted archers peppering a column. It was late afternoon. The lagoon was bruise and silver blue.

At the station I ordered a coffee and smoked a cigarette on the steps outside the cafeteria. It was nothing special, but I enjoyed every drag. The first of my last cigarettes in Venice! I had booked a hotel in advance; a little two-star number only three minutes from the Piazza di San Marco. November was clearly a good time of year to visit; if only the fog and the rain might hold off. I set off into Venice down its old, paved ways.

I found my hotel without trouble. The heating worked, the bed was comfortable, the outlook simple but pleasant. The tiled floor was cool on my hot, tired feet and the shower ran with rare force. Having stopped at the supermarket, I opened the shutters and placed my supplies on the deep window sill; ham, cheese, bread, milk, pastries, and a two-litre bottle of cheap barbera.

Warmed, fed and spruced, I set off into light rain to commence my picturesque arrivederci to the smokes. I chose melancholy music to match the chilling beauty of the weather. I wandered without aim over bridges, stopped under awnings, leaned against dry walls, puffed my way down narrow alleys. After two hours the long day got the better of me and I returned to the hotel for another hot shower and some bed rest. I treated myself to one last cigarette; leaning over the street with a glass of milk. There were plenty of smokes left, so I didn’t count them. This may have been the final packet, but it wasn’t ration time yet. Below, the wet stones scuffed and echoed. I exhaled into the backlit droplets.

The following day dawned with a piercing blue sky. The air was mild and bracing and standing at the window I felt fresh. Ahead lay many indulgent hours of smoking and photography. I showered, made my lunch, ate my breakfast, and kicked off with a nice hit of hash. At seven thirty, I set out to walk the streets in awe.

I spent the morning circumnavigating the Arsenal; from here the Venetians had once ruled the eastern Mediterranean. It was no mean feat and yet, despite the size of the space, and not normally being one to judge a book by its cover, it had about it the quaintness of pre-industrial industry. The small, clean, pocked bricks of the wall belied the great scale of the business they once secreted.

I took the ferry to the Island of Burano. Despite the beauty of its rainbow streets, it left me empty and distant. My eyes were ever looking back to Venice; the floating city seemed so rare and precious that I could not stand long to be separated from it. Anxious, I rushed back to the ferry and returned post-haste.

By one in the afternoon I was half drunk. The bottle of barbera in my pack steadily lightened as I swigged my lost way through alleys and down canals. At two I followed the signs to the Rialto and waited to take up pole position. Once installed at the bridge’s summit, the sun swung into place and shone down the blinding Grand Canal. The water turned to a black steep of silver stars; oblivion overrun with ripple sparks. I shot in black and white, straight into the face of the sun, seeking out silhouettes, cigarettes hopping on my lips. It might be impossible to take an original photograph of Venice, yet if one can get the cliché just right, then perhaps there is art in that.

So, things were going nicely! If this really was to be my last packet of cigarettes, what better place could there be, what better than this? And there were other good signs to consider. For all the pleasure of the loving drags I took, I rued the pungent reek of my fingers and the oily prickliness in my cheeks. I allowed myself to enjoy the cigarettes, yet did not forget the many, immediate and obvious disadvantages; the stench, the dizziness, the heaviness in the lungs. How I longed for a scrub with soap and water.

I grew increasingly drunk on the Rialto Bridge and did not budge for two hours. By four in the afternoon I was exploding for the loo and finally abandoned my post. Back at my hotel room, relieved by a rumbling torrent, I lay on my bed to download my photographs and woke up, lap-top across my thighs, at eight in the evening. The day had gone, the sun had set; the clear sky had retreated behind fog and rain clouds.

Sunburned and beat; hungover and nicotined out, I set off into the clinging night for a final, tripod-mounted shoot. My impeccable sense of directionlessness got me lost in all the right places. I felt fraught with a wonderful longing that pained me to know what to long for. I stumbled across floodlit decay; scaffolding shoring up damp bricks; dead ends in the emerald murkiness. I looked for spots to sit, spots to smoke then leave behind for other spots, feeling at times both whole and halved.

I was woken at six by a booming siren. In my pillow-muffled ears it sang like the old factory hooters that once sounded so sonorously across Sydney. The low moan tugged me back to harbour sunrise; rinsed blues and yellows in a hazy glare. With the dawn colour of ocean behind my eyes, I recalled where I was. My lids fluttered, blinking away the chimneys and rusting cranes. I stirred, happy in my heat, and sent a foot to the temperate air.

A moment later I knew the siren’s meaning. It came with unexpected clarity. Some time ago, when reading up on Venice, a particular detail had stuck; that the sirens warned of floodtides. Their sounding called the city council into action and prepared the people for a day of sloshing. All across the sinking city, Venetians would be pulling on gumboots. I sprang out of bed feeling lucky. It was too good to be true. The surf was up.

From my window I could see nothing of the flooding, but my faith was strong. I showered and dressed quickly, emptying my pack of all that I would not need. I should have to return before eleven to check out, but there was plenty of morning before then. I sat by the window and rolled two joints, tucking them into my cigarette packet. There were only five smokes left. I made myself a packed lunch; over-buttered rosetta rolls, ham and chunks of hard, dry cheese; apples and chocolate. I ate half a packet of cupcakes, drank a pint of milk and went downstairs for a surprisingly bad coffee.

It was seven thirty when I left the hotel. Outside the door, to the left, the street came to a dead-end at a narrow canal. Here the water had spilled over the lip, but it was dry along the base of the wall. I stopped, eyes locked to the ubiquitous arched bridge opposite, and smoked up one of the joints.

Being morning, the first thing that hit me was the tobacco. I felt so light-headed that I leaned against the wall to avoid dizziness. Good old tobacco, wondrous nicotine, with its strange ability to relax and make uneasy simultaneously. The hashish came on strong as I turned back towards the main vein.

I soon found what I was looking for – the canal overlapping its banks. Along the promenade, heading west and south, the water had risen above ankle height. Men unloaded from barges onto these swilling pavements. The manmade banks with their pretence of ordering the ocean had lost authority to the swollen sea.

I stopped, aghast, in love, in awe, propped and fired off shots. The cigarettes were hot in my pocket; the sea air risen, sharp and salty. I pulled out a smoke and stuck it in my lips. I knew I was putting it on, narrowing my eyes, sucking in my cheeks, trying to look tough and cool, but that’s how I started smoking and that’s how I was determined to finish. It was an irresponsible stance, foolish and vain, but how I loved it here on this fired-up, overflowing morning, the thin sun yellow through a fug of fading mist. I set off for the fish markets; first stop on a long day’s march.

Along the lengths of the main thoroughfares, wooden platforms, like clattering old school desks, had been erected. Upon these people walked, one abreast, turning their shoulders sideways as they edged past each other. Alongside, vendors stood in calf-high water, wearing thigh-high, olive green gumboots. People leaned from the safety of the platforms and bought whatever they required. I stuck some Italian opera in my ears, highlights, arias, then walked up and climbed aboard the platforms. It was slow going and soon lost its novelty, so the first chance I had I hopped off onto an island of dry land outside a café. On a whim I went in and ordered a scotch, to put some fire in my belly. It went marvellously well with a cigarette. I stood outside watching people shuffle down the boards; I was high on the atmosphere, high on the romance, high on the nicotine. It was all going so well!

I made my way along the higher, drier streets, photographing everything I could: men slicing fillets from large and bloody fish; market stallholders and deliverymen unloading goods into handcarts; widows sloshing from their homes; bored gondoliers lamenting the clouds; waiters waiting. I wandered through these vignettes; hoping my camera could capture the narrative. Venice was such a tumult of stimuli that it had ruined my concentration. The emotional tugs in the arias; soaring beauty and epic despair, robbed me of the desire to force things. I abandoned all plans to visit galleries and museums. Despite the rich interiors, this was not a time or place to be indoors. I strolled on through the wet and marvellous gloom that grew across the morning, content to witness this decay and fading grandeur. Venice is a living ruin, the heart of glorious sadness. It was appropriate that under a leaden sky, chest heavy with the weight of awe, I was smoking my final cigarettes.

I stopped and had another whisky. It warmed me and loosened my shoulders. Cold was seeping in from the ever-present damp. The clamminess and slow oil of skin passed to memory with the macchiato chaser. I had another smoke, then washed up in the bathroom. I had only two cigarettes remaining and the thought was making me anxious. Doubts were beginning to creep in. What would really happen when the final one was smoked? How long before the joy of being clean was overcome by gnawing need? I wanted to be free of anxiety on this front, yet I felt the impending nostalgia of finality.

Time had flown and I had to get back to my hotel to pack my bags. I made a beeline and walked apace. I took a gratuitous extra shower, freshened up, packed and left right on the stroke of eleven. Once outside I took stock of how to spend the afternoon before the train and plane and coach ride home. All along I had been avoiding the obvious; I aimed myself towards the Piazza di San Marco to see how the floods had taken hold.

The Basilica sat on the shore of a tidal lake, rain-stained and murky gold. The walking platforms had been erected around the piazza, one line of which led directly into the church. The smooth-worn and deceptively soft marble shone with wetness and reflections. Under the cloisters the scrape of steps echoed; the air was sewn by the whispered gasps of voices and a ceaseless lap and plop. I stopped just before the entrance; the hot damp of a present congregation exchanging its breath with the outside cold. My interest was unfocussed; bemusement and preoccupation with the presence of water. I wanted only to sit undisturbed on a wet marble step and listen to the drops and ripples.

I turned straight around and headed back out, walking on the platforms to the side of the piazza. The three steps to the arcade were sufficient to keep it above the height of the water. I had missed the tide at its peak and cursed.

Walking to the opposite end of the square, I sat on the steps and opened up my cigarette packet. The moment was dawning and the ludicrous significance I’d attached to it filled me with the melancholy of pointlessness. Was my life so devoid of purpose or meaning that I had to resort to conceits such as this? On the other hand, should I not be pleased that I was able to take such a curiously indulgent holiday? One cigarette, one joint, that was it.

The time beyond smoking seemed like darkness. It was a significant step towards death; like losing my hair or being forced to give up dairy products. Yet, it was a good while since I’d smoked without guilt; the casual unconcern of youth had long since left me. I knew I would live more comfortably if I accepted the inevitable.

I fired up the joint. There weren’t too many people about and I figured they would be none the wiser. The smoke curled roughly into my lungs; harsh, dry tobacco; sweet, oily hash. I had taken the music out of my ears to be alert and watched the people around me. Only one person seemed to have an inkling of what I was up to; a lithe and pretty girl with long dreadlocks, in hipster jeans and a colourful, striped top. She was facing perpendicular and our lazy stares must have met somewhere out on the shallow water.

As the hash came on, I closed my eyes and breathed. I wanted some music that kicked me with its pith and began spinning the dial on my iPod. I loved all these songs but was growing tired of them. Then my eyes lit on something so apposite I could have wept. Fate was guiding me, lending this moment a whole new grandeur; Led Zeppelin, When the Levee Breaks.

The loud, echoing snare timed me into six minutes of heart leaps. I rocked back and forth with the slow grind of the intro, till Page’s spanking riff had me breathing in tears. The basilica rippled at the end of the square, mirrored in the flood.

The song built and built, up and up so my hair stood on end. Yes, this was the moment – the moment to finish with smoking. The levee was broken, the pigeons shat hard from the columns and pilasters; the heavy sky was threadbare with blocked silver light. My heart was full; rich with excitement and the anxiety of uncertain yearning. I held the moment as tightly as I could; sweating in it, rocking with it.

My eyes locked to the centre of the piazza, I noticed a break in the water where the tide was receding and the land revealed its uneven shape. Had the weight of the buildings pushed down the edges of the piazza, leaving a hump along the centre?

The song was drawing to a close, petering into repetition. I turned down the volume and smiled through its coda. Perhaps now was the time. The longer I waited, the more anxious I would become about commencing the final smoke. I picked up the packet and withdrew the cigarette.

It was in my fingers, ready to be applied to my lips, when I heard a scuffle to my left. As I turned my head, a bright, cheery face leaned into view, introduced by a waving hand. It was the girl with the dreadlocks.

“Hi,” she said.

I smiled; startled, embarrassed, and pulled out my earphones.

“Hello,” she said, “sorry to disturb you.”

“No problem.” I hadn’t had a conversation in English for four or five days and was surprised at the sound of my voice.

“I don’t suppose you have a spare cigarette?” she asked.

“Well, actually,” I began, but then my heart sank. How could I explain?

“It’s my last cigarette,” I said, “really my last one.”

Knowing just how old and tired this excuse was, I added, “It really is genuinely my last cigarette.” I showed her the empty inside of the packet.

“Oh, that’s cool,” she said, but she did not leave immediately.

I was not sure what she was waiting for. Did she want to share it with me? Did I really want her to go away?

“I guess you can have it if you like,” I said a moment later. “I’m supposed to be giving up.”

“Oh, no,” she smiled, “I couldn’t take your last cigarette.”

“No, go on,” I said. “Seriously. You can have it, I suppose. I don’t see why not. Or we could share it, if you like? I guess a little company’s a fair price.”

“For sure,” she said, beaming. She sat down beside me, closer than I could have hoped.

“I’ll start it, if you don’t mind,” I said.

“Go right ahead.”

She was English, probably from London, though I couldn’t be sure.

I put the cigarette to my lips and stoked it up. My final cigarette! The very last one! And here I was, completely distracted from my mission to savour it. I’d been dragged kicking and screaming from detached, heroic edginess into thoughts of lewd acts following an imagined pissed-up luncheon. Never could I have predicted such a dilemma. This would be a cigarette to remember – that much was certain, but how, how, how could I explain?

I passed the cigarette to her and she took her first toke. I watched her technique; it was practised and sure. She drew the smoke smoothly, without grimacing. She took three tokes then passed it back to me.

I was pleased to find the filter dry. I took my drag, thinking of things to say. There was so much from which to choose that I said nothing at all.

“Any plans for the afternoon?” she asked.

“Not especially,” I said. “How about you?”

“Nothing really. Just more sightseeing I guess.”

“Cool, me too.”

I passed her the cigarette.

“Are you here by yourself?” she asked.

“Yes. And you?”

“I am now,” she said, “my sister went home yesterday.”

“Cool,” I said, not really knowing exactly what was cool.

“Well, in that case,” she said, taking a drag and passing the cigarette back to me, “we’d better get some more cigarettes.”

I laughed and smiled at her. I liked the sound of “we.”

“Yes, I suppose we should,” I said.

The floor was falling away beneath me. Was I really about to get lucky? This had happened once before in Turkey; a grand opportunity arising just prior to my departure. I gave a woman my jumper – she was worried about being cold – and she smelled it saying it had the scent of a real man. I left and caught my flight on that occasion, yet here, already I was calculating the cost of skipping tonight’s. I had often joked about heading back to England overland. I felt an awkward, bowel-shaking mix of despair at the impending failure of a sacred mission and the longing to succumb to a rare romantic possibility. It would need some thought, it would need some good fortune, it would definitely require more cigarettes.

“Yeah, fuck it,” I said, exhaling out the side of my mouth, “let’s go get some more fags.”

Posted in Memoir, Short Stories, Travelogues | 1 Comment »

I thought I knew Donkeys

August 31, 2011 by Professor Rollmops

This short story is derived from an incident in Apuleis’ 2nd-century novel, The Golden Ass.

 

Part I

I thought I knew donkeys. I thought I knew a thing or two about asses. By all means they’re known to be temperamental, as stubborn as they are dependable, and some even say the gods take their form to keep an eye on the natures of men. This ass, however, was a very odd beast indeed.

I didn’t have him for long. He was in my company just a few short weeks. Yet, in that time I watched him closely, and there were things I noticed and dreams I had that spoke of his curious nature.

It was some time ago now, when I was stationed in Thessaly, near the town of Hypata, just outside of Larissa. One day I received orders to transport my commander’s gear from the fort to his new station, in the nearby town of Lamia. I set off to look for a suitable beast. I was not in a good mood, it must be said. My mate Strabo, who takes his wine without water, had filled me full of his impious libations the night previous. My head clanged like an anvil, my stomach was sour as old milk, and I did not feel the master of my temper.

On the way back into town I came upon a man riding an unloaded ass. What followed, it pains me to recount, was nothing short of shameful.

“Where are you going with that ass?” I asked.

The man, a dirty poltroon in such wretched, dishevelled clothing he could barely be said to be clad, glanced at me quickly then turned back to the road, saying nothing. I watched him a moment, dumbfounded, then called to him again, approaching closer.

“Where are you going with that ass?”

Again he ignored me, staring ahead like a dumb mute. I found this every insulting; coming, as it was, from such a peasant.

“You, beggar,” I shouted, marching up behind him. “Where are you going with that unloaded ass?”

Still the man said nothing. I wasn’t about to stand for anything of the sort, and so, without a moment’s hesitation, I took my vine-staff and clobbered him one over the back of the head. The blow knocked him clean from the donkey’s back, and he hit the ground like a basket of bricks. At last I had his attention.

“Sir, sir,” he gasped, all humbleness now, scrabbling at my feet. “Please, sir,” he whined, “I speak no Latin. Only Greek.”

“Alright, alright,” I said in Greek, embarrassed by this new-found sycophancy. “Quit your whining. I asked you where you are going with this unloaded ass?”

“Why, sir,” he replied. “He’s not unloaded. He’s carrying me.”

“Not any more he isn’t. Where are you taking him?”

“I’m taking him into town.”

“Well,” said I, “we need his services. The commandant’s gear is being transported from the fort.”

The man looked at me like a dumb beast. I don’t have much patience for fools, so I took hold of the ass’s bridal.

“He’s wanted to join with the rest of the baggage animals.”

I began leading the ass away.

“But sir,” cried the man, his face a mask of sorrow. “I paid fifty sesterces for him! He’s all I have.”

“It’s no use telling me your stories.”

“Please,” he begged, “sir,” he whined, “friend,” he pleaded, as though I was his brother. “Be more civil. I wish only the best for you and your men, for the success of the legion and the commander, for a swift promotion for yourself. I call upon the gods to give you these blessings, but please don’t take my ass.”

He grabbed at my feet, bowing and scraping on his knees. The blood ran freely from his head. I could see that I’d hit him too hard.

“And anyway,” he said, “it’s a useless beast and terribly vicious. It’s on its last legs! It has a horrible disease! There’s only just enough life in it to carry a few vegetables from my garden without collapsing. It’s not fit to bear your master’s equipment.”

The blow must have made him forgetful. Had I not just seen him riding on the beast’s back? It looked a fine enough creature to me. I kicked the man away and stepped up the pace. I was sick of the sound of his voice. He was like all the rest; a liar, a dodger, a sycophant. I was in half a mind to give him another whack and put him out of his misery. He came after me again, abasing himself, grabbing at me. It was the height of insolence.

“Please, please, sir,” he said.

He clutched at my feet and nearly tripped me over. Completely fed up, I turned and raised my cudgel to silence him. Next thing I knew, he grabbed me like a wrestler. Crouching right down, the scoundrel took me round the calves and heaved me up and over with uncanny strength. In the blink of an eye I was down on my back with the wind knocked out of me. Straightaway he was onto me. He hit me and bit me, then took up a stone and beat me round the head and shoulders. It was all I could do to protect myself from a fatal strike. His strength was phenomenal; I was powerless against his onslaught.

“Get off me,” I cried, reaching for my sword, “I’ll finish you once and for all!”

Seeing me go for my sword, the knave went for it himself, took hold of it, and hurled it away into the bushes. Now he resumed his attack with even greater savagery, raining down heavier blows. There were no witnesses, no one to intervene – if it went on a moment longer I’d be done for. I was nearly expiring already, battered and bruised and bleeding all over. It was the least I could do to protect my head. Then, after a terrific punch to the brow, I went limp. I lay like a corpse, playing dead, fearful that he would find my sword, or take a larger stone and finish me off.

Instead, however, my assailant stood back, surveying the scene with horror. Believing that he had done me in and fearful now of a capital charge, he panicked and bolted. Taking up my sword, he made off after the ass, who was already hotfooting it out of there. He caught him up, hopped aboard his sturdy back, and off they went towards the town. In a welter of shame, relief and exhaustion, I blacked out.

When I came around the day was well on its way towards evening. The air was thin and cool and full of the requisite dust. I could smell a trace of cooking fires from the fields and my stomach turned in hunger. I felt desperately thirsty.

I hauled myself up, a sorry sight indeed. If anyone had passed where I lay, then none had stopped to help. They’re all the same round these parts, a bunch of selfish good-for-nothings. Still, it was a relief not to have to explain myself, for I was ashamed and disgusted. To lose my sword was sacrilege. The thought of having to explain the beating I had received was bad enough, but to have lost my sword as well! Almighty Jove, I was in for it alright.

I stumbled towards town, head hanging low. The birds were settling into the trees and making a hell of a racket. I cursed them and all their twilight chirpiness; cursed all the insects that tickled my wounds. Soon, however, I began to curse myself. The more I thought about it, the more I knew that I only had myself to blame. I had been too rough with him. He was just another simpleton like all the rest. That ass must have meant a lot to him and I should never have struck him like that. Still, were it not for his rudeness we might both have been spared all this misery. After all, the army had every right to that ass. We take what we need, and that’s the way it is. I cursed the hides of both man and beast who had shown such stubborn arrogance.

As I neared the entrance of the town a group of farmers emerged, returning, I suppose, from the markets. They saw the state I was in and took pity upon me, asking how I had come to be this way.

“Please,” I said, “this is a criminal matter; a serious offence.”

I was ashamed to think how the town would view me should the story get round. I wanted to be rid of their sympathy as soon as possible. Thank the gods I was moving on to Lamia.

“But, sir,” said one, “you can hardly stand. You need help.”

“There,” I said, pointing to the town gates, “the soldiers will help me. It is a matter for the army, now leave me.”

I stumbled on, feeling the chides of their kindness. The smoke of the hearth fires was rising from the roofs, the softened bustle of the day’s end drifted from the dusty streets.

It was a relief to see Caecus and Appius on duty. I knew Caecus well and waved to him as I approached. The moment they saw how I looked, they came running.

“What happened to you, Marcus?”

“I was attacked on the road.”

“Are you alright?”

“I can’t speak of it here. Help me to the barracks, I’ll explain everything.”

“Here, take my cloak.”

Appius remained on duty while Caecus led me away. With the aid of his cloak, I passed unnoticed through the darkening streets. We went by the back ways and soon arrived at the barrack block. The moment I entered, my friend Strabo, already resting from his duty, leapt to his feet.

“Gods,” he said, “what happened?”

“Let me drink first.”

I made straight for the fountain. Strabo brought me a cup and I drank until I thought I would burst.

Soon the off-duty men had gathered around, anxious to hear my tale. Despite my disgrace it was such a relief to be alive and amongst comrades, that I felt a great urge to get the story off my chest. I called for wine to ease the pain and food to give me strength. With Strabo’s aid, I removed my clothes and took up a sponge to clean myself. With a cup of wine in hand and the sweetness of fresh dates on my tongue, I shared my story by the flickering lamps.

“Don’t worry,” said Phaestus, a man of local birth. “We’ll find this beggar and his ass and get your sword back.”

It was treachery, they declared, what this beggar had done. What right, after all, did he have to question my authority?

“It will be best if you stay in your quarters for a couple of days,” said Strabo. “If the commandant gets word of this, he’ll have you skinned. We’ll put the word out that you’ve taken ill with the fever.”

“But I’m supposed to transfer his gear to Lamia tomorrow.”

“A day won’t hurt. Tell him you were delayed on the road. Show him your scars – how well you defended his possessions! Now, describe again the appearance of this man who took your sword, and we’ll make sure to find him.”

“First thing in the morning,” said Phaestus, nodding. “We won’t rest until we get your sword back.”

The following morning, good to their word, the men went in search of my assailant. I stayed put in my cot, anxious for news and thankful of the rest. My ribs were bruised black and blue; my arms and thighs had taken a battering, my head pulsed like an open vein, but nothing was broken. If Fortuna wasn’t exactly smiling on me, she was at least wearing a smirk.

Just after midday I heard the sound of footsteps running into the barrack block. A moment later, a young soldier, Manius, burst into the room and shouted.

“Marcus, sir, we’ve found him! Come with me.”

Despite my stiff, sore body, I was on my feet in a flash.

“He’s holed up in some friend’s house and won’t come out. The friend denies he’s in there, but we know he’s lying. The neighbours ratted him out.”

“What about the ass? Finding the beast would make it plain.”

“There’s no sign of him – but listen; Strabo cooked up a story. He’s told the magistrates that the man we’re after has the commander’s silver cup. He said it was lost on the road and this man found it and won’t give it up. They’re on their way now, to try to coax him out.”

I dressed as quickly as I could; Manius assisted me with the buckles. The weight and pinch of the breastplate came as a stern caveat. I grabbed my cloak and we were off into the streets, marching as best as I could manage. It wasn’t long before we arrived at the house. It was a two-storey number with a shop downstairs selling grain and legumes. There was a big crowd already gathered round the front; all the nosy locals had come for a peep. Right in the middle of it all stood a man I assumed to be the owner of the shop, facing up to the authorities.

“It’ll only be trouble for you, Philo, if you don’t deliver him up.”

It was Spurius Posthumus speaking; a magistrate I knew and liked. He was short, but handsome; a straight talker who lived for the law courts.

“How many times do I have to tell you,” said the shop-owner. “Shall I swear on the Emperor’s genius? You’ve got the wrong house.”

“Come on, Philo,” said Posthumus, “enough of that. We know you’re an honest man and that you have a duty of hospitality. This theft could result in a capital charge. Your duty to the law brings no dishonour in breaking a bond of friendship.”

“Shall I say it a thousand times?” said Philo. “I don’t have anything to do with it.”

I moved up next to Strabo and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned and saw me and clasped my hand.

“Shsshh,” he said, “say nothing. It’s all in hand. The law’s on our side and it’s just a matter of time.”

“How did you find him?”

“It’s a small enough town. Apparently he’s a gardener for a private estate. He often sells legumes at the market. This man is one of his purchasers.”

Another of the magistrates now stepped forward. A local man whose name I never recall.

“If we have to stand here much longer,” he said, “things will only get worse for you, Philo. If you want to save your skin from a charge of aiding and abetting, then you’d better give this man up quickly.”

The shop owner seemed not at all frightened. Indeed, he maintained an air of calm shock that such accusations should be levelled at him. I’ve seen plenty of bad liars in my time, but this wasn’t one of them. He stood with his arms folded, his legs apart and his chin thrust out. His curly beard was tapered in the eastern fashion, and his eyes shone above this like those painted on temple statues.

“Come on, Philo,” said Strabo. “We know he’s in there. Your neighbour, good friend that he is, told us as much. He saw you let him in last night and we have it from others that this gardener is an old friend of yours.”

The crowd was having a great time watching the scene. Relishing the sunshine, unseasonably warm for this late in the year, they pointed and chattered and some called out, “give him up!”

“You leave us no choice but to search the premises,” said Posthumus.

“Search all you like,” said Philo. “You’ll only see what an honest man I am.”

The constables, who had accompanied the magistrates, went inside while the rest of us waited. Deciding it was best to remain inconspicuous, I kept my head down and watched the faces of the crowd.

Soon the constables emerged shaking their heads.

“We found nothing and no one. There’s not a soul in there, and certainly no ass.”

“What did I tell you?” said Philo.

“This is ridiculous!” shouted Strabo. “All you shop-keepers have your little hidey-holes from the taxman. If it’s not in the floor, then it’s up in the roof!”

The crowd had grown and were jostling to get a better view. I was shoved slowly forward, inside the ring around the shop. The other soldiers began to shake their fists and back up Strabo’s accusations; repeatedly invoking the name of Caesar. The magistrates, however, were preparing to leave.

Strabo turned back to Philo. “In the name of Caesar, bring him out!”

Philo stood firm, shaking his head. We might have stood there all day, bickering like a bunch of jealous wives, were it not for what happened next.

“Look, up there!” shouted one of the soldiers.

We all followed the line of his finger up to the roof. Just below the tiles was a small opening at the side of the building; placed to shed light into a loft. There, poking from the window, mostly in shadow but plain enough for all to see, was the snout of an ass.

“The ass! The ass!”

The crowd rushed forward, the magistrates gasped, the soldiers bellowed, and Philo slumped like an empty sack. The game was up. The constables rushed back into the shop and this time Strabo went with them, pointing with his sword to all the likely hiding places. They soon found the entrance to the loft round the back of the building. Gods only know how they’d had missed it in the first place, being big enough to winch up an ass. A ladder was soon brought and up went the men.

I waited outside; worried should my sword come to light and with it the truth of the matter. The crowd were laughing and calling for Philo to give up his gardener friend. Philo said nothing. He sat on the pavement with his head sunk against his chest. I felt sorry for him, liar that he was. After all, weren’t my own friends lying even now on my behalf? I had not forgotten that my own foolishness had brought this sorry business into being.

Strabo soon emerged from the shop.

“Where is he, Philo? Save us the trouble, would you?”

Philo shook his head. In his shame he had clammed right up.

A shout came from inside.

“Look here!”

The crowd surged towards the doorway. Inside the shop, a rug had been lifted, revealing a trapdoor. One of the constables opened the trapdoor to reveal a space filled by a large, wooden chest. He whipped off the lid and there inside, cramped and gasping for breath, lay a terrified man – the very one who had caused me so much pain!

“I’m innocent,” he shouted. “This has all been a mistake!”

“Innocent, huh?” said one of the constables. “So innocent you had to hide yourself under the floor!”

This set the crowd howling with laughter. The constables dragged the man out onto the streets, where everyone craned for a look. This business had caused such a stir in the district that peddlers had gathered at the fringes. It was a veritable market day, though I can’t confess I was feeling very jovial at this point. If that gardener was to start making accusations, things might turn awkward. The magistrates, however, weren’t interested in any public hearings. Without hesitation they ordered my assailant to be taken off to the prison. As they dragged him past, I turned my face from his sight, afraid should he meet my eyes.

Posthumus approached and stood over Philo.

“Don’t think I’ll be forgetting about this,” he said. “It’s lucky for you that this crime has such an air of public entertainment, else I might feel a lot less inclined to be lenient. You can thank the spectacle of that silly ass for your reprieve.”

With this he turned his back and set off. The other magistrates and constables followed. Everyone seemed to have forgotten about the supposed silver cup.

“Bring out the ass,” called a man in the crowd.

“Bring out the accomplice!” shouted another.

All manner of jokes were being bandied about now, playing on the theme of the peeping ass.

As though he knew he was being talked about, which in hindsight, I don’t any longer doubt, the ass let out a loud bray from up in the loft. The crowd cheered and applauded.

In the meantime, Manius and two other soldiers were working to bring him down. With a rope and pulley fixed to the roof of the loft, they strapped him in and slid him down the ladder, bringing him in through the shop.

Now that the gardener and the magistrates were gone, I went inside. Strabo was there still, searching in the hide-away. He had helped himself to some wine.

“You can relax,” he said quietly. “I have your sword.”

He lifted his cloak and showed me where he had placed it, wrapped in a cloth and stuck into his belt.

“Try this, it’s good,” he said, offering me a cup.

I took a sip and it was indeed good. Nutty and syrupy, yet it only served to make me realise how thirsty I was. Philo now walked back inside. He looked both dejected and concerned, and I guessed he was worrying about the fate of his friend.

“I suppose you think you can just help yourselves, do you?” he said.

“You should be lucky we don’t take the lot,” I replied.

Philo looked at me, penetratingly, and I lowered my eyes. He must have known the truth of it and had likely guessed my role in things; scratched and bruised as I was. Seeing this in his face, my feelings turned once more to shame.

Outside in the street, the crowd was beginning to thin. They had all seen the donkey and the spectacle was over. The hawkers began to drift off.

Strabo joined me, smiling with his squinty eyes.

“Not bad for a day’s work,” he said, taking out my sword and handing it to me. “I don’t know why these criminals bother. The world is full of snitches.”

Now Manius approached me, leading the ass.

“There you go, sir,” he said, handing me the rope. “A prize for all your trouble.”

The ass looked up at me. His eyes were wide and sullen. If anything, he looked resigned, almost bored.

“Thank you,” I said, to Manius. “He’ll make a fine recruit.”

And that, you see, was how I came into possession of the ass.

 

Part II

I wish I was a better man, but I’ve always been a bully. It’s why I wound up in the army, after my father spent his whole life working to get out of it. Were it not for my disreputable lethargy and uncontrollable temper, I should have risen up the ranks already and found my own way out. They say the army teaches you discipline, but we all know that garrison life is a licence for bad behaviour. And here, in the land of Dionysis, bad behaviour is practically a virtue.

So, by such means, the ass became mine. As to his previous owner, I cannot claim to know his fate, though I can claim to have had a further hand in it. Is it boastful of me to account for the wrongs I tried to right? Looking over this, I see that already I’ve tried to excuse myself. It’s also true that my account has drifted from its purpose, so I’ll keep it brief.

The following morning, stiff and sore, but a good deal better rested, I went into town to make an appeal to the magistrates on behalf of the gardener, my assailant. Without telling the whole truth, I told sufficient of it to make plain that this man’s crime was merely to have overreacted to extreme provocation; that his guilt was of a much lesser nature than first supposed. I requested that he be treated with leniency, indeed, that he should be released immediately, without any fear of his offending again in future. He is not of criminal mind or intent, I pointed out. He is a poor man who was treated with injustice. Sadly, it must be said, the magistrates were only too familiar with the corruption and brutality amongst soldiers; they accepted my story without fuss, having already had their suspicions about the events of the day before.

“Too often the law comes down on those who kick against the pricks,” said Spurius Posthumus. “You bully a man until he fights back, then put him away for assault. That’s justice for you.”

It was Thucydides, a Greek sure enough, who said that justice is the plea of the weak when they can’t enforce their own interests. It is indeed true, yet only the hard of heart would hold it as doctrine. I did not, however, offer financial compensation. I am not so soft as to throw money away, and besides, it would be tantamount to admitting my complicity.

I returned to the barracks and inspected my ass. It seemed a fair prize for the morning’s philanthropy. He was firm of leg and sound of body – his back young and strong, not yet bowed by seasons of bearing. He was a handsome beast with cunning eyes, broad flanks and a fair round gut. He protested as all asses will when subjected to a bath, though when I brushed him down and cleaned behind his ears, I do swear he showed a certain embarrassed pleasure. Owing to a small patch of red above his nose, I decided to name him Rufus.

Keen to avoid further trouble, I made preparations to leave as soon as possible. I took Rufus to the fort and there spoke with the quartermaster. It was fortunate that the commandant had already left, or else I might have had to meet with him in person. Along with the commandant’s equipment, I was given a letter of introduction and told to report to one of the town councillors in Lamia.

I loaded up the ass, and, just after midday, led him out on the road, arrayed in full military panoply. For amusement, I placed the helmet atop his head and strode with as much of a swagger as my bruised body could manage. For a travelling Roman soldier, it’s important to keep up appearances. I had made use of some ladies’ ointments to disguise my cuts and bruises, and hoped the polish on my shield and sword should be sufficient to deter any would-be assailants. The main roads are fairly safe round these parts. I suppose people such as myself have seen to that.

The journey was pleasant, despite the dust and heat. The road was regular and I strolled at an easy pace. As we walked into the flat country, I passed the time, musing to my ass. There seemed to be something conversational in his occasional grunts, and after a time I fancied he was listening.

“I would like to get married,” I told him. “But not to the local girls. It’s all very well to fall in love, but marriages must be politic. If I play my cards right I can hurry along up the ranks.”

“Eee-or,” said Rufus.

“And what of you, Rufus? Have you had much luck with the ladies? You certainly seem well enough endowed.”

He let out a strange, and very sanguine moan, and I pitied him; for the hairy flanks he must have to mount.

“Still, I suppose you fancy them in your asinine way.”

We entered the town towards evening. I had never been to Lamia, and as I drew closer it struck me as an attractive place. It was built on a slight rise above the plains, with numerous trees standing tall over the rooftops. The town had no walls, but soldiers were posted on the main road. I greeted them and explained my business. They gave me directions and I set off into the quiet streets. I had little trouble finding the councillor’s house, and soon enough Rufus and I stood before a fine building with a half-columned entrance and painted frontons decorating the roof.

I was greeted by a soldier on the doorstep.

“Here at last, I see.”

“Yes,” I replied. “I was attacked on the road yesterday and my injuries caused the delay.”

The soldier grunted and reached out for the bridle.

“I’m to take these things to the barracks. You, for some reason, are to remain here this night.”

“I’d rather come with you, if that’s alright.”

“I’m afraid not. You are to remain here. You should consider yourself lucky.”

“But I wish to keep this beast. I paid fifty sesterces for him.”

“You can keep the beast, but I need him for now.”

“Will you return him to me?”

“If I can, I shall do so tomorrow.”

Rufus grunted and hung his head. I wondered if perhaps he was growing fond of me.

The soldier placed me in the hands of a household servant then set off, in accordance with his orders, to report to the commandant. The servant led me round the back of the house and in through a small stable. I was shown to a vacant slave’s cubicle by the kitchens, where I was supposed to sleep. Despite the lowly conditions and the councillor’s apparent lack of interest in his guest, I was relieved not to have to report to the barracks, if somewhat baffled as to why this was so. I was given meat and wine and a basket of fruit, and after a wash-down in the yard, I turned in for an early night.

The following morning, the soldier who had greeted me on arrival returned with Rufus. He informed me that I was to reside here until the commandant was ready to see me.

“Why am I not to see him?”

“You must have done something right,” he said. “We’re all busy up there, putting the new place in order. There’s a thousand men digging ditches and putting up walls. No one ever tells me a thing, but it looks like they’re moving the garrison for good.”

I already knew this to be the case, but merely shrugged and nodded. The soldier’s words had troubled me. In the army, you get used to uncertainty, but no one likes it. Being singled out for special treatment could be as much a curse as a blessing, and I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted either.

It was another two days before I was ordered to report to the commandant. I amused myself by walking around the town and the local countryside, resting my sore body and talking to Rufus. I took him with me through the streets and amongst the farms, riding him whenever I grew weary.

I passed much time inspecting the whores around the theatre. They were for the most part a pretty desolate bunch, with hollow eyes and sunken dugs; but some of the younger ones caught my eye. What surprised me was how they seemed to catch the eye of Rufus as well. He often brayed and grunted in the presence of finery, and I soon learned to follow his gaze to the more delicious of these creatures.

“You certainly have good taste, my friend. She’s a real delight indeed.”

“Ee-orr,” said Rufus.

In particular I noticed that he had a penchant for fine patrician ladies, few though they were round these parts. He would raise his nose to a waft of perfume and take from it such pleasure as I’d never before seen in an ass. On several occasions I caught him wandering off down the street on the trail of a beautiful woman. I’ve heard that desire can come in equal measure for different beasts, but that it should be so consistent with my own was unheard of in my experience.

Rufus displayed many other curious habits. He showed little interest in the oats and hay I offered him, yet would stop by all the stalls and nod his head towards the meats and stews. I’ve never known an ass to eat flesh, yet he seemed very fond of it and would stand salivating by the open kitchens.

I also had trouble keeping him from wandering into gardens. He seemed strangely fond of flowers and would rush to devour them first chance he got. Odder still was how quickly he lost interest after his first few mouthfuls, walking away seemingly disconsolate.

One night I was sent a strange dream. Rufus and I were in the markets sampling the quality of various goods. We stopped by a weaver’s stall to inspect the tunics and cloaks, and I showed various of them to Rufus who gave his opinion on this or that, showing, once again, quite discerning taste. It was only after a while that I realised not only was Rufus speaking to me, but he was standing on his hind legs in the manner of a man!

When finally I received orders to report to the commandant, the fears I had been suppressing returned to me. Though I had tried to avoid him through indolence and fear of extra duty, he was not a bad man and had been friendly to me in the past. Still, I was afraid that he knew something of my encounter with the gardener. Perhaps I was to be given slave’s detail or flogged in front of the men.

I was marched through a busy construction site where many familiar soldiers toiled in the cool, dry conditions. The commandant’s quarters were in a new building, three-storeys tall, with a view right across the town and out to the plains. The bricks were still bare and unfaced, while the entrance lacked steps and had in their place a wooden ramp.

I steadied myself for what was to come and strode in past the guards.

“Marcus,” said the commandant. “You’re looking well.”

There was a hint of sarcasm in his voice, but I was determined to play it straight.

“Thank you, sir.”

“I have a job for you, Marcus.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Yes, you should thank me. You’re a lucky man, indeed, if at times a complete buffoon.”

He glared at me sharply and I felt his eyes like pinpricks. He was very tall, almost half a foot higher than me, and his lean frame gave him the aspect of a skeleton.

“First things first. Don’t think I don’t know about this business with your sword. Don’t even begin to wonder how I know, just rest assured that nothing escapes my notice. That’s why I’m at the top of this steaming pile. You’re a smart man, but you’re also a damn fool. I should have you flogged for being such a clumsy ass, but I know you’re worth more than most of these other imbeciles.”

He moved to the window, wide and uncovered, gazing over the plains. It all seemed a little theatrical to me.

“Maybe it’s this place, with all its witchcraft and trickery,” he mused. “A man has to be careful to keep himself from going bad.”

He turned and faced me directly.

“I’m sending you to Rome. I want you to take a dispatch to the Emperor, but most of all I want you to disappear for a while. We can’t have word getting around and you being a laughing stock.”

His eyes narrowed.

“Wipe that goddamned smile off your face!”

What a shock his words gave me. I hadn’t even noticed, but I must have started smirking. For a moment I believed he would retract his decision and have me flayed alive. Was I really being sent to Rome? This was a great privilege, not a punishment.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t think you’re off the hook, soldier,” he said. “This is more than you deserve and I expect you to take note of that fact and pull yourself together. Take this chance to straighten yourself out and come back a man. Unfortunately, you’re the best-educated man in my pay and it’s probably time you were promoted. You know you’re a cut above the others, so prove it.”

“Thank you, sir. I will carry out my duty with all care.”

“Yes, you had better do so.”

He picked up three scrolls on his desk and offered them towards me.

“Don’t forget, I could just as easily put a shovel in your hands. Make whatever preparations you need to make, draw your allowance from the quartermaster, then leave as soon as possible. I want you gone by this evening.”

I concluded my business with the army and walked back into town. The coins were reassuringly heavy in my purse. For the sake of speed I would be using post-horses for the journey, and had little choice but to sell Rufus. I took him with me to the marketplace, and there, standing in the centre of the square, announced my desire for a quick sale. I was not concerned about the price, yet when a couple of ruffians approached me, I refused the sale out of feelings for the ass. I had grown very attached to him, more so than with any other beast before, and I wanted to be sure he went to good owners.

I was soon approached by a pair of finely-clad brothers. They were the well-to-do slaves of a rich master, Thiasus of Corinth, who had recently risen to the quinquennial magistracy: a pastry cook and a chef, who seemed rather fond of themselves.

“We only want him to carry food from the markets to the kitchen. If you really are worried about his welfare, then you needn’t be,” said the more portly of the two.

This seemed a happy enough situation for Rufus, and I certainly didn’t quibble when they offered me eleven denarii – a handy sum for an ass that cost me nought but cuts and bruises.

“Feed him well,” I told them. “But be careful. He’s very fond of the ladies.”

I took their money, gave Rufus one last scratch behind the ear, then turned my back on him and walked away. Before I had reached the other side of the square, I was struck by a terrible sense of loss. I stopped and turned for one last look, feeling as sorry as a child. The sight of him being led from the market brought a lump to my throat. What in the heavens was wrong with me? How little tenderness there had been in my life of late! Still, I had much to be thankful for. I was off to Rome.

 

Part III

There is little point in me recounting my journey from Greece to Italy and back. Suffice to say that it was made all the more remarkable by unseasonal storms and various diversions. I was a happy traveller and a very lucky one at that, and the many towns and cities through which I passed filled me with wonder at the greatness of Roman enterprise. I had hoped to meet the Emperor in person, but as I grew closer to Rome my nerves wore ever thinner at the prospect. In the end, I was spared an audience, and passed my commander’s dispatches to his trusted staff.

Three months later, I returned to Lamia to report the success of my mission. The commander was very pleased with me and told me I might expect my advancement to begin sooner rather than later. He was right to place his trust in me, for the journey had given me much time to reflect on my conduct and maturity.

After just two days back, whilst in the marketplace purchasing a new tunic, I recognised one of the two slaves to whom I had sold Rufus the ass. The fatter of the two.

“Hail,” I cried, approaching him. “You work for Thiasis of Corinth, yes?”

“Yes,” he replied. “Is something wrong?”

“Not at all. You have likely forgotten, but I sold you an ass some three months ago. Here, in this very market.”

“Indeed! Of course!” He seemed to become unduly excited about this and took me by the upper arm.

“That ass you sold us turned out to be quite a surprise,” he said. “Quite a surprise I can assure you!”

“How so? Is he still alive?”

“Oh yes, he’s still alive. And more alive than ever, it would seem!”

“What do you mean?”

“Listen up. A month ago we caught him eating all the best left-overs in the kitchens. At first I thought it was Agapios, my brother – the finest cuts had been disappearing for some time and no ass should have a taste for cured meats, sweets and other savouries. But, when I pointed the finger at him, he pointed it straight back at me. So the two of us sat up one night, spying on the kitchen, and sure enough, it was that ass of yours!”

“Ha!” I laughed. “He always seemed to have finer tastes.”

“Did he ever! But who could have guessed what would happen next? When my master heard of this he was so amused and intrigued that he invited the ass to dine at his table! When presented at the dinner table, he sat down on the couch as any man might, as though he were born to it, and showed himself to have perfect table manners. Not only could that ass nod and blink and bray in answer to questions, but he would, in his way, with his looks and his gestures, call for more wine! In the time you were gone, he became the talk of the town – so much so that all the local dignitaries came to witness this great spectacle. My brother and I have worked overtime ever since, for every night the noblest guests, happy to pay for the privilege, came to dine with my master and his ass.”

“Extraordinary! How can it be? Is he some sort of god?”

“Who knows? Many think that he is, my master included. Did not Zeus take the form of a bull? Did not Apollo once change the ears of Midas into those of an ass? Perhaps he has been punished by the gods, for some awful crime.”

“Or cursed by some black magic!”

“All the local philosophers and priests have their take on it. Some say he is just a clever beast, for you know as well as I that some are much smarter than others. Others say, as you have, that he was a man, transformed by witchcraft. Those who believe him to be a god can’t decide if he is a new god or an old one, come amongst us. No one risks offending him.”

“Where is he now? Can I see him?”

“He is on his way to Corinth. My master has returned to host his great games. He himself is riding the ass, and I believe he intends to make a great show of him in his home town. My brother has gone while I must stay here to keep house.”

Despite the sincerity with which his tale was told, I found this all very hard to believe. Yet, in the days that followed, I heard more and more gossip about the wondrous nature of this ass. The bawdier women spoke brazenly of their longing for his seed; the men of the town wished to be blessed with a member as thick as his. Increasingly, I felt a great sense of privilege; that if he were a god, then perhaps I had earned his favour by treating him with kindness. Yet, also I felt a grave sense of loss once again, as I had at our parting. To have traded away such a wonder for a few denarii seemed an inconsolable error of judgement!

I had little choice but to get on with my job and received, in due course, my promotion. As a Duplicarius I was now exempt from common duties and found my income doubled. I was thankful for this and made as good an account of myself as possible. Having witnessed the splendour and dignity of Rome’s cleaner districts, I was filled with ambition to rise higher still. Yet, all the while I could think of little other than my old friend Rufus.

In the weeks following my return, talk of the ass died down, as such things will without fresh incident. Then, after a month some news finally arrived. A travelling merchant, recently arrived from Corinth, stood himself on a stool in the market and called for the crowd’s attention.

“Wondrous news I have! People listen up!”

The crowd closed in and craned their necks. There was never anything so exciting as fresh news from afar.

“Citizens, hear me! You recall of course the recent tales of the divine ass in the household of Master Thiasis? Well, you’ll never believe what I’m about to say, but it’s all perfectly true!”

Like any good teller of tales, the man was drawing out his introduction until he had the full attention of the crowd.

“Citizens! Hear that upon his arrival in Corinth, preceded by his reputation, the divine ass was greeted with much enthusiasm. Not only did the local nobles all come to inspect and dine with him, but it is said that even women of patrician rank were paying a fortune to spend the night with him!”

This set the crowd roaring with laughter. He certainly had their attention, and indeed, mine.

“Believing him to be divine, and hoping they might become the vessel of a divine child, they risked not only their reputations, but their bodies as well! Soon master Thiasis, benevolent magistrate that he is, put on his glorious games; a great spectacle with largess for all and sundry. As a culmination of his week-long celebration, the master placed the divine ass on centre stage. There he was – ladies, cover your ears! – to make merry with a local prostitute. A real beauty, mind you, so that the people might see how gods are made! Yet, the divine ass, seeing this as beneath his holy dignity, baulked at the prospect and turned to flee the arena! He ran with such fury that no one could capture him, and soon he had lost himself in the streets.”

“What next friend? Did they find him?”

“They did not find him, but it seems that he found himself!” cried the merchant. “Several days later, reports came from the nearby town of Cenchrae that, during a procession of the goddess Isis, an ass had joined the worshippers. Amongst the priests he strode, walking in supplication before the idol. What happened next is beyond the old tales of legend. For, there, amidst the faithful, it is said, the divine ass consumed a bouquet of roses, and was transformed into a man!”

I felt tight beads of sweat break out upon my brow. I noticed that my knees had gone weak and my palms moist. The crowd hurled questions at the merchant, who assured and reassured that all he said was true. I had several questions of my own, but found myself unable to speak and in great need of sitting down.

Was it indeed possible, that Rufus had been a man?

“What was this man’s name?” called one of the crowd. “Tell us his name!”

“His name was Lucius, though I know not of which family. He was not a native of these parts, but travelled here on business.”

I listened further to the queries and answers. The merchant was adamant that events had transpired just as he said, and though such happenings were not common in this everyday world, I knew in my heart that he spoke the truth.

I found myself drifting away, my thoughts turning on recollections of Rufus. Had I indeed been kind enough to him? Had I treated him well? Was it possible that he was a divine agent, or indeed a god himself? Not a superstitious man, and hardly one for spending my coppers at the temple, I felt a great need to make a sacrifice. If I had, in anyway, offended this creature, then custom and common sense demanded all precaution.

If the goddess Isis was the patron of this wondrous ass, perhaps even his mother, then it was from her that I must beg protection and forgiveness. She was not a goddess to whom I’d ever given much thought, but like a great extended family, they all tugged at the folds of each other’s robes. I turned my soldier’s feet towards the sacral district where a small, new temple to Isis had been erected just five years ago. There, through the rising, aromatic smoke, in an expensive show of piety, I hoped to insure my soul against calamitous fate.

Posted in Short Stories | Leave a Comment »

Downfall

August 30, 2011 by Professor Rollmops

This is an account of my father’s dreadful head injury which happened on May 10, 2005. I finally got around to writing up the notes…

At quarter to five on a Monday afternoon I received a call from my mother telling me my father had fallen off a ladder and suffered a head injury. She was unsure exactly how severe it was, but he was “in a pretty bad way.” I ran out of my flat and took a taxi across town through peak-hour traffic, thinking how ironic it was that only moments before I’d been dozing at my desk, conjuring excuses not to go to university that evening.

When I arrived at Emergency at St Vincent’s Hospital, Darlinghurst, I had no reason to suspect it would become so familiar to me. I found my mother in a small waiting room beside reception, drinking a cup of tea and looking composed but bewildered.

“Oh, Benjamin,” said my mother. “Thank god you’re here.”

Before I’d had a chance to say boo to her, a social worker introduced herself as Julie and asked if I too would like a cup of tea. I said I would, then turned to my mother.

“What happened?”

“Your father was fixing the awning and he fell off the ladder. The lady who lives upstairs over the road saw him and called the ambulance.”

“But how bad is it?”

“Oh, he looks awful.”

“But how had is it?”

“I don’t know. They haven’t told me yet.”

Very little news had come through and, this, coupled with the shock, made it difficult to feel properly panicked or upset. I still felt a lingering air of inconvenience. How bad was it, for goodness’ sake?

Over the ensuing two hours our fears increased significantly as we learned more about the damage to my father’s head. On the surface there was a fracture at the back of the skull after a direct impact from a fall of between two and four metres, plus his two remaining front teeth had been knocked out. His neck and back were also uninjured, badly bruised and grazed, yet our biggest concern was about the state of his brain.

At last we had a visit from a young English doctor who told us how things stood.

“It’s a very serious injury,” he said. “To be perfectly honest, we can’t give you any guarantees at this stage. The next forty-eight hours are crucial. With an impact like that the brain can swell up so much it can cause a haemorrhage or stroke by pressing too hard against the casing as it expands. We just have to hope the swelling isn’t so bad. It’s a wait and see situation. There’s not a lot we can do.”

My mother clasped my hands and gasped back her tears. She was too thankful with the doctor, embarrassed by her own emotion. The doctor was handsome and kind and she wanted him to know he was a good man.

Shortly afterwards we were joined by my older, half-brother Dirk.

“What’s he done this time?” asked Dirk. “He just wants to be the centre of attention!”

I felt reassured once Dirk was there; with the news growing darker, numbers would help to shore us up against despair. Julie brought more tea and sandwiches and offered more comforting words. I soon began to feel sorry for her, coming face to face daily with others’ tragedies.

At seven-thirty we received word that we could see my father and we kicked immediately into gear. Julie led us via the spacious lifts to the Intensive Care Unit on level five. We emerged into a wide, hundred-foot long, linoleum-paved corridor. A garish series of canvasses stretched along its length. It was my first taste of a place that would become indelibly familiar to me over the next week.

We were led straight to the I. C. U. waiting room where we were introduced to the neurologist, Surita. She had conducted the first C.T. scan.

“There is a lot of bruising and swelling of the brain,” she said. “And until the swelling stops there is a very real risk of haemorrhage.”

It was the same news; she could tell us nothing different. Having already plumbed the depths of the worst-case scenarios, there was little left to be shocked about. The English doctor we had met before, whose name was Kevin, rejoined us. He was in a chirpy, sympathetic mood and he cheered my mother up no end. Ironically, that afternoon my parents had arranged to meet and see the film Downfall. Kevin jokingly suggested that since my mother was now without a date, he ought to take her himself.

It was another half hour before we were admitted to the Intensive Care Unit. We walked through in silent anticipation and reverence. There was activity all around, but I was compelled to focus only on my father. There he was, laid out, bloated and bloodied.  At first I struggled for equanimity against the sight of his breathing tube and the small pool of vibrating blood caught in its corrugated U-bend. In the thin line draining fluid from his lungs via his nose, pockets of bile shunted down towards a bag remaining mercifully hidden. I was saved by the whiff of hospital fluids, a tusk of alcohol riding the bestial emissions of bodies in crisis. I feared that I too, like my brother Matthew, might be prone to blood injury phobia; a mix of anxiety and disgust leading to a sudden loss of blood pressure which had caused him recently to faint and suffer a severe concussion upon a visit to see his girlfriend in hospital. I gripped the railing of my father’s bed and smiled with false courage.

My father was battered, damaged, hanging in the teeth of death. Yet he was also a tough old bastard and if anyone could keep themselves alive through sheer bloody-mindedness it was him. He was in an induced coma, to stop him struggling against the bonds. Apparently he had wrestled with the paramedics, ordered them from the house in a stream of filthy insults. It was incalculably fortunate that our neighbour had seen him. In the aftermath of his fall he had lain like a felled giant, flat on the bricks gushing blood. Yet still he had regained his consciousness, crawled to the kitchen, dragged himself to his feet and carried himself off to bed. He would have died there had he remained undiscovered; drowning in his own fluids as his gums poured blood into his lungs. I surmised that, in landing, his arm had swung back and through his teeth; what appeared by comparison a minor, cosmetic injury, might have been the final straw in this calamity. We stood and watched him a while, taking turns holding his hands and whispering words of encouragement, inaudible to him, but reassuring for us. We would need to maintain high morale for there was little chance this would be over in a hurry.

That night, I went home to my parents’ house with my mother and from there I immediately phoned my oldest friend Gus. He had done his PhD in traumatic brain injuries and would be able to tell me everything I needed to know.

“If it’s as bad as you say,” said Gus, “then he’s going to be out of action for a long time.”

“How long?”

“Months. Maybe three or four months to recover. It all hinges, of course, on how bad the damage is and how long the post-traumatic amnesia lasts. Post-traumatic amnesia effects the ability to form new memories. He’ll be able to remember the past, but it’ll be almost impossible to form new memories in the present. For a while anyway.”

“How long?”

“That’s the thing; it’s hard to be sure. The length of the PTA usually determines the extent of permanent brain damage. If it lasts a few days, he’ll probably be OK. If it lasts a week, then there will likely be more damage. If it lasts two weeks, three weeks, a month or so, then it often indicates quite severe cognitive impairment. It’s not a fixed scale, there are a lot of variables, but it’s a general rule that the length of PTA coincides with the level of damage.”

I talked to Gus for over an hour, quizzing him on every possibility. The staff at the hospital had told us none of this, focussing instead only on his immediate situation. It was a relief to know, but also difficult to stomach the idea that he wasn’t going to walk out of hospital in a week with some bruises and a headache. From what Gus had told me, he was likely to be there for two weeks at least, before undergoing extensive rehabilitation in a dedicated rehabilitation centre, to assist in restoring his cognitive ability. This was going to be a long campaign. I hung up the phone and broke the news to my mother.

It had become abundantly clear that we had on our hands a family crisis of the first magnitude. The following morning, on the way to hospital, I phoned work and took the rest of the week off, condemning myself to impending penury. Going back and forth to the hospital every day was hardly my first choice for a holiday. The idea of sitting and fretting on the purple chairs in the fluorescent mint waiting room of I.C.U for an indeterminate number of future days was not so much scraping the barrel as eating the bottom out of it so far as vacations went.

I must have looked anxious on that second morning, for the bearded, weather-beaten man sitting opposite, waiting for news of his brother, looked up from the Daily Telegraph and said:

“Don’t worry, mate. This place is like Valhalla. Everyone here’s a bloody hero.”

I chuckled and thanked him, feeling one of those fluctuating mood spikes so common to crises. From what I had experienced so far, I found little reason to doubt his words. The staff weren’t exactly wearing horned helmets, sporting battle-axes and quaffing foaming tankards, but even in the few brief encounters so far, it was clear that they were all heroes dedicated to the point of obsession. Irrespective of their medical expertise, having always been particularly squeamish, I was impressed merely by their willingness to deal with the array of revolting discharges with which they were regularly confronted. As I stood beside my father that morning, the man in the bed opposite continually groaned and vomited, shouting in despair for the assistance that was never absent. Elsewhere a man was swearing aloud after having soiled his bed. Across the room I could not avoid catching glimpses of the stricken; mostly elderly people, propped in often necessarily undignified positions, plugged into a tangle of tubes.

That morning I met Som, an amiable Thai nurse with a comforting smile. He had been assigned to my father and, over the next few days, he became our first port of call.

“Your father very strong,” he said, smiling. “Already he try to get up when he wake up one time. They want to keep him under sedation for at least two more days.”

Som struck me as a man who found it easy to be gentle. One minute he was hushed, addressing us with a touch of his soft hands, then his eyes would gleam with conspiratorial humour, as coy as a teenage girl. I was impressed by how personable all the doctors and nurses were, recalling public concerns about medical staff who lacked communication skills and empathy. Anna, Nicola, Jenny, Brian, Eric, all of whom had found the time to be pleasant and show genuine sympathy, even early in the morning or towards the end of twelve-hour shifts. They were comfortingly frank and honestly optimistic.

Outside in the waiting room, an altogether different culture was taking shape. This space soon became a meeting place for my father’s journalist colleagues and friends. I witnessed tears and laughter, black humour abounded, and within a few days the burden of co-ordinating everyone was transformed into an obsession. I began to feel almost at home when in this space, with its unforgiving lighting and repellently “neutral” scheme. It warmed considerably once colonised by passionate well-wishers. I felt a peculiar satisfaction in being the go-to man for news to some of Sydney’s best journos; presiding over the space and ready, at the drop of a hat, to deliver the much-rehearsed verbal press release.

By the third day, my father had survived the immediate risk of haemorrhage, but he was by no means safe. The doctors were still reluctant to be confident and chose to keep him in a comatose state so that his body might recover without the stress of consciousness and physical restlessness. After these first three seemingly eternal days, the hospital visits had already become routine. Going to and from St Vincent’s up to three times daily slowed down the passing of time by breaking the day into many different units; the heightened emotions added a raw edge that cast this environment more distinctly in black and white. Considering that I was, in effect, on holiday, I brought my camera and took photos of the people and the scenery.

The fine mildness of the dry May air was spiced with a pinch of desiccated leaf, and the occasional curlicue of chilled exhaust. The pale, cream hospital, bathed in crisp light and stark against the cloudless blue, radiated confident functionality. On the curving wall of the car-park entrance ambitious creepers pressed themselves arrestingly flat against the paint. By the sliding doors, invalids stood smoking by the drips they had dragged with them on wheeled stands. I found their relentless determination to get straight back into being themselves encouraging and amused myself with the thought that my father, being no idler in the assertive personality stakes, would be ordering everybody about again in no time. Despite his being such a difficult person, we only wanted him to be himself again as soon as possible.

Through the glass doors was an oddly welcoming world: purple carpet flecked with slashes of primary, a black wall embedded with backlit glass vessels, a collage of shots exhibiting local colour, monochrome photographs of a rodeo and a polished wood-veneer reception desk that everyone seemed to ignore. There was bustle about the café, tired faces of relatives, more ambling patients, a charity stand and industrial vacuum cleaner, and striding through everything with unaffected nonchalance, the doctors and nurses who had seen it all so many times before.

Having awoken to the possible consequences of the accident and the responsibility it entailed, these small details became comforting when appreciated in their own right. Optimism was a necessity and I began to view the journey as a quest for small positives alongside an indeterminately long road. My mother equally sought refuge in small mercies, and came to focus her attention on visits to the hospital café. “You must try one of these flans,” she enthused to me one afternoon. “They’re to die for.” As is so often the case with her, it was not long before she was on friendly terms with all the staff and receiving freebies.

Inside the I.C.U., Som remained our principal contact. He was always cheery and mild.

“Your father is very strong man,” said Som one afternoon, tittering. “All the time he try to break free. Even, unconscious, always, his body want to get up. Like Frankenstein.” He held his arms out and walked forward slowly, then began to giggle, his shoulders shaking amidst piping sibilations. His warmth was catching and we laughed along with him.

“We have to keep him tie up. Until he go off the drip.”

Like so much that is said in hospitals, it was both comforting and disquieting. We were concerned that my father might think he had gone mad should he wake up and find himself restrained. He had often joked that if he went “silly in the head” I was to finish him off with the two-pound hammer. Part of me genuinely feared that he might well have suffered irreparable brain damage and would never function normally again. I tried to focus instead on wondering whether or not he was dreaming.

On the fourth day, the breathing tube was removed and my father was allowed to emerge from sedation. Som was overjoyed when he saw my mother and I approaching the bed.

“Come see, he talking now,” said Som, beckoning us.

My father looked awful, swollen and bloated and sick. His face was bruised and veined by broken vessels. When first he spoke his voice was nasal and windy, transformed by the loss of his front teeth. It rasped like grinding gears, punctuated by coughs and gurgles.

“G’day, son. When did you arrive?” His eyes were bleary, yet his eyebrows attempted surprised inquisitiveness.

“I’ve got to get back to the hotel,” he said. “I’ve got to make some phone calls.”

“What hotel?”

He ignored my question.

“Where are you staying, mate? Which hotel?”

“He must think he’s still in Bali,” said my mother.

“You’re in Sydney,” we both said to him.

He looked at me like a dog shown a card trick.

“Sydney, we’re in Sydney,” I repeated.

He shrugged.

“When did you arrive? Are you going back tomorrow?”

His eyes glassed over and he sank back into his pillow.

As Gus had informed me, Post-Traumatic Amnesia, an almost inevitable consequence of any serious brain injury, impairs the ability to form new or continuous memories. It does not normally affect memories formed before the injury, although recollections of events immediately preceding the accident might vanish, sometimes for good. In my father’s case, he appeared to have lost at least five days. He had returned from Indonesia on the morning of the Friday previous, where he had been breaking stories on the 2005 tsunami and the Bali 9 heroin smugglers. He did not realise he had left.

A few minutes later he opened his eyes again and peered through a milky film.

“Ah, g’day, son,” he said. “You’re here as well? Everyone must’ve come over.”

There was a stab of shock at his forgetfulness. It was to be some time before we became used to it.

“This is Sydney,” I repeated. “Sydney.”

“What? I can’t hear you. Which hotel are you at?”

They tested his hearing that afternoon and got no response from one ear and virtually none from the other. We later learned that his left inner ear had been fractured irreparably in the fall and his right ear, which had previously been his bad ear, only had about twenty percent hearing. My mother and I went immediately and bought two foolscap notepads and a Texta.

Thus began our hapless attempts to communicate with him that were to improve only marginally over the coming months. My father would ask a question, almost invariably something to do with our whereabouts, and by the time we had written the answer, he had forgotten not only the question, but the fact that we were there altogether.

“Ah, g’day, son, good to see you,” he would say, as I sat scrawling an answer.

No matter how often we wrote to tell him that he was in Sydney and not Denpasar, it never registered for more than a minute or two. It was like talking to a deaf goldfish. His lapses in memory could be at times shockingly demoralising and at others, cause for amusement.

After six days my father was moved from I.C.U. to the Neurological ward, where, in his bed on level seven, he could see the city skyline. This helped to convince him that he was no longer in Bali, but only for brief periods. Even though he could see Centrepoint Tower, it still had to be pointed out to him and the import of its being there made clear. In the new ward, we found a wholly different culture with a host of different faces. Everyone moved at a slower pace compared to the decisive energy so prevalent in I.C.U. During his first week there, my father was in and out of a host of rooms, which didn’t help to anchor him in the present.

“Good to see you, son! Where are you staying? Did you fly in today?”

Now that he was more animated, it became increasingly exhausting spending time with him. The shifts at work I had felt so relieved to discard would have been preferable to the draining routine that replaced them. Since my father seemed to think he was in Bali, I began to daydream about being there. Sitting in the ward room with the blinds drawn on account of his headaches, I conjured pristine beaches attended by fawning palms. The tropics had always held a false lure for me, as someone more at home with museum collections or the dusty foundations of an ancient structure. Just at this moment, however, I would have given anything to be sunning myself on the beach, amongst the splashes, boasts and giggles of the Balinese meat-market.

After two weeks the post-traumatic amnesia did not appear to be lessening. It would have been a lot easier to deal with were it not for his deafness. My father began to ask more complicated questions. He was gradually becoming paranoid; unable to work out quite where he was or why he was there, his journalist’s nose for conspiracy led him to question everything. The problem remained that, by the time we’d written the answer, the question had slipped from his mind. I could see the fear in his eyes. It was an awful look of confusion, of a longing for trust founded on a dreadful mistrust. He was not eating and had, in just two weeks, shed almost ten kilograms. He looked taller, more angular, more fragile.

Throughout my life my father had always been an alpha male of the first order; a moustachioed masculine figure; a sailor, a sportsman, a marathon runner, gun journalist, a fighter. He was famously brave and famously good at what he did, undaunted by getting himself smuggled into Afghanistan in 1981 to join the Mujah Hideen who were then fighting against the Russians; spending months in Lebanon during the war with Israel and bringing home the bullets plucked from a wall that had nearly killed him several times; crewing boats that sailed around Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope. Occasionally he was wracked by nightmares of helicopter gunships, of religious fanatics who had tried to kill him for something as innocent as bathing naked in a stream. He was highly strung and unpredictable; at times irrational and angry, he took things out on his family, who were not especially forgiving. His real weakness was alcohol, yet it only made him more macho, and as a child, I’d hidden away from him; more afraid of him than reverent. I grew up spending the bulk of my time with my mother, whilst my father was on assignments, or in the pub. I was far more inclined to her habits – quiet pursuits like reading and writing – and found his machismo and jingoism disappointingly vulgar; until, that is, I began to affect it at the age of 16.

Now, weakened, restrained and bewildered, his eyes had the awful sadness of a caged, emasculated lion. He had become dependent on others, a situation that was initially unbearable for him. As I sat there, day after day, observing him and attempting to communicate with the notepad and gestures, I felt a great upwelling of annoyance at the stubbornness that had led to all this. That he had fallen off the ladder whilst fixing the awning in the backyard was the final consequence of his twenty-year effort to redecorate the house in Centennial Park.

From 1985 onwards, the family home had been a semi-construction site. My father had taken on almost all the tasks himself with the reluctant aid of his sons. For years, instead of being able to spend time with friends or play games with my brother, I had been handed a shovel or a paintbrush or a bucket on a Saturday or Sunday morning and made to work. I dreaded going under the house, where, cramped and wearing bicycle helmets, we shovelled out mud and dug channels and rubble drains in an attempt to stop the rising damp. Sure, he paid us generously, but at the age of thirteen I had no interest whatever in anything physical. Even later, once I’d started playing rugby, I resented this never-ending family obligation to work on the house. I hated it, and I hated the incompetence with which so much of the work was done. Three or four years after something was finished, the cracks began to appear. The mistakes were often very costly and, ultimately, it would have been far cheaper to have the whole house overhauled in a few months before we moved in. Had my father not insisted on torturing us all with his personal project for years – and my mother certainly had plenty to say about it, largely unheeded – then our family life might have proven far more harmonious. Had my father not tortured himself with his own project for twenty years, he might have instead spent his spare time finishing his third novel, then writing a fourth and a fifth and so on. Instead, he stalled, devoting himself to physical labour that only seemed to make him more annoyed, and indeed, more annoying. In the end, it led to his loss of a finger, when he dropped a great block of sandstone on it, and finally, this horrific accident.

I sat in the hospital and watched him for hours, laid up and afraid, stripped of his tyrants’ crown, yet still no less demanding. After two weeks he was moved to the Brain Injury Unit of the Ryde Rehabilitation Centre where he was to spend the next three months. Even after six weeks, he still suffered from post-traumatic amnesia, but it had gradually begun to lessen. It became possible to have conversations with him, albeit through the medium of the notepad and pen. These conversations mostly consisted of mundane small-talk, yet he also wanted to be informed of developments in stories he had been chasing in Indonesia. As time passed, he became increasingly paranoid, afraid that he was trapped in some sort of conspiracy. Story elements, jostling about in his imagination, began to creep into his utterances.

“Listen, son,” said my dad, grabbing me by the forearm one day. “I’m telling you right here and now, don’t get involved in buying those plane tickets from the Russians. They know all about it in New York. It’s too dangerous. I don’t care how bloody cheap it is, don’t buy those tickets from the Russians!”

On several occasions he would point to the notepads on which we wrote and demand that we keep them safe.

“Don’t let anyone see your notes! Keep them with you at all times. When you go, mate, you should take them with you. A journalist always protects his sources,” he said, banging a fist. “It’s not safe leaving them here; there’s people coming and going all the time. I don’t know who the fuck half of them are!”

After two months, they let me take him out to Camperdown to meet with a specialist doctor who performed Cochlear implant operations. We were relieved to find, when tested, that the nerves attached to his shattered inner ear were still intact, allowing him to have a bionic implant. A week later, the operation took place and, with the aid of a hearing aid on his other ear, we were at last able to hold a conversation with him in real time. I cannot even begin to express the relief that this caused, despite the fact that his comprehension was awfully patchy as he got used to the sounds through the devices.

“Mate, you sound like bloody Donald Duck. What’s the story? Stop quacking.”

On visits I would find him shuffling about the rehabilitation unit, wobbly and weakened, yet too curious and bored to stay in bed all day. Despite the bouts of paranoia, he was friendly with most of the staff; he seemed to have acquired more patience than I’d ever thought him capable of.

After three and a half months they finally released him. My mother felt a contrasting mix of relief that she no longer had to venture out to Ryde on a daily basis, and annoyance that my father was coming home where she would have little respite from him. Remarkably, despite the length and severity of his post-traumatic amnesia, despite the savagery of the injury he had suffered, my father’s brain had undergone an extraordinary rehabilitation. No doubt in part due to his strength of personality and fierce determination, his brain had re-routed much of its processing via less damaged regions. It seemed the principal impairment was with the bigger picture; he found it less easy to comprehend larger narratives, such as the complexities of a plot, yet he was by no means unable to do so.

On the whole, he was still very much himself. Indeed, in many ways, he seemed a taller, ganglier, more softly spoken version of the same man; a little more fixed in his inflexibilities, more prone to perseveration, but at the same time, slightly more apologetic. Having been brought so low, having for months relied entirely upon nursing staff and his family, and having finally understood how much effort people had put into his recovery and how dedicated his friends and family had been in following and assisting in his progress, almost none of which he would ever recall because the memories had never formed, he seemed quietly thankful.

My mother and I were also quietly thankful, though often we glanced at each other with the exhausted look of the long suffering. The power vacuum had brought about a coup, and the family dynamic would never be the same again. The totalitarian dictatorship of the Workers’ Socialist Democratic Republic Paradise, as my father called the house, had become, at last, through crisis, a genuine democracy.

Posted in Memoir, The Odyssey of Life | Leave a Comment »

After Gaddafi, what next?

August 30, 2011 by Professor Rollmops

This article was first published in New Matilda on 23/08/11, with revisions: http://bit.ly/AfterGaddafi

The regime of Colonel Muammur Gaddafi is in a state of near total atrophy. Rebel forces, pushing east from the recently captured town of Zawiya, have now entered Tripoli in force. They claim to have captured eighty percent of the city already, including the highly symbolic Green Square, and one of the largest military bases, Mais, where they freed nearly 5000 people and opened the armoury to rebel supporters. Rebel forces are now closing in on Tripoli on all fronts, with reports of troops arriving by boat as well.

Gaddafi has reiterated his claim that he will fight “to the last drop of blood”, yet rumours abound of his intended flight to Tunisia. His spokesman Moussa Ibrahim claimed that “we have thousands of professional soldiers and thousands of volunteers protecting the city.” Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, who has been indicted by the international criminal court for crimes against humanity, has been captured and detained. There have also been reports that Gaddafi’s eldest son, Mohammad, has surrendered along with the presidential guard, though fighting continues at Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound. (The two preceding reports were both later disproved). Gaddafi’s whereabouts are unknown; in recent months he has been sleeping in hospitals and hotels to avoid air-raids. Whether Colonel Gaddafi decides to stay or flee and whether his loyalist forces put up a staunch defence will determine how this destructive and deadly civil war is concluded.

World leaders have intensified their calls for Gaddafi to step down and avoid further bloodshed. In a statement released yesterday, Nato urged those still fighting for Gaddafi’s regime to lay down their arms. Despite real concerns about the possibility of ongoing urban warfare in Tripoli and fighting elsewhere in Libya, the real question now is what happens after Gaddafi. What sort of process will emerge and who will the major players be?

In recent weeks in particular, the rebels and their representative body, the National Transitional Council (NTC), have come under much greater scrutiny as commentators turn their attention to post-Gaddafi Libya. The NTC’s ability to control the chaos that will continue to prevail for some time after Gaddafi’s removal is as yet untested. They are currently without a cabinet, after NTC chairman Mustafa Abdul Jalil sacked the last one for its failure to investigate adequately the murder of General Younes. Divisions within the NTC have stymied attempts to form a new cabinet and the NTC’s legitimacy as a representative body has suffered. The rebels in Misrata, who have been highly critical both of Jalil and the NTC’s designated army commanders, stated that they have not been taking orders from the NTC. Indeed, it is the rebels in the west and not those based in Benghazi who so recently broke the stalemate, captured Zlitan, Garyan and Zawiya and advanced on Tripoli. There are certainly no guarantees that those western rebels will be willing to accept directions from Jalil and his associates.

Nato has announced its readiness to work with the NTC to ensure that “the transition is smooth and inclusive, that the country stays united, and that the future is founded on reconciliation and respect for human rights.” Despite its relatively high regard amongst those opposed to Gaddafi, Nato’s ongoing presence in Libya may, in the long term, serve to create tension and resentment and leave the door open to further accusations of imperialism. As soon as the fighting stops, they will do well to disengage militarily to avoid further complicating what will be a very difficult transition to a new constitution and government.

The recent assassination of rebel general Younes also raised significant concerns about the possible influence of Islamic extremists within the NTC, though most commentators agree that this influence has been exaggerated and overplayed. Inevitably there will be an Islamic element within the political equation. There are already strict Muslims in the NTC, though this should be no more alarming than the presence of devout Christians in the United States government. They are not advocating an Islamic state, but a secular one.

The chances of an Islamic state emerging in Libya are slim. For all its flaws, imbalances and human rights abuses under the regime of Colonel Gaddafi, Libya has long maintained a relatively liberal attitude toward personal freedoms. This is especially noticeable with regard to the situation of women. Partly through revolutionary ideals and a need for labour in a country with a population of only six million, Libya has given women access to many of the same rights and privileges enjoyed by men. Women not only dress in western-style clothing, but have been very active and visible in the workplace. Women have also been encouraged to serve in the armed forces, to the point that all girls in secondary school have been conscripted for military training since 1984. The people of Libya, though denied freedom of speech, especially in the realm of politics, are well-educated and have good long-term employment prospects should the political and economic situation stabilise. It is not a country known for Islamic conservatism and it is unlikely that the revolutionary zeal which began as a demand for democracy, would transform into religious zeal, though this is by no means impossible.

It needs to be remembered that the NTC is merely a transitional body. Despite significant difficulties, it has managed to present a surprisingly united front throughout the conflict. It must soon look to hand over its responsibilities to a more broadly representative body tasked with the implementation of a constitutional process. How successfully this can achieved will hinge on a number of factors, such as whether or not there will be an ongoing insurrection and whether or not reprisals will continue between different groups. Much is often made of tribal rivalries in Libya and loyalties in Libya, as is indeed the case throughout the African polity, yet the tribes have managed to work together in the past and sustained an overarching Libyan national identity. No doubt there will be disputes and discontent, sporadic clashes and political violence, but whether or not such possible tensions will prevent the process of building a new Libya from going forward is yet to be seen.

Despite the destructive nature of the conflict, much of Libya’s oil infrastructure has been unharmed. This will certainly facilitate a more rapid economic recovery, though it will likely be several months before sufficient social and economic stability return to allow full production. The transitional government in Libya will also face difficult decisions and temptations with regard to Gaddafi regime assets and funds likely to come into their hands. Nato’s intervention might ostensibly have been on humanitarian grounds, yet many voices have been critical of its member nations’ long-term ambitions with regard to Libya’s oil reserves.

Perhaps the most immediate concern for the present and in post-Gaddafi Libya will be ensuring the supply of basic services and food. Almost a million people have been displaced by this conflict, many of whom will soon begin to return home. These people will need water, electricity, food and, in many cases, housing. Libya’s wealth should be sufficient to cater for this, yet oversight and distribution must be rapid and efficient. There will also be questions over the detention and repatriation of the many foreign mercenaries recruited by Gaddafi. Whether their treatment is humane, along with that of Gaddafi’s political supporters, should be a serious concern for the international community.

This is indeed the end of the game for Gaddafi, but as in computer games, the boss fight is often the toughest. If he accepts defeat and surrenders or goes into exile, then hundreds of lives might be saved, just as thousands of others might have been saved had he not declared war on his people in the first place. After 42 years in control of Libya, Gaddafi must act fast to stop any further loss of life, for which he will remain, ultimately responsible.

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