For Everyone Concerned (11 page)

Richard tells Jean, in his usual fluent though disembodied way, that the two most significant events
in a woman’s life are the birth of her first child and the death of her mother. There are two lesbians in the class. They are the best writers. They both write elegant and vivid stories about their bodies and other women’s bodies. I’m surprised that Richard’s statement goes unchallenged until I realise that they haven’t been listening. They have simply not heard what Richard has just said. Is this carelessness on their part? Or some strategy, I wonder? Is anyone listening to anyone in this class? In the Chamber of Commerce? Anywhere in this country? If the doctor who killed himself and his three daughters hadn’t been communicating well, shouldn’t someone have been listening to that?

In the month leading up to the creative writing class, I’ve been teaching a literature class at the State University—Katherine Mansfield. Barb, one of my students, is in her late sixties. She misses class one day and the next day she tells me that she was in a diabetic coma for about fifteen minutes the previous morning but she feels all right now. ‘If the diabetes doesn’t kill me, my heart will,’ she says. ‘It was her heart killed my mother.’ Barb doesn’t breathe well; she walks with a stick. Sometimes Barb puts up her hand in the middle of a discussion about Oscar Wilde’s idea of the mask, narrative strategy, modernist responses to the Great War, and asks questions. ‘Are the winters bad down there in New Zealand?’

I like Barb. I find I don’t resent the fact that she
comes to class because she has no one to talk to. One day she puts up her hand: ‘Mr Wilkins,’ she says, ‘did you ever get to
meet
Katherine Mansfield?’

Another time we’re discussing the opening of Mansfield’s ‘At the Bay’, where the shepherd and his flock arrive with the dawn. Barb puts up her hand: ‘You eat a lot of sheep down there?’ she asks. Yes, I say, we do. We push on with the story for a few minutes. Look at the way, I tell the class, that the shepherd is soaked—literally—in the landscape, in the sea. He arrives like he’s been dipped in the harbour, dew in his hair. Barb puts up her hand. ‘You ever eaten monkey, Mr Wilkins?’ Monkey? I say. ‘Yeah.’ No, I say. ‘I worked as a volunteer nurse in the Borneo Jungle through 1961–62. Went cos my mother told me not to. That’s where I ate monkey.’

Because I feel this is going to be my only chance and because I don’t quite know how to get back quickly to Mansfield’s symbolism, I hear myself saying: ‘What did it taste like? What did monkey taste like?’

‘Sort of wild,’ says Barb.

‘Gamy?’ I say.

‘Sure,’ she says. ‘This is an animal who’s been swinging from trees.’

‘A little tough,’ I say.

‘Oh you gotta cook it right. Had a girlfriend with me, she couldn’t be
near
it. I liked it all right.’

‘You’d order it again?’

‘You had to tenderise the hell out of it. My girlfriend fainted and she was a nurse too.’

I am near the end of my reading. The Chamber of Commerce has finally settled down. I can sense a stillness in the room—a sort of appealing stupor has come over everyone. My mind is full of these images of speaking and listening, reading aloud and questioning, communicating and withdrawing, monkeys and birds, illness and death, family, the ocean.

The final image in the piece from the novel I am reading to this room full of Americans is that of my main character covered in sheep shit, being licked by dogs. He has been spying on his young son who is playing in the barn with the sheep. He has seen things he shouldn’t have seen; heard things he shouldn’t have heard. I finish my reading. There is applause and I make my way to the back of the room, past the video recorder on its tripod.

The next reader is about to begin. I listen to her for a few minutes. Suddenly I can’t bear it any longer. I have to leave the Chamber of Commerce. I realise as I push open the door that leads from the servery to the outside, that I’ve become one of those audience members who couldn’t stop moving when
I
was reading. In my restlessness, I’ve become American. It’s a beautiful summer evening. You can smell the sea, the salty grass. I watch two middle-aged men playing tennis—one of these men has said ‘fuck’ loudly
enough to penetrate the Chamber of Commerce while I was reading. I move over to the fence that surrounds the court and follow several points. They are good competitive players, quick between points, strong servers, economical movers. They have families somewhere; they play for their club teams. There is a dispute over a ball that is close to the baseline. The men argue—it gets quite heated. They say ‘fuck’ a lot. They have tempers.

‘Pardon me, sir,’ one of them says turning to me. ‘Sir, did you see that ball?’

‘Me?’ I say.

‘Do you wanna call that? I say he calls it.’

‘Did he see it?’ says the other one. ‘You see that ball going over the baseline?’

‘You wanna coach him some more, Dave?’

‘Just saying did he see it.’

They both look at me behind the fence.

‘You call it,’ the first one says. ‘The ball was good or the ball wasn’t good. You umpire it.’

I look at the tennis players, waiting for me to speak, listening hard. Their attentiveness is deeply, ridiculously affecting. It’s the first time all evening I feel—what is it?—the
emotion
—foolish, sappy, pitiful, shameless—the emotion attached to having someone wanting, needing your words. I feel like crying.

‘Too close to call,’ I tell them. ‘I couldn’t say. Sorry.’

I turn away from the fence and walk back towards the Chamber of Commerce. At the door I meet another of my students, Wayne. Wayne’s a burly, reticent grade school teacher in his early forties who wears teeshirts which say Baseball is Life, and, I Fish Therefore I Lie. The writing that he’s shown the class takes the form of disastrously organised, high octane monologues delivered by self-confessed psychotics. Wayne hardly says a word in class but when he reads he fills the room with his voice. ‘Look into my eyes,’ one of his psychotics yells in the obscure closing moments of Wayne’s most recent effort, ‘and I’ll kill you just by looking! My deep azure eyes! Death! Death! Death!’ The other side of Wayne is his extensive knowledge of bushcraft. I have begun to think of him up in the mountains, on the run from the law, wading through rivers, killing small animals. Yesterday, after much encouragement, he told us a really good way of cooking salmon over an open fire. Wayne is yet another character who seems to offer in his personality this troubling, involving double-image of silence and noise, quiet and rage, rest and violence. ‘Hope I didn’t miss you already,’ he says.

Later I discover there’s been a serious problem with the video on the tripod. None of the evening has been recorded.

—One time we took off, where was it, little place, up in one of the Dakotas, and we were getting into the plane, it was minus 23 degrees … Celsius?

—Fahrenheit.

—Fahrenheit exactly, and we were climbing up the steps, having walked through the snow from the place, the terminal, and I look down and there’s this poor bugger digging us out.

—Where was this?

—He’s got a shovel and he’s actually digging us out of the runway! North Dakota somewhere.

—Cold.

—Some of these other guys, passengers, were giving him a bit too. Really abusing this poor bastard for the delays and everything. I called out to him, ‘You probably want a hand with that, do you?’

—Right.

—I always remember what he said back too. He looks up and says, ‘God bless you, sir.’ Eh?

—You had the right attitude, good on you.

—I was serious. Then a while later he gets on the plane, I see this bloke, still carrying the shovel. He’s the pilot! He has a special cupboard, a locker for the shovel.

—What airline?

—Believe that?

—Tin pot.

—No, one of the main ones it was. Probably about thirty of us on it, the flight. Forty-minute flight. Commuters trying to get home. We’d been delayed a while and some of the buggers were getting annoyed, having a go at the girls at the desk, at the check-in. What for?

—See you’ve got a great positive attitude, which I think, not think, which I know is the secret of business actually.

—How can they help? How is the snow their fault? It does get cold up there though, my God. Fahrenheit.

—We need some of that here.

—The attitude?

—The snow, the extreme cold, my friend.

—I wouldn’t mind. The winters are killing us.

—So mild.

—I say to the bank, those bastards, I say, wait on a
moment, everything gets cold. Eventually.

—It’s all warming up though.

—The winters are killing me.

—They’re so warm.

—I hope for snow. Early and big. Just a decent drop. Get us off to a good start, that’s all. A lot of these bastards they’re complacent as hell. Until.

—They understand only one thing in the end.

—Losses.

—Devastation.

—Heavy losses.

—Crisis.

—A crisis would be nice.

—You don’t wish it.

—No.

—I don’t wish it.

—Who would?

—Some.

—There are always some.

—I know.

—What did he say again, the pilot?

—God bless you, sir. He was the actual pilot in charge of the entire flight.

—It was a miracle you made it. Ice. Icing.

—I never had a doubt.

—That’s what carries you through.

—I suppose.

—That’s it.

—And what about it, up there, in the States? Orders wise?

—I’m hopeful.

—Yeah?

—I am.

—We’re all hopeful, aren’t we.

—We are.

—Just to be here, right now, standing in a tent in the middle of nowhere, we’re hopeful animals.

Now we’re in our forties, are we expected to have already done with them, our fathers? Either they’ve died or they’ve stopped being a threat or they’ve been wished away somehow. Dying is actually a good method.

Daddy has been told that medically he has the body of a fifty-five-year-old. Soon we’ll have the same body.

I remember when I was sixteen and out with friends at Eastbourne on the beach—we’d just come from the Naenae College Chunder Mile—when a friend said there was someone looking for me. Who is it? I said. My friend said he didn’t know but he thought it was a priest.

‘A priest! Dear God, no.’

‘No, he’s really looking for you.’

‘Get off,’ I said. ‘There’s no one.’

Then I heard the voice. I stood up, moved away from the bonfire. The stars were hammered up. I was hammered.

I met Daddy walking over the dunes, calling my name. There was no anger in his voice. It was a polite request he was making of the night. I don’t know how many groups of kids he’d stumbled upon along the beach asking for me but my name had been picked up and I could hear several versions of it—parodic, plaintive—echoing after Daddy’s.

Yoo-hoo, they called.

‘Ah, there you are,’ said Daddy.

‘Yes,’ I said. Yes, Father, I almost said.

‘Your mother and I were just wondering what time you were coming home tonight.’

I’ve given his speech straight. In fact Daddy stuttered. ‘Your mother and I were just wondering’ … then he was stuttering. Actually stutter seems the wrong word for it. When he stutters, it’s more like he’s choking. ‘Your mother and I were just wondering …’ Then he was choking.

It was a beautiful starry summer evening on the beach at Eastbourne. The sand dunes were filled with my peers. Sparks flew up. Girls were laughing.

‘I might come home at about the normal time,’ I said.

‘All right,’ said Daddy. Then—strangely—he shook my hand.

He had never come to find me before and he would never do it again and I still don’t know why he came out that evening. He seemed almost apologetic, hence, I guess, the suggestion of priest. When he was a boy on the farm, he carried eggs across on his bike to the priests. Perhaps I only wished myself and not him dead at this moment.

His own father had died when Daddy was very young. He never knew him. The family of four boys was ruled by their mother, an amazingly powerful and long-living woman. Daddy eventually put several hundred miles and a vicious body of water between himself and her. When I was a kid, she’d occasionally phone. Daddy would take the phone and then we’d hear him stuttering.

He’d got a flat in town, without telling her. When his mother found out, she ordered his two older brothers to go round to the flat and physically bring him home. In the tram, they sat on either side of him so he couldn’t do a runner. Daddy, at this stage, was in his early twenties.

Jim: this is dedicated to you, you pussy. Rejected by the
Alpine Journal twice but what do they know. They are
pussies
.

We had three nights in the snow cave, I’m pretty sure, waiting out the storm, eating the last of our chocolate, going a bit loopy (heh), and then the sun came out and we felt shined on. Jim rummaged in his underpants threateningly, then crowed. I am the red rooster!

When we reached the bush-line we were running. In our minds we were home already, well on the way to getting pissed. We fell down a few banks through trees and rocks without serious injury i.e. death.

It was just getting dark when we came to the stream we’d crossed a week back (timing again might
be a little out). We were two hours away from the road. We waded straight in and suddenly the water was around our waists. Holy mackanoley! We got out of there and sat on the bank. The stream was a river was an arsehole. I said, Let’s wait till morning. Jim said, I’m not waiting, further down it’ll be shallower. Maybe it was the snow cave still active in his mind. He had no reply to my total disbelief and scorn. He stomped off.

He only walked about twenty metres downriver.

When Jim went in again, it was hard to see him once he’d stepped a few paces into the water, and I called his name. He cried out and I heard splashing. Jim! I yelled. Come out! Come back! I heard a noise further downriver and I ran to him. He was lying on his back, panting and grinning. I told him that was enough for the night and we’d cross in the morning. You give up too easily is your problem, he told me. You’re a deluded prick is your problem, I told him. But Jim said, no, no, there was a way and that was to get weights. The current wasn’t that strong, he said. Then he started loading his pockets with large stones from the riverbank. Seriously. I watched him gather all the stones and load up, as in a dream.

Finally I woke up. You won’t do that, I said. You’re mad! You’ll only be swept away and I’m not wasting my time looking for the body because I’ll die too. But he said there wasn’t any danger and he had to be home
that night. You’ll never be home again
ever
, I told him. He was still filling up with stones.

Jim’s bigger than me. Basically, in body types, I’m one of the wiry, the nuggety, and he’s one of the fat. But he’s tallish too. So I said come here and I’ll help you. I’ve got a stone for you, I said. Really? he said. True, I’ve got a nice one, come over and I’ll put it in. You’re a great friend to me, he said. And because of the cave, the emotionalism of the life-threat we’d had, all the hours together, looking at each other, thinking I’m spending my last time on planet earth with him, with
him
, Jim hugged me. At which point I had my pocket knife and I sliced the pockets off his jacket clean as a whistle, both sides, and cut the straps so his pack peeled off him. He didn’t know what was happening. He looked at his pack and at his pockets. All the stones were around us at our feet. Then he sat down on the stones. Sank down. Sat like he was hatching. What was he hatching? Thoughts? Evil? He was like some First Man, sitting on stones, listening to the Fuse.

After a few moments he said, let’s get a fire started anyway before we freeze to death.