Homesickness (26 page)

4

There are two hemispheres, a Greater and a Lesser. The one above of tall rectangles and glass, andromeda dazzle and the landmass; the other with its oceans of heat and tangle, raw materials.

One is congested, the other sparse.

All things imaginable spread or screech to the south in a curve filling the emptiness, for better or for worse. The heads of antipodeans glance upwards (shielding their eyes): multicoloured wires, tightly bound, possess magnetic powers. Moths to flames? With its museums and plethora of laws and words the Centre of Gravity lies in the Northern or Upper Hemisphere. It preserves.

There are two hemispheres, Left and a Right. One has words and equations stored like insects, hemisphere of engines and Armstrongs, one step at a time. Its partner is a map of manias, of blurred phrases, rhythms, shape, praise the Lord. The line dividing is properly blurred. The Left hemisphere constructed the right-angle; the other knows the Golden Rectangle. There are three sides to every story.

Blink, blink.

The Right is responsible for the recognition of faces and flags.

Heck, to the majority the city of New York was an immediate religious experience! Always a shade prosaic, Gerald Whitehead thought their dizziness might be induced by the towering rectangles. They'd spent the first day walking and had aching necks, for the glass surfaces appeared to lean in and the reflected clouds swirled, slid slowly across the surfaces, giving the illusion their legs were not properly on the ground. Until they were accustomed it was necessary to check their perpendicular positions, hastily.

‘Whoops! Ha ha!' They suddenly clutched at each others' elbows.

Still limping, his souvenir from Ecuador, Kaddok bumped into a parking meter where it hurts.

Interesting how the left or logical hemisphere is responsible for jerking the right arm up in fits of emotionalism—nationalism's puppet.

They were walking around Wall Street eating ham sandwiches, Garry a Hot Dorg. He had his right arm raised, a German salute at something high. Chins raised and following comments they took up most of the footpath. ‘Look at that. Fantastic!' he pointed. However, the pedestrians here were all running. Narrow side lines had been reserved for cripples or tired people, although these were virtually empty. Among the runners a dark-suited President could be seen sprinting from a lunch or heading for an appointment, and there were bankers and brokers, dark horses and operators, chartists, and the inevitable programmers trailed by assistants, and many middlemen and hired consultants all after a slice of the apple pie. Even the cannon-fodder—the mail boys, messengers, recently married clerks—were carried along, although theirs was a variety of jogging.

—‘Move your ass!'

—‘Outta the way!'

The group had to spill out almost into a culvert. Sure enough, as they looked on, a silver-haired cambist in a Hathaway and the essential cufflinks tripped and fell on his dial, spilling his Parker 51 and snapshot of the family. When Sasha moved to help him, he pushed her away. ‘Then piss off yourself.' she hissed. It's easy to join in.

A hectic day on Wall Street. They quite understood—being visitors—when a cop asked them to move on. Another party, Japanese, was waiting.

The white clouds above were slotted into a narrow gap of blue and were triangular, surprisingly straight-edged, mysteriously erased at intervals like the revisions on a commodities graph. Framed by the tops of buildings the sky-scape was signed lower right ‘Steinway' (advertisement for grand pianos). Elsewhere a perpetually rolling news flash consuming God knows how many watts demanded
FREE ENTERPRISE
! Yes, the nation's largest aircraft carrier had been seized by some tin-pot country, Asian, communist-ruled. ‘Fantastic…' Garry craned, as a hand lifted his wallet.

And over all was the rattle of jackhammers. These alone managed to surpass the combined brouhaha of the teleprinters, the ticker-tape machines, the whirring photocopying machines, the banging carriages of thousands of electric typewriters. New York: aptly titled. Like that ship of the Argonauts each part was gradually changed, so that the citizens constantly had a new city without having to change its name or idea. Single rectangles or entire precincts were coming down. The materials of the city were light for this reason. Small museums at intersections showed how the neighbourhood once looked.

It was exhilarating. They felt at home, and yet it wasn't home. Since Ecuador, Gerald had again retreated to the background and Garry, Doug Cathcart and Hofmann entered the foreground.

‘Howdy!' Doug stepped in front of a man, easy. ‘We're looking for the Empire State Building.'

It was something he had always wanted to see.

‘Can't help yerz. I'm from Australia.'

‘Hey!' Doug cried out. So were they! There's a coincidence for you. But the man had kept walking and had already disappeared. He had sandy hair and a tanned neck.

‘Perhaps he works for the UN?' Kaddok suggested.

The next man squeezed his eyes which were small anyway and looked around, and thought the Empire State had been pulled down—‘Hadn't it?'—adding anyway he came from Melbourne. The city was full of Australians, including a complete archery team. There were exporters with heavy cufflinks and bulging fountain pens, the newspaper execs, diplomats—yes, and artists from Sydney trying to break into Abstract Expressionism, and a black-fellow out to license the US manufacture and distribution of bullroarers and returning boomerangs. Only the other week the Prime Minister and his party had taken a suite at the Waldorf.

‘Two bob,' Garry whispered to blinking Sheila, ‘he's here.'

‘Who? I beg—'

‘Tall, dark and handsome. That drunk—you know who I mean. I'm kidding, Sheila. I'm kidding. He's all right.'

Her eyes had widened and she'd bitten her lip.

While the Cathcarts kept searching for an American, and met two ladies from Largs Bay, South Australia, Kaddok spoke up. The Empire State Building was
not
the tallest building in the world. It was some other new building. He mentioned the exact measurements. They nodded but it didn't matter; they still wanted to see the Empire State. As Kaddok spoke—dark glasses, dark suit—generous Americans dropped cents into his explaining outstretched hand.

In the Statue of Liberty twelve people can stand inside the torch held high in the right hand. First, climb the steps inside the radial artery. The arm is forty-two feet high. The vital statistics were reeled off by L. K.: a man could put both head and possibly shoulders inside her nostrils. The nose (Grecian) is five feet long. The distance between the eyes is three feet thereabouts, imagine that: a yard across. Ken Hofmann could give details about her teeth. No sizes are given for the breasts underneath the academic folds, but work it out. She'd sure need a
Büstenhalter
. Imagine the size of her—. In all, she weighed four hundred and fifty thousand pounds. The copper was in three hundred sections. ‘That is worth a fortune today,' said Hofmann, thinking of the London Metal Exchange. From sandals to tip of the flame a hundred and fifty-two feet. A folly, and dull.

Only twelve could fit in the torch.

‘It's all right,' said Violet. ‘I'll stay here.' She had her arms folded. ‘If I go another step higher I'll be sick.'

‘Violet!' Sasha laughed; because she was having a ball.

They were standing in the hollow forehead. As they moved up into the arm Violet rested her thin elbow on the ledge, their footsteps and chatter echoed behind her, dying away. The emptiness then became larger, a state of mind. There was the dappled deep sea far below and on it a red tanker; Manhattan rising from the water and mist, more a cluster of distant tombstones.

She heard or felt a movement behind her. As Violet turned, the hand already touched her waist; such a knowing hand.

‘I thought I'd study the view,' Hofmann gazed past her. ‘I may have missed something.'

‘That'll be the day.'

‘Well, what have you seen?'

‘That's a boat. That's New York. Those there are seagulls.'

Looking past her Hofmann smiled. ‘I see.'

Around her waist the grip tightened.

‘They look like molars, those skyscrapers. Don't you think?'

Violet hunted for her cigarettes, as she did in these situations.

‘I keep forgetting. You're the dentist.'

And she laughed.

She twisted away but the hand on the arm held. It pulled her in.

‘Shouldn't you be upstairs,' said Violet flippantly, ‘with your little woman?'

Hofmann gave no answer. Skidding past once, his mouth found hers. He pressed hard. She, against the parapet, cracked: her willowy back. His other hand felt its way along slowly, time and space were allowed, and found her loose breast; and a thick mist wreathed the city.

‘You're taking liberties—' Violet joked from the back of her throat.

Now why does she—? Somehow flippancy can turn a man right off.

But after glancing over his shoulder Hofmann pressed on, a kind of burrowing. He squeezed, flesh against flesh, too hard. She cried out.

‘What?'

‘It's all right,' she muttered. His knee pushed against her legs, invited; her legs parted. The Liberian oil tanker passed out of sight.

Now what: Hofmann whispered words, directed at her, there was no one else, obscenities, curses.

Well, Violet had tight lips, the tight surface.

She shoved him back, and for a second he kept blinking. Several times he ran his tongue over his teeth. It didn't suit the dentist, then.

‘Enough,' she said, ‘don't get carried away.'

She watched him.

‘Run along upstairs,' she said again, ‘to your little woman. She must be waiting.'

Her painted nails, her mocking sunglasses matched.

Staring at her Hofmann tugged his lapels, as if they controlled his facial muscles.

‘They should be down,' he agreed, distant.

‘A man of very few words,' Violet commented. ‘Well, at least that's something.'

She gave a short laugh; Violet could even be hard on herself.

Hofmann's lips returned to thin and firm, though still without colour, and his face to cardboard.

Watching her casually now Hofmann smiled slightly.

‘You assume too much,' she said, now defensive and unsteady. ‘You're not so smart.' She began poking around for cigarettes. It looked wretched.

‘In some things I'm not far out,' smiled Hofmann.

‘Listen to him.'

But he was right. Violet found a cigarette, unhappily, as if he wasn't there. And when she looked across at Manhattan rising, and the struggles there (all those young actresses), it was made worse. For the first time Violet began smiling. She was almost crying.

But then he was looking down, elbows on the parapet. She reached out and touched his arm.

The others were returning: travellers descending staircase. They were about to spill into the wide observation platform.

‘It's what I've been saying,' Garry reverberated, ‘a woman's head is completely empty. Nothing's there. We've just seen it with our bare eyes.'

‘Ha! Hear that,' said Louisa.

‘I'll clock him one where it hurts,' Sasha called out. ‘You're no Rhodes scholar yourself.'

‘What are you laughing at?' She peered at North from dark into sudden natural light; a tricky aperture problem for Kaddok.

But she pointed to Violet and Ken Hofmann: silhouetted against the sky, his arm outstretched lighting yet another cigarette. Both were so neatly attired; they were so New York.

‘What was it again that made you come on this trip?' she had asked.

To Hofmann, lighting the cigarette was sufficient answer. It implied casualness.

Sasha held North's elbow. ‘Now isn't that a lovely shot? They're like that cigarette commercial. What is it?'

‘I don't have television,' he had to remind her; but obediently gazed at the pair.

‘Stuyvesants,' Gwen offered.

‘Right.'

International

passport…

to smoking pleash-ah!

‘Violet starred in one of those commercials,' Sasha confided. ‘Did you know that?'

‘Did you all have a lovely time?' Violet turned. ‘What was the view?'

Gerald was laughing. His face went wider with horizontal creases yet his head somehow bounced up and down; an odd laugh. ‘Someone's written up there, GO HOME AUSSIES. That's a turn up.'

‘I never thought I'd see that,' Doug frowned.

‘It's somehow all senseless this,' Borelli murmured to Louisa. He had turned from looking down at the sea and Manhattan. ‘We're doing something odd. Don't you feel it? Going to places like this; simply in order to…'