—16—
Late afternoon.Brett was perched on his mountain, a book on his lap. I was stretched out on the chesterfield, playing with some pearls Kevin had strung for me, when Brett asked, 'Don't you read?'
'Why?'
But I thought he knew, so his question fuddled me.
'Should I?' I added.
'Do you?'
I thought I had replied. Maybe he was just confused. I dropped the pearls so I could pay attention to Brett. 'Why should I?' I asked.
'Does that mean you don't?'
He wasn't trying to annoy, so I swallowed the 'Of course not' racing up my tongue. 'There's no reason to read,' I told him. 'And I have better things to do.'
'Oh,' he said. But he sat there, not getting back to work. Instead he asked, 'Did I break into your thinking just now?'
I had been thinking something but I couldn't remember what. 'No problem,' I smiled.
'I thought you liked reading,' he said. 'Those piles of books in your room.'
His ignorance astounded me. It was hard to think of a proper reply.
'They were
work
, Brett.' I pointed to his book. 'Like you're doing now.'
When my books had burned I felt relieved—a phoenix released from the flames.
His eyes drew close together and left my face to focus inwards, to their eye-to-eye conference:
Do you understand? Not a clue. And you?
Then each looked to me.
'Reading was
work
, Brett,' I explained. 'So how could I
like
reading?'
'But they were novels, weren't they?'
'Yes? But?'
I thought, but didn't say: Get to the point!
'Work,' he repeated.
'Research,' I explained.
'Work. Research,' he repeated—a robot.
If he were anyone else, I would have knocked on his skull with my knuckles and yelled at it, 'Yodelay eee hooo!?' As this was Brett, I was at a loss to make him understand. Besides, this was too philosophical (and
booooring
) for my taste. I picked up a pile of swatches.
'Didn't you ever read for pleasure?' he queried.
At that, the silk slipped from my grip as I laughed out loud, until I saw his face.
'When we are children,' I carefully enunciated, 'if we are lucky, we are given books that delight us. But that is just a children thing. Once school starts...' But that was too much to get into now, so I cut to the moment.
'Professionals, Brett, can't
like
reading. It's like plumbers liking shit. They just plumb through it.'
He didn't say anything for a long time. I didn't feel I could get up and go, and yet I couldn't do anything where I was. I was in limbo.
He made no reply, but the answers to his questions obviously left him unfulfilled.
Finally, he climbed down from his mountain, the pile of books he was holding making him look quite academic.
'Did you ever go to school?' I asked. 'Or better yet, college ... any college?'
'No.'
I should have known. 'Well, that explains it.'
The conversation ended, as they usually did, with Brett going off to his room.
I picked up my pearls and thought a bit, too. Then I flipped through some of the pattern books piled at my elbow, and then I thought of what I wanted for dinner, and then I ordered it and joked with Serge for a while, and then I had a long bath, and then I dressed for dinner, and then Brett and I had dinner together, and then it was evening.
And then Brett went to his room, and I thought of ordering a TV but couldn't bring myself to sink that low. I never learned how to work a video, and didn't want to ask. I thought of going out to see a film, but only pervs and wrinklies go to cinemas alone. I considered asking Brett along, but he might start a fire if he was bored. Then there was the prospect of going to a coffee shop and pretending to wait for someone, and in the meantime drinking alone.
By the time I knocked on Brett's door, there was silence. He must have already left. I didn't dare open the door to find out.
~
It was two o'clock the next day when—pedicure done, massage over, elbow-length-glove-wearing lesson adjourned and the new art hung, I woke from a doze with a raging case of ennui.
Half of me was furious at Brett, my infector. The other half of me coolly analysed the situation—diagnosis: amazement I hadn't been stricken earlier. Whatever the source, don't confuse my malaise with boredom. This was a virulent strain of been-there-done-that, what's-it-all-about, self-destructive ebola of the psyche. I couldn't even revive myself with mirrors.
But the prognosis for my future was even more alarming. I'd learnt at the Higher Light that, just as a simple cold can weaken your defences and you catch pneumonia, my agony now was leading straight to a search-for meaning crisis, which descended fast as a jumper off the Harbour Bridge to its inevitable end. Like a drowning man clutching at something on the surface (which turns out to be a shark), if I didn't get treatment
now
, I was doomed to catch
belief!
~
'Brett?'
I tapped on his door. 'May I come in?'
'Please do,' he said, 'if you can.'
I turned the knob and pushed, but the door wouldn't open. Instead, there was a loud ruffling and then Brett's voice, calling, 'So sorry. Do come in.'
The door opened this time, but only enough to allow me to squeeze through. I wasn't surprised when it swung closed on its own behind me. Trying to move, I was stuck.
'Apologies again,' Brett said, ever so politely. The door opened, my skirts blew toward me, and the door clicked smoothly shut.
Brett was slouched in his usual sloppy guru stance, crosslegged—just below the ceiling. I noticed now that he had developed a scholar's hunch. Nothing I could see was holding him up. Short piles of books were scattered around him on a table made of the same stuff as his invisible seat. He looked so comfortable and the books surrounding him so ordinary in their being-read-now state, paper markers hanging out of some, others nesting, open book in open book.
The whole scene of Brett and his study materials was unmentionably mundane compared to the rest of the room. His room was as large as mine—orgy size, and simply
packed
with books, magazines, newspapers, printed matter of all sorts, including scrolls and what appeared to be cuneiform tablets. I stood on the only empty floor-space of any size. I couldn't have sat without hugging my knees to my chest. Brett's levitation put his head a foot from the ceiling, but the space between the top of the piles of reading material and his arse couldn't have been much thicker than the thickest book in the room.
He picked up an open book beside him, flicked one page and referred to something briefly, mumbled something to himself, then closed the book and let it go. It zoomed under him, flew halfway across the room, and dived below my line of sight. A pile in its vicinity rose and then settled, a little higher than it was before.
He looked down at me and waved toward a pillar of newspapers. Their edges fluttered like a zillion eyelashes. Then the whole pile disappeared. I didn't feel a whoosh but dust, powerful as snuff, pushed up my nose. I was sneezing when something shoved my knees forward, and I fell back upon soft cushions. Brett had brought my chair in—though with the tight fit, it had to have passed through walls. Small bones (?) now jabbed into my bum—the jet buttons of a chemise I'd tried on this morning. I pulled it out from under me and put it in my lap.
'What can I do for you?' Brett asked.
Do you have something to read?
was no longer a relevant question.
There wasn't room to wave my arms, but I opened my hands expansively. 'Have you read all these?'
'Oh, these? Yes. But all? No.'
Did he mean
all books?
'Don't you want me to?' he asked.
I couldn't answer immediately because my back was towards him as he spoke, as I was climbing on my chair. I turned around with care. Trained skirts and overstuffed chairs and little slippers with sharp curved heels are not the most acrobatic combination. But finally, I was up and gingerly reaching for a book, any book. Brett watched me not quite get to the book, so it removed itself from the top of the pile and put itself into my hands.
'Ta,' I thanked Brett, and it occurred to me that he possibly didn't know
ta
, it not being a bookish word. But that was his problem, as my clamber down was even more difficult than the precarious climb up.
Once again seated, I examined the book in my hands. Parchment. Not 'parchment' suitable for PAPER waste. This was real parchment. Once a sheep, always a sheep, even dead and with no fur. The skins (touching them, the thought occurred to me for the first time: why
leaves?
) in this book had been walked on by quill pens dripping gall ink, though the true art of dripping gall was developed later, satire not being a feature of the century that this book came from. I wouldn't have said it came from the Dark Ages as much as the Dull Ages. I flipped a page and saw I was wrong. Though the words had to be a bore, the people bent to fit into the decorated letters were droll indeed. This wasn't satire, but basic humour based on pain, like what sheep think to do.
I assumed it was a church book, but for all I could tell, it was
Airport
, circa 1200. I couldn't recognize a single word, not even a 'thee', though the letters were almost readable. I was placing it under my chair when it left my hand and raced back to former position.
I pointed to the top of another stack and lifted my eyebrows to Brett. He moved a finger, and the book sailed gracefully into my lap. Chaucer, first edition? I pointed to another stack. Something in squiggles. Another stack—a clay tablet. Then it was
True Tales of the Hieroglades
that didn't look true, by someone whose name wasn't believable.
I pointed to a pile in the distance, but it was as if Brett had trained in a deli. No matter how hard I pointed, what he gave me came from somewhere else.
When
Mein Kampf
dropped into my lap, in German, I'd had enough.
'Weary Dunlop!' (Dad's curse, when trying to be polite) 'You don't have to read everything, Brett.'
The pile I'd been pointing to was new books. A pile of hardbacks—specifically, I was pretty sure, the New York Times Bestseller List—and though they were close to Brett, he didn't need them close, and I couldn't reach them at all.
I threw
Mein Kampf
to the floor, smelly old thing.
Brett wafted it out and placed it carefully back on the top of its pile. Brett was either having me on, or he had seriously overreached his brief.
He needed his socks pulled up. 'You're only writing one book,' I told him. I hated to disappoint him but I waved my arms to unmistakably encompass the room. 'This looks a bit highbrow, you know.'
As usual, he didn't know, so I pointed to
Mein Kampf
.
Brett raised his eyebrows, I nodded, and the book tilted so I could see its title.
'Yes, Brett,' I said, and the book settled flat on its pile.
'You were saying?' he asked, innocently.
'You're supposed to be writing
romance
, Brett,' I said, without moving my jaws.
His expression was pure mud. Was he being dense on purpose, or was it natural? He smiled in a friendly
please explain
manner, so maybe he wasn't trying to drive me crazy.
'If you write about deep shit,' I explained, 'depressing stuff, you know...' And here I had to put a hand to my head to settle the effects of an involuntary shudder tinkling the pearls in my diadem. I couldn't afford frivolity when I needed him to concentrate.
'If you are gonna write deep shit, Brett,' I said, grabbing his eyes with mine, 'I shall have to change my name again to suit, and I'll have to change my hair again ... to something awful ... and get my old clothes back from the tip.'
Part of me said
This threat is stupid.
Brett wouldn't waste a hoot in hell thinking about my appearance. If I looked, and reeked, for that matter, like a fly-blown dag. If I chose that persona for immortality, then c'est la immortality! Viva la existentialism! Brett would just say, 'I wrote the book. You chose the look.' He had never made any comments other than the time when he asked me if I thought my look fit my name, and that my job was to make it fit.
So the back of my mind said to me
Don't Go Down This Track
, but the front of my mind was not listening to any wussy advice. And besides—the whole of me was shit-scared that he was racing down the hill towards Terminal Dagginess for me, not to mention the kind of fame that would mean that people would refer to me by my last name and never look at a picture of me except to confirm something, and I would have to memorize quotable sayings, and these would be quoted, along with the title of my masterpiece and a couple of phrases—but
no one would read me or want to see my image
. I would buy eternity as bibliography and pay with eternity in hell.
I felt a scream emerging. 'I didn't give my life to you for
literary
fame!'
No no no no no. I couldn't let Brett Ibsenize me. Was
Ibsen
right? Had he written novels? Does it matter? NO! And that's just the point. It
is
the point of the thing. I couldn't end up like that. And I couldn't permit that. Not when I had achieved the impossible—corporal beauty in my time.
He was pawing a book. Was he listening?
'Brett. Look at me. This is important.'
He laid the book on his lap, open.
'I don't want to be studied, Brett. I want to be loved.'
He
wasn't
listening.
It was all so spur-of-the-moment, but I had to act. In a measured tone of thoughtfulness, I asked him, 'How does A R Souse sound?'
There was no reply. He regarded
me
, on the contrary, with a measured look of thoughtfulness.
'And can I let everyone know that Brett Hartshorn is only your stage name, and you were born a mile away in the Woolloomooloo Mothers Hospital and not in a chateau, and that the closest you've been to Shichtenstein-Karslboff...'
Here, I ran out of inspiration, so I careered on in a different direction. '...and that you, my
brother
, were born "Norm Souse" and...'