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Wednesday, 7 May 2008
Peach Presents: Frank
Who is Frank?
Frank is a time traveller. He is a gender illusionist. He is a six foot tall bunny rabbit.
When you are close to someone, it is important to be frank with them.
“On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.” Matthew 2.11
Frank exists somewhere between me and you. When we walked down the road to Emmaus, he was the third amongst us, and yet we did not recognise him. When we spoke quietly about the future, he prophesised both the storm to come and the calm that would remain, but we mistook his voice for each other’s. Fearing the thunder and the lightening we locked ourselves in our homes, where he appeared to us. I looked at your face, formerly so young, so defiant but now browbeaten and cowed, your weather lined face was Frank’s.
and streaming down the road she laughed tears streaming down her face she cried out Frank! Frank! but he was too far away so streaming down the road she
Frank is as Frank does.
Frank is a time traveller. He is a gender illusionist. He is a six foot tall bunny rabbit.
When you are close to someone, it is important to be frank with them.
“On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.” Matthew 2.11
Frank exists somewhere between me and you. When we walked down the road to Emmaus, he was the third amongst us, and yet we did not recognise him. When we spoke quietly about the future, he prophesised both the storm to come and the calm that would remain, but we mistook his voice for each other’s. Fearing the thunder and the lightening we locked ourselves in our homes, where he appeared to us. I looked at your face, formerly so young, so defiant but now browbeaten and cowed, your weather lined face was Frank’s.
and streaming down the road she laughed tears streaming down her face she cried out Frank! Frank! but he was too far away so streaming down the road she
Frank is as Frank does.
Monday, 21 April 2008
Good Peaches and Bad Peaches
Not much can come from writing with emotion, unless of course you are spectacularly gifted at channeling your angst into free verse. Then again, nothing much can come out of intellectualising your feelings either. At some point, we can tend to over analyse , usually because we want to explain away why exactly it is that we insist on treating each other like cunts.
The tendency to over think also makes for pretty dry writing, which is why I shy away from non-fiction. People seem to think that by writing down what happened on a particular day to a particular person, that they are in some way capturing the truth of that moment. But such a telling ignores completely the emotional truth of a situation, which is why we go (or went) to the movies, because a good old-fashioned story can dive straight to the heart of the matter, as it were.
The problem today is that we tend to watch the news or go online to read about the "facts", because in the wake of wikipedia and CNN information is what we crave, rather than truth. So, onto the peaches.
---
Once upon a time, there was a young peach who had all the best advantages in life. He had a safe spot on his tree, nestled amongst the branches and the other peaches, safe from the prying beaks of passing birds. But he was not too nestled away that he didn't get enough sun. In fact, his tree was planted in a garden so warm and sun-kissed that he and his brothers grew to be large (but not fat), charming and generally well-rounded peaches.
He had a fine, if rather interrupted education at the hands of the caterpillars who built their cocoons in his tree, before bursting out in a flurry of colour and wings. It was always sad when his teacher-butterflies flew away, but it pleased him to think that they got to soar away over the horizon, to the distant regions Beyond the House, of which he knew very little.
Of course, such a well-rounded peach couldn't be kept on his tree forever, and he was itching to get away and see the world. But his tree loved him very much, and wanted him to stay. They began to bicker about it, especially whenever the young peach wanted to stay up late and watch the moon rise overhead. The tree didn't understand. She thought the garden was the greatest place in all the world, and that any sensible peach would want to stay right there. He could, she offered, even fall one day and land in the rich moist soil and grow into a great big tree himself. Wouldn't he like that?
Unfortunately, he didn't like it at all. He wanted to be free, unshackled, and though he loved his tree, he couldn't think of anything more sedate and fixed as the life of a tree. I want to see Beyond, he would say, whenever the wind shook the tree's branches, whistling about the peaches and whispering too. I want to go where the wind comes from, begged the young peach. I want to talk to the wind and swim in the sea and fly, like my teachers! His tree would shake her branches even more vigorously. There is no Beyond, she would say, and peaches can't fly.
It went on and on, and all the while the days grew shorter, and the wind bit more than it whispered. The young peach began to grow cold, as his fuzz did little to ward of the elements. Finally one day, when we were playing outside, we hit the tree with our ball, and the young peach flew off, landing in the damp grass. We gathered around, curious and hungry, but time and the cold had done their work. The peach was rotten.
The tendency to over think also makes for pretty dry writing, which is why I shy away from non-fiction. People seem to think that by writing down what happened on a particular day to a particular person, that they are in some way capturing the truth of that moment. But such a telling ignores completely the emotional truth of a situation, which is why we go (or went) to the movies, because a good old-fashioned story can dive straight to the heart of the matter, as it were.
The problem today is that we tend to watch the news or go online to read about the "facts", because in the wake of wikipedia and CNN information is what we crave, rather than truth. So, onto the peaches.
---
Once upon a time, there was a young peach who had all the best advantages in life. He had a safe spot on his tree, nestled amongst the branches and the other peaches, safe from the prying beaks of passing birds. But he was not too nestled away that he didn't get enough sun. In fact, his tree was planted in a garden so warm and sun-kissed that he and his brothers grew to be large (but not fat), charming and generally well-rounded peaches.
He had a fine, if rather interrupted education at the hands of the caterpillars who built their cocoons in his tree, before bursting out in a flurry of colour and wings. It was always sad when his teacher-butterflies flew away, but it pleased him to think that they got to soar away over the horizon, to the distant regions Beyond the House, of which he knew very little.
Of course, such a well-rounded peach couldn't be kept on his tree forever, and he was itching to get away and see the world. But his tree loved him very much, and wanted him to stay. They began to bicker about it, especially whenever the young peach wanted to stay up late and watch the moon rise overhead. The tree didn't understand. She thought the garden was the greatest place in all the world, and that any sensible peach would want to stay right there. He could, she offered, even fall one day and land in the rich moist soil and grow into a great big tree himself. Wouldn't he like that?
Unfortunately, he didn't like it at all. He wanted to be free, unshackled, and though he loved his tree, he couldn't think of anything more sedate and fixed as the life of a tree. I want to see Beyond, he would say, whenever the wind shook the tree's branches, whistling about the peaches and whispering too. I want to go where the wind comes from, begged the young peach. I want to talk to the wind and swim in the sea and fly, like my teachers! His tree would shake her branches even more vigorously. There is no Beyond, she would say, and peaches can't fly.
It went on and on, and all the while the days grew shorter, and the wind bit more than it whispered. The young peach began to grow cold, as his fuzz did little to ward of the elements. Finally one day, when we were playing outside, we hit the tree with our ball, and the young peach flew off, landing in the damp grass. We gathered around, curious and hungry, but time and the cold had done their work. The peach was rotten.
Sunday, 13 April 2008
Peach in Fed Square, Four Am
It's cold, bitterly cold. The only cars cruising past are taxis, which strangely seem to be refusing most potential patrons. It's late enough that people are just wandering, making up their minds whether to go home or to stay out for another drink.
It's cold and I'm tired enough that it's hard to string together thoughts that aren't incoherent or needlessly bitter. The temperature seems to be able to get beneath by clothes and under my skin. It infects me. A friend once told me that to ignore the biting wind, all you need to do is realise that the wind isn't going through you - it's going around you.
Unfortunately this doesn't really work and so I'm sitting on cafe chair that's tied to the table, and I can hear the sound of people shouting and glass breaking and buses are leaving but I hope they are the wrong buses.
We always hope that they are the wrong buses, foolishly believing that the right one is still to come. After all, don't the chances get better and better, the longer you wait?
Only if you believe the buses will keep coming forever. But if you think they will eventually end, perhaps when the sun pokes up above the cathedrals, then really your chances diminish with each passing bus.
But all this is rather a moot point - useless philosophising while my battery runs out and the cold continues to seep and there's no one to call. And no buses have come past for a while. Perhaps they've already finished? In which case I might follow river down to suburbia. A long walk but at least I might get warm.
It's cold and I'm tired enough that it's hard to string together thoughts that aren't incoherent or needlessly bitter. The temperature seems to be able to get beneath by clothes and under my skin. It infects me. A friend once told me that to ignore the biting wind, all you need to do is realise that the wind isn't going through you - it's going around you.
Unfortunately this doesn't really work and so I'm sitting on cafe chair that's tied to the table, and I can hear the sound of people shouting and glass breaking and buses are leaving but I hope they are the wrong buses.
We always hope that they are the wrong buses, foolishly believing that the right one is still to come. After all, don't the chances get better and better, the longer you wait?
Only if you believe the buses will keep coming forever. But if you think they will eventually end, perhaps when the sun pokes up above the cathedrals, then really your chances diminish with each passing bus.
But all this is rather a moot point - useless philosophising while my battery runs out and the cold continues to seep and there's no one to call. And no buses have come past for a while. Perhaps they've already finished? In which case I might follow river down to suburbia. A long walk but at least I might get warm.
Thursday, 3 April 2008
Peach Enters the Emerging Writer's Festival Competition
Travellers in search of El Dorado or Atlantis must listen attentively to the natives, who tell of a city without a past – where the people are too busy with the present to stop and look over their shoulders. They say that if you head out beyond the mountains, following the great dirty river that winds its way past well-kept vineyards, you will come across a city that settles on the horizon like a mirage. And no matter how close you get, it always remains there, just out of reach – even as you wander its many grey laneways the city seems unreal to you.
The city is built in such a way that you lose all perspective. Every street seems to head straight on without interruption nor incline nor decline until it passes beyond your vision. Such a flat city causes many travellers to lose their heads, the natives say. They spend many hours underground, throwing their money at polite well-dressed staff who don’t wear watches. The travellers forget the time, their families, their homes across the sea.
To say that the people of this city love their sport is an understatement. They bump and jostle each other on the wide, flat streets with such ferocity that they have little time for love, or politics.
It is a city constantly under construction. Its citizens reinvent their surroundings at every opportunity. The natives will point to themselves as examples, and the traveller sees them transform before their own eyes – noble savages to helpless primitives to national hero to alcoholic. The people welcome travellers because their own ears are already too much abused by tales of glory, discovery and liveability. The city would die if not for the constant influx of travellers who believed in the promise of the mirage they saw nestling on the bay in the distance. It is a city of dreamers.
Secretly, the city realises its own inadequacy. The people know that their fashion is too grey, their laneways too wide and their love too suburban.
Secretly, they hope for an event that will finally put them on the map. (Or at least on a T-shirt).
The city is built in such a way that you lose all perspective. Every street seems to head straight on without interruption nor incline nor decline until it passes beyond your vision. Such a flat city causes many travellers to lose their heads, the natives say. They spend many hours underground, throwing their money at polite well-dressed staff who don’t wear watches. The travellers forget the time, their families, their homes across the sea.
To say that the people of this city love their sport is an understatement. They bump and jostle each other on the wide, flat streets with such ferocity that they have little time for love, or politics.
It is a city constantly under construction. Its citizens reinvent their surroundings at every opportunity. The natives will point to themselves as examples, and the traveller sees them transform before their own eyes – noble savages to helpless primitives to national hero to alcoholic. The people welcome travellers because their own ears are already too much abused by tales of glory, discovery and liveability. The city would die if not for the constant influx of travellers who believed in the promise of the mirage they saw nestling on the bay in the distance. It is a city of dreamers.
Secretly, the city realises its own inadequacy. The people know that their fashion is too grey, their laneways too wide and their love too suburban.
Secretly, they hope for an event that will finally put them on the map. (Or at least on a T-shirt).
Thursday, 27 March 2008
While Filing Peach Daydreams About Napkin Eyes
She's the kind of person who thinks of insomnia as something that would be useful to have. She talks too quickly, and never chews her food properly. She's economical with her laughter, rationing it out so that she has enough for very serious emergencies, when she has a tendency to giggle with hysteria.
He has napkins for eyes. He has different napkins for different occasions. For day-to-day use, he wears plain napkins from cafes and mid-range restaurants. He draws his eyes on roughly with a biro. He wore a fancy emroidered napkin to his Year 12 Formal, and his eyes were drawn with a calligraphy pen his Dad gave him for his birthday. When he's slumming around the house, or feeling really hungover, he wears McDonald's napkins, but they tear quite easily, and it's very difficult to draw eyes on them, even with a biro.
They met on a rainy day. It seemed to her that he was crying. She averted her eyes, because crying made her nervous. The pitter-patter of the rain followed her all the way to her office, where she was distracted from work by the thought of his napkins. She wondered what it would be like to draw eyes onto his napkins for him. As the grey day wore on she imagined drawing happy eyes, bright and sparkling.
They met on a rainy day. It looked as if he was crying, because the rain made his eyes run. He tried to smile at her as she passed, but she averted her eyes. That made him want to take his napkins off and draw on sad eyes. Instead, he went home and watched the television. But nothing could keep his attention. Instead, he thought about her averted eyes, like little shiny mirrors.
The next day, he went to the supermarket. Wandering up and down the aisles he passed the dog food and the tampons and finally found what he was looking for - the al foil. Although he only needed one sheet he bought a whole roll because that's the way they sell them. Outside the supermarket he drew on the happiest eyes he could think of, and put them on.
[...]
He has napkins for eyes. He has different napkins for different occasions. For day-to-day use, he wears plain napkins from cafes and mid-range restaurants. He draws his eyes on roughly with a biro. He wore a fancy emroidered napkin to his Year 12 Formal, and his eyes were drawn with a calligraphy pen his Dad gave him for his birthday. When he's slumming around the house, or feeling really hungover, he wears McDonald's napkins, but they tear quite easily, and it's very difficult to draw eyes on them, even with a biro.
They met on a rainy day. It seemed to her that he was crying. She averted her eyes, because crying made her nervous. The pitter-patter of the rain followed her all the way to her office, where she was distracted from work by the thought of his napkins. She wondered what it would be like to draw eyes onto his napkins for him. As the grey day wore on she imagined drawing happy eyes, bright and sparkling.
They met on a rainy day. It looked as if he was crying, because the rain made his eyes run. He tried to smile at her as she passed, but she averted her eyes. That made him want to take his napkins off and draw on sad eyes. Instead, he went home and watched the television. But nothing could keep his attention. Instead, he thought about her averted eyes, like little shiny mirrors.
The next day, he went to the supermarket. Wandering up and down the aisles he passed the dog food and the tampons and finally found what he was looking for - the al foil. Although he only needed one sheet he bought a whole roll because that's the way they sell them. Outside the supermarket he drew on the happiest eyes he could think of, and put them on.
[...]
Monday, 17 March 2008
Peach Presents: The Rise and Fall of Herman the Cat*
My cat Herman wasn’t always so bad. Before Allie died, he would leap with a friendly jingle from behind a rose bush at the birds but they would flap lazily away. In winter, when my knees shake because it’s so cold, he would always slink into my room and leap unexpectedly into his lap. Then he’d curl up there and purr every so often and my knees would be still.
Herman discovered Allie’s corpse on a routine prowl of the living room. He didn’t notice the goldfish floating belly-up in her bowl until he was almost pressed up to the glass – something he liked to do regularly, peering into the water and pawing playfully at Allie.
The news of the death filtered through the house quickly and it was barely ten minutes later that we were all assembled in the backyard, around a little hole I dug in the shade of the apple tree. Mum held Allie in her hands, cradling her into the grave. My little brother Wilder placed a tiny Bombers scarf alongside the body (she had always seemed more energetic when the football was on TV, and would stare intensely through her bowl whenever Essendon were playing). Then we all grabbed a handful of dirt and sprinkled it over her until there was nothing left except a slight mound of dirt surrounded by patchy green brown grass.
A couple of days later, Herman had a dream. He was wandering by a lake, chasing butterflies, swatting at them with his paw. The sun was mirrored in the lake, and the rays from both sky-sun and water-sun bathed everything in a toasty gold. Then, without a sound, silky black animals of every kind stole into his dream and began to attack him. Claws, beaks, hooves and hands tore, bit, scratched and slashed him until he was on his side, dying, looking at the butterflies fluttering past just out of his reach …
Herman woke slowly, unable to shake an unnameable dread. It was mid-afternoon. Wilder and I played Cowboys and Indians in the backyard and Herman watched us, thoughts racing through his head. Mum brought out his food but he barely even looked at it, choosing instead to pace up and down the railing of the veranda. When we’re tired of playing I ran back inside to watch TV but Wilder stayed outside. He went over to Herman, who dropped off the railing and stretched out on his back. Wilder tickled, and Herman purred contentedly.
For a while, Herman forgot all about his dream. Little shoots began to push through the mound of dirt under the apple tree. Birds were chased to no avail, while Wilder and I played Cops and Robbers in the yard. Then the ants came.
We first noticed them in the kitchen. Wilder had managed to slather as much honey on the bench as on his toast, and sure enough, just as Mum had always foretold, the ants appeared. There was only a handful at first. Brave little scout ants that trekked across the sink and through the drying rack and over the blender. By mid-afternoon they had been replaced by an army of worker ants, who arrived so thick that the bench swarmed black and multi-legged.
The next day I found a little trail of ants leading from my window, down my wall and across the floor to my desk. They carried back crumbs of mud cake twice as big as themselves.
Herman didn’t take well to this invasion. He sulked on the veranda, and when he did venture inside he cast mistrustful eyes at the little trails of ants that seemed to seep out of little cracks in our walls. Eventually Wilder and I tried to coax him out of his gloom by buying him a ball of yarn, but after a brief smile and a half-hearted swipe he sank back into moody contemplation. I had to go play soccer, so I left him to Wilder, who had his crayons and was drawing Herman some funny pictures.
When I got home Wilder was sitting poker faced at the foot of the stairs. As I shook the mud off my boots he said in as serious a voice as he could muster, ‘Allie was murdered.’
All the dots connected, he told me. Herman notices things we’d never notice – firstly, goldfish don’t just drop off like that. They usually take days to die properly. Secondly, the ants were seen trooping in and out of the shed, where the weedkiller is kept. The way Allie died so suddenly is consistent with poisoning, he assured me. It wouldn’t have been too hard – remember when that bird flew inside and couldn’t find it’s way back out? We spent the whole day helping Mum, chasing the bird with broomsticks trying to show it the way out, and you remember thinking, it didn’t seem to want to get out? That was the day before Allie died. We were all distracted by the bird – but Herman wasn’t. Do you think that the first ants came only after Allie died? There weren’t many, that’s why Herman didn’t say anything, but there were enough to carry out the job. Just a few drops of weedkiller would have done it.
I was sceptical to say the least. All circumstantial evidence, I said, echoing the guy on TV. Coincidences, accidents. What about a motive?
Herman wandered inside and gazed sadly at me. Wilder too looked at me pityingly.
‘What about Herman’s dream?’ said Wilder.
I thought it best to leave them to their theories – just the fancies of grief, I told myself. They spent most of those days out on the veranda, Wilder with his crayons and A3 poster paper, making connections, tracing outlines of action.
Meanwhile, Mum and I thought of ways to get them to move on. We took Wilder on some retail therapy but he spent the whole day following us through Chadstone looking at the displays for hair transplants and home entertainment hubs. We bought Herman some Discovery Channel documentaries about lions and leopards and tigers. Finally, we decided to get a new goldfish.
The people at the pet store were very understanding. Things like this happen all the time, they assured us, it’s tragic, just tragic. You just have to move on. We nodded mutely and walked out of the store with a goldfish that looked almost exactly like Allie, a new tank and matching rocks and seaweed décor.
Wilder and Herman didn’t react well. They barely even greeted the new goldfish before retiring to their maps and diagrams. During the next few days they looked at me and Mum suspiciously and became silent whenever we were in the backyard. There was a growing expectation in the air that something was about to happen.
Before it did, Wilder came to me once last time. I was in my room, my knees shaking, trying to read a book about the Cold War.
Before he could say anything, I said, ‘Maybe we should have fed her better. Maybe we should have cleaned her bowl more often. Maybe there’s no big conspiracy. Maybe it just happened.’
Wilder shook his head. ‘Then how do you explain the fact that the ants invaded only once Allie was out of the way? The magpies had a motive – she was always such a passionate Bombers supporter.’
‘But they could all be coincidences. You’re piecing together a puzzle that isn’t there.’
‘And Herman’s dream? They’re behind this, the other animals. That’s what the dream meant. They’re jealous of our pets. Things don’t just happen for no reason. Goldfish don’t just die. And you know what this all means?’
I looked at him blankly.
‘Herman’s next.’
The next day, Wilder came out to the veranda with a can of deodorant and some matches. He searched the ground for a while, his little face scrunched tight in concentration. He soon found what he was looking for – an ant hole. Wilder traced all the little paths the ants were making to the house, and laid down a carpet of deodorant over their busy freeways. He lit a match and then watched as the fire spread from the heart, through the arteries to the suburbs, where industrious scout ants sensed danger coming from home but stayed on their designated tracks, calmly waiting for the eschaton. The fire consumed them quicker than Wilder and Herman had thought – it was surprisingly quick and clean. No writhing bodies, no ants running about on fire. Just the burnt out corpses of an entire colony. They wondered how things looked inside the tunnels. Did the fire penetrate? Was the queen dead?
Wilder returned with Panadol, placing the small white capsules among the birdseed Mum leaves out next to the birdbath. He left out Pringles laced with detergent for the possums.
That night, after the moon set, Wilder and Herman woke up under the cover of darkness and Wilder cleaned at Herman’s directions. The exploded birds, the dead possum, the charred ants. Herman showed his pleasure at a job well done by rubbing against Wilder’s leg and purring.
Eventually, Herman ruled the world from his vantage point on our veranda.
Often, just to wile away the hours, he would call on his most beloved courtier. Using the entire backyard, Wilder regaled the emperor with news of his empire – little newspaper armadas sailing across the pond; princesses kidnapped and held in the cubby house; the surviving ants drafted into service, now patrolling the swing. Wilder came to Herman with visions of his empire: shopping centres, office buildings, freeways and universities – all pastel colours and crudely drawn squares, triangles, circles and oblongs. Herman began to map out his vast territory, up there in his mind’s eye, a terrible, awe-inspiring kingdom.
Herman became quite particular, as is the case with most absolute rulers. He only ate out of his bowl – a shocking purple, with glitter-dusted letters spelling ‘H.E.R.M.A.N.’ accompanied by jaunty yellow stars. Dictators often have terrible taste. But maybe this is a little unfair. Herman was very discerning in his television watching. The West Wing of course, and Arrested Development. But also Big Brother and National Nine News. He wanted to understand his people.
Sometimes though, he wondered how well he knew them.
Wilder returned to Herman with visions that grew more and more vivid. He forewent pastel for watercolours. He moved on to pentagons, octagons, decahedrons even.
And all the while, the dream sat like a tumour in the back of Herman’s mind. Although the magpies now patrolled the skies for him, and the possums were his personal bodyguards, he couldn’t shake off that unnameable dread he had woken up with so long ago. He sent flies and bees to check on the still unnamed goldfish, and demanded status reports from Wilder everyday. Every detail was scrutinised with obsession. Why didn’t she eat one day? Why did she spend most of another day flying through the arch-like rock? Why was she so interested in Neighbours?
The tumour began to affect Herman’s eyesight. He started to squint from the veranda but still couldn’t make out the edges of the yard. The fence blurred into the grass. Wilder began explaining his shopping centres with the aid of brochures, illustrated with drawings that looked like photos. Herman saw the universities on a little television Wilder brought out to the veranda one day. It seemed to him that he was finally seeing his people clearly for the first time – they were cheery, culturally diverse, and talked with their hands while walking through impressive looking archways. He watched his creation and saw that it was good.
Herman started getting excruciating migraines around then. From inside, we would hear a keen screeching and if you looked closely you could see long thin scratch marks on the veranda decking. And always, the same dream …
Herman began to dislike his view from the veranda. The blurred edges of his vision started to hem him in. Even as his empire expanded (Wilder would point to distant lands on multicoloured maps – strange places where cats were eaten, others where cats were gods), his world grew smaller. He ordered Wilder to knock down the Hills Hoist and cut the tire swing. Even those animals that served Herman were to be exterminated. If he could not even trust his own eyes, how could he trust those ants, those birds? Those that had so much reason to hate him.
He retreated to the living room and held court beneath the dining table. The curtains were drawn, the doors shut. Wilder covered the table with doonas that hung over the edge and created a sanctuary. From in there Herman surfed the net and kept in touch with his empire. He would click the mouse and press enter, ctrl+alt+del. In a couple of hours the nameless goldfish was floating belly up in her tank, the rocks and seaweed décor gone.
One night Herman came into my room just as I was about to fall asleep. He prowled among the piles of books spread about across my floor. He seemed agitated. He told me it was about time he gave up this empire lark.
I switched on the light and I realised that the walls of my bedroom were now covered from wall to ceiling with maps, fabulously multi-coloured maps unlike any I had ever seen before. The maps encompassed the whole world – and yet I could easily pick out our house. I could move up our street, turn right and move past the shops right up to the gates of our school, and then through into the corridors, past my scowling principal and into my classroom where Liz and Max and Emma are playing Celebrity Heads … you could lose yourself in these maps.
Herman looked at me sadly. All too easily, old sport, he seemed to say, with a wistful little wink. He pre-emptied my question by assuring me that it wasn’t the power that had attracted him. It had all just been something to believe in. After all, you know what they say…it’s all fun and games until a goldfish dies.
He jumped from my desk onto my bed, curled up at my feet and settled into a dreamless sleep. Outside, Wilder roamed beneath the silent moon, among the burnt out remains of shopping centres, where the blackened fliers for weight loss and mobile phones fluttered out of broken shop windows, among the dying, and the dead.
*Originally published in Voiceworks Magazine
Herman discovered Allie’s corpse on a routine prowl of the living room. He didn’t notice the goldfish floating belly-up in her bowl until he was almost pressed up to the glass – something he liked to do regularly, peering into the water and pawing playfully at Allie.
The news of the death filtered through the house quickly and it was barely ten minutes later that we were all assembled in the backyard, around a little hole I dug in the shade of the apple tree. Mum held Allie in her hands, cradling her into the grave. My little brother Wilder placed a tiny Bombers scarf alongside the body (she had always seemed more energetic when the football was on TV, and would stare intensely through her bowl whenever Essendon were playing). Then we all grabbed a handful of dirt and sprinkled it over her until there was nothing left except a slight mound of dirt surrounded by patchy green brown grass.
A couple of days later, Herman had a dream. He was wandering by a lake, chasing butterflies, swatting at them with his paw. The sun was mirrored in the lake, and the rays from both sky-sun and water-sun bathed everything in a toasty gold. Then, without a sound, silky black animals of every kind stole into his dream and began to attack him. Claws, beaks, hooves and hands tore, bit, scratched and slashed him until he was on his side, dying, looking at the butterflies fluttering past just out of his reach …
Herman woke slowly, unable to shake an unnameable dread. It was mid-afternoon. Wilder and I played Cowboys and Indians in the backyard and Herman watched us, thoughts racing through his head. Mum brought out his food but he barely even looked at it, choosing instead to pace up and down the railing of the veranda. When we’re tired of playing I ran back inside to watch TV but Wilder stayed outside. He went over to Herman, who dropped off the railing and stretched out on his back. Wilder tickled, and Herman purred contentedly.
For a while, Herman forgot all about his dream. Little shoots began to push through the mound of dirt under the apple tree. Birds were chased to no avail, while Wilder and I played Cops and Robbers in the yard. Then the ants came.
We first noticed them in the kitchen. Wilder had managed to slather as much honey on the bench as on his toast, and sure enough, just as Mum had always foretold, the ants appeared. There was only a handful at first. Brave little scout ants that trekked across the sink and through the drying rack and over the blender. By mid-afternoon they had been replaced by an army of worker ants, who arrived so thick that the bench swarmed black and multi-legged.
The next day I found a little trail of ants leading from my window, down my wall and across the floor to my desk. They carried back crumbs of mud cake twice as big as themselves.
Herman didn’t take well to this invasion. He sulked on the veranda, and when he did venture inside he cast mistrustful eyes at the little trails of ants that seemed to seep out of little cracks in our walls. Eventually Wilder and I tried to coax him out of his gloom by buying him a ball of yarn, but after a brief smile and a half-hearted swipe he sank back into moody contemplation. I had to go play soccer, so I left him to Wilder, who had his crayons and was drawing Herman some funny pictures.
When I got home Wilder was sitting poker faced at the foot of the stairs. As I shook the mud off my boots he said in as serious a voice as he could muster, ‘Allie was murdered.’
All the dots connected, he told me. Herman notices things we’d never notice – firstly, goldfish don’t just drop off like that. They usually take days to die properly. Secondly, the ants were seen trooping in and out of the shed, where the weedkiller is kept. The way Allie died so suddenly is consistent with poisoning, he assured me. It wouldn’t have been too hard – remember when that bird flew inside and couldn’t find it’s way back out? We spent the whole day helping Mum, chasing the bird with broomsticks trying to show it the way out, and you remember thinking, it didn’t seem to want to get out? That was the day before Allie died. We were all distracted by the bird – but Herman wasn’t. Do you think that the first ants came only after Allie died? There weren’t many, that’s why Herman didn’t say anything, but there were enough to carry out the job. Just a few drops of weedkiller would have done it.
I was sceptical to say the least. All circumstantial evidence, I said, echoing the guy on TV. Coincidences, accidents. What about a motive?
Herman wandered inside and gazed sadly at me. Wilder too looked at me pityingly.
‘What about Herman’s dream?’ said Wilder.
I thought it best to leave them to their theories – just the fancies of grief, I told myself. They spent most of those days out on the veranda, Wilder with his crayons and A3 poster paper, making connections, tracing outlines of action.
Meanwhile, Mum and I thought of ways to get them to move on. We took Wilder on some retail therapy but he spent the whole day following us through Chadstone looking at the displays for hair transplants and home entertainment hubs. We bought Herman some Discovery Channel documentaries about lions and leopards and tigers. Finally, we decided to get a new goldfish.
The people at the pet store were very understanding. Things like this happen all the time, they assured us, it’s tragic, just tragic. You just have to move on. We nodded mutely and walked out of the store with a goldfish that looked almost exactly like Allie, a new tank and matching rocks and seaweed décor.
Wilder and Herman didn’t react well. They barely even greeted the new goldfish before retiring to their maps and diagrams. During the next few days they looked at me and Mum suspiciously and became silent whenever we were in the backyard. There was a growing expectation in the air that something was about to happen.
Before it did, Wilder came to me once last time. I was in my room, my knees shaking, trying to read a book about the Cold War.
Before he could say anything, I said, ‘Maybe we should have fed her better. Maybe we should have cleaned her bowl more often. Maybe there’s no big conspiracy. Maybe it just happened.’
Wilder shook his head. ‘Then how do you explain the fact that the ants invaded only once Allie was out of the way? The magpies had a motive – she was always such a passionate Bombers supporter.’
‘But they could all be coincidences. You’re piecing together a puzzle that isn’t there.’
‘And Herman’s dream? They’re behind this, the other animals. That’s what the dream meant. They’re jealous of our pets. Things don’t just happen for no reason. Goldfish don’t just die. And you know what this all means?’
I looked at him blankly.
‘Herman’s next.’
The next day, Wilder came out to the veranda with a can of deodorant and some matches. He searched the ground for a while, his little face scrunched tight in concentration. He soon found what he was looking for – an ant hole. Wilder traced all the little paths the ants were making to the house, and laid down a carpet of deodorant over their busy freeways. He lit a match and then watched as the fire spread from the heart, through the arteries to the suburbs, where industrious scout ants sensed danger coming from home but stayed on their designated tracks, calmly waiting for the eschaton. The fire consumed them quicker than Wilder and Herman had thought – it was surprisingly quick and clean. No writhing bodies, no ants running about on fire. Just the burnt out corpses of an entire colony. They wondered how things looked inside the tunnels. Did the fire penetrate? Was the queen dead?
Wilder returned with Panadol, placing the small white capsules among the birdseed Mum leaves out next to the birdbath. He left out Pringles laced with detergent for the possums.
That night, after the moon set, Wilder and Herman woke up under the cover of darkness and Wilder cleaned at Herman’s directions. The exploded birds, the dead possum, the charred ants. Herman showed his pleasure at a job well done by rubbing against Wilder’s leg and purring.
Eventually, Herman ruled the world from his vantage point on our veranda.
Often, just to wile away the hours, he would call on his most beloved courtier. Using the entire backyard, Wilder regaled the emperor with news of his empire – little newspaper armadas sailing across the pond; princesses kidnapped and held in the cubby house; the surviving ants drafted into service, now patrolling the swing. Wilder came to Herman with visions of his empire: shopping centres, office buildings, freeways and universities – all pastel colours and crudely drawn squares, triangles, circles and oblongs. Herman began to map out his vast territory, up there in his mind’s eye, a terrible, awe-inspiring kingdom.
Herman became quite particular, as is the case with most absolute rulers. He only ate out of his bowl – a shocking purple, with glitter-dusted letters spelling ‘H.E.R.M.A.N.’ accompanied by jaunty yellow stars. Dictators often have terrible taste. But maybe this is a little unfair. Herman was very discerning in his television watching. The West Wing of course, and Arrested Development. But also Big Brother and National Nine News. He wanted to understand his people.
Sometimes though, he wondered how well he knew them.
Wilder returned to Herman with visions that grew more and more vivid. He forewent pastel for watercolours. He moved on to pentagons, octagons, decahedrons even.
And all the while, the dream sat like a tumour in the back of Herman’s mind. Although the magpies now patrolled the skies for him, and the possums were his personal bodyguards, he couldn’t shake off that unnameable dread he had woken up with so long ago. He sent flies and bees to check on the still unnamed goldfish, and demanded status reports from Wilder everyday. Every detail was scrutinised with obsession. Why didn’t she eat one day? Why did she spend most of another day flying through the arch-like rock? Why was she so interested in Neighbours?
The tumour began to affect Herman’s eyesight. He started to squint from the veranda but still couldn’t make out the edges of the yard. The fence blurred into the grass. Wilder began explaining his shopping centres with the aid of brochures, illustrated with drawings that looked like photos. Herman saw the universities on a little television Wilder brought out to the veranda one day. It seemed to him that he was finally seeing his people clearly for the first time – they were cheery, culturally diverse, and talked with their hands while walking through impressive looking archways. He watched his creation and saw that it was good.
Herman started getting excruciating migraines around then. From inside, we would hear a keen screeching and if you looked closely you could see long thin scratch marks on the veranda decking. And always, the same dream …
Herman began to dislike his view from the veranda. The blurred edges of his vision started to hem him in. Even as his empire expanded (Wilder would point to distant lands on multicoloured maps – strange places where cats were eaten, others where cats were gods), his world grew smaller. He ordered Wilder to knock down the Hills Hoist and cut the tire swing. Even those animals that served Herman were to be exterminated. If he could not even trust his own eyes, how could he trust those ants, those birds? Those that had so much reason to hate him.
He retreated to the living room and held court beneath the dining table. The curtains were drawn, the doors shut. Wilder covered the table with doonas that hung over the edge and created a sanctuary. From in there Herman surfed the net and kept in touch with his empire. He would click the mouse and press enter, ctrl+alt+del. In a couple of hours the nameless goldfish was floating belly up in her tank, the rocks and seaweed décor gone.
One night Herman came into my room just as I was about to fall asleep. He prowled among the piles of books spread about across my floor. He seemed agitated. He told me it was about time he gave up this empire lark.
I switched on the light and I realised that the walls of my bedroom were now covered from wall to ceiling with maps, fabulously multi-coloured maps unlike any I had ever seen before. The maps encompassed the whole world – and yet I could easily pick out our house. I could move up our street, turn right and move past the shops right up to the gates of our school, and then through into the corridors, past my scowling principal and into my classroom where Liz and Max and Emma are playing Celebrity Heads … you could lose yourself in these maps.
Herman looked at me sadly. All too easily, old sport, he seemed to say, with a wistful little wink. He pre-emptied my question by assuring me that it wasn’t the power that had attracted him. It had all just been something to believe in. After all, you know what they say…it’s all fun and games until a goldfish dies.
He jumped from my desk onto my bed, curled up at my feet and settled into a dreamless sleep. Outside, Wilder roamed beneath the silent moon, among the burnt out remains of shopping centres, where the blackened fliers for weight loss and mobile phones fluttered out of broken shop windows, among the dying, and the dead.
*Originally published in Voiceworks Magazine
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