CRISIS
Copyright © Carmel Bird 1996. All rights reserved.
This comic novel of contemporary Australian life was first published under the pen-name of Jack Power. It was later re-published under my own name.
CHAPTER ONE
In which my obsession for Dinusha originates in the lingerie shop and I decide to abandon my serial-killer image for good.
Felicity and I had been divorced for six months when I fell in
love with Dinusha. It appeared to be a sudden thing, but actually
it happened over time. I had been observing Dinusha for some weeks,
but it wasn't until I went into the lingerie shop where she worked
that the whole thing hit me.
I was living in this run down house (Felicity, you understand,
had the four-bedroom mansion with the pool, bought, as she liked
to point out, mostly with her grandfather's money) and the only
good part about this place I was in (I mean the only good part) was the window that faced the street. Don't get the
idea that I used to stand at the window and watch girls walking
past. No, I had a better method. Facing the window there was a
large framed poster of a beach in Fiji, and the outside world
was reflected in the glass. So I'd lie on the old brown sofa with
my back to the window and I could see whoever went by. Plenty
of old blokes with bags of shopping, and boys on skate boards.
Sometimes it was this dark, mysterious, sexy Indian girl with
a Walkman. She was like some vision in a dream, drifting across
the glass in the picture frame. There I'd be, listening to the
cricket, and She would manifest on my screen.
I have a good friend called Ross -- and when he went through his
divorce he started going to an analyst. They would discuss imaginary visions not to mention dream images of dark voluptuous strangers and what it all meant. The Anima
and such. I knew what it meant, and when my houri (in the nicest
possible sense) made her way into my waking life, at a shadowy
remove, I lay on the sofa and accepted what fate had to offer.
A scruffy pile of books Ross forced upon me was piled up more
or less unopened on the floor beside this sofa -- Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D (a runaway best seller as seen on TV)
and things like Spiritual Awareness in the Mid-Life Crisis; The Conscious Marriage (which was full of exercises for things such as the container
transaction understanding your partner's inner world). I know
all about Felicity's inner world actually -- it resembles a casserole
of cold Irish stew with eels and spiders in it. Travelling With the Tiger -- I rather liked the sound of that one, but it turned out to
be about some sort of grace and revelation. These books were gradually
moving under the sofa. Soon they would be out of sight. Goodbye Harville Hendrix.
Felicity has often been known to criticise me for lying on sofas
listening to the cricket or whatever. If only, she used to say,
I would mow the lawn or prune the roses or sweep the paths or
clean out the gutters. She would explain that I would be so much
happier, healthier, more useful, more in touch. I asked about
'in touch' -- in touch with what, exactly. My feelings, the earth,
reality, life. Quite good value for a fellow who's just cleaning
out the gutters. In any case, I said we had experts to do these
things, people we paid to get the jobs done. We wouldn't want
to take their jobs away from them etc. etc. Whenever our discussions
came round to this point, Felicity just said 'mmmmm' and walked
out of the room. She thinks all the money is hers. Well, it is
in a way. I'm just a poor old teacher -- senior lecturer in fact
-- and I don't exactly bring home much bacon. Harville Hendrix
no doubt covers points like this in his book.
Anyhow, when I had my own place, with my own gutters simply crammed
with leaves and dirt and sprouting weeds like eyebrows, I took
considerable pleasure in lying on the sofa with my back to the
world (and life and reality) watching for the moments when my
dream girl went gliding by.
Then there was the day I was walking past the lingerie shop, idly
looking in the window at the black lacy numbers, when what should
waft into view behind a display of silver stockings but my deep
dark heart's desire. I noticed her eyes and her breasts. Fabulous.
Intelligent, if you know what I mean. Really intelligent tits.
I hadn't realised any of this when I had watched her reflection
in the glass, but through her little white top I could see what
I could see. I followed an urge to buy underwear and went in.
All I could think of was 34C -- Felicity is a 34C -- and so I
exaggerated and said 34D and it seemed OK because my dark beauty
didn't bat an eyelid (well, actually, she did a little discreet
eyelid batting, but it was playful, not judgemental) and got out
a small selection of white satin and lace bras. I said they were
for my fiancee. I felt I had to say something -- white seemed
a better idea somehow than black -- and a fiancee had a feeling
of less permanence than a wife. Although heaven knows a wife is
a will-o-the-wisp sort of a thing these days. I took two bras
at some fifty dollars each and two pairs of matching knickers
which were thirty dollars a pop for a minute draping of snow white
lace and gave her my Visa card. Then I changed my mind and wrote
a cheque because that way I could put my address on the back.
Showed her my licence with the god-awful photo of me looking like
a serial killer. Simon James Tyler, Serial Killer. I always expect
people to do a double-take when they see the licence and try to
connect the picture with me. They never do. She didn't either.
I watched her slender brown hands as she lifted the lingerie up
and gently let it fall over her wrist and drop onto the tissue
paper. I said, 'Champagne' out loud, meaning the colour of the
paper. The word just slid out of my mouth. 'Beg yours?' she said.
That threw me. 'The paper,' I said, 'the tissue paper's the colour
of champagne. Wouldn't you say?' 'I hadn't thought of it,' she
said, in a way she had, cocking her head on one side and letting
her incredible smile light up her face. 'No, I had never thought
of that. But now you mention it.' And she laughed. God, the laugh.
That was when I actually felt the thrill as the heavens opened
up to receive her laugh. I was a fish to the lure, a lamb to the
slaughter -- except it wasn't really like that at all. I always
reach for an animal image. It's because of my discipline. For
years now I've been teaching the second year subject of the Psychoanalytic
of Birds and Animals in Literary Discourse (East and West) and
the beasties have naturally gotten into my blood.
It used to drive Fliss wild. Can't you ever think about anything
but hyenas and carrions crows -- she'd yell at me. It wasn't fair.
It is, after all, my job, and a bird in the hand -- or a hare
and a tortoise here and there -- is a harmless enough thing, I
would have thought. Felicity, I should point out, has a very low
opinion of my chosen profession -- says it is scarcely fit for
grow-ups -- she despises Ross. I wonder why she married me; I
also wonder, sometimes, why I married her. I was madly in love
with Felicity, but I can't remember the details. Ross says it
must have been just sex. He's probably got a point there.
But back to Dinusha for a sec. Because I had made a fool of myself
over the champagne, I decided to go the whole hog (as it were)
and I just said straight out -- well, in a round-about crooked
sort of way -- I said, 'Patik, is your name Patik, by any chance.
You look uncannily like a student I had a few years ago -- her
last name was Patik.' She smiled mysteriously and looked down
and out came this most low and musical of sounds. She murmured,
'Maharaj. My name is Dinusha Maharaj.' I nearly choked at the
loveliness of it and I stood there stunned and staring into her
eyes, dark pools of mystery and passion. 'Oh,' I said,' sorry,
my mistake. Maybe you're related.' And she said in this amused
and faintly pitying way, 'I really don't think so.' As if I was
a half-witted child who couldn't be expected to know the finer
meanings of the gulf between a Patik and a Maharaj.
I needed to get home, to start to take in what was happening to
me. Harville Hendrix, where are you? Is this love? Do I sense
the contours of this beauty's inner landscape? She wrapped the
stuff up so slowly, deliberately and delicately (deliciously),
as I watched in a hypnotised sort of way. I could have watched
that woman wrap up knickers forever. She fondled everything -- the bras, the knickers, the paper, the raffia.
I swear she bound the parcel up with tufts of raffia. I'd never
seen that before, but afterwards I started to see it everywhere.
Even in the market they started tying bits of raffia round white
paper packets of cheese, round bunches of dried herbs. It's a
truism, of course, but when the beloved displays a particular
piece of behaviour, the lover (!) begins to find that particular
little novelty all over the place. I discovered raffia. I wanted raffia, longed to find myself bound hand and foot with raffia
bonds while I gazed up at Dinusha with eyes of anguish, begging
for pity. (This is all bullshit, of course. What I wanted was
to grab her round the waist and throw her to the floor and fuck
her in a pretty straight-forward sort of way. Forget the raffia.)
She said she hoped my fiancee would like the things. I had forgotten
all about the fiancee and nearly said what and who, but I stopped
myself in time. Then in came some repulsive woman covered in gold
costume jewellery and reeking of Poison (I know these things;
Fliss is a perfume freak. For fourteen years I have lived in a
house where the first rule of life is to smell good -- and that
means expensive, exotic, new.) This creature came tottering in
and started fingering the leopard skin slips and glaring at Dinusha.
I knew my time was up. 'Tell her she can change them if she needs
to,' Dinusha said as she handed the parcel to me in a plastic
carry-bag that said 'Fantasia' on the side. I'd never noticed
the place was called Fantasia. I say she handed it to me, but
it was like a ballet, more like a ballet. 'I think they'll be
right,' I said, quite calm. 'I'm sure they'll be right.' And I
drifted from the shop, from the precinct, from the hallowed ground,
the sanctuary, and floated along the street, turning the corner
into my own street without so much as a backward glance. I did
not look back.
Just then the sun came out and I saw the light shining through
the pale leaves of the trees in the street. Little hands of leafy
fabric unfolding before my eyes. Incredible radiance, translucent
umbrellas of tender green. I realised it was spring. The pavement
was as a ribbon of silk beneath my Nikes. My sweatshirt bore the
faded title Atlanta USA and a kind of rubber impression of the
Stars and Stripes. And a pizza stain on the elbow. I was wearing
(I can hardly believe this now) a pair of half-dead navy track
pants that were unravelling at the ankles (which were bare). There
I was floating along in seventh heaven, the parcel tied up with
raffia safe inside the Fantasia bag, dressed as a serial killer.
I don't know why I kept thinking serial killer. Maybe it was because
she was so divine and untouched and innocent (that's what I thought
then) and I was so old and tired and filthy and guilty and --
well - unworthy. By all appearances. Beneath the surface of me there beat a heart
of gold, not to mention a certain amount of perfectly healthy
and practically moral lust. I suppose if I went to Ross-boy's
analyst I'd find out I secretly wanted to capture, imprison, torture,
rape and murder Dinusha and dump her battered, unrecognisable
and dusky naked body in a shallow bush grave. I know for a fact
that that's what the analyst and Ross worked out, more or less,
about Ross and the female courier. Personally I find it absolutely
normal for a man to race off the girl in black leather and helmet
who brings the manila envelope with the exam papers in it; but
Ross and the analyst decided it was really deep, and they discussed
it for weeks. I wonder about the analyst sometimes. But that's a completely different
train of thought,and why should I care what kind of unspeakably
sordid bullshit that and the analyst cook up at a hundred and
ten dollars a go? Although I have had some gross thoughts about what I'd like to do to Felicity,
violence-wise. But enough of this.
I was all togged up as a serial killer, swinging a plastic bag
full of delectable little undies in my paw. I thought I was going
to start whistling a tune -- 'It's a lovely day today' kept running
through my killer's head. I controlled my lips and swung into
the drive of the bloody awful hovel where I lived. Suddenly the
fluttering jade parasols of the trees in the street disappeared;
the sky went dark and I was alone among the weeds in my driveway,
where the peeling timber of the house, the rusty metal of the
widow frames, the shoots of some terrible growth sprouting from
the chimney all rose up before me and I instantly went for my
nose-hairs with my right thumb and forefinger. I stood still and
yanked one out and wiped the little spot of blood on my arm. They
don't always bleed, but this one did. I was vicious at that moment.
Then I felt better, a bit better, and took a deep breath and went
into the house.
The house stank.
It stank before I got there, before I went to live there. Having
me there hadn't improved the smell, although I had prized open the bathroom window which was glued in place by layers
of paint and encrustations of grit. In the process of opening
it I snapped the catch, an ancient metal rod with holes in it
like a belt, and breaking this meant the window would never again
close properly. It swings and bangs in the wind, and the rain
comes in. I could analyse the smell of the house. Age mostly.
Decay. Mould and dust and nobody had opened the windows for about
a century. The trapped odours of years of fried sausages and chips.
Cigarettes. Cigars (some self-indulgent down-and-outer had spent
his dole cheques on half coronas and left the remains in a heap
in the fireplace where no fire had burned for a good fifty years).
Dog shit. Cat piss. Other stuff best left to the imagination.
I looked in the oven once. I really don't want to talk about it.
You could wonder where I got this house, what agent had it on
his books. There are agents, as it turns out (Ross knew all this)
who specialise in this kind of place for husbands who have been
displaced from the marital home. The analyst Ross goes to put
Ross in touch with Kang and Kang and they got Ross a place by
the river with an actual earth floor and snakes in the roof. It
didn't smell, as it happened. I went for smell. And he didn't
have rats and mice because of the snakes. I have rats. Possums
too. If I do become a serial killer, I'm going to start with the
possums. I should point out that all this costs a fair bit, more
than you'd imagine. It's a form of therapy, so-called.
Enough of the seamy side of things. I sat on the sofa with my
back to the window (sacred opening through which I had first glimpsed
my darling's shade in the glass) and removed the parcel from the
carry-bag. The champagne tissue paper her fingers had so recently
folded was tucked at the ends like the best kind of bed-making.
Hospital corners, crisp and clean. I think I was trembling as
I took the ends of the raffia and prized apart the bow. The paper
shifted open and there in my lap was the nest of pearly satin
and frothy lace. I brought it all up to my nostrils and drew a
long sweet breath. There's nothing like the smell of new lingerie,
nothing like the feel of it against your cheek, nothing like the
promise of how the perfume of this pair of knickers will subtly
change with wear. Musk.
I read the labels. They were all made in New Zealand. That's a
funny thing. You don't associate New Zealand with lingerie, somehow.
Still, considering how much they cost from a plain little neighbour
like New Zealand, I suppose I ought to be glad they were not French.
It's a long time since I bought any French undies for Felicity
(or for anybody, for that matter) and I had chosen to forget how
ill the prices always used to make me feel. Fasten hooks before
washing -- something Fliss never caught on to. Forever hooking
up to the holes in my Airtex singlets and attaching themselves
to socks. Very sensible advice -- fasten hooks before washing.
Dark colours wash separately. I thought about that one for a while.
I thought of the dark body of Dinusha Maharaj and of washing not
separately but together. Wash in company with dark colours. Pour
in milk, champagne, bubbles, pearls and add one fresh Indian maiden.
Was I in danger of going racist? Was this racist? Sexist? Everything
bad and forbidden, worse than capture, torture etc? Satin pintuck.
That's poetry anyhow. Satin pintuck. Pin Tuck. Sat In Pin Tuck.
I lay back on the sofa with my back to the window and I closed
my eyes and indulged in a few moments of personal intimacy. I
deliberatley didn't think about Dinusha -- it was an exercise
in discipline and respect. I thought about my usual dental nurse
fantasy -- we are in a public swimming pool changing-room and
she undresses with her back to me, slowly taking off her saucy
little cap, starched white uniform, white stockings, plain panties,
plain bra. Then she turns round. It always works.
I stayed there with a silly smile on my face, the nest of pintuck
satin crumpled in my hands, and fell asleep.
It was dark when I woke up, and the damp and mould and cobwebs
and dust and all the rest of it had collected in the gloom about
me. But I still had the sweet smile on my face. I also had a little
bundle of slightly used female lingerie. What to do with it? I
took an empty Heinecken carton from the bedroom and put the things
in it,and stowed it in the hall cupboard. There isn't much furniture
here. Most of my things are in suitcases or hanging on hooks on
the walls and on the backs of doors. Somebody -- probably the
cigar man -- had a thing about hooks and there are brass knobbly
ones, stainless steel, plastic stick-on ones, fancy ones with
china balls on the end, and they arre on the backs of all the
doors, on the walls, inside the cupboards, everywhere. Rang for
a pizza. Had a few beers. Watched the news and a thing about getting
water into the desert by diverting a lot of coastal rivers, and
I started to go really agro. About everything and nothing.
So I rang Felicity -- well, I rang my own number, my own home,
didn't I - and when she answered I didn't say anything. And she
said, 'Is that you again Simon,' and so I hung up. Then a few
minutes later I rang her again and Flora answered -- she's fourteen
-- and she said, 'If that's you dad, mum says to piss off will
you.'
I wasn't going to take that. So I said,'Look here Flora, I won't
be spoken to like that. I need to have a word with your mother.
It's very urgent.' Why do I do these things? Fliss came on and
said what was so urgent, and so I said I had just found out that
you had to do up the hooks on bras before you put them in the
washing machine. It was the first thing that came into my head.
Then there was a bit of a pause and Felicity, ever so gently,
hung up on me.
That's how it goes. I get agro, ring her up, go silent, hang up,
ring again, get one of the twins, usually Saskia, the sensible
one, or Toby, say something stupid, and that's the end of it.
I have a wife (well, an ex-wife I suppose you'd have to say) and
three children who live in luxury with three bathrooms and room
for four cars currently occupied by the 4WD and Eamonn Bloody
Waterford-Saxby's Peugeot 405 with its famous structural rigidity,
and with Hi-Fi the lilac Persian (a cat you understand) and Nobby
the golden retriever and the fish and the guinea pigs and the
silkworms and all the other sundry pets that come and go -- Flora
has spiders -- and a rat - and a security system fit to keep out
a rebel army. And piped music because Felicity likes to think
life is a big hotel. (The effect of this particular attitude of
hers is that when you do happen to get into a five-star hotel it's not so different from
home -- not as good, as it happens.) And the other element in
the house is Natalia the cleaning woman (girl really) who was
the straw that broke the camel's back when the marriage was falling
apart. Felicity assumed I was having it off with Talie and she
kept Talie on and I had to go. Not fair really. I see it as being
completely unfair. It was nothing, nothing, the thing that was
nothing, between me and Talie. just one of those pleasant hiccups
of married life.
What I'm getting at is the fact that there they are, Felicity
and her gang, barricaded against the rebels or the devils or whatever
it is in the outside world that threatens their existence, with
more running hot water than the Shah of Persia and here I am with
a fireplace full of somebody else's old cigar butts and a beer
carton of almost new satin underwear in the hall cupboard. Sometimes
I don't know what it all means.
But I brightened up. I may be a statistic in some great register
of male mid-life crisis kept in a computer in the desert by Harville
Hendrix, Ph.D., but I don't let myself stay down for long. I rang
Ross.
'I have met the most wonderful woman,' I said. You have to be
a bit laid back, a bit guarded. I wasn't going to admit I had
met my Fate, the girl on my red velvet swing. No, I have met the
most wonderful woman, I said. And he said thank God for that,
thank God somebody had met somebody. Where did I do it, how? So
I said she was the friend of a friend and he didn't know the people,
old family friends really from Wangaratta. We were at a dinner
party ... He started to get suspicious, I could feel it in his
voice, so I back tracked a bit and said it wasn't exactly a dinner
party, more casual, I dropped in on them and they were having
dinner and ... 'You dropped in on them?' Ross said. 'Since when did you start dropping in on
people -- with your crisis going at the rate it is.' He made dropping
in sound like a crime or a sort of griddle cake. Drop In. Or even a place for bored and useless sub-criminal youths to
go for a plastic foam cup of instant coffee and a bit of pool
and a lecture on making your own paper. Drop-ins for Drop-outs
-- I could sense all this in his voice.
'Yeah, I was passing, and I decided to drop in on the Winters
and they were having dinner and this girl was there, woman, girl,
I don't know. She's sort of Indian.' I felt his ears prick up
like Nobby's, and his eyes light up as well. 'Oh yes,' Ross said.
'Yes,' I said 'she's part Italian and part Indian.' Now I don't
know why I said that. I was getting very nervous for some reason.
'That's unusual,' Ross said, 'quite multi-cultural, really, old
son.' When he starts the old son routine I know I'm getting into
trouble, but I more or less ignored him and went on with the story.
I was getting right into it. Casual. 'I think she said she was
a dental nurse,' I said, the dental nurse just slipping out somehow.
'Stay away from them, old fellow,' Ross said. 'They are nothing
but trouble, nurses, dental nurses, psychiatrics, midwives --
believe me. Trouble. You'd better believe me. I know.'
He would know, actually. He has had very wide experience. Once
he was locked in a cupboard (by mistake) in a nurses' home for
two days. They passed him wet face cloths to suck, and gave him
bedpans. I find the details of this pretty bad, but he seems to
think it's funny. I decided not to pursue the subject of dental
nurses at this stage and said,'Have you had your pizza?' He had.
'Want to come round for a night-cap then?' He did.
We sat on the sofa. Golf on the TV with the sound turned off.
And had a few beers. 'Let's punish a can or two,' Ross said, and
we did. I gave away nothing about Dinusha, just told him the thing
was in progress and I'd keep him posted. He said I was looking
good on it, and assumed the best of me, assumed I had spent one
or two nights at Dinusha's house. It's good the way people assume;
it helps.
I noticed the socks Ross had on, conscious of my own bare ankles
above my Nikes. 'Are they those seed repellent socks, Ross?' I
said, and he said that as a matter of fact they were. For some
reason I couldn't take my eyes off them -- they were a kind of
terracotta colour and they looked so nifty somehow. 'They alsocome
in green. I've got some green.' He has a style of dress that I
sometimes aspire to -- a sort of stockman look with Drizabone
and short cowboy boots -- everything olive and chocolate and lichen
and antique mahogany or chestnut. I'll never quite understand
how Ross emerges from the riverside hovel looking like the man
in the old Marlborough ad, definitely high country. This image
is at odds with his deranged habit of driving past Meredith's
(his ex) house every other night, late, slowly, with a double-headed
Bad Axe on the floor under the mat in front of the passenger seat
and a butterfly knife in his boot. This night his boots were the
colour of wheat, golden against the rugged earthy tones of the
seed repellent socks.
I imagined roaming through the spinifex (what is spinifex), the heavens clear blue and lilac above, the grasses
brushing my ankles, Dinusha's hand in mine, and the socks repelling
every seed attack. I realised of course that the socks had a contraceptive
sort of reference. Safe sex with the grasses. It's my one-track
mind that can start with an innocent sock and end up with Dinusha
in my arms in the bushland high above a rushing river. I imagined
soft pink skin inside cafe latte labia and felt my temperature
rise.
I turned up the volume on the golf and stared vacantly at the
screen. Ross leant forward, intent.
The decision was made then and there to up-grade my wardrobe so
that the next time Dinusha saw me I'd be a new man. I cringed
when I realised what she must think of me so far, a kind of derro
trying to impress his fiancee. I shuddered. And I was sorry I'd
put my address on the cheque. Damn, damn. How could I face her
after she had got a look at this place from the street. I could
say I was waiting for my own house to be renovated, that I was
minding this patch for a friend -- or something -- or what? It
was all too hard. I gave up and put my mind to the golf.
We were both staring straight ahead, drinks in hand, when Ross
said, 'I've been meaning to tell you, by the way, Pixie and I
are getting together.' I thought I must have missed something,
overlooked some vital part of the conversation when I was dreaming
on about Dinusha and the socks and the colour of her naked skin.
Anyhow I said, 'Pixie,' as if I wasn't asking, just throwing the
word around a bit. 'Yes,' he said, 'I'm ready to come out of analysis
and get into the analyst, if you follow me.'
I didn't. 'No, I don't quite, Ross-Boy,' I said, coming clean.
'Who the fuck is Pixie?' And he said, trying to make out he hadn't
been misleading me for months, 'Pixie, Pixie Moon. She's my analyst.
Did you think the analyst was a bloke? God no.' 'No,' I said,
trying to keep up,'no, of course I knew it was a woman, but I
didn't know her name, and I didn't think you were supposed to
get it off with the analyst. I thought that was a really strict
thing.' And Ross just said, not taking his eyes off the TV, 'Get
real Tyler old son. Get real.'
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