Gatherers and Hunters (3 page)

Mark's own father had spoken about sex and masturbation and all that, but the kids at school were there long before that so it was no news. The bits about women and their bleeding and eggs and the pain of having babies, his father had been good on that and it was more urgent, somehow, than the video at school had been. It was as if his dad were confiding real feelings and Mark had asked about his own birth and if it was painful for his mother.

‘It was painful for us all,' his father had said, and that had set them both back. It was a new angle on things. ‘But I tell you this, son. It was worth it.' And he had given Mark one of his rare cuddles.

Over the next week, while his aunt was overseas, Mark dug up his old essay and assignment book on Rubber Plantations in Sabah. He had forgotten that there was one picture of Kalantan girls working on a stretch of roadwork in the tall forest. He had not noticed before that some of them wore their sarongs so as to free the breasts. Why had he missed that? Not even his teacher had remarked on it. Now that he looked at it again, though, it was quite obvious. He searched out the magnifying glass just to make sure.

And then Aunt Olga was home again. Everything was the same. ‘She sweeps everyone before her,' his father said, but he laughed and Mark could see that brother and sister were very close. It came as a jolt. Aunt Olga and his father were so different.

She promised him photographs when they were printed. She had a swathe of batik. She had some little carved wooden figurines and couple of shadow puppets that she was going to save for herself: printed red and gold and with long jointed arms and legs and elongated faces with no upper lips. Mark thought they were just the sort of thing Aunt Olga would go for, both spooky and ridiculous. The male figure was like a cross between a spider and a butterfly. Wayang Kulit, she had said.

But she had brought Mark back a special present. ‘I found it in a small village outside Kinabalu,' she said, ‘where there was a village madman and those delicate limbed Kalantan girls you've got the hots for, Mark, you randy little monkey. But this is a musical instrument. I think it is called a Selah.'

She handed him a smallish gourd, with a panpipe stuck into it, and a handful of pipes with finger holds. ‘You have to puff until you make enough air to fill the gourd and then more so; then you can play several notes at the same time, with those little pipes. I couldn't manage it. But then I could never play the bagpipes either.' She made him try. After the third or fourth attempt he managed to create a small wail on the instrument. That had been enough for both of them.

He took it to school and not even the music master had seen one of these before. Mark did not try playing it again, but it was hung on his bedroom wall, a real trophy. It was only some weeks later that he noticed the telltale signs of some insect infestation. Aunt Olga had smuggled it in past customs.

His father insisted it be destroyed immediately. He snatched it from Mark and took it away to burn, himself.

When Mark went round to tell Aunt Olga of this tragedy, that was when he first saw her latest painting. It was a self-portrait.

‘Woman in a red hat,' she called it. It was also the first time Mark noticed how like his own father Aunt Olga really looked. Indeed, when he walked into her studio, which was really the living room of their small cottage, she was eager to show it to him, though often enough she hid her paintings or tore them up. If they were on hardboard she was known to get at them with the axe. She said she could not afford canvas. This one was on paper.

‘Wow!' Mark had said. And he meant it.

But he could not get the image out of his mind: it was a picture of his father. Only the floppy red hat made it seem Aunt Olga. It was her hat, he recognised it. That was not sufficient disguise. And the eyes kept staring at him as if they knew. He had never really noticed his father's eyes, but they were his. They were following him and what was really spooky was that the look Aunt Olga had brought into the painting was the sort of look she had that night on the Friday the Thirteenth party. It was the look that seemed to be wanting him to grow up. More, it seemed to be wanting him to take off his clothes so she could reach out and touch him all over. It was Uncle Pat, at the time, who had said ‘What a man you are growing, lad.' Aunt Olga, though, had really made him feel how he had changed, in his body, in his mind. It was almost a look of envy, as well as of appraisal. In her painting both his aunt and his father were expecting something of him, something he could not give.

She gave him her painting.

‘Perhaps I did it for you,' she said. ‘I don't know – anyway, it's yours.'

He thanked her, but he couldn't wait to get home.

The mouth: that had his father's severe look. Eyes and mouth seemed to be saying different stories. When he did have it in his room, Mark could study the painting more closely, and in private. Was all this adult business always so confusing, so filled with conflicting messages and truthful lies? Though he had instantly admired it, now he was not so sure. It was not a portrait of Aunt Olga at all. It did not get her violence or her jokes. Uncle Pat was not in it, and her portrait should have the presence of Uncle Pat somewhere, somehow, if only in the background.

But then he thought of Aunt Olga in Kuala Lumpur or Sabah, alone. And he knew she would be revelling in it. She would be herself then. Like in this portrait.

Those echoes of his father. How could that be? It was as if the cobweb of genetic linkage was a tangled thread, sticky and adhesive, and no matter how you tried you could not get it disentangled. He thought of the feeling in his balls that night. It was still shuddery. It had been days before he had felt, finally, the sticky webs fully removed. He had kept the incident a secret from his father. Perhaps, though, he might have understood. He might even have laughed. Could that be possible? The way his uncle and aunt laughed with him, that was a sort of secret bond, perhaps even a secret promise?

But he did not remark on that reminder of his father in the portrait to his aunt. Instead, he said, ‘Have you ever done a painting of Uncle Pat?'

She had laughed. ‘Your uncle is too evasive a creature to sit still for a portrait.'

She had drawn out from behind the pile stacked against the wall another work on board. It was the same red hat, but beneath the obscured face the tubby body had something of his uncle's way of lounging over the furniture, though the body was hairless and naked. Indeed, it was like a giant baby's body, even to the unformed genitals. ‘He hates it, of course. But he refused to do a life study for me, in the altogether. So I did the next best thing. That's Patrick as he imagines himself to be. This one,' and she pointed back to the newer painting, which Mark had brought over so she could have another look at it, as she said. ‘This one is myself as I want people to see me. None of us is ever really honest with ourselves. But you know that, dear Marcus. You, after all, have seen through all of us. Have you forgiven us yet?'

‘I haven't forgiven you for sneaking to Malaysia and not telling me.' There, it was out!

His aunt looked across at him but she wasn't smiling now. ‘So like your father. So possessive already. Ah, little Marcus, you are growing up, more's the pity.' And her mouth did broaden then. ‘Think of all the things I've no intention of telling you. Then ask yourself why?'

She would not be drawn out further. Perhaps no one had been so honest with him before. And he knew he had no way to handle it.

Something had come between them, and it wasn't even honesty. It was like the sweat under his armpits – something new and intrusive. When he left, for the first time he did not kiss her goodbye.

What to Do at the Time

At fifteen it is still possible to be hurt by almost anything. The protective skin has not grown and the quick response still waits until midnight to assert itself. Too late, the enemy has marched off in triumph and timing. At midnight, or 2 a.m. the pillow, now damp with sweat, is more a mockery than a solace; it not only has lumps and hollows, it surrounds your face and thinks of suffocation. It is in the plot, also.

In the other bed, against the fibro partition in the sleep­out, Jim is snoring lightly. He means no harm. He is impossible. Jim doesn't seem to feel anything; Jim is the ultimate frus­tration.

Mick heaves over to his left side and doubles up the pillow to raise his head, see if that will do any good. He knows already this is a vain exercise. He has tried it before. Through the glass louvres there seems to be the promise of a breeze so slight that it does not even stir the leaves of the camphor laurel tree overhanging their side of the house. Mick believes he can feel it, though. He tugs back the damp sheets to let it circulate along his limbs, even though his summer pyjamas stick to him. There is almost a coldness from his eroding sweat, at least for the first minute or two. Both Jim and Mick wear singlets day and night; to absorb the sweat rather than for any protection. Their mother warns them it keeps their white school shirts drier and cleaner. When he unpeels his singlet in the bathroom at night, Mick often senses it is twice as heavy as when he initially tugged it on. Sometimes, in this weather, he has to change his singlet in the morning, too.

Tonight he knows he will twist and squirm and finally drag it off, despite warnings about catching a chill or letting his chest be unprotected. It is Jim, over in his bed, who catches colds and who is vulnerable to asthma, not Mick. For all his stoicism, Jim is the one their mother frets about. Mick can see that easily enough, even though she tries to hide it. No wonder he loses his temper at times; wouldn't anyone? Anyone, except Jim. Mick has already unbuttoned the pyjama top. It, too, is clammy. Summer nights, when the humidity does not drop and the breeze refuses to give even some pretence of coolness, are the worst. The top is off now, and Mick shoves it under the sheet, rather than toss it onto the boards. Now he can get rid of the singlet. He feels its wetness but he rubs it over his smooth chest as if that will mop up the dribble of moisture. This garment is tossed over the side.

Mick does allow the night air to wash over the upper part of his body. It is almost a defiance, secretly disobeying Mum's orders. At school today – yesterday, rather – not only had he failed to win the one hundred metres freestyle but he had let Garth Rasmussen lord it over him in the dressing sheds after, hounding him with a wet towel flick and joking about Mick's white skin where the sun did not get to it. Rasmussen was brown all over and was always skiting about how he went sunbaking with his cousins in the dam back of their place. His girl cousins.

It had got to Mick, not because of his pallid tummy and rear but because Rasmussen kept calling him girly-white, girly-white. Jim always warned his brother about his ‘Irish temper'. But Mick had very nearly been dead set to front up to Rasmussen there in the sheds, even though Rasmussen was a good foot taller and built like a tank. It had taken self-control. Mick was good at self-control these days. It had been years since his last turn and he was just a kid then. That whole afternoon locked in the bathroom. He remembered it all right. Of course he remembered, it wasn't his fault.

But Rasmussen was something different. He was deliberately trying to get Mick's dander up. That's why Mick chose to ignore him. Well, almost.

Some of the others had stepped in, but that was not the reason. And it wasn't because Jim had warned him, with that won't-you-ever-learn look of his. The real reason had been that Mick could not think of any retort that would wound Garth Rasmussen.

He had got beyond thrashing out blindly in a temper. He knew in his heart that words were more lethal than hands and arms and going crazy. You must watch that sharp tongue of yours, Mum said. Did she realise that she had made him secretly proud of his wounding way with words? Jim was his first experiment. Well, not experiment exactly; but Jim was always around and that silence of his was always galling. Mick had become the verbal rapier, Dad had said. He was all too aware of that, but it had not helped him in the dressing sheds today. The wounding words had not come. Where was his famous ‘sharp tongue' now?

What he really wanted was to brand his enemy with a potent nickname, one that would cling to him like spiderwebs, like his own shadow, to follow him everywhere, long after school, a name that would be so accurate and so cruel Rasmussen would never be allowed to forget it, would never outlive it. One that would replace Garth with a name like Filth, but more clever and more ruthless. It would not matter that nobody might remember who first coined the word, the word itself would take over. There must be such a word.

What was the name that came to him ten minutes ago? Already vanished, now it prods Mick like a finger on his bare chest till he tosses again, and groans, so that Jim over in the other bed raises his head a moment as if awakened, but then collapses back and draws his sheets over his head. He begins snoring lightly, as always; something to do with his nasal cavities, Mum said. Mick stays rigid for a few minutes. He knows there is no hope now; the word has vanished.

Jim seems always to need his bedsheets, even blankets in summer. They have different metabolisms.

Mick, though he might be pallid, has some inner body heat that insulates him whereas Jim would not dream of discarding his singlet, even on a hot night like this is. Mick's chest, though bare now to the air still seems swathed in the surrounding humidity and the dampness swaddles him as if to constrict all volition.

The sheets are tugged right back. He raises his hips and tugs down his pyjama shorts. He looks over to where Jim is sleeping; Jim has turned his face to the wall now and is ­rumbling quietly; almost with satisfaction, Mick thinks, and feels the usual pang of envy.

Lying naked on the hot bed is to invite the other sensations and Mick knows by this stage he is past caring. He also knows he will feel guilty later, but already the stronger process has begun, and once commenced it has its own inexorability. Does Jim never have these feelings? Mick has never detected any signs. But perhaps Jim is more sly than anything in his character seems to indicate? Perhaps Jim is more subtle? Mick cannot work his brother out, though, being always there, perhaps there is nothing to work out. Jim is who Jim seems: silent, practical, pretty unemotional.

Mick is the one with the highs and lows, the mad, bad feelings and the rages. He is the one who has inherited the Irish genes and Jim comes from some other, stoic line of the family, their father's side.

At a certain point the ears take over, the pulse in your ears reflects the other, mounting pulse and the entire body moves into one single unity, your thoughts then are absorbed into whatever it is that commands you. Then it is done and if you are lucky you will sleep at last. The body discharges itself of tensions; even the night air works with a sort of gentleness to turn sweat into coolness, if only for a short while. Mick does not even remember what it was he had been so restless about.

Garth Rasmussen is not even a shadow in his memory. Jim, over there, breathes on steadily. The luminous dial on Mick's wrist watch is not going to force him to look yet again; the damp feel of his hair against the churned up pillow eases its pressure; he knows he will have to locate those pyjama shorts sometime before morning but not now, not now. He draws the bedsheet up around his shoulders and, though he does not realise it, Mick curls into the foetal position.

+++++

At breakfast Jim is first up and has already piled his plate with four Weet-Bix and is now spreading sugar into hillocks and ridges before inundating the lot with the fresh milk brought in from the milkman half an hour ago. He shaved again this morning and there is a speck of white froth under his right earlobe. He is humming quietly as he pours, probably oblivious that his mouth let anything like musical sounds pass. Jim tends to capitalise on his silence. He didn't wish their parents Good Morning; humming was enough.

Mick enters slowly, rubbing his hands through tousled hair and checking the time on the ornamental clock above the mantelpiece. The wristwatch with its luminous hands and dial was a birthday present last week and he still feels the need to check it constantly. Jim has a watch with a leather protective case, like they use in the air force, he says. It means that he has to unclip it each time he needs to check the time. Mick was at first a little jealous of the neat, professional look of his brother's armpiece but he quickly realised the drawbacks, even though Jim pointed out how useful it was for games like football. Mick does not play football. His glowing numbers and pointers are in some way the product of radiation, he has been told. Radiation kills, Jim quipped. In the dark, though, the glow seems almost magical. Power. Mick couldn't care less about the so-called harm; if it were dangerous, wouldn't they have banned it, or something? Jim has no answer to that. Their father continues to read his paper, over all this quibbling. He is used to it.

Besides, that was last week's issue. Jim now wears his watch with its leather band and cover as if it had grown on his wrist, naturally. Mick's watch has an expanding metal band; it still sometimes catches the hairs on his arm. When it has tugged off all the hairs round your wrist you won't even notice it, Jim had said. Jim's watch does not have an illuminated dial.

Mick sits at the table and his mother brings him two eggs on toast and asks him if he wants some bacon, she has fried some for Dad, she says. Mick hesitates and then says No. When she sits down beside him he asks her if it's today she is going to town with Aunt Meg.

That's clever of you to remember, she says. Your brother asked me to watch his tennis semi-finals but I told him not today, today is the day of the big outing.

I knew it was special, Mick says. You don't hide things from me, you know. I could tell.

She ruffles his already tousled hair and gets up from the table. You really must get your hair cut this week. Both of you, she says, but they know it is only Mick whose mop is so unruly. Jim's hair is straight; a bit of Brylcream and it stays flat all day.

Now you will do your piano practice when you get in, she says. I won't be here to remind you.

As if he needs reminding.

+++++

Lunchtime is the time for his last practice for the Championships, the big ones, and he is determined about the one hundred metres.

Mick is in the pool almost before anybody else and has done three lengths before the next group comes ambling down the slope to the school baths, Garth Rasmussen among them.

Mick concentrates on the task ahead. He always does ten lengths of the pool, to limber up, and then gives himself a rest of five minutes before he gets the school coach, or one of the juniors, to time him for the one hundred. Four, five, six, seven, eight. Garth Rasmussen, he becomes aware, is there in the next lane and he is forcing the pace. Almost without being aware of himself, Mick is keeping up. He is competing. This warm-up swim is not intended for speed, it is for muscular coordination and efficiency. Rasmussen knows that but he is the sort of jock who would compete with his own shadow and then complain that it did not work hard enough. Garth Rasmussen has nothing better to do.

Mick eases back over the last two lengths of his warm-up. He watches Rasmussen do a further two lengths before he pulls up in the adjacent lane and gives Mick a splash. What is it with Rasmussen?

There's another six for you to do yet, Mick tells him, but Rasmussen tugs off his rubber cap. The ash blond hair falls over his face and he flicks it back with a jerk of the neck.

That's your problem, Turner, you always go by the rules. It's not rules that win races, it's cunning. Pity you never learned that one. That's why I'll lick you hollow, see if I don't.

And he throws his cap over the edge and dives back in, even though it has been forbidden to swim bareheaded in the pool, school regulations. Rasmussen's blond hair will turn green, Mick tells himself, and wishes it might be so.

Lined up on the block later, for a last practice, Rasmussen is three lanes distant but Mick knows he might as well be right alongside, his whole body a sneer. Garth Rasmussen might have that golden brown skin, and there are no freckles at all; and he might be a lot taller, and yes, he is built like a tank. But on the other hand, he is not really all muscle, there is some flab you can see from the way his navel dimples and there is already an incipient double chin. Not that anyone minds any of that: Garth Rasmussen has his own band of cronies and is notorious for his handouts of Minties and Jaffas, filched from his auntie's big general store over the other side of town. Rasmussen has a big mouth (in more ways than one, Mick thinks) and very even teeth, like an advertisement, but otherwise why should he have such tickets on himself?

Mick looks round for someone to time him, ignoring Rasmussen who has finished his warm-up session. Jim appears on the scene, his tennis semis must be over (and it is obvious at a glance the results have not been good). Jim and Garth Rasmussen are sort of friends, they are in the same Chemistry and Physics class and sometimes come home together to make what Mick calls stink bombs under the house, while Mick does his piano practice upstairs, getting louder and louder and repeating the scales that he knows drive Jim mad. Scales are the one thing that he can get a rise out of his brother from. Major. Minor. Harmonic Minor. Melodic Minor. Then, because he knows it will really work horrors on Jim, Mick does four octaves of the whole-tone scale. Then he begins the arpeggios. He can do this for hours.

Jim ambles over just at the right moment to be handed the stopwatch from the Prefects' Locker. Jim was butterfly champion last season but tennis has taken him over. Or it had. From the way he gives Mick a glare it is clear that this is not the best day for requests but Mick has no option. He pretends not to notice when Garth Rasmussen steps over beside Jim and moves with him to the pool end. Mick gives his brother a loud warning, and then dives.