The Beginner's Guide to Living (5 page)

OK, Will, it's my turn. Question. What is happiness?

T ♥

No comment about the photo. Happiness? I go onto one of those quote Web sites I've been checking out lately, type in
happiness
, and scroll through till I find one I like.

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

 

John Milton

 

Will XX

Good morning, Will. You got that off one of those quotation sites, didn't you? Cheat. So, what do you think about this?

 

There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.

 

George Sand

 

T ♥

OK. But isn't it dangerous loving someone when you know they're going to die?

Of course, but what choice have we got?

At the park later that morning, there's a flock of white cockatoos strutting around a pile of feed someone's left. As I approach, lens first, some of the birds sidle away, others stay, intent on the food. They tip their yellow crests as I get closer, one of them thrusting his gray beak at me with a screech. I crouch, but as my knee cracks, a cloud of them takes off in a rush of wind and I catch the spread of a wing through the lens. It looks like the wings of angels you see in paintings, though these noisy birds are about the furthest thing from angelic. But then I remember something Mom told me when I was little. She said for the Aborigines the cockatoo was seen as a messenger.

SETTING SAIL

I
N THE BOX UNDER MY BED,
I also keep the last photos my mother ever took. There are some of us on a picnic in the mountains before Adam went away last time, a close-up of Dad, his back against a peeling gum tree. He looks happy though I remember him getting pissed off soon after because he'd forgotten his binoculars and wanted to see the view. Mom handed him her camera and told him to look through the zoom lens instead. And there's a picture of me, my hair still long, before I cut it off, the dimple in my chin like Mom's. I'm not looking at the camera. It's as if I've seen a ghost.

*   *   *

The State Library has the right architecture for wisdom. Columns. A statue of Joan of Arc. I thought about calling Taryn and asking her if she wanted to come, but she's probably got better things to do on a Saturday. Most people do.

“It's my first time here,” I say to the woman at the information desk. She smiles, gives me a map, and marks a cross where the philosophy books are.

“This is a reference library,” she says, “so you can't borrow anything. Most of the first editions are in storage.” And I think, what would it be like to shake the dust off a few of those, smell the original ideas?

I go up the stone staircase into a gallery of paintings, through the doors to the reading room. It's massive. People are sitting at tables, lost in books and laptops, plugged in at booths, as I follow my map to 190, where the philosophers live. There are two whole rows of books, some on Western philosophers, most I've never heard of, others on Confucianism, Chinese ethics, shamanism, whatever that is, and all the big religions. Books with titles like
Does God Exist?
,
The Troubadour of Knowledge
,
Experiments Against Reality
,
The Truth About Everything
,
The Guide of the Perplexed
.

There are even books about mourning, one called
The Gift of Death
. Maybe I'll look at that one later. Nobody else is in this row so I sit on the floor, prop my back against the books. I didn't sleep well last night, kept waking up halfway through dreams I couldn't remember, like snatching at fog. All I have with me is my notebook and a pen; I had to leave my bag in the locker with Mom's camera in it. Hope it's all right.

I turn toward the shelf, see a title I like,
The Laughter Is on My Side
—comedy in the philosophy section; I could do with a bit of a laugh. It's about a guy called Søren Kierkegaard. Good name, Søren. I flick through to a chapter called “The Midnight Hour” and find a sentence of his—he was twenty-two when he wrote it, according to the dates; only five years older than me.
The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find
the idea for which I can live and die.

I shift my back, books digging into my spine. An idea for which I could live and die. But how to track it down among all these books, so many thinkers with different views of the world. And this is only one row among millions—Jesus, I might as well go home. Though, it could feel good to pile knowledge up against that ignorance Seneca talked about, the kind that lets in pain. But does knowledge equal happiness? I turn to Søren again, go through his words till I find this bit; it's like he's reading my mind.
It is only after a man has thus understood himself inwardly, and has thus seen his way, that life acquires peace and significance.

I guess he's not talking about world peace, more the settling of the fight within myself. Like with Dad. There are times I want to go up to him and say,
It fucking hurts,
grab hold of him, squeeze him hard. But there are other times I never want to see him again because the pain on his face mirrors my own.

Somebody's phone goes off. It belongs to a girl huddled over a laptop at the end of the row. She looks Chinese. Beside her is a stack of texts, philosophy maybe, or economics for all I know. So many books, so many lives.

I feel like I've been in the bath too long. I need air. The front lawn outside the library would be good right now, thick squares of green lying under the sun. I've got a cheese sandwich in my bag in the cloakroom, and a banana—hope it's not squashed, especially as Mom's camera's in there—but before I go I need to find Nietzsche. I still don't know if he's the one who killed God.

His books are on the opposite side of the row. There are loads about his ideas, and some Nietzsche wrote himself, one with a great title,
Thus Spake Zarathustra, A Book for All and None
. The girl on the phone is whispering loudly in Mandarin, sounds like swearing, and people are starting to eye each other. This is a place of silence; her anger isn't allowed. Someone goes
shhh
and it sounds rebellious against the hush.

I let my head drop back against the books and breathe in their musty smell. They're hard, the covers, no comfort here, but if I keep looking, maybe I'll find the one.

*   *   *

Nietzsche says some harsh things about women. Guess it was the time in which he lived, or maybe if he'd got laid more often it would have changed his whole view on life. One thing's for sure—he was a guy who lived and died for an idea.

Out on the lawn I lie back, hands behind my head, face in the sun. There's the noise of trams and voices and birds all merging together as my body sinks into the grass—I have spent the morning with dead people but they seem incredibly alive. I roll over, open up my notebook, and read through a quote I copied down from Nietzsche:

We have left the land and taken to our ship! We have burned our bridges—more, we have burned our land behind us! Now, little ship, take care! The ocean lies all around you; true, it is not always roaring, and sometimes it lies there as if it were silken and golden and a gentle favorable dream. But there will be times when you will know that it is infinite and that there is nothing more terrible than infinity …

I pull Mom's camera out of my pack—it's warm and smells of banana—and hold it up to my eye. Focus. The straight lines of the columns, the shine of statues, a bronze flag in the wind. Joan of Arc. She was still a teenager, wasn't she, when she died defending what she believed? I have to be careful that each photo I take is properly framed. So different from digital. I imagine my mother's eye pressed against the viewfinder—she once looked at the world through this small square of glass, defining what she saw, as I do now.

I swap the camera for my notebook.

9. Am I ready for the open sea?

Memory.

A blue dress. Sand patterns on her legs. Her stripy towel, same as Dad's. Running into the surf with her, being bowled over, finding my feet. Water drips from her arm as she helps me up. She heads out deeper into the ocean, her body rising and falling with the waves. I think she will be swallowed up, become part of the blue, and I want to shout above the crash and the foam. But in the end the sea gives her back.

WAVES

D
AD'S ALWAYS BEEN A BIT
of a workaholic, but now he's reckless—Sunday morning and he's in the study, hair feral, finishing off some financial report, and I swear it's the fourth day he's worn that shirt. Adam's having brunch in the city, meeting some people he might work with. I got that much before the conversation skidded into jargon and he lost me. I had the urge to grab his shoulders—he's that little bit shorter than me—shake him and yell,
Hey, Mom's dead
. But I didn't. Instead I said, “Enjoy your brunch.”

Then there are the lawns—ours, the next-door neighbors', on both sides, and an old lady's three doors down. They're my responsibility, my way of making some cash. I have to do them once a week this time of the year when the weather is yo-yoing, sun, rain, sun, things growing at a pace beyond reason. Oh well, each centimeter of grass means extra cash. And the stuff keeps pushing through no matter what—no matter what winter we have entered, outside it's still spring.

And tomorrow there's school. Apparently two and a half weeks are enough to get over the loss of a parent.
You need to focus on your exams,
that's what Dad said, right after I asked him,
For what do you live and die?

Taryn,

I'm going back to school tomorrow. Can you meet me after?

Come to my place. Nobody else'll be home.

T ♥

See you there.

Love,

Will

I know what it feels like to suddenly be an alien in your own world. To have everyone walking small steps around you, some investigating, some ignoring your every move. The first lot are seeking signs of familiarity, of life. The second are so scared of what your experience might reveal about themselves, they prefer to keep their eyes shut.

I'm talking about my Math class. First day back since
the death
and word's got around. Even Seb is acting like I'm a new species. At recess he asks me if there's anything he can get me, and from the look on his face I can't tell whether he's talking about a packet of chips or some supernatural conjuring of my mother. I guess Seb's only trying to help but lately Taryn seems the only one from a neighboring planet. Maybe because she didn't know me before tragedy struck.

*   *   *

After lunch, in Physics class, this girl called Mel I hardly know stopped by my desk as she was handing out work sheets for Mr. Brooks. She whispered, “My father died last year. Nobody understands if they haven't experienced it—it's like having a secret knowledge.” Frowning, she handed me the sheet headed
Interactions of Matter and Light
.

*   *   *

Taryn's house is not far from the train line. It seems more yellow in the four o'clock light, the kind of yellow Dad wouldn't even paint our letterbox. As I go to knock, Taryn opens the door, wearing that same dress that stops above the knee. She smiles at my school shirt.

“Come in.”

The house is quiet. In the kitchen, as I watch her fill two glasses with water, I realize I've never seen anything as beautiful as the way her long fingers wrap around the glass. She offers me one. “Hungry?”

I nod. The water tastes like water. From the pantry she takes a chocolate cake with a piece already gone and shifts a knife over it. “How hungry?”

“Very.”

She cuts me a huge slice and lifts it, balanced on the knife I used to carve the groove, over to a white plate, and hands me a fork. She takes one too and starts digging in, so sure of herself, and for an instant I want to be her.

“So, do you believe in miracles?” she asks, sliding cake into her mouth.

I remember what she said in her message. “Miracles? Not sure what I believe right now.”

“I believe in you,” she says, staring at me.

God, how she stares. I am halfway between cringing and falling in love. Outside a dog barks. “You hardly know me,” I say.

“I feel like I do.”

How I want that to be real, for her to have some special access to my truth.

“You're not so scary, Will Ellis.”

“Scary?”

“Don't you find other people frightening? Especially when they have some power over you?”

Her long hair prickles my hand as she presses her lips against mine. So this is how she deals with fear. I pull her in between my legs, stomach against stomach, her skin close beneath her dress, her tongue navigating my mouth. We sway back and forth. She kisses me on the eyes, the cheek, links her fingers between mine and pulls away, takes me with her to a part of the house I've never seen.