The Pages (16 page)

The Americans were relaxed about photography, Zoellner was not.

Disconcerted, I found myself leaping in to defend photography, or Cynthia (since they were one and the same), who appeared unconcerned at the shouting. Zoellner had a black beard. He was a man in his sixties. Somehow he remained expressionless while raising his voice.

The origins of a hot temper are difficult to trace.

Out on the footpath the Kybybolite brothers hosed me down.

‘Not exactly the Spinozan way of resolving matters,' I remember one of them saying. ‘But, hell, don't go letting it bother you.'

He went on to explain that spending every day for x number of years surrounded by the dense arguments and commentaries of the greatest thinkers, all turgidly or urgently – and cogently – put, had gone to his head (Zoellner's). Never mind the scholarly, dim-lit atmosphere. He made the point that second-hand book-dealers tend to be uncommercial bilious personalities, the complete opposite to those choosing the glossy environment of rows of gleaming new bestsellers.

We sat down in a café. They were big men, both of them. Always wearing the rough patterned shirt of the lumberjack. We joined them for breakfasts and dinners, and followed them to bars in suburbs almost but not quite off the beaten track. Together we took the train to The Hague to see the paintings. I had complained about Mondrian and his version of eucalypts. We had a good old time. It wasn't all light-hearted stuff. I had never before talked with anyone about philosophical matters. Carl and George both had attended the University of Chicago, and so spoke with an assured, almost breezy knowledge of the main achievements in western philosophy. They finished each other's sentences. Carl, though, had become addicted to dropping in significant quotes of other thinkers, sometimes two or three in the one sentence, so that it became hard to know exactly what his own thoughts were. I caught myself grinning at their extraordinary New World informality when Carl, in particular, identified quotes by the philosopher's Christian name – ‘What Immanuel came up with…' or, ‘An aim is servitude, as Friedrich would say' or, ‘Consider for a second Ludwig's…' and, ‘The Bishop got it wrong, that's for sure.'

Although I had barely been ten minutes in Zoellner's bookshop, and a few weeks in the company of Carl and George, it was in Amsterdam that I began positioning myself. I could feel it. I was beginning to gather my ideas. And I resolved to send Zoellner a copy of my philosophy, when it was printed (and to Carl and George, as well).

Already Carl was about to publish his own thesis,
The
Science of Appearances
– if I remember correctly. Nothing to do with photography, George gave Cynthia a nudge. She enjoyed their company. He and Cynthia used to joke at my expense.

I could feel within myself a beneficial hardening. It was a foretaste of clarity. No doubt it made me solemn, stolid even, for I didn't talk much. By contrast the Kybybolite brothers were playful. They took Cynthia to films.

It was my continuing education.

—
Lindsey wrote to say our father was ill.

I telephoned. My sister sounded matter-of-fact about our father. He was almost in the past. Of closer interest was when I was coming home, and was I eating properly? Had I fallen for a Dutch woman? She put Roger on and he too shouted, as if our family were barbarians, ‘When are we seeing you back here?' – an interesting variation on, ‘When are you coming home?'

Eventually, when I spoke to my father it sounded as if he didn't recognise me, and could not fit the voice to the face. It was no use. Suddenly he mentioned in very clear terms a stamp-dealer in London I should visit, ‘a decent individual'. Then he lapsed again, making no sense.

23

IT IS CLEAR that ordinary subjects can acquire powers through special usage, and adjust their shape, or else we do, until they become extensions of our selves. The modest couch Freud employed in Vienna which had a central part in his treatment of, or listening to, hysterics became endowed with mystical qualities – the couch to which all others are compared. It should come as no surprise that when Freud in the nineteen thirties fled to London he was accompanied by the beetroot-coloured couch with its Austro-Hungarian tassels and fringes, and set it against the wall in his consulting room in Hampstead, just as a concert pianist can only play on his particular Steinway, which may be fifty or sixty years old, and not always in tune.

Meanwhile, many photographs exist of philosophers half-reclining in deckchairs. Not merely the British philosophers shown at leisure amongst the dons in flannels on one of the back lawns of Cambridge, or at a 45-degree angle puffing the pipe on the outer of the Bloomsbury group, which is another part of the deck-chair story, or the picture we have handed down of Wittgenstein's room where the only piece of furniture was a deckchair. There's a shot taken through a telephoto lens of Martin Heidegger relaxing in what looks like a deck-chair, outside the hut at Todtnauberg. It's him, all right – though barely visible. These slack canvas chairs suspend like a drop of water just above the grass. They are closer to the earth than other chairs. Two people cannot share one. They are difficult things to get out of. The philosopher tries a few different deckchairs until settling on one that fits his shape.

24

IN THE KITCHEN Erica sat with Roger at the long table. It was the room she liked best. From here people fanned out in all directions to continue their daily tasks, while the scrubbed table, chairs, cream-fronted stove and black kettle remained in fixed positions, waiting on their return. Erica poured the tea for Roger, as her mother did for her father when he came home from work.

Roger Antill sat easily. It was his world. He was running the show. So he kept glancing out the window, one eye on the weather or whatever. As a rule, Roger didn't mind if and when a gap opened in the conversation, and remained open, even if – or especially – with a woman, a city-woman he hardly knew. It would never occur to him to rush in ad-libbing. Better to sit back. In these circumstances he allowed his mind to wander into something altogether different from the woman-problem at his elbow. Grass was growing in the paddocks, and sheep loaded down with wool were multiplying. The stationary engine needed loading onto the truck and taken into town. He glanced at Erica and almost smiled at how she was slightly over-dressed for the district. With her head unnaturally bowed he could without being sprung take his time noticing her neck, vulnerable in its trusting curve and suggestion of hair which parted the way wind can leave a furrow in grass.

‘I have to tell you,' Erica turned as Lindsey came in. ‘There's been coffee spilt all over your brother's pages. Ruined. I don't know what to do.'

Lindsey sat opposite.

‘How did this happen?'

Normally at this point Roger would pick up his hat and leave.

‘There's still plenty to go on,' he said to his sister. ‘I wouldn't get too worried.'

Erica shook her head. ‘I suspect those pages were important. They were the ones on his desk.'

Lindsey poured herself tea.

‘Then we shall see.'

This was more sharp than thoughtful. Erica glanced at her. She's concerned about this more than her brother. He is kind to me.

Such ‘accidents' hardly ever happened to Erica. Her method of thinking reduced the chances of. But lately at work and with shopkeepers and fellow pedestrians she had been attracting misunderstanding, incidents, embarrassments, clumsy moments, confusions – the small awkwardnesses which of course represented something else. She preferred just then not to be in the welcoming kitchen – anywhere, but here. And yet, she wanted to stay. She could have screamed! Sophie, if she were there, would have spotted the tone and cut to the chase (professional habit), ‘Yes, but what do you
feel
?' Sophie was alert to the strength of feelings. Most days in her work she patiently sought in a person what was hidden. And she could never be sure whether or not anything was there, or worth retrieving, held up, isolated – or how long it would take to uncover. According to her father, Sophie had the life of a detective who never moved from the one room. Not meant unkindly; it allowed Erica to lean back in bed and laugh. They were in the Sundowner Motel.

Through the window Sophie now appeared on the veranda, pacing up and down, trying to work her mobile. And beginning with Roger they each paused to look at her.

‘I'd better tell her,' Roger stood up. ‘If it's Sydney she's trying to get, she could be in a spot of bother. But they're working on it,' he said through his teeth.

From her hand luggage Sophie had managed to find a T-shirt in English mustard Erica hadn't seen before, chosen to display her figure to the full, and a filmy scarf with a few flowers as its feature. The trousers were burgundy linen, nicely cut. As if nothing had happened in the woolshed she waved, and signalled she was coming in.

Excusing herself, Erica stood up and went to her room.

It had been a mistake bringing Sophie along on this – just because she felt sorry for her. And typically she had preferred company to travelling alone into the interior, hundreds of miles west of Sydney. It was her timid side. What was the matter with her?

She stood at the bedroom window.

A return to her customary detachment was necessary. It was what she was known for.

Stepping outside, Erica went down towards the creek. Dozens of white cockatoos flew up from the ground ahead of her. There were other birds too, smaller birds. One had a short fan-shaped tail. The very idea of birds suddenly was amazing. Even crows. The many small, well-fitted bones. And two different lizards, one laughably plump, didn't bother to move. When she had been driving with Roger he cursed the rabbits. But here the sight of them excited her – their zigzag high speed.

The homestead and woolshed became smaller and smaller, until they disappeared.

Erica was stopping and sometimes squatted to examine all sorts of rocks, burrows (foxes), droppings (sheep, rabbits), animal trails, tufts of tough grass and the tiny flowers. Pale brown puddles of water reflected the clouds. A paddockful of sheep stopped and stared at her.

What possible dent could philosophy make on the fact of existence? The philosopher suffers from a rare disease of all-knowingness. Did Wesley know how to live? His dogged personality was oppressive. He was a tomato-sauce thinker. Look at the hundreds of handwritten pages stacked and overflowing in the all-grey corrugated iron shed. What a place to compose a meaningful slant. It was a hollow centre.

Thinking of Roger, the brother left to work the property, she saw his uncommon generosity. It was associated with his smell, which she found attractive, male sweat, dug-up earth, actual wool, possibly his hair – the last man in Australia still using hair oil?

So Erica walked until the ground became steep and uneven, perforated with rabbit holes.

In sight of the homestead, Sophie came out to meet her. She put an arm around Erica's waist, which is how together they reached the veranda.

‘I decided to go for a little walk.'

‘We were beginning to wonder…' Erica's impulse was to consider the word ‘we'.

‘Have you spoken to Lindsey?'

‘Look, something's done a little something on your shoulder. That's supposed to be good luck.'

Licking her tiny handkerchief, Sophie held Erica's arm and rubbed it off.

‘Are you regarding this as a bit of a holiday?' Sophie whispered. ‘I could almost learn to like it here, however much I'm not addicted to tea-drinking. Roger has to go into town in a minute. He's asked me to come for the ride. I could change, but this will do. What do you make of him? I'd say he's a hard one to read. There are men who are married to something solid, in his case it's the earth and the fences and everything.'

Erica had been thinking she'd better tread warily with Lindsey. She was beginning to see she was not a happy woman – didn't know what was going on there. But now she became sharply irritated with Sophie, a woman who had always yawned at the very mention of the country. When it suited her, Sophie changed tack. She didn't live by rules, not even the rules of psychology, if there were any. It sent Erica back to the calamity in the woolshed. And she felt a rush of coldness flow towards everyone.

No one was in the kitchen.

So Sophie said, ‘Listen, we have to talk.'

Ever since they had known each other Sophie employed specialised energy-words to give her conversation, or rather the interrogations and summations, an emphatic clipped structure, never ordinary. These words included
indicative
and
in point of fact
and
practically
, and to offer nodding encouragement when talking to women,
exactly
and
precisely
or
I agree absolutely, that's interesting
. Long ago she dropped like a hot potato any terms which had the slightest whiff of jargon, such as
transference
,
projection
and
narcissism.
Along with
ergo
and
closure
she left them for the amateurs, as she put it, the ‘pop-psychologists'.

Now she turned to Erica quite softly. ‘What is it about my father? I'd like you to tell me. I suppose he made the move, though you can't be entirely Miss Innocent. I know him better than you. I should tell you he's incorrigible. When he plays around with a woman it's all about him. His pathology is that of an obsessive. Of course I love him dearly. You do know that. For as long as I can remember he's had his little flings. Saddled with my stepmother, who can blame him? Do you have the right time? Thank you. In point of fact, it's more biological than psychological. One is the dominant aspect. This has changed our relationship to each other. That's only natural. Since when is it you've been seeing each other? I don't know why you should do this!'