The Swan Book (35 page)

Sometimes the homesick parrots' thoughts caught them in a nostalgic moment, and they would suddenly utter words from ancient languages. The girl watched the parrots waste their knowledge; their rare and valuable words disappearing into thin air. Never to be spoken again when the lost languages faded away.

Well! Holy! Holy! The swan flew in the dead of the night. Its faith was in itself. The great black bird had struggled to be free from the girl's arms and like a racehorse, ran in the direction of the neon sun where three strange men had appeared. They may have only been drunks, or spies sent by Warren Finch to keep an eye on her, but slunk away when noticed, and disappeared in the fog.

The great swan was soon in the air, wings spread in slow flight, just above Oblivia who was running after it down the street. The swan was completely savvy about directions in the city and took shortcuts, for within minutes she was back inside the lane.
Where you been?
Odd Machine was waiting at the door, angry but relieved that she had come back. He complained about how lonely he was, but she sped past him and ran back up to her apartment. The healed swan joined others outside in flight paths leading to the eel pond in the botanical gardens in the centre of the city where flocks of great numbers were assembled for the night.

Now swans were set free every night. Oblivia had faith in the owl with the Dean Martin
Houston
song stuck in its head, as it flew continually waving and gliding and twisting its body as it looked around, to suddenly change course over buildings. She followed its flight through the darkness on whatever route it took, keeping the bird in sight, and knew that the owl would always end up in front of the abandoned magic shop.

It did not matter that the owl's destination was just around the corner from The People's Palace and that she was pursuing the owl over vast distances for nothing. She told the Harbour Master and the monkey that an ordinary, logical route was not the point. If she had walked there herself in the most direct route possible, she would never have found the old genie's shop on the long abandoned street where the city's ghosts came at night, and which was best to release swans returning to flight. It was the desire she followed, of completing an arduous journey that allowed her to see the right perspective of the neon sun shining through cracks in the boarded-up frontage of the shop, and she grew stronger by imagining the genies still working in their workshop on the other side of the boards, and by believing that the spirits in this place – all of the ghosts that had never been taken home – also ran with the swan along the street, and helped it to fly. It was a ghost street. Very exciting: there were thousands of ghosts there. She had seen them herself, she claimed, although the Harbour Master and Rigoletto were not really convinced about her story. They knew a thing or two about ghosts.

Rigoletto sang his anthem,
questa o quella
. Badly sung opera was enough for the street kids to stop using the lane. They left, while shouting that whoever was singing like a monkey should stop. The gangs found something new to do, and gathered on the street corners waiting, to follow the owl leading the darkly clothed and hooded girl with a swan under her arm, or sometimes slung over her back.

The street kids kept their distance from Oblivia staring at the boarded-up building. They punched each other in the head to stand back to pay a bit of respect for the traditional owner of the land. They wondered whether she was just mad, you know, having gone crazy in the city, and crept in closer to see over her shoulder.

None had the girl's ability to visualise how the genie's shop had once been, of seeing the tiny birds buzzing inside an antique Chinese aviary constructed of wire that had once been forged into decorative swirls. She ignored their voices whispering in her ear,
What are you looken at, sis?

Inside the aviary flew the smallest hummingbirds in the world – but only if you thought of them flying, flying from cone-like nests in which they slept. The more she stared at the stillness of the nests, the more the hummingbirds would become animated, and would begin darting around the fresh flowers inside the cage. The street children were oblivious to the ghosts of the street crowding around them to watch the hummingbirds, but they felt that there must be something special about the building, and were organising a break-in.

Oblivia knows that her nights on the streets will not last long and she ignores the owl flitting around the light poles to catch insects, and the street children breaking into the building. She has too many other things to think about. For instance, she never knows when she will have to dress up again to appear on television – and what if Warren was already at the apartment waiting to pick her up? Already she feels that she will not be living in the apartment much longer. Feels it in her bones. Even the Harbour Master was packing his things.

Ships' bells can be heard faraway in the harbour, and the black swan released from her arms stands alone and confused on the empty wet street. Each swan was the same; uncertain about its ability to fly again until the wind off the changing tide pushed it along, and its webbed feet would start running down the road with their heavy load. The wind gusting along this corridor grew in intensity, and soon picked up the running swan and pushed it into flight.

The neglected city had thousands of pigeons flying around the rooftops of buildings, and trees sprouting out of the sides of cathedrals, chestnuts growing from the alcoves; fig tree roots clung to the walls, and almond and apple trees grew from seeds that flourished in the damp cracks. In these trees while pigeons and pet budgerigars slept, down below the troupe of owl, girl and swans travelled with a multitude of ghosts. Their parade implied a pilgrimage, a dedication to their never forgone longing for what was and had been, a prolonged hurting, like the Portuguese word
saudades
, describing the deep yearning of those left in limbo, and the melancholy dream passing through every quiet street in the city. Then Oblivia would again feel an excitable urge exploding in her stomach, to rush back to the apartment in double-quick time before dawn, for she was always hoping to become the television wife, to see herself as greatly loved, with the jubilant political husband – Head of State world leader – to actually experience what it felt like to be beside someone like this, and which would prove once and for all it really was her in the picture, that she felt this love seen on television, and by establishing her authentically beyond any measure of doubt to the Harbour Master and the stupid monkey.

In those nightly pilgrimages they heard the
Monteverdi
vespers sung over the droning of ancestor country. The winds whistled through the buildings, and through the skies, she was able to see that many swans were gathering in each ancient breath, and their flight formed landscape through the perpetual rain.

Yes, the swans were multiplying, nesting among flooded trees, reeds and swan weed, and had already overfilled ponds in the abandoned botanical gardens and a small lake in the city's zoo, then the city's shallow lakes where they were breeding along the bays, gullies and inlets.

At night, squadrons of swans flew up and down the brown-coloured river that cut through the city, and Oblivia sensed they
were in training for something even they had not quite anticipated. She thought that they were trying to tell her something. The thought shifted around in her mind – floated here and there while it grew, and then she was tossing it around something big, throwing it about, slamming it against the wall of her brain, until it became something ugly and angry, too hot to hold, too tough to manipulate and examine, the thing that she was too afraid to recognise – that not only was there was a lack of communication in her ‘so called' marriage, feelings of betrayal, manipulation, and abandonment were the goal-posts where havoc scored inside her head.

The thought stuffing up her mind made her angry, and she tramped on in the nightly parade, unable to concentrate on the swans flying up and down the river. Well! What was the problem? Obsession. Television wife. She started to ask herself questions: Why was she always in a hurry for someone she only saw on television? Who she only knew through the television? Where each image was a portrait of a happy marriage? Even she believed it. And whenever she saw herself on television, she could only explain herself in sketches of what she appeared to be – the image presented, rather then remembering her actual presence as Warren Finch's wife, and always, forgetting the details of ever being with this man who was her husband. She could not remember him – had no idea, even what he looked like unless she saw him on the television. But none of these things mattered really. What really mattered was that she could not admit to herself that Warren was using an impostor.
Of course,
the Harbour Master kept explaining with the impact of discovering nuclear energy,
the big high and mighty Warren Finch doesn't want to be seen with some complete myall like you for a wife
.
She is the pretend wife. Not you at all.
But, Oblivia wouldn't believe it. Could feel it in her bones that she was the television wife. She promised herself, the Harbour Master and the monkey, she would prove it.

Of course they wanted to know how she was going to do that. But her mind slipped, went slack, played tricks on her and, without the steam to propel the thought, she again concentrated on the swans, following them with poetry running through her brain,
The swan has leaped into the desolate heaven: That image can bring wildness, bring a rage to end all things, to end…
The swans continued the circuit and she followed while she thought less about the apartment, and more about the need to keep up with flight. They were communicating with her about flight, long flight, not about Warren Finch who was living it up elsewhere – resuming life as usual as the head of state of a dilapidated country in a dilapidated world.

The monkey had changed too. It decided to move out of the apartment because it had become too dirty. He had heard the girl talk about seeing poor, neglected monkeys in the zoo. He became very excited and left quietly in the middle of the night when the Harbour Master was asleep in front of the television. He went to the zoo and unlocked the door to the monkey house. From then on, he was the head honcho of a dancing troupe of monkeys that went to live as fugitives in the cathedral in the city, amongst the almond and fig trees growing from crevices in its sandstone walls. Free at last, the monkeys were popular buskers in the city malls. Always cashed up to pay the street children for protection.

The Harbour Master stayed home sulking about the monkey becoming independent and the apartment being emptied of swans. He sat on the couch. He was in rough seas with the Panasonic television that blared old cricket games in the apartment night and day. Games that had been played years ago, and in-between the news, where he could watch Warren Finch's face growing older every day. But there was no great satisfaction in watching someone grow older. Well! Not the face that never reached the destination of fulfilment, where Warren's continuing
triumphs – each seemingly more glorious than any before – were always sensed as personal failure.

Yes, the Harbour Master still preferred to glare at the television. It was as though he was trying to steer the whole darn spectacular life of Warren Finch from the couch, propelling him along blasphemously, while hollering over some invisible howling rain,
You know, people can talk and talk about how they are going to save the Aboriginal, world, ditto people…it goes on all the time, always wanting to save people who would rather talk about how they want to save themselves. When are you going to start thinking straight about that, Mr Warren Bloody Finch?

Well! Let's end the bad vibes with the cricket bats and kneepads that were all flying about the room. Why be so unhappy? Any of Warren Finch's newest major concerns were challenging to the old Harbour Master. He always had to prove how he had seen better, or knew about something that was absolutely more amazing in some off-beaten track of the world to laugh about. Still! You could not avoid the fact that Warren's life was being lived at a higher percentage elsewhere with the glamorous ‘promise' wife, the First Lady of whatnot, than being wasted in hanging around, and minding reality in a swan-filthy apartment.

The Street Serpent

T
his was not all you will see in the city, this junkyard from where swan flocks ascended into the heavens, and flew the brisk breeze amongst swallows and pigeons up where ghosts shouted down:
What a load of rubbish!
But the swans overcrowding in the botanical gardens were edgy with hunger. They searched for swampy waters and found nothing. These old luckless things could only return to the abandoned sprawl of overgrown gardens, to roam among the butterflies and insects. A place that served no purpose to city people who grew nothing, but ate their food from packets. They called this sprawling greenery
a flippen and friggen untidy mess!
And saw no point to having this old-fashioned, overgrown park in a city where there were people starving – better off living off the Government, and safer on the streets, like those living in the lane.

You could watch people like that walking by the old city's botanical gardens that made them think of a nursery rhyme for children, of still believing the city's legendary story that this tangled mess of brambles was the home of an overgrown
Lepus europaeus
called the hare king, but otherwise ignoring the place, applying the same sense of invisibility usually given to anything useless, obscure and made redundant. This landscape was once prized throughout
the world as having the richest library of the most precious, rare and extinct flora on Earth.

The people in this city did not regularly use words like
once upon a time
for being nostalgic and remembering things, but once, when it was hoped that the bad weather would change back to normal climatic patterns, the city had also hoped that the historical richness of the site would never be lost. Whatever was within man's power to save his environment was done for the rare old trees, flowers and shrubs, but in the end the struggle to save greenery seemed meaningless. The long drought killed kindness in hardened hearts. Then, when the drought was replaced by soddening rains, year in and year out, the canopy grew into an impenetrable wilderness too dangerous to people, and the precinct was just another place locked up forever.