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24. theft of the elixir
Nigel and Barbs tossed and turned in his bed the next morning. Nigel was always touching himself around the cock and arse, as if he wished someone else would do it for him. The black mat of hair grew thickly across his shoulders and chest. He was always adjusting his penis in his pants, fidgeting with it as if the sweat between his scrotum and his large legs stuck them both together, and he kept trying to separate the two. He gradually woke up snorting and farting. This man who had once called me 'petal lips', now called out into the dim morning from waking sleep, 'cawlp cawlp cawlp cawlp cawlp num num num num num'. He was gulping the staleness in his mouth back down inside himself, as though it were the staleness that was still asleep and not prepared to wake up. I crept along the edge of the skirting boards. 'Don't lose your cool. Don't lose your cool.' The silence of the dank room raged around me. 'I'm ice cold dead.' I stared back into it. The diamond sat inside the open drawer next to the bedside table. I reached in and took the red box from right under their noses. Then he groaned and farted so forcefully that it shot like a bullet from up beneath the sheets into the room. One of Barb's eyes came open just as I was near the door. I was sure that she had seen me. That one eye looked over towards him and it was a dead eye. Then it looked back to me and I thought, I'm dead. What could I do but not move a centimetre, in case a hair on my body made her scream for him. My eyes looked into her dead eyes saying, 'Okay sister, you got me. What are we gonna to do now?' But she just kept staring and never moved. It seemed as if she had only looked over to him to consider for a moment. Then without any indication from the deadness of her face and that glass eye of hers, she rolled back over as quietly as she had awoken. It took me just a couple of seconds to know how she hated him. She hated him more than she would ever hate me. His huge morning fart-filling the room like stale curry, and more than any dogs could, mingled closely with her carefully-chosen expensive perfume. At once I felt an acute sense of pity for her. He didn't deserve the rose-printed sheets they were wrapped in. I didn't hang around to question why she stayed with him. She seemed dead more than fearful. I escaped with the diamond in my left hand. I took it because I had to take it. I had hung around Frazer long enough and there had been no mention of a ring. I knew that if I hadn't taken it no-one would ever have given me one for myself. Now I had been given one. I was engaged to love and space. The diamond was meant for my fingers. It was one of the most magnificent landscapes I had ever looked into. I shot away down the street becoming garbage cans and shadows. I just did it. I could hardly believe it. It felt good to be out of their stale room, alone with what was inside the precious stone. The acute brightness of the diamond hurt my eyes. Nothing was able to enter me. Place a diamond on a table next to a bullet and it may be a thousand years and they will come no closer together. The incredible movement needed inside me had to be catastrophic like an explosion or a volcanic eruption. It was what was needed in order to push those two objects together, like a psychic could without touching them. When that power did come those two objects collided as if behind a glass dome in a laboratory. The lid was blown off my world. You know, every time I try to pour it out, I feel as if someone will bash me in. It's as though I have been involved in a car accident that has lasted for twenty-four years. I held myself tight and hard like a bullet. No information was entered and none was given out. The world was not knocking from the outside. It didn't care that much. It simply waited for me to fall apart in layers like an Australian desert rock must shed its layers like an onion, until it becomes the size of a pebble. Then all its dust is free to be broken down and blow across the outback. At first I let myself out in short and painful spasms of emotion, where it was hard to rescue another living thing. It was as though all my fingers were in cramp from a brokenness inside, and it was hard to even smile or breathe or let the sunlight touch my skin. I remember that my dogs were able to cycle and recycle. They received the things of the environment around them. It was simply passed through them like food as they processed it and let it go. I saw the worlds and universes moving through their small glad frames, as their tails wagged like windmills, and the world was wind through them. It was the first thing that made me glad. When the world was finally able to enter me, it was only because I had made enough room for it to come in. When the world came in, it came in strong and painful. The sunlight trapped inside the diamond reminded me of my own heart. It was finally hard enough to make me cry. My body has now become a vehicle for absorption and release, like a machine cycle that washes the day and night. The earth turns and daylight and nightfall flood through me. If you keep the gate closed long enough, it's gonna get kicked down, if not by someone else then by your own boredom, or by some determination in you that still desires life. Then you will die forever inside that part of you left standing behind the gate, after everyone else has left for work. The more you hold on the brighter and more impatient the earth will be. It smiles at your life like jaws. Thanks to the insightful lessons taught to me by dogs, little deaths and births now pass through me, manic as small birds. All I can do is keep moving. There will come a time when I am still again. I am presently rebuilding. All my personality has been unlayered and broken down into pebbles from an inland rock. The red sand is wailing across the land and will restructure itself. It blows along the path of harsh bright sunlight, glittering in a space as big as inland Australia. |
