Fresh Fields (36 page)

But the scene of the lovers in the glade had helped him. It had reminded him about The Great Reciprocation and the way it works, the endless interaction of the light and the dark. Happiness is precious only because there is tragedy in the world, and tragedy is profound only because there is happiness. The kiss of lovers is sweet because other people are bereft and lonely. The plight of the loveless is poignant because others are kissing. Pain and joy, death and life, gain and loss, and all of it bound in the great circle of reciprocation.

Because a certain dark thing happens tonight at eight o'clock, the light will be truer. And since the side of dark and pain and loss is the harder station in the Battle of Honour, and the harder to keep faith with, it is assigned only to the truest hearts.

On a sudden impulse he stood up and went along the row of seats and down the aisle to the Gents. It was empty. He went to the urinal and opened his fly and stood there. He could hear the soundtrack of the movie. He stayed at the urinal for what seemed like a long time, then he closed his fly and went to the washbasin and spent a long time washing his hands. He heard the movie ending and the theme music welling up to its finale, then silence. He heard the outer door of the Gents open and he darted into a cubicle and sat on the edge of the toilet until he heard whoever it was finish and go out. He leant forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands under his chin and stared at a bit of graffiti on the cubicle door. Then he decided he'd given it enough time. He got up and went out of the Gents. The lights were on and the theatre was empty.

The blue bag was still there on the seat. Nobody had taken it.

“So be it,” he said to himself. “So be it.”

 

 

 

Peter Kocan was born in Newcastle, New South Wales, in 1947 and grew up in Melbourne. He left school at fourteen to work on country New South Wales properties and in factory jobs. He served a decade in custody for a shooting offence and it was then that he began to write. He has published three previous novels and five collections of verse.