Las Vegas for Vegans (5 page)

Sava needed to run but all he could do was sit in the motionless train. He said, ‘I heard you. I could tell by the way you were wailing that he wasn't around. The sound—going on as though nothing could help it or stop it. I couldn't move for the longest time.'

The train's lights flickered and Sava worried they would die and leave the two of them in total darkness. Sava said, ‘It was a hollow sound and I knew it had to be coming from that man's well. I lowered the rope down the hole and I whispered though I suppose you couldn't hear me over that noise you were making. I got so worried that he would catch me whispering or he would come out because you were making that noise.'

Milan was moving as he listened, his hands rubbing at his eyes and cheeks as if he were washing his face. He was silent, yet Sava wasn't sure if his friend could hear him.

‘I looked up and there he was, sitting in a rocking chair on his porch, in the shadows. I could hear that explosion like we heard earlier. I was still standing there and I suppose I imagined the sound of his rifle. The silence went on and I started breathing again. He didn't move and I realised as I blinked at him that he wasn't watching and waiting. He was asleep in his rocking chair.'

Milan said, ‘Maybe that's why he threw me into his well instead of just “putting me down”, as he said he was going to do. And then falling asleep as he waited in ambush for you to come back for me.' Milan stopped washing his face with his dry hands and tilted his head up so he could look at his best friend. ‘He was a lot older and weaker than he seemed standing on his porch with that rifle. The hunting knife we were going to use at the lake was just sitting there on his porch.'

The engines began turning again. After a few more moments the train began to move. Sava looked out at Jabukovac station and noticed a large bird sitting in one of the trees. It was far enough away from the light to not be illuminated. Its head moved as the locomotive came to life again. The creature was the size of large baby or a small boy sitting on a branch. A huge bird really, and not too far away. A flash from its large eyes made Sava realise it was an owl and it stunned him that it had been sitting there for the entire time the train was halted without either him or his best friend noticing.

THE RIVER

The results still hadn't come in, even after a week of waiting. The physician was brusque, saying they would just have to wait for a diagnosis. Franz could not sit in the room of his boarding house for more than a few minutes, so he abandoned the unfinished manuscript on his desk and went for long walks alone. Autumn was offering him a few more warm days but he knew winter was close every shivering evening. The coughing was now almost constant. It had begun when he was still able to blow plumes of smoke into last year's spring mornings.

He came down to the Danube and stopped only because there wasn't a bridge at this part of the river. Franz remained standing by the water. It was some time before he roused himself from his daze and saw how many groups of people there were all up and down the river. There were families on picnic blankets, clusters of friends lounging in conversational circles, couples sharing wine, pet dogs released to scamper around, even a couple dressed as French nobles with a monkey on a leash. The woman had a parasol on her shoulder and the man puffed on a cigar. They didn't talk to each other except to remark on the tethered monkey's endeavours to catch a tabby cat loitering nearby.

The river had many boats drifting on it. Small sailing ships for children. Rowboats with propped fishing rods and their bright-red floaters bobbing in the water. Rowing teams sculled along to the calls of men with small cones held to their mouths. Ducks lifted into the air on a whim and came swooshing down again. Women in long dresses, wearing large hats with flowers pinned to their brims, threw breadcrumbs to the ducks from boxes they'd prepared at home.

A man with a scarlet robe, similar to the kind boxers wear, walked in a stately way towards the river and stopped by the water's edge. The children were the first to reach him and they formed an excited circle of onlookers as he began to disrobe. Beneath, he was wearing a blue-and-white-striped bathing suit. The image of a whale in green was stitched on his back. When Franz got closer he saw that below the leviathan was the name Jonah. The man sat on a rock beside the wide river, with his legs dangling in the water. He was breathing deeply yet rapidly and the whale on his back looked as though it was swimming through a blue and white ocean.

Franz and a large group of people gathered around the Swimmer. Franz asked a gentleman with a monocle next to him what was happening. The man replied that the Swimmer was going to swim across the Danube, from one bank to the other. When Franz shrugged, the man with the monocle explained that the swimmer would swim below the water, without coming up for air. It was over seventy metres wide at this point of the great river and he would usually carry something in his mouth when making his crossing. He had been known to carry a man's silver pocket watch, a blue robin's egg, and once he'd even carried a wedding ring over and back—at which point a gentleman had proposed to his prospective bride.

‘What's in his mouth today?' asked Franz.

‘Nothing. Today the Swimmer is going to go all the way to the other side—and return—without coming up for air.'

‘That's impossible,' said Franz.

‘I know,' agreed the man with the monocle. ‘It's impossible.' He smiled.

More people gathered to watch the Swimmer prepare. The smallest of the children took turns patting the whale on the back of the Swimmer's bathing suit, gently, as it seemed to swim below the deepest ocean. Those who could already read mistakenly assumed the Swimmer's name to be Jonah, but he and his costume still filled them with a sense of wonder.

‘How is he going to prove he went to the other side and back?' asked Franz.

The man with the monocle looked surprised by the question and couldn't answer it. Franz kept asking people until a young man with a very new, shiny top hat said that he had a white balloon shaped like a star attached to his waist, which he would release when he got to the other bank.

The Swimmer folded the scarlet robe that had been keeping his legs warm and politely asked a red-headed girl to hold it for a little while. People began to clap. As he made his way deeper into the water the applause grew louder. It petered out when he was fully submerged. The Danube was dark today and nothing more could be seen of the Swimmer.

People began to estimate how long it would take him to cross from one side of the river to the other. They looked for the white balloon that was sure to bob up soon on the distant bank. They did not spot it for all their eager searching. This fact was eventually dismissed, one man who had the bearing of a judge pronouncing that it would be as difficult to see as a snowflake landing on the water—picking out a white balloon on a river so busy with boats, fishing floats and ducks.

They all waited.

‘But it's impossible,' said Franz.

‘Yes, it's impossible,' people assured him with expectant smiles on their faces.

The gathering stood by the water for fifteen minutes before everyone began re-forming their original clusters of family and friends. They continued to talk as though they were all still part of an audience, if only for a few moments longer. They speculated on how long it was possible for a man to hold his breath. What was the outer limit for a fellow with good lungs, and then for someone who had trained for such endeavours as crossing the Danube or especially deep-sea diving? They had real professionals doing that kind of breath holding. Conversations ranged over the things men found below water, from sponges and pearls to sunken ships and treasures.

The children also dispersed from the water's edge after a while. The red-headed girl placed the Swimmer's scarlet robe on the rock he had sat on, breathing deeply, just a little time before. She asked her father whether a sponge was a type of fish and what kind of creature produced a pearl. Perhaps they were a special kind of egg. She asked if there were sunken treasures in the wide, deep Danube as well.

Franz hadn't coughed for the whole time he was waiting for the Swimmer to cross the river but he now pulled out a handkerchief and began coughing. He carried a number of handkerchiefs. Franz could feel his lungs struggling, tired from a battle that had been raging for months. His eyes were closed as the coughing fit went on and on. Franz opened his eyes and saw spatters of blood soaking into the white fabric resembling an image of a surfacing leviathan.

HUNGRY MOTHS

I know Truth is somewhere near. I can smell her perfume on the shirt I wore last night. Smudges of lipstick on the glasses we used. I'm sure there'd still be a taste of her in the bead of wine at the bottom of the glass over there on the window ledge.

We must have been leaning out. I remember drunken songs in snatches—stuff that doesn't make sense anymore. I think we threw some books outside as well, to watch them flutter down on their broken wings. Just a few books that I wasn't going to read, but my memory is a bit hazy. I'm distressed to see that my bookshelves are all empty. I had been intending on keeping some of them for the rest of my life.

The roar of traffic is loud through the open window and whatever remains of them outside must have been shredded to the smallest fragments of paper. I'm not sure even a word would have survived on that relentless road. Millions upon millions of cars pass, day and night outside—ceaseless now that the gates of the underworld are open again.

There's the dress she was wearing, still draped over a light stand, so she can't have gone far. Holes through the fabric of her gown (a shade of red she described as the colour a closed eye sees looking up at summer skies during high noon), puncture marks like a machine gun has swept across it.

I should have told her how hungry my moths are this far away from the sun.

NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING

she finds a spot in the car park after a few maddening minutes of circling graffiti on every available surface not reading any of the spray painted words listening to the radio and trying to stay calm the economist in the studio saying that australia has to be about the future and that means asia and the politician on a telephone feed replying that a global meltdown means global problems and the way forward has to be with a global mind frame turning the car off and enjoying the way she can kill their voices carefully getting out of her car stepping away gingerly because she turned her ankle friday hopping off the tram moving through a chaos gallery of public explosions graffiti artists have a few milliseconds of attention to play with then again there's a limited permanence high exposure audience in thrall if only for brief moments of parking being stopped in that one concrete space later she will remember this is the first instance of the words hive mind appearing before her a tag that's what it was called graffiti artists used tags instead of names maybe there is an honesty there it didn't matter who their father was or what name mother chose limping away from her car to the bookstore with a joy division song playing memory doesn't show everything who knows what's in there no words or title only the first line ian curtis intoning so this is permanence so this is through her mind again permanence which might have been a declaration of pain yet makes her feel as little anguish as graffiti so this is permanence is just a resonating sequence of syllables rising and subsiding in letters that require a brief hiss at the beginning and ending limping along like a gimp wincing with every step keeping the expressions minuscule doesn't show emotion in public if she can help it which isn't always true because she laughs out loud on her mobile when speaking to a friend so the ankle is as much a secret as she can make it hobbling along an inconvenience rather than an agony needing a book because she didn't want to move yet moving because she needed that book it's too hot out here there are too many people liable to bump or mill about on the footpath she gets through without needing to say excuse me excuse me excuse me please this is not permanence soon enough she'll be back home with her book and she will get into her comfy armchair and not move again for hours within the bookstore it's the christmas rush there's no time for browsing people brushing past swearing under breath wanting to shove barely containing themselves emitting some kind of frantic sound from their hectic minds dogs could hear it or smell it if they let dogs in here they'd be barking their heads off as animals often do in horror films in the presence of something unholy picking up a book she needs to rest her ankle it's a pocket of calm maybe no one wants books from the cultural studies section this time of year for presents for friends or family for a kris kringle the female eunuch probably hadn't ever found its way into an xmas stocking but germaine greer would cackle if she was to hang pendulous from the family mantel wishing she could make those kinds of friends with writers she enjoys and has come to know as if they were eternally present at birthdays being unwrapped or when there's time enough to curl up with them on an armchair such welcoming faithful dutiful loving spectres like greer or curtis singing about permanence and hanging from his neck almost twenty four years old and that song about permanence is called twenty four hours she now recalls one of those songs she's listened to hundreds of times never catching all the lyrics yet she can hear his voice so this is permanence she imagines ian curtis still hanging from a beam decades later a final guttural song recorded in a purgatory studio the lyrics never emerging played over and over in the endless pendulum of his feet swinging free of time below perhaps that is true for everyone and not just her and this ghost pain comes with the illusion that it will never end even when it's something as stupid as a twisted ankle and the worse the pain the more convincing the illusion of permanence but she still doesn't feel sad for him it's only a song attached to a few random biographical details seeing a book on the shelf picking it up for no other reason than it says hive mind on the cover she will later point out in an email to her friend edouard that this is the second instance in a total of three for the day writing that she can't remember seeing the words applied to people in general as if it's a recognised phenomenon or common term maybe it is now it had been made official by some pseudo crypto jungian rejigging the collective unconscious with a bit of sociology psychology history in the cultural studies demimonde emerging on youtube radio television coaching america's newest magazine gloss sweetheart through her latest paparazzi breakdown putting the book back as a total mind numbing fucking irrelevancy in any case giving up on the idea that she might hunt through the biography section for dad's christmas gift to get that particular farce over and done with limping to the book by jim shepard she wants to buy hating the cover but knowing shepard is one of the few writers who can give her that literary transport that she needs right now the tyranny of epiphany a tiny bubble in her mind popping among a billion other bubbles especially wanting to be jim's friend as with germaine but probably not poor grand mal ian and just chat about music movies books or the weather polar bears preferred on the south pole it wouldn't matter what they talked about really and she is sure that jim would like her at least as much as a facebook friendship allows he might correct her playfully about polar bears being only on the north pole and penguins living on the south pole never the twain paying for jim's ugly book getting out while the going was good feeling lucky not to have had an xmas rugby style scrimmage at the counter limping along a temporary cripple stopping to rest by the wall next to the car park sweating panting thinking about the time she saw betty cuthbert in a wheelchair at an awards ceremony with videos playing on big screens of younger days how permanent that is for the golden girl winner of three gold medals for australia breaking sprinting records with that open mouth sucking in air and national noise and love and the pain is so bad that she can barely hobble to the car thinking that 100 metres in a breath over 11 seconds in 1956 still seems so so
so
quick recalling jason from human resources paid only $36 on ebay for a gold medal from berlin 1936 the nazi olympics hopping the last few metres on one leg to her car as though this is a gruelling olympic event with the medal metals for victory being tin or lead or rust and the winner is raised by a curtis rope rather than asked to step up on those three steps for the honour of listening to some stadium muzak getting into her car not with a yell of victory but with a squeal in the privacy of her cabin as her foot knocks against the doorframe the radio announcer says well I wouldn't have said it was hive mind but we'll all have to decide for ourselves laughing at his own joke and then going to a song that had nothing to do with anything