Owls Do Cry (20 page)

The Remarkables are mountains.

But half-imagined only; with the patients fastening their dream upon the picture and creating beyond the yellow and blue cloud their frozen slope of thought whose blizzard, emerging from the stillness, cut from snow-block of day-after-day dreaming, will blow like swans or arrows flying from the yellow and blue cloud’s mouth to whip or sing in the demented night of four walls and the dead bulb of milk behind wire; and the eyes of the world from hour to hour staring through, amazed at the white storm and not knowing why.

And in the morning the pink people come to unlock the door, and struggle through the snow to the frozen bodies that are heaped on little trollies decorated with flags red and white and blue and a beryl stone, and wheeled to the rubbish dump, to be scattered amongst the toi-toi or burned.

At first when the world changed its colour and form and Daphne was taken to Arrowtown in autumn, with the Remarkables, there was a woman with grey hair and a coiled face like wire, and sand-stone eyes, who led Daphne from the ambulance in the door to the bathroom where a trough had been scooped from a side of one of the mountains, and lukewarm water poured in.

—You must have a bath, the woman said. Get in.

Her name was Flora Norris, and the wire of her face had been stolen from the wires of wreaths of poppy and nasturtium laid on the grave of her imagined lover, twenty years ago. She was matron of the hospital, Chief of the Remarkables, except for the tribe that wore coats of snow and raided, every morning, the poplar world and the blue and yellow cloud of people. But Daphne did not know of that. She sat in the bath, and rubbed her finger over the sand-stone
eyes of the matron. She shivered, and lay down in the trough, and took in her hand a little cake of cream that smelt like washday and the sheets bubbling in the copper.

—Don’t eat it. Wash with it, Flora Norris commanded.

Daphne rubbed the cream over her body to soothe the raw skin where the sand-stone had grazed and hurt. And then the woman poured a waterfall from an enema can, over her hair and said

—Now get out and put this nightie on.

But first,

—Any scars? she said. Any operations? Let me look.

She grazed Daphne’s body again so that the washing with cream had really been no help, but she did not find the scars the pine needles had sewn; so she pulled something square and striped, with arms out, like an empty scarecrow waiting to be filled, over Daphne’s head; and the pink woman who helped her led Daphne to a row of compartments, like horse-boxes, with swinging doors and room to look over and under, and said, sharply

—Do you want to go? Well hurry.

She poked her head over the door while Daphne sat on the seat. And then,

—Ready, said Flora Norris. Use that piece of apple-paper to wipe yourself.

And then,

—Quick now, into bed with you.

And then she smiled and the wire round her face melted and trickled down her neck inside her white uniform so that it tickled or speared, and she thrust her hand down to fetch it and replace it, and undo the smile.

—Remember, she said sternly, everybody is trying to help you. It’s up to you to co-operate and pull yourself together.

Daphne lay in bed, nearest the fireplace; with rubber, like a doormat, spread underneath the sheet; and Onward, Onward, written across the bottom of the quilt. And the little old Mother Superior, passing with a basket of linen, towels and sheets and pillowcases for tomorrow; the Irishwoman, with the zipped fur boots and the sea eyes and the black and grey beard, came close to Daphne’s pillow and whispered,

—Hello, and why don’t you speak?

—Leave her, the nurse said, arranging and counting and marking Daphne’s clothes.

—Leave her. This is Daphne. She is too ill to understand what you say.

And Daphne, listening, thought —Oh, what a whopper. There is nothing in the world the matter with me, except that I have been bathed in a trough and dipped under a waterfall and the pine-needles picked from my scars so that they bleed invisible blood. Oh, what a whopper. I will show her immediately that she is wrong.

And she folded back the bedclothes and dangled her foot on the slippery brown mirror that was spread like a floor across the room and, leaping from her bed, she hurried out the door and into the passage. Now where?

But the nurses, touching and folding her clothes in their suitcase, called out

—Get her! Get her!

And five shadows appeared, so that she was put in a little house on the side of the mountain; and she cried to
be let out, only to stand on the doorstep and look over at the world and the gentians and the snowgrass or to see if God were saying

Blessed are the meek and the poor in spirit.

But the five shadows whispered outside the door, and a sixth crept by, and suddenly they opened the door and seized Daphne and carried her to another house on the side of the mountain; there were many houses, all small and made of snow and iron; but this one was strong, with no light, and a smell of straw, and in the corner a round rubber vessel like a top hat upside-down, or a homberg that a cabinet minister may wear; only it was a chamber, and one of the shadows said,

—Use it, Daphne. We want a specimen.

And all the time outside the sheep were sitting on the lower slopes of the mountain, and the blanket of snow higher up, and ducks rising, like rainbows, from the black pools of the valley.

And Daphne lived there alone for many years, amid the assault and insinuation of sound in days unshining and nights without darkness; first the farm cries from the hill, the lariat of surging animal talk whipped in and out of the morning mist; the ear strangled in a noose of bark, crow, cry; and scream from the other farm, the down-place with its row of stables rich with steaming manure from imbeciles and the long-dead mad plotting their daily treasure in the small mountain room of four corners and a wooden pocket window. And the struggle to take hold of time between the slat-shadows of an unreal sun, for there the day is day but never.

And the whistle, the hooter, sounds at some hour like the scream of the mill, and Daphne remembers the poplar mornings and their tall slain shadow with the blood seeping through the coverlet of leaves, and the pearls of ice in the
heart of cabbages for kings and queens; and the sticky shine of a snail’s track; and the desolate ragged sky, comfortless, like a cheap cotton blanket that would not warm and the wind poked through. And the mill girls going on bicycles, chased by the south wind to their rooms of blindness; but not here, Daphne, here at the hour of the hooter, the door outside the mountain hovel is unlocked, some other door of a brick house holding the idiots and maimed and the dwarves with their crepe faces and parchment eyes, and these people move into the yard; they jabber, jibber and are quiet; they know what you say to them; they know, they are
understanding
, so they must work; and off they skip and limp and crawl, with bundles of soiled clothes under their arm to the laundry; all day with the hiss of steam like snakes in their ears; ironing, folding, hanging out the clothes; feeding and being crushed, their heads and the bones in their heads, under the mangle that is time, taking the sheets of earth they lie between and the pillow-cases of dream they rest their hearts on. They are tired and tireless, their faces are hot, and they roll up the sleeves of their print smocks and sit all together, with their wine and loaves of bread in the centre; and at mid-morning they drink their wine and break their loaves of bread, and are satisfied. And the men tell stories, and walk in the doctor’s pyjamas, smiling and shaking hands and bowing because they are Gods in flannelette; but all is not peace; for they quarrel and scream and fight for the last loaf of bread and the last glass of wine till the overseer comes back from her cosy corner, her mouth floured and moist with hot scone; and the hooter sounds once more and the mangles begin their
revolutions of pitiless greed; and the wine and bread spill from the jibbering jabbering and quiet mouths, and they die till the midday renewal of the feast, in the brick house on the side of the mountain. Daphne hears them returning shuffling, whimpering, like dogs to their kennel; and then the silence of grace,

O Lord be blessed for this meat.

The hand of silence over their mouths till the first taste that brings peace and war, while the matron and the ward sister, in white communion with the speech of mill and laundry, flow like waves from table to table, spilling and salt and omnipotent.

After the meal the half-minute to arrange the head and focus the withered eyes back to the heat and steam; the punctual siren demanding, like a sheriff set in the sky the condemned body of imbecile and long-dead mad, the skipping and sweet and blundering procession to the place of the mangle, and the afternoon death and feast, till night without darkness and the new day unshining.

And Daphne lived there alone for many years. It is quiet in the mountain room. Will Toby come or Francie or Chicks, or the mother and father who are set like sculpture, in the same place for ever, with their lives growing up through their body like grass through an ageing monument of stone? Who will come, into the quiet?

Someone stirs in the next room, and sings to curse the west wind and all men, and it is Mona with the olive skin and dark hair and brown eyes like darkened beer. She wants her child back to look at and feed and teach to hate, and sing to,

—Like this, she says, with my ukelele or guitar in my hand, now what shall I sing. Ah!

Sunny Australian sweetheart,

I’m in love with you.

—And then the rollicking one, my child, that your father, curse him, sang

I’m a rambler, I’m a gambler, I’m a long way from home

And if you don’t like me then leave me alone.

I eat when I’m hungry and I drink when I’m dry,

And if moonshine don’t kill me, I’ll live till I die.

And then, in case her child that she holds now in her arms to sing to and teach to hate, may be left hungry, she thinks of its food and tells from the side of the mountain to the world, not of milk flowing rich and yellow, crusted with love, from the breast or the cow’s teat when the new calf butts and dances, hornless and still wet from birth: but

cheese blisters
, how to mix them, how to cook them, and

—Do you know cheese blisters, Mona cries. Do you
know
them? They crackle and are salt, like blood, mixed with cheese that is old soured milk, skim milk, blue and deprived, the dregs of love. Do you know cheese blisters? Do you
know
them? Is there anyone there to answer me?

Daphne, in the next room, does not answer, for she waits for Toby to come, or Francie, or Chicks with a little pocket of wheat to share and share alike. Ah, there is a footstep outside the door, the eyes of the world look through the hole in the door, the key turns in the lock and here is a member of the white tribe, the chief perhaps, come to say why and where and how.

And then,

—Now. Where are you? the chief said. Do you know now where you are? You have been sick for a long time. What month and year is it? Or what day? Do you know your name?

And then,

—Why are you here? Do you know why you are here?

And all the time Flora Norris stood beside him, her hands clasped behind her back, her face cut through with the wire from the dream nasturtium, her lips pressed close to imprison the hallucinatory kiss of thirty years ago.

—Tell him, Daphne, she said, unclasping her ringless antiseptic hands and uniting them in front, beneath her breast.

—Don’t be afraid. Talk to him.

Daphne sat in the corner upon her straw mattress, her legs covered with a piece of torn blanket, her nightie, striped and oblong on her like a faded peppermint stick.

—Tell him, Daphne, urged Flora Norris again.

Daphne said nothing. Inside herself she thought,

They are mad. They are frauds. They are thieves who sneak through the night and day of their lives, exchanging their counterfeit whys and hows and wheres, like fake diamonds and gold, to zip them inside their leather human brain till the next raid and violence of exchanging, when they jingle their clay and glass baubles, untouched by sun, in their hands, and cry out,

—Who’ll buy our answers, genuine treasure, who’ll buy?

They are frauds, for the real how and where and who and why are in the circle of toi-toi, with the beautiful ledger writing and the book thrown away that told of Tom Thumb sitting in the horse’s ear; and the sun shining through the sacrificial fire, to make real diamonds and gold. And we sat, didn’t we, Toby, Chicks and Francie, as the world sits in the
morning, unafraid, touching how and why and where, the wonder currency that I take with me, slipped in the lining of my heart, to hide it because I know. And Toby carries it backward and forward across continents and seas and does not understand it though it glitters and strikes part of the fire in him; and Chicks is afraid, and covers it with a washing machine and refrigerator, and a space-heater behind glass.

Everything behind glass is valuable.

So Daphne thought and did not speak, and the chief of the white tribe, who wore spectacles, and carried in his pocket the sprout of a rubber tree to listen at the underground door of the heart and its beating of secret, walked forward and smiled encouragingly, saying

—Now now, Daphne, speak to me, like a good girl. We are going to make you better after all this time. You’ll be home soon.

And still Daphne did not speak, so the chief tried a different subject, forgetting how and why and where, but a question, all the same.

—How are your bowels, he said. And your water?

Flora Norris moved impatiently and pulled hold of Daphne’s shoulders,

—Can’t you understand? she said. You’re being spoken to.

And then Daphne moved and slapped the face of Flora Norris, digging her hands in the barbed wire, yet feeling for one instant the velvet and warmth of the dream nasturtium; and turning to the white chief she pushed him back to the door so that, almost toppling, he cried out a protesting