Peripheral Vision (2 page)

‘Thirsty, mate?' The bald man's voice came from behind the darkness of the screen door.

‘Shaun, don't, please.' The woman's voice echoed down the hallway. ‘Leave the guy alone.'

‘Come on, mate, don't be shy. We'll shout you a beer.'

‘You're very kind.' Pran used the verandah post to pull himself up. He was stiff from the long day of walking. ‘I'm not a beer drinker, but another glass of water …'

‘I think we can rustle that up for you.'

Pran gathered his clipboard and bag and walked into the house past the bald man, who held the door wide with his arm.

When the Indian stepped into the room and smiled at her, Marly's stomach flipped. He had been so serious before, an unsmiling manikin, but now that he had opened his face she wanted to touch his soft brown lips with her fingertips, run her tongue along his perfect white teeth. She felt the heat in her face and pushed herself up from the table.

‘I'll find some ice,' she said. ‘I think there's a tray in the fridge in the shed.'

By the time she got back with the ice cubes melting in the tray, Shaun and Azza were sitting at one end of the laminex table with the half-empty pizza boxes in front of them, while Pran perched on a chair in the opposite corner of the room near the stove.

‘He doesn't eat meat,' Shaun said through a mouthful of pizza.

‘But I am most grateful for you offering it to me.' Pran was holding his glass at chest height. When he raised it in a salute to the men, Marly saw that one of them had filled it with whisky. The Indian was so slim that half the amount would probably knock him out.

‘Here, let me fix that up for you.' She emptied most of the whisky into another glass, then filled his glass to the brim with water and ice before handing it back. ‘This should cool you down a bit.'

‘You are very kind.' He lifted the glass to his lips and sipped at it.

Marly watched closely. The whisky was the cheapest you could buy. She couldn't drink it without drowning it in Coke. But the man's angelic face didn't flinch.

‘I see you have a plasma television.' Pran nodded toward the screen, which was visible through the doorway into the lounge. It was a fifty-inch model Shaun had bought when they got the government bonus last year.

‘Brilliant for watching the footy.' Azza directed his words to Marly, as if he couldn't bear to speak to the Indian. ‘Right, mate?' He said this to Shaun.

‘That's why I bought it.' Shaun reached for the pizza box and passed the second-last piece to Marly before taking the last one, rolling it into a tube and stuffing it whole into his mouth.

Marly took a bite and chewed on the salty, meaty, oily slice. She loved pizza. Sometimes eating was almost as good as sex, like now, with the capricciosa sitting warm in her belly and a mouthful of fizzy sweet beer to wash it down. That Indian guy didn't know what he was missing.

‘They say that next year all the football will be on pay television.' Pran took another delicate sip of the whisky and water. This time Marly thought she saw his jaw clench as he swallowed.

‘Got it.' Shaun pulled a roll of paper towels from the bench behind him. He tore off four sheets and passed the roll to Azza before wiping his mouth and hands and tossing the used towels at the bin in the corner. ‘You're here to sell us Foxtel, right?'

‘No, sir.'

‘That other one, then. Optus, or Star, or whatever it is.'

‘Sir, I am not here to sell you a single thing.'

‘Fuck, he's really starting to piss me off now.' Azza spoke to the ceiling.

‘Your name is Azza, I believe you said? Where are you from, sir?' Pran seemed unperturbed. He swivelled a little on his seat to face Azza.

‘I'm from Thomastown, mate.' Azza had gone quite still.

‘And your family? They are from Thomastown too?'

‘They're from Lebanon. Not that it's any of your fucking business.'

Pran nodded and took another sip of the whisky.

‘So come on, give us your spiel.' Shaun rocked back on his chair and rested his thonged feet on the edge of the kitchen table like he was getting ready to hear a story.

‘I have no spiel. All I have for you is a free offer. No obligations, no payments, no commitments.'

‘Go on.' Shaun was enjoying himself. Marly remembered the time he got the Mormons in and toyed with them for an hour and a half. She'd been drinking that night and so had he, and the evening was blurry – but the Mormons had never pressed charges, even though she'd found a piece of tooth in the glass on the floor the next morning, and it wasn't Shaun's and it wasn't hers.

‘Do Hindus believe in God?' Marly interrupted. If she could break the chain, tonight might end differently.

‘We have many gods, which are manifestations of a single reality. We believe in reincarnation, and in karma. What you choose to do in your life determines your destiny in this life and the next.'

‘Sounds like that chick in the crystal shop.' Azza tipped back on his chair too, and swigged his beer.

‘Take your feet off the table, boys. It's not nice.' Marly tapped her nails on the tabletop. The Indian's clean white shirt and his polished shoes were flickering like soft candles in the corner of the room.

Shaun and Azza were so surprised that they lifted their feet and dropped their chairs back to the floor.

‘Jesus, Marl, where'd the manners suddenly come from?' Shaun reached across the table. He picked up a tube of toothpicks from the bench. He offered them around the table, but Azza and Marly shook their heads. The room was quiet as he rooted around the back of his mouth and brought out the toothpick to examine it. The tip was bright with blood, like a thin match.

‘So.' Shaun rubbed the toothpick between his thumb and forefinger, twirling it up and down the length of his thumb pad. ‘So, Pran, mate.'

‘Yes, Shaun?'

Marly couldn't believe how relaxed he was. Either he was stupid or he had some secret weapon.

‘Pran, I don't think we'll be taking your offer of a free set of steak knives.'

‘I am not trying to offer you steak knives, Shaun.' Pran lifted his canvas bag and brought out a pamphlet. ‘I am giving you free of charge six months of—'

‘I said we don't want it, mate. The thing is—'

‘Mr Pran, what did you mean by manifestations of a single reality?' Marly knew Shaun and Azza would be cursing her, but she had to make it stop. And maybe this calm little man had the secret. The secret of being happy, or of not always wanting to be someone else, somewhere else.

Pran wondered how the woman had ended up with these louts. ‘You see, Marly, our scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, says that there is a single essence that underlies all existence. You might call it the soul. “The soul dwells in every living being, and in every part of every living being; it dwells in the hand and the foot, the skull and the mouth, the eye and the ear.” ' Pran watched Marly move her lips as he spoke, as if she was trying to make his words fit into ones she might understand. ‘But for us in this world, it is only necessary to do one's duty.'

‘You're giving me a headache, Pran.' Shaun finished his beer and lowered the bottle to the table. ‘I think we're done here.'

‘But I want to hear more. This is interesting.' Marly nodded at Pran and he saw the tension in her tight forehead. ‘Come on, Shauny. Let him tell us a bit more.'

‘Yeah, Shauny,' Azza whined in a mock falsetto, ‘let's hear what the Paki has to say.' His voice dropped to its normal register. ‘But you've gotta ask, if they've got it all worked out where he comes from, what's he doing here?'

‘Come on.' Shaun leaped up from the table, his big body causing the room to tremble. ‘We'll walk you to your car, mate.'

‘I'm fine, thank you. It is very near.' Pran thought about the reserve and its bits of glass and discarded car parts. Outside, it was getting dark. The bush in the reserve would be dry and still and shadowy. He wasn't sure whether a path led straight through to the street where his car was sitting. Perhaps it would be wiser to take the long way around.

‘Nope, I insist. Where is it?'

‘Really, I don't want you to bother.' Perhaps these men thought they could attack him, take money from him. As if he would be stupid enough to carry money around a suburb like this. Pran eased his clipboard into his canvas bag and shook it until the clipboard had slid completely inside. ‘Unless you feel like a walk. Company is always pleasant.'

‘That's us, pleasant company. Right, Azza?'

‘Right.' Azza stood and hitched up his jeans. ‘Let's do it.'

Before he headed for the door, Pran turned and dipped his head to Marly. She was looking at him as if she felt sorry for him.

‘What you are suffering in this world' – he waved his hand at Marly's prosthetic foot, but his eyes were trained on her face – ‘will serve you in the next life.'

‘Great, 'cause it's not doing her much fucking good in this one.' Shaun laughed as he positioned his big hand on the back of Pran's neck and guided him out of the kitchen.

Marly was waiting in the chair on the front verandah when the boys walked back through the hole in the fence. Neither of them looked at her. As she followed them into the house, a creased sheet of paper eased out of Shaun's back pocket and fluttered to the floor. He didn't notice until Marly had stooped to pick it up, then he turned and tried to snatch it from her. She stared at the printed sheet with Shaun's scrawled signature at the bottom. ‘What's this?'

Shaun tried again to nab the paper from her fingers but Marly held on.

‘A minimum of two thousand dollars over twenty-four months – are you fucking kidding? How did he get you to sign this?' As she threw the paper onto the kitchen table, she noticed Azza thrust his hands in his pockets, but not before she had caught sight of the rusty brown stain on his palm.

‘Oh, no. What did you do to him?' She pictured Pran's melty eyes swimming with tears of pain, his soft mouth squeezed into a grimace. ‘Where is he?' If they'd hurt that beautiful man she was going to kill them.

‘He's all right, okay? I lost it for a minute, tapped him on the nose.' Azza pulled his hand from his pocket, spat on it and rubbed it against his jeans until the stain was off his skin.

‘That's blood.'

‘He's all right. We said we were sorry. He drove away in his fucking Honda coupe. Now shut up.' Shaun slammed his fist on the table. The dog bolted out through the back door.

Marly stood uncertainly in the doorway. Shaun was glaring at her, daring her to say a single word. She'd never find out how the Indian had got him to sign the contract.

‘I'm going out front.' She took a beer from the fridge and stumped down the hallway to the verandah on her graceless steel leg. The streetlights were on. She could see the shadows of trees in the reserve. On the other side, somewhere, was Pran, flying along the freeway in his Honda coupe with two thousand dollars of their money. Money they didn't even have yet. Two years of their lives signed away. Everything had turned upside down. She tried to remember what he had said about the essence. Something about hands and feet. Or skulls and ears. Or something.

Procession

When they first stood up and walked on their hind legs we paid money to see them.

I took my five-year-old. She laughed and ran up to one of the dogs, who stood upright beside a bucket where we were supposed to drop our tickets. Sienna was the same height as the Beagle. He laid a paw on her shoulder. His sinewy tongue curled for a moment around the lobe of her ear and she giggled, kissing the dog's wet black nose before she ran back to me. I pulled a wipe from my bag to clean her face as she chattered.

‘His name is Oscar but he doesn't like it.' She grinned her toothy grin at me as I screwed up the wipe and threw it in the bin. ‘A human gave him the name.'

‘A person, you mean. Like me or Daddy or your teacher.'

‘Yes, a person.'

In the ring, the dogs performed tricks people had taught them in the old circus. An Airedale played the ringmaster. He strutted across the sandy floor with a whistle clenched between his teeth, gesturing with his front paws to direct the performers around the stage. A Toy Poodle rode the shoulders of a loping Great Dane. Ten Border Collies formed a precarious pyramid, tumbled barking to the ground, bounced up and paraded around the ring for our applause.

The chests of the bitches were fluffy, but below the ribs the fur thinned and soft skin showed through, mottled black and white in the same pattern as their coats. They looked strangely vulnerable beside the parading dogs. When dogs walk on their hind legs, they display their cock and balls like ostentatious jewellery. The castrated dogs walked differently from the ones who were still entire. With their small empty sacs tucked up close to their bodies and their cocks thrust far forward they walked as if they were about to lose their balance. But they never did.

‘I want to go again tomorrow,' Sienna demanded.

‘No. Tomorrow is your swimming lesson, remember?'

‘I don't care. I want to see them again.'

On the walk home we passed a cobblestoned lane, shadowy in the late dusk, stinking of city garbage. Two mixed-breed dogs stood with their shoulders against the south wall of the lane. In the past I would have called them mongrels. They faced each other and made throaty grunts, their tails snapping against the brickwork.

I asked Sienna what they were saying. Only children and a very few adults could understand the dogs' guttural conversations punctuated with sharp barks and whines. Academics were studying recordings of them talking but their progress was slow. It was easier to ask a child what was going on.

‘They're having a talk,' she said. She licked ice-cream off her hand where it had dripped.

‘I can see that. A talk about what?'

Sienna took another long lick of her chocolate ice-cream before looking away from me and answering, ‘I couldn't hear very well.'

I think that was the first wilful lie she told me.

Not all the dogs developed at the same rate. Our dog, Pugsley, was at home behaving like the dog we'd always known, shitting all over the yard, barking at shadows, goofing around with Sienna and her father, Adrian, until very late in the piece.

I suppose, now I think about it, that it was the clown dogs who were the last to turn. Pugs, Basset Hounds, Boxers. The working dogs led the change. The first dog I saw standing up was a Blue Heeler bitch. She watched me walk past, my mouth open in amazement, and she coughed as I was about to turn the corner. When I swung to face her she wagged her tail slowly, languorously, looking me straight in the eye. That was the moment I knew everything had changed. Not the hind-leg walking but a dog gazing at me as if we were equals.

Once everything settled down we went back to shopping at the supermarket, but in the early weeks of fear that the dogs might attack, shops were closed and people were guarding their goods and property. I went to the cupboard and found tiny jars of anchovies, truffle-infused olive oil, the hand-ground dukkah Adrian liked to bring home from his work trips to Egypt. Sensible people went to their cupboards and found flour, sugar, tins of baked beans and soup.

I asked my neighbour if I could swap a packet of roasted almonds for a piece of fresh fruit for Sienna. She went inside to get an apple but her husband came out instead, red-faced and stinking of beer.

‘I haven't forgotten the fucking car, you bitch,' he said.

I stepped back, stomach whirling in fear.

‘Didn't the insurance company pay you?' I said, my voice squeaky. I wasn't sure whether to stay or run. ‘I did the paperwork. I sent it in ages ago.' I had rolled into the back of their car in the street – dented the bumper bar and cracked a rear light.

He lurched forward as if he would fall on his face, then grabbed the architrave and pulled himself upright.

‘We never had a dog. It's cunts like you who brought this on,' he said, and slammed the door.

I stood there shaking. Their seven-year-old son pulled aside the lounge room curtain and stared out at me, his pale fat face void of expression. He looked like he'd never eaten a piece of fruit in his life.

It's been eight years, but I still remember the circus and our wide-eyed admiration of those first few dogs. I remember the fear and panic that grew as more dogs changed. People with guns, behaving like savages. I remember the day the government declared the dogs protected against the vigilantes. The bill of rights, the opening of the compounds.

What I can't place is the exact moment last year when I realised Sienna had joined the Dogteens. She turned into a stranger while we worried about installing a new security system.

Last night she came home late, as usual, and flung herself on the couch in front of the television.

‘Senn, please don't wear the furs on the furniture,' I said. ‘Have you had dinner? How was school? Where have you been?'

She sat up, peeled off the stitched-together fur-scrap poncho, and tossed it on the floor beside the couch. Underneath she was wearing a T-shirt with a Chihuahua transfer and a pair of cut-off jeans. I noticed a bruise on her throat near the collarbone.

‘Take the fur outside and leave it on the verandah. It's disgusting.'

‘In a minute,' she said. I watched the bruise disappear and reappear as she rubbed it with her fingers.

‘Have you hurt yourself? Let me take a look.'

‘Leave me alone.'

‘Come on, sweetheart, let me have a look. A dog didn't bite you, did it?'

I saw it on a current affairs show last week. One of the Dogteens who'd broken away was interviewed. Her profile was in darkness, her voice disguised by technology and sounding uncannily like the gruff tones of a dog. She said the dogs in the inner compound nip the Dogteens to break their skin and infect them with a virus that turns their fingernails into claws and sharpens their hearing and sense of smell. Those teenagers, the ones who have been bitten, are the ones who never come home. I don't know why I kept watching. I never watch those stupid shows.

‘Of course not. They'd never bite us.' Sienna's hand crept up to her throat and massaged the purple mark.

‘Here,' I said, picking the stinking furs off the floor and stretching out my hand to help her off the couch, ‘I'll put some antiseptic on it. Please, darling.'

‘Fuck off,' she said. As she turned her head away to watch the TV I thought I heard a sound, a rumble from deep in her chest.

My heart started to beat faster. ‘Did you growl at me?'

She rolled her eyes and snuggled deeper into the rug on the couch. I could feel the greasy furs leaving their stink on my hands as I hurried to the verandah to hang them on the outside hook. The schools do the same thing – they have a shed at the end of the schoolyard where the Dogteens can hang their furs. I've tried washing them but Sienna will only come home with a different mangy collection of pelts. She wants to smell. Like her Dogteen friends she hates to be reminded she's human.

This morning we were all up early. Outside, the sky was an eerie watermelon colour. Clouds were gathering to the north, furling over the horizon in fat greys and purples. Adrian, home all weekend for a change, pushed eggs around the frypan and I buttered toast while Sienna stood on the verandah, her head high, sniffing the wind.

‘I'll have bacon,' she called in through the window.

‘You ate it all yesterday.' Adrian shut the window and turned to me. ‘Or maybe she rubbed it over herself. Soon she'll stink so badly I won't be able to stand in the same room as her. What happened to our daughter? Can't you get her to take a shower?'

‘Can't you?' The words burst out of me. I wanted to suck them back in. I didn't want a fight. I hate to fight.

I didn't dare tell him about the turd, or the cat's tail with scraps of pink flesh still hanging from it, or the rutting. She's a teenager, I told myself the night I heard her grunting and barking in the backyard with the boy who looks like a dingo, all pale bristly hair and pointy face. She's had her implant so she won't get pregnant. But the turd. The little exclamation mark of dried-up poo I found nestled behind her bedroom door. How could I explain that?

‘At least she's here for breakfast. She'll turn out all right, you'll see. You know most of them grow out of it.' I felt my face wrinkle into an appeasing smile.

‘That's if we still want her.'

‘Thanks a lot, Dad.' Sienna had slunk inside and was crouched on her haunches in the corner of the room, beside the door to the lounge.

‘You know I don't mean it.' He was smiling at her. He reached down to tousle her hair but she cringed further into the corner.

‘Darling, come and sit at the table,' I said. ‘I'll cook you sausages.'

She sneezed and scratched behind her ear. The soft curls of her strawberry blonde hair bounced as she scratched. Her foot thumped the floor. I could hear the packs of Dogteens gathering out in the streets, whooping and baying and shrieking as they did every weekend on their way to the local compound.

‘Forget it.' She rose to her feet in a fluid movement that took her out the back door in three long paces. ‘I'll see you later. I'm in the traces today.'

As soon as she'd gone I sat down heavily on the kitchen chair.

‘She's been bitten,' I said to Adrian. ‘Did you see her neck? And she's going to be hauling that dog!'

‘She's been bitten, all right. Some boy giving her a love bite.'

‘No, no. I think it's one of those dog bites where they pass on the virus.'

Adrian held his fork mid-air, balancing a triangle of toast topped with a wobbly pyramid of scrambled egg. For a moment he did nothing, then he guided the food to his mouth and chewed slowly and swallowed.

‘I want to take her to the doctor.' I heard the crack in my voice.

He put down his cutlery, edged his chair close to mine, and hugged me. I hadn't noticed that my husband had got plump like me until then, when his belly moulded over my left arm. His double chin rested on my shoulder. His arms could barely encircle my torso. We were two Humpty dolls. I began to laugh. He held me tighter. He thought I was crying.

‘That TV show is complete rubbish. You know that,' he murmured into my hair.

‘I know,' I said, between giggles.

He let go. I took his hand in mine, pressed his palm against my cheek. My giggles had subsided. A strange despair crept over me.

‘How did we get so old?'

Every Sunday afternoon the leader of the dogs, the packmaster, is towed on a float around the centre of town by thirteen Dogteens in harness. The remaining Dogteens, perhaps three or four hundred in this city, run alongside the float with the dog pack, laughing and shouting in that guttural canine tongue few adults have ever mastered, banging on drums and blowing whistles and doing cartwheels and funny dances.

Adrian and I take the tram into town, and we settle at a cafe's outdoor table. The young woman serving us, perhaps in her early twenties, is wearing a pair of clip-on dog ears. A fake fur tail hangs from the seat of her jeans. The cafe is called Dogster.

‘Here for the parade?' she asks as she takes our orders.

The city mutters in an expectant, festive conversation. There is an occasional rumble of distant thunder and the light is a yellowy purple. Whiffs of stale oil and rotten garbage and the leftover rank smell of Saturday night in the city swirl through the air.

‘If we had a normal daughter, this would be a netball final or a school concert. You'd better be right about her growing out of it soon.' Adrian blows on his coffee and takes a hesitant sip.

He's not ready for this. He spends too much time away, a life behind glass in cars and planes and offices. He's only just realised his daughter stinks. She's not simply our daughter anymore. She's a Dogteen. An independent wild thing who will do whatever she wants.

I can hear the procession coming down the next street. The drums and tambourines bang out unevenly and tin whistles are playing tunes, but most of all it's the barking and growling and yapping that echoes off the walls of the tall city buildings. Some comes from the dogs, some is recognisably human.

Sunday shoppers are heaving their bags through the streets and a few people line the footpath, waiting for the parade to pass. In the electronics shop next to the cafe, I can see a telecast of the float coming down Collins Street. The packmaster, a bizarre red-dreadlocked cross between a Hungarian Puli and a Kelpie, sits on a massive purple satin cushion on the float, flanked on each side by identical Pekingese trotting along the road like an undulating carpet. This week they're escorting a float in the shape of a giant bone. That's what we never expected – the sense of humour, the practical jokes, the sheer joy of life the dogs bring to every event. That's how they seduce our children.

The second they round the corner, tears spring to my eyes. I don't know whether I'm proud or ashamed. Sienna is the lead child in the harness. The chosen one. Leather straps criss-cross her chest, wrinkling the worn fabric of her shirt and carving a crevasse between her bud breasts. The harness and the float are strung with bells and medallions, ribbons and tattered pieces of coloured cloth.