The Solid Mandala (40 page)

But all that was long ago.

Now the dry woodwork ticked the rusty iron creaked or responded to mere claws or rain-scurries at night the water dripped in the scullery basin plant-life was reflected in the thinnest smear of sunlight on the walls and ceilings of the house in which not everyone had died.

Arthur didn't intend to die. He couldn't afford to. He had his duty towards his brother. If not to perform for Waldo the humblest tasks, to allow him to believe himself superior to anything proposed. It seemed fitting to Arthur that the house which had been built in the shape of a temple should be used as a place of worship, and he took it for granted it would continue to fulfil its purpose, in spite of timber thin as paper, fretting iron, sinking foundations. Like the front gate, it would hold together by rust and lichen, or divine right. At least there was that about age: there were others in the conspiracy.

The gentleness of it appealed to Arthur. It was his brother who kicked. Or turned his face away. That night, for instance, the worst happened in bed. When Waldo got the diarrhoea.

“What are you doing to me?” he bellowed.

Almost as though Arthur were responsible for the act as well as for the mopping up.

“All right, Waldo. Don't tell me. I know I'm the cause of a lot. But I know my responsibilities.”

Glad to perform the humblest act of all.

Waldo's breathing sounded pacified at last.

It was Arthur who bit his breath the morning he got the shock, the morning his ticker didn't actually stop, but ticked over slower bumping grating paining. He put his hands to his side, as if trying to hold in them, to protect and prolong, the first apple he was ever given.

If it was Arthur who got the shock, it was Waldo who took fright. You could see that. Even when there was no longer any
reason for it, the fright persisted. Waldo had prescribed the walks to show them they were still good for something. As, of course, they were. After the warning, Arthur had never felt fitter. It was Waldo who shrivelled up, bluer, thinner than if he had been — what was it?
collating
his notes — or writing a novel.

“Do you think,” said Arthur, “we ought to be taking these walks?” but looked at Waldo, and added: “At least they must be doing us some good. Yes,” he said, because Waldo was looking so furious, “they're doing us good.”

When even the aged dogs had begun to have their doubts. Runt had refused once or twice. Scruffy had turned the other side of the service station.

“Those dogs are going to die on us,” Arthur complained, “and what are we going to do then?”

Waldo laughed.

“We shall have each other.”

They had their memories. Sometimes a memory would assume a more convincing shape than any present flesh. If Arthur picked up from behind the copper that old dress, embroidered with rat-pellets and the light skeleton of a small bird, it was not an act of malice, but because the past forces itself on those who have participated.

“What is it, Waldo?” he asked.

Of course he knew. He only wanted to hear it said. You can never really confirm too often.

But he saw at once Waldo was hurt.

“Put it away,” he shouted, “where it was!”

“Why,” asked Arthur, “should we keep what hurts?”

Though he knew the answer.

He threw away the dress. Which turned into that poem.

Now the poems were about the only part of him Arthur would not have revealed to his brother. The mandala, the knotted mandala, he would have given, had kept, in fact, for that purpose, had offered even. But not the poems. There was no blasphemy at the centre of the mandala. Whereas, in certain of the poems, there was a kind of blasphemy against life. Which Waldo exaggerated quite
horribly and deliberately on finding the crumpled poem unfortunately fallen out of an overstuffed pocket.

Waldo's voice was reading, deliberately blaspheming,

In spite of mornings shouting with light, and faces of women receiving the truth.

“I know, Waldo!” Arthur cried. “It was never ever much of a poem.”

Because, more than his own, written words, his brother's voice was convincing him of his blasphemy against life. Not so much against God — he could understand God at a pinch — but against the always altering face of the figure nailed on the tree.

“Give it to me, Waldo!”

But Waldo made it unnecessary. Waldo was tearing the poem up.

That his brother continued to suffer from the brutality of their revelation was evident to Arthur when, in the course of the afternoon, he looked through the trees and saw Waldo carrying his boxful of papers towards the pit. Knowing he had probably destroyed his brother did not help Arthur to act. Through the trees he could smell the burning papers. He stood around snivelling, sniffing the fumigatory smell of burning. But he was not in any way cleansed.

When finally he went into their room, he found Waldo lying on the bed. Waldo raised himself on an elbow.

And Arthur saw.

He saw the hatred Waldo was directing, had always directed, at all living things, whether Dulcie Feinstein, or Mrs Poulter, or the blasphemous poem — because that, too, had life of a kind — the poem which celebrated their common pain.

“Waldo!” Arthur was afraid at last. “What are you trying to do to me?”

Arthur was afraid Waldo was preparing to die of the hatred he
had bred in him. Because he, not Waldo, was to blame. Arthur Brown, the getter of pain.

Then Waldo, in the agony of their joint discovery, reached out and grabbed him by the wrist, to imprint him for ever with the last moment.

“Waldo! Let me go! Wald.”

Big and spongy though he was, Arthur, Waldo's big dill brother, could go crumbly as one thing for love and now the death of it.

Waldo was lying still, but still attached to Arthur at the wrist.

When Arthur saw the murder he had committed on his brother he began to try to throw him off. He did not immediately succeed, because the fingers of this dead man were determined, in their steel circlets, to bring him to trial. So he had to fight against it. And finally snapped the metal open.

Then Arthur went stampeding through the house in which their lives, or life, had been lived until the end. It was a wonder the cries torn out of him didn't bring the structure down. Before he slammed a door on the shocked faces of dogs.

YOU COULDN'T SAY SHE WASN'T COMFORTABLE. HE KEPT THE
home painted up. Bill never showed his age. Lucky to still, in spite of his quirks, have his strength. Took a few jobs on the side to make the something extra. Like grass-cutting and pruning roses. For the few extra luxuries. You had to keep up with the times. They had bought the plastic awnings for the front. She had the electricity, she had the phone. Sarsaparilla wasn't on the sewer of course, and Bill wouldn't come at a septic, but she had her health, in spite of one or two aches, and what was a few steps across the yard to the dumpty. Altogether you couldn't say she wasn't comfortable. She had the radio, but no longer used it all that much, not since they got the telly, or anyway began the payments, like most else since recently. Bill said people had never in history had it so good, and well, she admitted, you couldn't say it wasn't pretty good. You couldn't complain. Not with the electric frying-pan — never used her oven now — not with the phone, and two doctors. And the telly. If she didn't have any friends without the ones she yarned with over fences, in buses, or the street, she didn't need any. She had the telly, the nice announcers, and world figures in your own lounge. She could afford to mind her own business, without Mrs Dun reminding her of it. That Mrs Dun was something of a disappointment. Cold. A dash of Scotch somewhere there. There was nothing like the Scotch for keeping their distance. Well, you couldn't blame them, you couldn't blame nobody for how they were made. And the Duns, both, were what the magazine articles call neurotic. From living with Bill she could tell neurotic, oh yes, even in the bus. Still, you couldn't say no to Mrs Dun. Company becomes a habit, if only the journey in the bus, and mucking around Davy Jones, or seeing a big new feature picture at the Roxy, you wouldn't ever go on your own, it was something at least to
know who it was breathing in
one
of the seats alongside of you. So you developed the habit. But there was nothing intimate with Mrs Dun, such a yellow little person, knotting up her scarf tighter still, those brown silk scarves, or buff, and the cameo brooch her auntie from West Maitland left. You couldn't say Mrs Dun wasn't a refined-looking lady, only somewhat cold, and never a dash of colour, that old black velour which must of been renovated, it was the niece who did it, more than once. But that was Mrs Dun's business.

At sixty-seven Mrs Poulter still liked a bit of colour. She knitted herself the cardigans. She loved the latest, her watermelon cardigan. Even though it had just come in through High Fashion and the magazines, without boasting, she had thought of it herself years ago. Watermelon. On chilly evenings she would tuck her hands inside the cuffs, and draw the wool down over her bust, and walk to the gate, and back to the steps, and down to the fence, to look, just to see. Of course she never expected anyone, and nobody ever came. It wasn't necessary. She was that snug in her watermelon cardigan. And soon she would go inside, to get Bill's tea, and watch the telly after he had eaten whatever it was, chops usually, or else a braise, and laid down.

Mrs Poulter was still quite bright of countenance. Her skin had gone to rags of course, at her age, but she had her health, her colour, which she helped out with Cyclax, more discreet than the other brands. More refined-smelling, more like a kind of ointment for the skin. No one could object to a person doing something for her chaps. Of course she couldn't alter herself. She was born brownish and healthy-looking. If she cracked up like some old enamel pot it was what happens in time.

When Bill asked her, her skin had been as smooth as plums. She was not, you couldn't say, pretty, but without being vain, nice-looking, in those cotton frocks she made up from the patterns, buying the stuff at Mrs Fat's. And a gay hat. She waited for the ones they used to send up to Fats' from Sydney. She was not what they call sophisticated then, none of them was in those days, at Numburra or at Mungindribble. Bill would drive in in the trap. They would drive down by the river, there was nowhere else to
go, but in good seasons it was lovely, flowers to pick, the trees was lovely, big smooth-barked gums standing straight and cool by the river. That was where Bill asked her, and she accepted so quick — how could she not of? — she felt a bit ashamed wondering what Bill. Oh, well. She loved a handsome man, and never looked at another. It was his teeth, it was his hands, yes, above all it was his hands that she could never stop looking at, or wrists, a man's wrists never seemed to know their own strength, but then a man never seemed to know. So she could afford to keep on looking. What of it, if you love a person? That was what the Bible told you. It was only with the ministers that sin came in, but they didn't always understand. She loved, she had loved Bill. Wearing his hat that way, and in the Army afterwards. She had only to look at Bill and would have melted if he had wanted. But. Bill wasn't one of those with only the one thought in their heads. Bill was not uneducated. Could write a stylish letter. You weren't at everybody's mercy with a man like that around. Could use educated words. He was not just rouseabout and Council labourer start and finish. No one altogether realized that. Not those Browns. Waldo walking that stiff with all he was supposed to know you would of thought he had the piles. Poor Arthur you couldn't very well expect.

Stringing fresh green beans sprayed her with the same chill smell as when she thought the name. Arthur Brown. That was different. That was years afterwards.

In the beginning there was Bill. It was of course a white wedding, and such a dusty day, but they had their photo took, with everybody all standing in the dust. There was no honeymoon, because Bill couldn't run to it, and she didn't complain. When they were together in the back room she tried to show it made no difference to her. She was not happy, she was more than happy, knowing what she had got. Well, there was nothing wrong with it, was there? She lay back wondering about the laundry, but grew too tired to wonder long, and everyone knew about it, anyway.

Those first years she could have eaten Bill. It wasn't right. He had his principles, it seemed. It made her proud. And him such a manly man. She loved his throat. It was wrong perhaps, but she loved where the hair began and ended.

She loved him, her husband.

She loved him. Oh my darling, she said between mouthfuls. His legs like a pair of scissors would cut her short.

How terrible the War was, only a woman could of known. She received his letters, of course, while he was at Liverpool and down the coast, but it did not ease her body growing softer for him.

They took away the little girl she lost. First the sister let her look. In after years sometimes she would cry, thinking how nice it would of been, to have her little girl to tell things to.

Bill never mentioned it. Well, you couldn't expect him to. She was the woman. Sometimes she felt she embarrassed him.

Anyway, he had changed when he returned. While remaining her husband.

At least she had her faith, which Bill didn't altogether approve of, but it was what she was brought up to, if she didn't always understand, but hoped to in time, not through the ministers, she would never of dared ask, but somehow. She had her Lord Jesus. Who was a man. By that she meant nothing blasphemous. Humankind. That was what they turned him into, wasn't it?

Mrs Poulter would lick her lips thinking it out, with very slight Cyclax. She knew herself by the glass to be what they call highly-coloured.

My darling, she would say, walking amongst the white chrysanths, she would say to the little black curly pig. No one could lift the combs out so gently as she. In winter she stood saucers of sugar outside the hives.

At first she used to cry when the pigs were dragged out squealing, to be hitched up by one leg, and bled. Later on she changed. Bill asked how could you live without butchers. There's the vegetarians, she said. The vegetarians are nuts. So, if men could only live normal by butchery, then she accepted it.

But would go in quickly beyond range of squealing, and switch on the radio, or better, after they got it, the telly. She loved the telly. It made her sit forward, holding her elbows, not exactly tense, but waiting, most of all for the
real
programmes, when they let off one of the bombs, or an aeroplane caught fire at the moment of crashing, or those guerillas they'd collared, of course they were
only Orientals, and once it showed you the bodies they'd shot. The news made the rubber eat into her, she would hear herself wheeze, the news items so real, you only sometimes overheard the squeals of a stuck and bleeding pig.

One mid-winter evening the squealing got so bad, she went and slammed the window shut, although it had only been open a crack. She broke a nail, they was so brittle, she got the indigestion, she couldn't concentrate on the telly for all that old sadness returning. Couldn't breathe, not in what they call them now the step-ins. The sister had said perhaps it was all for the best. But only to make it easier. All the while they was firing on a mob of squealing Orientals, in Singapore, or some such place. You wouldn't believe.

Mrs Poulter sat and hiccuped for a misborn child and a plastic doll writhing on the square of gelatine.

That bally doll, why she should remember she didn't know, or why Waldo Brown had bought her the doll. Even so, she had wanted to keep it and dress it nice, until poor Arthur found her out. With a big lump of a rubbery doll. She wasn't half ashamed. If you came to think there was a lot of things, the loveliest, made you ashamed by remembering them. Those first days with Bill, which were lawful and sacred, she had behaved so natural perhaps it had put him against her, only because she loved, and could not learn enough about him. Anyway. That nasty doll she had took down the gully with the spade and buried it in the loose bush soil beside the creek. And felt a little easier. For a while only. Because after the rain she had dared look and there was its legs, dimpled too, and mulberry nylon skirt, sticking out of the sand and leaves, like a corpse they find at Frenchs Forest. She kicked the thing. She got the hiccups. In that chilly hollow of yellow draining floodwater it was too sad to stay thinking of what was done with. She couldn't scramble quick enough up and over the rocks. Must of strained her back.

Sundays of a morning she went to church, unless she had a throat, or her leg was hurting. She took it easy up the road to church, because Bill never got a car, she could understand, it was his nerves, nor came with her, most of Sunday morning he lay on the bed, it was not exactly that Bill didn't
believe
, she suspected,
but like most men he left it to the women. It was anyway too delicate a matter for men. Not that she knew what it amounted to herself, not all of it, but knew. It was her own breath, her own body, the blood quicker in her own veins. But she wished she could see more clearly. She wished she could
see
. Recognize the face they spoke about.

In the days when she had gone with poor Arthur lovely walks through the paddocks and blackberrying in season as far as the Chinese farm she had almost seen or at least known so intimately so many details vein of leaf blade of grass sound and silence funny enough by Arthur's being there his head a fire amongst the blackberry bushes Arthur got cured of his trouble anyway on that day to dance the thing the mandala she still had the marble but too afraid to take it out for fear of facing what though on the day she had known there was never no need for fear with her and Arthur cured of all.

Of course she knew he was a nut. Though he wasn't. They'll say anybody's a nut. They said about Jesus.

So the bonfire of Arthur's head had never quite gone out for Mrs Poulter. Even though she never addressed him after. Unless addressed. In the moments of years. It was the only secret Bill wouldn't ever get out of her, if Bill was to ask for all. It was too difficult. Unlike their own lovely-fitting grooved love of the beginning, it could not be fitted to word or hand. If she and Arthur was answerable for the day in the blackberry bushes, where in a moment or two they had gone through more than you live in years, they was answerable only to the Lord God, to who the last answers are made. She was no knowall, but she did know that.

So Mrs Poulter, on cold evenings, after the telly had closed down, would roam far and wide through her wooden house and up the yard, crying softly, above grief: My darling, my curly pig, there is an end to blood and squealing if only we can remember how.

For she could never quite remember what they had seen and understood there below the Chinese farm.

But got at last to remembering she had not seen, she had not seen Waldo, she had not seen Him — Arthur — since when.

It was a Saturday, a Saturday afternoon, when Mrs Poulter, try
ing to mind her own business, failing to outstare the hedge opposite, decided to bake a nice custard. After all, someone could be sick, and neighbourliness was another thing to curiosity. It put fresh heart, fresh life into Mrs Poulter to bake the custard. She put on her watermelon cardigan.

However many times she had crossed the road to Browns' she had never got used to it. Her flesh grew prickly for the crunched sand. That gate, which they never mended for not knowing how to, poor things, a matter of upbringing, was standing open. Which was unusual. Somebody had forced it back so hard on its hinge it had stuck in the grass. No sign of dogs neether.

“Scruffy?” she called, for courage. “Runt? Runty? Where's the boys?”

All those old wormy woody quince-trees were pressing against the house, against most of the windows. Mrs Poulter went round the side, carrying as a protection her baked custard, but her heart and the silence were getting too big for her.

She wasn't going to not exactly look, but glance, to see whether one of the gentlemen was in their room. Sick. She was almost sure of something by now. She was glad she had brought the lightly-flavoured vanilla custard.

Then Mrs Poulter looked. She couldn't quite see at first for their never cleaning the windows. Then it was Mr Waldo she saw, laid on the bed in the closed room, through the curtains of dust, and that was their Scruffy sitting, unusually, on the bed. Waldo in that old dressing-gown fallen open. No longer sick, Waldo.