adamdaniel

Tales from the Punchbowl #7

Two Black Eyes

With the lullaby softness of a new morning coaxing me to wake up, the mild sunlight kissing the water of Port Phillip Bay and filtering through the panels of the playground, I packed up my mattress and hopped in my new space ship of a car, sleek and shiny grey, like polished armour or vibrant gunmetal. I drove contentedly for a while, without any real destination, and landed in Footscray.

I went into a random job search office and pretended to look like I had some actual purpose there. I helped myself to coffee, used the toilet, charged my phone, then got kicked out. Next door was a restaurant, offering cheap spicy food and ethnic fare, with heaps of people, mostly African and Asian. I sidled in, with no money, hoping for some water. Two African guys saw me and ushered me over. They were very affable, though their English was limited. They shared their excellent moussaka and pita bread with me and invited me to chat.

As I daubed the warm bread in the engraved silver bowl, enjoying the fine flavour, feeling glad of this unexpected boon, I chatted politely and learned they were from Eritrea and Tigray. The Ethiopian was aged, maybe eighty, a taxi driver, with hazy grey eyes and a cheerful mien. He spoke of his family and the embattled Ethiopian nation, famine and violence a perennial scourge. Jack, I learned, was his English nick name. I can show you something nearby, he said. Okay sure, I responded.

He walked me to a church where they do petrol vouchers. It was closed. But now you know, he said. Thanks. I drove him home, and he invited me in. The small, ground level flat was utterly putrescent, with decomposing vegetable matter and messy papers spread all over the table, all mixed up in a bacteria rich catastrophe. The noxious staleness hanging in the air was like troll’s breath or fart gas and must have rendered him in a weird, altered state of mind, so spectacular was its effect. I surmised that the last rent inspection must have been in 2011 or thereabouts. Here. Help yourself to the contents of my freezer, he said soliciously, after emerging from the bedroom. Okay, I shall. I selected Wagyu sausages and we departed.

Can you help me sell my car? I have no money. Okay. I took a decent set of photos of his quaint Holden Zafira then drove him to the library. We used the internet to post his vehicle on Facebook. Thanks my friend, he declared, pleased at the hope of two thousand dollars. I hope it sells!

After a lazy day, perusing the Maribyrnong, I needed to find somewhere to sleep. I was in the eastern suburbs, near Nunawading, on Blackburn road. It roused distant memories from a far away childhood. I could have sworn my mum took me to a park this way, with pine trees and cawing crows, four decades ago. I drove into the shadows behind the football field, behind the stacks of pallets and gas bottles, and dreamed dark dreams…

In my slumber, I saw things that should never be, top secret data from the pitch abyss, blocked out memories and rank evil from far ages and suffocated realities. It was distinctly and plainly bad, plainly dire. So sophisticated in its taboo content. I saw in the codex of the night mind shattering wrongness and intrigue, from parallel dimensions that I can’t articulate in words, all presented in technicolour in the cinema of my REM reverie. I had to know, it seems, as God doesn’t make mistakes, but the dream was a horror beyond horrors. Fine tapestries of the sleekest evil, etched into the back rooms of eternity.

I woke up, eyes wide, breathing steadily for comfort, but deeply anxious at the visions of iniquity my slumber had yielded. Such a decidedly real imaginary terror. Psychedelic dismay. Cosmic doom. Interstellar crime of the highest intensity, washed up on the shores of a sleeping human brain.

I spent another day roaming Melbourne like a will o the wisp, eating at the soup kitchen and chatting to strangers. Then nightfall. I wanted to charge my phone. I had ended up at the docks and was hunting around behind the bayside restaurants and apartments, looking for a power point. Flecks of lamp light jumped off the sighing black waves as I perused the exterior of the buildings, detritus and junk convoluting my progress. I couldn’t find a power point anywhere.

I got back into the car and drove into Albert Park. I pulled up at a large church, grey stone and black doors. Next to it another large red brick building, old and several stories high, with black window frames, hugged by vines and a lush garden. Here, I thought, I might find a power point. I stepped round the corner, into a recess, and was immediately studied by two black eyes. A vagabond, entirely dishevelled and woebegone, in a khaki cloak, reclining on a sleeping bag, with wine bottles and empty tins strewn around him. His feet were bare and caked in dirt. He started talking to an imaginary person next to him. Fucking shut up, he’s here. What did I say, woman, he asserted to his familiar female ghost.

Do you know if there’s a power point near here? I enquired. Yes, he said. One next to me and one on the church. What is this building? Haha, he said cynically, it’s many things… and a fine and murky past to accompany it. Can I use the power point here? Plug it in, he offered. He stood up and started talking in an animated way, like he was arguing with different people, ignoring my presence. He yelled and guffawed and protested and complained and abused and declared and threatened -all these different modes of discourse- to the audience of the people inside him.

I was startled and saddened and kind of curious. He spoke well, intelligently, but in a crass and menacing way at the same time. He paced up and down the verandah and gestured to the garden as his soliloquy continued, pointing and gesticulating as his stream of consciousness found a gruff and lucid voice. I was somewhat stupefied but curious also. I pressed record on my phone and later transcribed some of his words with the app Notta…

“Yeah, I mean, that’s you, fucking lying rat. Yeah, tell me you wrote that, as a fucking woman? It’s a man’s word, you fucking bitch. Hebrew. I’m killing the fucking man that taught you it. I’ll let you speak it all. You didn’t write it. Any man who taught you anything, I’m gonna kill him. No matter if he taught you Hebrew, taught you the Torah. Walter Mahon, you’re a fucking dead man for it.

Okay, you fucking mutt. I know it’s fucking you, you evil little fuck. You and your mates, and you’re asking your conscience for taking a bitch?! Things they should never know until this one woke up, but then you wanted to play. Now I’ve got drugs I’ve already been using. What the fuck is that? What are you, fuckin’ hollerin’ and saying fuckin’ dumb shit.

Nick, they’re walkin’ in an puttin’ chains on your ankle, questionin’ those who are sharing their beliefs. But I do want to say that we’re not allowed to do that. We’re not allowed to do that. Remember, I’m the holy keeper. And this one? Condemned from birth. Condemned. Written by a man, not a fucking woman. Michael said shut the fuck up, they even said those words we made, well… shut the fuck up! No, he’s not a dense man, Michael… I don’t know if I can move, I can’t run around, I can’t do shit.”

This semi-comprehensible gibberish and protestation continued unabated. I attempted to offer him some food from the car but he was too engaged with his own thoughts and continued in the same vein, conversing with the garden bed physically and with all the people and ghosts in his acquaintance supernaturally.

I disappeared to the other side of the red brick building and slept behind a shopping trolley. I could hear his determined voice continuing on from the other side of the building. Again, I bade adieu to the day staring at the moon. At length I slept and woke to the sound of children playing merrily in the school yard across the road.