Invention of Dying, The. Brooke Biaz
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Название: Invention of Dying, The
Автор: Brooke Biaz
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Контркультура
isbn: 9781602355415
isbn:
And then, first placing her black case awkwardly down on the sandy floor, Death began, one ebbing conversational piece at a time, to draw from the young clerk the truth about The Communion Islands. And she did so by questioning him about bats.
“Have you seen any barebacks? No?”
. . .
“Blossoms?”
. . .
“Any giants?”
The young clerk entirely unaware, in return, began to tell the story of the islands, so extraordinary, so unfamiliar, and so unknown to Death that he rekindled in her something of her own barely known past and almost completely lost love of Life. He brought back in Death something she had long been missing or, more accurately, had never found.
At least, that is how we like to tell the story of their meeting.
It might have been, alternatively, that Death merely recognised a job opportunity. All that talk of an island of children and of unchartered living places, it might have been . . . All that stuff about an island of youth, and a history of self-reliance. . . All that young clerk stuff about the abundance of The Communion Islands. . . . It might have been that Death merely recognized an opportunity and, seeing it hanging there in a tree so black and yet so bright, so aware of its surroundings and yet so blind, so ready for flight and yet so surrounded by the walls of its habitat, that Death took out her enormous silver gun and promptly shot it. I know the version of the story that I prefer.
But hey, all this arrives second-hand! I merely report! No one was there but those reported: Death appearing as a bat-loving middle-aged doctor and the clerk a dark boy born in a tiny village in the Cloud Mountains. Raising their voices together, their differences more obvious than their similarities. But getting on, by all reports (though she had been around, to coin an expression, and he hadn’t), as one questioned the other.
Meanwhile, pale Penny Apple, out behind the counter, began to glow so red, with embarrassment we can only assume, that she might well have combusted. The so-called “Waiting Room”, now barely half full on account of it being late. Almost empty, in fact, except for the McOrdles [Mrs and Mr and their four smallest], whose children used to come down with blemishes and broken bones at the turn of each tide; but, of course, always survive.
By the time two tales were half told Death and the young clerk were down at the Shoreline Hotel, drinking together, their voices like the barks of Fur Seals, their differences [sunny headed clerk from Upper Cuth; black pompadoured visitor , Death] thrown to the wind, until eventually they fell into slumber together on the table top, covered over only with the smiling embers of change.
Figure 6. The Human Heart
2a. The Conception, Birth and Life of Death
Shall I insert here a long section here regarding the founding and, later, the growth of The Communion Islands? Sure, I could do that. Isn’t living a lively industry?
We could spend some time talking about the building of buildings, towns and such, and then a formal section about transportation and communication, a glossary of local words with a neat historical index, a clever investigation of agriculture and pesceculture, fishing that is, a typology of island employments from sweeper to builder to butcher and baker, a nod to the arts, with a thumping local dance routine, a rollicking yarn about the power we have generated from the falling waters of streams and rivers. Perhaps for effect show the young clerk weaving himself through the scene, full of his own impending demise.
Dramatically, we could have Death flying around the islands in her shiny black cape, her memory of her own birth floating on her shiny black shoulder like a sprite of forest sunlight, perhaps a medical degree in her pocket from some prestigious school in London or Berlin or fine old Prague, to make that somber connection with her dear old ma whose body was undoubtedly preserved in a dusty glass case in a oak lined room (I make this up, but it can be imagined).
I like that idea, actually. I think if a woman comes to an island and brings about something, anything that would have otherwise not existed, something that her presence invests and inflects and bears boldly onto our island landscape, then she should be lauded for that effort.
Oh, I am a great believer in life, don’t get me wrong. I celebrate the origins of people, the foundations of civilizations, the real as well as the mythological essences that thread through island undergrowth and make their way into rocks and so forth.
“Without life,” I say, “where would we be?”
It’s true. And, of course, Death had connections to island life, whatever else might be said of her past absence. Death, you might say, presupposed life. If I were to be philosophic about it, Death was the dedicated daughter of life.
Excuse me while I historically digress! What we had here in the islands was like living in a communal home in which was located the vast hidden foundations of the universe, among the bubbled grey mortar, that is, the strong and hefty regal red beams, the creatures that thrived on the pure earth of entirely covered human reason. It’s impossible not to admire the importance of all that, as it was. It’s impossible not to relate to the human importance of our living foundations. Without which . . .
There’s a story told here about a wharf—what some people, in some parts of the world, apparently refer to as “a pier”, and others elsewhere in the world apparently refer to as “a jetty”. Strange. No matter! This wharf-pier was over on the North side of the islands near Yool Bay and Lower Yool. A Yooling jetty it was, regardless.
This was a wharf over which much timber was travelling. By which I mean, an off shoot of some famous imperial Timber Company, traders in timbers for several crusty generations, had sent in visiting teams who were working strappingly over there, bringing down from our pristine higher forests great swathes of blackwood and thropthorn, acres of brewt and those enormous philfond trunks, stripped already of their poisonous and spiky and somewhat historic branches. Those traveling timbergetters used their imported oxen in those days, not horses; and certainly not jigging trucks, whose painted, motorized growls were still some years away.
Two white sailed and foreign ships had been loading for what was said to have been almost two days. Sunburnt visiting men were moving back and forth, steering oxen teams of eighteen or twenty, up into the forest, the crack of their leather whips and the crunch of trees under wooden wheels was all you could hear. Night as well as day. That and the oxeneers’ shouts:
‘Whackah!”
“Fell yack!”
“Fooooowhist!”
The language of those traveling oxeneers is now a lost piece of history.
All day and all night. You can imagine the volume as mighty imperialing team upon sinewy team dragged down from our closest hills each log, the conjoined СКАЧАТЬ