I check the envelope centred on the bookshelf behind Hemmingway; there’s enough put by for six months, I think. I had a cold shower this morning, and one week ago I stopped using the electric lights and the heater. Just the fridge and the radio then. I’ve my thick handknit and slippers on, which is ample for the mildness of the autumn. A return to Haeckel today, a German turn-of-the century naturalist. A poster format watercolour in which hummingbirds hover; it’s a nice print in a Science of the Past mag. The caption reads “Hummingbirds by Ernst Haeckel, 1904; from Artforms of Nature”. His models were exquisitely stuffed birds from hat decorations. Here is a colour plate that improves the dull colouring of the birds in nature; twelve bright birds, two by two, caught rising. I think it’s a picture of phylogenesis showing the evolutionary divergence of the species. Four-colours with tonal fades and good definition provided by ink outline. A preponderance of greens which gives fertility; beats of toffee apple red caught in the narrow frame of branches and fronds and leaves crowding in. Up high in the corner there, an airy blue sky, all founded in an underbrush of dung green and brown; In this frame I see my origin, the stage from which I have descended. I breathe it deep. In the protection of my solitude, deep down there, at the seat of my lungs, where the hummingbirds with shy smiles and the business of sustenance and sex fly, I am reminded that they stopped, and we acceded; I know that my kind will beat this threat. Except her; she left.
******
He’ll be inside his clean brick box on the ColMylingwood hill. The backyard was my place. I could sit and pass the day. Watching, sketching, have a cuppa and maybe a biscuit. Breathe in and breathe out; open the eyes slowly. I wonder about the jade plant. Shaded by its foliage, the light on the main trunk is dull. A grey touched with afternoon gold. Brown and black dots in bands. Square stretch marks, cracks where the inner flesh outgrows its skin. Thick sprouts pair, new ears of celery green. The old leaves darken, spotted from pests. Surprising red and yellow roots growing hairy at the join to the stem, ready to shoot if the leaf drops. Step back. Don’t strangle it. Wash the colour round about it to give the plant its own place. The branch behind tumbles over the lip of the enamel bathtub I found for it. One time he drowned it. They call it succulent for a reason, big thick trunk heavy with the water… it just lay down. Always interfering, trying to help. Fuck; just leave things alone. The only thing; I had to start again. I bought some perlite, volcanic pellets, to make the soil porous. He gave me the cash because he felt guilty, greedy fingers twitching with the notes from Hemmingway’s envelope. I told him he wouldn’t need to if he’d left the hose alone. I re-potted and tied the trunk to a line that I ran across. It came good. And now he’s at pruning… “Clean it up a bit, so you can see.” He suggested I notice the outlines. He suggested ink.
******
She left me for my orderliness, for that I would not permit mess. It reached a head one day, when I was as usual doing the dishes, and I just couldn’t clean the sludge of coffee so dried was it. “Couldn’t you just leave it by the sink even?” I asked, but in that swoon that always came on with tidying, her eyes just rolled back. “Look at it,” I said; the cup brought from her shed, I poured a little water over the desiccated dregs, made a lesson of it, placed it by the sink. “See? Easy. I do all the housework in support of your hobby–” She interrupted with the lack of limitation, lacquering the quote with her fingers, “All the housework?” It was the spark. I admit I exploded, as you do. An incendiary of all the scrubbed coffee mugs flew from behind the fire-blankets of forbearance. A rage that’s hidden deep, in just the same place as where I at present breathe in the hummingbird’s simple joy. I ordered her not to quibble. So unevolved. She couldn’t paint like Haeckel if she tried. Too much wash. I demanded she contribute, or I would call it a day, to which she refused. So the day was called with neither of us conciliating. She packed her watercolours and things and left.
******
Back there cleaning he is, I bet. Fixing, polishing, showing no one but us that we are better than animals. Now; something… some waterproof… even just a sheet of plastic, something like that will do the trick. And I wonder, will the op-shops still be open, because I could do with a waterproof jacket for the winter. Would they? They’d give me that in these times, wouldn’t they? Otherwise… this spot by the river is perfect. A giant red gum… share it with the parrots by day and the curious possums at night. Yes, beautiful. Better than his box. Listen to the water busy by the rocks down there. Listen to the wind up there. Close the eyes… you see a thing better–a memory of it filled with sound. I’m like… this rock, this tree, this branch of this tree… that way, you get really close. It’s how I paint; not from seeing, but from my memory of seeing. I see the variety; no two things the same. He always said, I don’t look hard enough. I suppose so. But like… my jade plant. All of the new shoots start with a pair of ears, see? but no two are the same because they come in surprising places, at a different time, catching different light. I can see them now. Something eats one, someone bumps another. Each bit has a different sense. That’s what I see. That’s what I paint… the sense of a thing.
******
She couldn’t; I was meant to classify. I go about my chores with a base love of apt places for all things. Isolation is a joy, therefore. I scrub while Haeckel’s birds are clucking and chirping in every nook. Inside his fine points and vectors describing species brought together where they would not usually occur, I dust. On Haeckel’s nature, even as I polish here in my single-story brick duplex worker’s cottage, I find an exalted place to fly. In my filing I hear the buzz of my wings sharp against the dull drone of his assorted specimens. We are busy with the certainty of nectar tasks. And rustling beneath our labour is the environment of trees and bushes and ferns and creeper fronds; they brush a rhythm outside common time. The flora conspires in a great complexity that nevertheless obeys the order of Darwin’s long march from the soup, each species a perfect descent of sequencing. When I hide myself away in here, all trace of the epidemiological threat evaporites quicker than the alcohol of a sanitary wipe. Crouched over my magazine full of the smells of its age, the dormant fluorescent overhead, just that gap in the front curtain illuminating a conceit in the print, I spy that they share a delicious secret, these hummingbirds, captured by the naturalist’s hand, swept up in his fervour; he brings the conductor’s understanding to the concert of nature. Though they ache to tell me, his baton taps their silence, and so this privileged audience remains ignorant. Of course, in the grand scheme I am yet an acolyte; but he knew the code when he painted, and I study for it. A single order governs, and I want the key.
******
The weight is shedding, I can feel it. I’ll become what he always wanted, just he’ll never see it. I always had a bit of pudge around the hips, under my chin, I admit. Perhaps it suits me–a wilderness makeover. Yeah right; orphan girl from the wrong side of some track, that’s me. They gave me some plastic and a coat gratis; fleece lined it is. The old duck looked me up and down. She said that no one’s taking cash anyway these days. Latex gloves and goggles and a mask that sat big on her shrivelling, she put it down and stepped back, so’s I could step up. I took it. She called after me to take care. Nice old duck. It’s warm too, the coat. I stopped by the Collingwood box on the way through. I could tell he was out on his trip to the shop because he always leaves the latch one quarter turned so’s to see if there’s been any interference. Fine… but I know that’s what he does. I picked up a few odds and ends. A couple of brushes I forgot in the back shed, and I nabbed a few tins of beans that he won’t miss. His Haeckel was open on the front desk. A sad nature; dead birds captured, stuffed into joy. I nearly ripped the magazine, could have shredded it, freed them. But I didn’t.
******
To the kitchen. The Persian brown tiles are smelling sweet, scratchy despite the morning polish. The plates are stacked and tea-towels washed and hung. The mirror chrome and Laminex kitchen table, all that remains of mother, has the makings of a ham cheese mustard on white and a black tea prepared. I chew with such pleasure as though it were the last sandwich and ponder what this hummingbird secret might be. Anytime is good for pondering now the publishers let me go; and I need not worry just yet as the envelope behind Hemmingway will keep me in morning teas till our overseers lift us up. Empathy is the sign of our supremacy. Bookbinding was not the most vital job, certainly not rated essential, but it was a worthy skill. There are others who contribute less. Still, I understood the retrenchment. In the end it was the pay-out that fattened the Hemmingway envelope; there’s always a rationale to explain your place in the sequence. Not my fault she didn’t see it. Anyway, the bottom-line improved with her absence. I clean the plate and utensils, wipe down the board and plan things for the dinner. The ziggurat of tinned beans has been disturbed. My jaw clenches. I look behind me as if she’s there. I shake my head, free myself of her. I boil more water, forgotten that I’ve already had the tea, but it calms me watching the steam; I imagine I can see particles of moisture curling in light allowed through the kitchen window slats. Just watch. You are not mad. I breathe in and breathe out. Just as she always said.
******
School was never my thing. Not too many Reservoir College girls made it to uni; nursing, some of them. I lasted till a year before leaving. They put the education department officers on to me, but I was fast and sneaky. It was Miss Gow in the art class taught me sense. In back of the school we had a giant ghost gum, and she made me draw it. I guess I was being smart, I drew a few lines and kind of threw it at her. She was patient though. She asked me how I made sense of the tree. Dumb question; I said I didn’t know. I could see my friends waiting for the bus, looking in our direction; I don’t know why, maybe I saw a chance, but I waited with her. We felt the smooth bark, wet it with water; we smelled it. We sat still together and listened. She said all of those are our senses, but the tree has its own sense, and that’s what you draw. She said there’s a choice: fit it to your sense or understand its. He couldn’t do that. The one time I told him he was hurting me, he told me to just relax and get into it. I think he went harder every time after that.
******
The methylated spirits is running low, so after a swallow of tea I set out. Another cold day. As usual I keep my head down and walk with a purpose. I’ve a dangerous stoop that I use, and I discuss everything alone and aloud. On this morning as with most, it’s the virus. How it’s passed, how it attaches and how it enters. So I cinch the sleeves of my jacket around the neck of my gloves and draw the neck and hood tightly; I wear sunglasses though it’s a grey day. As I walk, I list the inventory of sanitation checks, count them on my fingers, which I know draws some stares and veers on-comers wide. A non-Caucasian woman of young age wearing sporting apparel stops my counting with that she is really hungry. “I’m desperate” she says. She stands directly in front of me, and when I try to side-step, she counters; I’m completely blocked. There is no help. I don’t know why I relent… it’s a regression, no doubt procreative. I take off my glove, reach inside my coat and produce a ten-dollar note. I hold one corner and reach it across to her, but she smiles, steps close and cups my bare hand as she takes the note and blesses me. I fall back then; I run around her, run to the safety of the shop and handwipes I know I’ll find at the door. The shopping is a waste of time as the meth is out of stock. I return on edge; I even imagine followers. I settle myself with inventories. I check the low ebb of my sanitiser and decide to close off part of the house to reduce the high-touch places.
******
This morning there was something weird. I’m settling in here. For example, there was, like… a scree; it annoyed me because small pebbles and finer dirt particles were buggering up my blue plastic floor. I’ve packed leaf and straw beneath there–better than a Sealy Posturepedic. So, I made a retaining wall from fallen branches. I shaped them into the curve of the riverbank and held it up with struts. I’m gonna get some mud and see about some stucco. So, the walkers and cyclists can’t really see me from the track up there. But anyway, this morning, I found a paper bag with three oranges inside. It wasn’t dropped. They were put there on purpose. I know because the brown-paper bag was neatly folded and placed by the edge of the concrete strip with a small rock on top to hold it. I was really glad because they were so sweet, and you don’t really think to ask for an orange these days–it’s not like bread, beans, a bit of chook… the staples… but fruit? I’ve already eaten two. I think they were home-grown because they didn’t have that shiny polish, that perfect shape the supermarket ones have. But it made me wonder… who brought them?
******
It was only yesterday… I think; I must admit I’m losing the time a little. I give the tiles the once over, rinse off and burn the cloths as I do periodically. A small fire within a square of bricks out back beyond the giant jade, before her studio-shed. The parrots smell the smoke, carrying on in the crown of the tree up there. Or it might be rain coming. I wonder if she has cover. Her little lemon tree has blight. I return for another session with my hummingbirds; humming though their wings are frozen in the printer’s moment, I don’t know how I could have missed it, but I spot the nest. Two-thirds of the journey up and to the left, it is half an ovoid of woven camel-coloured twigs, a neat shape with two small eggs warming inside, the mother hovering by, her sly bird smile maintaining the joyous bubble of procreation. It’s the way things are. It’s nature. Haeckel knew. The hummingbirds here, twelve species arranged two on top of two, ordered in a taxonomy of weak to strong. It’s why not all of us will make it. She made her choice to go out, and I’m in here. That’s selection. I’m glad there were no kids.
******
The parrots are going nuts up there. There are more birds now. With everyone off the streets there’re less cars, trucks, no one catching buses and trams and trains; a few bikes, so it’s a lot quieter, and I bet the birds are like… what the fuck? What happened? And they’re all up there screaming at each other that you don’t need to shout anymore. No more oranges–just the once; and I haven’t been back to the Collingwood box. I thought it might have been him, but we don’t have an orange tree. Lemons, I grew the lemon tree. After we were together, must have been ten years, I think, I put the lemons in a bowl on the kitchen table, his mother’s chrome and Laminex, the only thing left of her. I put them prettily; like I cut them with some of the stem and a few leaves left–so’s the smell was strong, so’s you had to notice it. And he said that our only progeny is lemons, and I said to him “not progeny stupid, this is produce”. Always an interpretation. Nothing was just a thing with him, there was always something behind the thing… a this-follows-that. Neither of us ever went in a church, but I think like, all of the things, everything he saw, or read, or heard, or felt, everything was a part of his order, and he was the priest, and if something didn’t fit, he would make it. He made me exhibit. He rented a gallery for a week. I didn’t want to show anyone, but he told me there’s no point otherwise, told me it isn’t art unless it’s seen. He made me picture frames.
******
I’ve taken a magnifying glass, arranged a table out back for extra light. I removed a board on the laundry window to catch the ten minutes of direct sun as its setting. So that I can try to read something in between the pigments, so perhaps I might find some pattern in the paper fibres. I see the studio-shed up back from here. I fixed the hinge, so she didn’t have to lift the door every time she opened or closed it, but I don’t think she noticed. It’s all locked up now. I put a padlock on because I think she came in while I was out, I think she came to get some of her things. She was the one that upset the ziggurat of beans, I’m sure of it. In fact, I think she did that to show me that she’d been. I know her. I shrug her off and return to my analysis. The birds are arranged in two columns of six, each oriented inwards, calling to each other across the gap. The sun is coming on and I attend to the gap, like I’m tapping in, and I hear their twittering. I hear lifting and falling notes, the beginnings and endings of phonemes, units of meaning clarify. I’m close. A wave of heat passes through me at the sniff of meaning. I gasp with the heat of revelation. But just when I think the golden cypher is revealing, no, not even; just as I glimpse a key, it’s as if the birds notice me and change the tune, a chorus of percussive warning, like water down a tin gutter in maddening time. They all take it up, and I press my ears and scream inside myself with the loss. They pause on the page at my cry; they fall quiet, and I am alone. Through the gap in the boards I see her studio-shed, corrugations losing the sun, closed up, silent.
******
It’s fucking freezing, but the air is sweet down here. Actually, that’s a lie because in fact it has a pong. The gum-leaves and other crap from the forest collects on the banks and gradually works its way either down into the loam or into the flow. So on a still morning like this, around the flood zone, there’s this musky smell of decaying crap. At sun-up, I filled a bean-tin with it down in the hoop of still water that’s formed by those rushes. It’s gooey. And after, once the clouds of scum settled, I saw these tiny guppies in there, staring back up at me as if they were telling me to please stop messing up the place. Jesus. Even the tadpoles are telling me to keep the place tidy. But I’ve done a little test on a scrap of newspaper to see how the muck of gum leaves goes. Sticks pretty good and great colour. I like that I’m painting leaves with the remains of leaves. There’s a weirdness to that. So I try it on the art block. First I spread it on a palate of bark, let the mud dry a little, enough moisture so it still spreads. A drop runs off the way rain might. There’s a rhythm to the swoop of these, one leaf long, one short, wide or thin, some are still fresh, others with the browning, deep red spots, yellow there too. Like the tree texting with colour to no one in particular–unnoticed, the meaning fades… until it’s gibberish compost. I leave the small format to dry; I exhibit on a nearby banksia, a note pegged to a frond. It’s a reincarnation that will fall again. No one will see it. In isolation that’s as it is–art is a quiet between the maker and the subject.
******
It was yesterday I think, might have been the day before. I haven’t turned a light on for months. Feeling my forehead just now, there’s blood down my cheek. Perhaps I opened my eye on the chrome strut of the kitchen table, but I can’t see any blood on the metal in the dim. I rest my head down. The pattern of the tiles finds focus; enamel fractals fired in cream on brown; they were named fractals long after the design. Someone said the Greeks got all their math from the Persians, but we were the ones to realise it. I breath in deep. Attention first to the right side then the left, I check my ribs, breathe, slide my knees back and forth, curl and uncurl the fingers, flex the wrists. No breaks. Did I fall? The most alarming part about all this is the loss of memory. It’s how we make sense, but all I can remember is the colours of the hummingbirds rising toward but held back from the air blue sky. They are given the temptation, never the flight. They are tetchy. Down here in the underbrush, my hearing bends to the long-beaked bird hovering up there in front of her nest. Of course, there is the humming of the wings, a hundred beats a minute, but spiking above is her call. Of a sudden, like radio tuning, it finds words, “l–e–t–h–e–r–g–o”, “you let her go” over and over “you let her go”.
******
I haven’t been feeling so good. It’s the middle of fucking winter, I can feel the cold biting at my skin, but I just can’t wear the coat. Inside I’m hot. Thing is, you can’t feel your own forehead for a temperature. He was my thermometer. Reckoned he could tell point-five degrees above normal, and in “calibrations thus thereon”. God he was a moron, but I loved taking my forehead to him for the measurement. I loved the touch of his hand to my head. I knew he cared for me then. I’m better off shot of him. Probably just a cold. A flu. Buzzing in my ears. I’m flat, laid out like the jade. I stare up at the treetops and watch the wind pushing the crowns here and there. There’s a single bird. A crow? Yes. Holding tight to the branch, pitching and rolling; up he rides, down he goes. On guard. Silent.
******
I know I must be running a temperature by the shiver; why me? I stagger up, holding the table, the chair back, the door frame, walk to the front room. And in there, sitting in my lounge chair, silhouetted by the shaft of the streetlamp that I never quite stopped, I’m certain it’s my wife. She’s hacking into her hand, doubled over, deep coughing and dark liquid drips from between her fingers. Heather, who left because I told her to. I whisper to her. Ask her if it really is her. I call her “Heather” which is what I use when she’s in trouble because otherwise its Hetty. But there’s no answer. She told me that she gave me all her keys. I would not have weakened, would I? I would not have let her in, would I?
******
I coughed up a bit of blood before. I can feel myself going. I think of him up there on the Collingwood hill. I wonder about the jade. It was in flower that last time. Pale pink heads. He locked the shed, so I stopped sneaking in. I wonder if he’s brought any of the lemons in off the tree. Maybe he didn’t spray the copper sulphate to stop the blight? He was always hopeless in the garden. Knew how to grow a spring onion because he thought they were a good example of regeneration. Christ’s sake. Yep, I’m fading now.
******
I search around, bleary. I check the front lock. It would be just like her to leave us open and exposed by leaving the fucking key in the lock. I spit “fuck” and plead “Hetty”. I cough from my groin. Pain shoots in me all about; my chest, my head; I bend double, hands on knees, hollowing the ribs, forcing the lungs open. I hold it, but another cough burns up, and droplets of blood splatter the floor. I cry “no” that she should bring me to this, and I fall on my knees, sit against the bookshelf. The Hemmingway is there, I feel for it, hard and proud. What? She took the envelope. I feel for it, the last of the cash. Probably only enough for two more trips to the shops–three if I ration well. Our overseers will lift us up. We are the pinnacle. I feel behind the other way. Books fall. I swipe the shelf clear. Hemmingway falls flat, face down, the envelope is stuck to the shelf. I peel it off and the last banknotes spill. Not yet zero. Has she been? She didn’t come. She didn’t come. What did she say to me that I let her in? She pleaded. “Just for a little while?” Clueless. No boundaries. How can you run a life like that? She calls that art. How does she expect someone to support a painter that never once produced anything that resembled the subject? Did you never learn to look? And look now. Look at me. Stupid thing. You throwback. You’ve brought it in.
******
I’m fading fast. To the side there is my retaining wall. The stucco worked–even kept out the water that time the rains came. I’ll break down here in the roots. The worms and the insects, the microbes will deal with the poisons in me. The virus is gonna take us. There’ll be a new stage. He was right. There is an order to things, but it’s not his order. It’s not our order. Just because they’re tiny doesn’t mean they’re weak. There are outliers, there are exceptions… there are things that jump sideways, across, not just up. They don’t always fit. Things make their own sense. And if you don’t get it, you change your view.
******
I can’t see. All around, the hum of their wings. I hear the two chicks close, crying for the mother to bring nectar. They are flying all around me. Now far, now near. I can’t move my legs, my arms. I feel a muscular wing bat on my cheek. The sharp of a beak fights the defence of my eyelids. The mother with her imperative of reproduction pushes through, in, punctures the orbit, sucks the jelly of my eyes. I can feel her wiggling spout, feeling its way deeper, unforgiving in its singular task to feed the young. She nuzzles deep. I feel a pull on the root. The nips of her beak gain a purchase on the retina, and with patience lest she lose her grip, she draws it free. She flicks it to the floor, and the chicks fall to it fighting. She comes again. A direct line now, to the recorders of my mind. She tickles the cones, no need of lens or aperture, no need of light. She regurgitates, empties her secret, I read the ink printed straight to the flesh of my mind. “See,” she sings. “See.” Over and over. The “ee” trilling delight. I tell her that I don’t understand, but she keeps on with her meaningless song, drilling her beak with more “see”. A rush of flapping, a fright striking through the flock and she pauses, sensing some immanence. She retracts and is off, into the air. “Wait.” I call that I don’t understand. But their chirping grows distant, and I am left. All dark now. No sound. No overseers. I’m done.
******
I wonder how he is. I woke just now with another bag of oranges placed beside me, a small rock like a crown on top. How kind. Ha. I made it through. Natural selection.
Ernst Haeckel: Trochilidae, 1899. First published in Kunstformen der Natur. Public Domain.
Notes
Robert Richards defends Ernst Haeckel from the association often made between his monist invesigations of evolution and the principles of National Socialism (nazism). His article illuminates both the tensions between these principles and the evolutionary principles of monism and provides an excellent understanding of both.
Bibliography
Haeckel, Ernst. Trochilidae. 1899. Plate. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Haeckel_Trochilidae.jpg&oldid=678212958.
Richards, Robert. ‘Myth 19: That Darwin and Haeckel Were Complicit in Nazi Biology’. University of Chicago, n.d., 11.