Being There

 

First Movement (calm)

 

The musicians are tuning their instruments; the violinists are taking their chairs.  The room is filled with the same assortment of noises—the truncated scales and shuffling feet, low talking and occasional cough—as in any concert hall across the world.  Only an expert in acoustics could distinguish the particular room from the sound.

 

This morning, when she woke, she couldn’t remember where she was.  Her host had left already, and she had the apartment to herself.  It took her a moment to find her glasses, placed on the left hand side of the bed. 

            Her husband called while she was brushing her teeth.  She told him about having to remove several pairs of socks belonging to William, who was putting her up in his spare room, from the sofa bed before she could sleep.  She told this as a joke.  “I felt them with my feet, at first.  I didn’t know what they were!  They were all scrunched up there, wedged under the tight part of the sheets,” she said.  “They were stiff and I was afraid to touch them, like they were mousetraps, or dead kittens.”  This detail made the joke one about her own silliness, not just the funny customs of her host.  She didn’t tell her husband that, while she waited for William under the sheets, he stripped off all his clothes except his socks.

            “Because you are an ice lady,” William said, as he climbed into bed. “Let me warm your cold breasts with my hands.”

            There were dishes left in the sink, William’s breakfast bowl as well as their plates from last night.  She washed them before she made her own breakfast.  She rinsed the wine bottles and placed them by the garbage bin; she didn’t know where the recycling bin was.  Before she leaves she will wash the sheets, too.  She thought about making sure the garbage holds no intimate traces, but could not really picture William’s other occasional girlfriends going through the trash.

            When she was younger, she imagined the purpose of art was to move.  Audiences, she believed, wanted to be discomforted.  “Move where?” she wonders now. 

 

 

Second Movement

(falling)

 

There is more than one way for a woman to fall.

 

She feels lucky whenever she hears a clock strike.

            The streets are not unfamiliar to her, although it is some time since she has been here.  Today’s humidity surprised her.  She has been used to seeing this city in winter. The scent of sycamore seeds mingled with the smell of diesel. 

            She bought a newspaper from a tobacconist.  The proprietor humoured her by pretending her improper grammar was perfect.  He is a migrant himself, a lean man with white hair and olive skin. He was stocking the refrigerator, which had a poor selection, when she entered. He wiped his hands carefully on a striped apron before taking her money, with the careful courtesy she associates with people who have weathered many losses.

 

 

Third Movement

(desire)

 

I have loved the sounds of the mouth without words. 

 

She entered a bar, one with an Italian theme, because it was dark and looked cool.  Of course it was not, but the tables full of people – friends eating from a single plate, couples reading different sections of the same newspaper, families with children – cheered her.  Their lives, happy and successful, or limited and blighted, imparted her with a sense of insight into choices she has not made. 

            As she sat and pretended to read her newspaper, the man from the tobacconist passed on a bicycle.  There was a child of perhaps six seated behind him, arms around his hips.  She was instantly and ridiculously charmed by the sensation of recognising someone.

            The waiter, with whom she had, irrepressibly, flirted while ordering her mineral water, mistook her smile for an invitation.  She caught his eye and quickly turned back to her newspaper.  He changed course, pretending he was headed to the cash register, where he used his napkin to dust the counter.  The next time he passed, she ordered a second drink, to compensate.

 

 

Fourth Movement

(fear)

 

When she plays, your eyes are drawn to her hands, her eyes.  You have forgotten what you feel with the  your own hands. 

 

At the station, a train had just left. The announcement board changed; names of stations passed in a blur.  Beside them, the hands of the sedate clock appeared still.  Operating the ticket dispenser without using the English language option gave her a simple pleasure. 

            She sat opposite a deeply tanned woman, who looked at her and sniffed ostentatiously.  The woman wore pale purple shadow in two huge arcs over her eyes, which accentuated her orange skin, wrinkled and heavy as wet clay.  She tried not to stare, and caught sight of her own reflection in the window; how soon will she look like that? 

            A few stations later, a person in baggy clothes, with crutches, entered the carriage.  She could only see this person in reflection, and thought he was a young man.  The young man didn’t sit, but propped himself on his crutches in the centre of the carriage, and began to declaim.

            (In German) “I want this morning to give you a poem.  Even if life is hard, you can find beauty if you look in the right way.”

            The young man spoke in a voice that was confident and loud but also as if he did not expect to be heard to the end.  “Enjoy these words, from someone who knew what to value.”

            The lines rose and fell in a marching rhythm.  The man watched everyone in the carriage.  Each of them looked away, down at the ground or out of the windows.  No one looked at anyone else.

            She turned away, toward the rushing tunnel wall.  The man moved toward her end of the carriage, halting beside each group of seats. 

            He stopped beside the woman seated opposite her, and spoke loudly.  She couldn’t follow what he said.  Up close, she could see that he was not young.  A cap, worn backward, covered tired hair in a ponytail, and a face that was lined, but pale.  She caught the word “schlecht”, and the woman opposite, who had not raised her eyes from her own feet, nodded.

            Her station approached, and the train began to slow.  She stood and reached for her bag.  The person on crutches backed awkwardly away to let her out, and she paused, proffering him a handful of change.  He said something and made an angry gesture with his crutches; he jerked and lurched with the movement of the train.  She quickly withdrew her hand, clenched around her coins, and lowered her head.  The man stood close behind her, speaking something over and over.

            As she stepped off the train she was surprised to find herself cold and a little faint.  The sky had dimmed, and the platform was full of commuters.  She took the closest stairs and found herself on the wrong street.

 

 

Fifth Movement

(anger)

 

If only you had waited, if you just had patience, that could have been the gift. 

 

Rain relieved the humidity.  People walked through the streets, laughing and sodden, holding bags over their heads.  The damp air amplified the sounds.

            In her hometown, the thunderstorms are tremendous.  When she was a teenager, they held her in thrall.  When the humidity built, her blood moved away from her heart and her limbs became heavy and slow.  Her hometown is filled with jacaranda trees.  After rain the bruised flowers cling to the skin.

            Now, the sky had the shine of brass under imperfect silver plate. A cool wind blew through the spaces between the buildings.  Everywhere there were bees. 

 

 

Sixth Movement

(weeping)

 

Even in her own body, there is the possibility of someone else taking up space.

 

What is there to see here?  She wondered.  She was overcome by a desire to be known.  As she walked, the faces, the signs, the pavement took on a movement of their own.  She walked until she found the bar she had visited in the morning.  She approached the waiter who had smiled at her. 

            “Buena Sera, Madam.”

            “Hallo,” she said, and smiled.

            He was silent, polishing a glass with his napkin.  After a moment he looked at her again.

            “Would you like something?” he asked, in German.

            She blushed.  He had not recognised her.  “Ein Glass Mineralwasser, bitte,” she said.  She drank quickly, and out on the streets again took out her mobile phone, which she rarely used because of the prohibitive cost, and dialled her home.

            A stranger answered.  “Hullo.”

            “Is Michael there?” she said.

            “No.”  On the street a charming child passed, wearing only a flowered hat and sandals, both hands held by smiling women. 

            She doesn’t want to ask who the stranger is.

            “Will he be back soon?” she said.

            “I don’t know.”

            “Can you tell him I rang?”  She passed a man who asked her for change, holding to her a fingerless hand to which his big toe had been sewn, in place of a thumb.

            “Who are you?” asked the voice on the other end of the phone.

The individual elements of the scene around her took on clear outlines and distinct colours.  A young man smiled past her at someone else, stubbing out his cigarette.  Outside a convenience store, a small dog, leash dangling, watched every person passing.  She walked on, one person of uncertain dignity among many.

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END

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Originally presented as script for Clare Dyson's Being There, performed at Tanzfabric, Berlin, 2007 and Judith Wright Centre, Brisbane, 2008.

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