Free On Brunswick Ground by Catherine de Saint Phalle Page B

only ones not to laugh. It seems that it’s often a small thing that will make the difference between life and death in an attack of that kind.
    â€˜It’s luck, of course, but it’s also about not giving in – in your mind – at any moment,’ an inspector tells us.
    â€˜Drenched women, unparalysed by their fear, are a different kettle of fish to stunned victims. Unless,’ he adds with a smile, ‘these guys had a catlike fear of water.’
    Maybe Jack is looking at big cats at this minute. Feeding them, even going into their cages. I wonder how he manages without music. There are so many questions my imagination stumbles on, a bit like a Magritte painting, with doors opening into nowhere, or into a sky of terribly ordered clouds. And there is always a man in a bowler hat. He waits there like a clown in a suit, without a circus. And I feel exactly like him.
    It’s nice to sit at The Alderman now I know Sarah. Even if she is too busy even to wink at me, I can be the Magritte man in peace, without feeling like a sore thumb. Here I’m safe to read and to remember other beers, and other conversations, on the other side of the planet. The stool morphs into a strangely comfortable seat, carrying me through the landscape of my book. As a child I used to daydream about the peas on my plate. If you observe them long enough they become mysterious. Each one has its own distinct personality. You get to like them individually, and so I swallowed them whole to keep them alive inside me. Reading is the same. The characters settle inside you like peas – whole and alive.
    When you’re not feeling so hot, characters in books are preferable to real people, who always seem to lead you back to the one person you shouldn’t be thinking about. We’re all in the same boats of misunderstanding and haphazard wisdom, inexorably rowing towards each other. Albert Cossery’s novel Proud Beggars pops into my mind. Thank the gods for that. Two beggars are friends. But one of them wants to commit suicide. His companion begs him not to. The candidate for suicide explains he could just as well be travelling in some distant country. His friend protests that in that case it would still be possible to imagine him walking in the sunshine, or savouring some wine in some shady café. But if he is dead, what can he imagine? Not his happiness, nor the breath coming through his lungs, nor the smile on his face, nor the coffee warming his belly – what torture. Every time I think of that story, it comforts me.
    Jack is alive. He may be patting a giraffe, gently closing a gorilla’s cage, offering his finger to some parrots to nibble. I imagine his breath clouding on a cold winter day, his tousled head in the morning. I see his neck and the quirky growth line of his hair behind his collar, as if someone had planted it while humming a tune. I see his kind eyes and his slow walk, as if his every step were there on purpose, for him to put here, on this Australian earth, where his parents and grandparents were born. I remember the shape of his hands and fingers and nails. I see his feet. He may have lost his memory, but he is alive – he is treading the same earth as me.
    Even thinking of books doesn’t always work.
    The bar noises stop swimming around me. Bernice is tapping her index finger on my shoulder.
    â€˜I thought you’d be here.’
    Then her ten soft fingers land on my forearm.
    â€˜Are you sure you’re all right?’
    With a severe expression on her face, she drinks deep before speaking.
    â€˜Because, I know. Things hurt after . On the spot they just splash at you, don’t they?’
    I smile at her.
    â€˜They did splash.’
    She shakes her head, until her fringe bounces.
    â€˜When my husband left me, I was in shock, it didn’t sink in, but for weeks, and now, for months, it’s as if he’s leaving me over and over again. So, you see, I know