The Beginner's Guide to Living (18 page)

A woman with long gray hair comes striding down the track. She looks about Mom's age, maybe older, magpie eyes, a dried leaf stuck in her hair.

“Hello,” she says.

“Hi.”

I pull my backpack higher on my shoulder as she points to a bush in front of me. “That's
coprosma quadrifida
. Prickly currant bush. You here alone?”

“I'm just going for a walk.”

“You're not lost, are you?” she asks, looking at my sneakers.

“No.”

“Well, be careful. You never know who you might run across out here.” She taps her walking stick on the ground, hesitates a moment, before marching off down the track, not bothering to dodge a patch of mud.

There are too many people in this forest. I tuck my jeans into my socks and look for a break in the trees. There's a gap between two giant gums that could be a path. I head for it. It's quite open except I have to climb over logs to follow it, and there are big holes, probably from wombats. The ground is littered with bark. My foot snags and I trip, fly headfirst toward a log, which I somehow avoid and land hard on my shoulder instead. I lie still, my face in a pile of eucalyptus leaves. I can hear the sound of cockatoos, wind, the creak of giant trees. I sit up and flex my shoulder, stretch the neck of my T-shirt to take a look at it, stripes of blood lined up against the white of the graze. That bark is lethal.

The track heads down steeply. I have to hold on to trees, steady my feet against roots. The last of the Band-Aids tears off my knuckle, making it bleed again. A couple of times there seem to be two possible directions, so I go with instinct. I can hear the trickle of water, probably a creek. I follow the sound. The bush becomes denser, somber—ferns reach around each other, lean into rocks, the ground springy, water dangling from tiny moss fronds. The smell of rotting and things growing.

The creek keeps disappearing under shelves of moss but I follow it upward, trying not to touch anything as I make my way. This place is primeval; there are hardly even any birds, no screeching cockatoos. They don't belong here. It's hard to stay close to the creek, it's so overgrown, fallen logs trapped between rocks as I climb a ridge, my shoulder aching, and work my way back down. Up ahead, a rock face, though it looks more like the wall to a dam. So much for the lost world.

I scramble around the side of it, grab hold of roots and branches and haul myself up. Barely visible through the trees, there's a small jade lake sitting in the sun. Pitched beside it, a domed gray tent.

*   *   *

Memory.

Camping by a river. Mom hates camping so she usually doesn't come, but this time she decides to join
the boys
. Dad and Adam have gone looking for wood. I'm staring at the river, how fast it's moving. I spy a tiny blue wren tracking me as it jumps from branch to branch. I edge toward it, remembering what Mom taught me about how to get close to a bird. With the mind of a cat. I get close but at the last minute it darts away. By the river's edge, the sun is hot on my feet—I want to dip them in the water, to see how cold it is. I stick one toe in, then my whole foot, the sand slipping beneath me, the river strong, my body following my feet. A shout and a pain around my throat. It's Mom, she's got me by my T-shirt and she's dragging me out, yelling at me for going so close to the edge. Her arms wrapped around me, so tight I can hardly breathe.

*   *   *

I can't see anybody around. The lake's small, maybe thirty meters wide, completely overgrown around the edges, hard to tell how deep. Overhead, a pair of rosellas dip their way across the sky as a guy walks out of the trees at the far side of the tent.

“Hello,” I say. He walks toward me, drops something by his tent as he goes past. He's bald, and tall, and coming for me. I step back.

“Saul,” he says, wiping his hand on his trousers and holding it out. I hesitate before shaking it. His grip is strong. Something moves in the bush. “Sssshhh,” he says, crouching down.

I squat too, follow his eyes to see what would make such a solid guy go for cover. He's wearing a khaki shirt with dirt on one shoulder and there's a shadow where his hair would be if he let it grow. Another rustle. Below us in the bush is a large brown bird. I smile.

“It's a lyrebird,” he whispers.

“I thought lyrebirds had big tail feathers.”

“That's a female.” He cocks his head to the side as she moves through the bush. She scratches at the ground with her feet, looking for food, and makes a noise like a cockatoo. Saul turns to me, his face too close. “Hear that? Great imitators, lyrebirds. She can copy any bird in the bush, even do a good version of a chain saw.”

“What is this place?” I ask, as the lyrebird moves away and we both stand up.

“People call it
the secret lake
.”

“Not very original.”

“I guess not. I shouldn't be camping here, but you won't turn me in, will you?”

He raises his eyebrows, the only hair on his head, but I can't tell whether he's making fun of me or not. I go over to the edge of the lake. The water's tea-colored from above, not jade, its surface stagnant, littered with leaves and a white feather.

“I come here sometimes, to get away. Nobody knows I'm here.” He pulls up the bottom of his trousers and starts checking his legs. They have no hair either.

“Looking for leeches?”

“Yeah, little bastards. I've got some salt.”

“Burned mine off with my lighter.”

“Did you sleep in the bush last night?”

“Yeah.”

“Any particular reason?”

“Yeah.”

“You always this talkative?”

“No, I'm usually the silent type.”

“What's your name?” he asks, rolling down his trousers.

“Will. So, what do you do up here?”

“Think.”

“About what?”

“Oh, you know, the meaning of life as we know it, what it's all about.” He laughs. “Monty Python fan from way back. I take off once a year for a week,” he says, undoing the fly on his tent.

“You always come here?”

“Sometimes. I've got a few spots. I'm a computer programmer,” he says, as if that explains everything. Maybe it does.

“My mother died.”

Saul squats by the open fly, his back to me, and pulls out a plastic tub. “I've got some tea. Would you like some? It's already got the milk mixed in. I wasn't expecting company.”

“Yeah, all right.”

He hands me a cupful and pours some into the lid of the thermos for himself. “So, how did she die?”

“Got hit by a drunk driver getting out of her car. She was going to a doctor's appointment.”

“When?”

“Nine weeks and two days ago.”

He stares at me for a moment, his forehead creased with parallel lines. “Does anybody know where you are?”

I have no idea who this man is, he could be a psycho. I'm sure plenty of computer programmers are half-mad. Maybe he's not even a programmer. “I left a message saying where I was. I'm going back tomorrow night.”

“You can stay here if you like, I've got plenty of food.”

“Maybe.”

He points up the hill to a patch of sun among the trees. “I'll be up there if you need me. I've found a good spot to do some reading. If you decide not to stay, it was nice meeting you, Will.”

He pulls a book that looks like a novel out of a bag in his tent, and heads off into the bush.

A ripple spreads out from the middle of the lake.

*   *   *

What I write in my notebook by the water's edge:

[1]

You can't see the wind but you can see what it does, its movement through leaves and grass. Like the larva that's dangling in front of me by an invisible thread.

I know it's there, that thread, even though I can't see it—logic tells me it is. Or is it a question of faith? In science? In the way the world's supposed to be?

 

[2]

Ants work around me on the log. When you squash them they smell like piss. Do they think I have an agenda or a purpose?

Am I good or evil according to the philosophy of ants? Or are they just waiting till I die, so they can pick me to the bone?

 

[3]

A fallen log covered in moss. The living grow around the dead in order to survive.

 

[4]

All things reach for their piece of the sun.

 

[5]

Why, in nature, does everything become a metaphor?

CHAOS THEORY

T
HERE IS NOTHING
to do here except eat, drink, sleep, think, forget. I have that book in my bag but I don't feel like taking it out—there are already enough ideas fighting for space in my head. I'm going to sit here among the ferns till I can make sense of it all. Lucky I've got the whole afternoon. The lake is still, except it only seems that way—there is constant movement, the flow of the water, slow, subtle, carrying everything with it, feathers, debris, leaves. Water trickles in one end and out the other. I take a deep breath and let it go, listen to the hum of insects in tune with the cadence of my heart, and close my eyes. A gentle emptying. The color blue. And a feeling a lot like love.

The shriek of a bird.

I open my eyes. A dragonfly comes to rest on a stick near my foot. There have been many great thinkers, but, in the end, they were all just seeking their own truth. I can do that, can't I, by the side of a lake?

*   *   *

Saul invites me for lunch and I decide I might as well. We have cans of tuna and an apple, with some more tea, and cookies for dessert. The cookies are mine but everything else is Saul's. Then Saul tells me his story, because I asked.

S
AUL'S
S
TORY

His dad was a bus driver, his mom worked part-time, making hats. He had two brothers and one sister—one of his brothers died in a boating accident when Saul was sixteen. When he was young, his favorite band was The Who but he never took drugs and he only had sex once before he got married. Her name was Sue, and it wasn't what he'd expected. At university he studied engineering because he liked answers, but he gambled, especially with cards.

Two days after his first child was born, he was sitting at home after visiting his wife in the hospital, and he suddenly realized he had no idea who he was. It went away when the baby got home because all that mattered was getting enough sleep, but it came back again about a year later, when he got a promotion. At the exact moment when his boss shook his hand, into his head leaped the question
Is this all there is?
So, he started going away for a day or two into the bush, taking with him a bag full of books. A tent. His thermos. His brother's sleeping bag he'd inherited when he died.

He reads all sorts of philosophy. He has his favorite philosophers, though sometimes they change. He remembers sitting next to a hunched tree fern on the other side of the lake, reading about Jean-Paul Sartre's idea of
bad faith
, how people lie to themselves about their lives, and that the sun came out and lit up drops of water hanging from moss fronds on the fern. He will never forget that moment as long as he lives.

On Sunday afternoons he listens to opera turned up loud if nobody's home. He has never smoked a cigarette in his life.

I decide to stay for the night.

I chop up onions and chili peppers for Saul while he gets his gas cooker going, and a couple of times I almost cut myself the knife's so blunt. Around the lake, the birds are swooping and plunging for insects as the sun goes down.

“Best time of the day,” says Saul, “if you don't count dawn.”

He opens a box of couscous and pours some into a bowl. He has big fingers, more like you'd expect on a builder than a programmer. In fact, he doesn't look like a programmer at all.

“Do you do a lot of sports, Saul?”

“Yeah, actually, I swim a bit, and cycle, and I still play rugby.” He grins. “On an old guys' team.”

“You any good?”

“Used to be, though now it's just for fun. I like a drink with the guys after a game, bit of barroom philosophizing.”

“Do you tell them about this?”

“No.”

I scrape the onions into the frying pan; they spit as they hit the oil. “Do you think it helps, reading all that philosophy?”

“Depends what you mean by
help
. It gives you clarity. And, there's always the companionship.”

I go to ask him what he means by that, but then I realize. A familiar voice in the dark.

*   *   *

I live in a nice house. My family aren't that bad, they even love me, but here I am, in the middle of a rain forest, with a man I hardly know—a man who smells like onions, and farts in his sleep. He offered for me to sleep in the tent but I said no. Instead I'm battling it out on my bed of ferns, surrounded by mosquitos, by the edge of the lake. Wonder if Taryn's awake, if she's afraid? She looked it yesterday afternoon, curled up all fetal on her bed, but so full of love. She's taught me that I'm able to love, too.

I pull the blanket Saul lent me over my head and hear him roll over in the tent. How did it all get so complicated? I want to break things down into a simple equation—nine weeks and two days ago my mother died, four days later I fell in love. I have taken twelve rolls of film with my mother's camera. I have four exams to go. Taryn and I have slept together thirteen times. Somebody dies, you fall in love, you have sex, a new life is created. Is that the formula for life?

Above me, a cluster of stars is visible through the trees. A constellation I recognize, not from a book, but a face.