The Man – A Philosophical Novel
The flame is not so bright to itself as to those on whom it shines
Chapter 3
Revised 15th September 2010
As he walked into town the Man passed the Aboriginal settlement. The houses, seemingly frozen in the process of being demolished had tell tale holes in the fibro and sacks soiled with the muck of everyday life for curtains. The front yard of each house was littered with rubbish between obnoxious weeds and patches of dirty grass that stood out like dreary islands in a sea of mud.
He smelt the large metal drums of garbage and putrefied rain water in which were thrown the broken pieces of asbestos fibro and the discarded remains of plastic take out, the remnants of a diet of cheap calories. He noted the derelict cars half assembled or were they half stripped down, the owner had long ago forgotten which.
Young snotty nosed Aboriginal children ran amok, one waving a stick with a dead rat skewered to it chasing the others who were laughing and screaming.
Young girls were playing hop scotch but there were no chalk marks on the ground, they just knew where the invisible squares were. Another group were swinging a skipping rope singing a dimly recognisable ditty while the girl in the middle effortlessly danced with the rope.
Sitting with their backs against one of the skeleton cars a group of teenagers sat sniffing petrol from an old coke bottle, their dull eyes wide and unseeing.
A Life Without Hope
The Aboriginal woman from the chemist shop was sitting on a door step, a burnt out cigarette languidly hanging from her purple, puffy, unkissed sunburnt lips. Looking but long ago resigned to not seeing she had abandoned desire and with that began the inevitable decline that ended with the loss of all hope. For her there was no joy in existence, all she had now was her little Anna and she was losing her ounce by ounce.
It seemed she was cursed to always be the giver, to never know the joy of receiving. Just once she wanted to experience that.
Then she remembered the Man in the chemist shop. She had been so caught up in her panic and the stress of getting the drugs Anna needed that she had not noticed his helping hand. Indeed she had mistaken it for a threat. At that moment she noticed the white fella passing the house, wasn’t that him? She cried out “Hey whitey where you going? Come and have a smoke with me”
The children looked at him. One little girl raised a leg and rested it on the other just above the knee, standing on one leg like a black swan.
He didn’t know whether to stop or keep going but she called again plaintively “Come here white fella” He turned and looked at her.
Beckoning him with her left arm “Come and say hello to my Anna” she tried. He wasn’t sure if he should but his legs moved independently of his mind. He entered the yard and the girls took a step back to put some distance between them and him. It was very rare to see a white man in this place unless it was for no good.
He approached the woman as she struggled to stand up. She literally climbed up the door jam, wobbling and unsteady on her legs. She held on to the door jam as though the house was part of her support system. “Come in” she said in a horse voice. Her voice was rough and she spoke with a heavy Aboriginal accent.
Inside the house he was assaulted by the smell. It was dark and the smell permeated everything. It was a cocktail of dirt, stale cooking smells, shit from the unflushed black toilet and damp mould. It made him gag and shiver.
The Man Meets Anna
The girl was on what passed for a bed, sitting up.
“She ain’t slept for two days” said the woman as if she was talking to a doctor “she think she won’t wake up”.
He moved to the bed. “Hello Anna”
“’lo” she said in a quite voice “Who you?”
“I’m a friend of your mama’s”.
“No you ain’t! She ain’t got no white friends” There was no anger in her statement, it was a mere matter of fact.
Her straight forward no nonsense reply startled him. He made to sit on the bed.
“You can sit on that chair” she said pointing to a dilapidated arm chair. He pulled it closer to the bed and sat down. Her body was thin and weightless but her eyes shone like black pearls.
“You goin’ to hurt my mommy?” she asked in that matter of fact voice.
“No, not at all. I just came here to say hello to you. Your mummy told me all about you when I met her in town. How old are you?”
“I, thirteen” She looked as though she was nine or ten.
“Did you really come to see me?” she asked looking at him doubtfully but with a slither of hope.
“Yes, I did”
And so started the conversation between the man who had lost all reason to live and the girl who would not die.
They talked for hours as the mother watched. She had never been able to talk with her daughter like this. How could this man know so many words? Will he never run out of stories? She was happy for the first time in years. Anna slowly accepted him, welcomed him as the dad she had desired for so long. Although it had never crossed her mind that he would be white!
Anna asked questions and finished some of his sentences.
She called him a liar, she called him a clown and finally she called him over.
What Is Truth?
“I ain’t never had a dad” she confided as though it were a precious secret. “Can I sit on your lap?”
“Of course you can my darling”. He leaned over and kissed her forehead as he slid his arms under her; shocked by how light she was he imagined her as a human feather.
As he lifted her she wound her arms around his neck and said in a low sleepy voice “daddy”.
The Man sat in the chair and the woman covered them with a smelly blanket that offended his nose. But it was warm and she laid it on them with love and tenderness.
“Tell me more stories Daddy” she whispered. He thought of another little girl who once said the same thing. If only he had known then that while stories are infinite the time for telling them is limited.
As he spoke she hugged him so hard that he worried that she would hurt her fragile arms. She rested her head on his shoulder and said in a low urgent voice “keep talking” “Yes my darling” he said. The tears were streaming down his face but he could not free his hands to rub them away.
“If I go to sleep will you wake me up?”
“Yes my darling I will wake you up” he lied.
For the first time in days she felt confident enough to close her eyes. She felt so lucky to find her daddy just when she needed him. She loved him tenderly and without reservation.
As he sat holding her in his arms, his inactivity gave him no way to hide from the nagging thoughts he usually avoided by keeping busy. When he was young and even when he was a rising star in the business world, he was confident he knew who he was, what he needed to make him happy and satisfied.
Truth or Myth? A Future with No Future
But life has a way of whisking the ground out from under the feet of unwary travellers and laughing at them as they fall into chaos. When you lose all hope for tomorrow you realise how important and yet how difficult it is to believe in a tomorrow. Worse, you come to hate it. Every day is today. Like standing between two mirrors, you see the future but it is just a repetition of today, through to infinity. Is that it? Is the future inevitable and unchangeable? But you don’t ask because you are a coward and whatever the answer it will require you act one way or the other and you are not sure you have what it takes to implement either course.
He felt the girl nestle deeper into his arms and make her head comfortable on his chest. She had no doubt; her daddy had come to her as she knew he would. She revelled in the knowledge that her truth was indeed the truth. No matter what anyone said, it was her life and it was up to her to give it meaning for surely, if life is not given meaning, it has none.
Anna’s Last Dream
The rhythm of his strong heartbeat filled her head with music and her mother was the conductor. The composition rose and fell and like the waves of the ocean she had once seen. It surrounded her and engulfed her. She knew the melody for she was the composer and together, she and he and her mother, they created a grand symphony.
Out of the mist she could see a great procession winding its way through the woods. She was seated in an open carriage preceded by kangaroos and wallabies; there were koala bears waving eucalypt branches and three proud emus marching in step and lots of other animals, hob goblins and children playing flutes and beating tin drums.
The trees waved at her and the birds sang a great chorus that was a fitting welcome for a princess. She was coming home. Strangely she felt very happy and slowly allowed herself to fall into a deep sleep.
The Man cried and the woman sat sobbing at his feet. Good night my darling. He reached out and held the woman’s hand and they cried together and knew that their life had been touched.
YouTube DirektThe Forest Sings for Little Anna
The Chapters So Far:
Read an Analysis of Each Chapter – The Philosophy and Ideas behind the Story
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