julie

Walls of Jericho

WE sit listening to the organ. It is a small and shiny Yamaha, though the sound that pours from it is a full cathedral version. I don’t know who is playing. In fact there is no sign of the organist.
      My husband has his eyes closed. I am fully alert and feeling deafened. Not that I don’t enjoy the music. But it is too loud. He says what’s the good of quadraphonic if it’s not played at full capacity. I say is more necessarily better? You don’t know what you’re talking about he says, and goes on listening.
      My son says how can you listen to that crap.
      When the music has finished its resonance reverberates and hangs in the air and in my head.
      The house itself takes up the reverberations and throbs. It is as if the house has suddenly assumed a life of its own.
      Can you feel the house shuddering I ask?
      Imagination says my husband and picks up the paper.
      I sit there, puzzled.
      A small crack appears in the far wall. It snakes slowly downwards following a zigzag path where the bricks are joined. It’s like watching a slow-motion film. Another crack appears, almost parallel to the first – but slightly wider. It fans out a little towards the floor. I sit in suspense wondering where the next crack will start or even if there will be another. Crack after crack appears but seems to be confined to a small section of the wall. Then, without warning, close to the ceiling where the very first crack started, a few bricks fall, tumbling outside the house.
      As they fall, lime mortar smokes in little puffs.
      What are you going to do I ask.
      Cover it with tarpaulin he says.
      The hole isn’t very big so I don’t complain. He drags the tarpaulin onto the roof. I seem to be a long way off. Confused. I fumble with the rope that is to hold the tarpaulin down. The ends of the stubborn nylon rope have been melted to prevent fraying. They are like blunt thumbs —too thick to thread comfortably through the eyelets. I push the melted stump back and forth until it does go through the eyelet and I can draw the length of rope behind it. It all seems rather futile because there are insufficient eyelets in the tarpaulin and it bugles and billows instead of fitting neatly as a sail would on a mast.
      I realise it is not a gap between the roof and the wall that we are covering, but that we are providing a kind of shelter over a patch of ground surrounded by a cyclone fence. There are spiky bushes growing inside the fence. They get in the way and impede my work. I wonder if the patch of ground inside the fence has once been a sanitary landfill dump, or whether a building has been demolished to make way for development and the new owners are trying to protect their property.
      I remember it is my house I am supposed to be protecting, not a piece of sanitary land-fill, burdened with broken bottles, rose prunings, discarded toys, books, cardboard cartons, old shoes and cracked plates.
When I look at my house all that remains is an uneven pile of bricks around its perimeter. While I have relaxed my vigilance it has crumbled brick by brick.
      I labour slowly across a great distance, gripped by shock, but unable to make my legs obey the message of my mind. When I reach the house I can see the dining room table standing intact but a falling brick has gouged a scar in its jarrah.
      It can be sanded and repolished I think.
      Inside (though once can scarcely say that about a wall-less house) everything seems normal, though there is a gritty dusting of mortar over most surfaces. A bowl of flowers is miraculously unscathed. The crystal and china are intact and as far as I can see little damage has been done to the contents. Then I realise that as the walls have tumbled they have carried with them all the pictures and photographs that I’ve collected and junk at various times. Most of them have been the butt of my son’s scorn.
      Could’ve done better myself as a kid, he’d say, whenever I’d bring home an abstract.
      And the bookshelves that have been crammed with bestsellers, mostly paperbacks, admittedly, have disappeared during the cascade of bricks. I scrabble frantically among the broken bits of masonry, breaking fingernails, panting as I struggle to move whole chunks of broken brickwork. There is no sign of book or picture. It hardly seems possible that while I have been pre-occupied with the tarpaulin, looters have been at work. Yet there seems no other explanation.
      I must ring my mother I say. The phone is engaged. I try again.
      Our house has fallen down I say.
      Yes dear she says. I’m going to town now.
      Mum I say, rather firmly. Our house has fallen down.
      I heard you the first time she says getting impatient, but I haven’t got time to talk.
      Mother. I realise that I am shouting. Our house has fallen down.
      Well she says, that’s solved your problem.
      I put the phone down.
      Our neighbours, who must have seen something of what was happening, come in.
      They seem mildly amused.
      What will you do they ask. Stay at your beach place?
      Too far away says my husband. We’ll stay on here.
      Do you think the insurance will cover it I ask?
      Act of God he says. Probably not.
      I don’t feel like arguing.
      Is there anything we can do says my neighbour.
      Like a cup of tea?
      We’ll manage says my husband.
      What shall I do if I want to go out I ask. Anyone could break in.
      You could string a curtain across says my neighbour.
      But thieves I say. We can’t leave all this stuff exposed. There’s silver and valuables. I suppose I’ll just have to stay housebound.
      Couldn’t you leave a car at home if you have to go out? At least it would look as if someone’s here.
      We can’t do that says my husband, though for what reason isn’t really clear in the ensuing conversation.
      As there doesn’t seem to be anything they can do the neighbours leave.
      Well I say, let’s get on with it.
      What ask my husband and son.
      Rebuilding the house I say. We must have a roof over our heads.
      They look at me as though I’ve gone quite mad.
      Come on I say and dust off a brick. I place it carefully on the foundations that are still intact. And another and another, like a stack of dominoes, interlocking the bricks as tradesmen do.
      You need mortar says my husband. You’re wasting your time.
      It’ll serve as a stopgap I say, with the tarpaulin.
      In spite of their scorn they labour with me until we have rebuilt the shell of one small room.
      It’s dangerous you know, says my husband, balancing like that with nothing to hold it together.
      Nonsense I say. It’s a home.
      And I set about filling it with as many of the possessions that had once filled the whole house that I can lay my hands on. By the time everything is packed in there is no room for us.
      Never mind I say. At least the carpets are out of the weather, and the beds.
      My son mutters what about us as the first drops of rain begin to fall.
      We’ll shelter under the tarpaulin I say.
      But it’s covering the furniture says my husband. And the silver and the glass.
      Just a minute I say. Where’s the organ?
      Good riddance says my son. It brought the house down.
      We shift all the stuff out again looking for the organ.
      Do you remember shifting it in here I ask my husband.
      But he knows nothing about it. Neither does my son.
      Surely it’s not outside in the rain I say. The veneer will peel if it gets wet and God knows what will happen to its tone.
      I am getting quite hysterical. We’ve only had it a couple of days. It cost almost ten thousand dollars. It can’t simply disappear. Go and look for it I say to my son. It must be found. I wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink if I thought we’d lost the organ.
      We’ve still got the piano says my husband.
      You don’t understand I say. I really wanted the organ. From the moment I set eyes on it.
      What’s so special about an organ says my son.
      That’s not the point I say. It’s ours. It belongs to us. I don’t like to think of it in other hands.
      At that moment my mother walks in.
      Will you help us look for the organ I ask?
      What are you talking about says my mother. I don’t remember any organ.
      You must I say. We only bought it a few days ago. It cost ten thousand dollars.
      More money than sense says my mother.
      She begins, compulsively, to wipe the dishes that are standing on the sink top. We are still able to cook in the open shell of the former kitchen. It baffles me the way the water and power continue to function in the chaos. I turn to my husband taking a shower in full view of everyone. The water glistens in rainbow drops on his pubic hair. He is singing. O solo mio.
      Don’t do that I say. The house is sensitive to music.
      What house he asks.
      The house we used to have.
Then what’s the problem he says vigorously soaping under his arms and blowing water from his nose and mouth.
      It’s the same bricks we’ve used I say.
      But without mortar he says significantly.
      Yes I say. Without mortar but on the same foundation.
      Will you two stop talking in riddles says my mother.
      They always talk crap says my son.
      Don’t use that word says my mother. It’s not nice and I don’t want to hear it.
      My son fits an earplug to his ear and curls up with his transistor.
      I’m going to make a cup of tea says my mother. A nice hot cup of tea.
      While she watches the kettle boil I go on looking for the organ. My husband who is now showered and clean refuses to help.
      I’ll look in the morning he says.
      It may be too late then I say.
      It is getting dark but I search and search, stumbling over the remaining rubble and assortment of items that couldn’t be fitted into our newly constructed, if temporary, home. The home that now houses our belongings instead of us. No matter where I look, the organ, which has been responsible for the collapse of our home with Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, is nowhere to be found.
      Stop fussing says my mother, handing me a cup, and drink you tea while it’s hot.

Julie Lewis

Walls of Jericho

Julie Lewis