LITMIR.BIZ

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Slim pickings. The Tito-man offering amaretti now, which are refused on account of Mr. Beckett having teeth that are yellowed like a draught horse’s and letting go, and they turn back with their half load, down along the peninsula, the green water of Pittwater on the right, the blue sea on the left and the sun just reaching its afternoon peak.

      Some years later I would raise questions about his early career and find in Tito Livio an affection inexplicable. How he admired the old man for the way he conducted his business and that he modeled himself in many ways on the old man’s attitudes. Origins speaking volumes. Mr. Beckett continuing in this field long after others had closed down or moved into the burgeoning work of extraction for the tanners, rubber-molders and oil refiners setting up along the Parramatta River. But the old man knew his market and sold his services on complete obliviousness to the downside of human waste. After Tito Livio moved on he went through half a dozen boys until deciding he’d be better off doing the job himself. None of the others showing any aptitude for the work. Complaining of the stench. The weight. The opportunities for disease. But Mr. Beckett, who could not properly see or hear them, decided quite simply that they didn’t understand the true nature of the job.

      . . . And now the dunny truck rolls into the yard, backs up and tips out its load. Tito Livio bids Mr. Beckett good night (because, though it is the hottest time of the day and the sweat rolls off them both like molten pinballs, the old man is heading for his shed to bunk down until evening, when he will wake, eat and get ready for work) and now the Titoman is on his way also, along The Corso. Ferries are arriving from Circular Quay and heading out to Taronga where they berth at the hippopotamus house and their passengers climb their way uphill through peccary, wombat, hyena, jackal, native cat and wildebeest to the kiosk and plastic souveniry. On The Esplanade: twelve dozen illegally parked Holden cars, their owners lying down on the sand which glitters with zinc and zircon. Ahead now: the newly launched Charismatic Church of the diocese of South Steyne. Former makeshift Nissen of South Seas soldiers in advanced stages of recovery. Known in the parlance as “Strawberry Street” just for this reason: the red badges of (perhaps) Mercurochrome, of (could it be?) blood splotted on issue whites. Home to the beach mission of the Charismatics which periodically has risen up behind the banner of King George’s cross and tramped over roadway, paved walk and white sand to the edge of the sea, blessing Christmas Day approaching and the true meaning of the yuletide, being charismatic with lifesavers, muscle-builders, hot-dog johnnies, towel thieves, perverts, ice-cream vends, surfers, skip-boarders and coconut-oilers spread-eagle. Tito Livio, stoked to have finished work but judging (rightly) in Mr. Beckett’s demeanor that the trade in excrement is getting tougher. From inside the place a song which (trained ear cocked) I know to be “Blessed Are The Meek” sung in the way of choirs with upward tones too small and downward tones too large. Polyphonic. Imbalanced. And Tito Livio reaches the church noticeboard and pauses. It is large plain board and set behind glass and the sea-breeze, being what it is, has fogged the glass with salt and gives the appearance that clouds are reflected or, naturally, that it’s steamed up. Tito Livio wipes the sweat from his eyes, wonders at what he might do to improve Mr. Beckett’s business and (ho-hum been toting sloshing pans all night) begins to read. For a young man who has learnt to speak a new language so perfectly it is a strangely faltered reading. Red lips open and close. Almond eyes sweep back and forth. Brow becomes furrowed. It soon becomes apparent that he has a unique technique. That the lines appear to move for him in distinct and Zowie! foreign ways. When he turns his head a little . . . this way . . . and now that . . . it’s as if he’s reading perhaps with his ear or orifices invisible set somewhere above his temples. Now this way . . . now that. And he has traveled maybe one paragraph. But not downward in the traditional manner. Across. Diagonally! Now three words from elsewhere. Now another from the other side. Tito Livio reading with a dyslexic’s attention to arrangement and space. Counterposing one part of document with another. Reading by color and shape. Following an ambitious course across, down, in reverse. But that’s not all! The more he reads the more he begins to grow. His chest is starting to puff out. His hands which were small small and fingers like filaments are clenching and in the clench they balloon and his knuckles white up and look like marble beneath the surface. A head crowned in black Roman curls is shaking and the curls spring out and corkscrew. Before he’s finished he’s as angry as Hell and stomps off in the direction of the municipal library.

      A Student for a Democratic Republic

      Man! what steamed a young guy up so much that he shucked off exhaustion and swore to God outside a hall of particularly charismatic beach missionaries that he would deal with the matter forthwith. WIDOW TRYMELOW’S LODGERS WILL NOT RETURN TO FACE THE MUSIC . . . No! No! Rumor it isn’t. Made-up headline of the divergent route of the lodgers (Has Maurice Manticora been granted his license to write copy again? As I’ve told it so far he hasn’t yet lost it!) BOB DYLAN TELLS HIS FAMILY “‘SEE THAT MY GRAVE IS KEPT CLEAN” No! No! Babaloos are rightly concerned that the truth is being stretched and gather up close and quiet and ask, “Was it news of the dunnycans?” Sweet innocent . . .”Was it news of fishes?” Ho ho! . . .”Was it about the missionaries who frighten us when they visit?” . . . They give you that line about becoming engaging little lambs, huh? Don’t worry they’re speaking in metaphor. . . .”Was it jokes, papa, about brothers and sisters?” “Was it words concerning the blessed Daffodil and also that Mr. Tito?” “Was it news of who is our grandfa . . . ?” No no! And, I must remind them, “Tito Livio, after all, is simply the first on the scene. There are two more lodgers to come and one of those you know already. That’s right: he’s the one who just growed and growed.

      My babaloos, poorly housed in the hospital next door (land on which Bibbidi Bobbodi Boo made a solid twenty-five per cent). Guinea pigs. Children for whom empiricism has dealt a poor hand. You at the forefront of modern science. Look at you, tightly bandaged, fed by fluids in yellow and pink and puce, some of you in chairs which run on electricity, from the shaven patches on your heads things spring and jiggle (I am thinking now of Mars, the red planet). All this to discover the secret of long gestations!

      What can I say? It was none of these things. It was not even the monthly synodic bulletin of Pastor T. B. Bull who in those days was principal at the school in the Vale, waster of water, chaser of fruit bats, teacher of Alice (‘Meanwhile,’ Maxim reminds you, “shhhh. Do not ever take what your mothers” say for granted . . . and you should not be afraid of the charismatics: they will appear in time as heroes in the rescue of lambs, fishes and, of course, loaves—and in the confidence they exude. Do not, babaloos, ever ever fear singers.”) What Tito Livio read was this: Men are not Angels.

      “Men per se,” he read, “are not of Heaven.” . . . My childhood memory of a charismatic document folded in four, pages bug eaten, stains of tabouli, a taratour sauce: “If there are men with enormous wings I have not seen any. . . . What do you say, citizens? Do you believe the story of Pelayo and Elisenda who came across an archangel in their garden and found the creature unresponsive?” Now sauce covers and makes it unreadable but if we ignore this and read on with dyslexic’s eyes, the next section continues the tone of address: “ . . . to which Robert Owen, the industrialist, made due contribution and in later life found solace not in spinning cotton but spinning the community together in a love of . . .” And again, the page adulterated, but not this time by sauces or bugs. The writer himself has crossed out this line, double, (scrubbing a story of a tailor who tried to sew flies into coats) and leaves us only with, “ . . . freeman or slave, patrician or plebian, the sun representing the light by uprising attainable” and now further obliteration which does indeed appear to be bug-food “ . . . who might heed Daedalus’s warning and the son’s wings melt on this evidence alone. Men, ditto, not being angels. Nor birds, I must say.” And now the age of the speaker appears perfectly obvious because he describes in some detail the miraculous differences between one species and another and though the hand is light and large and swirls out its words it is also selective and sometimes cramped and leans forward as if wishing always to get to what is coming next. The owner of this hand must be as old as Darwin himself! “A bird’s beak,” it says, “is not a man’s nose. A man’s hands are not a bird’s feet. Hair is not barbules. A man’s bones are not hollow. Arms are not wings.” And the weight of a not so welcome logic begins to mount up and the hand leans leans, and when it has been forced to prove that men are not birds it begins, tentatively, to argue that

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