ticket machine, fed it coins and pressed the buttons. When he located his platform it was bathed in full sunshine. He could not have denied there was a cheerful spirit afloat in the weather, but he still felt out of sorts and enormously thirsty. The side effects of Temazepam, taken for too long. Dehydration, memory loss, depressive withdrawal. All those benzodiazepines zapping the gamma-aminobutyric acid in his brain. He bought a bottle of water from the little stall on the platform, suddenly wondering how he might appear to Ellie. He didnât want rings under his eyes or a hung-over daze.
The doors parted before him. When he boarded the train James found he was silently chanting fragments of anatomy revision: right coronary artery, left coronary artery, anterior-ventricular artery, aortic valve, mitral valve ⦠it must have been one of the early lessons. He used to chant the terms as he walked the paths by the university around the river, timing his steps rhythmically, watching light from the sunrise glance in streaks on the calm water. It was a kind of happiness. Repetition, sky, light on water. Once he had seen a pod of dolphins in the river, lazily arching, turning their sleek bodies,and all momentarily was right with the world. God-in-his-heaven. Etcetera, etcetera.
The man in front of James was wearing a black T-shirt stamped with a logo that read teen spirit. As James found his seat he recalled the Nirvana video-clip, âHeart-Shaped-Boxâ: cut-price Surrealism. There was Kurt Cobain looking crazed, shouting at the camera. There was a crucifixion, ravens, babies hanging from a tree, there was a sad little girl in white robes and a white conical cap. There was a large woman in some kind of suit that showed her inner organs on the outside.
Although James was what? â nineteen â when this video version had appeared, it left a terrifying impression. He cannot now remember when first he saw it on television, but the images gave him a nightmare. And here now, on a train in Sydney, it was still invading and upsetting him, acting like airy turbulence when he wanted to cruise.
Â
James stared out of the window and watched inner-city Sydney slide by. He took another gulp of water, finishing the bottle. So much was playing in his head, ringing in this paltry, mortal cupola of the skull. He wanted to see Ellie. He wanted peace and quiet. He wanted not this thirst, this wider hunger, this sense of failure and shame, but whatever he had felt when twenty years ago he first fell into her body. Wholeheartedly. As a kid. Finding a true home.
It was freakish good luck, to be welcomed to the chamber she offered him. Women didnât realise this: that the noise a man made when he came was of gratitude, simply to have been admitted.
Central Station. She was almost there. The train slid to a creaking halt and a line of passengers disembarked, then came a tide ofothers to replace it, in a lovely long stream. It was re assuring to see so many people in the world. So many legs moving, stepping upwards, to the modern command of sliding doors.
Central Station . Pei Xing thought wryly that she would never be at the centre of anything, that her life would always be this circling around an irrepressible past. As the train accelerated away, so did her recollection. The world in a train-ride was conducive to her own speedy summonings.
Â
Pei Xing was thinking of her family, long ago, making them reanimate. With her mother and brother Lao, four years older, they had gone together to the First Department Store on Nanjing Road to buy her a new winter coat. She was seven years old. It was 1958, the beginning of the Great Leap Forward. Every morning at school the students praised Mao, the Great Helmsman, and sang âThe East is Redâ in a hearty, energetic spirit of agreement. They stood stiffly to attention, and even then, so young, Pei Xing knew of Grand Economic Plans and carried nationalist phrases on her
The doors parted before him. When he boarded the train James found he was silently chanting fragments of anatomy revision: right coronary artery, left coronary artery, anterior-ventricular artery, aortic valve, mitral valve ⦠it must have been one of the early lessons. He used to chant the terms as he walked the paths by the university around the river, timing his steps rhythmically, watching light from the sunrise glance in streaks on the calm water. It was a kind of happiness. Repetition, sky, light on water. Once he had seen a pod of dolphins in the river, lazily arching, turning their sleek bodies,and all momentarily was right with the world. God-in-his-heaven. Etcetera, etcetera.
The man in front of James was wearing a black T-shirt stamped with a logo that read teen spirit. As James found his seat he recalled the Nirvana video-clip, âHeart-Shaped-Boxâ: cut-price Surrealism. There was Kurt Cobain looking crazed, shouting at the camera. There was a crucifixion, ravens, babies hanging from a tree, there was a sad little girl in white robes and a white conical cap. There was a large woman in some kind of suit that showed her inner organs on the outside.
Although James was what? â nineteen â when this video version had appeared, it left a terrifying impression. He cannot now remember when first he saw it on television, but the images gave him a nightmare. And here now, on a train in Sydney, it was still invading and upsetting him, acting like airy turbulence when he wanted to cruise.
Â
James stared out of the window and watched inner-city Sydney slide by. He took another gulp of water, finishing the bottle. So much was playing in his head, ringing in this paltry, mortal cupola of the skull. He wanted to see Ellie. He wanted peace and quiet. He wanted not this thirst, this wider hunger, this sense of failure and shame, but whatever he had felt when twenty years ago he first fell into her body. Wholeheartedly. As a kid. Finding a true home.
It was freakish good luck, to be welcomed to the chamber she offered him. Women didnât realise this: that the noise a man made when he came was of gratitude, simply to have been admitted.
Central Station. She was almost there. The train slid to a creaking halt and a line of passengers disembarked, then came a tide ofothers to replace it, in a lovely long stream. It was re assuring to see so many people in the world. So many legs moving, stepping upwards, to the modern command of sliding doors.
Central Station . Pei Xing thought wryly that she would never be at the centre of anything, that her life would always be this circling around an irrepressible past. As the train accelerated away, so did her recollection. The world in a train-ride was conducive to her own speedy summonings.
Â
Pei Xing was thinking of her family, long ago, making them reanimate. With her mother and brother Lao, four years older, they had gone together to the First Department Store on Nanjing Road to buy her a new winter coat. She was seven years old. It was 1958, the beginning of the Great Leap Forward. Every morning at school the students praised Mao, the Great Helmsman, and sang âThe East is Redâ in a hearty, energetic spirit of agreement. They stood stiffly to attention, and even then, so young, Pei Xing knew of Grand Economic Plans and carried nationalist phrases on her
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