Creative Differences and Other Stories, page 6
We went to a French restaurant, and Joe brought a decent bottle of wine—better than my fizzy Portuguese offering. And proceeded to spend the whole evening chatting up my date. That turned out to be a good thing: the plan, obvious to everyone but me, was that I should get together with the friend. Which I did. Permanently, as it turned out.
One night we’re driving home from the pub in our separate cars, and Joe runs into the back of a cop car. A divvy van. I think he was so focused on not doing anything that might draw attention to himself, because he had the natural fear of being stopped and breathalysed, that he lost concentration on the obvious priority. He could only have been doing twenty or thirty kays.
I park right behind. I’m trying not to laugh and make it worse with the cops. But as I walk towards the car, and nobody gets out, I have this terrible premonition: a sense that nothing will ever be the same again. I run the last few metres, pull the door open, and Joseph’s dead behind the wheel.
Published in the Big Issue’s Annual Fiction Edition, 2015.
Intervention on the No. 3 Tram
I have a little story that might interest you, partly because it relates, in a roundabout way, to the patient I told you about who was involved—or, more to the point, not involved—in that altercation on the tram.
You remember his dilemma? There was a man in some distress, mentally ill or drug-affected, and he was being abusive in a non-specific sort of way, but there was a woman in a headscarf on the receiving end of some of it. Nobody intervened, unless you count shooting a video and posting bits of it on Twitter as an intervention. Which was my patient’s problem, because there he was in the background, doing nothing while, apparently, this woman alone was being targeted.
So, for my patient, who was a middle-aged man, it was about his shame. The Twitter comments were all about how gutless everyone was. My patient’s argument was that if he had confronted the abuser, he may well have escalated the situation into physical violence. The offender got off at St V’s, so he could have been one of ours on his way to get some help. If that was so, he was probably less equipped to deal with a volatile social situation than the woman for whom my patient was expected to speak up.
We can pursue this at another time, but the connection I wanted to make was with intervention and its effectiveness. Coincidentally, the story I’m going to tell you also took place on a tram: the No. 3 tram, which runs from Melbourne University virtually to my door in Balaclava.
We have our peer-review group meetings at University House and it’s an interesting ride home in the evening. The tram starts off full of Asian students. You look at the floor and it’s all sneakers, then at Flinders Street you look down again and the shoes are leather and the faces almost all white.
I was re-reading a paper on Lacanian psychoanalysis that we had been discussing in our group, and sitting opposite me was a young man—tall, thin, a little awkward-looking—with a clarinet case in his lap. I was struck by his disconnection: earphones, tapping his foot to the music, looking out the window, doing everything he could not to be present. So I already had a passing level of interest in him, before a young woman, perhaps twenty, quite slight, got on with a huge cello case. She was really struggling with it, so I stood up and the young fellow next to me—not the clarinettist who was opposite—took the hint and did the same.
She wasn’t comfortable taking the seats, emotionally or physically, even though the tram was only half-full at this point. You know how some people manage to project anxiety? Eventually she managed to manoeuvre herself into the window seat opposite the boy and put the cello in the aisle seat. It would have been more natural to put the cello in first, but her instinct was apparently to wall herself in.
I was of course watching my boy, to see if this quite attractive girl had made an impression.
Of course she had. He made a move to help with the cello, then realised he was too late and embarrassed himself by stopping in mid-air. He still had his earphones in, and he looked away, out the window. It took me a few moments to realise that he was looking at her reflection.
Then there was this quite lovely moment when she did exactly the same thing: she turned to the window to get a look at his reflection and they both smiled. Almost immediately, they both turned away and, of course, found themselves looking directly at each other. So we had these two shy young people—I’m not going to pathologise it as social-anxiety disorder—doing everything they could not to look at each other, despite it being the exact thing they wanted to do. She fiddled with the cello case, and at one point the tram stopped suddenly and he reached out and steadied it, and she smiled, but of course there was no possibility of starting a conversation because of the infernal earphones. Then he fished a piece of paper out of his bag and started folding it. I wasn’t the only one paying attention: everyone within viewing distance was watching it play out.
I should point out at this juncture that there was a woman of about my age, Caucasian, well dressed, standing a few metres away, and we exchanged glances, as you do when you recognise someone of your own demographic in a foreign place.
So, my boy was folding his paper, quite expertly, and the girl was doing her best not to stare, but she was naturally interested in what he was doing.
Quite quickly, this beautiful origami figure—I saw it as a swan—emerged. And I thought: what is he going to do with it? Because he was sitting, one leg crossed over the other, shoulders hunched, just as folded up as the swan, and I couldn’t see him being able to take the step of giving it to her. It was apparent to me that the older woman was thinking the same thing.
The tram stopped at Bourke Street, and the clarinet player looked straight at the girl and smiled. Then he walked to the door and got off. But he had left the swan on his seat.
The tram was now quite full, but no one took the seat with the swan or the one beside it. So we had the cello in one aisle seat, the opposite seat empty, the girl in the window seat and the swan opposite her. And an audience of commuters watching to see what she was going to do. That, of course, was her problem—being obliged to make her decision in public. The tram stopped at Collins Street, and she stood and pushed her cello out, but didn’t touch the swan. She was quite visibly conflicted about this: it seemed obvious to me that she wanted to take it, but her self-consciousness prevented her from doing so.
Then, just as the tram doors were opening and people were making space for her to get the cello through, the tallish woman I mentioned before—the one I had been conducting a non-verbal conversation with—grabbed the swan and went after her.
As interventions go, it was pretty minor, and probably quite appropriate. She only had to say, ‘Did you want the swan?’ and the girl could have her souvenir without making a public statement that she appreciated my boy’s interest. Or, equally, she could say, ‘No, thank you.’
Which brings me to the nub of the story: I was also compelled to intervene. It’s in the nature of such things that we only have time to reflect after we’ve acted, so for the moment let me just describe what I did rather than the complexities of my motivation, which, to be frank, I’m still working through. I followed the older woman off the tram and, before she caught the cellist, I gave her my card and said, ‘I’m going to follow the boy. Text me if the girl takes the swan.’
She was also under some time pressure: the cellist was crossing the road to the tram stop on Collins Street, and there was an eastbound tram approaching.
‘What for?’ she said.
I said, ‘I’ll try to get his phone number for her.’
That was my rationale. If the girl appreciated the swan, and by implication the young man’s advances, I wanted them to have a chance to connect.
I know you’re not going to be satisfied with that—a utilitarian philosophical explanation that I was trying to make the world a better place. But before I share where I’ve got to with analysing my reasons, I want to emphasise that I had made no actual intervention at this point, and there was every chance the boy had walked off or caught his tram.
My first thoughts as I ran towards Bourke Street were that I was projecting my lack of resolve in getting my own social life back in order. I related to the boy’s ambivalence in making the gesture without putting himself at emotional risk. In the same vein, by facilitating a relationship, albeit for a third party, I was perhaps giving a nod to the value of connection and taking a step towards doing something about it in my own life.
That said—and I acknowledge my personal situation played a role—I think there’s a broader issue about the appropriateness of intervention. Professionally, we obsess about it. We try to give just enough guidance to let patients discover the answers for themselves, and of course to keep them from serious harm. But a tram is not a therapy room.
Felix Lange told me a quite disturbing story about a colleague. This colleague, who has his rooms in the city, was in an elevator in his building and a middle-aged man collapsed. One of the passengers recognised our colleague and said, ‘Aren’t you a doctor?’ and he said, ‘Yes, but I think it would be inappropriate to intervene.’ The colleague—I won’t tell you who he is—was devastated afterwards, but in the moment his habits as a psychiatrist had distorted his sense of appropriate behaviour in the outside world.
The point I’m making is that my own judgement may have been clouded by the same habits, with the opposite result: I intervened when perhaps others would not have.
On the subject of clouded judgement, I suppose I should add that I had had a glass and a half of wine after the peer-review group, something I’d obviously not have done in a therapeutic setting, and I was feeling more adventurous than I had in while.
It only took me a couple of minutes to reach the tram stop on Bourke Street, and I found my man getting on a tram heading east towards Spring Street. I got in the back door: I hadn’t decided what I was going to do, but I thought I might as well keep my options open.
I stood at the back of the tram where I could see him, and felt my phone vibrate. I had a message from an unfamiliar number: Did you find him?
This was the beginning of an exchange of text messages.
Yes. On 86 tram. Haven’t spoken. You?
On 109 to Box Hill. Was waiting on you. 99
99?
Joke. 86 and 99—Get Smart. Spies.
I texted: No point me getting the number if she’s not interested.
There was going to be enough explaining to do without presenting him with a hypothetical situation. I wasn’t sure how much time we had. Either of our quarries could get off their respective trams at any time, and I would draw the line at following him.
She texted back: I think he wrote his number on the paper before he folded it.
I hadn’t seen him do it. I replied: What are you waiting for? But text me asap if she doesn’t open it in front of you.
My boy had his earphones in again and was buried in a book.
It was a few minutes before I got another message. She didn’t open it. You’ve restored my faith in the acuity of shrinks. Now get his number.
Of course, she had my card with FRANZCP on it, though most of the population wouldn’t have known what it stood for.
I texted: Does she want it?
You tell me ;-)
You’ll understand why the girl was reluctant to open the swan. She was the exemplar of the repressed music student: the swan was intact, and that of course was the operative metaphor, especially as all this was happening in the context of a sexual advance.
But would she be brave enough to make a phone call? I suspected not.
I texted: Ask for her phone number. So HE can call HER.
You’re making me do all the work. But roger 86. Stand by.
My boy put his book down, looked out and began to stand up. So far I had not actually intervened, unless you count coaching my friend on the 109. I felt there was little risk I would cause any harm. I intercepted him.
‘Excuse me, I was on the tram from Melbourne University and saw you making the swan.’ He seemed surprised, but not discomfited, and I explained that my friend had given it to the girl when she had been too shy to pick it up. Had he written his phone number inside?
He had not. He had written a short, anonymous note of good wishes that he did not expect her to see, as he thought it unlikely she would unfold the swan, which was in fact a crane. But he didn’t want to pursue a relationship: he had a girlfriend, and he just wanted to do something nice to show the girl she was appreciated. Good karma. Thank you for the thought, Anonymous Psychiatrist on the Tram, but no.
There was another message. Bad luck. Not looking for a relationship. Music etc. She appreciated the efforts. His, yours and mine. Gave me the crane. Thanks for sharing the adventure. Susan.
That’s essentially the story. A complicated intervention, sincerely meant and not badly judged, but ultimately failing to take account of the complexities of the situation. I thought it was a nice reminder that people have to solve their own problems in the real world as well as in the therapy room. No impact, beyond taking me almost to Bundoora on a tram I had never travelled on and Susan out to the wilds of the eastern suburbs.
Yes, there were a couple more messages.
I wouldn’t have opened the swan either. At her age. 99
Have I made you late for anything? 86
I didn’t have any plans.
And that was the end of it from a professional perspective.
Written for the Melbourne Writers Festival ‘17 Minute Stories’, hosted by Yarra Trams, and published online, 2015. Republished in Review of Australian Fiction, vol. 20, no. 5, 2016.
Heartbreak Hotel
The hotel is a half-hour’s walk from the village, which at 3 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon had shown no signs of life. General store closed, possibly permanently, and the pizzeria empty of tables and chairs. Now the hotel, three storeys high, behind iron fences, with unkempt grounds and an empty carpark, gives the impression of being abandoned too.
It’s been that sort of day, the thirty-second of an eighty-day walk from Southern Burgundy to Rome. The Chemin d’Assise, a trail dedicated to St Francis of Assisi, has taken us through the hills of Beaujolais, to more daunting climbs through the French Alps, into Piedmont, and now Liguria and the Apennines. As with the far more popular Camino de Santiago, the way is marked on trees and posts. We now spot the tau symbols, with a stylised dove indicating the direction, without effort. There’s a romance in being able to follow them to a destination still eight hundred and fifty kilometres away.
Unlike the Camino de Santiago, this chemin was not historically a pilgrimage route. It connects a few important Christian sites, from Vézelay to Assisi, using existing hiking trails, paths and roads. In four weeks, during the limited time of year during which the Alps are passable, we’ve seen only five other walkers—two couples and a solo pilgrim, all French, all doing just a two-week section before returning next year to pick up where they left off. We are humbled—and a little saddened—by the efforts that have gone into creating, way-marking and documenting the route and accommodation for so few of us.
On this less-frequented trail, there are few of the pilgrim hostels with their notorious dormitories, cheap meals and paranoia about bedbugs that feature in every camino traveller’s stories. We take what we can find: hotels, bed and breakfasts, agriturismos, apartments in deserted ski villages. And our meals similarly vary from the last-resort supplies carried on our backs to a Michelin-starred restaurant in the heart of Italian wine country, in our hiking clothes.
That meal is four days and a hundred kilometres in the past. In threading its way south and east through the mountains, the chemin takes us down paths and roads and through villages that are not on any tourist itinerary. On the border of Piedmont and Liguria, we’ve walked for hours on an empty highway, a wide road with long bridges and ridge-hugging curves with steep drops, the bitumen fallen into disrepair and the safety barriers rusty. All day, we’ve seen just one vehicle, a motorbike, packed with gear, roaring by without slowing.
So much engineering, so much work. At one time the road must have been busy, a stream of cars forcing pedestrians onto the protected footpaths, which are now closed off.
As we’ve become older, we’ve become more conscious of the things that were expected to last and haven’t. We buy a house and ask ‘What was this for?’ or, more poignantly, recognise exactly what it was for, but know it will never be used for that again. As a teenager, I was an amateur radio enthusiast. My old transmitters and receivers and spare parts, in the event they have survived somewhere, are of no use to anyone, as superseded as Morse code. Cleaning out after a parent’s death, looking at each other: ‘What are we going to do with this?’
The silence on the road adds to the sense of the post-apocalyptic. In Australia, on a sunny day, even in the cities, there is always the sound of birds. A few days ago, we stopped in thick woods, miles from habitation, listened, and heard—almost nothing. More lizards than birds. Since then, we have felt their absence.
The hotel was the only option listed in our guide, but it wasn’t on any of the online booking sites, and there was no response to my email. Finally, someone picked up the phone. Yes, there was a room. She hung up without taking my name.
The door is locked, but a young woman eventually appears and lets us in. We squeeze past bucket, mop and cleaning products on the stairs, boots in hand and backpacks still on. She doesn’t take our passports, or write anything, but we establish that dinner will be at seven-thirty.
The room is basic but clean and has the threadbare essentials. The hot tap doesn’t work and the shower fitting is broken. Our host has just one message for us, in sign language: ‘If you go out, don’t leave the light on.’
At 7.30 p.m., precisely, we’re downstairs, hungry. No sign of life behind the bar or in the grand dining room where one table for two and two tables for four are set with white linen tablecloths, nice silver and old-style claret glasses. The décor is faded, maybe 1970s, and there’s a big fireplace, not in use, though it would add both physical and atmospheric warmth. The bar shelves are almost empty: just a bottle of Campari, a couple of whiskies, some beer and soft drink standing uncooled.
