Life Underwater. Ken Barris

window opens onto a deep covered porch. There are two beds in it, against opposite walls. They each take a bed and recline against the pillows. They read Youngblood Hawke, each his own copy. They eat cubes of cheddar cheese off the toothpicks, and sip syrupy wine out of crystal glasses, aware of their sophistication.

      “One day,” says David Goldberg, looking up from the book, “I’m going to be a writer.”

      “I’m going to be a dentist,” says Simon. “I’ll pull out all your teeth.”

      “Maybe I’ll be an architect and design your surgery so that the roof collapses on your head.”

      “Maybe you’ll design it wrong, so that the roof collapses on you when you make a tooth appointment for the wrong day when I’m not there, and kill yourself.”

      “When I’m a writer I’m going to write a book about a stupid dentist who is never at his surgery because he’s worried that a writer whose teeth he wants to pull out is really going to be an engineer who will design his surgery so badly that it will fall on him and crush him to death.”

      “Architect, not engineer.”

      “What are you talking about?”

      “You said you’re going to be an architect, not an engineer.”

      “I said I’m going to be a writer, not an architect. Don’t you ever listen?”

      They listen to the wind, and read Youngblood Hawke. The wind howls warm and strong, subsiding and gathering again. It blows across the Mozambique current and piles up bluebottles and deathly jellyfish into Algoa Bay, against the leonine sand of Pollock Beach, Bird Rock, Humewood, King’s Beach, where every animal and thing that beaches as the wind blows can be picked up and examined days later by anyone who cares to do it. It blows in seaweed and Portuguese men-of-war, nautilus shells and squid and moss-backed turtles. It blows in a writhing arabesque of ribbonfish, oarfish, giant, slow sunfish which eat the poison stingers of the jellyfish and yet survive, and perhaps even a placid whale shark or two. All this is in the pages of Youngblood Hawke, and more.

      Eli

      My account of Jude’s cage is patchy, but this is what I recall. It begins life as a birdcage, which he assembles himself at a very young age. He makes it from slats of pine and chicken wire. It is five cubits by seven cubits by three, approximately the height of a boy of a certain age, or a bit more, and generous in length and depth. The cage is in the back garden, near our guava tree, not far from my father’s bed of kohlrabi and celeriac, green peppers and artichokes.

      The purpose of the cage is to house Jude’s collection of parakeets, namely two breeding pairs. He reads up on breeding boxes, makes them, mounts them, and sets the birds free in their palace of dreams. Yet the history of this cage will be brief and sad. He forgets to feed his parakeets or give them water. They are found dead one hot afternoon, lying on the ground with their feet up, four chartreuse fragments. Rose is furious, and there is great recrimination. She lectures Jude on responsibility and care, and on money wasted. He protests his surly innocence and blames other people. She and Jude badger each other to exhaustion. It goes on for days. She appeals to Archie, who declares that the boy is meshuga, what do you expect? The matter comes to rest at last, churlish and unquiet, stirring under the surface of our green velour study, our dining room, our red porch.

      Months go by. Pine slats weather in the rain, chicken wire loses its shine. Spring comes again, and summer, and Jude decides to collect butterflies. He knows they are short-lived and cannot be fed. He is quick and adept, he has a little net. He stalks lepidoptera in the garden and in the field. Soon the cage is filled with diverse marvels such as zebra blues, red-tip butterflies, blue-eyed pierrots, geranium bronzes, gigantic monarchs, and citrus swallowtails. They turn the cage into a garden of bright panic. Children from the neighbourhood come to admire this treasure. They praise the idea or scorn it, some arguing that butterflies should be free. Others insist they are just insects, on the same trajectory as crickets or fleas, lives without significance. There is great debate. The butterflies flap about and die, more are added. Soon the ground in the cage is littered with fading, desiccated wings, while new acquisitions decorate its air and space which suddenly – and no one knows quite how – become tawdry.

      I cannot recall exactly how or when hamsters take over the cage, but at a certain unclear stage, they become its next inhabitants.

      At first they are golden hamsters. They are allowed into the playroom at times, its three exit doors secure. They scurry about, we handle them, stroke them, play with them. It is a golden age of golden hamsters. Jude even allows Simon to handle these creatures, though he nearly crushes one by taking a backward step at the wrong moment. Then, tired or bored, whichever comes first, we return them to the cage in the back yard.

      Jude feeds them religiously, determined not to betray his responsibility. Yet gradually, unremarked, they become brown hamsters and then grey. The bronze age of hamsters is born. They are never allowed back into the playroom. They breed and multiply, they defecate. Their cage is burdensome to clean, it stinks most of the time. Archie complains about the smell when he potters around in his vegetable bed. He reminds Jude that the cage is just outside his bedroom window. Jude asks if he can smell it in the bedroom, and rests his case. Not yet, rejoins Archie, but it will get worse. The acrimony mounts, there are quarrels, disagreements, sulks, tantrums. No iron age of hamsters follows. They disappear too, simply vanish from recollection.

      Later comes a season of rabbits – I remember a black one, a piebald one, and their eyes gleaming satanic in the beam of a torch, but not much else. I do remember the tiring arguments, Jude digging his heels in, fighting to get his rabbits in the first place, then to keep them. I remember my mother’s fury and our father’s irritation. I remember Archie pursing his lips, looking disappointed, exasperated at yet more unreason from his first-born.

      The rabbits find it intolerable. They begin plotting their freedom, whispering when our backs are turned, nibbling mildewed lettuce in contrived innocence when they think we’re watching. One night they break out – who knows how? – and that is the last we see of them. No doubt they’re killed by dogs, taken by owls, run over. It has nothing, I assure you, it has nothing to do with Rose or Archie Machabeus, they would never do anything so decisive or so devious. Simon most probably left the door of the cage unlatched one day. In any event, Jude accuses him of doing exactly that, and lets the blame rest there.