The Tent (6 page)

Take Charge

I)

–          Sir, their cannons have blown a hole in the ship. It’s below the waterline. Water is pouring into the hold, Sir.

–          Don’t just stand there, you blockhead! Cut a piece of canvas, dive down, patch it!

–          Sir, I can’t swim.

–          Bloody hell and damn your eyes, what wetnurse let you go to sea? No help for it, I’ll have to do it myself. Hold my jacket. Put out that fire. Clear away those spars.

–          Sir, my leg’s been shot off.

–          Well do the best you can.

II)

–          Sir, their anti-tank missiles have shredded the left tread on our tank.

–          Don’t just sit there, you nitwit! Take a wrench, crawl underneath the tank, fix it!

–          Sir, I’m a gunner, not a mechanic. Anyway that wouldn’t work.

–          Why in hell do they send me useless twits like you? No help for it, I’ll have to do it myself. Cover me with your machine gun. Stand by with grenades. Hand me that spanner.

–          Sir, my arm’s been burnt off.

–          Well do the best you can.

III)

–          Sir, their diabolical worm virus has infected our missile command system. It’s eating the software like candy.

–          Don’t just lounge there, you dickhead! Get going with the firewalls, or whatever you use.

–          Sir, I’m a screen monitor, not a troubleshooter.

–          Shit in a bucket, what do they think we’re running here, a beauty parlour? If you can’t do it, where’s the nerdy spot-faced geek who can?

–          Sir, it was him wrote the virus. He was not a team player, Sir. The missiles have already launched and they’re heading straight for us.

–          No help for it, I’ll have to do it myself. Hand me that sledgehammer.

–          Sir, we’ve got sixty seconds.

–          Well do the best you can.

IV)

–          Sir, the makorin has malfunctioned and set off the pizzlewhistle. That has saddammed the glopzoid plapoodle. It may be the work of hostile nanobacons.

–          Don’t just hover there, you clonedrone! Dopple the magmatron, reboot the fragebender, and insert the hi-speed crockblade with the pessimal-point attachment! That’ll captcha the nasty little biobots!

–          Sir, the magmatron is not within my area of expertise.

–          What pixelwit deployed you? No help for it, I’ll have to do it myself. Hand me the mutesuck blandplaster!

–          Sir, I have been brain-napped. My brain is in a jar in Uzbekistan, guarded by a phalanx of virtual gonkwarriors. I am speaking to you via simulation hologram.

–          Well do the best you can.

v)

–          Sir, the wild dogs have dug their way into the food cache and they’re eating the winter supplies.

–          Don’t just squat there, you layabout! Pick up your stone axe and bash them on the head!

–          Sir, these are not ordinary wild dogs. They are red-eyed demon-spirit dogs, sent by the angry ancestors. Anyway, my stone axe has a curse on it.

–          By my mother’s bones, what did I do to deserve such a useless duck-turd brother’s nephew’s son as you? No help for it, I’ll have to do it myself. Recite the red-eyed demon-spirit dog-killing charm and hand me my consecrated sacred-fire-hardened spear.

–          Sir, they’ve torn my throat out.

–          Well do the best you can.

Post-Colonial

We all have them: the building with the dome, late Victorian, solid masonry, stone lions in front of it; the brick houses, three storey, with or without fretwork, wood, or painted iron, which now bear the word
Historic
on tasteful enamelled or bronze plaques and can be visited most days except Monday; the roses, big ones, of a variety that were not here before. Before what? Before the ships landed, we all had ships landing; before the men in beaver hats, sailor hats, top hats, hats anyway, got out of the ships; before the Native inhabitants shot the men in hats with arrows or befriended them and saved them from starvation, we all had Native inhabitants. Arrows or not, it didn’t stop the men in hats, or not for long, and they had flags too, we all had flags, flags that were not the same flags as the flags we have now. The Native inhabitants did not have hats or flags, or not as such, and so something had to be done. There are the pictures of the things being done, the before and after pictures you might say, painted by the painters who turned up right on cue, we all had painters. They painted the Native inhabitants in their colourful, hatless attire, they painted the men in hats, they painted the wives and children of the man in hats, once they had wives and children, once they had three-storey brick houses to put them in. They painted the brave new animals and birds, plentiful then, they painted the landscapes, before and after, and sometimes during, with axes and fire busily at work, you can see some of these paintings in the Historic houses and some of them in the museums.

We go into the museums, where we muse. We muse about the time before, we muse about the something that was done, we muse about the Native inhabitants, who had a bad time of it at our hands despite arrows, or, conversely, despite helpfulness. They were ravaged by disease: nobody painted that. Also hunted down, shot, clubbed over the head, robbed, and so forth. We muse about these things and we feel terrible.
We did that,
we think,
to them.
We say the word
them
, believing we know what we mean by it; we say the word
we
, even though we were not born at the time, even though our parents were not born, even though the ancestors of our ancestors may have come from somewhere else entirely, some place with dubious hats and with a flag quite different from the one that was wafted ashore here, on the wind, on the ill wind that (we also muse) has blown us quite a lot of good. We eat well, the lights go on most of the time, the roof on the whole does not leak, the wheels turn round.

As for
them
, our capital cities have names made from their names, and so do our brands of beer, and some but not all of the items we fob off on tourists. We make free with the word
authentic
. We are enamoured of hyphens, as well: our word, their word, joined at the hip. Sometimes they turn up in our museums, without hats, in their colourful clothing from before, singing authentic songs, pretending to be themselves. It’s a paying job. But at moments, from time to time, at dusk perhaps, when the moths and the night-blooming flowers come out, our hands smell of blood. Just the odd whiff.
We did that, to them.

But who are
we
now, apart from the question
Who are we now?
We all share that question. Who are we, now, inside the
we
corral, the
we
palisade, the
we
fortress, and who are they? Is that
them
, landing in their illicit boats, at night? Is that them, sneaking in here with outlandish hats, with flags we can’t even imagine? Should we befriend them or shoot them with arrows? What are their plans, immediate, long-term, and will these plans of theirs serve us right? It’s a constant worry, this
we
, this
them
.

And there you have it, in one word, or possibly two: post-colonial.

Heritage House

The Heritage House is where we keep the Heritage. It wasn’t built for that – it was once a place where people really lived – but the way things needed to be done in it was cumbersome, what with the water coming out of a well, and the light coming out of oil lamps and tallow candles, and the heat coming out of a stone fireplace, and then there were the chamber pots to be emptied and the tin bathtubs to be filled. Also it was so hard to keep the rooms clean. So people built newer houses, with plumbing and so forth, but the Heritage House was not torn down, and when we decided to have some Heritage we agreed that the Heritage House was a good place to store the stuff.

We spruced it up, of course: fresh paint, brass polish, floor wax. Women were hired to show people around: they are adept at smiling and giving explanations, and nodding. Among us, it is thought that if men perform too many of these activities their faces will crack all over and peel off, and there will be nothing but gristle underneath.

The people who visited the Heritage House were mostly women as well. They wanted the explanations that could be found there – why some chairs were higher than other chairs, in the days of Heritage, and who did the scrubbing of the tin bathtubs and the emptying of the chamber pots, and how the water used to make its way out of the well. They wanted to know how things got the way they are now, and they hoped that the explanations given by the smiling women in the Heritage House might help.

Men didn’t care so much about those subjects, and so they didn’t go. Also they said that Heritage ought to mean things that have been inherited, passed down from father to son as it were, but since nobody did the so-called heritage things any more, or even thought about them except when they were in the Heritage House getting nodded and smiled at and bored to death with explanations, Heritage House was a misnomer in the first place and they didn’t see why they should have to pay taxes to keep the joint going.

Over time, the Heritage House filled up. It was such a convenient place to stash things you no longer had a use for but didn’t want to throw out. More and more Heritage was crammed in. An annex was built, in the style of the original edifice, with a tea room in it where you could rest your feet and relax – Heritage could be exhausting – and more female guides were hired, and research was done on authentic costumes for them to wear. But then there was a change of government and funds were cut. Perhaps some of the Heritage should be disposed of, it was said. But by now there was so much Heritage jammed in there that just sorting it out would take much more money than anyone wanted to spend. So nothing was done.

I went to the Heritage House myself, the other week. It was in disrepair. The windows were opaque with dust, the front steps were a disgrace: it was clear to see that nothing had been scrubbed off or fixed up in years. I rang the rusted bell for a long time before anyone answered it. Finally the door opened. I could see a long hallway, piled to the ceiling with boxes and crates. Each box was labelled:
CORSETS. MIXMASTERS. THUMBSCREWS. CALCULATORS. LEATHER MASKS. CARPET SWEEPERS. CHASTITY BELTS. SHOE BRUSHES. MANACLES. ORANGE STICKS. MISCELLANEOUS.

From behind the door an old woman appeared. She was wearing a chenille bathrobe. She let me in, pushing aside a stack of yellowing newspapers. The place stank of mouse droppings and mildew.

She nodded at me, she smiled. She hadn’t lost the knack. Then she launched into a stream of explanations; but the language she spoke was obsolete, and I couldn’t make out a word.

Bring Back Mom: An Invocation

Bring back Mom,

bread-baking Mom, in her crisp gingham apron

just like the aprons we sewed for her

in our Home Economics classes

and gave to her for a surprise

on Mother’s Day –

Mom, who didn’t have a job

because why would she need one,

who made our school lunches –

the tuna sandwich, the apple,

the oatmeal cookies wrapped in wax paper –

with the rubber band she’d saved in a jar;

who was always home when we got there

doing the ironing

or something equally boring,

who smiled the weak smile of a trapped drudge

as we slid in past her,

heading for the phone,

filled with surliness and contempt

and the resolve never to be like her.

Bring back Mom.

who wanted to be a concert pianist

but never had the chance

and made us take piano lessons,

which we resented –

Mom, whose aspic rings

and Jello salads we ate with greed,

though later derided –

pot-roasting Mom, expert with onions

though anxious in the face of garlic,

who received a brand-new frying pan

from us each Christmas –

just what she wanted –

Mom, her dark lipsticked mouth

smiling in the black-and-white

soap ads, the Aspirin ads, the toilet paper ads,

Mom, with her secret life

of headaches and stained washing

and irritated membranes –

Mom, who knew the dirt,

and hid the dirt, and did the dirty work,

and never saw herself

or us as clean enough –

and who believed

that there was other dirt

you shouldn’t tell to children,

and didn’t tell it,

which was dangerous only later.

We miss you, Mom,

though you were reviled to great profit

in magazines and books

for ruining your children

–          that would be us –

by not loving them enough,

by loving them too much,

by wanting too much love from them,

by some failure of love –

(Mom, whose husband left her

for his secretary and paid alimony,

Mom, who drank in solitude

in the afternoons, watching
TV
,

who dyed her hair an implausible

shade of red, who flirted

with her friends’ husbands at parties,

trying with all her might

not to sink below the line

between chin up and despair –

and who was carted away

and locked up, because one day

she began screaming and wouldn’t stop,

and did something very bad

with the kitchen scissors –

But that wasn’t you, not you, not

the Mom we had in mind, it was

the nutty lady down the street –

it was just some lady

who became a casualty

of unseen accidents,

and then a lurid story . . . )

Come back, come back, oh Mom,

from craziness or death

or our own damaged memory –

appear as you were:

Queen of the waffle iron,

generous dispenser of toothpaste,

sorceress of Mercurochrome,

player of games of smoky bridge

at which you won second-prize dishtowels,

brooder over the darning egg

that hatched nothing but socks,

boiler of horrible porridge –

climb back onto the cake-mix package,

look brisk and competent, the way you used to –

If only we could call you –

Here Mom, Here Mom –

and you would come clip-clopping

on your daytime Cuban heels,

smelling of sink and lilac,

(your bum encased in the foundation garment

you’d peel off at night

with a sigh like a marsh exhaling),

saying,
What is it now,

and we could catch you

in a net, and cage you

in your bungalow, where you belong,

and make you stay –

Then everything would be all right

the way it was when we could play

till after dark on spring evenings,

then sleep without fear

because you threw yourself in front of the fear

and stopped it with your body –

And there you’ll be, in your cotton housecoat,

holding a wooden peg

between your teeth, as the washing flaps

on the clothesline you once briefly considered

hanging yourself with –

but forget that! There you’ll be,

singing a song of your own youth

as though no time has passed,

and we can be careless again,

and embarrassed by you,

and ignore you as we used to,

and the holes in the world will be mended.