With not so much writer’s block as writer’s lethargy, I take my place on the verandah in front of the laptop, hoping for an adjective or two to break through the slow, still heat. Wearing your sunglasses, I manage to see through the overcast morning glare, but somehow even the small contained pocket of air around my eyes adds to the heat and my face is soon streaming with tear-like sweat. And perhaps I could cry, if I was capable of that sort of thing any more. God knows that if I were to open my Pandora’s Box, I might find myself beaten by a thousand black wings of misery. But I don’t open that box any more. And Buka is no place for thinking. To sit in that cell-sized room, with its crazed, pastel, laminex paneling and the wracked-lung sound of the air-conditioning unit and to try to think would surely spell ruin for all.
Instead, I get off at the airport and chat to two doctors from Brighton who have come to assist with the diabetes problem. They meet two other wait-meris who have also come from Melbourne to help “the people”, whomsoever they might be. Eventually, I find the hotel bus, and arrive at a sleepy set of bungalows set along a central path of flowers and tropical plants. The reception area looks out onto a slightly septic smelling sea-pond containing several barnacled turtles and a weary school of reef fish, circling the small enclosure. A house girl arrives with a bucket of food scraps and throws them over the side to the fish and the turtles. Eventually, I find Ursula and the afternoon passes in repeat visits to the glacial temperatures of the internet café, fitful napping, erratic text messages to colleagues in Australia and the close stillness of the office. Eventually, Ephraim finds us some chicken and chips (only my ninth consecutive protein and potato meal) which we eat eventually together after staring at impossible plans and mad proposals.
Insanity and I drive on collision courses for each other. The bed, too small even for me, is bordered with a simple wooden frame, against which I manage to knock ankle, elbow and knee. With the air-conditioning on, I block out the sound of island reggae and expectorating locals, but find myself shivering and coughing with a rough, scraped feeling in my lungs. Surrendering to the natural temperature of the airless room, I quickly find myself adhered to the abrasive bed clothes. From outside I can faintly hear the music and beer from the water-view bar, which would surely be more amenable than reading my entire novel in one overheated evening in a pastel cell. Still, experience tells me that the refreshing liberation of one beer can lead to a week’s paranoia as you are tailed with baleful invasiveness by whichever member of staff has decided that your “loose” behaviour at the bar (talking to strangers, being in the bar at all, staying out later than a woman should) merits stalking you in hope of a repeat performance. In the morning, my neck is pleated tight with lumpy pillow and restless sleep.
Now, as I sit watching the overloaded dinghies bouncing through the passage, cutting little curls of white, watching a group of transfixed Papua New Guineans absorbed by Video Hits, I remember that I dreamed of snow. Me, who hates it so, and has never found much more than “cold” and “white” to describe it, as the fitful sleep gave way to the heavy rains with palm-lashing winds and all illuminating sheets of lightening, I dreamed of snow, just as one might wish for deliverance, all banjo twang and release and rescue.
We lie in a large bed, blankets piled atop with weight and purpose. Exposed slivers of skin give warning of the chill in the air, but in the deep bunker of sleep, we don’t notice. Bizarrely, the window is open just a crack and a wicked knife edge of air comes through into the bedroom where we sleep. Soon, one of us makes the ice-footed journey to the main room and starts the fire again, for which the other is grateful, waking to the soft crackling of wood. Returning to the bed, lifting the blankets seems almost an architectural experience, there is such a weight, such a structure to the arrangement. Snuggling against me, you slide your bloodless feet against mine, your cool hands finding my slack and sleep-warm breasts.
God, I’ll never get used to the cold here.
Sure you will.
You kiss the back of my neck with lips so large and tender that I forget everything except butter-soft skin and the broad acre of back. But then I remember that I am not sure at all and later I evaporate from all memories, fleeing back to familiar, warmer shores; everyone comments, with sympathetic sighs, “she just never really liked the snow” or something similar. Without blame they let you know it was never really going to work. Some things, some people, they just have a place, and it belongs to them and they belong to it: you can admire the rainbow glory of your tropical fish, enlivening your home with exotic colour, but one day you find them floating sadly horizontal in the tank.
But this is not the thought for now. For now, there is only the icing sugar dusting of the windows, the lone bare fingers of the trees reaching into a washed grey sky, the quiet outline of the houses against the winter, memories of other evenings matte and faded now against the clean sharp lines of the road recently cleared, all sounds pitched distinct and sharp through air vibrating faster than before, and the two of us, lying in bed.
In the morning, however, there is no memory of this dream of snow, no recollection, only the faint puddle of the reverie evaporating from my body, a gimmicky ice-sculpture melting at some tacky resort buffet.
eleanor j jackson 