Waiting Read Free

charred fences. Crisp black patterning in the surface of wood. Earlier, as she drove into the district she had been shocked and moved by the silent signs of gravitas. But increasingly now on the darkened spindles of trees − dramatically green foliage.
    Closer, there is more emotional hugging than any party she has seen: and a lot of crying. There are survivors here one year on from the fires and their tears come through for the loss, the un-changing loss, that most of them have and will keep. She had not realised this was in fact a memorial service done the Australian way – secular – as an anniversay gathering, with some guests having lost family or friends, others animals, no less beloved, and property; nearly all have lost property or know those who have.
    Angus knows this awareness is the fire-shadow, how it has fallen heavily over all of the locals. Respect for people’s trauma is para­mount. So there is also quite a lot of booze, casseroles and vivid salads in bowls, but no barbecue – it would be unthinkable – so much sad reason for undemonstrative people to hug and cry and have some time out in this company, and to eat and drink… Their shocking dreams cannot live here and never will; they all know the others at night dream of flames and the terrible smell of all manner of things burning.
    Angus is telling her about the news channels roaming the area for memories of the trauma. How intrusive they are.
    In some ways it’s only right, he says, showing compassion to balance the horror they keep referring to. But it can be bloody ghoulish having them driving around looking for people to inter­view. Horror isn’t a topic, it’s an experience.
    He stops and waves, no, he shakes his hands a bit more.
    I think trauma is… something like a hologram in the nervous system.
    This idea, of holograms, has only just come to him, and he is pleased with it regardless of the gravity behind its use. Jasmin sees his style is to think aloud; even if he is a hands-on working type this man is talking holograms?
    Angus nods to his own thoughts.
    For most people it’s something you can’t see, but they… he indicates the guests at this party… they can see it alright. In each other. And in their own minds.
    They both look back towards the main group of people.
    Sorry, he says to her, I should lighten up a bit. Here we all are – knowing very little about not very much.
    And so Jasmin remembers something.
    Did you know there’s a gang of cosmologists who believe we are not even here? That all of us are holograms. We are being projected from two-dimensional pixels on the furtherest wall of the universe.
    Pixels? You mean we’re like… bits of graffiti stuck onto a wall? And not just any wall but the last wall in existence? Jesus, how whacky. And I thought I worked too hard.
    And he grins at his joke. No, he is no Lawrentian. But she has the last line:
    What they don’t say… is what’s on the other side of the wall.
    Ha!
    His face reddens with welcome laughter. He is ruddy. But some fraction of his ruddiness has previously been bottled. He has been drinking. But, he is sad, he tells her, and no, he is not a local. He’s from South Australia, arrived a few years ago. Unlike the others he does not expect or even want the occasion to cover him, to wear a fire suit of No and Only Us for strangers. Like war suits, for those who have been in wars, so fire suits can be: don’t talk to the others, they won’t understand. And it is true. They won’t.
    When he is silent he has a habit of inspecting his roughened hands, and of scraping the edge of one thumbnail against the other. Every so often one of his out-breaths comes louder. Sometimes he thinks he is a dope. Yet he seems self-reliant, and calm. Something in him has been burnt, all the same.
    Jasmin sees this. She sees as a profession. Semiotics: she is all eyes and thought. But she is