‘Explain it to me,’ I’d said.
‘Do you need to understand it to love it? You think it’s beautiful. That’s enough,’ he said, and closed the book. ‘Proof that you don’t hate all poetry.’
He closed his eyes and I took the book from his sleeping fingers and read the poem again.
Tonight, I see the words and phrases that Henry has underlined over the years. I see also that other people have done the same, marking their loved ideas. Back in Year 8 I didn’t notice those markings. I didn’t notice the title page, either, but tonight, I read the inscription:
Dear E, I have left this book in the library, because I cannot bear to keep it, and I cannot throw it away. F
I know without any real proof that E is dead. I know that some of the lines on the love song are hers. She has been on the same page as me, the same page as Henry, and she has loved the same words that we have loved.
I stop being angry with Henry. I sit on the floor and read over the poem. I hear it in Henry’s voice. I think strange things as I read. How this copy of the book holds the memory of that night with Henry, and the memory of E and F, and the memory of countless other people, I suppose.
I decide to wait for Henry to come home. I take the copy of Cloud Atlas out of the window display, put the five dollars for it on the counter, take it over to the fiction couch, and start to read.
Cloud Atlas
by David Mitchell
Note found on title page, undated
Dear Grace, on your first day of university.
All men (and women) have the desire to know – Aristotle (and Dad) xxx
Enjoy the journey. It’s wild and a little confusing, but good, I hope.
Henry
it should be raining when she tells me
While I drive Martin home, I think about the argument I had with Rachel, which leads to thoughts about her in general, which leads me to the greater mystery of what happened to her and why she’s come back so angry with me and the whole world.
‘She used to be really something,’ I say to Martin. ‘She killed everyone in races at the swimming carnival. She won the science prize every year and the maths prize, till Amy arrived. Ask her anything about science and she knows the answer. She wants to study fish in the deep sea, the ones that live in complete darkness.’
‘I’m always worried about shark attacks,’ Martin says.
‘I know, right? But she’s not afraid.’
I can see her, three years ago, crouching, ready to jump at the starter’s gun. She hit the water and turned into one smooth line. ‘She doesn’t swim anymore,’ I say to Martin, who’s only half listening because he’s staring out of the window, dreaming about George, no doubt.
‘What?’ he asks.
‘She usually swims in the mornings,’ I say. ‘But her hair, it’s never wet.’
He nods, but he doesn’t understand. Rachel out of the water isn’t Rachel.
When we’re close, Martin directs me to his house, which is over the river on an avenue lined with trees. It’s a weatherboard with a huge fig tree in the front yard. Beyond the tree, I see two women sitting on the veranda. ‘My mums,’ he says, and I give them a wave as he gets out of the car. I miss my parents being together like that.
This side of town reminds me of Amy, because of the way she talked about it. She’s never really gotten used to living on my side of town and I can see why. I love it, but the streets aren’t graceful like they are over here.
I think about her all the way back over the bridge. I think about the possibility of her realising that Greg is an idiot, and the way she touched my arm before she left the bookshop. I think about how, so far, she’s always come back to me in the end. And so, on the way home, I make a detour down her street.
I don’t sit on the steps of her apartment building and wait. I leave a note in her letterbox: I just don’t think he’s good enough for you, that’s all. Henry.
Rachel’s there when I arrive. She’s reading Cloud Atlas, squinting at the pages in the dimness.
‘I thought you didn’t read fiction,’ I say, turning on the light so she can see.
‘Maybe I’m changing my ways.’
Cloud Atlas is a set of stories from different times, and Rachel asks me if they’re interconnected. ‘How does it all fit together?’ This is what Rachel does with fiction – she reads the last page first, she asks me for spoilers. She googles to find out the meaning. ‘Is it a novel, or a set of short stories? Just tell me that much.’
‘No,’ I tell her, and instead of arguing, she marks her page with a slip of paper.
‘Walk with me?’ she asks, and I head out with her, into the night.
We take the route we took when we were in Year 9 and it was hot and we couldn’t sleep. Down High Street, walking a huge block back up to the bookshop. Around again if we felt like it, which was almost every time.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘About the party. I started cataloguing tonight. I’ll try to finish it all.’ She smiles. ‘Sorry about the drink.’
I tell her about Greg and the hose and she laughs. ‘I should have stuck around. You know he used to dislocate body parts to impress girls. He told me in Year 9 that he could dislocate his penis.’
‘There’s no bone in there. Is there a bone in there?’
‘The adult body has two hundred and six bones, and not one of them is there, Henry.’
‘So what’s he dislocating?’
‘This is a mystery I do not need solved,’ she says, and hits the button as we stop at the lights.
‘I haven’t been myself lately,’ she says, balancing back on her heels. ‘Cal died ten months ago. He drowned.’
Then the lights change, and we cross the road.
I have this stupid thought that it should be raining when she tells me. It should be a different kind of night. It should be starless. It should be bleak. It’s the most terrible news I’ve ever heard, and I can’t quite make myself believe it.
I think about the last time I saw him. He came in looking for books on the ocean. I remember he bought a book that I’d found in a charity shop – The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck. I hadn’t read it. I’d bought it because I’d liked Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath.
Cal told me the book was about an expedition to the Gulf of California that Steinbeck had made with his closest friend, Ed Ricketts. They went to collect and observe marine life on the coast, and although I never got around to reading the book, and I’ve forgotten most of what he told me, I haven’t forgotten the part about the friendship between a writer and a scientist. It felt right, the balance between those two things. I don’t know much about Steinbeck or Ricketts, but I could imagine a scientist and a poet collecting specimens, drawing them, observing them from two different poles of life. I imagined one sparking the thoughts of the other.
I imagined them sitting on the boat at dusk, sunburnt, going over their thoughts from the day. Talking late into the night, and really understanding something about the world with the help of science and literature. Like maybe they were half of each other and they were always destined to be friends.