Eating the Underworld Page 4

  It seemed to Rachel that she felt what they said. Not in the sense of experiencing emotions, but in the sense of touching. Rachel felt like a blind woman brushing fingers delicately over the objects offered to her, trying to ascertain their texture, their density, their shape; trying to feel the force lines, as invisible as gravity or magnetic waves. Rachel believed that if she allowed these objects to rest, held in her hands in some way that she could not define, they would eventually begin to assert themselves. They would move from a jumble to a pattern, aligning themselves in the way that metal filings aligned themselves to the true call of the magnet.

  Rachel never knew how this was going to happen. It was a mystery to her as much as it was to the person with her. She knew, certainly, the technical aspects of her craft. She understood about narrative structure, theme and counter theme; but this, the final issue, would remain always mysterious, unable to be communicated in any texts or classrooms. It was based on some communion, some curious alchemy between herself and the person sitting with her, and she saw sometimes that it enabled them to turn the solar winds around, to slowly shift their own magnetic home.

  Rachel wrote a regular piece for one of the Saturday papers. It was called ‘Tales for our Time’. They were short pieces, compressed, in the way that poetry and dreams are compressed. Rachel sometimes felt that she was dreaming onto the page. She thought of them as fairytales. Fairytales for adults.

  Rachel knew that as people grew up, something happened to their memories of fairytales. They became cloudy, tinged with a roseate glow. They forgot the real and terrible details of the stories. They forgot that the witch had wanted to roast Hansel and Gretel in the oven and then eat them. They forgot that Snow White’s stepmother had wanted to kill her and that her father had been no protection at all. They forgot the rage, the desolation, the primal terror. They forgot the heated iron shoes. Rachel thought they forgot because they wanted to forget what children truly knew.

  Rachel came from a home where God did not exist. He had died in the concentration camps—from where her parents had emerged, skeletal, but somehow alive. Returning to their native Czechoslovakia was not an option. They needed to be as far from what they used to call home as water would take them. They picked the furthest country they could think of. And then they picked the furthest place on it. And so they came to Tasmania.

  The first of the precious children—Rachel’s sister—arrived in the first year of the new country. Then, two years later, there was Rachel. The two grew up with nothing denied them. That was where the fairytale was supposed to begin.

  In Rachel’s family, the Holocaust was not much mentioned. It was deduced; the gap in the family history, the absent relatives. It was nevertheless understood that after the camps, who could believe in anything but the random dice of the universe? God was not denounced; he was simply not talked about. As a child, she had had untutored fantasies about God, but only as a presence akin to the elderly senior-school headmaster. Stern but not omnipotent, detached from the everyday life of the junior school.

  In Anthropology 1, Rachel had learned that men had created gods in order to explain the mysteries of the natural world—how the sun rose, why the crops grew. Rachel did not believe this. She believed that men had created gods in order to protect themselves from evil, from darkness, from the night without stars; in order to understand what was beyond understanding.

  That was why Rachel loved fairytales. In fairytales, evil was punished and good won out. What could you do in a world where this did not happen? She loved the language of fairytales written as they were in the third person; stories to pass on from teller to teller, everybody’s property and yet belonging to the listener alone. People rarely had names in these stories. They were the King, the Stepmother, the youngest Prince. To name these people would be to tie them down to the particular. They were apart from that. They had been there a hundred years ago and they would be here a hundred years hence.

  Rachel thought that stories helped you to understand. That was Rachel’s passion, to understand. Her sister wanted only to explain. She could explain anything. She could explain things so well that she could make you believe that night was day.

  Rachel did not believe explanations were so easy. That was why she loved the old stories. On the outside they seemed so simple, but once you wandered inside them, they were intricate—a detail here, a detail there; things you hadn’t noticed at first, that made you pause; odd images, echoes, connections, opening like doors into unexpected places. The longer you stayed there, the more you saw and the more there was to understand.

  In the old days, fairytales were what ushered in the night. In those days, day was day and night was night. And it was the storyteller who linked them, guiding the audience from twilight into dark-time; into the rich, strange meanderings of dream. Rachel knew that one of the original names for fairytales had been ‘wonder tales’. She loved that name. That was what fairytales did best, she thought. They made you wonder.

  Rachel had been asked to collect her columns of tales for a book. She had them assembled on the table in front of her now. She was struck by the odd shapes they formed. Some were long and some were short. Some wove in and out of themselves. They were pieces, she could see now. Like the shards of diamond in a mosaic, separated from, but reflecting off, each other. When she wrote them, she had seen only each single piece. Now she could see there was something more they were trying to say.

  At university, Rachel had learned about Gestalt, the principle of closure in perception. If you showed someone a circle with a piece in the circumference left out, they would perceive it as complete, the mind filling in the gap. Rachel found this oddly moving. The optimism of the mind. The belief in wholeness. Rachel was fascinated by gaps, by blanks, by vacuums, by what was missing. Even the mind created itself across gaps. The spaces between synapses—the nerve endings of neurons, those curling, communicating tendrils of the brain. They never touched each other, sending their messages out instead into the electro-chemical aether of the brain.

  Rachel shuffled the tales around on the table. They sat separately from each other, a series of clues. Rachel waited quietly. She knew that if she was patient enough, they would somehow assemble. Each one leaning toward the other, an unfinished circle in bloom.

  Rachel imagined that inside the brain there would be an absence of light, a darkness deeper than the most isolated country night. She imagined the synpases, those fabulous, delicate creations, each separated from the other: the storytellers, passing their messages on and on through the dark.

  BEFORE WE LEAVE GREG’S ROOMS, there is another blood test. This is the second time in one day, and my veins are not thrilled. They decide it would be more amusing to play hide-and-seek. The nurse does not share their sense of fun. She is staring at them—or where she thinks they are—with a look I will come to see often. Luckily, neither they nor I have any idea right now, of just how often.

  With the trapping, catching and milking bit over and my veins released to muse sorrowfully on this rough new world in which they find themselves, the nurse hands me a sheaf of papers. They contain my travel orders—what time to arrive, what supplies to bring, what to eat, or rather what not to eat and how long not to eat it for.

  They remind me of those boarding school lists in Enid Blyton school stories. And indeed, underneath the capable and resourceful adult I know myself to be, I am aware of another presence—a tremulous wariness, the away-from-home vulnerability of a child on her first day of school, in foreign and unwelcoming territory.

  These days, the buzzword for patient is ‘consumer’. We’re told to stride into medical consultations as an equal partner. It’s a fine idea in principle, but the truth is that no matter how activist or assertive we are in the doctor’s office, those of us grappling with a life-threatening illness have been shaken into vivid contact with the frailties and fears beneath. The forthright discussion of treatments, trials, choices and statistics only subsumes a portion of what is hap
pening in that room.

  Unspoken is the tender, terrifying knowledge that it is our bodies we are talking about, our delicate, human selves who will live this. Furthermore, even though we may have educated ourselves on our illness, our doctors carry the authority of years of study and experience. They hold the keys to hospital admissions, to surgical decisions, drug prescriptions and treatment possibilities. Without them, or other physicians, we cannot gain access to these. While we are thrown into territory we have never visited before, they are at home here. Illness is their kingdom. We have been cast ashore on it with only the clothes we are wearing.

  And even though we communicate with them confidently and assertively, we are always vulnerable. We are vulnerable to the power of their words or the lift of an eyebrow. An ill-chosen phrase can elicit in us a powerful fear, a foreboding that lingers, even after we tell ourselves that it was nonsense, meaningless, that they don’t know and shouldn’t have spoken. They wear the cloak of the medicine man and their words, we fear, may have the power to sing us to death.

  Martin and I drive home, talking about what needs to be done before next week’s hospitalisation. It’s an odd place that I’ve landed in, an in-between place where nothing has been confirmed or denied. Although it is highly probable that I have cancer (Greg tells me afterwards that he was certain at that initial meeting that it was late-stage ovarian cancer), I won’t know for sure until after the operation. So it seems premature to take on the mantle of cancer patient. At the same time, I can’t assume that it will turn out to be benign. It’s a limbo. In a way it feels as if I have stepped out of the normal world and into a waiting area. There is a stillness around it; the opportunity to arrange things, to prepare yourself, to think about what you need. And always, the knowledge that something momentous is going to happen. And for once, you know exactly when.

  If someone had asked me what I would have felt in this situation, I think I would have answered: panic. But I don’t feel panic. There is fear, of course; but what I feel more than fear is determination—to get through this in the best possible way and survive it. With this determination comes a kind of calm. This calmness is not in any way the same as relaxation. It is a bunched-up calmness; centred, focused. The calmness that comes with a readying for action. The stillness of the runner on the starting block.

  To my surprise, I am not frightened by the prospect of my own death. What terrifies me is the impact that it would have on Amantha. She is sixteen, my adored daughter, and the thought of her pain is quite simply unbearable. I cannot allow this to happen to her. And I cannot, absolutely cannot, allow myself to believe that I may be impotent to prevent it.

  I remember long ago taking her for a walk in her stroller. A dog growled from a gateway as we passed and I was instantly on the defensive. It retreated. On the way back, I could feel the adrenaline bubbling as we approached the dog’s driveway and I knew that I, the animal lover who was always nursing strays, would kick it to death if it even looked like coming close to Amantha.

  I’m young, I tell myself, as I contemplate the deadly statistics on this cancer. I’m fit, I have inner and outer resources. If anyone can beat this, I can. And I determine that I will. What else can you do, after all?

  At home, I tell Amantha that I have to have an operation. One of the things that is important to me this week is not to panic Amantha unnecessarily. I know that if I’m calm, she will be. I tell her I have a lump that needs to be removed. They don’t know what it is. Could it be cancer? she asks. It’s possible, I say, but if it is, the doctor will cut it out and I’ll have treatment and be okay. She nods at this and seems to take it in her stride. Later, a few days after the operation, I ask her whether she was anxious about what the surgery would show and she says, ‘No. You were so calm, I didn’t think there was anything to worry about.’ Oscar time for me, I think.

  Back home again, after the doctor’s appointment, Martin takes care of the recalcitrant alarm. I comfort Tabatha, our dog, who is ready for life as a Valium addict after huddling through two hours of non-stop siren. Probably half the street would agree with her.

  I think about what I’ll need for hospital. A friend whom I spoke to yesterday suggested I bring short nighties that button up at the front. They make you easier to access for the doctors and nurses, she explains. I search my wardrobe, but don’t have any nighties that meet these medico-friendly specifications. Despite mixed feelings about my incipient career as an obliging parcel, it seems a good enough reason for Martin and I to head off to the shops. And anyway, it’s a task that is soothing. The city is so familiar and buying a new nightie makes me think of travel and packing and that marvellously self-sufficient sense of starting out on an adventure with your kit-bag freshly packed and carrying all that you’ll need.

  As I get into the car and prepare to put on the seatbelt, I am suddenly aware of the need to protect the mass in my abdomen. A doctor friend has already told me to quit the gym in case I rupture it. I put the seatbelt on carefully and stretch it out, so that it isn’t pressing on my tummy. It is exactly what I used to do when I was pregnant. I sit back, one hand keeping the seatbelt in place, the other circling my abdomen. I feel oddly as if I am carrying a glass baby.

  It is disconcerting to be in the city. I have walked through cities in foreign countries and felt like a stranger, but I have never felt such a peculiar and unexpected sense of dislocation as I do now. Here, in streets I have walked through thousands of times, in my home town, I am a stranger, more totally than anything I have ever experienced. The crowds around me are in one country and I am, irrevocably, in another.

  I know that statistically speaking, some of them must currently be dealing with grief, pain and tragedy, but that is not how it seems. Right now, they seem to float through the store, cushioned by stability and sameness; by the sheer ordinariness of everyday life. They are like some magical elite—the rich, in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. And I have my nose pressed to the window, wishing I could be in there.

  At the counter, as the salesgirl wraps the nightie, she says in that toneless, automated way, ‘Are you having a good day?’

  I resist the urge to reply brightly, ‘Yes, I’ve just been told I have cancer.’

  Back home, there’s a lot to do. I have to cancel patients, lectures and other appointments during the next few weeks. Greg has told me that even if it isn’t cancer, the recovery from surgery will take six weeks. I remember all the times I’ve found it difficult to organise a two-week gap in my schedule and worried about how to fit my patients in around it. Now I have to clear triple that amount of time and it seems ridiculously easy. It’s amazing how having no choice clears the mind.

  I also have to ring colleagues and ask them to cover for me regarding patients who may need to see someone while I’m unavailable. Then there are a few close friends and family to tell. But one of the first things I have to do is make myself an hypnotic tape.

  It’s a couple of decades since I did my training in hypnosis. My background was as an insight-oriented psychotherapist and the hypnosis course seemed like a bit of light relief. My readiness to see it as entertaining nonsense can be explained by my first encounter with it.

  I am a twelve-year-old schoolgirl sitting in class while Miss Davis, my art teacher, drones on. Miss Davis could make an invasion by ten-metre tall insectoid aliens boring. To do the same for art is a snap. Suddenly the class goggles out of its torpor. A boy has fainted. Miss Davis rushes to his side, loosens his collar and fans him anxiously. A couple of classmates are co-opted to carry him out into the corridor. Miss Davis continues the fanning there, accompanying it with the occasional panicky cheeping sound. The class is very excited. This is our first interesting art lesson.

  Suddenly, from beyond the doorway, the cheeping is interrupted by an almighty shriek. Seconds later, Miss Davis re-emerges, puce with rage. The boy is not seen again for the rest of the day.

  When it emerges, the story has us in ecstasy for weeks. On the previous evening our cla
ssmate had been to a performance of Franquin the Great, a stage hypnotist. He’d been foolish enough to volunteer for the stage. He had then followed Franquin’s post-hypnotic suggestions to the letter: ‘At midday tomorrow, you will faint and stay like that for three minutes. You will then wake, grab the first person you see, kiss them on the lips and yell Happy Christmas!’ I suspect the exchange of seasonal greetings was never quite the same for Miss Davis.

  Hypnosis turned out to be totally different to what I had expected. It’s a serious, rigorously researched psychotherapeutic tool; a world away from stage hypnosis. And what we can do therapeutically with hypnosis is far more fascinating than any myth or stage performance.

  At its most essential, hypnosis is a way of unlocking our hidden potential and maximising those strengths and resources we know of already. It is not a method of controlling other people’s minds; instead, it’s a way of learning how to access more of our own. And to top it all off, it’s one of the few things that’s good for you, that actually feels good.

  I’ve worked with hypnosis for over twenty years now, seen thousands of patients and given countless lectures and workshops on it as part of training programs for doctors, psychologists and dentists. I know that it works. And I know that one of the things it can do is help people recover from surgery more rapidly and more smoothly. I know this both from patients I’ve seen and research studies reported in medical and psychological journals. I’m now about to discover it from personal experience.

  What irritates me is that I’d like to go and see me. What I really mean, of course, is that I’d like to go and see someone like me. Unfortunately, at this point, I’m the most experienced person working in this area that I know of. So I’m going to have to do it myself. It means being both patient and therapist in the one parcel. Wistfully, I think of how nice it would be to be guided through this by the kindly, wise, lean-on-me archetypal therapist of my imagination. Then I quit the fantasy and get down to work.