The Cuckoo Colloquium

36 - Pinky Bell

Slipping through the thicket of tall bamboo, pinky Bell was lost in her own thicket of grave thoughts.

'Asano... So that's what this is all about!'

She knew nothing of that war; it was another time, a time that had might as well be prehistoric, with dinosaurs stomping around. Outback's accusations made no sense-His memories were all scarred up, unforgiving, too.

Of course, nothing could be proved, nothing confirmed; wasn't it all cataloged as just some forgotten lore? Besides, there were thousands of Asano's throughout Japan, maybe millions. What was the Japanese spelling of this Colonel's name? Of course, the ignorant Aussie wouldn't even be able to tell her that.

"I look forwards, not backwards," she mumbled in Japanese, watching a plant devour an insect by trapping it, and then dissolving its tissue with acidic fluid in a kind of ritualized slaying.

Yes, her family was in the rubber business, but beyond that she knew precious little. It wasn't like they came home and boasted of their kills like these Western men did. The Japan of seventy years ago never really existed-and even if it had, those times were vulnerable to any sort of distortions, or wrong-headedness. Best just to move on.

Pinky Bell's shoe was flapping again as she entered a shadowed ravine; the glue from the rubber tree had fixed the right sole, but now the left one carped tiredly over the bristly jungle floor. She removed her shoes and socks (even though she knew that putting them on again would be excruciating) and stood in a shallow, gushing stream, letting the cool water mollify her into a tranquil nothingness.

She bent over and looked at her toe in the water as one would some sea anemone at the aquarium-The big toe had turned black; it seemed almost twice its size; septic, no doubt. She'd have to lance it.

Scouring the ground, she came up with one of the culprits that had most likely caused the distended toe in the first place-a rattan thorn. She fingered the thorn and nodded, satisfied it would do the job. Then she inserted the long thorn into the center of her swollen digit, and when she squeezed the toe, the golden pus oozed like the creamy filling from a crushed Éclair and floated down the stream.

Pinky Bell didn't cry out-Instead, she looked up, past the bamboo, at the green kaleidoscope of the canopy. She saw something way up high, an enormous, wedged honeycomb that hung from the underside of a soaring tree. And she envied the elevated lives of bees as she tried to think of anything but the stabbing pain in her toe.

She heard something call her name-It was coming from the hollow of a dead bamboo stalk. She called back but it didn't answer. Then she peered deep into the coppice of bamboo, but saw nothing. It seemed blacker than black ...

But then she saw it all-the mossy-thick plants growing on the branches and trunks of the stalks and trees, curling and weaving in the tussle for sunlight; the lichens, the ferns, even the cacti, all beginning their lives in the canopy as spores, changing course, journeying downwards, where the clashing was not as ruthless.

"If you can't go up, you go down," she whispered in Japanese, "you find a way to survive ... You go back to the prime."

She undressed next to the stream under the stalky culms of bamboo; she wanted to look at herself. The lower half of her naked body was covered in a multitude of small, reddish spots-the leeches relished her sweet lamb blood. Everything had feasted on her, sucking, surviving. She saw it there on her upper thigh, but something told her not to pull the leech out, not to ruin the coexistence-something important she was just beginning to understand...

At fifteen and a half, Pinky Bell felt the lassitude of an ageing grandmother, a filthy old woman. She could smell the damp earth on either side of the stream, and she wanted to bend down, grab a handful of soil, and then throw it at Outback, tell him to stop being so crazy. The dirt, the worms, it would all feel good in her hands, she knew that. And she would squeeze it, pack it, before throwing it as hard as she could. But beneath the anger was the stubborn fear of what might be coming-And that was what she wanted to leave her, to enter the soil so she could toss it away forever.