Story for performance #270
webcast from Sydney at 07:10PM, 17 Mar 06

in the drizzly suburbs
Source: Misha Schubert, ‘Canberra site for first votes cast in Israeli poll’, The Age online, 17/03/06.
Writer/s: John O'Brien

I’m wet and cold and it’s another wild goose chase. The French cops are as bad as the English, and yet another nice lady from the consulate doesn’t want me to go to the newspapers (though she won’t say that OUT LOUD). I’ve been walking from the station to some strange address (it’s not that strange it’s just IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND) through strange streets with strange hip-hop playing (it’s not strange it’s just all in French or French African) and I find the building the guy said HE was staying in. In the drizzly bloody suburbs. Where the bloody hell am I?

So it’s into the building and I turn a corner and there’s a smell of concrete, block-house trouble, some scuffling noise but I don’t care. I’m like this: so much on the hunt for the man I love that they could take me, kill me and I’d still be on the hunt. That’s the shield that love provides. Or maybe just terror.

I feel a hand on my shoulder and I wake up. It was all a dream.

No, I’m still here, nowhere in France in the banlieus. Someone’s playing Smashing Pumpkins. I’m thinking, honeymoon’s going well so far.

I find another way in. That wasn’t the right gate, maybe this one is. I can see a pattern developing.

So I’m up the stairs and up the stairs and up the stairs and up the stairs. Time for a breather when I slip and fall backwards through the window and wake up. It was all a dream.

No, still here, on the eighth floor and someone’s playing another Smashing Pumpkins song. Or it’s the same CD and these tiny black-outs are getting to me. God I hate the Smashing Pumpkins.

HE would say, what you hate is, ruining perfectly good vegetables. HE would say, the idea of having enough pumpkins to waste by smashing them could only come from a country where excess is normal and overproduction of a crop increases world hunger. HE would say, feed them to your goats.

I remember now. One of the CD’s he packed was Smashing Pumpkins.

I’m running, up to the ninth floor, two steps at a time, along a bare wall and I’m banging on the door. Not the number I was looking for, but the number the Smashing Pumpkins are pouring out of.

The music gets turned down. A man of middle-eastern appearance opens up. ‘Oui?’

‘Is my husband in there?’ Screaming.

‘Are the police with you?’ Quietly.

‘Not yet.’

‘Your husband has gone to deliver something.’

‘When is he coming back?’

‘In a week.’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

---

I tell you a story. We are on the streets this night, there is many problem here, some of us are worry, we are interesting in the problem but we are worry for the people who maybe get hurt. We are the men, the strong men, isn’t it, so we are worrying for the women and the younger men. You know, the 14 and 15 years boys they are tough but they are not tough. We take them and send them home.

We see this man think he is all the police, arresting somebody but we see that he is not okay, he is talking English and he look like -

…yes, a brain injury, as you say. But he talk the interesting talk to us, there is nearly the fight but we are stopping it. Also everything is burning, the noise, it was so terrible night. He has no hotel, no name, no thing.

…yes, he has you, as you say. Also he has a mobile phone but it is not working here. It is the long night, we are busy for save the boys. And this man he is follow us, very soft, gentle. He is not a bad man. He is follow us. To here.

But what you are not understanding is the war. The war of the Gods, it is. Gods on one side, and the other side, the No Gods. This is not Israel and America and France and Palestine and Arabia, this is not the chômage and striking. This is for the right. We do the thing of the strong men. We think with right feeling. You understand? This man has no god, but he is good. So we ask him make delivery. And my friend find how to make the mobile phone to work, so we give you message.

---

Because it was no story, and because she could, and because she knew he was stalling—how did she know?—she stepped left, turning, and raised her right leg in a sharp kick which she pulled at the last second.

This was the position: she had the quiet man’s head pressed against a bookshelf by her right foot. There were no books on the shelf. Her leg was still bent, there was plenty of power left in her quadriceps. She looked like a still from a Jackie Chan film. The next Smashing Pumpkins track came on, and she mused for an instant, I could smash his head like a pumpkin. She also realised that her skirt had slipped up/down her thigh, revealing sheer knickers. His eyes flicked there for a second. She’d forgive that.

He asked her, where did she train? She explained, a police boys club in Newcastle, Australia. This was a lie. He asked her what she wanted. My husband back, in one piece. She fell backwards and woke up. It was all a dream.

No it wasn’t. It was fate calling her from below her sins, it was time to let her monster do its work. She let his head go. Stepped to him, put him in an armlock before he knew what was happening.

My offer is this: let me make the delivery with him, and I will not take you to the police.

He nodded. She blacked out and fell backwards.

Adapted for performance by Barbara Campbell from a story by John O’Brien.