Janette Hospital - North of Nowhere, South of Loss

Fourth Estate

A Division of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2004 by Fourth Estate

Copyright © Janette Turner Hospital 2003

The right of Janette Turner Hospital to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication .

Source ISBN: 9780007149308

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2016 ISBN: 9780007394869

Version: 2016-08-24

For Peter

1942–1998

In memoriam

Cover

Title Page

Copyright COPYRIGHT Copyright Dedication The Ocean of Brisbane North of Nowhere For Mr Voss or Occupant Unperformed Experiments Have No Results Our Own Little Kakadu Cape Tribulation Flight Frames and Wonders Nativity Credit Repair South of Loss Night Train Litany for the Homeland The End-of-the-Line End-of-the-World Disco Keep Reading Acknowledgments About the Author Other Books by About the Publisher Fourth Estate A Division of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain in 2004 by Fourth Estate Copyright © Janette Turner Hospital 2003 The right of Janette Turner Hospital to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication . Source ISBN: 9780007149308 Ebook Edition © JUNE 2016 ISBN: 9780007394869 Version: 2016-08-24

Dedication DEDICATION Dedication The Ocean of Brisbane North of Nowhere For Mr Voss or Occupant Unperformed Experiments Have No Results Our Own Little Kakadu Cape Tribulation Flight Frames and Wonders Nativity Credit Repair South of Loss Night Train Litany for the Homeland The End-of-the-Line End-of-the-World Disco Keep Reading Acknowledgments About the Author Other Books by About the Publisher For Peter 1942–1998 In memoriam

The Ocean of Brisbane

North of Nowhere

For Mr Voss or Occupant

Unperformed Experiments Have No Results

Our Own Little Kakadu

Cape Tribulation

Flight

Frames and Wonders

Nativity

Credit Repair

South of Loss

Night Train

Litany for the Homeland

The End-of-the-Line End-of-the-World Disco

Keep Reading

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Other Books by

About the Publisher

His voice came out of the black space between the two projectors. When a slide slipped off the wall, dropping into nowhere, the tiered funnel of the lecture theatre was so dark that the darkness seemed to rub itself against her, furry, like the legs of spiders. She shivered. Then a bubble of light would come, a coloured diagram or a photograph would appear on the screen straight ahead but below her, and words would unfold themselves on the other screen, the one that was angled across a corner of the room, high up, and therefore eye-level with the tier where she sat. She would see him then for a moment, shadowy, a juggler of ideas, images, impenetrable words, remote control buttons, a magician waving his arms in the twilight cast by the screens.

I watched her watching him.

She was trying to explain him to herself.

I watched how she held onto her own body, arms hugged tightly, and how she kept shivering (it looked like shivering) in the sweltering airless room.

Don’t worry, I wanted to whisper to her. I wanted to put my hand on her arm, soothing, but it would have alarmed her. Don’t worry, I wanted to whisper. He’s just as much a mystery to himself.

He spoke, and his words settled lightly onto the cantilevered screen in black block capitals, crowding, jostling like branches full of crows, she had always been frightened of crows, the way they swooped at you, dive-bombed, that time on the farm at Camp Mountain, long before Brisbane, she was still a child at Camp Mountain, the beaks slashing at her head (or maybe magpies, was it? had they been magpies?), they go for the eyes, Always wear a hat , teachers warned, and if attacked, cover the eyes.

ELECTRON MICROSCOPY, the screen said.

OF CRYSTALS.

And then in a fluttering rush: OF AN ALPHA-HELICAL COILED-COIL PROTEIN EXTRACTED FROM THE OOTHECA OF THE PRAYING MANTIS.

The black letters swooped at her and instinctively she covered her eyes. I watched the way her hands shook slightly (how would she speak to him? how had they ever really? and yet after all these years she had been hoping … but what language could they possibly use?) and all the time, through her fingers, she was watching for crevices of hope, for something to grab onto, and there was something, crystals , yes, she recognised that, he used to have a set, those heavy headphones, telling them he could hear Indonesia, England, the cricket scores, winding the world into his room, swallowing it, he had this terrible hunger, this unnatural … this kind of greed, she could never predict what … and it was never big enough for him even then, his room, their house, their lives, Brisbane, the country, the world, he was like one of those alien children on the late late movies, growing into strangeness, his mind butting against the ceiling, webbed toes, a third eye, foreign to her from the beginning. She pressed a hand against her stomach and stared at it. Where had he come from?