It was a house that I believe was soon to be condemned. The idea commanded my attention: it was as though the house had been damned. Everything had a religious tinge to it in those days.
To be honest, yes, it did feel like it was going to fall apart. Like the floors were going to cave in, or the whole thing would come tumbling down the slope. And at the party, it seemed as if there were hundreds of us, teenagers and young adults, bursting through doors and hanging off balconies. That must have been dangerous.
From the front deck, I could see my home in West Launceston. Wellington Street was a dark ravine, a rushing river I’d need to ford when it came time to walk home.
Such strange, turbulent thoughts as these rumbled through my head in those days. I can’t imagine I was a particularly gracious guest to have at a party. I stormed through conversations, winced and frowned at reunions with anyone I knew. I’d been reading Tolstoy for the first time; that can’t have helped. There was a girl whose surname was Farr. We were dancing and I murmured in her ear, “I’m uncomfortable being so close to someone named Farr.” She didn’t get the pun, turned on her heels, and found someone else to dance with.
There were a few fights. They were sad, careless scuffles. The indifference of violence is sometimes embarrassing to witness. Sadness tangles itself up like a poorly-cast fishing line. Yet how enchanting it can be.
Another guy grabbed my hand and pulled me into the frame of a photograph. I recognised him, which was not unusual – it was Launceston after all. The camera clicked, stammered, and gave out a flash. It was as if someone had let off an emergency flare at last. The guy turned to me and said, “I call you Jesus ... ” My hair was straggly and even on this winter night, I wore a pair of linen fisherman’s pants. “A lot of girls say nice things about you.”
“I’d like to ask you what you believe happens after death,” one of these girls subsequently asked me.
“I best formulate an opinion then,” I answered.
I didn’t even know what happened to the condemned house. Despite my mood, death was still the most distant of prospects. A few weeks later, I’d finally finish Anna Karenina – perhaps then I’d begin to properly contemplate death’s possibilities. One of our mates at the party, there on the porch, would die a few months later, falling through the roof of a warehouse we could have seen from that balcony. You’d have thought in my auspicious mood, I might have felt a premonition. But no-one did.
I left the porch, left the party. Wandering down to Wellington Street, ready to wade through that river, someone on the street shouted called to me. “Hey! You got punched, right?”
“No,” I said. “Not for years.”
The next morning there was a squall. Rain came down like shining bullets on my brittle windows, lightning drew attention to its destructions with a loud shout. With Tolstoy in my mind, I thought that Launceston looked like an old Russian town. Now I imagined the main road as a flood. The house on the other hill, if it was still standing, was invisible, and could not be reached.
Bert Spinks writes poetry, and poetic prose, about wilderness. He has also played football on Queenstown’s gravel oval. In this blog, he fills in some of the space between these essentially Tasmanian extremes.
