Stephen Orr

The four-and-a-half mat room (PDF version)

The left hand of a writer, lifted to the sun. She stands on a soap box she found the first day, looks up and out of the small 12x12 inch window, closes her eyes, feels the sun on her face, her hands (sore from writing the story of the reincarnated boy), takes a deep breath, because she knows, when the sun’s out, she can smell the grass (wild oats and spurge) growing around the old house. The basement of the house, 12x12 feet she paces out every day, concrete floor, a toilet bucket in the corner, a tap for drinking water, food on the same plate he pushes through a slot in the door every evening at 6.16 pm. She must sleep (on the bamboo mattress in the corner) because each morning, when the sun enters her four-and-a-half mat room, the bucket is empty, rinsed with disinfectant, replaced. She’s tried to stay awake, to see who comes in, takes the bucket, empties it, but she always, always falls asleep. She’s not sure why. When she was young she could stay awake all night (parties, clubs, raves) but now, in her basement room, she finds it impossible. She wonders whether he (she assumes it’s a he, all of the current narratives have male perpetrators) has somehow drugged the tap water or the food or maybe the air she’s breathing (there’s a vent, high above the single metal door). This is a possibility. It’d explain this sleep, wake, circle, check procedure that now dominates, no, is her life. She’s not even sure how she came to be here. Perhaps it was all of those years working as a writer, wondering, fretting, analysing, the small awards, the big rewards – then the quietus, the long paddock, hopes pinned on nothing in particular, checking for more congratulations, more reason to keep working which never (like the locked door) happened.

The sun goes behind a cloud so she steps down from the soap box, walks around the room, checks the door, but it’s locked, calls out, ‘Hello, is anybody there?’ Around the room again, looking for a way out, trying to reach the vent (she can’t), trying to loosen the bars on the window (she can’t), turning on the tap and cupping her hands and raising the water to her mouth and drinking and sitting on the toilet (naked, she did away with clothes years ago) and pissing and fluffing a gassy fart and wishing she could shit and she says to herself, Listen, old girl, it’s time to get back to jogging. So she does. She jogs around the room five or six times, upends two of her four-and-a-half mats, straightens them, around again, hears the bus, quickly climbs onto the soap box and calls (at the top of her voice); ‘Ryan, is that you? It’s Mum? Can you hear me, Ryan, please, in the basement, the basement under the ...’ But she hears the bus doors close and the bus itself pulling out. ‘Ryan? Is that you?’ Because she knows this is the bus her son catches to the city. The 273. Always. Every day. And although it seems hard to understand why he’d get off at this stop (in the middle of a non-descript middle ring suburb, car yards and chicken shops along the north-eastern arterial) she keeps trying, because one day (she hopes, for some reason) he will get off, hear her calling, break down the door (she’s imagined this a thousand times), come down the stairs and rescue her. When he does this, when she hears him approaching (calling something like – ‘Mum, is that you? Where are you?), she’ll gather her dress from the mattress and put it on and make herself respectable. Then they’ll have a conversation where they try to make sense of what she’s been doing in the four-and-a-half mat room for so many years, how she got here, who was responsible, then they’ll call the police and they’ll come but it won’t matter because whoever he is (assuming it’s a he) will be long gone, leaving no trace, no fingerprints or blood or DNA, nothing. Anyway, all of this’d be predicated with him getting off a bus he only catches to the city. Why would he get off? Maybe he’d need a new car and catch the bus here, stop 25 (she can just see it). But this seems unlikely. Or maybe he’d need one of the other stops along the road. Also, unlikely, but not impossible. So what other choice has she got but to keep calling every time the 273 stops? Or maybe, on a hot day, he’ll have the window open (she remembers how bad the air conditioning is on the buses) and he’ll hear her voice. Maybe. Or maybe she’s got it all wrong. Maybe someone else will hear her calling, come over to the basement window and say, ‘Who’s Ryan?’

            ‘My son, but it doesn’t matter, I’m locked in this basement. Do me a favour, will you, and call for help.’

            ‘I’m not sure ...’

            ‘Why not?’

            Then this person will walk off, and she’ll call, ‘Hello, I’m locked down here ...’ (etc., etc.)

The problem with this, of course, is why someone hasn’t heard her yet. Someone, dozens, hundreds of people must’ve walked past, so why have none of them come over? Maybe there’s a fence. Maybe a warning sign. Other reasons she tries to think of, but what’s it matter, all she can hear now are cars and trucks and all she can smell is exhaust and barbecue chicken and some sort of oil or grease from the mechanic and the sound of the machine that removes wheel nuts and ‘Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene’ playing tinny and loud in the same mechanic’s shop. Sometimes, on a Tuesday night or Saturday afternoon, she hears footballers calling for the ball (and kicking it) from Gaza Oval. A dog, barking, too. The same dog she’s heard for years, and she thinks (again), When I get out I’m going to find the owner and give him a piece of my mind (she’s imagined the dog tied up all day, out in the sun, no walks, yapping, but none of this is necessarily true). Crows, she hears plenty of crows, she knows they’re after food thrown from the cars. Sometimes they get hit by a car, but not often, they’re clever. And a noisy miner, every morning at five past six: bird call (and she counts 2,3,4), call [2,3,4), call [2,3,4] ... so well-timed and you can, she’s learnt, time the whole world from a miner: call [2,3,4]. Only for about half an hour, then it flies off to do whatever it does during the day before returning to sleep in a tree outside her window. Occasionally cars crash. This is always a distraction. The impact, people getting out, the shouts and screaming, doors slamming. A distraction.

She stands on her soap box. Deep breath. Now she can make out basil or sage, some sort of herb, someone must have planted it close to the house. Maybe the owner. The man who locked her in the basement. Why, she thinks, has he done this? Maybe he’s asked for a ransom? God knows who, no one she knows has any money. Maybe she crossed him somewhere, sometime, and this is his Edgar Allan Poe punishment (psychological always worse than physical). Maybe this is a dream, but no, it’s not a dream, because although she’s a writer, although her writing’s responsible for her being in the four-and-a-half mat room, this predicament is neither a dream nor figment of her imagination nor part of a story that’s become real – fiction, fact, fact, fiction – a sort of Franz Kafka thing. Maybe he’s saving her from something. Maybe something dangerous, and by locking her in here all these years she’s safe, safer, from whatever, whoever. No, this seems least likely of all. Maybe there’s no reason at all. Maybe there needn’t be a reason. Maybe things happen because they happen. Maybe searching for reasons (as she’s done her whole life) is the very thing that keeps her here. And if this is the case, maybe her freedom will only be obtained by not looking for explanations. This, she thinks, is most likely. So she sits (this happens every day), crosses her legs and tries to stop herself thinking about new plots, characters, themes, things like this, but she can’t, it’s come too far, and even the process of unthinking creates more stories and she knows, deep down, every day the lock gets stronger. So what to do? Meditate (she tries this every day)? Empty her mind of everything? She tries and tries but she’s not good at this and starts thinking again, can’t stop (is that the bus?), then the thinking becomes a story and she can hear the bolt tightening. But she must stop, she must find a way to stop thinking about the stories in her head. If not, nothing, no one will get her out, and she hears the bus, jumps up, stands on her soapbox, calls, ‘Ryan! It’s Mum. Can you hear me. I’m in ...’ But the bus pulls off, she steps down, tries to remember how many times today, yesterday, the day before, the month, year, years she’s called to her boy. She wonders if he misses her. At the beginning, she tried to imagine the search – her not returning home, Ryan calling the police, a search, days, weeks, months, newspapers, radio, television, has she been murdered, did she kill herself (God, she doesn’t want people thinking that), eventually things settling, the mystery remaining but no ongoing attempt to find her (which could explain her predicament). She tries to imagine Ryan now, what he thinks, what he does, whether he’s sad. But what can she do? Maybe he’s crippled with grief. Maybe he drives around the city all day searching. Maybe he’s gone mad and he’s locked away in some nuthouse? This makes her feel worst of all. What’s happened (without her knowing) to the people she loves? The rope hanging from the middle of the ceiling (and if she moves her soap box, she can reach it). Tied off with a noose, ready. But she can’t, because her boy needs her, and one day, somehow, if she can stop thinking about stories, if she can free herself from her own story, she’ll see him again, hugs, kisses, oh (she thinks): Imagine! Hugging herself to see what this’ll be like. Kissing her own hand, her arm. Oh, imagine!

She climbs her box, feels the sun through the bars, sings to it (‘Oh, don’t deceive me, oh, never leave me ...’), studies it passing through the webbing of her hand like an x-ray, showing the meat, the bones, the veins, the cold, blue flesh. Just holds it there and ... rosemary perhaps, or maybe it’s basil or ... she can’t be sure, but some herb, and why would he (all of a sudden) decide to plant herbs? So she goes to the door and calls: ‘What have you planted?’ Nothing. Never anything. Like he’s not there. Like it’s in her head. ‘It’s sage, isn’t it? Come on, you can tell me. Sage?’ Waits, but nothing, so she returns to the window while the sun’s out. Holds up both hands and sings: ‘Early one morning/Just as the sun was rising/I heard a young maid sing/In the valley below ... oh, don’t deceive me ...’ The song. Maybe the song is some way out? Maybe (and she tries this every day) if all she does is sing, she’ll forget her thoughts, her stories, and the door will open. ‘Remember the vows/That you made to your Mary ...’ Like this, for the next fifteen minutes, but as per the meditation, the stories return. The same one she was working on before her abduction (not that she can remember her abduction). The story described a newspaper article she’d read about a small boy in a Mexican village who’d died, was laid out in a funeral home, sat up and asked for a drink of water (as his parents looked on part horrified, part elated), drank the water, laid down and was dead again. Perhaps not died again, because he was never alive anyway, but either way, dead. This was the story she’d been writing. It fascinated her, held her. The despair and hope, all at the same time. If something described the human condition it was this story of the boy she named Luis. And now, she keeps writing the story in her head, tries to finish it (she only got half way though), tries to explain (or not) what happened to Luis. But she knows she must stop trying to do this. Although meditation hasn’t worked, and although singing hasn’t worked, and although sleep hasn’t worked, she knows she can’t (or at least shouldn’t) hang herself. Despite it being so easy. Set out carefully for her. By whom? Him? What’s his name? Is he bad? Is he planning on killing her? Does he want to rape her? Is he watching her?

She holds her head in her hands like the Munch painting and screams, like she does most days, hours at a time, goes mad with her own stories but can’t stop them because she is, she knows, nothing more than the sum of her own fantasies, and this is the problem ... so she stands, moves the soap box, places her head in the noose and says, ‘No, no,’ removes it, replaces the soap box near the window, hears another bus, calls again, gives up again, sits on the soap box listening to an angle-grinder (most afternoons, for an hour or two, and she wonders if it’s him doing some sort of work). Deep breath. Sighs. Stands. Sun. No sun. Sits. ‘... just as the sun was rising ... om mani padme hum ... I heard a young maid ...’

She studies the noose. How it moves in the little bit of breeze coming through the cracks in her window. Did he do this intentionally? How it moves in a little arc, like being a noose is nothing, like it’s just rope, some sort of thread or twine, like it can’t, hasn’t already killed someone, hundreds, thousands, millions of people. So innocuous. But there it is, ready to kill, a slight movement, as the body swings (she supposes) and what would it matter to her, Ryan, him, anyone? So why not do it? There’s no reason not do it. A few seconds, a few gasps, all done. Not so bad. She’s seen footage, the Nazis, up, over the head, dead, bang, Bob’s your uncle. But then she realises – thyme! Thyme, of course, goes to the door and hammers on it and says, ‘It’s thyme, isn’t it, you fucker?’ Returns to the window, takes a lungful, smiles, sings (‘just as the sun was rising ...’), gets down, pretends to hold Ted (her late husband), dances a waltz around the room two, three times, returns to the window, another breath and oh, life is so good, if these small distractions could only be fixed and they will, they will be fixed, no big deal, here he is now, stands, ‘Ryan! Ryan!’ But not this time and the world is Cyprus and Lebanon pine and a small stone house and sweet red wine and Ted and her in bed gazing across the ocean. This is life! This. And when she sits, this quality of light, the feel of fresh sheets on her legs, and thyme, thyme, of course, lingers and life is so good but if only she could ... Another circuit of the room, hammers on the door, tries the handle, realises she’s counting readers again, sits, stands, on and on, forever, another view of nowhere.

The long day, and she dozes (as she does every day) and wakes at 6.16 for food (announced by the ringing of a bell), eats it and circuits the room (this time, pretending she’s coming in to land at Heathrow). Sits listening to the buses (only every hour now, but she keeps calling for her son), falls asleep, and when she wakes the next morning her bucket is empty again, and the buses are starting again and the crows and noisy miners (call [2,3,4]) and all of it, all of it laid out especially for her. As she lies in bed, she wonders if the boy ever woke at all, or whether it was just his family hoping he would. If she could accept this she could forget Luis and she could start her journey towards her old life. Anyway, this is what she hopes (as she does, a dozen times a day), as the sun rests across her face in uncomplicated stripes and she smiles and sings.

Stephen Orr is an Australian novelist and story writer. He can be found here: https://www.stephenorr.com.au/