The Architecture of Song by Gary Crew

Author:Gary Crew
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-05-05T04:00:00+00:00

They clip-clopped the country for six weeks, Rosa and the willing Barkus up front, she taking notes on her tight-pressed knees, Stan and Augustus at the back, legs dangling (Stan’s, at least) as the tin billy clattered and the red dust rose.

On clear nights the boys slept under the stars, Augustus staring up while Stan snored. The boy (was he still?) would have liked to ask, ‘Stan, do you believe in God?’ because he often wondered if he did himself, considering the beauty that surrounded him, or arched over him, or spread beneath him, to which he was closer, tiny as he was, often spotting stuff in the dust, the dirt, like flowers. He especially liked white daisies, particularly those papery ones with yellow centres, and ants and beetles, although the beetles with hard black wings (the carapace, was it?) he did not like because of the crack they made if trodden on, and the fact that the black ones grabbed his finger and clung if he poked, but he liked the blue-green iridescent ones that were a bit like the colour of that butterfly he saw under the house with Mary Smokes that time, and Blue Butterfly herself, of course, though dead now, and in the proper long dark. But these stars: Surely, he thought, some Creator, some Super Being, some God made them. And a sudden memory came over him of those other firmaments: the cobalt blue of the canvas roof in Little Donny’s daggy tent and the peeling stars, and he sighed, wondering, has Little Donny’s star fallen? And that earlier firmament: the underside of his mother’s keyboard, and darkness there. And fearing he would cry because it was all too beautiful, all too awful, he tried to calm himself, to will himself to be quiet, but could not.

How he wished that Stan would wake up so he could sing for him, if only to ease his spirit.

And the thought occurred to him, I don’t know any spiritual songs, any religious lyrics, anything like what might be called hymns. Such songs were never sung at his mother’s (although believers must have come, must have been there somewhere, must even have been moved to sing, yet silenced, suffocated by her presence or asphyxiated in the vapours of her grog, which was possible, the gin always cheap.

As he wondered, staring, the thought came to him that singing was a spiritual act in itself, which must be, he assumed, why he harboured the hope that he might make that perfect note, and having made it, struck it, grow; that he would create that note out of himself, his own tiny body, and through his own voice reconstruct himself. Re-create himself, as it were, as some other Creator–Some other Being–had made the night.

But once asleep, Stan never stirred, so Augustus was obliged to keep his spiritual self to himself, which was probably all to the good, Stan being who he was and a bit rough round the edges.

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