The Gorgon Flower by John Richards

Author:John Richards
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UQP
Published: 2024-02-22T21:37:34+00:00

Jacksi Packsi

1.

When I was young and I’d had a really bad day, like the day Melissa Tessevo put chewing gum in my hair at school, or the day the vacuum cleaner dismembered Bungo Bear, or the day Mother told me my teeth were going to be in braces for years and years, Nana would take a dab of Tiger Balm from her tiny red-gold pot and, as I sat next to her on the sofa, rub it into my right palm, running her finger round and round. This action was always accompanied by the stirring introduction to the third movement of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, playing on the record player by the north-facing window in the sitting room. You’ll know the piece: a glorious tune supposedly inspired by a gaggle of swans, wings beating majestically, that the composer witnessed take to the air. (Of course, back then, I didn’t know who the piece was by – I was at the Konzerthaus Berlin some years later listening to a programme by Sibelius when I heard it again; I’d blinked furiously to thwart my eyes from sprouting tears.) As Nana’s finger traced ever smaller circles on my palm and I breathed in the aroma of camphor and menthol, she would intone the same words over and over: jacksi packsi, jacksi packsi, jacksi packsi. The anointing of my hand with a chrism that to me smelt of winter, the chords that seemed to swell in my chest like an inflating balloon, the soothing effect of Nana’s incantation: while these did not undo the originating event, they enabled me to look beyond it, to put it into perspective as people would say nowadays, and, in so doing, restore me to equanimity.

The sitting room was my favourite room in Nana’s apartment; it was by turns my study, playroom, conservatory, art gallery and sanctum. A bookcase took up the entire height and breadth of one wall: a mosaic of black, dark blue, tan and white leather spines. The two bottom shelves nearest the window housed my well-thumbed favourites (including The Midnight Folk, The Wind in the Willows, Anne of Green Gables, the Narnia books; as I grew older, Jane Austen, Jane Eyre and Precious Bane). Nana assured me that these books were mine; she gave them a home only so I would not need to transport them to and fro. The sitting room occupied the corner of the apartment: windows on two sides looked down onto the university gardens where birch, elm and willow trees shaded gravel paths that skirted a tidy lawn. In the centre of the lawn stood a magnificent cedar, its lower branches sweeping the ground; as a child, I thought it looked like an oak tree flattened by a giant’s fist. During the summer, students lay on the grass reading or chatting or stood throwing frisbees at each other, their voices and laughter floating in the air, merging with the distant drone of traffic and the chitter of birds to form a hazy

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