03.10.2008

"The End": the prologue of Stripped

Stripped is a novel about sex and death. Set in contemporary Melbourne, it looks at the impact of an untimely death on a close circle of family and friends. It's currently being serialised in the literary journal Meanjin, starting from volume 68, no.2, June 2008.

It starts like this:

In the end when she went it was so quick. She just got up and went through the doorway. Just like that. Direct. Strong. Courageous. She just went through, and then she was gone. I was waiting there by the doorway. She knew I was there. But she just left. We were all prepared. We had been prepared for days. People on seats waiting. Waiting for a dramatic event. But we didn’t expect that. A quick exit. Like that.

There is an intense silence in the room. Mama is here. The nurse is here. The priest is here. Louise and Jack are here. Daniel is here. Martin is not here. The trip all the way out to Rowville appears to have been too much for him. This is not a surprise, just a dull truth.

And I am here.

Lillian is in bed. It appears that she is lying restfully in this bed that we hired from the hospital. We are all in the living room. It is still ugly in the living room, as ugly as the rest of the house, but at least there is more space for the bed and for the medical equipment and for us. And there is light. There are sliding doors, which open out into their barren back yard. There is a flatness of green and brown, then the fence, then roofs of other houses and then the sky.

We have all been here for a couple of days. Except Jack and Louise. They arrived late last night. It is 2.37 on this warm afternoon and a silence has descended. We are waiting. The sun is coming through the windows, bathing our legs. We are all looking out the window, even Lillian.

It is as if we are on a cruise ship, slowly moving towards our destination. As if we are in deckchairs watching the landscape roll by. Going up a river. Hills in the distance, but getting closer. We’ll be there soon. And so we wait.