Janet Frame: The Reservoir

It was said to be four or five miles along the gully, past orchards and farms, paddocks filled with cattle, sheep, wheat, gorse, and the squatters of the land who were the rabbits eating like modern sculpture into the hills, though how could we know anything of modern sculpture, we knew nothing but the Warrior in the main street with his wreaths of poppies on Anzac Day, the gnomes weeping in the Gardens because the seagulls perched on their green caps and showed no respect, and how important it was for birds, animals and people, especially children, to show respect!

And that is why for so long we obeyed the command of the grownups and never walked as far as the forbidden Reservoir, but were content to return "tired but happy" (as we wrote in our school compositions), answering the question, Where did you walk today? with a suspicion of blackmail, "Oh, nearly, nearly to the Reservoir!"

The Reservoir was the end of the world; beyond it, you fell; beyond it were paddocks of thorns, strange cattle, strange farms, legendary people whom we would never know or recognize even if they walked among us on a Friday night downtown when we went to follow the boys and listen to the Salvation Army Band and buy a milk shake in the milk bar and then return home to find that everything was all right and safe, that our mother had not run away and caught the night train to the North Island, that our father had not shot himself with worrying over the bills, but had in fact been downtown himself and had bought the usual Friday night treat, a bag of licorice all-sorts and a bag of chocolate roughs, from Woolworth's. The Reservoir haunted our lives. We never knew one until we came to this town; we had used pump water. But here, in our new house, the water ran from the taps as soon as we turned them on, and if we were careless and left them on, our father would shout, as if the affair were his personal concern, "Do you want the Reservoir to run dry?"

That frightened us. What should we do if the Reservoir ran dry? Would we die of thirst like Burke and Wills in the desert?

"The Reservoir," our mother said, "gives pure water, water safe to drink without boiling it.

"The water was in a different class, then, from the creek which flowed through the gully; yet the creek had its source in the Reservoir. Why had it not received the pampering attention of officialdom which strained weed and earth, cockabullies and trout and eels, from our tap water? Surely the Reservoir was not entirely pure?

"Oh no," they said, when we inquired. We learned that the water from the Reservoir had been "treated." We supposed this to mean that during the night men in light-blue uniforms with sacks over their shoulders crept beyond the circle of pine trees which enclosed the Reservoir, and emptied the contents of the sacks into the water, to dissolve dead bodies and prevent the decay of teeth. Then, at times, there would be news in the paper, discussed by my mother with the neighbors over the back fence. Children had been drowned in the Reservoir.

"No child," the neighbor would say, "ought to be allowed near the Reservoir."

"I tell mine to keep strictly away," my mother would reply.

And for so long we obeyed our mother's command, on our favorite walks along the gully simply following the untreated cast-off creek which we loved and which flowed day and night in our heads in all its detail — the wild sweet peas, boiled-lolly pink, and the mint growing along the banks; the exact spot in the water where the latest dead sheep could be found, and the stink of its bloated flesh and floating wool, an allowable earthy stink which we accepted with pleasant revulsion and which did not prompt the "inky-pinky I smell Stinkie" rhyme which referred to offensive human beings only. We knew where the water was shallow and could be paddled in, where forts could be made from the rocks; we knew the frightening deep places where the eels lurked and the weeds were tangled in gruesome shapes; we knew the jumping places, the mossy stones with their dangers, limitations, and advantages; the sparkling places where the sun trickled beside the water, upon the stones; the bogs made by roaming cattle, trapping some of them to death; their gaunt telltale bones; the little valleys with their new growth of lush grass where the creek had "changed its course," and no longer flowed.

"The creek has changed its course," our mother would say, in a tone which implied terror and a sense of strangeness, as if a tragedy had been enacted.

We knew the moods of the creek, its levels of low-flow, half-high-flow, high-flow which all seemed to relate to interference at its source — the Reservoir. If one morning the water turned the color of clay and crowds of bubbles were passengers on every suddenly swift wave hurrying by, we would look at one another and remark with the fatality and reverence which attends a visitation or prophecy,

"The creek's going on high-flow. They must be doing something at the Reservoir."

By afternoon the creek would be on high-flow, turbulent, muddy, unable to be jumped across or paddled in or fished in, concealing beneath a swelling fluid darkness whatever evil which ‘they’, the authorities, had decided to purge so swiftly from the Reservoir.

For so long, then, we obeyed our parents, and never walked as far as the Reservoir. Other things concerned us, other curiosities, fears, challenges. The school year ended. I got a prize, a large yellow book the colour of cat’s mess. Inside it were editions of newspapers. The Worms’ Weekly, supposedly written by worms, snails, spiders. For the first part of the holidays we spent the time sitting in the long grass of our front lawn nibbling the stalks of shamrock and reading insect newspapers and relating their items to the lives of those living on our front lawn down among the summer-dry roots of the couch, tinkertailor, daisy, dandelion, shamrock, clover, and ordinary gross. High summer came. The blowsy old red roses shed their petals to the regretful refrain uttered by our mother year after year at the same time.

‘I should have made potpourri, I have a wonderful recipe for potpourri in Dr Chase’s Book.’

Our mother never made the potpourri. She merely quarrelled with our father over how to pronounce it.

The days became unbearable long and hot. Our Christmas presents were already broken or too boring to care about them. celluloid dolls had loose arms and legs and rifts in their bright pink bodies; the invisible ink had poured itself out in secret messages; diaries frustrating in their smallness (two lines to a day) had been filled in for the whole of the coming hear… Days at the beach were tedious, with no room in the bathing sheds so that we were forced to undress in the common room downstairs with its floor patched with wet and trailed with footmarks and sand and its tiny barred window (which made me believe that I was living in the French Revolution).

Rumours circled the burning world. The sea was drying up, soon you could paddle or walk to Australia. Sharks had been swimming inside the breakwater; one shark attacked a little boy and bit off his you-know-what.

We swam. We wore bathing togs all day. we gave up cowboys and ranches; and baseball and sledding; and ‘those games’ where we mimicked grown-up life, loving and divorcing each other, kissing and slapping, taking secret paramours when our husband was working out of town. Everything exhausted us. Cracks appeared in the earth; the grass was bled yellow; the ground was littered with beetle shells and snail shells; flies came in from the unofficial rubbish-dump at the back of the house; the twisting flypapers hung from the ceiling; a frantic buzzing filled the room as the flypapers become crowded. Even the cat put out her tiny tongue, panting in the heat.

We realized, and were glad, that school would soon reopen. What was school like? It seemed so long ago, it seemed as if we had never been to school, surely we had forgotten everything we had learned, how frightening, thrilling and strange it would all seem! Where would we go on the first day, who woud teach us, what were the names of the new books?

Who would sit beside us, who would be our best friend?

The earth crackled in early-autumn haze and still the February sun dried the world; even at night the rusty sheet of roofing-iron outside by the cellar stayed warm, but with rows of sweat-marks on it; the days were still long, with night face to face with morning and almost nothing in-between but a snatch of turning sleep wit the blankets on the floor and the windows wide open to moths with their bulging lamplit eyes moving through the dark and their grandfather bodies knocking, knocking upon the walls.

Day after day the sun still waited to pounce. We were tired, our skin itched, our sunburn had peeled and peeled again, the skin on our feet was hard, there was dust in our hair, our bodies clung wit the salt of sea-bathing and sweat, the towers were harsh with salt.

School soon, we said again, and were glad; for lessons gave shade to rooms and corridors; cloakrooms were cold and sunless. Then, swiftly, suddenly, disease came to the town. Infantine Paralysis. Black headlines in the paper, listing the number of cases, the number of deaths. Children everywhere, out in the country, up north, down south, two streets away.

The schools did not reopen. Our lessons came by post, in smudged print on rough white paper; they seemed makeshift and false, they inspired distrust, they could not compete with the lure of the sun still shining, swelling, the world would go up in cinders, the days were too long, there was nothing to do, there was nothing to do; the lessons were dull; in the front room with the navy-blue blind half down the window and the tiny splits of light showing through, and the lesson papers sometimes covered with unexplained blots of ink as if the machine which had printed them had broken down or rebelled, the lessons were even more dull.

Ancient Egypt and the flooding of the Nile!

The Nile, when we possessed a creek of our own with individual flooding!

‘Well, let’s go along the gully, along by the creek,’ we would say, tired with all these ridiculous home-school lessons.

Then one day when our restlessness was at its height, when the flies buzzed like bees in the flypapers, and the warped wood of the house cracked its knuckles out of boredom, the need for something to do in the heat, we found once again the only solution to our unrest.

Someone said, ‘What’s the creek on?’

‘Half-high flow.’

‘Good.’

So we set out, in our bathing suits, and carrying switches of willow.

‘Keep your sun hats on!’ our mother called.

All right. We knew. Sunstroke when the sun clipped you over the back of the head, striking you flat on the ground. Sunstroke, lightning. even tidal waves were threatening us on this southern coast. The world was full of harm, and harm persecuted kids with stronger intent.

‘And don’t go as far as the Reservoir!’

We dismissed the warning. There was enough to occupy us along the gully without our visiting the Reservoir. First, the couples. We liked to find a couring couple and follow them and when, as we knew they must do because they were tired or for other reasons, they found a place in the grass and lay down together, we liked to make jokes about them, amongst ourselves. ‘Just wait for him to kiss her!’ we would say. ‘Watch. Here it comes. There. A beaut. Smack.’

Often we giggled and lingered even after the coupled had observed us. We were waiting for them to do it. every man and woman did it, we knew that for a fact. We speculated about technical details. Would be wear a Frenchie? If he didn’t wear a Frenchie then she would start having a baby and be forced to get rid of it by drinking gin. Frenchies, by the way, were for sale in Woolworth’s. some said they were fingerstalls, but we knew they were frenchies and sometimes we would go downtown and into Woolworth’s just to look at the frenchies for sale. We hung around the counter, sniggering. Sometimes we nearly died laughing, it was so funny.

After we tired of spying on the couples we would shout after them as we went our way.

Pound, shillings and pence,

a man fell over the fence,

he fell on a lady,

and squashed out a baby,

pound, shillings and pence!

Sometimes a slight fear struck us—what if a man fell on us like that and squashed out a chain of babies?

Our other pastime along the gully was robbing the orchards, but this summer day the apples were small green hard and hidden by leaves. There were no couples either. We had the gully to ourselves. We followed the creek, whacking our sticks, gossiping and singing, but we stopped, immediately silent, when someone—sister or brother—sister or brother—said, ‘Let’s go to the Reservoir!’

A feeling of dread seized us. We knew, as surely as we knew our names and our address Thirty-three Stour Street Ohau Otago South Island New Zealand Southern Hemisphere The World, that we would some day visit the Reservoir, but the time seemed almost as far away as leaving school, getting a job, marrying. And then there was the agony of deciding the right time—how did one decide those things?

‘We’ve been told not to, you know,’ one of us said timidly.

That was me. eating bread and syrup for tea had made my hair red, my skin too, so that I blushed easily, and the grownups guessed if I told a lie.

‘It’s a long way,’ said my little sister.

‘Coward!’

But it was a long way, and perhaps it would take all day and night, perhaps we would have to sleep there among the pine trees with the owls hooting and the old needle-filled warrens which now reached to the centre of the earth where pools of molten lead bubbled, waiting to seize us if we tripped, and then there was the crying sound made by the trees, a sound of speech at its loneliest level where the meaning is felt but never explained, and it goes on and on in a kind of despair, trying to reach a point of understanding.

We knew that pine trees spoke in this way. we wee lonely listening to them because we knew we could never help them to say it, whatever they wee trying to say, for if the wind who was so close to them could not help them, how could we? Oh no, we could not spend the night at the Reservoir among the pine trees.

‘Billy Whittaker and his gang have been to the Reservoir, Billy Whitaker and the Green Feather gang, one afternoon.’

‘Did he say what it was like?’

‘No, he never said.’

‘He’s been in an iron lung.’

That was true. Only a day or two ago our mother had been reminding us in an ominous voice of the fact which roused our envy just as much as our dread, ‘Billy Whittaker was in an iron lung two years ago. Infantile paralysis.’

Some people were lucky. None of us dared to hope that we would ever be surrounded by the glamour of an iron lung, we would have to be content all our lives with paltry flesh lungs.

‘Well are we going to the Reservoir or not?’

That was someone trying to sound bossy like our father,—'Well am I to have salmon sandwiches or not, am I to have lunch at all today or not?’

We struck our sticks in the air. They made a whistling sound. They were supple and young. We had tried to make musical instruments out of them, time after time we hacked at the willow and the elder to make pipes to blow our music, but no sound came but our own vices. And why did two sticks rubbed together not make fire? Why couldn’t we ever make anything out of the bits of the world lying about us?

An aeroplane passed in the sky. We craned our necks to read the writing on the underwing, for we collected aeroplane numbers.

The plane was gone, in a glint of us.

‘Are we?’ someone asked.

‘If there’s an eclipse you can’t see at all. The birds stop singing and go to bed.’

‘Well are we?’

Certainly we were. We had not quelled all our misgiving, but we set out to follow the creek to the Reservoir.

What is it? I wondered. They said it was a lake. I thought it was a bundle of darkness and great wheels which peeled and sliced you like an apple and drew you toward them with demonic force, in the same way that you were drawn beneath the wheels of a train if you stood too near the edge of the platform. That was the terrible danger when the Limited came rushing in and you had to approach to kiss arriving aunts.

We walked on and on, past wild sweet peas, clumps of cutty grass, horse mushrooms, ragwort, gorse, cabbage trees; and then, at the end of the gully, we came to strange territory, fences we did not know, with the barbed wire tearing at our skirts put on over our bathing suits because we felt cold though the sun stayed in the sky.

We passed huge trees that lived with their heads in the sky, with their great arms and joints creaking with age and the burden of being trees, and their mazed and linked roots rubbed bare of earth, like bones with the flesh cleaned from them. There were strange gates to be opened or climber over, new directions to be argued and plotted, notices with said TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED BY ORDER. And there was the remote immovable sun shedding without gentleness its influence of burning upon us and upon the town, looking down from its heavens and considering our infantile paralysis epidemic, and the children tired of holidays and wanting to go back to school with the new stiff books with their crackling pages, the scrubbed ruler with the sun rising on one side amidst the twelfths, tenths, millimetres, the new pencils to be sharpened with the pencil shavings flying in long pickets and light-brown curls scalloped with red or blue; the brown school, the bare floors, the clump in the corridors in the wet days!

We came to a strange paddock, a bull-paddock with its occupant planted deep in the long grass, near the gate, a jersey bull polished like a wardrobe, burnished like copper, heavy beams creaking in the wave and flow of the grass.

‘Has it got a ring through its nose? Is it a real bull or a steer?’

Its nose was ringed which meant that its savagery was tamed, or so we thought; it could be tethered and led; even so, it had once been savage and it kept its pride, unlike the steers who pranced and huddled together and ran like water though the paddocks, made no impression, quarried no massive shape against the sky.

The bull stood alone.

Had not Mr Bennet been gored by a bull, his own tame bull, and been rushed to Glenham Hospital for thirty-three stitches? Remembering Mr Bennet we crept cautiously close to the paddock fence, ready to escape.

Someone said, ‘Look, it’s pawing the ground!’

A bull which pawed the ground was preparing for a charge. We escaped quickly through the fence. Then, plucking courage, we skirted the bushes on the far side of the paddock, climbed through the fence, and continued our walk to the Reservoir.

We had lost the creek between deep banks. We saw it now before us, and hailed it with ore relief than we felt, for in its hidden course through the bull-paddock it had undergone change, it had adopted the shape, depth, mood of foreign water, foaming in a way we did not recognize as belonging to our special creek, giving no hint of its depth. It seemed to flow close to its concealed bed, not wishing any more to communicate with us. We realized with dismay that we had suddenly lost possession or our creek. Who had taken it? Why did it not belong to us any more? We hit our sticks in the air and forgot our dismay. We grew cheerful.

Till someone said it was getting late, and we reminded one another that during the day the sun doesn’t seem to move, it just remains pinned with the drawing pin against the sky, and then, while you are not looking, it suddenly slides down quick as the chopped-off head of a golden eel, into the sea, making everything in the world go dark.

‘That’s only in the tropics?’

We were not in the tropics. The division of the world in the atlas, the different coloured cubicles of latitude and longitude fascinated us.

‘The sand freezes in the desert at night. Ladies wear bits of sand…’

‘grains…’

‘grains or bits of sand as necklaces, and the camels…’

‘with necks like snails…’

‘with horns, do they have horns?’

‘Minnie Stocks goes with boys…’

‘I know who your boy is, I know who your boy is…’

Waiting by the garden gate,

Waiting by the garden gate…

‘We’ll never get to the Reservoir!’

‘Whose idea was it?’

‘I’ve strained my ankle!’

There was an argument.

‘It’s not strained, it’s sprained.’

‘strained.’

‘sprained.’

‘All right sprained then. I’ll have to wear a bandage, I’ll have to walk on crutches…’

‘I had crutches once. look. I’ve got a scar where I fell off my stilts. It’s a white scar, like a centipede. It’s on my shins.’

‘shins, funnybone…’

‘It’s humerus…’

‘knuckles…’

‘a sprained ankle…’

‘a strained ankle…’

‘a whitlow, an ingrown toenail the roots of my hair warts spinal meningitis infantile paralysis…’

‘Infantile paralysis, Infantile paralysis you have to be wheeled in a chair a wear irons on your legs and your knees knock together…’

‘Once you’re in an iron lungs you can’t get out, they lock it, like a cage…’

‘You go in the amberlance to hospital…’

‘ambulance…’

‘amberlance…’

‘ambulance to the hostible…’

‘the hospital, an ambulance to the hospital…’

‘Infantile Paralysis…’

‘Friar’s Balsam! Friar’s Balsam!’

‘Baxter’s Lung Preserver, Baxter’s Lung Preserver!’

‘Syrup of Figs, California Syrup of Figs!’

‘The creek’s going on high-flow!’

Yes, there were bubbles on the surface, and the water was turning muddy. Our doubts were dispelled. It was the same old creek, and there, suddenly, just ahead, was a plantation of pine trees, and already the sighing sound of it reached our cars and troubled us. We approached it, staying close to the banks of our newly claimed creek, until once again the creek deserted us, flowing its own private course where we could not follow, and we found ourselves among the pine trees, a narrow strip of them, and beyond lay a vast surface of sparkling water, dazzling our eyes, its centre chopped by tiny grey waves. Not a lake, nor a river, nor a sea.

‘The Reservoir!’

The damp smell of the pine needles caught in our breath. There were no birds, only the constant sighing of the trees. We could see the water clearly now; it lay, except for the waves beyond the shore, in an almost perfect calm which we knew to be deceptive—else why were people so afraid of the Reservoir? The fringe of young pines on the edge, like toy trees, subjected to the wind, sighed and told us their sad secrets. In the Reservoir there was in appearance of neatness which concealed a disarray too frightening to be acknowledged except, without any defence, in moments of deep sleep and dreaming. The little sparkling innocent waves shone now green, now grey, petticoats, lettuce leaves; the trees sighed, and told us to be quiet, hush-sh, as if something were sleeping and should not be disturbed—perhaps that was what the trees were always telling us, to hush-sh in case we disturbed something which must never ever be awakened?

What was it? Was it sleeping in the Reservoir? Was that why people were afraid of the Reservoir?

Well we were no afraid of it, oh no, it was only the Reservoir, it was nothing to be afraid of, it was just a flat Reservoir with a fence around it, and trees, and on the far side a little house (with wheels inside?), and nothing to be afraid of.

‘The Reservoir! The Reservoir!’

A noticeboard said DANGER, RESERVOIR.

Overcome with sudden glee we climbed through the fence and swung on the lower branches of the trees, shouting at intervals, grazing possessively and delightedly at the sheet of water with its wonderful calm and menace.

‘The Reservoir! The Reservoir! The Reservoir! The Reservoir!’

We quarrelled again about how to pronounce and spell the word.

Then it seemed to be getting dark—or was it that the trees were stealing the sunlight and keeping it above their heads? One of us began to run. We all ran, suddenly, wildly, not caring about our strained or sprained ankles, though the trees out into the sun where the creek, but it was our creek not longer, waited for us. We wished it were our creek, how we wished it were our creek! We had lost all account of time. Was it nearly night? Would darkness overtake us, would we have to sleep on the banks of the creek that did not belong to us anymore, among the wild sweet peas and the tussocks and the dead sheep? And would the eels come up out of the creek, as people said they did, and on their travels though the paddocks would they change into people who would threaten us and bar our way. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED, standing arm in arm in their black glossy coats, swaying, their mouths open, ready to swallow us? Would they ever let us go home, past the orchards, along the gully? Perhaps they would give us Infantine Paralysis, perhaps we would never be able to walk home, and no one would know where we were, to bring us an iron lung with its own special key?

We arrived home, panting and scratched. How strange! The sun was still in the same place in the sky!

The question troubled us, ‘Should we tell?’

The answer was decided for us. Our mother greeted us as we went in the door with, ‘You haven’t been long away, kiddies. Where have you been? I hope you didn’t go anywhere near the Reservoir.’

Our father looked up from reading his newspapers.

‘Don’t let me catch you going near the Reservoir!’

We said nothing. How out-of-date they were! They were actually afraid!