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  ‘My answer is as clear as sunrise, but conveniently smaller. Perhaps you may feel you are distant from the penguin, does this mean you can take no delight in it? When your love is separated from you and in another place, will you cease to love? When you know the stars are untold miles away and not painted on a close roof of a sky, will they no longer glimmer and give joy? As you say, you are not the penguin’s keeper – no man can truly be a penguin’s keeper – but still you may appreciate the closeness of your heart and that of your avian exemplar. Hear the voice of the penguin in your mind and discover that there is no separateness in the world. You are part of the prisoner in his chains, part of the platypus, part of the statesman, the murderer and the tree. See yourself in all things which have the quality of being and show a little respect for the miracle this is.

  ‘Little brothers and little sisters, think of the other distances in your lives. Think of the fears you have made into countries and think of the penguin, diving and mingling in ferocious oceans without a boundary or a care. You too may be bold and recognise a place for yourselves anywhere and everywhere in the great sea of humanity. You need never lose yourself and you will always be at home if you will simply emulate the penguin who combines the courtesy of the stranger with the ease of the friend no matter where it finds itself. It is not a matter of chance that no city has ever been besieged by penguins, that no international incident has ever been ignited by penguins, that no glistering genocidal design has ever been pursued by penguins. Remember this maxim on all occasions – Penguins Have More Sense.

  ‘Here, I may point out that even the most sceptical persons may find something beneficial to learn from the penguin’s example. One may discover, for instance, that good things may be sought out and found most easily with the generous assistance of reflection. If a man seeks to be near a penguin, he may transport himself across the globe to sit with one on the great ice. Or he may go to the zoo and find one there. He may judge for himself which is the more simple task.

  ‘Now perhaps a woman may ask, “How can there truly be untold wonders concealed in such an unappetising, fishy creature – incapable of even peeling an apple for itself?”

  ‘My answer is short as the penguin itself. Wonders there are. For is not the penguin a bird and yet does it not fly in water and not in air, teaching us that all is possible? You may see how will and water have smoothed and narrowed the natural feathers of any common bird into the almostfur of a penguin, clothing it perfectly against the snow and tempests of its chosen home. The feet of the penguin, though forever naked against such terrible things as icebergs and the bitterness of cold, salt sea, never trouble it for a moment, so fitted are they for their purpose. How equally fit are its wings for swimming, its beak for beaking, its bright eyes for discerning white across white. Thus the penguin teaches us of the full rightness and kindness of our world. Deny your relatives and friends, your teachers, the queer twist in your stomach when you wake with the dawn, inexcusably alive again – even to you, the world may be kind.

  ‘The penguin will also show us that to stray without forethought into unknown places may bring us griefs we never dreamed of. Imagine the penguin’s torment if it was, all at once, arboreally inclined; its pitiful scrambles at mighty trunks, its patterings off leafy branches, its feeble beakings at slippery fruit. What would become of the penguin lost in forests, or indeed, in the rasp and wither of Ghobi sands? Before we begin our own momentous movements and translations we must be sure to equip ourselves for that which may reasonably befall. Preparedness is all and we may draw huge comfort from the fact that a penguin with a rope and crampons may indeed climb a tree, if not a mountain.

  ‘An ignorant person may call to mind that the penguin has no money, neither clothing, nor true shelter and yet it lives a full and marvellous life, exactly suited to its nature. This is all very well for the penguin, but as men and women, we must always be aware that we, though bound in our souls with a sympathy for the penguin, are not ourselves in any way penguins. For the sake of your own existence, whenever and wherever it is in your power, let no human be placed in the position of a penguin. Above all let none of your kind be driven to lose those sustaining elements of character from which the penguin draws its strength – namely dignity, time, space and purpose.

  ‘Little brothers and little sisters, allow yourselves to aspire to the penguin’s joy. Have we not seen it slip with its fellows down its icy slides to bob in the sea, then gaily scramble up to slip again? It will clatter beaks and run in the wind with a light heart. A penguin finds no difficulty in being a penguin, it simply is. This also is possible for you.

  ‘We may also take comfort in the fact that the penguin is not perfect, it merely does its best. Having chosen, perhaps less than wisely, to live somewhere at once movingly picturesque and tragically rich in rheumatic and sinus complaints, offering a diet composed almost exclusively of fish, many penguins have taken note of their mistake and acted upon it. Despite the lightness and satisfaction of its wintery life and plain fair at home, the penguin may be seen across the globe from Spain to California in zoological gardens where it may lounge in the sun, hail observing humanity and perhaps enjoy the luxury of peeled prawns, cabbage or drinking chocolate.

  ‘You who are accustomed to the delights of all the above may learn humility when you examine your diet more closely. Even the littlest child cannot be unmoved when it taps the simplest egg at breakfast and then considers that this very egg might have brought forth a whole, new penguin; bold and free. Perhaps the egg had, in reality, only hidden the start of a chicken or a duck – even so, you may well be grateful that you were not born a chicken or a duck, nor yet boiled to make a breakfast. It is a sad and shameful fact that men have fed upon penguins in dark hours. You cannot help but be grateful that penguins have never been moved to feed upon men. Humbled by your former wickedness you can be determined to bar the advent of any like abomination. If ever the difficulties of your life seem overwhelming, consider the prospect of being eaten alive by savage penguins and rejoice that such horrors are unknown to you.

  ‘Now gaze for an instant upon the land of the penguin; the white, flat white of the penguin’s home; and now let your eye fall upon the plumage of the penguin. “How can it be that the penguin is both white and black?” a keen mind may inwardly ask. “What may this signify?” One might suppose that, like the polar bear, like igloos, like milk, the penguin should be wholly white that it might be rendered safely invisible in its cold surrounds. But no, things are quite otherwise and they are so with a purpose

  ‘Notice that if the penguin should lie upon its face, turning its back upon the whole arc of the world, only the blackness of its feathers may be seen, marking out the glorious bird and exposing it entirely to foes of every kind. And yet, should the penguin lie upon its back, bearing its vital organs and the red tenderness of its heart to all that come, then is the whiteness of its belly feathers lost in the whiteness of the snow. Thus does the penguin, in embracing Nature, find itself protected by that very Nature and gentle Power which surrounds it. Embrace life freely, then, and see how freely it returns your favour, being ever mindful that a penguin does not often lie down, in either direction.

  ‘Oh, think of the bitter winds in the penguin’s feathers: that sound you may never hear, but may imagine. Know that there is nothing you may not learn, in putting yourselves within the triangular webprints of the noble and courageous penguin. What goodness and example may you not find there? Name me the penguin which has ever burned down a listed building by carelessly smoking in bed? Point me out the mocker of elderly ladies, the jumper of queues, the giver of previously sucked boiled sweets to little children who ever was revealed to be a penguin.

  ‘You cannot.

  ‘Think. Who would die for a penguin, kill for a penguin, offer a penguin their money or their vote? No one. It is the place of the penguin to be as a beacon to all humanity while remaining apart, untroubled by our world and its petty affairs. You may join me
in the fervent hope that our wealthy and our strong, our leaders and our led, our elected and our despots might imitate the virtues of the penguin and might wish no one to ever again die or kill or scheme or vote or suffer, or even spend a restless night on their behalf.

  ‘So, little sisters and little brothers, so is the wisdom of my life poured out before you.’

  And having spoken, the Wise Old Man glanced about him to find he had been left entirely alone. He smiled and, because he was tired at that time, settled himself to sleep beneath his particularly favourite tree. And while he dreamed, the afternoon became evening exactly as he knew it would.

  FAILING TO FALL

  THIS IS THE one thing I know from the minute I lift the receiver and slip that voice inside my ear – once it’s there, it doesn’t matter how this happens. It will happen.

  ‘Come now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I need you. I need you to come right now.’

  ‘I’m working.’

  ‘And I’m not. I’m at home. Come on.’

  ‘You don’t –’

  ‘I do. Tell them you’re feeling ill. You’ve got to be somewhere. There’s an emergency. This is an emergency.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Will you come now. I want you to. I want you.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I want you.’

  ‘Really, it’s impossible.’

  But, really, it happens that way. I walk through the typing or crashing or silent corridors and clean out of the building without even noticing whether I’ve put on my coat. I’m on the way to somewhere else.

  It seems a kind of falling and anyone can fall. When I think of it now, I wonder if we don’t all wait from time to time, ready to make a dive, to find that space where we can drop unhindered. Like an internal suicide.

  So I leave my work and start my fall. The door into the outside air swings snug behind me and I’m somewhere I can’t go at other times. Here we all walk together; are together. Watch for our feet, see our bodies; we all of us have the same music romping inside our heads. We’re moving through a big, blue waltz without a collision or a slip and I have my very own personal direction, smooth ahead of me. You could plant a wall across that direction and I would simply walk it down. Today I can do that. Look for my heart and you’ll see it beating, even through my coat.

  This is the only time I have when to be nothing other than me is quite enough. I love this.

  It may have been raining a fortnight, there may be salted snow and litter greasing together under my feet, dog shit and vomit – the usual pavements we have to use – but today I will neither notice, nor be touched. Angels have decided it; I will be clean today. The air will shine.

  And if I glance to the side, the effect is disconcerting. Things are blurred, as though I were watching them from a moving car. Once I have my direction, I can get up a fair head of speed. The final corner spirals off to my right, the sun is blazing a banner in every window and there they are, the reason I came, the taxis.

  Observing this from a distance, I can’t be sure why the taxis were always involved. I only know I have always taken taxis when I’ve been falling. When I could afford them and when I could not and when I had to borrow money before I climbed in. It was almost as if they had some claim on me. Indescribable. Sometimes I would find myself clipping that phone call short, just to get moving, to get aboard.

  ‘Come now.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll get a taxi, I’m on my way.’

  That kind of thing.

  Standing there with the taxis, I pause for a wonderful moment at the stance – I enjoy that – and then I reach my hand out for the door. Inside, in the air freshener and cigarette and boot sole-smelling cab, things change. Moving away, the fear comes in.

  With my face beside the window, I become acutely visible. I fill out with the feeling of being on my way and grow. It seems to me that I turn into something cinematically swollen. Surely, someone I work with, someone I know, someone representative of God’s wrath will take away this much pleasure before it arrives. Because this is far too big for only me to have; I should be at work, I should be doing some intermediate something for someone I do not know. I shouldn’t be growing this noticeably.

  I am afraid of eyes that will see me this way and then not understand. I myself have no understanding, because I am falling. There are meadows and opening seas of room between working and paying and shopping and cooking and eating and sleeping and general household maintenance in which I can be me, doing what I want. I no longer have to look out of the window and wonder who has my life, and if I miss it.

  Seated in the expectancy of the taxi, I can love all the halts, the lights, the flaring pigeons. My journey will take forever and no time at all.

  When I pay the driver I will only faintly notice how much, because money is irrelevant. It lies in my hand, defeated – just for today, we’ve changed places and I can pass it across with a big, careless smile before the door barks shut behind me.

  There is an irregular instant when I leave the cab, a slight loss of rhythm which is no more than natural, before I push the steps away beneath me and make the slow walk to the lift. Almost there.

  I plummet up the storeys in a stale little scrawled-over can with a pulse in my stomach which makes it all right. There is the flutter of arrival, of the door sliding back, the final steps, another door. Then I feel the pressure of movement between my face and another; the touch of hands, of air, of breath within breath.

  And the fall is over. I know what will happen now.

  I don’t want to remember this. I would much rather let it be over and hope it won’t come back again, but I know that I am not a strong person and that I very much miss those times when I was me and that was enough. Once every two or three months, I could change the world. I’m only human, I find that attractive, even now.

  And yet on the days when I was not falling I couldn’t think of it – the fall was somehow beyond my imagination. A particular sky, the movement of a breeze, a conjunction of word and feeling could give me a spasm of what I might call completeness, but for the most part I simply existed and made myself satisfied with that.

  Then even that satisfaction changed, beginning at the taxi stance when I arrived one morning and found there were no cabs there, I would have to wait.

  ‘We’re out of luck.’

  The voice was calm, soft, really very pleasant.

  ‘I said we’re out of luck. Odd for this time of day.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I believe I’ve seen you here before.’

  ‘That’s possible.’

  ‘I mean at this rank. I wait at this rank quite often because of what I do. It’s my rank.’

  ‘Well, I suppose it’s mine, too. If it’s anybody’s.’

  I am not normally this ill-tempered, but I was too far into my journey to focus on anything else and I never like speaking to people I don’t know – it makes me feel stupid. I end up discussing the weather when the weather is all around us and both I and whoever the stranger might be must surely have noticed it. We would be better off asking each other if our faces are still there.

  Against my nature and my better judgement and possibly because this was the only way that Fate could have arranged it, I turned to the stranger and asked, with a little ironic twist I was rather proud of, ‘What is it that you do?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You said you were here often because of what you do. I wondered what that was.’

  ‘I see. What I do.’ The smile was fully there now. ‘I make love.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what I do. I don’t mean that’s what I’m paid my wages for. I mean that’s the most important thing I do. My vocation.’

  I wanted to leave then – this was obviously not the kind of person I would usually speak to, not even the kind who was capable of small talk. I couldn’t go, though. It was that word – vocation – I knew exactly what that meant. For a p
ulse or two I was aware that both of us were falling together, passing and repassing, nudging briefly as we soared down our particular trajectories. I had never before met somebody so like me. There was no need for words, but my companion spoke in any case.

  ‘I’ve offended you.’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘I’ve surprised you then. I only mentioned it because . . . well, because I thought we had similar reasons for being here. A fling, an affair, a fuck. I’m in the right area?’

  This was all delivered with a beery smirk and of course, I was alone again at once, spiralling off in a way that no one seemed able to understand. No one knew. I wanted to explain the way things were for me. What I did wasn’t about sex, wasn’t about running amok and dangerous diseases, perversion, sweat. At that time, I could only have said that my sole way not to feel squeezed all the time, was to set off on my little journeys to someone close whenever I needed to, no matter what. I needed to be able to fall, to meet sometimes in a way that other people didn’t, to be outside the average shape of the day. Now that sounds like a whim, an eccentricity, but it was the heart of my life and a total stranger was quietly stamping all over it – purposely misinterpreting everything I was about.

  I wish I had pointed that out, instead of just saying, ‘No, not the same area.’

  ‘You can tell me, it’s alright. We aren’t the only ones, by any means. I know the type.’

  ‘Uh hu.’

  ‘No, you don’t see what I mean. We aren’t the only ones who come here to catch taxis to do . . . things in that area. I know the look. You do, too, if you think about it. You know how it feels. You think that doesn’t show?’

  I didn’t want to hear this. It was like watching my own reflection wink and walk away without me.

  ‘I think something shows.’

  ‘Naturally it shows. When I first realised – what we were all doing – when I looked at the taxis, smiling and creeping along . . . well, even now I can hardly keep from laughing.’