Content Warnings (click to reveal)
Depicted: animal cruelty, blood, coercive control, references to deceased Indigenous persons
Hobart Bled
Sundays were our favourite. It was the one day of the week that could always be relied upon for a family sighting. All that was required were a set of firm elbows and a spot on a pew at Saint David’s Cathedral in Hobart. The first requirement usually helped with the latter, so long as you weren’t afraid to jab.
Some days were busier than others. Christmas. Easter. Pentecost. Then the tourists and the news crews entirely drowned out the church-goers. We could hardly hear the Dean’s service, not that many of us came to listen. It was another voice we attended to. The family’s.
They mumbled barely-there words. Old words and dead words they had carried for almost two hundred years. Words meant for their dreamed-up audiences, but words that we tried to take for our own. We knew how to steal, or most of our ancestors did.
As many as could fit and then some would cram into the cathedral, leaving only one front pew free; the closest to the Very Reverend’s dais. That was the family’s seat. They had sleep-walked these centuries, never ageing, and we had watched. It was the dark miracle of the city, a phenomenon of ceaseless fascination.
What is it, how is it, that they dream?
We watched them so intently at service, attempting to decode any mumbles, any tiny kicks of the hand, any false blinks. Digital reams of articles, of websites, of misspelled X posts posited their theories. We wanted to hear what the family had to say.
We watched the Sundays for an epiphany, for something new, and finally we were granted it. It was a hand-span of days after William Crowther’s dethroning. That old Hobart statue, that old Hobart Premier presiding over Franklin Square, had been given a redressing. A few years earlier, local council commissioned a series of artists to show a taste of their true feelings towards this body-snatcher. He was lathered in red paint and a saw placed in his hands to speak to his crimes of mutilation, desecrating William Lanne’s body. More recently he was tumbled down, sliced off at the ankles. This wasn’t commissioned. Crowther didn’t rise again.
That Sunday, our pre-service whispers seemed to ring against the cold, damp-scented stone interior. Every creak in the floorboards was a whip-crack of Godly admonition. We were here for the wrong reasons, here with our greedy eyes and our trigger hands ready to pull photos and footage onto our phones.
We were here to witness.
The family came as they always had, and we practically slavered at their approach. Tendons stretched to their limits and mutterings moved in waves, rolling and tugging over the family.
There were always three of them.
The father seemed in constant threat of suffocation, with his starchy collar pressing so firmly against the medium rare red of his neck. The mother was a pale woman, with fainting hair and Sunday dresses of varying shades of brown. The daughter fared better, her youth elevating her looks into humble charm. It was her face we preferred to document. She was still a green, prepubescent girl, as she had been for almost two hundred years.
That was all before, when we have an after.
Something changed along with Crowther. Something snapped. The family, outside of time, had suddenly thawed into the present. We hadn’t noticed, at first. The service had been largely ignored in favour of the family. The family had risen and it seemed they thanked the Very Reverend, or at least some noise tumbled out of their mouths in his direction. That was when we had our until. It was on the seat of the daughter’s skirt. Now the daughter was continuing her shuffle on that mortal coil with a jam-like stain flowering across the back of her legs. Her first blood, her next step. Wherever would it take us?
* * *
I dream myself up as a whaler, and it doesn’t matter that in waking I scarcely know the bite of sea. In the sleeping I am rolling on top of Sullivan’s Cove. Never mind I am soft handed, barely now a woman, my salted knife and oiled coat make me man enough.
In the end we all die just the same.
I know the talk of rigging, in the sleeping. I know when the hemp begs for slack or for winding. I am the diplomat, opening communications between ship and sky and sea. The menfolk do not thank me, yet. I must get ourselves away, away, away from Hobart Town, and into whale province. The menfolk will warm once we are in the cold open.
I guide through waterways I have never seen and never known. In the sleeping it is enough. We take the foreign salt in stride.
Hobart Town is forgotten, nearly. I do not speak but for the grasp of my hands, the counting of callouses. No need for words when there is only one word to be said. When?
In the way of dreams, time skips and slows and starts and stops. When becomes now becomes then.
I speak with the ropes no more. My language now is in the deep.
We divide into the whale boats, and I allow the menfolk to row me forward. One passes the harpoon over to me. Perhaps he is bearded, undoubtedly weathered. It is inconsequential in the sleeping.
Something rolls in the dark waters distant. I tighten my hands. The harpoon sweats in my grip.
When?
A spume fans across the ocean, glancing across me in a fish heat. Something grows larger, grows closer. The harpoon sings into my palms. It knows how to end.
When?
Now.
Then.
The harpoon scarcely needs me; it knows the true path. My duty is to release.
A snag, a hurt, a lurch. I see the red-slicked back and it has begun.
Something pulls in the water, and the boat rolls. I hold steady.
I wait again for the when. When something tires, when I may draw closer, when I deliver the final blow.
When?
Now.
Then.
I handle the lance now and its appetite outpaces the harpoon’s. It lusts for the death throes. Who am I to deny?
I know, implicitly, implacably, the pathway to a whale’s heart. The lance knows it, too. Together we take our steps. First the lance plunging into the whale, into the sea, and then me.
The menfolk sing now, a lullaby to send me into the deep. Something shudders beneath the lance, beneath my grip, and I push further. The lance tip pierces against the heart, and I can feel my way into the chamber. Intrusive. This is not my home, but I force the welcome. The chamber opens, opens, opens, until I claim it. The whale blood that ribbons through my water-soaked fingers is my property. It is coming time to release.
When?
Now.
Then.
I fall below. The whale reddens above.
* * *
We had only known the family sleeping. Were they, now, about to wake?
The daughter’s period goes viral, talk of her blood on everyone’s lips. Hobart is in a fever.
We try to follow them after the service, as we have tried so many times before. We dog their footsteps in the soft-spoken rain and this time, we’re convinced we’ll catch them.
The sun unexpectedly slices into the wet streets and in the moment it takes our eyes to adjust, the family is gone.
Had we all imagined it? Had it all been dreamed? For now, we have been defeated. For now, we disperse.
Family talk meanders and crawls its way into every Hobart building. It sticks to the walls and the floors and leaves our footsteps tacky. Debates are held over the pool tables. We sink questions and billiards into the pockets.
Did we imagine it?
No, the photos prove otherwise.
Maybe she’s always been menstruating. Maybe the mother too. But surely we would have seen it before, in our almost two-hundred-year vigil. Our doubt ferments.
We need answers, but where to find them?
* * *
I sink through salted depths. An ocean tug pulls my sleeping back to Hobart Town. I condense, and the ocean condenses with me, fitting and flowing inside your womb hold. Mother, I forgot. Mother, I don’t forget now.
I shrink and shrink until there is scarcely any of me, and all of you.
I am you now, and you are me.
You have taken root inside of me and in the sleeping, I hold your weight with deliberation as I mount the carriage.
You send me off calibration. I am used to sharing and quartering off my body, but not like this. Not where I can’t see you. I must give up my hand to my husband, allow him the small of my back as he guides me inside. We are to go up Mount Wellington today, where my husband will leave me to the wives to dissect and smother. This was the way in the waking. It does not change in the sleeping.
My husband takes my hand again as we rattle up the Hobart streets. You and I contained. The pressure of his fingers sends Morse code through my flesh.
Be. A. Good. Wife.
We plunge up the mountain, where I will make friends of mothers and my husband will shake important hands. This does not change in the sleeping.
What does?
Your presence known to me alone. A brief secret before we unravel. For a sweet time, I sit in the carriage with my husband and you. No others.
But we go to a picnic; this does not change in the sleeping, and I am part of the feast.
It was red dawn at dream’s open, but it has since drained into proper morning. Blue bolt, white weaves of clouds. I steal what scraps of seconds I may to take in the sky, the blue-walled mountain. Let it be mine for just a moment longer.
The houses diminish as we climb into the scaffolding of trees. The carriage will not take us much further. We will walk, my husband and I, and you, my hidden daughter, will not take to the journey. You will try to slow me down by stirring trouble in my belly. In the sleeping, I try to quell you, knowing what unfolded in the waking, but you will not be silenced.
The carriage has seen its use. It is forgotten away as my husband leads me out by the wrist.
We must have brought food with us, but I do not know where it is in the sleeping. I take a step from my husband, and then another, so that his arm stretches taut in the air between us. I look around for wicker, but only see the stretch of stringybark and blue gum.
My husband pulls me back in closer, guides my arm through the crook of his. I only have seconds to borrow in the sleeping, and I have nearly exhausted my supply.
We walk, we must walk, and yet it seems only a handful of steps to reach the picnic. I am dizzied by the haste of it all, the pace of the sleeping, and you too, pulling at the strings of my body.
I am seated, now, in a circle of wives. I do not know how I got there.
I look for my husband. I search for his reprimanding eyes, but I cannot find them. I can feel a presence in and around and through the trees. Is it him and the other husbands? I do not think so. This is new to the sleeping.
A wife’s fingers brush against my wrist. They feel cool, milk-scented. Her hand offers me a strawberry, and another wife holds out the cream. I take them. This does not change in the sleeping.
I use up more seconds to look into the forest, to see who watches. I can make out no limbs save for the trees’. No eyes but for the suggestive knots woven into bark.
The strawberry grows heavier in my palm. I cannot avoid the eating. Only delay with the scattering seconds I still hold. It glistens. Arterial red. I think it may be beating. I take it slowly, slowly up to my lips, and you rise in reception. I bite. Blood-bright against my teeth. This does not change in the sleeping. You send it out of me again, recoiling, and the wives pass down looks. I am with, they know it. I am with you.
I have a second spare, before you expunge me, and I take it. I see who stands with the mountain trees in my second before dream closing.
I thought my lover had gone to Wybalenna.
* * *
We seek the Very Reverend.
He is almost as elusive as the family, but not quite. There is always someone who knows someone who knows someone. We work the chain, sifting through Saint David’s attendants to find those who go first for service, second for the family. We find the cathedral regulars who know the Dean, as a face, as a figure, as a friend.
We find him.
We follow the Very Reverend through the Salamanca traffic. He weaves past the cobblestones and the tourists as he dispenses his cash through the market stalls. Some of us idle, tempted by the snap and bubble of fatty Bratwürste. We don’t remain distracted for long. We continue the pursuit.
Finally, the Very Reverend exhausts his wallet. He faces us with a caught smile.
We ply him with our questions in a fever. He provides only one answer.
* * *
I recoil. So empty now with nothing to hold. You stand beside me, daughter, grown, and I reach for your hand, but it isn’t mine to take.
Whose hand is?
I have a husband’s hand I have taken, and I will find it.
I wend through the mountain trees and the mountain people. At first, I have to push through the masses, so thick and impenetrable in number. Then the way clears and grows clearer still. I see my husband’s hands, felling what stands before him.
I halt his fingers, long enough to hold them, and we join as man and wife. I have taken my husband’s name, his hand, his dream.
I am him now, and he is me.
I am boundless in the sleeping. All aches erased. My hands encounter no splinters as they set to tear the old world into shape. We break so we may mend.
The other men around me bear my body, my mind, my devotion. We are unified and uniformed. I stand in lines.
We take on the task of creating Hobart Town. We uproot the weeds and ancient detritus. We straighten the land with roads.
The land does not take to the taming.
My home, the first stones I have laid and the first labour of my hands, begins to unravel in the sleeping. First, it is native berries trailing the floors like dusty jewels. I must take them out of my daughter’s open hands and mouth. She has too much faith in my home-building. Then I find the bread loaves studded with eucalypt, soil clouding the drinking water. I must be ceaseless, ever vigilant. I tear down our old home and build anew. Bigger, better.
My wife and daughter huddle in a small and darkened corner as I pace the newly-made home.
I am boundless in the sleeping. I will not be contained.
Yet.
Cracks finer than the eye can see, but I count them. Cracks too few to threaten, but I can hear them sundering my home. My wife looks at me reproachfully from her barely-there corner. She knows I cannot keep the home.
Well.
If the home must fall, then I will be the one to fell it.
I lead my family up a high hill and clear the trees so I may have a view down to the water. I will not be blindsided again. I take shovel to the earth. It will yield into an indomitable foundation.
I dig my way down to home. Dirt rucks up into great piles by my sides. My wife and daughter ring the hole I labour in. They have no words left to say, only the stare of haunted eyes.
I dig foundations strong, my arms in perpetual motion. I judge the depth to be enough to hold my home in place and cease.
My labour is undone in the give and take of my breath.
I deliver enough foul words in the air to choke it, and begin again.
I dig forever and go nowhere. I dig a hole that will not empty and I think my wife might smile to see. I know my daughter pales further, goes mute. She sits at the rim with her eyes slowly shuttering. I am failing her, and my wife delights at it. I am failing, and this is not how the sleeping was supposed to go.
I summon the men from their world building. I cease the construction of the city in favour of the home. The men have my face and I see myself sour in multitudes. This is not the direction of the sleeping we chose, but it is the one we take. Together, we dig. Together, we find the earth unyielding.
Our palms grow lined with callouses and our fingers weep blood and I know now I am limited.
I am not boundless in the sleeping. I have been contained.
My dream, our dream, unravels.
* * *
We shepherd the Very Reverend away from the market stalls and lead him past the stone lions into Saint David’s Park. There seems no better place for our answer than here, where the cathedral once rose in hesitant wood, and where it was tumbled down by a tempest’s hands. We do not know where precisely it once stood, but we find for ourselves a section of dew-cold grass on which to stand, and this will do for our place of service.
We look to the Very Reverend.
The man, alone, clears his throat, but the answer will not come spoken. It is rectangular in the delivery.
A flutter of white, falling, wetted by morning. The Very Reverend holds out his empty hand for a moment more before turning and leaving. The service spell is broken.
We cluster, we swarm, we circle and swoop. Our fingers almost graze the white, then flit away shy. None brave enough for the opening. We must take it up and pass it around from hand to hand until our collective fingers may worry the white into a ragged brown. Once the family’s envelope is worn open, then we will read together our invitation.
Eilish Alexander is an emerging writer and playwright based in nipaluna/Hobart. Recent publications include Big Issue Australia’s Fiction Edition, Visual Verse and Crow & Cross Keys. She holds a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours in English and Writing from the University of Tasmania, and has had several plays produced to commercial audiences in Tasmania.
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