Book of Ma'Chi - 08 - Shari's musings

When she finished brushing her teeth, Shari had another look through all the bags in the bedroom, and under the beds to make double sure that her mother had not hidden her book.

She sat down with a sigh on her bed and tried to think. She noticed a small hole in her black tights above the ankle. She smoothed the corduroy of her dark grey knee length skirt absentmindedly as her gaze strayed out the window to the yard below. Seeing the Land Rovers parked in the garage, Jenny’s words played through her head: “Pick up the Indians from the eleven thirty train.”

“Of course! The Land Rover!” She’d had the book on the train and was sure she had slipped it into her bag. But the bag had gone into the back of the Land Rover.

She stood up and went to the window, looking closely at the back of the Land Rovers through the open doors of the garage across the yard.

She could see nobody about, and so pulling on her black hoodie she went down the stairs and out of the door into the yard and across to the garage.

As she snuck between the two Land Rovers in the garage, Martin, who had been checking an oil leak, lying on his back on a wheeled trolley, slid the trolley out from underneath the Land Rover at such a speed, that Shari, surprised by his sudden appearance and a whack on the ankle, fell on to the side of the door and from there on top of Martin.

He couldn't move or do much with her on top of him, until she had regained her sense of balance and started to stand up with the help of the wing mirror.

"I'm really sorry", he stammered as he slid out on the trolley and started to stand up, "I heard a noise and just wanted to see what it was."

“It's okay”, she replied, looking down at the hole in her tights, which was now the size of an orange.

"Did I do that?” Martin blurted, seeing her looking down at her ankle. “I didn't mean to hurt you", he continued as he stood up, "I hit it pretty hard to didn’t I?"

"It's okay", she repeated and she got her first sight of the redheaded Martin turning bright red in embarrassment as he realised what he had done.

"I'm really sorry", he mumbled wiping his hands on his overalls and looking sheepish.

"Garages are dangerous places”, said Shari, wondering why she’d said it.

"Are you sure you're okay?", asked Martin now covering his embarrassment by picking up the tools and rags he'd been using.

“Listen", said Shari, “it's okay, there's nothing to worry about. It’s as much my fault, poking around in your garage."

Martin's embarrassment was saved by the voice of Bernard calling across the yard: "Martin, you there? There are a couple of late comers arriving at the station in fifteen minutes, be a good chap and go fetch them for me please?"

Martin emerged in the yard, blinking in the weak sunshine that had just started to appear through the clouds. “Okay dad", he shouted back, “I’ll get on my way!”

“Sorry, I've got to fetch some more people from the station”, he said to Shari, relieved at getting out of a tight spot, “why were you in the garage?”

“Oh nothing”, she said and looked through the back windows of the Land Rover, hoping to see her book, as Martin backed out of the garage.

---

Shari went back up to her bedroom and saw Martin's Land Rover disappearing over the top of the hill behind the house. The window of the room she shared with her mother looked out over the corner of the yard and across the hill at the clouds scudding across the sky.

Her mind drifted to the first chapter of the book which she had read many times, the view of the hill reminded her of the hill in the Garden of Ma’Chi and how she had explored the garden many times in her head.

“The sky seems blue today, doesn’t it?”, the gardener asked.

“Well”, she thought, as she was looking up, seeing the sky for the first time, “it is blue.”

“Can you hear the rhythm?”

“No”

“Why are you listening with your ears?”

“I can’t listen with anything else.”

“Oh, I thought you wanted to read the second chapter?”

“Of course but ...”

“Then find the five rhythms.”

“What? Which five rhythms? What are you talking about?”

“So many questions and so little reflection, enjoy the sky, goodbye.”

This first encounter had taken a while to digest, she slowly got better at immersing her thoughts in the garden and as her dad once said, its sometimes easier to read with your eyes shut.

Almost imperceptibly she felt the rhythm coming from the direction of the Vegetable Garden. At first it seemed to be carried on the breeze and she could hear it, and then maybe the trees were making the noise, but she realised that she just felt it, and set off following the direction of this felt sense.

By the middle of the Vegetable Garden the rhythm was quite clear, soft but clear, and the source of it seemed to be a large water butt standing on four wooden legs by the wall. Half its height the butt apparently collected rainwater from the top of the wall.

Although soft, the rhythm was strident and pacy, with a clear underlying beat, which is what she had felt; and then it occurred to her that it wasn’t the butt making the noise.

There was a bowl, in some kind of terra cotta, like a large soup bowl, sitting on the ground underneath what looked like a gutter. This bowl was the source of the rhythm. The gutter ran diagonally from the bottom of the water butt down to the bowl on the ground some ten feet away; at the top of the gutter was a tap in the water butt.

The tap was closed. Shari opened it and quickly shut it again as the water reached the bowl, as the volume of the rhythm increased dramatically.

“Wow”, she thought, “so rainwater makes the bowl produce an strong rhythm, and the quantity of water determines the volume of the sound, cool.”

"So if I can tip the water out, the volume should go down.”

The bowl was quite heavy. She couldn't lift it, but by leaning with all her weight on one side of the bowl, she could tip it over enough for water to start running out. The volume of the insistent rhythm reduced immediately as the water poured onto the ground.

With most of the water gone she could see some kind of drawing, baked into the surface of the bowl. Now the bowl was light enough to move and twist around from under end of the guttering. The last of the water was easy to get out and the rhythm stopped, leaving only the noise of the birds and of the wind in the trees.

Now she could see the drawing, but it wasn’t one drawing, there were five. They seemed to be more symbols than drawings, arranged with one symbol in the middle and four surrounding it.

"What had the gardener said?”, she tried to remember, "something about the five rhythms, and not listening with my ears. Well, there are four, no, five parts to this garden. There are five symbols in this bowl. If each part of the garden corresponds to a symbol, and each symbol has a rhythm, I now have a bowl that plays a rhythm when filled with water! Then perhaps if I collect water from each part of the garden the second chapter will become visible.”

She had set off towards the Botanist’s Garden, carrying the bowl in her arms in front of her chest. Taking some of the rainwater with her was an obvious thing to do but she had no container. The Botanist’s Garden was the most easily accessible and she was sure that she’d seen glass jars in one of the cabins there.

In the fourth cabin she found what she needed and more, for standing on a bench was a complicated looking collection of glass containers connected with twirling glass piping. After following the various bits of pipe, she worked out that this was some kind of still. It didn't look much like the distillation columns they used at school but she could see where to light a fire and start the liquid boiling.

Around the back of the cabin she found a can of what smelt like vegetable oil. Matches were in the draw of the bench and on one of the shelves she found some kind of dirty looking water, at least it didn't smell of anything else. In a short while she had sorted out how to burn the oil, and had found some copper beakers to put under the ends of the glass tubing.

In the end only one of the tubes started to drip, and it was with some excitement that she replaced the copper beaker, which contained an inch of water, with an empty one and went outside to pour the water into the terracotta bowl.

The effect was instant. The moment the water touched the bowl a completely different rhythm emerged. Slower and more gentle, the rhythm was interrupted with small sounds and noises that came and went.

The feeling of triumph continued as she responded to her rumbling tummy by looking at her watch, and to her surprise – although she was getting used to the funny things time did when she was in the garden – it was twelve thirty and she was hungry.

Looking back out across the hillside she wondered if Martin had come back with the latecomers. She remembered his blushing red face, under the mop of red hair, and how his freckles disappeared when he blushed. He was a big enough bloke, obviously his father's son, probably about her age, but she didn't find boys of her age very attractive. The ones that she had to put up with at school were either stupid, lazy or sex mad. Her mind drifted back to how she had found other rhythms as the rain drummed on the window of her bedroom.

The solution in the Jungle had taken her completely by surprise, she had being wandering around by the edge of the jungle, wondering how to get into the thick undergrowth with its strong and intertwined plants, catching and snagging at your arms and legs as you push through the wall of greenness, when a small path had appeared in front of her where the undergrowth had been cleared somewhat so that she could make more rapid progress into the depths of the natural garden.

At first she heard the noise like distant thunder. She had made several incursions into the natural garden and had never found it a very friendly or satisfactory place; it had been enough to find a way out and not get scratched to pieces. The sound seemed to be coming from above her head, but the jungle was so dense that she could only hear and not see upwards.

Following the noise she became aware of the undergrowth becoming more and more damp and she thought she could taste a change in the air. The thunder got louder and louder and the ground started to vibrate under her feet as she got closer.
The scale and the power of the waterfall that suddenly loomed above her head, as she rounded some tall eucalyptus-like trees, took her breath away. The water seemed to emerge out of the side of the mountain in a huge cascade at least ten feet wide. The noise was created by this spout of water crashing into a hole some fifty feet below. The noise was deafening.

She was also getting very wet; hanging over the waterfall was a cloud of drenching moisture that was already trickling down the back of her neck. She had put a couple of glass bottles in her pocket that she had found in one of the cabins on the botanists garden, but she couldn't, at first, figure how to get water from the waterfall or pit below into her bottle.

There was no access at all to the cliff face where the water was gushing out, and the hole was so deep and steep that any access would have to be with ropes and pulleys and she didn't have any of that here. It was only when she sat down against one of the smaller trees, to think about how to get the water in the bottle, when saw the drips falling around her feet, dislodged as she leaned up against the tree.

Of course everything was soaking wet, running with water, she only had to collect the drips - somewhere she'd seen some banana-like trees and she was quickly able to collect up four or five big fat leaves and arrange them in a fan shape underneath one of the smaller trees. By creating a shower of drops, shaking and banging the trunk of the tree, she was able to collect water trickling off the tip of the leaves. One bottle would be enough to see if it produced a different rhythm.

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This is the eighth chapter from the Book of Ma'Chi