Fear, hope and the coronavirus
19th March 2020
Last Saturday, I was in the city with Jay to watch the play Cloudstreet. The adaption of Tim Winton’s famed novel follows two families living through the depression and the war in suburbian Perth. By financial necessity, the families begin living under the same roof in a mansion formerly owned by a nasty heiress. She fostered aboriginal girls who were abducted. A few girls, under her supervision, committed suicide. And now, their ghosts linger like a dark cloud over the home. And so, too, does the pain of the two grief-stricken families.
The parents of one family attempt to find solace in alcoholism and gambling. The other turn to god. I say god with a small ‘g’ because the parents—especially the mother—takes a more literal view of the Bible. She anthropomorphises the Divine, believing that God is a man in the sky who suffers from bouts of anger and jealousy. And, not surprisingly, she feels forsaken despite her devout compliance. The play goes on following each character who also look for answers in various forms and odd pursuits. In the end, the characters do find a sense of hope. Curiously, though, this isn’t inspired by the patriarchs or matriarchs—the authorities figures in which we look for guidance—but by Fish, a mentally challenged child.
After the play, Jay and I walked outside His Majesty’s Theatre and onto an empty street. An eerie ringing resounded. The neon signs of dead-quiet restaurants flickered in the rain. I looked up. The clouds were heavy and black. Two months before, the coronavirus was trivial news. Now, quite suddenly, I felt like I was in a dystopia.
Walking to a bar down the east end, we passed people sleeping at the foot of shop entrances, huddled under tattered blankets. I could still hear the humming and the rain, as well as Jay’s and my feet squelching on the sodden walkway. I felt uneasy. People were taking precautions by staying in, of course. Still, I thought a few night-goers would still be out.
“Look.” Jay pointed to an Asian man on the other side of the street. He was small and frail. He opened a case and pulled out a violin and began plucking strings, slowly and rhythmically.
“What’s he doing?” I said. Obviously he wasn’t going to get much of audience.
He plucked and plucked, then, finally, grabbed a bow from the case. He played well but quietly. Jay and I continued to watch. His fingers danced up and down the neck. The strings gave the street colour.
Who knows why the man was busking during a pandemic. But he certainly played like he had nothing to lose. Nothing to lose. Wouldn’t that be freeing?
After he finished the first song, a group of white men stumbled around the corner. They were drunk. They pushed each other and yelled profanities, as young macho men do. As the pack approached the Asian man, they took a wide loop and fell silent as if they were scared of him.
We, in the western world, seem to crumble in a crisis. Perhaps that is largely due to privilege. When life is relatively breezy, we don’t have to entertain poverty and starvation much. In fact, we go out of the way to avoid coming to terms with the fact that, at any moment, we could hit rock bottom. Instead, as privileged people, we attempt to scramble further up the worldly ladder, merely praying the rungs won’t break, praying the coronavirus won’t affect the stock market too much. The rungs always eventually break, though. But the degree to which we fear falling, of course, depends on how high we climbed the ladder.
And perhaps that is why last week at the supermarket in Cottesloe, the cars stuffed with the most toilet paper and canned foods were the Porches and BMWs. And why, on a forsaken street in the middle of the city, the Asian man was creating beautiful music and the horde of unruly white men avoided him.
I stepped closer to the violinist. The music was faint. The most stunning sounds always are. Another drunk group passed the man without acknowledgement.
“I’m going to give him something,” Jay said, pulling out coins. As she did, three indigenous elders staggered around the corner. There were two men and a woman. Their clothes were filthy and hair matted. Faltering past the violinist, one of the men stopped. Stooping, he out-turned his pockets. Nothing.
He called out to the woman who had wandered on. Hearing his stammers, she stumbled back to the busker. Before him, she searched her pouches. The woman could barely stand. She’d go to fall. But then she’d catch herself. After feeling around, she pulled out a handful of coins and, despite her condition, dropped them into the Asian man’s violin case.