Opealeux

By Miles Rothwell

Opealeux has three parts, the first is set in 1920's Paris. Two impoverished artists struggle to maintain an existence. The main character is Braq de Leppis who struggles to fulfil his ambition of creating a single masterpiece in his squalid darkly lit room in a compound of huts in the Montmartre precinct. His neighbour Marc is writing a journal of local events which he relates back to historical figures, mostly Greek, and walks his room reading out loud his journal entries.
Braq ventures into the neighbouring fields looking for kindling and vegetation that can be carried home. He stumbles upon wild mushrooms and truffles on his treks. Unknown to either Braq or Marc the mushrooms have an hallucinatory effect while the truffles are dried to use as fire starter. Both are unaware of the culinary value until one day in the Cafe Marc works in a truffle off-cut falls out of his pocket and the Chef wants to know where Marc found the truffle.
The style of the narrative is whimsical with commentaries of life as a struggling artist at a time when Paris was the new cultural epicentre of the Europe.
The second part of Opealeux has a contemporary setting revolving around two bohemians sailing around Indonesia with the lure of making quick money from illegal activities. One of them ends up in Bali searching for spiritual fulfilment . The main theme is the search of wanting a better life while avoiding mainstream work. The main character Jess, flees Darwin with the roguish Roman with money from the sale of Hashish in a Biker's Bar. Jess survives the perils of ocean sailing and lands in Bali and more specifically the remote settlement of Batu Belah where she feels attuned to the locals and their relaxed lifestyle. Jess meets a French tourist named Eugene who embarks on a hiking trek of Mt Agung, a local landmark.
The final part of Opealeux is set in 2162 in an undisclosed setting with two scientists trying to resolve a scientific irregularity in the fabric of the Universe. There is a symposium where various intellectual minds meet to dissect and assert what they think has happened. Politics intervene as money is needed to re-ignite a previously discarded solution that will resolve the issue of space-time continuity.
The three stories are linked with various clues and threads creating an allegorical and surrealistic commentary on the nature of existence and the future of mankind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Miles Rothwell
• Release date: Sep 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370994724

Miles Rothwell

Miles impressed a primary school teacher with a poem titled 'Snow' and then in his late teens won a school poetry competition. When the band Talking Heads released 'Remain In Light', Miles became obsessed with writing lyrics. After reading Joyce's 'Ulysses', Miles knew he wanted to become an author. His first manuscript was written while living in Darlinghurst in the eighties. Miles is the proud father of Alexandra and Tristan. Miles other interests are music, sport and going to the beach. He quite often pretends to know a lot about wine. Miles and the children like going on holidays, especially the South Coast of NSW. Miles ranks making Spike Milligan laugh at an ABC shop book signing as one of his greatest personal moments.

Book preview

Braq de Leppis was not always my name. Before I was born I had no name. I live in what is known as Le Compounde on Rue Orchamps. The roof rattles in the rain. Footsteps and horse cabs from the laneway can be heard inside the crumbling gypsum walls.

Marie Richelieu collects the rent. No one knows her last name. Maybe no one has ever asked. She waits at the gate near the stairs at noon on the first Sunday in the month. Sometimes we pay, sometimes not, it doesn’t seem to bother her which.

Mushrooms are easier to pick in the soft wet mulch.

That is Marc. Don’t be alarmed but sometimes I hear what he is thinking.

‘Grab that one there.’ We are outside in the field collecting mushrooms.

Kindling scratches; hindering progress through the thickets. A snapped branch - rotted out – tugs on a shoelace. Mulch everywhere, aroma of wet grass, blackberry branches mingled with oak leaves squelch underfoot. With a swift kick the gold tops fall to the ground.

Sometimes my thoughts get mixed up with Marc’s.

‘If I scrape them into piles with this branch we can collect them later.’

‘I’m not coming back, it will be dark soon, and this rain is getting thicker.’

I can tell Marc is getting anxious. He doesn’t like the outdoors or the dark.

‘We could collect more berries if the brambles weren’t so stunted from a lack of sunlight.’ ‘They’re seasonal as well!’ I remind him.

‘What?’

‘It reduces any consistent yield.’

‘I can’t sort mushrooms in darkness. They need to be sifted and sorted into piles of similar shapes.’

‘Let me see.’

‘There are the grey ones; those are black as coal and the smaller ones have the gold tinge.’

He was right; in the dark it was hard to tell which were which.

‘Discard the smaller pieces, they taste woody.’ I told him.

‘What about these off-cuts? They smell peculiar.’

‘They are bitter for certain but when left to dry they are excellent to start the hearth fire.’ ‘Here, I have a piece of hessian, wrap them to place under your cap.’

‘My hair will stink.’

‘It can’t stink any more than it already does.’

‘What was that?’

I hear a crack and a whistle - could be a bird high in the tree tops. Silence is the forest holding its breath. The vista appears two-dimensional, bland yet natural, the mind interprets broad brushes of light as a natural feature with no discern between earth, trees, and sky. A snail ventures onto a blade of grass unique in the thousands surrounding it, an odyssey of death and forgiveness. On a tree, bark shreds what touches it but along the grain the softness nourishes and protects when needed. Branches sway and yield to wind, rain and nests, but when dried litter the forest floor then snap and burn to support the process of re-generation.

‘In nature all is not what it seems and only becomes alive when seen as it is.’

‘What rubbish you speak. And why do you carry those bundled papers so?’

‘You know too well why. These are my journale. For who knows when complete it may change literare forever. You should scoff so, how less significant is your arte.’

‘My arte, as you call it, is nothing - for that is what I strive for, to paint nothing.’

‘You talk in riddles.’

‘Exactly.’

I introduced Marc to Marie just in case she needed to know. Allies are necessary but adversaries even more so. She said it was okay for him to stay with me. That was three years ago.

‘Hurry, she will be waiting at the stairs.’

‘Is it noon already?’

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m counting, and it looks like I’m five francs short this month.’

Every month is the same.

‘You have days, weeks no less to arrange and let me know if you are short. Why do you leave it so late to account for the rent?’

‘Wait,’ stop your incessant blabbering, ‘there is 3 francs in the kindling satchel, I’m sure.’

She won’t stay long at the gate, and the suitcase seems heavy.

‘Marie doesn’t care if we pay or not.’

Sometimes money is more trouble than it’s worth.

Marc works at Café Mesmaris. He collects and washes plates and jugs. On a good night he makes enough to buy cheese and brioche. Sometimes he brings home wine collected from the dregs which he pours into a jar and carries expertly in his coat pocket without spilling a drop.

I am a painter; actually I want to be a painter. For the time being I use charcoale.

Life is a struggle, as it should be. There are good days and bad days, but along the continuum they merge into neutrality that must be discarded of having any importance. There is a change in the air, you can feel it everywhere, and also the papers say so.

I collect newspapers from around the traps, and although a few days or weeks behind I keep up with current goings on.

Paris is alive again after years of inactivity. There are cafes springing up everywhere and people of mesmerising talent are converging here. I have read there is a shift from old Europe; Vienna, Rome and St Petersburg are teetering on the brink.

There are new ideas - transforming literature, art and music. Paris seems to be the new epicentre, for where else would Monet, Proust and Stravinsky be more at home.

I would love to live in Paris but it is too expensive, even here in Montmartre is becoming difficult to survive. Thank the heavens for Marie. She is a breeze, allowing us to do pretty much what we want and the rent has never increased.

Mind you she isn’t spending too much on keeping Le Compounde maintained in any high regard. The walls are cracking, the gate needs replacing and the wind whistles through the gaps in the roof but we are happy. The other lodgers all seem to have jobs in the day, leaving us to go about out nocturnal struggle unencumbered.

Painting requires time and attention to detail. Charcoale must be prepared, gypsum walls cleaned and washed and when paper or parchment is available it must be dried. All this takes time along with the seemingly never ending search for mushrooms and the occasional slab of rind and brioche.

The communal duties are supposed to be shared by Marc and myself but the reality is I end up carrying out the majority of chores. I collect the kindling, arrange for the laundry and clean the laneway of rubbish.

Le Compounde comprises ten rooms or huts as they are commonly known. There are three on each floor plus a manager’s office on the ground floor that is primarily used for storing ladders, tables and an odd assortment of never used buckets.

‘Trouble lies ahead for those that don’t learn from the past.’

‘How so?’

‘The past is the only reliable source of information. Without it we don’t know who we are.’

‘You and your lament for the past. Today is the only important day. Tomorrow will never happen. Your protestations fall on deaf ears.’

‘I have a gift!’

‘A gift for what?’

‘I can see into the past.’

‘If you are going to assert you have a gift at least predict you can see far into the future for no one will know. What’s the point of believing you can see into the past?’

‘To see how things were done.’

‘But things that have happened are already known.’

‘Not exactly, history is fantasy; people’s recollections are tainted by sentimentality and righteousness. Only the Lord’s word is resolute. Factions expand and contract, melancholy dominates the pages of history. Noble conquests of ideals and great expanse are tempered with the strewn and mutilated bodies of the great Peloponnesian wars, even our own Revolution. I have even heard there is unrest with the Tsar. How will he be recorded?’

‘But you can’t change History.’

‘Not so, history changes all the time, it is reviewed, revised and re-written all the time. Why does the great book not mention those huge fossils found in Egypt, or the bones of huge beasts that were never recorded in Noah’s Ark?’

‘It must be an oversight.’

‘How plain you see things, of course not, they weren’t discovered - they weren’t known about, so how could anyone write about such things. History is only what people at the time know. Cavemen could not write about electricity yet it was all around them, they would have looked up to the black belching sky in the middle of a great storm to see the sky light up for a second or two, no doubt they saw trees hundreds of years old crash and burn to the ground after such strikes, yet did they know it was electricity?’

‘And for what purpose is all this? Your retrospective wisdom?’

‘It fuels the present we find ourselves in. The future is over the horizon - yet to burn our eyes, so all we have is our history, both collectively and individually.

What do people hold onto most dearly? A mother’s breast, a quiet lullaby, a favourite toy, perhaps that first love, a tankard of ale…the list goes on.’

Marc and I often talk like this, sometimes for hours

‘Why is everything covered in soot? You never clean this place.’

‘Charcoale is very expensive so I collect what I can. I wait till dark then go to the laneway behind Partistes. On my hands and knees I search for shiny shards of black sticks. In a good night I can collect enough to last a week.’

‘That’s smart, I should come with you, never know what we might find.’

A seriate of semi-tone birds?

‘No, that’s not a good idea.’

‘Why?’

‘We might be seen.’

‘Maybe, but with both of us we will find more.’

‘True, but it also doubles our chances of being caught, you stay here and I will roam the laneways.’

Squeaking gates and dogs with insomnia are the enemies of nocturnal adventure. Along the banks of the canal many less fortunate congregate, not to share their histories for they have far more pressing affairs to attend to – warmth, food and shelter among the more prevalent. Traces of fire from the previous night lay dormant after the coals have dwindled. The homeless move on leaving lumps of coal, amongst the debris shards and flints of charcoal are left. When collected and pressed into thin pencils they can be left to dry and weighed down under cobbles. Over time they can be used as drawing implements, some are rough and splinter under the slightest pressure, others less rigid are malleable and if treated like