Wearing Paper Dresses

by Anne Brinsden

  ‘Heard you’re gunna give Elise’s fancy singin’ a go,’ they might have been heard to say.

  ‘Yeah. Ya’re prob’ly thinkin’ I’m mad as a cut snake, but I’m givin’ it a burl,’ they perhaps could have been heard to reply.

  ‘Can ya sing?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Better than sittin’ home and watching the crop die before your eyes though, eh?’

  ‘Yeah. There’s that for sure.’

  So what better choice was there than Turandot? It was a crazy choice and a crazy opera. An Italian opera based on a German adaptation of a Persian poem about an Asian princess and a Chinese warrior which is sung in Italian, and described by those who know of such things as a flawed masterpiece. And it was now going to be sung in the middle of a Mallee drought by people wearing dresses made out of paper. So Turandot was perfect.

  There were, however, a number of operatic shortcomings that were a struggle for Elise from early on. The concert had no orchestra. Just Elise and a violin player. Just Elise and a piano player. But everybody knew that all along and they didn’t mind. And no conductor. Just a baton carved by Bill from a bit of a Mallee stick, and Elise. And everybody hereabouts knew that as well and thought that a Mallee stick wielded by Elise was as good as any that the city might have to offer. And no principal singer – just Elise. And no knowledgeable, tuxedoed devotees of the opera to fill this small Mallee town hall – those who might have been acquainted with a bit of Italian. Just all those locals – loyal and stoic and courageous – there with their singular Queen’s English and in their Sunday best. And everybody knew that too.

  Try as everybody might, though, the singers could not help worrying about that one particular, sticky defect: that the opera was going to be sung in a foreign language and nobody was going to understand any of it. And no matter how they whispered quietly to themselves about it, they had no answer for such a lumpy problem. ‘Elise, we’ll be singing the whole thing in a foreign language,’ Aunty Kathleen, the elected spokeswoman, had pointed out early on as gently as she could.

  ‘That’s right. The opera is sung in Italian.’ Elise smiled.

  ‘But we can’t talk Eyetalian. You can’t expect everybody to learn Eyetalian as well as learning to sing just for this. Can you?’ asked Shirlene.

  ‘Does anybody know an Eyetalian that maybe could put it all in English for everybody?’ suggested Mrs Cameron.

  But Elise would not be dissuaded. ‘We are singing in Italian as Puccini intended. We will not desecrate it. But Elise was used to life flinging barriers at her, and used to facing any number of inadequacies that had been upended in her path, so the dearth of Italian understanding wasn’t going to damage Elise. She had foreseen this difficulty and she knew what to do. ‘Don’t worry. I have always had a solution,’ she said. ‘Our Turandot will not fail because of our insufficiency in the Italian language. I will assist everybody here throughout the concert. All of you will learn the words – in Italian. You will sing in Italian. And I will be there to support any in the audience who lack understanding in anything but English.’

  ‘I think that might be the entire audience,’ suggested Shirlene.

  ‘Quite so, Shirlene,’ Elise agreed, nodding.

  *

  Elise’s drought relief fundraiser was a sell-out success. The hall was jam-packed on the night of the concert. Locals turned up in drove after drove. They came from every direction, leaving plumes of Mallee dust to hang on the horizon in the warm night air. Cars cruised disbelievingly then resignedly past the front of the hall and down the road as their occupants realised they were not going to be able to park right out the front, or even in the now-full vacant block next door. Everybody for miles around marched themselves and their Sunday bests up the path to the front entrance of the hall, where they had to throw in a heap on the floor their Mallee sensibilities of tolerable personal space and stuff themselves precariously close together on the hard, wooden benches. Folks settled in, hauling their inadequate single-language competencies with them, and filled that hall past its brim.

  Marjorie was near the stage. She had appropriated a place at the very front for herself, Bill and Pa. The three of them were sitting now in their front-row seats, with Marjorie in the middle. They were staring up at the dark dusty red curtains straddling the stage front. Shielding, until they were ordered to do otherwise, Marjorie’s mother and her troupe of singers with their songs of love and betrayal in a language no one could understand. But all those opera-singing locals there behind the curtain had not worried about any of this for a long time. All of them, up there now, ready and waiting behind the stage, dressed in their paper costumes, were confident that Elise had fixed the Italian problem.

  And Elise had. Elise didn’t let down anybody in that packed-out little hall. The curtains moved aside and there was Elise facing the audience, standing in front of her lined-up, rustling, magical singers, her Mallee-stick baton in hand. ‘This is a story about mistakes people make, and love and fear, and having to live, and having to die. It is about death. It is about trying your hardest even if it means dying. It is about trying even when you don’t understand. It is about triumphing against the odds. It is about love.’ Elise’s smile was radiant. ‘And it is also in Italian. Which I will translate for you all. From time to time.’

  And so Elise did. From the moment those curtains drew aside, Elise would turn to her operatic audience whenever it occurred to her and she would call out the story, while those beautifully ordinary, courageous country folk rustling on the stage in their crepe paper sang their Chinese story in their dusty Italian Mallee accents. They sang the whole night through, as best they could, to their utmost, in their magical crepe paper costumes. They sang and held their chins up against failed crops and dying sheep and bone-dry dams. They sang for the beauty of human frailty in the face of almost anything. They sang.

  ‘This one is for you, Ruby,’ Elise called as Jesse’s mother sang her aria. ‘The gentle, faithful Liù who was willing to kill herself for love because someone she adored took the time to smile at her.’

  And just about everybody from hereabouts knew what that meant. ‘Ah . . .’ sighed nearly all of the hall as Jesse’s mother sang:

  ‘That was won by such flame

  I will love even you

  Before this dawn

  I will close my weary eyes.’

  Bill and Marjorie and Pa weren’t among the sighers, though. They sat silent. They stared up at Elise and Jesse’s mother. Then Bill reached for his daughter’s hand and patted it as Marjorie blinked and blinked and Pa cleared his throat.

  ‘This one is for you, Marjorie,’ Elise called again as Elise sang Turandot’s aria. ‘A beautiful ice princess who thinks her only option is to kill anyone who tries to love her.’ Elise waved her baton for the chorus to join in.

  ‘And now Jesse, with his beautiful tenor voice, will sing “Nessun Dorma”,’ Elise called over her shoulder to the audience.

  ‘Think about this one, Marjorie,’ cried Jesse, joining Elise in the calling-out. He stepped forward in his crepe paper. ‘He’s saying: None shall sleep, even you, oh Princess, in your cold room. But I will succeed. Vincerò! That’s what this song is about.’ And he walked to the front of the stage, his crepe paper Chinese warrior creation shoving and rustling and glinting on all sides.

  But what Jesse and Marjorie weren’t to know was that they were not the only passengers able to catch a train out of the city and into this town. That stage fright had crept on board one day as well and found its way back, even after all these years. It had snuck once more into this small dusty place and had been hiding out backstage in the town hall for days. And now it grabbed Jesse and strangled him hard. After all his days and days of practice – hours spent rehearsing with Elise in the middle of this stage with the daddy-long-legs quivering and trembling in the corners; hours spent practising by himself in the dark of
the night under the reproving glare of the sandhill, or all alone in the middle of the day on an idle and wasted farm – now he couldn’t sing out what was there in front of him. And it was such a little song. It was only three minutes long. Not even half enough time necessary for an adult to drown in a dam. But Jesse stood voiceless.

  Elise saw it. ‘Stage fright has no part in our production, Jesse,’ she murmured, stepping up to his side. ‘It is a thing devoid of all mercy. Don’t worry. I have encountered it many a time and now I will help you defeat it. We will not stumble,’ she whispered into his face.

  But Elise couldn’t do everything. She couldn’t help everyone at the same time. She had to turn her back on the chorus to help Jesse, and the chorus faltered straight away without Elise and her Mallee-stick baton. It lurched and stumbled as Calaf blundered against his supposed triumphant assurance that he would win the princess when the new day dawned.

  Bill stood up then. He inspected the teetering debacle in front of him like he was inspecting a line of dead rabbits hanging off the back of the ute. He squinted at the piano player and the violinist. He peered at the chorus. He looked at Elise and he looked at Jesse. Bill straightened his tie, buttoned his suit coat, picked up his hat, lifted his head high. He turned then, as if to walk out on the shame of the shambling chorus, the disgrace swarming in Jesse’s eyes at his suddenly faithless voice. But Bill wasn’t going to do that. He was turning to his daughter. ‘Look after this,’ he said as he gave Marjorie his hat. Then: ‘I’ll do the conducting, Elise,’ he called. ‘You help the lad with the song.’ And Bill leapt onto the stage, grabbed the stick of Mallee from his wife and started conducting. Because he had heard this song enough times in his life by now to know what to do.

  And out of the blue Marjorie was standing now and she was yelling. ‘Sing it, Jesse. Sing it!’ she yelled.

  Then Pa was standing beside her, charging in like he was the nineteenth man just given a chance to run on the field in this grand final: ‘Gorn, you lot, don’t just stand there gawping like a flamin’ stupid chook cooking itself in the midday sun – get singing, ya fools,’ he ordered the chorus. ‘Give that stick what for, Bill,’ he bellowed to his son.

  And Elise stood with Jesse and led him into ‘Nessun Dorma’.

  ‘That’s the way, lad! Give it what for!’ roared Pa.

  ‘Keep going, Jesse! Keep going!’ called Marjorie.

  They were the coaches, those two. There on the sidelines and shouting their encouragements. But not everyone was pleased:

  ‘Quiet down the front there,’ called someone.

  ‘Shut up, you two, will ya!’ called someone else.

  ‘Leave ’em alone. You’re the ones who should shut up! You shut up!’ called someone else.

  ‘Yeah,’ called Pa. ‘If ya’re not gunna lend a hand, then just shut ya bloody trap so we can all hear the lad sing his song.’ Then he and Marjorie sat back down to hear the singing.

  And that Mallee, with its bald and scabby paddocks, its stinking poverty-stricken dams, its echoing empty rainwater tanks and its silent useless windmills, stopped. Because what else could it do? It stopped as Jesse sang out his song. It stopped as Elise turned and led her little troupe again. It stopped as they sang past Calaf and his successful riddles, as they sang through Puccini’s unfinished end, as Calaf gave Turandot another chance.

  Marjorie stood up again when all the singing was done. It wasn’t to call out anything this time. She stood because her mother deserved it, and Jesse deserved it. And she knew about standing ovations now, on account of having lived in the city for a few years, even if no one else in that hall did. And wasn’t that what any decent person should do in the face of such humble magnificence?

  She stood there, alone, against the salt water and the salt crystals and the encrustations of her own private concoctions. And clapped and clapped and clapped. Standing by herself there in the middle of that roiling sea of applause as everybody from roundabout – all those faithful aunties and uncles, all those locals doggedly looking after their own – acknowledged this little Mallee masterpiece.

  ‘We can do an encore if you wish,’ called Elise to the hall. ‘You can all join in.’

  ‘Yeah! Go on. You and Jesse do that song again,’ the hall cried.

  So they did. Bill conducted and Elise and Jesse sang ‘Nessun Dorma’ one more time. Her little opera troupe chorus sang, her miniscule orchestra played, as Elise called the words to the audience.

  Marjorie stood, and Pa stood up beside her, and Marjorie and Pa sang with them. And so did everyone else there in that little hall. While that dusty stage, jammed full with its brilliant crepe paper rustling and glittering and crinkling, sang with them. And it turned out that Elise was right about the tablets not being magic. Because all the magic that Elise said wasn’t in her tablets was in that town hall in Turandot. It was jam-packed with it.

  The superintendent of the mental hospital had tipped off the newspaper reporters, of course. ‘An operatic recital in the middle of nowhere,’ he had said. ‘It will be marvellous. A testament to the recovery of patients from my institution.’ The newspaper reporters weren’t so sure. They had been to this town before and they knew what to expect. But they could sense a good story either way. So, armed with pen and paper, they returned, and squashed themselves against the back wall of that packed-out little hall to watch this Mallee Turandot unfold. It was boiling in there with that crush. Sweat smothered their shirts, and their mouths hung open. But not because of the heat, as you might think. It was because of Turandot. They forgot themselves and their duty at the back of that little town hall. They clapped and clapped along with all those locals. They rushed to write it up as the most marvellous of crepe paper operas in a nondescript dusty town fighting hard not to die of thirst in the middle of the Mallee.

  But nobody from hereabouts really cared two hoots about what was written up in the city newspapers. They weren’t too concerned at all about what might have been said. They wouldn’t have bothered to pay two bob for any of that. ‘Vincerò,’ called Elise. ‘Vin-cer-ò,’ sang Marjorie and Jesse. ‘Vin-cer-ò,’ Pa and Bill, the aunties and uncles and the whole lot of them sang. ‘Vin-cer-ò!’

  Jesse stood in imposing spangled splendour in the fanciful paper dress that Marjorie had sewn for him. He stood straight and tall now, right there in front of Marjorie and her encore. He didn’t move. The whole hall clapped and shouted and whistled at Elise’s crepe-papered musical masterpiece while a crinkling and rustling Jesse looked down at Marjorie from his dusty stage. Then Jesse moved. He moved his head just a bit, just enough. It was that slightly angled, slight downwards tilt. He gave Marjorie a Mallee nod. Right there. And Marjorie couldn’t help herself when she saw that. One side of her face scrunched up just a bit so that half her mouth tilted up in an almost smile, and one eyebrow raised itself just a little, and one eye just about winked at him. And when Jesse saw that, he gave her one of his Jesse smiles. He gave it sweetly and softly as he stood there beside her triumphing mother so it floated out over Elise, out over Bill and Pa and the aunties and uncles, out in full view of all those locals, and it settled ever so quietly on Marjorie.

  Marjorie’s face couldn’t help itself then. Before Marjorie even had time to weigh up the very real consequences of her face behaving like that, her face took that smile and gave that smile right back – straight away.

  *

  When can anyone ever really know about a thing? When do you get to nod and say, as you stare off down the track, Yep, we could all see that coming – saw that a mile off?

  And how does a thing ever find its ending? Can you chase after it and grab it and throw it to the ground? Or is it best just to stand back and watch it? Leave well enough alone. Watch that willy-willy feeding on itself – lurching and swaying in the dust and the heat – crazy and wild and ruinous and beautiful. Watch it until it wears itself out tearing across the stubble.
/>   And what if you could have seen that thing coming a mile off? Would you have tried to run and grab it and throw it to the ground? Would that have made it any easier for Marjorie? Would that have meant, in the long run, that things might have had a chance to turn out as something else altogether? Because no matter where Marjorie might end up there would still be all that Mallee somewhere with its relentless eternal implacable semi-desertness to contend with. Even if she might end up as far away as the city.

  But maybe Marjorie knows now that things can always have a chance to turn out as something else altogether from what a running girl might have first thought. Especially when you can know you have done a good thing – and you know now that you can walk off down that track. And the dust on that track will sigh under your feet as you pass. It will remind you for sure that there will always be this Mallee. But it will tell you also that this city is a solid thing. With its autumn leaves and its laneways, its Aunty Agnes and its asphalt, its trams and its coffee. And that just for you, in or out of the Mallee, with or without Ruby or Jesse, there is – watching and waiting for you – all that paper. All that piled-up, inexorable, indomitable, uncompromising fortune of broken and damaged books.

  That’s when you can know for sure.

  Glossary of Terms

  I have developed a short list of terms used in my book in response to a few questions and sometimes puzzlement about their use.