The Origin of Me

by Bernard Gallate

  ‘So are you two back together now or what?’ I said.

  ‘No, we’re not back together,’ Dad said. ‘But if you require some sort of definition, I suppose you could call us friends with benefits.’ He slipped his arm around Mum’s waist.

  ‘Steady on, tiger,’ she said, removing his arm. ‘I haven’t said anything about being friends. And the jury’s still out on the benefits. Lincoln, yesterday afternoon I went to the funeral of a distant relative. He’d been estranged from his family for years and nobody was there when he died. Ghastly affair. I only went out of obligation to my cousin Lana. We got a bit drunk afterwards so I stayed here last night instead of going all the way back home. There’s nothing more to it.’

  ‘Whose funeral was it?’

  ‘My Uncle Albert. You never met him.’

  ‘What was the funeral like?’

  ‘Mercifully one of the shortest I’ve been to. The minister either knew nothing about him or was very diplomatic. Albert was far from squeaky clean. He was a driver for one of Sydney’s biggest underworld figures in the fifties and sixties – Jack Monodora. Never convicted of anything, but I’m sure he made the occasional special delivery.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ I said. The dawning realisation was like being with Mum in the car sliding backwards down the driveway at Signal Bay all over again. Hearing the names Lana and Jack Monodora hit me like an airbag, knocking the wind out of me.

  I drew up the family tree in my head.

  Bert was my great-uncle.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Mum said. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘Just surprised to learn our family has a few dark secrets.’

  ‘All families have their colourful characters,’ Dad said, failing to make the connection.

  ‘That’s euphemistic, Lance. He was a volatile alcoholic and Lana hadn’t seen him in a decade. You can try to sever the ties, but family is family. Albert was still her father and she was a howling mess at the funeral.’

  Mum’s words became background noise as I thought through the consequences of being related to Bert. I remembered what Lana had said about him not passing the medical because of a ‘spinal issue’. Was Bert’s spinal issue a tail? He’d blamed himself for Johnny’s death, and the shame had destroyed his life. I needed time to sort a few things out before I could tell anybody anything. Fortunately Mum had reached the end of her story.

  ‘Skip the coffee,’ she said. ‘I have to dash.’

  The day at school dragged on and on. Bert’s death and the subsequent revelation that he was family had raised even more questions and I desperately wanted to finish the book to find some answers, but after school I had to work at Give Me the Juice with Pericles.

  In my half-hour break I raced down to Sushi Train® and claimed one of the two vacant stools. Three purple plates of raw tuna later, a lady in a brown coat excused herself and sat on the stool next to me. Devoid of make-up and colourful clothing, Ms Tarasek looked nothing like her usual flamboyant self and I might’ve left without recognising her if she hadn’t said my name.

  She asked how Art was progressing with the replacement teacher, and I said that Miss Timms was all about the theory and very little practical work.

  ‘Is the exhibition going ahead?’

  ‘Postponed, which I think means cancelled.’

  ‘I am not surprised. I had resistance from Mr Dashwood.’ She lowered her voice. ‘He said that your piece and two others were too controversial for display. I argued that they must be shown. Otherwise what is the point of art?’

  ‘Is that why you left?’

  ‘No. I would never back down so easily. My father is terminally ill. So I will soon return to Poland to be by his side.’ She took a bowl of edamame off the belt, popped a couple and began eating the beans separately with chopsticks. After expressing my condolences, I told her that Isa and I had discussed installing the knitted double helix unofficially.

  ‘You must choose your fights carefully,’ she said. ‘Be aware of the possible repercussions and be willing to face them. Two generations of my family have suffered terribly for their art.’ She didn’t elaborate further and it didn’t feel the right time to probe. Imagining it probably involved confiscation, burning, imprisonment or execution, I figured Isa’s and my effort was likely to seem trivial in comparison.

  ‘The worst they can do to us is cut it down before anybody has a chance to see it,’ I said.

  ‘I am proud of your courage,’ she said. ‘Teachers are not supposed to have favourite students, but we all do. You and Isa were mine. Such passion and dedication. Will you take my email address and let me know what happens?’

  ‘It would be an honour,’ I said. I put it into my phone then dashed back to work.

  After all that had happened today, explaining to every third customer that we were out of bananas took all the patience I could muster. Sam continued to hassle Pericles but now he brushed it off or silenced him with much wittier retorts. As the clock approached nine, he could see that I was exhausted, and didn’t ask me to stay back and help him close. I left a hundred per cent confident that he wouldn’t allow Sam to get under his skin again.

  I caught the train back to the Cross and rain began falling the moment I stepped out of the station. One minute later I entered our lobby saturated. ‘Cats and dogs out there,’ Frank said as I passed the desk. Home at last, I showered and climbed into bed, then turned to the final pages of My One Redeeming Affliction.

  Bitterly cold winds hastened the termination of the park’s season, but Irving Melinkoff, unwilling to forfeit a single penny, refused to cancel the show. Instead, he forced me to perform increasingly difficult and sometimes life-threatening underwater stunts to entice the park’s dwindling visitors. In Hilda’s absence, the mermaid princess was played by a submerged mannequin whose single moving feature was her hair. Neglect of the tank’s maintenance turned the water cloudy, and a vibrant green film of algae spread over the mannequin’s skin, terrifying and delighting the younger members of the audience in equal measure. The fouled water infected both my good and bad ears, and provoked a severe case of dermatitis that blistered and became fiercely itchy.

  Where once I’d enjoyed astonishing the audience with my fellow performers, I now dreaded being the sickly object of their leering gaze. Each night, after seven exhausting performances, returning to my lodgings brought little comfort. Bereft of my friend Paulo and his belongings, the small room seemed cavernous. And in the oppressive silence, my thoughts returned to my family and Deidre Budd. For more than a year I’d maintained my vow not to write to her, and with no photographic portrait to cherish, my mental picture, conjured too many times, had irretrievably faded.

  One evening the landlord delivered a letter from my sister, Loula. Following the usual pleasantries came some troubling news: Deidre Budd was being courted by one of the local Pyrmont lads. The blow of discovering the suitor’s identity on the next page struck harder than a prize-fighter’s uppercut to the jaw. How could she have fallen for someone as low as my tormentor, Reg McGuffin? McGuffin, the pug-nosed thug who’d stirred the Pyrmont lads against myself and Thomas. Surely the heartless ruffian who’d hurled a rock through the window of our family home hadn’t reformed sufficiently to merit her affection?

  Hoping to expunge all thoughts of Diddy from my mind in the revels of the racing crowd, I washed and shaved, dressed in my finest suit and headed for the New Brighton Hotel. Having hardly partaken of spirituous liquor since leaving Australia, I expected a whisky might loosen me sufficiently to enjoy the company of strangers. But my hearing loss made it difficult to follow conversation, and impossible to contribute – the raucous singing and laughter only mocking my desperate loneliness.

  After downing my third drink, I found my way to a dive bar in an area fittingly coined The Gut, where nobody would bother to interrupt a man’s solitary descent into delirium and stupor. There I threw back shots until my vision blurred and veins knotted my temples. Yet
still the blaring torment of being condemned to live alone forever continued. I drank one more for the road, lurched outside and witnessed the modern miracle of a million electric light bulbs spinning above me.

  Even in my miserable state, the tawdry beauty of the place wasn’t lost on me as I attempted to gather myself on a bench. And where there is any form of beauty, there is life. If only I could manage to find my way home, I thought, everything might somehow be all right. But the address of my lodgings and the ability to walk there had abandoned me. I needed someone who could point me in the right direction. Instead, a raven-haired woman wrapped in fox fur took my arm and pulled me east towards the Elephant Hotel, where a room could be paid for by the hour. On reaching the boardwalk I seized a pole and refused to continue. She drew close and traced a line down my back, her breath hot in my ear, whispering her desire to see the thing I was famous for – to touch it. She began to unbutton my fly, and I burnt with the shame of inexperience and unwanted arousal.

  ‘Don’t be shy,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t be my first animal act.’

  Her forced interest in my abhorrent feature for the sake of money filled me with loathing and self-loathing. I asked her to stop, but she dug her nails into my arm and said, ‘What’s the matter? You don’t like girls?’

  I shook her off and staggered away but she followed, unrelenting in her taunting solicitation. I pulled the remaining bills from my wallet and pushed them into her hand, then walked towards the sea. The woman remained on the boardwalk and yelled, ‘I don’t need your lousy change!’

  I reached the lapping waves. Water seeped into my shoes.

  ‘I’ve met some crazies in my time, mister. But you sure take the cake!’

  Fully clothed, I walked into the inky sea, lights dancing on its surface. I hardly registered the chill until it reached my aching ears, and cut off the woman’s voice.

  My toes curled with a chill of recognition that ran its way up my entire body, setting me shivering convulsively. When it reached the top of my head, I remembered properly for the first time how I’d walked inebriated and fully clothed into the sea, wanting to die from the shame of Nicole Parker discovering my ugly secret.

  Exceedingly intoxicated, I’d convinced myself that I’d never find love and happiness, and attempted to drown myself. Only by the grace of God did I fail. My father had always told me never to give up the fight, and at that crucial moment his words returned to me. I saw the faces of my dear family longing for my return, a revelation of their great love for me, and I chose life. I allowed the waves to wash me ashore and crawled up the sand. The cold bite of the ocean had restored enough sense in me to find my way back to my lodgings. I built a roaring fire and spent the night beside it, thawing my frozen body and planning my return to Australia.

  There I would fulfil my goal of setting my family free from their bondage of debt with the money I’d earnt from putting myself on display. Touring with the Astonishing Assembly of splendid performers had opened my eyes to variances in human anatomy and appearance, and given me an interest in studying medicine. I would eventually establish a practice that provided comfort and assistance to people suffering from any condition that made them feel isolated from society. And by accomplishing this, my own affliction would at last be redeemed.

  Edwin Stroud’s story finished happily enough, but the abrupt end of the journey left me feeling flatter than three-day-old roadkill. I lifted Ethel off the shelf and asked her if there was anything more to know, and if there was any way of finding out. I waited for five minutes then, putting her back onto the shelf and feeling utterly defeated, I noticed a tiny hole at the left side of her base – a keyhole.

  ‘Of course! You need to be wound,’ I said. ‘But where is your key?’

  Calling Isa after midnight was impulsive and perhaps selfish, but I desperately needed to slow my speeding thoughts. After she’d expressed her sleepy incredulity at the hour of my call, I asked what Bert had given her. She said it was a tiny brass key.

  I gasped, stopped breathing momentarily.

  ‘Are you still there?’ she said. ‘Speak or I’m hanging up.’

  ‘I’m still here. Could I please borrow the key?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I can’t divulge that right now – maybe later. Could you please bring it to school tomorrow?’

  ‘Sure. Goodnight.’

  Friday was cold and half the students had switched to the drab winter uniform. Isa was one of them. And she’d forgotten to bring the key. Unable to maintain a rational and objective view of the world, I accused her of doing it intentionally to annoy me.

  ‘It makes me sad if you really think that,’ she said. ‘I might’ve remembered if you’d bothered to tell me why you wanted it after waking me up in the middle of the night. I’ll bring it on Monday.’

  ‘Can I come to your place after school instead?’

  ‘If you insist.’

  After my longest day in living memory, we caught a train to Erskineville. Isa said I’d been acting remote, bristly and dismissive.

  ‘I’ve got stuff going on that you couldn’t imagine,’ I said.

  ‘Newsflash! You’re not the only one. Everybody has stuff going on all of the time. That’s what life is – stuff going on. You don’t realise that other people are struggling with shit because you’re so focused on your own.’

  ‘Well, excuse me for thinking that I might actually be going insane.’

  ‘Calm down. People who are really mad are totally unaware of it.’

  ‘That is complete and utter bullshit!’

  ‘Shh . . . We’re in the quiet carriage and you’re disturbing the other passengers.’

  ‘SORRY, FELLOW PASSENGERS! I am not completely crazy. You all just think I am because I’m talking loudly.’

  Isa put her hand over my mouth. ‘The only crazy person on this train is me, because I actually used to like you. I liked you a lot, if you want to know the truth. But I’m struggling to remember why. Because right now I don’t like you very much at all.’

  ‘Great, because I feel exactly the same way about myself.’

  We got off the train at Erskineville Station and walked up the stairs.

  ‘Lincoln, what’s going on with you?’

  ‘Yesterday I found out stuff that has me questioning the origin of my existence.’

  ‘You’ve completely lost me.’

  ‘I really hope not.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Isa stopped walking.

  ‘Nothing. I just thought you were one of the few people who got me.’

  Knowing that I hadn’t come for conversation or refreshment, Isa offered me neither when we got to her place. She made me wait at the bottom of the stairs while she fetched the key. Delilah must’ve picked up on the tense vibe, because when I reached down to pat her she clawed the back of my hand then pissed off into the back garden. Isa returned and dropped a charm bracelet into my hand. ‘There you go,’ she said. ‘Take extremely good care of it.’

  Attached to the chain, along with the little brass key, was the mood ring Isa’s dying father had given her mother, and a dove flying through a gold heart studded with diamonds – the brooch Edwin had given to Diddy Budd. Two love tokens.

  ‘Don’t you want to take those off first?’

  ‘No. Because against all current evidence telling me not to, I trust you one hundred per cent.’

  ‘And there’s the little key.’

  ‘There’s the key. Bert told me you might come looking for it. He said, “Make sure the little bugger gets it. But don’t make it too easy for him.”’

  ‘You’ve done your job well.’

  ‘Is it for winding the mechanical hen?’

  ‘I hope it’s for the hen. Bert left a tag around her neck that said, “Good egg for a good egg – Lincoln from up the hill.” This is going to sound completely mad, but I think there’s something inside the hen that’s for me.’

  Isa smiled and touched the lapels of my blazer. ‘You kno
w, you really are a good egg,’ she said. Then she crinkled her nose and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Good luck.’

  As the elevator ascended to level twenty-seven, I prayed that the hen would recognise her key. I paced the balcony before going to my room. I took Ethel off the shelf and said to her, ‘I think I’ve got what we need to get you going.’ I removed the key from Isa’s charm bracelet and guided it into the keyhole in Ethel’s base. It fitted perfectly but there was resistance when I turned it – an unhealthy grinding. Instead of forcing it, I found a tiny plastic bottle of hair-clipper oil in Dad’s bathroom and squeezed three drops into the hole. After waiting a minute, I tried the key again and it turned, no resistance, until the hen was fully wound. I removed the key and set Ethel on the table. I waited and waited, but she remained still. I figured she needed the token, but it was already trapped inside.

  Then I noticed a tiny hole under the base. I poked in Dad’s smallest screwdriver. A hatch fell open, releasing the gold token and the twenty-cent piece.

  I kissed the charms on Isa’s bracelet. I picked up the coin, and I kissed the sailor and I kissed George Pemberton. Then I dropped the golden coin into the slot. Immediately something inside Ethel whirred and vibrated. Her head turned from side to side, surveying her new home. She winked at me and nodded three times. There was more whirring, and the sound of something shifting inside. Her whole body lifted slightly then she lowered herself back onto the nest and shook her tail feathers. I bit my lip to stop myself laughing, concerned it might disturb the ritual. Ethel trembled, both metal wings ruffling as much as metal wings can, and she bobbed up and down. She clucked and cackled, scratchy at first then louder and clearer, igniting an intense feeling of joy deep in my soul. The irrepressible joy burnt through my chest and up my throat, erupting as laughter, squeezing tears from the corners of my eyes. Ethel was going completely berserk. Good to his promise, Bert had got her working again.