The Curlew's Eye

by Karen Manton

  ‘We only spoke English,’ Joel said. ‘Fedor’s rules.’

  Too many memories with his own language, Maria’s too. It was why she left the house to sing, Joel said.

  ‘We didn’t think about it. We didn’t want to be singled out.’

  No hard-to-say names, no strong-smelling lunchboxes.

  ‘There was nothing enviable about our foreignness then,’ he continued.

  It had always been clear he disliked the conversation. Greta didn’t push it.

  The homestead glowed in the slide viewer. Fronds and leaves rose like green wings protecting it. Among them a crimson ginger flower peeked out, a sexy pink, the fiery red of a heliconia. The lime tree by the front steps was laden with fruit. The frangipani’s dome of white flowers nestled by the kitchen window. To the side of the kitchen was the Hills hoist, and behind it a poinciana tree flared red. At the other end of the house a vegetable garden sprawled out to a mini orchard of banana and pawpaw trees. Uncle Pavel!

  The casement windows along the verandah were open. The living room doors were wide open too. Greta tried to see inside but it was all shadow.

  She looked at the second slide—the wicker chair on the verandah with its peacock woven into the high, arched back.

  You could enlarge those, she heard Vivian say. Make something of them.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ whispered Greta.

  The idea grew on her. If she could send these few slides and photos away to be enlarged and printed, she could set them among her photos of the ruin. Life as a montage of the past and present. Janna would love it.

  She slipped in the last slide. There was Maria in the chair, with her wistful smile.

  She heard footsteps and Joel’s whistle outside. His fingers tapped the door.

  ‘Come in,’ she said.

  The door opened slowly.

  ‘I haven’t wrecked a prize-winning pic?’

  ‘Lucky for you, no.’

  He sat next to her.

  ‘I was looking at these slides of the old place,’ she said.

  He was silent at first, seeing his mother.

  ‘Mrs Donegan passed that chair on to us. My mother loved it. She loved peacocks. I don’t know why. Fedor hated them. All those evil eyes in the tail looking at him.’

  He swapped to the homestead slide in the viewer, and then picked up the jewellery box, winding the key at the back. His fingers gently opened the lid. The music started.

  ‘My mother actually had a peacock for a while,’ he said, watching the ballerina turn. ‘Pavel bought a few chicks. Only one survived, the blue prince we called him.’

  He told her how it used to strut along the verandah and perch on car bonnets, until Vadik cracked his stockwhip and the bird flew to the poinciana tree. Maria kept the feathers in the linen cupboard and sometimes put them in a vase.

  The music stopped. The ballerina froze. Joel shut the lid of the box.

  ‘There’s a surprise for you over at the cabin.’

  Greta followed him to the balcony off their bedroom. A tarp was draped over a bulky object.

  ‘Tell me that’s not a dead body you’re hiding.’

  He pulled the cover away. There was the old enamel bath she’d seen at the homestead, filled with water and floating frangipanis.

  Joel lit a camping lantern on the chair next to it. ‘Thought you might like it for cooling off. Or growing waterlilies.’

  She shed her clothes and climbed in. The water rose with her and slopped over the edge. Joel lowered himself in too. The lantern cast a warm glow over his scars, the bleached welt from his shoulder to his midriff, the six thinner scars creeping towards his back.

  He flicked water at her. ‘Did you know Jupiter and Saturn are closer now than they’ll ever be again in our lifetime? Closest for four hundred years, in fact. Since Galileo.’

  She flicked water back. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Toby’s facts. I could go on a quiz show.’

  She’d overheard Toby’s chatter as he helped Joel measure wire and ram in stakes for a new python-proof chook pen. The planets were a recurring theme. A secret astronaut still hovered in him.

  ‘It’s the strangest thing,’ she said, ‘how we’re turning but can’t feel it. Rising and setting sun, moon, planets—it’s all an illusion. We can be upside down and never know, just keep thinking we’re the right way up.’

  He drew her in close, and cupped his hand to trickle water across the rash on her neck. She rested her face against the scar on his shoulder. Behind him the indigo night stretched up with its speckled path of stars.

  She thought of Maria feeding the peacock breadcrumbs from her hand and of the feathers with glowing eyes hiding in the cupboard. And of Fedor with his rage and his grief. She closed her eyes. In her mind was a picture in Kodachrome colour of a metallic-blue bird singing from a tree that grew orange-red flames for flowers.

  Fedor is sitting on the verandah after the grind of the day. A black shawl is over the back of the cane chair. He is washed, pristine. The blood and the carcasses have left him, the smell of them, though sores along his arm still itch. They are a constant irritation, these raised pustules. A long-sleeved shirt usually hides them. For now he is in a singlet, to let the late afternoon breeze reach his skin. His white-blond hair is combed back from his forehead, and scented. His eyes are ice blue.

  Maria goes to him. She walks with the slight sway of a dancer, and her eyes are full of sadness, and full of love. She holds out a tall glass of cool water with a wedge of lime. She grew the fruit herself. Its taste is bitter and alluring.

  He takes the glass. And she sees in him the old torment. It returns from time to time with the last kill of the day. It is the way the animal looks at him that undoes him. Those eyes become the eyes of a man he knew once.

  The last glance before a body crumples in snow.

  Years have passed since that moment, when the look of another man cursed him. The hours since then can’t be counted. And yet the eyes of that man are always with him.

  16

  It was dusk by the time Greta left Tori’s place. There had been great excitement when she dropped off her three boys for the weekend. Tori was taking them up to Darwin for Axel’s junior sedan race. The rough old car was ready on its trailer. Greta realised too late that Griffin had left his binoculars on the dashboard. Hopefully he wouldn’t miss them. She would have liked to see the car race too, but she was keen to blitz the garden, finish beading a few necklaces and make frames for her photos. She’d decided to send a range of jewellery and photographs to the Fishermans Creek arts and crafts show. She phoned her friend now on a stretch of road that ran like a spine along a hill and was known for good reception.

  ‘You have seen the light,’ Janna’s voice smiled from the phone cradle.

  Greta warned her the photos mightn’t fit with the seaside vistas and vessels. A bush stone-curlew, cycads, car wrecks and the homestead’s abandoned rooms could seem out of place.

  ‘They sound fantastic!’ Janna enthused.

  Greta’s car came over the rise. Janna’s voice vanished. Ahead an unnatural orange cloud hovered above the tree line. It was close, Greta realised as she came to the T-intersection with the road home. It felt like an odd rerun of the night they’d arrived at the property and found a fire along the way. She had a sickening feeling it was at the lake or the hut.

  A raised yellow ute powered by and clunked over the empty floodway. It swerved right onto the track leading through bushland to the lake. Greta followed it. The unmistakable noise of a blaze disturbed the quiet. The flames soon came into view. She pulled up next to the ute. An arc of fire surrounded the water on three sides. The slope up to the homestead was not yet alight, but Greta could see it would be soon. There was an odd wind pushing in that direction, fanning the flames. The pandanus were giant candlesticks wrapped in spiral ribbons of orange light. Each head of fronds caught fire with a sharp crack and flare of light. The fire gathered strength, chasing its way around the banks. The
lake was a silent darkness in the middle. Orange reflections shimmered across the water around the edges but the centre was a void.

  The driver of the yellow ute leaned on the open driver’s door to film it with his phone. As she eased out of the car he grinned at her and hitched up his low-slung trousers.

  ‘Fuckn’ brutal, eh!’

  On the opposite bank, shadow animals moved uphill. But one stepped in a different direction, onto the spill of rocks leading into the water. It was a person.

  Greta reached for Griffin’s binoculars. The heat was a mirage, the flames wavered. She tried to focus. Joel sharpened into view. He was looking across the poison water to the ring of flames. He was a shadow behind the fire. Like the dingo she’d seen run through the blaze that first night on the highway. She called out to him but the noise of the fire ate her voice. He turned and walked to the firebreak. His ute was there, ready with the slip-on water tank.

  No sooner had Joel driven up the incline than a fire unit rumbled in behind her, flashing red and blue lights. It was Ronnie. He pulled up close by. Voices and static crackled over the radio. The yellow ute started up, reversed and drove away.

  ‘Who was that?’ Greta asked.

  ‘Logan’s son,’ he said. ‘They live a couple of kilometres away.’

  She paused, unsure whether to ask Ronnie about the hut. She wished the girl would appear so she could take her up to the shack.

  ‘What if this goes into the valley?’

  He gazed over that way. ‘I don’t think it’ll head there,’ he said. ‘But it’ll light up that gamba in a minute,’ he nodded at the hill. ‘The wind might send it back this way too. Best follow me up the firebreak, eh?’

  His truck meandered through clumps of gamba until they came out on the firebreak. She kept close behind. The smoke was thickening. His lights were a comfort.

  At the top of the hill he parked by the ghost gums. Joel was there, and so was Tori’s partner Jed, in a fire unit.

  Joel came over to her. ‘I wondered where you were.’ He kissed the top of her head.

  While the men discussed how they would monitor the fire, a breeze came through and carried sparks onto the slope above the lake. A fierce new crackling filled the air. Sparks flew up from the understorey, reaching for the leaves of trees. One crown burst alight. It sounded oddly like pelting rain. Underneath, the flames passed up the hill like batons. The sand palms’ fanned fingers turned to fire. The cycads burned like torches. Clumps of gamba flared. Among them boulders and termite mounds shimmered.

  Embers floated across in orange twists and drifted into the gamba below the shack.

  Joel walked along the edge of the hill and down into the amphitheatre of cycads, Greta behind him. They watched the first smoke curls down near the outcrop. Fire sprang to life. In seconds a ravenous wall of flames was advancing. It was a roaring wind, a voice. Trees were enveloped. Saplings were tossed left and right in a crazy dance before the flame. Leaves disintegrated, sparks rocketed into the night. The force of it pushed upwards in a wave. It had a mind of its own, a consciousness. There was a grudge, an argument to settle.

  Joel’s face glimmered orange light. He stared down into the inferno. Did he see Magdalen? Was he in the burning car on the highway? Or was he at the homestead, beating flames with a blanket, standing back to hear the iron roof buckle, windows shatter, walls peel into flame? The scar on his arm flickered reflections.

  He shook off his quiet, and said, ‘We’d better hose down the cabin and shack, and then I’ll head up behind the old place. It’ll rip through there.’

  Ronnie’s red and blue lights flashed near the homestead.

  Greta told him to go and started soaking the roofs and ground around the buildings. She’d just filled the bath outside the cabin when Brynn’s ute rattled in.

  ‘Come to see if you need a hand.’ Brynn grimaced at the fire below her. ‘It’s a curse, this gamba. Makes fires too hot. Stunts the trees. Kills everything. In a few years we’ll be a wasteland. They’re meant to be cool fires, you know, good ones, cleaning up the land. Where’s Joel?’

  Greta pointed up to the old house. While she was looking, the turkey bush sprang into flame. She wished the curlews away. They would have escaped early on, she told herself, with the first hint of smoke.

  In the woodland beyond the lake, spotfires were starting.

  ‘Are your photos safe?’ Brynn asked. ‘I can take them for you, out of the smoke. You too, if you want to stay the night.’

  ‘I’ll wait for Joel.’

  She went and found a spade each, to keep an eye on the ground. Leaves, ash and embers were floating down around them.

  ‘Just as well Gabe burned off before you arrived,’ Brynn said.

  Yes, thought Greta. Gabe’s safe passage.

  The paddock behind the collapsed house leaped into flame. A surge of vicious crackling grew there. An orange glow pulsed above the homestead. Smoke mushroomed into the night.

  Simultaneously the fire across the hill lost breath. The monster that might have raced up to devour the shack had diminished. The grasses were mostly vanquished.

  Greta packed a couple of boxes of her prints into Brynn’s ute and waved her off into the night’s smoke haze.

  A strange silence pervaded the land. Earth and sky were the one darkness, except for snakes of orange flame creeping over the ground, fiery eyes in blackened trunks, and a flickering light inside the homestead. Her ears strained for the familiar cry of the bush stone-curlews. She heard none. There was just the last sighing of the fire, or the crackle of grass that had escaped before, now catching alight.

  Joel returned after midnight. He blew dark snot from his nose and sat on a stool at the kitchen bench. She nudged a glass of water to him. His eyes were bloodshot. The scar on his arm was smeared with grime.

  ‘Who lit it?’ she asked.

  He shrugged. ‘Piggers maybe.’ The glass shook a little in his hand.

  ‘I think it was Trapper,’ she said.

  He sighed. ‘Is there water in that bath?’

  ‘It’s waiting for you.’

  He eased himself from the stool and headed for the door. She followed him into the smoke-filled night. Blackened leaves were scattered across the cabin’s verandah. She lit the camping lantern on the chair by the bath.

  Joel stripped and slid into the greyish water. Fine wisps of ash floated around him. She watched him submerge, hands over his face. He was very still, holding his breath. Then he surged upright, blew water, smoothed his hair slick over his skull.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  She could hear the sound of the fire in him.

  He wiped the watery dirt from his shoulders. ‘I’m fine.’ His arm rested wet on the edge of the bath.

  Her fingers lightly touched the scars. ‘I’ll get you a towel.’

  She leaned in to kiss his smoky mouth once, twice, and the crease above the bridge of his nose that was pulled tight against her questions.

  When she reached the shack she saw a flash of light up near the homestead. She found Griffin’s binoculars and searched the darkness. Flames slunk along the ground in front of the ruin. She followed them down to Magdalen’s birth car. Inside it the giant tuft of gamba was alight. The car was aglow, a beacon in the night.

  Smoke still drifted through the valley the next morning. The land was transformed. Stripped, denuded. Black and grey ash stretched down to the outcrop and across to the lake. Most of the gamba had been razed to the ground. The trees were blackened, their leaves crisped brown. The colours of the escarpment were dull. A yellow cloud masked the sun.

  There was a great stillness all around. The land was in shock.

  Greta looked out on it with a thumping headache and nostrils stinging from the acrid smell of burned land and smoke. Joel might sleep for another couple of hours yet. Her father’s watch said 8 a.m. She gathered her camera gear and headed for the homestead to ring Tori. The incline seemed more exposed, the ruin more abandoned.
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  ‘Blaze at yours last night,’ said Tori.

  ‘It’s as well the kids weren’t here.’

  ‘You’ll be sneaking around with that camera, right? Watch out for the ground. It’ll be burning hot.’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’

  ‘And stay away from the trees. They drop with no warning.’

  A burst of static interrupted. Tori disappeared.

  Greta stood up into a wave of giddiness and nausea. She wondered if it was more than the smoke; if she was sick. She walked down to Magdalen’s birth car. The red bead tree had survived, though its trunk was licked black. The car was freshly burned out. Its tuft of gamba had disappeared. The body had sunk lower into the ground and was encircled by a line of ash. It reminded Greta of sand sculptures she’d made with Gavin. Cars, whales, monsters. She could see him driving over the sea to the horizon in a winged sand car draped with seaweed and studded with shells.

  She photographed the birth car and then walked along where the turkey bush had been. It was obliterated except for the blackened skeletons of a few contorted branches. Magdalen and Maria’s stones were naked white. The ground was scoured clean. There was no sign of the curlews.

  Below her the slope to the lake was a charred silence. The termite mounds were sooty towers. The cycads had bleached fronds in a whirl, like a memory of flame.

  A needling pain bit through her ankles and her knees. Her legs felt weak. She checked her father’s watch and returned to the firebreak. How changed the place seemed, like another world. Everywhere, once hidden debris was now exposed. The upturned tray of a truck, concrete blocks stuck through with metal pipes, tin cans, beer bottles, corrugated iron, fencing wire, steel drums. Rusted, burned, burned again.

  When she reached the far side of the lake she set up the tripod.

  A bluish haze hung among the trees and across the water. Blackened pandanus trunks stuck out of the ground at odd angles like abandoned oars. The only movement came from the kites, spinning their intent high above the water. They passed through drifts of murky cloud. And yet the lake was clearer than ever. Greta stood at the edge of the bank to see the submerged prisoners. The silent and gutted car. The bones in their dreadful whiteness.