by Marele Day
Giant Pacific octopus, fringed blenny, joyner stingfish, brocade perch, codling, snowy rockfish, longspine snipefish, blueberry roughy, orange roughy. Bastard halibut, Schlegel’s red bass, bar-tailed f lathead, striped jewfish, armourhead, slipper lobster, red crayfish, humpbacked shovel-nose lobster, striated hermit crab.
Bluefin tuna, great white shark, Patagonian toothfish, Murray cod, green turtle, humpback whale.
14
Hunter gatherers
Lilli stood at the beginning, at the moment of transformation, watching the steel river become a cascade of stairs. There was a glimpse of green f luorescence and then it disappeared. Lilli stepped on and began the descent.
She enjoyed the smooth glide of the escalator, imagined a bird in f light, finding the current of air, the hard work of wing-flapping over. All it has to do is not resist.
The escalator delivered her into a forest of abundance. The food hall. Pasta in all shapes and sizes—long straight strands, spirals, tubes, short ones tweaked into bowties. White rice noodles as delicate as spun sugar. Tins of peeled tomatoes. Packets of seaweed—arame, wakame, kombu. Squat jars of mustard, bearnaise sauce, horseradish cream. Large bottles, small bottles. Extra-virgin olive oil, sesame, macadamia, peanut, sunf lower. Bottles of oil in which were suspended a bay leaf, a single red chilli, curved like a scimitar.
Lilli hovered in front of a melon display, each cantaloupe in a membrane of netting stretched over it like caul on a baby’s head. It allowed the fruit to breathe yet protected them from bruising when packed for transportation. Three cantaloupes were balanced on each other to make a pyramid. Lilli imagined the raspy texture of the skin with its higgledy snail-trail patterns, the f lesh inside soft and fragrant, the colour of sun-kissed cheeks.
The display was on top of a stack of white boxes, one opened to show the fruit nestled into pink tissue paper if you wanted to offer it as a gift. Nearby were watermelons bigger than footballs, hanging together like a bunch of grapes. In contrast to the cantaloupes, the skins of these were smooth and shiny, deep green with lightning strikes of black like lines of longitude on a globe. They could have been dragons’ eggs; Lilli wouldn’t have been surprised to see one split open and a baby Godzilla emerge. The melons were the centrepiece of the fruit and vegetable section, this display cordoned off with a golden rope. If you wanted to purchase one you had to see an attendant.
The rest of the fruit and vegetables was positioned in front of mirrored walls so that the cornucopia appeared infinite. Tubs of tiny tomatoes, white radishes the size of pandanus roots, theSeaBed bunches of bok choy, tatsoi, spinach, basil, coriander. Bulbs of fennel with feathery green tips, smooth yellow button squash, perfect onions, careless snow peas, plaits of garlic, bunches of baby carrots as slim as fingers. Bags of salad mix—leaves of dark green cos, mizuma, white-veined radicchio, sunbursts of nasturtium f lowers. Apples as large as hearts, mandarins squatting on their tray like miniature sumo wrestlers, cherries the deep red of a lacquered box. Lilli moved on. This was not her day for buying fruit.
She touched a cucumber, her thumb and middle finger gently squeezing each end of it. A fresh cucumber should be uniformly hard along its entire length. She tried three more before finding one that was just right, then put it into her wire basket and passed into the dairy section—frosty bottles of milk, cartons, tubs of yoghurt, custard, double cream, tofu and cheese.
These sections of the food hall, in which customers served themselves—hovering over this onion or that or, if they were in a hurry, as many were at this time of day, methodically whisking items into the wire basket and moving on—were relatively quiet compared to the aisles of prepared food which were alive with monkey chatter. Even the smells were high volume, enticing shoppers to try—tubs of fiery pickled cabbage, pork buns, skewers of grilled meat, dumplings filled with spinach and prawns, water chestnuts, sea scallops and ginger. Saucy dishes simmered in large trays—teriyaki beef, bolognaise, buttery chicken in creamy red curry.
On the top of glass counters were samples with toothpicks and a fan of paper napkins. Sometimes backpackers ate entire meals in the food hall, grazing from one counter to another, a sliver of pastry here, a meatball there. Croutons dipped into rich green olive oil, extra-virgin cold-pressed, walnut oil, macadamia, each oil leaving lingering memories of its origins. The backpackers moved around like hunter gatherers, careful not to exhaust the supply of goodwill at any one spot, always nodding and saying ‘delicious’ or ‘very good’ or ‘we’ll come back later’.
The cacophony of smells mingled with invitations to try, to buy. Please, excuse me, welcome, what would you like, sir, madam, anything else, thank you. Next. It was a parade of giant billowing multi-coloured banners of voices and aromas.
Lilli looked at her shopping basket, at the lone cucumber that had already become a kind of companion, and moved onto the world of seafood. Her eyes rippled over the multitude of fish on their bed of ice. Other shoppers, women who prepared family meals, worked briskly, pointing out to the attendant which fish they wanted. A small fish for each family member, perhaps two for the father, bowls of rice from the cooker which was keeping warm its contents even as the woman shopped. There were trays of sushi—tuna, salmon, king fish, mackerel, scallops, prawns—attendants bringing out new ones to replace those purchased.
Lilli picked up a tray of salmon roe, glistening sea amber, and placed it beside the cucumber. She then proceeded to one of the checkout points, standing in line behind a long-stemmed young woman with a bunch of spring onions in her basket, a small bottle of sesame oil, an apple and a tub of yoghurt.
Sometimes while waiting in the queue Lilli envisaged whole lives from what was in a shopping basket. Customers buying breakfast cereal with gift offers had small children. Their baskets were packed to overf lowing with large boxes and bags of staples—rice, noodles, tins of tomatoes, instant soup. The young children were being minded by their grandmother. The eldest, a girl of ten, came to Grandmother’s house after school and the mother picked them up from there. It was much easier than bringing them shopping with so many easy-to-reach treats to divert them. The ten-year-old was the only one to see her father at night; the twins were already in bed by then, though he always went in, once he’d eaten the dinner his wife kept warm for him, and kissed them in their dreams. Sometimes they stirred, whispered Papa with soft puffs of sleepy breath.
The long-stemmed woman lived alone. She had a boyfriend and saw him on Tuesdays and Thursdays. They ate a light broth with spring onions, and cold omelette rolled up and cut into slices. It was already made and resting in the refrigerator. When he went home to his wife and family she cut an apple into pieces, sat in front of the television and ate the entire fruit, spearing each piece with a toothpick.
It was Lilli’s turn. She put her cucumber and salmon roe on the counter. The checkout girl moved them along, placing the salmon roe in a bag with a sachet of ice to keep it cool.
When Lilli entered her room heat rushed to greet her like a pet that had been cooped up all day. She turned the air-conditioning on and removed her shoes, felt the smoothness of the vinyl f looring. The bed was neatly made, the wastepaper bin empty. Everything was as she’d left it except for a pile of mail on the f loor. Three advertising pamphlets and a proper letter—from Chicken. Lilli threw the junk mail into the bin and held the letter in her hand, ran her fingers over the carefully written address, the wavy lines of the postmark. She gently placed the letter on the desk, for later.
Lilli stowed her purchases in the fridge, took off her office clothes and f lopped onto the bed. Home. The moment rippled through her body, everything coming to rest. This dry cubicle contained her, the life of the city outside on hold, the only sound the whisper of cool air being pushed into the room.
Lilli gazed steadily at K1 and K2, watched the evening light shift through them, yellow with pools of red near their foreheads. K1 had a spot of white on the top of his. They both bore a suggestion of black along the backbone. Each gill
was a single brushstroke, a sweeping movement that brief ly skimmed the surface of the paper then rose into the air again. The brace of koi were curved forward towards each other, like loving arms, their tails trailing away, connected by white space. Their mouths were open filtering the air, the little whiskers upturned in smiling joy.
If you turned the painting ninety degrees the koi swimming to the surface could be meeting underneath, their backs becoming bellies. Whichever way they were turned they made a circle and did not lose their continuity. The koi’s eyes were f lakes of orange with black teardrop centres. These were painted in the white area, near but not in the colour. Though there was no outline, you could not help but imagine that whiteness adjacent to the yellow to be part of the body, painting it in as you looked, the mind filling the gaps. What the artist started, Lilli completed. She nurtured the fish, brought them to life. K1 and K2 were her pets.
Lili took a plate from the rack above the sink, peeled the cucumber and cut it in half lengthways, scraping out the seeds. Through the window she could see the evening sky dusty orange from the city lights. Close by were other squares of windows like her own, some of them illuminated, others in darkness, waiting for their people to come home. Lilli broke open the plastic covering the pearls of salmon roe. Dinner was ready.
She paused for a moment, in appreciation of the food she was about to receive, then started with the roe, holding six or seven of the little eggs in her mouth and bursting these capsules of life-giving nutrients one by one on her tongue. She spread the next spoonful along the ditch of the scraped-out cucumber half, the intense tang of the sea in perfect counterpoint to the crisp crunch of cucumber. From time to time Lilli glanced at the letter, her dinner companion.
She tried not to think about what it had taken to bring the roe here, whether their mothers were farmed or wild-caught, about fishermen, co-ops, transportation, packaging. She stayed in the moment of receiving this bounty. No-one loved roe the way she did. It was as if there was a little creature held captive inside her, something small yet powerful as a gene, a strand of DNA, the blood that had come to her through the generations, that hungered for this food, for the remembrance of sea things.
When she had finished eating, washed up the single plate and left it to dry, Lilli opened the letter.
There was a noise, as brown and wavy as the clamour of kelp. It started as a drowsy lull but gathered momentum so rapidly that Lilli became alarmed. The strands of brown slid over her, fat slimy tongues licking, lolling, cocooning her in their moist stink.
Lilli’s eyes f lew open. She was trapped inside her body, entombed in cement. Her heart banged against the bars of her ribcage, her mouth was dry, face wet, hair sticking to her forehead, the back of her neck. It was a long time since she’d had the seaweed dream. She kept her eyes open, unblinking, filling them with the sight of K1 and K2, the sachets of green tea, the wastepaper bin, lamp, all the steadfast familiar things.
She could still hear the brown wavy sound, fading in and out, going round in a circle. It was the bikes, that was all. Lilli got out of bed, opened the window and felt the full blast of the squadron. The streets below were empty, but the motorbikes were close, tearing around the city blocks, ignoring traffic lights. It usually lasted twenty minutes. They always disappeared before the police arrived to disperse them.
Lilli poured boiling water into the waiting cup. The teabag loitered below the surface, bloated, sluggish. She manoeuvred a spoon underneath it and dropped the bag into the bin. The tea was perfect now, pale green, clear all the way to the bottom.
Lilli stood under the shower sloughing off particles of dead skin with the scrubbing glove. She always noticed the scent of roe the next day—in her armpits, when she urinated, in the crooks of her elbows, even on her fingertips—rich, aromatic, heady. It was her day off. The smell would have passed by the time she returned to work. A travel agent should be efficient at making arrangements, have a friendly and helpful manner, be knowledgeable about a client’s destination and the best way of getting to it. Clients should not be able to sense any personal idiosyncrasies, not even the subtlest perfume let alone more animal odours.
Lilli turned off the tap. The fan sucked the humidity the shower had created out of the tiny bathroom. She dried herself where she stood, careful not to make pools of water on the f loor. Then she went to the wardrobe and chose a freshly laundered dark green T-shirt and her favourite pair of blue jeans. Most of what hung in the wardrobe was work clothes—slim black skirts and white shirts. They were like a group of friends, patient, loyal, and they never criticised her.
Once dressed, Lilli opened the window a fraction. It was hot, even this early, and the city rumbled with activity. The lane down below was choked with delivery vans—a laundry service slamming its doors and pulling out, a young man in a white apron delivering a tray of pastries to the restaurant downstairs. The toasty, warm, just-out-of-the-oven aroma wafted up with the rising heat. Doors slammed, men shouted instructions to each other. They echoed and boomed, amplified in this tunnel of buildings.
At the mouth of the laneway was the intersection which returned the vans to the stream of traffic. Lilli could make out the obsessive tapping of the signal which let pedestrians know that the light was green and they could cross the road.
To the left was the bus terminus. Buses serving fourteen different routes lined up here. Scattered around the city were other termini but this one in front of the train station was the biggest. Lilli knew the number of each bus, its destination and the route it took.
The city was laid out on a grid, major roads running north–south or east–west—it was very easy to follow the map. As well as bus routes, the map showed the major subway stations. If sightseers wished to visit a temple or shrine, zoo, museum, art gallery, handicrafts centre, botanical garden, concert hall, cinema, palace, castle or a shopping precinct for electrical goods, fashion or homewares, Lilli could show them the way with the tip of her pen, even mark the destination with an X.
On the map the terminus was a mustard-yellow rectangle with numbers in fourteen different-coloured squares, like a board game. Lilli could tell tourists how many stops to their destination, how many major intersections they would encounter. With the appropriate map she could do this for any city in the world.
Lilli shut the window. The activity of the lane, of the city, continued in mime—buses coming and going, bicycles weaving through moving columns of pedestrians, the lights orchestrating the traffic.
The letter waited starkly on the desk. There seemed to be a slow ticking in the room, of time passing, though everything was stationary, silent. Even the air-conditioner was sleeping. Lilli wondered what the room was like when she wasn’t in it, whether things rearranged themselves. Perhaps simply opening the door was the mechanism that shifted it all back into place. When she went to the wardrobe, sleeves undulated in the breeze of the opening door then settled again into sleep. The only thing that didn’t move was the wetsuit, a heavier more substantial shadow in the darker recesses. Dust settled, fabric wore thin. K1 and K2 would fade, and even now seemed less bright than when Lilli had first brought them home. Perhaps looking at them wore them out.
Usually Lilli replied in a friendly yet restrained tone, the kind of letter you might send to a penpal, to someone you had never met or knew only brief ly. She was really pleased to hear from Chicken and hoped everyone was in good health. Things were going very well here, she would try and go down but summer was a busy time for her. Perhaps next year. Lilli was always well in her letters, happy and successful. She accompanied the return letter with a gift: confectionery made into colourful shapes—dolls, animals, last year a box of miniature aubergines, dark purple fruit with lime green elf hats.
The talisman rather than a heart on the back of the envelope should have alerted Lilli, allowed her to somehow prepare herself for its contents.
The photo caught her completely off-guard. The shock of recognition was immediate. What Lilli thought she had l
eft behind on the island was now here in her room. Beneath the torn corner was her childhood. There they stood, she and Chicken, the two of them together. Lilli had forgotten that they were wearing coats. When she turned the photo over, her own words came back at her. It was like seeing a ghost.
Lilli picked up the letter, reread the news about Pearlie. Then she made herself continue with the rest of it. When Lilli got to the list of those who had left the island the room filled with silent reprimand.
Lilli bought a bottle of water from the vending machine in the foyer then went up the stairs to cinema six, the neon number shiny as a loop of silver ribbon. She had not come with any movie in mind, but just to be out, to stop things crowding in. She chose an aisle seat and put her jacket on the seat beside her, as if that place were taken.
Just as the lights went down a mob of noisy office workers, six or seven of them, squeezed past Lilli and sat down in her row. The last one stumbled, put his hand on her knee. Marking her. Lilli could feel the impression of the hand long after the man had settled and the movie begun.
She brushed it off. In the darkness Lilli became part of the community of watchers, everyone sharing the same vision, imprinted with the same story; attentive, eyes shiny with ref lected light, like children gazing at the night sky, witnessing a small human drama played out in celestial proportions.
Afterwards, Lilli went to a nearby bar and ordered a beer in a slim frosty glass. The first mouthful was always the best, the fizz of tiny bubbles bursting on the tongue. Lilli looked past couples holding hands across small tables. She did not feel lonely.