Fish-Hair Woman

by Merlinda Bobis

  ‘Sissy Australian — bakla!’ Ramon spat at Tony’s back.

  Ay, my back most loved. The night before he disappeared, Tony marvelled at how thin I was. ‘How sharp this vertebra, how so exposed and sad,’ he said, counting the ladder to my nape, kissing each bone, christening every hillock with the name of a gem. ‘Sapphire, lapis lazuli, jade, ruby … ’ Often I remembered his lips and the trail of precious stones on my back and always my hair hurt.

  ‘But let’s trade these gems for something more useful than kisses, Tony. Perhaps loaves of bread, white or brown like those in your country where it’s easy to choose because there are choices. My village owns my hair, so why can’t they have my bones as well?’

  ‘Time to go, Estrella, time to go … ’ Tony hushed my bitter query.

  After I trawled a boy’s body, which nobody claimed, the cracks began to show. Ay, so many bodies before him, for nearly a year. Nightly I felt the seams of my scalp, it hurt, and hurt even more after the boy. I kept seeing the small head thrown too far back, flopping behind him. Around his throat was a necklace of weeds and the fattest prawns.

  Along the river a crowd queried the little corpse, crossing and re-crossing themselves. ‘Thank God, it’s not ours, but whose is it? We don’t know. It must be from the next village. But it can’t be one of the rebels, too tiny, too young — ’

  ‘It is not it!’ I screamed, and hid my face lest the village remembered that there could be no drought for the eyes.

  You who read this, may you never need to pretend that you have forgotten. May you never know the kinship between fishing for the dead and killing. The first time, you break, so you practise the art of forgetting. You teach your gut to keep whole. I am seamless, you tell yourself. You breathe in deeply then let go and thank heaven it’s not you in the water. This is an artful exercise, this conversation between the lungs and gratitude.

  Chapter 4

  The art of forgetting. Luke underlines it, a riposte in his head: you mastered it, Tony. Of course, thirteen years is plenty of practice.

  The plane lurches, so does his stomach.

  From across the aisle, the woman blows him a kiss again. Luke catches the gesture before he doubles over. The papers nearly spill from his lap.

  The woman nudges the man beside her, and her lips pucker and veer to the side. He nods and looks towards the boy, then makes a move to rise, but she detains him with a practised hand: slim wrist, dress watch, and nails that have seen years of tender manipulation. She sighs, as if the boy has suddenly made her tired. Perhaps it’s his thick glasses that seem forever askew or the hunched shoulders tight around the blades. She thrusts her lips at the boy again; this time, she nearly catches his eye.

  My God, she’s trying to pick me up? Luke turns away in distaste. She’s been blowing him kisses since Sydney airport and her man always nods as if in approbation. He rearranges the pile of papers for the nth time. From a page, Beloved stares at him in bold print. How apt, he sniggers in his head, glancing at the keen couple.

  She rubs his arm now, smoothing the golden hair; he nuzzles her. She’s patrician, elegant; he’s much younger and handsomely morose. The crumpled shirt and jeans make him look roguish, a foil to her perfect grooming. He pushes back the armrest, they snuggle closer. From the crook of her pearled neck, he surveys the boy with unabashed interest.

  Ménage à trois? Luke chuckles. Should he wink at him, blow her back a kiss? He must be okay now. Ah, nothing like sleaze to fish him out.

  The plane hurdles another air pocket. His toes curl, his breathing goes awry again, but this high it’s impossible to drown. He steadies the page in his hand, turns it over and writes.

  22 September 1997

  Dad went on holiday: 1984

  Dad extended holiday: 1985

  Dad disappeared: 1987

  Dad resurrected: 1997

  Hallelujah-ha-ha-ha!

  Chapter 5

  Long before Tony arrived in Iraya, I suspected that the sergeant had secretly desired me, maybe even worshipped me in some grudging way for my nerves of stone. He could never look at what surfaced with me. He only stared at my body wrapped in the wet tapis, then at my face, perhaps hoping to find a sign of breaking. He never saw me weep over the corpses that I trawled, even when the whole riverbank howled. ‘Because she keeps her heart out of the water and she has secret powers inside,’ Pay Inyo explained, thumping his chest. ‘In war, we need secret powers, truly-truly.’

  No one knew that my hair stole all the grief from my face. How could anyone see the ache in my scalp, the trick of memory, the betrayal of nerves at the roots of my hair? It’s not my ancestry, not my father’s Spanish blood, but the flush from the heart that had cursed the red into my hair.

  My hair, the anchor for the remnants of a village. The disappeared could be retrieved for a decent burial and perhaps the river would be restored to its old taste, sweetened again by the hills. Then we could drink it again, we could fish there again, we could gather the river fern and taro leaves again. We could have our river back. Always the village cried, ay, Estrella, have mercy on us!

  Tony cringed before the fish steamed in lemon grass after I rescued the girl without a face. ‘How could you eat this — my god!’ His limbs went cold and locked around him, his sweat soaked my mat. He was incoherent for weeks. Deranged by his strange ailment, he screamed about the lemon grass fish growing fat and swimming inside the belly of the dead girl. I wrapped him with my hair each night to keep him warm, then fell in love.

  Another river swells on desperate nights like this, flowing in the pelvis. Strange how, when close to death, we grow more intimate with desire. One tries to hide it, but the river overflows. Each night when I hushed his cries, my tapis betrayed me, reweaving its flowers into fishes, which grew as luminous as the moon on the river then swam to my breasts, biting behind the nipples. His blue fingers reached for them, coaxing the fishes to leap out. Underneath my hair, he loved me over and over again, until the chill ebbed from his flesh because I had shared it with mine — ay, dear reader, my scalp hurts again. I can hear the strands pushing out. This is the hum of memory, my beloved mumbling about winter love in the tropics, his breath tinged with lemon grass.

  ‘I’ll take you away from this,’ he promised. ‘I’ll take you back with me, back to the light. And we will cut that hair.’

  Back to clean, sunny beaches where breakfasts stretch till midday, where life is revived by cups of coffee, where the water never changes flavour, where it’s blessed by a sky so blue, one can believe in heaven. So you told me, Tony. Ay, strange, lucky Oz-traay-yuh, savoured in one lazy roll of the tongue — but not home, never home. Still, he made ready to leave, to arrange something for me, for us, at his embassy. The sharpest pair of scissors to cut me off from my river.

  As he was about to go, I unbraided my hair, which he could not bear to see loose after we buried the boy with the necklace of prawns. I spread it around my hut, hoping he would understand. ‘You know, Tony, all of this is destiny,’ but he never heard me. I saw lights in his eyes. He seemed happy, perhaps inspired at the thought of taking his lover home with her cropped mane.

  ‘Time to go,’ he had said on the night I found the little corpse. He had rocked me to sleep then, wondering why there were no tears though my voice cracked with sorrow. Later he noticed the strands of white at my nape. Again he invoked Rilke, as if reading the poet in my hair: ‘For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror … and we have no need of this, Estrella.’

  The day before the soldiers came for me, the gravedigger brought the news. ‘Lemon grass and fireflies, Estrella, you better believe it. Strange but how beautiful, perhaps a sudden miracle, ay, our chance for salvation, perhaps shards of the light of Damascus, sent to pierce the hearts of the soldiers, truly-truly… ’ Hunched at the foot of my steps, Pay Inyo insisted that it wasn’t brine anymore. ‘Ay, we know there’s a body when the water tastes of brine, but it’s lemon grass this time — ay, what is this beautiful curse �
� who is this body?’

  How could I answer? How could I return to the water now?

  The old man begged, ‘Ay, Estrella, have mercy on us! Relieve the water, make it taste like our river again, only as sweet as the hills.’

  The following day the sergeant arrived with his men to force the retrieval, but not for the sake of the water. He wanted the village to witness the fate of communists. He wanted to witness how my hair would fish out this new body.

  ‘Get down here, woman!’ He waved his rifle at the flying lights. The uniforms were a lit apparition, a terrible beauty.

  My scalp ached. I wanted to pull out every strand that heard my heart break. ‘I can’t do it, I can’t go there, not anymore — ’

  ‘Putang ina, you’re getting soft, big hair!’ Sergeant Ramon yanked at my braids. The black and red rope coiled at my feet. Then he laughed softly, Adam’s apple rippling. ‘Easy to break, your Oz-traay-yuhn — your pale sissy did not even know how to fight like a man.’

  A stone sank in my womb. ‘You cur!’ I pushed him away, lashed out with my braids. Welts bloomed on his face and arms. Quickly his men barged in, bringing more fireflies, and the sergeant grabbed my arms, pinned me down, breathing into my ear, ‘You’ll leave him in the water then?’

  The rifles glowed and clicked. I let my hair fall.

  Slowly he unbraided it, taking great pleasure in smoothing the strands into a net. His men watched in absurd respect. More fireflies entered the hut, lighting my acquiescence.

  We went, a grim procession to the river, guarded by flying lights and the soldiers who held my hair like a bridal train. Again I remembered his lips and the precious stones on my back and the river in my pelvis and his lemon grass fish swimming from the belly of a dead girl now growing her face and nipples back and her grandmother rubbing her feet as if trying to remember something and the soft mound of earth singing the ten-year-old bones to sleep.

  Thus the betrayal of memory, while the soldiers wondered how my hair grew so quickly in their hands. They were in on the secret now, they heard it from my scalp. Once I dive into the water sweet with lemon grass, I can never leave my heart on the bank again.

  Chapter 6

  Years later the dead is resurrected. He kicks his tomb door open and says, ‘I’m risen, boy, so pay attention. I have much to say, I am replete with goodwill and felicitations, I am reborn. Here’s an airline ticket and love letters. Open your arms and receive me!’

  Luke giggles. The scene has been unfolding like a cartoon in his head, with the mummy wrapped in paisley design, like the shirts Tony left behind in 1984. They smelled of his cigarettes, or did he just imagine that when he’d try them on? The closet was full of them, until the bathtub incident a year later, until his grandparents thought perhaps paisley was too cool for a seven-year-old. Until he started howling. So Saint Vinney’s was suddenly overcome by generosity: paisley with too much heart.

  Dearest Luke,

  My heart breaks when I think of each one of those long years when I’ve been away from my only son. I count them in my hands and find I don’t even have enough fingers to mark each year. Too long, too long indeed. Forgive me, Luke, I have wronged you. I beg you to let me make it up to you now before it’s too late. I am not well. Life has overtaken me and I know I deserve it.

  I have taken to bed. In this merciless heat, the days are too long. Too much time to think, to remember and break one’s heart. It is not death I fear, my boy, but the fact that I might never ever see you again.

  What does he think of me, a fuckwit? So the man’s gone sentimental, saccharine, and superlative to boot.

  Remember, I used to tell you that wherever you are, your guardian angel is Dad with wings. I have never stopped guarding you in my heart. But my wings are tired.

  Jee-sus, what a redundant ham! Heart, heart, heart all over the place — after thirteen years? And I’m supposed to fucking remember?

  Luke has read this letter too many times since he got it two weeks ago, along with chatty postcards also forwarded to him in Canberra by Aunt Therese. On the phone she explained they had arrived much earlier, intermittently from the Philippines, like the other letters, strange love letters from some woman (of course), it was all quite confusing, these two sets of — of connections with your father, considering … and we didn’t know how to tell you at first, knowing how you feel … until this (yeah, the heart letter) … I think he’s very ill, he could — he could be dying … and the arguments spilled from his head, potshots for a disappeared man.

  Let me be a proper father to you on my last days — fucking proper father!

  You’ll like it here, my son. Despite the heat, this is a beautiful country — yeah, ’right, your own country was never beautiful enough?

  I promise to make it up to you — when did you ever keep a promise?

  My heart is breaking — so get your new woman to fix it with her hair as long as your lies!

  Not seeing you again will be worse than dying, my boy — I am not your boy!

  Then, a week after, the airline ticket arrived. He went to Sydney to hear the full story. Business class, and with another postcard saying he’ll pick him up at the airport (how presumptuous), with directions on where he’s to wait, even a map, address and phone numbers (how very thorough). Then the photograph. It was a shock to see it: Tony laughing, arms around little Luke looking up at his father. So strange, yet so familiar. Aunt Therese handed it to him, crying — remember this? Behind it, a scrawled note: ‘I carried this in my wallet all these years.’ He couldn’t breathe, oh yeah, because she was hugging him too tightly, begging him to please take that flight or you might never see him again, and his shoulder was getting wet.

  ‘Feeling much better?’

  It’s the man from across the aisle, more crumpled than ever. ‘You were a bit crook there — ’

  ‘No, I’m okay.’

  ‘On holiday?’

  Jee-sus, he’s really picking me up now.

  ‘Or work?’ the man nods towards the pile of papers on Luke’s lap. ‘That’s a lot you have there.’

  ‘Not really — ’ He hides all the papers under his travel guide.

  ‘Ah, holiday, of course.’

  ‘I am not a tourist.’

  ‘And neither am I,’ the man smiles, extending his hand. ‘I’m Matt — Matthew Baker — I lived there for three years.’

  Chapter 7

  Few countries in the world are so little known and so seldom visited as the Philippines, and yet no other land is more pleasant to travel in than this richly endowed kingdom. Hardly anywhere does the nature lover find a greater fill of boundless treasure.

  Written more than one hundred years ago, a quote from the German ethnographer Fedor Jagor on the first page of the Lonely Planet travel guide to the Philippines. Further down, Luke found more praise, or hope.

  If you can learn to be as laid back as the Filipinos amid all this natural beauty, you’ll fit in just fine.

  So, laidback Australian lover meets not-so-laidback Filipina in a richly endowed kingdom. A fairytale in the arms of a revolution. No, a love story. Romance is promised by the Lonely Planet cover: blue sky, dark-blue hills, blue-green water, blue boat with outriggers, the blues suddenly swimming into each other. Luke hates it when his glasses fog — here’s blue for magical drowning, specifically for fathers with novels to write or for tourists with lesser ambitions, but he’s not one of them. Again he feels the strain in his throat, he looks out. He cannot swap the other blue down there — ocean and sky so clear as if polished by a pro, surf rolling in on white sand studded with Norfolk pines, a lighthouse here and there, a sprawl of green park. Why do they leave?

  Still six hours from Manila and the crumpled man is back; again the boy is hijacked by friendly overtures. He has dropped all his papers on the floor, kicking them under the seat in front of him.

  ‘So where exactly is the holiday?’

  Luke has grown sullen.

  ‘Let me recommend some places
,’ the man says and plonks himself beside the boy, imposing the weight of his wisdom.

  I want to tell you.

  Go on, proposition me.

  I should tell you.

  Aw, piss off.

  Their thoughts connect, deflect each other, their hidden weight more than niggling. Luke thinks of his curse: all the nosy creatures extending their hands in solicitous concern or reprimand. Why don’t they leave me alone? Aunt Therese wanted him to live with them again after the kind-ofcommiserating manager of the uni hostel kicked him out because he did drugs (Drugs? Well, bloody prove it!), which made the room smell, and because of that weird dog noise you make at night, the other students are complaining — have you thought of seeing a counsellor? How solicitous, like that Filipina at the airport who must have eavesdropped on his thoughts, and what about that gossiping clan with the baby, and now this!

  This did not miss any of the papers that the boy was shuffling and writing on furiously with his red pen. This crumpled man knows too much, but cannot tell, not yet. He chides his reticence, but wasn’t this the plan when he took the same flight?

  The silence stretches and both occupy themselves with little rituals. Matt plucks at his cuff as if it could yield the right opening line, while he gathers the papers on the floor with his peripheral gaze. Luke takes off his glasses, wipes them too thoroughly as he shifts with a disconsolate air, then resumes the drumming: sandals on seat, sandals on seat.