Cairo

by Chris Womersley

  Going up and down the stairs took some time, and after one such trip, while hunting around in their kitchen for a tea towel with which to dry my hands, I noticed large spots of what looked like blood on the wooden floor. I crouched to investigate. The stains were unmistakable. Now alert to their shape and hue, I saw that the sink and bench were also stained with droplets of fresh blood. On the fridge door, too, another smear.

  As James had returned to the roof and I was alone, I followed the drops. The bloodstains formed an erratic trail that led from the kitchen, along the entrance hall, and continued through the lounge room, where they became difficult to see against the swirling Persian carpets.

  I hesitated — perplexed, intrigued — at the short hall that led into the other part of the apartment, the portion that had been a separate abode. The hallway was dim. A door to one side was presumably for the bathroom; and another at the end, closed, probably Max and Sally’s bedroom. A hat stand tilted like a drunken scarecrow, laden with coats and scarves and hats. A stack of phone books, a telephone. The fan blew at my back, creaking with each slow oscillation.

  Then the bedroom door opened, and Sally shuffled out towards me with one hand clasped to her face, shoulders hunched, as if in grief. She was unaware of my presence until she stopped to turn into the bathroom, whereupon she removed her hand, revealing the lower half of her face to be black with shining blood. Blood, too, on her dress. I gasped. Coolly, she glanced at me before entering the bathroom without a further gesture or word, closing the door hard behind her.

  I stood there, struck dumb. A second later, Max came out of the bedroom. He was dishevelled and stared at me as if unable to recall who I was. Eventually, a dim light of recognition flickered in his eyes, and he approached, tucking in his shirt.

  ‘Ah. Sally has one of her blood noses and won’t be able to come out with us, I’m afraid. But let’s go, shall we?’

  ‘Is she alright?’

  ‘What? Yes. Perfectly. Gets them all the time. Now, where’s that other man? Where’s James?’

  SEVEN

  ONCE MAX HAD REASSURED JAMES AND ME AGAIN THAT THERE was nothing wrong with Sally, we staggered downstairs to find the Mercedes and set off. The fact that I was, by this time, quite drunk was not considered an impediment to driving. Max and James were so awe-struck by my ability to manage a car that, after a few whispered concerns (‘What on earth is he doing now?’), each of them sat as riveted as they might have done upon witnessing the voodoo rituals of Caribbean savages.

  As it turned out, the cafe in question was only a few blocks away, and it would have taken us less than ten minutes to walk there. El Nidos was a Spanish cafe on Johnston Street with plastic tables and lugubrious, unshaven bar staff who looked as though they had been on duty for some months without a break. Although it was late on a Sunday night, the place was buzzing with couples both young and old — Spaniards from the local nightclub as well as students eager to keep carousing after the pubs closed. At the front was a bar that served coffee and pastries, while the rear section was reserved for half-a-dozen pool tables of varying quality and size.

  Mournful Spanish guitar music played in the background. James joined a table of older men playing a card game that involved much gesticulating and slapping down of cards. Max bought me a specialty of the house — a Sol y Sombra, brandy and anise — which was mixed below the counter and served in short coffee tumblers.

  Max and I played pool, forming a rather formidable duo that beat all comers. One of the benefits of growing up in a country town was the access it had afforded me to hotel bars equipped with pool tables. I was an accomplished player. Max flirted with a ridiculously gorgeous, black-eyed Spanish girl at a neighbouring table until her brother or boyfriend threatened him, a rebuff that Max accepted with good humour. We played pool for money and won twenty-five dollars, more than enough to cover our expenses for the night. It must have been two a.m. by the time we had seen off all competitors and sat down to divide the spoils. My lips were numb from the liquor, and I kneaded them with my fingers to coax some feeling back into them.

  Max motioned for me to come closer. ‘You know that night?’

  ‘What night?’

  ‘Last week. When you overheard Edward and me talking outside your apartment.’

  ‘Oh. Yes.’

  ‘What else did we talk about aside from that painting? What did you hear?’

  The swerve in conversation took me by surprise. Our table was littered with dirty glasses and cigarette ash. The only people left in El Nidos were a group of long-haired drinkers on the far side who, at that moment, burst into uproarious laughter. A pinball machine in the corner bleeped. With effort, I thought back to their conversation of the week before, of what Edward had said. This isn’t just some old Norman Lindsay painting of ladies with big tits sitting in a river. This is the towering genius of the century.

  It was late and I was drunk, but I was conscious of what to reveal and what to keep hidden; secrets had value and it was wise not to spend them unnecessarily.

  ‘That’s all you talked about, as far as I heard.’

  ‘You’re a discreet chap?’

  I shrugged. ‘I think so.’

  ‘I see.’ Max slung back the last of his drink and crossed and re-crossed his legs. He patted his shirt pocket for cigarettes, extracted one with his teeth and shook out another for me.

  When we had lit up, he beckoned me closer. ‘You’re a good guy, Tom Button. Wise, et cetera. I knew as soon as I saw you that first time. In fact, I remember saying as much to Edward.’ He sat back and drew on his cigarette, keeping his eyes sidelong on me, as if weighing up a serious matter.

  Finally, he checked to see no one was in earshot and leaned across to me once more. ‘Tom.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How would you like to make some money?’ He brandished the twenty-five dollars we had won at pool. ‘Real money. Not like this.’

  I nodded. Who wouldn’t want to make some money? I had passed my probationary shift and had started working part-time at Restaurant Monet, but the job only paid eight dollars per hour — enough to support me, but not much else. If it weren’t for the fact I was living rent-free, it was doubtful I could afford to live in the city at all.

  ‘Afterwards we’re going to Paris. All of us. We’ve been planning it for ages. There’s a place in the south of France called Saint something or other — mind you, they’re all called Saint something or other. A house big enough for everyone. Sally and I. We’ll take James, even though he’s being difficult about the whole thing. You could come with us, write your great novel. There are markets and castles, fields of lavender. All those French milkmaids. We’re getting off this island. You can’t make anything great in this country. Imagine it. Koo Wee Rup Revisited, Breakfast at Dimmeys, The Wagga Symphony? No one allows melancholy to take root here, and you cannot make great art without melancholy. It’s as simple as that.

  ‘You know, in 1942 Shostakovich composed his seventh symphony; the Leningrad, as it’s now known. This was during the war and three members of the orchestra who were meant to play died of starvation before the premiere.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘All the good people leave. This country is large and spectacular, but it’s completely and utterly dumb. Beaches and bimbos. Here they worship cricket players and jockeys. And criminals. Which is often the same thing.’

  Although I had no idea what he was talking about, it sounded glorious. I thought of David Blake back in Dunley and felt victorious, the sweetness only dampened by the fact that he was unaware of what I was doing. If only he could see me now.

  Just then, James leaned across the table between Max and me. ‘I think that’s enough,’ he said.

  To whom James had addressed this warning (for it did sound like a warning) was unclear, but Max sat back and scowled up at him. His eyes contracted into surly slits. ‘Que?’

  ‘I think we should leave now,’ James said.

  ‘Been propositioning the wrong man out
the back again, James? These Spaniards, you know …’

  James flinched before composing himself. He played with the sleeves of his black velvet jacket, tugging them over his wrists in a manner I soon learned was habitual.

  ‘Come now, James. I’ve been telling Tom here about the delights of Paris.’

  James opened his mouth to speak, before glancing at me and reconsidering. ‘It’s late, Max.’

  ‘Run along, then.’

  Again James paused, evidently reluctant to leave us alone, before addressing me. ‘Bye, Tom. It was nice to meet you.’ And then, to Max: ‘Be sensible, won’t you? No need to involve young Tom here in all of your mad schemes.’

  We watched him leave. A waiter drifted past us like a sad-mouthed groper, stopping long enough to clear our table. We lapsed into scrutiny of the last of the pool players.

  Max stood and brushed crumbs from his trousers. ‘OK. Let’s press on. I think breakfast will soon be in order, eh?’

  Following Max’s instructions, I drove back along Smith Street, several blocks away. He gripped my arm. ‘Slowly, slowly. You’re a very good driver, yes. Really very good. Here. Stop! OK. Keep the car idling. You can be my getaway driver.’

  Max leaped from the car and riffled among delivery boxes in the doorway of a health-food store. He returned a minute later with a cardboard box of fruit. I checked the rear-view mirror as we pulled out again, half expecting to see some irate store owner pursuing us, but there was no one else about at that time of the morning.

  This process was repeated two more times in the neighbourhood — we stopped outside a milk bar for some newspapers, and next I waited in the car while Max dashed into Chalky’s, the all-night liquor store on Lygon Street, and re-emerged with a bottle of vodka and three packets of salt and vinegar chips under his coat. It made me uneasy. Like any bored small-town boy, I had indulged in a spot of petty crime — letting down car tyres, carving my name into the back of bus seats, swiping Choo Choo Bars from the local shop — but I was basically very law-abiding.

  ‘It’s terribly bad form to show up at someone’s place empty-handed,’ Max said, as if attempting to appease my unspoken misgivings. ‘Hence the little … heists. Keep going this way. Turn right here, please.’

  He declined to reveal where we were going but directed me to the adjacent suburb of Carlton. We cruised along ever narrower, ever darker streets and alleyways until we pulled up in an empty lot hemmed in by abandoned warehouses. Weeds sprouted through fissures in the concrete. The ground sparkled with broken glass. I cut the engine.

  ‘Here we are. There’s some people I want you to meet,’ Max said. ‘Edward Degraves is a well-known painter around town. His work sells, whenever he can get organised to have a show.’

  Still pondering the thefts, I didn’t bother to mention that I had already met Edward.

  ‘Did you steal all that stuff?’ I asked. My question sounded more prim than I had intended.

  He punched the car lighter. ‘Well, yes, technically, I suppose I did steal this stuff. But try to think of it more like the redistribution of goods. How else are we to have breakfast? You know, I’ve been learning French lately. They have a word, magouiller. It means circumventing the law but not breaking it. Smart people, you know.’

  The lighter popped out, and Max touched it to the end of his cigarette. His profile flared orange and he was wreathed in smoke, which he waved away from his face. ‘Their laws don’t apply to us.’ He stepped from the car and gathered up his booty. ‘Allons, mon ami. Don’t fade out on me now.’

  And, arms laden with pilfered goods, Max strode across the busted concrete and approached a large steel door set into one of the corrugated-iron fences.

  After a few seconds I followed him, almost tripping over an old bike in the darkness.

  ‘Pull that cord, will you,’ he instructed when I joined him.

  There came a distant tinkling of a bell from somewhere inside and, presently, the door opened a crack. A beaky nose, sallow cheeks, then those unmistakable blue eyes. Edward Degraves lurched through the door in pursuit of a snuffling black pug that had tried to dart past us.

  ‘Damn dog is always trying to escape,’ he said when he had gathered it up and tossed it inside. ‘Gertrude would kill me if he got out. Kill you, I should say,’ he told Max.

  Although he betrayed no surprise at finding Max ringing his bell at three a.m. — indeed, he was fully dressed in a white shirt and black trousers — I detected Edward was displeased by my presence.

  Perhaps picking up on this, Max was effusive on the fundamental excellence of my character and, as we climbed the rickety wooden stairs, he kept repeating what a wonderful person I was. ‘He’s a great driver, Edward. Really very good. He even has his own car. We stopped and picked up a few things for breakfast. There’s some chips, fresh apples from the health-food Nazis …’

  The only sources of light upstairs were a tall, stooping lamp and a flickering television. Although the corners and walls of the warehouse space were almost invisible, I intuited the space was vast, as one might be aware, when camping, of an unruly wilderness stretching out beyond the glow of a camp-fire’s light.

  Edward clattered about making tea and coffee like a marionette butler, his movements slow but precise. He looked even more extraordinary than the recent morning (was it only yesterday?) when we’d met on the rooftop.

  Max introduced me to Edward’s wife, Gertrude. She was a tiny creature, with a nest of toffee-coloured hair drizzled about her head. The light from the television played across her pale face.

  Gertrude smiled and shook my hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Tom. Why don’t you come and sit on the sofa here. We’re waiting for the space shuttle to lift off. Shouldn’t be long now.’ Although she spoke with rounded vowels that betrayed schooling of some quality, each sentence devolved into a nervous, high-pitched cackle that lent her the air of a rather demented aunt. ‘We can watch it live on television without leaving the couch. Isn’t that marvellous? Heh heh.’

  Edward stalked over to us with trays of food and coffee. The tips of most of his fingers were discoloured with what I assumed was paint. He and Gertrude bickered over his selection of tea set; he hadn’t put out the correct cups, according to Gertrude. Together, they were like the exiled monarchs of a kingdom imagined by Lewis Carroll.

  We ate chips and watched the NBC Today Show broadcast from New York. The jolly weather guy was in a snow-blasted street somewhere in middle America, wearing ridiculous earmuffs that made him look like an oversized koala bear. Every ten minutes or so the friendly but deeply concerned anchors, Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley, crossed to Cape Canaveral to check on the preparations for the Space Shuttle Challenger’s lift-off. Much was made of the fact that this time there was a female schoolteacher on board, in addition to the six professional astronauts.

  The cameras panned to the crowd gathered to see the takeoff first-hand. A squinting man in a chequered jacket, picnicking families, kids smiling and waving tiny American flags. And the weather looks terrific there and we should be set for a successful lift-off today. Of course it hasn’t been all smooth sailing so far. There have been some problems …

  ‘Damn lift-off keeps getting delayed,’ Edward said to no one in particular. ‘It was meant to take off last week but there was a problem with the ship.’

  ‘The whole thing is a scam,’ said Max. ‘Even that moon landing was faked, you know. Filmed in some studio somewhere. I read an article about it years ago that said Stanley Kubrick directed the whole thing. No one went to the moon. Why on earth would you? It’s only a pile of dust.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Edward. ‘Why would they do that?’

  Max rolled his eyes. ‘For the money, the prestige, the knowledge that it could be done — the same reasons you fake anything. They won the space race, didn’t they? Showed those blasted Russians a thing or two. This whole lift-off is probably faked.’

  Gertrude indicated the TV, which was showing footage of a
previous shuttle orbiting the Earth. ‘Oh, Max. Don’t be daft. How could you fake that?’

  ‘Did you not see Star Wars? It’s called special effects. Besides, it’s all in the preconditions. Visions of Christ only materialise to those who already believe in that stuff. If people are desperate to believe in something, then they will. You of all people should know that, my dear.’

  Gertrude shot Max a sharp glance, and there followed a strained silence. I enquired about the bathroom, and Edward waved a hand towards the dim recesses of the warehouse.

  ‘There’s a cadmium painting there of an angular jester.’

  I could hardly make out a thing in the meagre light, only shapes and shadows.

  He sighed at my obvious incomprehension. ‘It’s red. A red painting. The bathroom is to the left of that. Along that hall.’

  I felt my way through the cavernous space, my vision adjusting as I went. The sound of the TV fell away behind me.

  The spacious bathroom resembled one that might be found in a ruined Venetian palace. There was a dilapidated claw-foot bath on a black-and-white tiled floor, a crystal chandelier (minus a number of its glass droplets) and a couple of ferns tumbling from earthenware pots. A gilded mirror with carved cherubs lounging on its crest was large enough to reflect one’s standing self. I went to the toilet and splashed water on my face to freshen up.

  When I came out I noticed another room directly opposite. Through its part-open door spilled a shard of light and the alluring odour of turpentine and oil paint. Across the warehouse, which must have measured twenty metres from end to end, the figures of Edward, Gertrude and Max were deep in discussion, their faces illuminated by the television’s jittery light. From that distance they resembled actors on a faraway stage. While I watched, Edward swivelled on his chair to look in my direction, as if ensuring I was still out of earshot. Although there was no way he could have seen me, I instinctively shrank back against the wall.