Cairo

by Chris Womersley

  We laughed.

  ‘I’m sorry I put you in a tight spot,’ she went on. ‘I don’t know why I did that. You’re a love.’ She stepped over and kissed me on the cheek, before setting about plucking burrs of dust that had accumulated on her sweater and skirt.

  ‘He thinks you’re at the movies,’ I said when I had recovered sufficiently to speak.

  With one hand on my shoulder for balance, Sally slipped on her shoes. ‘I’d better go. Thanks for the tea. Perhaps tell Max you borrowed Bitches Brew? I’ll leave it here for now. Oh, by the way — what’s the last film you saw?’

  ‘It was called Le Samouraï. French. Why?’

  ‘Can you tell me the plot? If Max asks, I’ll tell him that’s what I went to see with Gertrude. He’ll never know the difference.’

  THIRTEEN

  TWO OR THREE DAYS LATER, JAMES RANG AND DEMANDED TO know what I was doing. He was in a flap. I had no plans, had scarcely seen a soul since Sally’s last visit.

  ‘You should come and see a movie with me,’ he said.

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘This afternoon. Why not?’

  Being unemployed, James often saw movies during the day. In addition to sporadic handouts from his parents, he was on an unspecified government pension for those unfit to work. This was, he intimated, only until he got back on his feet. The nature of his disability was unclear, as was what ‘back on his feet’ could entail for a man like James; it was impossible to imagine him doing anything more worldly than drinking cask wine in the afternoon or lolling on his mattress, reading I, Claudius. I, on the other hand — possibly owing to some vestigial Protestant suspicion of leisure — had always felt uneasy about going to the cinema during the day, and made excuses about having chores to do before my shift at the restaurant that night.

  But James would have none of it. ‘Meet me at the Valhalla at two o’clock, will you.’

  The choice of venue sealed it. The Valhalla was an independent cinema in Richmond that played cult horror movies and various other films with what might be termed ‘niche appeal’. Although I hadn’t yet been introduced to its charms, I had heard that one could purchase Quaaludes from the box office on Sunday nights when a Chinese girl named Muriel was working, and Edward had talked rapturously of seeing Koyaanisqatsi there after gobbling a handful of magic mushrooms. Every student house in Melbourne’s inner city had its poster of upcoming attractions taped up somewhere, usually on the back of the toilet door. At more than one party I had scanned the lurid advertisements for all-night Alain Delon marathons, weekend Sexploitation festivals, and the Friday-night screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Free entry for those dressed as Frank N. Furter).

  By the time I arrived at the Valhalla, James had already purchased our tickets. It was raining and the foyer smelled like wet dogs. Scarily cool people stood about smoking. We saw Blue Velvet, a film about a young man who gets involved with a gang of nasty psychopaths. In it, Dennis Hopper plays a character called Frank Booth, who — under the influence of a drug he inhales through a mask — beats up a nightclub singer played by the beautiful, doomed Isabella Rossellini; the violence interspersed with garish suburban landscapes. It was unlike anything I had ever seen, and I adored its blend of the horrific and the surreal.

  Afterwards James and I wandered up Victoria Street, known as Little Saigon on account of the Vietnamese migrants who had settled in the area during the 1970s. The streets were crowded with people and with stalls selling exotic fruit and vegetables. The air was fragrant with the smells of wet produce. James propelled me through an innocuous doorway and up some red-carpeted stairs to a crowded Vietnamese restaurant called Thy Thy. The place was noisy with chatter and Asian pop music. We sat at a rickety laminate table and drank jasmine tea from small cups. Nearby on the tiled floor was a colourful shrine festooned with tiny, flickering lights.

  While we ate spring rolls I told James about the afternoon with Sally, how she had hidden in my room at Max’s arrival.

  James waited until a Vietnamese boy, who couldn’t have been much older than eight, had cleared away our soy-smeared plates.

  ‘You know, a friend of mine has a room available in a great share house in Carlton. Benny. I think you were with me when I ran into him a few weeks ago in Lygon Street? Great room, very cool people.’

  I shook out a toothpick from the plastic canister. ‘I have somewhere to live.’

  ‘I know, I know. I thought you might want to meet some other people in town, that’s all. Get out a bit more?’

  ‘But I love living at Cairo.’

  ‘You know who else lives at Benny’s place?’ he asked in the tone of an adult promising an ice-cream to a child. ‘Dancing Susan.’

  I had, of course, heard of Dancing Susan, who was regarded as one of the most eligible women in the inner city. Dancing Susan — whose ubiquitous first name made the appellation necessary — studied psychology at Melbourne University and was renowned for her intellect, her red hair and her writhing dance moves. Women were scornful of her, but rumours of her attendance at a party were guaranteed to induce vast numbers of men (single or otherwise) to show up.

  ‘It’s for your own good, Tom. You need a girlfriend. A handsome boy like you.’

  ‘You’re being dramatic, James.’

  ‘And definitely not Sally Cheever.’

  I blushed and muttered something intended to sound suitably dismissive.

  James leaned forwards. His eyes were earnest. ‘I noticed the way you trembled after dancing with her that day, Tom. I know how tragic it can be to fall in love with the wrong person. The pain that person can inflict on you. You imagine what it would be like to be with them, the ways you could complement each other. The future you might have together.’

  Although I would never admit such a thing to James, I knew he was right. Ever since the day when we had danced, Sally had — there was no other word for it — haunted me. It was as if, from some minor but alluring ingredients (the undulations of her waist under my palm, the smell of her neck, her womanly thigh pressed to mine), I hoped to fashion a lover more tangible than that of mere fantasy.

  ‘Why are you going on about this?’ I said, having pondered for a few seconds the best tone with which to repel this accusation.

  ‘You heard about the duel, didn’t you?’ he asked.

  I nodded, laughing. I had indeed heard about Max challenging some man to a duel over a perceived flirtation with Sally but I always assumed it was a tall story to be filed alongside Max’s claim of having had a camel as a pet when he was a boy.

  ‘It’s not funny, Tom. Max was wild over it. If the guy had shown up, Max would have shot him. Assuming he wasn’t killed himself, I suppose.’

  ‘He actually had a gun?’

  ‘Well, you can’t have a game of Paper, Scissors, Rock over a woman. God knows where he got the pistol from, though. Only a small gun, but still. We waited for an hour at dawn in some park by the river over in Fairfield.’

  ‘You were there?’

  James dismissed my incredulous query with a curt wave of his hand. ‘It’s a long story. I don’t want to talk about it. The whole thing was insane.’

  ‘Was this the guy who got Sally pregnant?’

  James looked mortified. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘You did. Late one night at your place.’

  ‘Christ. I did? Well, don’t tell a soul about it or we’ll all be in deep trouble, Sally especially.’

  Our bowls of noodle soup arrived and we ate without talking. When he had finished, James rested his chin on his steepled fingers to scrutinise me. ‘Speaking of insane things. They told you, didn’t they?’

  I wiped my mouth. ‘Told me what?’

  ‘Don’t lie. The’ — he dropped his voice to a whisper — ‘the Dora thing.’

  I was relieved the conversation had moved on from Sally Cheever, albeit to the subject of my potential participation in the heist of a painting by the twentieth century’s most famous artist.
/>   ‘He told me you were involved,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Only by default, because I introduced them to Tamsin and her brother. Those Bolshevik twins. But you shouldn’t get roped into it. Look, the whole thing is crazy. Max is wonderful but, you know, very unpredictable. He has these ideas. He thinks he can pull off these grand schemes. The less you know about, um … Dora, the better.’

  I shrugged, endeavouring to make light of James’s plea. ‘Max said he’d kill me if I breathed a word of the plan to anyone.’ I said this in the most jocular tone I could muster, hoping to summon a corroborating dismissal of the threat. But my comment elicited nothing more than an almost imperceptible arching of James’s eyebrows, as if I had advised him that Max had purchased an extravagant pair of shoes.

  ‘Look, they’re all mad,’ he said. ‘Tamsin’s brother, George, is totally unstable. And Tamsin’s great hero is Valerie Solanas, for God’s sake. Heroine, I should say, or she’d probably try to shoot me. Speaking of which, Edward and Gertrude are both junkies, and they have to do an exact copy of this famous painting. You can’t trust junkies to do anything. Except be junkies.’

  This revelation was presumably intended to scare me away from Edward and Gertrude but only piqued my interest further. ‘They’re heroin addicts?’

  ‘The constant shortage of money, the mysterious phone calls, their unique ability to fall asleep standing up? Why do you think they both look so sick all the time?’

  ‘Gertrude told me she had a serious illness. She said she’s been having tests at the Alfred Hospital …’

  ‘Ah, yes. The Countess of Groan.’

  ‘In fact, I was going to drive her there last week.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Well, no.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I struggled to find an answer to James’s question. I had agreed to pick Gertrude up that morning, but when I arrived to drive her to hospital, she had no recollection of our arrangement. When I reminded her she suddenly recalled that the specialist had moved the appointment forwards. She had been there the previous day, she explained, and was now waiting on the test results. At the time I’d found it odd but hardly sinister. Now I was more perplexed.

  ‘Have they asked you for money yet?’ James said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘They will. But don’t lend them a cent — you’ll never get it back. It’s not your fault. Plenty have been fooled, doctors included. Gertrude has been on the brink of death for at least the past ten years. Maybe longer. We even held a benefit concert for her a few years ago to help with her treatment. All these dreadful punk bands they love like the Wreckery and I Spit on Your Gravy played. But she lives on. She’ll outlive us all. Her disease is that one where you think you’re sick, but don’t have anything wrong with you. Old Sigmund Freud would have a field day at their place, write a book about the pair of them. Her only real problem is heroin, and far too much of it. I’m no saint, but still …’

  I recalled that a week or so earlier I had seen Edward sitting on a bench in Murchison Square, a small park a few streets away from Cairo. He’d failed to notice me even though he was looking around anxiously. When I was still a hundred metres away, he leaped up and strode across to a comically beaten-up Holden that had squawked to a halt nearby. Edward got into the car but, instead of it setting off, he and the driver conferred for no longer than a minute before he emerged from the car and stalked off, with his characteristic tilt, in the opposite direction to me. Normally I would have called out, but there was something in his hurried, nervy manner (which I have since come to think of as Edwardian) that made me keep my mouth closed. The car chugged away, trailing blue exhaust smoke, and it was only now, sitting in a Vietnamese restaurant with James, that I realised I had witnessed an actual drug deal.

  James called for the bill by squiggling in the air with an imaginary pen. ‘It’s not too late, Tom.’

  I paused, marooned between the present and my memory of what I’d seen at the park, both of which were faintly unreal. ‘What?’

  ‘To get out of it. Get away from them. From all of us. You know what the poet Shelley said about Cairo, don’t you?’

  ‘No. What?’

  He held my gaze, as if desperate to imprint on my memory what he was about to say. ‘If there be a place of more beautiful and ruinous charms, then I am yet to hear of it. I shall be fortunate to survive it.’

  FOURTEEN

  I DUCKED BENEATH LOW-HANGING BRANCHES INTO CAIRO’S front garden a week or so later, only to be startled by Mr Orlovsky, who lumbered from the soggy undergrowth with a grunt of recognition. Although he affected the manner of one pleasantly surprised by our encounter, it was clear he had been waiting for someone to accost in this manner.

  ‘Ah,’ he roared. ‘Tom. How-how-how are you?’

  ‘Very well, thanks. And you?’

  ‘Oh, fine, fine. Cleaning out the old magazine collection. Blahblah-blah blasted day, eh?’

  Like a meteorite sailing perilously close to Earth, a morsel of Mr Orlovsky’s lunch flew past my face. I stepped back, almost tripped. I had just returned from Sunday lunch with Uncle Mike and Jane, and I was not in the mood for one of Mr Orlovsky’s lengthy dissertations on the likelihood of rain.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Very cold.’

  I endeavoured to manoeuvre around him, but the old-timer was alert to my tricks. Under the guise of flailing with his cane towards a flower or plant in the undergrowth that had snared his geriatric interest, he barred my only avenue of escape.

  These attempts of mine to truncate our encounters and his sly methods of entrapping me had, over the months, become part of our routine. While he was thus occupied, however, the male half of the New Zealand couple flitted by like a ghost without uttering a word to either of us, and Mr Orlovsky, having missed his chance, gazed after him with dismay before turning his attention back to me.

  ‘Terror-terror-terror terrible about those heroin people, isn’t it? To be caught in that way.’

  I thought of Edward and Gertrude. ‘What?’

  ‘That-that-that that’s why you don’t want to fight them. Ruthless bunch.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Orlovsky. What do you mean?’

  ‘Your Orientals!’

  He was making even less sense than usual. From the far side of the garden I heard the snick of the New Zealander’s door closing. I had never seen him talk to anyone. No one in the block — not even little stickybeak Eve — knew his name or that of his wife. To remain invisible to those who would torment you is an enviable talent.

  ‘Go-go-go going to hang them tomorrow, you know.’

  ‘What? Hang who?’

  ‘Bar-bar-bar Barlow and whatshisname … Chambers.’

  Then I understood. Two Australian men caught in Malaysia for drug trafficking had been on death row for some time, and evidently they were to be executed, despite appeals from the Australian government. The case — with its potent themes of drug running and innocents abroad, combined with a high-minded suspicion of our barbarous neighbours — had gripped the imagination of the nation over recent months.

  After several more minutes of baffling conversation I managed to escape Mr Orlovsky’s clutches. Upstairs, I was delighted to find Sally waiting outside my apartment. I had been busy the past few days at work and hadn’t seen her for over a week. She was cheerful and excited. She smelled clean and scrubbed, as if she had recently stepped from a late-afternoon bath.

  ‘I’m so pleased you’re back,’ she said, pecking me on the cheek. ‘I was about to go home again. Max is staying with a relative of Edward’s in the country for the weekend to finish off some part of his score.’

  As I opened the door to let us inside, I told her about my lunch with Mike and Jane. But Sally barely registered anything I said, even muttering, ‘That sounds nice,’ when I told her about the dreadful half-cooked snapper I’d been obliged to eat.

  ‘Tom,’ she said, once we had divested ourselves of coats and scarves and hung them in
the hallway. ‘I’m sorry, but I have an ulterior motive for dropping by this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Do you mind if I turn the TV on?’

  Max and Sally’s television had been broken the whole time I had known them. My own was tiny and so ancient that it required dextrous manipulation of the antenna to receive a decent picture.

  I crouched to switch it on. ‘What channel?’

  ‘ABC.’

  I fiddled with the dials. Before I could ask what she was so interested in watching, I recognised the opening drum riff of Countdown, a pop-music program that had been screening on Sunday evenings for so many years that its introductory theme was encoded into the aural DNA of any Australian under the age of forty.

  It was six o’clock: tens of thousands of teenagers across the country would be sitting down for their weekly dose of top-ten video hits and garbled interviews with unlikely role models. Max had been asked to perform on Countdown during his months of fame, but he disapproved heartily of the show and its inept but loveable host, Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum, whom he referred to as The Cretin.

  To the accompaniment of the screaming teenage girls that made up Countdown’s studio audience, I went to the kitchen to make tea. While waiting for the kettle to boil, I observed Sally from the doorway.

  As so often, she had arranged herself on my green sofa with her legs tucked up beneath her, chin resting in one cupped palm. She brushed hair from her forehead and reached down to scratch her calf, before turning to me with a smile so delightful I could barely stand it.

  ‘I remember you,’ she said.

  ‘Pardon?’ I said, startled to have been caught out so flagrantly admiring her.

  ‘During summer, right before we first met. I saw you in Rhumbarella’s that morning. You were watching me, like now. This handsome boy I’d never seen before. I was flattered. Look at you, you’re blushing.’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  Sally reached for her tobacco and set about rolling herself a cigarette. ‘You’re not like most of the people around here. Not trying to be someone else. You should be proud of that. Try to stay that way.’