The Life to Come

by Michelle De Kretser

  Bunty walked a little way down a side road where flowers stood thick in the ditches, before turning off along a footpath that ran through tall grass. Christabel, who had fussed with keys and exchange rates and maps throughout the holiday, followed without question: the day belonged to Bunty. A tussocky ridge ran down the middle of the path between two wheel-worn ruts. There were faded poppies in the meadow, and scatterings of tiny blooms that seemed to be made of yellow wool, and cornflowers the colour of Bunty’s other dress—she was wearing the one striped in shades of pink.

  The path headed for a wooded hill and began to climb in long, lazy loops. ‘We’ve come through The Flowery Meadow,’ said Bunty. ‘And now we’re entering The Dark Wood.’ The trees were hornbeam and oaks and beeches, she said—in Romania, Bunty was bossy and knowledgeable, as unfamiliar and appealing as her clothes.

  The path climbed gently on, compelling them. It gathered them into its purpose as if it would lead them to the end of the world. And while it carried them forward, it also seemed to lead back, into a dream landscape known from long ago. Every perspective ended in leaves. But once Christabel glanced down through branches and saw, far below, a sloping pasture folded like a secret into the side of the hill. It was late spring, and the lusty grass shone in the sunlight. She called to Bunty and pointed: ‘The Bright Field.’

  The morning wore on, and she could feel herself starting to flag; even Bunty seemed to have slowed. The path turned a last time, abandoned the forest and led up into the sky. The sky was an extraordinary colour: intense blue saturated with violet. ‘The Gentian Sky,’ declared Bunty. They came out onto a heath and found the grass clumped here and there with small flowers of the same exaggerated blue.

  It had been cool in the woods, and they were glad of the sun. They sat down to rest, and Bunty produced cherries and pots of yoghurt from a woven bag. She said, ‘The perfect meadow must be flowery. And set on the side of a hill.’

  Christabel spat out a cherry stone. ‘With trees along one side at least.’

  ‘Hedges are desirable.’

  ‘But a drystone wall will do.’

  Christabel must have dozed off. When she opened her eyes and sat up, Bunty was looking at the view. ‘On springy heath, along the hill-top edge,’ quoted Christabel. Grass stalks had woven a fleshy lattice into the backs of her arms.

  ‘The Springy Heath is good,’ said Bunty, still labelling everything like an illustration in a book. ‘And over there, I spy The Grim Castle.’

  The horizon was humpy with coloured hills. In the middle distance, a line of poplars marked the course of a river that bisected a plain. Christabel saw a big boxy building on the far bank. ‘It’s a factory,’ she said. ‘Look at the colour of that water.’

  ‘It’s a twentieth-century castle. Golden boys and girls are lured inside by tales of treasure, only to find themselves slaves of The Cruel Lord.’

  When they were on their way again, Bunty pounced. ‘La plume!’ she said triumphantly, brandishing a large brown-and-white feather. Holding it like a visor, she looked up. ‘L’oiseau!’ she called and pointed to the dark scrap hovering on an updraught.

  They followed the path downhill into squared-off little fields, yellow and green. Wind passed like a hand over a slope of grass. Something squealed in a hedge. Christabel looked over her shoulder, to the dark fur of the woods they had come through. Far away to the west, reapers working in a row, stooped or upright against the sky, were figures in a frieze. The path crossed a stream and joined a white gravel road. Presently, they saw roofs beyond the fields—the road was leading them to a village. A man cutting grass with a scythe didn’t look up as they passed. The first house, painted blue, came into sight. A young woman in an embroidered shirt with a patterned scarf over her head was busy in the yard. ‘The Goose Girl,’ said Bunty quietly. ‘I’ll ask for water and directions.’

  As if she had been expecting them, the girl smiled and swung open a wooden gate, saying, ‘Welcome!’ They saw that she was wearing jeans, which robbed her of archaism: she was any modern girl with an angular face and too much mascara. She took them past flowering beans, and a hutch where wet-eyed rabbits waited to be killed or fed. There was a vine-wrapped arbour by the door, under which a table covered with an oilcloth had been placed. An old man sat there, his hands folded over a stick. The door, which stood open, made an emerald rectangle against the soapy-blue wall.

  Beyond a curtain of plastic beads lay a dark room. The girl ushered them to a stiff sofa and went through to an inner chamber. Bunty and Christabel looked about, their eyes adjusting to the dimness. A magnificent shawl, with long, silky tassels, glimmered on one wall. On the table below it, a game of chess was in progress. Bunty crossed to the table, and bent her head over the plastic pieces on the board. Her tongue clicked twice. ‘Holy moly,’ she murmured. ‘Poor old black. But you know, I think…’ Her hand hovering in the gloom was a plump white spider. It dropped to close over a bishop.

  ‘I didn’t know you played chess,’ said Christabel.

  Bunty was still looking at the board. ‘That’s a little more interesting now,’ she said.

  The girl returned, carrying a tray. She set sesame-flecked pastries before them and a jug of water. There was also a bottle of amber liquid, half full. Bunty accepted a glass of this and knocked it back, lifting her round chin. The girl told them that she was a teacher of English. ‘I used to work in a school near the sea. But last year, my grandmother died, and then I became ill. So now my grandfather and I look after each other.’ Until then, they hadn’t noticed the bald skull under her flowery scarf.

  Bunty wanted the bathroom, and the girl went with her to show her the way. Christabel looked about the room. In every corner, shadows coiled like snakes. A shelf displayed the plump golden figurine of a beckoning good-luck cat. Beside it were glass jars, one filled with long peppers and the others with pale, lumpy growths: mushrooms or mice. From the corner of her eye, Christabel saw something slink along the base of a wall—a rat! A small squawk escaped her. But it was a cat with mutilated ears, slipping out like smoke through the beads.

  The room darkened: a figure with three legs didn’t lift the bead curtain but barged through. The old man lowered himself onto an upright chair and nodded at Christabel. His hand shook as he poured out two glasses of the thick yellow drink and passed one to her; first it tasted of berries, and then it tasted of flowers, and then it tasted of fire. ‘To the buffalo!’ said Christabel, raising her glass. Her host inclined his head.

  His attention fell on the chessboard; he turned towards it, a careful swivel from the waist followed by a sideways shuffle of the feet. When his granddaughter returned with Bunty, he spoke to the girl.

  ‘My grandfather would like to know who moved the bishop.’

  ‘That was me, I’m afraid,’ said Bunty. She put a whole pastry into her mouth and chewed.

  The old man continued to stare at the board.

  There was the no-sound of in-held breath.

  The grandfather laughed once. His teeth were broken or missing—he looked as old people had looked when Christabel was a child.

  ‘He says, “Very nice! Very, very nice!”’

  Bunty licked a crumb from the corner of her mouth. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It might not save the day. But I think black’s in with a chance now.’

  ‘He wants to know who taught you.’

  ‘My father. He played for his university. That was before the drink got him.’

  ‘He must have been a good teacher,’ said the girl.

  ‘There were forfeits, you see, for every game I lost.’ Bunty said, ‘I haven’t played since.’

  The old man moved a pawn. He sat back and smiled at Bunty. His face, brown, hairless and faintly shiny, was a wrinkled egg.

  Bunty craned to see what he had done. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Now that requires some thought.’ She pulled up a stool.

  ‘My grandfather was a professor of mathematics,’ said the girl. ‘He played chess for Rom
ania. He travelled to Moscow twice, and won against both Dementiev and Rusakov. The third time, he played Rashkovsky. The Russians fixed things and he lost.’

  ‘How can you fix a game of chess?’ asked Christabel.

  The girl tapped her glass. ‘By fixing the vodka the night before. Or maybe something in his food. He never went back.’ Her skin was so fine and pale that the liqueur seemed to stain her throat as it slid down. She said, ‘Later they fixed it so he lost his appointment at the university as well.’

  It was Christabel’s turn to go out into the yard to the bathroom. And the less said about that the better! Afterwards, there was cracked soap and a basin of water on a table outside the door. Shuddering inwardly, she dried her hands on a waffle-weave cloth. The croak of a saw reached across the fence. Someone coughed in the road. White primer had thinned the blue of the sky. For no reason Christabel was five years old, alone in the morning. Everything was about to begin.

  Back inside the house, she heard, ‘He says you could be a great champion.’

  ‘It’s a bit late for that,’ said Bunty, looking up from the board.

  ‘I give him a game now and then. But it’s so boring for him, even when he gives me a rook for free.’

  ‘Time to get going,’ said Bunty to Christabel.

  The old man asked a question. ‘He wants to know your name,’ said the girl to Bunty.

  ‘Bunty.’

  The professor spoke sharply. ‘He asks what you’re really called, not this clown’s name.’

  Bunty said, ‘My name is Alfrieda Maddalena Margaret Sedgwick.’

  The old man seized her hand in his trembling one and brought it to his lips. ‘Chère madame,’ he said.

  The girl gave them directions. She stood at the gate and waved when they turned. Her cat crouched at the bend in the road and twitched a battle-scarred ear. A cool wind had sprung up—Christabel could feel it pawing her neck. ‘Where’s the bus stop?’ she asked.

  ‘Didn’t you hear what she said? We have to go up to the main road.’

  Christabel was sure that was wrong. ‘I heard her mention a bell tower.’ But Bunty had turned into a urine-scented alley between two houses, saying, ‘It’s a shortcut.’

  The alley led to a field where only nettles grew. There were traces of a track, overgrown and oozing damp. The wind butted them in gusts. They laboured through the sludge and razorish leaves, and Christabel was grateful for her jeans and sneakers. But Bunty’s large pale legs scissored ahead, untouched.

  On the far side of the field, Bunty plunged into a stand of firs. Here the wind was less savage, but the afternoon was cold and dark. All around them was a rattling, inhuman sound like the laughter of a doll. A jabby sort of bush offered luscious purple berries that they knew not to touch: ‘The Poison Tree,’ murmured Christabel. Next came a downward slope, treacherous with pine needles. At last they were in the open, and there, ahead of them, was the winding road.

  They crossed a patch of waste ground, picking their way through rags and rusting tins. A brindle cow watched from one corner, munching on weeds. And whom should they find, on a low stone wall, but their bus driver! There was a priest too, clad in authoritative black, and a boy with aquamarine eyes in an idiot face; all three sat in a row, smoking. The driver bent down and put out his cigarette on his boot, revealing three red lines across the back of his neck. His unshaven cheeks were raw beef on which a greyish fungus had taken hold. ‘Wait here,’ he told Bunty and Christabel, looking at them directly for the first time. His gaze was frank: it announced that he was unused to nonsense. He said, ‘The bus will be along at any minute.’

  ‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ replied Bunty.

  Close at hand, a bell began to peal. The priest and the boy sat up straight.

  Bunty took Christabel’s arm, and they rushed away up the road, towards the bell. It grew deafening as they rounded a corner and saw a clutch of people at the foot of a white tower. A woman in a heavy, belted cardigan was waving, and they crossed the road to join her—it seemed to take forever because a great weariness had seized their legs. All the time, a distant toy-town bus was growing larger, so they knew that they had come to the right place.

  Christabel saw that the cairngorm had flown up from her bag and lodged in a tree on the far side of the park. She blinked and saw it turn into the sun, as round and orange as a sweet. Stretchy shadows were swaying on the grass, and the playground was deserted. It was time to go home, back to the silent, unhaunted house. One morning after another would make its entrance. She would light the oven, pull up the blind and inspect the sky. Life is long! The phone rang: an Indian offered to fix her computer. Christabel didn’t hang up but left the receiver dangling against the wall. Or else she said, ‘Shall we be friends? We could tell each other about our lives.’ Winter came and was followed by spring. She coughed alone, doubled up and howling.

  Small hearts ticked in the grass at her feet, in the lightless depths of the river. No one heard them, but they were there. The breeze snapped, and Christabel wanted her jacket but made no move to take it out of her bag. The park was filling up with people and dogs. Pombo and Raven. Sizzle. Trim. Not dogs’ names or clowns’, but the names of gentlemen. A gentleman could beat a child at a game and make her pay for it. Not that any of it mattered now: Bunty was gone, with her mysteries and her wasted gifts. Christabel stayed on, watching dogs of all shapes tumbling with one another or racing after balls. A gangly black-and-white mongrel abandoned the ruckus and turned to stare across the park. It was Bunty’s dog—Christabel was sure of it. He had come to lead her to Bunty. ‘Olly Faithful!’ she called. He lowered his head and started moving towards her. Her arms rose, joyful and triumphant. And still he came.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to Faber & Faber Ltd for permission to quote from Endgame by Samuel Beckett.

  Thank you to Clare Drysdale, Jane Palfreyman and Pat Strachan, and their colleagues at Allen & Unwin and Catapult.

  Thank you to Christina Thompson and her colleagues at Harvard Review for publishing an early version of ‘The Fictive Self’.

  For help with research, thank you to Yves Boscher, Justin CreedySmith, Tom Dundas, Martin Edmond, Mark Gillies, Zahia Hafs and Walter Perera. Also to Janet and Roger Anderson, Kate and Stewart Sutherland, and especially Karen and Geoff Daniel.

  Thank you to K.N.K. Wijayawardana, whose account of the 1977 anti-Tamil riots at Anuradhapura is published at www.island.lk/2003/08/27/midwee04.html.

  Thank you to the English Department at the University of Sydney.

  Thank you to Neel Mukherjee, who talked about the right books at the right time.

  Thank you to Ivor Indyk, Mireille Juchau and Fiona McFarlane for reading the manuscript, and to Mireille and Fiona for much else besides.

  A special thank you to Sarah Lutyens: ‘mast and sail and flag / And anchor never known to drag’.

  This book is for Chris Andrews, whom I can never thank enough.