Borrowed Light

by Anna Fienberg

  ‘I suppose so,’ he muttered in a grudging way.

  He manages to smile at me, and kiss Gany on his dimple before he leaves. ‘I’ll ring you when I arrive,’ he calls, as the taxi toots outside. ‘Wish me luck!’

  I see him as he dashes past the mulberry tree to the gate, his coat over his shoulder, waving to the driver waiting in the street. He’s running as fast as he can out into the world, like a river rushing to join the sea.

  My stomach drops as I watch him. Gany begins to whimper. I stroke his head, saying something, anything, because the sudden silence of this room, this house, in which we two are all alone, is frightening. I look down at his angel’s face, this little baby sent to me from heaven, and I know, with this terrible knowing, that he is my responsibility. There is no one else here. There is no one else who knows, right at this moment, if we are both breathing. When David goes, there is no one else.

  Sometimes I think we’re in a dream of mine, Gany and I. I don’t like that feeling, because in dreams you’re often left stranded. Sometimes you have to scream and no sound comes out Sometimes you have to run, and your legs are rooted to the ground.

  I just can’t understand why David has to set up this business now—in a country that’s seventeen hours away. He has a family, a wife who never sleeps, a little baby who needs him. That other firm wanted him. Could have had a fantastic salary, come home every night, bringing take-away Chinese and maybe a video.

  I want to do something creative, he said. You’ve just made a new baby, I told him, what’s more creative than that? He just rolled his eyes. He doesn’t bother explaining himself to me. He thinks he lives on another planet where the words are different.

  What’s so creative about buying and selling? I ask him.

  He rolls his eyes again. I read in the Herald that if a couple roll their eyes at each other more than five times a day, it means the marriage is over. Eye-rolling signifies contempt and unwillingness to consider the other’s point of view.

  David stays in dingy little hotels when he travels. He doesn’t buy and sell enough to afford rooms with reliable electricity and clean sheets. Once he found a dead rat under the pillow.

  There are terrible things going on over there. At night, when I’m walking the floor with the baby, I carry the newspaper with me. I read what happens there. I read about young children being taken away from their families and never heard of again. I read about raids on houses in the middle of the night, and sons being shot infront of their parents. When I cut out those clippings, of children’s faces pinched with fear, David crushes them up in his fist. I rush to rescue them. I smooth out the paper on the desk. I want to smooth out their hurt. I run my palm over their faces, trying to take out the creases. But they look back at me, with their injuries and their creases that will never disappear. I hate him when he does that. He has no mercy.

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ he keeps shouting at me. ‘I’m trying to do something about it, in my own small way. This company I’m building is giving money to those artists, money they’d never see otherwise. But you never worry about me—your husband—only those damn children.’

  Well, you’re white. No one’s going to arrest you in the middle of the night.’

  ‘No, but I could get mugged any time. You think it’s peaceful on the street at night in Johannesburg?’

  When David goes, I have this feeling that Gany and I are on an island. The rest of the world is very far away. We can only see the top of its head.

  Mother comes around sometimes. She brings provisions. She brings things from the outside.

  You get skinnier every day,’ she says in this disapproving tone. Her eyes run over me as if I’m a bruised peach she’d rather not handle. ‘Why aren’t you looking after yourself? If you’re not strong, you can’t be a good mother for your baby, can you?’

  She doesn’t wait for answers. She just delivers her missile and moves on. But I think about what she says. Maybe she has no idea of the power of her bullets. I don’t know why I’m no good at looking after myself. We’re on this island, Gany and I, and I wish one of us were grown up enough to crawl off it.

  If Mother would only come and show us what to do. She could make up Gany’s Milton sterilising mixture scientifically. She wouldn’t forget how many level spoonfuls of formula she’d already put into the bottle. It would be like being in the hospital again, with meals appearing out of nowhere, and an expert always around to give advice.

  But I’d never dare ask her. I couldn’t.

  JEREMY WOKE ME up on Saturday morning, jumping onto my bed like a great puppy. He licked my cheek and barked till I opened my eyes. I could smell milk and cornflakes where his tongue had been.

  ‘Ugh!’ I pushed him off me. My heart was still banging with fright, but he looked so ridiculous hanging upside down like that, with his tongue hanging out and his hair drooping over his eyes like an offended spaniel, that I had to laugh.

  ‘You need a haircut,’ I said sleepily.

  ‘I’m Batman’s dog,’ he announced. ‘Did you know Batman had a dog, Cally?’

  ‘No, fancy that.’

  ‘Well, he does.’ He paused a moment, his mouth open in concentration. I closed my eyes. A tide of nausea was rising up into my throat. I had to lie very still and wait for it to ebb.

  ‘Actually,’ Jeremy went on, crawling further up the bed and arranging a pillow behind his back, ‘it’s Robin who has the dog. Yes, Robin has this yappy little terrier that goes everywhere with him. And when Robin’s in danger, the terrier races to get help. I can just see him, Cally, can’t you? He’s pulling at Batman’s sleeve with these white little teeth, he’s barking like a maniac, and Batman bends down and says—’

  ‘Shut your trap, you dumb dog, or I’ll shut it for you.’

  ‘No!’ Jeremy thumped me on the leg. ‘You’re the dummy! Batman would never say that.’

  Jeremy looked so outraged, I felt ashamed. ‘I’m sorry.’ I patted his head and said, ‘There’s a good boy,’ and pretended to give him a dog biscuit.

  ‘Now stop joggling me,’ I told him as he wriggled and panted over my knees, ‘and go and get me a cup of tea. Earl Grey, the tea bags are in the yellow packet by the sink, you know.’

  ‘I can’t because I’m a dog. Dogs only understand certain words, like “go”, “fetch”, “sit” and “stay”.’

  I sighed. Everything took so long with Jeremy. You had to have this whole story, a novel almost, surrounding every domestic event. It was very tiring, especially when you thought you might throw up at any moment.

  ‘All right. What’s your name, little doggie?’

  ‘Grayson.’ Jeremy lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘This is just on the side, Cally, but the reason I’m calling him Grayson is because Robin’s real name is Dick Grayson, see?’

  ‘Okay, Grayson, come here.’

  Grayson came.

  ‘Go … fetch … tea … kitchen.’

  Grayson went.

  I pulled the covers up and sank back into the pillows. The buttons on my pyjamas scratched my nipple. It stung savagely. Through the window I could see a shimmery blue sky weaving between the trees. It would be fine tonight at the Observatory. That was a piece of luck. A mild piece, but it was something. Maybe it was a ‘sign’, as Mum would say, ‘good weather ahead’. God, it must be catching, this superstitious stuff, especially when you’re feeling fragile. I’d have to watch it.

  Jeremy came back carrying the newspaper in his mouth. I told him he was a very talented dog, juggling a cup of tea in his paws as well. I didn’t mention that half of it was in the saucer.

  The phone rang at lunchtime. It was Tim. He was at Byron Bay, and they’d just set up their tent. The weather was fine there, too.

  I got such a shock to hear from him. I don’t know why, since he’d only left a couple of days ago.

  ‘It took ages to put the tent up, because José didn’t bring enough pegs,’ Tim said. ‘Can you believe that guy? He wants Tito to sleep in the te
nt with us—he reckons someone might steal him otherwise. I told him, who’d want to steal a mangy old dog like Tito? He’s full of fleas and he farts. He’s got bowel trouble, José said, it’s not his fault. So, how are you? Have your periods come?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Oh.’ There was a pause then, like the obligatory minute’s silence we used to have at the school memorial on Anzac Day.

  ‘It’s all right, I’m going to handle it,’ I said briskly. It was ‘the voice’ again, and I felt grateful to it. It put full stops wherever I wanted them.

  ‘Oh, okay,’ Tim said. He sounded relieved. I think he liked full stops too. He didn’t ask me how I was going to handle it.

  Jeremy kept popping into the kitchen, like annoying ad breaks in a movie. He was mouthing something to me about how I should stop twisting the cord. ‘Remember what the man said,’ he reminded me.

  Once we’d had a faulty line, and we had to call in a phone man to fix it. ‘All that static you’re getting is due to someone twisting the cord,’ the man explained. When he said ‘someone’, he’d looked at me specifically, in a suspicious, Spanish Inquisition sort of way. ‘Teenagers are often the culprits with this kind of thing,’ he told Mum. ‘They stay on the phone for hours, and fiddle with the cord. It makes our job very hard.’ Mum had to give him a cup of tea to calm him down, and it turned out he had a teenager at home, too, and he was at ‘his wits’ end’. She did her comforting routine, and in the end we didn’t have to pay for his visit. He went out the door whistling. I bet he would have joined her Thursday group as well if she’d invited him, only he was the wrong sex.

  I felt quite unreal, sitting there on the stool in the kitchen, the telephone cord twisting in my hands. I tried to imagine Tim in his tent, with the dog and all, but it seemed like a dream. It was like talking to someone who didn’t exist any more.

  ‘I hope you have an absolutely fabulous holiday,’ I told him earnestly. I really meant it. I felt sorry and guilty and regretful and determined. Maybe he did too. I never really knew the inside of Tim Cleary.

  JEREMY SPENT THE afternoon asking me every five minutes what time it was. Why couldn’t Jupiter Night be in the morning? He couldn’t believe how long Saturday was taking. ‘Time stretches like chewing gum,’ he concluded at four o’clock. ‘It loses its flavour and gets boring in just the same way.’

  We had an early dinner with Mum, and she dropped us down to the ferry. ‘I wish I could come with you,’ she said in the car. She looked at us wistfully, and traced the line of Jeremy’s cheek with her finger.

  ‘Why don’t you?’ cried Jeremy. He had it all worked out in a second. ‘We could go and pick up sad Beth and bring her to the Observatory. Wouldn’t she like that?’ Jeremy couldn’t understand anyone not panting to get there. It was the safest place in the world, he said, because they had all those instruments pointed at the sky. They’d know before anyone else if a meteor was coming. And tonight they had lollies as well.

  Mum shook her head. ‘Thanks, Jeremy, but I can’t. Beth’s not in a fit state to go anywhere. I said I’d go and make her dinner.’

  Jeremy climbed out of the car. He didn’t insist. He could spot a lost cause.

  ‘Don’t be too late,’ Mum called after us as we hurried along the wharf.

  ‘You too!’ I called back.

  It was a fine, clear night. We were in plenty of time for the seven o’clock ferry, so we wandered around the boat, investigating. Jeremy decided that we should sit at the back, because he liked to watch the white water tumbling out behind.

  ‘Oh no,’ I protested, ‘that’s where all the fumes are.’

  ‘We can just hold our breath. It’s good practice if we have to swim underwater.’

  We settled ourselves on the seat outside. When the engine started, the sea foamed and frothed before us, leaving a path of white lace like the train of a wedding gown. It was quite spectacular. In fact the whole evening—the glinting harbour and the black silk sky—looked like an expensive backdrop for a show. Stars glittered and the city lights dripped gold and silver into the sea. I realised I hadn’t been out on the harbour for a while. You don’t see these things lying on your bed. You just get a lot of lint in your pyjama pockets.

  The Observatory is perched on top of a hill overlooking the bay. We had a long walk up from Circular Quay, and I was out of breath before we even reached the hill. Jeremy wasn’t. He skipped ahead, singing something or other.

  At the Observatory there was a long queue. Wriggling children asked their parents the time, as the queue snaked along the iron fence and down toward the bay.

  The gates were due to open at 8 p.m. We stood outside under a huge old fig tree. Its roots rose from the ground like a maze of low retaining walls. I love fig trees. They are as solid and ancient-looking as elephants, their trunks looping into folds of grey skin. When I was a kid, we used to climb them. You could flip your legs over those old branches and watch the world upside down. Whenever I see that slogan, ‘Hug a tree’, I always think of a fig: the mother of all trees. ‘Gome back here, Jeremy, this is a good climbing specimen,’ I called.

  ‘No way.’ Jeremy was already in the queue, staring viciously at the head of a boy in front of him. ‘If you move from here, a scumbuggit pushes in.’ The head in front didn’t turn around, but a woman glared at us. I went back to looking at the tree. I laid my cheek against its smooth skin.

  When the gates opened, the crowd streamed in. Children chased each other around the telescopes. I wondered if kids could ever stand still long enough to have a good look at planet Jupiter. I couldn’t see Jeremy.

  There were five large telescopes planted at different points in the garden. Most were trained upon Jupiter. At the eastern side of the lawn I spotted the tent with the cake. Next to that was the telescope with the longest queue. My heart sank.

  I peered along the queue, searching for Jeremy.

  Have you ever considered how much time you’ve wasted in your life in a queue? At the bank, the shop, at school, even at home—that is, if you have a large family. You notice queues a lot if you’re a borrower, because you’re always letting people in. It’s practically impossible to say no. Even if you’ve been waiting an hour, you smile politely when someone whirls in front and gets served before you. Once, when I was standing in a fairy floss queue, a boy in front of me let nine people in—he said they were all his cousins. When the last cousin had been served, the fairy floss man put up a ‘Closed’ sign. ‘Sorry, love,’ he said to me, ‘we’ve just run out.’

  I spied Jeremy hopping from one leg to the other as he waited. He was third from the front. He continually surprises me. Maybe he can still be a star, despite his background. I hurried toward him, making apologetic faces at the people standing in line. As I drew near, I could hear his clear, piping voice above the rumble of the crowd.

  ‘Why is the moon as thin as a mouse’s whisker?’ he said, pointing away from the telescope at the western sky.

  There was a titter along the queue.

  The guide standing at the telescope answered him. He had his back to me, but I could hear him smiling. ‘That’s a crescent moon you’re looking at tonight. The moon travels around the earth, and at the moment we can see only a small part of the sunlit side.’ His voice had a deep viscous tone, sweet and giving with the smile underneath, like toffee before it has set.

  The guide turned toward Jeremy, checking to see if he understood. I saw his profile. He had a long straight nose and decisive chin, rather like those Renaissance men I’d seen in Grandma’s Italian stamps. His hair fell forward as he spoke to Jeremy. I suddenly wanted to push the hair back and feel the warmth of his skin. He looked younger than his voice.

  I gave Jeremy’s jumper a little tug. ‘Hi,’ I whispered. I felt a bit breathless.

  ‘Hi!’ said Jeremy. ‘It’s my turn next. You can be after me.’

  I glanced at the guide. He was discussing Jupiter with the woman at the telescope.

  ‘Look for the
four moons,’ I reminded Jeremy as the woman thanked the guide and wandered off. Jeremy squeezed my hand. He gave a wriggle of excitement as he stepped up to the telescope.

  The guide told him about covering one eye and looking through the eyepiece. ‘That’s okay,’ Jeremy assured him, ‘I do this all the time. We’ve got a telescope in our back yard.’

  ‘And an alien in the front,’ someone chuckled.

  Jeremy lined his eye up with the telescope. ‘There they are, I can see them!’ he yelled. ‘Callisto, I can see you up there! Oh this is great, they are bigger and clearer than at home. Wait till you see them, Cal, they’re so beautiful!’

  Jeremy’s excitement was infectious. People began to stir restlessly. Children squirmed like worms in a jar. Jeremy stayed glued to the telescope, doing a loud running commentary on the celestial scene like a football commentator on the radio. The guide was staring at me.

  ‘Come on, Jeremy, it’s time for someone else to have a turn,’ I hissed at him. I was blushing hotly. I didn’t dare look back at the guide.

  ‘No!’ said Jeremy.

  ‘Yes!’ said I.

  I was sweating. When you blush, do you ever grow so hot that you sweat? There’s nowhere to hide. Your face beams out like a torch, with these little pearls of moisture strung along your lip. You might as well announce, ‘I’m dying of embarrassment!’ I was sweating like a madwoman. I could feel great wet patches spreading under my arms. Don’t let him make a scene now, not in front of all these people, I prayed. All these people he pushed ahead of. Don’t let him be a brat in front of that nice guide, please.

  The guide bent down and whispered in Jeremy’s ear. I heard ‘cake’ and ‘chocolate’ and ‘good boys’. Jeremy relinquished the telescope, giving it a reluctant little pat.

  He sidled around to stand next to the guide. He kept his eyes fixed on him as if he were the new messiah, about to do a miracle. I saw him take the guide’s hand.