by Arnold Zable
‘Is it true about the Red Cross lists? That you saw the name of an old girlfriend?’
Romek backs away. He is a man on the ropes, fighting for his self-belief.
‘Is it true that you wanted to send her money? That you said you would hang yourself if she did not allow you? That you threw something at her?’
‘We were all mad,’ replies Romek. ‘Who can understand what we felt?’
‘Is it true?’ Josh insists. He is relentless in his interrogation. He sees the confusion in Romek’s eyes, but he cannot help himself. He is driven to pursue him.
‘Is it true?’ he repeats.
‘True. False. It is not so simple,’ counters Romek.
‘Yes or no,’ demands Josh.
Romek falls silent. The book lies open upon the dresser. The Hebraic script is stained by the remains of a long-dead moth.
Romek lowers his eyes, and fastens them upon the stain.
She hears voices, and conjures the face of the man she once loved. ‘Romek mit di tsedreite oign.’ Romek with the crooked eyes, she mutters. They all have crooked eyes, those men whose voices seep from cracks in the kitchen walls. The entire world is full of men who betray and lie even as they smile. She sits in the kitchen and hears their distant talk in the front room. They are scheming against her: Romek with the crooked eyes, and Yoshua, her father’s namesake, may he rest in peace. He too is turning against her. She is lured by the muffled sounds. She latches onto the trail of voices as if drawn on the train of a bridal gown.
She steals through the dining room. The upright radio glows in the dark. The dials wink. The globes growl. She creeps over the dining room carpet. She pauses, listens, steps into the passage. The linoleum is hard. Her feet scrape. Her body is charged. The voices are becoming louder. ‘Zofia. Zofia.’ They are chanting her name.
She tiptoes past Yoshua’s room in a crouch. ‘Zofia. Zofia.’ The chorus terrifies her, yet draws her on. She places her hand upon the wall for support. She glances at the wooden skirting boards. She sees the holes in the plaster on the lower wall, the chipped paint on the boards. She pauses to calm her breath. She is outside the front room. The door is closed, but the voices are booming.
She can make out two strands. Romek’s voice is an insinuating whisper, and Yoshua’s, the voice of a questioning child. Surely they are laughing at her, pointing their fingers towards the door. The laughter is oozing through the keyhole. Their mockery is cascading from the walls. The walls are curving, tumbling.
The voices fall back to earth, and become quiet. She is terrified of this silence. They have heard her. She must not be discovered. She turns, and propels herself with her hands on the walls. She is running from the laughter. The dining-room carpet quietens her footfalls. She regains the kitchen and stops by the table. She sucks in her breath, restrains its hiss. The turmoil is subsiding, but the presences linger. There is nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run. And the house retains its silence like a beast of prey on the prowl.
It is Sunday night and the pub is closed, and the boys and girls miss the grog, but they know where to go. Shanahan too is on his way. He sees Josh loitering by the corner. He does not ask him why he is upset. Shanahan just motions and they fall into step. They walk from Amess to Sutton Street and cut through the vacant lot. The lone palm towers above them. Its elongated trunk can barely be seen in the dark. The fronds are talons clawing at the sky.
They come to a stop by a warehouse rimmed by alleys and lanes. A few raps on a side door and they are in. On the warehouse floor stands a beer keg, iron-hooped. Men and women are gathered around it in a casual circle, glasses in hand. They drink and sing as their children rush about:
Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care
Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care.
The children dart between bales of paper, in and out of cubicles and cul-de-sacs. They are disappearing into the darkest recesses, the cobwebbed nooks, and their parents are singing, shoulder to shoulder, arms linked. It is a party, a singalong. Burl Ives is their singer of choice, the beer keg their source of sustenance. They huddle around its warmth.
Josh recognises many faces: Logan the boxing trainer stands alongside Ferguson the Nutter. Pete the one-legged veteran leans on his crutches, beer in hand. Mrs Boucher from the corner store is no longer a witch. ‘Polly want a cracker?’ croaks the Cocky when he sees Josh.
I know an old lady who swallowed a spider,
That wriggled and wriggled and wriggled inside her…
Perhaps she’ll die.
‘We’ll all be dead soon enough,’ the Cocky chirps. ‘So drink up my friends.’ The men and women gathered about the keg need no persuading. There is a steady purpose in their drinking. It warms the blood and allows them to defuse baleful thoughts of the week ahead.
They are still singing when Josh leaves. He cuts through the lane behind the Rathdowne Street shops. The boys are back in Aronson’s house. Josh recognises Bird Parker’s saxophone as he walks by. He stops and listens for a while. He puts his foot into the back-door latch, begins to lever himself over the fence, but hesitates, and jumps back.
He jogs to Canning Street, pauses on the median strip, opposite the Swedish Girl’s house. The lights are off. It is getting late. Josh cannot dislodge Parker’s saxophone from his mind. He imagines her undressing, removing each item one by one.
By the time he returns home the storm is over. It is almost ten o’clock. Zofia sits by the kitchen table, elbows propped, hand on cheek. She is reading a newspaper, head cocked to the side. She mouths the English words; occasionally reads them aloud. This is her way of perfecting the language. She prides herself on her love of learning. And at this moment all appears well. Josh cannot fathom it. Does she recall tonight’s incident, her stealthy dash through the house? Is she aware of her brewing silences, her sudden bursts of rage?
He shrugs his shoulders when she asks where he has been. She does not pursue her inquiries. She is still reading when Josh makes his way through the kitchen, en route from the bathroom to bed. Josh is awoken by Shanahan singing ‘Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care’. It is not the first time he has heard him stumbling home drunk, and not the first time he has heard Shanahan pounding his front door: ‘Open up,’ he bellows. ‘Open up you bloody bitch.’ The next moment, he is imploring, childlike. ‘Open up, sweetheart. Please open up.’ Then singing: ‘Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care. Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care.’
Again he pounds, shouting. ‘Open up you whore. Open up you fuck’n bitch.’ His voice softens, and he is imploring. ‘Come on, sweetheart. Open up.’ Then the tinkling of glass, the sounds of a window breaking. Josh knows the sequence well. As do Zofia and Romek.
They lie in the front room, fully awake. The curtain flutters. Zofia rises, closes the window, and draws the blinds. But Shanahan’s voice can still be heard. For Zofia it is a personal assault, against her, against Mrs Shanahan, against all women. She hears the sounds of the Polish night, of neighbourhood revellers becoming drunk. It is a voice that can turn sinister, it evokes the howl of a braying mob.
And Romek hears a different Shanahan, no longer the lover of books, in repose upon the sofa, but a man dispirited. He sees him as another flawed being in a flawed world, and forgives his trespasses, as he wishes others to forgive his own.
Shanahan’s pounding is becoming louder, his entreaties more frantic: ‘Open up, sweetheart. Open up you fuck’n bitch.’
The neighbours are awakening; calculating the time this unwelcome interruption will wipe off their precious sleep. They know they will pay a price come morning. Their day of work will be undermined by more than their usual quota of fatigue.
Shanahan stumbles back into the street. He is weaving past, a drunken bard of the night. ‘Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care.’ He clings to the words with a stubborn regret. ‘Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t fuck’n care.’ His voice fades as he moves away.
And in the morning, as if nothing had taken place, he is back on the s
ofa, book in hand. But his eyes are bloodshot, and behind him can be seen the aftermath of last night’s rampage. The broken glass has been swept away, yet the cracks in the window remain. They snake to the edges from a hole boarded by three-ply.
Shanahan lifts his head from his book as Josh walks by. There is a touch of shame upon his unshaven face. And later that day, the neighbours will glimpse the remains of his handiwork as Mrs Shanahan makes her way to the shops—her bruised arms, her swollen lips, the blotches of purple beneath her eyes.
Friday, 25 April. Anzac Day. The morning fog has lifted. The sun has broken through. Josh leans against the railing on Princes Bridge. It is the first time he has attended the annual march. The parade is preceded by cars carrying returned nursing sisters and disabled servicemen, escorted by mounted police, followed by pipe bands led by drum majors in kilts.
They march ten abreast on Swanston Street, in army uniforms, knee-high boots, whipcord breeches, the ostrich plumes of the Light Horse Brigade. Some have abandoned their khakis and are trussed up in suits, regimental ties and an array of hats—snap brims, homburgs, berets, slouch hats, simple caps.
They march arranged in battalions, divisions, brigades, regiments and units, squadrons and drum corps, 29,000 veterans of four wars spanning fifty years. Wars fought upon battlefields that cover the entire globe: from New Guinea to South Africa, the Pacific islands to the deserts of the Middle East, from the European continent to the rock strewn isles of Greece.
Office workers wave from upper-floor windows. Shredded newspaper flutters down into shadowed streets. The bells of St Paul’s Cathedral ring out. A band plays ‘Mademoiselle from Armentieres’. Infants ride on their fathers’ shoulders. Children grasp miniature replicas of the Union Jack. Blind ex-servicemen stumble by, guided by mates, and Josh catches sight of a familiar face.
He has never seen his next-door neighbour, Clarrie Sommers, so far from home. He marches with his comrades of the 46th battalion. He walks, staring ahead, inscrutable even in the company of his mates. Josh is seized by an impulse to give chase.
He keeps his eyes fixed on Sommers as he dodges through the crowd. He falls in step on the footpath, in line with the 46th, as the men march from the bridge to St Kilda Road. Spectators perch in the trees on the median strip. Josh pursues the battalion past the parklands of Queen Victoria Gardens and King’s Domain. A crow hops over the grass beneath a Moreton Bay fig. Its eyes are black dots encircled by pale green. Its feathers glow a metallic black. Josh inhales the aroma of freshly cut grass, then, reminded of his quest, he sprints to catch up.
The men of the 46th are lowering their hats. A band plays ‘Pack up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag’. The men clasp their hats to their chests. They turn their faces sharp left, at the dais where the state’s governor stands to receive their salute. Josh falls back in with their steps. He glimpses the glint of sun upon sabres, the flash of a regimental insignia, the gold crown and lion of an imperial crest. He hears snatches of conversation. ‘I was in the water transport,’ an old digger says to his grandchild.
Then, like an apparition it appears, the goal of the march. It materialises out of the haze, rising above a grassed knoll. The Shrine of Remembrance is a pyramid-capped mausoleum, built in the neo-classical style. The men of the 46th are approaching the memorial cenotaph on the forecourt. Its eternal flame billows from a cauldron enclosed behind a bronze fence. The men are beyond the Shrine now, in the wings, stage left, dismantling their banners, exchanging greetings, setting off on their separate ways.
Josh keeps his eye on Sommers. He follows him into a field of wood crosses beside the Shrine. Each cross bears the name of a loved one. Sprigs of red poppies lie by their sides. Josh is distracted by the mourners. Their grief is palpable; a women kneels by a cross and sobs. Others stand, heads bent, lost in thought. By the time Josh resumes his search Sommers has vanished.
Hours later he is back on his verandah, pipe in hand, his face immobile in the encroaching dark.
‘Saw you watching the march,’ he says to Josh.
Josh is surprised at his words.
‘Come in. I’ve got something to show you.’
Josh hesitates. It is the first time he has been invited into Sommers’ house.
‘Come on,’ Sommers insists. ‘You think I’m going to bite you?’ he laughs.
Josh climbs the steps to the verandah, and follows Sommers inside. The door to the front bedroom, off the hallway, is open. Josh glimpses a dresser, a wardrobe and a small cabinet beside a double bed.
‘Tasmanian blackwood,’ explains Sommers pausing at the bedroom doorway. ‘A beautiful timber. It will outlast the rubbish they make such a fuss of nowadays.’
The lounge is covered in threadbare carpet; the wallpaper is a floral pattern of beiges and browns. In front of the fireplace lie a pair of bronze shell casings, souvenirs from the Great War. The house’s layout is the same as the house next door, and the kitchen an identical twin. Its floors are covered in linoleum. A gas stove stands in a corner beside a cast-iron wood stove. Only the smell is different: instead of the aroma of stewed onions and cabbage, this kitchen smells of ancient roasts and grills.
Sommers fetches a cigarette tin from the mantelpiece. The crown insignia of the Ardath Tobacco Company adorns the broadside. The lid is attached by hinges, and the tin crammed with photos. Sommers empties them onto the kitchen table. ‘My cobbers in the 46th battalion,’ he says. ‘I took the pictures with a box camera. I carried it with me wherever I went.’
There are perhaps forty photos, snapshots in black-and-white, passport size. Sommers fans them over the table. Josh leans over to read the captions pencilled on the reverse side. There are uniformed men on boats and trains, an image of three men in army uniform captioned ‘Self and pals in gas masks.’ There are photos of cavernous cathedrals and cemeteries littered with soldiers’ graves. Josh glances at a photo of ‘Billy Hughes addressing the troops,’ and a ‘Still life of mess tins with cans of corned beef.’
An enlarged copy of one of the photos stands on the mantelpiece. No caption is necessary. Four decades later it is still possible to recognise the features. Clarrie Sommers is dressed in jodhpurs, khaki jacket and knee-high leather boots. His feet are apart, hands clasped behind his back.
‘I was seventeen years old,’ says Sommers. ‘The photo was taken the day before we left for the battlefields. I thought I was invincible. We all did. But we soon had that rubbish knocked out of us. We were all deluded, as young men are.’
He gathers up the photos, squeezes them back into the tin, and returns it to the mantelpiece. He leans against the wall as he relights his pipe.
‘I’ll never forget my first march to the front lines,’ he says, still standing. ‘We marched by the bodies of soldiers shot and gassed. We saw prisoners of war locked in wire cages. They looked like frightened animals. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I wanted to turn back, but I would have been shot. We were trapped. We didn’t have time to pick up the dead. We had stepped into hell.’
Sommers pauses. Gathers his thoughts.
‘Once, after a battle, I looked at the German corpses. They were scattered over a field thick with mud. In death, they were curled up like newborn babes. I realised they were kids, just like me.’
Sommers sits down opposite Josh, and ponders what to say next. He seems to choose his words with care.
‘In that moment I saw the bloody truth; we were all kids. And in the forty years that’ve gone by, I’ve never stopped dreaming about them. I dream of their arms reaching out. They’re begging for help. Calling for water. I can still see the thirst in their faces, their cracked lips. I can still see their glazed eyes, and I wake up in a sweat.
‘And I’ll never forget the smell. That’s what the photos can’t show, the smell of urine and rotting flesh, the stench of fear and shit, the smell of death. It doesn’t take long for corpses to swell and stink.
‘“How are your bowels?” That was the question we asked each other
most. Instead of “G’day”, it was “How are your bowels?” We pulled off our socks in the trenches to dry our damp feet, and dreamed of clean sheets and home-cooked meals. But when we awoke, our feet were bleeding from rats that had grazed on our toes.’
Sommers fiddles with his pipe.
‘And the noise,’ he says as if he can still hear it. ‘Shrapnel, grenades, rifle and machine-gun fire, artillery and musketry, the flare and flicker of bloody shells. Then it would stop, suddenly. Followed by an eerie silence. Then, out of the silence came the shrieks of the wounded and dying.
‘The field hospitals were full of amputees, and men whose lungs had collapsed from mustard gas. Field surgeons were experts in dismemberment. The filth ate into our wounds. Some of my mates wept because no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t keep clean. “How are your bowels?” the nurses asked. Again that bloody question. This is what war is about: crook bowels, and the smell of shit and death.’
Sommers lapses back into silence. From the lounge room next door Josh can hear the ticking of the grandfather clock. There are questions he wishes to ask. But he is in thrall to Sommers’ authoritative bearing, awed by his tales. A lampshade-globe glows on the kitchen table, casting shadows that compound the silence. He can hear the tamping of tobacco as Sommers tends his pipe.
‘It’s a funny thing,’ Sommers says, as if awakening from his thoughts. ‘During the war, only officers smoked pipes. We just rolled our own. Now I’ve acquired a taste. I’ve betrayed my mates,’ he chuckles.
‘My mates,’ he says, and shakes his head, as if still trying to fathom it. ‘We will always remain close, united by a common fate. When we returned home, after the politicians pinned a few medals on our chests, we were left to go our own ways. People could no longer look us in the eye. Something about us frightened them. We had seen things that would haunt us for the rest of our lives.
‘We were united by a common fate, and our mutual knowledge of crook bowels,’ Sommers laughs. ‘We were experts in shit, but we were cut off from the rest. From those who had not been there. Some of our fellows were crippled. Others found it hard to get work. We’d lost faith in words and idle talk. During the Depression years we counted for naught. We drifted about with the rest, like defeated soldiers on a drawn-out march. That’s how it is. We get honoured once a year. Then it’s over and we have to return to our private lives. The war buggered us up. It divided those who were there, from those who were not. Believe me, war always buggers you up.’