I looked out of the window and watched St Kilda Road glide by: the concert hall, the theatre, the public offices, the school of music, and the elm trees. The work that I had started in England with the international baccalaureate program seemed no more than a memory, a vivid and fortuitous one at that. The gist of which had been noted, with start and completion dates, in a positive reference by the head sister. I looked at the glass. My focus came to rest on Zlatko’s attentive gaze, our superimposed reflections.
Zlatko lived in Southey Street, Elwood, or at least what felt like the beginning of Elwood, in an orange-brick three-storey apartment block with rusty wrought-iron railings. Even though the stairwell was open the steps were in near darkness, or perhaps my eyes hadn’t adjusted to the lack of sunlight. I tried to slide my hand along the railing, but the rust bit me. I ascended the staircase in twos and threes, waving blood into my fingertips.
On the third level, his level, it was daylight and the sun’s spots swam before my eyes. This level rose above the tree line and I could see a few lanes, a few cobblestone paths and the random sprawl of the suburbs around us. There were two doors, numbered 11 and 12, white and red. The hollowed umbra of his skull surfaced in the gloss of the first as he inserted the key.
Inside, the mirror, one circular plate, shattered and framed in the bevelled hollow of another, reflected the improvised tour. ‘I got it for ten dollars at a junk shop,’ he told me, ‘had it fixed.’ I snared on the word ‘fixed’, since on first glance the pupil seemed smashed. The giant pupil was an impressive kaleidoscope of mirrors set in permanent montage. The mirror, or more accurately the mirrors, silver with age, were framed by exactly, ‘exactly one hundred and one petals,’ bent in the same spiral, steering the eye into its vortex. Some of the gold plating had worn off the smaller than life-size leaves, leaving the bronze exposed. He had set it on the wall next to the tiny entry. The mirror was the only thing on that wall, or any wall, and as soon as you opened the front door it reflected the lounge in fragmented relief.
After a brief tour, I asked, ‘You like to look outside?’, eyeing the white padded armchair.
‘Try it!’
I sat down. The trees, slightly closer than expected, waltzed in the surrounding iris.
Zlatko left the door wide open, as if we were in another country.
‘Not worried?’
He raised his arms in reply, his empty hands indicating white walls.
I looked at the mirror, at least four feet in diameter, cumbersome and probably too heavy for a single person to lift. The light danced on the adjoining wall, and because of the reflection, the positioning of the chair, the mirror seemed adroitly positioned.
‘Ten dollars?’ It was worth hundreds, if not more.
He walked right up to it and tapped the frame, the shattered face declared it ‘Broken’.
I suspected that Zlatko had found a way of repairing it without incurring a single fee. A spontaneous itch made me want to covet it, to pay the ten dollars to the original owner, to stumble across it as my own discovery … and yet staring right into its pupil, at the terraced wood, I realised its value. It was a combination of Zlatko’s vision and handiwork that I really sought to recreate. In its original form, the mirror had probably been no more than junk.
The parquet, blond, slightly yellowed with age, had been recently varnished with a high-lacquered sheen. Each step revealed the outline of my leather soles.
The white walls, the lacquered floors and the one mirror made me think of a white museum cube, I imagined a room branching off one of the upper tiers of the National Gallery of Victoria.
‘I like your sofa.’ White, with whiter-than-white piping running along the joins.
‘It was a throw-out.’
‘I bet.’ Every item wrought by chance and re-creation now set with an air of accomplishment.
‘I reupholstered it,’ he said, a glint of obvious pride twinkling in his eye. He pointed to the floor below him. ‘I got help.’ He allowed the shadow of a snigger, the sort of confidence that I wouldn’t have expected. ‘It was my uncle’s trade back home.’
The fractured image of a light-swamped workshop flickered before my eyes. ‘Stunning.’ I found myself involuntarily steering the inside of a workshop more than half a world away and came face to face with …
‘Vladimir.’
‘Vladimir?’
‘Vlado.’
‘Calico?’ I asked pointing to the two-seater.
He gave a nod. I detected the faintest level of surprise.
The calico had a near transparent triangular print running throughout.
‘I tore off the flowers and …’ he pointed vaguely.
‘Perfect.’
I looked around. There was no TV, video; no hi-fi, radio, wall clock, nothing, not even a telephone, only a mirror that reflected a green wood that did not exist. I walked up to the window and observed the treetops of the modest garden below.
He kept the window in the bedroom open. The bed cover was the same material as the sofa, with a red undersheet blaring at the fringe. I scanned the room quickly, not wanting to seem too obtrusive, and noticed almost immediately the sun-splattered painting opposite the bed. It seemed an assured abstract study in orange, but on closer scrutiny I could detect the adroit interweaving of white and the reflective dapple of blues and the barely detectible, soul-bass referent, purple. In the room was a chair, padded (an obvious luxury) with the same material, and a small, square, wooden desk set below the bedroom window with a lined pad.
‘I write letters,’ he explained, mouthing words I had heard before. There was no sign of a laptop. In a glass jar stood a single clear Bic pen with a half-filled vein of blue ink and a tiny blue stopper that capped the end.
In my journal later that evening, I described his apartment as ‘spare and surprisingly coordinated’.
I liked the stark set-up. His place was as clean as a monk’s cell. It looked like he had started with the basics and was working his way up. I felt like I had stumbled onto an evolving blueprint.
In the kitchen I noticed he had no whitegoods. I looked at the empty fridge space. ‘I buy my food fresh.’ The kettle was his one kitchen necessity. ‘Coffee?’ he suggested, after examining my elongated reflection in its polished surface.
As he started riffling through the kitchen cupboards, I was distracted by a distinct whistle. Zlatko gave a corresponding click of his tongue. He pointed to the bedroom, leaning briefly into view.
I doubled back through the lounge, where the chatter of the light-swamped ditty gained volume, character. Just on the sill of the window was a stone dish and a finch, a crimson one, with its brown crown and toylike beak. It ducked its head before stepping onto the inside ledge. It looked like Nancy’s finch, Igor. These birds were from up north and rare.
‘Bizarre,’ I allowed as my thoughts trailed off.
Despite the sporadic randomness of it all, I felt the narrative gain pace. It aired its wings before taking flight.
As I boarded the tram I thought of my visit. Zlatko’s flat, the white cube. The cube I had prefigured in my own writing. If I had such a space I would be able to write; I knew I would. It wasn’t Zlatko I saw in his flat, but me. He wanted me to stay the night, but the truth is I wanted to get out of my clothes, my ridiculously expensive pinstriped suit; change, put the day behind me, perhaps visit Nancy, the gazebo, the River Una, the rapids, and yes, why not, Stalactites.
I got off the tram and walked past the Melbourne Concert Hall on St Kilda Road. I felt the claustrophobic force of the hall crowd the footpath outside the entrance. I walked through the crowd and realised that I was appropriately dressed for the occasion. I looked down the length of my suit and laughed. I blended in perfectly. The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra had performed Bruckner’s Eighth. I looked to my right, passed the National Gallery, the school of music, drama, up towards the Shrine, and on my left Melbourne’s new improved skyline. Each year I came back, there seemed to be a new tower, a n
ew communications satellite dish, giving the city a different look, a face that was slowly being put together, only to be changed again. The streetlights emitted a green tinge through the row of elms. The near 300-metre spire reflected a blue tinge in the bubble of light around me.
I sat waiting for the next tram in the new tram shelter. Through the plate glass, I considered the elongated tower. I liked the sleeker look, but missed the seagulls and moths that used to pivot and radiate endlessly in a dizzying spiral around the white flashing lights. Maybe the new style had nothing to do with the lack of attraction; maybe it was just the wrong season and the moths had temporarily settled in another place.
Ludovico felt he was being cheated into forgetfulness. Here, the River Una was fast-flowing and sharply terraced and rinsed the ear and eye with its beauty. He took a deep breath of the fresh air around him before brushing up lightly against Abrah. The air was cold and tested his strength; he felt a pain twitching like a bird’s wing in his lung. He held his hand to his heart. Abrah interpreted this as a sign of respect, a sign of grace. He acknowledged her smile, the shudder of branches around him, the view, and he wondered whether this newly struck friendship was just the beginning.
Abrah, the vocalist and flautist he found at the centre of the grove, just by his resting place, provided her counsel on writing. ‘Produce a mirror image of yourself, then as part of the evocation, add an unknown and see where it takes you.’ Her voice was hushed, but she pronounced her words crisply.
‘A combination of autobiography and fiction?’ he asked, knowing exactly that this is what she meant.
‘Autofiction,’ she announced. The leaves glittered in the strong updraft as she pulled her shawl tightly around herself.
‘A powerful montage,’ he conceded and added almost in the same breath, ‘Terribly creative.’
‘Oh yes,’ she affirmed, ‘dreadfully so.’
‘Though I imagine people, being people, would become obsessed with the facts. No?’ he asked, so as to draw her further into the conversation.
‘Let them peck over the details,’ she allowed with a laugh softer than the breeze. ‘That should hardly be your concern. Give yourself all the freedom you like! Besides, where the story gravitates towards sex and murder …’ she tilted her head in consideration.
‘Keep it all close to home.’
‘Yes.’
‘Autofiction,’ he repeated. ‘I do like it, something familiar, and yet … new,’ he pondered.
She looked towards him with intent eyes, and said in a voice not unkind, ‘I wouldn’t delude yourself.’
Despite the correction he continued, musing out loud, ‘An unknown as part of the evocation.’
‘That’s all it may take. The two elements could create a sort of tension,’ and hesitating for a moment, ‘a momentum to carry the narrative,’ she added, dotting an ornate motif with her little finger.
‘A little like melody and rhythm?’
‘Well, perhaps, if you’re going to insist on a musical metaphor.’ And after considering this, suggested, ‘One would also have to include an appreciation of harmonic progression: peaks, troughs, transitions …’
‘Key?’
‘Modality?’
‘I never thought of it that way.’ With his fingers dovetailed together he rubbed the balls of his palms up against each other, to and fro, inspired. Light and dark, dark and light, he thought to himself.
‘Speaking of something new,’ she teased, ‘I’ve just subscribed to the symphony!’
‘The symphony!’ Ludovico mimicked, tracing her movements as she actually skipped through the three syllables.
‘Yes, the … symphony!’ Giving a little shudder she readjusted the shawl over her bare shoulders.
Inspired thoughts aroused mixed feelings in Ludovico’s breast. ‘I’m so tired of subscribing to the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra. Always churning out Bach and Mozart.’ He thought of their last warm-up, sporadically coughing into their horns and scratching at their strings. He remembered a Polish friend he went to a concert with in Krakow, who no more than a few minutes after the commencement had leaned forward and, looking Ludovico straight in the eye, complained, with a somewhat protruding chin, ‘Melodies of thin invention.’ Ludovico lifted one hand half-heartedly, in a related and belated show of support. ‘What was it? Bruckner’s Eighth for the eighth time? Not even the slightest sense of reinvention!’ The pretension was palpable even to Ludovico’s ears. Still, he stood by his point.
‘Too many horns?’ Abrah suggested.
‘Way too horny for me, and so predictable. And so is their showcase of Beethoven – and just to diversify things a little bit, some Schubert!’ Ludovico imagined a corridor of mirrors as intricate as the path of the forest they were walking on, each mirror inclined to reveal the same scene. ‘Artificial.’
Their smiles met. He knew this without looking at her. It registered in the air, the energy between them. ‘Yes, this’s exactly what I mean. How many people knew of a regional composer?’
Regional, the word shimmered with possibilities.
He thought of ditching his subscription.
He thought of writing a disgruntled newspaper article, but the effort required stopped him. He was trying to regain focus on his second novel, but after the first thirty pages he felt that the whole project was losing steam. One failed novel – all he could bear. The truth: Ludovico was horrified of the day-to-day humility required to write a second. Just thinking of it made him quiver, releasing the frenzied rush of the ambition bird’s wings. (He confined the pain to one lung, his left, or so he hoped. He couldn’t stand another unabated attack.)
He looked for diversions. Work at the aviary? Long solitary walks? Ludovico’s thoughts pushed off out of him, like a canoeist gliding on a downstream slant, freed of his former momentum. Images of this morning’s dream flickered through his consciousness. His murky nightscape of birds, plumage, injury and death was so in keeping with the state of the forest, he considered the effect his dreaming had on his day-to-day mood. He shifted his focus. His mind took a turn in the cavern he rested in earlier, only to be nudged by the honey-burnt voice beside him. ‘“Regional” sounds like a place I’ve always tried to escape.’
A shot ricocheted through the halls of the forest; the branches answered with a shudder and a burst of wings, a rapid succession of birdcalls.
‘Oh God, the time!’ Abrah looked up, scaling the treetops around her, noting the alignment of the robin’s trajectory with the surrounding panic.
Ludovico burrowed into his pocket and looked at his watch. His mangled arm lay unnaturally still by his side.
‘What about the curfew?’
‘I have to go back,’ Abrah declared.
‘Where?’
Another shot ricocheted through the trees around them, closer. Ludovico was distracted by what looked like a tall, fine lady in a heavy pleated dress; a red ribbon was tied to a crown of loosely arranged hair. Snatches of her dress appeared through the green shrubbery. It was a glimpse, variegated as a transitory vision seen through a drinking glass.
In that moment of distraction, Abrah had taken flight. When he looked beside him he realised he was alone. He chased her sound, a twig underfoot, the vital essence of her presence just metres away. The forest swayed and rose like a sea in storm, responding to the sound of his footsteps, panic, the slap and ripping of the branches around him. In his haste he slipped again, landing adroitly on his right arm. Nonetheless, he yelled vehemently, unwilling to endure another loss, the full extent of the forest’s misery beating thick in his veins. Surely she must hear him, surely … The ground beneath him skipped and moulded to the soles of his shoes. He was running downhill into the clutches of a man’s past. Branches corridor around him, waiting for him to find that one lead, the key that will provide that one way, in.
‘Tell me about Bosnia?’
I viewed Zlatko with his telltale five o’clock shadow through the haze of the smoky booth. He had fini
shed work. We were seated at Stalactites on Lonsdale Street.
Darko had a day off. His daughter, Leila, served us; she only worked special shifts. Leila’s eyes were inclined and bordered in thick mascara, reminding me of the murals I studied on my trip to Cairo’s Egyptian Museum. Her plum lipstick rendered all the more boldly by her white powdered skin. My latte towered next to Zlatko’s macchiato.
Zlatko butted out his cigarette only to reach for another. His black roots had sprouted solid. He had cut his hair ragged and scruffily gelled the tips. He inhaled his cigarette deeply, another necessary puff.
‘Tell me about Bosnia?’ I asked as I stared at the white swirls running across the green laminated tops, the lit cigarette burning in the glass ashtray.
‘What do you want to know?’ he asked, knowing that the blueprint of the story was already mine.
‘You, tell me about you.’
He picked up the cigarette and slumped further into his green padded jacket. ‘You already know me,’ he answered.
‘Not really,’ I insisted, equally sedate, content to sip the home-brew. I tilted the glass and admired the twinkling in the subdued light, the resin of the crushed grape, amber.
‘What do you want to know?’ he asked, almost listlessly.
‘Tell me about your name.’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’ He etched a distinctly Eastern feature as his shoulders rose and fell in a hopeless shrug.
‘Omerovic, isn’t it?’ Knowing full well that was his family name.
Despite the show of indifference, he basked in the show of attention.
Antidote to a Curse Page 5