Antidote to a Curse

by James Cristina

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ he called to her, but instead of receiving a reply Ludovico swung around to a laugh and a quick trill of notes. When he turned back, the woman he was following was nowhere in sight. He looked behind him, squarely into the forest, but with no visible path he felt lost. ‘Abrah?’ he called out. All the crazy meandering seemed to make no sense. Mosquitoes surrounded him in a rapid swirl, a sign that he was still near the river. As he was about to give up, he heard a few more notes, a faint trill accompanied by an even fainter laugh. He looked ahead of him, behind him, he listened to the sound of her flute for more guidance, but her notes rose like bubbles to the top of the forest, where they seemingly evaporated. He had lost sight of her. Again, the laughter played through the fringe of dried twigs, followed by an ascending scale that ended as quickly as it had started. ‘Abrah?’ he called, but the woman remained invisible, making him feel like he was back where he’d started. A faint light poured through the thinning treetops and he noticed a horde of gnats and a single dragonfly turn simultaneously in the wind’s voracious pull.

  ‘Jesus!’ A thin bony hand closed over his wrist.

  ‘No, Mohammad!’

  Jasna brought her veiled face to his ear. ‘You must follow. I don’t want her to know where I live.’ She unveiled her hair and wrapped her scarf around her hand to wipe his wet brow. The burgundy material looked coarse but was surprisingly soft and released an odour with a few fragrant notes. ‘Just follow.’ She pressed the crumpled scarf into his hand and moved on. Ludovico pushed it into his right front pocket. Already she was ascending the slope before them; the heel of her low-cut boot was caked with mud. Her swaddling dimije, cut above the ankle, was made of the same translucent material as her scarf. He heard the laughter one more time, but it seemed as far back as the river. The gnats dispersed, the breeze became still and the light grew fainter. He held close.

  Jasna’s house was isolated. She had obviously moved south to Herzegovina after leaving Bosnia. He left his putrid sack on the porch outside the front door. The floorboards creaked as he entered the hallway. His clothes were dirty and he was aware of his perspiration. ‘Could I clean up?’

  She nodded, almost like Abrah, refraining from making a single sound until she caught her breath. ‘Please.’ She gestured with a flat hand and outstretched fingers towards the door beyond the hallway. ‘Second last on the left.’

  He looked at his hands and titled his head from side to side, like a metronome, on the pivot of his neck in a show of prevarication. ‘A minute or two,’ he said politely.

  ‘No, please, take your time – take as much time as you like,’ she insisted. ‘I’m doing the same,’ she said, pointing towards the upper floor. As he made his way through the impressive hallway she called out, ‘The switch is on the outside!’

  He walked up to the four-panelled door. He flicked the switch before stepping into a tiny bathroom. On first glance, he stepped through the doorway and entered an endless tunnel. The walls perpendicular to the door were each one mirrored plate, ceiling to floor. These mirrors, behind and in front of the toilet, produced a recurring hallway of mirrors. He and the lavender toilet were also reflected towards infinity. Above the ledge opposite the door was an oval mirror framed in lavender. In this mirror he noted that the back of the door, unlike the front, was laminated. He was relieved to see that a key was inserted in the lock. The golden key was ornate, and the keyhole was bordered in gold, Edwardian.

  The guest bathroom was, in fact, no more than a toilet and a sink, as wide as a door and deep enough to accommodate the narrowest of basins. It was the size of a modest broom closet, but immediately Ludovico could detect that the blueprint of this room had been etched by a mind with willed precision. The toilet came complete with two water pipes: one head was square with a mesh surface that indicated a light spray, a showerhead, while the other was bullet-shaped, about four inches long and interspersed with needle-prick holes. It seemed contoured for insertion. Ludovico gave a light-hearted snicker, but stopped when he realised that the laughter, along with his reflection, tunnelled miles from its source.

  ‘I noticed an exhibition at the Arts Centre. It’s free!’ Zlatko said, resourceful as ever.

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘Fashion.’

  After a walk along Southgate and the Yarra River, we were standing below a ten-foot pair of puckered, red-painted lips, which were the recurring symbol for the Couture to Chaos exhibition at the National Gallery.

  ‘What work did you do in Sydney?’ I asked as we waited in line. I wanted to learn more about his relationship with Abrah. I thought shooting around the dartboard might prove a strategic move.

  ‘I was a student.’ He pulled out his wallet and revealed his student card: expired, with a flattering photo, a memento of days past.

  ‘One course?’ I couldn’t bring myself to pronounce his teacher’s name.

  ‘Several.’ He snapped the wallet shut.

  ‘Ah!’ So the affair was longer than I’d thought, enrolment, re-enrolment. ‘Sydney’s where it all happened?’ I ventured, eyeing the row of people before us.

  ‘Yes, but I learnt in Bihać, the way everybody learns, TV, magazines, and all those monitors …’

  ‘TV?’

  He chortled carelessly so that the saliva flooded his nostrils and he choked briefly, so much so that the people in front of us turned and glanced. ‘Peacekeeping force,’ he corrected, diving into his tight, low-cut pocket for a hanky.

  The book he’d lent me came to mind, the cover depicting a shield with six yellow fleurs-de-lis arranged on a blue field and divided by a white band. ‘Ah, the so-called safe areas.’

  ‘Hmm.’ His brow furrowed tellingly.

  We paid for our tickets. We paid separately. The attendant wanted to know what my postcode was before handing back the change. ‘I’m homeless,’ I responded and held out my hand. Zlatko zipped through the four digits in an unfazed monotone.

  We walked through the double doors and after another attendant had checked our tickets we were free to roam around.

  ‘I read all about that …’

  ‘Have you finished?’ he asked with an expectant look on his face.

  ‘Yes, but I’ll hang on to it a bit longer, if it’s OK.’

  ‘Sure. Why?’

  ‘I found the book so interesting I covered it with pencil notes.’ I looked straight at him to gauge his reaction. I once annotated a friend’s book with pencil notes and returned it to him, naively thinking that he’d be interested in my ideas. He snatched the book out of my hold and walked away across the common, appalled.

  ‘Notes,’ he pronounced loudly. ‘You do that with every book.’

  ‘Not always,’ I said, giving a cursory glance at the colourful sequins and the rather tacky plumage.

  ‘Silvio, on the outside your books look new, almost unread, but when you open them up …’ He clicked his tongue as if that finished the thought. I moved away and looked at a pair of men’s shoes and some accessories encased at eye level in a glass cube set on a pillar.

  ‘It’s just pencil. I can rub them out.’

  ‘Don’t! I’m curious to see what you wrote.’

  Our eyes met through the cabinet.

  ‘I write in the margins,’ I offered, moving my gaze from the golden cufflinks to the gem-crusted tiepins. ‘Besides, I thought you looked through my bookshelf.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ He smiled. ‘The first time I saw your books I thought of Abrah,’ he admitted, ‘but she’d sabotage hers in pen.’ He pronounced the word ‘sabotage’ so distinctly, so foreign.

  ‘Sabotage?’ I repeated, resisting the urge to mimic him. I scanned the exhibit label and focused on the azure gemstone, the intense layering of its facets and the gratifying amplification of all that light.

  ‘They were unreadable.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m not joking.’

  ‘Red pen?’ I asked, imagining the worst.

  ‘She was mer
ciless. I threw a book in the bin, I was so angry.’

  ‘You threw a book out?’ I could never imagine doing this.

  ‘She fished it out and stuck it back on the shelf. She said I was overreacting.’

  ‘Why do I get the image of her being so soft,’ and after a mere second’s hesitation, ‘almost ethereal?’

  ‘Ethereal?’ He stopped dead in his tracks.

  ‘No?’

  ‘You really don’t get her, do you?’ he said, as if finally appreciating the gravity of the misconception. ‘She’s an idealist, a schemer.’

  ‘Yes?’ My voice sliding the better part of an octave.

  ‘And blood and bone!’ Then, after scratching the stubble on his chin, he conceded, ‘Her co-workers often called her a cynic,’ screwing up his face, the word ‘cynic’ obviously distasteful, ‘but that was unfair.’

  ‘Was she difficult to live with?’

  ‘Impossible, she was always moving from place to place.’

  ‘Is that why you lost contact?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would she ever go back to them?’

  His brow rippled – a series of rectangles.

  ‘Her books. Did she re-read them?’

  ‘Who knows? She wasn’t a writer.’ He looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘Unreadable,’ I muttered, ‘in one reading.’ I wondered how well Zlatko knew Abrah.

  ‘Are you taking notes for your book?’ he asked directly.

  I stopped before the next display unit and pretended to stare intently. ‘I’m not sure where I’m going.’

  ‘Don’t you start with an outline?’

  ‘Outline?’ I could tell from the look on his face that he was serious. ‘You can’t control a narrative.’

  ‘Yes you can.’

  ‘No,’ I insisted.

  ‘It’s just a process, step by step.’ Hopping from foot to foot, his knees raised exaggeratedly, burlesque style, he gravitated to the next display. It was obvious that he wasn’t taking the exhibition seriously.

  ‘If I could work it all out in an outline, writing wouldn’t interest me.’

  ‘Wow, you make it sound so hocus-pocus,’ he declared, his palms reflected in the glass.

  I mimicked his earlier steps and moved to the neighbouring display. ‘Difficult to predict, that’s all – so anyway, the monitors.’ I was keen to pick up the thread.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ He smiled lightly, teasingly.

  ‘Details. Just details.’

  ‘Ah! Such an Inspector Clouseau.’ He stepped up behind me and gave me a suffocating squeeze, burying his chin into my neck. My impulse was to pull away, but with his arms around me I gave a reverberant purr.

  ‘Just taking note,’ I admitted on release. ‘I can’t help it if you’re such an interesting case.’

  ‘I will lay myself bare.’

  ‘Perfect – so give me details.’

  ‘More details?’ he asked, giving his shag cut a good ruffle.

  ‘The monitors,’ I pleaded, ‘tell me about the peacekeeping force.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Did you speak to them?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘The Dutch, the Germans – even the Sri Lankans spoke good English.’

  ‘Ah, during the war Bihać became international.’

  ‘The only time we ever made the world stage.’ The flattery of being at the epicentre of so much cooperation was still palpable.

  ‘Did you get to speak often?’

  ‘Every day.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘At the beginning, every day.’

  ‘Impressive.’

  ‘Just small talk – after all, they were there to keep the peace. It was their job.’

  ‘Yes, but it failed,’ I blurted, involuntarily steering him away from his thoughts.

  ‘It was a disaster.’ Gravel shifted in his throat as he swallowed drily. I had stupidly steered him onto a landmine while glancing at a glass-fronted retrospective of Yves Saint Laurent. ‘You don’t keep peace with smiles and free candy.’

  ‘No.’ I breathed in sharply. The bitterness was palpable.

  ‘Anyway, I did a government-sponsored course when I arrived in Sydney.’

  ‘What did you think of Sydney?’

  ‘Wonderful place,’ he offered, eyes brightly lit.

  ‘Really?’ I asked, in a somewhat flat voice. ‘Was your teacher Australian?’

  He eyed me knowingly.

  ‘Ah,’ I allowed. ‘Abrah – what did you say her name was?’

  ‘Musij. Her family name was Bosnian. Her grandfather came from Brčko, though she was Azeri.’

  ‘Baku?’ I asked, zoning in.

  ‘Not good?’

  ‘Very. Why not have an Azeri lady teach you?’

  I raised my hand to the Giuseppe Zanotti collection. Elegant stilettoes, chunky heels, tassels for laces, a green lightning bolt, gem encrusted uppers. ‘You see more of this colour in Rome, but in Melbourne everyone seems to wear black.’

  ‘Ah, that’s why I changed the colour of my hair.’ Zlatko leaned towards the glass cabinet. ‘That’s what you call a pair of come-fuck-me shoes.’

  We laughed outright. Zlatko’s reflection stood more clearly in the glass against the red gloss of the patent leather boots.

  ‘Dramatic.’

  Zlatko gave me a sly, conspiratorial wink.

  ‘I wish I could speak another language as well as you speak English.’ The lack of opportunities to study another language when I was growing up in Australia was disheartening.

  ‘I will teach you,’ he offered.

  ‘Ha!’ Now wouldn’t it be great, I thought, to turn up in the Balkans with the national language down pat.

  We looked into another glass cabinet.

  ‘What languages do you speak?’ I asked.

  ‘Just Serb, English and some French.’

  ‘French?’ I didn’t know that.

  ‘I can read a novel, understand the news, but my writing’s poor. Can you speak Maltese?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come on,’ he goaded.

  ‘OK, some, but not the way I’d like to.’

  ‘Interesting language, hey?’ I could tell that he was going to reveal some intriguing statistic or fact related to my country of birth.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, it’s Semitic but written in Roman script, and about half the vocabulary is Italian.’

  ‘Have you had Maltese friends before?’ I asked, wondering if he’d actually learnt more about Malta in Australia.

  ‘Of course, especially in Sydney.’ Then adding casually, ‘Some of my friends even migrated there.’

  I gave him an incredulous look. ‘From Bosnia?’

  ‘Malta accepted a number of refugees during the war.’

  ‘Really,’ I said, with a flatness that betrayed my interest, turning my attention to other exhibits.

  ‘If you’d studied French, you would probably have known what haute couture means.’

  ‘Fashion, yeah?’

  ‘High fashion,’ Zlatko corrected with a smile. He brushed his hands up his arms, as if to warm them while his shoulders shuddered.

  ‘Let’s stop for a coffee.’ The NGV had a slick coffee shop above the foyer.

  We took the escalator up to the mezzanine floor, but the air conditioning here was equally as cold. The table was tiny, no more than a foot wide. The sugar canister twinkled between us. ‘I had a dream,’ Zlatko offered.

  I smelled the coffee and the promise of an imminent tale. ‘Home?’

  The dream, just a fragment, unreeled like an old super-8 movie I had seen before, but it was only in the reviewing, in context, that it began to accumulate meaning. It was shot outdoors, underexposed; the camera was pointed at a stretch of poorly lit road, and as soon as I saw the skeletal outline of a car with its headlights dimmed I realised this was yet another amateur shoot, shot in infra-red.
It didn’t appear to be televised news footage at all. This time the camera was fixed on a barren scene through a wide-angle lens. Without notice, the surrounding hills lit up with a short but intense burst of fire. The driver turned the lights off; within seconds the car stalled sharply. It was not easy to determine if it had been hit or whether the driver had decided not to progress any further. The camera zoomed in. The eerie nature of the footage made it feel like I was the only person viewing this. From the side of the road I could see a man wearing a beret approach the passenger’s side of the car. He lifted an arm and shot. The shot, distant and without reverberation, punctured the silence. The camera zoomed further and revealed the driver slumped forward in his seat. Out of the darkness, in apparent silence, two soldiers rushed to the driver’s side of the car. One opened the driver’s door shining a flash light into the car, while the other sought to retrieve the body. It was only once the driver had been pulled from the seat, into the arms of the waiting soldier that I realised, from the long hair and the way the body pleated so accommodatingly, that it was a woman.

  Jasna stepped into the hallway before him. He was surprised because she was wearing nothing but a petticoat. She had taken off her shoes and her tread was birdlike, though her feet, like her hands, were large. He stepped towards her and the floorboards splintered.

  She was thinner than he remembered. ‘The baby?’ he asked.

  ‘I lost it,’ she said, looking straight at him.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He paused to say something else, but instead asked, ‘Do you mind if I take off my shoes?’ They were already off and swinging in his left hand.