by Alex Miller
Teresa said calmly, ‘She’s at kinder. Roy came over.’
Roy said, ‘How’s it going, Antoni?’
Toni stepped up to his brother and they embraced.
Teresa watched them. ‘I’ll get us some lunch,’ she said. ‘You’ll stay for lunch, Roy?’
Roy turned to her. ‘Thank you, Terry. I’d like that very much.’ He spoke with restraint, an old-fashioned modesty in the manner of his acceptance of Teresa’s invitation. A man in his late forties, who had once been handsome, he was now slightly stooped, his appearance that of someone debilitated by chronic pain or prolonged anxiety. There was a trace of a European accent in his soft voice.
‘So everything’s okay?’ Toni said, looking from one to the other. He had not seen his brother since the opening of his last installation at Andy’s, an event that seemed so long ago now it might almost never have happened, except for the pile of old clothes and racks still cluttering the courtyard to remind him of it. ‘Have you lost weight?’ he asked his brother.
‘I’m fine.’ Roy smiled and put his hand on Toni’s shoulder and squeezed. ‘You’re looking great.’
Teresa said, ‘I’ll leave you two to have a talk then.’ She paused in the doorway, then turned back and stood looking across at Toni. ‘So where’s your picture?’ She was looking into his eyes as if she were determined not to miss anything, determined to detect the lie or the half-truth as it formed and wavered in his mind.
‘I took it over to Richmond.’
‘So you’ve finished it, or what?’
‘No.’
She waited for his explanation.
‘I was having a problem with the background.’
She said nothing, waiting.
He drew a breath. ‘Marina offered to do a new background for it.’
Teresa’s expression changed and she looked at Roy. Then she turned and went out the door.
Toni said, ‘Shit!’
‘You do these?’ Roy asked. He was holding up Theo’s sketchbook.
Toni reached and took the book from him. He closed it and replaced the rubber band and put it away in the drawer of the plan press. ‘You think it’s okay to come in here and just look at everything?’
‘You’ve got nothing to hide from me, Antoni.’
‘The book belonged to Robert’s father. The drawings are his. He gave it to me. Did Teresa look at it?’
‘She looked at it,’ Roy said easily.
‘I’m sorry,’ Toni said. ‘I didn’t mean to speak to you like that. Have you been ill or something? You don’t look the best.’ Roy had always seemed indestructible to Toni. A man of iron or stone who would never grow old or falter. Today he saw something vulnerable, something almost fragile about his brother that alarmed him.
‘I had a bit of an operation,’ Roy said. ‘It was nothing. I’m fine now.’
‘What sort of operation? Mum never said anything.’
‘I told her not to worry you.’
‘Jesus! You didn’t tell me about it? Come on, what was this operation? I need to know.’
‘It was nothing. Minor surgery.’ Roy laughed and gestured around the studio. ‘You’re doing it!’
‘You and Mum still behave as if I’m the baby of the family. I need to know what’s going on.’
‘Okay. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.’
‘So what are you and me supposed to be talking about?’
Roy picked up Marina’s island sketchbook. He hefted it and looked questioningly at Toni.
‘You can look at anything,’ Toni said. ‘You know that. I’m sorry. I’m just feeling a bit touchy. I was hoping to get to work. What’s all this about anyway?’
Roy opened the book but did not look at it at once, instead he looked around the studio at the drawings and paintings and the paraphernalia of the craft. ‘Dad should see this.’
‘You mind if I set up a stretcher?’
‘No. Go ahead. Do what you were going to do. Don’t let me interrupt you.’
Toni did not move. Roy was holding up the drawing of Marina asleep on the island.
‘So this is that?’ he said, indicating the oil on the plan press. ‘I prefer the drawing. I always preferred your drawings to your paintings. I’m not criticising.’
‘It’s okay. I feel the same.’
Roy considered the drawing of Marina lying in the shadows of the wattle. ‘This I could live with.’ He laughed softly, with pleasure. He jogged Toni’s arm with his elbow. ‘Hey! You’re not listening to me! You’re way off. What’s the matter? You want to work? I’m holding you up? Work if you want to work.’
‘No, of course not. It’s great to see you. We should see more of each other.’ His brother’s life was a mystery to him, as remote and sketchy as his father’s childhood had been for him.
‘Never mind about that. I’m telling you something. This is a beautiful thing. She sat for you like this? This is what you people do? What a life you have!’
Toni said, ‘You can have it. I’ll get it framed for you.’ He had refused to give the drawing to Marina, now he would give it to his brother. He reached for the sketchbook but Roy held it out of his way, turning at the shoulder, a minimal movement that reminded Toni of their father, as if Roy had begun to call upon their father’s gestures as he grew older.
‘You remember the way Dad used to go on about your gift?’ Roy said. ‘The gift of the line, he called it. It would bring tears of pleasure to the old man’s eyes to see this stuff. Dad was denied happiness.’
Toni could hear a strengthening of the old accent in Roy’s speech, the ethnic scar tissue from his early years alone with their parents emerging again, not erased by the passage of the years but subdued, appearing again now that his brother’s strength had begun to erode. Like their mother Lola, Roy had remained a Prochownik at heart and, like her, still carried the indelible marks of the displaced. The name-change to Powlett had not taken with Roy or with their mother. With those two it had been a failed graft. Perhaps one lifetime was not long enough to become an Australian. ‘Dad was happy doing his pictures.’
‘That wasn’t happiness,’ Roy said. ‘That was keeping up a brave front. Dad never found the freedom to be who he was. You were his chance.’
‘I think Dad was happy sometimes,’ Toni insisted. It was important for him to believe in his father’s happiness. ‘I often saw him when he was happy.’
‘We knew different people. Dad was careful with you. He never let you see what was really going on with him. He protected you from all that stuff.’
‘Like you and Mum not telling me about your operation, you mean?’
‘That’s it. It’s our habit. The family has always protected you.’
Toni looked at Roy. ‘Do you remember telling me when you came out of prison that no one’s protected?’
Roy looked up from the drawing. ‘Did I say that?’
‘You said it as if you’d found the key to everything.’
Roy laughed, pleased. ‘Maybe I had. You remembered it!’
Toni wondered, suddenly, if their father had broken his silence with Roy. ‘Did Dad ever tell you about his childhood in Poland? The war? The labour camp? All that stuff?’ He loved his brother achingly, hopelessly, but they had never shared the same reality. He would have liked to say, My brother! But it was too deep. Too lost. He knew now there would never be a time when he would know his brother. It was almost as if his brother had been denied a full reality. He would do his portrait. It would be difficult but he would love doing it. He would visit his brother’s room in St Kilda and paint him there. They would get to know each other a little. He would do it soon. When the island show was out of the way. He would do portraits of everyone. That was what he would do. He could feel his capacity for it. Teresa’s mum and dad too. Why shouldn’t they get their picture of themselves?
Roy said, ‘When Dad used to come out to the prison to see me, we’d spend the whole of visiting time talking about you and your drawing. You were still
at Nott Street Primary with Andy in those days.’ He stood looking fondly at Toni. ‘He’d bring a batch of your drawings and your little watercolours to show me. You were his beacon of hope. You became mine, too. I had your drawings on the walls out there. You had a following with the boys. You were famous. They used to ask me how you were getting on. The truth was never enough for them.’ He laughed. ‘I invented stuff about you. I invented this other kid who was your rival, so they’d barrack for you against him. They’d ask me, How’s that brother of yours doing these days? And they’d hang around and wait to hear the next instalment of your life. Dad used to say, Toni belongs to the new world. He relied on the fact that you were born here. He felt it made you safe.’
‘You were born here too,’ Toni reminded him, but he knew it was not the same.
‘Yeah. I was born here.’ Roy looked into the distance. ‘Dad lit up when he was talking about you. He wasn’t worried about me. He knew about prisons. He and Mum knew what was happening to me out there. They knew where I was. It wasn’t mysterious for them. Dad used to say, prison is prison, it doesn’t matter where you are. We understood each other. We understood that. It helped me that they knew what was happening to me.’ Roy fell silent, thinking back. ‘You should get Andy to put on a show of Dad’s pictures one of these days.’
‘That wasn’t what he wanted. Anyway, I don’t think Mum would let them out of her sight, would she?’
‘He wanted it. We all want it. Don’t make out Dad was different from the rest of us. He was a man, like you and me. He wanted what we all want. That big old suitcase under their bed? That’s his suitcase from the old days. Did you know that? I’d get home at two in the morning and he’d still be sitting up at the table. I’d see the light on in the kitchen as I was coming across the court. My old man up there doing his painting!’ He fell silent. ‘That one he did of Mum’s ironing board with her teacup sitting on the end of it. You remember that? It looked as if she’d stepped out and would be stepping back in again any second.’ Roy studied Toni for a long moment. ‘Anyone looks at that picture, they see our mother. We had it pinned to the wall above the sink for years. You remember that picture?’
‘Of course I remember it. Dad used to say all art is portraiture.’
‘Self-portraiture. That’s what he said. You can’t escape yourself.’ Roy set Marina’s sketchbook aside and picked up the book that Toni was using. He flipped the pages, studying the drawings. He paused at a drawing of the half-naked old man sitting on a chair. ‘Who’s this?’
Toni looked over his shoulder. ‘Robert’s dad. Theo.’
‘He sit for you like that?’
‘No.’
‘You do these from memory?’
‘Partly from memory, partly from life. Sometimes photos. Drawings. Whatever. What are we talking about, Roy? Why was Teresa upset?’
Roy stood gazing at the drawing of Theo. ‘We’re going to look like this. You and me. That’s how Dad looked towards the end. He was exhausted. I’d come in and he’d be sitting naked on the edge of the bath with that empty look in his eyes. It would be the end of another shift at the plant. The bath water would have that grey scum around it from the tyre dust. I’ve seen all kinds of looks in men’s eyes, men who’d lost their lives. But nothing ever affected me like that. The way Dad looked.’ He fell silent. ‘I used to watch his memories moving behind his eyes. Those old nightmares were still living in him and there was nothing I could do to help him. When I was young I used to think you forget things in time. But one life’s not long enough to forget some things. Dad wanted to tell you. He wanted you to know. But he couldn’t. He’d try talking to me about those things sometimes but he’d choke up. He couldn’t get the words out. I’d tell him it didn’t matter. I’d say I didn’t want to hear about it. When I’d walk in on him in the bathroom I always felt shocked and I’d stand a while, then I’d ask him if there was something I could get for him. When I spoke he’d come out of his daze and he’d reach for me and pull me down to him and kiss the top of my head. No, son, he’d say. I’ve got everything I need. I’ve got your mother’s love and I’ve got you boys. If there is something else we must have, then tell me what it is.’ Roy looked at Toni steadily.
Toni closed the drawer of the plan press. ‘I dreamed about him the other night. Do you ever dream about him?’
‘Remember the way he talked? As if our fates had been decided in some other place and time. He told me once he didn’t feel betrayed by his old God, he just learned his God was merciless. What a thing to say. Can you imagine saying something like that? What must have been behind that for him to actually come out and say it? You get the lot that falls to you, he always said.’ He looked again at Toni’s drawing of Theo. ‘I let them down, Antoni. Badly. I paid for what I did to that guy, but there’s no way to ever pay for what I did to Mum and Dad. I should have stepped away that day. It would have been better if I’d taken a beating.’
‘But not if you’d let Dad take a beating,’ Toni said softly. ‘You did it for him. I was there. Remember? It was just bad luck the guy died. Another time he would have got up and walked away.’
Roy closed the sketchbook. He was silent a long while. ‘There was an old Spaniard in there with us. Roncales. A little guy with bandy legs. He had a face like a stone that’s been used to pound grain for a hundred years. We called him Pony. He was a horseman in a previous life. A real horseman. A horse master. That’s all he knew. Horses. He used to paint these enormous blue and red acrylics of rearing horses. He told us the Spaniards had this saying: ‘The man who dreams of the perfect horse or the perfect woman never finds contentment in the saddle or in bed.’
‘So you’re telling me to be content with what I’ve got?’
‘I don’t know what I’m telling you. I just thought of Pony. We hear what we want to hear. Discontent is a disease. That’s something I do know. Am I giving you advice on how to live your life? You’ve got a beautiful wife and a daughter and this house and your gift. You don’t need advice from someone like me. That’s obvious.’
‘In the dream he gave me the go-ahead to be an artist.’
‘Don’t throw it away. That’s what I’m saying. I’d hate to see you throw all this away. I’d give anything to go back and step around that situation now.’
‘But you wouldn’t step around it if you went back. You’d do the same for Dad today as you did on that day.’
Roy reached out and pulled Toni towards him and kissed the top of his head. ‘That’s from me and Dad. We love you. Remember that!’ There were tears in his eyes. He gestured around at the pictures and drawings. ‘Has Mum been over to see this?’ He waved at the portrait of their mother. ‘You’ve got her picture up. She’s still beautiful, eh? You captured her beauty.’
‘I’ll invite her to the opening on the island.’
‘I’ll bring her with me. We’ll come together.’
They stood looking at the portrait of their mother leaning on the balcony at the flats, looking out at them.
‘I suppose Teresa rang you?’ Toni said. ‘I don’t suppose you just happened to come over?’
‘She’s worried things are slipping away for you two.’
‘I know.’
Roy said, ‘I’m not asking you to tell me anything.’ He gestured at the oil painting of Marina asleep on the island. ‘This picture . . .’
‘What about it?’
‘Teresa says it’s erotic. And she’s right. There’s nothing crude about it, I’m not saying that, but it’s suggestive. Wouldn’t you say? It’s a great picture. She asked me what I thought of it.’ Roy examined him. ‘She said it’s a picture of a woman lying there waiting for it.’
Toni asked tightly, ‘And what did you say?’
‘You see what you want to see, I said. Maybe what you’re afraid of seeing. It’s a picture, I told her. Antoni is an artist. This is what he does.’
Toni looked at his painting of Marina asleep on the island. He had loved doing it. He had painted i
t from his drawing and from his memory and from the wonderful feeling of their day on the island.
‘Teresa believes in family. That’s where she sees the strength in things. She believes if families stick together everything comes out all right in the end. She asked me if I thought she was becoming a jealous woman for no reason.’
‘So?’
‘So she’s your wife and I’m your brother. That so. Sometimes you behave like the baby of the family. Maybe that’s a habit with you too. People treat us the way we want to be treated. I’m not asking you if Teresa has a reason to be jealous. You get one shot. Don’t blow it. That’s all I’m saying. She asked me to talk to you, so I’m talking to you. She doesn’t want to interfere with your work. She’s scared she’s going to stuff things up for you now that you’ve finally got going at last.’
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘She’s trying to be cool about it, but she’s not sure what you’re getting up to with this woman and it’s driving her crazy.’ Roy looked at him. ‘She loves you.’
‘I know that.’
‘I love you too.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘She feels as if you’ve started keeping your life a secret from her. And for a woman there can only be one reason for her man to be doing that.’
‘She said that to you? That’s crazy!’
‘Is it?’
‘You said you’re not asking me?’
‘I’m asking you.’
‘It’s difficult to explain this project to her.’
‘Have you tried?’
Toni shifted uncomfortably. He resented the interrogation. He just wanted to be working on his new painting.
‘Why don’t you try explaining it to her? That’s all she’s looking for. She hates being closed out.’
‘Closed out! You two must have had some talk before I got here.’ Toni looked at Roy. ‘My work’s not something I can explain. I’d like to explain. Okay?’ He gestured at the room. ‘But you give someone a reason for this and you know that’s not what it is. You know that’s not the reason. You try to explain this and you start lying. Most of the time I don’t know what I’m doing.’