Shell

by Kristina Olsson

  She said: Why are you hiding? Or some such. The voice low and sudden in his ear, conspiring; his skin pricked as if dipped in cold water. Then a woman’s cheek against his. Breath clammy with alcohol. A phrase of his father’s came first: I beg your pardon?

  She was crouched behind him. An arm over his shoulder; he registered orange and brown on a sleeve, a marcasite watch.

  Nothing to be afraid of here, she’d said.

  He still hadn’t seen her face.

  She squeezed his arm then, and leaned away. Gone. He let newsprint swim up from the page for two, three, four seconds before he lifted his eyes towards the door. Flecks of orange flashed like low flames among the figures moving out into the night. Which one? A dark head turned to his question—did he say it out loud?—the face serious and open as a friend’s. She held his eyes until the dark engulfed her. He sat staring for whole minutes as if she was still there. As if she had asked the question: Which one? Me, he wanted to say. It’s me. He swallowed the last of his schnapps, and the bolt of warmth might have been the drink or it might have been the joy and fear of recognition. Of being seen.

  He’d returned to Lorenzo’s every night for weeks after that, a tremor of hope in his chest. But though the meeting room filled and tilted with sound and emptied again in the late hours, she wasn’t there.

  On Saturdays Axel would walk the early morning streets, greet men sweeping the pavements or wandering home with stunned eyes after night shifts at the wharf. The sky the color of new milk in the pail. At the market he bought his scant supplies: fruit, soap, hard biscuits. Looked in vain for something resembling the cheese he loved at home. The old Greek women would smile and offer him discs of Cyprus bread. No cheese. Only the feta they made themselves, bitter to his tongue.

  The sun was still low in the eastern sky, the day open. He was at once repulsed and drawn by the idea of the city and its watery edges: harbor and river and sea. Felt an obligation to know them, to see them in all weather, as if he was earning the right to be here. As if the right to create this glasswork demanded something in return. A concession, perhaps, to the people and the place, all that went before here, everything he didn’t yet know. To pay attention: like a kind of tithe or tax on his presence. It was, he thought, a small price for the return. He set off towards the harbor.

  Down at Woolloomooloo, he stood to watch the activity around the old wharf. An air of dereliction attended the men and the buildings; even the water appeared faded and dull and, like the men, overworked. He looked closely: here, among the sheds and decaying warehouses, there might be a building suitable for the next phase of the glasswork, when a bigger space was required. When there would be a team of glassmakers, furnaces, annealing ovens. The glasswork itself. And Woolloomooloo Bay was not so far from Bennelong Point.

  At Rushcutters Bay the air had turned silver, and the sun struck lozenges of light across the surface, lovelier than he had imagined. It was, he thought, as if the harbor had split into two different bodies of water, such was the change over the two miles he’d walked. Rushcutters itself was a different color: parks of rich green, trees that threw shadow and shade. He thought of the Mercantile and the scabrous streets it stood in. This place had once been no lovelier, he knew, the bay shallow and dull and swamped with rushes.

  Before he’d left Sweden he had tried, unsuccessfully, to learn about the city he was coming to. He had been working in Malmö, making a piece for the town hall, but he could find little to help him in the library, or even at the university in Lund. So he’d caught the ferry to Copenhagen: if Utzon could see the sea charts for Sydney at the Australian Embassy there, then surely there would be maps and photographs of the place, press articles, general information.

  Yes, of course, said an attractive young woman in a room hung with photographs of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and kangaroos in grassy fields. She had a charming accent, more formal than the Australian men he’d spoken to by telephone, more British. But still the flattened vowels, the twang, she called it. And blushed. He was offered pamphlets about weather and industry and beaches, and finally books that looked to Axel like school history texts. They were by and large a recitation of facts; convicts, explorers, wheat, and wool. One-dimensional.

  He thought then he would have to walk in this place, as his mother said, and wait for the country to reveal itself. But then from the somber pages of a book passed to him by one of the architects, he learned something of Sydney’s early history. This felt important in a place so content with itself, so disinterested in how and why. He’d begun to read about the first days of the British colony. (“Colony,” he’d had to ask what it meant.) Here at last were scattered references to indigenous people, the groups who had first lived here, had hunted and fished and sung and danced here. On the very land, he realized, he worked and lived and walked on.

  Now, at Rushcutters Bay, a startling story came back to him about the punishment of two convicts in the earliest days of New South Wales. The men were “flogged”—whipped or beaten, he understood—for stealing fishing hooks and lines from the local Aboriginal people here in this bay. But the beating was so severe that the natives, watching nearby, wept loudly, and a woman had rushed forward to attack the man with the lash.

  Axel’s eyes flickered over the park and buildings, the gothic trees he’d come to know as Moreton Bay Figs. Did their great roots mingle with past times, now layered beneath this one? What was in this soil he walked on, beneath the polite paths and grass? At home in Småland he might have known, from his parents’ and his uncles’ stories, from listening and watching: a Viking grave, a buried village. But even though he looked for signs, as he trod the neat streets around Darling Point to Double Bay, he could see nothing but surfaces. The bright veneer of the place.

  When he reached Point Piper he took a laneway past the yacht club. Stood on a miniature beach as the sun began to strengthen. Wished he could see through the earth he stood on, to find traces of the people who were here first. He wanted to see how they lived, hear them speak, hear them sing. He wanted to look into their eyes. To meet the woman who could not bear to watch a man flayed for taking a curved hook fashioned from a shell, a fibrous line. Even if they were her own.

  Pearl could smell the place as she went through the gate, within minutes of getting off the bus: a pall of deteriorating flesh, of talcum powder and disinfectant and yesterday’s roast. The staleness settled on her as she walked the corridors; it took a long soapy bath, whenever she got home, to scrub it from her skin. The funereal scent of lilies on tables and sideboards deepened the offense. She hurried past them, trying not to breathe.

  In the common room a radio was tuned to the races. She stood momentarily in the doorway, readying herself. It was hard to tell if anyone was listening; the dozen or so faces were blank, unmoved by the race caller whose cries ricocheted around and evaporated among the crochet and antimacassars and the thick, listless air.

  Patrick Keogh was in his usual chair, close to a French door that opened to the garden. She wondered if, in the world he inhabited, this was part of his escape plan. Through the door before anyone noticed, across the lawn, over the high brick wall meant to deter patients like him. Who might regard the wall as a minor obstacle; who might measure its height against the depth of their own misery, and run for it. She watched Patrick’s still profile as she crossed the room; from this angle he might still be young, his mind and body strong, untouched by demons. Sadness balled in her chest, sudden and hard.

  Sometimes he did not recognize her immediately. She had tried to get used to it but each time he turned a blank gaze to her a piece of her shrank. It was made worse by his eyes, as blue and fierce as they ever were. Hello, Dadda, she said now, softly, fingers light on his shoulder. The race caller’s voice trailed away to winner, favorite, odds.

  Now Patrick twisted his torso, a mechanical man on low batteries. Regarded her. Seconds ticked on the black-and-white institutional clock. Clack, clack. Recognition crept to his eyes like a slow daw
n. A twitch, a crease at the side of his lips, the closest he came now to a smile. She bent to him, kissing his forehead, relief flushing through her. The world tilted back into place.

  Pearl pulled a chair close and took his hand in hers. Their familiar routine: they sat together as the last races were called, her father’s gaze fixed on the radio as if he could see the track, the hooves and whips and silk. Maybe he could; she hoped so. In between she made small talk, the weather, the garden, football scores. Labor’s chances at the election. As she spoke her eyes flicked over his clothes, his shoes, checking that his lovely, spade-shaped fingernails were trimmed and clean. She pulled a tube of moisturizer from her shoulder bag and smoothed it over the dry skin on his hands and his forearms, continuing her prattle.

  She’d always known she wasn’t his. What she’d have given, when she was younger, to be his flesh and blood. It meant nothing now; she was so utterly his daughter in every other way. He’d made sure of it, making no difference between her and the ones who followed. And he’d named her. Though she was three when she met him and had been Shirley forever. The story of her renaming became part of her personal mythology: six months after Amy met Patrick, as soon as she was sure of him, she had introduced him to her daughter. And Patrick, bending to take her hand, had said simply, Shirley, is it? Well. Shirl the Pearl. Frowning gently at her, and at her mother. Then: Amy, that’s who she is. Just look at her. That’s her true name. He smiled like a priest, baptizing. Pearl. It was the moment, she knew, when he became her true father.

  Now from the corner a ragged cry went up, the words harsh, unknowable. It was Billy, no older than Patrick, his face anguished, hands gripping the arms of his chair. He cried again. One or two faces turned to his and away again. Billy blinked at them, subsided, and was quiet. The rattle and chink of the tea trolley sounded in the corridor.

  Pearl looked to her father, but his eyes were untroubled. Then: Where’s Amy? he said. Where’s your mother? This happened sometimes, his voice resuming the strength it once had and his forehead creasing. Is it onions she’s gone for? He swung around to her. We’ve onions in the garden!

  Pearl squeezed his hand. She’ll be along soon, Da, she said. Don’t worry yourself. She’ll be here soon.

  A woman in white appeared at their side with clay-colored tea in a thick white cup. Pearl watched Patrick’s fingers curl around the handle. Once it was the chains and hooks and ropes of wharf or foundry, a beer glass, fiddle strings. Now his hands around a teacup, this slight tremble, was enough to make her weep. She looked away. A magpie crept from the lawn to the patio, tipped back its head and caroled. Just look at this visitor now, she laughed, and Patrick turned his ear to its song. The remnant of a smile crossed his face. His dear face. Pearl swallowed hard. Amid all that had been taken from him—wife, family, memory—this remained. Just he and the bird, watching each other. She heard the low push of air as her father tried to whistle.

  She stood behind his chair and wrapped her arms around him. The boys will be along, Da. The voice of a fourteen-year-old. She came out of nowhere, still needing approval. Did he hear her? It didn’t matter. The words had been spoken aloud now; he might remember what she said, he might not.

  As she left she looked over her shoulder. His face was still turned to the magpie.

  The bus plowed the ordinary streets back to the city. She thought about her parents, what love was. Their marriage had been like any other, she guessed, up and down, happy and besieged by turns. She had always seen her father as the hero in it, circling her mother and her moods, her wounded sense of herself. Amy’s face: the twist of her lips, the way they pressed over a joke or some displeasure; the lack of emotion in it sometimes, though that usually meant fury. It soon showed up. She’d skin spuds as if they were alive. Pull weeds from the garden, vicious, indiscriminate. Back inside, her hands snapped dry washing into folds. But much worse than that: the thunderous silences that rolled around a room, collided with everyone, bruising.

  At these times her father would busy himself at the wood pile, or walk to the shop for a paper or a pouch. If she was quick enough Pearl would slip through the gate and walk with him, quiet at his side. After a few moments: She’s got a fine temper, your mother, he’d say, hands in his pockets, looking straight ahead. She would feel—briefly, softly—his palm on her head. At the shop he’d buy barley sugar twists.

  But she saw now they had understood each other. As if the things that had passed between them had brought them acceptance, and a restraint—at least from Patrick—that meant there were few arguments. Only the kind of questioning Pearl loved, a kind of storytelling between her father and her twelve-year-old self, a way of winkling out his take on the world.

  But why would the government hate the workers? What’s the sense of it, Da?

  They think we’re below them, girl. Down there with foxes, with dogs.

  But foxes and dogs are clever.

  They are. But still treated badly, still at the mercy of men.

  Why?

  Maybe they’re scared of their cleverness. Their teeth.

  You’re making fun.

  I am not, Pearl.

  The workers do the work.

  They do.

  You’re a worker, Dadda. Do they hate you?

  It’s not personal, girl. They don’t know me.

  And if they did—said her mother, clearing plates.

  Her father frowned. Maybe hate is the wrong word. They need us, but they don’t much like us. They need us to keep in our place so they can keep in theirs.

  Where?

  All the rich houses. The swanky hotels now, the silver service. If they keep us beneath them they can stay on top. See? On the table he made a triangle with three matchboxes on the bottom, two on top, then one more. There’s always got to be someone at the bottom.

  Pearl would keep that image for the rest of her life. The triangular shape of the world. What it was that pushed and pulled and held its fine point. It was there in her father’s fingers, the line of grease he could never scrub from his nails.

  Axel’s Saturday walks settled him, endowed a kind of possession that driving never could. And afterwards, footsore, thirsty, there was coffee. Each week he sat at the same low table, the Saturday Herald on his knee, or a letter from home, or his history book. Today it was the paper; a habit, now, to check for stories of Utzon. Nothing. He turned the pages over again, making sure. Then a presence on the seat beside him. He turned. Early afternoon sun slanted through glass and settled on her face, in her eyes, so her skin was infused with light. She said: Pearl Keogh. And offered a hand. The name no surprise: she was luminescent. Axel Lindquist, he said, trying for calm. Grasping the hand, the strong fingers. On her wrist, a marcasite watch. She said, Shall we have coffee, though it wasn’t a question, and turned her head to a waiter.

  He folded the newspaper and pushed it to the side. Then: You Swedes, she said. Meant to be good lovers, aren’t you?

  Axel glanced past her to the street. They’d known each other precisely ninety seconds. But now her smile widened, opening up the still space between them. Is that so? he said, returning it.

  They caught a late afternoon ferry and sat outside. The lowering sun washed over them, along the deck and the passengers leaning at the rails. In that mild air they spoke without wariness, words and thoughts considered and offered as evidence of who they were or might be. Something in the light, in the roll of water beneath them—in the very decision to catch the ferry—made them brave. Or perhaps, Axel thought later, it was the physical spark of their first sentences—Meant to be good lovers, aren’t you / Is that so?—that fired the air around them, took them beyond that to reckless.

  A journalist. The reply to his question casual, the words snatched by wind. But he thought: of course. Her easy questions, the veneer of toughness she’d need in that world. Now she waved his own questions away, and asked him about his home, his work. So he told her about Småland as a way of answering both. About lakes strewn across
the land like shards of glass. His province, he said, was merely paths between water, as if the earth was a veneer too. As he spoke he had a clear picture behind his eyes. The certainty he’d had as a boy: even when the sun shone uninterrupted from a clear sky, the land held a memory of water.

  He’d felt a shock of elation when he realized the connection, the inevitability: that glass would be made in this liquid place. But of course I had known it all along, even as a child, he said, watching my uncle at the forge. Like a dragon, I thought then, breathing smoke and fire. This kinship of glass and water. So water itself became a substance, something to look through, and outwards to the world.

  Pearl asked: What was your first piece? The first things you made.

  He smiled a boy’s smile. Trolls, he said. With strange heads and large noses. And a jar for flowers. He felt color rise in his cheeks. My mother still has it. There it was before him, clear and unsettling as a dream: uneven, misshapen, the bubbled glass tinged green from iron in the sand. His mother coming through the door with flowers from the fields, setting them in the jar where their fragrance mingled with coffee, with cardamom. And another smell, sweet, acrid. Because, at the edge of the picture, his father, the tobacco tin open by his side.

  He would roll the papers with exactitude, pass his tongue along the edges, tucking, tapering. Always one for his mother first. If it was summer they would go outside in the sun and crouch together like thieves. His mother tipping her head back and exhaling, his father twisting his lips to send the smoke sideways. Axel would kick a ball absently around the yard, pretend not to watch. But the intimacy of this ritual would stay with him, the casual arrangement of their bodies, the unison of breath, inhale, exhale, cigarette between thumb and forefinger, elbows on knees. He saw that they barely glanced at each other. It wasn’t necessary.

  He turned to Pearl. Fine strands of hair, straw-colored, whipped around her face. There was so much I didn’t know. Don’t know. Still.