Shell

by Kristina Olsson

  Why should they be afraid of this modern Pied Piper? Or better: why shouldn’t they be? Like the old inhabitants of Hamelin, these people had struck a deal, and in their case at least a true bargain. Perhaps their leaders had not anticipated that the people would fall in love with beauty, that they would look into the bright mirror of the opera house shells and see themselves. This might be dangerous. Who knew what else they might want: kindness, tolerance, more beauty, more.

  Of course, they hadn’t counted on the power of the piper. The sound of his flute, unworldly, untranslatable. Ethereal. Of course he had to go.

  The answer from the union man came back the following week. Surname of Keogh? The same rough-edged voice, but quieter, businesslike. Got a William and a James. Cooma, New South Wales.

  Cooma? Pearl was barely aware she’d spoken.

  Employed by the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Company.

  She stared at the desk in front of her. The world shrank to this: the round metal keys of the typewriter, the circled letters, the roller and its paper. The words, paragraphs there suddenly unreadable, insignificant. They’re still current members? At that address? Her voice a low kind of bark, though she tried for calm. Please, she thought. A prayer to no one but, if needed, to the god of her childhood, of the dour, righteous Protestantism of her mother. Good things come, she heard her say. She closed her eyes.

  A brief pause down the line. The sound of pages turning. Yep. Paid up, both of them.

  Pearl blinked at the walls around her, the ceiling above. Everything changed and nothing did. The world turned benign, ordinary, and her body released its hold, the defensive certainty of bad news. She breathed.

  The man’s voice again. All I can tell you, mate. More than I should. Good luck, eh?

  And he was gone.

  She sat for a moment and let the information settle. Looked at the scatter of paper and notebooks in front of her, all suddenly edged in light. In her head, alps, snow, bright rivers and men, heroic, forging new shapes in the landscape, holding back the force of water with their bare hands. Jamie and Will, with the faces of children.

  Finally she stood, walked again into the library, found the right phone book, asked for the files on the Snowy scheme. Scurried with them back to her desk, a witch with her hoard, with the makings of a spell to find them, to bind them. There were people to tell, but she wanted to sit with this feeling, let it settle in her, the joy and relief of it—and the trepidation.

  She thumbed through the files. The folders were thick with stories and speeches, sentences and sentiments that puffed up on the page like blancmange. The fervor, the righteous clamor that accompanied such projects, the building of a nation. Images of mountains tunneled by men, moles working in deep dark earth, slinking from their holes at shift’s end with exhausted smiles. The camera recorded it all. Men with faces marked by exile and immigration, the surprise of comradeship with old enemies and a decent wage.

  Newcomers and locals, stunned by cold, threw arms around each other’s shoulders for the camera, stepping into symbolism. They looked too tired to be cynical, too grateful. Too needy. Thumbing through endless clippings, this is what she realized: for the migrant men, war weary, whatever happened to their hands here, to the soles of their feet, their backs, these things didn’t matter. This was work for pay and for good. The war was in the distant past. In this place they were all one nationality.

  But then the regular reports of accidents in tunnels and on roads. Just two years earlier, three men in a tunnel had been caught in an avalanche of liquid concrete, were pinned by it as it set in the bottom of a shaft. There were rock falls, mistimed detonations. She turned from the clippings of accident reports with their images of ambulance bearers and faces frozen in shock. Could not meet their eyes. The thick skin she had grown as a reporter allowed her this, at least.

  Until suddenly, it didn’t. She wanted to weep: the lives of working men and women. The duty and acceptance. All over the world, men went down dark mines, labored with axes and shovels, in tunnels and sewers and abattoirs and in unforgiving fields. Women in the stink of factories and laundries, the relentless fist of the machine. Skivvying in the kitchens of the rich. Her own mother at the steam press and the cannery; she could not bear the smell of asparagus for the rest of her life. All without choice and little reward.

  Among them, her brothers. Were they grateful too for these jobs, this forging of an icon, for this fellowship of damaged men? Like those from the shredded countries of Europe, were they grateful, were they happy? Up there in the Snowy—even as laborers, or digging the earth, hewing rock—they would have a new identity, recast as builders of the new Australia. As useful. As brave. But still at the mercy of a pitiless landscape, a pitiless machine.

  There was the urge to borrow a car, find a map, drive south. But alongside it, needles of terror. She had wanted to protect them from the bludgeoning hand of government and war. But were they safer where they were, tucked away in snowbound villages, than they would be in Sydney? They might be. And their jobs might be exempt from the ballot. Even if they weren’t, it might be easier to avoid the draft up there, where news was harder to get and the thicket of nationalities might disguise you. There was the irony of big cities: everyone was connected in some way, and eyes were everywhere. She’d found that out those months ago as she marched in the first protest; the middle of the mob and still she was caught, seen by a random camera that turned the moment into an image.

  And then there was the fear: she may not know these brothers any more. Their moods and ideas, their personalities, how the grief of their childhood played out in them now. How they expressed anger, or worry, or love. How the hard scrabble towards manhood had marked them. Part of her was afraid she wouldn’t like them; they wouldn’t like her. That they would not want to be found.

  Depends who you’re doing all this for, said Suze that night, playing with the ends of a buttery plait that snaked down from her shoulder and across her breast. She examined the spikes of hair for splits, then dropped it. For them or for you.

  She had no answer. But the next day she called Jeanne, said she could stop searching. Asked if she could borrow the car Jeanne used to drive around the parish.

  Out on the site the night shift was not yet in full swing. Axel surveyed the forest of concrete and steel, the giant cranes in their crucifix shape, the erection arches along the soaring lines of the roof shells. The shells themselves like cupped hands, open and poised for prayer. Everything was cross-hatched, an artist’s impression. But now the moon, rising, turned the apex of the shells luminous, silvering the wide-hipped ribs. He followed their line upwards and there—like a show reel, like a magician’s trick—the stars of the Southern Cross. Above the crane, unmistakable even to a man who had grown up beneath the northern sky: two pointers and a crucifix. What did it signify to these people? He didn’t know. The shape of it, hung there like a symbol, like a promise.

  Now he wandered slowly through the darkness towards the concourse, readying himself for the blaze of industrial light, the blunt power of it, indiscriminately flooding the yards and corners, the shells and the main auditorium, the concrete and metal. A brutal sun in this forest of steel. In a real forest on the other side of the world, Utzon had walked and walked, around the lakes, through trees in thick drifts of leaves. Every day before he moved to Australia, he took his architects into the forest and out onto the frozen lake to sketch their ideas on ice.

  Axel had walked these forest paths too, but alone, and much later. Looking for signs and messages, clues to the architect’s mind, or his dreams. He had heard a story about Utzon’s children, how they had run at full pelt through this forest one afternoon to meet their father off the train, their bodies flickering through trees, their chests heaving, each dying to be the one who told him: he had won the competition, his design for the opera house. Their own father. The best in the world.

  This was the man he wanted to find. The architect, the father. At first it felt lik
e a waste of time; he couldn’t feel the man there or, when he did, it was just his shadow. But now, walking this dreamscape of steel and concrete and unworldly shapes, he could imagine himself back to Hellebæk, to the shores and the forests, walking beside Utzon, speaking of poetry and the sacred, clouds and canopies, the recurrent shapes of nature at the service of the artist. Here, beneath the darkened concourse, the evidence of this conversation was all about him.

  It was cold now; he pressed his hands beneath his pullover, looked out beyond the empty yard with its crouching shapes, unknowable in moonlight. Muted sounds from the handful of night workers reached him, and it felt very agreeable to be here, alone, surveying the richness of the scene. He leaned back in the quiet. Then he saw him: a mere shadow but tall, unmistakable, moving slowly against the fence, hands dug into the pockets of his overcoat. A noble silhouette. Axel was up before he realized, took several steps and stopped. Would he seem like a lunatic, approaching the man in the dark? He glanced down at his clothes: respectable, ordinary. Stepped out again. But in those seconds of hesitation the figure had gone. He hurried then, searching each section, and finally asked the guard if Mr. Utzon had dropped by. He shook his head, no, went back to his paper. But Axel knew what he had seen.

  When he reached the far end of the quay on his way home, he turned. From a distance and in a shimmer of night light, the sails themselves might be new celestial forms, a new constellation or galaxy in the southern sky. Might do the same work as the Southern Cross, he thought, guiding people home.

  Saturday morning dawned cool and clear. She caught the bus to St. Joseph’s, watching old women in cardigans and scarves subside in their seats, their faces unreadable. Outside, the winter paradox of Sydney: a cold wind snatching leaves from trees, overcoats held tight to waists, and the sun striking gold angles through lanes and windows, mocking. The city, gray, gaunt, was sliced with light.

  At St. Joseph’s Jeanne met her in the car park, clutching keys and a road map for the Alps. They embraced, Jeanne’s arms hard around her. It brought back the maddening tears she’d been crying since Thursday, some bottomless well of new emotion. When they pulled away from each other Pearl turned quickly to go. But as she drove through the gate she could see the nun in her rearview mirror, standing straight and still. She was there, hands in pockets, watching, when Pearl turned the car south. The early breeze picked up her hair, briefly curtained her face. Pearl blinked, pursed her lips, but the image hung before her as she drove.

  Cooma was hard and grubby with snow. Pearl was self-conscious, a pale figure in a pale landscape, pushing into the wind. Despite jumpers and coat, her bones were cold. The air particled with pieces of things, torn leaves, bus tickets, a scrap of fabric that might be a hat band, and the wind itself projectile, stinging her eyes. She wiped at them savagely as she walked.

  At the office of the Hydro-Electric Company, the unabashed gazes of men. The day manager did not remember her call. Apparently. He rifled through lists.

  Keogh, eh? You’re a relative?

  She regarded his bent head, Brylcreemed, and ignored the question. Dandruff littered his shoulders, the dark wool. James, she said evenly, and William.

  The stub of his finger pressed and sought. And then stopped.

  Here we are. Hut 27, Island Bend. He looked up at her with a loose smile. Your brothers, you say?

  She moved her head infinitesimally.

  Well then, if you go and talk to Wendy over there—he nodded towards a blond beehive across the corridor—she’ll fill you in. He swiveled to look at the clock above his desk. The next transport up there leaves in fifteen. You’ll want to leave your car here, unless you’ve got chains.

  Later, standing outside the office beneath the threat of a new snowfall, she thought: Island Bend. So they’re tunnelers? Human machines clawing rock and mud. Though in her head they were animals, boring into darkness, inching towards the sun. Their muscles fired and brutish, their eyes forgetting light. When she climbed into the jeep she looked quickly around, checking faces and bodies for signs. For what? She wasn’t sure. Hair and feathers, something scaly or raw? But they were just tired-looking men, two wives carrying shopping. When she told the driver who she was, he said, Keogh lads? Done for the day. They’ll be up at the ski jump with the others. And before she could reply: I’ll drop you up there.

  From a distance, the ski jump itself was not intimidating. An oversized ladle, a scoop of snow and wood. The men on the jump were not men but figures in a child’s wind-up toy, sliding, leaping, landing one after the other. Their timing and movements uniform and almost mechanical, the push, the lean, the flight. From a few hundred yards away she could hear the occasional whoop carried through the clear, still air.

  Pearl stood for a long time and watched, imagining this one Jamie, that one Will. Identifying profile and body shape, the angle of a crouch. Absorbing the irony: these boys, born to Sydney sun and summer heat, who had, she assumed, spent years in the parched landscapes of the bush; now trusting the angle and weight of their bodies to this air, this frozen ground. One after the other: the crouch, knees bent, chin up; poles firm for the push, the acceleration, the world rushing up. Then the leap, feet together, bodies merging with skis, they became boys with feet of wood, thinking through their soles and the palms of their hands, their knees, because these are what will save them, reattach them to earth. Without skulls and bones smashing as their balance fails and the world spins and splinters.

  She moved off towards the jump. Up closer of course it was bigger, more fearful to the eye. Its curve like the outstretched paw of a monstrous bear. Now she could see there were others like her, standing still to watch, trying to interpret the language of this. This flight. This bodily tunneling through air.

  She waited among the small group of spectators until the jumpers began to thin, until her brothers were two among the last four or five unbuckling their skis, pulling boots from packs. She could hear their voices now, the deep, easy voices of men. But unmistakably theirs; she knew them in a second. The cadences of their speech, the way Will’s sentences tipped up at the end. Still she waited behind several others, fiddling with the strap of her bag, attempting invisibility. She thought this was for them, not to embarrass or startle them. Her belly roiled with anxiety, a girl on a blind date.

  Then they were shouldering their skis and packs and the other men speared off, and she was standing in their path. Their eyes not quite registering. It was Will who broke first. Pearlie? He stopped, they both did. Staring. There were three feet and six years between them. Then Jamie tipped his head to the side, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.

  She was struck dumb, looking. They were taller. Their faces sharpened by manhood and perhaps by life. Weathered, she’d think later, though in that moment she saw only eyes and skin alive with risk, with the force of the elements they’d been daring. They were grown up, relaxed, limbs loose. With five o’clock shadows. She wanted to rub her hands over their chins, kiss their rough cheeks, say, You need a shave.

  But of course, didn’t. Her chest heaved, she swallowed tears that might change things. There was so much she didn’t know. But then their faces were against hers, she felt their arms about her, their voices. Is it you? one said. It is you. And the other: Pearlie. Which was which? It didn’t matter. They patted her cheeks, smudged with their own tears, wiped their eyes. Then pulled back. Laughed. How the hell? Jamie was holding her hand, shaking his head. How—?

  Nothing came. The words in her were gone. She stood mute, not trusting herself. Then Jamie stopped suddenly, the smile contracting, closing him up. He looked into her eyes. What’s wrong? Is it—?

  She stood squarely, eyeing them both. No. Nothing. She shook her head. Your Da’s okay. Not up to leaping off a ski jump, but he’s all right.

  She saw his chest expand with a breath finally taken. His lips part as he blew it out.

  Then, in the silence, Will’s slow grin. Did you see us up there? Tipping his head to the jump. We
re you watching? As if it wasn’t real unless she saw it. He was the boy in the tree once more, about to leap from a high branch, or from the woodshed roof, needing her as witness. As admirer.

  She nodded. Yes, of course I was watching. Her body returning to itself, to what she always had been: their sister. She beamed. Bloody terrifying. She looked from one to the other as both faces flushed with happiness. They were delighted and gratified by her fear for them. As they always had been.

  Back in the village, she walked between them towards their quarters in the single men’s huts. The sun faded to apricot, the cold like a fist tightening. The next shift began at ten; they’d change and take her to eat at a café in Cooma, their favorite, Jamie said.

  She glanced at her watch; five hours together, five hours to win them back.

  She sat in the mess to wait. A wooden shed, flimsy as cardboard, marginally warmer inside than out. At the end of a long table she watched men, dirt-smeared, fill their plates from tureens at the other end. They slid along the benches and immediately dipped their faces to their food. Occasional conversation sputtered into the air, low grunts of laughter against a background of cutlery scraping, plates and glasses banged down, the soft crack of bones as limbs were stretched. Pearl had learned the best approach in such places, where she was outnumbered by men by a hundred to one, was to assume a proprietorial air. She tilted her chin up to the space above the table, where industrial lights hung low above the rows of bent heads. But she stole glances at the faces and profiles: the olive-skinned, the swarthy, the bearded; bodies of every shape.