Had she been following his gaze? You should read the papers, Axel, she said now, her mouth close to his ear. Then he felt her lean back. They are at least a partial record. And it’s good for your English.
He hesitated, searching for a way. He didn’t want to sound evasive. How to tell her the very dailiness of it destroyed something in him? Diminished the small animal of his art in him, which was, finally, about questions, about trying to make sense. In this he was like a child encircling the shattered pieces of a puzzle with his arms and pulling them towards him. Seeing what might be possible there, meaning, order. The present, the future.
I think, he said carefully, that I use art to work things out. And this—he used the glass in his hand to indicate a folded newspaper—is a kind of camouflage. It’s not real. Surely people don’t think it’s real. Don’t think it’s their life.
It is their life. An undertow of impatience in her voice. And it is real. She threw her arm out. Here, all around us. Sometimes it can’t wait for art.
But Axel heard the defense in her voice, saw it in her eyes. It wasn’t him she was trying to convince.
In the morning he stood at the window with his back to her, stretching his arms above his head. She watched him dress. As he pulled on his trousers, the familiar blue of airmail paper in his back pocket. When he turned she nodded towards it: A letter from your mother, she said.
Surprising him: he avoided her eye. She frowned. What does she write?
It’s just the usual letter. Like the others.
In English?
He buttoned his fly, concentrating. Pursing his lips as he always did. She smiled behind her hand.
Swedish. Then: It’s a little sad. I won’t read it now.
She spoke softly, as if she was talking to a child. Axel? Read me some, just a sentence or two. She watched him but didn’t shift from the pillow.
He lowered himself onto the bed, his back bent. Something had altered in him during the night. As if he had been in pain in his dreams, or as if the pencil had drawn something from him, brought it to the surface. He said, It’s only the weather, and—not looking at her.
That will do. The weather.
He sighed, hesitated. Then began, faltering immediately. “The year—the year turns, Axel. The early snow”—he frowned, self-conscious. Fizzes?—“and dies in a rain shower, withdrawing. The autumn sun will take the rest.” He looked up to the ceiling. It’s not precise, I’m sorry.
It doesn’t matter.
“There it is, shy”—I think she means the sun—“glancing through trees. It will show itself soon enough in spring, and we will be flooded by light, nowhere to hide. When I think of coming to see you, this is what stops me. The—” He hesitated once more, lips pursed. “Exposure.” For some words there is nothing exact in English. He was still addressing the wall, the page. And it does matter, Pearl.
She was thinking of the last words he’d read; meaning hovered above her, not settling.
But I might as well finish it. “I am used to this aloneness now, this ache. You know how it is. There is a part of me that welcomes it; the ache becomes its own company. In truth I think I would miss it. This is who I am now, this person, here in my house, cooking, reading, talking to Aldous. Only outside, wandering about in the woods, do I lose that sense. As if I leave my conscious mind and enter another. As if I am just another tree. I think you understand this, Axel. It is only lately that I see how like me you are.”
He lowered the pages and sat staring at his hands, shoulders slumped, his body conceding. Pearl reached for her tin of rolled cigarettes, extracted one. Struck a match and leaned towards him, offering it. Then lit another. A thin trail of smoke from her fingers. The calibration of time.
Finally she said: It’s like a conversation. As if she’s here in the room, speaking to you.
Axel shrugged, smoked the cigarette, spoke without turning. She just writes as she thinks, he said. Sometimes she thinks too much.
But what Pearl had heard was Axel’s own assessment of himself. Not in his own words but his mother’s. There it was on the page, a pencil sketch of a body growing around a wound. Its movements protective, the pain like an infant who must be placated. Kept safe. What had Suze said about pain? That it was like a child who just wants to be understood.
Axel said: She—how do you say it—lives inside herself.
Pearl pulled the last from her cigarette. Blew smoke. It’s understandable, she said. Inched forward across the bed to look at him. His face was blank.
Yes, he said finally. It is.
In the office that day, after she had filed two stories, she went into the library. Browsed the day’s Herald at the bench and waited for a lull. You right, Pearl? asked Wanda, the head librarian, who’d been at the paper even longer than Pearl had. She barely lifted her eyes from the newspapers she was clipping. Raoul Wallenberg, Pearl said. Swedish resistance in the war. Do we have anything on that? Or the White Bus movement? And as Wanda consulted the card file: and the Jørn Utzon photo file, if it isn’t out.
Back at her desk she turned first to the slim packet marked “Sweden, World War II.” A Red Cross booklet, some clippings about the country’s trade in iron ore since the turn of the century, stories about the disappearance of the emissary, Raoul Wallenberg, and Swedish merchant shipping in the Baltic Sea. She opened the Red Cross booklet. There, on the first page, a black-and-white photograph of a line of buses with the Red Cross insignia, and an essay about the Swede Folke Bernadotte. Secret negotiations with Heinrich Himmler and the rescue of prisoners from German concentration camps near the end of the war. She skimmed it front to back, and found herself staring down at a picture of Bernadotte as he was in 1944. The Scandinavian cheekbones, the clear eyes.
There was a fat file of photographs of Jørn Utzon. On the opera house site, in his home village, Hellebæk, a speck on a map between lake and sea. With premiers and politicians; with Arup, the engineer. He was a good-looking man, in a hard hat or a suit. Genial, at ease in any company, the workers, the Queen, Patrick White. She wondered what his wife was like, his children, if they were as impossibly sunny as he was. Did they also look so . . . what? So not Australian. As she thought this, Utzon’s face on the page slowly became Axel’s, which morphed into Bernadotte’s. The smile that hinted at patience, intelligence, an even disposition. Or perhaps it was just the Nordic bones, she thought, closing the folder.
Because Axel had a different look, and it occurred to her suddenly that it was slightly furtive. The look of someone who was ashamed. But didn’t know. She knew that look. He would glance down, or away, at certain points in a conversation, shove his hands in his pockets, look at the sky or the road behind, or bite his lip and stare at a nearby street sign, or flower.
She tidied the clippings and photos. As she shuffled and checked, her eye fell on a timeline of Bernadotte’s life. The last line: Assassinated in Jerusalem in 1948.
The phone rang and she answered it in her newsroom manner, holding the receiver with her chin as she read. Pearl here. Careless, peremptory. So her heart banged when she heard a boy’s voice: Pearlie? He sounded ten years younger than he was.
Jamie! She slammed shut the file on Swedish resistance and pushed it to the side.
You said to call.
Well, you took long enough.
Ah y’know. Not good at phones.
No. How’s your brother?
A jostling noise and then Will: I’m good, Pearlie. Never better. We’re finishing up here this week. Static as the phone changed hands again.
Thought we’d better let you know. Jamie calm, adult, though there was something behind his voice, some caution. He let a moment tick by. She imagined him taking a breath, then diving: We’re going into camp. She felt the words coming before he said them but still, the shock of it. She wasn’t prepared, despite the weeks since she’d seen them. Wasn’t ready.
Really? What about medicals and things?
Yeah, but we’ll be right.
More silence. Then: Will?
What?
Come on.
Can’t say too much, sis, so don’t ask.
I’m asking, dammit. Then she lowered her voice and hissed: You’re too young.
What does it matter, Pearlie? I’m in. Don’t do this.
Your mother—
Or that.
Fuck. On a breath to stop herself crying, or crying out.
We’re coming through Sydney.
Where? Where’s your training?
Pookie something?
Kapooka.
That’s it.
They were coming to Sydney. You’ll want to see your Da, she said. Felt a hesitation over the line. It’s all right, she said. We won’t tell him. She couldn’t bear to think of her father’s face if he knew. Despite his ravaged mind he would understand immediately, and it would break his heart. That they had chosen it. Her own heart had not yet recovered.
Still, when they walked off the platform at Central Station she felt an old happiness wash through her, something comforting and true. The years collapsed inwards. For a while they beamed at one another. They might never have been apart.
They found a locker for their bags and went to find beer. Their faces flushed with pleasure and, she understood, an anxiety they were trying to hide. It’s some city, smiled Jamie as they settled in a bar near the station. And it was true: Sydney had turned itself on for them. Spring had finally arrived in full color. Each day a movie played out, a spectacle for the eye: trees greening, and lawns, the sun bright but benign on harbor and sandstone and faces turned up to its warmth. Even here on these rough streets, it played on walls and bitumen and people’s faces, lifting them. On late afternoons like these, everything glowed with it, this soft light that transformed the winter-dull city into a place of optimism and energy.
Jamie looked around and said: It really feels solid, or something. Serious. Different to other places.
Pearl looked at him closely. He might have been talking about himself. This new, adult version. His face: more grown-up, though it had been a matter of weeks. Solid, serious. She frowned: How?
Well, Melbourne is so kind of—
Cold, Will said.
Heavy. Jamie turned his glass in his hands. And Brisbane’s the opposite, like those towns out west, only bigger. Wooden houses on sticks, big verandas. Feel like they might blow away in the next storm. He sat back with his beer. Smiling, Pearl thought, like a man.
Will said: Brisbane’s hot, I love that. It doesn’t even feel like a city. It’s a lazy kind of town.
So Sydney’s like a real city? She was grinning at this side of her brothers she hadn’t seen.
Yeah. Will tilted his head, thinking. But the harbor makes it different. Makes it a bit mysterious. I used to think there was something under there, like that Atlantis place. He blushed. Picked up his beer. She’d never heard him say so much in one breath.
They walked to the bus stop. There were so many things to say, and she wanted to say some of them before they saw Patrick. As they blinked into lowering light she spoke in a rush: Before we go, I want to say I’m sorry. That you were lonely, that you had to run away. I should have been there more.
Two pairs of eyes on her. Not angry, not forgiving. Finally: We weren’t running away from you, Pearlie. Will’s face broke open; he looked from her to his brother and back.
No, said Jamie. And frowned. We were running away from them. St. Joseph’s. He breathed in, audibly. It was horrible. More than horrible. And besides, we wanted our own life.
Nothin’ to do with you, Pearlie. Will put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed, an old uncle who has told a lame joke. Thought we’d do a summer out bush and come back. All cashed up, you know. But then there was another job and another—
A girl here and there. Jamie smiled, at last. But I’m sorry you worried. I’m sorry about Da.
We wanted to make good, Pearlie, Will said then. You know, get rich, buy a cattle station or something. To make him proud, yeah? He shrugged again, a new habit. You too.
She looked from one to the other. Christ, she said.
They got off the bus outside the nursing home. The boys stood, hands in pockets, regarding the dull brick, ramps, the scuffed grass. Already Jamie was struggling, Pearl could see; he looked away up the street, averting his eyes. Getting his emotions under control. Will looked straight ahead at the entry, blinking. Let’s go, she said.
It was visiting time, busy, and Pearl was glad of it. The presence of other families, the general hubbub of tea trolleys and children and conversation: an absorbent backdrop for everything they were feeling. She led them through the corridors, watched their mounting unease at the uniformity of it, the drabness, the smell. The utter lack of cheer. Their father in its hold.
The week before, she’d come by to prepare him. Knelt in front of him and tried to hold his eyes with hers. The boys are coming, Da, she said evenly, trying for calm. Jamie and Will. She waited a moment. Next week.
She watched his face for signs. At first he was blank, returning her gaze, registering nothing. But she’d learned something from the accumulated hours with him here: patience. It could take minutes for understanding or recognition to dawn. She shifted her weight from one knee to the other, waited again. Then: Your sons, Da.
There was barely a twitch from him. Then without warning, tears. No sound. Only a glassiness, his eyes full and then overflowing. The tears ran down his cheeks, across his lips. She stood and took his handkerchief from his pocket, dabbed at the creased cheeks. Kissed his forehead.
Next Wednesday. Knowing it meant nothing, the days or the weeks, the months. They were a series of punctuation marks, that was all, sleep, eat, watch the birds, sleep. Okay? I’ll tell them to get out your best shirt.
She’d told the night sister. The blue checks. His sons are coming.
Now they reached the common room and halted in the doorway. Scanning among the patients and staff and families for his face, his chair. And then Will was walking away towards a corner, slowly, as if he was pulled by a string. Pearl and Jamie stood for several seconds, watching. Will’s shoulders collapsed forward a little as he moved closer to his father’s chair. As if he was making himself smaller, more boy than man. Pearl took Jamie’s hand. They followed.
She watched her father’s face. Said a prayer to no one in particular: please see him. Please recognize him. She saw Patrick lift his head as the figure approached. As Will dropped to his knees, his hands on his father’s face. Hello, Da, they heard, and then Jamie was there, his arms around him. Patrick’s head on his shoulder. Pearl watched a sob shudder through him, silent. He closed his eyes.
The staff had placed extra chairs around, pulled a table over for tea. Patrick was indeed wearing his best checked shirt and trousers. He was shaved and combed. This in itself nearly undid her. She let the boys settle themselves and went to fetch cups, glad of a distraction. Some of the aides had paused to watch the scene in the corner unfold; they smiled as she approached, and she thanked them for what they’d done. In the kitchen one passed her a plate of fruitcake. He likes that, she said.
When she returned the boys had worked out what to do, how it was. What their father could hear and take in, what he could understand. What he couldn’t. So they spoke to him as if they were down at the Federal, spinning yarns. No matter that he could not reply; they spoke into the space, imagined what he might say, replied to questions he could never ask. They sat and told their father their lives since they’d seen him; stories of the great Snowy, of wild bulls and horses, of drought and flood and fire, of the men and women who had come their way. There was Will learning to ride and tame a brumby, there was Jamie cooking for the shearers. That would surprise you, Da, he smiled as he told him. It surprised me.
He can do a mutton stew and a roast, Will said, a pudding. Scones. He poked Pearl in the ribs. Better scones than you did.
I never did, she said.
I know, he said.
A
nd all the while Patrick Keogh sat, tea going cold in his hands. Occasionally one of the boys would lean over and ask him: How’s that then? Help lift the cup to his lips. Or cut a square of cake and put it in his good left hand. Then continue on with whatever they were saying, making nothing of it. Making nothing of their father’s muteness, his thin wrists, the heartbreak of it. He was their old Da. They spoke to him of the past rather than the present, not out of avoidance, or what was left unsaid, but because the past was where their father lived.
The boys grew quieter as the afternoon closed in. The tea things were cleared away and most of the visitors gone. The nurses had been patient but now they looked at Pearl and motioned towards the big clock. Again it was Will who moved first. He bent to Patrick. We have to go now, Da. Speaking to Patrick’s eyes. He put his hand on his father’s shoulder. We’ll be back. We’ll be here to see you.
But Patrick was worn out. His head drooped. As Will stood he might have nodded, Pearl wasn’t sure. But when Jamie put his arms about him, Patrick raised his own left hand to hover over his son’s back. Somewhere in the depths of his unknowing, Pearl thought, he felt it, this intimation of farewell.
We’ll see you soon. Jamie half choking on the words, withdrawing quickly, walking away. Then turning, unashamed of his tears. I love you, Da. Then Will. They walked from the room, heads down, wiping their faces, as unlike soldiers as you could get, Pearl thought. She kissed her father and moved to join them, looked back from the door. Patrick had turned his face to the window, where the sun was setting, where his beloved birds were scissoring home through the sky, home to their nests and their broods.
In her flat they ate cheese on toast and refused the offer of her bed, opting for the lounge room floor. It’s what we’re used to, Jamie laughed, patting it. Only this is too soft.
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