by Gary Crew
‘A hawker by the name of Da Silva. Keeps doves and dresses in motley. Got silver hair.’
‘What’s motley?’
Augustus gave this some thought. ‘Like an old-time court jester. His clothes are covered in red and green patches. Says he’s a storyteller.’
Stan grunted, suspicious. ‘You seen him then?’
‘He’s been here a few times. And his girl. His daughter maybe, but he says she isn’t. She keeps finches in cages made out of sticks.’ And remembering, he added, ‘Da Silva says she’s got “the dance”.’
Stan nodded. ‘The St Vitus’, eh?’
‘You know it?’
‘Had a mother bring a kid into the circus that had it. Wanted to pass him off as a freak. Always dancin’, you know. Crazy like. Young Bertie Sullivan would have hired her there and then, but Cigar seen straight through her. “This kid’s sick,” he says, and sends her packin’.’
‘This girl’s pale and silvery, but she’s doesn’t look sick. She’s pretty, I reckon. Like a fairy.’ The idea appealed to him. ‘Like a fairy child.’
‘Umm,’ Stan grunted.
Augustus went round to stroke the dozy horse’s nose. ‘Nice horse,’ he said.
‘Yeah. Here, give us your hand,’ and Stan pulled him up.
The black leather seat was crazed and stiff. If Augustus sat forward, he felt he would tip over and tangle in the harness; if he sat back, his feet stuck out, making the horse look like it had four ears. ‘Where will Rosa sit?’ he asked. ‘I’d feel safer in the middle.’
‘Dunno,’ Stan grunted, and Rosa appeared on the crazy paving. She wore an ankle-length dress of white muslin, soft and gauzy, the fabric wrapping about her thighs. A sash of silver silk graced her waist. She had whooshed her hair so it flared, fiery and bright, while a picture hat, also of white muslin – possibly starched, probably milliner-wired – framed the fire about her head.
Augustus gasped. ‘Just then,’ he said, ‘in the sun, you looked like an angel.’
‘Ha!’ Rosa scoffed, loving it.
She handed up a girly little Bo-Peep basket. ‘I’m not sitting on the edge,’ she said. ‘I want the middle. I don’t want mud off the wheels dirtying my frock.’
Augustus glared, although he was happy for the outing. Maybe that silver-haired fairy would be there. And the motley finches. So when Rosa was seated and her frock tucked under her thighs, Stan called, ‘Git, git!’ and they were off.
Midmorning they crossed a bridge over a dribbly creek. Seeing willows there, Augustus said, ‘Can we stop here for our picnic sandwiches and a cup of tea? You did bring your flask, didn’t you, Stan?’
‘I did,’ he said, reining the horse in under a willow. ‘It’s behind the seat.’
Since Rosa didn’t complain or demand that they go on to some other place, they all got down – Stan helping Augustus because Rosa wouldn’t – and sat on a rug.
When they were settled, sipping and munching, Augustus looked about and said, ‘You remember that dribbly creek and the weeping willow we passed when we left the circus?’
‘I do,’ Stan grunted.
‘I don’t,’ Rosa chirped.
‘Hmm,’ Augustus mused. ‘I saw Little Donny at the markets. He looked exactly the same. Remember his little red coats? And his dogs, Bozo and Bonzer?’
Rosa shrugged, raising a teacup to her lips. ‘That was all so long ago …’ and she attempted to look wistful, lifting her eyes to the weeping leaves.
So they sipped and munched a little longer until Augustus grew bored, teasing, ‘Rosa, why are we going to see this Da Silva today?’ And he winked at Stan, who didn’t get it.
‘I am hoping,’ Rosa began, alert to Augustus’s games, ‘that “this Da Silva”, as you call him, will put my past even further behind me. That he might offer me a future. A furthering of my spiritual quest, you might say.’
‘He might,’ Stan offered, ‘if we knew where he lived.’
‘We never will if we sit here all day,’ Rosa huffed, chucking her cup into the picnic basket. And giving her hat a correctional tweak, she waited for a hand up.
Augustus thought Helidon was nice, the town having retained a certain romance in its colonial facades, sandstone churches and lolloping camphor laurels; a mile after, the road turned to dust that billowed.
‘Do ya know where this Da Silva lives?’ Stan whinged. ‘I gotta get this trap back by dusk. And the horse here will want feedin’ and waterin’.’
‘Shush!’ Rosa ordered. ‘Have faith.’
‘Faith?’ Augustus asked, considering this a fair question.
‘Faith,’ she assured him, though in what, she declined to say.
So a silence fell, the scabby bush and the hush of the dust contributing until, all of a sudden, figures appeared between the gums.
They were dressed in black, as if in mourning, but since the dust obscured, whether they were men or women, or two or three, and whether they wore black frocks or black frockcoats, will remain forever unknown. Augustus claimed to have seen one – Absalom, was it? – with long blond hair. Stan reckoned another was ‘a sheila with a beard’, while Rosa refused to be drawn at all, fearing that any detailed articulation of the vision might lessen her chances of its fulfilment. Whatever they were, those hirsute tricksters, they pointed, as one, in the direction of a galvanised shed not a hundred yards from where they stood.
‘We are there!’ Rosa crowed, and in moments Da Silva appeared, stepping lightly as a dancer onto the roadway, toes first, then heels, all dressed in patchy hose of red and green, the colours of his choice. ‘You have found me!’ he cried and so saying he reached for the harness to lead his visitors, all ogling and agog, to his shed, or temple, in the bush.
‘Extraordinary!’ Augustus gasped on spotting the place, because it was so ordinary as to be otherwise.
‘Oh!’ Rosa moaned because, although warned, she had more than hoped. Stan said nothing. He’d seen sheds before.
Approached via a sandy path brittle with sticks (snapping and popping), the shed reared square from the coarse brown grass; a box made of tin, no less. So ordinary was it, so drab: a rectangular prism, twenty feet by thirty feet with a red-and-green door on the narrow end facing the approach. Without eaves or guttering, the roof pitched at thirty degrees, the whole – walls and roof, since that was the lot – clad in sullen silver with three hessian-hung holes (windows, were they?) measuring three feet by three feet along each of the longer sides. This was Da Silva’s shed.
‘A temple,’ Rosa breathed, since she wanted it to be.
Stepping along the path, avoiding the sticks, Da Silva opened the door.
Inside was as ordinary.
A three-dimensional void, twenty by thirty feet with three hessian-hung holes of three feet by three feet along each of the longer sides and an unlined roof of corrugated iron, pitched at thirty degrees.
Inside was the same as out, except for the doves, perched on the rafters.
‘Erk!’ Augustus groaned, spotting their chalky dribble. ‘There’s rivers of it!’
Da Silva laughed. ‘Will they come down?’ Rosa wondered, straightening her hat. ‘If I tell a story,’ Da Silva said. ‘Often they are my only audience.’
Augustus shot him a sly glance. ‘What about that finch girl?’ he wanted to know.
‘Now there’s a song for you,’ Da Silva chortled. ‘Where is Sylvie, and what is she?’ silencing Augustus good and proper.
But not Stan, who was too silly to know. ‘Yeah,’ he said, looking. ‘Where is she? And them finches you was talkin’ about?’
Da Silva declined to play. ‘Shall we have a story?’ he asked. ‘Who knows who will come?’
‘Maybe even those ones in black that I seen beside the road?’ Stan suggested, hopeful for a better look, but Da Silva ignored him.
‘Over here,’ he said, indicating a circle of sandstone blocks on the floor. ‘Sit, and I will begin. Water anyone?’ He held out a calabash, brimming.
Whe
n they had sipped, and were seated, he took the centre and began: ‘Once upon a time …’
Down came the doves, resplendent in white, to settle among them but Stan leapt to his feet. ‘No!’ he wailed. ‘None of that “once upon a time” stuff! None of that kids stuff! I’m outta here.’ From the door he cried, ‘And I seen them doves afore. Come outta magicians’ hats, they do. All trickery, hey! Well, they’re not trickin’ me. I’m gunna find that spring …’
When he left, Da Silva began again.
Augustus and Rosa sat in that sandstone circle, transfixed. The sullen afternoon sun struck the silvery walls, the heat absorbed by the low-pitched roof until, almost swooning, Augustus looked up, easing his collar. There in the darkness beneath the tin above, he saw golden eyes staring. Possums, were they? And when he looked deeper, blinking, he saw others, not possums this time, but lizards – skinks, yes – and when he blinked again, he saw others; not possums, not lizards but there, lying flat upon the rafters, as one with the architecture – ants or termites or wasps – yes, mud wasps surely, listening.
The heat eased its heaviness upon him, and he dozed, drifting.
Augustus woke to the slamming of a door, shouting and a turmoil of doves. ‘I can’t find no silver spring,’ Stan roared. ‘I can’t hear no finches. I can’t see no motley girl.’
Da Silva hushed him, his finger to his lips. ‘Stan, Stan,’ he cooed. ‘She hides, my Sylvie. She returns to the earth. To the fallen leaves. To the silvered web. Without her there is no sandstone spring. No finches. Shush now, hush, and I will look with you.’
‘Yeah, well,’ Stan blustered, ‘it’s too late now. The day’s near over. The sun. See how low it is behind that hessian? Rosa, we gotta go. There’s the horse. The cart. Unless you’re payin’ the extra?’
‘No,’ she said, standing and wiping her eyes. Had she slept too, had she dreamt, there in that temple of doves? ‘We should go. I’m sorry, Da Silva. The heat, the story, the billing and cooing. How quickly time passes,’ and she looked to Augustus, who blinked.
‘Next time,’ Da Silva cheered. ‘Next week, shall we say?’
‘Yes, please,’ Augustus croaked, his voice hoarse, his throat dry. ‘Yes, please, Rosa. Can we?’
‘Of course we can,’ she beamed, one consenting glance from Da Silva being enough. ‘We might, if allowed – if invited, should I say? – even stay the night. Can we?’
‘Of course you may, you might, you can, you will!’ Da Silva laughed. ‘I will make you a bed of leaves. A nest, if you prefer. And I will find my Sylvie. I’ll call. I’ll capture her, if I can, if I might, if I may – although I can’t say I will, since she is not my own.’
‘Then whose?’ Augustus asked.
Da Silva stooped to hug him. ‘Like yourself,’ he said, ‘she is a child of miracle. A child of finches, of stone, of the spring beneath. Who knows where she hides herself? Who knows where she springs from, if she springs at all? Some days, so many days, I see and hear nothing of her.’
The next time they hired the trap for the weekend. This was a special occasion, being Augustus’s eighteenth birthday.
Da Silva greeted them with cake and sweet tea and later, after the candles were blown out, Augustus asked, being special, ‘Can we go look for Sylvie?’
Da Silva smiled. ‘Are you keen on her, eh?’
‘Fascinated would be a better word,’ Augustus replied, determined not to play childish games.
‘Rosa?’ Da Silva asked. ‘Do you mind?’
‘I won’t come,’ she said, fussing with the remnants of the cake. ‘I’d rather stay here. I like the place.’
‘I’ll come!’ Stan declared, jamming on his straw hat. ‘I want to see that spring. And those motley finches.’
So they left, eager to find what they might.
Da Silva brought three doves that fluttered about his head and settled on his shoulders. The men walked up front, pushing aside branches, bending and releasing saplings, causing Augustus to sometimes lose sight of the doves.
The scrub reminded him of that patch of straggly gums down the back of Miss la Vie’s: that place where Rosa hung the washing. The trees were thin and starved, like people in pain, their foliage grey, silver, as no doubt Rosa would claim, though they were not. Drab would be a better word. He looked at the ground. This was not soil beneath his feet but gritty sand. Remembering what Da Silva had said about the sandstone and the spring, he looked about, hopeful.
Now and then Da Silva called, ‘Sylvie? Sylvie?’ but though they walked for almost an hour, no answer came; neither voice nor finch.
‘Tell me,’ Augustus said when they took a breather. ‘Where does she live? Really?’
‘I have told you,’ Da Silva replied.
‘You said “without her there is no sandstone spring”. Surely she lives by that spring?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Then take us there.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Da Silva sighed. ‘I said, “Without her there is no sandstone spring”, and that is what I meant. Exactly. Insofar as anything can be exact about Sylvie. I am saying that the spring appears when she does.’
‘So where is this spring?’ Augustus wanted to know.
‘Anywhere, or not at all. It comes when she comes, it goes when she goes,’ Da Silva artfully explained.
Stan caught Augustus’s eye. Evidently he did not believe. ‘This is all more a that “Once-upon-a-time” stuff,’ he whinged. ‘This is more of those magician’s tricks, eh mate?’ He gave Da Silva a wink. ‘I don’t reckon she’s comin’.’ And he turned for the shed.
‘Why do you think I came to your house alone?’ Da Silva asked. ‘Why do you think she came so rarely?’
‘Wonder she came at all,’ Stan mumbled over his shoulder. ‘Come on, Augie. I don’t like these tricks.’
But Augustus lingered. ‘Why didn’t she come? Tell.’
‘Because I couldn’t find her. Because she comes and she goes. Like when she turned up, all those years ago. I am telling you the truth.’
So they searched all day, Augustus and Da Silva, but Stan, who could not believe, stretched out under the trap, his hat over his eyes.
On their next visit Stan set them down at the shed then returned to Helidon. He left the horse in a stable and took a room at the pub. Rosa stayed in while Da Silva and Augustus went out to look. Rosa shifted things in their absence; particularly the circle of sandstone blocks, which she stacked one upon the other at the far end of the shed, opposite the door.
That night, as they sat upon their leafy pallets, Da Silva perched atop this stony altar, resplendent with doves, to tell a story.
Incense was burned. Smoke ascended.
Bodhisattva of the Doves, Rosa thought (worshipping, was she?).
Later, in the dark, the silver girl appeared in the rafters.
Tricks, Augustus mused (dreaming, was he?). Just full of tricks.
Although he knew all about Little Donny’s hookah, Augustus had never given much thought to the phenomenon of smoke. True, he had watched smoke; he had smelt smoke; he had even tasted smoke, in that breathing was tasting, but now, in the swirling dark, he turned his mind to the ascension of smoke. Smoke rose from that sandstone altar pure and perpendicular and having reached the roofing tin looped, over and under, between the rafters where those creatures lurked – those possums, those lizards, those wasps, possibly even that sylvan girl – attempting further ascension, but the tin prevented. The smoke, he saw, could go no further; and having done with its attempt, it dispersed.
So song ascends, Augustus thought. Yet may also be prevented. And a memory of the underside of his mother’s piano came to mind, the ceiling of that keyboard, the canvas roof of the big top, the pressed metal ceiling of that caravan, the crimson confines of Miss La Vie’s parlour – limitations all – and just when he had begun to despair, doubting that his song reached anyone, that anyone heard, that anyone appreciated, that anything happened, he called to mind those jacaranda blooms sw
eeping through that blood-red hallway, and those blue-green butterflies looping up and out; and how those pages fluttered, white, dove-like, clearing the clerestory, their poetry greening the dismal willows of the library, fleshing those stony hearts, and he felt better, thinking, If this shed is indeed a temple, it needs a tower or two, like those of the temple of Karnak; or a spire, like those cathedrals in France; or a steeple, like those little churches in New England, so my song might rise through and beyond that mundane tin, and having ascended that tower or spire or steeple might soar, out there, beyond the stars.
And in this hope he slept.
When next they visited, Stan again stayed at the pub. As usual, Rosa remained in the shed while Augustus and Da Silva looked for the girl, calling and calling. ‘I must be careful not to damage my voice,’ Augustus observed as they returned unfulfilled. ‘And you too, Da Silva, being a storyteller.’
‘I will,’ Da Silva replied. ‘But to tell the truth, there’s little chance that she will answer. It’s been a long time. I haven’t seen her since she made that cage for you. How long ago was that?’
‘I was seventeen,’ Augustus replied. ‘Now I’m eighteen, so I’d say it was six months.’
‘She’s been gone longer before,’ Da Silva informed him. ‘Once, for over a year.’
‘What brought her back?’
‘I don’t know. Although she brought new finches with her.’
‘New finches?’
‘A different species. Firetails, they were. Not from around here. From way out west. In the heat. The desert. They like the seed of desert grasses.’
‘How does she get there? How does she travel?’
‘I have no idea. Whether she can’t tell or won’t, it’s all the same. She just doesn’t.’
‘Do you worry about her?’
‘I did. But no more. Although this time, with you here, and your interest …’ He glanced down at Augustus, who refused to bite. ‘That’s different.’
‘And there’s Stan,’ Augustus said, ‘who doesn’t believe. Wherever she is, she might sense that.’
‘He’s hardly here,’ Da Silva pointed out.