Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 14, Issue 1

by Irma Gold

  Geoffrey pulls his bicycle out of the shed. It is a grimy green, no longer a zippy lime, and there is clearly a spider living under the mudguard. He props the bike against the washing line and hoses it down, works a cloth over its surfaces, carefully bringing it back to life. He can’t find a helmet, instead jams a cap over his shorn head. The haircut Esther didn’t even notice.

  At first he is wobbly, veering all over the footpath. But once he takes to the road he finds his stride. The press of his calf muscles and the push of air against his face feels good. The sky is a single cloud of icing sugar spat from a burst packet.

  He decides that he won’t go to the ceremony. It has nothing to do with him. Nothing. He needs to focus on positive things. Keep moving forward. Keep moving.

  Halfway to Woollies he gets a flat. Just when everything was going so well. He pauses under the bridge, filled with indecision about whether to turn back or keep going. Perhaps he can get a repair kit at Woollies, but he’s not so sure they’d carry that sort of thing.

  A male voice calls out from behind—‘Hey!’—and Geoffrey starts.

  A homeless guy is walking towards him. Geoffrey has seen him round the area, given him coins when he’s been sitting out the front of the shopping centre.

  ‘What can I help you with?’ Geoffrey asks uneasily, shifting his weight against the bicycle.

  ‘Nothin, bra,’ he says. ‘I’ve got a new tube in my bag. You can have it if ya want.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Geoffrey says in a rush. ‘Thanks for the offer but I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Seriously, bra, it’s no trouble. It’s just up here.’

  Geoffrey can do nothing but follow him off the path and into a clearing. There is an old bike, a bird in a busted cage and a large striped bag.

  ‘This is Popper,’ the man says, indicating the bird. ‘I’m Ajay.’

  ‘Geoffrey.’

  The two men shake hands. The bird squawks. A semitrailer roars over the bridge. Geoffrey tries to smile.

  Ajay rummages around in his bag, pulls out a tube, begins expertly removing the old one from Geoffrey’s bike before he can even protest. The bird is pecking at an old plastic mirror. Geoffrey wonders how Ajay sleeps at night, whether he has a sleeping bag stashed somewhere.

  ‘There ya go. Good ’s new.’

  ‘I can’t thank you enough,’ Geoffrey says, pulling a twenty from his wallet. ‘You’re a lifesaver.’

  Ajay waves his hands. ‘Don’t worry about it, bra. This is what it’s all about!’

  Geoffrey walks around the supermarket in a daze. He can’t remember what he came for, wishes he’d written out a list, and comes away with random items.

  ‘Bag?’ the checkout chick asks. Her skin is orange, the colour of too much sun.

  ‘Thanks.’

  She bags up brie, a carton of juice, mushrooms, beetroot dip, Nashi pears, a dozen packets of the crackers Esther loves, a box of Carman’s muesli.

  Picking up the bags, Geoffrey notices his ring finger. Already the indentation is less apparent.

  By the bridge Geoffrey slows down. Ajay is sitting on the path.

  ‘Wheel holdin up orright?’ he calls.

  Geoffrey makes a decision. Dismounts, walks over to him.

  ‘Listen,’ he says, pulling a shopping bag off each handle. ‘This is for you.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘By way of thanks.’

  Ajay covers his face with his hands.

  ‘Bird seed,’ Geoffrey says uncomfortably. ‘I should have got bird seed. Next time I’ll do a better job. You can give me a list.’

  Ajay wipes his eyes. ‘You’re a good man, bra. A good man.’

  Geoffrey pats the man on the shoulder and takes his leave. Rides his bike straight to the beach.

  ‘Didn’t think you were goin ta show,’ Marj says.

  ‘That makes two of us,’ Geoffrey says.

  ‘Glad you did but.’

  Geoffrey watches a clump of kids holding colourful paper flowers that flap in the wind.

  ‘’Parently a mother at the church playgroup suggested this whole thing,’ Marj says. ‘By the way, nice cut. You look real smooth. A regular George Clooney.’

  She gives him an exaggerated wink, a flirtatious parody, and he grins—all his teeth on display—in a way he hasn’t for too long.

  They stand close together and Geoffrey feels that every part of him is alive. His skin hums.

  Someone has brought a wooden cross and stuck it in the sand. It tilts to one side as if the wind has slapped it. Propped against it is a bright yellow teddy bear, the cheap kind that are hard to the touch. The Minister stands beside it. Now he raises one hand to indicate that he is ready to begin.

  ‘Today we are gathered to honour the life of a baby girl with no name and no story,’ the Minister says, raising his voice above the surf. ‘Every life is precious and should be acknowledged. We are here today to do just that.’

  He opens a Bible and begins to read. A woman with a turquoise sunhat is weeping openly.

  Geoffrey looks over the Minister’s head to the spot where he discovered the girl with no story. Except that there was a story. A brief one, but a story nevertheless.

  The Minister closes his Bible. ‘Let us pray,’ he says.

  Marj’s fingers brush Geoffrey’s, searching. He pulls her hand to him, knits his fingers into hers.

  Saudade

  Matthia Dempsey

  The house is robbed on Sebastiao’s birthday. He pulls into the driveway after a day shift and sees the television on the front porch, tilted almost to the point of tipping down the stairs. At first he thinks Magdalena has decided to replace it as she keeps threatening, telling Sebastiao and his wife that they can afford a plasma, and a big one at that. His youngest daughter leaves electronics catalogues at the kitchen table, bright collections of big machines and small prices, wrinkled by the wet. At the same time as he thinks about Magdalena’s catalogues though, Sebastiao’s body begins to shake. It can do this, he’s discovered. Get to the real explanation ahead of his mind. His body takes him back thirty years and across an ocean so fast he has to push the cab door open and throw up on the driveway.

  Getting out without stepping in his own mess takes some twisting but he makes it to the lawn and slams the car door. Anyone left in the house should have heard him pull up but he wants to make sure. He stands for a long while on the grass with the beginning of the afternoon storm falling on him, and listens. The air holds only birdsong and insects and the sounds of traffic. The house is one of the old weatherboards left from pre-cyclone Darwin, easy to break into. From the yard he can see where the front door has been jimmied and wonders if anyone has seen the thieves do it. It is closed now and otherwise the house looks untouched.

  In one of the double moments he has grown used to, Sebastiao sees this house and also the glassless windows of his childhood home the day they were stripped of their curtains. He remembers the space of the doorway without its door and the empty rooms it framed. Inside, the floorboards were scarred with nails and littered with scraps of underlay like lint where the Indonesians had ripped the carpets away to be sold.

  He walks up the front steps of his home now and looks closely at the television. Had it been too heavy? He wonders if Magdalena was right, if no one had these big box screens anymore. He pushes open the unlocked door. The hallway is as it always is. Walls lined with shoes but smelling sweet because his wife makes sure to keep lilies on the table by the phone. Sebastiao pauses again to listen and, hearing nothing, walks over to the lilies and runs his hand over one of the skin-like flowers. A small deposit of powder falls from the stamen onto the wood below and leaves a deep yellow mark that he will find in the years to come can never be removed. As he rubs at the mark Sebastiao notices that the metal bowl the family usually leaves their small change in is empty.

  He walks through the rest of the house, noting the corner of dust where the television had lived and the empty cabinet from which the DVD player and
stereo have been taken. He has the sense of things missing in spaces he doesn’t recognise and feels that the way the drawers in every room hang open is somehow obscene.

  He stops in the bedroom he shares with Luisa and sees her small box of jewellery lying open and empty on the carpet. Sebastiao imagines the soundless way it would have hit the ground.

  In Timor, as the lucky ones returned to their houses from the hell of the airport and wharf, his parents had cried when they saw their home. They weren’t crying for the beds, the chairs and tables, the clothes. Sebastiao knew it was shock at the things they had seen. Their tears were a terror that could only now be expressed. They stood crying in front of the wall where the sink had been and discovered the Indonesians had also taken their food. Sebastiao had stood looking at those floorboards, counting how long it had been since he saw them last. He worked out it had been fifteen years: his father had laid the carpet when Sebastiao was five years old.

  Stiff from the day’s driving, Sebastiao bends to pick up his wife’s jewellery box and pockets it. He flicks the light switch a couple of times, watching the shadows come and go under the globe, and thinks of the first night he and his parents spent in their looted house after the invasion. They curled with each other in the dark because the Indonesians had taken not only the lampshades but the light bulbs themselves.

  Before he drives to the police station Sebastiao calls his eldest daughter. Eloise is at home with her baby, a dark-eyed monkey of a child that is just learning to stagger between adults from knee to knee. Sebastiao can hear his granddaughter speaking her nonsense language in the background as his daughter tries not to sound surprised at hearing from him.

  We’re supposed to call you Dad, not the other way around. Happy Birthday!

  Sebastiao can hear her stacking plates or unloading the dishwasher and worries for a moment that she will drop something if he tells her about the burglary. He tries to think of something else to say.

  Dad? What is it? Are you okay? Is it Mum?

  He thinks he can hear a different tone in Elly’s voice since she had Rosa. There’s more of his wife in the things she says and the way she says them. When he tells her the house has been robbed she is concerned but almost businesslike. As soon as she knows no-one was home or is hurt she relaxes.

  And you have insurance, right?

  He nods, realising he has not thought of it until now. Yes, he says. We have insurance. Sebastiao has been thinking of his possessions as gone and this realisation that they will be replaced hurts somehow. It is often this way, the blessings of his adopted country seeming at times like salt on a wound.

  His daughter promises to phone his wife and keep her from the house. I’ll swing by now and get her good clothes out of the wardrobe for tonight, Elly says. I’ll come up with something.

  Sebastiao wonders whether pushing in the cupboard drawers will interfere with any investigation of the crime, but he walks around the house doing it anyway. In the living room he wipes down the wall behind the television with a cloth from the sink. Then he changes out of his uniform, washes his face and wets his hair. In the driveway he hoses away the vomit and gets in the cab. He starts the engine, but then stops and gets back out. He goes to their neighbours on each side and rings the doorbell but both houses are empty. He looks at his watch and realises it is only half past three.

  The police officers are polite and brisk. Since the referendum he has thought better of the Australian police force. He knows many local officers have done good work in Timor. But other pieces of knowledge, overheard and guessed at in the depot or while fishing at the wharf, make him wary. The young man taking his statement types as Sebastiao speaks. There isn’t much to say and the officer wraps things up by giving him a card with the station’s phone number on it and a copy of the form he tells him he will need for the insurance. Sebastiao leaves the station feeling like he’s just been for a check-up and given a nominally clean bill of health.

  When he arrives home the house is loud with his daughters. Elly is there, sifting through the clothes in her mother’s wardrobe and pulling out satiny things that catch the light. She holds them up in front of herself in the mirror and Sebastiao sees once again how closely she resembles her mother. He can also see that right at this moment she is a woman split three ways: a daughter who wants her mother to look her best, a mother anxious and checking on her child, and an older sister, calling out occasionally to Magdalena who hovers in the doorway. In a bassinet on the bed Rosa sleeps with abandon, unstirred by the commotion around her. Magdalena is alternately sobbing and screaming.

  His youngest daughter was always dramatic. When she broke bones it was always badly. When she cut herself, it was always deep enough to need stitches. She did well in drama at school, earning a place in the productions they put on at the end of every year. Now she is raucous with grief, makeup down her face.

  They took my phone, Dad. The one day I forget it. She keeps talking but Sebastiao loses the words as they taper into sobs.

  He looks at Elly and is surprised to see her frowning, appearing to take her sister’s loss seriously.

  All my messages, Magdalena says. Every message Aaron sent me. They’ve taken all of them.

  Then she’s gone inside her bedroom, face down on the bed in her favoured crying position.

  When this need arises, this twisting coil of energy inside him that craves the release of a slap or a shake, Sebastiao knows to take himself away. He stalks off to the kitchen and stands in front of the window, trying to let calm settle over him. He keeps still but his hands are shaking with fury at his daughter. He tries to steady them looking through the mail his wife has left for him on the kitchen counter. From the bedroom he hears the beginnings of Rosa’s wails.

  The letters are all bills in clear-boxed envelopes with his name printed inside, but he notices another piece of mail on the kitchen floor. It’s a card. The envelope is already ripped open and he realises the thieves must have tried it, hoping for cash. It’s from Sandra. He doesn’t see her much these days but she never misses Christmas, his birthday or the anniversary of his arrival here on an illegal ship she and her network arranged.

  Just her name brings back the nights spent in bilge water, waiting for the boat to leave. The way the light left scars on his eyes when he was finally allowed up on deck. The way the scars lasted for months.

  Elly finds him lost to the world, the card still in his hand. He sees her eyes flick to the writing and back to him. She’s bouncing Rosa against her shoulder. The baby is awake and grumpy. She’s trying to cry but each bounce interrupts her. Again, he is reminded of Luisa. All his beautiful daughters look like their mother and he wonders, not for the first time, if his wife’s first two children also took after her this strongly. Like many of the memories from the time before they met, the images of the boy and girl Luisa lost are just cut-outs to Sebastiao. He knows them only by the shape of the hole they leave in his wife’s stories.

  I’ve told mum to meet me at our place, his eldest daughter is saying. He sees she has something the colour of lilac slung over her arm in a plastic dry-cleaning bag. It crinkles every time she bounces Rosa.

  Is there anything else I can do?

  No, Sebastiao tells her. No, just keep her away. Until…

  Elly nods, turns and lies Rosa in her capsule, clicking buttons to make her safe.

  See you at dinner then, she says.

  He throws open the door to Magdalena’s room. He’s half hoping the force is hard enough to throw the wood off its hinges, but the door just bangs softly and swings back to him. All his daughter’s scarves and handbags hanging from the back muffle any sound. He holds it open and sees that she is no longer crying but has a notebook open in front of her, her biro resting in the dimple of her cheek the way she has held pens and pencils ever since she first began to write.

  He pulls his wallet out of his back pocket, takes out the credit card and flings it at her. She looks at it where it has landed on a small mountain range
of bedclothes and then back up at him. Her expression is questioning but more amused than afraid.

  If only you knew, he thought. If only you had any idea.

  Take it, he says. Take it. I want you to take it, right now, into town and I want you to buy a television. That flat screen, whatever you wanted. And a DVD player. A stereo too. Now, before they close.

  She’s still confused, blinking.

  Now.

  He thinks he’s whispered it but the way she jumps up and grabs the card makes him realise he’s screaming. She’s rubbing her hands under her eyes as she walks out, trying to wipe away the makeup that makes her look so young. As she reaches the door he calls her back.

  And Magdalena?

  She turns around.

  Make sure you buy yourself another phone too.

  Sebastiao tosses in the bed, in and out of memory and sleep. On the days his shift starts early he needs a nap in the afternoons, especially today, when the girls will want him to stay up late at the restaurant for dinner. But the afternoon storm seems louder on the roof than usual and he can feel adrenalin, his old friend, back in his blood. The heat pumps it around and the sound of it is louder and louder in his ears.

  He gets up and goes into the bathroom, running water to wash his face and then taking two sleeping pills from his wife’s bottle. As he puts them back he thinks of a conversation he heard at the depot a few weeks earlier—some of the older drivers talking about a man who shot himself in his garage. Sebastiao’s wife uses only one tablet each night. In the first years after she tried to take her life, he rationed them, but it was soon obvious she was better. Now they are just a small help to them both.

  After he lies back down he finds himself floating instead of sleeping. He’s just above the jungle watching figures below him, knowing they are searching for him. He knows the dream that is coming, knows the waking version of it like he knows his own body. It comes slowly. He falls from above the figures on the ground until he is at their feet with their legs closing in.