The Best Australian Stories 2016

by Charlotte Wood

  He took out his key. Then he remembered that he had forgotten to pick up Mrs Fars’s kidney medicine from the chemist. I will find an excuse to explain it to her, he thought.

  He entered the hayat, which was covered in snow. His footsteps crunched. The plastic bag he was carrying brushed against the bare rose bushes. He flicked at a branch with his key and snow fell from the branch. Then he reached the veranda, he cleaned his feet on a ‘Khosh amedid’ doormat, opened the door and entered the hallway. He locked the door behind him and dropped the key into his pocket.

  The living room was furnished with a two-seat sofa and three armchairs with a light-wood frame and a floral fabric. In the corner of a wall a picture of Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ and ‘Starry Night’ were lost among numerous Gobelin tapestries, which covered all the walls. A large Gobelin of ‘The Last Supper’ was framed in green-golden Baroque style. Mrs Razi finished these tapestries four years ago. Her first heart attack had prevented her from going back to the Pardokht girls’ high, where she had taught Year 12 ever since her marriage. She took art classes. These art classes were organised with their next-door neighbour’s wife. Mr Razi loved his wife’s artworks. He didn’t care that all the other neighbours’ living rooms were decorated with the same objects made by the neighbourhood wives at the art classes.

  The coffee tables were light-coloured wood; the china cabinet was a bit darker. On all the coffee tables stood a tissue box with handmade lace tissue covers, all in light green to match the light green curtains. In the two years before a series of heart attacks killed her, she spent all her time on her art and craft.

  In the evenings he had decided to learn how to use the internet and watch the news online on his new laptop, which his niece had encouraged him to buy.

  ‘You have to send me an email every night and tell me what you watched online,’ the niece said. ‘It is a new world, uncle. You should be part of it. You can follow the news online. I know you don’t watch news on TV since your TV was broken. Believe me, you don’t need TV, you can watch everything on the internet now.’

  He purchased the laptop by selling some of his wife’s jewellery. To show his appreciation for helping him to buy and learn how to use the internet, he gave his niece one of his wife’s favourite rings.

  ‘She loved you.’

  He watched the young hand wearing the golden ring. He kissed her face.

  ‘You are like my own daughter.’

  He kept his office the way Mrs Razi kept it. Above his working desk there were his Bachelor of Economics and diploma for chemical factory auditing framed in the same light green. Mrs Razi’s diploma of teaching and certificate of tailoring were kept in the box of her sewing machine.

  In the kitchen, he boiled two eggs and made a pot of jasmine tea, put it on a plastic tray and took it to his bedroom with the laptop. Sitting in bed, he watched the news on the internet. War, war, war, killing, killing everywhere, what a world is this? He talked loudly as if talking to someone. Then he opened his email and sent an email to his niece.

  ‘My dear Homma, I watched the news online, as you showed me to do it. News all over the world is horrible; watching news online didn’t leave any hope in me. I think I was happier when I didn’t have TV to watch all the animosity human beings all around the world are facing these days. But sending an email to you every night is exciting. From your old uncle.’

  Then he took two zaleplon and hoped to sleep as the chemist promised him. He slept at the left side of the bed. The right side of the bed remained untouched. He spent the next three days in bed. He left his room only once, to make tea, pour it into his flask and bring it to his bedside table.

  *

  On the next day, snow continued and he didn’t go out. In the kitchen, he made scrambled eggs and while eating he walked to his living room. His courtyard was framed in tall glass windows; it was quiet and the snow obscured the skyline and the land, white flakes falling from unseen origins. Then he watched the weather news on his laptop. The next days would be cloudy with possible snow. He sent an email to his niece.

  ‘I can’t come out in this weather, tell your mum I won’t come tonight. Love you both, goodbye.’

  He turned off the laptop and in his mind he heard his niece’s voice: Dear uncle, take care of this computer and be careful not to spill water or tea. Just be careful, sometimes you can be like my mum, a bit forgetful. He took another two sleeping pills from his bedside drawer and took them with his tea. Just before he turned the bedside light off, he heard the doorbell.

  At first he imagined he was hearing echoes, as he did when he didn’t sleep deeply. Then he thought it must have been a mistake and whoever was behind the door would go away. But the bell rang again. He looked at his silver bedside clock. It was five past eleven. The bell kept ringing. He pulled his wool robe and wool slippers on and when he reached his hallway he pulled a brown wool throw from the corner of the sofa and covered himself with it. He walked through the hayat, the thorns of the rose bushes clutching at his robe.

  His fingers frosted to the iron handle of the hayat’s gate. The bell rang again. He couldn’t remember the last time he had had a visitor.

  ‘Who is there?’ he said, still holding the doorknob.

  ‘Hello. Sorry to bother you at this time, so late. It is late, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is. How can I help you?’

  ‘Again, I am sorry to bother you this late; I am your next-door neighbour.’

  He opened the door slowly. There was a young woman, standing on the other side of the gate.

  Her gloved fingers pointed to an old building pressed between apartment blocks on the other side of the street.

  ‘I know you don’t know me. I am Lili. My internet is disconnected. You know I had to pay for my mother’s medicine. So I thought if it is okay with you, I use your computer to talk to my sister. She lives in Australia. I have to ask her to send money.’

  Ms Lili was pushing Mr Razi aside and was already in the hayat. Mr Razi was trying to process this conversation and at the same time was trying to remain calm and courteous. But he had heard that recently some robbery had happened in the neighbourhood, so he had to be careful. He was holding the door firmly; he was wondering that she might push the door open.

  ‘But miss. Sorry, I am sorry, but I don’t know you and it is very late. Can you call your sister tomorrow?’

  Ms Lili was almost in the entrance to the hallway of the house. ‘It is really cold here. Can we talk inside?’

  Mr Razi’s fingers, still cold, let the stranger enter his hallway. He locked the door and put the keys inside his nightgown pocket. In the hallway he took his throw off his head and took his shoes off.

  The young woman followed him to the living room. ‘Ah, it’s so warm and nice here.’

  Mr Razi turned the living room’s lights on. Ms Lili bit off her blue wool gloves and removed her headscarf, overcoat and boots.

  ‘Here, you can leave them here,’ said Mr Razi, taking Ms Lili’s snow-covered boots and leaving them inside the shoe cabinet. Ms Lili moved towards a sofa and sat there. Mr Razi was moving awkwardly around. ‘Do you need anything? I mean, can I offer you something?’

  ‘Yes, please – a cup of tea, if you don’t mind.’

  Mr Razi did mind. It was almost midnight. But he was obliged to make the tea for this stranger.

  While boiling the water he looked through his kitchen window. The snow had stopped. He wiped the fog from the window. He realised that Mrs Fars’s kitchen light was on. In fact, he saw that she was sitting there, watching him. Has she seen this girl enter my house?

  When he entered the living room, Ms Lili was sitting on the sofa with her legs crossed and the throw on her legs. She had the Razis’ wedding photo frame in her hand. ‘Is this your daughter and her husband?’ She stared at the photo.

  ‘No, she is my wife.’ He took the photo and put it on the table. ‘She was my wife. She is dead. I don’t have children. We don’t have children.’
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br />   She stared at him. ‘Is this you? No way!’ the stranger girl almost shouted; her surprise annoyed Mr Razi. Then the girl realised that might be rude. ‘I mean, you were so young when you married. And your wife, oh my god, she is pretty.’ She stopped and corrected herself. ‘I mean, she was a beautiful woman.’

  ‘Yes, my wife,’ he grunted, pushing the tea at her in exchange for the frame.

  She noticed he was shaking. ‘I am cold too. It seems that this winter never will come to the end.’ Then she took the lid from a crystal bowl and scooped out two chocolates.

  ‘I will bring my laptop and you can use the Skype for a moment only,’ he said. He went to his office, and when he returned the stranger was walking around the living room, checking the objects on the entertainment unit, the photos, DVDs. She pressed the CD player’s play button; ‘Golden Dreams’ by Javad Maroufi played; she turned it off. Then she took the wedding photo frame again. Mr Razi didn’t know how to ask her politely not to touch it.

  ‘You two look very nervous in this photo. Were you nervous on your wedding day?’

  ‘Here, internet is connected. You can call your sister now.’

  ‘Can I have another tea, please?’ And then she took her cup and walked towards the kitchen. Mr Razi walked after her to take the cup from her, but she was already in the kitchen, pouring her tea and helping herself to biscuits, which he had placed on a china plate.

  ‘This is nice.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I buy them from the market at the Freedom Square.’

  ‘Oh, no, not biscuits – they are nice too, but I was talking about your kitchen.’ She finished her tea. Then she sat on the chair, her back towards the heater.

  ‘Please, Ms? Sorry – what was your name again? It is very late. Maybe if you talk to your sister now – I, I have to go to bed.’

  ‘Do you have to work in the morning?’

  ‘No, I don’t – I mean, I don’t work outside anymore. I do some consulting work from home.’ He was annoyed at himself for answering her question.

  ‘When did you retire?’ She took another biscuit from the plate. ‘My father retired at age fifty. He was sick. We don’t know what went wrong with him, but the doctors said it was something in his heart. My mother never worked. She is sick and is in a wheelchair. One reason we came to this house is because there are no steps.’

  Mr Razi was feeling very dizzy and sleepy. He couldn’t ask her directly to leave; he had never asked anybody to leave his home before. ‘Sorry, Ms Lili. It is lovely to listen to you but it is very late and I have to go to bed. Can you please use the internet and go? I am so sorry, I hope you don’t think I am rude, but I really have to go to bed.’

  ‘Oh, I am so sorry to bother you. Certainly, I leave now. I come back tomorrow to talk to my sister because I think she will be out now. The time difference between here and Australia is a headache. When is night here, it is day there and my sister is at work. And when it is night there and day here, I can’t leave my mother alone to come here to talk. I will come back tomorrow night.’

  She put on her wool overcoat, scarf and gloves, then opened the shoe cabinet and pulled out her boots. ‘Don’t bother to let me out. I know the way out.’

  The next day was Wednesday. When Mrs Razi was alive she used to have a cleaner on Wednesdays. Mr Razi kept this tradition but he knew because of the snow the cleaner would not turn up. So, after drinking his morning tea, he decided to clean the house himself. He found the dusting sponge, the carpet cleaner and the blind cleaner inside a small plastic blue basket in the kitchen cabinet under the sink. There was a bag of white nylon gloves too, but he didn’t bother with them.

  First he dusted the wooden cabinet. After dusting the CD player, he played ‘Golden Dreams’. At lunchtime, he scrambled eggs and ate them with cucumber pickles while watching the street through the kitchen window. He couldn’t see Mrs Fars anymore, but her kitchen light was still on. He wanted to check the news online but remembered some unbalanced mood that lingered around him last time when he watched the world news. He was feeling exhausted, so he decided to take his pills and go to bed. He didn’t know how long he had slept when the bell rang. ‘Oh my god, it is her again.’

  He covered himself with wool and walked slowly through the snow in the hayat. The snow beneath his feet sounded as if someone was grinding something in their mouth. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s me, your next-door neighbour.’

  ‘Sorry, miss, I am going to bed. As a matter of fact, I was in bed asleep, and you woke me up. Can you please leave?’

  ‘Please, sir, open the door. It is freezing here.’

  ‘Yes, it is freezing here too. Please, I beg you, young lady, go home.’

  ‘Please open the door. Something happened to my mum today.’

  The softness of her voice made him go back and get his keys to open the door. ‘What happened to your mother?’

  Mr Razi was rugged up, and covered in snow. It made her heart break. She put her arm around him and softly pulled him with herself. On the way, she flicked at a branch with her finger and snow fell from the branch. Mr Razi rushed to open the hallway door; a bare branch clogged to his wool shawl. He pulled the corner of the wool and freed himself.

  Inside, she went to the kitchen, and Mr Razi followed her, still in shock from seeing this stranger in his home again. Lili made tea.

  He watched Lili pull out the plastic step, which his wife had used to reach the higher cabinet. When she stood on her toes, Mr Razi saw the soft roundness of her bare heels.

  *

  After five days of deep sleep, Mr Razi decided to go out. There was nothing left to eat. He needed more eggs, toilet paper, toothpaste and some cleaning items. He also needed more sleeping pills. He checked his medical insurance booklet and made sure it was in his pocket. In the kitchen he checked the weather though the window. The sky had emerged, seemingly deeper, and darker, than before the coming of the mountain snows. Sparrows darted between the electricity lines, which had emerged from beneath a membrane of snow. He ground some dried bread in the palm of his hands and tossed it into the hayat. Still, the street was empty except for the bustle of the snow cleaners.

  After he finished his morning tea, he took the shopping list and his medical insurance booklet and put them in his wool overcoat. He wrapped his neck with his shawl and took his key and left his hallway. The snow still dusted the footpath through the forecourt. He pushed some snow from a rose branch with his glove-covered finger and left his home. She is very strange this new neighbour. Maybe it isn’t such a bad idea if I just knock on the door and introduce myself to her mother. Poor crippled woman. I hope I never get put in a wheelchair. Awful.

  He walked only two or three steps, and stopped with a shock.

  The neighbour’s house had been demolished and was covered with snow. Corners of broken bricks and tiles and broken pieces of bathroom were strewn across the lot. He walked towards the rubble and called, ‘Ms Lili! Ms Lili, where are you?’

  An old peddler woman was walking past, selling handkerchiefs. She came closer to Mr Razi. He pulled out a few coins to offer her.

  ‘Do you want to buy?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Then I hope God makes your house worse than this.’

  He knocked on Mrs Fars’s door. No answer. Then he walked towards the chemist shop.

  ‘There you are. I just knocked on your door, looking for you,’ he said when he walked inside the chemist. Mrs Fars was sitting on a metal chair waiting for her prescription to be prepared. She was covered with her heavy wools. Her small wrinkly face looked like an old turtle’s face covered in a wool shell. ‘Mrs Fars, I am so sorry about not picking up your medicine last time.’

  ‘Which medicine? When?’

  ‘Mrs Fars, what has happened to our neighbour?’

  ‘Which neighbour? The young couple upstairs? Oh, they are fighting again over their divorce. So you could hear them too? I told police. You know, I was the one who called the police. The
y came late, of course. So if you have heard them from the other side of the street, no doubt my other upstairs neighbour should have heard them too, but when police asked and questioned her she said she has heard nothing.’

  Mrs Fars’s prescription was ready. She walked toward the cashier but she was too short to reach the desk. Mr Razi took the money and her medical insurance booklet and handed it to the girl behind the desk. Then he helped her out, holding her arm.

  ‘Mrs Fars, I am not talking about your neighbour in your building. I am asking about Ms Lili’s family, my next-door neighbour.’ Mrs Fars’s arm in Mr Razi’s hand felt light as a twig. The distance from the chemist to their homes was only a few streets but even that was too long for Mrs Fars, especially with this snow.

  ‘Can we catch a taxi?’ she asked, like a little girl asking for a doll.

  Mr Razi stopped at the corner of the street to check for a taxi. ‘There is no taxi. I don’t think in this weather anyone comes out of their home. We better walk, otherwise we will freeze. Why did you come in this weather?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t realise that I didn’t have any painkiller. My rheumatism is unbearable. At my age, my children should be around me to help me. But as you know, these days, whoever can run away from this place, they will do it at any cost.’ Then she pressed Mr Razi’s arm even firmer, to stop herself from falling into the piled-up snow.

  ‘Yes, I know, Mrs Fars, how you feel. I don’t have children.’

  Then his face moved towards Mrs Fars for confirmation. ‘Since my wife passed away I feel so lonely in this world. I can’t sleep at nights. That is why I came out in this weather, to buy more sleeping pills.’

  They turned onto their street.

  ‘Mrs Fars, where are Ms Lili’s family? Where did they go? When did they demolish the building?’

  Mrs Fars stopped. ‘Mr Razi, what is the matter with you? Your next-door house has been empty for the last five years. Don’t you remember? Don’t you recall the day? It was your wife’s funeral, the car stopped in front of the building, and the last resident asked you to move the car because of the removalist van? Don’t you remember?’