Home Is Nearby

by Magdalena McGuire

  3

  The studio on Charlotte Street was in a warehouse that, until recently, manufactured men’s clothes. Fixed to the pale brick façade was a metal sign that read, Parantelli’s Fine Shirts, Made in Australia. I ran my finger over the curve of the ‘p’, the straight line of an ‘l’, the tactile letters reminding me of the carvings that Father and I used to make.

  ‘This is nice,’ Rahel said, surveying the building. ‘You will do good work here.’

  I gave her a quick smile.

  It was cool inside, the heavy bricks shutting out the midday heat. We walked through a narrow corridor to a small room that smelt of damp laundry. I pictured rows of women, their heads bent over, sewing shirts.

  Carla was kneeling on the floor next to a canvas filled with yellow dots of paint. She smiled broadly when she saw us. ‘It’s a work in progress,’ she said, getting up. As she twisted the row of studs in her ear, she told us that a range of artists worked in the studio, printmakers and painters and sculptors, and that most of them made art from whatever materials they could find. Cardboard, tin cans, plastic bottles and magazines. The aim was to keep things low cost. ‘That’s the whole ethos of the place,’ she said. ‘It’s an art cooperative with a non-hierarchical structure.’

  Her words made no sense to me. ‘What does this mean?’

  ‘Basically,’ she said, ‘it means everyone gets a say in everything. We’re all equal.’

  ‘This is nice idea.’ Rahel raised her eyebrows so high they disappeared under her fringe.

  ‘Well, we try,’ Carla said. ‘That’s all you can do, right?’ She shepherded us to a small room at the back of the warehouse, empty except for a chair, a bucket, and some stiff sheets of newspaper on the ground. ‘This is it,’ she said. ‘Rain got in the other day. Should air it out.’ She climbed onto the chair and wrenched open a small window located by the ceiling.

  As I looked up at the window, I got a sense of vertigo, reminded of my cell in prison. I hadn’t told Rahel about that. Or the papers. There was a lurching sensation in my stomach.

  Carla was talking. ‘Anyhow, if you want the space, it’s yours. Free of charge.’ To my relief she dismissed my protests that I should give her money, saying that the rent, minimal to begin with, was paid for the next month. ‘We’re stoked to have our first international artist at Charlotte Street.’

  ‘Stoked?’ The word tasted strange in my mouth.

  ‘Happy,’ Carla said. ‘We’re happy you’re here.’ She told me about an exhibition that the artists had planned, From Nowhere. ‘It plays with the perception that Brisbane’s a backwater kind of place.’

  Rahel and I looked at each other in confusion.

  ‘You know, that it’s a big old country town,’ Carla clarified. ‘You reckon you can produce something for it?’

  Without hesitating I told her, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Carla clapped her hands together. The gesture reminded me of someone. I tried to place who, before realising it was Małgorzata. How odd. They looked nothing alike. However, Carla’s easy manner, her confidence, reminded me of my friend.

  If we were still friends. Małgorzata would certainly have heard about Dominik’s article by now. Even so, I was overcome by the desire to reach out to her. She was part of my past, which meant that she was part of me.

  When the others left, I cleared the sheets of newspapers from the floor, sat down and took out my notebook. I started to write a letter, the Polish words soothing me, taking me home again.

  That afternoon I went to the post office. The clerk, a fleshy man with an accent so thick I could barely understand it, licked the backs of the stamps and fixed them to the envelope I’d given him. As he did so, I imagined Małgorzata getting the letter and the look of disgust that would come over her face.

  This was a mistake. I waited for the clerk to hand back the letter. Instead, he tossed it on the bench behind him, and said something about ‘sorted’ and ‘love’. I tried to tell him that I had changed my mind but my English came out jumbled with Polish.

  He said, ‘What’s that now?’

  Mortified by his look of pity, I grabbed my change from the counter and rushed away.

  4

  Though I now had my own studio space, I was unable to put it to good use. My hands, which used to be so quick, always working two steps ahead of my mind, seemed to belong to someone else. Instead of working I spent the hours learning about this new country I was in, reading old copies of the local newspaper, which didn’t strike me as being any better than Trybuna Ludu back home. I wondered whether Pani Wedel was tending to Father’s and Mother’s graves like she promised.

  After a few weeks of sitting uselessly in the studio, I grew depressed. I decided to spend the day at the hostel. While other people busied themselves learning English or looking after their children, I went to the garden. Here was a plant that I liked for its spectacular flowers as well as its wonderful name: Flame tree. Its red petals crushed beneath my feet as I spread a blanket on the grass. The smell of marzipan hung in the air. I tried to devise a sculpture for Carla’s exhibition but my head became muggy with heat (the days were all too hot here) and I put down my notebook. As soon as I closed my eyes, I fell back into Poland, to the picnic that Dominik and I once took at the Stobrawski forest. It was a spring day and we lay underneath the pine trees, Dominik resting his head on my chest. His breath was hot through the fabric of my shirt. He edged his way down and kissed my knees, tracing the underside of my legs as he told me he loved me, Kocham cię, Aniusieńka, kocham cię.

  ‘Yoo hoo, Ania!’

  With a start, I pushed myself up, rearranging my skirt. One of the hostel workers advanced towards me. As she drew near she waved something above her head. ‘Letter arrived for you, chook.’ She passed it to me. ‘Looks a bit exotic.’

  It was a blue envelope fixed with three stamps: two were of an iron-masked figure wielding a sword and one was a sketch of a seaside town. In the top left corner of each stamp was written, République Française.

  The woman placed her hands on her hips. ‘Who’s it from?’

  ‘Thank you,’ I told her firmly. When she made no sign of leaving, I thanked her again. She marched back to reception, shooing some magpies out of her way.

  I checked the back of the envelope. My hands weakened – I hadn’t been expecting a reply so soon. I dropped the letter on the blanket, resolving to read it later.

  No. The sooner I received the bad news, the sooner I could try to forget it. I wedged a thumbnail under the seal and tore it open.

  Dear Ania,

  I’ve thought of you often since I left Poland and was heartened to get your letter. From Australia! I read it to myself three times before reading it aloud to Ryszard and baby Tomasz. What a faraway country you find yourself in. It must be very inspiring for your art. I can only imagine the incredible sculptures you’re making.

  As it happens I’ve decided to try my own hand at sculpture. I’ve sent you clippings about the show I had at the Museum of Modern Art. My agent (I have an agent can you believe it? They’re all the rage here in France) says the show will do well in New York. To think it all started as a bit of fun!

  Dominik is out of the sanatorium – but what a habit of speech, I keep forgetting I can write what I like! Dominik got out of prison a few months ago. Of course, he was safer in there than he was on the outside as the Americans still visit Barczewo to make sure the prisoners are looked after. Dominik’s prison diaries are very popular and he is quite the famous writer now, so the Solidarność movement raised funds for him to move to London. He’s living there and is writing articles for Świat Kultury and other magazines. I hear he’s even been commissioned to do a book.

  I wanted to tell you that I’m very sorry about your father. Krzysio told me what happened. He went to your village to see you and discovered a large family living in your house. They didn’t know anything about you. He asked around and eventually went to the abattoir. The manager told him that
your father died and that you were gone. She wouldn’t say where.

  Krzysio seems better. I told him he should move to Paris and try to put what happened behind him but he insists on staying put. He is back at university and has joined this Orange Alternative lot who are staging happenings around the city.

  There is one last thing I wanted to say and that is, I understand. I know how close you were to your father. Dominik understands this too. He just got carried away, you know what he’s like. He writes first and thinks later.

  Take care Ania and send me more letters about this strange hot land you have found yourself in. And your art – I want pictures!

  With love,

  Małgorzata

  So Małgorzata knew. She knew about the papers I’d signed and she said she understood. But what did she write next? Dominik understands this too. A sharp twist in my chest. Had she spoken to Dominik about me? I remembered the first time I met Małgorzata, the way she and Dominik had exchanged those cosy smiles and jokes. How was it that the three of us lived in different countries and yet the same dynamics played out across oceans?

  I sighed. Enough. The important thing was that she forgave me. I didn’t need to hide any longer.

  I went over the letter again, trying to extract as much information as I could. My second reading left me confused. Since when had Małgorzata been a sculptor? I located the clippings she’d included, translating a headline from French: ‘Pole Brings Mother Sculptures to Paris’. A quote from Małgorzata: “My work is a reaction against the tradition that says sculptures must be dead monuments to dead men. My sculptures say yes to life. They are moving, breathing things.”

  Another clipping contained a photo of her standing on a pedestal in a gallery, completely unclothed. One arm hung by her side, her fingers curled next to her thigh in the manner of Michelangelo’s David. The other arm was bent, elbow jutting out to accommodate an infant who I assumed was her baby, Tomasz. Loosely swaddled, the baby suckled at Małgorzata’s breast. The swaddling trailed down her stomach, stopping above her naked pubis. In the photo, an older couple gazed up at her, the man cupping his chin while the woman clutched the strap of her handbag with both fists. From their expressions I found it difficult to decipher whether they were impressed or simply as stunned as I was.

  Breastfeeding naked in a gallery … This was sculpture?

  Ever since I’d met Małgorzata, I had accepted her as the real artist. Yet the lines had been clearly divided: she was the photographer, painter, performer and all-round star. Sculpture, on the other hand, was mine. At least it had been. Małgorzata had taken the form and made it her own. She had even, in this short time, made a name for herself in Paris.

  I shook out my picnic blanket, anxious to get back to the studio.

  5

  When midday came, I realised that I’d been gripping my pencil in the manner of an arthritic old woman. I massaged my sore hand. After six hours in the studio, all I had to show for it were a few scribbles, the pencil lines faint on the page. From Nowhere was opening in a week and I had nothing to exhibit.

  I shifted on the damp concrete floor, wondering if Małgorzata was ever stuck for ideas. Probably not. She was her own source of inspiration. I envied her ability to take the raw material of her life and turn it into art. What would be the reaction if I stood on a pedestal at the Charlotte Street exhibition and took off my clothes? If what Carla said was true, I would probably get arrested. She’d told me about some friends of hers, theatre students, who used nudity in a performance at university. The next day the police – pigs, she called them – descended on the campus and arrested not only the students but their professors too. ‘We’re living in a police state,’ Carla had insisted. I nearly laughed. The streets in Brisbane were lined with palm trees, not army tanks.

  Even so, a nude performance was out of the question. Not because of the police but simply because I lacked Małgorzata’s boldness.

  I thought back to the sculptures I’d made in the past, wondering if I could adapt any of them for this exhibition. There wasn’t time to make a piece from clay and using blood was impractical for many reasons, not least of all the heat. Then I remembered something: the nettle dress that had caused such a sensation when it was exhibited in Paris at The Ones to Watch. It wasn’t my sculpture, that was true, but I could be inspired by it, surely. There was no harm in that. All I had to do was take the idea of the nettle dress and make it my own.

  That afternoon I walked back to the hostel, where I had an appointment with a man who was going to get me a job. Back home, the only jobs I’d had were carving for Father and tutoring, now and then, for kids in the village. I was nervous about working in this new country, especially after learning what Rahel had gone through. She’d quit her bar job after discovering she was getting paid less than the Australians. Now she worked as a maid in a fancy hotel and had a boss who demanded that she should polish the toilet seats so thoroughly the guests could eat dinner off them. Rahel told him that if people wanted to eat off a toilet seat then the germs were part of the attraction. They would be doing the guests a favour, she said, if they left them intact.

  My delight at Rahel’s comeback sustained me as I panted uphill, my clothes dampening with sweat. Although I’d done a lot of walking in Wrocław, its flat streets didn’t require this type of exertion. The hills of Brisbane, together with its perpetual sun, were changing me. My body was turning brown and my limbs were hardening with muscle.

  As I walked past a man who was watering his garden, I caught sight of a tall figure coming towards me, his eyes shaded by round glasses. Dominik! My mouth made a gasping sound and, at the same moment, I realised it wasn’t him. The boy glanced at me, smiled, and kept skidding downhill. I turned to watch him go. My elation gave way to shame. Even now, I didn’t know how to stop myself from wanting Dominik.

  To distract myself, I thought about my sculpture. For this piece I wanted to use a plant that captured my impressions of my new surroundings. The shape and smell of gum leaves were appealing but they would be difficult to weave. My legs strained as I climbed uphill, the palm trees offering scant shade. I stopped to stroke a frond, testing its narrow leaves.

  As I continued walking, I collected palm fronds that had fallen to the ground. I turned up to my appointment laden with an armful of them, the leaves camouflaging my body.

  The employment man stood up from behind his desk, giving me a smile of amusement and concern. ‘What have you got there?’

  ‘This is for art.’ I deposited the palms on the floor.

  ‘Is that right?’ He tightened the elastic around his grey ponytail. ‘Well. It’s good to stay busy, isn’t it. Now, your case file says you’re an artist. I might have a job for you at the new gallery that’s opened. Nothing flash, mind. They’re looking for a cleaner.’ He must have registered the disappointment on my face, because he added, ‘You can always work your way up.’

  I thought of how Pani Wedel had once offered me a job at the village abattoir and how dismissive I’d been. Working as a cleaner was hardly better but what choice did I have?

  ‘This is okay,’ I told him. ‘I’ll take it.’

  With a laugh, he informed me that you didn’t take a job here, you had to apply for it. I had to prove I was the best person to mop the gallery floor. ‘Interviews are next week,’ he said. ‘Oh, and here’s the other one.’ He surveyed a sheet of paper. ‘This artist, John Papa, is looking for an assistant. He’s a sculptor, pretty well known apparently. Only problem is he’s not in Brisbane. You’d have to move up north.’ He showed me on a map, his blunt nail inching along the ragged coastline.

  ‘Is this a nice place?’

  ‘Never been there myself. I hear it’s a bit feral, but. Wouldn’t be many of your sort up there, I’d imagine. Still, no harm in having a chat to the bloke. Treat it as a practice run.’

  He called the number and spoke to the person on the other end before cupping his hand over the receiver. In a loud whisper, he said, ‘We
’re in luck. Now introduce yourself like I said.’ He handed me the telephone and as soon as I said hello, a male voice gabbled away, the line crackling from time to time.

  ‘Please speak more slowly,’ I said. ‘My English …’

  ‘Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Where are you from, anyway? My last assistant was Yugoslavian. Nice girl but she took off to Sydney and left me in the lurch. I need your help preparing for a show I’ve got overseas, think you can do that?’

  Instead of waiting for an answer he kept talking. Again, I had to ask him to slow down.

  ‘Your materials,’ he said, ‘what materials do you use in your work?’

  The employment man nodded at me encouragingly.

  ‘I use many things,’ I said, ‘whatever I can find. Trees, metallic. Even blood.’ On hearing this, the artist sounded excited and wanted to know more. I told him about my exhibition, Burning. I recounted the fires that melted the blood sculptures, the crows that circled overhead and the two blindfolded musicians who played the violins. My chest tightened at the thought of Dariusz.

  There was silence. When I thought the phoneline must have cut out, he said, ‘When can you get here?’

  ‘First I will decide if to go.’ I asked, ‘What is this like, where you live?’

  ‘It’s wild. Like nothing you’ve ever seen before.’

  Wild … I didn’t know if I wanted that, especially given the employment man’s scepticism. As though sensing this, the artist changed his tack and said that up north was paradise, a place where the rainforest cradled the sea. ‘Promise me you’ll come, Ania.’ Unlike other Australians, he pronounced my name the Polish way, his ‘a’s’ as soft as a sigh.

  The employment man spoke to the artist once more and then hung up. He gave me two sheets of paper outlining the details of the jobs in Brisbane and in the north. I asked what he thought of the artist.