Home Is Nearby

by Magdalena McGuire

  ‘Sounds a bit eccentric,’ he said. ‘That’s what they’re like up there. If I were you I’d stay put. Take the cleaning job in the gallery. Even Picasso had to start somewhere, right?’

  6

  I worked in the hostel’s dining room when it wasn’t being used for meals. The Queen watched over me as I cut palm leaves into strips and arranged them in horizontal rows on a table. It was easier to do this here rather than in the studio, with its damp concrete floor. As I threaded a vertical row of leaves through the strips, I thought of that other sculpture, the nettle dress that had been exhibited at The Ones to Watch. To the critical acclaim of Paris, just like Małgorzata’s Mother Sculpture.

  A sip of water moistened my lips. Lots of artists were inspired by the work of their peers. There was nothing wrong with that. Brushing away dirt from a palm leaf, I kept weaving, creating a grid-like pattern of green and yellow leaves that was wide at the bottom and narrow at the top. Next I created two sections for the sleeves, stitching them to the body of the dress with long fibres of palm. When I was finished I held the dress up. It was a little taller than me, with stumpy sleeves and a slightly misshapen hem. Had the nettle dress looked like this? I couldn’t remember. Quickly, not wanting to think about what Professor Jankowski would say, l rolled up my sculpture and stuffed it in a black plastic bag.

  On the morning of the opening I caught a bus to the studio, my legs sweating against the plastic bag wedged between my legs. When the bus reached Charlotte Street, I slung the bag over my shoulder and hopped off. As I neared the warehouse my footsteps quickened. A wire fence had been erected around the building and men in hard hats were swarming around it. They were armed with clipboards and walkie-talkies.

  I spotted Carla and ran over to her, dropping the plastic bag to the ground.

  She was standing on the street-side of the fence, arguing with a man in an orange vest. As he stomped off, I heard him say, ‘Bloody hippies.’

  ‘Fuck.’ With her fist, she whacked a sign on the fence. Danger, Do Not Enter.

  ‘Carla?’

  ‘They’re tearing it down.’ She hooked her fingers in the wire diamonds of the fence. ‘Rent’s been paid for the rest of the month but they’re kicking us out. Reckon we can go to court if we don’t like it.’ She turned her attention to a man who was rolling yellow tape around a tree. ‘We have to phone everyone. Tell them the show’s cancelled.’

  I pressed my face to the fence. The warehouse looked to be intact. ‘When is it broken?’ I asked.

  ‘Most likely tomorrow. Maybe the day after.’

  ‘This is not a big problem.’ I told Carla that we would hold the exhibition for one night, before the building was destroyed. We simply had to be careful not to get caught. ‘We used to do this in Poland,’ I said. ‘When the galleries shut down, we made our exhibitions in apartments, church, wherever we could find. One boy I heard of made exhibition in a hole. No, not hole. Under …’ I put one arm in front, horizontally, and buried my other hand beneath.

  ‘A tunnel?’ Carla said.

  ‘Yes, an old tunnel. He showed his pictures in it. This here,’ I gestured to the building, ‘this will be good.’

  Carla unhooked her fingers from the fence, regarding me. ‘I’ve never heard you talk about that before. About where you come from.’

  Turning my attention to the fence, I said, ‘When it gets dark, we must cut so people can enter.’ I gave the wire a shake. ‘For this we need big scissors.’

  ‘Pliers,’ Carla supplied me with the word. ‘We need pliers.’

  When the workmen left in the late afternoon, we dissected the wire fence, pulling it back to make an opening about half my height. The warehouse electricity had been cut off so we strung Christmas lights from the ceilings and positioned candles along the bottom perimeters of the walls. We worked quickly to set up our pieces. I hung the palm dress in a back room. Carla gave me a battery powered lamp to illuminate the dress. I left it for someone else to switch on.

  That night, people entered the exhibition on their hands and knees, crawling through the hole in the fence. They brushed dirt off their skin and laughed as they compared scratches.

  ‘Much more exciting than just walking in through the door,’ Carla said drily. She tipped back her drink and then darted over to rescue a kinetic sculpture from a young man with a mohawk who was backing into it, waving his arms as he entertained a couple of girls with a story about his drunken antics.

  The evening was warm and Rahel arrived at the exhibition wearing a loose black singlet that could have been one of Carla’s, and a short denim skirt that was streaked with bleach. There were red marks on her knees from where she’d crawled through the hole. ‘If you told me this I wear trousers,’ she said, picking some gravel off her leg.

  ‘You’re here.’ I hugged her tight. I didn’t see much of Rahel now that she was working long hours at the hotel.

  ‘Where is your art?’ she wanted to know.

  Plastic cups of wine in hand, we made our way through the exhibition. Past a collage of a naked woman that had been put together from magazine clippings of meat. Next to this was Carla’s piece, an intricate painting consisting of tiny dots. When I stood close to the canvas, it was ochre. When I took a step back I could see hues of yellow and even blue. The more I looked at it, the more I wanted to keep looking at it.

  ‘Your girlfriend is very clever,’ I said.

  Rahel squeezed my arm. ‘I know.’

  Then we came to my sculpture. At the last minute I’d threaded a few skeins of red and white wool through the palm leaves. The wool zig-zagged to the floor, ending in three balls that were arranged in a nest made from newspaper. At a loss as to what to call the piece, I’d named it, Untitled, 1983.

  Rahel stared at it, her arms crossed. Then she straightened up and said, ‘It’s good.’

  I shone a torch on the dress, trailing the light up and down, from one side to the other, regarding it critically, the way Professor Jankowski would have. It was terrible. I could see that even in the dim light. Either Rahel didn’t know anything about art or she was playing her old game where cold meant hot and good meant bad. Carla, on the other hand, had said nothing about my piece.

  ‘I must drink,’ I said to Rahel. I drained my plastic cup and went to the bar, which we’d constructed from a plank of wood that was elevated with bricks. After tossing some coins into the saucepan, I squirted cask wine into my cup, gulping it down and then pouring another.

  The palm dress was a forgery. That’s why it had no life in it – it didn’t come from me. The whole time I had been making it, I hadn’t looked at it. Not properly looked at it, with my entire self, the way I would my own work. No wonder I had put it together in the secret of the hostel dining room. I didn’t want the other artists asking me any questions.

  From where I was standing, I could still see the dress and I switched my attention to the exhibition. The warehouse was filled with people my age who wore torn jackets and jeans and threadbare dresses and laughed loudly as they drank their beer and wine. The whole scene reminded me of Poland.

  The thought, which should have brought me comfort, was unsettling.

  Ever since I left Poland, I had been chasing the past. The existence I’d fallen into here was nothing but a pale imitation of the life I’d left behind. What was I hoping to do, keep drifting until I found another Dominik? Tag along with Carla, the way I had with Małgorzata? All that was gone.

  I swigged my wine. As my vision blurred, things started to make sense. If I wanted to make art again I couldn’t stay here.

  The next day I returned to Charlotte Street to watch the studio be demolished. The artists had rescued their works from the building. My piece was the only one left behind. I was glad to be spared the humiliation of dragging it out and deciding what to do with it next. Burn it? Stuff it in the bin?

  Carla was squatting on the footpath next to the fence, shading her face from the sun. When she saw me she pulled herself up and envelop
ed me in a damp hug.

  ‘They found the hole,’ she said. ‘Can’t prove it was us but they’re pissed off. We’re supposed to stay two metres back or they’re calling the pigs.’

  On the other side of the fence a yellow machine rolled towards the warehouse. Dust rose from the ground, making me sneeze. The machine unfurled its neck and struck a window with steel jaws. The middle of the pane smashed and then the outer edges fell in small pieces, glass tinkling to the ground. The machine swung around and directed its blows at the brick wall.

  ‘We’ll find somewhere else,’ Carla yelled over the noise. ‘There are plenty of empty office blocks around. We’ll start again.’

  There was an insistent beeping as the machine backed away from the warehouse. When it subsided, I said to Carla, ‘I’m leaving Brisbane.’

  ‘Not you too.’ She massaged the back of her neck. ‘All the creative types are taking off. Where are you headed, Sydney or Melbourne?’

  ‘Not there,’ I said. ‘I’m going to the north.’

  ‘Up north …’ Her eyes widened. ‘For real? You know what you’re getting into, right? There won’t be art exhibitions and stuff. It’s extremely isolated.’

  I kicked a bit of rock towards the fence. The hole had been mended with wire. Above it was a new sign: Vandals Will Be Prosecuted.

  I said, ‘I liked your painting. You made me look at red and yellow and blue like I was seeing colours for the first time.’

  Carla thanked me, saying she’d been nervous about displaying the piece. ‘Yours was good too, Ania. It’s just … I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but it was a bit unfinished. It was missing something.’

  Though the criticism hurt, it was a relief to hear it said out loud. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know.’

  The yellow machine swung its jaws towards the warehouse and there was a tearing sound as the façade tumbled away. The final sounds of destruction were anticlimactic, as though the building was made of matchsticks rather than bricks.

  7

  For two days and two nights I sat cramped on a bus, my neck sweating against the velour seat-cover. As we hurtled past small towns and across stretches of umber track, my exhilaration gave way to stiff-boned fatigue. The employment man had warned me that the north was far away but I didn’t imagine it was so far as this.

  At last the driver announced my destination, pulling up near a tin shack that displayed crates of pineapples. Wedged between a pineapple and a rusty can was a handwritten sign that said Honesty Box. Standing on the gravel track, I coughed up fumes from the departing bus. My new leather suitcase by my side, I stared up at the colossal sky. The afternoon was hot and bright and I could smell the sea.

  Behind me came the trundling sound of plastic wheels being pulled over dirt. A woman in a yellow pantsuit approached, her luggage in tow. ‘Where you headed, darl?’

  I showed her my map, the location of my accommodation circled in red. The artist, John Papa, had arranged for me to rent a bungalow on a citrus farm.

  ‘Tom’s Oranges,’ she said. ‘It’s not far from here. I’ll take you.’

  The town centre had one main road. Palm trees grew from garden plots in the middle of the asphalt. The rain-forest loomed behind the town, overshadowing the tin-roofed buildings. There was so little keeping the rainforest at bay. I got the sense that if people vacated this place for a week or two, the plants would soon take over.

  As we walked, the woman pointed out the local landmarks: the post office, the grocery store, the school. She showed me the pub: a pale yellow, double storeyed building with hanging-plants adorning its wooden terrace. She stopped to greet a couple of passers-by, towns-people with ruddy complexions and inquiring smiles; who was I, they wanted to know, and where did I come from?

  Tom’s Oranges was a huge citrus farm that looked onto the rainforest. The farmer and his family lived in the centre of the property, in a wooden house that was elevated on stilts. My bungalow was further back, on the outskirts of the farm. That evening I fell into bed exhausted, expecting instant sleep. Instead I was awake all night, terrified by the shrieking and scrambling and heavy breathing coming from the roof. In the morning I located the farmer and told him that a person, or perhaps a bear, had been trying to get in. He laughed and said, ‘That’ll be the possums.’ He explained that they were a bit like rats, but larger, with long curled tails. When night came again I waited outside the bungalow with a torch until I saw one. It fixed its red eyes at me, hissed, and then scurried away.

  Now that I knew the possums couldn’t hurt me, I was grateful for their presence. Their awful noises distracted me from the visions I had at night. Father was always there and he was always dying. Sometimes there was Dariusz, or Krzysio lying beaten on the street. And then there was Dominik, telling me over and over that he loved me. I would have given anything to sleep so deeply I couldn’t remember my dreams.

  My first day of work was a week later, on a Friday. John Papa, who had been in Sydney, was now back. I called him from the payphone near the farm and he gave me directions to his house. ‘Number fifty-seven. Big place on the hill,’ he said. ‘If you get lost, ask someone to point you the way. Everyone knows everyone around here.’

  It took me about twenty minutes to walk from the citrus farm to the centre of town. The main street offered islands of shade from the morning sun. Beyond the street, to my left, were the emerald folds of the hills. To my right was the sea, its steady rush, rush accompanying me on the muggy walk. Incredibly, it was hotter here than in Brisbane and the air was wetter, too. As I walked, the itch of my plait against my neck became unbearable and I stopped to pin it around my head. The town centre behind me, I finally reached a ragged plank nailed to a tree. It was painted with the number fifty-seven. I wiped the film of moisture from my cheeks and then panted up the hill, up a set of concrete stairs that were so large and uneven that I didn’t dare lift my gaze from my feet.

  ‘Hey!’ someone yelled.

  When I looked up, I came face to face with a shark. Startled and dizzy from the heat, I nearly tumbled back. An arm reached out to steady me. There was a laugh as a man appeared from behind the shark, which I now saw was not real. Bare chested, the man clutched the shark under a sinewy arm and gave it an affectionate pat on the head.

  ‘You must be the Polish sculptress. I’m John and this is Sisyphus.’ He spoke faster than the other Australians I’d encountered, and despite the shark, used more hand gestures.

  ‘Sisyphus. The one who must push the rock?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s right.’ He moved the shark, tucking it under his other arm. ‘She keeps me company while I’m engaged in that masochistic pastime we call making art.’

  ‘What is this? Mas, masor …’ I struggled to recapture the word.

  ‘Mas-o-chis-tic. It’s someone who likes pain. I reckon that’s a pretty good definition of an artist, hey?’ He chuckled and with his free hand, helped me up the stairs. ‘Now that you’re here Sisyphus can have a holiday. Isn’t that right, Sissy?’

  When we reached the top, he tossed the shark to the grass. ‘This is where I live.’

  Hands on his hips, he stood before an enormous eggshell coloured building, the grandeur of which had slipped into decay. Cracks shot up the concrete walls and purple flowered vines pushed through them, winding their way around the Romanesque columns at the front.

  I stroked the furred leaf of a vine. ‘You have a big house.’

  ‘What can I say, I’m Greek.’ John caught my look of surprise. ‘Second generation that is,’ he said. ‘When I started making art, twenty-odd years back, no one could pronounce Papageorgiou so I shortened it. I’m half regretting it now that ethnic art’s all the rage. You’ll do well with your name. Ania Skowrońska, that’s got a nice ring to it.’

  He held the door open for me. I had overdressed for my first day of work, in dark trousers and a white collared shirt. I was grateful to go inside where fans whirred on the high ceilings, slicing through the heat.

 
‘I’ll fetch us some drinks,’ John said.

  In the kitchen, he shooed a bird off the window sill and then leaned against a wooden bench, his eyes focused on a point behind my head. He was tall and thin, with thick dark hair on his head, and smatterings of curlier hair on his chest and legs. Was he going to put on a shirt? Part of me thought him uncivilised for being so scantily dressed. The other part of me was envious: my own clothes were clammy and claustrophobic and I longed to get back to the bungalow where I could take them off.

  John had deep lines on either side of his mouth, like parentheses. He traced these, one at a time, with his index finger. Then he exclaimed to himself and grabbed an envelope from the bench and proceeded to scribble on the back of it. Having done this he seemed to return, fully present, to the room.

  Bottles of beer in hand, we walked downstairs to his studio. Standing side by side, we examined a folio of sculpture designs. Sweat dripped from his chest onto a plastic-covered sketch and he wiped it off with his thumb. Something about his sketches bothered me. However, he flicked through them too quickly for me to determine what it was.

  ‘You’re a lifesaver,’ he said. He turned another page in the folio. ‘I don’t even want to think about how many sculptures we’ve got to assemble for my exhibition. White Water … How do you like that as a title? It’s showing in London so that’s quite a coup.’

  The mention of London sent a jolt through my spine. I tried to put aside thoughts of Dominik to concentrate on what John was saying.

  He told me that he needed me to make a series of sculptures from clear plastic sheets. Others were to be constructed from wood or glass. ‘That should keep you busy,’ he said.

  ‘And you? What will you do?’ My words came out blunter than intended.

  John didn’t seem to take offence. He laughed. ‘Right now I’m going to feed you, that’s what I’m going to do.’