Home Is Nearby

by Magdalena McGuire

  There was a copy of Dominik’s book on his desk and I flicked through it while he watched. ‘I’ll have to read it,’ I said.

  He smiled.

  It was disorienting seeing him again. At one moment I felt incredibly close to him, as though the past was of no consequence. The next moment, the words from his article came back to me and I felt myself harden once more.

  He came over. I put the book down as he stroked a loose hair away from my cheek. Our lips met. The softness of the kiss becoming hungrier, more vital. I pressed myself against him, shifting him towards the bed, tipping him back so that he lay beneath me. He pulled the elastic band off the end of my hair and unplaited it. I watched him, rediscovering his forehead, his cheeks and his nose. I still knew his face so well. Which was strange, given what had happened in prison.

  Dominik pulled me towards him, unbuttoning my shirt.

  ‘You must have had a good doctor,’ I said.

  ‘A doctor?’ He tugged my shirt off and tossed it to the floor.

  ‘Those injuries you spoke about in the lecture. The guards broke your nose, your cheeks. And yet …’ A note of cynicism had crept into my voice.

  He went to kiss me and then caught my look. He edged back, sitting at the end of the bed, his gaze locked with mine. Then his defensiveness gave way and he shrugged helplessly. ‘Call it poetic license.’

  ‘You lied?’

  ‘I didn’t lie. The guards were rough. They were total pricks who loved nothing better than humiliate us.’

  ‘Did they beat you?’ I asked.

  ‘Like I said, they were pricks. They roughed me up, alright.’

  I tried to understand what he was telling me. ‘Did they break your bones?’

  There was a guilty caught-out look on his face.

  I traced the stripes on his bedspread and asked, ‘What about the way they harassed you because of the papers I’d signed? Was that poetic license, too?’

  ‘Of course not!’ He dragged his fingers through his hair. ‘I’ve never lied to you. That stuff about the guards beating me up – that was true, even if it didn’t exactly happen in that way. The thing is, you’ve got to make things entertaining for people. It’s like you need to present them with a bigger version of the truth. A version that they can really get behind, if that makes sense.’

  Frowning, I looked at him once more, at his strong shoulders and the lines of muscle in his arms. His perfect, never-broken nose. Prison was his success story. It had made him a hero, all the girls lining up to hear his tales of bravery and honour. No one wanted a story like mine, that was bent in all directions. In my life, the good things I’d done were all mixed up with the bad.

  ‘Ania.’ He moved closer and brought his lips to my shoulder, making me shiver. He tipped my head gently to the side and kissed the nape of my neck, his fingertips light against my back and then firmer as he pulled me in. I let it happen and then met his embrace with vigorous kisses of my own.

  This was what I wanted. For things to be the way they were before.

  I moved down and breathed in the warmth of his chest. The smell of his skin was masked with cologne. Aniseed and spice.

  The niggling thought returned: Dominik wasn’t the person I thought he was. Or maybe the trouble was that there were two Dominiks. There was the lover I’d had who smelt of tobacco and ink, who kissed me in forests, who held me in his arms in his tiny bed, and who sat with me in my Father’s house while we talked about our lives until it got dark outside. And then there was this other one. The Dominik who was able to lie about the things that mattered the most.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

  My heart skittered in my chest as I pulled away. ‘This belongs to you.’ I took the ring off my finger and placed it in the palm of his hand.

  ‘No …’ He tipped the ring onto the bed.

  My smile pressed back my tears. ‘Yes.’

  In my life, and in my work, I wanted to move closer to what was true. Dominik, on the other hand, seemed intent on moving in the other direction. I reached for my elastic and divided my hair into three sections, threading them into a plait.

  15

  Australia, September 1983

  The morning sun was fierce, striking down on the citrus farm and the sweep of rainforest behind it. When I closed my eyes the insides of my lids were flecked orange, the sun finding me even in darkness.

  After what happened in London, I wrote to Małgorzata and confessed everything. I told her how ashamed I’d been about the signing of the papers, how terrible it was to flee Poland like a criminal, and how I’d lost my way with art. I admitted, at last, that I was in awe of her and that it sometimes made me petty. This morning I received a reply, written in her extravagant hand, a picture of the Eiffel Tower on the top of the page.

  It’s funny you say you envied me, because I always wanted to be you. You’ve never put on airs. If that sounds condescending I don’t mean it that way. I mean you have something in you that is rare and heartfelt and true. You are an artist and soon the world will see it and the rest of us will be able to say we knew you. (Your Mother Sculpture was better than mine. Remember? The one made of clay.)

  I hadn’t thought about that sculpture since Poland. I didn’t even know where it was now. Languishing in the studio at the Academy perhaps? My chest ached as I recalled how I had promised Father I would bring it home.

  You say that art has left you and I refuse to believe it. You need a change of environment, that’s all. Come stay with me in Paris. There’s plenty of room in the apartment. Ryszard is in America making another film, leaving me with the baby. I’m torn between being lonely and being thankful for a break from him. He’s a different person in Paris or maybe I’m the one who has changed. Anyway, I want you to come! It will be good for your art and good for me, too.

  There was no reason I couldn’t go. There was nothing to tie me here – nothing to tie me anywhere, in fact. A notion that made the skin on my arms tingle with exhilaration and fear.

  An insect fell into my glass of coffee. I picked it out and flicked it to the ground, where it lay sodden and still. A shadow inched towards it. As I looked up, John approached, his sandals scraping against the ground. He stood before me, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his shorts. He was wearing a buttoned-up shirt.

  I focused my gaze on the rainforest behind the citrus farm. John and I had barely spoken since the night of his exhibition. He’d left London a couple of days after the opening, claiming that the city was making him crazy. He went to Greece while I stayed in London, as planned, for another week. I spent my days at the big galleries, drawing the sculptures and the people who flocked there seeking art.

  ‘Can I sit?’ John positioned himself next to me on the step. He dragged a twig through the blades of grass by his feet. After a long pause he said, ‘I’m sorry, really I am. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what happened. I had to get away and sort myself out. I was losing the plot a bit. You don’t know what it’s like, the pressure of those shows. Having all these hot young artists clambering to take your place. I needed something big for the exhibition. I got scared. In my own head, I managed to justify it. Tell myself that what I was doing was okay. Not that it’s any excuse, mind.’ He sighed. ‘You know, in a way I miss the old days, when I was working in private, making art for no other reason than because I wanted to.’ He skewered the twig in the ground. ‘Tell me what I can do to make it up to you.’

  ‘Did it sell?’ I asked. ‘This bath with fish?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He looked away. ‘An American collector snapped it up. The critics loved it too. One of them said it captured the existential pain and isolation of the artist.’ He raised the pitch of his voice at these last words, emphasising his sarcasm, but I could see he was proud of the review.

  I wrenched the twig from the ground. ‘The pain of the artist …’ I said. ‘And this artist, it is you or me?’

  ‘Ha.’ There was a sharpness to his laugh.

  I recall
ed what Dominik had said to me in London, to justify his lies. That he had to make the truth bigger for people. John, on the other hand, had taken someone else’s truth and presented it as his own. Did everyone stoop to these lows?

  As soon as I asked myself this, the thought came to me, unbidden, that I had stolen too. Like John, out of desperation, with no ideas of my own, I took the nettle dress and remade it from palm. The difference was that my sculpture hadn’t been a success. That, and I hadn’t been caught.

  ‘I’ll give you half,’ John said. ‘Half of what it sold for.’

  I recalled the incredible prices that his pieces had commanded. By comparison, the wages he had given me were paltry. I had made his sculptures with my own hands. And the one I hadn’t made – the fish in the bath – that came from me, too.

  In making that sculpture, John had taken something from me. However, I was beginning to see that he had given me something as well. I knew, now, that I had in myself what it took to be an artist. My stories, my ideas – these were good enough to show in a proper gallery in London. And, unlike John, I had the technical skills to make my own sculptures. I wanted to work again, and with the money that John was offering, I would have the time to do it. For a year, maybe two, I would be my own boss. The way Father had been.

  ‘Okay,’ I said to John. ‘The money for the sculpture, I have half. And I will tell no one.’

  John nodded slowly. Then he said, ‘Let’s seal the deal.’ He shook my hand in his. ‘Will you come back and work for me?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I will make my own art.’

  He flicked an ant off his leg. ‘That’s good, you’ve got something in the pipeline? I mean, you’ve got an idea for a sculpture have you?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  There was a pebble by my foot and I picked it up. Its surface was smooth. Like a headstone, waiting for a name. I was transported back to Father’s work shed, to the song of our chisels as we worked together, dust motes floating in the air. I shut my eyes for a moment, getting closer. I needed to get hold of some rocks that were big enough to carve on, big enough to hold my memories.

  ‘What is it in Polish?’ John asked out of nowhere.

  Confused, I turned to him.

  ‘What’s the Polish word for carp?’ He shrugged and said, ‘I should learn a bit of your language, right?’

  ‘It’s the same,’ I said. Using my finger, I etched the letters on a patch of dirt, KARP.

  In a way, the fish had bought me independence. For a year or more, I would own my own time. I had John and the American collector to thank for that. However, I was puzzled by the logistics of the sculpture. ‘This man who bought the bath, must he fly the fish all the way to America?’ I asked.

  ‘Nah,’ John said. ‘It’ll be a different fish. The one we used for the exhibition is dead.’

  ‘It died?’

  ‘Yeah, because of the water. Too much chlorine in it. For a fish, it’s like breathing in poison. Stupid, I didn’t even think of that until later. I guess I heard your story and figured that regular water would be fine.’

  I remembered how the carp in Małgorzata’s bathtub had darted around furiously for the first day or two, before it became despondent, floating listlessly in the water. It wasn’t tired or bored by its enamel cage. It had been dying all along.

  I wandered through the citrus farm, towards the large house where the farmer and his family lived. Their verandah was set at ground level and was fenced off by a latticework of wood. The farmer’s wife was there, watering the pot plants that were crammed onto the verandah. The hem of her dress fluttered around her ankles as she directed the nozzle of a hose towards a flowered plant hanging from a pole. Water dripped from its basket onto the concrete floor.

  I spoke to her about the limestones I had seen piled at the back of the house, leftover from a spa-bath that the farmer had installed in their garden. ‘Can I buy them?’ I asked.

  ‘That dusty pile of rocks?’ She folded the hose in half, cutting off the water. ‘You’re welcome to them.’

  I piled the limestones into a wheelbarrow and transported them to my bungalow, unloading them under the mango tree. It was heavy work in the heat and my skin grew damp with sweat.

  From inside the bungalow, I retrieved the chisel that I had brought with me from Poland. Its comfortable weight in my palm, I sat under the mango tree and examined the limestones.

  The stones were relatively flat and ranged in size. The smaller ones I could cover with two of my hands, while the larger ones were about the size of a clutch disc. Beautiful, organic shapes, no two the same. I picked up a rectangular stone in both hands. It was heavy, weighing as much as three or four tins of food. I put it down and then selected a triangular stone with a curved base. This one was smaller and light enough for me to lift with one hand. I had grown up surrounded by stone, by granite, marble and slate. How odd that I had never used it in a sculpture before. I thought back to the lessons Father had given me, when he told me about the different properties of rocks. Limestone, I remembered, was formed from tiny pieces of marine life, such as coral. It was a stone that came from the sea.

  Wiping the perspiration from my forehead, I selected a rectangular stone, lifting it with both hands and checking it for fissures and cracks. I secured it on a sandbag on the ground. Then I slipped on a pair of goggles and a facemask, held a hammer in one hand and a chisel in the other. It had been a long time since I’d carved, but when I brought the chisel down to the stone I wasn’t nervous at all.

  16

  When the tide was low I began to install my sculpture, laying the stones down on the sand. Arranging them in a curved line that stretched out to sea. Each one was carved with words from my memories, some in English, some in Polish.

  Crouching down, I rested my palm on a stone that was carved with a slanted script like Dominik’s: I want to tell you so many things. I placed it on the firm, dry sand. Then I took a few steps forward, where the sand became damp, and placed down another. I, Anna Izabela Skowrońska, do hereby confess. Two steps towards the sea, where I rested a stone that was carved with elegant writing like Father’s, These tales from the village must be very boring for you. On another, I had engraved the inscription from Mother’s headstone, Remembrance is ours. Then another, more recent memory, Pin down the ideas before they escape. And then, I wanted it to be perfect.

  The lick of the water transformed the stones, bringing them to life. They glimmered in the afternoon light.

  There was one stone that was special. I held it in my palm. It was much smaller than the others and darker. I’d brought it with me from Poland, taking it from the cemetery where Mother and Father lay. On it, I’d written, słoneczko. I nestled it by the water’s edge and then stepped back.

  At the sea-end of the sculpture, water shimmered on the sand, filling up my footprints. The water flowed over the rocks and then dragged back towards the horizon. It left behind a trail of seaweed and froth. When it rushed forward again, it came closer to shore.

  I sat by the mangroves. Using a twig, I sketched the name of the piece in the sand, first in Polish, then in English, Dom Jest w Pobliz.u/Home Is Nearby. I knew, now, that I belonged to this. No matter where I ended up in the world, no one could take it away.

  People appeared on the beach, taking their evening walks. As the sun began its descent, orange and pink light rippled through the sky. An older man and woman dragged their dog away from the mangroves and led it to shore. They glanced at the trail of rocks before stepping over them. Then a small girl in her underwear ran towards the sculpture. She tumbled to the ground and scooped up a stone in her hands, holding it to her bare chest.

  ‘Mum, look!’ she yelled to the woman in a white bathing suit who was hurrying after her. The woman caught up with the girl, looked at the sculpture and then at me. She scolded the girl, taking the stone away from her and positioning it back in the sand.

  My instinct was to speak in Polish, and I corrected myself, stumbling over my words. �
��It’s okay.’ I brushed the sand off my hands and stepped towards the girl. ‘You can touch. You can take.’

  The mother glanced at me. ‘Say thank you,’ she told her daughter.

  The girl held out the rock towards me, tracing the Polish letters. ‘What does this mean?’

  ‘It is “little sunshine,”’ I told her, pressing the rock in her hands. In English, it sounded wrong. ‘Słoneczko,’ I said slowly, sounding it out.

  The girl repeated the word and then, grinning, raced off with the stone.

  Other people on the beach were watching. After the example set by the girl, they overcame their caution and approached. They strolled up and down the line of stones, stopping now and then to cast me a questioning look and when I nodded yes, they handled the sculpture. Sometimes they took a stone with them. Other times they examined a stone and then placed it in a slightly different position to the one I’d chosen.

  When I had told John about the sculpture, he wanted to photograph it for my portfolio. ‘Otherwise it’ll be gone,’ he said. ‘Kaput.’ I told him this was what I wanted. The importance of this piece was in the making, and then the letting go. My work would appear in galleries. I knew that now. This piece was for me. Of all the sculptures I’d made, it was my favourite. When I looked back at the blood sculptures I made for Burning, it was with tenderness for my younger self. All my brashness and elation and uncertainty had gone into that piece. Now, I could feel myself moving closer to the direction I wanted to go. Closer to my own vision, as Professor Jankowski would put it.

  Standing up, I followed the path of stones towards the horizon. The tide was coming in and dusk was starting to fall. As I stood watching the sea, salt water welled around my ankles, submerging the stones. Soon enough, the water came up to my knees. I remembered how Father had told me that Mother loved to swim and standing here in the ocean, I felt close to her. Close to them both.