Sea of Many Returns

by Arnold Zable

  My eyes are drawn to the sea behind him. For the first time I see the bay as Manoli sees it, as a place of drama and boundless life, and a source of freedom, a means of escape.

  Dusk has fallen. The winds are gusting. They batter the weatherboard like a horde of brigands. They attack the windows and tear corrugated sheets from the roof. They propel the tide over the full extent of the beach and whip the river over its banks.

  Cormorants tuck their heads beneath their wings to shield themselves from the onslaught. Two terns struggle above the water’s surface in search of fish. They dive when they locate prey, but are blown off-course. Water drips from the ceiling and we place buckets under the drops.

  Sophia and Manoli stride out into the night to do battle. ‘Do not dare leave the house,’ father warns. The water rises to the veranda and licks the steps to the front door. The pointer leaps about in the kitchen. Lightning cracks the skies apart, and I catch them through the window in the momentary light. Manoli is scaling the ladder to the roof, while Sophia, on the ground, holds the lower rungs. Her upturned face is streaming with water. They return to the darkness as abruptly as their bodies had lit up.

  Manoli remains outside long after Sophia returns. I see him by lightning strikes, battling to fasten a billowing tarpaulin over a boat propped on blocks in the backyard. He is doubled over, arms flailing as he attempts to secure the ropes. When he is done he bursts back into the house. The rain drips from his clothes and hands. A strike of lightning illuminates Sophia and Manoli’s faces. In this rare instance, they are partners, united in a common task.

  In the morning, when I walk the foreshore, I find dead gannets and terns. Their powerful bodies are intact, washed clean by the tide. They have succumbed to the gale, but not without a fight. The beach is littered with windswept branches and mounds of kelp. One of the terns is still gasping for breath. By the time I bend down, it has expired.

  Manoli sits on the garage sofa, mid-winter, and threads a large needle. He bends over a pile of netting, and lifts part of it up by the hems. He passes it through his fingers like a man feeling his way in the dark. There is tenderness in his hands and stillness in his concentration. He looks up, but does not see me watching from the yard. He returns his focus to the net and continues to mend.

  There are languid weekend afternoons warmed by winter sun. Manoli is at work on a new boat. He has laid the keel and is fitting the ribs. He works slowly. There is no other way. The demands of labour dictate the pace. The air smells of sea breeze and brine. He ferries the bent ribs to and from the garage and fits them inside the hull at right angles to the keel.

  The afternoon is punctuated by bursts of hammering, the whirr of a saw, the buzz of an electric drill. As the work progresses, the exposed ribs curving up from the keel begin to resemble the skeletal bones of a fish. The sky expands with afternoon light. The yard breathes at a leisurely pace. It is the pace of the boat yard, of a craftsman at work, an antidote to Manoli’s restlessness, his saving grace.

  Yet always, the ominous lying in wait. I recall a row of slain foxes, tied by their feet on a paddock fence, their coats clotted with blood. They have been shot and left to rot. They are vermin, I have heard said. Yet I can see how beautiful they must have been while still alive. Perhaps among them are foxes I had seen in the back paddocks at dusk, pelts flashing in the long grass, setting out on nocturnal hunts. They would send the pointer into a barking frenzy. She pursued them, but they were too swift and cunning, intent on appeasing their hunger and thirst.

  Manoli cannot stay still. The state of the house is a mark of his indecision. He knocks down a wall between two rooms, fits in a lintel, and abandons the project to embark on something new. He rips up the linoleum and exposes the floorboards, but leaves them as they are. He revives his plan to convert the weatherboard house into a brick veneer. ‘The house must be brought up to date,’ he says. ‘Brick veneer is the way of the future.’

  He tears down the veranda and scours building sites for discarded bricks. He brings them home in a trailer and unloads them where the veranda once stood. I help after school and on weekends, cleaning the bricks. I chip off the mortar, scrape off the dirt and scrub the surface until my wrists ache. Manoli pours a terrazzo; the concrete subdues the contours and enables him to lay the bricks against the timber boards. When the brick cladding is a metre high he loses interest. It becomes one of a mounting number of aborted renovations.

  There is only one activity he sees through to the end: the creation of boats. When one boat is done, he sails it for a year, then sells it to make way for the new. He completes a bigger boat, a cabin cruiser with an outboard motor, and when it is finished he realises it is far too large to drive out.

  Manoli orders in a crane. The neighbours gather to watch the operation. They are buoyed by the free entertainment. The crane is positioned in a dirt lane behind the back fence. Someone has alerted the newspapers and a photographer is on hand. The boat is winched up and sways above the fence. The crowd pulls back. The boat is steadied and lowered to the lane. The following day a photo of the operation appears in The Sun. For several days Manoli is a cause célèbre in the neighbourhood, as much for his folly as his enterprise.

  Manoli comes and goes as he pleases. When he is at home he tends the blaze in the living room fireplace. He drags in logs and tree-trunks, and feeds them whole into the fire. The ends stick out beyond the grate. When one end has burnt, he kicks the remainder into the flames.

  Sophia restores order. She cleans the grate, stacks the remaining logs by the fire; boxes the kindling she has scavenged from the riverbanks, and scrunches wads of newspaper to re-ignite the fire. She works in his absence, afraid of the sound of the door opening, Manoli returning inflamed with rage.

  I see her now, Sophia when she was tall and slim. See her before she succumbed to a premature curving, a leaching of the bones. See that it is work that kept her from going insane. See her when mounting debts and Manoli’s erratic behaviour force her to seek work further afield.

  She leaves the house early morning. I hear the door close behind her, and register her departure fifteen minutes later when the first train rattles over the bridge. She works in the city for Sevasti, a distant cousin and recent arrival from Ithaca. A gifted seamstress, Sevasti had established a business making wedding dresses to order. Newly arrived girls from the island and other parts of Greece, spend their workdays at sewing machines to convert her designs into masterpieces.

  Sophia, Australian-born, stands at the counter, receives orders and helps out with the accounts. She leaves for work in the winter dark, returns in the dark, and heats up the remains of last evening’s meal. She comes and goes from the city, and when she is gone, she moves in her own mysterious world. For a time, she too is a lone navigator embarking on voyages of her own.

  I am woken by a cry. I run to the backyard. Sophia is distraught. I see a scattering of feathers, two patches black, the other white, the remains of our three hens. The mesh wire cage is empty.

  ‘They have been taken by foxes,’ Sophia cries. ‘They drag them by their mouths to their lairs, or bury them for future meals.’ I have never seen her so distressed. ‘I should have noticed the opening beneath the mesh.’

  The backyard is tainted by slaughter. There are sinister forces lurking. Foxes are staking out the neighbourhood, waiting for nightfall, a gap in the fence. And somebody is watching us now. I turn and see Manoli standing by the back door. He surveys the yard and takes in the carnage. For a moment I think he is about to offer a word of consolation. He steps forward, hesitates, then hurries to the car.

  ‘Bah! What do you expect?’ he says, with contempt. While the car idles, he opens the gate. He reverses into the lane and drives off without a backward glance.

  Sophia and I pick up the feathers. We do not stop until there is not a single one left. That afternoon Sophia repairs the cage. Days later she returns from work with a hen and two chicks. She releases them from the cardboard box, then stands back, a
nd watches with satisfaction as they take to the yard.

  The two chicks stay close to the mother. They fossick from dawn till the fading light. The sound of low-key babble has returned to the yard. Sophia has held fast. Order has been restored to the world. She turns to me, and smiles, triumphant.

  There are many absences at the heart of this tale, yet even in their absence the men are present. Mentor, Manoli, Andreas, Stratis: voyagers and seamen, sojourners, gamblers. Providers. Builders. Community leaders. Self-appointed bards. Their voices ring loud, their deeds are apparent. Each has his version of epic journeys to new worlds, each can boast of forging new paths.

  Yet where is Fotini? And other women whose names I had heard about the house: vague talk of Fotini’s sister, Adriani, who had remained on Ithaca, of Melita, Manoli’s mother, who died when he was a child. And of her sister, my grand aunt Irini, who was still alive somewhere over there, in that other world.

  I fight to insert them into the manuscript. Perhaps this is how the helmsman feels at the tiller when trying to turn his boat in adverse winds. The weight of the sea courses through his hands. He strains against its power and battles to stay upright. Only with persistent effort does the boat come about.

  I have few memories of Fotini, my grandmother. She once stayed for several days, before we shifted to the weatherboard house. She was in remission from the cancer that would soon claim her. I recall her white hair, puffed like cottonwool, and her smile. She possessed the quiet resolve of a woman who, I would one day learn, had journeyed, years earlier, from Ithaca as a proxy bride.

  ‘Ola ine gramena,’ Fotini would say, with a shrug. ‘All has been written.’ That is all. Two gestures: a smile and a shrug. Far removed from the world of men, passed down through the generations. My heirlooms.

  I walk beside Sophia on a busy Melbourne street. The sky, contained between buildings, is a restricted blue. We enter one of the buildings, and step from the lift into the corridor on an upper floor. Fotini is lying in a far bed by the window of a public ward.

  Sophia moves her seat close, bends over, and whispers. Fotini can barely talk. They fall silent, as if observing an unspoken pact. I turn my eyes to the window, where the light is streaming in. When I look back at Fotini I see that her white hair is lost in the white pillows. Her tiny face frames a stoic smile.

  She reaches out a hand and I bend over to take it. She strokes my cheek. Her eyes glow and follow me as I retreat. They hold me from a distance. Glowing. Growing smaller. And years later, they still reach out, as the doors to the ward swing open and shut.

  Manoli comes and goes as he pleases, to the pub, out on the bay, on hunting trips with Ithacan friends, and to the inner city, the mysterious rooms of the Ithacan Club. ‘Come,’ he says, gruffly, one evening, as if acting on a whim. He places a hand on my shoulders and ushers me to the car. It is the closest he can come to affection.

  He drives the longer route, the beach road rather than the highway. Once past Mordialloc the road follows the shoreline. At times the sea is directly beside us, at others, at the foot of sandstone cliffs. We see the city lights and further still, round the bay, concentrations of lights between stretches of dark.

  We park in the city, climb wooden stairs above a shop on the corner of Elizabeth and Lonsdale Streets, and enter the rooms on the second floor. As soon as he steps in, Manoli’s demeanour changes. He is among compatriots and friends. I recognise summer guests: Alexis the wrestler, Uncle Cherry Ripe, the Gambler.

  They look different in this company, harder. Intent. They hold the cards to their chests like well-guarded secrets. They greet me, turn back to the game and vanquish me from their minds. It is an abrupt shift in focus I have come to expect. I have seen it at picnics and family gatherings. They are engaged in men’s business and are not to be disturbed.

  When we leave the clubrooms Manoli is anxious to return to the bay. He drives directly to the beach road, veers right mid-journey, and descends the gravel path to Half Moon Bay. He parks the car by the bluestone seawall. One hundred metres offshore we make out the hull of a warship, scuttled years ago to create a breakwater. A man lounges on a stool at the end of the pier, on guard behind three fishing lines. From this position the bay appears vast. We sit and watch for a while.

  It is not the first time I sense that Manoli is trying to reach out. I imagine his lips on the verge of moving, about to confide. Then, like a crab pulling back within itself, he starts the motor and adjusts the clutch. ‘I zoie ine mia trippa mes to nero,’ he says. Life is a hole in the water. He backs the car from the wall and returns to the highway. We do not speak on the drive home.

  Manoli comes and goes as he pleases. He brings home new friends from the pub, Swedes and Italians, long-time Australians. He makes no distinctions. ‘I am a citizen of the world,’ he says, with his arms around his new brothers. He offers them work on sites where he works on his latest ventures: shops he is fitting and renovating. He tells them of his long-held plans to build blocks of flats and shopping centres. His ambition revives as he talks. He will take them out in the boat on fishing expeditions, he tells them. His generosity knows no bounds.

  Sophia delivers plates of food, and cups of tea. Manoli draws on his stocks of refrigerated beer. The men talk politics, thump the table and speak idly of revolutions yet to come. They talk of the snapper, the ‘big buggers’ they had caught the previous day, and of the thousands currently swimming the bay. They talk of the starfish they had found in the snappers’ gutted bellies: ‘Will eat anything when they’re hungry.’ Fish talk.

  Manoli is light-hearted with drink and camaraderie. He never drinks to ugly excess. I prefer this Manoli, content with drink, seated at the head of the table in earnest discussion with his new circle of friends. It is his soberness I fear.

  Manoli’s comings and goings are more frequent, his outbursts more strident. It has something to do with letters arriving from Ithaca. I glean bits of information from conversations. Stratis, his father, is very ill. He lives on the island, in the patriko. He is a subtle presence beyond my understanding, made more mysterious by distance. There is not one photo of him in our house.

  I am woken late at night by the sounds of voices. ‘Leave me be,’ Manoli shouts. I hear him walking to the living room, and, soon after, sobbing. I creep from my bed. The door is ajar. Manoli sits on a sofa, his back turned to me. He clasps his forehead in his hands. He sits up and beats the armrests with clenched fists. It is the first and only time I see him weep.

  In the morning he is gone, and Sophia has left for work. At dinner that night, she tells me that a telegram had arrived the previous day with the news of Stratis’ death. Manoli has taken out the boat. He is gone for days and when he returns, he is haggard and drawn. He stalks the house like a wary beast.

  Manoli is crumbling. His business ventures are failing. His body is succumbing to years of toil. What is there to show for all his efforts? For the forced smiles in the offices of bank-managers? He is wilting, becoming reckless. He attends races, spends hours pouring over form guides. His bets are increasingly daring. He drives to midweek meetings at country courses. He is a familiar figure, known for his big bets, and his couldn’t-care-less demeanour.

  ‘Den peirazi,’ he says when he loses. ‘Den peirazi,’ he says when he wins. ‘It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Life is a hole in the water,’ he laughs. I lie in bed at night and try to fathom it. How does one make a hole in the water?

  He drives the beach road and detours to join fishermen on jetties. He baits his line, hurls it into the water and settles back on a canvas stool. He keeps two buckets, one with bait, the other for the few fish he is able to hook. He does not care whether he reels in fish or kelp. He does not care if his line is robbed of its lure and bait. He does not care when the chill descends. He remains seated for hours in the dark. Den peirazi. Nothing matters.

  Manoli’s comings and goings are more erratic. I am alert to the sound of his return, the brutal sound of his departures, the doo
r slamming. One evening, he motors out to sea and vanishes. There are reported sightings by friends who claim to have seen him moored by wharves in various parts of the bay. We do not report him missing to the police. We are well accustomed to his ways.

  He returns after a month like an apparition risen from the sea; steers the boat to the berth, mid-morning, and climbs the embankment. His lips are chafed and cracked, his skin singed and flaking. He is a dishevelled stranger cloaked in the last vestiges of pride.

  The fight has left him. He sits in the garage, idly sketching. The nets are unravelling. The engines he regularly oiled and greased are rusting. He spends his days among stacks of rotting timber, moth-gnawed sails and unrealised visions. He has grown ill and dispirited. He will never sail again.

  Manoli died in 1971, in the first weeks of spring. I was fourteen. He died suddenly, felled by a stroke. He died within months of his final return from the sea, and within a year of the death of his father. He died when wild freesias were appearing, the wattle and jasmine blooming. And he died with the return of the birds. They descended in the tens of thousands. The skies were eclipsed by their density; the wetlands disturbed by their collective breasting.

  ‘Do not go to the swamps,’ Manoli had warned me, but I was now free to come and go as I pleased. I nestled against the dog, and watched the newly arrived birds feeding on the muddy banks. Pelicans landed on billabongs, generating a confusion of eddies. Reeds and wild grasses swirled, then eased back into uneasy silences.

  Manoli’s final boat strained like a dog on a leash at its berth on the river. He had transported it down to the water days before his death, and readied it for the warm months ahead. It was, in retrospect, one last flurry of activity. The boat bobbed with the tides and currents, emptied of promise. What can I say? Manoli was gone. We did not know whether to rejoice or cry. That is how it is. Life is a hole in the water.