100 Years of Vicissitude

by Andrez Bergen

  The place might have been right next to the CBD, but it was gloriously restful and quiet. There was no rain. The sun shone, and two mudlarks hopped about beneath a sprinkler.

  Our walking route took us close by a building, partially covered with ivy. ‘Do you know Captain Cook?’ I asked Kohana.

  ‘The pirate?’

  ‘The famous English navigator. Cook, not Hook.’

  ‘I know, I know. I was only having a bit of fun.’

  ‘That joke’s old hat, my girl. This is supposed to be his house. It was purchased for eight hundred quid, shipped out from the Old Country in the 1930s, and then set up here to celebrate Melbourne’s centenary. The thing is, while it was definitely owned by Cook’s parents, no one’s sure if James lived there.’

  Two blonde boys, aged about four or five, were running around the house. They had on corduroys and matching Banana Splits T-shirts.

  ‘Must be the early ’70s. I remember that show.’ I scanned the place again. ‘Which would make this around the time that I used to come to visit Pop before he died. That was in 1970 or ’71. His hospital is right over there.’

  ‘So you were, what, five years old?’

  ‘Mmm. I don’t remember the details so well, but he was a brave man. Always put on a smile when we came to visit. I knew he was in pain, but he never let on.’

  We continued along the wide, paved path, before stopping near a tree stump that had carvings of cavorting sprites.

  ‘The Fairies Tree, made around the same time Cook’s cottage arrived in pieces,’ I said, ‘carved on the stump of a three hundred-year-old river red gum. That tree, right there, is older than Melbourne.’

  ‘You know a lot about this place.’

  ‘In actual fact, I’m trying to compete with Y, that pilot friend of yours, the one who liked flying into stationary objects. I don’t know that the park stands up to Kyoto, but it has its own story to tell. We came here often while Pop was in the hospital. I think I learned all the tidings from my grandmother.’

  ‘She was a good woman?’

  ‘That sounds… odd. I never gave it much thought. She was good to me.’

  ‘And to Les?’

  ‘I have a feeling she wouldn’t have been the easiest person to get along with, in terms of marriage—one probable reason he stayed in the army so long after the war.’

  ‘I was never sure what he died from,’ Kohana ventured.

  ‘Leukaemia.’

  ‘Leukaemia—hakketsubyou ? That’s our name for it. Oh.’

  ‘You learn something new every day.’

  I wandered ahead, my hands in the pockets of my smoking jacket, grateful the gun was gone. I had more space.

  ‘Pop stuck it out in the army until the late 1950s, and he spent some time stationed in South Australia where the British were conducting nuclear tests. He and his unit got to be spectators for Operation Buffalo in 1956 and the detonation of a thirteen-kiloton weapon called “One Tree”—I seem to remember it was about the same strength as the bomb they dropped on Hiroshima, but I could be wrong.’

  The rich green lawns in the park faded away, becoming an ocean of red sand with tufts of spinifex grass , and the introduced English elm trees disappeared.

  In front of us was a line of soldiers dressed in khaki, and beyond them, as far as the eye could see, a flat, wild, dry place blessed with the occasional mallee gum.

  The horizon flickered. A huge cloud spiralled up, and then ballooned outwards.

  I wasn’t aware if Kohana would glimpse the vision too, but really should have known better.

  ‘I see it,’ she sighed. ‘Perhaps we can recreate the things we thought long and hard about in life. Whether they’re real or not is another matter.’

  ‘Rings true. I suppose we both would have seen footage, at some stage of our childhood, of A-bombs or kamikaze attacks. They must have left a subliminal impression. Coupled with our imaginations, I’m not surprised. But most of that footage would have been in black-and-white. The colours here impress me.’

  ‘You’re impressed?’ Kohana sounded like she was appalled.

  ‘No, not by the thing itself—the colours. The rest of this vision has bothered me ever since we visited Pop in the hospital. For sixty-six years, with spare change.’

  ‘I actually had no idea they tested nuclear weapons in Australia.’

  ‘I think most people outside the country didn’t know. The British detonated seven of the beasts, but it wasn’t big news at the time. Later on, domestically, things got more interesting. Not only military personnel were exposed to the radiation—there were also the local Aborigines, and fallout from this particular bomb was detected as far as Queensland.’

  ‘You believe Les’s illness was related?’

  ‘Honestly? I don’t know, but it does make you think.’

  The cloud bobbed about like a tethered balloon, one that chose to loom thousands of feet above our heads.

  ‘We had no family history of leukaemia. When I was studying law at Melbourne University, I obtained part-time work helping out solicitors involved with the government’s Royal Commission into nuclear tests. This would have been in—oh—1985?’

  ‘Sorry, I have no idea what a “royal commission” is.’

  ‘Before your time.’

  I winked at her, and she reddened. Wolram—3, Kohana—0.

  ‘A public inquiry. Generally, these things were set up to examine some controversial issue—police corruption, departmental mismanagement, whatever. This one was established to scour the British government’s conduct during the testing, along with the complicity of our home-grown authorities. Leading up to the inquiry, there was talk of British and Australian servicemen being deliberately exposed to fallout from the blasts in order to gauge results.’

  I kicked up orange sand, and straight after regretted it—I had to take off my slipper and pour out a bunch of warm pebbles.

  ‘I kept tabs on events after that. In 1999, a British study found a third of the participants had died in middle age from cancer-related illness. Leukaemia was a popular one. A couple of years later, they unveiled evidence of troops being forced to, well, do this.’

  I pointed to the soldiers, who first ran in twos, and then walked, jumped, skipped, and now were crawling across the sand.

  ‘Nothing like a spot of calisthenics for a few days after a nuclear explosion, only a few kilometres from the blast site.’

  The desert, and the soldiers, vanished.

  We were standing by a hospital bed on which lay a middle-aged man. The haggard, creaky Pop I truly remembered from childhood. He slept peacefully, so far as I could tell. On the small, sterile bedside table were two objects: a framed photograph of me and my mother, and a timeworn corncob pipe.

  Kohana was transfixed, tears threatening, as she stood closer to stare at a man she hadn’t met in over eighty-four years.

  ‘Thank you. For letting me see him.’

  ‘You’re welcome, but I really am being selfish.’ I could not resist throwing back one of her favourite expressions. ‘Deshō?’

  ‘Deshō.’

  ‘And it’s funny. At the age of four, I realized the doctors in the hospital were goddamned useless. They weren’t helping him. They were keeping him barely alive, via a lot of tubes and contraptions.’

  I noticed Kohana’s hand was resting on Pop’s.

  ‘Are you all right to go now?’

  ‘Yes.’ She produced a nice smile. ‘I’ve said my goodbyes.’

  Once again, we were all aboard that supermundane carousel. When we disembarked, I found another place that rang distant bells.

  A sparsely populated, typically Melbourne pub—the Victoria Bitter signage was a giveaway—but which one?

  I could hear muffled music from the next room, and every time the door opened, it came through louder.

  ‘Depeche Mode?’ I realized. ‘Well, well.’

  ‘You know where we are?’

  ‘Melbourne again. A pub called the Sarah S
ands, on the corner of Sydney and Brunswick Roads. I think this may be 1989? If so, that’s a goth/post-punk club next door.’

  I went over to the counter—and was surprised when the bartender, an old gent younger than me, grinned and asked what I wanted.

  ‘Two pots of VB—um, thanks.’

  The barkeep walked away to pour glasses from a tap vividly marked with green, red, white and black. A tad screwy, I thought.

  That was the same second I spied myself in the looking-glass, behind bottles of liqueur.

  ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ I heard Kohana remark.

  Staring back was a twenty-three-year-old, in a black suit and shirt, with spiky black hair and a pale face. It took a little longer to recognize the kid.

  ‘No,’ I said, stunned.

  ‘Actually, I think, yes.’ That was Kohana, in my ear as always.

  ‘No. No way. Me? I’m young again?’

  ‘Either that or you’ve been renting out your mirror-image.’

  ‘Not that I recall. Bloody Nora.’

  ‘Well, now, stovepipe trousers—stylish. And I’m digging the narrow, dark wine and black jacquard tie. I never thought you had it in you, my sweet. The minimalist, geometric design is a nice flourish.’

  ‘My favourite at the time. I later lost it. I think.’ It’s fair to say, I was bamboozled. ‘Vintage 1960s. Silk.’

  ‘Let me see.’ The woman took the tie partway out from under my jacket and flipped it over. ‘Dior.’

  I tore myself away from the mirror and looked at the tag. ‘Dior? Oh, crap. That is just plain sad.’ I then checked myself. I’d definitely shelved the smoking jacket. ‘What the Hell is going on, Kohana?’

  ‘It’s not real, but enjoy it.’

  ‘Just like that.’

  ‘Why not? Live a little.’

  Kohana was again the teenage hangyoku, in the pitch-black kimono, this time gift-wrapped with a scarlet obi.

  ‘Well, now, your colours are appropriate for this place,’ I noted, ‘but aren’t you going to change for this age?’

  ‘Easy to fit in here.’ The girl conjured up a compact out of thin air. ‘I already have the deathly pallored greasepaint—all I have to do is add some Nefertiti-like eyeliner, and ta-dah.’

  When she looked up, I burst out laughing.

  ‘Not quite the image I was looking for?’

  ‘No, no. I love it.’

  The beers were in front of us, drooling, so I paid with a new-found wallet from my trousers, and we went to an empty table. My head was buzzing. I was sure I was taller.

  Kohana had turned her attention to the drinks.

  ‘I’ll never, ever get used to the tiny beer heads in Australia. The froth in Japan took up over a third of the glass.’

  ‘Sacrilege.’

  ‘So. 1989, huh?’

  ‘Yeah, I believe so.’ I blew out as I looked around. ‘Bloody Hell.’

  ‘The first year of the Heisei era. I moved to Melbourne in 1989.’

  ‘You’re joking?’

  ‘No, no. It was the year that O-tee-san, singer Hibari Misora, and Emperor Hirohito all died, and my place with them. Time for change. I moved to a country where the incumbent prime minister wept on TV as he admitted to marital infidelity. That was… fascinating. I was used to men shedding crocodile tears on national television—in Japan, a common occurrence when company execs screwed up—but doing so over an affair was new to me.’

  ‘You came over with your husband?’

  ‘Oh, no. He stayed on in Tokyo, running his empire. He only came after the world fell to pieces. But my daughter Kaede tagged along. She was thirteen at the time.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Fifty-nine.’

  I raised my beer in her direction. ‘You look good for your age.’

  ‘As do you.’

  ‘I suppose—yes. Strange. Cheers.’

  ‘I always liked “cin cin”.’ We clicked glasses. ‘You know what “cin cin” means in Japanese? Penis.’

  I almost snorted my drink. ‘Damn. Now that’s news to me.’

  Kohana laughed, and then she leaned closer. ‘So, your turn to play Y—our Kyoto tour guide, remember? Tell me about this place.’

  ‘The Sarah Sands? Or about Melbourne?’

  ‘Both would be nice.’

  ‘Combination stuff, eh? Well, not far from here, in 1835, an unscrupulous fellow named John Batman made a deal with the local Aboriginal people for over a million hectares of land. He paid for it with a few dozen blankets, axes, knives, scissors, handkerchiefs, and some tubs of flour. A very good businessman, if you ask me. Twenty years later, this place, and many others like it, were built. The Aborigines regretted their part of the bargain ever after.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s all I remember. Australian history isn’t as exciting as other places.’

  ‘Well, time for a lark. Follow me.’

  Kohana picked up her glass, and took small steps in her perilous clogs to a tabletop videogame. I plopped myself down on the other side of it.

  ‘Do you have twenty cents?’

  ‘It’s that cheap?’ I hardly remembered prices like this. I slid a coin across. Kohana slotted it, and beamed as the screen came to life.

  ‘Show me your stuff,’ she said, settling in.

  I lost—Kohana was a demon on the thing. I never thought to see a geisha playing Galaxian. When she finally finished and had her initials at the top of the list, she asked for another coin, and ventured over to a decrepit Musicola jukebox.

  Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’ started up.

  She returned and stood over me, towering in those thirteen-centimetre geta.

  ‘Not my style,’ I said. ‘At this time, I was more into Front 242.’

  ‘Will you shut up for one moment?’

  Right then and there, she seated herself on my lap. Her face was close to mine, and I discovered I was intoxicated with her Nefertiti’d eyes. She pressed her mouth against mine. God help me, of course I wilted. Then I pulled free.

  ‘Stop,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s not right.’

  ‘Says who? Come on. This is probably the only time our ages are in sync and we get to have a good time. Don’t ruin it.’

  ‘You’re not thinking of Pop, are you?’

  ‘Just a teensy bit.’

  Kohana kissed me again, and I thought my head would split. God. She finally detached herself and leaned back.

  ‘There.’

  ‘There what?’

  ‘There nothing. It’s the only thought that crossed my mind. It’s been a while. I worried I might be out of practice.’

  ‘No,’ was about all I could manage.

  She ran her fingers along my cheek, into my hair. ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘I’ll live. Come on, I’ll take you next door. They have the best souvlaki.’

  37 | 三十七

  I was an old man again, and went there alone.

  I swear I could taste garlic sauce and was nursing a headache. All those beers had been effective after all. A ghost with a hangover would be a new, shameful entry in the annals of haunting.

  It was daytime, but there were very few people on the narrow street. The place was pretty enough when you could see it. Much nicer than in the dark. The okiya with the round window was just behind me, and I saw the alleyway to my left, easy enough to miss.

  Without Kohana to stop me, I sauntered down there.

  It was past time to sort out the mystery of this thoroughly innocuous thoroughfare.

  The first thing I heard was a loud, objectionable crow. It scared me half to death—an oxymoron if ever I’ve caroused with one. Stupid bird. Straight after, I made out laughter.

  I wondered when I’d banish the impulse to move surreptitiously, though my jitters in this case had to do with the fact I was malingering in a place Kohana had done her best to stop me from entering.

  So I stepped quietly, and hesitated next to a
sagging wooden wall.

  A girl and boy were sheltering further down, in the shadow of a great tree. It took me but a moment to identify Kohana. Her kimono was pristine and perfectly tailored, whereas the stripling with her had on an outfit that looked like a worn-in tradesman’s.

  I didn’t recognize him at all, a handsome teenage boy whom she plainly liked.

  He was entertaining her with a warm, familiar charm and wit. I liked him as well, straight away. One of those people you can place stock in, who aspires to better things and will—in probability—go places.

  For her part, Kohana played the ingénue, giggling in a joyful manner, and after a while I realized that, this time around, it wasn’t an act. The absurd behaviour was real.

  ‘So, we’re settled,’ the boy was saying as I edged closer. ‘I’ll be waiting for you tonight, and we’ll make our escape then.’ With that, he grinned.

  ‘But I have a booking in the evening.’

  ‘Afterward, then. Come snow, sleet, hail or high water—I’ll be here, don’t you worry. Oh, unless of course I have a booking too.’

  ‘You’d break your leg straight away, trying to wear our okobo!’

  I saw Kohana roll her eyes as she turned my way, watched as a big smile rose across her face and her cheeks glowed, and then she swung straight back to plant a kiss on the boy’s surprised mouth.

  ‘I’ll come,’ she said, straight after.

  In our time together, I had observed plenty of Kohana’s moods, had witnessed her mirth and merriment, but never before had I caught sight of such honest happiness. This, it seemed to me, was a close relative of rapture. I felt a knot tighten deep inside me.

  ‘I promise it,’ she sang.

  For a brief moment, the boy showed a more realistic sense of gumption. ‘Wait. Seriously. Are you sure this is what you want?’

  ‘Far more than just plain sure.’

  ‘You’ll be happy?’

  ‘We’ll be so happy.’

  The boy crowed at the clear, cloudless spring sky. Certainly, it was an adolescent carry-on—but, for the life of me, I couldn’t conceive of a single better way to react.

  ‘I’d say I was the king of the world, but right now I’m located on its bottom rung,’ the boy said. ‘Even so, I have plans, Kohana. We will be happy, I swear it. You inspire me. More than that—you trust and believe in me. For these things alone, I adore you far more than any pot of gold.’