Ricochet

by Robyn Neilson

  When, in that house of horrors you called home we were all accosted by your chaos, we caught a nasty whiff of what it was like to be inside your head. A foul and festering whiff. We were to discover that as compensation for love, you had surrounded yourself with a fortress of stuff. And that you had made certain that no one could ever reach your doorstep. Or enter your ensnared house. It was impossible to find a place to set foot. The stench of your soiled bed, the bullet holes in the wall opposite, which housed once the bed-head of your parents and now if those bullets had kept going, they would have blast holes into the living room of your sister Pauline, straight across the street. It was brutal to find your disconnected plumbing and electricity and the glaring absence of comfort; that you had lived this way for months, as if you were determined to disgust yourself with yourself. Isn’t that a biblical verse?

  Instead of just four pairs of work gloves, we found 110 pairs. And twelve chainsaws, forty cordless drills, twenty pairs of new steel-capped boots, fifteen industrial vacuum cleaners, 283 pots of paint, thousands of nuts, bolts, nails and screws. The list is infinite. In fact, seven years later, your family has still not succeeded in completing an exact inventory.

  Outside, your backyard was a tip. Buried under tons of stone, scrap metal, timber, centuries-old oak beams, terracotta pipes in all configurations, roofing, dismounted antique Citroëns, gravestones, ancient Bournes, and your waylaid passion; wrought iron gates, statues and fountains. All hand-forged. Just like your father had made, when you and little Loup would watch the magic of the red-hot metal as it grew, engorged and alive, your father by turns violently hitting and carefully turning. Finally drowning the metal in cold water. Immortalising its form.

  Croire dur comme fer.

  Mur de pierre and a girl from Drybore Road.

  But within the tip, remnants of beauty persist. I see on the old wooden shed a faded mural: there are bold birds (remarkably, like our king parrots of Gippsland), and a grizzly bear (bizarrely, like my Yukon memories).

  ‘I painted those’, says Loup with pride, ‘when I was nine or ten. I’d never even seen a bird like that, or a bear.’

  The other redeeming feature is a wall. A handsome stonewall built by Pascal before he disconnected the sewerage and power and stopped sleeping. Built with passion for his native Grès desVosges, unique pink-grey sandstone from Alsace. Problem is, this wall was created by Pascal’s calloused hands upon a slither of land donated by the neighbour. A gentleman’s agreement scrawled upon a piece of scrappy notepaper. An extra metre of land along the fence-line so as Madame Zorn could access her garage. Her scraggly signature agrees that if requested in the future, she would return the land to the neighbour.

  Problem is, the neighbour who has no shame, came the very afternoon of the funeral, having absented himself from the service, simpering to Odette that ‘Pascal was like a son to him’, and ‘would the family consider selling their home, otherwise he might have to reconsider the loan of the land and the status of Pascal’s wall.’ Which he had condoned, even lauded the elaborate wrought iron inserts and the value it added to his own land, which otherwise was littered with rusted skeletons of every sort of iron wreckage you could imagine. This affront was all Odette needed to declare war for the wall. Not Berlin. Not Jericho. Nevertheless a wall that contains the blood sweat and tears of their brother. So that eight years later they are still paying a lawyer to save the one remaining piece of Pascal they can see and touch.

  One afternoon, whilst Loup and I are quietly wading through Pascal’s hoard, we find his collection of souvenirs from Australia. I come across the photographic address book my parents had given him. In his tight hand, were the addresses and phone numbers of his new Aussie family, and his own family in France. There were no other entries, apart from one ‘Nicole’. Nicole Manning, who lived in Dubbo, and whom we assumed you had befriended Pascal, on your adventure to Alice and the Outback. When I hand your little book to Loup, he inhales sharply, one shoulder slumping. His eyebrows make that funny twitch they make… you know, when he’s unreachable. Later, your brother quietly returned the book to me, along with a well worn envelope full of your miniscule handwritten notes, scribbled on the back of bus tickets to Coober Pedy, a receipt from R. M. Williams, a tram ticket from Melbourne, postcards from Cape Bridgewater and Uluru that you had written and posted back to yourself, and your plaited leather wrist band, which you wore everywhere. Its edges are rounded and soft and still hold your smell. It occurs to me to ask why you chose to take it off, that night before you went to the bench, but I keep the question to myself.

  ‘Here Freya, you can take care of these… And look… the card you wrote to Pascal, and… his notes for our wedding….’

  ‘Wasn’t that the most amazing speech? He must have spent hours on getting the English right…it was more like a poem…’

  ‘Ca c’est sûr… you know my brother was terrified of sounding stupid.’

  ‘The irony is, he was the most eloquent of anyone… Um…chéri… do you think we should contact this Nicole? Do you think she and Pascal were lovers?’

  ‘Et ban…c’est possible, but I don’t reckon… you know, Pascal never had a proper girlfriend.’

  ‘Yes, but he might have had in Australia where he felt … I dunno… free? God I hope they did get together, even for a night…. to have some good memories.’

  ‘Mmm. Maybe she was hot, and I should contact her… Toute de suite! Without delay!’

  Returns Loup the clown.

  Pascal, I believe that you and Nicole were lovers under a desert sky…. drawn together in those listless hours in the tour bus, gazing out at red sand and scraggly unconvincing trees, wincing as the sun forced freakish shadows out of the Devils Marbles. And as you were thrown together into the rush of cold at Leliyn Falls, escaping the annoying crowd, climbing higher and higher, until you found your own private Eden, you stripped off, and jumped into crystal water and I imagine that not for the first time, your eyes appreciated Nicole’s bounty, and that you retreated shyly, thankful that the water was icy, disguising your desire.

  Finally late that night, after a few vodkas at Daly Waters, and armed with her schoolgirl French, Nicole made sure that your swags were together, private. She also had not failed to notice your attributes, Pascal. Your corporeal temple, still intact. But what about the rest, the interior that made up you…

  What went wrong, Pascal?

  Could you no longer remember when you returned to your stifle, the pulsing of the earth beneath you, or the pristine water? No longer buoyed by the smells of your own mingling flesh in that night and by the breath of the ancients across your skin? Did it go like this Pascal? That after you had let down your guard, and joined your new friend in her swag, you awoke after a rare unbroken sleep, in which you dreamed in the arms of a Nicole-shaped Morphée, to find a note lying under your head torch.

  ‘Merci beaucoup Pascal, pour ton beauté.

  I don’t want to leave. But I will never forget you. Stay in touch…. write to me from France! Who knows, maybe I could visit?

  Take care of yourself, bon voyage,

  Love, Nicole

  Ps my address: Nicole Manning,

  RMB 507 Drybore Rd,

  Dubbo 2830 NSW Australia.’

  And so it came to pass Pascal, that after keeping safe her address for six years, in the hope that perhaps Loup or your sisters might write to Nicole, I reluctantly burn it in our potbelly on the last cold night of spring. Forgive me if I have offended you Pascal. I never knew what was the appropriate behaviour. I wanted to contact Nicole. But not without Loup’s blessing. I guess you cannot blame your siblings: wanting to close the chapter, to not torture themselves with possibilities, romantic or otherwise. Which would only hurt them more.

  Rue Saint Sébastien, Marseille, March 2009.

  “For a while she was quietly resigned to the prospect that nothing would change, but she did not know what the consequences would be, or what form they would take.”

&
nbsp; Colm Toibin, Brooklyn.

  Before I’d even heard of the river l’Ill or Route de là Wantzenau, or what portent they might hold, there were rudimentary tasks to be completed closer to home. Setting the alarm for 4.45 a.m. to line up on a drab pavement on a chilly morning in Marseille holds not quite the promise of lining up for a Pearl Jam concert. But this is what I must do if I am to be permitted residence in France. One week into being Madame Zorn, we visit the Préfecture, and thereafter, frequently. Enchantment is nowhere to be found. Turns out the Préfecture are grown up versions of the head prefect at school: pontificating and untouchable.

  Although I construe something else in the long hair of the men; their un-ironed shirts loping out of their G Star-ripped-jeans, the toes of their brown suede shoes scuffed, and the rounder faces of the women who favour Campers or Doc Martins over the stilettoes of Parisiennes; their figures also more pragmatic than their anorexic cousins. I imagine them, like myself, as listeners of Nagui and La Bande Originale. I imagine them to be jaded public servants; having once completed their political degrees, now their soft humanist and socialist ideals calcifying against the faces of too many supplicants. Too many people wanting to live in this land of milk and honey and frommage and olives and vin; too many people wanting access to the best free health, education, and housing system in the world. Well, that’s how Loup sees it.

  Cummon, let me in! Christ, the only reason I came here is to be with my French husband. I don’t want any of your social help, generous as it is. Loup, the landscape and architecture are all that interest me. And of course, this turns out to be my husband’s major gripe, that I do not persist in getting assistance: Loup insists his taxes go towards others taking unjust advantage. Gradually I see he has a point. Which is probably why guilt didn’t overcome me, those free rides on the SNCF, or for the sinful pleasure of dipping in the EDF canal.

  The first three years of wanting to live as Loup’s wife, asking only for the liberty to return to and from Australia, are marred by a choked bureaucracy, unable to keep up with the demand; one of the sobering lessons I learned about taking liberty for granted. Wearied by a diaspora of people throwing themselves at France’s mercy, the Préfecture’s response was perfunctory and non-negotiable. Loup declared it would have been easier if I had come from a French colonised Department, North Africa, or the European Union. The ‘down-under cringe’ sticking to me like the mud in the Yarra: this isn’t quite the entry credential I need. I have met two French people on two separate occasions that were keen to comment on the politics of my country. Theirs seemed to be the general view: that Australians are a motley race of galèrians who had murdered all their indigenous predecessors. And now Marine Le Pen of the far right was brandishing our ‘Stop the Boats’ policy as heroic. I had no leg to stand on.

  The representatives of mother France are strangely bewildered when I assert again that, ‘Si, I do love this land, but I don’t want it to be my new forever home, and that, ‘Oui, I would like to return to visit my dying father and pregnant daughter and baby grandchild’. And ‘Bien sûr, I love my work as a fire-tower observer and waitress back home’. Yes, I adore being ‘une serveuse’.

  This affronts them. They can improve me. Be the cajoling parent. They believe in accelerating my evolution, putting my two degrees in Fine Arts to better use. As an ‘Animatrice’, keeping bored kids entertained at holiday camps whilst their apparently beleaguered parents go on holidays, without them. A position I refuse. Instead off my own bat, I clean for elderly people, without the bonuses of the government. And again the Préfecture detains me against my will.

  ‘Non, vous ne pouvez pas voyager, Madame’.

  Égalité, Fraternité, Liberté et…Laïcité

  His wrist is ironbark brown against the starch of his cuff; his hand disappears around the waist of his companion. Pulling her in close to him, protective against the crowd surging and the dawn cold. Under his other arm, he holds close a worn leather satchel. Their protection against everything, the conduit they trust for all of their future. From where I stand on their heels, I catch a waft of their elegant scent… I imagine them migrating here from Nigeria to further their studies. Breathing down their white collars, his topped with organized brown curls, hers with a chignon of gleaming black. I sense the tremble in the woman’s gold hoops dangling from her earlobes as they cast for the feeble light.

  Behind me, Loup prods. I teeter forward on my tiptoes; I don’t want to upset the poise of the young couple.

  ‘Easy, I’m not a cow!’ I would feel sorry for the cattle back home, when squeezed into the chute, they wait to be branded; pushing and shoving and kicking up the race. Shitting with the indignity.

  ‘Stop prodding me!’

  ‘Chérie, if I don’t push you ahead, you’ll lose your place, and all these other people will walk all over you. That’s the first thing you need to learn about this country. You have to push and shove and speak up for yourself! I know it’s not what you’re used to; you can’t just be polite here. Or you’ll never get your Carte de Séjour!’

  I was brought up with ‘want’ being sifted through Protestant restraint; never articulating what it was I wanted, and never quite knowing what that was. So that in my relationships with men this imploded into guilt, then into resentment at my perceived lack of entitlement. In my relationship with my new country, never feeling entitled took on surprising proportions. I would discover that remaining a tourist was a lot easier, and simply much nicer.

  But I am here today to apply to be Madame Zorn, épouse of Jean-Loup, and therefore it is only natural that France would ask certain things of me.

  ‘Why am I the only white person here?’ I whisper.

  ‘Because most of these people are from old French colonies, the Departments, North Africa, Algeria, the Ivory Coast. Even the Pacific, the Caribbean…you know we have French-speaking people everywhere.’

  ‘Ah yeah, that old line about you being the only colonisers that the locals loved!’

  ‘Well baby, here’s the proof…. they’re all here because they WANT to live in France, the motherland… because we offer them Égalité, Fraternité, Liberté AND Laïcité…!’

  ‘Are you being sarcastic again?’

  ‘Chérie, just shut up and keep inching forward…. Or do you want to set the alarm for 4.30 again tomorrow morning?’

  I shudder and wish that Loup would hold me close rather than prod me.

  I admire, probably stare, at the multi-generation family groups… tribes of flowing gowns and black burqas and elaborate colourful turbans and long grey beards and tight black ringlets and kohl-rimmed eyes and cocoa babies… so many babies, patiently passed from one family member to another, whilst heavily pregnant mothers leave their spot in the queue, and go somewhere, God knows where, to relieve themselves. Much later, unable to hold on, I too rush for the toilets, only to find that these are filthy, damp porta-loos outside, with no paper and the stench you might expect as if we actually all were at a rock concert.

  I admire the resilience of the supplicants. When we had arrived at 6.15 a.m. families already queued. Bleary and cold, they huddle beside the dubious shelter of three enormous skip bins, full of broken-down boxes. ‘Putain’ Loup had cursed, ‘I told you we should have gotten up earlier…. we’d better get seen today!’

  An hour later, and the crowd have tripled; people just keep coming. The lines continue all down the street, and kids come and go across the narrow road playing in the gutter; until half an hour later, sparkling Audis and Bmw’s arrive, dropping off their precious bundles at the École Maternelle opposite. Then came the high school students, in their skinny jeans and fur-rimmed hoodies, cigarettes stuck to exaggerated rouge-lips. Both little kids and older, disappeared behind enormous carved timber doors. Their exclusivity protected from the motely mass in the trottoir gutter, by looming stone walls, behind which was a world that most of us in the queue would never see. Unless we became the school cleaner.

  Loup’s hand still i
n the small of my back, I realise, is his sign of affection. Loup wasn’t one for an outward display of feelings. Shoving his hands in his pockets was Loup’s response to the cliché of French couples holding hands. This was another new and curious thing, to see French couples of all ages, holding hands whenever they walked in the street. But not Loup. A year and a half later on our winter walks along the deserted, blustery boardwalk at La Ciotat, Loup did hold my hand. My best memory of that quixotic place.

  Drip, drip, drip. Icy wet down the back of my neck.

  ‘Merde, did you think to bring your umbrella?’

  ‘Bien sûr, here, hold my bag open’.

  I rummage around in my huge sac, the perfect French term for a ladies’ handbag; the sack for every predicament. But in whose caverns I can never bloody find anything. While we huddle closer under the umbrella, the man in front holds the satchel as cover over the chignon… who said gallantry was dead? I worry for the pregnant mother with her little girl next to us, so I offer her our umbrella. Others rush to grab the cardboard out of the bins; no one would think of usurping their spots. Instantly, our group is transformed into a public art installation; suspended layers of odd shaped cardboard, plywood, newspapers, polystyrene, anything out of the skip to protect us from the rain and hail.