And she doesn’t know how long she stands there. Long enough for it to become dark. However long that took. But still, the question persists. Why? Why so familiar? And she’s not sure she even wants to know, for there’s a sense of dread that comes with the question. That the answer to the question contains something menacing. Not something she can put her finger on, but there all the same; the sense of something out there she’d rather not remember, rolling in with the darkness. But what? And it is then that a child, five or six years old, emerges from the shadows, smiling, eyes wide, arms outstretched, with a handful of crushed butterflies, saying, ‘Here, Mum, for you’; then that she sees, and she doesn’t want to, her hand reach out in the night and slap the butterflies from the child’s hand; then that she watches the crushed wings fall to the ground, sees the smile vanish from the boy’s face and once again hears her voice, coming back through the years, its clarity undiminished, demanding to know of the child where the hell he has been, screaming that it is dark, couldn’t he see, telling him that he’s been gone for hours, and that she’s been worried sick all the time and why, why didn’t he realise … and it is then that she sees the frame of her 23-year-old self fall to its knees on the dirt footpath of that dusty frontier suburb and kiss the hand from which she had slapped butterflies, a mess of tears and anger and shame, and afraid to look in the boy’s eyes in case he sees the shame in hers.
And it is then that she knows exactly where she is. These frontier places that nobody really wants to live in — wherever they may be — have that in common, the look that tells you nobody really wants to be here. At least, that’s how it looks to Rita, who knows that look because she gazed upon it for years.
Yes, that’s where she is. Travel the world and your world travels with you. A bus drops you on the outskirts of a famous place. You step outside as darkness falls on the streets, and straight away everything is eerily familiar. But why? Then a child emerges from the shadows with a handful of crushed butterflies, and the dusty streets, the vacant paddocks, the thistle and the stick houses of that suburb she fought against with all her strength for all those years assemble around the child and she’s plunged back into it again.
How is it that the image of the five-year-old Michael comes back with such clarity? And how is it that the dirty, dusty street follows her here? And not just follows her, but pushes in and takes over. Reassembles all around her. How is it that Vic, with that silly don’t-want-to-be-here, never-wanted-to-be-here-in-the-first-place look on his face, has been striding along beside her or following just behind her all through the tour? With that walk that he took everywhere, as if striding into an imaginary wind, a winter walk in summer. The sort of walk you acquire in hard times and never lose. How is it that he’s still there? Just as he was. And how is it that the very place she fought against all those years ago is back again, all around her, right now?
Is there ever any end to it? Does it ever let go? Or does it keep you forever in its thrall? And the ‘you’ that existed then — the you that gave everything she had to that one glorious shot at living that never came up to what it could have been and was never going to — does that ‘you’, the you that gave and gave and gave until there was nothing left to give, ever step aside, its job done, and let another ‘you’ have a go?
All her life it’s been like this — this giving that becomes a point of pride. All her life has been like this — lived for other people, other people’s lives, as if her own were unimportant. Almost irrelevant. As if there were always some greater good to which she readily deferred. A giving that became, in the end, a way of living. No frivolous thoughts, no trams of one’s fancy back then. Just this greater good to which she readily deferred and which defined her life. Moulded her. To the point that she can stand here in a foreign street, on the other side of the world years afterwards, and it can still claim her.
But it’s while she’s turning all this over, the street now dark, the apartments now shadows and outlines, that it suddenly occurs to her that it’s she, Rita, who not so much allows it to claim her but who keeps dragging it all back. As if the very thing that she fought against all those years she really needed all along. Or grew to need to the point that she misses it. And now that it’s gone she misses her pain and calls to it, calls it back, at the same time that she is desperately trying to wave it goodbye.
It is, she imagines, a sort of tug-of-war. Like, and she frowns faintly in the darkness at the front of her hotel, one of those life-and-death struggles. For it is, this tug-of-war between then and now, a life-and-death tussle. And she knows she can’t go on calling it all back again and again and blaming it for being with her again and again. When it’s not it, it’s her. Let go, let go. Do a little something for yourself. For the ‘you’ who was denied all those years. And isn’t that what she was doing when she jumped upon the tram of her fancy?
For in all those years of giving, the idea of doing something for yourself, and for yourself only — no ‘us’ or ‘them’ — became forbidden. Even unthinkable. But now she must do a little something more for herself. Something more than just jumping on the trams of her fancy. She must let it all go and stop calling it back and, finally, become the ‘you’ that she never allowed a life, whoever that ‘you’ might be.
And it occurs to her that most of those on the bus are women, and most of them about Rita’s age, all possibly doing a little something for themselves — the lifetime of day-to-day struggle in all of them remaining unspoken. For whenever it is spoken it comes out all wrong and sounds sort of laughable: we sacrificed ourselves, we scraped by, we did this all for you, and so on. So the loss and the struggle remain unspoken. Of course. Is that not always the way? A life of giving and giving until there is nothing left to give never makes a fuss. The low, rumbling moan of a ship entering the port rolls in with the darkness. Once, twice, but Rita barely hears. Let our children know, she silently intones, shivering in the salty cold and speaking, if only to herself, that which is not spoken. Let them know, let them all know, that we tried. In our way. That we grew older for them, that they might not grow old. That we lived the wrong life for them, that they might live the right one. That we suffered for them, even before they were born, that they might not. And if we snapped and shouted and slapped their love away or brought damage down upon them, it was not for want of trying not to. For we tried, in our way. We tried. And if they should ever ask, let them know.
She looks about her, at the flats, factories and smoking chimneys not far off, still shivering in the salty cold. How do you tell those two artists in the town that? And what did they think of her? Not, she reminds herself, that it matters. She concludes, though, that they’d see her as being just like all the other little people they left behind when they left the country and never returned, except perhaps on visits — a bit, she sniffs, like catching up with your mother on Sundays. Yes, they’d see her the same way they see all the others. Square little people in their square little houses, square lawns and square lives. Little people who live and die and never really live at all, with their silly phrases, what do they call them? … homilies … like ‘doing a little something for yourself’, that pass for life’s acquired wisdom. Not people but types. The types that they make jokes about on television, or put in books or on the stage, the types that everybody laughs at. Or that become paintings put up on the walls of public galleries so that everyone can come along and gawk. And it’s not you; it’s the way they saw you. And that’s just it. Once they’ve pinned you to the wall and caught you the way they wanted you to be caught — once you’re there and helpless and pinned up on the wall the way they saw you — that is what you become. It’s a sort of theft. They steal your life, and all our lives, these people. They’re always stealing you, taking what you were and turning you into something else — painting pictures of mad old women living in tents on the edge of the world who were never mad at all. Not mad, just having a shot at living. At getting something out of life while it’s still there to be got. Bu
t they’re always stealing you, and once you’ve been stolen, that’s what you become. That’s how everybody eventually comes to see you: a mad old woman in a tent, an annoying intruder at a café table, a busload of sheep going baaa, baaa at the passing towns, and a silly housewife who comes all the way to the Tuscan hills and remembers them only for the hanging baskets and completely misses the majesty of the Gates of Paradise. Only, she didn’t.
But when they pin you up on a wall or put you on a stage with a tea-pot and some flying ducks in the background, the possibility that there just might be a bit more to it all than that will be washed away by the laughter. And before long you’re laughing too. Not that there’s anything wrong with laughing at yourself — but in laughing along, you’re agreeing with them just a bit. Aren’t you? Saying, yes, that’s me and that’s them — when, all the time there’s more to you and more to them than that. And when you laugh at yourself the way they see you, you’re also laughing away those other parts of you that never get into the picture, because all anybody can see is the you up there on the stage with the flying ducks.
Yes, that’s how the two artists saw her. One of those quaint little people from the land of lounge-room feature walls, shadow boxes and ornamental boomerangs, and no hint of her struggle against that dirty, dusty street where dogs howled like something out of the Middle Ages, and no sense of the struggle to create something as simple as a white house with French windows and long curtains in the midst of it all — a house, white, and lighting up well in the night, shining like a touch of civilisation (because the toff’s not the only one who knows about that). And no hint of being hounded by the very thing you struggled against all through those desperate years when you lived the wrong life so that your children might not, nor of the emptiness that follows when everybody’s gone and the house is deserted. Nor of the question, what now? No hint of any of that at all, just a silly housewife on a stage with her tea-pot and her flying ducks on the wall behind her and everybody laughing.
When, all the time, there was a life inside that laughing-stock figure — and a thousand more lives inside her just waiting to be lived. And Rita knows, standing on the now dark footpath of this suburban edge of Venice, that it’s time to start living one of those thousand lives. Step out of the painting, step off the stage, and live one or two of those thousand lives that exist out there beyond the frame and outside the walls of the theatre itself. Time to step free of the shadows of that place that she called home and struggled against and that follows her wherever she goes, and which she summons up without thinking. Like a sickness she can’t shake because she doesn’t want to. Time to say goodbye to it all. For, as much as she struggled against it, she held onto it. All those years. Time to let go. Time to let be.
She’s shivering and can smell the sea out there, towards the end of the street. And beyond the red-and-white smoking chimneys, she can see a cruise ship, lit up in the night, coming in to dock. And the blinking lights that guide it in. And as she’s staring at the spectacle of the cruise ship and the lights and smelling the sea out there, a child suddenly emerges from the shadows, eyes wide, arm outstretched, with a handful of crushed butterflies, saying, ‘Here, Mum, for you.’ Time to let go … Let go … And maybe, she tells herself, just maybe, one day when she finally has, when she has let go for long enough, the child’s palm will open out, the butterflies will take flight, and the air will be alive with a thousand fluttering wings.
At the beginning of her trip time moved slowly, everything was new and had to be lingered over; a shop window here, a famous monument that she had only ever seen in a film or photographs there. Now, a two-day stay in Venice done, time has begun to speed up: the days are shorter, the moments have lost that something that made everything special. One city gives way to another — Vienna, Zurich and now Paris. Except this is not the Paris of her imagination — of story-books and pictures. They’re out in the sticks again where the bus left them, and a number of the party are demanding their money back. Some are shouting at the tour guide; somebody is crying. And Rita can’t help but think that these members of the tour are like little children, who are just over-tired and need an afternoon sleep. They’ve been like this for days now. And, Rita has noticed, it doesn’t take much to set them off — like little children, tired and ready for home.
She exchanges glances with Nellie on the other side of the hotel foyer. She’s never had much to do with these members of the party, kept her distance. Just as well. And knowing that there is more to them than this, she, nonetheless, offers a silent baaa to the absent Michael and one more silent baaa again. It’s almost funny. Like the end of a party that’s gone on too long. They’re tired and ready for home.
This is how these things end. In a hotel foyer that could be anywhere, but which just happens to be in Paris, although you wouldn’t know it because they’re out in the suburbs that could be any city’s suburbs, with a giant freeway running out to the airport beside their hotel. Suitcases, coats and shopping bags are all over the foyer and against the walls. And there’s shouting and tears before bed-time. It’s almost funny.
And then, when the shouting dies down and the tears subside and the protestors have been given their rooms, the tour guide joins Rita and sits beside her, and lights up a cigarette. ‘Who’d do this?’ she says, expelling a cloud of smoke with the question. And Rita smiles, for, as well as Nellie, she has come to know the tour guide a little. And so she smiles when the guide poses the question to her, but in a tone that suggests it’s for anybody else who wants to hear. But Rita is no sooner smiling than she’s contemplating the idea. Then dismissing it, then contemplating it again. The idea, never having entered her head until the tour guide blew the question out into the hotel foyer along with her cigarette smoke. There are, the tour guide adds, always five or six like them. You get used to them. Besides, we’ve had some fun, haven’t we? Then she takes another drag on her cigarette. She’s younger than Rita, but not by much. She worked in a bank before she decided there was more to life than standing at a counter all day saying, ‘Next, please.’ And, if you weren’t careful, you could spend all your days like that. So she took a plunge, and it’s got its moments, like the cry-babies who wanted their money back, but it takes you out into the world beyond the counter.
And with the word ‘plunge’, Rita is suddenly seeing that young woman diving into the icy waters of the bay. Once again hearing the splash as she plunged into the sea. And, once again, imagining that what she was witnessing was the splash of life. Like those moments when an animal suddenly has to run. And keep running. All life, no thought. Until something in the animal has run its course. Sometimes you have to plunge if you want to live. And, once again, she’s contemplating the tour guide’s question.
During the last days of the tour, in between climbing the Eiffel Tower and riding a tourist boat down the Seine, Rita has more time to talk to the tour guide. Time to ask all the questions she imagines she needs to ask. And on the very last day the guide gives Rita her card and her number. And it is agreed they will talk more. She also tells Rita that, of course, she could do it. She’s organised herself for most of the tour, hasn’t she? Why not the others? And it’s not so bad, it’s just that there are always five or six cry-babies.
And on that last night, alone in her room, vaguely watching French television after a dinner at a ‘typical’ French restaurant, Rita has time to look back over the trip and recognise that they have been twenty-one of the kinds of days that aren’t the usual ones. Each day with a story, even those that sped by and didn’t seem all that special were: it’s just that she didn’t notice the special things at the time — a bit like life. And she realises, with that thought, that along the way she has gathered traveller’s tales, after all. And she knows already that Michael will particularly enjoy the tale of those last days — the tears before bed-time and those over-tired little children who were missing their sleep. As well as Nellie, who gazed upon the flowers of Provence with the eye of a van Gogh.
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She breathes them in, these last hours of the tour. And as much as she pictures herself returning to that life of quiet suburban streets and trams and standing at a counter of the department store all day asking if anybody needs help, something has happened to change the picture. Nothing grand, but something, all the same. A modest picture of a modest life modestly shifts. Nothing grand, but a shift all the same. And the Rita who always gave, who defined herself in a lifetime of giving, and who denied any number of those thousand other lives that we lose in living, feels that shift, as modest as it may be, and for the first time since leaving home, the inevitability of returning to her job when she returns to Melbourne is not so inevitable. She steers her thoughts towards home, remembering those ships that she spent all day watching, coming into the bay from out there on the other side of the horizon before going back again. And the image of Rita, sitting on her bench at the beach, observing it all, comes back with the memory: framed, like a painting. A modest picture of a modest life shifts, and in the corner of that picture, a young woman plunges into the icy waters of the bay and her splash carries to the shore and beyond and echoes around the room in which Rita now sits, taking in the last hours of the tour.
10. Art II
Two men sit at a restaurant table in the town square. Above them, in the green hills that surround them, a bus winds down a narrow road that leads into the town. The sun is low, the sky glows orange and yellow, and the shadows are long across the wide, open square. Those who live in the town and those who are visiting wander along the colonnades that border the square looking for a place to stop and eat. The green hills turn to ochre, a bus winds down a narrow road, two men sit at a table.
Art and Sam have talked for more than an hour, mostly about old times — the people they knew and that city that they couldn’t wait to be shot of. And, during that time, the sun has slipped behind one of the hills above the town, the sky has turned purple and yellow, and the bus that was winding down through the hills has deposited its passengers and their luggage at the hotel opposite them in the square.
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