by Carl Nixon
I can imagine how it must have been. The grenade would have landed on the green carpet between them. I like to think that there was a sudden sharp smell of urine as someone pissed their pants. At the fat man’s feet the moaning figure would have pulled off his balaclava as he managed to stand. He ran, tripping and falling. The two others turned and fled with him. From my window in number 15 I saw them go.
They were halfway across the lawn when the grenade exploded. It made a hollow thump like a single strike on a large skin drum. The windows of number 14 blew out, and glass and fragments of metal ricocheted off the walls and landed on the grass like lethal snow, kicking up a low cloud of dust from the dry ground.
When I picked myself up I saw the three running, stumbling, sprawling in their haste. One of them tripped on the edge of the concrete path, leaving a bloody mark from a nasty shrapnel wound in his shoulder, the blood spreading like a rapidly opening bloom. And as they ran a noise began in the units of Calbourne Courts. I still hear it in my dreams.
It echoes off the pink concrete walls and reverberates through the four rooms of each unit until it spills out into the dry courtyard where it collects and swells. It is the laughter of old people. It is loud. Louder perhaps than I can stand. The sound pushes the three running figures like a vengeful wave, jostles and prods them down Calbourne Drive until they are out of sight.
Perhaps it is my memory, perhaps the painkillers the nurse gives me in larger doses every day, but the details shift like the air over the hot tarseal of the car park where we waved goodbye. I seem to remember the fat man emerging from number 14, victorious, unscathed, having been protected by the thick block walls between the lounge and the bedroom where he took refuge. It may be that a party was given in his honour and that Mr Baxter played the accordion and Mrs Munro sang ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’ four times. I do think I remember something of the sort, although I cannot be sure. Perhaps that was another occasion, a ninetieth birthday which I am mixing up in my mind. Why do I think that it was at that same party that the fat man claimed Mrs Harwood of the summer frocks and the younger woman’s legs? Perhaps they really did depart to sail the sheltered waters of the Bay of Islands in his schooner. Perhaps they are there still.
I can no longer say with any certainty what is true. I do, however, have an image in my mind of a man walking towards me along Calbourne Drive. I can see him now, when I close my eyes. He is a fat man and uses a stick, and in his other hand is something like a cricket ball or a piece of fruit. This seems real but who can say? Who can be certain of anything these days? I am sure he remembers what truly happened better than I do. I will be sure to ask him when he finally arrives.
The Distant Man
ONE
the Jade Garden is an arrangement that he has drifted into with his father. On the first Monday of every month he drives into the centre of the city. It is only a short journey from the gallery where he works, ten minutes, never more than fifteen even in the worst extremes of weather or city traffic. He leaves his car in a parking building and takes the narrow lift with its faint smell of urine down to the street. From there five minutes’ leisurely walking will see him approaching the restaurant.
The exercise is pleasant after the inactivity of a morning spent sitting in his office. He savours the gentle working of his muscles, the easy swing of his arms, the undoing of cricks. Part of his route follows the curve of the river past the arched war memorial with its two stone lions, and in summer he walks along the neatly mown bank beneath the willow trees where the light is dappled. Of course he thinks of the impressionists but, more readily, of a favourite work by Evelyn Page and another by Bill Sutton from the late ’50s. If it is raining he keeps to the footpaths, carries an umbrella and listens to the percussion of the rain on the taut fabric. Regardless of the weather, he times his journey to arrive at the Jade Garden at 12.30 precisely.
His father, Jack, is always waiting at the top of the flight of steps that leads up to the main door. A tall, gaunt man of seventy-two, his slightly hunched stance is distinctive even from a distance, a question mark on the horizon. His father stands in the doorway, framed by red lacquered wood, glancing occasionally along the street towards the river. If there is a breeze, or the day is in any way cool, Jack wears a brown overcoat and faded tartan scarf. He has always been a predictable dresser. His thin hair, which he allows to grow too long, sits above his ears like tufts of raw cotton and moves in the breeze as he waits.
He finds it difficult to know exactly when to acknowledge his father. Too far away and he considers there to be an embarrassingly long wait until they meet. Too close and it looks as though he has been ignoring him. He compromises. He waits until he is just beyond the last plane tree pushing up through the footpath, raises a hand, smiles. His father habitually returns the gesture. As though they are playing a children’s game where one has to mirror the movements of the other.
He climbs the flight of concrete steps. They shake hands and go inside.
The Jade Garden was his suggestion. It has a certain ambience, a well-orchestrated tranquillity, he finds pleasing. The same hostess greets them every month, plastic-coated menus held stiffly up under her arm. She is Asian, young, slim, but with no trace of an accent. He has no difficulty understanding her polite enquiries after their health. He notes how her black hair is pulled back tightly from her forehead without a single hair out of place. If it is winter she takes their coats and relieves him of his umbrella, which she hangs on one of several hooks behind the reception desk before leading them along the red carpet laid out from the door, across the foyer and down the three steps into the restaurant proper.
The Jade Garden comprises a single large room divided into sections by low partitions. It is well heated, never cold even in July and August. The principal colours are gold and red, colours to which he has always been partial. He approves of the way the lighting is kept low and the polished leaves of the peace plants screen the tables one from another. Faint music plays, modern but inoffensive and blessedly devoid of lyrics. An occasional waft of incense, although admittedly a cliché, reaches the diners. On a Monday there are never more than half a dozen other patrons, mostly Asian, and only a few discreet staff.
Their regular table is near the back of the room by the window. On the first Monday of the month it is always available. The reserved sign was not something he requested. It appeared on their fourth visit. Only a small courtesy but nonetheless another reason why he continues to bring his father here.
Their table overlooks a compact courtyard where bamboo has been planted to hide the concrete-block wall in the rear. In the foreground there is a kidney-shaped pond. Four large carp, orange and black, circle slowly, brushing against one another as they turn in the small space. The largest fish has an injury or a deformity. He is not sure which. Its spine is curved at a point just above the tail, giving it a peculiar bent appearance. It swims with ease, however, and shows no signs of distress, circling continuously with the others.
The hostess serves them herself. She makes a show of handing them the menus before taking their drink orders (a glass of Riesling for him, beer for his father), and then retreats to give them time to look at the menu although they are familiar with the selection and have fallen into a pattern of ordering the same food every month. Chicken with cashews for him, pork and vegetables for his father. The rice, which comes in a separate dish, is soft and glutinous.
Over the course of the meal they make conversation. His father talks about current events, things he has read about in the newspaper or seen on the evening news. A disappointing second half in the last All Black test. An upturn in the Kiwi dollar. A spell of unseasonable frost which has burnt the spring bulbs.
He listens politely, drawing his father out with questions and observations of his own, although he finds current affairs and sport uninspiring topics and has no interest in gardening. His father speaks in a quiet voice as though there are people at the other tables who might overhear, cocked ears
behind the waxy leaves of the peace plants; as though the information he conveys is somehow sensitive. Jack raises the food to his mouth between topics. He has not mastered chopsticks, giving up on their second visit and opting instead for the fork the waiter never forgets to bring.
He cannot remember a time when conversations with his father did not deal with the practical, the concrete matters of day-to-day living. Their discussions are never heated or even particularly animated. His father is not a man of passions, he accepts this. Before Jack retired he was a builder. A practical man used to the company of other practical men. It was always his mother who filled the circling silence with her enthusiasms, her sudden exclamations of wonder and outrage, her gossip and trivia, her joie de vivre. Her death shifted the focus on to Jack, who often seems lost for words, dumbfounded by the simple act of conversation, left searching for topics and links until he inevitably retreats back to familiar, well-trodden ground.
He makes an effort to keep up his end of the conversation. He shares carefully chosen details of his job. He is the director of the Heaphy Gallery. It is a public art gallery, small by international standards but with a growing reputation. He believes that it is not entirely vanity to claim that the gallery’s recent successes have been largely due to his own influence. During his six years as director, the Heaphy has mounted no fewer than seven major exhibitions. A significant number for such a small institution so far off the beaten cultural track. In the last eighteen months alone he has organised a retrospective showing of the work of Ralph Hotere, Beyond the Black Light; also an exhibition of the self-portraits of Rita Angus. For the Hotere there were queues out into the street and a complimentary item appeared on the national news, for which he was interviewed against the white marble of the gallery steps.
Watching the news later he had appraised himself as one might appraise a stranger or an unfamiliar painting by a favourite artist. All things considered he was pleased. He saw a tall, well-dressed man in his late forties with a high forehead but not yet balding. With an air of considered experience rather than age. There were inviting lines in the corners of his eyes. He judged himself pleasant, open, neither disconcertingly handsome nor forgettably bland. He spoke slowly, in a well-modulated voice. His answers were to the point.
The exhibition had record attendance figures.
During the lunches with his father at the Jade Garden, however, he tries not to talk about his work too much. He is well aware that his father has no history of art appreciation, no context in which to place the work he does at the Heaphy. He deliberately steers the conversation towards less challenging matters. He talks about family.
He has a younger sister, Joan, who lives in Brisbane. There is a brother-in-law and three young nieces whom he has not seen in several years. Occasional e-mails sent to the gallery keep him updated. It is information that he stores up and passes on to his father. Jack, in his turn, shares any news he may have gleaned from Joan’s regular phone calls from Australia.
They also talk about his own son, Richard. He is divorced from Richard’s mother. They married young, then divorced quickly when both still in their twenties — something he no longer bothers to regret. Richard is living in Dunedin, is in his first year studying medicine at Otago University. By all accounts he is doing well, is on track for a successful career. His son is not distinguishing himself academically, but he is managing to pass his courses. Richard and he see each other a few times a year and, of course, they speak on the telephone.
He does not look forward to his lunches with his father, nor does he dread them. A month provides ample material for conversation. He is in the habit of storing ideas, pocketing them so that they can be brought out over the course of the meal, one at a time like souvenirs of a brief sojourn. The ritual of ordering and eating food is sufficiently distracting to fill any awkward silences that may appear.
Generally speaking he does not order any dessert although, depending on how much work he has to get back to, they may request a coffee. For a Chinese restaurant, he finds the coffee surprisingly good. But more often, having finished their meals, he announces that it is time for him to be getting back to the gallery. He has work to do. His father is understanding. They rise and walk back past empty tables to the reception desk.
He always insists on paying for the meal himself. The Jade Garden is very reasonable. Even with coffee, the bill never comes to more than thirty-five dollars. The hostess says goodbye to them and escorts them to the door, opening it gracefully for them to pass through.
Once outside, it is their habit to pause at the foot of the steps. They shake hands again and tell each other to take care. He confirms their meeting for the coming month and they part. He begins the walk back to his car, thankful for the opportunity to walk off his lunch.
The whole meeting takes up only an hour of his time. They have met this way for the five years since his mother died. It is an arrangement that he considers entirely satisfactory.
Until one day. It is the first Monday in October. When he arrives at the restaurant his father is not waiting for him outside. The sight of the empty doorway is so unexpected that for a moment he is flustered. Perhaps he has got the wrong time. The wrong day. But no. The mistake is not his. He stops and looks up and down the street. The day is blustery, the wind swirls, eddying between the tall buildings. Perhaps his father has simply retreated inside to avoid the wind.
Inside the restaurant, however, they have not seen his father. The hostess acts suitably concerned, crinkling the skin of her forehead beneath her straight hairline. She suggests that his father will arrive soon.
‘Yes. It is possible that he has missed his bus. I will wait.’
He sits at their usual table and is brought a complimentary cup of green tea from which steam rises into the room. He watches the carp circle. The bamboo shifts in the wind pushing down into the courtyard from above, corrugating the surface of the pond, making it opaque. As he watches, the goldfish appear to melt across the surface of the water like oily stains of orange and white and then regain their solid shapes before the next gust of wind.
Annoyingly he has left his cellphone in his office. After twenty minutes he asks if he can use the telephone and is directed to a small alcove next to the door of the kitchen. There is the smell of fried food as he dials, the sibilant hiss of vegetables landing in hot oil. The phone rings in his father’s house but is not picked up. He stands holding the receiver slightly away from his ear. He lets the phone ring for several minutes and then places the receiver back in its cradle.
As he walks back to his car he considers the possibility that his father may be ill. At his age some degree of ill health is inevitable. But he does not think he has any reason to be seriously concerned. Generally speaking, his father is a healthy man — excellent, in fact, considering his age. He is a regular walker, a man who swims at the local pool twice a week. He cannot actually recall the last time his father was ill. Certainly not a likely candidate for the sudden fall that cracks a hip or the scalded hand that will not heal — injuries which, he is aware, often mark the beginning of the end.
But he is at a loss to explain this unprecedented failure to meet at the Jade Garden. And why no call to the restaurant to clarify the situation? He cannot think of any circumstance in his father’s life that could be so pressing as to prevent him from keeping their monthly appointment.
His father’s house is in a suburb on the hills, in the older part of town where property prices still manage to edge up even in times of recession. The street where he lives angles upwards, climbing a narrow spur, giving the houses a view over the city and up the coast to the north. The old villas and bungalows are tiered one above the other, peering uneasily over each other’s shoulders like distant relatives in a group portrait.
The house is a single-storey villa painted white with a pale blue trim around the windows. It is a large house on a large section, a quarter acre in lawns and flower-beds. There is a veranda that wraps around two si
des. His father bought it cheaply in the early ’70s, before the property booms, and renovated it himself. Too much though now, he believes, for a man of his father’s age. But Jack is not willing to talk about selling the house, moving to somewhere smaller. On the two occasions when he has raised the subject, his father has shaken his head like an irritated old horse and refused to discuss it.
He parks his car on the sloping street and walks up a steep flight of grey concrete steps leading from the wrought-iron gate to the house. The steps give way to a path that curves around the front past rose-beds. There are phlox and lavender by the front door. The edge of the lawn is neatly clipped and a curled garden hose rests to one side of the path.
There is no doorbell so he knocks on the stained glass of the door. No answer. He tries the handle. It rattles loosely but is nevertheless locked. He walks around to the side of the house where geraniums and agapanthus line the path. There is a conservatory here that his father added on to the house himself shortly after he retired, but the sliding aluminium doors are locked. He knocks and puts his face close to the glass, making a visor of his hands. Inside there is a clutter of spider plants and flowering succulents, a cane chair with a high rounded back, a footstool. A book is splayed open on the floor. He knocks on the glass again. His father does not appear, tousled and apologetic.
He stands back and looks around, uncertain of what to do next. He has met a dead end, has exhausted his options.
Because of the slope of the hill he can see over the low hedge into the neighbour’s back garden. He watches as a woman emerges from the house next door. She walks in profile to him, carrying a green plastic hamper full of what he thinks are white sheets. In the middle of her lawn is a clothesline, round and spindled like a wind-stripped umbrella. She reaches it and puts the hamper down. For a moment she bends and disappears from his view. When she straightens up he sees that she has in her hand not a sheet but a cloth baby’s nappy bleached a pure, somehow startling, white.