The Fragments

by Toni Jordan

  ‘I don’t think,’ Caddie stammers. ‘I’m not sure I’m the right person.’

  ‘I’m quite sure. Someone who is definitely the wrong person—your professor, for instance—wouldn’t question it. It seems to me you’ll be the perfect person.’

  Caddie hugs the parcel to her chest with one hand. Her other hand finds Jamie’s.

  They hear footsteps behind them. The security guard: there’s a few minutes left before the exhibition leaves Brisbane for good.

  ‘Would you like some privacy?’ Jamie says.

  The woman looks up at Inga, on the wall. ‘Not necessary. I have no idea why I keep coming back. It’s not like I’m ever going to forget what she looks like.’

  Outside, shadows are growing long and the air is beginning to cool. The traffic, the fountain, the horn of a ferry. The woman leaves Caddie and Jamie, and she walks towards the smaller photo on the wall. Inga in a restaurant, flanked by uniformed staff. She stands close, tilts her head back.

  ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ the woman says. ‘Isn’t she the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?’

  32

  New York City, 1939

  She won’t fit, that’s her conviction. The bars are tight and close and the metal is now growing hotter. She’s jammed at the widest point of her chest. She changes her angle, hopes she can slide between the bars like a slippery fish. She knows they won’t be able to support her for much longer. The bars are even hotter.

  It reminds her of when she was a child and she watched a goat being born back in the village in Austria. She was in tears, pulling on her mother’s arm but her mother only laughed and then—how amazed she was at the sudden rush of it. The inevitability of gravity, and the small complete beast standing up almost immediately, surer on his feet even as she watched.

  Something gives. She falls the few feet to the top crate, using her arms to cushion her, and then overbalances and tumbles down Fischer’s makeshift ladder. She lands on dirty snow and earth. She’s winded but not hurt—or at least she can’t feel any injuries. It’s quiet out here, like another world. The noise and panic inside the warehouse are years away. She is reborn. She rises, fills her lungs with air. To blink, for salty liquid to clear the smoke from her eyes. In an instant, she turns around to the window.

  It is an instant, surely. It can’t have been more.

  She climbs the crates again, her fingertips tearing on the splintered timber, until she reaches the top and plunges her hand back through the bars. The air inside is hotter than before. Another memory comes unbidden—again when she was small, opening their old pot-bellied wood heater and putting her hand inside only to be pulled back by her father and yelled at until she sobbed. There is no one to pull her back now. She stretches further. An iron bar—steaming, livid—sears the skin between her shoulder joint and breast. She can feel her blouse melting into the skin and still she stretches.

  Her fingers touch nothing.

  She reaches further, presses harder. Waves her arm as high and as low as she can reach. From side to side. Spreads her fingers until she can feel the webbing close to splitting, fighting every instinct that tells her to whisk her arm away. The smoke is thicker than before. She sees nothing. She feels nothing solid. She screams now. She screams Rachel’s name, she screams to God, she screams for Charles.

  The skin on her hands, she can feel it pucker. She touches nothing but oven air. The feeling she is praying for, the touch of skin and bones, of a hand she knows so well—it isn’t there. She stretches. She presses. She screams.

  *

  Very soon after that, she hears the sirens. She stays at the window until the fire engine comes, until the hoses unfurl, then she climbs down on her hands and knees. She crosses the road to a quiet, sodden alley and lays her arm in the grubby mud because the pain has built brick by brick to become a monstrous heavy thing. The sky is clear now. The smoke has blown somewhere else, yet there’s no wind. She can’t recall ever seeing so many stars.

  For a while, she lies on her back on the pavement in that alley on the other side of the quiet street, looking at the dark blue sky that pulses with the throb of her arm. She hears three loud explosions, and she thinks of all her words, tens of thousands of them, freed from the pages and flying through the sky in wild arcs. Her heart beats of its own accord, her chest moves up and moves down. It seems to her that the thrum of the city is quiet for the first time since she moved here and she longs to rest on fresh earth that still remembers people and animals living and breathing atop it. She wants to feel damp soil close around her and press her nose against it like a dog.

  She thinks of the time she and Rachel first met, the way Rachel crossed the room to give her a warning.

  Later she finds a stinking blanket in that alley across the street and huddles beneath it in a doorway to watch because she cannot leave, not yet.

  Things go wrong just after the second engine arrives. Part of the roof of the warehouse collapses. A tall brick wall falls with an almighty crash. There are injuries. Yelling, running. She watches, impassive, as though all this happened years ago. An ambulance comes and leaves with two injured firemen. Another ambulance comes and does not leave. The driver and his colleague wait, squatting on the gutter, smoking and chatting with their greatcoats wrapped tight around them. There will be no siren tonight. They’ve been told already that there is no hurry.

  The night passes. She stays. The pain in her arm and in her hands ebbs and flows. It keeps her awake and remembering.

  She stays in that alley until early the next day when two bodies are brought out in long sacks, one fireman at each end, and loaded into the ambulance. She stays as they are driven away and although she wants to follow them, she knows this is ludicrous and she must let them go. They have each other, after all. She pulls the blanket tighter with her unfeeling hands and begins to walk. Her hands are bloody and her face is ash. Rachel’s tenement is the closer, and as she staggers through the streets toward it she looks like a tramp, another victim of the last few years. She thinks of water: drinking rivers of it; the feel of her hair, floating like kelp.

  A block from Rachel’s, she hears the newsboy shouting to the world that the famous author Inga Karlson is dead. He is close to crying as he calls it out, and she watches for a good half-hour as people hand him a coin and take a paper and then sob on the shoulders of strangers. A woman drops the paper in the street and Inga kneels down to read it where it lies. She is dead and Charles is dead, she reads. It is here, printed in black ink. She sits in the gutter, stunned, while close by the newsboy continues to call.

  Two bodies, the boy cries.

  Two bodies. She is dead. Charles is dead. Dear Charles, kind and brave Charles. In the swirl in her head she thinks of the scars that will form on her hand and arm: that they will be a kind of armour. She is immortal now. There is nothing more to fear. She is dead. The worst has happened, yet here she is.

  She is free now, from everything. The world opens up before her. She has cash, she has a lot of cash and a way to get more. She has nothing left to lose. She will change her name and she will change her face—with money and courage and a little ingenuity, anything is possible. And Fischer will pay, and soon. She will cushion his family as best she can, but he will not draw one more breath than she can help. She will look him in the eyes and the last thing he will hear in this life will be Rachel’s name. Wherever I go, I will make sure that people hear the name Rachel.

  Two bodies found, the newsboy cries.

  Rachel likes small things, humble things. She has feeling for people, and a kindness. She has a way of finding joy and for a short time, she gave that joy to Inga but Inga’s life is over now. And her heart is light, so light that she starts to laugh right there on her knees on the sidewalk, as people detour around her. She wants to grab them by the ankles and tell them that Rachel is alive and everything will be well. Two bodies, and she is dead and Charles is dead and that must mean that Rachel, her beautiful Rachel, is alive. Rachel is
alive, and the thought fills her with such joy.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In researching this book, many people were kind enough to share their memories of 1980s Brisbane. Thanks especially to Monika Sudull. Robert Stanley-Turner pedalled around South Brisbane at short notice, taking photos when my memory failed. Thank you also to the staff at the Queensland Art Gallery, especially Cathy Premble-Smith, for their invaluable help. Any errors, of course, remain my own.

  Paddy O’Reilly and Merle Thornton were insightful and generous first readers—thank you Paddy and Merle. Jane Novak is not only a wonderful agent but one of the best people I know. Emma Schwarcz lent me her keen eye and at Text Publishing, Michael Heyward remains an inspiration. I’m very lucky to work with him. Most importantly of all, all my love and thanks thanks thanks to Mandy Brett, who makes everything possible and whose work on this novel was unparalleled. (And thanks to John, for lending me his Sunday-night chef.)

  An early draft of this manuscript was awarded a Varuna Fellowship. I’m grateful for time spent in quiet contemplation in Eleanor’s beautiful home, and for the many kindnesses and good advice of Gabrielle Carey, Linda Jaivin, Judith Rossell and Dave Allan-Petale.

  ALSO BY TONI JORDAN

  Addition

  Fall Girl

  Nine Days

  Our Tiny, Useless Hearts

  Toni Jordan’s previous book, Our Tiny, Useless Hearts, was shortlisted for the 2017 Voss Literary Prize and longlisted for the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award. Nine Days won the Indie Award for fiction in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Colin Roderick Award and the ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year. Her debut novel, Addition, was shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferis Award and longlisted for the Miles Franklin in 2009, and has been published in sixteen countries. Toni lives in Melbourne.

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  @tonileejordana

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  Copyright © 2018 by Toni Jordan

  The moral right of Toni Jordan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published in 2018 by The Text Publishing Company

  Book design by Imogen Stubbs

  Typeset in Granjon 13/18 by J & M Typesetting

  ISBN: 9781925773132 (paperback)

  ISBN: 9781925774047 (ebook)

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia