‘Don’t be so disappointed with your father. Give him a chance to make up with you.’
‘Yeah, Mr Smoke.’ Ricky’s eyes smiled into his. ‘I hope she does.’
Ricky put his arms around Charlie and gave him a hug.
Good thing was, the boy would never know just how much effort it had taken Charlie to get here, when all he really wanted was to keep himself flat for days on end and sleep in his bed. Still, there were things a young son needed to hear—plus of course there was Diego’s funeral to go to.
Charlie rested in the bench seat and watched the boy pick up his bag. Then Ricky followed the trail into his school, first at a walk, then a nice run.
You bury a king, you do it right.
Charlie arrived at St Stephen’s Cathedral to crowds of folk he hadn’t seen in decades, people that even Diego Domingo mightn’t have seen since his days in the ring.
Sistine was waiting in one of the groups on the main staircase and, to his surprise, when she saw him she came straight down and said, ‘You’re sitting with us,’ like she’d been waiting for him all along. With Bobby and Miranda, and other family up front nearest the nave, he was close enough to the polished rosewood coffin to reach out and touch it.
Cómo está, cerdo Español? ‘How are you, you Spanish pig?’
Estoy bien, salami graso. ‘I’m fine, you great salami.’
Bobby wept quietly through the early parts of the service, yet once he took the lectern the boy managed to keep himself together. His eulogy was loving and, surprisingly, both true and funny.
‘My father showed me how to be a man by example. Some of that example was good, and some of it was the type we’ll try to keep out of the papers a few more years.’
People liked that. They laughed, though respectfully, with plenty of affection.
By lunchtime there was a wake at the bistro. Having fortified themselves with whisky, Connors, McGavin and ‘Doctor Irish’ came to inspect Charlie’s face. Charlie stayed an hour longer before making his goodbyes. He held Miranda a long time without speaking and shook Bobby’s hand, then Sistine walked him out. His ute was parked nearby, but he wanted to stroll around the Valley now for the things he needed to buy.
‘Bobby’s a good kid, all right,’ he said, turning to his daughter. ‘Things okay between you two?’
‘He is, but you’re right. I’m too young to even think about getting married,’ Sistine said. ‘Bobby’s getting used to the idea.’
‘Do you know anything about the bistro?’
‘He’ll run it. They’ll be fine.’
Charlie looked into her face, not seeing himself, or Tracy, but someone who knew her life was ahead of her.
‘So it’s study for you?’
‘Travel, I think. A year, maybe two … I’d like to live somewhere in Europe. Just for a while, get some experience of a world outside of here.’ She looked anywhere but at Charlie. ‘Where the hell are we from anyway? I don’t even know.’
‘I guess that’s something we could talk about.’
‘We could.’
‘Thing is … I’ve got this dinner planned for tonight. I’m making something from the old country, taught me by your grandmother when I was a kid.’
‘I can’t be trusted with toast.’
‘We could start fixing that.’
‘Who else is coming?’
‘That woman you met.’
‘Miss Violet? Wow. You wouldn’t prefer to be alone?’
Charlie Smoke liked the way his daughter now met his eyes, and he liked her teasing too.
‘I’m calling Holly later to ask her to bring her boy along as well.’
But Sistine was already thinking about something different. ‘I wanted to tell you something. I wanted to tell you that I know you were right about Papi.’ She dabbed the handkerchief she’d been holding all morning to the corner of one eye. ‘I got to see all the good things about him. But I understand now that you saw what was not so good.’
‘It’s not like I’m much different, Sissy.’
‘Hey,’ Sistine said, and he felt her take his hand. ‘Look at me.’
So he did. Her eyes studied him. Then she nodded like she saw something. ‘So why don’t you tell your daughter a secret? You’ve always got a little something up your sleeve, huh?’ Sistine squeezed his hand.
‘Just one thing I want,’ he said. ‘There’s this recipe our people—that’s you and me—been keeping from the rest of the world too long. Come over tonight and let me show you.’
‘Sure thing, Papà.’
First time she’d called him that since six years of age, the type of turn you could spend a lifetime hoping for. Charlie hugged his daughter and caught the fragrance of fresh berries, and his shoulders trembled with the sort of happiness you just couldn’t give a name.
It was a strange feeling walking away from the bistro, taking his time in so many familiar streets. This area so old, once such a big part of his life. Charlie turned and looked at the small peak of Bowen Hills to the Cloudland Ballroom, with its colossal archway that shone a fluorescent pink at night. Once the place for swing bands, eighteen-piece orchestras and pretty girls. Young new-Australian men always looked sharp in their cheap suits, hair carefully slicked back, and the girls in their gowns took your breath away. Life so fresh and ready for the taking. With Tracy he’d gone to the ballroom so many times, in their better days, and had danced on feet that not only understood the quick quarter-turns of the boxing ring, but also the dances that brought Tracy in close, that pressed her to him and made the colour rise in cheeks so lovely.
From down here that ballroom looked too distant, as if it had already receded from his grasp, yet as he kept walking he could recognise every alley and storefront along the way. If he caught his reflection in a glass somewhere he might see the Smokin’ Charlie of so long ago, ghostly now but once full of promise, a boy ready to make something of each new day.
In the busier parts of the Valley he passed the small stores and delicatessens, the cafés and pizza places where he used to sit sometimes with Joe Pacca, his father, and before she’d passed away so young, his mother, Agostina, too. Everyone used to know everyone else, and people were happy when the young boxer came by.
It wasn’t Vegas, this place, and it wasn’t a point of any note whatsoever compared to the boxing meccas of the world, those glittering cities where men made and lost their reputations, became rich or turned themselves into bums, where fighters might live as stars or as never-beens telling tall stories; but here in this almost unknown island continent of the southern hemisphere, and most especially in these small streets no one cared about, Diego Domingo had been a king, and the boy people knew as ‘Smokin’ Charlie Smoke’, or Carmelo Fumo, or both, hadn’t been too far off the mark.
Get a seat and a drink and something to eat, because we’re going to watch a young prince fight his way to the top, no doubt about it.
Acknowledgements
For their support and encouragement, and for helping to shape this novel, my sincere thanks go to Madonna Duffy, Jacqueline Blanchard and Julia Stiles.Warm appreciation to Sue Ballyn and David Kohner Zuckerman. And special thanks to Daniel Crawford, boxing and fitness trainer extraordinaire.
BLACK MOUNTAIN
Venero Armanno
Beginning in the sulphur mines of Sicily over a century ago, Black Mountain takes you on a journey through time and back again.
When a boy sold into slavery finds the courage to escape, he is saved by a mysterious stranger, who raises the boy as his own. Renamed Cesare Montenero after Sicily’s own ‘black mountain’, Mount Etna, the boy begins to develop unusual talents, and discovers that he has more in common with his saviour than he imagined. And when he meets the enigmatic Celeste, he suspects for the first time that he may not be alone.
Based on factual events and ranging through
Italy, Paris and the rural fringes of coastal Australia, Black Mountain is a haunting exploration of what it means to be human.
‘Like the best fiction, this unsettling novel remains with you long after you have finished.’
—Christos Tsiolkas
ISBN 978 0 7022 3915 1
THE DIRTY BEAT
Venero Armanno
Rock and jazz drummer Max, is dead. Now, in his coffin as his friends prepare to bury him, Max is surrounded by the ghosts of his life and the dreams that never faded. All the old music is back too – from raw seventies rock-and-roll to the type of cool jazz that made legends of John Coltrane and Miles Davis.
In this sea of memory, Max recalls the tragedies, people and relationships that defined his life. From his first love Maree Kilmister he learned about sex; from his great love Debbie Canova he learned about loss; and from the enigmatic Laetecia Sparks, he learned about hope. As the players in his life gather for his funeral, he has one last chance to relive his past and see it for what it was.
Driven by music and passion, The Dirty Beat shimmers with an electric intensity.
‘A bold, original and moving reckoning of a life in those final post-mortem moments with which Max – at least – has been blessed’
—The Age
‘One of the most versatile and daring of Australian novelists … An exhilarating, hectic, ultimately poignant journey.’
—The Bulletin
‘…the book goes off like a shot, fast and furious and dirty and seeking a target that, in the end, explodes with a surprise, bittersweet ending that leaves you reeling’
—The Sunday Mail
ISBN 978 0 7022 3690 7
First published 2017 by University of Queensland Press
PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia
uqp.com.au
[email protected]
Copyright © Venero Armanno 2017
This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
Cover design by Christa Moffit
Cover photographs © Danielle Skinner/Arcangel Images and Stephen
Mucahey/Arcangel Images
Typeset in 12.5/16 pt Bembo by Post Pre-press Group, Brisbane
The University of Queensland Press is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.
The University of Queensland Press is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
National Library of Australia cataloguing-in-publication data is available at http://catalogue.nla.gov.au
ISBN 978 0 7022 5970 8 (pbk)
ISBN 978 0 7022 5931 9 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7022 5932 6 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7022 5933 3 (kindle)
Burning Down Page 22