‘She’s got a job, starting next week,’ I said. Mum’s face brightened.
‘Oh, that’s good. What kind of job?’
‘Waitressing.’ I ploughed on, hoping that she wouldn’t ask any more questions.
‘Where?’ my mother asked. I looked up and saw that the anxious glint in her eyes had returned as she tried to read my face. All my life I have known my mother well; she has always been like an extension of myself. It was a new, almost frightening, experience to be suddenly aware of her as someone totally different.
‘Remember that cafe where a lot of Chileans hang out?’ I said carefully.
‘I know it,’ she snapped. I looked up at her defensively.
‘Do they mind that she doesn’t speak Spanish?’ Mum eventually asked.
‘No. But I’m teaching her anyway. She picks up the songs really easily, so I reckon she’ll learn a bit. Enough anyway.’
‘Do you go there often?’ she asked, trying to sound casual. ‘I was hoping that you’d forget all about that . . . and mix more . . .I was hoping you’d not stay tied up . . .’
Her voice dropped away. I saw that she couldn’t finish the sentence. She was really upset.
‘You were hoping that I’d not stay tied up with my father?’ I asked drily. I longed to go over to her and hug her tightly. Tell her I loved her and would never do anything to make her unhappy. A year ago I would have done just that. But this year I sat there heavily, watching her, my stone heart cracking and rubbing itself raw.
‘Who runs it now?’ she asked quietly.
‘Juan Enriquez,’ I replied. She jumped up from her chair, then sat down again as if I’d shot her.
‘Oh, Jude,’ she whispered, tears forming in her eyes, ‘oh, darling, please!’ I watched two of them roll down her cheeks and still couldn’t move.
‘You remember him?’ I asked stiffly. I had to know. There was so much she hadn’t told me.
She nodded. ‘Of course I remember him . . .’
‘So why don’t you come down and see him? He’d love to see you, I’m sure. We talk about . . . about my father, about Carlos, often. He’s told me a lot already. Why don’t you come?’
But she was shaking her head, gasping as though in pain.
‘Jude, let it go! Please . . .’ she implored softly. I got up, moved away from the table and stood by the sink. Our lunch dishes were still stacked haphazardly over the benches. Mum had cooked us wonderful completos for lunch. Carmel and I had had three each. Now the ants were out, already organised into small secret labour lines, methodically carrying off the surplus from the plates. I hated the smell of ants, but I also hated killing them. It seemed criminal somehow to destroy such ingenuity, such sure purposeful work. I let the hot tap run for a while and then filled a cup with steaming water. Then I drowned the ants. I watched fascinated, horrified really, as their ordered little world collapsed. Their bodies flayed wildly as they headed for the plughole. I refilled the cup and finished the job.
‘Mum,’ I said slowly. ‘He was . . . my father . . .’
‘But see how it’s . . . wrecked my life,’ she whispered. I looked up quickly, shocked.
‘What do you mean . . . wrecked your life?’
‘Living in the past,’ she said, ‘living for memories. Jude, I want you to enjoy life here. Now! Don’t live in the past . . .’
‘I don’t live in the past!’ I cut in angrily.
‘So go out! Meet all different people. Get involved with other things. Have fun. Jude, I came . . . I came back from Chile all those years ago so that you could have a life!’
I believed her. I felt for her, too. Maybe I would have done the same thing myself if I’d had a daughter. Gone back to where it was safe and secure.
‘Jude, all my friends were over there! My life was there! I’ve hidden myself in this bloody town for you!’ She was speaking loudly now. So that I would understand what she meant. Her hands were working overtime, the way they do when she speaks Spanish. But now she was speaking English. ‘I could have had . . .I could have married . . . again over there. I could have . . . Jude, I’ve done everything I could to give you a chance, haven’t I?’ I shrugged and she slumped back into her seat.
‘I haven’t stopped you . . .’ I muttered uncomfortably.
‘No, but Jude there was always your father,’ she said. ‘He was a wonderful man. Compassionate, loving, totally committed . . . but he was killed, Jude. Died, working so hard, so selflessly . . . He’s gone. He’s been dead for nearly twenty years!’ I stared at her sullenly.
‘You can’t take up his burdens!’ she shouted.
‘Why not?’
‘This is a different country! The times have changed. Even if you go back to Chile, there isn’t the popular feeling for change that surrounded us in the early seventies. Everything’s changed . . .’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know! People write . . . Jude, it’s the truth.’
‘So you think my father wasted his life?’ I said furiously.
‘In the broad scheme of things his life was . . . not wasted,’ she answered slowly. ‘It is important for the world to know . . . for people to know that there are brave men and women around who will not be silenced, who will die for what they know to be right, but . . .’ She raised her face and looked at me.
‘But what?’ I whispered. A coldness had crept into my chest, a sort of chill tingling from my throat, all the way down my legs.
‘As far as the small picture goes,’ she continued. ‘I mean the effect his death had on us, even on Chile, on the immediate situation there, then, yes, his life was wasted. I think he should have stopped after the coup, after 1973. When they let him out of detention the first time he should have given up and tried to get out of the country . . . the way I wanted him to. There were people who would have helped us . . .’
I sat very still refusing to let her words settle into my head. I didn’t need them. I had no wish to understand things from her point of view. Down that path lay weakness, emptiness, failure. I was filled with an angry indifference that probably showed in my face, but I didn’t care. We sat there for some time, not speaking, not even looking at each other.
‘I’m organising the protest with Juan,’ I said eventually.
‘What protest?’
‘The Chilean president is coming here in July,’ I said, ‘and we plan to be everywhere he is. Public halls, hotels, the World Trade Centre . . .’
‘Who is “we”?’ she asked.
‘Fifty, sixty people,’ I said, ‘maybe a hundred in Melbourne.’ ‘Why, Jude? What do you think you will achieve?’
‘Not that much,’ I shrugged. ‘We just want him to know that we know. That people in other parts of the world care. He was elected on the understanding that he would bring some of those bastards to justice and acknowledge the ones who disappeared. We want to keep the pressure on for proper trials . . .’
‘I know the situation,’ she cut in with a dry laugh. ‘Everyone knows there will never be proper trials while the army has so much power. What I mean is, why are you involved?’
We went on into the night. We were both so tired, but we couldn’t give it up. Most of the time we were talking around each other, coming at the same thing from totally different angles. Whatever it was that was happening she couldn’t stop talking. I knew she wanted the best for me. But at the same time I was furious. Unlike my father, she had been a committed communist. He would simply have described himself as a doctor working for change. She used to think there were things worth fighting for. I despised her for not having the strength to hang on the way he had. But I loved her, too, so it was complicated. Most of all I desperately didn’t want to be dragged into her way of seeing things.
Eventually we said goodnight. It must have been about three in the morning. She came over to embrace me in the usual way, but I pulled away after a brief kiss.
‘What do you see in all that stuff, Mum?’ I asked bluntly, pointing at the poster
pinned to the wall. It was a colourful abstract design advertising a ‘spiritual awakening’ conference to be held in Sydney later in the year. The day before I’d been going to tear it up and chuck it in the bin, but I’d thought better of it. After all, Mum had never tried to shove any of those things down my throat and the next day I’d be going back to the city.
‘I want peace, Jude,’ she said in a small voice, ‘some kind of peace. I’ve seen things I can’t forget.’
‘What kind of things?’ I wanted to scream. ‘Tell me. Tell me. Tell me. I want to know everything.’
As I was drifting off to sleep I thought about peace. I don’t think it’s as important as everyone believes it is. This will sound crazy, but when my mother had been talking about my father having no thought for the danger he was in, of the way he went on fearlessly organising and working, keeping faith with what he believed in – in a way implying that he had brought about his own death – my love for him was renewed in a deep, almost physical way. I was filled with a powerful attraction for that kind of life. It wasn’t simply a matter of being proud of him. I realised that I wanted that for myself too.
My father was shot for refusing to stop working towards a just society. His beliefs were simple. He wanted a society in which the poor would have enough food, schools for their children, medicine when they were sick, shoes for the winter. All things that we take for granted in Australia. And in Chile that was enough to get him killed. Some guys of forty die of cirrhosis of the liver from drinking too much, or of cancer from smoking. And many more die of the same self-inflicted things ten or twenty years later. What’s the use of having the extra twenty years if you do nothing with them? From the age of about ten, I have felt that I would die young. And that knowledge or hunch has never worried me. In fact, I want to nurture the feeling and make sure that when the time comes I will be giving my life for something worthwhile. That’s what’s important. I think it would be a privilege to die the way he did, totally in command, having made no compromise, no retreat, no surrender.
Someone in Chile continues to put flowers on my father’s grave. That is enough for me. For me that means he is still alive.
When I have finished my medical training I will go back there and carry on the work. I know I won’t be alone. In every country there are people who are willing to put themselves on the line. If I end up with a bullet in my head, so be it. Perhaps I will end up alongside him. Together at last. Lying side by side in the Santiago cemetery, looking up at the enormous tree that my mother tells me stretches over at least thirty graves.
I sit all day in lectures and tutes and learn how the human body works. I also learn from my fellow students about how the world is organised for the benefit of the middle classes and upwards. The whole place, my course especially, is filled with kids from Brighton and Toorak and Doncaster; from private schools all over the state. Most of them are very nice, friendly anyway, fine to pass the time with between lectures and share lunch with in the cafe. I think I am the only one in first-year Medicine who has come from a country state secondary college. This fills me with inordinate pride.
I have made only one real friend within the medical faculty. Declan is twenty-two and in fifth year – the one other student I’ve met who was educated at a country state school. I met him and his girlfriend Annie at the Amnesty group in my first week. After only half an hour with them over a coffee I felt like I’d known them both all my life. Declan is tall and thin-faced with brown curly hair and a dark serious face. He doesn’t talk about himself much. But over the months I’ve slowly been able to build up a portrait of him. He is one of those freaky types who has had no advantages at all and yet manages to be naturally everything he wasn’t meant to be. He loves music and plays well, although he’s never been formally taught. He is a thinker, even though there were no books in his house and his parents thought anyone who even read the paper was up themselves. According to Annie his family had lived on the verge of poverty for most of his young life; the dominant memory of his childhood a never-ending screaming match between his parents and his older siblings. For some reason that Declan hasn’t yet explained to me he has been a committed member of Amnesty since he was fifteen. He writes letters, calls meetings, formulates policy, and badgers politicians and journalists. He is always the first to arrive at meetings and the last to leave.
Annie is a small, pretty blonde woman with a gutsy laugh and a dry salty way of seeing things. She ribs me about my hot Latin temperament, teases me about my inability to be cool. ‘Try and curb that passion, Jude!’ she drawls, throwing an arm lightly around my shoulders and winking at whoever is nearby. ‘Keep your mouth shut, girl, and you might become a proper Aussie one day.’ It took me a while to realise that her jokes and prettiness – the blonde hair, blue eyes and sexy figure – disguised a person who in her own way was just as passionate as I was. She and Declan are rarely apart, yet I never feel as if I’m in the way when I’m with them.
I’m almost asleep thinking how much I have enjoyed everything in my last few months in the city. Even when I’m with people in my course who are snobby or boring, I know I’m learning something new. When you feel in your bones that you haven’t much time everything becomes interesting. Sweeter. Life is always surprising me.
After about three hours of deep sleep I wake up with a start, sweating. I can’t remember anything much about the dream except that I’d been with my father. I had been watching him ride a horse down a very steep ravine. I was afraid that the horse would lose its footing and fall. Although I try desperately I can’t remember any more of the dream. I lie in the dark trembling, trying to make myself breathe deeply. As I begin to calm, it dawns on me that my mother really is keeping things from me. Perhaps even Juan, too. Both of them have secrets that they are keeping from me.
FOR THE FIRST FEW WEEKS AFTER EASTER, life went on as before. Carmel went to work in the early morning and we’d meet up in the evening: eat, talk and play music together. But when she began the evening shift, life changed for me. Nights were suddenly lonely. I’d never been someone who’d had heaps of friends – in fact I’d privately scorned the whole idea of getting around in a crowd – but I’d been used to company, more or less whenever I’d wanted it. My mother had been there all my life. It surprised me to realise that throughout my school days my mother had probably been not only my best friend, but my only real friend.
Katerina was almost always out. I’d arrive home from uni around six most nights and Carmel would have left for work. So I’d cook myself something and then go into my room to study for a few hours. I still enjoyed university, but it was a hard slog. There was so much to learn. Studying medicine was like working at a full-on job every day right through the term. I knew I had to keep up. There were tests and assessments every couple of weeks, as well as the exams at the end. I knew I was capable of doing well and I really wanted to.
May brought the first dissection class for the year. We’d all been warned and knew we’d have to get used to it because it would make up a major part of the course for the next few years. By this stage I’d made a bit of a reputation for myself; I was blunt and fairly tough compared to many of the other girls. Some of the ex-private-school boys found me a little hard to handle, although I know I amused them too. So I suppose it surprised them as well as me that I found dissection a bit hard to deal with at first.
On the day of the first class, two hundred of us made our way dutifully up the stairs to the third floor, then down a corridor and through a couple of glass doors. We were met by the professor of anatomy, who told us that we were never to enter the room without gowns and gloves. There was some general nervous laughter as we donned these. Already the smell of formalin was strong. Silently we trooped into the huge room. About thirty steel tables were lined up each side under the large windows, with another three sitting in the middle. On each table lay an adult human body covered with a white sheet. A shiver passed through me and I was tempted to run straight out.
&nbs
p; ‘Okay, please break up into groups of six,’ the professor said loudly, ‘then select a table. Pull off the sheet, fold it and put it on the bench nearest to you. After each session you are to cover the cadaver again. You are to remain in the same group with the same cadaver every week for the next six months . . .’
We all shuffled forward and quickly did as we were told. In my group the sheet was pulled off by a boy I vaguely recognised; a funny Jewish kid I’d joked with last term. Amos. He made a ghoulish face at me and we both smiled. I looked around the room; no one was retching or fainting, but everyone seemed solemn and some had gone very white. All of us were taking quick, sidelong glances at the dead body in front of us.
I got used to dissection, of course, after some time; the smell and the feel, the look of those dead people that I had to work on, became just something else I had to do in my day. I wasn’t the only one who found it difficult at first. Only one of us had even seen a dead body before the classes began. That girl had seen a distant relative all laid out in pretty clothes in a shining wooden coffin. She told us that the body had looked like a wax dummy. These dead bodies we had to work on didn’t look like wax dummies. They looked like people. But they were so still, they looked like . . . well, like . . . dead people, which was exactly what they were.
Each Tuesday afternoon I would walk over to the table in my white coat and look down at the face of the one assigned to us – a man in his fifties with white hair and yellow skin. He’d died of a massive heart attack apparently. The professor was going to show us the damaged heart when we’d finished dissecting the legs. The curious side of me was quite looking forward to this. It would be interesting to see in real life what I was learning from all those books. But another side of me was appalled. I didn’t want to see his messed-up, sad old heart.
Queen Kat, Carmel and St Jude Get a Life Page 18