by Gregory Day
‘Oh, my head!’ were the first words Nan spoke and as she did she rolled over in the direction of the edge of the loft, to where Ionio was standing at the top of the ladder. For the moment he’d taken his beanie off, and his black hair was pointing in all directions from where he’d ruffled it with his hands. I’m not sure whether this would have added to the surprise Nanette got as she rolled over but, to my relief, her reaction was not what I’d been fearing. For a moment she said nothing and he looked at her with a blank expression on his face. Eventually she asked quietly, ‘Who are you?’
Ionio’s eyes immediately lit up at being addressed. Rather than answering, though, he looked over at me with an expectant air. I gathered that I was to speak for him, but what was I going to say?
After a pause in which I nervously untied the rope from the nail that kept the shutter closed, I said the obvious: ‘Nan, this is Fra Ionio. Ionio, this is my good friend, Nanette.’
Nanette sat up a little in bed and said, ‘What? What was your name?’
‘I-O-N-I-O,’ I said, very slowly. ‘He’s Italian.’
‘Yair, I kind of gathered that,’ Nan said. ‘But how come I haven’t heard about you? How long have you lived in town?’
I didn’t think he was going to answer at first, but with my nod of encouragement the previously garrulous monk spoke his first words in the presence of Nanette: ‘Excuse me, I don’t live in this town,’ he said. ‘But I visit because there was a job worth doing. And now Noel and I have come to you for safe harbour. For, it is this, I am a secret here in Mangowak.’
I put two and two together as soon as he opened his mouth that Ionio was nervous because Nanette was female. Probably also because she was a female in bed. His voice had little of its prior joy and he spoke more formally than he had to me, even when first greeting me out by the ditch.
A charmed look came over Nan’s face, even as she clutched her head in self-inflicted pain. She smiled at Ionio, to my great surprise, and then immediately changed the subject. Groaning in despair she said, ‘Ah, close that fucking window, would you, Noel, the light’s too much!’
I did as she asked, putting the jute back on the nail.
‘I’d say I’m sorry about last night, Noel, for crying on your shoulder and all that carry-on, but I’m not. What I am bloody sorry about, though, is my head! God, it’s pounding.’
‘No kidding,’ I said facetiously. ‘I’d cook you something to settle you down but we’ve got to get Ionio up to the fire tower.’
Now a look of intense annoyance came over her face, as if I was being needlessly obscure. ‘What do you mean?’ she shot out.
‘Trust me,’ I said eagerly. ‘He’s done a great thing, Nan. While you were snoring your head off he saved all the eels.’
‘How did he do that?’
‘By releasing them into the river.’
Ionio interrupted then. ‘By calming them down. They were in a state of great agitation.’ He said this with such concern in his voice that Nan looked straight at me with an air of incredulity. But then she looked back in the direction of the monk with a gentle smile.
Some time later, during which Ionio read my map of Victoria on the wall below the loft as Nanette got dressed up above, and I went inside the house to the loo and to get the keys, and to feed all the house animals, we were racing up the river valley in the Moke. Nanette crouched low in the space in the back, wincing at the biting wind and the bumps, with the look of someone who was about to be very sick. It’s just as well we’re in the Moke, I thought, she can chuck over the side.
In contrast, Fra Ionio was sitting erect in the front next to me, his beanie back on, his face beaming, his terracotta-coloured skin giving him the look in the wind of someone who’d just come in from Menindee, or somewhere else in the outback. Glancing down at his lap I could see his hand firmly around his little bell, which he would ring occasionally, and with the rough old motion of the Moke he allowed his body a little rocking rhythm, back and forward, to and fro, as we headed up into the Barrabool hills.
For myself I was beginning to feel vaguely elated at the prospect of this out-of-left-field adventure I was involved in, and looking at Fra Ionio’s happy face only buoyed me further now. In the back of my mind I had a strange sense of familiarity about all this, as well as a small but inevitable feeling of panic, and, like Nan, I’d had a few more than normal the previous night at the pub, and very little sleep, so my stomach was beginning to go off on its own tangent altogether.
It must’ve been barely seven still as we headed up the old Dray Road into the hills, with the scent of the forest around us thick in the air, the bush glistening with dew, and the dams and billabongs brimming but settled after the rains. In the grassy verges between the treeline and the gravel of the road, russet-breasted wallabies began to appear out of the trees to browse the wet stubble, and all around them were strewn the remnants of the wild weather – the wet bark, the fallen limbs, the road itself slippery and pitted.
As we rounded Mexico Bend, with cockatoos sounding in the steep ironbark gorge to our right, what should come around the corner but a police 4WD. Looking back I don’t know why, really, but I suppose it was because Ionio didn’t want to be discovered that I immediately grew paranoid at the wheel. But they whizzed past us unconcerned, just more faces in the area that no-one recognises, and from Mexico Bend all the way to Nan’s place the only person we saw was Ash Bowen, whose car was parked next to the dam near the Boonah turn-off with him standing beside it looking down at the ground through his camera lens. He didn’t even lift his head from what he was absorbed in to wave.
It was just after we passed Ash that I heard, in the wind the car’s speed was making, a minute sound from the back and looking over my shoulder I saw Nanette leaning out over the rear mudguard emptying her last night’s entertainment onto the old road. As I said to her later, ‘Geez, that road’s copped a fair battering over the years, Nan. Well watered, eh?’
‘I think they call it acid wash,’ she said in reply.
We arrived at Nan’s unscathed, a bit lighter in weight, and undiscovered as the chaperones of our unusual visitor. Nan jumped out without a word, looking green, and headed straight inside. Ionio and I looked at one another and smiled, and as a few drops of sunshowery rain began to clang on the steel of the Moke we shared another cigarette as I reassured Ionio that he was safe now.
‘For that I am grateful. It takes a special quality not to be alarmed in this world.’
He waved his cigarette hand dismissively and then took another drag in his hoonish style. ‘It’s all right, Noel, but let me say that I could get into a lot of trouble in these parts. For one day only I must station myself carefully, as it appears I have done. Like the Riccis of Catanzaro and the Chiodos of Foca, yourself and Nanette are people I know I can trust.
‘And look around,’ he cried then with a sweep of his arm, standing in the circle of banksias and wattles within the loop of Nan’s driveway. ‘La foresta è bella. What a place! Tall trees and little birds. And songs every day, si?’
A fairy wren was jiggling around on a bottlebrush nearby, its trill filling the air, and it was true, it was a morning of birdsong like any other in these parts.
Nanette appeared from under the awning at the side of her house, showered and in new jeans and jumper. She had her old red suede coat on for the walk to the tower.
‘I’ve got all the food and drink we need up there,’ she said, anticipating my question, ‘but, uh, Iomio, would you like to wash before we go up?’
We didn’t correct her on getting the name wrong – I thought if it continued I’d find a quiet moment. Nanette’s like that with words, anyway. There’s certain ones she’s always mispronounced. Calendar, for instance. She’s always said ‘colander’. Don’t ask me why. But I knew ‘Ionio’ was a tough ask.
‘For you a wash, for me a drink and to rest,’ Fra Ionio said to her, his little red smile appearing as he did so. I was beginning to find his shyness arou
nd Nan quite funny. It seemed so ordinary in a figure that had appeared like an apparition in the night.
We set off on the same track to the tower that Nan and I had walked down the previous day. And how long ago did that seem! What with the excitement of Nan turning up à la Fred Ayling at the pub, and the weeping, and the eels and the appearance of this monk, and of course the releasing of the eels. Walking along the track now, even the blackwoods and the grass-trees seemed kind of changed. They felt fresh, and appeared to hold new significance. And, walking in front of me, Ionio’s presence itself was becoming less and less surreal. Despite the bizarre and magical events of the night he was so amicable, and ruddy, and tangible as the ground. I mean, he smoked like a lout from the old Geelong mall! I watched him moving along in the light mud in front of me and noticed how he seemed to suit the environment, to belong, his body well acquainted with the bush, his feet stepping surely and his face tilting upwards to the birdsong in the trees.
IX
AS WE ARRIVED AT THE TOWER the morning shadows were playing on the flattened ground of the track where it opens out at the foot of the ladder. In the springy breeze and with the movement of the foliage surrounding us, the brocade of shadows flitted and danced on the dirt and leaf litter, almost like characters moving on a backlit screen. Ionio stopped and closed his eyes for a few seconds and then remarked on the comic sounds the birds make. He said the morning sounded fresh and funny, like jokes were being told.
Listening with him then, Nan and I heard the various characters in the bush as the tricksters he was imagining: wattlebirds, willie wagtails, the black cockatoos, the currawongs, the amber wrens, the magpies and gang-gangs, all of them sounded comic to us now. Even the white cocky’s harshness seemed to be some kind of raucous jest.
‘And these morning shadows,’ he went on, noting our observance, ‘are fresher than any other. Sweeter. They are more innocent and young than those of the afternoon, showing us what the climbing sun can do. Of course in Stellanuova, where I was born, there is stone everywhere, flagstones on the ground, cobbles on every pathway. Ah, more than once I stopped to commiserate with the shadows of the morning. So sweet, cosi dolce, but so sad because they could not lend their decoration to the original ground. Allora, I asked my God, why are we covering up the ground as if we are ashamed of it? From the moment of my conversion I could never understand. And so the shadows spoke to me. Like songs longing for an ear. The songs of dark and light that man wouldn’t allow to play upon the soil.’
As if on cue a willie wagtail’s cascading song started up in the wattle tree behind him.
‘Ah, the sorrowful heart is always lightened by the birds,’ Ionio said, with the thumb of his right hand crooked into his waist cord. ‘But we must let them be. Let them be.’
We turned to the ladder. First Nan, then Ionio, then I began to climb up the steel steps of the tower. Rung by rung we went up, and occasionally the coarse hem of his cassock would brush my face from above and I would smell his smell, of the antique fabric and some spice I couldn’t name, and also the more familiar acrid smell of the mud from the edges of the river. That smell I’d learnt to swim in, to think in, to smoke in, and to kiss in, for that matter. But now, instead of being mixed with deodorant or mosquito coil or zinc cream or my old man’s creekbed wine, the smell of the river was mixed with other things from elsewhere: with a dark coarse fabric and that spice I couldn’t name.
We stepped into the tower at the top of the ladder, and Nan and I stood watching as Ionio walked about the room familiarising himself with its contents, and its view of the hills. He stood at first in front of the big windows gazing out, then he walked back across the room and into the kitchenette, where he opened and shut one of the red cupboards, seemingly just for the enjoyment of the click of the latch as it closed. He went into the little bathroom at the back and through the doorway we could see him peering at the porta-shower and stopping to view himself in the tiny vanity mirror that sat on the sill of the louvre window in there. Nan looked at me and raised her eyes like a kid with a guilty secret. Then immediately she shook her head in adult disbelief, shrugged her shoulders and resumed watching the monk.
‘Ciò è una cesura piccolo nel pianetà,’ he said as he came out of the bathroom and re-entered the kitchen area. He stood looking out the side window near the fridge. I can still see his small figure now, amongst the dust motes floating in the kitchen window light. He stared for a time at the days of the old Marriner’s Nursery calendar that’s pinned to the wall next to the window before letting out a high-pitched yawn.
‘Here, Iomio,’ Nan said, ‘come and get some rest. The bed’s made. You can sleep for as long as you like up here. Noel and I might do the same while you’re at it.’
He turned and let out another of his little peals of laughter. Then he bowed his head, said thanks, and wondered if he could have a sandwich to take with him as he lay down. Nan’s never been very good with food but nervously rushed to the fridge and began to fix one up. Ionio went to the bed in the corner, sat and took off his skate shoes and his socks, and lay back on the quilt with his cassock still on.
‘If you’d like to remove your clothes we can turn the other way,’ Nan said.
‘Grazie, Nanette, a warm bed is never as good with the clothes on, is it?’
So I joined Nan in the little kitchen and as she continued to prepare Ionio’s salad sandwich on the kitchen bench, I stood beside her, looking south out the window across the forest towards the ocean. It was a fine day, a gentle blue day now after the wind and rain. The view out that window was as if the world had been washed.
‘Pronto. It’s all right now,’ he said eventually, and I turned to see him tucked into the bed, yawning and smiling his head off. Although his cassock was folded on the floor beside him, his beanie was still on his head and he looked rugged, with that swarthy skin of his, under Nan’s blue sheets and red quilt.
‘It’s always the same when you get into a wellmade bed,’ he said to me. ‘It’s so delicious, isn’t it, Noel? Like the womb. Or the house of the grandmother.’
I agreed. ‘Maybe that’s what the eels feel like now they’re back in the river,’ I ventured.
Ionio raised his arm with passion and smiled an even broader smile. ‘Ah, that’s it, Noel,’ he cried. ‘I am an eel today, per compassione. And after my sandwich, I too will slip with them, away into the river.’
He sighed as Nan approached with his food. Taking the plate from her, he said, ‘I will not drink coffee before I sleep.’ He laughed. ‘And so it is good that you have not made it.’
He ate his sandwich in silence, with his eyes opening only occasionally and looking straight out the main windows at the hills. Nan and I took to the couch and also looked out at the hills. It wasn’t long before we heard Ionio put the plate down on the driftwood bedside table Myles had made, and not long after again that his breathing became that of a normal man asleep.
On the couch the silence between Nan and me became speechlessness at the point when Ionio was obviously asleep. It was the first opportunity since we’d been with him to talk to each other about what had happened, but where would we begin? The spell we were under had not entirely broken with his light snoring, but it was definitely lessened, so that rationally minded questions came freely into our heads, doubts about his strange way of speaking, about his even stranger clothing and shoes, and, of course, the biggest question of them all: about who he was and where he was from and how come he spoke almost as if he’d lived for hundreds of years!
In a whisper, with the spring hills stretching out into the lovely day in front of us, we talked over the possibilities. Nan said that as soon as she laid eyes on him at the top of the ladder in the barn she liked him. But she wanted to know what he’d said to me, and how I’d come to be with him when the last thing she knew was me and her flopping, pissed as farts, into bed together.
So I told her about the events after she’d fallen asleep, and how I’d seen him earlier in the
day on the riverbank. Although I didn’t really have anything concrete to tell her about him, I began trying to convey to her that he was, in some way, right out of the normal run of things. Of course, I need hardly have bothered. We may have had questions about who he was and where he was from but the fact that he was out of the ordinary was in no doubt at all.
‘You can feel it, Nan, can’t you? It’s bizarre. He got those eels out of there, I don’t have any doubts about that. I walked with him along the ditches to the river. And he’s chanting and ringing his bell. And when he talks, Nan – well, you felt it. The things he says. Beautiful things.’
We were talking in whispers, which gave our conversation a surreptitious tone, as if we were somehow hostages in the tower. As if Ionio was our prison guard who’d momentarily fallen asleep at his post.
Nan asked me if I thought he’d brought the rain. I didn’t catch on to what she meant at first, so she explained. Perhaps Ionio was some kind of miraculous presence and he’d brought on the rain to flood the swamp so the eels would be tipped out into the ditches from where he could save them.
All her life Nan had been much more open than me to the mystical or supernatural side of things. She used to keep these two big red and white books called Isis Unveiled beside her bed, and she was always consulting them, right back from when she was a teenager, about one occult issue or event or another. I think it was only after her brother Phantom’s suicide that she dropped her interest in that side of things. But now, with the extraordinary appearance of Ionio, something in her seemed to be reawakened. She started to wonder aloud about whether or not he could be some kind of angel or metaphysical man. Some immortal. Despite my initial fears that she’d dismiss Ionio as a mere junkie or whatever, she’d taken quite the opposite tack.
‘Maybe,’ she said, running with the idea, ‘he thought he wouldn’t have to come and save them. Eels don’t usually need any help to get along a ditch into a creek or a river. Maybe he thought all he needed to do was create the deluge and that they’d handle the rest. Before the machines moved in and dredged them out. Before they ended up in a shire skip!’