by Gregory Day
Step by step we came out of the sky, which by now was studded with great thick slate-grey clouds, all on their way to joining up with each other to form the late afternoon blanket. I wondered if I knew this Donna from Skeleton Creek, but I couldn’t place her and all my efforts to track her down since have come to nothing. People remember the O’Connells, they were well-liked, but apparently they left to live in New Guinea sometime in the seventies, and no-one has an address. From time to time, though, I think about Donna O’Connell, the fat girl who played snakes and ladders with the monk, and wonder what a meeting would be like. Maybe one day we’ll hook up through the Internet and compare our experiences with Ionio. Who knows?
As he prattled on about Donna, and then about the Stilos of Chiaravalle, and then about how cockatoos reminded him of clowns and eagles of his Greek friend Maniakes, I realised that all the chatter was intended to take my mind off the fact that I was descending from a very, very great height. It took me a while, in which I was half concentrating on what he was saying, half laughing as he impersonated the birds like a comedian, and half shitting myself about the height, but when I did realise what he was up to, any fear vanished altogether. It was so ironic to hear a supposedly immortal man using such ordinary chatter to alleviate a mortal fear. By the time we got to the bottom I was wondering whether I had been cured of my fear of heights forever.
Nan had climbed down much more quickly than Ionio and me, and was sitting on a fallen log by the leaf-littered path when we arrived. She told Ionio that she could see up his cassock as he was coming down. She laughed and so did I, but he didn’t. I don’t think he was morally offended by her joke, he was just a bit shy. I could see by his reaction that there were lines he couldn’t cross. He was a celibate monk, after all.
‘So what now?’ Nan asked when her mirth and Ionio’s embarrassment had subsided. ‘Do you have a plan, Iomio?’
He looked into the sky at the position of the sun. ‘Well, I must leave you about an hour before dark. I have to prepare and meditate for my returning journey. So we don’t have that much longer together.’
‘Where do you have to get to?’ I asked, almost as if he was a backpacker on his way to a lift down the coast.
‘Well, I can’t really say that, Noel. But wherever we are will be fine, as long as I leave in good time. What about we just go for a walk in this bush. Is there a creek around here, some water we could sit and chat beside? That would be nice.’
‘Yair, there’s the Traherne about a couple of miles back that way,’ Nan said, pointing south-west. ‘That’s a nice walk. Pretty. There’s a platypus in a pool there at the moment. Late in the day’s the best time to see him too.’
‘Yair, that’d be good,’ I said, keen like Ionio to end our time back near water.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to La casa del Ornitorinco then, and speak a little more.’
We walked through what was familiar ironbark and messmate country to Nan and me, but whether or not Ionio knew it too was an unknown. Even though he’d visited Mangowak before, and had been observing this part of the earth from ‘up above’ for longer than Nan and I had been alive, he definitely didn’t know the literal cartography of it. He didn’t know, for instance, that there was a dam at Ko-im junction, nor where any of the remnant logging and fire tracks intersected our path, but he did sniff the air and sigh as if he was reacquainting himself with an old friend, and an old friend of whom he had very fond memories.
He didn’t crack jokes as such but he buffooned around the whole way to the creek. He grilled me about girlfriends and Nan encouraged him, at one point telling Ionio that I was like a ‘rat without a drainpipe’. The monk cackled in a high squeak at that. It was obvious that matters of sexuality were only sensitive issues when they concerned him specifically.
We walked along the track, telling stories and laughing. We went past the melaleuca swamp and Ionio kept stopping to wonder at the wildflowers, the drosera and heath, which grew on the verges. He also loved to stop at the back of certain eucalypts where an opening appeared at the bottom of the trunk. He said these openings were like archways onto the colonnades in Italy. They were natural niches, he said, and pointed out how these niches had a tongue of moss leading to them, often scattered with wallaby poo. He laughed and said it was as if they were making offerings to the shrine. Nan assured him that the droppings were there because the moss was soft on their bums. This explanation he found even funnier than his own.
The country out back here is often accused of being monotonous, but that’s only by people who don’t know it. It is, in fact, incredibly varied once you really begin to understand it. Ironbark and messmate dominate but there are patches of ferny rainforest gully, high she-oaky arid ground, swamps like the melaleuca swamp, gorges where the original creeks tip over waterfalls on their way to the sea, high mountain ash spars and the gums, manna gums, and amongst it all, especially in spring, an assortment of wildflowers that litter the ground in light sprays of yellow and red and pale blue and white and orange and mauve. To us it is always changing. The roll of the hills is in folds, like the earth is a huge sleeping creature and we are walking over its thighs and shoulders, over its hips and lower back, over its calves and bottom. And it unfolds in front of you differently every time, constantly renewing the imagination. Sometimes I draw it from a long perspective and it’s like a crown or collar of hills, and other times from deep within it’s like some perfect glade that only the wrens and finches have really learnt to play in. On some overcast days the husks of the ironbarks and the endless unflowering wattle can make the world seem dreary and sad, but it only takes a turn around a bend and a new vista, or a brief patch of sunlight, to enliven the whole scene. Or the sound of water sluicing its way downwards, or the cascading racket of the kookaburra, laughing that anyone would think the earth could stay dreary for long.
Eventually we crossed the Gentle Annie track and scratched our way down through the thick growth towards the Traherne Creek. Ionio wasn’t at all fussed about the rough walking, his weariness seemed to have faded now that we were on the move, although I must admit I was getting a bit buggered myself – after all, I’d hardly had a wink of sleep and quite a lot had happened, you might say, since the night before.
We caught sight of the Traherne looking tawny and cold as it flowed down the gully at the bottom of the slope we had just walked. A little way upstream was the pool where me and Phantom had brought some tourist girls from Lorne when we were only fourteen: stretch jeans, Brandivino, a bag of Violet Crumbles and two packets of Wild Woodbine.
We found the bank beside the pool, which was looking very much like a platypus haunt in the late afternoon light, and sat down. Nan said she’d seen one here only three weeks earlier when she’d come with her youngest son, Adrian, on a Sunday without Myles.
‘You talk about the platypus as if it’s important to you, like the eels are to me?’ Ionio said to her.
‘Well, I’m not their saint, if that’s what you mean,’ she scoffed. ‘But I love seeing ’em. It’s so bloody rare to see a platypus, you just lap it up when you do.’
‘The best one I ever saw,’ I told him, ‘was across the hills, deeper in the forest at a place called Pascoe’s Falls. I was camping there with a good mate from school. We walked in there late one afternoon, pretty tired, and after we set up camp I went walking, sniffing about the river, which is beautiful there. It’s a large, over-organised camping ground, and there’s a massive pine plantation on the hill behind it so at times you feel like you’re in Canada or somewhere, but the river is often full, and untouched, pretty much. I was just sitting there near the old wooden bridge and the blackwoods, and there it was, slick and brown, breaking the surface of the water, and then it was gone. It was the cleanest thing I’ve ever seen. I’ll never forget it.’
‘It sounds beautiful, Noel, and mysterious, huh?’
‘Well, yair, cos it’s so shy. I mean, I’ve spoken to friends in Tasmania who see them all the time
but around here they’re very few and far between. Like saints, I suppose.’
‘Maybe even more rare than saints,’ Ionio replied, smiling.
‘Every time I see one,’ I went on, ‘and that’s not very often, it’s like I’m touching base with something very, very old. And I mean ancient. It’s like being in a time machine or something, you know? As if when they emerge they come from the past to the present. As if they’re down there in time, in some kind of deep time, ancient, before they were under threat, or . . . before a lot of things. And then they pop up at the skin of the water and if you catch a glimpse of one it’s like sharing the most beautiful secret there is. It makes me so happy.’
I paused for a few seconds and then said, ‘And now here we are with you and you’ve come from the past, not as far back maybe, but you have, and you’re a pretty good secret, Ionio.’
At which point he gave a little bow of appreciation, his bell tinkling as he did so.
‘It’s true, Noely,’ said Nan. ‘And it’s fitting, isn’t it? Underwater and all that. I mean, given the reason . . . the eels . . . the reason you’re here, Iomio.’
‘Ah yes, Nan, that’s right, the platypus and the eels. They share the same rivers. But, of course, in Stellanuova there was no platypus.’
‘No, and the platypus is a more solitary character than the eel,’ I said.
He laughed a knowing laugh. ‘Ha, a bit like the Australian and the Italian, huh?’
‘Do you think?’
‘Well, Italians are used to crowds. And Australians like nothing better than an empty beach.’
‘Yair, but that’s changing,’ I said. ‘We’re getting more and more like Italians every day now, more and more uncomfortable with just nature and our own company.’
‘Ah, but, Noel, there is a sadness in that old Australian solitude, yes?’
‘Sadness is a fact of life, isn’t it? For us mortals, at least. I mean, we die.’
‘Yair,’ Nan chipped in edgily. ‘You either get a little sad about it or you distract yourself by running around building shit stuff everywhere and wrecking the joint for others. Running to stand still, like that song says.’
I agreed. ‘We prefer the bit of sadness in the landscape to this big-man syndrome that’s getting up around here now. I mean, in the end, what’s sadder? You’ve got to know what you’re dealing with. Otherwise it’ll end in tears. Not just a bit sad, but bloody awful.’
The conversation had suddenly become dark and intense. The depression Nan and I felt about the development, the change in the area, was finally spilling out a bit, raw and uncluttered. But Ionio was giggling to himself.
‘What’s so funny now?’ asked Nan, obviously exasperated.
‘Well,’ he chuckled, ‘you talk about it as if someone’s doing you wrong. But you’re crazy. It’s just the flow of the creek. That’s how it flows. If you want it to be any different you have to have faith. Not disappointment. Not resentment. Faith! You’re pointing the finger. Keeping worlds separate. Excuse me, but you, Nan, you sit up in your tower treating yourself with embroidery and self-misery and you have the right to complain about what is happening in the town? No.
‘And you, Noel, you don’t talk about it with people, you don’t share these things you love. You hold the past too close. Take it from me,’ he laughed, ‘I’m from the past! Believe me, it was no different from now. Yes. Your childhood. Too close. Open it up. Share it. Share it around and it will come true a bit again. You know? It’s funny. When we are mortal we are so hard to please. Even with all this around us!’
‘Well, that’s easy for you to say,’ Nan shot out.
‘And that, signora, is easy for you to say too,’ shot back Ionio.
I couldn’t help snorting at that, and then they looked at me and couldn’t help themselves either. It was good. We were seeing each other from all sides.
Fra Ionio shifted his body where he was sitting beside us and gazed into the trees on the other side of the pool. ‘When I died,’ he said, ‘they placed my body in the Chiesa Di San Pasquale for my people to see. Ah, such a long time ago now and yet, the lesson applies. You see, by then I was well known throughout Calabria, and the crowd gathered in their hundreds to pay their respects, to pray and weep at my feet. For twelve days and nights.
‘Of course, in Stellanuova the dead body of a taumaturgo was a sacred object and was often used to heal the sick and answer prayers. And so it was. People brought their faith and prayed. They touched my skin as a blessing. They took liberties they did not have when I was alive. They offered fruit from their orchards and wine from their vineyards. They wept and tore their hair. But in the church there was one man who went too far. He came bursting through the crowd in a passion and as he reached the bier where my corpse lay, he bent down and savagely tore away my toenail between his teeth. The crowd screamed, and he fled, running down the centre aisle and out the door. My spirit shuddered with the shock. But, of course, before long it was forgotten. What did I need with my toenail anymore?’
He lit a cigarette and turned his gaze back towards us. He said: ‘You must realise anything sacred will attract men such as that. Sometimes in their hundreds and thousands. They come to disfigure and take bits for themselves. Just like my toenail. But here I am. My spirit still laughs. And so it will be, in Mangowak. Long after the greed and disrespect have fallen from mortal lips, the bush and ocean will still be here. And the birds will still be laughing. Sacred and strong.’
We sat quietly, thinking things over. Nan and I lit cigarettes as well. Clearly we saw that it was true what he had said and our hearts began to lighten. Across the water a currawong’s call was echoing through the trees.
I told Ionio and Nan then about the day that Phantom and I brought the two girls to this pool when we were young. It was hilarious thinking back on it. How raw we can be as we go through our different rings of growth. Then Ionio told us about the girl that he loved, Barbara Marrari, when he was just thirteen. Before he entered the Franciscans. He was tiny and a late developer as a teenager, and no matter what he did she wouldn’t notice him. He played harmonica beneath her window one night and her father came out and thrashed him to within an inch of his life. He stole books for her from a rich man’s library and was caught and got into terrible trouble. Nothing he tried worked. And then eventually he was put out of his misery when she got married to a smooth customer from Taranto when she was only fifteen. He kept telling us how beautiful she was. And then laughing. And then crying mock tears.
As time drifted on I was conscious of the fading light and our encroaching separation. It began to feel strange to be just chatting away about trivial things. And then Ionio turned to us with his river-coloured eyes and his red smile and said: ‘One little lesson about the power of death. I know, from my migration, first from earth to mirror-earth and then from Stellanuova to Victoria, about the many different lives people live. On many different landscapes. Irrigation ditches in one place, a creek as sweet as this at the next, desert somewhere else. And no matter which landscape it is, no matter what they say, the people of it are entwined in it. Do you hear? They are of it. It is a part of them, like their blood. So it was with the eels.
‘Blessed anguille. For years and years they had lived in that swamp, and after that rain, pioggia benedetta, they were roughly thrown out. Out of their rhythm. Yes, normally they can cross land, crawl up your leg, curl up in a clothes drawer like a snake, travel for thousands of kilometres. Of their own volition. But these eels, this time, here in Mangowak, I had to save them. So they were thrown out. Ejected. No choice. And all of a sudden what they knew was gone. Everything was different. Time, place. And they panicked. Oh, how they panicked! You heard them, Noel. This is the power of death.
‘They could easily swim those ditches into the river. They’d done it before. They could’ve slid right down the middle of the road if they’d wanted. But no, they panicked. This is the power of death. They thought the worst. They thrashed and they thrashed. T
angled up into one another. Fearing the ultimate. Not feeling the water and safe mud all around them. And so I intervened. Not to do anything miraculous but only to calm them down. To give them confidence. Confidence in life, in the natural course of things.
‘This is the power of death over you poor creatures. It kills confidence, it dries out faith. But, Nan, with your life, don’t panic. Imagine I am there like the banks of the river, guiding you as you flow to your own capabilities. Relax. And, Noel, have faith. You do. Both of you. I love you.’
There was a splash at the far side of the pool and, looking over, Nan and I caught sight of the platypus with his head above the water, his big wide bill swimming across towards some bubbles we could see on the surface to our left. He swam for about ten or fifteen feet, what seemed like forever – it was definitely the longest sighting of a platypus I had ever had – and as it arrived at the bubbles, it paused and then, with a customary flip, ducked back under the water, its tail being the last thing we saw.
I looked to Ionio to see his reaction. He had gone. I looked at Nan. Her mouth opened wide but no sound came out. Between us, where he had been, was nothing but a pair of skate shoes, sitting neatly with the laces tied, obviously waiting to be returned to the convent.
A few minutes later, I thought I heard strains of a tremolo harmonica in the bush to the north of us. But I couldn’t be sure.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to thank Chris Grierson and Hilary McPhee, whose faith in The Patron Saint of Eels was just the ticket. Thanks also to Nikki Christer at Picador, who saw the vision and loved it.
A big kiss for Sian Marlow, whose images grace the book.