‘I thought at first it was vanity,’ he says. ‘Now . . . ’
I take another sip.
‘Perversity,’ he says.
‘I’d call it a malicious sense of humour,’ I say.
‘Aren’t they the same?’
‘Only to someone who has no sense of humour.’
‘That’s pretty much everyone at the Embassy then.’
‘Hard for you,’ I say.
‘Not really,’ he says. ‘I don’t have much of a sense of humour either.’
I take another drink and face him, gathering the hem of my silk dress so I can curl up on the bench. I have the feeling he wants to move further away but he stays still. Holds his ground.
‘I suppose surveillance guys don’t need humour,’ I say.
‘I’m not spying on you,’ he says, sharply.
‘But you are a man on a mission?’
He hesitates.
I raise the glass to the moonlight. The liquid, coiled and gold and oily, rolls back and forth. The bubbles are gone already.
‘You want to know about the stories,’ I say.
He shrugs. ‘That’s not what the Embassy is interested in.’
I laugh. ‘Really?’ I hold the glass out, under his nose. ‘Just one little drink,’ I say. ‘You’ll feel better.’
He looks at me. The moonlight catches the edge of his eye, the sliver of deep blue, like the sea where it meets the horizon on an overcast day. But then he moves his head back and all I see is black.
‘Which stories?’ he says, mildly. ‘The drug stories? The loony bin stories? The men stories?’
I drain the glass, reach for the bottle. ‘All you file-collecting Embassy types want to know the men stories.’
‘But if we’re efficient Embassy types, we already know the men stories.’
‘Never as interesting second-hand.’ I raise the bottle. ‘One teensy drink?’
‘You can’t taunt me into drinking.’ He closes his mouth, hard.
‘Is that what I’m doing – taunting you?’
‘Forget it,’ he says. ‘That is too . . . personal.’
‘What’s wrong with personal?’
‘Well . . . ’ He says slowly, as though he is feeling his way through the words. Cutting away dangerous jungle. ‘I don’t expect you to tell me anything . . . intimate. I’m a stranger. I might use it against you.’
‘What if I want you to use it against me?’
He stares at me. I half fill the glass. The bottle is empty. I throw it onto the gravelled path where it breaks in two with a loud crack which makes the security guards at the jetty rush forward. I drain the glass and raise it. A guard waves and speaks into his walkie-talkie.
I throw the glass onto the path and turn to the man on the bench. ‘Here’s the thing, John Devlin,’ I say. He draws a breath. ‘I just got back from Poland where I was arrested for trespassing and deported, as if you didn’t know. Nothing my lawyers couldn’t handle, of course, because even though my father is a convicted looter who was busted smuggling art from Baghdad to Casablanca, and who had his assets frozen in three countries, everyone still thinks I have billions – ’ I hiccup and put my hand over my mouth. ‘Excuse me.’ I wait to see if I am going to hiccup again. I’m not. I take my hand away. ‘Where was I?’
‘Everyone thinks you have billions.’
I stand, unsteadily. There is a crunching on the gravel: a waiter carrying a silver tray with a bottle of champagne, two glasses and a large pot of caviar.
‘Thanks, Italo,’ I say. ‘Just give it to Mr Devlin here.’
Devlin is still. He takes the tray.
‘You’d better bring another bottle,’ I say to Italo as he retreats.
Devlin puts his hand on the cork.
‘Can you open that?’ I say.
‘Yes,’ he says.
A breeze smelling of salt cools my cheek. I raise my hands against the sky, to enclose the moon and the stars. ‘Look,’ I say. ‘My hands are full of stars.
‘I have to be by the water,’ I say, walking towards the jetty, still conducting to the stars. ‘My idea of hell would be a dry place. A hot place. Not to smell the sea. There are no boundaries when you swim. No expectations. No dark cities. It is a democratic country. You forget the shipwrecks inside yourself.’
I reach the stone wall above the jetty. Across the canal the palazzi sit eyeless and darkened, water lapping against the old stone. Over the doors, gargoyles’ heads glower, turned black-green by their mossy growths. Some of the lower levels are boarded up, uninhabitable as the water rises.
‘One benefit of being rich,’ he says, behind me. ‘You can choose where you live.’
‘Only for those with no memory.’ I wonder how close he is.
‘That’s a little self-indulgent isn’t it?’ he says.
I prop myself on the wall. The guards are at the far end of the jetty, their backs discreetly turned. The sparks from their cigarettes float into the darkness like tiny lanterns, up into the slipstream. ‘Goodbye, lucky voyagers,’ I whisper as I always do.
I hear liquid falling and imagine stars in a waterfall. I look over my shoulder. He is pouring champagne into a glass. ‘What exactly are you celebrating?’ he says.
I turn back. ‘Death.’
There is silence behind me. I look to the mouth of the canal, where the lights from the lamps in the piazza trail like tresses on the water, the pale oranges and silvers breaking up in uncertain lines.
‘To water,’ I say. ‘Everything is absorbed by water.’ There is the clink of glass on stone. I stretch out a hand. ‘Whole cities. Silence.’ The trailing lights are sinking, the harbour is blackening. ‘Even darkness itself,’ I say. The guards have turned, curious. I stretch out to grasp the light falling through the black water. ‘Water is the material of despair.’
Devlin yanks me back. He holds me a moment. His hands drop.
‘Do you want them to think you are mad?’ His voice is steady but there is trembling somewhere.
I was sure I could feel it. I was sure then. Later, of course –
‘What’s wrong with you?’ he says.
He takes the bottle and glass and goes up the path.
When I reach him, he is flicking through the book but not really looking at it.
I sit beside him. ‘I’m not drinking alone while I tell my story,’ I say, extending a hand.
He looks at the bottle. ‘It makes me careless.’
‘Do it for your country.’
He says, ‘You won’t like the results’ but he fills the second glass and raises it to his lips. It seems as if barely any liquid goes down his throat but his mouth tightens. He rests the glass on the bench, moving the stem so the liquid swirls slowly in a miniature whirlpool.
He says, ‘Quid pro quo.’
I say, ‘My story is the usual sad tale of a poor little misunderstood rich girl. The end. As of tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow – why?’
‘I’ve done nothing but sit and read poetry for three years.’ Pain twists through my stomach. ‘I was meant to go to Poland three years ago. But I lost my nerve. Now I think I should do something.’
‘You’ll never get out of Italy,’ he says. ‘You can’t use your father’s money.’
‘I’ve got some of my own,’ I say. ‘But you couldn’t know that, could you?’
He meets my gaze without blinking. ‘No.’
‘I bought my first painting when I was seventeen,’ I say. ‘An Aboriginal artist. A landscape depicting Australia as a great lake. I liked the hidden shapes in the water. ’ I put my hand up against the sky. ‘Radiant with hope and despair.’
‘Paintings,’ he says.
‘A Jasper Johns sold last month for eighty million. Private sale. No commission.’
‘Jesus fucking Christ.’
‘You said it, bub.’ The moon outlines my fingers in silver. ‘I always had a good eye for the authentic. Not so good with people.’
‘They’ll take all yo
ur assets, once they find them,’ he says. ‘Now your father’s dead, they’ll come after you. They’ve got nothing, they’re furious.’
‘Then I’ll write. I’ve been doing articles and appraisals.’ He picks up the glass. ‘I write under another name: Emily Dickinson. In case you didn’t know. Do you want me to spell it?’
He stares at the liquid inside the glass. ‘I told you, I’m not a policeman.’
‘So I’m free to leave tomorrow?’
He looks at me over the rim of the glass. ‘Absolutely.’ He takes a small sip, then another. He raises the half-empty glass, throws his head back to drain it. There is a shadow at the base of his throat I can’t make out. In this light, it could be burns.
He says, ‘The Embassy has resources. They can help find your brother. Get Interpol and everyone else off your back.’
I fill my glass. After a moment he holds out his. I see black stars in the liquid as it falls.
‘If I collaborate,’ I say.
‘Co-operate,’ he says. ‘Avoid jail.’ He drains the glass, pulls at his black tie. The collar comes undone. I see darkness move like snakes at the base of his throat.
‘No-one’s talked to me about jail,’ I say.
He sighs, runs his fingers through his hair.
‘I shouldn’t tell you this,’ he says. He avoids my eyes, flips open the book beside him.
But you’re going to, I think. ‘I don’t want to get you into trouble,’ I say.
‘No, well . . . ’ He looks at me. ‘You should know – wherever you go, you’re on a plane, you go to the bathroom, you’re at dinner, you put your bag on the floor, you leave your coat at the cloakroom – wherever you go, whatever foreign country you are in, sooner or later, someone is going to find heroin in your bag.’
I look up at the image on the wall. It is Catherine Todd’s Three Girls On A Hilltop Facing The Sun. More radiant colours, more hope. The very colours of Australia. Why am I always turning towards the light? I should know better. I should know it is water I need.
‘I’m sorry.’ He sounds sincere. ‘Obviously, I don’t agree with it.’
‘No-one thought to appeal to my patriotism?’ I say. ‘My love of art? No-one ever thought to just ask me?’
He stares at me. ‘No.’
‘I don’t think we’d make very good collaborators.’ I stand, put out my hand. ‘My book please.’ The moon trembles above me, the stars shift. I put my glass down carefully, almost missing the bench.
He turns the book over. ‘You mustn’t think much of your own party if you’re out here reading.’ He sees the gold lettering on the spine. ‘Collected poems,’ he says. ‘Oh, poetry.’
‘You say it like it’s a disease.’
‘I don’t get poetry.’ He sits back, with the book. ‘You should explain it.’
The breeze blows the skirt of my dress around me. ‘You must think me simple to fall for that trick.’
‘I told you I wasn’t very good at this job.’
‘I think you’re very good at it.’ I sway a moment on the wind.
‘If you think you must go . . . ’ He holds out the book.
As I take it, my hand touches his. He sits back, flexing his fingers. ‘What’s it good for?’ he says. ‘All those emotions. Interfering with getting things done.’
‘You prefer men of action,’ I say.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a way of communicating.’ The back of my hand is burning where he had touched me. ‘Part of the dance. A way of talking about emotions too private to be spoken. Like music.’ I sit, slowly. ‘It’s a release.’
He picks up my glass, takes a mouthful. ‘Persuade me.’
The moon is yellow and satiated above us. ‘Say the two of us are sitting here . . . ’
‘As we are.’
‘And I wanted to let you know how I feel but not too directly because I don’t know who you are . . . ’
‘As you don’t.’
‘Then I might look up at the moon and I might quote poetry, a few meaningless words, in the moonlight, to see how you would react.’
He gives a short laugh. ‘But it’s just words. It’s not doing.’
‘It’s a way of doing,’ I say. ‘It’s a prelude to doing.’
He shrugs. ‘Well, what are these mystical words?’
‘It won’t work if you scoff.’
‘I’m not. Seriously.’
‘Seriously, you are. But maybe . . . ’ I consider him. ‘Maybe that makes it better.’
‘What better?’
‘Your surrender.’
‘Oh, bullshit.’
‘Can’t mistake that,’ I say. ‘Two Australians far from home.’
He leans forward. ‘What about your precious words?’ For a moment, I think he is about to put a hand on my knee. He is supremely confident – in some knowledge he thinks he has over me.
I put my hand around his hand so the pulse of my wrist is at his wrist. I put my other hand around his neck, below his ear. The moon is warm overhead. He is still. I move until I am a breath away from his mouth and I say, ‘I carry your heart. I carry it in my heart.’
I sit back, slowly.
His eyelids flicker. ‘That’s cheating.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of the touching.’ He takes his glass, bends to pick up the champagne bottle.
‘What about if I touched you like this . . . ’ I put a hand on his inner thigh. He lets out a short shocked breath. ‘And what if while I’m doing that, I say, Gee you look familiar? Do you think that has the same effect?’
‘You broke the mood.’
‘Maybe. But you didn’t answer my question.’ I reach for his glass. He takes a long sip.
‘You do look familiar,’ I say.
He gives me the glass. ‘Us office drones are all alike.’
A large gondola floats past. The black-backed water sidles restlessly in the canal, like silk dragged back and forth, so the moonlight glimmers in the puckered material. Revellers wearing party hats shout at the security guards on the jetty. I raise my hand too, wave, miss the air.
He pours me another drink, to the brim. His own glass is half full. My hand trembles as I pick up my glass. ‘I hope to do the same to you one day.’
‘I’m sure you will.’ He reaches out to touch the book in my lap. His fingers graze my leg through the silk. The satin underskirt slides like the sea over my skin.
There is a muted riff of ferry horns; orange lights swing back and forth restlessly across the mouth. A long blast and the lights settle, heading north. The bigger ferry to the Lido has won the right of way.
He nods at the water. ‘I keep forgetting the lagoon is a working harbour.’
‘In our old house – ’
‘The mansion,’ he says.
‘No, our first house. In the western suburbs. There was a creek, just a little one, which ran past the back yard. Bits of scrub but it was packed with birds and possums and lizards. It was a whole universe. Or it seemed to me then. The animals never spoke but the water talked to me the whole time.’
‘I see why you read poetry,’ he says. ‘It’s the only thing that translates you.’
The image on the wall changes again: Brueghel’s The Temptation Of St Antony. I stare at the small figure looking up to the grey sky, the winged monsters approaching. A speck of humanity in a monstrous landscape of cruelly jagged rocks and stony peaks.
‘What are you celebrating?’ he says.
‘My father’s death of course.’ A wave of fine black mist passes in front of my eyes. I say, ‘What’s the one thing you remember about your father?’
He holds the glass up to the light. ‘For my first driving test he bribed the marker.’
‘To make sure you’d succeed?’
‘So I’d fail. He thought it would be character building.’ He lowers the glass. ‘Shit. I’ve never told anyone that. Shit.’
‘How did you celebrate his death?’ I say.
He stares at me.
‘You can’t say that to people.’
‘I’m not saying it to people. I’m saying it to you.’
‘You can’t let people know things like that about you. They’ll make . . . assumptions.’
‘Not if they’re the right people.’ I wonder how drunk he is. He seems a long way from sober but from what I know of him, he has a bottomless capacity for alcohol. For poison.
‘But how do you know if they’re the right people?’ he says.
I reach across and pull his collar aside. His hand grips my wrist, tightens, until I hear the bones grate. ‘No,’ he says and I appreciate how angry he is. The reference to his father had been a mistake. The pain washes through me, a familiar tide, it is like the first plunge as the needle goes in. I wait for the rush of sweet feeling but there is only him, watching me, his eyes black in the light.
And now we come to the moment. I look at the patterns of hooks and knives curved across his upper chest, like a hangman’s noose lying loose below his neck. He wants me to cry out, to say anything, so he can release me. But I am silent. I force a small smile, I gaze without blinking. He draws a harsh breath and lets go, shaking his head. He gets up awkwardly, as though his legs are stiff.
‘I’m the wrong man for this,’ he says.
‘I think you’re the perfect man for this.’ I stand near him, so that when I sway, I brush his shirt front.
He puts his hand on my wrist again, this time pulls me to him. He bends his head. Our mouths are almost touching. I feel the heat blazing off me but he seems perfectly cool, cold even.
He steps back. ‘Sorry. That was – ’ he pauses ‘– out of character.’
The black mist drops over my eyes. I sway again.
His voice comes closer now. ‘How do you know if they’re the right people – to tell things to?’
I look down at the book in my hand. Under the moonlight, the words break up and re-form themselves like waves at early light. I reach and find his black marks like rocks in a slowly warming sea. I rest my hand there. This time he lets me. I wondered about that later. I always wanted to ask him. But I never did. Maybe I already knew I would be afraid of the answer.
As the heat floods into me, I say, ‘Because they are as guilty as you.’
The light scatters. I close my eyes as he puts an arm around me and says, ‘Where’s your room?’
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