Four Fires

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘My goodness gracious me, this one she will be opera singer!’ Mrs Rika Ray is ecstatic. ‘It is a girl, a most beautiful very, very wonderful girl, Sarah! Very, very healthy!’ Mrs Rika Ray says.

  Sarah is still panting furiously but the moment she sees her daughter, she bursts into tears, trying to smile and at the same time trying to stop her panting, all of which can’t be done simultaneously. So she bawls and pants. She’s not crying because she’s sad, but because she’s so happy.

  Then Mrs Rika Ray becomes aware that someone is banging furiously on the window of Sarah’s bedroom. She moves over and opens Nancy’s yellow-daisy curtains to see a wild-eyed Sophie outside, her nose pressed against the windowpane and the branches of the lemon tree behind her, a lemon resting on top of her head. She pushes the window up and Sophie climbs into the bedroom, gasping and falling to the floor with a thud. But she’s up in an instant, even before Mrs Rika Ray can reach out and give her a hand. Mrs Rika Ray doesn’t seem too surprised at Sophie’s entrance. ‘Hot water we are needing, a kettle to boil and a pot, you are hurrying please, Sophie.’

  But Sophie isn’t listening, she doesn’t say a word or even glance at Sarah or see the baby but makes straight for the bedroom door and runs down the passage to the front door where she grabs the envelope containing the sixpences and flies out the door and tears down the pavement to the telephone booth on the corner. The door bangs behind her.

  The scene in the bedroom continues uninterrupted. Mrs Rika Ray lifts the baby from between Sarah’s legs and places her on her tummy. ‘Sarah, you are holding the baby only on your tummy, you are soon seeing fingers and toes for counting, but not yet.’ She takes each of Sarah’s hands in turn and shows her how to hold the baby. ‘Be careful, the umbilical cord we are not yet cutting, I am tying first then we are cutting.’

  She reaches down to the newspaper parcel on the wooden fruit crate beside the bed and takes a single length of twine about eight inches long and ties it tightly around the umbilical cord, about an inch from the baby’s navel. Then she takes the second piece and ties it about three inches further up towards Sarah’s tummy. She reaches down again and picks up the scissors and cuts through the section of the cord contained between the two pieces of twine. In this way she stems the blood flow through the cord from the baby and the mother’s end, and at the same time detaches the baby.

  With the baby no longer attached to its umbilical cord, Mrs Rika Ray looks down at Sarah. ‘Now you are lifting baby and holding to breasts. You are holding up baby and you are counting ten for fingers, ten for toes.’She smiles. ‘If you are finding more than ten, you are telling me please and I am putting baby back quick-smart and we are asking Mr Stork for new one.’ Sarah smiles weakly at Mrs Rika Ray’s feeble joke as she lifts her baby up toward her face.

  Throughout the birth Mrs Rika Ray hasn’t raised her voice and is perfectly calm, seemingly going about her business with plenty of time on her hands, as if what she is doing is the most natural situation in the world. Which, when you think about it, I suppose it is. Sarah senses that she’s in good hands and does what she’s told, now drawing and clutching her daughter to her chest so that her stomach is exposed.

  ‘My dear, we are taking out placenta. I am pressing down on your tummy, I am wanting deep breath, then slowly, slowly breathing out until next contraction is coming.’ She sees Sarah’s look of dismay. ‘No, no, it is not hurting.’

  Pressing down gently but firmly on Sarah’s tummy with one hand, she proceeds to tug carefully on the umbilical cord and, waiting for the next contraction, she allows the placenta to slide out. She then checks it to see that it is intact. ‘Everything perfect, Sarah, a very, very nice birth we are having, I am giving eleven out of ten, no questions asked!’ She wraps the newspaper around the placenta and sets it aside for Morrie to examine. ‘Now we are looking for the tearing. If the tearing has come, we must wait for Morrie to stitch.’ She examines Sarah. ‘My goodness, so lucky, so very, very lucky! First birth and always tearing but no tearing, only very small, not needing stitches, your perineum it will be like new in week, you are having spontaneous birth and very nice baby to boots.’

  ‘Oh, she’s so beautiful,’ Sarah whispers. ‘Thank you, thank you, Mrs Rika Ray.’

  ‘Red hair she is having, beautiful like her mother,’ Mrs Rika Ray smiles. ‘Now, my dear, I must go to kitchen. It is cleaning up we must do, making you and baby clean like a whistle. I am boiling water and bringing basin and changing sheets. Where is Sophie? I am the complete bamboozlement with disappearance of Sophie. A very, very big mystery. She comes first through the window and then she is disappearing in thin air! Abracadabra, I am not knowing where! I must boil kettle now.’

  Almost as she says this, there is a furious banging on the front door and Mrs Rika Ray goes out and opens it to find a sobbing Sophie on the other side. ‘Just in nick of times you are coming, Sophie, no more midnight wanderings, we are needing boiling water in kettle and clean sheets. You must help me now please.’

  ‘Morrie! Morrie is comink, Sarah will go to ’ospital!’ Sophie says tearfully.

  ‘Hot water and basin, Sophie! Sarah is having a baby girl. She has very, very easy pumpkin-pip special, first-class sliding out, a copying-book birth.’

  Sophie brings her hands up to her lips, her eyes are wild and terrified. ‘Oh my God! The Kommandant, he will kill za baby! We must hide baby, Morrie is comink, he will do it!’ She starts to laugh hysterically.

  ‘Hystericals we are not having!’ Mrs Rika Ray slaps Sophie hard against the cheek and Sophie grabs at her face and sinks to her knees in the hallway, sobbing, ‘I am sorry, I am sorry,’ she sobs.

  ‘No time for sorry. Boil water!’ Mrs Rika Ray commands. ‘I must get the herbs for cleaning and disinfecting.’ Sophie gets to her feet and runs into the kitchen and Mrs Rika Ray hears the tap at the sink being turned on and then the sound of the kettle being filled.

  Mrs Rika Ray sets about tidying up, removing the newspapers from the bed and the bottom sheet. It isn’t long before Sophie enters with the large kitchen kettle, clutching the handle in both hands. She looks at Sarah for the first time and sees the baby, now asleep, on Sarah’s breast. ‘Thanks to God! Thanks to God!’ Sophie cries.

  ‘We are thanking God later, Sophie.’Mrs Rika Ray takes the kettle. ‘Now we are cleaning baby and mother and you are helping me.’

  But instead Sophie sighs and collapses to the floor in a dead faint.

  Mrs Rika Ray brings her around and makes her sit with her back against the bed and she puts Sophie’s hand in Sarah’s. ‘Hello, Sophie, have you seen our little girl?’ Sarah says, smiling weakly. Sophie bursts into sobs. ‘Ja bede kochala wiecey. Ja przyzekam.’ (‘I will love her more than my life, I promise.’)

  Mrs Rika Ray pours the contents of the kettle into the basin and adds cold water from the jug until she judges it hot enough. Then she taps a few crystals of potassium permanganate (Condy’s crystals) into the basin, turning the water purple, and adds the extract of seaweed (iodine). She starts to wash Sarah. When she’s finished she takes up a jar of herbal ointment and rubs it into Sarah’s thighs and girl parts. ‘It is natural analgesic, my dear, for taking away pain.’ After she’s made Sarah comfortable, she starts to clean the baby, having first thrown the water from Sarah’s basin out the window and added fresh water from the kettle and a lighter solution of the previous concoctions. Finally she pats the tiny infant dry and swaddles it tightly in one of the baby blankets Mrs Barrington-Stone has given Sarah and hands the bundle to Sarah, who draws her baby daughter to her breast. The tiny infant, exhausted from the birth, immediately falls asleep again, sucking its thumb. Sarah lifts her baby bundle gently and hands it to Sophie to cuddle.

  Sophie is ecstatic. Tears once again run down her cheeks, but this time happy ones. Mrs Rika Ray makes Sarah take a tablespoon of something else she’s brought and soon she too is asleep. She then changes
the sheets and cleans up the room just as Morrie arrives home, banging the door behind him and running down the hallway.

  Sophie’s sitting there, holding Sarah’s baby. She looks at him. ‘All my life. All my life,’she says quietly in Polish, smiling this huge smile.

  Mrs Rika Ray takes the baby from her and puts it on Sarah’s chest.

  Sophie rises and rushes into Morrie’s arms, ‘Morrie, you have come just in time!’

  Morrie laughs, ‘I am in time for what? The christening?’ He walks over, takes the baby from Mrs Rika Ray and places it at the end of the bed. Then he unswaddles her and checks for any abnormalities, examining for a hernia, looking to see that the spine is straight, or if there are any birthmarks. After he sees that the baby’s palate is intact, he tidies up the navel. Sarah’s daughter doesn’t much care for all this extra fuss and yells her tiny head off. Morrie pronounces the infant perfect in all respects, then swaddles her again and hands her to Sophie.

  ‘You hold, my darlink, we check Sarah now.’ He pulls back the sheets and presses on Sarah’s tummy and finds it is soft and doughlike. ‘Perfect,’ he says, then he examines her perineum, ‘No sutures needed.’ He pulls the sheets back over Sarah, who smiles, drowsy from the stuff Mrs Rika Ray has given her. ‘A spontaneous birth, that is wonderful for a first child. Congratulations, my dear. Mazeltov!’

  Sarah can’t keep her eyes open but smiles. ‘Mrs Rika Ray was wonder–’ She doesn’t complete the sentence before she’s asleep again.

  Morrie turns at last to Mrs Rika Ray and, moving close to her, embraces her. ‘We are grateful more than we can say, you too, Mrs Rika Ray. Now you are also our Australian family. Thank you, thank you, from za bottom of za heart.’

  It’s been a long time since Mrs Rika Ray has been hugged by someone who loves her and she doesn’t know whether to cry or laugh. ‘I also, I am happy from my heart’s bottom!’ she says, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  About this time with Sarah’s baby asleep in Sophie’s arms and Sarah now a mother, the remainder of the Maloney family are on the road to Melbourne. Nancy is driving and refuses to go more than twenty miles an hour, which is twice as fast as she goes when we’re collecting the garbage, so, as far as she’s concerned, she’s practically racing. In some places where the road is narrow, cars are banked up for a mile behind us, some hooting with the driver’s arm out the window trying to urge us to go faster. You can almost see the steam coming out of their ears. We pretend not to hear their angry shouts when they eventually pass us.

  Little Colleen’s in front with Nancy and the rest of us are in the back with the bed, double mattress and Singer sewing machine and Bitzers One to Five, who have arranged themselves around the perimeter of the back of the Diamond T so that their noses can catch the breeze. Bozo has given them permission to bark and they’re having a real nice time barking at passing cars, cows, sheep and the occasional horse grazing in a paddock.

  ‘Should make it around Christmas,’ Mike says with a sigh.

  But the good thing is that the old Diamond T hasn’t broken down.

  ‘It’s a bloody miracle,’ Bozo declares. ‘Old bugger must be showin’ off with its borrowed tyres, don’t tell him it’s only for the trip to Melbourne.’ He’s got his tool box with him, a spare radiator hose, spark plugs, a tin of engine oil and a four-gallon can of water. The Diamond T is farting smoke out the exhaust like it’s in a chimney-blowing competition, but that’s nothing unusual, nor is the clapping of the tappets in the engine, which sound like a kid banging on a tin drum. The only mishap was when some cows decide to cross the road and Nancy slams on the brakes and the Diamond T swerves to the edge of the road and skids on the gravel and then stops with a jerk. The Singer sewing machine, which we’ve tied to the back with a rope, breaks loose and, because it’s on these little metal wheels, it goes sliding across the end of the Diamond T and slams into the opposite side. But when we examined it, it didn’t seem to be any the worse for wear, a scratch on the side that Bozo said he could get out and revarnish when we got home. Otherwise the trip was easy with no other problems.

  Seven hours later we arrive with a clank and a snort and a single backfire outside the Carlton terrace. A whole lot of kids are playing in the street and one shouts out, ‘Jeez, look at the old bomb!’ They all rush over and stand on the pavement with their hands behind their backs staring at us and one little girl says slowly, ‘Maloney & Sons – Garbage’, reading the side of the truck. They all giggle.

  ‘G’arn, git!’ Mike says and they all run away, yelling ‘Maloney & Sons – Garbage! Maloney Garbage!’ Bozo gives Bitzers One to Five permission to bark and so everyone in the street knows we’ve arrived.

  Suddenly the door opens and there, standing in Sophie’s pink dressing gown is Sarah, smiling and holding this little bundle in a blue blanket.

  Well, I’ve never seen Nancy so over the moon! She’s grinning and laughing and holding Sarah’s baby and kissing its head and making snoofy sounds and touching it on the nose with her finger and swinging around and doing a little dance.

  When she hears the story of the delivery, suddenly Mrs Rika Ray and she are blood sisters forever. All is forgiven in the instant. Nancy, as the grandmother, promptly pronounces Mrs Rika Ray one of the godmothers on the spot. Sophie and Morrie are like proud parents and Sarah, who has slept practically the whole morning, gives us all a hug and I must say, I know she’s my sister, but her hair is brushed and the sun is catching it and it’s shining like a sort of blaze and she is beautiful. Even someone like me can see that.

  Sophie’s been baking all morning and there’s something she calls cholent, which is sort of like a stew with meat and beans and Jewish stuff that she explains is cooked real slow. It’s been in a low oven all Friday night and all day until dinner at noon, because Jews aren’t supposed to light a fire on a Saturday. She calls Saturday ‘Shabbat’. Only, she says, she and Morrie are not kosher and they can light a fire if they want but cholent is a tradition. I don’t know about a tradition, but I’m telling you, it’s the best stew I’ve tasted in the history of the world! Then there’s latkes, which are fried potato cakes, sort of made very light, but they taste better even than chips and she’s made this apple strudel with fresh cream and we all decide that perhaps we ought to stay forever. All except Bozo, because he’s et hardly anything and says he’s not hungry. Sophie is a bit upset, but Bozo explains it ain’t the food, it’s just he’s not hungry.

  Nancy, who’s tucking in a treat, says, ‘If you’re sick, you’ll have to have castor oil!’

  Mrs Rika Ray says castor oil isn’t good for him, she’ll give him something. But Bozo says, no, he’s fine, just not hungry, that he’ll be hungry tonight for sure.

  ‘That’s good,’ Sophie says. ‘Tonight we eat chicken soup and geroicherte flaysh mit kroit (I only learned how to say that later, but it’s stew with cabbage) and honig lekach, which turns out to be honey cake. Mrs Rika Ray is cooking something special too.

  After we’ve had our tea, Bozo comes up to me, real casual like. ‘Hey, Mole, Big Jack Donovan’s telephoned Kevin Flanagan so I can visit the Russell Street police gym. Wanna come with me?’ He looks at me and I can see he wants me to come. ‘We could go in a tram?’ he offers, bribing me.

  I’d been sort of hoping him and me and Mike could have a look around Melbourne in the afternoon. Go walkabout in Collins Street and those other places we’ve only heard about, the Myers shop that’s got the biggest toy department in the Southern Hemisphere. We’ve never been in the city proper, just the showgrounds. Though, I have to admit, riding in a tram would be something else. ‘We haven’t got any money for the tram,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, got plenty,’ he replies and puts his hand in his pocket and pulls out two bob. ‘Wanna come?’ He must have sold something he’s fixed up before we come down.

  Then I see he’s brought his boxing gloves, the ones Tommy give him for Christmas. It
don’t take too many brains to work out what he’s got in mind. He’s hardly eaten any of Sophie’s champion grub, which means he’s going to try to have a spar with the featherweight who’s in the running to go to the Olympics. The bloke who’s seventeen and Kevin Flanagan said would be much too good for him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I don’t know how Bozo does things, I mean he’s only been to Melbourne twice, once to the Show and the next time to tune the Austin 7 ready for Sarah’s getaway, but he knows exactly what trams to catch to get us to the Russell Street gym. We walk to Nicholson Street, where we catch the tram to the city and Bozo asks the conductor to put us off at Russell Street. Sounds simple enough but the thing is he took the trouble to find out before.

  Bozo thinks about things more than me or Mike, even Sarah. Right from when we were small he’s always had a bob in his pocket. Nancy says she doesn’t know where he gets the nous from, no Maloney ever had a shilling to spare, money always burns a hole in our pockets. It was him thought about fixing junk up and selling it, he’s a natural trader.

  To give you an example, there’s the time in January when Toby Forbes wanted a special weekday delivery of the Gazette. He had six clearing sales advertised for the coming weekend and came to see us about an early-morning drop when we did the garbage. He always pays on the nail, not a fortune, but there’s usually five bob in it for each of us. Bozo’s got three lawnmowers he’s fixed and painted and then re-varnished the wooden handles but hasn’t managed to sell to the second-hand shop in Wangaratta, so he says to Toby Forbes that we’ll do his drop for nothing if he gives us two advertisements in the Gazette. Toby Forbes agrees and Mike does up this little advertisement which is clever as anything and which says: