by Alex Miller
They are all coming to dinner on Wednesday evening. I know, I didn’t need to do this to myself. But I’m doing it to satisfy my entirely selfish desire to see Sabiha sitting at our old dining table being a tragic beautiful exotic princess, one of our antique crystal goblets in her hand, the red wine gleaming like the blood of a bull in the candlelight. I want to set her up for this, as if I’m a portrait painter, Max Ernst setting up his model for his Attirement of the Bride. What a picture that is! The most unsullied eroticism. I’d like to know what Sabiha would think of it. It’s in Venice. A good reason for going there. We’ve not had a dinner party in the dining room since years before Marie died. We stopped doing that kind of thing. How dumb is it to want to see Sabiha in this way, though? How old man is it of me? It’s something I’m never going to confess to my daughter. There are some things we don’t tell anyone.
Wednesday seems to be the only evening Sabiha can spare. I’m feeling anxious about it. But then I’m anxious about a lot of things these days. There is no flow to my life, that’s the trouble. What don’t I feel anxious about is more the question. I can’t decide whether to be completely informal with them on Wednesday and just sit around the kitchen with some finger food and a dozen cans of beer, or whether to put on a grand show for them in the dining room and demonstrate my respect. I can only have my dream image in the dining room. Clare hasn’t offered to cook. And I haven’t asked her. The Cap will be there, with his head on the table I suppose. I asked Clare, ‘Why can’t he sit up at the table like everyone else?’ She said, ‘Dad!’ So I left it at that. His legs fill the space under the kitchen table and his arms angle about all over the top. He doesn’t seem to notice that there are things on the table that he might knock off. How do they sleep together? Clare must be crouched in a corner of the bed. I can’t sit down when he’s here without being afraid I’m going to touch him.
And he’s always here. I think he’s moved in. I’m not sure. I asked Clare but her answer left me no wiser. I don’t understand them. We are not of the same world anymore. Venice beckons. It’s not funny anymore. It never was. They can have the house. After all, what do I need a house for at my age?
It’s not just Robin the Cap, however. It’s not just him. And it’s no good blaming him. After all, he’s not intentionally rude. He’s not aggressive. And he seems to genuinely care for my daughter. More than once I’ve noticed his expression soften when he looks at her. Is that love, or not? From memory, that’s love. I should be grateful. I’ve never seen him drink more than two cans of beer and he doesn’t seem to be on drugs. Though how would I know? Anyway, Clare has to live her own life, in my house or somewhere else. And she has a right to choose who she sleeps with. I don’t want to think about that side of it. No, it’s not him. This goes a lot deeper for me than my daughter’s boyfriend.
I’d just about decided to make a start on John and Sabiha’s story when we had our last meeting at the Paradiso. Yes, that’s right, I’d decided to come out of my retirement for one last throw. This is not a surprise to anyone, I realise that. My retirement was genuine, but John and Sabiha’s story seemed to be just too much of a gift from the gods for me to pass it up—Sabiha’s old gods, undoubtedly. The playful ones. So why was I passing it up? I hadn’t been able to find an answer to this question that carried any conviction. In fact I knew I was going to regret it for the rest of my days if I let their story slip past without having a go at it. So a couple of evenings ago I spent several hours at my desk reading through my notes, from beginning to end, to see what I had. It was all there. The whole thing.
It was a lovely Melbourne autumn day. Autumn is the best time of the year in Melbourne. The oppressive heat of summer is gone and the sun gives just the right amount of warmth to the air to make life comfortable without a jacket or a cardigan, no wind and maybe just one or two innocent white clouds going by. You have to be here. People are happy on days like this. Strangers say hello. Even young women smile at me. And no one’s in a hurry. It’s the kind of day Chinese students get up and offer me their seat on the tram.
John and I were sitting outside the Paradiso after lunch at a table on the footpath. All the tables were taken. There was a lot of chatter and laughter going on around us in about three languages. John told me he didn’t know Australia when he got home, things had changed so much, but not in ways he’d expected. He laughed and said, ‘Sabiha was more at home in Carlton than I was.’ Every now and then a big dry leaf from the plane tree above us came twisting and spiralling down and one of the young women at the next table made a grab for it and laughed. Watching the girl grabbing for the leaf I remembered telling Clare when she was a little girl that if we catch a falling leaf our wish will come true. The two of us running across the oak lawn at the Botanical Gardens chasing falling leaves, Marie sitting on the grass by our picnic watching us or drawing in the pad on her knees. Marie was always turning her world into drawings. She never joined in our games but she loved to see me and Clare running around having fun. It was a magical time for the three of us. Clare must have been about Houria’s age then. A little kid full of confidence. It used to break my heart to watch her running across the grass, her skinny little legs going like clockwork. I see kids doing that now and I stop and stare at them and my throat tightens. As a general thing I don’t have a problem with being old or even with getting older, but when I see the beauty of children I do regret that life must soon pass from me and be no more. It’s a dry kind of regret and I don’t weep, but it’s real enough.
I thought John had finished his story. He had left me with that affecting image of Sabiha and Bruno’s son in the kitchen of Chez Dom, the place sad and closed up and finished, its history done with. The young man doing his best to deal with what had happened in a manner that would dignify the memory of his murdered father. I wasn’t expecting a lot more after that. I had one or two questions, like did they ever catch up with Nejib’s brother, and stuff like that, but I had decided these things could wait for another time.
We were sitting there saying nothing. I was listening to the conversation in Spanish at the next table. Lorca’s language! It was a pleasure to listen in. I stopped thinking about myself. There was no expectation playing between me and John, and the silence between us was easy. I thought we’d done for the day, for the whole thing. Life was going on around us and I had a new story to write.
Then I realised John was looking at me steadily, a smile in his eyes. He said, ‘I want to thank you, Ken.’
‘Oh, there’s no need for thanks,’ I said. ‘It’s me who ought to be thanking you.’
‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what you’ve done for me. I came home from France after sixteen years with nothing of my own to show for it. Not a thing. I felt as if whatever gifts or ambitions I’d once possessed had been wasted. I felt guilty about this failure to make sense of my life. When we got back to Australia I made the mistake of taking Sabiha to Moruya. I felt sure there would be nothing for me in Melbourne. I couldn’t believe I’d get a job with the Victorian education department after being away so long, so I didn’t even try. I went home to Moruya to see Mum and Dad. Mum was pretty far gone with Alzheimer’s and never did work out who Sabiha was. But she seemed to like her, whoever she thought she was. Sabiha was depressed for a long time, grieving for Bruno. For a year or so I didn’t think she was going to get over it. If it hadn’t been for Houria I wonder if she would have come through it. I don’t imagine she will ever forget him. But she’s found a way of living with it. We don’t talk about it. Whatever she feels now it’s her private sorrow. We had five pretty tough years up there. Then I heard about this teacher shortage in Melbourne. You know the rest.’
He sat there saying nothing again and I thought this was definitely it. I was on the point of asking him if Sabiha knew he had been telling me their story when he looked up at me and said, ‘When you started coming into the shop on Saturdays and then I saw you at the library I didn’t know who you were. Then I saw you on t
he daytime replay of The Book Show and realised you were a writer. I’d heard your name, but I’d never read any of your books. When I found myself standing next to you at the shallow end of the pool that Saturday I decided it was a sign. That’s when I asked you to join me for a coffee. Remember?’
‘A pool-water coffee,’ I said. ‘Yes, I do remember.’
‘I was planning on making use of you.’
‘How do you mean?’ I said. But I believed I knew what he meant, his need to move his story on and get it out of his system had been obvious.
‘I had no confidence that anyone would be interested in our story. But our story was all I had. It was all I’d brought home with me after sixteen years in Paris, and five years wasting our time in Moruya. I decided to try our story out on you. Like you said, you were my perfect listener. Your interest has given me the confidence to write it. When I get home after each of our sessions, I spend hours writing what I’ve been telling you.’ He waited for my reaction.
I said nothing.
‘I’ve been staying up till two and three in the morning writing it. Once you start, it’s all just lying there waiting for you, isn’t it? I’ve more or less got a draft of the whole thing.’
‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘Who doesn’t want to write their memoirs?’
‘I’ve become a writer, Ken.’
I could see he was serious.
‘I’m making some sense of my life. It’s this I want to thank you for.’
I said, ‘I just listened.’
‘Our story was written in my heart. But I needed the confidence to write it. That’s what you’ve given me.’
He was rather solemn about it. I said something like, ‘Well this is terrific news, John. Good luck with it.’ I shook his hand.
He said, ‘I’m not asking you to use your connections to help me get it published. I’ll do that myself. It’s not ready yet. I’m dedicating it to you.’ He grinned. ‘I hope you don’t mind?’
I said I was flattered.
‘I suppose you’re in the middle of writing a new book by now?’
‘I have an idea for one,’ I said.
‘Have you done much work on it?’
‘Quite a bit.’
‘I’m happy if you want to talk about it. I might not be the perfect listener, but you could give me a try.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ I said. ‘But if you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about it just now.’ I met his eyes. ‘I’ve found the surest way to lose a story is to tell it.’
He laughed uneasily. ‘I’ve found mine by telling it.’
I didn’t say, We’ll see, but that’s what went through my head.
We were silent for a minute or so, then he said, ‘You know almost everything there is to know about me. I know almost nothing about you.’
I said, ‘There’s not a lot to know. My life’s in my books.’ I got up and went inside the café and paid for our coffees.
Chapter Thirty-Six
I was in the pastry shop this afternoon, waiting my turn, enjoying watching Sabiha serving her customers. I love to watch her move, to witness her calm reserve, the grace of her manner, to look at her and know her secret strength, her secret tragedy, her endurance, her courage enough to face a lion. She is my hero. I love her most deeply, most secretly. I have only ever been able to write about people I love. No matter how filled with doubt about my life I am when I go into her shop, I am convinced of my purpose once again by the time I come out.
She turned from serving a woman and looked out the window. I turned to see what she was looking at, so did the woman she was serving. The traffic was heavy at that time of the afternoon and all I could see was the usual line-up of cars and trucks behind a bus, heat radiating off their bonnets. The woman Sabiha had been serving was not fretting at the delay, but was looking out at the traffic and the people on the street in the afternoon sunlight, as if she shared Sabiha’s interest in the scene. It was one of the beautiful things about Sabiha and her shop, this lack of hurry, the quiet respect with which people felt called on to treat each other in her presence.
Thoughtless people, people in a hurry, young women in black suits with frenzied eyes, their new Audi double-parked outside, were not in the shop five minutes before they discovered the joys of mental calm and good manners. I loved Sabiha for it. I was going to write her story, and I was going to go on being her friend and her admirer, and the friend of her husband and her beautiful daughter, a miniature replica of her mother. My part of Carlton was so much more hopeful with Sabiha and her pastry shop in it than it had been with the derelict drycleaners and the desolate supermarket. Thanks to Sabiha Carlton was my reality once again. There was no longer any need for me to think of returning to Venice to slip away quietly one summer afternoon like Aschenbach in his deckchair. The Paris of Chez Dom was my dream now, my fiction, and for a year or two I would live it. Venice could wait for another time.
The traffic moved along and when the bus had passed I saw John and Houria standing at the kerb, waiting to cross to our side of the road. I have never dwelled heavily on nostalgia, but I couldn’t help thinking of bringing Clare home from prep in the old days. A lifetime away, that, and a fine subject for nostalgia. It was not nostalgia, not a longing to relive those times with my daughter, but a pleasure in witnessing once again that these things survived. I’ve sometimes been tempted to cry out with despair that everything has changed and all the good things have been swept away. But that is the prejudice of the old and must be resisted. The truth, if I can deal in truth for a moment, is that the very best and the very worst of things, those primal things that make us human, have remained unchanged, the good and the evil.
Houria was looking up at her dad with an eager expression on her face, evidently asking him something that was important to her just at that moment. Her blue and yellow kid’s backpack bouncing about on her back as she made her point with great enthusiasm. John was looking down, listening to her. I watched him bend and pick her up then. She was a big girl for her age and he held her against his chest, his bulky satchel making it an awkward manoeuvre for him. He stood holding her, looking along the street, frowning and ready to make a dash for it as soon as there was a gap in the traffic. Watching them I experienced again my old anxiety at children and traffic and wide streets. In fact I could not bear to watch and looked away from them and at Sabiha.
Sabiha was laughing at something the woman customer had said to her, and was selecting pastries with the crocodile tongs, offering that same considered care she had shown me the first time I came into her shop, holding the paper bag in one hand and looking into it as she positioned the pastry inside, being careful not to damage the crust.
When I looked out the window again John and Houria had made it to the centre island. John set Houria down and took her hand and they stood waiting for the cars to pass. There wasn’t so much traffic going into the city, and it was only moments before they were able to cross in safety. Houria didn’t walk, she jumped. She was seeing how big she could make her jumps, her hand gripping her dad’s hand, he looking down at her and encouraging her, giving her an extra lift.
The woman said, ‘And I wouldn’t mind getting some of those too.’ She was pointing at the pyramid of honey-dipped briouats on the shelf behind Sabiha. ‘How do you pronounce that again? They always look so delicious. I’ve been meaning to try them for ages.’
Sabiha picked up the crocodile tongs and selected the two topmost briouats, one at a time, and put them into a paper bag. She put the bag on the counter next to the bag of pastries. ‘Try them. No, you don’t need to pay me for these. They’re just for you to try.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ the woman said. ‘Frank will love them. I’ll be lucky to get a look-in.’
I looked at Sabiha and wondered if the night of Bruno’s murder still flashed in her mind when she was lying awake beside John. Did she go over the details of that night again and again in her memory? Reliving the horror of it? Was
she still tortured by guilt and remorse for what she had done to that man? John had said she had found a way to live with it, but none of us is master of our dreams or our night fears. To see her smiling and talking to the woman customer it was almost impossible for me to believe that Sabiha was a tormented woman. But I remembered the day I first saw her, and how I had witnessed some deep old grief in her eyes and had wondered then at the cause of it. I had her story now, but it is one thing to have a story and another to write it. How was I to articulate the delicate complexities that must give weight and depth and beauty to her story, those things that most easily elude us?
She turned to me, her eyes meeting mine as if she saw the question in my mind. ‘Hello, Ken,’ she said and smiled. I was aware of John and Houria coming into the shop behind me, Houria’s high-pitched voice, excited about something she wanted to tell everyone. Whose idea had it been, I wondered, to call the pastry shop Figlia Fiorentino?
Sabiha said, ‘I’m cooking for Wednesday’s dinner. Something you and Clare have never had before.’ She laughed.
‘You can’t do that,’ I protested. ‘You’re my guest.’
‘Something Tunisian,’ she said. ‘A surprise.’ She looked at me. ‘We cook for our friends, Ken. We know how to do it. It’s what we do. You and Clare can provide the hospitality of your lovely home. We’ll do the rest.’ She held my gaze and I saw she wanted to say something more but was hesitating. ‘You are part of our story now,’ she said.
I was moved. But Houria was tugging at my sleeve and shouting my name over and over, ‘Ken! Ken! Ken!’ I turned and knelt down to her. ‘What is it, darling?’