The Book of Ordinary People

by Claire Varley

  Evangelia thought back to a school project Xanthe had completed the previous year, when she’d grilled Evangelia for answers about their family history. She had asked why Xanthe didn’t ask Yiayia herself, but Xanthe had been too impatient to struggle through the stilted English, made less intelligible in those days as old age fought for a resurgence of the mother tongue. So Evangelia had answered the questions. What did Yiayia do during the war? She waited for it to end. What did Yiayia do when she moved to Australia? She raised her family. What did Yiayia do for fun? Trips out east to pick the cherries, holidays at Lakes Entrance, church fundraisers when she would rise before the sun to bake and set up, then finally kick off her shoes and dance around the courtyard with her friends as the sun went down. No, no, no – that’s not interesting enough to write down! It was a life too unexceptional even for a nine-year-old.

  Nearby, her phone flashed. It was a text from Lydia, followed in quick succession by others. She – Evangelia – had forgotten a school fundraising meeting. Had been meant to bring refreshments. Had left them all thirsty. Had been put on the roster to collect donations for the upcoming silent auction. Had been volunteered by Lydia because she was the only mum without a proper job. Evangelia pushed the phone away. She stared at the blank page before her now, angry that it remained so.

  10

  Rik

  North Facing Window: Italo De Luca

  May 2016

  By Rik Lee

  The bluestone laneways of Coburg and Brunswick run like veins through the middle northern corridor. Quarried from Merri Creek, often by prisoners from nearby Pentridge Prison put to hard labour, they have been part of the area’s aesthetic for more than a century and a half. But not for long, if one man has anything to do with it.

  Since falling and breaking his arm a couple of years ago, Italo De Luca has been on a one-man mission to bring an end to the cobbled laneways surrounding his Brunswick home. ‘They’re no good,’ Italo says, kicking at a paver. ‘Look how uneven! My wife, she can’t even come here because she has the walker and the wheels won’t go.’ Italo is a well-known face at council meetings, regularly presenting his petitions which can hold upwards of thirty signatures. ‘I live here a long time. Sixty years. That’s my house there. You see my driveway? Concrete. You see the pavement out front? Concrete. How hard is it to put some in the laneway too?’

  Italo’s first job after arriving in Australia from southern Italy was at the Queen Victoria Market unpacking fruit and veg in the early morning hours. ‘Was no good. Too cold in the winter. Later I save my money and bought the taxi and things change. What a job! I saw the whole city. From the airport all the way out to the east. Toorak, you know! Those streets – wide enough for three taxis. Not like here. But it’s my home, I love it.’

  Italo’s favourite thing about living in the north is how easy it is to get to the airport, providing there is no traffic.

  Rik hit send, the email hurtling off into the world. A fair day’s writing, all things considered, though he’d collected the interview a few weeks earlier. He went to the fridge and cut himself a thick slice of cheese then ate it silently sitting at his kitchen table-cum-desk. After spending some time doing this, he grabbed his notebook and an umbrella and stepped out into the grey world. Rain fell in bursts, dull clouds heaped across the sky with little interest in travelling anywhere. He watched them as he waited at the tram stop, but the only things he could imagine were other clouds. A big cloud, a slightly bigger cloud, a cloud that looked like all the rest of the clouds . . .

  He rode the tram towards the city then got off at the corner of Smith Street. He pulled his collar up against the cold, releasing the umbrella, then he quickened his pace along Johnston Street. He slowed as he reached the start of the awnings, shaking the umbrella then tucking it under his arm. He looked around this little patch of the inner north, everything as it had always been for all those years. He was embarrassed, but there was nothing unusual about that these days, and as he skulked around the corner he pretended he wasn’t looking at the familiar building across the street. He did the same thing after he’d doubled back half a block, and then, once more, just to be sure. Eventually he stepped into Marios Café and perched on a stool looking out through the window onto the street. He was people-watching, and laid his notebook open before him as evidence of this. People-watching for his job, which was an entirely reasonable thing to be doing. And he would have a coffee while he did this, and a Danish too, which was also markedly acceptable and not at all nostalgic because who in this entire café could ever have reason to call him a nostalgic man? Not a one, to be sure, he thought to himself, resting his chin in the cup of his palm and staring wistfully out at the gallery.

  After some time, he pulled his mobile from his pocket and opened the internet browser. The previous search was still open – the one from the early hours of the morning – and he hurried to close it. He misjudged the screen in his haste, refreshing the search, but there was still nothing on the entirety of the internet about that poor poor man. Suddenly his throat tasted like bile and his heart was thumping about his ears and he could smell the rusty air that followed him across the ocean and into his nightmares and it was screaming – the air – screaming out to him, Stop, please, I only want to help! and all this happened in a sliver of a second. Rik pushed his fingertips into his eye sockets and pressed firmly. When this didn’t work, he reached into his pocket for the foreign painkillers then sat very still, willing the headache away.

  Eventually he was startled by the heavy thud of a deliveryman depositing a bound stack of newspapers on the bench beside him. The deliveryman slit the plastic binding with a Stanley knife. It was his newspaper. He folded a majority of the Danish into his mouth then gingerly seized the top copy. As he flicked towards North Facing Window he stumbled across a large beaming photo of Lotti, the caption proudly proclaiming her the recipient of the publisher’s best new talent award. She looked suitably happy, her bright young eyes sparkling out at him. Rik stared at her a moment, all the hope and promise bursting from her face like piercing beams of light. Like the world was a satisfied oyster and not a cracked shell bogged with useless sediment and muck. Rik took up his pen and carefully measured out the beams of a rainbow, arcing from one eye to the next. He considered it a moment. It looked more like a monobrow. He added a little pot of gold then gave Lotti a fabulous bristling moustache. And some fawn horns too, just for good measure. And, because the horns seemed to demand it, the tight curl of a serpentine tail snaking up behind the shoulder of her smart fitted blazer. He was just deciding what to write in the Lichtenstein-esque speech bubble that now blossomed from her mouth, when a shadow fell across him. Rik looked up to see a camera pointed straight at him from the street outside. His hands splayed guiltily across Lotti’s desecrated face. Then he realised the camera was focused on a figure to his right, a well-dressed silver-haired man delivering a piece to camera. Rik watched his broad back as his hands puppeted out occasionally. Eventually they finished and the man turned from the camera. As he did, Rik realised it was Harry, a former colleague who was now with one of the commercial stations. He’d made a generous toast at Rik’s farewell do only months before. Rik tried to hide, a misguided action as they were less than a metre apart and separated only by a very large, frustratingly clean sheet of glass. He was mid-slither southward of his stool when Harry noticed him, his face breaking into puzzled surprise. You-wait-there, he gestured, heading towards the door, and Rik raised himself reluctantly from his awkward crouch. Harry greeted him with a warm handshake, then stuck his hands on his hips.

  ‘Didn’t expect to see you back so soon.’ His face fell for a moment. ‘It’s not something terrible, is it? Not back for a funeral or something? How’s –’

  Rik shook his head kindly. ‘No, no, nothing like that. Just back.’

  He left it at that. Clearly Harry hadn’t taken to googling him. This both hurt and relieved Rik. Harry w
atched Rik intently, his eyes now properly taking him in. Rik leant one hand on the paper, meaning to hide it, but it had the effect of merely sliding it closer to Harry. Harry’s eyes tracked to the newspaper then to Rik, then, briefly, back to the newspaper.

  ‘Working on a story?’ Rik asked conversationally, nodding his head towards the cameraman outside who was now filming the busy street from various angles.

  ‘Yep,’ Harry replied with mock brightness. ‘Residential parking permit brouhaha. Bit of a wank, really, but I’ve got a tit-for-tat where they let me do one of my pieces if I do one of theirs.’

  Harry had started his career as an unpaid Indigenous cadet with free rein to report on anything he wanted, unsurprisingly discovering a distinct seesaw correlation between his preferred reportage and income earned.

  ‘This one’ll get me a minute or so on disproportionate representation in the child protection system.’ He shrugged. ‘But you’ve got to earn that crust somehow, right?’

  ‘Me too,’ Rik said, holding up his notebook as proof. The page was blank save for some splatters of Danish residue. They both politely ignored Lotti’s graffitied face.

  ‘So you’ve got work?’ Harry asked, nodding his head encouragingly.

  ‘Bits and pieces. Mostly just doing some freelancing. More time to write the Great Australian Novel.’

  Rik watched this lie float out into the air between them. Never in his life had he ever had any intention or interest in writing a novel. Nevertheless, Harry seemed to accept this.

  ‘Living the dream then, hey? I’d be there too but the wife wouldn’t approve of it. Children, mortgage, blah blah blah. But it’s good to see you making the most of it. The staff cuts, I mean. It’s a massacre at the moment, even since you’ve been gone. Bodies piling up everywhere. Good luck finding an arts correspondent anymore. Good thing commercial telly’s safe as houses, right? Look, I’ve got to keep moving but let me know if you want any extra work. We’re always looking for freelancers these days and I’ve got a list up to here of pieces you could follow up. I mean, just as likely to be a piece on a baby elephant taking its first steps as the Calabrian Mafia fruit war, but give me a call if you want anything. Same number as before. Get that handsome bearded mug back on the telly.’

  They shook hands once more and Harry gave him an awkward little salute as he headed back outside. Rik watched him, craning his neck with the certainty that he would, at some point somewhere down the street, report what he’d seen to the cameraman. Then it would only be a matter of time before he did a google search and that would certainly be the end of that. His eyes drifted over Lotti’s heavy ink monobrow, knowing he would never contact Harry. He told simple stories. It was not entirely something he wanted, but this was what he did now. The door swung open and Harry was beside him again, his breath heavy from his brief jog back along the street.

  ‘Speak of the devil,’ he said, bending forward slightly to catch his breath, waving his mobile in one hand. ‘Something’s just come up. I’m triple-booked but it’s the perfect piece for you. Social justice, sticking it to the man, etc. If you’re in, I’ll pass your details on to the producer and they can pick you up on the way.’

  Rik didn’t respond.

  ‘Come on, mate. Do you good to get your teeth into something juicy again.’ Harry motioned with his eyebrows at the paper.

  Rik hesitated, then nodded reluctantly.

  ‘Killer. Give me your number.’

  Rik scribbled it in his notebook then tore the page out. Harry politely avoided the Danish smears.

  ‘I’ll get them to bring you a suit too. What are you, a thirty-four, thirty-five now?’

  ‘Thirty-two.’

  ‘Nice one. Did I tell you how trim you’re looking? So trim. Not like the rest of us old blokes. Syria did you good, buddy. Anyway, thanks a million for this. Holler if you need anything.’

  Rik smiled weakly.

  ‘Give my best to Seymour too, mate.’ Harry grinned as he strode towards the door. ‘It’s good to have you back. Welcome home, Patrick.’

  11

  Aida

  Once more, it was the squeals of equal parts joy and disbelief that pulled Aida from her dreams. This time she had roamed the desert, thirsty and lost, searching for her father, before she was roused by Niki’s cries of triumph from somewhere nearby. Aida heard her race through the house informing both Cyruses before finally bursting through Aida’s door bearing her precious treasures. Aida provided appropriately impressed sound effects as Niki presented her findings: A pebble, a tangle of string, and an empty snail shell.

  ‘Afarin,’ Aida crowed. ‘Well done!’

  It had started with the tooth pari visit – a sudden willingness to involve Aida in the happenings of her little life – and Aida now found herself counted among the lucky few chosen to share in Niki’s everyday discoveries. She let herself be led out into the kitchen where Elham stood scraping Niki’s breakfast off the wall. It was raining again, steady and loud with wind that whipped at the windows, and as the day wore on, Niki soon grew bored. She yowled and whined like the Cyruses until Aida could take no more.

  ‘Come, Niki. Let me tell you about Iran.’

  As Niki begrudgingly pulled herself onto a kitchen chair beside Aida, Elham fussed about the kitchen. The kettle rumbled in the background as Elham placed three plates on the table, then proceeded to divide up fruit onto them. From the pantry she pulled a packet of dates, then placed a couple on each plate. She fished around in the fruit bowl and balanced a cucumber atop the small pile assembled on the plates. The kettle singing, she transferred the hot water into a teapot, setting out three small glass teacups as it steeped, then filled them with liquid. Finally, she took from the cupboard a packet of sugar cubes found in a Persian grocers, and placed this in the middle of the table.

  ‘There. An Irani snack for an Irani story.’

  Aida placed a sugar cube in her mouth and sipped her tea through it. Niki did the same, minus the tea. As Elham settled beside them, Aida cleared her throat.

  ‘Let me tell you about the bazaar in Iran, Niki,’ she began. ‘This is where we go for all our shopping. The original Woolworths. Before you even leave the house you must check the air for pollution. Breathe in, Niki. Check it is clear enough or we’ll all end up with red eyes and coughs. Too many cars, that’s our problem. Maniacs on the roads filling the air with haze. So now that we know it’s fine, we’re going to catch the train. It’s very busy in Tehran – eight million people in one city! – so squeeze in, Niki, or you’ll be left behind.’

  Niki was watching her with mild interest, a second sugar cube now wedged between her teeth.

  ‘Off we get! Quick now, elbow your way out. Now hold tight to Maman’s hand. The bazaar is full of people, pressed together, this way and that. Now, where should we start? You see, how the bazaar works is every section is different. Here we have fruit and vegetables. Over there is the fresh meat. Back this way you can get your nuts and pickled vegetables deep in their briny vats. And spices, too, piled high and colourful like a painter’s palette. Now, if you head around to the other side, that’s where you’ll find the clothes: T-shirts and tailors and all kinds of scarves for women. Then the materials: your rich silks and deep earthy cottons, and yarn too, for weaving carpets. Speaking of carpets, I know someone who can give you a very good price, Niki-joon. Cousin of a cousin, good guy by the name of Ali. Ali Baba to his friends – just joking! – but you tell him Aida sent you. Specialises in mid-range pieces but he’s got some special sixty-knot beauties out the back if you’re prepared to sell your house for one. Tabrizi, Kerman, Naeen, some spectacular pieces from my mother’s hometown in Esfahan province. Or basic pieces starting with a twenty-raj knot count if you aren’t in the mood for anything fancy. Anything catch your eye?’