Fava Beans For Breakfast

by Suzanne Salem

  The chair creaked as he settled into a comfortable position and allowed the sky to perform its daily healing. The ephemeral bliss that overcame him at this time of day was magic, there was no other way to understand its transformative power. Light cherry was deepening to blood orange. The cloud shadows on the valley below was the muddled dirty brown of an old nail bleeding rust. It was unsettling, but these odd hues would pass, they always did, to make way for a sublime rush of beauty.

  He opened the thickest book to a section he’d dog-eared. It was a story about the Dream Stela of Thutmosis IV, and he kept returning to this story, over and over. It was as comforting as a lullaby after a disquieting day. It was an old story, of myth meeting history, of a young king striking a deal with the sun god way back in 1400bc. Thutmosis IV was the eighth king of the eighteenth dynasty who was hunting alone in the desert near Cairo, on the west bank of the Nile. Under the full glare of the midday sun he became hot and decided to rest awhile against the paw of the great Sphinx of Giza, which at that time was almost entirely buried by sand. Thutmosis fell into a deep sleep and dreamt that the sun god spoke to him directly, through the form of the Sphinx, and promised him the united throne of Upper and Lower Egypt if he promised to clear the sand that buried the Sphinx’s body. Thutmosis agreed. When the young king woke from his dream, he promptly began a project to uncover and restore the Sphinx and honour his commitment to the sun god. When Thutmosis IV eventually became the king of the united throne that combined upper and lower Egypt, he erected, at the base of the Sphinx, a stela: a large, upright slab. The story of his dream was written in hieroglyphs carved into the stela, which became known as the Dream Stela. To think that this very stone slab, with its ancient hieroglyphs, remained upright to this day at the base of the Great Sphinx. For the rest of his reign, Thutmosis IV identified with the sun god, Ra. Historians, it appeared, seemed to agree that the young Thutmosis needed to legitimise his right to a united throne by claiming he had the endorsement of the sun god. To think that even the Sphinx had once been buried.

  It was a great story. The intersection of fiction and history was etched into the stone of the Dream Stela, powered by the ambition and self-belief of the young king. How histories and stories had the power to carry on through time, however true, however fabricated they were. Tom now understood that his own old beliefs about himself didn’t serve him. He had created a fiction of his own mythology but he could change all of it; that was the great thing about stories. His mind was abuzz.

  There was a knock at his front door. He put down his book and rose in irritation. There on his doorstep was Cherie Blossom, her hip kicked to one side, her wavy red hair floating around her head as a sudden wind seized the evening. Loose garbage lids in Hungerford Place scudded across yards and onto the street.

  ‘Blimey. Cherie Blossom.’ Tom urged her inside the house. ‘Did anyone see you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Where’s your car?’

  ‘I was dropped off.’

  ‘Bit risky … it’s a long walk home. What if I was out?’

  ‘I’m a daredevil.’

  He took off her coat, pulled her close, and inhaled the nape of her neck.

  ‘You phoned me at the farm this morning. I didn’t get your message until late. Sorry about that. Maya can be a bit forgetful. She said it was urgent.’

  ‘You didn’t have to come over, you could have phoned me back.’

  ‘I haven’t seen you for ages, baby. Not since we went on that walk to the caves.’

  ‘True … About those caves, I’m wondering how you feel about being shown those caves, now that you’ve had time for it to sink in and whatnot.’

  ‘Interesting that you should ask me, baby. I took Philomena and Vishnu to the caves. We’ve talked about it. We don’t think it’s right for that land to have been bartered through a gambling debt … without any consideration of cultural sensitivities. The state government should be interested in preserving this site.’

  Tom thought of Pritchett, the dirty maggot, being made an offer by the state government to buy his land and absorb it into the Bindi State Forest. He’d sell for sure, and pocket a gain he didn’t deserve. There was still a chance he’d crow about Tom’s friendly relations with the Rainbow Lilies, as the spiteful maggot he was. This was an ugly outcome, but it was the least ugly of all the possible outcomes. Tom was confident that once the government owned the land he could secure a lease to moor the houseboat on the pier. He needed some action from the Rainbow Lilies about the rock carvings and paintings.

  ‘What are you planning to do, exactly?’

  ‘Lobby. Petition. Get some media. I have friends. It’ll happen. Is that why you called?’

  Cripes. This could take years. ‘Well, to be honest I was curious what you Lilies would make of it.’

  She raked down her wayward hair with her fingers and tied a messy braid to one side. Her eyes were sharper and clearer than usual; a dark circle of blue traced the paler interior of her iris. She was beautiful and impenetrable. Not in the biblical way.

  She sat behind him on the sofa, placed her legs on either side of his hips and massaged his head. God it felt good. Her breasts pressed against his back. He closed his eyes. Her breath was hot against his neck as her mouth opened into a smile. With her fingertips, she kneaded his scalp with small, circular movements. ‘Your massage can give hope to the hopeless,’ he said.

  ‘I’m a purveyor of hope.’

  ‘Don’t you wonder what it’s all about?’

  ‘All the time, baby. The mystery of life has an answer. I have the answer.’

  ‘Share it around then. Cocky little thing, you are.’

  She paused. ‘Lightness. To leave no tread behind you … no baggage, no guilt, no burden, no shame.’

  A couple of months ago he would have laughed off this hocus-pocus. She could be full of it sometimes. Yet, there was a depth to Cherie Blossom that stirred him as truth.

  ‘So that’s my problem.’

  ‘You asked, baby.’ She tugged at his earlobe with her lips.

  He had dedicated the last two years to growing the biggest tread Burraboo had ever seen. Cherie’s oversimplified maxim left no space for creation or inspiration. To deliver more than you devour in life has to count for something. It meant something to Tom.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you. About Vishnu … do you think he’s been blabbing about my going over to the farm?’

  ‘Vishnu doesn’t blab. He speaks less than three hundred words a day. Trust me. Where’s this coming from?’

  ‘I’m copping some heat for visiting your farm. Someone’s talking about the two of us. Being on your farm, and seeing you, it’s not exactly … in my best interests.’

  ‘Not Vishnu,’ she said, firmly.

  ‘Things are about to get quite nasty.’

  ‘We have a code, remember? Whoever comes and goes, that’s their business. We offer refuge for body and spirit, to anyone who needs it. That’s what we’re about. We’re a soft place to fall.’

  ‘What the hell do you know about falling, Jayney bloody Blossom Cherie Rose?’ He laughed, and grabbed her by the wrists to send them both tumbling off the sofa and onto the floor.

  Of course, she was a soft place to fall. She gently bit him over the broad bridge of his nose and nuzzled his neck. His body stiffened. He hadn’t been sure how to end things with Cherie. Hell, he wasn’t exactly sure how they had started. But he was certain it had to end, right now.

  He gently pulled himself away from her limbs. ‘No,’ he said, so softly it was almost a whisper.

  She stared at him, confused for a moment, then her face relaxed and she smiled at him. ‘It’s cool, baby. No burden, no shame,’ she said, and removed her arm from his chest.

  He stared up at the ceiling, with Cherie Blossom’s elbow lightly touching his. Pritchett’s proposition had pulled Tom’s stitching wide open. He had less than a month to declare his hand to the grubby old maggot. The Rainbow Lilies’
most fervent appeals to the state government would not give him an outcome within the month. The Lilies were playing it too gently; they were playing it like butterflies. What the Lilies had to do was invite a few media types. Play the tambourine, bare their limbs and talk a whole lot of rubbish to the cameras.

  All Pritchett needed was the promise of an offer from the state government. Tom was counting on it. He would have to make a call, pull some strings. There would be a long lunch in Sydney. Cigars. Dry mouths sated by one Old Fashioned after another. The fine art of persuasion. Favours pulled, favours tallied.

  His decision should have been straightforward. Sell Pritchett the pier and everything that came with it. But Neema complicated that decision. Damn Pritchett. It roiled Tom that the old maggot had made dirty assumptions about his relationship with Neema. Pritchett was dead wrong.

  In his most dolorous moments, Neema’s easy laugh and cavernous eyes seemed to shrink the reverberant gap between him and the rest of the world. His modest loan to her was hardly an act of altruism. The best parts of his week were the days he could leave work early, settle into his wicker chair on the verandah with her and watch the light dance with darkness during sunset. He hungered for the beautiful simplicity of those quiet moments. Neema’s notebook of ‘Improvements and Problems’ would be open on her lap while she talked him through the issues that troubled her most about their cafe business. She sated him like a lullaby at the end of a child’s day. She stirred him. The foreign lilt in her voice, all the unexpected inflections in her speech. Her food. Damn, she was a fine-looking woman. She stirred him without touching him. She was more than his business partner.

  Tom leaned on her. Sometimes a person comes into your life like a gift or an answered prayer from the gods, guiding you to bring out the best parts of you, to realise everything you thought you could be. His relationship with Nick was being built anew; they were both done with looking back, and as he became closer to his brother he kept finding more things that he liked about himself. Asking his brother to join him at the Lou Reed concert was the best decision he’d made all year. They’d had a damn good time and after the concert they went back to Tom’s hotel bar and talked for ages. That was the last time Tom slept in a Sydney hotel. He now stayed with Nick and Cassie, in their guest room. They’d done alright for themselves. Nice big house in Wahroonga. The boys liked to rumble him; they’d hang off his neck or thigh, as their perfect little limbs knocked his nose or ears or belly. They were moments of levity, of transcendence.

  Sometimes, driving back to Burraboo after a weekend with his nephews, Tom felt as though he might weep with gratitude, with the joy of finding his way back to his brother. His family. None of this would have been possible without Neema. She had helped him push away the detritus that had buried him and in return he wanted to bring her the kingdom and everything in it.

  If the cafe was as successful as their financial projections, she would pay off her loan to Tom, pocket a handsome profit for her half-stake and leave Burraboo. The time he had with her could be finite.

  Fred was the wildcard. Tom was counting on Fred to buy the pharmacy and lay down roots that grew so fast that Neema would happily replace one ideal for another. Between him and Fred, they’d find a way to keep her happy in Burraboo. The earring palace she imagined owning in Sydney was bewildering but he understood the yearning that came from absence. He felt a pang of sympathy.

  The Pritchett problem remained. There had to be a way he could outmanoeuvre the old maggot.

  * * *

  Tom smeared his last prawn with cocktail sauce. As he bit into the sweet flesh he contemplated the perfect balance of zest and creaminess that sang in his mouth. Finished, he wiped his lips with the thick white napkin and chided himself for having eaten too quickly. He eyeballed his companion. Wine barrelled around the waist. Self-aggrandising. Fingers like fatty pork sausages. Influential. Tom needed him. Sanford Sweet MP looked up from his own prawn cocktail and popped a green olive drowned in pink sauce into his mouth. A small blob of pink grease lingered at the side of his mouth.

  ‘So,’ Sanford said. He licked his lower lip and found the blob. ‘You didn’t come down to Sydney to talk golf handicaps with me the whole time.’

  ‘No.’ Tom pulled himself up to full height and drew in his belly. He adhered to a simple policy when wishing to extract a favour during lunch: that all serious conversations would take place between the first course and the main meal. This would permit his guest to enjoy a sufficient intake of alcohol to encourage vital discussion but not so significant an intake that his guest would not remember what was discussed and agreed. ‘As a matter of fact, there is something I’d like to discuss with you.’

  ‘Your development.’

  ‘Not quite.’

  Sanford puckered his lips in surprise.

  ‘Rock carvings.’

  Sanford swirled his wine glass and took a loud, lusty sip. ‘Go on.’

  Tom thought of Frank Pritchett. Yesterday, he had called Denise and left Tom a message. The old maggot had insisted that she relay his message, verbatim: ‘One more week. Time’s almost up.’ The next two minutes were going to be crucial. Stay cool. He squeezed a fist under the table.

  ‘There are significant rock paintings in the bushland area above Bishops Bay, in Burraboo, of course. They’re old. Real old. They’ve been dated unofficially to be at least a couple thousand years old. They need to be properly radiocarbon dated.’

  ‘I’m intrigued. Not about the paintings, but your sudden interest in history.’

  ‘We’ve all become quite the historians in Burraboo, what with those pre-dinosaur fossils. Anyway, about these cave paintings … there are quite a few of them. Well-preserved. Spread over a few caves. There are rock carvings too. They are within spitting distance of the fossil discoveries.’

  ‘How far away?’

  ‘Couple of kilometres, at the most.’

  ‘We were lucky to get in the funding for the research lab in time, you know.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Spending freeze.’

  Tom felt his pulse roar. ‘We’re expecting more discoveries at that fossil site.’ He lowered his voice. ‘It’s very promising. This could be … incredibly advantageous for the state government.’

  ‘You think that there is value in the peninsula that hasn’t yet been realised?’

  Tom fought to retain composure in his features. ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘We’ve just passed an act to protect and conserve these sites. There’s been a massive hoo-ha over preservation of Aboriginal sites.’

  ‘The National Parks and Wildlife Act.’

  ‘You’ve done your research, as always … I should know better than to underestimate how much information flits inside the cranium of a Grieves man.’

  ‘This could become an attractive source of revenue for the government. Could spark some more development in the region, generate employment among your constituents, income growth, tourism …’

  ‘The holy grail.’

  ‘Thing is … anything might happen to those paintings when the land is privately owned. One day, we have a historical and culturally valuable site under our noses, the next day … bam. Gone.’

  Cherie Blossom and her crew of Lilies were lobbying Sanford Sweet’s office and making quite a noise. Surely the Lilies were already an irritating rash in their state representative’s day. Tom imagined a pile of letters, protests and threats arguing for preservation of the cave paintings sitting in a humped folder in Sanford’s office. If Sanford was hiding his knowledge of the paintings he was hiding it well.

  ‘I have a vague recollection of a memo from Morris Willis about this. Yep. Yep. It’s his portfolio. His control.’

  ‘It’s your constituency.’

  ‘Who’s the lucky land owner?’

  ‘Frank Pritchett.’

  ‘Mate of yours?’

  ‘Quite the opposite.’

  He looked at Tom warily. ‘I’ll look into it. But you have
to know that nothing can happen this year. Until the freeze is lifted.’ He lowered his voice. ‘The budget’s in the shit. We’ve overdone the spending injection. I’ve done my bit to help the blowout. The funds allocated for the improved road infrastructure in Burraboo,’ he lowered his voice even further, ‘to support your Horizon development … was not insignificant.’

  ‘That road is instrumental in raising the productive capacity of the entire region. Who can argue against that? It’s the panacea.’

  ‘There’s nothing left in the kitty this year. We’re expecting savage spending cuts next year.’

  ‘Can you get federal support?’

  Sanford Sweet laughed gruffly from the side of his mouth. ‘Mate, we’re in a stoush with Whitlam, you know that. Besides, his government is a shambles.’

  ‘State elections last year, geez,’ Tom whistled, ‘your party received some generous, sizeable donations. Bob Askin … he’s sitting real pretty.’

  ‘Look, Tom—I’ll support any measure that gets people stopping at the peninsula. I’m telling you, right now, the timing is stuffed. Next year, I should be able to do something …’ He stopped as the waiter refilled his wine glass. Tom placed his hand over the top of his own glass.

  Sanford raised an eyebrow. ‘Cutbacks seem to be endemic.’

  ‘Tell me, Sanford, is there any possibility that some highly scrutinised, media-experienced lobbyists might help our case? Create sufficient interest in the paintings … make such a bloody fuss that the funds become available to add to the Crown land? Perhaps, say, there’s a clever redirection of money committed elsewhere?’

  ‘Mate, if it’s committed, it’s committed. As for media, yeah, sure, that can help build public profile, create some urgency.’

  ‘Define urgency.’

  ‘It won’t be your timeframe. That donation to the party … Well, we remember our friends. It’s just that it’s bloody impossible this year. I’m sorry, Tom.’

  Tom winced. ‘At the very least, can you get a team over to the site? I’d like an assessment of the condition of the art and its cultural value. This needs to be documented.’