Watercolours

by Adrienne Ferreira

  ‘Tried the local poison yet, Dom?’

  ‘Mulberry wine?’

  ‘God no!’ Mira shuddered. ‘Stay away from that.’

  Dom decided not to mention that he quite liked it. Instead he told them about his neighbours and their habit. Mira was horrified. ‘Jesus! You’re not living up at Camelot with all those widows, are you? You’ll never get laid hanging out with that lot!’ She poked his leg with her bare foot, flashing scarlet toenails. ‘I bet they love you, though.’

  Dom looked down with a bashful smile. They did love him. Kane was just a bit of fluff.

  ‘Amaro Cherubini,’ George said, pouring a small amount of thick dark liquid into each glass and nodding towards his wife. ‘It’s an old recipe from Mira’s family. A digestif. Good for the blood, they say.’

  Dom took a sip and frowned at the drink’s complexity, sweet and herbal. He tried to identify the flavours but could only think of aniseed. He took another sip. Novi came to join them and Mira handed him one of the glasses.

  ‘Sip it slowly,’ she instructed. ‘That’s all for you.’

  A breeze stirred. The candles guttered, flicking light across their faces. It was Mira’s father, George told Dom, who’d established the local wine industry, and the whole operation had begun long ago with an experiment in silk.

  ‘It was around the time people were looking into grapes and olives and the like, alternatives to wheat and sheep. Some of the migrants from Europe had a silk tradition and there were plenty of others here who were keen to give it a go. At the time there was huge export potential. The silk industry in France and Italy was knocked for six from disease.’ George threw up his arms. ‘Louis Pasteur, Dom!’

  ‘What about him?’

  George sat forward. ‘The French government commissioned Pasteur in the 1860s to find a cure for their silkworms, that’s how much the industry was hurting. Pasteur wasn’t famous then — he’d never even laid eyes on a silkworm! But he went on to develop his system of quarantine by studying them. In the end, all he could do was contain the disease, he couldn’t eradicate it. And the native European breeds were more or less wiped out.’

  Dom took a sip of liqueur and frowned. He’d never heard any of this.

  ‘At one point,’ George continued, ‘entire P&O liners stacked with nothing but silkworm eggs were travelling from Japan to Europe — gives you an idea of the demand, eh?’

  Dom found it hard to imagine. ‘When was this?’

  George leaped out of his chair, threw himself off the veranda with a grunt and disappeared like a torpedo across the dark lawn.

  ‘He’s getting the box,’ Novi explained.

  ‘I’ll put the coffee on,’ his mother sighed.

  A few minutes later George emerged from the shed with a shabby archive box and plonked it triumphantly in Dom’s lap. Dom lifted the lid and began picking through the documents and photographs inside.

  George sat down, drained his glass and poured them more Amaro.

  ‘Around 1876, these ships from Japan were being insured for millions of pounds, the eggs were so valuable. I mean, the Japanese were making more money exporting silkworm eggs than Australia was from digging up gold. No wonder some far-sighted locals like Mira’s granddad decided to try for a piece of the action.’

  George shook his head and fell back in his chair, overwhelmed by the lost opportunity. Returning from the kitchen, Mira leaned over and rifled through the box on Dom’s lap until she found the photograph she wanted.

  ‘My grandfather. One of the very first silk growers in Morus.’ She handed the picture to Dom. In mottled sepia, a middle-aged man sat before a curious exhibit. Dom craned towards the candlelight to see better.

  Mira’s grandfather had obviously gone to a lot of trouble to prepare for the photo: he was dressed in a dapper-looking three-piece suit complete with tie, fob watch and white pocket handkerchief. His hair, oiled smooth and parted on the side, was lying close to his head like a cap, and his long moustache had been carefully shaped, too. The shot was taken outside; a polished wooden table with turned legs and matching chair had been brought out into the sunlight and the man was seated with one elbow on the table. Covering the table was a white cloth and on top was a big, burry-looking nest of what seemed to be miniature, elongated eggs.

  ‘Silk cocoons,’ Mira said.

  Dom peered closer. The man held one cocoon delicately between his finger and thumb while his deep-set eyes gazed directly down the lens of the camera. He was being captured for posterity and he was clearly proud of the fruits of his labour. Dom thought there was something odd about the shot, though. Despite his smart attire and careful grooming the man’s dusty work boots were poking out from beneath his trouser cuffs — most likely the only shoes he had. The table’s elegant legs rested on bare dirt and in the background a rough timber corner of a house was just visible. These contrasts Dom found interesting.

  He saw there was something else at odds with the man, too, something beyond the stiffly placed hands and the selfconscious angle of his head, unaccustomed as he must have been to being photographed. It was his eyes — there was a light radiating from them, a glittering intensity. This man didn’t belong to the world of splintered wood and bare dirt and a single pair of shoes. He’d set his sights on a much more splendid future. And the key to this future he held in his fingers: a cocoon, like a nugget of gold, plucked from the weary dust of poverty.

  It’s late and I’m tired. I know the cicadas won’t keep me awake tonight. For once I am looking forward to going to sleep. My mother is tucking me into bed and, like every night, I ask for a story.

  ‘But if I’m gone too long, George will drag out the blueprints and Mr Best will be trapped.’

  ‘Is he going to ride home in the dark?’

  She smooths the sheet over me. ‘One of us will drive him,’ she says. ‘We’ll put his bike in the back of the ute.’

  I’m glad about this. ‘Can I have just one quick story?’

  ‘About Jack and his glory?’

  I groan.

  ‘Shall I begin it? That’s all that’s in it!’

  She’ll give in. She always does.

  ‘A real story, please? Tell me about Pyramus and Thingy.’

  ‘Pyramus and Thisbe — you love the gory ones, don’t you?’

  She settles down next to me but I don’t take up my sketchpad like I usually do. Tonight I just listen.

  ‘All right then,’ she begins. ‘This story was told to me by my father, and it was told to him by my father’s father. And it was told to him by my father’s father’s father … all the way back to a poor little village in Italy where your ancestors first grew silk. In those days every farm had to have a mulberry tree because silk was such an important resource for the country. The king couldn’t get enough of it! So this is the story of how mulberries got their colour: the tragic tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, those desperadoes of forbidden love.’

  ‘Why was it forbidden?’

  ‘Because their families were bitter enemies. They were neighbours locked in a feud and they despised each other more than anything in the world.’

  ‘Why were they fighting?’

  ‘Well … they’d been fighting for so long nobody could even remember why. And that only made their fighting more intense.’

  I frown. ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Who said it had to make sense? People rarely make sense.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘Shush! Just listen. Back in the days of Pyramus and Thisbe, parents were very strict. They had complete control over their children.’

  ‘The kids were like slaves.’

  ‘They were very well behaved. And of course the parents of Pyramus and Thisbe wouldn’t let their children see each other.’

  ‘Because of the feud.’

  ‘Exactly! So for months and months these two passionate souls could do nothing but make love through the garden wall.’

  I pull a face. My mother sighs.

&
nbsp; ‘Make love, not have sex! There’s a difference! And in those days there wasn’t much in the way of contraception so a stone wall was probably as effective as anything. But finally they couldn’t stand it anymore and decided to steal away from their families in the dead of night and meet in the cemetery.’

  ‘Was it haunted?’

  ‘Probably. So the beautiful Thisbe arrives first and she’s waiting there with bated breath and heaving bosom when all of a sudden a lion runs out of the bushes on a hunting spree!’

  ‘Were there lions in Italy?’

  ‘This was in Greece, not Italy. Pyramus and Thisbe were Greek.’

  ‘Were there lions in Greece?’

  ‘Well, obviously! This was thousands of years ago, mind you. So, the lion charges at Thisbe but he only manages to get her handkerchief, chewing it in his bloodied mouth while Thisbe runs off. Then Pyramus turns up and scares away the lion. He finds the bloody handkerchief and, oh my God, he’s devastated. He thinks Thisbe’s been eaten! In a fit of despair he plunges his sword into his chest, thinking that life without Thisbe just wouldn’t be worth living. His blood gushes out and flows into the soil at his feet where a white-mulberry tree is growing. All that passionate blood washes onto the roots of the tree and stains the ground a deep, dark red. Then, of course, Thisbe returns, right as rain and no hint of the lion anywhere. She sees her poor Pyramus dead and not to be outdone in dramatic love gestures she stabs herself and gushes blood everywhere, too. And with her last dying breath, Thisbe asks the mulberry tree to remember them, to mark their deaths by bearing fruit the colour of their blood forever after.’

  ‘And the tree heard her.’

  ‘It did. And that is how mulberries got their colour, to remind us not to hold silly grudges because it will only end badly.’

  ‘Is that the moral?’

  She kisses me. ‘If you like. That, or don’t impale yourself on a sword before making sure your lover’s really dead. I mean, that Pyramus was a bit of a dill, eh?’

  I yawn.

  ‘If the parents had just let those two horny devils get to know each other they probably would have discovered they had nothing in common anyway. In all likelihood, Pyramus was a bad kisser and Thisbe was dull as dishwater.’

  She switches off the light and leaves the door open a crack, the way I like it. I lie there for a while, looking at the strip of light and listening to their laughter out on the veranda. I fall asleep dreaming of swords and lions and rivers of blood.

  The volume on the stereo softened a little and Mira reappeared with more coffee and a plate of biscotti, a red shawl thrown over her shoulders. Dom hadn’t noticed how cool the night had turned, he was too busy watching George roll a joint and wondering how he should respond. Mira sat down and poured coffee. George lit the joint, inhaled and offered it to Dom. He hesitated.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Mira teased, rearranging her shawl and tucking her feet beneath her. ‘We won’t tell.’

  Dom accepted and took a drag. The last time he’d smoked a joint was ages ago, sitting on the back steps with Ace at his farewell party. The tobacco hit him the hardest, straightaway his head started spinning and his legs turned warm and weak. He passed the joint to Mira and drank in deep breaths of cool air, full of earth and river and sweet invisible flowers. Note by note he received them until every cell in his body was infused, until he was at one with the night, coasting pleasantly along its endless dark and hidden passages. He listened to the ghostly swish of bat wings and shivered, cherishing the chill after so many weeks of flattening heat. He sank deeper into his chair, his lungs full of night air, his face awash in candlelight and his belly pleasantly stuffed. He glanced over at George. The man’s face had grown jolly and his big eyes were shining. He met his gaze. ‘Cheers to you, Dom,’ he said.

  He clinked his glass against Dom’s a bit too merrily and cracked it. Before Dom could react, George shouted ‘Ha!’, and tossed the glass into the ferns with a flourish that startled the cat.

  The joint went round again. Feeling full of abandon, Dom decided to share a secret. ‘You know, I’ve never told anyone this before …’

  ‘Oh, goody!’ Mira sat forward to give him her full attention. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’ve always wanted to have a nip of Scotch and then throw the glass into the fireplace.’

  She was delighted. ‘Really?’

  ‘I know it’s dumb. I think it’d feel good, though.’

  Mira considered it. ‘Hmm … macho. Like beating your chest.’

  With a heave, George pulled himself out of his chair and bolted inside. He reappeared a moment later with a bottle of Scotch and three fresh glasses.

  ‘Here you go,’ he said gleefully, handing around the glasses and slopping whisky into each of them.

  Dom laughed.

  ‘Come on!’ George encouraged him. ‘Up we get! Beat your chest — throw it like a wild man. Try and hit the pepper tree. Okay, all ready?’

  Grinning, they nodded.

  ‘Cheers!’

  They downed their drinks and pitched their glasses across the lawn. ‘Shit!’ Mira cried as hers fell short on the grass. The other two made a satisfying smash as they struck the tree, and George and Dom roared in victory. The cat took off.

  Tumbling back into their chairs they sat in silence for a while. Down by the river the bats were growing raucous. They dipped wildly in the night sky, wiping out the stars in dark streaks. Dom looked across at Mira and George and felt a giggle rising to fill his chest and then dissolving warmly. Mad as cut snakes, both of them. With a surge of wellbeing not completely cannabis induced, he took a sip of Amaro and let out a long, deep sigh.

  Chapter 11

  Dom woke on top of apricot chenille in three worlds of pain: aching body, pounding head and throbbing erection. The erection was his first struggle. As soon as he touched it he thought of Camille. It was a tantalising combination but every stroke was like a hammer to his head; in a feat of evil engineering the booze-and-dope hangover had fused his skull and his penis together via a bolt in his jugular. Any tinkering below triggered a twist of metal in the neck. It was torment. He soldiered on.

  Afterwards he squinted at his watch until the face of it made sense. Eight o’clock on Sunday morning and he was late for T-ball. An absurd hour to be up on a Sunday, eight. An absurd sport, T-ball.

  He was late, late. He lay on the bedspread making no move to get up. Splinters of sunlight needled him through the pattern of the curtains. A lacy mother duck led three lacy ducklings down to the water’s edge, none of them making the slightest effort to shield his vulnerable eyes. Their indifference inspired in him a savage urge to lash out and pull the useless fucking things from the wall. He lunged, yanking at the corner of the curtain with all his feeble early-morning might. The lace was synthetic and merely gave the ducks a pleasant stretch. Nausea foamed up in him from the effort of pulling and he was forced to lie back and stay very still for a few minutes. After a while he felt pretty confident he wouldn’t be sick. He dragged himself upright and out of bed.

  He was already fully dressed, a good start, except his T-shirt was the one he’d ridden to the Lepidos’ in and reeked of dried sweat, while George’s cotton trousers made him look like a circus performer and had a gaping hole in the crotch. He’d have to change. The task seemed monumentally difficult. He could hardly focus through the pounding behind his eyes. All he could think of was George pouring him more and more of that syrupy Amaro the night before. In the end he must have confessed he liked mulberry wine because he remembered drinking that, too. He plodded to the bathroom to use the toilet and then out to the kitchen, where he found a whole case of mulberry wine sitting by the fridge. Looking at it made his cheeks twinge.

  A light knocking at the front door dragged him back to reality. Mavis. Only she would be up and looking so sprightly at this hour. She flitted through the open door — he must have forgotten to close it the night before — and into the kitchen. She eyed the case of wine. ‘Did you have a
nice time at the Lepidos’, dear?’

  He nodded and it hurt. His head hurt and his body hurt and he had to get back onto that instrument of pain and ride out into that horribly bright sunlight and motivate a whole lot of other people’s children to hit a softball off an overgrown golf tee.

  ‘Did you get to sample any of Mira’s bush bud?’

  ‘What? Mavis!’ He ran the kitchen tap and splashed cold water onto his face.

  She put her hands on her hips. ‘Well, you don’t think they survive on basil alone, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ he cried in exasperation, wiping his head with a tea towel. ‘I’m late!’ He grabbed a box of cereal out of the cupboard and gave her a pleading look.

  She must have decided he was too wretched to tease any further. ‘All right then. I’ll leave you to it.’ From the hallway she called, ‘The best remedy for a Cherubini hangover is pancakes, by the way.’

  Dom didn’t reply. He was back in his bedroom flinging clothes around in a fury. Someone had hidden his deodorant and all his clean underwear. Someone had also forgotten to rinse out his sweaty sports shorts and instead left them in a damp ball in his backpack. The conspiracy threatened to overwhelm him. Finally he discarded his sour T-shirt for a clean but comprehensively creased one. George’s trousers would have to do. He would just have to remember not to do any squats. ‘And bacon!’ he heard Mavis sing out, ‘to cut through that purple, purple haze!’ Her door clicked shut and shortly afterwards Frank Sinatra started belting out a tune with full orchestral support. In his lounge room, Dom glared through the doorway but his eyes began to quiver strangely so he stopped. His watch mocked him. He clutched his forehead in misery. Leaving the unopened box of cereal on the bench he grabbed his wallet and helmet and hobbled outside, thinking no further ahead than the familiar path to the take-away shop.