Camouflage

by Murray Bail

  Banerjee enjoyed this sort of banter, even if he was on the fringe. There was not much of it in the day of a piano-tuner; and it would never occur to him to banter with his wife Lina, who had anyway become curiously solemn after having their child.

  Early one afternoon planes were spotted—three of them, high. Leaning back they shielded their eyes to watch. The officer on the ground had to clap and yell to get them down—‘For Christ sake!’—off the roof.

  Later that same day they had a grandstand view of the first two planes to land.

  And just when the dust had settled, and they were admiring the practised efficiency of the Americans parking the planes, they ran out of paint. There was nothing to do but come down on ladders and sit around in the shade, where it was still hot.

  Without effort, Banerjee was a man who kept his thoughts to himself; preferred to stay back than join in. Yet there he was more or less part of the group mumbling and wisecracking. Often they were joined by the camouflage officer. After all, he had nothing much to do either. Close up Banerjee noticed his face was infested with small lines.

  The officer looked up from scratching the ground with his stick. ‘I don’t know what’s happened to our paint.’ To Banerjee he added, ‘In war there’s more waiting than shooting. Always was.’ When the talk turned to music Banerjee could have said something, and with real authority; instead he listened while letting his thoughts wander among other things.

  On the third or fourth day one of the pilots squatted beside him. After talking about his hometown (St Louis) and his parents, he held out a hand and introduced himself.

  Banerjee married late. Lina was barely twenty-one. He had taken her away from everybody else; that was how it later felt. All her privacies she transferred to him. The way their habits became one she accepted with busy contentment; while Banerjee composed his face, unable to find his natural state.

  He was strong all right, in the sense that he practised a certain distance, the same way he had played the piano. But Lina, she knew more; she always had. It was part of her flow, along with blood.

  Whenever he paused and considered his wife he first saw her name, then found he knew very little, virtually nothing, about her; what went on in her mind, the way she came to decisions—no idea. He could not get a firm outline; and he knew only a little more about himself. More than anything else he was aware of her needs, and how he reacted to them. She had a slightly clipped voice.

  She had gone to him for piano lessons. When he appeared he said he was no longer taking pupils. But that didn’t stop her. Marriage was a continuation. Later, she explained how she’d heard him playing in the next room, and then his voice, though unable to catch his words. Without seeing him she had turned to her mother, ‘That man is for me. He will do.’

  ‘Even though you didn’t hear a word I said? I was probably talking nothing but rot.’

  But then Lina’s faith in situations invariably impressed him. She could be very solemn, sometimes. She was a woman who couldn’t leave things alone; constantly rearranging things on tables, plates, sideboards. She also had a way of peeling an orange with one hand, which for some reason irritated him. Banerjee knew he should be thinking more about her, his wife; and their own daughter. She complained, as she once put it, he was ‘somewhere else’. Very fond of her pale shape. Her spreading generosity.

  One afternoon Banerjee and the picture-framer were invited by the pilot and another American for a drive to the nearest town, Katherine, about an hour away. The jeep had a white star on the bonnet; and, unusual for a pilot, he drove one-hand, crashing into bushes and rocks instead of driving around. ‘Know any songs?’ he called out over his shoulder. Both Americans began singing boogie-woogie, banging on the dashboard.

  They reached the town—a few bits of glittering tin.

  It was here the picture-framer spoke up.‘I’ve got a wife called Katherine,’ he said. ‘She’s a wonderful woman.’

  Leaning over the steering wheel the driver was looking for a place to drink. ‘Well, we’re about to enter Katherine right now. All of us. You mind?’

  The other American was smiling.

  Some time later Banerjee played the piano. Nobody appeared to be listening. The flow of notes he produced seemed independent of his hands and fingers, almost as if the music played itself.

  The pilot and the picture-framer beckoned from a table. Between them were two women, one an ageing redhead. Her friend, Banerjee noticed, had dirty feet.

  Both women were looking up at Banerjee.

  ‘Sit down,’ the pilot pointed. ‘Take the weight off those old feet.’ Leaning against the redhead he said with real seriousness, ‘I’ve got my own aeroplane back at the base.’

  ‘That beats playing a piano. Any day,’ said the younger one.

  The redhead was still looking at Banerjee. ‘Don’t smile, it might crack your face.’

  ‘Hey, if a plane comes over and waggles its wings, you’ll know it’s me.’ Taking her chin in his hand, the pilot winked at Banerjee. From the bar the tubby American constantly waved, touching base.

  The drinking, the reaching out for women; the congestion of words. It was the opposite to his usual way of living. Banerjee went out and stood under the stars. He tried to think clearly. The immense calm enforced by the earth and sky at least over this small part of it, at that moment. Also, he distinctly felt the coldness of planets.

  When it was time to return he found the picture-framer squatting outside with his head in his hands. And in shadow behind the hotel he glimpsed against the wall the tall redhead holding the shoulders of one of the Americans, her pale dress above her hips.

  On the way back the pilot kept driving off the track. ‘I need a navigator. Where are the navigators around here?’ He looked around at his friend asleep.

  Seated in front Banerjee didn’t know where they were. ‘Keep going,’ he pointed, straight ahead.

  On the Thursday both hangars were finished. Everybody assembled on the ground and looked up, shielding their eyes, and were pleased with their work—about eight men, without shirts, splattered in paint. Still to be done were the long walls and ends of the buildings, the vertical surfaces. And there were sheds, the water tank, bits of equipment.

  The camouflage officer unlocked one of the sheds. It was stacked with tins of beef and jam. ‘Will you have a look at that? Not a bloody drop of petrol to send a plane up, but plenty of tinned peaches.’

  He stood looking at it, shaking his head. He wondered if Banerjee and the picture-framer could fashion a patch of green water and a dead tree out of packing cases and sheets of tin, to be placed at one side of the runway. ‘A nice touch.’ Gradually the pattern was coming together.

  For Banerjee these counted among his happiest days. The last time he had been as happy was when he had been ill. For days lying in bed at home, barely conscious of his surroundings; it was as if the walls and the door were a mirage. There were no interruptions. Now away from everybody, except a few other men, Banerjee with the sun on his back applied paths of colour with his brush, observed it glisten and begin to dry, while his mind wandered without obstacles. As the sun went down, the pebbles and sticks at his feet each threw a shadow a mile long, and his own shape stretched into a ludicrous stick-insect, striding the earth—enough to make him wonder about himself.

  Since their trip into town Banerjee joined the Americans at tea-breaks or after meals. To squat down without a word emphasised any familiarity. The Americans were relaxed about everything, including a world war. Their talk and attitudes were so easy Banerjee found himself only half listening, in fact hardly at all. Without a word the pilot would get into the jeep, just for the hell of it, and chase kangaroos around the perimeter. A few times Banerjee and the pilot sat in the warm plane parked in the open hangar. When asked what exactly the plane was to be used for, the lanky American who was flicking switches and tapping instruments shrugged. ‘Search me, my friend.’

  In the few weeks that remained Banerjee forme
d a habit of strolling down the runway after dark, joined by the camouflage officer who came alongside in his carpet slippers. With hands clasped behind his back the officer recalled performances at the Town Hall, the merits of different conductors and pianists, but invariably turned to his wife and three teenage daughters in Adelaide. ‘Imagine,’ he said, in mournful affection, ‘four women, under one roof.’

  Banerjee had been receiving regular letters. Here were trust and concern he could hold in his hand—words of almost childlike roundness, beginning with the envelope. Willingly his wife expressed more than he could ever manage. For her it was like breathing. In reply he found there was little he could say. Months apparently had passed. It came as a surprise or at least was something to consider: what about him did she miss?

  He mentioned to the officer, an older man, ‘My wife, she has written a letter—’

  ‘Not bad news, I trust?’

  ‘She tells me the front gate has come off its hinges. A little thing. I mean, my wife would like me to be there now, this minute, to fix it.’

  The officer put his hand on Banerjee’s shoulder. ‘A. woman who misses you. The warmth in bed. There was symmetry, it has been broken.’ He coughed. ‘The symmetry we enjoy so much in music is illusion. That’s my opinion.’

  In the dark Banerjee found himself nodding. More and more he was conscious of a slowness within, a holding-back, as if he saw other people, even his own family, through pale blue eyes, whereas his were green-brown. Even if he wanted, Banerjee could not be close. Not only to his wife but to all other people, to things and events as well. It was as if the air was bent, holding him just away.

  On the day in question the officer inspected the paint job from all angles, as the men waited. It took more than an hour. He came back, rubbing his hands. ‘Well done. That should do the trick. Tomorrow we go onto the next.’

  The Americans looking on had their arms folded.

  ‘Only one way to test it.’ The pilot put on his hat. ‘You with me?’

  Banerjee hadn’t flown in a plane before. Soon the earth grew larger and the details smaller, reduced to casual marks, old worn patches, blobs of shadow. He twisted around to see the aerodrome. At this point the pilot tilted away and began diving; just for fun. He went low, then rose in a curve; Banerjee’s stomach twisted and contracted. As always he composed his face.

  Levelling out, the pilot now looked around for the aerodrome.

  He gave a brief laugh. ‘You sure as hell have done a job on the ground.’

  Banerjee thought he saw wheel marks but it was nothing. The earth everywhere was the same—the same extensive dryness, one thing flowing into the next. When Banerjee turned and looked behind it was the same.

  Climbing, the plane reached a point where it appeared to be staying in one spot, not making any progress. It was as if he was suspended above his own life. Looking down, as it were, he found he could not distinguish his life from the solid fact of the earth, which remained always below. He could not see what he had been doing there, moving about on it. Knees together, the dark hairs curving on the back of his hands.

  Everything was clearer, yet not really. Plane’s shadow: fleeting, religious. In the silence he was aware of his heartbeats, as if he hadn’t noticed them before.

  Now the earth in all its hardness and boulder unevenness came forward in a rush.

  Briefly he wondered whether he—his life—could have turned out differently. Its many parts appeared to converge, in visibility later described as ‘near perfect’.

  THE SEDUCTION OF MY SISTER

  MY SISTER and I were often left alone together. She was younger than me, about eighteen months. I hardly had time to know her, although we were alone together for days on end, weekends included.

  Our father worked odd hours at an Anglo-American tobacco company. And our mother, she had a job at Myer’s. Ladies’ shoes, manchester, toys and whitegoods were some of her departments. She worked Saturday mornings, and there was the stocktaking. She put in a lot of overtime, working herself to the bone. Some nights our mother arrived home after dark, more like a widow in black than a mother, and passed around meat pies from a paper bag, one for each of us, including our father. Otherwise we were ‘left to our devices’, our mother’s term; I heard her explain to a neighbour over the fence.

  For a long time I took little notice of her, my sister, always at my elbow, in the corner of my eye. Whatever I was doing she would be there. More than once I actually tripped over my sister. She seemed to have nothing better to do than get in the way. She said very little, hardly a word. She and I had different interests, we were interested in totally different things, yet if I was asked today what her interests were I couldn’t say. Tripping over her once too often or else wanting nothing more than to be left alone I would turn and shout at her to go, get lost, even giving her a shove; anything to get rid of her. Half an hour later she would be back, all smiles or at least smiling slightly as if nothing had happened.

  My sister was skinny, not much to look at. She had short hair in a fringe, and a gap between her teeth. If anybody asked what colour eyes I could not answer, not exactly. There was a mole above her lip, to the left, almost touching her lip.

  Taking an interest in something or standing near a group she had a way of holding her mouth slightly open. I can’t remember a single thing she said.

  The mole could have by now transformed into a beauty spot, I’ve seen them on other women. Brothers though are supposed to be blind to the attractions of their sisters.

  Our father had a small face, and although he didn’t himself smoke the odour of fresh tobacco followed him like a cloud, filling the passages of the house. I don’t know about him and our mother. About their happiness or contentment even it was difficult to say. When our father spoke it was to himself or to his shoes; he hardly looked at our mother. In reply she would say nothing at all. Sometimes she would make a strange humming sound or turn to us and say something unrelated. Arriving home after standing behind a counter all day our mother looked forward to putting her feet up. After the table had been cleared our mother and father often went over the various budgets, income and outgoings, gaining some sort of pleasure or satisfaction from the double-checking. If he saw us watching our father would give a wink and make a great show of scratching his head and licking the pencil.

  It was a short street, the houses dark-brick from the thirties. Each house had a gravel drive and a garage, although hardly anyone had a car, and a front hedge, every house had its box hedge, except directly opposite us, which was an empty block, the only one left in the street. It was surprising how long it remained empty, swaying with grasses, lantana in the left-hand corner. Who in their right mind would want to live all day looking across at us? Our father winked at us, our mother taking a breath, not saying a word.

  It remained then, a hole in the street, a break in the hedges, in the general tidiness, an eyesore to more than one.

  Nothing lasts, that is true; it goes without saying. Nevertheless, the morning we woke up and saw pyramids of sand and a cement mixer on the block it was a shock to the system, the builders more like intruders than new neighbours, trampling over habits and feelings.

  Slowly, then rapidly accelerating, a house took shape out of the disorder and commotion; I would have preferred it to last forever, so much there to follow, to take in and assemble in my mind. I can’t speak for my sister.

  Instead of retreating at right angles to the street like any other house, including ours, it was positioned longways, parallel to the street. It caused our father to give a brief laugh of misunderstanding. He called it ‘The Barn’. Instead of bricks the colour of lamb chops which slowly turn brown, ours, it had cream bricks of a speckled kind, and grey tiles on the roof instead of the painted corrugated iron of ours.

  I came home one afternoon late to see my sister standing at our front gate as always, waiting for me; only, I could tell by the way she was twisting one leg around the other she was talking to someo
ne.

  The Gills had moved in, their doors and windows wide open. Gordon withdrew a hand and introduced himself. He was their only son; about my age.

  The house inside was still smelling of paint. In his bedroom he had a stamp album and cigarette cards scattered on his desk, and merely shrugged at the model aeroplanes suspended from the ceiling, as if he had lost interest in them. We went from room to room, my sister and I. In the lounge Gordon demonstrated the record-player which opened on silver elbows into a cocktail cabinet. Shelves and glass cabinets displayed plates and bowls and porcelain figures. From another room a clock chimed. Now and then Gordon stepped forward to explain something or take it from our hands, then returned to the window, answering a question or my sister’s exclamations. Across the street directly opposite stood our house, stubborn, cramped-looking. It was all there to see.

  Mr Gill put down a lawn, bordered by roses, not ordinary roses, but dark roses, and stepping stones of slate to the front door. Mr Gill had a moustache, the only one in the street, and a strong set of teeth. From the moment they met he called my father ‘Reg’, and made a habit of dropping it with informal gravity into every other sentence, sometimes flashing a smile, which pleased my father no end. ‘Do you think, Reg, this weather’s going to hold?’ And, if he was in the middle of something, pruning or striding around to open the car door for Mrs Gill, who remained seated looking straight ahead, he’d glance up and with a single nod say ‘Reg’, and return to what he was doing. Even this pleased my father.

  It was our mother who suggested doubts. ‘No one,’ she was scraping the plates, ‘is like them, not in this street. They might as well be from another planet.’

  With his wide shirt open at the neck our father put his finger on it. ‘They’re all right,’ he smiled, ‘they’re extroverts.’