Surfing Mr Petrovic

by Colin Bowles

  It was on the way home that I finally figured how Matt knew so much about Mister Petrovic; what time he had his shower, that he went out on Wednesday afternoons, and all of that. I don’t know why I didn’t realise it before. It was because he had nothing better to do than hang around outside his house and watch. Both Matt’s parents were at work before he went to school and were still out when he got home in the afternoons and he was bored.

  And maybe even a bit angry.

  In fact, now I saw Matt in a whole different way.

  But it was a bit too late to start figuring things out now. I was in the manure up to my chin and the level was just about to rise another foot.

  We got out of the car and went inside the house. I figured Mum was waiting to get out of public view before she started because she was planning to hit me with something and she didn’t want to get hauled in for child abuse.

  But she didn’t hit me. She sat herself down on the sofa and cried.

  Well.

  I’d never seen my mum cry before. Like I said, she’s a pretty tough chick, even though she doesn’t look it. I don’t remember even seeing her cry when Dad left. Back then I’d sometimes catch her walking round the house with a soggy tissue in her hand, when I knew she didn’t have a cold. But she never really sobbed. Which was what she was doing now.

  This was worse, much worse, than I had been expecting. I just stood in the middle of the room watching her, knowing it was all my fault, and really hating myself for it.

  I walked over to her, really carefully, like she was a sweating stick of dynamite, and touched her gently on the shoulder. She didn’t move. ‘Mum.’

  She made a big effort to pull herself together and then she took her hands away from her face and looked at me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘You are driving me crazy,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I ever had a family. Between you and your father I think I am going nuts.’

  ‘Why are you crying? Why aren’t you mad?’

  ‘I’ve tried getting mad with you. It doesn’t work. You seem to like people getting mad at you.’

  ‘This really wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘Not your fault? Was dumping ten tons of wood on that poor man’s driveway not your fault? Is the way you’ve been treating me and your father and Barry not your fault either?’

  This seemed a bit unfair, lumping all these different problems together. But I didn’t think I was in any position to argue with her. ‘What are you going to do?’

  Mum got up and straightened her dress and threw the clump of tissues in her fist in the bin. ‘I think there’s only one thing we can do,’ she said.

  ‘You’re going to ground me for three months,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think that’s really going to sort this out. We should have done this after the wood thing.’

  ‘Done what, Mum?’

  ‘Gone round to Mister Petrovic’s house and apologised.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that,’ I said.

  ‘Not me, Tao. You.’

  14

  We parked the car outside Mister Petrovic’s house. I felt like a murderer going back to the scene of his crime. Everything looked the same, only different. Having Mum with me, the house didn’t look quite as frightening as it did when I was with Matt and Bluey. The garden looked quite sad, really. One of the six rosebushes lay on its side on the concrete and three others had had all their blooms snipped off.

  Mum looked at the roses and then looked at me. ‘How could you?’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  It crossed my mind to dob Matt in right then. It just seemed so unfair, having to look at what he’d done and carry all the blame for it. But when it came to it, I couldn’t be a dobber. So there I was, stuck with it. The scapegoat. The sacrificial lamb. The dog that had had its day.

  We went up the path and Mum rang the bell. The door opened. Mister Petrovic was dressed as he was always dressed, in an old singlet and brown trousers, and there was a thick white pelt of stubble on his face. He looked at Mum, then at me, and blinked in surprise. He wasn’t nearly as big as he looked from a distance, and he looked a lot older.

  ‘Mister Petrovic,’ Mum said, politely. ‘My name’s Christine Symonds. This is my son, Tao. I believe he has been making a nuisance of himself and we’ve come to apologise to you and see if we can find some way to make amends.’

  I thought: This is it. This is the bit where he goes berserk and grabs the axe from behind the door. But he only nodded and gave a funny sort of shrug which seemed to say: what’s done is done and it won’t bring back my rosebushes.

  ‘I’d like you to apologise to Mister Petrovic,’ Mum said to me.

  I swallowed and tried to make my lips wet so I could talk properly. It wasn’t easy. ‘I’m sorry about your rosebushes, Mister Petrovic,’ I said. ‘I really am. It was a terrible thing to do.’

  Mister Petrovic reached out a hand. I thought he was going to gouge my eyes, which I supposed was reasonable in the circumstances. But instead he did a remarkable thing. He patted me on the cheek. Not hard, but really gentle, like it was all a big misunderstanding and he was too tired to be angry anyway. ‘Maybe you want a cup of coffee?’ he said to my mum.

  Even Mum looked surprised. ‘I think that would be very nice,’ she said.

  Mister Petrovic led us inside the house. I thought there would be rats and cobwebs and bits of dead bodies leaking out of the refrigerator but actually Mister Petrovic had a very nice house. He must have been very religious because there were lots of holy pictures and statues of the Virgin Mary scattered about, mixed up with old framed black-and-white photographs on the walls. The furniture did not seem to match with it – it was all new, if kind of old fashioned.

  Mister Petrovic took two cups and a glass from the kitchen cupboard and went to the tap to fill the kettle. He waved us to a little table by the window and we sat down while he waited for the kettle to boil. ‘This morning I call the police,’ he said. ‘I am so sorry. I get really mad, crazy mad. But then I think.’ He spread his hands, in a kind of gesture that said, oh, it doesn’t matter. ‘So now I call them and I tell them is okay. So you must not to worry.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Mister Petrovic,’ Mum said. ‘But that really isn’t what’s worrying me. My son is deeply ashamed of what he’s done. And so am I.’

  Yes, this was definitely worse than hanging. Why wasn’t everyone yelling and screaming at me? I could have coped with that. And why wasn’t Mister Petrovic behaving like a war criminal? I looked around the room, looking for clues about Mister Petrovic’s past, pictures of concentration camps perhaps, or rusting old torture implements, but all I could see from where I was sitting was a really ancient black-and-white photograph of a bride and groom on their wedding day.

  Mister Petrovic also seemed to be more interested in the photograph than what my mum was saying. He saw where I was looking, and got up and took the picture down from the wall. ‘Me and my Jana,’ he said, and he was smiling. He looked a lot different when he smiled. Like somebody’s grandad.

  ‘That’s you?’ I asked. The man in the photograph had black hair and was clean-shaven and looked like a bit of a dude. Hard to imagine this was the same Mister Petrovic.

  ‘That’s me,’ he chuckled.

  ‘But you’re young,’ I said.

  I heard Mum groan but Mister Petrovic seemed to think this was funny. ‘Yes, young!’ he shouted. ‘Sometimes I am young too, yes!’

  ‘When was it taken?’ Mum asked him politely.

  ‘Nineteen and forty-six,’ Mister Petrovic said. ‘Zagreb.’

  ‘Where’s Zagreb?’ I asked him.

  ‘Capital of Croatia. Yes?’

  The kettle was boiling and he got up to make the coffees.

  ‘Mister Petrovic,’ Mum said. ‘I would like to replace the roses in the front yard.’

  But Mister Petrovic, bless his cotton socks, did not want
to talk about my misdeeds. He paid no attention to Mum and went on with his own story. ‘After the war I work in factory, in Zagreb. Make shoeses. For the foots. Yes?’ He pointed to his slippers. ‘Then when I get married, we move back to my town, Vukovar. I have shop.’

  He bought two coffees to the table and sat down. I got a glass of orange cordial. He opened a little packet of biscuits and put them on a china plate. He pointed to me. ‘You eat,’ he said.

  I took this as a direct order and helped myself despite Mum giving me The Look. I couldn’t believe the way things were turning out. I’d come here expecting to get busted big-time and here we were sitting down and eating his biscuits. Life is never what you expect.

  ‘About your roses …’ Mum said.

  But Mister Petrovic still wasn’t listening. ‘We have four childs,’ he went on in his funny accent. ‘My big boy, he come to Australia nineteen and eight-six. Nice boy, handsome boy. Very strong. Mix cement, make a lot of money. Buy me this house, all this nice furnitures.’

  I imagined Mister Petrovic’s son walking in through the door any moment, Arnold Schwarzenegger in work boots and a Chesty Bond, shouting, ‘You break my daddy’s flowers!’ and hitting me with his cement shovel.

  But nothing happened. Mister Petrovic went very quiet, and his eyes went kind of watery. He stared into his coffee.

  ‘Where are the rest of your family, Mister Petrovic?’ Mum asked him. Finally she had stopped going on about the roses.

  ‘My little boy, he is policeman in Zagreb. My daughter, she come with me to Australia. Her husband, too, her childrens, they all come.’

  ‘You said you had four children. What about your other child, Mister Petrovic?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know where she is went. Too much war in my country.’ His voice suddenly sounded croaky. ‘I still pray for her, yes?’

  Suddenly I didn’t feel like eating my biscuit any more. Of course I’d seen all about the war on television, but I didn’t know anyone who had actually lost one of their family. It had all seemed so far away from Australia. Poor old Mister Petrovic.

  Perhaps he wasn’t a war criminal, after all.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ my mum said.

  ‘Why was there a war?’ I asked him.

  Mister Petrovic shrugged his shoulders. ‘How can I tell you? Because no one can forget the past. Because no one like someone else if they are different. They must be the same or we want to hurt them, yes?’

  ‘Do you feel that way, Mister Petrovic?’

  ‘Does not matter what I think. I did not want this war. I did not want to fight anyone. But I have to leave my home anyway. Everything I have is gone now.’

  ‘You lost everything?’ Mum said.

  ‘Not everything,’ he said. ‘Here. I show you.’ He got up and we followed him to the front yard. He went to one of the rosebushes and snapped off a rose from one of the stems. His hands were all brown and hard and leathery and the thorns didn’t seem to bother him. He gave the rose to my mother.

  ‘For you,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mum said, but she looked confused.

  ‘Very special rose,’ Mister Petrovic said. ‘When I live in Vukovar, our garden is full of rose. My Jana, she likes this roses so much, she plant everywhere. When the war come, we have to leave. What can I take from my home to show my whole life. I take this six rose, yes? All I have left of my Vukovar, my Jana.’

  A long silence.

  ‘Where is your wife, Mister Petrovic?’ Mum asked.

  ‘When the war come we want to stay in our village. Grenade come, fall on our house. But I am not there. When I come back, my Jana is dead, my house is gone. All I got left is my rose.’

  I felt like I was going to be sick. I imagined Mister Petrovic digging up the roses, putting them in little pots, the ruins of his house in the background. I thought about him pushing the six little rosebushes out of the village on a wheelbarrow. I could see him now, arriving in Australia, nothing left except these six rosebushes. I tried to think how he must have felt when our football landed in his front yard near his precious roses; what he thought when he found us riding our skateboards around them; what it must have been like to find one of them completely destroyed that morning.

  Now I knew why he was always shouting at us. The roses were all he had left of his whole life.

  We were all silent for a long time, staring at them. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so sad in my whole life. When you see things from someone’s else’s point of view the whole world changes completely and it never quite seems the same again.

  I thought about what he had said. No one can forget the past. No one likes someone else if they are different.

  Perhaps that was my trouble.

  ‘Your poor roses,’ Mum said.

  ‘Just this one she is broke,’ Mister Petrovic said. ‘I still have these one here. No problem.’

  ‘I’m really sorry, Mister Petrovic,’ I said. ‘I really am.’

  ‘Just a rosebush,’ he said.

  He went around the side of the house and came back a couple of moments later with Bluey’s skateboard. He gave it to me.

  ‘This belong to your friend, yes?’

  I nodded. ‘I’ll give it to him.’

  ‘You tell him, come and see me. Maybe we have orange juice and I tell him about my beautiful roses. Yes?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  Mister Petrovic smiled. I realised he wasn’t a grumpy old foreigner, but a nice old man with a lot of stories to tell. I would come back. And I’d try to persuade Matt and Bluey to come with me.

  Not that I planned to hang around with them much any more from now on. But maybe it would do them some good.

  15

  Barry was sitting in the lounge room reading The Independent. He did that every Saturday morning. Sometimes he put earphones on and listened to really old music like the Beatles and sometimes new stuff like the Rolling Stones. There were times when he was cool and times when he wasn’t. I could never make my mind up with Barry.

  I held out the little package that the lady in the shop had gift-wrapped for me.

  ‘What’s this?’ he said.

  ‘It’s your birthday present,’ I told him.

  ‘My birthday was weeks ago.’

  ‘I know. But I didn’t get you anything. Now I have.’

  He put down his newspaper and took the package. He opened it up. It was a CD, some really ancient group called The Grateful Dead.

  ‘Mum said you liked them.’

  He looked really pleased, so it must have been right. ‘Thank you, Tao.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  We kind of looked at each other. There wasn’t much either of us could think of to say at that point, so we just let it be. I had intended to apologise for some of the things I’d said to him, but I didn’t want to lay it on too thick. A kid my age has got to be careful he doesn’t go too far or before you know it he’ll end up a nerd like Michael.

  ‘I thought you were saving your pocket money to buy a Dockers jumper,’ Barry said.

  ‘It can wait.’

  ‘Well I appreciate this,’ Barry said. I knew he was looking at me and thinking, Okay, what’s the catch? What’s he done now? Whose garden has he dug up? You don’t live down a reputation overnight.

  I picked up the phone and dialled my dad’s number. He had found himself a new place a couple of k’s away. I hadn’t been over there yet. Mum said he was living on his own now. The girlfriend he had left Belinda for had caught him hanging out with Belinda and now neither of them wanted to hang out with him.

  I had given up trying to follow my dad’s life. It was all too confusing.

  ‘Hi … Dad?’

  ‘Tao?’

  ‘How’s things?’

  ‘Yeah, okay.’ He sounded surprised to hear from me, but also pleased.

  ‘I wondered what you were doing,’ I said.

  ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘I was just listening to the sur
f report. They reckon there’s a good right-hander at Port Beach.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Feel like getting wet?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, still surprised. ‘Sure. I’ll pick you up in about half an hour.’

  ‘Okay. That’d be great.’

  ‘We can go to Qasar later, if you like.’

  ‘Whatever, Dad. See you in a while.’

  I put the phone down. I felt a lot better, inside. Nothing had changed, of course. My parents were still split up, and I guess they always would be. There wasn’t a thing I could do about that.

  I suppose I was the one who had changed. The thing with Mister Petrovic had taught me that you just have to let things be. Storing up hurts inside you is like putting drawing pins on your own chair. The more you do it, the more it hurts and the only one you’re doing it to is yourself. You can’t make other people the way you want them to be. You just take them as they come.

  Mum came in from the garden and saw me standing by the phone. ‘Don’t forget you’ve got your maths homework to do this weekend.’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  ‘Make sure you do it before you go off surfing.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  In your dreams. Maybe I’d changed.

  But I hadn’t changed that much.