by Sarah Laing
‘I don’t want to look.’
‘But you were wonderful, Klara. Even Frank thought so.’ Owen looked at Frank, cutting his toast into fingers, dipping them into his milk, although she’d told him not to.
‘Can we buy my electrical transformer after school today, Mum? For the train Aunt Esther sent us?’
‘Not today, Liebchen. I’m not feeling very well.’ She hated him calling her ‘Mum’. It sounded so hard.
Owen snorted again, turning to the racing section, in which he’d recently developed a disturbing interest.
‘Why not today? You always say that. And why do you call me Liebchen?’
‘It’s what my mother called me. It’s because I love you.’
‘Matthew says it’s what the Jerries say. It’s Nazi talk.’
‘Frankie! How dare you, I’ll take my belt off, my boy, and strap your bare bottom,’ said Owen.
Klara felt the anger flare through the fug. Not at Frankie, but at Owen, who had rendered her roots unmentionable.
‘I am German, Frankie. It’s my mother tongue. But I’m not a Nazi. Your grandparents were killed by the Nazis. I’m Jewish, as are you.’
‘I’m not Jewish, I’m a New Zealander.’
‘That’s right, Frankie,’ said Owen.
‘Oh shut up, he’s Jewish in anyone’s books.’ And you’re just a drunken fool, she thought, turning into your father in your old age. Why did I marry you? Why did I come here?
‘Klara, you’re being irrational. He’s a boy, he wants to fit in, to not be bullied. Let him be a New Zealander. Don’t burden him.’
‘I’m not burdening him. But neither can I let him forget what happened to my family.’
‘I just think you should have waited.’
‘Waited till what? Until he yelled some anti-Semitic remark in the street? God, Owen, you’re just like your family, completely repressed. No wonder you need to hit the bottle every night. All this seething stuff to keep quiet about.’
‘This is rich coming from the woman who stayed out drinking till two in the morning. Now look what you’ve done.’
Frankie’s shoulders juddered, fat tears coming down his cheeks. ‘I just want you to call me darling like the other mothers do.’
Klara got up and went round to the other side of the table, wrapping her arms around Frankie’s narrow shoulders. ‘Darling. Is that better?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you’re still Jewish. You’re a Jewish New Zealander, my Liebchen-darling boy. Now finish up your toast and get ready for school. Make sure you brush your teeth at the back. I don’t want to have to take you to Tinakori Road for more drilling.’
‘Okay.’
Klara looked down at her toast. She couldn’t eat. She should go over her concerto again, smoothing out some shifts that didn’t work so well, because next week they would be taking it on tour. They would ride the bus to Palmerston North, to Wanganui, Stratford and New Plymouth, then to Auckland and back down again the other side of the island. She’d have to endure the winding carsick roads, the dirty jokes, the cigarette smoke.
But Klara was too hung over to practise now.
‘You make sure he gets out of the gate, Owen.’ She threw the toast into the rubbish and returned to bed.
It was afternoon when the phone woke her.
‘I’ve got the paper, darling,’ Owen’s voice said.
‘Huh?’ She didn’t know why he was telling her this.
‘Let me read some. “A composed and elegant Klara Quinn took the stage to give a spellbinding performance. It was as if we felt the very heart and soul of Haydn fly into the concert chamber and ignite the audience. It is a rare privilege to be in the company of such talent, but Klara Quinn is one of our own, a resident of Highbury, Wellington.”’
‘So I fooled them?’
‘Klara, why do you always have to be like this? It’s in the paper. You’re good.’
‘But they don’t know what good is. They haven’t heard Rostropovich or Casals. They haven’t heard Amaryllis Fleming or Paul Tortelier. They don’t know that I’m second-rate, that I’m all they can afford in this country.’
‘You moved them. They don’t need to hear those people. They have you.’
‘They are fools.’
‘Klara, snap out of it. Accept the compliment, and stop being so arrogant. If you don’t like it here in New Zealand, why don’t you go back to where you came from?’
‘But where is that?’ said Klara. ‘Maybe I will go back to America. Maybe I’ll take Frankie with me.’ She thought of Scott’s drunken promises.
‘We’ve talked about this. Things are still a bit tight, Klara. Look, I have to go, I have a customer.’
Klara listened to the disconnect tone of the telephone, a D flat. It was two-thirty. It seemed the closer she got to her music, the further she grew from Owen. And she did need to go home. Not to Germany, but to New York.
CHAPTER 22
New York, 2003
It is strange to have two boyfriends in the kitchen. Toby is shorter than Bruno, and slighter. His glasses give him a more intellectual air. I can’t say which one is better looking because I see neither of them clearly. They’ve both sat on a sunlit sofa and I’ve seen their pores, their hairy nostrils. Bruno is cuter than I remembered, but in certain lights he is uglier too.
‘How was work?’ I ask Toby.
‘Okay, but man, they do things differently here. I’ve spent a week on the third-level navigation and I think I’m going to spend another week on it if my eyes don’t fall out. They definitely take things a lot slower — big budgets and all that.’
‘So are you still enjoying it?’ I ask this tentatively, in case the answer is ‘No, you’re using me, I’m going to London after all.’
‘They’re nice people. My boss is Italian — his folks came out from Sicily and opened up a restaurant in Philly. He took us out for lunch today and everyone laughed at me when I tried to eat my pizza with my knife and fork. You’ve got to pinch and fold.’ Toby demonstrates on an evangelist flyer given to me on the way back from Prospect Park.
‘I’ll remember that when I’m going undercover at a pizza joint,’ says Bruno.
‘Yeah, it’s the little things. Like, I can’t say fortnight here, I’ve got to say in two weeks’ time. I asked my workmate, no, sorry, colleague, what he got up to last night and he didn’t understand what I meant. Maybe it’s my accent, but when I said, “What did you do last night?” he said, “Oh, I get it.” Also, my boss got all uptight when I didn’t take his design critique onboard. He said, “Why are you being so defensive?” I was like, this is how we deal with feedback in New Zealand, mate. We fight back.’
‘New Zealanders don’t like being bossed around, eh,’ says Bruno. ‘But we’ve got a good rep as workers in the UK. The Brits are too busy off at their long pub lunches to get anything done. And the class system. It’s all yes sir, no sir, fuck you sir behind your back and I’m not going to show any initiative, ’cause my ancestor tried something new in 1623 and he was hung for his efforts.’
‘Don’t tell me you think New Zealand doesn’t have a class system. ’Cause it does.’ Toby’s quite passionate about this. Even though he’s got a degree, and a good job, even though his dad is an amazing lay paleontologist and shortwave radio enthusiast, he’s a mechanic, and Toby is adamantly working class. His mother, on the other hand, is nouveau riche, botoxed, driving her Range Rover to the dairy for a bottle of organic skim milk. His half-sister goes to ballet lessons; his mother emailed a jpg of her latest performance. I like Toby’s working class roots. It defies my parents’ prissiness, their insistence that I hold my knife a certain way.
‘No, no way mate. Of course there’s a class system, and there’s poverty in New Zealand too. It’s just not so obvious as it is in the UK or in the States.’
Toby looks disappointed: he would have liked to fight this one out.
‘You cooking my favourite, Beck? She makes the best eggplant parmes
an.’
‘It’s a collaborative effort.’
‘I think my mum might have given her the original recipe,’ says Bruno.
‘I’ve evolved it a little,’ I say, not wanting Toby to think that his favourite dish is an ex-boyfriend cast-off. Still, Toby’s brow furrows.
Bruno finds the perfect dish to scallop the eggplant and greases it while I fry the onions and garlic for the tomato sauce. He grates the parmesan, a job I usually delegate to Toby because I’m afraid of hurting my knuckles.
‘Do we have any beer? Wine?’ says Toby, his hands on my hips as he makes his way to the fridge.
‘Wendy should be bringing some.’
‘Well, what can I do to help?’ He looks plaintive and excluded, as if Bruno is showing him up. Normally he’s happy to let me cook.
‘You could spin the salad,’ I say.
Wendy returns with the wine, her dinner guest Ryan tailing her with a six-pack and a cheesecake in a box. Wendy’s pallor is compromised by two pink spots in each cheek, a twinkle in her eyes. ‘Ryan brought me the zebra collage as a thank-you-for-dinner present.’
‘Shouldn’t that go to us then, Wendy?’ I say.
Wendy laughs. ‘Technically it should, but don’t you think it’s perfect with Iggy? He won’t be so lonely if he can see the zebra through the glass.’
‘I think Iggy would prefer the real deal, Wendy,’ says Toby. He’s stealthily improving Iggy’s lot, changing his water every week. He tells me he’s going to kidnap him when we find our own place: we’ll get a proper tank with an oxygen pump and buy him some friends.
‘I can make you another,’ says Ryan. ‘What do you like? You’re a musician, right? I got this great book on lutes I’m going to chop up.’
‘Yeah, a cellist. And you’re a drummer in a punk band?’
‘You got it. But my band broke up. Artistic differences. Or should I say, the lead singer got a job as a day trader on Wall Street. He couldn’t reconcile punk rock with his new hanging-with B-list-celebrities, ordering-$1000-bottles-of-champagne lifestyle. He was too busy making money to come to band practice.’
Bruno takes the tomato sauce out of my hand, spooning it over the eggplant, then sprinkling it with parmesan.
‘Rebecca’s looking for a band. You guys should jam.’
‘I’ll keep you in mind. At the moment I just need to process what happened. I’m still renting a practice space in Williamsburg, though, and it would be a shame not to use it.’
‘I’d love to work with a drummer. I really need something to take my music to the next level.’
Ryan looks at me, and I’m scared I’ve sounded too keen. What in it for him, anyway? He probably has loads of friends, friends who went to NYU, who are friends with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Strokes, who would happily form a new band with him. Maybe I’ll have to get Toby to help me, to record some music and burn him a CD. Toby says he’s going to buy an iMac once he gets his next pay. He’s sick of fighting Wendy for computer time, and he wants to do some creative stuff so that the analytical side of his brain doesn’t get distended over the pharmaceutical website. Toby has to work quite hard at not descending into computer geekdom — he’s also been researching foot pedals so I can loop bass riffs as I play.
Wendy puts her drawings and fabric swatches into a file box, and sets the table. She does so with precision, sifting through her napkins, deciding on avocado green to offset the reds and purples in the food. She aligns her Korean stainless steel cutlery, and gets down her oil candles, made out of salvaged baby food jars, lighting them so there’s a glow. We sit down and I’m suddenly pleased that Wendy and Ryan have crashed the party: it dilutes the two-boyfriend concentrate.
‘Help yourself,’ I say, but everyone’s too scared to take the first spoon. I grab Ryan’s plate and cut him a pile of the eggplant parmesan. I do the same to Wendy’s and Toby’s plate, and Bruno administers the lentils and the beetroot. Toby pours wine into everyone’s glasses.
‘You know, I never had salad until I left home,’ says Ryan, as I dial up six units of my insulin pen, finding a fold of skin to slip it into. I tuck the pen beneath my plate rim, and rub the spot, which is throbbing as I hit a blood vessel. Another lump, another bruise tomorrow.
‘How did that happen?’ says Wendy, who rarely eats a salad now.
‘We always ate TV dinners, and they don’t come with salad. When I went to college in Ithaca it was a revelation. Bean sprouts and mesclun and heirloom tomatoes.’
‘This is delicious, Beck. It makes me homesick,’ said Bruno.
‘Thanks,’ I say, glowing at the compliment, feeling self-conscious at my forgery of Lydia’s signature dish. I bite down on my impulse to apologise for the lack of fresh herbs, the imperfect balance of salt against pepper. Normally I love eating, but when I cook for other people, I’m always so worried about what they think that my tastebuds retreat into my tongue.
‘What I’m homesick for is a sausage roll. A really fat one, dipped in lots of tomato sauce,’ says Toby.
I don’t understand why he has to come across as a redneck; he built our compost heap in Wellington.
‘This is so healthy. You guys are the healthiest people I’ve lived with,’ says Wendy. ‘But I don’t know, it doesn’t seem like a meal to me without meat.’
‘You could cook some meat to serve on the side,’ I say.
‘Could you pass me the salt?’ says Toby. ‘It’s behind you, Bruno. On the bench.’
‘Tastes perfectly seasoned to me,’ says Bruno, reaching around to grab a pair of ceramic pigs in chef’s hats.
‘Have you been to Peter Luger’s Steak House?’ says Ryan. ‘Fifty dollars a steak, but it’s perfectly marbled with fat, it melts in your mouth.’
‘No, but I’d love to,’ says Wendy. ‘Maybe we can eat there after we go on our bike trip together.’ She helps herself to another spoon of the eggplant parmesan.
‘You don’t have a bike, Wendy,’ says Toby.
‘I do — I bought a ten speed off this guy who was sitting on the stoop a block away. It’s under the stairs. I just haven’t ridden it yet.’ She pours more wine into our glasses; her pink cheeks are warning flares.
‘I used to go bike riding, through the town belt,’ says Bruno. ‘God, it was steep. I remember the time I forgot to duck under the tree and I stuck to it, and my bike went sliding down into Mount Vic. Took me forever to find it.’
‘Like the kittens,’ I say, but Bruno doesn’t register. Maybe he doesn’t remember. I still feel bad about the kittens, but they’re probably Mount Vic wild cats by now.
‘I used to bike in Wellington too,’ says Toby. ‘But I’d bike around the waterfront to work. I miss that waterfront. Beautiful on a clear day. The harbour would be completely smooth. It seems a world away from here and all the post-9/11 paranoia.’
‘So what do you think of Bush?’ says Bruno, a glint in his eye.
‘The man’s a complete idiot. Who frickin voted him in? I hate Florida,’ says Wendy, with unexpected vehemence.
‘I can’t believe he’s invading Iraq. Is he just trying to finish his father’s dirty work? That family signed a pact with the devil,’ says Ryan.
‘Maybe it’s a good thing. Saddam needs to be taken out,’ says Toby. He leans back in his chair, interlocking his fingers behind his head.
‘Toby!’ I say. Wasn’t he telling me the other day about what a set-up it was?
‘How can war be a good thing? And what about the justification? The so-called weapons of mass destruction? They haven’t found any — it’s probably bullshit,’ says Bruno.
‘What if it isn’t? What if they drop a nuclear bomb on you?’ Toby is smiling; his words are having the desired effect.
‘The weapons inspectors went in and found nothing — it’s just an excuse. It’s oil Bush wants: he’s trying to destabilise the Middle East so he can sell more of his Texas gold. He doesn’t even have a UN mandate. I mean, how illegal is that? And calling Korea and Iraq an axis of ev
il — Bush has the axis up his arse. You know what it is? It’s racism, it smacks of colonialism, it’s the Christians against the Muslims all over again.’ Bruno looks fierce.
‘You agree, don’t you, Toby?’ I say nervously. ‘We went to the anti-war march together.’
‘Cool,’ says Bruno, his fingers still curled into loose fists.
‘Bloody hard work, marching in Manhattan,’ says Toby, on the other side now. ‘You can only go a few blocks before the police barricade you in. They’ve got their guns and their bulletproof shields. It’s like they’re waiting for you to riot.’
‘So did you demonstrate in Washington? That’s where it really counts,’ says Bruno, leaning back in his pea green chair.
‘We were thinking about it,’ I say. I read about the free bus in the Village Voice but eight hours return plus a night in a hotel was too much, so we headed into Manhattan for a gig at the Knitting Factory instead.
‘Fen and I helped organise the Brighton faction for the anti-Iraq protests. We were in charge of banners. I tell ya, if I were a different man, I could make a load of money in advertising. I don’t know why Tony Blair’s being such a toady to Bush.’
Again I feel guilty about my self-centred musical life. I’m not even playing tunes to old ladies in rest homes. I took my cello in once to play to Granddad, but he became agitated, a stray synapse relinking, yelling out ‘Klara, Klara’ until I put the instrument away. Maybe it isn’t too late, maybe I could get a bit more involved in politics. But I don’t have the same idealism as Bruno. I don’t want war in Iraq, but I find it hard to believe that I can change things.
‘You want one?’ says Ryan, opening a tin and licking the end of a joint.
‘Sure,’ says Bruno, looking eager. He takes a big toke, then passes it to Toby, who passes it to me. I inhale, even though it will probably make me neurotic and sleepy. I imagine Bruno smoking a joint with Fenella, then making insatiable passionate love. She’s probably petite and blonde, fitting under his armpit. She hums tunelessly as she goes about her day, and Bruno loves her for her lack of intonation.