by Murray Bail
“She didn’t want to see me at all, it was a serious misreading on my part. I have never heard her speak loudly, it was because she was at her friend’s house. She asked what was I doing here. You have ruined everything, and now you come here, she pointed at me. Who do you think you are? There was no need for us to speak again. Spoke to me in that way. I didn’t know what to say. I handed her the books, she may have been interested. She threw them to one side without looking at them. Then she began to cry. I thought I should at least touch her on the shoulder, to be of assistance, but thought better of it. Her friend from Amsterdam in her little apron-dress stood up and asked me to leave. On the path to the gate, her twelve-year-old son began throwing gravel at me. At the gate I met the garage-door salesman, come to visit the children. He saw in an instant what was happening. He talked to me about garage doors. The business was booming, he said to me. Home-owners in Perth and Fremantle wanted not one but two or three garages, each with the tilting or roll-up door, his firm could supply either. A lot of houses here have two cars, or one car plus the boat, he explained, or two cars and boat. And these need protection from the elements, he said. He could not keep up with the demand for garage doors. He quoted figures. It made him cheerful. He was a cheerful and energetic man, I saw he was the opposite to me. He had no doubts. I explained I was from Holland, and did not possess a garage, but he gave me his card.” High waves came in twos and threes, the ship had to point into them, the famed Southern Ocean, sending up spray which came down heavier than rain all over the ship. “It is an advantage to be pleased with the sound of your voice,” von Schalla behind his desk. “Everybody is aware of his own voice. As you talk, you listen to your own voice, make adjustments to it as you speak, listening to your own opinions, your choice of words, loud or soft, and approve of them. If you do not listen to your voice,” he said in Vienna, “you will not attract buyers to your piano. And never be concerned about repeating yourself.” For the first few days, Delage spent as much time as possible with the Dutchman, who couldn’t stop talking, in all their time together on the small deck he had never heard the Dutchman talk as much, they were in the Southern Ocean, he was going over the same thing again and again, the ship met the procession of long gray waves, one followed by another, another, again, the Dutchman was incapable of changing the subject, which was his wife or former wife, he had a moist swallowing action Delage hadn’t noticed before, his tongue darted forward which showed bewilderment, the influence of the woman she had become friends with in Amsterdam, now settled with children in Perth, had not been helpful, all things considered, the Dutchman said, he went on talking to himself when he wasn’t talking directly to Delage, as if Delage wasn’t there. “Not for a moment have I stopped being interested in my wife, if you know what I mean,” he told Delage. “After our years together, it is a source of unhappiness to realize she is no longer interested in our situation, how we once were, what is left of it now. She has removed me entirely from the equation, all ideas of me.” The Dutchman hardly noticed he had become saturated at the rail, any physical discomfort only reinforced his psychological discomfort. “You could have been swept overboard, and disappeared completely,” Elisabeth said. “And then what would I do?” Delage was having difficulty keeping his balance, drying his hair with a towel. “What a question! I would expect you to immediately jump in and save me.” “I do not know why you find him especially interesting,” she went on, “his circumstances are not uncommon.” “He has me worried. He doesn’t look in great shape. Whoopsie!” The ship was pitching and rolling. “The poor wife, think of her. She could have been driven crazy by him.” “That’s possible,” Delage changing out of his trousers, “I wouldn’t be surprised.” “You have spent more time talking to him than talking to me,” though she was not really complaining. Delage noticed she had been sighing less on the ship than on land. “I have added up the minutes,” she looked up at the ceiling. Elisabeth envied the easy relationships between men, however slight. He removed the bones from the fish for her. She imagined an honesty, or simplicity between them, although she knew if she questioned Delage about it he would avoid a straight answer, it was not a subject he had given any thought to. On the small deck, the Dutchman talking, Delage saw how little he knew, only her shape, little more, waiting in his cabin, he was always on the brink of discovering more about her, her mother stood before him, he knew her even less, if he could say he knew her at all, yet he believed he understood the mother more than he did her daughter. Her breast in her hand, in the room, it was phosphorescent. Elisabeth smiled and sat up when he said Amalia reminded him of the Statue of Liberty, always standing. “But my mother could hardly be called passive. She has strong feelings about everything.” “I think she is brave.” “I do not know what you mean by that.” “I like her very much.” It was hard enough to know your own mother, let alone anybody else in the world. Elisabeth spoke of herself sparingly, indifferently, to an unusual extent, which made him all the more thoughtful, unlike his sister whether on the phone or in person, she invariably came out with everything possible about herself, everything she could think of, even when it had not yet happened. The two sisters emerged in similar charcoal gray, the discarded sister adding a series of silk scarves which featured horses, a promising touch, adding color to her mood, should anyone in the family be meeting the ship in Melbourne. All along they had hardly said hello to the Dutchman, almost ignoring his presence, some people don’t have any manners, even in the narrow confines of a ship, it doesn’t hurt to say “Good morning,” or “Too rough for you?” although he seemed not to notice. The incomprehension of the discarded sister had stabilized, as a consequence the anger and weeping diminished, the younger one told Elisabeth, they were yet to return to their normal sisterly ease, she confided, visually the younger attentive one maintained what is called a supporting role, in Melbourne they lived ten minutes from each other, she would see to it that her discarded sister had plenty of people around her, while the husband was off somewhere pursuing a new life. There were the same large birds following the ship, then on the fourth day the sun came out. “The voyage had been the bookkeeper’s idea, she made a strong case for it. But now here I am returning without the piano on board,” he pulled out brochures advertising the Delage. “For all the difficulties, the trip has almost paid for itself. Everything saved is money earned. We have been having problems with the banks and cash flow. And, as our bookkeeper pointed out, I hadn’t taken a day off in God knows how many years. She has made a big difference to the office. It’s quite a professional outfit now. Before she arrived, the filing system, for example, was a terrible mess. She knows nothing about pianos, the craftsmanship that goes into them, and all that. Otherwise, she pretty well runs the company.” When he left for Europe she was pregnant, the question was whether she would be staying in the job. “This is the woman from Slovakia?” Elisabeth had an uninterested air, turning the pages of the brochure, the Delage piano photographed from different angles, including an aerial view, featured pale glossy colors Delage had come to think were garish. “All along I was more interested in the workings of the piano than its appearance, which I know is the road to bankruptcy.” The fine grain of the highly polished timbers, taken from forest trees on the verge of extinction, had shifted attention from the technical improvements hidden beneath the lid, which produced the Delage sound, a sound like no other piano sound. The range of colors reminded him of the garage-door man in Perth, his horizontal doors, which opened like enormous piano lids, came in eye-catching colors, the salesman had informed the Dutchman, although white was generally preferred. “Your mother said not to worry about the color. Apparently in a Vienna drawing room, a nicotine-brown or a white piano doesn’t look out of place. I saw straightaway what she meant.” It had been a long time since he had been out of the factory for more than a few days, separated from the people he had become accustomed to, their attitudes to him, the way they spoke, combed their hair, each with their own skills, stubbornnesses, the
many encounters, solving problems together, his daily habits, on the streets, in the rooms where he slept and ate, each morning stepping out after shaving and reading the Telegraph, assembled into what felt like normal life, a slightly useful life. In fact, aside from when he came down years ago with the flu, just as the first piano was being finished, Frank Delage could not remember being away from the factory for more than a day. “In the early days there was a lot of problem-solving.” It was the part he most enjoyed. “I’d sleep in the factory. I had a camp-stretcher made up in the corner,” the thought of which sent Elisabeth, like others, into chortling. Not only had he been away now for six weeks, possibly more, perhaps seven, without newspapers, calendars, clocks on the ship, he had spent more time alone with Elisabeth von Schalla than he had with any woman before, establishing a separate layer of habit, with an inevitability he hardly thought about. “When we arrive, what was it you planned on doing?” He was looking thoughtful as he spoke. He had a responsibility, he had to be careful. After the Schalla palace in Vienna, she could easily take one look at his rented two-bedroom with balcony apartment in Artarmon, Sydney, and catch the first plane home. She kicked one leg up, “Back to Wien? I am sorry, that is no longer possible.” Together they spent hours in the cabin or out on the deck, they were not always saying anything of note, at intervals settling into various kinds of silences, interesting, they were not at all uncomfortable, the occasional sighs from Elisabeth were more like breathing. The Romance had slowed outside Port Phillip Bay for the pilot. Delage watched as he climbed on board from the tiny unstable boat, a stocky bare-headed man wearing a nylon jacket and a tie. “Do you want some news? I don’t have any,” he said to Delage in passing, who had been waiting for the Dutchman—at other ports they had leaned together over the rail on the small deck, observing the pilots making grabs at the swinging ladder, difficult in rough weather. “It is easier getting on than getting off,” the Dutchman had observed. The pilot gave Delage his folded newspaper after he had steered the ship through the Heads, and complained about the lack of dredging, it was making the entrance dangerous for the large ships. “It is an accident about to happen,” Delage managed to hear over the wind and engines. How the complicated events of the world are compressed into sheets of paper always of the same size, which need to be filled to the outer edges every day, reports from long distances or eyewitness accounts taken on trust, reporting or prophesying situations which begin to change, as everything does, even as the newspaper is being printed, replaced the following day by a fresh set of happenings, or possibly about to happen, people described in victory or at a loss, or stories without people at all, a melting glacier, worth reading or at least perusing. News is essentially about other people’s mistakes, or their misfortunes, a regular feature is the one-paragraph report of disaster in remote regions (floods, bushfires, earthquakes, train crashes, a building collapses, the obligatory tornado, overloaded ferry has sunk), the short efficient sentences produce an exclamatory effect whether intended or not. There will always be news whether there’s any news or not. The finance, sports and weather pages can be relied upon more than any of the other pages. Anything to do with art, literature, music a matter of opinion in the newspapers, through which a consensus eventually may form, while the larger opinion pieces are just that, one thought laid out at a time, a man swinging a sledgehammer to erect a circus tent. Newspapers raise unimportant incidents to the level of important incidents. This was how Frank Delage, small manufacturer, read about his piano in Europe, and saw the photograph, not in the folded tabloid the pilot had handed him as he left the ship, another newspaper a few days later, on the way to Sydney. Whenever he thought of Konrad von Schalla and his outspoken words, often he did, he thought of von Schalla’s wife at arm’s length, he had almost reached out to her but had not, he had but not enough. He should have, he had begun to, but had not. Thinking of Elisabeth, he would return to thinking of her mother, Amalia, the small similarities, mother in the daughter, which made her attraction intimate. Elisabeth had a solemnity that was casual, modern. In his short time in Vienna, he had become drawn into the Schalla family, for different reasons each of them wanted his presence, he, from Sydney not Vienna, an entirely fresh face, musical, yet not musical at all, not by their standards, at the most inconvenient times with Elisabeth he would think of her mother in Vienna, Amalia von Schalla, standing, she appeared before him, it was difficult, if not impossible, to avoid. At the last minute the captain announced the ship was having six hours turnaround, and would leave on the tide before midnight, which allowed Delage and Elisabeth only a quick tour of the city from a taxi. The two sisters with their suitcases at the top of the gangway were in such a hurry to leave the ship and have Melbourne, marvelous Melbourne, underfoot, family and friends waiting on the wharf under umbrellas, they said goodbye hurriedly, looking at the wharf and away at the skyline, office towers lit up, rather than at Delage and Elisabeth; the sisters were eager yet awkward, the older rejected sister appeared as a young or youngish widow in black, except for a small rosella parrot brooch, avoiding Delage and Elisabeth entirely, not a glance in their direction, already she was wary about her new life in Elwood, Melbourne, how she would be seen, her sister providing support nearby, which she wanted but didn’t want at all, all of which gave Delage and Elisabeth the opposite feelings, tolerance, energy, optimism, curiosity. Delage left it up to the taxi driver to show them the sights of Melbourne, in richness and so forth a city closer to Sydney, certainly than to Perth, Singapore, Port Said, he was from Riga, “that’s in Latvia,” he said, not everybody knew, a man with large sloping shoulders, “I wouldn’t go back to Riga if my grandmother was on fire. There is always something wrong with a city, your only hope is to choose one with the smallest number of faults.” Every place where people had settled, congregated, built and added their monuments and decorations, had its faults. By not saying anything, trying instead to make sense of the shapes in the darkness, Delage and Elisabeth appeared to give encouragement to the driver who reeled off the major cities in the world and their most unattractive characteristics, he had been to all of them, he said, beginning with Riga, which had no personality whatsoever, and a terrible sewerage system, Vienna and Sydney each had so many things wrong it was difficult to know where to begin. “There are irritable people everywhere,” Delage leaned into Elisabeth, “even in Melbourne.” Whenever the driver from Riga described the faults of another city his sloping shoulders shook with what could only be satisfaction. At least Melbourne had a river. In the darkness it wandered like a sunken road, lights reflected and stretched on the surface. Government House was behind the bushes. There was the Olympic swimming pool, the Melbourne Cricket Ground in silhouette. Unfortunately the taxi was fogging up. The rain had almost stopped. On the way back, they passed the concert hall and the art gallery, one an enormous gray horizontal box, the other a circular shape, more or less brought together by an Eiffel Tower structure of welded pipes, painted glossy white. With the six-hour turnaround they would not be flying to Sydney, Delage’s idea, it would take just a few days more by ship, following the east coast of Australia. These were among their happiest days. They now had the small deck to themselves, Elisabeth reclining in her large sunglasses, as if there were no sunlight back in Austria, or anywhere else in Europe, her breast, Delage noted, slightly rounder than her mother’s, filling his hand, Delage flipping through the newspaper he’d bought in Melbourne, without knowing why, Australian newspapers are amongst the worst in the world, certainly the worst in the English-speaking world, Australian journalists practice a violent simplicity which has been successfully exported to the rest of the English-speaking world, others who are called broadsheet or quality journalists, said to be the level-headed ones, are hardly better with their embarrassing self-importance, making pronouncements concerning the world with the self-assurance of the airport taxi driver—before long they’ll be on television making their pronouncements, replacing the actual newsmakers, it would eventually infect t
he thinking capacity of those who consume Australian newspapers. Delage wondered why he had bought the newspaper, he was complaining to Elisabeth about them, about the general situation of his country, who was listening, but Elisabeth never read newspapers, which explained her untroubled appearance, her smooth skin tone, still talking, an audience at least of one, he turned to the inside of the national daily, Saturday edition, a paper he didn’t normally read. Elisabeth opened her eyes, he had stopped talking. The pianist was a young woman with long black hair, on stage naked, playing the piano while it was burning in different places, it had been set alight, while an accompanist in a tuxedo swinging an axe, a sledgehammer and rubber mallet set about destroying it, at rhythmic intervals to a score, the only Delage concert grand in Europe smashed into little pieces, until it was not a piano at all, and there was no music possible, nothing left to go on, only the beginning of silence, before an audience in formal evening wear, the premiere performance of what was an avant-garde work by the Austrian composer, Paul Hildebrand, in Vienna last week.