by Michael Sala
‘We have some news,’ Mum tells them as she places dinner on the table and starts serving it out. ‘We’re going back.’
‘Back?’ Constantine asks. ‘To Newcastle?’
But that is not the answer.
5
‘Snow is just around the corner. Can you feel it?’
Moessie’s soft bosom heaves as she speaks. She still has her heavy furniture and her old paintings but she doesn’t have her white dog anymore, only a photo. Baasje. She still keeps her snowy white hair cropped short and she lives in the same apartment that looks out over Bergen op Zoom. The Zoom is the steely river that flows through the town. It freezes in winter and people skate across the surface.
Michaelis’s skin in the mirror is tanned as dark as Moessie’s furniture. His feet are toughened and etched with scratches from going barefoot on Bribie Island. He can still feel the soft tar road beneath his feet, the sand and the mangrove mud squelching up between his toes. He cannot even imagine what snow feels like; he knows only that one is the past and that the other is the future.
Inside the apartment it is warm enough to wear a T-shirt. Heat radiates from the walls. Everything is built here with the cold in mind. Moessie gets out her china tea set, boils the water, and heats up the pot before she pours in the tea. You always have to heat the pot, she says in her tremulous voice. And you pour your guest the last tea and the first coffee. On the other side of the world, Mum would say it in Dutch:
Wie zijn gasten wil bedenken,
moet hemzelf het eerste thee
en het laatste koffie schenken.
It used to sound out of place in Australia. Now Michaelis feels out of place hearing it. Moessie spoons tealeaves into a porcelain pot with an ancient silver spoon. Her hand trembles as she picks up the kettle. The skin of her wrist is like thick, soft tissue. When the water hits the tea, the smoky aroma fills the apartment. Moessie takes out a tin, opens it, and leans towards him stiffly. Inside are the chocolates Michaelis remembers, wrapped in brown and gold paper, with the gold elephant on the side.
‘It’s so nice to have you all back.’
‘Yes, it’s lovely to be back,’ Mum says. ‘Gezellig.’
Dirk laughs. Michaelis and Con sit together on a couch. They are always closer when they come to a new place. Michaelis unwraps his chocolate and sticks it in his mouth. He lets it sit there on his tongue and melt. He gets a cup of tea as well, milky and sweet from too many cubes of sugar. He sticks a spare cube of sugar in his mouth. Dirk raps him on the knuckles with his spoon.
‘It’s all right,’ Moessie says, folding her fleshy wrists across her belly. ‘I don’t mind.’
‘It’s the principle.’ Dirk turns back to his pipe, pats down the tobacco with his thumb and sticks the pipe in his mouth, squinting down at it as he teases the tangled leaf with his lighter. Smoke drifts from his mouth. His legs stretch out before him, the workboots scarred and flecked with paint. He loosens his belt and sits there, quietly letting off smoke.
Moessie clears her throat. ‘Have the boys seen their father yet?’
‘Not yet.’
‘He comes by here sometimes. He’s very excited to see them.’
Mum’s teacup rattles back onto the saucer. ‘He comes here?’
Moessie gives a slight shrug. ‘I can hardly turn him away, can I? He’s always treated me very well. It’s not been easy on him either, the way you went, just like that. No word to him for three years.’
‘You know it wasn’t like that.’
‘What do I know?’ Moessie lifts and drops her heavy shoulders.
Michaelis goes to the window and stares outside. Parkland stretches to the right, bare trees in rows. The salmon-pink curve of a bike path follows the lake and straightens towards the town centre. There are bike paths everywhere, following the roads like ghosts. Clusters of bikes are parked below. They all look the same, the bikes. They don’t have any gears, because everywhere it is flat. There isn’t a single mountain on the horizon.
Houses huddle on the other side of the park, and past them, the distant, familiar figure of the cathedral with the giant clock. The Pepper Shaker. De Peperbus. But directly in front there is another apartment block, exactly the same as this one, the same balconies and dark, gleaming windows.
That’s where Dad lives now.
When they flew into Amsterdam, friends of Mum met them at the airport. There was lots of crying and hugging. The man and woman then turned to stare at Michaelis, and exclaimed how tall and dark he’d become.
‘You must remember Bart and Rie!’ Mum said. ‘They looked after you for a few months when you were young.’
He studied them with renewed interest, but nothing sparked in his memory. They have a son, a slightly built kid with a confident, easy way about him. Sebastiaan, the boy is called. He used to be his friend, apparently. The boy’s mother said that they would have to be friends again. They shook hands while their mothers looked on.
They are staying with Bart, Rie and Sebastiaan while they look for a place of their own. The only good thing about this is the Playboys that Bart keeps by month and year on a bookshelf in the attic. Michaelis leafs through them sometimes, staring at breasts and the hair between the women’s legs caught in the hazy light of the lens. The back of his neck becomes hot, like bad things could happen at any moment. Somewhere, a woman in the house is crying. He keeps flicking through the pages of the magazine, smelling the ink, the gloss, a part of him snagged on that sobbing, which is coming, he thinks, from the room Mum shares with Dirk.
It is not their home, but he has to act as though it is, just like he has to treat Dirk as his father, and he does not really like Sebastiaan, who won’t share his toys and cries too easily for a boy. When Mum buys Michaelis and Con a BMX bicycle each, Rie takes her aside and complains that she has made Sebastiaan cry, that Sebastiaan feels left out and needs one too.
‘The whole thing is so disappointing,’ Mum says as she pulls down the sun visor in the car and checks her make-up.
She is talking about the whole experience of seeing her friends again, talking to Dirk, although Michaelis and Con and Jonno are also sitting there in the car. Inside the car, Mum speaks in a way that she can’t in the house.
‘Things are never the same as when you leave them. Living on top of each other, relying on the hospitality of others. They’ve changed. Everyone changes. I don’t know if any of this was a good idea after all.’
‘Verdomme,’ Dirk says. ‘Now you tell me.’
And there are so many relatives to visit, all of them waiting their turn. They have to start somewhere.
Mum glances back at Con and Michaelis, sitting either side of Jonno, who has fallen asleep. ‘I was the second youngest. Jannie was the youngest. When she was born, they put me out of the pram and I had to walk. I was three. That’s how I remember it. See here—’ She shows them her arm, points at a white thread of raised skin above the inner wrist. ‘We were sitting at the table when we were young. Jannie said she loved me and stuck a fork in my arm. It stood straight up.’
Dirk shakes his head. ‘Your sister is mad. They’re all mad.’
Mum drops her arm and turns to the front. ‘I prefer not to hold grudges.’
Jannie’s house is across the road from a park. The house is joined to a hundred other houses that stretch along the length of the street, and on the other side is the park, very green like all the parks in this town. They get out of the car, breathing mist over their scarves.
‘Mind what you say,’ Mum says quietly, her breath a fog.
Michaelis feels unsteady, a burning in his throat. Maybe this is how it feels when you go to a different country, when you get off a plane and everything is upside down. They go inside and meet Mum’s sister and have chicken soup.
After lunch, Jannie’s husband pulls out his record collection. There are lots by the Beatles; two in particular catch Michaelis’s attention. One is blue, the other red. On the blue album the Beatles have long hair, and on th
e red one they don’t. The date on the albums is 1973, two years before he was born, the time when Mum and Con and Dad were together in London, although mainly it was Mum and Con who spent the time together while Dad was out. Con used to get up in the morning and the first thing he’d do was ask for a cup of tea, which Mum made for him with lots of milk. Tea? he’d ask. Tea? They had such fun together, Mum and Con, just the two of them. Now Con doesn’t like tea at all.
Michaelis sits there beside Constantine, looking at the record covers, and conversation winds and unwinds around him and he doesn’t pay attention. He listens briefly when he hears Dad’s name mentioned. Andreas.
‘He’s a wonderful man,’ Jannie says. ‘We’ve become great friends. Oh, he makes me laugh!’
‘That’s one side of him,’ Mum says.
‘Yes, yes, we all have versions of events, stories to tell.’
‘Stories?’ Mum says. ‘Is that what you think they are?’
Michaelis turns back to the pictures of the Beatles. They are standing on a balcony, looking down, smiling.
‘It’s time to go,’ Mum says. ‘We won’t keep you any longer.’
Jannie gives Michaelis a kiss on the way out. She’s short like Mum, but she doesn’t so much smile as draw back her lips from her teeth, and Michaelis keeps imagining her with a fork in her hand, ready to strike. He and Con get in the car and Dirk slides into the front seat, filling the cabin with his breath. Con begins tapping restlessly on the hand rest of the car door. Mum is still inside. When she comes out, Jannie comes out too. Jannie has a hand in Mum’s hair and pulls on it like she’s trying to wrestle a handbag off a mugger.
‘You’re sick!’ Jannie shrieks. ‘You’re possessed by the devil!’
Mum punches Jannie in the face to make her let go.
Dirk jumps from the front seat and bundles Mum into the car. Jannie’s husband is trying to restrain her, but she struggles free and walks towards the car. She is still screaming and shaking her fist as their car turns the corner. They drive for a while without anyone speaking.
‘Well, that was pleasant,’ Dirk says.
‘Why did she get so angry?’ Michaelis’s question falls into the silence of the car. He decides Mum isn’t going to answer, but then she does.
‘It’s because we have different memories.’
~
He is seven. Eight is not so far away. By the time they get home that evening, he knows that he is sick. His face is burning. His cheeks have grown tight and swollen. Mum puts a cool hand on his face.
‘I think you need to go upstairs and lie in bed.’
It doesn’t help. His cheeks feel as if they are about to explode. Every time he swallows he feels needles in his eardrums. He hears them speaking downstairs.
‘Hij heeft de bof.’
De bof. The mumps. He can smell straw. The world is moving and moving. The house hardly exists. He moans, and when he closes his eyes he sees a black dog lying on a hot road, bleeding from its mouth, whining, tongue half out, dark flecks on its exposed gums. Barry will be okay, soon as I go. He’s remembering that wrong; Barry got away. Didn’t he?
Dirk is standing over him. ‘What’s wrong with you? Stop making all of that noise. Aansteller. Kleine meisje. Stop making more of it than what it is.’
Dirk lifts one hand, then drops it again. His feet thud down the stairs, down into the jumbled haze of noise beneath. Michaelis draws the blanket over his head. He drifts through pain and finds himself back on Bribie Island. They have not left at all. He is daydreaming, walking along the road. Low rumbles carry from the horizon. Toads flattened by cars bake in the sun, clouds of blood around each one. Razors in his mouth, pressed up against his cheeks, digging out towards his ears. Stories. Dad is still far away. The road leads to the beach, a dense wall of mangroves to one side, with countless roots. The shore slopes away so gradually that the water hardly seems to be getting deeper, but it is, and there are sharks in there, dark shapes beneath the surface, waiting to come onto the land.
6
The same thick hair rises from his head, combed back in a wave, but silvery streaks run through it. His skin has an ashen look—not enough sun, he says with an easy laugh—and everything is angular in his face. Dad hugs them both and gives them a kiss. Michaelis smells cologne, feels that rough scrape of freshly shaven cheek.
‘It’s so good to see you both! Gosh, you are both so dark, like proper little Greeks! Animaaales!’ Dad keeps speaking in his high-pitched, rapid voice. ‘Not bad, eh? I’ve got my own car. Your dad’s doing pretty well for himself, isn’t he? I can’t believe that you’re back. You have to tell me everything.’
‘Make sure you look after them.’
Dad doesn’t look at Mum. ‘Of course, of course.’
He speaks in English, like they do, but with an accent all his own, a slippery sort of thing, caught between a handful of languages and places. They get in the car, Constantine in the front, Michaelis in the back.
‘You still playing football, Constantinos?’
‘Yeah.’
Dad laughs and shakes his head. ‘Good, good. We’ll have to see if you can still steal the ball off me. I have to warn you, I’ve been practising. I won’t be easy on you. You look almost like a man now, Constantinos. Incredible. Incredaaaable! How does it feel, to be nearly a man?’
Con is silent. Dad has perfectly shaped teeth, like Constantine’s, but they are yellowish from all the smoking that he does. A cigarette hangs from his mouth, and though he blows the smoke through the window, it gets sucked back in. The car is old and uncomfortable, like every other car Michaelis has been in, and he still feels weak from the mumps. He stares at the back of the front seat, feeling the car lurch around unexpected corners.
‘Been seeing any girls, Constantinos?’
Constantine doesn’t answer.
Dad pokes him in the ribs. ‘Well then, Constantinos? Any nice Greek girls, eh? Handsome young man like you…’
‘No.’
Dad puts a hand on his shoulder, squeezes it. ‘Oh, sure you have. Are you keeping things from your father? Your own flesh and blood?’
Con turns to look at him, his face hard. ‘I told you no.’
‘Okay then. Okay.’ Dad takes away his hand.
He drives with the other elbow resting on the rim of the window, the creases in his leather jacket glistening at the joint, an amused glint in his eye, his fingers drumming lightly on the steering wheel.
‘When the time comes,’ he says in a serious tone, ‘make sure you settle down with a nice Greek girl, Constantinos. They’re the best.’
‘I feel sick,’ Michaelis says.
Dad’s eyes flash into the rear-vision mirror, like he forgot Michaelis was in the back. ‘What kind of sick?’
‘Carsick.’
‘How bad?’
‘I need to vomit.’
‘You get that sick from being in a car? Wait till I pull over, all right? Can you do that?’
As soon as the car door swings open, Michaelis sends the morning’s food into the grass. Farmland stretches out before him. A bunch of cows stare at him with their big, sad eyes, slowly chewing their cuds. Dad is standing over him. He pinches his nose and glances around.
‘Are you okay, Michaelis?’
‘I’m okay.’
‘You don’t look okay.’ Dad makes it sound like an accusation.
When they get to Dad’s apartment, he gives them an ice-cream container full of almonds. ‘From your grandmother in Cyprus. So, how was Australia? Did you see anything dangerous? Sharks? Snakes? Kangaroos?’
Dad’s eyes constantly come to rest on Constantine. Michaelis wants to talk about Australia and all the moving and Dirk, but somehow he doesn’t say a thing. Constantine isn’t saying much, either. Dad fills the silence. There is an incredible restlessness in his wiry frame.
‘I want you to remember this, boys: my house is yours. You may have been on the other side of the world, but you’ll always be mine.’
&
nbsp; The whole place is tidy, though it smells of aftershave and cigarettes and coffee. Michaelis pours himself a glass of orange juice from the fridge. From the kitchen window, he can see the other apartment block, the one where Moessie lives, where he was born seven years ago. He can see her windows, although they look impenetrable from this distance.
Michaelis follows Con back into the living room. Dad comes in and surveys them both, sitting around his glass-topped coffee table, with their glasses of juice and coiled, rubbery Greek sweets and plate of chocolates.
Someone knocks at the door. Dad answers it. A boy stands there, looking up at Dad, glancing in at the apartment, shy and lean, a few years older than Constantine.
‘Not now,’ Dad tells the boy, ruffling his hair. ‘I’ll talk to you later.’
He closes the door and walks back inside.
‘My sons,’ he says, grinning hugely. ‘My beautiful boys.’
But he has two more young children now, and a second wife, Irene, whom he has also divorced. Irene is religious, and when Dad takes them to visit their half-brother and half-sister on the edge of town, she talks about how Jesus has changed her life. She stares at them when she says this, and Michaelis is tempted to say something, to ask questions, just to keep the conversation going.
She smokes one cigarette after another, just like Dad, and as she talks about Jesus, she interrupts herself to take long drags. She makes a lunch of different cheeses and thinly sliced bacon followed by chocolate flakes on thick white bread. Her children look on. Michaelis doesn’t know what to make of them. They have the same dark skin as him, and that is all.
Irene does not speak about Mum at all, but there is something in her voice when she draws near to it, a tightness that you cannot trust.
‘Play with your brother and sister,’ Dad tells them before he follows Irene into the kitchen.
Michaelis hears the metallic rasp of a lighter, and smoke drifts into the living room.