The boy seemed to sense Darcy staring and abruptly he caught all his pins and packed them into his drawstring bag. Darcy held up his gloved hand to say he was sorry, he meant no harm. As the boy got on his bike and scraped down the street, he glanced back at Darcy in the doorway then blended into the dark and cobblestones. The juggling pins in his bag bumping gently on his back.
Monash University, Late spring 1983
The quad lay in shadows, dew on the grass, they appeared with the Ming Wing behind them like a juggernaut. Darcy kicked the forty-four gallon barrel that rumbled with books, keeping it straight, a drum accompaniment as it rolled over cement behind Fin as she shouted her spiel about witch-hunts. The Malleus Maleficarum, she yelled to Asian kids who roamed the campus at night, haunting the libraries, gathering now, intrigued yet ill at ease with their own books under their arms, evening lecturers turning their heads, on their way home. Fin dressed up as a punk medieval witch, purple boots that came up over her knees, her leather mini-skirt and a cape with an embroidered Harley-Davidson. She looked more like Robin Hood’s dominatrix.
The Hammer of Witches, she said, that’s what it means.
Darcy held up her placard that read WE ARE NOT THE EVIL-DOERS. He felt like a magician’s assistant, but he’d promised to support her. He dropped the sign on the ground because he couldn’t do everything, poured the fake copies of the witch-hunt book from the barrel all over the moist evening grass. Copies of anything by William F. Buckley Jr stolen from the library, now pasted with Malleus Maleficarum covers.
Darcy glanced up at the random assemblage of student faces, some of them wincing, trying to understand. Fin pointing at men accusingly: A hundred thousand women killed, she shouted, her numbers that always felt plucked from the air.
Accused of infanticide and cannibalism just for refusing to weep in the inquisitorial courts.
She doused the insides of the now upright barrel with kerosene and threw in a match, started burning the books. Her face painted black with white lips, her eyes now lit by the flames with a ghoulish effect. A female teacher in a plaid skirt shouted, Hey, offended by books on fire.
It’s an instruction manual, Fin yelled back. For the killing of women. Like you. Idiot women like you.
The woman walked off towards the Student Union and Fin stared at Darcy accusingly. He faded behind her into the shadows but, undaunted, she continued with tirades about female circumcision, Islamic women, Nigeria, Egypt, Sudan, infibulation, subjugation.
Elly elly etdoo, Darcy warned her as a security guard emerged through the glass doors of the Union and Fin stopped mid-sentence, abandoned her props, and they ran through the dark between buildings to the car park on Wellington Road with their smiling getaway faces. This was the fun he’d been robbed of, he thought. Then he realised that Fin was in costume, quite unrecognisable, while he’d been there as himself.
That went well, she said, laughing, as they leapt into Darcy’s mother’s Corvair and sped out towards Dandenong Road. She reached for her stash in the glove box to roll them a joint.
You call that art!
It’s more interesting than what you do, she said, taking a first toke and then coughing. At least it says something. She passed the joint to Darcy and he took a hit, his chest pumping in as he held it, sputtering.
They had no idea what you were talking about.
Then it must be art, she said.
Darcy puffed again, resenting how she made his work feel dated, painted. He closed his eyes at the Chadstone lights and waited for the first hint of a buzz. And then they were silent, Fin already in her Fin world.
At Caulfield, they turned underneath the railway bridge and all became more vivid, the glare of the headlights along Balaclava Road, cutting across to St Kilda. The distant beat in Caulfield Park where he’d have stopped if he were on his own, the observant Jews at Orrong Road, on foot because it was Friday night, men in black hats, the women frumpy. Dad doesn’t live so far from here, said Darcy.
Fin took another pull on her blunt as they passed a tram that screeched on its cables. Do you ever see him? she asked.
Not lately, he said. His girlfriend’s nice, though. She’s Israeli. He wanted to tell her how his mother was what she called circling the drain, that he had her car because she barely left the house, the Austin getting her back and forth to the drive-thru bottle shop in Frankston. What happened to Aunt Merran? he asked.
Fin took another puff, swallowed then exhaled. I saw her once, she said. In California. She was still in the house outside Montecito. She had a blind ram in the garden. It walked in circles with its head up in the air, sniffing towards her when she called it. It had holes for eyes.
Does she drink too? he asked.
She did that day.
They arrived outside Darcy’s flat on Robe Street and parked. He hadn’t told her he paid the rent from his grandmother’s money, the small inheritance Fin never saw. He showed her his studio in the closed-in end of the balcony. His own exaggerated realism: the four of them on easels, like he had a gallery at home. The curved brick walls and the signs of the buildings. Wheelan the Wrecker and Berrigan’s Foundry, streetlights and old Holden cars, a Falcon ute parked in the shadow of a railway bridge, everything slightly larger than life.
They’re really good, she said. She picked up an envelope of the photos he’d taken of them, sets of pictures ready in envelopes with his resume, some shots of his portraits and pastels.
I’m applying for graduate art programs, he said.
Can I take a copy of these? she asked.
Darcy nodded, flattered. Sure. She put the envelope in her satchel. Your thing was good too, he said. I didn’t mean to make fun of it.
It was kind of stupid in the end, she said. She went to his bathroom and washed off her white and black make-up, put on her red lipstick, and together they walked up Acland Street, Fin still in her cape and boots. They headed to Pokey’s up near the corner, caught the end of the show, a part-Aboriginal drag queen singing ‘Nutbush City Limits’. Darcy was high from the dope and for once he felt happy. The music was loud and the dance floor opened, Fin in her own little groove with her cape and her satchel, her hands in the air to the Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’, doing her Annie Lennox thing.
Darcy ordered a Bundy and Coke from the shirtless tattooed boy at the bar, the older men cruising, the glare in their eyes and the tips left wet on the bar. Darcy leaned there and listened to the Human League, tasted the liquor and thought of his mother as the rum touched his tongue, and vowed, as usual, that this was his last for the night.
He drank and then danced with Fin to the Thompson Twins, in a rhythm like they belonged together. If he were alone he’d go down to the beat near the beach, lose himself there on the weed and the Bundy, where no one said anything, but now he had Fin and he held her narrow waist as they bumped on each other on the crowded dance floor like no one else existed. He felt sexy in his tight Fioruccis, his narrow black boots as they slithered on the slick parquet. He circled on his own and looked up at the lights as they dazzled, mused about art school in Sydney, the night-life up there, but when he came back to the present Fin had disappeared. He went to the ladies room and shouted, looked around the club but there was no one he’d take home. With a good buzz on, he took another drink to go, for out where he knew the night would take him, to the paths along the banks of the Yarra, waiting under the Anderson Street bridge or in the bushes, to find someone to remember and forget.
Ulitsa Kazakov, Thursday evening
It was already 7 pm when Darcy stood slender and pale in his boxers, reflected in the shadow-stained bathroom mirror. He stared at the black and white remnants of the photo from Prague floating in the toilet bowl, torn up by Fin and left here for him to pee on. But Fin wasn’t here now. Darcy flushed and some pieces were swallowed, but part of his face just swirled and remained: a tight-closed eye, and the top of the soldier’s burnt-sugar hair. His army cap indelibly placed on the rusted cistern, out of the way, as
he’d lowered himself on that piss-stained cement. A second swirl of water and all was gone. Darcy’d been set up; he knew that now. The soldier was one of those agent provocateurs. He’d been set up in Prague and now by Aurelio, everyone part of something, Fin as well, except Fin and he had ignited a new secret of their own. All he did was kiss her on the back; why did she turn around?
Behind the bathroom towels, Fin had stowed her potato vodka from Poland, a gift, he assumed, from Jobik. Darcy sensed she’d kept it hidden because he’d sworn off it before she’d left Melbourne in September. He’d barely painted since. She told him he didn’t need to become any more like his mother, but now the voice in his head said: too many feelings to cope with on your own, come with me, my sweet potato?
The vodka seared a hollow in his delicate throat and it made his breath feel loud inside him, flooding his veins, liquid distilled from lava, a tasteless taste that usually brought tears as he walked with the bottle into the hot other room where the canvas sat sketched without colour on the easel. In the dog’s red wax eyes Darcy sought all kinds of forgiveness, for his mother and father, the Mormon, the soldier, and he searched in its eyes for himself, asked how he should paint this, the charcoal in his newly warmed fingers. He had the pavilions, the fountain, he had what they wanted, the obelisk mounted with the shape of the dog, the only colour so far in those red torch-lit eyes. He remembered Laika as famous, launched in that rocket, but did she ever come back?
Darcy picked up the waxen puddle of the cinnamon candle from last night. He’d paint it for penance, not just for himself, he’d paint it in wax with the stash of Fin’s candles. He pulled her collection from the drawer of the end table, red and cream and yellow, a royal blue, the paraffin scaly and rough in his fingers as he laid them out like paints on the ironing board. He covered the ironing board roughly with pages of Izvestia, newspaper photos of Andropov living and dead, and laid Fin’s cheap oils and Russian watercolours alongside the candles. Melted wax and paint, it would be naïve and primitive, all he needed was heat.
The travelling iron sat on the board like an invitation. Its plastic handle folded into its shell, and he lay it on its back like a silver beetle, a miniature hotplate. Another swig and a burn in his pharynx that rushed to his ears and it made him feel close to his mother, snapping candles, ripping at wicks and pushing their nubs into the iron’s heat. He grabbed a teardrop knife from Fin’s paintbox, Fin who he wished hadn’t turned around. He kneaded the molten wax with the blade, conjured the boy in the square and his juggling, but the vodka had eclipsed that, so he turned to the dog on the canvas.
He drank again and then knife-painted the wavering flag on the wedding-cake building, layering the ruffled red in melted wax. Already he knew it felt good. Blending in yellow he wax-painted the tourist bus a more brilliant red. He imagined all breeds of wax—beeswax, carnauba for polishing cars, floor wax, ear wax, tallow, shellac. The aeroplane bright yellow, even though the Aeroflot at the museum was white with a flag on the fin; he would make it a thing of his own. He carved its windows with the pick-point of the palette knife, wiped the knife clean across Andropov’s newspaper face. With the knife in his hand he felt a feverish accuracy, reaching for the oils, tubing silver on the palette to knife-paint the obelisk platinum. His version of the Monument to Space Flight. He marked the stones shiny with the knife edge, detailed them fine to the top where Laika stared out, curious and waiting. He would paint her last.
Straight from the candle sizzling on the travelling hotplate he waxed the sky above her with off-white and powder blue. The candle he used like a lumbering pen, then he smudged on some more direct from the iron. Gold ochre for Laika, you innocent thing; he worked on her with a fine-tipped brush, sculpting her shape from the whippet’s, mounting her hopeful on a rocket through space, reaching for something. In green, he painted a pair of butterflies there, wings in the light from Laika’s chasing eyes. Green, he’d heard, was the colour of the heart.
To frame it, he shaped the curves of the lavatory cistern ingrained in his mind from the photo from Prague, the rusty cast-iron shape. On top he outlined the soldier’s cap, its peak faced forward, emblematic, with a CCCP insignia and star. They would have their nationalism. Darcy stood back to see what he had and it was quite something, the shapes in the wax. It wouldn’t be what they expected, it might even be better than that. Along the cone of the obelisk he signed: forgive me.
Darcy turned at the door being opened, Fin standing in the entry hall. His drawing hand tightened, anticipating her thoughts: good that he’s painting; he’s fucked up my travelling iron; why did I bring him here, why did I turn when he kissed me? She silently removed her coat, and he felt her assessing the shining dry wax and the shapes of the buildings, the eyes of the dog and the half-empty bottle of vodka, the mess, but she was looking at Darcy in his boxers. He wanted to cover himself.
I painted the dog for you, he said, and the butterflies.
Fin leaned on the velvet arm of the couch where the buggers and de-buggers had delved among cushions. Self-consciously, Darcy dabbed red wax in the star on the military cap that sat on the cistern up among the clouds, he carved its details with the pick. The cap was a military grey with a stretch of canvas blank above it. The colour ended mid-stroke near the edge. He put the brush down. He waited.
It’s wonderful, said Fin. What about the corner?
Darcy stood back again and saw the canvas whole; the strip left uncoloured made it seem more modern, less exact. I like it that way, he said. The mix of wax and paint seemed vaguely kitsch but at least it was unusual. Fin approached him, lifted her hand and peeled a scab of red wax from near his nipple. He wasn’t sure what it meant. It’s really good, she said, the painting. She blew the wax from her finger. It’s not what they’re expecting but the curator’s cool, he’ll like it. She picked up the vodka bottle. No glass? she asked.
No glass, he said, a smile of apology. He’d rarely painted sober, she knew that, but he felt suddenly sober now. Are you okay? he asked.
She reached for her Polaroid camera on the bench and took a random shot—Darcy with the canvas in the background, the ironing board alongside like a flat-backed horse. I wouldn’t say that, she said.
She peeled the picture and gave it to Darcy to dry, and they both watched his shape materialising from the cloudy turquoise liquid. Her blouse brushed his bare elbow as the picture coalesced in the streaks like one of the Rorschach images. His features arranged themselves in the tinted emulsion and red flags brightened from the painting, the silver of the obelisk and the anxious face of the dog.
I’m sorry about last night, he said. That was all wrong.
I can’t deal with that now, she said. We have to deal with the other business.
I know you warned me, said Darcy. He looked at himself in the image, formed now, his eyes and mouth seemed somehow less generous.
We need to get practical, she said.
They both watched the painting. It was drying also; the wax gave it a depth and dimension. I went to the embassy, he said, but I couldn’t get in. Maybe we should go to the Americans?
Quietly Fin screwed the lid back onto her vodka bottle; they were sparing contact with each other’s eyes. No one will touch you, she said, especially the Americans. Not now—and, anyway, there’s too much going on. Everyone’s afraid Chernenko will be the new General Secretary and that’ll be like going back to Brezhnev. There may be changes in Poland, she said, but it’s too soon for here.
Darcy looked at the words he’d written on the obelisk. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed them. What about us? he asked.
I think Aurelio will be your best bet, she said. I don’t want to be around you when you’re drinking. As she left the room she turned momentarily. The painting’s really amazing, she said. Thank you.
Don’t give up on me, said Darcy, but she was already closing her bedroom door.
Nepean Highway, Winter 1976
Darcy knew it was too far to take the Austin on a rainy day, all
the way to Melbourne. They followed the kombi, two cars behind, Darcy’s mother too crocked to be out on the road. She drove in her housecoat with gin in her veins. Rain seeped in above the visor and the Austin felt small on the highway, like a dodgem car implanted with a brand new battery. It was going to be his car one day. Shouldn’t I drive? he said, but his mother was on a mission; she’d already coerced him from the house in his pyjamas as if the kitchen were on fire.
You’re here as my witness, she said.
You people are crazy, he said. He started to doze but his mother struck him hard on the arm.
I need you to watch, she said, so we don’t lose him. But the kombi travelled high enough so they could see it ahead in the traffic, his father driving through the same rain, oblivious.
Perhaps you should go to Alcoholics Anonymous, said Darcy.
And she should go to Don’t Fuck My Husband.
What about me? asked Darcy.
You should have gone to Nude Driving School for Boys, she said, but it’s too late now.
Darcy looked out the window.
They caught up with the kombi well before St Kilda, saw him turn up Chapel Street where the houses began to get bigger, more trees that weren’t eucalyptus. Toorak, Darcy’s mother said, disdainfully. On Albany Road they saw him pull over, deliver some eggs in a hurry. Look at him run, said Darcy’s mother.
But he was already back and driving. He stopped off Glenferrie Road at a house with a modern extension in the front. Darcy’s mother parked the Austin behind a station wagon and they watched him carry four cartons up the drive. Then she picked her teeth nervously with paper she’d folded into an edge.
Stray Dog Winter Page 11