There were people everywhere. There were tiny shops on every corner. There was sound from all openings. It was a shut, full area, without one tree, with asphalt playgrounds, with supreme absolute austerity, with the pride of claiming no beauty, with no attempt at grandeur. It was the simple present privilege of being alive. It had no embellishment. It said only that she was lucky to live when there was so much against existence.
Then she forgot the green trimmed gardens, the pruned savaged trees, the laboured borders of marigolds. Because she had come through some line and could know, not for any reason, that because she did not have the address of the rich, and because she did not wear the clothes of the rich, she was unsafe, without the cards of a good citizen.
So after she had bought two pints of milk, and an ice-block for Abercrombie, she went back into the sour house, and found, in the kitchen, an old Irishman with a terrible hangover.
‘Where should I keep my milk?’ she asked him.
‘Keep the kid away from the phone,’ the old man growled.
‘I don’t know what refrigerator I should use,’ Persia said.
Then the man, whose face was a good face underneath its whiskers and wear, said that she could share his fridge on the first floor near the bathroom, and that nothing would be stolen from it.
‘Always lock your door,’ he said, ‘even if you go to the bathroom.’
Persia was surprised. She had never confronted dishonesty before. The rich were always scrupulously polite.
‘Is it true there are bashings here?’ she asked.
‘Noooh,’ the man answered, and shook his head vehemently. ‘They all happen on the next corner,’ he added, and began on his can of beer.
So Persia went up to the fridge which was very old, and shook and trembled like men with fever. In it there was half a tin of dripping and two slices of bread.
Then she used the bathroom. She did not sit on the seat. There was a pile of faeces on the floor, and a puddle of urine in which the toilet paper had soaked, and was swollen.
When she washed her hands the basin filled up with water which collected the grease from round its edges, floating in clots and film. But out the window the bright real day made there be true backyards of litter and cement, with high walls, sometimes fortified by broken glass or rims of chicken wire against intrusions.
When she went back to the kitchen the surly mother was there with a naked baby on a bouncinette. There was a puddle of urine on the cracked laminex floor under the baby. On the table flies crawled in an open tin of Lactogen. There were piles of beer cans and ashtrays filled with refuse. There were stacks of filthy plates over the sink and a milk bottle with hard yellow contents. The stove, which was ancient, was thick with grease and uncleaned saucepans. But Persia could only smile for the happiness of being among such things, and be proud to be allowed admittance.
As well as the Irishman, there was a fat Indian with popping eyes. He spoke with a perfect American accent. He was already drunk.
‘You must be the new tenant,’ he said. ‘I’m Louis-Jean. I’m only living here temporarily because it’s so close to my work. I used to work for a big publishing firm you know. Travelled the States, have working visas for three different countries. Had an expense account of millions. I’m just here until I find some new venture.’
He smiled. His smile was one of lost satisfaction. His gestures were educated remnants. He had, it appeared, lost some grand and travelled existence because of his drinking.
‘My mother and father were both lawyers in India,’ he said. ‘We were very high caste. I’ve lived in London and Paris. I married an English refrigerator who didn’t know her elbow from her ass, if you’ll pardon the expression. And that divorce cost me some dough. Have a beer.’
‘Thanks,’ Persia said. She had never drunk beer in her life before.
The old Irishman gave Abercrombie twenty cents. ‘Go down and buy yerself an ice cream,’ he said.
‘I’d better go with him,’ Persia said.
‘There’s a shop jist round ther corner,’ the surly girl said, looking up from shoving baby cereal into the baby’s mouth. The baby, which was like white chicken bones, kicked, and some yellow stuff ran from the corner of its mouth, like soup from spoons.
Then Persia knew she had been accepted, and did not know why, feeling ashamed of the way she spoke, which was too clipped and pronounced like sails grappling for grandeur in winds. And she did not know why she was allowed into all secrets and murmurings on doorsteps, when other girls in the house, who appeared on other future days, were ignored for their high aspirations.
She went with Abercrombie and bought him the ice cream, and wanted to say to the Italian shop-keeper that she lived in Redfern, and was a genuine resident, of genuine intent, but because he probably knew anyway, she did not say anything, and went back to the house, and thanked the Irishman, and gave him the change.
‘I always like somebody who don’t swear,’ he said.
There was now also in the kitchen a fat white woman like slugs under stones, suddenly exposed to sun and curling with slime. She also was drinking the Indian’s beer.
‘Yon don’t wanna take no notice of that fuckin’ cunt there,’ she said to Persia. Her arms rippled from torn sleeves of a shift, as she indicated towards the surly girl, who simply smiled, and busied herself more in feeding the under-nourished baby.
Persia, who did not know of swearing, ignored the words as if they were pavements to be travelled over without looking down.
‘She’s got V.D. and she won’t even go back to the clinic to get the results of the test. You don’t wanna sit on the toilet seat. The place is riddled with the fuckin’ disease. Look at ’er kid. It’s ten pounds underweight. She don’t boil nothin’ and it’s frigging sick. She sleeps with every man she meets. She’s nothin’ but a frigging whore. You wait, she’ll be out ternight, wanderin’ up and down the street, lookin’ for an easy lay. I’m telling yer, Gay, to keep yer hands off me Gary or I’ll be after yer with a knife.’
The girl merely smiled, ducked her head, and continued feeding her baby.
‘Mind what you say,’ the Irishman said.
‘People fuckin’ tell me to shut up, that I got a chip on me shoulder, but so would yer if yer’d been through the kinder life I have. I sez what I thinks. I never been beaten in any fight. I’ve been into Gary with the knife. He’s git scars all over of him from where I git him. He knows ter keep outa ther way when I’m drunk. He knows the psychiatrist said I git homicidal tendencies when I drink,’ the slug one smirked. Nobody spoke. They let her rave. Persia listened and used each word, understanding then that violence was not invented by frantic script writers for T.V. crime series, but by people who rolled their lives in it to crisp the edges. It was true that other people had discovered in their own ways and at their own times, particular holes of violence and poverty. But to uncover by yourself, because of your own good luck, such fantasy, and to be permitted to sink among it unnoticed was like opening other people’s drawers, a special but secret privilege. So that some people had never discovered, and other would find out some time, but they were incidental to your own experience.
‘I’ve bin in Parramatta,’ the fat one said.
‘Are the allegations true?’ Persia asked.
‘What?’
‘Is it true they beat you?’
‘This fuckin’ fella was pesterin’ me in the pub all day, stickin’ his ’and up me arse, and I told ’im if ’e didn’t buzz off I’d git him. So at closin’ time I leads him across a park and me two boyfriends see me goin’ and foller me, and they bash ’im up for me. But they didn’ bash ’im ’ard enough, not for me likin’. So I picks up a board that was lyin’ there and crowned ’im with it. ’E was made mental for life, ’e was.’
‘And did you feel guilty when you saw him in court?’ Persia asked.
‘I wish I’d given it to ’im ’arder,’ the porous girl said. Her face showed no emotion. It was thick and impassi
ve like sandstone paths.
*
Persia went with Abercrombie to the park. She was proud to walk through the streets that belonged to the poor, to the migrants, to the blacks, to the pensioners. In the park there was only asphalt. There was not any grass, nor any trees. The sun beat down hot and relentless on the dust and empty coke tins. A couple of Greek children in pinafores, shoes and socks, played on the roundabout. Abercrombie ran over and joined them. Together they turned, circling the same square of space under the same sky, seeing the changing vision of the same surroundings from the same fixed point, three fat, wide-eyed faces, clinging to the spinning periphery.
There was an old woman, rocking herself gently on one of the swings.
‘Hot day,’ she said to Persia.
‘Yes,’ Persia answered. She was not used to strangers addressing her.
‘Come here every day and watch the kiddies,’ the old woman said. ‘See that one there, he’s a nasty little fellow. They come in from the streets, those dark women, and they leave their kids in this park from ten in the morning until three in the afternoon. And they never have nothing to eat. I go and buy them a loaf of bread and sometimes if I’m feeling real generous a tin of treacle. And I can tell you them’s snatched that bread away before I’ve lifted the knife.’
‘Goodness,’ Persia said.
‘So I was feeling drowsy today,’ the old woman said. ‘Nothing to do with drink. I never touched a drop all my life. So I says to myself I’ll come and sit here and keep an eye on the kiddies.’
‘That’s kind,’ Persia said. She sat on the asphalt beside the swing. Abercrombie and the Greek children continued to turn.
‘One time I took some real good clothes down to them dark mothers down the lane to put on their kids, because it made me real sorry to see the way they was dressed. But after we found them all in the rubbish tin. Them mothers was too lazy to wash the clothes, so they just chucked them out. It’d break your heart, it would.’
So Persia felt compassion, which she had not known before, and wished to have helped in any way, to have grovelled for the privilege of serving some poor alcoholic, to have been permitted to scrub lino floors and wallow in faeces, if it might have advanced in any way their suffering to lesser suffering. But she knew how it would be to have charity thrust in your face, from righteous silken whites with glossy eyes.
So she called Abercrombie, and said goodbye, and they went away.
*
There was the endless night, with Abercrombie tossing on his foam rubber mattress, rolling onto the floor, waking and crying, having to be reset into his bedding confines, as he walked, asleep, hugging his pillow, round the room. There was the light from the street pouring in through the thin curtains so that Persia could read the early morning hours on her watch. Then there was the doorbell which buzzed like musical bombs, so that just as you were going away, you were brought back with bangs and tirade. Also a phone, chained into the hallway, and operated by cents, rang most often, so that you waited for the sound of feet down the hallway breathlessly, until it was answered.
But the morning did come at five thirty when a sailor rang the bell for admittance and vanished into the upper storeys. Abercrombie stared from his dark pillow. Persia pulled on her clothes. Already trucks were roaring down the road. The pavement was noisy with factory worker’s feet tramping to labour. There was chatter, sometimes in English, and often in anything else, which rose up through the permanently unlocked window.
She gave Abercrombie bread and butter and milk for breakfast. She had a cup of coffee made from lukewarm water from the tap, not wishing to challenge the grease-clogged kettle.
*
Lyn was the one who had attempted murder. Her room held a double bed, unmade, and a table with a television on it. There were piles of crushed clothes over the floor, and rubbish spilling out from under the bed.
It seemed that Persia had, for some reason she did not understand, been accepted without introductions, without apologies, without explanations, the three of them drinking together. The other woman neither cared about Persia’s past nor her future. She was not anyone else’s belonging. She was simply herself, free to claim for herself whatever she wished, with her own independent will to choose her own independent life, and to do good, or bad, or nothing at all, without the need to consult, to plead or to demand.
She went across to the pub across the road to buy some beer to share with them. The old lady from the park was leaning against the counter, already choked with alcohol, her cheeks in drawers and cupboards of spirits. The old woman did not take Persia’s smile. And so you learnt another thing, easily, without words, without time, but simply as a matter of course.
Back in the dark hole of mustiness and cockroaches, they consumed their beer from stubbies, the tops being opened with teeth. The other woman had a pale face with the thin lips that come with having to pinch yourself in. Her eyes were a clear pure brown which might never have known sin. But she said when she had been in Parramatta she had put a nail on the end of a broom handle and stuck it up a girl who had declared herself to be a virgin.
‘She was all ripped inside and went mad for life because of what they did to her.’
‘Who was “they”?’ Persia asked.
There was a heavy silence while the girls sipped at their beer. The question, remaining unanswered, was therefore a full reply.
‘They even had to cut up the frankfurts,’ Lyn said, ‘because the girls was usin’ them on themselves.’
‘You’ve seen some things,’ Persia said.
‘I bloody frigging have. I’ve lived in a fuckin’ cave for three months eatin’ nothing but bloody nectarines. I’ve slept in the back seat of a car for weeks on end. Now I haven’t even got enough money for the dinner ternight, and Gary’ll go crook on me.’
‘I can lend you five dollars if you like,’ Persia said, and knew it was a way of giving, and did not mind, but was honoured for the opportunity which had come. For it was her first real giving to a first real person, and it was the most full promise, so that all sin was made remote by your own small contribution.
*
There was eighty dollars stolen from under Jan’s mattress during the ten minutes she was in the shower. It was her pension cheque, and some rent collected from other tenants, due to the landlord. She rang the police, and they came.
Two lean, cold detectives stood in the street, squinting into the hallway. Their eyes were chrome. They had no smile, and no love. They cut into all corners with their intrusion. They walked as though they wished to avoid even the air of the house. Seeing Persia, they studied her in surprise from their black, sharp depths, until she had to look away. It was the first time she had ever seen a detective in real skin and flesh, or seen their real faces, dressed in their real clothes.
‘Now what’s this about?’ the older one demanded. He almost spat his words.
‘Someone git me eighty dollars from under me mattress when I wus takin’ me shower.’
‘Do you know who it was?’
‘We thought yer might search the rooms and find it. It must be around ’ere somewhere.’
The detective looked at Jan. He saw how her straps hung from under her frayed top. Festoons of pale brown hairs spilt from her armpits.
‘You,’ he said, ‘come here.’ He spoke like men who train dogs. He spoke as though she was not worthy of a name. He beckoned her with the crook of his finger, and pushed her down the hallway ahead of him, into her room.
Later he came out, and she was crying behind him. He had told her that her room was a brothel.
‘You find out who did it, and let us know,’ he said.
‘Bloody cops,’ Lyn muttered. Everyone was clustered in the hallway.
‘Did you tell them about Will?’ a blonde girl, of no more than 16, said.
‘Who’s Will?’ the detective snapped.
‘Oh, ’e lives upstairs but it wouldn’ ’ave been ’im,’ Lyn said.
‘Can we
speak to you alone please,’ the detective said to Persia, most politely and almost with a bow. He stood aside for her, and she led them into her room. They shut the door behind them and ran themselves round the last vestige of space, examining all cracks until they had chewed up and spat out the room.
‘What are you doing here?’ the younger detective demanded. He had an acned face, from which he turned a thick smile on Persia, the kind of smile she had grown to recognize from men.
‘I came to see what it was all about.’ They stood, doing their best to dominate, but she moved away from their occupied portion of room.
‘Where did you live before this?’ he asked.
‘The North Shore.’
It was the right answer of course. They put on some more deference, even though they insisted on writing down her name and address. She was proud to be among their files, even if she did not yet merit a record.
‘Take my advice and leave this place,’ the detective said, sotto voce, in all confidence. ‘Shots have come through these windows from the pub across the road before now. You’ve chosen the worst place in the whole of Sydney to live.’
‘I like it,’ Persia said.
‘Then take our phone number,’ the detective answered, and wrote it down. He was like an animal trainer, ready to be cruel if insurgence threatened. ‘Any trouble, ring us. We’ll drop in from time to time to see how you are. The man upstairs, his family has a long criminal record. We’ll be keeping an eye on him.’
‘O.K.,’ Persia said.
‘You don’t have any idea who might have done it?’
‘None whatsoever,’ Persia answered. She opened the door for them and they went. The hallway filled with curious residents.
The Beginning of Everything and the End of Everything Else Page 12