by Joy Dettman
That got his brother from his bed, or got his feet on the floor, got him sitting, looking at Kurt with bloodshot eyes, which made the blue a paler shade.
They fell silent as they heard footsteps returning. Waited, watching that door, ready to dodge Joseph’s bucket of water. It was only Elsa putting Katze out before her husband’s heavy boot evicted him from her kitchen.
Eat, Kurt thought. Leave the fool with his stink and his problems. Instead, he leaned against the door, watching Christian pick up the shirt he’d worn last night, smell it, then toss it onto the bed. He was of similar height to Kurt, though his bones were heavier. He’d inherited the build of his mother’s people, but not her temperament. Elsa, always a big woman, was becoming a broad woman. In some distant future Christian too might become broad. This morning he looked much like his brother, though his features were set in a scowl and his sweat-soaked hair appeared darker.
Kurt sighed, picked up the discarded shirt and stuffed it into the calico bag hung from a hook behind the door. ‘I found her unconscious on the road, close to our gate – and only minutes after you came stumbling into this room at dawn. Did you leave her bleeding there?’
‘What do you think I am? Is she all right?’
‘I don’t know who you are these days. Would you know what you did last night? You couldn’t find your own bed.’
‘Is she all right, I said?’
‘I don’t know that either. Her head was injured. I left her with the doctor and the constable. He’s at the hotel now and will be here next.’
Kurt stripped the sheets, shook them, turned them top to tail. He smelt the pillow Christian had slept on, tossed it onto the bed. ‘If you weren’t with her when it happened, then who was she with?’
‘If she’d let that gimpy bastard touch her, she’d let anyone.’
‘You stink, brother, like a rutting dog. In your head, in your heart, you stink. Soil my bed with your filth if you must, but not her name.’
He moved to the other side of the double bed they had shared since infancy, and he stretched the top sheet taut, tossed the coverlet over the lot. It was never left on the bed at night, and so had not absorbed the stink of sweat and booze; perhaps it would seal it in. He pulled the curtains open, anchoring them on hooks each side of the window frame, hoping air might circulate. When he turned back to his brother, Christian was pulling a clean shirt over his head.
‘You put a clean shirt on that? Wash yourself!’
‘You sound more like the old bastard every day,’ Christian sneered. ‘No wonder everyone in town hates your guts.’
‘I don’t seek the approval of everyone, and I seek a drunkard’s approval less than most, and how I talk is my bloody business.’
Christian was slow to remove the shirt, slow to reply. ‘Did she say anything?’
‘She was unconscious, I told you. Her head was bleeding.’ He stood a moment looking at his hands, then walked to the door. ‘The doctor handled her as if she were dead.’
‘Shut up with that shit.’
‘It’s shit, all right!’ His hand on the doorknob, Kurt turned. ‘All morning I’ve been thinking about that shit you made for yourself, and I’ve been standing in it with you too, right up to my neck. A year ago you were warned to stay away from her. Those people might play around with others but they marry their own religion, their own class.’
‘Gimpy bloody Kennedy class? His father was a mongrel-bred bastard.’
‘And his grandmother was Molly Squire’s daughter, which in this town makes him good enough.’
Kurt leant against the door, his gaze moving across his brother’s face, attempting to see something he couldn’t find there. He shrugged, turned to the window as his hand moved to his cheek, wiping at it, remembering old man’s Kennedy’s spittle landing there. He’d been in the grocer’s, buying tea and flour. The war was over, and soon his mother could go into town and do her own shopping, soon he would be asked to play cricket in the schoolyard. That was the day he’d known that to some, he would always be a German bastard, and German bastards did not play cricket. They walked on eggshells around many in this town.
He looked at his hand, shrugged. ‘Perhaps you needed to feel that spittle on your face,’ he said, suddenly weary, wishing he could climb back into bed and begin this day again.
‘It probably helps you with licking the old man’s boots too,’ Christian said.
‘Christian, Kurt. Come to breakfast,’ Elsa called. No English now. Obedient wife, Elsa.
‘We come now,’ Kurt replied in his father’s tongue. He ran his fingers through his hair and turned again to Christian. ‘One thing is for sure, you will never fill those boots. Now wash, and don’t mention the accident at the table.’
‘She’ll be all right.’
‘Ah, so my brother is God, eh? If he says she’ll be right, then the dead will arise and walk.’
‘Of course they’d send her across to the Willama hospital. Old Hunter doesn’t know his arse from his elbow.’
‘Nor do you, brother. Nor do you lately. Now wash, and come to breakfast.’
Through her kitchen window, Elsa watched her nearest neighbour. She liked that woman’s garden but did not approve of the gardener. Loose hair suggested loose values. Elsa wore her hair plaited tight.
Much time was spent at the work table beneath her window, meals were served there, pastry rolled, vegetables prepared, dishes washed in a large tin dish beside that window. There was no sink in Elsa’s kitchen, no tap, but a tank stood close to her back door, and a pump in the washhouse supplied bore water. She dreamed of town water and shiny taps and sinks, stared at them each time she passed the hardware shop. Such conveniences. She had a fine house, but still had to bathe in the old tin tub in the washhouse, bucketing water first from pump to copper, waiting for it to heat, then bucketing it from copper to tub – as she had been bucketing water here for over forty years. And while she squatted in that tub she had to bend her great knees and be thankful for the plentiful underground water, which at times turned soap to scum.
The town pipes would pass by this land before the year was at an end, and continue on to the hotel. Joseph wouldn’t pay to bring town water to this kitchen, he wouldn’t pay for a sink, or build a new bathroom. Perhaps Elsa would pay with the money from her good friend, Mrs Buehler.
She smiled, a brief, tight smile, made so by her disloyal thought – and by the restriction of a meaty jaw and large prominent chin. Her eyes smiled. An oversight by her cruel maker, her eyes were far too fine to be stranded between those unfortunate jowls and the high broad brow. Since childhood, she’d worked hard for Joseph and been given no money to own, to spend. It was a fine thing to have money, not in a hole in the ground, but in the post office bank, where she could make a paper and say: ‘If you please, Miss Martin, I’ll take five pounds today.’
When the legal papers came, she had not been able to write her name. Now she could write it. Kurt had held her hand, guiding the pen until she could do it alone. The name had power. All words had power. She could write numbers, and cat, then by adding another letter, make cat become coat. Warm things, coats and cats.
Her eyes turned to Joseph’s German words, written on a sheet of paper pinned to the back of the kitchen door with a rusted drawing pin. Always, he’d pinned his lists there, with that same drawing pin. From when her boys were very small, he’d made lists of chores they had to do when they came home from school, and there was big trouble if her little ones could not read what those German words said. How many times had they stood before her with worried faces, sounding out the words so she might save them from their papa’s anger? Such good little boys.
She looked at her sons now seated at the table. Not so small, but still her little boys. Again this morning, they were worried boys.
‘Perhaps the ambulance vehicle came for the public house,’ Elsa spoke in the old tongue. ‘Perhaps this is why the constable was there.’
Christian glanced at the window. H
e’d been thinking of Dolan’s cider pit, trying to remember what he’d done there last night. Just a blur of faces and voices and the redhead at the piano, playing popular tunes. Until three months ago, he’d rarely tasted grog. Last night he’d put away so much, he couldn’t remember coming home, how he’d come home, or when.
Elsa placed a mug of tea and a plate full of eggs, fried tomato and home-made sausage before him. He drank his tea then stabbed at the sausage, watching it ooze fat. Shouldn’t have done that. Everything she cooked oozed fat and he couldn’t face her cooking this morning – couldn’t face those greasy eggs staring up at him with yellow eyes, daring him to put them in his gut. Like when he was five, when she’d drawn him from his safe quilts, dressed him, made him eat an egg before dragging him up that hill to the school. He’d puked. Every morning for months he’d puked halfway to school, but she’d continued dragging him, or carrying him up there, Kurt walking obediently at her side. Always the obedient son, Kurt.
Christian listened to his brother jabbering, he watched his father nod, pour tea into his saucer, then suck it up like a pig at the trough. He filled his mouth with sausage – didn’t allow sausage or tea to stop his jabbering reply.
They were talking about the new dam. It would be written on his list behind that door. He’d numbered his latest demands, one to six. Christian could read the numbers and that’s all he could read. Whatever he’d written there in German gibberish hadn’t been done. Since spring that same list had been waiting. The ink was fading, the paper yellowing.
They’d started on Dolan’s paddock two weeks back, first clearing the site of scrub and reeds, then soaking it, ploughing it, now the crazy old bugger was planning to scoop out what they’d ploughed then soak it again. That was the way he’d dug his first dam and that was the way his last one would be dug. There was machinery now that would dig a dam faster, better. So what? Machines must be paid for. Joseph Reichenberg had horses and slave labour.
Kurt could switch from one language to the other mid sentence. He never put a foot out of place. They both used to sit at this table with that book of gibberish before them, their father behind them, boxing their ears when they couldn’t see the difference between one word and the next. Kurt had learned to decipher that gibberish. Christian had learned to duck.
Until he turned fourteen, he’d spoken German in this house – until the day his arse got thrashed because he’d left Kurt to unharness the horses while he walked Rachael back to the swimming bend. That was the day he stopped speaking German.
His shoulders low, chin down, he slid an egg eye to either side of his plate, built a long nose of tomato pulp then moved the sausage beneath it as a smiling mouth. Not a day for smiling, so he turned the sausage over and the mouth scowled at him. Better.
He’d go to Rachael tonight. He’d ride his bike to Willama, an easy ride at night when the moon was full. Last night it had been full. He could remember that much.
‘You stare at her like a halfwit. Move away from that window,’ Joseph growled.
‘She is staring over here,’ Elsa defended. ‘She’s beneath that first pear tree.’
Joseph stuffed the last piece of sausage into his mouth, grunted, rose and walked to Elsa’s side. While his back was turned, Christian slid his eggs onto Kurt’s plate. An old game – sometimes they came back. Once they’d landed on the tablecloth. He relocated the sausage on his father’s plate, then spread the tomato on dry toast, added salt, pepper. A small bite, just to test his stomach – that salt was good. He added more, bit again. Perhaps it would soak up some of the grog.
Back in September he’d packed a few clothes, strapped them to his bike and ridden to the bridge where he’d waited all night for Rachael to come. She’d changed her mind, or her father had changed it for her. He watched as the train they’d planned to catch went by, then he rode to the post office and placed a call to the Squire house. Her father took the call, asked who was calling. Christian hung up. Three times he tried to reach her that day, and each time Squire answered the call.
Not a note, not a word from her, nothing for two weeks, then Kurt came home from the dairy one day and told him she’d wed Kennedy. She sent him a note – a week after her wedding – which Christian tossed into the stove unread.
Just thinking of her in her marriage bed with that gimpy little bastard grunting on top of her made him puke. He puked every day for a week after she’d come back from her honeymoon, and Elsa fed him greasy chicken broth. Then he saw Rachael in town with Kennedy, who had hurried her into the grocer’s: Christian followed them in.
‘I wish you joy of your married life, Mrs Kennedy,’ he said.
That was the night he took coins from Elsa’s new purse and climbed the fence to the cider pit where he drank two glasses of beer. He’d gone there every Saturday night since.
Then she’d had the nerve to come crying to him! What had she expected?
‘Get away from me, Rae, and stay away from me,’ he’d said.
‘You didn’t come, Chris.’
‘Who didn’t come? I waited all night for you. I looked for your letters every day. Now get out of my sight.’ Like a child, like a fool. He loved her, had always loved her, would always love her. That was the night he should have taken her and run. And last night, moonlight on her face, moonlit tears as she clung to his arm. He could remember that much. ‘Go home and cry on Gimpy’s shoulder. It’s too late to cry on mine.’ That’s what he said, wanting to hurt her because he’d been hurting for months, and when he was hurting he needed to share that hurt around.
‘Shit.’
Perhaps Joseph didn’t like the word – or more likely, he hadn’t liked the English. His hand reached to swipe. Christian ducked, and the hand missed. A grunt then, a finger pointed to his empty cup. Elsa refilled it.
‘If there is enough in the pot, thank you, Mutti,’ Kurt said. His cup too was filled, then Elsa saw his plate, and Joseph’s, looked at Christian’s while she filled his cup.
No reading skills required in order to read her sons; no word of admonishment spoken. She didn’t tell tales, never mentioned the coins missing from her new purse.
Joseph saw what she had seen. He stabbed the sausage, tossed it back onto Christian’s plate. ‘Get it in your belly. There is work today.’ German words growling up from the old German throat. ‘Already your brother and I have done a day’s work while you lie like a dog in your bed.’
Christian offered the plate to his father. ‘You eat it, Pops. I’m not hungry.’
Joseph hit the plate, spilling its contents onto the cloth. ‘You think the old man is a fool? You think he has no nose to smell that red whore’s stink on you? You think he does not hear you come home at dawn, eh?’
‘I don’t understand,’ Christian said.
Joseph stood, fists clenched, and Christian stood, his own fist clenched. ‘Have a go, Pops.’
‘Christian! Show respect. You don’t speak this way to your father!’
She’d spoken the words in English, and the old man roared: ‘You don’t speak that shit in my house, woman!’
Kurt pushed his chair back, stood. ‘Come. We’ll harness the horses,’ he said in the old tongue.
‘I don’t understand you either, you crawling bastard,’ Christian said, walking ahead of him from the room.
‘Australian shit,’ Joseph bellowed after him.
‘Dung is what keeps the soil rich, my husband,’ Elsa said, scooping the wasted food from her cloth, dabbing at the stain. ‘You think because your fence is strong enough to keep in the old cow, it will hold back that young bull. Your fence is not so strong now, my husband.’
the empty room
No tool could be put down in Joseph’s barn, it always had to be put away, and God have mercy if a spade stood out of line. The giant horse collars, the leather and chain harness, the horse shoes – everything had its place and was in its place. Except for a heavy rope hanging from a central rafter.
It hung there without purpo
se, had been there for all of the boys’ lives. Elsa said it was from the days of the other children who had played in this barn, that ghostly family lost to Joseph when he was a young man. Perhaps he had laughed then, had watched those ‘others’ swinging on the rope. Kurt and Christian knew him only as an old man, all bone, sinew and a pair of ice blue eyes that could freeze your heart while his tongue chipped away at it, like the ice man, chipping a block of ice to size, making it fit the ice chest.
Christian’s eyes were the colour of his father’s but were not ice eyes, more like blue sparks from some internal fire. They shot sparks now while his hand swiped at the rope, sent it swinging towards the rafters.
‘Talk to me,’ Kurt said.
‘Go and harness his bloody horses and dig his bloody dam, you crawler.’
‘You’re so smart, brother, it’s a great pity that you have the brains of a fool to be smart with.’ Christian threw the rope at him, Kurt caught it, threw it back hard. ‘I saw you push Rachael from you last night. Others saw this too. I heard you tell her to go home to her gimpy husband. What do you think Mrs Dolan has told the constable of last night?’
‘As if I’d hurt her. As if I’d leave her bleeding on the road. What do you think I am, for Christ’s sake?’
‘What I think isn’t important. Who do you imagine Squire will blame? Who do you think Kennedy has already accused?’
Brothers they were, good friends before Rachael’s marriage. Growing apart now, growing in separate directions but still expected to share a bed. That empty room goaded them, that unused space where one might sleep in comfort, but while Joseph lived, neither one would sleep there. With too much time spent working and eating together, they needed the separation of night. Elsa knew this. She’d suggested buying a bed for the unused parlour.
‘They have a bed.’ Perhaps Joseph wanted them to fight, wanted to see which one would fight hardest for his precious land. Perhaps he didn’t care.