* * *
Next door, on Rahimi Island, Riff went out early and, in his slow study of the morning, discovered a small mayhem. Three of the four white ducks sailed serenely, as they always did, on the pond, but the fourth lay broken and dead on the earth of Afsoon’s filled-in grave. And when Riff went closer, he saw that the boat, the little eight foot replica he’d made of the crude vessel that’d brought him and Parisa and Afsoon and too many others to Australia, had been holed by a large stone and was awash in the pond. There had been no warnings, no hints - no reason for this. But there was a boot print.
His heart fierce with anger, Riff prowled the yard. Nothing more was amiss. He studied the boot print. He heard the voices of the Duke and Duchess, laughing beyond the Folly. And then, because if he didn’t do this he would do something much worse, he took up his hammer and his packet of nails and began to pound on the wood. Nail after nail; after which he beat on them some more to bend them into hooks that would hold an entire jungle of Parisa’s thorny bougainvillea.
Parisa, when she came down to question his racket, saw what he had seen and understood. She pushed loose earth over the little duck and tried, vainly, to right the sunken boat. Then, with a single-mindedness equal to Riff’s, but with much greater tenderness, she brought Latifeh the goat in under the house and, began to wash her, making a careful, methodical search for ticks, none of which had ever been found in this yard.
Afsoon, though she felt like her entire body had been sprained, had been at pains to seem unaffected at breakfast. Everything was fine, she’d told them. Not to worry. But when Riff had demanded a promise that she would not again go wandering in the after-dark neighbourhood, she’d declined.
Riff’s fury had been palpable. A disobedient child, he’d sworn, was worse than no child at all. That was the point at which he’d marched downstairs, made his discoveries and been driven to renew his attack on the impenetrably anguishing world. Parisa, before following him, had tried one last time to understand her daughter’s obstinacy.
“Why, Afsoon? Why must you disobey your father? You know, he only wants to protect you. That is his job. That is his life. You take his life from him when you disobey! What do you do that is so important?”
They couldn’t know that, as of this morning, she was nearer than she’d ever been to being able to make such a promise. And the reason for that was the Quiet Man’s story about the exploded boy which, in Afsoon’s mind, despite all her previous conviction that somewhere he remained alive, had become not the actual, but the symbolic story of Anosh.
“Mama,” she’d said. “Is Anosh dead?”
That was the point at which Parisa had risen silently and followed Riff into the yard. She was twenty minutes into the grooming of Latifeh before Afsoon, having cleaned and tidied the kitchen, joined her and asked again, “Mama. Is Anosh dead?”
Parisa gave a barely perceptible shake of her head.
“Anosh will always be alive, Afsoon; in our hearts.”
“Yes. But in our lives, is he dead?”
Parisa stroked the goat lovingly, as though it was her lost child, and refused acknowledgement. In the yard, the body of the white duck lay like a flag of surrender.
“The pirates,” ‘Soon asked. “Did we dream the pirates?”
Again, no answer. But it didn’t matter. ‘Soon had found in the Quiet Man’s story at least some of the truth about the dream she’d siphoned off from Riff. The part, for instance, where the Quiet Man had been at Riff’s war, watching and not watching. Watching a boy, but not watching out for that boy. And so, the red dust also made sense.
She picked up a brush and joined in the grooming of Latifeh, who shuddered with pleasure. Shoomba and the Duke had also been in that dream. Out at the Folly, the hammering became suddenly more intense and oaths in the Dari language could be heard. ‘Soon knew from experience that a nail had crumpled against the implacable Australian hardwood and Riff, in hatred of both the nail and the fence, was hammering it sideways into the wood.
“I wish I could’ve helped,” she said softly, either to Latifeh or to her mother. “To kill those men.” Latifeh didn’t react but Parisa lurched to her feet in sudden and blinding fury, knocking her chair to the floor.
“You know so much!” she cried, pointing a shaking finger at Afsoon. “You know nothing! You hear? You are a foolish child! And you will not . . . not ever again in my house . . . speak like that! I forbid it!”
‘Soon stared in astonishment. Raff, Parisa, her mother - this woman, was normally as unflappable as a stone. But now, she stood, swaying, like an animal designed for fleetness, but born in a cage. Resentment and hopelessness were etched on her face and she panted, pushing back her hair, straightening the long western style dress she’d taken to wearing, as a way of ‘fitting in’.
Until finally she fell into a distant but too near memory at which she bared her teeth and snarled bitterly. With all the strength of her mind, Afsoon reached out and she saw, for certain, that the pirates had been terrible, terrible . . . and their smell was still there in her mother’s mind, ever and again to be defeated and repressed. When control finally came and Parisa was released, she said softly, “Get a towel and dry this goat.” And then she stalked away, up into the house.
This one time, ‘Soon did as she was told. And when she was done, she took Latifeh out into the yard where the brown pigs grunted at the sun and the three remaining ducks swam on the still, flat water of the pond, circling the sunken little replica of the boat that’d brought the three Rahimi’s and their countrymen across the sea to Australia.
When Parisa came back down stairs, fully composed again, but unsmiling, to gather the eggs, she saw Afsoon walking, a shuffling, heart-sore, resigned kind of a walk, into the banana palm forest.
Neville the Less Page 32