Dancing on Knives

by Kate Forsyth

  Sara was young enough to accept their parents’ gradual withdrawing into their own preoccupations quite complacently, but Pablo was in a constant fret of unhappiness. He missed his mother, felt an unreasoned but instinctive rage against his father, and chafed constantly against Consuelo’s odd black spiciness. Pablo wanted to be just like all the other boys at school. He wanted to play football and join the Nippers and have kids over for sleepovers. He wanted to be called Jack and have blond hair and skin that peeled in the summer. He wanted his mother to pick him up from kindy, wearing a frock and little heels and with her hair carefully blow-dried like the other mums. He wanted so much he was thin and hungry with the wanting.

  Bridget was not so self-absorbed that she did not recognise his unhappiness, but she was so ill and exhausted she could do little more than try and reassure him, and pretend all was well. Augusto grew impatient with him, and mocked him, which only made Pablo sullen and resentful.

  At last the twins were born, and all energy was suddenly sucked into them like light into a black hole. They were nothing but bellowing air, red-faced, red-bodied, crumpled with screaming, their sticky red hair sticking up in tufts from their soft, shapeless skulls. Day and night merged. Conversations whirled past Sara in unfinished snatches. ‘Did you … could you … coming, coming … please … have you seen … no, not yet … I’m coming!’

  Once or twice Pablo tried to tell his mother how he was feeling, but she was white as she had once been red, thin as she had once been enormous. ‘Mum, couldn’t you come pick me up this afternoon? No-one else’s Grandmama picks them up. Mum, all the kids at school call me Pedro, and ask me where my donkey is. Mum, couldn’t I have vegemite sandwiches? Mum, I don’t want tortilla, no-one else ever has it. Can’t I have a normal lunch? Mum, now they’re calling me Diablo, what does that mean, Mum? Mum!’

  One day, while changing one of the twins’ nappies, Bridget said rather absently, ‘I always said Pablo was a stupid name for a boy. I wanted you to be called Joseph like my uncle Joe, or Michael maybe, but he had to call you Pablo Diego José Francisco, for God’s sake, after his precious Picasso. I told him you’d be teased but when does your father ever listen to anyone?’

  ‘Oh, Mum, couldn’t I be Joe? Please?’

  He was so intense, so desperate, that Bridget laughed rather helplessly and said she supposed so, if it was that important to him. From that moment on, Pablo insisted everyone call him Joe. He wanted to chuck off the skin of Pablo Sanchez like a cicada shell, and reinvent himself as an ordinary Joe, a Joe Blow, a Joe Muggins. Augusto was furious at first. He had sewn himself such a vivid, many-coloured cloak from his Spanish ancestry it wounded him to have his own son reject it.

  Then he grew cold and distant and sarcastic. He was already so detached from the everyday life of his family that it was easy for him to take that extra step away, and stop calling his son anything much at all.

  For as Augusto’s home life grew more crazed and tearful, his public life was falling into the pattern he had always wanted. His exhibition was a resounding success. Most of the paintings were sold, two bought by influential private collectors and one by a major state gallery. He won a handful of minor prizes, and then scored a major trifecta by having paintings chosen to hang in all three of the major Sydney prizes, the Archibald, the Wynne and the Sulman. He won none of them, but his name made the papers and his reputation grew. He was chosen to prepare some paintings for a travelling exhibition, and then won a well-respected regional prize. He was commissioned to do a mural for a new skyscraper being built in the city, which kept him hard at work for months, and the corporation threw a party for its unveiling that made the metropolitan newspapers. He was invited to all the gallery openings and industry parties so he was out nearly every night, while Bridget went to bed in a daze of weariness and misery.

  Then Augusto won a scholarship to go and study in Rome for a year. Weeks of bitter arguments followed. In the end Augusto gave in and declined the scholarship, but irreparable damage had been done to them all. Augusto was bitter and ungracious in his defeat and Bridget bewildered and exhausted in her victory. They fell into a pattern of politeness, and that was in its way worse than the fights.

  Then, one gloomy wet evening, when the twins were almost two months old, Sara was helping Consuelo roll out the pastry for pastel de cabello de ángel when she accidentally knocked over the little bowl of freshly ground cinnamon. It fell to the floor and broke, sending up a fine spray of sweet-smelling brown powder.

  ‘No importa, querida,’ Consuelo said, getting stiffly down on to her knees to sweep up the broken china and cinnamon with a dustpan and brush. ‘There, there, never mind.’ She gave Sara a warm, affectionate hug that smelt like cinnamon and got laboriously to her feet again. ‘We’ll put the angel’s hair marmalade in the pie, like that, see, and decorate the top like so and pop it in the oven, and then I shall run down to the shop and buy some more cinnamon. It won’t be fresh, desafortunadamente, for the people around here do not buy their cinnamon in sticks for some reason, but it will still be good.’

  Sara did not want her grandmother to go. It was dark and windy and wet outside, and Bridget was asleep in bed with the twins still greedily attached to her, and Joe was at football practice and Augusto was out somewhere. Sara did not want to be left alone. Consuelo gave her a little admonitory rap on the head. ‘Nothing to get upset about, stupido. You wait here in the warm, querida, and watch our pie and by the time I am back it will be ready.’

  Only Consuelo did not come back. In her customary black she was invisible in the gloom, and she was hit by a car while crossing the dark little street below their apartment. Sara sat and watched the angel’s hair pie slowly burn to a crisp while a black shroud of foreboding inexorably tightened about her. She was not allowed to touch the oven, and the only times she had ever woken her mother she had been made to regret it. Sara did not know what to do. In the end the smell of burning penetrated Bridget’s senses and she woke and got up, to find the apartment full of smoke and Sara huddled before the oven, incoherent with tears.

  When the first shock and grief was over, and the funeral held and Consuelo’s affairs sorted, it was found she had written a new will only three days before her death. She had little to leave – some old clothes and jewellery which were divided between her two children, and a carved wooden box with her recipe book and a pack of tarot cards which she gave to Sara. In the box was a note written in Consuelo’s old-fashioned hand.

  ‘To help you see more clearly,’ the note read.

  All the long uneasy night, as the tide slowly ebbed away, Sara waited for news of her father. Occasionally lightning shivered from horizon to horizon, followed by a low ominous growl of thunder. The hail had passed over, but the rain drove down so thickly that when Sara went out on to the verandah all she could see was its dark tumult. The Dodge was gone, though, and the boys’ boots from the living-room floor.

  The hours dragged by. Sara sat down at the chessboard, fingering the hand-carved wooden pieces she had always loved. She flicked through the newspaper. She picked up an old romance novel but found she already knew the ending. Eventually she turned on the television and sat watching an old movie that was playing on Capital. Called The Prodigal, it made no sense to her – a series of black and white scenes without reason or connection. She no more understood what was happening in that flickering world than she understood what was happening in her own. All the uneasy night the two worlds swirled together like water and paint. All the uneasy night she waited, listening, listening.

  The clock hands pointed to twenty past four when Dominic’s trail bike roared up the hill. Sara was sitting at the kitchen table under the cold fluorescent light, her hands resting on her box of tarot cards. She had not dared to try and read them again. She listened to Dominic’s footfall on the step, the squeak of the wooden flyscreen door, and watched her knuckles clench around her fingers. Dread wounded her.

  ‘We found him,’ Dominic said, his freckl
es blotches of orange. ‘He’s fallen over the headland. We think he’s dead.’

  Her tongue was a stone in her mouth.

  ‘We’d better ring the police,’ he said. ‘They’ll have to get him up somehow, I dunno how. Dylan is up there now. We thought someone should wait.’

  Dominic’s hands were clenched by his side, his head lowered into his chest, the freckles orange as distress lights on his white skin. He waited for her to respond but, when she said nothing, shrugged unhappily and picked up the phone. She watched him frown, and hit the button a few times, before he gave up. ‘Phone’s out. Damn! Better go into town.’

  ‘Where’s Joe?’ Sara was surprised at how calm her voice was.

  ‘Went up the main road in case Dad had broken down along there somewhere.’

  ‘You and Dylan had better go to Alex’s,’ Sara said. ‘He’ll know what to do.’ She saw her brother frown and said, ‘At least then you’ll be able to get out of the rain.’

  Dominic hesitated. ‘Shouldn’t one of us wait with Dad? I mean, I know it’s too late, it won’t do any good, it’s just it seems …’ His voice trailed away.

  Sara felt walled up in a citadel of ice. Across all the cold distance she heard her voice say words she never thought it possible for her to say. ‘I’ll go.’

  Dominic stared at her.

  She said it again, a little stronger. ‘I’ll go. Take me up to the headland.’

  ‘But Sara …’

  ‘I’ll stay with him. I want to. Please.’

  He gave an uneasy shrug of his shoulders, looked at her slantwise then looked away, unable to meet her eyes. As if she were a child, he took her hand and led her outside.

  Sara, who had not left the farm in more than five years, rode up to Towradgi Headland on the back of Dominic’s trail bike, her eyes clamped shut, her fingers claws in Dominic’s belt. When the bike stopped its wild bucking she managed to slip to the ground, the rain beating against her jacket.

  ‘He’s down there,’ Dominic said, pointing over the edge of the cliff. Dylan loomed out of the darkness, his face white within his hood. He seized Sara’s thin arms incredulously. ‘What in God’s name are you doing here?’

  ‘Dad …’

  ‘He’s dead,’ Dylan said brutally. ‘And he’s hanging upside-down halfway down the bloody cliff. There’s nothing you can do.’

  She wound her arms more tightly about her body. Despite her rain jacket, water was seeping into her clothes. Her feet were very cold.

  ‘Line’s down,’ Dominic was explaining. ‘Sara thinks we should go to Alex’s and ring the police from there. Sara says she’ll stay here with Dad.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea …’ Dylan said to Dominic over her head.

  Sara had to clench her jaw together to stop it from chattering. ‘I’ll stay,’ she forced out and felt rather than saw the long, considering glance the two boys exchanged. ‘Better if you both go,’ she said. ‘Just in case.’

  Dylan shrugged and turned away, swinging his leg over the seat of his trail bike.

  ‘Don’t worry, we won’t be long, we’ll come back with help,’ Dominic said. There was a throaty roar, then the two motorcycles raced away over the rough ground, headlights stabbing into the thick clouds.

  For a long time Sara sat still, crouched over her stomach, the hood of her jacket pulled close about her face.

  The sun would rise soon. The stars faded above the racing clouds and to the east the sea was dark against a paler dark. The air smelt of sea and rain, and was cold against the numb skin of her face. Her hair was smeared across her cheek and into her mouth. She did not lift a hand to brush it away.

  Augusto would not have fallen meekly. He would have clung to the hurtling sky with his toes, his knees, his hooked scream. He would not have let death take him easily.

  Her chest heaved painfully. Sara Sanchez, who lived in terror of darkness and loneliness and ghosts, was alone in the dark and the rain with her dead father. How could she be so stupid? She locked her arms tight about her knees and rested her forehead upon them, so still that she could have been a bundle of bones and seaweed and shells thrown up by the sea. The rise and fall of the ocean’s song was in her ears, she wanted to float away on rocking waves, submerge herself in black rocking waves.

  But the darkness was ebbing. She heard the kookaburras’ maniacal laughter, echoing from the hills. The rain petered out. She lifted her face, tasting salt on her lip. There was just enough light for her to see her own hands. Very slowly she crawled forward, both hands clinging to the ground. Though her stomach shook so much she thought she might be sick, Sara looked over the edge of the cliff. Far below she saw a dangling stick figure, like a child’s game of Hanged Man.

  ‘Not Dad,’ she whispered. ‘No, not Dad.’

  Her foot clinked against metal, and reaching down her fingers closed over the metal rod of her father’s portable easel. She felt around blindly until her fingers closed upon his sodden sketchbook. She held it to her breast, within the shelter of her jacket. In the faint light, she could see the Elephant nearby and crawled beside it, leaning her head against its shabby seat, her arms crossed over the sketchbook.

  Had he known he was falling? Did time blur into a single moment: sky, earth, sea, all spinning into a vortex of roaring? Had he screamed into the falling night? Did he cry out for someone? Who? Who would he cry for?

  Falling.

  Sol y sombra is what they call the two halves of the bullring in Spain, and sol y sombra was the nature of Augusto Sanchez as well. When he was pleased they all basked in the sunshine of his approval. When he was unhappy the whole family was submerged in gloom.

  The sombra of Augusto’s grief hung over the family for a long time after Consuelo died. At first he drank a great deal and sat up half the night strumming his guitar and singing the deep songs of the gypsies, the droning lament of cante jondo. Some days he would not get out of bed. Bridget was troubled on his behalf, and did her best to distract him from his grief. She spoke softly and tenderly to him, and sat behind him, massaging his shoulders and trying to find things to talk to him about.

  Then he was possessed by a need to explore and express the wound his mother’s death had dealt him. He began to pace the living room at night. He would stop only to hunch over a sketchbook, his pencil scoring deeply, sometimes filling the whole page with dark, frantic scribbles. The confines of the small apartment fretted him unbearably. He kicked baskets of washing out of the way, snapped at the children to be quiet, for God’s sake, and shouted at Bridget. At last he slung his painting satchel over his shoulder, bristling with paintbrushes and tubes of paint, and roared off on the Elephant.

  His family hardly saw him for the next five months. He was sharing a studio in Surry Hills with three other artists and he took to sleeping there most nights, working, sleeping a few hours, waking to work again.

  Struggling to care for the four children herself, Bridget only left the apartment to go to the grocery store or to get more takeaway. The twins seemed to cry all day and all night, and they were always hungry. Some days Bridget did not even bother to change out of her dressing-gown.

  The confines of the apartment became Sara’s world. With Joe at school, she spent a lot of time alone, playing with her toys, drawing and colouring in, looking at picture books, and making up imaginary games.

  Sara imagined she was a princess in a tower, waiting for a prince to rescue her, or that her bed was a sailing ship and she was exploring the seven seas. She set up all her soft animals and pretended she was at a tea party, or crawled about the apartment, miaowing and lapping up milk from a saucer. Sara pretended she was La Sirenita, swimming fluidly in the blue fathomless depths of the bath, dreaming of church bells and dancing in the prince’s strong arms. In her bath-towel, dripping water, she would creep to her bedroom and pretend her bed was the sea-witch’s house, made of sea wrack and human bones. She imagined the forest of the sea anemones, reaching for her with long slimy arms and fingers
like slithering worms. Shivering with terror, Sara would beg the sea-witch to use her magic to take away her fishtail and give her the legs of a human. She imagined the cutting out of her tongue.

  When she played this game, Sara would not speak, not for any reason. She would wince with every step as if stepping on knife blades. When Bridget demanded to know what was wrong, Sara would not answer, only shaking her head and pointing to her mouth. She mimed her tongue being cut out, but this only made Bridget puzzled and confused. ‘Don’t bother me with your silly games,’ she would say. ‘Though I suppose I should be grateful that you’re quiet.’

  One day, when Bridget had not seen or heard from her husband in almost two weeks, she gathered up her courage and took the four children across to the city on the ferry. Joe and Sara felt as if they were true adventurers, setting off to discover new lands. Despite all Bridget’s attempts to make them sit still and quiet, they ran all round the ferry, hung over the sides, threw hot chips at the seagulls and squealed with excitement. Bridget slapped them both across their bare legs and made them sit down but they were too thrilled to sit still for long and were soon chasing each other around the deck again. By the time they got off at Circular Quay, the backs of their legs were red and sore from Bridget’s slaps.

  They caught a train to Central Station and walked through the filthy back streets to Augusto’s studio. Bridget kept her bag clutched close under her arm and pushed the twins’ pram along so fast Joe and Sara had trouble keeping up with her.

  It was a long walk and the children were hot and grizzly by the time they reached the studio. Augusto was dancing a close and passionate fandango with a paintbrush and a canvas as tall and wide as a wall. ‘The Toreador’s Song’ blared from a paint-encrusted record player on the floor. Augusto had a long, slim, black cigar in his mouth, and as he spun and lunged and stepped back, the blue smoke wove itself in flowing ribbons about his head. Resting on a table nearby was a bottle of his favourite cognac and, as his wife and four children stood in the doorway and watched, he picked it up and gulped down a mouthful.