Dancing on Knives

by Kate Forsyth

  Feeling her heart submerge, Sara picked up her father’s dirty plate from the night before, his encrusted fork, the wine glass with its crimson slurry, and the great brandy balloon, reeking with spirits. She cast a quick glance at her father. He ignored her, flicking through his mail, sipping his coffee. She stifled a sigh and turned to go, then caught in the corner of her eye the huge canvas resting on its easel.

  Sara stood still, as if turned to salt. She had not known what Augusto was painting. She had thought it a landscape, since he spent so much time on the headland. But there, lying sprawled across the canvas, was her dead mother’s body. Bridget’s eyes were half-closed and glazed. Her hair was the only colour – it was the orange of flames leaping on the hillside, the orange of the sun sinking, the orange of old blood drying into a trickle. Otherwise all was storm and darkness and grief, the pale roundness of the moon floating above the craggy black profile of Towradgi Headland, the round paleness of her face floating below.

  Sara stood still, staring. Her hands holding the tray trembled so the plates and cups rattled together. Augusto glanced up. Rage suffused his face. ‘What are you doing? Get out! Get out!’

  Sara crept back to the kitchen, only to find the roasted capsicums black and smoking unpleasantly. She sat with her head in her arms, smoke filling her vision. At last she stood, wiped her eyes, threw out the burnt peppers, and began again.

  ‘Soak salt cod in water until soft again,’ Consuelo’s hand had written. ‘Change the water every few hours. Then roast three large red bell peppers until the skin loosens and falls away. Salt three eggplants to draw away the bitterness. Cook onion, garlic, eggplant and zucchinis in oil, then mix in roast capsicums and sun-dried tomatoes. Fry cod.’

  That was it. Sara had rung Gabriela. ‘What does it mean by salt cod?’ she asked. ‘Where do I get it?’

  When Gabriela had told her, she begged Joe to buy it for her, which he had done with some ill grace, saying, ‘Why can’t we just have a barbie like normal people?’

  When he had brought it, Sara had looked at the dried-up hank of fish in dismay and rung Gabriela again. ‘It looks like something the cat spat out a week ago,’ she said. ‘Are you sure that’s what I’m meant to cook?’

  Gabriela reassured her.

  ‘It says to soak till soft. How long does that mean?’

  ‘At least a day and a night,’ Gabriela said.

  ‘But it says to change the water every few hours!’

  ‘Just change the water before you go to bed, then again when you get up in the morning.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s OK?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure. I’ve cooked samfaina y bacalao heaps of times. It’s easy, as long as you’ve got time and patience.’

  ‘Well, my social calendar looks pretty clear, I guess I’ve got the time,’ Sara had said. ‘Not so sure about the patience. How will I know if it’s soft enough?’

  ‘You’ll know.’

  ‘How will I know?’

  ‘It’ll be soft. It’ll fall apart if you lift it. Though don’t do that else you’ll wreck it.’

  ‘Great. Thanks. I’ll call you at the next crisis of confidence, OK?’

  ‘Sure, Sar-bear. But really, it’s easy.’

  ‘Easy for you,’ Sara had muttered, hanging up the phone. But it had been easy.

  Cooking by herself in the kitchen, steadfastly following her grandmother’s steps, Sara had felt an unaccustomed peace. It gave her pleasure to cut all the vegetables up small and neat, and to see them soften in the sauce. It felt good to test the fish gently with a knife and see it had softened, just like the recipe said it would. The smell of the fried fish was wonderful, and the sight of it – all golden and perfect – made her feel so proud. Maybe she was not so useless after all.

  Just then Augusto flung the door open.

  ‘Is that fish I smell?’ His voice was not pleasant.

  Sara nodded.

  ‘Why are you cooking fish?’

  ‘I thought I’d make us a nice lunch …’

  ‘So you thought you’d cook fish. Why fish, Sara?’

  Sara could not think what to say. Dumbly she stared at him, twisting the corner of her shirt about her fingers.

  ‘Because it’s Easter, I s’pose. You thought you’d be a good little Catholic girl and do what Mummy would’ve liked you to do. Didn’t you?’

  Sara had forgotten fish was meant to be eaten on Good Friday. She had prepared samfaina y bacalao a la catalana because Augusto loved it. She wished she had remembered, and twisted the corner of her shirt into a tight corkscrew.

  ‘Well, Easter was something invented by a lot of fat, rich, crooked men in purple to make other people feel guilty, and pay up so they could keep on with their fat, rich, crooked lives. It’s all about money and greed, and I won’t have it celebrated in my house.’

  As he spoke, Augusto swung the frying-pan off the stove and, in one easy move, flung the fish out the open door. Sara watched it hurtle through the air and splat into the dust. The dogs fell upon it, snarling with raised hackles, as Augusto stalked out of the kitchen.

  After a while, Sara got out tomatoes and bread for lunch. As she sliced up the tomatoes, the knife slammed again and again into the breadboard, scoring deep into the wood.

  She knew Augusto had thrown her fish to the dogs because she had seen his painting. She should not have looked. She should have gone away without raising her eyes. But the temptation had been too much to resist. It was the first major painting her father had attempted since Gayla had left. For Augusto’s muse had gone away one day and never come back. A muse is always jealous and exacting, Augusto thought. He had tried to placate her, to win her back again, but the fear he was being punished for a mortal sin refused to be banished. He offered her libations of wine, and at times swore ‘fuck you’ as if she could hear him. But no muse comes for the asking, and the last two years Augusto had not even pretended the wine was for her.

  His muse had returned without warning in the New Year. Sara had taken in his midday cup of coffee to find her father scraping back an old canvas, a rag keeping his long hair out of his eyes. ‘I’ve got an idea’ was all he said, but it seemed like a promise of better times, a fresh start for the whole Sanchez family.

  That night he had cooked them an elaborate feast – arroz negro con calamares rellenos, stuffed squid served with rice coloured and flavoured with the squid’s ink, a disturbing dish both rich and delicate in taste, and strange to see. With his usual morbid wit, Augusto followed this dark, brooding course with something delicate, angelic, chaste – pan de Santa Teresa, fried bread with sugar, cinnamon and lime named for Saint Teresa of Avila, whose bold spirit and wicked tongue did much to excuse her sainthood in Augusto’s eyes.

  It hurt Sara when she heard the twins cheer and say, ‘Good-oh, Dad’s cooking tonight.’ She was also glad, though, for she loved her father’s cooking. She loved to watch his dramatic flourishes as he poured oil into a smoking pan, drumming his heels in rhythm to the flamenco music on the stereo, hands clapping over his head, a neat half-spin as he reached for the wine to refill his glass, a toss of his long, oily ponytail, the quick skilful dismemberment of the squids, the squirting of their blue-black blood from the ink sacs, the tossing of the little tentacles in oil, the stuffing of their guillotined heads with herbs and nuts and meat, the delicious smell that reached far back into the past, probing fingers against old memories that ached with regret and desire.

  It made her so happy to see her father painting again.

  Sara had forgotten, though, how nasty her father could be when he was painting. Augusto the King of Hearts was swallowed by Augusto the Demon-God. Nothing existed for him but colour, shape and texture; nothing but the canvas of his mind. This was when his worst cruelties were practised, in the name of creation. This was when her father drank brandy.

  The Demon-God had been in residence all summer. Augusto painted in a frenzy, snarling at anyone who dared interrupt him, once throwing a jam-jar of
murky turpentine at Joe when he came in, cheque-book in hand. Augusto slept on the couch in his studio, and ate his meals with a sketchbook in front of him, a pencil in one hand, his fork in the other. His hard shell of a body grew thinner, and for the first time Sara noticed grey hairs in his pony-tail.

  She began to recognise the warning signs. If Augusto drank brandy; if he walked up and down the length of his studio so the wooden boards creaked all night; if his voice rose high and shrill when he called from his studio: these were storm signals.

  So she was not surprised Augusto had sacrificed her fish. Sara was only sorry she had not thought of something else to cook. Oca con peras, for example. This subtle yet extravagant dish was the one that most reminded Augusto of his mother, that small, thin, black-clad woman with her fortune-telling eyes and quick, angry tongue. He would not have thrown oca con peras to the dogs. He would have eaten tenderly, delicately, the skin about his mouth gleaming from the goose fat, as he told them stories of his childhood and how Consuelo was the queen of the neighbourhood, ruling all with a lift of her bony finger. ‘Great men were scared of her,’ he would have said with a reminiscent smile, ‘though they could have lifted her and thrown her with one hand. Oh, she could cook, though, my mother. You call this oca con peras, princess? This is nothing but an overcooked goose. If you could but taste my mother’s oca con peras, well, then you might begin to know how to cook it.’

  Sara had been stupid though. She had cooked fish, and now Augusto was in a white rage, and the whole day ruined. She could hear the angry roar of the Elephant as he revved it down the hill and knew he might be gone for hours.

  But Sara was wrong. It had been only an hour or so later that Augusto had come home, cruising along the valley road on his motorcycle. Sara stood on the verandah and watched as he rose up the curve of the hill, her hands clenched together at the junction of her breasts. He was smiling when he parked the motorcycle, however, and she felt the knot of tension inside her loosen. He bounded up the stairs, his batik-print sarong all damp.

  ‘I know how to do it!’ he said triumphantly. ‘Princess, I’m finished. I know what to do. It’ll be magnificent. It’s a masterpiece. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. There has to be rage at the end, that’s what I’ve done wrong. Anger, fury, despair. Just a little orange pointillism in the eyes, that’s what I need. Amazing what a difference a few orange dots can make.’

  He grasped Sara by the waist and waltzed exuberantly across the sunken boards of the verandah, his long black hair dripping all over her. He had forgotten his rage of that morning, forgotten her fish. Against her will, Sara felt her unhappiness slip away.

  ‘How long before lunch?’ he cried. ‘Have I time to do it? Such a small change, such a very small change, but oh, how great a change a small change can make!’

  As he went singing flamenco into the house, his wet pony-tail plastered against his thin, brown back, Sara began to set the table with a slight smile on her face.

  Eating was an important ritual in the Sanchez family and always approached with appropriate ceremony. That Good Friday, the table was set only with what was left in the pantry, since the pièce de résistance was nothing but a scatter of bones and scales in the dust. Sara had picked flowers and leaves from the garden, however, and was using the heavy, green Spanish wine-glasses her father loved. Joe had picked up a bag of small Easter eggs for her, and Sara had scattered them over the tablecloth, giving the table a festive air. After the quarrel over the fish, she had been a little wary of bringing out the brightly wrapped eggs but Augusto’s mood swing had encouraged her, and he said nothing, perhaps feeling chocolate eggs had no religious significance.

  It was hard for Sara not to regret her beautiful fish, but there was plenty of bread and wine and cured ham and Catalan salad, and Augusto was at his scintillating best. Even Teresa was charmed out of her sulks, while the twins actually grinned and teased her about her new short haircut, calling her ‘Ted’ and asking her what position she played in rugby. Only Joe remained silent, brooding over his plate. But that was not unusual.

  Sara was so happy Augusto was in a pleasant mood that she almost failed to recognise the first shadow, it seemed so small. This from Sara, who spent her life guarding against darkness.

  When tyres scrunched on the gravel drive, she gave no more than a slight start and got up, folding her napkin and saying, ‘Whoever can this be?’ The imperious ring of the front door bell made Augusto set down his wine-glass thoughtfully.

  When Sara walked around the corner, her shoulders a little hunched as she prepared herself for a stranger or an unwanted acquaintance, she saw her maternal uncles waiting gravely on the step. Alex Halloran, her mother’s brother, was tall and thin and grey, with a mouth compressed by the habit of anger. He wore a blue shirt with a button-down collar, a navy nylon tie, fawn-coloured moleskins and brown riding boots, rather worn but carefully polished. He carried his Akubra hat in one hand.

  Sara was not altogether surprised to see Alex, even though it was Good Friday and he was a devout man. It was a rare day these days when Alex was not at Towradgi, frowning over the accounts, exclaiming over the erosion, criticising Joe’s handling of the dairy cows, and suggesting they take a shotgun to the kangaroos.

  She was surprised to see her uncle-in-law, Harry Dunbar, however. Short and fat and balding, with a belly that shook with lascivious laughter when he told dirty jokes, Harry was married to Bridget’s sister, Maureen, and Sara had not seen him since her mother’s funeral.

  ‘Can we see your father, Sara?’ Alex Halloran said. He did not seem pleased to see her, but then, he never was.

  ‘We’re having lunch …’ she hesitated.

  ‘Just tell your father we want to see him,’ Harry Dunbar said, gleaming with sweat.

  When Sara relayed the message to Augusto, his eyebrow lifted. As he strolled round the edge of the verandah, his shoulders were flexing. This was not a good sign. All five of his children sat and listened as he greeted his brothers-in-law contemptuously. ‘So, bros. What’s up?’

  ‘We need to talk to you, Gus,’ Alex said, in his thinnest, greyest tones.

  ‘So, talk.’

  ‘I think inside might be more appropriate.’

  ‘Sure, bros.’ His children could easily imagine his exaggerated bow as he opened the door for his brothers-in-law. A little prayer began in Sara’s head: please don’t, please don’t, please don’t. What she was praying for, she hardly knew.

  Joe sprawled at the table, frowning heavily, drawing aimlessly in some salt he had spilt on the table.

  ‘Joe!’ Sara said. ‘You’ve got to throw a pinch over your left shoulder when you spill salt.’

  He cast her a look.

  ‘It’s bad luck,’ she said.

  ‘You think everything’s bad luck,’ he said, dabbing his finger in the salt and tasting it.

  Sara thought of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper, with Judas knocking over the salt cellar. ‘It’s to blind the devil,’ she said.

  ‘You really think the devil is standing behind my left shoulder?’ he said, the irony of his voice barbed with more than a little malice. He glanced over his left shoulder, pretending to be frightened.

  ‘Better safe than sorry,’ Sara said, and took a little pinch of the salt and tossed it, first over his shoulder and then over her own.

  Dylan reached out a lazy hand and rapped on the table. ‘May as well knock on wood too, just to be sure.’

  A fly buzzed above the broken bread. Try as they might, they could not ignore the sound of raised voices from the studio on the other side of the house. The festive mood drained away. Joe got up, and curtly told Dominic and Dylan to get their work-clothes on. ‘Farmers don’t get holidays,’ he said.

  He looked at Teresa and she grinned at him impudently. ‘Don’t look at me,’ she said. ‘I’ve just had a manicure and there’s no way I’m breaking a nail for you.’

  ‘Bloody typical,’ he answered. ‘Well, you can help S
ara then, for a change. She’s not your bloody servant, you know.’

  ‘I never thought she was,’ Teresa answered sweetly and got up, picking up a few plates and disappearing into the kitchen. By the time Sara had followed her through with the rest of the crockery she had disappeared again, as usual, and Sara was left to wash up by herself.

  Instead she crept round to kneel outside the studio’s window, trying to hear what her father and uncles were saying.

  Alex said, ‘Just what I’d expect from you. You just don’t care, d’you?’

  Her father replied with a sneer, ‘Lick my arse.’

  His words were swallowed in a bellow from Harry: ‘You bastard! I’ll fix you, you mongrel!’

  A crash, a burst of shouting from Alex: ‘That’s it, you bastard. I’ve had enough. You’re all out of here, you and your bloody mob of children. You’d better start packing. I want you all out of here! Come Monday, I’m calling in my loan.’

  Shadows brushed her, the shape of a stingray passing over sand. Sara had crept away, arms wrapped about her. She could not leave Towradgi. What would she do if Alex meant what he said? She had not left the house for five years. Five years trapped within its mildewed walls, five years where the mere suggestion of meeting strangers made her heart pound so hard it almost choked her. She could not leave. Even the thought of having to go to the shopping centre was enough to bring the fear in a black wave, a drowning wave. She could not believe Alex could be so callous – he knew her fears, he knew she could not leave the farm.

  He and Harry had driven away, spraying gravel behind them. Then Augusto came out, his nostrils pinched white with anger. Sara shrank away from him. He walked straight past her, his portable easel slung under his arm. Crouched on the rickety seat of his motorcycle, Augusto once again disappeared into the hills. The sun had set into storm, into rain and hail and lightning, but Augusto did not come home. All evening the rain had rained and the thunder had thundered, all that long evening she had waited and worried. Sara was swallowing darkness, swimming in black ink to her eyebrows.