Dancing on Knives

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘Listen, you know who your uncle reminds me of?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘It’s a joke my old man used to tell all the time …’

  ‘Oh, another joke.’

  ‘My dad was a big joke-teller. A joke for every occasion.’

  ‘Well, I can’t wait to hear which of his jokes is going to suit this situation,’ Sara said. He grinned and shifted her a little closer.

  ‘One day, while doing his parish rounds, Father O’Brien sees three children playing marbles on the footpath. Thinking of his duty to educate his flock he stops and offers the kids two dollars to whoever can answer the question, “Who was the greatest man on earth?” The first little boy, called Paddy, cried out, “President Kennedy!” “Sure now,” says the priest, “he was a good man, all right, but not the greatest.” “St Patrick, because he brought Christianity to Ireland,” says young Mick. “A good answer, Michael, but not the right one,” says the priest and he puts away his two dollars. The last kid piped up, “I know the answer. It was Jesus Christ.” The priest pays up but with rather a puzzled air. “Isaac,” he says, “surely someone of your faith doesn’t believe that?” “Oh, no, Father. I know Moses was the greatest. But business is business.”’

  Sara began to laugh, and once she began she could not stop. ‘That is dreadful!’ she said at last. ‘Haven’t you heard of “political correctness”?’

  ‘Sure I have,’ Matthew said. ‘I don’t think my dad has, though. He thinks PC is a kind of policeman.’

  Sara smiled. She felt warm all over. She was not surprised when he bent his head and kissed her. Their mouths tasted of salt, and the wind cut against their skins with the sharpness of paper. He shifted her, pulling her closer, and she opened her mouth to him.

  At last he lifted his head, looking into her eyes from only a hand’s span away. She was lying on her back in the sand, her dress rucked up about her waist. His hand was cupping the hollow behind her knee.

  ‘Feeling a bit better?’ he asked, smiling.

  She nodded. He took hold of her hair, wrapping it around her throat. He kissed her again, with such tenderness she felt her heart move sharply in her chest. It was the first time her heart had ever moved in any emotion other than fear. She took his head in her hands and drew his mouth closer. Even as she felt his whole body respond, she was wondering how she could ever explain to him this strange exhilaration, this cheating of death.

  But he had drawn back away from her, resting on stiff arms, a hand on either side of her head. ‘Sara,’ he said rather hoarsely. ‘This would be a good time for us to stop.’

  She did not say anything, but she felt herself stiffen and grow cold.

  ‘It’s just if we don’t stop now I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop later. I’ve kind of been wanting to do this for a long time.’

  ‘Really?’ she said, softening and brightening again.

  He nodded. ‘And I’m pretty sure we’d be providing the surfers out on the point with a bit of entertainment they weren’t expecting if we do go on.’

  Immediately a wave of intense mortification swept over her. She would have flinched right away if he was not holding her still with his body. He cupped her skull in his hands, making her meet his gaze. ‘We could go back to my place.’

  She dropped her gaze. ‘OK.’

  In an instant he was on his feet, pulling her up. She could not meet his gaze or speak, but she let him lead her back along the beach to his motorbike.

  All the way to the farm, Sara rested her head against his back. He parked the motorbike in the shed, and took her hand. She allowed him to pull her up the stairs to his flat, long thoughts dropping like silence into a well. She thought of how the bike had run at the side of the road as if to shout ‘Try me!’ She thought of how he had kissed her. She thought of being afraid all the time.

  He opened the door and led her into his tiny living room. She looked about curiously, smiling to remember what it was like when it had still been a loft and she and her brothers had played hide-and-seek amongst its giant bales of hay. He pulled her down to sit beside him on the couch, fixing her with his dark, intent gaze, and ran his finger down her breastbone, slipping inside the neckline of her dress. She shivered with excitement and dread and dropped her gaze, swinging her hair across her face, unable to look at him. On the coffee table was a bowl of peaches. They fascinated her with their colour and plushness. They reminded her of a day when she was eight, a day of wild adventuring with her father and her brothers, a day of hot blue brilliance. She longed for the taste of a peach in her mouth, for juice to slide down her chin, for the taste and scent of that day.

  He reached up and took her hair in his hands, pulling it away from her face. She looked up at him. His fingers were on her neck. Keeping her eyes on his, she slowly leant forward and kissed him on the mouth. At once he took hold of her, pulling her close, his mouth hard and insistent. She shut her eyes and went down beneath the wave of his passion as if weighted with stones. She had thought of doing this so often that, now she was here, she wanted to drown in him. She wanted to feel a wild intoxication that would hurl her out of this world and into another.

  For a while she did. He murmured to her as he kissed and stroked and gently bit, and his words were a pleasure to her. She smiled and pressed herself closer to him, and let herself feel the shape of his muscles in her palms. She opened her mouth to him, and felt herself fade away.

  Matthew fumbled at his jeans. She was afraid to look, shutting her eyes. He pulled up her dress and tugged down her underpants. She pressed her legs together instinctively, but he pushed them apart, heavy upon her. He was pressing all the breath out of her, her mouth smothered in his neck. She turned her head and gasped. Her body resisted him. She could hear him grunting with exertion, and she tried to push herself away but the lounge was hard against her shoulder and she could not move. He lifted her and held her, positioning himself again, and the pain was sharp like the stab of a knife. Although she flinched, he did not stop. He moved hard in her for some time yet, and she braced her shoulders, feeling the rough fabric of the couch burning her skin.

  Then it was over, as suddenly as it started. She held his buttocks in her hands. He lay on her, heavy, panting loudly. Her neck was twisted painfully against his. ‘Sara,’ he said, ‘Sara,’ and then was still. She thought he had fallen asleep. But his hand moved up her leg and she felt a moment’s panic, though he was only dabbling his fingers in the blood and semen that stained her thighs. ‘I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘You should have told me.’

  She sat up awkwardly, dragging her dress back down. ‘Don’t,’ he said sleepily, and pulled it up again so he could see her long, bare legs and the vulnerable triangle between. ‘So beautiful,’ he said and kissed her flat stomach.

  She held his dark, curly head in her hands and cradled him to her. She could not have put her feelings into words. It was exhilaration and shame, grief and joy.

  He rolled over and sat up, pulling his shirt back on. ‘Better get back to work. We don’t want Joe to come looking for us.’

  Sara nodded. Tears stung her eyes. His face softened and he bent and kissed her. ‘Come down to me tonight?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  He pulled on his jeans and got up. ‘Okay then.’

  Shakily Sara gathered up her discarded underpants and pulled them on. Her body hurt. She saw with mingled distaste and triumph the bloodstains on the back of her dress. Half-hysterically she thought about hanging it out her window, showing the proof of her broken virginity to the world. And then she panicked, wondering if the stains would come out.

  It was in this state of confusion that she ran back to the house. Her head pounded, she felt like she had a fever. She hoped no-one would see her.

  As she came in the front door, she heard voices from the living room. It sounded like someone was crying. Sara slipped across the front hall and up the stairs as invisibly as a tadpole through murk. She did not count her steps.

  Sh
e had to go to the bathroom, she could feel something trickling down her leg. The light of the bathroom seared her eyes, but she had to see, she wanted to see. Perched on the edge of the toilet seat she looked down between her legs and watched great white goblets drop from the secret places of her body and sink slowly through the water. It hurt to urinate, she felt like she had been branded with fire, and though the thin yellow liquid was brief and hot, she had to stay sitting there for some time as her body relinquished the seeds of Matthew’s body. To her surprise, she found that she was smiling.

  Sara changed out of her stained dress, hiding it under her bed, and dressed in jeans and a white lace top she had always loved. Then she slipped down the stairs in her socks, and went to the kitchen.

  A bunch of freshly picked thyme lay on the table.

  Sara stared at it for a moment, then picked it up and held it to her nose. Thyme for courage.

  Gabriela must have picked it, Sara thought. Perhaps she planned to make soup.

  But Sara’s heart was galloping like an unbroken horse. Her skin prickled all over. She rolled the sprig of thyme between her palms so the clean, strong smell came up to her in waves. Then she tucked a sprig behind her ear, holding it in place with the heavy sheet of her hair. She got down her tarot cards.

  Rocking a little, Sara laid three in a row. She was reading for her father, so it did not surprise her when the first card she turned over was Death. She knew now not to read the cards as literally as she had done when just a child. With the help of an old book bought for her by Joe at a garage sale, she had learnt that the cards had metaphorical meanings that were as many layered as the dry membranes of a snowdrop bulb. The thirteenth card was a reminder that all kings must fall, that all seasons must pass. It was a card which said that destruction would be followed by renewal, and so Sara regarded the picture of a skeleton riding a white horse with a look of grave composure.

  The second card was the Ten of Swords. It showed a man lying in a wasteland, his body pierced through with ten swords, a black sky above him. It was an evil card, signifying ruin, defeat, the dissolution of family, the failure of hope. It shook Sara, despite all her expectations. She had to unclench her fingers from their rigid knot before she could turn over the third card.

  Three circles, one within the other. A serpent fell to the left, a jackal-headed man rose to the right. A sphinx, an angel, a winged lion and a winged bull guarded the four corners of the card-face. The innermost circle was divided with eight spokes like a compass, each pointing to strange esoteric symbols.

  It was not a card that usually turned for Sara. It was the Wheel of Fortune, signifying the perpetual motion of the universe and the flux of human life within it. Birth, life, death, joy, contentment, grief, the forces of good and evil, the change of seasons. It surprised Sara as much as the card before it. She sat and stared at it for a very long time.

  Sara heard a sound at the door. She looked up. Teresa was standing there. Her eyes were red and inflamed. ‘Sara, Sara, where have you been?’ she cried. ‘Oh, Sara!’

  Sara stood up and went swiftly across the room to put her arm about Teresa’s shoulders.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Teresa sobbed. ‘We’ve been looking all over. Oh, Sara, the hospital’s rung. Dad’s dead, he’s gone!’ Teresa’s voice broke, and she began to cry.

  Sara nodded. The scent of thyme was strong in her nostrils. ‘I know. Never mind, sweetie. It’s for the best.’

  Teresa looked up at her. ‘What do you mean?’

  He had a talent for tragedy, Sara could have said. We’d never have got free of it.

  But instead she said, ‘He was so badly hurt. He’d never have been himself again. It’s better this way.’

  Teresa nodded.

  Sara looked out at the dusk-filled landscape, touched with an unbearable melancholy. A raven was circling through the sky, tolling its harsh bell.

  ‘Oh, Sara, what are we going to do? What’s going to become of us?’

  Sara kept her eyes on the line of poplars on the far hill, their spear-heads still burnished with light. When she spoke her voice was grave, but even. ‘We’ll be all right, Tess. Life will go on, just in a different pattern. It’s the nature of things. People are born, people die, life goes round in its wheel.’

  Teresa was angry. ‘What’s wrong with you? You don’t seem to be upset at all!’

  Sara’s breath caught. ‘I’ve had all weekend to be grieving. Two days, thinking about nothing else. Upset doesn’t come close to describing what I feel.’

  ‘It’s just …’ Teresa made a broad gesture with her hand, unable to express what she meant.

  Sara gave her shoulder a little squeeze. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I forget you didn’t see him. I was up there on the cliff, when they winched him up, you see. I knew he couldn’t survive such a fall.’

  Teresa let out her breath in a long shuddering sigh.

  ‘Where’s Joe?’ Sara put a hand up to touch the sprig of thyme entangled in her hair.

  ‘He’s in the living room with Gabriela and the twins. They’re completely shattered.’ There was a sly sort of emphasis in Teresa’s voice.

  ‘Drunk as a skunk, pissed as parrots,’ Sara replied.

  Teresa laughed. She looked at Sara with a new expression in her eyes. If it was not respect, it was at least a new wariness.

  She came into the living room. Joe sat at the table, his head in his arms. Gabriela sat beside him, trying to comfort him. The twins were huddled together on the couch. They were white and wild-eyed, and stank of marijuana. As she came in, they lurched to their feet, Dominic sobbing aloud. She closed her arms about their angular shoulders and did not even try to find something comforting to say. There were times when an honest silence was better than meaningless words.

  Joe stood up. His face was haggard with relief. She saw in it everything she needed to know. ‘Sar,’ he said and scrubbed his eyes angrily. ‘Oh, Sar.’

  ‘It’s all right, Joe,’ Gabriela said, rubbing his arm. ‘Oh, Sar, I’m so very sorry.’ She stood up and embraced Sara, who stood quietly within her heavy arms. ‘I’m so very, very sorry.’

  Sara nodded.

  ‘Sara, I’d better ring Mum and tell her, OK? She’ll be real anxious. She’s going to be so upset.’

  ‘OK,’ Sara said and watched Gabriela go out of the room. Sara went over and stood by the window, looking out across the sunset-coloured paddocks to Towradgi Headland, with its grieving profile staring out to sea. The sight of it broke something in her.

  Joe put out his hands. He said the same things everyone kept saying. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Are you?’ Sara said. ‘Yes. I suppose you must be.’

  Joe stared at her, his lips white. ‘Huh?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t suppose you wanted things to be this way,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying and trying to think what must’ve happened and I can’t see you killing him on purpose. It was an accident, wasn’t it?’

  He shrank back, putting both his hands on to the table behind him to support himself. ‘No, what are you saying?’

  ‘You know what I’m saying, Joe.’ She looked up at him, met his eyes which were the same sea-colour as hers, the same sea-colour as their father’s had been. ‘I know, Joe,’ she said gently. ‘You think I can’t see? You think I’m blind?’ And weak? And foolish?

  He tried to rally. ‘Sara, you can’t know what you’re saying. Surely you can’t mean …’

  ‘You know what I mean, Joe. I know you killed Dad. You pushed him … Oh, God, I never knew, I never realised, how much you must have hated him.’

  She had thought she was so calm. She had thought she understood everything. What she did not understand was how sharp and poignant her feelings still were. As she spoke, pain ran her through like a spear. Her voice quivered and failed, and she had to put out a hand for something to lean on.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Teresa cried.

  ‘Oh, Joe,’ Dominic wept.

  Sara said nothing more.
She counted her breaths. It did not take long to win back control. She had years of practice at counting her breaths. She raised her head and looked at Joe. In her look was everything she wanted to say, the helpless rage, the bewilderment, the wish she might be wrong, the delicate, unspoken love she had for her brother, who had brought her books and red dancing shoes and tried his best to shield her.

  ‘It was an accident,’ Joe said then, sobbing aloud. ‘I didn’t mean it. It was an accident, I didn’t mean to kill him, not really, I just wanted to hurt him, I wanted to hit him, I didn’t mean him to die.’

  He stared at Sara, hands held out, pleading for understanding.

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘I know you’ve had a hard summer with him, I know you’ve had your problems, but I just can’t see what drove you to kill him. I mean, your father.’ Again there was that bewilderment, that inability to express in words her instinct that what had happened was deeply and fundamentally wrong, in a way that ran further back than public laws and legal systems.

  ‘It’s weird, you know,’ he said, dropping his hands, turning away. ‘I’ve often thought about killing him. After Mum died, I used to imagine putting poison in his bloody zarzuela so that he would shrivel up and die. I used to think about it all the time. But I knew I could never do it.’

  He turned to Sara. ‘Do you remember when Mum first found out about Teresa? I remember how she looked. She was so white, so shocked, so … broken. She came out of the kitchen and saw us, we were sitting on the stairs, listening, do you remember?’

  Sara shook her head. ‘She looked at us, sitting there, and her mouth all screwed up, and she said “A daughter!” And we didn’t understand, not then.’

  Sara did remember now.

  ‘She said, “I knew, of course, that there was someone. I even knew what she looked like, thanks to the paintings. But a daughter! Six years old. Almost as old as the twins.” And she laughed. I didn’t know what she was talking about until Dad brought the brat here.’ Joe jerked his head at Teresa, who was staring at him. ‘She drove off the headland the very next day. I’ve always kind of wondered if she did it just on impulse, driving back down into the valley, or if she had planned it all along. If she’d planned it, surely she would have said something, tried to say goodbye?’