They watched the fish in their metre-long world; the singing pinks and oranges, the velvet blacks and virtually transparent silvers, the streaks of fluorescent colour which darted and the fish which drifted and trailed, dazed by their own glories. There were striped fish and plain fish and timid fish and fish with spots which cruised or hid in plastic castles or wove through hectic green aquatic plants as graceful as themselves.
Spiro was now pointing, making formal introductions. ‘Rosy Barbs. Neons, a good name, no? See how quick. Black Neons, two there are, but one hides in his castle. Cardinal Tetra two, Angel Fish two, Golden Gourami and two Pink Kissing Gourami is all.’
Rob dipped his head at each name though they had met before.
‘I had a Red Oscar once I did call a name. Icarus, I called him, he flew so high. Leaping for food. I fed him by hand and one day, Ppht! Up, up, he is leaping for more, and suddenly there he is.’ Spiro’s foot tapped in demonstration. ‘My Icarus is on the floor. My Red Oscar lies stunned and gasping.’
Rob’s mouth twitched. ‘Was he all right?’
‘A box of birds he was soon, but I had to take him to my cousin in Tawa who has a big, big tank.’ Arms moved. ‘He was too big for his boots, my Icarus. Yes‚’ he continued, ‘fish are the things to watch because they are beautiful, things of mystery which I do not understand. Learning you can learn from books, from words, eyes, people, like watching with the filo pastry, the sharpening of the knife. That way you can learn. There is a right way and a wrong. Always. But not with understanding, not with knowing. That you cannot learn. I do not understand these fish. What makes them‚’ asked a hand, ‘tick? Each move is different. How can that not delight me? Why? Why do they go this way that way? Who says, who is it that is boss? Look at him, this speedy Neon. This time he leads, this time he goes halfway, next time who knows? Pfff!’ Again the upflung doubting palms, the cheerful acceptance of the total unknowableness of any creature beneath the moon.
And this was fish. How did Spiro go on humans? He was now making Greek coffee—hot as hell, sweet as love and black as something, served in tiny cups with glasses of water.
‘What about people?’ asked Robin. ‘How do you go on people?’
‘Simple, boy.’ Spiro’s face was eager, his moustache on the move. ‘It is words that are the trouble.’ He demonstrated, waving legions of the things in the air. ‘Words are all that is the matter. If I could say to him‚’ he pointed to a larger more complicated fish, ‘why this way, why that way, and he could tell me then he would, no? But perhaps I am his boss say, or he is mine. Perhaps I think, ah now I understand, but he might have his own‚’ he produced the word with triumph, ‘agenda might he not? How can I trust him? It is not thoughts I hear. Not his. Not mine. Not yours. It is words.’ Spiro shook his head. ‘It is not that he lies. He is a good fish, no? See how honest, his eye firm, the streams of his tail float buoyed up by angels. He does not lie, but perhaps he feels he should say something when asked. It is more he does not know, this fish who is asked. None of us, none of us know why we do come, why we do go, why we do love and yet we ask and we ask and we ask again. Do you love me? Yes. Do you really love me? Yes. Oh yes. Do you love me? I am not sure but I think and hope so. Who can say that? Who is the monster who can say that? Even he who is not sure cannot say so. He can only hope and pray and try to love.’ Spiro stared at the sludge in the bottom of his cup. ‘And yet still we act as though all the passion of our words will not be turned to dust.’ He crossed himself briskly, gloated over the word. ‘Dust.’
He stood up. ‘You do not have to hate yourself because your Lisa died.’ He crossed himself again. ‘There are depths and mysteries.’ Spiro stood up and took Robins little cup. ‘Tell me about her‚’ he said. ‘Talk to me about your Lisa.’
Time passed, as they had said it would. It passed as days and nights and weeks and months. Sometimes it went in circles or scrambled to hell. It was not as linear as they had told him it would be, but it passed. Robin had not yet gone south to see the husband. His research, you could say, had suffered since his wife had died. Eighteen months isn’t long.
*
He stood at the back of the crowded lift as it sighed its way to the ground floor. ‘Of course,’ said the man from linguistics as the door opened, ‘they let themselves become completely dependent on the potato.’
His companion nodded.
‘It depends whose side you’re on,’ said a woman striding past, ‘Bloomfield’s or Chomsky’s. You have to believe in something.’
The woman’s hair as she marched up the Pirelli tiles of the entrance tunnel reminded him of Emmeline’s. Robin’s pleasure in the potato pundit sank. He had been rude to Emmeline, worse than that. Much worse. He would go and see Emmie. And Calvin. He had not seen them for months.
And Eileen, and Maureen and even, God help us, Murray. All of them he would see. All of them he would love (fat chance!), none of them he would understand, and none would understand him. He felt faintly elated, as though he had worked something out, or rather Spiro had; had tracked down the original resource material and handed it on so it would come in handy. Is your Dad handy?—the Jehovah’s Witness at the door had asked him years ago. No. He’s dead and you can skip the house either side as well.
Robin glanced at the posters for a Chainsaw concert plastered on the brick wall beside him. Why fifty small identical posters. Why not one big one. Why not fifty separate posters. A leaflet drop. He did not understand. But then he did not understand anything. But then he did not have to understand anything. Spiro had told him. His step quickened as he passed two strong-calved women. ‘Of course there will be ongoing assessment, continuous assessment for relevance as well as content,’ said the one with the backpack.
Of course. Of course and of course and of course.
The steps near the library were lined with students eating, peeling fruit, drinking juice and confiding. A neat line of orange peel decorated the tread of one step. They sprawled, supported each other’s backs, drank coffee, belched and ate apples. Some were hauntingly beautiful. A young Maori woman sat reading The Duchess of Malfi with a man’s pink cannon-fodder face cradled in her lap. He lifted a finger, curled tendrils of hair, dropped it when satisfied and started again. She had good hair. Strong, springy, plenty of it.
Robin’s gut was sticking to his backbone. Two-thirty. Lunch. Yes. Lunch. He collected a precariously loaded roll, jammed a slice of cucumber back into position with a thumb, picked up a polystyrene cup from the stall in the corner of the quad and sat down to anonymity and echoing noise and peace of a sort. Smoke trailed from some jerk’s face into his. The mandibular movement of a python was needed to get to grips with the roll, to catch the free-floating beansprouts, the tomato slices, the egg mashed with mayo. He opened his mouth wide.
The pigeons cocked satin heads and waited. One sat unblinking as a leading light on the step below him. A small grey feather flecked with white was stuck to one claw. The bird seemed unconcerned at the misplacement. Did it mind, wish to dislodge it as a human would. He would never know. He put out his hand to grey and black and crossed primary feathers. The pigeon scuttled. He thought of George’s daughter.
His mother was home. She came out to greet him smiling in checked easy-care, an enormous star-shaped brooch stuck on her left front. She disliked her front. It was too big. She had always wished for a smaller one but you don’t have much say do you.
The brooch was dazzling, a gold and red centre surrounded by the mangled rays of a scrambled sunburst. ‘I haven’t seen that before‚’ he said.
Her hand flew to it. Rays were still visible writhing beneath her hand. ‘Oh, its just costume.’ She gave a little yelp of laughter. ‘It’s not real or anything.’
Well no.
He had seen that look before today, round-eyed, amber, unblinking, watchful. Of course. The pigeon. His mother’s fingers moved against the brooch caressing shit metal. ‘Where did you get it?’ he asked.
‘Someone g
ave it to me.’
‘Good on them.’
‘I think of it as a symbol‚’ she murmured. ‘The Son of God’s rays reaching deep into our hearts spreading joy.’
Ah.
She looked up at him, her eyes anxious. ‘I wish you would get back into the comfort of the church, Robin.’
‘You make it sound like some sort of padded playpen.’
If she was offended at his cheap crack she did not show it. Her pale cushioned face did not change.
He offered her a childhood memory in apology. ‘“I want to get back into the woods where bears are bears.”’
She looked startled, but then she often did. One finger touched her lips.
‘Kids’ radio programme. Sunday mornings. Maxi the Taxi, you remember.’
‘I would have been at church.’
‘Of course.’ He felt the cool stillness, the drawn blinds. American voices telling him of little tug boats and bright fire engines and bears who did not discover they were happy in their own backyards till they got into trouble in someone else’s and went back to the zoo and made the kids happy. A cop-out. He had thought so at the time.
He picked up the battered hymn book from the table. ‘Why the markers, Mum?’
‘I mark them when I first go in. It saves time. And I keep the markers there till next week so I can check if I want to. Which hymns we had, I mean.’
He put his arms around her, kissed her soft cheek. ‘I see,’ he said.
‘Mind my hair,’ she said gently.
There was no answer to his knock next door. He peered through the venetian blinds. Maureen lay asleep on the cretonne-covered sofa. Beside her in the high chair he had found sat Betty, her battered face calm, her eyes blue. Rob laid his face against the cold glass for a moment then ran leaping up Emmeline’s path.
He stopped short. Murray was mowing her lawn. Pushing and yanking at a smoking old Morrison, yelling the Hallelujah Chorus at the top of his voice, Murray was in action. He thrust the lever into idle. ‘Hallelujah, Hallelujah‚’ he roared, seizing the laden catcher and heading round the back trailing clots of green. The sweat stain down the back of his shirt was T-shaped.
Rob clutched Emmeline’s arm at the door.
‘What’s Murray doing?’
She removed her arm, held it against her with the other hand. ‘Cutting the grass‚’ she said. ‘What did you think?’
Six
‘Yeah, but why?’ said Rob.
Her purple pants were wide, her shirt knotted above her navel, her feet bare. ‘He offered to.’
‘Why?’
‘King of Kings and Lord of Lords,’ roared Murray, followed by the thundering roar of the mower as he set off again.
‘What is this? The guy offers to cut the stuff. I say thanks.’ Arms akimbo, body tense, Emmeline had had enough. ‘What’s it got to do with you? I’ve scarcely seen you since Aunt died. The first time I did you spat in my eye. What are you, some sort of …’
Her toes and heels beneath the purple were bright pink, the arches white. Why just the toes and the heels, he wondered. He lifted his eyes to a wedge of hair and sharp-nosed anger.
‘Yeah, I know. I’m sorry about that. It’s just …’ He watched the clown roaring and belching along. ‘When did you start liking the shit?’
‘When he started offering to cut the grass.’
You had to hand it to her. He stretched his mouth into a grin.
She was looking at him with her usual attentiveness. ‘Are you not feeling yourself?’ she asked gently.
The banal phrase, the possibility of double entendre, was dirty fighting, as she would know. He looked at her, his eyebrows banging behind the bridge of his glasses as he disliked her.
There was a flicker, the merest glimmer of a smile as she led him inside. Her hand touched Aunt’s bedroom door as they passed. Her voice changed, became conversational, chatty. ‘You know it’s weird. I always think of Aunt as smiling. Why do I do that? She didn’t smile much. She wasn’t a chucklehead. She was tough, grim even. Remember those grisly stories? Why did she tell us those blood-curdlers? She’d be lynched now. Even Sylvester the cat doesn’t have his head burned off like Little Degchie-Head or thumbs lopped off like Little Suck-a-Thumb.’ She scratched her head—couldn’t work it out, didn’t know. She offered him muffins and lemon drink from a jug with a sieved spout held at navel level. She was on an Earth Mother kick. A guy at the theatre had brought fruit and vegetables from up the coast and no one wanted lemons.
She would never change, he knew that. Till the day she died she would be frugal and prodigal, strong and self-doubting, a fiercely independent panhandler who could get under his skin when he was not feeling himself. Murray would never have offered to mow anything unless there was a reason. Robin would bet on that.
Her ability as an actor seemed to him another thing she picked up and discarded at will. Useful to have, and a pleasure to slip into, to fling to the audiences below when required; to bless the hands, the cheers, the sheer bloody enchantment. Yet he knew about her hours of research, her excitement at ‘finding the walk’, at ‘getting inside’, her willingness to work till she dropped. She was correctly cast as an actor. They are meant to be various. To stand like saints and fry like sinners before gliding into the final tango. The one constant in Emmeline was her love for Calvin.
She was now curled up on the old couch in the kitchen taking an interest in her pink and white feet as she told him how she had fixed the blockage in the back lavatory.
The Edwardian completeness of the old house fell apart at the back. There were passages to burrow down, half-empty rooms with speckled mirrors, a cracked hand basin in a corner. Rob’s heart ticked. In a back room in Seatoun Alice had sat down and wept.
Emmeline was now on another tack. Did he know that the Aborigines along the Murray and the Coorong Rivers had used human skulls as water carriers? The skulls of choice were those of deceased parents and close relatives. Emmie snatched her feet to her, clutched the toes. ‘Isn’t that wonderful?’
Her navel had disappeared, folded away neatly in a pleat of her stomach. He missed it. ‘Miss Bowman would have liked that.’
She nodded as though he had got something right, some minor cause for approval like the correct answer to a tricky clue. ‘Yes.’ She blinked. ‘This lemon drink isn’t bad.’
Talking to her had always been interesting. She leaped from topic to topic, whirred from grief to pragmatism like an out-of-control Catherine wheel. He was glad of the muffins and cordial and the now-absent tanned navel and the sleazy crackle of rayon against her legs. Her particularities, her contradictions could be ticked off on several hands, like six.
The scent of bruised grass filled the air. Murray was still at it.
Emmie was now backtracking. ‘The “great long red-legged scissor man” haunted me. Just when I was getting over those bleeding stumps I read Kipling. Aunt had lots. I’ll never read him again. Ever. An Indian girl falls for an Englishman. At the end of the story she stands outside his window and holds up her arms. No hands. Her father has chopped them off.’
‘Kipling,’ he said hopelessly.
‘And Saudi Arabia. You’ve seen those photos? It’s worse, it’s worse if they do it surgically.’
‘What!’
‘The stumps are so thin. The ends of the arms.’
What on earth was she on about? She couldn’t mean it would have been better, that they would have been thicker if hacked off on a block in the marketplace. How could he have thought she was ‘all right’, ‘coping’? How could he have assumed for one moment that anyone as fragmented as Emmeline O’Malley could cope without her rock of ages.
‘I had a dream last night.’
Oh God.
‘Yes.’ Her chin was now propped on the heel of her hand. ‘I lost a thumb. I wasn’t worried or anything, you know how you’re not in dreams.’
Other people’s dreams bored him. He was tempted to skip them in novels but obviously somet
hing was expected. ‘I am,’ he said. ‘Often.’
‘Oh yes, if it’s that sort of dream. Anyhow, I looked down and there it was all neat and tidy, no blood, and I thought ah yes I must put it in the fridge.’
‘Freezer.’
‘No, no you’re meant to pack it in ice. Not put it in the freezer. But I didn’t have any ice, you know how you never do in dreams. Have what you want, I mean. But it didn’t matter at all.’ She wiggled her thumbs, stared at the tendons, stroked the generous back swing.
‘Are you working at the moment?’ he said quickly.
‘I am and it’s great. Hedda Gabler. You must come. But that’s not what we’re talking about.’ She was hugging her knees again. He supposed it was because she was so thin she could slip from one position to another with such ease, her movements smooth as spilled water. Sinuous. That was the word. Sinuous. Lisa had not been sinuous. Lisa had been edible. He stared out the open window.
‘We were talking about Aunt.’
Were they? He hadn’t noticed. He had gone somewhere else. It still happened.
‘I wish we had some dope.’ She was on her feet again. ‘I just might have.’ Toes and heels moved with the precision of a ballerina ascending a gutter. She was reaching at full stretch for a jar inscribed Unguentum Ultralanum on the top shelf of an old dresser. ‘What a bit of luck.’ She sniffed the contents. ‘Does it go off?’
She rolled the joint with quick hands. Even as a child, he remembered, they had combined the manual dexterity and brute force of a specialist in crown and bridge work. She lit the feeble-looking thing, inhaled and handed it on.
He had worked hard on dope in the eighties, had hoped to be enhanced, elevated, to shuck off a few layers, but nothing much had happened. He dragged deeply.
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