December 11, 2017 / mascara / 0 Comments
Susan Hurley is a health economist and writer. Her research has been published in numerous international journals including The Lancet and her articles and essays have appeared in Kill Your Darlings,The Big Issue, The Australian and Great Walks. Susan is currently working on a novel that originates from a disastrous drug trial. She lives in Melbourne with her husband and labradoodle. The Death of an Impala was shortlisted for the 2017 Peter Carey Short Story Prize.
Death of An Impala
The animals were standing in a clearing under a cloudless early-morning sky, a dozen of them, more or less.
‘Impala,’ Max said. He braked and turned to face his guests. Max’s vehicle didn’t have a rear-vision mirror, or a windscreen, or a roof. There were ponchos for the guests if it rained. Max’s vehicle didn’t even have doors. Being close to the animals, with no barrier, made the safari experience more authentic. Provided the guests didn’t do something stupid, they were safe.
Max had only two guests today: Judith and Bob. They weren’t a couple. ‘Hi, I’m Judy,’ Judith had said to Bob that morning in the dining room, the sun not yet risen, the air still so cold it stung.
Yet when Max asked, ‘May I pour you coffee or tea, Judith?’ like the lodge manager insisted guides must ask guests, she hadn’t said, ‘Call me Judy.’
Now, Max saw Judith look away from the impala.
Boring, she thought. More antelope. She hadn’t come all this way and spent all that money just to see a bunch of Bambi look-alikes. The guide, this Max, was making a pathetic attempt to make them interesting. ‘We call impala the McDonald’s of Africa. Ya,’ he said, pointing out the ‘M’ sign that their black rear markings and tail appeared to make. Bob laughed, so she laughed too. Geez Louise, she’d come all the way to Botswana—and Botswana was even more expensive than South Africa—she’d splurged on a private game park, not to mention a lodge that the travel agent assured her was superior, and now she was laughing at an antelope’s bum.
‘Make her happy, Max,’ the manager had said that morning after the staff briefing. The singing, the dancing and the praying after the briefing were the best part of Max’s day. Blessing from kitchen department led the singing and he, Max, he led the dancing. But today, after they’d heard which guests were leaving, and after the guests who would be flown in after lunch had been assigned to guides, just when the singing was about to start after Blessing had clapped her hands and ululated for all of thirty seconds, like only Blessing could do, loud and so beautiful just like he hoped she would do at the mokgolokwane for his wedding, when he and Patience finally married, the manager had pulled him aside. ‘I need a word, Max,’ he said.
Every evening at dinner, the manager, whose name was Nathan, visited guests at their tables. ‘And how has your day been?’ he would ask.
The previous evening, Judith told Nathan she was disappointed. She hadn’t seen that much on her first game drive. She’d come all this way and it was just like the Singapore night zoo.
Nathan tried to fob her off. He asked about Singapore, a place he’d never been. He was South African, with that clipped New Zealander accent they have. The rest of the staff were Botswanan, but their English was good.
She’d done Singapore en route to Bali for her bestie Kylie’s wedding. ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Judith told Nathan, ‘I adore that zoo.’ Judith knew Nathan didn’t care how her day had been, but she was eating dinner alone. She was travelling solo and this lodge didn’t do communal seating at dinner, or even lunch. The table was candle-lit so it was too dark to read. Nathan could listen up and earn his keep.
‘We did see some elephants, some giraffes, and a few zebras,’ she told him. ‘Oh, and antelope—the common ones. What are they called again?’
‘Impala,’ Nathan said.
Max had shown Judith a dazzle of zebras yesterday, not just a few. Max loved to make his guests laugh at the collective nouns for the animals: a tower of giraffes, a leap of leopards, a soar of eagles. But Judith hadn’t smiled at the dazzle of zebras, she hadn’t seen even one leopard, and the giraffes hadn’t moved. If they had Max would have told her, ‘They’re called a journey of giraffes, now that they’re walking.’
The elephants, the giraffes, the zebra and impalas had not made Judith happy. She wanted to see some action, she told Nathan. She wanted to see the animals doing something, because that’s what a safari is all about. That’s what the American woman who’d deigned to talk to her at the bar before dinner said too. Judith had dressed for dinner. She hadn’t frocked up—just back skinny pants and her off-the-shoulder crimson silk blouse with the ruffles—but she looked pretty damn good, even if she did say so herself. The American woman was still wearing her sweat-stained safari gear, and didn’t introduce herself. She told Judith she’d just arrived from Momba lodge, which was such a special place. The experience of a lifetime. She and her husband saw a leopard with a kill there. The woman whipped out her iPhone and played a video of the leopard sitting in a tree, dangling the impala carcass for its two cubs, who toyed with it like a plaything. Judith had agreed with her: the video was amazing.
Today, Max needed to do better. But all he had to work with so far were the impala. They were standing in an almost perfect circle. ‘See how the animals are all facing outwards,’ he told Judith and Bob. ‘Ya. They’ve got a three-sixty-degree view. And see how their ears are up. There’s a predator nearby. But they’ve got the area covered. Ya. These animals won’t be attacked.’
Bob was sitting behind Judith. He snapped some pictures. This was his first time on safari, he’d told her over their breakfast coffee. His camera’s lens was so big he had to attach it to a fancy tripod thingy that he’d strapped to the bar behind her head. Click, click, click. Bob must have taken more than twenty pictures already. The clicking was driving her crazy, and they were only impala, for God’s sake.
The two-way radio crackled: ‘Gee to Max.’
Gee was Max’s friend. He was also Patience’s brother, so one day, soon Max hoped because Patience was becoming impatient, Gee would be his brother-in-law. Gee was on duty at the lodge today, coordinating the vehicles out on game drive. He had promised to help Max make Judith happy. The guides worked together to track animals, calling in any clues they saw or heard. A troop of baboons screeching was a sign that a predator was hunting nearby—a lion, a leopard, or a cheetah if you were very lucky. A congregation of vultures up a tree meant that the predator had made a kill. The birds were waiting for their turn at the carcass.
Working as a team made sense because this game park was huge—twenty-one thousand hectares—so the predators that all the guests wanted to see were hard to track, even if you knew the paw prints of lions as well as the lines on the palm of your hand. But manager Nathan had made a new rule: only two vehicles at a time were permitted at high-profile sightings such as a kill. This was a superior lodge. Guests expected exclusive sightings and they wanted photos without other safari vehicles in the frame.
The new rule had not worked out well for Max. The week before Judith’s arrival he saw a lioness on the move and called it in. The lodge put the sighting out on the radio. Ralph and Ping were closer, upwind from an impala that the lioness was hunting. Their guests got to watch her disembowel the impala and feast on its innards, while Max and his guests waited the respectful hundred metres away, like manager Nathan insisted the third vehicle at a sighting must do. When Max’s turn finally came the lioness was sated and sleeping. Max did not get good tips that day.
‘Turn your radio to channel four,’ Gee had told Max this morning, ‘I’ll give you a heads up before I put any hot sightings out to the others on channel one.’
Now Gee was making good on his promise. ‘Wild dogs at Linyanti crossing, some heading east, some west,’ Gee’s voice said. ‘Prince called it in, he’s following the eastbound dogs.’
‘Copy that.’ Max put his vehicle in gear. He would go west.
Max turned to face Judith and Bob. ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘Bob, hold on to your camera please.’ Bob looked like he’d be a good tipper, but not if his camera got broken.
Max floored the accelerator. The track was sandy and his vehicle swayed from side to side. In just a few minutes he came across three dogs, circling a mopane tree where a leopard was perched on the lowest lying branch.
‘Amazing,’ Max said. ‘This is amazing. I’ve only seen wild dogs and a leopard together once before. And I’ve been a guide ten years.’ The leopard hissed. The dogs yapped back.
Judith wasn’t a dog person. The wild dogs looked, well, like dogs actually—spotty, mangy ones—but at least this was some action. ‘Will they attack the leopard?’ she asked.
Max laughed. ‘No, wild dogs can’t climb trees.’
Judith felt her face flush. What was so funny? The branch wasn’t even that high off the ground. She hadn’t come all this way to be made to feel a fool. Curtis had done that often when they were still together, one time even embarrassing her in front of Kylie, telling Kylie that Judith was ‘just fat’ when Kylie asked if it was a baby bump she could see profiled beneath Judith’s figure-hugging dress. ‘And barren,’ Curtis had added, so quietly only Judith heard.
Four more dogs trotted up the track to join the three who were harassing the leopard. ‘A pack. A hunting pack,’ Max told Judith and Bob. The dogs were thin, hungry, but Max didn’t point that out. The dogs would need to make a kill today, but he wasn’t going to raise his guests’ expectations. ‘When you’re following a lead to a high-profile sighting, don’t get the guests excited too early. Remember how easily things can go pear-shaped,’ manager Nathan had told the guides. ‘Under-promise and then aim to over-deliver.’
One of the dogs lifted his leg and peed a dribble, marking his territory, then the pack trotted off, leaving the leopard in peace. Max got on the radio: ‘Max to Gee. A female leopard, up a tree two k west of the crossing.’ The leopard was a good sighting. Max would follow the dogs though. A kill was a much rarer, much higher-profile sighting than a leopard.
‘Copy that,’ Gee said. ‘And Max, an impala, a female, is running for the river. Dogs in pursuit. Prince is on it.’
Max knew what had happened. The impala would have been hiding in the thicket at the edge of the flood plain, standing still, trying to make herself invisible, but failing. The dogs Prince had followed had picked up the impala’s scent, and the impala, sensing the dogs’ movement as they closed in, had made a run for it. If the impala got to the river before the dogs she might manage to swim to the safety of the island. The dogs would bail at the river. They were scared of crocodiles.
Max swerved his vehicle right, into the bush. He would take a short cut. ‘Mind the branches. Please put your heads down, Judith and Bob,’ he said.
The three of them hurtled through the scrub. This guide is a maniac, Judith thought. His vehicle was flattening bushes, ripping branches off trees. Sure, he was permitted to go off-road for high-profile sightings because this was a private game reserve—he’d explained that yesterday—but didn’t these people care about the environment?
The branch of a thorn bush snagged the arm of the cream shirt she’d bought especially for the trip. Max was too busy destroying the landscape to notice her squeal, but Bob reached forward and un-snagged her. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked gently and gave her arm a little rub. She felt herself start to choke up. It was almost a year since a man had touched her, not that she was keeping count.
When Max drove out of the thicket he could see Prince’s vehicle across the flood plain near the river, parked by a clump of papyrus. He could hear the dogs yelping in the reeds, but he couldn’t see the impala.
‘What’s happening?’ Judith asked. All this hooning about had better be worth it.
‘A safari?’ Kylie had said. ‘Really? Why not go to Thailand? Sit by the pool, sip cocktails, have a holiday fling!’ But Judith had wanted to do something more unique than Thailand. A safari had sounded perfect. It was an indulgence, absolutely—it had cost a big chunk of her alarmingly small property settlement with Curtis—but she had wanted to treat herself, and also, truth be told, show Curtis she was quite capable of travelling to new places, dangerous places, without him. This lodge had a reputation for danger. Only a few years back a lion had killed a guest, a woman, and Judith had asked Nathan the night before for all the details.
‘It happened at the lodge,’ Nathan told her. ‘We were outside in the boma having a barbeque dinner, and she apparently decided to go back to her room to change her shoes.’ He shook his head, still appalled at the woman’s foolishness. ‘She should have asked for an escort,’ he said sternly. ‘It’s one of the lodge rules. We have security staff, with flashlights, to escort guests to their rooms at night.’ Were lions scared of flashlights? Judith had wondered.
Max knew the impala was down. Snippets of information about the dogs would hopefully distract Judith and Bob from the fact that they’d missed the kill. ‘Wild dogs are an endangered species,’ he said. ‘There are only about three thousand left in all of Africa.’
Max drove across the flood plain, slowly now. He parked facing Prince’s vehicle and pointed to the spot where the papyrus was shaking violently. The dogs were eating the impala. Every thirty seconds or so one of the dogs lifted its head above the rushes. The dog’s face was tomato-red from the impala’s blood. ‘It’s checking for predators,’ Max told Judith and Bob. ‘At a kill, dogs are easy prey for lions.’
‘Lions lick their prey before they eat it,’ Judith announced. Nathan had told her that the night before. The lion licked the woman who left the boma unescorted. Nathan said the woman had been wearing a short, skimpy sundress and the lion licked her leg, all the way from her foot to her torso. But lions have very rough tongues. The licking ripped off the woman’s skin.
‘The woman’s husband and a security guard went to see why she was taking so long,’ Nathan said. ‘They disturbed the lion and brought the woman back to the boma. She was still alive then, but she died within the hour.’ Nathan sighed. ‘One of the other guests that night was a doctor, but he wouldn’t touch her. Said it was a law suit waiting to happen.’
Neither Max nor Bob heard Judith mention that lions lick their prey. Max had secured a good position for the sighting. Max was happy. Bob was click-click-clicking, getting good shots. Bob was happy too.
The day was heating up and Judith felt herself becoming sweaty. She needed to take off the thermal vest underneath her safari shirt. If Curtis had been with her, and if it had been one of their good days, he would have held up his coat so that she could get undressed without Max and Bob having a perv.
‘These dogs will eat as much of the impala as they can fit into their stomachs, then they’ll run back to their den, fast, and regurgitate the kill for their pups,’ Max said. He did not hear Gee call out the sighting of lions heading in the direction of the impala kill. Gee made the call on channel one, but Max’s radio was still tuned to channel four.
The lions racing toward the kill site had been purchased from another game park, to replace the pride that was shot after one of their number killed the woman who left the boma to change her shoes. ‘A lion that’s tasted human blood must be destroyed. Otherwise it might start to hunt people,’ Nathan had told Judith. The lodge didn’t know which lion was responsible so they had to shoot the whole pride.
One of the dogs, now slicked with blood from its head to its hind legs, backed out of the rushes, dragging a piece of the impala. Judith felt her stomach churn.
The dog hauled its plunder over to Max’s vehicle. ‘Oh, the impala was pregnant’ Max said.
No shit, Sherlock, Judith thought. She could recognise a foetus when she saw one. Bile bubbled up her throat.
One by one the other dogs leapt out of the kill site, leaving the impala to the vultures. They trotted over to Max’s vehicle and began to devour the delicacy. ‘Unbelievable,’ Bob said. ‘I’m shooting video of this.’
Judith slid over to the other side of the vehicle, away from the carnage. She was going to throw up. No way was she doing that in front of Bob and Max.
The lions had reached the edge of the thicket. They could see the dogs. But Max did not see the lions. He was thinking about Patience. He had already saved half the dowry that Patience’s father was asking. Today, his tips would be good. By Christmas he would have the entire dowry if he had more good-tip days like this. Ya, that would make Patience happy.
Max did not hear Judith slip out of the vehicle.
August 23, 2017 / mascara / 0 Comments
Mark O’Flynn’s most recent collection of poems is Shared Breath, (Hope Street Press, 2017). He has published a collection of short stories as well as four novels. His latest The Last Days of Ava Langdon (UQP, 2016) has been shortlisted for the 2017 Miles Franklin Award.
Fresh Air
They hardly ever left the city these days, so it was time. They hadn’t seen their cousins since summer and Naomi and Brent were jumping with rabbity excitement. Perhaps trepidation better described the type of excitement they were feeling. The cousins lived in the country, just beyond Cowra, and were trying, in their way, to be farmers. Naomi and Brent had many sleepless nights in the lead up to a visit to the farm. Darren Twomey, their father, had not spoken to his sister for a long time. Each time, between visits, he wondered if their relationship was reverting to that old enmity, their childhood status quo. As adults it had indifferently thawed. They had gone separate ways. They were so at odds that they each wondered at times how the other managed to survive. Since the death of the parents, long ago, all their battles suddenly seemed old ones. Distant memories. There was no point fighting about them. They were now able to talk to each other as equals. And since the birth of their children, (Lil had three), they had become, well, for a while Darren had thought the word was close.
He felt remiss about not getting the kids out of the city more often. When they were littler Naomi and Brent loved their cousins, although now they were getting to an age where they, too, were finding their lives leading elsewhere. The cousins had not one, not two, but three tree houses. They had their own quad bikes. They had animals. Cats and dogs, of course, but also a constant stream of little yellow chicks, which Naomi would snatch up feeling their hearts vibrating in her hands. Also goats, a peacock, a few cows, a sheep and a great big bull all by himself in the front paddock. Lil and Carlo, her husband, were trying to be diverse-interest farmers. Trying – they were pretty good at it. They wanted to do everything for themselves, grow their own food, make their own clothes, as well as supply what they could to the nation. Subsistence farming was not a phrase Darren could readily throw at them. Nor was impossibly romantic. It must have been hard work. For Lil it was about the survival of the planet, even her clothes were about the survival of the planet, whereas Darren believed the planet would still be here long after he was done with it. Yet they were modest. Lil worked at a high school in Cowra while Carlo, following in his family’s footsteps, worked the land. Not much of interest to Carlo happened beyond his ploughed acres. Lil had an old, self-deprecating joke she would trot out when she thought people had forgotten it: What do you call a successful farmer? One married to a teacher.
The first time they had seen the bull, after the long drive from Sydney, it had its long, pink pizzle out swinging in the breeze. Their mother, Mara, had tried to get them to stop laughing – pizzle was such a funny word, but their father was laughing just as much.
Carlo knew farming. You couldn’t knock that. Darren was slightly envious of his ability to fix, well, anything. His practicality.
‘We’ll twitch it up with a piece of fencing wire.’
That was the panacea he applied to any situation. No problem was too big. Plough up forty acres before breakfast, no worries; change the tines on the harvester, done; slaughter a piglet for dinner, easy. He was the one who had built all the tree houses. An estate of them. Darren resented his own inability to provide as much for his kids. You couldn’t build a single tree house in their inner city back yard no bigger than a couple of picnic blankets. He could barely build a lean-to for the lawnmower. He didn’t need a lawnmower. Carlo did not think much of that. Carlo would have hated being able to hear the neighbours playing their radio, washing their dishes – just there, through the wall. It was one of Darren’s secret pleasures, to see Carlo’s discomfort, on those rare occasions when they came to the city, perched on the edge of a chair as the morning filled with sirens and truck engines and aeroplanes passing overhead. Darren could work the phones and move stock and do a deal on futures trading, but he could not twitch up a tree house with a length of fencing wire.
Naomi at least loved coming here. Lil’s boys were older, closer to her age. Brent was more wary. No one could say they loved the long, dreary drive, but the whole occasion was, for Darren, a shot in the arm. He could leave his phone at home, something that always made him feel liberated, if a little naked. It was as if time sprained its ankle and slowed down. They always slept well. All that fresh air. The vegetables they ate were, frankly, stupendous.
Mara did not love it quite so much. The insects. The animals in general were not her style. If she walked across a paddock she was bound to tread in something. At nighttime it was too dark, the bull shrieking somewhere out there in the blackness like something wounded in no-mans-land. Mara preferred the glow of streetlights coming in the window, the wheezing traffic on rainy roads. She was in her element at a busy intersection, timing her dash across the road.
If she was quizzed closely what it was that disturbed her she was forced to admit she was scared of snakes. And spiders. All the creeping, poisonous wildlife with which the countryside was plagued. She was fearful of wasps and stick insects. She was fearful of sticks that looked like insects. In fact she wasn’t too crazy about sticks in general. And she was certainly no fan of the bull’s pizzle.
‘But there are spiders in the city,’ Darren rationalized.
‘Yes, but they know their place,’ said Mara. ‘They don’t try to dominate the conversation. And they understand spray.’
That was Mara’s panacea – spray.
‘There’s an eagle,’ said Naomi from the back seat and Brent leaned across her to see.
And the house, Mara thought to herself. It always seemed to smell of ash. That would have been because of the open fires. Swallows sometimes flew down the chimney and darted about the room. Every floorboard in every room creaked. You could hear each footstep in the nighttime squeaking their way to the toilet, which took a long time to fill after it had been flushed. Those floorboards were something Darren enjoyed for some reason – talk about irrational. If you looked out any window to any point of the compass there was nothing but grass. Grass, which made Mara sneeze, if they happened to visit during the spring. The first time they had come out here Naomi had cried: ‘Where are the shops?’
Darren had laughed, but Mara knew what she meant.
The joke about how primitive it all was had worn pretty thin after several days of complaint. Carlo found more and more things that needed repair, activities that kept him away from the house for long periods of time. No, he didn’t need any help. He could be seen at odd times bouncing along the horizon on his tractor.
‘There’s no reception,’ said Naomi, shaking her phone and peering at it.
Darren said he would not bring them back again if they were going to whinge and be such scaredy-custards. All the cousins protested at that, so Darren had to back down and rescind his threat. Mara and Lil looked at him, sadly. Brent sniveled most of all because, like his mother, he had become anxious at the unfamiliarity of everything. His cousins had made him stick his finger in a calf’s mouth and he had cried at that strange sensation. He needed some traffic noise to calm him down.
‘What’s that smell?’ Brent asked, his gap-tooth whistling on the sibilance of the word smell. The tooth had come out during some rough-and-tumble with his sister. Hadn’t there been a fuss about that! Mara was like a raptor or the proverbial tigress on the look out for danger to her cub. Poor Naomi had been flayed alive.
‘That’s fresh air,’ said Darren. ‘It’s good for you.’
This nervousness all came back, it seemed, to spiders. The fact that they could kill you. Snakes also, but snakes were more exotic. You wouldn’t expect to find a snake indoors, in your shoe. Spiders were more commonplace; danger lurking in every nook and cranny, in every cupboard where the biscuits might be hidden. This was the kingdom of the spiders.
‘If you leave them alone, they’ll leave you alone,’ said Aunt Lil.
‘But what if you want a biscuit?’
‘You ask for one.’
Brent’s formative consciousness went through a terrible struggle every time Darren announced they were going to visit their cousins. Attractive as the tree houses were, they were full of biting, stinging, lethal bugs. Snap out of it son, he wanted to say, although he knew better than to declare these views in which he heard his own father’s conservative voice. Okay, okay, it was fine for the boy to cry. He didn’t really have to steel himself at all. Manhood still years off. Be a kid. Enjoy it.
Darren bit his tongue. Mara had read all the books. Yes, sensitivity was a virtue, he agreed. If Darren felt that Mara was babying the boy, she for one would not hear of it. Her upheld palm, her whittled disdain, could puncture Darren’s resolve in its womb. He could so easily be reduced to a cliché. All he wanted was for his son to take on the world, not to shy away from it.
So when the long weekend arrived Darren was the least ambivalent about jumping in the car and taking off into the wide green yonder. He would have been happy to go alone, but that was a pathway fraught with its own repercussions. Mara would have grizzled that she was being abandoned to do the child rearing, while he waltzed off on his merry own to enjoy himself in the country. Where was the equity in that? She had a job too you know. They had had this squabble before. Complaints about the wild life, the discomfort, the leaky toilet seemed to be the piper he had to pay to shore up the complaints about neglected responsibilities. He neglected nothing. He thought about everything all the time.
Darren sighed.
He packed the car with far more than they would need for three days. God help them if they had to get to the spare tyre with all this crap on top of it. But then would he have really known what to do if that need arose? He was ready to leave a full half hour before anyone else. There was make-up to be applied, last minute phone calls to be made. Finally they hit the trail. Stop – Naomi had left her flash drive. Stop – Brent had left his DS with its latest uploads. Stop – Mara had forgotten to set the alarm. There was a hold up on Paramatta Road that delayed their departure even further. They were like pigeons, Darren thought, trapped in the city by the electromagnetic radioenergy of the metropolis. Or something. Where had he heard that theory?
They crawled along in first gear for twenty minutes through the grey fumes of the traffic. Darren watched the temperature gauge climb steadily. It was just approaching the red when the traffic opened out and they were able to speed up. The needle went down, and Darren’s simmering level of stress also subsided.
‘Just wait till we get out to all that fresh air,’ he said, more brightly than he felt.
They played a game where they had to name things they saw in alphabetical sequence. They always got stuck on Q.
Soon enough they fell silent. Naomi listened to her i-pod, lips moving in silent song. After an hour of playing his electronic game Brent said he felt carsick.
‘Look out the front window, mate.’
‘I’m gunna be sick.’
‘Stop the car and let him walk around in the air for a little,’ said Mara.
‘He’ll be fine. Just look out the front.’
‘I’m gunna vomit.’
‘Don’t vomit in the car,’ Darren raised his voice more than was necessary.
‘Then stop the damn car. Let him stretch his legs.’
So Darren stopped the damn car and Brent, looking green about the gills, walked in circles by the side of the road.
‘Brent is gunna spe-ew,’ chanted Naomi, making her own entertainment.
‘I’ll spew on you,’ said Brent, now red in the face.
‘Be quiet,’ snapped Mara. ‘Leave your brother alone.’
‘Why do you always take his side?’
Darren drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Traveling with the children, and with Mara for that matter, always made the journey so much more tedious. No need to go into detail.
In the town of Blayney Naomi observed that the entire town appeared to be closed. Beyond Cowra they turned off the highway down smaller and smaller roads, winding through paddocks revitalized after the breaking of the drought. Finally a corrugated dirt lane brought them juddering in a cloud of dust to Lil’s gate. Mara began to sneeze. The bull was standing in the front paddock staring at them.
‘Hey Brent,’ said Darren, ‘hop out and open the gate for us.’
‘There’s a big bull,’ said Brent.
‘He’s not that big. I bet he won’t even move. Just shut the gate behind us and hop straight back in the car.’
‘Can’t you do that?’ Mara asked.
‘Brent can do it. He’s old enough.’
Brent reluctantly stepped from the back seat. He stood at the gate and fiddled with the chain. Darren loved those chains, although he could not have explained why. If you lived here, he thought, that chain would be the sort of everyday thing you would take for granted. He wondered if Brent would have the gumption to stand on the gate and swing its wide arc like the kids did in the films, but Brent simply walked it open. The bull stared at them like a wharfie at a picket line. Darren drove through and idled a little way up the track. There were potholes full of water, puddles, he supposed you’d have to call them. Probably full of tadpoles. He would like to look. In the rear-vision mirror Brent had his head bent over the chain at the strainer post. The sun came from behind a cloud and the grass, in an instant, appeared luminously green. Then the back door was open and Brent dived excitedly in.
‘That cow’s comin’,’ he squealed.
Again in the mirror Darren saw the gate behind them slowly swing open and the bull ambling towards it.
‘Hey!’
He honked the horn, but this only had the effect of making the bull trot forward through the gate, out onto the road.
‘Shit.’
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Mara.
‘The bloody bull’s got out. Didn’t you shut the gate?’
‘I thought I did,’ said Brent.
‘Jesus Christ. Come with me.’
Darren got out of the car. His tone did not allow Brent to object. Mara’s lips were thin. She stared straight ahead. Brent followed his father. The bull was wandering up the road, what did Carlo call it, the long paddock?
‘What part of shut the gate don’t you understand?’
‘Sorry Dad.’
Darren began to trot after the bull. Brent lagged behind. Darren wasn’t quite sure if this was a wise thing to do, to chase after a bull of unknown temperament, but he could not arrive at his sisters, having not seen her for so long and say: ‘Sorry I’ve let your bull out the gate.’
What would Carlo say? Carlo would think, as he had always thought, that Darren was just another city idiot, about as bright as a pigeon pecking for crumbs in the city square.
Puffing now, Darren caught up with the bull, making sounds as if he was trying to reason with it.
‘Wait. Hold on. Wait up.’
The bull suddenly stopped in the middle of the road, tall grass growing up on the verge at either side. Giving it a wide berth Darren circled around it with the idea of herding it back towards the gate. The bull stared at him. No movement.
‘Go on. Shoo. Move.’
The bull stared. Darren waved his arms. He did not know the preferred method for getting a bull to move. He picked up a stone and threw it at the animal, hitting it square on the forehead with dull thud. The bull blinked. Darren picked up a bigger stone and threw that. It hit the bull on the shoulder. Suddenly the bull turned and snorted and began to trot back down the road.
‘Yah!’ Darren ran along behind it, and there in front of the great beast, the much smaller form of his son standing in the middle of the lane.
Everything happened quickly after that, yet at the same time everything slowed down. Seeing the animal coming Brent turned and ran. The bull, seeing nothing but a smaller, fleeing figure, gave chase. The lane was too narrow. All three of them were running at full pace down the road when the bull caught up with the boy, treading on his heel and sending him spinning. Brent tumbled beneath the hooves of the bull, which ran right over him, legs whirring, and kept going past the gate in the opposite direction. In a moment Darren was there, his son on the ground, gouts of blood pulsing from his mouth with every cough, his left foot twisted at entirely the wrong angle, his eye yellow with dust, staring up at Darren, pleading, too stunned to cry. In the distance, Mara, running down the track from the stationary car, her screams shrill and faint like some hysterical bird in a far off flaming tree, but coming, coming.
April 27, 2017 / mascara / 0 Comments
Laura McPhee-Browne is a writer and social worker from Melbourne, Australia. She is currently working on what she hopes will be her first book, ‘Cooee’, a collection of echo stories inspired by the short fiction of her favourite female writers.
Wet Towards the Waterfall
for Silvina Ocampo
We fell in love quickly, he and I. That was certainly my way, to dive in without testing the water with my toes, to sweep up the consequences, later murmuring, “well at least I lived”. For him I could sense that it was an abnormality; that he was in above his head, that he was used to taking months where we were taking hours. But there was never a question of stalling, of taking our time. We were mad, and it was a river washing over us, dragging us wet towards the waterfall.
We started looking for a house to live in within days. I was unhappy in my large, grimy share house and he was essentially homeless—spending his nights on his studio couch or at friends’ houses in attics or spare rooms trying not to snore. It suited us both to move in together. The first place we looked at, on Jaggery Lane, was perfect. We thought it was perfect anyway, and danced in the kitchen holding our hips in when the real estate agent left to answer her phone. It had natural light and a double bed on stilts, and was small like our sighs as they echoed in the night time.
It was only after we had moved in that I wondered who he was. I knew his name was Badi, and that Badi meant wonderful, marvellous, brave. I knew that he had skin the colour of my grandmother’s hessian couch, and that when I kissed it I could taste what I imagined to be a clean and hairless animal. I knew that he loved to paint, or that he wanted to love to paint, and that he spent most of his time looking at big books full of sad paintings of naked men and trees. I knew he slept sideways, diagonally across whatever bed we shared, and that he liked me to wrap myself around the parts of him that were immovable. I knew that he was tangible, and that around him I was seen. But I started to have dreams that he was reaching towards me with a small knife, planning to slice at my throat while I was sleeping.
I couldn’t tell Badi that my subconscious believed he was trying to harm me. I had started to feel in my belly that he was superstitious; in the way he stacked the dishes upside down and locked the door and opened it six times each day before he left the house. He told me too, on our seventh morning in our new home, that he was scared of most things and dubious of everything, and that I was the first thing he had ever touched that hadn’t deceived him.
I asked myself in bed, feeling the rhythm of his breath in my throat—how did we meet? I couldn’t quite remember. He told me when I asked that we had walked past each other and locked eyes, but I knew that I looked at the ground when I walked, to avoid destroying those tiny sprouts of grass that sometimes grew. He didn’t seem to care why I wondered, didn’t question why I couldn’t remember how it had begun. This made me scared, made me keep my eyes half awake even as I fell down the well into dreams, and I saw his hand holding a butter knife just above me over and over, though I knew it was only for protection.
In our seventh week together, our sixth week of living together and eating toast together and wiping the toothpaste from the edges of our mouths together with soft towels, we received a letter in the mail. Well I received it, for I had taken some time off from work to make sure I could sleep. The letter was enclosed in a small, cream-coloured envelope and written on crêpe paper with a pencil. It read,
To Veronica (for Veronica is my name),
Don’t you know that Badi without the I is just Bad?
From,
Someone who knows the consequences of seeping fear
After I read it, I left the letter on the kitchen table and went to the bathroom to sit on the toilet a while, with the lid down, feeling the cool plastic against the backs of my thighs. Who had sent me this letter? Who knew Badi better than me? What seeping fear did they refer to? I imagined it was Badi’s fear of everything: his terror at being watched when he was in public, his insistence that we check the gas stove and the iron over and over before leaving the house, the jumping at noises in bed at night that shook the very mattress. I felt a little sick in my stomach to know that someone was watching us, that our little life might be someone else’s game.
I began to have Badi followed. His routine was simple; get up hours after I had left, leave the house for his studio, leave the studio sometime later for home. All this told me was that he was ripe with boredom, for the detective followed my advice and watched him through a studio window one day, only to find that he lay on the couch in the corner for eight hours, not even flicking through a magazine or opening his eyes occasionally. Knowing that Badi was bored, was uninspired, did not quell my love for him. If anything, it made it grow fatter inside of me, for now I knew how much I was needed. But I was still scared, and every night would dream that Badi was somewhere in the room apart from beside me, often above me with a weapon. He always tried to kill me in my dreams.
One day I was at home from work, languishing in the bedroom, when the doorbell rang. I had never heard the doorbell. We never had visitors, and neither Badi or I had ever forgotten our key. I wondered who was out there, who would want to speak to me at such an hour, at any hour for that matter. It felt ominous, as everything did at that time. I pulled on my dressing gown (the need to impress or pretend that I was coping had left me) and answered the door, quickly, before I lost my nerve. Standing there on the nature strip was a young woman, a woman about the same age as I was at that time. She was beautiful but weary, with dark circles under her eyes and hair that had not known a brush in weeks. I was annoyed: she was too beautiful and too wan to be anything good, and I wanted her to go away.
I asked her what she wanted.
She continued to stand on the nature strip, staring straight ahead, not at me but through me, into the dwelling I shared with Badi.
“What do you want?” I heard my voice break on the end of the last word, as if I didn’t know myself what it was. This woman made me feel silly, I could already tell. I wished so strongly for her to leave that I could feel my fingernails breaking against the skin of my palms where they were wrapped up against them, my hands in fists ready to fight.
“Did you get my letter?”
The woman was looking at me now, not just to the side of me. Her eyes were a deep black-brown. I never usually noticed the colour of eyes but hers demanded attention.
“Yes,” I answered, wanting to ask her why she had sent it and what she had meant by it but stopping myself. I did not want her to know that she had scared me, for that had clearly been her aim.
She kept watching me, and lifted a hand to play slowly with the end of a piece of her dark, knotted hair. I wanted to pull at it, to break it off and stomp on it and make her disappear. Who was this woman to Badi? Why had he never told me about her?
“I meant what I wrote. You must listen to me. He is dangerous.”
“What do you mean?” I would not let her know that I was scared. Badi was the only thing I had.
“Badi! I know him. I know him better than you do and I want to warn you. I tried to warn you with the letter but I can see that you did not listen, that you are still living with him here in this tiny place where he can easily get you. I am telling you to leave, from one woman to another!”
Each word she spoke was faster and more urgent than the word before, so that at the end of this speech she was talking so quickly and so loudly that I was overwhelmed, and had to place my hand on the edge of the doorway to steady myself.
“I don’t want your letters, your warnings!” I stood back and saw the young woman’s face become sadness as I pulled the door shut upon her. I would try to smudge this finteraction in my memory; the letter too, and its insinuations. I could not be alone again. I needed Badi.
That night he did not come home. I waited in the softest armchair in the kitchen, pulling at threads on its arm until one whole elbow unravelled. I wasn’t hungry, but I strained some white beans in a colander and poured vinegar all over them, eating them one by one at the sink and letting the acetic acid bite the inside of my mouth. Badi did not have a phone; he did not like the idea of people tracking his calls and had no money to pay for a bill. I couldn’t call him, and I couldn’t leave the house to check his studio because I was scared and tired and unsure I could have him anymore. The young woman had been so beautiful, and so wild in a way I could never let myself be. I knew that he must still be in love with her, perhaps violently. I imagined them making love against the ladder going up to our bed in our little terrace house and I couldn’t banish the picture of their rubbing flesh from my mind.
At an hour past when I should have been sleeping, the doorbell rang again. It was a well known tune, and I hummed it as I walked towards the front door, feeling as if I might be floating, or that the floor had sunk and I had not descended with it. When I opened the door I saw standing there the young woman again, but this time she was crying, and in her hand was a leash that lead down to a small, black, topsy-turvy sort of a dog, with a thick pink tongue hanging from its mouth.
“Here, you take it then!” She yelled at me, thrusting the leash in my direction and turning to walk away down Jaggery Lane. I was utterly confused, and repelled by the small dog’s excitement.
“Wait!” I yelled back at her. She did not stop or look back. “Whose dog is this? I don’t want this dog!”
She turned around then; the terribly pretty woman with the hair like forest after fire.
“It’s his!”
Before I could reply, before I could even understand what she had said, she had turned back and started running, away from me down the narrow pavement towards the heated traffic of the main road that forked Jaggery Lane. Even the way she ran was beautiful, I remember thinking on the doorstep, with the black night air against my cheeks.
The dog was his. I believed her, despite Badi never mentioning a dog, or any other animal, or professing to owning anything at all since we had met. The idea of him was coming apart much quicker than I could believe. At least the beginning of his hands and his feet in my mind were fraying threads. The dog was whining and wagging and licking at my slippered feet and I wanted to drop the lead and leave it there on the concrete and not bother with its shaggy body, but I couldn’t do that. We went back inside the little terrace house together and I sat on the couch and the dog sat near my feet and looked up at me, so much hair in its eyes I could barely tell if they were trusting. I was tired, despite the excitement, and my eyes drooped as the dog panted and wagged and circled its body around the tiny living space filled with Badi’s scribbles on scraps of paper and my grubby bras and lipstick cups rusted with Milo. I let myself fall into sleep, and patted my lap for the little dog to join me.
The next morning was bright with sun and smelt of the little dog’s saliva. I woke with a start on the couch and saw that Badi had returned; I knew because he had left his boots near the door of the room and his jacket on the floor beside them. He must have seen me lying there and not woken me, even though he had been so late home. The thought was loneliness in my pelvis and stomach and groin, and a slickness in my throat.
I got up slowly; the little dog was still sleeping in a puddle on the floor at my feet and I did not wish to wake it. Fondness circled my heart for the creature, particularly now that Badi had begun to move out of my chest. I could hear movement coming from the kitchen and could smell bad vegetables, or lentils cooked too long, mixed with something young and sweet. Badi often prepared strange meals at odd hours, and I hoped he was not too busy chopping up a root or grinding inexplicable things into a paste to sit down and talk to me.
What to say? How to ask whether he was deceitful? Would a smile or a frown or a perfectly blank expression be the right way to approach him, this new version of Badi I was trying to understand? I gathered myself—,patting the dog hairs off my thighs and smoothing down my hair.
When I walked into the kitchen he had his back to me, and I did not think he knew yet that I was there. His back moved just slightly as he washed something in the sink, his shoulder blades flying like the wings of a slow bird. Anger shot out inside my torso as if sperm, or bile, and I wished him peace no more.
“Badi!”
He turned, slower than I wanted him to, and I could see that he was washing strawberries, though it wasn’t summer and he had never eaten them in my presence before.
“Darling,” he answered me, his eyes softening as he took in my rumpled body and my creased face.; as if he had not been out all night, as if he did not own a dog and had not had a girlfriend I had known nothing about. As if he was still mine.
“Where have you been Badi? Where have you been!”
My hands were shaking now, and I wanted to tell him what had happened and to sit down on the couch with him and cry, to have him kiss my head. I wished he was not the enemy now, as crossed lovers often do, but I could not pretend the wild beautiful woman and the little dog were not real.
“I told you darling. I stayed at the studio last night. To work on an idea that needs space and time.”
It was true that Badi needed space and time when he had an idea; something that had not happened since we had known each other but that he had told me about, and that I now remembered. But I did not remember him telling me that he would be gone, and I had the little dog to prove his lies.
“No you didn’t Badi! I waited hours last night for you.”
“Oh my darling,” he answered, and I could not look now at his eyes, for they were soft and warm and etched like always. All the words I had imagined saying to him and the hair of the wild young woman and the smell of the dog’s small body were swishing around in my head and down my neck into my chest and I couldn’t get them to stop. I held on to the top rung of a kitchen chair and felt almost dizzy.
“And a woman came to the door and gave me your dog. She wrote me a letter first, warning me about you! Then she came and gave me your dog, she didn’t explain it but it’s yours! It’s your dog, Badi! And she was your woman, too!”
I stopped myself there and took a breath, waiting for Badi to be angry, or shocked, or to feign confusion. My chest was heaving, and the dizziness lingered behind my cheeks. Badi stood there, the strawberries still in his dripping hands, and I could smell them and their fleshy sweetness. A pot bubbled on the stove but the strawberries were what I could smell and it occurred to me that he must have been bruising them slightly with his hands, so that the smell could really come out. He was shaking his head, and his brow was pushing his eyes almost closed. Then he spoke.
“What woman is this? I have no dog, no other woman. Darling, you must be mistaken.”
I turned and opened the door to the living room, calling out for the little dog.
“Pup! Pup! Little pup! Come in here!”
The little dog did not come.
I walked away from Badi into the living room but the little dog was not anywhere I could see. It must have got out somehow, into the hallway and perhaps into our bedroom, where it was probably snuggled up on the bed right now, its black hairs sticking to the unripe apricot-coloured blanket.
In the bedroom I could not find the little dog, or in the bathroom, the toilet or the sunroom the size of a tall coffin at the back. I could not understand it, and my head was starting to thump. Badi followed me around the house, as gently as a sparrow below a table covered with crumbs. I turned around in the sun room, empty of sun and colder than it had ever been before and saw that he was crying.
“It was here. She brought it here. I am not lying.”
As we stood together in the little death room I started to shiver, and Badi came towards me with his wet face and wrapped his brown arms around my body.
“There’s no woman. No dog. You’re ill,” he said, his pupils big and black and fearful. He moved his hands to my shoulders to hold me still. I felt ill, now, all of a sudden. As if I needed to lie in bed for days, with a strange version of the flu.
“It’s okay,” Badi told me. “You’ll be okay.”
I could see the young woman with her wild snake hair behind my eyes. She might never go away, but I was safe, for now, and the little dog was safe too—no longer with her or me, but somewhere beyond us both. I didn’t have many options, I had always known that. But I still had Badi. Now he reminded me with his hot breath on my neck, his warm hands closing along my spine.
April 15, 2017 / mascara / 0 Comments
Hasti Abbasi holds a BA and an MA in English Literature. She recently submitted her PhD thesis on Dislocation and Remaking Identity in Australian and Persian Contemporary Fictions. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Antipodes, Southerly, Verity La, AAWP, and Bareknuckle Poet Journal of Letters, amongst others.
Sinking Ship
A woman as thin as a shoelace is standing next to a tripod aluminum tripod easel. On which “Iranian Film Club” is engraved. “Hi, welcome,” she smiles. “Hi, thanks,” I say. The door in the southeast corner of the hall leads to a big room. A flat-screen TV is mounted on the wall. There are a few people standing around a table, each holding a mug of tea.
A robustly handsome, black-haired man scratches his nose, approaching us. “Hi, I’m Shahab, I usually manage the group discussions after we watch the selected movie. Welcome to our club.” Going by the wrinkles on his forehead, he is at least forty.
“Hi, I’m Celin, and this is my husband, Saeed.”
“Welcome to our club,” he says as the corner of his mouth quirks upward, creating a dimple.
Shahab explains to us, considerately, that there are both tea and coffee making facilities in the kitchen area.
“I’ll grab a mug of tea; would you like one?” Saeed asks me, looking quite sheepish.
“No, thanks.”
Everybody takes a seat. I take the middle seat in the second row, next to a beautiful girl. Her white jacket is appropriate for the cool night air. “Hi, I’m Sara,” she says. “Hi, I’m Celin.”
She appears to be in her late twenties, a decade or so younger than me. “Which city of Iran do you come from?” she asks.
“Karaj.”
“Lovely. I love your skirt—red’s my favourite colour,” she says. I feel sexy and confident. “Which flight did you take? Emirates or Etihad?”
A pounding in my head starts on the left side and goes up to the top and down the bottom, and very quickly I feel my heartbeat in my neck. Emirates or Etihad? Which one is better? These people have all gotten on and off planes.
“I’m a gynaecologist. What do you do?” is her next question.
“OK dear friends, let’s play the movie. I hope you will all enjoy it,” Shahab says.
Somebody turns off the lights.
What a relief.
Runner. That is the name of the movie. The setting is Abadan, an Iranian port city. My whole body misses this flat salty plain, its sandy and dust storms, and grimy railroad stations. My hometown.
A young boy is enthusiastically shouting and waving at an oil tanker that is disappearing slowly through the mist.
The day I told Mum about our plans, she sat down on the steps silently, flashing me a wan smile as she struggled to keep in her tears. “The sea is bottomless; you will regret what you are sewing when the storms rage.”
The movie is about how a young boy, Amiro, sees the world. In his struggle to survive the adult word, he collects floating bottles from the harbor, and sells cold water. A man on a bicycle rides away without paying for the water, making Amiro run after him for a long time. Why should a young boy fight so persistently for what is rightfully his? Does he know that he is deprived of the most basic rights? Just having the desire to fight is what matters to him, the desire we killed in our son the day we chose the apparently simplest way to fight for our rights.
I feel uncomfortable. I wish I could stop the movie or at least leave the room, but I might distract others if I walk past them. I slowly lean back in my chair and shut my eyes tightly. I will not watch the rest; neither will I think about anything.
I realize the movie is finished when the audience breaks into thunderous applause.
The gynaecologist turns to me, probably to ask further questions. I quickly get up and walk towards the table. A number of curious eyes stare at me as I stretch out my hand for a small biscuit.
A woman with an impressively high forehead approaches us. “Hi, I’m Kimia.”
After realizing that we are new to Brisbane, Kimia smiles and says, “I’ve been in Australia for twenty years. I’m a graphic designer, but I used to be an electrical engineer.” She adds that Iranians living in Brisbane are kind and welcoming, always ready to provide information and support. We, as new immigrants who may have a lot of struggles in the beginning, can ask for their support. “Any time,” she declares.
I shove a hank of my dark hair out of my face. “Thanks.”
People sit in a circle: Nine men, six women.
“OK, friends. Thank you for your attendance. It’s always more enjoyable for me to watch a movie with you all. So, what did you think of the movie?” Shahab asks, “Let’s start with Maryam.”
Maryam did not like the story. That is all she says sternly. Her pullover sweater and striped pants look good on her slim figure.
“I believe the director is expressing his dissatisfaction with the structure of the society, the rich and poor condition of Abadan,” a clean-shaven man says.
They are all talking; one after the other, each giving an example of the new wave in their defence of why they think this movie is a personal and biographical reflection of the director’s childhood rather than a pessimistic representation of Abadan.
“Do you have any idea, Celin?” Shahab asks me.
“No.” I say, waving my hand self-consciously.
I never let the slightest ray of intelligence get in the way of my stupidity. I think an IQ test would come back negative if I did it.
“Give your mind a rest,” Saeed whispers in my ear a few minutes later. I am happy I did not let another child have him as his father.
After they finish discussing the movie, we say goodbye to them, and walk out and down the street towards our car in a swelling silence.
Saeed seems to be concentrating on something. Time for his introvert party. Keep thinking; you’ll come up with a silly question soon. “Were you shy or something?” There you go.
“Why?” I ask, as I get in the car.
“You didn’t say anything when they asked for your opinion.”
“Don’t know,” I say, looking out at a fat, gray-haired pedestrian with a jacket slung over his shoulder. He presses the crosswalk button.
Yes, I was shy. I was embarrassed to sit in a movie club freely while my brother is developing suicidal thoughts.
When we arrive home, I take off my clothes and lie down on the couch. Five minutes later, the door opens and Armin comes in, his mobile in one hand and a Domino’s pizza in the other. As usual, he is wearing his ripped grey jeans and a plain white t-shirt. I explain to him that we have Fesenjan for dinner and he replies with a cold “I don’t like Fesenjan.”
“I’m thinking of going swimming tomorrow,” Saeed addresses Armin. “Would you like to join me?”
Armin does not favor his Dad with a reply; instead, he pulls a long string of gum out of his mouth.
The lunch dishes are still piled up by the sink. I wish we had a dishwasher.
“Mum?” Armin calls me.
“Yes?”
“I like your hair. Have you had it cut?”
“Yes, thanks,” I say, as I fill the sink with soapy water.
“I wish you were dead,” Armin had said, looking me dead in the eye when they were taking me to the Nauru hospital. “It definitely is the best way to stop carrying the responsibility of making us more miserable than before.”
Do it again; throw yourself under a car, he whispers in my mind. At least I think it is a he. I mean the ghost who follows me everywhere I go.
I sponge the dishes and rinse them with hot water, heat up the Fesenjan, and set the table.
“My armpits smell so bad recently,” Saeed says as he comes out of the bathroom.
“It’s time you stop having garlic and onion in every meal you eat,” Armin says, with a grin. He takes the pizza out of the microwave. He usually has pizza, fries and soda for dinner.
“I will, and it would be great if you stop eating junk food.”
Armin sits at the table.
“Did you get your tablets?” Saeed asks me, scratching his head in confusion.
What’s your confusion about? You little man. Why didn’t you ask me on our way home?
“Yes,” I say.
He screws up his face in a concentration.
“How much did you pay?”
Damn you.
Armin squirts ketchup all over the pizza.
“Forty dollars.”
“What about the rest?”
“They will deduct twenty dollars from my account next month.”
He likes the fact that stupidity is not a crime.
Armin’s lips twist into a satirical smile.
“How’s school going?” I ask.
“The same,” is his response.
How did your meeting with the social worker go today? Did she talk to the principal about the money you are supposed to pay for the textbooks? I desperately want to know.
“Try some Fesenjan,” I smile a quick smile, “you’ll love it.” He gives a mock shudder. “I’m fine, thanks.”
Saeed drops a ladle filled with Fesenjan into his plate. “This is the best Fesenjan I’ve ever had.”
I will call the social worker tomorrow and ask her about the meeting.
Armin makes himself a coffee. “Good night,” he says, stirring his spoon in slow circular motions.
Give me a kiss. “Sleep well,” I whisper.
Armin bestows upon me a kind and generous smile and goes to his bedroom.
Saeed washes the dishes. I take my allocated four pills and go to bed, recalling the night when two officers held my arms, dragging me into a room.
Why are you sleeping? Your brother is so cold he probably can’t breathe, the ghost softly whispers to me.
My brother is subject to twenty-four-hour observation by guards in a camp where the only thing people encounter every day is never-ending insecurity and uncertainty about every moment of their lives.
I moan and grunt and push him away as hard as I can. “Go away.”
I close my eyes and visualize the brutality of the sea and the slap of water on the rocks. Armin is standing on the edge of the boat, gazing out to sea, tall and thin. Saeed is standing above, holding something in his hands. He follows my eyes, discovering my concern. “Armin! Be careful,” he says loudly. Armin turns around and looks straight through me. He walks towards me. “You’ll be fine, Mum, we’ll be there soon.” He takes my hand, and kisses me on my forehead with quivering lips.
In the distance, I hear the shrill of an ambulance. I open my eyes, smelling the insulting sea and its hostile moving water. The ghost appears again: you don’t deserve to be alive.
“Leave me alone,” I plead. He seems to be expecting a response from me. “It was your fault my baby died. You made me take twenty Panadols. Go away, you bastard.” I say, feeling like I am drifting back to the sea.
Sorry about your loss. Sometimes death happens the same way life just happens. But soon you’ll be able to spend some good time with your baby in the other world, he says.
“How do you think I should do it?”
Cut your vein.
“Now?”
Are you silly? You don’t want Armin and Saeed to see you do it, do you? Wait for tomorrow when they both go out.
Saeed opens the door. The ghost disappears. “Talk to you later,” I murmur in my mind.
“It’s your Mum,” Saeed says, handing me my phone.
“Hello, Mum.”
“Hi my beautiful daughter, how are you? How are Armin and Saeed?”
“We’re all fine, thanks. How are you? Is Dad OK?”
I can hardly hear her. She’s in a noisy place.
“Yes, he’s fine. Have you talked to Kamran? I’m so worried about him.”
“Yes, I talked to him in the morning, he’s doing great,” I lie.
“If only I could hug you and Kamran once more, I wouldn’t ask for anything from God. It’s all I want before I die. Is there any news about when they might send him to community detention?” she asks on the other end of the line, thousands of miles away from me. The woman who held me in her womb for nine months and did her best to raise educated children is now wishing for a simple hug. Just a hug. I hate myself.
She is crying. She has been crying every day for four years. Yes, he’s joining us tomorrow. I’ll make him Ghorme Sabzi, his favourite food. I will protect him forever. I wish these were the things I would tell her. “No news yet, but I’m sure he’s fine and will join us soon.”
“Inshalla. Inshalla.”
Armin is screaming. The phone flies out of my hand as I run towards his room.
He is sitting on the edge of the bed, burying his face in his hands.
“Did you have a nightmare?” Saeed asks as he hands Armin a glass of water.
Armin is stunned. Truly traumatized. I do not know what to do, where to look. “What were you dreaming?” I ask.
“The same dream,” Armin says, locking his hands behind his neck.
“You’re fine now. We’re here,” Saeed says.
I am on the verge of tears. I leave the room.
“Is he asleep?” I ask Saeed when he comes out about ten minutes later.
You shouldn’t have left the room, his look says. “He’ll be fine. Don’t worry. Wash your face and stop crying. Please,” he says, putting a reassuring arm around my shoulder.
“You sleep; I’ll watch a movie first.”
I want to know what happens to the hero of the movie, Amiro. I play the movie. His friends ask him to play football with them. He gives them a wonderful smile. One of the most impressive ones I have ever seen. He is crying because his only friend departs to work on a ship.
“I did not know I was pregnant,” is what I keep telling my social worker. But the truth is that the baby would need a predictable and safe environment, a dream world I never thought possible. That is why I took the pills.
I stop the movie, and get up to look through Armin’s bedroom’s half-open door to make sure he is asleep.
I turn back at my mobile’s message tone.
“Hi, this is Shima. We met in Nauru detention. How are you? Are you awake?”
Oh my God. There is definitely something wrong with my brother. Why else would somebody I don’t even remember message me from Nauru? My head twitches. Saeed, I want to shout. I can’t. I have a knot in my throat.
I call back the number with a feeling of constriction in my chest.
It rings. My heart is being grabbed and squeezed. Nobody answers. I call again. No answer. I want to walk towards our bedroom, but my legs feel weird. I feel like water is running over my feet. “Saeed, Saeed,” I whisper. I open the door to find Saeed faced down naked with his hands flat, next to his shoulders, with only a tiny towel slung on his hips. I hear the running tide and the call of the sea. A sea of blood. “Saeed, Saeed.” Saeed opens his eyes. “Are you OK?”
“Read this message.”
Saeed reads the message, looks at me, reads it again. “So what?” he asks, sounding confused.
“There must be something wrong with my brother. I haven’t talked to him in the last three days.”
“Calm down,” Saeed says, dialing a number on his mobile. “Hello, Yes, this is Saeed. Listen, Celin is very worried about Kamran. Do you have any news about him?”
Saeed lowers his eyes from me, a worried expression creasing his forehead.
What has happened Saeed? Please place the phone on speaker, what’s he saying? Damn you, say something.
“What is it?”
Saeed doesn’t raise his head. “OK,” he pauses, as if to reflect. “Yes, yes.” He ends the call.
“Is Kamran OK?”
“He’ll be fine,” he says, nodding.
“What do you mean he’ll be fine? What’s happened? Has he hurt himself?”
Saeed’s mouth is moving around frantically. For what seems like hours, I can hear nothing but the sound of my teeth being pressed together. The indignity and the most embarrassing moments of my journey all march in front of me, one after another, like a series of flashcards. The wave is about to capsize our boat, and take it down. Armin falls off the boat. He is floating on the sea. People are shouting. Kamran dives into the water and pulls him out. He turns Armin’s head to the side and then back to the center, breathes into his mouth. He then checks his pulse in the deafening silence that follows. Everybody is staring at Kamran. Afraid, shocked, upset. “He’s alive,” Kamran smiles and then cries his longest, loudest cry.
I open my eyes to the sound of Saeed. “Kamran will be fine,” he says, breathing hard. Saeed lets out a sigh and removes a half-smoked and dead cigar from his mouth.
August 20, 2016 / mascara / 0 Comments
Teya Brooks Pribac is a vegan and animal advocate, working between Australia and Europe. She engages in various verbal and visual art forms as a hobbyist. She’s currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Sydney researching animal grief. She lives in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales with other animals.
CRAZY ANIMALADIES
I.
When I first met her I didn’t realise she was a crazy animalady.
She moved light and carefree among her books ranging from poetry to geophysics.
Sometimes out of the blue she’d say something in one of the many languages she mastered,
not to prove anything to anyone, just because she felt like it.
Dancing to the notes of Mozart or some gentle Blues, depending on the mood,
every night she’d carefully arrange the silver on the dining table, always inclusive of a dessertspoon even when she’d not had time to make dessert.
But when it rained… ah! when it rained, the raindrops touching her skin softly, her bare body
fully exposed, were the music.
‘Feral,’ she’d say turning to the sky with her arms open, ‘we need to go feral, learn to live
like other animals again, nothing else will save them.’
And she meant it.
II.
At the time I’d only just begun to enter the space she’d already inhabited for a while.
It seemed odd for a seasoned vegan like myself, but I’d only gradually become aware of the full extent of human disgrace.
Charlie Dog, seeing my confusion:
‘Equality is not something other animals need to prove to you, it’s something you have to allow us to express,’ he spoke.
‘You spoke!’
‘Yes, I often do, but you don’t listen.’
‘Just because it makes it all the much harder to bear it doesn’t mean it’s not there.’
‘What?’
‘Other animals’ desire for the freedoms you humans cherish for yourselves. The utilitarian philosophy of the Takers, the biblical parsimony of their views, it may allow us the capacity for physical pain but not much more than that.
You’re still one of them.’
The ancestral beat alive and well in his bones and heart.
A human slave but not a human artefact (as hard as humans have tried).
You can lead a human to knowledge but you can’t make them think.
Forget the naked Derrida, this was life-changing.
‘I am sorry,’ I said, feeling inadequate.
III.
Hand in paw, the road to reparation was going to be long.
We moved to a larger property, a decision agreed upon by all the parties involved.
That’s where species truly met.
But that, too, took a while.
Advertised as a vacant property, the place of course was nothing of that kind.
At first, it felt like a ghost-town.
That creepy feeling of being watched but unable to work out whom, or even where, the gaze was coming from.
Come out echoed back to me as Go away!
‘Never trust humans,’ I heard them whisper, ‘particularly when they invade your home and look like they’ve come to stay.’
Charlie shrugged his shoulders, seemingly untouched.
‘Stop it, Charlie. We’re trying really hard.’
IV.
How do we un-take what we’ve already taken just by being here?
Can we ever learn to fit in, not as voyeurs (as humans often do), as participants? Can we give back and give back more?
It was the arrival of the sheep that helped it happen.
Rescued from a situation of neglect, the sheep too were wary of humans.
But aware that, by necessity, our lives would from that point on be intertwined, they chose to offer us a chance.
And others followed, the ghosts incarnated as
ducks, rabbits, possums, rats, magpies, kookaburras, and other peoples.
They made friends with the sheep first – at night, dreaming under the same moon, billions of stars, during the day, soaking in the warmth of the sun, sharing fruits and grass – and through the sheep, slowly, cautiously, they made friends also with us.
V.
If dogs could do with more freedom and respect, what to say of sheep?
The worst forms of violence escape the gaze.
What do you do when a sheep comes up to the gate to nudge your hand?
The postman looked at me, smiling sweetly, his pickup line:
‘Is IT of the tasty kind?’
Touched by the devil, I showered for hours that night.
‘What did he mean, mum?’
‘Nothing dear, but stay away from the gate, not all humans are nice.’
My darling baby boy who’s known no harm since he came here, only love.
I spent six months in the paddock with him, rain or shine, providing a secure base while we were learning from the adults how to be a sheep.
What is it like to be a sheep?
Or a pig, a chicken, a cow
The armchairist’s quest.
Reach out. What’s in a name?
When the heart pounds with fear or joy, we’re all the same.
VI.
When I first met the animalady in person after years of long-distance daily correspondence she felt like home.
We’d been putting the visit off fully aware of the vices of human nature.
It can turn a puppy or a precious lamb into a mechanistic tool for its own convenience. It can do the same with another human, and there are limits to what one may want to risk.
Her skin smelled of rain; her feet, caressed by the earth just moments before, still warm, now resting comfortably in my lap.
How do you touch and not take?
Setting the table, however, was easy.
VII.
‘The Wheel,’ says my husband,
‘when the Wheel leaves you, relationships start breathing again.’
He is also a crazy animalady with a Jungian twist.
He started off as a feminist, but that didn’t go down well.
He was ridiculed by women and called a cunt-licking something by men.
Those were hard times, unlike today when anyone can be an animal rights hero as long as they purchase free range.
Of course, unlike women, animals don’t get a say.
I hold his head in my hands in an act of mateship (what is it with gender fluid people, do we know double the truth or only half of it?)
‘The world is harsh and self-righteous,’ brushing the dust off his wings.
They tried to break them, but he deserted.
‘Men or women, same seed of deception.
So strong, so strong, it must come from weakness. Miroslav Holub.’
He smiles at my political incorrectness.
I smile back knowing he agrees.
Sheep, gathered around us.
Charlie licking Henry’s ear.
The duck pair with their nine children under the cherry tree.
Peter Feral Rabbit settling in for his afternoon nap beside them.
They are safe here.
But it’s a war.
Relentless.
Never-ending.
VIII.
In April, when we visit the animalady again, the hunting season will just have started.
They hang out on the edges of her property waiting for her family to step onto public land
so they can kill them just because
they can.
The smell of neighbours lighting up the BBQ – a chilling breeze in a warm summer night.
‘When we touch, malaika, do we leave a mark?’
‘I believe so.’
‘What if we don’t?’
‘Let this then be a curse upon them:
Let them continue to be
self-exiled from the earthly heaven.
Let them never find
such a garden within themselves.
Let there at least be poetic justice.
Let them never understand such
fury, such sadness as this.’
- This work featured in the exhibition Animaladies, Interlude Gallery, Glebe, 11-22 July 2016.
June 26, 2016 / mascara / 0 Comments
Meera Atkinson is a Sydney-based writer, poet and scholar. Her work has appeared in over sixty publications, including Best Australian Stories 2007, Best Australian Poems 2010, and Griffith REVIEW. Meera has a PhD from the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University and is co-editor of Traumatic Affect (2013), an international volume of academic essays exploring the nexus of trauma and affect.
Souvenir
It was a late winter night; the kind that feels like spring will never come. Around the corner from the choked neon artery of Kings Cross a decrepit Persian cat with knotted fur sat at an upstairs window of an Art Deco building. The cat leapt off the ledge, sauntered into the kitchen, and rubbed its arthritic hips against the frail stockinged legs of an old woman who was finishing a meal of fried fish fingers.
Peggy stood and rinsed the plate under the cold tap before laying it face down on the aluminium sink. The flat was dark, except for a bald bulb illuminating the kitchen. It was tidy enough, but nothing was clean; a film of dust and grime covered the surfaces and the air had a musty scent to it, as if the windows had long been closed. Everything gave off Peggy’s peculiar smell: cheap perfume and stale make-up mixed with that strange salty stench of aged, unwashed skin.
Over the years, the cat had scratched the stuffing out of the arms of the sofa, and the floral carpet had worn threadbare in heavy-trafficked patches. The furnishings dated from the wake of WWII when an eighteen-year-old Peggy first moved in with her husband, a returned soldier. Oh, the Cross had seemed so grand then, with life ahead of them, all promise and plans. But gradually the neighbourhood changed around the distinguished old building, morphing into a sleek and moneyed enclave of stock brokers and publicists, its glamorous heyday and bohemian history alive only in the memory of the few left to recall it. The sleaze, sex, suburban punters and die-hard junkies persisted like dwindling life forms circling a dying star.
Peggy made her way to the bedroom and sat at her dresser. She powered a pale mask onto her face, and the particles made craters of her pores. When she considered herself in the mirror, under the stark glow of the overhead light, Peggy still saw herself as she was at forty, the decade of her prime. Back then she was the owner of a prosperous photographic business, respected by the community, welcomed everywhere, finally happy and free. Her husband, an immature young man when they married, had grown into a brutish bore far removed from the swaggering digger she waited for, and on her fortieth birthday he was five years in his grave. Satisfied, Peggy applied her lipstick and, standing, smoothed down her skirt. With some effort she tottered down the hall. A camera rested on a side table in the hallway, obscuring a framed photograph of a girl with a strawberry blonde ponytail. Peggy picked up the camera, hung it around her neck on its leather strap, and closed the door behind her leaving the cat staring dully at the door.
Emerging from the wrought iron gates at the entrance of the building, Peggy adjusted her wig, a silvery blonde bouffant, as the gate swung closed behind her. Once a glamorous faux-hairdo, its original glory had given way to gravity; the wig had lost its shape, and it was lacklustre and matted. Peggy was one of those elderly women whose years are impossible to guess. She had a kindly face that had once been pretty and her still generous lips were coloured with wonky red lipstick. She wore only black and white: a no longer so white shirt, a knee length black skirt that had seen better days, and sensible yet stylish black shoes that were worn down at the heels and scuffed at the toe. She was coatless and seemed impervious to the cold. The huge old Polaroid camera hung like a relic around her neck, pulling her already burdened shoulders down further.
Jasmine, a transgender working girl,leant against the wall in her usual spot, smiling warmly at Peggy as she stepped out into the night.
“Evening Peg”, hollered Jasmine in a singsong tone.
“Good evening”, replied Peggy with a sweet smile as she passed by.
Jasmine called out.
“You have a good night hey! ”
Peggy reached the glittering main drag and weaved through the crowds with a fragile sure-footedness and an intimate knowledge of the curves and crannies of the streets that eluded the tourists and revellers. She disappeared into restaurant after restaurant and promptly appeared again. She made her way down The Strip, venturing off into the laneways that shot off it. She walked in and out of doors, in and out, until at last the corns and calluses on her feet complained. The largest, on her big toe, was threatening to become ulcerous, and the pain of it forced her to return to the flat without a penny earned.
The following Saturday night Peggy went through the same ritual once again: first the fish fingers, then the powdering of her face, the drawing of dubious eyebrows, the rubbing in of out of date anti-biotic cream on the corns, the careful covering the area with bandage and stockings, the dressing in linty black and sullied white, before setting out again, her collapsing wig set high on her head, her lips in the trademark red. She turned into the first backstreet and entered a small, upmarket restaurant. A clean-cut waiter spied her and moved forward in a swift motion stopping her in her tracks: “You know I can’t let you in. Owners orders.”
Peggy’s eyes flicked up to meet his briefly before she turned and left, the camera hanging heavy around her neck. She seemed unaffected, oblivious to the humiliation; a small, half-mad smile set on her face, her eyes deep set and distant as if focussed on another dimension. She walked further down the street, entering the colourful doorway of a busy Thai restaurant. At first she seemed to go unnoticed but as she approached a young corporate looking couple eating spring rolls at a cosy corner table a tiny Asian woman materialised and spoke in clipped accented English: “No, you go please. Customer don’t like.” Peggy turned and left, once again seeming to float above her expulsion.
She continued down The Strip, and when she reached the intersection of William Street she crossed over into Victoria Road, walking with the famous Coke sign blinking behind and above her. Peggy passed by a noisy café with a NO HAWKERS sign before entering the loud, bustling restaurant beside it. The staff didn’t seem to mind; the owner, Johann, a benevolent old German, considered her a local institution and didn’t have the heart to refuse her.
Years ago, when Peggy had first wandered into the place, it had wider aisles, fewer tables, and it was not peopled by garish groups of well-to-do trend-makers swilling wine. Then a good night at The Bavarian meant a few immigrants and truck drivers, and perhaps a table of scruffy young people wearing torn jeans, eating cheap in the homely room. It was not the kind of restaurant she serviced back in those days, and she only bothered with it on slow nights, and not so much to work as to take the opportunity for a coffee break and a chat with Johann. Over the decades, the classy restaurants that were once her stock in trade had disappeared one by one and business at The Bavarian had picked up, attracting the professional class who flocked to eat its hearty fare, streaming from renovated Paddington terraces and slick Surry Hills penthouses and the new high rise luxury apartment buildings of Darlinghurst to enjoy the novelty of working class fare: homemade sausage, stew, schnitzel, hash browns and slaw. Paradoxically, it was the only place left in the Cross that welcomed her.
A waiter in lederhosen stood impatiently beside a table, order pad in hand, while a young couple deliberated over dessert. Finally, the young woman flicked her red hair, closed the menu and announced her decision. The waiter moved off. Peggy snaked along a clear passage surveying the diners. Her melancholic-mad eyes settled on a table where two middle-aged women ate their meals and talked soberly. One of the women saw Peggy’s approach from the corner of her eye and, visibly annoyed at the intended interruption, held up a hand before Peggy could speak: “No photos thank you.”
Peggy crossed to another table where an older couple considered their menus. The woman looked up at Peggy and quickly turned back to the menu. Peggy addressed the man: “Would you like a souvenir photo, Sir?” He forced a quick smile and avoided eye contact: “Not tonight thank you.” The young woman with red hair watched as Peggy made her way toward them. She leaned forward and whispered to her boyfriend. “There’s an old woman coming. I think she’s going to ask us to have our photo taken. It’s so sad. Everyone’s turning her down.” Her voice trailed off as Peggy appeared smiling her inexplicable smile. “Would you like a souvenir photo?” asked Peggy, cheerily. The young woman looked up at her and noticed, with a sharp stab of pity, that this inspired hope in Peggy’s tired blue eyes. Peggy spoke again. “A souvenir photo to remember the occasion?” The young woman glanced at her boyfriend awkwardly and looked around the room to see if anyone was watching. “Okay”, she said, in a small embarrassed voice.
Peggy sprang into action and positioned the camera. She viewed the pose in the frame: the young woman’s stiff, uncomfortable smile, the young man’s exaggerated, indulgent grin, his shot glance toward the young woman, humouring his girl. The flash went off. The Polaroid developed up from the white plastic like magic. Peggy waved it in the air and blew on it, then handed it to the young woman who stared at the photo. The paper was damaged with a crease at the corner, and it had a bad colour, making her and her boyfriend look sallow and dark under the eyes. The young woman feigned satisfaction. “Thank you. How much?”, she asked. “Twenty dollars please”, replied Peggy.
The young man’s eyes widened, and he pulled a face in the direction of his girlfriend as he reached for his wallet, plucked out a twenty, and gave it to Peggy. As Peggy moved off his outraged whisper could be heard by the dinners at the next table, but not by Peggy, whose hearing wasn’t what it used to be: “Twenty bucks?!”
Peggy moved to a table where a bespectacled man was in intense debate with two female companions. “Would you like a souvenir photo?” Peggy asked the clever looking gentleman. They turned to acknowledge her with indifference. The man nodded no and resumed his discussion.
Her feet ached and, with the mere twenty dollars in hand, Peggy walked back to her flat. When she opened the door, the cat meowed and rubbed around her throbbing, varicosed legs. Peggy put the camera down on the side table and kicked off her shoes. Her corn had rubbed red again under the bandage. She picked up the cat and sat down on the sofa, stroking its lustreless fur in the dark.
The next Saturday night Peggy ate her fish fingers, made her face up, and walked down The Strip, darting in and out of cafes and restaurants, the crooked, beatific smile fixed on her face. When she reached the The Bavarian, she was once again tolerated by the staff and shooed away by the diners. Peggy was just about to leave when she noticed a rowdy table where a group of friends were held to ransom by their life-of-the-party pal, seemingly at the tail end of an animated story. Peggy made her way over and waited for him to finish before speaking. “Would you like a souvenir photo, something to remember the occasion?” A girl in the party promptly answered: “No, thank you.” The storyteller, drunk and bloated, interjected. “Oh, come on!” He turned to Peggy: “Sure, we’ll get a picture.”“Dave!” protested the girl.
Peggy stood back with her camera. “Can you squeeze in together please?” She made a waving gesture. The group squeezed together. Peggy framed the pose: Dave smiled cheesily with his arms stretched around the women either side of him. One fellow held up his drink, a woman smiled into the camera sarcastically, and the girl who’d first said no turned to Dave with a why-are-you-letting-her-take-our-photo sneer. The flash went off. The Polaroid developed and Peggy passed it to Dave. The paper was not creased this time but there was still the bad colour and the top of Dave’s head was cut off.
“Twenty dollars thank you”, said Peggy, sweetly.
Dave pulled out a twenty and handed it to her and the group closed in to look at the photo. A roar of laughter erupted from the table as Peggy departed, which even her failing ears caught. A voice cut through the din.
“Hey, Dave’s had a lobotomy.”
“About time”, said the girl who’d said no.
“Check out the look on Zoe’s face”, observed another.
On her way home Peggy’s feet hurt so bad that she sat down to rest on the edge of the El Alamein fountain. She watched the street, staring blankly into the night, watching the ghosts of yesteryear. A car pulled up in front of her. Jasmine climbed out and walked toward Peggy in high heels. She sat down, crossed her long, muscular legs, and rummaged around in her purse for a cigarette. “Good thinking Peg. Time for a break.” Jasmine lit the cigarette and exhaled with a dramatic sigh. “You live alone in that nice old building, don’t you?” asked Jasmine. Peggy nodded. “No family?” Peggy nodded again. “I had a husband once but he died, a long time ago”, said Peggy. “I had a daughter. She passed too”. Jasmine sounded a small apologetic “oh”. “It’s not right for a child to die before a parent is it?” She looked briefly at Peg’s profile, took another drag of her cigarette and blew the smoke out in a straight line in front of her. “You don’t work these dirty streets unless you got a story eh? Ah well, they’re cleaning it up so much there won’t be anyone with stories left soon.”
Peggy’s mind drifted back to a time when going out to a restaurant on a Saturday night was special, when a woman would wear her finest dress and a man would wear his best suit and they would be greeted at the door by a bow-tied maitre’d and shown to an elegantly set table. And when Peggy approached them and offered to take a photograph almost everyone would jump at the chance to take a memento of good times home to show the family, a keepsake of happiness, to put in a frame on the mantel, or to give pride of place to in a photo album. Cheerful diners, in couples or groups, would pose, the women handsome with set-hair and pearls and the men slick and clean-shaven. Peggy spoke in a daze, as if talking to herself.
“It was wonderful then. People dressed up so nice for dinner. I took photos in every club and restaurant in the Cross. One Saturday night I took sixty photos!”
Peggy adjusted her wig, which was slipping, and continued.
“Back in those days everyone wanted a souvenir because the night was special, see. It’s not like that any more.”
“Nah”, said Jasmine, butting her cigarette out, “it’s all selfies and piss-ups these days, isn’t it?”
Jasmine stood up with a sigh.
“Better get back to the salt mines”, she said, laughing at her own joke.
Peggy stood and wavered slightly on her ulcerated foot. Jasmine grabbed Peggy’s arm and together they crossed the road. “Good night”, said Peggy, when they reached the other side, leaving Jasmine to take her position against the wall.
Peggy took the elevator up to the top floor and the cables creaked as the lift rose. She lay her camera down on the side table along with the $20. It wasn’t much, but it all helped. Peggy switched on the radio, poured herself a port, and sat down on the faded reproduction Louis XIV chair in the dim living room. She sipped her drink and tapped a cigarette out the pack, humming along to a jazz standard, a song she’d loved when she was a girl. Tommy Dorsey came on next and Peggy rose unsteadily, sore corn and all, and began dancing, slowly, around the room, port in hand. When the song ended Peggy stopped and stood looking through the window at the skeletons of trees.
The following Saturday night Peggy left her building with the camera around her neck. As she set off she saw Jasmine bent down to a car window. Peggy walked up The Strip, past an arguing tattooed couple and the bikers who still loitered around their motorcycles. She played out the same routine, weathering a string of ejections before taking refuge in The Bavarian on Victoria Street. As she entered the familiar clamour, the waiter looked up at her with a tense grimace. A waitress passed with plates in hand and glanced at Peggy with a regretful twist to her smile. A man Peggy had never seen before stood behind the counter. The headwaiter approached her and spoke in a low, sympathetic tone.
“I’m very sorry. We’ve got a new owner. He has a policy.”
Peggy stood with no perceptible response. He continued.
“You can’t take photos here any more. I’m very sorry.”
Peggy walked back down The Strip with throbbing feet. She rounded the corner into Potts Point, passing Jasmine’s empty spot. She entered her building, took the lift up, opened her door, and placed her camera on the side table. She moved into the kitchen and poured her nightly shot of port. The cat rubbed against her shin and purred. Peggy took the drink into her bedroom, and when she switched the light on the room illumed, revealing her bed with its frilled, stained mauve bedspread and dusty lady porcelain boudoir lamps on the bedside tables.
Peggy took a seat at the dresser and put her drink down next to the scattered make-up. She removed her wig, placing it on a battered Styrofoam wig head, and opened a jar of cold cream, spreading it onto her face and removing it with tissues. She sat staring at her bare, wrinkled face in the mirror until the cat jumped up onto the dresser, weaving before her, all croaky chirrups, all love.
June 26, 2016 / mascara / 0 Comments
Martin Kovan completed graduate studies in English at Sydney University and UC Davis. His poetry, prose and non-fiction have been published in Australia by Cordite Poetry Review, Overland Journal, Antithesis, Tirra Lirra, Colloquy, Westerly, Peril Magazine, Group Magazine, and Southerly, and in a number of publications overseas. He has lived for long periods in Europe, India and SE Asia, and also works in academic ethics and philosophy.
In Khost Province
The roads—still mostly unpaved. I’ve always thought I’d get used to the shuddering, the relentless jarring of the bones. All the other places—always the same. (In Iraq, Markus said he got haemorrhoids, not from sitting on rubble, on broken concrete for sometimes hours at a time, in the middle of a hotzone, waiting for the free exit. He got them from the days, weeks, travelling on the rutted, desert roads.) Not sandy, not lush or smooth, not a movie-scape, there, or here. I’ve been in deserts, as full of waves as the sea—but not here, in the waking world. I’ve travelled through them in dreams.
More than a hundred kilometers, now, in the valley due south from Kabul. The rise of the mountains in the west, and further, towards Pakistan. The city I can’t describe—mythical, like so many cities here, minarets rising above poplars and fruit trees—but I can see it, in my mind’s eye, I work in images, in planes of shape cut by shadow, the way a human face breaks the formal mode and lets life break in. Life—breaking in, despite all the denial.
A couple of weeks ago I saw a coloured mural, a thing of wonder in Kandahar, a dream-evocation of democracy, the rich blues and greens promising Ballot not Bullet, in English and Pashto, a dove with an olive branch, the ballot-box an emerald gem-stone. It was like Berlin 1989, all over again, my first commission, the release, the promise, the promise, but here, now, more than twenty years of knowing this country, it was a dream blooming before me, school children walked by, talking and laughing, in clean laundered salwar kameez, young, unknowing, knowing too much. I took the shot, caught, stole the colour, the promise—sent everywhere, in every direction, far from Afghanistan.
I don’t know what is in the children’s minds, not really. We travelled to Khost with the convoy for the voting materials, from Kabul, under armed escort. I already know the country is full of betrayal—but I trust the children. So many of them are taken away—not always stolen in person, but their minds held hostage. The madrassas like toxic mushrooms, sprouting all over, I’ve seen them, the young girls like crows, full body chador, floating menaces in the streets, also young, too young. I didn’t photograph them, not out of respect for Islam, but their virginal modesty. Nor a disrespect for the religion, either—I respect the will of the person, of the woman to live as she wills. But these ones are so young, they can’t know what they want; they only know what they are terrorized to believe. I defended, lately in the press compound, that word—’terrorized’, that is so over-used. A mind that swims, at first, in innocence, can only experience that force of authority as a violence. It kills what is alive, what is already free, in it. There is no such thing as a moderate religious fundamentalism. Or, I haven’t seen it. I’ve seen a lot—but not that.
I’ve seen the violence, of it, instead, in all these places. I saw it in Germany, as a child, long after the war, but deep in the denial, in the fear of facing the past. The schoolmasters who ridiculed my carrying a camera around. There was no time for art, they said, in the new Germany. I was sixteen, I didn’t know anything; only one thing: that with the camera I could, when nothing else could, identify, and capture, the truth. Not words; not politics, and it was still years before the Wall would come down. For a decade before then, I wandered the streets on assignment; small-town scandals, accidents, winter festivals. Whatever kind of truth, it was still the truth. Higher stakes now; and truth has become the truth, more than anything, of trust.
It is dry, but threatens rain. The foothills rise up like long, elongated birds in the distance. I don’t think so much about the National Army soldiers who accompany us here; they are quiet, like we are. We left Khost an hour ago, I don’t expect trouble here. I also know not to trust my expectations—but I’ve kept paranoia at bay all these years by not making a dogma out of it. There are always exceptions—which often prove the rule. I’m a believer—in my unbelief.
Always the people that draw me, out there on the roads. The elderly faces, as well as the young ones. Woman now by the roadside, carrying bound kindling on her back. A young man on a pony, catching her up. There are all these stories, biblical ones—but I don’t seek the narrative so much as the stills of realization, in the faces, the eyes, especially. A vast story within something that is already epic. You can’t see it on TV, in a three second newsbite. You can see it in large-format print, silent on a gallery wall. Berlin, two years ago—a moment of truth, as the cliché goes. How many moments…passed now. This one…and this.
We’re coming to the edge of Tani; a voting-station will be set up here, we’ll cover this new ‘moment of truth’ for the Afghan people. What will it bring? I don’t know, not yet. I only hope no threats, no suicide-bombs. Already last month in Kabul, two journalists killed. I can’t call them by name, anymore; the shock has been nearly as deadly, for all of us. I knew them too well, to know them in death. We don’t speak of them, now, under armed guard.
I’m not alone, never alone. A woman, a friend, braver than I am, just here, doing what I do in words, the words that escape me, but not the image. There is a security there, in the image, held in its frame: nothing can escape, and also, nothing can invade it: it is inviolable. When I cut the frame, I control the life it holds: it is contained, at long last. Also—safe; I bestow care, and compassion, on the image, the reality it exposes: everything there, left to the world to see, naked, disclosed life, but set free in safety. That’s something I do—the act of a mother, maybe. Not needing children, myself, already having so many, set loose in the world, in frame, enframed by the care I took in the conception, in the nurture, and in the letting go. Has that been my job, all along? To let the truth—of all this—free into the world, as joy? Then an alchemy, when I’ve got it right—a transformation of, often, base lead into gold, a living gold of the heart, of life, one that can’t be stored away or hoarded as capital, because it can only live in its freedom. That’s what, on good days, the work has been.
Not having ever really thought about it. I don’t think; I see, and hold, forever, what I see. Then I let it go, reconfigured. That’s enough, I think.
It’s strange though, to let the image float free, right out into the ether, across the feeds and the online networks, when I am myself surrounded by armed protection. The irony: my images more free than I am, who gave them birth. Would I be free at all, without my camera? I could go back home, and stay there, out of harm’s way. I could…and forget what it is to be alive. I don’t know. We do what we’re called to do. Schicksal. ‘Mein Schicksal’—too funny. I laugh when things are so true that they can never be understood.
The check-point ahead. We have passes, the right documentation, everything is in order. Like the Wall before the Fall. Like all walls—you have to merge through them, like a ghost, like liquefaction. I would like the car to stop so I can get out and take some shots of the dirt road leading up to the point of entry; the cordon of security, the men in full uniform holding subdued talk, guns slung over shoulders, the dust in the air, the smell of coming rain, that I can include only by invocation, or association, a kind of prayer. I would like to stop and pray, an unbeliever, a believer of children, in the dirt, stop and, even, a real surrender, lay down the camera. But I can’t, can’t say this even, to the driver, or my colleague; we are each silent in our—what is still called here—kismet: each in their fated world.
I am in this one, still here, the car stopping, now, for the police patrol. They are national servicemen, in our service, serving our freedom, our safety, that of their fellow countrymen. One of the men, he could be the unit commander, comes to the car, speaks now, I want to hear, I can’t hear, I can only see, I have the image, in my mind’s eye, I have caught it, it is conceived, the stillness of it, the eternal frame in my line of sight, he raises a gun to us, inside the car, faces down, he prays, too, says out loud Allahu Akbar! The caught image, life, breaking in, is mine—is free.
(In memoriam Anja Niedringhaus, killed April 4th, 2014, Khost Province, Afghanistan)
June 26, 2016 / mascara / 0 Comments
Raelee Chapman grew up in Albury-Wodonga. Since 2011, she has lived in Singapore with her family. Her fiction and narrative non-fiction has been published in Australia and overseas in places such as Southerly, Lip Magazine & Expat Living among others. She is currently compiling an anthology of short stories set in Singapore for Monsoon Books.
Golden Girl
It’s a tar thick night. A cool mist licks at her heels. He can no longer touch her skin now that she is hiding. She knows he is looking for her in the swirling mist. This is how girls vanish. She treads light as a marsupial over the rotting leaves. He fumbles and lugs, heavy through the bush. The bats watch, their eyes pinned on him like a hundred needles casting a voodoo spell. There is a full moon, a fat halo of light leading her. The air tastes sweet as she leaves Big Man’s scent of tobacco leaf and three day post-shower stench behind. No longer will she sleep pressed into his sweaty armpits listening to his enlarged heart’s odd beats. Soon she’ll no longer hear him flailing behind her.
At night-time she has trained one ear, the ear not pressed against him, for the distant, syncopating hum of a highway. She doesn’t remember the road or the way to it, when she came here, her eyes were closed. She can hear him swearing, grunting, stopping to pant, holding onto paper-bark trees, sheaving their Bible-page thin peelings. His bare feet are nicked by bindi-eyes and scratched by low scrub. For there was no time to put on boots. “Bathroom,” she’d whispered and slung off his heavy arm. She stepped out of bed and crouched by their bottom drawer and paused her hands resting on its contents for only a moment. Summoning her strength. Big Man let her use the flush toilet these days, instead of the chamber pot by the bed. He was more relaxed since she’d given birth to their son.
She moves on, stealth in the night towards the white noise of the highway and leaves behind all that was familiar to her for the last six years. The lonely wooden farm house with tannin-stained windows and gap-tooth steps. She had tripped many times on those steps. An ideal haunt, so well hidden in thick bush if you didn’t know it was there, you would never find it. There is one road in and one road out. She avoids that road.
She passes the pile of ashes where they sometimes lit a fire. Where onetime a black fella arrived unannounced with a dead kangaroo over his shoulder. Road kill. They accepted his invitation to cook and share the meat. The visitor never spoke, he saw her with the lead-rope looped around her waist connected to Big Man’s belt and said nothing. The black fella slept by the fire that night on a dirt mattress he made with his hands and was gone the next morning.
Her soles kick up and scatter ashes through the archway Big Man made with scraggly sticks. Where they married, wattle wreath in her hair, its sunny pollen dusting her nose and cheeks. “My golden girl,” he had called her. There were no witnesses, perhaps not a proper marriage. Big Man said the rites or made them up. It was the first time he let her off the lead rope tied around her waist since the day she arrived. She was fourteen, he was forty-one.
In the bush she finds clothes, dotted in trees, lifted by the wind years ago from their simple rope clothesline. These clothes made a run for it before she did. How often she’d wished the wind could carry her. In a copse she recognizes what Big Man called the birthing tree, where her son was born in the dirt. Big Man had wrapped him in a flannelette shirt and squeezed her breasts to show her there was milk. The baby softened Big Man. How often he holds their son aloft, a naked pudding baby, a trophy, both of them cooing. He could no longer restrain her so closely now that their son needed constant attention, feeding, bathing, changing. He was more trusting. But when Big Man went out, he locked her in a windowless back room without a fan because once before their son was born he found her with an electrical cord around her neck.
When her son tumbled forth from her womb, a new and instant love came with it, saving her. He is what gave her strength and makes her push on. Her son is the only light in that dirty house. A house she could never get clean, that has decades of filth and grime entrenched in every grain of wood, every porous surface, rusty tap and sink. Mice and cockroaches scuttle across the floorboards and her son loves to watch them wide-eyed and clap his clumsy hands.
A branch snaps and she hears him stop dead in his tracks. She can hear it too, the boy’s wailing. It has taken on a more desperate pitch as though he can sense what is happening. He is tucked in his little bed made from a deep, empty chest drawer, nestled in old clothes. She knows now Big Man won’t follow. This is the only way. Her only chance. If she takes the boy, he will hunt her down, never let her go. She will come back to claim her son. Someday Big Man will be locked up. She wonders who will hold his lead rope. She will swoop up her dirt-stained son and wipe him clean of Big Man, of this place.
She hears him turn back, his soles slap crashing back to their son. She follows the moon’s spotlight. She is robed in her ivory shroud. When Big Man looks up, seeking light for his path, all he sees is sky as dark as a tar canvas.
September 29, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Zahid Gamieldien is a writer, tutor and former lawyer. In 2015, his fiction has been published in Overland, Tincture Journal, Bahamut Journal and Pantheon Magazine.
The Boy Who Believed in Magic
The camp gets attacked on a Monday afternoon. I’m in the antechamber of the medical tent, administering the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella to a young girl. She’s afraid of the syringe, and I tell her not to worry, that everything will be okay. Her mother soothes her in Manding language, probably Dioula, but even she seems tense. The girl is bawling and I call the Dutch nurse, Klaas, into the antechamber.
I’ll show you a magic trick, I say to the girl.
Klaas nods and I turn to a cabinet, on top of which is a Styrofoam cup. I make a small hole in the cup and push my thumb through it, and then I grip it with both hands. Feigning intense concentration, I lever my fingers and palms from the cup, which is held in place by my obscured thumb, and I shiver the cup through the air as if it’s levitating. The girl goes quiet. Klaas kneels beside her and swabs her upper arm with an alcohol wipe. He jabs her with the syringe. She begins to wail and I grab hold of the cup while Klaas and the girl’s mother apply a bandage to her puncture. Sighing loudly, I return the cup to the cabinet and listen to the girl’s crying fade from the medical tent.
You should give this doctor business up and get into the magic shows, Klaas remarks. We chuckle; I like the way he shushes his S’s.
I’m about to reply when I hear a convoy of jeeps in the distance. Klaas and I step out of the medical tent and stand there, watching. The camp is in chaos. People are running every which way: some roil the dirt as they sprint to nowhere; others dash into their tents, which are draped in white sheets like Halloween houses or Californian bungalows being fumigated. The sheets carry UNHCR branding.
Through a rust-coloured cloud of dust, I spy a man that I recognise. He’s barefoot, carrying a machete, leading his family toward the dirt road.
What’s happening? I ask.
It’s better for you to run, doctor, is all he says.
I don’t move.
The regular doctor at the camp, a South African named Sissy, sprints past me and into the medical tent. Klaas and I follow her. She heads for the tent’s main room, which has two rows of eight hospital beds divided by a narrow aisle. I realise that most of the patients must have fled behind my back: only four remain, and each of them is unconscious.
Too late to move them, Sissy grunts.
Klaas and I wear guilty expressions and now, close by, I hear peals of gunfire, the screech of brakes. My skin feels numb, tinnitus in my ears — no, not tinnitus: I can isolate the screams of individuals, of children, of women, of men, and they get cut short, these screams, abruptly, like when you press the mute button on a TV remote.
Klaas’s brow is moist; he wipes it with a shaky hand. Sissy, the only one of us with her wits about her, drags a sheet up over the face of one of the patients. Klaas and I realise what she’s doing and we follow suit, until the four patients are entirely covered. We head back to the antechamber and wait.
The footsteps on the ground are heavy, jackbooted perhaps, and I know immediately that the people sheltering in their tents are not going to survive: their choral screams rise and grow elliptical and fall silent, the tempo dictated by a grim layer of percussion. I dap my Adam’s apple in my throat and try not to picture it, but I can’t help it. Klaas whimpers; he’s pale as a waxwork and wet with sweat. Sissy places her hand on his back, as if to steady him in case he passes out. Her mouth is shut tight.
Two soldiers, dressed in black shirts and camouflage pants, enter the antechamber. Both have AK47s. One of the soldiers is tall, not yet twenty; he’s wielding a machete as well as a gun. The other is pubescent, a boy, although he has no laugh in him and his brow is as creased as a forty-year-old’s. The tall soldier raps something in a Kru dialect, directing his question at Sissy. He jerks his rifle toward the main room. Sissy stares at him dumbly and he repeats the question in French.
C’est une morgue, Sissy responds. Allez jeter un oeil. She’s defiant, but her voice quavers. Squinting dubiously, the tall soldier issues a command to his accomplice, the boy, who adjusts his aim.
The tall soldier ambles into the main room. He pauses near a covered patient and slings his AK47 over his shoulder, and then he takes out his machete and drives it through the patient’s chest. There’s the crack of a ribcage and the gurgle of blood in a throat, the strain of ungreased bedsprings. I stifle a scream, Sissy’s eyes go to her feet, and Klaas holds his breath. We don’t watch any more. The tall soldier returns to the antechamber, dragging behind him a white sheet with which he wipes the stains from his machete. He shrugs and says something to the boy, before he drops the sheet and exits the medical tent.
The boy’s forehead grows more serious and he’s yelling at us in Kru which, of course, none of us can understand. He’s becoming frustrated and I realise that he’s asking us — no, ordering us — to turn around so that he can shoot us in the back. We comply, slowly.
Don’t do this, Sissy pleads. We’re doctors. Médecins.
I glance over my shoulder: the boy is unmoved, or otherwise, he doesn’t understand. I see that Sissy and Klaas are holding hands. Klaas is muttering a prayer. They’re resigned to their fate.
I’m about to clasp Sissy’s other hand when I spot the Styrofoam cup on the cabinet, and I don’t know why, but I grab it and push my thumb through the little hollow in it.
I’ll show you a magic trick, I offer.
There’s confusion on the boy’s face, yet I press on with the routine, releasing the cup from my hands, leaving it perched on the end of my thumb, giving the illusion that it’s defying gravity.
See, it’s magic, I say.
Mah-jik, the boy repeats.
That’s right, I say. Magic.
He takes a couple of paces back and glances outside of the tent. I crush the cup in my hand. Sissy’s expression betrays her puzzlement, Klaas’s his relief. The boy mimics turning a key in a lock, and I’m confused.
Unlock? I ask uncertainly.
I think he wants a car, Klaas observes.
I take my keys from my pocket and jangle them, as if I’m performing another trick. The boy beckons with his rifle and I cant my head to the others, indicating that we should follow.
In single file we step out of the medical tent. In Dutch, Klaas recites the Lord’s Prayer. The camp is a Golgotha of corpses upon which dust is settling like ash, like in the aftermath of a volcano. The tents are silent and riddled with buckshot. Sissy’s hand is over her mouth. I also want to vomit. The boy prods me in the side with his AK47 and we walk — the three of us now in front of him — toward the dirt road, past booted and barefoot soldiers, and the dead, and firewood that is being kindled for a pyre. In the shade of a palm tree is a group of armed men, who laugh out of the sides of their mouths, gravely, or as if they’re chewing tobacco.
As we reach the dirt road, I can hear yelling from behind us. It’s the tall soldier. He’s about thirty metres away, striding toward us and waving his hand to call the boy back to the camp. I expect the boy to stop, but he presses the AK47 against my spine, forces us to quicken our pace. We get to my four wheel drive, which is near the parked convoy of jeeps, and the yelling is getting louder, closer.
I jump into the driver’s seat and the boy gets in the other side, pointing his gun at me. Sissy and Klaas hop in the back.
Make it fast, Sissy urges.
Ja, ja, ja, Klaas adds.
They buckle their seatbelts. I start the engine and immediately my window smashes. The tall soldier is opening fire on us. I reverse and lose the back wheels in a ditch, and I hear them spin unavailingly, and the spittle of bullets against the side door, and then the tyres gain traction and we’re away.
Once we’re out of sight, I move to switch on my GPS and the boy stays my hand.
Where do you want me to go? I ask, and he shuts his eyes in meditation.
He doesn’t know where he’s going, Klaas says.
He saved our lives, Sissy replies quietly.
The boy opens his eyes and yawns. Miles of dead road drift by, and when we reach a fork he indicates that we should take the road to the left.
The other way goes to the city, I suggest, pointing. He sits up straight and places his finger on the trigger; he’ll brook no argument. I say, Okay, okay.
After we’ve been driving for ninety minutes, the boy straightens his fingers. I bring the car to a halt near a village that’s been burned to the ground. There’s no sign of life; only the outlines of the dwellings remain. The boy taps his chest and blinks back tears.
I think he was kidnapped from here, I say. We drive a little farther down the road and then get out of the car. Beside us is a dried up cocoa plantation, the trees forked like dowsing rods that have lost the art of divination.
As we enter the plantation I notice that there’s a camp there, hidden from the road. Tarpaulins are tied to the branches of the cocoa trees and curious people with sunken eyes begin to emerge, to study us as we approach. The boy says something to a middle-aged woman, who nods approvingly. He guides us between rows of trees to one of the campsites near the end. It’s sheltered by a faded tarp and there’s an old man seated there. He’s fanning flies from the face of a woman, an elderly woman, who’s lying on the ground; she has a severely infected wound on her neck and her lips have gone white. The boy puts down his weapon and holds her hand in both of his.
He gazes up at Sissy. Dok-toor? he implores.
The breath flows heavy through her chest. She shakes her head. Sorry, she says. There’s nothing I can do. Désolée.
The news sinks in, and then the boy’s eyebrows rise with hope as he looks to me. Mah-jik, he says, and I begin to sob, and I see that Sissy’s jaw is tight, and Klaas has his head tilted to the sky, and I watch as the boy realises that there’s no such thing.
September 24, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Peter Boyle lives in Sydney. He has published six collections of poetry, most recently Towns in the Great Desert (2013) and Apocrypha (2009) which won the Queensland Premiers Award in 2010. A new book of heteronymous poetry Ghostspeaking is due out next year with Vagabond Press. As a translator of French and Spanish poetry he has had four books published, including Anima (2011) and Tokonoma (2014) both by the Cuban poet José Kozer. He is currently completing a Doctorate of Creative Arts at the University of Western Sydney.
My attempts to find Maria Zafarelli Strega
During my partner’s absence in Bhutan I went by myself to Buenos Aires in late May 2014 to find out what I could about Maria Zafarelli Strega. I had read the few poems by her included in the 2011 Antologia de Poesía Rioplatense published by Alianza Editores and wanted to find out more. It seemed she was still alive but where? A friend in the film and theatre business in Buenos Aires had suggested an address but no one there had heard of her. Asking at nightclubs and bars in the Palermo district (a suggestion sparked by correspondence with one of the staff at Alianza) eventually brought a result.
After three nights of useless searching, I met a middle-aged woman who gave her name as Carlotta and immediately sparked up at the mention of Maria Zafarelli Strega’s name. “Of course I knew Maria”, she said. “Buy me another drink and I’ll tell you about her.” The chill from an open side door drifted across us. Up on the stage a rather shrill singer had just finished a round. A noisy group of Spanish tourists had moved on to another nightclub. We settled down at a table in the rear of the bar and she began, “Maria was tough – her life was tough. When she was young she was wealthy, I mean they were all wealthy, her family, but cursed because of that father of hers, a monster if there was ever one. Dead now and anyone might have done it though I’ve got my theories. The only really happy time in her life was the summer holidays with her grandparents in Uruguay – at Punta del Este. She’d talk about the huge drop from her grandparents’ house to the ocean and the din of cicadas. And then, when she was twelve, her grandparents both died. I don’t think she ever got over that shock. She told me too about when she was fourteen and another girl in her class sat on a window ledge to feel the top of her head, found all these bumps and told her she was destined to be a great genius. She never spoke about her father and the terror she and her mother knew because of him – I think she was too frightened ever to talk of that. But, as I said, he’s gone now, found in a lane near Teatro Colon with three knives in him. She disappeared just after that.” She said this last phrase slowly, with a knowing look I thought, but maybe I’m reading too much into it. “Maria told me she was twenty two,” Carlotta went on, “when she finally got free of her father. She’d left secretly for Uruguay, finally ready to become someone else – the only way she could ever be herself. It was tough, her three years in Montevideo. Moving from place to place, half-starved sometimes, looking for cheap places to eat or sleep or escape from it all with alcohol or pills, mostly in Aguada and Villa Muñoz, never that far from the Estación General Artigas – that was when she met Aurélie, the great love of her life. But if you know about Maria you know about Aurélie. I don’t want to talk about Aurélie – if you know how it ended it’s too painful to talk about, and maybe I’m jealous – maybe I hoped somewhere I would be loved like that. But I was never Maria’s type. We got to know each other around the time she and Aurélie broke up, after she’d tried to kill herself with barbiturates. But I don’t want to talk about that.” And at that Carlotta looked worried, confused, downed her drink, swept everything into her handbag, and prepared to leave. “I forgot. I should be somewhere else. Come back tomorrow night and I’ll meet you here. I don’t want to talk any more but you can see the scraps of writing she left me. It’s all I have of hers . . . she never liked photos.” And with that she rose to her feet and, slightly the worse for her several drinks, vanished into the chill late autumn night.
The next day I went back to the bar and waited and waited. At one in the morning there was still no sign of her so I left. I returned the next night and waited. When she hadn’t turned up by twelve thirty I started to leave. We almost collided in the door as Carlotta walked in, making no apologies as if the missed night had not existed. Once we were seated at the same table in the rear of the bar she produced from her handbag a battered dog-eared copy of a French edition of Aurélia by Gérard de Nerval. And, as I opened the front cover, there on the title page was the word “Aurélia” surrounded by hand-drawn stars and a strange shape that on closer inspection was a bolt of lightning severing a pigeon into two parts. Flipping through the book I saw pasted onto various pages small cards covered in what I took to be Maria’s handwriting, at times in a peculiarly disjointed Spanish. Were these really the writings of Maria Zafarelli Strega, the poet born in September 1961 whose whereabouts had been unknown since 1995? Her name was written on the front cover, in a neat miniature script that certainly looked like the one letter of hers I had been shown from the archives at Alianza Editores or, to my mind, like the scrawl on a handful of similar cards later brought out by the owner of a bookshop on Florida, another enthusiast of her poetry whom I met through introductions from my film and theatre friend, Fernando. (When I spoke to the woman at the bookshop a few days later, shortly before flying back to Australia, she gave the impression she was tired of the mysterious disappearance and the endless speculations. She seemed fairly certain that if Maria had disappeared it was because Maria had wanted to disappear. After all, she said, the years of the dictatorship were long gone and there seemed little reason to suspect foul play, and yet?)
Carlotta spoke very little that second night, content to give me time to read the notes and, with her permission, I copied down several of the cards. There were many I barely glanced at, cards with only phone numbers, names of people, individual disjointed words or phrases scrawled in ways I could not decipher. They seemed to point towards a privacy I already felt should be left as privacy. It was Maria’s writings as a poet I was interested in. I already felt I had come as close as I ever would to the real Maria. Her thin volume of poems I have never been able to track down – only 100 copies were produced in 1988 and there have been no re-issues. It is only her poems in the Anthology I have ever been able to find. The fragments I found on the cards I will reproduce (in translation) here. I was struck by the strangeness with which she wrote about herself, almost always, in the third person, not unlike the poem in the Alianza Anthology titled “From the notebooks of Maria Zafarelli Strega”[1]
[1]Only later on the plane back to Sydney did I recall a certain phrase used by Ana, the woman in the bookshop, “Sometimes when people disappear they stay exactly where they are.” It occurred to me that if Maria had changed her name once she could do so again and for a few moments I wondered, but it seemed too crazy a thought, could Carlotta be Maria?
The Card Collection
MZF’s vertiginous reinvention of herself began at age 22 on a sidewalk near the Cementerio del Norte in Montevideo, a cold morning in mid-winter. She no longer had a name – that baggage of evil had fallen into the sea on the ferry from Buenos Aires – and for three days she had wandered the city without a name. That morning she saw it appear all by itself on a shop window frosted over by 6 am chill: Maria Zafarelli Strega. Her name.
She heard only the sounds no one hears.
Poor Maria. If she could just climb out of herself and step down into the other world. Then she could love.
She always dreamed of living in Paris but every time she saved up money to go there someone would break into her flat or strangers would steal it. Even when she had no flat, even when she had no money. She was destined to survive here only or not at all.
It will not be easy to be born under the earth. I have heard plants tell me that.
An ordinary evening in the park near Paseo de Florida. She was invited by two mice to accompany them and she tracked her way across the park into a deserted building, the two mice constantly looking back to make sure she was following. Once she entered the building, they wanted her to go down into their underground burrow and she had to explain patiently that this was not possible. And from the window, just above her, the leaden weight of the sky kept trying to force her to surrender.
For a whole month during the bitterest winter of my memories, in a hovel near the docks I would unfold my map of Paris. The two working girls who let me stay there marveled at the joy I took in my map. I would say out loud, I will write this novel on this street, on this street I will write a poem, at a bar near this corner I will begin my most famous book. And I would imagine making my way through the curves and steep tunnels of lanes leading to Père Lachaise or heading across the Marais. The two girls watched with incredulity as I played with the map. I was at some time the lover of both girls but we did not make love anymore. Our bodies had become too strange, too much a tangled skein of catastrophes. I remember once kissing the long scar that trailed down one girl’s belly. I remember a very drunken dawn when one of them tried to kiss the knot of pain that kept exploding deep under my skull. When they made it back to the room at dawn after all the clients of the afternoon and the night, after working the streets and sometimes being kicked and beaten, they came back to sleep.
Years later I had a much older woman who was my lover. When she left me she said, “I have made this for you. Lay this small sack of herbs over your eyes and you’ll find sleep. Someday you’ll see. When you can’t give love anymore, at least you can give sleep.”
I was destined to survive here only, to invent my name, to discover almost nothing – but that slender thread would be everything.
Self-sabotaging faces in a frosted mirror at dawn.
We were breathless like the wire of the sky.
When the cat came to play with me and I had to explain that I would be dying soon it understood everything straightaway. Everything I could never explain to people was clear straight away. And because words were almost unnecessary, new playful words migrated into my head or suddenly were just there, secreted by some twist in a vein or fold of tissue, puffed up there and then like balloons in the vexing inner chamber of my head. The words were not audible. I simply saw them, like the words of my new name that just wrote themselves out before me one morning. They made me remember things that came from another world.
She was being driven out along the magical bridge of the seven rivers. River after river flowed slowly by under the narrow bench of her carriage while, in front, the driver sat idly flicking a knot of string into the air above the horse that shifted a little forward every few moments. An immense dawn sky stretched in layers of gold and pink interrupted by white wisps of cloud but there were no birds. She wondered why in all the teeming flow of waters there were no birds, and why the silence of the world was so total. “India” she thought to herself, and here she was, being driven towards this secret India devoid of people, this plain of silent rivers and limitless dawn. Each river she crossed was less than a river – it was as if every river had been shredded into thin ribbons of water in an inexhaustible plain. Is this the Ganges or the pampas, she wondered. “Nous voyageons vers l’Orient mais nous sommes en ‘Oriente’”, she said to herself in French, using the old Argentine name for Uruguay, and then, counting each separate stream she was passing, she thought “when the sequence of finite numbers has run out I will wake up at my grandmother’s house in Punta del Este”.
Waiting out the grey wind. Sometimes I wake and I think: it is somewhere. In a small box slipped under the floorboards of the stairs, my blue wish, my breath. What came out of my eyes one night, what hid away.
At a certain time I had to say, No, I will not go any further down the dark road. I will stop just here, under this tree, and write for two days, then I will die. And the two days grew and grew and started to look, almost, like a lifetime.
Along the flat endless road where I walk sheltered from the brisk wind by fragrant burning piles of cow-dung, I stop beside a small one-room house where I catch sight of a tiny mirror dangling from the ceiling. Stepping through the doorway I am suddenly in a corridor of whirling mirrors each turning at different angles at different speeds as if in answer to a multitude of undetectable breezes, a myriad of off-centered climates or micro-whirlwinds that arise only in private deserts. Fearfully I step among them and my face slips into one mirror while my hands, my legs are elsewhere. I am enjoying my fractured loneliness when a woman steps from behind a curtain. She is wearing purple gauze and a conical blue hat that is topped with the sign of the moon. “It is all frightfully simple,” she says. “You just choose.” And her smile slides back and forth between a wide gentleness and a knowing carnivorous intensity. Between the small circling diamonds of glass I freeze and I wonder, Am I she?
Who is it who comes to me, who is almost known, almost visible, almost might leave a glance inside me, a thumb print on a wall, a name, even just a single word, now in extremis as a curtain falls back into place when the breeze stops, something or someone whose gliding past brushes me, glare of the one day so awful, yet needing to be stayed with, this absolute face I yearn for, the longest arc of days, washing of the sea through the window of death, wave on grey wave tilting towards the end of vision, almost slightly, who?
Yesterday all day rats circling round me – first in the rat eyes of the old woman nibbling at the fingers and toes of the children caught in the sugar house, then in the two small sandals worn by the woman eaten by rats. When all that is left is terror and hunger. When we are both the rat with its numbed eyes and the victim unable to escape, a wilted starved body nailed to a bed of collapse. In the distance the rising falling notes of the legendary piper who would lead away our nightmare. A music in the world’s far corner that holds the key to our unsuspected otherness. The part of us already elsewhere.
