Questions of Travel (44 page)
ALL WEEK, SHE HAD
been bringing flattened boxes home from work; also a roll of masking tape nicked from the stationery cupboard. As it turned out, there were more boxes than she needed. She was giving away the silks, the pintucked cottons, the vintage Indian blockprints, stuffing them, some still on the hanger, into garbage bags she would lug to the charity bin. Many of her prettiest clothes no longer fitted, and all had been bought for Paul Hinkel. What an idiotic compulsion, she thought, eyeing a lacy shirt: all that money on finery he had stripped from her without delay. A buttonhole in the shirt was ripped. Laura remembered,
I couldn’t wait.
At the sight of the torn shirt, the Goth receptionist had blushed, turning before Laura’s eyes into a child. Then she had produced a pin.
Boxes were stacked on the landing. Robyn would store them at her flat, which Laura was going to share until she found a place of her own. “There’s heaps of space,” Robyn had said. “It used to be Ferdy’s synthesizers.” Laura taped up a last box and added it to the stack.
The house struck silent, secretive, large. Laura had never been there alone on a Sunday afternoon. She made a mug of tea and carried it, on impulse, to the big front bedroom. No harm in gazing, one last time, on Drummond and his works. In the gloom, as she passed him, his eyes were judge and hangman. But when she had got the blind up and turned around, he was only a genius with a green face.
Downstairs, a bell insisted. Robyn Orr, come earlier than planned to collect the boxes—so Laura guessed. But on the doorstep: “Darl! We couldn’t let you slip away without a bon voyage!” Tracy Lacey kissed and kissed, while peering down the hall. A black-haired sprite held out a parcel tied with gold string and labeled
Chocolate Panforte;
and Laura crouched and enfolded, smitten, as always, by the child. Destiny accepted the embrace but didn’t return it. Something compelled her to keep her eyes open, yet close-ups of adult faces disgusted her: the slabs of pocked flesh, the giant black nostrils! But by the end of her first week at school, she had learned the uses of deception. Her expression remained compliant and sweet.
In the hall, Tracy explained, exclaimed, lingered and wondered. For where was the old man? It was Tracy’s last chance, because Laura Fraser, always inclined to think only of herself, had suddenly announced that she was moving out. Yet at the gallery they believed that Tracy was the vessel into which Carlo Ferri decanted moods, secrets, whims. How had this come about? Tracy had no idea, although she might have said something like, “He’s an absolute sweetie, darl. It’s a matter of pushing the right buttons.” Or she might have smiled and looked as if there was no end to what she could tell. None of this was exaggeration: Tracy knew that Carlo and she would get on like a horse on fire as soon as they met. But he was never at home when Laura invited, and anyway of late the invitations had grown rare. Whenever Tracy proposed, Laura countered with a tale of work or a virus, or suggested lunch in Newtown. So if anyone was to blame for the situation with Carlo, it was Laura Fraser. But Torquil’s star had risen to deputy director, and he seemed to think that Tracy had promised to set up
an
exploratory meeting
with Carlo Ferri. Torquil could be really unreasonable, he could sink his teeth into an idea and shake until something snapped.
Laura was leading Destiny into a room off the far end of the hall. Tracy followed and found herself in a kitchen. There was an oilcloth on the table—was oilcloth retro now or still ethnic in the wrong way?—but no old man. Through an archway, Tracy saw a room that hadn’t been aired in years. The walls were a faded red, but the rose on the ceiling was nicotine yellow. Tracy always tried to maintain positive energy—it was the keystroke of Stew’s philosophy—but she could feel a headache coming on, the close-fitting, all-over kind like a swimming cap made of lead.
When she turned around, it was just in time to prevent Laura from poisoning Destiny with almond-milk cordial. “Sugar is death, darl! Nothing but fresh juice,
n’est-ce pas?
Or organic spring water.” There was only tap, but Tracy put slices of lemon in the jug to counteract the toxins and rinsed Destiny’s glass herself. When she suggested that they go up to the roof, Laura muttered that everything there was a mess because she was packing. But no way were Tracy and Destiny staying in that kitchen, who could say what damage the passive smoking had already done?
On the landing, Tracy paused. She had noticed a door, usually shut, that today stood ajar. Of course:
la siesta!
It transported her at once to the Tuscan farmhouse, Tracy, Stew and Destiny all snoring lightly in shuttered rooms after an
insalata del pastore.
Not a trill issued from the room, so the old man hadn’t dropped off yet. Calling to Destiny, who had gone ahead with Laura, Tracy set off. Laura said something that might have been “No!” but Laura hadn’t driven all the way from Paddo with Destiny and a panforte because Italians lose their heads over children and sweets.
When Tracy saw what was in the room—well, as she would tell Torquil, it was nothing less than an epitome. Laura buzzed at her elbow saying, “But Carlo.” Tracy came out of the vision in which she lowered her gaze when Torquil got to the bit in his speech about her
invaluable service to our cultural heritage.
It emboldened her to inquire where
was
Carlo? “Haberfield,” said Laura. “He’s having an operation on his hip first thing tomorrow. His cousin’s driving him to hospital this evening. So we shouldn’t—” “I’m sure he won’t mind, darl,” said Tracy. “I’m a trained professional,
n’est-ce pas?
” She had been examining the canvases stacked on the bed but was overcome by the need to document. She took her phone from her bag and aimed. “Mum,” wailed Destiny,
“Muuum.”
Destiny Lacey-Buck was bored but was not allowed to be. Bored is childhood’s name for the formless, treeless, weatherless place from whence it comes: a memory and a presage. But
the b word
was banned in Paddo. What were piano lessons and
conversazione
and swimming classes and Free Expressive Movement for if not to maintain positive energy? As the flash went off, “Would you take Destiny up to the roof, darl?” asked Tracy. “Go and look at the boats, gorgeous, big hug, Mummy’s working.”
Contemplating the vegetable ruins around her, Destiny remarked, “Everything here is very old, isn’t it?” She was still holding the panforte by its golden loop. Laura said, “Shall we have some of that, do you think?” She took the parcel into Drummond’s studio to find a knife, while Destiny wandered hither and thither among the devastation. She had soft dark eyes and a rosy-dark pansy face. In a woody tangle of summer jasmine high above her head, she saw what no human eye had seen, a pale blue egg. It was out of reach but was magically connected to a plant at home from which small pink and purple ballerinas dangled. Their name was fuchsia and they were a sign, like the egg, that Destiny’s wish for a dog would come true. Stew said, “For God’s sake, don’t start,” and Tracy said, “Think of picking up the poo.” Destiny looked on as tiny Tracy and tiny Stew plunged from the roof and were lost in blue. At her silent whistle, Hotdog cleared the bridge in a bound. He swam and flew.
In the studio, Laura had been diverted from her purpose by the sight of the red glass star. The red rug waited in a roll on the landing, but she had forgotten to take down the star. That year, while the merry-go-round in her skull revolved to things Paul Hinkel and she liked to do to each other, she had let Theo’s death day pass unnoticed.
Forgetting was the real meaning of death:
she had realized that on a cold street in Prague. She addressed the star: But you haven’t gone yet, not while I’m still here. Theo would live on as long as he was remembered: even humanly and imperfectly. She would leave the red star for Carlo, decided Laura. Not as an olive branch or an apology but as
a tiny object in the night.
He would understand or not, but she didn’t want to leave only darkness behind when she went.
She had carved out two chunks of panforte and brushed the leaves from the table under the frangipani when she looked up to see Destiny making free expressive movements on a chair she had dragged to the edge of the roof. There was the protective wall, but the child already had one foot on it. Laura exclaimed and commanded. Destiny was perfectly safe because of Hotdog, but she came obediently when called. “Have you seen a little dog around here?” she asked, startling Laura, whose thoughts had strayed to Paul Hinkel. “Oooh, he’s gorgeous,” went on Destiny. “Shiny brown—no, I mean black, about this size.” She measured with her hands, described. All the while, she was trying to decide if she was crazy about panforte. When Laura came to Paddo, she would say, Have a squiz in my bag, Destiny. There would be a book or a toy or a bracelet. But there was no bag here, only dead sticks and sour water. Laura was asking one of the dumb questions grown-ups ask about school. There were only three that mattered: What must you not show? Who is the leader? Where can you hide?
A long time later, when Tracy and Destiny were leaving, the child went unbidden to Laura. She pretended to kiss but placed her mouth very close to the large ear. Very softly and very distinctly, in her light, childish voice, she said, “Everyone says you’re ugly.” Destiny’s best friend had said this to her on the last day of school, and Destiny knew its power. At the gate, she turned her flower-face to Laura and waved.
When her mobile rang that night, Laura didn’t hear it. She was keeping watch on the roof, and the phone was in her bedroom below. After she had packed Robyn’s car with boxes and seen her off, Laura had gone upstairs and done brutal things with secateurs. She had watered until everything on the roof looked soaked and wild. Halfway through laying into the bougainvillea, she had thought, What’s the point? So she lit a last candle in Theo’s star and settled down to see it out. The bridge was a rhinestone-studded handcuff finished with a ruby; its missing twin had closed around Laura’s heart and was squeezing. The phone beseeched in a muffled way, but a child spoke plainly: Everyone says you’re ugly. All evening, it was the only thing Laura had heard.
On a Blue Mountain far to the west, Donald Fraser dropped his phone into the pocket of his dressing gown. Why was the runt sulking tonight? He hated it when she wouldn’t talk to him. Still, she always came round in the end, he could count on her cheery hello. She was the true child of his true wife. The imposter had tried to feed him to a silver-skinned beast. But Donald wasn’t fooled. She could call it
your car
all she liked, but he could see the snarling cat and read the label:
Jaguar.
Not long after that, Cameron had come. He asked, “Do you know the prime minister’s name, Dad?” Had the boy lost his wits? The prime minister’s name was always Opportunist. Then Donald realized what had happened: the imposter had dug out Cameron’s eyes and replaced them with the stones from her hand. The sparkles spelled,
A ring of thieves!
Together they had delivered him here, repeating that it was a lovely place, just like a hotel really, Donald was going to love it. That was quite true: Donald did. The carpets were so kind to his corns after the parquet, and in five weeks? eighteen months? eleven centuries? no one had once said, “Pull yourself together, Don.” Sometimes the Rottie rested his heavy head on the arm of a chair, but the imposter had pushed her orange face close to Donald’s going
mwa, mwa
and vanished forever. The food was excellent, exactly as she had promised, and every night the stars held a party. His wife usually dazzled there. By day, the telescope showed her backcombing her hair in a tear stain called a waterfall. The long window didn’t open, but Donald could always hear her calling across the valley. Tonight she had prompted, “Isn’t there something you have to say to Laura?” Donald explained that he had been trying to get through to the runt for years. But whenever her voice greeted at the other end of the line, Donald would realize that it was too late to call.
THE PEOPLE WALKING TOWARDS
the lights were making better progress than the cars. In the backseat, Hana clicked her tongue. “We should have parked near the main road.” It was what she had proposed, but Abebe had said that it would mean a fifteen-minute walk. The evening was chilly, and it was drizzling on and off—they might have done better to postpone the trip. But on discovering that Ravi had never seen the Christmas lights, all three—Hana, Abebe, even Tarik—had insisted that he couldn’t leave Sydney without doing so. “We go to a different place every year.”
Light spiraled around the trunk of a palm tree in a garden. When Ravi remarked on it, Tarik said, “Just wait.” A family strolled past the stationary car, the three young children in dressing gowns over pajamas. They were followed by a woman wearing a lilac jacket, denim skirt and short boots. Ravi had noticed her further back, when the car had overtaken her; she had caught up with them now. Hana was saying, “It’s like a different country, all these people out in the street at night.” There were dogs, babies in slings and strollers, a man with a walking stick. Something eased ahead, and the traffic slipped forward. Abebe was looking for a side street, but there were none, and soon they were at a standstill again. The lilac jacket drew level with the car, the woman walking briskly past Ravi’s window. This happened two or three times. She was dark-haired, dark-skinned. Under a streetlamp, her jacket shone fluorescent blue about the shoulders. A group of teenagers carrying pizza boxes filled up the pavement, and when Ravi next saw the woman, she was a long way ahead.
At last they reached a roundabout and turned left. Their luck had changed: just in front of them, a Pajero was pulling out. In an undertone that couldn’t be heard in the backseat, Abebe said, “You know what
pajero
means in Spanish?” His hand at his crotch made a universal gesture.
When they had joined the people flowing uphill towards the roundabout, Ravi saw something wonderful: in the distance, a ship of light floated above the massed darkness of trees. The others looked where he pointed. But: “Wait,” said Hana and Abebe together, and Tarik said, “Wait.”
Hours later, they dropped Ravi off at Hazel’s. It was his second-last night there. The following evening, Hazel and the boys were taking him out to dinner; Damo would drive him to the airport the day after that. Ravi couldn’t know it, but that offer of a lift represented the outcome of a struggle. On learning that Ravi was going back, Damo had choked on incredulity, anger, hurt, disappointment, loss—in other words, rejection. Savaging a sausage in the sunroom, with his brothers and Hazel around the table, he came out with, “So that’s it, is it? He waltzes in here, when there are people literally dying to get into this country, and then decides he’s going back?” For a while, there was only the sound of knives. Then Russ, blanketing a T-bone with tomato sauce, was compelled to say, “Who spent two years pulling pints in Dublin when he finished uni? Can’t see how this is different.” Russ had always been thick
as,
it was completely different, you couldn’t compare a working holiday to…Damo chewed and chewed. He was remembering an afternoon of strict, clean light when he had taken Ravi to the plague cemetery at La Perouse. They had looked at the graves of nurses, girls in their twenties, who had caught the contagion from their patients. Damo’s father had taken him there—it was one of Damo’s special places. Why had he shown it to Ravi? Fair Play chose that moment to whine at the back door. Damo decided silently, You can just stay out there.
Hazel’s present to Ravi was a photograph album. She had given it to him in advance, so that if she’d forgotten anything important, there’d be time to take a photo of it before he left. Night after night now, Hazel came to stand in the sunroom. She was looking for Ravi’s light. On the dresser, her babies smiled and faded daily, trapped behind glass. Sometimes Hazel was still there, holding her elbows, when dawn broke in the plumbago; Blue Heaven, her mother had called that flower. Two questions jousted for supremacy during these vigils. Why must everyone go away in the end? When will it be my turn?
Sitting on his bed, Ravi turned the pages of the album. There was the sleep-out: in summer with pumpkins encroaching; in winter, with Ravi grinning in the doorway, hands shoved into his fleece. Passionflowers were a red riot over the dunny. There was the shed, and the view over the river, and the lane clotted with jasmine. Fair Play appeared with her legs braced for attack, chewing Lefty’s face. On the next page, she stood over a freshly limp mynah with her tail straight up. But it was the third photo that made Ravi pause. It showed Fair Play regal on her throne, one ear tucked back, head held high. What was striking was the spread of white on her muzzle. “Fair Play!” said Ravi. The little dog stared with unsparing clarity from his pillow, and he saw that she had aged before his eyes. The photo had shown him a change to which he had been blind in life.
When Abebe was driving away from the lights, Ravi had spotted the lilac woman again. She was on the driver’s side of the car this time, moving at the same steady pace, looking straight ahead. So ghosts are said to walk through walls. The car drew level for a moment. Then they had left her behind.
In the backseat, Tarik asked, “Which one was your favorite?” Hana voted for the house where every row of rooftop tiles was roped in light. “I loved the reindeer,” said Tarik, alluding to the giant shining beast that had galloped across a lawn. “And the Baby Jesus scene.” “You only liked the Baby Jesus scene because Mr. Whippy was parked outside.” “That is so not fair, I loved the little lamb and the donkey and the angels,” said Tarik in an excited voice. Abebe looked in the mirror and said, “It’s okay to like both, Mr. Whippy always parks outside the best lights.” “When we live in a house, can we have a reindeer?”
No one asked what Ravi had liked. He had been transfixed by it all: the stars and flowers and waterfalls of light, the good-natured, festive crowd ambling past the illuminated houses, the children waving neon wands, the emblazoned night. But among all the surfing Santas and inflatable snowmen and electric Nativities come to kindle silent Australia, what had truly moved Ravi was the ship: a simple outline like a child’s drawing in light.
The Christmas houses
—Tarik’s phrase—stood along four or five streets that climbed and twisted and dipped. As soon as the ship of light loomed, a bend in the street would take Ravi away from it. Then it would appear again, floating above the trees.
Eventually, he realized that he would get no closer. He found that he didn’t mind. The ship would remain with him, a radiant prospect. Close up, it might have failed to enchant. So that’s what I’ve become, thought Ravi, a man whose best hope of happiness is avoidance. He remembered when the whole world had floated before him, a ship of possibility.
Hana, Abebe and Tarik had reacted each in their own way to the news that Ravi was returning to Sri Lanka. As usual, the child said nothing direct, but her expression declared that she had always known he was a fool. Abebe was dismayed, but it was not in Abebe to oppose what anyone wanted. Before long, he was of the opinion that Ravi was right to go back: the cease-fire was holding, there would be all kinds of opportunities for someone like Ravi. “With your IT skills and English.”
Politics
hovered, an unspoken question to which Ravi didn’t have the answer. But Abebe and Hana didn’t pursue it: they were occupied with plans. Abebe had passed his final exams and was looking for work as an accountant. Hana had applied to two universities to study social sciences part time. Her attention had swung away from Ravi: he felt it, like an absence of breeze. She remained sharp and scornful but only impersonally so, saying of his decision to leave, “Nothing will ever drag me back.” On their outing to see the lights, she had walked ahead with Tarik, leaving Abebe and Ravi to follow. At one point, Ravi had fallen behind, distracted by a flashing green kangaroo on a golden surfboard. When he turned around, he saw that the other three had crossed the street and were walking together, hand in hand, Abebe saying something to his sister over the head of the tall child. Earlier that evening, Ravi had shared their meal. Abebe Issayas had torn off a piece of bread, dipped it in spicy stew and placed it between Ravi’s lips. Across the table, Hana smiled faintly. Ravi pictured her long fingers busy at the sleek new keyboard behind her. When she said goodbye outside Hazel’s, her cheek against his was smooth and cool. He saw that she had never been available anyway: she belonged to that winner, the future. Tarik, kneeling to face the wrong way on the backseat, waved with both hands as Abebe accelerated. Ravi lowered his arm when the taillights had disappeared around the corner. There was a glint in the corner of his eye. He looked down and saw that the verge was scattered with broken glass.
More than an hour had passed since then and Ravi still hadn’t started packing. Once again, he turned the album’s pages. The boys lifted their stubbies to him around a barbecue, Kev in a plastic apron brandishing the tongs. Hazel beamed from her latest chair. One of its arms was patched with a coffee sack, but Ravi didn’t notice. He was thinking of the lilac woman. He had seen her quite clearly, but trying to call her up now, he produced a composite, Hana, Malini, the lilac woman herself: a figure who looked to neither left nor right but steadily ahead. For a little while her life had kept pace with his, but they were moving at different speeds.
In her hotel room near Central, Mona Fleurie, née Mohan Dabrera, had taken off her lilac jacket and gone out onto her balcony. She had come to Sydney to see the son she had fathered when she was still Mohan. The boy was in trouble at school for truancy and bullying. Mona knew, because he had told her so, that everything wrong with his life was her fault. He had set the place and time of their meeting, but when Mona rang the doorbell, he wouldn’t leave his room. His red backpack hung like a promise in the hall, but her son refused to see her. Variations on this theme had been going on for three years. His mother had dinner guests, and Mona wasn’t invited. There was nothing to do in the end but turn around and walk all the way back to the station. Mona had taken planes, taxis and an upstairs train to reach the child who didn’t want to see her; however you looked at it, she had traveled a long way. Now, seven stories below her balcony, the wet street was a black mirror. Mona Fleurie had trained herself to keep her gaze on where she was going. But you couldn’t outdistance the past. It drew level eventually, whether or not you recognized it, and then it overtook you.
His mother’s gray suitcase lay on the carpet. When Ravi opened it, Fair Play jumped off the bed and scratched at the door—she knew what an empty suitcase meant, and she was wasting no more time here. A second case stood by, because Ravi was returning with more than he had brought. Priya had sent a detailed list of requirements, which she updated almost daily. In addition to these gifts, Ravi was taking home things like memory sticks, packets of soup, T-shirts with logos, Kmart jeans.
He began with the photograph album, trying to fit it into the inner pocket of the case. But it encountered an obstruction. Ravi slipped his hand behind the ruched satin and drew out a yellow viewfinder shaped like a TV. He placed the little toy to his eye and clicked. Nothing happened: long ago, the mechanism had broken. Sitting there on his heels, Ravi could see that the picture wasn’t going to change. But he went on clicking for quite a long time.