of one asleep, alone in a dark room -with the shadow of the moon across the ceiling ..... felt when she had been looked upon as a beautiful faraway girl, walking in the streets in ..... Her beautiful little mouth was always smiling a small vague smile ..... Hana Inoue was the “Japanese girl” the Dean of the college had introduced.
INTANGIBLE GIFTS
A Dancing Doll in a Glass Case
The IMAGICA photo film factory was near the river that ran into the sea near Tokyo. Her apartment building was near the factory and every evening she would hear the factory siren signalling the day’s end for those packing reels of film. The other factories around the blocks of apartment buildings manufactured cars, pharmaceutical products and the other necessities of life. All of the concrete structures, when seen from a distance, were streaked grey and charcoal from the factory smoke. Before she hung the washing outside, she took a wet cloth and wiped the film of pollution from the bamboo washing poles on the balcony. At ground level in between the huge oblongs of concrete, sometimes she would pass by a tiny house that someone had managed to keep since before the war. These houses had the old ceramic tiles on their roofs and here and there a trickle of morning glories could be seen clinging to the old thatched and mud walls.
There was no space for gardens, so often Rosanna stood under the samisen teacher’s plum tree on the street corner. The plum tree had flowers of two colours -red and white. Half the plum tree’s branches had been chopped off by the local council so that it would not infringe on the passing traffic of trucks going to and from the factories. From her balcony she could see the grounds of the local temple and the garden of the house of the tofu man. His shop was made from the entrance hall of the grand old house where he appeared to be living.
There was an old water well in his garden surrounded with a tangle of over grown cumquat trees. From the eaves of his house the tiled icons warding off evil spirits looked into clumps of bamboo grass that had grown wild in the garden.
Whenever Rosanna went to the department store that sold foreign things she was
homesick for, she passed by the tofu man sitting in his shop alcove. An old mirror hung behind him and reflected the back of his head that was just beginning to go bald. She would always catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror and in his sliding glass front doors. Then their eyes would meet just for an instant. She was a foreign girl walking in an everyday street in Japan. The mirror and the glass doors confirmed this for her. behind him and reflected the back of his head that was just beginning to go bald. She would always catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror and in his sliding glass front doors. Then their eyes would meet just for an instant. She was a foreign girl walking in an everyday street in Japan. The mirror and the glass doors confirmed this for her.
The one and only time she had entered his shop was because she had forgotten to buy a special ingredient from the department store. She had been living with a Japanese man for five years. “He is a strange one, that one,” the neighbours agreed.
“He leaves that young foreign woman alone for months at a time.”
That night, she was going to cook a fish stew for the man she was living with. At the department store basement she bought the water chestnuts and the tiger prawns. But as she passed the tofu man’s shop she realized she had forgotten to buy the ingredient that had inspired her plan to cook the fish stew. In the Japan Times the article on autumn cooking had translated the name of the translucent noodles as “white waterfall noodles.”
Because the leaves were just turning colour and the moon was the shape of a beautiful woman’s eyebrow she decided to buy the white waterfall noodles and some tofu at the shop she had often whispered to herself never to go into. By the time the tofu man came out from behind a curtain painted with river gourds, he had been observing her for some time.
He had then said an unforgettable thing
“It’s you.”
But they had never met before.
“Do you sell white waterfall noodles?”
“Yes…yes Miss.”
He seemed too nervous to be able to say anything more. And then he had refused her money
“I am giving them to you…where are you from?”
“I am from Australia and I live just over there in that apartment block, but I am going back to my country soon for a long holiday.”
He repeated her name again and again as if it were all a miracle. When she wrote for him her mother’s address across the seas he bowed very low to her again and again.
She could feel his gaze as she put the 500 yen coin back in her silk purse. He watched unblinkingly as she slipped the purse cords around the wrists of her hand. The plaited purse cords were so soft that they sometimes felt as if they were not there at all. The bell on the cords chimed softly.
She could not tell why she was relieved to be outside again in the grimy air of rush hour. He was just a shy man who had never spoken to a foreign girl before. And he was kind enough to actually give her the white waterfall noodles. The red leaves of the autumn cherry trees looked as if they could be living in the mountains surrounding a shrine -and not lining the streets of grey factories.
From her apartment building balcony she could see into the tofu man’s garden. Flowering vines that she did not know the name of wound around the trees that had grown wild. The bamboo fence had been pushed down at one end of the bending clumps of persimmon and cumquat trees. As it grew darker she could see that just one light had been put on in a room at the back of his house.
The man she was living with was not coming home again that night. It was too
dark to sit without turning on the light. She put the white waterfall noodles in a small bucket of iced water in the fridge. Autumn was deep enough for the other ingredients to be already cold to the touch. The silken tofu made by the strange man was like the flesh of one asleep, alone in a dark room -with the shadow of the moon across the ceiling. without turning on the light. She put the white waterfall noodles in a small bucket of iced water in the fridge. Autumn was deep enough for the other ingredients to be already cold to the touch. The silken tofu made by the strange man was like the flesh of one asleep, alone in a dark room -with the shadow of the moon across the ceiling.
The shop where she had always bought her letter writing paper sold rice-paper notebooks painted with fireflies or snowflakes. Decorated differently for each season. Writers and painters shopped there. The shop sold bookends made of jade and rosewood. Brushes for calligraphy with handles made of lacquer or of tortoise-shell, for long-life and good-luck. Brushes as thin as those used to paint eyebrows, and brushes as thick as a young man’s arm -used to paint scrolls, and inaugurate special occasions. On the second storey, sometimes, bending over a glass case of pendants used to weigh down the scrolls, she would look up, and see the shopkeeper, smiling at her from the corner of his shop. They never spoke, but merely exchanged a faint bow of the head.
She filled the paper notebooks with poetry that was written to send across the seas but was never posted. Hisako was the only one who had seen the poetry.
Hisako was a very small woman, even for a Japanese female of her generation. She had a head that looked far too big for her body, and pudgy fingers. Her hairstyle, high-maintenance, was unflattering for a woman her size. It must have been created by a process of three phases. Phase one would have been -taking very large rollers and wrapping the strands of various lengths around them, (twenty minutes). Phase two would be setting this dome-like sculpture in lotion and waiting for 35 minutes while it set. Phase three would consist of taking out the rollers and blow-drying in a circular motion for a period of at least twenty more minutes. Emerging from over one hour of this chemical +
electric hot air experience, Hisako would feel coiffed enough to face life until the next weekly appointment. Once a month this gleaming black helmet of “hair” would be cut and dyed, blacker and shorter each time. Now that it was over twenty-five years since she had stopped breast-feeding her only child, the hairdresser was the only person with whom Hisako came into physical contact of any kind. She never discussed her relationship with her husband with Rosanna, but Rosanna had edited the translation of a Sylvia Plath inspired poem in which the husband had tied Hisako’s hands behind the back of a kitchen chair on which she sat. weekly appointment. Once a month this gleaming black helmet of “hair” would be cut and dyed, blacker and shorter each time. Now that it was over twenty-five years since she had stopped breast-feeding her only child, the hairdresser was the only person with whom Hisako came into physical contact of any kind. She never discussed her relationship with her husband with Rosanna, but Rosanna had edited the translation of a Sylvia Plath inspired poem in which the husband had tied Hisako’s hands behind the back of a kitchen chair on which she sat.
The doll that Rosanna had left at Hisako’s house was a dancing doll in a glass case. Later, Rosanna often wondered what had happened to the doll. Had Hisako thrown it out on the street that summer with the rest of the monthly rubbish collection? In old Japan, dolls were not considered to be inanimate objects -they had a human spirit.
The flowers on the silk kimono and the hair decorations a woman wears are possessed with the spirit of the wearer. A woman’s spirit also lives in the hair she encloses in love letters. In the days before rayon, a doll’s coiffure had been made from human hair. The owner of the doll that was she, felt she hadn’t just left behind an object, but that the doll must feel as if it had been abandoned.
The poetry magazine in which Hisako had published an article about their poetic collaboration was giving a performance night for readings of emerging poets. Hisako had run her hands in an agitated manner through her own helmet-like hair arrangement as she said -“Because you have long hair, you look like a poet, but…” At the time, Rosanna
told herself that the “but” was just some adjunction because, as Hisako always said of herself, her written English was far better than her spoken English.
Hisako explained over a pair of Wedgwood tea cups at her house that at the performance Rosanna should read her own original poem in English and then Hisako would read her translation of the poem in Japanese. But at the performance, under the stage lights that made Hisako’s face foundation run into the wrinkles on either side of her mouth, something impromptu happened. Rosanna, the author of the poem, began to read the Japanese translation she had pencilled herself into the column of the page. This was because they had done so much talking and re-reading of the various versions of the poem over the previous few days, that Rosanna had began reciting the poem in Japanese even in her dreaMs Under the streaming stage-lights Hisako scuttled away from her place beside Rosanna at the microphone. What was it all about? Rosanna realized with a jolt that she had read the poem’s original translation into the Japanese that she herself had written. What she didn’t realize was that Hisako had told the editor that Rosanna didn’t understand Japanese at all. Now Hisako had nothing to add to the performance. The applause began after a second of silence, and Hisako and Rosanna went and sat down. Rosanna was head and shoulders taller than the older Hisako. At the end of the night the editor of the magazine approached Rosanna and offered her two massive bunches of white chrysanthemums that had been in the foyer of the hall. Pressing her face to the flowers she had heaved the sigh of someone who had performed well and now it was all over so quickly. air of Wedgwood tea cups at her house that at the performance Rosanna should read her own original poem in English and then Hisako would read her translation of the poem in Japanese. But at the performance, under the stage lights that made Hisako’s face foundation run into the wrinkles on either side of her mouth, something impromptu happened. Rosanna, the author of the poem, began to read the Japanese translation she had pencilled herself into the column of the page. This was because they had done so much talking and re-reading of the various versions of the poem over the previous few days, that Rosanna had began reciting the poem in Japanese even in her dreaMs Under the streaming stage-lights Hisako scuttled away from her place beside Rosanna at the microphone. What was it all about? Rosanna realized with a jolt that she had read the poem’s original translation into the Japanese that she herself had written. What she didn’t realize was that Hisako had told the editor that Rosanna didn’t
understand Japanese at all. Now Hisako had nothing to add to the performance. The applause began after a second of silence, and Hisako and Rosanna went and sat down. Rosanna was head and shoulders taller than the older Hisako. At the end of the night the editor of the magazine approached Rosanna and offered her two massive bunches of white chrysanthemums that had been in the foyer of the hall. Pressing her face to the flowers she had heaved the sigh of someone who had performed well and now it was all over so quickly.
As they headed towards the train and were out of sight from the magazine audience, Hisako’s face transformed into an expressionless pane. What had happened to the sweet smile of the moment before? “Hisako are you alright?” Rosanna asked in Japanese. Hisako’s face was set on a spot on the ground two metres ahead. She jerked
towards Rosanna. “I cannot go with you on the train,” the face said.
“Hisako, are you feeling alright?” In the twinkling of an eye, the jerkiness disappeared and was replaced with a shocking smoothness, “I’m fine, I wish to visit my friends who live near here,” Hisako replied in English. Then bowing “goodbye”, without a further word she walked into the public toilets next to the row of train-ticket machines. Tokyo’s anonymous crowd swirled and buzzed around Rosanna, standing with the enormous armful of flowers, she looked up at the train-station map for the shortest line back to Yokohama.
The doll was encased in a glass case box with pure black lacquer pillars at each corner. The roof of the box was a square sliver of wood covered in gold foil paper. The doll lived untouched by the cyclic dust that swirled through the earthly world outside her glass case. The brocade just visible in two asymmetric strips from under the dancing kimono was the colour of the hearts of plum flowers. Her eyes were made from a piercingly black substance that imitated an ancient gem. Her brows, mouth and the set of her face all told of inner thoughts as calm as the face of water unruffled by even the softest wind. The doll was the unchanging reincarnation of an ideal girl with an ideal life made from the auspicious combination of brilliance, good fortune and beauty. Rosanna had flown back to a land Hisako saw with long-distance vision as a place where Rosanna enjoyed unrestricted freedom and leisure in spaces with no limiting horizons or boundaries. Hisako, the published poet and winner of the 1993 Emperor’s National Poetry Prize, hated the doll. Hisako, the older poet of the two, back in Tokyo was forced to be a wife first and a poet second. All she was left with from the younger foreign woman were a few strange objects -the doll for example. Hisako could not forget that her
husband had touched the younger woman by brushing past her, so that the younger woman had said “sorry” in her softly chiming voice. woman had said “sorry” in her softly chiming voice.
Even before Rosanna went back to Australia, the letters and boxes of presents from the tofu man had begun to arrive at her address in Adelaide…
The letters were all written on the same thin sky-blue rice paper. There was a letter taped to the inside of each box, which he always insulated with a very large quantity of pink or white tissue paper.
She had asked “the tofu man” to send her a pair of red velvet geta. She spun the gossamer thin strand of hope across the Pacific Ocean for a man who was deluded with what Western medical science would only call erotomania. It was a sinful thing to do, she told herself. The stamps from Japan and the faraway scent of the parcels sent her a glimpse of that gaze of pure admiration from him. Surely she was not sending him any sadness in this one request? He had sent not only the one pair of requested geta but boxes of different pairs for each and every occasion in her faraway life. In the boxes there were also the letters from the tofu man, which she later stopped answering.
“Rosanna-san, please fill in the following questionnaire as regards your feelings for me. And please accept this good-luck charm from the temple near here, Rosanna-san where I used to see you walking. You used to pat the temple cat, which often sat in the tree. Please fill in the questionnaire, and then send it back to me. I will say a prayer to Buddha, Rosanna-san, for your eternal happiness. This charm will protect you, please wear it all times. In this parcel I have sent you some Izu green tea and a HELLO KITTY clock. Please forgive me for always sending you the same kind of things…”
“Rosanna-san, if I come to Sydney will you please meet me, even if only for a few
minutes at a time. I have heard that Sydney is a very beautiful place. My dream is to go sailing on a boat in the Sydney Harbour with you, Rosanna-san….” beautiful place. My dream is to go sailing on a boat in the Sydney Harbour with you, Rosanna-san….”
“Rosanna-san, Please forgive me for writing to you in this way, again and again, but I must know that you have read these words from me to yourself. Please answer me whether or not you think it is possible, for us to marry, in the future -please answer either, ‘yes’, or ‘no’, or ‘maybe’. I will accept any of these three answers. It is time to know what is in your heart. I wait to hear from you…”
And then in English, at the end, there was, always written, the same phrase
“I will always love you.”
One of the letters had asked Rosanna to send a lock of her hair so that the tofu man could feel she was still living near him. But then in the next letter, he had apologised over and over again for such a request. And at the end of this letter he had asked for a photograph -“of only your face.”
Across the thousands of miles of windy sea, Rosanna was on her own journey, looking for work back in her country. The letters from the tofu man had a poetic poignancy that could not be imitated -they carried the spirit of truth that enabled the words to travel unchanged, from one language to another. But Rosanna could not even remember clearly what he looked like. It was wrong of her to have acknowledged his gaze upon herself. She should have pretended that she hadn’t noticed his simmering gaze, she told herself. It was wrong to use the power of his desire, when she was going to give him nothing back but hope from across the ocean. But it had made her feel the way she felt when she had been looked upon as a beautiful faraway girl, walking in the streets in Japan. She turned her mind to looking for work in Melbourne.
The Gold Chain
On the top floor of a building in Toorak, the President of the company began his day with the same precise militaristic routine he had unwaveringly observed on taking up his post three years, five months and ten days earlier. He woke up to the sound of his digital alarm clock, did his callisthenics (choreography unchanged for some fifty years) and sat down in his pyjamas to watch the Japanese news on television. The world of the Japanese NHK News from the previous evening in Japan came into his living room and he connected with his own “real world” for a preciously short twenty minutes. As usual he cursed the exchange rate and blamed “America”, muttering angrily as green tea was served to him by the young maid. The young maid was an exchange student from Osaka who had little idea of what the company was all about, couldn’t make either green or black tea properly, but had a beautiful complexion and never spoke unless spoken to. She had been recruited by an agency that assured Mr Ikeguchi that she had very little awareness of her present surroundings and would be no trouble to him under any circumstances. She was due to go back to Japan in six months for an arranged marriage, at which time Ikeguchi would be supplied in a rotational system with another girl of similar description. She had never dreamed she would one day live in a condominium with a pool on the roof, and with her very own bedroom. She padded silently around the apartment with terrified reverence even when Ikeguchi was not there. A very satisfactory arrangement. It would be most unseemly for Ikeguchi to be seen by the resident Japanese community as having to look after himself.
Wearing a sombre Armani suit, Ikeguchi grunted to signify “thank you” as the young maid turned his shoes the right way for him to step into and handed him the
tortoise-shell shoe horn. The car was waiting. The driver was a young Japanese man supplied by the same agency, who couldn’t speak English at all. He had dropped out of a commerce degree the year before but hadn’t told his parents back in Japan yet. He was working to pay back gambling debts before daring to go home. Ikeguchi put his walkman on and rehearsed various “American Business English” phrases during the drive to the office. He scanned his diary for the day. An eleven o’clock appointment with a “Ms” Rosanna Miller. For a week now, Ikeguchi’s aide at the office had been making discreet enquiries throughout the Japanese community regarding Ms Miller. Nobody knew anything about her. She had never been employed in an offshore Japanese company, didn’t belong to any Japanese connected clubs, hadn’t signed any visitor’s books at any organizations or applied for any scholarships or grants. Ikeguchi had played the recording of her voice left on the answering machine over and over. She sounded just like a Japanese girl. A Japanese girl trained in honorific speech, with a beautifully high, mellifluous voice. The tone was so familiar, as if she were calling him back into the past and inviting him to remember something momentous. She had also skilfully implied to the aide, in his absence, that she was personally acquainted with him; otherwise she would never have even gained access to the voice-mail at all. Ikeguchi was quite chuffed that the aide now thought that Ikeguchi may or may not know her, that it was a confidential matter. But of course he didn’t know her. He would remember if he had ever met or heard of a foreign young woman who could speak perfect old Tokyo Japanese. Especially in that voice. Ikeguchi stood on the plush Persian rug in just his socks, after the office staff and gone home and listened to the recording again and again. He knew her little speech by heart now. The speech ended with a reverential “I will be delighted, Sir, -shell shoe horn. The car was waiting. The driver was a young Japanese man supplied by the same agency, who couldn’t speak English at all. He had dropped out of a commerce degree the year before but hadn’t told his parents back in Japan yet. He was working to pay back gambling debts before daring to go home. Ikeguchi put his walkman on and rehearsed various “American Business English” phrases during the drive to the office. He scanned his diary for the day. An eleven o’clock appointment with a “Ms” Rosanna Miller. For a week now, Ikeguchi’s aide at the office had been making discreet enquiries throughout the Japanese community regarding Ms Miller. Nobody knew
anything about her. She had never been employed in an offshore Japanese company, didn’t belong to any Japanese connected clubs, hadn’t signed any visitor’s books at any organizations or applied for any scholarships or grants. Ikeguchi had played the recording of her voice left on the answering machine over and over. She sounded just like a Japanese girl. A Japanese girl trained in honorific speech, with a beautifully high, mellifluous voice. The tone was so familiar, as if she were calling him back into the past and inviting him to remember something momentous. She had also skilfully implied to the aide, in his absence, that she was personally acquainted with him; otherwise she would never have even gained access to the voice-mail at all. Ikeguchi was quite chuffed that the aide now thought that Ikeguchi may or may not know her, that it was a confidential matter. But of course he didn’t know her. He would remember if he had ever met or heard of a foreign young woman who could speak perfect old Tokyo Japanese. Especially in that voice. Ikeguchi stood on the plush Persian rug in just his socks, after the office staff and gone home and listened to the recording again and again. He knew her little speech by heart now. The speech ended with a reverential “I will be delighted, Sir,
to meet you even if only for a few moments, at your convenience...” The phrase “at your convenience” was pronounced in the most delightfully singsong tone that he just had to listen to it again. He had forgotten how it is felt to be spoken to a by a young woman like that. The young Japanese women these days spoke exactly the way their boyfriends spoke. A disgrace. The only women who still spoke that way were the women his own age. Over the phone they were young girls but in person they were hardened members of the opposite sex who had seen success and failure in both business and love many times before. Inexcusably boring. The embassy should not even grant such hags a visa. It would be interesting to see what this Ms Miller looked like. Terrible custom to introduce this “Ms” title into things. How were you supposed to know which women lived under the protection of men and which did not? Anyway he would find out soon enough. ur convenience” was pronounced in the most delightfully singsong tone that he just had to listen to it again. He had forgotten how it is felt to be spoken to a by a young woman like that. The young Japanese women these days spoke exactly the way their boyfriends spoke. A disgrace. The only women who still spoke that way were the women his own age. Over the phone they were young girls but in person they were hardened members of the opposite sex who had seen success and failure in both business and love many times before. Inexcusably boring. The embassy should not even grant such hags a visa. It would be interesting to see what this Ms Miller looked like. Terrible custom to introduce this “Ms” title into things. How were you supposed to know which women lived under the protection of men and which did not? Anyway he would find out soon enough.
Next to her hotel bedroom window was an enormous clock. The town hall clock was the clock Rosanna kept the time by, every day. On the day before she went to meet the President of the company, she went to confirm the location for herself. Wearing an ADDIDAS tracksuit, she went down to the hotel lobby and asked for a map of the CBD. The building where the president had his office was just one block away in the same street as the hotel -near the Embassy of Japan and the Embassy of Sweden. She had already planned what she would wear to meet the president for the first time. A black velvet suit, with a Gucci handbag and her grandmother’s jewellery. The perfume would
be Dior. The eye-shadow the green YSL, with no lipstick. She went to the street where the president’s office was, to rehearse the walk there, scheduled for midday the next day. The president’s office was in the building next to Cartier. Cartier’s new necklace for the season was draped around a long headless neck made of onyx gleaming in the mid
afternoon sun. Anonymous, she walked into the foyer of the building. Whisked on sportsshoe clad feet through huge revolving glass doors that whooshed like the wings of prehistoric birds. The foyer was a world of granite, water, bronze and glass. The walls were a beaten gold surface from ceiling to floor. In one corner, very large flowers stood in a huge embossed Chinese vase. The air in the cavernous foyer smelt of the enormous rare flowers. The only sound was the fountain, designed by an Italian sculptor, and the soft chiming echo of the elevators. shoe clad feet through huge revolving glass doors that whooshed like the wings of prehistoric birds. The foyer was a world of granite, water, bronze and glass. The walls were a beaten gold surface from ceiling to floor. In one corner, very large flowers stood in a huge embossed Chinese vase. The air in the cavernous foyer smelt of the enormous rare flowers. The only sound was the fountain, designed by an Italian sculptor, and the soft chiming echo of the elevators.
On the morning of the appointment she arranged to have an early morning call. Two days beforehand, at a salon in Chinatown called “Geisha”, she had had the longest tendrils of her hair dyed blonde. “A champagne cognac diamond blonde really.” At the hair salon she had spoken in Japanese and drunk green tea for the first time in what seemed ages. Living in Tokyo seemed like another lifetime. Her hair was looking beautiful for the meeting with Mr Ikeguchi. She was going to wear it “down” over the tight fitting shoulders of the black suit, with the tight waist and the tiny slit behind the pleat at the knees. Black lace Schiaparelli stockings. “Very French, but just right for lunch at KIKU...”
When Ikeguchi had left his office with her for lunch the next day, he strode ahead of her until they were out of sight. Once they had reached the elevators he assumed the attitude of a European gentleman -allowing her to step in ahead of himself. KIKU was close enough for them to walk there. Beyond the automatic sliding bamboo and frosted glass doors was a hushed and shadowy stone garden. They were given the best table. The chef from Kyoto was called out to greet him. Then Rosanna noticed that the
apprentice chefs were looking at her with empathy from the doorway in the kitchen.
Halfway through the grilled lobster from Broome with wasabi sauce, a group of Ikeguchi’s male golf friends appeared. The men had acted as if there were not a chance in the world that she could understand Japanese. After the masculine laughter was over, she could see that Ikeguchi was blushing like an overjoyed schoolboy. At last the black sesame seed sherbet was served. Back at the office Ikeguchi gave her one of that year’s twenty-four carat gold alumni bookmarks from his old university. And the application form for a scholarship for post-graduate research at any government university in Japan. As if in prayer, Ikeguchi had closed his eyes and nodded slowly as he gave her the application form. And then he had regained himself, and laughed for the young “foreign” woman who was now in her own country, as if even the trade deficit were in the palm of his hand. Ikeguchi’s male golf friends appeared. The men had acted as if there were not a chance in the world that she could understand Japanese. After the masculine laughter was over, she could see that Ikeguchi was blushing like an overjoyed schoolboy. At last the black sesame seed sherbet was served. Back at the office Ikeguchi gave her one of that year’s twenty-four carat gold alumni bookmarks from his old university. And the application form for a scholarship for post-graduate research at any government university in Japan. As if in prayer, Ikeguchi had closed his eyes and nodded slowly as he gave her the application form. And then he had regained himself, and laughed for the young “foreign” woman who was now in her own country, as if even the trade deficit were in the palm of his hand.
After the lunch at KIKU she walked down Little Collins Street. Next to the Kansai Yamamoto shop she saw something very disturbing. In the window was a display made from a decorative box with that season’s newest shoes placed for effect upon it. The incongruous part was that the box that these empty shoes, placed at such immodest right angles to one another, were resting on, was a box for Japanese tea ceremony cakes. The black lacquer box was decorated with just one sprig of silver kaya grass, blowing in the wind of an invisible river. The box was slightly damaged around the edges, as if it had been on many winding and unlikely voyages. What kind of person would place Italian circa 1950s replica shoes on a sacred tea ceremony box? A person with no
knowledge -no respect! She wanted badly to go in and ask them if she could buy the box that didn’t belong there.
In Kyoto, where that kind of box was originally designed, nobody would even
step inside their own home -even when alone -with any kind of footwear on. Yet these people had displayed shoes for sale on top of the box, without so much as any speculation as to what the box was really made for. In Kyoto, in the Silver Pavilion, the courtiers who had as much leisure as their counterparts at Versailles, would have had runners carry mounds of ice from the mountain tops to chill the only kind of cakes these boxes were made for. The cakes were designed after the flowers around which that season’s winning poetry of the Palace contests shot the beautiful women of fashion to be over-night stars in their own revolving cult of beauty and unearthly refinement. Transparent cakes, a technique copied from the envoy’s conversation of what was the latest at the palace in Peking, were all the rage eight hundred years ago. The evolution of this cake made it more and more a perfectly unnatural imitation of the perfection of nature with each successive generation. During the Meiji Restoration the most prized cake won the confectionary designer an invitation to the Emperor’s Palace. In the story told and re-told in his family for three successive generations now, he had met the most celebrated living geisha of the day. Inspired by her voice and the one decoration in her lustrous hair, he had made the new cake to commemorate that occasion. The transparent cake was made in a mould the shape of river gourd. It had three layers of colour. The bottom layer was made of seaweed, to create an aqua green. The middle, main layer, was a pane of mirror-even when alone -with any kind of footwear on. Yet these people had displayed shoes for sale on top of the box, without so much as any speculation as to what the box was really made for. In Kyoto, in the Silver Pavilion, the courtiers who had as much leisure as their counterparts at Versailles, would have had runners carry mounds of ice from the mountain tops to chill the only kind of cakes these boxes were made for. The cakes were designed after the flowers around which that season’s winning poetry of the Palace contests shot the beautiful women of fashion to be over-night stars in their own revolving cult of beauty and unearthly refinement. Transparent cakes, a technique copied from the envoy’s conversation of what was the latest at the palace in Peking, were all the rage eight hundred years ago. The evolution of this cake made it more and more a perfectly unnatural imitation of the perfection of nature with each successive generation. During the Meiji Restoration the most prized cake won the confectionary designer an invitation to the Emperor’s Palace. In the story told and re-told
in his family for three successive generations now, he had met the most celebrated living geisha of the day. Inspired by her voice and the one decoration in her lustrous hair, he had made the new cake to commemorate that occasion. The transparent cake was made in a mould the shape of river gourd. It had three layers of colour. The bottom layer was made of seaweed, to create an aqua green. The middle, main layer, was a pane of mirrorlike “water”. Inside the water, made of a gel of concentrated red, rested a camellia. A camellia as red as the celebrated geisha’s perfect, laughing mouth had been on that momentous day.
Why, oh why…in faraway Melbourne did she have to see this box treated in this way? It was only because it was all so faraway, she told herself. A woman, “dressed to
kill” emerged with a clatter to shut the Edwardian replica doors of the shop. The strange girl who was Rosanna, had been staring at the shoes with such a curious expression for so long. The street lamps had been turned on. She turned around and joined the crowd of people in the rush hour, walking back to reality, down Little Collins Street to where she was staying, at the Hotel Victoria. girl who was Rosanna, had been staring at the shoes with such a curious expression for so long. The street lamps had been turned on. She turned around and joined the crowd of people in the rush hour, walking back to reality, down Little Collins Street to where she was staying, at the Hotel Victoria.
The man at the Stellini café had said that The Hotel Victoria had been there “forever.” From the facade and the various fixtures which had not been removed or covered with fibro you could see that yes, it had been there forever. People had been looking through the stained-glass windows shaped like portholes since before the war with Japan. That was “forever”. Someone had forgotten to take away the windows and smash them along with drainpipes that were calcified and too noisy for a 1970s hotel. It was as if only some people saw that the stained glass windows were there at all. They existed like old and forgotten letters that no one had looked at for years but might tell a different story every time they were read.
The mouse used to appear through the slit between the fridge (no bigger than a television) and the white laminex cupboard in the room without ensuite in the Hotel Victoria. She had come to Melbourne to look for work. She rode the broken elevator up and down to her room that was a sub-division of something that had once been more stately. If you didn’t press the 1940s brass buttons in the right combination, the lift took you down to a basement venue with no sign. The walls there were red and gold velveteen baroque with two dimmed candelabra lamps. A waiting passage to what? What went on in that basement? Back in the real world of the ground floor lobby the bellboys had said “events” happened there. The few times she had been plunged by the elevator into the
basement with no sign, she had waited in fright for the elevator to come back from nowhere again. Was this how people disappeared? By unknowingly going to places that did not exist? nowhere again. Was this how people disappeared? By unknowingly going to places that did not exist?
In the hotel room she took off her black high-heeled sandals. Peeling off the tight lace stockings, she turned on the evening news. Getting ready for a shower down the hall, she removed the bits of gold from her body. The room and everything she had been wearing still smelt of Shiseido’s ZEN she had so carefully scented everything with that morning. She put the gold chain into the red brocade pouch. The colour that, traditionally, only the youngest of women wear. The tea ceremony box began a rippling of thoughts, taking her back on her own solitary secret journey to Japan.
The President of the company reminded her of some one whom she had known back in Tokyo. Often she wished that she had never met that man. Or rather, that he had never set eyes on her. She had been only eighteen years old. Two years younger than the traditional age of adulthood in Japan. But she remembered him in some way or another, almost every day, wherever she went in this world. By the time they had separated, or by the time she had escaped from him, she was sure that she no longer loved him in any way. But sometimes, unawares, she found herself planning to contact him again. And then she would be glad, again, that she had not sent a letter. No letter through an anonymous intermediary. No word at all. She would never meet him again. Not in this world, nor in the next. Not in this life, not in this youth. Maybe he was dead already, and all this love and all this hate were for nothing. Or did her bright and unchanged smile keep him alive from across the sea? He had said that she gave him a second unexpected youth and that he thanked the Gods every day for her. But by the time they had separated,
she had given up believing in such prayers, such lavish statements, such promises. She had escaped back to her own country, without so much as a goodbye. The God-send that was she, left a resounding silence behind her. This was achieved by asking him to wait at the appointed place at the usual time, and then just not arriving. She did not arrive twenty minutes late on that day, after that on any other God-given day. avish statements, such promises. She had escaped back to her own country, without so much as a goodbye. The God-send that was she, left a resounding silence behind her. This was achieved by asking him to wait at the appointed place at the usual time, and then just not arriving. She did not arrive twenty minutes late on that day, after that on any other God-given day.
The gold chain was from him, but it only came into his possession by chance. He did not choose it the way a man might purposefully choose a bunch of musk scented “Oriental Lilies” because those flowers had some symbolic meaning for the intended woman. The gold chain came into his possession for the purpose of being a gift to Rosanna because it caught his eye in a shop that sold such things. It just happened to be the right price. Maybe it was that it was the just the right carat. The material it was made of -gold -was irrefutably of some measurable value. He must have thought it would be accepted as sure currency. As a work of art, it had passed through his hands only in the way a painting might be bought by a construction company and then sold at an auction to a real lover of art, or just another collector. It still brought prestige to the construction company for it to have passed through their hands at all. He had handled it on that day, he had placed it around her neck with the hands of one very unfamiliar with such an object. In that world between dreaming and waking, when we walk along a street whose name we don’t know and will never know -sometimes we touch things or catch things the way an infant who still hasn’t learnt to speak flaps at the air. Something that looked just like a leaf becomes a lizard -but usually we feel these things are unconnected to us. That is the way his hands had looked when he took the gold chain out of the box. The satin inside the box happened to be branded with two famous Jewish surnames linked together
forever in the corporate world of jewellery. It had had nothing whatever to do with him. Just currency. Just currency.
She tried to reason that she could keep the gold chain free from the associations of memory because, though from him, it had passed through his hands in this anonymous way. It had been sterilized by a hundred, no, a thousand baths since then. And that was what numerology was all about. The Chinese woman whose youth had been burned up in Japan had told her that gold could be purified by the rain. There was a special ceremony for this alchemy of metaphysics. People where she came from had been doing it for centuries. Surely in the secret, solitary world of Rosanna’s memories it was not just a bad luck burden. Was such a thing, which hung as an ornament around her neck like a weightless molten rivulet such a burden? Was it a heavy debt incurred by herself, to her light as air youth, never be repaid until it was given away? The chain was made of twisted strands of gold melted into waving lines with a life of their own and then hardened, tied and prised into a rope. The symmetry of it coiled into an endless line. When taken off from around her neck and placed onto the unsuspecting table, it lay like a snake, motionless to its helpless prey. But it was just a bit of gold, she told herself. Nobody else knew. In that museum in Italy, the gold chain’s prototype had stared up at her as if it had been waiting to be discovered. The design had travelled from the times of Marco Polo across the civilizations of East and West, repeating itself over and over again in different lives from the same mould. Designed in Italy, made in Hong Kong, sold in Tokyo.
After all, the day she realized she was free from him was the day he had given it to her. This man who thought he could buy her pride was reduced by Rosanna to being
asked to place it around her neck. A neck longer than most Japanese women’s, like the exaggerated long curving necks and unnaturally sloping shoulders of a beauty in a woodblock print. No real Japanese women looked like that. What a find she was to him. If he didn’t love her -she would take his pride, by making him pay in “gifts.” anese women’s, like the exaggerated long curving necks and unnaturally sloping shoulders of a beauty in a woodblock print. No real Japanese women looked like that. What a find she was to him. If he didn’t love her -she would take his pride, by making him pay in “gifts.”
In the hotel room, in front of the mirror polished clean as a pane of water each time the customers left, an unexpected incident of triumph was accorded to her. He often asked her how often had he -the president of the biggest construction company in Tokyo -been laughed at since becoming “a millionaire”? It had all happened so effortlessly for her. Revenge for being made into his mistress was Rosanna’s in the space of a few seconds. “Put it around my neck with your own hands,” she had said, like a trusting, far younger lover. Half daughter, half lover. No Japanese woman would dare make such an intimate request. She held the cards, she called the shots. He said nothing, but looked downwards the way he looked when he knew that his English wasn’t perfect. As if something as flimsy as language mattered to her! The eyes tell all. Touch tells all. The body does not lie. She had continued to play her part for reasons he would never understand. He was the stupid one -not this woman young enough to be his daughter. He both hated and loved the way she proudly let her teeth show when she laughed.
He had said that he had lost the joint of his forefinger in a factory during the war. He had told her that at a time when she wouldn’t have known any better. The missing joint was his insignia for joining an organization that forbade its name being spoken out loud. Outsiders who breathed the word “yakuza” in the presence of its members were often visited by grave and mysterious misfortune.
“Place it around my neck, and I’ll never take it off…” she said. He liked to feel as
if he were living in some foreign movie, playing opposite a girl who men on the underground train could only fantasize about. Continuously she created the scene and gave him his cue. His hand with the missing joint couldn’t undo the catch. Rosanna sat at the mirror waiting. Unaware she was watching him fumbling at the catch with his finger with the missing joint, he turned to face her reflection looking steadily at him. She was smiling. The innocent sweetness of her smile had a piercing knowingness. Once again she had seen him being unable to do something so simple. Seen, out of his depth by this younger foreign woman who was demanding more and more of him every week. Imperceptibly her face changed to a look of sympathy -“Oh, its alright, I will undo it myself.” She took the gold chain and placed it around her own neck. underground train could only fantasize about. Continuously she created the scene and gave him his cue. His hand with the missing joint couldn’t undo the catch. Rosanna sat at the mirror waiting. Unaware she was watching him fumbling at the catch with his finger with the missing joint, he turned to face her reflection looking steadily at him. She was smiling. The innocent sweetness of her smile had a piercing knowingness. Once again she had seen him being unable to do something so simple. Seen, out of his depth by this younger foreign woman who was demanding more and more of him every week. Imperceptibly her face changed to a look of sympathy -“Oh, its alright, I will undo it myself.” She took the gold chain and placed it around her own neck.
Black butterflies
As Ikeguchi walked away from the lunch, he remembered the day he had decided to go to Tokyo to study. It was because of a certain newly debuted geisha that he had done this. The girl, Tsuki, from his hometown who had become a geisha used to come to his mother’s house to practice flower arrangement under her tutelage. Two summers before she had scandalized the town by refusing the son of the town mayor in marriage. She came from a poor family with no brothers and people said that she really must think highly of herself to refuse such an illustrious marriage offer. It was his own mother who had unwittingly helped her reputation of eligibility by telling everyone at the bath-house that for a small rice-farmer’s daughter she showed a beautiful love of flowers, and that she was not even accepting money from the girl for the lessons. Ikeguchi had helped at rice harvesting times and had bent down in the water between the rows of rice to tear out water lilies called “weeds” by the farmers. “Flowers” were no different to them than were fireflies or grasshoppers. How was it that such a refined soul had survived amongst them? Unlike the other farming girls, Tsuki had long graceful legs like a city girl. When she sat on the veranda overlooking the river at the back of his mother’s house he watched her unobserved from the balcony above. Her hands, as she cut the leaves from the stalks of flowers for the local temple, moved softly.
His mother had done a great deal to help her, they heard at the bathhouse. Why had she refused the marriage proposal, which could have given her family almost twice as much land to farm with? Later, she was at the crux of a rumour involving a young priest-in-training who had disappeared from the temple. Tsuki was in Tokyo, her family nervously said, in a rehearsed way. But when had she left? The train stationmaster knew
who bought tickets for the weekly train to Tokyo and he would have known if Tsuki were on any train leaving the mountains. y train to Tokyo and he would have known if Tsuki were on any train leaving the mountains.
The following season, Tsuki’s family had a new thatched roof and the people who had made it were paid with a money order from Tokyo signed by Tsuki. The village postmaster showed the piece of paper with a glowing red wax print of her new name stamp to everybody. Pretending he was only verifying if the stamp were genuine, Ikeguchi had passed his fingertips over her stamp, made from the character of her nickname “Tsuki” (Moon). Everybody reminded one another her real name was Satsuki.
Tsuki started to come back to the hometown to visit once she had made her debut in Tokyo as a geisha. She always caught the morning train into the mountains and left by the night train to return to the city. She was in training to the geisha house and lived there with the owner, until she could open her own business. Sitting on the balcony, primly talking to his mother in a city accent, you would think she was born to wear silk, and not cotton pantaloons, as she had done. It was not that the young priest belonged to a sect forbidden to marry, but that he had not told anyone he and Tsuki were in love. Ungrateful young man. Now he worked grilling chicken on skewers in Ueno Park to finance a dream to be a painter. He was going to go to Paris one day, and he was Tsuki’s special protector in the big city.
When he had heard this Ikeguchi felt jealous for the first time in his life. If anyone deserved Tsuki’s attention it was himself. His mother had taught Tsuki how to sew her own kimono in the city way and had been the first to say that she didn’t deserve to be an unpaid rice-farming hand. That young priest, as soft looking as a woman, what did Tsuki see in him?
Tsuki bowed down very low on the veranda floor and he heard her voice drifting up like a hushed song, anda floor and he heard her voice drifting up like a hushed song,
“I can never thank you enough madam for having taken a good-for-nothing like myself under your wing. I did not deserve your efforts to marry me off well. Things are better this way. You know that my family were not doing well after the heavy snows the year before last, but through Buddha’s mercy we are doing better now. Please accept this humble gift I am ashamed to even offer you...” Ikeguchi could not wait until his mother and Tsuki stopped exchanging pleasantries, so that he could have the chance to walk her to the train station. His mother would never allow him to be seen walking with her under any other circumstances. That might offend the town mayor’s family, and then they would be in the bad books. But the real reason was that Ikeguchi’s mother could see that he acted like a bumbling puppy, tripping over himself with joy, every time Tsuki spoke a word in his direction. Her beautiful little mouth was always smiling a small vague smile as her lovely eyes glided coolly over the world around her. Now her mouth was painted a glistening Tokyo red. Ikeguchi waited in the entrance to his home, as if he had only just come in. He wore the suit that his mother had made for him to go in on the first day to Tokyo University. He would tell his mother that he had been trying it on again for size. That he thought the shoulders were too tight. Tsuki’s little geta were placed very formally on the tiles of the entrance hall, where she had respectfully left them. While he could still hear their voices on the balcony he was safe. He leant down and picked up one of her city-bought geta. The inner soles were painted with tiny black butterflies, which only would be visible as she walked along the street and her instep left the ground level. They were made of lacquer. His fingers left an imprint where he held them. He shone the geta
on his sleeve to remove the transparent marks of his fingers, and placed it back next its pair. Ready for her to step right back into. She would never know he had actually touched her things. What an unexpected thrill. He really had not meant to do it at all. pair. Ready for her to step right back into. She would never know he had actually touched her things. What an unexpected thrill. He really had not meant to do it at all.
Just then his mother and Tsuki appeared. He had never in his life seen his mother acting nervously. She was the only woman in the town to have arrived as a bride from Osaka, and never had to be careful in her speech with anyone he had ever known. But Tsuki seemed unaware, and spoke mellifluously on, “Oh no, madam, really you are too kind...” And so on. He felt as if it would never end, and as if there were water rushing through his head. As she moved around, a hypnotic fragrance hung around her. She made eye contact with Ikeguchi for an instant as she bent down to pick up a handbag with silken cords to slip over her wrists. Ikeguchi’s mother spoke to him as if he were not yet grown-up, “Please accompany Tsuki to her home with this box of nashi from us and then make sure that she gets on the Tokyo train on time.” His mother turned to Tsuki -“You are a good daughter and I really wish you well for the dancing performance in Tokyo next week. I pray that you will one day make the name of this town famous. I always knew you were going to be a great beauty. You deserve it. Please give my regards to your dear parents. Thank them for the boxes of rice. You are a good girl. Take care now.”
He realised afterwards that he had not heard anything his mother had said at all. It had been recorded in his sub-consciousness as he came to terms with the fact that his mother was actually asking him to accompany Tsuki through the town. “Yes, mother,” he had remembered saying, like a schoolboy. Tsuki gave him her unchanging smile, and had bowed ever so slightly in a gentle swaying motion. And off they had gone, on the most momentous stroll of his life.
For a very long time Ikeguchi had buried the memories of the moments that made up that stroll. He had buried them so that he would never contact her in Tokyo and could study undistracted. He had buried them during his arranged marriage to the company president’s daughter. He had not remembered them for the years in Berlin with the company. After thirty or so years you would think that he had never known Tsuki at all. very long time Ikeguchi had buried the memories of the moments that made up that stroll. He had buried them so that he would never contact her in Tokyo and could study undistracted. He had buried them during his arranged marriage to the company president’s daughter. He had not remembered them for the years in Berlin with the company. After thirty or so years you would think that he had never known Tsuki at all.
Many years after becoming one of the most prominent men in the Trade Commission he had forgotten he had ever needed to say to himself that it was unseemly for a man to lose himself over a woman. It was very depressing that that particular day, of all days, has come rushing back to him as he walked back to the office. Melbourne, of all places. Why did they send me here? Ikeguchi went back to his office, high above the face of the Town Hall clock and did something he had not done in a long time. He took out a bottle of sake from a box that a trade delegation had given him. “Come in here Shiroyama,” he had said to his young secretary, “I don’t want to drink alone...” Shiroyama was rather apprehensive, until he could see that Ikeguchi did not have his usual vigour that particular afternoon. “Tell me Shiroyama, what do you think of the women out here?”
“The women sir?” Definitely it was better to be safe. “I really would not know sir. With the trade deficit with Tokyo sir, I haven’t the time to focus on anything else...” It occurred to him that Ikeguchi was at last going to avail himself of his own multipurpose responsibilities out here in Melbourne and ask him to arrange some discreet meeting. Now that would be something to talk about over mah-jong with the others, he thought. But no, Ikeguchi continued to act strangely, and saying nothing else, had
ordered the car and left. The Town Hall clock, which always looked as small as the face of a wrist watch to him, had struck “6”. After asking that strange question about “the women out here”, Ikeguchi had only made one further remark. He had said “The rush hour has started.” Then he had started to leave. ed the car and left. The Town Hall clock, which always looked as small as the face of a wrist watch to him, had struck “6”. After asking that strange question about “the women out here”, Ikeguchi had only made one further remark. He had said “The rush hour has started.” Then he had started to leave.
“Your shoes, sir...”
“What? Oh.”
Ikeguchi shuffled off the JAL complimentary slippers, put on his shoes and went home, after listening to that recording, just once more, with the volume turned right down, and his head next to the machine, as if Shiroyama were not there at all.
The Diamond Ring
After emailing the promised resume in type-set Japanese to Ikeguchi, the next day Rosanna went back to Adelaide. Adelaide was the hometown of her high school days. Her first casual job had been as a Japanese language interpreter. The national network had proclaimed it “exists to facilitate communication for people encountering language difficulties in interpreting the spoken word and/or translating the written word.”
It was past midnight, when she had been called to the psychiatric hospital. A national interpreting service telephone operator spoke from one of the neighbouring states across the country:
“Can you go to the hospital immediately to work for an emergency case?”
“Yes, I can.”
“The job number is MSL7. The patient’s name is Mieko Umehara.”
“O.K. I will call a taxi now.”
The black rainy streets were empty except for a speeding Falcon Ford carrying some lonely and wild looking young wolves. The gold Greek Orthodox pendant on the taxi driver’s rear vision mirror spun around, glinting like a hypnotist’s charm. Driving unnecessarily fast, the driver swung around onto the gravel of the hospital’s driveway. A gothic building with bars on the window stood like a mother who had given birth when far too old, around a cluster of 1970s semi-detached brick wings of the hospital.
To the taxi driver, the passenger seemed just a young girl:
“Why are you going to that hospital now?” he asked.
“I’m working there tonight.”
She looked out of the window, as if the dialogue was over. out of the window, as if the dialogue was over.
“You Greek?”
“No, I’m Australian.”
The taxi driver was agitated.
“You should be proud your culture.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your parents are Greek, so you Greek too.”
“My parents are Australian.”
The taxi driver looked amused.
“Sorry, some people no like to say they Greek.”
“Yes. I am thinking about my job tonight. I cannot talk to you.”
The girl looked at the interpreter job-slip booklet.
The patient was ushered into one of the rooms of the 1970s brick building after the interpreter had her identity checked at reception and briefed by one of the team of doctors. The patient was a person who was obviously very displaced in her present surroundings. In the room with a glass window for monitoring purposes, her skin was as white as the breast of a bird in a river brimming with rain. In the room of plastic chairs, no mirrors and no clocks of any kind her long hair shone as if it would melt under the
fluorescent tubes. She was wearing the checked cotton pants and T-shirt she had arrived in. A tiny piece of cotton wool had been taped to one of her arMs The patient’s eyebrows were twin young leaves of willow. Her mouth was like the heart of a plum blossom. She belonged in the wing of a temple in the mountains overlooking Kyoto. There would be no sound there except a stream of running water outside and the birds that drank. In that
place made of cedar which grow in the surrounding woods her eyes would glide over the bands of rising mists in the mornings. She did not belong in a partly reconstructed gothic horror with rusting bars on the windows. bands of rising mists in the mornings. She did not belong in a partly reconstructed gothic horror with rusting bars on the windows.
The diagnostic process began. Dr Exanoff addressed the interpreter as if they were at a glittering party where all the ambassadors and consulates were present.
“Could you kindly ask the patient if she remembers how she arrived here?”
Between the patient and the place she called home a thousand leagues of windswept sea tossed and turned. The equator, invisible to the eye lay in an impenetrable boundary never to be cut.
“Do you remember how you came here?” asked the interpreter.
“Yes. I came here on a Japan Airlines flight which left from Narita Airport.”
‘‘No, we mean do you remember how you came to this hospital.’’
“I was brought in a Mercedes Benz.”
“A Mercedes Benz?”
“Yes. My ‘home-stay mother’ drove me here.”
“Is she a nice lady, this ‘home-stay mother’?”
‘‘No, she is mean.”
“How is she mean?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“When you came to Australia, was it the first time for you to leave Japan?”
“Yes.”
“Was it the first time for you to fly in an airplane?”
“Yes.”
The interview went on interminably. Then it was time for the patient to rest until daylight. The doctors asked the interpreter to wait alone while they left the room to discuss the case. Some nurses appeared in the observation window and the interpreter motioned to them to let her out of the locked room. The nurses looked blankly at her, smiled to one another and turned around and left, laughing. In the airless room without a clock the countless minutes went by. After the interpreter had given back the I.D. she had received on arrival she was driven home in a hospital car. daylight. The doctors asked the interpreter to wait alone while they left the room to discuss the case. Some nurses appeared in the observation window and the interpreter motioned to them to let her out of the locked room. The nurses looked blankly at her, smiled to one another and turned around and left, laughing. In the airless room without a clock the countless minutes went by. After the interpreter had given back the I.D. she had received on arrival she was driven home in a hospital car.
Soon after the national agency had then sent her a fax to say that she had been taken off that particular case because her behaviour strongly indicated that she was emotionally involved with the progress of the patient. An interpreter should never divine what was in the mind of the one whose language was being interpreted -it was the doctor’s job to do that. They were the professionals. A presumptuous attitude. Inappropriate interpreters with attitudes were against the code of professionalism. How could she know what was in that mentally disturbed girl’s mind just because she spoke that language? Maybe it was actually a situation that the interpreter was shamming and had not understood what the girl was saying at all. The notes that the doctor had taken showed that there were some serious discrepancies. Maybe the interpreter was trying to make the girl look sicker than she was because the interpreter knew that if the girl had to be repatriated someone had to accompany her on the plane back to Tokyo, all at the Australian government’s expense? Too weird. End of the “interpreter’s involvement in the Case File number 3iiJ.”
There was nothing for Rosanna in Adelaide, she told herself. She applied to write a thesis on “Japanese Poetry” at a university in Sydney.
A Glass Flower
Hana Inoue was the “Japanese girl” the Dean of the college had introduced Rosanna to, for his own reasons. Living on campus would be a good way to integrate back into life in the West -no longer life in the Far East. But as there were no rooms available at that time Rosanna moved in with Hana for the rest of the semester. It was a good sign that the flat mate’s name was Hana, which means “Flower” in English.
At the Dean’s office, the English secretary told Rosanna that the girl Hana was “Japanese.” The girlfriend of the dean’s son was a Japanese girl, the daughter of the Dean’s wife’s friend, she said. Her name was Hana Inoue. So her Japanese name would be Inoue Hana. The Japanese girl needed a room-mate. She lived in Kirribilli. The phone number and the address were waiting for Rosanna. Hana was expecting her to call. Rosanna moved in with her immediately, to live in the two bedroom apartment in Kirribilli, near the wharf.
She found the photo of Hana soon after she had moved in with her. It was leaning against the back of an empty cupboard in her bedroom. They were built-in cupboards. The room had a bookcase and a double-paned window with Venetian blinds. The photo was life-size. It was black and white. Her face was not visible. It was a shot of her body only. From the top of her stomach, down to the middle of her legs. But Rosanna knew it was Hana. Rosanna took out the photo, and lay it on the bed. In the dark, Hana was covered in a hazy glow. Because of the developing technique, in sharp focus, in the sunshine, the dots on the surface of the photo were very round, and defined. Under lights, for the camera, her skin was illuminated to a platinum white. Hana’s iridescent skin was like a mercurial reflection of Rosanna herself. She could be looked at but never
fully touched. She was like a lily at the bottom of a pool. To be looked at through the undisturbed water. To clothe her beautiful nakedness, Rosanna put her back, in the blackness of the cupboard. undisturbed water. To clothe her beautiful nakedness, Rosanna put her back, in the blackness of the cupboard.
Hana came and went, never actually living at the flat. She came back to get clothes -to wash and hang out clothes. She would listen to the messages on the phone in the kitchen, and then plug in her mobile phone, to re-charge it, and then go to get the clothes ready. She would change, and then say goodbye, and leave. They only had the chance to speak while Hana was doing these things.
Hana’s dressing-table had been given to her by her grandmother in Japan. It was very small. Japanese size, like her. “Like a doll”, as they say, in Japan. The stool, and the drawers, and the mirror with its frame, were made of a heavy, red, polished wood. On a little silver table next to the wall, was a collection of glass vials, of different colours. One was a very large reproduction of the woman’s hour glass figure, done in pink glass. Only once, had Rosanna seen Hana lying naked, on top of her bed. The duck feather quilt, with a red satin cover, was lying on the floor. The radiator on the wall was on. She had been asleep in the room, warm enough to hatch eggs. If the phone rang Hana had asked Rosanna to answer the phone and bring it in to her. The phone had rung, with the first three bars of the latest hit love song. Hana had jumped off the bed, her eyes opened wide, but for that one second she still seemed to be asleep.
During the day Rosanna was always alone in the flat, on the slope going down towards the sea. An oil portrait of Hana when she was modelling for payment, by the hour, was over the mantelpiece. It was very large, and framed in a thick, heavy baroque gold frame. Hana was lying, naked, with her hair spilling into the foreground of the
painting. Her nipples were painted a cherry-blossom pink. In the oil painting, her skin had been a deep ivory. Her smile, so slight. She told Rosanna that she would introduce her to the man who had painted the work. As soon as she had the time. -blossom pink. In the oil painting, her skin had been a deep ivory. Her smile, so slight. She told Rosanna that she would introduce her to the man who had painted the work. As soon as she had the time.
There was something about the Dean, who had been the link between Hana and Rosanna. In the two dimensional world, he was attached to the Department of Environmental Science, and was Dean of the college, but in the subtler scheme of the universe, the Dean to Rosanna was a satyr in an academic robe. The genetic make-up of the satyr has repeated itself, over and over again, in various socio-cultural environments. The Dean of the college was just one example of a satyr living in the times of the Sydney Olympics, in that city, at that university, as the Dean of the college for men and women.
The Dean reminded Rosanna of a black marble statue she had seen on the first day she had seen the real-life statue of “David” she spent so much time looking at in a small greyish black and white art textbook photograph at the Catholic girl’s school.
Brigitte and Rosanna had been under one of the almond trees…
“Why does it look like that?” Rosanna had asked.
“Because he is not circumcised.” Brigitte had informed her.
In real life “David” had looked over his shoulder in the way a football hero pretends to ignore a girl he wants to ask to the school dance. The black marble statue haunting Rosanna’s dreams with heavy wetness since then had been a satyr copulating with a naked woman. The woman’s neck was arched back, and her mouth was open in a silent scream of pleasure mixed with pain.
Later in the semester the satyr’s face, in orgasm, was like the Dean’s to Rosanna as she lifted up her head from prayer at chapel. She would always notice him looking
from under his brows at her. Even at the Uffizi, Rosanna could not take her gaze away from the black satyr. The satyr’s cold rock skin was veined with thin criss-crossing rivers of pink. Like pulsating blood rising to the surface of the body. And then she had seen a man who was either a merchant seaman from the Baltics, of maybe the Prince of Liechtenstein, looking at her with amusement from a touchable distance, while she sat staring into the all-seeing eyes of the satyr. osanna could not take her gaze away from the black satyr. The satyr’s cold rock skin was veined with thin criss-crossing rivers of pink. Like pulsating blood rising to the surface of the body. And then she had seen a man who was either a merchant seaman from the Baltics, of maybe the Prince of Liechtenstein, looking at her with amusement from a touchable distance, while she sat staring into the all-seeing eyes of the satyr.
On the day the Dean and Rosanna had first met, she waited in his completely quiet office, while he went to bring her a VHS video of the college, and some technicolour pamphlets, for hard-copy. Surrounded by rugby fields, the only sound was the grandfather clock. The couches were leather. A fire crackled in the wrought iron grate. Photographs of the old boys in their whites hung in silver frames. Among the faces of those who had fought in the last war, were “an Indian Prince” here and there. The mantelpiece was made of black marble from Italy, and there were waratahs in a crystal vase. The Dean came back, and then they had a tiny sherry, together, in front of the fire. She could not stay, she apologised for the High Table. But she would definitely come next Wednesday. They talked about Japan. And literature. The oars of the blue and white boats hung from the mahogany panelled walls. In the glass cases were souvenirs from India, which a certain “old boy” had brought back or sent back from his days of service there. The rug was a round patch of bright red two-inch-thick woven Chinese silk. As she left the college, to go back to her hotel, the Dean had said “Hana, my son’s girlfriend, would love to have you stay with her until the room here becomes available. Welcome to the college -mind you leave your details at the office for Hana to make contact. We are very interested in you.” The Dean’s hand had been like that of some kind of animal
coldly sweating to the touch. But the hairy hands protruded properly from starched white cotton, tweed and cuff-links reflecting the green study lamp on the leather desk. cotton, tweed and cuff-links reflecting the green study lamp on the leather desk.
Later in the semester, Rosanna was giving a tutorial in the Senior-common-Room of the college after High Table. The audience was all male except for the wife of the resident priest and the wife of the Dean. The under-graduates sat at the front, in a semicircular row around the over-head projector Rosanna was using. The words, SPRING AUTUMN SNOW FIRE LOVE and the translated Japanese characters corresponding to these themes in the ancient poetry of Japan were thrown up in a wave of light onto the screen wall. In front of the screen Rosanna indicated this and that with an outstretched arm as the projected illuminated words ran over her body in a beam of light and shadows. The words ran over her like running water or drifting flames. The Dean watched motionless as Rosanna made the smooth gestures through the beams of shadow and light. When the Seminar on Japanese Love Poetry was over, the Dean approached Rosanna as she packed up the projector with three eager and bumbling under-graduates each trying to help her more than the other.
With his face confidentially close to Rosanna’s bent head, (she was taller than the Dean), he made his pronouncement on the evening –
“That was superb, my dear. You could hear a pin drop. I must recommend you to the Department of History –they will be interested, I’m sure.
Would you like to join my wife and the O.B.’s for a brandy in the library now, before bed-time?”
“Thank you Dr Mason,” (for that was the Dean’s name) was all Rosanna was heard saying. She feigned to be unaware when the priest’s wife was overheard saying to
the mousy wife of the Dean
“I don’t care if her tight little black skirt does cover her knees. There’s something quite inappropriate about tutoring these men in sandals like that!”
They watched her deer-like legs made all the longer by the high-heeled sandals held on with black leather straps around her slim ankles.
“Well what a performance that was,” chuckled the Dean to the other O.B.’s, as Rosanna retired early “to study.”
On the day Rosanna last saw Hana, they were both home all day, but Hana did not want to be woken up until it was time for her to go out. Hana got up and had a shower. They hardly spoke. Hana was telling Rosanna what to say if her Sydney boyfriend rang, while she was away with her Melbourne boyfriend, who was studying at RMIT. Her Sydney boyfriend, Ralph, thought, of course, as she had said the day before, that she had broken up with the RMIT one, who was Eric, the Dean’s son. She went in to put on her shoes -black suede Dolce Gabbana high heels, with diamante decorations. Her black, long hair was in tight plaits, hanging down to her waist. Rosanna had helped her dye it blue-black that afternoon. The TV was turned down, so that Rosanna could hear whatever instructions Hana had been giving, before going out. They had kissed one another goodbye for then. In the dark she watched, as Hana nimbly climbed into the tree. They used to climb into the tree to get over the back fence that faced the bus stop. Climbing in the tree as if she were a little girl, but wearing those stiletto heels -Hana was very like Rosanna’s image of herself, in that instant. She had looked back once, smiling, her eyes refracting the dim light of the Kirribilli street lamps.
“She rang me, very late, the night after. She asked me to go into her bedroom,
open a drawer, take a note-book full of phone numbers, take the notebook faraway from Kirribilli and throw it in a bin somewhere. It was not safe to be kept in the Kirribilli apartment. Then I must leave immediately -take an overnight bag -don’t even stay long enough to pack your stuff -just leave. I must call, she said, to ask her when it would be safe to return. Then she had said that she couldn’t talk right then, but she would call me back…” -book full of phone numbers, take the notebook faraway from Kirribilli and throw it in a bin somewhere. It was not safe to be kept in the Kirribilli apartment. Then I must leave immediately -take an overnight bag -don’t even stay long enough to pack your stuff -just leave. I must call, she said, to ask her when it would be safe to return. Then she had said that she couldn’t talk right then, but she would call me back…”
That previous day, Hana came out of the bathroom to answer her mobile phone, which Rosanna had already picked up. As Hana had opened her black almond shaped eyes wide, she whispered with a wicked significance “It’s HIM!” A billow of steam unfurled before her appearance from the shower. She was pushing one arm through the red silk kimono Rosanna had given her, the other arm was through already. Her breast spilt forward as she leant down to fling her hair back over her wet, satiny head. Her perfectly shaped head crowned her graceful neck and sloping shoulders. Her body was streaming with steam. Her nipples were spherical, and pink. The skin like taut, wet silk. The skin around her nipples the colour of cherry blossoms, was a glistening white. Like snow under the moon.
She stood with her hand on her hip while she spoke to the HIM. The underlining of the kimono, a blood red, reflected on her mirror-like body. The hair over her pussy was glossy black, and was cut very short, so that it clung to the skin as if it were a baby’s scalp. The clitoris hung out, like a little dangling bell. A glowing, pink, opaque droplet. On either side were her silvery thighs, glowing with the steam. The steam ran down from her navel, into the cleft of her pussy. And she stood there talking about where to meet that HIM.
She rubbed her hand over one breast, and then said “Anyway, I’m cold -I’ll see you there later,” and went back into the bathroom. The steam drifted as slowly as smoke into the living room, and the molecules evaporated in the swirling, gold perpendicular pillar of light, beaming from the French windows, to the evening news of Sydney…. ’m cold -I’ll see you there later,” and went back into the bathroom. The steam drifted as slowly as smoke into the living room, and the molecules evaporated in the swirling, gold perpendicular pillar of light, beaming from the French windows, to the evening news of Sydney….
That night, in Double Bay, in the bedroom where Hana had grown up, Rosanna dreamt of her, standing in the kimono…” The colour of a pink diamond. Not an ordinary diamond. A misty diamond, the colour of a star. A star pink argyle diamond. I wonder if there is such a thing… a moonstone, yes, that’s it… a moonstone.”
In the Dean’s office that week, the parents of Hana looked as if they knew something Rosanna didn’t, but were trying to say that the situation was the reverse. Hana’s English mother, who had divorced Hana’s Japanese International Law father, sat beside him as if she had never bad-mouthed “Japan” to Rosanna or said “I hope you’re going to act as the sister she has never had. We’ve been so worried about Hana. Her father and I divorced recently, then her getting mixed up in this scandal involving ‘ecstasy’ -which she has never even tried, she assured me -and Hana never lies. And the intense relationship with that motor-cycle riding older female at the university.”
Then Hana’s father spoke his role -“Just tell us where Hana is, please. You know she has been engaged to Dr Mason’s son for seven months now and it is very unlike her to just disappear. You must know something and you must have your reasons for not telling us.”
Dr Mason, the Dean of the college, looked on at this dead-end exchange with the practised eye of a man who had “been mentoring men at the university for over two decades.” The satyr’s transition to the analyst was effortless -it seemed to Rosanna –
“whose eyes had that attention-deficit-disorder look.” -deficit-disorder look.”
“She knows something”, they all nodded to one another.
“This is going to become a matter for the police,” said Dr Mason, after a pause.
Rosanna conceded, with a maddening calm and an alarmingly good vocabulary, that indeed it looked as if the police should be involved. She agreed that “an honest girl” doesn’t just vanish without informing her trusted parents. This seemed not to be what the two sets of parents were after.
The Dean then said, “We had hoped that you would bring Hana out of her social isolation. You often spoke in Japanese, we heard.” His eyes were directed towards Hana’s Japanese father, as if his nationality was proof that the two girls had a secret understanding.
“Yes, I remember you saying that Hana’s father would be so pleased that I spoke Japanese, so that Hana could get back in touch with that side of her cultural heritage. But the fact is that Hana actually told me she couldn’t speak Japanese and had no interest in that side of herself.” Rosanna looked across at Hana’s father. “She said that it was 50% genetic only -and not environmental in her case. To use her words, `I am afraid of their culture. It’s only in my blood anyway -not in my self-identity.’” Rosanna paused and turned to the mother, (a blonde woman from Leeds) -“don’t you remember Hana saying that, the day you came over for afternoon tea?”
On that unforgettable day Mrs Inoue had said, to Rosanna’s astonishment and to even Hana’s blush, “As a room-mate at least you’re better than these spastic Japanese male students the Accommodation Officer at the uni keeps dumping on her.” Rosanna had wondered at the time if that was meant to be a compliment or a gesture of
acceptance? It really didn’t fit in with Hana’s description of her mother as being a very well read woman who just couldn’t stand being “dominated by anyone or any other culture” -“That’s why we’re divorced,” -she had explained, as if this would be obvious to anyone. Hana had given a sigh of inevitability and boredom then. It was a case of who could expect an English lady to be dominated by a Japanese husband? But he was still her father and she loved him and she was sure he loved her, in his own way. Mrs Inoue seemed not to recall the afternoon tea occasion at all. The interview regarding the disappearance of Hana was then terminated. ’t fit in with Hana’s description of her mother as being a very well read woman who just couldn’t stand being “dominated by anyone or any other culture” -“That’s why we’re divorced,” -she had explained, as if this would be obvious to anyone. Hana had given a sigh of inevitability and boredom then. It was a case of who could expect an English lady to be dominated by a Japanese husband? But he was still her father and she loved him and she was sure he loved her, in his own way. Mrs Inoue seemed not to recall the afternoon tea occasion at all. The interview regarding the disappearance of Hana was then terminated.
Rosanna moved back to the Lodge for post-grads, and wondered who the new male student from France might be. She had seen him in the dining hall but they hadn’t spoken. His stuff was already in one of the bathrooms they were all sharing. In the mirror, her breasts and her bottom were a cream colour, and the rest of her a deep chocolate brown, even though summer was over. She picked up the shaving brush with two fingers. It was made of soft black and white bristles from some kind of animal. She ran the brush lightly up her arm, and then circled it slowly around her nipples, and her navel. Then, without making a sound, she replaced it in its silver holder. She had not disturbed the slab of soap which said “Pour L’ Homme.”
The food at the college was of a standard that had not changed since the college was founded by Protestant men in the nineteenth century. In fact there is even a college song, handed down over the generations of hungry young male students, about a soupery in the town. The soupery had become famous as a venue to escape the ordeal of the High
Table. That night, she decided to cook “something.” The kitchen in the lodge was dead. Just dead. A dead spider, its legs clamped to its sides, in horrible symmetry, lay on the
dark green linoleum. Nothing was in the enormous fridge except a bottle of very expensive champagne that an ecstatic homebound graduate from one of the four corners of the world had completely forgotten about. The ice cube trays, filled with greying ice were wedged into a frozen mountain, deep in the freezer. The freezer would have been big enough to hold a turkey, three family ice-cream buckets and four ice-trays. Its cavernous depths challenged the regeneration of any kind of molecular life, any kind of heat, any kind of conception. She lit all six rings of the gas range. Then she lit the oven and left the door open. Squatting down, she crossed her arms under across her breasts, and put her palms and fingers into her armpits to warm them. She sat, letting the heat run over her in waves, while she thought of what to cook to christen the kitchen for the new semester. expensive champagne that an ecstatic homebound graduate from one of the four corners of the world had completely forgotten about. The ice cube trays, filled with greying ice were wedged into a frozen mountain, deep in the freezer. The freezer would have been big enough to hold a turkey, three family ice-cream buckets and four ice-trays. Its cavernous depths challenged the regeneration of any kind of molecular life, any kind of heat, any kind of conception. She lit all six rings of the gas range. Then she lit the oven and left the door open. Squatting down, she crossed her arms under across her breasts, and put her palms and fingers into her armpits to warm them. She sat, letting the heat run over her in waves, while she thought of what to cook to christen the kitchen for the new semester.
She left all the lights on, in the absent lodge, and walked across the football oval, to go shopping. She went to the Greek’s shop on the main Street. Either the Greek, or his wife, stood or sat all day long, next to the mountains of fruit. The tiny place was between a pawn shop with electric guitars in the window, and a day and night surgery. A young man with curly hair was pulling down the aluminium roller shutters of the shop. Under the main street’s lights, the hair on his down-turned head shone like fluorescent lights. The Victorian ramparts of the buildings looked small against Sydney’s evening news time sky.
His skin was a dewy porcelain. If one had touched it, it would have been as wet as dew, yet as dry as velvet. His eyes were chocolaty.
“Hi.”
“I would like to buy some fruit. Is it too late? Are you closing now’?”
“No, that’s O.K. sweetie, come in.” ’s O.K. sweetie, come in.”
He rolled the aluminium roller door up again, in a rattling sweep. The light in the shop had already been turned off, by him, five minutes before. A single bulb, with yellow mosquito tape wound around it. A window with a paisley curtain separated the shop front from the house at the back. The hair, at the nape of his neck, was shaven short. As he turned his head, it fell in spherical curls over his forehead. Around his smooth, round neck, a matted silver chain stuck to the skin.
“We’ve got these.”
He picked up a punnet of raspberries. On the thumb of his thick hand, was a heavy gold ring. She walked towards him, to give him the two small coins, with two slender fingers. Then he leant down, and put two other punnets into the bag. A blue glass bead dangled from the silver chain around his neck. Sydney’s sunset struck through the aqua bead and threw an azure spot of light onto his white throat. In Greece itself, many years later a woman had told her that the blue glass bead is a symbol for the sea. The ocean was that vast womb that joined and gave birth to all humanity -and challenged the divisions that people conjured to separate themselves from one another.
“You can have these ones too,” said the god living in the exile of modern-day Sydney.
“Thank you.”
He walked close behind her, to the shop-front on the street, to close the shutter again. She left the shop that sold fruit, cigarettes, aluminium foil, oven cleaner, and other things.
A Diamond and A Stranger and A Stranger
Rosanna was on the tram back in Adelaide going to a place from her past. A young man, almost a boy, sat with his legs stretched across the aisle. The other seats were arranged in double sets facing one another. He had chosen the seats that seated three, facing one another, so that his legs could stretch their full length across the middle of the aisle. There was no moustache on his upper-lip, but stylishly he had let red stubble grow between his lower lip and his chin. The bottom of his chin was bare but the sun lit up the glistening reddish shadow. The nape of his neck was closely shaven right up to the middle of the back of his head. The strawberry blond thick curls, the size of Alexandrian grapes, he had allowed to grow to their full size, only on the top crown of his head. His side-burns were shaved to diagonal “V”s rakishly above the top of his ear. Either aware or unaware of her, he was at ease in his unmoving profile. Arms outstretched on either side of the long red leather seat. She could imagine them around a girl on either side of him. His lashes were dark, and were half-closed as the tram rocked along. As if he were amused at something. She recognized the blue blazer he wore as belonging to a Catholic high school. As she stood up to go, their eyes met for an instant, but he appeared not to see her. Now even the schoolboys in the country she had left long ago, seemed like fiery gods. She was on the way to get rid of a diamond ring that she had received when she was the same age as the young man who was not a boy, but by law, not a man, either.
The fairy floss coloured plum blossoms were just opening on black patent branches. The cathedral where “Rock Mass” had once attracted the teenagers of her day now looked like a country chapel. She had since seen Notre Dame and the Big Buddha. The Cathedral had been there all those years, unchanged, while she had been across the
sea. Was this another dream dreamt in a rented room in Tokyo? How could the church be so small and so unchanged at the same time? In her pocket was a small velvet box. Slowly she opened the box. The ceremony of self-exorcism was about to begin. so small and so unchanged at the same time? In her pocket was a small velvet box. Slowly she opened the box. The ceremony of self-exorcism was about to begin.
The man in the pawn shop whose son went to the best school for boys in town had said that the diamonds in the box were worthless. How could diamonds be worthless? Regardless -it was fitting that they be called that now -by a man whose suit hid his tattoos. The diamonds had had too much false power in their day -just because they were called diamonds. A diamond engagement ring is no thing for a schoolgirl to have been given. The inside of the ring was bent, from the tip of her thumb worrying it into a convex curve. The diamond was no bigger than the spots of light one sees just before fainting from heat or from shock. She had deliberated carefully over the final destiny of this ring.
The giver had died at the end of a rope in a local forest twelve years after the engagement that never was. Whether murder or suicide was not a thing to speculate about out loud in the small town that thought itself a city. She had contemplated throwing the ring in the sea -no, then it would last forever. An archaeologist in the centuries to come, after the blinding new apocalypse, would find it and make some speculations. The wearer had slender fingers -a young woman perhaps.
The wearer indeed had had slender fingers -the ring had always been too big for her. The wearer had been a young woman who liked old things? At least she liked reproductions of old things. But not now, not for all eternity would anyone be able to know what the wearer of this ring was like. Because it had not been the ring of her choice. In the shop she had pointed to a gold butterfly studded with multi-coloured geMs
She hadn’t wanted a “solitaire” pin-head sized diamond which was just happened to be the right price. This was not the way she had ever imagined a first diamond ring to be like -let alone a diamond engagement ring. The butterfly, definitely -trying it on her hand it had looked light enough to come to life and flit away at any moment. To go through a chrysalis and fly away free to unchartered skies all by itself. No good, was the verdict of the buyer -that thing looked too much like a “friendship ring”. The purchase had to be the choice of the buyer. ’t wanted a “solitaire” pin-head sized diamond which was just happened to be the right price. This was not the way she had ever imagined a first diamond ring to be like -let alone a diamond engagement ring. The butterfly, definitely -trying it on her hand it had looked light enough to come to life and flit away at any moment. To go through a chrysalis and fly away free to unchartered skies all by itself. No good, was the verdict of the buyer -that thing looked too much like a “friendship ring”. The purchase had to be the choice of the buyer.
No-one would ever know now what the wearer had really been like. Death separated herself and a dream she often had -to throw the ring at the feet of the giver at the horrible party where he had unexpectedly said in front of the others -“Now we’re engaged.” Throw it at his face in front of those whom she was blocked from smiling at and blocked from receiving smiles from. Throw it in a bin in a park? No satisfaction in that. To show the greatest contempt of all would be not to sell it, not to trash it -but to give it away as if it were truly worthless to her. Just a ball and chain that had been in the shape of a band around the specific finger. Never again. Give it away to someone she didn’t even know. Yes.
The black satin box was chosen to house the object because it came from a shopping-mall in one of the other states she had grown up in. The satin box had never belonged with the ring -whatever the ring had come in originally she now could not remember. Most of all, the black satin box was chosen on this day because it came from a forgotten shop called BLACK MAGIC. The name was printed on the inside of its lid.
The priests would examine the box and divine immediately that here was a ring that should be prised apart and melted down -for sale and for liquidation. She went to the
Rock Mass cathedral which for her had been simply the venue for showing new clothes from Sportsgirl and smirking when it was time to say “Peace Be With You, and also With you,” as a taste of what was in store for one on Mondays. from Sportsgirl and smirking when it was time to say “Peace Be With You, and also With you,” as a taste of what was in store for one on Mondays.
She pushed the black magic box through the thick slot that said “Charity for the Poor.” Strange that it should have just fit -as if the slot were designed for this particular rite alone. It fell with the speed of falling water, making a soft chink into the coins in the dark of the box.
And then nothing. It had been too quick. The material world doesn’t lie, though. There was definitely a space between herself and that ring. When you give something away like that -you give it away forever and unconditionally. Decisions and vows don’t come into it. Now there was a wall of wood with a lock on it and a halo of sanction between herself and that cursed ring. The red flame that would never go out flickered unchanged in the alcove above the box. Mary looked on unconcernedly.
In a pool of light coming from the street outside, the young man with the shaven head had been looking at her, watching her clasp her palms together with bowed head. He was smiling at her as she looked upwards and opened her eyes. That is how they had first met, after she had got off the tram.
Lost and Found Black Cat
That day in the Rock Mass cathedral was Valentine’s Day itself. Rosanna had gone to Mitch’s house on that first day. All she had to do was go back to the tram line, and catch the same tram, the last three stations down the line, to the house where he lived. It was twenty minutes before their first kiss on the mouth. The shoes she was wearing that Valentine’s Day were a toffee-apple red. The kind of red the toffee apple is when still wet. At the Easter Show in Sydney when she was a child, she used to like to watch the man twirling apples in sticks through the hot, red river of molten candy. Then they would be hung up to dry. While the apple was still wet, in the sunshine, it glowed a special red. A shimmering, mirror-like red. Those shoes of hers were that red exactly. They were very high heeled, with a tiny block platform under the toes and the balls of her feet. They clasped her as tightly as if her feet had been dipped in hot, wet, red candy that had dried, and she was now dancing in. The shoes had sling-back straps and the front was decorated with two tiny tight red bows, made from shimmering red glass. The smell of the toffee apples had been like sugar over a flame, just before it burns.
Wearing nothing but the red shoes, she rehearsed leaning forward on one foot to give him a kiss as light as a whisper, as soon as he arrived at Tram Stop Number 12. Then she had given him the call to say that she was leaving to catch the tram now. They had arranged it that way, after she had given him an electric first kiss on his frosty cheek as she stood up to leave the tram. The other rush hour passengers who were strangers to one another, had been reading their newspapers and Harlequin novels.
Mitch let her go through first, into the silent entrance hall with the ceiling to floor mirrors, in the dark. The light from outside shone onto the mirror glass. He took her hand.
The only sound was of the traffic on the highway.
“The landlord used to have many parties when he lived here, for the Greek community. You can imagine -him being Greek and a rich man…” She nodded.
First they waltzed for what seemed like only a few seconds, under the chandelier, in the room with the sprung wooden floor. Then they stood in the kitchen for a few moments. They were going to go and buy something to drink. That involved putting on make-up. He watched her sit on the coffee table, take out a small, round, red Japanese lacquer mirror, and apply red lipstick. They walked hand in hand, and kissed at the traffic light that had turned red as the foil wrapped around a Valentine’s chocolate .
The place to buy something to drink and score a coin-bag of marihuana was St. Leonard’s Inn. The front bar smelt of the beer spilt every night on the carpet since the 70s. The floor was littered with old cigarette butts. The Hell’s Angels sat around with greasy hair hanging to their shoulders, crowned with baldness. A re-play of the football was on the TV, dangling from the corner of the stained fawn walls. A girl emerged to change the money to the right price for the coin-bag. It was nude barmaid hour. She stood with her fair hair cascading down her naked white bottom. Her breasts had light rose coloured nipples. She stood, unperturbed, in the trash around her. They scored the bag, bought the wine and then Mitch and Rosanna went “home”.
Mitch’s landlord’s wife suffered from claustrophobia, and that is why the house had windows on all four sides. There were window seats with a little curved bench to sit on. There had been similar window seats in the piano rooms, at the school Rosanna had been to. The curtains the landlord had bought for himself while living here, were still hanging in the room at the same windows. Outside, stood two Egyptian trees. They have
small red fruit, these trees, which she had used, along with other fruits, as a schoolgirl, to redden her lips. all red fruit, these trees, which she had used, along with other fruits, as a schoolgirl, to redden her lips.
On that first time they hadn’t mentioned Valentine’s Day. Even though there were cut-out cardboard signs saying “Buy champagne for Your Valentine tonight”, it was the next day before either of them said anything about it. After all, Valentine’s means real love, and you don’t mention real love on a first date when you’re spending the night with one another. Mitch was playing a tape of the evening news of the day before. So she had said, “It was Valentine’s Day yesterday. I know who you are now -you are My Valentine.” And then he had said, “So, you’re my Valentine.” And they had laughed, as if it were a joke. As if real love is for the kind of fools who cannot tell tin foil from gold. She had put the red shoes back on, and said, “I’m going now. I want to go home, and think about you.”
When she had said this, he was sitting on the other side of the room, on the grey couch, smiling like a lynx. The afternoon light on the wall was a quivering vial of fluid cut in half by a bright white ribbon. On the left of this transitory installation from the empyrean were two constantly flipping and inter-changing bright white coins. Then the wall was just a blank flat page again -the light had evaporated into nothing.
The morning after she had seen his body for the first time, she had asked him about the scars. Why so many scars? Mitch had said that he had accidentally electrocuted himself when he was a child. He had shaken so violently from the electric shock, that the plug had dislodged itself from the socket. Even in her own thoughts, at the time she didn’t question it. The one in love hears the words from the other’s mouth, and drinks in the new information, as if all things are possible. On the inside of his arms (“veined like
marble”) the wrists were marked with multiple symmetrical slashes. He did not want to talk about it. He had been “not happy then.” So she did not say anything more about it ever again. talk about it. He had been “not happy then.” So she did not say anything more about it ever again.
The house where Mitch was living had convex glass windows. There was the whole panel of mirrors when you came through his front door. The living area was two large rooms, joined together by sliding glass doors, held open, almost always. The room had large, smoky coloured chandeliers. There was a bar lined with wall mirrors in the middle of the two rooMs And a mantle piece with a large oval mirror, in a gilt frame. They would look at one another in the mirrors, as they spoke. In the dark and in the light, they could always see each other’s reflections. The dark big rooms ran into one another like pools of water. There were candles on the Shrine to Byron they had made. The neighbour’s frangipanis, floating in saucers of water, flickered in the gold and silver light. Sunset came through the Venetian blinds. Outside on the marble porch, they often fed the black one-eyed cat, using a chipped saucer for milk. The battered black cat put out its little rough tongue and licked up the milk with a rhythmic disbelief.
The black cat reminded her of a place she had left in Japan. To show Mitch herself, she told the story of leaving the place where she had once had a precious black cat…
When she had arrived home that day in the place in Japan the magazine that had published her translated article was in the post-box in a big envelope. When she found the right page she saw that the man she had been living with had published it under his own name. And he had already been paid and had spent the money on himself the month before. That winter she left the apartment where she had been living with the man who
was a “photo-journalist” while he was away again somewhere. She did not know herself that she was going to do this. An evening came when she realized, -journalist” while he was away again somewhere. She did not know herself that she was going to do this. An evening came when she realized,
“I am only in this box apartment with the sliding glass doors to be photographed occasionally by him. I am not here for his eyes, but for the eyes of others -to be shown to them.”
On the day she finally left she had come home to a dark apartment. There was nothing wrong with the alcove light bulb at all -after trying the lights in the other two rooms in the apartment she knew the electricity had been cut off. It was lighter outside than inside, so she pulled up the Venetian blinds to allow the moonlight and reflections from the street to filter through the room in long slat-shaped beaMs From the 7th floor the sea was a ribbon of greyness. A packet of tiny birthday candles, bought by his departed wife, was found at the back of a kitchen drawer. She lit all the candles in a small saucer. Little Black’s eyes shone like tanzanites as she made a tiny “niaow” and jumped up into her lap. She emulsified some silvery dried sardines in hot tap water for Little Black until her trusting, warm purr stopped and she was asleep in her lap.
She must do it tonight she told herself – before she left the apartment and he came back. She rolled up the legs of her pyjamas and put on her coat to hide what she had on underneath. She put on his rain-boots because “big snow” had been predicted on the television weather report. Already the snow fell in a steady oblique shower of shadowy drops across the panel of the electric street light. She was going to drop Little Black over the wall of the rich people’s house. They would find her and keep her. She deserved to grow up next to a coal brazier and eventually her fluffy coat would be as sleek as a Persian carpet. Even though it was night -she put sunglasses on from habit. Anyway, the
sunglasses hid the glare of the fluorescent lights in the elevator. And then they hid the tears and protected her from the snow. People would assume she was there to be whisked away in a friend’s car -to go to a nightclub or a country-house. She just happened to be carrying her cat -that’s all. ey hid the tears and protected her from the snow. People would assume she was there to be whisked away in a friend’s car -to go to a nightclub or a country-house. She just happened to be carrying her cat -that’s all.
Yoko Ono’s family still lived somewhere around there -or Ono Yoko as she is known locally. The cat would be loved and kept forever. She put Little Black into the sleeve of her coat -the way one of the great beauties in a wood-block print carried her kitten somewhere. Behind the big wall of the rich people’s house the filigree lantern emanated a complacent steady gold light.
And then Little Black’s soft precious left paw was tired of being kneaded, on this strange trip. She jumped out of the sleeve and ran away. It was dark. The snow started to come down mercilessly. One leg of Rosanna’s pyjamas came down and was soaked in icy splashes from the snow stained with car petrol. Little Black was gone. Did that kitten ever survive that night? It was something she often wondered and cried over. The next day she left the apartment -before the man she was living with then came back.
Rosanna and Mitch’s first “real date” had been in a Japanese restaurant. This starving younger student was taking her out to dinner and paying for it. She saw this a gesture of real faith from man to woman -regardless of the gap in their years.
The restaurant KUMAMOTO was named by its owner with his “family name.” Really it was his off-shore family name. In Japan his registered family name had been Shimamura but very few people knew of this double identity. He had never been either a cook or a restaurant owner in Japan. His home-town is a collection of some two dozen houses around the last station of a railroad track that leads into the deep mountains north
of Tokyo. His father had farmed the persimmon fields but didn’t own his own land. When Shimamura had left for Tokyo to earn enough to pay back the local landowner’s son a mah-jong debt, the persimmons were hanging out to dry on strings from the eaves of the dilapidated wooden house. He worked for a while in Tokyo, at a place introduced to him by the debt collectors. He was told not to open his mouth unless he spoke Tokyo Japanese. In the evenings he swept the surrounds of The International Building where he was made a cleaner. The broom was made of a frayed piece of bamboo, which reminded him of the home-town he had left. Brooms like this were sold under the bridges of Tokyo by people who drifted into the city to sell whatever they could -straw sandals and woven baskets. In the mornings it was Shimamura’s job to tip buckets of water onto the pavement, to make the place look at least occupied and less like a money-washing venue. Calculating that he would never be able to repay the mah-jong debt before expending his youth, he left on a merchant sea vessel, with the credentials of having “two arms and two legs.” In Manila he jumped ship and bought “the Kumamoto passport” from the brotherfather had farmed the persimmon fields but didn’t own his own land. When Shimamura had left for Tokyo to earn enough to pay back the local landowner’s son a mah-jong debt, the persimmons were hanging out to dry on strings from the eaves of the dilapidated wooden house. He worked for a while in Tokyo, at a place introduced to him by the debt collectors. He was told not to open his mouth unless he spoke Tokyo Japanese. In the evenings he swept the surrounds of The International Building where he was made a cleaner. The broom was made of a frayed piece of bamboo, which reminded him of the home-town he had left. Brooms like this were sold under the bridges of Tokyo by people who drifted into the city to sell whatever they could -straw sandals and woven baskets. In the mornings it was Shimamura’s job to tip buckets of water onto the pavement, to make the place look at least occupied and less like a money-washing venue. Calculating that he would never be able to repay the mah-jong debt before expending his youth, he left on a merchant sea vessel, with the credentials of having “two arms and two legs.” In Manila he jumped ship and bought “the Kumamoto passport” from the brotherinlaw of a girl he had met in a bar. This girl became his lover and then wife before coming out to the new country. With the money she had saved from pouring drinks and lighting the cigarettes of American soldiers they opened KUMAMOTO in Adelaide.
They were told in Melbourne that Adelaide was a place without a big Japanese community and that they should do well there. The restaurant was on the second story of a building in the “up-market” end of town. The surrounding locals were keen to show off their knowledge of sushi, gained from ten-day JALPAK sojourns. The first night was attended by a local theatre critic who wrote a glowing review in “The Advertiser.” The restaurant had a woman’s wedding kimono on the wall, bought at the auction of a
bankrupt’s total worldly belongings in Melbourne. ’s total worldly belongings in Melbourne.
When the couple who had spent Valentine’s Day together arrived, there was a recording of Noh music being played. The restaurant smelled like a pub before lunchtime, before the lights are turned on. Kumamoto came out from behind the curtain at the kitchen door and indicated a table for two with the sullen formality he had learnt from his years in Tokyo. His crew-cut was shaggy and there were dried splatters of blood on his white chef’s outfit.
Afterwards Mitch said “that was the worst food I’ve ever tasted and it cost me a fortnight of Austudy.”
“It wasn’t real Japanese food -I’ll make some real Japanese food for you.”
But Rosanna was not upset -to the one in love, the beloved’s laughter makes the whole world seem funny. Even a tragic Japanese restaurant to a home-sick-for-Japan girl who isn’t “really Japanese” anyway. Even previously non-acceptable “jokes” are funny.
She stood on the glass table only in the red shoes and the black Dior bra. He sat opposite her on the leather couch he had brought from his parents’ house in Brahma Lodge.
“Where are you really from?”
“Take off your clothes and I’ll tell you.”
“Maybe.”
“Do you want to go there with me?”
She was pointing above his head to the gold framed remnant of Kouros’ s old life.
The painting on the wall had the Eiffel Tower in the background on a rainy day. A woman in a red raincoat was wandering past a stranger.
“O.K. Let’s go. You can be that woman and I’ll be the man.” ’s go. You can be that woman and I’ll be the man.”
She stepped off the table and sat on the glass table with her knees around his legs.
“Why haven’t you kissed me yet?”
“We don’t kiss much in Japan.”
“How romantic.”
“I’ll make a cultural exception for you shall I?”
“I’m interested.”
They smoked the rest of the bag, and fell asleep finally on the carpet which had burnt her legs. The dawn came in through the convex windows like the tide on an autumn day in mid-summer.
A White Sapphire
Rosanna had shown Mitch her recently re-discovered first ever love letter. The aerodynamics of the letter were not quite right because of the paper clip holes on its left side edge. But it had reached its destination and crashed silently like a caress on her pigtailed head. The place had been a hot breathless classroom of a 3 o’clock Brisbane speared from side to side with a satin pillar of sunlight. The letter, written in best block letters had four words only:
“I LOVE YOU BEST.”
She had told Mitch about her first love. Her first love was a Chinese boy. His name was Steven Chan. “Steven” was also her father’s “real name”. Steven was the name written on the front of letters, which were sent to her father, but all the visitors called him “Steve.” In her mind, Steven was a name for very important circumstances, never seen or heard by herself in real life. These must have been circumstances which happened after it was time for her to go to bed, or circumstances for which her father wore a necktie.
She had shared a desk with Steven Chan. The dream to share a desk with him only came true through a chequered game of musical chairs in the classroom. Another little girl had to leave, and go to another school. So he was moved into the place next to her. He moved his beautifully ordered pencil-box and spotless homework books into “their” desk, with the two wooden lift-up lids. The desk had matching round empty holes, for obsolete inkbottles, on each farther side. Then, after her dream to sit next to Steven all day had come true, something unexpected happened. He also had to leave the school. Maybe his father had to move to the other side of the city, or the other side of the world. She couldn’t remember that part of it. The part she would always remember was the
cardboard box of silkworms he had brought to school for “show and tell”. On the day he had to leave the school, their last day, the dreaded home-time bell rang. Her mother was waiting for her. She had to say “goodbye” to Steven, in the chaos of older sisters, younger brothers, parking meter that were waiting, and forgotten rain hats. Steven’s mother, dressed in a dress like the nice dresses in the shop windows, spoke to her mother in a hushed, smiling way. Her mother then said to Rosanna, “Steven would like you to do something for him.” Steven’s mother gave him the box, and Steven handed it to her. had to leave the school, their last day, the dreaded home-time bell rang. Her mother was waiting for her. She had to say “goodbye” to Steven, in the chaos of older sisters, younger brothers, parking meter that were waiting, and forgotten rain hats. Steven’s mother, dressed in a dress like the nice dresses in the shop windows, spoke to her mother in a hushed, smiling way. Her mother then said to Rosanna, “Steven would like you to do something for him.” Steven’s mother gave him the box, and Steven handed it to her.
“Would you look after the silkworms? They are a going away present for you.”
Rosanna was crying.
He said very seriously, “They can only eat one thing. Spinach.”
So. Rosanna had been given something very important to do. Then Steven’s beautiful smiling mother took his hand, and they walked away, as if it were a happy day.
The morning Rosanna told this to Mitch was a sunlight river of champagne bubbles across the ledge of the ceiling and down the cliff of the wall. Lovers begin their relationship by telling the horrible history of what it was like before they met each other...
“There was an inner courtyard at the school. A little grotto where a powder blue statue of Maria stood under an arch of roses. This was surrounded on three sides by music rooMs The rooms facing Maria were a row of chambers only big enough for two or three girls at a time, and the piano. Each room had a window seat, where the girls
would sit, facing one another, hugging their knees. The inside of the building was floored with a mosaic of wine red, black and ivory tiles. The walls were rammed earth, and lined with holy paintings in gold baroque frames. The echo of the girls practicing for choir, was like a draught of the purest spring air. Brigitte had hair that was very blonde. The
crests of the waves of the curls of her hair shone a hot white. She had China blue eyes. Like a dolly. In the years that had passed since, Rosanna had never gone to the reunions at the Ramada Grand, but she often thought of Brigitte. She had heard that Brigitte got married to a company president who owned a fleet of buses that took people to the ski fields. When she heard this she was really, really, glad for Brigitte. Brigitte deserved it. The school had since become co-ed but in those days, behind the big moss-covered stone walls, boys had not been allowed. Like a dolly. In the years that had passed since, Rosanna had never gone to the reunions at the Ramada Grand, but she often thought of Brigitte. She had heard that Brigitte got married to a company president who owned a fleet of buses that took people to the ski fields. When she heard this she was really, really, glad for Brigitte. Brigitte deserved it. The school had since become co-ed but in those days, behind the big moss-covered stone walls, boys had not been allowed.
Brigitte had white skin and white blonde hair. Brigitte had divined the secret that the bully, Catherine, lived in fear of people discovering. Catherine was a lesbian. Just a “leso” -she had never had sex with a boy. She did not hate Rosanna at all, but was in love with her. But that was the secret she was afraid of the others knowing. That was why she called Rosanna “a dago and a slut.” Often Rosanna had thought of her own chocolaty coloured skin, in such a contrast to Brigitte’s. If they were pressed skin to skin together, how soft as a cloud of fairy floss Brigitte would be. How divine she would be. Her blondeness was a sugary dream. Like a cascade of confected fruit, seen in a tall glass window, in an iron lace shopping arcade. Her breasts were like pastel marzipan, dusted with icing sugar. Brigitte’s blondeness was like the white marble fruit and flowers carved into the icing on the triple tiered almond frost.
Rosanna’s absent father had given her “a jewel” as a present. Nobody’s father or anybody else had ever given any of the other girls a jewel. Not in the world of their collective memories. Gold crosses to hang around the neck, received at Confirmation, did not count at all. Nothing even resembling “ an unset jewel” belonged to their lives. Gold crosses hanging from ears, and gold bangles, bought on lay-by at “Zamels”, were nothing
to envy. Everybody had enamel “Blue birds of Happiness,” worn through the ears. “Charm bracelets,” with gold four leaved clovers, shamrocks and love hearts. Gold Madonnas around the neck, on little round medallions, given on birthdays and namedays. But no sapphires. And the sapphire was “a white sapphire -a white sapphire, from Thailand”, she had told them. This was never forgotten. It was repeated over and over again, along with the other true and untrue stories. “Charm bracelets,” with gold four leaved clovers, shamrocks and love hearts. Gold Madonnas around the neck, on little round medallions, given on birthdays and namedays. But no sapphires. And the sapphire was “a white sapphire -a white sapphire, from Thailand”, she had told them. This was never forgotten. It was repeated over and over again, along with the other true and untrue stories.
She had forgotten she even had the thing long before everyone else. Nobody’s father had given them anything like a sapphire. It must be a lie. She did not even have a father, someone whispered. She was making it up. If she had a father, why did not he live in Adelaide? She had said that her father gave it to her “in Melbourne”, when she went to visit him, because he did not exist. In the courtyard, under the arch of roses over the Statue of Our Lady, the present was revealed during lunchtime, to a lucky select few, who happened to be there at the moment. She had taken out the spherical stone, and it had shone like a disco mirror ball when it rolled around in the palm of her hand. And nobody had a father who worked in Melbourne, either -the idea! Melbourne was the nearest big city to Adelaide. A centre of more sophisticated culture -even grown-ups thought so. It was so offensively impressive.
After the girl’s father moved to Tokyo, (“transferred by the company he works for…!”), the legend became that the new girl’s mysterious absent father, was really “a Japanese.” A Jap! But that it was “a secret.” Her mother did not want anyone to know, of course. Having a Japanese father was a disgrace. No wonder it was a secret. There were lots of different things about her -she did not have pierced ears -for example. They were going with Rosanna together to get them done, that Friday after school, “in town.”
The new girl Rosanna had arrived from Brisbane, for her “new life” in Adelaide, wearing her brand new uniform. At music lessons it was found that she could not even read music. But Sister Bernadette had let her join the choir anyway, as a soprano -it was not fair. And she had performed at the Town Hall with others, only weeks after arriving at the school, in her brand new uniform. She had no right to barge in -the other girls had been going together at the school since kindy. Why was Rosanna the star as soon as she arrived on the scene? At the Town Hall, after the concert, the new girl’s mother came to pick her up. She had long hair in a ponytail, and wore a bangle around the upper part of her arm. She did not wear a Country Road suit past her knees -no -she wore a miniwearing her brand new uniform. At music lessons it was found that she could not even read music. But Sister Bernadette had let her join the choir anyway, as a soprano -it was not fair. And she had performed at the Town Hall with others, only weeks after arriving at the school, in her brand new uniform. She had no right to barge in -the other girls had been going together at the school since kindy. Why was Rosanna the star as soon as she arrived on the scene? At the Town Hall, after the concert, the new girl’s mother came to pick her up. She had long hair in a ponytail, and wore a bangle around the upper part of her arm. She did not wear a Country Road suit past her knees -no -she wore a minidress. She was not carrying a handbag. The fur coat was only rabbit. On her hip she was carrying a boy baby with straw coloured hair. No-one knew what to make of that Margaret’s mother ventured that the father was obviously a different father from that of the new girl’s. This made sense -she had different coloured hair and skin from that of her brother. Divorce was a disgrace according to the church. Unless the new girl’s first father had died -her mother must have run off and had “sexual relations” with another man. That must be why the new girl’s mother was “abandoned.” Abandoned meant left without anything except the kids. So the new girl’s mother became “a single mother”. She was whispered about.
It came time for the new girl, Rosanna whose name was not a saint’s name, to go to weekly Mass with the others at the little chapel. When The Lord’s Prayer was being said, the new girl committed an unforgivable faux pas. But the expression “faux pas” does not really cover it at all; it was nothing less that a “transgression.” An insult to Our
Lady. She was “found out” because, of course as any Catholic knows the words, “For
thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever, amen,” are forbidden. Only unbelievers say those words. Those who do not believe in Our Sacred Lady. The new girl’s mother had a cheek sending her illegitimate girl to this school. An independent woman was she? What kind of role model is that for our girls? No respect for marriage. When she grows up Rosanna is “going to work in Japan” is she? Well, this will be interesting. We will see what kind of grades she gets. She might be pretty, in a brazen sort of way -and she might have a good voice -but how smart could she be if she had a divorced mother who was not even divorced? e is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever, amen,” are forbidden. Only unbelievers say those words. Those who do not believe in Our Sacred Lady. The new girl’s mother had a cheek sending her illegitimate girl to this school. An independent woman was she? What kind of role model is that for our girls? No respect for marriage. When she grows up Rosanna is “going to work in Japan” is she? Well, this will be interesting. We will see what kind of grades she gets. She might be pretty, in a brazen sort of way -and she might have a good voice -but how smart could she be if she had a divorced mother who was not even divorced?
But suddenly, the speculation surrounding the new girl was cut short by an unforgivably impressive chapter to her life -her father sent for her, and she was going to Japan, not after matric, when she grew up, but now, right now, without even waiting for the exaMs She did not have to sit for the exams -she did not have to do anything anybody told her. She was getting into a mammoth silver aircraft and going to Melbourne to change into an even bigger plane at the new Tullamarine airport that had been in the papers. Travelling to the other side of the globe, without so much as a please or no thank you. The other girls could only trace with their fingers over the classroom world globe, following the international path she had flown in. “Where is Japan, anyway?”… “It belongs to China, don’t you even know that?”… “Is Japan Communist?”
Then they kind of forgot about Rosanna, in the daily grind of homework, rumours, and clothes for the weekend. Until Theresa got a letter from her. The stamps were dangerously exotic -a multi-coloured phoenix flying through bands of lavender
coloured clouds. And then a smaller stamp, in strange shape -not a “normal” square shaped one. On the outside, the letter said, “Theresa, be careful when you open this,” and
so Theresa’s father had made her open it in front of him. But Rosanna had only written that on the back of the envelope because it was filled with dried cherry-blossoms, and she did not want Theresa to accidentally crush or break them. She wrote that she had pressed the flowers between the sheets of “The Virgin and the Gypsy”, by D.H. Lawrence. Her mother let her read anything, Theresa’s parents exclaimed. “Lord of the Flies!” -no child should be exposed to that. Her mother was once even seen in that Communist bookshop in Rundle Street, someone remembered. Never mind that she was “a teacher.” A teacher in a State school -with no visible husband. What next? ’s father had made her open it in front of him. But Rosanna had only written that on the back of the envelope because it was filled with dried cherry-blossoms, and she did not want Theresa to accidentally crush or break them. She wrote that she had pressed the flowers between the sheets of “The Virgin and the Gypsy”, by D.H. Lawrence. Her mother let her read anything, Theresa’s parents exclaimed. “Lord of the Flies!” -no child should be exposed to that. Her mother was once even seen in that Communist bookshop in Rundle Street, someone remembered. Never mind that she was “a teacher.” A teacher in a State school -with no visible husband. What next?
And what kind of name was “Rosanna ?” If they were really not Italian, then why did she have a name like that? Affected nonsense. Maybe Rosanna’s mother was really an Italian, and too ashamed to say. Margaret’s mother had an Italian woman “in” to clean the house, once a week. It was on the day that the other mothers came to play bridge. So Rosanna could not very well just come out with the fact that her mother was Italian, but not really an Italian. That was how Margaret explained the obvious to Catherine. There were a lot of things in Rosanna’s life that were definitely not quite right -she could not hide the truth forever, they agreed.
While she was still at that school, once Theresa and Rosanna sat in the graveyard, behind the gravestones right at the back. Theresa broke the black, gold-tipped Sobranie in half, and Rosanna lit hers on Theresa’s half, pressing the burning ends together, until they were both alight. Theresa had given Rosanna the half with the gold-tipped filter. They shared the ritual silently. Smoking in the toilets had become found out by the Sisters, so
the graveyard, had become the “new” venue for this sacred ritual of smoking. Actually, in many a former year, the graveyard had been smoked in -but for Theresa and Rosanna the
genesis of the era of smoking in the graveyard began in Year Eleven, (their year eleven.) There are only two things more sinful than smoking -and we all know what they are. But Rosanna, they remembered, had a different idea of what “real sin” was, and she told the nuns this, straight out, as well. Real sin was not something superficial -like smoking is. “Superficial?” She was just repeating some big words her mother used surely. Sister Patricia had been right to call her “a brazen hussy.” Rosanna really had a cheek to be angry that time she got back the essay in which Sister had written in her crooked sloping hand, “Presumptuous language -Come and see me after this class.” There are only two things more sinful than smoking -and we all know what they are. But Rosanna, they remembered, had a different idea of what “real sin” was, and she told the nuns this, straight out, as well. Real sin was not something superficial -like smoking is. “Superficial?” She was just repeating some big words her mother used surely. Sister Patricia had been right to call her “a brazen hussy.” Rosanna really had a cheek to be angry that time she got back the essay in which Sister had written in her crooked sloping hand, “Presumptuous language -Come and see me after this class.”
Rosanna received “gifts” from an absent father even when it wasn’t her birthday. And she had actually brought the invitation to the St. Peter’s “Blue and White Ball” to school. But that place was a Protestant boy’s school! She had said that she had met the boy at “drama classes.” What next, might we ask? The nuns whom she reminded of their own youth spoke in tender undertones of her upcoming Confirmation -why were they taking her into the fold?
The reason Theresa and Rosanna had become friends was easy -Theresa’s mother was dead, and so she had only one parent. She had this in common with Rosanna. Theresa’s father even went out on “dates.” Margaret’s mother understood though -a man could not very well stay a widower forever. He needed a wife. After all, a vet is a professional, and Margaret’s father was a radiologist -so their families understood one another. What Margaret’s mother could not understand was why any understanding existed between Rosanna’s mother and Theresa’s father. The fact that their daughters were friends and Rosanna’s mother had once taken her cat to Theresa’s father’s surgery
“to be looked at,” was of no consequence. People could only have real bonds of
friendship if they were firmly married to others. There was something fishy going on. Anyone could see that Rosanna’s mother was on the make. Theresa’s father was “rich” and yet he had let Theresa stay at Rosanna’s house at the weekend. The house was very strange, of course. Theresa had been eager to describe it. An old monstrosity with a galvanized roof. Margaret’s house was much nicer -that’s why she was not allowed to go to Rosanna’s -it was not that Rosanna had never asked her. It was not that Rosanna did not know she existed. Oh, well, yes, she existed, but only as the younger friend of Theresa -they caught the bus home together every day. After Theresa’s mother had died in the sanatorium, Margaret’s mother had spent much time comforting Theresa’s father. And they lived in the same area. They went to the racecourse together with Margaret’s father, as a three-some, always. In the Catholic religion, gambling is not a sin. The most famous horse-trainer in South Australia had a daughter who went to their school. To suggest that gambling ruined people’s lives was pretentious heresy. Puritanical Protestant nonsense. Only poor people said that. People who not only could not even afford to own shares in a race horse -they could not afford to bet. Rosanna should never have mentioned that her father was a Protestant and that she had gone to a Methodist Young Ladies College up in Brisbane. She was only trying to set herself apart from the others in some way. A “Young Ladies College” -what was a brazen hussy like her doing there? She obviously had mentioned it because the Protestant faith, not having the Vatican to support it, charged higher fees than the Catholic schools. Those Protestant schools were just commercial businesses really. You really had to tell your girls about this Rosanna’s motives. I mean, she said it because she wanted our daughters to think that her broken family somehow had more money than us who have known each other for years. We Anyone could see that Rosanna’s mother was on the make. Theresa’s father was “rich” and yet he had let Theresa stay at Rosanna’s house at the weekend. The house was very strange, of course. Theresa had been eager to describe it. An old monstrosity with a galvanized roof. Margaret’s house was much nicer -that’s why she was not allowed to go to Rosanna’s -it was not that Rosanna had never asked her. It was not that Rosanna did not know she existed. Oh, well, yes, she existed, but only as the younger friend of Theresa -they caught the bus home together every day. After Theresa’s mother had died in the sanatorium, Margaret’s mother had spent much time comforting Theresa’s father.
And they lived in the same area. They went to the racecourse together with Margaret’s father, as a three-some, always. In the Catholic religion, gambling is not a sin. The most famous horse-trainer in South Australia had a daughter who went to their school. To suggest that gambling ruined people’s lives was pretentious heresy. Puritanical Protestant nonsense. Only poor people said that. People who not only could not even afford to own shares in a race horse -they could not afford to bet. Rosanna should never have mentioned that her father was a Protestant and that she had gone to a Methodist Young Ladies College up in Brisbane. She was only trying to set herself apart from the others in some way. A “Young Ladies College” -what was a brazen hussy like her doing there? She obviously had mentioned it because the Protestant faith, not having the Vatican to support it, charged higher fees than the Catholic schools. Those Protestant schools were just commercial businesses really. You really had to tell your girls about this Rosanna’s motives. I mean, she said it because she wanted our daughters to think that her broken family somehow had more money than us who have known each other for years. We
have just got to protect our girls -they are so impressionable at this age. Rosanna was a very bad example. That girl was going to come to a very bad end one day. Theresa had been the only one to receive Rosanna’s letters. After the first one, with the cherry blossom petals, her father had not insisted she open every one in his presence. -they are so impressionable at this age. Rosanna was a very bad example. That girl was going to come to a very bad end one day. Theresa had been the only one to receive Rosanna’s letters. After the first one, with the cherry blossom petals, her father had not insisted she open every one in his presence.
When Rosanna came back from the year in Japan, her hair had grown down her back, and she was taller. The letters full of cherry-blossoms and intimacies between Theresa and Rosanna had been a correspondence the other girls had no part in. That was because the love and trust living in a letter was in the written word. It was not a whispered thing that altered from teller to teller. It was only between those two. The words could not be changed, or misquoted. They existed, unchanged forever, in the little “jewellery boxes” of each girl under lock and key. Theresa’s jewellery box was pink, like the walls and curtains of her bedroom. It was decorated with pink bands of curling icingsugarlike braids. When you opened it, a little ballerina twirled around in front of a convex cyclorama of prism mirrors. Rosanna’s jewellery box was black lacquer, and on the side of it, two sampans glided into bands of faraway mist. On the bottom it had written, MADE IN JAPAN.
Rosanna never did ask Theresa about her mother, because the other girls had said that no one was allowed to talk about it when she was around. On the day they shared the black, gold tipped, Sobranie, in the graveyard, Theresa told Rosanna something that she had never told anybody else. Her mother had committed suicide. In the sanatorium in North Adelaide, when Theresa was just eleven years old. She had been “depressed” for a very long time before she died.
Theresa asked Rosanna to swear not to tell, of course. Suicide is a sin. God gives
us our life -we have no right to terminate this life here on earth before God says so. The name of Theresa’s mother was mentioned at every Mass. Theresa’s grandmother had arranged for the mother’s name to be called out in the list of people whose souls had to be prayed for -basically forever. But no-one was allowed to mention Theresa’s mother’s name outside of the venue of Mass. -we have no right to terminate this life here on earth before God says so. The name of Theresa’s mother was mentioned at every Mass. Theresa’s grandmother had arranged for the mother’s name to be called out in the list of people whose souls had to be prayed for -basically forever. But no-one was allowed to mention Theresa’s mother’s name outside of the venue of Mass.
Anyway, no one could ever work out what precious thing existed between Theresa and Rosanna . There was something very fishy about it. It did not pass unnoticed that Theresa got contact lenses just when Rosanna came back from Japan. The way Rosanna did her hair like Theresa’s. Margaret’s mother thought it a disgrace to let girls wear fishnet stockings or whatever else was in COSMOPOLITAN. That depraved magazine preached contraception to unmarried women. Margaret’s mother had “skimmed through” Rosanna’s copy for that month, borrowed from Theresa, and obviously hidden in her schoolbag. So much for Rosanna’s mother being a teacher. Rosanna had freedoms that even decent married women did not have. Margaret’s mother predicted a very bad end for that Rosanna girl. If she topped the class in English every time it must be because she cheated. Probably her mother wrote her essays. They sounded arty enough. The webs spread and tangled into themselves.
The Opal
Rosanna told Mitch about the girl she had been at school. Then she had shown him something very important to herself -the way a girl shows the man of her choice her body for the first time. She had shown him and told him about the opal...
“When we used to go back to my father’s mother’s house, we had to catch a little plane from the city. The plane only seats about a dozen people, and we were late. We could not sit where we wanted to, in such a hurry, so I sat down next to a man who was a stranger. The man ordered a drink for himself, and told me who he was. He travelled all over the world, and sold opals. Opals from Australia, to other people, in other countries. The man asked who I was. I told him about my grandmother who lived on the coast, where the pelicans fly. I was going to see my cousins, I explained. Outside lightning had struck, but it was too far off to be a danger. Below, the fields were a velvety green. The plane stopped at the place where the man had to get off. Before he left, he had given me a small oval shaped opal, with a flickering flame deep inside it. ‘While you are growing up, this opal will bring you good-luck, in everything you do. Hold it up to the light.’
“I had held the opal up to the window next to him. The light from drifting sky outside had shone a pure red through the opal. When I arrived that day, at my father’s mother’s house, I had to tell Mary-Jane, my cousin, in the hallway, that my first period had started. I had to ask my cousin for something, to soak up the blood, until my mother arrived, in the other taxi.” She showed Mitch the opal she kept with herself always, in the little velvet pouch.
“The clots of blood were so red -so red. What can be redder than blood waited for and then seen unexpectedly? In the corridor where the lights were never turned on until
after dinner, my older cousin Mary-Jane was not happy. She had to tell me that she didn’t have anything for me to use for the blood. ‘Its not that I haven’t had my periods yet -if that’s what you’re thinking,’ she said. She then ran out strangely to tell Aunty Jacqui. -Jane was not happy. She had to tell me that she didn’t have anything for me to use for the blood. ‘Its not that I haven’t had my periods yet -if that’s what you’re thinking,’ she said. She then ran out strangely to tell Aunty Jacqui.
“But that day I was given the opal turned into a horrible day for me by my mother. With a scowling face she said -‘Now that this has happened I want you to stay away from boys.’
‘Boys? Why?’
‘You know why!’
“But I didn’t know why. I didn’t find out ‘why’ until Mary-Jane told me that she knew I always ‘told lies’. That my mother had told everyone that I always told lies. That I always had ‘fantasies’ and that I was not having my first periods at all -that my periods had not started yet and I was making it all up. But I couldn’t put the pieces in the bigger puzzle together until many years later. All I knew on that day was that I wanted so badly to grow up and escape from her. To be a grown-up woman on an airplane all by myself. So that I could speak to whatever person. I wanted to and go to places she would never arrive at.”
Mitch told her about the Monte Carlo-like house on the highway they were in. A house with a black cat that felt it did not belong there. He told stories to explain a broken chandelier.
“Kouros bought the house when he was just starting to get rich. His wife had claustrophobia or agoraphobia or one of those. That’s why the whole house is surrounded by French glass windows like this. With mirrors everywhere.” Mitch said.
“You know, it’s funny you say claustrophobia or agoraphobia -because I’ve
heard that psychological illnesses are not always clear-cut in their boundaries between one and another. They merge into one another all the time.” -cut in their boundaries between one and another. They merge into one another all the time.”
He looked at Rosanna for an instant and then his eyes flickered, as if he hadn’t heard her at all.
There was one fig tree in the courtyard, and one lemon tree, leaning against it. When she used to hang out the washing, Rosanna could see the planes flying overhead in the square of sky. The rainy days stopped. After the thirteenth day of their love affair, he went to the beach all day and did not come home. It was an aluminium grey morning. The two-storey white Monte Carlo style house was built on Anzac Highway in a suburb near the airport. It had been built in the days before trees were planted on the road-islands of the highway. In the fifties the strength of the landlord’s youth was soaring in the new country.
Now the house was divided into four main apartments and a few bed-sitters by a maze of fibro walls and double garages. Running from the highway to the back of the other block, towards the tram tracks, the house created its own compound, with an inner courtyard such as those found in Greece. The front was a swimming pool filled in with rose bushes and two palm trees. The back was a tennis court and now a car park. The entire building was painted white, except for a huge sign put on the top right hand-side, which said KOUROS.
She lay alone on his bed, naked, with wet hair draped over the pillow behind her, waiting for him to come back from the beach.
In his bedroom, adorned with the flag of Croatia, posters of Renaissance paintings of the Sistine Chapel and Hari Krishna posters, she stretched and luxuriated. Michael
Kouros, the landlord’s son, came to collect the rent, inspect the renovations and leave a cryptic verbal message for Mitch. He seemed to recognize her from somewhere, but didn’t say anything. She had barely covered her body with a sheet. ’s son, came to collect the rent, inspect the renovations and leave a cryptic verbal message for Mitch. He seemed to recognize her from somewhere, but didn’t say anything. She had barely covered her body with a sheet.
After the landlord’s visit, she was examining the she that was herself. With wet hair, she stood in front of the mirror with the Hari Krishna shrine, on the dressing table section of the built-in robes KOUROS had made for his wife. The candles on the shrine were lit.
“Wasn’t this the way I said it?” she asked herself in the mirror. She tried to replay her dialogue with Mitch:
“The night I met Kouros senior, I was wearing black leather T-bar high heel sandals. And a black elastic skirt with slits up the sides. Only as far as my knees.”
“Go on.”
“Well, the Hilton has fountains made of rims of granite that go around the lobby.”
“Is this relevant?”
“The rims of granite are engraved with what looks like the claw marks of a giant sphinx.”
“I see.”
“The water runs down the grooves of the claw marks in a steady rhythmic river.”
“Yes, I see.”
“And from the ceiling there is a forest of crystals hanging down, and swaying in the breeze of the soft music.”
“Yes.”
“Kouros walked towards me. He was there in the lobby. And sometimes, since
then, he has seen me in the street...”
Trying to recall her conversation with Mitch regarding Kouros, and Kouros’ son Michael, she couldn’t remember having said anything dangerous. She dissected the conversation word by word. But the only safe thing to have done was not to have told him that she either knew or recognized Kouros or his son. Everyone knew that those people were involved in the underworld. She shouldn’t have told Mitch that Kouros’ son Michael had always turned to look at her in whatever street they met. Mitch looked at her venomously when she said that. It didn’t make any difference who owned the glass house they were living in. Everyone thought that Kouros’s son was a womaniser, which he was, but Mitch told her that he also liked men.
The air in the entrance hall where the mirrors went from ceiling to floor had been as cold as a pane of glass to the naked skin. It was not the first time she had seen Mitch’s body in the transparent flood of daylight. Since the night of Valentine’s Day, he often walked from the bathroom to “his” room as if to show her a taste of what she could have “not yet.” The week she had moved in there had been an episode, which in remembrance, was like a dream on morphine used to dull the pain of a broken bone.
Mitch’s friend Nick was in the next room, and would have heard her moaning and screaming. Mitch had taken her nipples out of her bathing suit and licked his finger to gloss around them. He had lain her down, not on the bed, but on the floor. He had stroked her stomach as if she were a cat, kneeling beside her prostrate body. At last it was happening! And then he had kissed her navel, as if bending down in prayer. And then breathing warmly, kissed the hair between her legs that she had locked together at the knees and ankles. Smiling the same smile -he flicked the blanket over her to cover her
nakedness. “That’s enough...” he had said. akedness. “That’s enough...” he had said.
That time in front of the mirrors he had been watching her getting dressed to go out. Wearing just her shoes he asked her to “come in front of the big mirrors.” Her own toffee coloured skin pressed against his whiteness had lasted only an instant. The glass front door made her feel as if they were being watched even before she saw Kouros’ son’s face gliding past, looking inside. But she had believed Mitch when he had said that it was just an accident -nothing to be ashamed of -“Michael knows about us,” he had said. He had said that he knew Michael well. Once she had seen them together in Michael’s open sports car outside the house. He had said that after he had paid the rent at Michael’s father’s office in the city, Michael had driven him home.
Previously she had seen Kouros’ son, when he was going into collect the neighbour Antionette’s rent. That was the day Mitch had found the cat. He has followed the trail of its blood to their door.
The windows in the glass house that were the “upstairs apartment” were covered from the inside with a multifarious yet colourless piece of material from edge to edge of the glass pane. The material had not been left to hang like curtains but had been tacked onto the frame with something to serve as a cyclorama. In front of this cyclorama in centre-stage position was a life-size artificial sunflower. The sunflower smiled at the outside world of the highway as if it were growing more beautiful every day. The men who came and went up and down the outside staircase to the room behind the window were of a telling, yet ambiguous, description. Immaculately uniformed schoolboys in pairs, middle-aged men in suits and sunglasses that wrapped around their eyes and temples in an unbroken band of black plastic. The kind of sunglasses advertised on
television from 3 a.m. onwards.
Rosanna thought she had never met whoever lived in the upstairs apartment during that hazy time of settling in to the glass house. Her name was Antoinette but actually Rosanna had met her, not knowing who she was. In Rosanna’s mind’ s eye Antoinette was an older woman with a dyed bee-hive encased in V05 never fully combed out. Perhaps she had a heart of gold and her youth had been hard. A youth not spent in almond orchards or on sandy beaches but in iron-mining town pubs where the carpets are covered in cigarette stubs. In the never-ending round of either head-on collisions or nearmisses called life perhaps she had become something that she had never dreamt of becoming. Mitch had said that Antoinette was going to give up “tasting” heroin one day. “She’s told me that she’s tasted all the lollies in the lolly shop and now she sick of it,” he had said.
One evening when Rosanna came home with a translucent-eyed fish to bake in the now clean landlord’s old stove, she saw Mitch walking down the stairs of Antoinette’s. Antoinette stood in the background. The quiet words between them trailed off and blew across the rush-hour highway.
“I’m home,” Rosanna said.
“I’m not eating tonight,” was his rehearsed reply.
“Who was that?”
“That’s Antoinette,” He opened the downstairs door with the keys that opened both locks.
So Antoinette was not a woman with a bee-hive never fully combed out -she was a young woman with glossy long dark hair. Rosanna recognized Antoinette as the girl she
had seen and spoken to at the phone-box outside the building. She was the girl Mitch had exchanged silent nods and laughter with at the bottle shop when they had bought the Valentine Day’s wine. Out of the corner of Rosanna’s eye, Antoinette’s track-suited legs had moved with effortless rhythm. Rosanna did not know what their quiet laughter was about, so she feigned not to notice. Now the connection between the life of the upstairs apartment and the spoons and bottles of water which appeared and then disappeared began to coagulate like a new language during the third or fourth lesson. Heroin. In the glossy and irretrievable moment of her youth, Mitch had said that Antoinette lived the way she lived up there, “for her child”. To the uninitiated, the baggage she knew that he had but had not been able to identify was light enough to blow into the air and disintegrate like particles of powder. With a life of art and beauty she would throw this baggage away and then their real life of uninhibited love would begin. -box outside the building. She was the girl Mitch had exchanged silent nods and laughter with at the bottle shop when they had bought the Valentine Day’s wine. Out of the corner of Rosanna’s eye, Antoinette’s track-suited legs had moved with effortless rhythm. Rosanna did not know what their quiet laughter was about, so she feigned not to notice. Now the connection between the life of the upstairs apartment and the spoons and bottles of water which appeared and then disappeared began to coagulate like a new language during the third or fourth lesson. Heroin. In the glossy and irretrievable moment of her youth, Mitch had said that Antoinette lived the way she lived up there, “for her child”. To the uninitiated, the baggage she knew that he had but had not been able to identify was light enough to blow into the air and disintegrate like particles of powder. With a life of art and beauty she would throw this baggage away and then their real life of uninhibited love would begin.
Rainbow Lollipop
What was the meaning of “distinguishing characteristic: scar on left arm” in her old expired passport?
“What scar? Show me,” Mitch demanded.
“I fell off a horse when I was fourteen years old.”
“No you didn’t. Someone did this to you.”
“Well, yes ‘someone’ did give me this scar. A surgeon did. When I fell off the horse, I broke my arm. The bone was broken into splinters and had to be pinned together in an operation. The operation was not successful the first time and I had to be put under morphine for 24 hours until they could operate again. It was in the Queen Victoria Hospital overlooking the Zoo. During the night you could hear the monkeys, elephants and other animals calling to one another and talking to the stars. You could hear the hippo getting in and out of his pool. After the second operation, I woke up and saw the nuns from school in a circle around my bed and I thought that maybe I had died and gone to heaven. But it was just the nuns visiting me to see how I was mending. At first the scar was like a purple leech around the top of my arm. But it was a medal of bravery -I had fallen off a horse that had bolted in a gum tree forest. Nobody could out-do that. That was wilder than hitch-hiking or riding as a pillion passenger on a motor-cycle. And even though my mother had forbidden me ever to get onto a horse again, I told everyone that I was going to and no one could stop me. That was wild. Wild meant too bad to be good and was the realm of ecstatic forbidden freedom.”
Mitch leant over and kissed the scar, saying nothing. Nobody had ever done that before. That was a memorable gesture for a man one had just had sex with for the first
time, to make.
“Why do you always talk about Japan?” asked Mitch. “Why don’t you just forget about it? You’re in Australia now.”
But it was not as easy as that, she told him. When she was in Italy, the country of her girlhood dreams, something very telling had happened. The experience occurred, like most powerful experiences, without any warning. It was in the place where Romeo and Juliet were supposed to have lived. But she was sick, her heart was sick. If a doctor had asked why her heart and mind felt so sick, she could only say, “Because I cannot forget the one back in Tokyo. I miss him.” Then, on the outskirts of Reggio Amelia, beyond a field of poplars, she found herself in a Japanese restaurant. There was a doll wearing a black kimono and a red obi. Although the doll’s smile did not change throughout the dinner for the Reggio Amelia Festival, she knew the girl who was the doll didn’t feel at home there. She did not want to be in a restaurant owned by a man who would not let his waiter go to the Festival’s performance with complimentary free tickets. The waiter came from Kyoto, and was in Italy to study the violin. He also did not want to work in a restaurant with imitation Japanese food sold as an exotic item to the locals. Owned by a man who could not even tell the difference. The restaurant smelt of the olive oil used to fry the tempura. The doll looked delicate enough to only ever have eaten the light seaweed that floats onto the shore on the foam of the waves. Too light to catch in the hand. It had to be caught in a net, woven especially. The doll deserved to be given only the oysters brought from the coast where the pearl divers are famous. Oysters brought from the coast of the Virgin of Ise, by a relay of white horses, to the palace where she was a dancing girl. What was she doing in Reggio Amelia? Obviously she had been
kidnapped. The doll stood to be looked at like a meaningless decoration. Behind her was a wedding kimono hanging on the wall. The wedding kimono was repulsively heavy with imitation gold and silver thread. As if nothing shiny was nothing beautiful. The dancing girl doll wanted to sit in the quiet shadows of a temple so old, the silver leaf had fallen away to remain as only an uneven sprinkling. But her smile did not change. She was the same indestructible butterfly. Only her eyes spoke. Rosanna saw all this, and understood. a wedding kimono hanging on the wall. The wedding kimono was repulsively heavy with imitation gold and silver thread. As if nothing shiny was nothing beautiful. The dancing girl doll wanted to sit in the quiet shadows of a temple so old, the silver leaf had fallen away to remain as only an uneven sprinkling. But her smile did not change. She was the same indestructible butterfly. Only her eyes spoke. Rosanna saw all this, and understood.
Mitch’s flat-mate Nick, was English. He had pouting lips, like Rudolph Nureyev. He liked to watch Ali G. Sometimes in the dark of the living room she had found him watching a video with a girl with short hair whom she never saw again once she herself moved in permanently. On his bedroom door there was a poster of a black musician. “He’s English,” Nick had said, as if she were about to contradict that fact. He and his mother had moved to Queensland from England six years ago, but his accent was still very strong. He always wore a long-sleeved SEGA soccer shirt.
Mitch and the flat-mate Nick had met at their high school in a suburb called Brahma Lodge. It was a new suburb made of prefabricated houses built by developers on what had been a hay farm, near an airfield where people trained to be pilots. It is on the other side of Elizabeth, which is a suburb of English people who came out in the 60s and 70s.
The state high schools around that sphere on the outer edge of Adelaide are no longer “white”. There are a lot of Vietnamese people living in Elizabeth now. That is why Mitch felt qualified to say “I don’t like Asians.”
What Mitch really did not like about them was their indestructible pride in who
they themselves are. Their good grades at school were an insult and an attack on
everyone who was not Vietnamese. They were just greedy and sneaky, not “smart”, he said. The fact that they spoke in their own language in the lunch sheds of the playground was a reminder to everyone that they lived in a binary world. Mitch could not speak Croatian himself and was afraid to attempt and fail at this cultural journey into his own origins. After all, his father could not speak Croatian well either. His father had come to Australia at the age of fifteen, with parents who could not read or write their own language. Right at the core of his being, Mitch felt there was something to be ashamed of in being Croatian. In being anything other than “normal.” said. The fact that they spoke in their own language in the lunch sheds of the playground was a reminder to everyone that they lived in a binary world. Mitch could not speak Croatian himself and was afraid to attempt and fail at this cultural journey into his own origins. After all, his father could not speak Croatian well either. His father had come to Australia at the age of fifteen, with parents who could not read or write their own language. Right at the core of his being, Mitch felt there was something to be ashamed of in being Croatian. In being anything other than “normal.”
There was an unspoken agreement between himself and his father that it was unfortunate that Mitch was not part of the elite at the high school whose native language and whose names were totally and unmistakably English.
Being Croatian was too obscure. Nobody even knew where Croatia was. Until the war with the Serbs began to be talked about by his uncles even he did not know exactly where it was. Where it was or is was always changing anyway. Perhaps it only existed in his grandfather’s delusions and in the newspapers. It was difficult to ask his grandfather about this since his grandfather didn’t speak English. There was also the fact that his grandfather was not talking to them in any language because he didn’t like his daughterinlaw, Mitch’s mother.
His mother was Finnish, but she could not speak her parent’s native language either. All these invisible boundaries were real. Being Finnish was nothing to be proud of. Just bury it. If anyone “asked” just say, “Well, what are you, anyway?”
His mother was sixteen when she he had been born and his father was nineteen. His mother hated to cook. Fast food was her escape from cooking, and the washing up
had no meaning for her either. What can be gained by cooking and washing up? Waste of time. The sex had not been good since that day she had found out for sure that she was pregnant. Life was a real bitch. time. The sex had not been good since that day she had found out for sure that she was pregnant. Life was a real bitch.
At the park where Rosanna used to spend hours on the swings, she told Mitch some things that had happened long ago. When she was in first grade at Maroubra Primary School in Sydney, her father had a friend who was an unknown fashion designer. The fashion designer needed a child model at an event one night to walk along the catwalk with the grown-up models. Her mother arranged for her to play the part. She had no memory of her father being there at all, but she and her mother went back-stage to a place in the city. There she got ready with the grown-up models, in front of the big mirrors. There were beautiful coloured lights. When it was her turn to pace down the catwalk, she walked right to the end, but was then transfixed by a man’s eyes in the crowd. The man had a white goatee. She must have stood there for a little longer than was needed, because when she turned around, she was the only one standing there. One of the grown-up models came to get her, taking her by the hand.
They had a big lollypop, made of swirls of rainbow coloured candy, as a present for her, for the night’s work. Her mother did not want her to have the lollypop. Her reasons were very unsure. What a shockingly mysterious catastrophe. In front of the grown-up, beautiful ladies, under the coloured lights of the confidential back-stage, with the very serious curtain all around it, Rosanna was told that she was not allowed to even hint that she wanted the lollipop. But she would not cry in front of the grownups… Rosanna told Mitch the story there, in the very park where she used to play as a girl. Where she used to dream of being a grown-up woman. Going wherever she wanted
to go.
Mitch was smiling strangely -“You still want that lollipop really badly don’t you?”
In the middle of the park playground was a little house with no doors and no glass at the two windows. Like an unfinished real-life house. In the middle of the transparent house was a miniature round table with a phone with a blue body, a red receiver and a yellow spiralling vinyl cord. The primary colours of picture crayons. Whoever was ever in the playhouse could be seen from the outside, and anyone outside could see in. Any children in the playhouse were protected by the wide spaces of make-believe. The yellow spiral cord of the phone hung down the side of the round table, as if it had been cut in half, not joining the receiver. Maybe that was because it was dangerous to have a long cord joining the receiver. Maybe it could be used the wrong way, in a game that wasn’t meant to be dangerous. Like in a special kind of hospital room with no mirrors. Did those hospital rooms just have no mirrors so that no-one emotionally sick could cut themselves? Or were mirrors forbidden in those rooms so that such patients could not see themselves -and confirm in their hearts who they themselves were? Then if a beautiful woman were locked in such a room -how would she know that she was a beautiful woman if the young doctor didn’t confirm that for her? Mitch didn’t seem interested in these musings. His cryptic silence didn’t prepare her for what he had to say
“It’s just that I wanted to come to this park that you’re always talking about to ask you something.”
“What?”
“Will you move in with me? To our house full of mirrors that reminds you of the
place where Marie Antoinette lived?”
A little boy’s shrieks pierced the air as he ran into the jungle gym and climbed to the top, with a little girl climbing after him. Her hair flew into the air and floated down around her face, stuck to one cheek with perspiration.
Rosanna had agreed.
As they were visiting her mother’s house, Mitch made an investigation of his new surroundings. He took an obsolete university text from the shelf. The cover page seemed to contain something significant
“Who is Steven Miller?”
“Steven Miller is my father.”
As if that information was ridiculous -“Your father studied Political Science in 1963?”
“I guess so -yeah.”
“Your father who lives in Tokyo?”
“Yes.”
He was crestfallen.
“What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with my father studying political science in 1963?”
A long pause, and then very casually:
“I just get the feeling that he didn’t -that’s all.”
Before dawn on a day when he was still asleep she made the decision that would prove her love to him. She went back to her mother’s to get her things and move in permanently with Mitch. She walked the three kilometres back to the house where wild
olive trees had begun to sow themselves in the backyard. The apricot sunrise against the morning rush-hour sky confirmed how irrelevant the world was, compared to her relationship with him. inst the morning rush-hour sky confirmed how irrelevant the world was, compared to her relationship with him.
Behind her mother’s house was “the old Greek’s place.” On the Edwardian tiled veranda of the old Greek were the two big tins with the gold letters “OLIO”. In each tin were olive tree saplings that had been grafted and planted. Ever since she could remember moving there as a child, the olive trees in the tins had been the same size. It only occurred to her on that day that they were not the same olive saplings, year in, year out. One of the old Greek’s black cats ran across the street and turned to look at her with both terror and recognition. She had heard from his sons that the old Greek never let the cats into the house, and didn’t love them. That was why they were afraid of people. But she had always liked to think that they had a secret understanding with her alone. It was an auspicious sign. The cat’s eyes seemed to refract the morning light of her new life starting on that day.
Another letter from the tofu man was in her old bedroom …
“Rosanna-san, you do not write to me. Everyday I look in the letter-box for a letter I know is not there. There is something I must tell you -I lied to you, Rosanna-san. Are you angry with me? The thing I need to tell you is this -my father was never a tofu maker, as I told you in my third letter. This house used to be where my mother grew up, but now she lives with my married sister. My father was never a tofu maker, Rosannasan. I am sorry. Please accept these gifts I send you today, with my eternal love.”
Her mother was out. She went into her room and built a fire in the grate. She began to put things into bags to take away from there. She put a bundle of letters onto the
fire and watched them disintegrate. Then a red jewellery box made of papier-mâché. Inside it were the keys to an apartment to which she would never return. Burn what housed the keys and watch the keys melting down into little pools of silver nothing. That was the way to leave the past behind. Her doctor from an ancient and exiled culture was a man who had left the past behind himself often -he would approve. “The past is a foreign country, my dear, and they do things differently there. You can never go back,” he always told her, in his beautiful foreign though very English, English. She took her sewing box and threw it on the increasing flames. The wicker crumbled in burning orange lines writhing to reveal the nothing inside the disappearing box. Hollow -had such a house made of nylon satin cushions full of rusting fading pins been so flimsy? The bows and frills disintegrated into an angry red then white and then all was ash. n a red jewellery box made of papier-mâché. Inside it were the keys to an apartment to which she would never return. Burn what housed the keys and watch the keys melting down into little pools of silver nothing. That was the way to leave the past behind. Her doctor from an ancient and exiled culture was a man who had left the past behind himself often -he would approve. “The past is a foreign country, my dear, and they do things differently there. You can never go back,” he always told her, in his beautiful foreign though very English, English. She took her sewing box and threw it on the increasing flames. The wicker crumbled in burning orange lines writhing to reveal the nothing inside the disappearing box. Hollow -had such a house made of nylon satin cushions full of rusting fading pins been so flimsy? The bows and frills disintegrated into an angry red then white and then all was ash.
Red Geta
“One day a visitor came from Kyoto. He was a professor of mathematics. He brought my mother a string of Mikimoto pearls and my little brother a yoyo with electric lights from Osaka Expo 70. His gift to me was a pair of high heeled platform red brocade geta with little bells in an enclosure on the heel. I was allowed just once to wear the high heeled geta with the bells tinkling as I took each step, around the living room. And then the red geta were put away. I wasn’t allowed to wear them until I grew bigger. And then I grew out of the precious red geta decorated with embroidered butterflies while they sat in a box covered in rice paper you could see straight through...”
She told Mitch about the house she had lived in, in Brisbane...
“The merchant seamen brought strange things to the house when they came. A pair of deer antlers from a market in Taipei, as white and fawn splotched as flesh cast with pools of shadows when partly uncovered in the dark, somewhere. A bag of dried octopus, when boiled, unfurled their legs as if coming to life again from a deep sleep through a journey from one sea to another. If you close your eyes when you are being taken somewhere, you never know how to go there again…”
The little girl that was Rosanna never grew tired of touching the deer antlers. She had been told that she must never do this. The antlers curled into the air in the shape of a river seen from an airplane or in an atlas. The horns had grown into pronged branches on the disappeared deer’s head. But even hanging on the wall, they seemed like something alive. She had been told “no”. Such sharp things were dangerous. There had even been a discussion as to whether or not to keep them. But the deer hadn’t just died for its antlers deer are also hunted for their skin. The fawns are the ones who are most valuable in some
cultures -because of the markings on their rumps. Was it the glands of the females or the males that were the most valuable as an aphrodisiac in Japan and China? Her parents agreed with one another that they didn’t know. -because of the markings on their rumps. Was it the glands of the females or the males that were the most valuable as an aphrodisiac in Japan and China? Her parents agreed with one another that they didn’t know.
The antlers were something a wild animal had been hunted and killed for. They were not just an object and not just a gift from passing visitors. They were a forbidden import, someone said. Maybe in the culture of the givers, it had not been a bad thing to have done -to kill the deer. The discussion went on in never concluding fragments whenever the horns were remarked upon by other visitors. What were they going to do about these horns? It would be a sin to hide them in the cupboard. Then no-one would see their beauty -for which the animal had died. Yes or no? Western logic or Eastern philosophy?
The little girl that was Rosanna would take a chair when no-one was home and stand on it to touch the horns in the silent house. The only sounds were of other children playing “out in the sunshine” -not in a dark, empty, locked house. The surface of the horns were as smooth as shell and grew warm to the touch. Their markings were like flames of fire or rivers of Chinese ink spilling over paper. Sometimes the markings looked like the close-up photos of craters on the moon -where “man” had just landed for the first time.
Mitch finally asked the dreaded question -“Why are you always fighting with your mother?”
“Just because. It always degenerates into an argument. It is always about my Nana, somehow or another… my Nana could no longer breathe without a machine. Most of her friends were dead. She no longer had that wild black hair in the charcoal sketch
done in her youth. The man who had sketched her on a serviette, while she was serving in the bar in Kings Cross, had just won the Archibald Prize for an oil painting of a prima donna. But he was younger than Nana. She was living alone, as she had always done. This time it was in an apartment on a hill in Mosmon, overlooking a sea that looked like crinkled aluminium foil. But she missed “old Paddo,” and the place in the middle of the city, where she had lived for thirty years. Next to the new apartment building, there was a graveyard, with headstones written in Vietnamese, Lebanese and all the other languages of the new and old people of Sydney. When she was a young girl, the headstones were only written in English. Life had passed by since then. She had to go to the hospital, and so the apartment was empty for almost a month. I moved in there, in Spring. I hadn’t been to Japan for a long time, it seemed to me. But in reality it had only been eight months. The geta I had been wearing were getting worn, and there was nowhere I could buy new ones, even in Sydney. The lacquered heels were splintered and the silk and velvet thongs to go between the toes were frayed. When I turned them over to see if I could fix them myself, the flowing signature of the geta maker sent waves of ‘homesickness’ through my heart. It was like coming, unexpectedly on a place from the past. In my exiled mind’s eye, I saw the shops of the gem maker, the tatami maker, the eel shop and the paper screen shop, the tofu shop. The walkway to the temple, filled with wisteria. I considered throwing away the past and burying it, to take away the pain. Nana had said, ‘those Japanese wooden things, they make you move different. At night, when the shadows fall on the wall, the silhouette of that dancing doll from Japan looks just like you.’ She did not want me to go back to Japan. ‘The Japanese were cruel during the war. I don’t trust them...’ Nana had been so glad when I said as a little girl that I wanted to be the bar in Kings Cross, had just won the Archibald Prize for an oil painting of a prima donna. But he was younger than Nana. She was living alone, as she had always done. This time it was in an apartment on a hill in Mosmon, overlooking a sea that looked like crinkled aluminium foil. But she missed “old Paddo,” and the place in the middle of the city, where she had lived for thirty years. Next to the new apartment building, there was a graveyard, with headstones written in Vietnamese, Lebanese and all the other languages of the new and old people of Sydney. When she was a young girl, the headstones were only written in English. Life had passed by since then. She had to go to the hospital, and
so the apartment was empty for almost a month. I moved in there, in Spring. I hadn’t been to Japan for a long time, it seemed to me. But in reality it had only been eight months. The geta I had been wearing were getting worn, and there was nowhere I could buy new ones, even in Sydney. The lacquered heels were splintered and the silk and velvet thongs to go between the toes were frayed. When I turned them over to see if I could fix them myself, the flowing signature of the geta maker sent waves of ‘homesickness’ through my heart. It was like coming, unexpectedly on a place from the past. In my exiled mind’s eye, I saw the shops of the gem maker, the tatami maker, the eel shop and the paper screen shop, the tofu shop. The walkway to the temple, filled with wisteria. I considered throwing away the past and burying it, to take away the pain. Nana had said, ‘those Japanese wooden things, they make you move different. At night, when the shadows fall on the wall, the silhouette of that dancing doll from Japan looks just like you.’ She did not want me to go back to Japan. ‘The Japanese were cruel during the war. I don’t trust them...’ Nana had been so glad when I said as a little girl that I wanted to be
a ballet dancer. She was not afraid that I would fail, in my dream. She believed in making dreams come true. I said to myself, dreams come true. I said to myself,
‘In my heart I am Portuguese, like her. I take more after the Portuguese side than the English side. It is spiritual -not just blood.’ I looked at the black lace fans on her mantle-piece. In Japan, the fans had an austere beauty, so different. Silver gilt, decorated with only one trailing autumn leaf, or flower. It would be autumn there now. But it is spring time here. I cannot be in two places at once. I have to live where my body is.’”
“I asked Nana’s dolly what I should do. ‘You are not a Japanese girl. You must say what you want to do to yourself -or others will decide for you. Others will drink up your talent and beauty and youth as if they deserve it themselves. Go out and find your new life. The life where you choose your own lover, without compromise, come hell or high water. The life where, if you choose to play Carmen on that day, then Carmen you will become, in your spirit, in the way you move. Go out and find your new life in the country which you left when you were so young. You became a woman over there -but really you are from here. A woman must make herself -or others will re-make her, for their own pleasure…’ The dolly pouted her glossy red mouth with conviction. She looked as if she had just been kissed, with that glossy mouth just made for kissing. So on that day, I put on my absent Nana’s old gold high-heel sandals and went into the city. I bought a pair of black leather pants and decided to wear them back to Mosmon. I had the knee-length skirt I had been wearing wrapped up in the shop’s paper. As I walked out of the shop, my eyes caught those of a Latin looking man, smiling at me. ‘This is the way I am going to walk again. And I am going to smile with my mouth open, and my teeth showing. I am not a Japanese girl. I was never a Japanese girl.’
“My Nana who is my mother’s mother always used to say ‘Wait till I put on ’s mother always used to say ‘Wait till I put on
my face,’ before we went out to the shops.”
Rosanna told him about the last screaming argument she had with her mother. Rosanna had been running from one room to another with the tears streaming down her face as she was asking her mother -“Why? Why did you want to steal my face? That rouge with Nana’s fragrance? Why did you take away my lipstick as well? Why did you do that? Its because it made me look like Nana. Now her rouge is disappeared, I can never buy another one. I had it once and now it’s gone. That rouge that was Nana’s face and mine has disappeared off the face of the earth without a trace. While she walked this earth and while she still had a breath left in her body you blocked her from me. Now I know why. It is because she knew some things you wanted to be buried or burnt forever. You would not tell me where she had moved to. Or where you had moved her to. That place in Paddington held some truths about her youth. What were they? You forced her out of that place in Paddington because you knew that one day I would go looking for her past.” “You moved her out to suburban nowhere, no man’s land, to remove her past. But you can never bury it. No matter how many times you try and burn it, it will rise up again inside me. Do you think it was a coincidence that she asked to be burnt in that red silk kimono I had bought her? That was a sign to me from her in the next world. It was because the kimono was embroidered with a phoenix on its back. Shut up! I’m not drunk! You can call the police if you want. She didn’t dump you on your grandmother. Your grandmother stole you away from her and then began a life-long campaign to tell you your mother was only interested in her own face. I am trying to tell you something! Once, after a one night stand in Paddington, in the morning I went out into the garden. There
was Nana’s window looking down on me. Do you think that was a coincidence? It was not. Her spirit drew me there. The night before I had not even known where we were going to be staying. I can see her face now with that wild black hair swept up. Now there is no breath left in her body you can’t block her from me. The bonds of the flesh are cut. She’s everywhere now. Not just in one hidden place. Not just in Mosmon, that powerless place you placed her. Not just in that one body. Now that she is dead she speaks to me all the time. She tells me the truth in so many undeniable ways. I’m not putting on a turn! I’m not creating a drama! Every time you look at me you see her -that’s your problem. You see the mother you think abandoned you. Old Moira her mother came and took you away. It was not Nana’s fault that her “coloured” father had left. That’s what it was all about. Not even you can put out the eyes she gave me. These eyes are like black mirrors that look back at me from her face every day of my life. These eyes reflect the truth.” ’s window looking down on me. Do you think that was a coincidence? It was not. Her spirit drew me there. The night before I had not even known where we were going to be staying. I can see her face now with that wild black hair swept up. Now there is no breath left in her body you can’t block her from me. The bonds of the flesh are cut. She’s everywhere now. Not just in one hidden place. Not just in Mosmon, that powerless place you placed her. Not just in that one body. Now that she is dead she speaks to me all the time. She tells me the truth in so many undeniable ways. I’m not putting on a turn! I’m not creating a drama! Every time you look at me you see her -that’s your problem. You see the mother you think abandoned you. Old Moira her mother came and took you away. It was not Nana’s fault that her “coloured” father had left. That’s what it was all about. Not even you can put out the eyes she gave me. These eyes are like black mirrors that look back at me from her face every day of my life. These eyes reflect the truth.”
Brahma Lodge and a string of pearls
Mitch was a good athlete, like his father had been before he accumulated twentyfive plus years of smoking over twenty-five ESCORTS a day. His track and field prizes until the second year of high school looked as if they might give the parents a conversation topic. It was then that what his mother had known for a very long and anxious time, became openly jeered at. Mitch was “gay.” Bi-sexuality was not a concept at the high school, or for miles and miles around it. Gay boys in Brahma Lodge were not accepted in the one, or the two or the three dimensional world.
These mothers were not girls who had ever been to ballet school, or who might have confessed to having gay brothers and gay friends. These mothers could not hold up their heads unless their sons were as completely straight as the football heroes. And all the football heroes were completely straight. Naturally! The only acceptable thing to become really excited about was the Aussie Rules football. The arts did not exist. The arts were a load of wanky fairy, pretend stuff. Gay boys in Brahma Lodge, whether they were footy heroes or not, lived and played out an undying lie about themselves. They never, under any circumstances, wore anything like make-up, not under any pretext. Their clothing was always a collection of plain colours. For birthdays and for Christmas they were given T-shirts emblazoned with phrases which showed the world that they were heterosexually active. If their names were mentioned openly, in the context of being gay, they had unspeakable things done to them by their own sex. They could not be the only boys in a group of girls at lunchtime, for refuge. It just did not work.
They had to leave the world of Brahma Lodge, and its miles of nothing around it, to save their own lives. They had to lose everything they knew, and start again from
scratch, in brave new worlds. They appealed to Art and Drama teachers to guide them into unknown territories, which they knew existed, but had no idea how to navigate. They had desperate dreams of new lives, “in town,” where they knew that the unknown existed. Or they could live in the closet permanently. hem into unknown territories, which they knew existed, but had no idea how to navigate. They had desperate dreams of new lives, “in town,” where they knew that the unknown existed. Or they could live in the closet permanently.
Through seeing others endure public humiliations, the memories of which lasted whole life-times, those who lived the schizophrenic lives of being gay on the inside and straight on the outside, did it so successfully that not even the girls they had sex with, suspected anything for months on end. Sometimes, in fact in the roulette called “life”, pregnancies resulted from these encounters. Then the gay boys convinced themselves that they were straight. When such men had sons born to them, they celebrated like secret losers who had become winners after all. Such men called their female mates “alright” never “beautiful,” when asked about their feelings.
When they were about to get married to these female mates, they threw stag parties they could not afford. Their fathers came too. They all went in their Saturday night clothes. At these stag parties, the girlfriends and wives of other men “danced” lewdly on the crudely constructed, flimsy catwalks. Their pussies were pierced and adorned in other ludicrous ways, to compensate for their hard unfortunate faces. The men leered while giving one another sideward glances, and jeered until they were hoarse, to show how straight they were. Mere women were just playthings who would not know the difference, to these playboys from Brahma Lodge. The johns from Brahma Lodge could either take ‘em or leave ‘em. Sluts. They were real men who had had every kind of sex with women from all over the world. Big playboys and big spenders. Wait till their girlfriends heard about this. They’d be mad. They’d be jealous. The climax of these stag
parties was always the same -the Bridegroom was stripped naked. -the Bridegroom was stripped naked.
In the house where Mitch and Rosanna were taking refuge from the past, the narrator’s voice on the television art documentary explained in a steady modulated tone
“Lord Leighton’s ‘The Tinted Venus’ is today encased in glass to protect it from the sun and the caress of modern admirers…the averted face of the Venus facilitates voyeurism…she appears to be looking at herself with an almost masturbatory gaze…”
“That’s you,” said Mitch, “You moved into this house so that you could always look at yourself in the mirrors here.”
“Vanity is a sin. My mother once said to me that if I didn’t stop looking at myself in a certain mirror in our house, she would cut my hair off while I was asleep. I was sixteen years old when she said that to me. She used to catch the reflection of my eyes with hers in the mirror. A mother never lies -so it became a sin for me to gaze at myself. Not in my spirit, but in my mind, I began to believe this. But I found myself looking and looking at myself and telling my reflection that one day I would grow up to be beautiful. The more beautiful I became and the longer my hair grew the more that power of her eyes on mine in the mirror seemed to evaporate. And then one day when she came up behind me and caught my reflection I realized that her power had vanished. I had drunk up all her power. In my school uniform in town I began to play a game right up until the last minute when I had to be at home. I would catch the glances of strange men in the street and on the tram and then pretend I hadn’t seen them. Then as I walked away I turned back to look at them full in their eyes.”
Mitch smiled without saying anything.
She told him another story.
She had once stayed at her other grandmother’s house alone, without her mother. Every vacation, in the early summer, before Christmas time, they would go there. It was the quiet part of the summer holidays. The time she stayed in the house alone, with Aunty Felicity was after Nellie the maid had gone home. Rosanna was given the attic room, with the window seat like those in the piano rooms at the convent. It overlooked the front garden, which rolled down in a soft hill. Half way down the hill there were three white stairs, flanked by pots of white flowers. In the dim evenings, she sat with her girl cousin in the window seat. The bed had a mosquito net hanging from the top of the four poster carved mahogany bed. In the hot summer holidays she slept naked under the net, with the window open. The curtains fell from the ceiling to the floor and blew in and out in the sea breeze. They were made of white lace. Aunty Felicity’s house was papered in every room, with painted silk. The silk had not been changed since 1924. Rosanna liked sitting at the dressing table in this bedroom. She sat on the silk satin stool, naked, and watched her breasts and her stomach move in the shadows, as she stroked her hair with an old silver backed brush. There was a little silver backed nail-buffer, made of chamois, to match. Sitting with her back very straight at the stool, she would observe how she would look if polishing her nails were still, in Aunty Felicity’s words, “the vogue”. e stayed at her other grandmother’s house alone, without her mother. Every vacation, in the early summer, before Christmas time, they would go there. It was the quiet part of the summer holidays. The time she stayed in the house alone, with Aunty Felicity was after Nellie the maid had gone home. Rosanna was given the attic room, with the window seat like those in the piano rooms at the convent. It overlooked the front garden, which rolled down in a soft hill. Half way down the hill there were three white stairs, flanked by pots of white flowers. In the dim evenings, she sat with her girl cousin in the window seat. The bed had a mosquito net hanging from the top of the four poster carved mahogany bed. In the hot summer holidays she slept naked under the net, with the window open. The curtains fell from the ceiling to the floor and blew in and out in the sea breeze. They were made of white lace. Aunty Felicity’s house was papered in every room, with painted silk. The silk had not been changed since 1924. Rosanna liked sitting at the dressing table in this bedroom. She sat on the silk satin stool, naked, and watched her breasts and her stomach move in the shadows, as she stroked her hair with an old
silver backed brush. There was a little silver backed nail-buffer, made of chamois, to match. Sitting with her back very straight at the stool, she would observe how she would look if polishing her nails were still, in Aunty Felicity’s words, “the vogue”.
Rosanna had shown Mitch her most prized possession. It was a photograph of that grandmother’s house that had been made into a postcard. “Heathfield House” had been taken off the government heritage list by the family itself, and then dismantled and taken onto her uncle’s block of land, so that it no longer existed.
That is why I am never going back to that town -so that the memories remain the way they were and things were like in this photograph. The photograph was taken at
night-time to catch the Christmas lights that grandmother and great-aunty used to put on the trees in the front gardens. The four Norfolk Pines strung with multi-coloured fairy lights could be seen all over the district. They were the tallest trees for miles and miles around. The trees had sown themselves, up and down the coast where the pelicans fly. They were not native trees though... -time to catch the Christmas lights that grandmother and great-aunty used to put on the trees in the front gardens. The four Norfolk Pines strung with multi-coloured fairy lights could be seen all over the district. They were the tallest trees for miles and miles around. The trees had sown themselves, up and down the coast where the pelicans fly. They were not native trees though...
They were brought out with a vision in mind. My great-grandfather had brought seeds over, to plant trees to make the masts on the ships. My great-grandfather had arrived out of the sea’s horizon and began to build a house and shipping yards there. But anyway, I felt when I was a little girl, from the city, going to visit my grandmother, that we had the biggest Christmas tree in the whole country.
But in that house the fat cousin had moved silently towards me, as if she were on wheels.
‘What are you looking at in my grandmother’s room?’
‘Just my profile.’
‘Your profile.’
It had sounded as if there were no such thing as a profile.
‘You look nothing like her. Have you ever thought about why you’re so dark? You don’t belong in this family.’
Rosanna had told him “what” she was….
My Nana, my other grandmother, my mother’s mother, -loved things that were gold. She covered things in gold. She made doll’s ballroom shoes from a cork and a piece of twisted paper, sprayed with gold. The doll had been found naked and homeless, sitting astride a heap of rubbish. My Nana took her in and presented her with a glittering fan,
made from the foil lining of a cigarillo packet. The dolly with a gold butterfly, big enough for a grown-up to wear in her hair, sat on what had been a broken wooden foot-stool, turned in its new life into a baroque throne. The three-panelled screen around her was made from bits of broken mirror and the remains of the fingernail polish named “Masquerado Oro.” Around her neck was a big round coin of chocolate called REAL GOLD. She was a rich, lucky dolly. Worth more than all the gold taken from Ballarat to the marble Melbourne banks. butterfly, big enough for a grown-up to wear in her hair, sat on what had been a broken wooden foot-stool, turned in its new life into a baroque throne. The three-panelled screen around her was made from bits of broken mirror and the remains of the fingernail polish named “Masquerado Oro.” Around her neck was a big round coin of chocolate called REAL GOLD. She was a rich, lucky dolly. Worth more than all the gold taken from Ballarat to the marble Melbourne banks.
Rosanna had told him about her aunt in Sydney…
The aunt’s house in was made of planks of wood. It was painted a khaki green, and the windowsills were the dark brown of long-distance trains that carry wheat or cattle into the cities. The veranda was a block of concrete covered in tiles, with two metal rods as pillars going from ceiling to ground. The veranda was about the size of a children’s blow-up plastic pool. To the cousin who lived in a sandstone house, with three chimneys, (me) it must have looked like a flimsy doll’s house made of matchboxes, the aunt thought. The aunt who lived in the cheap wooden house was a short fat woman, always bragging about her daughter’s talent for ballet. Defending and promoting her daughter Vicky, was her mission in life. To show the unbreakable bond and intimacy between them, the aunt referred to her daughter as ‘V’. Holding a cigarette in her pudgy fingers she told the story again -–’When I took V to ballet school on the first day, the teacher asked me how long she had been doing ballet. And I said --(a dramatic pause was made here) – well, this is V’s first time at any ballet school.’ This quote was made with an air of great and puzzling mystery, so the listener might surmise themselves that V
was just a born prima donna. The years ticked by without V losing her puppy fat. V
became more and more lumpy, and as her face became lumpier, her eyes became smaller. At the same pace, the dark niece became more and more willowy. When the dark niece walked into a room, you couldn’t even hear her coming. She was like a cat , and as her face became lumpier, her eyes became smaller. At the same pace, the dark niece became more and more willowy. When the dark niece walked into a room, you couldn’t even hear her coming. She was like a cat -always with that silent smile. Every Christmas holidays she was thinner, and moved more airily. They searched for a fault. But the girl had a good report card too. The problem was that no one could deny grace. Grace is a real thing. Imitation grace is a lie against nature. It is impossible to cheat to appear graceful. The husband of the fat aunt watched the dark niece’s every move with the slow, licensed stare of an uncle. But what chance did the uncle have of touching or kissing her? So he took the opportunity of making a dark cloud fall over the dark niece’s perfectly oval shaped head. To take that beautiful smile always hovering around her lips away from her. If one steals a smile, no-one ever finds out. Who would be able to prove it? A smile is not a valuable object that can be finger-printed. If he stole her smile -he could take away everything she had without anyone knowing what was wrong -or where the silvery laughter had drifted to. She would become ‘a liar’.
One Christmas, in the confusion of everyone saying ‘hello’ after long separations -he put his hands under her arms and pumped her small round breasts with his palMs But she was too old to be touched on the chest, with his palms slid under her arMs His eyes had gone into hers, like a dirty blade. The fat aunt, who was always, always watching saw this incident. And so the hatred for the niece was confirmed for a lifetime. He had prised open a virgin rose bud, with his hairy hands and murky eyes. The fat aunt claimed that the dark niece was a wanton little piece. But the truth was that it was V had been ‘screwing boys’ since the age of twelve in the car park.
Rosanna had told Mitch about what it was like when she was a virgin… she had told him what it was like for all of them to be virgins -behind those walls on which broken glass had been stuck in the last century, when they all came out from Ireland. She had told him something she had never told anyone before -man or woman -girl or boy. It was the secret about her Brigitte. And about how Brigitte had had sex with the gardener, in one of the piano rooms… told him what it was like for all of them to be virgins -behind those walls on which broken glass had been stuck in the last century, when they all came out from Ireland. She had told him something she had never told anyone before -man or woman -girl or boy. It was the secret about her Brigitte. And about how Brigitte had had sex with the gardener, in one of the piano rooms…
A Fiery Touch
Mitch continued his search for “what” Rosanna was –
“What do you mean by ‘Portuguese blood’? You told me that your mother’s side was Irish.”
“It is Irish. Its very Irish. Her name was Moira and she married what they called in those days ‘a coloured man’. He was a wharfie. They were working class people. All my mother’s family was working class.”
“You said she’s a teacher.”
“She is a teacher. She won a scholarship to go to teacher’s college -out in the bush of Queensland.”
Rosanna told him about red-haired green eyed Moira, who had married “the coloured man…” as he became known after she left him and left out-of-wedlock with her next husband -a bona fide white man by whom she had two more children -both golden haired. When it was time for my great-grandmother to take my mother away from my grand-mother there were the screaming arguments. “Your father was coloured and so are you. You can’t look after this one here in the city. The Cross is no place for a child -I’m taking her back with me!”
Rosanna’s first memories are of living in a place called Maidenhair Meadow and her great-grandmother’s garden there. The names of the flowers and waiting for her mother to come home from teaching school. Sweet-peas and other nondescript colourful blooms were eclipsed by a bed of “red-hot pokers”. Rosanna was not allowed to touch the red-hot pokers -native flowers -because they burned to the touch. The long, velvety red flowers were forbidden to little girls like her. It was a secret that she had touched them,
though, when no-one was looking. In Wollongong, there is a suburb which exists in every big Australian town, the only difference being its wider outer environment. Maidenhair Meadow must have been named after some heathery field, sprinkled in daffodils, in the rainy memories of an England, Ireland, Scotland or Wales that was never to be returned to. In the new world, it was a housing trust area, bloomed from the steel works. In the new world, the men didn’t have to crawl for miles underground in the pits, but they swarmed like an army of ants into the steel mills, as soon as they were old enough to be kicked out of school. Bloody teachers. Bloody Liberal Government. In the new world, they were free men in a free world. They had unions, and nobody owned them. -one was looking. In Wollongong, there is a suburb which exists in every big Australian town, the only difference being its wider outer environment. Maidenhair Meadow must have been named after some heathery field, sprinkled in daffodils, in the rainy memories of an England, Ireland, Scotland or Wales that was never to be returned to. In the new world, it was a housing trust area, bloomed from the steel works. In the new world, the men didn’t have to crawl for miles underground in the pits, but they swarmed like an army of ants into the steel mills, as soon as they were old enough to be kicked out of school. Bloody teachers. Bloody Liberal Government. In the new world, they were free men in a free world. They had unions, and nobody owned them.
In a weatherboard house, painted a pastel colour, (blue or brown-pink or light green), great-grandmother Moira, told the story again…
“He went up the steps of the big rich house. The windows were as tall as church steeples, and inside there was a ball going on. He put his gun through the crack of the window and he shot him dead. He shot the King of England. That very night, he and the other Phoenix Riders rode until they reached the port where the ship was waiting for them. And then he came out here. But he never forgot where he came from, no fear, he didn’t. He was Irish, like my little angel pet. Like my little Lovey. He was a captain of a big ship. A sea captain. He brought with him, out here, a little box, just like a tiny treasure chest. And what do you think was in it? An emerald green shamrock. And every time he opened the little treasure chest, the shamrock was there, to remind him. It didn’t
need no air. Because it was from Ireland, it was always green. You never seen such a green as it was…” Then Moira made custard, like she promised, like a good Nana. And then it was time for Rosanna’s mother to come home. “Oh, you never saw such a
turn as she put on this morning. Real fiery turn it was. She scared me -rubbing her face on the carpet and carrying on. The pot’s ready Love. Come and take off your shoes…” -rubbing her face on the carpet and carrying on. The pot’s ready Love. Come and take off your shoes…”
Rosanna’s mother had been told the same story about the sea captain grandfather, and Moira often forgot herself which was her grand-daughter and which was her greatgrand daughter. In “the Cross” during the war, Moira’s eldest daughter lived. She was Rosanna’s Nana. Even in the War days she had had not only enough to eat, she received jewellery from men she didn’t even know. She pawned the rings and other things and took the money back to the bush, where her little girl who was Rosanna’s mother was being looked after by Moira, her mother.
Rosanna now wished she had never told the stories about her grandmother’s house. About the Norfolk Pines they had used for masts. About the tennis courts near the church that were lit by lamps covered in platinum moths. There had been an aboriginal spear on the wall, and a gun with the bullets removed. The spear was carved with spells of “black magic” used to attract the fish. A map of the black people’s tribes had been there. There was a cowskin on the floor outside the larder. A possum was kept like a cat, in the room papered in silk from London and then Sydney in the Twenties, but now stained from the salt air. She wished she had never told those things to Mitch, as he had lain silently looking at the ceiling.
One morning construction workers arrived across the street. Mitch asked Rosanna to close the curtains behind the grimy Venetian blinds. That morning on the wall was a flickering black and white photographic slide of someone’s bloodstream. Veins of the projection pulsed with flowing bubbles from bulging arteries. The rippling square of light intercepted by shadows darted onto the ceiling and then vanished.
There in the house made from mirrors and glass, they made it night time again. The boy who had been left at home every night while his parents went to the footy club pub asked her to tell him something from her past again... made from mirrors and glass, they made it night time again. The boy who had been left at home every night while his parents went to the footy club pub asked her to tell him something from her past again...
In a voice like running water she told the story in fragments…
The passionfruit vine grew all over the roof of the house that was to be sold without any fuss whatsoever. On the hot Queensland coast, under a plain sky, the vine was like a cool water blanket over the roof and eaves. The mantle-piece inside was made of cream coloured stone. Aunty Jean left Anne-Marie and her cousin Rosanna alone, in the old house, until such time as she came back from the hospital, visiting the maiden aunts.
The maiden aunts were very old, and were expected to die at any time. Aunty Jean didn’t know what time she would be back, and even if she did, she did not have to tell young girls like Anne-Marie and Rosanna what she might or might not be doing.
Across from the house, in the distance, there were always some black and white cows. This was the last day Rosanna was ever at that house -it was sold shortly after. Aunty Jean drove away, in the LTD, around the circular gravel drive. The passionfruit vine was in full bloom. It was mid summer. The only sounds were of the river. And the long grass blowing in the wind. The sky and the river were the same colour. Inside, the mahogany panelled walls were cool to touch, and press your face against. They cooked omelette, wearing their bras and panties. The parlour had heavy velvet chairs. Naughtily they drank the “8 Years Aged” port from a crystal bottle. The sun sank down on the veranda blinds, and then they went for the swim.
They ran through the head high grass down to the river, leaving their underwear
on the veranda. When they got back it was dark, so they had to light candles. In the cool of the house, the cream had set, in a brim around the bowl on the table. So rich and soft to eat just the cream, on cold silver spoons. The two maiden great-aunts had shared a bedroom. The knobs of the twin-like queen-size brass beds glowed a reddish long unpolished gold. On close inspection, the blue-birds of happiness were painted on china balls between the larger brass balls of the bed-ends. A once much envied rug, all the way from the land of Omar Khayam, was as soft as water under their bare feet. With a brush of the finger the moth-coloured dust flew into the streaming twilight flooding the room. The weave was of a foreignly close density. t back it was dark, so they had to light candles. In the cool of the house, the cream had set, in a brim around the bowl on the table. So rich and soft to eat just the cream, on cold silver spoons. The two maiden great-aunts had shared a bedroom. The knobs of the twin-like queen-size brass beds glowed a reddish long unpolished gold. On close inspection, the blue-birds of happiness were painted on china balls between the larger brass balls of the bed-ends. A once much envied rug, all the way from the land of Omar Khayam, was as soft as water under their bare feet. With a brush of the finger the moth-coloured dust flew into the streaming twilight flooding the room. The weave was of a foreignly close density.
What was that? Just the vines scratching the roof. Something that looked like a bench covered in a black Chinese shawl embroidered with poppies felt strange to sit on. The shawl almost removed itself with a liquid motion of acquiescence. It could not have been any other way -that shawl was meant to be removed. It was made to be taken off the now exposed chest. How else could things have been? There stood the uncovered chest with a big lock faded to the colour of mud at the bottom of the river. Should we open it, they asked? It’s locked. Maybe not. No, we shouldn’t. If it is locked we shouldn’t.
The lock sprang open to the touch. It had been waiting to be opened. It was alright. The hinges of the lid made a creaking noise.
“Have we broken it?”
“No, it was strong enough to cross the ocean, after all. No-one will know.”
Under a fathomless mass of papery stuff lay the unconsummated secret. The silky mystery was a long heavy ivory satin gown. The train of the gown, when unfolded,
stretched across the room. Under the gown, at the bottom of the chest was a tiara made of tight waxen orange blossoMs The face of the long, long veil was sprinkled with embroidered seedling pearls. It looked as if it were showered with drops of iridescent rain in the dusty light of the room. Attached with metallic thread, the pearls seemed to have been sown on with a hand both light and deft. They had an uncountable sacredness. Rosanna’s eyes appeared dilated in the cloudy mirror through the filmy never-worn but often long ago tried on silk. Then it was the cousin’s turn to try on the dress. Rosanna wore the veil only, over her sun-warmed nakedness, inside the cool dark house made of wood. ‘We will hear Aunty Jean if she comes. We will see the lights of the car.’ Outside it was inky night. She put one ankle on the chaise-longue, in front of the tall mirror. Taking off her gold-chain she wrapped it high around her thigh, as an improvised garter. She saw all of her naked self, in the full-length carved mirror, wearing the gauze veil, and the gold chain, high around her thigh. She rolled up the lipstick from the heavy gold vial and put it on to make a bow shaped mouth to kiss her own reflection. ra made of tight waxen orange blossoMs The face of the long, long veil was sprinkled with embroidered seedling pearls. It looked as if it were showered with drops of iridescent rain in the dusty light of the room. Attached with metallic thread, the pearls seemed to have been sown on with a hand both light and deft. They had an uncountable sacredness. Rosanna’s eyes appeared dilated in the cloudy mirror through the filmy never-worn but often long ago tried on silk. Then it was the cousin’s turn to try on the dress. Rosanna wore the veil only, over her sun-warmed nakedness, inside the cool dark house made of wood. ‘We will hear Aunty Jean if she comes. We will see the lights of the car.’ Outside it was inky night. She put one ankle on the chaise-longue, in front of the tall mirror. Taking off her gold-chain she wrapped it high around her thigh, as an improvised garter. She saw all of her naked self, in the full-length carved mirror, wearing the gauze veil, and the gold chain, high around her thigh. She rolled up the lipstick from the heavy gold vial and put it on to make a bow shaped mouth to kiss her own reflection.
Mitch remained silent as she recalled that moment. So then Rosanna had told him about the trousseau lying under the dress. That night they had taken the trousseau out
where it lay in folds of frothy stuff like an under-water treasure. The satin of the nightdress came undone with the sound of a snow-drift falling in the dark outside.
“What is a trousseau?” asked Anna-Marie the younger Sydney cousin.
“It’s a nightie for the wedding night.”
Under the cold heavy satin rimmed with “Belgian Lace, LONDON, PARIS,” were the Sydney cousin’s big round pink hard nipples.
Mitch interrupted.
“Are you a lipstick lesbian by any chance? How do you really feel about other women anyway?” Mitch asked. other women anyway?” Mitch asked.
“What is a lipstick lesbian?”
“You know what it is.”
“No I don’t. How do I know what lingo has evolved while I have been away in Tokyo for sixteen years?”
Mitch told her.
A jewel around the throat
She had shown Mitch her little rice paper books of poetry. Written with a heart of uncertainty, backwards and forwards from Japan. Never arriving and never fully leaving. Never being able to tell anyone that feeling either. Maybe because she couldn’t define that feeling herself. A permanently indefinite fugue.
Rosanna had bought the blank notebooks in a Ginza shop famous for selling things to write or paint with. Writing letters became the only way in which she told the truth. A beautiful and good Japanese girl does not show desire, jealousy, anger, or any other emotion which is not virtuous and quiet.
When Rosanna had been fourteen, she was cast as ‘Madamoiselle Diegos at the Moulin Rouge’ in a play for youth drama at the big white theatre on the river in the middle of town. In this momentous act of her new life, she was going to wear a jewel on a black ribbon around her throat. They had already rehearsed the can-can with the other grown-up girls and she was the one who could kick her legs the highest. Her mother said that she wasn’t allowed to do it -that she wouldn’t pay for it. But the rehearsals and everything else were free. Then her mother had refused to come to the play, so Rosanna had given the free-ticket to Sister Genevieve. After the opening night, it was announced that the play would be put on two months later. There was a beautiful boy who always lifted her up into the air during the dance. She and he went with the others to a disco to celebrate. In broad daylight, the nightclub of the disco had been opened especially for their party. They danced under the strobe lights as if their life were just beginning. She felt as if she were flying when he lifted her up and swung her around under the flecks of silver light. Her mother had an announcement to make of her own:
“You’re not going to be in this ‘second season of the play’.” You’re not going to be in this ‘second season of the play’.”
“Yes, I am.”
“No you’re not! You’re going to Japan to stay with your father!”
She formulated a secret plan when it was time to change planes at Sydney, she would hide in the toilets then run away to her grandmother -who was an artist and who understood. But that never happened. Her mother saw that she wasn’t looking too worried and after a while, guessed why that was. She changed the flight to go through Melbourne. But Rosanna had never forgotten the look in the eyes of the play’s director. She took his words and his gaze with her across the seas which rushed by at so many miles per second. She thought about the director’s gaze as she sat for eight months in a Japanese school every day at a desk too small for her long legs.
“At the Japanese school where I was sent, we were constantly taught never to show emotion. Nothing else was more important than this. Even if we learnt nothing else -to learn successfully not to show emotion was the main goal. In desperation, I always told myself, ‘Maybe if I am a very good girl, and obey them to the letter, they will eventually send me home.’ So, in letters back to my country, I poured out my feelings. The words transformed themselves and began to live like real poetry. The letters were full of tears and yearnings to ‘come home.’ Because I was not allowed to cry in real life. And then without realizing it, I had melted into the Japanese classroom the way I was supposed to -‘as a valuable educational experience which would last a life-time’.
“I saw a letter from my real mother in my surrogate-mother’s hand. She wouldn’t give it to me, but was getting her son to read and translate for her. That night, ‘Okasan’ said that she was going to cut my hair -that I was too vain for a young girl. I got my
father in Tokyo to telephone her and tell her not to. That night, when she and I were in the bath together, she said with a voice like a whip ‘show me your nipples’, and grabbing my body as if I were a doll, she had announced -‘You are not a virgin!’ the bath together, she said with a voice like a whip ‘show me your nipples’, and grabbing my body as if I were a doll, she had announced -‘You are not a virgin!’
“So for one whole tortuous year I was a good Japanese-style daughter for my surrogate Japanese parents. After a while I forgot that I had never wanted to be there and then it was time to ‘go home’ at last. And then to ‘go back’ again, and go to university ‘over there’.”
Mitch roused himself and toyed with her fingers.
Why did she still “love Japan”? Mitch didn’t want to see anything between being spiritually dislocated from Europe yet not feeling Australian, and Rosanna’s relationship with Japan. But she continued to call across this gulf to him.
“These notebooks, these flowing words which look like love letters running with tears, they are the records of my dreams…” she whispered, “In my dreams I walk in the Ginza. I do not have to be anywhere else. I do not think of where I “come from” or where I have to go back to...”
They were in the dark bedroom, with the flannelette sheets Mitch had brought from his parent’s place in Brahma Lodge.
Mitch, the boy who had never been on an airplane and whose bedroom was filled with Falun Gong meditation balls, posters of St. Francis, Hare Krishna beads and a crucifix from Croatia said “I don’t believe you. You never owned any of those things. You never had a string of pearls stolen from you. Your poetry was never ripped to shreds by a possessive untalented man. You never wrote any poetry. Those Japanese ‘characters’ were written by someone else. You’re lying.” He got out of bed and put a towel around
himself -in a startling few seconds he regained his “real” self. -in a startling few seconds he regained his “real” self.
She felt she had been stabbed in that dark room, after revealing something of priceless value. She got out of the bed, and went into the living room with the dirty felt carpet. When she had finished telling the story, she had turned her eyes from the ceiling, to meet his eyes, glazed over into the angry stare of a three year old. Were stories an infuriating mirage to him? Were they promises made to trick? Perhaps they were eternal window shopping, for things he could never, ever hope to have.
After all, stories are ‘make believe’. Not real. Not the kind of stuff that straight men are interested in. He had asked her as if he knew she would not do it -just in case she did not. Was ‘tell me a story’ like leaping over a cliff? Did he hate stories but love them so deeply that he had to seek them out in the dark? Did he secretly love stories so much that he would slash his wrists to hear a true one, just once? Is that what all the scars on his body were about? Rosanna paced the room, alone.
She asked herself, months later, “Is this the way men with false names tell women they give money what they would like them to do? Ashamed, to voice their heart’s desire, did they suggest that whatever it was, it was the woman’s idea? Her notion alone? Something he wanted to do but could not say?” This was the way criminals lured accessories to commit crimes with them -with his kind of power of suggestion.
She had seen the footage of Brahma Lodge’s David Hicks, handcuffed and leg cuffed, being shuffled around by guards behind the double layered razor-wire fence of the high-security prison in Cuba. Hicks’s father came onto the news to talk to the Australian public and the rest of the world as if it were due to some stupid people that his son was deprived of his liberty in this way. The fact that he had decided to “embrace Islam” in the
geographic location of Brahma Lodge and then become a mercenary for Osama bin Laden was something that either the father did not get coverage for or had no opinion on. “He’s not going to hurt anybody,” the father said, as if his son had been sent home from Boy Scouts camp. Laden was something that either the father did not get coverage for or had no opinion on. “He’s not going to hurt anybody,” the father said, as if his son had been sent home from Boy Scouts camp.
Mitch had told her that he and David Hicks had gone to the same high school. What were the backgrounds of the mercenaries in that Cuban prison from France and the other countries? Why leave a peaceful life of football on Saturdays, fish and chips, Centrelink and possibly a job at the Mitsubishi factory to be in the line of fire on dusty foreign plains? Why “embrace Islam”? Was David Hicks a philosopher, so disillusioned with the ideals of the West that he took up arms and disappeared for three years before the Americans interrupted his military career?
His father had served in the Australian military. Maybe she should take a bus out there and have a look at things, so that she could understand where Mitch was coming from. On television, the ex-wife of David Hicks smiled in a flattered yet panicked way for the cameras, “I neva knew where ‘e was...” David Hicks in a photograph from his past was a man whose expression told he had rarely been photographed. As a father at nineteen, his smile seemed to say, “See, I’m a father too, but I’m really not sure about life after this photo.” The CIA asked their Australian counterparts to check on David Hick’s first gang involvements, from high school onwards, starting from the era of his residence in that area of Adelaide. That was when he was known to have purchased his first firearm, “for the purposes of rabbit hunting.”
In which direction did that suburb lie? Mitch had said that it was full of gangs, and drugs and boredom. Full of people running each other down all the time, and that is
why he had left. He had started taking speed out there while still in high-school, but he had stopped doing it now. His mother thought that he did not have a phone, in the place on the highway, because he wanted to cut the lines between himself and the past. As Mitch had not become a football hero, his father pretended to others that he did not know where his son was, anyway. University was just a waste of time. He obviously should have gotten a job in his Croatian grandfather’s mechanic shop. The other cousins and uncles worked there. But all he wanted to do was read books. What a wimp. He could move into town and support himself. He would never make it. He’d be back one day. The dream to be “something” was just a fantasy. Real men worked, like everybody else. -school, but he had stopped doing it now. His mother thought that he did not have a phone, in the place on the highway, because he wanted to cut the lines between himself and the past. As Mitch had not become a football hero, his father pretended to others that he did not know where his son was, anyway. University was just a waste of time. He obviously should have gotten a job in his Croatian grandfather’s mechanic shop. The other cousins and uncles worked there. But all he wanted to do was read books. What a wimp. He could move into town and support himself. He would never make it. He’d be back one day. The dream to be “something” was just a fantasy. Real men worked, like everybody else.
At the place on the highway, in the mail box, sometimes letters would arrive from Mitch’s mother. He would always read each letter without saying anything, and then throw it away in the kitchen bin.
“I believe in your dreaMs..” Rosanna had said, at night, with the silent highway outside. Those words, the exact words that he had craved to hear, he kept close to his chest, and pretended to her that in fact he had unwavering faith in himself.
Nick, the house-mate was “refusing to move out.” The handsome blond, Nick, had always just been part of the background to this rocky new one-sided love affair. It was a love affair in which the girl in the picture was told that the barrier between the present and some yet untasted ecstasy was but a thin and see-through layer of something
that would be broken through at any moment. The mystery would be de-coded for her by Mitch -not to worry about any misinterpretations. She shouldn’t feel that there was something to prevent this break-though. The constellations surrounding their encounter were not quite aligned, Mitch said. The taller, lithe and stronger him assured her with a
dreaded expression of boredom that it was merely her feminine irrationality. How could he prove his love? Had there not been a layer peeled away from her mind after their first night? Something like coming out of the muddy haze of morphine in the operating theatre to face real life? Was she not sure herself? Don’t ask again. boredom that it was merely her feminine irrationality. How could he prove his love? Had there not been a layer peeled away from her mind after their first night? Something like coming out of the muddy haze of morphine in the operating theatre to face real life? Was she not sure herself? Don’t ask again.
It was time to trace the windings of the maze from its elusive beginnings to the confusing present. When Nick had said “hello” for the first time, he had glanced strangely at Mitch as if to say, “So this is her...”
The lives of the three people who were not sure where each other was from, continued in the house full of dusty mirrors. An in-between life of in-between relationships and in-between jobs and in-between identities. Nights filled with VHS tapes which they never really watched. During the video viewing of “Eyes Wide Shut”, asked Nick, the beautiful blond just out of high school, and a soccer champion, in his Liverpool English -“What is this movie about anyway?”
Rosanna knew it was useless to explain.
“The labyrinth of the mind,” she answered.
“What?” he retorted, without pronouncing the consonant at the end of the word.
At that moment, with herself in the middle on the couch, the eyes of Mitch and Nick met for one enraptured instant. Sitting on the floor with one divine knee bent up in the tight training pants, he had turned his head up and backwards to meet the eyes of the one she was in love with.
And then RAGE had started. Videos of emerging musicians who were bigger than big played until dawn -but she was over a decade too old to know their names or the names of their songs. Madonna had turned 41. When Rosanna had been nineteen in
Tokyo Madonna had just released the “Material World” that made her a big star -but that memory was irrelevant to Mitch and to Nick. -but that memory was irrelevant to Mitch and to Nick.
And then suddenly, Nick did move out. She came home to see that Mitch had obviously been crying. Maybe it was another letter from his mother? No. The house was silent. This time it was something bigger. He was sitting on the carpet of the living room. It was past sunset but he had not turned on the lights. Mitch had looked at Nick as if to say, “Can’t you see she’s back now?”
Mitch and she went into his bedroom to be alone, or so she had thought.
“Nick is leaving”, he said.
Then Nick got into his car and sped aggressively out of the driveway. He would come back to get his mattress and stuff. Antoinette’s baby upstairs started crying and the usual footsteps across the ceiling of Nick’s bedroom ran in and then out again.
Mitch had hung his head and said, “He’s gone now.”
But he had been saying all week that he wanted Nick to go. That he wanted her to move in and start their new life properly, built on art and beauty, in the house made of glass windows where Kouros and his claustrophobic wife had lived, before building their fortune, in this raw strange country.
There had been a subtle yet transparent dimension of balance in the house. There had been a third, subtle yet transparent layer of something, and it was now removed.
When Nick and Rosanna had driven to KFC, he had made an illegal U turn at a road island. He turned the car up onto two wheels the way children do with toys they race
around on the ground with their hands. The moment after, the car was airborne and when it had crashed back to earth he looked into her eyes, to confirm the fear. They drove on
without speaking for another half a minute, with Nick smiling strangely. Suddenly, as if she knew very well what he was going to say, he asked,” You like Mitch a lot don’t you? Yeah, I know that. But does he like you, then? The same way I mean? You know what I mean?” she knew very well what he was going to say, he asked,” You like Mitch a lot don’t you? Yeah, I know that. But does he like you, then? The same way I mean? You know what I mean?”
His face wore the expression of a police officer leading a suspect to a very logical ending where the trap suddenly slammed shut.
They bought the chicken and the video and turned for home. In the shops he had looked someone enviable to be with. Very short blond hair, very charming. All the women looked at him.
A Lock of Hair
“What is this?”, Mitch was holding a piece of exercise book paper with the passage written in pencil
“In the world of your gaze, in an unforeseen season, poison ivy, lily-of-the-valleyand love-in-the-mist all came alive and breathed in the unlikely Far Eastern city.
I am looking for a man named David. I can’t believe I can’t remember his second name. It was Irish. He is the only person in the world who, when I said “I have Irish blood too,” replied “I can see that.” He was in the Year-In-Japan Program. Are you him? Are you the one who told me I was stalked all the way to Tokyo? And said I must get away from that stalker? Just let him go ahead and “take an over-dose” if that was what he was threatening to do? You said it was obvious that he was a fake because he wore a flannelette checked shirt and a mullet hair-cut. He claimed he had sold his motor-cycle to follow me to Japan? So what? I must not listen to my mother. No-one can ever “grow to love” anyone -that it was a hoax. Put checked-shirt’s stereo out on the street, you said. Are you the man named David who told me to take myself back by force and give myself back to myself whatever the price? The only thing checked-shirt had was me, and soon he would lose that as well. Did I live for a year in your hazel eyes in Tokyo? Do you have red hair and is your Christian/First/Given name, David?”
She read it again, in front of him to feel her own words. He asked why she bothered to burn old love letters -what was the point of it? If she had really wanted to exorcise “that” man from her life she would have burnt the piece of his hair as well as the other stuff.
“No, throwing the hair into the bin was done on purpose. I hadn’t wanted the
smoke from an unwanted sacrifice of hair to permeate my room, to go into my lungs or to run into my blood. Throwing it away is more meaningful than burning it. He once said to me, ‘I hope your heart breaks and runs down The Stairway to Heaven.’ I never wanted a lock of his hair.” run into my blood. Throwing it away is more meaningful than burning it. He once said to me, ‘I hope your heart breaks and runs down The Stairway to Heaven.’ I never wanted a lock of his hair.”
“What are you, anyway?” asked Mitch.
Maybe he spoke like that because it is the way people speak in Brahma Lodge. It was not because he was not thinking, “Who are you?” People in Brahma Lodge say “What are you?” when they want to know where you are from.
It was not because he resented the fact that several times Rosanna said “I’m an Australian and will always be an Australian, even though some people cannot see that. People change when they go to the other side of the world for half their lives. The way you speak changes first, and then the way you think and the way you move. That doesn’t mean that I am any less Australian, does it? Now I have an accent as well, I sound different. I was in Tokyo for so long. But Australia itself is changing all the time. There will come the day when none of us look ‘different’ any longer.”
No answer. Maybe he was hurt because once she had asked how well he understood Croatian? If he did speak another language, she thought, that would be one way to illustrate the binary world he was always asking her to explain.
The stories seemed to be too heavy in metaphor to be interpreted faithfully. Maybe there was an unbreakable barrier in this labyrinth glass house after all. Why would anyone choose not to believe when belief was the first step away from the suburban hell on earth one railed against? She had brought some heavy silver-plated spoons to the glass house. It was to show him that everything of hers was his also, and
that even “heavy-duty” silver spoons can be bought at the Salvation Army. Not necessarily inherited. They were a token in a ceremony. The second time she found one of these spoons inexplicably on his bedroom dresser she knew he must still be taking heroin. He said he had given up long before he met her. The baggage he had been carrying all along when she first met him was as heavy as a death-wish. A curse could not be heavier. No wonder he had laughed at the silver spoons. It was not because he didn’t love her. The barrier between them was just this translucent powder that surely she could break through to find his real love for her. -duty” silver spoons can be bought at the Salvation Army. Not necessarily inherited. They were a token in a ceremony. The second time she found one of these spoons inexplicably on his bedroom dresser she knew he must still be taking heroin. He said he had given up long before he met her. The baggage he had been carrying all along when she first met him was as heavy as a death-wish. A curse could not be heavier. No wonder he had laughed at the silver spoons. It was not because he didn’t love her. The barrier between them was just this translucent powder that surely she could break through to find his real love for her.
She didn’t know for how many days and weeks she struggled with leaving the glass house with the mirrors, when all she would have to do was walk away. Then the phone call from Ikeguchi’s secretary came -she had won the scholarship to go to Japan for a year.
The sky of Tokyo
At the geta maker near the university dormitory she ordered the most expensive geta in the window. The geta she had worn for two summers in Australia, with the frayed silk thongs and broken wooden soles were thrown away. She sat next to the geta maker in his tatami alcove as he twisted the brocade thongs and nailed them into the carved lacquered wood. He had her try them on several times while he made them to fit her perfectly.
In a long tight black dress and the new geta, she went down the steps of the subway. The wind of the rushing trains sucked her back into her “real life.” The middle of Tokyo, the Ginza, was now three subway stops away. Just three rushing subways stops, not thousands of miles of sea. She did not have to change trains and she did not have to make a long distance call -she would be there in moments. In body she would be there, and not just in her dreaMs Evening was coming on but the city offices had not yet closed. A few women on the train were wearing kimono for their night’s work in the restaurants. There was a woman carrying a bag labelled WAKO. That is the name of the department store where she always used to wait for her friends.
And then she was there. The train had arrived at the Ginza. Coming out of the train, she did not know which part of the Ginza, ground level would be. She came up from the steps and found herself outside the summer cotton kimono shop. She turned around 180 degrees to feel that precise moment --to feel that she was there. The night was still early and the neons were still not all turned on. In a sprinkling they came on here and there in the colour of children’s lollies. After turning around she came face to face with the kimono shop owner. “You have been here before, haven’t you?” He smiled and
nodded as if he knew her well and she had never been away at all. “You bought your first cotton kimono here?” He spoke as if he knew one day that she would come back to his shop. ll. “You bought your first cotton kimono here?” He spoke as if he knew one day that she would come back to his shop.
“Yes, I have been away. I went back to my country for a long time.”
She smiled and nodded to him. In her transposed memory, the day she had bought that roll of cotton had been only yesterday. Without them exchanging a further word, as if they would meet again soon, she began to walk away through the streets of opening shops. The first few steps were like entering the shores of the sea, after a thirsty and uncertain journey through the desert. Back in the dark bedroom cupboard of a rainy Adelaide room lay an unsown roll of cotton, printed with the red and black dragonflies of a young summer.
Next to the university dormitories was a bookshop run by a single woman who had given up her day job at an office. She lived above the shop, in an oblong apartment building. The ground floor had a jumble of bicycles, and a small corner, turned into a traditional Japanese garden, with symmetrical lines of grey pebbles and a Japanese stone lantern. Sometimes, a grey dove flew from the neighbouring temple. It would alight on this tiny corner of earth, between the buildings in the city. At night the lantern was lit artificially, a lime green. Next to the bookshop was a noodle shop, where Rosanna ate at night, after going to the computer room and the bathhouse. In that bookshop, something happened. She saw a dark green little book, and, printed on the spine, in faint gold, was Byron’s name. It was smaller than all the other books. She took it out of its place on the shelf, and held it for a moment. It was bound in soft young deer skin. She opened the pages, edged in gold. A silent ripple of thunder went through her body. There are
thousands of miles of windy sea between Tokyo and that city and Adelaide. But it was a sign from the gods. If Mitch had asked her which gods -she would have said, “The gods who live as Birds of Paradise along the rivers of New Guinea.” All of the Greek gods. The gods who live in the Shinto shrine next to the dormitories, the gods rising in the smoke from evening fires. Like the many signs in Tokyo’s sky, which said: “Bryon lives here too. Byron does not still walk only in that house with the mirrors.” The two times she had seen Mitch crying were the day Nick had left and when he had confessed to her that he didn’t know what Bryon meant by between Tokyo and that city and Adelaide. But it was a sign from the gods. If Mitch had asked her which gods -she would have said, “The gods who live as Birds of Paradise along the rivers of New Guinea.” All of the Greek gods. The gods who live in the Shinto shrine next to the dormitories, the gods rising in the smoke from evening fires. Like the many signs in Tokyo’s sky, which said: “Bryon lives here too. Byron does not still walk only in that house with the mirrors.” The two times she had seen Mitch crying were the day Nick had left and when he had confessed to her that he didn’t know what Bryon meant by
“Italia! Oh Italia! thou who hast
The fatal gift of beauty.”
She had written the essay on Byron for him to hand in at the university the next day. Under the broken chandelier she had sat staring at the words, “…100 pens, two gallons Japan Ink…” from Bryon’s letters. Maybe Mitch had been trying to explain away his constantly red eyes again and he had not been crying at all. In the instant that she thought this she realized that she didn’t know who he was. But his skin just fresh from the shower floated up before her eyes as if he were close enough to touch.
The way the one in love sees the beloved in hallucinatory delusions -Rosanna began to see him in Tokyo. A youth wearing a white cap facing backwards was him.
Anyone with a shaven head was him -but of course not him. It was in finally Tokyo when she decided she was not going to live with him anymore. She was not going to send her half of the rent back to the house full of dusty mirrors.
She could not sleep. She sat in front of his brief and precious emails for hours. She deleted his last two messages, without even reading them. She threw away the soccer
shirt from Brazil that he had given her, to sleep in. ep in.
She had wanted him to give her something she couldn’t voice -a ring of barbed wire tattooed around her finger. Such a ring branded onto the skin unless burnt off by a surgeon would have been proof of something in an unchangeable past. Or her name tattooed with biro ink and a compass from Geometry class on his untouchable shoulder. His only gift to her had been that look as deep and as shallow as a mirror, into the reflection of her own eyes, looking into his.
After reading it, backwards and forwards, over a number of nights and days, she took apart his photocopied university course text “LOVE, LUST AND POWER.” She had taken it from the house, and brought it to Tokyo. As she tore up the pages, and put them in the waste paper basket, she could smell the house with the mirrors. She punched holes in what remained of it that she had decided to keep, to put it in a folder. She was going to file it. Should she do that? Yes, she should do that. File it. The emails were deleted.
The emails disappeared into the black space of infinity. As she walked in the park, at night, and looked into the sky, she heard his voice on the phone, the month before, coming across the Pacific Ocean, and into her body. “When are you coming back? We can start all over again…” She had wanted to do it this way, though. She was not going back. She was going to stay in Tokyo. That meant deleting the last two emails without even reading them. So she had done those things.
But she was not completely safe. He still came to her in dreaMs He had always said he found it curious that she referred to his “university course text’s title as ‘LOVE, POWER and LUST’ when in fact, the real title was ‘LOVE, LUST AND POWER’. Why
did she always put the POWER before the LUST?” He had said those things on the day after she had spent the night writing his essay under the chandelier with one broken light bulb, while he drank with Nick at Brahma Lodge somewhere. These things came back, wherever she walked in the city. Everything came back. No, she had decided not to go back to him. n the day after she had spent the night writing his essay under the chandelier with one broken light bulb, while he drank with Nick at Brahma Lodge somewhere. These things came back, wherever she walked in the city. Everything came back. No, she had decided not to go back to him.
At night, she lay awake until dawn. She went up onto the roof and looked at the city’s first morning fog.
Rosanna had seen his face on an Etruscan vase in an exhibition. In that city, so far away from the origins of the Occidental world she drank the resonant draft of the transported world of Greece. Arranged chronologically, the earth-coloured pottery was etched in stark black with familiar figures. On the Etruscan vase, the Mitch of the days before she had met him on the tram, sat under a fig tree holding a leopard. In a photograph to show the obscured side of the vessel, two nymphs stood in an uncertain attitude. The vessel belonged to a travelling exhibition, was part of the permanent collection in Athens. Sifting through layers of long ago dreams Rosanna remembered that she came across his face once before, framed in filigree gold. The face of a fawn coloured Pan, carved into a cameo. Nana had worn that cameo. And she wore it only when it was time to go to the shops. The face of “the lady” was frozen in profile, head tilted in some cryptic, ancient emotion. The long, slightly sideways, twisted neck, on the perfect shoulders. Cut in an oval, right above the nipples. “She” seemed to be saying, “I know I’m beautiful, you numberless fool.” The eyes were turned downwards, neither open, nor shut. Rosanna ran her fingers over the cold lips of the face – the mouth, the eyes and the line of the cheek and neck that was just so much like the “him” that was Mitch.
In the room in Tokyo she got out of the bed, drenched in dawn’s hot, then cold wetness. The cupboard holding the cameo was like an abandoned shrine. Filled with the smell of dried flowers in gossamer bags tied with blue satin ribbon of a blue not made any more, it had the smell of Nana. These things had travelled all the way from Adelaide to Tokyo. She took out the stand-up picture of Mary, with the rain pouring out of her wrists. The St. Christopher medals, and the cross with Jesus wearing a crown of thorns. Her mother’s Bible. All long untouched. She passed over the belongings as if she would never need them again. She had used those things and believed in them long before living in Japan for those many years, returning to her country, and then coming back to Japan again. got out of the bed, drenched in dawn’s hot, then cold wetness. The cupboard holding the cameo was like an abandoned shrine. Filled with the smell of dried flowers in gossamer bags tied with blue satin ribbon of a blue not made any more, it had the smell of Nana. These things had travelled all the way from Adelaide to Tokyo. She took out the stand-up picture of Mary, with the rain pouring out of her wrists. The St. Christopher medals, and the cross with Jesus wearing a crown of thorns. Her mother’s Bible. All long untouched. She passed over the belongings as if she would never need them again. She had used those things and believed in them long before living in Japan for those many years, returning to her country, and then coming back to Japan again.
At the bottom of the heap of former icons the cameo was wrapped in a familiar best hanky. In the dawn, placed on the wooden floor, the cameo reclaimed its long hidden powers. “Pan is a very, very old God. A God older than our Jesus. He plays the pipes all day and night in the woods. A very naughty God who sometimes does not know wrong from right. Pan is not a lady and not a man...”
Two shooting stars
The month before, the ticket had been arranged by Ikeguchi so that she had to spend one night in Melbourne before taking the flight to Tokyo. In the Victoria Hotel with air conditioners dripping like the stalactites of ancient caves into the back-streets and deep red underground doors blocking the daylight, she watched pigeons sitting on the face of the enormous Town Hall clock adjacent to the seventh floor. Watching a peacock green sky on a day after the Melbourne Cup the difference between the Queensland butterflies and the desert scorpions pinned in the souvenir shops of Swanston Street became suddenly revealed.
Mitch was afraid of poetry because poetry spoke the truth. The mouse appeared again through the slit between the fridge and the cupboard. It stood like a horse ready to be saddled on four silent legs. With the round black eyes of her own childhood photos it confirmed for her the truth.
It was on that day she had read the article in the four-day-old newspaper. The article’s title read “The Dark Feline Twist of a Writer’s Mind.” She had never read “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe, otherwise she would have known immediately why Mitch had kept asking if she had read it.
“I don’t want you getting too close to that cat,” he had said about the stray he threw cubes of cheese to. He stood on the veranda of the house with the mirrors and threw the cubes of cheese with the deliberation of a fisher who knew the fish would definitely come. The stray cat was followed always by just one surviving kitten as black as its mother. Before she read the words “gouges out one of Pluto’s eyes” her mind uncontrollably hurtled towards the connection between the story in Poe’s novel and the
story Mitch had told her about the stray’s missing eye being his own fault. The stray had urinated in Nick’s room and Mitch had rubbed its nose into the mouldy carpet as punishment. The next time he had seen the cat he noticed that it had one eye missing. He felt that the missing eye was his fault. ’s missing eye being his own fault. The stray had urinated in Nick’s room and Mitch had rubbed its nose into the mouldy carpet as punishment. The next time he had seen the cat he noticed that it had one eye missing. He felt that the missing eye was his fault.
All of this was a lie. As paltry as fibro hiding the evanescence of obsolete stained glass. Just as you travel without ever reaching a destination in staring at a starry space hurtling by on a blank computer screen, she could not face the truth that he was lying about that black cat. He had done something horrible to the black cat to prove his toughness and “mate-ship” for Nick.
“I don’t know,” Mitch had said -“I don’t know what to do with my life. Have you always known? Have you always known that you’re a poet?”
So Rosanna told him about that day in Tokyo when, on the way home, the sky she saw from the train was glowing like an iridescent opal. The sky glowing like the iridescent opal she had been given on that first day of her life as a “woman” -“One day I will get the opal set in rose gold... no, white gold. The time has come -I have lost my dream and found my dream again. The opal must be seen and not hidden in a velvet pouch. I’ll wear it in one earlobe, and the white sapphire in the other -like an older woman poet with a famous younger lover.”
Rosanna had been in Paris with the Japanese boyfriend who was a dancer. In the cafe overlooking the Seine one Autumn afternoon after a matinee performance, newspaper reporters from Tokyo were discussing the opening night. That week it had received rave reviews. The dancers themselves had not yet come out from back-stage. Ex-girlfriends who had been discarded sat with their current husbands: chiropractors, out
of-work photographers and tour managers. The man everyone in Tokyo knew was gay, except Rosanna, did not emerge from the showers back-stage even after the other dancers made their appearance in the cafe, to loud cheers. She tried to cast her eyes around the room, to appear mentally occupied. -work photographers and tour managers. The man everyone in Tokyo knew was gay, except Rosanna, did not emerge from the showers back-stage even after the other dancers made their appearance in the cafe, to loud cheers. She tried to cast her eyes around the room, to appear mentally occupied.
There was one person who had stood out from the crowd, from the beginning of this one hour and seventeen minute ordeal. He was wearing a wide piece of black silken velvet wrapped tightly around his shoulders and fastened on his back. His casual demeanour showed that he was aware of his appearance and was accustomed to both men and women tripping over themselves just to say “Hello, I recognized you from your photographs! I saw you perform your work in…” Under the brilliance of the chandeliers, his black hair was like something that would never lose its light. His eyebrows were the same blue-black against his pale skin. His nose was more beautiful than any woman’s, as he turned to have his cigarette lit by a stranger at his cafe table.
“Who is that?” Rosanna asked a certain someone who always knew who everyone else was.
“That is the lover of Koyanagi Hiroko.” Hiroko Koyanagi, as she was known in the West, was a poet who had a much talked about but little seen lover, much much younger than herself.
Nine years after that day in Paris, Rosanna met this great woman poet in Tokyo. The meeting was preceded by some four telephone conversations with the same beauteous younger lover. Hiroko-chan wa inai, -(“a term of endearment usually used for those younger than one’s self or those with whom one has a relationship of intimate familiarity”: (dictionary definition). Koyanagi Hiroko was not in Japan at the time.
“Hiroko-chan wa inai.” He had spoken the words with the playfulness of a male adult to a female infant. He spoke as if to say, “But the fair is over now and it’s time to go home.” Rosanna left her name and said that she would call back a few weeks later, as he had advised. After she put down the receiver, she realized that she had broken out in a thin film of hot sweat. His voice was like seeing a shooting star, and then another one, on the same night. -chan wa inai.” He had spoken the words with the playfulness of a male adult to a female infant. He spoke as if to say, “But the fair is over now and it’s time to go home.” Rosanna left her name and said that she would call back a few weeks later, as he had advised. After she put down the receiver, she realized that she had broken out in a thin film of hot sweat. His voice was like seeing a shooting star, and then another one, on the same night.
On the pamphlet for those reading with Allen Ginsberg one night some twenty years earlier Hiroko’s photograph showed a magnetic face framed by a great amount of hair. Fearlessly she gazed beyond the camera lens into a New York sky.
Three more telephone encounters which were, for Rosanna, momentous dialogues and to him maybe like a conversation with a girl selling rice-crackers, ensued before Rosanna met Hiroko.
And then one day, when Rosanna had braced herself to speak to him again, Hiroko had answered her phone herself. The voice which critics across the four seas described as “husky, sensuous, penetrating...” was imperious and interrogating.
“Who are you?”
But at the time Rosanna thought, “She is one of the greats -and all sorts of nobodies must somehow reach her all the time.” Rosanna was instructed to wait at a certain tea-shop on a date over two weeks thence at 4:30 p.m. She delayed her flight back to Sydney, especially to have the honour of meeting Koyanagi Hiroko.
Rosanna borrowed everything Hiroko had ever written as well as the English translations and critical articles. One arts magazine in Prague had used the words “prima donna” to hail her imminent arrival there. The photograph did show a prima donna
indeed. She stood with hands on hips, twisted around to face the camera. She wore a red clinging sweater and on the fore-finger of her right hand, a ring with an enormous diamante-framed red stone. Her smile showed a tender noblesse-oblige to the photographer. Maybe she was not so scary after all, Rosanna thought. Maybe she had a phone personality and a separate in-person personality. clinging sweater and on the fore-finger of her right hand, a ring with an enormous diamante-framed red stone. Her smile showed a tender noblesse-oblige to the photographer. Maybe she was not so scary after all, Rosanna thought. Maybe she had a phone personality and a separate in-person personality.
The name of the tea-shop for the meeting was “Renoir”. The great master’s signature was magnified and transposed onto signs that lit up at night. Ballerinas in filmy white skirts in rehearsal rooms high above Paris, bend down to tie the ribbons of their shoes behind their ankles, unaware that they have been transported to the Far East. The thick carpets feel very different to walk on, after months of taking off shoes before entering tatami mat rooms.
On the phone Hiroko had pronounced Renoir’s name in the Japanese version and Rosanna at first hadn’t understood her. There was a silence and then the great poet repeated the words in a patronizing tone as if to say, “I would not expect you to know Renoir.” In the same short telephone conversation she had both the cruelty and the pity of a ballet mistress.
The day of the meeting came. Rosanna had chosen her clothes days before. She wore all black. The train carried her high above a part of the city she realised she had been to many times before. It was strange to think of who may live, with silent telephone numbers, among the teeming millions. People whose dreams should never be voiced or repeated to anyone, and people whose dreams are worth more than treasures sunk into unknown oceans. Dreams or words that can inspire the creation of masterpieces or fire one glance into a never-ending love.
The waiters at the “Renoir” were as confident as young conquistadors. Hiroko had told Rosanna to inform them who she would be waiting for, and to mention her name. They offered the window seat. Rosanna waited until the time came for Hiroko to arrive. had told Rosanna to inform them who she would be waiting for, and to mention her name. They offered the window seat. Rosanna waited until the time came for Hiroko to arrive.
“Could it be that I am in the wrong ‘Renoir’?” Rosanna asked them. The waiters exchanged glances. One hour and twenty minutes went by. “She often meets people here,” they assured Rosanna, “she will come, don’t worry.” The outside view of the teashop went on unchanged. A woman standing on the street looking up at the window where Rosanna sat began to come into focus just by the power of her static gaze. “No, that could not be her. If it were her, why did not she come up here?” The woman turned her head away like a mechanical doll.
Koyanagi Hiroko was dressed from head to foot in black. She began walking across the street and came directly through the downstairs automatic doors. Then she appeared in the doorway of the room where Rosanna was waiting. She looked straight at the much younger Rosanna. “It must be her,” Rosanna realized.
Rosanna stood up as a sign of respect and bowed to her from across the room but the woman walked straight past her. As she neared her table her line of vision shifted from Rosanna’s eyes to another older woman sitting at the table in front. She went and sat down with that person.
The waiters with their silver spherical trays all exchanged glances and looked at Rosanna with sympathy. She was exhausted from the suspense of waiting. She went up to the closest waiter to ask for her bill. “Aren’t you going to speak to her after all?” he asked, as if he completely understood her position.
“But she is obviously not coming...” she is obviously not coming...”
He had answered, “Miss, that is Koyanagi Hiroko talking to that lady guest over there.” His eyes added “She often holds court here. Don’t be upset, you’re not the first person she has done this to.”
Out of curiosity Rosanna decided to see what Hiroko had planned. A long conversation transpired between Koyanagi Hiroko and the other woman, during which Hiroko was ceremoniously given a gift-wrapped box. The giver, with bowed head, passed the box across the table with both hands. After a pantomime exchange between them, the giver at last stood up and left after bowing to her very deeply.
Hiroko came over to Rosanna’s table and sat down as if Rosanna had known all along that this would be the drill. The eyes that gazed into the New York sky in her photograph were ringed with the same 1960s ink. The hair, now uncurled and with a fringe like a Japanese doll’s was still voluminous. Everything else was different. Baggy, saggy, dumpy and pouty.
She demanded whether or not Rosanna was “a spy” to use “that voice” on the phone to her lover. What did Hiroko mean? Had she recorded the conversation? What had he told her about Rosanna’s “voice?” “You can save that voice for when you’re playing around in the Roppongi discos,” she said, as if Rosanna knew very well what she was talking about.
She mentioned the name of two other writers and said that she knew they had sent Rosanna to meet her. Her anger and suspicion escalated. Rosanna struggled to protest that meeting her was all her own idea and that she had never even dreamed that she would give her the honour. She had originally only intended to send Koyanagi-san her poetry.
“Show it to me.”
Rosanna produced the poem she had written in Japanese and in English on the finest rice paper she could find. Hiroko’s eyes passed over the Japanese symbols up and down and then the English version left to right. She continued looking at the page with her eyes fixed on one spot. “You didn’t write this,” she said.
She quickly recovered herself and acted as if she did not want to embarrass Rosanna by pressing the point. The meeting continued with some promises exchanged for Rosanna to devote herself to getting the famous poet some air-space on national Australian radio without accepting a fee for Rosanna herself. It would be an invaluable help to Rosanna’s aspirations, the great lady said. She then gave her a signed copy of her latest work and they went to pay the bill. The waiters were still holding their silver trays. Hiroko Koyanagi had said that Rosanna’s work was not her own. If Rosanna hadn’t realized it before, that was the day that she knew she was a poet.
THE POETRY ROSANNA SHOWED KOYANAGI
I lived in a dark room like a photograph undeveloped in the daytime I drew the black curtains that reminded him of back-stage to somewhere and in the night I opened the curtains to watch the moon travelling like a woman alone. In the darkness I saw your skin with my hands the way the white of the sky is seen
only when lightning crashes. I dreamt tossing in a static sea of black and dull platinum of touching you with my eyes open.
SHE
The shadows on her skin were like glaciers or drifting flames. The shadows on her throat clasped around her like fragments of broken glass stuck to the flesh or a maiden name forgotten. The shadows on her skin were like the ripples in the water made by a black swan under a willow. Like flowers gazing at themselves. Like paper never folded. Like the air at the top of the Eiffel Tower or a clouded moon seen from a boat travelling from Calais to the White Cliffs, like a clock softly ticking.
Or the echoes of low laughter in a place of worship.
********************* The naked eye the naked flame the naked skin uncovered of the layers to cut through open secrets to cut through darkness.
THE LETTERS
Some of the letters arrived unexpectedly. Like snow falling through the night. Some were waited for like rain for the earth. Some were as cryptic as a foreign tongue, and others as obvious as the sea’s tide in the evening. The unopened ones were taken from apartment to apartment, to unlikely suburbs in a zigzag route, across the city.
Those were the ones with a postmark
made from an American flag printed with the block letters, “LOVE”
Some were written with no commas, or full-stops
The words running in crooked lines all over the pages.
One had a photograph of that day.
The one in a red envelope
made birds
flying in an oblique path
swerve in a rushing wave
scatter
and then return.
One had been written on an air-plane
by a person who had nothing left
but himself
to bargain with.
One was re-directed from a foreign place.
One had boxes to fill in with ticks or crosses
like a statistical questionnaire
.. yes .. no .. maybe
One had words quoted from a holy book
of an unknown god.
There was one given in a darkened room by a man still in bed, with his two outstretched fingers. It began, “Because of what you said at the park…” and went on re was one given in a darkened room by a man still in bed, with his two outstretched fingers. It began, “Because of what you said at the park…” and went on “ Because of…..because of…”, but never stated its result. There was one which stayed in a locked suitcase from Finland to Greece. That letter compared an opaque shell thrown onto the shore and retrieved by the never-resting waves to “LOVE.” One had been stolen and then replaced. One was envied so much by another that she fell on the knife of her own words. One made the flowers open under the sheets of ice. One was written while a city slept. One was sent by DHL
and went straight into the heart like a flaming arrow. One was written on the rim of a fountain where people wait. One was written about stars flung in purposeful pattern against the black map of the endless sky. There were letters full of songs gone missing from one never coming back but who didn’t know that at the time. Some of the letters spoke of always waiting while silver reflections spilt from fragments of mirror into a daylight sky seen from a passing tram. Another letter came painted on a paper boat lit by a candle at its helm through a hail storm. like a flaming arrow. One was written on the rim of a fountain where people wait. One was written about stars flung in purposeful pattern against the black map of the endless sky. There were letters full of songs gone missing
from one never coming back but who didn’t know that at the time. Some of the letters spoke of always waiting while silver reflections spilt from fragments of mirror into a daylight sky seen from a passing tram. Another letter came painted on a paper boat lit by a candle at its helm through a hail storm.
Guided by a star one letter came through a flame a flame that never goes out a flame named “LOVE.” One opened and read by eyes it was not meant for was so true it caused a man drunk with longing to throw the readied weapon through a grid on the city street. One letter was about the odds of finding a jewel once it had been dropped into the ocean. On one a tear had splashed after falling deeply into the letter “O” one letter came through a flame a flame that never goes out a flame named “LOVE.” One opened and read by eyes it was not meant for
was so true it caused a man drunk with longing to throw the readied weapon through a grid on the city street. One letter was about the odds of finding a jewel once it had been dropped into the ocean. On one a tear had splashed after falling deeply into the letter “O”
of the word “LOVE.” Then the letters stopped coming And then came again. This time the words were a stream of mounted horses the riders wearing balaclavas riding the defile the icons of the past they had built in a new faith unbeknown to itself as shallow and as deep as a shadow. The words ran like a heart beating thunderously in white hot renouncement. The words drew a diagram of a cliff across which was a bridge made of acid rain and below it a burnt forest. And then the words ran away as quickly as they had come into an unseen night of exile and extinction. The words in those letters Then the letters stopped coming And then came again. This time the words were a stream of mounted horses the riders wearing balaclavas riding the defile the icons of the past they had built in a new faith unbeknown to itself
as shallow and as deep as a shadow. The words ran like a heart beating thunderously in white hot renouncement. The words drew a diagram of a cliff across which was a bridge made of acid rain and below it a burnt forest. And then the words ran away as quickly as they had come into an unseen night of exile and extinction. The words in those letters
were stuck together into one drowned prayer by tears obscuring the signature of a forgotten one in the name of “LOVE.” I gather all the letters to delete my name from the envelopes like a transient who doesn’t want to be found. I write “RETURN TO SENDERS” I go to a red post-box tall as a skyscraper and ask a man to lift me up to push them through the slot to send them back to a place called “LOVE.” ****************************************** “Him” into one drowned prayer by tears obscuring the signature of a forgotten one in the name of “LOVE.” I gather all the letters to delete my name from the envelopes
like a transient who doesn’t want to be found. I write “RETURN TO SENDERS” I go to a red post-box tall as a skyscraper and ask a man to lift me up to push them through the slot to send them back to a place called “LOVE.” ****************************************** “Him”
with eyes like the air full of snow With naked eyes With hair like the night sea A tongue of water turned to wine. Him With a tongue like single stars seen while travelling. Him With words made of clouds to the touch With eyelashes Like the smoke from burning pines With a throat of fields of grass just cut A touch like the eye of a storm Words like rough diamonds Like crushed diamonds Eyes like pebbles on the floor of a still pool To the eye like a touch that wakes. With a sex like the eye of a storm. ***************************** From where can I escape the memory of you With naked eyes With hair like the night sea A tongue of water turned to wine. Him With a tongue like single stars seen while travelling. Him With words made of clouds to the touch With eyelashes
Like the smoke from burning pines With a throat of fields of grass just cut A touch like the eye of a storm Words like rough diamonds Like crushed diamonds Eyes like pebbles on the floor of a still pool To the eye like a touch that wakes. With a sex like the eye of a storm. ***************************** From where can I escape the memory of you
to climb the pole of the searchlight on the horizon of the tarmac, tall as a virgin’s legs piercing the oblique lines in the sky? ********************************** the pole of the searchlight on the horizon of the tarmac, tall as a virgin’s legs piercing the oblique lines in the sky? **********************************
The International Phone Call International Phone Call
Kouros’ old swimming pool, filled up with earth and roses between the two big date trees flashed always through her Tokyo day-dreams She had told Mitch
“A man in jail I had even forgotten, wrote a letter to me with a government stamp on the left-hand bottom corner. It was to tell me that my name now lived in a wind-blown ribbon through an arrowed heart on his newly tattooed arm. Tram conductors let me travel for free into my unknown future without them.”
But Mitch had said to her -“No man ever said to you, ‘when I lost you I felt I had dropped a jewel into the ocean.’ No-one ever sang to you
‘one day
you may find yourself
in a beautiful house
with a beautiful wife
and you may ask yourself
how did I get here?’
You’ve never been to Italy. You’ve never been to Paris. You can’t ride a horse! No man in Japan you bought tofu from is sending boxes of gifts to your mother’s house!”
In Tokyo after omitting the zeros of the area codes she heard the dial tone ringing in the mirrored house. The phone was ringing in the house where they had lived for three
months and eleven days. Was he on the deck chairs? The front garden? The front garden with the swimming pool that had been filled in with earth to make a circular rose garden. The even, regular beat of the dial tone sent the sensation of having made “contact” with him through her nervous system. The phone was ringing in the house of dusty unused
mirrors carved with Greek mythological figures. The sirens would be swimming with their curling, flipping tails around the walls of the bathroom. At the bar in the living room, divided by folding glass doors, the cock on the mirrored ceiling would be crowing with its throat bent back, as if ready to be slit. with Greek mythological figures. The sirens would be swimming with their curling, flipping tails around the walls of the bathroom. At the bar in the living room, divided by folding glass doors, the cock on the mirrored ceiling would be crowing with its throat bent back, as if ready to be slit.
The phone kept ringing.., and then he answered in a slow mellifluous voice. Like a schoolgirl ringing a boy Rosanna said “hello” back to him in a high cracked voice. “I’m ringing you from Tokyo.”
“Yes, I can see that from the number on the little screen on the phone.” She knew she was a stupid older woman, defeated by the technology of the latest phones.
“How are?” He went on in the most assured of alto tones. The voice of The Apothecary in the illustrations of The Arabian Nights. The apothecary greeting a disturbed woman in love who came to buy a drug that was going to be very bad for her. A love potion made from the gland of a snake and the powdered horn of a unicorn. But The Apothecary knew that she was going to keep coming back and back to him, until her heart was clouded with poison.
“I have been thinking about you.”
“Have you? I have been thinking about you too. You came here last night.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s you. You and that black cat. I want to see you and that black cat in the same room for once.”
The night before she had left for Japan he had pulled her toward him by one hand. She had seen her face’s own reflection through the sliding layers of mirrors. The black cat had run behind the bar that Kouros had had built for the big party.
They had stood facing one another’s reflections ’s reflections
“If you really loved me you wouldn’t be going anywhere.”
“That’s not what you have been saying all along.”
“I had a life before I met you. I didn’t want a woman. I told you not to bring that cat in here.”
She sat with her hair spilling onto the carpet in front of her face.
“If I could I would take the cat with me back to Tokyo.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Because you can’t always get what you want in this life -you know that. All I ask is that you give Little Black some Love while I’m away.”
“I never promised you that.”
And then he had been tired and had gone into the bedroom. She had continued packing until dawn. When the alarm clock had rung Little Black had jumped off her lap and run through the trap hole that Kouros’s wife had once had made for a miniature poodle.
The static on the ocean between them continued as the glass house receded behind Tokyo’s sky…
Rosanna felt her own breath on the receiver -“What are you talking about?”
“I can’t talk right now, I’m working on the Byron essay.”
But the Bryon essay had been written by Rosanna for him during that one day that he had said he “had to” go back to Brahma Lodge with Nick, “because Nick’s got a car.” The stupid older woman would never have written the essay if she were not euphoric with a desire she was sure would be granted at any turn of the ever speeding journey.
The evening light under the chandelier with one prism missing rose up in her mind’s eye, as she stared through the Tokyo temple next to the window, as if it were not there at all. The words she had memorized against her heart’s will reverberated across the Tokyo sky mind’s eye, as she stared through the Tokyo temple next to the window, as if it were not there at all. The words she had memorized against her heart’s will reverberated across the Tokyo sky
“The hope, the fear, the jealous care, The exalted portion of the pain And power of love, I cannot share, But wear the chain.”.. p.163 “Bryon’s Greece” by Elizabeth Longford
Strange that she should remember the page number of the source, of all things, at that long-distance telephone moment. And she had seen the result “A” in the red flowery hand of some professor on “the Byron essay”. Why was it still in his life? What was this stuff about herself and that poor one-eyed black cat?
The KDD tone rang to signal that they had had a line across the Pacific Ocean to one another for three minutes exactly. “I have to go now,” she said, to her own surprise. Then she sat and wrote the words,
“Of chains and butterflies…”
and then again, the words
“Of chains and butterflies…”
And then she went to go and sit in the room with no air, and lines of computers, where the young man with hair as black as forests in the snow, and eyes as black also, had asked her why she was crying.
The next time she rang he had spoken as if she were a stranger, through an ocean of static. A man laughed a short laugh of triumph in the background.
“I can’t talk to you right now, I am working on the Byron essay...” ’t talk to you right now, I am working on the Byron essay...”
“Who is that laughing?”
“A girl -just a girl you don’t know.”
Rosanna hung up. The game of questions and answers, and who or what she was, had became clear in that instant.
In the front room smelling of the Hari Krishna candle the morning before she had moved in, the morning after they had gone to the park with the swings...
She lay on a sheet on the carpet and he lay over her. He lay beside her and bent her legs over her head. He blew onto her vagina as if it were a shellfish still alive from the wind and sound now that it had been taken out of the ocean.
“Pretty pussy. Pretty girl. That’s all for now.”
Then he had got up and blown out the candle. The wick burnt black and the smoke curled towards the rolled glass windows of the room where Kouros had once slept.
It is always more deadly to do something to someone if they have no inkling that such a thing could possibly happen to them. To give no warning at all was the sure-fire way. She rang TELSTRA from Tokyo and had the phone which had been put into her name in the “sexually-transmitted-debt” scenario, cut off. Then she rang the line across the Pacific Ocean one more time -to make sure it was dead, and that she was safe from that electric voice.
Another letter from the tofu man
Rosanna-san,
In my dreams of you, you fax me the arrival date and time of the flight. I go to the airport, and wait with my birth certificate in my hand. Then they tell me at the airline counter that the flight has been delayed. I wait in the arrival lounge, but the airport becomes more and more empty. The cleaners come, and look at me, as if I cannot see them. They sweep up rubbish that is not there. And then the airline people tell me that the flight has been cancelled. I shout and rave and splutter. They tell me that there is no Virgin Airlines Flight 573. There never was any Virgin Airlines 573. I go to every other airline counter, but they will not talk to me. They get on the phone and call Security. Suddenly I hear your voice over the P.A., flowing through my head like strata clouds made from the mist of dry ice: “I’m in Tokyo now, I’m not going to Yokohama tonight to meet you. I cannot talk to you right now. I’ll call you back. Please leave a message, after the tone. I’ll get back to you, as soon as I can.”
Before the tofu man came to her university dormitories in Tokyo and shot himself, she thought that she had seen him in the street several times, the newspaper article had said. The following is part of her statement to the police:
“Do you really think I will have to swim in the black rivers of hell, up and down, up and down, until the end of time? It is not as if I never gave him a word of thanks. I thanked him often. I thanked him for the 101 things he sent me. To prove his love. I gave him my words, sweet as the sound of the fountains of Versailles. Even when written on paper. I once gave him a call -all the way from here. It was the first time for him to receive an international call. He wrote back, saying so himself. I kept all the letters. In
case he became dangerous. Because the intensity escalated -without me even saying anything at all. Without me even replying to him. But, yes, I let him give me 101 things. That is true. That would be true, before all the Gods of the universe. That is if I have to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If I had to sign a statement regarding that matter, in the presence of more than one man wearing curly wigs made from the tails of blonde horses, I guess I would even have to say that I asked him to give me 101 things. Technically. Well not at first. I mean, he started by giving me free buckets of tofu in his shop. Just like that. I thought there was something strange about him then. He stared at me with those eyes. Iridescent. Black as the rivers of hell. Like fires over the sea. But I was not scared of him then. The black rivers of hell are never scary if you know you will not have to plunge into them. Not if you choose not to. If the choice is yours. Why would they be? Anyway, the first thing I gave him during our exchange was my address and telephone number. Big mistake, yes. But I really thought he would never contact me. Its just too far away. Between here and there the echoes of love songs fade away and die on the slate grey surface of rainy plains of water. Little girls falling asleep behind portholes too thick for tidal waves to break, in white cruise ships with lollipop coloured lights strung on the decks are the only ones who hear the songs of those drowning men. It is just too far away to be a danger. As I stood in that tofu shop of his, I thought I would give him a piece of the moon one can never touch. The moon that shines over the equator as well as shines on the roof of his tofu shop. His tofu shop a thousand times smaller than the head of a pin, on the map of who’s who in Tokyo. Just give him a little piece of the moon, which costs me nothing. The way the Goddess of Mercy gives a little piece of her heart to every man, even a man drowning with love, who has not long -without me even saying anything at all. Without me even replying to him. But, yes, I let him give me 101 things. That is true. That would be true, before all the Gods of the universe. That is if I have to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If I had to sign a statement regarding that matter, in the presence of more than one man wearing curly wigs made from the tails of blonde horses, I guess I would even have to say that I asked him to give me 101 things. Technically. Well not at first. I mean, he started by giving me free buckets of tofu in his shop. Just like that. I thought there was something strange about him then.
He stared at me with those eyes. Iridescent. Black as the rivers of hell. Like fires over the sea. But I was not scared of him then. The black rivers of hell are never scary if you know you will not have to plunge into them. Not if you choose not to. If the choice is yours. Why would they be? Anyway, the first thing I gave him during our exchange was my address and telephone number. Big mistake, yes. But I really thought he would never contact me. Its just too far away. Between here and there the echoes of love songs fade away and die on the slate grey surface of rainy plains of water. Little girls falling asleep behind portholes too thick for tidal waves to break, in white cruise ships with lollipop coloured lights strung on the decks are the only ones who hear the songs of those drowning men. It is just too far away to be a danger. As I stood in that tofu shop of his, I thought I would give him a piece of the moon one can never touch. The moon that shines over the equator as well as shines on the roof of his tofu shop. His tofu shop a thousand times smaller than the head of a pin, on the map of who’s who in Tokyo. Just give him a little piece of the moon, which costs me nothing. The way the Goddess of Mercy gives a little piece of her heart to every man, even a man drowning with love, who has not long
to live. I didn’t know I was sowing the seeds of desire and death. ’t know I was sowing the seeds of desire and death.
During our exchange -our written dialogue -I once left him a phone message that I had received the purse and thanks very much. That would explain why there were two listings from my phone in Sydney to his tofu-shop/place of residence, yes. It seemed to give him so much pleasure just to give me things. Just to receive words from me. Just to hear from me. Just to see me. Just to watch me from far away, sometimes. To watch me walk past for an instant, in the mornings, and walk past for an instant in the evenings. It seemed to give him so much pleasure to give me things. He once wrote the words, “There is nothing I would not do for you, you have made my life worth living.” And those words were with the miles of distance between us. The miles of rainy water. And never one kiss.
Do you think a look -I mean an innocent glance into a man’s eyes -can be as powerful as a kiss? I have often thought of the shapes of his dreams of me. What were they? Did he dream of taking all my clothes off? Did he dream of drinking me the way one drinks the rain seen sometimes caught in pale red magnolias in the mornings of unfamiliar places? I don’t want to think about it.
A woman cannot curse a man to hell with one innocent look. Yes -I asked him to drink the reflections of lights from passing cars crossing the ceiling of the hotel room instead of the wine for us to drink on the night of my return to Yokohama. You can put that down in whatever language you want. You can tape it if you want. Use it as material for the local news and the foreign press. I will sign it any way you want. I will even scent it with the Anais Nin by Cacharel I use to scent my mail with. All my mail, not just what I sent him. That still doesn’t mean that I asked him to kill himself after turning up at the dormitories in Tokyo where I was sent by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs on my return to
Japan. With a gun he had bought in 1983. I do not know what he would have done if I had been there. do not know what he would have done if I had been there.
Well, I was there, but I was out of sight. I was on the 12th floor with a guy from the International Writing Program. As my original statement says: I had just finished hanging out my washing. Tokyo looks like a tossing ocean of neons, from up there. A sea with no boundaries or end. The kind of thing he would rarely get to see I guess. I mean, he lives, or lived, that is, on the bottom of that ocean. Behind the long curtains of that tofu shop his father left him. The curtains are long, longer than a young woman’s hair. Those old traditional curtains that have a slit down the middle -you have to part the two halves to enter the shop. You have to sing out “Is anyone there?” That first day I went to his shop, I remember I had to sing out “Is anyone there?” about five times before he stirred from the tatami room inside. He had been watching me. I sang out, my voice as bright as the mirrors in gold frames on the walls of the Ritz-Carlton. A voice as clear as a choir of virgins, singing soprano Latin behind the mossy walls of a convent in a black wet town at the bottom of the world. They don’t sell the latest Gucci handbags there. Yes I asked him to send me the Gucci handbag. Because you can’t get them there. You know they found the geta, the one geta I sent him to use to measure my foot for the other geta he bought to send me -they found that geta in his living room. I should say, his six tatami mat TV room. I said “six tatami mat” -that’s how they measure rooms over there. They found it hanging on a tack on the wall. You don’t understand. It’s all the more weird because its taboo to take footwear into such rooms No-one ordinarily would do it. Noone normal that is. He told them he used to hold it sometimes, when he was watching TV. He wrote that my feet must be so light, light as air. That my hair was long, long as a
round the world-flight that never ends. That my eyes were wild, wild as the dreams of a man’s heart unfulfilled. Yes, the only thing I ever sent him was the wine. Do you want me to die of guilt? That may happen anyway. Do you think I would have to join him in the black shining rivers of hell? -flight that never ends. That my eyes were wild, wild as the dreams of a man’s heart unfulfilled. Yes, the only thing I ever sent him was the wine. Do you want me to die of guilt? That may happen anyway. Do you think I would have to join him in the black shining rivers of hell?
He wrote that I was the first gaijin girl he had ever spoken to. That he was sorry that he couldn’t speak English. The can of mace was in the very first parcel. Next the alarm clock. Then all the geta. Geta with red velvet thongs for between my toes. Geta carved from wood softer than a deer’s skin, for the soles of my feet. Then there was the writing paper. Then his father’s stamp collection. At the New Year’s once, he sent me a fish. A big smoked salmon in a thermostatic plastic bag, from Hokkaido. Yes, they say the flesh of the fish is the best up there. They swim in the icy waters, separating Russia from Japan. Then he sent me a box of the best shoyu (that’s how you say soya sauce). Even though I could have got that brand in Chinatown here. I didn’t ask him to. He sent me a lot of red things. A shell painted red, wrapped up in masses of rice paper as soft as glass. Although he also sent me a lot of things which were not red. So it may not be significant. I can’t remember the exact order of how I received the things. Sometimes I wasn’t even there to receive them by registered international post.
I got scared only when he started to ring up the dorms this time when I returned to Japan. He would ring up and say nothing but I knew it was him, from his breathing. The way he didn’t breathe, I should say. I heard the two shots while we were listening to that song, “I believe in miracles, baby, where you from, you sexy thing?” I don’t know why he would’ve done it. I don’t know what his nightmares were. How black or white or red they were. Let me go back to my real life now. Oh -to stroll along, unaware of time,
along the promenade of the Ginza under the lights of a new evening. When a man you don’t love says that he loves you, the only thing to do is to hang up and send him no word at all. My fingerprints will never change, I am aware of that. Not until the day I am turned back into dust. To ashes. A void. Stripped of power. You can print my name, linked with that of the dead one. Print that written word, which will last forever, over there and over here. Before dawn, the millions of words will be printed, to last forever. Ginza under the lights of a new evening. When a man you don’t love says that he loves you, the only thing to do is to hang up and send him no word at all. My fingerprints will never change, I am aware of that. Not until the day I am turned back into dust. To ashes. A void. Stripped of power. You can print my name, linked with that of the dead one. Print that written word, which will last forever, over there and over here. Before dawn, the millions of words will be printed, to last forever.
Maybe when he was at a school that looked like a jumble of concrete playing blocks, the little girls all laughed at him. In a soprano chorus they would have shrieked and pointed when he missed the ball thrown at him by the best kendo player in the class. His favourite was the one with the longest plaits that shone like the caught silvery fish still writhing from the ocean. Her hair shone so that it hurt the eye -shone more like something pure white than pure black. Maybe she had led that chorus of piercing laughter.
My gift to him was a few softly smiling words from shining red lips. The row of teeth like pearls from Ise. The tongue like a glimpse of a rare butterfly he had heard of but never had hoped to see. My gift to him was a reflection in his glass doors of tangles of ribbons of hair blowing in the port city’s wind. The sight of two ankles pressed tightly together, each as thin as air. Then the two ankles of a girl from far away moving in a soft quick step to turn and slide the glass doors shut. My only gift to him was the sound of a little silver bell on a key to a room he would never go to. A bell kept in the darkness of my silk purse. A silk purse wrapped with silk cords around my wrists.
