The Sound of One Hand Clapping

by Richard Flanagan

Sonja turned around from the sink to face him, but didn’t reply immediately.

  ‘Where she? Where Maja?’

  ‘Getting meat for your tea,’ said Sonja.

  Picotti looked around, drew his bottom lip up and nodded his head, as he came to his own conclusion as to where Maja was. Within the shadowed country of his face she could see his eyes blinking in rapid spasms, a nervous condition which came on him whenever he and Sonja were alone together and which she detested. His mood seemed to change, though the tone of his speech remained low. He breathed out and then spoke.

  ‘Yeh, she say that, sure she say that, but I know different. Most afternoons she not here.’ He seemed weary, to be musing about something of great weight. Casually he flicked a bottle of the preserved fruit off the table. Sonja’s body flinched involuntarily, but her face remained unchanged. She watched the bottle slowly roll through the air.

  All that work.

  All that love.

  And when it bounced slightly upwards on hitting the floor she hoped it might not break. But the fractures in the glass merely took a split second to course the length of the bottle then open outwards, and the bottle collapsed back upon the floor into a mess of glass shards, syrup and fruit. And all the time she was watching the bottle fall and shatter he was watching her, staring at her, saying nothing, unmoving, an animal with semaphoring eyes sizing up its prey. The conversation had been transformed into an interrogation, though neither spoke for a few moments, until Picotti resumed.

  ‘Where? Where she go?’

  Picotti searched Sonja’s face for confirmation of his suspicions, and he was infuriated to find none, to be reminded yet again of the complicity of wicked women as certain as it was obvious. He put his fingers under the table, felt its weight, lifted one end ever so slightly off the floor and held it there.

  ‘Why? Why she go? Another man, that is what it is. You know?’ murmured Picotti, his voice remaining ever so soft, his fingers so gently balancing the slanting table. ‘She out in another man’s bed. You know what they do?’ He smiled, then the smile was gone and Sonja knew him to be displeased, as if it had been her who had smiled and had insulted him by doing so, as if it was her playing games with him. Still he talked quietly. ‘You know?’

  Then Picotti snapped. He suddenly threw the table up and over. Sonja leapt backwards. The table flew up into the air and then clattered down, bottle smashing against bottle, as both table and bottles fell to the linoleum floor with a horrifying crash.

  ‘Of course you know!’ roared Picotti, and his voice was a cyclone that Sonja thought might blow her away.

  Terrified, gripping tightly the sink behind her, Sonja looked down at the linoleum, at its abstract pattern, bright colourful lines and squares repeated all over, which, despite constant effort upon the part of her and Maja, had seen better days. Parts of it were worn almost down to the hessian backing, and over this shabby lino landscape the smooth syrup and scores of apricots now rolled in a colourful glacial flow, leaving in their wake moraines of plump fruit and broken glass.

  Then Sonja’s head jerked up to see Picotti’s blinking had ceased as strangely and inexplicably as it had begun, and that he was pointing an accusing finger at her.

  Sonja did not know what to say or do, but feared what Picotti would do next if she said nothing. So she grabbed a mop, cried out, ‘I’ll clean it up, Mr Picotti,’ her voice at first high, sounding as if it were her fault, then cracking, as she tried unsuccessfully to lower it to hide her fear from him.

  ‘No,’ said Picotti. ‘No—you show me,’ said Picotti swivelling his head up and sideways as if he had just won a knife-fight in a pub but was watching all angles in case of one final, unexpected feint, and Sonja could hear his shuddering breath, ‘You show me where she is.’

  He dropped his half-smoked cigarette into the mess of preserved apricots that lay upon the floor, as if there were something somehow offensive about the things women did and took pleasure in doing.

  Picotti ordered Sonja to come with him for a drive in his bright burnt-orange Pontiac, to find his unfaithful wife and her phantom lover. In the back seat of the huge car Sonja felt trapped, the soft bone-coloured seats enveloping her like restraining arms. As she wriggled to the front of the seat, trying to find a place where the car had minimum purchase upon her body, she was belaboured by Picotti with details of his wife’s supposed infidelity.

  ‘That bitch,’ he rued, ‘she is sleeping with another man. I know this, I know Maja, I find them both now and make them pay for shaming me like this.’ His lips, she noticed, were moist with saliva. He punctuated his points with an elaborate throw of his left hand sufficiently vigorous that his brilliantined fringe fell out of its neatly combed place.

  ‘Me! Umberto Picotti! The bitch! The filthy whore! Women like her are no good, Sonja. They are bad to their husbands and bad to their children.’ He put the fingers of his right hand under his drooping fringe that sat across his face like some outflow of sulphurous bitumen, and flicked the hair back into its correct position. ‘Like your mother see.’

  This was a throwaway line on Picotti’s part, but in the rear-vision mirror he glimpsed Sonja looking up, and he sought to talk his way out of it, partly out of embarrassment, partly out of curiosity, to see what it was that interested Sonja in her mother whom he knew she had not seen for many years.

  ‘I tell you now because you are a good girl,’ he continued, studying her all the while in the rear-vision mirror, ‘because you are like your father, I tell that your mother was not faithful to him and that is … that is why she is not here.’ Sonja looked away from the front, from Picotti. She curled up against a side door and stared at the cars passing by, as though she was not listening. ‘She did not love your father,’ said Picotti, thinking, But you are listening. Listening to everything I say. ‘She did not love you.’

  He paused to light a cigarette.

  ‘Your mother did not love you or she would be here now. Eh? She would. If she loved you, she would be here looking after you. You understand what I say—your mother did not love you. This is hard for you I know, but it is better you know it all.’

  He paused again.

  Inhaled.

  Exhaled.

  Carefully thinking what he would say next.

  ‘She was whore, a filthy whore, and I tell you true you are better for her going.’

  Without warning he pulled the Pontiac to a halt on the side of the road. The big car slewed and rolled like a rudderless boat buffeted by a wild sea.

  ‘Eh! Sonja. Come over and sit in the front seat.’

  Picotti smiled at the child’s back as Sonja clambered over into the front seat without enthusiasm and without awareness. Sonja sat down and turned around to see Picotti had resumed his rapid blinking. He reached over and placed his hand on the inside of Sonja’s leg and began to draw it up her thigh.

  She felt a knotting in her stomach that would return to her often after, felt a terrible fear, felt herself falling into his power. But her stony face betrayed nothing. She knew to survive this movement, her face must be that way. His hand reached the hem of her dress and still it would not stop slithering upwards.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, trying not to let her voice trill.

  Picotti continued smiling and he spoke so softly, so gently, in such a pleasing way that Sonja wanted to believe what he said.

  But she did not believe him.

  ‘Do not be frightened, my child,’ he said.

  But she did not believe him, would never believe him. His hand was nearing the top of her thigh when he sneezed and at that moment of distraction Sonja drew away and reached for the door handle. With her gaze fixed upon his blinking eyes Sonja gingerly opened the door and eased herself out of the car. Picotti made no further movement toward her. Sonja walked away down the sidewalk. When she was ten yards or so distant Picotti leant across the front seat and shut the front door.

  And, without looking back, drove off downhill, leaving Sonja t
o find her own way.

  Chapter 25

  1960

  THE DAYS PASSED into weeks and then into months. Autumn gave way to winter and then winter passed into spring. Rains came with great force but Bojan did not come and the talk was of terrible floods up north and then spring too was gone and summer had arrived but Bojan still did not return, and Sonja had come to be part of the strange little household. Every night she prayed to the Madonna Mrs Michnik had taught her about and every night she begged the Madonna to bring her father back to her the next weekend, and every weekend she waited and her father did not return and she could only conclude that the Madonna, like so many other grownups, was inexplicably angry with her. Picotti was away a lot, working shifts at the cell room at the zinc works or drinking, which suited both Sonja and Maja Picotti, who, despite all her protestations to the contrary, seemed much happier without her husband.

  Maja Picotti watched the child and wondered who she was. Sonja helped her around the house, but rarely spoke. Maja Picotti found her trustworthy, hardworking but strange. She did all tasks asked of her without complaint or comment. Until the day Maja Picotti had gone out shopping and had left her sleeping baby in Sonja’s care.

  Almost as soon as she had gone the baby had woken and begun to cry. Sonja watched and waited impassive. She did not move to help the baby, to pick it up and comfort it. She waited for Maja Picotti to return but Maja Picotti, who had been held up chatting to a friend, did not come and did not come and still the baby cried.

  ‘She’s like her papa,’ Maja Picotti had said. ‘She won’t wake till it’s time to eat and drink.’

  But the baby had woken and still Maja Picotti did not come and the baby was crying and suddenly Sonja could not bear to hear its cries. She seized the cot, rattled it a little, and when that proved to no avail, shook it harder to stop the baby crying. The baby took to bellowing. With all her might Sonja heaved the cot back and forth. And it was at that moment that Maja Picotti walked in, saw what was happening, grabbed her baby, and admonished Sonja.

  ‘Madonna!—what are you doing you stupid child! Can’t you see the baby’s upset?’

  The baby’s blubbering diminished as Maja Picotti rocked it back and forth on her shoulder. She turned and stared fiercely at Sonja. She searched the child’s face for some explanation of her bizarre behaviour. Maja Picotti looked hard, but found nothing. Presumably the child was fearful of what might follow, but she did not flinch, nor did she try to apologise.

  ‘Well?’ said Maja Picotti. ‘Well, what have you got to say?’

  Sonja wished to say the baby had woken and the baby was crying and Sonja could not bear to hear its cries.

  ‘You never cry,’ said Sonja. ‘No matter how bad you feel, you never cry.’

  Sonja wished to say that she felt infinitely sorry for the baby, but the baby had to learn what she had or the baby would die. But Sonja wished to tell these things to the baby and not to the baby’s mother; wished to say: Beware, beware, and learn from me—never feel, never feel like me.

  The baby began to blubber again. Sonja didn’t move toward the cot, but stood exactly where and as she was when admonished by Maja Picotti. Sonja stared past the baby and began to sing:

  ‘Don’t cry little fishy

  Don’t cry don’t cry

  Don’t cry little fishy.’

  Maja Picotti stared at Sonja, not understanding, perplexed by the strangeness of the child. She shook her head, and momentarily wished she could pick Sonja up and hold her forever.

  Sonja continued to sing:

  ‘Don’t cry don’t cry

  U-fee little fishy

  Don’t cry don’t cry.’

  But later Maja Picotti felt troubled by all that had taken place and all that she had felt, and before she went to bed that night Maja Picotti said rosaries for the safe journey of Sonja’s soul back from wherever it had so clearly fled.

  ‘U-fee little fishy,’

  Sonja sang in her bed that evening,

  ‘Don’t cry don’t cry,’

  Sonja sang.

  But there were no proper words for the emptiness she wished to sing. In the end she gave up singing out loud songs she knew and instead took to slowly mouthing words that did not exist for feelings that had no name, her lips forming into a circle and then collapsing, circling and collapsing, like a fish panting for life-giving water as it dies in the foetid air of a fisherman’s creel.

  Not long after, Bojan returned.

  He and Umberto and Maja Picotti and Sonja each sat at a side of the kitchen table. Sonja was filled with a sudden dreadful vision of Picotti sweeping them all aside like bottled apricots and them—Bojan, Maja, her—falling to the floor and breaking, and Picotti flicking ash upon them, smiling. Picotti blinked, once, twice, continuously. Bojan smiled. Sonja shivered. Bojan was ignorant of what had passed, of why Umberto Picotti would have wanted to end the arrangement to look after Sonja. He had, after all, paid the Picottis handsomely. The atmosphere was brooding, the coffee that Maja had made undrunk, the cakes on the plate in the table’s centre untouched. Umberto Picotti counted out some money and slid it across the table to Bojan, past a bowl of brodo he had not permitted Maja to take from the table when Bojan arrived.

  ‘That your money back, minus when we look after her,’ said Umberto Picotti.

  Bojan didn’t reply. He was confused. Umberto Picotti, without looking up at Bojan, addressed his soup.

  ‘Take her now.’

  He rubbed his blinking eyes, rolling his balled fingers hard like an auger, as if he were trying to bore them out.

  Bojan felt perplexed. ‘Oh, Bertie…’ he began. But Picotti interrupted before he had finished.

  ‘I won’t miss her,’ said Umberto Picotti, blinking to the noodles floating in his chicken soup. ‘Disobedient little bitch.’

  Chapter 26

  1989

  TASMANIAN MADNESS—the bastard issue of a century and a half of despair cleaving to ever more outrageous fantasies—only intruded in the Hobart airport in a way that wasn’t immediately obvious: some years before, in the vain delusion that such a facility must inevitably attract sadly absent international custom, an international terminal had been built and the runway lengthened to take jumbo jets. While local satraps, in the manner of previous cargo cult chieftans, continued searching the sky for fabled jumbos full of wealthy Asian tourists and made speeches reassuring their followers that the island’s salvation as the Singapore of the south was nigh, the international terminal found use for a minuscule company flying locals in six-seater planes to the remoter edges of the island.

  Apart from such pleasing eccentricity, the Hobart airport, though small, was of its type an undistinguished example, and it was from this thought that Sonja derived some solace as she waited with Helvi at her side in the queue for the reservations counter, ready to return to Sydney. Airports always had a comforting effect upon her, of dissolving the familiar into the general, the important particular into a mass insignificance, acting as the chain-saws of life, clearing away the certainties of place into clearfelled wastelands that were the same the world over. People smoking, people weeping. Ashes and tissue paper, thought Sonja, handing her ticket over to the reservation clerk. Jiri, who had until then maintained a respectful distance from the two women, stepped forward and, his best 1970s vinyl bum-hugger jacket squeaking, passed the suitcase to be checked in, and then stepped back.

  ‘You could stay here,’ said Helvi. The reservation clerk passed the ticket back to Sonja, complete with a boarding pass, as if to refute Helvi’s words. ‘You know that. It’s not too late,’ Helvi continued, but it was clear from the quiet way she spoke that she no longer believed this.

  Sonja held the ticket and boarding pass in front of Helvi’s face, as if it were a sentence she was condemned to accept. She shrugged her shoulders, then shook her head and smiled at such insistence. With a soft mock sternness, as though admonishing a child, she said, ‘Helvi.’

  Helvi looked at So
nja and saw it all once more. Felt the grief, huge rocks pressing hard in her belly and on her forehead, felt it almost overwhelm her. Changing tack, Helvi said, ‘You never tell your father you’re pregnant?’

  Sonja seemed detached. ‘No,’ she said. ‘What could I say?’

  ‘The truth.’

  ‘Ah, that,’ said Sonja unemotionally. She began walking at a brisk pace to the departure lounge. ‘The truth.’ She continued to stride, smiling a little, tried to swallow but found her mouth dry as sand, and then, without looking across at Helvi, said, ‘He wants to believe I have some serious love in my life, that I at least am happy.’ And though she was angry with Helvi, pushing her so, she laughed a small, wry laugh. ‘The truth is rarely worth knowing, Helvi, you know that? It hurts. Lies are easier.’ And all the time she was walking and all the time she was looking straight ahead and not at Helvi. ‘What’s the point of telling him there is no father who wants the child, no proper home, no time I can spare from working. Not enough money. No anything. That I could offer the child nothing.’ Abruptly she stopped and fixed Helvi with a harsh stare. ‘That I’m poor in everything and abortion is cheaper.’

  Though the fight was lost, Helvi wasn’t about to concede defeat.

  ‘Sometimes an abortion is right,’ Helvi said. ‘Sometimes a baby destroys what little a woman has.’ Sonja looked away, wondering how much more she had to endure before she could finally leave, though grateful that Helvi seemed to have finally swung around to her position. ‘But sometimes,’ continued Helvi, ‘it is wrong. Sometimes a baby can help heal.’

  This was too much for Sonja. She gave peremptory embraces and kisses to both Helvi and Jiri, then hurried away alone to the entrance of the departure lounge.