The Sound of One Hand Clapping

by Richard Flanagan

  Chapter 82

  1954

  LIFE HAD REVEALED ITSELF to Bojan Buloh as the triumph of evil.

  He stood in the bright light thrown by the unshaded light bulb in the corridor of their house, heard the rain that had followed the snow flogging the iron roof, felt the walls and low ceiling close in on him further like some mediaeval torture press, smelt his own fear and felt that his whole life had been a journey downwards to what he now believed to be true hell.

  Out of his time. Far from his home. Forever bound to her, yet no longer a husband. Where was the sun? Where was his rightful place? Where could such a man and his child who was as surely her child now go? And the edelweiss that once gave its enigmatic directions in lands that he knew only as mysteries now gone.

  He knew he simply had to live each day—as much as it was possible—without hope and without despair. This required of him that he think as little as possible, and this he largely achieved, emptying his mind not only of troublesome thoughts but of the capacity to reflect upon events. Life did manage to stick in his mind sometimes, troublesome burrs of experiences, and these could only be pulled out with a furious eruption of anger. There was, he had discovered, good and bad in everything—in life, in the very earth itself—and in everybody.

  But in the end darkness prevailed.

  There is only that, thought Bojan Buloh.

  He put one arm out against the wall to stop it crushing him, to steady himself. What was his time? When was his home? He staggered the few short steps to Sonja’s bedroom, feeling his body to have found the immobile weight of lead, as agonised and as difficult as the crawl of wounded man to safe shelter.

  But when at her doorway he raised his head, Bojan Buloh saw a sight of such exquisite beauty that for a moment he thought he had truly lost his mind. For Sonja’s bedroom had burst into blossom and even in the dim half-light he saw that it was full of edelweiss in full bloom, their starry white petals filling the room with a lunar luminosity. Arising out of the mass of flowers like an old stunted tree he saw an upturned wooden box down the edge of which was stencilled in red letters the word GELIGNITE. On top of the box was a frayed lace doily laid diagonally, and upon the doily sat three postcard-sized pictures. On the left was a picture of the Virgin Mary with her hands outstretched as if in compassion; in the centre a photograph of Maria’s father laid out in his coffin, a man who looked tired and worn-out even in death, who looked without hope even when surrounded by flowers; and on the right was a photograph of Maria and Bojan in their best clothes, with Sonja as a baby dressed in an old-fashioned long christening gown, being held by her father. Next to the gelignite box, Sonja lay asleep in her bed, the old iron frame painted a cream colour through which suppurated numerous chancres of rust.

  Bojan noticed, though strangely it did not disturb him, that the edelweiss were growing out of his daughter’s nostrils and ears, and that their petals pointed in every conceivable direction. There was no proper bedspread, only an old blanket, but all was neat and clean, and the only discordant element was the child of flowers herself, who had kicked her covers away. Beneath her nightie he could see the raised impression of what he could only assume were more flowers growing out of her sex, embossing the thin cotton with striking stellar shapes, and he momentarily wondered if it was the starry night sky he was seeing, wondered if the vast southern heavens had been transformed into his small daughter or she into the heavens and he felt dizzy with the thought and the sight.

  Bojan’s hands gently and silently pulled the covers back over his daughter. Then, his face brushing the edelweiss petals, he kissed her on the cheek and whispered to the heavens, ‘Aja, aja.’ Still asleep, the child stretched out her arms in an embrace and held her father around his neck. He felt her small body stiffen, shudder in a nighttime spasm, then relax back into sleep. Her arms went limp and fell away, and Bojan crossed them on her chest beneath the covers.

  Then he went back out into the harsh white light of the corridor, and returned dragging a mattress which he laid on the floor next to Sonja’s bed. He noticed, though strangely the observation did not disconcert him, that the flowers had all gone. As he made a bed up with some blankets, he thought to himself and knew it to be a curious thing to think, that the bedroom had simply returned to its winter state and that the flowers had all died and now he must sleep until spring returned. Then he lay down, with Sonja asleep in her bed on one side of him, and Maria laid out in her coffin on the other.

  Bojan Buloh let his body of lead run into the mattress until all that remained was his soul and his soul was the universe and he let it fill to overflowing with the snuffling and movement of Sonja, let the sound of his three-year-old daughter sleeping fill his universe.

  There is only this, thought Bojan Buloh, and only this.

  Outside sleet once more began to slap the small window panes. But Bojan Buloh had fallen asleep and did not hear its icy scratch.

  For there is this, Bojan Buloh was dreaming. This.

  Chapter 83

  1990

  BOJAN BULOH HAD SEEN MUCH in his life before he fell asleep that night, and he was to see much thereafter. Flowers growing out of the living and the dead. A Tasmanian tiger, and what’s more one that carried a vision of hell within its gob. Pigs incinerating themselves, and people behaving similarly. Great dams being built and great dams falling apart and rivers once more running free. He could, if he so desired, which he did not, and would never have even conceived of the idea—he could have written a treatise on how he had seen people die: how the disinherited did not even die easy, but as hard as they lived, slow protracted deaths at which they had to labour as hard as if they were dumb driven cattle; how both the corpses of his race, as of the Germans who once thought Bojan’s race inferior, started white at the moment of death and ended up—if not buried—as black as coal, the corpse in between inflating, deflating, rotting, until it was little more than a skeleton clutched hard by a tarry skin that resembled nothing so much as a worn-out old black boot. He had seen animals of all types give birth and seen newly-born calves and piglets and foals, and had known the curiously empty, wrong feeling of killing a roo and finding a living joey in its pouch.

  But Bojan Buloh had never seen a newly-born baby, not even his own daughter, Sonja, having then been forbidden by the hospital for three days after her birth to see either her or Maria.

  When Bojan Buloh had woken up on this morning he had, without thinking about it, driven to a florist’s. His momentary look of disappointment when the shop assistant told him she had never seen an edelweiss in any florist in all of Tasmania in all her years, gave way to an enigmatic smile when the shop assistant then showed him a bunch of white carnations as being the next best thing. They weren’t, of course, but Bojan was still smiling at the absurd idea of two such different flowers being thought in any way similar when he was back in the FJ and the motor was misfiring and rattling as he was driving into the heart of town, and he was just hoping to Christ that it got him there and he praised it in Slovenian (Dobra staryr auto) for all its years of faithful service and beseeched it in Italian (Per favore cara macchina) to last the few more miles that would see their journey finally ended and ordered it in Deutsch (Raus! Raus!) to continue going and cursed it in Australian (Shitfuckingbucket) for spluttering worse than himself in the morning.

  But, once the promise of a new Australia, the FJ was now, like its owner, aged and decrepit. The FJ was not the car it once had been, and, Bojan had to ruefully admit if only to himself, it had not been much of a car in the first place. So when the FJ went ominously silent as he was driving down Macquarie Street, Bojan was philosophical in his realisation that after two and a half decades the FJ’s 138 motor had finally died, and he was looking forward to either buying a new car or never returning to Tullah. He rolled the car to the side of the road, did not even bother to raise the bonnet for a look, but grabbed the flowers and a plastic shopping bag from the front seat, hopped out and without even bothering to shut th
e car door began what, for a man of his age and proclivities, was less than easy: to run.

  And in this manner, without any conscious thought, with legs feeling like lead, heart hammering, breath heaving, Bojan found himself some minutes later in the elevator of the maternity hospital, wondering if he wouldn’t end up in the emergency ward for a heart attack he was feeling that awful, heading for the labour wards.

  Chapter 84

  1990

  AS IF JUST BUTTERED, vernix covering her frog-like face, there she was: a freshly swaddled newly-born baby, strange-looking stranger to her mother. The baby gave a small cry, somewhere between a scream and a yelp, and her naked arms spasmed out and up in an L-shape, tiny fists clenched, as if she were surrendering to life. Sonja put her nose against the baby’s head, and gasped. For the first time since she had been a child in Jean’s kitchen Sonja recognised strong odours: of yeast, of bread—of her baby.

  In the dimmed light of the labour ward Sonja held her child close, and looked at that alien animal in awe and with not a small amount of fear. Sonja heard herself gulp and moan, knew her face to be smiling, to be frowning, to be shaking. She kissed the baby on the forehead, then—so very hesitantly—she put out her tongue and lightly touched the baby on its head with her tongue tip, once, twice, and then, feeling braver, she licked the baby’s neck and face, long, delicate licks, all the while drawing in deep draughts of that extraordinary scent of bread.

  Betty, who had left the room some time before, returned to tell Sonja that her father was outside. Sonja did not look up from her baby. Betty was concerned about such an intrusion so soon after giving birth. ‘I can tell him that you are not up to seeing him yet,’ she said, ‘and for him to come back tomorrow.’ Sonja ran a finger over her child’s small, puckered face. The baby, after her initial brays, had not cried. Instead her wide eyes roamed the dimly lit room, as if serenely appraising the curious world she had arrived in, and it seemed to Sonja that far from being wrong, it was somehow right her father would wish to see his only grandchild at such a time, and right that her daughter should meet her grandfather so soon after birth. There was a magic to the moment that Sonja did not understand, but which she vaguely apprehended, and she knew it had a power that would only be manifest for a short period. In that year after the revolutions, she was now circling time. And though it seemed dreams were being born within dreams, it was not so. It was only a mother and her child waiting.

  She told Betty to ask him in.

  Bojan entered apprehensively, frowning, one hand held behind him, the other carrying a plastic shopping bag, eyes scooting back and forth, as if appraising the room ready for a quick exit. He looked at her and he looked at the baby and his nervous frown gave way to a nervous smile. From behind his back he produced a large bouquet of white carnations, which he placed at the foot of her bed.

  ‘So you haven’t gone back to Tullah yet, Dad?’ Sonja smiled.

  ‘No,’ said Bojan. He paused, but then felt what was for him the unusual need to explain himself more fully. ‘I’m not going back. Told them they could shove it. Jiri thinks he can line me up a job. I don’t need much. Anything is okay by me. Maybe I even look after the baby when you work, things like that, I dunno. But I am not going back, not now.’ He looked down on his newly-born granddaughter, and moved closer. ‘Not ever. Not to that.’

  He went to put the plastic carry bag on the floor, then halted. ‘Ah—now,’ he said. ‘Helvi give this to me.’ He reached into the bag. ‘She tell me how much you want to repair it.’

  And proffered in his hand was the bramble-patterned teapot Sonja had smashed so long ago. Finally together in one piece, once more complete. She saw that his work was, as ever, true and careful, the few fractures that remained apparent only as hairlines.

  He leant down, handed the repaired teapot over to Sonja, and she, as if in exchange, passed her daughter to him. Bojan held the baby not awkwardly, but in a relaxed manner, cradled in his right arm, cooing and cackling as he stroked her chin with the knuckle of his index finger. ‘Anyway, now it’s fixed,’ continued Bojan, playfully pressing the baby’s nose as if it were a button. He laughed at his own convoluted speech. ‘Not like my English.’

  As Sonja turned the teapot around and up and down admiring its reconstruction, Betty, not knowing what else to say to the strange man of heavy odours and curious accent, asked, ‘How would describe your feelings about your new granddaughter, Mr Bellow?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Bojan looking up from the baby, his head rolling in an uncharacteristically loose way, like a treetop feathered by a fresh wind. ‘Oh, I, eh, I think there are some things that matter more than words.’ He pressed the baby’s nose in again and laughed, and said: ‘She’s beautiful, eh?’

  He smiled once more and now there was no trace of nervousness. Sonja felt that perhaps it might just be, after all, possible. Maybe one afternoon when the baby was crawling around the kitchen floor, pulling lids and pots from cupboards, maybe they would sit and talk long, long into the night, about her, about him, about the baby—and about all the things she had long thought she would stand over his grave regretting she had never told him, asked him, reproached him for and laughed with him about. They would talk for so long that the sun would fall and night would come and they would put the baby to bed and keep talking through her night feeds into the next morning about them and her and what had happened and what might be. They would talk only about what they could hold onto, and they would not use words they could hide behind, but use words like timber to build a table they could sit around.

  A beautiful table, big enough for a family feasting.

  And after Bojan left, a small miracle took place. For the first and not the last time in this new lifetime, Sonja cried and her tears fell like summer rain upon her baby’s head.

  Chapter 85

  SOMETIMES A VAST LONGING would come back over her.

  And when it did she would not fight it, but sought to celebrate it, would gather some things together in a carton and put the baby in the car and they would drive back. They would drive up that long empty road to that empty place where once stood a construction camp called Butlers Gorge and where there was now nothing, nothing but strange bird cries and wind and cold.

  Though she did ask twice, Bojan never came with her. He still drank, but infrequently, and Jiri was only rung four times in the following two years by frustrated barmen asking him to pick up a hopeless drunk who had given them this number. He still drank, but with the exception of these occasional bust-outs, the quantities were small and his behaviour—apart from becoming sometimes tedious with his repetition of stories—unobjectionable and even quite likeable. It was impossible, of course, to know how long it would last, but both Bojan and Sonja wisely treated it at best as a day-to-day proposition, and each showed genuine delight when the other honoured the day by calling around or ringing.

  Sonja and Jiri secured Bojan a housing department semi-detached unit with which he seemed genuinely happy and where he grew vegetables that he gave away, and strawberries which he kept for only his granddaughter to eat, along with yoghurt he would make by letting milk sour on top of his hot water boiler. He fought with the housing department over his garden, not because of his vegetables or strawberries, but because of the FJ, which he parked there permanently and used both as a children’s playground and the site of some of his garden, making beds out of the engine bay and boot and headlight cavities. After Ahmet intervened on his behalf Bojan won, and the flowering FJ full of kids became something of a local landmark. Occasionally he would grow tired of the racket and yell at the kids to bugger off, but sometimes, late in the afternoon, he would open a stubby and sit at a short distance from the FJ having a quiet drink and smoke, as kids darted like gannets and pilchards around him. He would look out over his garden and see it all again, a gale which he cursed and which had cursed them all, which transformed time into a dam and the dam into dust and dust into earth and the earth into a garden in which he found himself si
tting staring at a rusted-out car, seeing it all again, though this time there was mixed with his desolation a certain wonder.

  Chapter 86

  UPON ARRIVING at the old construction camp site, Sonja would get out of the car and draw herself erect and look around at the tall manferns dripping rain upon the ageing stumps of huge eucalypts felled so long ago to clear the site. She would do as she did every visit: look up and see the new trees that had grown since that time. Then, with her baby in one arm, and the carton under the other, she would walk into the desolate, harsh noises of Tasmanian rainforest, toward the scrawk of black cockatoos and the cries of the currawongs, into the slow thrush-thrush of the wind up high in the forest canopy, and sometimes she thought she heard sounds most peculiar: of her mother singing—

  ‘Spancek, zaspancek