Sweet Bitter Cane

by G S Johnston

  ‘We’ve lived with Paolo’s parents for six years in Bologna. Paolo found work with a building company and started to send some money. But it wasn’t much, especially after I paid for our living. It took years to save for our passage.’

  ‘Paolo and Cristiano have never met, have they?’

  Clara turned to Amelia. ‘You’re smart.’

  A comfortable silence fell between them.

  ‘And you?’ Clara said. ‘You’ve taken a larger gamble. At least I’ve met Paolo. There must have been someone in Italy?’

  ‘In my village and the next village and the next, there are hardly any men left. Those the war hasn’t picked off, immigration has won. There are just frail old men and babies.’ She shuddered, breathed in the enormousness of what she’d done, tried to shake it off. ‘Perhaps it’s better to marry someone like this. My friends in the village … The men failed them.’ She stopped, aware of Clara’s scrutiny. ‘I’ve taken a great risk. And I’m frightened. I’ve no idea how this will end.’

  Clara turned to dimming Naples. ‘But there’s something far more dreadful that’s made you leave.’

  Amelia looked back towards Vesuvius, unsure what she wanted to say to this woman she’d only met. Her honesty unnerved her.

  Clara searched her face. ‘Why are you so scared to tell the truth?’

  Clara had trusted her with a story she doubted many knew. So Amelia would tell a story she hadn’t even told her mother.

  ‘I had a friend, Emma Veronesi,’ Amelia said. ‘She was a very beautiful girl. We’d known one another all our lives. She only had to smile … But that’s not fair to her. She was so much more than just her smile.

  ‘During the war, the son of the feudal lord came home on leave. Each day he rode through the streets on his fine horse in his fine, fine uniform. How could Emma not notice him, this Raffaelo Mancuso?

  ‘One afternoon she was filling the water buckets at the fountain. He rode by and she stared at him. The next day, he met her eye. He stopped, dismounted and came to the fountain. She stepped back to allow him to drink, but he wasn’t thirsty. He talked to her. And I’ve no doubt she smiled her smile.

  ‘Each day he’d come and dismount. Until one spring day, he asked her to meet him, in the early evening, in the forest. I begged her not to go. But she went. And they met. And he told her he loved her, and kissed her, and had his way with her.

  ‘And of course, she believed all his promises, as did I with each passing day. Raffaelo returned to the war but said once it was over he would marry her, and she would have everything. What fools we were. The fighting against Austria in the Veneto was fierce. She feared he’d not return. But she was pregnant. And when she told him, when he finally returned, he denied knowing her. Before anyone else knew, Emma threw herself from the church spire.’

  ‘My God.’ Clara breathed deeply. ‘How awful. I’m sorry for you.’

  ‘And the day she died, when I stood at the well, he rode past. He raised his buttocks from the saddle, took the horse to a canter, but I knew what he was showing me. His ass. And he knew that I’d say nothing. What lets them take whatever they want?’

  ‘Jus primae noctis – the right of the first night – medieval laws.’

  ‘Beautiful Emma. He threw her away as if she were muck.’ Amelia looked out at the dark, breathed in the sea air. ‘The priest refused her a funeral mass. She burns in hell, he said.’ The priest was wrong. Amelia knew. Emma was with the Holy Mother, who saw and felt and understood everything. ‘I don’t want to die poor while someone who owns the land I work is made wealthier. I want something more, free from the stain of poverty, free from fief.’

  ‘And this is it?’

  ‘Italy is barren with its old ways. Australia is new. New ways.’

  Clara was silent. ‘You’re right; Australia is a young country. Let’s hope it has new ways.’

  The deck vibrated below their feet.

  ‘I’ve never told Emma’s story to anyone. People think Emma was possessed by the devil or there was madness in the family. Only Mancuso and I knew the truth. And no-one would believe me …’

  ‘I do.’ Clara took Amelia’s hand.

  ‘Will we ever return home?’ Amelia said.

  ‘Italy isn’t our home anymore.’ Clara continued to look to the horizon.

  Amelia observed her. She had warm eyes and an open face. All that was left of Italy was the dark trail of Vesuvius, cutting through the salt air and the blackening sky. She would miss her parents and her brothers; just to think of them squeezed her heart. What were they doing now? How long until they returned home? Would they go that evening with the others of the village to Veronesi’s large stable for la veglia, the evening party? The men would play cards, the women’s never-idle hands spinning wool and their voices telling stories to the young. Shouldn’t she be there with them?

  She breathed in her last glimpse of Italy. Signora Pina had made her promise they would return. She shook her head. The sea was black, capped here and there with white peaks, not a drop of blue to be seen. She felt pulled apart, as if she’d shed an old skin. She made a promise to herself: from now on, she’d go only forward.

  The RMS Orvieto had no second class, just first and steerage. A steerage ticket restricted the passenger to the lower decks, a mix of Italians, Germans and Irish. Amelia listened to all the voices she didn’t understand, but the Irish – their hefty rhythm, their broad smiles and laughing – she liked the most. The first-class passengers, a mix of English and Scots, were free to range to the lower decks, but Amelia and Clara’s daily walk was restricted to the lower.

  ‘Why can’t they stay on their own deck?’ Amelia said.

  ‘There’s space for everyone—’

  ‘They just want to ogle us.’

  In an effort to tire themselves, they repeated circuits of the decks many times, but the crowds slowed them. Amelia linked her arm through Clara’s. Whilst they kept to one another’s company, they saluted the other walkers and passed small amounts of information. Some were families, some single men and even two others brides by proxy.

  ‘Do you speak any English?’ Clara said.

  Amelia winced. ‘There are many Italians in Babinda. Italo said I don’t need it.’

  ‘You won’t have any independence without it.’

  Amelia thought. ‘Do you speak it?’

  ‘Not a word.’ Clara smiled. ‘Let’s start together in the morning.’

  And so each morning after breakfast and their walk, they studied. They made lists of every item in the cabin, and Clara found each word in Amelia’s dictionary. Every morning all four of them would repeat the words – bed, porthole, floor, ceiling, chest of drawers (three words where they had one). Amelia was years from her schooling, which had been snuffed by her work on the farm and then the war, snuffed by her just being a girl. She swam in a head-aching confusion, but her love of Italian words soon carried over into an interest in these clunky and abrupt ones, sounds that had no rhythm or rhyme she could find but that somehow made meanings. Clara was a steady teacher and mixed the work with much laughter and courage. Three days later, when they’d crossed the Mediterranean to Port Said, they’d all, even Cristiano and Frau Gruetzmann, made headway with the nouns of their cabin.

  Each evening the Italians ate at one long table, the men at one end and the women at the other. The noise – plates and cutlery, the men’s opinions and counters, glasses knocked together and over – made eating vibrant. The wives kept an eye on their husbands’ plates and, if they finished their food, a stodge of potatoes and meat, they would hurry to replenish it.

  ‘And you wonder why I want to leave Italy,’ Amelia said.

  Clara regarded the wives and their husbands. ‘What would you have them do?’

  ‘Serve themselves. Serve their wives, God forbid.’

  Clara laughed. ‘I wish you luck.’

  Would Italo expect her to wait on him? Surely, a man who’d lived on his own, far away from Signora Pina, would
be able to serve himself food. She looked at the other unmarried women. They too watched the wives, but they watched as if learning how to be, rather than how not to be.

  ‘I’m glad you’re teaching me English.’

  Each day brought more heat, landscapes she could never have dreamt of seeing. There was an excitement to this, but at the same time she wished the voyage would end. The land of the Suez Canal was ceaselessly flat, and each hour the air became hotter and drier. Along the shore camels toiled, carrying goods, carrying people. They passed steamers returning to the Mediterranean, so close they could see the passengers on the deck, waving and smiling. And on the shore, trains passed them effortlessly.

  Five young boys, dressed in what appeared to be long white shirts that brushed the ground, waved to them from the canal’s edge. Amelia and Clara waved back. In unison, the boys turned, pulled up their shirts to reveal their round, bare bottoms, which they proceeded to wiggle. Clara and Amelia gasped in shock and then bent over with laughter, drawing the scowls of those on deck who’d not seen the show.

  Each day grew more stifling, as much as forty-two degrees Celsius by midday. To avoid the heat, they took their walks earlier and earlier in the morning. Soon they’d left the calm waters of the Suez Canal and were moving through the long Red Sea, a place from the Bible, where Moses had parted the water – and she, Amelia, was seeing it.

  With only a taste, Amelia was now keen to further her English studies. Clara began the verbs, starting with the conjugations of ‘to be’.

  ‘There’s so little difference between them,’ Amelia said.

  Clara patted her hand. ‘Don’t listen to the end of the verbs. Listen to the beginning.’

  ‘This language is upside down.’

  They added new verbs – to eat, to sleep, to want, to feel, to hear, to touch. They made small sentences, peppering them with the nouns they’d learnt. She would listen to those who spoke English, concentrating on the sounds. How flat they all seemed, how lifeless, as if everyone who spoke English were sad. In her sleep, verb conjugations pounded like galloping hooves. By the time she’d memorised the verb ‘to eat’, they were free of the Red Sea, moving into the Gulf of Aden, the horizon free of land.

  On the first morning in the Gulf, the blue sky washed over with fierce dark clouds. A storm was coming, the tail end of a typhoon, and the passengers were asked to secure their cabins and remain below decks. They hoped it would last only a few days, not all the way to Ceylon. The winds picked up, the dark water rose, the crest broke open, sounding like shovelled gravel, white spilling over the slope of the wave. The ship rolled. Amelia gripped the railing. The wind moaned through the decks and open passageways. She turned back to the cabin.

  Clara and Frau Gruetzmann had put themselves to bed. Clara lay flat on her back, her face pale but heavy about her eyes, staring at the ceiling. Cristiano sat on the top bunk. Amelia took his hand to relieve his fear and to assess what she could do. Both women had vomited into buckets, the stench nauseating. Amelia drained one into the other and took it to the deck. The engines strained up one side of a wave, but then the propellers broke free of the sea, whining high as the ship slid down the swell.

  Day and night, this pendulous action remained. Luckily, both she and Cristiano remained unaffected. Cristiano worried about his mother and helped where he could. The cabin reeked of vomit, but it sat so low in the water it was impossible to open a porthole. The ship surgeon, McCausland, examined Clara and Frau Gruetzmann and instructed Amelia to give only small amounts of water. Amelia held Clara’s head from the pillow to sip from the glass, but whatever she managed to swallow soon returned to the bucket. After two days, despite the unrelenting motion, Frau Gruetzmann recovered a little, enough to sit and drink some weak black tea.

  Amelia had reports; they would see Ceylon in three days, if they were lucky. And the reports were good to their word. They sailed into Colombo on Monday, the twenty-sixth of July. With each metre they advanced, the sea calmed and the sky brightened until there was full sun. The port was busy, all manner and size of craft crisscrossing. The boat was surrounded by a sea of black hair as the native boys yelled to the passengers from rafts, trying to sell trinkets, diving for the coins the passengers threw into the blue sea. For the first time in days, Clara, weak and shaken, came to the deck.

  ‘The nausea won’t stop until I’m on dry land,’ she said.

  And so they arranged their passes. On land, Clara’s legs wobbled, drunk from the sea. They walked her to a shaded bench. Amelia looked at this strange place. The men, lithe and tall, wore long swathes of fabric, almost dresses, white turbans covering their dark hair. Some women wore rings through their noses. Men, indentured like beasts, pulled small single-seat vehicles, tooted at by cars, swerving past long carts drawn by oxen. Others, their heads shaved, were swathed in orange or maroon robes. Amelia tried to take it all in, but her eyes saw things she didn’t know how to understand. The ground was covered in gobs of red, the droppings of some exotic bird, and she instructed Cristiano to avoid them. But the men chewed something and then spat it to the street, leaving their mouths and the street stained red.

  Once Clara felt less nauseated, Frau Gruetzmann and Cristiano walked ahead towards the steamer. Clara smiled for the first time in days, which warmed Amelia’s heart. A heavy squall came over. Clara took Amelia’s arm, and they walked the long portico to the ship.

  Now they’d reached the equator, their morning walk was accompanied by a humidity that became higher and more oppressive until it broke into rain. And even then, the cool relief from the closeness, the exhaustion and the sticky skin was only brief as the steaminess rose again.

  ‘You’ll need to get used to this,’ Clara said. ‘Babinda isn’t so far from the equator.’

  The thought of such sultriness was unpleasing.

  This was the last leg of their journey to Australia. Each morning they would stop at a map that charted the ship’s progress.

  ‘Is Brisbane near Babinda?’ Amelia said.

  Clara pointed to Australia. ‘Brisbane is here.’ She ran her finger north, along the coastline, higher, higher and higher. ‘There’s Babinda.’

  ‘It’s not so far …’

  ‘Look at Italy. It’s the same distance as …’ She opened her thumb and her forefinger. ‘From Munich to the heel of the boot.’

  ‘That far …’ The distance flattened Amelia. Her only friend in Australia would be so far away.

  ‘We can write,’ Clara said.

  ‘But it won’t be the same.’

  Clara smiled. ‘Nothing is ever the same.’

  Amelia looked out to the clear horizon. What an irony – to have wished these days of travel to pass quickly. She wanted to pitch the ship’s anchor overboard, halt any more progress. In Clara, she’d found the friendship she’d had with Emma. She looked at the distance between Babinda and Brisbane.

  ‘Come,’ Clara said. ‘We’ve many verbs to master before Fremantle.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Australia rose on the horizon, shone at them. The passengers crowded the decks, two, three deep at the rail, jostling for their first glimpse of the port town of Fremantle at the mouth of the Swan River. It was a Friday morning, the sixth of August, 1920.

  ‘It’s so small,’ Clara said with a note of disgust but couldn’t take her eyes away.

  People started to yell to their loved ones, who were so far below Amelia doubted anyone could understand.

  ‘I’d be happy with a single hut,’ Amelia said.

  Clara continued to stare at the shore but raised her lips to a smile. ‘What have we come to?’

  Amelia bent next to Cristiano. ‘What do you hope to see first in Australia?’

  He looked to the shore. ‘A kangaroo.’

  She smiled. Men walked along the dock in time with the ship, beyond them carriages for coal and rows of warehouses. There was industry. Clara was too harsh.

  Frau Gruetzmann packed a small day bag and they joined the long i
mmigration queue. The day was indifferent, neither hot nor cold, but the sun shone, the sky a profound blue. They watched huge cranes haul the cargo from the hull. Cristiano had it on good authority there were three British automobiles to be unloaded. A mix of people of all ages stood at a distance.

  ‘What do you suppose they’re looking at?’ Clara said.

  Both the men and women wore hats, the women dressed in lightweight fabrics. And then Amelia remembered. It was no longer summer, as it was in Italy. In Australia everything was upside down; it was now August, almost Ferragosto, the celebration for the height of summer, yet it was the middle of winter. But the women dressed like it was summer.

  ‘They’ve come to see the “new chums”,’ Frau Gruetzmann said. ‘I was told about it. That’s what we are.’

  Frau Gruetzmann used the English words, and Amelia had no idea what they meant. But once Clara explained the term, it was evident to Amelia that ‘new chums’ was what they were. From the stern looks on the mob’s faces, Amelia was unsure what favour that classification afforded. Everywhere was English, all the signs and all the people speaking it.

  They began to walk. Amelia sucked the air deep into her lungs, fresh and clean but dry. Cars moved along the street, but there were also horses pulling drays. They passed a café and Clara asked for a table but couldn’t make herself understood, so Amelia took her coat sleeve and pulled her back outside, and they erupted into laughter. The streets were wide and bore so few people. They walked into a park and found a bench, part shaded by a tree. Even Cristiano was without words.

  Men and women lay on the grass, some seated. A noise, almost human, roared in the treetops. Cristiano covered his ears. Frau Gruetzmann’s eyes bulged. Clara looked to the canopy.

  ‘It must be a kookaburra,’ Amelia said. She looked at Cristiano. ‘It’s laughing at you.’

  They continued to look up but couldn’t spot the bird. What a wondrous sound, so different from a nightingale’s. But what had amused it? The other people paid it no heed. They were drinking from tall brown bottles. Italo had written of the Australians’ love of beer, and she presumed this was what they were drinking, the empty bottles left lying on the grass. But in a park and at this hour of the day?