Sweet Bitter Cane

by G S Johnston

She looked at the newspaper pages stuck to the wall, the writing in English. The date in the corner, the twenty-fifth of March, 1902, a Tuesday. She looked closely, tried to read the sentences, only understanding a few odd words. How would she ever comprehend this? On another part of the wall was another day’s newspaper. Why would you decorate a room like this? She put her flat palm to the wall, which buckled under her slight pressure. The wall was little more than a weather break.

  She had no idea where to unpack her things, but when she opened the wardrobe in the main bedroom, it was completely empty. The house was like the bedspread – pieces were pleasing but the whole wasn’t. She found the key to her trunk, undid the straps and then the lock. She lifted the top layer and placed the carefully folded silk blouse on the bed. Under it was a small blanket, embroidered with wandering cherry blossom. Her mother had packed it; it had been hers and was now intended for her first child. She tried to smell her mother. Tears came to her eyes. What had she done? She would have a child without her mother’s help.

  Heat coalesced on her forehead, above her lip. These damn flies. This dust on everything. And although it had rained, it was humid again, syrupy on her skin. Unpacking had upset her and she returned the items and closed the trunk.

  She heard steps on the front verandah and poked her head from the room into the hall. Italo stood. She pulled back into the room, dried her eyes and went to him. He’d washed his face, although it was still smeared with soot. She walked the few paces to the door, looked at him, as he did at her, through the veil of the metal-mesh flyscreen. Now his face was almost white, she could see he wore a thick moustache that hung down the sides of his mouth. This too hadn’t been in her photograph. And his thick dark hair really was gone, his pate shiny. And what was left of his hair, a thin band on top of his ears, was grey, but the cane soot lessened the effect.

  ‘The mills know no clock,’ he said. ‘The cane has to be delivered or there’s no end of problems.’

  Amelia smiled with her lips and nodded.

  ‘Why don’t you come in?’ she said.

  And then he looked at the screen door. He opened it, the hinges crying in pain. But he remained outside, on the verandah, looking at her from his great height.

  ‘You’re as beautiful as my aunts said.’

  Her eyes moistened again, and she did all she could to clamp the tears. She turned into the house, resting in the hall near the bedroom door. She heard his steps and the closing flyscreen.

  ‘You must be very tired,’ he said. ‘Let me go and wash and we’ll eat.’

  For some small moments she regarded him, as he did her. What did he see? But what was she hoping to see? For over two years, she’d stared at his photograph. Now she tried to see him. But he wasn’t really there, covered in this veil of soot and sweat. And what was there to read of a person in their physique?

  He stepped towards her. She braced herself. She didn’t want him to kiss her. Not here. Not like that. She stood her ground. He remained close.

  ‘If I could get by,’ he said.

  She looked behind her. She and her trunk were blocking the hallway. She half smiled and stepped aside.

  Italo walked through the house, out the side of the breezeway to the washroom. She went to the small kitchen. At least the roof didn’t leak, and the floor was dry. She’d never cooked on an open fire. Maria had told her how, but she was at a loss to remember and stirred the embers on the slab, moved the pot with the stew to a hook over the embers. With all of Italy’s poverty, at least her parents had a stove.

  She heard him moving in the washroom. What did she make of him? He was softly spoken, as Zia Fulvia had maintained, but not as expressive as his letters had suggested. Signora Pina knew of the photograph’s deceit and must now be laughing. Well, he may be older but at least he owned this large stretch of land. And the cane grew tall and strong. And he was tall and strong and healthy, although a little thin. The rich red land was good, not some marsh or barren hill.

  Italo came into the kitchen. He wore just a towel at his waist, dark hair in the shape of a crucifix on his chest. But the underside, along the ridge of his chest, was greyed. Like her brother Giuseppe’s, the hair trailed to his towel. She looked away.

  ‘I’m too used to living on my own,’ he said.

  But he didn’t move away or seek to find something else for cover. She turned back to him. What was she meant to do? Go to him? She’d never seen a man before, not like this, just her brothers or father, but they were different. His shoulders were wide, at least twice hers. And his body so long and flat and without a skerrick of fat. His arms were of another type to hers, long and rangy with bulges and depressions, as if bands constricted and released the muscles. Despite all her work in her father’s orchard, hers had no such signs of strength. His lower legs, his calves and ankles, were so large, as were his feet, some extra grip on the earth.

  What did he want? What did he expect?

  She swung to the fire. She heard him leave the room. Was he disappointed? Had she done the wrong thing? Were they to have fallen into one another’s arms? She stayed in the kitchen, took the lid and stirred the pot. The fire was too hot and, as Maria had warned, the stew had caught. She removed it from the heat and spooned it onto the plates.

  He returned to the main room and stood near the table, dressed in a white collarless shirt and grey serge trousers held with braces. He stepped back as she placed the plates. He’d lit a curious type of incense, a coil held on a metal tray, the odour strong and slightly unpleasant.

  ‘For the mosquitoes,’ he said.

  Without words, she returned to the kitchen for the damper and pot of dripping. He uncorked a bottle of wine and took two glasses from a sideboard. The bottle had no label or tax stamp. He smelt the cork and left the bottle to rest. She felt her nerves and moved to seat herself. He moved quickly to take her chair. Once he was seated opposite, he poured the wine. Even then they didn’t speak. As if acting some practised part, they lifted their glasses, touched them together and sipped the wine.

  ‘A little young, perhaps,’ he said.

  Then it was perfect for their first meal.

  ‘You’ve cooked on the open fire,’ he said.

  ‘Maria did.’

  ‘That’s right. She said she would.’

  She ate some of the stew. It was simple but tasty. He tore the damper. It was heavy like cake but not moist, quite unlike bread. He smeared the dripping on it.

  ‘Have you finished your harvest?’ she said.

  He shook his head slowly. ‘Many more days of work.’

  ‘Your land is large.’

  ‘Large?’ He raised his brow, which caused his shiny pate to ridge. ‘Oh … The field you came to this morning isn’t mine. It’s Manny Pellegrino’s. His crops were due at the mill.’

  So, she’d been left in Brisbane for some other man’s crop, not even his own.

  ‘We work in gangs,’ he said. ‘Harvest each other’s crops. We share the tools, the trucks and the labour. We just have to get the work done. No matter what.’

  And his land didn’t spread as far as she first presumed. ‘How far does your land extend?’

  He looked from his meal, his face set in questioning. ‘From the road to the hills, a hundred and forty acres, but about a hundred in use. When there’s time, we can walk the boundary.’

  She looked back at her meal. She hadn’t meant the question to be so pointed. ‘You burnt the cane on purpose?’

  He laughed. ‘It gets rid of the leaf rubbish. Makes the cutting quicker. And it drives out the rats and snakes.’

  ‘Snakes?’

  He looked and smiled. ‘And spiders too.’

  He was teasing her, as her brothers did.

  ‘Don’t you get burnt sugar?’

  He laughed, sat back in his chair. ‘The cane protects the pulp, but you’re right, we lose a little. But it’s quicker to harvest. So what we lose in the sugar we gain in time. And we can plant much closer together, so more cane
per piece of land.’

  She’d never considered so many things and had so much to learn.

  ‘I’ll have Signora Maria take you to the village.’

  So there was a village, not just a crooked sign.

  ‘I sense, from my mother’s letters, she disapproved of our match,’ Italo said.

  She froze. Signora Pina disapproved of almost everything in equal measure. But she didn’t want to say this, not now at any rate.

  ‘I’m sure I felt no such thing.’

  He pulled at a crust of damper and placed it in his mouth. His eyes never left hers as he chewed it slowly.

  ‘The house isn’t what you expected.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘I’m sorry there’s no stove.’

  ‘Maria said I’ll learn.’

  ‘I’ve plans to build a proper house, further up on the hill,’ Italo said.

  ‘She mentioned it.’

  ‘It’s the best view in the valley.’

  So the evening passed, with little questions of Italy, with small comments about his aunts, about the village, even some about his mother. He asked of the voyage, and she told him of Clara and Cristiano and the wonder of the Suez Canal and the violent storm in the Gulf of Aden. He remembered the men in Ceylon who chewed and spat the red matter.

  ‘It’s betel,’ Italo said. ‘They chew it with lime. I thought they were spitting blood.’

  He laughed and she tried to. But as they talked, Amelia felt a gulf, as large and rough as the Gulf of Aden; as unknown as the sea was Italo. With time, she told herself, with time.

  When it was time for bed, he excused himself to smoke a cigarette while he checked the horses in the stable, the long building she’d passed near the fields. After she’d cleared the meal and cleaned their plates, she closed the bedroom door. What was she to do now? What would he expect? There was no drape. She undressed. She put on her sleeping clothes and climbed into the bed, swirled the mosquito veil around her, lay on her back and stared at the ceiling.

  It was half an hour or more before she heard him come back to the house. She lay still, startled when he entered the room, bathed in the silvery moonlight. She feigned sleep. He shuffled about the room. She heard the rustle of fabric as he removed his clothes and opened her eyes to thin cracks. Through the veil, she saw his naked back. Two distinct ridges of muscle ran the sides of his long spine. His braces hung from his waist. He stepped from his shoes. He folded over, to pull down his trousers. His lean waist gave way to strong buttocks, his legs stretched long, reminding her of Giuseppe. He went to his side of the bed. She clasped her eyes, heard the covers move, felt his pressure on the mattress. He was naked. She stayed still, afraid to move, to breathe.

  Should she speak? Should he?

  How she wished she’d asked Clara what would happen. But he didn’t move and soon his breathing slowed and became lapping, so unlike his mother’s. Was this the reality of married life? She’d expected something else. A small draught brushed her cheek. And with it, she remembered her home, her parents, her brothers and herself all sleeping in the same room, their warmth pressed against the cold.

  And a certain sadness settled on her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  She woke with a start. Not a sound. No light. No drone of engines.

  She wasn’t on the boat. She’d arrived, slept in Italo’s bed. He was already gone. She lay still, but the moments stretched longer. And longer. She couldn’t bring herself to move. She jittered. Until now, this had been an adventure, as if she and Clara had stretched a thin corridor from Italy to Brisbane. But that was over. The door had shut. This was it. No return.

  She should rise and meet the day. But who was there to greet? No-one she knew. What had she done? This house was little more than a hut in the forest with no curtains at the windows, huge cracks in the floor. What were her family doing? Had they just woken? No. She’d no idea what time it was there. Why had she left her parents? They may have been poor, but they had a stove.

  Where was her dictionary? Even to her, the thought was irrational, but she mustered her strength, rose from the bed, found her gown and house shoes and walked to the hall. The verandah door was open, leaving just the flyscreen. It had no lock. He wasn’t out there. She walked through the breezeway to the main room. Her dictionary sat on the table. No-one. And no-one in the kitchen. The fire hadn’t been stirred.

  ‘Italo?’

  She held her breath. The clock on the mantle said it was just past five. Some money was on the table. Maria was coming to take her to the village. He mustn’t have wanted to wake her and left the money. No note. If he started work at this hour, no wonder he slept so soundly. She thought of returning to bed but felt uneasy. There were no locks. And if Italo was working, shouldn’t she? But first she would make herself coffee. In the kitchen she looked on the tabletop, through all the kitchen cupboards. There was no coffee. No grinder. Nothing. Nothing of any use. What type of man lived like this?

  She found the teapot, filled the kettle from the tap, stirred the fire. Where was the tea? She looked over the shelf, over those things on the mantle: King Tea, in a wrapper bag.

  This strange house, so much space it was like the outdoors, so many holes it was the outdoors. Perhaps if she unpacked her things it would at least begin to feel like home. In some solemn ceremony, she placed each item of clothing on the bed: the two cotton dresses, a woollen skirt she could never wear in this heat and the silk blouse her mother had bought her. She placed the bundle of Italo’s letters on the small table beside her bed.

  The memories each item evoked became overwhelming, and the heaviness swelled. She took her tea to the front verandah. There wasn’t even a bench to sit on, so she sat on the stair. The first sun appeared, rising on the distant field, turning the proud cane heads silver, coaxing them to maturity. Such a different field to the one that held her father’s sparse apple trees, the cane so closely packed and thick like a tapestry. The morning air was crisp but with each second the light felt harsher, hotter. Small flies swarmed in the air.

  She wished for Clara and Cristiano. It had been a happy time, and although Clara had been paid to chaperone her, they’d become friends. Perhaps they should have stayed on the boat and just continued their journey. She went inside to her portmanteau and retrieved a block of writing paper.

  But on the step, she had the sensation of being watched. Down the slope something moved against the cut grass, grey and the strangest beast she’d ever seen. It rose, conical on its broad hindquarters, over a metre tall, and glared at her. Two stunted arms held some blades of grass. It chewed slowly while it watched her, its dark eyes large in such a rodent-like face. And then this movement started in its stomach, low to the ground and rising. And then a head appeared, much smaller but shaped like the other.

  She gasped, which startled the animal. It must be a kangaroo. It must be the mother. The animal turned, fretful like a deer, slow, almost lazy and yet precise, and hopped away, her long tail beating the earth, disappearing into the brush some distance from the house. Amelia remained. If she stood still long enough perhaps the baby would tell its mother it was safe to return. But after five minutes it was clear the beast had gone.

  She sat on the verandah step and wrote to Clara, telling her although things were very unfamiliar, she was all right. She implored her to tell Cristiano she’d seen a kangaroo. Then she wrote to her parents and brothers but soon realised she’d written nothing more than a list of harsh complaints: the house, the heat, the dust, the lack of anything to cook on, the flies and her dull sorrow. She screwed up the paper and started again, sticking, as she had with Clara’s letter, to the factual: She was safe. Italo seemed lovely. She would write more when there was more to write. She told them of the kangaroo.

  She suddenly felt restless and changed her clothes and started down the hill, trying hard to put something sprightly in her step. The grass beneath her had been scythed, but it was an incredible colour, the green so vivid it almost hurt her
eyes. The humidity was thick, but the sky was blue, not a trace of cloud. At the bottom of the hill, she came to a path dividing the lower edge of the hill and the first of the fields.

  She crossed over. The canes appeared to grow in bunches, as many as ten and fourteen growing from one base, splaying out. They looked most curious, fiercely straight, reaching to the sky, most much taller than her. They didn’t appear to follow the sun, like sunflowers. They were independent.

  She took a cane in her hand. It was a type of grass, she’d read somewhere. It had some girth, more than she would have imagined. She pulled it. It flexed, the length marked by ridges, knuckles dividing the growth into smaller sections. Reeds grew from the higher sections, making the cane look top-heavy, and she wondered if they’d adorned the lower portion but had fallen off, leaving the knuckles. She must remember to ask Italo.

  She pulled until the head was at eye level. Above the hair of reeds was a type of flower, she supposed, but unlike any she’d ever seen. Rather than soft and concealing petals closed over like those of a rose or a camellia, this flower thrust itself forward, dry and brittle and bold, feathery like a duster.

  So this was sugarcane. Their fortunes rode on this thin, straight plant. She let it go. It hurtled back into the bunch, rocked slightly, its feathery head waving like a national flag.

  She turned to the house. In the distance, three brown-and-white cows walked ahead of a man with a pronounced limp. They moved along the ridge, away from the house. He waved to her and she returned his gesture. At the house, the cows had left pats on the grass to the side of the breezeway. But in the kitchen, the man had left a jug of fresh milk. It was still warm and she poured herself some, the taste comforting.

  She found an old broom, its bristles worn and slanted, and swept the verandah. No need for a shovel as, once prompted, the leaves and dust fell through the cracks. She set to work in the main room. For such a large chamber, there were few windows, the inside of the house dark and the light outside too harsh. She dusted the chairs and the mantle and the sideboard, then swept the floor. But each time she moved a piece of furniture it looked just the same, out of place and untidy.