by Neil Grant
‘She’s not coming. End of.’
There is a break where his mother must be talking but her voice is so low that he cannot hear it. He can picture the head wobble she does when she is trying to say yes, or trying to say maybe, trying to convey she understands, trying to calm or reassure.
‘I’m not talking about it anymore.’ A classic Cord Solace shutdown.
Rudra creeps to the door. They are in the living room. He can see the back of his dad’s head, the scars beneath his number-one haircut like gill slits. He can see his mum, her hands pressed as if in prayer against her lips. And they seem further away than ever, a distance that cannot be crossed. Rudra often wonders why they even got married.
This much he knows. His mum, out here from India at nineteen, studying physics at Sydney Uni – a bright girl from a rural village who earned her way to boarding school in Kolkata. Refusing her childhood ghosts and building a wall of books to keep out the gods and goddesses that pound on it nightly.
Kolkata, she tells him when he is still small enough for her lap, is the home of the fearsome goddess Kali. Kali, the black one; she who dances on corpses, who drinks blood, his mum says, wincing but not refuting the words. Rudra, cowering in the corner while Kali’s tongue, dripping red, reaches for him. His mum says not to fear her; Kali is powerful but she is also a protector, a destroyer of the demonic asuras. She tells him these stories, then tells him not to believe. She is ashamed – he can see this even at age five. Folk stories, she calls them, but Rudra sees beyond that, even then.
Rudra’s dad, fearing Kali so much he banishes her statue. She is only a keepsake, Rudra’s mum tells him. To remind me of Kolkata. She is not a goddess. There is no such thing. And Rudra wants to say, But what about the sea goddess taking my words? How can you pick and choose your stories? Rudra sometimes pulls black Kali from her hiding place. She’s a statue no bigger than his hand; she is cool, even among the old jumpers at the back of the wardrobe. He touches her garland of skulls and that lolling black tongue, and feels that she is real and they are a part of each other. He also feels terrible confusion at a shame so deep, buried in jumpers, hidden from the world.
His mum met his dad at the fish market, in Pyrmont. She was there with friends, eating squid tubes and fresh crab. She loved the market – the smell reminded her of the Sundarbans, a vast tangled mangrove swamp in West Bengal. Here, the steel tang of fish; there the glitter of scales. Her, as a child, placing them on her fingernails, dancing for her parents, in the lamplight.
Cord was twenty-three and had inherited his father’s boat. He had big capable hands and deep blue eyes. She liked the way he walked and told her friends so. So confident, that one, she said, pointing at him. He knows the world. She was bold, six months into her science degree – a girl who had escaped the village and saw everything open before her.
One of her friends stopped the fisherman and asked about his catch, then asked him to sit and have coffee. He was busy, he said. Had to offload the fish and get back, he said. And it should have stopped there. Could have, so easily.
I was wild back then, she tells Rudra. A wild and stupid girl. I bought a whole mackerel – sides barred green, its underbelly plump and glossy. Such beauty you cannot imagine.
Cord was leaving when she stood in front of his ute. Back then she thought she was in control. She handed him the fish through his open window and he looked at her like she was mad.
That night, he laid the fish on his bench and slipped the filleting knife from the vent to the gill slits. With a quick flick, he pulled the guts into a bowl. Cold, pink and red, smooth. Something caught his attention and he grubbed out a piece of paper. He unfolded it to read Nayna and a Sydney phone number.
Things twist on the smallest point. A tremor far at sea, down deep where no one can see. And these things, they wash through time, collecting people, carrying them, building speed and force, until they erupt one day like a tsunami on a white sand beach.
In the living room, his mum is sitting beside his father on the couch. Rudra’s eye is pressed to the narrow gap between the hinge side of the door and the jamb. No more than a pinkie’s width to see it all. The TV is on but the volume is down. There is silence and space between Nayna and Cord. A space where Rudra would sit when he was younger, not understanding then he was both buffer and glue.
‘She’s my mother,’ says his mum.
Silence rises from his father like smoke. Rudra can see the outline of his jaw, chewing on the bitterness.
‘And she has no one left. I am the only child. She will die now my baba has gone.’
‘That old witch will go on forever.’
‘You don’t talk of her like that.’
‘I don’t want to talk about anything.’
‘You never do.’
‘She’s not coming. You’re not going. End of.’
‘I have saved some money, Cord.’
‘Good. I need cash for repairs.’
‘I worked for it. All last winter, when you couldn’t fish, I was serving food in that damn restaurant.’ She never swears. ‘I put food on our table and I saved some money. For a time such as this, Cord. For now.’
‘Then send her the money and be done with it.’
‘That’s not how it works in an Indian family. I have responsibilities.’
‘This is not an Indian family.’
Rudra turns from the lounge room and slips out the front door. The cicadas are drilling the night as he walks down the street. At the end he takes a right, turning away from the sea and walking up the creek edge.
The water is brassy with moonlight as he picks his way between the sawtooth edges of oyster shells. On the other side of the creek, Wallace’s light beckons to him as he doubles back towards the creek mouth.
There is a good stock of dinghies on the foreshore. When the pub closes, the men will clamber in and row back home, splashing water on their faces in the hope of sobering up. Some holiday boats are turned over against the weather, waiting to be rowed over four times a year, filled with wine, cheese and Hawkesbury oysters. Rudra flips a boat and drags it down the sand, leaving behind a slim furrow. It’s borrowing, Maggs’s voice whispers, it’s not stealing if you bring it back. It’s not as if it’s a local’s boat or anything – that is Rudra’s invisible line. Slipping the oars in the rowlocks, he pushes out.
Water tocks on the hull as Rudra moves towards the far bank. The tide is running out so he angles above Wallace’s landing, pulling on the oars, feeling the tightening in his shoulders. When the bow hits the sand, he jumps out, dragging the boat to Wallace’s jetty and tying it off. He climbs the rough concrete steps to the house and knocks on Wallace’s door. The cicadas are now in a wild fury and the trees on the escarpment are restless.
Wallace appears, framed by the doorway, bleary-eyed. Rudra can see red wine tusks at the corners of his mouth.
‘Come in,’ he says, backing into his home.
Wallace built this place himself, over time, from scrounged materials. Not a pretty house, but it serves its purpose: to keep Wallace dry, mainly, and warm, mostly.
Wallace’s dog, Tangent, is asleep on the couch. He is grey around the muzzle now but still perky in the way of all little dogs. He gets called a chihuahua a lot. I’m a miniature pinscher – a minpin, he snarls. So get it straight or I’ll have a piece of you. The dog wakes and rolls his belly at Rudra. His tail moves lazily. Rudra sits beside him and, pulling him onto his lap, rubs him behind the ears.
‘Wanna watch TV?’ Wallace asks, flicking on his old black-and-white. Rudra has never seen one of these relics anywhere but at Wallace’s. Because it makes everything look arty. Like a National Geographic photo. For this Wallace turns the sound down, so it provides a backdrop to his life – moving wallpaper – to be ignored or watched as he sees fit. The cicadas outside get shriller and shriller until it seems like the air will combust. Rudra doesn’t know how to start this conversation.
He looks around the room as if seeing it for
the first time; exactly how it is rather than just the container that has always held Wallace. The kitchen crammed in one corner with walls streaked with sausage fat. The raggedy furniture worn shiny, stuffing stumbling from cuts. Sun-bleached photos of the mullet run stuck to the wall with Blu Tack – the killing of so many fish. The whole place shabby and old and on the brink of being forgotten by the world.
And there in the middle of all those photos, one makes him feel as if he is falling through himself. It is of Rudra with his mum and dad, when he is maybe seven or eight. He can even remember the bright-blueness of that very day. They are about to hop on the ferry to Palm Beach. They got fish and chips that day, and he tamed those seagulls, oh yes he did. His mum called him Master of Seagulls. There she is, shading her eyes against the sun, bright as polished brass. She is smiling, her dark hair lifted by the lightest of breezes. But his dad, he is coming right down the lens – reaching through time and space and, finding his son, pushing his fists high inside his chest and crushing Rudra’s heart.
‘What was Dad like back then?’ Rudra asks.
Wallace answers, almost apologetically, ‘He’s always been a hard man, Rudra. Hard to like and hard to know.’
‘And Mum?’
‘She was special, your mum.’
‘Still is,’ says Rudra. Cord Solace’s fist is around her heart too. Rudra squeezes his eyes shut for a second, watching tiny flashes of light arc on the inside of his lids. ‘I should get back,’ he says, barely a whisper.
‘You only just got here.’
‘I know.’
‘Well, you know where I am if you need something.’
‘Thanks, Wallace. Have a good night.’ Rudra closes the door and walks to the jetty. Patonga’s lights hit the water so softly it looks as if there can be no malice in the town. As if, behind every window, in every lounge room, there is calm.
4
PEACE COMES TO THE SOLACE HOUSE and stays for a while. Fixing the boat takes up most of Cord’s time and the arguments burn themselves to silence. But this isn’t a comfortable peace – the kind that Sunday afternoons are cut from. Instead, it is more like a truce – an uneasy and purposeful forgetting.
And then, all at once, war returns. Rudra shelters from the bombardment in his bedroom. The shells sing their destructive song, and sometimes it seems like shouting, and sometimes it seems like tears. And sometimes it is just heartbreaking silence. He doesn’t know why that feels the hardest of all.
His dad goes fishing without him. He takes Wallace. And Wallace won’t meet Rudra’s eye. He leaves Tangent at the Solace home for company and Rudra sits in the deep shade of the verandah with the little dog on his knee, feeling his heartbeat quicken with the wind.
Restless energy forces Rudra to act. He calls Maggs and they arrange a meet-up. Together they cross the Rip Bridge in search of flathead.
The water, smashing its way through the narrow nip in the bay, is rarely at peace. The bridge connects the far side of the coast with the peninsula and cuts the long trip from Booker Bay to Daleys Point down to mere seconds. They watched a video about the bridge at school. An engineering marvel, the voiceover called it, spanning the troublesome rip in one graceful leap. Rudra has never trusted the bridge though. Even now, when he crosses it in a car, he holds his breath from one side to the other, counting the expansion joints as they clunk beneath the tyres.
The concrete pavers that form the footpath rattle as they walk. The railing is barely a metre high. Rudra looks down to the coursing water and oyster-scabbed rocks below. They spot Judge and two of the year-zero heroes loitering at the railing halfway across.
‘Let’s turn back, Maggs,’ says Rudra.
‘Why?’
‘We’ll get more fish off the pier at Ettalong.’
‘Toadfish?’ Maggs shakes his head. ‘That’s not fish. The spot we’re going is the bomb. Flathead’ll be on the menu tonight.’
Rudra pulls his cap down over his eyes. With his red bucket and his rod, he feels like a kid heading to the beach.
As they approach the year zeroes, Judge pipes up. ‘Well, lookee who it is, lads. It’s Daggs and his faithful sidekick Curry Boy.’
Tangent growls way down in his throat. Maggs pushes his cap back with the tip of his rod. The footpath is narrow. There is nowhere to go.
‘Nice tatt,’ says Maggs, nodding to Judge’s Southern Cross, the stringy script below it: Remembering Cronulla 2005. ‘You must’ve been like seven years old when the riot went down.’
‘My uncle was there, you little dog. Protecting the beach from invaders.’ He sneers at Rudra.
‘Whatever,’ says Maggs. He rests his rod against the rail and looks eighteen metres down to the churning water. ‘Jumping, are you?’
‘What’s it to you?’ says Judge.
‘Just concerned, that’s all. Might break a hip or something. Should leave it to the younger fellas.’
Judge spits. ‘S’pose you’re going to tell me you’ve jumped before.’
‘Might’ve.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Maggs,’ hisses Rudra. ‘Don’t get sucked in.’
‘Yeah, Maggs. Listen to the curry-muncher. He knows what’s best for you.’
‘Piss off,’ says Maggs.
‘What?’
‘You heard me, shitbird.’
‘Cheeky.’ Judge lunges at Maggs. ‘Little.’ He catches his arm. ‘Arsewipe.’ Turns Maggs’s arm up behind his back. ‘Give us a hand here, lads,’ he yells to his mates. ‘Let’s learn him some manners.’
‘Leave him!’ But Rudra knows it will do no good.
The three year zeroes wrestle Maggs to the bridge railing. Tangent runs in circles snapping at their ankles.
‘Let’s dangle him,’ shouts Judge, excited now, kicking out at Tangent. Maggs is a fish on a hook, his fight trembling into their arms. They get him up and over the rail. They lower him – one at each leg and one holding the back of his shirt. Maggs goes limp; he knows better than to fight this one.
‘Let go,’ says Judge to the guy holding Maggs’s shirt. The guy backs away, hands up in mock surrender.
‘You’ll kill him!’ yells Rudra.
‘Say you’re sorry, Daggs.’
‘Piss off, Judge,’ Maggs replies.
‘Be nice, mate. I got your life in my hands.’ He turns to his other sidekick. ‘Let go of his leg. I got him.’
The other year zero is unsure. ‘I got him!’ yells Judge, grabbing the other leg. His mate eventually lets go and Judge shakes Maggs above the water. A fishing boat slows to look. There are two-foot standing-waves beneath the bridge and legends of broken spines and bleeding lungs.
‘Say. You’re. Sorry,’ says Judge, jerking Maggs at each word. Maggs’s left shoe comes loose and Judge fumbles. Judge’s hand slips from the ankle and loses hold of the toes.
Maggs falls.
Rudra runs to the railing in time to see Maggs managing to flip his legs back under him, hitting the water feet first, as straight as he’s able. It is not a pretty entry – a low scorer by Olympic standards. The water flowers white for a moment, fizzing. Then all trace of Maggs is swallowed by the churning rip.
‘Shit, Judge,’ says one of the year zeroes. ‘You might’ve killed him.’
‘We should look for him,’ say the other one. ‘He could be in trouble.’
‘Be in more if we stick around,’ says Judge. ‘I reckon we get gone.’ Could be fear in his eyes.
Rudra shouts, ‘Bastards!’ as they run from the bridge. He chases after them before veering off and taking the J-shaped footpath that leads down to the water.
Rudra reaches the water’s edge and looks out over the lumpy water. He scans left and right but sees nothing. No! No-no-no-no-no! The words, machine-gunned from deep inside do not sound like his own. He runs twenty metres up the bank towards Woy Woy before the sheoaks and mangroves stop him. ‘Maggs,’ he calls. ‘Maggs!’ Tangent empties a volley of yaps into the air. ‘Maggs!’ The name scours the back of
Rudra’s throat. ‘Maggs!’ He runs back to the spot where he saw Maggs fall. ‘Maggs.’ His voice fails. ‘No, Maggs. No.’
Then, from around the mangroves at the water’s edge, Maggs drags his sorry arse. He is limping, carrying his surviving shoe in one hand, carefully picking his way through the oysters. His nose is bleeding.
‘I can’t believe they dropped me,’ he says.
5
FINALLY, SHE ARRIVES, LIKE SHE WAS always going to. She stands on their doorstep mid-afternoon, small, with a battered cardboard suitcase. They have never met, but she is so familiar – that smile, the tips of her ears poking from her hair. Rudra thinks he should probably hug her, but he shakes her hand like the stupid kid he is and leads her to the kitchen.
Nayna is bent over the stove, stirring soup. She looks up and blinks once, twice. They stand apart from each other, the wooden spoon hovering, dripping soup to the floor. And then they are together, his mother and grandmother, and their eyes are closed and they don’t speak.
The shoulder of his grandmother’s sari is wet with tears by the time she hugs Rudra. She smells of fenugreek, and it is the most exotic and the most normal smell he has ever come across. She holds him out at arm’s length.
‘What a strong boy you have become, Rudra. Like your dadu – your grandfather.’ She looks at her daughter. ‘Does he know this word, Nayna? Have you taught him Bangla? So much like him, don’t you think, Nayna?’
Nayna waggles her head.
‘Of course he does. Your dadu would be so proud. So proud. Where is your husband, Nayna? Are you keeping him a secret all these years? No photos or nothing like that.’
‘He’s fishing, Ama.’
‘Fishing, is it? Well, it is not the best but it is not the worst. It is good to be busy, Nayna. A lazy man is trouble. I have always said that. But look at me. I talk too much. Can you make me a cup of cha, Nayna. Nice and sweet. I have presents for you. Here in my bag, they are. Let me sit down and I’ll show you. You will like them.’ She winks at Rudra conspiratorially. ‘I brought ladoos.’
