The Origin of Me

by Bernard Gallate

  Tuesday I had History with Mrs Hatcher, who, like Ms Tarasek, has an alternative approach to teaching. She encourages free debate, and today things got a little loose.

  ‘What do Moses, Oedipus, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White and Superman all have in common?’ Mrs Hatcher said, tapping the e-board to make them appear. ‘Anybody?’

  ‘They were all abandoned children.’

  ‘Correct, Isa. The foundling is a character type found frequently in historical narratives, mythology and popular culture. The child is often discovered and nurtured by a lowly couple, unaware of its special destiny. In other variations the child is raised by animals. For instance, Romulus and Remus were suckled by a wolf, Paris by a bear.’

  ‘Paris Hilton?’ Starkey said. ‘That’s hectic.’

  ‘Not her,’ Pericles said. ‘Paris was a prince in Greek mythology who abducted Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, which triggered the Trojan War.’

  ‘The Greeks practised a form of child abandonment called exposure,’ Mrs Hatcher said. ‘If a child was disabled, deformed or deemed somehow imperfect by the elders, they would leave the child on a hillside to the mercy of the elements.’

  ‘That’s called murder,’ Cheyenne Piper said.

  ‘They didn’t see it that way because the child still had a slim chance of surviving, which the Greeks would attribute to the intervention of the gods. Though yes, Cheyenne, most died from hypothermia – if they weren’t ravaged by wild dogs.’

  ‘Those Greeks were barbaric,’ Cheyenne said.

  ‘Hold on,’ Pericles said. ‘Athens was the cradle of Western civilisation, the birthplace of democracy.’

  ‘Nice if you were male and belonged to the elite ten per cent who were citizens and owned slaves,’ Liliana Petersen said.

  ‘Yeah. You could force them to work all day and reward them with a flogging,’ her twin, Ingrid, finished her thoughts. ‘Now that’s democracy.’

  Mrs Hatcher turned to Pericles to encourage a rebuttal.

  ‘It had to start somewhere.’ He shrugged. ‘That was thousands of years ago. Things evolve over time.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Cheyenne said. ‘Everyone knows you Greeks are still the same. One set of rules for the guys and a different set for the girls.’

  Mrs Hatcher held up her hands. ‘Let’s keep this civil, please.’

  ‘Cheyenne has no idea,’ Phoenix said.

  ‘But you do?’ Nads said. ‘China still has child restriction policies. What happens when a couple wants a boy and gets a girl? You’re lucky you were spared.’

  ‘Darvin, please!’ the teacher said. ‘No personal invectives.’

  Phoenix stood, hands on hips. ‘I was born in Australia. So were my parents and my grandparents.’

  ‘Big deal,’ Starkey said. ‘You’re still a blow-in, so sit down. I can trace my family back to the First Fleet. We’ve been here the longest out of anyone.’

  ‘For a white boy,’ Isa said. ‘And of course white men never did anything nasty, did they? No – they just massacred the first peoples, stole Aboriginal kids away from their families and tried to breed out the Aboriginal race. There’s equality in action. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people weren’t even fully counted in the census till nineteen seventy-one. Go, white man!’

  ‘That was ages ago,’ Starkey said. ‘It’s got absolutely nothing at all to do with me.’

  ‘If the past means nothing, then stop bragging about your stupid convict roots.’

  Mrs Hatcher looked at her watch then ended the session. Nothing like a spirited discussion to bring out people’s true colours. And it made me realise for the first time just how white Crestfield was. It’s funny: dressed in my blue blazer with its golden trim I fit perfectly into the demographic, but my secret deformity means that I’ll never feel I belong there. Still, it was better than Ancient Greece. If I’d been born with the nub, I would’ve been abandoned on a hillside to become dog food. Grecian GravyLog®.

  Homunculus ridiculed me intermittently all the way home with politically incorrect names for someone who doesn’t conform to the physical norm. Riding up in the lift, I slapped my forehead to shut him up. Inside the apartment, I made myself a peanut butter sandwich, contemplating all the reading I had to do for school, but the tantalising mystery of the Percy coincidence drew me back into the pages of My One Redeeming Affliction.

  Bloody arrival to bloodier departure, my father William’s life was punctuated by accidents – some grave, others fortuitous. His conception was the unintended but hardly unforeseeable result of an incautious liaison between wealthy industrialist Thaddeus Stone and his mistress Evie Griffin. Weighing nine pounds and possessing an exceptionally large head, William had to be cut from his mother’s belly, a procedure only the infant survived. Thaddeus already had six grown children, so to avoid scandal he gave the child to his deceased lover’s sister, Hannah, and her husband, Matthias Stroud, a Cornish tin miner. Unable to produce their own, they considered the child a blessing from Heaven, and the boy thrived in the countryside.

  Shortly after William turned nineteen, Matthias declared his plan to seek his fortune on the goldfields of New South Wales. He asked William to look after his mother in his absence, but the young man’s fierce desire to join his father on the adventure prevailed. William abandoned his study of philology, breaking a condition of the trust established by his birth father, and together he and Matthias set sail for the colony.

  The Araluen diggings yielded mostly alluvial gold: the precious grains gleaned by hours of cradling, sluicing and panning. In a good week a miner might extract fifty or sixty ounces, fetching about four pounds on the market – ten times the average weekly wage for a factory worker. A bad week would produce nothing. Though the work was arduous, the diggers were bonded by a shared dream and, unlike at many other fields, a fair degree of harmony existed between the various nationalities.

  Two Chinese fellows, Ah To (who chose the English name Johnny) and Lin Cheong (known as Mac), supplied William and Matthias with their tea, flour, sugar and fresh vegetables. In return for English lessons, Johnny introduced William to the exotic tastes of dried fish and pickled ginger, and the game of fan-tan. Along with poker and two-up, it became my father’s preferred form of entertainment. Life itself was a game of chance for William, and whenever his pockets were full he went out to play. I knew nothing of his fondness for gambling nor the awful repercussions of the habit till some time after his death, when Johnny visited my family to pay his respects and, under duress from my mother, revealed all. The only gambling stories my father had ever told us involved taking chances that paid off.

  One of those stories began with the decision to leave the Araluen diggings in the autumn based on the flip of a penny. William and Matthias bade farewell to Johnny and Mac and headed north to the Turon River near Bathurst, granting themselves six months to strike it rich. If the story’s true, their good fortune arrived before they’d even pitched their tents. As William was digging a cesspit, his shovel hit something metallic a few feet beneath the surface. With incredulous fervour, the men dug out an enormous nugget of gold. It was officially weighed in at 132 pounds and six ounces troy, fetching £5467! Divided in half, it was still a fortune.

  Only blind greed could’ve kept a man on the fields a day longer. The pair travelled to Sydney, where Matthias bid William a heartwrenching farewell and set sail for England. He returned to his wife Hannah a wealthy man. But, having found great fortune in New South Wales, William believed his destiny lay in the colony’s bustling port.

  Lodging at the Ship and Mermaid Hotel on Gloucester Street, my father struck up conversation with a Greek fisherman from the small island of Ithaca. Over copious pints of ale, Dimitrios gave a rollicking account of his odyssey around the world. William suggested they eat at one of the fried-fish-and-oyster shops but Dimitrios refused, declaring them the last resort of hungry drunkards. He shared his dream of buying a fishing boat and opening a restaurant selling only the freshest fi
sh and oysters, then invited William to his tiny cottage on Millers Point to sample his snapper pie. One glorious bite and my father promised to make his friend’s dream come true.

  Six months later, with William’s finance and Dimitrios’s experience, the pair opened a small oyster saloon a stone’s throw from their first meeting place. Selling oysters and exceptionally fresh fish, the establishment quickly became well patronised, especially by drunkards when the public houses closed.

  Seven years of solid business later, William and Dimitrios sold the saloon for a handsome profit and my father took another gamble, acquiring a lease on the top level of George Pemberton’s newly built Magnificent Emporium. The partners decorated their dining room with copies of classical statues, some carved from marble, most cast in plaster with a faux-marble finish. Assuming them to be authentic antiquities, Sydney’s high society flocked to the Ionian Restaurant to immerse themselves in the splendour of its decor, thrilled to be surrounded by statues they assumed to be the spoils of plunder.

  Wednesday afternoon, Ms Tarasek announced pairs for the collaboration project. My hunch – that I’d be partnered with Isa Mountwinter, who I hadn’t spoken to since she’d cornered me in the library last Thursday – was confirmed. Obviously finding the idea of working together irksome, she requested a partner swap. Despite the feeling being mutual, my self-esteem took another dive. Awkwardly for both of us, the request was denied.

  Ms Tarasek showed us a photo of a rocky landscape covered in material. ‘In nineteen sixty-nine, the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, along with their volunteers, wrapped Little Bay in thousands of metres of synthetic fabric. It was the largest public artwork in the world. They continued working together for another forty years, until Jeanne-Claude’s death. This is devotion, yes?’

  Ms Tarasek directed us to sit opposite our partners and gave each pair a slab of clay and an empty bowl. ‘Truly successful collaborations are rare, because egos get in the way. Today we learn to merge our creative impulses.’ She filled our bowls with water. ‘Without tools, you will create one piece together. No planning, no talking at all. Be guided by your intuition. Begin.’

  Isa wouldn’t even look at me, which made non-verbal communication challenging. Minutes passed without either of us touching the clay. Worried we’d have nothing to show, I whispered, ‘What should we make?’

  Isa shushed me and pinched off a small nugget for herself, then pushed the rest to me. ‘That’s yours,’ she whispered. ‘Make whatever you want.’

  I looked around the studio. Everybody else was getting stuck in. Mullows and Cheyenne Piper had made their clay sloppy and were squishing it between each other’s fingers. Cheyenne’s eyes were shut, and she appeared to be channelling Demi Moore in the pottery scene from Ghost. Mullows caught me looking and winked.

  Disregarding whatever plan Isa had for her clay – if there was one – I began modelling half an oyster shell, influenced, I suppose, from the previous night’s reading. She shrugged a what-the-hell shrug, so I made the other half and connected them. She shook her head and frowned. I tapped my watch, so she rolled her clay into a small sphere, dipped her finger in water and smoothed it into a pearl. Ms Tarasek came over and placed Isa’s pearl inside my shell.

  ‘Here is a perfect union of minds,’ she said to the whole class. ‘Lincoln and Isa have trusted their instincts to create a cohesive and meaningful piece.’

  ‘You know, a pearl is nothing more than a self-protective response to an invading irritant,’ Isa said to me.

  ‘I didn’t. But thank you for sharing.’

  Pericles Pappas is a nice guy, but I noticed during squad he gets edgy whenever Nads, Mullows and Starkey are around. Sometimes he seems nervous talking to me. Could be because he’s buddies with Isa and Phoenix, who wouldn’t piss on me if I caught fire. This afternoon I was feeling chuffed that I’d managed to stay right behind him for the entire three-kilometre training session, until we got out of the pool and he accused me of drafting.

  ‘Don’t even know what that means.’

  ‘You slipstreamed me the whole way, which makes the swim thirty per cent easier. You should’ve tapped.’

  ‘I didn’t want to pass.’

  ‘Then don’t come so close. It’s annoying.’

  I have zero interest in competition, but Pericles obviously does. My only goal was avoiding nub detection by the swimmer behind.

  Training finished later than usual, and I was ravenous when I got home. Dad had left a note saying that if he was late there were some gourmet sausages to grill and eat with pre-made slaw and mash. At seven-thirty, unable to wait any longer, I broke the seal of the sausage tray. Four gourmet bangers, translucent skins bulging with minced lamb and Middle Eastern spices. I was overcome by an intense hunger, stronger than I’d ever experienced before – an instinctual urge. Without considering the ramifications, I bit off the end of a sausage and sucked out the raw filling. It was gamey and spicy and delicious, and one was not enough. Dad walked through the door and caught me with the third sausage in my mouth, no grill on the bench, no cooking smells.

  ‘Quickest way to give yourself salmonella, mate.’

  ‘I couldn’t wait.’

  ‘You’re an animal.’

  ‘I desperately needed protein,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve been thinking exactly the same. It wouldn’t hurt you to bulk up a bit now that you’re right on the verge of turning sixteen, so I’ve booked us an introductory session with a personal trainer at BigTown Gym™.’

  ‘Terrific,’ I said, thumb-gouging my eyes at the thought of participating in another physical activity that could expose the nub.

  ‘Lincoln, you’ve been acting very strangely since the weekend. It feels like you’re avoiding me. Is everything okay?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m just missing Pop Locke really badly. He died a year ago tomorrow.’ It was only half the reason for my despondence, but I wasn’t ready to reveal the rest.

  ‘I know. I miss him terribly too.’ Dad’s voice broke, his chin crumbled. ‘I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye properly.’ He started crying, which really threw me. Then, attempting to recompose himself, he said between sobs, ‘We had some unfinished business. I disappointed him very badly.’

  I’d never seen my father fall into such a broken state so suddenly, not even on the day Pop died or at his funeral. Tonight, as he wiped his nose with the back of his hand, he seemed embarrassed that his vulnerability had been exposed. ‘Let’s talk about it another time, eh?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, unable to utter anything more encouraging than that, and afraid to tell him he’d disappointed me as well.

  Sweet sixteen today and I’ve only been kissed once, by Nicole Parker. Terrific but ended badly. Regret at my lack of experience was weighing heavily on my mind as I sat in one of the fleet of minibuses taking Year 10 to see

  CHARLES DARWIN: VOYAGES AND IDEAS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD

  at the National Maritime Museum in Pyrmont.

  Our first stop was a re-creation of Darwin’s cabin; a flimsy hammock was strung up above a table and chairs. Having been to the exhibition twice already, Tibor Mintz assumed the role of personal guide, unaware of my personal connection to the subject.

  ‘Darwin shared it with two others,’ he said. ‘Charting coastlines was the main point of the voyage, not his specimen-collecting.’

  ‘It would’ve been awesome sailing around the world,’ I said.

  ‘Except that he suffered from terrible seasickness.’

  ‘Still, what an adventure.’

  Starkey poked my back. ‘Why are you hanging out with T-boring? Come and check out Darwin’s crabs.’ He pulled me over to the display of crabs caught on the epic voyage, on loan from Oxford University. ‘Do you reckon they flew over first class?’

  ‘Sure,’ Nads said, cuffing his head. ‘They were served oysters and champagne on take-off, dickhead.’

  I broke away to check out the drawings and watercolours of South America’s flora and
fauna. Who’d have the patience to record everything so meticulously? There would’ve been so much work in pickling all the insects, and skinning and stuffing animals. Lucky Darwin had a trusty cabin boy, Syms Covington, assisting him. I bet they had some interesting conversations as they chowed down on roast turtle.

  Heather Treadwell, leader of the Crestfield Bible Study Group, and David York, staunch atheist, were having a discussion on the existence of Noah’s ark beside the display of flesh-eating plants. David was arguing that the larger, more ferocious animals would’ve devoured the smaller ones before the first drop of rain fell. Heather countered that God can do anything because he’s God – including creating man fully formed, without the involvement of evolution. Having been a member of the Fire Station Church for six months, where they preached quite a literal interpretation of scripture, I could appreciate where Heather was coming from, but evolution is a scientific fact.

  ‘Show them your backside and win the argument for the atheist,’ Homunculus said distinctly. I thought Heather and David had heard him too because they both turned and looked at me at that exact moment. I skulked away, scorched by shame.

  During lunch, Starkey spread a rumour of a bikini parade at the upstairs exhibition, EXPOSED! THE STORY OF SWIMWEAR, and persuaded a group of us to sneak in and check it out. When Nads and Mullows realised he was bullshitting, they punched him and left. But three black-and-white photos on the walls caught my eye.

  The first was of Australian swimmer Annette Kellermann posing in front of a painted ocean backdrop, foot resting on fake stone. She was wearing a thigh-length one-piece with tights underneath. The caption said that Harvard professor Dudley Sargent had measured thousands of students and, finding Annette’s proportions closest to the Venus de Milo, he’d declared her the perfect woman. I guess she was the 1910 version of Vienna Voronova. A year later, Annette was the first woman to swim with a mermaid tail in a film and, five years after that, the first big star to do a nude scene. Serious legend.