by John Clanchy
THE HARD WORD
John Clanchy was born in Melbourne but has lived in Canberra since 1975. For some years he was head of an academic advisory service for students and later Foundation Director of the Graduate Teaching Program in the Graduate School at the Australian National University. His short stories have won awards in Europe, the US and New Zealand as well as in Australia.
Other books by the author.
Short stories and novellas
Lie of the land
Homecoming
Novels
Breaking Glass
If God Sleeps (with Mark Henshaw, under the pseudonym J. M. Calder)
To my son
Edward James Grant Clanchy
(1974-1998)
Miriam
‘Look what I’ve found,’ Philip says. When all I’d sent him to the laundry for was frozen peas.
‘See?’ he says again when I don’t turn.
‘Philip,’ I say, ‘I’m trying to get this roast in the oven. If it doesn’t go in this minute, it’ll be nine o’clock before we eat.’
Though this isn’t the reason I don’t turn. The reason I don’t turn is that I know whatever Philip has found that isn’t frozen peas will be just another of his childish, schoolboy jokes.
That I normally love.
But not now. Not today. Not right at this minute.
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I can wait.’
And he does, standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the laundry. I do not look at him, but he fills the corner of my gaze each time I move between the bench and the shelves, between the shelves and the stove. I lay the sprigs of rosemary across the pale dusted skin of the lamb, sprinkle the last of the oil, and then lift the tray into the oven.
‘There,’ I say, but still I don’t turn or raise my eyes. At the sink I peel the last resistant orange glue of flour and paprika from my fingers and look out into the yard. In the reflections of the glass, I try to guess what it is that Philip is holding. Without giving him the satisfaction of actually looking. Something white and solid projects from his chest. It bounces languidly up and down in his hand.
‘It’s melting,’ he warns.
I dry my hands, breathing. Before I look. I am not going to be surprised, I tell myself, whatever it is.
‘God, Philip –’ It’s Laura, my daughter, who’s surprised. Who’s come bursting into the kitchen and given me the chance to look. The stupid grin on Philip’s face is already falling away at one corner. ‘God,’ Laura says again, ‘what’s that?’
‘That,’ he says, ‘is what I hoped Miriam would tell me.’ Except that now, his tone says, half the fun’s gone out of it.
‘Weird,’ Laura says, crossing to him. ‘It looks like –’
Yes, it does, I’m thinking. It looks like a plaster model of a moonscape, white, sparkling with frost, and with two white conical hills rising from the narrow band of the plain. But it’s not a plaster model, of course. It’s a bra which Philip has found, snap-frozen, in the deep freeze.
‘Well, it’s not mine,’ Laura says, taking it from him. She lays the cast across her T-shirt, fitting the cones over her smaller breasts. She has to press her shoulders back to do this, squinting concentratedly down at herself as she does. ‘Oh, that’s cold,’ she laughs, and takes off the stiff breastplate. Two small conical hills, sparkling with ice, are left moulded in her T-shirt. ‘It must be a 38,’ she says, ‘a 36 at least, so it can’t be Mum’s.’ Bitch, I say to myself, as she turns it over looking for a label. ‘Where on earth did you find it?’
Philip, I notice, is no longer looking at the bra.
‘He found it in the deep freeze, of course,’ I say. And I hear the frost in my own voice.
‘The deep freeze?’
‘Why don’t you go and put some proper clothes on,’ I say. ‘If you’re so cold.’
‘I’m not cold,’ Laura says, and it’s her mouth now that is starting to turn down. ‘I never said I was cold,’ she says. In a moment, I know, she’ll be storming off to her room. But, just now, there’s something she finds more interesting. ‘What’s it doing there,’ she says, ‘in the deep freeze?’
And, of course, she knows as soon as she’s said it. And bites her lip.
‘Exactly,’ says Philip, remembering the point at last. But he’s starting to look foolish now, as Laura hands him back the bra. It’s beginning to sag with the heat of their handling.
‘Did you get out the peas?’ I ask him.
‘What?’
‘In all this fooling about, did you manage to get out the peas?’
‘Now come on, Miriam,’ he says. ‘Be fair. I wasn’t the one who put the thing in there.’
‘Nobody said you did.’
Laura says nothing. She begins to look as though she wished she had gone to her room.
‘I simply found it.’
‘All I asked you to do was get some peas from the freezer.’
‘Well, I started to,’ says Philip, who, right at this moment, is entirely unlovable. ‘And I found this.’
‘For Christ’s sake –’
‘For Christ’s sake, what? What am I supposed to do? Leave the thing there?’
Laura is frowning, fiddling now with the shuck of herb scraps and garlic skins left on the bench. I see her withdrawing.
All right, all right,’ I say then. ‘I admit it shouldn’t have been there. But it’s a simple enough mistake. It’s our own fault for keeping the freezer in the laundry.’
‘It’s our fault now?’
‘Philip … will you just put it in the laundry basket where it should be, and get out the peas? And Philip – please, darling, it’s been a long day – will you get me a drink? Sweetheart?’ I say, looking at him properly for the first time since he came in.
‘Okay,’ he grumbles. But lightening all the same, at the prospect of a drink for himself as well. ‘A gin?’ he says, still not softening entirely.
‘A gin at this moment just might save my life.’
‘Okay.’ He looks back over his shoulder at me as he stops by the laundry door. ‘I’ll get the washing machine started up, and mix you one.’
We look at each other.
‘You’ve got to admit, Mum,’ Laura says then. Quietly, unable to keep the tremor out of her voice. ‘It is pretty funny.’
‘I guess,’ I say and make the effort to smile as she and Philip burst into laughter. ‘I guess it is.’
Laura
Names, God. Just try explaining to people.
Philip is Trent, and Mum is Harcourt. She was Harcourt when she was young, before she married Dad, and now she’s Harcourt again even though she’s married to Philip now, who’s Trent. So, Katie, my little sister, is Trent-Harcourt. Mum would have wanted Harcourt-Trent because she’s the mother and the mother’s name should come first, but Harcourt-Trent gets mashed and garbled cos everyone runs the two t’s together and it comes out Hackit-rent or something, and then you spend the whole day explaining and spelling it to people, whereas with Trent-Harcourt you’ve at least got to stop for a gulp of air in the middle. So it’s Trent-Harcourt. But of course I’m still Vas-silopoulos, Laura Vassilopoulos, after my Dad. When Mum left Dad, she asked me if I wanted to change my name to Harcourt too – but I said no. I was only seven then, and I was frightened Dad might not be able to find me if Mum and me came back to Australia and my name was something different. Mum was upset, I know. She wanted to change everything then. But if that’s what I wanted, she said, then that was that. Besides, I could hardly be Harcourt-Vassilopoulos, she said. It wouldn’t fit on most of the forms for one thing. And school would be hopeless. Imagine telling other kids your name was Harcourt-Vassilopou-los. But Grandma Vera’s Harcourt. Mrs Vera Harcourt. Though she’s not Mrs any more, but she still calls he
rself that.
When she remembers.
People think you’re crazy when they ask your name and you go Laura Vassilopoulos, and after they’ve swallowed that, they say, Is this your sister, and you go, yeah, that’s Katie. Katie Vassilopou-los, they go, that’s nice, just to be polite and show they’ve been listening to you and are sophisticated and that, and can speak Greek when they can’t really speak a word of it, and that’s when you go, No, Katie Harcourt-Trent actually, and they go Hu-uh? People are such fakes.
Like Philip. Philip is such a fake. He’s always looking at other women, really perving when he pretends he’s just so interested in what they’re saying or if their kids are doing well at school, or whatever. Philip couldn’t care less if they’re doing well at school, he doesn’t even know their names, so long as he can look down their mother’s dress while he’s doing it or when they’re not looking. He thinks people don’t notice, or maybe they don’t. Like the time in the kitchen I put on Grandma Vera’s bra that she’d put in the deep freeze instead of the laundry basket. I did that deliberately just to stir him, just to show him what a hypocrite he was. But Mum can’t see it, she thinks he’s normal. I don’t know how she stands him. If someone did that to me –
Philip can be all right sometimes, though. Sometimes he stands up for me when Mum’s been doing her Heil Hitler act about my room or homework or piano practice or blah. And he can be funny when he takes people off. He went to this posh school and he had all these weird teachers that he can do – their accents and everything. Like the French teacher who was really an Austrian butler and wasn’t French at all, but he would line all the boys up in the corridor outside the classroom, and they’d have to come up to him, one at a time, and bow and say, Bonjour, Monsieur Rifka , and he’d say, ‘Bonjour, mon enfant, and bow back, and then they’d go into the classroom and run to the back and get out the window and race around and get on the end of the line again. Some days, Philip says, it took twenty minutes to get them all in the room at once and half the lesson was over by then. Philip can be very funny when he does that, the boys bowing and Mr Rifka bowing back. But somehow he makes you sad for Mr Rifka as well as laughing at him. And one day apparently the headmaster came past when there was a lot of noise and fooling about, and Philip was in the front row and he heard the headmaster whispering to Mr Rifka, ‘For God sake, man, get a grip on things, can’t you. The inspectors will be here in a week. Aren’t you worried about the inspectors?’, and Mr Rifka goes – Philip is really good at this, Mr Rifka is so calm, he’s not frightened of the headmaster at all – he goes, ‘Inspectors? No,’ he says, as slow as anything, as if he’s been asked the date or his name or something, ‘for I haf been interrogated by the Nazis.’
Toni – she’s my best friend – she thinks Philip is gorgeous, especially when he’s telling a story. She thinks he’s such a spunk. What, Philip? I say. Yeech, no thanks –
I only remember a few words of Greek, like efhareesto for thank you, or avgho for egg, or yiayia for grandma, though I could remember more if I really tried. Like yeea sas for hello or poss eesteh for how are you, and andeeo for goodbye. For my eighth and ninth birthdays, my father sent me cards and a present, but then he stopped. My mother said she heard he got married again and opened a garage in the village and she hopes he’s happy now. And I think she means it, but you can never tell with parents. Sometimes I tell her I mean to go back there and see him and live there for a while, but I don’t know if I do really. Or if I just say it to stir her. To see the look on her face when I say it.
Miriam
‘What does it look like!’ I say, as contemptuously as I can. ‘What does it look like!’
‘What does it look … What does it look like?’ they say, straggling after me in a ragged, sheep-like chorus.
‘What does it look like!’ I say again. And this time I feel my lip actually curl, and they laugh – in shock, hands flying to their mouths. They are not sure this is how we should be behaving.
Us women.
There are fifteen of us in the class, fourteen of them – the four in the front row from Asia and the Middle East, Farida from Afghanistan, Hafize from Turkey, Njala and Samia from Lebanon, all strong women, scarved, vocal, mother-hipped, and beside them, darkest of all, Eleni from Greece, then Maria, their counterweight, from Chile, who sits immediately behind them, her powerful voice and forearms sometimes propelling the entire boat of the class forward, then Renuka, the Sri Lankan, and Shamila, from India, her sari not red today as it normally is but a dense golden wattle, and perched all around them – never in the same order but fluttering from one seat to the next even in the course of a class – six brightly painted miniature birds, six tiny creatures, from Vietnam, from Laos, two miniscule Cambodian girls, shy to the point of extinction, and – most surprising of all in a class of migrants and refugees like this – Yuriko, weightless, from Japan, the skin and flesh of her arms so transparently white that bone and green vein are laid out glowing for all to see as if she was radioactive. And then, of course, there is me, their teacher, their guru, sensei, maestra, profesora, mudarrisa. Trying to solicit a single common note from this unruly, polyphonous choir.
‘What …’ they ask, singly, overlapping, their unpractised voices flying. ‘What does it look like … ?’
‘It’s not really a question,’ I tell them. ‘It’s not asking for information, or even a response. If you pass a man in the street on a hot day and he is fixing his car, and you ask him what he is doing, and he says, ‘‘What does it look like!’’, he is not asking you to describe a man fixing his car.’
They look at me, then laugh.
‘Do you understand?’
We are practising the idioms they’ll meet on the streets – not just reading them or analysing their structure, but using them, acting them out, trying to get inside the feeling, the intention of the words. It’s the session where we have most fun. Like now, with Maria, the market woman from Chile, up on her feet. Legs spread, arms akimbo on thick hips, black eyes flashing. She whirls on Yuriko, diminutive, white-face, eyes black too, and filling now with apprehension.
‘What,’ Maria spits at her, ‘does it look like!’
There is a momentary hush, and then a burst of laughter and clapping.
‘This Maria,’ they say.
Yuriko reddens, then smiles, the blood swimming beneath her white skin. A hand goes up again to cover her mouth.
‘Bravo, Maria,’ I say. ‘Now, Yuriko, try saying it back to her. Let’s pretend Maria has just asked you whether you’re upset by her comment. What could you say back to her? Go on, try it.’
‘What …’ Yuriko whispers into the already whispering silence. ‘What does it rook rike?’
This time there is a sigh, as soft as Yuriko’s own voice. Then: ‘Ll-ook,’ they say along with her. ‘Ll-ook. What does it lll-ook lll-ike …’
‘Lll-ook,’ Yuriko repeats, and they nod and smile together.
Towards the end of the class, when we are all exhausted and headachy with these drills, we listen to a story together. Not from a book, but their stories – and mine. They have asked me for mine. This is something I will have to think about. Each week one or perhaps two of them, depending on time, read out the story they have written.
In the beginning, all the stories were short, perfunctory – usually something about a member of their family, their lives at home – but, as we have got to trust one another, they have grown more elaborate, more intimate. The English of these stories is nearly perfect. Between classes, the students work alongside an individual tutor, a TESOL trainee from the local university, who collaborates on their story, helps turn it into grammatical, idiomatic English. The stories become models for their own practice – for reading, for pronunciation, for writing. They fall in love with the English of their stories. They read them over and over until they know them by heart. Some even copy them into specially bound books, keep them under cellophane like photos in a family album.
Today ther
e is time for only one story.
Maria’s.
‘For fifteen months …’ she begins, and looking up for one long moment, fixes us in our seats with her long, black gaze. ‘I was disappeared …’
‘Disappeared?’ someone whispers, but Maria ignores it.
‘This was 1973, and the junta had just taken control. They had murdered Allende by then, they had bombed La Moneda. All those months my family did not know what is happening to me …’
‘What had happened to me,’ I say.
‘Pardon,’ she says. ‘They did not know what had happened to me … Whether I was dead or just disappeared. They did not know I was involved, they did not even know about Raul. When the soldados arrested me on the street one night after curfew, all I could think was I must not betray Raul. But I was frightened. How could I keep it hidden from them? When I had heard what they did to people. By that time I already knew I was pregnant.
‘I was driven in a truck to the National Stadium, taken to the cells under the ground there. The corridors were dark and full of bodies, some of them were still moving. I was dragged along the corridor by my hair, all the time being hit in the back and on the legs with a rifle butt. I tried to step over the bodies, but I could not see. I stood on one man, I wanted to say sorry. I must have made some sound, he turned his face up at me. His lips had been torn off. I was thrown into a cell. It was large, there were men in the shadows, three, four. A cloth-bag was put over my head. Each time I reached up to take it off, I was beaten on the arms and hands. Still none of the men had spoken until one of them told me to take my clothes off. ‘‘All,’’ he said. ‘‘Hurry,’’ he shouted, ‘‘or we’ll do it for you.’’ In a few minutes I was naked. Before these men. Then they began to shout, all together, questions, curses. They began to beat me, on the head, shoulders, breasts. I kept my arm locked here, over my belly, it was all I could think of doing. I must protect the child, I kept saying over and over in my mind. I must protect the child.
