Now, he is writing to her, and why is that? But even more puzzling is the return address: the military camp not far from the foundling home. Such a wonderful name it has: Broadmeadows. Once again, she imagines swaying fields of wheat and haystacks, but can only remember seeing from the train window Scotch thistle and scrub. Broadmeadows camp. What on earth is Viktor doing there? Has he gone and done it? Done something silly? Joined this mad march to death?
She tears the letter open and sure enough he has. Idiot! Her fist thumps the table. Did he forget he is about to have a child? Yes, Vera, there is a father. And she knows that in thinking all of this, that in registering that jumble of emotions that the letter has set off, she is allowing herself to indulge in the possibility that once the child is born, instincts as old as the stars will take over, and the child might see its father from time to time, and might even come to know him. Now this. Idiot!
He writes that the town now nods its approval in the streets, and that certain people have begun to speak to him again who haven’t spoken to him for years. The feathers have stopped coming. Trade is booming. Even his mother lets slip occasional murmurings of pride. He writes that he doesn’t expect her to feel or think any such things, and he’s right. But she can also see it, that awful town. All feathers and spite. Its mineral waters bloodied, its gardens dark as death. Everybody staring at him in the street, in shops, at church. Ghouls. No wonder he broke under the weight of it all. How could he not? And it’s only as she finishes re-reading the short letter, for his head, he says, is asleep even as he writes and he only has so many words in him, that she notices he has changed the spelling of his name. He is now Victor.
She could weep. Not for Victor. But for something that she can’t even name at the moment, and is suddenly too tired to even bother trying to. Viktor is now Victor. The beast has won. Perhaps someone really did threaten to report him. Have him rounded up, like all those rounded-up neighbours all over the city who went from being neighbours one day to Huns the next. The beast roared, and Viktor bowed to Victor.
But she can now write to him, at least. He’s even asked her to. Asked her how she is. And she will write. When the time comes.
The front door opens, and Maryanne stuffs the letter back into its envelope and slips it into her dress pocket as Katherine appears. The sisters stare at each other; Katherine doesn’t need to ask who the letter is from and Maryanne doesn’t need to tell her.
Besides, she doesn’t have the energy. A long day makes itself felt. She barely has the strength to rise, but she does, and makes her way to the front room and the armchair that has become hers, the sound of children fighting in the street faintly audible as she closes her eyes. When she wakes, Katherine will have everything ready. A meal will appear. A pot will be brewing. All will be well. Here, at least. She drifts into sleep, to the comforting clatter of cutlery and plates, and her sister humming some distantly familiar hymn from their youth.
***
In the morning the sun is bright. She is rested, she is strong. She pours tea. The newspaper is on the table.
The Milhaus case still captivates the city. His trial goes on. The city rushes to the papers for the latest, gasping and hissing like children at a show, the caped villain of Milhaus pausing to laugh or sneer before going about his nasty business. A handwriting expert, Maryanne reads, has given testimony. The letter retrieved from the basket and the letters of Milhaus, he says, are in the same writing. Written by the same man. And still Milhaus proclaims that he was not even in the city on the day the letter was written and delivered, the date clearly inscribed at the top of the page. But there are no witnesses, and who will believe the word of a fallen god?
And so the evidence of the handwriting expert prevails. Milhaus is guilty before the judge even speaks. Condemned by the beast, the papers, the experts. All agree. And when Maryanne puts the paper down on the table, it’s the memory of Milhaus’s foot, frantically tapping, as if tapping out some secret message in code, that comes back to her.
What was he holding back? For she is sure he was hiding something, sure there is another story that isn’t being told. Innocent. She hears that laugh again. Nervous. Unsure. Cuffed hands folded. An attitude of prayer. Foot tapping. Almost as though he were guilty of something. Or felt he was. And had come to the conclusion that guilt for one thing is no different from guilt for another. It’s all one.
She bites her toast, drinks tea and looks out the kitchen window onto the small yard. The case is already decided. Just as Milhaus said. They will take him to those gallows she saw the Sunday before: the rope, the lever, the trapdoor – waiting just for him. All there is to do now is await that something final that everybody craves.
And will they be satisfied then? Feel the slightest remorse? Do the hounds feel sympathy for the fox? She has always sided with the fox. Even knows what it is to be the fox. Or imagines she does. Give that to your fancy man! People! They ruin everything. She folds the newspaper. Enough for one day. And the image of a fox she saw once in a city park comes back to her: keeping low, up against a wall, somehow doomed. Well, the hunt is nearly up; the fox awaits sentence. The dogs are in full cry.
***
Later that morning, Katherine having given her a list of what they need, Maryanne is standing at the counter in the local grocer’s. It is an old shop, and Maryanne has been coming here for much of her life. She knows the husband and wife who run the shop. They know her. Enough to pass small talk. With knowing eyes, they’ve watched her belly grow but haven’t said anything. As though it doesn’t exist. Or perhaps they think that if they act as if it doesn’t, it won’t.
There is a small queue behind her and the shopkeeper is humming to himself as he wraps onions in a sheet of newspaper. The people behind Maryanne are chatting quietly in a sort of background murmur that Maryanne finds restful. Then the shopkeeper pauses, looking down at the next sheet of newspaper on the counter. He laughs. There is a picture of Milhaus in the centre of the page, and he stares at it, then looks up.
‘We don’t need a court to tell us what we already know, do we?’
Maryanne is staring at the photograph, thinking it is not such a good likeness (that in this photograph he does appear shifty), and when she finally looks up she realises the question is addressed to her. And, what is more, the shopkeeper is waiting for her response. And when she turns around she sees that the queue is also waiting. And as the silence goes on, the shopkeeper and the other customers begin to view her with suspicion. Then distrust. It’s not a difficult question. The answer should be easy. So what is she waiting for?
And it’s then that she realises that the question has become a test. Of loyalty. Or something else; she’s not sure. But a test, all the same. And it is in this moment that their faces all transform, become warped. Mouths twisted, eyes of animals, noses twitching. The way the beast eyes her in the streets and squares. Sniffing her out, recognising with unerring animal accuracy that she is not one of them. And the longer her silence lasts, the more their suspicions are confirmed. She has been tested and failed. But what for? Her loyalty? Her patriotism? Her sense of duty? So be it. Let them fail her. She’s never, never once – she could tell them, would love to tell them – called herself a patriot and distrusts anybody who does. She’d rather believe in God than a country. Or a football team. She is silent. A silence, along with the look on her face, that rings with something between cheek and pride. All eyes are upon her and she knows she has been called upon to say something that shows she is one of them, after all, and has failed. But, of course, they know she’s not one of them. They knew it all along. She’s the Hun’s whore. Still, they gave her a chance.
And it is while she is contemplating this that she suddenly finds herself saying: ‘And just what do we know?’
The shopkeeper plonks the wrapped onions in front of her. ‘I know a guilty face when I see one.’ And he points at the photograph in the newspaper. ‘Guilty as the devil, that one.’
With this, the qu
eue behind her erupts into agreement. And it is while this is happening that Maryanne takes her onions and drops them into her shopping bag, casually saying when they all fall silent, ‘Oh, I don’t know; he didn’t seem all that bad to me.’
There is a sudden intake of breath throughout the shop. A kind of disbelief. They can’t have heard right. She said what? Maryanne folds up her shopping list, forgetting all about whatever else she was going to buy, and puts it in her pocket. And as she turns to leave, she adds, ‘And not so tall. Little boy, really.’
She leaves the shop with the sound of muttering behind her, and although she can’t hear precisely what they are muttering – to themselves, to the other customers, to the shopkeeper – she can well imagine. And suddenly muttering seems like a good word, just right, for they’ve all got that muttering look about them.
Outside, she looks up to the sky and bursts out laughing. Oh, what the hell. They hate me anyway. May as well give them something to really hate me for. And talk about. It was her chance to show them she was one of them, after all. And she’s flung that chance back at them. And would again, without hesitation. So, she silently says as if addressing them all: if I don’t love my country, what do I love? She smiles. Would you like to know? Would you really? She asks this, staring back at the grocer’s shop, the owner and the customers eyeing her as if she were dangerous: a stray dog, unpredictable. To be avoided. Or rounded up. Her smile broadens as she stands there in the street, slowly rubbing her belly. What do I love? Let me count them. I love this child, more than my own life. And I love my sister. And small animals. I think that’s it. Oh, and those moments when the clouds part and step aside, almost thoughtfully, and we see the endless blue behind them.
She might have said that, and it might have been fun to watch their faces. But all that matters at the moment is that for once, just once, she has silenced the beast. And has walked from the shop, the beast staring after her, its mouth agape and muttering. A small win, true. But a win. One she’ll pay for, she tells herself as she turns for home with only a fraction of the shopping she promised Katherine she’d do. Of course, she’ll have to explain to Katherine why that is. So be it. Leaving the beast behind her, she imagines a slight smile on the face of the child as together they walk home.
11.
GUILTY. The word covers almost half the front page of the morning paper. She’s never seen such a thing before. Nobody has. Almost half a page for one word. Black letters, stark as a scaffold. GUILTY. And it makes no attempt to explain itself: who is guilty or guilty of what. It doesn’t need to. Like the words YES and NO, GUILTY doesn’t need to explain itself.
That light-heartedness she experienced outside the grocer’s shop the day before deserts her. She is heavy again, weighed down by this world. She can hear the roar of the beast, smell its medieval stench, see its scales shining triumphantly in the sun, the swamp dripping from it as it bellows to the sky. There will be death. Death it craves, and death it shall have. And the broken body of Milhaus will be returned to earth. Just as one day the beast will be returned to the swamp from which it came.
The paper sickens her. Sudden waves of nausea pass through her. She could almost vomit. Fears she will. Body and mind no longer separate, but united in disgust. And Maryanne, faint, powerless to quell this rising disgust with it all. She can feel the frenzy of the mob coming off the paper: roars of satisfaction, cries of rage and jeering laughter. Like some dark festival. And once again she asks herself: if this is the world, where is hers? Where is the child’s? Not this, please, not this.
The nausea passes. The disgust ebbs. The moment fades. She reads on, beyond that stark, single word. Milhaus, it seems, will be sentenced the next day. And at this point she puts the paper down on the table, folding it as if to silence the thing. Outside, children are being dragged to school, the clang-clang of the smith’s hammer a distant ring. She pictures Milhaus standing in the dock, the court as full as a football ground on a Saturday afternoon. And Milhaus the lone figure on the playing field. The crowd straining forward to see, hushed and breathless, as if expecting one last miracle, one last leap that will leave them gasping in disbelief. One last reminder of the days when he was as good as a god, before he fell and became a dark angel with crushed wings, foot tapping on the courtroom floor. Impatient for the thing to be over, and, like the crowd, longing now for that something final.
And, once again, the image of Milhaus, suddenly alone in the playground and wondering where everybody has gone, comes back to her. And she decides there and then to go to the court the next day to watch it all. Put herself through it. Somehow. So that he can see her, know that she’s there, and know that Milhaus the Hun, who lifted them all to the heavens with every leap he took, who left them breathless then betrayed them, is not alone: that there is someone out there, after all. She need just be there, nothing more.
And it is while she is vaguely listening to the sounds of the day’s activities outside that Katherine steps into the kitchen, sleeves rolled up from wringing out the washing before hanging it on the clothesline. For there is a breeze, she tells Maryanne, and it is a good day for drying. She sits and pours the last of the tea. Her forearms are strong, a glimpse of the different kinds of work she’s done on farms and in towns out there on the land that Maryanne has barely seen and has no great desire to. And she dwells on this for a moment: Katherine and Maryanne, both born in the city, the same neighbourhood, but now living in different worlds. And she wonders if, by some strange chance, she were to come across Katherine one morning or evening in the bush, sitting round a camp fire – alone or with others, casual workers like herself – she would recognise her. Would she pass by and not even know her sister? Would this other Katherine be unrecognisable? A different Katherine altogether. Which makes her wonder who this other Katherine is, and if she’s ever really known her.
Maryanne doesn’t say what’s in the paper and Katherine doesn’t read it. They say little. It is enough that she is there, that they are together. For she is sure that if Katherine were not here, she would not have the strength to take them all on. And so the talk, or the lack of it, doesn’t matter. It’s just being there that does.
All the same, she suddenly throws a question across the table, one that she has never asked her sister before, but one she has long contemplated and thought about asking.
‘Have you ever thought about getting married?’
‘Married?’ Katherine says, startled by the question. But it is also a response that suggests: my sort, Maryanne, my sort doesn’t get married.
‘Well, not so much married as having someone around.’
‘A man?’
‘Well, yes. Haven’t you ever wanted someone around? Being there, with you?’
Maryanne has no idea what sort of answer she expects. In a sense, after the surprise of Victor’s letter, she is almost asking herself the question, and asking Katherine is a way of contemplating it. Seeing how it sounds spoken, as apart from thought. And so she watches, half contemplating what her own answer would be.
Katherine looks down at her cup, turning it round and round in front of her. When she finally looks up it is with a touch of mischief in her eyes, an expression that says: you did ask.
‘There was a man, once.’
Maryanne snaps out of her own thoughts and eyes Katherine. What? She’s happy to be surprised by people, especially when she thinks she has them nailed. But her sister?
‘Was?’
‘Yes.’ And the mischief in Katherine’s eyes has given way to a slight smile. ‘Is it so preposterous?’
‘No. Of course not. It’s just that you’ve never …’
‘Let on.’
‘No.’
They stare at each other, silent for the moment. Neither sure who should speak next. Finally Maryanne, who can’t stand such silences and always breaks first, speaks.
‘When?’
Katherine, recognising that there is a story to tell and that it may be a long conversation,
seems to gather herself before beginning. ‘A long time ago. I was still young.’ There is a touch of wonder in her voice, as though remembering someone she once knew. ‘He proposed. Quite formal. I thought about it then, I did.’
‘And?’ Maryanne waits, eyes wide, as if, indeed, speaking to a different Katherine altogether.
‘I said no. Obviously.’ She pauses, as if it is another Katherine speaking. Or, rather, one whom she keeps to herself and is only now giving voice to. ‘I’d only just set out. On my travels. I was sure that life, the country, was full of adventures. And I wanted to live them. All of them.’ Her face darkens. ‘But I also knew that getting married would be the end of all that.’ She sits back in her chair, eyes on the ceiling. ‘Oh, I thought about it. Of course I did. I’m plain. I know that. A plain girl, a plain woman. I knew there wouldn’t be too many proposals. That this might well be it.’
She stops, nodding to herself, in recognition – at least, to Maryanne, this is how it looks – that it was, indeed, it. ‘Mind you,’ she says, picking up her thoughts, ‘he was a plain man himself. A small farmer I did some work for. Didn’t speak much. Usually left the talking to me.’ Here, she laughs. ‘Thought I was fascinating. Told me he could’ve listened to me all night.’ She looks directly at Maryanne. ‘Nobody ever told me that before. Oh, yes. I thought about it.’
She folds her sleeves down, buttons them and pats them into place. ‘It was the proposal of a lonely man. Someone who wanted a voice around. And I could see why. It was a lonely-looking farm. On the edge of a plain. Nothing to look at. Flat. I’d have gone mad there. Besides, I wasn’t a lonely woman. For the first time in my life I felt free out there in the bush. No rules.’ She stops short. ‘Well, just a few basic ones. And everything new. And always, always moving on. Every day an adventure. I wasn’t giving that up. I’d only just started out.’
Year of the Beast Page 12
