Down Under

by Sonia Taitz

  “Do you want a nibble of something? I could make you both a nice cup of cocoa, or—”

  “I thought we’d have tea together, Ma,” said Collum. “A proper tea, with cakes and thick bread and butter and jam.”

  “But I haven’t got cakes on the spur here, Collum. Would biscuits do? I’ve got those nice gingersnaps; they’re always the last to be eaten. Don’t you find that so, Judy, dear?”

  “Don’t I—?”

  “Don’t you find that if you lay out an assortment, say, of biscuits—chocolate, jam-center, graham, ginger—that the ginger will always be the last to go? It’s like people are afraid of it, I tell you!”

  Judy, whose parents favored rugalach, chose to agree.

  “There, you see?” said Betty, leading her into the kitchen. “I knew I’d like you! And you’ll eat a few of them, won’t you?”

  Judy nodded. She felt better now that she was in this room, which caught the sun, and whose curtains were white and airy. Betty’s kind voice soothed her.

  “Now let me see about the bread—I could toast up some of this loaf—we don’t go for sliced bread in this house—and there is a bit of blackberry jam, I think—”

  “Can I help you with anything?” said Judy, trying to be good. In her house, her mother did everything that the cleaning lady didn’t do, which wasn’t that much, and she, Judy, did even less. She liked the homespun quality of Collum’s life, the “loaf” and the ginger snaps, which his mother kept in a round tin with candy canes on it. She liked Betty’s flower-patterned cotton apron, and she liked the braid that Betty wore down her back like a young girl of olden days.

  “No, I’ve got it. You two sit down, I’ll just put on the kettle.”

  “Thanks, Ma.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Whitsun.”

  “Now, dear, just call me Betty.”

  They sat down at a small round table in the center of the kitchen, around which five ladder-back chairs were arrayed.

  “Would you prefer coffee? I do have some instant, and it’s fresh from the grocery.”

  “No, I’d love tea,” said Judy. Normally, she drank tea only when she had a bad cold, but suddenly the humble drink seemed far, far nobler than the aggressive jolt of coffee that her parents preferred.

  “That’s fine, then,” said Betty, putting on the kettle.

  In the silence that ensued, Judy listened to the sound of the wall clock ticktocking. It was an old clock, made of wood, and its subtle rhythms filled her with a sense of tradition. This clock may have ticked and tocked over in the old country, she thought. Suddenly, the thought of all those years and years made her tired. She wanted to be in the world now, where she was, and not be carried back. She could have done with a blast of radio, announcing the latest pop tune.

  As though reading her thoughts, Betty said, “Yeh, it’s seen the years, it has. That was my own mother’s clock. We brought it over, one of the only real memories of the house of my girlhood. County Mayo, long ago. Ah, well. Time and tide.”

  “Is that from your old house, too?” asked Jude, noticing an enormous crucifix on the opposite wall. It was placed between two high cupboards.

  “No, no, that’s from my husband’s woodshop downstairs,” said Betty, as the water shrieked at its boiling point. She turned the flame off. The shriek retreated down the scale, and then was silent.

  “It’s—it’s really impressive,” said Judy, staring now at the large amounts of painted blood that poured out of the body of Jesus. There was blood on his head, rivulets from every thorn in his crown, blood from the deep, enormous gash in his chest, and blood from the centers of his hands and feet. The color of the blood was less red than maroon—a dark, clotted, and shiny color that made the drips look three-dimensional, congealed and impasto-thick.

  “My husband, I’m proud to say, is a great artist. During the day, he is a house painter, and none is better for getting the job done, fast and neat, but then at nights and weekends, he—well, you can see the sort of work he does.”

  “I can,” Judy agreed.

  Mr. Whitsun Also Composed

  Clearing the teacups and cake-plates, Betty Whitsun became pensive. “My husband also has the gift of music,” she said. She held a cup in one hand and a spoon in the other, as though she were about to ring the cup and make an announcement. Her hands were in the air, and her face looked as though she were waiting for a cue.

  “No, Ma,” pleaded Collum, his face twisted like a martyr’s.

  “Oh, all right,” said Betty, returning to her chores.

  “Not today, thanks.”

  “Well, his compositions are very lovely,” his mother insisted, now scraping the crumbs off the plates. “And Judy here seems to be interested in his artistic expressions, am I right, Judy, dear?”

  “Oh, yes, of course I am.”

  Collum shot her a look.

  “I am!”

  “It’s so easy for you young ones to forget that we parents are also people,” said Betty, sighing. “Human beings, with hopes and dreams and passions.”

  “That’s true,” Judy conceded. For instance, she actually thought that her love for Collum, and his for her, was deeper and more serious and abiding than anything her parents had ever felt. It was good to remember that they had possibly once felt as she and Collum did. Or—even more remarkably—that they still felt anything at all, at their age.

  “Oh, yes,” said Betty.

  “Please, no,” said her son.

  “I think she’ll love it, Collum, darling. It’s quite lovely.” She caught his miserable glare, and added, “and it won’t be too loud.”

  “It’s always loud enough to haunt anyone,” said Collum miserably.

  “Not as loud as the music you young folk listen to, at any rate, when Dad’s not home.”

  She was referring to Collum’s older brothers, who were teenagers, and liked banging music, rhythmic as the long march into Hades.

  “I personally don’t mind if it’s loud,” Judy offered, wondering from where the music would emerge. There didn’t seem to be a record player in the room. In those days, music emerged from record players, often through speakers. There were lots of wires and knobs involved. The record would go round and round, centered by a small silver stick. A long arm would dance along the grooves of the record; at the end of the arm was a needle that followed them. Sometimes, a bit of dust, or a scratch on the vinyl, would cause a crackling sound, or a hiss, which only added to the drama of hearing notes emerge from a spinning plastic platter.

  “Neil!” Betty shrieked into the kitchen air. “Can you come upstairs for a minute?”

  “Your father’s home?”

  “Yeah,” said Collum dully. “I did notice his boots in the corner of the foyer. Sometimes, he works odd hours. Emphasis on odd.”

  What Collum didn’t explain was that sometimes Neil Whitsun was too drunk to work. On those days, he would lie in bed most of the day. Eventually, he would go down to his sanctum in the cellar and not be heard from until dark.

  But music, Betty thought, could always cheer him. Let him come up from that gloomy basement he spent so much time in. Let him bring a note of gaiety into his life, the poor man. She never forgot the boy she had fallen in love with, the one with the sweet smile and the deep belief that life had a meaning, and that the meaning was good. She was touched that he still tried to express what he felt, what he knew.

  “Ne-il?” she sang out more loudly. Then, with a broom, she banged on the floor, and cocked her ear expectantly.

  “Neil! Neil! NEIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

  “YAAAAAAAAAAAHHH????”

  Judy could hear a voice, sepulchral and goaty under the green-and-white checkered kitchen linoleum. The call and response of two lunatic beasts.

  “CAN YOU COME UP, MY DARLING?”

  “NAAAAA AAAHHH!!! ’FRAID I CAN’T!!!!”

  “WE’VE GOT A GUEST, NEIL, DARLING! A SCHOOL FRIEND OF COLLUM’S! SHE WANTS TO HEAR YOUR MUSIC!!”

  There was silen
ce for a long moment, and then the menacing reply:

  “WHO . . . WANTS . . . TO. HEAR . . . WHAT?”

  He sounded like Oz, the great and powerful. Judy reflexively crossed her arms and legs against an onslaught. She, after all, was the “WHO” in question.

  “A SCHOOL FRIEND OF COLLUM’S!!!!! SHE WANTS TO HEAR YOUR MUSICAL COMPOSITIONS!!!!!”

  “SHE WANTS TO HEAR MY MUSICAL COMPOSITIONS??”

  “YES!!!!!!!!”

  “IT’S A GIRL, YOU SAY? A DAMSEL, FAIR?”

  Betty turned to Judy.

  “You tell him, love. Tell him that you want to hear his music.”

  “Oh, Christ almighty,” Collum muttered, head in hands.

  “You really want me to tell him?” She was still digesting the words “damsel fair.” What was expected of her? On the other hand, the challenge was becoming fraught with romance, in a way. She was the damsel in this tale. Collum’s maiden, with an ogre raging below.

  “Yes, if you don’t mind.”

  Judy attempted to shout. She felt stupid at the first attempt:

  “I want to hear your music!”

  “Louder, please,” said Betty.

  “I want to hear your music!!!!”

  “With all you heart and soul, dear.”

  “I WANT TO HEAR YOUR MUSIC!!!!!” Judy bellowed, like a motherless calf. Oddly, the release of doing so almost brought tears to her eyes. She DID want to hear his music. This all seemed so extreme, so crazy, in a wonderful way. She wanted all of life to be like this, released and true. Full of hidden music, finally sounded out. Driven by a pulse of desperate passion, however pathetic the outcome. Very different from her father’s nightly music hour, listening to the classical station on the radio.

  Collum’s father did not respond.

  “Should I bang on the floor with the broom?” Judy asked Collum’s mother, with a touch of eagerness.

  “Wait,” Betty responded. “I think I can hear him—yes—listen, he’s coming up the stairway.”

  Judy listened with all her young body and soul.

  By really concentrating, she could hear the first steps of Neil Whitsun, mounting upward from his basement. As he rose, the sound of his tread grew louder and louder. After a few more steps, he stood there before them.

  The sight of him stopped the world in its tracks. The kitchen disappeared, time disappeared. The only thing Judy could compare this to was being at Radio City Music Hall, as the curtain rose and the sound of a kettledrum rattled your bones.

  Collum’s father was movie-star handsome. He had a thick head of hair, leonine, white. His face was long, the bones articulate, almost aristocratic. His eyes blazed like those of his son, and like Collum’s, they were bright blue. His body, moreover, was tall and strong, with only a slight bend of defeat to the shoulders.

  In contrast to his looks, Neil Whitsun wore a dirty white T-shirt and baggy khaki pants. On his feet were a pair of sagging black socks. He wore slippers, worn and humble.

  Neil Whitsun took a long, almost rude stare at Judy. “So, you want me to sing to ye, do ye, girl?” he said.

  Judy flushed under the intensity of his stare. She felt accused, as though this whole singing thing had been her idea, as though Betty had not mentioned it, not forced the situation. But under the circumstances, she had to play along. Even Betty was looking at her expectantly.

  “Oh, yes, please. I hear your music is really nice.”

  “IT IS NOT NICE!!! IT IS FAR FROM NICE!!!” Neil thundered abruptly.

  “It is—majestic,” Betty offered, trying to guide Judy to the right level of reverence for her husband’s gift.

  “Well, I—I love majestic things,” Judy stuttered.

  “Yes, you may ‘love’ them—like a whore loves a shiny golden necklace with a most peculiar star—but do you REVERE and RESPECT them? That’s the better question, now isn’t it?”

  “It—it certainly is,” she agreed, her fingers fumbling to tuck her incriminating necklace into her blouse.

  Collum kept his head down throughout this interchange. His fists were on the table, joints clutched so tight they shone white through his skin. All Judy could see, as she looked over to him, were these knucklebones, ready for self-defense, and his head held low, all blond curls and a touch of furrowed brow.

  “I’ll begin, then,” said Neil Whitsun, with exaggerated politeness. “That is, if no one present has any objection.”

  The silence that responded showed collective assent.

  He began:

  LORDY. LORDY, SLAY ME NOW

  KILL ME WITH YOUR BLOOD, SHED!

  TAKE ME, BREAK ME, ANYHOW

  TAKE MY HEART, EYES, GUT, HEAD!

  MAKE ME MAKE ME MAKE ME DEAD

  BUT NEVER SO ALIVE AND BRIGHT WITH REDDDDDD!!!! Blood.

  Neil Whitsun paused to draw breath. There was white spittle at both sides of his mouth. His face was scarily flushed.

  Judy quietly remarked, “That was good.” She thought the “song” was over. Neil glared at her.

  “I don’t sing for your approval! And I’m not half done!”

  And now, having rested, Neil’s face became less red. Slowly, he began to dance, eyes closed, and to snap his hands in rhythm. His voice was now as tiny and high-pitched as it had been loud and deep:

  Come to me come to me come to me come to me . . .

  Take me take me take me take me

  Rip my life out of its shell

  Lift me from my living hell

  Please . . . Oh Lord Oh Spirit!

  Father, Father, don’t you hear it?

  Falling to the ground with the last near-inaudible word, Neil Whitsun seemed to have really finished his song this time. He lay face down, sobbing loudly and at length.

  Judy actually liked this part. Particularly the rhyme of “spirit” and “hear it.” But she said nothing, taking a cue from Betty and simply watching the man cry. Perhaps this was part of the performance.

  When Neil Whitsun stood up again, his face was wet, and so was the front of his khaki pants.

  “I have peed myself,” he announced with dignity.

  No one dared respond to this.

  “You’ll know you have sung well when you have peed yourself,” he added proudly.

  “That’s a good pointer,” said Judy, ever polite. In her insular life, she had never seen a man so drunk before. That’s what he was, she reasoned. Not insane. Not anointed by God and/or his messengers. He was drunk. She had never seen any human being behave like this before, and the spectacle of this unhingement was slightly thrilling. My God, what people in the real world could get up to! The lengths to which they would go to express themselves!

  “It’ll never happen to you,” he answered rudely, almost as though he had read, and dismissed, her thoughts. “I can tell just looking at you. Logician. Self-preserver, full of cunning sophistry.”

  For an inebriate, he spoke very clearly now, enunciating every syllable and slicing it clean from its neighbor.

  “Cowardly cringer.”

  “Dad, Judy is a guest—” Collum began.

  “Judy? That is who you brought into my house? A Judy? A cursed, stinkin’ JEW-dy??”

  Judy was not exactly sure what she was hearing, but the very scene was bright and thrilling in some way. It seemed important, in the way that her father’s tenets seemed important.

  “She’s a very nice girl from school,” said Betty, quickly. “We were just having tea and ginger snaps before you—”

  “What’s your full name, if you don’t mind my asking?” continued Neil Whitsun.

  Judy would have readily answered, when he cut in:

  “It’s Pincus, isn’t it? Pink-ass, more like!”

  Here we go again, she thought. Collum had called her “Pinkstein.” Like son, like father. Judy became like her own father, and commenced lecturing:

  “It’s a biblical name. From Pinchas. These Hebrew names might sound funny, but they’re regal. Like the tribes—Naftali, Gad, Menasseh—
I guess they’d seem odd to you, too.”

  “Oh, don’t list them for me. Don’t I know only too much about your tribes. Know about you and your people, your tribal ways. Your father is a money-counter, eh?”

  “He’s—what did you call him? A money-counter? He’s actually an accountant. You know, a CPA. Certified Public Accountant,” she finished.

  Neil Whitsun simply stared as her words stuttered to a halt.

  “Exactly so,” he said with satisfaction. “And he’ll have some accounting to do ‘later,’ if you catch my meaning.”

  Judy didn’t, but Collum and his mother did, and winced.

  “Later, when it’s far too late for payoffs and bribes, my girlie.”

  “But—but he also writes poetry,” Judy weakly appended.

  With this admission, Judy had hoped to appease Collum’s creative father. For a moment, he did seem to retreat into thought, but then he picked up a new head of steam and spoke rapidly, panting:

  “Always prayed you would never meet my son, or any of my sons. But it’s in the blood, isn’t it? Take what you can, take over, rape, pillage, and plunder, right?” As he said “pillage” and “plunder,” his mouth spat a little into the air.

  “‘In the blood’?” was all Judy could muster.

  “You said it, not me,” said Whitsun, with a smile.

  “You mean that I’m—that I’m—”

  “Of the Chosen Hebraic people?” offered Neil Whitsun helpfully.

  “They really don’t rape all that much,” Betty noted.

  “My father told me all about people like you,” said Judy, summoning her courage. “I never believed him. I thought he was paranoid. And now here you are, with your dangerous prejudices.”

  “Yes! Here I am!” said Neil Whitsun. “And here I will stay. Vatican II did not stop Neil Whitsun, and neither shall the likes of you.”

  “Oh, now, darling, don’t get yourself started!” said Betty.

  What’s he like when he’s “started”? Judy wondered.

  Vatican II had declared that there might be changes made in the Old Church doctrine. For example, that perhaps the Jews were not to be considered forever and solely guilty of causing the death of the Lord. That they were not evil and not to be punished eternally for their sins.