by Sue Saliba
‘are you doing anything?’
simon looked at some invisible spot in the air. ‘samantha wants me to… and, yes, i think it’s completely horrible and cruel but…’
‘but?’
‘i don’t know if i can…’
‘what do you mean?’
‘esma… the owner’s name is cassar.’
‘so?’
‘cassar, esma. he’s maltese.’
‘oh… do you know him?’
‘my father knows him. he’s the vice-president at the centre.’
‘oh. but simon,’ esma started again, ‘it’s awful… and it’s wrong… ethically…’
‘i know… and maybe legally. that’s what i was speaking to my tutor, bryan, about last night. he said it might be possible to build a case against cassar.’
‘are you going to do it?’
simon looked at the floor.
‘i’ll get the sample letter for you,’ he said. and he walked to his room but not before he’d reached out and touched esma’s wrist, and said, ‘you’re a good person, esma.’
and it was as esma was climbing the stairs – letter in hand – that she heard the twist of kara’s door handle.
footsteps on the wooden floor, just as she closed her own bedroom door behind her. not the softness of slippers but heels ready for leaving. kara, thought to be sleeping, must have been awake, dressing, watching herself in the mirror, tying her black pointed boots. esma had heard the sounds before, the shiftings of kara through the wall, and whether she strained herself to hear them now, or whether they entered her room by their own sheer force, it didn’t seem to matter.
whichever way you looked at it, esma and kara were entangled,
enmeshed.
and now, entanglement and separation – or the fear of it – fed each other wholly. where one arose in esma’s mind the other jumped in immediately, largely, escalating itself above and beyond so that all other thoughts disappeared.
how stupid. she could think of nothing but kara.
but then it wasn’t so stupid after all. not if you’d been paying attention. not if esma had been paying attention. did she really believe she thought of kara as some kind of innocent substitute for jen, or that she felt close to kara because kara understood her grief about jen? or that her attraction to kara was because she thought that by learning kara’s forcefulness she’d become present in the world like her? did she really think that these were the forces that bound them? true, these were aspects of their connection but there was something else.
something esma wouldn’t admit, not yet. something that only screamed so hard at her once kara revealed her plan, something that even then esma attempted to veil in a half-truth.
and what was kara’s plan? here, skipping beyond the inevitable discovery, awkwardness, anger, defensiveness and withdrawal around kara’s discovery of where esma was that night of the phone call, around silent accusations of how esma had let her down, around how kara didn’t know if she could fully trust again, around how the house was teetering on the edge of not becoming a home,
kara revealed her plan.
‘well, this is it, esma. i would have discussed it with you more but you didn’t seem to allow me the space. it seems the best thing to do, since we both want a home. chloe is coming to study education here at melbourne uni next semester. i want her to live with us. you and i will tell simon to leave.’
Spring
so, as winter ended, esma took her book of sparks to the gardens. one last glimpse, perhaps, before branches and stems forgot their sleeping selves and burst into colour and life. it seemed inevitable, natural, completely normal that the world should be flowering and vibrant and she almost chastised herself for having believed that the coldness of winter could last forever. how could i have believed such a stupid thing, she heard herself saying and she nearly bent down witness to a tiny daisy coming early through the grass.
but she stopped herself.
no, it was true – it had been winter. she hadn’t imagined it, and she was right to lie curled and stiff beneath the blankets and let her mind believe in unending cold. for a moment she forgave herself. and instead of choosing an opening flower or a new leaf for her book of sparks, she broke a twig, useless and dead, from a tree.
it will remind me, she thought – and she paused. it was difficult to say it, even to herself, but at last she did: it will remind me that i was right to feel winter.
it was important all of a sudden, as it had never been before, that she did not dismiss herself, all the bits of herself she felt were wrong or undesirable. all the failures. in the past she would have embraced this new feeling of spring and locked her winter self into shame. but now she saw the black twig as at home in her book of sparks as any opening flower or beautiful feather or piece of sun.
how strange, every moment of the world was suddenly alive, equally alive. shyness, fear, love, courage. the tiny claw mark in the tree. none was better or worse than another.
that’s when she thought, i’ll tell him i can’t do it. ‘i’ll tell him it isn’t me, that there are parts inside me that are other, different… and for once i won’t wish myself away.’
she was talking about simon and his plan to prosecute the puppy farm owner. she was talking about the law case they’d read together the other day when she’d followed him to his room, triumphant, happy, feeling something in her life had now changed. she was on top of things. she was strong. kara had wilted before her, and she was about to embark on her journey as an animal rights activist where she would be vibrant, passionate, unstoppable.
but those hours she had sat with simon reading the detailed case of state department versus wilson and underlining and taking notes and cross-referencing to huge hardback covered books on law he had on his bookshelves had seemed like years. ‘okay, highlight that sentence in section four point one,’ he said, ‘and mark the points referring to “unreasonable detention” in all the county court cases prior to 1992. we’ll need to go back through the bibliography in “the law and its technical applications”. we might need to go through the microfilm archives in the basement of the law library.’
in between the facts and numbered points, esma thought of the sketch she’d made of rascas’s paw, of that night he’d led her to the duck pond. she thought of the possum, of the bird she dreamed of nursing back to health, and of her sadness and her joy too.
these were the things that inspired her, as childish or nebulous as they may have seemed. these were the way, she realised, that she must help the dogs. in her own way.
why was nothing simple? why was nothing black and white?
even kara. there was esma thinking she’d moved beyond the threads of kara but when she returned from the gardens with her book of sparks – yes, with the rough twig stuck between two pages and causing the whole book to make an awkward arc – there was kara alone in the back garden.
esma saw her through the kitchen window as she reached to close that cupboard above the sink yet again – the cupboard door kara had told her on that first day to master but she had never managed to control. kara was pulling up the parsnips, her winter crop that she’d already complained had yielded very little. ‘looks like they still have a bit of life in them yet,’ esma said as she came to stand behind kara, bent, grasping at the leafy tops and pulling.
‘they’re beyond being productive,’ kara said.
and esma nodded. ‘still, there’s something special in this garden.’
‘i know.’
‘i don’t think you know what i mean,’ esma said.
‘i think i do.’
and when esma looked at the grave she and simon had made for the baby possum beside the vietnamese mint, she saw that it had been tended – carefully protected from weeds and even marked by a row of coloured stones – all through the winter.
‘i thought you didn’t like the possums.’
she knew it was cold and even cruel to say in the face of kara’s vulnerability
but something like fear – a fear of their intimacy again perhaps – made her say it.
‘i liked that little young one,’ kara said. ‘i tried to make a nest in my room for it once but it wouldn’t leave its mother. and then, when it disappeared, i looked everywhere, even just for a trace of its fur. but there was nothing. he’d vanished, esma.’
‘no one vanishes.’
kara sat down then, in the wet and the near-mud of the back garden.
‘is she still moving out?’ esma asked.
‘apparently… i don’t know… we haven’t really spoken much lately.’
chloe had moved her things from kara’s bedroom back into the tiny room beside the balcony because, she said, she needed more space. she’d decided she’d move into another house that was closer to the university. she’d found one in parkville with six other students. they were younger, like chloe herself, and they were mostly studying drama.
and then, of course, there was jonathan.
jonathan had been visiting most days since that night of kara’s birthday. he’d say hi to simon, then go straight up the stairs to see chloe. they’d talk in her tiny room and then go down the road to stay at his place. rascas, it seemed, had moved in with alain. he’d always loved sneaking into alain’s room and sleeping on the bed and now he became a permanent resident. and then, of course, there was simon. he was jonathan’s best friend, which meant chloe suddenly had a kind of privileged access to him, or so kara felt.
‘she was out for drinks with him the other night. she said they were waiting for jonathan to finish up his session at the recording studio around the corner. she came home wearing his special leather jacket he bought in malta. you know the one, esma?’
‘kara,’ esma said, and she knew she was betraying simon or her friendship with him, but even more she knew she was betraying herself.
‘kara,’ she continued. ‘i’m not working with simon any more on that puppy farm thing, i mean the law case for it. it… it just isn’t me.’
it was a gift, she realised as she said it, a gift to make kara feel better, to take some of her aloneness away.
‘i’m not that kind of extraverted person, you know, that confident person like law students are, with charisma and very bright and quick to pick things up. it just isn’t me.’
kara smiled. they were both covered in rain, light rain. the baby possum’s grave glistened at them. esma might have welcomed kara’s hand, then, as she had in the gardens that day they’d shared morning tea after maurice had left. all those months ago, before winter had come. she might have held kara’s hand and even dared to look at the beautiful tiny wrist just like she had that morning. but not today. she felt her fingers curl into fists. once she had dreamed that she and kara would merge. nothing, she had thought, could make her happier. but now she knew that they were going in different ways.
it was something kara didn’t seem to understand, or perhaps didn’t want to.
‘i’m glad things are back to normal,’ was all she said. and esma felt caught between sympathy for kara and her own silent promise to move along a path that let her feel more and more alive.
after they had gone inside and climbed the stairs that afternoon to their separate rooms, esma slowly buttoned a plastic raincoat around herself and went awkwardly down the stairs. she stuck her head in simon’s room near the front door to check she had the right address, and then rode her blue speckly bike all the way along roads from carlton to kensington as if, despite her guilt, it was the most natural and necessary thing.
samantha’s house wasn’t just a house, it was a mansion.
not in the sense of property values but in the true sense: sprawling, overgrown with plants and vines, many-roomed. grand.
samantha was sitting on the wide verandah that went all the way around the house. she was nursing a ginger cat, safe from the rain.
‘hey, esma,’ she called when she saw esma fumbling with the front gate, wet hands and shaking with an excitement that hadn’t made its way into words in her head yet.
‘hey…’ samantha was coming down the path with one arm out and one cradling the ginger cat now inside her blue mohair cardigan.
‘it’s great to see you… but you poor thing, all wet and soaked with rain… come on, come inside. give me the bike. we’ll put it in the hallway.’
it was after – upon samantha’s insistence – esma had had a bath in the finest vanilla salts and was dressed in samantha’s woollen pants and dressing gown that she sat in the lounge room and actually saw where she was.
she was surrounded by cushions and rugs and books. there were patterns of fish on the walls, a dreamtime platypus, chinese quotes on pieces of paper. ‘yuanfen,’ one of the notes read. ‘yuanfen: that apportionment of love which is destined for you in this world.’ beside this she saw green tara, a tibetan deity of enlightenment, and below it a photograph of a thylacine so perfect she could almost forget the animal was extinct.
it was like being in the boys’ house with its chaos and life, but here there was something more, something better. here there was a richness, a warmth, a sense of possibility that esma had felt nowhere else.
‘why didn’t i come here earlier?’ she said out loud. and samantha, sitting opposite her on a patched-up floral couch, shrugged and said, ‘you’ve always been welcome.’
and then samantha came across and placed the ginger cat in esma’s lap. so simple, honest. ‘we found her out the back,’ she said, ‘lost.’
there could have been a bigger story, esma knew. with facts, explanations, drama. but there didn’t need to be. the ginger cat looked up at her. it purred, it treaded its front paws on her lap and turned a circle before settling down. ‘she really likes you,’ samantha said. ‘i can see she feels at home.’
and esma felt it rise inside her – the reason she’d come here. ‘i want to help,’ she said. ‘i really want to help.’
love had rarely appeared like this before – an outpouring rather than a calculated sum of what she could receive. a simple forgetfulness of all the boundaries around her, and a desire to give without the fear that it might not be returned.
she and samantha walked down the hallway of the house. ‘i’ll show you the room where we have our meetings,’ samantha said.
they passed old chairs made soft with pillows and marked with stray fur and the indentations of sleeping cats. esma felt the green eyes of a kitten watch her from its nest in a box. there were charts of birds on the walls, pictures of echidnas, quolls, even an arctic fox. she felt something underfoot and looked down to see a ball of blue wool. midnight blue, like the colour she’d seen in the night-time sky above the gardens. it belonged in this house, she decided. a colour like dream, like day becoming night, like the upside-down world of possums and bats becoming awake as those blind to a certain light settled down to sleep.
‘come in,’ samantha said, stopping all of a sudden.
‘this is the room.’ and a brown dog – a pomeranian – rushed in ahead of esma, nearly tripping her over in his hurry.
‘he likes to be in on everything,’ samantha said, and the dog curled up beside samantha’s feet and looked up at esma with his one perfect eye. ‘we’re not sure how he lost the other eye. he just came into the shelter like that… he’s happy, though.’
esma looked around and saw on the walls the various campaigns samantha and her housemates and friends were involved in. they mapped a catalogue of cruelty they had all been fighting against.
native ducks being shot from the sky. cows and sheep boarding ships to be slaughtered in foreign abbatoirs. hens trapped in metal cages, never once feeling the earth with their feet. cats watching from crates, a hundred green eyes, before being clubbed and skinned for their beautiful coats.
and a dog – a puppy – that esma saw and wished she hadn’t.
it was behind wire, almost the kind of wire you might see at a shelter, a rescue centre, but beneath the picture were the words: he’s not going to a good home, he’s
going to a laboratory.
‘we need someone to help us with the raid on the puppy farm,’ samantha said. ‘things have taken an unexpected turn and we need to act quickly. will you help us, esma?’
the ‘unexpected turn’ was to do with simon, not directly and not in a good way but when he confided in esma later she understood something of that in-between space, of how the route from one point to another is rarely a straight line.
the puppy farm owner had got news of the imminent raid and begun moving the dogs to a secret place.
and simon was responsible.
it wasn’t because of the law case. in fact, he hadn’t got far with that although he had worked late into the night for weeks on it. it was because of his father, and because simon had told him about the campaign against the puppy farm.
‘he’s always been so supportive of me,’ simon said. he was sitting with esma on the wide verandah at samantha’s house. esma had been visiting more and more since that first visit and it was inevitable – she knew – that she would collide with simon there.
‘my father’s sacrificed everything for me and this whole thing with samantha and the puppy farm, it became so important to me… i thought… god, i don’t know what i thought… that he might understand? i thought that if someone loved you they would want you to follow what your heart says is right even if there are risks to them in what you do. i don’t know, esma. i guess i wasn’t really thinking straight. and now i’ve made a mess of things, for everyone.’
‘maybe you just knew there was a choice – a difficult choice – between two things you wanted.’
‘and i wasn’t able to make it.’
‘maybe you’re on your way.’
simon was silent then, simply sitting and looking at the verandah floor. it was wet. it was always wet lately, with spring and the rains that it brought. the garden was still and the house behind them was quiet.
samantha and all of her housemates had gone. she’d tried to convince everyone at the boys’ house to go along but only alain had agreed. they’d taken the van and left early that morning. they were making their way to ballarat with wire-cutters and torches and cameras. they were planning to document the appalling conditions of the puppy farm – and to save as many dogs as possible.
