Joe Cinque's Consolation

by Helen Garner

  The newly-weds stepped out on to the floor and into each other’s arms for the bridal waltz. They moved so slowly, enfolded in a blissful embrace, that they seemed almost asleep on their feet. Guests darted out to wind pink and lavender streamers round the dancing couple, cocooning them, mummifying them in love and paper.

  A big black cat slid into the room and leaped on to Mrs Cinque’s lap. She held it with tenderness, and stroked it.

  ‘Joe had another girlfriend before he went overseas – Rebecca. After he passed away she came to see me. She put a big bunch of red roses on his bed. She said to me, “If only Joe would have loved me, I would’ve been the happiest girl in the world.” What can you do. You can’t tell your heart what to do. He was in love with her – I can’t say her name. He was going to marry her. He was happy with her. Every time with her he laugh and smile. I called her a witch.

  ‘I gave Joe a ring for his twenty-first birthday. He wore it to his uni exams, to bring him luck. I didn’t put it on him, when he was . . . when he . . . She gave him a ring, her grandmother’s wedding ring. He wore it on his pinkie. When I first see him at the – at the morgue – when I see that ring on his finger, I start screaming, Get that ring off.

  ‘I didn’t know till the trial that they had him for three days. When I hear that, I had another attack of screaming. For days, for days, nobody lift a finger.

  ‘We went up and down to Canberra, just to hear why. What am I going to tell my mother, when I go back in Italy? Joe was the first grandchild on both sides of the family. He carried my grandfather’s name. I don’t know what I’m going to tell them.’

  She sat with the remote in her hand and the dense cloud of darkness on her knee, and wept in silence. The tears slid off her face and disappeared into the weave of her jumper.

  That first day, Maria Cinque and I spent seven hours in her kitchen, with the tape recorder clicking on and off between us. Her husband Nino came home late in the morning and took his place at the head of the table. He was a slightly built man of sixty or so, tanned and bespectacled, wearing a well-ironed open-necked shirt. He had kept his hair, though it was grey, and wore it combed back off his forehead in a wave. He was a smoker, with the cough to show for it. His manner was quiet and rather sweet, his natural expression a half-smile. Often, though, through the long afternoon, he would be overcome, and would have to leave the room abruptly and go into the garden, or step through the open archway into the living room and stand there for a moment, out of our line of sight; we could hear him, gasping and blowing out great lungfuls of air, like an athlete after a marathon run.

  Their surviving son Anthony, a desperately thin young man in his early twenties, slept all day and rose desolate and paranoid, his face tormented with pimples: he drifted in and out of the room, smoking and seldom speaking. The big black cat, too, came and went. But Mrs Cinque stayed.

  To call the encounter an interview would be to gild the lily. I was too bewildered by their story, and too shaken by their raging anguish and grief, to do much more than listen.

  Yet the day was not shapeless. Underneath the machine-gun rattle of speech, the sobs and shouts of anger, the mourning cries, the curses, the incredulous whispers, and the long stretches of quiet weeping that sounded later, on the tape, like the soughing of a wind, there lay a solid foundation of courtesy. Wild with pain, half mad with it, they still thought to make a guest welcome. Mrs Cinque fortified us with brilliant espresso coffee. When I went to the toilet I found new soap and a fresh hand-towel. At noon she wiped her eyes, got to her feet, and asked with a smile if I would like something to eat. At five o’clock, Mr Cinque led me down the long, orderly back yard and we stood without speaking before his rows of shivering lettuces.

  At half past five, as I was gathering up my things to drive back to Sydney, Mrs Cinque invited me to stay for tea. I hesitated, anxious that I had exhausted her. She pressed me. I accepted. While she cooked I got up from my place at the kitchen table and stood about, stretching my legs and watching her practised movements at the stove.

  The time came for us to sit down. She called Mr Cinque and Anthony, but before they appeared, she whispered to me, ‘Sit in this chair, Helen – sorry – don’t sit next to Nino. That’s where Joe always sit. Nino don’t like it if anyone sit there.’

  I looked at her in horror. For seven hours I had been sitting in Joe’s chair, ignorantly making his father suffer; and they had been too polite to tell me.

  It took me three days to transcribe the cassettes, hauling the tape back and forth, stabbing away at the buttons. I was appalled to hear my own contributions, the puny interventions I made, my impertinent attempts to inject hope, to modify savagery, to relieve tension. I sounded ignorant and shallow, a twerp with no experience of life. Mrs Cinque was three steps ahead of me the whole day. She had read my mind before I could open my mouth. She overmastered me at every point. Her voice was forceful, passionate, wild with bitterness and contempt, and heavy with the authority of suffering.

  I had to take frequent breaks from transcribing, to run out of the building into the fresh air and walk fast up and down the hilly streets, because as I copied down their story, something inside me seemed to be breaking. Into my thoughts kept seeping fantasies of violent retribution. Of execution. What was happening to me? Like almost everyone I knew, I had always been ‘opposed to the death penalty’. I had worn my ‘belief’ as a badge of decency and reason. But now I saw that I had never thought the matter through. I did not want to have to think it through. I didn’t know how to start, and I was too scared of where I might end up. I put my head down and forced myself to keep typing.

  Joe Cinque and Anu Singh met in Newcastle towards the New Year of 1995.

  ‘Joe just came back from his overseas trip,’ said Mrs Cinque, in her husky, blurred voice. ‘He start working for the same company his father and grandfather used to work for. He was employed as an engineering project manager. Couple weeks later, he went out with his friends to the Brewery, a nightclub near the wharf here in Newcastle. He met this Indian girl, who was studying in Canberra. She was home for the Christmas holidays. Her parents were going to move down to Sydney.

  ‘I got nothing against anyone, but when he said she was Indian . . . I know the culture difference, I was worrying about it. He says, “She’s nice, I like her, she’s very intelligent.” And she started to call on the phone.

  ‘Joe used to come home from work about six o’clock for tea. We haven’t got a TV in the kitchen, because one thing I always insist, we had tea together. Six to six-thirty was the special time – we like to tell what happened to everyone during the day.

  ‘But she start ringing up about quarter past six. Of course he stop, he went to the phone for one, two hours. Every night. To me was not normal to talk so long on the phone. One night he went upstairs and I picked up the phone down here and I said, very abrupt, “In this house we have tea from six to six-thirty – can you please ring after that.”

  ‘That year, 1995, he started to go down to Canberra to see her. He was going nearly every weekend. During the week he still played a lot of sport, but he’d leave work in Newcastle on Friday night, and come back Sunday night – two o’clock in the morning. I was worried sick about his driving all over, and he had to go to work the morning after.

  ‘She was very controlling, very bossy. She was calling at least twice every night. Sometimes during the day I called his mobile and he had it switched off. I go mad at him:“Why you have a mobile if you have it switched off?” He never told me, but his boss told me after that she was ringing and ringing, interrupting his work.

  ‘I didn’t meet her till the middle of 1996. Joe didn’t tell me, he just brought her here one day. They were going to play tennis. They come to the door. I was doing the ironing. He say “This is –” I can’t say her name.

  ‘When he came back that night he said, “What do you think of her? Isn’t she beautiful!” I said, “She’s okay. She looks a bit skinny.” She was skinny. She wa
s wearing jeans and a top. Even though it was winter you could see her stomach. He thought she was beautiful, anyway.

  ‘Joe start to tell me at that time, she was having a problem with eating disorder, she was throwing up, she was bulimic. He took her to the doctor but the doctor could not find nothing wrong with her.

  ‘Before, Joe never miss one day university, one day work . . . but couple of times he left work in the middle of the week to go to Canberra and look after her.

  ‘You know, the women talk more and the kids don’t listen. But Joe listen to his father. One time she call him, want him to fly down there. Nino he say, “Look – her parents are doctor! Why you want to go there?” “She sick, Dad.” “Her parents can look after her! You’re not a doctor!” So that time Joe change the arrangement, he say, “I’m not gonna go.” ’

  ‘Yes, but after another couple of weeks,’ Mr Cinque broke in, ‘she call him again, he go to the airport at Belmont, he take the plane to Canberra – through the night! I was upset! Because he working like a dog, here. First two years in a job, you got to put your guts out, and he did! I say to him, “You are a man! Why you go there for? Only because she whistle?” ’ Mr Cinque sucked in a breath. ‘Tsssssssss – I was so upset.’

  ‘And the telephone!’ said Mrs Cinque. ‘I know when you’re young and you’re in love, but this was ridiculous! They were ringing and ringing each other – the phone bill go sometimes to seven, eight hundred dollars – just for her. Nino said, “I’m not gonna pay this phone bill!” and Joe goes, “I’ll pay, I’ll pay.”

  ‘Joe changed so much when he met her. He wasn’t a happy, free spirit any more. I told my best friend Rosalba, “She’s gonna end up taking Joe from us, from work, from his friends.”

  ‘That’s the only time we argue, Joe and I, and Nino too – about her. I say, “She manipulate. She snap and you go.”’ She mimicked her son answering between clenched teeth. ‘“Don’t say that, Mum! She doesn’t do that.” I say, “You’re your own person. Don’t let her control you like this.” “Mum, please – don’t make me choose. I love you but she needs me – I have to go there.” But I say, “If she sick, and the doctor can’t find nothing wrong with her, she just wants you there for herself.” ’

  One of many things that enraged the Cinques about Anu Singh’s defence was its stress on what they saw as the trivial problems of her early childhood, and its argument that these difficulties lessened her responsibility for her adult behaviour. Part of her father’s evidence, for example, was that as a small girl she was unable to sleep except in her parents’ room. The Cinques had their own story of childhood trouble: if the same reasoning were to be applied, they said, their two sons should be ‘monsters’.

  In 1979, when Joe was eight years old, the Cinque family had a very bad car accident. Another vehicle went through a red light and struck their car, which rolled. Joe was thrown clear, but Anthony was stuck behind his mother, bleeding and screaming; Mrs Cinque’s left leg and foot were smashed (now, twenty years later, she still limps and has to take pain-killers every day), and Mr Cinque was knocked unconscious.

  ‘People faint when they saw me in hospital,’ Mrs Cinque told me. ‘I was a mess. I was in intensive care, and then in hospital for three months. The boys had a lot of shock. I had to leave them behind so many times. When I went to Sydney for two months for an operation on my foot, a friend had to look after Anthony. He said, “Please, Mum, take me with you. Ask the doctor for a bed next to you. I will not do nothing. I’ll sit there all day – please don’t leave me behind.” It nearly tore my heart out.

  ‘Anthony had to have the light on in his room for years – he was scared of the dark. I took him to a psychiatrist in Sydney, because he remember how they had to cut the car to pull me out of the wreckage – he was only three years old. And now he’s back in a mess again, because of what happened to his brother.’

  Because they had no family in Australia, and because Mr Cinque, once he recovered, had to go straight back to work, Joe became ‘the little man in the house’.

  ‘He was only eight,’ said Mrs Cinque, ‘but he had to grow up quick. Anthony was a baby and Joe had to look after him. In a way I feel responsible. I was sick and in pain. I asked a lot of him: “You’re older! You should know better than that!”

  ‘He did it no problem, no complaint. He just did it. He could cook, he could do ironing. That’s when he learnt to look after people.’ The habits of care he was obliged to develop as a child, Mrs Cinque thought, fed into his relationship with the woman who was to kill him.

  ‘He felt that she needed him. That he could take care of her and make her better. I think there was nothing wrong with her – she just pretended to be sick so she could hold him. It was the only way she could control him.

  ‘When you’re my age, you been through a lot. You know women, the way they act. I’m a woman – I’m not against. But you know the way they operate. I know exactly the way she operated. But Joe couldn’t see that. He didn’t want to see that. He was in love with her, and he thought he could make her better.’

  The beginning of Joe’s affair with Anu Singh was complicated by secrecy. ‘Until he went down to live with her in Canberra,’ said Mrs Cinque, ‘Joe had never been to her parents’ place. Her father didn’t know about him. After she split up with the other man, Simon, her father said to her, “You gotta finish your study before you get involved with somebody.” Joe warned us – in case her family ring up and ask who Joe was, we had to say he was “one of Tony’s friends” – Tony’s one of her brothers – he used to live with them down in Canberra. That was something I really could not accept.

  ‘But around November 1996, when university finish, Joe brought her up here to stay with the family. She was polite and everything. She stay two, three weeks with us. She was perfect. Perfect girl. Dress properly. She help in the kitchen, wash the dishes. Joe tell me she didn’t eat meat so I always prepare vegetarian food. Joe told her to look what I make – “That’s what I like, dishes like that.” And Joe tell Nino, “Just be careful when you talk to her. Don’t say nothing chauvinist, because she’s a feminist.”

  ‘Two months before he pass away, Joe wrote us a letter about the new car he got, how happy he was about it and his job, how much he loved us. “I can’t wait till she finish her degree in November and then get married next year.”

  ‘But deep down I knew she wasn’t the right one for him. I tried very hard, but she just upset me.’

  ‘You mean you kind of felt an instinctive thing?’ I said.

  ‘I swear to God I did.’

  ‘Do you think maybe . . . When I look at the wedding photo I see those lovely Italian girls and I think . . . uhmmmm . . . what am I trying to say?’

  ‘I know what you’re trying to say,’ said Mrs Cinque, very clear and loud. ‘No! It was not because she was Indian. He had another girl before, Rebecca. She wasn’t Italian. She was Australian. She was the most beautiful gorgeous nice girl. Used to work in the restaurant where he worked when he was studying. She gone to Sydney long ago, she’s married now. Ohhh, she was wonderful. She like to get married and settle down. But Joe was only twenty-two. He was too young to get involved. He wanted to do a lot of things before – finish his study, go overseas. So when Rebecca was around he wasn’t ready.

  ‘When he came back from his trip we pick him up in the airport in Sydney, Nino and I, and he said, “Five dollars! That’s all I got left!” He said he had the best time of his life. He says, “When your thirtieth wedding anniversary I’m going to send you to Greek islands! So beautiful! You gotta be there!”

  ‘I dream of him only two nights after he pass away. And I said to him’ – she imitated herself, strongly, like a mother – ‘Where you been? His hair was wet, just like he had a shower. I told you, Mum – I been in Greece! I said, How did you get there? He said, Went by car! Another time I dream of him and he said, What happened to me, Mum? I said, She kill you, remember? After the party? And he look at me, like he didn’t
know what happened to him.’

  Mr Cinque went out of the room and returned with a manila folder which he laid on the table in front of me. Confused, I opened it and shuffled through the papers.

  ‘Whose are these? Phone bills? Credit card bills?’

  ‘In court they tell,’ he said, ‘she never go nowhere, she stay home locked in her room, not eat, not go out. Not true. They went everywhere. See? Casino.’

  ‘Joe told us,’ said Mrs Cinque, ‘they were going to the casino many times – at the casino, winning money, many times!’

  ‘They went everywhere. They went shopping – in big shopping centre.’

  ‘What about in court,’ said Mrs Cinque, her voice rising. ‘They say “She didn’t look after herself, she didn’t dress properly” – what rubbish that was! “Ten showers a day!” It’s not true! She was here for two, three weeks, she never even had two showers a day. I can hear, when you open the water upstairs. She didn’t have more than one shower a day. This pacing up and down – now I have to take a Valium to sleep, but before, I could hear a fly. If she pacing up and down, I could hear.

  ‘And if she was bulimic, I never found any trace. When you’re bulimic, you eat, you go to throw up after half an hour. She didn’t. She sit here drinking –’

  ‘Eating,’ said Mr Cinque. ‘Playing cards with us. In this house! At this table! She was laughing! We spent hours and hours. She wasn’t going to the toilet to vomit. She was just going outside to have a smoke, because she never smoke in front of me – I can say that.’