Fish-Hair Woman

by Merlinda Bobis

  ‘Welcome, Luke, to my humble home. Mi casa, su casa.’

  Luke sees the girl first. She is in shadow. She is at the foot of the winding staircase. She has a bunch of gardenias in her hands. Her shoulders are bare. Her white dress has delicate beading on the bosom. She walks into the light. She walks towards him. She does not stop staring. She almost touches his face, or is it his hair. She hands him the flowers. She is also nineteen.

  Chapter 28

  The girl’s frown is close to a query. His clothes are too big for him, and those glasses too heavy. He is unhappy. He is too white but handsome — and that hair, golden hair. He does not know what to do with the flowers.

  Luke can’t quite look at her. She stares without blinking. She stands too close to him. She smells with a sweetness that’s making his toes curl. He is ashamed of his sandals.

  Introductions are in order but Dr Alvarado is waylaid at the door by a fast-talking journalist who’s waving a copy of the Philippine Daily News. ‘Have you read this, Doc Kiko, this thing on the river inquiry? Carillo’s been salvaged — my God, this is explosive!’

  Meanwhile Luke is staring at the gardenias in his hand, a little abashed. ‘Th-thanks for these … ’ He starts and shuffles awkwardly when the girl does not respond.

  There are about forty people in the lounge room, which is as large as a ballroom or a small car park. It is comfortably air-conditioned. The walls are hardwood lined with art and antiques, meticulously chosen. The furniture, also hardwood, is ornately carved. The floors, bone-white marble, click under the high heels of elaborately dressed matrons. Everywhere is a marked luxuriousness, just a little short of ostentation, or maybe not. The uniform of the night is long and beaded with puffed up, stiff sleeves for the women, and embroidered see-through shirt and dark pants for the men. Also, gold and diamonds for both. There are a few suits around, foreigners mostly, and khakis with their corresponding stars or stripes. Everyone seems to be over fifty, except for the endless trail of servants, in black and white ensemble, keeping mouths and glasses full. The only other young people in the room are under the crystal chandelier.

  She thinks his hair is on fire.

  ‘Ah, you’ve met my Adora — Luke McIntyre, this is Adora Alvarado, my angel — so, you’ve welcomed our honoured guest?’

  She nods, not taking her eyes off Luke.

  ‘Dr Alvarado, please let’s talk,’ Luke begs. ‘I don’t — ’

  ‘Very good, my dear, very good,’ the mestizo approves of the flowers. The pudgy fingers are possessively paternal on the bare shoulders. The diamonds wink.

  ‘Dr Alvarado, I’m taking the next flight home — when’s the next flight —I’ll ring and book now — my father is well, so there’s no reason — please, let me —’

  ‘Nasaan ba ang Ate Stella mo?’ he asks in Tagalog, ignoring the boy. Where’s your sister Stella?

  The girl kisses the air in response, lips lifting towards the stairs. That gesture, I know that gesture. The girl does it again, hand seconding the kiss that’s directed upstairs. So that’s what it is, a directional moue. The little epiphany tempers Luke’s agitation.

  ‘She’s not coming down?’ Dr Alvarado asks.

  She shakes her head, massages her temples with both hands and touches them to her chest.

  The baby lips become a thin line. ‘I’m sorry, Luke, you won’t meet my daughter Stella tonight. She’s indisposed.’

  ‘Dr Alvarado, I need to use your phone. Please.’ He will rebook his flight home, there’s no dying man, he’ll fly back tomorrow, maybe he can ring that ex-diplomat on the plane, Max or Matt, what’s-his-name. He checks for the calling card in his pocket.

  ‘Ah-ah, business must wait, hijo. As you can see, you’re not my only guest. I have to attend to the others.’ Then he whispers to the girl, ‘So, Adora,’ he purrs the ‘r’, ‘fix his clothes.’ Then the bearded chin rubs the bare shoulder. ‘I leave you in charge of our guest.’

  ‘Dr Alvarado, please — ’ Luke calls out, but the older man does not look back, so he turns to the silent girl. ‘Please, I need to make a call,’ but she only takes his hand and leads him to the stairs.

  ‘Hang on, where are we going? I said, I need to use a phone.’

  Adora lets go of his hand but does not stop walking.

  ‘It’s urgent, you must understand.’

  She does not even look at him.

  ‘Please — are you listening?’

  Still no response, so he grabs her arm. ‘Hey — do — you — speak — English?’

  She faces him, brings both hands to her lips, clamping them tight, then shakes her head slowly. Her face is just a few inches from his.

  He stares as she repeats the gesture, taking in the full meaning of her response, then the tiny contusions, like little pursed lips on her right temple, cheek and neck.

  Quickly she lifts her hair from her back and pulls it around to her side, covering the scars and settling the long blackness over her right breast. The fluid gesture silences him, or perhaps it’s the realisation that her silence is perpetual.

  Chapter 29

  She walks him through a dark corridor, then into a room. She turns on a lamp. The large double bed is the first thing that catches his eye. She smiles.

  ‘What … ? I’m not … sure … ’ he says.

  She’s still smiling, nodding her head, then she pushes him further inside. The gesture is efficient, sure.

  ‘We — we don’t even know each other.’

  It is a spacious room in pale blues, very neat and tastefully appointed. Unlived in but expecting habitation, and more gardenias on the bedside table. Their perfume hovers.

  She opens her arms slowly as if to embrace the room, then gathers her hands on his chest, lingering there. Out there and into his heart? Is this some ritualised foreplay? She does it again, but this time prodding his chest. All of this is yours, your own room. Then she moves to the mirrored wardrobe, is about to open it — but stops.

  Both stare at the incongruous picture in the mirror. A longhaired girl is looking like a bride in her strapless white dress but it is the most unlikely groom, in his denims and sandals, who is holding the flowers.

  He opens his mouth to protest, but something about the picture stops him. Something strange yet perfect. A boy and a girl in white, the flowers. Her face raised to his, her hand almost touching his face.

  He turns to her. His face contacts with her hand, settles there.

  They are still for a while, assessing each other.

  Her fingers cool on his cheek, her breath hot and sweet.

  His face slightly moist on her hand, his lips — how would they feel?

  He is wondering too.

  But she steps back and smiles, opening her arms towards the picture in the mirror, gesturing to it, to him. He thinks hers is a most expressive face, every feature in earnest play, and those hands making arcs, tips of fingers grazing his chest then teasing the air as she turns away and steps close to the mirror, misting it with her breath. He hesitates at first then reaches out, brushing her back with the flowers. One shoulder lifts, accentuating its curve as if now it were a niche for this moment alone. He is feeling brave, even careless. He runs the flowers on the tiny arc of bone.

  For a while she receives this halting benediction. Then she turns, walks around him, touches his hair, lifts it from his nape, nodding in solemn inspection. Where her fingers land, he is bold and fearful, deliciously unsafe. He imagines her shoulders now smell of gardenias. How to stay his hands, their impulse to grab. This is all strange and new, and ‘perfect’, he keeps hearing the word in his head, yet he craves for more. Never has he been so aware of the paucity of his body’s utterances. He is jealous of her body, its certainty. He longs to stretch her gestures, to lengthen their duration, so there’s enough tender thrill to moor him to safety if not completion. He has never been with a girl before except in the groping stages, and everything was always hurried, impatient and greedy.

  But this, thi
s.

  She studies the eyes behind the fogged glasses. She thinks they don’t suit him, their frames too heavy for his fine bones. He thinks her face has grown soft, all of her so soft. She thinks he is less unhappy now. He knows he is getting a hard-on. She notes he is blushing. So she turns away and opens the wardrobe. He is confused. She seems to have forgotten him as she chooses several suits and lays them on the bed. Her hands motion for him to try them on, then she walks out of the room.

  Chapter 30

  He brought shoes. The thought returns the boy to himself. He sinks on the edge of the bed, murmuring, ‘I’m not that uncouth,’ to where she stood just a second ago. He feels giddy … these bloody gardenias … and his embarrassment at having gotten it all wrong, or did he? Surely before this mirror, together they felt, she felt — the way she looked at him, her hand on his face, surely —was it really just about these? These were the suits, blues and greys, all silk and looking bridal beside the bouquet of flowers. He pours the contents of his backpack over the clothes that she chose so efficiently. How ridiculously alien among his things: the return ticket, the pile of papers, only one change of clothing, a toothbrush and the shoes, of course, the Lonely Planet, the photos. Yes, the photos. He picks up the first one, looks at it closely.

  Father and son, yeah, fucking happy times — so, when will you reappear, huh? The next questions sneak in, like the jumble of anger and longing: When will I see you? In a few days, a week, another thirteen fucking years? When — where — there’s something behind, something sticking out behind his father’s back — ah, Tony’s desk. The no-go zone, his mother would warn him. Don’t disturb dad, he’s writing a story. The photo rewinds like a film reel.

  It’s the study. Little Luke has been hovering outside, by the door, his own story under his arm — read me Cat-inna-Hat, Daddy, he wants to call out, but heeds Mum’s warning. Only the click-clack of the typewriter amidst the hush of the house. He falls asleep at the door, his father nearly steps on him when he comes out for coffee, he’s startled, he cries, daddy picks him up, says sorry, takes him into the no-go zone, shows him the story on the page, magic! Words appear as his father touches the keys — me too, me too, he wails, reaching for the keys, but Mum suddenly appears, I told you, Lukey, not to come in here, it’s okay, Patti, and Dad tickles him, they both tickle him, his laughter skips around the room, and a camera suddenly appears from one of the drawers, here, Patti, take a photo, take us.

  Was this how it was? The memory is sharp, a shock, he can’t breathe.

  Yeah, fucking happy times.

  And this? He queries the other photo: an older Tony, beer in hand at the pool table. Your own happy hour? Prick.

  Luke shoves the photos into a little blue notebook, grubby and much fondled. He flips through it, again telling himself that he’ll rebook his flight home … and yet, after thirteen years, he hopes … then there’s her, he didn’t quite catch her name… different longings converge in his lungs — he breathes out, there’s no point in staying, the man is alive and as always traipsing around the countryside, still predictably charming perhaps, dapper and well shod, never the sandal type. On the corner of a full page, he writes:

  Who’s the female guide this time?

  When Luke entered puberty, he began keeping the notebook. ‘Family reportage’, an absolutely clandestine operation, the scribbles hiding into themselves. Reportage. He liked the sound of the word the first time he heard it from his Year Ten English teacher. He sprawls on the bed and reads an early entry. Hey, don’t lose sight of history.

  5 February 1993

  Fact file on lost dad: Left for Asia. 1984. With American woman (neighbour said). Travelling around Asia to write (Mum said). Wrote home a bit, then suddenly zilch — no more letters. So the bathtub incident. 1985. Then Mum drowned herself. 1986. I was eight and stupid. We were all stupid. How could you marry a writer who’s always about to publish a book, but never ever does? Get a life!

  Dad: ‘word’ class wannabe.

  At the bottom of the page, he adds:

  22 September 1997

  I am not like my father.

  Chapter 31

  Who explained ‘the phenomenon’ to him recently? Uncle Josh, who never liked his brother, for good reason, then Luke extrapolated on the bitter discourse but all in the past tense. They never thought his father would reappear.

  Tony was always in love with different women. He was a serial monogamist, no breathing space between affairs. Strange how a cliché works when said with conviction: ‘You are my muses.’ You will gift me words that can sneak into the brain and rearrange the furniture there. Apparently in the sixties, he always had a novel and a fuck in progress. He was promiscuous, he was glib and incredibly attractive. Then ethereal Patti, all of fifteen, made him fancy himself as her gentler Heathcliff. He married her but continued to seek inspiration elsewhere. At first he never left his wife. He always returned to her bed. He convinced her that he was her homing pigeon.

  What to do with a legman? Give him a chastity belt? Then the little pigeon morphed into a bigger bird of bigger loves. Women became vast landscapes, histories, cultures. The Orient: he flew into it, revelled in its stories, caroused with its songs, consumed its strange victuals. First the tasting trips, then his palate was overcome, as he’d put it to his brother when he took off for good. Australia had become too bland for him, like ‘unleavened white bread’.

  She never knocks, he’ll soon know this too well. Adora walks in just as he’s zipping himself up (finally the blue suit) — was she out there the whole time waiting, or watching? She studies him now with an intensity that makes him grow warm, she runs a hand around his waist, checking the fit. She is so close, he can smell her, and ah, that cleavage when she bends to study the length of his trousers. He wants to say it again, take me to a phone, but as inane rather than urgent repetition, now that he feels his resolve growing under the silk trousers. Surely she is staring at it as she giggles briefly, the very first sound he hears from her, then sobers up to produce a safety pin from one of the shelves and unbuttons him in that no-nonsense fashion, much to his mixed excitement and agitation. Hey, hey, watch it.

  Her hands are swift little birds. His waistline is pulled up and quickly tightened with the pin, then she steps back to survey him with that never satisfied look of tailors: yes, the trousers do not hang too low at the crotch now, but not quite right yet, oh, never mind. He’s gaping at her, can’t you see it, me, this? He feels like covering his crotch.

  She turns off the lamp, stretches a hand towards him. Shall we go?

  He can still see her, that beaded bosom, under the flood of light from elsewhere. They both turn to its source, still for a moment. Luke wonders who it is between them that sighs. Outside the moon has shrugged off the smog. It’s incorrigible, this huge, laughing mouth. But toothless. Safe.

  Chapter 32

  ‘Adora’s congenital flowers,’ the doctor intimates, pleased with the metaphor. ‘Not scars but birthmarks, Luke.’

  Doc Kiko is happy now with his guest who looks quite presentable in the borrowed suit. The boy does look like Tony, the likeness so incredible, it makes his temples throb. He decides to make things clear to him as the night progresses. He owes him that. After all it’s only proper not to keep a guest in the dark.

  ‘By the way, most of the men here are wearing the traditional barong tagalog, and the women, the terno. They’re all my friends, and very faithful ones. You might meet someone who knows your father … That hulk over there is General Lucio with Colonel Belmonte, my golfing partners. Good players … loyal men. The octogenarian with the cane, that’s Don Andres, a shipping magnate, my always-generous uncle. We should visit his island sometime. He loves game and his shotgun with a passion, that old man. Boom-boom! Has hectares of private hunting ground — wild pigs, monkeys, even zebras, giraffes, yes, imported animals, superior hunting excitement! And that priest he’s talking to, that’s my Father-confessor, Father Martinez, a splendid man, well connec
ted on earth as he is in heaven. He’s the vanguard of my conscience, you’ll understand it if you’re Catholic … And the guy that just walked in, that’s the kindly Mr Tanaka, my business partner, passionate about resorts and fresh idea theme parks, ahh, eclectic taste. And that mestizo with the pipe was a classmate, now a senator. His wife, the one in aqua beside the piano, was a romance from once upon a time, ah, querida mia, but for a month only … ah-ah, I tell you, I sowed so much wild oats in my time … she’s into every charity … without doubt, a good woman.’ It’s as if he were fleshing out his status in this enumeration of personages.

  ‘This celebration is a double bienvenida, my Luke, a double welcome — for me and for you, of course. I lived overseas for a while, but I’m finally settling down in my country again, I’ll tell you my life story sometime, ahh, home at last … but I haven’t offered you anything yet — hoy, over here, you,’ he calls out to a young woman with the drinks. ‘So, Luke, what’s your heart’s desire? Wine, scotch, beer? Nothing? My Luke, you can have anything in my house … Come, we must eat … we’re all hungry, I’m sure.’

  Beside a wall with an impressionist series depicting rural scenes is a long table with four roast pigs, each with an apple stuck into its mouth. These glistening centrepieces determine the arrangement of dishes, from entrée to dessert, all carefully laid on hand-embroidered piña, pineapple cloth, again as explained by his host. Now he surveys the table from end to end, checking out each pig as if he were a magistrate of heads. It’s the upper region which absorbs him most, that snout, those eyes, especially this ear — then he returns to the first approved specimen. And rips off the ear.

  ‘This is the best part of the lechon, Luke, the best part — hoy, serve my guest,’ he orders the servant standing by with a carving knife, then bites the ear delicately.