Fish-Hair Woman

by Merlinda Bobis

  ‘Hang on, Stella — ’

  ‘What did he tell you about me?’

  ‘I’m — he —’

  ‘Did he talk about your father?’

  He deflects the assault. ‘So where is he, Stella? What’s your story this time? Your history?’

  ‘You tell me, Mr McIntyre.’

  ‘He’ll return next week, your father said — ’

  ‘Will he really? What other secrets did he tell you? Where did you go last night? Are you in this too?’ She clutches his shoulder, forcing him to turn to her, the car swerves, Luke grabs the wheel to steady it. ‘You’ll fucking kill us both, woman!’

  ‘Why are you here? Who brought you here? You said your father sent you your airline ticket — was that what my father said? You’ve all been lying to me, haven’t you — you’re all fucking with my head,’ she carries on, the tirade unrelenting.

  ‘Who’s fucking with whose head? I’m drugged, am I not, and taken into your room each night, interrogated about my father — by you who said he’s away when I rang from Sydney — so who’s fucking lying?’

  The Pajero screeches to a halt, slamming Luke against the dashboard.

  ‘All you dirty, conniving bastards!’

  ‘Aw, fuck you, Stella!’

  ‘Fuck your father!’ She says it as if the swear word were hard candy in her mouth.

  Cars blare their horns. Traffic is stalled by the Pajero sitting in the middle of the road. A driver yells, ‘Hoy, ano ka, sira?’ — hoy, you crazy?

  She returns to the wheel, suddenly dumb. The rain makes up for the silence. After a while Luke says, ‘So he left you too, huh? This is my love letter to you who never wrote to me. How sad, Stella, how very sad.’

  Through a string of expletives, she overtakes a Mercedes, nearly grazing another Pajero. Around them the cars honk again, the drivers curse.

  ‘Penance. Absolution. Did he talk to you about it?’

  ‘Just what do you and your father want from me, Stella?’

  ‘You don’t step on dung then wipe it off on someone else’s doormat,’ she spits out. ‘Or expect the owner of the house to clean up after you.’

  ‘Was that what Tony did — left you to clean up?’

  ‘We can’t ever be clean again!’ Spite, and now despair. The air in the car grows thick with it.

  ‘No point in cleaning after him,’ Luke whispers. ‘I hate my father.’

  The pale, brown eyes search his face, then the space where she’s about to park, then back to him, reorienting her gaze. ‘You hate him.’

  ‘Aw, you don’t know me and you don’t care. Let’s leave it at that — so where are you taking me — and am I safe?’

  Perea Street. 6:45 pm and it’s pouring rain. Behind the Philippine Commercial and Industrial Bank, among the garbage bags, a vagrant is abusing the security guard. Dressed in tattered trousers, the old man is drenched, hair and beard dripping grime on his chest. Between curses and irate gesticulations, he licks a McDonald’s carton. Around him the plastic bags have been burst open, their entrails gleaming blue under the neon. He’d been scavenging, throwing out ‘unusable’ garbage onto the street before the guard found him. The guard, a trainee, now pleads with him to leave the bags alone, but he screams back, ‘Banko ko ito! Banko ko ito!’ My bank! My bank!

  Suddenly the vagrant jumps up, gripping Luke’s arm and shouting, ‘Mr Amerkano, Mr Amerkano, my bank, my bank!’ He’s pointing to the garbage, demanding affirmation.

  Luke freezes, unable to look away from the man’s demented eyes, the whites turned blue by the light. Stella shouts at the vagrant to back off, he does, and she grabs Luke and they both run to the Australia Centre. Behind them the altercation continues. ‘My bank, my bank!’

  She leans against the silver column, both hands catching her brow. ‘I’m sorry … I’m sorry for my country.’

  She’s apologising to me? But Luke misses the tone of despair in which he does not even figure.

  Chapter 41

  They’re late. They sit in the back row. The room is packed with mostly Filipinos. A few stare at Stella, unbelieving and hostile. At the podium on a makeshift stage, a poet is churning out his arguments between poems. His favourite topics: globalisation and Filipina mail-order brides.

  ‘Global village. Really? I think you need to erase village in that phrase. First world living is no village life. Or perhaps the first world and their imperialist multinationals need that word to legitimise themselves. Their lives must be inclusive of the village, because this is where they have their holidays. They’re desperate for a village paradise — something like the wretched rice paddies gone Bali Hai or Blue Lagoon. Keep paradise pure. First world tourists look for villages still at one with nature, unadulterated by progress. But they might just run into problems if the farmer in the village suddenly demands. ‘But I want your BMW too, and your toilets that flush and all your wonderful amenities. Is this possible?’

  Amidst murmurs of approval, the poet smiles apologetically as he continues, ‘The Australia Centre is the best venue for my last poem tonight. This is from a Filipina mail-order bride dedicated to her Aussie husband.’

  ‘Going Ethnic’

  ‘When I met you,

  you even wished to learn

  how to laugh in my dialect.

  Between the treble of bees

  and the deep bass of water buffalos

  on television,

  between the husk and grain of rice

  from an Asian shop,

  between my palms

  joined earnestly

  in prayer,

  you searched for a timbre

  so quaint,

  you’d have to train your ears

  forever, you said.

  And when I told you how we village girls

  once burst the moon with giggles,

  you piped, ‘That must have been

  a thrilling sound,

  peculiar, ancient

  and really cool —

  can’t you do that again?’

  The applause is more than enthusiastic. The few Australians shift in their seats, while the poet dishes out a parting shot. ‘So let’s preserve our folksy village ways for our first world guests.’ Then the floor is opened to questions. If anyone is brave enough to ask? Someone is.

  ‘Thank you for your poems. I have two queries. One: in this country, the word village is a term also attached to the names of subdivisions for the privileged, even for the millionaires’ row, am I right? Two: more of a comment really. I’m uncomfortable with the way you talk about the Filipina mail-order bride as always the poor, exploited victim. Don’t you think it’s unfair and patronising to think that she’s always “the village girl”, that she’s provincial and naive — that she can’t hold her own?’

  From behind Luke recognises the speaker. Matt Baker!

  ‘I’m not in any way condoning “the bad Aussie husband”, but not all of them are despicable as you portrayed. Most of us are decent, ordinary human beings. And don’t you think that exploitation can be reciprocal? The exploitation of the possibility for a better life. Both the Filipina and the Australian hold out a promise of a better future for the other.’

  An awkward silence follows. Quickly the director of the arts centre takes the microphone and thanks everyone, tactfully inviting them to some drinks and snacks in the foyer.

  Seats are vacated and Stella seeks out her assignation, losing Luke in the crowd. She searches for the marked calmness that she so admired once, that even unnerved her. Ah, how can she be missed? At the other end of the room, the university professor is arguing with the white man who asked the awkward questions. She is a tall woman in jeans and t-shirt, with an ornate red and black neckpiece. Her hair is still shoulder-length, her face as composed as ever, like when they were in high school.

  ‘Inez Canlas … Inez Carillo … it’s really you!’

  The woman stares back before saying in a flat voice, ‘Matthew Baker, meet Estrella — ’ a
nd here, she pauses — ‘I mean, Stella Alvarado, the writer — now I’ve done the introductions, so if you’ll excuse me — ’

  ‘Don’t go, Inez … please … and I’m sorry about your husband — I read in the papers — your Federico was an honourable man and I couldn’t believe — I’m sorry, I’m terribly sorry,’ but Inez Carillo keeps walking away.

  Matt stares at the woman calling out her apology, her despair: strikingly fine bones and a look of perpetual anguish, and those hands that keep touching herself as if to check that she’s still here. So this is she!

  ‘We must talk, I’m a friend of Tony’s,’ he says.

  ‘A friend … ’ She grasps his hand and pleads, ‘So where is he?’ but Luke comes between them.

  ‘Oh, hi Luke.’ Matt cannot hide his discomfort.

  ‘You know each other?’ Stella steps back.

  ‘Just as you know each other, it seems.’

  Luke’s riposte puts Stella on guard. ‘No, we don’t,’ she snaps, ‘but you do know him. It seems. And why’s that?’

  Luke can’t see Matt trying to warn him with a look. Just shut up, please.

  ‘We met on the plane.’ Luke notes the man is neatly presented this time: shirt well ironed. ‘You were impressive on that flight, Matt Baker — a diplomat who might have met my father, yeah, ’right, and I’ve stayed, as you suggested, but do clarify that advice.’

  ‘Luke, I’m sorry, I should have — I will — ’

  ‘What’s this?’ Stella withdraws.

  ‘We must talk. Finally,’ Matt insists, leading her away from the crowd. ‘Please, no more puzzles or ploys for me to read. I’m on your side,’ he explains, but throughout his story, Stella’s response is far from discreet and people begin to stare.

  ‘Shut up!’ she finally screams at him. ‘Don’t treat us like children who can’t be held responsible for our own violence and corruption. If you treat us as equals, you’ll know that we take responsibility for our actions!’

  Matt matches her anger, but keeps his voice down. She’s shaken by what he says. No, she is shaking. She sways slightly. Luke rushes to her side, steadying her as she walks out. ‘You okay, Stella?’

  Matt is unmoved. ‘Listen, Luke, your father is not away on some fucking research. Your father disappeared in 1987 and has never been found. But no one talks about it. No one believes me. Everyone has forgotten him. Ask her to remember, will you? Ask her father.’

  Chapter 42

  How salty is a decapitated body? What minerals does a bloated limb generously shed?

  The bodies in the river fill him. He thinks of his father. But this is fiction. He stares at the manuscript, now twice its original length. Stella does not own up to her ‘love letter’. No, it is a testimony about a militarised village and, in the margins, the lost Australian. And now found? He hangs on to the doctor’s promise: his father will return but panic twists in his gut, then sorrow.

  ‘Everything is self-interest. Everything returns to the navel. Writing, love, especially love,’ Stella rambled on their drive home yesterday, her voice gritty as if scraped off the pavement. ‘Everything returns to the navel where we are cut off, where we are utterly alone — do you know what Tony did in this country?’

  Why should I know? Why should I care? Under the light of an incoming car, he could tell her cheeks were wet.

  ‘But love, like a revolution, is just another gesture.’

  Did he tell you about me? He wanted to ask.

  ‘I thought I was in love with the dead, because they have no more gestures. And now … and now … ’

  So he’s alive?

  She was moaning, muttering under her breath. He could not follow her words. She was mourning in another tongue.

  Luke returns the manuscript to his backpack, then empties it again, still hoping to find his return ticket. Or Matt’s card. Then he checks the door. It’s open. He locks it.

  Surely his father will return. He wipes off the fog from his glasses, tries to erase the hope in his chest, this shameful affliction.

  Her visitation is a motif in his sleep. It repeats itself without fail. She is back tonight, cradling his sorrow. She does not take him anywhere this time. He tells her about his mother and how it is to keep trailing that ambulance wail, in one’s nightmare, in one’s voice. She nods to say she understands. She opens her mouth into an O, kissing it to the ether. She makes strangled sounds in her throat. No, this is not a directional gesture. For the first time he understands. She heard him howl that first night.

  He kisses the marks on her temple, cheek, neck. Perhaps these pursed lips would bloom into speech. What are your own stories? But when he lowers himself into her, there is only a half cry. Her legs lock him in. She is strong, adept. For a brief moment, he is ashamed. He is shaking. This is his first time and all he feels is a wayward grief. She gathers him, both hands grasping, pushing him deeper inside. On her lips, his mouth opens, completing her cry. He is crying out her name, no he is crying.

  Chapter 43

  His mother always used the downstairs bathroom because the plumbing was reliable, she said. But not that day when there was no other adult in the house, she made sure of this. Luke found her. First attempt: razor, wrist. The cleaner found both of them just in time. She had passed out; he was catatonic. Sitting on his haunches and hands limp on the edge of the red bathtub. He was seven.

  Take it on the chin, his grandparents had whispered to each other, their pale lips hardly moving. It was early spring, still cold, when they took him away from Surrey Street. Before he got into the old Bentley, he counted the first leaves of the ivy. He couldn’t get past ten. The ambulance wail ate out the numbers.

  They were good, stoic people. They nursed their son’s wife back to health and they loved their grandson with fierce conviction, while they waited for their son to come home. The old couple compensated for his absence, maintaining that, well, Tony is what he is, but he loves his family. Really. They knew how to put words together, especially for their daughter-in-law and their precious grandson. Tony sends his love, he wrote to us, why wouldn’t he?

  So they all loved and waited in the Bowral estate, the house with the pool, the fatal one. Take it well, they said again. Everyone did. For a long time they went around with bruises on the chin.

  Their somnambulist grandson haunted the house. He sleepwalked at midnight, opening doors, closets, the pantry, the fridge, as if dreams were hidden there. He always ended up in the bathroom, sitting on his haunches, with hands limp on the edge of the tub and a funny sound in his throat. O stretched to infinity, till they woke him up. They were not surprised. They were wise and articulate. They had words for everything.

  ‘Most weep. Few sit on their haunches and howl.’

  They say, in the morning it is always better. What with the dent on the other pillow, the smell of sex and fresh gardenias, and the sun overheating the bed even before seven o’clock. It is the morning of the 27th of September, a prelude to the day that will be difficult to forget.

  Last night Adora listened, for what choice did she have, her lips unable to sound beyond a moan or a hush to allay the spill of grief. Mush in his chest. This morning, it makes him cringe.

  Stripped of its melodramatic timbre, this is plain heart-talk but with such pressing anguish, one is surprised the breast does not cave in — I wish I was never born.

  From the manuscript Iraya he had copied that passage on his notebook, then erased it, and copied it again. Then he added: I am not my father’s son.

  No, it is not always better in the morning. Nor is it better in the years that follow. One magnifies, embellishes, and love and the desperation for it do not get any more bearable. The boy on the bed rolls onto the other pillow, fitting his face on the dent, that absence. He remembers another line:

  Right-breast love … it’s love without the necessary organ.

  I like that, he tells himself. Right-breast love: it’s hollow, safe. Ah, but we had to love from the stupid side of the chest.r />
  Chapter 44

  Upstairs the boy takes his time to rise, while the maids fret over the party tonight. Where to get live lobsters at short notice? The Hapon wants to eat a banagan alive! The maids shiver at the thought.

  The master is hosting a despedida, a going-away dinner for his Japanese business partner, Mr Tanaka, who has a weakness for live lobster sashimi. He and Dr Alvarado have verbally agreed on a logging deal, and he leaves tomorrow, so he must have anything he desires. Get him his live lobster!

  By seven in the evening, two lobsters are on their backs and clawing the air on a glass platter garnished with colourful odds and ends. There is also a range of sashimi and sushi and, of course, the ubiquitous roast pig along with the doctor’s Spanish favourites. And a traditional dish, which Stella is offering around the table with her stories.

  ‘You should try this, Mr Tanaka — taro leaves cooked in coconut milk and lemon grass, with a dash of chilli. My mother’s favourite. She once planted a garden of lemon grass a long time ago. But she was not my real mother. My real mother died when she was fifteen, when she had me. Do you remember, Papa? Oh how could you? You weren’t there. You were never there.’ She’s on a roll. She tells about a village, a river, where you can find the best taro leaves.

  Doc Kiko squirms at her performance, she’s out to get me, and the Australian boy is all ears to this assault. Around the table the men clear their throats, embarrassed.

  Mr Tanaka listens politely then says, ‘I’m sorry for your mother, so young to die.’ But he’s more interested in wrestling with the lobsters, which, he wants to point out, have not been prepared correctly. They should have been laid on ice to inhibit resistance and at this moment the will to escape. He has pinned one down with a knife and is attempting to open its back, but its bedfellow is snapping both pincers and rattling the platter and will not let him proceed efficiently. It should have been served on another plate!

  ‘Sweet when so fresh,’ he explains in a soft voice, hiding his contempt for this unsophisticated household. All this ogling! He finally cracks the back open and scoops the meat to his mouth in the neatest possible way.