Another Throw of The Dice

by Mary Clare Morganti

  Min began to shake with dry sobs and she threw the letter on the floor. Her mind was jammed with emotions of fury, persecution and hatred. She convulsed with physical and intellectual pain and was unable to summon to mind the rationale which had sustained her over the past few years. Her anger was now against this system which had created such damage and inevitable distress in a person, the fabric of whose life was knotted with misconceptions, obscurantist notions and distortions. Her poor mother! When her body and mind stopped struggling chaotically and she was able to breathe deeply to alleviate the shock, she was filled with pity for her mother and all those like her who were locked in a straitjacket of sin, guilt and fear. She was sure her father’s drinking was a shield against all that and she felt compassion for them both for the first time.

  She had forgotten the gift lying innocently on the table and went to her bedroom to lie down and practise the deep breathing which had helped her in the past.

  She found herself in a dark place among a crowd of people who were dressed in sackcloth and shouting something unintelligible. The darkness was created by a huge cathedral which blocked out all natural light and from which came chanting and the sound of bass drums. After a while it became clear that the horde of people carrying lighted candles was moving slowly to pass a catafalque on the steps of the cathedral. When each group reached this object they raised their fists and uttered unintelligible words. She wrapped her arms around her head to protect herself from the clamour and fell down.

  The sensation of the fall woke her up with a start and she felt a great relief to be where she was. She remembered Noriko’s gift and eventually got up to open it. She read the card which was written in perfect English thanking her for her hospitality and then she carefully undid the package which was a cream silk blouse with fine tucks in the front and back. It really was charming and Min wondered when she would dare wear such a delicate garment. Perhaps when Noriko came back briefly from New Zealand the following week…

  She picked her mother’s letter up from the floor and took up where she had left off. Her strong reaction to the first part and the subsequent cathartic dream had calmed her and she now felt a sympathetic detachment as if she were a clinician reading the aberrant ramblings of a tortured soul. The letter went on to say that her mother was not feeling well and wondered if Min could come home for a visit. That proposition tested her new-found understanding and she knew that she would need to let it bed in before she put herself through the fire of vicarious religious fervour. At least she could pick up the telephone and ring home and see how she coped.

  The following day, when she and Jim collected Polly from the hospital, to her surprise Jim had a copy of the newspaper with the article which Min hoped Polly would not see at this particular time. To distract her, Min started on a hyped-up account of the wedding but in spite of that Polly seemed more interested in the article which Jim read out when they got home. They were both heated in their reaction and their dismissal of its thesis. Min played it down and told them about her discussion in the staffroom, but Polly was adamant.

  ‘It’s the last straw,’ she said, ‘I’m outta here.’

  Jim looked at Min for more palliative words but she wasn’t prepared to go any further. She too had felt indignant but as so often happens another person’s overreaction provokes a mild defence to allay it. Polly reminded Min of how disturbed she had felt when her brother-in-law had talked about her so-called neo-colonialist agenda, and she took the point. However she also reminded Polly that the principal had laid that ghost and again this time, her opinion was more valid than the armchair critic’s.

  ‘Her support, along with the hard slog put in by the students whose lives are often a struggle trying to balance family responsibilities, helps me to stay focused. So poof to Patriot and all his - or her - works and pomps. But,’ she added, ‘I can understand how you must feel when you have been so willing to try and get to grips with this culture. I’d feel the same in your shoes I know.’ Min smiled at Polly who smiled back for the first time.

  ‘To hell with cross-cultural efforts,’ pronounced Jim firmly. ‘Let’s get stuck into the bourbon.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Polly in a change of mood. ‘I’m my own boss again at least.’ Min turned the conversation to the state of Polly’s health. She brushed aside any probing by saying that she felt purged and needed time to come to terms with what was indeed a shock. Jim was very quiet and meditatively sipped his drink so Min changed the subject back to the wedding and described the gift Noriko had left for her. She also took it upon herself to describe Yushi’s sister and her enthusiastic interest in everything.

  ‘She won’t be here long enough for the novelty to wear off,’ Jim said quietly, looking through his raised glass with one eye closed.

  Chapter 56

  His arrival in Australia aroused in Michael mixed feelings of familiarity, strangeness and apprehension. The accents all around him at the airport reminded him that he was an exile and he found himself longing for the rich vegetation and general languor which he had left. Now he must face his past and hope that he could return without the sword of Damocles over his head.

  He spent the first night in a backpackers’ hostel on the limits of the city before travelling into the central district where his lawyer had commodious rooms. The first night furnished him with another dream concocted from the medley of his life. He could not remember any of his other dreams since the visitation of the constabulary to his old home. He was working in his aunt‘s garden while she lay on her chaise-longue on the verandah where wisteria festooned the iron tracery. She was smiling indulgently as she watched him work. In due course he stood up to take a break and wipe the sweat from his face and saw that her chair was empty. He was startled at first but then he thought she might be making a cup of tea. He went into the house calling her name but there was no sign of her. Instead several strangers were sitting around a table strewn with documents which they were studying. They turned to look at him with what he recognised as animosity, so he apologised and withdrew. The crash of cutlery woke him and it was daylight. Other hostellers were preparing their breakfast in the common kitchen but he lay awake, thinking about the dream and its significance. The brief meeting with his aunt was both consoling and traumatic while he wondered at the power of the subconscious mind to record and retain our meaningful experiences.

  The lawyer was unable to offer positive encouragement for the short term. The disciplinary body had a job to do within the current laws on mercy killing and because he had not tried to cover his action with a plea for motives of pain relief, he did risk losing his licence to practise medicine. His only hope was to plead inexperience; he had believed in his power to find solutions and the moral imperative which he followed boiled down to that. Michael asked the lawyer about the situation with his marriage.

  ‘Not a lot of good news there. I have a letter from your wife’s lawyer stating that there is no question of divorce, given her religious convictions.’

  ‘Maybe it’ll have to go to Rome. They seem to be able to find grounds for annulment in most cases.’

  The lawyer pursed his lips. ‘Is it important to you?’

  ‘No - as it happens. I have no plans to remarry and a de facto relationship wouldn’t worry me. Leaving your comfort zone puts a lot of things into perspective. I meant that my wife might try the Roman route.’

  Michael got up to leave after giving a temporary address with his old university friend where he hoped to stay for a while.

  As the tram wheels ground and screeched around a corner, he had confirmation of returning to the industrial age like a time traveller. All the modern urban trappings were laid bare to intrigue him and take his mind off his problem for a short time. It was as if there was a metallic patina over the world and even the trees and shrubs stood in an organised relationship with each other, respecting the spaces in between. He was looking at his own city with new eyes and he felt respect for the aura of control in evidence, from
the concrete towers to the traffic lights.

  He fell to thinking in his hopelessly intellectual way, about the striving for mastery of the natural world which this city represented. Perhaps this was what had prompted him to wrestle with a natural threat. Pain and grief had challenged him to act within his power and he had not reckoned with the consequences for his position in the very society which had equipped him with that power. Would he do the same thing again? he asked himself and the answer was ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t mind me.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he smiled woodenly when his intense rumination was interrupted by the buxom woman who landed beside him with a loaded shopping trundler which she tried to manoeuvre beside her in the aisle.

  ‘I should of gone home earlier, but I met a friend I hadn’t seen for ages and we stopped to chat. Yer know how it is - yer get talking and next thing yer know yu’ve yakked the time away. Trouble is - I hadn’t seen my friend since her hubby died, God rest his soul.’ She turned stiffly to look at him but had to rely on her eyes going to the limit of their sockets.

  ‘Of course,’ said Michael obligingly, feeling sorry for the bulk she had to move around, plus shopping.

  ‘I don’t drive - a thing I regret many a time - but then there’s the parking. Yer can’t win.’

  ‘No,’ he said, hoping to confirm her belief, whatever it happened to be.

  ‘So what’re you doing on public transport then? Lost your licence - had a bit of a run-in with the law?’ She nudged him with jovial intimacy.

  ‘Something like that.’ Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings and garrulous old women, he thought.

  She hadn’t waited for his answer.

  ‘Yeah - my Darren lost his licence soon after my Sid died - God rest his soul - and it was just at the time when I needed a shoffer. “Yer timing’s pretty rotten,” I told him. As I say - yer can’t win - ya just have to battle on - Oops, here’s my stop. Nice to chat…’

  Michael watched her admiringly as she called out to the driver to wait while she got herself and her uncompromising trolley off the steep step, and he waved back when she smiled up at him from the pavement. Once upon a time he would have resented such a conversation but now he felt differently about a woman struggling to connect with her fellows. He remembered his intolerance with the platitudes and jokiness of some of his parents’ acquaintances but now he was more like a kindly anthropologist come to engage with the natives and possibly learn from them. For some reason he thought of Min and wondered what she would be doing while he was grinding along in a tram and surrounded by concrete.

  His mind had become so distracted that he had forgotten to look for the landmarks denoting his stop and found if necessary to alight and hail a taxi to backtrack. Once again he found himself in the company of a garrulous person who was full of information about his last fare. He heard how this hapless passenger was in the throes of chemotherapy and his days were numbered so had worked out how many journeys he would have to make and paid in advance. Michael felt his anger rising but the oblivious chatterbox capped his tale with ‘That’s what I call organised, don’t you?’ as he processed his credit card.

  ‘You bloody heartless fool!’ blurted Michael as he slammed the door and felt his erstwhile mood disappear with the accelerating taxi.

  Chapter 57

  Polly was determined to find out who ‘Patriot’ was, who had sheltered under a pseudonym to get something off his or her chest without facing any friends among the expatriate community. She could sympathise with that but her suspicion that Eturasi was the author nagged at her mind and made her anxious to talk to him. She decided that it might be a good idea to invite him and Luatasi for a meal to clear the air. So far she had not seen Jupeli to arrange to go on with the language sessions because for her, the landscape had changed and she needed time to reengage with life and people around her. With Jim in particular. The miscarriage which could be viewed as a resolution of a crisis had a profound effect on her emotions and her relationship with him. To bear a child of local heritage would have been the ultimate commitment to the culture and she mourned its loss while admitting that her transient idealism would have been incorporated in the being of another person. She and Jim needed time alone together and they were thinking seriously of a visit to the Big Island which they’d heard so much about. When she suggested that they invite Eturasi and Luatasi, Jim wanted the resolution of the relationship with Jupeli first.

  ‘After your ingenious reason for going on with him as tutor, I think you should also tell him what happened. Following up what Eturasi thinks is small beer surely?’

  Polly agreed but said she was nervous about confronting Jupeli. ‘He’ll probably say the child was yours. You and I know it wasn’t but how can I convince him?’

  ‘By the way - do you want to carry on with the language tuition?’

  ‘I must say I’m feeling ambivalent right now. It’s awkward with Jupeli and if Eturasi wrote that stuff I’ll feel awkward with him - unless we can sort things out.’

  So it was agreed that an evening with Eturasi and Luatasi might be the best course after all.

  The cicadas were deafening as the couple walked over to Polly and Jim’s about a kilometre away. It was not often that they were able to go out together because of the demands that family and jobs put on them. Luatasi was involved with new curriculum work for the primary level and it took up most of her thinking time; she was highly motivated to change the teaching environment for their two young daughters. They had spent some weeks at school in New Zealand and sometimes complained about the more authoritarian methods at home.

  As they strolled along and met people they knew, they stopped to talk and in some cases explain that they had a babysitter for the girls. That in itself was a town phenomenon and made some people smile.

  ‘We should try and do this more often,’ said Eturasi. ‘Our lives are too separate these days.’

  Polly had lit lots of candles around the main room and Luatasi was reminded of her liturgical past at boarding school in New Zealand. When she said as much to Polly, they laughed at the bonding effect of a Catholic education in a very different hemisphere.

  ‘All this flickering is likely to give me a headache,’ said Jim. ‘Why we want to hark back to such deprived medieval times when we entertain, beats me.’

  Eturasi laughed. ‘Recent times for us of course - so it is interesting that it appears romantic I’m told. When I was a kid, electric light was non- existent in our village. Still is, in many.’

  ‘We’re being too prosaic.’ Luatasi looked apologetic. ‘We said to each other as we walked over here how pleasant it is to go out together for a change.’

  ‘So let’s drink to that,’ said Jim, standing up and rubbing his hands.

  The food was a mélange of Polly’s mother’s tortilla recipes and local fruit which they never tired of. She had made a chocolate cake because she remembered Eturasi’s enthusiasm for the one she had made for him when she started her lessons. It was going to be difficult to broach the subject of the newspaper article because neither she nor Jim wanted to be contentious after all. So when Eturasi, feeling the need to get a response to the sentiments it had expressed from people he considered to be friends, asked if they had heard about it, Polly said firmly,

  ‘Of course. We’re wondering if “Patriot” is someone we know.’

  Eturasi was looking down at his hand which was splayed on his knee and Luatasi gave a preparative little cough. He glanced up briefly and said it was not intended to offend the people who made a real contribution to ideas but the system was patchy.

  ‘We have had some bad experiences in the past of volunteers sent here to carry out some project and they’ve been worse than hopeless. There seems to be an assumption that a person from a so-called developed country is ipso facto, a developed sort of character with the requisite skills.’ And Luatasi added,

  ‘Some teachers who’ve come to upskill us are less qualified than
many of our own. They’re more of a hindrance than a help.’

  ‘Do you think the volunteer system is at fault?’ asked Polly.

  ‘Problem is, the salaried experts are overpaid and are sometimes not worth the money.’

  ‘Surely there are useful things achieved in spite of the failures.’ Jim looked hopefully at Eturasi who agreed and said it was embarrassing to read the entrails with two hospitable and earnest volunteers whose contribution was welcome. He looked at Polly and said her interest in the culture made her stand out from the crowd.

  ‘As I saw it, what you said about some volunteers being unemployed at home sort of reflected on all of us and that’s what upset some of us.’

  The possibility of doing a stretch in an idyllic environment did appeal to some who were of a shallow persuasion but they must soon be weeded out according to Jim.

  ‘It’s not all that easy changing eating habits and doing without a decent library and the film circuit. After all, the volunteers live closer to the local people than UN folk and the like.’

  When they ambled home again, Eturasi and Luatasi were too tired to talk much but they both agreed later that the discussion had been interesting and even instructive all round.

  ‘I forgot to tell Polly that Jupeli is going to New Zealand and we will have to go back to the old arrangement - that is if she wants to carry on with her study.’

  They both knew what had prompted the decision to arrange for Jupeli to leave the country but were reluctant to voice their thoughts. All in all, they would not be surprised if Polly took a while to make up her mind to resume her classes with the Patriot.

  Chapter 58

  ‘How do you feel now?’ Jim turned to face Polly as they lay separated by the clammy heat, a thin sheet over their nakedness.

  ‘I was amused how Eturasi assumed that we knew he had written that article.’

  ‘I agree with him to a large extent because I think some Europeans are inclined to have a born-to-rule mindset and when some of the no-hopers find themselves in an underdeveloped country they throw their weight around. I’m starting to notice it after the initial bewilderment of adjusting. I don’t want to be guilty of it because I find it nauseating. Please tell me if you see me veering into a patronising frame of mind.’ He stared at the ceiling fan. ‘That’s where I admire your engagement Poll. It couldn’t have been easy to dive in at the deep end.’