by Derek Hansen
Poor Annemieke felt guilty, yet she could not forget what she had experienced. She was ashamed that she’d let it happen. She was even more ashamed that she’d enjoyed his kiss so intensely. And she was ashamed of the excitement that would not go away.
Sometimes in bed, or when playing the piano, or doing the housework, she would think back to that moment and wonder how it might be with another man. These thoughts tormented her. She’d dismiss them, but they came back unbidden. She decided she would never allow herself to be alone with Anders again.
When Eduardo came home from Jakarta, she roasted a piece of rump fillet and served it the way he loved it, red raw, and barely warm in the middle. She raided their wine cellar for a Show Reserve 1970 Lindemans Hunter River Burgundy. Then, when she took him off to bed, she gave him a welcome home he would never forget. Eduardo believed he was the luckiest man alive.
Chapter Forty
Bibiana and Domingo did not find their new life in Australia easy, as Eduardo had done. At first they stayed with Domingo’s brother, on a barren new housing estate at Campbelltown, in Sydney’s far west. They experienced a side of Sydney tourists never see.
The dry months of winter and spring had burnt off what little vegetation there was. There were no trees to offer shade, they’d all fallen to the developers’ bulldozers. One day it would be blindingly hot with temperatures up around forty degrees Celsius. Then, seemingly out of the blue, storm clouds such as they’d never experienced in Buenos Aires would rush in and pepper them with hailstones the size of billiard balls. Then the rain would attack the baked ground, and cut it up into rivulets and gullies as it washed away the precious topsoil and turned the subsoil into mud.
Still, they made the best of it. Whenever they could, they crammed into Domingo’s brother’s van and drove to the south coast, where the sea breezes brought blessed relief. They were disappointed with their start but not downhearted. This was a new country and it was only a matter of time and hard work before they established themselves.
But first they were to receive another setback. Domingo was contracted to the Department of Education, as a condition of being granted resident status. He had no choice but to go where he was assigned. And he and the family were sent to Collarenebri, a small country town in the north west of New South Wales.
Collarenebri’s greatest asset is the thousand or so people who live there and on the stations that surround it. Like most country people, they are honest, open and forthright, and quick to lend a new family a helping hand. Especially the new school teacher’s family. And especially when the family is new to Australia.
The Gimenes family did not know what had struck them. This was a far cry from the lush pampas. This was desert dotted with scrub and occasional blades of grass. The land was flat and featureless, except for the Barwon River which cut a deep ravine around one side of the town. Bibiana looked and wondered how such a placid and innocuous river could cut the land so deeply. They would soon learn.
The town had no cafes, no confiterías, bonbonerías, whiskerías, and no tangoes. It had an old pub, which would never make it onto the heritage listings for preservation, and an RSL club that offered snooker tables and table tennis for recreation. If you wanted more fun, you made it yourself.
They lived with dust through the drys, and roads that became slippery as ice at the first fall of rain. They learned to cope with the dust, the downpours and, if that wasn’t enough, with other people’s downpours. They learned that the rain that fell on them wasn’t the problem. It was the rain that fell further north. Rain that gathered in gullies and streams hundreds of kilometres away, before tumbling into the Barwon River and swelling it to a raging torrent that rose above its steep ravine and burst its banks. The Gimenes family became expert in filling sandbags and baling out classrooms.
They got over the thrill of seeing kangaroos in the wild, and learned how to avoid crashing into them in their car. They became blind to the sight of emus dying slowly, their feet trapped in a twist between the top two stands of wire fences. And they became deaf to the dawn to dusk screeching of cockatoos and galahs in flocks of a thousand or more.
They were happy enough. The people of Collarenebri loved having fun as much as any others, and there was always a barbecue on somewhere, or a cricket or football match. Domingo became famous for his parrillada, and Bibiana for her laugh. One daughter played netball, and the other swam breaststroke faster than any other girl in her school. Her son Julio played football, cricket, and fished for giant cod from the banks of the Barwon. Everybody got by except Roberto.
Roberto’s hand-eye coordination was sorely lacking. He came last at athletic carnivals and was no better in the swimming pool. He was a quiet, studious boy who would rather read than watch television, and rather play piano than football. And he was mortally shy.
Country kids are no different to any others. If you don’t shape up, they’re the first to tell you. And they told Roberto at every opportunity, until it became painful for him to venture outside. So he stayed indoors, played his piano and helped Bibiana, thereby confirming what every kid in town suspected. He was a sissy.
Bibiana felt for him, as did the rest of the family. But what could they do? They were stuck in Collarenebri for at least three years, and there is a limit to what anyone can do on another’s behalf. This was one battle Roberto would have to fight on his own.
Towards the end of Domingo’s three year tenure, he was given a choice. He could stay on at Collarenebri indefinitely, and ultimately become principal, or accept another rural posting at Gulargambone away to the south. They were bitterly disappointed. They’d hoped for a posting back to Sydney or, at the very least, to Newcastle or Wollongong.
They sat up at night and discussed their limited options. They could either accept their posting or resign. They discussed staying. They had made many friends in Collarenebri, and the kids, with the exception of Roberto, were happy enough. But mostly they discussed leaving and living in Sydney.
It was like a magnet to them. A city not too dissimilar to the one they’d left behind in Argentina. A city with museums and galleries and theatres and cinemas. With a nightlife. With cafes and restaurants, clubs and bars and dancing. With crowds of people and all the trappings of civilisation. Inevitably, they talked themselves into giving up the security of the Education Department for the bright lights of Sydney.
‘The children deserve no less,’ Bibiana said in justification. ‘They must learn that there is more to life than sport and weather maps. They have the right to be young in a city.’
Domingo agreed to stay on in Collarenebri while they planned their escape. He was adamant that they would not leave without first finding a job, so he combed the Sydney Morning Herald’s classified section. He applied for the job of Spanish teacher at a TAFE college. He applied on spec to every private school listed. He applied for storemen’s jobs. He applied to manage petrol stations and shoe stores. Where he had no previous experience, he invented it. Who could check?
Sometimes his prospective employers didn’t bother to respond, others sent their regrets. He was either unsuitable, the job had gone, or distance made him too hard to deal with. He kept sending off applications.
‘It’s like a lottery,’ he said. One day something would come up.
And it did. In the space of a single week, he was invited to attend interviews for the positions of booking clerk with Aerolineas Argentinas, service station manager in Campsie and, to their joy, teacher at a private school for boys in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. He booked a seat on the bus to Sydney, and his family held their breath.
Domingo was the least academically qualified of all the applicants at the private school. But his fluency in Spanish, Italian and Latin saw him through. His English, he was told, would have to improve. Domingo took the plunge and moved the family to Sydney, even though he was made uncomfortably aware his appointment was subject to review. After Campbelltown and the dust of Collarenebri, there was only one place they
wanted to live. Near the sea.
Of course, they could not afford a view, but they were happy enough with the square, featureless, brick house they bought in Dover Heights. It faced the morning sun, and was sheltered from the blustery southerlys. But its key attribute, as far as the Gimenes family was concerned, was that it was less than ten minutes from Bondi Beach by bike or bus one way, and ten minutes from Watson’s Bay the other. It was exactly the home and the start they were looking for.
For Roberto, the move to Sydney was salvation. While his brothers and sisters went to the beach, he went to art galleries. He discovered trendy cafes where people went to look at one another just like they did in Buenos Aires. He discovered David Jones’s Elizabeth Street store where a pianist entertained the shoppers with selections from the classics.
He was overcome. He’d never seen anyone play so beautifully. He couldn’t tear himself away. He positioned himself so he could watch the pianist’s hands as his fingers danced lightly over the keys. Nobody else stopped to watch and he began to wonder if he’d be moved on.
But the pianist had spotted the tall, thin lad with his shy manner and began to play to his audience of one. He played with verve and passion. Bemused shop assistants turned to see what was happening, as if they were hearing the piano for the first time. The pianist threw a smile at Roberto, then, via a timely decrescendo, brought his playing back to its former level.
‘Thank you,’ Roberto mouthed, and left the smiling pianist to see what other wonder Sydney held for him, around the next corner.
Bibiana set about turning their squat little house into a home. She would have dearly loved to strip away the dreary wallpaper, but they didn’t even have enough spare money for paint. So she scrubbed and washed where she could, and covered up the cracks and the patches of damp with pictures and furniture. She would have to get a job, she realised. Her four children needed school uniforms and books. All but her eldest, Monica, needed bikes. And now Roberto was pleading for piano lessons. She needed a job. She knew Domingo would argue, but they had no choice.
Chapter Forty-one
Jakarta wasn’t Sydney. Jan had warned him that things moved slower and took longer. But Eduardo had arrogantly ascribed some of that slowness to Jan. Now he was learning differently. Everywhere he went in Jakarta, he was warmly received. He made his presentations to enthusiastic audiences. If promises were bankable, the business would be booming. Yet each month it struggled to make costs and, without the patronage of expat Australians would have struggled to do that. Eduardo found it hard to reconcile the reception his presentations received with the lack of business.
‘You have much to learn,’ Jan counselled. ‘Indonesians are rather like the Japanese in that they don’t like to be the bearers of bad news. Nor do they like to disappoint. So when they smile and say yes, you cannot take this as an indication that work will automatically follow. What they are saying is, ‘Yes, we are interested and would like to enter negotiations both official and unofficial’. Your presentations only win you the right to pursue the next step.
‘You will find another variation on this when you finally produce work for them. Whatever you show them, they will admire and appear to accept. Even if they don’t like it. Then, over the next few days, word will filter back and you will have to be receptive to this. When you present your work you must learn to always leave the door open for a dignified and courteous rejection. It saves time.’
Eduardo realised that his publishing company in the Pulogadung Industrial Estate had actually taught him nothing about doing business with Indonesians. All his clients were off-shore. Fortunately, the East was booming, and they were picking up work hand over fist from Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. But the Jakarta based work was proving difficult to crack and demanded more and more of his time.
‘Perhaps if you lived in Jakarta,’ voices advised, often enough for Eduardo to feel the point was laboured. The simple truth was, his clients would be more comfortable with him if he actually lived there, played golf with them, dined with them. It would help him come to understand how the city worked.
Eduardo was not a flashy man and greatly preferred understatement in his dress. His one ostentation was an oversize Mont Blanc pen which Annemieke had given him as a wedding present. He had long admired the pens, and loved the weight and feel of it in his hand. He went nowhere without it. In Jakarta, he could not help but notice the effect it had on the Indonesians. Obvious wealth made a big impression. So he flashed his pen as much as he could, added a gold Rolex to his wrist, designer labels to his clothes, and purchased a Louis Vuitton executive case.
Gradually, Eduardo came to spend more and more of his time in Jakarta and less and less in Sydney. He tried taking Annemieke with him but that didn’t work either. He would spend all day and half the night on his business dealings, leaving her captive in her hotel, more alone than she was in Sydney. Understandably, she was reluctant to risk the helterskelter of Jakarta’s traffic any more than she had to. One accident in Indonesia was enough. So Annemieke stayed home while Eduardo travelled.
Eduardo came home as often as he could but, frequently, he would be exhausted and reluctant to go out. Phil and Don would demand his daylight hours and, when they didn’t, Jan or Estelle would claim him for Java Man.
‘It is a temporary aberration,’ Eduardo told Annemieke. ‘Once Jakarta is up and running smoothly, everything will settle down. I will be yours exclusively once more.’
Annemieke was patient, but she was also young. And she’d been patient and gone without for too much of her young life.
‘If it wasn’t for this blasted recession, I’d be tempted to let this Jakarta thing go,’ Eduardo told her. ‘But the fact is, we need it to work. It could prove our salvation over the next few years.’
Annemieke saw the sense of that and she understood. But she had her own problems, and she was lonely. She called her old friends for companionship and for expeditions to the bright lights. And she rang her mother every day or called into Java Man. But something was missing. Eduardo was missing. So she rang the next best thing.
Anders was delighted to hear from her, and seemed genuinely concerned at the despondency in her voice. He sent a car for her immediately, and took her to lunch at Beppi’s. He poured wine into her, fed her whitebait fritters from New Zealand and scampi from Western Australia. He lent her a most sympathetic ear and made her laugh with outrageous stories. When they had finished, he put her back in the car and sent her home a little drunk, happy and feeling wonderfully feminine.
When Eduardo heard over the phone how happy she was, he faxed off a thank you note to Anders.
Chapter Forty-two
‘I thought you might be Argentinian,’ said the voice on the phone. It was a boy’s voice, high-pitched and uncertain, and given to breaking. Whether it was just his age, or nervousness, Annemieke couldn’t tell. ‘Gallegos is quite a common name in Argentina,’ the boy continued. ‘I thought a teacher who spoke Spanish could help me where my English is inadequate.’
‘My husband is Argentinian,’ Annemieke said, and laughed. ‘If it helps, I’m very good at understanding English spoken with an Argentinian accent. Besides, I also speak Dutch and Bahasa, so one way or the other we will get by.’
‘How much do you charge?’ the boy asked.
‘Twenty-four dollars an hour for students, or twelve dollars for half an hour.’
Annemieke heard some whispering taking place.
‘I’m afraid I will only be able to afford half an hour a week.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Annemieke. She only had three other students and was anxious not to let this one get away. ‘If you come at four every Thursday afternoon, I’m free until five. We might be able to stretch your half hour a little. Provided you don’t tell anyone …’
‘Oh no, no, thank you. I won’t tell anyone.’
His joy reached down the wire and touched Annemieke. She could hear him whispering the good news to somebody else in a rush of Spanis
h.
‘Good. Thank you. I will begin this Thursday. Thank you.’
‘Excellent. Now are you going to tell me your name?’
‘I am sorry. I got so excited. My name is Roberto. Roberto Gimenes.’
He arrived promptly at four o’clock. That is, he rang Annemieke’s doorbell at four o’clock. He’d ridden his bike there straight from school and beaten the clock by more than fifteen minutes. He’d pedalled up and down her street until the appointed hour. Now he stood heart beating, head pounding, as he heard her footsteps approach the door.
‘Hello, you must be Roberto. Come in.’
Roberto followed her through the door in awe. His music teacher at school was a dragon. The other music students spoke of their teachers in terms that suggested all music teachers were the same. Yet Mrs Gallegos was lovely. And not all that much older than himself.
‘Sit down, Roberto. Now, tell me about yourself. How many years you have been playing piano, and what levels you’ve reached.’
He told her. She seemed pleased when he said grade four, and delighted when he told her his passion was classical music. She asked him to play for her and he played ‘Song of India’. He chose it because it was a slow piece which gave his nervous fingers a chance to steady. It crescendoed and diminished with the slow regularity of waves washing up upon the shore. He concentrated with all his might. He wanted so much to please his new teacher. When he finished, he turned to her shyly. He was pleased with the way he had played.
‘Very good,’ she said. ‘You have nice touch. But are you aware that you missed out a whole phrase? Two bars, in fact.’
Roberto was stunned. Where? Where?
‘In future, when you play to me or just for yourself,’ Annemieke continued, ‘use your music and read the notes. Otherwise you won’t improve.’
