Room for a Stranger

by Melanie Cheng

  Leila chewed on the burnt sausage, which suddenly felt like broken sticks of charcoal in her mouth.

  Leila had always been able to pass for white. Much to her disappointment, she had not inherited her mother’s lush black eyelashes or coppery skin. As a baby, she’d had blond hair, and her brown eyes had a splash of green in them. Only her name, Leila, hinted at her Arabic roots, and even that had become mainstream. Apart from Mrs Kelly, Leila couldn’t remember a single person ever asking about her background.

  Leila’s mother, on the other hand, was a loud and proud Syrian. If people didn’t enquire about her heritage, it wasn’t long before she told them. People often mistook her for Spanish or South American. On those occasions, Leila felt sorry for the check-out chick or hairdresser or bank teller who had made the error, because they would then have to endure a short lesson on Syrian history. Leila’s mother loved to tell people how the capital, Damascus, was one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world.

  It was five-thirty in the morning. The bus had pulled over by the side of the road for the tourists to watch the sun rise over Uluru. The desert was cold and dark. Max, the tour guide, handed out blankets and mugs of freshly brewed coffee. The Italian sisters, keen photographers, cleaned their camera lenses and assembled their tripods. The Australian family and the American couple were deep in discussion about whether or not to climb the rock.

  ‘I would,’ Ellen interjected, ‘if not for the arthritis in my knees.’

  They had all seen the sign.

  ‘WE DON’T CLIMB’

  OUR TRADITIONAL LAW TEACHES US

  THE PROPER WAY TO BEHAVE.

  WE ASK YOU TO RESPECT OUR LAW BY

  NOT CLIMBING ULURU.

  It was a polite appeal to visitors by the traditional owners of the land. But the climb was not prohibited, except on windy days, and today was not a windy day.

  Leila walked away from the group. She crossed the road, put her earbuds in. In the dark, the rock was just a shadow, but even its shadow was colossal, like the silhouette of a beast asleep on the smooth black land. Soon the sun peered across the rock’s shoulders, momentarily blinding them all. When they finally regained their sight, they saw the beast’s muscles stretch and flex beneath a dome of light.

  Leila and the others watched the climbers, reduced to the size of ants against the hulk of the rock, as they waited for the start of the tour. Leila tried to pick the three tiny dots that were the American couple and the Australian father.

  ‘Minga!’ a voice boomed from behind the group. Leila, Ellen and the Italian sisters stopped looking up at the rock and turned towards the speaker. He was a tall Aboriginal man with green eyes and a wide-brimmed black hat.

  ‘That’s what we call the climbers in our language.’ He pointed a finger at the rock. ‘See that white line?’

  Leila looked at the chalky streak on the rock’s orange face.

  ‘That’s the mark left by people’s footprints.’

  ‘Like a scar,’ Leila said.

  Ellen glared at her.

  The man smiled. ‘Name’s Jimmy,’ he said, tipping his hat. ‘I’ll be your guide around Uluru today.’

  As they walked, Jimmy told them how his ancestors had lived in the caves at Uluru, feeding on grains, honey ants and bush raisins. He told them the story of Kuniya, the sand python. He tried to explain Tjukurpa to them. He told them how Tjukurpa was law, teaching people how to care for one another and the land around them.

  ‘It’s the past, the present and the future all at once,’ he said.

  When they arrived back at the start of their walk, two hours later, they saw a large group gathered around an ambulance. The Sydney mother sprinted towards the crowd shouting loudly for Tim. Leila presumed that was her husband’s name. The children didn’t move but stayed with the group, watching their mother with glassy eyes. Ellen, who was closest, kneeled down and gathered the children to her, pushing their faces into the two enormous pillows of her breasts. Luckily Tim soon emerged, with his wife, tall and unscathed. The children ran towards him.

  It turned out it was Harry Brown who was responsible for all the commotion. He’d had an attack of angina halfway up the rock. There had been two doctors on the climb with him, an anaesthetist from Canada and a cardiologist from Germany, and they had escorted him back down. Cynthia Brown had almost fainted with the excitement of it all, and she and her husband were rushed to the medical centre at Ayers Rock Resort.

  It was a smaller and more sombre group that climbed back on the bus at four o’clock. The early-morning start and the heat had taken their toll. The Sydney mother wore an annoyed I-told-you-so face, and the children, sensing something was up, played quietly on their iPads. Even the Italian sisters, who were always calm, looked less relaxed than usual. Max tried to lighten the mood with a couple of inappropriate jokes about Yankees and sand pythons, but it was no use—the tourists refused to be moved.

  As they drove back to the resort, Leila’s thoughts turned to her English grandfather. Like Mr Brown, he had suffered from angina, and Leila knew what a serious condition it could be. He used to say it felt like a tired old elephant had decided to take a rest on his chest. It was an image that had appealed to five-year-old Leila. For years afterward, whenever she saw her pa, she imagined a weary elephant trailing behind him.

  Leila was close to her father’s parents, Nan and Pa, but she had only met her Syrian grandparents once. She was just three at the time, but the journey was such a novelty, the memories had been seared into her brain. French doors with paint peeling in long white ribbons. Cream tiles with flecks of gold, cool to the touch of her toes. Coffee brewing in a copper pot on the hot blue tongues flickering up from the stove. Most of all she remembered the light—a glow neither watery like the British sun, nor hot and white like the Australian one. It had warmed Leila from the inside out. Like tea. Familiar, somehow.

  Harry Brown was in a stable condition at Alice Springs Hospital—at least that’s what Max told them once they had got back to Alice Springs themselves. Two full days had passed since the incident at Uluru. Leila had almost forgotten about the Browns during a swim in the ‘Garden of Eden’ at Kings Canyon. As she lay floating in the waterhole, staring up at the patch of cloudless sky between the walls of orange rock, the fate of any individual—Harry Brown or otherwise—had seemed irrelevant.

  It was the last night of the four-day tour, and the group had gathered in a small theatre in Todd Mall, the town’s main shopping precinct. Leila was perched on a plastic seat, flanked by Tim and Ellen. The Italian sisters were sitting silently in the row immediately behind them. There were still a few minutes before the cultural extravaganza started.

  ‘Lucy’s back at the hotel with the kids,’ Tim said, excusing his wife’s absence. ‘They’re buggered.’

  Leila hadn’t seen the Australian couple speak directly to each other since they left Uluru. They communicated through their children instead. Ask Daddy to take a photo of us. Tell Mummy you’re hungry.

  ‘She still upset about Ayers Rock?’ Ellen said, ignoring Tim’s clear desire to avoid the subject.

  ‘She’ll get over it.’

  ‘Wives worry about their husbands,’ Ellen replied solemnly. ‘It’s normal.’

  Tim shook his head. ‘She thought it was disrespectful. To the traditional owners.’ Now that the issue had been broached, he seemed relieved to be speaking about it.

  ‘Big problems,’ Ellen said, shaking her head. ‘We’ve got big problems back home in South Africa.’ She looked behind, at the Italians. ‘But it’s not just Africa. Look at Europe!’ The sisters, surprised that they were suddenly being included in the conversation, simply nodded. ‘And not just Europe!’ Ellen said. ‘England too!’

  They all turned to look at Leila.

  Leila felt a rush of blood, hot and itchy, to her chest and neck. ‘Yes,’ she agreed, gripping the edge of her seat. ‘But I’m probably not the best person to ask. Mum being Syrian and everything.’ />
  The room was thrust into darkness. On the stage a lone spotlight shone on an Aboriginal man with a didjeridu. Lines of white paint fell in diagonals across the man’s pulsating cheeks. Leila felt the thrum, like a cat’s purr, through the soles of her feet. For a moment it was as if the entire world were vibrating, not just the tiny theatre in Todd Mall. Leila imagined her mother, sipping a cup of tea in England, trembling with the music too.

  Also by Melanie Cheng

  Australia Day

  Room for a Stranger

  Melanie Cheng is a writer and general practitioner. She was born in Adelaide, grew up in Hong Kong and now lives in Melbourne. Her debut collection of short stories, Australia Day, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2016 and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction in 2018. Room for a Stranger is her first novel.

  PRAISE FOR MELANIE CHENG

  Room for a Stranger

  ‘A beautifully written novel about how the stories we tell ourselves can get us stuck and how opening our lives to others might jolt us free again. Melanie Cheng offers both razor-sharp insight into the flaws and foibles of ordinary people and a deep warmth and tenderness for them. Room for a Stranger is that rare thing: a novel which stings and soothes all at once.’

  EMILY MAGUIRE

  ‘My god, this was a joy to read. Every year there’s an Australian novel everyone endlessly passes around and recommends because they bloody love it so much, and this is going to be 2019’s. Room for a Stranger explores the high stakes of quiet moments, reveals the beauty of unlikely connections and shows how the antidote to shame is always compassion. After reading this impossible-to-put-down novel, Melanie Cheng is quickly becoming my favourite Australian writer.’

  BENJAMIN LAW

  ‘Melanie Cheng’s Room for a Stranger is a touching exploration of an unexpected friendship and how two vulnerable people find the strength to carry on. Cheng examines the complexities of human nature with gentle humour and thoughtful attention to the minutiae of her characters’ lives. I could not put this moving, insightful novel down.’

  MIRANDI RIWOE

  ‘I can’t think of anyone who writes human connection as beautifully as Melanie Cheng. Room for a Stranger is superb.’

  BRAM PRESSER

  ‘A wholly engrossing portrait of two very different people whose collision reminds us that the need for companionship is ultimately what unites us all. With startling humanity and precision, Cheng shows us how complex, contradictory and difficult to define we are. Her characters will linger in your mind like a great open-ended question.’

  FELICITY CASTAGNA

  Australia Day

  WINNER

  Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction, 2018

  ‘Cheng’s work is polished and affecting. Australia Day is that thing we all chase: a complex, engaging and timely read.’

  LIFTED BROW

  ‘A stunning debut that takes its place among Australian short story greats…This is the kind of book you can read in one sitting, or space out one story a day to savour the experience.’

  AU REVIEW

  ‘Cheng’s scientific training shows in her keen and dispassionate character observation. These no-fuss tales display a variety of people attending to their lives each wrapped snugly in their own skins and in their own heads but each curiously identifiable as Australian.’

  SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

  ‘A sumptuous collection.’ HERALD SUN

  ‘If only the PM might pick up a copy, even by mistake.’

  SATURDAY PAPER

  ‘The author’s empathetic eye and easy facility with dialogue make the anthology a strong debut, with the longer stories in particular offering breadth and depth.’

  BIG ISSUE

  ‘A bittersweet, beautifully crafted collection.’

  BOOKS+PUBLISHING

  ‘Melanie Cheng is an astonishingly deft and incisive writer. With economy and elegance, she creates a dazzling mosaic of contemporary life, of how we live now. Hers is a compelling new voice in Australian literature.’

  CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS

  ‘What a wonderful book, a book with bite. These stories have a real edge to them. They are complex without being contrived, humanising, but never sentimental or cloying—and, ultimately, very moving.’

  ALICE PUNG

  ‘In each story, Melanie Cheng creates an entire microcosm, peeling back the superficial to expose the raw nerves of contemporary Australian society. Her eye is sharp and sympathetic, her characters flawed and funny and utterly believable.’

  JENNIFER DOWN

  ‘Melanie Cheng’s stories are a deep dive into the diversity of humanity. They lead you into lives, into hearts, into unexplored places, and bring you back transformed.’

  MICHELLE WRIGHT

  ‘The characters stay in the mind, their lives and experiences mirroring many of our own, challenging us to think how we might respond in their place. An insightful, sometimes uncomfortable portrayal of multicultural Australia from an observant and talented writer.’

  RANJANA SRIVASTAVA

  textpublishing.com.au

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  Copyright © Melanie Cheng, 2019

  The moral right of Melanie Cheng to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by The Text Publishing Company, 2019

  Cover design by W. H. Chong

  Cover illustration by iStock

  Page design by Jessica Horrocks

  Typeset by J&M Typesetting

  ISBN: 9781925773545 (paperback)

  ISBN: 9781925774351 (ebook)

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia