by Murray Bail
• 15 •
Planchoniana
ELLEN REMAINED indoors. At about nine-thirty she made tea for her father and Mr Cave, one with dirty fingernails, the other clean, and after they set off and their voices, littered with latinised names, placenames and occasional surnames remained in the air before dying, a vast stillness descended on the land and the homestead; it filled the hollows and every part of a room; certainly not only water finds it own level.
Then returning to her room Ellen had plenty of things to record or discuss in her journal. It was there she returned to her encounter with the man asleep. These were hot days as she studied her nakedness in the mirror. And she drifted off east to Sydney, to its city edge—crowds, glare of white, the blue-green. In Sydney she could simply be amongst many others, other women, taking part in a constant overlapping sliding motion, joining them (without necessarily knowing any of them). Later in the morning there was housework; moving about, busying herself, she let her thoughts drift. That in slow combination was how she spent her days.
In the front room, as she darned her father’s socks, the needle pierced her little finger. Her head flew back like an irritated horse.
She tasted the blood, then wrapped the finger in a handkerchief. She soon changed handkerchiefs. The finger wouldn’t stop bleeding.
Mr Cave stood before her—those pleats, his body heat. So he’d notched up another successful day in the field.
He held out a gumnut.
‘For you,’ he said, ‘I picked it up on the way down. It makes an ideal thimble.’
Ellen smiled. For the first time he’d decided to look at her. Head bowed she tried the gumnut. It fitted. ‘I thought it would,’ he said. Fat men make the finest dancers, she had been told. Very gently he was undoing the handkerchief.
‘Do you have any molasses in the kitchen? Stick your finger in it. It’ll sting like blazes, but it will stop the bleeding. It was a trick my mother picked up. She was from the country.’
From the other room her father was yelling out to him.
‘Your father wants to show me something.’
Absently slipping the gumnut on the pricked finger Ellen saw that Mr Cave’s sudden approach to her was a sign of his practical side. He knew he would be winning her; any day now. He could hardly take her away cold, as it were. Meanwhile, the bleeding had stopped. It was the gumnut. Ellen wanted to point this out to Mr Cave. At that time she was all too ready to assign meanings to casual events.
‘Anyway,’ he virtually smiled, ‘ask your father for the short common name of planchoniana.’
• 16 •
Approximans
AND THERE are stories (it was explained) that consist of such slender means it’s a wonder they can be called stories at all. These are the ones tossed off in a line or two: fragments, with no ending—too factual. They are approximately stories, or possibly stories. They are more like sums. Such brevity goes against the iron law offered by the celebrated German colossus: ‘All good stories are slow stories.’
Still it cannot be denied that the briefest anecdote (there, we won’t say ‘story’) can produce an echo of really curious, indelible power. For the same reason, let us not forget, artists give high value to drawings and thumbnail sketches.
In Rangoon after the war a once-grand hotel, which is still operating to this day, had a Beale piano in the dining room. The Beale is an Australian-made piano. It has a eucalyptus lid. And in the clatter and murmur of the dining room, under the whirring of ceiling fans, or probably because it was the cabaret custom anyway, the piano lid was always raised. It hardly mattered that the Beale, made in Sydney, was usually out of tune.
Planters’ wives, traders, government officers liked to dress up and, in the tremendous humidity, dance to waltzes and foxtrots played on the Beale, one or two violins accompanying. Piano, violins and humidity: infinite melancholy.
The flow of sound released via the raised eucalyptus lid of the Beale would have produced a secondary, more lasting echo between more than a few couples—the complications, the distinct possibilities; so many different stories would have grown around chosen people, and hovered like musical notes, thanks to the Beale with its raised lid. The solitary piano in Rangoon or even the lid itself would have become the source or the core of a story or many stories. ‘If you see what I mean,’ he said.
• 17 •
Imlayensis
POSSIBLY THE rarest of all eucalypts, the Mount Imlay Mallee has been seen by—rough estimate—a few dozen lucky people. Only about seventy plants are supposed to be in existence, all in the one small area among rocks near the summit of Mount Imlay, on the far south coast of New South Wales. Young trunks are green, the colour of dragonflies or parrots, until they weather to orange-brown or grey.
How Holland managed to obtain a seedling remains a mystery. The world of eucalypts can be viciously protective; stories of ignorance and betrayal spread like bushfires, and are just as difficult to stamp out. People in the field never quite knew what to make of Holland. He wasn’t really one of them. It was hard though not to respect his tenacity.
Still more impressive was how he managed to cultivate on his property so far inland, a Mount Imlay Mallee.
From the tower Ellen watched the two distant figures toiling across a paddock as if against a headwind. At intervals they were blotted out by a cultivated tree. They were heading as the crow flies for the outcrop of quartzite at the southern end where the rarest of eucalypts had taken root; she knew because her father had winked and nodded at her over breakfast. But the very rarity of the Mount Imlay Mallee gave it such a distinctive appearance it would make identification easy at least for someone of Mr Cave’s calibre.
Ellen lowered her head when they disappeared. She couldn’t have kept looking anyway. Every tree Mr Cave went towards was another step towards her. In this way her father appeared as some sort of usher. He was driving her away. In the tower it was warm. Ellen turned her attention to her toes and as she examined her knee recalled the other suitors, their voices, hopeful faces. For an hour or more she seemed to gaze at her knee. It was several days since she had come across the sleeping man. It wasn’t his hair Ellen thought about now, but his manner which was perplexing. The suddenness of it all was almost irritating, she scribbled in her journal.
When she looked up again and across the tree-dotted paddock—the direction opposite to Mr Cave and her father—she could just make out near a denser clump of trees a single figure, moving.
Such a sight was rare on their place. It looked like him, the man of medium build she’d found asleep on the ground. She hurried down the narrow steps into the wide-open light, and strolling, but with firmness, reached the approximate spot.
No sign of him, just eucalypts here and there, which in her restlessness looked all the same. To Ellen, her life was like this. As supplied by her father it had casual abundance, shown by the trees, and an unresolved puzzle at its centre.
As for the green blouse she normally wore only on special occasions it somehow added impatience to her speckled beauty.
• 18 •
Foecunda
AFTER MANY adventures along many roads—many cities, towns and forests—he had arrived at Holland’s property tired, at the beginning of summer. He was alert, and a hard one to pin down; he was indifferent to a lot of things. Illness had made him thoughtful. Otherwise he might have seemed irresponsible.
And instead of returning early in the morning to the far long paddock Ellen went among the darker trunks by the river, in view of the road.
It was a form of drifting; almost like fishing.
She’d only paused for a minute near the still water by the bridge when someone whistled at her. Instead of hostile dismissal, as in town, she turned.
‘Oh, you’re still here…I thought you’d left our district.’
‘District,’ he repeated. He stood more or less facing her. ‘Apart from that, what have you been doing?’
‘I look after my fath
er.’
‘He needs looking after?’
‘Probably not.’
‘I imagine it’s sometimes hard to know.’ He had his arms folded, but not harshly.
‘He is my father,’ she wanted to say. ‘And you don’t know him.’
‘A bite of apple?’
The lure of sharing food, and of clean spherical dimensions which show the amount taken, is irresistible. And as Ellen reached out, her sleeve slid back and laid bare her arm.
‘I saw someone like you yesterday from the house.’
But he had taken a male bite from the apple and only appeared to nod. The way his jaws worked reminded her of a horse. They were heading through the different trees to the end of the long paddock anyway.
‘How many eucalypts do you suppose are here?’
‘I think even my father’s lost count. He’s got them all written down.’
‘Obviously we’re talking about hundreds.’
They came to the outburst of imprecise bushes normally found in a sandy band along the bottom of Australia.
About here,’ Ellen turned and faced the house. ‘I think it was you…about there.’
‘Of all the eucalypts, the mallees leave me cold. They can never make up their minds which direction to take.’
He gave a sly look of complicity which she couldn’t, at that stage, accept.
‘Don’t the mallees leave you cold? Don’t you prefer a good old solid gum tree, the kind,’ he said hopefully, ‘you see on calendars?’
‘I’m not interested in any of them!’
The subject was the least interesting she could think of. The only people who came to the property were men hoping to please her father, all wearing their ridiculous detailed knowledge of trees. The very word eucalyptus, which many would swear is the loveliest of all words, was for Ellen an unbearable word, a bearer of troubles. Anyone who entered the world of eucalypts came out narrowed and reduced, was her opinion. And now this one standing beside her pulling off a leaf, he was surely another one. Although he didn’t exactly come out with the species’ name, the Narrow-leafed Mallee (E. foecunda), he seemed to know, for he glanced at it and cleared his throat.
There was an Italian, he said, who had a fruit shop in Carlton.
This man, he continued, was the first in Melbourne to call himself a FRUITOLOGIST—if you’ve ever wondered where that came from—and have it painted in green letters outside his shop. His fruit was the best quality. He lived above the shop. Both parents had died. He was a hunchback. Not a severe hunchback, but enough to pull his mouth down a little on one side. Everybody liked him. He was careful to listen to women. In turn they wouldn’t hear a word said against him, let alone his fruit, though they would also shake their heads and laugh at any suggestion of marriage.
His shop in Carlton was famous for its displays of fruit. These he composed with great patience and skill each Sunday, behind the shutters. He had plenty of colours and shapes to choose from.
The usual pyramids of apples and so on he dismissed as too common. Instead he did detailed maps of Italy using green and yellow peppers, or the state of Queensland to celebrate the mango season. National flags, football of course, clocks and a cyclist were some of his memorable subjects. As his skills increased he turned to fruit sculptures: these included nativity scenes, an Ayers Rock of Tasmanian apples, anti-war scenes using cantaloupes, custard apples and pineapples.
It was his hobby, which also happened to be good for business. People would ask, ‘So what have you dreamed up for us this week?’
The care and attention the hunchback lavished on his fresh fruit displays had begun modestly enough as something to stave off that peculiar atmosphere of desolation ‘which pervades Anglo-Saxon towns on Sundays’. At the same time it gave pleasure to customers or people passing on the footpath. Gradually the displays grew in ambition and complexity, demanding on his part still more patience, ingenuity and stamina—to name just a few of the requirements. While the hunchback continued serving as always quietly in his shop, the fruit sculptures became more extreme.
Working next door in the cakeshop was a young woman. Occasionally she stepped into his shop—to buy a bunch of grapes, or something. Whenever she passed he paused to look at her. Never once did she so much as glance in the hunchback’s direction, let alone acknowledge his presence, even when he happened to be standing on the footpath in his apron.
He gave her some grapes once; she took them with barely a thankyou. And, it goes without saying, she didn’t take the slightest interest in his fruit displays, which as a consequence became more and more ambitious.
Now this young woman had extraordinary blue eyes which belonged more to a Persian cat (a distilled version of the blurry blue of the mountains west of Sydney). Even more extraordinary, and perhaps connected to the colour of her eyes, was the way at every opportunity she looked at herself—not only in mirrors, but in windows, doors, bonnets of cars, puddles. It didn’t matter whether she was in the middle of walking or talking to someone. At every opportunity she tried to catch a glimpse of herself. Often as she noticed her reflection she used it to adjust hair and clothing. She couldn’t help it. Here was self-absorption developed into a tic.
Was she lovely or was she beautiful? Ellen wondered about the blue eyes.
Lovely or beautiful, it doesn’t really matter. She had long, straightish hair and a slightly empty expression. The poor hunchback became obsessed with her. To have her to himself would make his life complete.
At every spare moment—even when serving customers—he considered ways to catch her attention.
He sat down and drew up a list. Colours were sifted. He calculated quantities. Special orders were placed for exotic fruits. At the market he personally selected each item and weighed it by hand, looking for shape as well as evenness of colour.
All Sunday he worked behind the closed front of the shop. And he was still at it, making finishing touches, in the morning. He was like those earnest birds in New Guinea that busily collect bottle tops and bits of glass in their nests to attract the female.
The usual bystanders and early customers gathered, and when he raised the shutters, a politician unveiling a bronze, a murmur of admiration rustled among them.
It had passed the first test.
All he had to do now was wait.
Some tourists were taking photographs; children jumped up and down and pointed at it. A customer who lectured in art history at the nearby university began congratulating him, ‘A masterpiece. And I am not one who uses that word lightly…’
At that moment she appeared, in high heels. He left a customer in mid-sentence and moved to the front.
Hurrying late for work she still managed to glance left and right for any reflective surfaces. And yet—what’s this?—she walked straight past his window without noticing anything special. He hung around waiting. Mid-morning she passed again without noticing; at lunchtime too; and again on her way home when her attention was caught not by his fruit-sculpture but by the side mirror of his parked truck.
There she was, modelled in the window, head on bare shoulders, an amazingly faithful Arcimboldian mosaic: her peaches and cream complexion; sliced apple and dates for nose; forehead of pawpaw; banana chin; glistening teeth of pomegranate; eyebrows, kiwifruit; juicy plum lips; bunches of guavas did for ears; pears formed her shoulders; and other bits and pieces too subtle immediately to recognise but contributing to the whole. With a split in the forehead and delicate placement of nectarines and figs he had even captured her self-obsession.
It was all there, in loving accuracy—except for the eyes. He had been unable to find a light blue fruit. Without the eyes she apparently couldn’t see herself.
And he accidentally brushed against Ellen as he reached over to rest the flat of his hand against a splendid smooth trunk, which happened to be a Southern Blue Gum (E. bicostata).
• 19 •
Sideroxylon
WHY DID the lovesick grocer have to be a hunc
hback? As if he didn’t have enough problems, living alone above the shop, etc.
It was only a story. It is necessary for the story.
He should never have called himself a ‘fruitologist’—a bad sign, as far as Ellen was concerned.
When the stranger had left the story dangling in midair, she felt a sudden impatience at his indifference to her questions, such as, ‘Did she eventually stop in front of the shop and recognise herself? And then what? Couldn’t someone tell her? And shoes—what sort of shoes did she wear?’
Instead, he moved onto the next tree, a squat angry-looking eucalypt near the pale brown dam, which seemed to remind him of another, entirely different story. Ellen searched his face. Was he making it up as he went along?
The tree was a Mugga Ironbark (E. sideroxylon).
This is not a happy story.
In one of the countless culs-de-sac in Canberra lived a retired public servant and his wife. For the last seventeen years they had only spoken to each other through their dog.
‘Will the old bitch get off her backside and make a cup of tea?’
‘He can make his own, I’ve been serving the so-and-so for all these years.’
Ellen began laughing.
This is supposed to be an unhappy story!
During his working life the man had climbed the many levels of the public service until he was responsible for all the weights and measures in Australia. It was a career that had resulted in a certain satisfaction. After all, it had demonstrated how one thing inevitably follows another: coming down hard on sloppy standards of weights and measures produced a corresponding rise in career-trajectory. In turn, it encouraged in his private life a high degree of precision and disappointment.
