Conny had been some kind of salesman by day and musician by night, but at his advanced years he’d given up all of the former and most of the latter. Before he moved in I’d had a freedom few other of the boys at my school ever experienced. My fellow students could only dream about the so-called good fortune of an orphan with an uninterested guardian. I was free to do whatever came into my head almost without limits. I’d disappear for entire weekends; stay out as late as I wanted doing whatever I wanted. It was easy to take a day here or there off from school, absconding sometimes into the city and the malls, or as far away as some sandy beach. Aunt Emma had plenty of money, so there was no need to take me out of that mercilessly rundown old Christian Brothers school and move me into the state system, but she had no talent at all for discipline or any other niceties of childrearing. For these things you had to care and most of the time she didn’t.
Conny, however, was a different kettle of fish. The first time Emma poured me a glass of beer at the dinner table, a new template came into existence. He watched the glass get filled, my hand go around it, and the practised way I raised the drink to my lips. He reached out and stopped me before I could take a sip.
‘Little boys, they no do drink alcohol.’
And that was it. Emma nodded. I was thirteen and didn’t complain, not even for a second. I found it curious that this man should tell me to do what was so obviously correct. For a moment I sat back in my chair and considered him. Conny had already resumed eating his meal and didn’t look back at me. He’d made his rule without fuss or fervour and we were going to follow it. All I could see was wispy hair that only just covered a monk’s pate. Who was he, really? It took me years to find out.
As part of my free-wheeling ways, I’d been breaking into houses. Mostly it was just for pocket money and the fun of it. Never got caught. One night past eleven I raised a half-brick to smash the back window of a darkened house in the neighbourhood, one I knew was empty because the family had headed to the beach for the holiday season.
A spirit-voice rose behind me: ‘Max.’ He always pronounced it ‘Muxx’ and my heart skipped a beat.
I put the half-brick down. Climbed off the trestle I’d been balancing on. Conny put out his hand for me to take. It wasn’t as soft as I’d expected it to be. His drumsticks had created lifelong calluses in the skin. We walked away hand in hand, a pinkish moon overhead. I hadn’t walked like that with anyone since the last time I went shopping with my mother, must have been five or six years past. He didn’t say anything at all, not a word. Muxx, and then his hand for me to take. When we arrived home Emma was in bed asleep and he went to the living room to kick off his shoes and drink a small glass of Cynar in front of some late-night television show. I don’t know why or how he succeeded in doing it, but I simply stopped every single one of my larcenous activities. I stopped skipping school. All of this was a relief. A relief to have someone in the home who expected a little better of me.
They were married in a ceremony attended only by Aunt Emma’s church friends and me. No one came from Conny’s side. There might not have been a side. He seemed a perpetual loner; a solitary man who for some reason had decided to make this house his home. What attracted him – my aunt Emma? It was hard to believe. The only way they were suited was in their respective loneliness. She was content with her church, television and beer. He liked the quiet inside our home’s walls and the sound of his jazz music playing softly from the record player.
I know that what came next came from him: it took time to get through, but they adopted me, became my legal parents. I overheard him once saying, ‘Emma, mi tesora, this boy he need help, yes? Is for us to do the help – who else can?’ I think I was shocked to hear someone say something like that, to be so ready to be concerned about me. Still, I never stopped calling her auntie and him Conny. I kept my mother’s surname. Nothing was going to change that.
As time passed and he became more of a fixture in the house, gradually I learned more about Concetto San Filippo. What he’d sold had been men’s apparel in department stores: suits, ties and the shirts you needed to go with them. My new stepfather was also an ex-swing orchestra drummer and across four decades he’d played shows at church halls, small and large jazz clubs, the city hall and the Cloudland Ballroom. His main gig had been with an outfit called Jimmy ‘Knockout’ Jones and His Incredible Sixteen-Piece Orchestra. Band leader Jimmy Jones had his entourage together for nearly twenty years and Conny said that in their time they’d entertained everyone from debutantes, desperate bachelors and discouraged spinsters, country women’s associations and Masons, to political leaders, visiting dignitaries and royalty – but, to Knockout’s eternal consternation, never the Queen of England.
‘He from the great London. To him, the Queen she is the Virgin Mary come back to life. To me she is cafone – twit – but there you go, huh?’
I checked his old, out-of-date passport. Born in 1908, Conny had arrived in Australia after the Depression, a young man with only minimal understanding of the English language. Hello; goodbye; nice country; nice sky. He had musical training and distant relatives here who’d helped ease his passage to the new country. Where these people were now, I didn’t know. He never spoke about any family or his old community of Italian friends. What I did know was that somewhere along the way there’d been a schism in his life; something had happened and maybe it had ended up isolating him.
As I learned about retired musicians, their old instruments tended to stay close to them. Only the most bitter people, usually those who’ve tasted success only to see it melt into a fiasco, will sell their guitars, pianos, saxophones, drums, what have you, all in a fit of pique – then spend their lives wishing they hadn’t. Conny kept his drum kit under my aunt’s house, covered with a sheet, but when the mood was in him, usually on Sunday mornings, he’d whip it off and clean and polish his set-up within an inch of its life. The stool, the snare, the bass drum, the foot pedal, the high hat, the tom toms, the crash and ride cymbals, all of them kept ready for the next sixteen-piece orchestra extravaganza, the one that never came.
It was nearly a year before he actually started playing. Sunday middays were no longer for the wrestling on TV – he’d put a stop to that, saying barbarity should never be allowed into people’s homes – and the house was as quiet as it now was every Sabbath. This particular Sunday he went down for his usual dusting and polishing, then an hour later it started. The previously languid air vibrated to a beat. The day was no longer owned by birdsong or the mild croaking of cicadas. Conny played for an hour, then two, finally stopping after three hours – and once the dam was broken his percussive concerto became a weekly occurrence.
The neighbours put up with this for a half-dozen sessions then went crazy. It was a miracle they took it for so long. There were no walls under our house, there was nothing to cushion the relentless, all-permeating sound he made. The neighbours came and, when called, so did the police. Two officers explained to him what the words ‘public nuisance’ meant. Conny explained to them that no worthwhile music was ever made in silence. He asked them if they danced, which they had to admit, they did.
‘And who makes the beat so you know when to move your feet and your girl to shake her rump? Me! Then how this can be a problem?’
He had them laughing. Tempers cooled. Conny struck a deal – he’d only practise his art for one hour, one day of the week. Sunday. He’d start at eleven in the morning and end at midday. That way everyone would know it was coming. They could go out to church, or take a walk, and be confident in the knowledge that they wouldn’t be disturbed for another week or at any other time of day or night. This compact was to be inviolable, and while it stood there’d be no more trouble.
My poor Aunt Emma suffered the weekly thrashings on his set with the grace of a middle-aged woman getting her teeth drilled. She adored him, but not the racket he made. He’d go for the allotted hour, our house above him rattling as if made of cardboard. In his heart and in his head he m
ust have been rehearsing – or maybe reliving – some brilliant dance brackets. At the time I didn’t recognise them for what they were, but he was playing syncopated rhythms peculiar to swing and to jazz, all at varying, hip-swinging tempos. Sometimes the music was feathery – something to make you want to hold your girl close while she caressed your face and put her full lips next to your soap-scrubbed neck – then the tempo would increase, the bite of the beat sharper and actually cracking in the air. The lucky dancers in Conny’s mind would sway and shake their hips, whipping their hair to the jubilant rhythm of another fabulous ballroom night.
When it was time to come upstairs for auntie’s waiting roast he’d be in a steaming lather of sweat and in fine spirits too. His brown eyes would be shining and there would be a smile on his face, a smile so impish that it belied his almost-seventy years. Emma would be wearing her best floral apron and her tight, pained smile. He was good at his craft, even a kid like me could hear that, but there was seldom a word of appreciation or encouragement from his new wife. I was quietly proud of this man who wasn’t my father but who acted as good as one, yet Emma never had a question or comment about technique, never any wifely interest in what songs and tunes made up his mental set list. There was only her weary relief that it was over for another week.
Still, for his reward there was roast beef and cold beer. He’d have a single glass while Emma downed four or five. I’d have to do all the cleaning and washing up while they retired to their regular Sunday afternoon siesta. After about twenty minutes the house would start rhythmically moving on its tall timber stumps. In the kitchen I’d turn up the radio so I wouldn’t have to listen to the sounds that came next.
Life wasn’t always so harmonious in this place. Little things could set Conny off and when they did I’d have to run for cover. I wrecked his razor by using it to sharpen my pencil. When he went to shave he opened his chin. Bleeding profusely he shouted that I would have to stay in my room two days and nights, his eyes as wide and wild as though I’d tried to use that razor to cut his throat and kill him. At least he relented by evening and I was allowed out for my meal. One day I did kill something: the pumpkin patch he was attempting to establish. I was digging in the garden for worms I could use when I went fishing off Redcliffe pier, me with no idea there was anything trying to grow there anyway. The next day he came at me, for some reason screaming the pumpkin’s Latin genus: ‘Cucurbita pepo! Cucurbita pepo!’ I thought he was going to strangle me, veins standing out in his forearms, temples and neck. I ran for my life and Emma locked herself in the bedroom.
One weekend my stepfather attempted to help me with an English assignment, which was to write a review of a book called Brighton Rock. Knowing I was useless at something like this he had sat and slept with that book for a week, reading it painful page by painful page. The English language, so hard for him to speak, so tricky for him to interpret when written down.
He composed the review for me, him dictating and me obediently writing it out. Even I could see what a bad idea this was. He used pompous phrases and naïve clichés that might have sounded good in his native Italian, but which were comical in this language, especially when badly translated: ‘The most beautiful story ever written about this evil boy gangster who don’t know the church is there to save him’; ‘A mystery of razors slashing blood out of delinquent youthfuls before the war in the great England before she went bad’; ‘Perfect story that is maybe a bit hard to understand because the language it is superlative’.
When the assignment came back with a big fat ‘F’ on the front, and the tight, pained handwriting of a Christian Brother providing a critique that included the use of the word ‘childish’ seven times, Conny spun out of control. Tears of rage and hurt sprang from his eyes. In English and Italian he cursed the church, the brothers and all Christians of all denominations. He tore up the assignment, but he wouldn’t go face the teacher in question. He was humiliated, utterly emasculated, in his mind proven to be a fool. Cut to the quick, he took his hat and left the house. Neither Emma nor I had the slightest clue where he went. When he turned up the next morning there was no explanation. Emma gave him the cold shoulder for days; he gave it back to her. Then he succumbed and brought her chocolates and a fresh leg of lamb wrapped in butcher’s paper. The following Sunday his hour of drumming was followed by beer, lamb roast and twenty minutes of house-swaying. I turned the radio loud. Life resumed as before.
The angriest I ever saw Conny was the day the neighbours came to see him, in a pack. They told him something they thought he ought to know: the increasingly cacophonous and chaotic sounds that had been smashing and crashing from under the house on most of the occasions when he drove his Premier out of the driveway and was away for any substantial period of time.
I arrived home from school. Fourteen years of age, I was still quite short, still a couple of inches shorter than Conny – who was by no means a tall man. There was an oppressive mood to the house. It was dark inside though a hot sunny afternoon outside. Windows were shut and curtains were drawn. No one seemed to be home, then I noticed Conny, stiff as a statue in the couch by the black-and-white television. The TV was switched off. My stepfather’s arms were folded and his chin was buried down into his chest. At first I thought he was asleep or dead, then he moved. He stood. Something about his manner made me back out of the lounge room, but he confronted me in the corridor. His eyes blazed and I noticed there was something white and gummy dried at the corners of his mouth.
‘The neighbours they come. They tell me what you do.’
‘I haven’t done anything. I’ve been at school.’ I tried to get around him but without even touching me I felt pushed with my back against the wall. ‘What are you doing, you crazy old man?’
His voice came low and deep. ‘You never touch my drums, figlio di putane che sei.’
‘What does that mean? What did you say – what did you call me?’
‘Son of a whore!’
I tried to push past him. He slammed me so hard against the wall that the back of my head hit the timber. My jaw snapped shut, almost cutting off my tongue. I still tried to get away, but he pinned my arms with his hands. His grip was like steel, far stronger than I could have imagined. I was stuck there.
‘You do never touch my drums, they is mine!’
‘Learn to speak English!’
‘Is not toy for stupid boy!’
‘Grammar! Verbs! You dumb wog, you sound like a moron!’ He looked with horror into my hate-filled face. It was the worst of the insults I could have flung at him. He let go of me and with great deliberation raised one hand so high that I couldn’t help it, I cowered. Flinched.
That stopped him, the way I drew back from the coming blow. He lowered his hand, but steel remained in his voice. Each word extracted its own pound of flesh. ‘This word you want to use when you do look at me. You must never. Never. To call a man this is to say him he is stranger in this country and will always be. You learn what I tell you right now. Right now.’
So I couldn’t call him a wog, but he could call me the son of a whore. In my mind’s eye I could see my ma, thin, grey and dead. I ran into my room and slammed the door. Locked it. Had no idea where Emma was or when she’d be home – as if I could expect any sympathy or help from that drunken old bitch anyway, I told myself. Light footsteps stopped outside my door. There was silence. I held my breath.
Then came his voice. It wasn’t angry but gentle. ‘Muxx.’ He waited. ‘Muxximillion.’
I didn’t answer him. I would never answer him. Either he would have to leave this house forever or I would. One of us had to go.
For the present it was him. Conny stayed there another minute, then I heard him walk away. The front door opened and closed. Outside, the EJ Holden’s engine started up. He’s off, I thought, I’ll never see the dumb dago again, and I threw myself down on my bed and covered my head with my hands. Good! I don’t want you in my house! – and I started to cry.
He didn’t
return that night, nor the one after.
XV
Three nights he was gone. From there we lived in deathly silence for days on end. A week passed, then two. Conny was like a corpse and my aunt Emma stayed deeply, silently angry. Conny was never in any room that I went into. He avoided me and at dinner time he ate alone outside by the vines. Each night he slept in the spare room.
The house was no better than a morgue and no one could seem to face anyone else and make up. Then one morning I heard Emma speaking to Conny as he shaved in the bathroom. I was in the hall, sleepy and not all there yet. I couldn’t quite make out the entire conversation, but it was clear she was quietly grilling him. She ended with something like, ‘Don’t lie to me, you’ve gone back to it, haven’t you?’ or maybe it was, ‘Don’t lie to me, you’ve gone back for more, haven’t you?’ but, either way, I could tell he wasn’t going to answer.
I moved closer to the bathroom and could see him over her shoulder. His face was half-frothed, half-shaved. He was silent – but in that studiously vacant, brown-eyed gaze I thought I saw the unconscious assent all men betray when their wives have got the whiff of some secret truth in their nostrils. She turned and pushed past me. He resumed shaving without acknowledging my presence. For the hell of it I went into that bathroom, lifted the lid of the toilet and urinated copiously into the bowl, making as much noise as possible. He didn’t flinch.
We entered the third week of familial misery and I kept working that new information over and over in my mind: You’ve gone back to it or You’ve gone back for more.
A woman? I doubted it. An old man’s not going to have a paramour hidden away somewhere. Then maybe it was gambling, but that seemed just as unlikely. Drinking was out because other than a Sunday glass of beer or a nightly shot of Cynar he was the most moderate person in the house. The only thing I could come up with was the obvious answer: after all, Concetto San Filippo had been a musician all those decades, had played in so many bands and with so many other musicians, he must have come across plenty of drugs and addicts in his life. Maybe he had a habit. Something as simple as smoking spliffs or something as hopeless as the hard dead end of heroin. I wished I could warn him off, wished I could let this old guy know some of the wisdom in this teenage boy. It would have been useless, of course – why listen to me? He’d probably seen and experienced more human misfortune than I could even imagine.
Dirty Beat Page 7
