Mad Meg

by Sally Morrison

Upstairs our grandmother had a wardrobe as big as a small country. It was there Rose met Dadda, who was known in the family as Henri. The wardrobe had an electric light in it – Milan, a very advanced city in the twenties, even had electric streetlights – and full-length mirrors so our grandmother could see herself in all her glory. Henri was lying on a mink stole under her dresses, wearing an imitation bald patch with grey hair sewn around the edges and a pair of spectacles attached to a warty nose underneath. He was pretending to be dead. In the space between the dresses and the mirrors, he had made two pyramids out of his mother’s shoes. Rose was already inside the wardrobe when he said, in a deep and ghostly voice, ‘Lasciata ogni Speranza, voi ch’entrate.’ (Abandon all hope ye who enter here.) He nurtured a passion for Dante from a very early age and it was Uncle Nicola, a passionate Dante scholar, who taught him.

  ‘’E was so sweet, Henri,’ said Rose. ‘’E was only seven and ’e ’ad little veins under ’is chin, like Eli. And little pretty legs and tiny ankles and tiny knees. We spent hours making masks and turning ourselves into ozzer selves. I couldn’t speak Italian; ’e couldn’t speak French, so we just made everysing up. Henri ’ad a box full of all sorts of zings: feazzers, thimbles, dry grass, little bottles, beads, sequins, fur and satin and offcuts from ze shoes your grandfuzzer made.

  ‘We dressed each other up. ’E was wearing a cape and ’e ’ad circlets of ’orse ’air bristles tied around ’is legs like a red Indian. And ’e ’ad a real sword, but it was so big it trailed on ze ground from ze scabbard ’e had tied under ’is armpits. I used to love the way Henri walked. ’E still walks like zat: long jaunty strides from ze ’ip. A parody of marching, so gallant! Like a person who is going to fix everysing up wis some powerful joke ’e ’as waiting up ’is sleeve.

  ‘Zat castle over ze road from your fuzzer’s house was really extraordinary. Henri and I visited it on zat first day, in our fancy dress clothes. I went as a pear tree because we found a velvet bag full of little glass pears in Henri’s box of odds and ends. I made myself a crown and a necklace and a belt. Zere were even some artificial leaves left over from some shoes, so I made myself bracelets and anklets from zem. Everybody had to watch for us coming! I tell you, we were mighty beautiful rascals!

  ‘When we got inside, ze walls were gi-gant-tesque! Zere were little markets set up at zeir bases under stripy umbrellas, but zey were dwarfed. Henri was stooping and rolling ’is eyes under the bigness. Even if you ran, it took too long to get anywhere. Zere seemed to be so much sky above ze courtyard and I could feel ze ghosts of soldiers in suits of armour. It was very scary. Zere was even an ’awk in ze sky whose shadow was swooping zrough ze sunlit places.

  ‘Ze courts at ze back of ze castle were much more friendly. You could walk out into an open park behind zem. I remember zinking zat ze grass in zat park was very brown. In fact, all of Milan was dusty and dry. Zey said it was ze sirocco blowing straight up Italy from Africa.

  ‘Ze ceilings inside ze duke’s court at ze back of ze castle were painted wis angels and stars and vines. It made me zink zat once upon a time ze skies above Milan must ’ave been blue because ze skies in ze frescos were very blue, but zat summer, I tell you, ze real sky outside was brown and gritty.

  ‘In one room Henri and I lay on our backs on ze floor and zere was God, sitting in a circle on ze ceiling vault, surrounded by angels. And zere also was Jesus, rising out of a tomb, being carried up to ’Eaven on a sort of gold plate rimmed wis little snakes.

  ‘Milan ’ad quite a different feel from Paris. Zat castle was part of a wall surrounding ze old city. It was ze place where people went to shelter when ze city was under attack. And it was attacked many times, going right back to ze Goths.

  ‘At ze ’ub of ze old city is ze Square of ze Duomo, and ze Duomo is a very wonderful building, I can tell you. Your grandmuzzer took us zere. When I first saw it, I zought it was a building wis a ballroom inside, because it was covered all over with figures on pinnacles and I zought zey were dancers. I didn’t know much about saints, you see, being Jewish. We climbed up inside a tower and came out on ze roof, and Henri said we were coming out into ’Eaven. Perhaps ’e zought getting to ’Eaven meant being ’eld up ’igh in ze air on a very long stick, because zat’s what it looked like to me. Zere were a couple of sousand saints being ’eld up on long sticks on zat roof, all at different heights, depending on ’ow good they were. ’Ighest of all was ze golden virgin. After seeing ’er, I made my first doll, an angel wis real chicken wings who would fly about ze saints on ze Duomo’s roof and ask zem if zey were hungry. I ’ad to throw my angel out after a day, because ze wings went bad. Zat was ze first time I fully realised zat living things go rotten when zey die.

  ‘Right next to the square of ze Duomo was an elegant arcade wis a domed glass roof. It was very, very exciting for me, because your grandmuzzer knew someone who lived zere, and your grandfuzzer ’ad a very beautiful name for her. ’E called ’er “Ze Apparition of Light”. I’d ’eard about ’er quite often before I met ’er. She was an old Russian lady who told fortunes. You would go up ze stairs to ’er apartment, and when ze door was opened, all you could see at first was a swirl of smoke and sunlight streaming zrough ze windows zat overlooked ze square. Zen you would see ’er reclining on a green chaise longue in ze middle of ze room, a cigarette in a long ’older and ze light seeming to pour zrough ’er long fair ’air, so it looked like an ’alo.

  ‘We went to visit ’er quite a few times. Your grandmuzzer seemed to bring her reams of paper, or piles of journals. Zere were papers and journals everywhere, ’eaped up on desks and chairs and on ze floor. And Ze Apparition of Light was always surrounded by a bevy of adoring young men.

  ‘She could speak French, and when I first met ’er she read my palm. She said it made ’er laugh; ze story was very funny and she liked me. She especially liked me because I ’ave six fingers on my right ’and.’ Sure enough, on Rose’s right hand, the little fingers were perfect duplicates of each other, plump, white and well made, but fused to the first knuckle. ‘I am really two people,’ she said, ‘but one of me is just a little finger.’

  It was in The Apparition’s salon that Rose first came to suspect there was something very wrong in Italy. It must have been in early June that the normally buzzing salon had taken on an air of gravity and tension. Someone had disappeared, been abducted in Rome, jostled into a car apparently and taken away at high speed. Enemies were putting it about that he’d gone abroad, but everyone in the salon knew he hadn’t. They were certain he’d been murdered.

  ‘My fuzzer and both your grandparents were really shocked by zis news, and when someone was arrested in Rome carrying a pair of zis man’s bloodstained trousers in an attache case, zey felt zere was no room for doubt.

  ‘Sure enough, ’e ’ad been murdered, but ’is body wasn’t found for quite a while, and ze police seemed to be arresting ze wrong people to give ze people who were really involved time to get out of ze country. One of zem was caught leaving Genoa in a speedboat, and ’e was only caught wis reluctance because a journalist recognised ’im. It showed everybody zat zere was an ’igh level of corruption in ze police force, and got zem saying zere was an ’igh level of corruption everywhere.

  ‘It seemed zere was a gang involved and zat zey’d received orders from someone in ze Fascist ’ierarchy to silence ze murdered man, who was Mussolini’s chief opponent in ze Chamber of Deputies.

  ‘It was Matteotti, Isobel. Perhaps you know ze story?’

  I had to confess my ignorance.

  ‘’E was secretary of ze Socialist Party. After ’is murder Mussolini gained total control.

  ‘Ze Apparition’s lover was ze most prominent of ze socialist deputies in Rome, Filippo Turati. ’E tried ’ard, but could not convince Matteotti’s widow and ’is muzzer to take ze decisive public action zat was needed to bring Mussolini down. Zese women ’ad no sense of being part of a larger web. Zey’d been protected all zeir lives and channelled into domesticity. Lavish mo
urning was socially acceptable, ze death and ze grief were everysing.’

  And so the moment for action was lost. Mussolini’s opposition withdrew from the Chamber. They called themselves the Aventine Secession. They fought the brutality and open corruption with newspaper campaigns until the newspapers were either forcibly taken over by the Fascists, or crushed.

  FIFTEEN

  Reason, Religion and Folly

  I WANTED ALLEGRA to befriend Rose Hirsch, but it was a long time happening. She couldn’t see how any friend of The Brolga’s could be a friend of ours. But Rose knew all about Dadda, I protested.

  She knew our Italian grandparents. Didn’t Allegra want to know what they were like, what they did, where they lived?

  Allegra pretended she was indifferent. Families were unimportant, anyway, and the sooner family structures disappeared and gave way to the collective rearing of children the better. I had only to look at Eli to see corruption in the making. It was not that she didn’t love Eli, it wasn’t his fault, just that he’d been born a bit too soon. Now there were co-operative, community play centres run by the parents, the whole approach to child-rearing would be revolutionised.

  Actually, there was only one co-operative play centre we knew of, and they were continually being left in the lurch by parents who had to race off to courses, or were single and found it hard to make up the quota of parent days.

  When I told Allegra about The Apparition, she said, ‘Huh! Those Milan socialists! Reactionaries! They wrecked the Second International. In their view the middle class existed for the sake of the working class. They were bourgeois themselves. They had a vested interest in the survival of the free market and parliamentary democracy.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  We were lying on blankets on our damp back lawn. Overhead the spring of 1975 was trying to move in by cramming the winter into one dark lumpy cloud in the only bit of sky I could see, framed by guttering, paling fences and a large old oak tree from which the occasional acorn smote our picnic. The washing plapped on our rusty hoist. Failed cauliflowers were raising white fists at the ends of long green arms, challenging me to modify my horticultural methods. Allegra was trying to read five books and a newspaper all at once. Her hair fizzed out, long and wild, from her little heart-shaped face. Every now and again she gathered it into a bundle as thick as a hay bale and tried to tie it in a knot. She moved rapidly from book to book, now sitting up, now lying down; sunglasses on, sunglasses off; biting her pencil, jotting in a margin. She was researching something, I didn’t quite know what. I was trying to look like Jackie Onassis.

  ‘You don’t understand, Bel,’ she said, still jotting away. ‘Socialism is about working-class rule. It’s about the destruction of the bourgeois state and the so-called free market. Not everybody’s capable of doing great things, but everybody needs the wherewithal to live. Look at the situation in art. As things stand, gallery directors do better than artists out of artworks.’

  ‘Not at Mad Meg,’ I said.

  ‘But Mad Meg’s only one gallery.’ She sat up straight, cross-legged, specs on the end of her nose, forehead wrinkled. ‘Why should that be the case? By the time art ends up in the public galleries, it’s been bought and sold many times. Do people go to galleries to worship art icons for what they are, or for what they cost?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t a clue why some people paint and others want to see their work. It’s just part of culture, aesthetics. I couldn’t say what use it has. None I can put a name to. Maybe its original function was to identify people and places. I suppose it has to do with God, too, striking fear into people or eliciting respect from them, or just trying to show God’s presence in, or absence from, the world. And then, western art is used to signify taste. Once God has fallen away, I suppose it serves Mammon.’

  ‘Precisely. In a free market system, people are wage slaves. In a socialist system, it isn’t money that rules people’s lives. A good socialist system aims to free people from the constraints of capitalism so they can live life creatively.’

  ‘How can you live life creatively in the absence of mundane reasons for living it at all?’ I was plucking grass, blade by blade, and nibbling on the luscious white bits.

  ‘You’re too introspective and cynical, Bel.’

  ‘You still haven’t told me why socialism is better than two-party democracy.’

  ‘Socialism is about workers saying how, when and where they will work. It’s about ownership by the people. It’s about co-ordination and co-operation, equality of women with men. It isn’t about centralised rule by the puppets of capitalism in Canberra. Better to know the face on your representative, because then any complaints you have will be real to that person. Truly socialist government is a one-party system with a vested interest in the future of all people in common.’

  ‘What if you don’t like the party?’

  ‘The party is open to change and progress, Bel. Communes elect their own representatives. What could be more democratic than that?’ ‘Might lead to stagnation. I don’t see how two-party systems are less democratic.’

  ‘Well, they are, you just get the swapping of one power elite for another. In a one-party system you’re not voting for some distant ideology or lobby group there to sustain a money-driven economy, you’re voting for what you want to happen around you.’

  ‘But Marx and Lenin talk about violent overthrow, Allegra. As a pacifist, I don’t take to that. They stress the necessity for violent change.’ ‘Yes. Well, things aren’t as they were. Now it involves a radical change from within and people are changing, you only have to look about you to see it. There are communes being started everywhere. There are co-operative food shops. People are learning to live simply and use environmentally friendly products. It’s all happening.’

  To some extent I had to say she was right. Environmentally friendly products, however, hadn’t scored a mention from comrades Engels, Lenin and Marx, and conventional people of our parents’ generation still sat rigid in their suburban houses, keeping the television polished and making sure the demand for dead chooks was so high special shrines with refrigerated altar aisles had to be built for them.

  All the same, our generation was rejecting this way of life, preferring food that was less processed and came in recyclable containers, and a lifestyle that was far more open and socially active. Petty niceties like polished footwear and two-piece suits had been dispensed with. It was not uncommon to see men in caftans. Hair was worn in all varieties of long. Babies were suckled when and where their mothers pleased. The government had brought in a universal health scheme and a legal aid scheme. Australian art, film, writing and theatre were having a field day and everyone began to take them seriously, instead of holding them up against English or American creations and comparing them unfavourably.

  It seemed that since the vote had been given to eighteen-year-olds, the voice of the young was being heard in parliament. Something had happened to the pecking order among females, too: it wasn’t there. Everybody was talking and everybody had a sex life; the word ‘spinster’ was an hilarious anachronism. It was only my vegetables that weren’t behaving like good Marxists – their behaviour was distinctly biblical: succumbing to plague and blight, bringing forth tares and breaking off at the base with something Jesus doesn’t mention.

  The ambience suited Dadda. It was rumoured that at a certain party he was raped in a thistle patch by an English pop singer (female) of some note. The Dadda/Brolga quarter was said to be shaky, but solidified once again when it was realised that in this climate, Dadda was a phenomenal commodity; through him, The Brolga could come by just about anyone she pleased.

  Dadda took to going alone to deepest, darkest Japan. North of Japan, he confided, was a confluence of current that mingled Soviet with Japanese rubbish. It had given him some trouble in Customs on his return and some of it had been confiscated.

  I pictured Dadda getting through checkpoints with his luggage full of detritis while
other people were being blown up at airports and hijacked in planes in the name of someone else’s liberation, and I wondered how he avoided arrest. But he seemed content and the world was more and more delighted with his output. He had begun concerning himself with the cycles and destinies of global rubbish.

  I would have to sneak off to galleries to look at his work, as I didn’t want to be seen by people who would tell on me. Even so, the proprietor of the stuffy gallery where he showed in Melbourne would follow my progress with an ancient eyebrow raised. Either she thought I was the wrong sort of client, or she knew who I was.

  Once I ran into The Brolga. She hovered in the foyer in a bat-winged coat, humming and ha-ing before oh-well-why-notting over the threshold. ‘Hello, Isobel,’ she said to me grudgingly. I nodded curtly, but when I looked back at Dadda’s painting, I couldn’t see it, there was so much interference in my head. I left before seeing everything, mumbling to the eyebrow raiser as I went that she ought to get in the pest control people as I’d just seen a rat.

  It’s stopped raining. The Midnight Knitter is snoring in her armchair by the fire. Firelight livens the whiteness of her hair with a colour verging on red. The garment has tumbled from her hands and covers her old feet, misshapen from a lifetime of wearing shoes too small for her.

  Mad Meg’s silent bellow issues from the dark wall of the kitchen as I pad through to the balcony for some fresh air.

  Choughs come here in the mornings to eat bread from Reg’s hands, squabbling and beating each other to it. The rain has left large blebs of water on the balcony rails. It is cold out here, the smell of eucalyptus keen in the nose.

  Above, the sky has cleared in patches, giving it a rinsed look behind sudsy clouds. Somewhere, unimaginably far away, there are pockets in the universe so dense that even light cannot escape them. There, gravity rules. If two such pockets should collide, out of phase, I have heard it said the impact would cause an immense explosion, reversing the direction of entropy and sending matter back into the field where light moves fastest and gravity is the weakest force. Thus, the history of the universe, a history told in deep time, might be a never-ending series of bangs and crunches.