Questions of Travel

by Michelle De Kretser

  One Sunday evening, he found himself in a neighborhood where people wore leather, tattoos, an arc of studs along the brow. A man with long silver hair glided past a wellness center on a skateboard. Distracted by the spectacle of two women kissing, Ravi almost collided with a third. Robyn Orr said, “Oh—hi, Ravi.” Her glasses were framed in the same bright red as the building from which she had emerged. She said, “I live just around the corner, this place is really convenient.” A broad-shouldered form against the long perspective of the street, Robyn gave off a kind of brilliance: her glasses, the metallic clips in her hair. This glitter was also a projection of the power she wielded at Ramsay. She might have stepped from a spacecraft dispatched by a superior civilization. At the thought, Ravi glanced at the red building behind her and saw that it was a Chinese restaurant. Robyn said, “Actually, Mao’s like a brand name now?”

  These days, Ravi examined the west of Sydney with an eye tutored by the luxuriance of other quarters. He saw that the hills flattened out there and potholes appeared. Even the climate was distinctive: the west was breezeless and hot—the promise of the sea had been withdrawn. In compensation, showrooms grew larger. They lured with novel galaxies: Sleep World, Carpet World. The suburbs streamed towards the mountains bearing a cargo of saris, pho, Korean pickles, Iranian raisins, taxation advice in Mandarin, wines from Portugal, headscarved grandmothers, the purple flesh of ritually slaughtered goats. Thus the known world conspired to offer a reprieve from Australia. Ravi might have been back in Hungry Jack’s at Central. In the west, too, people came from everywhere to consume, snatch a bargain, sink into dreams. They pushed strollers before them, trundling their vigorous, greedy, Australian children into the future.

  Ravi consulted the Ramsay guide to Sydney. Surf, museums, sandstone passed in review. He flipped to the section called “Secret Sydney.” It provided directions to a nudist beach, a street of polychrome-brick mansions, a gay cabaret, a cafe that never closed. When Nadine called for ideas at the next e-zone meeting, Ravi spoke up. He had noticed, he said, that the guide to Sydney made no reference to the city’s west. Why not feature this neglected region on the web? It was—he brought out the Ramsay idiom with nonchalant pride—off the beaten track.

  Crystal shot a look all round, then dropped her gaze over her coffee. Some of her smile had come off on her cup. Obliged to respond, Nadine said, “Okay, so what would you list as attractions in the west?”

  “Fat people,” intervened Crystal. “And that hotel in Milperra where there was that bikie massacre.”

  Suggestions poured forth. Art Greco houses. Lebanese gangs. A world-class Kmart. Heritage fibro. Not to mention brick venereal. When everyone had finished laughing, Nadine was still looking at Ravi. All he had in mind were the minglings and partings of a shoving, kaleidoscopic crowd. But it was as multiple and hard to take hold of as life itself. He fumbled about in the whirligig and came up with, “A lot of different people live there.”

  Nadine Flanagan’s face grew whiter than a screen. Meetings were mountains; Nadine toiled upwards in boots that bit. But she strove always for fairness or at least logic. Ravi was a trainee, he needed training. It was her duty to explain that visitors to Sydney—like travelers anywhere—were in search of the iconic. She rattled off the trinity: Bondi, the opera house, the bridge. “Typical places where people hang.”

  Ravi was enlightened. “Westfield Shopping Center in Burwood.”

  Nadine’s armpits turned damp. She managed to say, “Typical but not…ordinary.” Crystal arranged her face to fit the sentence in her mind: She controlled herself, but laughter played about her lips.

  Ravi had the impression that anything might happen next; events at Ramsay often found him in midair. But Will Abrahams observed that Ravi had a point, the Sydney guide was hopelessly white bread. It was decided that Crystal would write up Cabramatta as a destination. In time, “Saigon in Sydney” was published on the web. Ho Chi Minh and Buddha, two pretty cool guys, meet 30 km west of the CBD…Crystal swiveled her chair to inform Ravi that Cabramatta station was known as Smack Express. “When some Swede or Japanese goes and gets killed there, will that be typical? Or just ordinary?”

  Ravi asked where Crystal lived. “Bronte. If you’re more than five minutes from the beach, you might as well live in Melbourne.” She stretched out her legs, flexed her straight toes. She was wearing a lace shift, a chunky cardigan and rubber slippers called Havaianas. Ravi and she admired her feet: two flawless little golden animals. Crystal said, “It’s a lifestyle thing.”

  Laura, 2003

  THE THREAT OF CHRISTMAS brought a summons from the anesthetist. Not to the feast itself, for Portsea was a sacred ritual. But to drinks on New Year’s Eve. Afterwards, Donald Fraser and his wife had competing invitations—from an embassy that was showing minor royals in captivity, and an orthopedic surgeon with a yacht—so dinner was out of the question. But a family had to get together sometime.

  This assertion made such a clang over the phone that it precluded further conversation.

  Over the years in Bellevue Hill, the dining room had been made over as a gym, the terrace revisioned as casual dining, the outside ordered in, the inside shoved out, every vanity cantilevered, every counter Carrara-ed, the spare room conquered by landscapers, the jacaranda vanquished by architects, the kitchen revolutionized with an en suite, the porch upcycled with under-floor heating, the living spaces compelled to flow, the study repurposed as a plunge pool, the basement revealed as a wine cellar, the Rottweiler converted to ashes, a car stacker installed in the garage, until finally, when the house was perfectly luxe, and painted throughout in Lubyanka with the wow factor supplied by feature walls in Goanna Moderne, it was fit only to set a record at auction, and the Frasers downsized to a penthouse at Darling Point.

  Where Laura, proffering crimson mallets of protea as if they might tenderize the moment, mwa, mwa-ed at the appointed hour. She crossed the living room as commanded, a journey of several minutes, to admire The View. This was reduced by twenty-one floors of steel and reinforced concrete to a scale model of itself. Laura contemplated the iconic sights: a midden of white shells, a toytown arch spanning a blue puddle. The value these diminished splendors added was laid out for her delectation along with the amuse-bouches.

  There was a tripod-mounted telescope on the terrace. With his eye to it, Donald Fraser stood and searched the horizon, as he did for hours every day, and was reluctantly persuaded to turn his gaze onto his daughter.

  Who was different, the hair at least. Something flashed in her face, and Donald saw his wife—the real one, the dead one—signaling to him. She, too, had been in the habit of doing things to her hair. Donald’s mind sought and closed around a word: backcombed. Laura advanced, and he realized that the suggestion of snout would always hover. He was resigned to it now—as to so much else—and succumbed to her embrace.

  Cameron arrived in the company of a woman. He guided her with a hand on her neck, propelling her before him across the parquet steppe in the manner of a criminal manipulating a human shield. It was the third time Laura had seen her brother since returning to Sydney. Accompanied, on each occasion, by a different female, he had addressed each one as Car. All his Cars had long, graceful necks, presumably to facilitate his grip.

  He mashed Laura’s hand, calling her “Sis.” It was the same breezy style he had adopted at their previous meetings. She remained unconvinced. Only a week ago, her phone had cried out at three in the morning.

  Car said, “It’s Catriona, actually.”

  Cameron, who had released her neck, seized it again. She was pushed forward into The View.

  The breeze refreshed ruthlessly on the terrace, so after an appropriate interval, everyone was shooed inside and ordered to Sit. Laura couldn’t prevent a glance at the distant console where the Rottie was cradled in a cloisonné jar.

  The anesthetist called her chairs by names, like children—there was even a Ghost. They all took after her, being firm, clean-lined, impervio
us. Car was parked on Tulip, Cameron directed to “take Egg.” Donald Fraser subsided into Barcelona and closed his eyes. Ghost, the favorite, was spared material buttocks, and Laura positioned at one charcoal extremity of a leather couch so long that the anesthetist, at the other, appeared perspectively shrunken.

  Cameron told entertaining stories about people he had ruined in the line of duty.

  Car said, “Actually, the ruling might just as easily have gone the other way.” It was plain that if she outlasted the year it would only be by hours. She rotated her long neck to smile at Laura and inquire what she did.

  While they were talking, the anesthetist rose to leave the room. This she eventually achieved.

  As soon as she was gone, Cameron leaned forward. “Sis!” He drew a BlackBerry from his person. With one thick finger poised above it, “What’s the best number for reaching you?” he asked.

  When Laura had recovered, “Don’t you have it?” she countered. Cameron’s brazenness had to be a form of insanity. Yet beneath its polished thatch, his monumental façade was as bland as a bank.

  Words rushed from him, their father and Car of no account. It was the difference, calculated in millions, between the family home and this place that was preoccupying Cameron. Why shouldn’t the money come to him—and Sis, of course? “Now, while we can enjoy it.” He wished Laura to broach the subject with the old man. He would brief her as to wording.

  Laura remained mute and unseeing. She was picturing Quentin Husker, in a room like this one (only smaller, of course), constructing, for the benefit of women, fables that starred him as victim, dragon and knight. For the first time it occurred to her that Cameron, too, might be merely average—no worse than a type.

  Her brother’s voice rose. “You could get away with anything. You were always his favorite!” It was a cry in which disappointments echoed up from a valley forty years deep. Laura accepted a card and agreed to call him, knowing that she never would. His judgment had come unhinged. It stopped at surfaces: took punishment for justice, silence for complicity, a checkbook for tenderness, profit for inheritance, the curve of a neck for submission. Car proved his miscalculation, helping herself to independent Mumm.

  Donald Fraser, trapped in Barcelona, was afraid. His wife’s eyes were smaller than her rings. He had noticed this quite recently; it coincided, more or less, with the move. The light hoovering over the terrace removed everything that wasn’t essential. Now the realization wouldn’t leave him, panting in his ear. A few days earlier, he had thought, I am dogged by misfortune. Ever since, the Rottweiler, too, had followed him. The dog’s crime, as it grew old, had been to fart unreasonably. What could Donald do but scan the sky? Once it had been a source of help, or so he seemed to recall.

  Ushering Laura to the security lift, the anesthetist came in close. The lift began its weary ascent, and she confided, as if referring to a particularly pernicious kind of weapon, that Cameron “had ideas.” Laura was the sensible one, she declared. Neither woman referred to the change in Donald, although it was as inescapable as The View. His wife had diagnosed a minor stroke, but Donald refused to submit to tests. It was unscientific, therefore dangerous, but the anesthetist couldn’t help associating the telescope with his new stubbornness. She remembered that she had always been against it, picturing it in advance, a large black insect cluttering the pure sweep of the terrace. A word that meant something like witnesses had been in her mind when she consulted the calendar and picked up the phone to call the giant humans who passed as her stepchildren. For the same reason, her mother had been summoned to stay not long before the Rottie embarked on his last journey to the vet. Afterwards, the anesthetist could say, “You saw for yourself what he was like, the poor old boy—it just wasn’t practical to have him around the house any longer.” When you married a man who was nineteen years older, you married a risk. Silently, Donald Fraser’s wife renewed her annual vow. She had formulated it when she was fifteen, and kept it against parental expectation, professorial sarcasm, the bullying of surgeons: I won’t be a nurse.

  Ravi, 2004

  PRIYA AND HER HUSBAND wanted to sell the house that Carmel had left to her three children. Ravi saw strange faces at the windows, rooms ripped open, the mulberry on its knees before an axe. A desk occupied the wall that belonged to his mother’s dressing table. He saw the house painted a different color. Varunika, too, didn’t wish to sell. The argument went on in emails and phone calls, now intensifying, now fading.

  It echoed another conflict. In the last months of his mother’s life, she had shared her house with a servant. When Carmel was a girl, this woman had cooked for her parents. One day she was there on Carmel’s doorstep. She was seventy-eight and had nowhere else to go.

  Several weeks after his mother died, it occurred to Ravi to ask what had become of this servant. She had gone away, replied Priya. Where? Priya didn’t know. She had her own cook who came in every day. In any case, the old woman was useless, she could barely see to pick stones out of lentils. Ravi answered this email with accusations. Then he called Priya. What he really wanted to say was that they should send the old woman some money. But his sister would scoff; the words stuck in his throat. Meanwhile, Priya shouted that it was easy to stay away and find fault.

  Now, with no message of her own to accompany it, she forwarded an email from their mother’s cousin, who lived in Sydney. It was an invitation to lunch. Ravi had avoided getting in touch with the Patternots. He had feared interrogation and tedium. Desmond and Merle would want to discuss the events that had brought him to Sydney. Then they would call up an age when everything was better in Sri Lanka—it had ended when they left.

  Their nostalgia was what attracted Ravi now. The Patternots would talk about Carmel. Although Malini and Hiran were never far, what had seemed unimaginable had come to pass: days went by and Ravi didn’t think of his mother. But the Patternots would recall a party or a scandal, and he would retrieve her. He would see his mother as she had been before they knew each other: hesitant or idly flirting, but in any case ignorant of the spotlit role in his life that was to come.

  When picturing the Patternots’ house, Ravi had seen a hallway and a room opening off it to the right. In fact he stepped straight from the door into the living room. It was full of people because it was Merle’s birthday. Desmond went among his guests, saying, “This is Carmel’s son.” An old lady told Ravi that she would have known him anywhere: “You have the van Geyzel face.” Desmond said, “Carmel Sansoni who married Suresh Mendis.” The old lady looked dashed but said, “Never mind, darling, I recognized you anyway.”

  A large brass tray in the shape of Sri Lanka glittered on a wall. Ravi was conscious of something he hadn’t missed until then: a friendliness that wasn’t personal but originated in family. However mistaken the identification, among these people he would always be someone’s son. More guests arrived. No one sought Ravi out, but someone always turned to him in conversation or refilled his plate. There was no talk of the old days—all the gossip was of Sri Lankans in Sydney. The three Australians present, two girlfriends and a son-in-law, smiled to show that they were keeping up or at least didn’t mind.

  The new podiatrist at the health center had complimented Merle on her English. “What do they think we speak?” Her nephew worked in a shop where a recent immigrant from Sri Lanka was also employed. It was assumed that the two men would be friends, having a country in common. But the newcomer was a Tamil who ate rice with his fingers. Tania, the Patternots’ daughter, said sharply, “What does it matter, Mum? We’re all Australians now.” The Australians in the room received this in silence. Ravi realized that Tania had that the wrong way around. What she meant was that in Australia, they were all merely Sri Lankan—Burgher, Sinhalese, surgeon, sweeper, it was all the same. Immigration was the triumph of geography over history. At home, I’d never speak to people like that.

  The old lady told a filthy joke about John Howard and a kebab. Everyone laughed, but afterwards Desmond said, “Th
ey are keeping the economy on a firm rein, isn’t it?” Ravi took this to mean that the Patternots voted for the government rather than Labor. For that generation of emigrants, the Left was the torch applied to the thatch. It was mob rule, clothing coupons, the erosion of standards, rationed and stinking country rice: the rising flood from which they had run.

  Tania was moving about the gathering with pieces of love cake nestled in a crumpled handkerchief made of red and white glass. She told Ravi that she had just returned from her first trip to Sri Lanka with her family. A fantastic holiday, you could buy anything you needed, and the kids just loved the hotels. Tania had steeled herself for misery, but the cease-fire had brought hordes of tourists—there was no poverty these days. Mind you, the pollution was another story. Desmond said, “They went to Kernigalle and saw our old house. It’s owned by some Muslims now. They showed the children around, let them take photos and everything.” “It’s not Kernigalle, Dad,” said Tania, “it’s Kurunegala.” Ravi remembered that his parents, too, had used the old name and been corrected by their children. Not only had a way of life gone, even the memory of it was passing. Each year, there were fewer who made the old mistakes.