Questions of Travel

by Michelle De Kretser

  It was a relief to walk away. At the same time, Ravi felt like a book that has been shoved back into a shelf. To prove his independence, he went down to the path beside the river. The water, glimpsed through branches, was thickly green. He spotted Malini on the bank, ducking about between the mangroves—but she turned out to be only a trick of the light. There was no doubt, however, that Hiran was very near. He called, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” while running up and down a locked passage in a handsome sandstone building. It was a former school for female orphans established in the early years of the colony. Hiran’s arms rose, but he couldn’t reach the window. Ravi headed back to the car, walking fast.

  On the way home, Tarik announced that her throat hurt. Hana shifted into the middle of the backseat, and Tarik huddled against her. Abebe asked if he should stop off for lemons. A little later, Hana asked, “Do you have a sore throat as well as a headache, Ravi?” When he turned in his seat to deny it, she said, “Are you sure? These things are very infectious.” Her tone was severe, but she was smiling. Ravi wondered which way she pictured the flow of contagion. Absurdly, he felt himself to blame.

  Tarik said, “Mum, you know Jacinta in my class? I really hate her hair.” The child often ignored Ravi, greeting him with her eyes dropped. Sometimes, when she was snuggled up against her mother or seemed absorbed in a game, Ravi would discover that Tarik was in fact observing him. In the same way, Fair Play curled on a chair, seemingly asleep, would keep covert watch. Their eyes had the same look: cold but lively. They were waiting to see what he would do. Ravi realized, with a jolt, that he might represent a threat to a small female. At other times, he was an opportunity. Child and dog would stare openly or even cavort, willing him to produce a sardine or a sweet.

  Hana murmured, “School of Law.” When Ravi looked round at her, she said, rather defiantly, “You know about these things. Before today, I would have said ‘Law School.’” Whitlam Institute, Campus Service Center, Auditorium: they were not names on a board, Ravi saw, but steps carved into a golden mountain. At its peak, Hana, gowned and mortared, waved goodbye to the conveyor belt, the flat that smelled of exhaust, the bed she shared with her daughter. She upended a bag: an avalanche of dirty five-cent pieces fell on her French mother-in-law and killed her.

  Ravi asked to be dropped off at the station, but Abebe replied that he would drive him home after leaving the others at their flat. “That’s a good idea,” said Hana. “There’s always a cold wind when you’re waiting for a train.”

  Outside Hazel’s, the two men sat on in the car. Abebe had offered Ravi a cigarette, then told him about Hana. When the ambulance came, she had asked, “Is my son completely dead?” It was one of the things about her that Ravi would never forget. Shivering, he found the button that raised his window. When he got out of the car, he trod on a paper plate of caramel popcorn. He scraped his sneaker back and forth on the grass. Abebe, who had turned the car around, saw him and laughed.

  Ravi, 2004

  A LONG, BITTER EMAIL came from Nimal. For months, he had laid siege to a divorcee from Nevada who was renting a house near Galle. She was forty, looked fifty and brought a touchingly clumsy enthusiasm to everything she did, whether performing fellatio or rolling a joint. With a flow of phone calls and emails supplemented by almost daily visits, Nimal beat off a trishaw driver and an upstart waiter; like most foreigners, the divorcee had no appreciation of the local social stair. At last, as his campaign reached its strategic climax, Nimal drew the garnet from his finger and placed it on hers. Two weeks later, he demanded its return. In the interim, the divorcee had steadfastly refused to entertain any suggestion of returning to her native land. She was never going back to those winters, she declared. Nimal pleaded for California and Hawaii, he Googled the average hours of sunshine in Santa Fe. It was all useless: all through their idyll, when he had been dreaming of SUVs and steaks, her imagination had thrilled to rice paddies and crisp, fresh hoppers at breakfast.

  Ravi saw Hana almost every weekend now. Their relations had taken on a tinge of self-consciousness; or perhaps it was only Ravi who had changed. Hana was buoyant with plans. Her brother would sit his final accountancy exams at the end of the year, and then it would be her turn to study. Hana had sent off certified copies of her high school diploma to a government office for assessment—she wondered if she would have to do a bridging course. “There’s no hope if you can’t imagine your life changing,” she said. “That’s why places like Banksia Gardens feel sad.”

  Tarik and her mother had a new game: When We Live in House. They took turns: When we live in a house, we’ll plant roses and figs. When we live in a house, we’ll have two cats. Hana tired quickly of these mundane visions. “When we live in a house, we’ll keep a kangaroo.” Tarik would shriek with glee, but her amusement was shot with panic. If Hana continued in the same vein, the child would beg her to stop. The game was solemn to her, a ritual. What counted was this pledge: When we live in a house, Tarik will have her own room. And what would she have in her room? inquired Abebe. “A TV!” shouted Tarik, bobbing up and down. That was intended to divert. Already the child knew that it was prudent to conceal what was precious. But her wish was strong and it wriggled free: she wanted “a painted cupboard with lots of drawers.” Revealing this secret, she watched Ravi, the outsider, from the corner of her eye. In fact, what he had been shown was only a casing, the leaden casket around the jewel. Tarik cupped her hand around her mouth and whispered at length into her uncle’s ear. “I see,” said Abebe. His face, seen close up with its pores and hairs, stirred disgust in the child. But she knew that Abebe would never harm her. “You say,” she urged him, for with Abebe as its custodian, the treasure was safe. “Are you sure?” She nodded. “Okay. Well, it’s like this: Tarik will have a drawer for her socks and another for her hair bands and another for her T-shirts. And she will open each drawer in turn and put both her hands inside and everything will have its own place.”

  It was the kind of exchange to which Ravi could have listened for hours. He missed the plot of family, its nonsense, quarrels, intrigues. Abebe, Hana, Tarik: what drew him was a triad. In short succession, he had the same dream twice. He was in the gray room where he had gone with the Irish girl. He saw the rumpled couch, the sheet thrown back. But it was Hana’s face on the white pillow. Her full lips closed around his fingers and sucked. There was a waking dream, too, in which he undressed her without haste.

  He wanted to divulge their symmetry. In private, he recited, Malini, Pierre, Hiran, a baby who turned to ashes in Paris. He could have talked to her of death or love, inexhaustible topics. Then she was before him, and he said nothing important. A piece of paper in her possession gave Hana the right to live in Australia. Ravi didn’t want her to think that he was interested in it. The old lady at the Patternots’ raised her ruined face: “Darling, when are you going to marry a nice Australian girl?”

  His landline rang at eleven on a Saturday night. He thought, as anyone would, of home and bad news, and sprang to answer it. A woman said, “Ravi? This is Martine.” The old film Ravi had been watching was louder than her voice. He said, “Wait, please,” and found the remote. “Paul’s wife,” he heard.

  She apologized for calling so late. Paul had gone out earlier that evening and hadn’t returned. His mobile was switched off. “I thought…” Then she said, “He talks about you, I know he likes you. It was so nice that day you came.”

  At which, Ravi recalled the spoon that Martine Hinkel had offered him. He had left it on his saucer and quite forgotten it until now. How rude she must think him! Her presence came vividly to him, her gentleness and the smell of her hair.

  Fair Play, who had lifted her head at the disturbance, rose from Ravi’s pillow and resettled herself. For some weeks now, she had been transferring her collection of stones, one by one, to the middle of the bed. Ravi was obliged to shift them when he wanted to go to sleep—it was no use returning them to the garden because Fair Play fetched them in again. When Ravi lay in b
ed, the stones prevented him from stretching his legs. Their presence was proof of great trust. Also a consolidation of territory. Curved like an apostrophe beside her treasure, Fair Play snored with content.

  Ravi asked after the Hinkels’ little girl. The conversation convulsed back and forth, until it succumbed to silence. The silence went on and on. There was something very restful about sitting in TV light, with the phone at his ear, while a beautiful woman who carried a candle and feared for her sanity crept mutely along a corridor on his screen. For a few minutes, Ravi allowed himself to be caught up in her black-and-white intrigue. Then a faint sound reached him down the phone, and he repeated that he was sure there was no cause for worry. As if that was the signal for which she had been waiting, Martine wished him goodnight. She hoped he would come again soon, she added. Ravi thought of a child whose face was the only bright thing in a room. He remembered the tortured tree.

  Laura, 2004

  SHE WAS LOOKING AT the name of her caller. It was a sign and a wonder: Paul Hinkel on a Saturday night!

  He said, “Are you at home? I’m outside.”

  It so happened that Tracy Lacey had invited Laura to dinner that night but had cancelled at five: Stew was running a temperature, the poor darl, the motivational guru circuit was so draining, he just gave of himself constantly, she knew Laura would understand. Laura Fraser, pounding down the stairs, having decided to stay in because there was nothing she wanted to see at the cinema, offered brief, wild thanks to whichever god was lurking in the vicinity.

  On the step, in the hall, Paul Hinkel repeated, “I can’t live without you.”

  But she was leading him up the stairs.

  On the landing, she remembered the spinsterish width of her bed. She turned: “Not there. Here.” He swerved, clutching her hand. She understood that he would have followed had she said “Mars” or “the moon.” Triumphant, half mad with victory and wanting, she reeled into the big front bedroom, hauling her prize. Hugo Drummond eyed them with distaste. He reared above the mantel—one half of his face was green.

  His paintings were stacked everywhere, covered all the walls.

  They were cleared without ceremony from the bed.

  Time passed.

  Laura went downstairs. Returning with a jug of iced water, she almost tripped over a canvas. That might have been after or before she raised the blind and the sash.

  Paul Hinkel crouched above her, saying that he had gone out to get milk and had just kept driving. His voice went on and on, a gibbering so fast that at one point a rivulet of spit ran out with the words. He had emptied himself into her twice and still wasn’t drained. She heard him declare that he was tired of the lies. Laura had a glimpse of their life together: a soundtrack swelled between the bouts of canned laughter. There was no mirror in the room, but she had the impression of receding depths. She turned her head and encountered the famous whirlpool of Drummond’s gaze.

  They slept. She woke to Paul’s hand grazing between her legs.

  It was cold on the roof, and they were only half dressed. But Laura had felt compelled to display them both to the harbor. So animals are paraded before a sacrifice. Or had she pictured Paul inside her, up there, as the first birds sang in the dark? She had thought about that often enough, waking alone to the dawn havoc. Marching ahead of him now, she said something about the brassy birds of home. Did he miss the blackbirds of London? It was nonsense—in Kentish Town, she had woken to the sigh of air brakes. But with her first step on the roof, Laura had surrendered to a mechanism that ran on preset laws.

  Paul Hinkel was navigating past dangers. A chair threatened, bougainvillea clawed. The moon dribbled just enough to obscure what was withered and rampant alike. Leaves, towers, eyes, all that was individual showed solid in its grudging light.

  They stood hip to warm hip. A clockwork tour guide went on saying things like, Look—the bridge! Or: Over there—see? Luna Park! She drew assiduous attention only to whatever was obvious. Goat Island! she cried, as if it might hear and be moved to come to her aid. Birchgrove! And, finally, in despair: “Hugo Drummond’s studio—would you like to go in? The palette scrapings are authentic!”

  Then she had exhausted her repertoire, and it was no longer the monumental that couldn’t be avoided but silence.

  You could have heard a pin.

  The sky paled.

  Where was the tour guide when you needed her?

  So it was left to Laura to tell Paul Hinkel what he had really crossed the dividing water to say: “It’s no good, is it?”

  He protested. Rather, he piped. For a moment, his voice changed pitch with relief. That was merely a confirmation, however. Here was the giveaway: his breath smelled fresh. When he had stood on her step, when he had squatted above her to proclaim starting over, a foul current had carried his words. Laura had assumed a sanitary oversight: naughty Paul Hinkel forgets to brush, burns bridges! Now, on the roof, she remembered having read, in a novel or two, of that smell. What it betrayed was terror. Paul Hinkel had faced love, as another man might confront a firing squad, with fear on his breath. How amazing, thought Laura Fraser, that life should bear out a phenomenon she had believed the invention of novelists. I can’t live without you and I’m tired of the lies and every other heartfelt platitude Paul offered had actually been addressed to his wife—thank goodness his breath had known it. We have so much to learn from the wisdom of our bodies. Sadly, Laura acknowledged that Quentin Husker and Paul Hinkel had always been cut from the same template. If she hadn’t felt so cold, she might have smiled.

  In no time at all, he was dressed and down the stairs. The sun was still working up the nerve to peer over the horizon when he drove away. When adventure palls, little dog scampers home to dry rations and forgiveness. But first, turning to her on the doorstep, he spoke with odorless breath. “You’re right—it’s best this way. A clean break. It’s cleaner.”

  Noon was gathering itself to strike. Carlo was back from Haberfield. Laura could hear him in the kitchen; something fishy was going on down there. Oh, she could murder a great big serve of tortellini followed by a selection of yummy little pastries! These days, after they had eaten, the old man arranged himself on the sofa. There he looked to her meekly for a verdict. Laura might reach for their record or not. One Sunday she had tormented him by slowly shuffling the stack of vinyl as if searching for something infinitely rare; later she picked up her clothes and left the room while a crescendo was still building in its rosy crevices. Lingering in the hallway, she grinned to hear him curse. How dare he expect. Let him taste what she did twice a week in a motel, naked, waiting, certain it was all over. But today she would be merciful, she decided, she might even fondle him. After all, she had cause to be grateful to Carlo. He had shown her the scraps on which life could be sustained. Carbs for fuel, sugar for solace, an occasional perv at a spectacle that aroused.

  In the front room upstairs, Laura smoothed the powder-blue satin coverlet. Piling it with canvases, she looked at each one first. How much time had passed since Carlo had done the same? When had she last seen him heaving himself upstairs? The room into which she burst towing Paul Hinkel had held an accumulation of silence. It was already thickening afresh over their disruptive moans. When the door closed behind her, neglect would resume its occupation. The front room faced north but struck chill. Like all altars, it required proof of devotion from the faithful. All it asked was a pilgrimage of pain up a stair.

  It had begun to rain. Not the tremendous Sydney bucketing of yore but a stringy sort of music. At the window, Laura listened to water running off the roof. Now and then, it shuddered down the pipe and came out as a splat. On a different day, it would have sent her up to the roof to watch rain running over the harbor. But as long as the sash remained lifted, the blind raised, jug and glasses uncollected, traces of a pattern called Laura Fraser and Paul Hinkel twinkled through the dusty coat of indifference that time slapped over everything in the end.

  Then it couldn’t be postponed an
y longer. Back teeth together! With the window fastened, she bowed her head before Drummond. You fool, he told her, the difference is Carlo was loved.

  Weeks passed before Laura saw that the rooftop above the harbor mirrored the hotel terrace above the ocean. Symmetry was the imperative that had made her drag Paul up there. A good editor, she hadn’t forgotten to provide the bracket that marked the close of a parenthesis. Now the main story could start over. Hinkel, P and M would march on.

  Ravi, 2004

  IT WAS ONE OF those days when the shade made Ravi shiver. He took his cigarette across the car park to the patch of sun beside the fence. Further along, where winter had stripped them of obscuring greenery, white symbols showed on the palings: <<+#>>.

  A woman was making her way between the cars. Laura Fraser often put Ravi in mind of upholstery: an armchair advanced across the concrete, bearing a mug.

  She announced that it was a beautiful day. Then she asked if Ravi had done anything interesting on the weekend. Presently, she indicated a blue Mazda. “I think that’s Paul’s car. There’s a kiddie seat inside. You know Paul Hinkel, don’t you? Everyone knows Paul.”

  In cold weather, Ravi’s lips were always dry. He licked them as she continued, “You’d have to be a dickhead to bring a car in here, wouldn’t you say? With Central so close. He must be a dickhead.” She grinned broadly, while her brown eyes glared. How small they were and how savage! Ravi watched their depths turn to rust. “I must say I pity his poor wife,” she went on. “Who’d want to be Mrs. Hinkel?”

  All the time, Ravi had the unnerving impression that Laura Fraser, while looking at him intently, was not talking to him at all but to an invisible figure at his shoulder. He placed his back to the fence and was moved to say, “Mrs. Hinkel is a very nice lady. Very kind.”