Questions of Travel

by Michelle De Kretser

  On a Blue Mountain far to the west, Donald Fraser dropped his phone into the pocket of his dressing gown. Why was the runt sulking tonight? He hated it when she wouldn’t talk to him. Still, she always came round in the end, he could count on her cheery hello. She was the true child of his true wife. The imposter had tried to feed him to a silver-skinned beast. But Donald wasn’t fooled. She could call it your car all she liked, but he could see the snarling cat and read the label: Jaguar. Not long after that, Cameron had come. He asked, “Do you know the prime minister’s name, Dad?” Had the boy lost his wits? The prime minister’s name was always Opportunist. Then Donald realized what had happened: the imposter had dug out Cameron’s eyes and replaced them with the stones from her hand. The sparkles spelled, A ring of thieves! Together they had delivered him here, repeating that it was a lovely place, just like a hotel really, Donald was going to love it. That was quite true: Donald did. The carpets were so kind to his corns after the parquet, and in five weeks? eighteen months? eleven centuries? no one had once said, “Pull yourself together, Don.” Sometimes the Rottie rested his heavy head on the arm of a chair, but the imposter had pushed her orange face close to Donald’s going mwa, mwa and vanished forever. The food was excellent, exactly as she had promised, and every night the stars held a party. His wife usually dazzled there. By day, the telescope showed her backcombing her hair in a tear stain called a waterfall. The long window didn’t open, but Donald could always hear her calling across the valley. Tonight she had prompted, “Isn’t there something you have to say to Laura?” Donald explained that he had been trying to get through to the runt for years. But whenever her voice greeted at the other end of the line, Donald would realize that it was too late to call.

  Ravi, 2004

  THE PEOPLE WALKING TOWARDS the lights were making better progress than the cars. In the backseat, Hana clicked her tongue. “We should have parked near the main road.” It was what she had proposed, but Abebe had said that it would mean a fifteen-minute walk. The evening was chilly, and it was drizzling on and off—they might have done better to postpone the trip. But on discovering that Ravi had never seen the Christmas lights, all three—Hana, Abebe, even Tarik—had insisted that he couldn’t leave Sydney without doing so. “We go to a different place every year.”

  Light spiraled around the trunk of a palm tree in a garden. When Ravi remarked on it, Tarik said, “Just wait.” A family strolled past the stationary car, the three young children in dressing gowns over pajamas. They were followed by a woman wearing a lilac jacket, denim skirt and short boots. Ravi had noticed her further back, when the car had overtaken her; she had caught up with them now. Hana was saying, “It’s like a different country, all these people out in the street at night.” There were dogs, babies in slings and strollers, a man with a walking stick. Something eased ahead, and the traffic slipped forward. Abebe was looking for a side street, but there were none, and soon they were at a standstill again. The lilac jacket drew level with the car, the woman walking briskly past Ravi’s window. This happened two or three times. She was dark-haired, dark-skinned. Under a streetlamp, her jacket shone fluorescent blue about the shoulders. A group of teenagers carrying pizza boxes filled up the pavement, and when Ravi next saw the woman, she was a long way ahead.

  At last they reached a roundabout and turned left. Their luck had changed: just in front of them, a Pajero was pulling out. In an undertone that couldn’t be heard in the backseat, Abebe said, “You know what pajero means in Spanish?” His hand at his crotch made a universal gesture.

  When they had joined the people flowing uphill towards the roundabout, Ravi saw something wonderful: in the distance, a ship of light floated above the massed darkness of trees. The others looked where he pointed. But: “Wait,” said Hana and Abebe together, and Tarik said, “Wait.”

  Hours later, they dropped Ravi off at Hazel’s. It was his second-last night there. The following evening, Hazel and the boys were taking him out to dinner; Damo would drive him to the airport the day after that. Ravi couldn’t know it, but that offer of a lift represented the outcome of a struggle. On learning that Ravi was going back, Damo had choked on incredulity, anger, hurt, disappointment, loss—in other words, rejection. Savaging a sausage in the sunroom, with his brothers and Hazel around the table, he came out with, “So that’s it, is it? He waltzes in here, when there are people literally dying to get into this country, and then decides he’s going back?” For a while, there was only the sound of knives. Then Russ, blanketing a T-bone with tomato sauce, was compelled to say, “Who spent two years pulling pints in Dublin when he finished uni? Can’t see how this is different.” Russ had always been thick as, it was completely different, you couldn’t compare a working holiday to…Damo chewed and chewed. He was remembering an afternoon of strict, clean light when he had taken Ravi to the plague cemetery at La Perouse. They had looked at the graves of nurses, girls in their twenties, who had caught the contagion from their patients. Damo’s father had taken him there—it was one of Damo’s special places. Why had he shown it to Ravi? Fair Play chose that moment to whine at the back door. Damo decided silently, You can just stay out there.

  Hazel’s present to Ravi was a photograph album. She had given it to him in advance, so that if she’d forgotten anything important, there’d be time to take a photo of it before he left. Night after night now, Hazel came to stand in the sunroom. She was looking for Ravi’s light. On the dresser, her babies smiled and faded daily, trapped behind glass. Sometimes Hazel was still there, holding her elbows, when dawn broke in the plumbago; Blue Heaven, her mother had called that flower. Two questions jousted for supremacy during these vigils. Why must everyone go away in the end? When will it be my turn?

  Sitting on his bed, Ravi turned the pages of the album. There was the sleep-out: in summer with pumpkins encroaching; in winter, with Ravi grinning in the doorway, hands shoved into his fleece. Passionflowers were a red riot over the dunny. There was the shed, and the view over the river, and the lane clotted with jasmine. Fair Play appeared with her legs braced for attack, chewing Lefty’s face. On the next page, she stood over a freshly limp mynah with her tail straight up. But it was the third photo that made Ravi pause. It showed Fair Play regal on her throne, one ear tucked back, head held high. What was striking was the spread of white on her muzzle. “Fair Play!” said Ravi. The little dog stared with unsparing clarity from his pillow, and he saw that she had aged before his eyes. The photo had shown him a change to which he had been blind in life.

  When Abebe was driving away from the lights, Ravi had spotted the lilac woman again. She was on the driver’s side of the car this time, moving at the same steady pace, looking straight ahead. So ghosts are said to walk through walls. The car drew level for a moment. Then they had left her behind.

  In the backseat, Tarik asked, “Which one was your favorite?” Hana voted for the house where every row of rooftop tiles was roped in light. “I loved the reindeer,” said Tarik, alluding to the giant shining beast that had galloped across a lawn. “And the Baby Jesus scene.” “You only liked the Baby Jesus scene because Mr. Whippy was parked outside.” “That is so not fair, I loved the little lamb and the donkey and the angels,” said Tarik in an excited voice. Abebe looked in the mirror and said, “It’s okay to like both, Mr. Whippy always parks outside the best lights.” “When we live in a house, can we have a reindeer?”

  No one asked what Ravi had liked. He had been transfixed by it all: the stars and flowers and waterfalls of light, the good-natured, festive crowd ambling past the illuminated houses, the children waving neon wands, the emblazoned night. But among all the surfing Santas and inflatable snowmen and electric Nativities come to kindle silent Australia, what had truly moved Ravi was the ship: a simple outline like a child’s drawing in light. The Christmas houses—Tarik’s phrase—stood along four or five streets that climbed and twisted and dipped. As soon as the ship of light loomed, a bend in the street would take Ravi away from it. Then it would ap
pear again, floating above the trees.

  Eventually, he realized that he would get no closer. He found that he didn’t mind. The ship would remain with him, a radiant prospect. Close up, it might have failed to enchant. So that’s what I’ve become, thought Ravi, a man whose best hope of happiness is avoidance. He remembered when the whole world had floated before him, a ship of possibility.

  Hana, Abebe and Tarik had reacted each in their own way to the news that Ravi was returning to Sri Lanka. As usual, the child said nothing direct, but her expression declared that she had always known he was a fool. Abebe was dismayed, but it was not in Abebe to oppose what anyone wanted. Before long, he was of the opinion that Ravi was right to go back: the cease-fire was holding, there would be all kinds of opportunities for someone like Ravi. “With your IT skills and English.” Politics hovered, an unspoken question to which Ravi didn’t have the answer. But Abebe and Hana didn’t pursue it: they were occupied with plans. Abebe had passed his final exams and was looking for work as an accountant. Hana had applied to two universities to study social sciences part time. Her attention had swung away from Ravi: he felt it, like an absence of breeze. She remained sharp and scornful but only impersonally so, saying of his decision to leave, “Nothing will ever drag me back.” On their outing to see the lights, she had walked ahead with Tarik, leaving Abebe and Ravi to follow. At one point, Ravi had fallen behind, distracted by a flashing green kangaroo on a golden surfboard. When he turned around, he saw that the other three had crossed the street and were walking together, hand in hand, Abebe saying something to his sister over the head of the tall child. Earlier that evening, Ravi had shared their meal. Abebe Issayas had torn off a piece of bread, dipped it in spicy stew and placed it between Ravi’s lips. Across the table, Hana smiled faintly. Ravi pictured her long fingers busy at the sleek new keyboard behind her. When she said goodbye outside Hazel’s, her cheek against his was smooth and cool. He saw that she had never been available anyway: she belonged to that winner, the future. Tarik, kneeling to face the wrong way on the backseat, waved with both hands as Abebe accelerated. Ravi lowered his arm when the taillights had disappeared around the corner. There was a glint in the corner of his eye. He looked down and saw that the verge was scattered with broken glass.

  More than an hour had passed since then and Ravi still hadn’t started packing. Once again, he turned the album’s pages. The boys lifted their stubbies to him around a barbecue, Kev in a plastic apron brandishing the tongs. Hazel beamed from her latest chair. One of its arms was patched with a coffee sack, but Ravi didn’t notice. He was thinking of the lilac woman. He had seen her quite clearly, but trying to call her up now, he produced a composite, Hana, Malini, the lilac woman herself: a figure who looked to neither left nor right but steadily ahead. For a little while her life had kept pace with his, but they were moving at different speeds.

  In her hotel room near Central, Mona Fleurie, née Mohan Dabrera, had taken off her lilac jacket and gone out onto her balcony. She had come to Sydney to see the son she had fathered when she was still Mohan. The boy was in trouble at school for truancy and bullying. Mona knew, because he had told her so, that everything wrong with his life was her fault. He had set the place and time of their meeting, but when Mona rang the doorbell, he wouldn’t leave his room. His red backpack hung like a promise in the hall, but her son refused to see her. Variations on this theme had been going on for three years. His mother had dinner guests, and Mona wasn’t invited. There was nothing to do in the end but turn around and walk all the way back to the station. Mona had taken planes, taxis and an upstairs train to reach the child who didn’t want to see her; however you looked at it, she had traveled a long way. Now, seven stories below her balcony, the wet street was a black mirror. Mona Fleurie had trained herself to keep her gaze on where she was going. But you couldn’t outdistance the past. It drew level eventually, whether or not you recognized it, and then it overtook you.

  His mother’s gray suitcase lay on the carpet. When Ravi opened it, Fair Play jumped off the bed and scratched at the door—she knew what an empty suitcase meant, and she was wasting no more time here. A second case stood by, because Ravi was returning with more than he had brought. Priya had sent a detailed list of requirements, which she updated almost daily. In addition to these gifts, Ravi was taking home things like memory sticks, packets of soup, T-shirts with logos, Kmart jeans.

  He began with the photograph album, trying to fit it into the inner pocket of the case. But it encountered an obstruction. Ravi slipped his hand behind the ruched satin and drew out a yellow viewfinder shaped like a TV. He placed the little toy to his eye and clicked. Nothing happened: long ago, the mechanism had broken. Sitting there on his heels, Ravi could see that the picture wasn’t going to change. But he went on clicking for quite a long time.

  Laura, 2004

  ON HER FIRST DAY in Sri Lanka, she was to have breakfasted on the terrace of a famous hotel in Colombo, gazing at the Indian Ocean. But her connecting flight from Bangkok had set off only to turn back after an hour. The engine trouble wasn’t serious, the pilot announced, while the passengers looked at each other. How strange—they had never expected to die in the company of a bald man in tracksuit pants and a child vomiting on his mother’s shoes. Regulations required the flight to return to its port of origin. The next hour was one of those that contains—oh, more minutes than anyone can count, certainly not sixty. Time stretched, sagged, snapped, sang. Afterwards, an endless day passed to the tinkle of electronic carols in gate lounges, and then Laura was boarding her connection again. By the time she had reclaimed her case and cleared Customs, “Merry Christmas, madam,” said the Sri Lankan official who exchanged her dollars for rupees. A whole day of her holiday had vanished. Laura thought, Why not go straight to the southern beaches? In Bangkok there had been an email from Ravi Mendis inviting her to spend New Year’s Day with his family. She would be able to tell him that she’d skipped Colombo altogether; that was even better than get out as soon as possible. She looked for the rental car sign.

  When Laura woke the next day, it was to the thought that she would have to rearrange her itinerary to take in the visit to Ravi’s family on the west coast. There would be fresh bookings to make, more deposits sacrificed, new hassles. The previous evening, the rental car had carried her from one southern hotel to another until, at last, in a decrepit establishment facing away from the sea, a vacancy was found. Here there was no pool, no air-conditioning, no complimentary cocktail on arrival: only the whisk of a rat along a beam. But what did it matter? She had a booking at a flash place up the coast the following day; meanwhile there were coconut palms at her window. Surrounded by concrete, Laura pointed her toes at the ceiling fan that had expired some hours before dawn. It was the unforeseen that returned tourism to travel. Ramsay was dedicated to the reverse. That was the real message of the letters and emails that arrived by the thousand there. Prices had rocketed, beggars had menaced, sunsets had disappointed, but it was the soul that bled and composed accusations. It had learned that it was a tourist—not an explorer, vagabond, nomad or adventurer. And if it sent compliments because the advice had been awesome and the trip really amazing, what did that mean? Exactly the same thing. The true guidebook would advise: “Pay attention, be kind, think twice, shut up.” Laura informed the fan, I’m hitting Jobsearch as soon as I get back. But what was she fitted for? And what would change? What could she do that wouldn’t stun with busyness, lull with routine, infect with compromise like a slow, fatal blight?

  But tourism existed to postpone such questions. It was the first day of Laura’s holiday, the country unknown, the morning pure potential. Rising to meet it, she was conscious of joy. The magic land existed. It had to—hadn’t Laura always known it? She would find it yet: in the depths of a wardrobe, at the top of a faraway tree.

  Her lightness of being persisted as she made her way along the beach; she was heading towards the Internet cafe run by Ravi’s friend. Lightness had kept her co
mpany throughout her dip in the warm, glassy bay, throughout breakfast, where she had considered pineapple jam, then spread hard, cold toast with a fiery sambol. Doing things differently was the point of leaving home. It wasn’t until she was under the shower that Paul Hinkel showed up—at home, he was waiting as soon as she woke. Getting away was starting over. The old dream of renewal gathered Laura up; Alan Ramsay had founded a fortune on it. A holiday was as good as a change, it was green growth on the twig.

  At that, Carlo was with her. On Laura’s last day in Sydney, Rosalba had answered the phone by his hospital bed. The operation had gone well, Laura heard. The voice was mascarpone: triple cream, with never a hint of denaturing acid. It thanked Laura for her concern, and informed her that talking tired the patient; it was sure Laura would understand. What Laura understood was that Rosalba had been sitting by Carlo’s bed for half a century, waiting for him to come round. The voice claimed to be grateful “for everything you have done for my cousin.” The very faint emphasis on “everything” notified the fat one upstairs that Rosalba knew—knew or guessed about rose-red Sundays. But you don’t know what I didn’t do, thought Laura, after she had broken the connection. She picked up a sealed envelope and placed it with the rest of Carlo’s mail. It contained the greater part of her savings: enough, she hoped, for new plants for the roof. It had seemed the least she could do. But thinking of that envelope now, Laura remembered the checks that had arrived over the years bearing her father’s signature and was ashamed. What Fraserish reflex had persuaded her that damage could be wiped out with dollars? Carlo knew better, he left without a backward glance. Rosalba wept in the Spanish Quarters; in her strawberry-pink villa, a principessa raged. The betrayer had moved on: that was the meaning of betrayal. Tracy Lacey’s flash went off in Drummond’s face. That was another discovery in store for Carlo: among the envelopes waiting for him had been one printed with the gallery’s name. A breathy whisper assured Laura, Everyone says you’re ugly. She vowed to write to Carlo, neither requesting nor expecting forgiveness, as soon as she got back. She would change her life, she would start over.