Homesickness

by Murray Bail

  Garry nodded. He added two and two.

  ‘Growth areas. Population explosion and the increased leisure time. The ball’s at our feet, if only we knew it. We’re selling tons of bloody tennis rackets and jockstraps. We’ve just introduced a new type of crash-helmet. I should tell Monzan, but that character doesn’t seem to know what day it is.’ Hammersly laughed. ‘He’s pissed, look.’

  Monzan had their drinks in each hand but an athletic-looking Latin held onto his elbow. He became free as the other one used a moist handkerchief to demonstrate a bullfighter’s pass.

  ‘An old friend,’ Monzan explained. ‘The forecasters tell us it will happen. It has been confirmed. So be it.’

  Garry glanced at Hammersly.

  ‘They’re all matadors in the corner. Some not so good. Not any more. Like me they’re no longer young. So is the barman. You’ve heard of the great Porfino Paz?’

  They hadn’t heard of the great Porfino Paz.

  ‘His nerves are gone—shot to pieces. His last corrida was bad, very bad.’ Monzan gave a high laugh in his cups. ‘Each of us has a difficult season this year. It is not getting easier. So here we stand in its direct path. The slightest tremor is a terror for me, ever since a boy. But the waiting will strengthen me. We are a group. Thirteen. It is a test. Such preparations are needed for the coming season.’

  Garry must have looked puzzled.

  ‘Ah, you have not experienced an earthquake before? I assumed that is why you too are here.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Garry breathed.

  It was getting late.

  Now that you looked at Monzan’s smooth face, sweat there had moistened the nose and the dark tufts sprouting from his ears wilted like the winter grass on the pampas. A faint tremor along his lower lip was constantly erased by his tongue, but always began afresh.

  ‘And that’s what you’re staying here for?’

  ‘It is shock treatment,’ Monzan admitted.

  ‘You’re mad!’

  ‘Who are you? You have experienced, what, nothing. Understand? Nothing. So you might say it is lucky. Que suerte? Suffer through nature and pain. Emerge strong.’

  ‘We have bushfires…’ Hammersly tried to tell him.

  ‘Live dangerously! Go to your perimeters.’ He stamped his braking foot down onto the floorboards. ‘We are on top of a fragile seismologic line. It runs under this floor. The earth will open up. It’s almost intolerable to be standing here. Who’s going to fall in?’

  ‘Not me.’ Garry murmured, but he frowned.

  For the time, volcanoes were completely forgotten. They can erupt in another year. Praise God, there is the trusted statue strategically located through Quito, the Virgin of Quinche—protectress against earthquakes.

  Hammersly belched. ‘No one gives a fuck about Australia.’

  Swaying, red in the face, Garry stared at Monzan.

  Well, there are many types of phobias: acro, claustro, agora and zoö. Why, some people are known to be afraid of midnight and the pattern of Persian carpets. In the elevators of the world’s tourist hotels there is no number 13.

  ‘Come on,’ said Hammersly. ‘They’re crackers. You believe in Santa Claus? That’s the trouble with these little countries.’

  But Garry was stumbling towards the corner. He had never met a bullfighter and here at least a dozen stood in ill-fitting suits, and one was lying on the floor, drunk.

  In Room 217, opposing flesh sent an ornate wooden bed creaking alive on the floorboards. These picturesque hotels erected at the turn of the century: parpen walls of monastic measurement, but the tongue and groove of the floor worn thin and cracked. A line of dust like wavering string, sand in the hourglass, fell onto Sheila’s pillow. Lying still, alert, Sheila duplicated Louisa Hofmann almost exactly; though she, Sheila, lay motionless—legs, mouth and eyes all open, mouth dry, imagining, in drift, while Louisa attempted twists and a kick, the gown above her waist, and she tried shoving to force Hofmann’s elbows back. But he was strong; he always was. And she was his. The lamps had been left on as if she was being violated before a crowd. All she could do was subside, and hiss as the dowels in their joints sang. For different reasons she and Sheila bit their bottom lips. Louisa twisted her face away; Sheila began shaking. ‘Come on!’ That was a Hofmann instruction. Sheila lying below almost caught the murmur. His hand had reached up to her breast as he shoved in, both now swollen beyond control. Louisa began crying.

  Always crying.

  ‘Shut up.’ She heard Hofmann’s voice.

  Enjoy yourself.

  With her right hand Sheila switched off the bed lamps, and a few lines of yellow seeped through from above and ruled her body, a grid. She touched her cheek.

  ‘I’m bored,’ came Louisa’s voice clearly. ‘It’s you.’

  ‘Don’t tell me.’

  Close to Sheila’s head another voice whispered: ‘Oy, where’s your light? For Chrissake. Sheila, you there?’

  She sat up.

  ‘Hello. It’s me.’

  Sheila saw Hammersly, rectangular and tall. His tie was undone.

  ‘Should always lock the door, Sheil,’ he said, giving his tweeds a hitch. ‘You can get any perv coming in.’ And he added, incongruous, ‘How are you?’

  Here Sheila had difficulty finding words. She glanced around the room.

  Hammersly made himself at home now. ‘It’s like mine, exactly. Same mirror, same bathroom.’

  ‘What must be the time?’ Sheila whispered.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Live dangerously.’ He sat on the edge of bed. ‘I flew in yesterday.’

  ‘I was about to fall asleep. What do you want? I heard at the table someone had seen you.’

  ‘Following you, Sheil. My word of honour. All around the world.’

  Sheila looked at him startled.

  ‘You’re all hot! Open your window.’

  ‘I look like the Wreck of the Hesperus,’ she managed, confused again. Her movements became clumsy, or they seemed to be, but her body was soft. She should quickly ask him something, make a comment, anything. She tried to think.

  ‘Leave your glasses,’ he said quietly. ‘Not that you don’t look good with them. In fact, I’d say the opposite. Definitely.’

  Then what was he moving for? What was his idea? His face was near. He’d been drinking, and his suit smelt of cigarettes, but he spoke confidently, persistently, all the time watching her.

  And before she knew it her pyjama top (‘It’s like a bloke’s,’ came his breath) had been slowly removed. She shuddered at the touch of his hands, rough hands, and caught her eyes and mouth in the mirror; but almost cried out as Hammersly with a shove removed her arms. ‘So there we are…’ his hoarse voice. Her breasts beckoned. In the mirror she could see his shoulder and the back of his head. She began breathing, almost heaving, through her mouth, when the door opened in her eye’s corner, and the voice of Garry Atlas filled the room.

  ‘Saw the light. Anybody home? Hey…’

  Hammersly stood up; cleared his throat.

  ‘We-elll. Bugger me.’ Atlas acted all surprised. ‘Excuse me! I’ll leave the room!’

  But he turned from Hammersly to Sheila, slowly lifting his chin. Facing the wall Sheila appeared to be making almost imperceptible shaking movements of her head. So he began smiling at Hammersly, casual-like, ‘Well you’re a cunning bastard.’

  And then his mouth moved without saying anything. He swayed, drunk.

  ‘What happened,’ Hammersly asked lighting a cigarette, ‘with your bullfighters?’

  ‘They were all yacking in some other lingo. They were pissed out of their minds on tequila. Anyway, I wanted to see my old friend, Sheila here. I come up and what do I find? You here. So that’s why you snuck off early? You’re a shady bastard, aren’t you? God’s gift to bloody women.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ said Hammersly.

  But Atlas turned to Sheila, swaying. ‘Do you want him here?’

  ‘Now just a minute,’ said Hammers
ly. He put up his hand.

  ‘Listen, you’re not with us, you’re not in our party. We’re a group. Understand? You’ve got a bloody cheek.’

  Atlas took a step forward.

  ‘Shhh. Stop it!’

  They turned to Sheila. Her head was still turned.

  ‘Please go. Both of you.’

  She went into the bathroom and closed the door.

  Hammersly and Garry Atlas stood looking at each other.

  ‘Mmmmm…’ Hammersly looked concerned.

  ‘You’re in the shit, fella,’ said Garry casually. ‘Caught in the act. How’s the missus back home? Kids all right? Better luck next time.’

  ‘You’re a prick. What’d you barge in for?’

  Atlas jerked his head towards the bathroom. ‘I know, she’s not bad. She’s not as square as she looks. How did you go?’

  Hammersly shrugged, being modest.

  ‘Come on!’

  In both side pockets he had a cold Heineken. ‘Hey. I almost forgot!’ He snapped them open, spraying the mirror. Positioning the chair he put his feet up. Hammersly sat on the bed. They raised their cans.

  ‘Better luck next time.’

  Atlas guffawed.

  ‘You’re a bastard.’

  Garry let out a small belch. ‘Shell,’ he twisted on the chair, ‘would you like a snort? Come on out.’

  ‘We won’t bite,’ Hammersly winked at Garry.

  No answer.

  ‘She will,’ Garry predicted. ‘Sheila’s all right. She’s just a bit shy.’

  Travel broadens the mind. Along the passage Gwen Kaddok moved her lips as she dreamed of that large circular contraption of notches, hieroglyphics and saplings invented nearby by some Mayan priest, which made it easy to recall events up to 300 years past (crop failures? marriages? plagues?); an insomniac in Room 219 sighed and closed Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, dissatisfied.

  The museum attracts the missionary or Ancient Mariner types, one-eyed with zeal. ‘Yes but, but…’ the guide interrupts, scarcely able to let another speaker finish. They hold on, won’t let go: with moist eyes, the pincer grip of the thumb and fingers, or with peripatetic rhetoric. Some astonishingly do it by affecting boredom, thereby giving the object in question superior status. ‘Formerly it adorned,’ said he, with a bored look, ‘the tomb of…’

  ‘They become involved, obsessive. In the end they can never properly share it.’

  Phillip North had long experiences of them. He smiled at the very idea. ‘Such harmless people are important to us. We should be pleased.’ At the zoo he and Sasha had followed the keeper with the stained bucket and leonine features—a burnt-out case—and watched another inside an aviary, barefooted and with sparrow’s hands speaking non-stop to the eagles.

  And you know there is an obese Irish curator of the Potato Museum in Reykjavik—the world authority; in C., that pan-chewing Bengali docent all day under the sun who simultaneously spits out sideways a stream of betel juice (Scandinavian tourists step back, ‘Tuberculosis!’) while pointing a lingam-tipped pole at details in the remarkable erotic sculptures; in the Vatican, what about that clattering cicerone with the permanent smile retailing amazing miracles? Dozens of them (cicerones with permanent smiles). Keepers of the facts, the inventory of civilisation and interesting flotsam manufactured and subsequently preserved.

  In lower Quito was the MUSEO DE PIERNAS, and the only way to reach it was by foot. Stone bridges, cobbled alleyways, new districts had to be crossed—itself an experience. They arrived pleasantly puffed.

  On the steps a group of twenty to thirty lazzaronis lounged in descending order, and abruptly stopped talking. Around them squatted a few shoeshine boys who should have been at school, as Mrs Cathcart observed, and began banging their brushes, rattling tins (Kiwi polish, export quality), pointing to the group’s feet, ‘Zapatos sucios!’

  It must have sounded an alarm, for the museum director came bursting through the swing doors, a short man on mahogany crutches, shouting in Italian, switching to Spanish: both sufficiently theatrical. He had one leg missing. Significantly, his remaining tan shoe was highly polished. The empty trouser hung like those deflated wind-socks at country aerodromes, partially raised here above the knee with safety pins, exposing clear daylight.

  But his crutches; they had seen nothing like these on their travels. The instinct was to comment, show a keen interest. After all, this was a Museum of Legs; it licensed them, so to speak. As the man stood there Doug Cathcart squatted down, wife looking over his shoulder, and tapped with his knuckles the left side crutch.

  ‘Very interesting,’ he said, ponderous, slightly nasal. He looked up at the others. ‘Take a good look at this.’

  He was recommending it.

  Both crutches were carved in the manner of one of Quito’s baroque cloisters, the dark wood twisted with myths and figures, expounding the doctrines of Catholicism. A neat, nay natty man, the director. Little fella, he wore a ballooning red shirt.

  So keen and natural was he that the Australians adopted their relaxed, normal manner. They stood around as if they had met years before. And by casually avoiding his face they announced to him their acceptance.

  ‘Ag-ost-in-elli,’ he pronounced his name. And beamed at every one of them.

  ‘We have them living next door,’ Mrs C. stepped back: this one had been eating garlic too.

  ‘What is an Italian doing here running a museum?’ Gerald asked.

  The Italian had an electric-bell laugh.

  ‘Running a museum?’ He waved a crutch. ‘You can be funny! Ha, ha!’ He had to stop and wipe his eyes. ‘I must remember that. The director of the Museo de Piernas is…Scusi. Why me? you ask. It is because of the shape of my country, Italy, and think of our history of tight trousers. Also, I was a Roman Catholic. I was a natural.’

  On the steps Louisa looked pale and red-eyed, and seemed to take an excessive interest; beside her, standing in a kind of alliance, Sheila concentrated more than usual, and glanced occasionally in Atlas’ direction. Squatting, Kaddok was busy trying to focus on the crutches. Everyone found the Italian interesting. The man’s energy gave the impression of unbounded optimism.

  Hofmann, his hands in his pockets, nodded: ‘What about your other leg there?’

  ‘On my own initiative,’ said the director glancing at the space, ‘I had it removed. To draw attention to the contents of the museum. It was well worth it.’

  ‘He’s pulling our leg!’ Garry whispered.

  Only Louisa turned and tried to smile.

  As they watched, the Italian propelled himself up the steps—remarkably agile. He turned. ‘Without question, ladies and gentlemen, this is the most significant museum you’ll ever see—and I mean anywhere. Meraviglioso! You ask, why a Leg Museo? Why so significant? Because,’ out of habit he panned their faces, eyes bulging, ‘because your leg is fundamental. Not only to tourism. It is at the heart of all that is human. The quintessence!’

  Raising a point of order Gerald cleared his throat. But Agostinelli had turned to usher them through, ladies first.

  ‘Fundamental,’ he kept on inside, ‘was that glorious moment when homo sapiens first straightened his legs, lifted his face from the earth, separating himself from the apes and monkeys. The leg is the key to our evolution. We know now that man stands upright’—the Italian’s voice rose in sympathy, cracking at falsetto—‘in order to speak his thoughts, to propel words. Think of that. The straightened leg has promoted language, which is the supreme faculty of man! You see? You see? We never forget this. When man worships, the knee is bent—we return to earth. Such is our acknowledgment. The homage role of the knee before gods and kings…occasionally women. Custom dictates that we touch and kiss feet. Shoes are removed in mosques and other temples. Christ walked on water. He didn’t crawl on water…’

  Switching to etymology: the great word ‘knew’ came originally from ‘knee’. But he threw that in as an aside (a footnote), in a fading voice. Only those in front—t
he Hofmanns, Gerald Whitehead, Borelli—caught the gist of it.

  Silence. Some frowning among them; and pursing of the lips.

  They passed wax and plaster casts of legs in genuflection, a Bourdon etching speckled with rust, ‘The Child Jesus Treading Sin Underfoot’. On the wall and under glass were famous examples of Achilles’ Heels.

  The Italian hobbled along. ‘The foot has twenty-six bones, thirty-three joints. An amazing engineering feat, ahem, by any standards.’

  Unusual for a guide, he went ahead ignoring individual exhibits. Positioned on either side the items seemed like the small towns and things which support the broad path of history. He had studied the entire subject. He knew it backwards.

  ‘Human locomotion,’ he was saying, almost talking to himself, ‘left-right, one leg before the other. Man keeps going—forward! We are brave. It is all we have. Understand. History is nothing if not a record of man’s movements. Crucial messages were once delivered by runners. Wars were fought on foot, and always will be. The coward runs. Migrations! Refugees! Much has been written lately on the stirrup’s influence on history. What about the invention of the horseshoe nail?’

  A pause to let that sink in.

  They had just passed a bronze replica of Rodin’s masterpiece, ‘The Walking Man’, and someone pressed a button on the counter and a life-size leg constructed by a Quito engineer of plastics suddenly came to life on a table, walking backwards and forwards, whirring, creaking, illustrating the miracle of tendons, muscle and fetlock. As they walked, it stopped. Then it began tapping to a 78 disc,

  Gee, but it’s great after bein’ out late,

  Walkin’ my baby back…

  Agostinelli, their guide, had turned the corner, and they could hear him pontificating (which went so well with ‘Agostinelli’) about the stirrup in history. Invented in the eighth century it revolutionised the early horse wars. Men could shoot from the saddle. It literally altered the map of Europe, of Asia. And doesn’t the leg fit into the stirrup?

  Resting on his crutches he lit a cigarette and kept it in his mouth squinting, like a Frenchman.

  On a surgeon’s table: an amputation kit, and a surgical saw used in the First World War. A vivid description of gangrene. Various jodhpurs, puttees and khaki trousers were tacked on the wall.