Homesickness

by Murray Bail

  ‘Certain cities suddenly become centres of gravity,’ the Russian bellowed. Certain people gravitate. ‘It used to be Vienna, Paris, Berlin. Now they tell me it is New York and Sydney.’

  ‘Sydney?’

  Gerald gave such a laugh the Russian looked surprised.

  ‘So I am told.’

  ‘What about Moscow?’

  ‘The Olympic Games’ll put you on the map,’ said Doug.

  The Russian said in a low voice. ‘Not Moscow. Not yet. I don’t think so yet.’

  ‘Hey!’ Doug stared down at his thigh and everyone began laughing.

  His car keys on their silver chain began climbing out of his pocket. A small but powerful red wall magnet had been mounted at waist level to demonstrate the similarity between gravity and magnetism.

  Other movements then caught the eye.

  In the middle of the room an angled pink blur signalled by a perpendicular waving arm as Sasha slid down an ordinary slippery dip or children’s slide. At its base Mrs Cathcart stood firm, an overseer.

  ‘Go on, Mrs C. Have a go!’ Garry called as they went over; but then Ken Hofmann, a satellite as usual, slipped and grappled with the nearest, Borelli holding Louisa, bringing them down, Gerald too, his spectacles bumping off his nose, and Kaddok in the midst accustomed to trips and spills, cupping his camera and held his other hand out to the floor. And the writhing heap of five slowly began sliding, as in a dream, towards the end wall—such was the polish and angle of the Moscow floor—until Hofmann amid the high laughter of Sasha and Violet, both on top of the ladder, grabbed at and held the first rung of the steps.

  First to extricate, Gerald began savagely cursing.

  The ursine Russian had kept ambling unconcerned back to the side wall, a proven path, pointing with his crumpled arm at the laziness of nature—a basic truth which, according to him, passes unobserved by most people.

  ‘Look at waterfalls,’ he suggested, as the others eventually made their way back. Excellent photographs of seven great waterfalls. ‘And the course of every river in the world. They go only where they can, naturally, without fuss.’

  The interest shown here by Borelli seemed to be excessive. To Phillip North, the guide seemed to be stating the obvious. He and most of the others drifted away.

  ‘The law of nature,’ the Russian quoted, ‘is to act with the minimum of labour…avoiding, so far as it is possible, inconveniences. It doesn’t fight.’

  An excellent illustration was the catenary droop of the ordinary clothesline; the one rigged up close to the wall had been completely missed by the others. With Borelli and Louisa, and Sheila remaining, the guide stood back admiring it.

  ‘You understand, it has reached a state of equilibrium with respect to gravity. What is called the principle of least action.’ Shaking his head he seemed lost in admiration.

  ‘That’s me,’ Borelli breathed.

  ‘It is close to poetry,’ the Russian agreed.

  Louisa looked at Sheila and slowly rolled her eyes. Turning to her, Borelli took Louisa’s necklace in his hand. He let it drop.

  ‘The principle is everywhere.’

  ‘Everyone can see that.’

  ‘But we haven’t properly considered it before; when you think about it.’

  ‘One could say that about everything,’ Louisa shrugged.

  The stocky Russian meanwhile was busily removing his coat and shirt. Hairily bare-chested he stood waiting as the others returned. With his coarse weather-tanned throat he suddenly looked old. On his stomach he had a few bullet and shrapnel scars.

  ‘We were talking about the laziness of nature, its line of least resistance.’

  His enormous grave face; its poorly shaved folds. Holding his arms out horizontally he used his chin to point to the pale flesh under his arms which had dropped, pulled earthwards by gravity. ‘I am not a young man,’ he said.

  His breasts were sagging.

  ‘I can hold twenty-cent pieces under mine,’ Sasha told North airily. ‘I believe that’s the test. I don’t like this museum anyway.’

  ‘Shhh, you’ll learn something.’

  Gravity had ravaged the man’s cheeks, pulling them to earth along with the flesh underneath his chin, letting air into his eyelids: the line of least resistance. As he put on his shirt again some found themselves frowning as they pinched their own chins.

  ‘Anything,’ the Russian quoted, ‘becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.’

  Remembering his job he suddenly mentioned neckties, although he himself was not wearing one. Well, their performance depends on gravity. He pointed to Gerald’s. Borelli nodded, ‘Almost entirely.’

  ‘Ha ha!’ shouted Garry.

  ‘He’s a real weirdo,’ Sasha whispered. ‘What difference does it make! Darling, come along.’

  Russians can be so bloody morbid.

  ‘Stay around,’ said North, ‘and listen. Stop fidgeting.’

  Gerald nodded. ‘It’s becoming interesting. Much of what he says we’ve simply overlooked. It’s a new slant.’

  Reconstructions: a brown boulder poised on a papier mâché hill, and towards the middle of the room a superb scale model of a shot-tower. However, these were abruptly overshadowed, as was everything they had previously seen, by the gallows a few paces to the right: standing black and waiting.

  ‘History and gravity.’

  ‘Wow!’

  Who said that? Garry Atlas.

  They could see it was not a replica, not a reconstruction. The wooden steps were worn. Gerald poked around underneath the trapdoor, the black space for the kicking into Ewigkeit. Bumping into people, Kaddok manoeuvred to take a picture. How many people had ever seen real gallows! He called out for someone to stand on the platform.

  ‘I will!’ Garry volunteered, and for effect protruded his tongue and bulged his eyes.

  ‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ Hofmann advised.

  The guide was watching them. ‘You are like Americans and Canadians. You know very little. Nothing.’

  ‘We can sometimes be shrill,’ said North alongside.

  ‘We often seem corny,’ Borelli agreed.

  ‘Do you still have capital punishment in the Soviet Union?’ Hofmann called out, turning it back onto Russia. ‘Come on,’ said Sasha, upset. ‘It’s an awful thing.’

  ‘Where’s our Anna?’ Mrs Cathcart asked. She went off labouring and elbowing up the slope.

  ‘This is Russia all right, eh?’ Garry grinned.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Violet.

  ‘We should all listen to him,’ Gerald nodded. ‘There’s nothing wrong.’

  The Centre must have known the effect produced by the gallows. The section following dealt briefly with Sport.

  ‘You realise, most games are a play with gravity; I draw your attention to gymnastics and ballsport especially. Proficiency is simply being best at counteracting gravity.’

  He passed onto the various ways of ‘beating gravity’. In pride of place of course stood a bust of Igor Sikorsky and a pair of tremendous grey blades from one of his choppers. Both the inevitable Sputnik and the mug shots of the first Soviet cosmonauts failed to interest them, which in itself was an interesting question, although according to Kaddok the dates given were wrong. Instead, a vaguely familiar lever trailing a piece of broken cable, lying in a glass case, caught their eye. They turned to the guide.

  ‘Hah! Handbrake taken from a Moskvich.’

  For some reason Borelli burst out laughing. He apologised.

  ‘I am sorry. It’s unexpected there.’

  The Russian stared at him but could see he was enjoying himself, learning.

  Visually intriguing in their way was the assortment of lift-pumps; a vodka-still of intricate elegance; the fearsome stomach pump; a passenger lift in art nouveau style from one of the grand old St Petersburg hotels—soberly they ‘tested’ it, standing in facing out, until Atlas began calling imaginary floors, as in a Myer emporium. In Russia it seemed Garry Atlas joked more tha
n usual to show his independence. There was also a trapeze artist’s stained tights.

  All these were examples of man’s attempts at defying, with varying degrees of success, the law of gravity.

  Tatlin’s resurrected glider was suspended from the ceiling, and a row of parachutes (history of) wafted in the breeze like anemones. A pleasure to stroll among these silken cords with the translucent carapace above; gradually they forgot the gallows.

  Sasha leaned on North’s shoulder.

  The guide now began searching his pockets, announcing: ‘This arrived only yesterday.’

  He muttered a few words in Russian as they waited. That can be the trouble with museum guides. There was no way of knowing it was not, rather, part of a well-rehearsed act. For when he found the cable he held it at exaggerated arm’s length.

  ‘Who reads English?’

  ‘Violet,’ Sasha pointed. ‘She’s an actress. Use your best voice, darling.’

  GRAVITY [she read]:

  Palmeira dos Indios, Brazil, June 9, REUTER

  Violet cleared her throat.

  The Mayor of this north-eastern Brazil city has desisted from his intent of mustering a majority in the city council to repeal the law of gravity, according to press reports. Mayor Minervo Pimentel was annoyed at the law of gravity because city engineers told him it prevented their building a water tank on the sloping main square of the city.

  When he called on the Council’s majority leader Jaime Guimareas to muster the councilmen to repeal the law, he was told it was better to leave it alone.

  ‘We do not know whether this is a municipal or state law and it might even be a federal law,’ Guimareas said. ‘It is better not to get mixed up in this business so as not to create any problems,’ he added.

  Violet handed back the cable.

  ‘Yes, we went to Latin America,’ Kaddok told him over the racket, the horse laughter. Slapping himself so much Garry had lost his footing on the floor and fell, keeping his cigarette in his mouth.

  ‘Very interesting place. At the Equator we—’

  The Russian nodded without listening. Even he had to concentrate along this stretch of the floor.

  Slowly raising his arm, to preserve balance, he shouted over Kaddok: ‘The machinery which has sprung up around gravity. We have the hydrometer and the gravimeter…’

  Some like old Doug and Sheila, and Gwen Kaddok, tried squinting expressions, denoting interest and concentration, but once a person began grinning it seemed impossible to stop it. Residue from the telegram remained, and always would; contributing was the fun-park angle of the floor. Holding onto North’s trouser belt, Sasha just couldn’t stop giggling.

  Stactometers (various sizes); and they slid past a village-built tribometer not noticing the ingenious system of greasy ratchets, the leaf-spring off a German army truck and the ballast drums of gravel suspended on frayed cables, attached to the face of an alarm clock. Leaning in the corner, a primitive janker—what’s that got to do with gravity?—and a collection of stuffed birds put to one side for the time being.

  ‘I think they find such absurd things fascinating because their lives are grey,’ said Violet in a clear voice.

  ‘Violet, I think I agree with you,’ said Gwen hanging onto Kaddok.

  But they were subdued by the grave expression of the Russian. That large worn-out head; his unspeakable sadness. And he had a job to do. They were at the corner of the ballroom.

  ‘The purpose of the Centre,’ said he tying it in a knot, ‘is to show gravity from every angle. The history of mankind is one of grave situations strung together like beads on a necklace’—he attempted to smile at the simile. ‘Gravity is the common thread. It can be observed both on the national and personal levels. We manage to keep going, nevertheless.’

  The ‘grave situations’ were illustrated rather pedantically by photographs of war graves. Those in French soil, at Verdun, appeared like freshly planted geometric vineyards—order restored after chaos, as if to say it was all worth it; quite a contrast to the austere mounds like brown snow from the siege of Leningrad.

  Disasters on a grand scale illustrated the ‘national level’, mentioned next: scenery after earthquakes, eruptions, plane crashes; the emaciated figures of famines and African plagues. Finally, the ‘personal level’ was shown by photographs of people with long faces, grave expressions, chins resting on hands, widows weeping: culminating in an enlarged shot of a young woman, mouth open, arms high, leaping from a bridge.

  ‘That’s Brunei’s bridge at Bristol,’ Gerald broke the silence. He turned to Phillip North. ‘Remember we saw that! One of the most important bridges in England.’

  Remember too the high tide in the harbour; the Bristol zoo; the cold sausage rolls for afternoon tea?

  ‘People are sometimes awful,’ Sheila bit her lip. ‘I don’t know…’

  Putting her arm around her, Louisa moved her from the photographs. ‘Never mind. I always think it happens only to other people. We read the papers and we never seem to know the unfortunates.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Our present theory,’ the Russian rasped, ‘is that we dream in order to break away from gravity. In every dream, gravity is defied. Without such relief the pressure would be intolerable. I’—he added in a queer personal note—‘sleep badly.’

  ‘It must be awful,’ Sasha murmured. She too had a vast surplus of sympathy.

  ‘Ah, but it’s not worth losing any sleep over!’ Louisa cried unexpectedly. Her husband laughed so harshly people turned.

  ‘You should leave her alone,’ Borelli turned, staring at him.

  Evidently such troubles were common in the museum, a by-product of the grave atmosphere, the concentrated force of the exhibits and the tiring slant of the floor, for the guide simply veered to the penultimate exhibit, the obligatory Soviet graph depicting the grave downward path of capitalism. Various economic measures were used. About to elaborate he stopped and craned towards the wall. He turned to them with a sigh, ‘Which one of you?’

  ‘What?’

  Garry Atlas went over: he should not have laughed. ‘Someone’s written here “Down Under”. There’s a small map of Australia drawn.’

  ‘Hurray!’ cried Sasha, but was elbowed by North.

  Garry turned back to the wall. ‘This someone’s really been busy. There’s “Down with Gravity” and…“Down with Communism.”’

  The laughter fluttered, fell short.

  The Russian stared.

  ‘Which one of you.’

  ‘Ay, come on. Fair go!’

  ‘What’s he saying?’

  ‘You’re from down there…’

  ‘He can read English,’ Violet declared, ‘when he wants to.’

  ‘I think it’s perfectly all right,’ said Gwen. ‘It’s freedom of speech. We believe in freedom of speech, where we come from.’

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ Hofmann advised. ‘Everyone shut up.’

  ‘Listen,’ Garry faced the Russian, ‘we didn’t do this, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘One of you is missing,’

  They looked around. They turned to Doug. ‘Hey, just a minute!’ he laughed. ‘She toddled back to the entrance. Anyway, she wouldn’t dream of—’ He made a second embarrassed laugh, looking at the Russian. ‘You don’t know my wife…’

  ‘It’s in biro,’ Gerald reported.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Borelli. ‘These things unfortunately happen.’ To show his nonchalance he practised a golf swing with his walking stick, and almost fell over.

  ‘Incorporate it in the Centre’s collection. What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘It will be reported,’ said the Russian. And they didn’t feel sorry for him any more. Moving quickly—for a bear of a man—he slid to the right preventing Kaddok photographing the defiled corner. Remaining there he pointed to the door.

  So no one noticed the last exhibit, the attempt on the Russians’ part to finish on a light note. Tilted above a false door
a bucket of whitewash hung in the balance: the old silent-film joke, akin to falling down the open manhole; depends entirely on gravity. No one noticed. And in all likelihood they would have enjoyed that. It would have relaxed the strained atmosphere. The guide seemed to remember. He half-turned, programmed, but went on without another word.

  ‘They’re a strange people,’ Hofmann was saying. ‘They’re definitely paranoid.’

  Garry nodded. ‘A bit of bloody graffiti never hurt anyone.’

  They made their way carefully up the narrow slope, the Russian taking up the rear.

  Mrs Cathcart was seated at the entrance, watching Anna knitting. She scarcely looked up.

  ‘A spot of bother,’ Doug reported, and hitched up his trousers. ‘Silly business. We’ve got to watch our Ps and Qs.’

  ‘It’s still hot as blazes outside,’ Mrs Cathcart observed. ‘Anna and I have been sitting here.’

  When Sheila asked the guide if the Centre had any postcards he didn’t answer.

  ‘Let’s go,’ several suggested. ‘Come on.’

  They pushed open the door. Garry stopped and looked back.

  ‘Say, where’s Smiley, our bag of laughs?’

  ‘I think he’s gone to report us.’

  ‘We could be shot, all of us.’

  ‘He could be, more like it.’

  Anna was gathering up her knitting.

  By sticking together they could come to no harm. That was the feeling: it showed in the way they barged out into the open air, and for several minutes stood around, squinting, a form of carelessness.

  Coughing, exaggeratedly slapping himself, Garry made Russian cigarettes briefly the centre of attention: trying them was part of the overseas experience. Back home before recalling the curiosities of the Kremlin or even the Centre of Gravity he’d say, ‘Ever tried a Russian cigarette? Chrrrist! In Moscow…’

  Opposite at the table sat their guide, the moon on embroidered cotton.

  ‘Don’t take any notice of him,’ Sasha advised. ‘We all hope he chokes.’

  Nodding and smiling Anna wiped her mouth with her handkerchief.

  They were picking at the pink salmon. The white wine was sweet.

  ‘There aren’t many lights at night,’ Sheila observed, and they twisted in their seats to check. ‘It’s black as pitch outside.’