by John Foster
By October I was able to report that the GITF was making progress. The West-coast seminarian had been to talk with the Minister in Canberra and brought back details of the new arrangements. The Minister was willing to admit gay partners of Australian citizens who had been in a continuous relationship for four years. More than that, in the case of more recent relationships, a gay partner might come on a visitor’s visa, which could be extended every six months until the four-year point was reached. ‘Under these guidelines,’ I wrote to Juan, ‘you could apply for permanent residence the moment you come back, and unless there is some terrible political upheaval in the meantime, it should be more or less automatic.’
I was assuming now that his decision was made. He replied:
10.15.85
My dear Johnny,
Your letter sound so good that I will not believe until is official because sooner or later it will be known all over Australia. But I think that is great that finally some high ranking official understand our cause.
Today I had good news from school. It is true that I will receive $1,005 from the Pell Grant. I must say that I’m very delighted. I doing very good in school. In the ler of three tests done already I have in Maths 94, French 88 and in Chemistry 82.
I’m feeling much better now. My stomach is back to normal, but now is winter and, well almost winter, and already is been at freezing point some knights and I only have the long coat. I don’t have a jacket. I left them there. I should have with me the grey leather one.
The stomach worried me. For weeks—or was it months now?—he had been complaining about a sore stomach. I tried to persuade myself that he was being alarmist. On the other hand, those terrible itches had not been imaginary; the little lesions on his back and buttocks that left the brownish spots were not imagined; and nor were the bronchitis and the racking cough and the loss of weight. I must have discussed these things with Murray, who alluded to them in his next letter, which received the following response:
My dear friend,
Your letter was so cheerful that I give it to other people to read so they can laugh too.
I’m not sick, and I do eat a lot. N.Y.C. may be a dump to much people who have never been there. But tell me where in the world you can go at 4AM in the morning and buy a pastrami sandwich? Definite not Rusia!
Well, I’m happy that you are keeping in touch with Johnny. I think he needs company from time to time. We are in touch almost every week. I call him at almost any hour.
You don’t know how much I want to be there and see my ‘children’ playing in the garden and see them grow. I think that I made a mistake but that was something that I had to do, so I know what I really want. Now my mind is clear. No more pain in my chest. And my memory is just, well, just that. A memory. I’m free.
Do you know John is coming to N.Y.C.? He will be here for 2 reasons and I’m one of them of course.
My dancing is coming real fine. It been so long that I should be more rusty but I’m not. I’m sore from head to toe and my leg is not as high as before but it feel like I have never stop dancing. Plus Alvin Ailey’s Co. is one of the biggest modern dance co. in America, so maybe that makes my adrenaline flow with more zest. I’m very happy. Delaighted.
The performances are in December. John will be here by then. He have seen my choreography but I don’t think he have seen me dance. That is mainly why I’m doing it, and for me too.
I never did see him dance. Between October and December there was a hitch in the arrangements with Alvin Ailey. Did the funding dry up? His disappointment was so keen that he didn’t want to talk about it or even, on this occasion, to bemoan his luck.
CHAPTER SIX
I am like a flag surrounded by distances.
I sense the winds that are coming, and must
live them.
—R. M. Rilke, ‘Presentiment’
I flew into New York with the snow. Five years earlier, on my first visit, I had detested the worn-out February snow, packed hard and piss-stained where a thousand dogs had walked their owners on the streets. It had seemed like a two-toned city, yellow and grey like the ribbons that had still been fastened to the street trees to celebrate the release of the Middle East hostages and the end of ‘444 days of degradation’.
This December snow was different. It was falling softly as we drove from La Guardia airport across town to the studio apartment on Riverside Drive that Juan had sublet in my name. The key wouldn’t turn in the lock and we had to fetch the doorman to let us in. He was a young Puerto Rican, sleekly pleased with himself in his braided uniform.
‘I hope you’ll be happy here, sir,’ he said to me, as though Juan did not exist. ‘You’ll like the view.’
It was late afternoon and the sky in the west was already dark. To the left of our window the George Washington Bridge thrust out over the Hudson. Straight ahead, the cliffs of New Jersey rose sheer from the river; there was nothing but winter trees and snow and the powerful grey river, and no sign of humanity except for the chain of light where the traffic flowed noiselessly across the bridge. The vast silence of the scene impressed me. Standing behind me and looking out over my shoulder, Juan slipped his arms around my waist.
‘Did I do good?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you did fantastic!’
He had a Christmas present for me. Shouldn’t we wait till Christmas? No, no, he wanted me to have it now. It was a ‘Movado’ watch, the only watch, he told me, that was in the Museum of Modern Art, the perfect design. It was a beautiful present, and a great compliment, really, to the Pell Grant people who had made it possible.
That night I had diarrhoea. Squatting on the lavatory bowl I had time to admire the watch on my wrist and to notice how it nestled in the hair that grew more thickly on my forearm than almost anywhere else on my body. And to wonder. This business with my bowels was no more than a traveller’s accident, the result of a germ picked up from a ham sandwich or the tropical fruit, perhaps, that I had eaten at Honolulu airport. But Juan also had diarrhoea. Not the spectacular 24-hour variety that kept me up all night, he explained, but loose, half formed and so persistent that his arse was sore.
AIDS? We skirted round the word, assuring ourselves that he had no fever, no night sweats, no violet spots, in fact nothing more serious than a slight acid feeling in the stomach and loose bowels. And of course he had always been prone to that problem and had always had a low tolerance for milk. Cheerfully seizing on that fact, I suggested—though I was hardly convinced—that a more sensible and regular diet might settle the problem. He played along with this strategy and so we agreed, at least while we were in New York, to augment our diet with plátanos, but boiled rather than fried, and spiced with lashings of garlic and lemon juice. Green plátanos would gum up the bowels of a duck.
The green plátano cure was sufficiently effective to allow life to continue normally. Back at the German-Jewish archive I was immersed in a new accession of documents that promised to reveal the remaining secrets of Hans and Klaus. Juan was doing exams, for which he prepared in the evenings, sitting upright on the floor with his legs spread at an angle of ninety degrees and his notes conveniently assembled between them. The day the results were to be announced he insisted that I come with him down to the college on Chambers Street. We were early, and whiled away the time buying Rastafarian Christmas cards from a stall, watching an intercollegiate netball game, and marvelling at the information provided in the college handbook. The campus, situated on 4.28 acres, was a $128 million mega-structure that was equivalent to the Empire State Building lying on its side (minus the tower). We had an interview with a course adviser, who said that Juan’s course was now complete with the exception of English I and that he could complete that for credit at any reputable university in Australia. Was the English Department at Melbourne University reputable? They would have to check it out, said the adviser.
His results in French and chemistry were posted on a board and were most satisfactory. The maths result
would be announced in class by the professor, who turned out to be a diminutive Chinese woman with spectacles so large that they framed her cheeks as well as her eyes. The students, apart from an almost white Argentinian book-keeper who sat to one side of the room in a kind of self-imposed male reserve, were largely Haitian women in varying degrees of middle age; and there was Juan, the only ‘A’ student in the class. The book-keeper, I thought, looked slightly peeved at Juan’s success, but the women squealed and applauded and embraced him and wondered how he could be so brilliant. The Chinese professor made a little speech in which she thanked the class and said they had all worked hard and that they all congratulated Juan on a great result and wished him a very happy life in Australia. She was sure, she said in the nicest way, they would need mathematicians down there. The farewell rituals had begun.
In the weekends we went out to Queen’s to visit Ernie, the businessman who sold sporting goods and equipment for gyms and who was the most enduring of Juan’s succession of patrons. In a fix, he could always be relied on for a meal and a bed. I suspect that is how Juan had survived the last semester, though he had had to make do with sleeping on the living room sofa because the spare bedroom was occupied by a Puerto Rican boy from the Bronx whom Ernie had taken in when he was in trouble with the courts. Juan didn’t care for him much; he considered him a sly little queen, which he probably was, though even sly little queens deserve a go.
Everything about Ernie was solid: his house, his furniture with its heavily timbered and padded look, his considerable frame, his conversation, his cooking. He specialised in shepherd’s pie, which Juan found boring, though I secretly approved of these calorie-rich, bowel-stopping dishes with their three-inch crust of mashed potato.
For all his paternal affection for young Latins, Ernie inhabited mainstream America. He lectured Juan from time to time about getting a full-time job, perhaps as a salesman in the men’s department at Macy’s. That particular suggestion was received with speechless disdain which turned into a torrent of protest the moment Ernie was out of earshot. Didn’t Ernie understand, after all these years, how important it had been to finish his college degree? Did Ernie really think that he was good for nothing but selling briefs in a cheap department store? Well, perhaps not. At any rate, when he wrote a reference for the Department of Immigration in Canberra, he put things in a different light. It had been his pleasure, he wrote, to have known Mr Céspedes for approximately twelve years. ‘I first came to know Mr Céspedes when he acted as a Trade Show adviser to this Company, assisting in the design and set-up of New York Trade Show displays. During this time he proved himself to be talented, dependable and a positive contributor to our success.’ He was certain that Mr Céspedes’ character and intellect would make themselves quickly known wherever he might be.
Meanwhile, Ernie wanted to give him a parting present: a bike. One Saturday afternoon we drove out to Long Island and pulled into the carpark of a suburban sports store. It was just after Christmas and they were doing a lively trade in exercise machines. We watched the antics of a group of women in designer tracksuits, who were looking for a machine that would trim their post-festive flab with the greatest speed and the least expenditure of energy. They called each other ‘you guys’, and giggled and hooted and chattered at the top of their voices and hardly seemed to notice the price tags. Suddenly we were in middle America. Was it this that made Juan uneasy? Or was it simply the huge array of bikes of every conceivable style and make, so that choosing one was as difficult as buying a salami in a Berlin sausage shop? German or Hungarian? With pepper or without? With the pepper inside or outside? How should he know? So he stood in the middle of the showroom looking dazed, and assented gratefully when Ernie took charge and settled on a grey and pink machine with a German-sounding name and more gears than there are hills in San Francisco.
We had leased our room with the view on Riverside Drive for three months. I intended to leave in mid-February, and by the time I was back in Melbourne my next salary cheque would be enough to cover Juan’s fare. We called at the Qantas office and waited till the black woman was free and booked him a seat for the end of the month. Then he began to bargain with me. Couldn’t he leave a bit earlier? Did I really need another four weeks at the archive? Was it absolutely impossible to find the money for the fare before the end of February? This was not the gamesmanship he employed when we negotiated a movie to see or a friend to visit. He was urgent and quiet. And although he would not say as much, I knew that he wanted to see a doctor, and his doctor was in Melbourne. So we did what I had sworn was absolutely impossible and brought forward my departure date by a month. After I had been to the bank manager, he would follow two weeks later.
On our last day together in New York we went down to the Village, feeling nostalgic and planning to have lunch at the Pink Tea Cup in Bleecker Street. It had moved, gone up-market and trebled its prices to pay for the new pink linen tablecloths. We sauntered along 14th Street and lit a candle in the church as a gesture of thanks to the Lady with the halo of Mexican daggers. Crossing the road we called in at Hiram’s so that I could say goodbye and Juan could use the loo.
Last of all, I said goodbye to Ernie. ‘Take care of the kid,’ he said, as though he were entrusting his son to me. I liked Ernie. But about Juan and me, I thought, Ernie didn’t quite understand.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘The slight despair
At what we are,
The marginal grief
Is source of life.’
—W. H. Auden, ‘The Exiles’
We were not like lovers in a novel, amazed with joy in the moment of our reunion. We had travelled too often, and too far, for that. No, it would be truer to say we were content, happy with the prospect of ordinary pleasures and a life together. And if we had known how brief this time would be, how fragile were the foundations of our contentment, we would not have arranged things any differently.
He arrived on a visitor’s visa, as the GITF recommended. We seemed to fit so neatly into the Minister’s guidelines that we didn’t anticipate any problems with his application for permanent residence. The only cause for apprehension was the health tests the Department routinely administered. Would they introduce an AIDS test, either as a general policy or, still worse, targeted at high-risk applicants? There was pressure for them to move in this direction, though so far they had been deterred by concern about civil liberties or the desire to maintain the confidence of what they now described increasingly as ‘the gay community’. Yet if they did introduce the test, what if he turned out to be HIV-positive? Would they declare him a public health risk? Would they consider the care for him an unwarranted impost on the national health budget? Would they send him back to New York? And then? The sooner he submitted his application, the better.
By now the GITF people had considerable expertise in the matter of applications. They had advised on half a dozen cases and the Minister had complimented them on the exemplary documentation provided. Clearly it would be wise to follow their guidelines.
In submitting an application they said, the Australian half of the committed relationship needed to show that if the permit were not granted he would suffer severe emotional hardship. But how do you talk to a bureaucracy about such things?
It seemed easier, safer, more in line with the GITF’s sense of etiquette, to leave my threatened emotional stability to the representation of friends: of Susan, who had opened her house to us in Lincoln and guided us round the cold cathedral; of Jim, whom Juan always associated with the great bearded Assyrian kings in the British Museum; of Rickard, to whom I had first written about my encounter with Juan; of our neighbour, Father Jim. They composed the most supportive testimonies, saying that we had been through thick and thin, that it was costing us a fearful amount of money to maintain our trans-Pacific relationship and that I would suffer severely if the Minister didn’t give us what we wanted. The combined effect of these statements was to make me sound a trifle unhinged; but Juan though
t that they were perfectly correct.
There was a lot that was left unsaid. Take the question of money, for instance. There were people who wondered about that. They asked me, ‘Who paid for all those fares?’ And in the end, when it was all over, I was even asked, ‘Who paid for the grave?’ Well, of course I did. Nobody said it was a scandal, not directly. But you could tell from the way they narrowed their eyes and said ‘Oh!’ that they were busy making moral calculations, about Juan, and about me.
We weren’t embarrassed about money, except that there was never enough. In fact, money was a subject that I had always found profoundly tedious. With the comfortable security of a tenured job and the luxury of having no dependants, I had never given it much thought. In mildly profligate reaction against the thrift of a middle-class upbringing, I spent what I had, or I gave it away, and the savings that had still mysteriously accumulated had gone to pay for that unsalaried year in Berlin. This indifference to money—or this irresponsibility—was a trait in me of which Juan entirely disapproved, and when it came to paying for those airfares and subsidising various expenses in New York, I began to see his point. It was rarely so easy as simply writing out a cheque. To raise the cash for one airfare I had to sell an antique bookcase. It was an art-nouveau piece, but I had come to dislike its swirling lines and was happy to see it go. I had no compunction either in selling a mahogany pedestal desk. It looked magnificent but was never used because I preferred to work on the floor, so the removal of the desk was pure gain.
