Queen Kat, Carmel and St Jude Get a Life

by Maureen McCarthy

  ‘Excuse me!’ his wife snapped coldly. I shook my head, gave a stupid smile of apology, and dived into my bag for my purse.

  ‘It’s in the fridge!’ she hissed out of the side of her mouth.

  ‘No it’s not!’ he came back angrily.

  ‘Are you Orlando?’ I asked, handing over a twenty-dollar note. I watched him turn around. I could stare right into his face now. My words ricocheted back and forth, from him to me, echoing in my ears. After a few moments it didn’t seem as if I’d spoken the words at all. I could see his brown eyes watching me. They crinkled up a little at the corners and his mouth opened briefly, showing a line of perfect yellowing teeth. It was a small flashing smile that disappeared almost as soon as it had arrived.

  ‘That’s me,’ he said.

  ‘The Orlando who owns this restaurant?’ I went on stupidly. The woman handed me my change. They were both waiting for me to go.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said.

  I wanted to keep looking into his eyes. I hadn’t found the first thing that I’d come here for, and I didn’t want to have to go out into that cold night again without having found at least something.

  ‘And you come from Chile?’ I went on boldly. I felt quite powerful as I saw a sharp flash of suspicion cross his eyes. He blinked a couple of times and gave another brief smile.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said again. ‘And you? You’re Chilean?’

  ‘Half,’ I said. ‘My mother was . . . is Australian.’

  ‘You look . . . very South American,’ he said politely. But his body was tense with irritation. I nodded, unable to tear my eyes away from his face. The eyes, brown and gleaming in his olive-skinned face. He looked like an ordinary man. No, better than ordinary. His face could have been considered pleasant, handsome even. There were lines around the edges of his mouth. Were they cruel? Or were they just . . . lines? His hands weren’t particularly big or thick. One of them was half-covered in white flour. The hands of a cook. I could picture him out the back in the kitchen, up to his elbows in pastry, doing complicated things with syrupy peeled pears, tiny hot pies, and glacé fruit. Those hands had tied blindfolds around eyes, stuffed mouths with heavy stinking gags. They’d connected electrical clips to testicles, to nipples, to tongues. They had pressed the switch, made the current run down the wire into the delicate nerve-endings and flood the flesh with burning, shocking pain. Then more. And more after that. Until. Until the convulsed body spreadeagled on the bed in front of him was arching wildly, as involuntarily as a single leaf caught alone in a massive cyclone. Until the person didn’t know who they were any more, or what they knew, or what they should or shouldn’t tell. My father, sweating, bloodied, screaming silently through his gag before this man. Every nerve-ending fractured. Burning with pain. Those hands, the hands of his torturer, were right in front of me. One was plucking anxiously at the notebook on the counter.

  ‘Yes . . . my dark hair, and . . .’ My voice dropped away. ‘My skin.’

  ‘So you speak the Spanish?’ he asked. I could tell my fading voice had him baffled, slightly embarrassed.

  ‘Sí . . . Sí, Señor, sí, un poquito.’

  ‘Good! Good!’ he laughed. He wanted to get rid of me, but didn’t know how. ‘I have to get back to my work, Señorita. So if you’ll forgive me . . . ?’ He raised both palms in front of him and shrugged, then he turned and walked back through the tables to the kitchen. I watched him, mesmerised. When he’d disappeared I turned to his wife. She was checking through some figures, her face still curled with displeasure.

  ‘Goodbye, Señora,’ I managed to say. But she didn’t reply.

  After that I couldn’t forget him. The days passed. I went to my classes. I even learnt things. I had conversations, had meals with people, although I ate hardly anything. I couldn’t eat and I couldn’t forget him. He began to lurk around the edges of my dreams. Whatever I was dreaming was always suffused with this sense of threat: the tall solitary figure in the background, the good-looking man with the even yellow teeth who, although he was always smiling and I never knew quite who he was when I was dreaming, always filled me with terror. I had thought I would only need to see him once and all would be revealed. Not so.

  I began to stalk him. Without telling them why, I cajoled some of my friends into coming back to the restaurant with me. It was out of their price range, but they complied a few times just to humour me. Even poor Declan, who lived on about fifty dollars a week, agreed to spend twenty of them for one meal at Orlando’s, just to please me.

  Then I began to sneak down to the river when I could, hanging around waiting for glimpses of him arriving and leaving. Once I even snuck through an open gate out the back, climbed the one small leafy tree in the concrete backyard, and had a good, although very uncomfortable, view into the kitchen. I watched through the large back window as he came in and out, organising the food and talking and laughing with the rest of the staff. Two or three times I waited out the back of the restaurant beyond midnight and watched him from a small lane opposite as he and his wife locked up. I was terrified of being discovered. My heart was racing as I listened to their clipped small-talk and watched them get into their car and glide away. Sometimes they spoke in Spanish, but not always.

  My friends began to worry about me, the sudden weight loss and my new quietness. Especially Carmel. I would see her looking at me sometimes, frowning, trying to work out what had got into me. She was a good friend. I loved her. But I didn’t want to talk about this to anyone. I knew it was useless, dangerous, knew it wouldn’t get me anywhere. At least nowhere I wanted to go. Of course she’d ask me what was wrong every now and again and I’d mumble something about not feeling well. I stopped answering my mother’s letters, even stopped reading them after a while. I would just see her writing on the envelope and drop it into the overflowing rubbish bin near my desk. She’d ring, but I wouldn’t go to the phone. ‘Tell her I’m asleep!’ I’d hiss through the bedroom door at whoever had come to tell me. ‘I’ll ring her later.’ But I didn’t ring her. I had no intention of contacting her at all.

  I’d find little notes from Carmel when I’d come home from uni. Felt like making some lasagne. Please save me from myself and eat the rest that’s in the fridge! Love, Carmel. P.S. See you when I get home from work.

  And when the gentle hints didn’t work, she’d try a more forceful tone. Jude! Anton and I bought some delicious Indian takeaway last night. Leftovers in the fridge, plus a container of your favourite bought specially for you. Please eat! You need to, Jude. I’m serious. Love, Carmel.

  Everything around me seemed to contract as my inner-life raged. Strange dreams intertwined with rehearsals for the showdown I imagined having with Orlando. I’d say, you murdered my father, and he’d say, so? Or he’d say, prove it, and I’d say, sure, I’ll do that. And he’d say, leave my premises, and then I’d say . . . There was always a different outcome in these inner dialogues. But they’d become more real to me than the people I was dealing with in my everyday life.

  When I forced myself to think about confronting him I realised that I really had nothing to say at all. It was rather that I had developed an intense fascination with him. I needed to know what he wore, where he lived, how many children he had and how old they were. I was like a fan who had become obsessed with a rock star. I wanted to know everything about him.

  My dreams became more vivid and convoluted. One that continually recurred was about me waking up knowing that I was inside his house. I would get up and begin to roam stealthily through the huge, semi-deserted rooms full of dust and sour smells, rats and cockroaches, broken furniture and mess. All the time I was afraid that I would come across him, that he would suddenly appear from behind a piano or creep up on me from behind a curtain. But I couldn’t stop myself from looking. I wanted to find his clothes and all his personal stuff. In these dreams I was searching for a bathroom, a warm bed where he’d just slept. I wanted to smell him.

  The worst dreams were those in
which Orlando and my father merged into one. I couldn’t tell one from the other. I would be following my father along a cramped hallway. We were going somewhere important; I knew I had to be there. Then he would turn around and I would see that the man I’d thought was my father was really Orlando. He would turn and smile with those yellow teeth. Terrible.

  Every time I had this dream I woke up sweating, my heart pounding wildly and my hands and forehead damp and hot.

  Eventually it happened. I knew as I felt myself get thinner, and as the bouts of dizziness came more and more frequently, that it was only a matter of time before I wouldn’t be able to go to university at all. A big part of me baulked at this, fought against it with every ounce of energy I possessed. For so long I had been determined to stick to my blazing ambition of becoming a doctor and following in my father’s footsteps. If I gave up university, what would become of me?

  The crisis day came unexpectedly one beautiful morning in August. I got up and went to my window, saw the bright blue winter morning sky outside, lifted the sash and felt a gust of cold air against the skin of my face. Yes! I took a deep breath and for a few moments allowed myself to hope. Perhaps today would be the end of it, the beginning of my way back into my old life. To who I’d been. I could feel hunger nagging in my gut and that gave me added optimism. I would go down to the kitchen and make myself something to eat. I would sit at the table and spread the toast with thick butter and jam and make myself a comforting mug of hot milky coffee. I longed with a pang for the comfortable settled feeling of food in my belly; it would clear my head, give me a stronger idea of who I was and what I should do. That physical pang lit an emotional fire inside me. Today the dizziness would stop. I dressed quickly, afraid that my new optimism might blow away in the sharp breeze that had begun to invade my room. I went down to the kitchen and began to organise the toast and hot milk. I was hungry, hungry, hungry, I told myself. I would eat.

  I put two slices of bread in the toaster. Then I got the butter and jam out of the fridge and determinedly placed them on the table. So far so good. The toast smelt wonderful, but very strong. Almost overpowering. I picked a small, sharp, black-handled knife from the drawer and an image came to me: a black crow descending towards a defenceless newborn lamb. I would kill Orlando. Yes. The idea hit hard. I could almost feel it take hold, the grip of its talons in the soft flesh of my shoulder, the scraping of one wing against my face. I sat down. Yellow light poured in through the kitchen window. Fat buttery yellow light. The crow disappeared and the idea grew, inflated out and floated upwards, tugging at my brain like a huge birthday balloon. A perfect shape, round and simple, a lovely red. The best ideas are often the simple ones. I remembered a favourite teacher saying this once, smiling. Surely it would be easy enough to do. It would only be a matter of planning it properly. The knife in my hand spread the butter around and around the toast and I watched the tiny pieces of bread-dust fly chaotically through the yellow light.

  I’m sick of words. Sick of wild thoughts and mad dreams that go nowhere. No more words. Just act. Action is called for in extreme situations. This was an extreme situation, wasn’t it?

  I dumped a tablespoon of red jam on top and spread that out too, letting it run off the sides and onto the plate. Yes. As soon as Juan had told me I knew there would be nothing to say to this man. I must do something.

  Katerina waltzed into the kitchen rubbing her hair dry with a towel. We were hardly speaking at all by this stage. After the night of Carmel’s first gig – the night after I’d been told about Orlando – I had avoided her as much as I could. Not that I had consciously decided to. But I had a lot else on my mind.

  ‘Jude, could I ask that we make sure the towels are hung up?’ she said, all light and airy, as prissy as some bloody secretary in a lawyer’s office. I’d tentatively begun to eat. I’d had two large bites and was trying to ignore the familiar feeling of nausea in my stomach.

  ‘Yeah,’ I snarled, ‘you could ask that . . . I suppose . . .’ I hadn’t intended to be so sour or offensive. I tried to go back to reading the print on the side of the bread packet as I chewed, but I could feel her eyes boring down at me. I had to make myself not look up. The strange thing was that after the night of the gig she seemed to be home a lot more. From my bedroom I’d hear her walking about the kitchen, playing music in the lounge. Men didn’t seem to come around any more to pick her up and take her out. There was less fancy dressing up. She stayed in her room a lot. And when she did come out she was dressed in sloppy old jeans and sweatshirts. I hadn’t seen her friend Kara in ages either. Maybe they were concentrating on their studies. I didn’t know and I certainly didn’t care, as long as I didn’t have to look at her or talk to her.

  ‘Jude, is there something wrong?’ she said eventually, quite kindly. ‘You seem so strange lately, so out of it . . .’ I slammed my mug down onto the table and got up.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Well, I just thought I’d ask . . . because . . .’ She looked determined to continue, but nervous too.

  ‘The towels are wet,’ I cut in sarcastically. ‘And they’re heaped up in the corners of the bathroom like dirty smelly old lumps of rotting fruit! Is that why you thought you’d ask?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I just thought it would be better for everyone if we . . .’

  ‘Oh spare me!’ I snapped, getting up from the table. ‘Spare me from what you thought would be better for everyone . . .’ I slammed out of the room without even looking at her.

  You feel worse when you know that you’ve behaved badly. I smouldered all through my tram trip into university refusing to allow myself to see the truth: that I’d behaved like a moron, and that I owed Katerina an apology. After all she’d only asked me to do a simple thing, and quite nicely, too. I didn’t like grotty bathrooms either and our whole house had got very grotty lately. No one seemed interested in cleaning up.

  I walked up the steps of the Med building studying the timetable on the front of my folder. First biology, then chemistry, then an anatomy tutorial, then . . . I stopped. Hordes of students were hurrying up the stairs around me, only a few coming down the other way. I stood and stared as if seeing the place for the first time. They were all young, some dressed in torn-off jeans with bright tights underneath, workmen’s boots and suede op-shop jackets, others in jeans with old hand-knitted jumpers, baseball caps on their heads, carrying heavy bags of books. Long hair, short hair. Fat and thin. Some were alone, frowning and intent on where they were going, others laughed and called out, threw things to each other. The big glass doors opened and shut. Opened and shut slowly. Opened again.

  I felt my legs gently slip from beneath me as I stared at the door, as though I had been plunged into a deep pool of water. The door swung open again. Exhausting. I didn’t actually fall, just melted somehow to my knees and then shifted onto my bottom. Once down I didn’t seem to be able to raise my head. I stared at the moving shoes climbing the stairs. The grey concrete stairs.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Two sweet-faced girls had squatted next to me and were peering into my face. I looked up and vaguely recognised them. They were both in my year.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Sure. Thanks. I’ll just sit here for a few moments, then I’ll come in.’

  ‘Would you like us to wait with you?’

  ‘No. Thanks.’

  But I can’t go in. I won’t go into that place. It’s all impossible now. I have no idea why I wanted to do Medicine in the first place . . .

  Eventually I got up and walked back down to the tramstop. We had an exam the next day. If I couldn’t bear to go to lectures, then I knew I should go home and study for it. But I crossed the road and waited for the tram that would take me in the opposite direction. I bought a ticket to Southbank and thought about Katerina. I’d try to be pleasant next time I saw her. I’d say I was suffering from exam pressure or something. Make some excuse. There was no point in making an enemy o
f her.

  Why am I going down there again? Do I even expect that he’ll be there at this time of the morning? Get real, Jude! But I just need to . . . What? I need to see him? But why?

  I walked along the Yarra for a couple of hours, feeling cold and miserable and half crazy. Eventually I bought a bucket of hot chips and a coffee and managed to eat perhaps a dozen chips before I threw them to the gulls who were pecking and screeching around me, dipping and diving angrily against the cold gusty wind above the river.

  The water was very dark that day. I sat and watched from a seat on the bank opposite Orlando’s and imagined myself falling into its liquid blackness. Would it smell? Would I feel cold? I longed for the lack of all this bright glaring light and the sudden quiet that would envelop me. Would I hear anything apart from soft gurgling as I sucked the water into my lungs? The roaring sound of blood beating wildly through my legs and arms and chest? I could simply walk over to one of the two bridges, only a few metres from where I was sitting, and drop myself off. I would discard my coat beforehand and loosen my hair from the thick plait I’d made that morning. I’d leave on my jumper and jeans, my gold earrings and watch, the chain around my neck. I would let the strong black leather boots my mother had bought me take me down. Downwards. Through the black sludgy water, through the coldness, deeper and deeper until they reached the sandy floor of the river. My long wavy hair – the hair I’d inherited from my father – would fly out around my head. I would raise both my arms high, like a bright child in class, open the fingers wide, stretch out to meet whatever it was that had come for me. We would meet each other. Whoever or whatever it was, down there on the floor of the river. I would stand there, my hands spread, swaying slightly in the current. Not trying to swim.