by Adib Khan
His mind slides to the fairies in Nora’s garden, and the wisdom of Aboriginal Dreamtime stories.
There are movements. Creaky floorboards. A fit of coughing and what sounds like a groan.
‘Everything okay?’ he calls. The front door opens and shuts with a bang.
He is tempted to get up and follow. But then that might be intrusive. The lumbering noise of heavier feet. The front door again. He has not overheard an argument, but maybe he dozed off? He checks the time using the light of the torch. The young have the energy to quarrel even after midnight. Irritably he turns on his side.
Mentally he juggles with numbers and tries to calculate the cost of driving to Melbourne and back. Once a week? No; the intensity of guilt and the initial burst of enthusiasm wouldn’t survive. Once every three or four weeks is more likely. Take a day off. Visit Nora, then Ron and Colin on the weekends. He would wait until he found Nora in one of her rare moments. There is something I want to tell you. Instead of her face, it is the old Vietnamese woman staring at him. I will be living near my son. I won’t be able to see you quite as often. The voice of desertion. A disavowal of responsibility. That is harsh, he reproaches himself. There is the village with the burning huts. The soldiers run through the jungle until they reach the next hamlet. What have we here? He can see the faces as though they were in front of him. Won’t you look after me? A fragile figure stoops over a walking frame. In command. Overlapping images. There is blurring and the throb of a headache. Andrew, you’re a bloody fake! You haven’t helped me at all. The psychiatrist is calm, as usual. Ultimately you have to determine what you carry with you in life. Confront what is there and shed some of the unnecessary load you cart around. Travel light. There is a gaunt face and a hairless head with veins standing out like thick worms. Why do you punish yourself, Martin? Colin carries a wand and wears a conical wizard’s hat. His eyes enlarge and take over his entire face. Smouldering orbs that can see across time. The angry eyes of the dragon…The old woman cackles from somewhere in a mist.
Martin starts up from the bed. Moves himself.
The kitchen is cold and uninviting. He drinks thirstily, annoyed with himself for allowing his thoughts to spin into such a crazy dream. He hears Maria and Frank come inside. Maria is talking to Frank as a mother might speak to an upset child. She sticks her head through the kitchen door. ‘Sorry to wake you up. I’m coming in there in a minute.’
Martin is disturbed by a suspicion. There is something odd about this move to the country, after all.
Maria comes into the kitchen just as Martin finishes making a pot of tea. She saves him the effort of searching for an opening gambit. There is an immediate and disarming frankness about her.
‘Frank has never told you, and he’ll be upset and angry with me. But you should know—he suffers from depression.’
Martin nods in appreciation of her directness. He pours equal measures of tea into two mugs. Gives himself time to marshal a response. ‘I thought there was…I should have done something, to help him.’
Martin’s body is stiff. He feels like he’s labouring for breath. He thinks of the swings in Frank’s moods and constructs links in his mind.
He avoids looking at Maria. ‘Is he on medication?’
‘Yes. Anti-depressants. But there are side effects.’
‘Has he had any counselling?’ In his heart Martin is horrified that they must talk about Frank like this.
‘He has been to a psychotherapist, who recommended meditation. But Frank gets slack about doing it. I hope things will change now. The ashram, perhaps…’ She looks sharply at Martin. ‘You don’t think meditation is useful?’
Martin is startled—is his scepticism so transparent? ‘Well…what do you think?’
‘Anything’s worth trying. But then I was born in a Buddhist tradition. It’s not an unfamiliar custom for me. My father is a great believer in meditation.’ She sips her tea and thinks. ‘He says it enabled him to maintain his sanity on the boat—as it was tossed about on the sea. Mum had a long and difficult labour and it looked like she wouldn’t survive…Well, it taught him acceptance of whatever life brings, he told me.’
Martin remembers being struck by Nyugen’s calmness. But is that composure a character trait or a state of mind and emotion reached by a conscious process?
‘I’ve felt for a while that all may not be well with Frank,’ he says despondently. There is no urge to hide anything from Maria now. Sometimes, he realises, it takes an outsider’s innocence to crack a mould of secrecy. ‘I feel as if I’ve caused it all. Worse still, I have been negligent.’
The Uncertainty Principle. Truth and reality are not rigidly grounded in absolutism. Until now, Martin had struggled to understand Werner Heisenberg’s concept. But it begins to make sense. It is not possible to observe something without changing it. Deductions about any phenomena are based on personal perceptions. And his Vietnam experiences, and what he has subsequently read about the chemicals used there, guide Martin’s thoughts tonight about his son.
Maria speaks and listens patiently. Her confidence inspires Martin to speak freely at last. Occasionally she corrects him gently about pieces of information, or adds her own observations. Martin sees finally how well read she is about Vietnam, about the research to establish links between the soldiers’ exposure to chemicals and possible effects on the next generation. Yet she is free from bitterness. He marvels at that.
‘It’s the uncertainty of not knowing that makes everything so unsettled and so difficult to handle,’ Martin confesses. He remembers the feeling of being lied to and let down by the government. ‘The world was a lot more complicated than the politicians made it out to be. And then the Evatt Royal Commission! That just confirmed our suspicion that people in authority couldn’t be trusted.’
By the time Maria excuses herself to go back to bed it is nearly dawn. Martin begins to paint the lounge. He works with penitential fervour until the job is done. After a short break he begins on another room. The physical work suspends his anxiety.
‘Hi, Dad.’
Martin turns and places the roller brush on the aluminium tray Meticulously he wipes his hand with a rag. Frank is pale and there are shadows under his eyes.
‘Good morning.’ Martin curses himself for the wariness in his voice.
‘Sorry to have disturbed your sleep.’
Their exchange is stifled, as if they’re decorous strangers. Martin walks quickly to Frank and hugs him. His son is startled. But then a wan smile slices his face.
They go into the kitchen together and sit down.
‘Maria told you?’ Frank sounds guilty.
‘She’s a strong girl with a great deal of common sense. You’re lucky to have her.’
‘She has to be after what she’s been through. You know, Maria was the first name her parents heard when they landed in Australia.’ Frank falls silent.
‘There’s something that I want to tell you.’ Martin swallows. ‘I feel guilty that you suffer from depression. There isn’t any concrete evidence about many things that went on in Vietnam and about their after-effects. But I feel quite certain. The terrible truth is, we’ve got to put up with the consequences of war.’
Frank sits quietly, his eyes fixed on his father, as Martin speaks. Weak sunlight begins to filter through the dirt-streaked window, lighting up the bareness of the kitchen. Just as Martin begins to think his son has accepted this, Frank lashes out. ‘Didn’t you ever think you might be selfish, having a child?’
‘But I…we didn’t suspect anything at the time,’ Martin protests. It sounds naïve, even stupid, but that was the reality in those days. ‘Even now opinions about the chemicals—’
‘Bullshit!’ Frank won’t listen any more. ‘How could you be so bloody thoughtless?’ He slams a fist into the palm of his hand.
Martin is shaken and it’s only Maria’s composure, when she comes in for breakfast, that puts a buffer zone between them.
‘Frank and I had a forthright
chat,’ Martin explains after Frank silently leaves the kitchen.
‘That’s putting it mildly.’ Maria smiles. ‘It was impossible not to hear Frank.’
‘Then there’s no need for an explanation.’
‘None at all.’ Maria prepares a bowl of fruits mixed with low-fat yoghurt. ‘As a child I learned that when there are difficulties that can’t be easily resolved, you accommodate them in your life instead of struggling and fighting as though they are enemies. That way problems become a part of every day’s landscape.’
‘You make it sound easy.’
‘In primary school I was called names.’ Maria pauses to remember them. ‘Chink, Slope, Ching Chong, Slant. When I cried or lost my temper it was worse. Then I discovered that if I smiled and absorbed it all, the kids got bored and gave up.’
‘I wish I had your fortitude,’ Martin says frankly.
‘Oh no! I don’t want to give the impression I handled it well. Far from it! I even dyed my hair blonde when I was sixteen.’ Maria laughs self-consciously. ‘Dad took one look at me and gave me a rare piece of advice. “Never hide from who or what you are. With another chance, I would give you a traditional Vietnamese name.” Then he held me and almost magically my confusion disappeared. At that moment the dualism of my identity fell into place. I was a Vietnamese-Australian, born on the sea somewhere between the two countries. After that I never denied my Vietnamese connections again. To make sense of who I am, I always acknowledge my ancestors, my parents—they’re the coordinates of my identity. So, I’ll always live as a fractured being.’
They smile a little sadly at each other.
‘And what did you do about your hair?’
‘I was blonde for just a few hours. I went back to the hairdresser that afternoon.’
They change the subject. Within minutes Maria has asked more questions about Nora than Frank has in all the years.
They talk until Maria has almost finished her breakfast. She wants to know why Martin won’t bring Nora to Daylesford.
‘Do you ever take her out?’
‘I can’t say I have,’ he confesses.
‘Don’t you think she might enjoy a break from the hostel?’
‘She probably would,’ Martin agrees. ‘It’s just that she can suddenly become very difficult.’ He is unable to envisage how Nora might react to Maria.
‘But you aren’t embarrassed by her behaviour?’
‘No, I…’ He stops. There’s nothing to be gained from a long-winded justification of his interaction with Nora. Yet something in Maria elicits honest responses. ‘Yes…I suppose I am conscious of the way she might behave. Nora can be…well, rude.’
‘But does she know that? Is she deliberately rude?’
To his surprise Martin finds he has no reservations about introducing Sebastian to Maria. He talks about the struggle he has to keep up the pretence.
‘Why is it pretence?’ Maria asks, fascinated by the profile of Sebastian. ‘Why not just enter her world? Fantasy is a different kind of reality. My father once told me that life’s ultimate gift is the ability to make others happy.’
Later, Martin is bothered by this. Was Maria saying he is condescending to Nora?
BUSINESS MUST BE highly lucrative, Martin thinks, luxuriating in the leather seat of the Mercedes-Benz. The real estate agent, Matthew Close, has become gregarious since discovering Martin has a house in inner Melbourne and is thinking of selling it. They exchange the kind of information strangers often do when forced into each other’s company: background, lifestyle, means of livelihood, the state of the economy.
The drive takes less than twenty minutes. After a final turn onto a dirt road the car crawls along until they reach a gate. Beyond, a small weatherboard house stands among gum trees.
‘The trees were deliberately planted to enhance the rural effect,’ Matthew Close points out. ‘Pretty, isn’t it?’
Martin surveys the rest of the undulating grounds. The moment of panic subsides. Different as the trees are from anything tropically Asiatic, their density has reminded him of the Vietnamese jungles. The soldiers dreaded walking through light-dappled greenery where the sun was almost shut out by interlocking branches high above. They could never be certain whether there were mines hidden beneath the cushion of rotting leaves under their feet, or whether the Vietcong were waiting in the trees or behind fallen trunks. Although they expected the sound of animal feet and the noisy flapping of wings, the jungle life made them edgy. Sometimes a flurry of activity came in response to the soldiers’ movements. Immediately the men crouched and gripped their weapons, alert for the enemy.
Stoically now Martin listens to Matthew Close waxing about this rural buy-of-the-month. The house itself is small but well maintained. Two bedrooms, a lounge, kitchen, bathroom and a separate toilet. The off-white woollen carpet looks new. There is an open fireplace in the lounge, as well as an oil heater. In the kitchen the old potbelly stove has been scrubbed and thoroughly cleaned. Martin discovers the remnant of a vegetable garden in the backyard, where mounds of chopped firewood have been dumped. And beyond, the darkness of the trees.
‘What do you think?’ Matthew Close asks confidently. ‘Easy to live here. Wouldn’t mind a place like this myself, to retire to. Won’t take us long to sell this property.’
Martin remains non-committal. He walks through the rooms, checking the walls and ceilings, the doors and window frames.
‘I have to go into Trentham to hand some documents to a client. It’ll only take a few minutes.’ Matthew Close looks warily at Martin, who is inspecting the plumbing in the kitchen. ‘You’re welcome to stay here and have a look. I’ll pick you up on my way back, or would you rather come with me?’
Martin prefers to stay behind. The condition of the water tank and the tin roof concern him. There is a wooden ladder in the backyard. But first, after the estate agent leaves, Martin scrutinises the kitchen shelves and cupboards. He opens and shuts the back door several times to test the hinges, the hang, the shape of this house. Then, convinced that he has seen enough inside, he steps through into the yard. He wanders to the edge of the trees, lingering as if he expects familiar sounds and movements. The silence is disconcerting.
Colin once told him that trees are among the most revered symbols across cultures. The oak was worshipped by the Celts, he’d said, the lime tree was sacred to the Germans, the fig tree is still special in India, the ash is esteemed by the Scandinavians. Martin can hear Colin’s voice now: ‘In Central Australia, the Dieri people are very particular about not cutting down certain trees because they are supposedly the fathers of the people, transformed after death. The symbolism of trees signifies the life of the cosmos, Martin, it represents immortality. Remember, in Genesis there is the Tree of Life.’
Martin recalls now why Colin had been telling him all this. ‘I think of where Barry Hobart died when I see clumps of trees,’ Martin had just said to him. ‘Sometimes those trees looked like the real enemy, with eyes, limbs and guns. It’s embarrassing to think of the number of times I shot at tree trunks and branches!’
When Martin had mentioned his fear to Andrew Gribble, he’d said, ‘You once told me about the curse of an old Vietnamese woman.’ Andrew had leafed through Martin’s file until he found the relevant notes. ‘You said, “We torched the huts and the surrounding trees. The branches crackled as if the trees were in pain.” Didn’t the woman mention a dragon? Well, isn’t it interesting that the dragon and the snake are frequently related to the tree? For example, Martin, think of Bosch’s Ars Symbolica—Symbol LVII shows a dragon beside the tree of Hesperides. Remember it? So…dragon and snakes, representing primal forces, are frequently associated with the roots of trees.’
Martin strides forward. The ground is soft and slippery, suitable for the type of boots he wore in the army. He walks in a straight line, his being alert to an encounter with the improbable. He imagines a clearing further inside. The sounds of bells and excited chatter. Nora and Sebastian whirling in a
dance of joy around a blazing fire. There’s My-Kim and the old woman. Barry, Stan and the girl soldier Martin had shot. Ken and his accomplices. A lithe young figure. What if they all join hands and dance in a circle? But no…
He sits on a rotting stump. Thinks about Frank, Colin and himself. There is another echo in his ears. The emptiness around him is filled with a child’s laughter. Then the sound of a car horn.
Reluctantly he walks back to the house.
As the car turns onto the sealed road, Martin comments cautiously, ‘It looks like a good property. I didn’t get a chance to check the roof and the water tank.’
‘They’re in good nick,’ Matthew Close promises. ‘I checked them myself the other day.’
‘Well, I can’t make a quick decision.’
‘It’ll be snapped up very soon,’ Close warns him. ‘Shall we discuss it in the office?’
‘I’m not ready.’ Martin is unfazed.
They drive back to Daylesford in silence.
Martin’s curiosity about the town leads him to the Information Centre. The shelves are well stocked with brochures and maps of the region. He reads about one of the best restaurants in country Victoria and about Hepburn Springs. There is a guide to gay and lesbian Daylesford, a leaflet on the art of dowsing and information on family activities around the spa country. There are pamphlets on different forms of therapy available in town. The Massage Healing Centre offers naturopathy, tarot and astrology, and there is a Respite and Rejuvenation Centre. Other places offer Ayurvedic massage, reflexology and aromatherapy.
Martin loiters on the main street then saunters away from the centre of town, towards the lake. On the wooden deck of the waterside cafe he lingers over a long black. Nearby the Book Barn is still open for business. When he’s finished his coffee he walks across.
Inside, he browses quietly and finds a hardbound copy of Erich Fromm’s The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness for himself and a paperback edition of Hart Crane’s poetry for Colin. The shop is warm, echoing faintly with chamber music. He gazes at the calmness of the lake through one of the windows.
