Tales from the Tower, Volume 2

by Isobelle Carmody

  Later, when she had done all she could, she straightened and saw him, surprised all over again at this little man in her shed.

  ‘So. Hello. Good afternoon,’ he said. He was wearing a pale linen suit and a beret, as if he had stepped out of a French film. It was not a labourer’s beret like the leather-trimmed one her father had worn. For a moment she felt a stab of grief, remembering his smell, his forearms – brown and stringy with muscle – straining a fence, tending an animal.

  When she did not respond he went on smoothly, ‘I am forgetting my manners. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Sanek. Otto Sanek. My friends call me Otik. How do you do.’

  ‘How do you do,’ she said, peeling off a glove and feeling his warm, smooth hand in hers. His formality was catching. ‘My name is Greer.’

  ‘Greer?’

  ‘Yes, it’s Scottish.’ She smoothed her hand over her overalls and felt her work-hardened palm jag minutely on the cloth.

  ‘Scottish?’ He was smiling again. ‘I have not been to Scotland, but I hope one day to go. I hear it is beautiful.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’ Her real origins – here, the farm, these pigs – seemed too drab to own.

  Now what? He was standing before her in his little suit as if there were nowhere he would rather be.

  ‘Perhaps, if it is not too much trouble, I could ask you for a glass of water.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  She indicated the door, infected by his civility, and followed him out of the shed. The dogs were dancing on their chains, so she let them loose and they bounded round her, sniffing at the blood on her overalls, wagging their tails and waltzing in circles. She saw that he was chary of them, even little Molly, who was a scruffy charmer and accust- omed to being petted. She ordered them to stay.

  ‘You are wery kind.’ He took off his beret and she noticed that his head was as flat as a flounder, the hair pressed to the back of his skull and dark with sweat. ‘May I?’ He nodded towards a worn backpack and a battered folio under one of the pine trees.

  ‘Of course, bring them onto the verandah.’ She waited for him, then opened the screen door, and they did an awkward little dance on the threshold as he pressed past her, each of them trying not to touch the other.

  ‘Please, take a seat,’ she said, and crossed to the sink to fill two glasses with water. ‘There you are.’ She dragged a chair out from the table and sat opposite him.

  ‘Your health.’ He drank it down in a single draught, and smacked his lips appreciatively. ‘Aaah, thank you so much.’

  She noted the wide forehead and the strong clean planes of his face, as if they had been hewn from wood. It was a head that belonged on a big, strong, handsome man.

  ‘It is rainwater?’

  She nodded, rotating her glass. His skin was fine-grained, spared the desiccation of an Australian childhood.

  ‘There is nothing like it. Delicious.’

  ‘Another?’

  ‘If it’s not too much trouble.’

  She leapt up, conscious of his eyes on her back, her buttocks. This time she filled a jug. Jumping up and down like this was ridiculous.

  She poured him another glass and he tossed it back. His face reminded her of the bust of Cicero on her tutor’s bookcase, with its intelligent brow and soft loose mouth.

  ‘Ah, so good. I am on a long and hungry journey – oh, I beg your pardon, a thirsty journey.’ He laughed, and this time she smiled back.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.

  His eyes slid away, and he said, ‘Actually, I am famished.’

  She was on her feet again, bringing bread and cold pickled pork, a board and knife, a plate. Her own appetite would take some time to return. It was always the way when she killed a pig.

  When she began to slice the meat he took the knife from her, but charmingly, with an ‘Allow me’ and another smile, as slice after slice peeled away, moist and pink.

  ‘None for me,’ she said hurriedly. But he sliced more anyway, then slabs of bread.

  ‘Do you have – what is the word? – lard?’

  And she was off again, bringing the lard pot and setting it before him.

  ‘Wonderful,’ he said, his eyes gleaming. ‘And a little salt perhaps?’

  She fetched the salt and placed it near him, white and crusty in her grandmother’s old crystal dish, the little silver spoon tarnished, she noticed. How she let things go, living alone. Her mother would never have been so careless.

  As he ate, he told her stories, about himself, about the pictures he painted, about books and music and films, all the while biting and chewing, digging lard from the pot with his bread and salting it generously. His gusto, his pleasure in the food – in everything – seemed to loosen a knot somewhere within her. This is what I’ve missed, she thought. This talk about the wider world, about art and ideas rather than just the price of wool and the cost of feed.

  She watched him, intrigued, and scooped up his stories, saving them for later, when she had time to think. She tried from long habit to find words to describe him, but he was too strange, too new, like a piece of music heard for the first time, and so not heard at all. And he made her laugh, pretending his command of English was less than it was, flattering her and offering little wordplays and jokes. She did not know what to think.

  When at last he stopped talking, the plates were all empty. Not a crumb was left of the loaf, and the pork bone was clean and white.

  ‘You were hungry,’ she said.

  ‘I am always hungry,’ he said simply.

  And yet you’re a good doer, she thought, hearing her father’s voice in the words and having to steady herself. How long until she stopped mourning for her parents, dead over a year now? After the accident Charlie had picked her up from university and brought her home. Dear Charlie, her neighbour and friend since primary school, with his slow smile and steady grey eyes. He’d seen her through those first stunned days and months, helped her with the farm, yet it wasn’t enough. She was young; too young to be stuck out here alone. She still hankered for that other life she’d glimpsed at university, of ideas and books.

  ‘Allow me to give you a little gift, to thank you for your kind hospitality.’ He sounded rather grand as he said this, grand and generous and fine.

  She blinked, unsure how to respond.

  He went to the pile of his belongings and fetched the heavy cardboard folio.

  ‘My verk,’ he said, his voice weighty now. He untied the tapes and laid it open before her, lifting aside a sheet of tissue paper carefully.

  They were small paintings in rich, intense colours, of things she had never seen or imagined outside of dreams and nightmares. She looked at them, entranced, drawn into a land she knew from childhood tales. If there were figures, they were solitary and stiff, like toys or dolls, their faces vacant, their eyes blank, peopling fantastic cityscapes, towers and empty squares. They reminded her of the grotesques of Hieronymus Bosch. She struggled to name the disturbing feelings they evoked: loneliness, isolation, rejection, yearning?

  As she laid each one carefully aside, landscapes and abstracts replaced the figurative work, pigment bleeding into fantastic plants or meadows, domes or spires. These she loved. The less he put into the paintings, the more she saw, and the more room there was for her to imagine and dream.

  ‘They’re strange . . . but very beautiful.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I would like you to have one, for the meal. A little one. These big ones are for my show.’

  How could she choose? She went through them care- fully once more, setting aside the bizarre figures and keeping the smoky landscapes.

  ‘Or if you do not find one that you like, perhaps I could paint your farm, or your livestock . . .’

  ‘My pigs?’ She snorted.

  ‘Your pigs are beautiful! I love the pigs.’ He laughed at her reserve. ‘Mr Orwell was not kind to the pigs, but we know better.’ At the ‘we’, she felt the hard knot inside her slip a little more.
r />   ‘Please, show me your farm.’ He pulled a small sketchbook from his pocket, and a mechanical pencil of some sort, and said with another charming smile, ‘I am ready.’

  ‘What do you want to see?’ she said, grabbing Spinner by the collar as he pranced up to the door with a stick in his mouth.

  ‘Everything. Everything on this very fine farm.’ He quickly took command of their walk, opening gates and doors with a flourish, gallantly ushering her into her own sheds. All of it was wonderful – unlike his own country, but magnificent. The orchard, that was a little like home, but there they had cherries, whereas here? Yes, Greer assured him, there were cherries, planted by her grandparents. The hens scratching under the trees were very nice – how many eggs each day? And the pigs, such fine beasts. He lingered over them, especially the piglets.

  ‘Do you eat them?’ he asked.

  ‘No! They’re only babies.’

  ‘But with the apple? Suckling pig – she would be delicious.’

  When he said delicious, he made a wet sound with his mouth that Greer found slightly repellent, but she quickly smothered the feeling. Here was an artist, a real artist, admiring her pigs, her farm, giving it back to her transformed.

  She laughed. ‘I’d soon be poor if I sold them off at that size.’

  ‘Yes?’ He nodded, and began to question her about the price of full-grown pigs, her profits, the living she made here. She would have minded if it were anyone else, but there was something so open, so frank about the questions that they seemed guileless.

  ‘May I watch?’ she said as he sketched one of the sows. Piglets were lined up along her belly suckling and nudging at the soft dugs. He nodded, concentrating. His hand was deft and quick, and he drew with a sureness that made her marvel, the lines economical and expressive. And yet the piglets looked strange when he had finished. Exotic, Greer told herself, as if he saw them through an old-world filter. She thought of the sinuous eucalypts in early colonial paintings squeezed into the mould of a birch or alder because their forms and colours were too novel for European sensibilities. For a moment she thought she glimpsed things through his eyes, and saw her farm grown suddenly unfamiliar. Do we always see only what we expect to see? she wondered. Even the artists and poets?

  She wanted to ask him, to say that making poetry was like drawing or painting, that it required the same fresh glance, the same sifting and shaping, but she could not find the words. Often days passed on the farm when Greer spoke to no one but the pigs and the dogs, and when she did meet someone, her voice felt rusty and dry, and she could think of nothing to say. Small talk had never been small for Greer.

  Since her parents had died, words had sometimes deserted her utterly, and she worried that she would become mute. Yet on good days, when she sat at her desk to write, words came unbidden and she folded them into her small, spare poems with a deep pleasure.

  The old smokehouse her father had built sent him into ecstasies; it was just like the ones at home. She smiled at his enthusiasm. Charlie, however much he’d admired the farm, would never say much more than, ‘You’ve got a nice set-up here.’

  ‘Do you make sausage? Salami? Hams?’

  ‘No. When my father was alive, he—’

  ‘But Greer,’ he cut across her, ‘you could make much money from selling these . . . these . . .’

  ‘Smallgoods?’

  ‘Yes, these small goods. Much money.’

  She wanted to laugh. Raised never to discuss religion, politics or money, Greer felt suddenly liberated by his complete indifference to social niceties. He was like a child who says loudly what everyone is thinking but is too afraid to utter.

  Then they were back at the killing shed, and he hesitated outside the door to the cool room.

  ‘The blood will still be good,’ he said. ‘Shall I show you how we make blood pudding? Blood pudding you could sell, also.’

  She felt a warm rush of nostalgia. ‘My dad loved black pudding.’

  ‘Barley first,’ he said, once they were back in the kitchen and the blood had been salted and thinned with vinegar. ‘It must be soaked. Do you have . . .?’

  She didn’t.

  ‘But you will have oatmeal. Good Scotch woman will not be without oatmeal.’ He grinned at her, another little joke.

  She returned the smile and brought the rolled oats.

  He scooped up a quantity with both hands and dropped it into a bowl, passed it to her and indicated the tap. ‘Plenty of your good rainwater to soak . . . no – more, more.’

  She did as she was told, and had just set it down when he said, ‘Now fat. That beautiful fat I saw on your pig this afternoon. It is perfect. We need—’ He indicated with his hands the amount, then said, ‘And bring belly fat. I will show you how to make škvarky, another very good dish.’

  She strode out to the carcass, aware of every inch of her body, feeling that she might skip, or dance, or run for the sheer delight of it, as children do. She remembered the story of stone soup her mother had told her when she was a little girl, the cunning stranger drawing what he needed from his witless host. They had laughed about it, both confident that they would never be so gullible. Greer cut away enough of the creamy fat to fill a basin, then some liver and lights for the dogs, and strips of belly fat.

  His eyes glistened when she gave him the basin, and he sank his hands into it, slicing and cubing the fat in a trice.

  ‘Onions now, please.’

  Greer fetched the basket and he took three large ones, cut them in half, slipped off their skins and sliced them with startling haste.

  ‘Butter next, and your biggest frying pan.’

  The kitchen soon filled with the smell of frying onions, and he issued more instructions: the oatmeal drained, a large bowl, salt, pepper, paprika?

  Greer shook her head.

  ‘I have my own supply,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. You are not the first in this primitive country to lack paprika!’ He slipped outside and returned with a small tin of reddish spice which he sprinkled over the oatmeal. Then he tipped the onions into the bowl and blended everything together with his hands.

  ‘Now, blood, please.’

  She obeyed.

  ‘It is best to use before it . . .’

  ‘Clots?’

  ‘Yes, clots. Pour it in until I say no.’ She did so, her stomach turning at the texture, which reminded her of curdling milk. He began to mix and squeeze the bloody mass, and Greer realised she had only ever seen someone use their hands to mix scone dough or pastry. This looked alien and slightly disgusting.

  ‘Ah, this reminds me of my papa. He made the best blood pudding – No!’

  She stopped pouring at once.

  ‘This is enough.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  He frowned. ‘Mother is dead.’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

  ‘No need. She was mad. Best she is dead.’

  When he had worked the mixture to an even consis- tency, he set the bowl aside, spread a tea towel over it, and said, ‘While it cools, we will prepare the . . . what do you call this?’ He indicated the mound of his belly.

  ‘Stomach?’

  ‘No, within.’

  ‘Oh, guts?’

  ‘Guts? No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Intestines, innards, entrails.’

  ‘Intestines.’

  ‘I feed them to the dogs, or bury them.’

  ‘Greer, you must not. You need them for your sausage! Come, I will show you. They are not yet given to the dogs, I am hoping?’ Seeing her expression, he waved a hand. ‘No matter, we can use cloth instead. We need no intestines, then.’

  The blood pudding was finally seething in a pudding cloth when he sat down to paint. He unpacked a small travelling paintbox, the colours vivid as gems, and opened a cloth pouch of brushes.

  ‘May I verk here? On the kitchen table?’ he asked politely, sliding the lunch dishes to one end.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Please, some more
water. Two jars is enough.’

  She fetched them, and sat opposite him.

  ‘This pudding,’ he declared as he loaded a brush with crimson, ‘is not traditional way. But this is good for you Scotch people. Haggis, you call it?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Next time when you kill the pig, you must have tubes all ready. Waste nothing, my father always says.’

  He seemed to forget her then, concentrating on the paint.

  What could she offer him in return for all he’d brought her? What did she have that would do?

  ‘I write poetry,’ she said. It came out baldly. ‘I—’

  ‘So, a poet. “Here with a loaf of bread beneath a bough, a flask of vine, a book of werse . . .”’

  She laughed.

  ‘You have a book of werse?’ He smiled broadly. ‘You are published poet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must show me this book.’

  His attention shifted to the stripped ham bone before she could get up and fetch a copy of her book. ‘Will you make soup?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, awed. His appetite for food – for life – seemed unquenchable.

  ‘The pudding is done, I think.’

  Greer fetched plates, forks, knives and napkins, the sight of the two settings on the kitchen table lifting her spirits as it always did, even when it was only Charlie dropping by for lunch.

  ‘Beer is the drink to have with blood pudding,’ Otto said rather wistfully.

  ‘I’ve got beer. In the cellar. Wait a bit.’ Charlie was the only one who ever drank her father’s home brew.

  By the time she returned with a bottle in each hand, the plates were piled with slices of steaming pudding, its strange cloying smell filling her nostrils. She poured them a glass each, and set the bottle between them.

  ‘Bon appétit,’ he said.

  ‘Cheers.’ She heard how casual that sounded, almost childish, and speared a slice of the pudding, tasting it. It was good, livery, rich and savoury, but with a bitter aftertaste, and too strong to eat alone. She left the table and brought tomatoes and salad greens, a handful of little carrots, and her last loaf.