Tales from the Tower, Volume 2

by Isobelle Carmody

  ‘Good?’ He smiled at her.

  ‘Yes, good,’ she said, and returned the smile. It was a long time since she had sat with someone at this table, and she felt a sudden wash of happiness.

  After the meal they sat and talked. He had finished the blood pudding and half the bread, emptied both bottles of beer, and they had begun on a bottle of whisky her parents had kept at the back of the pantry. Bolstered by the generous slug Otto had poured them both, Greer remembered studying Holan and Seifert, the only poets she knew from his part of the world, and offered them to him as a sort of surety, but when she moved on to the Russians he stopped her.

  ‘Russians I hate,’ he said.

  ‘But surely their writing . . .’

  ‘Yes yes, but still I hate them.’ He smiled. ‘At school we must learn Russian language, Russian books, Russian music. Enough!’ He laughed. ‘I still remember the smell of Russians in my country.’

  ‘Surely not.’

  ‘Surely yes. They stink of cologne.’ He poured more whisky for himself. ‘Will I tell you how I escaped from them?’

  Greer nodded, with some of the gleeful anticipation she felt when her mother asked her, ‘Will we have another chapter?’ Perhaps she was drunk.

  She listened while Otto told the story of his escape, full of bravado and audacity and humour, and she found herself laughing, then almost at once pitying him, and soon after admiring his courage. Surely no one she knew had ever had to make such decisions, or risk so much. It was . . . heroic, she thought rather muzzily.

  The night ticked by, and what would happen next loomed between them, but Greer was unable to speak, despite the whisky. Eventually, he drained his glass, rose to his feet, bowed, and said he would be on his way.

  ‘Where will you go?’

  He smiled at her winningly. ‘That depends rather much on where I am.’

  She ran a hand through her hair. Why hadn’t she washed it? ‘Well, it’s a good hour to town if you go by the road.’

  ‘I see.’ He was serious now.

  There was an awkward silence.

  ‘I will go. You have been wery kind. I have been wery happy today.’ He got up and cleared the plates. ‘But first I will vash the dishes, as my mother taught me. Verk first, with Mother, always verk.’

  ‘No, please don’t worry. I’ll wash them with the breakfast things. Saves water.’ It sounded too curt.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘If you would like to stay here, there’s a spare room,’ she blurted. ‘It’s late to be walking, and where would you stay when you get there?’

  ‘Ah, you are far too kind, Greer, but thank you. I would like that very much.’ His lips formed a little moue, as if he were savouring that last word, as he had savoured the blood pudding.

  She woke late. Greer, who never overslept, who was at her desk before the sun rose, woke to sunlight streaming through the window and groaned. She leapt up, guilty, climbing into her work clothes unwashed, unbrushed – the hair would have to wait another day.

  The kitchen smelt of fat, and the table was set with food from the pantry. Had he eaten breakfast? There were no dirty dishes, but he had left his crockery and cutlery in the dish drainer, neat in all things, and in the sink were the shells of half-a-dozen eggs. The bread tin was empty, but on the bench there was a bowl with a few cubes of greasy crackling – what had he called it? Škvarky? Weighed down with a knife was a small sketch of the dead pig, with a few touches of colour and an inscription – Thank you Grir – in a baroque hand.

  She stared at the sketch. Did she like it? The disturbing slit in the pig’s body was black and ragged, the gash in the throat a charred scarlet. Was it weirdly erotic or weirdly perverse?

  He had gone, and taken his paintings with him. Why hadn’t she chosen one when she had the chance? He had appeared and disappeared so suddenly she might have conjured him up, were it not for the empty plates in her pantry and this one small sketch. It was as if the little man had come from the land of wonders, of reverie and art, his paintings like souvenirs from that strange and marvellous place which she, a simple poet – no, be honest, a farmer – had only glimpsed now and then. Still, she believed she could recognise the signs of it in his work. He had the secret, she was sure of it.

  She propped the picture carefully on a shelf, downed a glass of water, fighting the undertow of disappointment and self-doubt that seemed to be her lot now that she was alone. Why had she slept so late? She should not have let him slip away.

  The dogs were scratching at the back door, and she stepped outside and squatted down to them, burying her face for a moment in Spinner’s silky coat. Count your blessings, she told herself in her mother’s no-nonsense voice, but there was only the clamour of the pigs for their food, and the dogs’ polite hints, and this huge thirst in her. Salt or alcohol, she thought, draining another glass of water, or both.

  Molly and Spinner wolfed down their dry tack, then followed her to the pig paddock, where the weaners were pressing their snouts through the fence and shrilling to be fed. She banged the slop bucket, calling, ‘Pig, pig, pig,’ and they followed her to the troughs. The farm had long outgrown slops, but still she took her peelings and kitchen waste and added it to the grain and pig feed. Yes, the pigs were beautiful. She could admit it now that he had said it, the artist. The smell, too, was part of the odour of childhood, familiar. For a moment she watched them, leaning over to scratch a scaly neck or two before heading back to the house and her morning’s work.

  Watching the black-and-white pigs rootling for tender shoots, she wondered what her parents would have said about letting them wander, and what they would have made of the artist, but the dead keep their counsel. At times, even now, she felt their deaths as a dragging weight, and missed their steady love and clear good sense. Month by month they faded. Perhaps she had rubbed away the lustre from her memories as she worked them into those raw, abrupt poems. She had been surprised when they were published, and then favourably reviewed, surprised they were reviewed at all. Best, though, was the note from a favourite poet expressing his admiration. He wished he had written one of the poems himself, he said. She kept the letter in the old blackwood box of her father’s, along with her mother’s rings and the single strand of pearls that Greer could still not bring herself to try on.

  Eat, she told herself. You are just hungry. Eat and then work. But today her commands could not contain the wash of yearning that stopped her for moments and left her staring at nothing, or rather at fragmented images, flickering like an old black-and-white film: a toddler with flaring sun-glitter on her hair, the dark bulk of a man. That day she felt chock-full of longings, for a family to wrap around herself, replacing all she had lost.

  She was driving back from town a week later when she saw a figure on the side of the road, hefting an assortment of bags. Otto! She swung the ute off the road and braked hard.

  He leant in at her window, smiling broadly, and she smelt his sweat.

  ‘Greer. I am coming to see you. I have the photographs. May I?’ He piled his belongings into the back and bounced into the passenger seat.

  ‘Look at this!’ he exclaimed, waving a hand at the bleached summer paddocks. ‘This grass you must paint with Naples yellow and white, and perhaps a very little Payne’s grey. What a landscape!’

  ‘I always think summer grass is the colour of sheep,’ she said, and smiled at him. She could not say such things to anyone else.

  All the way home he exclaimed at the beauty of the high clouds, the line of hills, dropping the names of painters into the conversation which she pretended to recognise, or knew a little.

  ‘Such a long walk,’ he said with a sigh, easing his bags down beside the kitchen table.

  ‘Have a seat,’ she said, dropping her own bags beside the fridge. ‘I’ll put the kettle on. Are you hungry?’

  ‘I am always hungry,’ he said again, grinning, and this time she laughed. ‘But I will cook, and you will see what I have done. Here, you sit down and
look at these.’

  He busied himself while she set out the photographs on the kitchen table, disappointed for a moment that they were all black-and-white. She had been expecting the same gorgeous colour as the paintings. But soon she forgot, and when he placed an omelette beside her, she ate absently, her eyes on the pictures of what must be her farm, for the images were cryptic, the light mysterious. In one, the pig’s body lay on the heavy drape of its own skin, its fat creamy and pure. In another, rosebuds of raw flesh gleamed on trotters where the hoofs had been hooked away. The entrails were like a Dutch still life, glistening, coiled and weighty. And most surprising of all was Greer herself, suddenly beautiful, the sheen of sweat on her arm as she turned the carcass, the line of her back, ribs corrugating the old singlet as she bent over the cavity to free the lungs. She had never seen herself like this; never seen her place like this. He had given it back to her renewed.

  ‘You see, this is very beautiful,’ he said, running a finger over a photograph to trace the line of her neck. ‘You have a long neck—’ He repeated the gesture, almost touching her, and she went still and held her breath, heat flooding through her.

  Next morning, she lay in bed, sore and dull, the sheet pulled up to her chin and one hand cupped between her legs. None of this had she imagined, even in her most florid fantasies. Such . . . greed. He had wolfed her down when she had wanted to be tasted and savoured, to be touched tenderly, appreciatively, to be known.

  When she had sought his mouth he had turned his head sharply – almost in disgust, she thought now. ‘I don’t like to kiss,’ he’d said, and rolled her away from him, butting at her from behind.

  Grow up, she told herself now. This is a man, not some timid romantic boy. But she felt her throat constrict as she pressed the weal on her shoulder where he had sunk his teeth into her. The bones of her pelvis ached and she needed to cry.

  Now the sun was up and she could hear busy, cheerful sounds from the kitchen. Soon he appeared with a laden tray – fragrant coffee and slabs of fried bread giving off the savoury stink of garlic. He was happy, and seeing him, Greer had to smile too.

  ‘I am thinking all night of the smokehouse,’ he said, giving her the tray and taking his own plate over to the window. ‘Salami, prosciutto, sausage, hams—’ he waved his fork, ‘—you can do all. Greer, you have the goldmine.’

  It was not what she had expected.

  There was a small silence, and then he said, ‘You are very beautiful woman, Greer. I have made picture of you. Would you like to see?’

  It was in his sketchbook, a Neolithic Venus, breasts and hips amplified, head shrunk to an apple on a long stalk. Was that her – Greer, the artist’s muse? There was something in the proportions, in the distortions, and the lines were sure and elegant. She was flattered.

  And so the little man crept into her heart, and into her bed. Never would he tolerate her kisses or caresses, starting away from her as if her touch burned him. But she told herself it was early days – a man and woman needed time to learn about each other – and perhaps, in some dark place, she welcomed the brute force, the compulsion.

  Each evening when she came in from work, the smell of linseed oil seemed like the smell of promise. They ate vast meals and he talked about the smokehouse and the market for smallgoods. She studied him, enjoying his enthusiasm and the pleasure he took in everything. And they talked, about books and philosophy, art and music, the old cities of Europe and their bloody history, skating over them at dizzying speed. This, at last, was life. Greer wanted to dig deeper, to develop her ideas, but he was always off on something new.

  She loved to see his paints and jars and brushes, the sketchbooks open on the kitchen table, the sequence of bizarre still lifes he was creating. In his paintings, Otto transformed the contents of her cupboards: her grand- mother’s yellow porcelain bowl supported a nesting bird with extravagant plumage; a grove of old bone-handled knives, silver spoons and forks grew from the hill at the back of her farm; her cast-iron pot became an unlikely vessel afloat on a darkening sea; and a pig flew over a pile of her books. They were images from a child’s fantastical world, and Greer was entranced to see the stuff of her life, grown invisible to her through long use and habit, transformed into art. She puzzled over the paintings but could find no meaning in them. Poetry often required effort. Like all good art, it didn’t always open itself on a first reading, but demanded something of the reader. Why could she not see beneath the surface of his paintings? Art for her demanded the deepest honesty and the clearest sight, or it failed. There must be some lack in me, she thought, but still she was captivated.

  Sometimes he would be there, bent over his small easel; at other times he would disappear for half a day, or a whole evening, coming home long after she’d gone to bed. Perhaps he went in search of new things to paint or to photograph. Greer felt unable to ask yet, her own place in his life still tenuous and undefined.

  Within a month she found herself able to pack up her parents’ clothes and possessions and store their bed in the barn. ‘It is best, Greer,’ Otto had said kindly. ‘I help you. It will be my studio, this room. Something new. You will see. It is best to forget the past.’

  The dressing table would be good for drawing, he insisted, and his pleasure in the room carried her along as she collected her mother’s few cosmetics and tipped them into a bin. The brush, still smelling faintly of her hair, Greer pushed to the back of her own underwear drawer.

  As she sorted and packed, she told him stories, to make him a gift of her childhood, and the parents he would never meet. She showed him her mother’s few bits of jewellery, catching the worn ring in her palm and giving it a squeeze, rubbing the pearls with her thumb.

  ‘I used to fiddle with this ring while my mother read to me. It’s one of my earliest memories. Those magical stories, and her warm weight on the bed . . .’

  ‘It is gold?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  She told him about the rare times her mother had worn the pearls to a dance or a wedding, and how beautiful she appeared to her small daughter, her dark eyes gleaming, her lips an unaccustomed red.

  ‘They are valuable?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never had them valued. I always put off wearing them until . . . I don’t know . . . until I became a woman, I suppose.’

  ‘This room is good for me,’ Otto mused. ‘The light is excellent.’

  The strand of pearls trickled through her fingers into their case and she snapped it shut.

  ‘This warze will do for my brushes.’ He indicated a vase with a rich green glaze.

  ‘Oh, that one belonged to my great-great-grandmother. My mother used to fill it with blossom – she had a knack with flowers – and hawthorn berries in autumn. I don’t think . . .’

  ‘Ah, Greer, you are such a bourgeois,’ he said. ‘It is only a warze – so ugly.’ He smiled. ‘These things, they do not matter.’

  And they didn’t, because Greer was happy, busier than she had ever been, but able to watch Otto while he painted, increasingly confident that he possessed the key to a door that would open onto that larger and more intense world which she had glimpsed in her single year at university. Both her parents had been readers, and she came from generations of self-taught farmers, but she was the first to go to university, and had always felt the two parts of herself, daughter and student, chafing against each other. In the grief and shock of her parents’ death, she had done what was necessary. The poems had been both a way to honour her parents and an attempt to regain some of what she had lost, to reinsert herself into the world of poetry readings, small-press magazines and slim, hand-stitched chapbooks.

  Otto talked of the smokehouse often. His best memories, he told her, were of his father smoking sausages when he was a boy – the mingled smells of garlic and pork and wood smoke, and the taste – there was nothing like it. Greer thought she recognised the voice of longing and loss, and pitied his homelessness. She wanted only what he wanted, but she was practical, and b
egan to anticipate what must be done to please him. ‘We must make it modern, though, Otto. It must be clean, and it must be bigger than your father’s to make sense commercially.’

  She did her research in the evenings, when she came in from work. Otto would have a joint on to roast, the kitchen smelling wonderfully of garlic and onions and spices. He would pile their plates with meat and potatoes, and they would eat and drink until Greer pleaded satiety, then, feeling heavy but content, she would return to the computer until late.

  Soon people from the city began to call to see the artist at work, or people Otto had met at a gallery, or on a bus, old friends perhaps. Often she would come in from mucking out the pens to find her kitchen full of people, all talking and laughing and admiring his latest paintings. The air smelled of cooking and fresh coffee and he would pour her a cup, solicitous and kind in front of them. ‘Greer, sit here. Would you like water also?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She felt shy, clumsy in her soiled work clothes, and un- used to so many people and so much chatter. But it had been one of her secret wishes, for a world where people talked about more than the drought, or the price of fertiliser; where they lived different lives from her parents, from Charlie; where she was not so odd. Perhaps this was the beginning.

  Often they talked late into the night, wine bottles accumulating on the table, the coffee pot refilled. When she woke, bleary and thick-headed, in the morning, humps of bedding would cover the sofas and the door to the spare room would be shut. She would tiptoe outside into the day, closing the screen door carefully behind her.

  Her poetry notebooks were untouched – she had neither the solitude nor the energy for her early-morning drafts, but she kept a small pad in the pocket of her overalls to jot down fleeting images and lines, hoping that one day she would have time. Each night she fell into bed too exhausted to read, but life was good, life was rich and exciting with Otto. The house filled with the things he made or found. He hewed firewood into crude beasts, torsos or heads and set them in the garden and beside the drive. He lined a discarded mudlark’s nest with a lace doily and displayed it on the mantelpiece, and wove corn dollies out of straw, hanging them in the window. His view of the world was as fresh and unspoilt as a child’s, and she loved him for it.