Tales from the Tower, Volume 2

by Isobelle Carmody

  The half-built studio was on a rise overlooking the orchard, which had been sold to people from the city. They had pulled out half the trees to clear a large building site, but left most of the rest, for which Greer was grateful, as she was for the money, but she felt a deep shame over the loss of the orchard. She had failed her family, failed herself. The rustic building she had envisaged for the studio, with its recycled timber and second-hand windows, quivered and dissolved. Otto insisted on double-glazed industrial windows from floor to ceiling, ‘for the light’; masonry walls for a stable environment for his papers; water was necessary, and a toilet, and also a small kitchen. And proper heating. Greer tried to talk to him about the mounting costs, but he flew into a rage. ‘You who have so much begrudge me this? How can I paint if I have no studio? I am an artist! Where can I work? I cannot print in your little kitchen! It is dirty. Painting is dirty. You do not want me and my dirty paints when you have your little baby.’

  He was jealous, Greer reasoned, and felt touched. She’d be less blunt when next they talked, she promised herself. But each time they fought, she would find something broken, or missing. The shattered green vase she found pushed to the back of the wardrobe. Her mother’s pearls, gleaming in a dark still life with a china teacup and a silver spoon, simply disappeared. When she asked about a crystal ewer, he looked at her with such loathing that Greer, worried she would drive him away once and for all, learned to be mute. Children needed two parents, she was convinced. Her baby must have a father. She should practise detachment, like the Buddhists. She should not put such store in mere things.

  ‘You are losing weight, Greer. Are you eating sensibly?’ The midwife jotted down the figure with a frown.

  ‘Yes, I . . .’ In truth she was often too tired to eat, or felt too unsettled.

  ‘You are pregnant. You need to eat and rest. If you don’t, you will endanger the health of your baby.’

  Greer’s eyes prickled with tears and her hands, gripped in her lap, blurred and swam. She nodded. There was nothing to say. She had to work, now more than ever. Otto was travelling again, organising exhibitions he said, in a chain of galleries in several big cities. He had to be there in person to close the deal. Without Otto to share meals with, she often fell asleep in her clothes, too exhausted to eat, and woke later, shaking with hunger and fatigue.

  Greer had been to the bank manager to try to extend the term of the mortgage and borrow a little more, but there was no sign of the warmth he had shown Otto. ‘If you need to borrow money for daily expenses, you are not managing your finances or your business properly,’ he said coldly. ‘No offence.’ This time there was no convenient block to sell. The rest of her land was on four large titles and if she sold one of them, she would have to rearrange the rotation of her paddocks and lose good cropping land, but it was that or lose the farm, which secured the mortgage. She sold one, and somehow it was Charlie who managed to buy it, and pay a fair price, even though he knew she was desperate.

  When Greer’s waters broke, almost a month early, it was Charlie she called. He did not mention his own farm, or the shearing waiting for him, or Otto, a capable man, living with her but apparently unable to work, and now gadding around Europe . . . He just came when she needed him and said nothing. Charlie would never understand that Otto was an artist, and therefore exempt from the rules that governed the lives of others, but the effort of explaining it all was beyond her.

  On the trip to hospital, feeling her body in the grip of a powerful spasm that she had seen often enough in her labouring sows, she remembered to tell him that her best sow had just farrowed, and needed to be watched. ‘Not to worry,’ he said, ‘I’ll keep an eye on the litter and I can feed the pigs and the dogs till you’re back on your feet.’

  The baby was born underweight but healthy, his little limbs thin as twigs, his old man’s face rehearsing expressions from the grandfather he would never know. Greer loved her son with a ferocity that frightened her. When the midwives carried him off to the nursery and exhorted her to rest, she felt a painful tug in her chest, as if there really were heartstrings that could stretch unbearably.

  Three days after the birth, she woke to sunshine and the sound of Otto’s laugh. ‘You are too kind,’ she heard him say. Then there was more laughter, and one of the midwives showed him into the room bearing an enormous bouquet of brightly coloured flowers.

  ‘Aren’t they divine! I’ll get a vase for you while you meet your beautiful son. We’ll need a big one.’

  ‘Ah, please. I am so grateful.’

  When she had gone, he walked to the window and said, ‘So, you are okay here, in a private room?’

  ‘Yes, they want me to rest, and it was too noisy in the ward.’

  ‘And the food?’

  ‘Yes, it’s fine. Do you—’

  ‘Thank you, but I have eaten. You know how it is on planes; always they feed you.’

  ‘I mean, do you want to see the baby?’

  ‘I have, I have. The nurses showed me. Look, I have already made a sketch.’

  He took out a beautiful leather-bound sketchbook and flipped through until he found the page, holding out a drawing of a waif, the little wisp of baby hair transformed into a ragged crest, the mouth lolling open.

  ‘Oh, may I?’ The midwife set the vase down on the floor and hurried over. ‘You’re an artist! How wonderful. Oh, what a lucky boy to have his portrait painted before he’s a week old.’

  Otto smiled modestly. ‘Look through it if you would like,’ he said. ‘Most are from Paris.’

  Greer put her baby to the breast as she had been shown, self-conscious now that Otto was sitting opposite her, sketching. Everyone, it seemed, had been in to marvel and exclaim over the drawings, and now it was the turn of the lactation consultant. ‘Look,’ Otto said, holding up his latest sketch. ‘Greedy Otichek.’ The baby’s mouth was enlarged, his cheeks ballooning, as if he would swallow his mother whole.

  Greer felt tears threaten, for in reality her milk had not come in, and the baby fretted, which made her anxious and clumsy.

  ‘This is quite normal,’ the lactation expert reassured her. ‘Nothing to worry about. Just relax and you’ll be fine.’ But Otik continued to lose weight, and Greer felt that she was failing him.

  Otto was ebullient when he came to collect her. ‘Wait till you see,’ he said, shepherding her out of the ward.

  ‘Are you sure he’ll be all right?’ she asked the midwife escorting them to the door. ‘He’s so thin—’

  ‘He is fine,’ Otto said with a broad smile. ‘Isn’t he fine?’

  ‘Yes,’ the woman said, smiling back at him. ‘Don’t worry so much, Greer. Go home now. Rest, and enjoy your baby. He’ll soon be back to his birth weight.’

  On the drive back to the farm Otto said, ‘I have painted little Otichek. A whole series. It is my best verk, I think. Wait till you see.’

  Greer clutched at this sign of paternal feeling. Such a warm, generous man could not fail to be a good father, she thought, given time. She turned in her seat to check on the baby, and smiled to see him sleeping.

  They pulled up by the house and Otto leapt out of the car. ‘Come, you will see.’

  ‘But the baby . . .’

  ‘He is sleeping. Let him lie. Come on. This is my baby.’

  Her raw senses recoiled at the reek of linseed and varnish as he opened the door, but she followed him through to the living room, ignoring the fumes. The paintings were propped against the walls, and her first impression was of rich dark surfaces slashed with scarlet.

  ‘This is old story about foolish woman,’ Otto said, ‘who wanted baby most of all. Here she is. And here she finds baby – you see? It is piece of wood . . .’

  ‘A stump.’ Her voice came out flat and dull.

  The nuggety baby had roots for legs and branches for arms; the fingers were twisted twigs, the head a block.

  ‘He cries for food, all the time. See, he is greedy like little Otichek.’

 
Now the stump was slashed across in red to form a gaping toothless mouth. Around him were scattered broken plates and cups. Greer thought she heard a faint cry and turned her head.

  ‘The more he eats the more he wants,’ said Otto, ‘until he has eaten all.’

  The stump baby confronted his foolish mother and father, who stood side by side looking almost as wooden as their son.

  ‘Still he cries, but there is no more. So he eats up Father.’

  Greer had fallen silent, listening as she stared at the painting of the father half engulfed by the monstrous child, his face impassive.

  ‘Next he eats up Mother. That is the thanks she gets.’

  ‘Otto, I think I can hear—’

  ‘And now he goes outside to eat more. He eats up all the pigs . . .’

  Greer saw that the pigs were her own Wessex Saddlebacks, their black-and-white bodies despoiled and bloody, crammed into the giant mouth.

  ‘Then off to the village to eat more. First a girl . . .’

  The girl’s face, frozen in horror, filled much of the painting, her upper arms gripped by the twig hands of the monstrous infant. Was it Eva? The baby was crying, she could hear it clearly now.

  ‘Next he eats up horse and cart and farmer with it. And then sheeps and sheep farmer and dogs.’ There were Molly and Spinner; a trotting horse and sulky from the stud across the road, driven by an old man; Charlie and his merinos. Greer felt her breasts prickle and sweat dampen her face, but Otto seemed unaware of her silence, gazing at his work with pleasure.

  ‘Ah, but here is trouble. Next he meets the old mother.’

  Greer recognised the Judy character with her axe, but her whole attention was on the cry, which had intensified and now pulsed through her. She felt a cramp low in her belly, and half turned towards the door. ‘Otto, I can hear the baby. Just wait a moment and I’ll fetch him.’

  ‘He is fine. You will spoil him if you run to him like this. I am showing you my work. Look.’ He took her by the arm and turned her back to the pictures. ‘Here he says, “I have eaten up all the food – mother, father, pigs, girl, horse, cart, farmer . . .”’ he pointed to each painting as he listed the gargantuan meal, ‘“sheeps, farmer again, dogs, and now you, old woman.”’

  Greer took in the old woman standing on the monster’s shoulder with her dripping axe, the wooden chest opened from gullet to guts. She felt milk leak from her and dampen her shirt.

  ‘“No, you do not eat me!” she cries, and she splits him open with axe.’ Otto chopped at the palm of one hand with the side of the other, and Greer flinched. The baby’s cries had risen to such a pitch that Greer could hardly endure it.

  Animals and people tumbled out of the sooty red cavern of the monster’s chest and belly, like entrails from a butchered carcass, or a parody of birth.

  ‘And never more does mother say “I want little baby”,’ Otto concluded. Greer turned and rushed out to the car, fumbling over the capsule straps, haste making her clumsy, and gathered the hot little sobbing body to her chest, crooning and swaying as she walked back into the house.

  Otto was still studying his pictures when Greer returned and settled herself in her father’s armchair. Struggling to make her voice calm, she said, ‘You’ve painted your mother? With the axe?’

  ‘Yes, and Father, too. See, in the cart with the horse. He is Grandpapa now. I have told him about little Otik.’

  The baby was hiccuping, pressing his cheek against her, so Greer pulled up her shirt and put him to the breast. The baby cast around for the nipple, a stuttering cry starting up. She cupped his soft head and guided him onto the breast. Was he attached properly? Her hands were trembling, but she looked up and smiled. ‘I’m glad you’ve told him. You must tell me what he said.’ Little Otik was suckling, and she knew that she must calm herself, must live these days to the full, and enjoy her baby as the midwife had said. She smoothed the pale down on his head and watched the tiny fist curling against her breast. Something would happen.

  And it did. Greer came down with pneumonia, a virulent form of the disease that had her back in the small local hospital before she’d had a chance to settle little Otik into the nursery. This time it was the intensive care ward. Her fever was so high that she felt ethereal, thin and hot and free from care, as if the dross in her were being burned off. Her dreams were vivid and strange, and full of fire. The smokehouse was burning, tussocks of flame sprouting from the windows.

  She woke once, weeping, because her dead parents had come to her, had looked down at their new grandchild as if to bless him, and had laid their hands on her bowed head in a sort of benediction. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, like a refrain, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been such a fool.’

  She had woken again to a baby crying, or so she thought confusedly, but there was no baby, and she wept and tried to submerge herself in the same dream but dreamed instead of little Otik. In the nightmare he was glistening with lard, lying trussed on a baking dish surrounded by chopped vegetables. The heat radiating from the dish beat against her forehead and cheeks and neck, and she woke gasping, sticky with sweat, her heart hammering. Otto was there, at the nurses’ station, with the baby capsule on his arm. He was laughing with the nurses, his round face shining and taut, as if the skin were stretched tight enough to split, and yet still he charmed them. When had he grown so fat? How had she not noticed? The baby was crying. She knew the baby was crying, she could feel it in her breasts, in the prickle and leak of milk. Where was he? Who was feeding her baby?

  When she dreamed again, she was in a forest, the trees reaching down their gnarled branches to catch at her, tangling in her hair, scrabbling at the infant in her arms. She recognised her own orchard, transformed by sleep. She had betrayed the trees. They stooped to engulf her, but she struggled to escape, plucking at her arm to release a clinging tendril; then the old Judy was there, with her axe on one arm, and a tightly swaddled baby on the other. Her face was riven by creases and cracks, as if she had endured a lifetime of care and hard work. Greer was glad to see the axe. ‘Who are you?’ she croaked, but the crone did not speak.

  She woke to find an old nurse thumbing the tape on her intravenous drip.

  ‘You mustn’t pull it out. Leave it be now. Try to sleep.’

  The mild words filled Greer with sorrow, and tears seeped from her eyelids and ran down into her ears, wetting the pillow under her neck. It was too hard. Life was too hard. She wanted to rest and let someone else shoulder these burdens for a while. Just till she was well again. She wanted to lie with her small son and gaze into his smoky eyes and think of nothing.

  Greer returned to herself slowly, and as she did, the ache to see her little boy, to be home again, became almost unbearable. The nurses taught her to express milk herself, now that she was feeling stronger, but why didn’t they bring the baby to her? She asked for a phone, but nobody answered when she called home. Where could he be? She called again an hour later, but the phone rang out. He had not been to see her, apart from that one hazy visit, and as the afternoon and then the evening passed, she became first anxious, then panicky, then frantic. How many days had she been here? Who was caring for her little boy? She had to get home. But the nurse absolutely forbade it. ‘You will not move from that bed until the doctor has seen you in the morning. What nonsense is this? Your husband is caring for the baby, he has formula, and the milk you’ve expressed, there is absolutely no cause for alarm.’

  ‘But he doesn’t—’

  ‘He can learn the same way you’ll have to learn. Now go to sleep and no more chatter.’

  Greer waited until the change of shift, feigning sleep. She could be cunning, if that’s what it took. She slid open the drawer silently and felt for clothes – hospitals were never dark, she could see what she needed in the fluorescent twilight – now shoes. The public toilet was just down the corridor. A murmur came from the nurses’ station, no more. One quick sprint and she was in the toilet, but her knees were weak, and heat washed over her. She dressed, shoved
her pyjamas behind the toilet seat and straightened her hair – ugh, it was plastered to her head.

  Outside the night was crisp with stars. Everyone was watching television, judging by the blue light leaching the curtains and blinds. Fine, she would walk home.

  The tilting world slowly righted itself and the wind cooled her hot cheeks as she set out across country – she could cut off a third of the journey at least, and it was light enough for her to find her way. But after a short time she had to stop and rest, weak and breathless. Slow and steady, she told herself, as her father used to say when they were tramping across the paddocks. What’s the rush, missy? But there was a rush. She walked on beneath the whorl of the night sky and over the jarring clods and tussocks of the paddocks. Pressing the tiny wound on the back of her hand where she’d pulled out the cannula was like pressing a bruise to test the ache; it grounded her. Her breasts dragged and throbbed, and she tried walking with her arms crossed over her chest, but feared she might fall. Sometimes one leg would give way, and she would stumble to a stop. Shaking, she would lock both knees to teach them strength – standing to attention, she thought irrelevantly.