Bridge of Clay

by Markus Zusak

  Very quiet and very calmly, she said:

  “I grew up with the statue of Stalin.”

  * * *

  —

  As the night wore on, they each told their stories about why and where they were made of. Michael spoke of Featherton—the fires, the mines. The sound of the birds by the river. He didn’t mention Abbey, not yet, but she was there at the edge of everything.

  Penelope, by comparison, often felt like she should stop, but she suddenly had so much to say. When she mentioned the cockroaches, and the terror they’d inflicted, Michael laughed, but sympathetically; there was the faintest stretch of wonder on his lips for houses made of paper.

  When she got up to leave, it was well past midnight, and she apologized for all her talking, and Michael Dunbar said, “No.”

  They stood at the sink, he washed the cups and plates.

  Penelope dried, she stayed.

  There was something risen up in her, and so, it seemed, in him. Years of gentle barrenness. Whole towns not had, or lived. Just as each of them knew they were never so game or forward, there was another truth at hand—that this would have to be it:

  No waiting, no politeness.

  The wilderness out, from in them.

  * * *

  —

  Soon it became too much for him.

  The quiet suffering was intolerable for another second, and he stepped, reached over, and gambled—his hands still covered in suds.

  He grabbed her wrist, both calm and firmly.

  He didn’t know how or why but he put the other hand on her hip bone, and without thinking, he held her and kissed her. Her forearm was wet, her clothes were wet, just in that patch of shirt—and he took the cloth hard, and made a fist.

  “Jesus, I’m sorry, I—”

  And Penelope Lesciuszko, she gave him the fright of his life:

  She took his wet hand, put it beneath that shirt—the exact same place, but on skin—and delivered him a phrase from the East.

  “Jeszcze raz.”

  Very quiet, very serious, almost unsmiling, like kitchens were built for this.

  “It means,” she said, “again.”

  It was Saturday—the halfway point to the Murderer’s return—and Clay walked the road from the property, in the dark of just turned night.

  His body was part elastic, part hard.

  His hands were blistered raw.

  Inside he was ready to burst.

  He’d been digging alone since Monday.

  The depth to the bedrock had been nowhere near as deep as he’d feared—but at times, even inches were hard labor. Sometimes he thought he might never hit it at all—but then, the ache of stone.

  * * *

  —

  By the time he was finished, he couldn’t recall anymore which nights he’d slept a few hours inside, and the ones he’d worked till morning; often he’d woken in the riverbed.

  It took a while now to work out it was Saturday.

  And evening, not dawn.

  And in that state of delirium, and those bleeding, burning hands, he’d decided to see the city again, and he packed only very lightly: the box, and the favorite of his bridge books.

  Then he’d showered and burned, dressed and burned, and staggered, like that, into town. Only once, he wavered, to turn, to look back at his work, and that was all it took:

  In the middle of the road, he sat down, and the country surged around him.

  “I made it.”

  Just three words, and each one had tasted like dirt.

  He lay for a while—the pulsing ground, the starry sky. Then forced himself to walk.

  That first night, at 37 Pepper Street, when she left, it was agreed.

  He walked her home and said he’d come down to her apartment, on Saturday at four o’clock.

  The road was dark and empty.

  Nothing much more was said.

  On the return visit, he’d shaved, and brought daisies.

  It took a while before she played the piano, and when she did he stood beside her. When she finished, he placed a finger at the far right end.

  She nodded for him to let it fall, to press it down.

  But a piano’s highest note is fickle.

  If you don’t hit it hard enough, or right enough, it makes no noise at all.

  “Again,” she said, and she grinned—nervously, they both did—and this time he got it to work.

  Like a smack to the hand of Mozart.

  Or the wrist of Chopin or Bach.

  And this time it was her:

  There was hesitancy, and awkwardness, but then she kissed the back of his neck, very light, very soft.

  And then they ate the Iced VoVos.

  Right to the very last.

  * * *

  —

  When I think about it now, I go back through all we were told, and especially all Clay was told, and I wonder what’s most important.

  Here I think it’s this:

  For six or seven weeks beyond that, they saw each other, they swapped venues, up and down Pepper Street. Always, for Michael Dunbar, there was a kind of welling up, through the newness and blond of Penelope. When he kissed her he tasted Europe, but also the taste of not-Abbey. When her hands held his fingers as he stood to leave, he felt the feel of a refugee, and it was her but also him.

  * * *

  —

  Eventually, he told her, on the steps of number 37.

  It was Sunday morning, grey and mild, and the steps were cool—and he’d been married before, and divorced; her name was Abbey Dunbar. He’d lain on the garage floor.

  A car drove by, and a girl on a bike.

  He told her he’d been devastated, living, hanging on, on his own. He’d wanted to see her much earlier than the night she came to his front door. He’d wanted to, but wasn’t capable. He couldn’t risk a fall like that again, not anymore.

  It’s funny, I guess, how confessions come out:

  We admit to almost everything, and the almost is all that counts.

  For Michael Dunbar, it was two things he left out.

  Firstly, he simply wouldn’t admit that he, too, could produce something approximating beautiful—the paintings.

  And next (and this was an extension of the first), he didn’t confess that somewhere in his murkiest depths, he wasn’t so much afraid of being left again as condemning someone else to second best. Such was how he’d felt for Abbey, and the life he’d once had, and lost.

  * * *

  —

  But then again, what choice did he really have?

  This was a world where logic was defied by argumentative piano men. It was a world where fate could stand out front, both tanned and pale, simultaneously. God, even Stalin was involved, so how could he possibly say no?

  Maybe it’s true that we don’t get to make these decisions.

  We think we do, but we don’t.

  We do laps of all our neighborhoods.

  We pass that certain front door.

  When we hit a piano key and it makes no sound, we hit it again, because we have to. We need to hear something, and we hope it isn’t a mistake—

  As it was, Penelope was never meant to be here.

  Our father should never have been divorced.

  But here they were, walking perfectly, and quite fittingly, toward a certain kind of line. They’d been counted down, like skiers on a mountainside, and were hitting it for the now.

  At Silver Station, he saw the oncoming glow of the night train.

  From far away it looked like a magic, slow-moving torch.

  Inside, though, it was heaven.

  The air was cool; the seat was warm.

  His heart like a broken body part.

  His lungs a kind of waxw
orks.

  He lay back lightly, and slept.

  * * *

  —

  The train pulled into the city just after five o’clock, Sunday morning, and a man was shaking him awake.

  “Hey, kid, kid, we’re here.”

  Clay startled, and managed to stand up, and despite everything—the enormous headache, the searing pain when he picked up his sports bag—the draw was unmistakable.

  He felt the glimmer of home.

  In his mind he was already there; he was watching the world of Archer Street; he was up on the roof, he saw Carey’s place. Or behind, to see The Surrounds. He could even hear the movie in our lounge room—but no. He actually had to remind himself he couldn’t go, and especially not like this.

  For Archer Street, he’d have to wait.

  * * *

  —

  Instead, he walked.

  He found that the more he moved the less he hurt, and so he trawled the city, to Hickson Road, down to under the bridge; he relented at the slanted wall. The trains came rattling above. The harbor so blue, he almost couldn’t look. The rivets in rows, on his shoulders. The great grey arch reached over.

  It’s a she, he thought, of course she is.

  He leaned and struggled to leave.

  * * *

  —

  In the afternoon, he finally managed it, though, and walked the curves of Circular Quay; the clowns, a guitarist. The traditional didgeridoos.

  The Manly ferry beckoned him.

  The smell of hot chips nearly killed him.

  He walked up to the railway, changed at Town Hall, then counted the stops and walked. He’d have crawled if he’d had to, to the racing quarter. There was one place, at least, he could go.

  * * *

  —

  When he got there, way up on that hilltop, for the first time in a long time, he paid proper notice to the gravestone:

  PENELOPE DUNBAR

  A MANY-NAMED WOMAN:

  the Mistake Maker, the Birthday Girl,

  the Broken-Nosed Bride, and Penny

  MUCH LOVED BY EVERYONE

  BUT ESPECIALLY

  THE DUNBAR BOYS

  When he read it, he dropped to a crouch.

  He smiled hardest at the last part, and our brother lay down, cheek-first on the ground, and he stayed there alone a long time. He cried silently, nearly an hour—

  And these days, so often, I think of it, and I wish that I just could have been there. As the one who’d be next to beat him up, and bring him down, and punish him hard for his sins, I wish I’d somehow known everything.

  I’d have held him, and quietly told him.

  I’d have said to him, Clay, come home.

  And so they’d be married.

  Penelope Lesciuszko and Michael Dunbar.

  In terms of time, it took approximately a year and seven months.

  In other terms more difficult to measure, it was a garageful of portraits, and paintwork at the piano.

  It was a right-hand turn and a car crash.

  And a shape—the geometry of blood.

  * * *

  —

  Mostly it comes in glimpses, that period.

  Time shrunk down to moments.

  Sometimes they’re scattered broadly—like winter, and her learning to drive. Or September, and hours of music. There’s a whole November of his clumsy attempts at her language, and then December through February to April, and a few visits at least, to the town he grew up in, and its sweat and surging heat.

  In between, of course, there were movies (and he didn’t check her for laughter), and a love she found for video—likely her greatest teacher. When movies were on TV, she recorded them for practicing English: a 1980s catalogue, from E.T. to Out of Africa, Amadeus to Fatal Attraction.

  There was continuing The Iliad and The Odyssey. Cricket games on TV. (Could it really last five whole days?) And countless salted ferry rides on that bright, whitecapped water.

  There were the slipstreams, too, of doubt, when she’d see him disappearing, to some place, held doggedly, within. The inner terrain of not-Abbey again, a landscape both vast and barren. She’d be calling his name from next to him:

  “Michael. Michael?”

  He’d be startled. “What?”

  They stood at the borders of anger, or foot holes of small irritation; both sensing how soon they could deepen. But just when she thought he might say to her, “Don’t come for me, don’t call,” he’d place a hand down onto her forearm. Her fears, through the months, were calmed.

  * * *

  —

  Sometimes, though, the moments stretch out.

  They stop, and unfold completely.

  For Clay, they were the ones Penny told him about in the last few months of her life—when she was high and hot on morphine, and desperate to get everything right. Most memorable was a pair of them, and both occurring in evening; and exactly twelve months between them.

  Penelope saw them as titles:

  The Night He Finally Showed Me.

  And Paintwork at the Piano.

  * * *

  —

  The date was December 23, the eve of Christmas Eve.

  The first year, they’d eaten together in Michael’s kitchen, and just as they’d finished, he’d said to her:

  “Here, I’m going to show you.”

  They walked out into the garage.

  It was strange that in all the months they’d known each other, she’d never set foot inside it. Instead of taking the side entrance, he used the roller door out at the front. A noise the sound of a train.

  Inside, when he hit the light, and removed the curtain of sheets, Penny was amazed—for amongst the kernels of floating dust there were countless sheets of canvas, all stretched over wooden frames. Some were enormous. Some the size of a sketch pad. On each of them was Abbey, and sometimes she was a woman, sometimes a girl. She could be mischievous, or buttoned-up. Often her hair ran all the way to her waist. In others it was cut to her neckline; she held the streams of it in her arms. Always, though, she was a life force, and she never left you for long. Penelope realized that anyone who looked at these paintings would know that whoever painted them felt even more than the portraits could suggest. It was in every stroke before you, and every one left out. It was the precision of the canvas stretch, and the mistakes kept perfectly intact—like a drip of mauve at her ankle, or an ear that floated next to her, a millimeter from her face.

  Its perfection didn’t matter:

  All of it was right.

  In one painting, the biggest one, where her feet sank into the sand, Penny felt like she could ask for the shoes she held out, in her open, generous palm. As she looked, Michael sat by the gaping doorway, his back against the wall, and when Penny had seen enough, she sat herself down beside him. Their knees and elbows touched.

  “Abbey Dunbar?” she asked.

  Michael nodded. “Formerly Hanley—and now, I have no idea.”

  She could feel her heart rise then, and quicken in her throat. She forced it slowly back.

  “I—” He almost stopped himself. “I’m sorry I didn’t show you earlier.”

  “You can paint?”

  “I could. Not anymore.”

  At first she pondered her next thought, or move—but now she flatly refused it. She didn’t ask if he might paint her instead; no, she would never compete with that woman, and now she touched his hair. She ran her hand through, and said, “So just don’t ever paint me.” She fought to find the nerve. “Do other things instead….”

  It was a memory Clay held dear, for it was hard for her to tell him all this (but death was a hell of a motivator); how Michael had come up to meet her, and she’d led him directly over—to the place where Abbey had left him, whe
re he’d lain, undone, on the floor.

  “I said to him,” she’d said to the boy, and she was in such a withering state. “I said, ‘Take me where you were exactly’—and he did it straightaway.”

  Yes, they’d gone there and they’d held and gave and hurt and fought, and forced everything unwanted away. There was the breath of her, the sound of her, and a flooding of what they’d become; and they did so for as long as it took—and between each turn, they lay and talked; Penelope often spoke first. She’d said she was lonely as a child, and wanted at least five children, and Michael said all right. He even joked and said, “God, I hope we don’t get five boys!” He really should have been more careful.

  “We’ll get married.”

  It was him—it just came out.

  They were grazed by then, and bruised; their arms, their knees and shoulder blades.

  He went on. “I’ll find a way to ask you. Maybe this time next year.”

  And she shifted below, holding tightly.

  “Of course,” she said, “okay,” and she kissed him and turned him over. Then a final, near-silent “Again.”

  * * *

  —

  And the next year came the second title.

  Paintwork at the Piano.

  December 23.

  It was Monday night, with the light turning red outside.

  The noise of neighborhood boys came in, playing handball.

  Penelope had just walked by them.

  On Mondays, she always came home around this time, a little after eight-thirty; she’d finished the last of her cleaning jobs, a lawyer’s office, and on this night, she did as always:

  She dropped her bag down by the door.