Joyful

by Robert Hillman

  Daanya turned from the stove. She looked full at her husband then frowned and looked away, as if she’d just that instant reconsidered what she intended to say. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that God is great. That is all of my faith, if you wish to know.’

  Delli snorted. ‘If there is one thing above all that a man should be spared,’ he said, ‘it is a humble and dutiful wife. Where is your venom? Your husband detests you. You are a thing of feathers and flowers and ludicrous piety. Muslim, Christian, Jew, what do I care? Better you were Lucrezia Borgia, brewing poison for me that would split my abdomen. You timid, passionless insect! The world is for one thing only, and that is burning.’

  ‘The timid have their passions,’ said Daanya. ‘More fierce than the conflagrations you like to imagine.’

  Before her husband could reply, Daanya added quickly, ‘I saw Leon Joyce a few weeks ago.’

  ‘You saw whom?’

  ‘Leon Joyce. Tess’s husband. I have been meaning to mention it.’

  A smile spread across Delli’s face. ‘Him?’

  ‘He was brought to the clinic by a policeman. He had a cut on his head that needed attention. He was going from shop to shop in Wangaratta trying to buy a pistol. Eventually the police took over. The policeman thought he might have gone a little mad from the blow on his head. He was a sensible sort, the policeman. Obviously he was not violent, Leon. I spoke to him.’

  ‘So, the husband of the whore?’

  Daanya flashed. ‘Is your world entirely populated by whores? The female half? There was a time when you displayed more chivalry, husband!’

  Delli ignored that. ‘And what brings him to our part of the world?’

  ‘I’m not sure, no. But he is staying at his house, where we stayed and where Tess…’

  ‘Yes? Where Tess what?’

  ‘Where Tess stayed.’

  ‘Oh ho! The angel can’t bring herself to say it! Where Tess entertained her Polish ram? Is that it? The house she chased us from to make a stable for the devil’s ram? Oh, but she is not a whore! Oh no! We saw her with our own eyes running in the paddocks in her bare flesh, yes, and the old ram mounting her in a very snorty manner, oh yes! The beasts of the field at play! But please don’t refer to her as a whore! Oh dear, no!’

  Daanya shrugged uncomfortably. ‘We came back to the house for our kitchen things without warning. What we saw was our own fault for witnessing. If you have forgotten Tess’s kindness to us, that is a great shame, husband.’

  ‘I must see him,’ said Delli. ‘What tales I have to regale the eunuch with! Daylight buggery! Oh but she is no whore, of course not!’

  Daanya busied herself with layering the pasta sheets, meat sauce and cheese in a baking dish. Delli watched with every sense alert. She had more to say, he knew. Even in the deftness of her movement as she smoothed the cheese, he detected some reserve in her manner.

  ‘We chatted a little,’ said Daanya. ‘He was of course surprised to see me.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He recalled our project, you know.’

  ‘And what project would that be?’ said Delli. He knew what she was talking about. ‘The only project in this household is your scheme to disgust me in every way possible. Great success it has brought you!’

  ‘He recalled our project, that is all.’

  Delli lunged for the baking tray, intending to throw it against the wall. But Daanya fended him away with her shoulder. ‘Calm yourself!’

  Delli stalked up and down the floor snorting and cursing. He made a fist and ran at Daanya. ‘Emmanuel! No!’

  He stood panting with his eyes closed and his head raised. His moustache was flecked with foam. A tear ran from the corner of each closed eye, picking a path through the black and grey stubble on his cheeks.

  He walked rapidly from the kitchen to his study and fell into his chair.

  Daanya came in behind him and placed a hand on each shoulder.

  ‘I won’t mention it again,’ she said.

  ‘No, don’t.’

  ‘But calm yourself.’

  Daanya pulled up a chair beside her husband. Warily, she kissed the tips of two fingers and touched them to his lips. He turned his gaze on her.

  ‘You speak of our project,’ he said. ‘Our only true project is the misconceived project of our marriage. Why do you persist in your foolish beliefs? We are nothing. Two Kurds in the backwater of a country empty of purpose. Well. Perhaps this is the right place for us after all. We have much in common with the black people you so adore. What are they but the living relics of a failed religion? Their spirits could not save them. And you, stupid woman, embracing the superstition of your ancestors once more! Islam is a failed religion, my Daanya! A failed religion is like a failed state, nothing left but violence because that is all the state can afford. And now you propose poetry. Even I, Daanya, so accustomed to your stupidity, even I am amazed! Poetry!’

  Daanya risked once again touching her husband’s face.

  ‘There was a time when poetry filled your heart.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ Delli pushed Daanya’s hand aside. ‘I had a son,’ he said, refusing now to look at Daanya but instead staring ahead through the window to the garden and the clothesline. ‘I loved him in a way you could not imagine. I read him poetry, you may remember. I read him Wordsworth. We had put, oh, I would say twenty poems into Kurdish. Our great project. I read him Wordsworth in Kurdish. But it meant nothing. Dead in the gutter with a hole in his forehead. And my daughter? In Venice, when she was sick, I sat by her on the balcony over the canal and read to her for hours. And where did they find her, fool? In a bathtub with her wrists sliced open. I will never forgive her, never in my life. I will never forgive Joseph, and I will never forgive you. Never in my life. And now if you will excuse me, I have to piss.’

  Delli paused in the doorway.

  ‘Moreover I have a new project, you will recall. Yes, my correspondence with Doctor Mark. Far more satisfying than translating poetry, I assure you.’

  chapter 18

  Flames

  LEON ARRANGED for the initial fees for Daniel, Emily and Gareth to be paid into the Enchanted bank account. Then four days passed and nothing came; none of the relics of Tess’s life in Yackandandah. On the fifth day, Gareth drove by and offered to sing a song he’d written for Tess two years earlier. Leon said that songs were not in the contract and sent him packing.

  Susie called him on the morning of the sixth day of his vigil and asked him if he enjoyed telling lies. He had to be reminded that he’d promised to return to Melbourne. Before he could make a further false promise, Susie said that she had Sandra Perelman in the shop and was going to put her on.

  ‘Mister Joyce? Sandra Perelman. I was wondering if you’d found time to read my letter and perhaps glance at the journals I sent you?’

  ‘I haven’t received any letters.’

  ‘You haven’t received my letter?’

  ‘No. Unfortunately. It’s been good to talk to you, but I must—’

  ‘Just a tick. Susie wants to speak to you.’

  ‘Leon? I gave you some letters to read.’

  ‘Yes. Some letters. Did you?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘I haven’t got around…’

  ‘She is coming up to see you.’

  ‘To see me? But why?’

  ‘Your family. Hold on.’

  ‘Sandra Perelman again. Mister Joyce, would it be possible for me to call in for a short time?’

  ‘Well, in fact I am a very long way from Melbourne at the moment, so that wouldn’t be possible. Unfortunately.’

  ‘In Yackandandah, I think? I’ll come to Yackandandah. I can be there this time tomorrow. Mister Joyce, I would be eternally grateful for just an hour of your time. If you read my letter, you’ll…’

  ‘For one hour?’

  ‘One hour, absolutely.’

  ‘In four weeks.’

  ‘Four weeks?’

  ‘I’m quite busy. Four weeks. For one hou
r.’

  ‘Okay. Sure. What time?’

  ‘Midday.’

  ‘At midday?’

  ‘Yes. For one hour.’

  ‘Mister Joyce, thank you. Thank you. Susie wants to speak to you.’

  ‘Leon?’ Susie barked. ‘Don’t run away.’ She hung up.

  Leon found a parcel and a letter, both in yellow Express Post envelopes. He read the letter impatiently, regretting that he hadn’t refused to have anything to do with this person who sent people things they didn’t want. Susie and her bullying.

  Dear Mr Joyce,

  Please don’t be intimidated by the length of this letter! Susie told me to explain everything. That said, permit me to introduce myself. As the letterhead indicates, I am Dr Sandra Perelman of the Faculty of Arts (Politics and Social Inquiry) at Monash University. My reason for writing to you concerns a project I have been busily working on for the past two years. I am researching Australian utopian experiments from the early years of European settlement through to the end of the 1980s. I do know that other people I…

  Leon closed his eyes. ‘For pity’s sake.’

  …I do know that other people I have contacted in this same way that I’m writing to you are pretty much baffled by what I mean by ‘utopian experiments’ so I hope I won’t try your patience by explaining a little. I’m studying communities established on a specific utopian agenda with a common…

  A vehicle with a defective muffler passed on the Beechworth– Yackandandah road half a kilometre away, sounding just for a moment close enough to have turned in through the gate. Leon stood with the letter held in one hand hanging at his side, the other hand fashioning a sort of salute that shielded his eyes from the tawny glare of the November sun. He willed the car to be what it could not be, and even after its thrum had faded still strove to believe that the Enchanted station wagon would rise from the dip in the drive where a bridge of loose grey planks crossed the little creek.

  …communities established on a specific utopian agenda with a common aim of providing a transforming model for the broader, mainstream community. I suppose that’s about as clear as mud, but I’m talking about various highly motivated groups that have, over the years the study covers, sequestered themselves from the mainstream community in order to pursue their dreams of a better society. By this they usually mean a ‘purer’ or ‘more just’ or in some very ambitious cases a truly ‘transcendent’ society. Very often the bracing dogma of these ‘utopians’ is religious in origin.

  My particular interest, as a philosopher, is not so much in the politics of these utopians as in what they say about themselves. Mr Joyce, it may make my request a little more intelligible if I provide you with a brief summary of my work leading up to my current project.

  She then gave an account of her doctoral study of utopian experiments in Europe and Russia. None of it was of any interest to Leon. In 1773, the ninety-five members of a Polish commune attempted to achieve ‘the cleanliness of the Angel Host’ by starving themselves to death. Dozens of other utopias fared as badly. It was a struggle for Leon to turn the pages; to persist. Even in happier times, he’d avoided dark tales of human folly.

  ‘My present survey of Australian utopias,’ wrote Doctor Perelman,

  takes in mixed-race (European/Indigenous) communes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; workers’ communes; Dissenters’ communes; communist ‘bush camps’; ‘Hippy’ communes of the 1960s, and later. I have also broadened my definitions of ‘utopias’ to take in what I term ‘couple utopias’ and ‘solitary utopias’ (hermits, recluses). It is the documents of mission that I am interested in, as you can see; the words and sentences of commitment that became the foundation of these utopias.

  Leon muttered in exasperation: ‘Yes, but what do you want from me?’

  Which brings me to your family. Mr Joyce, you must forgive me if I’m providing information here that you already know quite well, but Ms Lwin indicated that your interest in the Joyful connection is only recent, so perhaps it’s better if I take nothing for granted.

  Your maternal great-aunt, Jennifer Suzmeyan (1905–1958) was the leading light in the establishment of a Christian Socialist community at a site on the outskirts of Yackandandah in north-eastern Victoria. I know from your great-aunt’s own records (preserved via your mother, Dorothy Joyce, in the Philpott Archive at ANU) that the year of initiation of the community was 1942. The site at that time was…

  Dorothy gave Jennifer’s papers to—what?—the Philpott Archive? When? That huge brown leather suitcase in the garden shed at Moore Street with two belts strapped around it? Behind the rake and spade and the big drum with the rose-food granules? Surely it was still there, and if it wasn’t, why would Dorothy think that a university archive would care about its contents? She would have asked him about it, definitely, a woman who could not change her brand of tea without consulting half-a-dozen friends. Or had she? He had a filmy memory of Dorothy years ago asking…something? And he’d advised her to…do what?

  …of initiation of the community was 1942. The site at that time was dominated by a two-storey red-brick house of great charm (if I may say so—I have seen it) which had come down to Jennifer from her father, your great-grandfather, Charles Suzmeyan (1861–1943) whose wife Teresa (1881–1927) gave the name ‘Joyful’ to…

  Teresa? How strange. He’d never known the name of Charles’s second wife, the English girl he’d been told of, with the horses…

  …name ‘Joyful’ to the property. The house and four other smaller structures had been built by your great-grandfather in 1920 in imitation of a nineteenth-century English country house in Warwickshire. (I imagine you knew of the Warwickshire connection?) The community was built on principles of self-sufficiency and surplus, not an uncommon strategy among CS communities, and appears to have flourished in the post-war years and almost up until its decline in 1958. I have access to two sources of information on the life of the Yackandandah community: the notes of Argus journalist Peter Kavanagh, who was given leave by your aunt to visit the community in 1946, take photographs and talk to the community members; and your great-aunt’s own records and journals. Kavanagh’s notes are valuable, of course, but it does appear that his projected article on the community, which was never published, was conceived in response to rumours concerning the community’s politics: ‘Joyful’ was said to be a communist ‘experiment’ (or in Kavanagh’s phrase—‘Mr Marx’s Antipodean Garden Plot’).

  Your great-aunt’s records and journals form the more important source, and it is in regard to them that I hope to consult you. The records comprise 112 notebooks detailing the community’s produce and financial transactions. The journals comprise 16 small notebooks, each of 52 pages, at first quite uniform in style. Your great-aunt conscientiously examines her faith each day, responds to events at Joyful, and so on. She also provides brief, insightful sketches of other community members. Then, in April 1948, the fairly placid character of the journal writing changes. Not only the character, but the language, quite literally. From April 1948 until 1958 (the year of Jennifer’s death) there are intermittent journal entries in German, a language your great-aunt mastered for her thesis at Marburg. This was, as you will imagine, deeply puzzling to me and I was sufficiently intrigued to have the German texts translated. I have sent you in a second parcel photocopies that sample the journal over a period of years, and what a tale Jennifer’s journals reveal! Your great-aunt’s story may be seen to fall outside the scope of my project, and yet if you will give your permission, I would very much like to use it. I am trying to sound sober but if I tell the truth, I’m madly excited by what the journals reveal!

  The small amount of interest that Sandra Perelman’s project had aroused in Leon was soon exhausted. He tossed the letter aside and wandered about indoors, imagining Tess beside him, encouraging her to say things he recalled from their life together; things she would not have said in this house. She stood by a window in the library and called to him. ‘What a lovely
day!’ She caressed the soft underside of her wrists with her fingertips as she had done at times when she was lost in thought. She sang to him from across the upstairs dining room: ‘Darling, you fill up my heart when you potter about in that way!’ She smoothed her skirt over her behind. ‘Don’t ever leave me, will you?’ she said. She patted his tummy, ‘You are,’ she said, ‘one of those curious people who should always remain a little overweight.’ It was the invisibility of the dead that was so maddening! If they could lie unconscious forever it would be bearable. But this absurd business of disappearing! He made Tess stroke his cheek. He made her smile. He heard the heels of her black half-boots with the slightly upturned toes echoing on the bare boards of the library floor. He even allowed her to say things he hadn’t enjoyed her saying in her living days: ‘Beloved, could you say something nice about my tits? I’m feeling a bit peculiar about my tits.’ In the kitchen, she cut a Mars Bar into thirds and ate one piece slowly, with tiny bites.

  He came to the floorboard on which he’d written his proposal for Daniel. Yes. He hurried downstairs and found his ballpoint in the pocket of his blazer, returned to the library, knelt above a second freshly sanded board and began writing. He again wrote lengthways down the page of the pale timber, shuffling on his knees to create lines of blue script three metres long.

  Tess dearest, did you sometimes love me when you were here? Did you sometimes love me in this house? And did you love me when you said you loved me many many many times? Did you love me when you said my beloved, my darling, my dearest? Did you love me then because I do not believe no I do not do not believe that you never loved me, do not believe that you told me only lies when you said beloved dearest darling. What can I do with everything in my heart if it were all horrible to you, if you detested me, if you hated me? I don’t mind about porpoise. Why should I mind about porpoise? I am a porpoise and porpoise doesn’t wound me. But darling darling darling even if I were the least part important to you would you make a sign, make a sign please please? I don’t want my blood anymore my head eyes legs anymore. If you were here I would give the house to you and to that vile Daniel for anything you wish to do anything you wish. That part of you is I promise yours and only yours. But darling darling do you know what I understand now? Do you know I understand now that beauty doesn’t know what beauty is, it is only itself and doesn’t know what it is.