Watercolours

by Adrienne Ferreira

  We climb higher. Eleanor taps the window’s inner layer with her peach fingernail and I can just make out the winery among all the green. I try to find my house but the plane is heading in the wrong direction and everything is behind us now. In my mind I picture the boat with Varmint sitting in the shade without me. Something slops through me when I think of it, Varmint nothing but a speck dissolving as I fly away, my home swallowed up by all those trees.

  I turn away from the window. Eleanor is watching me.

  ‘You’re going to love Sydney.’ Her voice is high pitched through the whine of the plane and sounds younger. ‘Wait till you see the Gallery. It’s fabulous!’

  We fly even higher and there is a loud crackle as the captain says hello and tells us our altitude. It’s hard for Eleanor and me to talk over the roar of the plane. The jitters in my stomach have been taken over completely now and my whole body is a buzzing engine. Water drops have formed between the layers of the window. I put my hand there. The plastic feels cool against my fingertips. Down below the hills are dark with trees and the land looks bumpy and crumpled like a carpet laid over rocks. In between, the valleys look like lips. Orange dirt roads wind everywhere and make me think of tapeworms. I turn away from the window and lean back in my seat.

  My eyes are dry. I squeeze them shut. Last night I hardly slept, I was so excited, and now the hum of everything is making me feel tired. I’m not about to let myself fall asleep, though. There are too many interesting things to see, like the two stewardesses handing out trays from a trolley. Each time they move further down the aisle they put the brakes on to stop the trolley rolling away. One stewardess has brown eyes and short shiny brown hair and she smiles at me whenever she passes. The other one has a yellow ponytail and a little scarf tied at her throat. Her lips are bright red and her skin is smooth, like a doll’s. They are so different I find it impossible to decide which one of them I would marry.

  When it’s our turn to be served, Eleanor shows me how to pull down the tray from the seat in front to use as a table. It has a circle dent for your cup. The brown-haired stewardess hands us two plastic-wrapped crackers, a soft triangle of cheese in gold foil and a little sandwich that’s made with brown bread on one side and white bread on the other. I try to guess what’s inside; turkey, maybe. Pressing hard, I manage to poke my fingernail through the foil lid of my apple-juice container and take a sip — I’m very thirsty — and have another look at the safety card. There is a faceless child in a lifejacket and hands help it tie straps and pull cords that inflate things. If the plane crashes into the sea, the card says we have to leave briefcases and high heels behind before we jump onto the slippery-dip ramp that leads to the lifeboats. I look down at Eleanor’s shoes. They look a lot like the ones with a big red X over them on the safety card, but hers are beige instead of orange. They look like her good Sydney shoes and I don’t think Eleanor would want to leave them behind, even in a crash — she loves Sydney so much.

  I take another sip of juice and try to imagine Eleanor’s naked feet.

  For a long time I stare out the window in a kind of daze, not wanting to miss anything. The ground creeps by. I blink hard and now it feels like there’s sand trapped under my eyes. When I open them again it takes me a while to focus and I have to blink a few more times. I look down. Then I press my nose to the cold window and stare because down on the ground something amazing is happening.

  There’s a pattern, then another one, lots of them, and my heart does a funny puff and squeeze because even though this is my first time in a plane, the first time I’ve ever seen the earth from eighteen thousand feet, I know these patterns. I’ve seen them before.

  It’s as though the window is the eyepiece of a giant microscope, showing me what’s really there. The ocean is a hide of blue leather. A river runs into the sea in dark ripples, the way purple runs through the grey lumps of brain that Mum sometimes cooks for us. Or the way veins run along the middle of a leaf and out to its edges when I hold it up to the sun. When the plane turns away from the coast I see the dry land rusting in streaks the same way corrugated iron rusts, stacked behind the shed. Flying over a scattering of round boulders, I feel like a giant crouching over crab balls on the beach. My mind whizzes around, thinking of my collections at home. I think of the piece of rock with the opal running through it that Uncle Alan gave me from his prospecting days; its streak of green and blue is exactly like the flash of colour in the black cockatoo feather I found by the river. I remember the mulberry-leaf grooves on the back of my grandfather’s hands.

  All at once I feel like I’m expanding, bursting out, growing right up into space, because here is the proof I’ve been looking for! And even though I can’t hold onto the evidence I know that everything I’ve sensed about the river and Nonno and me is true. There’s a pattern, and the pattern links us all together.

  The moment passes when houses appear; suddenly they are everywhere. I start counting swimming pools but give up because there are too many. I didn’t know there were so many rich people in the city. With another crackle the captain tells us we’ll be landing soon and there’s a rush for the toilet. I don’t move. I don’t want to miss any of it, not one blue kidney or red roof or smokestack. Not one skyscraper.

  I’ve never seen the city before.

  At the airport there is the longest line of taxis. We jump into the back of one and take off into the busy traffic. There aren’t any taxi queues in Morus; there are only about three taxis and you only take one if your car has broken down and no-one can give you a lift, or on special occasions like when relatives arrive on the train and everyone’s at work, or if you have an operation and aren’t allowed to drive home from the hospital, like when Dad had his vasectomy. I look out the window as we speed along and it seems every second car has a light on its head and a little pine tree hanging from its mirror.

  We check into our hotel and head straight out again, walking a few blocks towards Eleanor’s favourite coffee shop. Even though it’s a warm day a gust of wind whips around us and I shiver in the shadows cast by all the tall buildings. When I look up, the sky is just a strip of blue high above. We hurry along — everyone is hurrying as if there’s some kind of emergency — and I feel like a character in a comic book, caught up in a string of action pictures where every few metres takes me into a different world. We pass big banks and fancy jewellers, shoe shops and bag shops and underwear shops. There are so many different clothes shops: some are golden and calm with hardly anything in them; others are blaring pop music and look about to explode, they are so crammed full. I notice some vampire assistants lurking among the racks. But what strikes me most is the smell. The city doesn’t smell like home, it smells of metal and fumes, grit and salt and a hundred other different things. Each shop brings something new: the warm whiff from a bakery’s glass shelves, a bookshop’s tang of fresh pages, incense wafting from a doorway jangling with dolphin wind-chimes, pubs with their beer and smoke smell. At Gowings we stop to look at the window display, a mountain of clothing and toys and camping gear. Inside, Eleanor buys Mr Roper three packets of underpants and with some of my spending money I buy my father a dancing hula girl that looks just like Mum. Outside again we squeeze past a newspaper stand and some rubbish bins leaking brown juice. There’s a man dressed in layers of dirty clothing shuffling from bin to bin, plunging his hand into the rubbish. I stop for a second, wondering what treasure he’s found, but the stink of him makes me afraid so I hurry on.

  At last we turn into a quiet arcade trimmed in brass and polished wood. Soft classical music soothes us as we cross a pattern of tiles and make our way past tiny curved shop windows selling chocolates, antique jewellery and ladies shoes so pointy they look impossible to walk in. Eleanor’s favourite coffee shop is nothing like Fifi’s. For a start, it has a shiny spaceship behind the counter — really a machine for making lots of cups of coffee at once, with different nozzles for heating milk and dribbling thick black liquid and spitting hot water. A woman rings up
our order on an old-fashioned cash register with pinging buttons and prices that pop up on little tags and then we perch on stools and breathe the smell of grinding coffee while I drink my hot chocolate and Eleanor sips her flat white. Between us we eat a croissant filled with soft sweet almonds. Afterwards Eleanor dusts icing sugar off her blouse and reapplies her peach lipstick without a mirror. Before we leave she buys a bag of coffee beans. They smell so good but when I put one in my mouth it tastes like wood so I spit it in the gutter.

  The lift opens into a narrow hall. We make our way along it to where a woman sits behind a tall counter guarded by a vase of spiky flowers that look like they’d bite if you got too close. Eleanor talks to the woman while I walk over to the wall of windows and look out over the city. We are very high up. I lean forward to rest my forehead on the glass and a lurching feeling hits me; any second I feel like our building will topple over into the harbour, crashing into the tanker moored close by, scattering boats and ferries like bath toys and flooding all the streets with the tiny figures scurrying about on them. I wonder how anyone can find their way around down there. Maybe all those cars and trucks and buses are full of lost people, desperately trying to find their way back home. Concrete overpasses loop around and houses and trees stretch all the way into the distance, ending in a band of apricot haze. I am surprised by all the green. There are more trees in Sydney than I was expecting. I pull away from the glass and see my forehead has left a blurry imprint. Turning, I discover a huge painting in a chunky gold frame hanging on the far wall. It’s the biggest painting I’ve ever seen, with layers of bright colour lathered like icing. I stare into it and feel myself being wrapped up in sunshine.

  A man in a grey suit appears from behind a glass door. His hand goes to his tie and then he heads straight for Eleanor. ‘Mrs Roper, what a pleasure!’ He shakes her hand. ‘I’m Patrick Symonds, General Manager, Client Relations. You’re here about the delay.’ He doesn’t notice me right away because I’m hidden in the folds of the painting. Or maybe he wasn’t expecting to see a boy in the reception area. Either way, when he spies me a few seconds later his slim shoulders jerk inside his jacket. Fear scuttles over his smoothly shaved face until he realises I’m with Eleanor and not a leprechaun who’s just jumped out of the picture.

  ‘Well! And what’s your name, young man?’

  I can tell Mr Symonds doesn’t speak to kids very often but I don’t mind because he smells so good, a bit like Mr Roper. It is the cologne he’s wearing; I could happily stand here all day breathing it in. I’m too busy sniffing Mr Symonds to answer him. He takes a small step backwards.

  ‘This is Novi,’ Eleanor says. ‘He was just admiring your landscape.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The painting.’

  ‘Oh, of course!’ Mr Symonds looks at the giant canvas. I can tell he’s never even noticed it before. ‘Colourful,’ he says.

  ‘Novi is an artist,’ Eleanor explains.

  Mr Symonds smiles, although his whole body shows he couldn’t be less interested. He takes us through a glass door and along a curved corridor and into a room where there is another view of the city. I can see some of the Harbour Bridge so I pull my camera out of my backpack and take a photo through the glass, being careful not to use my flash. We all sit down at a dark polished-wood table and Mr Symonds offers us a drink from a tray set out specially. I choose an interesting green bottle of what I think is lemonade but am disappointed to find is mineral water. I take a bite of one of the biscuits. It is hard and bland and I crunch it noisily in an attempt to extract more flavour. Crumbs tumble onto the shiny table top. Mr Symonds looks as though he’d like to wipe the crumbs away and me with them but he just returns Eleanor’s smile. He opens up his leather folder, takes out a blank notepad and a pen and slides them across to me. Under the logo Pacific United: Customs and International Freight Brokers, I start to draw Sydney hit by a giant tsunami.

  ‘It’s lovely to finally meet you, Mrs Roper,’ Mr Symonds says. ‘We’re used to seeing your husband.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Eleanor. ‘Gerard deals with things when they’re running smoothly. But today we have a problem.’

  There is a weird silence. I look up and see that Mr Symonds doesn’t look so friendly anymore.

  ‘This continued delay is simply unacceptable,’ Eleanor says. ‘Sinclair’s has a loyal customer base and I cannot have my farmers waiting for essential supplies a moment longer.’ She goes on with a reasonable smile. ‘Now, I’m here. You’re here. And between you, me and this giant head office I’m sure we can sort out the trifling matter of one container.’

  She sits back and slides the plate of biscuits towards me. I take another one and start crunching it. I’d like to take a photo of Mr Symonds to capture the gawky look on his face but I’m still working on the tidal wave. Besides, I can always draw him later.

  Afterwards, Eleanor is too happy to be cooped up in a taxi. She wants to walk, striking out along the footpath and I have to trot to keep up with her. It’s lunchtime now and there are even more people swarming everywhere. Among the fumes of cigarettes and perfume, oil and aftershave, B.O. and hairspray, I turn to look up at the building we have just left. I have to lean way back to see where the top strikes blue and when I finally catch the angle the height of it shoves me backwards. I almost fall over but Eleanor grabs my hand. She leads me through the crowd like this and it’s a relief not to have to concentrate on keeping her close; instead I can ride along with the current and let all the bodies pummel me. I wonder if this is how a stick feels, tossed into the river.

  We walk past the Queen Victoria Building and some big movie theatres and then turn down a side street into Chinatown. Stepping over streams of water we keep walking past piles of old lettuce leaves and boxes of funny-looking vegetables until we’re standing outside a tiny, packed restaurant. Somehow we are squeezed inside and a lady brings us a pot of tea. Eleanor orders us dumplings and a plate of noodles, rolled and stretched by the smiling man in the kitchen window. When the dumplings arrive, Eleanor shows me how to dip each one into a dish of dark vinegar. After lunch we wander the aisles of the supermarket next door, looking at strange dried shapes in plastic packets, trying to guess whether they are plant or animal. Eleanor buys some jars of brown paste for cooking, the sort you can’t get in Morus, and I find a little pink bowl with a yellow dragon painted in the middle for my mother and a bunch of incense as thick as a small log that I’m surprised doesn’t cost more.

  It isn’t until we’re walking up through the park full of ibis eating hamburger scraps that I notice something is missing. The cicadas are gone. I feel my chest. Not a scratch or a twitter, not one cellophane wing. Just my heart and my breath, quick from the slope we’ve been climbing.

  I’m confused. Why would the cicadas leave just as I found proof of the river’s connection to Nonno? Did the noise of the plane frighten them off?

  Eleanor takes me into the war memorial, where we stare at a hundred names melted into bronze, but I can’t concentrate. I keep wondering about the cicadas. Maybe they can’t travel far from the river. Or maybe we’ve flown so fast and over such a long distance they have been left behind. I have outrun them! Even if they come searching now there’s no way they’ll be able to find me.

  For the first time in a long time there is no pressure in me to draw. There is no scratching, no bird following me with its secret messages to work out. Just me, my own body, empty as an eggshell.

  Suddenly I feel so light I could lift off the ground, right up into the stained-glass dome above us like a lost balloon. We head out into the sunlight and I practise walking in my new empty state. It feels strange. Everything — trees, birds, office workers eating their lunch — ignores me. I am on my own; free. In the space that the cicadas have left, relief flows in like warm water.

  At the top of the park we hit a big intersection and I have to focus on making my way across without getting flattened. We keep on going up a busy street where cars and buses tremble
at traffic lights like frightened animals and I notice how the shops are changing. Chemists have signs saying 24 hours in pink and blue neon, rows of faceless heads display crazy wigs, there are mannequins posing in dangerous-looking studded-leather outfits and every single shop throbs with music. All sorts of restaurants tempt us but we are full of dumplings and keep going, past Thai places with pyramid cushions instead of chairs, Indian places with hot trays full of bright liquid, kebab shops where men with muscley forearms carve strips off glistening spits.

  Eleanor stops when we get to a restaurant with a barbecue in the window. A big hanging vent like the trunk of an elephant sucks up the smoke from the fish and slabs of steak charring there. The smell makes me think of summer and camping, of hot afternoons with Mum and Dad and barbecue dinners by the river. I feel my eyes start to burn. My throat aches like it’s being squeezed. Suddenly I miss my parents and want to go home.

  Just then I see a dark doorway off to the side. Eleanor is standing there, her eyes shining.

  ‘This is it,’ she says.

  Stepping from the busy street into the calm of the art shop feels like entering the doorway to a new universe. Behind me is everything I have done so far; ahead is everything I still have to do. It only takes a second to cross from footpath to paint-flecked floorboards — I am blind for a minute until my eyes adjust to the gloom — but in that time my whole idea of drawing, of pictures, of paper and pencils and paint, of what it means to make something, changes forever.

  The aisles are stacked right up to the roof with every kind of art supply you could imagine. I stand there with my mouth open in the middle of it all and feel like I’m staring into the future. Surrounding me is a never-ending landscape ready to be born — hills and valleys and oceans and rivers, animals and people and all of their relations, everything still raw but ready. Waiting for me to give it life.