narratorAUSTRALIA Volume Two

by narrator AUSTRALIA

  ~~~

  So, twelve long months had passed!

  The unwilling landlord was becoming more restless. The community was talking … questioning … pointing. The mother and her children had, as one, slipped into a quiet solemnity so thick that it was palpable; and the father’s discomfort tightened like an iron girdle day by day.

  He spoke to no-one with regard to his anxiety, but stayed out later night after night and disappeared at weekends. Week by week the silent gulf between them grew along side the fear and hopelessness.

  Still, no word did the father share of his dark fears, or of his plans. Till, on a wet and windy Friday when the mother was past panic, he came home early. His demeanour was markedly changed though she was too overwrought to see it.

  ‘Start packing!’ he demanded. ‘I have found a better house. It’s smaller but much nicer; closer to town. The kids will change to the big school in town.’

  That familiar panic now consumed his wife as she moved about the house to pick and pack. He’d move the stuff in car loads this time then come back for her and the kids. They would be out by sundown on the Saturday.

  All that night and late into the Saturday she struggled and toiled between packing and sorting … and children!

  All that night and into Saturday the rain and wind assaulted the stilted house, and the house recoiled against them, pulling this way and that. It groaned and cried as though in agony.

  The packing finished and the last load gone, the mother and her children sat on the floor and waited. They sang songs to mask their feelings, and they made their faces brave.

  Finally he came for them. Tired now and angry, they bit their lips and filed out at his command. They made their way gingerly down the new store-bought-timber steps and felt them heave as the frail old house retched its protest against the elements. It screamed its protests too, like a too-ancient man living in arthritic agony.

  As the family walked toward the car, they could none of them resist the urge to turn and look one last time at the wreck which had at one and the same time provided them with shelter, and filled their lives with terror.

  As they seemed to turn almost in unison, an angry wind gust cut the air and slammed into the side of the house. The old timbers could no longer hold on to the new. They wrenched themselves away. The steps seemed to pause in mid air in shock for a few seconds before crashing down and then the spindly stilts, like a weak and chalky skeleton, gave way. The house teetered, seemed momentarily to right itself, then toppled to one side.

  As melodramatic as it may sound, all this happened seemingly in slow motion, and was to the ear like a sound track slowed right down; it made a most unusual noise as it landed! It was a sound like a tortured and cornered animal too weary to battle anymore; yet too strong of mind and too angry at the hunter to simply lie down and die.

  That sound struck the mother, like a victory trumpet after a protracted and bloody battle or rather, perhaps, a call to battle. In her heart and mind she memorised the sound, and willed her members to play it over and again. She savoured it! Indeed, she tried to recall every note of it.

  Suddenly she ‘knew’ that the house had fought to stand this past twelve months, not to panic her but to rest, protect and teach her. It seemed as though the house itself had recognised and identified with her weariness. As the house roared its dying agony, it breathed new strength into the mother. That battle cry would remain imprinted on her memory to recall each time she needed to draw on it for strength … for independence … for hope.

  That house would be remembered with affection after all.

  This item formed part of our ‘it made a most unusual noise as it landed’ week.

  Sunday 7 April 2013 4 pm

  Dissident

  Sandra Renew

  Dickson, ACT

  It made the most unusual noise as it landed.

  It came out of left field.

  It bounced and jostled and discomfited.

  It called for the letting go of preconceptions,

  of prejudice and of predisposition to the conservative.

  It shook up the aggressive,

  and spoke to the transgressive.

  It shied from being named as progressive,

  and claimed to be a missive

  from a dissident thinker,

  a thinker who stood out from the crowd,

  a tall poppy who stuck her neck out,

  who challenged the popular, and the cliché,

  who went against the flow of crowd speak,

  who had an unusual world view,

  who asked unusual questions,

  and made unusual commentary.

  And the unusual noise it made as it landed,

  stunned the world into,

  (in-drawn breath),

  unusual silence.

  This item formed part of our ‘it made a most unusual noise as it landed’ week.

  Monday 8 April 2013

  Mr Harry Morgan

  Fayroze Lutta

  Randwick, NSW

  Cara Andréa,

  I am here abroad thinking of my home town of Sydney, to see you again at Bar Milazzo to take a macchiato together made by that other expat paysano Claudio. I miss you my dear Italian friend. I miss you like I miss my city made up of all my old haunts, my family, my dear friends, and all those much loved renowned of Sydney’s inner city street urchins.

  The day before departing I bumped into a man that calls himself Harry Morgan. I am not sure if this is his real name as he may have appropriated it from the longest serving WWII veteran of the same name. He roams the inner city much like the man at high speed on his maroon moped on the footpath who blasts Elvis songs from speakers secured firmly to the back for everyone’s pleasure.

  I met Harry all those years ago on the corner of Oxford Street and Brisbane Street when Surry Hills had not yet been completely annihilated and unravelled by gentrifiers. The White Horse Hotel lay as a vacant shell, rumours of Mafioso biker gangs letting it decay – demolition by neglect they call it. Still adorned and crowning with the crumbling horse – hooves proud in the air – wild and unbridled, the building boarded up.

  Harry is known to most shop keepers around Oxford Street and the art school students that walk up and down Oxford Street, too poor to catch the bus to the train station. He is a darling of the inner city, one of Sydney’s much loved sons. It is because Harry is tuned into life in such a way he doesn’t miss a minute of it.

  By day he wanders the inner city, a reassuring face in the faceless crowds of nobodies. What is his story? I have wondered what was the sudden change or the moment of impact that let voices speak aloud inside his mind. He has his ways I am sure, his idiosyncrasies-a-plenty, less able to disguise them as the rest of us attempt to present ourselves as normal-well-adjusted beings. A friend of mine told me once that the world is one big open asylum. He looks better these days, less distressed than those days of my early twenties walking up and down Oxford Street on my way to and from art school, saving the bus fare to buy a cup of coffee. He seems more self assured these days as we all get with age.

  My art school days I would usually catch Harry standing on Oxford Street wearing his fatigues. He was clean shaven then, but he had the wild look of disturbed thoughts that marched through his head. He would carry on and rant, lost in his schizophrenic scatting, angry at the world. I felt the same then, raging against the world and trying to find my place in it.

  There is one day in particular in 2001 that I still recall. I must have had bus fare that day and I saw Harry from the bus on the corner of Oxford and Pelican Streets. He was in his full army regalia with matching metal army helmet, waving the front page of the newspaper, overwhelmingly distressed and distraught. Harry was screaming and the front page read ‘WAR’. I felt Harry’s pain and he was right all along. Why nobody else was screaming along with him I don’t know. I wanted to wrap my arms around Harry and tell him the dismal truth – that it would be alright, that here in this far f
lung city we would be untouched, and the world’s indifference would let life continue as normal here in our city.

  I then think to the bicycle courier, one of the many that gather at Martin Place and drink brown bottled long necks on Friday afternoons on the steps of the GPO. However, this courier is special – in between errands he plays his trumpet for the people of his city, his siren song to the city of the South. Yet his presence and his playing is only for the uptown-Hunter-State-Street elite where he rides. When he plays he speaks to my broken heart – he echoes all the great sadnesses I have felt in my life in this city. He plays it all out on the streets of Market, King, Hunter and Elizabeth, killing me with his playing. He plays out all the darkest secrets of my heart and my soul on that trumpet of his, echoing all the solemn cries of the past as I toss a coin, walk on letting it fade into the background, fade into the crowd, fade into the past.

  On that last day before departure, seeing Harry on the corner of Bathurst and George Streets on the steps of the Energy Australia Building, I shared my umbrella with him as it was raining. He told me he lived in a house now, by himself in Redfern, and he was happy with that. He explained to me that he didn’t have any money until pay day. I gave him all my coins – they mean nothing much to me but a cup of coffee. He gave me a kiss on the cheek, his razor sharp stubble prickling me as he moved his face away. We stood under my umbrella. He was dressed warm and smoking a cigarette, I smoked one with him.

  Fayroze

  Tuesday 9 April 2013

  The Conjurers Club

  Henry Johnston

  Rozelle, NSW

  A freezing rain silenced Dublin. Citizens seeking shelter said the sleet crossed the Irish Sea from Britain and Belgium and as far away as Poland. The crystalline water seeped into the cracks of old Georgian mansions behind O’Connell Street, forming stalactites on the garden statuary and biting into the granite of the stately homes of Irish high society.

  I had disembarked the ferry at Dun Laoghaire a few days earlier. Passengers wore life belts the entire rough crossing from Holyhead. I struggled to keep down my last meal of pickled eel and chips.

  My editor suggested a thousand words on a reunion of magicians at Dublin’s Conjurers Club. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. No? Me neither.

  ‘Are you serious?’ I asked, but a city map and an expenses chit countered incredulity.

  The logo of an upturned top hat, a rabbit peeping over the brim identifies the Conjurers Club and beneath in prefect copperplate script, is the club’s motto: one and three are odd numbers.

  The building is in Holles Street near the old National Maternity Hospital, a kilometre from St Andrew’s Church, a temple of sobriety James Joyce dubbed All Hallows in Ulysses.

  If you find St Andrew’s, scrunch up your eyes and imagine Leopold Bloom exiting the church and turning left toward Sweny’s Pharmacy on his eternal round of the city.

  I located the club after two or three missteps. A company of men stood beside an open wrought iron gate of the old Georgian house, fidgeting in the cold, stamping their feet and breathing into their gloved hands before walking single file through the club’s front door.

  I crossed the street, my collar turned to the rain, but as I approached, the men emerged carrying furniture, seats, a dais, and boxes of magicians’ stage props.

  A tall, older fellow with a patch over his right eye and dressed in full evening tails, followed. He expanded a large black umbrella, picked up a wooden sandwich board and propped it on the footpath. The sign, written in sublime copperplate read, ‘Conjurers Club reunion cancelled’.

  A riderless horse with neither bridle nor saddle, clip-clopped the cobblestones obscuring my view, and when I looked back, the notice, the old man and his accomplices had gone.

  Tuesday 9 April 2013 4 pm

  Southern Tablelands

  Amber Johnson

  Annerley, QLD

  In a field

  where the earth is a rich ochre

  and the grass is bleached gold,

  ewes graze with their lambs

  in a flock two hundred

  head strong.

  They seek refuge

  beneath the shade of an aged eucalypt

  with skeletal boughs

  that stretch to the sky,

  silver trunk

  stripped bare.

  Cicadas sing

  in an eerie drone,

  praising Sol for his kiss on this valley.

  Their relentless song

  becomes the melody for leaves

  that dance in the wind.

  As you scan the landscape,

  mountains encompass your view.

  The distant ranges along the horizon

  are consumed

  by a blue haze.

  And the hills roll like the thunder

  that booms through the clouds,

  striking the earth,

  caressing the gums,

  and embracing natural curves.

  Farmers and their Blue Heelers

  jump aboard their John Deere tractors

  and groom the pastures,

  wheat fields,

  and crops,

  to a handsome

  clean-cut finish.

  They toil

  until the powder blue sky becomes streaked

  in tie-dye hues.

  Sun ebbing from sight,

  fading to dusk.

  The lambs are left rest

  beside that lone gum tree,

  beneath the obsidian sky

  that shines like magnetite.

  With gentle winds

  like sighs from a baby’s breath,

  the Southern Tablelands

  are illuminated by moonlight.

  Wednesday 10 April 2013

  An SMS Summer Journal

  Ashwyn Kale

  Moonah, TAS

  When everything was packed and ready, I knew that the one thing I really needed to leave behind was me.

  ~~~

  Life Jacket Under Your Seat No Smoking In The Toilets Fasten Seat Belt While Seated Please Do Not Remove This Poem From The Aircraft.

  ~~~

  Distant dogs barked as you slept, thickening the unease. Only seven plums on the tree this year and that, too, unsaid.

  ~~~

  Too much sunlight now. My eyes wider than the desert, unable to grieve. Flowers bent and wilted, coloured paper flapping in the hot northerlies.

  ~~~

  She offered to explain, but explanations are of no value to those who have never loved, and those who love need no explanations.

  ~~~

  I had strawberry stains on my shirt and sunburnt nose, ears, neck. The red on my chin was juice or blood and I couldn’t tell the difference.

  ~~~

  You laughed, and I wanted those ripples in my dark world, tapping at the silence, yes.

  ~~~

  Graves, orderly, only Mr Selman Ibrahim facing west. I remember his bulbous nose, leave-me-be eyes and dark children. In death still foreign, alone.

  ~~~

  Currawongs lament purple skies, privet air, heat, curling ferns, absent wind and the cake that was fresh only yesterday.

  ~~~

  I turned on the television, waiting for a politician to say, ‘and at the end of the day, the sun goes down’. I watched a movie starring rain.

  ~~~

  Shadows wept across the fields as the pickers and packers made their way home. Seconds, three dollars fifty a kilogram, self service.

  ~~~

  You have the right to breathe happiness. You have the right to sing lonely clouds to sleep. You have the right to love the world. You.

  ~~~

  I sat down in the plaza next to a one-eyed fortune-teller with a dove on his shoulder and he said the future just wasn’t what it used to be.

  ~~~

  Every mountain ash stood to attention, gunbarrel straight, and the prospect of evil seemed barely a dim green light in the distance.

/>   ~~~

  The family gathered for dinner. Small lies were a bother to cook so they had big lies. They were very juicy. It was a kind of tradition.

  ~~~

  Petrol cheaper on Wednesdays, the cool change too late for one drowned so far at Safety Beach and still caravans queued at the freeway exit.

  ~~~

  If and when my acting career ever resumes I’ll be playing a dead serf in an arty BW film where skinny people stand around grim rooms talking about Dostoyevsky.

  ~~~

  The hand upon the desk that clicks the mouse that guides the pointer across the screen that starts the program didn’t even flinch.

  ~~~

  When the stars came to pull the covers back from that shaky night the darkness was lying at an uncomfortable angle.

  ~~~

  The neighbours parked their beige car in front of their beige house and had beige holidays every second weekend until they died.

  ~~~

  At the summit there was a grassy clearing with a kangaroo kissing the ground. A branch crashed down. The Pope raised his pointy ears and hopped away.

  ~~~

  Was there any need to ask when you heard the question tremble and fall before it even thought about passing your lips, unkissed?

  ~~~

  Thunderheads tumbling. Frogs swimming in rain. Wheels licking roads. Drains gargling muddy broth. A cat hiding, watching, twitching, waiting.

  ~~~

  From what I can recall she was a collision of light and flesh that dropped by for dinner one day, ate my soul and departed.