Chapter 1 Stormy Monday

 

It was yet to become sunrise but the sky was starting to grow lighter. The shapes of the trees were black against the silvery water. And the dogs running looked like black silhouettes also when they were visible. One note sounded - of a machine across the water. Then a voice from the shadows cursing,

"Get the fucking dogs off me you fucking bitch, get them out of the fucking park."

The woman hesitated beside the car and then called the dogs over and continued down the path. Nothing moved. The lights of the cars twinkled along the highway across the bay, little blocks of light moving across the water. And the reflection of the silos like a fairy palace shimmering green and white, for dancing princesses out dancing all night. But for her it was the other end of the day beginning with daybreak.

They stopped on the old stones jutting into the bay next to the canal. One of the dogs walked into the water and swam out in a small circle, the end of his tail still dry and waving in the air like a feather plume. The sky lightened over the city and by the time they reached the old closed road by the timber yard all the clouds in the sky were glowing pink. As they drew level with the timber yard gate, a semi-trailer parked at the end of the closed road suddenly started roaring towards them. She stepped quickly to the edge of the road but the dogs rushed barking towards its giant tyres. She screamed at them to come away but the younger dog got caught up under the chassis and was dragged and tumbled over and over as the truck gathered speed and moved quickly onto the main road.

The other dog reached the twitching corpse before her, checked that his mate was dead and ran off into the park again. By the time she got there the dog was still and horribly damaged. She bent down and touched an undamaged piece of fur on his back. Already it felt inert like an old carpet on the road. The usual knot of dog owners was still standing in the middle of the park. A timber yard worker came out, making reassuring and constructive comments.

But was it murder. A sign. A warning.

The lecturer concluded by applauding the efforts of the local Orthodox Church in helping to maintain Greek language and Greek culture as well as a sense of community among Greeks in Australia. Then it was question time. The first question was from a young woman.

"I would like to ask the speaker what she thinks of the fact that the Greek culture which is being promoted by the local Church is patriarchal and backward-looking. There is no place in the Church or the Church community for women to speak or act in positions of power and feminism is frowned on. Within that community it is impossible to question the traditional family and the gender roles it fosters. So can the speaker please explain, as a feminist, what she thinks is the role of feminism in the local Church or for that matter in the Church in Greece?"

The lecturer dismissed the woman out of hand and looked around for other questions as a ripple went through the crowd. More people stood up and asked articulate questions about multiculturalism and social justice issues. More people were put in their place. The air became electric. She seized on a good-looking man but he also asked a difficult question. She lacerated him. Some people started to laugh. She'd read the audience wrongly. Laceration was a familiar and accepted tactic. It didn't scare anyone. It was read as provocative not conclusive. Everyone wanted to talk and discuss. They didn't want to stop or be stopped. She held her hand up,

"No more questions. I'm sorry, I'm very tired."

"That is the point though, isn't it?" the man in front of us said, turning around to watch her leave with a couple of fans.

"How do we conserve our culture and our language without being old-fashioned, anachronistic and religious? What if you're an atheist like me? Am I going to send my kids to Church? No way. I'll send them to Saturday School but not to Church."

The grass in the park in the brilliant winter sunshine. What could pass in Northern Europe for summer. Close up, the grass like tweed, the way each stalk and blade fold firmly over each other. The way you can see the stalks as much as the blades. Not green at all, not like an English park or suburb where the grass is spilling, flowing, running all over. Lush, covering stones, running up against fences like a ground cover out of control. Impossible in Australia, always going brown, always developing empty bald patches. Going dusty in the heat and muddy in the wet. And huge flat expanses. No cool and shady little forest areas. No sheltered little tracks covered with leaf litter. No little, only big.

Sheets of rain moving across the water and a misty effect. Standing in a room looking out. Visited by ghosts of the past. So far back now. Those people who understood and accepted me. When I was consumed by the idea of a quest for understanding. So many of them with migration problems or holocaust problems. Someone left behind, the hardship of a new start, the opacity of Anglo-Australians, the uncomprehending. Considered criminal interlopers by the interlopers. Impenetrable, it just is like that. The environment seems inexplicable but it's not. The ranking of the egalitarian society necessitated being equivocal.

The beautiful eastern sunshine streamed through the big picture window facing the beach, flooding, saturating the room. Just post-sunrise. A great time to sit and think, 6 am till 7 am. Then it got too hot to think and you could only muse and dream. Already 45 minutes had been gained since the solstice. The time for winter brooding was over. She picked up the beach towel, goggles, swimming cap, ear plugs, hat and keys and headed down to the beach. The flats so close to it that the bottom step was always lost in the sand. She walked along the beach to the pool, swam 10 laps and walked back. On the way up the steps again, she heard two phones ringing, two different rings. Neither was hers. Neither was answered. One was picked up by an answering machine. She could hear her neighbour's outgoing message very loudly, followed by a message from a man with an unnaturally deep and modulated voice. Maybe it was a joke but the message was something banal about a lounge suite. She went inside and sat on her balcony with a coffee for a few minutes. She heard a car door slam, then the rustle of plastic carry bags, then a car door closing again, then footsteps along the path and into the foyer. Mrs Spellano back from early shopping. On the second trip out to the car, she looked up and saw her neighbour. She waved and called out,

"Rini, sweetheart, I've got a giant tin of matjes, you'll have to take some."

Rini waved back.

She woke up sweating, her heart pounding. The sun from the glass doors was beating on her head. In the dream she was running after an aeroplane which was taxiing along a runway. She was late. The aeroplane door was open but she couldn't reach it. At the cyclone fence at the edge of the tarmac a man stood staring at her. She didn't recognize him. She clutched at the tail of the aeroplane but it slipped away and took off. Her hand was left covered in an orange glove and the orange stuff was a chalky pigment - maybe poisonous massicot.

The sun began to sink and the shadows became dark and rich. Grey storm clouds banked up in the east behind the skyscrapers. Then for a few minutes the sun struck the mirrored glass of the office towers and reflected the sunset. Sunset on both sides of the ridge beaming across the road down the side streets, streaming through the car windows. On the back seat, the dog snapped at parked cars, running across the back seat snapping out one window then snapping out the other. Sometimes leaning across the driver to snap at cars ahead. Overhead but to the left, a procession of planes on international flights passed slowly across the sky.

We're stuck on the island. So far from everywhere. Sure it's big but it's an island. Australia is an island. We're trapped here.

Below, the panorama of Sydney looking apocryphal and sharply detailed in the sunset like an Altdorfer painting. Dramatic storm clouds in the sky and a crack of dark orange along the western horizon. A contrast to the stuffiness and staleness inside the plane. With shoes and crumpled aeroplane blankets on the floor and everyone feeling exhausted. He looked down into Sydney Harbour along the fractal shoreline and recognized the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge from TV and photos. The view was not kitsch like postcards but lovely like a real panorama is. It seemed neat and still even though the twinkling lights of cars were flowing along the roads.

Taxis passed by. His brother was late picking him up because the flight was one hour early. A car passed by slowly, driven by a woman scanning the footpath for someone. The dog on the back seat was also looking. A few minutes later she passed again, then pulled up further along in a no stopping area. She got out of the car and stood on the frame of the open car door scanning the interior of the terminal.

The young man's face was serious and he had dark rings under his eyes. He was still and quiet, not fast to react. He was smoking slowly. Like someone who had shouldered an enormous burden which registered skeletally, making him slightly stooped. He took a small rug out of his bag, opened it, shook it and refolded it. The rug was a beautiful hand-crocheted piece with wool from the red-orange end of the spectrum. He wrapped it carefully in brown paper and put it back in his bag.

She slammed the car door and went into the terminal. The dog jumped into the front seat behind the steering wheel. She ran past all the families clustered around the exit ramps and down to the foreign currency exchange window. The old woman turned to hug her, saying,

"Don't worry, I wouldn't change money here. I was just interested in the exchange rate."

Before they reached the car, the dog had squeezed out of the driver's window and was running up and down the footpath. The dog had attracted the attention of a security guard who was walking quickly towards them but by the time he got there, everyone and their baggage was in the car. He nodded and turned back again.

Sheets of rain moved across the road. A large square coachhouse lamp shone in the darkness. Behind it was a three-storey terraced house with a soft golden glow coming from the downstairs windows. There was a feeling of complexity about his brother's situation. The unexpected wealth and his extreme fitness, muscularity even.