Scraps of Heaven Read online

Until thieves will out with their booty

  And give to all a happier lot

  Each at the forge must do their duty

  And we’ll strike while the iron is hot.

  They emerge from the dark passages of their houses, from the bosoms of their separate lives. The working week is almost over, Friday is a welcome night. Step back, adjust your eyes, and you will see them on their verandahs, or peering from the balconies of two-storey homes. Others are out on the pavements, beside front gates, where they sit on chairs or stools. The red tips of cigarettes describe lazy circles in the dark. The drone of radios emanates through open doors. The murmur of conversation rises and subsides. It is a relief to be outside veiled by the anonymity of a humid night.

  Romek places a chair on the verandah. He is wearing a white singlet, leather sandals and khaki shorts. The shorts are baggy, but not long enough to cover his knees. His calves are hard, worn smooth and bone-white. Romek is a middle-aged man with a tight build. His biceps are firm, and his lower arm veins are blue tributaries that peter out into the palms. He glances at the patch of road where, just twelve hours earlier, he had gathered the manure.

  The house is a one-storey terrace, bound by a cast-iron fence. A flight of four stone steps ascends from the gate to the verandah beside a tiny plot of earth. Two rosebushes lean against geraniums scattered between weeds and dirt. Moths whirl like deranged dancers around the streetlamp. From the pavement Romek looks like a skeleton, white and disjointed, dangling in the dark.

  On the verandah next door sits Mr Bianchi. His wife Rosalba delivers a plate of biscotti and three glasses of wine. She places them on a card table by the patriarch’s side. Bianchi’s face is a mottled red; his white hair shows through the gaps in his unbuttoned shirt. He is a layer of bricks, a man of ageing muscle and bulk seated by his honoured guest, Valerio, his nephew, fresh from the boat. His unpacked suitcases can be glimpsed through the open door. Throughout the evening they arrive, Bianchi’s two sons and their families, relatives and friends, to greet Valerio. The gathering waxes and wanes with the arrival and departure of guests. The lilt of their voices evaporates into the night.

  On the verandah of the adjoining house sits Mr Sommers. His neighbours do not know his first name. He lives by himself, and keeps to himself. His hair is white, as is his moustache. He is as still as a Buddha. This is how he sits, night after summer night. Some say he fought in the Great War, others add that he was wounded on the battlefields of France, perhaps gassed, and that even now, four decades later, he suffers from its effects. As for Sommers, he just sits. And smokes. He pauses from time to time to refill his pipe. He pokes and prods the tobacco into a tight fit. He nods his head slightly in acknowledgment whenever someone walks by. When his pipe is well lit he settles back, wordless in the dark.

  Next door, Miles Shanahan lounges on a weathered sofa, glass of beer in hand. The dimly lit passage is lined with books scattered over wooden shelves. Shanahan trucks freight interstate, and when he is home, between runs, he allows his body to sag.

  ‘Come and have a drink,’ he calls, as Josh ambles by. He mixes a shandy for Josh, one dash of beer, four parts lemonade. ‘The working class is a sleeping dragon,’ he says with an ironic smile. ‘And one day we are going to wake up and roar!’ It is his peculiar form of greeting, the way he toasts his friends.

  Somewhere inside, his pregnant wife is moving about. Merle Shanahan is a mysterious presence, a thin woman, pale and tightlipped. They are opposites, Merle and Miles, husband and wife. She flits in and out of view, barely visible under the single globe light. Her hair is blonde, her skin a sun-deprived white. He is black-haired, robust, his forearms and hands are sunburnt dark. She smells of stale perfume, and there are dark rings under her young eyes. She is a woman of interiors and he, a man of the road. They barely register each other’s presence; and Josh can sense it— in Merle, a hint of fear and, in Shanahan, the faint tremors of a stifled rage.

  Shanahan has a photographic memory. It is his party trick, and a source of great pride. He claims to be able to recite the opening page of his favoured books. The first time he invited Josh onto the verandah, he had taken him into the passage and pointed at the shelves: ‘These are my special books,’ he had claimed, ‘the ones that are worth reading many times. Go ahead. Just pick any book from that shelf.’

  Josh pulled out, at random, The Call of the Wild. ‘Jack London’s a great writer,’ said Shanahan, ‘and a great traveller. Like me. From the cabin of a truck, you get a bird’s eye view of the world. London writes about my own kind. He understands the working man. And he understood dogs. Open it up to the first page. I know exactly what’s written there.’ True to his word, Shanahan recites the opening lines:

  Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.

  He had loaned the book to Josh, and now they sit, months later, side by side, and talk of wild beasts, snowbound lands, and a sledge dog called Buck who becomes leader of the wolf pack.

  Shanahan pauses to roll a cigarette. Josh can smell the tobacco on Shanahan’s breath. It clings to his fingers, along with the smell of diesel fuel and sweat. He spreads the tobacco along the paper, shapes and caresses it between his forefingers and thumbs. With one swipe he tongues the glue and seals the paper into a perfectly rounded cigarette. Shanahan holds up the final product, admires his handiwork, and lays it aside on the armrest before tidying the tobacco pouch. He lights a match, hands cupped to shield the flame from the breeze, and sucks at the cigarette until the smoke takes hold. He returns the pouch to his back pocket, stretches, yawns, and sits back.

  ‘This is a dog-eat-dog world,’ he says after he draws his first full puff. He speaks slowly now. The ritual has calmed him. ‘Yes, it’s a dog-eat-dog world, and you’re a skinny runt. You need a bit of toughening up.’

  Shanahan exhales, and his eyes follow the smoke as it dissipates. ‘Better to be the leader of the pack than a follower,’ he says. ‘Take a leaf out of Buck’s book. Come by tomorrow morning. It’s time to put a bit of muscle on those bones. It’s time to learn to fight.’

  Zofia lights two candles and places them upon the mantelpiece. She sits by the kitchen table in the candle-lit dark. She does not wish to join Romek outside, but prefers to sit alone. Her elbows rest upon the tablecloth. She is no longer a believer, yet on Friday nights she still honours the arrival of the Sabbath bride.

  But the voices persist. They rise from the gas pipes. They lurk in dark corners, in storm drains and within the kitchen walls. She hears them as mocking hisses that flow from the telegraph poles. She detects their echoes underfoot, in the cobwebbed foundations of the house. She sees them as cloud formations, dark forces about to cut loose; but tonight the voices are benign. The candles reduce them to a whisper, and the Yiddish song she has begun to hum keeps them at bay:

  You ask me my friend, how old I am now,

  How to count the years that are mounting.

  My life, my friend, is a long, long path,

  And the distance is not worth the counting.

  Zofia glances at the enamelled kookaburra perched on a twig upon the oven door. Its beak is slightly open, its laughter imminent. The meal is over, the house clean. Her work is done. As she sings the voices retreat. For every occasion Zofia has a song, and on this Sabbath eve the song is stronger than the ghosts.

  In Canning Street there is a median strip lined with poplars and palms. The boys are playing cricket in the shadows cast by a streetlight. Josh hurries from Shanahan’s to join the game. The palm tree acts as a stump; the players
are adept at straight drives. Square cuts and hooks can break windows or shatter the reverie of those sitting nearby.

  Later, those with bikes ride to the cemetery, four blocks distant, on Lygon Street. The boys chain their bikes to the iron pickets and squeeze into the grounds through a gap in the bars. Tombstones stretch from the visible foreground into the dark. The boys are playing ‘walking on air’. The object of the game is to get from one side of the cemetery to the other without touching the ground. They have no respect. They are too young for that. Besides, the night is warm, the air scented with cypress and pine. The boys leap from grave to grave. They dodge stone vases and urns, and pause at statuettes of angels and marble Christs. They retrace their steps on the tombstones to find a way that avoids the paths.

  Josh comes upon a couple lying beneath a cypress. To the south, in the near distance, glows an enclave of inner-city lights. A flock of pigeons flutters up from a clearing of raw earth. They veer in a half circle of shadows, and vanish on their collective flight. Josh crouches behind a tombstone, riveted by the couple’s movements in the dark. He listens to the moans of the lovers, the shriek of crickets, the hum of a tram moving past.

  His friends call him, but Josh remains quiet. His eyes are fastened upon the couple’s vigorous movements, his ears attuned to their sighs. He runs his fingers over the inscription on the tombstone as if deciphering a hidden code. A lone beetle ambles below him on the dirt path. The cemetery is a place for the living.

  Bloomfield sits on a park bench in Curtain Square and surveys his domain. This is a true square. Not like those he has seen in other suburbs, squeezed behind back fences, bums facing outwards like an afterthought. In Curtain Square the houses face inwards, interspersed by cobblestone lanes. On one corner stands the Kent Hotel, dark now, except for one light in an upper room, and on another, the low-slung buildings of a kindergarten. There are two-storey terraces with balconies framed by iron lace, and single-fronted cottages that have known better days.

  Bloomfield observes the scattering of families gathered on the lawns. The parents lie on blankets or sit cross-legged while their children run wild. They cling to swings and monkey bars, or send soccer balls scudding over the grass. Two dogs are sniffing each other under a streetlamp; a group of teenage boys wrestle, fall to the ground, and spring back up.

  Every child, it seems, is moving, on scooter, foot or bike. Bloomfield glances up at the old man on the balcony. He is still sitting, fingering his beads, as he has all day. On the parapet, a ginger cat sits motionless, a statuette in the dark. Three girls nestle in the hollows of the Moreton Bay figs. They play hide-and-seek between the roots. They are small enough to disappear within them. They fit easily into the curves, and glide in and out.

  An old papou wheels a pram past his bench. Bloomfield knows his routine. He comes at the same time, on the warmer nights, along the same path, to the same swing. He wears a white singlet, a pair of slippers, loose-fitting trousers with their cuffs rolled. He releases his grandchild, places her upon the swing: ‘Oppa, oppa,’ he exclaims with each push. When his grandchild takes flight he rejoices. ‘Fly, poulakimou,’ he says. ‘Fly, my little bird.’

  Bloomfield enters into a private rhythm of seeing. The longer he watches, the more he disappears, until all that is left is the seeing. He is the seer and not the seen. He will be there long after the others have gone.

  One by one the children fall asleep to the fanning of a breeze, the rustle of elm tree leaves. They fall asleep to the scent of summer grass and the strains of a baby’s cry. The adults too are dozing off after one last slap of a card, one final sip of beer. They fall asleep on the crest of a humid wave, with relief at the imminent end of another working week.

  Bloomfield is not yet ready for sleep. He does not want the movement to cease. He paces the square, but keeps the world at bay. He extends an arm as if feeling his way. He finally comes to rest back on the park bench. It is warm enough tonight not to have to return to his single room in the welfare house. Yet he wraps himself in his overcoat despite the warmth. Bloomfield senses the company around him. He will sleep well tonight. He is not alone.

  On this night comes the return of desire. The skin is warm to the touch, and damp with the heat of a sultry night. Romek is surprised that she has yielded. Zofia is forty years old, and there is an enduring ripeness in her body. Yet Romek can feel the outlines of her bones, and the flesh that contains them, the delicate balance between firm and soft. He can sense the beginnings of the underlying hardness that will intensify with the passing of time. He can feel the beginnings of Zofia’s ageing, the first movements towards the last phase.

  These sensations intensify his desire. As too does the smell of her hair, its luxuriance, its blackness that is even blacker against the dark of the night. This is what it means to know a woman, he reflects with his incorrigible poet’s mind. It is a knowledge that can only come with the sharing of the same bed for many nights, over many years. And he is seized with a sense of panic, tinged with regret. Why had they wasted so much time? Why had they withdrawn into an isolation that denied touch? Why did she prefer to undress outside, in the passage, out of sight?

  Romek and Zofia make love in the dark. They can only make love in the dark. They no longer look upon each other’s bodies. The dark envelops them and sharpens their sense of smell. The dark protects them, and magnifies the sounds of the night. They make love to the barking of street dogs and the far-off wail of a cat. They make love because the heat has released the scent of forgotten days. They make love because it is hot, and it is late, and they are too tired to care.

  It has taken them by surprise, and taken them before they can draw back. There is an ease when he enters her that surprises them both. There is a yielding, a weary surrender to touch, a fluidity in their coupling that Romek had resigned himself to never knowing again. They have not made love for over a year; and it will be the last time they will ever make love.

  It begins with the barking of one dog. There is anger in that bark. Yet it is also comforting. It intensifies the mystery of the night. Somewhere out there, in a backyard, a dog is barking. One bark begets other barks. The barks rise, subside, and return to the dark. And somewhere out there a cat wails, and another is snarling. His snarl begets other snarls, a crescendo that culminates in a brawl.

  Josh imagines the fur flying. He knows how brutal it can be; he has seen the bloody wounds. He has seen his own cat slink warily home to avoid the tomcat’s fights. She had made her way into their lives many months before. She had sauntered into the yard, a skinny scavenger, and scrounged in the rubbish bin. Zofia had fed her and taken her in. They named her simply ‘Puss’. ‘Here, puss, puss, puss,’ they would call, and she would run to the kitchen door for her scraps, then retire under the Kooka stove. Now she lies in the backyard, pregnant, on a pile of curdling blankets against the wash-house wall, insulated from the territories where neighbourhood cats fight over each patch of turf.

  Josh drifts back to sleep as the howls subside. An hour later the barking begins anew. Again one bark begets another and the cacophony penetrates his dreams. Josh is being chased over a field of ice. Buck is running with the dog pack. They are howling, yelping, closing in. They are leaping at Josh’s heels. He slips and slides over the ice. His legs cannot take hold.

  ‘Run,’ says Shanahan. ‘Run you skinny runt.’

  He sits on his sofa, on a distant verandah, detached. The dogs are tearing at Josh. Pawing. Howling. Lunging at his throat. Their eyes are bloody with wrath. Shanahan sits back, rolling a cigarette. The faster Josh runs, the more elusive Shanahan becomes. He can still see him rolling that damn cigarette. He is slipping back. The barks are louder, more insistent. He can smell the dogs’ rancid breath.

  ‘Run,’ says the receding Shanahan. ‘Run you skinny runt.’

  Zofia is dreaming of a river and a boat. She has hold of the oars. The river curves around one last corner. Rising from the mists is a palace. Zofia knows the palace well. She has
climbed its stone steps, and crept through its gates. She has descended into its crypts and gazed upon the tombs of bishops and kings.

  She guides the boat towards the palace landing. Just as she is about to tie the ropes, the boat is drawn back. The oars move quickly, but the outgoing current is stronger. Her arms are tiring. The river is widening. The boat is adrift on an open sea. The glare of the water scalds her. The vastness terrifies her. She steels herself against the currents until, slowly, she turns the boat around and regains sight of land.

  She guides her boat back through the river mouth, and glimpses the palace on a distant hill. She nears a jetty and sees a row of hands reaching out. The palace is moving closer. She is within reach of familiar ground. She loosens her grip on the oars; but just as she is about to touch the jetty, the boat is drawn back out. Her oars are dead weights against the tide.

  She resumes her rowing. She is desperate to regain the shore. With great effort she draws back through the river mouth. The jetty is so close she can touch it, but the hands are tentacles driving her out. She loses her grip. The oars snap and are carried away. A flotilla of corpses drifts by. She wants to see their faces, but the corpses dissolve. She is back in the vastness, trapped between sea and sky; and she awakens in terror, in the front room, to the barking of dogs, and the snarls of enraged cats.

  The light from the streetlamp is a mild glow. It penetrates the lace curtains that hang limp against the open window. Zofia glances at the dresser, the fireplace, the chest of drawers and mantelpiece. They are familiar markers, visible in the dim light.

  The barking has stopped. The cats have crept back into dark corners to nurse their wounds. She is in a quiet place, half a world removed from the sites of horror she had once known. The house is still, and despite the cracks in the wall, the stuffed rat holes and patches of damp, the foundations seem strong. And despite the sense of dread that can suddenly assail her, Zofia drifts back into a dreamless sleep.