Calvaria Fell, page 23
Shrugging, I say, “Plenty more of what?”
He gives me the knowingest of looks, dips his hand, pulls out his stash and reels me in, with Travel by Trans Australian Railway; Ireland, land of romance; Michie Tavern, Charlottesville; Fasco Mexico Panoramic Hillside View and 1964 New York World’s Fair Expo Postcard Souvenir Swedenborgian exhibit.
Excitement sets my heart aflame, but he’s not finished yet. Next up reveals an original Philips’ Comparative Wall Atlas South America Climate Summer Map from 1921.
Seriously now, where did these brides unearth such precious treasures?
Rhizanthella of the sapphire hair pouts, signaling they know they’ve won me over.
“Genesis or Ecclesiastes?” I mumble, coughing sharp to clear my throat.
She shrugs, so I’m going for E over G, being that those words are kind of filthy when you get under their skin: All about God creating man in his own image, all male, female and blessed and lah-de-dah. Instructing them to get shagging and subdue the Earth, with dominion over everything that moves. Which is, of course, exactly how things played out, long-term, unchecked dominion being what landed us all in this heritage listed, excluded and confined predicament.
No point arguing over spilled histories. I snatch the Vatican cards for my collection—can you believe there’s a whole new city I never previously knew existed?
And then we’re off as locals meandering the waterfront drop half-mended nets and basket traps, leave racks of drying fishy things and line along the concrete pier to clap and wave and wish us bon voyage and happy trails, with sun and breeze and wine and songs and the brides do look completely and utterly amazing. A lurid, groaning trifle of structured fashion-forward beaded bodices with restricted boning, clean lines managing to be classic, yet sensual and unique, delicate and romantic with renaissance lace and all the trimmings.
And yeah, it’s definitely going to be a job for Ecclesiastes: Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor; If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them . . . Numbers in need of upgrading as it goes without saying that if seven lie down together, they will keep very much warmer than only two, reinforcing that one cannot keep properly warm alone.
And the day is warm and the sun so lovely, waters calm and smooth and lazy, wind tousling my salty beard and I know I’m one of the lucky ones because although heritage listing is dull and slow and we live off algae pressed and shaped like fish, and nothing ever happens in this fragment of the world, it’s a better life than we actually deserve.
—
Daisychain is the best of doggos, acquired from army surplus. Not the prettiest of pooches—a slightly rusty, dynamically stable quadruped military unit shelved (too loud for combat and too picky for reconnaissance), refitted, recalibrated and reclassified as a medical care device before washing upon these shores. Daisychain may well be dented, but he loves me best and that’s what matters most.
Air stirs thick with pheromone potpourri as we’re casting off from shore, with brides ever elegant and seductive in pastel ombres of buttons, beads, sequins and ribbon; mermaid tulle overlay with ruffles offering a playful commentary, a splash of color infusion tiers and a touch of old-style Hollywood glamour, not to mention those iridescent vintage (obviously) blue-green embroidered Sternocera beetle wings.
They’re waiting for me to do my thing. The Winedark Soup lies still so close to shore where safety is assured in shallows. Cloud banks brood along distant horizons, layered dark on dark, a moody, shifting mass of heaving coal from which forked lightning illuminates cracking, fizzing underbellies laced with spidery threads of forked electric sun.
Moustachio offers to take the wheel while I nip below to fetch my admiral’s jacket, the one with the bullion embroidery and rank insignia anchor-embossed brass buttons, ribbon bar and breast eagle. The jacket hangs in a slim wooden robe alongside my deep and darkest treasures: a scrimshaw jagging wheel complete with mermaid breasts and tail; a love heart carved from Whitby jet and the assortment of strange pornography I keep in a Hoyo de Monterrey Jose Gener Excalibur #11 wooden cigar box.
Within the box sit secret postcard remnants of a frightening domain. Dogs and cats stuffed into baskets captioned with Wish you were here; the dolphin jumping through a flaming hoop; the woman in dotty bathers posing with a giant bear against red curtains embellished with brassy handguns. Florida—Drop in anytime—says the reptile head with enormous spiky teeth, while Wildlife of the Desert boasts improbably named gamble quail, horned toad, kangaroo rat, kiss bug, centipede, spotted skunk, ring-tailed cat, elf owl, coral snake, side winder, bobcat and others you would never even believe.
Then there’s Cove Haven Resort in the Pocono Mountains with a heart-shaped tub in every room; Ghost Riders in The Sky, the gone-but-not-forgotten Twenty Mule Wagon team across a spectacular Death Valley sunset with the Devil’s Golf Course in the foreground.
So many cards with old men posing alongside murdered animals, like they were somehow proud of what they’d done. The past is another country is what my Gramma used to say, but I reckon it must have been much, much worse than that.
A sudden lurch slams me hard against the companionway, the rise and fall bow into breaking waves creates a powerful sensation of forward surge. Somehow, against all odds, the wind has found us.
I stuff the porn back in the box and emerge on deck to a blur of brides grasping tight and pulling ropes, fighting gravity and wind, as waves slam fierce against the sides. Wicked gusts spitting mist into our faces, astonished as Goldeneye jumps up to the main mast to reef the sail, rigging singing as water rushes along the hull, sails popping and pulling taut as my Santorini heads straight for the belly of the beast.
“Oh hey,” waves Rhiz through the foaming spittle.
“What the hell do you crazy brides think you’re doing?” I bellow.
“We want to get married on Santorini,” she shouts over the ocean roar. “As in, on the actual island, not the boat.”
“Over my dead and destituted corpse! Nobody returns from the isle of Santorini!”
“We know that, oh excellent of Admirals. We want to find out why.”
My startled, damp stare shifts from face to face. The brides are drenched and enjoying every minute. “Santorini is a smoking crater!” I shout out through my creaking lungs. “The 88-minute war. Everybody knows about these things!”
“Of course we know about the war, dear, lovely Admiral. But you’ve got a boat and we’ve got a collective insatiable urge to learn the ever-loving truth.”
“The truth of what? What truth is there to learn? The Exclusion Zone . . .”
“. . . excludes exactly what?”
Thing is, I’m not an idiot. I’ve looked up exclusion many times, firstly in the Collins English Dictionary Fourth Australian Edition Better by Definition, with its shiny cover of black and gold. It states exclusion is an act or an instance of excluding or the state of being excluded. Not much help in the grander scheme of things.
“Question is,” she continues in a loud and nauseatingly knowing tone, “is the state of being excluded keeping something out or keeping something in?”
“Santorini is radioactive,” I shout back at her, adding a steely glint for emphasis. Which is quite a trick with Winedark spume spraying everywhere.
The fat one with the sideburns rolls her eyes. “No it isn’t! No nukes were deployed during the 88-Minute war. That’s why the damn thing went on for so long. Surely you’ve read the Chronicles of Whatnot and Wherefore . . .” Pudgy fingers attempt explanatory curlicues in fizzing, salt wracked air.
Above us, dramatic energy discharges flare in shredded indigo sky. “The volcano then. Nea Kameni must have blown its top again.”
Sideburns nods wetly. “Plausible.” She then leans in close and personal. “But don’t you want to find out for yourself?”
“No I don’t!” Words blurting far more forcefully than intended, surprising everyone including me. Even Daisychain cocks an ear and tilts his head.
“Just close enough to see if there’s smoke,” she adds. “If Nea Kameni’s belching, we’ll get out of there.”
“I’m not going,” I inform them, crossing sodden admiral arms, “And you can all get off my Gramma’s boat now, thank you.”
None of them budge. They stare me down while steering the Santorini out into forgotten waters. Like they’ve done such things before. Like somebody has taught them all about it—which is more than anyone ever taught me.
Truth is, I have not the skills to sail this boat across the Exclusion Zone to Santorini. I’ve never been further than a couple of Ks from Heraklion’s rocky shoreline. I am no more a sea captain than this lot are bona fide brides. Gramma’s Santorini is heaving with impostors.
—
My Gramma taught me lightning strikes are five times hotter than the surface of the sun. With this in mind, we navigate by sextant, compass, paper maps and stars through an exclusion zone as wifi sterilized as every other. We tug and grasp at hardy ropes, fighting fierce wind, gravity and rigging, sails popping and pulling taut. Reefing like our lives are depending on it. Needn’t have panicked. These brides know all about the double play of sail and rudder, forward surge and running down the face of waves.
And as winedark soup slops over the deck, it all starts coming back to me in strobing shards and spits and slivers. A voyage under dead of night, ocean waves like thick and blackened blood. Tossed and pitched and rocked and roiled, Gramma’s tanned arms straining against the wheel. Thunderous rumbles, random flashes. The slick and oily surface of the deep. Everything so much bigger than I’d ever dreamed of; the boat, the sky, the waves. Rapid dog-leg bolts firing from the base of vast formations, with me a bumbling, clumsy little boy bundled tight in orange polymer; lashed to the mast to stop me sliding overboard while Gramma’s shouting words I can barely hear.
Well of course my memory can’t catch her words—I was never on the Santorini—or any boat during exclusion years. I wasn’t even born. I never got to meet my Gramma. But stories, they get under your skin, they sidle up and seep on through and before you know it, you’re claiming whole great swathes of half-remembered fancies. Heraklion boasts three Cleopatras, one small gay Napoleon and enough self-righteous Kennedys to inhabit their own island if we could spare one.
Memories are not to be trusted. Nor are digital remains. The 88-minute war messed with our hearts and heads. These days we put our faith in stain on paper. Our library-museum contains so many precious treasures, our paper made from seaweed and driftwood pulp. Ink from bottled squids, charcoal and boot black.
Remembering’s what turned us into a nation of poet-gardeners, exclusion zoned and heritage listed, yet here we are on my trusty Santorini, slipping in under stealth of day. Crusty old salts back on land are certain old war drones see better in the darkness. Best we can hope for now is obsolescence.
My admiral’s jacket’s graphite thread count refracts sunlight and radiation. My doggo doesn’t need protection—he runs on 100 percent bio-D. The brides have come prepared for anything. A corset bodice is a gorgeous vintage look, pretty bows or knots, cutouts, extremely flattering and the extra exposed skin adds alluring touches, pearls being the ultimate classic feminine detail—subtle yet beautiful embellishments evoking romantic sentiments.
Neither Rhiz nor Goldie listen when I explain exactly what we’re going to find on Santorini isle. Bleached donkey bones and crumbling ruins and perhaps a mangled mash of cable cars. Feral cats in disintegrating doorways—haunted beasts, all matt and bone and sinew. The caldera harbor choked with cruise ship skeletons, all sunk and drunk and listing on their sides. A reef comprised of smashed remains of hulls and hulks and fallen Boeing carcasses.
Daisychain’s barking up a frenzy and I cling on tight with both hands as memory intrudes of fire raining, people screaming, running with hair aflame. Gramma grips me, won’t let go, crushed and mangled by a giant wave. Not my memories. How could anything like that belong to me? Might be my Gramma’s boat but I never met her. All I’ve seen of anywhere is pretty postcards.
Eyes wide open and I can’t believe it—no wonder Daisychain can’t keep hushed. Laid out ahead is a real-life picture postcard. Skala Pier as good as old, nestled at the feet of impressive cliffs, the curve of donkey steps cut clear. Little boats of red and blue and white. I’m bobbing in a little boat myself, jammed between two bulky brides who don’t seem the slightest bit impressed that we are literally entering a postcard, entering memories that can’t possibly exist.
“But the 88-minute . . .”
Nobody cares about those minutes in this moment. Brides tumble from the shore boat in a confectionary of white chiffon and lace, dripping water and sloughing rosebuds and sequins.
Faint music wafts from a bistro embedded higher up in the volcano’s side. Unfamiliar music that is neither old nor new. Murmuring voices and the clink of knives and forks on china plates. Nice to meet you. Thank you. Bye bye.
Santorini, ripped straight from the bluest blue of postcards. A wafting blend of seasoned, grilling fare distracts me from figures in dim corners, hovering.
The donkey trek is beckoning—not taking chances on the clack and shudder of a potentially figmentary cable car fighting gravity up grim volcanic rock the color of sun blasted lichen.
I sweat up pathways lined with spiky cactus, eucalypts and oleanders, perfect as those prewar era dirty postcards. White on white and blue on blue and the sun begins to sink as church bells peal. Hot young things pause, bating breaths and posed for tanned and tattooed boyfriends fumbling with large, expensive cameras. A miserable child throws its regular sunset tantrum as swarthy men heft luggage down the winding, pale gray stairs, white-edged, the solid slap of sandals, passing locals sweeping and fixing and fetching and ferrying, pushing carts and weeding potted gardens.
A welcome splash of bougainvillea as drinks are stolen from passing trays and we merge with random wedding parties, pretty girls attached like limpets to my Admiral arms as fading sunlight dapples cheeks.
Daisychain barks and the girls let go as something emerges from the crowd, at first shapeless, shifting and coalescing, then hardening into solid and unmistakable bride. Not one of mine, this is something new, or perhaps much older as well as blue and borrowed. Brighter than a supernova, entangling me with its searing diamond glare. A being birthed during 88 minutes when humankind let go and dropped the ball.
No words from me. Nor from the bride. Daisychain does all the talking, barking and barking until the moment passes and the entity glides off about its business to the accompaniment of bouzouki, clarinet, lute and mandolin, santur, toubeleki and a flurry of enthusiastic stomping.
And I realize I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life, suspended in a thousand damaged windows to the past, in garish scenes frozen and manipulated, trapped in laminate, glossed and falsified and static. Whitewashed, airbrushed, Photoshopped, grandslammed and Instagramed, rose-tinted, sunset squinted.
Familiar and comforting sounds envelop: the violent flap and rattle of sun umbrella canvas in stroppy winds and, somewhere in the distance, yelping. Eyes wide open—now what has that damn doggo got himself into this time? Over my shoulder, beyond the flat-roofed houses pressed into volcanic cliffs. Beyond misty blue deceptive Aegean remnants, dotted with white triangle sailboats leaning as bright pink petals scatter on gentle vespers.
Two wedding guests, lithe girls in livid blue, already drunk and separated from their pack. Above their tight-pinned fascinators bob blue and white balloons expelled into the wild, destined for the intestines of sea turtles and whales if only such elaborate creatures still existed.
Tears of laughter, tears of joy and hello, what is happening over there? One blue dome per church or maybe two, three at a pinch and I’m pretty sure that’s law—but that one there, by the holy slippers of Saint Spyridon of Tremithus, that church appears to be encrusted with blue domes, pulsing and blooming like pustules of far cast cerulean pollen. Whitewashed walls butting against each other, doors and windows merging into tunnels.
And Rhizanthella, she’s starting to resemble a tank with human legs and filigree, the bio-ordnance still configuring to her pearl-encrusted form, tugging and stretching, snapping and shifting, folding in upon itself, then outward along new lines.
Furrows ridging deep between my eyebrows. “They’re gonna know you’re not one of them. That outfit will not fool an artificial mind.”
A familiar huffy pout distorts her face. “Who’s trying to fool anyone or anything? My repurposed ordnance frock is an expression of solidarity, connectivity and haute couture.” She winces as something unseen beneath a polymer chitin layer pinches. Tugs at it till the irritation passes. “Them. It. We are unsure of the correct applicable pronoun, greeting or salutation. Not sure of their status or their numerical identity. Their personhood, so to speak.”
Not sure what I’m supposed to say to that, so I keep quiet as she continues. “We just want to talk is all. We—” and she gestures to the brides “—have come to join them.”
“Join whom? Who is them exactly?”
“The collective entity now known as Santorini, Admiral dearest!”
“Can’t be a person and an island both.”
“Says who—you? Who made you the boss of regenerating land masses?”
I puff my chest up like one of those birds on the postcard advertising California iceberg lettuce, but she’s already turning away as the wedding party ripples at its center mass and an old bird emerges, swaggering into view like one of those vintage cigarette packet cowboys inviting you to come to where the flavor is. She is wire thin with hair like Alpine frost. Thin lips stained flamingo pink.
