Canberra Tales, page 25
We took a ride in the car, the ludicrous Fairlane. He was silent, catching his lower lip with his teeth occasionally in that nervous, impatient way of his. It was a hot night, moonless. We drove with the windows down and the air reeked of dust and on the radio we heard that the city was ringed with fire and it seemed like we could smell acrid smoke from the burning in the bush. But this was ridiculous, the fires didn’t come so close. With the night as black as it was the sky and the lake formed a spherical whole. Only the stars and a faint sheen on the water made it possible to distinguish between them.
There was a grassy verge leading to the lakeside. Our headlights picked out the curves of the bike path and the silverwhite trunks of the gums. I could just make out the shadowy hulls of the sailboats on the water.
Know where we are?
I studied his bony profile. In the dark the nose was the most prominent thing about him. It gave him a substance that the rest of him lacked but in it you could see something of the man he might become. If it reminded me, naturally, of Giulio, it was equally clear that he might not turn out like his father. Whatever it was, that boniness suggested something other than hardness.
He laughed a little. Don’t you remember?
It was coming back. This was the route we had taken to the golf course. Years later, at night, it was different. There was less expanse of stubble, it wasn’t so rocky, the distance between the road and water seemed narrower, more abrupt. Before I could realize it, we had gone past the bike path, and the road was diverging inland from the shore.
Yes. Now I do. And as if to excuse myself I added: It’s not the same in a car.
I still like it.
Oh yes, I quickly agreed. I was glad he set store by his memories. But there was something guarded in my voice, something false. I might have been placating a child.
Don’t you remember, he said, that time when Marco came with us? He kept wanting to go back. He was afraid we’d get hit with a golf ball.
I said: I hadn’t thought of that.
Paolo smiled, a wry little smile. I’ve noticed that about you. You hardly ever think ahead, of the things that can go wrong.
I trusted you, I said.
That’s what I mean.
I laughed. You mean Marco was right?
He put his elbow out to rest on the open window. There’s always a chance you’ll get hit in the head with a ball.
It occurred to me that this was the first time I had known him to smile with pleasure, even if it was a mixed pleasure, the kind you get from teasing. He had always been serious. As a kid sombre, determined. Bragging about what he possessed or what he could do, right that minute or sometime in the future. Sulking if we refused to believe him. Older even worse. Until tonight, when it appeared that he might be returning the affection I had for him, in spite of it all.
He veered off the road. The big car bounced slowly over the lumpy surface. Dry grass and bits of gravel and twigs crackled under the wheels. At one point the exhaust scraped over a rock. Paolo winced but kept on driving until we came to a low wooden fence of treated pine logs. A stand of green reeds in the water flashed in front of us, lit by the headlights before he switched them off.
I’ve been wanting to talk to you, he said, moving the steering wheel back and forth, lightly, with one finger. Did you know that? He hesitated, then: I’m worried about Mamma.
You should be. You give her a hard enough time.
She gives herself the hard time.
Yes, I had to agree, that too. He turned to face me: You make it sound simple. All I could give him was a blank defensive stare.
You think she’s just started, behaving this way.
What way?
Exasperated, he leaned back against the door. Shit, Lisa. The disappearing act.
Only once.
He watched me then. And when he saw that I wasn’t going to elaborate, he came forward from the window and began rocking the steering wheel again.
You’re lucky, he said. He brought his hand down. He wanted me to make it easy, to prise out what it was he had to tell me. But I couldn’t think of anything to say. So he went on. She’s always been like that. Ever since Papà died. Maybe even before. Yes, I’m sure of it, before. I used to envy you. You, Marco. Even Enrico.
Me?
Yeah. Your family.
I had to smile. It wasn’t always fun with Marco and Enrico. Or Papà.
I used to dream of coming to Sydney. To stay with you.
It would have been a squeeze.
She has lovers.
Lovers? … It seemed so old-fashioned. Lovers.
Maybe only one, now. But she doesn’t want us to know. Why on earth not?
He paused, as if he had the answer but wasn’t sure he could share it. Then he said: I reckon it’s part of her game.
Will she remarry?
I didn’t say that, he said.
I went to bed thinking about Papà, what he would have made of Paolo’s revelations. What might have happened if Paolo had come to stay with us. It seemed such a happy, impossible notion that the house I was in became distanced in my thoughts. I felt separated from its muffled tensions, as if I’d already escaped, as yet scarcely conscious that I desired escape. But oddly, I remember falling asleep with a smile.
The following day I went to work without waiting for Simonetta. I had the key to the shop and ordered a cab, a plan we had devised for mornings after nights when she’d been out though I must have felt awkward about seeing her. The sky was already bright and people were out hosing in their gardens. I got there before Nancy, made myself coffee and fiddled with a cobalt blue scarf on a mannequin in the window. It was shadowy in the shop. Sunlight swam in at an angle from the north; the dresses on their hangers, the belts on their rack, all pristine, undisturbed.
Through the window I see Nancy coming towards the shop, the sun sending sparks off her coarse grey hair, the morning paper folded under her arm. She waves to me and I wave the blue scarf. I see her laughing through the glass. She opens the door and the buzzer goes as she steps inside.
All that morning we waited. If we had been busier it would have helped. Delivery had begun on the autumn items and from time to time I would occupy myself in the storeroom, checking the incoming stock. Some of this I carried out front, where Nancy and I would do what we could to blend it with the summer linens. As the day’s heat rose and penetrated the shop, the presence of these odd jumpers and jackets seemed more like an intrusion. We were in a kind of limbo, not only was little happening but what was happening was awry. A couple of customers came. Nancy sold one a cotton skirt. The other asked after Simonetta; Signora Renaldi, she said, please give her my regards.
The books are more or less in order. Among the invoices I find another letter from the bank. The bank manager, too, sends Mrs Renaldi his regards. But his purpose in writing is to remind her of the mortgage. The payments yet again are slipping behind. Perhaps she might consider rearranging the terms.
When Nancy left for our sandwiches I made another phone call to the house. The phone rang so long I almost forgot why I was ringing, and I hung up feeling a little question mark begin to curl through my intestines. The shop filled over the lunch hour and I was kept busy till Nancy returned but after that wave of customers subsided, neither one of us could keep up the pretence. It is too far into the day to have heard nothing. A few more phone calls punctuate the afternoon. The patient ringing on the other end of the line beings to sound like laughter, a low ominous laughter that screws up my guts even tighter. When five o’clock comes without a sign or a word Nancy agrees it is time to call Paolo. We try his number but with him too there is no answer.
After we shut the shop I went back to the house and finding no one there I took another taxi, this time to Paolo’s. Surely if I had thought about it I wouldn’t have gone, I would have known he wouldn’t be there, that it wasn’t in the nature of things for Paolo to be home at that hour. But I was still warm and open from the night before. I felt as if I could stretch out my arms and he would be there.
His flat was in a jumble of units on one of the arterial roads in Woden. It was almost impossible to find. When I did I pressed on the bell, again and again, but of course no one came. I checked my purse before wandering back through the maze of two-storey buildings onto the main road.
It was a part of the town with few trees and little to break the skyline except for some office blocks and the low encircling hills. The sky was overpowering in its expanse. A pale, ethereal mauve, it seemed to suck me right into it, there was so little on the earth to hold me down. I felt rather giddy coming onto the road and searching for another taxi.
He was cooking. The smell of onions hit me as I waded through the buffalo grass. It was a humble, kindly smell that shamed me somehow for treating him badly. There was light enough to pick up a number of touches I had missed on New Year’s Eve. The boat in the garage. The pottery frog to the side of the native bushes.
I followed him down the hall towards the cooking smells. How’s it going? he asked. His broad back seemed to span the walls of the narrow corridor. Paolo ever get you down to the coast?
The onions were in an electric frypan. He must have switched it off when he went to answer the door. As we walked toward the fridge I said: I’m looking for him. He stopped and then I added: It’s important.
With both hands he adjusted his glasses, large fleshy hands, almost hairless. Jesus. I don’t know. He could be anywhere. Have you tried Helen?
Helen?
She was at the party.
I nodded and he took a beer bottle from the fridge. He sat it gently on the counter. No. I hear he’s not seeing her any more.
Don’t you have any idea where I can find him?
He likes to get around. Daryl opened the bottle with the end of a corkscrew. It gave a quiet little hiss. He filled a couple of glasses and held one out to me. His movements were slow and the way he was looking made me feel he was appraising me. I took the glass from him thinking this was probably better than I deserved.
He’s got himself worked up a bit, he said, his head bent over his glass. There was a pause. It could be my fault.
No. That’s Paolo.
Then he looked up at me. I was the one who told him, he said. About his old man.
He sat me down. Evidently I didn’t understand. He began to explain about the leases. Right from the start the rents were high, you see. Too high for many of the concerns, people who were trying to make a go of it. This was in the interest of the big fish so there was no real opposition. But if rents went too high, then everyone might suffer. And rents could go through the roof if anyone sold. So they had to find a way; a balance. As long as they could keep a lid on the re-sales, they were sweet. I hit on all this when we were drawing up policy on self-government. The background, so to speak. Someone got paid, they could still be getting paid, into a bank account somewhere.
Can you prove this?
No, I can’t prove it. He took a swig of his beer and adjusted his glasses again. I’m not even certain I’m right. Just a hunch, and I told him. Renaldi was paying someone, someone in the commission, or there was a guy on the assembly. Although as I said, I can’t prove any of this.
Then why did you tell him?
Daryl smiled. To shut him up, I reckon. He can get to you, after a while.
But he’s got it wrong.
He has plenty wrong, Daryl agreed.
No. I mean he thinks my uncle was getting the money, and now he thinks my aunt is.
Daryl took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Without them the hard inward look of the nearsighted was bared. But there was compassion. He gazed at his chunky hands. That explains some things, he said. After a second or so he smiled again and slipped on his glasses. He got up and went over to the frypan. You’ll stay for dinner?
When I told him I couldn’t he shrugged and brought the cover down on the onions. Look. I’m sorry, I said. It was going to sound silly but I felt I owed it to him. About before. I thought you were just being nice.
So did I, he said.
I gave him a little smile. I am sorry.
Then I had to tell him that my aunt was missing and that was the reason I was anxious to find Paolo.
The house is wrapped in darkness. The sky, the camellia bushes, the leaves of the birch tree are as black as if washed in ink. Only the bricks and the tree trunk emerge, marble-white against the night. I sigh, and feel Daryl staring at me. Then he gets out of the car and walks me to the door. Maybe he thinks I am strange. Surely he can see I am worried. Very worried. Something changes in his expression, the skin stretches tighter over his cheeks. All right, he says. We’d better find him. And he asks me if I will be there so he can contact me. I say yes and he takes my hand before he leaves.
It was like the sting of a snake at the end of a long unwinding. I hadn’t even known I’d expected it but yes, it had always been ready to strike. Each time I had entered that house I had sniffed out its loneliness, some ghostly thing tangible by its absence. I sat stiff on one of the green velvet couches. There was a phone in the front hall nearby. An off-white handset to blend in discreetly with the surroundings. I thought if I kept my distance the more likely it would be to release me with its ring.
For company I had the statue, Giulio’s angel with his oversized fish. I stared at it so intensely that I began to worry that I would talk to it. Perhaps I did. I had a crazy idea that it contained some essence of Giulio, that it was indeed Giulio, wiser than before. In death he might have achieved this insouciance, the ultimate in breathtaking release, because at last he had nothing to fear. Or maybe, I confused myself further, this was life, this supreme playfulness: an innocence we lose before we lose our flesh: a death before death. The flat bronze eyes, turned away from the squirming prize, seemed to confirm this irony, as did the lips that parted in a smile.
At some stage I ran to the phone, thinking to call my parents. Instead I rang the police who told me to come and see them in the morning.
Day came at last. I went out on the verandah to water the geraniums. The light, which was soft enough at that hour, hurt my eyes and my head rang from the cicadas and the crackling of the birch tree in the heat. I loosened the dirt in the pots, broke off the dead brown leaves and, crumbling them with my fingers, dropped them over the railing onto the lawn. Then I hosed down the concrete. I was so thankful for the steadying effect of these tasks that Paolo’s arrival was almost an anti-climax.
He said I was over-reacting; we had discussed Simonetta’s absences before. He disapproved of them, but they had stopped worrying him. But when I reminded him that she had never been away so long a grave expression came on his face, and his face was too boyish to carry it. It made him look like he was pretending.
Where does she go? I asked.
At first he didn’t answer. He pulled off a leaf from the birch tree and began stripping it at the spine. I thought he was withholding something, out of that curious pride, but then it seemed he was trying to work it out. There’s a bloke lives at Fraser, he said. The one with the restaurant.
At Christmas? I thought of the man at the bar and how flustered Simonetta had been. Paolo nodded slowly.
You’re sure?
The sun was already strong. It was too hot on the verandah and his face was sweating again. Could be, he said. There’s a bunch who hang out at the races. They had a syndicate with Papà.
We should ring him, I said.
He laughed a soft, hopeless laugh.
It’s something, I said, to tell the police.
He looked up and threw away the leaf. Shit, Lisa. We’re not dragging in the cops. Listen, he said, I’ll get in touch with Casini.
Is that his name?
Yeah. He jiggled his woolly head. That’s his name. There was something touching about this. Onore, Papà called it. Papà too felt bound by it, a code that part of him despised. Nothing public, no police, keep it in the family. It was, after all, Simonetta’s reputation. Which made me shudder for what I had done.
This Casini—did he have anything to do with the lease?
Paolo whipped his head around to face me. He might have, he said. He grabbed the verandah railing and, rocking on his heels one or two times, set his eyes on some distant point in the garden. His breath came fast and harsh. The bitch.
Paolo! I said. It isn’t what you think. Giulio wasn’t getting money, he was paying them! I was certain Paolo would be hurt to find I knew any of this but I wouldn’t stop. And it’s bleeding your mother dry!
His face lost its olive colour. Where did you hear that?
Same place as you, I said, coming to see now that he had wanted me to know and maybe that was the reason for introducing me to Daryl. Only, Paolo, you’ve got it all wrong!
He swallowed, and started chewing away at his lip. I had to tell him then about ringing the police.
I told them I’d come to the station, I said.
He looked at me sharply and then it was as if something inside him snapped. The pain on his face swept me back, he might have shrunk in front of me on the verandah. And the Paolo standing there was the lonely, peevish smart-arse we had known, with all of his stuffing gone. The kid who couldn’t take any more of the teasing and went rushing from the garden and into his room.
The sergeant who took the particulars must have been around Paolo’s age. They eyed each other with mutual suspicion. The sergeant’s very callowness made him seem hard. He punched the commands into the computer and watched with crisp absorption as the new file appeared on the screen. Mrs ?
