Painted Ghosts, page 14
Stella recalled the man: tall, handsome. ‘What was his name? What was it now? Such a nice fella. Barnett. John Barnett. He was so accomplished, such a charming man. He came highly recommended to mum—’
Lena seemed to freeze. She looked like she needed a drink and Stella was close to giving in to her if for that moment it eased the pain she was clearly going through. Lena scowled, bunched up her fists, looking as though she was about to break down. ‘You’re not serious,’ Stella read pain in Lena’s face a moment. ‘He was a very good friend of mum’s. He wouldn’t—’
‘Our little secret,’ Lena said quietly.
Stella held her ground. ‘No, Lena. Not that. He was a good man. Nobody knew when you were telling the truth, or telling us something to get our attention. And you did nothing? You said nothing? Why? No Lena, nothing happened.’
‘He said he would kill me if I said.’
‘And you didn’t say anything.’
‘And one day he said he would kill you. You’d have this strange accident — fall down stairs or something—’
‘You would have said something.’
‘I told auntie Jean. She said Barnett was mum’s and her’s best friend, he would never do such a thing. I was making it up because I didn’t want to play the piano anymore and it was a way of getting out of it.’
‘She was right. You had to be the centre of things all the time. And why now?’
‘I don’t know, ’Lena was sobbing. ‘This talk of Izzat Baig and Sohni in the garden, it brings it all back. I wanted the piano, Stella. I could see it would be the key to me writing the songs I wanted. I knew it even then. But every week I would have to do Barnett favours if I carried on. I can’t touch pianos. I can’t—’
Arun edged towards Lena. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘She always did like a drama, ’ Stella said.
‘We have to believe—’ Arun added.
‘The drugs, the self harming, the lies, Arun.’ Stella had to fill him in.
Lena turned away from them, asking Arun for pencil and paper. They let her go, sipped their juices and watched while she scribbled the lyrics she had told them.
‘You can do it for me,’ Lena called to Arun. ‘Take the lyrics and make something. But take me to Izzat Baig’s Garden—’
‘You didn’t say.’ Stella appealed to her sister, bewildered. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘You seem to know everything else about me.’ Lena rocked a little on her feet, the pictures of Izzat and Sohni near her on the table. ‘And when I was on stage the very last time I wasn’t in some place of bliss. Nah. It was hell. I looked around me and saw a grim naked race for survival. All the nasty little things people have to do to get food in their mouths and shelter in their lives. Just like all the other animals. Survive or die — by whatever means. And you know I thought to myself in the middle of that song: what if we didn’t have to fight to survive, we could rise to levels of creativity we can’t dream of. ’ She waved over at Stella. ‘Long ago I lost the anger of: “Why haven’t you got anywhere? You give all in your singing and it falls on deaf ears.” That rage gnaws at you — destroying the belief you have in yourself.’
‘I’m sure you are gifted—’ Arun said.
She gestured at Stella again. ‘When you are young, men grind you down with their power.‘
‘You think I never had that?’
‘We don’t know what each other’s pain is — none of us. ’ Lena seemed almost to be thinking out loud, tottering, as if close to being in trance. ‘That’s why we need art and music — to do it for us—’
‘You always did over dramatise.’ Stella tried to take it all in. ‘Work on your new song then.’
‘I will. I’ll go so deep in it’ll kill the memory of what I was pushed into being.’
‘You always were more hard done by as a child.’
Lena was firm. ‘Your dad and our mum had parted for a while. My dad comes along, passing through. You think — that if my dad hadn’t come along, your dad would have come back. But not with somebody with a black baby. God no. If my dad hadn’t come by, I would never have been born. You would have had them all to yourself—’
Arun cut in quickly. ‘We should take a break. I’ll get some food prepared. I can get someone in to cook—’
Stella chided her. ‘You make yourself a victim and dramatise for effect. They’re all dead now so what difference does it make?’
‘It happened, Stella,’ Lena said quietly.
‘You get help and move on.’
‘That’s it then, box ticked, done that, faced it, put it away. Ignore what an imprint it has on you, how the scar becomes you.’
‘Do as mum did.’
‘What did she ever do for me?’
‘She put her weaknesses and imperfections and hurts in a little box and pushed them to the back of her mind. That’s how she survived.’
‘I did that — feeding it on junk.’
Arun said, ‘What happens to us we become and we pass that on to others. Gurus say if we could work through our past hurts we can be renewed.’
‘We’ll never be that good,’ Stella replied.
‘They say,’ Arun continued. ‘What is it about our nature that makes it hard for us to find empathy.’
‘People will never change,’ Stella kept on. ‘Because we are who we are.’
‘I need to go there, Arun. ’Lena appealed to him.
*****
‘It’s no use, really,’ Stella told him the following morning. ‘I just haven’t got the talent. You can do so much, then you find you can’t push your abilities any further—’
Lena’s stool was empty. The sea was pouring in along the shore, a group of young men were splashing each other and small groups of lively tourists were out strolling.
‘But the orange boat is beginning to live. And the fisherman you’ve put there, he has movement — authenticity.’
‘Do you think so? Or am I just paying you to say these things to me?’ She laughed.
‘Confidence comes with practice.’
‘I wish I believed that. ’She felt good with him alone — like it was last year. She had him all to herself. ‘You never showed me those pictures when I was here before. Your secret, eh? You’re not all you seem on the outside.’
‘Lena is late?’
‘She couldn’t be bothered, today. It’s just me, your favourite student. Now show me how to put in another figure along the beach.’ She gently grabbed his arm and pulled him closer. ‘I had such a wonderful time with you last year — those romantic boat trips along the river, under the old wooden bridge, the Brahminy Kites circling high up.’
‘Will she come later? She hasn’t given up altogether?’
‘Who knows with her.’
‘So much has happened to her.’ Arun spoke softly.
Stella was still shocked and was grappling with her feelings about the revelation. It was always hard to believe what Lena said, there was such a history of lies and deceit, of craft and connivance. It was why mum lost it with her. Even as children she was known to bend the truth to get her way or to get out of things. That was all magnified with the addictions when she got older. Stella dare not contemplate whether what Lena had said could be true. She could not think about it anymore, it was too difficult and painful. She wanted them to be close as sisters but doubted it was possible. She had to put it out of her mind, it was too big. This thing could never have happened.
‘Now, this figure. Help me, will you?’
He silently took her brush and prepared to smooth out some lines for her. ‘She is so sensitive—’
Stella nodded for him to get on and alter her painting. ‘You don’t need to worry about her. Maybe it was a mistake—’ He smoothed the lines of the chalets in the background, softened the green in the foliage on the island behind. ‘I brought her over, when I could have had a trouble free time with you. Doing her a favour. I got hold of her when mum died. She said she’d dried out — I believed her.’
‘I don’t think it was a mistake, Stella.’
‘Maybe not to you.’ Stella felt challenged.
‘The visit to the Garden will calm things.’
‘I was thinking of putting her on a plane and sending her back home.’ She pushed for a response from him.
He stopped painting. ‘She’s hurting.’ And standing back he said, ‘I think we need to adjust the perspective a little — that person way down the beach is too large compared to the fisherman — let me — Tomorrow night we go to the Garden. The next day we will talk about the images we gained from that, do some sketches and try out ideas we can work up into paintings—’
‘Exciting.’ Stella sucked the end of a brush. ‘You won’t fall for her charms, will you? I don’t like to say it but you can see she has always been a bit jealous of me.’
‘Her piano lessons?’ Arun stared at her.
‘The stage was the right place for her to develop her narcissistic streak—’
He put the brush down and considered the painting. ‘She seems — broken — in many ways.’
Still holding her wet brush, Stella folded her arms. ‘She’s got you where she wants you when you believe that.’
‘I do want to help her write songs again.’
‘She won’t stick at it,’ Stella was adamant.
‘You would let me help her?’
‘Who am I to stand in the way?’
‘I’m sure if I can get her back to the piano her whole life will change.’
Unfolding her arms she dipped her brush in a pot of water and then wiped it on a cloth. ‘You can try.’ She rubbed the brush heavily into the cloth again, avoiding eye contact. ‘I came back here so we could spend more time together — you and me — I thought—’
‘Yes,’ he cut her off. ‘Yes, when we have finished the course.’
Stella nervously drilled the brush further into the cloth. ‘I thought — a meal together. You and me.’
Arun screwed lids back on tubes of paint and stacked them in a box. ‘Let us go to the Garden, and finish our ideas after—’
‘Tonight, I thought perhaps — The Rocking Globe restaurant.’
‘We cannot leave Lena alone when she is like this.’
‘She knows other people down town she can get drunk with.’ Stella took the pot of water and slopped it over the rail onto the green spiky plants in the sandy garden beyond the veranda. Then she turned to him: ‘I have hopes for us, Arun.’
He gave her a quick frown, ‘If I try and help Lena with her songs, you might not finish the course?’
Putting everything down she sidled up to him, smiling. ‘We were very close last year, Arun. I want that to continue and develop.’ She took his hand and rubbed it. ‘We agreed we’d make a partnership of it. And now, with my inheritance, you can build a new studio with a gallery and open up all your contacts. The world’s open to you Arun, you just have to paint the right brushstrokes—’
7
When they came out of the small concert hall, they sat on a couple of wooden benches draped with green, red and gold fabrics, the dark star-spotted sky above them. Candles lit routes through the garden. Flickering light danced over the tropical greenery. A thicket of bamboo formed a crescent behind them, and on either side were tropical plants with great green leaves. Bromeliads proliferated, along with bougainvillea, pitcher plants, heliconia. Orchids hung precariously in semi-darkness. Palm trees towered over them, their branches unruffled in the stillness of night. Stella recognised agave plants and tall cacti— not native, but thriving in this atmosphere.
Hidden fans allowed drafts of air to waft around their feet, keeping mosquitos at bay. A giant banyan tree stood over the back near the river’s edge, its branches and fronds draped with golden fabrics and tiny flickering lights.
The size of several football pitches, the garden was like a small jungle lit entirely by candles of all shapes, colours, perfumes and sizes. Paths led to quiet groves surrounded by palm trees and hung with brilliantly designed drapes. Some were occupied by groups or couples sitting in meditation on carpets with the whiff of incense around them.
From Stella’s bench the sound of trickling water from a fountain nearly drowned out the distant hum of sitar and tabla. She was fascinated by the feature, the water shooting from the mouth of a pot — Sohni’s pot. A pond spread out ahead of the fountain where carp lurked with streams leading to groves and grottos.
When they had first arrived Arun had walked them round, leading them down overgrown tracks and paths to sacred little sights. One grotto consisted of a mound standing in front of a rock on which a three foot high Shiva pranced, a circle of bronze flames framing him. Surrounded by incense the lively dancer sparkled in candlelight, making him seem alive and in motion, moving in a similar way to the dancer in the concert hall.
Another path led to a rocky arch that Stella and the others had to bend low to get through. The end opened out to a cavern containing a life size Buddha sitting in meditation, eyes half closed, body and limbs in complete relaxation, his lithe young body of smoothly carved stone.
A model of the Taj Mahal half a metre high stood in another quiet area, complete with reflecting pools, its structure seemingly golden white to Stella. Miniature fountains supplied the pools, and the whole was surrounded by tiles and mosaics of Islamic design with stylised Arabic writing.
Arun told them that the shrines represented various religions: Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam and that other grottos were planned to cater for all religions, including Sikhism — to be represented by a model of the Golden Temple — and Christianity — perhaps to be symbolised by a simple wooden cross. Each shrine and each meditation area was supplied by streams of running water that circled the garden, starting at the pool with the main fountain, working their way around and back, the fountain pool being the heart of the place.
Occasionally a young waiter in a white Punjabi Suit and tightly wrapped turban of orange or white or green drifted through the greenery taking drinks, sweets and snacks to people hidden in groves and caves.
Stella had been excited by the performance. The moods the sitar and tabla painted, from the slow and romantic of the lovers meeting, to the quickness of the flooding river inspired images of Arun’s paintings. Most of the hundred or so audience in the space seemed enwrapped, eyes closed in meditation, or open in trance watching the dancer. Clad in tightly fitting leggings and a bodice of reds, yellows, golds, silvers and greens — with gold earrings, bracelets and necklaces — and with trailing scarves, the twenty year old leapt lightly across her space, animating the story with finger and hand gestures. Arun had told her there were two groups of performers taking it in turns throughout the night to prevent over tiredness.
Stella was engrossed, but did not see herself as being as immersed as Lena and Arun, or most of the audience.
They sat on the bench silently for a time, enjoying the mixture of sounds: the trickle of the fountain and running of streams, and the phasing in and out of the sounds of the sitar and tabla.
Arun looked over at the women and nodded: ‘You see?’
Lena whispered: ‘Don’t talk now.’
Stella left her in her trance, and whispering to Arun said, ‘Oh yes, it was very good. I’m not sure it took me to the heights you go.’
‘Shush,’ her sister hissed. ‘You have to enjoy the silence that fills the space between the notes and the dance steps afterwards.’
Stella could not help but feel that she was trying to impress Arun.
‘The smoothness of the sounds,’ Arun said. ‘Every time I come, even though I’ve heard it many times — it just transports me.’
‘You can imagine each part of the story.’ Lena seemed to wake suddenly out of her trance.
Stella crossed her legs. ‘Very good, but just music.’ She enjoyed the variety of plants in the garden, felt enclosed in a friendly jungle, expecting to hear monkeys chattering and parakeets calling. But the music trailed on, the distant whine of the sitar and the incessant tap of the tabla. She imagined the dancer with her smiles, her lightly shaking head, her finger motions and the turns of her feet. And the pleasant sound of the trickle of splashing water at the little fountain added further magic to the music. It was all pleasant, all of it, the garden, the music and the dance, but not in the way they were experiencing.
‘Didn’t you feel the flow of the river,’ Lena went on. ‘And the intensity when they are in each other’s arms—’
‘The tabla talks back to the sitar,’ Arun added.
‘And her dance — the green and the gold — the expressions and movement. Her hand and finger gestures. I was in your drawings,’ Lena told him. ‘There’s that moment when he’s herding cattle and he sees her approaching with a pot on her head. The feeling of first love, the youthful bliss — it’s all there.’ She paused a moment. ‘You didn’t get that, Stella?’
Stella laughed. ‘It was good.’
‘The wedding,’ Lena carried on. ‘The distraught Izzat Baig in the background, the unsure and uncertain bride, the arrogant bridegroom. It’s all there in the music.’
‘I like it,’ Stella said. ‘It took me to memories.’ She laughed nervously, ‘Perhaps not as far as you two.’
‘That is good,’ Arun said.
Stella felt they were reading too much into the event when it should be taken on the artistic and cultural level it was intended. ‘It may take you places. It was very enjoyable, but not therapeutic — at least, for me. And I don’t want to be dragged into memories. The past is the past and it should stay there,’ she contemplated.
‘But it can’t,’ Lena challenged her. ‘It’s part of the present, and the present is who we are. That’s why it seemed so real to me.’
‘I’m very pleased it did that for you,’ Stella tried to sound genuine.
Lena continued, ‘There’s a part where Sohni is making pots and the dancer is spinning round and round. The sitar player has a smile of deep contentment. The music has possessed them with the story of life: the tragedies, the comedy. That magic moment when performers and audience link in appreciation. Yes, a sort of bliss. A place where words don’t exist. Nothing of us is left then, the mind drifts untroubled. There is no pain in that place.’
