Questions of Travel Page 3

  When it was completed, the feeble wit and flagrant ineptitude of this assemblage overwhelmed Laura. Nevertheless, she entered it for the Hallam Prize. Nevertheless, it was declared a wittily iconoclastic appraisal of Australian modernism and included on the shortlist of six.

  The annual Hallam Prize, open to all undergraduates at the college, was endowed by a former student who had inherited a largish deposit of opals near Lightning Ridge. It offered the use of a Paris studio for twelve months, an almost-generous stipend and tuition at the Beaux-Arts. Miss Cora Hallam had long since fled her native land for historic stones and up-to-date plumbing in St Germain but remained mindful of those condemned to vacuous ease.

  On Laura’s Walkman, Bowie sang of modern love. She crossed a park on wings and never saw the two-tone flare of the magpie who decided, at the last moment, that she wasn’t worth swooping. Nor did she offer her customary salute to the man who sucked sherry from a paper bag, for her thoughts, as cinematically black and white as the birds overhead, were of Belmondo and cobblestones, and herself advancing down a leafless avenue in a slanted hat. Paris was surely her reward for irregular verbs committed to memory, for the existentialist struggle of persisting to the last page of La nausée.

  Luckily she glanced down just in time to sidestep the small corpse lying on yellow wattle blossom and wet black leaves.

  In a corner cafe, her friend Tracy Lacey was waiting at a metal-bordered table that was genuine fifties laminex. Tracy, too, was a finalist for the Hallam, with a video that involved a housewife in a robe of steel wool taking a hatchet to Superman. It was uncomfortable viewing, for this radical deconstruction of androcentric hegemony was quite as horrible as Laura’s jaundiced gaffe.

  So here were the girls, meeting to celebrate their good fortune with ciggies and cappuccinos.

  The announcement of the winner was still a fortnight away, but Laura knew that the Hallam would go to a final-year student called Steve Kirkpatrick for Mr. Truong in a Red Chair. She accepted this as right and just, yet being human hoped. Hope beat its wings under her breastbone. It went so far as to insinuate that men with trench coats and ageless bone structure would speak to her of post-structuralism on terraces hedged with potted shrubs, while a waiter wrapped in a long white apron plied her with fines.

  To suppress these ravings, she asked whether Tracy ever looked up when walking down a street and imagined rooms that hadn’t yet been built. “Apartments with people cooking and watching TV where now there’s just air.”

  Much of what Laura Fraser said was best ignored. Yet how Tracy loved her friend, for Laura was a darl and tried so hard and looked so…unusual was the kind way to think of it. And Tracy was all heart. And joyful choirs were making merry in those crimson chambers. Surely even Laura might hear their caroling?

  But Laura had the lid off the powder-blue Bessemer bowl and was intent on sugar—with a figure like hers! So Tracy had to lean forward and hiss, “Guess what, guess what!”

  Dull Laura Fraser hadn’t a clue.

  “You have to swear you won’t tell anyone. Ant’ll kill me if word gets around.”

  Ant was Tracy’s latest, this guy in Admin who looked exactly like Mel Gibson. But a bit shorter.

  Laura swore the required oath.

  “Guess who’s won the Hallam!”

  For a soaring moment, Laura imagined…

  “Mais oui!” cried Tracy. “Moi, moi! They gave Ant the judges’ report to photocopy.”

  Boulevards and Belmondo were fast fading to black. It was hard to breathe, the air was so choked with debris from the collapse of flying buttresses. A lightning protest in Laura’s brain declared, I could have had Paris until the announcement if. Fourteen days of sophisticated depravity in garrets overlooking the Seine trembled and were reduced to dust. For the last time, Laura lit another Gauloise and said, “Is it not the case that your refusal to place the metaphysics of presence under erasure is always already an aporia?”

  Ashamed of such selfishness, she offered congratulations without delay.

  “Thanks, darl,” said Tracy. “You’ll have to visit me. In Paree.” She wore her hair combed back and up, and tied at the nape with a floppy pink chiffon bow. Under her black quiff, her face was a white pumpkin. But the profile sliced.

  “In any city with decent licensing laws, we’d be calling for Bolly. But while we wait for civilization to arrive, let’s go crazy and have another round of cappuccinos—n’est-ce pas, Mademoiselle Lacey?”

  How Laura’s tongue clattered and clacked, like that wooden noise-maker she had rattled as a child.

  “God, you make me laugh, darl! Mine’s a skinny.” And when Laura returned with it, “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Herald did an interview. The Hallam’s never gone to someone in first year.” Tracy fingered the ironic pink rag at her neck and observed, “I’m a break with tradition.”

  Laura, reminded of another who would have hoped, and with far greater cause, murmured, “Steve.”

  “I still can’t believe they shortlisted him.” Tracy’s profile stood out as clearly as if stamped on the silver light of Paree. “I mean, he’s technically quite good”—for she was magnanimous in victory—“but where’s the concept in that painting?”

  The words truth and beauty occurred to Laura, but after six months at art school she knew better than to utter them. The aroma of ham and tomato jaffles, however, proved irresistible.

  As she chewed, the image of the dead mouse over which she had stepped returned to her. The eyeless head had resembled a mask. It was astonishing how a true thing might be taken for an imitation of itself.

  Tracy Lacey, gazing on through drifting veils of Camel, was savoring the satisfaction of a woman who has denied herself food. That was the great thing about Laura, the comparison was always in your favor. Tracy was quite overcome with tenderness for her friend. Her complexion was after all rather gorgeous, peaches and cheese.

  Here Tracy looked closer, because something in Laura’s face, bent over buttery crusts, suggested despondency. At first she couldn’t imagine why, on this gold and blue day with such news bestowed upon her, Laura Fraser should be glum. For herself, electric eels were slithering along her veins.

  When enlightenment arrived, “Oh darl!” she exclaimed and ground out her ciggie. “I’m really going to miss you too, you know.” A damp, greenish seed clung to Laura’s chin, where tomato had spurted when she sliced open her jaffle. But Tracy scarcely noticed it, being sincerely moved.

  In her share house in Newtown, when she should have been working on a project or researching an essay, Laura was to be found reading fiction. She read dreamily, compulsively, pausing only to pop in a square of Cadbury’s or knock the hair from her eyes with her wrist. Novels, dutifully taken apart at school for Themes, had reasserted their wholeness, like time-lapse films of decay reversed. Now she read them as if they were guidebooks, looking for directions on which way to turn.

  But she was so alone at humid midnight, trying to pummel her pillow into coolness! While still at school, Laura had realized that she could enjoy rather more success than far prettier girls by making it clear to their bumbling, flesh-fed brothers that she was willing to sleep with them. When she tumbled to that little ploy, There’s that taken care of, Laura thought. Many a pleasant hour followed. But it turned out to be no more than a kind of competence, not so different from the facility with which she drew. In both cases, a degree of victory only heightened awareness of all that remained out of reach.

  The numbers on her old clock radio clicked over again, and there Laura Fraser lay, thoughts scraping like the lemon-scented gum outside her window: a modern girl in the grip of antique cravings. The next novel waited beside her bed. Passing a bookshop that afternoon, she had spotted one of those brilliant little manuals called something like The Children’s Barthes. Paree flared, quivered, threatened: it was a marble-topped table feathered with gray. But a merciful rush of dun-colored patriotism came to Laura’s aid. By the time it receded, she was le
aving the shop with a secondhand copy of For Love Alone.

  Laura picked this up now and opened it with the tips of her fingers. She approached Sydney gingerly in fiction. Was it really up to literature, even the Australian kind? She always feared that it might be like watching someone she cared for, but whose ability she doubted, thrust on stage by an ambitious and deluded parent. What if the performance came over as provincial and amateurish, or blustering and self-important? Sydney was always already: rakish, stinking, damp, radiant, too much with her. She turned a few pages. Multihued ballpoint warned from the margins: Irony. Opinion of Australia.

  Downstairs, the phone began to shrill. It stood in the hallway, just outside Cassie and Phil’s door, but they were at band practice and wouldn’t be home before two. Tim’s room lay between Laura’s and the head of the stairs, but Tim held himself aloof from domestic activity; he was an artist, he had explained. So Laura heaved herself out of bed. She took the stairs at a gallop—as the young do, upright and unafraid.

  There was silence at the other end of the line. Then the click as the caller broke the connection.

  It wasn’t the first time it had happened.

  Laura switched on the jug for a hot chocky. But then—she checked in the sink and behind the couch—there were no mugs to be found. Tim lived on Vegemite toast and milky tea, and one by one every mug in the house would vanish into his room until someone banged on his door and demanded. Laura got dressed and went out into the night instead.

  Above her, stars were conducting their long migrations. Hefty eucalypts filled tiny yards: broccoli jammed into bud vases. The trees must have been planted in the optimistic sixties, when minds expanded and it had seemed that everything else must follow. When Laura tried to peer past one, a veranda showed its wrought-iron teeth. She ambled on, trailing her fingers against a sandstone wall, crumbling grains that had known the weight of an ocean. Oh, sea-invaded Sydney! The Pacific never tired of rubbing up the city, a lively blue hand slipping in to grope. It made you want to shout or sing—or swig the stars. But what came out of Laura Fraser’s mouth was a giant burp. She was passing an open window at the time. The two on the other side muffled their merriment in a pillow, and enjoyed each other more fiercely thereafter.

  She had been walking for a while when a lone car slowed and flashed its lights. Recalled from her trance, Laura remembered that she was female and veered closer to a fence as if its hard brown arms might save her. Over the accelerator’s screech he called, “You’re too fucken ugly, love!” The harbor smell was reaching south to tickle scentless roses.

  Laura had been choosing back streets, but instinct now led her towards thoroughfares and lights. Soon she was approaching the place where Glebe Point Road ran into Broadway. It was a junction Laura associated with vivid occurrence. Once there had been a motorcyclist face down in the road and a shriek of sirens. And quite recently, a gust of wind had presented her with a sheet of paper on which someone had copied out the lyrics to “Message in a Bottle” with the chords written in above.

  Tonight in the op shop, lights blazed scarily for no one. Drawing closer, Laura saw a big window peopled with frozen brides. They modeled beaded sheaths, dresses that frothed, skirts that belled, empire waists, sweetheart necklines, a bolero, a veil. A cream-embroidered caftan proclaimed that the seventies were over. Taffeta and lace, rayon and silk proliferated in a bank of dressing tables at the rear of the display.

  At first, what fascinated and appalled was the approximation of life: the mannequins were spooky, multiple, sci-fi. But it was their setting that gradually pressed its claim. The brides posed among the varnished sideboards and satin-skirted standard lamps, tile-topped tables and brown corduroy armchairs of yesteryear. Smack in the middle, posing on a china cabinet that held an orange telephone and a lidless willow-patterned tureen, was a small plush dog of the breed that flourishes in the rear windows of cars. As Laura looked on, its head began to nod; a draught must have crept into the shop. There the little dog sat, assenting to the triumph of time and tawdriness over dreams—secondhand dreams it was true, somewhat threadbare, but impulses towards an ideal, all the same.

  Ravi, 1980s

  HE HAD BECOME FRIENDS with a boy named Mohan Dabrera. A mild rivalry served to intensify their awareness of each other. They sat next to each other in class and snorted at each other’s jokes. Now and then, overcome by comradely feeling, one or the other would kick or strike his friend.

  Dabrera, a short boy with a large head, had a worldly air. His father, an importer of catering equipment, had contacts at the hotels that lined the beach. Dabrera liked to boast of their buffet lunches. But he was essentially harmless. He invited Ravi home one Sunday and let him listen to The Police on the Walkman bought for him by his father on a business trip abroad.

  These Sunday afternoon visits soon became a fixture. In Dabrera’s bedroom, which stood at the end of a long, gloomy passage, the boys listened to music; a shelf held a collection of pre-recorded cassettes. Snacks were served to them, and cold glasses of Coke. The ceiling fan wheezed as it turned, while the boys practiced card tricks. Sometimes they played Mastermind. Mostly they talked, Ravi cradled in a tangerine beanbag, Dabrera reclining on his bed.

  They were at that stage of adolescence which sets great store by purity, Dabrera shedding his ceremonial air to lose himself in fervent homilies on the theme. He revealed that he took a cold shower-bath three or four times a day. To do less was caddish. Where had he picked up the distinctive word? It studded the boys’ exchanges, for like all zealots they were much exercised by what they denounced. They would analyze anything that caught their attention: a classmate’s remark, a line in an advertising jingle. Then: Caddish! They would shout it, jubilant. Entire categories were damned, tourists for instance, a species Dabrera had studied at first hand, who went about with practically nothing on, and didn’t wash their feet at night before climbing into bed.

  Carmel Mendis cried, “What will you do when you catch dengue fever and die?” But Ravi had discovered something thrilling: he could ignore his mother. He went on setting up his bed on the back veranda. When he woke at night, the moon returned his stare. He vowed to do stupendous things. But then he felt thoroughly disgusted with life. Because Priya often teased him, poking fun at his mannerisms and turns of phrase, he lost himself in an elaborate story that culminated when she begged for his forgiveness. He assured her that she had it. Then he had her hanged.

  Sometimes, taking Marmite with him on her chain, he slipped out into the street. Feelings of wonder and tenderness for all living things would overcome him. There was also the great mystery of selfhood. It was amazing that he was he, Ravi Mendis, with all that he thought and felt accessible to him alone. How terrible that the intricate web of his consciousness could never be experienced by, say, the one-eyed man who called periodically at the house to buy old newspapers. Or for that matter by Sting. Ravi held out his hands: there, at those ten fingertips, he ended. The sea sighed as it stretched in its bed. Marmite licked his knee.

  There came an afternoon in July when Dabrera’s feelings were tuned to an excruciating pitch. His face was strained, and his voice, habitually sonorous, disintegrated into childish piping as he swore Ravi to secrecy. Then he announced that their form teacher, Brother Francis, masturbated with the aid of a mango skin. Dabrera always avoided slang, preferring to say masturbation, penis, and so on; the formality lent his disapproval a redoubtable force. Swaying back and forth on his short legs, he refused to reveal how he had learned about the mango skin, saying only, “Trust me, our so-called reverend brothers are a filthy lot.” And—a scatter of fine spittle accompanying his climax—“It’s all just unspeakably caddish.”

  Dabrera often required Ravi to accept his claims without question. But his loftiness grated this time. Perhaps Ravi had tired of his role as guest, with treats portioned out like deviled cashews—gratitude is rarely an emotion that keeps. Or perhaps it was just the irritability that spurted in him these days, causing h
im to take offence at the least little thing.

  He said, “I don’t believe you.”

  It was one of those suspended moments. It might have ended in a blow or—the vision that came to Ravi was at once precise and highly peculiar—a caress. But Dabrera only stood on tiptoe and fumbled along the top of his almirah. Then he held out a copy of Playboy. He had found it the previous week, he said, hidden in his father’s desk.

  “Can’t you see?” Dabrera’s voice shot up the scale again. “It’s much worse than you think. No one—no one—is above caddishness. It’s all around. There’s nowhere safe.” He crossed the room. “Move over.” He settled himself into the beanbag and said, “Look at it, will you.”

  Side by side, neither sitting nor exactly sprawling, they looked. Ravi turned the pages, sometimes quite fast. Now and then the movement brought his arm into contact with Dabrera’s shoulder. In the distance, or it might have been just outside the window, a crow cried, Ah-ah-ah.

  Light was starting to fade, rubbed from the sky with a dirty eraser, when Ravi left. He walked down an avenue of crotons, away from the large, silent house. The only other person he had ever seen there was the gray-haired servant who brought them their nibbles and drinks. Dabrera was an only child, and Ravi had never met his parents. He had the impression that Mrs. Dabrera was sickly; the long, dim passage suggested hankies soaked in cologne. But now and then, an angry female voice rose behind “Roxanne.” The servant’s face was always frightened and exhausted. Ravi began to walk faster and, eventually, to run.

  On and on he sped, and a piano hurled the notes of an arpeggio after him like stones. He passed a broad, dark banyan tree and a green where cricket was played. Still he fled, running past the rest house, running past people and open-fronted stalls.

  He reached a street lined with souvenir shops and places where tourists went to eat. He dashed across, and into a lane. Here, after the brassy streetlights, shadows surged to meet him. Blinded, he ran into a pale shape.