My mother was out of time.
•
Victor and I had a terrible argument that last trip to Germany. Dismayed by how feeble and ill my mother was, he wanted to bring her home with us. When I demurred, he accused me of abandoning her. I thought him ridiculous. He had just read her fucking book. Was he prepared to clean up her shit every morning? Did he really believe she would be happy in our California bungalow in Melbourne? Did he really think my mother would be content tending to the vegetable patch and pretending to be interested in the endless stories from Mrs Koulouris next door about her grandchildren?
He didn’t want to listen. ‘It’s our responsibility,’ he insisted. ‘We have to take care of her. Don’t you love your mother?’
‘I do,’ I yelled back, ‘but I don’t particularly like her.’
His face was purple with fury. ‘You’re inhuman,’ he spluttered, ‘just inhuman.’
We thought my mother was asleep in her bedroom but at that moment she came into the living room wearing an open robe and nothing else, and filled a dirty glass with the cheap red wine she loved drinking. Victor turned away, embarrassed by her nakedness.
My mother gulped hungrily from her glass, finished it and refilled it. She wiped her cracked, wine-stained lips with a sleeve. ‘Victor, darling,’ she said, ‘I think you are adorable, but for Christ’s sake, stop being so insufferably petit-bourgeois.’
Danke, Mama, danke schön.
She died in her sleep. Her wish was to be cremated. I returned to Germany for her funeral and it was during that time that I discovered for myself the wonderful numbing panacea of alcohol. Throughout the organisation of her funeral, the endless conversations with journalists and critics, I drank. I drank from morning to night, I was drunk at the service, I was drunk at the wake, I was drunk on the flight home.
I was sitting next to a slim young thing, a blue-eyed pale-skinned woman returning home after five years in Europe. She asked me if I was visiting Australia for the first time.
‘No, I live there,’ I explained. ‘I’ve just been back to bury my mother.’
‘Oh,’ the young woman said with wide eyes, then added timidly, ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘No, no,’ I slurred, and then giggled. ‘She had an interesting life, my mother, there is no reason to feel sorry for her.’ Then I said it, wanting to be wicked, wanting to see how she would react. ‘She once sucked off Paul McCartney in the toilets of the Star-Club in Hamburg, many, many years ago.’
The young woman stared at me. ‘Oh,’ she said again, and then sighed, no doubt thinking of her own mother, of returning home. ‘She sounds amazing.’
‘Yes,’ I answered, indicating to the steward that I wanted another drink, ‘yes, indeed she was.’
Petals
I AM IMPRISONED. I AM IN here for three years. I am having to endure two years and three months longer. I don’t know if I can endure. I don’t speak. This is a curse and there is no reply to make back to a curse.
They are blaspheming all the time in here. They are beasts, and not only the imprisoned ones. The ones with the keys, they too are wild. The master too and those who are working here, they all have the stare of a beast. This gaze they all share, it doesn’t come from in here, it is carving on their faces from long ago. Their fathers too have the same stare and their grandfathers and the grandfathers before them.
It tells where they come from and what they are.
I sing yesterday. I don’t know why, I no sing from the first day here. No, from even before. From the moment when I open my eyes in the peace and in the calm and I am hearing a song from inside my body. Not from outside me but inside, a melody that is being sung by my blood and my bones. I hear my voice and I open my eyes and all is mud and dirt.
She is white, as if a leech has drunk all of her juice. I am killing her. The singing stops. She falls, a bird I shoot with my sling. Then I see that her fingers on her left hand are twitching, that her eyes are opening and closing and opening and closing. I have not killed her. I lay her before Death but He does not take her. For bringing her to Death’s door I am here for three years and I must endure two years and three months more.
I have no hunger for song and I have no right for song. Even my pain and my solitude do not deserve a song.
Even so, I sing yesterday. My voice is a clarino.
Where are the greens of the meadow, the water from the well?
Stiv hears. Stiv is the name of that poofter, sometimes they call him Stivi, the little Stiv. It is not possible such a pollution is once a child. I struggle to say their names, they makes my mouth twist, like a stone is caught there. Stiv Gharin, such a name tears at my throat. Stiv Gharin shouting at me, What’s that shit you are singing, dago? Who said you’re allowed to sing?
—I don’t need permission from you to sing, you fucking animal.
—What was that, you reffo?
I say again in Greek.
And that is when his eyes go the glare of his race and of the demons, and I swear to all the gods and all the saints and to the Mother of us all that I am speaking the truth. They are all devils, him and his father and his grandfather and their grandfathers before them. Till you reach the end of their line and you find the Satan. That is their start and that is their story. It is written in their eyes.
He makes a scream, from deepest hell. Each word is a gob of spit at my face, at my brow, at my cheeks. Speak English, you dirty fucking wog!
Where are the greens of the meadow, the water from the well?
His forehead smashes into mine and there is pain, then black, then a yellow light. Then I am throwing up an ocean of blood. Stiv Gharin, that obscenity, that demon, he is gone.
I see it then that I will kill him. A vision of a prophet, ancient and built by the gods.
I have two years and three months. Why do I care, what is there to seek from a future? I have no future, I only have fate. All future is gone now.
I see this written as if a commandment from our God.
—Are you hurtin’?
It is Tzim. He is a good lad. It is him and me and the poofter Stiv, we are the three in this cage. Tzim is good, he is tasty, he is sweet and he is handsome. He is half of that race of beasts and criminals and he is half of that black race here that is made a misery. He is good and he is handsome but the drink in here has made him slow and the pooftering here has made him a whore. That is as it is. I too jump the kid but only when we are alone. Of course I jump him. He is tasty and he is sweet. When I kiss him, his lips are soft, they are as a child. He tastes like a child. I kiss him. The others only jump him, they are a gang and they jump him together. One is in his arse and two are in his mouth and the others spill themselves all over him. But I am a man, I am still human and I kiss him.
—I no hurt.
He doesn’t believe in me. He brushes his finger on my nose and pain makes tears in my eyes. And I curse, I curse the Christ and the Mother and I curse my balls.
Tzim jumps back, a shadow in his eyes, the mark of the beast of that damned white race. And even him, even him that they spit on and they fuck and they bash and whose arse they have made the same as the cunt of an old woman who has birthed a dozen children, even he does not bear it when I speak my tongue.
That is what every stranger is like. I understand it first on the ship that takes me to these dark horizons, I understand it that the stranger cannot bear our tongue. Of course, I understand it. I too do not want to hear a stranger’s tongue. That is God’s law everywhere.
I speak in English. Thanks, mate.
He is again sweet. He smiles. He takes a scrap from his pocket, a cloth that is a handkerchief also and full of his sweat and his spit. The cloth is red now with my blood. He gives it to me the cloth.
—Come on, I’ll take you to the sick room.
Butchers they have here, not doctors. The doctors and nurses here they too have that wild stare. I don’t want to go but there where Tzim touches it my nose it begins to swing like a bell.
>
Fuck bloody God, I want to hear the peal of bells on the mountains and through the valleys! I want to hear a chant from a priest, even though them I can’t bear. I leave Greece and in here I leave one more time my homeland. There is no Greece anywhere left for me, not even in that toilet of shit they call Melbourne. Even there I am exile.
Two years and three months. What does that matter?
—No sick room, no bloody doctors, I say to Tzim. I tell him I want to go to the desert.
—Go bush, I go bush, I become black bastard like you.
He doesn’t like it. I take his hand.
The dog with the keys, that outrage, he laughs when he sees me.
—I want sick room.
—And I want cunt. What are you going to do about it?
Two years and three months. I slaughter him now and then they hang me with that beautiful lad, Ronilt Raen, handsome that one, a man that one, I am proud to swing next to a man like that. And I will meet Death with at least one cunt cop head hanging from my belt.
Tzim lets go of my hand.
•
The doctor is new, only here four months and not yet savage. He is a kid, he is a little darling. He has red hair and he has blue eyes. It will happen, it will happen. He is of their race, soon he’ll be a beast.
—What happened, Arthur?
He says our names, the animal with the keys doesn’t like it.
I don’t speak.
—What happened to him, Donaldson?
—He fell.
And with that the monster with the keys, he pushes Tzim out of the room. The doctor and I only alone.
Tzuli too has red hair. Tzuli too has blue eyes. Before I making her eyes black, before I am killing her.
Slowly, slowly the doctor fixes me up. He is taking my nose and pushing. There is a pain, it is burning in fire but I am not even one breath leaving to escape. I do not move at all.
—You really need a hospital.
That makes me laughing. I am eleven years old when I first coming to Athens and having my nose breaking in a boxing match. There is no hospital for me then and there is no hospital now. Hospitals not belonging to us.
To forget pain I looking up at the icon of the Queen on the wall behind the doctor. She is not beautiful but she is young and she looks like one of them but not with that ugly savage stare. It is this forsaken land that making them beasts. It will make us all beasts. Her skin is white, I’d like to touch her skin, to put my hands on her tits, to make her cunt lick my fingers.
The doctor is noticing my staring at the Queen. Not for him, he doesn’t like her. He talks of my homeland, he starts to say big words I can’t understand, I hear democracy, I think I hear fascism. I think. I don’t know, they are big words and I have no appetite to answer him even if I did understand him. Why is he asking me questions? What does he want from me?
Tzuli too asked me questions. All the time, asking me questions. About the wars, about Greece, about politics. Tzuli is a student and wanting to know everything. In the end, she betray me.
Best not to say a word to no one, that’s the first and best lesson I taking from Greece. Best to not say one damned word.
Tzuli wanting to know everything. And in the end, in court, she tells them everything. How many times I am hitting her, how many times I am kicking her, she tells them everything. She is tasty and she is sweet, she is beautiful and she is good. But in the end she is a betrayer.
I pretending I am mute and I am dumb. I pretending I don’t know one fucking thing about politics.
I can see, that young, sweet doctor, he is not happy in me. What the devil does he want from me?
He is not happy in all of us Greeks in here. There are four of us, we all pretending we are hicks from the mountains. The devils with the keys and the demons with who we share our cages, they don’t want us together. Speak English, you reffo cunt! They don’t want us together and we don’t want to be together. We reminding each of us of what each of us is losing.
None of us answering the doctor’s questions.
Two years and three months. I will go to the desert. Black I will become.
He bandaging me up.
I makes my way to the yard. In the far corner, where there is some soil and garden, there is the old man with his roses, colours I have before never seen. I like the old man, he is timid and he is gentle, he is sweet and he is soft. I have never heard him blaspheme. I go to help planting some more flowers. A thorn pricks my skin and I damn the rose and the garden and the prison and the world. He laughs but then quickly stopping, he looking away. I see that there is fear in his glance.
He doesn’t stare as the beasts do, he stares as the frightened do.
He jumps children, that is his sickness and his fate, that is why they have imprisoned him. All of them hate him, those animals despise him. The murderers and the rapists, the thieves and the forgers, the drunks and the drugged, the dogs with the keys, all of them hit him and bash him and spit him and curse him and rape him, and again and again they bring him just to reaching Death. They make him look at Death, then bring him back. Again and again. That is his life. The beasts say of him, He is the worst, the most ugly and vile thing in here, that there is nothing worse.
I don’t believe it. He is gentle and he is upright. I think those little girls are fortunate to being broken in by a good man, it is no problem if I is a boy fucking a gentleman like him. He is tender and rare is tender. That is why the wild men with those venom stares can’t stand him. It is the tender they hate. They don’t have it, their fathers never have it, not their grandfathers or their grandfathers before them.
Pink and yellow like the sun; white as Tzuli’s skin. There are blue roses here and purple and gold and red. I like working in the soil and the mud and the ground and the dirt with the old man. Silent, our hands and knees graze the flowers and the musk of the petals flies all around us. Everywhere else here stinks foul; here, in this small patch, there is perfume.
—I heard you had an accident, Luigi.
It is Stiv, Stiv and his arsebuddies. A gang of wild beastly glares. I don’t pay him attention. He is pissed off.
With one hand he grabs the flowers, the thorns cut his skin, but he not caring. He tears them from the earth.
One small bit of land, one bit of good in this hell. Even that is too much for him. He is not from family or society, he does not know of welcoming or duty. He is an animal in the wild, he is savage.
Stiv rips apart the flowers. His arsefriends take hold of the old man from behind and Stiv opens the poor old fool’s mouth, the old fool who doesn’t cry out, doesn’t say no, doesn’t say a word, the old fool who suffers this every day, and Stiv fills the old man’s mouth with flowers, with the petals, with the thorns, with the stems and with the dirt. They are laughing. Blood on the lips of the old man, blood like tears running from his mouth.
Stiv to me turns next. He is pulling out the remaining flowers. He is not laughing.
Where are the greens of the meadow, the water from the well?
I wish to sing, to sing so loud that the mountains fall. But there are no mountains here. I cannot find my voice. And it is the old man stopping me. His eyes pleading for me to not do a thing, not say a thing, not make movement. His eyes are terror and helpless and understand all together. The old man is stopping me.
Stiv throws the flowers in my face. With laughing, as always with the most vile of words—dago and reffo and wog and poofter and cunt and fuck and shit and piss—Stiv and his arsebuddies are not here.
Tzim’s cloth is still in my pocket. I clean up the old man, I pull out thorns from his lips and his tongue, pull one from the back of his throat. What a worthless race black Fate has sent me to dwell with. Whatever the old man is doing before, his body now is frail and it is dying. How can they do this to old men? There is nothing of knowledge or respect here, I say into my own mouth, just poofterism, alcohol and violence.
—Spit, I tell him. And he spits in Tzim’s handkerchief
.
•
The nights inside here sicken me. The minutes pass like hours and the hours are infernal and eternal. We playing cards, we listening to wireless, but most of all they are evil cursing. The black bastards too, they curse. The Yugoslavs too, that spat-upon and lost race, they are shouting and blaspheming. We Greeks and the Calabrians, we letting out vileness only under our breath. Otherwise, Shut your mouth, you bloody dumb dago. It is the race of the savage glare that create the din of hell. Every second word a foulness, every other a blasphemy.
The old man alone he sits, always alone. If I having real balls I should be sitting with him but it is not worth it. They will give it to me day and night and night and day. He is scratching at his lip, taking off the skin where the thorns is been biting him. The little skins float into his lap like dying petals.
Stiv Gharin gets up from the table of card players and asks the filth with the keys he wants to go to the toilet.
I get up too, I ask the filth with the keys that I must go to the toilet.
In the latrine I can hear Stiv Gharin pissing a fountain. Then he lets drop a foul fart as he shits.
Two years and three months.
I kick door and he has no time. Brow meets brow, and I am hitting him so hard with my forehead that the sound is a clean Orthodox bell ringing on the mountains. He places a hand to the wall of the latrine, he has courage this beast, he will fight Death, but he cannot go to his feet before I pulling at his hair and bringing his head down hard on the concrete slab of the toilet. I do it again. And again, the bells ring.