I slip my camera into my backpack and Gerry drives me into Paris. Very soon the hideous suburban landscape is replaced by the bloated opulence of the inner city. I care nothing for the prim and pretty façades and ornaments of architecture; what excites me is the darkness and the shadows. Sweat, drugs, excrement and the caustic traces of the city.
Gerry drops me off at the Gare du Nord.
—When you return to Australia, you will go to your father’s grave and you will whisper a farewell from the Hebrew. You will do that. It is an order. We never farewelled one another.
—Yes, I agree. Of course I can do that. My father will not hear but I will do that. What’s your real name? I suddenly ask. It can’t be fucking Gerry.
At this, it is his turn to let out a wild cryptic laugh.
—It does not exist anymore. It has disappeared with the land in which the wolves fuck. Let my name be erased.
With that last instruction, he starts the ignition, the truck rumbles and he turns on the car stereo. Waylon Jennings is singing ‘The Bottle Let Me Down’, and the Hebrew vanishes into the night.
I take my photographs of Paris. I take a photograph of a boarded-up old butcher shop, of two African drag queens outside a bar, of a girl selling illegal cds to customers at an open-air cafe. The intense euphoria I experienced in the old Hebrew’s truck is waning but I am still happy and fearless as I trudge the streets. I take a photograph of two Arab men smoking cigarettes in a Halal pizza shop. There is no God but Allah and his Prophet is Mohammed. I shoot the luminous spires of Notre Dame. Jesus Christ was the Son of God crucified and Resurrected on the third day in order to redeem us from sin. I capture the Hebrew lettering on the windows of a bakery in an alley off the Bastille. There is one God and the Jews are his Chosen People. The savage mythologies of ignorant, obsolete tribes. I am not tired, I am still elated. I am of this world, only in and of this world. Revelation. Every photograph I take is an act of defiance against God.
I will sleep on the train to Amsterdam and I will awaken refreshed and enter the city and take a room in a small hotel in the red-light district. I will wander the streets and cross the bridges over its canals and all the while I will glory in my omnipotence. The fire in my blood is still roaring and it is as if I can view this city and its inhabitants with a clear-sightedness that I did not have as a younger man. I will no longer be saddened by the rote masturbations of the whores parading their grotesque bodies in the clear glass windows of the brothels. I will look on at a young African woman, her cunt shaved, cupping her mammoth breasts in her hands, and it will make me laugh. She will be there for my pleasure. I will walk among schizophrenic homeless men and women and their snarls for money will appal me and I will understand the urge to wipe this wretched scum from the earth. I will enter a porn cinema and have sex with three men, a German, an Italian and a Korean: I wish to have my fill of bodies, to consume and devour. I will be the first to come and as I spray my scent on the face of the pale-skinned German, he will reach out for my hand and I will slap it away. I will zip my jeans, I will slap his hand away, I will extinguish them all from memory. I will then call Colin and tell him that I will be home within a week. I will feel no guilt, I will experience no shame. He will tell me he loves me. I will pass by the house of Anne Frank and will not have the patience to wait in line to visit the apartment in which a young woman once sought refuge. I will smoke handfuls of dope and I will pay for sex with a young man who looks younger than the age he is advertised and who will tell me in faltering English that he is from a land that was not yet born when I last visited this city. He has a tattoo of the Nazi Iron Cross on his belly and he has a tattoo of the warm proud face of Stalin on his back. As I fuck him, I make myself hard by wondering how long it would take me to squeeze the life out of him, to tighten my grip around his puny adolescent neck. Before entering the brothel, I will have given my rolls of film over to a young woman at a photo-shop who will return them to me with contemptuous silence. I will laugh in her face. But when I will take them back to my tiny room and lay the photographs on the bed, I will stare hard at the damaged, bent, misshapen bodies that return my gaze. The young men in Gerry’s warehouse are not laughing and joking. Their faces are contorted into death masks of sullen despair, of unbearable anguish and of never-ending grief. Their bodies are charred, blackened as if from fire and plague. Some of them have their faces turned from the camera, their bodies are limp, entwined, slumped. They are carcasses, they are meat. The warehouse is an abattoir. Those morose faces turned towards the lens are countenances pleading for a great silence: they are doomed. And the old Hebrew’s face is not proud, it is not welcoming my mother’s gaze into his European world. There is no expression on his face, it can’t be read. He is Charos. For a long time I will hold up a photograph of Sula’s face. It will not convey the smile she beamed at me in the suburban Parisian square but instead her eyes reproach me with despair and terror. I will feel a pain in my gut then, I will feel shame. I will hear the old Hebrew’s laughter then and I will take my camera back out into the Dutch streets and I will continue to shoot photograph after photograph because it is all I know to do. I will walk among strangers and take my photographs, feeling no connection with anyone: whores and junkies and pickpockets and thieves; bored jewelled women and elegantly suited men; white faces black faces brown faces yellow faces orange faces pink faces. I will speak to none of them. I am not ill, I still have clarity. Every photograph is an apology, every photograph I take is an act of contrition before a mocking malignant God. With every shot His laughter rings out. I am nothing in this world.
IT WAS A cold place. Reveka shivered as she crawled under the long wooden beam and squeezed herself through the broken slats that lay across the cellar. She landed on her hands, and the squish of the damp mud floor made her shudder. But she did not hesitate. She fell into the mud, scrambled to her feet, and with her head bowed under the cellar’s low roof, she listened carefully for noise from the world up above. She could hear shouting but from such a muffled distance that it could have been the wireless from the house next door. Gradually her breathing slowed and she crouched, looking around her at the dark walls. The only light came from the sun that poured in from the damaged slats, the beams of light forming thin gold stripes on her shoes and legs.
—It’s all right, Angelo, she whispered. I think we’re safe.
No, they’re still there.
—I can’t hear them.
They’re still there, he insisted.
Reveka sighed and sat down in the dirt. She knew that she would be in trouble from Old Woman Kalantzis. But her only concern was to make sure that Roger and his friends did not find her. If that meant that her skirt and stockings would be soiled, then so be it. She could feel Angelo’s presence next to her, feel his cold skin touching hers. There was a scampering from up above, and she froze. She looked up through the slats and saw Roger’s cruel pale face smiling down at her. He pursed his mouth and then expelled a large brown gob that landed at her feet.
—I’ve found ’er.
Two other boys’ faces peered down into the cellar. They blocked out the sunlight and Reveka shivered alone in the darkness. Angelo’s icy fingers clasped her own. Roger had already begun to remove the slats and his hand was groping towards her. She felt rather than saw Angelo dart towards the lean thin arm.
Roger squealed, a high-pitched embarrassingly girlish screech.
—The dirty wog, she bit me.
The boys began to tear up the slats. Reveka shifted back in the darkness until she was pressing against the cold stone wall. One by one the boys dropped into the cellar. Reveka was suddenly aware of their smell. They smelt of dust and earth and boy. Angelo was still holding her hand. Let me, he pleaded.
—Ochi, she insisted. No.
—What did you say, wog?
—Nothing. She looked up at Roger. He was kneeling in front of her, a blue singlet hanging loosely across his scrawny shoulders. His mouth was too big for his face; he was
all teeth and gum.
Let me. Let me. Angelo’s voice in her ear was a chant.
I mustn’t speak out, thought the little girl, I mustn’t let them know that Angelo is here. The boys began to pull at her. Roger held her while the other two forced her out into the sunshine. Reveka glanced quickly across the small yard, over the tomato plants to Mrs Bruno’s kitchen window but inside the room was dark and silent. Should she shout? She decided against it. The boys would only do worse things to her. Already Roger’s fingers were pinching into the flesh of her hips. She bit on her tongue. She would not cry.
In the alley, the oldest boy, his face streaked with dirt and mud and snot, slammed her against a corrugated iron fence. Roger pushed his face against hers. He was nursing his arm where Angelo had bit him.
—Why’d you bite me?
—I didn’t bite at you.
—I didn’t bite at you, Roger jeered at her accent. The other boys giggled.
—Why’d ya dob? he continued.
—I didn’t dob.
—Yes you did, Rebecca, you dirty liar. Sandra said you dobbed to Mrs Cowan. That’s how she found out we hid the paintbrushes.
—Sandra, she lie.
—You’re a bloody bastard wog liar.
—You have paint. Your fingers have paint. That’s how Mrs Cowan know. Her voice was now urgent, her words rapid. She saw the oldest boy form a fist with his left hand, she could feel Angelo’s breaths quickening next to her.
—What are you talking about, wog? She did not know this boy at all. Unlike Roger and the oldest boy, he was not from her school. His black hair was as thick and as dark as a Greek’s. But his smooth pale skin was of a whiteness that made her recall snow. And it had been two winters since she had last seen snow. In this new place there was no snow.
—What are you talking about, wog?
She looked up at the white boy’s eyes. They were ugly with spite and distaste.
Reveka attempted to explain. She wanted to make them understand that Mrs Cowan had noticed the traces of blue and red paint on the boys’ fingers. This was how the teacher guessed they had taken the paintbrushes. She tried to explain how Sandra’s older sister, Maude, was jealous of Greek girls because Maude’s boyfriend had become lovesick for young Anna Kiriakidis who lived in Charles Street and that Sandra too now detested the Greek girls and would do anything to get them in trouble. But in her fear and confusion, as she slipped Greek words into her English, as she truncated sentences and got the tenses of her verbs all wrong, the words came out making little sense. Angelo was no longer by her side. She wanted to turn her head, to see where he had got to, but she did not dare take her eyes off Roger. Roger had hurt her before. Roger enjoyed hurting children. Roger was what her father called the worst kind of Australian. She continued defending herself.
—Shut up, wog. Reveka abruptly stopped her defence. The boy had slapped her hard on the shoulder. We know you dobbed on us.
The very worst kind of Australian, Reveka mou, is ignorant and violent.
Roger pursed his mouth again, cleared his throat and spat into her face.
—That’s for being a dobber. Together, the other two boys also spat on her.
And what I don’t understand, my little angel, what I don’t understand about these people is how proud they are of their ignorance.
She did not dare wipe at the thick froth sliding down her cheek and face.
Roger spat on her again.
—And that’s for being refo scum.
The oldest boy’s spit landed right in the middle of her closed left eye. When she opened it again she felt the thick sticky liquid soak into her eye. Roger laughed and spat one last time.
—And that’s for being a greasy, ugly wog.
Criminals and prostitutes, Reveka, my poor daughter. I’ve brought you to a nation of criminals and prostitutes.
Reveka waited till she heard the boys’ laughter fade as they ran through the alley. Only then, only then when she was sure that they had gone, did she bring the hem of her tunic to her face and wipe away the phlegm. Only then, alone, under the blazing foreign sky did she allow herself to cry.
We should have hurt them.
She did not answer. A huge lorry was attempting to reverse into a factory gate and Reveka stood and watched its progress. The truck wheezed and shuddered; it seemed likely that the massive square cabin would nudge the red bricks off the arch. Reveka held her breath. The truck slipped through the gate. Reveka expelled a large sigh.
We should have hurt them.
—No. It’s wrong.
She could see he was hurt. They walked in silence down Church Street. A corner hotel was full of men who had just finished their shifts. She could barely glimpse their shadows in the dark dusty windows. Very soon they would be vomiting and urinating against the cool green broken tiles. She walked quickly past them and turned up the next street. The asphalt streets shimmered like liquid in the stifling summer heat. Reveka opened the gate to her house.
Old Woman Kalantzis was already home. She was sitting in the kitchen, drinking a coffee, her pale blue uniform unbuttoned and revealing a glimpse of white brassiere and brown skin. She was fanning herself with a stalk of silver beet.
—Shut the Devil’s door, she roared.
Reveka watched Angelo creep up to Old Woman Kalantzis. He was crouched before her, his burning black eyes staring at the suggestion of breast. Reveka turned away and headed to the room which she shared with her father. There were things about Angelo she did not understand. She knew, for he had told her, how much he despised Old Woman Kalantzis. It was he that had minted that nickname for her even though she was far from old. She lay on the bed, her eyes following a supple line of cobweb stretching from the ceiling lamp to the curtain cornice. She shifted her head and looked out of the window. She knew that Angelo would be creeping up close to Old Woman Kalantzis, sniffing at her, sniffing at her woman’s thing, maybe even daring to touch her there. She closed her eyes. She knew that Old Woman Kalantzis would shudder, that she would suddenly feel a chill, suddenly feel fear, and that she would bring her legs together, button the top of her uniform and make the sign of the Cross.
She opened her eyes. Angelo was lying next to her. He was breathing heavily. She grabbed his hand. It was cold and hard and rough; it was more like touching a piece of bark that had fallen from a tree than touching flesh. Let’s go and play, she whispered to him.
Her father had a plot allotted to him in the far corner of the garden, behind the shed. Mr Kalantzis kept some tools and old boxes in the shed, but many of the roof shingles were damaged and rain always got in. The floor of the shed was muddy and slippery and the whole structure smelt of mouse-shit and damp. Her father’s plot was tiny, barely enough for a few rows of tomatoes and a corner filled with zucchini flowers. But he had also planted blue and red flowers in beds he had made from old bricks and broken bluestone. The flowers were beginning to droop in the summer sun but their perfume masked the rank stink of the tumbling down shed. Two sheets of corrugated tin tied together with a thick piece of rope formed a gate to the alley outside. Reveka and Angelo loved swinging on the doors but they made an abominable sound and Old Woman Kalantzis would scream at them whenever she heard the rumbles and the squeals.
—What are you doing, you animal!
Reveka would quickly jump off the gate.
—You’re worse than a boy, she would be scolded. Later, at dinner, the old bitch would complain to her father.
—Michaeli, you’ve got to look after your daughter more. It’s school that’s causing this. She’s becoming like a boy. There’s no reason for a girl to be at school.
Reveka agreed. She wished there were no school either.
—It’s the law, here, Mr Kalantzis interrupted his wife, and Michaeli nodded. And here, you have to obey the law. It’s not like home.
—What kind of place is this? And with a grunt of disgust, Old Woman Kalantzis again attacked her food.
Reveka lay in the
garden bed and looked up at the vast blue sky. The stalks of the withering tomato plants towered over her and Angelo.
What can you see?
The lazy sky was nearly empty except for a smooth wisp of blinding white cloud.
—There’s a man sleeping on that cloud. Can you see him?
Tell me what he looks like.
—He has a funny red hat and is wearing long black trousers and he has no shoes on. But that’s because it is so soft when you live on the clouds that you don’t need shoes. Can you see him?
I can see him.
They preferred it when the sky was low and dark and filled with mountains of cloud. Then, then, the world above them would be filled with palaces and turrets, hills and valleys. Some of the worlds in the clouds were barren like deserts. Sometimes there were huge grand cities with factories spewing forth thick black smoke. Sometimes the people in the clouds looked human. Sometimes they had the heads of lions and the bodies of goats. Reveka stretched her head all the way back, searching for more cloud, but all she could see were the thick stalks and flat green leaves of the broad beans. And the endless blue.
She began to search the clouds on the ship. The first days were terrifying. The women and the men were separated into different sleeping quarters and Reveka could not stop crying at the thought of not seeing her father. Old Woman Kalantzis spent the early days of the journey refusing to allow either Reveka or her own daughter Eleni up on deck. You have to keep out of sight of the sailors, she warned. Those days had seemed endless. The journey itself was smooth, for the waters were calm, but the heat inside the vast dormitory was suffocating, and the other girls and women rarely talked to the dark lonely child. It’s because your mother was a witch, Eleni informed her casually, without malice, when Reveka asked her why she wasn’t allowed to play in the circle with the other girls.