Centuries Past

Set the scene.
         A number of weeks past since last meeting, the second of three in total.
         On that occasion she had been included in a group outing to neighbouring Footscray. Hardly an event by most measures.
         Granted the strong, spicy coffee at the East African cafe was a nice treat.
         Did we also share a muffin between the four of us?
         That was the extent it.
         The first meeting she had been received into the house for what was a brief visit, a cup of tea.
         The entire sum of the acquaintance up until yesterday’s chance encounter.
         Surprise on both sides.
         The hand extended was clasped in both of hers and the shaking led on her side. On both sides tumbling, inadequate words, impossible to recall because of what came next.
         Her hair carried some minor colour highlights, delicate and attractive, in a kind of mop-top that was common among Japanese women, both young and middle aged.
         This thick, full bouffant shook as she bowed her head following the hand-shaking.
         Almost certainly her chin reached her collar-bone.
         For a couple of seconds the head remained locked down—the time it took the hair to come to rest. Or did she in fact quiver all through the bowing?
         A warm, flushed glow, shining eyes, smiling on raising. Simple courtesy, grateful acknowledgement and nothing else.
         How can you not love the Japanese? (Forget the authority culture, patriarchal oppression carried in the genes and the rest.)

Measured Allure (Aug26)

Such impossibly perfect length judged to perfection by the lovely passing on the arm of her beau—the fork of the trunk, the central lodestone, a whisper away with every flutter, every thrust along the pavement. Eternal waves lapping the rocks, gently battering the brain. Monitoring along the way in the windows just to make sure, to keep a proper lid on it. Pleated denim calibrated not simply for the dead weight of fabric, but the see-saw rise, quiver and fall in motion too along the paving stones. How did she do it, so young and guileless? From his vantage the lad was missing the theatrics entirely.

Stones

The sale not come off this afternoon at Canturi corner jewellers. At the table with the oval mirror providing additional angles and facets, the two dames had the customer over a barrel. Fingers back-stretched and curling on the black felt created a dance of jewel-light. Ineffective in this instance. 
         Coming out the door lady gives herself a low smile at the trap avoided. 
         Added lamps not apparent in that glowing corner; recessed spots somewhere. 
         High backed chairs. Measured insets in the wall. 
         One and a half metre chandelier that is too broad for the room, especially given the low ceiling. 
         The door requires a bell for admittance, the size of lock audible in the tight, vacuum close. 
         Days past numerous suspicious glances have been cast in the direction of the unshaved observer casing the joint. Not in evidence today: positively angelic Come hither glances at the panama and knitted tee. (The usual Bonds does ring alarm bells in these quarters.) 
         A dozen bulbs emitting candle-light absorbed by the dark panelling and black furniture. 
         Carpet was a field of virgin snow. 
         Later the shiny-headed former rowdy boy who gains admittance with his wife knows to bow in thanks.
         Dumb-show street theatre better than the paying kind, Café e Cucina affording front row seat. (Greek emigrant from the sixties struck it lucky there.)

Entrained (Aug26)

The 3AM goods train seemed to pass hard against the house this morning, the gap between a kind of funnel that sucked the roar directly through the walls. 

            All child’s scale: the leaping side of the passing beast, the funnel of the street, the vulnerable house now suddenly marooned on a waste piece of ground. 

            Adding to the threat were the detonations. (Surely Arthur could not be right about the warnings to the workmen up the line. It seemed it was only the train in the middle of the night that carried that accompaniment.)

Following fuller wakefulness, another industrial-like blast was heard a little distance off. Escaping steam it might have been. With the repetition it was clear it was the possum in a kind of undertone, snorting a casual warning. Or mating possibly. This was far from the fierce, hellish battle-cry that we had become used to through the summer. And no clambering recently either, along the side of the house or over the roof back & forth.

Last night for an earlier train the diesel had hung heavy in the air a long time afterward. Sometimes on a Sunday the steam engine still came by, some kind of novelty run with parents & children from Newport most likely.

Heavily loaded wagons rocking over the sleepers made the glass in the windows vibrate on that side of the house. The train to Adelaide too was sometimes shunted through Newport and passed us there.

Interesting to note, guests in the house quickly settled to the ruckus, even after a single night. We had domesticated our train. It belonged to us in Watt Street and Montgomery Crescent more so than those other streets further a field.

When Ash & Barb moved into the corner house it was good to hear the train was considered an attraction by the pair, rather than any kind of negative.

Years ago Neda from around in Kernot Street threw herself under the wheels, as Babi too had considered once or twice back in the troubled early days.

Montaigne's Friend

Mr. Osman had booked his flight for the end of the month. This time last year—thirteen months ago he calculated—Mr. Osman had last been back home. At present he was awaiting his visa for Sudan. As there was no diplomatic office for Sudan in Australia, the passport needed to go to Kuala Lumpur. A week should see it all done, which would have Mr. Osman flying out on the 31st as scheduled.

            This turned the talk to the route, either directly to the Middle East, or else a stop-over in KL. Either way, Qatar then Khartoum. In the latter city Mr. Osman had two shops and an unfinished apartment. The shops were let and brought in some income. Work was needed on the apartment—adding a toilet and septic tank the main requirements—before it too could become an earner. Neither the shops nor the apartment had a toilet at present; as things stood the tenants went over to the near-by mosque to "piss.”

            These works were the ostensible reason for Mr. Osman's trip. Of course the return home offered all kinds of additional attractions, not all needing to be detailed here.

Back over the border in Eritrea there would be the tenth anniversary of independence, this year to be held in Mr. O.'s home town of Masawa. The Qatar stop-over presented something especially wonderful too. In Qatar Mr. Osman's friend from the early days in Saudi would be waiting. Almost fifty years the pair had known each other. The friend was a fellow Masawan, though the men had not been acquainted in boyhood back home; in the time since there had been a number of connections made between the families. Meanwhile the friend had become rich, a ship chandler's business developed into oil-trading; there was a villa on the water and other assets.

            — He very likes see me! Mr. O. declared with bursting pride. A wide, full radiance showing, of the kind not often encountered in men of that age.

            Mr. Osman had experienced the joys of life; there was no doubt. Mr. Osman could become a little rapturous. On the one hand even-tempered, patient and deliberate, Mr.O. was also given to hilarity, to sly playfulness and boisterousness.

In his late sixties now, a father of eight, the children progressing “beautiful” in education and life. A lot to do with Mr. O.’s good management, one could safely assume. The three eldest, two boys and a girl, Mr. Osman had successfully married; two of these after trips back home escorted by himself. 

Khartoum was as much home to Mr. Osman as Masawa; even before the war the family had relocated in Sudan.

           In his chair Mr. Osman was quietly dwelling on his upcoming trip. Having reached the Qatari stop and the introductory outline of his friend, a pause had ensued.

           At the airport the friend would await his visitor; unless Mr. Osman kept his arrival secret and intended to surprise. Beyond the keen anticipation Mr. O. did not indicate how that would go.

            Mr. Osman sitting two feet across the table, eyes cast aside. Not focused exactly; not a reverie or fixity. There was nothing really to hint at the workings of mind and memory.

            Not much could Mr. Osman say about this friendship in Qatar. How to tell a recent friend, one of the last five years, something of it? How to summarise?

            Dark skin. Perhaps faintest red in the tint, as could sometimes be found in North Indians and Pakistanis; steel-rimmed glasses. Baseball caps that were adopted in Saudi had kept Mr. Osman’s face unwrinkled even after twenty-five years in that punishing heat.

            Waiting then on Mr. Osman at the Qatar stop. There had been a short in-take of breath. Something further was to be added, something misplaced by Mr Osman it seemed.

Prompting Osman somehow was not possible. The fullness of the moment, the sense of anticipation, was strong and just a trifle strained.

            Mr. Osman’s face remained unchanged. Perhaps only the slightest, the most subtle and indescribable change. There had been some kind of alteration in the man as he sat silently.

            All at once, suddenly and unannounced, the long thin line of a tear became visible standing on Mr. Osman’s face. The overflow of emotion all at once seemed to have no precedence.

Thin and in a more or less straight line that had crossed the better part of the dark cheek, the tear had formed a small globule at the end. Uncannily, the other eye seemed to have remained dry.

            Mr. Osman held his position in the chair. In the shadow against the wall the left side of his face was shrouded.

            Mr. Osman did not wipe the tear. The glasses had been removed at some point during the long pause.

            No one in the café could have noticed. Eagle-eyed Faisal at the counter directly opposite might have observed what appeared an impasse, or blockage of some kind. Two of his regulars facing off rather strangely.

            If Mr. Osman had flushed it was not apparent; everything suggested balance and order, collectedness and calm. No shifting in the chair, no twitch or adjustment. The shifting in chair was all on the other side.

            Mr. Osman resumed again with the details of how the money was made by his Qatari friend. This he wanted to tell, Mr. Osman declared, recharged with purpose.

            A little lunge from his chair now. 

            Some sharp astuteness first of all had been important; recognition of opportunity and canny deal-making when the time was ripe. Steady coolness of head had been a factor. Subsequent manoeuvering that had got by the authorities and competitors drew little whoops and chortles from Mr. Osman. Broad smiles and beaming pride in the recall. 

           Wealth and riches would not divide this pair, nor geography either. Montaigne’s friend could not have been dearer to the old magistrate.

The Levant

The solitary old festooned and bejewelled Arab or Greek slow-stepping the pavement in Flinders Lane. Long pointed polished shoes almost tripping him up, poppy-red flower button-holed in his jacket. Clipped beard and crowned with royal blue flat-cap, neater and more pedantic for his city jaunt. The Smith Street grunge dive among the youthful hipsters was his usual haunt, cigar puffing at an outdoor table without raising his eyes or looking out. Savings or inheritance. Once or twice he has sported some kind of jodhpurs which could only have come from the family trunk. The Levant and nothing else (ignoring the hint of gypsy in the silver and gold).

         South-side the Grand Prix carnival has most of the stands erected, the barriers only needing a lick of tyre-black. Before lunch the sea plane joy-flight over the water at Port Melbourne made deceptive pelican curves. Through the evening at least two dozen passes from the paired choppers back and forth between Laverton and the CBD. Solo sorties dangerous no doubt in the hot zones.

         Brit, American and French petroleum have brokered what kind of split with the Benghazi opposition post-Gaddafi? Wikileaks where are you?

City Moods (Nov25)

Tail end of lunch fanfare—not For the Common Man—boosting the trade in Block Arcade early afternoon. As usual the Tea Room was full; the other shops vacant as usual, awaiting the very few select and discerning customers that keep the operations ticking over. 
         Out on Collins the Novotel spread a faded red carpet longways beside the gutter. Dangerous the other way for the passers-by. In their vaudeville uniforms, bellhops awaiting the patrons, larking a little in muted tones. (No taxi whistling here, as over at Langham’s on Southgate.) 
         At the truncated City Square on Swanston corner, down near the bottom of the fountain, the tubby hound had attracted tourist cameras, a colour un-co tubby chap himself pointing a long, expensive lens down at ground level. 
         Surprising posture when you haven't noticed the re-positioning of the little armoured bronze cur. (Or has he always been there?) 
         Possibly Russian like the photographer, a couple of lasses stepping down from the raised platform in Georges, tall and short; early thirties. Hair up with knee length boots; the other a long sheer scarf, smiling at her companion’s concern for footfall.

         To date they refrain from the background music for the pictures of the Japanese quake and tsunami. Grieg or Shostakovic had been expected. Gorecki had been done to death.

         Military choppers continuing in passes along Bourke hill through the afternoon, momentarily unnerving.