Missives For the Beyond

 Six years on was a big leap from late eighties to mid nineties and leaving the visit a number of months added further lag. Now Teta Marija was dying. Overnight the decision was made to get out to see her. Teta M. was one of Bab’s closest friends in the new country. They had known each other from Maffra out in Gippsland, four hours by train from the city. In the morning a family gathering had put off the venture until early afternoon; then after the trek out she was found to have been transferred to the hospital in fact. When the daughter Jenny texted Palliative Care Room 5 in her confusion she had forgotten to add it was the Werribee Mercy and not the home. Poor darling rapidly slipping, presumably doped up and only thin consciousness remaining. She was in little need of the visit herself now. Through the night and in the mornings the memory clung of the famous Montenegrin keeners at the gravesides sending messages over to the earlier departed. If there was some place of gathering in the beyond the logic followed. Searching out the hospital after the ordeal of locating the home in the first place was impossible. No, the poor dear was is no need of a visit. It seemed pointless. Without a Melways or GPS, without data on the phone, half blind in the right eye­ – Joyce and Borges predecessors – the almost entirely vacant streets, the ordeal had overshadowed the larger ordeal of the waiting hospital bed. As Veko had reported, a better class of home it appeared, the view of the entertainment room from reception showed oldies in chairs watching television and others pushing their frames across the carpet. Two and a half years residence would cost a pretty penny. Ghastly suburban prospect en route let’s say and leave it at that. Australian ugliness big time, to the max. In large fields backhoes were continuing on their merry way. There was clearly much more scope in this terrain for more and more housing of the same sort. It took almost as long extricating oneself from the web as it did locating the home in the first place. Finally an obliging ute was followed to the freeway back to town. Maccas, IGA, KFC were the signposts, more prominent because of their colourful livery than the schools, churches and creeks. Skeleton Creek was one marker on the rough pencil sketch prepared beforehand. The fantasy street names were not always easy to read. Ibiza, Pasadena, Central Park Avenue. Botanic and other pleasures were another thread: Peppermint, Juniper, Elegante, Cabernet, Bliss, Manna. Traditional old painters, favourite writers and footballers in other sectors. Construction cladding advertised an upcoming large amusement development featuring a Major Water Slide, Major See-Saw, among a number of other features. The housing had been built in the past decade. For the first twenty or thirty years in this city an Indian had never been sighted. Now there was reportedly 200k in Melbourne alone. A news item earlier in the day that needed to be rebutted by the ABC suggested Sydney had become a majority Chinese city. The relatively clean air, blue skies, stable social order had certainly attracted numbers from less favoured places in the region particularly. A year or two ago the municipality of Wyndham had been the fastest growing area of the country; in more recent time a region on the outskirts of Perth had overtaken. Chemist Warehouse had been another of the Google Map markers. It was difficult to recall whether that chain had been in existence six years before. A chap at a coffee stall at a small mall near the home reported a second outlet not too far distant. This though was the one near the Manor, up Boardwalk Boulevard second on the left.

The Walnut (April25)

By wash-up it was 2 o’clock, cool still without a wink of sun. Nine or ten degrees being no good for painting, the day was devoted to cleaning, gardening and clearing the paths around the back of the house. Once the weatherboards were sponged a couple times the resulting gleam suggested they might be left another couple of years at least. In this quarter of town the eastern side of the house was sheltered. Up under the roof on the western side a number of boards might need to be replaced, close on fifteen years had done for them. It was good to get the prep completed, good to follow the same old rhythms. The gardening was light weeding and raking the walnut leaves, some of which still bore traces of yellow and even green. (My way of life has fallen into the sere.) For a number of weeks various household tasks had brought back Babi. It had been not so much memory as bodily posture and movement, programmed by the earlier example. Sleeves rolled washing the smalls in the bathroom basin, lifting the washing onto the line, spooning out the breakfast from the various containers the sense was of established formal pattern – these actions followed Bab’s unique and precise motions. People had children after all for the hope of continuance. Bent over the garden shovel, plucking weeds, raking leaves & carting into the different corners for their blanketing and manuring brought pleasure in the mimicry. Paying for the works could not have provided anything of the sort. Behind the back fence a brood of beautiful hens could be heard in low tones that were close to the voices of the housewives from decades past. The week before the low gabbling had been investigated, the ladder moved across and a peek taken. When the new owner was heard opening his shed door a short conversation ensued and the chap was duly congratulated. The fellow was told of our chooks of fifty years earlier that had needed to be slaughtered when a neighbor complained to council of the stink. These lustrous copper hens were of a particular breed, kept for ‘dual purpose,” the chap said – eggs and also meat. A while ago before he had gone to the chopping block, there had been a rooster too. It was doubtful that this young hipster lad had wielded the axe himself. During the morning a bird had called from the olive in Romano’s yard. The prickly pear reminder of Sicily was no more against Signor Carmelo’s fence – Romano’s father-in-law in front. It was a pity it had not remained while Signora Maria was still alive; perhaps it withered somehow in the droughts. Bab had planted the walnut at back beside the old outdoor WC in early years. There had been little growth over the six year absence. Another walnut down at her house had died while she was still alive. There has been a kilo & half of nuts, most of which were given to Kuma Jasna on a visit. The walnut was a dangerous tree, many a picker having broken their backs falling from those brittle branches. In the foreign soil the trees never attained the size of those back in Europe, they said.

Two recent publications

The ThinkCity people in Johor Bahru, Malaysia have released a chapbook of my JB writings over a few years of stays in that town just across the Causeway from Singapore. Titled "Southernmost Point – Jalan Jalan Johor Bahru," here it is below. (ThinkCity is a non-government urban regeneration group that has previously worked in Georgetown Penang, Butterworth & KL. The photographic work is all their own doing I hasten to add – somewhat touristy for my liking.)

And an Australian literary magazine called Gargouille has recently published a new issue where a short piece of mine has been included, titled "Wife No. 2." Gargouille is based in Melbourne, $18 from various outlets & mail-order. After a decent interval I will post the piece on the blog.

Salam & shanti

And Eid Mubarak to my Muslim friends
Pavle

file:///Users/carllooper/Desktop/TC0001_5Chapbooks_1ST_FA_FORVIEWING.pdf

Wizardry (Jun25)

Pair of beautiful Afro sisters, one hooded and one plaited. Nine makes the elder grade 4, younger might have been 2, perhaps. Striking little coconuts with their Oz accents and rhythms. Daddy at the counter attempting to scan and print. Golly gee! Who walks into the foyer opposite all of a sudden, but a girl from elder’s class in school. Milly! Milly!... Oh my goodness! What are you doing here, Milly?... Asian with glasses giving one look behind, before she wordlessly disappeared behind the glass of the employment agency next door. Puff of smoke and gone... Maybe her mother works there. How did Milly get here though? Catch a bus did she, maybe. Even driving it took 20 minutes to get here. Waves through the door like cleaning a window pane. Milly! Milly!...  Won’t come out and the pair can’t risk going in… Go on girls, do it! Watchya scared of? It’s safe… Won’t risk it. You go in then!... Hey! But hang on a minute, whose classmate is this girl after all?... They’re not going to eat you in there, no big bad wolf waiting... Solving the mystery must wait on the morrow, however. Darn. Veeeery strange. Daddy progressed to the PC room; Junior circling through the pair of doors, the prayer room and PC. Hello. Hello. Hello each pass… Full of beans like that they could not have been fasting. Christians? You couldn’t tell. The Muslims occasionally brought in young daughters. Right oh. A game then. Come on. You ready? Need paper first…Hang on, gotta be something here. Rummaging. Rummaging. Had some somewhere…Yeah. Finally. OK, on your toes now and no second chances. This here is how you spell MILLY, alright. And this now is how you spell your name too…What did you say it was? What?... FRATA? FRATA?... OK… Block letters. F.  An R. An A… Leaning in… No, no, no. That’s not how you spell Milly. And. That’s not how you spell my name, either… The former variant was easy as pie. Simple; no help needed. Latter we had to see… An E, then?... OK. OK, you got it. EEEE. There. And. What?... A PH. Like for what?... A dolphin?... Not FFFF. A P. And a Haich… Pen waving like a wand before big stunned and gleaming brown eyes… Abracadabra. Jingily, jingily, jang!... There. You. Are… EPHRATA. But what I wanna know now is why daddy named you after a river. You gotta tell me. Come on. You gotta. No secrets. We going to be friends or what?... WAH! The looks on the faces! Blimey! Flamin’. Little mite’s lamps bigger than anything and that swivel of the chin like an ice-cream cone on the march!

 

 

NB. Fausi’s no-name café on Barkly Street, Footscray by the P. O., where most mornings there were more Viets than Africans. Brought back Muhammed Ali refusing the draft. Despite all the evidence, just like Iraq, politicians like John Howard could no doubt retrospectively justify it.

 

 

 

 

 

Brotherhood and Unity

Nearing quarter after five, the chaps were soon to partake. In fact the back tables had cleared again, many of the men returning to their homes for the repast. Four South Sudanese at one window table and an Eritrean Orthodox Christian adjacent. It had always been assumed that the latter had been a Muslim. Appearing last week with a couple of scarved women the matter had been raised with Abdul Razak. An Orthodox Christian, by the name of Haile Yesus – Haile for short. The woman with her daughter had been a cousin just returned from church. There had been nothing to distinguish the pair from any of the Muslim women on the street. Ten years now the ease and warmth between the Muslims and Christians on the Horn had been witnessed. Back in the day former Yugoslavia had featured similar camaraderie between the religious groups. Where Muslims were a majority, Haile Yesus suggested some days later, all was well between the different groups. On the Horn they had all managed very well. Hearing of the experience on the equator Haile was a little surprised. What, in six years in those parts not a single sharp, rabid Islamist? Really? Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia together? 

            Famously, Bratstvo Jedinstvo had been one of the chief slogans in communist Yugoslavia.

            In English Hailie translated as “power.” For the last emperor Haile Yesus had inadequate English. Fifteen minutes after the enquiry had been made the man returned with an answer. In English Selassie was “trinity”. 
            – You know trinity? Hail asked. 
            No wonder Abdul Razak and the other lads in the back row had been unable to provide.

Condolences

Rain close beneath the tin under the wing of the Studio before dawn was a trifle unsettling; it was something like the concern at howling wind and storm against the window in childhood. The evacuated possums would be having a torrid time of it without shelter. After having dispatched the large bushy-tailed felon a second much smaller was squeezing through a tiny gap on the other side of the front window. More trouble and expense. In the end handyman Goran had flipped the hinges on the box he had crafted that had fixed the first old fellow and filled that hole with expandable foam from an aerosol can. Three days later the operation appeared to have been a success—no sound of the creatures in the ceiling. After the funeral on Sunday over in Montenegro the matter of rain over a grave had played in the over-het brain. Finally the bereaved brother and the widow were reached on the phone and condolences offered. Words had been very difficult to find either side. As a sailor the brother Vajo had missed both his father and mother’s funerals. On this occasion he had been found at home. A flinty old mariner, thought had been that Vajo might have gathered himself and a calm, settled voice would be heard on the phone. In the event it proved to be not the case. Bad choking. Velika ti hvala, Many thanks to you, Vajo had responded. There was little else intelligible. Often Vajo could be quiet and circumspect. As in the villages, in Vajo’s place there at Kumbor where Aunt Radoslava had married he would live the remainder of his life one hundred metres below the church graveyard where all his family lay in the ground. Shaving the last days the thought had come of the preparation of the corpse. The younger brother Leka—Aleksandar—had a kind of large mole high on his cheek. In the summer it grew larger, he had said once. Some kind of skin condition ran through the male line in that branch of the family. Leka’s nephew Vladimir had a large dark patch of skin on his forearm that had raised consternation among the grandmas in his early years. The women shaving would need to take care with Leka. Surprisingly, late last year up in Johor Bahru, Southern Peninsular Malaysia, it had been revealed that among the Muslims in the Tropics at least it was the male kin who prepared the dead for burial. Not the case in another patriarchal form in Montenegro, where the duty fell to the widow, the daughters and other female kin.

                                                                                                       Melbourne, June 2017

Revolt

4pm, over 100 pages in on Patric, stopping at the Janissary passage – the Janicari that were of course well known to mother and all the tribes across the hills back home. Unspeakable horrors of history, invasion, power and domination. One’s own flesh and blood come back in the hated occupier’s colours to wage war on the people. There would be contemporary parallels, but nothing quite like that state policy of the Turks. Patric had heard the same stories at his grandfather’s knee possibly; being born in the old country he may have been luckier in that regard…. The older Viet girl here, married in fact with children and hardly a girl any more, understands immediately and accepts without hesitation the mandarin left for her on the counter. Possibly she saw peel on the table beside the bicycle helmet. Most of the lads were fasting of course, day six of Ramadan. Mario the Orthodox Christian in the window seat seen taking a drink of water needed a moment for recall. One could share the fruit cheaply today. Like her younger compatriots who also worked at Abdul Razak’s, the Viet woman was always pleasant, friendly and smiling. The girls here were all well treated by customers and the boss himself. Often the girls took food from a common plate with Abdul Razak, in the usual Muslim way. The ful was loaded up a bit more when Abdul Razak called them to the back table, Come, come. Quizzing the cheeky devil later about one of his common terms often playfully employed the man was less than forthcoming. The Mamalukes were vaguely remembered from the history books – Young Turks weren’t they? who assumed power in Ottoman Egypt for a number of decades, if not centuries. When copy paper boxes had been delivered the shifting had fallen entirely to the boss. The Viet woman in Abdul Razak’s employ had been busy at the coffee machine; there had not been a finger raised to help the man. Too many Mamaluka around here, Abdul Razak whined playfully. Bludgers, loafers, no-goods, Abdul Razak seemed to mean in his usage. Of course where the man came from the hired help – if it was hired and not owned – would jump to cart, clean, scratch the boss’s back without ever being asked; without the merest eyebrow raised. Of course. Those who were good and useful among the labour; there was always the laggard one could do nothing whatever with…. What is Mamaluku? the Viet woman had asked. She may have asked some weeks prior too without any answer from Abdul Razak…. Even he does not know, the woman was answered by the wise guy at the first table. In the enquiry that followed Abdul Razak was told the term was known from books, but what did he himself mean by Mamaluku?... Re-arranging the chairs Abdul Razak took his time responding, crafting his English for the reply. (Greatly improved English over these six years of absence. Six years ago Abdul Razak had possessed no more than four dozen words of English. Five at most.) If you know from books that is enough for you, Abdul Razak cheekily retorted, in a similar form that the elders had sometimes annoyingly employed for enquiries in childhood.  How many times had Abdul Razak been heard: Mamaluka!... Too many Mamaluku…. All Mamaluku here…. Loads and loads of times. Mr Morwel the South Sudanese Dinka might know the answer to the question. In the back room Morwel was working on a computer. A union leader back in his own country, who had spent six months in the USSR in the late 80s shortly before the collapse, Perestroika. Educated by Italian missionaries, Morwel spoke excellent English. Arabic as well as his own Dinka of course. There was some French too and fair chance Morwell knew more than a bit of the Tigrinya of the Eritreans. Teaching English to his people out in Fitzroy, Morwel was also collecting Dinka prose, poetry, proverbs and fables for an anthology he hoped to publish for the sake of the youth. With translations included there would be revealed some of his country’s literary heritage to Australian readers. Close Mugabe look-a-like, taller perhaps than the old fox. One “e” had been confirmed; the name was a compound of something like patience, perseverance, triumph overcoming hardship. Two separate Dinka terms mor and wel, and nothing to do with English…. Ah! Yes. That was it. Revolt of the slaves. Yes. Not the Young Turks at all; that crew had been another kettle of fish altogether. One of the most remarkable of events from the pages of the history books; similar to Haiti, but in this case much longer duration. A revolt of slaves. Slaves assuming power and retaining it for a thousand years. Like Mugabe no doubt, once in the saddle ossification and the usual insularity and jealously guarded power centre…. Something Abdul Razak might possibly not in fact have in his knowledge and no need disturb the little chappie.

NB. Black Rock White City, A.S. Patric