12 DECEMBER 2005
ANNA ROSEN, BURDENED by heavy bags of groceries, climbed the four flights of stairs to the apartment her father had left her. To be precise, she had inherited one third of the property, but she had bought out her brothers’ shares and thus ended up with a sizable mortgage.
Anna had found every aspect of the transaction grimly amusing. Thanks to her communist parents, she had grown up strictly opposed to inherited wealth; but the further necessity of dealing with moneylenders had made it even worse. She felt her skin crawl when she was forced to submit to a bank manager’s capricious will. The punctilious prick had questioned why she’d never borrowed money in her life. He seemed to believe that she was in the grip of some strange deviance beyond his comprehension.
Anna had persisted because her brothers had convinced her they could use the money to reduce their own mortgages, but she had also begun to think, after a lifetime of renting, about what she could leave to her own daughter. The dwindling royalty cheques from her books would not amount to much. Nor would her meagre superannuation accounts and she really must get around to the boring job of corralling them into a single compound-interest-bearing entity one day. Such a task made her nauseous.
Not that Rachel would ever need what little Anna had to offer. When it came to money, her daughter was an apple fallen far from the tree, then picked up by a passer-by and tossed over a high fence. As if in mockery of her mother, Rachel was steadily making her own fortune working for a private-investment fund in some capacity that Anna still struggled to comprehend. Rachel had already bought her own city apartment and a European sports car to occupy its precious garage.
Anna reached the landing, lowered her bags and opened the apartment door. She preferred the American term apartment—as in a suite of rooms—with its subtle implication of elegance. Her father, Frank, had called the place a unit, reducing it to a component, a module or a segment of something larger. This gave it a kind of socialist connotation that perhaps helped salve his conscience at having bought it in the first place. Her mother had suffered no such pangs of guilt. Eva had grown up in a spacious, high-ceilinged apartment in Vienna, filled with Ottoman carpets and fine furniture and valuable paintings, all of which had been stolen, in due course, by the Nazis.
Anna picked up the groceries and entered her home. Her home! She bumped the door closed with her bottom and felt the same sense of elation she always did. She was grateful that Eva had finally gotten her wish; pleased that Frank had not denied it to her after four decades living in public housing. After all, during the many years he had devoted to The Party, as an apparatchik and an evangelist, Eva had stood by his side, unwaveringly loyal through the worst of times.
The apartment was European in style. It was the closest thing to her childhood home Eva had been able to find in Sydney. When Anna finally took ownership of the place, she, as her mother had done, set about making it hers. On the parquetry floors with their patina of old polish she had laid her Afghan rugs, rugs whose price she had negotiated while drinking mint tea during a lull in the fighting in Kabul. She had filled the rest of the apartment with paintings, objects and photographs gathered during a lifetime of travelling.
Anna carried the grocery bags down the intricately patterned runner in the hallway and past the two bedrooms, past the bathroom and the study, which Frank had lined with old cedar bookshelves. She entered the living room with its high pressed-metal ceilings. Here tall windows looked down over Woolloomooloo. The long finger wharf and the green peninsula of the Botanical Gardens reached out into the harbour. Beyond and above the gardens was a section of city skyline, a slice of the Opera House and the arch of the Harbour Bridge.
Anna put her bags down. She never once saw the familiar shape of the bridge without it triggering memories of two men. One was more a demon than a man and, though long dead, he would forever inhabit the structure as a dark presence. The other had been lost to her for decades, yet he still existed in her life as a tangible, living presence.
After methodically unpacking the groceries, Anna reached up to a shelf of spices and took down the jar of tarragon. She put two fingers inside, feeling for what was hidden there. She found it easily enough and placed on the counter a green lump with tiny fibrous branches and pale seeds nestling among its resinous foliage.
It was all that remained of the bag of hydroponic dope she’d bought more than a year ago, dried and compacted like the Buddha sticks of her youth. Soon she would face the same old dilemma of how to replenish supplies. Her once-reliable dealers had evaporated, died or simply gone straight in middle age. The fellow she’d been most comfortable with, like the one mechanic you trust with your car, was now a website designer who wanted his friends to forget how he used to make his living.
Artists tended to retain their connections to the black market and there was a painter Anna knew pretty well who liked a smoke, but she was too embarrassed to ask him. She pulled out her papers from a kitchen drawer and rolled a thin joint using the dried tarragon as a tobacco substitute. She lit it up and drew on the fragrant smoke.
Anna liked cooking when she was stoned. It gave her focus. She thought about that and then, realising that the very idea sounded silly, she laughed at herself.
‘Focus,’ she said aloud. ‘Some music.’
She wanted up, not down, and she found waiting on top of the CD player an album by Amadou & Mariam.
Not too hot, not too cold—just right.
The gentle ringing tones of ‘M’Bifé’ filled the room and she danced to it a bit until she saw herself in the mirror across the room—or, rather, what seemed to be an incarnation of her former self, swaying rhythmically, sexily. She moved closer until she saw a truer reflection. As always, the first thing she noticed was the tear-shaped scar below her left eye, damage wrought by men, but it could have been much worse. When she changed focus and saw the whole picture, she wasn’t unhappy with it; she didn’t mind the face that the years had given her. Anna toked on the joint, blew smoke at the mirror and watched her clouded reflection smile at the gesture.
In the kitchen she lined up the ingredients for Rachel’s meal, a simple ritual she had done time and again. It was an act of devotion, after all, the preparation of a meal for a loved one on her birthday. For a present she had chosen a painting which had lived for years on her bedroom wall. Rachel had always loved it and it was now wrapped and leaning against the living room couch. Like the meal, it was a peace offering. She felt guilty that she’d seen so little of her daughter in recent months. Both of them had been busy, but the lapse seemed to cover most of the time that Rachel had been together with Leah. How many months was it? Anna tried to harness her drifting thoughts. Three or four perhaps, and in that time Anna had met the young woman only once at a café, and after what seemed like ten minutes Leah had made a lame excuse and run off, leaving Rachel to interpret what had happened.
‘She finds you intimidating, Mum.’
‘I can see that. I just don’t get it.’
‘You’re scary, that’s why.’
‘Oh, come on.’
‘She’s seen you on telly tearing shreds off people. Imagine holding a contrary opinion. Even I used to find you intimidating.’
‘Well, you got over it.’
‘Really,’ Rachel had said, raising her eyebrows. ‘You think so?’
•
The squid and the blue swimmers were packed in ice, which Anna tipped into the sink. She cleaned the crabs first, flipping them onto their backs and, finding with her fingernail the triangular key to unlock the carapace, she prised them apart to peel off the grey lungs and wash out the mustard. Then with each squid she forced her fingers in behind the head, with its cloudy, dead eyes, easing out the gut, the ink sac and then the quill, setting aside her disgust at the partly digested fish in some of them and the white viscous substance that always gave her the unpleasant sensation of rinsing out used condoms.
Anna’s fingers were deep in squid entrails when the landline phone rang.
‘Oh fuck,’ she cried and dropped the slimy dead thing into the sink. She thrust her hands up like a surgeon waiting to have her brow mopped and the call diverted to the answering machine.
This is Anna Rosen. I’m not here, please leave a message …
Anna rinsed and dried her hands as a voice boomed through the machine’s small speaker:
‘Anna, it’s Leon. Are you screening? Pick up! I need an answer on Aceh. Don’t fucking screen me, Anna! I’ve got a queue of writers begging me to put them on that plane …’
The voice was still squawking when she grabbed the receiver. ‘Leon?’
‘Ha,’ he said. ‘I knew you were there.’
‘Uri Geller now, are you?’
‘I wish. You got to love a magical Jew.’
‘It’s not magic.’
‘Don’t tell me what’s magic. You ever tried bending a spoon? What are you up to?’
‘Rinsing out condoms.’
‘What?’
‘Cleaning squid and trying not to puke … A birthday dinner for Rachel. Give me some time, will you? I’m still trying to decide if I want to go back to Aceh.’
‘Who else should I send?’ Leon responded peevishly. ‘You were there.’
Anna’s brow creased and she rubbed her eyes with her free hand. ‘That fucking place is full of bad memories,’ she said. ‘And, anyway, I hate anniversaries.’
‘Don’t tell Rachel that when she’s blowing out the candles.’
‘I still have tsunami nightmares, you know. Thing is, I’m not going to give you an answer now. I’m nervous as a cat about tonight. Rachel’s bringing her new girlfriend. I’ve only met her once and we didn’t exactly hit it off.’
‘Such a lovely girl, Rachel. I was sure she’d grow out of this thing for women.’
‘Leon!’
‘It happens you know …’
‘That’s wrong on so many levels. I’m hanging up now.
‘Call me tomorrow!’
•
Anna cursed herself for answering the call.
Aceh.
She was still high and this hydro weed could take you down as quickly as up. Unwanted images played in her head—black water, bodies large and tiny, countless; bodies, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of bodies entombed in mud, and she smelled again the stench of their dissolution and heard again the wailing grief of the living.
Just under a year ago, on Boxing Day, she had rushed to Aceh when news of the tsunami broke. Her piece for the magazine had ended with the mothers who crowded the bridge every night where they heard their lost children crying out to them from the river. It wasn’t only mothers. Husbands heard the cries of their wives, wives heard their husbands, children their parents. Now Leon was pushing her to go back, and though she had agreed she dreaded it.
When she went back to the dead animals in the sink she remembered helping a man pull the bodies of his wife and daughter from a mud-filled house and hot tears gathered in her eyes. She grabbed up a paper towel and blotted them away.
‘Bloody hell,’ she muttered, throwing the damp thing aside.
•
By late afternoon her preparations were done. Anna made herself a gin and tonic and surveyed her work. A curry base awaited the crabs. The squid had been stuffed with their own chopped tentacles and a mixture of pork and spices, and then sewn up with thread, ready for the wok. There was a large bowl of nuoc cham with sliced chillies floating lethally on the surface, and bowls of rice noodles, lettuce leaves, mint and basil, with bok choi and gai lan waiting in steamers. The cake she had bought from her favourite bakery on Macleay Street was safely on a shelf.
Her own mother would have been bemused by the exotic choices, but Eva had always gone to great trouble for special meals, and Anna knew how much she would have loved to have been there tonight with her daughter and grand-daughter.
She glanced automatically at the photo of Eva and herself on the wall. It had been taken two decades ago when they visited what was left of Ravensbrück concentration camp. Eva was in a wheelchair. She had less than six months to live when she finally decided to go back and confront the past, and only then was she able to tell her daughter what had happened to her in the camp. Anna turned away from the picture and the train of thought that had taken her in swift steps from the Holocaust, back to Aceh and to the fallacy of a merciful God.
Anna was heading for the shower when the Blackberry chirped. She had to change that irritating fucking tone. She considered just ignoring it, but then thought that it might be a text from Rachel, caught up at work or something worse. She was relieved but surprised to see the sender: Pierre / The Hague.
Pierre Villiers, that was. A year ago, her old friend had got himself a job at the War Crimes Tribunal. She had heard from him only once since then and that had been early on as he was settling in to his new life, so she was surprised at the abrupt tone of his text.
I’ve emailed you some pics. Have a look as soon as you can and call me.
Anna had never figured out how to open attachments on the Blackberry so she went to the study, woke up the computer and activated the modem. The familiar beeping dial-up tones gave way to the eerie electronic whale song, and it squealed away before transitioning into an orgasm of white noise as the connection was made. She had resisted the advice of tech-savvy friends to upgrade to ADS-something or other which, they assured her, could achieve download speeds of five hundred and twelve kilobits per second. Anna didn’t know or care what a kilobit was. She reasoned she could get whatever she needed from the internet with her old dial-up modem but, she had to admit, it was a real bugger opening attachments.
She found Pierre’s email at the top of her inbox with a second intriguing message:
Have a look the attached photos. Do you recognise this man? Call me!
Anna found four files at the bottom of the email and opened them all, leaving them to download while she went to the bathroom. She washed her hair and languished under the shower, letting it stream at high pressure over her shoulders and down her back. The tail of the marijuana high added a sensuous note that made her reluctant to leave the warm water.
Anna was in a bathrobe, drying her hair, when the doorbell rang. She ran to peer through the spyhole. It was Rachel, alone. She unlatched the door and pulled it open.
‘Hi, Mum,’ said Rachel, in a small, embarrassed voice.
‘Hello, darling.’
Anna threw her arms around her, dampening her daughter’s pale silk blouse.
‘Oops, I’m still wet. I wasn’t expecting you so soon.’
‘Sorry, I thought I should come early.’
‘Don’t be silly. I’m just happy to see you. It’s been too long.’ Anna stroked her daughter’s cheek and pushed strands of wayward hair back behind Rachel’s ears. ‘You look tired.’
‘I am. It’s not easy taking care of other people’s money.’
Anna hesitated, then caught her tongue. ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Come in.’
She drew Rachel inside, an arm around her waist. Halfway down the hallway, her daughter stiffened and stopped.
‘Mum! Have you been smoking dope?’
‘What?’
Rachel pulled herself free and stared into Anna’s eyes. ‘You’re stoned.’
‘Well, mildly buzzed.’
‘What are you, sixteen? Buzzed?’
‘It was hours ago.’
Anna watched with alarm as her daughter raced about the living room, hauling up the tall windows. Once all of them had been thrown open, Rachel turned to her mother and Anna was taken aback by her apparent distress.
‘Christ, Anna, what were you thinking?’
‘Come on, darling. It’s not like you to be such a puritan. It’s mostly tarragon you can smell, anyway.’
‘It stinks like a hippy campervan. Leah would have a fit.’
‘This is my apartment Rachel, I’m not sixteen and the world’s not going to end because I smoked a joint.’
Rachel nodded and took a breath, deliberately composing herself. ‘I’m sorry, Mum. It’s my fault. I should have told you before now.’
‘About what?’
‘It’s Leah. She’s … Orthodox.’
‘Are you serious?’
Rachel gave her mother a pleading look. ‘Please understand, Mum. It’s bad enough what we’re going through with Leah’s family. I didn’t want you on my back, too. On top of everything I’ve been working around the clock. That’s why I came early. Let me make us a drink.’
‘You mean Orthodox, Orthodox?’
‘Yeah, well, Modern Orthodox.’
‘What does her family think of you?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘I’ll bet it is,’ said Anna, constructing in her mind the whole world that Rachel had kept from her and feeling ashamed that her daughter had been too wary to share any of this with her.
‘You want to sit down?’ asked Rachel.
‘Oh fuck,’ cried Anna, slapping her head theatrically. ‘I’ve just made the most non-Kosher meal imaginable: crabs and squid—no fins, no scales—and the squid’s stuffed with pork. It’s like I set out to offend her.’
Anna laughed with a slightly hysterical edge, but then Rachel joined in and it ended in a tight hug.
‘It’s my fault, Mum,’ said Rachel. ‘I’m sorry, I really am. Look, I bought fish on the way. Can we start again?’
Anna saw that Rachel’s eyes were brimming with tears and imagined the fraught nature of the love she had given herself over to.
‘We can do that,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t worry. It’ll all be fine.’
‘I wonder sometimes if it ever will be.’
‘Look,’ said Anna. ‘I’ll go put some clothes on. You cut up the fish and we’ll make a kosher curry.’
•
The two women spent an hour or more, their good humour largely restored, working together in the kitchen to transform Anna’s menu—as she put it—from the profane to the sacred. Only when it was done did she remember Pierre’s email. She left Rachel setting the table and went into the study to wake up her computer again.
The photos Pierre had sent her had downloaded, but they had opened sideways. Anna twisted her head to look at the first image. It was the figure of a hooded man wearing a set of orange overalls. He was handcuffed and shackled at his ankles. Two men in military uniforms were on either side of him, grasping his arms as they led him down the stairs of a Jetstream aircraft parked on a darkened tarmac. Her immediate thought was Guantanamo Bay, but, looking closer, she saw, distorted by the angle, what appeared to be UN markings on the side of the plane.
She scrolled down to the next picture, a wider version of the first one. The hooded man and his guards were heading for a black-windowed van parked on the tarmac near the jet, and she saw part of a sign that indicated this was Schiphol, the main airport of Amsterdam. Pierre had offered no explanation, but Anna deduced that this was an accused man on his way to the war crimes prison in The Hague.
The next photo seemed to confirm that assumption. It was a typical police mugshot. The man in the orange jumpsuit was unhooded now and his face showed the obvious signs of a severe beating. He was middle-aged and powerfully built. His nose and both his eyes were badly swollen and discoloured by bruising, as were his cheekbones; there were bloody butterfly bandages holding together cuts that seemed to require stitching. Below the image was a name:
MARIC, Tomislav
D.O.B. 13.11.51
Rijeka, Croatia
Anna stared hard at the photo. Pierre had asked her if she recognised this man and all her nerve endings now seemed to be tingling. Was there something there? She scrolled down to the final image, hoping for clarity. It showed a man from the waist up wearing a hospital gown. It was the kind of photo taken by medical staff for their records and she imagined doctors and nurses appalled by the damage done to this patient, whatever he might be guilty of. The man’s face was still discoloured by the bruising, but the swelling around the eyes had subsided. Anna drew a sharp breath. There was a tremor in her hand as she used the mouse to enlarge the image, focusing on the man’s eyes.
They were a distinctive green. She sat up, blinking with shock. What she was seeing was simply not possible. Her heart was pounding so hard she reached for her chest as if to hold it in. He could not be alive. She did the mental calculations—Bosnia, June 1992, more than thirteen years ago—that’s when she had seen, with her own eyes, his car shot so full of holes it was like a giant colander. Black flies swarmed over seats pitted and perforated and sweetened with gouts of congealed blood. She remembered how the flies had risen from the gore, dotting the air around the car, and how she had swatted them away from her face in disgust.
And what of the mourning men? Their grief could not have been feigned. No, he had died in that car. No one could have survived such an ambush. In her imagination, he had died like Sonny Corleone, shot to pieces by machine guns as he tried to tear himself from behind the wheel of his Cadillac. Yet she could not ignore the evidence on the screen in front of her. She was absolutely sure that these were the eyes of Marin Katich. There could be no doubt. They were the same green eyes possessed by their daughter.
At that moment the doorbell rang, and she heard Rachel rush past her, down the corridor to welcome Leah.