THE GEAR SHE HAD was strong and they were thoroughly stoned when Anna challenged Marin to a game of table tennis. They played eleven hypnotic games back to back, a fierce competition that she won six to five. When Marin threw himself into a tattered armchair, Anna was still standing at the table, precision bouncing the ball on her bat and flipping her wrist as she did it.
‘Where’d you learn the play like that?’ he asked.
‘I used to go to youth camps when I was a kid. I was the age champion.’
‘Youth camps?’
‘The Junior Eureka League. It’s for young communists. They train us up in ping-pong, then infiltrate us back into society to wreak havoc on political opponents. Break their spirit.’
‘Funny. I already know who your dad is—it’s not exactly a state secret.’
‘It was very nearly a secret from the state, but anyway we won that referendum. Listen, are you hungry? I’ve got a bad case of the munchies.’
Marin suggested a place he knew in the little enclave of Middle Eastern restaurants in Surry Hills. ‘If you like Lebanese, it’s not too far.’
He convinced Anna to ride there on the back of his motorbike. He kicked the black monster into life and they roared off helmet-less down City Road and up Cleveland Street. Anna clung onto him, despite her misgivings. His body was hard under the T-shirt and moved with supple ease as he slipped at speed through miraculously appearing holes in the traffic. She was exhilarated but disturbed at the same time by her sudden dependency on the man and the machine. She would have to learn to drive one of these things herself.
At Au Za’atar, Marin greeted the owner like an old friend, calling ‘G’day Mo’ to a thickset man who responded with a bear hug.
‘This is Anna,’ said Marin when Mo released him.
‘Nice ta meet youse,’ said Mo, looking her up and down with his heavily bagged eyes. ‘Hungry?’
‘Starving.’
‘Is Fatima cooking?’ asked Marin.
‘Yeah, man.’
‘How about the mezze, then?’ said Marin. ‘And if you’ve got any of your wine out back, that’d be great.’
Mo clapped a hairy arm around Marin’s shoulder and winked at him. ‘I’ll do my best, man, since you bring your girl here. Sit down. Sit.’
Mo returned, bearing a jug of wine and a comically suggestive smirk, and plonked the jug and two glasses on the table.
‘Wine for your “girl”, eh?’ said Anna as Marin poured.
‘The food makes up for it. Trust me.’
‘I’m imagining poor Fatima locked in the kitchen. Does he keep her in purdah?’
‘Fatima’s his mum. He’s still eligible, so watch yourself. I saw the way he was measuring you up there. He’s wondering how you’d look with a bit of meat on your bones.’
‘Remind me not to have any of those sweet pastries.’
‘Fatima makes the best baklava in Sydney—let’s see if you want to stick to that.’
They gorged themselves on plates of vine leaves, spinach pies and kebabs with hummus, baba ghanoush and tabouli on flatbread. Mo came back from time to time like a dutiful suitor to light Anna’s cigarette, to refill the wine jug whenever it got low and later to pour them muddy Lebanese coffee.
‘What’s Au Za’atar mean?’ Anna asked him.
‘It means “at the beginning”, said Mo, with a huge grin. ‘Like the beginning for you two, yes?’
Anna avoided the question and instead ordered baklava with their coffee. They were still talking avidly when Mo quietly started turning out lights and putting chairs on the tables. Disturbed by the activity, Anna checked the time.
‘Christ,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to get to the printers in Glebe. The paper’ll be coming off the presses soon.’
‘That’s no problem. I can take you.’
‘You don’t need to. I’ll catch a cab.’
‘No, I’d like to see that.’
She looked at him warily before agreeing. Marin thanked Mo and paid him before she had a chance to object. It was only when Anna stood up that she realised how much the wine had affected her. She asked Marin to wait while she slipped into the bathroom.
Anna had a pee, then pulled the little vial from her pocket and tapped out two lines onto the ceramic cistern. She took a banknote from her pocket, rolled it up and snorted one of the white crystal mounds, wincing briefly. Her head cleared and the sense of inebriation was gone. In the mirror, she saw an intense young woman, not uninteresting. Perhaps they could be friends.
Anna laughed out loud. Yes, definitely still stoned. Don’t be fooled. She bent and turned on the tap, scooped up a mouthful of cold water and splashed her face before coming back out.
‘I left a line of speed for you in there,’ she whispered, handing Marin the rolled banknote. ‘Better go in quickly before Mo finds it.’
Marin gave her a disbelieving look.
‘You’re mad,’ he said. But he took the note and disappeared into the bathroom. Moments later he was back, still sniffing.
‘That’s some after-burn,’ he said, handing the note back. ‘Here.’
‘Keep it. That’s my share for the dinner. I don’t like blokes paying for me.’
‘Have it your own way,’ said Marin, pocketing the note. ‘Shall we go?’
•
The ride to Glebe was faster than she could have imagined, and impressionistic. Leaning into corners, whipping past cars and trucks—vap, vap—lit and unlit shopfronts, dark shapes of late-night people—vap—neon and street lights and traffic lights, accelerating through orange. Then, in no time at all, they had arrived.
She took him into Quality Press through the near-empty compositors’ room. Most of the workers had clocked off. The presses were running and their noise filled the space. Two compositors were still there in a back room, drinking beer from longneck bottles.
‘G’day Anna,’ one of them called out over the racket. ‘Want a beer?’
‘No thanks, Pete. How’d it go?’
‘Yeah, no dramas, love. What about your mate?’ Pete held up a bottle.
‘No thanks.’ Marin waved it away. ‘Already had a few.’
‘Knows when to stop? Lucky man. Could be a keeper, Anna.’
She made a face at him. ‘Where’s Pierre?’
‘Out the back. Watching the run.’
‘Okay. See you, Pete.’
•
They found Pierre bent over, thumbing through a warm copy of The Tribe fresh off the presses, his face almost hidden by strands of long hair. The noise was deafening this close to the machinery and he didn’t notice them until Anna tapped his shoulder. Pierre looked up from the paper and smiled when he saw her, pushing the hair away from his glasses. Then, without warning, his expression changed. He had realised she was not alone.
‘This is Marin!’ she said loudly. ‘MAR-IN!’
‘Okay!’ Pierre yelled back. He quickly scrutinised Marin, sizing him up in a primal way, and didn’t offer a handshake. Instead he turned back to Anna.
‘It all looks good,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
Anna was puzzled. As Marin wandered off and picked up another copy of The Tribe from a wooden table nearby, she cupped her hand and spoke directly into Pierre’s ear.
‘Don’t you want to go for a drink?’ she asked him. It had become a tradition to sit together in the late opener the Fairfax subs frequented and go through the paper with a fine-tooth comb over a beer and a few frames of pool.
Pierre glanced back over at her companion. ‘With him, you mean?’
Anna looked over at Marin and saw him at that moment through Pierre’s eyes. ‘Yes, with him,’ she said, though she hadn’t thought about it until that minute.
‘No, thanks,’ Pierre said abruptly. He grabbed his satchel, shoved the paper into it, threw it over his shoulder and stalked off without another word.
Anna watched him go, annoyed by the show of petulance. She looked across at Marin, who smiled and shrugged, and then went over and spoke to the men supervising the loading of the bundled papers into the waiting distribution trucks. After a while she came back.
‘It’s all under control here,’ she said to Marin. ‘I’m heading to the pub to go through the paper. Want to come for a drink?’
‘Sure. Looks like your boyfriend’s taken off, anyway.’
‘He’s not my boyfriend!’ she shouted over the presses.
‘You might want to tell him that.’
At the Australian Hotel, they ordered beers while Anna went through the paper. Then they played a few games of pool, which Marin won. When it became very late and she was thinking about calling it a night, he asked, ‘Do you want to have an adventure?’
She gave it a moment’s thought before responding.
‘Sure, why not.’
•
The stars seemed just out of reach as they stood there, still a long way from the summit of the bridge. Anna identified the Southern Cross and felt she had never been so close to it. Ahead of them, the arch flowed up towards the centre of the bridge, its highest point. The curvature was so pronounced that it had its own horizon; she couldn’t see the summit, but the route was clear—a stepped path up the spine of the arch, steep and narrow with low railings on either side.
Marin beckoned, striding ahead. ‘Come on, then.’
Anna felt momentary resistance to traipsing after him, but soon began climbing again. She moved cautiously because the smooth surface on either side of the path created the illusion she might slide backwards, like a child trying to climb a slippery-dip. After a while, the horizon changed shape. Anna thought they had reached the top, but then she saw that some great thing spanned the whole width of the arch and was blocking their path. In silhouette, it was a horned beast crouching in front of them.
‘What is that?’ she demanded when Marin stopped.
‘Our last obstacle,’ he said. ‘It’s one of the cranes. There are four of them. See the two over there on the other side?’
‘God, they’re huge.’
‘They’re basically giant cable cars with massive electric motors to haul them up and down the arch.’
He showed her the tracks on either side of their path housing steel cables glistening with oil. As they got closer, Anna saw that the horns were fixed cranes extending from the machine’s roof on either side. Attached to the cranes were floating cradles, which swayed above the harbour in the breeze and tapped the monster’s steel flanks.
‘You okay?’ Marin asked her.
‘How are we supposed to get around that thing?’
‘Simple enough. We climb down into the cradle, go past the machine and back up the other side.’
‘Hang on—they look really wobbly.’
‘It’s safe as houses. The riggers do it every day. These things have been here since the bridge was built.’
With that he stepped over the handrail and moved slowly along the back of the machine to the outer edge of the arch.
‘We do have to be careful, though,’ he said as he reached the edge. ‘It’s two hundred feet down to the roadway and another two hundred to the water.’
Anna felt her legs go weak.
‘I don’t think I can do this.’ Her voice sounded small in the vastness.
Marin walked to the edge, took hold of a rope and swung himself down into the cradle. He disappeared for a moment, then his head and shoulders reappeared and he called to her.
‘Anna, look—we’re nearly there. Come over here. No more surprises. I promise.’
He helped her down into the painters’ cradle, which was still swaying a little from his jump.
‘This time, really don’t look down,’ he advised.
She did. The vertiginous drop to the water was so terrifying that she froze, fiercely gripping his arm.
‘Okay, well, you’ve seen it. Now slowly turn your back.’
He faced her towards the steel wall of the machine and enveloped her with his body, slowly edging them past the stalled beast. He then helped her clamber back up onto the arch and to the safety of the central pathway.
Still breathing hard, Anna saw that this time they really were near the top. Marin climbed up beside her and sat down.
‘Not so hard?’
‘Bloody terrifying.’
‘I’ll tell you now what once happened to my old man.’
‘In that thing?’
‘Yeah, years ago. There were four of them going down in the cradle and the gears started freewheeling. Suddenly they just dropped out of the sky. The ropes were smoking. All of them screaming blue murder. They fell eighty feet before the crane driver realised the winch had popped its brake. When he yanked it back on, the cradle tipped over and they were all hanging on for dear life. A miracle no one was killed. When they pulled them back up, Dad climbed out, went straight down on his knees and said a prayer. No one raised an eyebrow. Just patted him on the back.’
Anna sat staring at him before she spoke.
‘You know what?’
‘What?’
‘I’m glad you didn’t tell me that before.’
•
The summit was a wide, flat place with high flagpoles set in the middle and a metal railing to keep summiteers well back from the edge. They were now on equal footing with the city’s tallest buildings, whose signs glowed like a line from an incomprehensible poem: Occidental, Plessy, Clyde, AMP.
The harbour below was a relief map laid out at Anna’s feet. The white curves of the Opera House sails rose from the construction site on Bennelong Point. She still marvelled that the parochial morons in the state government could have commissioned such a thing. Utzon’s dream was so clearly at odds with their crippled souls. Like the products of evolution, it was a brilliant accident.
Beyond the Opera House were islands, coves and inlets. Bays and beaches marked out by phosphorescence on the tips of small waves. At the furthest reach, she saw The Heads, the north and south cliff faces at the harbour’s entrance. And, beyond them, nothing but the dark ocean.
Anna felt the stiffening breeze on her face, the first signs of the promised southerly buster. She tasted the sea on it and thrust her arms up high as the cool air rippled around her. The halyards on the flagpoles began to whip around noisily and she heard the distant bells of harbour buoys rocked by the swell.
Elated, she turned to Marin and moved into his arms.
‘Thank you,’ she said simply. ‘I do get it.’
‘My pleasure.’
‘Do you bring all your women up here?’
‘You’re the only one. The only one who’d come, that is.’
He laughed and she thumped him on the chest.
‘Tell me more about your father,’ she said.
Marin stared out over the harbour.
‘This was the first thing he saw when his ship came in. The bloody great “Coat Hanger”. Ivo was an engineer, so he understood he was looking at something special. But you know how it goes—he soon found out that his qualifications didn’t count for anything here. They weren’t going to let him build any bridges. Working on this one must have seemed like the next best thing.’
‘What year did he get here?’
‘1948. He was trying to get as far away from the communists as he could.’
Anna laughed at the irony. ‘Now you’re fraternising with the enemy on his beloved bridge.’
Marin’s expression clouded. ‘This is none of his business.’
Anna scrutinised his closed face again, looking for clues. ‘You mean you wouldn’t dare tell him about me.’
‘I mean it’s none of his business.’
‘But I’m one of those nasty subversives.’
Marin’s face opened again. ‘That must be part of the attraction.’
She put her arms around him and looked into his eyes. ‘That’s a big transgression. They’re right about us Rosens, you know. We’re a dangerous mob.’
He smiled at that. ‘Bomb throwers, eh? They say the same thing about my people.’
‘Something in common, then?’
‘As long as you don’t blow up the bridge,’ he said.
‘No, I’ve always liked the old thing.’
‘Besides …’
‘Besides what?’ she demanded.
‘It’s not as if I’m actually sleeping with the enemy.’
Anna studied his face again. The enigmatic Marin Katich. She made up her mind at that moment and reached up to kiss him.
After a while he dropped his hands to her waist and she felt their warmth in the gap between her singlet and jeans. He kissed her neck below her ear. When he pulled at the bottom of her singlet it seemed natural to raise her arms so he could slip it over her head. He pulled off his own T-shirt and she held him flesh to flesh. Passion took them slowly to the floor, their limbs folding as they crumpled down. She unbuttoned her jeans and he pulled them off, peeling them from her ankles like a shedding skin. She felt the steel deck, cold beneath her. Kneeling silently before her, he stripped off his remaining clothes. The chemicals in her bloodstream made everything raw. Round steel rivets pressed into her back and she arched up. Still he was silent as he moved over her. She pushed back, taking the weight of him on her hips.
His eyes glistened with the lights of the city. She saw beyond the surface reflections and found him at last, crying out from the bottom of her throat as the southerly screamed across the harbour and over their bodies.