ONCE MAX HAD REASSURED JAMES AND ME AGAIN THAT THERE was nothing wrong with Sally, we staggered downstairs to find the Mercedes and set off. The fact that I was, by this time, quite drunk was not considered an impediment to driving. Max and James were so awe-struck by my ability to manage a car that, after a few whispered concerns (‘What on earth is he doing now?’), each of them sat as riveted as they might have done upon witnessing the voodoo rituals of Caribbean savages.
As it turned out, the cafe in question was only a few blocks away, and it would have taken us less than ten minutes to walk there. El Nidos was a Spanish cafe on Johnston Street with plastic tables and lugubrious, unshaven bar staff who looked as though they had been on duty for some months without a break. Although it was late on a Sunday night, the place was buzzing with couples both young and old — Spaniards from the local nightclub as well as students eager to keep carousing after the pubs closed. At the front was a bar that served coffee and pastries, while the rear section was reserved for half-a-dozen pool tables of varying quality and size.
Mournful Spanish guitar music played in the background. James joined a table of older men playing a card game that involved much gesticulating and slapping down of cards. Max bought me a specialty of the house — a Sol y Sombra, brandy and anise — which was mixed below the counter and served in short coffee tumblers.
Max and I played pool, forming a rather formidable duo that beat all comers. One of the benefits of growing up in a country town was the access it had afforded me to hotel bars equipped with pool tables. I was an accomplished player. Max flirted with a ridiculously gorgeous, black-eyed Spanish girl at a neighbouring table until her brother or boyfriend threatened him, a rebuff that Max accepted with good humour. We played pool for money and won twenty-five dollars, more than enough to cover our expenses for the night. It must have been two a.m. by the time we had seen off all competitors and sat down to divide the spoils. My lips were numb from the liquor, and I kneaded them with my fingers to coax some feeling back into them.
Max motioned for me to come closer. ‘You know that night?’
‘What night?’
‘Last week. When you overheard Edward and me talking outside your apartment.’
‘Oh. Yes.’
‘What else did we talk about aside from that painting? What did you hear?’
The swerve in conversation took me by surprise. Our table was littered with dirty glasses and cigarette ash. The only people left in El Nidos were a group of long-haired drinkers on the far side who, at that moment, burst into uproarious laughter. A pinball machine in the corner bleeped. With effort, I thought back to their conversation of the week before, of what Edward had said. This isn’t just some old Norman Lindsay painting of ladies with big tits sitting in a river. This is the towering genius of the century.
It was late and I was drunk, but I was conscious of what to reveal and what to keep hidden; secrets had value and it was wise not to spend them unnecessarily.
‘That’s all you talked about, as far as I heard.’
‘You’re a discreet chap?’
I shrugged. ‘I think so.’
‘I see.’ Max slung back the last of his drink and crossed and re-crossed his legs. He patted his shirt pocket for cigarettes, extracted one with his teeth and shook out another for me.
When we had lit up, he beckoned me closer. ‘You’re a good guy, Tom Button. Wise, et cetera. I knew as soon as I saw you that first time. In fact, I remember saying as much to Edward.’ He sat back and drew on his cigarette, keeping his eyes sidelong on me, as if weighing up a serious matter.
Finally, he checked to see no one was in earshot and leaned across to me once more. ‘Tom.’
‘Yes.’
‘How would you like to make some money?’ He brandished the twenty-five dollars we had won at pool. ‘Real money. Not like this.’
I nodded. Who wouldn’t want to make some money? I had passed my probationary shift and had started working part-time at Restaurant Monet, but the job only paid eight dollars per hour — enough to support me, but not much else. If it weren’t for the fact I was living rent-free, it was doubtful I could afford to live in the city at all.
‘Afterwards we’re going to Paris. All of us. We’ve been planning it for ages. There’s a place in the south of France called Saint something or other — mind you, they’re all called Saint something or other. A house big enough for everyone. Sally and I. We’ll take James, even though he’s being difficult about the whole thing. You could come with us, write your great novel. There are markets and castles, fields of lavender. All those French milkmaids. We’re getting off this island. You can’t make anything great in this country. Imagine it. Koo Wee Rup Revisited, Breakfast at Dimmeys, The Wagga Symphony? No one allows melancholy to take root here, and you cannot make great art without melancholy. It’s as simple as that.
‘You know, in 1942 Shostakovich composed his seventh symphony; the Leningrad, as it’s now known. This was during the war and three members of the orchestra who were meant to play died of starvation before the premiere.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘All the good people leave. This country is large and spectacular, but it’s completely and utterly dumb. Beaches and bimbos. Here they worship cricket players and jockeys. And criminals. Which is often the same thing.’
Although I had no idea what he was talking about, it sounded glorious. I thought of David Blake back in Dunley and felt victorious, the sweetness only dampened by the fact that he was unaware of what I was doing. If only he could see me now.
Just then, James leaned across the table between Max and me. ‘I think that’s enough,’ he said.
To whom James had addressed this warning (for it did sound like a warning) was unclear, but Max sat back and scowled up at him. His eyes contracted into surly slits. ‘Que?’
‘I think we should leave now,’ James said.
‘Been propositioning the wrong man out the back again, James? These Spaniards, you know …’
James flinched before composing himself. He played with the sleeves of his black velvet jacket, tugging them over his wrists in a manner I soon learned was habitual.
‘Come now, James. I’ve been telling Tom here about the delights of Paris.’
James opened his mouth to speak, before glancing at me and reconsidering. ‘It’s late, Max.’
Again James paused, evidently reluctant to leave us alone, before addressing me. ‘Bye, Tom. It was nice to meet you.’ And then, to Max: ‘Be sensible, won’t you? No need to involve young Tom here in all of your mad schemes.’
We watched him leave. A waiter drifted past us like a sad-mouthed groper, stopping long enough to clear our table. We lapsed into scrutiny of the last of the pool players.
Max stood and brushed crumbs from his trousers. ‘OK. Let’s press on. I think breakfast will soon be in order, eh?’
Following Max’s instructions, I drove back along Smith Street, several blocks away. He gripped my arm. ‘Slowly, slowly. You’re a very good driver, yes. Really very good. Here. Stop! OK. Keep the car idling. You can be my getaway driver.’
Max leaped from the car and riffled among delivery boxes in the doorway of a health-food store. He returned a minute later with a cardboard box of fruit. I checked the rear-view mirror as we pulled out again, half expecting to see some irate store owner pursuing us, but there was no one else about at that time of the morning.
This process was repeated two more times in the neighbourhood — we stopped outside a milk bar for some newspapers, and next I waited in the car while Max dashed into Chalky’s, the all-night liquor store on Lygon Street, and re-emerged with a bottle of vodka and three packets of salt and vinegar chips under his coat. It made me uneasy. Like any bored small-town boy, I had indulged in a spot of petty crime — letting down car tyres, carving my name into the back of bus seats, swiping Choo Choo Bars from the local shop — but I was basically very law-abiding.
‘It’s terribly bad form to show up at someone’s place empty-handed,’ Max said, as if attempting to appease my unspoken misgivings. ‘Hence the little … heists. Keep going this way. Turn right here, please.’
He declined to reveal where we were going but directed me to the adjacent suburb of Carlton. We cruised along ever narrower, ever darker streets and alleyways until we pulled up in an empty lot hemmed in by abandoned warehouses. Weeds sprouted through fissures in the concrete. The ground sparkled with broken glass. I cut the engine.
‘Here we are. There’s some people I want you to meet,’ Max said. ‘Edward Degraves is a well-known painter around town. His work sells, whenever he can get organised to have a show.’
Still pondering the thefts, I didn’t bother to mention that I had already met Edward.
‘Did you steal all that stuff?’ I asked. My question sounded more prim than I had intended.
He punched the car lighter. ‘Well, yes, technically, I suppose I did steal this stuff. But try to think of it more like the redistribution of goods. How else are we to have breakfast? You know, I’ve been learning French lately. They have a word, magouiller. It means circumventing the law but not breaking it. Smart people, you know.’
The lighter popped out, and Max touched it to the end of his cigarette. His profile flared orange and he was wreathed in smoke, which he waved away from his face. ‘Their laws don’t apply to us.’ He stepped from the car and gathered up his booty. ‘Allons, mon ami. Don’t fade out on me now.’
And, arms laden with pilfered goods, Max strode across the busted concrete and approached a large steel door set into one of the corrugated-iron fences.
After a few seconds I followed him, almost tripping over an old bike in the darkness.
‘Pull that cord, will you,’ he instructed when I joined him.
There came a distant tinkling of a bell from somewhere inside and, presently, the door opened a crack. A beaky nose, sallow cheeks, then those unmistakable blue eyes. Edward Degraves lurched through the door in pursuit of a snuffling black pug that had tried to dart past us.
‘Damn dog is always trying to escape,’ he said when he had gathered it up and tossed it inside. ‘Gertrude would kill me if he got out. Kill you, I should say,’ he told Max.
Although he betrayed no surprise at finding Max ringing his bell at three a.m. — indeed, he was fully dressed in a white shirt and black trousers — I detected Edward was displeased by my presence.
Perhaps picking up on this, Max was effusive on the fundamental excellence of my character and, as we climbed the rickety wooden stairs, he kept repeating what a wonderful person I was. ‘He’s a great driver, Edward. Really very good. He even has his own car. We stopped and picked up a few things for breakfast. There’s some chips, fresh apples from the health-food Nazis …’
The only sources of light upstairs were a tall, stooping lamp and a flickering television. Although the corners and walls of the warehouse space were almost invisible, I intuited the space was vast, as one might be aware, when camping, of an unruly wilderness stretching out beyond the glow of a camp-fire’s light.
Edward clattered about making tea and coffee like a marionette butler, his movements slow but precise. He looked even more extraordinary than the recent morning (was it only yesterday?) when we’d met on the rooftop.
Max introduced me to Edward’s wife, Gertrude. She was a tiny creature, with a nest of toffee-coloured hair drizzled about her head. The light from the television played across her pale face.
Gertrude smiled and shook my hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Tom. Why don’t you come and sit on the sofa here. We’re waiting for the space shuttle to lift off. Shouldn’t be long now.’ Although she spoke with rounded vowels that betrayed schooling of some quality, each sentence devolved into a nervous, high-pitched cackle that lent her the air of a rather demented aunt. ‘We can watch it live on television without leaving the couch. Isn’t that marvellous? Heh heh.’
Edward stalked over to us with trays of food and coffee. The tips of most of his fingers were discoloured with what I assumed was paint. He and Gertrude bickered over his selection of tea set; he hadn’t put out the correct cups, according to Gertrude. Together, they were like the exiled monarchs of a kingdom imagined by Lewis Carroll.
We ate chips and watched the NBC Today Show broadcast from New York. The jolly weather guy was in a snow-blasted street somewhere in middle America, wearing ridiculous earmuffs that made him look like an oversized koala bear. Every ten minutes or so the friendly but deeply concerned anchors, Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley, crossed to Cape Canaveral to check on the preparations for the Space Shuttle Challenger’s lift-off. Much was made of the fact that this time there was a female schoolteacher on board, in addition to the six professional astronauts.
The cameras panned to the crowd gathered to see the takeoff first-hand. A squinting man in a chequered jacket, picnicking families, kids smiling and waving tiny American flags. And the weather looks terrific there and we should be set for a successful lift-off today. Of course it hasn’t been all smooth sailing so far. There have been some problems …
‘Damn lift-off keeps getting delayed,’ Edward said to no one in particular. ‘It was meant to take off last week but there was a problem with the ship.’
‘The whole thing is a scam,’ said Max. ‘Even that moon landing was faked, you know. Filmed in some studio somewhere. I read an article about it years ago that said Stanley Kubrick directed the whole thing. No one went to the moon. Why on earth would you? It’s only a pile of dust.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Edward. ‘Why would they do that?’
Max rolled his eyes. ‘For the money, the prestige, the knowledge that it could be done — the same reasons you fake anything. They won the space race, didn’t they? Showed those blasted Russians a thing or two. This whole lift-off is probably faked.’
Gertrude indicated the TV, which was showing footage of a previous shuttle orbiting the Earth. ‘Oh, Max. Don’t be daft. How could you fake that?’
‘Did you not see Star Wars? It’s called special effects. Besides, it’s all in the preconditions. Visions of Christ only materialise to those who already believe in that stuff. If people are desperate to believe in something, then they will. You of all people should know that, my dear.’
Gertrude shot Max a sharp glance, and there followed a strained silence. I enquired about the bathroom, and Edward waved a hand towards the dim recesses of the warehouse.
‘There’s a cadmium painting there of an angular jester.’
I could hardly make out a thing in the meagre light, only shapes and shadows.
He sighed at my obvious incomprehension. ‘It’s red. A red painting. The bathroom is to the left of that. Along that hall.’
I felt my way through the cavernous space, my vision adjusting as I went. The sound of the TV fell away behind me.
The spacious bathroom resembled one that might be found in a ruined Venetian palace. There was a dilapidated claw-foot bath on a black-and-white tiled floor, a crystal chandelier (minus a number of its glass droplets) and a couple of ferns tumbling from earthenware pots. A gilded mirror with carved cherubs lounging on its crest was large enough to reflect one’s standing self. I went to the toilet and splashed water on my face to freshen up.
When I came out I noticed another room directly opposite. Through its part-open door spilled a shard of light and the alluring odour of turpentine and oil paint. Across the warehouse, which must have measured twenty metres from end to end, the figures of Edward, Gertrude and Max were deep in discussion, their faces illuminated by the television’s jittery light. From that distance they resembled actors on a faraway stage. While I watched, Edward swivelled on his chair to look in my direction, as if ensuring I was still out of earshot. Although there was no way he could have seen me, I instinctively shrank back against the wall.
Unable to contain my curiosity, I peeked into the other room. It had to be Edward’s studio. In the centre of the room was an easel supporting what looked like a half-finished work of red and green shapes against a cream background. To my eye, the abstract painting displayed little in the way of technique or imagination, although the colours, juxtaposed as they were, were startling. A reading lamp was tied with wire to the easel. Scattered across a scarred wooden workbench were tubes of paint, rubber stamps, spoons, bottles of liquid, spatulas, brushes, and paint-smeared jars and plates. A hairdryer rested on the bench tangled, squid-like, in its black electrical cord.
On a shelf above the bench were arranged at least twenty cork-stoppered bottles of differing sizes, their labels so smudged and stained that they were hard to read. There was phenol something or other, saffron, gum arabic, linseed oil, gelatine, vinegar. Pinned to the walls were colour charts, postcards and photographs, yellowing hand-written notes in an indecipherable scrawl, chemical formulae. Some looked like they had been there for years. In addition, there were various colour reproductions of artworks torn from magazines or books: a couple of portraits, one of a woman who wore a faint moustache; another showing a pair of women engaged in beheading a man with a sword, their faces set in expressions of stony pleasure. Only one of the reproductions was familiar to me, that of Pablo Picasso’s lurid Weeping Woman, a painting much in the press lately on account of the National Gallery of Victoria’s decision to purchase it.
Canvases both painted and bare were stacked on the floor against the wall, and there were at least a dozen others under the bench. For an impressionable country boy like me — who had for so long dreamed of an urban, bohemian life — such a studio was utterly compelling: its smell, the spring-loaded energy, a sense that things were created right here. The wonder I felt could not have been more exquisite than that of a surgeon’s upon encountering his first wildly beating heart. The pug sidled into the room and began snuffling about my ankles like sea water around an outcrop of rocks.
I was preparing to leave when a painting lying flat on the end of the bench caught my eye. It was a rectangular canvas, taller than it was wide. It was a portrait of a woman seated in front of a wavering blue background with her arms crossed on her stomach. Her hands were lumpen against a dark dress and her face was misshapen, as if hewn from a difficult clay. Her brown hair was an indistinct bob. The woman’s pose was defensive and in her eyes there nestled a challenge, as if she had sat for the portrait under sufferance. The paint was thickly applied. I peered at it, then back to the unfinished work on the easel. It was unlikely they were the work of the same hand. Neither was signed, as far as I could see.
A cough at my back startled me, and I wheeled around to find Gertrude hovering in the doorway. I had the overwhelming feeling that she had been observing me for several minutes. She was not even five feet tall, flat-chested, her body like that of a child’s. Adding to this impression of girlishness was her habit of grasping the sleeves of her white top in her fists. She had worried at them so much that the sleeves were frayed.
She crouched to pick up the dog and held it to her cheek, whispering to it in a language that sounded alien to my ears. The creature was so fat, it was tricky for her to hold. Its hind legs dangled against her stomach.
I began to apologise, but she waved my words away with a bony hand. ‘Did you meet my precious Buster?’ she asked, scratching the pug beneath its chin.
The dog’s yellow eyes half closed in ecstasy, and its growl became an insistent throb. It fell asleep. Gertrude looked from me back to the painting I had been inspecting.
‘Max told me Edward was a painter,’ I said to explain my intrusion.
She hoisted the dog. ‘Yes, he is.’
I gestured around me at the paint-spattered bench, the walls covered in pictures. ‘It’s wonderful. This studio.’
She laughed, somewhat derisively, I thought. ‘This is where it all happens.’
I indicated the portrait lying on the bench. ‘Is that one of Edward’s?’
As if on cue, from the far side of the warehouse drifted the raised voices of Edward and Max.
‘No, no, no,’ Max was saying. ‘That’s where you are wrong, my friend. Oswald was set up all the way.’
‘They’re always arguing, those two,’ said Gertrude. ‘Men. Always trying to prove they’re right. As if they don’t have enough already.’
She pointed at the colourful abstract painting on the easel. ‘That one is Edward’s.’
I hmmed in a manner intended to sound both perplexed and appreciative, a vocal equivalent of tilting one’s head while touching a finger to one’s chin.
‘Tell me, Tom. Do you know much about art?’
‘No. I mean, I studied it a bit at high school, but that’s all.’ I thought of old Mr Johnson in his tweed jacket (staring dreamily through a classroom window, as if willing it to transform into those of the Chartres Cathedral), trying to infuse sweaty schoolchildren with admiration for the Renaissance.
‘Which of the two do you prefer? Which do you think is better?’
‘Are those the same things?’
She ducked her head as if to concede my point, but said nothing.
For me — unschooled as I was — there was no question which was the superior work. The abstract painting on the easel seemed to me amateurish and ill-conceived, a jumble of shapes without meaning. The portrait of the woman, on the other hand, bristled with sullen energy. Its clumsiness was its very blood and skin. I suspected, however, that I was on dangerous ground when it came to expressing a preference.
‘I like them both,’ I said.
‘I can see you are very diplomatic, Tom. It’s a good quality in a person.’ She regarded me, and in that light her eyes were like green marbles. ‘The portrait is by a man named Chaim Soutine. It’s called Woman with Arms Folded.’
‘Is he a friend of yours?’
She laughed, but not unkindly. ‘Not quite. It’s an, um, experiment, that’s all. What do you think of it?’
‘I think it’s amazing. Beautiful.’
I inspected the painting more closely. Its surface was cracked and the canvas was torn at its edges. ‘It looks old.’
She gave a gratified snort. ‘Well, you can have it when we’ve finished with it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, nothing. Nothing.’
I surveyed the studio again. ‘What about that abstract painting on the easel. Edward’s one. What’s that called?’
Gertrude made a scornful gurgle in her throat. ‘Who knows. The actual work is not so important these days.’
She put Buster on the ground and lit a cigarette with a match. Smoke plumed from her nostrils. ‘What matters is those artist statements. As long as you have one of those. Say it’s about — I don’t know — consumerism or your childhood abuse at the hands of evil nuns, and you will be fine. Mention intertextuality. The claim of what the work is about is more important than the work. Be a one-armed lesbian. Be a one-armed Palestinian lesbian. Make sure you’re oppressed in some way — it’s more authentic. Better still, get someone else to make the work for you. That way, you don’t even have to get your hands dirty.’
It was a disdainful way to talk about her husband’s work, and I felt uncomfortable. I glanced away, but when I turned back Gertrude looked ghastly. She had reached out to grasp the doorjamb and was bent over as if likely to collapse.
‘Are you alright?’ I asked, stepping forwards.
She nodded and grimaced. The episode passed after a few seconds. She stood up straight, threw her half-smoked cigarette to the ground and crushed it under her heel.
‘I have a condition known as … Oh, it doesn’t matter what it’s called. A long and complicated name. Sometimes it catches up with me, that’s all.’
‘Is it serious? My uncle is a doctor. He lives in Melbourne. I could ask him to take a look at you.’
‘Oh, no. That’s alright. There’s a specialist I’ve been seeing. There’s some new treatment, they tell me. I’ll be alright.’ Her voice disintegrated into her trademark nervous giggle.
‘Well, if you’re sure.’
She nodded again, caught her breath. ‘You’re new in town?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me, Tom. Are you really a person who can keep secrets?’
I made no answer. Gertrude stared at the Soutine portrait on the bench. Her eyelids drooped and she seemed, momentarily, to forget me.
Then Edward was behind her in the doorway, thin arms flapping about. ‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ he said to me. ‘Gertrude! He should not be in here. This room is meant to stay locked at all times.’
‘Oh, darling. You scared the life out of me. Tom here was very keen to see your work. What’s this one called again?’
Edward glared at me wild-eyed, and inspected the studio as if checking nothing was stolen or damaged, before ushering us out and closing the door. ‘I don’t know yet. Come on. Quick. The countdown has started.’
The flight of the Challenger lasted under two minutes. The shuttle exploded into pieces like a lumbering, oversized firework against the hard blue sky. At first it was unclear anything was wrong. The audio was a direct feed from NASA Control, an engineer’s staticky drawl. There seems to be a problem. An explosion. The feed is down.
We watched in silence, shocked and thrilled at witnessing the deaths of seven people live on television. White smoke fizzed off in various directions, a dozen zippers opening in the sky. Shots of faces in the crowd turned skywards with mouths agape, hands clutched to pale American throats.
After seeing a replay of the explosion for the umpteenth time, Edward said, with an ill-concealed and callous air of satisfaction, ‘Well, I doubt they’d fake that.’
*
Some time later, the television was switched off. Dawn light slunk through the warehouse. Despite this, no one showed any inclination to retire for the night. Gertrude was curled in a chair leafing through The Face magazine with a picture of Grace Jones on its cover. Buster snored on a red satin cushion on the floor. Edward and Max continued an argument they had been having about the Kennedy assassination (‘Edward, the word “assassin” does not come from sneaky Arab killers smoking hashish in the goddamn kasbah — you’ve been reading way too much William Burroughs’). I was exhausted and still drunk. It had easily been the best night of my life to date. I wanted it never to end.
As the room brightened, and hitherto unseen parts of the warehouse were illuminated, I became aware of a remarkable sight. Like a silent-movie buffoon I sat up and rubbed my stinging eyes. The vision, however, remained. From beneath an arbour painted across the portion of the ceiling adjoining the far wall, there rose broken, vine-covered columns lining an ancient Roman terrace, shrubs, stone urns, a family of gypsies resting in the shade. Beyond that was a large bay enclosed on its left by houses. The sky was pale blue, its clouds wispy and thin. On the horizon was a mountain shrouded in gauzy mist. The cry of distant gulls, sunlight glinting on water. A breeze caressed my face. I sniffed the air, expecting to detect a briny tang from the sea.
‘Welcome to Naples, Tom.’ It was Gertrude. She was standing directly behind me. ‘Do you like it?’
‘I think it’s the most incredible thing I have ever seen,’ I said, quite sincerely.
The trompe l’oeil stretched across ten metres of wall, floor to ceiling, the effect interrupted only by a low bookcase and a wooden chair in the right corner. If one studied the mural, one might also notice the vertical bump of a water pipe passing through a menacing-looking succulent on the left.
‘Naples is on Italy’s coast. The home of Caravaggio after he fled Rome accused of murder. The birthplace of pizza, believe it or not, and the capital of its own kingdom for a while. That mountain in the background there is Vesuvius, the destroyer of Pompeii. This is based on a nineteenth-century painting. Naples doesn’t look anything like this now.’
‘Have you been there?’
She gave one of her cackles. ‘No. I don’t leave the house much. But I don’t need to go there, do I? Naples came to me. It took us five months. The morning is when it’s at its best.’
‘Are you a painter, too?’
Her eyelids fluttered. ‘Not really. I used to be.’
Max and Edward’s argument ran out of steam. Coffee brewed on the stove; spoons tinkled against cups. I lay back on the couch, unable to remove my gaze from the splendid view of Naples that had materialised before me as if at a genie’s whim. I closed my eyes and imagined myself far away. I heard waves washing up on a distant beach, the hoarse laughter of sailors and whores drifting up from the port. Birdsong. Morning sun beat down on my face.