2

The morning is waiting to be created.

Coffee on stove; toast, eggs, pickles.

A shot of rakia to take the edge off the hangover.

Shot, shudder, smack of the lips.

Aleks’ grandfather Mitko sent a bottle last week straight from the village, made from cherries, strong enough to clean wounds with. Aleks smiles. Dedo Mitko has had a shot every morning of his life, before heading to the fields to plough and plant. ‘Get the blood going before you face the day, Aleksandar – a shot of rakia is a good friend, but someone to be treated with respect!’

He thinks of his grandfather, so frail now, next to the window in a sweat-heavy room, his big, calcified hands the only testament to a life’s labour. Ten years in a German factory, the rest in the fields the family had ploughed for centuries. He would be watching the tomcats stalking through the weeds of the garden and the cars passing intermittently on the way to Ohrid; his eyes shining with frustration. Poor old dedo, waiting all day for news from town, from Australia, from anywhere really, and exclaiming ‘Mashallah!’ if the news is good. Aleks would have to make up some good news and give the old man a call.

He puts J Dilla on the stereo at a low volume.

His hands are huge and hairless, the knuckles scabbed up; they move efficiently, with resolve. He scrubs the stove, then the pan. Streaks of egg and pickled green tomatoes. Then he packs a lunchbox – an apple, a packet of chips, a ham sandwich and an orange juice popper. He sets it on the counter and calls out in Macedonian:

‘Hurry up, sweetheart. Gotta get ta work.’

‘Yes, Dad.’

He moves swiftly, blue bead swinging, and soon the cupboards and marble kitchen top are shining. He proudly observes his kitchen (which he built with his own hands), lights a cigarette and opens the blinds. Aleks can see the whole Town from here, mostly low-lying houses in orange brick or white stucco, with flatblocks in between like dice tumbled randomly from an unseen hand. Everywhere is construction, trucks and scaffolding, and cranes like predatory birds and, winding throughout, the shining body of the river.

The sun whets itself on distant hills and comes in low and mean.

Aleks’ own street curves down a hill in a new part of Town, covered in a scribble of burnt rubber. Several houses down, standing out against the monotony of suburbia, is a phone box with tags all over it, various shades of dripping red and black, Poscas and Molotow flowies. An endless cycle of scrawling and buffing, buffing and re-scrawling – the signatures of generations. He imagines a magic machine stretching out every layer in 2D planes like an accordion.

Down the bottom of the street, a boy is throwing a pair of sneakers over a phone line, sending a gaggle of sulphur-crested cockatoos squawking. A cluster of shoes already there, like grapes on a vine. Aleks smiles, turns and takes a gym bag from the top cupboard, well out of reach of little hands.

‘Come on, Mila!’ he yells.

‘Coming!’

He reaches for a pair of old boots, caked in clay and spattered with paint, and thinks for a second of all the brand-new sneakers in Solomon’s room. As he slips his boots on, he looks through the bedroom door at his wife Sonya, still asleep, her blonde hair halfway across her face. He tiptoes in, bends down to clear her face of hair, then kisses her forehead. She doesn’t wake.

As he ties his laces in the doorway, his daughter appears at his shoulder with a mischievous grin. He wipes a smudge of Vegemite off her cheek then pinches it. She squeals when he tickles her and then bounds out the door ahead of him. ‘Hurry up, Dad.’

‘You should eat ajvar, not that Vegemite crap,’ he says half-heartedly.

He throws the gym bag into the back of his white Hilux with the cans of paint and rollers. It’s suffocatingly hot inside the vehicle and the belt buckle burns his hand when he touches it. ‘Pitchka ti mater!’ he swears, then immediately looks around to make sure Mila hasn’t heard him. He picks up a stack of CDs, stops to look at the Souls of Mischief one but instead throws on a Tose Proeski album that his cousin Nicko burned for him. These are the rules he has made – Macedonian at home and in the car. Australia, the outside, takes care of teaching her English. He stops at a petrol station to fill up and chats about the World Cup with the owner, an enormous, shaved head Samoan man with big teeth. Aleks has always loved how Islanders can convey so much with a simple arch of the eyebrows. He speaks to the man in a soft, ingratiating voice and claps him tenderly on the shoulder. The man once tried to converse with Solomon in Samoan. Solomon looked like a child and couldn’t answer the simplest questions; how impotent and ashamed he had seemed. Aleks heads back to the car, chewing a Mars Bar.

‘Tat?’

‘Da?’

‘Mum’s birthday’s coming up.’

‘I know, baby.’

‘Can we go on a holiday? Pleeease?’

He turns his head and sees that her eyes are on him, an unnerving, mirror-like blue. She reminds him of his sister Jana. Aleks passes a hand through his sandy hair, winds down the window and drums his fingers on the side of the door. She’s right – the family needs a holiday. Soon. Somewhere tropical with long beaches and rosewater sunsets where Sonya can have some time to get better. Or maybe even back to Macedonia to see the family. He knows it’s unrealistic, unless he can find a way to earn a lot of cash, quickly.

‘Maybe we could go to Madagascar,’ says Mila.

‘What’s in Madagascar?’

‘Lemurs. Chameleons.’ She says the words in English with a broad Aussie accent. Aleks smiles.

‘You know, you look like a little lemur. Where’s ya tail?’

‘Daaaaad!’

‘All right, all right, relax. I’ll see what I can do. Maybe we can build a raft outta coconuts to get there.’

‘Would that even work?’

‘Well, you won’t know until you try.’ He winks.

‘You’re the best, Dad.’

‘Hey, you know the rules. Macedonian only in the car.’

‘Da, da.’

A police car drives by and Aleks turns his cheek, his whole body tightening. He’s driving on a suspended licence. Shouldn’t have had that shot in the morning; in fact, he might still be a bit pissed from the night before. He has to be more careful, for his family’s sake.

‘What’s wrong, Dad?’ Mila is cocking her head. Nothing escapes this one.

‘Nothing sweetheart. What are you studying at school today?’ He ruffles her hair.

As she speaks about assignments and the upcoming swimming competition, he passes the courthouse. He sees two people he knows smoking outside, looking uncomfortable in suits. They wave at him as he passes. He gives them the thumbs up.

When he pulls up at the primary school, Mila is already unbuckling her seatbelt. ‘Don’t forget your lunch.’ She kisses him on the cheek and clambers out of the Hilux. He leans across the seat and yells, ‘Te sakam, Mila!’ She looks back once with those neon-blue eyes and yells back, ‘I love you too, Dad!’ in English. Then she turns and becomes another eight-year-old streaming into the schoolyard. Aleks exhales and opens the glove box. He sifts among the papers and takes out a crumpled packet of durries. There is one left, which he lights. Ahhh. He reaches into his shirt and rolls the bead between his fingers, lets the strap fall over his thumb, middle and index. A thrill goes through him.

‘Goodness me. Fucken lovely,’ he says.

He starts up the engine and drives off. As he drives, he passes an abandoned building that was supposed to be demolished years ago. A yellow crane crouches next to it. He looks up and sees something he painted at the top of the building almost fifteen years ago. Tall, dripping, black letters: ‘Greece is Macedonia,’ and a yellow Vergina Sun next to it. Amazing that it’s still there.

He and Solomon had scaled the heights of the building and twice they nearly fell to certain death. The building had been a general store in the early 1900s and was falling apart. It was two-storeys high and the wooden beams they climbed were rotten, the iron railings rusted. Neither would admit their terror, so they had egged each other on. They had to crawl on their bellies over the corrugated iron, staining their shirts yellow and red, to get a good position to spray-paint the slogan on the streetside wall, starlit.

Solomon had asked what the slogan meant. Aleks tried to explain it the way his father had explained it to him: that Macedonia had been at the centre of a tug-of-war since time immemorial, that heaps of people claimed it didn’t even exist. However, he had found it difficult to explain and had become tongue-tied.

Solomon had shrugged and said, ‘Sounds good to me,’ then started plotting how to rack some tins of paint. They were twelve at the time. Aleks wishes he could explain it to his mate now, properly, but Solomon always seemed so uneasy discussing nationality.

Back then, Jimmy had been too scared to climb, so he stood below and kept watch for cops. Solomon had ridiculed him mercilessly, even though they needed a lookout. Jimmy turned away, and afterward they didn’t see him for two whole days.

No one knew where he’d gone.

Aleks considers Jimmy and Solomon’s relationship to be one predicated on a struggle for power and Jimmy had been born into a losing war. It was bad blood, Aleks was sure of it.

He passes a small block of flats that sits next to the river.

Only derros, alcos and new immigrants living there.

He keeps driving at a leisurely pace. Dead grass, eucalypts, low river, even the empty driveways: all seems bare and hungry from drought. Some gardens have been planted with the drought in mind, and bloom with tough plants like wisteria, sage and bush sarsaparilla, their lilacs and purples slurring in the heat haze. A Christmas beetle drops onto his bonnet.

Aleks is closer to the heart of Town now. On the main street he passes several redbrick pubs from the early 1900s, a small war memorial shaped like an obelisk, a dry fountain and a bronze statue of a bearded man carrying a book. There is a TAB, several kebab shops, charcoal chicken joints and pide houses, and on every block is the scaffolding of construction. He stops the car at a traffic light and an African girl in a hijab crosses the street. They catch eyes. Aleks nods at her but she looks down and keeps walking, books close to her chest.

Unlike many in his family, Aleks has always liked Muslims. He even has a grudging respect for Albanians. They may all be criminals, but at least the proceeds of their crime go back to their country, back to the cause. He thinks with shame of some of the Macos here, who are Macedonian by name only, so eager to become like the Aussies, the kengurs (based on the word ‘kangaroo’). Like Julian, the local car dealer. Aleks can’t stand people like him: Macos who won’t speak their own language, who know no music or folklore, who never go back, who keep stacking money higher and higher as if it would make a staircase to God. If every Maco in Australia went back to the homeland with even $20,000, it would save the failing economy, he thinks.

Aleks pulls up at a nearly completed block of new apartments next to a barren soccer oval. He gets his gear out and climbs the stairs, nodding at the foreman on the way up. A day of hard work ahead, but he looks forward to it. His work ethic is what ensures his and his family’s survival.

His partner is already there; a young skater in his late teens, who Aleks knows had some problems with heroin but is now on methadone. He works for half the price but twice as hard. Aleks lets him play his own music on a paint-splattered radio, because it helps him keep up with the latest shit. Today, it is mostly a jumble of Odd Future’s lo-fi, off-kilter horrorcore and Yelawolf’s mercurial drawl.

‘Seventy-five per cent of painting a room is prep – always remember that,’ says Aleks. The boy nods.

They lay plastic sheeting on the floor, check the wall for discrepancies with a light and sand away the few they see. They put down the base coat with a paintgun. Then they begin painting the trim of a bedroom. Aleks is careful but moves with ease and is soon finished. He stands back, admiring his work with pride. Flawless.

His phone lights up with a message. Number unknown.

Well well look at the big boy comin in2 the playground. how dare u come here and steal all my friends?

Aleks smiles. It could only be one of two people. He pauses, then types back with two thumbs.

I dont giv a fuk whoz playground it iz. Ne time I wanna drink from the bubbla, Ill do it and theres fuk all u can do bout it.

Send.

Then he starts to paint the dry walls with a roller, keeping a wet edge to avoid lap marks. Where these apartments now stand there was once a big block of land where an old Croatian couple lived and tended to their flourishing vegetable garden. All summer there would be a grapevine covering the whole fence, free for all who passed. The boys would gorge themselves and do chin-ups on the old plum tree that hung over the fence. All of that was gone now.

His phone lights up again, this time with the message, we’ll see bout that cunt. He texts back immediately – lets talk pursonaly. meet me tmorro at the old cemetery. i got a proposal for ya. He clicks send then switches the phone off. He’ll deal with all of that later – there’s work to be done.

At lunchtime, he makes an excuse to his co-worker and drives a few blocks to meet Solomon. There are barely any people on the street, and those few cast no shadows. A red-brick pub stands on the corner and Solomon is lounging outside, in the middle of telling a story to two Tongan blokes. Aren’t Samoans and Tongans supposed to hate each other? Solomon is wearing a singlet and honey-tinted sunnies and is gesticulating as precisely as an orator, his face serious. The two men are rapt, eyebrows knitted. Suddenly Solomon says something with a final jab of the index finger and the two men begin laughing hysterically. He leans back in his chair, smiling, rubbing papaya ointment into his lips and then his elbows.

Aleks and Solomon order chicken schnitties and mash with schooners of draft and sit inside to escape the sun. The pub had once been a notorious, sweat-reeking, liquor-soaked bloodhouse. There had even been several murders in the rooms above it. However, it had recently been renovated by a local entrepreneur and was now clean and airy, lavender scented and surprisingly, full of people. Solomon is suddenly sullen, but Aleks makes no comment, used to his shifting moods, from charismatic to brooding to street to booksmart. It is something women find mysterious and attractive, Jimmy finds endlessly annoying and contrived, and Aleks ignores. Solomon keeps looking around at the trendy decor, paintings on the wall and trim barstaff and eventually mutters, ‘It’s a fucken disgrace, man. I swear to God.’

‘Tsk. It was a shithole, brother. It’s a lot nicer now.’

‘Should’ve left it how it was.’

Solomon, adamant that hip hop should change and progress, is equally adamant that the Town is changing too fast, losing its working-class identity, becoming yuppified. This is his town and repository of his life’s story. Aleks looks at him and thinks: everything in the world exists with its death alive in it. Every fire dies, every story, every star, every town. Every nation? Childhoods are macadamed beneath asphalt and paint rolls, but just for other childhoods to exist. This, the nature of change, of modernity. Buildings go up, dreamings wander in search of graves or new owners; some remnant will stir occasionally, but these buildings will one day turn to dust and float through the bushland like ghosts. Eventually, the bush would die, too.

And besides, it’s not like Solomon contributes anything – at twenty-seven lazing around with a half-arsed dishwashing job, still living at his mum’s place, monkey-swinging from woman to woman, feeling sorry for himself about an injury he had almost ten years ago. Nah, there is dignity in hard work.

Solomon cheers up after a second beer and starts telling Aleks about a perfect spot for a mission, a fuel depot on the edge of town where a piece would be seen by everyone leaving for the City in early morning traffic. Aleks is mopping up some mash and gravy with a piece of bread, nodding. He knows the spot.

When he gets back to the apartment block, the kid is working at a furious pace, painting meticulously. Must’ve done a good apprenticeship. If you’re taught to paint badly in the first place, you’ll go thirty years painting like shit. Aleks is glad he didn’t take the kid with him to lunch – Solomon has complete disdain for bogans.

It is now Freddie Gibbs’ deep voice booming from the radio with fuck the woooorld attitude. Aleks paints with the bassline reverberating deep within him, completely calm. They are both in a zone. Before he knows it, they’re finished for the day. He switches his phone back on and gets another text from the unknown number. Done. Seeya then.

He picks up Mila from school, takes her to ballet practice and waits outside in the Hilux, drawing in his blackbook. An hour passes, then fifteen minutes more. It has become dark. Getting tired of waiting, he gets out of the Hilux. He spies the bag in the back of the truck, among the tins of paint. The street is empty, but for an owl that swoops down onto a fence, its eyes two yellow phosphors. He is about to reach for the bag when he hears a voice.

It’s another parent, a bloke Aleks calls Mr Chuckles because he can’t remember his real name. The man is a lawyer and speaks with a patrician’s briskness, giving off the impression of a civilised man marooned among savages, a benevolent dictator. Aleks smiles, remembering that the man is a renowned lawyer, an unscrupulous but aggressive tiger on the court circuit, and you never know when someone like that might come in handy.

He excuses himself and goes in search of his daughter. He opens the door into the mirrored light of the dance studio and sees her and ten other girls lined up, twirling around and around with varying degrees of skill. She sees him in the mirror, and smiles at him, open-faced, then twirls again, but trips and falls onto the ground. He laughs, eyes glittering. When she’s finished, he takes her sweetly by the chin, kisses her on the cheek, then hoists her onto his shoulders and carries her out.

When he gets home, his wife is just waking up.