Tram Through South Melbourne

It is Tuesday morning and we are lurching comically through the streets, as though the tram is drunk on sunshine. I am cheerful. Everyone is cheerful. We’re all giving each other smiles, like something unusual and pleasant just happened. I have the urge to shake hands with the man next to me, to put a hand on the shoulder of the woman behind us. But don’t, of course.

And so we glitter and glow in this giddy way around leafy corners, and a white, white haired woman stands, steadying herself between seats. She is elegant and aged and extends a long, knuckled finger to the buzzer. The light pressure is adequate. The tram hushes to a pause and she alights, strands of that white, white hair sparking in a sudden blast of wind. The warm, green trees swoon in one rolling Mexican Wave and then they are still.

The tram reanimates and as we move away I watch the woman until she is gone from view and a blue thought bleeds like dye through me and I am full of the very real feeling of being an elderly woman walking slowly in sun-warmed clothes to my white terrace house on a leafy street in South Melbourne, reaching the fence, clicking it open, shutting it, the smell of my hot garden, the cool stony shadow of the balcony as it draws across my head and neck, the cold feel of the metal doorknob, the thick way the heavy door opens, the smell of my wooden floors and fabric softener and the smell of the looming gape of the hallway, the living room, the padded clunk of the door as it closes, the heady silence. 

Sale Books

An imposingly tall, wide man with an austere face, long white hair and a black beret is promenading outside the shop. His expression is one of critical surveillance, cool, composed, impassive. I would guess he is some sort of academic and so am especially curious, and slightly anxious, to know what has caught his attention in our humble sale-book suitcase. He glances up. I bet he thinks the selection is pitiful. He looks into the case again. I bet he is judging me. Ah shit. He’s coming inside. Now I’ll have to explain myself, account for the copies of Beaches and Single White Female disgracing the noble halls of this hallowed arcade. Unless he’s seen Zola’s Germinal. Or the Ibsen collection. They’d redeem me. I bet he’s coming in to get a better look at the Shakespeare anthology in the window. He’s seen that the loftier books are inside and, thank god, doesn’t think I’m such a trumped up bullshit peddler after all. 

 

I care so much about what snooty, elderly academic types think of me. I still have flashbacks of the old professory-looking man who roared at me for charging ten dollars for a dog-eared Genet. That is a disgrace! How can you justify such a price? You ought to be ashamed! Of course I was too overcome with girlish horror to tell my ancient abuser that if he liked Genet so much he should have just pocketed it. 

 

The tall man finishes looking in our suitcase. I can’t read his expression. Is it satisfaction at the range of titles or grim acceptance that society has finally deteriorated? He crosses the thresh hold. I take a breath. He scans the shop, arms held behind his back in that dramatic way pompous men attempt to appear open and benign. Before I can ease into a gentle ‘hello’, he is straight down to business. 

 

“Ahh theess ull uv thee books yoo hev?” 

 

He is eastern European. I could have guessed that too. Of course he’s Russian or Ukrainian or Belorussian or of some other fierce and mighty old oppression-enduring-and-crushing-and-enduring race. 

 

“Yes, they are,” I say quietly, with a smile, in the pleasantly intelligent voice I have reserved for these occasions. It softens my Strine into something more palatable for the foreign ear. He nods in gruff, staccatoed understanding. That’s it. I’m finished. He is disgusted by my predictable wares and my pathetic airs and he has had enough. How on earth did I think he’d be impressed by a shitty, newish Collected Works of Shakespeare? He probably smuggled a gold-leafed pocket edition in his shoes in the Gulag. He probably knew Bulgakov and debated with Nabakov and translated Gogol into Chinese. Jesus. I feel like such a dumb shit. 

 

His blue eyes pierce my inferiority like a laser through the ice of his glasses, magnificent mind a star burning purely in a perfect galaxy my polluted solar system could never fathom. 

 

“Ken yoo tell mee then, “ he thunders, the history of human thought and endeavour rumbling through the catacombs of his veins, “how motch iss your copy off Misster Tickle?”

An Event

An event is coming but we don’t name it directly.

Most of the conversations we have allude to the event but we phrase them cleverly so that they won’t run into any trouble, like, having to use distasteful or disturbing words. Explicit words. The cause of the event and the effect of the event and the name of the event itself.

Allusion and implication help to remove us from the event, help to build a little Perspex screen between us and it. We can keep the screen clear if we want, but, luckily, we can also let it fog up a bit, when things feel too overwhelming. We can even let it get dirty.

Dirt does a better job of obscuring the event than fog. 

Brownlow Count

“Hi dad.”

“Oh g’day, Gen! What are you doing?”

“I’m just at home. I just got back from Abbotsford.”

“Oh, good. I’m just watching the telly.”

North Melbourne versus Geelong, Etihad Stadium.

“I talked to mum today, she told me about the doctor’s.”

“Oh yeah. Yeah.”

North Melbourne, M. Firrito, one vote.

“How are you feeling?”

“Oh you know, I’m fine!

North Melbourne, B. Harvey, two votes.

I feel fine, apart from my bloody hip, which actually worries me more than any of this stuff.

North Melbourne, J. Ziebell, three votes.

It’s all a mystery, Gen! It’s all the mystery of life!”

“Yeah.”

Round 4. St Kilda versus Fremantle, Etihad Stadium.

“Yeah. It’s all a bit strange. But you know, I’m not particularly affected by it.”

St Kilda, L. Hayes, one vote.

“You’re not scared at all?”

“Not particularly.”

Fremantle, S. Hill, two votes.

“Ok.”

“You know, if I didn’t have my faith I probably would be.

Fremantle, A. Sandilands, three votes.

 I just feel for people in my position without any faith.”

“Yep.”

Carlton versus Essendon, Melbourne Cricket Ground.

“Ahh. Well. Anyway. I’ll let you go, Gen. It’s all just a big mystery.

Essendon, S. Crameri, one vote.

But you know, I’ve got God, and I couldn’t ask for more comfort than that, you know? Whether people believe it or not, you come from God and you go back to God and that’s all there is to it!

Essendon, J. Watson, two votes.

And you never know, I could go on for another twenty years or I could get hit by a truck tomorrow! You never know, Gen! Life’s funny! It’s all a big mystery!”

Essendon, B. Stanton, three votes.     

“Yep.”

“Mm!”

Collingwood versus Port Adelaide, Etihad Stadium.

“Anyway, I’ll let you go, Gen. Send my regards to Kim.”

“Alright, dad.”

Collingwood, T. Cloke, one vote.

“Seeya darlin.”

“Bye dad.”

Port Adel--

Family Jewels

For a good portion of my life, dad has implored me to have things from his jewellery collection. Costume jewellery, mostly. The clinking, tangled leftovers of the intense, melodramatic, generally alcoholic women who dot our recent ancestry. Whenever the mood takes dad to showcase the ordered chaos of one of his jewellery boxes, or swing a heavy rack of brass chains from out of his wardrobe, I see these dead women parade before me, spangled, furred and Eau-de-Cologned. There's the tall, black-haired one with alarming Rasputin eyes. The strong-jawed blonde with lipstick outside of her lip lines. The buxom matron. The one-eyed astrologer. And then, trailing behind them, there's the one who gassed herself with the kitchen oven. In the glassy glint of the stones I hear these women's voices, rasping, whining, trumpeting, commanding me to join them. And all of the jewellery-wearing years of my life I have absolutely refused! I have held up a stubborn hand to their fuming ghosts and said, 'No! No. I will not join your ranks!'

So why, suddenly, on the ten-millionth occasion of dad asking me if I want C's ring, A's necklace, M's brooch, as if he has never asked before, did I suddenly feel moved to take B's watch? 

I wear it to work and in a silence I hear its soft, whirring tick. I hold it to my ear. 

Missing Woman

A woman has gone missing in Brunswick and her name drums through my body. With every rehashed detailing of her last known movements in the papers and on the news, I picture her tottering along in heels, tipsy, happy, heading home.

Her husband's wild grief has been aired too many times. It is too much. His white face has stained my mind, left it helplessly marked and sodden, like my own shroud of Turin.

Where is she?
I walk the question into the streets.
Where is she?
I pour it into my cereal. Wash in it. Turn it on when I turn the lights off.

The missing woman is a classic Irish beauty. Marble pale and black headed, the coils of her thick hair tangle past impish eyes and a jovial mouth, a mouth that seems poised, ready to tell us what we need to know.

In Chinatown I see a little boy with a shaved head staring at the poster, tongue flicking absent-mindedly as though he is colouring-in, concentrating. His mother calls to him and his meditative stillness ripples. He hesitates for a moment, suspended in a child's fathoming. But it is superseded by a firmer call and he twists away to his mother's sure side.

My brother preps me as we lie around in the sun in the park.
"I mean, even that could help you," he stubs an index finger on my jagged ship ring. "You could actually do a lot of damage to someone with that. If you got someone -" he swings his fist upwards, backwards, "like that, in the eye -" he brushes his own pretend ship ring past his brow in slow motion, "you'd fuck them up."
"I did that once by accident to a guy I was dancing with. I just missed his eye. He had blood running down his face. It was fucked."
"Yeah, well, do that," my brother urges, "and you should always walk with your keys between your fingers."

The missing woman's handbag has been found, five minutes from her house, which is ten minutes from the bar where she was last seen. The police have been scrutinising CCTV footage of her walking down Sydney Road, and are going to release it later today. But I can already see it in my mind. The fuzzy last steps of a woman before she exits the frame.

Outlet

Afternoon in Abbotsford

My five-year-old niece sprawls on her unmade bed, silken, boyish bob flopping over her pale face. It is a Raphaelite angel’s face, smooth and glowing with an almost bloodless whiteness.

Suddenly, she flares her nostrils, contorts her red rubber mouth and twists her porcelain hands into rigid claws. The angel vanishes. We now have a laughing demon. I throw a pillow on her head and she forces out a hyperactive cackle, leaving the pillow in its absurd landing place, waiting for a reaction.

“Oh no,” I sigh nonchalantly, “now you’ll have to stay like that forever.”

“Ohhh, fooorrrevvverrr?” comes the muffled reply, a squeaking, posh old lady accent. I mimic the tone.

“Yes, most definitely forever.”

A sparking eye, more hazel than green, flashes out from under the pillow.

“Yoooou meeeeean,” she hisses, “forever until the day I die?” 

Death's Head

She couldn't sleep and so she got up and went into the bathroom and shaved her head.

It was 3:30am. She said she remembered hearing or reading once that 3:30am is the most common time people commit suicide. This head shaving was, she realised, a kind of suicide. But one she would live through. Her fresh skull would be a reminder of the next step. It would be a death's head. 

When she put her prickly head to the pillow she wondered who would be the first person to see her in the morning.

Teller

“I love your ring,” says the bank teller, eyeing my right hand as she shuffles notes into a drawer.

“Oh, thanks! Yeah, a local guy made it.”

“It’s beautiful. Where’s he based?”

I write the jeweller’s name and his shop location on a scrap of paper from my purse and slide it under the bulletproof glass.  

“Thanks!” She smiles, in a less bank-tellerly, more normal-girly way. “I’ll check him out. Is he expensive?”

“Well, kind of. This cost a few hundred. But, for the work, it’s worth it. I think of it as a little piece of art on my finger.”

The bank teller hmms agreeably and a general sort of strained good feeling flutters between us.

“Yes, it’s nice to support local artists.”

“Yeah.”

There’s a pleasant, thoughtful silence as she clicks her keyboard and prints off my receipt. She slips it through the slot to me and smiles.

“I get my silver rings online. It’s my little present-buying secret! I order them straight from Asia, so they cost nothing! Beautiful, handmade silver rings for two, three dollars. It’s great!”

Black Tie

Our friend came home drunk and though it was dark it was clear he had been crying. His voice bumbled softly through the room, dry and defeated. He had been at the opening party of a festival and it had been requested that guests dress ‘black tie’.

He had been excited to have something special to dress nicely for, to try for. He had the suit from his brother’s wedding, and the expensive shirt he’d saved up for a few years ago, so he spent the days leading up to the opening sourcing his outfit’s accents; cufflinks, good shoe polish, a black bow tie. The day of the party he had a haircut, a haircut he shyly confessed he had had the hairdresser copy from a picture he’d shown her of a Mad Men character.

In the evening, before the party, our friend had dressed with more care than he’d taken dressing in a long time, if he’d ever dressed so carefully before. He’d bought hair product from a nice shop, and applied it with ceremony. He said he’d felt lovely to take such care. To pay attention to every detail of his own appearance with a kind of kindness.

When he was ready, he had gone to the mirror in the lounge room to get a full-length view of his efforts and he had been unable to suppress the smile. He looked good and he felt good, and now all he had to do was wait for a few minutes for his friend with the tickets to call before he could head down there.

Half an hour passed. And then an hour. The bright nerves sparking in his stomach had turned to spikes of anxiety as call after call to his friend went through unanswered. Finally her nonchalant voice sighed down the line, telling him to chill out man they’d be there soon.

When our friend arrived at the venue, after waiting for almost two hours, the sight that met him had made him want to turn around and run home. No one had dressed formally. It was all the usual, Melbourne, I don’t give a fuck look. Draping, blankety, black. Scruffy fringes over scowling faces. Ironic backpacks. Fluorescent sneakers that were so many levels of ironic that they ceased to be ironic anymore. The air prickled with self-consciousness. People talked in childish, cut-off rings to their own friends and no one was smiling. And no one was wearing a black tie.   

Our friend would have left undetected if it had not been for an acidic acquaintance, who popped up suddenly from nowhere, turned to him drunkenly and trumpeted that oh god they couldn’t believe what he was wearing it was so cute and oh god he looked like he was with the brass band playing inside. And then the ticket-holder friend turned up with a patronising comment of her own and there was no getting out of it. 

The rest of the night followed suit; he barely spoke to anyone in that hall full of people, including his friend, who was too busy trying to climb some social ladders propped strategically around the ballroom. Our friend finished the night standing on his own at the bar, sculling a few more cheap sparklings, and leaving.

“No one…cares…anymore,” he gulped to us in the dark, “and I’m sick of…caring.”

A Morning in the Arcade

From the top of the stairs that lead to the arcade tailor, a man pauses mid-descent to blow his nose. A white handkerchief fanfares this mighty moment, heralds to all that businessmen are a proud, stout and unapologetically well-prepared breed, primed in presentation and ready for action. Resuming his march to Ground Floor, our hero folds his sodden flag and presses it ceremonially into the breast pocket of his shirt, against his heart. A woman approaches suddenly from out of nowhere, but never fear! the businessman steps a foot to the left just in time to let her pass with the utmost ease and comfort. Now that all is well in the world of chivalry, he can resume his journey to the office.

Entering the scene stage right, a married couple smile appreciatively at the glittering shop fronts, shuffling slow foot by slow foot so as to ‘take it all in’; the mosaic’d floors, the ornate arches and the pretty glass ceiling. Despite their age, the married couple hold hands, a touchingly naïve expression of commitment to any cynical eye that might slice past, and a definite indicator to such wizened urban types that, yawn, our gaping, gawking rural cousins have come to agitate our self-consciousness again, but sigh, at least they’ll be spending their hard-earned on our shitty city toys and novel services because god (or the universal energy or science or whatever) knows the Victorian retail sector is completely fucked these days and needs whatever injections it can get.

Couriers and delivery agents of all fluorescent kinds jolt by with carts and trolleys, grim and bothered. Shop to shop, they bleat, flutter paperwork, hand over parcels, clatter away. Their faces fog with function, the joyless setting of the bound. Families, rents, bills, all things oiling the joints with duty, all needs that need to be met, all givens that do not give.

The man who has just opened a café in this leg of the arcade has, in the space of a few weeks, fully and completely taken on the unadvertised job of Lord and Master of This Leg of the Arcade. At any given time he can be heard holding court in his 3x5sq palace, grandly bestowing the wisdom he accrued in ten years as a vacuum cleaner salesman upon anyone lucky enough to step inside. Since his arrival, phrases like, “I’ll tell you, mate…” and, “...don’t take shit from nobody…” float down the walkway like reassuring mantras for the shoppers and tourists.