This is My Song Page 15

  ‘Ah, the utilitarian –’

  ‘But if you do so totally, then aren’t you stopping something else?’

  ‘Stopping what?’

  Your own –

  ‘Your own growth?’

  Yes. That.

  ‘Selfishness as a virtue, Joe?’

  ‘Selfishness as a balance, sir.’

  He put down his cocoa and ran his hands around the lining of the brown case. Nothing more, nothing … a small rectangular lump held within an internal pocket.

  ‘Joe? What is it?’

  This book was much older. It had a frayed cover and a title written with lettering that was a blend of the familiar and not so. He opened the cover tentatively and saw R. Ullmann scrawled in faded script. He flicked through several pages, being careful not to crease or bruise the already fragile paper.

  Foreign words placed neatly against their English counterparts. ‘It’s a phrasebook,’ he said. Ahoj. Hello. Sbohem. Goodbye.

  Annie nodded. ‘Makes sense,’ she said. ‘On top of everything else.’ The fingers that she ran through her hair scratched and scraped like the claws of a hungry chicken. ‘It’s bad,’ she said, ‘that there’s so much to know. Makes me feel terribly guilty. I should’ve done more when he was alive, found out more.’

  Joe put his mug in the sink. ‘Selfish,’ said Annie sadly. ‘Oh, there’ll be time, There’s always time! Do it tomorrow, do it next week, then before you realise –’

  Tired, overwrought, she went to bed. Joe padded into his room, logged on and sent a message to Piers.

  - hey think my gf was jewish

  - serious?

  - yeah

  - how u no?

  - hidden stuff from his room

  - weird he was jewish then u jewish 2 a bit anyway do they even live in oz?

  - don’t know also think gf was czech

  - not canada?

  - canada later czech first ww2

  - woh! ww2 czech jew not good remember hist last year

  - yeah but more think gf maybe at auschwitz

  - woh x 2! big idea scary SCARY!

  - biggest ever idea but need more info

  - ok help you?!?

  - thx

  - no wuz hey how r u, must be ??? jewish czech

  - Im okay thx c u 2moro

  - done maths yet?

  - c u 2moro

  Okay? Actually, he thought, no. Because okayness comes from certainty and certainty comes from knowing the what-where-how-why and therefore being able to deal with all the potential disruptions. The pop-ups. Ever since that windless, insect bite of a day when Nash had left, Joe had toiled to reset the certainties – and here they were again, leaning in, pushing him back towards the not-knowing. The un-okayness.

  The more he considered it, the more seismic the shift became. Now, with little warning, he and his mother came from a place in the mad network where everything mattered more than it had before. You watch SBS News or dive into a chunk of world history and see the obvious, that being Australian is easy. Whitey-mainstream Australian, that is. Not too many tricks or traps. Don’t need to know much because, honestly, there isn’t much there. Indigenous tribes, convicts and settlers, exploration and migration, the wars, the Commonwealth. Cities and rivers, flag, song, speak English. A version of it, anyway. Footy, cricket, Sydney Olympics, go Cathy, go Thorpie. Yeah, he thought, go. That’s Australia, land of the never-ending go. Fair go, say the politicians. We’re a bunch of goers. Ambition; go to school, go get a job, go get a better job, go buy a house, car, second car, second house. Go have kids and go put them in the houses and cars, go to the beach for a holiday. Swim with the live fish, eat the dead fish, go home, go watch other Australians on TV do the same things you’ve just done and wish you were lucky, like them.

  Go us.

  Whereas this Jewish thing had more noise. Carried the sharpened smell of a monumental history. What little he knew: being a Jew was about living in the same ways that the forebears lived. It was about knowing the past and how that had made the now and it was about connecting the whole shebang with God – the God, thought Joe, that he had always avoided. Unavoidable metaphor; his bowed self, skulking away like a wimp in the schoolyard because God was no mate, he was either bully or paragon.

  Either way –

  What little he knew: Jewish people wanted to live in their own land, sing their own songs, eat their own foods and pray to their own God without being harmed for doing these things. Which had happened in the past, obviously, the harming, and was probably still happening – and here I am, he thought, worrying about a sold farm, my father’s tuna-salad lifestyle, buttheads who think I’m psycho, Soraya and Ms Wicks and the history of cows.

  In the morning Joe said to his mother, ‘Nash asked me to live with him.’

  Annie put the bread loaf in the freezer. Her reply was near toneless. ‘He’s your father. He has that right.’

  Joe blinked. His mother said, ‘What would you like to do?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he told her, and they left the conversation there.

  Annie went to work. Joe dressed for school. His packed lunch was on the kitchen table, next to the notebook that they had found in Grandpa Ullmann’s brown case.

  He picked up the notebook. Odd, he thought, that the pages had been left blank – apart from the title, which was also odd. ‘Love and sorrow’; it sounded like a fourteen-year-old chick’s badly rhymed poem about her bust-up with that cheater Tyrone, the romance that couldn’t.

  Joe held the book by the spine and shook it gently, hoping that some hidden words might loosen from their catacombs and drop like crumbs into a readable pattern. His grandfather’s life finally explained –

  A folded yellow piece of paper slid onto the table.

  The paper must have been secreted somewhere in the end of the notebook, where they hadn’t checked. Joe picked it up. Single page, spotted brown like an old man’s skin. He examined it for a moment, turned it over, unfolded.

  Two names on the top right, M. Laks faintly written in what might once have been pencil and beneath, written in blue ink, the now familiar R. Ullmann. The remainder of the sheet was a rough-ruled musical score, the notes also written with possible-pencil. Some were smudged, others diminished to mere suggestion.

  Joe held the paper directly beneath a downlight. Tiny, spidery words, also written with ink, ran parallel to the music. Surprisingly, the words were English.

  Piers said, ‘It’s definite, then.’

  Morning tea behind S-Block. Joe had told him about the family photo and pretended that the notebook really had been a memoir with sketchy details of his grandfather’s internment at Auschwitz. It didn’t seem right to mention the inked arm. Skin was too personal.

  He nodded, not for the first time. Piers said, ‘Doing the maths, he must’ve been a kid.’

  ‘He was.’

  ‘That’s whacked. Kids did not survive those places. Straight to the shower room.’

  ‘Well, some did,’ said Joe. ‘Obviously.’

  Piers was silent for a moment. ‘This’ll change you,’ he said.

  Already has, thought Joe, but he shook his head anyway.

  ‘Nah. Same old me.’

  ‘No way. Finding something like that in your background, you have to change. It’s like getting yourself a new brain.’

  This time Joe laughed. ‘Same old brain,’ he said.

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  Joe did. We drift along, he thought, assume we know it all, drift, drift and then a great big fist belts us in the guts. Bend over, stand up – different. Everything.

  Joe remembered a different metaphor, one they’d previously shared.

  ‘There are days,’ he said, ‘when the sun rises in the west –’

  ‘– and sets in the east,’ continued Piers, but his face was closed and serious. ‘It’ll change you,’ he insisted.

  Awkward moment. Joe was unusually relieved to hear his name broadcast over the speaker system,
immediate attendance required at the Green Room.

  ‘Gotta go,’ he said. ‘See you.’

  ‘Kiss for Miss,’ instructed Piers but even that, their well-established joke, sounded flat.

  She was wearing a floaty, flowery gown that Joe thought looked like a melted wedding cake but he didn’t care because when she looked up from the piano and smiled he was once again caught amidships, knowing that his infatuation was ridiculous, wondering if it really was love. For the past few months there’d been this vague smoke-edged dream: a farm (English? The grass was bright green and there seemed to be daisies) and bulging meandering cows and music that she played and he sang, no one else there to listen or judge –

  ‘– you’d brought the form,’ she said. ‘Registrations close tomorrow.’

  ‘Sorry, miss?’

  ‘Bel Canto, Joe. I can’t wait any longer. Do you have it?’

  Blood rushing and roaring as he shook his head.

  ‘Forgot,’ he said thickly. ‘In the morning –’

  ‘Joe,’ said Ms Wicks in that kids-are-sooo-annoying teacherly voice that she never used with him, ‘sit down.’

  He did so, accidentally knocking over a music stand with his bag.

  ‘Sorry, I’ll –’

  ‘Wait,’ she said, holding up her hand. ‘A question. Why this reluctance?’

  His face flamed.

  ‘Please don’t pretend otherwise,’ she told him firmly. ‘We’ve been doing this for – what? About two, two-and-a-half years now? All those liturgies, feast days, concerts, celebrations – I know your voice and I know a bit about you too. I would never have suggested Bel Canto unless I thought you could cope, so why?’

  Silence, compressing.

  ‘Joe, please. Tell me.’

  And now tears? Stupid. Stupid! He willed them away and said, ‘I should go.’

  ‘No. Stop avoiding. Tell me.’

  Stop avoiding? Might as well stop living –

  He moved his feet and mumbled, ‘It was what you said, that time –’

  ‘What I said?’

  ‘About not feeling –’

  ‘The music? Oh, Joe, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean –’

  ‘No, miss, you were right.’ He raised his eyes to her concerned face, lines he’d never seen before, and said, ‘I try, but nothing seems to connect, and then I heard that girl –’

  ‘Soraya?’

  ‘– how she feels and there’s so much, it’s like the song is in the room, here, and it’s really powerful, whereas I’m just a voice, perfect pitch, blah-blah, might as well be a robot or a computer program, plug me in, set me to play –’

  ‘No, Joe, no! That’s not true!’

  ‘How I feel,’ he said miserably. Straightening himself and standing. ‘Miss, I appreciate your support but Bel Canto doesn’t need robots.’

  ‘Joe, stop –’

  ‘Sorry, miss. RE, and Mrs Hammo goes bananas if we’re –’

  ‘Wait, Joe. Wait!’

  Up from the piano, eyes rimmed with an unsettling meld of wetness and fire –

  ‘Please,’ she said. She motioned to the chair and Joe sat back down, drew in his knees.

  ‘Can I tell you about Soraya?’ Ms Wicks asked. ‘I’m going to anyway, so please, just listen. She’s from Liberia. A very troubled country, lots of war. Civil wars, wars against their neighbours. Soraya and her family have been here since 2002.’

  She cleared her throat and said, ‘You’ll keep this to yourself –’

  He nodded.

  ‘Good. Joe, Soraya was born in a refugee camp. Have you seen those places, maybe on the news or on a website? Until she came to Australia she’d never lived in a house. Not only that, she has never known her father. He was a soldier in the Liberian army, went missing before she was born. He’s still missing, probably dead. They don’t know. No one knows. There are no records … Anyway, it was dangerous for Soraya’s mother to stay in their home without her husband so she and the children fled over the border to Guinea. They were placed in the camp and stayed there for years until the UN managed to get them to Australia.’

  Blank life, blank mind –

  She closed her eyes and said, ‘We can’t pretend those kinds of experiences. When Soraya sings, no matter what the song might be, she is telling us about missing her dad and missing her home. Or she might be telling us about feeling lucky, or feeling different, feeling alone, feeling grateful, all sorts of things. She doesn’t just produce her voice with her lungs and throat, she produces it with her life. Do you see what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but like you said, not everyone –’

  ‘Joe,’ said Ms Wicks, ‘we all have that. It might take different forms, but it’s there. Soraya uses her voice to share who she is and where she’s from. I know that sounds a bit deep and philosophical but it’s true.’

  Whereas I –

  ‘Great singers don’t hide,’ his teacher insisted. ‘They might have the voice and the technique but they also have the courage – to share. They give us the music and they give us themselves.’

  My grimy self. Grimy, compromised, uncertain –

  ‘No matter who they are,’ said Ms Wicks. And again, the words ramming, ‘No matter who.’

  The rain spat soft darts then built to a deluge that swallowed the city like an enormous mouth. He sat in his room, read and re-read the page. Lay along the edge of his bed, balancing precariously and remembering another rainy day last summer, his mother at the window trying to unjam the swollen frame with a screwdriver.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘What? For God’s sake, this window –’

  ‘Why did you marry Nash?’

  Recalled her pause, turn and return. Scrape, scratch.

  ‘Funny sort of question. Don’t know why you’d be thinking about such things.’

  He’d waited. Usually worked. His mother was honest and forthcoming, he knew that. Like anyone else, sometimes she just needed time.

  Scrape, scratch.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Well, I did love him,’ she’d said, the words sounding slow and mystical. ‘But it was the wrong kind of love.’

  Kinds of love? Suppose so … degrees and shades. Love like heat, like light.

  She’d said, ‘What I actually loved was the idea of him. The idea of us.’

  Scrape, scratch, Joe moving forward, cautious.

  ‘What idea?’

  ‘Oh, the usual,’ his mother had said. ‘That popular cliché. Husband and wife, children, house. Shared happiness, inside a cocoon.’ She’d paused for a moment and added, ‘What I thought I had as a child.’

  But –

  ‘It was okay for a while,’ she’d said, ‘but Nash had a different idea. So that was that.’

  And me, Joe had thought, born out of this cliché, these differing ideas. What about me?

  Scrape, scratch, scrape – ‘Gotcha!’ His mother had stood back, triumphant. The window had slid.

  He heard the grind of keys in a lock, the door opening and shutting as if by rote.

  ‘Home,’ she called.

  Joe met her in the hallway. His mother was shaking water drops from hair that had been frizzed and teased by the rain. Her umbrella lay opened and upside down.

  ‘Torrential,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Okay.’ Joe held out the single page. ‘I found this.’

  She eyed him curiously. ‘Need to dry my hands,’ she told him.

  They went into the kitchen. Annie’s face was pink and shiny. She wiped her fingers with a tea towel.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A song.’ Joe watched as she first inspected the paper then held it close to her eyes so she could read the words.

  ‘He wrote this?’ Her tone was incredulous.

  ‘Looks that way.’

  ‘But, music.’ Annie furrowed her brow. ‘Music was always –’

  She left the sentence unfinished, put the sheet of paper on the bench, wandered away, ran her finger alo
ng a sill and found dust.

  ‘A song,’ she said eventually. ‘And a bird. Who would’ve thought?’

  Joe picked up the paper. He said, ‘Listen,’ then he sang the first verse and chorus in the way that he had practised that afternoon, not looking at his mother, not thinking of anything but the music.

  He went to the Imax alone, Piers ringing late and saying that he couldn’t go, his mother was coffee-and-caking with the Yummy Mummies, his sacred duty to look after Oscar and Henry.

  Twin brothers, nine-year-old terrorists with Bieber undercuts. Joe murmured sympathy. Couldn’t help but wonder though … the last few days Piers had been non-committal. Slinking from class to class they’d been limited to standard-issue conversation. What’d you get for Biol? Seriously, Maths, what is the point? Shakespeare? Don’t get me started.

  See you. Yeah, see you. Then nothing more, as if Piers was – what? Angry? Jealous?

  Distancing, certainly.

  The film was drab. A plain man’s beautiful wife was kidnapped for no apparent reason. Rather than pay the ransom, the man, a mega-rich stockbroker in a suit, decided to save her. Luckily he was skilled in driving fast, escaping inescapable situations, punching, skiing, flying small planes and encrypting intelligence data. The enemies wore black jackets, carried guns that just wouldn’t shoot straight and spoke with accents that slid between Serbian, Irish and Indian. After two hours of running and thumping in his suit, the man saved his now even-more-beautiful wife and foiled a plot to kill the (also beautiful, female) President of the United States. As the credits rolled, the man and his wife made jokes and went to Hawaii.

  When people in the cinema stood and applauded, Joe knew that it was time to leave. He wandered into Grey Street. Overexcited shoppers, a breeze off the river and the throat-catching smell of frying food. Three o’clock on a Saturday; he wondered about walking up to the State Library, doing a broad-based search of Czech Jews at Auschwitz. There might even be an online survivor’s register, names that were hyperlinked to ancestry sites –

  ‘Joe?’

  The African girl, Soraya. She was wearing a bright cardigan and jeans.

  ‘You were at the movie,’ she said. ‘I was behind. I recognised you.’