The Swan Book Read online

  What about the genies? Haphazardly, she held up three fingers to his face, and waved her other hand around, and blew mouthfuls of air.

  There are no genies. Genies don’t exist. The things you see here are what exist. Nothing else. Trust me and I will show you everything you need to know.

  Oblivia winced at Warren’s denial, and stared at her three fingers while slamming them into her other hand.

  Where are they then?

  I told you they have been moved to town.

  The owls? All the eggs we counted? Those men?

  Very casually he lent over and covered her face with his. The Harbour Master raised his eyebrows and spat in disgust, A kiss to seal a dream with…Look! Girl! He’s got lips like Nat King Cole. She started to disbelieve herself. Her memory was unreliable. Why would she have travelled over salt lakes? She had beaten the odds. Had not been left to die in the bush. She lived in this city with a rich man. The wedding seemed like a daydream. The red-headed family were just ghosts of people from storybooks that she thought of meeting one day.

  She remembered Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions once saying that no story was worth telling if no one could remember the lesson in it. These were stories that have made no difference to anyone. Old Aunty was fading away forever. But…even true stories have to be invented sometimes to be remembered. Ah! The truth was always forgotten. She was in a car with a stranger.

  Gypsy Swans

  In amongst grey city buildings as solemn as each other, and at the end of silence, they reached a laneway of old and rundown buildings, to stop in front of what Warren Finch called his home.

  He called it The People’s Palace.

  The first thing Oblivia noticed about the building was the iron bars lacing the windows and the single door of the shopfront. The building was a cage. It reached up to the sky like a giant finger that had come out of the ground to orchestrate the heavens. Cold winds flew down the street with sheets of rain. The building frightened her. Would she be locked inside its guts? Like the women locked in the guts of Country?

  In the grinding rain there were many poor people in shapeless brolga-grey coats milling around the laneway, who stared sideways through the limp wet hair falling down over their faces. Some held out their hands for money, but then withdrew them quickly, and passed by without raising their heads. Underneath their hair, some stared at her from the corner of their eyes. Theirs was a primeval kind of surveillance, like wild dogs. She pretended not to notice how wet the people were who slept against walls, some standing, and others lying under pieces of cardboard while styrofoam and plastic rolled over them in the wind. They lay on the concrete sideways with an ear to the ground, as if trying to hear the stories that lay underneath. Oblivia did not understand then that what they were really listening for was the hint of another tidal surge flooding in the sewers below the city. Harbour Master looked around, then bent down and put his own ear to the concrete footpath and said Warren Finch’s home was a piece of shit. These people threw venom from their souls at him. A woman walked by with a pink towel wrapped around her nostrils and mouth, and stared at the bride. The air is bad here girlie, she muffled.

  They stood in the rain as Warren unlocked the cumbersome gate and the heavy green door with apparent ease, giving the impression that he knew the building well. Welcome to my home, he said.

  Is this a shop? she thought, picking up the voice of Dean Martin singing along with the Harbour Master, Well! It’s lonesome in this old town…I am going back to Houston, Houston, Houston.

  No, this is not a shop. It is a place. That was all he said.

  They stepped inside a lantern-lit world of water gardens and concrete ponds from which rose enormous antique fountains, while overhead roaming in mist, were large and colourful puppets of birds, dragons and people with wings that swayed from long strings attached somewhere in the ceiling. In this idyll of constant movement, jets of water spouted in the air from wrought iron or brass horns carried by larger than life cupids, giant maidens and young men, or spurted out of the beaks of enormous swans and geese, and from lotus flowers, or from the mouths of frogs and dragons. Whenever the water reached its zenith, it loosely and noisily fell into a Klangfarbenmelodie of music, dropping into the multitude of shallow ponds, from where it was sucked into pipes, then spouted back up into the air again, taking with it Dean Martin’s song of what it was like to be going home, to Houston…

  In this crowded space, where eyes swung hocus-pocused through the kaleidoscopically fantastic creation, there was even more drama unfolding, with statues of ancient Greek men and women watching on with faces of wondrous serenity over ibis, eagles, the imagined animals of fairytales, and giant lions with heavy manes that lay on the floor with heads upright, staring into the distance. Wherever there was space not taken up by the human ability to marvel in its imagination, ropey plants, palms, aloes drooping and stringy battled to survive in the atmosphere of wetness and dimness, by stretching half-starved stems towards whatever light came through the windows.

  There were cats asleep on pedestals, mantlepieces, steps and shelves, and any place free from being sprayed by mist. The cats watched Warren Finch with yellow eyes as he led the way. A brighter light came on from somewhere above, and when the girl looked up, she saw a break in the clouds passing over the glass dome roof. He led her to a wire cage that belonged to another century. It surrounded the elevator that he explained was a masterpiece of engineering. A bloody marvel that still works perfectly even after practically two-and-a-half centuries, he claimed. It must have been the pride of the city when it was first built. He pressed the dirt-and-grease-coated brass button that shone on the mark where fingers had been pressing it forever. Bloody impressive! She saw him quiver momentarily, while they waited for what did seem like forever, for the lift to come. It slowly descended, whining with pain, until suddenly falling the last metre with a thud. A manlike creature like those she had just seen on the street outside, pushed open the concertina door, and said very slowly: Hello, Mr Flinch. You’re back.

  Hello Machine. How have you been? Pretty good? Meet the Missus. He did not mention her name.

  The man grunted and said that he had nothing to complain about. He looked at Oblivia with old dog-type eyes for a split second, and then continued looking at the floor. By the time the lift had struggled several floors up to the top of the building, he had managed to say Hello, Mrs Finch. The fountain garden far below was bathed in yellow lights that reflected off the water, but looking down made her feel dizzy. Beside the lift were several flights of dimly lit steps. In the darkness, Warren placed a key into a door with the number 59 barely visible, screwed onto it. Inside, he switched on the lights and walked through the rooms.

  Everything works, Warren said, while striding around the apartment that looked as though it was never used. She was given a quick demonstration of electric appliances: stove, fridge, jug, toaster, microwave, washing machine, television, radio. Rubbish: Left nightly outside the door. Water: Hot and cold shower, bath, basin, kitchen sink. Toilet: How to flush. Cleaning: Broom, mop, bucket, wipes. Cleaning liquids: Kitchen, Bathroom, Toilet, Laundry, Floors. Clothes: There were some spare clothes left in the wardrobe. He slid a glass door open and she could see a line of clothes hanging for her. Shoes on the floor. Underwear in the drawers. He continued on, and quickly explained what she could and could not do in the apartment, which he said was, yours now. Frequently, he called out lists of instructions with: You must promise me that you will remember. Then he emerged from the bedroom, bags packed, one in each hand. The mobile was calling but he did not answer.

  Her eyes had been glued to the images changing on the television until it occurred to her that the mobile was still ringing.

  I will call them back in a minute, he said, and looking at her for a moment as he tried to remember something he had to say, he continued: I will try to get back on the weekend.

  Her eyes were now fixed on the bag in his hand. Warren could see her face locking into
meltdown, another panic attack, and thought he better say something to her, before she destroyed the place, or stopped him from leaving. Yes, that would do it. He would explain his work to her – where he had to go.

  Sometimes Canberra. That’s the nation’s capital. I am in government you know. Sometimes the world. Anywhere. My parish is the world. Wherever I am needed in the neighbourhoods of power. That is where I work: where I do business. Your business is to stay here and be my wife. Machine will look after you.

  It was his words that described hugeness that helped her to realise how powerful he was, and her lack of power, in a place that she did not know.

  Just ring the lift if you need anything. You can trust him so don’t worry about asking. You will be good company for Machine. He is a good man and he does a good job. He broke the slight awkwardness in his voice by looking at his watch to confirm his departure.

  Look! He said impatiently, I have got to go right now to catch the flight. This is something you will have to get used to I am afraid. I have to go tonight because I have been away too long and I have a lot of very, very urgent work to do, starting first thing in the morning. Look! I will call you.

  Then he left. She heard him talking to the man he called Machine on the other side of the closed door, and shortly afterwards, the slamming concertina gates, then the rumbling noise of the lift wobbling back down its own neck, and the whining sound of creaking ropes fading further away.

  She now belonged in the menagerie of exhibits artificially created by the weirdo named Machine. That was how the Harbour Master described the situation.

  From that moment of silence, Oblivia would be waiting for Warren to come back.

  Countless times, the girl stood in front of the large glass windows of the apartment, as she would do numerous times in the future. What did she watch? Cold rain mostly, that fell on the sun-deprived walls of the buildings across the laneway while she daydreamed about how she would escape through the mazes stacked in her mind – thousands of unknown city streets and distances across the country too great to be imagined, to return to the swamp – imaginary flights that always fizzled into a haze-land between the here and then that stopped her every time. She followed the routes of rainwater pouring through the moss and black lichen that grew in profusion down the shady walls, or dripping melodically like piano notes onto the drooping foliage of fig trees, banana trees, tropical trees and ferns growing from cracks in these buildings. She watched dark-hooded people drifting into the lane to sleep. Those who formed a huddle for security at night, then left in the morning. Sometimes, she would be awakened in the middle of the night when she heard people screaming King Billy, and she rushed to the window to watch dark shadows scattering though the waters flooding in the laneway, the old drought-buster spirit when tidal surges flooded through the sewers into the lower, poorer, and central parts of the city, usually at times when violent hail storms from cyclonic weather struck the coastline. She watched the people from the lane moving away, or sheltering from the rain and hailstones under pieces of cardboard and plastic, or standing around for hours in floodwater, holding their belongings to their chests, until the waters subsided.

  Old Bella Donna’s books about swans wrapped in fishing net were left on the table like a souvenir. Oblivia had found the package one night while roaming around the apartment after she had woken startled from a nightmare taking her to the brink of madness. Her common nightmare of being caught in the improbability of returning or leaving, of being locked in this moment forever, and there it was on the table. Had Warren come back? She froze, looked into the shadows, then started searching the place with the kitchen knife while the Harbour Master was winding her up so fast, urging her on to kill the useless prick if she found him, that she was racing around in a frenzy like a mad woman cut loose. The books could have been a wish come true. Washed up from the tracks of dry salt lakes. Hauled through the clouds outside the window. She had missed the genies tapping on the glass, to grant her wishes if she had any more to make.

  The Harbour Master kept calling Warren Finch a fuckwit for leaving them all in this dump of a place. He was itching to leave. He said he had seen her bloody books in the vehicle where she had left them. On the edge of the salt lakes. The books smelt of the hull. If she touched one, or picked it up, images of being in the hull flashed through her mind.

  Somehow, the books became good company. Pages were flicked over, and lines recited, and reflected upon: The wild swan’s death-hymn took the soul of that waste place with joy. Was this wasteland the swamp? She left the books on the table, and touched them frequently as though they were her friends. She sang over and over, a chant, her lonely incantation to the swans flying over Country, All the black swans sail together. She moves on, finds another thought – He who becomes a swan, instructs the world! This swan could spread his wings and fly where his spirit takes him, and Oblivia imagines the past disappearing in this flight to a frightening anticipated unknown future. Shakespeare’s Sweet Swan of Avon! What a sight it were…where a Mute Swan, or Whooper Swan, flying ten-thousand leagues, had taken the old swan woman’s people across the sea. But her mind turns away from that vision, and returns to anticipate how her own black swans from the swamp were moving over the country she had travelled, and listens to them singing their ceremonies in flight, and she holds this thought in her mind because it soothes her, instructs her in endurance and perseverance.

  Days passed and weeks turned into months of not knowing how she could continue reminding herself of the home she had been taken from, a place that no longer existed in the way she remembered – Now, when you awaken, remember the swan’s last dance. As quickly as she tried to reconstruct the swamp in her mind, the quicker the images of watery slicks consumed the hull, capturing the earthed lightning of a flock of swans…and the rotting abandoned hulls flew away in the wind from a world fallen apart. It was not safe to have thoughts that were now wavering into forgetfulness until all that remained were vague memories too hard to hold. She no longer felt safe thinking about the hull. Slowly but surely, her life had become anything Warren Finch wanted it to be, the Swan I tempted with a sense of shame…and he was already doing that by not coming back.

  In the middle of the day Oblivia watched the liftman from her window, when he was down in the narrow lane, right where the water was gushing out of the pipes carrying the water flooding from the top of the building. His shoes are wet from the windswept rain, but he continues emptying the rainwater from their bowls and feeding his cats. They follow his every move despite not liking the rain falling on their fur, because they are hungry. They are mainly orange marmalade cats; black and grey brindle cats; black and white cats. Soon, they are just wet cats. He judiciously supervises the feeding ritual to ensure that each cat manages to grab a bit of food.

  Machine reminds her of Warren. The dominant, stronger cats are often discouraged from being too greedy with a swift kick from the tip of his boot. Other times, when in a hurry, he does not bother emptying water from the bowls. On these occasions, he just throws scraps of meat all over the laneway and wherever a bit lands, the cats rush towards it, and it all ends up in catfights. He watches for a moment or two as though he finds pleasure out of the spectacle of fur and claws, then he turns his back and saunters off towards the street entrance to the building. Other times he seems to be sick, and just empties tins of congealed cat food onto the ground in the running water. Then afterwards, he picks up all of the tins and carts them away in his rubbish bag.

  Over rooftops where the crows wait, she would often see right out to the grey bay where the clouds were chopped by wind. She listened to the sound of ferry-boat engines whining in the rough, and the jets that flew continuously over the roof tops, and she wondered whether Warren might be on board, antlike, up in the sky. In the street below, in the constant sound of traffic, she saw delivery trucks travelling back and forth to feed the city, as if the entire population of the country existed only in this place.

  Sometimes
, when the weather eased, and if she looked closely, out into the shadows of the greyness, she would often find the dark form of a fisherman huddled in his secret fishing place among the rocks along the edge of the bay. She watched the small motorboats slowly churning over the choppy water, where hunchback fishermen went back and forth, then as night fell, the boats moving between lanes of flickering red, green and golden globes, and a seemingly never-ending trail of bats travelling from one abandoned park to another across the city. Then she moved away from the window. Her daily routine was completed.

  Warren Finch still did not return, and she did not wish he would come back. She started to believe that one day the view from the window would change. A plane might fall from the skies, straight into the deepest part of the bay in front of her, with his body still strapped to its seat. She waited expectantly, anticipating the time when she would become one of the hunchbacked people on one of the little fishing boats, with eyes blinded by a stinging sea spray as they searched the crash site.

  The rain never stopped falling. Sometimes it fell so hard it was impossible to see the bay. The telephone never rang. She had placed the receiver on the table and left it there.

  Oblivia avoided Machine like the plague. Never wanted to see him. She did not even watch him feed the cats anymore. She feared that one day he would knock on the door and she would have to answer it. Yet, the liftman did his job of looking after her. He regularly left groceries and money outside the door in a box along with the household and personal things she hardly used. She stacked the things left by Machine into a mountain as high as the ceiling until the construction tumbled. She restacked bath soap, tins of food, laundry detergent into a higher pile. Most of the perishable food she did not eat, she left in the rubbish bin outside the door, where more food was left for her.