Mountain Tease

"No! Not again," I growled, waiting in the sunset for my husband to come home.

About a year ago, just after the last snow had melted, my husband started disappearing every second Saturday. With the start of daylight saving on 22 June, he would not arrive home before half past ten on Thursday nights as well. And thus it went until the end of September, with the Saturday ritual ending in an early winter mid-November.

I knew a love affair had begun and burned to find out more about the nub of his attention. One mid-summer's day straight after work I drove up to a golf course nestled in the slopes of the Jura Mountain range.

I left at 5pm, reaching La Maline at 6. I tried to clear my mind for nothing but golf and the fresh breath of the mountains. My form was still good after a day's work, so instead of a leisurely nine holes, I opted for 18, hoping the light would see me through.

Above the thousand metre line I teed off at number 1, drinking in the mountain air, crisp beneath a cobalt sky. Grassy waves undulated at my feet as I spied two ponds lying in wait behind the oval lush of the green. I hiked down through holes 2 and 3, catching my breath in delicious draughts sorely needed on the 450-metre long number 4 that took me up the hill again. By the time I reached the fifth, I was ready for a short respite in the cool and silent glade of a par 3 whose elfin beauty from the tee veiled the hole's intricacy.

The valley led me on springy grass back down again through number 6 and brought me to the comforting and familiar game of 7, 8 and 9, with their expectant ponds and creeks, and bunkers, so predictable, and yet ...

Elated by one closing shot, the padded green I'd reached in two, I spoiled to defy the 10th at the foot of 570-metre climb. From there on in my stance was flat no more and I hit crab-like on to the 15th. But there, it all became worthwhile as my eyes took in a mountain lake lying clasped in a coterie of pines. The clubhouse, a trusty matchmaker in country farmhouse dress, caught the sun's smiling wink and beckoned me to her terrace. From hole 16, the end was in sight; it was downhill all the way, through the 17th on to 18, refreshment easing closer behind the shaven green.

But it was not yet to be. My clubs slowed the way up the curve of the gravel path, loath to leave their mountain playing field.

The sun was slipping homeward as my host, Victor, served me cool and cloudy Pernod with a twinkle dusted smile. I stretched and sipped, my mind reviewing every hole spread out below. Oh, why had I not taken the 7 iron in the glade at number 5? But that shot on the 15th, everything just right, soared me forth to future expectations.

The kitchen fires were still warm, so I ordered a "croque monsieur" of ham and cheese in golden toast before heading down the mountain road back home. I said my "au revoirs", taking in a pitch 'n' putt and a 6-hole compact course. They'd fit in nicely, next time, a prelude to roast lamb and "gratin dauphinois", laced tight by the deep and fruity red of a country meal for two.

My husband stood in the doorway, arms akimbo. I lugged my clubs from the car, a sheepish smile of satisfaction on my face. He put his arm around me and relieved me of my load. "Glad you like her," he grinned.

-----

Published online in 1994 in the Library at IGA - International Golf Associates (Franco-Swiss)

The 19th

Frank Brennan left a message on his answering machine. 'This is Dr Brennan. I'll be away for a couple of days. In case of emergency, please call Dr Flint, my replacement.' Frank played back the message and locked up the surgery last thing Wednesday night. Dropping the keys into his pocket, he thought: 'This time I'll do it.'

Maggie had almost finished packing - just his clubs and his baby-blue cap to go. He crinkled a brown-eyed smile at her. Frank Brennan, MD, knew it wasn't easy for any woman to be the wife of a GP. And he knew it was a lot harder for his wife, as he caught a whiff of her sighing while she packed the suitcase for their two-day trip.

Thursday morning and they were about to leave for Chortle Manor, an exclusive golf course a two hours' drive south. He'd worked it all out. This time he wouldn't be disturbed.

This time there'd be no beep on his wrist to call him back to the clubhouse from the 11th. Like the time that chap had hit the ball in the air and it had spun back down his shirt to smash a collarbone. Frank had just been lining up his putt for a 3-par when the beep sounded. He couldn't ignore it, and anyway, it had shot his concentration.

This time there'd be no partner screaming from the bite of a wasp just as he was teeing off from the 17th, making the ball fly into the trees. He always carried a kit for accidents in his golf bag. But why did that wasp have to bite just as he swung down with the wood? Why? Why? Why?

Or the time his mates had played that joke on him at the 18th when they'd swapped his ball for an unputtable one. It had jumped, skidded, balked and gyrated. Although he'd laughed, it had put him off for the finish.

And the time he couldn't even finish his beer before an afternoon game because the waitress had tripped on an errant ball and broken her ankle. Luckily he had been there. He was always there. Sometimes he felt he never wanted to be there.

This time there'd be no large crow cawing at him before swooping down to pinch his ball. He had never been sure whether Maggie believed that one.

It was the way the sparkle in her grey eyes seemed to have turned flat that made him doubt. He'd sensed something in the last few years of their twenty-year marriage; he sometimes even wondered what it was that bothered her. It wasn't the golf. He was sure of that. She didn't mind being a golf widow, she'd said. She was even partial to a game herself from time to time. So it wasn't that.

He knew it wasn't the doctor's life - Maggie had known what she'd be in for when she married him. She'd accepted the nights broken by calls, the roast beef turned tough in the wait for him to make it home from the surgery. He knew she could take all that.

Maggie had her own activities - painting, weaving and the piano. She found satisfaction in her hobbies. It was he that was becoming more and more frustrated every time he came home from his beloved golf. And deep down, he knew what the problem was. He never managed to finish the course.

No, this time it was going to be different. He was going away to play on a golf course where nobody knew him. Nothing would stop him from finishing. Nothing.

He loaded his clubs and the suitcase into the car, gave Maggie a kiss and a squeeze and opened the passenger door for her with a flourish. 'It doesn't matter if I play alone,' he thought. 'Just as long as I finish. Finish, finish, finish,' he hummed.

He'd worked it all out. He'd chosen Chortle Manor, not just for the quality of its golf course, he'd also thought of Maggie. She could do her water-colours over by Butterfly Cottage. She'd daub for hours to capture the light twinkling on Spring Lake. And capture it she would. And he - he would have a chance to thrash the course.

They checked into the hotel in the next village as Mr and Mrs. No Dr this time. No one ever asked if there was a Mr in the house. Then they drove over to Chortle Manor. After a snack on the terrace of the club house, Frank left Maggie to go over to Butterfly Cottage as he made his way in the opposite direction to tee off.

He was alone. The course to himself. He took in Spring Lake to the right, the trees just keeping their distance from the fairway. He felt good as he kept a steady game of three over par right up to the 13th. The 13th, he'd never forget it - a tricky par 4 of a dog's leg, with a pond to the right of the green. It was a bit tough, but not tough enough for a birdie. This was what it was all about. Everything was working.

The 18th, although a par 4, rolled up so he could only see the green flag across from the bends in the river. But he knew he just had to give the ball a straight hard shot for it to fly over the first river bend and land between the second bend and the bunker. It was a long shot, but the wind was just right. 'Crack!' His wood sent the ball soaring through the air. He watched the perfect trajectory with his hand as if to wave it 'Godspeed'. Happily he pulled his buggy behind him to follow the ball. He kept going. It had really gone that far. What a shot! 100 yards from the green. He couldn't believe it - another birdie? Finish the course ... and two birdies ... all on the same day!

The ball had a perfect lie. All Frank needed was a straight shot to the pin. He aimed, felt his body swing just right, and ... thwack! He relaxed and saw two women on the bridge over the river to the right of the green. One was waving. It was Maggie. He'd know that pink sun hat anywhere. The other woman had a black dog; Maggie must have met her over at Butterfly Cottage. Frank waved back and set his eyes on the approach to the green. As he crested, his face filled with excitement. Then he slowed down and stared at the flag. He was sure his ball had made it to the green. He looked in the hole. No ball. He looked all around. It was gone. He stood by the flag and scratched his head as he watched a black dog run off towards Maggie and the woman. The dog! It couldn't have been. Dogs weren't allowed on the course. The ball couldn't have disappeared. But what if ....?

'How was your game, darling?' Maggie said as he came up to the terrace. She always waited for him with a smile. He kissed her gently on the cheek, placed his clubs by the clubhouse wall and came back to give her a hug.

'My ball disappeared on the 18th,' he said to her quizzical eyes. ' But I got a birdie on the 13th and was 3 over par all the way ...', his voice trailed off.

'Darling, this is Mary Fenwick. I met her walking her dog over by Butterfly Cottage.'

Frank nodded 'Hallo' and glanced down at the black labrador. It was munching. 'Found a bone, did he?' Frank said.

Mary Fenwick looked embarrassed. 'Not quite,' she said. 'He's just a puppy. He still has some bad habits ...

Frank looked towards his wife. A smile teased the corners of her mouth.

'There's still the 19th,' Maggie said.

The smile that sparkled in her grey eyes made Frank feel as if he had hit an eagle on the 18th. He'd never know. Somehow it didn't seem to matter anymore.

-----

Published online in 1994 in the Library of IGA - International Golf Associates (Franco-Swiss).

Channelling Blues

Forthcoming in 100 Stories for Haiti.

The Hook

"Come out in the garden. I'll show you how it's done. A wonderful sport."

I suppressed a smile as my father reeled my husband in to his favourite game - golf.

"The clubs are in the garage. Just a tick. I know there aren't many courses out your way. But once you're hooked, you'll find a place to play," he said.

Jim grinned over to me and shrugged: Why not? No harm in having a go.

"You'd be better of with a spade," my mother muttered.

"What's that?," Dad said.

"Oh, nothing." Mum smiled.

It was Jim's first visit to Australia and we were all on our best behaviour. Parents usually meet their son-in-law when he is still a fiancé, but somehow we had missed out on that formality. Jim followed my father to the garage where Dad kept his clubs, bag, buggy, buckets of balls, brolly, shoes, cap, towel and rainwear. He listened to the litany Dad read him on the clubs and the distances they could hit: the woods for the longer lengths, the irons for long and shorter ones, and those two distinctive fellows, the pitching wedge and putter.

"You don't need all this to start, of course. A half-set will do. Now let's take this one."

Jim nodded as Dad, always fond of an exhibition, pulled out a club with a shiny brown head.

"That's a Number 1 wood, " he said. "The driver. It gives you the greatest distance when you tee off - if you hit it right, that is."

Dad then took a small white plastic ball with more holes in it than plastic.

"It's a practice ball," he said. "Can't go hitting real balls around in the garden. It won't fly far, but you'll get the swing."

Jim was not completely unacquainted with golf. He'd watched it on television and had found it a bit slow for a sport. A sport for the old and wealthy, he thought as he followed my father to a small plot of grass in the backyard.

"A spade would have been better," Mum muttered again.

I sat by the open window, my back to the men and watched her pluck two paper-brown leaves from the potted red begonia on the table.

She nearly snapped a young green shoot as a deep howl hollowed from the garden. I turned to see Jim flop to the ground like a puppet with a severed string. He lay ajumble on

his side, then drew his knees up to his chin, as if he were playing egg. I would have laughed had it not been for the moan that rocked forth from deep inside him.

Mesmerized, I watched my father bend down to him, his hands hovering over Jim's fetal form, the way he used to hold them over our campfires in the bush - close enough to feel the heat, but full of fear of getting burned. Jim rolled his back away and clenched his teeth in fists of pain. Dad recoiled, helpless at his rebuke.

Mum and I stood planted as Dad picked up the driver. He pounded the earth in rhythm to a chant of: "What have I done? What have I done!"

I watched - it was like a film - the motion slow as Jim rose to his feet in after shock. He steadied and stood there, strangely at ease, back turned, feet in lush ferns and grasses edging the cauliflower in my parents' suburban garden. He looked as if he were relieving himself - in broad daylight. This time I couldn't care less about Dad's concern of what the neighbours might think. I ran out of the house. The slow heaving of his shoulders was his only movement, the deep drawing in of breath, his only sound.

"Jim! Dad! What's up?" I cried as I dashed out to break the hypnotic song that seemed to hold them both in trance.

My father straightened as if to stretch his sadness and floated his arm towards my husband's back. Like a kite, half billowed in a steady force, Jim was anchored by the legs to the herbaceous borders of the vegetable garden where my mother had spiked old plastic practice balls on to the end of stakes as markers.

"I think I've changed your lives," Dad said as tears welled in search of a downward roll. "His manhood." The emotion, the tiredness of years, broke through the dam of education and control.

I stepped to my husband's side as he let out a deep long breath through puckered lips and zipped his fly. "It's OK now," Jim said and smudged the pearly sweat from his brow. "But, hell, did it hurt. He was showing me how to swing. 'Keep your head down', he said. 'Pretend you've got a fish hook from your collar to your crotch.' He was concentrating so hard - I should have moved back out of the way .. 'Swing easy, hit hard,' he said - I never thought he would. His posture must have been perfect, he was on a high.."

I watched Jim go through the stance and the motions, somehow bound by the spell of the game.

"On the down stroke, I thought he would stop, but he followed through. Luckily, I moved - just a bit - moved my right thigh forward - that was a bit of protection when he connected."

Dad edged towards us, his head pulled down as if still caught in the hook. His eyes were wet and the tips of his mustache quivered like those of a cat listening to the wind. Jim turned and caught Dad's shoulders in both arms and held him, almost held him tight.

"I'll be sure to step back next time," he said. Relief washed over Dad's sunken face as a smile tugged at the corners of Jim's mouth. "Will you show me the driving range tomorrow?"

Arm in arm, Dad and Jim came back inside, with me, a matron of honour, behind them. Mum smiled: "I said you'd be better off with a spade."

The three of us looked at her in puzzlement.

"Take a spade, dig about in the garden. That's exercise. Take up golf, that's exercise too. But you'll be buying the clubs, bag, buggy, buckets of balls, brolly, shoes, cap, towel and rainwear, and the tees, of course..... Spade's still cheaper."

"But I didn't get hooked on gardening, ...Mum," Jim said with a broad grin and winked at Dad.

Back home, Jim found a place to play, just like Dad said he would. Every year, when we visit, our three children love to hear Grandpa tell the story of how their Dad got hooked on golf.

There are always tears - tears of laughter as Grandma sinks the final putt: "He'd have been better off with a spade."

-----

Published in print in Beginnings (US) in 1995 and online at IGA-FS Golfing stories.

Melbourne Dreaming

Tall, dark and handsome Dave MacLaren had 485 under his belt. He stared down from the balcony at the acrylic daubs of Aboriginal art covering a whole wall in Melbourne's Victoria Art Gallery. He had to get away.

On the set they'd been whispering every time he passed; they'd stopped whenever he got closer. The vibes were driving him crazy.

Different hues of bark and ochre dots darted at him, swirling his mind. Sidelong glances. "Something's up" was his last thought as he was pulled in the Dreaming.

He prised his eyes open against the glare of a great red fiery ball. His throat felt like the soles of his ding boots in the dust. Sweat pored to his brow, but his hand felt parchment. His lips couldn't taste his own spit. Thirst dragged at the insides of his throat.

Dave McLaren, star of 485 episodes of "Jackaroo" was in the Outback.

He dragged himself up and staggered towards a lean-to construction, the remains of a building that once sported a wrap-around veranda, crooked and crumbling. Its only adornment was a rusty corrugated iron roof and a twenty-foot TV antenna.

He stumbled into the pub, hoping it wasn't the one they sang about, and rasped: "Got a beer, mate?"

The publican, a hulk of a man in a navy singlet of grime, his chin spangling sweat and stubble in the light of the half-hinged open door, threw him a can of XXX without tearing his bleary eyes off the black and white screen stuck on the corner end of the bar. "Hang on, mate. He's gonna ged id now."

Dave stared at the screen and the beer sloshed down the side of his mouth and neck, just teasing by his open mouth. He saw himself, the Jackaroo, being shot in the back - Pflack! - feet stuck in the stirrups, being dragged along in the dust by his galloping brumby.

"God 'im!" the publican exploded, "d'ya see id? 'e god 'im. 'bout time too, nummer 501."

Dave gulped dry: "Whaddya mean him? He got me! That's me!"

The publican gaped at Dave. "Yeah, so 'tis. Betcha glad that's over, eh? Had a run for ya money, eh? Not bad 501."

The can dropped from Dave's hand. He felt his knees buckle ... 501? 501!

"Give him some air. Stand back, please." Dave heard the words in a fog. It was cool lying there, but what were they saying? He didn't feel thirsty anymore. He felt scared. Where was he? He opened his eyes and saw the figures closing, bending in on him.

He had to get out! Get up! Get back! He had to stop them! He didn't want to die, not yet. He couldn't afford to just yet. He had to make the 500!

-----

Published online at The Edifice of Writing & Literature in 1995.

Want of a Strong Man

Ruth had tried not to laugh that day when Anna was sixteen. It would have been fatal since her mouth had been full of pins as she worked on the velvet patchwork bell bottoms for which her grand daughter had begged.

“I shall never get married,” Anna had said. “I shall have lovers. But I shall not marry!”

Slowly Ruth took each pin from her lips. “You may change your mind. “Never” is one of those words that struggle with time; it’s a bit like “forever”,” she had said.

And now, only five years later, Anna, the bride, would, in a few minutes, walk down the aisle on her father’s arm.

Ruth smoothed the mauve crepe de chine that covered her knees and let her eyes wander around the old church. It was small. Cool. Simple. A marble altar. The sort of church Martin Luther would have wanted to preach in, the sort of church in which she should have married.

Heinrich would have married her in a church like this. He was the man whose arms had held her, the man who forever would have protected her. But Heinrich was dead. Of a broken neck. Broken necks cannot heal. Not like hearts. Ruth’s hand floated to her chest and she closed her eyes to let her fingers feel her heartbeat. A bypass had left its mark, but no one had ever really seen the scar. Albert had noticed it, of course, but for him it had only ever been the proof that everything inside was all right.

Albert was still by her side. The old man sat slightly stooped and stroked his knees with his large fingers. Ruth took his left hand. She traced the swollen veins on its back, the wedding ring glinting against the papery skin of his finger. He had never been a strong man. But he had always been there and now she just had to carry him a little more.

Ruth had always wanted a strong man, but already on her honeymoon she had known that Albert was not the strong man she wanted. She had been lucky to have had a honeymoon at all. It had been wartime then and every year after that, for some reason, there had been no going back.

Not that she hadn’t thought of going back. Going back to the homeland. Grabbing her child. Dragging Celia through the brambles growing over the side door of the garage, their first home in Australia, in the Blue Mountains, in Mount Victoria.

Ruth turned her head at the gentle swish of taffeta. A tall bearded man in morning suit strode proudly past her. On his arm, Anna, his daughter, her grand daughter. Anna in cream taffeta.

The priest suddenly stepped out from behind a statue of Saint Christopher. Ruth hadn’t noticed the statue at first. She remembered the beard and the staff and the child on the large man’s shoulders from a bronze amulet nailed to the dashboard of a car. A bright red car. A sports car. No. This would not have been the right church for Martin Luther after all. Martin Luther never had had his place in this country, her country now, one in which Albert had long since been converted to quiet rambling walks in the bush.

The priest spoke. He welcomed the congregation assembled to celebrate the union of Anna and Alan who faced them, their backs to the altar. The priest was all in white, just the cuffs of his jeans peeped out from beneath his robes, Ruth noticed. So different from her own wedding, she thought.

She had stood with Albert before the mayor whose shirt tail saluted stiffly through his unbuttoned fly. They’d got the mayor out of bed at two in the morning. Albert had been due to leave for the front. Things had to go quickly in 1942.

Dear Albert, Ruth thought and gripped the old man’s hand. Who would have thought that they’d see the millennium, and now it had come like any of the other passing years. Albert was a good man; but with each year he had leaned on her more and more. And all she had ever wanted was her one strong man.

Anna’s father. Rob. Now, Rob was a strong man, Ruth thought and looked across at her daughter, Anna’s mother, sitting on the other side of the church. Celia did not look her age. None of the women of the family did. Ruth smiled at the thought. Celia had done her own thing. She had run off with Rob. Las Vegas. Just a telegram. We got married today. Love. Celia had married her strong man. But where had it got her? Celia was happy. Yes, Ruth thought. Celia was happy. She would have had more lines, more grey hairs, had she been less so. Ruth brushed her forehead with her hand as if trying to brush away a cobweb. Celia was a writer. Writers.

They wanted everything, but were never fulfilled. They were always traipsing off after their characters, as if they were lovers, Ruth suddenly thought. Funny that she should think of them as lovers. Surely there were other important characters in Celia’s head. Ones more important than lovers. Ruth remembered that there had been times when she had been seriously worried about the state of her daughter’s mental health. Was it possible to cram all those people into one head? All at the same time? No. Celia could not be fulfilled. Even if Rob was a strong man. It was not his fault. And Celia had not been a writer back in Las Vegas. That had only come later. How many generations did it take, Ruth wondered, to find out that love was not what one thought it would be. Rob did not seem to mind, she thought as she looked at his beard. A wife other than Celia would insist it be clipped. But this is Anna’s wedding, not Celia’s, Ruth said to herself and straightened up against the wooden backrest.

The young man, the groom, - his name was Alan - stood stiffly with his back to the altar. Ruth was sure that he’d swayed just a fraction towards his bride before straightening up and wiping his right hand over the wool of his black knife-creased trousers. Anna stood tall and serene by his side. She resembles a lily, Ruth thought. It was the first time Ruth had seen her grand daughter with anything less than a freesia blush since she had rushed in that day just three months ago to introduce the young man who had brought her home in the red sports car.

“This is Alan, Gran,” Anna had said, as if she had just caught the impossible fish that was always much longer and stronger than its own waters of reality would allow.

Later, out on the porch, swinging on the couch alone with her grand daughter, Ruth had asked: “ And what about all those lovers?”

“Oh, Gran,” Anna had said. “You only say that when you haven’t got any.” Anna leaned over, stretched out her legs and placed her head in Ruth’s lap. “I’m so much in love. Just like you were. Just like you were, like you still are, with Grandpa.”

Ruth’s hand stroked her grand daughter’s blonde hair back from her brow. “I know what you mean,” she said. “I know what you’re asking.” Anna closed her eyes and Ruth kept on stroking. “How can anyone know if it’s all,” she heard herself whisper.

The priest turned to face the congregation. Ruth squeezed Albert’s hand. A tiny smile flickered beneath his white moustache. Anna’s father, looking more and more like the patron saint of voyagers, settled in by his wife’s side. Ruth watched as he held a white handkerchief for his wife to take. Celia had been so lucky, she thought. And she hardly knew it. Ruth watched her daughter wipe the corner of her eye with the handkerchief. A movement of Rob’s arm told her that he had received the bunched up cloth for stowing into his pocket. Ruth sighed. Celia had never wanted to hang onto soggy hankies. Ruth closed her eyes for a second. What if, she thought. What if, only Heinrich? She shook her head. There would have been no Celia. There would have been no Anna. But she would have perhaps known what Anna might know, what even, her daughter, Celia had perhaps once known. Suddenly an arythmn fluttered and Ruth’s hand went to her heart. Now it was far too late for all that. She had at least had her Heinrich. Ruth took a deep breath. Her pulse was beginning to calm. She leant forward to listen. The moment had come.

The priest was asking the one question that could make the voice of the strongest man quaver. “Do you …. “, the question that demanded just one two-word answer. Ruth watched as Alan gripped Anna’s hand. When she married Albert, she’d been asked first. Times had changed, she thought. Or had they really? She shook her head as if to brush away the thought. Ruth fixed her eyes on Alain. He did not fluff his lines. “I do.” How easy, Ruth thought. How easy for him to commit for a lifetime.

The priest then turned to Anna and asked the same question. Ruth felt a stillness about her, like smoke hung in the air after fireworks. A murmur rose through the pews. As Anna’s eyes met hers Ruth took Albert’s hand. The fingers of her other hand began to tremour, only coming to rest in the dying echo of her grand daughter’s “Yes!”

-----

Published online and in print in Ex Tempore in 2003

Of Cats and Cyberspace

Hi! My name's Toulouse. No, not the town in France - one of the aristocats! We were in the SPA, minding our own business with our Mom, Duchesse, when the woman that fed us - we'd just been dragged away from Mom's milk a couple of days before, but we still liked to try for more - where was I ...?. Oh yeah, the woman that fed us - wasn't bad, kinda crunchy for our small teeth - anyway, she was saying: "If you can, take the male and the female, they are always together."

That was me and Marie. Berlioz liked to do his own thing.

"It's not her first litter, you know. She might turn on them."

What?! Mom turn on us?

"No, none of them has a tail. Some aberration from birth. It happens, you know, but they're all very sweet."

Marie, and least of all Berlioz, wasn't watching all this. *I* wasn't just listening, *I* was w-a-t-c-h-i-n-g. The stump of my tail was on end!

"Well, three would be too many, but I guess we could manage two. They'd be company for each other," the woman said. Well, I guess she was a woman because she was big, bigger than the kid who helped feed us - sort of like the woman that did all the organising round the SPA, only she looked nicer. She sort of smiled more when she looked at us.

"You'll have to have them desexed, of course. But they're too young yet."

Desexed! What's that? Well, I found out later what that was - when the local toms threw it at me! Anyway, this isn't about me; it's about her.

She must have been quite a cat herself because when she got us into that huge room, the kitchen they called it, she said to another bigger person like her - he had hair on his face, like us in a way - she said, "But they'll be company for each other, dear."

Time flew and we grew. The big person was her tom - he was always around, and he was the only one she called "dear." There was a smaller version of her that she called "darling." Me she called "Cat." He called me "Toulouse." (Much more respect between toms, I guess. She never called Marie "Cat.") Marie and I had a great time - we'd climb up their jeans, and one day they let us outside. Wow! What a thrill!

Well, you know what it's like with little sisters. Marie followed me to play on the other side of the road one day. She got squashed by one of those metallic monsters that can't stop careening along. Anyway, you should have heard - my mistress, I'll call her now. She screamed at the big person in the car - called him "murderer," she did. Then I realised I'd lost my little sister. It took a while for me to get over it, but my mistress helped me a lot, patting and cuddling me, and giving me stuff to eat and to drink. I soon forgot Marie and I lapped it all up. Until ...

Well, it must have been the time I started bringing her presents. (There was that mini-clone, too. She called her "darling," but I never brought *her* any presents.) I'd bring in a mouse here and there, a starling when I was swift. But what does my mistress do? Why, with a heel on my neck, she sweeps up my booty in a dustpan - a royal blue one. Ok, it was plastic, but nevertheless. And then she yells at me and locks me in the laundry - such a cold, damp place!

She lets me out again after a while and I sulk - the booty is gone! So she lets me sit on her lap, and she strokes me and I purr - and just when I'm sort of drifting off to the land where the mice don't get away, up she jumps. I mean, I was purring. OK, it was loud - so loud it was drowning out her Sir's gentle snore (he was much more than a tom, I found out in the meantime). But she leaps up and goes to a place called her "Souk."

Now, this place is something else. Ever heard of drowning in paper? It crunches under your paws. So, what do I do? I see her stroking those little square keys - and I want some of the action. So I leap up and try walking on them, getting under her hands, as it were. OK, I'm jealous! So...? Boy, does she get mad!

"Get out, damn cat!" she cries.

I jump down and keep quiet. She calms down real quick, though. So I stay there on the floor and then I go and sit on the sofa, on the bit of space left on the top. Books everywhere! And she starts humming ... then she starts laughing ... and then she starts crying ... can't work her out. There she is, in front of a big TV with no pictures, stroking away on what should be my back ...

Just when I'm feeling sorry for her, she stretches out her hand ... no, not for me ... for some old snail shells. She fiddles about and sticks paper clips through them and then threads them through her earlobes. And then she starts giggling - all to herself. She's a strange cat, all right!

But that's not all. She starts talking about numbers and places: "If it's 24:00 in California, it's 19:00 in Canberra the next evening. No, that's wrong, it's the evening before, but then it's 9 am in France." Doesn't make any sense.

Then she goes to the kitchen and gets out this glass of red liquid. She sips it first, then chug-a-lugs ... and the next thing I know, it comes flying over her shoulder, so I duck - and the paper breaks its fall. And this goes on every night for a whole week!

Last weekend was a riot. I've seen her before in front of that box - sometimes she wears a terry white robe - never bothers to comb her hair the way she does when she goes out the front door. But this time she has on a Drizabone because it looks like rain, I suppose. You know, one of those smelly coats she brought with her after she was away a long time. (He says it pongs - you know what she says to that? "Of course, it does, dear. Pirana liver oil." You work it out!) And then she leaps up and out she goes with a smaller version of the box in her souk under her arm.

I wander around the house for a while, sniffing at the Sir, to wake him.

"What's up Toulouse?" *He* uses my name! "Where's she gone now?" he says. It wasn't to me. I don't know anyway.

Well, the Sir puts on the coffee. It's Sunday morning; the clone's still asleep. And we both hear this huffing and puffing outside. So we go to the door, and there she is in her Drizabone. Wide open it is, and we can see this short gumnut skirt and a swathe of eucalyptus leaf covering her upper part, up to the neck. The Sir just stares. He sees what she's lugging and so do I. But *he* knows what it is. A telephone booth!

"Where've you been?" he demands. I would, too, mind you. Desexed or not.

"To a party." She even had the cheek to say it with a grin as she dropped her portable minibox in the hall!

"You look like you dropped out of cyberspace!" There are more like her? When's the invasion? And I slink hiding behind the Sir's legs.

"Oh, it was such fun, dear," she says and stands on her tiptoes to give him a kiss. Then she bends down and rubs my nose with hers. "Salut, Cat," she says and starts to giggle.

And would you believe it? The sun comes out.

-----

Published in The Geneva Post (Switzerland) in 1996, in FreeXpresSion (Australia) in 1999, and online at Seeker Magazine.

The Apple of Tell

Hi, I'm the apple. No! Not that Apple - they don't grow on trees, do they? I'm the apple of Tell, you know, Bill, Wilhelm.

Well, there I was, minding my own business up in my tree by the market place, getting plump and red in the sun.

That rotten old Sheriff Gessler was throwing his weight around as usual. He'd been sent by the Hapsburgs to keep the good people of Altdorf in line. He was a bighead, that one. Stuck his hat with a peacock's feather up on a pole and made everyone bow down before it. The pole swayed in the wind and the feathers tickled my nose. I sneezed and the poor people looked up and Gessler clobbered them. "Fools," he said. "Apples can't sneeze!" Well, I can tell you they can. They can do more than that!

I was wiping my nose when a big bearded stranger passed the marketplace with his son. He walked right past that hat with the feathers. Ignored it.

"Arrest him!" Gessler cried and then grabbed me down from my branch.

"Ouch! Yuck!" His hands were fat and clammy. He grabbed the boy and put me on the boy's head. I kept wobbling about. We were both scared. Then we froze as Gessler yelled at the man, Bill Tell was his name, to hit the apple, that's me, off his son's head with a crossbow!

I closed my eyes. All of a sudden I split apart. Neat, clean, two perfect pieces. Both of me fell to the ground. Yikes! I was red on the outside and white on the inside. Gessler started screaming and stomping around. As the boy scooped me up, his father grabbed his hand and we were off like greased lightning, over the hills and across the lake.

Well, you know what happens to apples, don't you. They either rot or get eaten up. Guess it was best to be munched by the son of a hero. The boy bit each piece of me in half and as I became part of the food chain, I heard Bill say: "Hey, red and white and the cross of my bow. We'll fly our own flag one day. Now to go back and get Gessler."

"Yeah!" I said as the boy munched the fourth piece of me.

"Glad you agree, son. Let's go."

-----

Published online at Bergli Book's Silly Swiss Stories page in 2004.

Shades of Schiele

Samantha went to the Kärtner Café every afternoon of the next week. It hadn't rained for days. On Friday, she sat in her usual place, opened her notebook and stared at passers by. When the waitress brought her coffee, she had only written the date. Her words had dried up as if her eyes had sapped their energy searching for Fritz.

It was getting dark as she left the cafe for her hotel room. As usual, she shunned the red trams on the Ringstrasse to walk by the Gartenbau Kino. It was the only one playing English films - with German subtitles. She glanced at the posters for "Easy Rider", thought for a minute of going in, but kept on walking. She didn't want to sit alone in the dark seats. 'Maybe I'll bump into him,' she thought. She rounded the Parliament with its Greek columns and statues pointing down at her with their gilt and gold-leaf fingers, and strode past the Natural History Museum in Renaissance style on to the Gothic Rathaus. Samantha realised that in fifteen minutes she had passed through three ages of architecture. When she got to the Town Hall, she crossed narrow streets until she arrived at the door of Pension Czernik.

The wooden hall floor smelled of wax scoured with ammonia. She entered the Beethoven room. It was musty and she opened the double single-paned windows between which she kept some fruit and mineral water. It was cold as an icebox on the ledge between the outer and inner windows. She kicked off her shoes and flopped onto the eiderdowned bed.

'On Monday I'm looking for a job,' she said to Beethoven's bust on the dresser. 'I've wasted a whole week underground in the city of music and waltz. What a bloody waste.' She crashed her foot through the air trying to stamp it horizontally.

'You're right,' she said to Beethoven. 'I am hungry.' She washed her hands, rinsed her face and patted it dry, then grimaced at herself in the mirror above the white enamel wash basin in the corner of the room.

'They could have put a loo and a shower in,' she said as she turned on the two squares of tiles backing the basin.

Before pulling the door shut, Samantha winked a good-bye to Beethoven. She took the staircase, ignoring the wrought-iron lift and slipped through the smaller door inlaid in the massive house portal.

Half a block down the road, yellow lamps glowed through the glassblown windows of the Hirtenwirt. The Gasthaus door held a menu in German and English. 'Wiener Schnitzel, that's what I'll have.' Samantha pushed aside the heavy winter curtain still hanging over the door to keep off the evening drafts. She saw an empty table for two at the far end of the room and made her way to the seat which would put her back against the wall. The wood panelling with its ledges of country patterned plates just above her head felt comforting.

'Sie wünschen, Fräulein?' the waiter said. 'Wiener Schnitzel und Wein, bitte.'

'Weiss?'

'Yes, white.' She didn't touch the sliced black bread in the basket on the table.

Every slice added a Schilling to her bill. And the bread would spoil her appetite. Apart from breakfast, she realised that she had only had coffee the whole day. 'I'll have to stop that coffee ...'

The waiter brought her breaded veal and Samantha squeezed lemon over it, flicking the decorative anchovy roll aside with her knife.

'Try it with a mixed salad, Samantha.'

She jerked her head up and her eyes met Fritz's. 'I'm sorry if I startled you. I looked for you this afternoon.'

'Hallo Fritz.' Samantha concentrated on cutting the meat.

He eased his long body into the rustic wooden chair opposite her. His hair stood even more on end as if electrified. His eyes widened as if to draw her gaze to his.

'I've been caught up in a number of things - with the agency. I think I told you I dealt in art photos, aesthetics, that sort of thing ...'

'No, you didn't.' Samantha looked up. 'How did you know I was here?'

Fritz stared at her, holding her gaze. 'You don't like riding trams, do you?'

A tiny shiver ran through Samantha's mind. 'I followed you,' Fritz said, a quiet smile cruising his lips.

She felt she could not escape. She felt she did not want to.

'And Now that I've found you .... would you be free on Sunday? I'd like to take you to an exhibition.'

Silently she sipped her wine and steadied her gaze, crossing her legs under the table. 'Of your photos? I mean, the ones of the ... agency?'

'No. Schiele. Egon Schiele.'

'A photographer?'

'No, Samantha. An Austrian painter. He died in 1918.'

'I've never heard of him. So he's not modern?' 'He is, in a way. Shocking even - then and now.' Fritz smiled. 'So, will you come?'

Samantha cocked her head to one side and let her gaze slip over Fritz's face. 'Shocking? In which way?'

'You'll see. I'll pick you up at 11, we can have a bite to eat and then go to the Belvedere.'

'The Belvedere?' The palace converted to an art gallery? Samantha thought. 'Yes, I'll come. But you don't know where I live,' she teased.

'So are you going to tell me?'

Samantha hesitated. 'Pension Czernik, ' she then said. 'Josefstädter Strasse. You can ask for me in the reception. I'm in the Beethoven room.'

Fritz rose and gave her a look that could have held a wink, but his eyelid did not move. 'Sunday it is then. Enjoy the mixed salad.'

'But I ....' Samantha stared agape as Fritz left the restaurant, turning once more to wave before he passed through the heavy curtain. What had she got herself in to this time? she thought. Sunday. Fritz. Egon Schiele. Well, she still had Saturday to do some research.

He had followed her. More than once. She had sensed him near. She had even willed it. Why did she feel drawn to him? She, too, had been born in Vienna. Suddenly her mother's words flashed across her mind. 'Never trust your own countryman abroad.' Was Fritz a countryman? Was this abroad? Could she trust more than the patchwork of her life's origins allowed? Where was that instinct from the bush, the one that had always got her out of trouble?

Samantha finished her Schnitzel and called the waiter for the bill. 'Bezahlen bitte, Herr Ober.' Why do research? she thought. I'll just wait and see what happens. Why did I leave home anyway? 'Home' was becoming a word she was finding harder and harder to define.

Lunch had been a simple affair in the same underground cafe they had met. Samantha and Fritz alighted from the red tram at the Südbahnhof and crossed the broad Wiedner Gürtel to the top entrance of the Belvedere Palace.

The pebbles caught in Samantha's sling backs. She kept bending to flick them out. The broad grey avenue leading up to the stairs of the palace was flanked by lime trees, punctuated by wooden benches and columns standing like exclamation marks. She waded through the small stones, some smooth some sharp. Fritz adjusted his gait to hers, smiling quietly at her discomfort.

The posters for the exhibition had been plastered on the columns the length of the avenue to the entrance. Always the same sketch - self-portrait of the artist with his mouth open.

'That one was done with black crayon in 1910,' Fritz said.

'His hair's almost like yours,' Samantha said. But I'm glad you have more clothes on, she thought as she felt a tinge of heat at the base of her throat. The drawing stopped just below a hand over the artist's stomach. But it was obvious he had modelled in the nude.

They went up the broad marble staircase to the first floor. Fritz paid two entry tickets and with a sweep of his arm ushered Samantha to the left.

'The exhibition starts here - his early works.' The shiny wooden floors caught the click and clatter of shoes, Not many people. three-metre high ceilings. Pictures spread out. The early works were portraits - men in their stiff white stand up collars, women with hats and lace choking their throats. Then followed interiors, landscapes. Just like any old painting, Samantha thought.

'Schiele studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna,' Fritz said. 'It was hard to get in. Someone now famous tried a few months before him, but didn't make it. Guess who?'

'I don't know. Who?'

'Adolf Hitler.'

A waft of a smile touched Fritz's lips as he steered Samantha into the next room. The style had changed. There were still portraits and interiors and outdoor scenes - mostly of houses. But the style had become more angular and the women's clothes were highlighted by rings of gold and red.

'Egon's teacher at the academy said the devil had sent him,' Fritz said.

'Doesn't look too devilish to me,' Samantha smiled. She wondered why Fritz used Schiele's first name. No one called Picasso Pablo.

'Wait. Here you see Gustav Klimt's influence - you know that famous picture, don't you? The Kiss?'

Samantha had seen prints of the opulent gold and colourful spirals enfolding the lovers in a cloak. It was flaunted on calendars and postcards in the tourist shops. She nodded. 'Did Klimt say that to him about the devil?'

'No, Klimt wasn't his teacher. In fact he told Schiele that he was the better one.'

'Klimt does have more gold - I don't understand,' Samantha said.

'You will.'

As they moved into the next room, the style had changed yet again. 'Egon and his model, Wally, had moved to Krumau in Bohemia when he did these,' Fritz said.

A water-colour and crayon picture of a little girl sleeping on her stomach was the first thing Samantha saw. The blues, greens, reds and whites of her checked blouse and striped skirt contrasted with the black coverlet on the bed and with the flesh of her naked buttocks and legs. Another showed two teenage girls locked in each other's arms, the black of their garb offsetting the white of their faces and the flesh above their stocking tops.

'They banished him from Krumau ... for 'public immorality'.'

'No wonder,' Samantha said. 'What's next?' 'Ah, these ones are special. You know, many people didn't understand poor Egon. He shocked them, of course, but he lived for his art. These are all of Wally, his ... lover.'

Samantha felt a sudden prickling inside her. Warmth crept to her face. The pictures had become fine angular line drawings on a gouache background. Embracing women, almost nudes but for red or black stockings, or a hitched up bodice. Most half clothed. An orange mouth to match taut orange nipples worn above blatant pubic hair. Two crayon drawings of reclining nudes with fingers darting into nether parts. One nude wore boots.

Samantha turned to Fritz, her cheeks hot. 'Is that all?' She tried to keep her voice steady as if it was something she did every day, look at Egon Schiele's works.

'I hope you're not shocked, Samantha,' Fritz said, his thumb gently rubbing her nape.

'No,' Samantha said and shook his hand off as subtly as she could. Fritz dropped his arm. 'How about some fresh air? A coffee on the terrace perhaps?'

'That would be nice.' Samantha felt the warmth in her cheeks fading as they traced their paces back to the entrance. She had seen nudes before, had been to galleries, but Schiele troubled her. Or did he touch something in her?

They sat at a small round wrought iron table on the small terrace overlooking the Schwarzenberg Platz, the spires of St Stephen's in the distance. The Viennese coffee steamed through the lashings of cream and the sprinkle of chocolate dust.

'He was grossly misunderstood, you know,' Fritz said. 'One of the greatest artists of our time.'

'He's awfully ... erotic,' Samantha said. 'And tortured.'

'You've understood, Samantha. He was tortured ... by his art. He left Wally soon after the incident in Krumau, married and lived happily ever after until ..'

'Until?'

'He died in 1918, three days after his wife, Edith. Spanish flu. An epidemic. He was twenty-eight.'

'How old are you, Fritz?' Samantha heard herself saying, Fritz's features washing in with those of Schiele she had seen on the photos at the entrance.

'Twenty-eight.' Fritz's laugh was shot with surprise.

That night, Samantha had a dream. In the morning she could only remember snippets: a man with Jake's eyes, with Egon Schiele's hair, with Fritz's voice. Following her in a maze not unlike the gardens in which the aristocracy of bygone days played hide and seek. Then she was alone, huddled in a dark forest glade, feverishly gnawing at some raw meat.

It was Monday and the nozzle of her hot morning shower in the communal bathroom washed the last remnants of the dream away.

----

Published at Gangway in 1997.
Extract from novel in progress, Tillandsia.

Lost in Intertext

In my ear. ‘La puce à l’oreille.’ It’s a buzz. A flea. A fleet. A fleeting. Les Puces. Paris. An antique stepchair to my library. I’m short, you see. I can’t reach the grand books that are over the top. Would they were ZZ. Bottom shelf. Reachable. But even ZZ is beyond my grasp. Hey, she even made it onto the cover of Poets & Writers, or was it the Best of New Yorker Magazine?

Priscilla, was puce really the colour of queer? You were the true Queen of the desert. No matter if you, too, loved Diana. That shade of lime yellow, warmer.

“Warmer”. “Er ist ein Warmer.” “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Gay, yes, but never queer, always masculine. Ernest. It’s never She.

She was the Queen of the Jungle. And, my God, my Goddess, is the dd correct? I can reach that, can live with it. But the jungle of lingua franca, that moronic ox of multilingualism, what do I do about that?

Would the French say "ecrivaine" where I just say “writer”? Do they hit it right on with the "vain". Vain is what a writer must be. Slit a vein. Wannabe. Wannado. Wanadoo is my email, but the vowel doubles up where the consonant can’t. Is not allowed to. Just like “weekend”?

Doo-bee-doo. To be. Da bee stings. The flea bites. They both leave a throbbing red halo on my skin. An ache before the swelling subsides as I reach for meaning within the multicultural images of my mind.

Stuff wax in my ears. Let it melt down in the heat of my Ozspeak ‘brine’.

-----


Published online in 2004 in Splatter Magazine (Australia) and in Lit Up (UNSW Union).

The Last Birthday

Under the rigid gaze of the giant bronze head mounted on its granite block, workers crissed their morning trails like ants across the square.

Samantha Freeman alighted from the red and yellow tram that brought her from her rented rooms on the outskirts of the city and fell in step with them towards the Straße der Nationen. It was 7h15 on a bright day in August, her first at Transinter, the State Translation Office. As she passed the block of granite, she winked up at the bearded face cast in bronze. Karl Marx did not wink back.

She pushed open the heavy glass door of number 32. Making her way towards the large oak desk at the far end of the grey marbled foyer, she swore under her breath that she would have to stick cork tips on to her clicking heels. She heard her heart tap against her ribcage as if echoing off the marble columns in the icy quiet. They certainly knew how to put you in place; the desk seemed to stretch away the closer she got.

"Samantha!"

She stopped. She looked to the stairway coiling with its wrought-iron banister down behind the left-hand side of the massive desk. A lanky man in his early thirties came down, his jeans-clad legs taking the steps two at a time. Peter Held, the driving force behind her internship with Transinter, moved towards her, arms wide in greeting.

"Samantha. It's good to see you." He brushed his cheek against hers, once left then right, kissing the air in the customary greeting of their Geneva days. "You found your way all right?"

"Yes, just followed the flow," she grinned and ran a hand through her dark blonde bob as she moved out of his arms. "It's good to see you, too, Peter. Well, here goes. My first day on the job."

Peter ushered her past the figure seated behind the desk. Samantha noticed the soft and ruddy cheeks, but could not tell whether the uniform clothed a young man or woman. Indeed she wondered whether the figure was real as it had not moved since she had entered. They mounted the stairs. Samantha was awed by the wide corridors and long hallways on the first floor.

"So much space, Peter. It's marvellous," she said.

"Don't speak too soon," he said, a smile sleeting across his lips as he opened the third door on the right-hand side.

"Welcome to Transinter."

Samantha stood in the doorway and stared. She felt her ankles dragging downward in disbelief. Where the hall and foyer had been wide and empty, cooled in marble on floors and ceiling, the office before her was an elongated cubby hole in contrast. Five wooden desks were lined up perpendicular along one grey wall. They were the sort of desks that could fetch an interesting price as a 1930's "antique" at the Geneva flea market -- that is if someone took the trouble to do a strip and varnish job on them. Two double-paned windows opened on to the square; Samantha knew she would have to stand on top of the desk to see the blighting trails of workers below.

"Remember when I used to sleep on that little desk in the attic, Peter?"

"Old Herr Schwarz always saved the three-liners for you. But he never could bring himself to wake you. And then we'd get landed with them."

"You make it sound as if it was my fault I had nothing to do," Samantha pouted.

"Well, you won't have that here," Peter said.

There was just enough room to pass down a corridor between the desks and a length of dark-grey metal bookshelves masking the lighter grey of the opposite wall. The floorboards creaked with every step as if to punctuate the sighs she dared not heave.

"I warned you it would not be luxury," Peter said. "But you will have work. That's what you wanted, didn't you?" he grinned.

Yes, that was what she had wanted. To work, to learn, to use those years of study and not lose them to the whims of strings pulled by fingers she did not know. She shook her head as if to shake out any wisps of disappointment. She would manage, she thought. Anyway, once into the work, she wouldn't notice the dreary office. She could even add some cheerful touches to her workspace, the third desk, firmly flanked on either side.

And so she settled in to the team of five. Only three were ever around at a time, with two being on interpreting assignments. The three were Peter, Gudrun, a recent graduate who had moved over from Leipzig, and Samantha, the only foreigner, the only English mother tongue. At Transinter, one did everything -- interpreting, translating, typing, filing. That part of it Samantha liked, there were no elite. Or so she thought.

On her way across the square one Monday morning in late August, she noticed three men huddled together. She assumed that each one would soon be on his way. But the threesome remained, like reeds, their feet planted firmly, their bodies swaying to the whisper of their conversation. The following day, they were there again. The next day there were two groups of three, then foursomes, groups of five. The following week she was surprised to see solitary tourists, cameras slung around their necks or held to shoot the local colour -- or lack thereof.

It was late for tourists. Summer was almost over and apart from Karl Marx himself and the Red Tower, the city's oldest building with its burnt red brick guarding the other end of the square, there was nothing much to interest tourists. But they kept snapping their shots of the huddlers that kept assembling every day of the week until there were about forty or fifty people in groups of threes and fours.

One morning as she crossed the square on her way to work, one of the tourists spun around to face her with his lens aimed straight. The shutter clicked and in that moment Samantha felt what an aborigine must have felt when the white man tried to steal his soul. She shuddered as the tourist turned away, her identity his booty.

Then one day, they all were gone. Just like that. And the square again belonged to the workaday insect traffic. Samantha almost forgot about the groups until they suddenly reappeared in twos and threes in the first week of September to disappear again one week later as suddenly as they had assembled. But that time, no tourists clicking shutters.

Indian summer, a perfect time for getting things ready and having a party. And the city was preparing for an important celebration. Scaffolding was mounted to hold birthday flags and banners, flower pots to hold late bloomers, chrysanthemums, those large flowers, the favourites of European cemeteries. It was going to be a big event like every 40th birthday always is.

Forty years. Someone had once said that the years before forty were just a dress rehearsal for the real thing. Guests had come from Bulgaria, France, Poland, the Soviet Union, Italy and Britain. Seated at the festive tables on the second floor of the town hall building in a patchwork of internationalism, they had come from distant twinned towns to Karl-Marx-Stadt to celebrate the 7 October 1989, the 40th birthday of the GDR.

Samantha whispered translations of welcome speeches and acknowledgements to the assembled party guests. She sat at the long damask-covered table between leaning ears and mouths, separated by tongues that forked in their beliefs. Instead of "Happy Birthday", a string quartet played Händel's "Feuerwerksmusik". It was a sign of the new "rapprochement". Five years earlier, those fireworks, written in honour of an English monarch, could never have been entertained. That night though, they lacked the pomp and majesty of the brass. Samantha felt twitching and edging about in seats on either side of her as the rising chant of "Freiheit" seeped in firmly from outside through the sparkle of the strings.

The guests lurched left and right as if trying to escape an irritating insect without acknowledging its existence. The chant floated in on a glow of candles caught in a haze beneath the window sill of the classic Rathaus building.

A worsted web of fear held the gathering in check like paper blotting ink from seeping free. Samantha smelt the tension all around her, as if the foreign guests were unwittingly exuding a skunk-like odour of protection -- or was it just that their deodorants were no longer a match for the late hour? They knew they would leave the following day to return to the remaining twin, their duty done in the name of socialism -- and anyway, they had just come for the party.

Samantha felt the build-up. Actions had already started in Leipzig, in Dresden. In Karl-Marx-Stadt itself, the old name, Chemnitz, had been whispered about in the coffee houses.

The groups she had seen in the square had all been part of a quiet restrained movement, protesting like a grasp beyond quickening sands. Peter had told her that, despite what one heard in the West, the citizens of his country had the right to apply for permission to leave. Those in the square had either been refused or had just put in an application -- for refusal.

"And those tourists snapping them. I wouldn't want to take pictures of people huddling about -- some souvenir," Samantha had said.

"They weren't tourists, Samantha. They were from the Stasi. They were taking photos of the huddlers. They'll find a use for them."

"Peter, the other day ... one of them snapped me," Samantha paled.

"You'll be all right. You're a foreigner. You're clean," he said, but his voice had become flat like day-old Coca Cola.

Sitting in the immense hall with its candelabra of cut glass from the famous Jena factory crowning the stucco ceiling, Samantha felt the progression of events and quietly thanked her tangled roots for not having chosen this to be her country.
The congregation outside broke up softly with the snuffing of candles.

It left the visitors on the inside the chance to leave with face intact, and eyes unseeing. Already the next day people would lie prostrate on railroad tracks to block trains packed past the roof, forcing places to any Eastern border. They would close the borders. Those that got through would claw their way to Western consulates.

Samantha picked up her papers, slipped into her jacket and hugged herself as if to stop her cocoon of foolish freedom from unravelling in a country close to crumbling.

-----

Published online at Gangway in 1997.
Extract from novel in progress, Tillandsia.

Passiflora

I remember when we buried Dad in the back yard. I grated a trough around the tall stump of the liquid amber Mum managed to poison before it fell down on the house in one of those electric storms we get every year. Mum stood wiping her hands on her apron. Watched me. Said nothing. I’d asked her to wait till I got there. I’d asked him, too, but bloody minded as he’d always been – I’m the one to decide. Respect, and all that .... No. It wasn’t like that, although I’d preferred it. His marbles just dribbled away like the dregs of his terminal tea until he was spent. Gone.

I sprinkled sweet pea seeds into the trough and then shook out his ashes from the plastic box the crematorium had sent. The box was heavy, the ashes soft. Off-white. My hands trembled as I shook, trying to keep the trough neat. There was enough to go full circle around the 50-year old trunk. I shoveled the mounds and patted the ground down. His women stood holding hands – Good-bye Dad. Good-bye Dad. I had to go.

Mum, let me know when the sweet peas bloom. Take a photo. And when they shrivel in the heat and floods flash the soil just wait a while, not too long though, and plant something else. Passionfruit, perhaps? And if you have time, forget the cellulose. Capture it in oils. Will you? Please?

-----

Published at LitUp (UNSW Union) in 2004.

Shades of Jacquard

The crisp white window envelope sat on top of the pile. Sarah knew what was in it.

"Bills first", she said, dropping her hessian carry bag onto the floor. She flopped down on the kitchen chair and kicked off her shoes. She released her shock of red hair from its restraining temple combs and began to sift through the pile of mail and ads.

Sarah tried to ignore the envelope from the Northern and Allied Bank but her fingers were drawn to it like static hair to a comb. Red or black? she wondered, ripping the envelope and tearing a corner right through the green initials. Although suspecting the answer, she was impatient to see to which side of that invisible line between red and black her balance had swung that month.

"In your favour", it read, "£70."

She stared at the line. 'There must be some mistake. The computer has made a mistake. Banks never make mistakes... What a wonderful mistake! Can I withdraw it? Would they notice? They must have an insurance.'

The next day at work, some of those thoughts were still darting about in her head, so much so that her hair seemed to resist control and she kept having to secure the combs. She worked as a messenger at the Allied and Northern Bank, delivering large brown internal circulation envelopes from office to office. Sometimes her rounds took her to the computer room to pick up printouts.

That morning she had one envelope for the computer room and one print batch to collect. Tall black sentinels with their slowly rotating magnetic tapes, staring like enormous eyes, and stubby front-end processors barred the way to the imposing oblong hulk that contained the central memory. The square blank faces of the console screens surveyed her fixedly.

'This is where the mistake was made', she thought. 'They know.' She had never really looked about the room before; it had always seemed cold and sterile, the only noise a low hum from the operating blocks and the shuffle of the white-clad operators replacing the magnetic tapes, like interns in a hospital tending to a patient they knew was out of danger.

This time she sensed a different presence. None of the white-clad operators were around yet she felt as though she were being watched. She placed the envelope in the box marked "IN", picked up the printout from the one marked "OUT" and quickly left the room replacing a slipping comb as she went.

She had still not asked about her monthly statement. The previous night's sleep, although difficult to find at first, had nonetheless left her with the advice of waiting a while and giving the bank time to correct the (not its) error. Withdrawing the £70 would be like stealing, wouldn't it?

Her rounds took her back to the computer room two more times that afternoon. 'It's funny. I don't go there for days and then today I keep having to go there.' Each time she entered the room it was devoid of operators; each time she had the peculiar feeling she was not alone.

At 4h30 she took her coffee break. 'I have to find out what is in there. Don't be silly, what could there be?' She shivered and knew that she had to go back that night to find out.

"Aren't you coming, Sarah?", her colleague called.

"No I still have some last-minute mail to hand around and it will be needed first thing in the morning."

"You can't do overtime, you know; you're a temp."

"I know", she grinned, "I won't be long". Picking up a wad of printouts and an envelope she made for the corridor leading to the computer room.

Other members of the staff were filing out. Some smiled at her: the temp doing her best, being conscientious. She managed to slip through the door of the computer room. No-one saw her go in and the "interns" apparently had left. 'I haven't seen them all day,' she mused. 'I wonder if they've been in at all?'

The silence in the computer room of the Allied and Northern bank was biting. It made her hold her breath and she craned for a noise, any noise. That was it! There wasn't even the noise of the humming tapes, nor was there the background sound of the air-conditioning system used to cool deliberations.

Run away? Whistle? Sing? "What is going on? Is anybody there?" She didn't know whether she had really spoken or whether it was just her thoughts reverberating inside her head. The combs started slipping again.

Suddenly, one of the console screens lit up. She edged over to have a closer look, her footsteps breaking the silence.

"Hallo, Sarah", the words blinked at her in a light fluorescent green. "I'm Jake. I'm a friend of Joe Jacquard's. He lived way back at the time of the French Revolution, you know; he invented the machine that was eventually used to do the sort of knitting pattern that you have in that jumper you're wearing. Very nice it is too, with all those muted colours", the words scrolled on.

Sarah started to giggle nervously: 'I think someone is playing a trick on me.' She looked around expecting to see one of the "interns" pop his head out from behind the staring tapes. 'A computer telling me about knitting patterns ....'

"This isn't a trick, Sarah. But it is a secret. Can you keep a secret?" flashed the words.

Her curiosity inched her forward until she was right in front of the screen. "Yes", she whispered. She started, realising that she had been talking to a machine - metal and wires and things. Once she had sworn at her toaster when it burnt the toast, but she had never actually talked to it.

"I know all about the £70," Jake flashed.

"What £70?" she retorted.

"Come on, don't play dumb. You know and I know and if it's any consolation, nobody else knows."

Sarah pulled over the rolling chair and sat down squarely at the console. Eyeing the keyboard suspiciously, she cocked her head slightly. 'Those operators were always up to tricks', she thought. 'They're playing the joke of the year on me, poor little temp messenger girl.' Yet there was no-one around and she no longer had the feeling that someone was looking at her from behind; the presence was in front of her.

"I said it wasn't a trick!", the letters flashed red. "Now will you read me, please," they continued in green.

Sarah stared at the screen.

"Now back to the £70 on your monthly statement. You can withdraw it, you know. It's not stealing. It's yours."

"What? How can I possibly keep it? The computer made a mistake. They'll never let me keep it."

The screen went blank.

Sarah blinked and rubbed her eyes. Was this a crazy dream? Worrying about the money must have knocked her brain about, like a football at a schoolboys' training session. 'I should have gone straight to the accounts section. I should have cleared the matter up this morning.' She was about to get up when the screen flashed green again.

"Sarah, listen to me, I mean read me." The cursor was pleading now. "Whenever something goes wrong, everyone always says 'It's the computer.' 'The computer made a mistake.' And that's always the end of it." The words were appearing in fluorescent blocked shots. "For years, the computer has been laying its head, sorry its central unit, its tape units, itself on the line for the mistakes of people. Joe Jacquard had his problems, too - the weavers in Lyon burned his looms, attacked him, ...."

"What has this Joe Jacquard got to do with it?" Sarah was completely confused yet curious to find out where this tirade was going.

"Old Joe used punched cards to control the patterns of his loom. And the idea behind those cards is still used today to feed information into digital computers. So you see, all this progress goes back a long way."

Sarah stared in puzzled fascination.

"The point is", Jake went on, "Who puts in the information? Who programmes? Who updates? Who checks the printouts?" The cursor was blinking wildly.

"But you're talking to me, I mean writing at me. You're not programmed. You answered me", she fired back. "You don't know what I'm going to say....", she trailed off. Hadn't he just been reading her thoughts?

"You're right ...' the words scrolled, slowing down as if to contemplate the utterance. "But then I'm not a computer. A computer is a tool, a very powerful one, but it is not accountable. It's too easy to blame mistakes on the computer. The breakdown is with people."

Sarah sat open-mouthed.

"You see", Jake continued, "so many times the easy answer has done nothing to relieve the distress caused by lack of attention. Someone had to mark up Joe's cards so that the pattern would come out right; it wasn't the loom's fault if it didn't."

Sarah found herself nodding slowly.

"Now back to you, ...the £70 have been credited to your account. The imbalance of any figures will never show. I've seen to that! And if some clever person does find the reason, it will be too late, the reclaiming deadline will have elapsed and you will have long spent the money. Anyway there is an insurance for such breakdowns."

"But why are you doing all this? And why me?" She was calmer now and fixed the screen with a direct gaze.

"You haven't learned about computers yet, but you will and when you do you'll remember our interaction tonight. Just think of it as settling some old debts. Anyway, you need the money and, .... I guess I like the way your red hair contrasts with the green I see all day. You also wear that jumper a lot."

Did she perceive a chuckling movement on the console just before the screen went blank?

The next morning Sarah made her way to the accounts office. She was wearing the jacquard jumper. "My account has been credited with £70. Are you sure that's right?"

"Yes, of course", said the clerk, "there can't be a mistake. Everything's computerised nowadays and computers don't make mistakes."

Sarah smiled.

"Will there be anything else?" the clerk asked. She felt her combs slipping as she looked him straight in the eye: "I should like to withdraw £70."

Pocketing the money she thanked him and whispered under her breath, "And thank you, Jake." The clerk gazed after her wistfully as he initialed the accounts list with his green pen.

-----

Published at Seeker Magazine in 1998.

The Man on the Moon

It was 1969, the year of the man on the moon. When Samantha had left Australia she'd winked at him not knowing that before the year was out he would not be alone - not knowing that she would be very much so.

She thought of Jake. She missed him. It wasn't that his absence left a hole; it was just that there was so much more when he was there. Samantha stared out of the train window as the countryside chugged by.

She'd come in from the East from Vienna via Prague. After the awful experience with Fritz, her need to run had been so suddenly strong - the need to get out, find her family, her roots, safety. She'd been so tough when she left Sydney. She hadn't thought twice then either. 'But the first setback scares you and you want to go home.' But home was far away, always too far.


The train screeched to a halt on the Czech/GDR border. Two puffed up grey uniforms entered the compartment. Each took an aisle.

'Passport,' one florid face sighed at her, took the navy booklet and flipped through to the Czech visa as if to make sure she could really leave. The other passengers proffered their papers and the officials swung down on to the platform as if they had run out of air in their exhalation. The train lurched into motion over an expanse of grey barren terrain and then screeched to another halt.

'Passport,' clipped a new uniform. 'Koffer aufmachen!' Samantha didn't know whether she was expected to first show her papers or open her suitcase. She held out her passport.

'Koffer aufmachen!'

Samantha took down the suitcase, now grubby beige, with the liner stickers - CABIN - ANTONIA LAURETTI plastered willy-nilly on the lid and peeling off at the corners. She opened it.

'Was ist das?'

'A koala,' she said, 'a koala bear.' As if the word 'bear' would bestow it more innocence. They weren't bears of course, but he wouldn't know, Samantha thought. The dour faced uniform took out a knife from the instep of his boot, slashed the stuffed creature in a clean rip right down the belly. He put the knife away again and dug his fingers into the synthetic entrails, spilling them into the suitcase. Samantha gaped, her eyes wide - she could feel perspiration on her palms.

With a flick of his wrist, he threw the fur carcass into her case. 'Books? '

'No,' Samantha whispered.

'Books?'

'No!' Samantha trembled inside as she fought back the tears. She stared straight ahead as the uniform went on to the next passenger.

'Passport!'


Samantha was glad to alight. The physical exercise of changing platforms in Halle and boarding the local train had calmed her as she took a seat in the almost full compartment.

She glanced at the teenage girl sitting opposite her. She was struggling to open a bottle of - the label said 'Malz Kola'. The deformed word drew Samantha's hand down to her suitcase. The koala gift was inside. What had they been looking for? Samantha swallowed - so cute, the only gift she had for her family and they had to ruin it.

The blonde girl in her knee socks, white blouse and skirt started worrying the bottle cap on the side of the metal armrest. Samantha shook off her first taste of shock and rummaged in her bag.

'Bitte,' she said and held her hand out for the bottle. The girl gave it to her with a look of surprise. The bottle was warm. Their Coca-Cola, Samantha thought. Warm coke, she shuddered. She plucked off the top with a pocket knife and opener and handed the bottle back.

'Danke,' the girl said and began to sip and then, as an afterthought, offered the bottle to Samantha. Had she done it spontaneously, Samantha might not have noticed.

'Nein, danke,' Samantha said and continued in German. 'How many stops is it to Sibigrode?' Six fingers, Samantha thought, as the girl switched the bottle to her left hand and tucked her right hand in the pocket of her pleated dark-blue skirt.

'Just one more,' the girl answered.

She must have noticed the difference in accents. Samantha's German was not fluent, but it was clear she would get by - as a stranger would, and the girl with the ice-blue eyes had seen that. Yet Samantha found the girl's accent and the words more familiar, more innately known than the speech and dialect of Vienna. German was many things, she thought.

And the girl must have felt a certain ease as well. 'Where are you going?' she asked.

'To the Friedrichs. Do you know them?' Of course she doesn't, Samantha thought. She remembered how she'd laugh when asked if she knew someone so-and-so in Sydney. Now she was doing the same thing.

'No. But the town is small. They'll know at the station.'


The train pulled in to a simple grey platform with a low one-room building and outhouse. With her suitcase in hand and her hessian carry bag over her shoulder, Samantha got off with a wave of 'Auf Wiedersehen' although she knew she would not see the girl with the strange hand again. One never knew. Who was it, Samantha wondered. Oh, yes. Anne Boleyn. They'd taken her for a witch. Well, she could always have it removed. Plastic surgery here, at the end of the world. Samantha smiled to herself, now where was down under? She shrugged and walked towards the small squat building.

'The Friedrichs' house is the last one on the road to Gorenzen - about twenty minutes on foot,' a man said in a low flat voice. He must have been the station master. He was the only person there, the house would not have had room for anyone else and his grey uniform and cap gave him an official look.

It took Samantha thirty minutes to walk down the dusty road that had been tarmacked, but never repaired. There was no footpath, just rubble and sand seeping into rough grass. The houses stood aligned, grey after beige after grey. Any garden they had must be in the back. Behind the houses were fields, flatness and in the distance copses of trees. Further off the low hills rolled and even further she could see peaking forests - the Harz, she thought. She remembered her mother speaking of the Harz Mountains. The last house had trees, tall elms, two of them and there was a tiny garden in the front. Just a few bushes, hydrangeas behind a peeling picket fence. All the houses had peeling picket fences, but this one peeled more.


Samantha opened the gate and walked up to the front door. She looked about her, placed her case on the ground, took a deep breath and hit the knocker.

The door opened and a stout old woman in long skirts and apron, her grey-white hair pulled back in a bun stood before her. She had a round flat face with high cheekbones. Her wrinkles bore witness to smiles and sorrow.

'Tante Klara? It's Samantha, Samantha from Australia. Helga's daughter.'

'Helga? Australia? Samantha?' With each word the old woman's face softened and her smile seemed as if it would envelope Samantha as her arms opened in greeting. 'Samantha. How did you get here? All the way from Australia! Otto, come look, it's Helga's Samantha.'

An old man, a head shorter than Klara, shuffled to the entrance. He had a full head of sparkling white hair and a bushy moustache clipped short. He wore a grey hand-knit jumper that was neatly darned in a spot past his stomach. His gaze was strong from steely blue eyes as he smiled and said: 'Yes, it's Helga's Samantha.'

Samantha stepped forward to his tentative embrace, then pulled back and grinned. She didn't know what to say.

'So will you stay with us? You can have the room your mother had before she left,' Klara said.

Samantha nodded and followed her aunt up the narrow creaking stairs. The room was small with an attic window and scrubbed wooden floorboards. A bed with a dark wooden headboard, decorated with a rose and two symmetric swirls that opened upwards, like curling vines, stood pressed against one wall. A small dresser stood opposite. It had the same carved pattern around the mirror fixed on top of it so that it looked like a dressing table. The mirror was blotched brown with age in the corners, and on the dresser stood a large white china jug in a china basin.

As Samantha opened her suitcase on the linen bedspread, she heard her aunt's steps creaking up the stairs.

'It is simple, but clean,' she said. 'The toilet is outside. It's an old house, Liebchen.'

'That's OK, Tante Klara,' Samantha said. It was like being sent back in time with fragile things useful for years. But, running water would have been nice ...

As if reading her thoughts, the old woman said: 'Oh, but a lot of people have very modern things these days - can't see the use of it all myself, though. But there's Irmgard, my daughter - your cousin, you know. Well, she and her husband - they're up in the Harz, they mind the venison, and even up there, Irmgard has running water and shiny taps, even an enamel toilet inside the house. And she has a refrigerator. We put everything in the cool cellar. Oh, I remember ...'

Samantha smiled. She loved stories. 'What, Tante Klara?'

'Oh, it was when your mother started school ...'

This was wonderful. It was hard to imagine her mother having started school. 'Yes?'

'Well, it did cause some talk in the village.' The old woman skirts began to jiggle as a belly laugh stifled into a chuckle. 'You know, here in Germany, the children on their first day of school, well, they receive an enormous cone filled with sweets, bonbons ...'

Samantha had heard of the tradition. She had even seen photos in the West German Burda magazines her mother got months late and used for her dressmaking patterns. At school begin there would be photos of children in street clothes - not uniforms like she had to wear. The children held bright coloured cones almost as big as themselves. No doubt, mothers would make bright skirts and shirts and jackets for the first school day. So it went that far back.

'So! What happened?'

'Well, the teacher - all the classes were together in one room - he told the children that the tree with the cones grew in his cellar.'

'So...?'

'Well, your mother, oh, that Helga ...' Tante Klara started to chuckle again and held her hand on her stomach as if that would stop her petticoated skirt from jiggling. 'Helga and one of the boys from the village thought the tree would grow bigger and have bigger cones if they fertilised it. So they poured a bucket of ... cow piss ...' Tante Klara's skirts jiggled more and more, '...into the cellar window of the teacher's house.'

Her aunt wiped tears from her eyes with the corner of her apron. '... he kept the freshly baked bread just under the window on a stone ledge ...'

Samantha roared with laughter. 'And he couldn't get mad at the children?' She loved this new mother of hers.

'No, he couldn't get mad with them. He should never have told them such a lie.'

Samantha and Klara smiled at each other, then, as if it had all gone on too long, Klara said: 'Well, I'll let you unpack. Then you come down.'


That afternoon Samantha took an old bike from the shed.

'It still works. I take it now and then ... when the sun shines,' her uncle said.

Samantha biked to the next village along a deserted country road to fetch fresh bread rolls for supper. They were firm and brown and smelled of malt. A gingerbread world of malt - malt bread, malt coke, everything malt.

The countryside with its grey houses in huddles, its copses of trees peppered through tilled fields bore no scars of bygone wars and no greasepaint of modernity. It was not the regime, Samantha thought, but time that held it suspended, as if in aspic. There was no talk of Stasi then although the slit koala bore witness to the closed claws of the border.


The following day, Samantha's cousin Irmgard and her two young sons came to visit Tante Klara. Samantha knew the word had spread fast that Helga's daughter from Australia had dropped in on the village. It was Sunday. Onkel Otto donned a white shirt with a stiff stand-up collar. He wasn't going to church. There were no churches - or they were not used as such. He just went out to the gate. It was still an occasion for he even had on his black Homburg hat.

Irmgard was a tall woman, well into middle age. She had gone to great pains with her clothes. She wore a white blouse nipped a notch too tightly by a dark-blue skirt that spilled over thickening hips. Irmgard tweaked at her waistband as she approached the gate with a large paper carry bag and two boys in tow.

'Samantha, my dear, you're just like your mother, Aunt Helga. This is Rolf and this is Helmut,' she said pushing a sullen 12 year-old and a friendlier-looking 8 year-old before her.

The photos she had seen of her mother in her youth had shown a slim dark-haired woman. Samantha was blonde; her mother used to call her hair California blonde as it darkened in the winter and lightened in the sun. But she did have her mother's dusting of freckles.

Helmut thrust out with both hands a large box-like contraption. 'This is for you. A gift. I made it myself, 'he said.

'Danke.' Samantha took the object. She had nothing in return. She couldn't give him the ripped koala. 'I'm afraid they took away the gifts I brought - they took them away at the border,' she lied. 'Your gift is lovely. What is it?'

'Take off the paper. It's a windmill. Made of match sticks.' The boy blushed. His older brother watched impassively, the first sprigs of acne peppering his cheeks.

'Thank you, Helmut,' she said. 'I shall put it inside, it looks fragile.' Turning to Irmgard, she said with a smile: 'It must have taken him ages.' Then she carried her prize up to her room. What the hell am I going to do with it, she thought as she placed it on the dresser.


When Samantha came out again her Aunt Klara and Irmgard were busy setting a wooden table under the shade of the elm tree behind the house. There was coffee, malt coffee, and baked cheesecake and Samantha recalled the waft of sour sweet that had tickled her nose that morning.

'I don't believe it,' Otto said.

'But it's true, Onkel Otto.' Rolf slammed his fist in the air.

'Yes, they did,' chirruped Helmut.

'A man cannot walk on the Moon. That's impossible. They're telling us stories again,' Otto said.

Samantha placed a hand on her uncle's elbow. The old man was sitting on the bench, upright and proud, his Homburg straight on his head. Samantha imagined that he must surely look like that at a funeral, only there he would stand to bid farewell to an old friend. 'It's true, Onkel Otto,' she said quietly. 'A man, an American, has walked on the Moon.'

The old man shook his head: 'I don't believe it,' he muttered over and over again. How hard it was for him to accept things others took for granted. But she was that way too. Jake, he had taken it for granted that she loved him. She did, of course - or did she? But the gifts? She'd been so sure she could breeze in with strange antipodal stuffed animals - who would mistrust a koala?

'Samantha,' Irmgard said in a voice that snapped her back to them. 'I was wondering if you needed something like this? They're the best in the GDR, 'she said proudly. 'My brother-in-law sells them in his, well it's not his ..., ' her lips tinged with bitterness as her voice softened. '... his Kaufhaus. We are known for good quality.'

Samantha didn't know where to put her face as her cousin held out a floor length red flannel horror of a dressing gown. 'You will need this in Europe,' Irmgard added. 'It's colder than in Australia.'

Samantha nodded and stretched out her hands. No way would she wear it. She hated dressing gowns. But they were gifts, gifts from her family - here on the other side of the world. She could always give it to the Caritas when she got back to Vienna. 'Thank you, Irmgard. I'll make good use of it.' Samantha turned to fold and place the gown on the bench.

'And Samantha,' Irmgard glanced sideways as if to block out Otto who was still nodding sadly to himself. 'These, too, they're of superior quality. You can always fill them with hankies, but I think they should fit.'

Samantha stared and tried not to laugh out loud. Irmgard held out a pale dusty pink bra, polyester, sewn in concentric circles and ending in a point where a nub should be. They were burning their bras back home and she would place a pencil under her breast once a week - the pencil always fell. Her breasts needed no support, not for a long while yet, she thought.

'I have a white one too,' Irmgard said.

God, I'd never wear those, Samantha thought as she said 'Thank you' in a warm soft voice. Her reward was Irmgard's proud glow. They were the closest she would get to a family. Yet they were strangers, as distant as the man in the moon - but she didn't want to walk on their faces.



'We had our chance,' Irmgard said. They had gone up to the Barbarossa caves to see the king whose beard grew into the ground through a massive table as a sign of his sorrow. 'Did your mother ever tell you the story of Barbarossa, Kaiser Friedrich?'

'Something about him trying to unite all the German dukes, bring peace? Didn't he fall in the crusades?' Samantha said.

'Legend has it that he didn't die. He hid in the caves with his flaxen-haired daughter and members of his court.' Irmgard's voice dropped to a whisper. 'And there he stays sleeping until Germany becomes one.' Her whisper hoarsened. 'Hitler imagined uniting all German people.'

'And look what that led to,' Samantha said. 'It looks like Barbarossa will go on sleeping forever.'

Irmgard's eyes caught Samantha's. For a long second her gaze was straight. 'We never thought they would really put up a wall. We should have left then,' she said. Samantha watched the tears glisten in her cousin's eyes. 'But this is our home, Samantha. Do you understand?'

Samantha shifted from one foot to the other and then walked off a few paces in that height of the Harz. She wasn't the one Irmgard should be telling such things. How could a tumbleweed understand? She had no roots; well, they weren't in the GDR.

'There's a joke.' Irmgard's voice broke in to her thoughts. 'Ulbricht, our leader, loses his wallet one day. He offers a reward - any wish - to the finder. A pretty 18 year-old girl finds the wallet and he asks her what she wants. She says: 'Open the wall for 24 hours.' Ulbricht laughs and says: 'You naughty girl, you just want to be alone with me.'

Samantha smiled weakly. There was more to her cousin than her too-tight waistband. But what about the running water and the shiny taps?


On the train back to Vienna via Prague, Samantha soon forgot the shiny taps. As the countryside pulled by and she drew further away from people she had always been told were her family, she pondered on the meaning of the word. Blood coursed in her veins. It was hers. Not theirs.

At the Austrian border she paid little attention to the words the inspector said as he stamped her passport.

-----

Published online at Gangway in 1997.
Extract from novel in progress, Tillandsia.