Fire Fire

fire fire

Eva Sallis was born in Bendigo in 1964. She writes mainly fiction. She is a Visiting Research Fellow in English at the University of Adelaide.

Also by Eva Sallis

Fiction

Hiam
(1998)

The City of Sealions
(2002)

Mahjar
(2003)

Non-fiction

Sheherazade through the Looking Glass:

The Metamorphosis of the 1001 Nights
(1999)

Co-edited

Painted Words
(1999)

Forked Tongues
(2002)

Dark Dreams: Australian Refugee Stories
(2004)

eva sallis
fire fire

First published in 2004

Copyright © Eva Sallis 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The
Australian Copyright Act 1968
(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone:   (61 2) 8425 0100
Fax:        (61 2) 9906 2218
Email:     [email protected]
Web:      
www.allenandunwin.com
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Sallis, E.K. (Eva K.).
    Fire fire.

    ISBN 1 74114 352 7.

    I. Title.

A823.3

Set in 11.5/16 pt Granjon by Asset Typesetting Pty Ltd
Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For L'hibou and Bodie
Still at large

acknowledgments

T
hanks to Annette Barlow, Anne Bartlett, Kirsty Brooks, Rose Creswell, Sophie Cunningham, Jenni Devereaux, Mariana Hardwick, Sue Hosking, Annette Hughes, Maria Joseph, Stephanie Luke, Bryan Lynch, Gay Lynch, Heather Millar, Anna King Murdoch, April Murdoch, Roger Sallis, Tom Shapcott, Morgan Smith, Julia Stiles, Mandy Treagus, Colette Vella, Phil Waldron and Teresita White. Thanks also to Richard, Briar, Erika, Barbara, Alfred, Konrad, Richie, Robbie, L'hibou and Michael.

A version of ‘Topend' was published in
Elle
in 1999 as ‘Summer Goes North'.

A work-in-progress version of ‘Dirige Dominus Deus Meus' was published in
Southerly
in 2003.

The Tomten
is a book by Astrid Lindgren. The nightingale song is a traditional German folk song.

Contents

acknowledgments

Prélude

Aubade

Crescendo

Wolf notes

Abendmusik

Dirige dominus deus meus

Coda

prélude

T
he doorframes buckled and split. Struts melted and curled. Paint peeled back, revealing little dramas along the architraves. The bared white wood turned gold, crazed and black in seconds, then spat jets of blue and orange. The kitchen, the first room roofless, roared like a wind tunnel, cooking the stacked dirty saucepans until they folded in on themselves and formed white-hot aluminium patties. The floor rose to meet the flames, as if something invisible were shouldering its way out from underneath the house, issuing from the flowering floor, making a grand appearance. Then the kitchen windows exploded, scattering shards of hot black glass over the garden, scorching the roses and Christmas lilies. The head-height cupboards opened their mouths, red and roaring, and vomited three decades of photos, albums, certificates, scrapbooks, sketches, locks of hair and other detritus into the up-draught of the flames. The table suddenly cracked in the middle and heaved dark thighs into the flames. The roof of the house lifted, flapped dark wings once before it crashed onto the wilting garden in a pile of shrieking galvanised iron.

In the light-scalded auditorium, the instruments flared in their corners. The cello's golden varnish was a silk scarf whipped away and then the cello belched and burst. Violins curled like babies on the roaring sofa.

Small creatures, frozen into doorframes and cornices, came to life and began to sing. They hissed and farted, sizzled and sighed, whispering joyously around the walls as the fire reared fifty metres into the air. Listen listen listen, the voices muttered, licking their lips before they too, one by one, bucked, bent their backs and flew screaming skywards.

Scorched photos winged with flame were puffed into the sky, then floated away. Faces smiled up at the blue, as the horses, goats, dolls and the siblings they hugged or held were eaten away from their arms. Charred and separated fragments of the Houdini family fell softly, like black snow, on the surrounding bush.

aubade

‘W
e are internationals, transnationals,' Acantia said, twisting around, catching each child's eye from the front seat of the kombi. ‘But we are retreating from the world and we must find the right place for us to live out our days in
full
creativity. All the spiritual masters and the great artists retreat from the world.'

Her eyes were a little square, like those of a cornered cat, and Pa looked resolute. The kombi passed mountain fortresses, their damp and rotting timbers barely visible among the tall trees, passed cavern houses hidden behind cliff faces. The kombi passed by endless expanses of stubble and a sequence of ruined stone, brick, slate, weatherboard and battered tin, and other piles of broken rooms. The kombi, lined with the faces of the five children and baby, passed by a low green cottage and sheds in the dunes on the edge of a great grey lake. It had to be something extraordinary.

Acantia made an adventure of it but the children sensed something underneath.

They had left the great world in a great hurry.

Pa was very big: Acantia looked like a dwarf next to him on the front seat. Pa drove the kombi but they all knew that Acantia chose the direction. Pa found their house, finally, but Acantia chose it. When they first rattled along the bush track to Whispers they found themselves facing something very unusual indeed. The house was a strange conglomeration, partly an old hall, the former residence of a bankrupt named Angus Bad, secreted on a large bushland property in the hills near the city of Toggenberg. The grey and brown trunks of the stringybarks surrounded it like an army weathering a long siege. They were lean and spare and hardened. The birds fell silent as the Houdinis, twigs and dried gum leaves crackling under the tyres, wound their way along the disused bush track. Pa stopped the kombi and the children listened.

The bush gave off faint snapping and intermittent crackling sounds, like sentinels easing their knee joints and cracking their jawbones. It was late spring and the early heat shimmered through the limp grey and red leaves, which seemed to wriggle and writhe out of the corner of the eye.

The birds started up again, cautiously, and the sentient sounds of the bush were swallowed.

Ursula pressed her nose to the filthy window and felt her snot sucker her nostrils to the warm glass. She stared out, wondering and wondering. It was a hideaway, for sure. You could sense that people were things of the past, that no foot had trod, and that not many, other than the Houdinis, would want to. On balance, she liked it. She had a sudden image of herself, unkempt and twiggy, with a long beard and goatskin clothes, chasing lizards. The last survivor. Yes, she liked it. What she wasn't so sure about was why they were here. The great world had seemed benign: just music and concerts and people eating undersized sausages with thumb and forefinger. There were also the bodgies, widgies, druggies, bra-burners, no-hopers, home-breakers, double agents, fifth columnists, reds and lefties, but they were easily dismissed, always had been. Acantia had no fear of them, and neither had Ursula.

How could Acantia know that the great world hadn't come with them, like a disease in her and Pa? In the kids? What if Acantia had overlooked their permeability? Maybe it was here already waiting in the gaunt trees. It was the retreat that troubled Ursula, not the world. Was retreat possible? Did the world just stay put once it had become mysteriously threatening? Was there a border between worlds?

Acantia should know.

Pa hummed Mozart sonata melodies as he stared up at the caved-in ceiling of the auditorium. He grinned at the children conspiratorially as he opened and shut the broken front door, stomped the rotted pathways, shook the trees, jumped on the floorboards. On the verandah he waved his arms at the sky, the bushland, the great trees, the absence of prying human eyes and the seclusion. He turned around and blew cheery raspberries. They could tell that Acantia really liked the place. They pranced and stomped and hooted too. Pa tuned the viola with gusto and played into every corner of the building. The sounds moaned through the dry rot, shaking loose the mites, insects, worms, eggs, snakes, birds and gnawing through to something else which was resting in the damp throat of the house, back against the wet earth in which it was half buried.

Acantia prepared some soya bean salad for a cold lunch. She surveyed her lean and grimy children, smiling distractedly. ‘You'll all be home-schooled here, true children of Nature. You will sit public examinations, and then go to Oxford University and study music or, if you wish, medicine. You'll be like Yehudi Menuhin. Marie Curie and Louis Pasteur! Sherlock Holmes! Pure minds! Inspirers and Discoverers. Heroes of the Twentieth Century. You'll put Australia on the map. We'll show 'em.'

The children spread through the strange building, swinging gingerly on the frayed ropes, testing for skeletons and other residents. Salt damp had spread like an enclosing hand from the dissolving walls against the rock face to the front of the dark hall. But it was late morning and the house was sunny and lovely.