Fire Fire (26 page)

It had taken nearly a decade and the fire for Siegfried to resurface. He emerged as someone who took no shit from Acantia and saw his brothers and sisters in controlled environments. Acantia called him a lazy good-for-nothing in vain. Siegfried simply said No, capriciously and without explanation, to everything; but didn't stop phoning her and Pa.

‘Siegfried, will you and Isa be coming over for Christmas?'

‘No.'

But he still came.

He arrived first with his wife and baby. It was a warm December afternoon. Whispers was beautiful. Redolent. Ghost-riddled. Pain-riven.

Lilo arrived in an F100 pick-up. She had been away for eighteen months and Acantia, Pa and Helmut had not seen her since she'd got back. She had wintered in a squat in Budapest, burning furniture for warmth and playing street violin, before returning to Melbourne to work as a freelance prostitutes' bodyguard. She had become an urban commando, fighting skinheads and anyone else who annoyed her. She was lean and mean, pierced and gap-toothed. She had tattoos. A rat rode on her shoulder. To compensate for her indestructible beauty, she carried weapons upon her person. No one asked why she came to Christmas fully armed.

Acantia told her to wash the dishes but hugged her tight.

Acantia was very sweet to Toxique the rat.

Pa said, ‘Prettypolly, arrrrr, me hearty,' and they all laughed.

Arno arrived, smiling shyly, with Lilo. He had long golden hair, a small red beard and moustache, and a laptop. He lived on sickness benefits, but had saved for the computer by restricting his diet to soya beans, lentils, margarine, onions, eggs and spinach for ten months.

Beate arrived in a taxi with alien-looking luggage and wearing make-up. They were all shocked at how little she was—no taller than Acantia. Beate had an accent. Beate walked straight out of family legends into life again. She had left her children in safety in the other hemisphere. She tried to cover her horror at being home for Christmas under a brittle shell of breathless excitement. She could not hide her shock at the burned-out ruin. She ran around ringing the bells of memory until Lilo said, ‘Bring out your dead.'

Beate laughed hysterically and then began to cry.

Ursula arrived on foot. Speed dropped her at the bottom of the track—after all these years she still didn't bring Speed to Whispers.

She looked around for Gotthilf, hoping wildly, but she could see from everyone's manner that Gotthilf's return could not be. She had the sudden thought that it would fix everything as suddenly as the fire—but then, how could anything be fixed?

Gotthilf didn't come home for Christmas.

Acantia and Pa had created a spectacular edifice out of the burned-out ruins.

Acantia stood with her arms held wide. Her face was crinkled up into its yearning, loving look and Ursula felt herself slewing sideways, sinking towards old selves. Acantia was very small, dressed in something that was still white. She rushed around her tall children, eager to touch them, eager to show everything she and Pa had done, eager for their approval and armed to the teeth against any criticism.

She had rebuilt most of what they had ripped down. She had built beautiful, even flourishing, gardens throughout the ruins. She had packed the floor with compressed dolomite. It was an inside-out house. The enclosed verandah was roofed and windowed but the rest was nearly all open to the sky. A Japanese-style bridge made out of slabs of polished river redgum joined the remains of the auditorium to the outer garden.

Ursula roamed through it all in the elated, exhausted dream-world of a woman who has been writing all night. Replete and empty, seeking more. She felt as though she was undersea diving, seeing her family for the first time. How would Gotthilf feel, seeing it all after such cataclysm, such change, and such a long passing of years? Seeing it submerged and harmless. She began to imagine that she was her brother, and that all the hugs pressed upon her semi-detached body were that impossible reconciliation.

‘Who's that trip-trapping over my bridge!' Acantia cackled at Ursula, grinning in delight at her memories, knowing that Ursula shared them. Her eyes caught Ursula's in a swift, stabbing glance.
We have an understanding
, the eyes said, loving, accusing.
I can know
all and forgive, see?

The bridge led to a pergola that resembled other pergolas in some respects. In the old music room, or rather the ground over which it had stood, there was a large pond surrounded by rocks and plants filled with frightened fish. The walls had an austere beauty: expanses of marbled plaster streaked with black and pink sand patterns that were almost like watermarks. They had aged to a subtle grandeur.

Ursula stared up at the dead trunk of the apple tree. Its crabbed skeleton, broken at the crown, leaned and embraced the airy black spine and ribs of the dead deodar.

‘I gave baked apples to all the guests at Siegfried and Isa's wedding!' Acantia giggled, putting a small hand over her broken teeth. Ursula laughed weakly. She could hear it as if she had been there.
Once in a lifetime apples! Baked on the tree! My house burned
down just last week, you know!

The fireplace was filled with dried flowers and ringed by candles. Where the kitchen had been, bright blooms of red and white were stark against the scarred and dappled walls. Ashes and roses, grey scars and geraniums. The walls were about shoulder height. Beate, looking in over them, resembled an impaled talking head. They all laughed. Parts of the ruins were staggered and each step had a pot of red geraniums bright against the black. The narrow chimney loomed tall into the crystalline sky. The old great hearth was quiet and silent but Acantia said they should come up in winter because there was no reason why they shouldn't light it as they had in the old days. They could have a winter barbecue. Some parts had bits of roof built over them but most were open to the sky. Acantia had a picture-framing room, a room with shelves and the blackened Grimm and Andersen and other storybooks. Where the old study rooms had been, Pa had a beautifully restored music room painted in light cream and sandy tones which now housed the grand piano.

On the streaked and blackened walls of the kids' room, the giant cats that Acantia had picked out in the fire scars threaded themselves sinuously, emerging clearer when seen through the corner of the eye than when faced directly. Acantia also had a medicine room, lined with what looked like dried parsnips, some with two, three, even four hairy limbs. A weed had sprung up all over Whispers which Acantia named native ginseng and used in her potions and medications.

The Tarsinis were gone. They had severed themselves from their shadows. Where they had mimicked and ridiculed the Houdinis there was a great, square, empty space through which the tall children walked or jumped. No need for doors.

The auditorium, now the pergola, was Acantia's medicine wheel. Buoyed by their unconditional admiration for all she had done, she was leaping about eagerly to show everything. They stood on the Japanese bridge looking over the clay expanse of the pergola floor. It was in itself a painting rather like a mandala, made up of shells and rocks and sand, and with a self-seeded stringybark sapling rising from near the middle. Flowers ringed the outside, and stepping blocks of polished river redgum rounds led to the bridge. It was a dry marine world.

‘Look!' she said, pointing. ‘There in that galactic spiral is the story. The whole story of this house, if you know how to read it.'

‘You have to be able to read Shell,' Helmut told Ursula, smiling.

Three spiral rays made out of a multitude of scallops and trails of pale sand radiated out from a small cairn in the centre, on top of which was a roughly pyramidal chunk of opal potch. Inside the cairn was a form of shrine containing a small wooden bowl and some other objects. Acantia leapt nimbly through the arms of the spiral.

‘You go along here by this path and you can read the whole story inscribed in it. But if you cannot read, you do this.'

She reached into the cairn, into the bowl and brought out a small carved box which had survived the fire. She opened it and withdrew a crystal, which she thrust into Ursula's hands.

‘Close your eyes!'

Ursula couldn't bring herself to. Acantia didn't notice.

‘You can see the spiral, can't you? It is the wheel of the universe, centred on this home.' Her voice was reverent. ‘From carbon comes diamond, and the miracle is the Connection!' She waved her arms above her head and twirled lightly on her toes, singing, ‘
Spiralling outward from the source of all Love.'

Acantia told Ursula casually that she had discovered the secret of physical movement to the fourth dimension and that she and Pa had been there a couple of times. The medicine wheel and the story of the house were the great launching principles of all hyperspace travel and interdimensional transportation. She said that if Ursula cared to embark on a long course of purification she could come with them next time.

Acantia looked her in the eye mischievously this time, but still with a secret message.

Ursula noticed that Acantia had tears of happiness, or happy sadness, gleaming in her eyes as she smiled up at her children.

Ursula had to walk away.

‘It's feng shui,' Acantia was saying. ‘Feng shui is used by most on
such
a small scale, but really we have to arrange the universe ourselves!'

Beate's house sagged next to the ruins in silent senility. It stank and everything in it was dirty or broken. Acantia and Pa had made it their own.

Siegfried was sitting on a log in the courtyard with Isa and their new baby. For most of them it was the first time they had met Isa, and they stared in grabs, glances and long draughts through half-closed eyes. Isa sat silent, prickly, warned, watchful, cradling the tiny creature in her arms. The baby had a hairline unheard of among the Houdinis. Siegfried had the aloof, easy air of someone who has a bodyguard. When Acantia settled down next to the mother and child, she had the look of a dog who almost dares to steal the dinner.

Acantia and Lilo sat talking in the courtyard that had been the kitchen. Acantia was laughing delightedly because they were almost talking about sex. She grabbed Lilo's hand and began reading her palm.

‘Ooooh. You will marry five times, Lilo, five
different
men!'

Lilo snorted.

Helmut said, ‘She's already had at least those five men.'

‘Aaah, but these are special ones!'

‘Obviously not special enough,' Lilo said.

Acantia giggled. ‘Oh, men!'

Then she read Lilo's health.

‘Mmmmm.
Sexually
, you are OK.'

‘Yes. So I've been told.'

Helmut and Lilo exchanged glances, Lilo mischievous, Helmut laughing but uncomfortable.

Acantia shivered with delight.

In the corner of the kitchen that was, Helmut had built a small alcove by roofing the corner with gently sloping galvanised iron. It was beautifully done. It looked like a small stable or goat shed. It sheltered the great iron frame of the burned Lipp piano, strings intact, scarred picturesquely with charcoal; a nether-regions harp. As Pa lumbered about lighting candles for the Christmas carols, Acantia called the clan together theatrically by striking the harp and clashing two battered saucepan lids together.

They sang the old songs, the strange, sweet descant from Beate making the hair rise on the back of Ursula's neck.
Ehre sei Gott. Alles Schweiget.
Dona Nobis Pacem.

They sang into the descending dusk, sitting on logs where the table once was, sitting on the sill where the Tarsinis once lived.

Acantia sat on a log, her legs tucked up to her chin, the white dress spattered with soup and streaked with charcoal. Ursula watched her mother's eyes touching the heads and bodies of her wild and vigorous children. Acantia's face was soft and gentle in the candlelight. Her cheeks flickered with orange and gold and blue and grey.

We have our snow on the inside
had been a Christmas joke many years before. Ursula's heart was cold and empty, as ruined as the house. The golden chatter of her brothers and sisters rose around the shards of their past lives. She could hear them hidden around her, the children she had saved or perhaps stolen from her mother. She wanted to cry for Acantia, but could not.

As if in answer to her guilt and emptiness Helmut's voice rose in protest somewhere behind her.

‘She loved us all. She did her best.'

Some glowing murmur soothed him and his voice fell down to earth once more.

Lilo, Siegfried and Ursula sat by the pond, laughing. The ruin was eerie and beautiful in the fading light. They listened to the others and themselves as several voices hummed and burbled, trailing upward from around the walls into the luminous dusk.

‘It is a pity now that Gotthilf can't see this.'

‘Certainly cleaned out the germs! Gotthilf can't use that argument any more to avoid bringing his kid here!'