Siddon Rock (17 page)

Two weeks after their arrival, Catalin was surprised by the knock at the door of her hotel room, and even more so to see the pale lemony-coloured shape that was Matron Helith of the Siddon Rock and District Hospital. Within a few minutes Catalin was hired to work as a wardsmaid and kitchen relief. She was to have a large room with a small room off it,
quite suitable for yourself and the child.
Catalin would use the hospital kitchen to cook meals for herself and Jos, and would cook for patients and staff when Nell was not there.
Nell has been with us longer than anyone can remember
, said Matron Helith.

The Siddon Rock and District Hospital stood at the north-east corner of the town, surrounded by pale greyish earth. Catalin had seen many exotic buildings on her rambling journey from Budapest to Berlin to Siddon Rock, but she stopped in stunned amazement at the awkwardness, the sheer, unbelievable excess of the hospital building. It stood high off the ground, spread with three equally spaced wings leading from a small central block, all balanced on what looked, to Catalin, like leafless trees.
Like a spaceship
,
Catalin would say later when telling the story of her arrival. Matron Helith laughed at Catalin's reaction.

The only builder anywhere in the district was a bloke from Queensland
, she said.
Members of the Council all looked at the plans, but everyone just assumed that it would be the same sort of building as everything else here. It wouldn't have mattered anyway, as he only knew how to put up stilt houses. It does keep very cool, though.

And indeed, as Catalin walked into the central area where the three corridors met, there was a distinct drop in temperature. Such a different hospital this was, from the crowded and dirty room where Jos had been born among the death and detritus of war. Here there were no uniformed men with vacated eyes, no urgency to give birth and leave. Here in the cocooned world of healing it was as if the outside world of hot wind and dust did not exist.

That night Catalin looked for paper to write on, to record her first day at her new job. She found the local newspaper, the
District Examiner & Journal.
The back page was headed ‘Classified Advertisements' but there was nothing but a large white space. In this Catalin wrote:
I am in a bad dream. Tonight, this first night in this place, I want to make Jossy feel good, to feel at home in all this strangeness. So I go to the kitchen to make an omelette, like he likes, or maybe a potato latke. But where are the small implements, the sauté pans, to do this. I think I am in the land of giants where I am too small, and overwhelmed by everything. Everywhere there are enormous pots, huge saucepans in which two or three eggs or a grated potato would disappear – like the country, so
big that it eats up everything. And how many people are there here to need such huge saucepans? This is such a small town, how many people could there be in the wards?

And there is a ghost called Nell in the kitchen. I see her, but she has no colour – she should not be here, but in her own place, which is not this building, so her colour waits for her at home. She tells me that people in this town do not see her at all, except when she is at work here at the hospital, or at her other work cleaning the school.

As for Nell, she realised that Catalin was one of those people who are able to slip across borders, but had yet to learn the language of this place.

Later, Matron Helith told Catalin that the huge pots were bought by the first matron of the hospital. There had been high expectations that a population of new settlers with large families would take up land, and so the hospital had been built and supplied accordingly. Instead, the marginal rainfall and barren salt-prone ground made farming difficult, and the district and town did not grow. She told this when she was showing Catalin through the three corridors of the hospital.

In the first corridor, high-ceilinged rooms were darkened by drawn blinds. Beds held bare mattresses covered with a rubber sheet, and metal trolleys were angled neatly over the bed-ends waiting to hold meal trays and medications. Next to them standard hospital bedside cupboards stood open. The wide corridor had heavy doors at each end, muffling external noises. There was a feeling of dulled expectancy.
Never been used
, Matron Helith said.
Terrible waste it is. Was to be the maternity ward, for all the new little ones. But it never happened. There's a small four-bed ward in the main corridor that we use for mums and bubs, that's more than enough. Much easier for one night-nurse to handle, too.

The second corridor was the nurses' quarters and empty except for the rooms given to Catalin and her son, as staff were generally drawn from the young women of the town. The third corridor held separate wards for men, women and children, each with six beds, and the small maternity ward of four beds.

There was one room, away from the others, where a dull light shone through the half-closed door, and Catalin could see murky grey and dark green colours hanging like dirty cobwebs around a large metal cylinder. A sound like ghostly bellows filled the room.
Ah yes, Young Ralphie
, Matron Helith said.
Poor little blighter. He'll always be here. Polio.
Catalin understood the colours then.
Stagnation, confinement, death.

Catalin hugged Jos hard when she put him to bed that night. She said goodnight and checked the names on the edge of the cello:

 

Margit Catalin 1879 to 1930 … Viktoria Margit …

Catalin Viktoria … Josis Matthieu …

 

Then she stood the instrument in the corner of the room, opposite the bed so that Jos could see the pictures painted on it.
To keep away the beasties
, she said. That night she slept
fitfully, trying to ignore the wisps of grey and murky green floating past her window.
I will not run again
, she wrote on the back of an envelope.
This must be home.

Bluey Redall talked often with Catalin when she was living at the pub. One night when Harry Best beat him at poker, Bluey challenged him, the headmaster of Siddon Rock Primary School, that Catalin Morningstar would take his crown as town intellectual. Harry demurred, saying that he had seen no signs of this when she enrolled the boy at the school. But the comment intrigued him, and he would watch Catalin as she walked down Wickton Street to the small lending library at the Council Offices and back to the hospital. She rarely had a book with her, and Harry knew the few shelves contained mainly popular fiction and some children's books.

One day Harry followed her and Jos as they climbed the track winding up the rock. He called to them and was shocked by their reaction.
Like startled rabbits
, he told the poker players.
Took off down the rock faster'n bloody lightning.

Ya want me to introduce ya?
Bluey Redall offered.
As long as I can be there when she wipes the floor with ya!

Intro, yes. Be there, no.
Harry was adamant, using his headmaster's voice.
I want to find out if she's suitable to talk to the kids. About where she comes from and what her country's like. Maybe she can tell them about living in a war. And you hanging around won't help at all.

And so it came about that one evening Catalin Morningstar left Jos with Marge Redall in the pub kitchen, and met Harry Best in the Ladies' Lounge of the Railway and Traveller's Hotel. There they engaged in the first round of mind-dances that would last for many years.

Mrs Morningstar
, Harry started.
My apologies for calling to you on the rock. I didn't mean to frighten you.

It's Miss Morningstar. I am not married
, Catalin replied.
You don't frighten me. No-one frightens me. It's your colours, they are so mixed and bright. I can't look at you without it hurts my eye.

So I'm a bright lad, am I?
Harry Best quipped, but with no response from Catalin.
Shall I sit under the table, then? So your eyes are not offended?

Catalin did not smile.
That would be quite acceptable. Then we can talk.

What colour am I?
Harry asked, from beneath the tablecloth.

A bright purpley-red
, Catalin said.
What IS this drink called? And you have streaks of orange.

A shandy. Do the colours signify anything? Do they mean I am something particular?

I know what ‘signify' means
, Catalin snapped.
It's just that I see people as colours. No reason. I just do. Other things too. Your sound is not the colour of your look – it is confusing. And may I please have a scotch whisky with some water. This is the very worst thing I have ever tasted in a glass.

Only if I can have one with you – above table. Shut your eyes for a moment.

Harry went to Kelpie Crush, who was pulling beers in the main bar. When he returned to the table, balancing a round tray on one hand, he took a pair of sunglasses from his pocket and handed them to Catalin.
Here's protection
, he said. He put down two glasses of Johnnie Walker scotch.
Here's the drinks.
Then a small jug of water.
Here's the dilutant. And here's something if we need to cool things off
, and he placed on the table a bowl of ice-cubes that Kelpie had given him from the kitchen fridge.
Now can we talk?

Catalin laughed, and it was a sound like no-one had heard before in Siddon Rock. A belly-laugh which rolled out in rich, scarlet waves, so that even the men in the bar– separated by a closed door, a corridor, another door, and the tall back of the bottle shelf – were transfixed by the splendour of it, the sheer, deep and suggestive beauty of it. Nell, walking near the railway station, smiled to hear the sound and then laughed with Catalin, and the dogs following her joined in. Marge Redall, spooning soup into a bowl for Catalin's son in the kitchen, also smiled, and then shuddered as black imps of mischief tumbled through the door on the sound.
Hey, Kelpie
, she called.
Come 'n' watch young Joe for a sec.
And she marched into the Ladies' Lounge, knowing that it was all too late.

In the kitchen Kelpie Crush smiled at Jos and handed him a glass of lemonade.
Here you are, young Joe
, he said.
We don't need to tell your mum about this
,
do we? Marge and Bluey won't mind you having a drink.

The short-term outcome of the meeting between Harry Best, headmaster of Siddon Rock Primary School, and Catalin Morningstar, holder of a doctorate in science from the University of Budapest, was that Catalin went to the primary school to tell the Grades 5 and 6 something about Europe.

The long-term result of the meeting was one that only three people ever knew about, apart from Catalin and Harry themselves. Harry's wife came to know because one day a piece of water-pressed paper fell from a pocket as she hung laundry on the line. The visible letters of a few compressed words told her some, but not enough, and she decided there and then that unless she was shamed in front of the town she would not watch them and would say nothing. What could a woman of her middle-years and inexperience do to make a living?

Nell, who cleaned the school each afternoon when she finished at the hospital, knew; but then she always saw more than the town realised.

Granna, of course, knew.

Later, when people wondered out loud to Catalin why she, such an attractive if somewhat unusual woman, had not married she always replied,
I have had only one love in my life, and cannot possibly marry.

 

BERLIN IS – WAS – A VERY BEAUTIFUL CITY
, Catalin said to the crowded classroom of children.
It had beautiful buildings that had been there for nearly a thousand years.
But
a thousand years
was not a concept available to these children of this new place, and incomprehension dulled their listening.

Think about this place here, where you live. What about the rock? The rock has been there for many, many thousands of years. And the people who were here before you came. Think about them.

But
, said one young Aberline,
there were no people here before we came.

Yes
, said Catalin,
the Aboriginal people. All the tribes.

The next day Gloria Aberline and Martha Hinks knocked on Harry Best's door. They asked him why this New Australian thought she knew more about Australian history than they themselves did.

Berlin was a very beautiful city
, Catalin told the small faces watching her.
It has – it had – wide avenues. Twice as
wide as Wickton Street to the railway station.
The child of the station-master asked why it did not have them now.

The English and American bombs have broken them down
, she said.

An angry Mister Placer closed the railway station at lunch-time and banged into Harry Best's office, demanding to know why this ignorant Balt was telling them lies about our fighting boys.

I lived in Berlin
, Catalin said.
I used to teach at a university there.
A child timidly asked why she had left. She told them,
I had to leave because the Nazis were killing my friends.

Gentle Gawain Evans stopped Harry Best in the street, wanting to know how he could allow such brutality to be talked about in his school.

What would you like me to talk about with you?
Catalin asked the class.

My dad said you're a Hun and I should ask you what you did in the war, Miss?
The voice was disguised and the class giggled nervously.

I'll tell you a story
, Catalin said. She turned the room into a dark cavern by pulling down the window-blinds, and switched on the light on the teacher's desk, placing it so that it threw a bright arc on the wall.
Once when it was not,
she began,
beyond seven times seven countries and the sea of Operencia, behind an old stove in a crack in the wall in the skirt of an old hag, and there in the seven times seventh fold – a white flea, and in the middle of it the beautiful city of a king.

Now this king had been taking care of the beautiful city for many years, and he ruled in the same way that his father had, and his father's father had, and all the fathers back as far as anyone could remember. However, there were some who lived there who called him a ‘slow old dog'.
Catalin held her hands together in front of the light and on the wall appeared the shadow of a dog's head with ears cocked forward, opening and closing its mouth. The children laughed.

One day a wolf came to the beautiful city.
The dog shadow appeared again, but this time it looked larger and the mouth was more open, showing its teeth.
At first the people thought this wolf was their friend –
in her voice were sounds of laughing and cheering, and on the wall tiny figures appeared to be waving –
and they welcomed him and said that he could bring his friends to stay.
Small wolf-shadows mixed with the people-shadows on the wall.
For a while they all lived together happily. The old-dog king even asked the wolf and his friends to visit him at the palace, and they talked of this and that, but mainly about the people and the kingdom.

There came a time, though, when there was famine in the beautiful city and people began to say that the old-dog king was too old and ill to rule, and that maybe the wolf and his friends should rule in his place.

And so the wolf went to the king and told him that he would look after the problem of the famine, because the king had been so welcoming to them and had given them a home. The wolf and his friends went out among the hungry people but instead of giving them bread, they
had lists of names and guns with them.
Catalin moved her hands in front of the light and more wall-shadows appeared, of running people being rounded up by wolves. Her voice held the thud of marching boots and gunfire.
This is just like your sheep-dogs do with your sheep, eh? Round them into pens so they can be sorted out and taken away.
And the people-shadows huddled in one corner of the wall, surrounded by wolves.
But these wolves call out some people's names and not others, so that the ones not called are very pleased. They tell the wolves the names of the others they think should be taken away, so that they themselves will be allowed to stay.

Who had to go, Miss?
Angie Aberline asked.
How did the wolves choose?

Ah
, Catalin said, and the wall shadows became larger and moved more wildly,
now that was the question, wasn't it? Who indeed?
A keening sound that could have been the plovers crying from near the cemetery filled the room.
All these people seem the same, don't they? But the wolves thought not; they thought that some were making the beautiful city an impure city, so this is what happened.
The wall darkened as it became a mass of shifting shadows, which separated into many wolves and a few people.
The people who the wolves didn't like had different types of names from their own. They looked different from those people who joined the wolves. Maybe they were Gypsy or Jewish people. Maybe they thought that a different family of wolves should control the beautiful city. But always the first wolf said who could stay and who had to be sent away or killed.
Many voices shouting filled the room, all
shouting the same two words that sounded like
see hail
, and the wolves became more frantic, snapping and biting at the few people left.

Someone in the class laughed. Catalin spun around.
So. So you think this is a funny story.
She stopped talking and turned to the wall. Light flooded the room, and the wolf-shadows grew and spread, a great dark stain across the whiteness of the walls, until they filled all four walls of the classroom. The
thump-thump
of many marching feet, mixed with the sound of breaking glass and gunfire, was loud and threatening. Black wolf-shapes slid from the wall to the floor making children scream and stand on their desks. Behind the spreading shadows in the room, dressed in a uniform that tucked into long boots, stood the largest wolf of all, so large that he filled a wall on his own. He held his arm straight out in front of him and flames engulfed the shadow-world and burned the few remaining people-shapes. When there were none left the wolf leaped from the wall into the schoolroom, running at the children and dragging flames with him until the dry timber of the room itself started to burn. Children screamed and ran for the door, which appeared to be jammed shut until Catalin opened it and let them outside.
It's good to be able to get out, isn't it?
she said.
Not like the people in the beautiful city, eh.

The children, even in their old age, when asked what had happened the day the schoolhouse caught on fire, just shrugged and said they didn't really remember, not wishing to drag the shame of that day from the deepest shadows of their memories. But many years later, when he
was in a position of immense power in the government of the nation, one in particular remembered and said
no
at a crucial moment.

That night, Catalin, in the margins of an old copy of the
District Examiner & Journal
, wrote:

Some people live as if they have forgotten death
, Catalin said to Macha as she walked with her on the nightly patrol around the borders of the town. This was after Jos disappeared, for Catalin would not have left him alone at night. Not ever.