Silver Wattle (5 page)

The strain between Milosh and Mother was conspicuous throughout the following week. We ate dismal meals together, Milosh sitting with a furrowed brow, Mother barely saying anything. When they did speak to each other, it was usually with an undertone of criticism.

‘Where are
you
going?’ Mother asked Milosh one afternoon as he hovered near the front door, pulling on his coat and checking his appearance in the hall mirror.

‘Where did
you
put my riding gloves?’ Milosh asked in return. He had indirectly answered the question and at the same time implied that Mother’s orderliness caused him great inconvenience.

Klara, who had not seen the storm coming and was too young to understand paní Benova’s role in it, thought that the antagonism between Mother and Milosh was because of her performance at the soiree. She played peacemaker, embracing Mother at every opportunity to comfort her while trying at the same time to placate Milosh. One day, Milosh decided to criticise one of the younger maids by pointing out every fingermark on the walls, and Klara followed behind him with a sponge, ready to remove the stains he found.

‘It’s not your fault,’ I told her.

I wanted to protect my sister from the hurts of the world. It was a mission Mother bestowed on me when she revealed the truth about her younger sister.

‘Emilie was gentle and kind—and a talented musician,’ Mother said, showing me the necklace she had kept as a memento: a gold chain from which a filigree medallion with a centre of blue crystal dangled. ‘But she was susceptible to slights. I was her older sister but I did not watch her closely enough. When she was nineteen, an infatuation with a scoundrel sent her spiralling downwards. Emilie started hearing voices. My father called the best doctors and she was confined to bed. But she thought her fingers were talking to her and cut them off. She was committed to an asylum but she died that winter of pneumonia.’

I shivered. So the story about the rabid dog had been to hide Emilie’s insanity. The truth about my aunt’s death pained me.

‘After I am gone, you must protect Klara and keep her safe,’ Mother instructed me. ‘When I look at her delicate face I see Emilie all over again. Do not lose sight of Klara the way I lost sight of my sister.’

But how does a sister—even a loving, devoted one—protect her charge from the facts of life? One morning I found Mister Rudolf floating upside down in his tank. As nothing in his diet or conditions had changed, I assumed his death was due to natural causes. I had no idea how to break the news to Klara. I considered buying another fish, but Klara was almost impossible to fool and it would be difficult to find a carp even half the size of Mister Rudolf so far from Christmas. I resigned myself to introducing her to a sad reality of life.

‘He didn’t suffer,’ I assured Klara when she stood before the tank. ‘And you gave him a longer, happier life than he otherwise would have had.’

Klara lifted her chin stoically but tears pooled in her eyes and slid down her cheeks.

I pressed her close to me. ‘It’s acceptable to cry,’ I said. ‘“Goodbye” is the saddest word in the dictionary.’

Klara and I wrapped Mister Rudolf’s body, which had taken on an opaque sheen, in muslin. We then walked along the winding streets and past the baroque houses of Mala Strana to the woods of Petrín Hill. I dug a hole in a spot where the light filtered through the avenue of maple trees, while Klara collected stones and blossoms to place on the grave. ‘Face him towards the path,’ she said, when it came time to lay Mister Rudolf in the ground. ‘So he can see the people walk by. He liked to watch us when we passed by him on the way to the parlour.’

I took a photograph of Klara standing by the grave, and afterwards we strolled around the park and on to Hradchany. It was a warm day with a gentle breeze and the least I could do was to give Klara pleasant memories of Mister Rudolf’s burial. When Mother’s friend Anushe died in childbirth several years earlier, I was plagued for weeks by nightmares of the funeral. The sickly smell of incense and coffin wood and the stern face of the priest had confused me with their morbidity. My image of Anushe while she was alive was of her bright smile and the sound of her raucous laughter.

Klara and I walked the cobblestoned streets of the Castle district, stopping occasionally for me to photograph the medieval house signs. We tried to guess what they represented. Before houses were numbered, tradesmen and merchants used these emblems instead of an address. There were shoes for cobblers, crowns for nobles, violins for music makers and keys for locksmiths. We had enjoyed walking here ever since I was old enough to take Klara on my own, and we always seemed to discover new signs in the endless nooks and alleys.

Klara was patient with my picture taking. I waited until the clouds in the background were right, or the sunlight was in a good position, before taking my shot. But when her pace slowed, I understood she was tired. I bought some cherries and we ate them on our way home. At the base of the Castle we stopped to look over the panoramic view of Prague. It seemed reposeful with the Vltava flowing under the Charles Bridge and the dome of St Nicholas and the Gothic tower of the town hall rising up through the red roofs. Prague was my home and the vista from the Castle was as much a part of me as my hands and feet. I took Klara’s fingers, sticky with cherry juice, and clutched them in my own. I re-avowed silently that I would guard her well-being with my life.

My birthday that year marked the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. The day before had been sunny and warm, but on the morning of 21 August, I looked out my window to see that fog had settled over the city. I washed my face and hands in the basin and hurried downstairs to have breakfast with Mother and Klara. In the dining room, the maids were laying out bread rolls and assorted jams. There was also a vanilla cake with pink icing. I was surprised to see Milosh sitting at the table reading the paper. Things had settled down between him and Mother to a cold courtesy. But I did not know if it was because Milosh had given up on paní Benova or whether Mother had chosen to turn a blind eye to his indiscretions in order to keep the peace.

‘
Vshechno nejlepshí k narozeninam
!’ Klara wished me happy birthday and pulled out the seat next to her.

‘Klara and Josephine helped me choose your present this year,’ said Mother, passing me something soft wrapped in tissue paper with a purple bow. I opened the gift to find a shell-pink silk scarf, almost as large as a shawl, with a fringed hem and peach blossoms embroidered in each corner.

‘It’s lovely,’ I said, pressing the fabric to my cheek.

‘You are a young lady now,’ said Mother, with a proud smile. ‘You should only wear beautiful things.’

Aunt Josephine avoided our house when Milosh was in town, so she invited the three of us to her home for afternoon tea that day instead.

‘Has Uncle Ota not written to you at all these past months, Aunt Josephine?’ Klara asked when we sat down in the parlour. While our drawing room was all French windows and Delftware porcelain, Aunt Josephine’s parlour was more comfortable. The wall panels were a rich mahogany, and crimson drapes with gold tassels framed the ceiling-to-floor windows.

Aunt Josephine glanced at my mother. ‘I have in fact just received a letter,’ she said. ‘But we have all been so busy that I didn’t have the chance to tell you about it.’

Klara’s eyes flew open with delight but I knew that Aunt Josephine, usually so scrupulously honest, was not telling the truth. The first thing she did whenever she received a letter from Uncle Ota was rush to us to read it.

‘Please, go ahead,’ said Mother, folding her hands in her lap. ‘Ota’s letters give the girls such pleasure.’

Aunt Josephine shifted in her seat. Perhaps she was nervous that Mother would start crying again. But she was put at ease when Mother remarked that she enjoyed Uncle Ota’s letters because ‘his adventures far surpass any excitement we know in Prague, despite the concerts and galleries’.

‘Very well,’ she said, rising from her chair and leaving the room. She returned with a crumpled envelope and sat down. Frip rested his chin on her shoe. Aunt Josephine unfolded the letter and commenced to read.

To my dear ladies,

After a voyage of seasickness and storms, Ranjana and I are now in Australia. It is the most mystifying country I have ever seen. Its beauty is both lush and dry. Its people the same. We are presently in Perth, on the west coast, and were greeted in the city not by people but by dozens of black and white birds called ‘magpies’ sitting on the docks and fences. Ranjana has fallen in love with the plant and bird life and has taken up ‘botanising’. It is wonderful to watch her pressing the specimens of flowers and seeds into her album. Even with her sari and dark skin, she is more attentive than any European lady I have seen.

We will sail on to Sydney in a few days’ time where I will try to find work as the passage here swallowed most of my funds. Ranjana and I have decided that if Sydney is to our liking, we will stay. Intellectuals are not valued in this harsh land, so I may need to work with my hands. I once said that I would never stop travelling but I have decided that if I choose to live in a foreign country, one so different from my native homeland, it does not count. There is a raw sense of adventure and possibility about this country that makes me think it is the place for us to live. Not that it was easy to be accepted past the boarding officers. That, my dear nieces, was a feat greater than passing examinations at the University of Prague. Not so much for me, as the colour of my skin is more acceptable than Ranjana’s! Australians would like to keep anyone from Asia—and most non-English-speaking Europeans—out of their country, and would succeed too if not for British objections to the insult it would be to their subjects in India. Because Australian officials cannot legally discriminate against anyone who is not suffering an infectious disease, is not a criminal or a menace to society in some way, they have come up with a dictation test. Being given a test in English, the national language, I can understand. But the test may be administered in any prescribed language. A Maltese applicant was given a test in Dutch; a Spaniard a test in German; and a German fluent in several languages was eventually failed when he was tested in Gaelic! The poor man was sentenced to six months’ jail for being an illegal immigrant. You can see what Ranjana was up against. Luckily, she passed the test in English and French and was finally let through when they could not find anyone to test her in Russian!

We will send you more news and an address when we get to Sydney. Meanwhile, Ranjana has asked me to enclose a book about the birds of Australia. We believe little Klara is particularly interested in these things.

Yours lovingly,
Ota and Ranjana

Mother’s reaction to Uncle Ota’s letter was the opposite of how she had responded to the previous one. ‘Ranjana sounds delightful,’ she said, ‘and very suited to Ota.’

She poured out the tea while Aunt Josephine cut the kolach.

‘I hope we may meet them one day,’ I said.

Mother sat down again. ‘You would like Ota very much. I remember his keen mind and his quick wit. But it doesn’t sound as if he intends to return to Prague any time soon.’

Aunt Josephine placed a slice of kolach in front of Klara, who adored the dough-bread sweet. But she was absorbed in the book on birds Ranjana had sent for her and even the scent of the cheese, stewed prune and apricot filling did not stir her. Soon she was telling us that the brightly coloured rainbow lorikeets had brush-like appendages on their tongues for eating nectar, that willy wagtails sang when the moon was bright, and that galahs mated for life.

‘We were never ones for travel, were we, Marta?’ asked Aunt Josephine, studying Mother’s face. ‘Oh, we had our seasons in Florence and Paris but that was enough for us. We learned the languages so we could pronounce the foods we served at dinner parties, but we never found anywhere that made us as happy as home.’

Mother blushed but held her own under Aunt Josephine’s gaze. ‘That’s right,’ she answered. ‘That’s why I waited for Antonín to finish his training before I married him. I was lonely without him, but I would have been useless away from my mother and home.’

Aunt Josephine searched Mother’s face once more before sitting back. ‘I want to change these drapes,’ she said, clutching the velvet curtains. ‘They are too heavy. Maybe you could suggest something, Marta? You have good taste.’

I sensed that Aunt Josephine had been trying to find out something but became afraid of going too far. Mother and Aunt Josephine were as different as apples and oranges but they had been friends for twenty years. They would have died for each other if it ever came to that.

I was as confused about Mother’s behaviour as Aunt Josephine. I wondered if Mother had been in love with Uncle Ota once. But anyone who had seen my mother and father together could not have doubted their bond: Mother’s face had lit up whenever Father entered the room, and nothing could distract her attention when he was speaking. As for my father, witnesses said it was Mother’s name on his lips when he died.

I picked up Uncle Ota’s letter and read it for myself, trying to discover the man behind the swirling handwriting. In the pictures I had seen of him, Uncle Ota was the opposite of my father: tall with a shock of hair and keen, light-coloured eyes. But no matter how many times I read the letter or stared at the lines, I could not solve the puzzle.

Not long after, another letter arrived from Uncle Ota.

To my dear ladies,

Ranjana and I are in Sydney now. And what a city! We loved it the moment we set eyes on it. The magnificent buildings of golden sandstone took our breath away. We know their names now: St Mary’s Cathedral; the Lands Office Tower; the Town Hall; and the Queen Victoria Building. True, one sees Europe in their Classical and Renaissance styles, but there is also something different—something ‘other’—about the place. Perhaps it is the natural setting: the opal-blue harbour with its coves and beaches, the ochre villas set amongst the silvery-green bushland. And the trees! Our first purchase in the city was a botany book and my lovely wife has already recorded descriptions and the botanic names of the fascinating species. These are some of the gum trees that thrill us with their gigantic trunks and branches that reach out like the arms of a Hindu goddess, embracing all manner of bird life:

Sydney red gum,
Angophora costata

Red bloodwood,
Eucalyptus gummifera

Scribbly gums,
E. racemosa
and
E. haemastoma

Sydney peppermint,
E. piperita

The birds make a deafening chatter in them in the mornings and evenings: white parrots with massive beaks and claws, and smaller ones that are coloured like tropical fruit. Your mother would certainly have inspiration enough for a thousand of her paintings if she were to see all this beauty. We have rented a house on part of the harbour known as Watsons Bay. It is a ramshackle dwelling that is falling to bits around us, but it is the best we can do for now. Although Ranjana swapped her sari for western dress and speaks more refined English than most of the resident population, our joy is tainted by the prejudice against her. When we approached landlords about places they had advertised, they were nearly all friendly to me, but changed tune as soon as they saw Ranjana. There was one man, who was leasing what amounted to a tin shack in a yard full of coils of wire and blocks of discarded wood, who almost came to blows with me simply because I made him an offer. This behaviour is inconsistent with Australians in general, who are mostly egalitarian and carefree. Perhaps it is the location—so far from the British Isles, from where nearly all of them come—that makes them so afraid of Orientals. The only people who welcomed us were the artists of Kings Cross, but I did not fancy making Ranjana live in a rat-invested hovel. So after some frantic searching we found this place. We are renting it from an elderly blind woman and her daughter. The end of it all is that for the first time in years I have a permanent address, which will make it easier for you to write to me. I look forward to hearing the news about you and your lovely mother, although I notice my sister does not mention your stepfather much. How is he these days? Still up to his ears in chandeliers and chinoiserie motif fabrics?

Our love always,
Ota and Ranjana