The Swan Book (28 page)

In the distant mirage beyond the houses, Oblivia saw the green and white service station. The sight of the green roof became a thought to reach, not of running away, but taking back her life. He knew her thought as she looked off in the distance, and said:
It won't pay to go over there. You will find that this is a pretty rough joint. We will wait here. The plane won't be long.
His mobile phone rang once, twice, and three times before he answered it
. Yep! Right!
He seemed relieved to be leaving. She could hear him talking about the plane's arrival time and then the droning off in the distance. She listened to the sky too – for the heartbeat of swans flying, and for a few moments of panic, caused by the thought of being forcibly pushed onto the plane by Warren, she was again standing on the shores of the empty salt lake. Only the warmth of the swans remained where they had rested on the ground covered with low-growing tussock grass and saltbush.

Within moments of the blue aeroplane landing they were gone. Only the deafening howl of the engine could be heard as it flew above the saltbush landscape, over the salt lakes, and into another world. There was nothing but clouds, and the frightened girl thought how the clouds would look around the mountaintop of the old woman's homeland, and thought she should have asked the old woman a question about clouds, because she did not know:
Who spoke of great seas of clouds where wind was eddying under the crevices?

The Christmas House

A
fter clouds, always mist, and another ghost story to tell.

Ah! Beautiful, isn't it. This is where we will be living from now on. Well! For you this will be your home for a little while at least. Look! Right down there, can you see it? Just there! That place! It will be your home from now on.
Warren Finch sighed, his face marvellously at ease as he looked longingly through the small window of the plane. Below, the city she saw was a sea of stars twinkling from the base of mountains, and sprawling across flatlands to the ocean. The plane flew through dozens of searchlights splashing back and forth through the skies, and on to Warren's relaxed face while he was humming that old song,
Sea of Heartbreak, sea of dungkumini, malu of heartbreak
…
the lights in the harbour, don't shine for me
, and the relief was in his voice:
Yes! It is good to be home.

There was no way Oblivia ever expected that she of all people would see the riches of paradise from a plane.
How come?
She thought about the Heaven people taken from the cities by the Army and dumped in the swamp. They prayed all the time for the chance to see their paradise again,
How did I lose you, where did I fail?
The lights he called home spun meaninglessly in her head. She searched for the distant light of the burial chamber he had
pointed out, to show her where she would be living and from the sea of lights below, all she extracted was a single glow. She looked away to censure the old woman creeping from the clouds and into her head, forbidding her from asking the question about women and girls who have disappeared:
Can you see any left dead on the side of a road in that light?

Ah! Don't worry, you are dead already,
the Harbour Master answered on the girl's behalf. He was also somewhere on board the plane – said he was the bloody pilot.
That's right,
he laughed,
better remember to put the wheels down
.
Who was to know if she was dead or alive?
The plane bounced on the winds of
one pilot short
, in its descent to land.

Warren kept talking:
You are going to love it here. You'll see. It will take a little bit of time but it will be better for us if you give it a chance.
He spoke philosophically,
so it is equally important that you make an effort to do this for me and for yourself. You will find that life will be better if you see things like this.

They stepped from the aircraft and into a world shrouded in fog and darkness. Warren Finch was immediately surrounded by a group of security people, and within moments, they were leaving in a shining black, chauffeur-driven limousine with a small Australian flag fluttering in the breeze. Several security cars, that had been discreetly parked, would also accompany them for the rest of their journey.

The limousine careered through a foggy maze of concrete industrial buildings, high-rise offices, factories and houses. In this closer glimpse of paradise, the girl could see that much of the city had cracked; the city was breaking up, as though the land beneath had collapsed under its weight. This had happened a long time ago and now, the natural landscape was quietly returning and reclaiming its original habitat. In its strange kind of way, the
city was creating a garden. Through the cracks in the footpaths small trees had sprouted, and ferns and grasses became obstacles through which people were struggling to steer a clear path as they walked. She saw more mature trees with the orange fungi
Pycnoporus coccineus
growing from branches and tree-trunks, while ferns and grasses that swayed from mossy walls and roof tops caught her attention with each gust of wind. There were places on the roads not hit by heavy traffic where long grasses grew.

She saw no camp dogs hanging about these streets. No birds. There were only crowds of people moving quickly past one another with blank faces, and many others living in footpath ghettos, like people were in the swamp. They were begging for food. She heard frogs croaking in the drains where the rainwater poured in such profusion it was hard not to imagine an underground river flowing beneath the city.

Warren continued a running commentary like a tour guide. He spoke about why people were running, what they were doing, whether they went into restaurants, grocers, supermarkets, fish shops, meat shops, women's clothing shops of every description, shoes, pets, computers, furnishing, delicatessens, banks, office buildings that stood side by side reaching for the skies, down and up through narrow streets and onwards, while countless lights shone from the homes of families, single people, couples, and apartments where parties were held, and couples made homes, made love, grew children, cooked food or brought home takeaways, and new furniture, and spent all night discussing life or conspiring, or deceiving, or divorcing, or engaging in adultery, throwing out rubbish, playing computer games about war. He talked more or less about all of this while the girl was thinking about something else. She was trying to determine the natural sound of the wind through the distortion of sounds passing through the laneways between buildings.

The Christmas house of prehistoric green was lit up like the solar system. It stood in a garden of worse-for-wear Norwegian fairytale forest firs covered in glowing balls of coloured lights that swung madly on the wind-tossed branches. Owls were calling out to one another from the deep foliage like calls from the genies they had left on the salt lake. The girl looked at Warren but he was too occupied with the spectacle of Christmas lights, and what lay ahead. The journey they had taken was now clearly wiped clean from his mind. The first thing she noticed as they stepped from the car was the fragrance of the trees clutching the mist, and the house groaning in despair each time it was buffeted by winds coming in from the sea.

The Harbour Master and the old woman exiled amongst the clouds were both awestruck with the glamour of it all. Could this be the home that Warren had been pointing to from the plane?
It's bloody marvellous
the Harbour Master claimed, but the old woman scoffed at its cheap imitations, and described how pretensions made her feel nauseous by pretending to vomit on the bonnet of the shiny car.

The driveway was lined on either side by a parade of adult-size glowing snowmen. The people greeting them enthusiastically at the large door shone in the way that people usually greeted Warren Finch. He said they were his anonymous friends. This was a safe house, which immediately had the Harbour Master asking what he needed a safe house for. But before the girl could think of an answer, she became too wrapped up in being ashamed, and looked away. All she had seen looming at the doorway were giant-sized people with red hair blowing like fire in each gust of wind. They were not introduced. The man, the woman, and two children, one boy and one girl, became an avalanche of fiery white ghosts flying out of the house, and descended on Warren with non-stop pattering.

Don't tell me this is your E–thyl? Is this really her?
The big woman squealed.

This was a safe house because it was typical, Warren had forewarned Oblivia.
Typical of what? Australia! Paradise?
Even she could believe it was a place that nobody of right mind would want to come to and she had been nowhere. Old Aunty squealed like the big woman. The Harbour Master pushed his way in front of them and yelled to the girl to keep away from the bunch of red-necks. This had the old woman and the Harbour Master arguing about how you could identify a red-neck. She insisted that they were only missionaries.
I know what a missionary looks like
, he claimed combatively:
How would you know anything? You think every white person is a missionary.
The girl wanted to disappear from hearing her name falling off everyone's lips.
Yes! It was true then?
They had been talking about her for days, practising that name, because they did not want to offend Warren's lady.
Why, she will be the first Indigenous lady of the country soon.

E-thyl was a very pretty name the lady claimed, and said she insisted on knowing how she had been given such a name.
You sure you got it right? You sure it is not Ethel? That's a girl's name. I don't know where you get a name like E-thyl
.
Was it Aboriginal?

The girl was covered in goose bumps every time she heard the name. She hated the name. Wondered where it had come from too and would have preferred to be called nothing, like normal. The girl wore filthy clothes – the ones that she had on when they left the swamp. Warren laughed at everything the red-haired people said. He had not stopped laughing since he had arrived. Should she laugh too?

She felt thinner and darker than normal people while standing next to this strange family that she thought were the typical Australian family, because Warren said so. And beside their snowy whiteness, she felt an out of place darkness, much darker than Warren even whose golden skin glowed in the soft yellow lights of the house. The more she saw, the more in awe she was of how white
Australians lived. Unconsciously, she edged herself up against the wall to keep out of the way of the endless movement of these big people scrambling and gushing with every footstep in welcoming Warren back into their home.

Hold on now! I have only been gone a few weeks,
he joked and laughed loudly, and even the girl was surprised to see him competing to be more extraordinary in a plain, simple laugh. The din of laughter echoing throughout the house was deafening for someone who never laughed. She thought
Why laugh?
How do you laugh? To say continuously,
Ha! Ha!

Oh! Boy! Our Warren,
the woman and her husband beamed in satisfaction, and together they raced through the dark echoing wood-panelled house to see the Christmas decorations in the backyard, while calling back for the girl to follow.

Come on. You got to have a look, Eee-ah? Come on. It's better than last year even.
Now Warren was speaking like these people, even forgetting how to pronounce her name.
What's wrong with you? Get going. You think that they are contagious or something? Might turn you white?
A voice that sounded like the Harbour Master echoed in her head.

The large garden was a forest of full-grown pine trees decorated with coloured lights. It stretched all the way to the edge of a rocky cliff where waves crashed, but the red-haired lady said it was a good thing they had planted the trees to muffle the sound of the ocean,
because you get sick of it roaring day and night. It was enough to give you a headache
. Underneath the dripping canopies of the trees a single seagull was lost somewhere in the needles, singing its airs to the seagulls gliding far away, over the sea.

The family ran breathless along curving paths, brushed against the wet foliage of the trees, and deep in the forest were greeted with Christmas carols sung by a glowing metre-high smiling robot snowman with a red carrot nose, and black top hat.
It's an
extravaganza – a miracle,
Warren exclaimed, saying that he had never seen anything like it in his life.
It was first prize mind you, in the whole of the city,
the children and their mother said proudly.

Warren looked on warmly, his face flushed and glowing as the soft lights touched his skin. He said it reminded him of how great Christmas was in this house. And there, in a corner of the yard, sat many more second-hand Christmas trees of all shapes, sizes and condition in pots. The girl learnt that these were orphan trees. They had been dumped by people in the city, and were waiting to be planted one day – once space could be imagined for them
. Yea! We drove around and collected them all – couldn't bear to see them die senselessly,
the wife claimed.
It does not pay to take your eyes off them though,
the husband added with a wink,
otherwise their numbers would increase.
Then they ran from the mist in a jostling stampede back to the house just in time to experience a crinkling smell of smoke, as the electricity short-circuited the wet lights.
It was different in the old country, where you had to run around with a torch in the middle of the day to see where you were going.
The woman's voice filled the house.

Christmas! Christmas in the city was different now.
The girl had to listen very hard, to keep up with the quick-speaking red-haired people racing through everything stockpiled in their heads for this moment, as if every precious second counted while Warren Finch was in their home. She watched words tumbling out of four mouths that never stopped moving – open and closed, up and down. Their voices shouted to be heard above each other to complain about power surges in the city, and the malfunctioning Christmas lights that were never like this before. They remembered a time when you could leave the lights burning all night without anyone batting an eyelid
. Bring back the good old days when we could even cover the whole yard, trees and all, with the snowflake machine.
The only good thing apparently, was that it had been another bumper season
for the growth of the Christmas trees. The red-haired man was jubilant about this. Conifers loved the rain, and the perpetual mist, and did not seem to mind if the sun never shone.