Where There's Smoke (9 page)

CAMOUFLAGE

MURRAY BAIL

All things considered, piano-tuning is a harmless profession. Working by themselves in rooms filled with other people's most intimate belongings, piano-tuners give the impression of wanting to be somewhere else. They're known to jump at unexpected sounds. At the sight of blood they'd run a mile. And yet early in 1943 Eric Banerjee, along with some other able-bodied men, was called up by the army to defend his country. ‘Mr Banerjee wouldn't hurt a fly' – that came from a widow who lived alone in the Adelaide foothills, where her Beale piano kept going out of tune.

It followed that, if a man as harmless as Eric Banerjee had been called up, the situation to the north was far more serious than the authorities were letting on.

For the piano-tuner it could not have come at a worse time. He had a wife, whose name was Lina, and a daughter who was just beginning to talk. It had taken him years to build up a client base, which barely gave them enough to live on. Then almost overnight – when the war broke out – there was a simultaneous lifting of piano lids across the suburbs of Adelaide, and suddenly Banerjee found he couldn't keep up with demand. These were solid inquiries from piano owners he had never heard of before, in suburbs such as Norwood and St Peters, even as far away as Hackney. In times of uncertainty people turn for consolation to music. Apparently the same thing happened in London, Berlin, Leningrad.

‘I'd say it was some sort of clerical mistake.' He patted his wife on the shoulder. ‘I won't be gone for long.' She'd burst into hysterical sobbing. What would happen now to her and their baby daughter?

Already the city was half empty. Every day the newspapers carried grainy photographs of another explosion or oil refinery in flames, another ship going down and, if that wasn't alarming enough, maps of Burma and Singapore which had thick black arrows sprouting from the Japanese army, all curving south in an accelerating mass, not only towards Australia basking in the Pacific, but heading for Adelaide, its streets wide open, defenceless. And now it was as if he, and he alone, had been selected to single-handedly stand in front and stop the advancing horde.

This uncertainty and the vague fear that he might be killed gradually gave way to a curiosity at leaving home and his wife and child, although he was bound in strong intimacy to them, and entering – embarking upon – a series of situations on a large scale, in the company of other men.

Besides, there was little he could do. The immediate future was out of his hands; he could feel himself carried along by altogether larger forces, a small body in a larger mass, which was a pleasant feeling too.

*

Eric Banerjee gave his date of birth and next of kin, and was examined by a doctor. Later he was handed a small piece of paper to exchange for a uniform the colour of fresh cow manure, and a pair of stiff black boots with leather laces. At home he put the uniform on again and gave his wife in the kitchen a snappy salute.

It was so unusual she began shouting. ‘And now look what you've done!' Their daughter was pointing at him, screwing up her face, and crying.

On the last morning Banerjee finished shaving and looked at himself in the mirror.

He tried to imagine what other people would make of his face, especially the many different strangers he was about to meet. In the mirror he couldn't get a clear impression of himself. He tried an earnest look, a canny one, then out-and-out gloom and pessimism, all with the help of the uniform. He didn't bother trying to look fierce. For a moment he wondered how he looked to others – older or younger? He then returned to normal, or what appeared to be normal – he still seemed to be pulling faces.

‘I'll be off then,' he said to Lina. ‘I can't exactly say, of course, when I'll be back.'

He heard his voice, solemn and stiff, as if these were to be the last words to his wife.

‘You're not even sorry you're going,' she had cried the night before.

Now at the moment of departure something already felt missing. At the same time, everything around him – including himself – felt too ordinary. Surely at a moment like this everything should have been different. Turning, he kept giving little waves with his pianist's fingers. Already he was almost having a good time.

*

At the barracks he was told to stand to attention out in the sun with some other men. Later there was a second, more leisurely inspection where he had to stand in a line, naked. Then an exceptionally thin officer seated at a trestle table, whom Banerjee recognised as his local bank manager, asked some brief questions.

Banerjee's qualifications were not impressive. The officer sighed, as if the war was now well and truly lost, and taking a match winced as he dug around inside his ear. With some disappointment Banerjee thought he might be let off – sent home. But the officer reached for a rubber stamp. Because of his occupation, ‘piano-tuner', Banerjee was placed with a small group in the shade, to one side. These were artists, as well as a lecturer in English who sat on the ground clasping his knees, a picture-framer, a librarian as deaf as a post, a signwriter who did shop windows, and others too overweight or too something to hold a rifle.

Over the next few days they marched backwards and forwards, working on drill. They were shown how to look after equipment and when to salute. Nothing much more.

A week had barely gone by when the order came to report to the railway station, immediately. It was late afternoon. Lugging their gear they sauntered behind a silver-haired man who appeared to be a leader. As Banerjee hummed a tune he wondered if they should have been in step. From a passing truck soldiers whistled and laughed at them.

‘I don't have a clue where we're heading.'

‘Search me,' said the signwriter.

Banerjee took a cigarette offered, though he never really smoked.

*

Every seat was taken with soldiers. Most were young, barely twenty, but actually looked like soldiers. Tanned, tired-looking faces in worn uniforms. They played cards or sprawled about in greatcoats. A few gazed out the window, even after it was dark. A few tried writing letters. Some shouted out in their sleep. The motion of the long train and the absence of a known destination gave the impression they were travelling endlessly, while at the same time remaining in the one spot. To Banerjee, the feeling of leaving an old life and heading towards a new unknown life became blurry. A voice asked, ‘What day are we?' Later another, ‘Has anyone got the time?'

All that night, the following day and the next they travelled slowly, with frequent stops, up the centre of Australia. They were heading towards the fighting. The further north they went the more they stopped in daylight, waiting for hours on end. On the third day the train remained motionless all afternoon, creaking in the heat, and they saw nothing through the windows but low grey bush, a few worn hills in the distance.

A young soldier spoke for the first time. ‘As far as I'm concerned the Japs can have it.'

The horizon remained. Nothing moved. And the low horizon may have spread the melancholy among them. Banerjee tried to picture his street, his front fence and house, the appearance of his wife. Their daughter was growing up while he waited in the train. The other men had fallen silent, some nodding off.

*

The train stopped. It creaked forward, stopped again. In the dark a sergeant came through, shouting his head off.

It was Banerjee's group which was told to fall in outside.

The cold and unevenness of the ground alongside the train had them stumbling and swearing. They herded together, hands in greatcoats, and waited.

‘Put out that cigarette!' – meaning the light receding.

Banerjee didn't even smile. After it could no longer be seen the train could still be heard; but what remained was soon enough replaced by the immense silence. To clear a throat out there would be deafening, worse than a concert hall.

Banerjee was probably the first to pick up the sound, a smaller engine. Another ten minutes must have passed before the truck stopped before them, tall and vibrating. It took some trouble climbing into the back. They sat facing each other under a tarpaulin roof; and the truck turned, climbing over bushes, and made its way back along the same track, over low bush and rocks, and what appeared to be creek beds, pale stones there, while the dust funnelled out behind them, obliterating the stars.

After two hours of this – bumping about, grabbing at arms, crashing of gears – the truck slowed, the path became smoother.

Someone nudged, ‘Stick your head out and see where we are.'

To no one in particular Banerjee said, ‘I've never been in this part of the world before.'

Leaning forward he saw a large silver shed and other buildings in the moonlight.

They were shown into a long hut. Banerjee lay down in his uniform and slept.

At first light the desolate composition of the aerodrome was revealed. A runway had been cut into the mulga by a team of crack Americans. Here then were the nation's forward defences. And not a cloud in the sky. Already it was warm. Everything spanking new in the morning light. There were two large hangars, sheds and a long water tank. Down the far end were smaller buildings and men moving about.

A man wearing an officer's cap and khaki shorts stood before them. Eric could have sworn he used to see him at the recitals at the Town Hall, although there he wore a beard.

Clearing his throat he spoke casually, but firmly. He didn't expect much in the way of formality, he said. He did however expect their full attention. ‘It would make our job a darned sight easier.' The enemy, he explained, was not far away and coming closer ‘as we speak'. The aerodrome was one of a number along the top of the Northern Territory. Their task was to paint – every inch of the place. ‘At the moment it is a sitting duck,' was how he put it. The slightest patch of bare metal, he explained, could flash a signal to the enemy in the sky. To demonstrate he fished around in a pocket and held up a threepence – ‘like so'.

The camouflage officer then squinted at the new roofs shining in the sun. ‘The art in all this is deception,' he said thoughtfully, as if the whole thing was a game. He spoke of the ‘science of appearances', of fooling the oriental eye. It was a matter of applying the right colours in certain combinations and patterns.

Banerjee was handed a bucket of ochre paint, a wide brush, and assigned the roof of the main hangar. It took a while to get used to the height. And the roof itself was slippery. Close up it didn't seem possible that his hand, which produced a strip of rapidly drying colour, would make any difference to the larger situation, the advance of mechanised armies across islands and continents. Further along other men were slapping on industrial grey.

As the day progressed the huge expanse of corrugated iron warmed up, almost too hot to touch, and glittered more, straining the eyes.

The others had taken off their shirts and the signwriter nearby knotted his handkerchief at the corners and put it on his head. Now and then the officer in shorts appeared below and studied their progress through the reverse end of binoculars. Pointing with a long stick he shouted up to Banerjee to give more curve there to the red ochre. He made a parallel flowing movement with his hands. ‘Like a woman's hips. Think of her hips!' Which allowed Banerjee in unpromising surroundings to wander over the softness of his wife's body – at that moment probably bent over their daughter. ‘That's good, a little more to the left. Good man,' the voice continued.

At the morning tea-break Banerjee sat in the shade and closed his eyes.

The Americans were recognisable by their sunglasses. When he returned their greetings Banerjee thought everybody could do with sunglasses up on the roof.

And this thought made him realise he was doing his best, and he felt satisfied.

*

Piano-tuning hadn't been his first choice of profession. When Eric was about ten the
News
ran a photo of him seated at the Town Hall's Steinway, his feet barely touching the pedals, reeling off a mazurka by Chopin he had sighted only minutes before. That tabloid which always had a reputation in Adelaide for fearlessness came out and announced ‘our latest prodigy'. A career in the concert hall beckoned. Accordingly his normal schooling was adjusted and his parents made the necessary sacrifices, going without small luxuries, such as extra clothes or holidays. The teacher appointed was considered one of the best available: Viennese, arthritic, cameo brooch.

Banerjee became accustomed to applause. His combed hair, jug ears. He hardly ever missed a note. As he went on playing here and there, as it all flowed more like water out of his hands, years passed, and he began to wonder, as did others, whether his playing was progressing. Flaws in his technique began to show. These were probably flaws in temperament; he didn't seem conscious of them. He was taller and heavier than most pianists.

By his mid-twenties Eric Banerjee had given very few recitals, at least not in the main venues. However hard he worked the world around him remained just out of reach. It was as if a steady invisible force held him in the one spot, and now began pushing him back slightly and to one side. Almost without noticing he was playing more and more at less demanding venues, weddings, church gatherings, schools and the like, and didn't seem to mind. He felt comfortable there. Both parents died. He hardly ever attended a concert. In the space of a few more years he retreated still further until, after taking in a few pupils, which is how he met his wife, he came to rest, it would appear, pianotuning, which may be some distance from bowing in tails on the concert platform, but is in the general vicinity, and supplied a small, regular income.

For all this, Banerjee had escaped the bitterness endemic among piano-tuners. He was pale and had a small valley in his chin. One advantage of his profession was that it left his head permanently inclined to one side, which gave the impression he was a good listener.