Cairo (17 page)

‘So,' I asked at last, unable to keep the scepticism from my voice, ‘assuming you can pull it off, how much do you sell this million-dollar painting for?'

‘Please. Don't be like that, Tom. Mr Crisp will give us — in
cash
, mind — $150,000. All of us have discussed this long and hard and decided that you will get $15,000.'

That was a lot of money, as much as I would make in two years working at the restaurant. I sat back to take it all in. The world
beyond my apartment had crumbled away since Max had started outlining the plan. I no longer heard birds, cars or even the trams that were usually so audible as they passed along Nicholson Street. The day, too, had darkened. I hadn't turned on the lamps, and dusk had crept inside.

I listened in a daze as Max filled me in on the extensive research Gertrude had done into Picasso's technique, of the canvases she had painstakingly prepared with historically correct finishes, of a secret manual she owned that was written by a famous Hungarian forger. It was all so unlikely, so mad, so wonderful.

‘And the best thing about it,' Max was saying when I tuned in again, ‘is that the scheme is similar to the one when the
Mona Lisa
was taken from the Louvre in 1911. Someone waited overnight in a cupboard, took it off the wall and walked out. They didn't even
realise
it was gone for two days! And you know who they brought in for questioning over it? A bowlegged Spaniard called Pablo Picasso. The whole thing is an homage.'

‘Or a copy.'

‘Precisely! We refer to our
Weeping Woman
only as Dora, after the woman in the painting. Never,
ever
mention it by name from here on. The thing to do now is to sit tight. I'm going to get stuck into
Maldoror
. Nothing will happen for a while, I shouldn't think. All you need to worry about is your part of the plan. It's like a spy cell — everything else is on a need-to-know basis. I'll inform you when it's going to happen.'

Max got up to leave. I walked him to the door, but before I could open it, he pressed one palm to my chest and leaned in so close that, for a second, I thought he intended to kiss me on the mouth. Such a gesture would not have been wholly out of keeping with the clandestine intimacy of the conversation we had just had.

We stood face to face in my tiny entrance hall. I smelled sherry and cigarettes on his breath, the fragrant lotion he applied to his
wilful hair. ‘Remember,' he said, wagging a finger in front of my face. ‘Tell no one of this conversation. Not. A. Soul.' He laughed, but not convincingly. ‘Or we might have to kill you.'

When Max left I collapsed onto my sofa and stared at the low ceiling, turning the past few hours over in my mind. The episode had quickly assumed the distorted, aqueous qualities of a tale — written, perhaps, by Poe — in which a mysterious visitor relates his barely plausible adventures to a disbelieving narrator. Fragments of the afternoon floated before my eyes. Over and again I saw the pile of money, Max brushing hair from his eyes, cigarettes heaped in the ashtray, the fronds of the peppercorn tree at my window swaying like the skirts of island women.

THE DAYS SHORTENED AND GREW COLDER. AUTUMN LEAVES
rotted in the park, and there gathered about Cairo's ramshackle garden the dispiriting smell of sodden earth and cold concrete. People talked about the football, exchanged statistics and opinion with a degree of seriousness usually reserved for politics or war. I worked long hours at the restaurant and slept until late when I could.

This onset of winter coincided with a hiatus in my social life, in which I didn't see as much of my new friends. James went into hibernation and, although I still heard her spelling out words in her piercing voice, even Eve stopped visiting. This relative quiet was not unwelcome after the heady pleasures of summer and early autumn. By this time I had found my feet in my adopted city; I knew which trams to catch to get around, the best place to buy coffee. Even the fat man at the local milk bar knew my name.

More regularly than before, I heard Max thumping away on his piano, working on
Maldoror
. Every so often, he played portions of it to me, each demonstration accompanied by a convoluted explanation of the particular text that inspired it and a sense of the piece's overall architecture. Much of what he had written was rather jagged, but there was a more spacious section that was very
beautiful; a few simple and melancholy notes — barely a melody — that strolled through my inner ear for days afterwards as if lost, but pleasantly so.

Following his example, and inspired after seeing a late-night screening of Jean-Pierre Melville's great gangster film
Le Samouraï
at the Carlton Movie House, I attempted to revive my languishing novel, which had developed into a dirty noir: black streets and blacker-hearted men; a crummy motel, snowy roads. With two fingers I pecked away on a typewriter I had bought for five dollars at a junk shop on Gertrude Street.

Despite the violent nature of the story I was trying to write, it was comforting to be involved so intensely in a make-believe world. Each time I sat down to work, I was reacquainted with people with whom I felt my destiny to be entwined. The writing of novels is often characterised as a solitary enterprise, but I have found the opposite to be true. It's just that the people are not real; or not entirely, anyway.

One person I did see a lot of during that period was, much to my delight, Sally. She fell into the habit of turning up at my door late morning, seeking a cup of milk for her coffee, but after a while these pretexts fell by the wayside and the visits became purely social. She had not been getting as much temp work as usual and Max was so busy with composing that she was bored and lonely.

Sally and I talked of general things and gossiped about people we knew. She revealed details about her childhood that I found delightful; explained complicated games she'd played with her younger brother, Robert, when they were children.

‘When I was small,' she told me one day, ‘I used to write notes to my parents if I thought I had done the wrong thing. Sorry for breaking a cup, that sort of thing. Sorry I made Robert cry. I was very proper in that way, always trying to be good. I still do it sometimes, send notes to Max if I feel I've hurt him somehow.
They're short, but I always mean what I say in them; they're very sincere. Childish, but there you go. Old habits die hard, I suppose.'

Because Helen's record collection was so dire and mine so rudimentary, Sally began bringing around albums to play while we chatted and sipped our tea or wine. My heart sagged with disappointment on one occasion, when under her arm was the double gatefold edition of the 1970 Miles Davis album
Bitches Brew
. It was more modern than Max's usual listening fare, but its disavowal of any recognisable musical forms appealed to him. Symptomatic of Max's musical obsession were his efforts to unlock a piece of music, as another person might take apart an electronic device to ascertain how it worked. He had played
Bitches Brew
to me repeatedly one afternoon, analysing each burp and squawk and even going so far as to replay sections to demonstrate his points. I liked Miles Davis, but I didn't enjoy that fusion of jazz and progressive rock one bit.

So I was gratified, when Sally dropped the needle onto the vinyl, to hear not
Bitches Brew
at all, but a completely different style of music.

‘What is this?' I asked her. ‘It's not Miles Davis.'

‘God, that album's awful. No one enjoys it, you know. People own it — musicians, especially — because they feel they should.' She gestured to my bookshelf, which was by now overflowing with paperbacks I had been picking up at second-hand bookstores around the neighbourhood. ‘It's like novelists with their dog-eared copy of
Ulysses
. No one reads the damn thing, do they?'

I laughed. She was right; I had been trying to read James Joyce's novel on and off for weeks but never got very far before the words and their meanings began to dissolve and slither around the page.

‘This is New Order,' Sally said. ‘One of my favourite bands. See, I hide it in these other album sleeves. It's a trick I learned when I lived at home. I used to borrow records from school friends and
hide them in the covers of acceptable albums, such as versions of the Lord's Prayer sung by Scottish nuns.'

‘Is that the
Ulysses
for religious people?'

She smiled. ‘My father didn't approve of pop music. Well, he didn't approve of much at all. I also hollowed out the pages of a large Bible so I could fit my Joy Division tapes in there. That took me weeks. I got the idea from a movie where a criminal hid his pistol that way. My father thrashed me with his belt when he found out — desecration and all that. I must say I panicked a bit when Max wanted to play
Bitches Brew
to you a few weeks ago. Had to jump in and swap the albums around.'

‘What would he do if he found out?'

She dodged the question and, laughing, asked, ‘I take it you've never played Helen's record of
Rockin' and Stompin' with Col Joye
?'

‘Um, no.'

‘You'll find that's a Smiths album. Your aunt gave me a key to this place, and I used to come over sometimes and listen to records when she was at work or away on one of her holidays. Although I've lost the key now, so you don't need to worry about me prowling through your personal things when you're out. Can I tell you a secret?'

‘Yes.'

‘You have to promise you won't tell anyone.'

‘I won't.'

‘And you'll have to tell me one of yours in return.'

I shrugged.

She made an exaggerated face of a girl confessing mischief. ‘I'd tell Max I was going to work, and then come here and hang out, drink tea and play records all day. Max was too busy to know and Helen didn't mind. She was great company, when she was around.'

We listened to the music for a while. I slumped in my armchair while she kneeled on the floor near the speakers, hands splayed on her knees, head bowed in appreciation. She was wearing a
grey, Russian-style fur hat from which a few strands of blonde hair trailed, lending her the countenance of a ravishing, exiled princess. A smile played along the edges of her red mouth. Like smell, music has the uncanny ability to dislodge an avalanche of memory and connection, and it was clear this record was doing that for Sally. I longed to know what the music conjured for her, but felt it impertinent to enquire. Besides, it would most certainly involve other people. Instead, I contented myself by observing her; her presence was delicious enough, and I didn't want to scare her away with inane chatter.

‘Your aunt was wonderful,' she said when the frantic beats of the song
Denial
dissolved into vinyl's distinctive woolly hiccup.

‘Yes. She
was
great. I still miss her, even though I didn't see much of her in recent years.'

‘I know. She was so depressed about all that. She hated not seeing her family, you most of all.'

‘What else did she say about me?'

‘Well, nothing much. Only that.' She crawled to the turntable to flip the record over before resuming her position on the rug. The music began again. ‘Your turn. What's your secret?'

I answered before I even knew what I was saying, as if I had been waiting my whole life for someone to ask me such a question.

‘I think Helen might have been my real mother,' I said, and went on to tell her of my suspicions surrounding my family, how I had never felt at home with them.

My heartbeat thickened. I had never before told these things to anyone, but here, a long way from home, it seemed a natural response. Perhaps I hoped Sally knew Helen's secrets? But then my words, hanging in the air, suddenly sounded like the dream of a foolish child. I wanted to cram them back into my mouth.
Idiot
. A hot blush infused my face. With shaking hands I lit a cigarette and coughed loudly, as if to cover my tracks.
Idiot
.

Sally was startled. She opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it. Only when the record had finished did she respond.

‘She was a bit like a mother to me, as well. The mother I might have chosen for myself, if I had been given that choice. We used to call her Helen of Roy. Of Fitzroy, you know. The face that launched a thousand ships. Families are so complicated, aren't they? Did you ever ask your family about her?'

‘I've always been too afraid.'

‘Afraid of finding out it's true, or finding out it's not true?'

I didn't answer.

‘Well,' she said, ‘perhaps you should be brave.'

‘Brave like you?'

To this she said nothing. I smoked in a cringing silence. Outside, drizzle hung in the air like dust.

‘James told me you ran away from home when you were a teenager,' I said at last.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘What else did James tell you?'

Having recovered from my embarrassment, I was thrilled to detect a flirtatious undertow in her question, but didn't know how to capitalise on this. ‘Do you see your family anymore?'

She lit her cigarette and blew out the match before dropping it into a large glass ashtray. ‘Not for a few years. I visit Robert in Sydney from time to time. But not my father.'

‘That must be hard.'

‘It was at first, mainly because he had told me for so long how evil the world was. He wanted me to be suspicious of outsiders. His sect don't mix at all with people outside their church. But people are generally nice, I think. Besides, I have a new family. Max, Edward, Gertrude, James. A few other people. Now you, too.'

I was flattered to be included on such a list.

‘What about you?' she asked. ‘What about your family? Or, the
people who raised you, I guess I should say. You hardly mention them.'