Dead Europe (36 page)

—Who are these people?

—I really don't know. Believe me. These were not the shots I took. I promise you.

I rummaged through the proofsheets. I found the shot of the old man in the train carriage. But in the photograph he was not asleep. His terrified eyes were wide and bloodshot and his toothless thin mouth was stretched in a moan to the camera. I pointed at the photograph.

—Sam, I took this shot this morning. On the train. The old guy was asleep. The fucker was asleep. I had begun to cry and I was shaking in the bed. Sam looked down at me but he did not make a move towards me. I wiped at my eyes and lowered my head. Our silence was only disturbed by the sounds downstairs. Sam walked to the door.

—Mate, I don't know what drugs you took in Amsterdam but I'm running you a bath. We're all cooking you up a meal. You need to eat. And then he smiled.

—Your photographs are shocking, mate, they are. But they're beautiful. They're not filthy, Isaac. They're far from that. Don't you dare apologise for them, Zach.

I reached for the prints again. Sam's parting words forced me to feel something I had not attempted in a long time. Courage. Fuck you, I muttered. I don't care if it's the Devil or if it's God. Fuck you.

I looked at the prints. Sam was wrong. Or rather, he was not being critical enough. They were not all beautiful or powerful. There were many in which the lighting was bland and dull, a few that suffered from a lack of contrast, too many in which the shapes of the figures were uninteresting or in which the landscapes I had chosen were prosaic,
ordinary. I searched the proofsheets and then stumbled through Sam's drawers for a white pencil. I marked the shots I liked on the proofs and then tidied the bed, put on a dressing gown and went into the bathroom.

I washed myself thoroughly. The water was warm. I squeezed my nose and put my head under. I washed under my arms, my neck, my ears, my hair, my arse, my genitals, my feet, my hands, my legs. Fuck you, I whispered to the night air, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I took those shots, those images, they belong to me. They're my photographs. I could sense a trembling, a disturbance in the steam and humidity of the bath. I was not afraid. I hissed. I started laughing. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I was not afraid. I would not be afraid.

It was a warm night and I dressed in a t-shirt and long shorts. At the bottom of the stairs, a young blonde woman with a long face and dull grey-green cardamom eyes greeted me. She held plates and cutlery in her hand.

—Welcome, she said in a thick accent, I am Vera. Come, you must be very hungry.

Vera had laid a white cloth across the small table in the lounge room and there were cushions spread around it. She set down the plates and the cutlery, then poured me a glass of wine.

—The men are cooking, she said, and led me to the kitchen. Sam was briskly stirring a hissing wok. The other man, who seemed a giant in the cramped tiny alcove, had his back to me.

—Isaac, this is Zivan.

The man who turned and smiled was at least six and a half feet tall. But more than his height, more than the undoubted beauty of his strong broad face, what struck me was the warmth of his wide smile. I could not help beaming back at him, immediately. He grabbed my hand, shook it firmly, and welcomed me. Then, turning back to his
cooking, he ordered me to sit, to drink and to smoke.

—It will not be long. But you have time for a cigarette.

I immediately wanted to photograph him. I wanted to take shot after shot of his smile. Vera offered me a cigarette.

She too was striking, but it was an austere beauty, there was no softness to her face. Her fair hair was long and fell in subtle waves across her cheeks and her shoulders. Unlike her husband, her mouth did not fall naturally into the slant of a smile. There was sadness in her weary eyes, and a wariness across her thin mouth. She sucked on her cigarette, vehemently drawing in the fire and speedily expelling the smoke. She had finished her cigarette and had lit her second while I was still nearing the end of mine. Choose some music, she insisted.

Their cds were all piled across and under and by the side of the television. I could tell immediately that none of the occupants of the house were passionate about their music. There was a spread of titles. Classical and opera, rock and roll classics, a few Slavic titles, a few ethnic titles and the soundtrack to
Blade Runner
. Nothing to indicate a collector, no indication of a grand passion for a genre or a style of music. I chose the Rolling Stones'
Beggar's Banquet.

She smiled at the first whiplash yelps of ‘Sympathy for the Devil'. She swayed to the music, and then fell about laughing. Laughter made her pretty. Laughing, she looked girlish and young. Unsmiling, her face had no age.

—I love to dance to this, since I was a very young child. She indicated a small height with her hand. Is such a sexy song.

—It is.

She pointed to the wall opposite.

—See, Isaac, I have had you looking at me for months.

It was a junior effort, done when I was in Sam's class. A self-portrait. I was sixteen and sitting against the school fence on St George's Road. I look weaselly, a coarse coat of
fluff across my top lip, as I squint in the sun. I had thought myself so ugly then but all I saw now was my youth, my impatience and my trepidation.

—It smells good, I said, nodding towards the kitchen and taking a seat next to her on a cushion.

—And you are still a photographer?

—Yes, I am.

—Yes?

—Yes, I am.

—I admire photography. She laid equal stress on each syllable.

—What do you admire about it?

—It is the most truthful of the arts.

I was about to launch into a well-refined counter-argument. Then I remembered the prints upstairs. I realised that I agreed with her.

—And are you a student?

She shook her head savagely and drummed her fingers hard against the table. Where are the men? She shook her head again.

—I was a student in Yugoslavia. No more. Now I clean for students. I am a cleaner, at the Cambridge University.

—What's Cambridge like?

She snorted.

—Big. There is a lot of cleaning.

—It is a fabulous university.

Zivan had entered the room, balancing three plates in his hands. Vera threw up her hands in objection to her husband's comment. She gave a scornful whistle.

Zivan and Sam brought in the rest of the food. There was a steaming roast of lamb with baby onions and finely sliced potato. There was a Mediterranean salad of tahini and eggplant and long green beans stewed in a tomato sauce. The room quickly filled with the fragrant smells. I attacked the food immediately, spilling oily potatoes on my plate, biting
into huge chunks of the sliced garlicky meat. My appetite had returned, it was normal. I was in England, I knew the language, I knew the rules. Maybe everything had returned to normal. Sam came in from the kitchen with a bowl of bread and sat beside me. He hugged me and raised his glass.

—To our Australian friend.

Zivan towered above us. He had his plate between his legs and Vera had one arm draped across his jutting bony knee. I stole glances at him throughout the meal. He caught me at it and smiled back. His messy hair, blends of yellow and cinnamon, fell across his forehead; he kept flicking it away from his eyes. His eyes were noon blue, as wide and open as his smile. His mouth, his eyes, were too big for the lean, wide face. They made him appear boyish. Sam had told me he had recently turned thirty. If I had not known that, I would have assumed the man across from me was in his early twenties.

Vera's face, her body, seemed all sharp planes. The clothes she was wearing, a loose linen blue tunic and a long, straight black skirt, deliberately hid her body. There was a puritan efficiency to her, evident in the way she chose to dress. And in her wary, cautious gaze. But as I watched her eat, attacking her food with the same compulsive appetite as she smoked her cigarettes, watching her attentive sharp eyes dart from her husband, to me, to Sam, to sounds outside the room, outside the house, I found that I was becoming captivated by her.

Each of us was making sounds of pleasure as we ate, as we chewed on our food and drank our wine. Happiness was coursing through me and with it an inevitable distant longing for home. Colin, food on the table, the radio or the stereo or the television in the background. Home.

As if reading my thought, Sam asked, How's Colin doing, Isaac?

—Same. Col's well.

—And your mum?

—She's good. A bit old, a bit of gout. She's alright. Immersed in the grandkids.

—And what's happening in the old country?

Three pairs of eyes were on me.

—Not much good.

I thought back to
The Guardian
I was reading at the train station at Harwich that morning.

—Same as here, really. It's all national security and fear about terrorism and refugees. The old country's fucked.

Vera, her mouth full, exploded.

—Terrorism, bloody terrorism. I am sick of hearing about terrorism.

—Do you have many refugees in Australia? asked Zivan.

—A few. We lock 'em up.

I looked down at my plate and picked at the beans. I didn't want to speak: talking about Australia in Europe still shamed me.

—That's not quite true, Sam interjected, we lock up asylum seekers, not refugees.

I was surprised at his pedantic distinction.

—Technically, yes. But most asylum seekers are still refugees.

—There has to be a process of ascertaining genuine refugee claims.

I was disconcerted by his measured counter-argument. I had expected him to share my outrage.

—And that includes locking them up, in the fucking desert, even children?

He shook his head. Vera put down her fork.

—You lock up children? In the desert?

I nodded.

—Has it always been like this?

—No, answered Sam for me, let's just call it ultimately another by-product of terrorism.

Vera groaned at this and broke off a chunk of bread.

—They justify everything, every evil, under the myth they are protecting us from terrorism.

—Quiet, Vera.

—You be quiet, Zivan. I will say what I like. The real terrorists are the Americans.

Sam put his plate down.

—Those people who died in New York, those people who died in the World Trade Center, they were not terrorists, they were murdered by the real terrorists. His voice was steel.

Vera scowled.

—Do you wish me to lie? I will not pretend a grief I do not feel. My grief was exhausted a long time before that. No, Sam, I was happy to see New York bombed. So they can understand, finally, what it is to suffer.

—You are alone in thinking like that. Sam's voice was shaking.

—That's not true.

Everyone's eyes turn to me.

—My mother felt that way. I was watching it with Colin, and you have to remember, it was late at night, and we were both transfixed to the screen. It seemed both real and surreal all at the same time. And then I called Mum because she's all alone and I thought she might be really frightened but when I called she sounded very calm and the first thing she said, the very first thing she said was,
epitelos
. I repeated the word.
Epitelos.

—What does that mean?

It was Zivan who answered Sam.

—Finally. It means, at last.

—See, Vera's tone was quiet and firm, I am not alone.

Zivan piled salad onto his plate. He took a bite of cucumber, chewed it carefully, then sipped his wine.

—I cannot be happy when so many people are dead.

I turned to him.

—I don't think my mother was talking about the deaths. She was horrified by it all, of course she was. But she's a fucking Greek, don't forget, she believed that the Americans had it coming to them. Christ, I'm an Aussie and I felt some of that.

I turned to Sam.

—You must have felt a bit of that yourself.

—No, I certainly did not. I have friends in New York, Isaac. I've been to New York. I couldn't feel that. I love that city.

—And I loved my Sarajevo, look what happen to that.

—Vera, Sam was firm. That's a very different situation. And the Americans did not cause the civil war in your country.

—Bull-shit. Equal stress on each syllable.

—They did not.

—Their money, their greed, their interference. They caused it.

I was looking at Zivan. He had put down his fork and his eyes were darting from Sam to his wife. He was silent.

—We've had this argument, Vera. I am not having it again.

—Of course not, you want to believe that the civil war in Yugoslavia was caused by stupid Slavs who were barbarians and had to depend on the civilised West to assist them from the chaos we make. That is what you believe.

—I believe that Bosnians wanted independence.

Vera slapped her forehead loudly with her palm.

—I am bloody Bosnian. I born in Bosnia. I wanted no independence.

—That's because you're a Serb.

—No! She screamed out. I was born Yugoslavian. I am Yugoslavian. I die Yugoslavian.

—Zivan, I asked, what do you think?

He was still smiling; still boyish, but sad. He leaned over to his wife and kissed her.

—I am not like Vera. I am not a proud Yugoslavian. Yugoslavia is finished. But I was happy there, I was happy listening to the Rolling Stones and swimming with Vera in the Adriatic. That's what I remember.

His words created calm.

Vera scooped the last juices from her plate, finished her wine, refilled her glass and those of the men, and then lit a cigarette. She pointed it to Sam, and then she looked at me.

—Do you think your teacher has changed?

—Yes. I think he has.

—How have I changed, Isaac?

—You've gone grey.