Eucalyptus (14 page)

There was an Italian, he said, who had a fruit shop in Carlton.

This man, he continued, was the first in Melbourne to call himself a FRUITOLOGIST—if you've ever wondered where that came from—and have it painted in green letters outside his shop. His fruit was the best quality. He lived above the shop. Both parents had died. He was a hunchback. Not a severe hunchback, but enough to pull his mouth down a little on one side. Everybody liked him. He was careful to listen to women. In turn they wouldn't hear a word said against him, let alone his fruit, though they would also shake their heads and laugh at any suggestion of marriage.

His shop in Carlton was famous for its displays of fruit. These he composed with great patience and skill each Sunday, behind the shutters. He had plenty of colours and shapes to choose from.

The usual pyramids of apples and so on he dismissed as too common. Instead he did detailed maps of Italy using green and yellow peppers, or the state of Queensland to celebrate the mango season. National flags, football of course, clocks and a cyclist were some of his memorable subjects. As his skills increased he turned to fruit sculptures: these included nativity scenes, an Ayers Rock of Tasmanian apples, anti-war scenes using cantaloupes, custard apples and pineapples.

It was his hobby, which also happened to be good for business. People would ask, ‘So what have you dreamed up for us this week?'

The care and attention the hunchback lavished on his fresh fruit displays had begun modestly enough as something to stave off that peculiar atmosphere of desolation ‘which pervades Anglo-Saxon towns on Sundays'. At the same time it gave pleasure to customers or people passing on the footpath. Gradually the displays grew in ambition and complexity, demanding on his part still more patience, ingenuity and stamina—to name just a few of the requirements. While the hunchback continued serving as always quietly in his shop, the fruit sculptures became more extreme.

Working next door in the cakeshop was a young woman. Occasionally she stepped into his shop—to buy a bunch of grapes, or something. Whenever she passed he paused to look at her. Never once did she so much as glance in the hunchback's direction, let alone acknowledge his presence, even when he happened to be standing on the footpath in his apron.

He gave her some grapes once; she took them with barely a thankyou. And, it goes without saying, she didn't take the slightest interest in his fruit displays, which as a consequence became more and more ambitious.

Now this young woman had extraordinary blue eyes which belonged more to a Persian cat (a distilled version of the blurry blue of the mountains west of Sydney). Even more extraordinary, and perhaps connected to the colour of her eyes, was the way at every opportunity she looked at herself—not only in mirrors, but in windows, doors, bonnets of cars, puddles. It didn't matter whether she was in the middle of walking or talking to someone. At every opportunity she tried to catch a glimpse of herself. Often as she noticed her reflection she used it to adjust hair and clothing. She couldn't help it. Here was self-absorption developed into a tic.

Was she lovely or was she beautiful? Ellen wondered about the blue eyes.

Lovely or beautiful, it doesn't really matter. She had long, straightish hair and a slightly empty expression. The poor hunchback became obsessed with her. To have her to himself would make his life complete.

At every spare moment—even when serving customers—he considered ways to catch her attention.

He sat down and drew up a list. Colours were sifted. He calculated quantities. Special orders were placed for exotic fruits. At the market he personally selected each item and weighed it by hand, looking for shape as well as evenness of colour.

All Sunday he worked behind the closed front of the shop. And he was still at it, making finishing touches, in the morning. He was like those earnest birds in New Guinea that busily collect bottle tops and bits of glass in their nests to attract the female.

The usual bystanders and early customers gathered, and when he raised the shutters, a politician unveiling a bronze, a murmur of admiration rustled among them.

It had passed the first test.

All he had to do now was wait.

Some tourists were taking photographs; children jumped up and down and pointed at it. A customer who lectured in art history at the nearby university began congratulating him, ‘A masterpiece. And I am not one who uses that word lightly…'

At that moment she appeared, in high heels. He left a customer in mid-sentence and moved to the front.

Hurrying late for work she still managed to glance left and right for any reflective surfaces. And yet—what's this?—she walked straight past his window without noticing anything special. He hung around waiting. Mid-morning she passed again without noticing; at lunchtime too; and again on her way home when her attention was caught not by his fruit-sculpture but by the side mirror of his parked truck.

There she was, modelled in the window, head on bare shoulders, an amazingly faithful Arcimboldian mosaic: her peaches and cream complexion; sliced apple and dates for nose; forehead of pawpaw; banana chin; glistening teeth of pomegranate; eyebrows, kiwifruit; juicy plum lips; bunches of guavas did for ears; pears formed her shoulders; and other bits and pieces too subtle immediately to recognise but contributing to the whole. With a split in the forehead and delicate placement of nectarines and figs he had even captured her self-obsession.

It was all there, in loving accuracy—except for the eyes. He had been unable to find a light blue fruit. Without the eyes she apparently couldn't see herself.

And he accidentally brushed against Ellen as he reached over to rest the flat of his hand against a splendid smooth trunk, which happened to be a Southern Blue Gum (
E. bicostata
).

• 19 •
Sideroxylon

WHY DID
the lovesick grocer have to be a hunchback? As if he didn't have enough problems, living alone above the shop, etc.

It was only a story. It is necessary for the story.

He should never have called himself a ‘fruitologist'—a bad sign, as far as Ellen was concerned.

When the stranger had left the story dangling in midair, she felt a sudden impatience at his indifference to her questions, such as, ‘Did she eventually stop in front of the shop and recognise herself? And then what? Couldn't someone tell her? And shoes—what sort of shoes did she wear?'

Instead, he moved onto the next tree, a squat
angry-looking
eucalypt near the pale brown dam, which seemed to remind him of another, entirely different story. Ellen searched his face. Was he making it up as he went along?

The tree was a Mugga Ironbark (
E. sideroxylon
).

This is not a happy story.

In one of the countless culs-de-sac in Canberra lived a retired public servant and his wife. For the last seventeen years they had only spoken to each other through their dog.

‘Will the old bitch get off her backside and make a cup of tea?'

‘He can make his own, I've been serving the so-and-so for all these years.'

Ellen began laughing.

This is supposed to be an unhappy story!

During his working life the man had climbed the many levels of the public service until he was responsible for all the weights and measures in Australia. It was a career that had resulted in a certain satisfaction. After all, it had demonstrated how one thing inevitably follows another: coming down hard on sloppy standards of weights and measures produced a corresponding rise in career-trajectory. In turn, it encouraged in his private life a high degree of precision and disappointment.

‘I left some toast on the table for him, I hope it goes cold.'

Always in the old dressing-gown, isn't she? You'd think she'd look at herself in the mirror.'

Each waited impatiently for the other's death; in the meantime they each did their best to win over the dog, a slow-moving kelpie, patting and feeding it the choicest scraps from their plates, all the time talking to and through it. As the kelpie grew even more slow-moving they became afraid of how they would address each other if it died.

The woman was the first to go. Busy with the crossword the husband had not noticed anything different. She was discovered on the bedroom floor around lunchtime; the man heard the dog making a faint noise.

From that day on the kelpie stayed close to the man.

The house felt more than half-empty.

Every Tuesday and Friday he went to her grave, the slow-moving dog following, and complained to her about the dog, while it lay at his feet: what the dog did; what it didn't do; the mess it made in the laundry; its fleas; how it didn't respond to his whistle any more.

And then after a few months, in what could only be described as the worst possible result, the man woke in the morning to find the acquiescent dog too had died.

Agreed, it was an unhappy story. Ellen wanted to tell him and at the same time ask if he liked dogs. She had suddenly many questions; but he had moved to another tree, seemingly at random, a Grey Gum (
E. punctata
), which is called Leather Jacket on account of its bark, and eased into virtually an identical story—except for one crucial difference.

As follows: a shoemaker in Leichhardt (I should tell you it's a suburb in Sydney of telegraph poles and telegraph wires and red telephones) every evening goes to the grave of his wife, often forgetting to take off his leather apron, and tells her the news of the day, and
asks
her advice, ‘Mrs Cudlipp's heels have gone again, those green shoes. She should take off weight. I forgot to water the flowers. We're running out of laces again. You know the Farini girl, the one whose boyfriend picks her up on the motorbike? He came a cropper, and tore his leather jacket. “I only do shoes,” I told her. I took a look, I can patch it up. What do I charge? The usual? The postman, Reg, he's back again. Of course his tips keep falling off. I've told him a thousand times, rubber, switch to rubber, as you always said. But he's the old school. He likes his cup of tea! Two women are going to the same wedding, you know them. My memory's going. Both high heels, reinforcement of the straps. The one with the loud voice, you said her mother was deaf. Man came in for change for a parking meter. Did I tell you the lease is up in November? I did, yes. We'll have to nut that one out, I've got a few thoughts. They say it's going to rain tomorrow.'

He also wanted to know what to do with all her shoes, sensible shoes, with affectionate wrinkles, which remained in rows at the bottom of their wardrobe.

This story which had rolled off his tongue was supposed to be an antidote to the one about the stagnation of a marriage, the bitter canine catastrophe, as he put it; but Ellen found it sad, far sadder, almost too sad to contemplate. As she pondered the strengths and weaknesses of a long companionship, the trees around her went out of focus; it was all verging on a dream. The subject of course was as vast and as varied as a forest, the different aspects coming in from different angles in different shades.

Glancing, she wondered how he'd look in a leather jacket.

To cheer her up, he spotted a small tree from Queensland,
E. beaniana
, and in a thoughtful tone told her that not long ago he'd overheard an oldish woman on a Manly ferry comment to a woman who may have been her daughter, ‘That's a terrible name! It's going to be a millstone around her neck.'

He turned to Ellen, ‘Ah-ha, she smiles.'

Speaking of millstones, what about the technical sales manager of an industrial ceramics firm, Sydney again, who for some reason always ended up losing authority in the workplace?

He had the name Been—Peter Been.

Obviously whenever a person in a jovial tone enquired, ‘Been all right?' it seemed to be casting aspersions on this man, wherever he happened to be. Even the habit of his innocent salesmen to begin a message ‘has been today' pointed a finger at his declining abilities. In the rapidly changing, low-margin world of industrial ceramics the slightest suggestion of someone being a ‘has-been' is… unfortunately it's the kiss of death.

Ellen was still pondering the power of companionship, the story of the poor cobbler.

Really, puns are invariably a nuisance—and of no consequence. They're seen as a way to shift to one side of the true essence of things, an evasion which doesn't get anyone anywhere. At least they have made very little headway in the traditional method of naming trees, and that includes the eucalypts.

‘Do you know my name?' she asked.

‘Of course. But don't ask me now.'

They had stopped before another eucalypt, a gaudy one, miraculously transplanted from Melville Island, its maroon flowers hovering on a green-brown sea, a shawl from Kashmir without the fancy borders. And as Ellen saw him thinking on his feet she leaned against the trunk, and waited.

‘From now on, I won't mention a single pun. Nup,' he put his hand on his heart, ‘nothing artificial.'

As they went from tree to tree and he told other stories, Ellen allowed them slowly to circle and enter her. Over time his voice vibrated along with the familiar heat, through the trees. She liked the sound of his voice. In the heat of the day she felt like closing her eyes. Instead she surveyed him, as she listened. She didn't even know his name. What if someone asked?