Hill of Grace (7 page)

As the comedy faded to a chorus of Colgate promos, Joshua stretched back in his chair and closed his eyes. Reaching out for the tuning knob he by-passed 5AD's gardening hour and settled on a low, gravely voice with a Russian accent. He pricked up his ears. ‘As we moved into punishment block we came across the whipping bench . . .'

Describing the marks of clawing fingers on the wood.

The Soviet film
Chronicle of the Liberation of Auschwitz, 1945
, was almost as powerful without the images. Joshua's mind created the portable scaffold which hardly ever worked, inmates being helped back up as if they were boarding a bus. And as the voice continued, he entered a sorting house known as
Kanada
: piles of teeth, hair and prosthetics, reaching to skylights which would offer no liberation. Spectacles and shoes, decoy tickets which spoke of places the victims would never see.

And through all of this a vision of God started to clarify in his mind. A pile of burnt bodies, still smoking, hastily re-burnt before liberation, like a clipping William had failed to find or stick in his scrapbook. An aborted foetus with placenta, dried up beside its murdered mother.

Where was God? He was there watching, shaking his head, despairing for human beings and their inability to see him through a haze of sweet-smelling smoke. Jesus too, looking at his watch, saying to his father, How long before I can return and sort this whole sodden mess out? But God was in no rush. ‘Let them come to see me first, in lilies and Ajax, Roy Rene and the smashed shell of an old Austin Seven.' Otherwise, he explained, there would be no point in returning. People would just laugh when he said, ‘Yep, it's me, Jesus of Nazareth. Nazis and Baptists to the back of the room, please.'

Which meant that if he were right, William was just as likely to be called as anyone else. Eventually the words ended and a Bach violin concerto began. In the play of instruments Joshua could hear voices struggling for dominance, forming a sonority and then receding; a chorus of all instruments speaking at once, and then a single voice, clearer and more pure than all the rest.

And in this state he stood and walked out his back door, leaving his pipe on a window sill, moving down through his garden in wet, muddy socks in the face of an approaching storm. Passing through rows of Seppelt's chardonnay the rain began to spit, and every drop was a bullet trying to stop him from reaching God: bloomers at three and six, Victas and Tony Curtis in a zoot suit. The rain bucketed down. He pulled off his socks and, feeling the energy William had tried to describe, started to run between the rows. ‘Lana Turner has written to me,' he screamed, and a few pickers, working late by gaslight, looked over the vines to see.

‘Lana Turner, the movie star!' he called hoarsely, trying to overcome the noise of torrential rain. Tripping. Falling over and ending up in a puddle of mud. Looking up at the sky and screaming, ‘Damn you!' Lying back down, yielding, his heart returning to normal as he licked water from his lips. Convinced that he did have some part to play in the grand scheme of things which, all in one instance, encompassed Auschwitz and Macackie Mansions.

The next day, as he helped William pick, they laughed over the story of his muddy socks. He urged William, again, to write something down, to describe and define the time he'd been told about.

‘I have some ideas,' William replied, ‘but numbers are unreliable.'

‘Nonetheless . . .'

They worked on in silence, William watching Joshua and wondering if he'd risen above the rational.

William cleaned and rinsed his crusher and his first dozen barrels of blended red, with oak chips, were placed on the floor of the wash-house to start reacting with the yeast he had added in imprecise amounts. The barrels were wiped clean and covered with old cardboard boxes, salvaged from the Black and White Cafe, to keep out the light. Within days the bubbling would begin, carbon dioxide erupting in small hiccups of shiraz perfumed gas.

As he did at least once a week, Arthur Blessitt joined the Millers for dinner: lamb chops fried black in a frenzy of improvised hollandaise Bluma had read about in one of Mary Hicks' old
Weeklies
. He helped Bluma and Nathan clear away the dishes and wash up and they settled in for one of William's epic devotions.

Pulling up his sleeves and setting out pages in front of him, William began. ‘God chooses us,' he said, as he looked at each of them. ‘We become disciples through his grace. What am I talking about, Arthur?'

Generally a pious man, Arthur could think of better ways of letting his food settle. Still, there was no point trying to change William. When the Lord's name was invoked you bowed your head and savoured the smell of Bluma's rhubarb crumble, drifting over from a slowly cooling stove. There was nothing original about William's devotion – as with Pastor Hoffmann, you stood at the right time, made the sign of the cross and recited blank verse. Maybe it all meant something to God, but it probably didn't. There were better ways of expressing your love for the omnipotent. The full-size cross he'd started building in his workshop was an example of this. What he'd do with it or where he'd erect it when he was finished, he didn't know. Probably he'd just re-use it for scrap. The thought of being branded a heretic was too much for a simple man of flowers.

‘Forgiveness,' Arthur replied, remembering a similar devotion from last year. Either way, the intoning of a few simple words was generally enough to keep William happy: sin, forgiveness, love, persecution, resurrection – once he'd even thrown in
sublimation
, and William had nodded his head in approval.

‘Forgiveness was at the centre of the Saviour's life, this is what his disciples learned. Unconditional and absolute. Here in Matthew chapter nine, verse nine to thirteen . . .'

William was off and running, rubbing the pages of Matthew between his fingers, reading slowly, as though the words might come to mean more. ‘“And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house . . .”'

But Arthur was off in his delphiniums, lovingly weeding between the drip irrigated rows. Nathan's thoughts were with Lilli, recreating moments on the Seppelt hill, as foot massages became other things in anticipation.

‘Nathan?' He heard his father's clicking fingers in front of his face.

‘Sorry.'

‘Tell us about the disciples.'

Nathan furrowed his brow. ‘The desertion. Peter's denial.

Things put in the Bible to teach us about . . .'

‘Grace.'

‘We aren't naturally forgiving. We have to learn.'

‘And this was the lesson of the disciples?'

‘Yes.'

‘And where do we hear about this?'

William pushed the Bible over. Nathan picked it up and flicked through Matthew, as though it was the
Weekly
, full of stories, tid-bits and cardigan templates, words that meant little beyond the obvious.

‘Matthew eighteen, verses twenty-one . . .'

‘Go on.' William sat back and folded his arms as Nathan read.

‘“Then came Peter to him and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me?”'

Arthur's stomach gurgled and he farted into a haze of warm rhubarb. Nathan stopped reading and looked up. ‘“Children of Israel, shall we forgive . . .”'

Just as Nathan knew he would, William sat forward, his hands on the edge of the table. ‘Nathan.'

‘What?'

Nathan continued reading, but he caught Bluma's smile as Arthur bowed his head in unspoken shame.

At last his father took back the Bible. As Anthelm's grandfather clock ticked away in the hallway and Arthur sniffed for the fading scent of Bluma's crumble gone cold, William canvassed the Bible's views on sin, passing on to how forgiving is not the same as for -getting but how, like the twelve disciples, we had to try do both. As the tired old metaphor of the vine and the branch was trotted out again, Nathan watched as Arthur slumped forward in his chair, waking with a start sometime around the, ‘If man not abideth with me . . .' line.

‘Pardon me,' Arthur said, excusing himself again, as Nathan grinned. William looked at his son.

‘What, it wasn't me!'

Everyone except William laughed. ‘We're reading the Gospels.'

‘William,' Bluma scolded, ‘your whiskers are sticking up.'

At which point the three of them lost it completely. ‘You have the spontaneity of a mushroom,' Bluma continued, poking her husband's belly.

‘Get off.'

Arthur had had enough. He stood up and took the crumble out of the oven, fetching a steak knife and stirring the coals for the kettle.

The following Friday, as Nathan waited with his father and mother on the Adelaide Railway Station concourse, Arthur deposited a bag of brown apple cores in the bin. Although he was way past it, Nathan read the poster for
Eagle
magazine as William considered a series of photos promoting the progress of the Snowy scheme. New Australians, with their single eyebrows and greasy hair, manned pneumatic drills on sheer rock faces, working for the privilege of being called
real
Australians.

Arthur returned via the cafe with Peter's Dandy ice-creams in their tubs. Wooden spoons were clutched as Nathan led them towards the River Torrens. Passing the city baths as the sun began to set he said to his father, ‘This way, no turning back.'

For once Nathan was genuinely happy. All he needed now was Lilli, to witness what he was up to. Which was to follow up on his father's promise.

‘I'm
not
stuck in the past,' William had said, as they sat eating cold crumble.

‘Prove it,' Nathan challenged.

‘I have nothing to prove. My focus is on God.'

‘God won't mind.'

‘So?'

And with that Nathan had closed his Bible and told him what happened every Friday night beside the Torrens. Brushing up against Anglicans and agnostics his father's capacity to celebrate life would be fully tested.

Passing through Elder Park – where Arthur had once come with a rug and thermos of coffee to watch La Stupenda sing
Rejoice
Greatly, Oh Daughter of Zion
– Nathan led them onto the Pop-eye passenger boat and paid their fares.

Casting off, William could hear jazz drifting across the water, could see strings of fairy lights flashing blue, red and gold, reflected in the water of the Torrens lake. The Pop-eye approached the floating stage, docked and William's eyes lit up to a dozen or so musicians, all in tuxedos, playing a waltz he could almost remember. Joe Aronson and his Synco Symphonists, he read, on a painted backdrop, as Nathan helped him aboard the over-sized barge which bobbed lightly in the wake of the Pop-eye.

William stepped onto a dance floor which extended out in front of the orchestra. Tables and chairs were arranged in precarious clusters around the edge. Imitation flappers darted to and fro with watered spirits, West End in steins and frankfurts dished up with a dollop of sauce. An American flag refused to flap as a couple of teenagers from Mile End feigned Al Capone. Children invaded the dance floor, teaching each other something called the ‘vertical stomp', leading Nathan's eyes and mind away from the oom-pah resonances of a valley childhood.

‘Fine,' William said, sitting and smiling. But he wasn't impressed, convinced that Australians, in the absence of their own culture, were too quick to imitate others, generally choosing the worst of whatever was available. ‘A swinging time,' he said, smiling, trying his hardest, although Bluma could tell his words were about as real as Joe Aronson's accent.

Drinks were ordered and Bluma was up first with Arthur. Nathan took over, twirling his mum about in improvised moves which had more of the Landler than the Charleston. After a time he whispered in her ear and she went over to fetch William. At first he refused to stand, but when the cheers of surrounding tables grew up around him, he had little choice.

As a dancer he stunk, his moves stiffer than the hired tuxedos. But in time he put his arm around Bluma (in a public display of affection which took some doing for a Barossa Lutheran) and they settled into a slow, gentle rhythm which seemed to respond to the waves of the Torrens itself.

‘Matthew chapter . . .?' Nathan asked Arthur, his eyes set on his parents.

‘William may yet learn,' Arthur replied.

‘What?'

‘Every man worships in his own way.'

Which to Arthur was a glass-house of summer chrysanthemum, or a freshly planed cross smelling strongly of Tasmanian oak.

When he sat down, everyone looked at William in anticipation. The voice of Gnadenberg and the feel of brittle pages between his fingers had faded, but the fake moustaches of the waiters reeked of an artifice he couldn't tolerate for too long. At best a novelty, this was a world of lost people, unsure of what to eat and drink, when to harvest or how to cure wurst. These were people with Mickey Mouse ears, out for a good time, with nowhere to go afterwards.

Still, he knew he had to try, at least this once.

As Aronson's baton came crashing down, the music faded away into the distant bamboo on the northern bank. Aronson stood up and, beaming a smile, asked the diners to check under their seats. There was a general flurry and at the Miller table, ecstatic cries as William produced an envelope. Bluma hugged him and accompanied him up to the podium.

‘Open it,' Joe urged, in his fake Brooklyn accent.

William fumbled the envelope and read the writing on the voucher.

‘Into the microphone,' Joe urged.

‘“The holder is entitled to goods to the value of twenty pounds,”' he read. ‘“Courtesy J.N. Taylor's Homewares, Grenfell Street and suburbs.”'

There was general applause and Joe asked, ‘What will you use it for?'

Bluma jumped in. ‘Lino.' And people mostly laughed.

William suddenly felt like he was a contestant on Pick-a-Box, broadcast through crystal sets into the living rooms of a nation. The flickering of lights in the water became the illuminations of an all electric hell, the static through the microphone, the hiss of God's displeasure.