New Australian Stories 2 (5 page)

He looked into the bottom of his glass with one eye as he kept the other on a tall blonde woman who had just walked into the bar.

‘Don't you fall for that bullshit. I bet it's already on. Like I said, with someone you know.'

We had a few more beers before I left alone. I walked to the train station in the rain. When I got off at my stop it was still pouring. I was wet to the bone and felt miserable with the thought that all I had to look forward to was an empty house.

The day Rachel left, she insisted I stay away from the house while the removalists came. When I returned home that night I heard her absence as soon as I put the key in the door. And as I walked down the hallway my footsteps echoed throughout the house, reinforcing my sense of abandonment.

There was little furniture or ornament remaining in the house, which was not unexpected. I'd arrived two years earlier with a backpack stuffed with clothes and a cardboard box full of paperback novels. Previous to moving in with Rachel I'd lived in a share house in Richmond. None of the furniture there was mine, either. I was a literature student at university but dropped out during third year. The other tenants had dropped out also, from one venture or another. We did not have a serious dollar between us, the house was falling down, and we drank from jam jars and sat on stolen milk crates.

Rachel rescued me from this mess. We met at a seminar organised by a job centre. While I didn't get anything of value out of the seminar itself, Rachel and I hit it off straightaway. We talked all afternoon. She said I had ‘potential', and I believed her.

Even though the double bed belonged to her, she'd left it in the house for me, along with a clean fitted sheet, two blankets and a pillow. That first night, I sat on the bed and hugged the pillow to my chest as I considered how generous she had been. But now, following the conversation with Alan, I woke in the middle of the night, troubled by the thought that since she'd left her bed with me then logically she'd moved to someplace where a bed was waiting for her.

A bed she was probably sharing with another man and, as Alan warned me, ‘rooting' in.

She had also left her kitchen table, two wooden chairs, the fridge she'd stuck the note to, and enough cooking implements to get by on. Not that I'd done any cooking once she'd gone: I was living on black coffee, cigarettes and toast.

There were some pre-made meals in the freezer, casseroles and soups that had been lovingly prepared by Rachel before being labelled and stacked away. She once told me they'd come in handy on wintry evenings, after we got in late from a romantic walk through the park or along the river. We would warm a meal on the stove and sit on the couch in front of the TV.

Well, winter had arrived, and the couch and the telly and my girlfriend were gone.

I did pull a frozen block of pea-and-ham soup out of the freezer one night, but couldn't bring myself to thaw it, let alone eat it. I forgot to put it away and found the container on the bench the next morning sitting in a pool of water. I threw the meal in the bin, made myself a cup of coffee and smoked a cigarette.

I'd been off the smokes since meeting Rachel. Deceiving myself that I hadn't taken up the habit again, I bought my cigarettes loose, in twos and threes, from Ali at the local milk bar. I'd smoke the first of three as we chatted out the front of the shop and the second on the walk home. I shared the precious third cigarette with a cup of coffee on the back porch as I looked over the garden.

It had become unkempt since Rachel's exit. With the exception of an olive tree that continued to thrive, most of the plants looked sadly neglected. I couldn't summon the energy to care for it. The best I could manage was to look at the garden as I took a drag on what I truly believed was my final cigarette. I'd then sit at the kitchen table for an hour or so before giving in and making another trip to the milk bar.

I was on my way to Ali's one Sunday morning when I noticed a rickety wooden ladder leaning against the trunk of an olive tree that grew outside a block of flats at the end of the street. A yellow plastic bucket was sitting on the nature strip, next to the ladder. Closer to the tree I noticed a pair of legs wearing thick woollen socks and a scuffed pair of slippers on the top rung of the ladder. I looked up and saw an old woman picking olives from the tree and throwing them into the bucket. She looked down at me and nodded. I nodded back and walked on.

At the milk bar Ali suggested I increase my supply to four or even five cigarettes.

‘I'm no pusher, man. But you buy more and you will come back not so quick. It is better for you.'

As I paced the footpath outside the shop he stood in the doorway complaining about his son's recent trip back to Egypt.

‘The bastard, he rings me reverse. Reverse charges. I say “no”, but his mother, she is too soft. Always, she takes the call.'

A teenage boy brushed by him and went into the shop. Although it was a cold morning he was wearing only a singlet, a pair of track pants and no shoes or socks. As we chatted Ali looked over his shoulder, keeping a watchful eye on the boy. He came out a couple of minutes later, empty-handed. He was about to walk away when Ali grabbed him by the neck.

‘The pockets, little thief. Empty your pockets.'

The boy tried to free himself. They scuffled. A bottle of tomato sauce fell from his side pocket onto the footpath. Ali let go of him, reached down and picked up the bottle. The boy ran off and stopped at a laneway. He turned and called Ali a ‘wog prick' before disappearing down the lane.

Ali laughed as he studied the bottle of sauce.

‘No offence, my friend, but this country has no culture.'

I lit another cigarette, said goodbye and began walking home. When I got to the olive tree the old woman was down from the ladder. She was picking up the few loose olives that had missed the bucket. It was almost full. I reached my front gate before I stopped and walked back up the street.

‘I have a tree. In my yard.'

She stared at me, blankly. I wondered if she understood English.

‘I have a tree,' I repeated. ‘In my backyard there is an olive tree, just like this one. I live at number thirteen. You can come and have a look if you like?'

‘Thirteen?'

‘Yep.'

She shrugged her shoulders, picked up the bucket and walked off.

I hadn't been home long when there was a knock at the door. It was the old woman. She had an empty bucket in each hand. A man in a checked flannel shirt, work pants and muddy boots was standing behind her, leaning on the wooden ladder. She introduced him as her husband.

They had come to see my olive tree.

When I opened the side gate and took them into the yard, they smiled with joy as they walked around the tree, admiring the abundance of fruit. I watched from the kitchen window as they worked together. They spoke in Italian, English and, occasionally, something in between. I went out into the yard and lit a smoke. One of the buckets was full. They were busily working away, shaking at the tree like a frenzy of birds. I didn't want them thinking I was spying, so I pretended to tidy up around the yard. I picked up a broken terracotta pot but didn't know what to do with it and put it down.

I wandered over to the corner of the yard and stopped outside the garage. In the two years I'd been with Rachel I'd never been inside. I forced the wooden door open. The room was empty except for a piece of furniture sitting in the corner. It was an ancient record player — a ‘three-in-one'.

The old woman called out to me from the yard.

They'd finished picking the fruit from the tree. Her husband, who didn't say a word, had the ladder slung over his shoulder. He was carrying the fuller bucket of olives in his other hand. She tried explaining the process of washing and preparing the olives to me, only some of which I understood.

She smiled at me as they were leaving.

‘I will come back, a week, maybe two. I have olives for you.'

I stood outside the garage and watched as they walked from the yard. He was a little taller than his wife. Carrying her bucket in one hand she reached up and rested a hand on his shoulder. They rhythmically waddled from side to side as they left.

That night I dragged the record player into the kitchen with the idea of listening to the radio. It would keep me company. The three-in-one was covered in dirt and cobwebs. I cleaned it with a damp cloth. As I wiped its smoked-plastic lid I noticed an album sitting on the turntable. I plugged the player into the wall socket and flicked the switch, half expecting an explosion or an electrical short at the fuse box. Nothing happened. For the next hour or so I tried everything I could to get the radio working, pulling wires out of sockets and checking loose connections, with no success.

While mucking around with the wires I accidentally knocked the arm of the record player. The turntable began turning. It was not until I moved the needle across to the vinyl and heard the crackling notes of the first track that I remembered that my parents had once owned the same album.

I picked up one of the wooden chairs, placed it in front of the record player, sat down and listened as the album spun around. The music saddened me a little. Not particularly because of the words or the melody, but the memory of my parents arm in arm together in my childhood lounge room, a place full of people and the sounds of life.

True to her word, the old woman knocked at the front door a fortnight later. It was a Saturday morning. The jar of olives she nursed in her arms was enormous. I stepped onto the porch.

‘Your husband? Where is he?'

‘Oh, he fell down from ladder. Sore back.'

‘I'm sorry.'

She waved my concern away. ‘Better soon.'

I invited her into the house. She hesitated before following me down the hallway. She looked around the near-empty kitchen, and her eyes settled on the record player and chair in the middle of the room. She was not impressed.

‘The house is empty. You live alone?'

‘Yes. Alone.'

She shook her head. She looked as sad as I felt.

‘You' — she pointed — ‘enjoy the olives. They bring peace. They bring luck. They bring happiness. Eat.'

Before I was able to comprehend what she had said she turned around and marched out of the house.

I had no idea what to do with the jar. As I didn't want to offend her I hadn't told the woman that I didn't eat olives. I'd always thought they were a little too
exotic.
I rested my back against the kitchen sink and looked across to the jar. I walked over, bent forward and peered through the glass. There were hundreds of olives in the jar, along with pieces of chilli, peppercorns and delicate flakes of sea salt.

I unscrewed the top of the jar, reached in, took out an olive and rested it on my tongue. It tasted both warm and fresh. I bit into it. The olive held many flavours, but most of all it tasted — not like the sea —
of
the sea. I ate a second olive, followed by a third.

I quit smoking the next day, and not because I'd taken a pledge to give up. Each time I took a puff on a cigarette I could taste burned rubber in my mouth. I also decided to weed the garden; I stocked the fridge with food. I even picked up a comfortable two-seater couch from the Salvation Army store.

Within a week, just as I was fishing around the bottom of the jar for the last of the olives, the old woman returned with a fresh supply. She told me I looked a lot healthier. ‘More fat,' she said, laughing, as she grabbed her well-proportioned stomach and jiggled it up and down. ‘Yes, more fat,' I replied, as I showed her out of the house.

Not long after she left there was another knock at the door. I was surprised to see Rachel standing on the doorstep. She looked different. Her hair had blonde highlights through it, and she had lost weight, a little too much, if you ask me. She was dressed differently too. She wore tight jeans, black leather boots and a T-shirt with bold letters across the front —
LIVE FOR THE MOMENT
.

Before she could say anything I pointed to the T-shirt.

‘What's that mean?'

She tugged at the letters. ‘It's sort of like a Buddhist thing.'

I was surprised. Rachel had been more secular than Richard Dawkins.

‘Have you become a Buddhist?'

‘No. I said
like
a Buddhist. You know, the idea that what's happening now is what matters most.'

There was a car parked in front of the house, a late-model sedan. A man was sitting behind the wheel.

‘He with you?' I nodded in his direction.

There was a nervous twitch in her eye. ‘Yes. That's Robert from the front office at work. You know him. He's been fabulous, helping me get resettled. That's why we're here. I don't know if you remember, but I had an old record player in the garage. We saw one just like it at a garage sale last weekend, and Robert thinks it might be worth something. I'm going to auction it on eBay.'

Robert got out of the car. He rested his hands on the roof as he watched me closely. He appeared concerned, like maybe I was going to abuse Rachel. In an attempt to reassure him I smiled and waved. He appeared relieved and waved back.