Tales from the Tower, Volume 2 (16 page)

S
he stunned the pig quickly, to spare them both, and stuck it while it was still rigid, opening the throat in a welling slit. Its trotters paddled in a pitiful attempt to flee – or so it always seemed to her – but it was dead, or as good as. Sprawled on its side, it ran on. She attached the chain quickly and hauled the pig aloft by a back leg, glad to use her muscles freely after clenching herself for the killing. Then she shoved a drum under the snout as the pig bled out.

‘Excuse me.'

A jolt of horror stopped her – did the pig speak? – but she turned towards the doorway of the shed and saw that it was a sturdy child silhouetted against the flare of light. For a moment she was speechless, her heart thudding in her chest, then she stumbled to one side so she was not dazzled and saw that it was not a child but a little man. What was he doing here?

‘Oh, look out!'

She flinched, but it was the pig that had convulsed, knocking over the drum.

‘The blood,' he said. ‘What a shame.'

She re-positioned the drum beneath the thrashing pig, steadying it with one hand. Steadying herself.

He was watching the pig with keen interest, not her, and her breathing eased a little. She saw that her mistake came from the childlike proportions of his body, the large head.

‘We would make a blood pudding, where I come from,' he said, and she noticed the accent now.

Her heart was still pounding, but she found herself saying calmly enough, ‘And you're—'

‘Bohemian,' he said, then held up an expensive-looking black camera and fiddled with the lens. ‘Would you mind?'

Ah, tourist
, she thought, and wiped her forehead with the back of a gloved hand, conscious of her lank unwashed hair and flushed skin.
Lost tourist.
She stepped away from the corpse, turned her back and took out her steel to put a keener edge on the skinning knife. She disliked cameras.

‘Please, don't let me interrupt. Go to your verk. Forget me. I will be silent. Do not think of me at all.' Snap.

But she did think of him, a strange man appearing as if by magic in her shed, and she alone.
I'm the one with the knife,
she told herself.
Yet something childlike about him disarmed her.

‘This is wonderful.' Snap. ‘The afternoon light is so beautiful, don't you think?'

She reached for the hose and began to sluice the pig, glad of the fine mist on her burning face while he framed and shot. In spite of herself, she ceased to mind the camera, and they moved around each other in a sort of minuet, she thought, as she worked on the pig, slicing along the seams of the carcass to peel away the skin, hooking off the hooves, delicately opening the belly. Gutting required all her attention, and she soon forgot everything else.

Later, when she had done all she could, she straightened and saw him, surprised all over again at this little man in her shed.

‘So. Hello. Good afternoon,' he said. He was wearing a pale linen suit and a beret, as if he had stepped out of a French film. It was not a labourer's beret like the leather-trimmed one her father had worn. For a moment she felt a stab of grief, remembering his smell, his forearms – brown and stringy with muscle – straining a fence, tending an animal.

When she did not respond he went on smoothly, ‘I am forgetting my manners. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Sanek. Otto Sanek. My friends call me Otik. How do you do.'

‘How do you do,' she said, peeling off a glove and feeling his warm, smooth hand in hers. His formality was catching. ‘My name is Greer.'

‘Greer?'

‘Yes, it's Scottish.' She smoothed her hand over her overalls and felt her work-hardened palm jag minutely on the cloth.

‘Scottish?' He was smiling again. ‘I have not been to Scotland, but I hope one day to go. I hear it is beautiful.'

‘I wouldn't know.' Her real origins – here, the farm, these pigs – seemed too drab to own.

Now what?
He was standing before her in his little suit as if there were nowhere he would rather be.

‘Perhaps, if it is not too much trouble, I could ask you for a glass of water.'

‘Oh, yes.'

She indicated the door, infected by his civility, and followed him out of the shed. The dogs were dancing on their chains, so she let them loose and they bounded round her, sniffing at the blood on her overalls, wagging their tails and waltzing in circles. She saw that he was chary of them, even little Molly, who was a scruffy charmer and accust- omed to being petted. She ordered them to stay.

‘You are wery kind.' He took off his beret and she noticed that his head was as flat as a flounder, the hair pressed to the back of his skull and dark with sweat. ‘May I?' He nodded towards a worn backpack and a battered folio under one of the pine trees.

‘Of course, bring them onto the verandah.' She waited for him, then opened the screen door, and they did an awkward little dance on the threshold as he pressed past her, each of them trying not to touch the other.

‘Please, take a seat,' she said, and crossed to the sink to fill two glasses with water. ‘There you are.' She dragged a chair out from the table and sat opposite him.

‘Your health.' He drank it down in a single draught, and smacked his lips appreciatively. ‘Aaah, thank you so much.'

She noted the wide forehead and the strong clean planes of his face, as if they had been hewn from wood. It was a head that belonged on a big, strong, handsome man.

‘It is rainwater?'

She nodded, rotating her glass. His skin was fine-grained, spared the desiccation of an Australian childhood.

‘There is nothing like it. Delicious.'

‘Another?'

‘If it's not too much trouble.'

She leapt up, conscious of his eyes on her back, her buttocks. This time she filled a jug. Jumping up and down like this was ridiculous.

She poured him another glass and he tossed it back. His face reminded her of the bust of Cicero on her tutor's bookcase, with its intelligent brow and soft loose mouth.

‘Ah, so good. I am on a long and hungry journey – oh, I beg your pardon, a
thirsty
journey.' He laughed, and this time she smiled back.

‘Are you hungry?' she asked.

His eyes slid away, and he said, ‘Actually, I am famished.'

She was on her feet again, bringing bread and cold pickled pork, a board and knife, a plate. Her own appetite would take some time to return. It was always the way when she killed a pig.

When she began to slice the meat he took the knife from her, but charmingly, with an ‘Allow me' and another smile, as slice after slice peeled away, moist and pink.

‘None for me,' she said hurriedly. But he sliced more anyway, then slabs of bread.

‘Do you have – what is the word? – lard?'

And she was off again, bringing the lard pot and setting it before him.

‘Wonderful,' he said, his eyes gleaming. ‘And a little salt perhaps?'

She fetched the salt and placed it near him, white and crusty in her grandmother's old crystal dish, the little silver spoon tarnished, she noticed. How she let things go, living alone. Her mother would never have been so careless.

As he ate, he told her stories, about himself, about the pictures he painted, about books and music and films, all the while biting and chewing, digging lard from the pot with his bread and salting it generously. His gusto, his pleasure in the food – in everything – seemed to loosen a knot somewhere within her.
This is what I've missed
, she thought.
This talk about the wider world, about art and ideas rather than just the price of wool and the cost of feed.

She watched him, intrigued, and scooped up his stories, saving them for later, when she had time to think. She tried from long habit to find words to describe him, but he was too strange, too new, like a piece of music heard for the first time, and so not heard at all. And he made her laugh, pretending his command of English was less than it was, flattering her and offering little wordplays and jokes. She did not know what to think.

When at last he stopped talking, the plates were all empty. Not a crumb was left of the loaf, and the pork bone was clean and white.

‘You
were
hungry,' she said.

‘I am always hungry,' he said simply.

And yet you're a good doer
,
she thought, hearing her father's voice in the words and having to steady herself. How long until she stopped mourning for her parents, dead over a year now? After the accident Charlie had picked her up from university and brought her home. Dear Charlie, her neighbour and friend since primary school, with his slow smile and steady grey eyes. He'd seen her through those first stunned days and months, helped her with the farm, yet it wasn't enough. She was young; too young to be stuck out here alone. She still hankered for that other life she'd glimpsed at university, of ideas and books.

‘Allow me to give you a little gift, to thank you for your kind hospitality.' He sounded rather grand as he said this, grand and generous and fine.

She blinked, unsure how to respond.

He went to the pile of his belongings and fetched the heavy cardboard folio.

‘My verk,' he said, his voice weighty now. He untied the tapes and laid it open before her, lifting aside a sheet of tissue paper carefully.

They were small paintings in rich, intense colours, of things she had never seen or imagined outside of dreams and nightmares. She looked at them, entranced, drawn into a land she knew from childhood tales. If there were figures, they were solitary and stiff, like toys or dolls, their faces vacant, their eyes blank, peopling fantastic cityscapes, towers and empty squares. They reminded her of the grotesques of Hieronymus Bosch. She struggled to name the disturbing feelings they evoked: loneliness, isolation, rejection, yearning?

As she laid each one carefully aside, landscapes and abstracts replaced the figurative work, pigment bleeding into fantastic plants or meadows, domes or spires. These she loved. The less he put into the paintings, the more she saw, and the more room there was for her to imagine and dream.

‘They're strange . . . but very beautiful.'

‘Thank you,' he said. ‘I would like you to have one, for the meal. A little one. These big ones are for my show.'

How could she choose? She went through them care- fully once more, setting aside the bizarre figures and keeping the smoky landscapes.

‘Or if you do not find one that you like, perhaps I could paint your farm, or your livestock . . .'

‘My pigs?' She snorted.

‘Your pigs are beautiful! I love the pigs.' He laughed at her reserve. ‘Mr Orwell was not kind to the pigs, but we know better.' At the ‘we', she felt the hard knot inside her slip a little more.

‘Please, show me your farm.' He pulled a small sketchbook from his pocket, and a mechanical pencil of some sort, and said with another charming smile, ‘I am ready.'

‘What do you want to see?' she said, grabbing Spinner by the collar as he pranced up to the door with a stick in his mouth.

‘Everything. Everything on this very fine farm.' He quickly took command of their walk, opening gates and doors with a flourish, gallantly ushering her into her own sheds. All of it was wonderful – unlike his own country, but magnificent. The orchard, that was a little like home, but there they had cherries, whereas here? Yes, Greer assured him, there were cherries, planted by her grandparents. The hens scratching under the trees were very nice – how many eggs each day? And the pigs, such fine beasts. He lingered over them, especially the piglets.

‘Do you eat them?' he asked.

‘No! They're only babies.'

‘But with the apple? Suckling pig – she would be delicious.'

When he said
delicious
, he made a wet sound with his mouth that Greer found slightly repellent, but she quickly smothered the feeling. Here was an artist, a real artist, admiring her pigs, her farm, giving it back to her transformed.