eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781925581119 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Spinifex Press |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 188 |
| File size: | 969 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
DESI
Last night watching TV, it occurred to me that Kate's former neighbour, Alma Bocca, might be the filmmaker whose work I found online. If so, at the one time living in this street were three amazing women: Mrs Alma Bocca, filmmaker, Mrs Johanssen, wildlife carer at the zoo and Mrs Gardiner, environmentalist and artist. Could they all have been lesbians? That was in the days before the word Ms was widely used. Back then this was not the fashionable artsy suburb it is now. But the lesbians had already moved in.
That's the thing about lesbians, it's a kind of detective story that unwinds in scraps but half of the pages are shredded and the rest are so destroyed as to be unreadable. What we have left are fragments. This story therefore is told in fragments; those I have been able to piece together. I'm Desi, niece of Kate who sometimes used her birth name Ekaterina when she wanted to be noticed.
My Aunt Kate was a lesbian, and before her, her great aunt. Before that, who knows? Her great aunt, Eudy, went into exile and like so many, hardly left any footprints. Kate, by contrast, left behind a huge swathe of writings, but most of it never made it off her computer, or was published only in fragments, or published in tiny magazines, or published in so many different ways that hardly anyone ever managed to put these fragments together.
Why bother, you ask, who wants to read about a few old dykes, old ducks? You'd be amazed. I was. In fact, I could hardly believe what I was reading half the time. Oh, I forgot to mention how I came across all this stuff. Well, my maiden aunt, that old dyke, left me a whole lot of boxes, a few books and some diaries. And the house. What am I going to do with these? I thought. Out of indecision, I stacked them away in the back room. One day, I was having a big clean up and about to junk the lot. I sat down to read a few of the scraps of paper and was bowled over. Not by all of it, but enough to make me think that I should keep it, at least long enough to sort out what was worth keeping and what was not.
It's been three years since I opened that first box and started reading and I finally know what I want to do. I've enrolled in a degree in creative writing. I said rather lamely in my application that I was looking into the ways in which women passed down memorabilia through their families, in particular looking at women who do not have children. Diagonal Genealogies, I called it.
It turns out that the story of Kate and Mercedes is way more interesting than I ever imagined. There's not much from Mercedes, just a few letters. The rest is Kate, though she also writes under the name Ekaterina.
The problem is, and don't tell the examiners, sometimes I don't know if it's me writing, or her? Or them? It's all so weird.
ancient writing happens in many different ways in Crete it resembled their method of ploughing called boustrophedon
What the fuck is a boustrophedon? It turns out that it has to do with cows. Kate was obsessed with cows. There are cows here and cows there. These ones are cows from Crete thousands of years ago. They walk in a zigzag (a bit like my inheritance down through the auntie line) long parallel lines that go back and forth across the paddock (she was a farm girl after all). Those old Cretans then turned it into a method of writing.
backandforthacrossthepageinacontinuo teguoynehwdnaskaerbynatuohtiwworsu totheotherlineyoujustkeepgoingbackwar telbaebotevahuoyesuacebhcnubtramssd oreadbothways
You see what I mean! No simple task. Anyway, this back and forth thing intrigued her I guess. As did moving backwards and forwards in time. She never stayed put. Late twentieth century or five thousand years before now. Reading her is like reading the weather. Sometimes you get it right, often you don't.
Mercedes is forever telling me stories about her ancestors. That's because when her family moved to Melbourne, along with suitcases, they brought the entire family – and not just the current generation, but going back over hundreds of years. She can rattle off ancestry as if it were just one of those seven impossible things you get done before breakfast. Their suitcases rattled with the bones, the hearts, lungs and spleen of bloodlines.
But me, my family left those memories behind in the far off villages of Crete. I get lost going back only a couple of generations. I know their names, but I hardly know who they were. That's one of the losses of migration. My grandmother was one of seven daughters – that was an auspicious beginning. Seven sisters, just like the Pleiades. Here is what I know.
Ally, eldest daughter. They grew up in the mountains in Crete. Ally was as sharp-eyed as a kingfisher. I have a memory of her, sitting beside the open front door sewing gingham dresses for my cousin and me. Red gingham with white cross-stitch for my cousin; blue gingham with white cross-stitch for me. She travelled around Europe in the 1920s. Went to grand-sounding meetings that might have changed the world if the next war hadn't come. When it did, the world changed. So many dead, so many hiding in caves where the Germans could not find them.
Lecca, had a face like the moon, round and bright. I saw her when we travelled to Greece to see all the aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents. She was old and as frail as a stalk of wheat. She simply lay in that bed, silent. No words, no memories to share with the little girl beside the bed.
The third sister, Maia, was a fine storyteller. Maia, my grandmother. So much to say about her, and yet so little. It's my emotions that rev up at the thought of her. She used to watch the boxing. She lived in Irakleion. I remember her sitting beside me. I had mumps while we were there. She must have told me stories, because that's what I feel I remember. We stayed for a year and then returned to the farm back in Australia. My father returned after just a few months because they couldn't get through the shearing and harvesting without him.
Another was called Tiggy, a reader, quiet as a doe, but behind that shield, a sharp mind. Tiggy, mother of Loukas the artist and boatman, I see her in her tiny kitchen. She's explaining to me why the English word ballet is pronounced –ay– at the end instead of –ett–. In summer Loukas takes us out on his boat, sailing out across the sea, sometimes as far as Santorini's moon bay.
One of the family puzzles is Mari who moved from the mountains down to the sea. Of all the sisters, she's the only one who looks sad most of the time. There's an old-fashioned element to her – her cotton dresses just a bit too long, her face expressing something I can't quite get a grip on. She took up with Giannis, a sailor, who had a great sense of humour. She shared a small house with her sister Callie, whose highjinks must have rubbed off on her. She married Giannis just before we left for Australia.
The youngest and most fun loving was dark-eyed Callie. Callie was my favourite. Her voice still vibrates through my soul. Deep and resonant. In our time in Crete we stayed with Callie and Mari (always in that order) many nights when our parents were away in those first few months – who knows where they went, what they did – for a few days or a week. And we were in heaven. Taken to the beach, where we swam and played. She too married. A Belgian, can't remember his name. He'd spent years in Africa and brought with him treasured art, carved wood for his gallery visited by summer tourists. Were these objects stolen?
From our last summer in Greece, I remember a painting. It must have come from the Belgian. A huge painting of a chook, streaked with colours. This chook must have been a Belgian chicken, sophisticated, elegant, a city chook. Not like the poor old dried out hens we had back home in Australia that panted around the water trough on hot dusty days. Callie's apartment, on the waterfront at Chania, was filled with paintings and artwork from so many places. I wonder now if I'd have liked her after all. I suspect that we'd have been at opposite ends of the political spectrum.
And finally, Aunt Eurydice, she was always disappearing with her girlfriends. Eventually she went so far away, her sisters never saw her again. There are three photos of her. In one she is standing alone. It is such a small photograph I can't see the features of her face. In the second photo, because I don't know her, I cannot pick her out in the one taken with so many of the sisters in Paris in the early 1920s. What were you doing there? Living it up? Finding love or a companion?
The last photo is of Eudy standing on the moors or some other wind-blasted place with another woman. Who is she?
Ruby. You are the mystery woman in the photo with Eurydice. I found your name in a letter which was signed, Eudy and Ruby.
But when we left Crete, I lost them. Lost all six great-aunts and my grandmother at once. Gone were the stories. Gone were the walks into the hills to pick olives. Gone were the afternoons of golden light when I would sit next to Maia and watch her milk the goat. She let me pull at the teats too sometimes. Warm, soft, it made me feel all squeezy inside (that's what I called it). I lost a whole world at a single blow. Each Christmas there would be gifts, but how could they remember what size I was? How could they know what now held my interest? Only the wrapping paper and the cards really sang to me. Every year or so there was one fewer sister, until one year, no gifts came, no cards, no fine wrapping paper.
Language makes us. But we too remake language. And ourselves. If we listen, imagine, invent.
Listen to me. Listen to my language. Once upon a time it was the language of the birds. Did you listen then? Are you listening now?
I'm a person out of place. Perhaps a person without a place. But that cannot be. Surely, everyone has a place? But is the place in this time?
Let me begin again. Once upon a time ... it was a very long time ago. More generations than you can count on your hands and your toes. It was in the time when the first stirrings of language were in our throats. A time of gurgling and burbling, of whistling and of singing.
It was the singing that began language. We imitated the birds. And slowly, so very slowly, words began to take shape. Words formed from the electrical charges in our brains. Concepts arising with each new song. And so, in a way, we sang ourselves, our communities into being.
DAY 1
I don't know where I am. They came hooded. Shouting, waving their guns. They were wearing boots and hooded jackets. Inside the hoods their mouths were covered by some kind of wrap. From behind they looked like aliens without necks. The hoods dropping straight to their backs. I heard a shot. A neckless one stood holding my beautiful Priya by one leg, dropped the dog body on the floor as if discarding an old rag. Another shot rang out. As I watched she fell in slow motion to the floor.
I don't know why I'm here. Wherever here is.
They pushed me into a van. I heard another shot as they slammed the van door on me. Mercedes? I was scared, so very scared. No markers. Nothing to tell me what the meaning of this could be. The van sped along the highway for a long time. Three hours maybe. Then we began to take a route that resembled a bowl of spaghetti. Any sense of direction I might have had vanished. Finally we hit a bumpy track, full of pot holes. The side to side swaying shifted to vertical jolting. I was sore by the time we arrived here. Wherever here is. I'm repeating myself. I want to know.
They opened the van door and shoved a heavy cloth over my head. It was still dark but I thought I glimpsed some light on the clouds before the hood covered my eyes. Hands pulled at my arms, hauling me out and pushing me again. I tripped over a step as they led me inside. The first thing that hit me was the smell. It still is. It's the smell of animal urine mixed with fear.
Where was I? Language. Where did it come from? I need to start at the beginning. I need to restart if I lose my place. If I lose my will.
What I see is a group of women sitting on a hill. In the middle is a small fire. Something is cooking. A sweet smell fills my nostrils. It is quiet except for the occasional bird song. A woman taps another on the shoulder and points to where the sound comes from. She purses her lips and a strange air-filled whistling begins. The other women laugh. Mercedes is there among them. Her eyes shining with that dazzling dark light of hers. She touches me.
This imagined place reminds me of so many places I've been. It's a mix of many hills from many countries. But the colours, they are the colours of Australia. The dry places that still suffuse my memory. The light of late afternoon that I've not seen anywhere else. The sun hangs low, hugging the horizon and turns everything gold and shining. There's a particular view from the top of the tank stand at the old farm, looking through the eucalypts towards the dam. My brother and I used to climb up the metal ladder and sit. We'd watch the house cow meander across the paddock. Watch as the sun spread either side of a black callitris trunk, and then turn pink as it hit the flat edge of the world. There's a spot next to Cooper Creek where the sun hangs forever spreading its wattle shower.
I stumbled as they pressed me into a room. They shouted and manhandled me to a wall. Hands up. Legs apart. They placed me so that my hands were above my head. My legs in the military at ease position. But this was not at ease. I felt something hard in my back. A weapon? I shifted just a little. They shouted, prodded me in the back again and moved me back to the original position. I stood. And stood. And stood. The aching began. Fear was spreading through me like a drug. I wanted to think about something else. Imagine myself in a different place. But my brain kept pulling me back to the now. My body ribbed with bars of pain. The body its own kind of prison. My hands were trying to read the wall. The wall blocked from me by the hood. Cold. Stone. A rough surface. Can't tell if it's rock or manmade. It feels thick.
As sight is shut off everything else intensifies. My ears have become antlers. I allow all the sounds to wash over me. Voices. Look at those hairy legs, says one of the two right behind me. Other voices mix further away. Clatter of footsteps. An echo of nothing. Like a hollow space between the ears. Amo, my brain starts up. Amo, amas, amat. Amamus, amatis, amant. Miss Lupa. Latin. Wolf woman. I only realised that later. Amo, amas amat, amamus, amatis, amant. How many times did we repeat that? How was I to know then that it was love that defined her, and would me too. Bellum, bellum, bellum, belli, bello, bello. Bella, bella bella, bellorum, bellis, bellis. That's what this is. They've finally done it. Declared war on us.
Mercedes, are you my wolf woman? They would say devil.
I'm a wolf, loping (louping) through the forest. My gait is even and measured. I can do this for hours, days, stopping only to mark my territory. Like the wolf, I am condemned. I am hunted. I cross vast expanses of country only to come face to face with the hunter. My only advantage: I smell him before he sees me. After days of moving, I am hungry. My appetite is me. I sink onto my haunches and wait. I have the patience of a wolf.
I will myself to have patience. To still my hunger. Like the wolf I must wait. Turn the tables and tell myself that it's not me who is the hunted, in the end it is them. They will fall prey. Even if it means that I drown with my wolf self, better that than that I give myself to them. Better that I should drown than betray all that I've lived for.
It's been building over years. With each election new laws were introduced. Laws that pulled most into the system. But as the rest were pulled in, we became more visible. More trouble. And we appeared more radical than ever. Not much had changed, just the contrast made sharper. I hadn't heard that we were in danger. I've always been outspoken. Is that why me?
A burning rod. My body taut with pain. I'm a violin whose strings have been tightened too much. Touch me and I'll howl like discordant strings. A threnody of loss. Strings wailing with grief. Will I break? Will they break me?
They've put on a CD. At first I thought, good, I won't have to listen antennae-eared to their movements, their disparaging comments behind me. But this can't count as music. Banging, barraging sound meant to deafen me and drive me mad. I want earplugs. No services on this flight out of reality. The sound burns through me. Now and then I catch a phrase. Hate-filled.
How long have I been here?
Go back. Back to the beginning again. Beginning with what? With O? With zero? With the circle? When did the voices emerge? Was it when the women stuck out their lips and allowed a low sound to roll up from the diaphragm? Or was it the short sharp ooo-ooo sound of a chimpanzee? Or was it the aum rolling up from the back of the mouth, across the palate, onto the lips and out through spacetime? There are so many puzzles to unwind.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Dark Matters"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Susan Hawthorne.
Excerpted by permission of Spinifex Press Pty Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.