Charades (29 page)

“Christ,” Bea said.

“Bea, it would break their hearts, they'd die of shock.”

“Yeah,” Bea said dryly. “That's for sure. You'll be the subject of a few prayer meetings, that's also for sure. Howd'ja get away with it?”

“I taught till a few weeks before the end, then I had to resign, they're the rules. So I don't have a job any more. Not here. I applied for one overseas, I saw an ad for teachers, I leave next month. Bea …?”

“What?”

“I can't just give her away.”

Bea said nothing.

“So … so
would
you, Bea?”

“Would I what?” They stared at each other and Bea turned white. “Bloody hell,” she said, and had to sit down. “Bloody hell, Kay, you've got a nerve.” She lit a cigarette and asked harshly: “Boy or girl?”

“A girl. I've called her Charade.”

“You seen him since?” Bea wanted to know.

“Once. On my twenty-first. I told you.”

“So he's seen her. What the hell did he say?”

“He said it wasn't the first time, and he was sorry.”

“Jesus,” Bea said. “Bloody Nicholas.”

Kay's eyes were still asking:
Bea, will you?

“Bloody hell,” Bea swore. “As well hung for a sheep as a lamb, right? Our wayward sister Bea, and who'll think twice? All right then, I will, but
Jesus,
Kay.”

And after that, how could they ever speak to each other again?

“I don't know,” Charade says, “I don't know. It came and went, that version, in a second. Like a bird flying in one window and out another. It doesn't quite add up either. I mean, they'd never have let Kay keep teaching that long, not back in those days.”

But why did so much happen in late 1963, when Nicholas and Verity vanished from sight? And what was the translation of that look in Katherine's eyes? “And why …?” Charade begins.

“Hush,” Koenig murmurs, his lips in her hair. “It doesn't matter any more.”

The last street lamp blinks off.

“Look,” he says. “Now you can see the constellation of Taurus. And if we had a telescope, the Crab Nebula would wink its neutron eye.”

But Charade is asleep in his arms.

PART V

Truth, Physics, and Other Questions

Somewhere someone is travelling furiously toward you,

At incredible speed, travelling day and night,

Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents,

through narrow passes.

But will he know where to find you,

Recognise you when he sees you,

Give you the thing he has for you?

Hardly anything grows here,

Yet the granaries are bursting with meal,

The sacks of meal piled to the rafters.

The streams run with sweetness, fattening fish;

Birds darken the sky. Is it enough

That the dish of milk is set out at night,

That we think of him sometimes,

Sometimes and always, with mixed feelings?

“At North Farm”

John Ashbery

1
The Crab Nebula Dream

2
Wave Mechanics

3
Probability Theory

1

The Crab Nebula Dream

One of the most spectacular events ever seen by humankind was recorded by Chinese astronomers on 4 July AD 1054. A supernova explosion, caused by a dying star, left behind its remnants and formed the famous Crab Nebula. The Crab is an expanding cloud resembling a Fourth of July starburst …

But it was not until the twentieth century that astronomers discovered a neutron star spinning rapidly at its centre.

The spinning star has an enormous magnetic field and sprays matter like a hose or a lighthouse as it turns.

NeilMcAleer,
The Mind-Boggling Universe

Down the long corridor of Charade's sleep someone kept coming, the footfalls never getting closer. She could almost see who it was, but not quite, because the corridor twisted and turned — which was odd since clearly it was MIT's Infinity Corridor that runs straight as a die from Massachusetts Avenue to the Crab Nebula. When she turned the corner into Building 6 (Physics), she was aware of subtle changes. For one thing, the sign:
The Uncertainty Corridor is closed until further notice.
We regret any inconvenience.
For another, the corridor itself was no longer a corridor, not really, more a tunnel carved out of rock. She reached out, pushing at folds of twilight, to read the tunnel walls and felt striations regular as ribs. It's The Cut, she thought with surprise. I'm in Sydney, I'm down in The Rocks near Circular Quay. There was also the scrubby reassuring texture of Koenig's chest hair and of Tamborine underbrush, both of them neatly planted on Arbor Day by order of the City of Cambridge and the children of Boston.

She ran toward the footsteps which kept coming and coming, fainter, louder, never further off than now. Was this pointless? Echoes bounced like neutrinos. When she called, hallooing, the rubble of her voice was everywhere, all directions at once. Wait for me, wait for me, wait. Unevenness in the rock floor caused her to trip and skid so that for whole downward stretches she was in fact falling, turning as she fell, head-over-heels cartwheel style, a pulsar, a fragment from the Crab Nebula blast. She had no idea The Cut was so endless, that they were still extending it, and in the same old way too, that was plain. She could hear the convict chains and the chink of chisel and mallet. Tap tap, tap tap, tap tap. She ran and ran.

She passed the Harbour Bridge and the north shore beaches and the Hawkesbury River, she crossed the border into Queensland, keeping up a steady jogging pace, Coolangatta and Surfers Paradise on her right. Always the tunnel curved ahead, always the footsteps, always she had to stay alert for trains, running between the tracks, flattening herself against the wall when the subway cars rushed by. Brisbane loomed ahead; there was never any mistaking the smell of that city, the way it came at you in a familiar wave of frangipani and jasmine and a yellow splash of allamanda flowers. She passed the Botanical Gardens and the kiosk and made straight for the centre of town, for that section where the underground concourse fans away from the Harvard Square trains and curves into a loop. That was where the supernova stopped, that pulsing spinning blinding splinter of star, the Crab Nebula junk. That was where the buses came in.

She waited, along with Harvard students, Radcliffe students, the bag ladies, the underground drifters and huddlers. It seemed a long time. Somewhere behind a pillar the footsteps marked time (though when she looked, there was a cunning scuffle, a red-shift). At last, shuddering, the bus arrived, the bus for Goodna, and she put two quarters in the slot and climbed
on board. Where the star stopped and pointed, she got off.

Goodna was no different, the same grey smell, the grey halls down which the footsteps were coming faintly towards her. She followed though they never got any closer. She saw Maeve who opened her housecoat by way of greeting, she saw Jimmy the Bookie, she stopped at the door of Sleeping Beauty's room where Crab Nebula spilled its light.

The footsteps kept coming and coming.

Sleeping Beauty was in her rocking chair by the window, her shaven head splendid and frightening as Circe. Charade stood in the doorway and watched, and the chair, all by itself, began to rock. Very slightly, very softly, creaking just a little, certainly not enough to blot out the sound of the footsteps, faint though they were.

In profile, the head was not unlike Nefertiti's. Or like that of a prisoner-of-war. It turned, and in the slow arc of its turning, Charade felt the coming of a heavy answer. She felt it like the leaden drag of menstrual blood, she felt panic, she wanted to run but couldn't move. Very slowly the head turned, very slowly, somewhat stiffly, a little awkwardly, testing a mechanism of movement long out of use. But the eyes which had been vacant for so many years were now focused and pulsar-bright.

“You came,” Sleeping Beauty said. Her lips did not move, but the words were nevertheless so clear that Charade could feel their sharp edges. The words spun and glittered like pieces of star. Fragments, hundreds of fragments came to meet them, a reverse explosion. They piled themselves up around Charade — Charade of the leaden legs, the cast-iron body — Charade who was frantic to flee but could not move, who was deafened by a voice and
by footsteps.

Sleeping Beauty tilted her head slightly to one side.

“Is he coming?” she asked. It seemed that the air, by arrangements of waves, made the sounds. Or perhaps she willed them on Charade. Her lips never moved. “Is it he?”

Words spoke themselves through Charade's lips. “He is coming, but not getting closer.”

Sleeping Beauty's eyes lost lustre as water runs out of a sink, as a star crosses the lip of a black hole. Suddenly. Absolutely.
She looked at Charade without looking, and Charade, feeling the high kick of panic again, strained against her own leaden weight in a ponderous effort to back out of the room. Too late, the event horizon crossed. The hands of Sleeping Beauty, which had never been seen, removed themselves from the grey folds of skirt.

Entreaty? A warding off? Defence?

Without volition and in fact against her will, Charade took a step, and as she did so the outstretched arms, although they were blind and rigid, swung like compass needles in her direction. She took another step, then another, a millstone walk. Now the bald head and its downy stubble were at eye level, inches away.
Say goodbye, Charade.
Charade's fingers hovered, tentative, then stroked the way Bea used to stroke. And at the instant of contact, knowledge came. Crab Nebula exploded. Sleeping Beauty opened her hands and they were full of raisins. Charade took one and woke with a cry.

2

Wave Mechanics

What is transported along the wave is the disturbance causing the wave phenomenon, but not any material particle.

In the apartment off Harvard Square, dread beats like a heart, each beat deafening as chaos. Charade is curled inside the tent made by Koenig's arms and his chest and the bed, in the crook of his heart, and would like to stay there. Her own dread pulls at her, her own fate which is as common and as horrible, as incomprehensible, as that of any other sleeper in Boston, as ordinary as black dribble in the mouths of the dying.

“Koenig,” she murmurs. “Oh Koenig.”

It is a kind of prayer and even saying the name gives momentary comfort. She buries her lips in the coils of his chest hair, that matted and greying bulwark.

He does not wake.

“Oh Koenig,” she whispers again.

She would like him to open his eyes and dissuade her.
She would like him to snap his fingers and discount the dream. She wishes the dream would vanish, the way dreams do, into some black crack of absolute non-recall.

But Koenig sleeps.

As she slides away, his arms stir and make a reflexive effort to hold her, then go slack.
No,
he moans. But a restive nerve claims him. His muscles twitch and relax. He rolls over to face the wall.

Charade tiptoes to the kitchen and switches on the dim appliance light over the stove. In the demi-monde of shadows and thick silence and mute domestic things, she sees signs and portents, fantastic messages, a code of horrors: tongs, redhot coils, knives, graters, grinders, slop bucket, plughole, freezer. The telephone huddles like a black listener between the fridge and a row of green and white canisters. She shivers. She dials zero.

“Directory assistance, please,” she says. “For overseas calls. Australia.”

Convoluted explanations are required. Country code and the area code for Queensland, she has those; but the number she needs is for a pub, McGillivray's, in Mt Tamborine. Yes, yes, of course it is the name of a village as well, surely the operator knows that. Isn't she in Brisbane? No? San Francisco using onscreen data, how confusing. There is, says San Francisco, no onscreen listing for Mt Tamborine. Ah. Well then, Charade supposes it must come under Beenleigh, which she has to spell for the computer. There is a blip blip blip, the computer thinking, connections being made, a long beep, and then a new synthetically generated voice takes over.
The number you need requires an additional rural routing code of static static static … This is a recording 
…If
you need further assistance static static white noisssssssse.

Charade begins again. On the third attempt, she gets a number and writes it on the memo pad beside the phone.

She tries to remember the time difference, and eventually concludes: It will be tomorrow afternoon there. Late afternoon already. If Mum is on afternoon shift, she will answer the phone in the bar. She dials the number.

“G'day,” says a broad Australian voice, male. “McGillivray's. What can I do yer for?”

“Joe?” Charade's heart is hammering in her chest.

“Half a mo'. I'll get 'im for yer.”

“No, wait! Who's speaking?”

“Davey Ryan here. Who'dja want?”

“Davey!”
My God, Davey! In her absence, his voice has crossed the cusp. He's become a man.

“Who's speaking?” Davey sounds puzzled, having heard the long-distance pips. “Where're ya calling from?” She's not an Aussie, that's for sure, whoever she is.

“Davey! It's me. Charade.” She is half laughing, half sobbing with longing.

“Who?”

“Charade. Me. Your
sister,
you silly drip.”

“Bloody hell!” he says. “Charade! I don't believe it. You sound like a bloody Yank. Where the hell are you?”

“I'm in America. In Boston.”

“Christ Almighty,” he says.

“Davey, I have to talk to Mum, it's urgent.”

“Jesus,” he says, tense, concerned. “What's happened?”

“No, no, nothing's wrong, not that kind of urgent. I'm fine, I just want to talk to her.”

“She got a letter from you,” Davey says. “Weeks ago. She's been flashing it all over the mountain. Says you're coming home.”

“Yeah.” In that instant, Charade realises it's true. “Yeah, I am. Davey, can you go and get Mum? I'll call back in half an hour.”

Davey roars with laughter. “You've been gone too long, kid. Even the mountain's changed. You know what Mum went and did?” He pauses dramatically. “Wait for it,” he crows. “She got the phone put in. Because of you I think, to tell you the truth. She's been awfully jumpy since you went.”

“Yeah well. Give us the number then.”

“Mum? It's Charade.”

“Hello?”

“It's me, Mum. Charade. I'm calling from America. I called McGillivray's and Davey gave me your number. How are you, Mum?”

“Charade!” Bea wonders, if she lives to be a hundred, will she ever outgrow this inner lurch, this sense of her children as unbelievably fragile and perpetually prone to harm, this wish to cradle them in her nest mound, to cover them with her wings and keep them safe. She presses her lips together and leans against the wall of her kitchen. Through the window she sees a crow at the mangoes again.

“Mum? Can you hear me?”

“Yeah.” The telephone is still a foreign object to Bea. How can you feed into it the things you might want to say? “I can hear. You sound different.” She concentrates on the mangoes. Must get Trev and Liz to climb the tree this arvo, pick the rest before the crows get the whole bloody lot. She'll get Liz to help with the mango chutney. “You finished gallivanting yet? The little'uns have been asking. They miss you, I reckon.”

“Yeah, me too. I'm coming home, Mum. Mum,” — Charade takes a deep breath and holds it — “do you still go to Goodna?”

“Whad'ya think?”

“And they're all” — she is twisting the cord around her fingers — “they're all still there? Jimmy the Bookie? Maeve?”

“Jimmy's died. Dear old Maeve's in and out, in and out.”

Charade can hardly breathe now. There is a terrible constriction in her chest. “And Sleeping Beauty, Mum? Is she still there?”

“Yeah. Still there. Same as ever.”

“Mum, I have to ask you something.”

“I reckoned you would, sooner or later, Charade.”

“Is she Verity, Mum?”

Bea sighs. “Yeah. She's Verity.”

“Mum …” Charade's hand is trembling. Her back against the kitchen wall, she slides to the floor and sits huddled. “Is Verity my mother?”

Through the window, Bea watches the crows, how they peck and peck, how they worry at the mango till it falls. Then they leave it to rot. They leave it for another perfect piece of fruit. They start again.

“Charade,” she sighs. “Why can't you let things be? Why can't you let sleeping dogs lie? Why do you want to know everything? You think
knowing
is so great?”

“I don't know why, Mum. No, I don't think it's so great, but I have to know, I just have to, that's all. She is, isn't she?”

“Yeah, she is.”

“What happened?”

“It's not pretty, Charade.”

“Was it me? She went mad because of me?”

“Don't ask stupid questions. No one can answer stuff like that.” That part of it, in fact, Bea understands: she remembers the helplessness, how she used to feel ill with anxiety, how there were frantic and lunatic things she might have done to keep any one of her babies from harm. So she understands, in a manner of speaking, given everything else. “She tried to drown you, Charade. They took her away, and Nicholas brought you to me.”

“Oh God,” Charade whispers. “Oh God.” She is blind, she cannot breathe, something burns across the surface of her skin. She rocks herself on the floor of Koenig's kitchen. Where is all this salt water coming from?

Bea is talking. Bea watches the mangoes fall. “Listen to me, Charade. There's things that happen, and there's things that
matter.
And me and Nicholas … as far as I'm concerned, me and Nicholas made you right here, in this house, on the day I turned twenty-one.”
Struth,
she thinks. And the thoughts that have never taken shape before push, shove, fizz their way out, a geyser of astonished outrage. Me, someone
looks
at me and I get pregnant, so
how? why?
Bea sighs. “Verity's your mother. But me and Nicholas made you, that's the truth.”

“I know that, Mum.” Yes, I do, Charade thinks. I do know that. “Mum, did Nicholas leave her? Is that why?”

“No, that's not why. He wouldn't've … well anyway I reckon he wouldn't've. Ah struth, who knows? Nicholas is Nicholas. But she …” Bea sighs. Another mango falls. The crows leave. There is a crimson flash of rosella parrots. “She always expected him to leave. She expected everyone to leave. She always expected to be alone.”

“I didn't find him, Mum.”

“Yeah. Well.”

In the eternity that ticks away between them, Charade hears the whole Pacific on the line: the long shush of white noise and waves, the static, the shuffle and ping and collision of disturbed molecules of air.

“Mum,” she laughs nervously, “this is an awfully expensive silence.”

“Yeah,” Bea says, watching scrub turkeys scratch at their nest mounds. Somewhere in the rainforest a bower bird preens and she sees his dance, his shimmer, in her mind's eye. There are things, she thinks, that a person can't forgive himself for. He'll have to keep running from them forever, he daren't look back. That's
the way things are. “Yeah well. Don't be too harsh, Charade.”

“Do you think he'll ever …?”

“Who knows? Charade, remember the tree orchids on the mango? There's one just out, I can see it from here. Funny, when you were little, you always had to have one of those flowers in your hair.”

Charade is dizzy with homesickness. “I'm coming home, Mum. God, I miss you all.”

“Yeah, me too.” A female scrub turkey shakes her feathers outside the kitchen window, a kookaburra laughs, Bea taps her foot to keep time. “I'll spread the word, Charade. Reckon we'll have a party.”

“Yeah. That's beaut, Mum. See ya soon, then.”

“Hang on, I gotta — Charade? Listen, there's no need to tell Kay about, you know … She sort of … she always wanted to … The thing is, Verity was, I dunno, bloody magic for her. No sense spoiling that.”

“Mum, I think she knows. I think she knew when she
saw me.”

“Yeah. Could be. You've got Verity's eyes, not the colour, but the shape, or something. Sometimes I see her looking out, scares the hell out of me too, Charade.”

So maybe now Kay will forgive Bea at last. Now that she knows. And Bea, who has let that little cruelty go glittering on through the years, is Bea willing to …?

Bloody Kay, though. All these years wondering if she and Nicholas … star-shaped mole indeed! Through the kitchen door, Bea can see the bed where still and always … She sees the hollows of his thighs, those milk-white creases where her body swallows his cock, his eyes, oh God his blue blue eyes, and in the bleating hollow of his neck, the brown mole in the shape of …

Bea frowns.
Was
there a mole? Was there ever a boy with a recorder? Bloody Kay, bloody bloody Kay, bloody bloody bloody —

“Mum? Are you still there, Mum? Do you want me to give you Aunt Kay's number?”

There is sweat on Bea's upper lip. When she rubs the back of her hand across it, it shakes a little. “What?” she says vaguely. “Kay?” There are two whole seconds of silence. “I don't know, Charade. Let sleeping dogs lie, I've always said.” She can see the crows at the mangoes again, they can never leave well enough alone. Somewhere a bower bird keeps up the same old dance. “Yeah,” she sighs. “Give me Kay's bloody number.”

Charade sits on the floor, seeing nothing, till first light comes through the Venetian blinds. Then she tiptoes into the bedroom where Koenig is still sprawled in sleep, one arm flung up across his face like a child. How beautiful he is, she thinks. She stands and looks at him.

Losses, losses, losses.

Will he miss her?

Perhaps, she thinks, he will miss me enough to write.

(Struth, who knows?
Bea asks.
Nicholas is Nicholas.)

And Koenig is Koenig, Charade thinks with a terrible pang.

Before she can change her mind, she kisses him on the forehead and on the small mole (not star-shaped) in the crook of his neck and gathers up her things and leaves.

And with that,
as Scheherazade said to King Shahryar when the thousand-and-first night had come,
she vanished like camphor.