Tuvalu (33 page)

I hardly slept for a week. I walked quiet streets, peering into yellow-lit apartments. I felt incredibly lonely and it was this which eventually led me to call Tilly a little before sunup on a Saturday morning, having walked and sat on benches all night and waited in vain for the sun to rise from the top of an austere parking lot. How could it hurt to be civil, I reasoned, to take an interest in an ex-girlfriend? Was she home?

I found a phone, purchased a card and dialled Tilly's number, which was still deep inside my wallet. The call rang out and, nervous, I dialled again.

Mr Willoughby's voice was sleepy.

‘Mr Willoughby?'

‘Yes.'

‘It's Noah Tuttle. I was wondering, is Tilly there?'

There was a lengthy silence in which I pressed the cold plastic receiver hard against my ear, waiting for a reply.

‘Matilda?' he asked.

‘Yeah.'

‘Who's this?'

‘Noah Tuttle.' I worried about the early hour. ‘I didn't wake you, did I?'

Another pause.

‘She's dead,' Mr Willoughby said, before quietly hanging up.

I was astounded. I had to know more. Even if more was only a scrap, a single word. I had to know
how
.

For days I dialled Tilly's number, always getting the busy signal. More often than not I would think about that one tail-light, about the day I found a seat on the train without bothering to say goodbye. It was by no means the last time I saw Tilly, but it was the moment I most regretted. Somehow in my mind that was the point at which I abandoned her; the point at which I finally took her for granted. Perhaps it was even earlier than that. Perhaps it was from the beginning. But it was the tail-light my mind skipped to whenever I heard that long tone.

Once or twice I slumped and tried to cry but, sober, the tears felt forced and unearned. I had no idea what to cry about. Without knowing how she died, she was not dead. At least not to me. Over and over I would expect her to answer, to discover she was alive and merely extracting revenge for the cats.

In between dialling I tried to go on with my life as before, but my hatred for Tokyo only intensified. At work I came close to shouting at customers. My thoughts bubbled threateningly like lava and I became yet more racist in my outlook, lumping the Japanese in together and hating them all with an equal, unjust ferocity. I had, of course, never made any effort to integrate myself into Japanese society, but now took Tokyo's disinterest in me, in my loss, as a rebuke.

It never occurred to me to leave, however. There was nowhere to go. Instead I acquired sleeping pills and doggedly tried to take up drinking. The two threw my life out of focus like a snapped antenna. I was fired for not being able to add up change and for vomiting on a computer keyboard. I was always either drunk or ill, rarely bothering to leave the apartment. I stole Phillip's grass and smoked it in the bathroom, regularly exiting to dial Tilly's number, until eventually it was disconnected and replaced with a Telstra ‘Out of Service' message.

This bout of booze, pills and self-pity came to an end outside a love hotel near a foreign shot bar called ‘The Munroe'. I had been drinking whisky since around midday when, just on dusk, a woman sat beside me, a woman with an old, scar-pink cut that caused one eyelid to sag slightly. Japanese, she had a solid roll of fat around her middle and was perhaps forty but still retained a certain unmistakeable attractiveness. She said nothing for an hour or so, just sat and drank whatever I did. Eventually I think I bought her something—a pack of cigarettes, maybe—and we did our best to chat across two languages, mincing up the grammar of both. Twice the barman warned her off, whispered in her ear that she was drunk, that she ought to go home, but this did not stop me kissing her. We rented a love-hotel room and I vaguely recall sleeping with her, sex that became almost violent towards the end as we both struggled to finish. Horribly drunk I sobbed afterwards, and she lay hugging me until our hour was up and we found ourselves back outside, roughly dressed. She took my hand and shook it, then hobbled on high heels to a pedestrian light, waiting patiently for it to turn green before crossing the street and vanishing into a dark, leafy park full of concrete dinosaurs.

Ten minutes later my misery swirled up into a solid fear. I vomited and, slumping onto the concrete and staring disgustedly at the mess, resolved to go home at the first opportunity. I had too many questions.

Home

T
he girl beside me was nervous. She wore a tight top which revealed her navel and enabled me to visualise, with some certainty, the shape of both her breasts. Whenever the plane shuddered these breasts bounced and the girl clutched the inside of the window as a rock climber might a mountain face—with sheer force of pressure. During turbulence her nasal breathing shortened and she shut her eyes. I must have sat staring at her hands for half the flight. Either that or at the girl in front, on whose head a tiny brown ant walked in muddled circles, lost amidst the black, coarse hair.

We landed safely and I was once again in Melbourne. My new backpack was searched by customs, after which I was let into the onset of summer—T-shirt weather. Women's arms and legs were on display and everyone was wearing sleek sunglasses.

This time it was Celeste who picked me up, driving me to her house, where my mother had prepared a roast. Oddly, it made all the difference to me to see my mother. I had not thought about it flying over. She was just someone who was going to be there, a stepping stone on my journey to the lavender farm. Perhaps it was the food. It took my mind off death. I tried to relax, battling a headache and feeling an obligation to actively participate in the conversation. My mother drew talk from me carefully, like worms from arid ground.

We discussed the lingering impact of the coalition war in Iraq, then Celeste's artwork—mostly about a piece called ‘Fork' which, she reminded me, she had been working on at the time of my last visit. It was the can-opener project. She had welded them all into a giant fork, she explained, watching me, my face. I nodded blankly and she dropped her head.

‘It's crowding fucking back of the house,' she snapped angrily, jabbing at her downcast head with one thumb. ‘No one gets it.'

My mother caught my eye. ‘Given a can,' she said softly, ‘people so often have nothing more than a fork.'

‘And so,' said Celeste, looking up and holding out both arms, ‘furk!'

‘I see.'

‘So stupid an idea. So many openers but too smart.' She scrunched her face up. ‘Too smart, too simple,
ne
.'

‘I still want to see it,' I said.

‘You can buy it. Buy it and melt it.'

‘If it's all the same, I'd like to see it before I buy it.'

This improved things markedly. Celeste brightened, nodded and shrugged. ‘I am sore,' she said. ‘Ignore me.'

We ate in silence, until my mother felt it time to once again draw me out. ‘So,' she said brightly, ‘tell us all about Japan, Noah. We speak so little.'

‘Japan's okay.'

‘You and your girlfriend,' asked Celeste distractedly, as if it was any old question, ‘still fucking?'

‘No.'

She cocked her head. ‘Why no?'

‘Tilly returned to Australia.'

‘Ah … lust but no love,' she said, voice a mumble.

I did not reply, stood and cleared my plate in the kitchen, afraid that I would say something nasty about the first piece of artwork I saw. My mother joined me. She gave me a hug, which I suddenly realised she had not done at the front door.

‘Celeste reacts badly to people being inside this house. She feels exposed. Everything she's done with her life since returning to Australia's here. Also …' she said, hesitating.

‘What?'

‘She doesn't like being the third wheel.' I suspected my mother was blushing. ‘It's a shame,' she continued, ‘that Celeste's like this, that this is all you see. She's fantastic when it's just the two of us.'

‘She was nicer last time.'

‘She wasn't. She'll calm this time, though. At the moment she's just nervous.'

‘A third wheel,' I repeated. The words were not exactly a surprise but it was still bizarre to hear them.

My mother smiled. ‘It must be strange for you. I remember being a child, looking up at my parents and thinking they're different to me, that they've stopped making mistakes. You always tried to look at me that way. I saw it and I let you. But you're not a child anymore, Noah, and I'm here with Celeste. Now that you understand, perhaps you could go easier on your father.'

I felt a flutter of panic. ‘I …' My mother smiled and ran her fingers through my hair, roughing it up.

‘Now come back out, will you?'

‘I was only stacking my dishes.'

‘I know.'

But Celeste, having heard whispers, was determined to pick a fight. ‘You cheated?'

‘She's dead,' I said. ‘That's why I'm home. She died.'

After this no one spoke. My mother had an awful look of pity in her eyes, unaware that Celeste had been correct. Celeste, meanwhile, looked perplexed. She eventually stood and refilled her wineglass, which, being a large glass, she emptied half the bottle into. Without another word she left the room. I could hear her heavy tread on the ceiling above, pacing.

‘Well,' said my mother, throwing down her napkin, ‘that went much as expected. I'm sorry about Celeste. And about Matilda. What a terrible thing to have happen. Was it some kind of an accident?'

‘I don't know. That's why I'm home. To find out.'

‘You're going back to her place?'

‘Yeah.'

An eighties pop song started to blare upstairs, bass causing the crockery to shudder.

‘I really am sorry,' said my mother again.

‘Stop saying sorry.'

That night I thought of Tilly and there was no comfort in the little sleep I managed. It was all sweat, muscle ache and dreams.

The following morning I wandered down to Celeste's shed, wanting to make peace. I found her inside, dressed down in pyjamas and cutting one-inch lengths of fencing wire from a large coil before straightening them in a vice.

Behind her was one half of Tokyo's Imperial Palace. I recognised it at once and caught my breath. Made entirely from lengths of wire it included the buildings, gardens and moats, and shimmered beneath a bare globe hung over it specially. I marvelled at how Celeste had created the illusion of water and even greenery with nothing more than wire.

‘Amazing,' I said, momentarily forgetting everything.

Celeste's face brightened. ‘It will stand as long as the real one,' she said. ‘Toughest Aussie wire.'

‘I want to buy it.'

She beamed at this, cutting off a length of wire for me to inspect. I tried to bend it with my hands but could not. Seeing this, Celeste held up the tools she had been using and explained how she constructed various aspects of the buildings. I noticed she used large maps and I asked her what she could tell me about the moats.

‘No information,' she said. ‘I have maps for the buildings and for the gardens. And for where moats are. Nothing else. Why?'

‘I know a girl in Tokyo who says she jumped into one of these moats—right here.' With a finger I pointed to where Mami claimed to have jumped.

Celeste let out a sceptical laugh and shook her head hard and fast—like a child. ‘Not possible.'

‘I didn't think so. She says things, this girl, things that are hard to believe.'

‘She sounds bad.'

‘Maybe.'

‘But you like her?'

‘No. Not like that.'

Celeste shrugged and returned to her work, a slight smile on her lips, like a last comment I could not rebut. I had no interest in rebutting it; I thought about Tilly and the journey ahead.

‘So,' Celeste said, ‘will you please your father?'

‘What do you mean?'