Peter Carey - Amnesia

“You’d as likely chop your hand off.”

“This is all there is.”

“You’re a liar. But why would you think you could write this in the first place? How could you be such an authority of my mother’s home? I wasn’t even born. You were never there. What makes you think you can write about her?”

“Show me what you read.”

“825 Stanley Street, Woolloongabba,” she said, and thrust my stuff back at me. “The house isn’t even there anymore. They put a highway through it. Everyone is dead.”

THE GREATEST VIRTUE OF 825 Stanley Street, Woolloongabba, I had written, was the trams which rattled past the front door and thence across the Brisbane River where, if you took care with your appearance, no-one would know where you had come from. Without these trams Celine Baillieux could not have been born.

Celine’s grandmother—who died at the beginning of our first year at Monash—was “tall and skinny as a rake.” She “never had a sick day in her life.” She had a son and husband fighting overseas. She took in boarders, but she was always broke. She was a Methodist. During the Depression she fed her family by stealing her neighbours’ potatoes in the middle of the night. She had all the good manners and principles she could afford and when the women of Australia were instructed to welcome the “Yanks” into their homes, when they learned it was their daughters’ patriotic duty to be “Victory Belles,” in those few short months before she understood exactly what this meant, she communicated to the authorities that she would be very happy to entertain some officers, except no Jews.

Her gratitude to the Americans was well based. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, invaded Thailand, and the Philippines, seized Guam, marched into Burma and landed on the beach in British Borneo. Soon they would bomb the port of Darwin, then Broome, then what? They bayoneted men tied to trees, they raped and chopped off heads. They were headed for Brisbane and the British “could not do a bloody thing about it” except run for home. As for “our own boys,” they were in Egypt in their bargain-basement uniforms, trying to save the Poms.

In these first days, Celine’s grandmother was grateful to the Americans with all her heart, plus, of course, sugar and cigarette rationing did not apply to GIs and they could be expected to unwind their well-fed bodies from their taxis carrying cartons of chocolate, sweetened condensed milk, silk stockings most of all. She was not alone in expecting this.

Her daughter Doris (she who would be Celine’s mother) was at secretarial school in the city every workday, but both women were at home on Saturday afternoon when the Americans arrived.

Celine’s grandmother was, at that time, only forty. She had good legs. She was ready in her best frock which was from St. Vincent de Paul’s although “you wouldn’t guess.” When the door knocker echoed through the dark hot house she collected Doris and brought her to the door.

What was there revealed were four officers of the United States Army, or if not officers you would never know, for the fabric was so fine, the cut so flattering it made you feel sorry for Our Boys who had no chance at all, poor buggers.

The four soldiers stood there, together, their smiles extra-white, gifts held in their dark hands, that is, the Americans were as black as night, and Celine’s grandmother, a Woolloongabber all her life, held her right hand against her breast while the left searched unsuccessfully for the daughter.

The men introduced themselves. Their voices were deep and melodious.

“Oh dear,” Celine’s grandmother said when they were finished. “There has been a mix-up.”

The soldier at the front was small, if only in comparison, but he stood proudly with his shoulders back holding his carton of Lucky Strikes. Peering from behind her mother’s stringy shoulders, Doris smiled at him.

“I’m so sorry,” the future grandmother said. “There’s been a mistake.”

Doris had detected the scent of aftershave which she had never smelled before. Behind her was what you would expect: cabbage and mutton fat. Ahead was America: cleanliness and beauty and a young man, at the rear, so tall and slender with modest lowered eyes. He had a cherubic face, if cherubs could be black, and it was clear they could. The girl smiled; the young man smiled right back.

The mother was now pushing the door closed and the daughter was pulling it open.

“No,” Doris cried, and held it open.

“Shut up,” her mother hissed. “I didn’t ask for them.”

At this the smiling ceased.

“I’m sorry,” Celine’s grandmother probably said. “It’s not your fault. It’s just a mistake, that’s all.”

And for a moment there was no pressure on the door.

“Well ma’am,” said the short wide-shouldered man with the proud expression, “we are very sorry to have inconvenienced you. We will be on our way now, but it was not a mistake. Our Captain Cohen, he don’t make no mistakes.”

Later Doris would possibly think her mother had been the victim of a prank, but at the time all she knew was that darkness had descended on the hall. The slap jolted her head sideways. She felt a sharp cruel pain, heard the loud heavy steps ascending the uncarpeted stairs. This injustice, this fear, was as normal as the smell of mutton stew and when Celine’s grandmother’s bedroom door had slammed, life remained as normal as could be.

At Doris’s secretarial school a girl from Rockhampton was discovered wearing a scarf to hide the lovebites on her neck. She was sent away.

Time passed. Sundays were slow. Doris crossed back and forth on the tram between Stanley Street and the city, back and forth, without particular hope. The houses in Woolloongabba were perched high on sticks. She could hear the bands at the Trocadero—Eastern Swing, Lindy Hop, Jive—all happening just a mile away.

She turned seventeen. There was a song on the wireless late at night. It said that her lips were so close to his that she could not help but kiss him, and he didn’t mind at all.

With her eyes deep in the pillow, Doris saw him very well. He was American of course. His uniform was tailored and his teeth were lovely and it had suddenly become a sin to prefer him to the Aussie boys as so many girls now did. They had wanted you to show hospitality to the Yanks. But very soon they started to hate you for doing what you had been told. You were an Aussie girl. Then you should only go dancing with the Aussie boys, your brothers who were dying for you, who had to wear the awful uniforms that the mingy government provided, not tailored, not slick, not even the right size. They were your flesh and blood, dear Aussie boys who had sunken cheeks, their teeth all pulled out to save the money on the dentist. The Americans were a knife twisted in their guts, overpaid, oversexed, over here.

Each evening at sunset Celine’s grandmother locked the door. Outside, the trams from the city delivered more and more black men “with one thing on their minds.”

The white Americans were kept in the city, but Stanley Street was near Brissy’s “black zone,” that is, an area where black Americans were allowed to look for entertainment. The blacks were bees to honey pots at the Trocadero dancing to “Chattanooga Choo Choo.”

Why us? Celine’s grandmother wished to know. The authorities think we aren’t no better. Can you see your father’s face? He’d murder them.

You can forget that Victory Belle rubbish, her mother said. To emphasise this point she unplugged the hot water jug and doubled the power cord to make a whip.