Peter Carey - Amnesia

“You are perfect,” he said, and he touched her cheek where the horrid spit had been.

“Well,” she said, “you’re not so bad yourself.”

“I’m no angel, baby.” But his voice was so light and its inflection so tentative she laughed. He smiled too, and narrowed his eyes so that her tummy went quite strange. His eyes were pale and clear as water with no stones or pebbles or specks or flecks or injuries of war.

“You have lovely teeth,” she said, which was much too fast of her.

“All the better to eat you with.” As a joke, he bit his own hand and then showed her the bright red teeth marks embedded in his skin.

“You’re a strange one.”

“Well thank you, ma’am,” he beamed at her, and took her fingers and kissed the inside of her wrist so gently that she had to snatch it back.

“Whoa, Dobbin.”

“Sing for me,” he said. And she might have (why not? who would ever ask her such a thing again?) but there came a great roar of men from the street below, as if a wicket had just fallen at the Gabba.

Immediately he drew the curtain back. She whispered you were not allowed to do that after dark but he said it was a brownout not a blackout. Someone shouted to close the curtain. He said, not quietly, that the Australians were always in a panic. She was more frightened of what was about to happen in the dining room than in the street and was slow to understand the scene below on Queen Street which was turbulent with pushing men.

She watched two American officers enter the street from the front door of the restaurant.

The first was knocked to the ground. She saw. The second was lifted into the air, his napkin or handkerchief still in his hand as he was passed like a side of butchered beef, over the heads of the crowd and thrown on the footpath on the other side. The Aussies made a circle around him then kicked his face.

There were now three, four, five circles in the crowd. An American would come walking down the street, the Aussies would grab his arms and legs and throw him up in the air to get him to a clear space to bash him more. Throughout there was a loud hammering, like blows on bone. Doris finally understood it was a mob hammering on the restaurant door.

“We can’t stay here,” she said.

Hank sat down. He did not seem to realise that the Aussies were coming in to get the Yanks and kill their whores, to break them limb by limb.

“They’ll murder us.” She took his hand and pulled him up. He looked furious but he did allow her to lead him past the coat rack where she had the nous to grab an Aussie slouch hat. She pulled him down the stairs and through the stinking kitchen and out into a slippery laneway where the air was rank with fat and blood.

Beyond the alley was Queen Street and a howling mob.

“Come on,” she said, but now he had his arms around her and was pushing her stomach with his thing.

“Songbird,” he said. “Sing to me.”

“Jeez,” she said, “lay off, will you?”

She got the slouch hat onto his head and his situation seemed to dawn on him. He set the hat, tipping it back in the style favoured by the Aussies.

They were saved by the brownout and the happy coincidence that the northbound tram was tipped over just as they left the lane. There was such confusion. The American military police brought out their shotguns. All she could think was they had to get home, south Brissy, somewhere safe. She heard the first blast, then the second. She would have settled for a pillbox but it seemed every pillbox was occupied by men and women doing what she had never done, and would not do, no matter what she drank. She knew girls who had a “bit of a pash” in a pillbox but she had never anticipated the stink.

“They’ll kill you,” she said, but he wanted to pash into her there and then. He was strong and persistent, persuading her down into a lane, still very gentle with his mouth—soft little puffy kisses all around her neck. “Sing to me,” he said, his hard arms around her, those mad kisses on her throat. She sang “Danny Boy” for fear. “Don’t stop,” he said, “don’t stop.”

He was doing what she did not know.

“Don’t stop. Keep singing.”

He had to let her go to fiddle with her bra and she slipped free and ran, unhooked, with her shoes in her hand, down Queen Street, thinking God Jesus let there not be broken glass. The tram for south Brissy was already rolling when she leapt aboard, and he was right behind her, she heard him, laughing like a drain.

The man and girl plonked down together on the bench, she in disarray, he laughing hopelessly, and the whole tram went silent on her and judged her for a tart. She folded her hands in her lap, covering her ring finger, pretending to herself they were engaged, going to live in Deetroit, no longer Doris Crook, something better, safer, clearer, richer, thank the Lord he behaved himself. He put his arm around her shoulder and that is how it happened, when they arrived in Stanley Street and she saw, a cricket-pitch length from the tram’s running board, the thirteen front steps of her home, that she was still holding Hank Willenski’s hand.

OUR SOLE RESPONSIBILITY to our ancestors, I had written, is to give birth to them as they gave birth to us. The houses in south Brissy were wrapped with skirts of lattice, as secret as a veil. Doris’s mother had her bedroom up there overlooking Stanley Street. Yes, it was the noisy side, but she could be out of bed in a jiffy when the front gate clicked. You could rely on her being up there, waiting, the electric flex already wrapped round her hand.

The house was twelve feet off the ground and all the underneath was latticed too. If it had not been for the brownout the street would have looked so lovely—sky deep, black blue, and the latticed houses glowing like golden lanterns in the honeysuckle air, and if you shut your eyes and hid the trams and the pub and the shunting train and the drunk peeing by the lamppost you could almost think Woolloongabba was beautiful.

She brought Hank Willenski home, not knowing what else to do. When she jumped off the moving tram, she knew she would get caught. She did not doubt she’d get roared up. She wished for nothing better than the flex across the legs. The American was right behind her as the tram rolled on, its wheels screaming worse than nails on a blackboard.

She was for it now. Thank God.

“Home,” she said, quite loudly. She could make out his teeth. “My dad will have waited up,” she said.

She put her finger to his lip to show he must not kiss her.

He bit her finger, hard.

“That wasn’t funny.” Why was she whispering? She wanted to get caught.

“Sing me a song.”

He got her around the waist and lifted her up in the air and she grabbed at the fence and felt the splinter drive into her injured finger. Why did she not scream? He had her over his shoulder. He was passing through the gate. Her mother would hear the latch.

But then she was out of sight, dragged underneath the house. There was stuff lying everywhere, snakes in bottles, axes, preserved quince, dead marines. She thought, he’ll trip and fall.

“Let me down,” she said, “I’ll help you do it, honest.”

He set her down very slowly but then he was at it again, kissing her on the neck, holding her hands together tight, pushing his thing against her.

“I’ll show you,” she said. Show what? Show where? She was embarrassed by the smell of her home. Nightsoil and honeysuckle, dirt and gas. He kicked the preserves and she heard a bottle crack and the smell of sugary peach juice making witch’s pudding with the dirt.