David Malouf - The Great World

The fat lady had started off in a pet shop in Vienna, selling larks: they put their eyes out, she told Digger, to make them sing. The Human Torso was an accountant. But there was a market out there whose values prevailed, so they had decided, with only a little urging on the part of a manager, to cash in on their advantages and put themselves on show.

The fat lady read cheap romances, in French, and had a little gramophone in her wagon on which she played gypsy music. She gave a lot of attention to her nails. She did in fact have very pretty hands, which were the most diminutive part of her, except for her ears. She kept a black velvet glove on her dressing table that was stuffed up to the size of a real hand and covered with rings; but she had too much refinement herself to wear more than two at any one time. Her favourite film star was Edward G. Robinson, whose features, heavy with menace and the promise of soft violence, looked down in a dozen poses from her dressing mirror. Her only female pin-up was Hedy Lamarr. ‘She’s from Vienna,’ she told Digger. ‘Like me.’

The Human Torso was a gambler. He spent all day, wherever they were, poring over the racing sheets and drinking Beenleigh rum. He had a system. The rumour was that he had thousands of pounds stashed away in banks all over the country in different names. An American by birth, he was a loud-mouthed coarse fellow, but when you caught him sober he wasn’t. He lent Digger a book by Theodore Dreiser, told him Europe was finished and that all the world’s troubles were the fault of the Jews.

They were happy days in spite of the misery of the times. He did not mind living as he did.

The war came and his father went to it, changing his age again but putting it down this time. They had a drink together in Sydney.

‘You should be in this, Dig,’ his father told him, looking smart in the uniform of the Light Horse.

But Digger did not think so. Living with the blacks had made him see things in another way: from the side and a bit skew, but with a humorous scepticism, as they did. He wasn’t one of them, he knew that; but after a time they were as open with him as if he was. ‘You’re all right, Digger,’ his mate Slinger told him, but you could never be sure with Slinger that he wasn’t having you on. ‘Maybe yer a blackfeller on the other side a’ yer skin.’

Then one day in Newcastle, when he was just hanging about looking at shop windows and considering the picture ads, he came upon a mob of fellows who were in a line to join up. A recruiting platform had been set up right in the street, flags and all, English and Australian. Men in their shirt-sleeves, and in suits too, some of them, were moving one behind another towards it. At the back of the line a fellow was putting on a turn to keep the others amused, and Digger stopped a moment to listen to him. The other men laughed, but self-consciously, and looked at one another, a bit leery of the line he was taking. He talked like a Communist.

He was a big fellow in a woollen shirt, a blusterer, but for all that there was a kind of lightness to him. If he danced you felt he would be very light on his feet, and his talk was a kind of dancing. He played up to his audience, keeping them always in tow, and after a time his play began to take in Digger as well. When Digger laughed outright once the fellow turned to him and said, as if they had known one another all their lives, ‘Givvus a fag, mate, willya?’ Digger stepped from the wall where he had been leaning, gave him the fag he had been rolling and rolled another. ‘Ta,’ the man said, dipping his head, when Digger was ready, to take a light. ‘Bramson’s the name. Doug.’

The others stood watching, not knowing what to make of it and hanging still on his words. He knew it and held off.

After that Digger too stood openly listening. It was all nonsense really — Digger was reminded of Farrah, the spruiker; just the sort of thing to pass the time while the line shuffled on. ‘This feller could talk right through a world war,’ Digger thought. ‘The time’d pass pretty easy, too.’

At last he turned to Digger and said: ‘You in this line, mate?’

‘What?’

‘Are you joinin’ up or just considerin’?’

Digger was nonplussed. He hadn’t been doing either, in fact, just passing the time. He looked at the pavement, ground the butt in with his heel, then glanced up under his brows, but Doug had already turned away. The question had been put, that’s all, offhand. It wasn’t a test.

But, standing in line with these men, he felt something. The warmth of being, in the easiest way, one of a mob, as on nights back home when he had stood round a burning log outside a dance-hall, smoking, yarning, listening to bits of local gossip, or to jokes that might have needed explaining if you didn’t know the lingo. That’s what he’d missed these last months. Suddenly he felt homesick. There was an easy pitch to it that was different from the one he had been living at.

The coons were touchy. He was in their world and they accepted him, but only provisionally; and there were times when he felt he would never really understand them, not even Slinger. He had never faced the indignities they had, the humiliations. He had no idea in the end what kept them going.

These fellows he did know. They were the same ones he stood among each night playing his part. He could join them now and they wouldn’t see any difference in him — he hoped they wouldn’t; unless he had picked something up from Slinger and the others that he didn’t know about; a way of leaning maybe, or holding his shoulders, a smell, but he didn’t think he had. He felt a need suddenly to be taken back, to share whatever it was these men were letting themselves in for, to be relieved of putting on an act. He turned himself inside out again and came out white.

The others hadn’t noticed anything. Their attention was all on Doug. He was the star here.

As Doug went on with his patter new chaps kept coming and falling in behind, till at last it was Doug’s turn to step up and sign on, and after that, Digger’s.

‘Listen,’ Digger told Slinger that night, ‘you won’t believe this. I joined up.’

It was after the show. They were pouring scoops of cold water over one another’s shoulders, dousing down in a rigged-up showering place behind the camp.

Slinger was an Islander, a big shy fellow, over six feet, a heavyweight. He paused now with the scoop of water, then slowly let it pour over his head.

‘Done it this arvo,’ Digger said. ‘I was a mug, eh?’ He took the scoop and dipped it.

‘Shit, Digger.’ Slinger looked genuinely upset. Digger was pleased by that. ‘Whatt’d ya do that for?’

Something in Slinger’s voice made him think of his mother, but it was only when he sat down later to drop her a line that he saw how she would see it: that what he was doing was taking himself further away.

He sobered. The water running over his chest was cold.

‘Must of been a mug all along,’ he offered.

‘Yair,’ Slinger said, ‘you must of. An’ I thought we’d learned you something.’

‘CHILLY, EH? ONCE the sun’s gone.’

Digger looked up, startled. He had been miles away, years; feeling the shock of cold water as it poured over his head, plastering his hair down over his eyes, all his white skin goosepimpling, his cock and balls shrivelling up as he danced on the boards of their rough and ready washing place and reached for a bit of towel they were sharing.

Vic shifted his gaze to the river. ‘What about that cup of tea you mentioned?’

Watching them come up the path towards the store Jenny began to fluster. This was the third time he’d been in here in not much more than a week. He’d never done that before. He was after Digger for something and Digger was worried. She’d heard him at night through the wall, tossing and turning, but he wouldn’t let on to her what it was.