Omar Musa - Here Come the Dogs

Battery. Dead.

The Leagues Club.

Cricket. Who’s playing?

Fuck cricket.

Schooner on schooner.

A bar chick.

I wink but she turns away.

The basketball court,

no more.

Bulldozer teeth.

Blacktop skinned.

Tears,

hot as napalm.

Another court maybe?

It won’t feel the same.

Fuck the court. Fuck the kids.

And fuck Scarlett if she doesn’t wanna call back.

Maybe she’d stay if I got her pregnant.

‘Oi. When’s the boxing on?’

‘We’re not showing it.’

‘What? It’s the bloody world championship.’

‘Well, yeah. Nothing I can do. Sorry, mate.’

‘A pub’s gotta show the boxing. If it doesn’t —’

‘Look, I’ve got work to do.’

On the balcony,

looking over the river.

First ciggie in ages.

Fuck I’ve missed you.

The river roaring.

A little girl drowned in there,

remember?

A day later a boy was bitten by a tiger snake.

They find bodies in there sometimes.

Dangerous, snakey river.

But I love it.

The river doesn’t change.

The river goes on and on and on.

I scrape together shrappers,

only a few gold coins in there now.

Let the liquor carry me.

No drugs today.

No, no, no, just little golden clouds,

my limbs are treacle.

What’ll those kids have left?

And me?

Something. There’s always something, ay.

That something is change.

Perth?

A couple,

down by the river,

hand in hand.

Georgie!

With a new man.

They are in love, for sure.

I’m happy for you, Georgie,

I really am.

I’m sorry.

They don’t see me.

Eyes closed.

Many women,

faces melting,

then it’s just Scarlett there,

sunlight and Scarlett.

Yes I can love,

I know that now,

but can I hold onto her,

I don’t know, I don’t know,

some things aren’t meant to be,

but fuck it,

it’s all love,

all love that I’m thinking of,

the fury of, the triumph of,

the madness of,

love.

I wake up in the old graveyard

against a tombstone.

How the fuck did I get here?

My head is ballooning with pain

and the sun has dried me out.

Skull full of moths.

My phone charged, somehow.

I can see a call to Scarlett

that went for thirty minutes.

What did we talk about?

Maybe I could head to the court?

No more.

Maybe I can use the other one.

Maybe Perth, maybe something.

I just stare at the sun

until everything turns white.

Aleks stares at a bowl of glossy green apples for a long time, arms resting on the marble kitchen top. In his bedroom, all of his clothes are folded and clean. He holds a shirt to his face and closes his eyes, wiggling his toes on carpet so soft and thick he could sink into it like quicksand. In the basement, he looks at the crates of empty spraycans. A few are unused, but not enough for a whole piece. He spies a length of yellow rope, which he picks up, loops around his neck, thinking of Gabe’s suicide attempt. Holding it in one hand from above, he leans forward slightly, feeling the rope bite into his neck.

He hears the doorbell, distantly. Aleks takes the rope off, folds it up and climbs the stairs. Through the frosted glass, he recognises the silhouettes of his parents. He opens the door and they’re holding shopping bags full of groceries. He swears they look smaller and older than he remembers, even though it’s only been a couple of months. He tries to usher them in but his father hugs him in the doorway. They stand, holding each other on the threshold. Finally, Aleks says, ‘ Aide, tat ,’ and guides them in. They head to the kitchen immediately.

Sonya comes out of the shower with a towel wrapped around her hair and Aleks kisses her briefly in the hallway. She has just got a new job working in a medical clinic. Her eyes are different, he can see that now. Something of loss, something of tenacity. A long way to go, yet.

When he comes back into the kitchen, a culinary operation is underway. Petar pushes a tulip-shaped glass of yellow rakia into his hand and they drink. Biljana is fussing over the stove. He can see they are preparing many of his favourite dishes — tavche gravche (beans in a skillet), polneti piperki (capsicum stuffed with rice and meat), and a variety of meats ready for grilling.

He tries half-heartedly to help them but they wave him away, moving as a team. He recognises for the first time that his mother’s face is inscribed with something like a timeless pain, which is perhaps contained within every Maco, every person from the Balkans, who at some point has just had to cop it, again and again. The lines on her face like infinitesimal divisions and subdivisions of anger, trauma, loss — a tumbling alphabet within the DNA. When Aleks and Jana were children, Petar sometimes recited lyrics that were taken from a song called ‘The Orphan’ by Konstantin Miladinov of Struga. The last lines come to Aleks now:

‘And I feel a pain in my heart

Which reduces all to dust and ashes,

It’s as if I had only winter before me,

As if I were always walking in a dark fog.’

Aleks looks outs the window but it is still summer, clear as diamond.

Mila gets off school early and isn’t as inquisitive as usual, just overjoyed to see him. Sonya had told him on the phone that Mila had taken to hugging his work overalls to her body in his absence. Aleks takes her by the chin, kisses her, then presents her with a brand new iPad and soon she is watching Beyoncé and Rihanna film clips on it. As he and his parents eat, they discuss Jana’s imminent return from Brisbane. Whereas previously the thought of her filled him with a sickening nervousness, he is now calm. The fact that she agreed to come to New Year’s is a good sign. She will see him changed, cleansed, ready to face the future — against all odds. People drop in throughout the day. Nicko. The local Orthodox priest, who, wearing purple, holds him by the shoulders and smiles benignly. ‘May God be with you.’

‘And with you, father.’

‘I hope one day to see you in Ohrid. I am going back there soon.’

‘God willing.’

Each one of his visitors keeps stealing elegiac looks at him and he wants to yell, ‘It’s not like I died or anything, for Christ’s sake.’

But instead, he pours another rakia, and thinks that what he would love most of all is to go for a paint. Then he silently recites the number Clint gave him.

* * *

He’s preparing to go to the paint shop when he has a final, unexpected guest. Grace is standing between the twin plaster lions at the top of the stairs, fidgeting. When he sees who it is, he breaks into a big grin and gives her a hug. He busies himself making coffee and hunting through the pantry for cakes, but Grace insists he needn’t bother. She looks at his big hands holding the coffee cup.

‘Long time no see, Aleks.’

‘Too long, too long. Cake?’

‘Sure.’

The conversation starts with Jimmy and Solomon, and moves onto how quickly the Town is changing, then it draws to the inevitable, the reason she has come.

Grace begins to tell a story, breathlessly, of how she has been having trouble with a pair of neighbours. One of them, a truck driver, has taken to teaching people how to drive trucks in the carpark behind the flats from as early as seven a.m. on a Saturday. One day, after a long shift, Grace had had enough, and approached them to tell them off. The response had been swift and vituperative. They told her she was an ugly old slut, a coconut fucker, and mocked her for still living in the flats. There are tears in her eyes as she finishes the tale. Aleks looks at her with his head cocked like a bird. A dog barks down the street. He takes a neat sip of the coffee and says, ‘Which house is it?’