Gatherers and Hunters Read online

  When she had made her one big killing – the samovar – that was the time she sat, graciously, on a cushion and carpet bestrewn divan and accepted her first Turkish coffee, surrounded by the two gentle old men and the excited clutter of little boys, all of them huge eyed and serious.

  She was told the history of the large vessel, its antiquity and its provenance, though she only caught the one significant word – Suleyman – and she examined the pale markings with genuine interest and thought of the slaves and harems and giant eunuchs with servile hands.

  The fortune teller materialised out of nowhere, or out of the milling crowds, who paused, moved, jostled and flowed all around her. The old men were evidently delighted to see her and she was given a place of veneration almost as reverently as that accorded to Rachel. The old woman motioned for her to finish her coffee. Rachel drained the dark sandy-textured dregs, wiped her mouth with the white hand­kerchief jammed into the amulet on her plump right arm, and looked, herself, into the murky depths of the tiny white cup, before handing it across to the eager brown fingers.

  ‘You speak English?’ The old woman had a tobacco voice that reminded Rachel of her own Aunt Dolly – the ‘fast’ one who had become wealthy in Potts Point. It was both a relief and a little annoying to find herself so promptly identified. She had not uttered a word during the entire negotiations, the bartering, the careful wrapping or the courteous invitation to coffee and this opulent interior of the small marketplace tent. At no point had Rachel felt the slightest hesitation or nervousness. She was prepared for anything, but not even her moneypurse, hidden beneath the flowing garments, had seemed in the least threatened. The fortune teller was tiny, wizened, and in her smoky voice, at one stroke, she exposed her. Rachel knew her bulky necklace had already been assessed and valued, the one turquoise ring among the pretty other baubles immediately noted, and she hoped the cynical twist at the corner of her mouth had been properly identified.

  The old woman reached out her other hand before gazing, herself, into the proffered coffee grounds, and took up Rachel’s turquoise finger. She looked into her eyes then, just for a moment though it seemed endless. Rachel knew not to waver.

  ‘Yes, you speak English, but you are not England.’ She waggled the finger in her own grasp. ‘You come to Istanbul to find love, yes?’

  Rachel had spluttered. The spell was broken.

  ‘I came here for … for …’ But the words, surprisingly, had not come. She could have said ‘for adventure’, or ‘for the sense of history,’ or even ‘for the excitement of a world where I do not know the rules and where my wits must carry me.’ But it had never crossed her mind to use the word ‘love’ in any of its contexts.

  She clutched the large samovar in her arms, as if it were the demonstration of her reason for being here.

  The old woman saw. She nodded and grinned, revealing an almost full set of strong teeth, yellowish but decisive. ‘You have found your love, then. It will please you, but you will have dryness in your mouth.’

  Then she finally took up the tiny cup and looked for a long while closely at the black dregs. Despite her disbelief, Rachel could not hide her interest or her curiosity. The boys by now had all gathered round and were craning, too, to examine the contents. The two old men sat back and waited. They had all day.

  ‘You wonder I speak the English?’ the old woman said. ‘It is because of the war. I was young in the war, you will not believe how big my eyes were in the war, how big my hunger for everything. Words. Meanings. They were men, all those boys. They taught me and I taught them. The English. Then the New Zealand boys and the Australians. I was in Wellington two years, do you know that? You, you are not England, you are Wellington, or is it Sydney?’ She laughed, a sound like paper being ripped, or parchment. ‘You see, I know everything about you.’

  Rachel had been prepared for the well-documented ­strategies of fortune tellers – the quick observant eyes, the conversational scratching of tiny offguard revelations, the adept analysis of apparel, clothing like a personal definition that classifies everyone. She had felt complacent, aware that no other Australian would wear with such generous flair her ‘bazaar khaftan’ as she liked to call it. She had walked out of the pensione that morning encased in her own sense of exoticism and theatrical pizzaz. What had given her away? What had betrayed her?

  The fortune teller’s silence and concentration held the whole crowd spellbound. Rachel had leaned forward, too, despite the cynicism.

  ‘It is so.’ The old woman finally muttered. ‘Look, see!’ But she had whisked the tiny bowl too quickly under Rachel’s eyes and now was staring at it again herself, fully in control. ‘You are a strong woman. But that will not protect you.’ She turned then and spat, accurately, onto the one small area of sand outside the tent flap, some three feet distant. ‘It never protects you.’

  And it was at that moment that Rachel realised, with some genuine disappointment, that the old woman was more an autobiographer than a prophet, a teller of futures and fortunes. It would have been enjoyable, in this rich and truly exotic context, to have been offered a magical formula, something she could joke about later but remember.

  It would be nothing but some old habits of mind from this old woman, practicing her English on the first comer, no doubt delighted to have spotted her prey, and indeed accurately to have assessed Rachel’s origins. No doubt it had been something she noted from afar, like her walk, her stance, the cast of her shoulders and forearms in motion, that had identified her. Rachel, herself, had picked out Aussies in Venice only last month, just by the way they lounged and lurched in a crowd from the Vaporetto.

  ‘You are strong, though, and there will be many good moments. You are marked for a rich life. There are children. Yes, there are children. Children are always a joy and a disappointment. They are balls of wool. They should be neat and perfect but they always unravel. You want to know how many children? I cannot tell you that. Do you think of children?’

  But Rachel, whose life to that point had been crammed with ambitions and plans and a whole Atlas of opportunities or possibilities, had never had the slightest inkling of children. Her sister’s infant shat in her lap, once, and Rachel decided on the spot that it is not necessary to suffer everything. There are choices. Rafe was around at that stage, too, and Rafe’s definition of ‘choice’ was another of the more arcane of the maps on their shared atlas. They had booked on the same liner to Rome, though after that first week with Rafe and his new friend Orlando, Rachel had been happy to launch out on her own. She, not Rafe, had been the cicerone on that first week. She had memorised all the itineraries and, perhaps for the first time, had realised how retentive and accurate her own memory was. Rafe had been content to let her lead. That had been another bone of contention. And besides, Orlando had been the one to complain incessantly of weariness. He could not manage a cathedral without endless pauses, much less one of the thoroughgoing galleries.

  ‘And who is the father of these children of mine?’ she had asked airily. ‘Do the coffee grounds tell you that? I would be curious to know,’ she added, aware that the old fortune teller would be already making assumptions.

  ‘That, I think, is for you do decide. Yes. That is something you will decide. But believe me, the children are there and they will not be denied their entrance into this world of sorrow and pain.’ She gave a sharp nod, one of the children instantly snatched the coffee cup from her hands and disappeared. The old men moved forward. Rachel knew this was the moment and that she must not fudge it. The coin she fumbled from the pocket of her khaftan (Pockets! Such useful receptacles!) was suspiciously generous looking, but it must do. She sailed out of the tent bearing her samovar and did not even look behind at the old woman, though surely there must have been some arrangement, some commission, some form of licence or exchange. Her part in the scenario was done. She found herself without the heart to enter into further barterings or negotiations with the sellers of slippers or the merchants dealing in bronze or
leather. For the first time, ever, she was convinced, she had been implanted with the idea of children.

  In the Trattoria Rustica on Lygon Street the crowded table just behind Rachel and Dragana had become noisy, toasts were beginning, and all the young people had relaxed out of their elegance into more argumentative or amorous positions. Coats had been flung over the backs of chairs, at least one of the girls had strands of hair that were not part of a conscious gamine presentation, and for the first time Rachel noted the bloke at the head of that table – he had a black and white hide jacket showing now which must have been previously hidden by his expensive Italian suitcoat.

  It was vulgar and debonair, cheeky in its way but decidedly placing him in that company as being both egotist and vulnerable, his wide shoulders and the almost Valentino moustache and sideburns reinforcing the assertiveness and the loud extroversion that was dangerously close to innocence, so that she glanced immediately at the other members of that party, and decided that he was perfectly at home and that not one of them saw his gaudy outfit as being other than himself. He was that sort of person. She had a sudden flash of memory. How old would Benno be now?

  She turned to her companion. ‘Dragana, do you notice that young man over there, the one in the cowboy waistcoat, it’s like a bolero. Yes, that’s the one.’

  But Dragana glanced and turned back without a nod. ‘They’re all Macedonians,’ she said. ‘We call them cowboys.’

  ‘I thought they were Italian.’

  Dragana gave her a level look. ‘How long, Rachel, since you were last overseas? No, I do not mean that American trip, which was when we first met, in L.A. Didn’t you once tell me you had been for a week in Istanbul?’

  ‘Twenty five years ago. I tremble to think what has been done to that beautiful old city.’

  ‘You would not want to go back. I almost do not want to go back to Belgrade. My husband is a Croat you know. This last time, from the start, had its small upsets but you cannot allow such things to prevent your plans. Look at that girl near the end. No, not so obviously. You see? Nowhere in Italy would you see bones like that, except among refugees. Oh, perhaps up in Trieste, but that is hardly Italy. We had our honeymoon in Trieste. The wind blew constantly, from every angle.’

  Rachel was thinking of Istanbul, though, and of how she deliberately missed her plane that time. She had not found love, but there had been her brief intoxication, as she was later to call it, with proper irony. Benno had been born in Brisbane. For sixteen years he had absorbed her utterly, that was true enough. She stole another look at the young man, but turned her attention to the crepe in front of her. She had allowed it to get cold.

  When Benno had decamped it had been a relief. Simply that. Benno knew every art of blackmail and he used each one. She had not initiated any panic search. It was almost as if she, herself, was the one who absconded. Two can play at games, she had said to herself, then or sometime later. She took a position in Melbourne. She did not pick up the pieces, she allowed them to drop away into whatever nooks and corners. It was always refreshing to start with a clean slate and she had done precisely that.

  Dragana hailed the waiter. ‘Now. We are ready for coffee. Ah, is there a place nearby where it would be possible to have a Turkish coffee? No, I am not serious. You see, in the end, I am always a creature of compromise.’ She took two sips of her tiny cup and looked up at Rachel. ‘So. You have organised your whole life? Commendably?’

  ‘Commendably.’ Rachel smiled at the expression. ‘Yes. I think I have organised my life commendably. I’ve had a lot of practice, as it were. But do you know, I can’t get that young man at that table out of my sight. Do you know what it is? He reminds me of my son. Of how my son might be, at that age.’

  ‘Really? I did not know you had a son, but why not? Where is he now?’ Even Dragana could not hide the implication and the suggestion. She angled and fished but could not get Rachel to say more. ‘Well, you are a close one. I like that. Come. I must write up my notes. The next conference is in Toronto. You must make the effort to get there. It is ­commendable also to expose oneself to chances and risks I think. Like in Belgrade in March. Oh, we took our risks all right. But when it happens, sometimes life does overtake. Then it is commendable to make a quick exit.’

  She gathered her things and raised her hand to her captive waiter. ‘My husband speaks of children, but there is no time. I do not want to raise a child in Belgrade.’ She shrugged.

  Rachel reached into her purse. She could not avoid the feeling that Dragana was being patronising. But she had learned to settle for that.

  As she walked to her car, alone, she was thinking, again, of the brash young man with his black hair and his too willing smile. Those sturdy shoulders. Slowly she imagined him stripping off his clothes, it was like a scene from some forgotten movie or an imagined, or unimagined, past. The setting was a hot hotel in Istanbul. She could afford to be indulgent.

  As a boy Benno had been charming, and wilful, and imperious. He had gauged her weakness for the strong, black coffee and when he wanted something he would brew it for her – pungent, fragrant. She would not have it any other way. But that was before he became unmanageable and could smell his freedom. Well, she too had lit out. One must never become dependent. She had organised her life, yes, commendably. Children, after all, are only a loan.

  This was the first time in many years she had seen somebody who so strongly conjured up his image, or his possibility. Yes, she thought. The old Gypsy fortune teller had been right. There was still a dryness in her mouth. But a mother is allowed only such a tiny sip out of the coffee cup, and all the rest, at the bottom, is the grit of bitter grounds.

  Pristina

  Because my grandfather said the water here was still in a ­pristine state, that’s why. He called his property Pristina and the little settlement that sprang up round the crossroads naturally took the same name. Grandpa owned all that land originally. Or at least he leased it; same thing.

  Well, the Wayfarer’s Inn was the first, where the Sportsman’s Motel is now. Their pub on the main street, well that’s recent. Relatively. They’re still Irish, been here almost as long as us. But they did work hard, give them that. The lot of ’em and the womenfolk most of all. Drank the profits, but. Though Mickey, he’s my age, you wouldn’t believe what a tough little bugger he was. He was the backbone of the district soccer team, before the grog of course. Yairs, we had some good times back then, if you think of it.

  Then there was the Post Office store. I tell you what, people today just take everything for granted but when that store opened – it was before my time, and yours – we knew Pristina was on the map. My old man got married the same year – 1923 – and he said all his birthdays had come at once, that’s what he said. He got the property too, very same year. Grandpa had his first stroke; Dad always said it was the excitement, but whatever, Dad was running the place from then on. No one would believe the old man would hang on another forty years. Now who could believe that? Yairs, I remember his room out in the back shed. Well, corrugated iron outside. Outside, mind you, but Dad had it lined. He did it himself, he told me, with knotty native pine. It still smelled strong when I was a kid, that pine, but it was snug as a big bug in there and I remember old Grandpa writing on his little pad to say he didn’t mind the dark. His eyes, you see. And he listened to the radio, all the time he listened: Parliament, the races, the news; he followed the news.

  Yairs, I remember him well, the old codger, though it was hard to think of him as he was in the old photos: that stiff white collar and tie. And the gloves. Do you know he had gloves in those old photos? Well, times change.

  But the pub and the Post Office store, they were only the start. With the second pub, right in the centre, we knew we were there. The government took back some of Dad’s land, the scrappy stuff out towards the Magic Mountain. Well we always called it the Magic Mountain, it’s only on maps you see the official name: Cable Top. Well, it’s true, all those new people
call it Cable Top nowadays but they don’t count. Not really.

  No, I’m not saying that. I’m telling you how things were. How things got settled and established, how this place got its name and its character. It’s real character, not this later rot.

  The Verralls too, don’t forget the Verralls, though there’s none of them left in the district, but they were big in the ­district, oh for ages. And the Weatherheads of course, Mum was a Weatherhead. They were great farmers, the Weatherheads, they introduced the irrigation and the new crops – peanuts, for instance, and then in the war, the Second World War, they took up the government plan for cotton. For a few years there they made a fortune on cotton. And the cannery, it was their cannery – until it was bought out by Yates, that is. Yes, Grandpa Weatherhead was a genius in his way. I think it was him brought out the first reffos, after the war.

  When the cotton was big he used a lot of Italian POWs to do the hard yakka. Cheap as dirt they were, he said, and grateful for anything. That was what gave him the idea later, when he opened the cannery and put in the irrigation and began growing miles, simply miles, of carrots and beetroot and all those beans. For canning. He organised a whole tribe of reffo Balts: Yugoslavs, or Croats or Albanians, no they weren’t Greeks, and they had their own religion so they certainly were not Reds. No way. They were escaping all that.

  And work! Grandpa Weatherhead had a real nose for these things, and you should have seen the way they worked for him. They would have tilled the fields with their bare hands, give ’em half the chance.

  And he treated them well. They were their own slaves, not his. He gave them holidays on their religious feasts, that sort of thing. Enough to keep ’em happy, he said, but not enough to give ’em ideas.