embrace until I felt myself flow away and no longer needed to exist. When I woke up the next morning, he was gone.
I looked out of the window and saw him sitting in the early rays of the sun, a dark silhouette in the sand, motionless as a rock, and knew at once that I had substituted one memory for another and that this one would leave me with as little peace as the other one had. I would exist in someone else’s mind, without knowing who I was in there. This would have been unbearable to me in the past, but it didn’t matter to me any more. I now knew who I was. One time, acting on a bizarre impulse, I had asked my mother what she would like to be thinking of at the moment of her death. She didn’t answer right away, but merely shook her head. Then at last she said, ‘Some things are better left unsaid.’
‘Can’t you tell even your own daughter?’ I asked.
‘Especially not my own daughter,’ she said.
After a few days in Port Willunga we went to a strange place, a reserve in which we played at being Aborigines. It sounds awful, and it was. I don’t know why he took me there, but at least I now know how to find food in the desert and have seen how pure silence can turn you into silence yourself. No one was surprised to see me, so perhaps he had brought others there before. I shrugged off the well-meaning nonsense and practised withdrawing into myself – I’m good at that. It was not his mob, and since they spoke English to him, they did not come from the same language group either. I did see him smile, but not at me. I considered telling him what had happened to me that week, but my black cloud could never be his. I would take it with me when I left, incorporate it into the rest of my life, as if one cloud could cancel out another. We’ll see. It is our last night together. I rub my hand over the dirt floor of the cabin. It feels hard and dry, like paper. Everything in this country is different from mine. Outside, the dawn’s early light flows out over the world with such violence that it almost hurts my eyes. Red paint. Blood. I roll over and look at him. He is still asleep. He too just a shape. I wish I could lift him up and fly away with him, over the vast emptiness of this country, to the place he comes from, to the place where he belongs and I do not.
14
‘DIDN’T YOU AT LEAST HAVE A FEW LAUGHS TOGETHER?’ Almut asked. I knew she was going to ask me that. I also knew that she was angry, indignant. If there is no laughter, something is wrong. In Almut’s book, at any rate. I had come back to Adelaide alone. We still had one night left in the cabin in Port Willunga, and she wanted to see it. The same beach, the same ocean, the same birds, though now I knew what they were called. We were sitting high up on a dune in a little restaurant called the Star of Greece because a ship by that name had once been shipwrecked there. It was high tide again, and the surf still had many things to say. Unlike me. I knew that Almut was waiting for me to tell her everything, since our relationship had always been based on sharing. We had no secrets from each other. But I also knew that I could not talk to her. Not yet.
‘What did you do this week?’ I asked her at last.
‘Me? I partied every night, OK? No . . . I spent all my time wondering what I ought to do next. I didn’t know if you were coming back.’
‘I said I’d be back at the end of the week, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, but the expression on your face might have meant the exact opposite: that you would never want to come back.’
I shrugged, but she blew up. I knew that my best bet was to wait out the storm.
‘Why can’t you admit that we’ve got a problem? For one thing, we’ve run out of money, though that’s beside the point. I didn’t know how you were doing, and I’m not used to that. I was worried. Not because the man took no notice of me, but because I don’t think he saw you either.
‘His work is beautiful, especially the painting
I looked out of the window and saw him sitting in the early rays of the sun, a dark silhouette in the sand, motionless as a rock, and knew at once that I had substituted one memory for another and that this one would leave me with as little peace as the other one had. I would exist in someone else’s mind, without knowing who I was in there. This would have been unbearable to me in the past, but it didn’t matter to me any more. I now knew who I was. One time, acting on a bizarre impulse, I had asked my mother what she would like to be thinking of at the moment of her death. She didn’t answer right away, but merely shook her head. Then at last she said, ‘Some things are better left unsaid.’
‘Can’t you tell even your own daughter?’ I asked.
‘Especially not my own daughter,’ she said.
After a few days in Port Willunga we went to a strange place, a reserve in which we played at being Aborigines. It sounds awful, and it was. I don’t know why he took me there, but at least I now know how to find food in the desert and have seen how pure silence can turn you into silence yourself. No one was surprised to see me, so perhaps he had brought others there before. I shrugged off the well-meaning nonsense and practised withdrawing into myself – I’m good at that. It was not his mob, and since they spoke English to him, they did not come from the same language group either. I did see him smile, but not at me. I considered telling him what had happened to me that week, but my black cloud could never be his. I would take it with me when I left, incorporate it into the rest of my life, as if one cloud could cancel out another. We’ll see. It is our last night together. I rub my hand over the dirt floor of the cabin. It feels hard and dry, like paper. Everything in this country is different from mine. Outside, the dawn’s early light flows out over the world with such violence that it almost hurts my eyes. Red paint. Blood. I roll over and look at him. He is still asleep. He too just a shape. I wish I could lift him up and fly away with him, over the vast emptiness of this country, to the place he comes from, to the place where he belongs and I do not.
14
‘DIDN’T YOU AT LEAST HAVE A FEW LAUGHS TOGETHER?’ Almut asked. I knew she was going to ask me that. I also knew that she was angry, indignant. If there is no laughter, something is wrong. In Almut’s book, at any rate. I had come back to Adelaide alone. We still had one night left in the cabin in Port Willunga, and she wanted to see it. The same beach, the same ocean, the same birds, though now I knew what they were called. We were sitting high up on a dune in a little restaurant called the Star of Greece because a ship by that name had once been shipwrecked there. It was high tide again, and the surf still had many things to say. Unlike me. I knew that Almut was waiting for me to tell her everything, since our relationship had always been based on sharing. We had no secrets from each other. But I also knew that I could not talk to her. Not yet.
‘What did you do this week?’ I asked her at last.
‘Me? I partied every night, OK? No . . . I spent all my time wondering what I ought to do next. I didn’t know if you were coming back.’
‘I said I’d be back at the end of the week, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, but the expression on your face might have meant the exact opposite: that you would never want to come back.’
I shrugged, but she blew up. I knew that my best bet was to wait out the storm.
‘Why can’t you admit that we’ve got a problem? For one thing, we’ve run out of money, though that’s beside the point. I didn’t know how you were doing, and I’m not used to that. I was worried. Not because the man took no notice of me, but because I don’t think he saw you either.
‘His work is beautiful, especially the painting
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