The Fig Tree by Arnold Zable Page B

it hurtled upon bumpy rails. She did not know where she was going. She had rarely left her bayside Melbourne home. Perhaps it was the first time. Her mother seemed preoccupied, sombre. The train stopped at stations with a fit of clanking, and resumed its journey with a slow start. Dora revelled in the changing pace.
    She wanted the journey to never end. Inside the carriage it was dark and cool. Through the window she glimpsed backyards, private domains on public display. Flitting by, she saw the spiky fronds of date palms against blue skies. She felt happy and new. Almost everyone about her seemed happy. But still, her mother remained silent, remote.
    The train journey ended. They walked side by side on a busy street. Dora was overwhelmed by the noise. They entered a tall building, and ascended in a lift. They stepped out into a corridor. A door swung open, and shut. Dora saw people lying in beds. She had never been to a hospital before, and she was frightened. The sun did not shine here. Everything seemed grey. They came to a room, and inside, on a bed, lay her nonna , Lily’s mother, Poulimia.
    The door to the cancer ward continues to open and shut. Alexander stirs. Dora pauses. Adjusts his blanket. And continues her tale. She is surprised at the clarity, at how much she remembers. And yet, how little. Perhaps it has something to do with corridors and impending death.
    They seemed united in an unspoken pact, Lily and her mother. Locked in each other’s pain. And Dora felt shut out. She wanted the day to be as it had seemed, just hours earlier, fresh and new. She glanced through the hospital window, and at the light streaming in.
    Dora sat by Poulimia’s bed. Her grandmother did not speak English well. She preferred to speak Greek. Although she understood her, Dora refused to reply in Greek. Besides, she did not know what to say. She did not know Poulimia well. They rarely saw each other.
    Now, years later, in a hospital corridor, she is beginning to disentangle the webs; to see the strange symmetries. Poulimia too was dying of cancer. She passed away aged fifty-four. This is just one of the few memories Dora has of her, the only image of a lineage of women, and of a grandmother who arrived in Melbourne as a proxy bride. She remains a remote dream recalled in a hospital corridor, where the doors to the inner sanctum silently open. And shut. Miracles can happen, Spirou, Roza’s son, tells me. He has just flown back from Greece, to join his mother in her final days.
    â€˜Miracles can happen,’ he repeats. ‘I know. I have seen it.’ We are standing by Lily’s bed, he on one side, I on the other. I ask Lily if she minds us talking. After all, it is late at night. And she has complained of the noise. ‘Go on,’ she says, her eyes closed. ‘I am listening.’
    â€˜Miracles can happen,’ Spirou persists. It is like a chant. ‘I was on military service in Greece. I saw a jeep crashing over a cliff. It plunged many metres below. It rolled over thirty-one times.’ I wonder at the figure thirty-one. Did he count each roll as he stood on the cliff-side?
    â€˜At the base of the cliff the jeep burst into flames,’ he continues. ‘We found a way to the car as quickly as possible. Two of its occupants were dead. But the third emerged totally unharmed. And he told us that as the car plunged over the cliff and began its descent, he had felt, with certainty, that something, perhaps someone, was protecting him. It was as if an invisible blanket was wrapped around him. Yes. Miracles can happen. After all, my mother is still alive. And she wants so much to see her village one last time.’
    These are the stories told late at night in a cancer ward in St Vincent’s. Between people who just days ago were strangers. And this, in itself, is a miracle.
    A corridor in St Vincent’s. Roza’s husband paces about. Beside him walks Yiayia, with a look of