Fiction

When he made his first billion, Samir bought the top half of the mountain. Once his grandparents had lived at its foot but now he had a view to the sea and the mountains beyond. His first point of business was the road. Bulldozers, excavators, trucks and workers battled a road to the top. He liked the appearance of dust but not how it clung to his clothes. They layered the gravel and then sprayed the asphalt. He thought, Now I can build my house. He flew in an architect, he flew in consultants recommended by his friends. The design would be Mediterranean: white walls, orange tiles, a palace equal to his life. The first night he spent in his palace, he lit up every light. He imagined people below looking up. Yes, the mountain has a king at its top. His sole regret was he could not be in two places at once: to see the mountain being lit for the first time while being the one who flicked the switch. Tomorrow he’d ask and his people could give him a detailed report. He thought to live a...

It was a short walk to the field. Do you remember the field, as you remember me? Small and plain – but good? Thankfully, it was no longer thick with snow. Just green and brown and pink under blues. As I told you, it was always my chapel where I gave thanks to God. Now it was holy again. I was resolved to meet Him soon. On two plain card tables shaded by cherry trees near the verge of wildflowers were slices of black cake and rye bread with butter. (No prize winners, these.) Also weak ale in cracked china mugs. Mr and Mrs E. D. had little to give – but they gave. Guests stood and ate politely. Then, in the field’s dewy middle: a mahogany gaming table from the last century, heavy, with fine marquetry. Satin pillows, with embroidery. And sitting on these: two sabres.

I usually bought warm, sturdy jackets that I imagined railroad workers would’ve worn in the ’40s. The new jacket wasn’t sturdy and it wasn’t warm. It was made out of pale blue, faux-crocodile print vinyl. It was so blue that you could sort of still see the blue of it when you closed your eyes. I couldn’t conceive of any occasion when it would be appropriate to wear it, even in normal times – unless I was somehow transported to whatever German bar Lou Reed and David Bowie were hanging out in 1976, or to Grace Jones’s birthday party at Studio 54. ‘Hello!’ the jacket said when I took it out of the crackly plastic. ‘Hello,’ I said, putting it straight on a hanger.

A new work of short fiction from the Miles Franklin award-winning author of Too Much Lip.

Sagal rejoiced when she got the keys to her apartment in Flemington. ‘The war is officially behind us, kids,’ she told them. But both Samia and Idriis believed she had brought the war with her. ‘I reckon death feels like hooyo’s anger nonstop,’ says Idriis. ‘Nah, I reckon hooyo’s anger is more like the ocean on the attack,’ Samia says. ‘You can’t see what’s inside the ocean, the same way we never know hooyo’s intentions for us.’ ‘God,’ says Idriis. ‘I feel a bit faded, sis.’

The president wanted to make the call herself, but as a committee we felt this was risky. She saw her place in history, the first human to make direct contact with an alien civilisation; we saw a diplomatic catastrophe. Even if she managed the conversation without incident, it would be seen as an unforgivable insult by China, a declaration of war by the Americans. In the end, she was only convinced by our doubt. We insisted that it could all turn out to be a hoax, that her name might become synonymous with failure, a shame that would endure for generations. Eventually, she saw our point.

I am a dressmaker who does alterations to make a living. You might call me a tailor, but what would you know? How long would you spend down here in the heat, working 12-hour shifts? And this is better than when I worked in the shop with 30 others doing the same thing – making shirts where if one sleeve was slightly shorter than another, it made no difference. It’s impossible to plumb the depths of cultural and familial exploitation in this, to work around your presumptions, your impositions, your faux guilts and apologies. You read me as you choose to read me within the matrix of your expectations, the stereotypes of avoidance. And even the word ‘stereotype’ becomes a trigger, a way through the labyrinth of concerns.

When I was younger, I would look at my body in the mirror when I got up in the morning, between taking off my pyjamas and getting in the shower. I would drop the flannel pants and then my undies, letting my smell fill my nostrils. It was my body – it still is, though it’s a different body now – and I liked to remind myself of that as I faced my reflection and slid my hands down either side of my torso and across my hipbones, into the modest forest below. I would do the same at night before I went to sleep: clothes from the day discarded, hands exploring.

Look, a dead great-uncle. He is staring straight ahead through a black-and-white film as his boat carves through the waves. He is standing on a beach all scratched up and flickering. He is wearing war medals stored in a box I can’t find in the shed. He is meeting me as a toddler in a car park, though I’m told he was long gone then. He is speaking through my father on a dull day with the sky sunk deep in its own pool or the sky padded with clouds or the sky a painted cream ceiling with the cracks all dark and starting to leak; a day where the air is gusting with sun or the afternoon streaming with rain – do I look outside, are the curtains closed all day to hug our chill rooms? – and this great-uncle tells of working at auctions in the old Burns Mart, the excitement of the crowd bidding over boxes from lucky dip estates. ‘The Huon pine tables were popular,’ he says.

The track through the vacant block is well used by commuters but no one else had been there that morning, a few months ago now, when the woman’s body stiffened and arched. Carolyn had watched, fascinated. She had never seen anyone have a seizure and had often wondered what it looked like. It didn’t last long – a couple of minutes at the most. Carolyn stayed until the woman was still, then hurried up the path towards the sound of her train. On the platform her heart raced as she realised how easily a seizure could be misconstrued as madness or drunkenness. She should have gone to her, called for help, but the sight of the woman’s body contorting and the awful groaning made Carolyn recoil. She had to get away.