material and his manners become more like those of a percussionist and he is beating the shit out of the old Minone. A fake amphora stuffed with artificial flowers not unlike my mother’s perching on the top of the piano rattles and slides. The thud of its fall evicts me out of my post-panic-attack misery and again I am ready to face the world that acts like…
…like a drongo.
Liam has a thing about drongos.
I might even face the social worker instructed by my half-aunt to offer me ways out of the rock bottom I have hit. My half-aunt, another victim of the embarrassment I spread around. And the social worker offering me retraining, sending me to business class which I never attend, signing me up for lectures. I attended only one and created havoc, it was on how to make money and not to wait on hand-outs. Very embarrassing to be poor.
I look at Jeff. Manoli will charge the fake amphora on his meal.
Money, I am learning it the hard way, is all there is and the world looks to me like a hungry mob engaged in ripping each other off. Nobody bothers to pretend otherwise. For me remains the curse to be different.
The vertigo comes back.
I close my eyes.
Again away with the fairies! Elizabeth, don’t do this to me!
All I hear is my inner voice that tells me THE FREE FALL IS AN ONLY SALVATION because it’s not the first time I am told I am not needed.
Redundant is the word.
WhenI was told I was no longer needed at my previous equally casual and badly paid job I went home early only to find a short-sighted Chinese girl squinting at me from Alec’s bed, her jet black hair sprawled over the pillow still carrying the warmth of my head. Alec introduced me as a flat mate. He offered me to settle in the spare room. I left and headed for the old abandoned house by the river once belonging to my grandparents where I nursed my cancer-ill mother until her face became smaller than my palm, At the funeral her half-sister told me I was not to inherit the half of the house: we were in such a big debt to her.
Weeds have overgrown the little patch that used to be a garden between the house and the heavy hypnotizing waters of the Brisbane river moving along the tidal moods of the ocean. Exhausted of fighting depression I have contemplated these waters as a way out. Another option presented itself as a knot of red belly snakes curled on the steps leading to the front porch to which I still kept a key but it looked copycat Cleopatrian and melodramatic.
My mother’s half sister, a staffer of someone big in Canberra, waits for a worthy developer’s offer. A City Cat boat crosses the river between West End and St Lucia full of students who remind me that once in another life I was like them full of enthusiasm and youth-loaded arrogance looking forward to a degree in psychology, having my own practice like beautiful Amruta, buying off the rest of the house and more green frogs for my mother’s pool, she loved them. She would go out onto the terrace listening to their primal song, the throaty croak making her feel good even in her last days.
There are no longer frogs in the garden. The snakes have taken care of them. The pond is dry and overgrown but it’s still a home, although I feel like a squatter what I actually am.
In café Santorini I open my eyes and come back to face reality.
It wasn’t that bad, three minutes.
Jeff plays something soft and romantic and it takes time to remember that Manoli has thrown me out hoping my pride won’t last long with hunger and medical bills pressing me, draining me, obliterating my last scrapes of energy: a hyena picking on the sick animal of the herd.
For the cards I’ll be paid with a ploughman’s sandwich and a coffee.
I wonder what meals Jeff gets.
He is not picky. I think he fancies you.
“Thank you!”
“It’s all right!” says Jeff in a green-frogs-voice and his smile kisses my smile, kind of.
The vertigo ebbs and I finish an extra card “Coffee is a hug in a mug.” I place it on top of the other I have already made, and leave. Suddenly it’s the rugged sounds of cool jazz trailing after me as does Jeff’s gaze. I want to wave to him but the hurts carved into my heart prevent me from doing it. I walk away feeling guilty and ungrateful.
Walking down Boundary street I still feel wobbly but it doesn’t prevent me from painfully noticing how West End is changing with a steady stream of highrises pushing their way in, dwarfing the physiognomic traditional stilt-set queenslanders, creating grotesque obelisk-like landmarks among small Greek restaurants, homes of sirtaki music and delightful moussaka, or among non-pretentious Vietnamese shops for those tempted by hot and spicy food. Construction sites swallow the river banks and cranes like vultures devour small parks and alleys, devour old houses like the one I squat in. All in the name of money.
Cashing in. That’s what they are doing. Stinky desert foxes.
As I walk slowly I take in the windows of bookshops where fast literature is banned, of bakeries and delis trying to stay away from fast food trends, of charity venues selling preloved clothes and where you can still score a bargain on odd Royal Doulton porcelain figurines, of cafes spilling onto the sidewalks, of dark narrow corridors where occult paraphernalia and masquerade costumes fight for attention, of homeopathic and alternative clinics suddenly included in medical covers, of places where one can buy a chunky amethyst stone supposedly opening the third eye and the crown charka or pay to be told the future by a gypsy-style dressed taro lady. I take in people who I know smoke tobacco and pot, gather at the Woodford festival for drum sessions in a brave attempt to clean the negative vibes in the world, listen to lectures on palm-sole reading and spirituality and never on money. People who like my mother refuse to join the rat race and pay for it.
I never expected so much envy from you, Elizabeth! To call rat race the beautifully arrange order which renders the rich richer and … you know the rest because you are part of it.
I don’t bother to engage in a conversation with Liam because at the corner where two side streets form a small triangle with an old tree and a grass patch around it I stop in front of a stall with a makeshift cover that looks like a horse float. The dark, slim woman in her bright-coloured cotton wrap is busy around two small burners. On one she roasts green coffee beans in a copper pan, stirring them occasionally with a spoon. On the other, a copper jug with water is heating. As the beans hiss and pop, the woman whose name is Malita empties the pan and takes her time, pounding the beans in a mortar. She then slips the contents into a long-necked clay jar, adds the boiling water, taps the jar and leaves it to steep. Finally she looks up at me as her hands, quick and agile, stirs a new lot of beans, tossing them in the air and catching them in the pan in one efficient movement. I watch the lidded clay jar, steam and aroma escaping through a designed hole, reaching me with an overwhelming aroma. Soon I am drinking in silence this coffee made the way they used to make it in Africa a thousand years ago, the hypnotic liquid bringing mist to my eyes. Malita, an Ethiopian refugee, gives me a smile with her eyes. In Ethiopia circa 800 AD shepherds noticed that goats got frisky dancing around coffee bushes, that was the beginning of coffee.
We know each other but we barely talk that’s why I am surprised when she turns her huge amber eyes to me and they erupt in a smile like her full lips.
“I’ll sing for you an old Ethiopian prayer,” she says and with her eyes now closed chants. “Coffee pot,
