the backyard of yesterdays

Text copyright © 2015

C Donovan, N Harlamb, S Luke, I Savvides,

M Sugden, A Vitanza, C Waters,

M Wong, K Yang, S Zhang

Cover photograph © 2015

M Sugden

Cover design © 2015

M Sugden, K Yang, S Zhang

First published 2015 at Abbotsleigh

1666 Pacific Highway (Cnr Ada Avenue)

Locked Bag 1666 Wahroonga NSW 2076

Things

THE RED SUITCASE (2015)

1

Inspired by Bordando el Manro Terrestre , Embroidering Earth’s Mantle: Remedios Varos, 1961

The Red Suitcase Irini Savvides (staff)

They say there was a time when the sky was blue, when people told their own stories, wove

their own tapestries, when the trees had leaves and plump red fruit. They say he came to the

village, the Piper clad in red when the town promised him anything to rid their town of the rats.

They gave him their stories, one by one, spoke them into the magic black book of his as the

Piper played and their memories fell out of their heads and became his. What was the loss of

an idea here or there they had thought at first? They traded stories for safety. Yes giving up a

few stories was nothing if it meant the plague of rats was finally gone, with their nibble, nibble,

nibble and their squeak, squeak, squeak. They could sleep at last when the last rat disappeared.

Or so they thought. But the silence that descended on the village without stories sat heavy and

spread its shadow. The people were silent and then suddenly four women disappeared. Red-

heads all. Worse still every year the rats returned and every year the Piper stole four more

women and as many memoires as his little black book would hold.

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It was the promise of a new story and the song that had tricked Remembrance. Her mother had

always warned her that with her Titan hair and heart shaped face she must hide when the Piper

came looking. She looked like her namesake in Greek mythology Mnemosyne who Dante had

painted in green shiny robes and that famous flowing hair. He had forgotten though the shiny

blue necklace, real sapphires hidden under her mane. Objects and stories seemed to float to

Remembrance from other places and other times. Remembrance carried future memories that

she had gathered and she watched spider’s weave their webs in the morning. She carried

memory in old language books she tried to decipher at night that looked Greek to her. Objects

had turned up under her bed after each trip to the river. A small brightly coloured wooden cube

that she hid.

True to her name she carried memories in the child’s shoe that had turned up on the shore one

day when she had been searching for her beloved. He though had never returned, but still she

often went looking and collected things from the River Lethe that bordered her hometown. At

first they were small things: a pretty shiny book with beautiful sketches and an intricate

language she could not make sense of, an unreal book that had within it pictures of people as

if captured in a film of amber wearing clothes that made her blush. She knew these were

memories of a time that had yet to come and for a while hid them in an old box tied with rope.

But then one day when she was longing for the man that had been carried across the sea and

looking out into its depth and waves that only brought other people’s loves to her there came a

camphor chest. Made with adoration that it reeked of hope and she dragged it from the beach

and she hid the objects and the chest deep in cave, covering them in silk and sand. Each day,

every Thursday in fact another object would arrive at the shore: a strange shiny dice made of a

metal she knew was from a world after this one, a piece of music oddly dry despite the trip in

the ocean, but with the clear imprints of tears from the singer she guessed. Ah sighed

Remembrance, it had been so long since she has sung. Once she had loved music, but it had

cost her dearly. Ever since the Piper has come and the rats has left and the women and the

stories had started to disappear. If you listened to his song you too were caught in his net.

Everyone knew to keep the wax in your ears for they had all heard the story of the Greek and

the sirens. The women knew to keep the hair over their ears so the Piper would not guess you

were immune to his song, and you would not hear the lure of the story. He would promise you

could have your memories back, eventually and then you would become one of the weavers,

telling his version of what the world was. But each year the women never returned, their bodies


3

found instead bloated from drinking the river water that in saner moments they knew not to

touch. Instead the plague and his damned flute would call more weavers.

In the weeks before he arrived the silken threads from the tower would bleach from orange to

yellow, from yellow to white and the village would know. Living forever in the shadow of the

turret the terror would rise when the colours changed. Soon they would expect the pink and red

painted feet to be treading the cobbled roads of the village. It was now a place where the trees

never grew leaves.

It was the promise of the ship returning, even after the colour of the silk faded, and they were

searching for the next weaver, that stopped Remembrance from jumping from the window. It

was open to the wind and the trip down could only have one end, but the thought of forcing

another woman to take her place was intolerable. Besides the way they were all tried to the

spindle meant she may take the other three with her. She often thought it may be a kindness,

but did not want to be the one to lead. And still… the promise of the ship one day returning

stopped her for a long time from the sin. Besides, she wanted to know what part of the story

the Piper would tell them next. Mostly she wanted to know who owned the strange childish

bracelet that was the last thing that had arrived on the shore.

One could say they were weaving the Earth’s mantle, one could say that life and death are all

one. One could say many things and the Piper did. He read the story night and day. The story

of a world with no memories left, and they paid him to tell them back their stories. Each woman

heard a different story for their corner of the Globe: North, South, East, and West. She often

wondered how to escape and steal the black book. But if she stopped listening would her love

be forever lost on the sea? Her love was no Odysseus, not a great warrior at all, just a simple

man gone in search of the healer who could reverse the curse upon them. Weave in, my love,

weave out, on the sea, Remembrance would sigh as she wove her thread.

This is an ending that is not an ending, because in a world like this there should be change.

Remembrance should forever be waiting for her love to return, but his ship would neither arrive

nor depart. The woman facing the North had long since forgotten the outside world, had been

caught and poisoned by the net of the Piper’s story. She could lift her spindle and weave the

fates into the cloth without even realising he wielded power. She had become the story: stitch,

weave in, weave out, pull the next stitch, and weave in and out, a story. The woman on the East

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longed for the place by the window to smell the breeze, but as if he knew the Piper would send

her better tales, richer plots, more twists and turns. Then she would forget her longing in the

colour of the cloth she wove and her wanting the book. But finally Remembrance who sat

nearest the window in the South felt the breeze moved just enough one day. Somehow and she

had no faint idea how, Remembrance was imagining stories of a woman who has not been able

to escape the huge flames that had been sent by a metal dragon out of the sky, she has been

giving the Piper tales about a man young, wide eyed with very shiny hair that had ridden a

strange spiky beast with round wheels thin as liquorice into a vast city like no other she had

ever seen, she had given the Piper a memory of a young man lying in a barren room, his heart

breaking as the familiar scent of alcohol wafted into his nose. The Piper had stolen all these

stories and they had spilled out into the silk and across the seas. But then Remembrance had

seen her, a woman with a small red suitcase overflowing with clothes, trying so hard not to cry

leaving behind a mother who had watched her go with the same knowledge in her eyes that

Remembrance had in hers when he love had left. The Piper had looked at her, wanting the next

story but instead she had shifted the mane of hair, and the love that the sapphire necklace had

been bought with had given her courage and she had jumped. The threads of the stories spun

out into the air, back to the owners that had held them and the Piper had yelled, ‘You will pay

for this Remembrance!’ But his dastardly voice and his menacing voice no longer frightened

her.

‘You were a cliché at best,’ Remembrance thought as she tumbled into a pond in Hades to find

a green robed, Titan haired goddess. ‘That necklace you are wearing is from my father Ouranos.

I’d like it back now. Best get out of that pool of memories quickly,’ Mnemosyne said. ‘We

can’t have you dying just yet. The story has just begun.’


5

The Small Things Kai Yang

Everything has a history behind it, but some of these histories are more interesting than others.

I, a fairly ordinary teenage girl who is very much absorbed in the world of the twenty-first

century and the great debate of Vegemite versus Marmite (Vegemite wins, obviously), would

much rather learn about the Ancient Romans and their odd fixation with drinking the blood of

their revered gladiators than be boxed up in a classroom learning about who discovered the

electron. And if you’re like me, and you love histories, you’re going to love this one. This

history has been woven from the delicate threads of time. This history has been unfolded from

the luxuriously soft sheets of China’s rich culture. This is the history of the bracelet which sits

on my bookshelf, a silent reminder of what once was and what never will be.

*

For Zheng Wei, life in China had been easier in the 1940s, when the concept of industrialisation

had seemed so foreign that idea of building factories on Chinese soil would have brought tears

of mirth to the eyes of many. Given that China’s current stance on industrialisation has evolved

considerably, her former perspective seemed almost embryonic. For Zheng Wei, a simple

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bracelet maker, the embryonic perspective was fortuitous. It meant that he was able to do what

he loved most.

His hands are creased with lines running over the valleys of his skin, mapping out his life. His

fingers are gnarled, like the arms of an ancient oak tree caressing the sky. His eyes are clouded

by old age, shrouded with the mysterious cloak of his eyelids. His hands – weakened by time

but strengthened by experience – chip at the block of marble on the workbench until a sphere,

comfortingly cold, emerges from the shapeless stone. His hands tremble with arthritis as he

etches the Chinese character for ‘luck’ on one side of the stone swirls.

It was fitting, he thought, that his bracelets were etched with luck. His bracelets were treasures

– to him, to others. He remembered all of them. There was his first, fashioned at the bitter age

of fourteen, as rough as a pineapple and as beautiful as a featherless duck. There was his last,

fashioned at the ripe age of ninety-six, as smooth as the skin of an apple and the colour of milky

tea. They were like the cold chips at the bottom of a bag – they went unnoticed at first, but

someone was always thrilled to find them. Indeed, it was purely luck that permitted him to keep

his job. Luck that he had not been replaced by factories and machines and cheap fabrications.

Luck that his handmade treasures were still appreciated. But that’s the thing about luck. You

start off with a gleefully full bottle that never seems to run out – and then you’re left desperately

trying to get those last few precious drops before you throw the bottle away.

People today say change is a good thing. But in the 1960s, change had brought Zheng Wei an

existence that promised nothing. He remembered the letter that had caused him so much

despair, the letter that had been printed on the stark white paper that seemed to sneer and rejoice

in his sufferings.

July 3rd, 1964

Dear Zheng Wei,

The purpose of this letter is to confirm the outcome of your recent

telephone conversation with Tan Yi of ICON Jewellery. As a result

of the establishment of our new Shanghai-based factory, our

company would like to purchase your bracelet designs for a large

sum of money – more than three times your annual salary. We will,

of course, pay you commission. We at ICON Jewellery strongly

believe that this investment will be highly beneficial to your

reputation as a bracelet manufacturer and will stabilise your

financial future. We hope that you will consider our ofeer please call

me within the week.

Signed,

X.J Chen.


7

Then there had been a phone number, which had glared at him with its cold eyes, the colour of

the burnt stuff at the bottom of a saucepan. That stuff leaves a bitter aftertaste – the same taste

that had lingered at the edges of his mouth as he rang the number. What else could he do? His

steady trickle of customers was slowing to a sickening drip, drip, drip. His once-full bowl of

clients was empty, with just a few grains of rice stuck to the sides. He needed money.

A lot of things can change in twenty years. In twenty years, I suspect that I will have wrinkles

that I will desperately attempt to hide, a stable job, perhaps children. For Zheng Wei, twenty

years saw his source of joy be replaced by something that could only create a weak construction

of carefreeness.

Clinks. Clanks. Crashes. A conveyer belt running an endless race, over and over, never tiring,

never reaching the finish line. A ruthless, slick system which waits for no one, the factory is

one of the many ‘blessings’ of industrialisation. Something which would once have taken hours

to make can now be ready for sale within a few seconds.

They had mailed him one of their bracelets – wrapped in tissue paper, made of plastic, stamped

by machine, slapped together as carelessly as a McDonald’s burger. None of it resembled the

intricate marble jewellery which he had poured all his love into for so many years.

*

The marketplace is a cunning system crafted much like a puzzle – each stall has its own rightful

place, and each stall is content with the position it has been allocated. Each stall has its own

kind of unique beauty, a beauty that draws in the consumer and refuses to let them go. It was

this beauty that drew in Fa Mei. Her eyes scour intently over the goods table, scanning for

something to give as a gift. They come to rest on an elaborate amethyst cutting that positively

radiates brilliance, and fixate on the small bracelet behind it, tucked almost out of sight. Perfect.

‘How much is that bracelet, please?’

The seller smiles and picks it up, twirling it effortlessly around his finger with a flourish.

‘This one? Two dollars, an excellent bargain. It’s one of a kind, you won’t find another one

quite like it.’

Although the marketplace is full of the shouts of others, Fa Mei’s ears hear only the silent

sound of her resonating happiness.

*

If you were to look at a map of China, Shanghai is probably the first city you would identify.

But nestled south-west of Shanghai is a city called Yiwu: one of China’s top crystal

manufacturers. And if we delved even further into geography, a subject I detest, we would

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stumble across a small village near Yiwu, full of men and women who speak their own dialects

and all know one another. It is here that Fa Mei, my grandmother, lives. She is the most selfless

person I know. If she sees someone hungry, she will give them her bread even if she, too, has

not eaten since the previous day. If she sees someone cold, she will lend them her coat, even if

her teeth are chattering and her fingers numb. And when she sees me, she will always give me

something to remind me of her love. Those things are like a thick, knitted blanket – the kind

that the cat likes to snuggle up on when you’re not around and the kind that you secretly like

to sleep with. Amongst these things, the bracelet is my favourite.

I remember the day it was given to me, a series of sepia-toned Kodak moments in a world

where everything is documented by high-definition technicolour. It had been snowing outside,

and the tofu-seller had been whistling a cheerful tune that I didn’t recognise. The air had tasted

like happiness, tinged with a hint of cigarette smoke. Elderly men had been playing poker in

the late hours of the afternoon, just as they did every single day, and it had been most reassuring

to hear the atmosphere punctuated by shouts of ‘Cheat!’ and ‘You looked at my cards, you

bastard!’ It had been my last day in China, and my grandmother had pressed a mysteriously

lumpy envelope into my hand. I remember being thrilled, because this was the first time my

grandparents had been able to afford something in addition to their basic necessities.

To anyone else, the bracelet itself must look cheap and tacky, a little too clumsy and clanky to

ever be paired successfully with any outfit. But to me, this bracelet which looks like something

you could get at the dollar store, this bracelet which most people would throw away without a

second glance – this bracelet is special. On that day, when I had been walking around the village

by myself (a mighty feat for a seven-year-old, I tell you), I had passed the house of Zheng Wei,

who often declined invitations to join the rest of the village for dinner. I had never spoken to

him before. But when I had passed his house, his face had flickered with a glimmer of sadness,

and he had taken my wrist to admire the bracelet. I remember him asking whether or not I could

read. I had shaken my head, unsure as to why he had thought to approach me. ‘You see this

character? It means luck. A wonderful thing, luck. I hope you never run out of it.’

And then, for the first time in many years, Zheng Wei, the man who was known as ‘the unhappy

one’ by all who lived in the village, had smiled.


9

Cubes Maya Sugden

The cubes are small: three by three centimetres, five grams each, to be exact. Each side a

honeydew green, an Egyptian blue, a crimson red or just a plain, simple, white. The corners are

rough from countless hours of little hands. The brushstrokes are still visible, licking the edges;

the drips and dribbles constantly tormenting the perfectionist within me. If you look closely,

the paint has cracked in some places, its flaking sides holding fragments of the memories these

cubes have collected. The cubes are always moving, always rotating, always turning. They are

rolled like die and assembled like a rubix cube. Four in total, a puzzle to solve, a consumption

of time for those who did not yet know how to entertain themselves.

My great grandmother had lived in a flat amidst many more apartments. Endless passageways,

stale brickwork and flaking yellow railings had surrounded her home. Creases had gathered at

her eyes like crumpled ironing, collapsed together, a smiling bundle of softly folded flesh. She

had eyelids that hung like washing, weary after a century of blinking. She had fancy teapots

and flowering crockery, and like every dutiful great grandmother, an ample supply of biscuits.

Her eyes, though tired, were always smiling.

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The cubes lived in her world, tucked in the spare room, crafted by the hands of her husband,

one who had long since departed. They awaited her great grandchildren’s return, to be placed

on the carpet, to be mixed and matched but never completed. Once the chatter had ceased they

would be returned to their places and it would be time to leave. We always wanted to take them

home with us, carry them delicately to the car like stolen treasures.

The cubes were never meant for me, but they were not really meant for anybody else either.

After my great grandmother’s passing they had been left in a jumbled pile with other things,

things that she had not adorned with yellow posted notes and delicate cursive writing. I had

scanned over the organised rows of objects that had been assigned to one family member or

another, eager to catch sight of my own name inscribed upon a yellow posted note. I had hoped

that maybe she had remembered me, and that maybe she had left a small treasure through which

I could remember her by. Catching sight of my name my breath had quickened with excitement

as I reached to claim my prize. Lifting the lid I had unfolded the crinkled tissue paper to find a

ceramic bird, painted softly with the colours of the moon. Although beautiful, my childlike

mind could do no more but feel disappointed at the gift, it meant nothing to me. Moving it aside

I had looked through the pile of other things and it was here that I had found my true gift.

Rolling the cubes through my fingers I had closed my hand tightly around them, keeping them

from the prying eyes of my family. Avoiding any disapproving stares I had run out of the

bedroom, cubes and bird in hand, and from that moment on they had belonged to me.

I’ve often wondered if they held any significance to my great grandmother or whether it was

intentional when they were left to collect dust in the spare room. Whether they made up a larger

puzzle, and were just mere fragments of a superior game… or whether they were too much of

a reminder of the one she had lost. I’ve never actually met him, her husband. Him, my great

grandfather, the creator and the sculpture of these cubes. The one who laboured over them as

the days rolled over. His features exist in my mind as a whirl of distorted stereotypes, a crinkled

image of old age. I imagine that he stood at a workbench laden with bits and pieces, scattered

with materials and tools. Possibly he used a sander, maybe a saw. I imagine he would have

carefully cut out the blocks, three by three centimetres, a perfect cube. Maybe he sanded the

corners, a precaution to avoid little splintered hands even though his own children were well

grown up. He would have dipped stiff bristle brushes into the tins of hardening paint, colours

left over from various constructions before. He could have chosen the colours by random, a

carefree collection of unused paint. The paint would have been smeared on, a continuation of

thick brushstrokes, rolling over the edges and down the sides. One colour at a time, his

technique methodical. Maybe he let them dry in the sun, where the paint stuck to the fabric

beneath creating creases of colour.

But to be honest, I’ll never really know. You see, these blocks don’t exist in the memories of

others, in the minds of the family that preceded me. They seem to have been placed into my

hands, pulled from a void of treasures and knick-knacks. No one knows for sure who made

them, although what I have described is the most commonly accepted assumption made by my

family. There is no one left to verify their creation; my great grandmother passed away just past

the one-hundred year mark, my grandfather has no recollection, nor does my dad for whom he


11

only existed for eight or so years of his lifetime. So it had been left to me, a tangled web of

uncertainty to construct my own story, a story that was rightfully my great grandfather’s.

One story I didn’t anticipate was the unveiling of the truth, the accidental discovery that would

remove the need for me to construct a false reality. A truth that had been innocently hidden

from me.

It was a day filled for the most part with laughter and family celebrations. Six years had passed

since the day I had held the cubes in my grasp, the day they had finally become mine to treasure

forever. The same typically unruly cousins had been trampling through my grandparent’s house

like any other family gathering, and the same scent of soon-to-be devoured birthday cake had

hung in the air. Escaping from the high pitched screams of pre-school-aged cousins I had found

myself browsing through my grandad’s collection of dust enveloped books, reading snippets

of everything from physics to birdwatching. A peculiar grey-spined book had caught my eye

with the title ‘Puzzles of the 20th century’ wrapped across the front cover, its vibrant colours

inviting me in. Upon removing it from its place it had fallen open to a page bookmarked by a

scrap of lined paper. The page trembled slightly beneath my fingers as I recognised what lay in

front of me. The cubes…‘my’ cubes, lay in front of me, their illustrated look-alikes littered

across the page. No more than a mere children’s puzzle, these cubes held no other significance.

The same honeydew green, Egyptian blue, crimson red and simple white adorned their faces,

teasing my foolish assumptions. They were not special…in no way unique. They were nothing

but simple objects, available to all. Nothing more than blocks of wood and easily replicated

paint. They even came with instructions, shattering the countless hours of my childhood that I

had spent turning and twisting, desperately trying to expose the hidden solution. The hours I

had spent on my great grandmother’s carpet, in the midst of multiple stale brick houses and

flaking yellow railings, had been inadequate and devoid of any sense of accomplishment. But

here, in this book they had given me a solution, an answer which should have satisfied me, but

one nonetheless with an empty sense of achievement tied to it. They crushed my concepts of

towering pyramids and uniform shapes, of matching colours and perfectly positioned corners.

On the page, these cubes were aligned in nothing more spectacular than a straight line, with

every side featuring only one of the four colours. Four cubes, with only one perfect solution.

Later, in the refuge of my room, I had clutched the real cubes in my hands, aligning the colours

with those in the illustrations, reinforcing my discovery. Even the combinations of colours were

the same, copied from a common blueprint and slapped onto the wood with less precision than

their manufactured equivalents. There was no creativity, there was no puzzle to solve. The

countless hours I had spent were inadequate, they would never have been enough to solve the

puzzle. My ideal solution to the puzzle had rendered it impossible, completely erasing the

possibility for its completion. I had wasted those hours. I had thought that the cubes were

special, and I had been mistaken.

According to the ‘Puzzles of the 20th century’, they now replace the simple white with a lively

yellow, an updated version to catch the eyes of 21st century children, children who are no longer

interested. The other colours, although fundamentally the same, have the added vibrancy and

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energy of fresh paint. Their cubes have clean cut edges, stamped out by machines. No cracks,

no drips, no faults. No love or care has been placed into these cubes, with only the intention of

profit.

Some may question why after this discovery I still kept them in the suitcase, the suitcase that’s

battered edges imitate the disappointment I had met. The suitcase that stares back at me from

the corner of my room, questioning why it should hold those seemingly trivial cubes. Although

replaceable, they are still my cubes, still the cubes that have been rotated and turned and still

the cubes that both filled and opened a gap in time. The cubes that formed a place of mindless

escape and imagination, and held childhood memories, memories which must be passed on,

glimpses of a time before.


13

My Name is Sophie Nicola Harlamb

I wander through the pages like a child in a toy shop, admiring the words as if they were delicate

dolls lining the shelves, each foreign sentence more captivating than the last. As my fingers

hover over the edge of another yellowing page I hear the garage door creak behind me. I cringe

and the book slips beneath my fingers onto the concrete beneath my bare feet. I silently pray

that I wouldn’t turn around to see a familiar figure at the doorway. I turn back around and sigh,

thankful that I am still yet to be caught in the garage, reading, at 3 am on a school night. The

white book with children playing on the cover really is beautiful, it isn’t anything modern or

fancy but you can feel that it has a past. I wish this children’s beginner book could just teach

me everything about the language…and my family. All my life, everything about my

background has been a total mystery, aside from a few very basic details.

It is more difficult than I had anticipated, trying to learn a language on your own, particularly

from a children’s book, but I feel a sense of motivation inside of me that I’m not used to. I

glance down at another word, using the torch on my phone to illuminate the page, I had learnt

all my colours last week and tonight I’m beginning animals. ‘Αγελάδα’, I try to wrap my tongue

around another word, occasionally speaking a little too loud, and then placing a sticky note

beside the word in the book, it means cow. I already know horse, ‘άλογο’ and fish, ‘ψάρι’ and

my pronunciation is actually pretty good, well, at least I think so. Whilst I’m not exactly

stringing sentences together yet, being able to learn and speak the language that my family had

known for generations is exciting.

The subject of Greece or family has always been sensitive with my parents. I don’t know why,

I’ve never asked. But I remember in Year 5, at school, we needed to do a presentation on our

heritage. I tried talking to my parents about it, asking them questions, even writing up my own

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little interview, instead I got one-syllable answers and a lecture from my mum. ‘Sophie, this is

ridiculous, stop asking questions about things that don’t matter.’

‘But mum, this is for school.’

‘Oh well, I’m sure you know enough, they probably won’t want too much detail.’

I didn’t really think much of it at the time, only extreme frustration at how I’m possibly going

to complete the assignment. Whilst, my not-so-conventional learning methods from this book

are comforting, they aren’t exactly practical. I know that eventually I will want to learn more,

there’s only so much a child’s beginner book from the 1940s can teach you. I want to ask for

some lessons, and for many this wouldn’t be a big deal, in fact many parents would force it

upon their reluctant children, but in my family that has never been how it works and possibly,

it never will be.

*

The car ride home from school the following afternoon feels longer than usual. I keep my gaze

firmly out the window focusing on the cyclists trailing our car with complete determination to

overtake us.

‘How was your day?’ Mum breaks the silence with a cheerful tone.

I nod slowly, not bothering to turn and face her. ‘It was alright.’

‘Are you feeling okay, Sophie?’ Mum asks, putting her palm to my forehead.

‘I’m fine, mum.’

‘Are you sure?’ Mum eventually asks, clearly frustrated.

I nod slowly, silently debating whether or not to share the idea that had been gripping my mind

for weeks now.

After briefly drawing up a list of pros and cons in my mind, I turn to her, ‘Actually, I was

thinking that I might like to take some Greek lessons.’ I was unsure of her answer but I knew

from experience that her response wouldn’t exactly be positive.

To my surprise, she laughs, ‘What on earth made you even think of that, Sophie?’

‘Well, I found this book in the garage. You know, the white one with the little boy and girl

playing on the cover.’


15

‘Oh, that old thing! It was your grandmother’s, you know. My mother would torture my sister

and I every Saturday morning with that book. I would never put you through that.’ She replied,

brushing me off with the wave of her hand.

I nodded and forced a smile onto my face. Her answer isn’t entirely unexpected, I grew up

knowing I was Greek, but never really knowing or feeling what that meant. My friends always

had close ties to their backgrounds, whether it was the food they ate, or the language they spoke

with their family, and that was always something I had envied a little. All of them share stories

of their great grandfathers fighting in wars, or the way that their grandmother met their

grandfather, but I had never known any of that. Everything is a secret and I do not know why…

it honestly feels like a jigsaw puzzle sometimes. My parents both came to Australia as small

children, with their families, to start a better life and forget what they had left behind, but ever

since, they have dismissed any connection to Greece, claiming that ‘Australia meant the start

of a new life of freedom’. Personally, I see it differently, but I can’t exactly comment, I’ve

never needed to flee my home before.

*

‘Sophie,’ I hear my dad shout from downstairs, ‘dinner’s ready, and your Aunt’s here.’

I shut my textbook and walk downstairs. I walk over to my Aunty Stacey and give her a hug.

She is mother’s eldest sister, and one of my favourite people in the world, every year since I

was 4 years old she would make an Easter egg hunt for my cousins and I and tell me where she

had hidden half of them beforehand. ‘So, Soph,’ my Aunt looks at me from across the table,

‘how’s school going? Did you get that maths exam back yet?’ I shake my head towards her.

‘No not yet, but it’s going pretty well, exams are over.’ I smile at her.

‘This is a really nice meal, Anna.’ My dad tells my mum, breaking another short silence. My

mother smiles at him. ‘Thank you, I used the same recipe as last time’ After initial conversation

around the dinner table had died down and the only audible noise was that of the cutlery on

plates, I decide to bring up my request again, in front of dad and Aunt Stacey, to make it harder

for mum to say no.

‘I was actually thinking of taking some Greek lessons.’ I smile, avoiding eye contact with my

mother.

She shoots me a glare, ‘Sophie, we’ve discussed this. It’s a silly idea…’

‘It is a bit of a stupid idea, Soph,’ my father added, ‘We’re living in Australia, I can’t see a

point in it.’

‘Maybe, I want to learn. Neither of you have ever taught me anything about Greece or our

family, which is okay, but this is my way of figuring it out for myself.’ I defend, trying to

ABBOTSLEIGH

16

remain as reasonable as possible. I’m not asking for much, I’m not even asking for answers, I

just want the freedom to make this choice on my own.

I could see the frustration growing in both of my parents eyes as they try to ignore my protests,

‘Well, if you’re going to say no, I think I deserve an explanation as to why?’

‘Maybe she does, guys. Maybe it’s just time to stop leaving the kid in the dark.’ Aunt Stacey

spoke firmly, coming to my defence.

‘No, Stacey, it’s not.’ My father retaliated, ‘Sophie, you are the child and we are the adults, we

make the decisions.’ My father spoke sternly. Just like a typical Greek I think ironically.

I look down at the napkin in my lap and sigh, ‘I’m just trying to figure out who I am, and who

my family was. I’m sorry if that’s hard for you to understand.’ I speak before taking my plate

and shoving it in the sink, making a loud noise, and walking up to my bedroom.

I pull my little white book out from under my pillow and start reading it, going over what I

know and putting more post it notes onto the pages I’m going to start on next. A stray tear slips

out of the corner of my eye and I quickly wipe it away.

I hear a knock and my bedroom door opens.

‘Am I allowed in?’ My Aunt calls, her tall figure pressed against the doorframe.

I nod and pat the spot beside me on the bed.

‘I understand where you’re coming from, Sophie. It’s unfair that you’ve been left in the dark

for so many years,’ she began, as she pushed my hair behind my ears, ‘but you need to

understand that things happen for a reason. Your parents are trying to protect you from the

heartache they both felt. If it were up to me I would tell you all of it myself, but, Sophie, that

isn’t my place.’

‘I know that, but I want to figure out who I am. I don’t need to know the story, but I do need

something to connect me to it. I just want to learn the language. I want make them understand

that it’s me finding my identity.’ I stopped when I saw something slip under my door.

Aunt Stacey gets up to open the piece of paper lying on the floor. She reads the note and smiles,

‘It looks like you already have.’

She passes me the note and I look down at it.

‘Το όνομά μου είναι Sophie…kαι αγελάδα προφέρεται a-gel-áda.’

‘My name is Sophie…and cow is pronounced a-gel-áda’.


17

Beginner’s Luck Allegra Vitanza

The young, pale hands of Marcie’s granddaughter held and inspected the individual charms on

her grandmother’s worn bracelet, sitting on her wrist. The young girl was sitting on her

grandmother’s lap, and they were both settled on the floral sofa in the front room of their house.

‘Grandma Marcie, where did this one come from?’

The older woman looked down, and saw that the small silver dice was being held away from

the others. She smiled, ‘It came from Las Vegas.’

Her granddaughter’s eyes lit up at the mention of a destination overseas. ‘Did you buy it there?’

the young girl, asked.

Marcie shook her head as her husband shuffled into the room, crouching over the wooden stick

he carried around as he walked. He grunted as he fell back onto the couch across from the two

girls.

‘It’s a lucky dice,’ Marcie told her granddaughter, with a slight raise of her eyebrows.

‘Really?’ She looked over to her grandfather, her eyes sparkling, ‘Grandpa Max, really?’

Max nodded, smiling. The two shared a knowing glance between each other.

‘Would you like to hear the story?’ Marcie prompted.

ABBOTSLEIGH

18

Her granddaughter nodded enthusiastically, hugging a frilly cushion to her chest, and Marcie

started to retell the story of the dice to her granddaughter.

She remembered being young and naïve, mesmerised by the thought of being all alone and

independent for the first time. Being in another country added to the wonder. All she could see

was a blur of neon signs and flashing lights, contrasting against the dark sky.

She walked into the grand hotel lobby, met with bustling crowds of well-dressed people.

Marcie instantly felt like a fish out of water, her favourite navy dress and white gloves could

not compete with the masses of designer clothing and brand stores around her. The butterflies

in her stomach mingled with the uneasiness bubbling inside her.

After Marcie checked in, she dropped her leather suitcase off in her small, single-bedded hotel

room, and looked out at the view from her window. A row of Ford thunderbirds were parked

on the street below, lined up against the pastel pink and blue buildings. She sighed contently,

relied that she had finally arrived. The whole flight, she had a tight knot in her stomach, which

only pulled itself tighter whenever there was a small bump or minor shake, and didn’t undo

itself until her feet were on the grounds of Nevada.

Later, when the sun died away behind the horizon, the city came to life. Blinking lights

contrasted against the dark sky accompanied by a constant buzz of people exploring the

wonders that Las Vegas had to offer.

Marcie absently walked around the lobby, following a crowd of young people into hotel’s

casino. She stepped inside, the band playing lounge music that was unlike the music she and

her cousins danced to on Saturday nights.

Marcie’s father had taught her how to play a few card games before she left, and she’d even

won a few rounds against him, but being here made it seem like those were all warm-ups that

didn’t count towards anything, and all her skill and talent couldn’t compete with the experience

of anyone else.

Marcie leaned over on the playing table, then noticed two more men to her left, and took her

hands off the table, mimicking their stance. They started up a game with the dealer, and it

became obvious that she was the underdog of the group. She kept revising the rules in her head,

remembering the tricks and hints her father had told her. Her first two cards where an ace, and

a five. She strategically counted her ace as a one, so her card added up to six. She calculated

how many more cards she needed while the dealer went around the table.

The two much more experienced players to her left were using quick, subtle hand movements

and taps on the table after glancing at their cards, whereas she kept counting how many more

she needed, and her blatant hand gestures felt awkward.


19

Marcie’s turn quickly circled the table and returned to her again, waiting for her to make a

decision on her next move. The unnerving eyes of her opponents stared her down. All

reasonable thought drift out of her mind, and whilst caught up in the intensity of the game, she

asked for another card, even though her cards already added to seventeen. As soon as the card

was placed in Marcie’s hand, her face grimaced. The cards she held in her hand added up to

twenty three, and she placed them down on the table, ‘I’m out,’ she said softly.

‘Better luck next time,’ the dealer said to her, shuffling her cards, as she took a step back,

leaving her cash in a pile in front of him on the table.

Marcie walked around the hazy, smoke-filled casino, finding an empty wooden bench, and

jumped up onto the high stool. While everyone around her laughed, talked, and drank, she

focused on the unique geometric pattern of the carpet.

This trip was turning out to be a bad mistake, and even though she had been looking for

adventure, maybe she could have looked at somewhere more local. Originally, Marcie and her

sister had planned to visit an international destination together, but her sister had pulled out a

month prior, leaving Marcie to travel alone; and she didn’t want to give up the opportunity to

experience the City of Lights. She didn’t know when the next time a chance like that would

come again.

From her spot sitting at the bench, she saw something on the ground catch the light. She slid

off her high stool to look at the glinting object on the carpet, expecting it to be a coin. As she

got closer, she realised the object wasn’t flat like a coin was. Perhaps it was an earring. She

crouched down, and reached for the object, finding a small decorative silver dice. She turned it

over in her hands, noticing it had a hole through the centre so it could be strung onto a chain.

Marcie knew that the right thing to do would be to leave it, or hand it in. Even she could

recognise that it was valuable, and must have belonged to a specific set. Someone had lost it,

and were probably looking for it.

Marcie placed it in the centre of her palm, and closed her hand around it. She abruptly stood

and turned, instantly bumping into someone, nearly knocking herself over.

‘I’m so sorry,’ apologies started slurring from her mouth, before she even looked up, her face

flushing, and embarrassment rushing over her.

Marcie raised her wide eyes, seeing a small group of young men, wearing trousers and cardigan

jumpers, half of them with their arms wrapped around girl’s shoulders, all looking on, probably

wondering how someone could be so clumsy and reckless. The man she had bumped into, had

his arms out, steadying her.

ABBOTSLEIGH

20

‘Are you alright?’ the American man asked. He had dirty blonde hair that was combed back,

contrasting against his light tan skin. He wore trousers like the rest of the group, with a light

blue cardigan.

Marcie nodded, lowering her eyes, and took a small step back, getting ready to quickly hurry

in the opposite direction straight to the solitude of her room.

She looked up at him and he smiled at her. ‘I’m Max,’ he stuck his hand out to her.

She hesitated, looking from his hand to his face, then slowly putting her dainty hand in his,

‘Marcie.’

*

Marcie smiled at her husband sitting on the opposite couch, finishing her story, and her

granddaughter looked up at her with wide eyes, her brow furrowed, ‘Did you win your money

back?’

Marcie’s eyes crinkled at the sides, ‘No.’

The small girl frowned deeper, pushed herself up on the floral couch, and folded her arms, ‘Did

you win something else?’

Marcie shook her head.

‘She didn’t win anything,’ Max added.

Their granddaughter looked blankly at her grandparents, ‘Then, how is the dice lucky?’

‘I won a lifetime of happiness,’ Marcie said, with a small smile.

Max rolled his eyes, grumbling under his breath. Their granddaughter cringed, but Marcie

didn’t mind, because as she sat with her granddaughter on her knee, and her husband chuckling

on the opposite couch, she knew she had won the most precious people and experiences, more

valuable than any found miscellaneous charm on a bracelet could ever be.


21

The Song Unsung Caity Donovan

I knew I had become an unwelcome guest within the empty auditorium. Standing amongst an

encirclement of empty seats, I joined their force against the stage which quivered beneath us.

Usually I wouldn’t be on this team – usually I’d be trembling alongside the stage, struggling

for air and chocked by the rope of eyes impending from the audience. But tonight I was the

intruder, cowering in a critic’s seat whilst the stage before me outpoured its dark, silent lament.

The sharp knock of a heel on the wooden foyer floorboards outside interrupted my fascination

and I looked to my left to see my teacher presenting me with a questioning smirk. ‘Are you

ready for the performance tonight?’ The stage stopped its soulful recital mid-note and in its

place my stomach began performing; millions of tiny and repetitive somersaults.

‘Of course, I ran through my piece just before’ I lied. My teacher shifted her weight backwards

slightly, then tilted her head before finishing her sentence of movements with a question mark,

formed by a discreet yet distinct raise of one eyebrow. Surrendering, I followed my teacher out

of the auditorium towards the collection of studios down the corridor, leaving the stage to finish

its unreciprocated duet undisturbed.

The studio we arrived at was warmer than the auditorium, due an old red-glowing heater

perched in the corner of the ceiling and back-wall. At the piano however, sat a scowling man

of illumined disinterest; the type of person whose mere expression and movement immediately

resonated a claustrophobic discomfort. This man was my accompanist, and though this was not

ABBOTSLEIGH

22

the first time I had met him; or even performed with him; his apathetic nature conducted

questions of inadequacy I simply couldn’t steer away from. My teacher, not noticing my

discomfort, offered an encouraging smile before nodding her head to say ‘Whenever you’re

ready’.

My accompanist looked up at me briefly, waiting for the flutter of eye contact to gesture a

beginning. As I met his gaze he began to thread the soft introduction together, his tattoo-sleeved

arms and hands delicately providing each not as they glided over the slightly off-white, time-

tainted keys. Gradually the introduction wove into the first verse and I fostered a shaking

breath, envisioning the note I was about to sing – how it would sit on my tongue, the tremble

of air on my lips as it travelled forward, and the lingering shape it would form once it met the

piano’s supportive accompaniment. Then, just as I had imagined it, the first phrase uncoiled

perfectly, smoothly weaving into an intricate braid of golden rope and upturning either corner

of my lips. I stayed like that for the rest of the piece – a childish grin resonating across my

cheeks whilst I watched an enchanting web of notes form and sail above me. This was the

reason I sang and I held onto it through the last note which slowly diminished, taking my note-

spotted web alongside it.

‘So what did we think’ my teacher asked, referring to my accompanist who sat expressionlessly

at the piano, having returned from his private performing realm to face a disinteresting reality.

I watched their conversation anxiously, scanning for their reply as an abandoned kindergarten

student would search for their parents when left alone at the school gate. ‘It was rubbish’ my

accompanist finally replied with an impersonal headshake. My teacher appeared to be shocked

by his abrupt response, though she didn’t turn her head towards me. I almost felt as if I’d

betrayed her; and I’m sure, if I could have secured my trembling lips to enough of a degree to

form an audible reply, I would have apologised for that.

Refusing to demolish into a watery performance in front of the accompanist, I bit the insides

of my cheeks and forced myself to swallow any approaching tears. ‘I’ll just sing the old song’

I quickly interjected.

My teacher, still focused on my accompanist at the piano, replied with a tone more forceful

than I have ever heard the gentle, reassuring woman use. ‘No’, ‘I want you to sing that one –

you’re singing this song all the way through’. As she squared her shoulders, and indignantly

raised her chin, my teacher made it very clear that her statement was to stand over that of the

accompanists’, who submitted with a painfully begrudging shrug. I turned away from both of

them, not daring to reveal to the accompanist the impact of his judgement.

I found my way to an empty studio, fumbling with the cold metal lock as I locked anything

outside of the small room away. Finally it was just me, a piano and the potentiality of empty

air; though instead of filling the space with sound, I allowed my legs to recoil underneath me

and hugged my shaking frame.


23

Gradually each distressed breath became slightly more tranquil, I looked toward the piano; an

invitation of soothing keys surrounded by chocolate-coloured wood. Wiping away the mascara

tinted trails on my cheeks I sat down and played an F, the first note of my piece, then repeated

it three times and slowly descended to the next two notes. I closed my eyes and saw the phrase

form in my head, just as it had when I sang it earlier. After the image dissolved I played the

next phrase, savouring it the same way as the first before I moved on. Each continuation

wrapped warmly around my shoulders like a comforting blanket during a cold, rainy night; and

slowly the previous hour melted away.

When I finally reached the end of the piece, I found my teacher watching from behind the

square window in the locked door. I stood up to unlock it, allowing her to enter my thoughts

as she graciously stepped inside the studio. ‘Are you alright?’ she asked tentatively.

Was I alright – was I alright?

I didn’t know how to answer her; I could tell her I was fine, that I knew a performer had to

have ‘thick skin’ and that I wasn’t discouraged by a single comment, but the red glow around

my eyes had already portrayed that as a lie. On the other hand, I couldn’t explain to her how I

felt having thrown a fragment of who I was – which was so often kept private – in front of

someone and allowed myself to become as vulnerable as a glass figurine, only to be crushed

by the weight of three simple syllables. No, I couldn’t say that to her, or anyone else – not out

loud.

‘I just don’t think I’m up to singing this tonight’ I replied, I wasn’t lying – not completely. My

teacher looked at me gently, ‘I think you know how disappointed I’d be if you didn’t perform

today’. Keeping her comforting gaze at the same level as my own I knew she wasn’t only

referring to herself, but me as well – she knew how disappointed I would be if I didn’t perform

this piece tonight. I walked back over to the piano, one arm still hugged across my chest with

a hand resting protectively on my collar-bone. I looked down, taking a deep breath – was I to

give up now and go home, accepting that one critic would devour a gift I knew I possessed?

Or should I wipe away the evidence of tears, warm up my voice and make sure my accompanist

knew I would be performing?

My teacher, still standing just inside the door of the studio, became to form a timid smile that

seemed slightly unsure if its presence was appropriate just yet. ‘But what if he’s right?’ I asked

her. She appeared consider my question, weighing the pros and cons as she dipped her head

from one shoulder to the other. ‘To some people, he will be – but to others, he’ll be ridiculously

far from that’. Carefully, she sat down on the piano stool beside me. ‘When I was a student

performing terrified me; I loved it, and I studied a Bachelor of Performance, but during my last

performance while I was performing with the Sydney Symphony – all I could think about were

the mistakes I was terrified of making’. She looked across the piano to me, not as a student, but

a friend and an equal musician. ‘I know if you don’t perform tonight, you’re going to build a

barrier that will only get harder and harder to push past; and I think you know that too’. I broke

my gaze away, both embarrassed and humbled to discover she understood how I felt. ‘I don’t

ABBOTSLEIGH

24

think it’ll be a perfect performance – but I’ll try’ I said with a shaky breath. My teacher nodded

in reply before leaving to let my accompanist know we were still performing.

After the night’s performance I once again sat amongst the encirclement of seats before the

stage, although this time I didn’t feel like an intruder. The stage dismissed my presence as it

delivered a silent melody, not as an unwelcomed guest, but a mutual companion with an

understanding of the accompanying fear in performance. I watched with a smile as the stage

created a perfect harmony for only itself and the last golden glow of a stage light dimmed,

setting the sun of the theatre peacefully behind a thick red curtain. Now I knew it was time to

go home.


25

The Rebel Heart Starry Zhang

I’d call myself an artist. Otherwise it wouldn't explain why I chose my name from a painting.

All the sketching and pasting on my pink scrapbook were kept from the first year that I could

hold a pencil. Once, I felt that every bit of it was shameful evidence of how I used to live and

it needed to be destroyed. What actually happened was that I found myself staring at the same

page, for the entire afternoon. I looked at a heart shape and a few letters that most wouldn't

consider worth keeping, except for me.

ABBOTSLEIGH

26

The dry and solid summer was where I found my heartbeat found itself. I could see myself

sitting on the rooftop of the school building. The scrapbook was opened on my knees. Its coils

were undamaged at that time. I repeatedly picked up and put down the pencil because my eyes

were caught by the basketball game on the playground. I found the rooftop was a perfect place

to watch the game.

‘What are you doing?’ The sound of the wood door slammed at my back followed by a light-

hearted voice another who wouldn't be at the game.

‘Can I see?’ He meant my scrapbook. I started to think whether it was not a good idea to always

let him find me during lunch breaks.

‘Uh-uh,’ I covered the page with both hands, ‘Remember that privacy policy we made, Louis?’

‘Rule number 11: If I came to your secret rooftop I would have to stay away from you at other

times. Otherwise we’d get caught. Am I right?’ Louis said genuinely.

‘Thank you, Louis. You may take a seat.’ I glanced at his incorrect uniform and frowned. He

was exactly as I met Louis: On the first day of school I had caught him not wearing his tie, the

second day he found me climbing to the rooftop. And the third day, we established the Privacy

Policies that was against every school policy.

He sat down beside me while I nervously flipped the hard cover of my scrapbook to the front

quickly. I hope he didn't notice my sketch, a heart and a few letters. If he were to see what I

drew on my scrapbook you would soon find me busy swallowing the whole page.

‘Got maths after lunch?’ Louis asked. Of course he didn't explain why he wasn't at the game.

‘Unfortunately,’ I replied. It is odd for him to look that nervous sitting next to me since he had

never told me that he was afraid of anything.

‘I wonder which one would you choose to pursue for a living finally, maths or your drawing

stuff?’ He pointed at my scrapbook and added, ‘Be honest.’

I tightened my fingers on it instinctively.

‘There was never a choice. I shouldn't dream about such things.’

Both of us were gazing at my scrapbook as if it revealed my dreams.

‘I don’t see what is wrong with following your heart?’ He retorted, but watched my reactions

carefully.


27

‘It is too rebellious for my culture, and it had prices.’ I jumped off from the air condition we

were sitting on and sighed, ‘If I could get out from here, I could be an artist.’ I wanted to prove

Louis that I am not a coward just as much as I wanted follow my rebellious heart.

‘That’s easy. Just come with me.’ Louis invited. I lifted my chin up and looked at him, hoping

this first incitement from him was a joke. Yet I was surprised that he insisted again.

‘Too bad, Lou. My heart tells me it is time to go to class.’ I answered and patted his back with

my scrapbook. What a bad move.

Because Louis snatched my scrapbook out of my hands when our arms were close enough.

Then he started to run. The sense of guilt about my own carelessness at losing it together with

the fear of him finding out what was in the scrapbook frightened me. We were soon off running

into the summer sun, away from the noise of the nearly finished basketball game.

We ran, straight, down, a slight right turn then straight again. Now I really should have stopped

because Louis was running in the opposite direction of the classroom; I should have stopped

because of each of my breathing became heavy and burnt; I should have stopped because my

glasses went up and down, and then shattered the road I was heading to. But I did not. The

stupid, baby-pink scrapbook was a floating sign I had to see.

‘Louis, I will turn around and tell our teacher if you go out the gate. You hear me?’ Eventually

I shouted so much that his figure carrying my scrapbook stopped. He easily grabbed the

handrail to hop onto the gate instead of turning back.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Why would I want to follow such a childish boy?

‘I want to see how much you can give up for your dream.’ He held up my scrapbook, ‘Besides,

I really want to know what was on that page.’

Half of his body was already out of the campus. Warning! There was no distance at all for him

to find out my secret. Warning again! Strangely at this time I could hear the secret place I was

going to share with Louis was calling me. Loudly and desperately as if it was what my heart

wants. Strikeout.

‘You know that we can still make the lesson if we…Wait!’ I suggested while slid down from

the handrails, but Louis was trying to threaten me again by pretending to open my scrapbook,

‘Louis, you know that means the end of everything. Privacy Policies, remember?’

‘Yes, Miss.’ He nodded and replaced the cover. All clear.

Without giving me a break, he started moving again. I followed him close behind this time,

then I recognised the train station. I stopped, stared at Louis’ back because the fear of all

penalties overwhelmed me. Was this truly worth it?

ABBOTSLEIGH

28

‘Can you fell it? The freedom.’ Louis announced whilst I read the ticket that he handed to me,

Museum station.

‘You might not realise what serious trouble we will get in, Louis.’

‘I gave you the choice, to come or not to come. You made the move, you rebel.’ Louis said

breezily, teasing me.

‘And you can have it back.’ He handed my scrapbook over. My dear, dear scrapbook. I wiped

the cover by my sleeves and wondered why he had changed his mind.

‘In return, you have to draw me a portrait.’

‘So that was all that ‘follow your heart’ theory was about, Lou?’ I laughed, ‘You could just

told me that on the rooftop. This whole thing is your fault.’

‘Well, you should have let me see your scrapbook in the first place so the karma just came back

to you. You hide it from everybody except me, didn't you? It is reasonable for me to be curious

about it.’

Like I said, I draw everything that I can think of. But I avoided things I didn't want others to

know because it will became evidence. Artists, including me, are only translators of the

nameless feelings from our heart, in a medium.

We boarded and sat in the train, silent, unmasked and surrendered in the void vacuum of our

own thoughts. He had been told to act like a rock while I moved my pencil on the page.

Pressures, high expectations and decision makings at school – they couldn't catch the pace of

my pencil.

‘That page had something to do with me. I want to see it.’ Before the train finished the tunnel,

Louis unfroze and made the conclusion firmly as he moved.

‘Don’t be so vain, Louis.’ I checked immediately and was relieved to see that my scrapbook

was still in my hands. Telling myself to be calm, I know he was bluffing. Louis examined my

eyes for long enough, almost long enough to expose my disguise. Clearly he didn't find what

he expected, so he led me out.

‘Where to?’ I asked. But he just walked me to the museum.

‘Look at what Vincent did.’ Finally, the exhibition room. His lifted chin and my attention.

Suddenly the excitement diffused in the strange silent work between us so I looked at it.

It was Van Gogh’s painting Starry Starry Night, however transferred into digital signals. Every

single stars could now move on the screen – rushing, floating and decorating the dark blue sky.


29

‘Sorry. I couldn't wait to share this with you.’

So this was that it had been about.

‘I only want to say thank you,’ I said, and ripped off the sketch I did for him, ‘You should keep

this.’

‘I…I was following my heart.’ He accepted it then said surprisingly, gazed to the screens again

like he was too shy to say anything else.

‘So was I, Lou.’

When a heart has already filled you with rebellion, I guess you have to eventually decide what’s

wrong with following it?

ABBOTSLEIGH

30

A Promise of Tomorrow Melanie Wong

Some people are old at 18 and some are young at 90. Time is a

concept that humans created.

Yoko Ono, 1977

The dust had settled quietly onto the cover and in between the pages. After all, it had not been

touched in many years in the still, two-storey house that was a mirror image of the surrounding

houses. Yet every time it was held, it was held with a quiet fondness that never seemed to go

away, regardless of the time and events that had passed. The light of the fireplace shone a

spotlight on the Statue of Liberty that was emblazoned on the upper left corner. Postage stamps

of places they had yet to visit embellished the cover as the album was placed onto the smooth,

dark surface of polished wood.

It did not appear to be special. It was white and decorated, but like any other photo album that

could be found in the house.

No, it did not appear to be special.


31

And yet within the crackling pages of paper and plastic, silver metallic pen adorned the white

spaces with words she’d forgotten, that described joyous sad times, adventure and exploration,

and far off places that one might visit in dreams.

However, it was not even the carefully inscribed words, or the memory of creating such an

album that convinced the woman to hold the book with reverence. It was the printed photos

with careful, black edges. The smiles that stilled with a flash, the joy that would last forever,

the love that would cease to stop. The memory of blossoming feelings in stomachs, the end of

one journey and the beginning of another. It was the bonds that were shared, that grew and

flourished into something even more beautiful than those that were trapped within the pages.

But while joy was hidden in the pages, so was sorrow.

So was the memory of better times, of childish banter, of growing up. The firsts of everything

and the stinging reminder of what was and was no more. Of all the joy it had contained yet was

no longer found in the still and quiet house the book resided in.

It was a reminder of the ghost of a laugh on birthdays and Christmas, a tumble down the stairs,

the smells of cooking breakfast for five, hungry mouths and a pile of presents under a wonky

Christmas tree. Of two birds who had already flown from the nest, riding the wind and feeling

it lift them higher than the clouds, taking them to places others could only dream of. For the

youngest hatchling, places that would only be found on the cover of a photo album until her

wings grew strong and steady.

A wrinkled hand with rivulets of green hovered hesitantly over a glossy photo; two faces stared

up with large smiles, their skin golden in the sunlight with the water glistening in the pool

behind them. A moment captured on a sunny day of presents and cakes and flowers in delicate,

glass vases. Their faces shone with warmth and the startling similarities of their features

brought a rush of fondness and a bittersweet smile, reminding her of off-key singing in a quiet

house and immature conversations that never seemed to stop.

But they did, as all good things do.

The youngest hatchling observed the photograph –two birds had flown from the nest with a

promise of tomorrow and the youngest hatchling had watched as time moved as if in a film –

quickly, unyieldingly and with a rush of knowledge that settled itself deep within the boxes of

their minds. She had watched as the eldest bird grew and soared, regardless of the injuries of

the past. She had watched as her next sibling flew to new heights, her wings strengthened by

the weight of the lessons she had learnt in love and travel. And one day, she had found the

strength in her wings to leap from the nest and fly with them.

The hand turned the page gently, as if the pages of the album were as fragile as the soft fluffy

feathers of a baby bird. The woman’s skin was decorated with the stories she had heard and the

story she wove for herself as her tired eyes read the small, silver script. Graduation 2011. Her

ABBOTSLEIGH

32

eyes lingered on the photo, five faces smiled at her. She remembered holding the plush,

graduation toy and the unexpected sweeping breeze while her mother’s hand lay warm on her

shoulder. She remembered the sweet fragrance of flowers and her eldest sister’s beaming smile

as she cloaked herself with black wings of knowledge and a head of feathery tassel, her cheeks

a fiery red but her eyes shining with pride.

‘Let’s go!’ Her other sister had said, taking her hand. Her hand had been warm. Or maybe it

had been her mother?

‘Congratulations!’ Her 11 year old self had shouted, with the energy and excitement that only

a child could possess. Her memory blurred and her hand swooped, flipping the page with a

whoosh of breath.

Smith’s Lake 2011. It had been a good holiday, filled with laughter and canoeing in the lake,

where large, pale white jellyfish floated below and birds with black wings and feathery heads

flew above. The sand had been soft beneath their feet and in the cool evening air, eight people

laughed in the warmth of their temporary home. The silent stillness of the lake was disturbed

by shuffling tiles of mah-jong followed by loud calls in rapid-fire Cantonese that seemed to

make the house she resided in emptier than ever and filled her with a quiet, unnameable feeling

that left her insides hollow.

Her hand flipped to the next page yet the pages contained no more frozen snapshots of their

lives. Instead, there were blank, empty spaces that went on, and on, and on.

She remembered how all too soon, there were plastic boxes filled with things they didn’t need

and large bags of books that made home, home. Clothes were tossed haphazardly then folded

neatly and tucked into little pockets of space among pots and pans and towel racks. There was

confusion and stress and relief all in one big ball of chaos that rolled around the house with no

direction. But at last, the car doors slammed shut with deafening finality and sagged under the

weight of their souls.

‘Good luck over there,’ she’d said, with a sincere wish that did not seem to reflect in her tone

of voice. ‘We’ll meet up. Every week.’

‘Of course we will,’ her sisters had both said. ‘We’ll see you soon, okay?’

She’d nodded, because she hadn’t known any better and because there was a glittering bubble

of innocence back then, broken only by knowledge. They were young, and there was time. But

now there wasn’t, really.

The cars had driven away, laden with their lives and love and stories, and joined the rush of

city life and the slow-burning fires of peak hour traffic. The road had calmed and the house had

sighed in its lightness as the sun kissed the horizon a fond farewell. And the youngest hatchling

had simply watched.


33

The old woman fingered the timeworn, silver camera next to the album. The words ‘SONY’

were still printed on the front, despite being slightly faded, and the shutters still made that

shifting noise when she flipped the switch. But the memory card had been changed too many

times to count. She felt like her memory card had been changed too many times too. Was she

still the youngest hatchling? She wasn’t sure. Her mind was missing things, like the empty half

of the album. The door creaked slowly.

‘Gran? It’s getting late. Maybe you should go to bed?’ The child’s voice was soft and timid, as

if afraid of shattering the silence brought by night. There was a small, warm hand on her

shoulder that lifted the youngest hatchling from her place by the dying embers and guided her

to a soft, comfortable bed that welcomed her. The clock struck ten.

But all thoughts of slumber vanished as the slamming of a car door and a ring of laughter

echoed in the still streets. She got out of her bed as fast as her bones allowed, leaving the warm

embrace of sleep as her feet touched the stairs with care and a cautiousness learned through

time still hope coursed through her veins as she opened the door in one chaotic movement.

Two women stood in the doorway, their features startlingly similar to her own and equally

wrinkled, tired, and shining with warmth.

‘Sorry we’re so late. We promised, didn’t we?’

ABBOTSLEIGH

34

The Big Black Book Sarah Luke (staff)

I think my notebook might be manipulating me.

You’d expect that from other notebooks, but not my simple black book. A diary with a jewel-

encrusted cover and a little golden lock on the side – you’d expect ruthless coercion from a

book like that. You would expect to be talked down to, when it found time to condescend to

talk to you that is; when it wasn’t busy with its own lofty literary musings now that you were

its slave.

But mine’s not like that. It’s just a boring black notebook. Nice big A4 pages with pale brown

lines on thick white paper. And yet it has power over me. It colludes against me. It makes me

do things.

If it lets me look away to survey my bookshelf I can see that I’ve got a soft notebook with a

blue-jelly cover and an elephant on it. I think I can safely say it’s never had the slightest input

into my life, other than to ask when it might be put to good use. Every time it pipes up I remind

it that it was the product of a gift voucher; its lip trembles and it goes quiet. The one with the

classic book spines on the cover, the one with the excellent memory, says nothing even when

I ask its opinion. The linen-covered one, the academic of the bunch, is always busy with history

and does not seem keen to contribute to the future, what with its eyes lit up by the hallowed

past. It knows when harpsichords gave way to piano fortes, and when wellington boots first hit


35

the market. But the black one with the big pages and the brown lines. The one that was rescued

from a pile of surplus office equipment years ago. The one with the sticker that says ‘Stories’

on it. It is the king of notebooks, the ruler of the underworld of useful stationery. It holds all

my notes and plans for the stories I write. I reserve my nicest pens for it; the best place on my

bookshelf is its home.

It was thirsty for the first ideas: the strict planning of that first story under the new regime of

novellas. It was flattered I suppose, and it had triumphed over the others, even the prettier ones.

They hissed at it when I was not there, would not share their bookmarks with it. But it had me,

and waited for me. It attended closely as Mr Fox watched, uninterested, as the helpful Trevor

tired to kill the immortal and very bored Horatio out of sympathy and a lack of other things to

be getting on with. It said nothing as their story embellished itself under the direction of bullet

points and clouds and arrows, mad underlines and asterisks. As rare, mint bus tickets and

obsessive collectors involved themselves into the ridiculous complication. It watched and

waited, feeling the felt tip pen scratch over its flesh, embossing ideas on its pages and its

conscience. It was useful and I praised it, thanked it for its role in the organisation of my worlds.

I slept soundly with my best ideas in such plain, such safe, hands.

It drank up my next story, felt the hate I felt for Mr Chester with his bad moods and debauchery,

and the revenge Salford felt as the weeds clung to Chester’s foot in the shallow pool and held

him long enough to exhaust him. Felt the triumph when Chester got what he deserved, and

liberated his wife in the process; urged love when Salford questioned if he had done the right

thing in doing nothing. It cried with me when the words were all written, the story tied up with

no more for me to do but find someone to share it with. We were twins: my world was paper

and the sea was ink.

But then one day, on the third, Lady Luck would not do as she was instructed. Barry ne Pas

was all committed reverence with his halo and wings and dry cleaning; Sir Walter, dropping

his toy soldier, quick to the mark; but she would not budge. ‘Do as you are told!’ I ordered her,

typing as I went, and trying to drag her back onto the page to where she was required. But she

would not. My black book spoke then, like running water sliding fast along parched ground.

Luck would not do as she was told, it whispered, but perhaps what she preferred was best?

They two smiled then, each a crooked smile. So my story took an unexpected turn away from

my plan. I told myself that this happens sometimes.

But to write is to own power over the ordinary and extraordinary, the gutter-crawlers and the

heroes. They are mine, those that I invent, their thoughts, their actions, all are down to me. I

felt incensed: I had been challenged, my authority questioned.

So I planned in more detail to hem them in. I was ready, I thought. I would say, ‘No it must be

my way, my dears. For do you not see how important this moment – every moment – is. We

must stick to the plan, and your feet must go where I direct. You must say what I intend, and

have no argument about it.’

ABBOTSLEIGH

36

‘Oh! Yes!’ hissed the black book, words running smoothly as over the lip of a fountain,

splashing playfully into the next tier, and overflowing into the next, and the next. It surveyed

the cast. My cast. ‘She is the boss, you know. You must do as you are told.’ But when my back

was turned, the deep black book cooed to them who I had made. ‘Step the other way,’ it tempted

them. ‘Say it this way,’ it instructed.

Then it began: the flood. One, a woman, looking out from between the rows of words on the

page, demanded: ‘I must have a larger part!’ She screamed, ‘I want more lines – and a name.’

And so I stopped and considered as the water lapped at my feet. The black, black book nodded

– and it was done. I abandoned my typing and attended to my plan as the book looked down

over me. I forgot myself and gave the woman an unearned role in my story. She was promoted,

and I did not even think.

I might have snapped the book closed or burned it or shredded it – but for the fact that

sometimes its advice was sage. I was knee-deep when it told me that Ralph would be better,

nastier, more loathsome, with a smaller appearance before his end. So I organised for Tom to

meet Ralph only once in my fourth story: one concentrated opportunity for Ralph to laugh and

jeer at the goodness and generosity of others, one opportunity for him to kick his silly mother’s

dog, and force a little more money from his brother before his head was dashed against the

gutter and he was left to die on a road of fool’s gold. The book smiled and simpered and sang

to me as the pool reached my middle. My fingers were its to control. It moulded my work to

suit its own taste, a taste so decidedly my own and yet not. It allowed me first ideas, and then

took them and kneaded them into a figure which suited it.

It said one last thing to me, before my head went under and air was no more my own. In a voice

not stunted by the water that engulfed me, in a voice that was like rain falling towards the

clouds, or rain rising to the earth, ‘Forget these characters whose wills we must direct. Forget

Mr Fox and his silly musings on public transport. Forget Salford’s test of right and wrong.

Forget Lady Luck and her infallibility. Forget the tragedy of Tom, as he walks his own road of

gold. Forget them all, figments and fantasies. Focus on me. Write about me.’


37

Cover of publication Niki Marangou, For A Faint Idea (To Rodakio: 2013)

Reading While Taking Tea in a Lemon China Cup Irini Savvides (Staff)

I have dared to ask you to read your poetry to me and my audacity has been rewarded. You

smile as I step out of line. I can see you still clearly. Strong cheekbones, beauty that has aged

with grace and yet a strange carelessness about your dress that belies the precision in the room.

And in your writing. You tell me a funny story about an interview you once did wearing a

friend’s borrowed blazer. She rang you afterwards annoyed. She admonished your choice,

telling you that at least you could have chosen one that had buttons on the sleeves. Already I

am intrigued. A Cypriot woman not obsessed with clothes. Who can laugh so lightly at herself?

You, the poet, lift glasses to your eyes and then the poem in your right hand. Or perhaps it was

your left.

There are things I can remember and things I am unsure of. Tea. We drank tea.

Behind me are your shelves of books, wooden, deeply embedded within both you and the walls.

I am nervous as I sip hot tea. Tea in a fine bone china cup. Tea with a slice of lemon. We are

to have coffee later. The only thing I can offer you with any assurance. A reading of the tiny

cup. Grainy, but more certain than my being here today. But fate has sent me. The week before

lost in Nicosia, women kept pointing the way. Turn left, then straight. MAM bookshop. Inside

ABBOTSLEIGH

38

a book Cultures of Memory caught my eye, as the old woman went down the stairs to bring up

water stained books with photos from thirty years ago. She told me stories of people in the

photos fleeing. Stories that haunt. About women. The title of one man’s writing promises more

stories by three women poets. Of whom you are one. A list. A start. A promise. Later. Now

some tea.

There are things I can remember and things I am unsure of. Tea. We drank tea.

An early trip again to the capital. Moufflon Books. Another woman leads the way. A pile of

books grow, while I drink coffee, boxes of books that will ride home across seas to the

Antipodes. Others I cannot bear to part with and they come in my luggage while I give clothes

away. I make myself phone poets. I sweat through winter clothes as I plan to meet people I do

not know. On the phone you are so warm, offering far too much to a student. Patient. Careful

with me, as if I will break. I may. You offer to pick me up; I refuse, but am so perpetually lost

that the taxi driver eventually rings you. You give me direction. Finally I arrive and you offer

tea. Tea with lemon in a precious fragile cup.

A cup rimmed in gold. This I remember. But I cannot recall what poems you read that day. It

was morning. Late morning, your lunch was cooking on the stove. Rovithyka, my favourite.

You invite me to stay. I want to say yes, but know I will not. My great-grandmother’s ghost

taps me on the shoulder. You will miss this meal she warns me. I ignore her, trying to stay

present in the room. The loss of her fills the air. The scent of a meal I will not ever eat wafts

through me as you read, your voice confident, you seeing nothing but the words on the page. It

was from Divan, that much I know. But I did not ask you to sign the book, the moment too

gossamer to be tied down. Sipping on fragrant tea.

The cadences of the words lilt across your tongue. My eyes fixed at the rim of the cup. I search

for patterns. The words dance, three steps, a kick and a promenade. Your voice thickens with

the tomato scent, taking us elsewhere. Byzantine images blaze through my mind and together

we go toward yesterday. Many yesterdays and suddenly the poem is done. So the coffee is

boiled, it rises treacly, is sipped and turned. You speak to me of places you have returned to;

visiting them again this lifetime, the strange familiarity that makes you know this treading of

the earth is not the first, not the last, just the present. A bitter black coffee that will stain. You

know we visit more than once. Sometimes.


39

When I read for you I unveil myself at last. And then, then and then and then. Suddenly we talk

of love and lovers, men and woman who move us, soul mates. We talk of art that makes you

poor and rich all at once. Your eyes light up as we speak of the next generation and I am glad

to have given you pleasure. We disagree over men and you are firm. Then you go and get me a

story to read, Artemis. ‘Read that soon,’ you insist as if it will fix you and fix me, and all men

and women at once. ‘A woman’s story,’ and so I tell you about what I have written. You nod

as I talk of my work; you invite me again to lunch. My great grandmother tightens her apron

in the ether of her world, but the truth is I am to meet a man I call uncle. A jeweller, not related,

who walks me to the other side time and again. Who takes me to the past as we search for

trinkets he can remake and that I can wear. The irony is not lost that when later Nikos asks

where I have spent the morning and I say with the poet Niki Marangou he stops. ‘How did you

meet her?’ He asks impressed. ‘A fine woman, a fine soul. Why did you not invite her to lunch

with us? I would have loved to see her.’ When I admit she was cooking chick peas and I wanted

to stay, he asks why I did not. I will have no answer until years later. Too late. You tell me to

read Gunnis. I do not.

People visit. An archaeologist about to fly to Australia. A lawyer. An ex-husband. Another

bitter coffee cup. Some more tea. The trip to your toilet like visiting Aladdin’s cave. Walls,

even there, lined with books. You graciously allow me to wander through your sumptuous

garden, stare at your art and when I leave my hands are full. Recipes for your daughter, books

on her artwork, your collection of unpublished poems. I am embarrassed that all I have for you

is a jar of homemade mosifla jam, but you are thrilled. Your own crop has not taken this year,

you tell me. I look at the title of the thin book you have placed in my hand tied in a fine orange

ribbon. No buttons on your borrowed blazer. Towards a Faint Idea. Men we have loved.

Women we will always love. We talked. We read, you a poem or two, me the cup. I grinned.

If this woman has only a faint idea, then the rest of us are lost.

There are things I can remember and things I am unsure of. Tea. We only drank tea.

*This story was previously published in Cadences: A Journal of Literature and the arts in Cyprus. Vol 9 Fall

2013. 50-53, an edition written in memoriam for the poet Niki Marangou.

*The poetic series referred to in this story was later included in a larger anthology For a Faint Idea posthumously.

The cover of this anthology is the opening image of the story.

Memories


41

A Midnight Tour in the Museum Starry Zhang

It had always been the coolest winter days when they celebrated the joy of the Spring Festival.

As he walked out from the hot steam of the market just constructed, this thought wrapped with

cold current travelled through Yu’s forehead. The boy turned into the familiar alley, nameless

in this small village, to his old brick house.

There was a visitor in that late morning. He saw the dull olive coloured bicycle resting in front

of his door that said ‘China Post’. The mail the bicycle carried decorated the bike the rich white

feathers looked like a bulky pigeon. It was the mailman! Yu rushed into the living room

regardless of the fresh onion still in his hands.

Following his steps he saw the mailman. He was handing his father over a pile of letters. His

father, shared irrelevant jokes with the mailman in his green uniform.

ABBOTSLEIGH

42

‘Yu, was that you? Where are my onions?’ Before Yu even asked anything his mother yelled

from the kitchen. So he walked back, watched both men disappear from his sight slowly, then

went to the kitchen with an ordinary chimney that could be found in every other corner of

Northern China.

‘I was just wondering what took you so long,’ said the mother. ‘We are having a busy day and

you spent the entire morning doing nothing.’

‘I, I’m waiting.’ He replied nervously, ‘Today’s the last day before the Spring Festival so it

should have arrived.’

The mother watched her fifteen-year-old run out. It was her favourite time of the year, when

her husband and children returned, gathered, raised their drinks to toast their reunion. She

hoped they would not leave her alone again too soon.

But in fact Yu didn't think in the same way. The letter must come today. Fang, his father was

standing beside the doorway, reading those snow white envelopes.

‘Any letter for me?’ He asked.

‘You were expecting something?’ His Father glanced at him, ‘There’s one with no name on it,

but it was indeed to our address.’ He examined the boy curiously but still gave him the letter.

‘That’s it! It must be from…’ Yu tried not to be too excited when he read the envelope. Quickly

he ripped the skin off and started reading, suddenly he felt regretful for not washing his hands

after touching those onions. His eyes grew large.

‘Father, could I go to the city with you after the Festival?’

‘Why?’ His father was confused, ‘I’m leaving early next week. Is there something you need to

get from the city?’

‘No, dad.’ He realised it was too late, so continued.

‘Dad…I got in the state school in the city.’

*

The journey took until the entire sunset and much of his sleep. Across from his seat was his

father, who slept long before the last image of his village faded away from the half-opened

window. This trip was normal for him, but it was the first time for Yu. It looked like the sweet

weather reporter on his old radio didn't lie, the cold current would stay for the remaining days

in the second month in 1977. Snow was embedded between the hills and reminded him of his

mother Lian’s hands. How those hands sewed every stitch on his jackets, how those hands set


43

up the stove fire at late nights and in the early mornings. If there was one more thing he could

take with him, then it must be his mother. Somehow he felt like an extra luggage, an uninvited

guest to the city himself.

He took the letter out of his chest pocket again and reconfirmed the address and blamed the sir

or madam behind those inks for forgetting his name. But there was enough fuel for him to

launch his newborn dream.

‘You didn’t tell me you wanted to continue studying.’ He didn't notice his father has woken up

from his nap. The question jarred his nerves so he thought carefully for a while.

‘It was a promise you made,’ answered Yu, almost like reconfirming it to himself, ‘And it

became my only chance.’

‘Not the only one, but the most difficult one. You are just like me, my child, the way we both

intend to push ourselves to the point of no return.’

‘I will return, father. Where have I just left is the place my roots grew, deeply under the yellow

land. Wherever I go I must later go back home.’ He stopped to see the landscape outside again.

He recognised the roar of industrialised buildings and slogans painted in red, or was it real

blood? The hunting had just come to an end and these unfinished prey, hoping was a recover

by the spring, was just waiting.

The train stopped at the semi-industrial belt of the city as the emptied train station and midnight

mist welcomed them. Yu adjusted his canvas backpack and said farewell to his father. Fang

murmured something to himself, something like ‘sorry’ or ‘good luck’, and gave him a last pat

on the shoulder.

‘I must get off here.’ He squeezed his lips together.

‘You know where you are going?’ said the father.

‘Yes, upper north side of town centre,’ he stated, but in fact the location wasn't clear to him

either.

Then the train was gone. The boy had packed with no fear in his a heart but the thought of

conquering. The city zoomed in and out in his eyes like he was offered a precious ticket to view

the Metropolitan Museum at night. His ticket, yes, the letter was his ticket. And they must have

an address to the museum on the ticket, mustn’t they?

He put his hands into his pocket. Pulled it out, nothing was there. He put his hands in again,

and his palms were empty again. Then he found the broken lining of his chest pocket and felt

a sudden drop of his body temperature.

ABBOTSLEIGH

44

Too late, he almost heard the security at the museum said, you can’t get in. Where’s your ticket?

If Yu could retell this story to his own children, he would choose to skip the part when his

blood and hope all ran away from him. Or the meaningless time on a dark and foreign street he

was standing on. Don’t tell him or her about how his brave heart was cooled to ashes and how

it flew with the cold wind. He mustn’t tell that one of the possible endings was that it was a

fantasy, an unrealistic dream for a boy from the small village to stay in this splendid city. The

city didn't treat him well.

‘Hey!’

‘Hey! You!’

In the middle of the steel desert, a voice has brought him spring water. He turned around

quickly and it was a stranger examining him curiously. His kindness was almost hidden by the

ancient leather hat he was wearing. Yu carefully looked behind the man, there was an old brick

house that strangely reminded him of home. Maybe it was the steam on the window or the

stove fire, he suspected. How on earth would a man care enough to speak to him?

‘You know where you’re going, boy?’ The man asked gently, ‘Are you lost?’

He guessed that his face must look really confused. All he did was shake his head. But as soon

as he realised he denied it himself: ‘I am going to the state school.’

‘It is too early, even for the first school day of the year.’ The man said, ‘And the state school

isn’t around here.’

His silence continued but the man went on: ‘I’m Cai. I could show you how to get there, but it

has to be when I finish my shift this morning. If you don’t have a place to stay, come on in

here.’

‘Can I?’ Yu asked almost with disbelieving voice, ‘I, I don't know…’

‘Just come in. I have some dinner left over, and it’s warmer inside.’ Cai invited. Yu stared at

the warm orange shadow Cai’s lamp projected on the corner of the window. It gave him the

courage to nod his head thankfully.

The room was just as tiny as he imagined from the outside. The tight layout provided him with

a comfort that reminded him of his own room he had left behind last night.

‘Dumplings?’ Cai brought a pair of bamboo chopsticks, smiled at him.

‘An old and lonely man like me doesn’t this much. You need to have your tummy full to study.

You are the next generation and you are our hope.’


45

‘I am the hope?’ He took the small dish and questioned him.

‘Yes, you. Education, is the most important thing to save our nation.’ Cai took out his pipe and

carefully knocked it on the wooden surface of the table.

‘You are the hope as bright as the sunrise.’ He pointed at the sky outside. The first seam of

sunrise just cracked the velvet like sky.

Sunrise. As he described. Within dark here came the light.

ABBOTSLEIGH

46

Four Melanie Wong

It was loud.

The first thing she noticed was the noise. The loud babble of Chinese, loud colours, loud planes

and the cold, quiet night that made her movements stiff. The woman took her children by the

hand, their small, trembling fingers numb as the floor of the apartment rumbled threateningly.

A Japanese flag fluttered in her peripheral vision.

‘We have to get to the basement,’ she said, her words muted against the sound of planes.

‘Quickly!’

‘Where’s Papa?’

She did not reply, but the three figures hurried through the smoke towards the door, staggering

through the fourth apartment block. The earth shook and the sky rained splintered wood as an

explosion of shrapnel blasted a street that had housed a school and a hundred dreams. The smell

of burning wood and flesh filtered through windows and walls until coughs racked each fragile

frame. Blood watered the earth until the dirt was a mocking red carpet. Outside, a Chinese flag

burned with the cries of a child.

A man joined his family at the door, four storeys above safety, his black hair a chaotic mess of

ash and dust. The man shouted in Chinese, his words never betraying his fear to the innocent

ears he instructed.

‘Let’s race down the stairs again – ready, set, go!’


47

It was a mad dash, as eight feet stumbled over each other in their haste. It was only a game.

Just the game they played every day.

‘One, two, three, four – I’m beating you!’

The sky burnt red in a flash of flames. Their feet slapped the concrete steps like thunder.

‘You can’t catch me!’

There was a squeal of pure joy, a thrill of adrenaline and a beaming smile of victory as a small

hand touched the door to the basement. There was a moment of stillness, a frozen snapshot of

a family through the smoke, before shrapnel and fire tore through four bodies and only dust

and ghosts lingered.

In the eighth house, eight streets away, a girl woke up.

*

‘I’m sorry.’

There was no reply. The girl sat silently behind a door in the eighth house of their street, an ear

pressed to the cold, hard wood that opened into the mysterious world of her parents’ room.

‘What…do we tell the children?’

It was the first time she’d heard her mother talk in a week since the Japanese bombs had

dropped near their home. She’d felt the vibrations within her bones and had felt, despite the

heat of the fires nearby, a numbing cold that made her stomach drop.

Soft fabric sighed as the man moved slowly. ‘The truth?’

A pause. ‘Will they understand? Will they understand that they’ll never see their aunt again?

Their cousins?’

The girl stopped. For a moment, her only movement was the delicate puff of white mist that

escaped her lips into the frigid air. Her eyes stung and her tongue darted out to lick her suddenly

dry lips, coming away with the taste of salt, before a chair scraped inside the room and the girl

flinched at the noise. She scrambled away from the door, her heart pounding erratically in an

uneven beat of guilt and fear.

The door opened and the girl caught a glimpse of her father’s unshaven face before ducking

behind the bannister. But her quiet steps faltered as her mother came out and though she could

not see her face, her voice sent a shiver through her frame.

‘I can see you on the stairs, Zhi.’

ABBOTSLEIGH

48

Zhi stood guiltily, her fingers linked behind her back and her footsteps unusually loud on the

dark wood. But her mother showed no signs of distress, or anything.

‘Fetch your siblings. Come to the living room.’

When the family of eight had settled into their chairs, her mother addressed them in the same

hollow voice. ‘You know your Auntie? The one that lives a couple of streets away?’

The children nodded, their eyes betraying the curiosity that they felt. ‘The one that always gives

us sweet things!’ Her brother interjected, his face alight with a child’s excitement. Her mother’s

face strained.

‘Yes. That one. Last week, we all heard loud noises at night, didn’t we? We heard –’

‘The bombs!’

‘Chun!’

‘Sorry, Big Sister.’

Their mother appeared not to notice their bickering, her light brown eyes focused on them yet

not quite seeing her own children. ‘Yes. The bombs. I – we won’t be seeing your Auntie again,

or your cousins. They’ve…moved away.’

Chun’s face screwed in confusion, as did the faces of her four other younger siblings, but Zhi

only swallowed with difficulty and blinked quickly as her father led her mother out of the room,

her mother’s face crumpled. Five inquisitive faces turned to her.

‘Big Sister?’

Zhi cleared her throat. ‘What, Chun?’

‘Why didn’t they say goodbye to us?’

Zhi ignored him and brushed out of the room, silently biting her lip in an effort to block out the

sound of explosions and screams until she tasted the metallic tang of blood.

*

Every month, a Chinese family of twelve bowed in front of the altar, in the living room of a

spacious home in Guangzhou, which housed four photographs, food offerings and the ashy

remains of burnt incense. Zhi didn’t need to tell her ten children anything as each stepped

forward to say a small prayer before melting back into line. The black and white photograph of


49

her parents was framed delicately next to the photograph of her aunt and uncle and the smell

of burning incense flooded the room with smoke and spice.

‘I’ll be home for dinner tonight,’ her husband smiled as he walked out the door. She merely

nodded, and retired to the sitting room where, surprisingly, her youngest son remained.

‘Wa? What’s the matter?’

A question burned in his eyes but she waited for him to speak. His small hand lifted and pointed

at the altar in the corner of the room. ‘Who are they?’

‘Those two,’ Zhi gestured to the left of the four, ‘are my auntie and uncle. The other two are

my parents.’

‘What happened to your auntie and uncle?’

‘They died in World War II. One night, when I was twelve, there was an air raid, and there

were bombs being dropped from planes in the sky. The sound of the bombs dropping was so

loud, you could feel the tremors through the floorboards. There was a high pitched noise, and

then you knew a bomb would fall soon. I remember waking up to the sound of a bomb hitting

a building near us. It might have been the one they were living in, but so many homes were hit

that night that I don’t know for sure.’

Her son looked at her with wide eyes, his mouth slightly open. ‘Were you scared?’

‘Yes,’ she answered truthfully, her hand finding his. ‘People were screaming and yelling

outside. I didn’t know what to do, so I hid in my room with the blankets over my ears. In the

morning, I came out, and so many people I knew were gone. Everywhere in the house that I

went, I could smell smoke. But it was quiet, at last. I looked out the window, and there was

grey rubble and smoke in the street. And red.’

‘Blood?’ Wa’s expression held no fear but she could feel his heartbeat pounding unevenly in

his small chest.

‘Yes. My mother didn’t let my siblings out of the house for a week.’

Wa inhaled deeply before relaxing into his mother’s embrace. ‘Good thing your house wasn’t

hit.’

His mother didn’t say anything, so he listened to the clock ticking in time with her heartbeat

and closed his eyes to the smell of incense.

*

ABBOTSLEIGH

50

A few minutes after eleven o’clock, the door to his study creaked open, but the slumbering man

did not stir from his armchair his curly, thinning hair a mess and his glasses pressing lines into

his skin. Cicadas buzzed in the Australian heat that permeated the house even in the darkness,

lit by the moon and the lamps.

‘Dad?’

On his desk, a sleek smartphone vibrated briefly and Wa jerked awake, his eyes bleary, and

looked up to find his daughter at the door. ‘Jessica? Why aren’t you asleep?’

Jessica padded forwards and, to his surprise, clutched her craft project in one hand. On one side

of the cardboard were photographs of her father’s parents, his grandparents and his

grandmother’s sister. The other side was much larger, and explored the family tree of her

mother.

‘Can you tell me about your great-aunt? Her family is the only one I haven’t written about yet.’

Wa nodded, his eyes still blurry, and Jessica sat on the soft carpeted floor, her project splayed

on the floor in front of her.

‘My great-aunt and her kids all lived in an apartment block near my grandma’s house. She had

two kids, who were about six and four during World War II, and they all lived in Chongqing,

in China.’

‘Is that where you lived, before coming to Australia?’ Jessica asked, leaning against the

armchair in a more comfortable position.

‘I was born there, yes. You’ve probably learnt this at school,’ her father continued, his eyes

resting on the map of the world on his wall, ‘but there were air raids, Japanese planes flying

overhead. Bombs being dropped. And your great-great-aunt was hit by one. The sky was dark

but the whole city lit up with flames, so that everyone could see the explosions and the

destroyed buildings –’

There was the soft sound of breathing next to him, and he peered around to find his daughter’s

eyes closed, her mouth dropping open slightly as she slept. Slowly, he lifted her up and placed

her on the couch next to him, careful not to disturb her.

Pulling a blanket to her shoulders, he wondered what she dreamt of. He wondered if she dreamt

of war or of better things.


51

He and She Charlotte Waters

He

17th November 1961

Thank you very much for the lovely books. I have to admit that my

favourite was The Catcher in the Rye. I know you don’t like it, but I

really admire the way Holden sees things. I liked the bit about the

museum, how each time you go, everything stays the same and it’s

only you that changes. I think it’s a bit like that when we see each

other.

Much love,

Helen

Her writing was getting better, so much better. She was so smart, really. He was so often at war

with his conscience, praying for the discipline not to adorn her pages with glowing red pen, but

really, he didn’t mind. Perhaps, she had not been blessed with the opportunities he had, but,

though her writing was simple, there was a sort of beauty in it that no level of training could

produce. She used no elaborate turns of phrase or impressive language in order to capture his

interest; but at only 18, her hands and eyes were well-trained from years of cherishing and

serving her large family, and she knew no other way. He had spent his life always in hunger of

climbing to a higher branch, whilst she had known nothing but her own small nest, and yet was

strangely content. A few months ago, he craved a partner with whom he could engage in

complex intellectual discussion, but now, this was irrelevant and, frankly, pretentious. He could

learn so much more from Helen from the small country town of Inverell, who had to leave her

one-teacher school at 15, who was humble, hardworking, and kind – so kind – than he could

ABBOTSLEIGH

52

from any scholar at Sydney University who could boast award-winning essays on Shakespeare

or make mathematical breakthroughs. Perhaps he could reflect this in his teaching, one day. He

could aim to teach young children the laws of understanding and compassion, as well as those

of geometry.

She

His letters were what she looked forward to most. Her mind was a storm, and she thought she

should feel comfort at the prospect of him; that the waves should become calm – or at least,

that they wouldn’t become any more ferocious. Throughout each day, her thoughts were

scattered with pangs of adrenaline, when she least expected them. In the moments her heartache

felt most raw, she was winded by the thought of David, but each time she saw his words behind

her eyes, Ross’s face became ever clearer. He had been only nine. It was he for whom she had

made a dress before his birth, adamant that she would receive a second sister. After eight

brothers and eleven long years, surely she deserved some reward for her patience. She

remembered the moment she heard the news that Ross-had-been-impaled-in-a-truck-accident-

and-there-was-nothing-anyone-could-do-and-the-truck-had-been-driven-by-her-sister’s-boy-

friend-but-it-wasn’t-his-fault-it-was-no-one’s-fault-it-was-just-a-terrible-accident. And she

had felt as if she had only had one brother, and that brother was now gone. But as she fed the

chickens, there was Allan, asking when David would next be visiting; as she watered the

garden, James and Philip were at her feet, animatedly explaining their theories regarding his

love for her, and when the mailman came with a well-awaited letter from a certain someone –

well, you can imagine the bustle. There was a silent chaos in her family; each so alone in their

own mind, and yet still so tightly knit to one another.

He

He loved receiving her letters. Was it simply a fleeting romance; a little friendship told in torn

pages belonging to different books from every corner of a library? Whatever it was, the story

of them was strange – nonsensical, and yet perfectly logical. It was worthy of a young and

excitable child, but would be told through generations. He knew to cherish it, for in a few

months he intended for it to become little more than a memory. He had always known his love

to be educating young children, and he would shortly be beginning Teachers’ College. There

really wouldn’t be time for anything or anyone else to impede his realising this vision. He

would simply go back to his studying, and she, to working hard to provide for her 10 younger

siblings. But he knew too well what it was like to forget someone’s face, little by little, until

all he remembered was the image he’d created inside his own mind, and the thought tore at

him. Perhaps it would not have to be this way. He reprimanded himself for thinking it, but

perhaps many great things could exist at once.

She

24th November 1961

Dear Helen,

I am writing, albeit briefly, to ask you whether I may visit you and

your family in five days from now. I have been missing you greatly,

and I would love to see you again as I know that soon we may see


53

very little of each other. In the meantime, I shall be thinking of you

and anticipating your response!

‘Mother, may David visit us again? In five days?’

She had long looked toward the moment in which her parents could discover not David Brown,

the student from Sydney, the achiever, the one of whom all could undoubtedly expect great

things; but simply David, thoughtful and witty, graceful and clumsy, subdued and yet brimming

with character. David, who wove words and numbers into gold thread; who could turn her life

into an artwork, without realising he had done it. Who could never mend the gaping hole Ross

left in his wake, but could perhaps patch it up and decorate it a little.

‘It would be an absolute pleasure. We’ve loved having him here. Tell him he’s welcome back

at any time.’ Helen was quick enough to catch a knowing smile. Perhaps she and David would

become mere shadows of one another in the coming months, haunting each other in moments

of loneliness at the fireside or in the late night as he studied or at the crack of dawn as she drove

herself out bed, each day with less reassurance of change. But at that moment, none of it

mattered, for she would be seeing him again.

He

9:00 am

His friends had merely laughed when he had told them. His pleas of, ‘No, you don’t understand

– well, of course you wouldn’t you don’t know her as I do,’ and, ‘It’s an antique, a beautiful

camphor wood chest’ were ignored, if they had heard him at all over their laughter. But he was

adamant – they didn’t understand. Perhaps their idea of a token of love was a simple ring, but

really, conventions had never really applied with this relationship. Helen would know

immediately that this was a mark of David’s love itself, rather than a symbol of the mere

concept of love, the one revered and worshipped from afar but never examined up close; the

one that began with candlelit dinners and ended with growing old together. Not the love that

involved dancing to jukebox music and floors scattered with grammatically questionable

letters; the one that certainly did not end with growing old. And after all, she had loved his

other presents – and really, was a present coupled with a promise so different? Anyhow, he had

managed to pack it – with some difficulty, granted – into his trailer, and begun the long drive

to her home.

12:00 pm

Really, though, she would love it, he thought, as ate his burger. The milk bar was humming

with heat and flies and sweat and loneliness, and the morning had been long, but dotted with

cool bursts of confidence and stamina each time he remembered her laughing eyes. He was

sure she would appreciate his originality, as he always did hers. And as for her family, they

would be delighted. They had always been so kind to him, welcoming him into their home with

love. Surely, this time could be no different, what with his (admittedly, very hard to carry in a

trailer) gift.

ABBOTSLEIGH

54

4:00 pm

But as he mulled it over in the barely cooling summer air, his thoughts began to shift. Perhaps

he was being ridiculous. He was arrogant, so arrogant, to have simply assumed she would

accept him. Perhaps she had never fallen in love with him as he had with her – perhaps he

would occupy her time and thoughts, now, but after he began university, he would slowly fade

from them, and she would be content with that. She would find another; another who had time

and money on his hands. Another who would enjoy those candlelit dinners, and after a while,

he would give her a diamond ring, and they would age together peacefully. And, moreover,

when he arrived tonight, what if she simply thought he was joking? He hadn’t imagined it

before now, as she was always so sincere, but when he thought about it, she had probably never

experienced a young man she had known for only months, mind you, turning up to her door

with a great wooden chest asking for her hand in marriage. He must be mad. After all, how

could she take a vow so great, so shortly after the accident? He knew she appreciated his

company, as it distracted her from her thoughts, but to have a husband, when what she really

needed was time to heal? But if he turned around, he wouldn’t make it home before late night.

He would have to drag himself and his ridiculous chest to a local motel and stay the night,

before returning in the morning – that was it. Any number of peculiar looks from nameless

strangers were better than one from the person he loved most.

5:00 pm

But he did love her, and that was why he had done all this in the first place.

6:00 pm

What was the matter with him?

7:00 pm

He had to see her.

9:00 pm

It was her mother who answered the door. ‘David! It’s lovely to see you, please do come in.’

‘Thank you so much, Mrs Marchant – but I might need a small bit of help.’ Why hadn’t he

considered this before? Standing there, flushed, with a camphor wood chest he could barely lift

at his side – he only hoped Helen hadn’t heard him. But as Mrs Marchant led him to see her,

he noticed she looked different – more alive – than he had ever seen her.

‘Helen, I’ve missed you so much! I just – I brought you this as an –’

‘Yes!’

‘You knew?’ he faltered.

‘That you were going to ask me to marry you? Of course.’


55

He gently closed the lid of the camphor wood chest. He had never been more alive than that

night, and yet there were few years in which he had been less alive. He had taught and learnt

and grown for 53 years, and yet neither he nor his wife had ever grown old.

ABBOTSLEIGH

56

If I was Back Home Nicola Harlamb

I finished putting another floral blue dress with a drop waist on the rack, my fourth completed

dress of the day, and turned my attention to the conversation happening among the women

working around me, as I started on another.

‘If I was back home, I would have people making my dresses for me,’ one woman said as she

heaved the fabric onto the counter. The only thing that could act as a distraction for us was the

casual lingering conversation to get us through each day, particularly now that winter had come

and the temperature in the clothing factory had dropped significantly. This would be my first

winter in Australia, the thought was exciting, but these colder temperatures felt quite foreign

to me.

‘If I was back home, I would have the most expensive jewellery and clothing,’ added another,

interrupting my train of thought.

Collective sighs of disappointment and frustration sounded amongst the women as they focused

on their menial tasks and reflected on the lives they could have had. We were all in the same

situation, disappointed by the promise of a life even better than the ones we were living. All of

the women standing around me were just like me, migrants. We all knew what it felt like to

have left our home, not knowing what we would find on the other side. That very fact was

enough to bond us together, as we knew that our lives had similar pasts.


57

‘If I was back home, I would be an actress,’ I added to the conversation, nonchalantly. I

surprised myself. I didn’t normally join in on this kind of chatter.

The women around me all looked up simultaneously, raising their eyebrows.

‘Really?’ One woman spoke in disbelief.

‘We haven’t heard this one before,’ another spoke up, ‘why don’t you tell us your story, Claire.’

It was only as she asked to hear it that I realised I hadn’t told the story once since arriving in

Australia in early 1960, almost five months ago. Perhaps it was self-protection – dwelling on

the story would only make me feel more desolate in my new life than I already did.

But as the prospect of another long day in the factory stretched out before me, I began to

reconsider. There are parts of my story, of course, that I may not explain to these women right

away, but I’d heard all of their tales thousands of times before and I guessed I owed them a

little of mine. There was Mena, with her hundreds of servants in her Turkish home, Lynn, with

all her family’s expensive jewellery stolen by a corrupt border official in China as she made

her way to Australia. And, of course, Aziza, who lived a life much like mine in Egypt – but, it

must be said, not nearly as eventful.

‘We led a life that I would never have dreamed of giving up. Every luxury was yours – every

need you had was tended to and our home was happy,’ I paused.

Alexandria was the only place I knew growing up, because none of us ever wanted to leave it.

In comparison to the many around it that suffered bleak poverty, it was a city of affluence and

prosperity. The free standing homes with large windows and beautiful grounds that lined our

street were impressive, but they all looked the same to me after a while. Except for the one on

the corner, the one with the columns at the entrance and beautiful gardenias along the pathway,

the ones I, myself, would water every few days. That house always looked different to me,

brighter, livelier. I lived there for 16 years with my father, mother, and four sisters.

‘I had become accustomed to a certain lifestyle, well, I suppose, you would all know what that

was like.’ I continued as the women around me nodded slightly in agreement, with a hint of

encouragement for me to continue. I noticed that many of the women had halted their tasks and

were solely focusing on me, this was likely to be what happened every time someone told a

story, but it was new for me.

One day as my father and I were spending time just the two of us, as we so often did, strolling

along the streets and through my favourite clothing and jewellery stores. I noticed a large blue

sapphire necklace in a window. I can still remember hesitantly looking up at him and pointing

to it in admiration. He’d smiled down at me and pulled me into the store, purchasing necklaces

for me in ‘any colour, any style, any shape’ that I liked. Too many, I was ‘spoilt’, but that

ABBOTSLEIGH

58

memory hasn’t stayed with me because of the necklaces. I remember the look on my father’s

face when we walked out of that store, he was happy that he could make us happy, he stood

tall and proud. He was the strongest person I knew.

In my early teenage years I had received a few offers to model, but most fathers from our city

would never consider such a thing. And, to mine, those were certainly not the kinds of jobs

young girls, his daughters especially, should be doing. Honestly, I never minded that, I wanted

to make him proud.

‘A few months before we left Egypt I received an offer that was a little bit different to

modelling, it was one to act, something I hadn’t particularly thought about doing in my life,

but the offer intrigued me. It had come from an actor that was a local rising star, destined for

America. He had been introduced to me by a friend of mine, and he told me that he was looking

for a young girl to be in a movie with him.’ I began on the second, most important part of my

story, without really knowing what I was going to say next.

The young man turned out to be the son of a man that had once known my father, he moved to

Cairo at a young age, but was back in Alexandria to find the perfect person to be in his next

film, a small project that he hoped would take his fame to new heights. He was, for some reason,

convinced that was me. As soon as I had received the offer, my feet took off and I ran home to

tell my sisters, I knew how excited they would be. The front door swung open as I raced through

the house and up the stairs to find two of my sisters lying down in the bedroom. I hurriedly

explained to them that, ‘I would be able to star in the next big movie and then, after that, I

could be in another, and another, and eventually end up in America.’ The three of us had

squealed together for a few moments before it was stopped by my eldest sister sighing, ‘It is a

shame that you won’t be able to say yes’. I felt my stomach sink in that moment, I realised that

everything I had wanted up until now my father had also wanted for me, and I knew that would

no longer be the case.

‘So, did you go with him?’ One woman spoke, breaking my pause and interrupting my train of

thought.

‘I told my father that night, he had said no, surprised that I had even asked. As I pressed him

about it, he began to raise his voice, something that he never did towards me.

He told me, ‘I have already told that you will not work, especially, in the entertainment world.’

That was the end of it, he didn’t want to discuss it further.’ I replied with a shrug.

‘But, don’t you regret saying no? That was the chance of a lifetime!’ Mena said, visibly

frustrated.

‘Of course I do, but what happened when the young actor showed up at my house, was enough

for me to know that I needed to obey my father here, I realised why it was so important to him.’


59

I stood behind a wall inside my house listening to the conversation that my father was having

with the man, most of what I could hear was low mumbling, until my father abruptly told him,

‘No daughter of mine will ever have to work a day in their lives, I worked hard so they wouldn’t

have to.’ Before shutting the door on the man. After that, it was as if nothing had ever happened.

We haven’t spoken about it since.

I was glad I had told the other women my story, well, most of my story. It was, as Aziza

explained, the first step towards acceptance.

As I returned to the cramped house with a leaking roof that night from the factory, I opened

the door to our small home and saw my father sitting hunched over in his chair, he looked so

small and had the same dazed look on his face he did when he told us that we needed to leave

our home and seek a new life in Australia. Looking at him, I remembered the words I heard

him yell to the young man at the door of our home, ‘No daughter of mine will ever have to

work a day in their lives.’

ABBOTSLEIGH

60

Lesson Number One Kai Yang

August, 2014

My name is Huifang Lee, and today I am eighteen years old. All my life, I’ve been asked a lot

of difficult questions. When I was seventeen, my teacher asked if I had ever considered

auditioning for the Conservatorium of Music in place of my state school: ‘You’d really like the

people there, you know. They’re all piano buffs, just like you.’ When I was thirteen, my

classmates asked me what it was that I found so fascinating about fictive worlds, and why I

spent my Friday nights having tea and biscuits with Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens

instead of catching the latest flick at Hoyts. When I was nine, the boy sitting next to me asked

why my eyes were ‘so slanted.’ However, the worst question I have ever been asked is ‘Do you

understand?’ This question has been repeated to me countless times over the years, but the first

time anyone ever asked me this was when I was four. A sunny summer’s day. A simple

preschool student. A straightforward question. I should have answered – but I didn’t.

February, 2000

I can hear the sounds of children laughing, and the hushed sounds that mean someone is sharing

an important secret. The preschool teacher is carrying a plate of freshly chopped oranges, and

the sight is enough to make anyone’s mouth water, let alone thirty-or-so hungry kids. It is warm


61

– not the smothering kind of warmth, like hugs from your great-aunt Hannah, but comforting,

like the feeling infants get when holding their favourite stuffed toy.

It would be nice to have an orange. It might relieve the smoky taste of heat that hangs in the

air. I might suck the juices out of it first, savouring the sweet taste, and then chew on the dried

segment until it dissolves into nothing. It will make me feel better about the rocky chasm

stretching its haunting grin beneath me – the chasm that I have to cross in order to feel the

refreshing taste of oranges on my tongue.

Everyone else’s faces are frozen in elation. I long to laugh and share a secret too, to have my

face freeze in that same expression. I long to be a part of the crowd the teacher is chatting with.

I long to be cared for. Most of all, I long to understand.

I am different. I remember that on my first day here, I had stared at the children around me with

their different coloured hair, and the many shades of their skin –the colour of snow, and the

colour of chocolate. At home, I had stood in front of the bathroom mirror, prodding my face

and playing with my hair. Why didn’t I look like any of the other children? Why, when standing

next to them, did my hair appear even darker than usual, and my skin such a pallid yellow that

I resembled a corpse? But more importantly, what were the strange sounds that seemed to flow

so easily from the mouths of these children? They were nothing like the melodic sounds of

Mandarin that comforted me in the middle of the night after waking up from a bad dream, nor

did they resemble the harsher tones I heard only when I had done something wrong.

And so, back to my most frequently asked question: Do you understand? No. No, I did not

understand. In fact, I did not even understand that I had no understanding. I was raised by

immigrant parents, and I spoke no English. I did not belong here. I had approached no one, and

no one had approached me.

March, 2000

Sitting in the car with my Aladdin lunchbox on my lap, I wonder what today will be like. Will

I be greeted by the same blank stares that greet me every day? Will the teacher give me the

same friendly expression that quickly changes to one of disappointment when I fail to smile

back? Will the same brown-haired girl who always tries to share her Vegemite sandwich and

offer me a triangle? I glance at my own lunchbox, and think of the cheese sandwich inside it.

Cheese is my favourite, so this is a rare treat. It would go well with Vegemite, so I secretly

hope that I will be one of the lucky few she chooses to share with today. But it probably will

not happen. She has never paid any attention to me.

My mother glances over at me, and gives me a reassuring smile. I must look nervous, because

she reaches over and squeezes my hand. It feels nice to be cared about by someone, even if this

particular someone is obliged to do so.

‘I’ll see you this afternoon, okay?’ she asks in Chinese, the lilting sounds doing little to ease

my nerves.

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62

‘I guess so,’ I say, opening the door.

‘Don’t forget your lunchbox!’ she calls, and sticks it out of the car window.

I race back, smiling in thanks, and then run back to the door, where I am greeted by those same

blank stares and that same friendly-yet-disappointed expression. My day seems to be the same

as another day, then. But the teacher moves aside, and I see a girl huddled in the corner of the

book room. I do not know her. She must be new. Her expression is one of fear, and she looks

as if she would like to become part of the beanbag she is sitting on.

I know that expression. It is an expression I have worn many times. This girl is scared. She

knows no one. No one has offered to be her friend. I know exactly why. This girl has dark hair

that hangs over her face. This girl’s scared eyes are chocolate brown. This girl’s skin is fair,

and a brown freckle rests on her left cheek. This girl is Chinese. This girl is just like me.

I approach her timidly, and she looks up.

‘Ni hao. Wo shi Huifang. Ni ne?’ I ask. Hello. My name is Huifang. What’s yours?

‘Wo shi Yulan, dan shi ni ke yi jiao wo Angelica,’ she responds, looking relieved to have

someone to talk to. Yulan, but you can call me Angelica.

I take the beanbag next to her, snuggling into the soft cover. ‘Ni xiang du yi ben shu ma?’ Do

you want to read a book?

‘Ke yi.’ Okay.

Angelica selects a book with a colourful fish on the front, with scales that are all the colours of

the rainbow. Opening it up to the first page, the two of us stare at the strange squiggles that

seem to sneer at us with their mocking smiles. What on earth did any of this mean? The picture

has several fish surrounding the pretty one, with all the colours, but neither of us are able to

decipher the strange characters.

‘Wo you yi ge ban fa. Wo men we shen me bu bian wo men zi ji de gu shi?’ Angelica asks,

excitement in her voice. I have an idea. Why don’t we just make up our own story?

An opportunity to make up our own stories! An opportunity to feel like we belonged in this

place! Who could say no? A friend to laugh with, a friend to talk to, a friend to share your

sandwiches with. Angelica and I spend hours in that corner, making up stories according to the

funny pictures.


63

There was the squirrel who left home to find the perfect nut, the dog who dug a hole to China

and then climbed the Great Wall, the artist who drank his paint and then became sick. It feels

good to laugh after spending months by yourself in the sandbox.

At lunch, Angelica opens her lunchbox, and I see that she has Vegemite. I give her half of my

sandwich, and she gives me half of hers.

July, 2000

Everything is much better with a friend. It’s much more fun to draw at the art tables when you

have someone willing to listen to you explain why your work is ingenious. It’s much more fun

to eat lunch when someone else is trying to steal your chips and you’re trying to protect them.

It’s much more fun to play in the sandbox when someone else is making sure that no one tries

to sit on your sandcastle.

Today, though, is not a good day. Angelica is absent. Sitting on my beanbag by myself, I have

no one to accompany me whilst I listen to the laughs of other children. No one is there at lunch

to trade cheese for Vegemite, or strawberry jam for raspberry. No one is there to queue up with

you for oranges at morning tea time, and no one is there for you when you feel abandoned by

all those who care.

I watch the other children smiling and playing with each other in the sandbox, squirting their

water bottles over the dry flecks and moulding them into fantastic creations. The air tastes like

dust, and the flavour collects in my throat, making me feel sick. I wish Angelica was here,

because then we could play in the sandbox, trying to copy the words that we saw in the books

with the nice pictures in them.

I would have to do that by myself today. Mustering up all of my courage, I walk over to the

sandbox, taking off my shoes and sitting in the corner. So far, so good. No one has noticed me

here yet. The sand is warm, and I love the feeling of it sifting through my fingers and flowing

back into the pit. I swirl my fingers around in the sand first, enjoying the sensation of it sliding

over my skin, and then I pick up a twig and begin to draw. After several hours have passed, the

sand is not as warm and the wind has picked up; several flecks of sand fly into my eyes and I

reach up to rub them. It is clearly time to get out.

After dusting off my clothes, I look around for my sandals. To my confusion, they are not in

the spot where I left them. This is not good. I had worn my favourite pair of pink sandals today,

the one with white flowers on them. My mother warned me not to lose them this morning, and

I had gone and done just that. Most of the other children are already inside, and the only person

around is the brown-haired girl who wanders around offering to share her sandwiches.

Tentatively, I approach her.

‘Where is my shoe?’ I ask in English, stuttering over the unfamiliar words. She looks at me

strangely for a second, but quickly recovers. ‘I don’t know, but I can help you look.’

ABBOTSLEIGH

64

Vacant Allegra Vitanza

Thomas shut the metal gate behind him and walked up the gravel driveway to his father’s front

door. His dad sat on the wooden chair on the veranda, staring at the street with a beer in his

hand.

‘Hi Dad,’ Tom said cautiously with a small wave, as his other hand touched the door handle.

His father flinched, quickly turning his head to see his son. ‘Oh, hi Tommy.’

Tom smiled sadly and entered the house with a sigh. Conversations and messing around with

his father were a thing of the past. Thomas had been young when his father left for war, but he

recognised that his father’s personality was not the same as it had been before he left. He had

decided that it was perhaps better for him to move on from the uncertainty he had always felt

living with his father.

Tom’s room was through the first door on the left, where a dark oak bed sat neatly made. He

jumped onto it, disrupting the perfectly folded bedspread. Tom opened his brown case that he

carried to school, emptying its contents gently onto his bed. An apple he’d taken from the

markets that morning, a school book, a ruler and the newspaper he’d retrieved from the kitchen

counter. He placed the book and ruler at the edge of the bed, not needing them. Tom carefully

straightened out the slightly crumpled newspaper and laid it flat. He rummaged in the bottom


65

of his bag for a pencil, eventually finding one, then moved his legs so he was sitting cross-

legged.

Tom took a bite out of the apple, resting his arm on his knee, and opened the first page, a pencil

in hand. His eyes scanned over the headlines, skim-reading the small print, until he reached the

advertisements. He leaned forward, carefully reading every word so that he didn’t overlook

anything. He took another bite of his apple, the notices for home-delivery for groceries and

toothpaste not interesting him, when his eyes stopped on a bold lettered ad, informing readers

of a vacancy in a two-bedded room in the boarding house a few suburbs away. Tom circled the

small box, and copied down the telephone number and address from the foot of the advert into

his spiral-bound notebook. As the sky got dark, Tom packed his things back into his bag and

settled into bed.

He heard his father enter the house and pad to the kitchen, open the fridge, and the clanking of

glass bottles. The fridge door closed, and the radio turned on a man speaking. Tom shut his

eyes, trying to block out the muffled noise, and eventually fell asleep.

*

Tom picked the comb up from his dresser, parting his hair and flattening it, then dropped it in

his bag. He picked up his suitcase and his school case, and turned around to inspect his room.

With most of his belongings packed into the bags he was carrying, he was surprised that the

room looked plainer than it already did, but not all that different.

He walked past his father sitting in the kitchen, reading the newspaper.

‘I’m going,’ Tom said with a small smile.

His father looked up, and got to his feet, walking around the table. He hugged his son. ‘You

can come back anytime,’ he said, slurring his words.

Tom nodded stiffly.

‘Bye, Tommy,’ his dad said, squeezing his shoulder.

Tom walked to school, unable to focus on anything but the address sitting in the pocket of his

trousers, and the heavy case in his hand. After school, he began the walk to his new home. He

was torn between walking quickly to get there before dark, but feared the unfamiliarity that

came along with the decision to move away from his dad.

His parents’ relationship had been unstable ever since his father returned from the war. After

long nights of listening to them screaming into the night from under the covers in his bed, his

mother eventually threw his father out. Tom, feeling betrayed by his mother, and not fully

understanding her decision, went with his father. After spending months with his dad, he

ABBOTSLEIGH

66

discovered why his mother had forced him to leave. His father’s eyes were often glossed over,

with an empty stare, he had bursts of rage, he was irritable, and Thomas found living with him

unpredictable and exhausting. Tom knew his mother wouldn’t take him back in, not after the

convincing it took her to let him leave, so he had no choice but to find his own place to live.

The young boy finally arrived at sunset, and stood in the doorway of his room, looking around.

The walls were cream, and two dark oak wardrobes stood opposite each other, beside their

corresponding beds. There was one dresser, with a cream crocheted rectangle resting across the

top. He could hear a group of people through the walls in the room next to him laughing.

He walked over to the bare side of the room, placing his suitcase down on the bed. He opened

the latches, and began folding his shirts and trouser to store in the empty drawers and wardrobe.

It was around ten when Tom finally made himself comfortable and got into bed. His roommate

was still not home.

Tom’s eyes became heavy and he felt himself slipping into sleep, when the lock turned from

the other side of the door. The light flooding in from the streetlight outside made the man

nothing but a shadowy silhouette of a body.

He froze, suddenly aware of the quietness in the room and the sound of his breathing.

The man kicked off his shoes and sat down on the bed across from the boy’s face. He looked

over, and Tom quickly shut his eyes, even though the features of his face would have been

undistinguishable in the dark room. After a few moments, the man got up to go to the bathroom,

and Tom fell asleep before he returned.

Tom had woken up and left for work before his roommate was up, so he was yet to introduce

himself. When he returned later that day, the man was sitting in the chair, reading a novel Tom

had never heard of before and smoking a cigarette.

‘Hello,’ the man looked up.

‘Hi,’ the boy replied, dropping his bag on his bed. The stranger seemed less intimidating in

daylight.

There was a silence as the man turned a page in his book, readjusting the cigarette in his mouth.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Thomas.’ He pretended to rummage through his bag, but his belongings slipped through his

fingers at the feeling of the stranger’s eyes on him.

‘I’m John,’ he said, returning to his novel.


67

John looked over the top of his book as Tom began to remove his school books and make a

pile on his bed. ‘You seem pretty young.’

‘I am.’ He looked down, absent-mindedly opening his notebook.

‘Is this your first time living alone?’ the man asked.

Tom nodded.

John sighed, shaking his head, and held out his cigarette between his fingers as he spoke, ‘Well,

kid, good luck. People come and go all the time. No one stays here for long.’ He put the

cigarette back in his mouth, and turned the page, continuing reading.

Tom stared at him for a few moments, then redirected his focus onto his maths equations that

had to be completed by the next day, with a confused frown.

Just as John had told him, Tom saw numerous men, most drunken, find empty rooms and

moving in, only to move on, or be evicted a few weeks later. When he laid in bed at night, he

could hear drunken brawls on the street, and that’s when he thought about his dad living alone.

He woke up at four every morning, heading to the fruit markets to work so that he could pay

for rent. School was becoming increasingly hard to keep up with, but he knew he had to finish

the year.

In the afternoons, he did his homework and played music on the radio that John owned. John

helped Tom with his homework when he needed it, especially Maths. One afternoon, Tom

struggled with a question, and waited for John, as he had said that morning he would be home.

John often came home late, but never after the sun went down. Tom was still doing his

homework when John stumbled through the door, and stormed over to his dresser, swiping his

hand across the table and throwing his items to the floor.

The familiar smell of his father entered the room. Tom backed away, crawling to the corner of

his bed. He glanced at the still open door. John turned around, and Tom saw the same glazed

look in his eyes that his father got when he drank. John was mumbling under his breath, with

a clenched fist.

Tom shut his eyes, ‘Stop! John! You’re scaring me!’

John froze, breathing in heavily. Tom stayed in the corner with his back pressed against the

wall, until John’s fist slowly started to unclench.

He put a hand to his forehead, ‘Sorry, kid. I didn’t mean to–’ He paused and sat down on his

bed. ‘Sorry.’

ABBOTSLEIGH

68

Tom swallowed and slowly backed away. ‘It’s alright,’ Tom mumbled.

John sat on the edge of his bed, his hands pressed to his head, and let out a heavy sigh.

Tom glanced down at his book. ‘John?’

John lifted his head.

‘Could you help me with this?’ he asked, holding up the page in his Maths book.

John nodded, and Tom moved to sit beside him, showing him his book. Tom patiently waited

for John to get his thoughts together and assist in solving the problem.

Tom waited until he could see that John’s breathing was no longer ragged, and told him that

he needed to get to sleep so he could get up early in the morning.

John nodded, lying back onto his bed, with a hand over his eyes. ‘Okay, Tom.’

‘G’night John,’ Tom said quietly.

‘Night, kid.’


69

A Little Red Suitcase Caity Donovan

Her breath snagged instinctively at the back of her throat as she stepped down onto the cement

platform and a train slowed to a halt.

‘What’s wrong Mummy?’

The woman looked down at the tiny hand encircled tightly around two of her fingers. Gregory,

her five-year-old son, watched her curiously. On her other side two-year-old Nicholas grinned,

pre-occupied by his excitement about the train ride. She gave both sons’ hands a gentle squeeze

and sealed the accidental spillage of past memories. This was not Budapest. Her name was no

longer Piroska Gergely. It was 1964 and she was Piroska Donovan, standing at Artarmon train

station, only fifteen minutes from her Hunters Hill home in Australia, a home she would always

be able to return to. A home where her small new family could always remain within her reach.

A fear of trains was no longer rational. Slowly her breath was expelled.

*

Budapest, 14th August 1941

A small red suitcase lay open on Piroska’s bed. Clothes overflowed, too many to pack and

definitely too many to carry. Outside her window the pounding of unified feet against pavement

presented her nation’s new reality far too clearly: Hungary had officially joined Hitler’s war.

ABBOTSLEIGH

70

Everything had begun to change at the end of the last year. The Germans had rolled in within

days. German troops – most of whom didn’t speak Hungarian – positioned themselves on busy

street corners and along footpaths outside schools. Some had even adorned the steps of

Budapest’s St. Steven’s Basilica. Piroska would see them on her way to school in the morning,

smoking and swearing on the steps of the church with German army trucks parked beside it. In

another time she would have sat along those steps on a Monday afternoon, gossiping with

friends as she waited for a steaming hot chocolate to cool to just the perfect temperature. Now,

long rifles leant casually against the outside pillars. Perfect hot chocolates were replaced by

intoxications of fear, served in strategically placed reminders. By June Hungary was simply

another of Hitler’s many conquests. To Piroska, even after sixteen years, Budapest was

growing rapidly unrecognisable.

‘Piroska?’

Her mother opened the door, only the slightest crack. ‘Would you like some breakfast? I saved

the last kifli for you!’

Kiflis were becoming a staple breakfast food in Piroska’s household. After the Germans

marched into Budapest many of her previous favourites had slowly disappeared from bakery

shelves. Many bakeries had disappeared altogether. On the corner of her street a cake shop sat

dormant after being raided the previous year. Piroska remembered the display of handcrafted

cakes which sat untouched behind shattered glass. A German poster had been taped to an

unbroken section of the window. ‘Kauf nicht bei Juden! Die Juden sind unser Unglück!’ Do

not buy from Jews! The Jews are our misfortune! Piroska knew better than to consider where

the old woman who owned the store had gone.

‘Piroska, did you hear me?’ her mother called unusually patiently from the doorway.

‘Just a few minutes!’ she replied, closing the curtains over her window.

‘I need to talk to you.’

Her mother let herself into Piroska’s room, stopping at the flimsy white dress which flooded

over one side of Piroska’s red suitcase. She looked at her daughter with an expression that

creased the centre of her forehead and lifted the central point of either eyebrow toward her hair

line.

‘It will close Mother, I promise!’ Piroska protested, pulling the lid down and mustering all her

strength in an unwinnable battle with the zip.

‘Piroska, leaving might be more difficult than we expected.’

A jolt ran through the floorboards beneath Piroska, like it had during the air raids last spring.

Nothing else moved, but she could hear the radio’s warning siren howling just as loudly as it


71

had then. Her mother still sat stiffly beside her dressing table – two feet planted to the floor,

hands with nervously interlocked fingers on her lap.

But what exactly did she mean? Piroska had always known leaving Budapest was going to be

difficult. But they had planned it over and over again. Slipping through the city late in the

evening – once the Nazi patrols had started to thin, onto the train, and out – quickly, quietly

and unnoticeably. First to Germany, then onwards, somewhere safer, before anyone had even

realised they were gone. In theory the train line was still safe for them. They weren’t Jewish.

‘Your step-father and I have been discussing the details. It’s important we all leave. Hungary

isn’t safe for anyone anymore. But your sister... she isn’t even two years old…’ Her mother’s

voice trailed off and she looked at Piroska.

‘So we aren’t leaving yet?’ She had never really been sure whether she wanted to leave.

‘Darling you’re sixteen, you need to leave as soon as you can. This is no longer a place where

a child should grow up.’

Piroska knew what her mother meant. They all needed to leave. They needed to leave because

her step-father didn’t support Hitler, because he refused to fight, refused to donate money to

the German army and refused to stand against his morals in doing either. She used to hear her

mother and him arguing about it when they thought she was out of ear shot. They would start

cautiously: hushed voices, sharp hidden hand gestures. Then quickly it would begin to grow

and either side would fire rapid sentences that pierced the air between them like bullets. At

some point, Piroska’s stepfather would notice her sitting close by, clear his throat and push his

glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. Her mother would fold her arms and tilt her head

slightly toward her left shoulder. From eye to eye the argument would continue raging

wordlessly.

‘I don’t care if it’s the Fuhrer’s birthday tomorrow. I am not hanging the Nazi flag from our

fence.’ Her stepfather’s lapse back to speech would usually signify the end of the discussion.

Her mother would walk away shaking her head.

Piroska never needed to eavesdrop – the issue her family faced was painted all too loudly across

their outside walls in the shape of a missing Nazi flag. Their safety was only temporary and, as

long as Hitler’s support continued to grow, it would grow more temporary still.

‘It’s the exact same plan.’ her mother continued, ‘Only…’

‘Only I get on that train by myself,’ Piroska finished.

Her mother looked hurt. She yearned to comfort her daughter and promise her that everything

would be alright. But she forced herself to remain silent. All she could offer was comforting

lies.

ABBOTSLEIGH

72

To Piroska this new plan felt like a betrayal. Budapest had been her home for sixteen years

because of the people she had lived there with. Even if she left Hungary, with them by her side

home would somehow travel with her. All she could do now was attempt to ignore her mother

and the train ride that loomed far too closely ahead. She tried to force a bundle of stockings

into the non-existent space left in her little red suitcase, but her hands shook too violently.

Whether it was out of anger or fear Piroska couldn’t tell. Instead of packing she left her mother

sitting on the bed and walked out to the kitchen to find the promised kifli that had been saved

for her. She wondered how many she could fit in her already over packed suitcase for the train

ride. Maybe some clothes would have to be left behind.

*

21st August 1941

‘Papiere!’

A week had passed since Piroska’s mother had saved her the last kifli and the young woman

now awoke to the routinely spat demand for her papers from a German train guard. August’s

midday sun belted uncomfortably through each train window.

‘Are you travelling alone?’ The guard questioned, his hands resting on a stomach that protruded

unflatteringly over his belt.

‘Y-Yes, sir.’ Piroska’s reply was stumbled, careless. ‘My grandmother lives alone in Munich,

I’ve been helping to look after her. She’s nearly seventy.’

Lie number one: her grandmother lived down the street from her home in Budapest and would

have glowered at the idea of being ‘looked after’. She was a robust sixty-three year old woman

who never missed her brisk nine am walk before breakfast.

The guard nodded slowly. Piroska’s heart leapt upwards into her throat, then returned to beat

at a pace faster than the spinning of train wheels beneath her.

He leaned his elbow on the back of Piroska’s seat, drumming his fingers along its metal rail as

he examined her papers.

‘And where are your mother and father?’

‘They’re at home with my baby sister. She was born in January last year,’ she answered with

ease – at least that wasn’t a lie.

His eyes flicked quickly, almost unintentionally, over Salzburg station outside the train

window.

‘And you’ll be returning soon?’


73

The train rushed past, Salzburg’s station just a grey blur, forgotten amidst the train’s nine

hundred kilometre journey. The guard’s eyes returned to Piroska’s papers.

‘Of course!’ she replied. Lie number two was possibly the biggest of all.

The guard nodded, though he seemed to hardly register her reply. He glanced back to the

window that had so quickly snatched Salzburg away. Anyone who knew how it felt to lose or

leave a home could see the old memories resurrecting behind his vacant eyes. He passed

Piroska’s papers back to her, his gaze still fixated on Salzburg, and walked silently onward to

the next carriage.

*

22nd August, 1941

The Munich station platform swarmed with orderly lines. Some snaked in perfect green

columns with Swastikas on proud display, whilst others were hustled cruelly along, each

member clearly labelled by a six-pointed star. Amongst these top hats bobbed and ducked

hurriedly, navigating through the constantly reshaping maze with protectively clenched

briefcases. Piroska stood up from her seat and made her way down from the train.

With feet planted firmly on the ground she studied the blurred picture in front of her. Piroska

had never seen Munich before now, although she doubted the current circumstances lent

themselves at all well to sight-seeing. At this point in the original plan her step-father would

have decided upon the next move. She had always trusted that he would choose the right train

and lead her family unfailingly to their next allotment of temporary safety. Now this was up to

her, but unlike her step-father she didn’t know which countries Hitler’s army had occupied,

just as she had no idea where, when, or even if, the Russian army was likely to invade. A

strange new lottery of trains stood before her. Somehow, out of each one that would leave

Munich’s brimming platforms over the next week, Piroska would have to choose just one. If

she was lucky her prize would be a ration of safety.

‘Can I help you, Miss?’

A young German soldier stood within metres of her, separate from the evenly snaking green

lines. His uniform was neat, his hair just a few shades too dark to be considered blonde and his

eyes a watery blue.

‘I’m – I’m visiting my grandmother!’ she blurted out. It was too direct, too rehearsed. He’d

never believe her. Piroska grasped her red suitcase closer, watching the station clock’s second

hand fall slowly and unintentionally into the arms of the next minute.

The soldier laughed. ‘You don’t appear to be sure of where you’re headed.’

ABBOTSLEIGH

74

Piroska looked down to her boots, blushing although she meant not to. She couldn’t tell a

German soldier her real plan, but apparently, to this particular soldier, she couldn’t recite her

fake plan either.

‘My name’s Bella Erdy,’ the soldier offered, holding his hand out toward Piroska.

She swallowed and opened her mouth to speak, but her protesting eyes would focus only on

her shoes or the clock. She had never considered the German soldiers as similar to herself, or

as anything besides guards and intruders. They had never spoken to her and she had never

spoken to them. But, strangely enough, now that she was at her most vulnerable it was a

German soldier who offered her a name and a hand.

‘Are you going to tell me your name?’ Bella Erdy inquired amusedly. His tone of voice told

Piroska she was no longer the only one blushing.

‘I’m Piroska,’ she finally replied. Surely giving only her first name wasn’t such a risk.

She looked up to see Bella now staring at his boots as well. A few moments of silence passed

between them, until he raised his head with an embarrassed grin. Both Piroska and Bella let a

small, half-supressed laugh escape under their breath.

‘I’m going to France next week,’ reported Bella, breaking the silence. ‘To visit, not to fight,’

he added quickly.

Piroska had been to Paris before, years ago with her mother and step-father.

Bella took a half a step towards her. ‘Do you need help finding your grandmother’s house?’

Reality suddenly thumped loudly against Piroska’s ribs. She had forgotten the lie at the start of

their conversation. ‘No,’ she replied bluntly, ‘I’m sure I can find it myself.’

Bella nodded slowly, his head tilted ever so slightly to the side. ‘You know I’m not going to

tell anyone.’

Piroska nodded, finding, even to her own surprise, that she believed him.

‘There’s a bakery a couple of streets away,’ Bella continued, quickly grasping back onto a line

of conversation. ‘If you’re hungry they make the best kipferl.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Piroska began with two self-conscious dimples becoming quickly apparent, ‘but

what’s a kipferl?’

‘It’s,’ Bella looked embarrassed, ‘it’s really just a crescent shaped bread roll.’


75

‘Like a kifli!?’

‘I guess so – if you’re from Hungary.’ Bella looked at her, his furrowed eyebrows quickly

placing the pieces together.

Piroska smiled. Nine hundred kilometres away, in an old white house in Budapest, she could

hear her mother’s laughter sneak through a creased smile. Maybe home wasn’t so far away

after all.

ABBOTSLEIGH

76

Threads Maya Sugden

Threads. Weaved and wrapped, around and around, again and again. Much thinner than the

strands of hair that fell to my shoulders and trembled in the breeze. Much stronger than cotton,

more magical than silk; these threads could fold the light and capture the rain. You could find

them in bundles, in spirals or like delicate lacework, draped over water cans and windowsills.

The threads would sway in the morning air, decorated by the dewdrops that clung tightly to

them as if the water itself knew their value. Resting on the delicate surface of these threads sat

our happiness, hung cruelly in the balance between anger and peace. Between joyfulness and

fury.

We collected these threads, Rita and I, accompanied by the distant rumbles of firearm training

from the Armidale racecourse in town. Mother had told us not to worry about the roars and

crashes from the racecourse that travelled down the dusty road towards our home, she said they

were practicing for the big war. The soldiers were always awake before us, before the first rays

of sunlight had claimed the paddocks and before we had clambered out of bed, adorning tattered

shoes and coats too large for our pre-adolescent frames. At age nine and twelve, the clothing

passed down from our cousins still draped over us, consuming our tiny bodies. Nonetheless we

would run out of the house and down towards the bushland on the edge of our property, the

loose flailing fabric attempting to trip and tangle us. Upon reaching the comfort of the trees we

would begin our quest, the clinging dewdrops hanging like beacons before us, guiding us in

the right direction. To us these droplets were important, filling each of our hearts with ease as

they appeared before us. The threads teased our fumbling hands and frostbitten fingers as we

attempted to remove them one by one from the branches on which they were draped. Wrapping


77

them around the prongs of a gardening tool we would continue on, the knowledge that today

might be a happy day growing with each thread collected.

Those happy days were ones to be treasured, so precious that they saw the light for the briefest

of moments. They were not filled with the grumbling anger that spilled from our father, nor the

rage that lay suspended in the air, suffocating us with its heaviness and brutality. On those

happy days we had managed to soften our father’s usual temper by sliding the newfound

threads under his door, somehow taming the beast whose usual fury leapt up at us like a ball of

anger; consuming and constricting. From beneath the safety of our bedsheets his most recent

rage would crystallise in our minds, whimpering as we saw again the hurling of crockery and

the slamming of doors. Yelling, fierce and heavy. His words flung out at us like shards of cut

glass. You would hear mother humming loudly in the kitchen, attempting to block out his noise

and preferring to ignore his actions. We were brought back into the present only by the

beginnings of a list of our shortcomings, ‘Too thick…too sticky…too short…too yellow’,

hoping that maybe one perfect thread would suffice. If not, we would be sent out again, the late

morning sun causing the dew drops to dribble towards the ground all too soon, rendering the

threads almost invisible.

*

Around and around, again and again; two flies flew close to the web, unaware of the danger

that lay in front of them. The spider descended towards them, all along weaving his web of

deception. But for now the flies had been lucky, the warm breeze carrying them away from the

hungry jaws of the beast.

*

It seemed senseless that a web of a single spider could dictate our happiness. To a pair of

‘normal’ young girls, spiders would be among the list of things to be avoided. But in our world,

the more dangerous the spider, the better the web…and the better our chance for a stolen

glimpse of happiness.

On the bad days, Rita and I would sit on the fence that entrapped our property, feeling the harsh

midday sun on our faces. We watched the careless strolls of the other children as they sauntered

towards the beginning of a school day, unaware of their luck and fortune. As we passed the

dismal hours I would imagine myself as one of them; walking towards a joy willed day with

polished school shoes and a bag strung on my back holding the deepest knowledge I could ever

hope to attain. Against the wishes of our often pre-occupied mother, father had kept Rita and I

away from the independence of the schoolyard, preferring instead to educate us on the land that

we had grown up on. With the help of mother I had applied for a boarding school in the big

city, although in my heart I knew I was destined to collect threads for as long as our father

wished for them. So sitting in the dust I would create my own school, drawing circles and lines

into the sandy earth, shapes that joined to form letters and numbers.

ABBOTSLEIGH

78

‘Why is the dirt red?’ Rita would ask,

‘Why is the sky blue?’, to which I would try my best to answer. I would try to fill her mind

with wonder and possibilities for life ahead and provide explanations for the parts of our not-

so-everyday life which perplexed her. Like why our father had to be so angry.

Father had explained the threads to us once, hoping to excite us with the innovation they

brought. He drew labelled diagrams of surveying instruments, and after unwrapping the threads

from our gardening prongs he would set about stretching and twisting. Remarks would be made

about the fineness and superiority of the threads, his explanations often drifting off into

educated swirls of thought before remembering he was talking to mere children. In an attempt

to further convince us of the remarkable nature of the threads he would use words such as

‘crosshairs’ and ‘theodolites’, placing two threads into the ring of the instrument so that they

formed an X in the centre. But he didn’t need persuade us with his fancy words and

terminology, for Rita and I already knew the value of the threads.

*

Around and around, again and again; the spider spun its web. Its delicate line work sat ready

to collect the misfortune of any insect who dared to get too close. The web of threads was his

way of survival, and without it, a certain demise he would face.

*

It was the 29th of November, when I received the letter, a day filled for the most part with our

father’s all too common consuming anger. The days had become shorter and the hours hotter

as the land begun to proceed into summer. Drought had begun in its usual way to wrinkle the

tufty patches of grass and crack the earth. For the safety of our pale, freckled skin, Rita and I

had migrated to the porch, preferring its coolness to the branding heat of the fence. The letter

had come in a simple white envelope, crinkled slightly on the edges from the many miles it had

travelled. It had been sent to me from the boarding school in the big city, conjuring my dreams

in one page of delicate cursive writing. Beginning with the words ‘To Miss Dorothy’, the letter

continued on, the loops and curves of the writing collecting my dreams, my hopes and my

desires. I had sounded it out syllable by syllable; ‘ac-cept-ance’, ‘op-por-tun-ity’, ‘chan-ce’,

reading aloud to Rita who sat curiously by my side. Rita had hugged me and held my fingers

as we danced in circles of celebration on the creaky porch floorboards. I was overjoyed; blessed

with an opportunity to achieve something and make my family proud.

*

Around and around, again and again; the spider circles its prey, encasing it within the silky

confines of its web. This time, he had gotten lucky, the two helpless flies were entrapped in his

net of deceit. But by some unforeseen error in his patchwork the larger fly was able to wiggle

free, escaping the threads, glimpsing freedom on the horizon.


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*

Grasping the flimsy promise of a future in my hands, I had turned and run up the length of the

porch, pausing only to move the letter into my left hand, allowing me to fling open the fly-

screen door and enter the house. Striding quickly through the hallway it had taken all the effort

within my small body to walk quietly, with such great news at hand I dared not to further upset

my father. Stopping at the wood panelled door I knelt to slide the letter through the opening at

its base as a loud rumbling of rage escaped my father. I recoiled, its bitterness ripping through

my joy and reminding me of my reality. In that moment I had remembered the life that I lived

in and the threads that kept me in place, and while my freedom was on the horizon I knew in

my heart that I could not leave Rita to endure alone. So I removed the letter from the gap under

the door and hid it under my mattress, knowing it would be there in times of trial but refusing

to accept its promise for the sake of Rita’s happiness.

*

Around and around, again and again; the spider moves closer to its prey. Both flies lay still,

their entangled bodies giving up the fight, once and for all surrendering themselves to the mercy

of the spider.

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The Cliché Shop Sarah Luke (staff)

Once upon a time I went shopping at the cliché shop. I had a faded and much-loved leather

handbag with me, my trendy worn jeans and your favourite t-shirt on. I strolled there, I ran

there, I hummed a tune as I went. The sun was shining and beaming at me – it foreshadowed

what was to be a brilliant life. A cloud scudded past the golden orb and for a second a dog

trotted towards me. In the distance, on the crest of a hill, I could see a kid flying a kite. You

know exactly what I’m talking about. You can see it too. You’ve heard it all before.

I rounded a corner and saw the shop. It was dilapidated, it was a modern icon, it was just like

you’d expected. I eagerly went towards it. As I stepped over the threshold, a bell ringing

somewhere in the depths of the place, I was overwhelmed with the temptation to start narrating

in the present tense. I held strong, thought of my stormy past, and determined: No. I am not

doing – I have done.

Rows and rows of shelves fought for precedence in my vision. It was a shop like no other: an

emporium in every sense of the word. A single, transient space, crammed with knick-knacks

and thingames, gadgets and whatsamacallits. Clichés. I grabbed a plastic basket and started

looking around.

There was a world globe sale on: I closed my eyes and spun one, thinking that where my finger

landed I would go.

Not really.

There were golden lockets on the next stand, visually-merchandised with flair. I flicked open

the catch with one of my chewed nails and for a second I was lost in contemplation of my


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mother, who had abandoned me at a young age. As I surveyed her painted portrait in the heart

of this jewel, I remembered the arguing in the humid house at the edge of the forest and

wrenching open the door without a final farewell – when my heart was rent in two by the baby

left on our doorstep, and which I almost stepped on. It brought our family back together; it was

a sign.

You know I’m kidding, right?

I slipped on a banana peel. I bandaged a puppy’s paw. There were curious magical jars of light,

covered in a sickly kind of gloop. An icy blast of wind went right through me. A ghost waggled

its fingers in my direction.

Woooohhhhhhoooooo!

Where have you heard that before?

A sign near the cashier pictorially explained what counted for money in this place. Gold

galleons, doubloons, shillings and crowns. I had dollars and an opal card. My heart sank as I

realised that nothing here could me mine. (I was not the stealing type, you see.) It was like

walking past the Prada shop in the city. None for me!

I approached the counter and I repeated to the old man/woman what my problem was. I would

explain that – if you needed me to. You’ve seen the type before. Usually on the bus.

‘Hello,’ I said, I mumbled, I began, ‘I love your shop, but I don’t have any of the coins on your

sign.’

The man/woman, crusty and flaking, with rough knitted fingerless gloves on its hands, with

scabs and open sores gleaming in the half light, spoke slowly.

‘Then you browse with no purpose my dear!’ it cackled, witch-like. It looked me up and down.

‘I’ve got an opal card,’ I responded hopefully, emphasising the opal bit, and interrupting its

survey of me.

It regarded me even closer then, one eyebrow curved into a dangerous arch above its eye. Greed

glittered there. You’ve seen the same look in Fagan’s eye, in Mr Elliot’s.

‘It be made of opals then?’

It looked sour when I declined to offer a positive answer.

It raved at me then, waving its arms over its head, herding me out of the shop. Its eyes flashed

red. It screamed I’d wasted its time, its voice magnified and fierce. It screamed about penalty

rates – something about not being enough? – and GST. A furious wind whipped up around us:

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82

the trees were bent as though caught in a tornado – the cement footpaths began to curl from the

earth – the bell in the shop was ringing incessantly as though some little miss in a manor house

needed desperately some tea – and I was thrown – literally propelled – from the shop with a

great force, as though some invisible giant was pushing me from the shop. The door was open

now, and I was being pushed in the small of my back. My feet were stumbling and my arms

going windmill-fashion – I was about to fall over my feet – I was trying desperately to clutch

at something to stop my falling – I stumbled onto the road as the wind instantly stopped. The

trees regained their composure, and the footpaths re-attached themselves to the ground.

This, obviously, was not cool. I mean, what’s the difference between shopping and browsing

anyway?

It watched me, arms crossed over its chest, from the window, squinting at me from below the

open sign. It watched me, or so I thought. Its eyes were focused on my hand, and I suddenly

realised, as I emerged from the haze of shock which had engulfed me, that I had something in

my fist. It – the jar – was pulsating now, the light inside it flaring as it throbbed. The gloop on

it seemed to become more liquid – and just as I became aware that the It in the shop looked

amused, I found I couldn’t hold it any more. It shot out of my hand like a bar of soap on steroids,

soaring into the sky. I went all gridiron for a second and readied myself to catch it – but no –

too slippery – and the thing broke into a thousand pieces when it found the ground.

The clip-clopping of horses’ hooves on the pavement. That’s when it started. The clichés.

Of course, he was dark and handsome and tall – and I thought he might have arrived to see me

– but the dragon crouching behind me, guarding its nest in the hollow of the cave, was his real

target. The streets were gone – all except the cliché shop which stood, stubbornly real, while

Prince Charming charged at the dragon. A woman, presumably his princess, was screaming

and barracking for him at the top of a turret. She was waving a flag with his coat of arms on it,

brandishing a matching foam finger, and swooning at the same time. The beast tried to

incinerate the King-to-be with a blast of flame, but the heir dodged the blaze. I don’t mind

telling you how far that dragon could project that fire – it got my shoe laces – and just as it

began to explode with roaring, and hotter breath, the prince won through and speared the thing

in the chest.

Light engulfed us – and for a second all the world was white light. Colour returned to me, and

then the clichés began harassing me once more.

There was the fat kid who usually helped save the day … and the brainy bespectacled kid who

does all the work and yet somehow by the end of the story has learned the true value of chilling

out and friendship. There was the dog making tangible his mater’s likes and dislikes. There was

the faux medieval village, the gentleman thief who danced with the elite at the masquerade ball

one evening and then burgled them the next. There was the boy in rags finding his real family,

and being rewarded with gold. The wise old mentor who has nothing to recommend his advice

but his age.


83

The screaming alarm clock – screaming like a banshee, yelling like a mother – was pounding

in my ears – and then I was awake.

I guess it was all just a dream.

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84

Inspired by Worktable of Vernica Kent in collaboration with Sean Perry, 2013:

Anne Zahalka in ‘Constructed World Exhibit’ Grace Cossington Smith Gallery

Night-time of Youth Irini Savvides (staff)

The children were leaving as soon as it was day. As young as they were they both knew they

would not come here again, for all the adults talk of when they returned, when their parents

returned to them. But children are smart you see so they knew they were being told lies, lies

those stodgy-faced adults, in clothes that were as faded as their words, told as they would not

look at them in the eyes.

Besides the red suitcase had said it all. No one would have bought them such a fine gift if they

had been to return. There was little food and little money to be had and it was too new and too

shiny and really they distrusted it altogether. The adults told the children that they could pack

the most precious of their things: a bracelet, a wooden cube, a sheet of music, a scrapbook, a

photo album, a book of poetry, some dice, their mother’s old language book that they did not

understand, and their father’s black journal that they never dared to open.

So the two had spent the day in the backyard of yesterdays, which was what she had called it,

the girl Remembrance all of a year older than the boy Piper. They had spent hours lying on


85

their stomachs smelling the slightly pungent smell of the now putrid pool. They had hoped if

the smell had stayed in their nostrils that they would remember the summers they had spent

here together, these two forlorn children.

They were separating them. Both of them knew it in their bones. The boy Piper had begun to

fear a life without his sister. She was the one who at night told him stories of the man he had

been named for. She was the one who had read to him the Odyssey, stolen from their father’s

bookshelf. He was taking just about as long as the hero in that tale to return. Piper often worried

that he had forgotten to stuff his ears with wax and that his body had been washed up on the

shore of deadly Sirens. He had not packed the book into the suitcase. Strangely only one for

the two of them. It all did not feel right. He could not yet say why. And there was so little room

in it.

But Remembrance felt it too and had been looking for clues. One day as she has been rifling

through their father’s desk. Indeed, he was long gone and so who could berate her she kept

telling herself she has found the black journal. Before the war had taken him, he had left a pile

of books on his desk. It was most unlike him she knew, everything was always returned to the

shelves at the end of the day. He may allow himself the luxury of a book on his bedside chest

but never left on his desk. There were a few other titles.

Remembrance did not know what telepathy was. But she did know what a radio was.

‘Listen,’ his sister told her. ‘This book is called The Mental Radio. It is how I am going to find

you when they separate us and we forget.’

‘No,’ young Piper insisted. I want more stories. Tell me now what stories you know,’ he

insisted. ‘Just in case I cannot find you and must look for you in your sleep.’

So Remembrance told him stories: of the aunt who never returned from the flames, stories of

the boy who left his village to go to school in the city, stories of the almost actress who ended

up sewing clothes, the shop where you could by clichés, the child who learned a new word

‘shoe’, the girls who collected spider webs as the day broke, the boy who lived alone at fourteen

that dreaded the smell of alcohol, the man who proposed to his love by driving a camphor chest

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half way across the state, and the young woman who stood at the train station with a red suitcase

brimming over with clothes and tears.

‘Was it our red suitcase?’ Piper asked Remembrance but she had strangely fallen asleep and

was dreaming of a peculiar land.

They say there was a time when the sky was blue, when people told their own stories, wove

their own tapestries, when the trees had leaves and plump red fruit. They say he came to the

village, the Piper clad in red when the town promised him anything to rid their town of the

rats. They gave him their stories, one by one, spoke them into the magic book of his as the Piper

played and their memories fell out of their heads and became his. What was the loss of an idea

here or there they had thought at first? They traded stories for cleanliness. Yes giving up a few

stories was nothing if it meant the plague of rats was finally gone, with their nibble, nibble,

nibble and their squeak, squeak, squeak. They could sleep at last when the last rat disappeared.

Or so they thought. But the silence that descended on the village without stories sat heavy and

spread its shadow. The people were silent and then suddenly four women disappeared. Red-

heads all. Worse still every year the rats returned and every year the Piper stole four more

women and as many memoires as his little black book would hold.

It was the promise of a new story and the song that had tricked Remembrance. Her mother had

always warned her that with her Titan hair and heart-shaped face she must hide when the Piper

came looking. She looked like her namesake in Greek mythology: Mnemosyne who Dante has

painted in green shiny robes and that famous flowing hair. He had forgotten the shiny blue

necklace, real sapphires hidden under her mane. Objects and stories seemed to float to

Remembrance from other places and other times. Remembrance carried future memories that

she had gathered in the spider web threads she collected in the morning, she carried memory

in old language books she tried to decipher at night that looked Greek to her. And in her dreams

she put her hand to her neck and cupped the blue sapphire necklace hoping that one day the

man she loved so much may return to her.

This is an ending that is not an ending, because in a world like this there should be change.

Remembrance should forever be waiting for her love to return, but his ship would neither arrive

nor depart. The woman facing the North had long since forgotten the outside world, had been

caught and poisoned by the net of the Piper’s story. She could lift her spindle and weave the


87

fates into the cloth without even realising he wielded power. She had become the story: stitch,

weave in, weave out, pull the next stitch, and weave in and out, a story. The woman on the East

longed for the place by the window to smell the breeze, but as if he knew the Piper would send

her better tales, richer plots, more twists and turns. Then she would forget her longing in the

colour of the cloth she wove and her wanting the book. But finally Remembrance who sat

nearest the window in the South felt the breeze moved just enough one day. Somehow and she

had no faint idea how, Remembrance was imagining stories of a woman who has not been able

to escape the huge flames that had been sent by a metal dragon out of the sky, she has been

giving the Piper tales about a man young, wide eyed with very shiny hair that had ridden a

strange spiky beast with round wheels thin as liquorice into a vast city like no other she had

ever seen, she had given the Piper a memory of a young man lying in a barren room, his heart

breaking as the familiar scent of alcohol wafted into his nose. The Piper had stolen all these

stories and they had spilled out into the silk and across the seas. But then Remembrance had

seen her a woman with a small red suitcase overflowing with clothes, trying so hard not to cry

leaving behind a mother who had watched her go with the same knowledge in her eyes that

Remembrance had in hers when he love had left. The Piper had looked at her, wanting the next

story but instead she had shifted the mane of hair, and the love that the sapphire necklace had

been bought with had given her courage and she had jumped. The threads of the stories spun

out into the air, back to the owners that had held them and the Piper had yelled, ‘You will pay

for this Remembrance!’ But his dastardly voice and his menacing voice no longer frightened

her.

‘You were a cliché at best,’ Remembrance thought as she tumbled into a pond in Hades to find

a green robed, Titan haired goddess. ‘That necklace you are wearing is from my father

Ouranos. I’d like it back now. Best get out of that pool of memories quickly,’ Mnemosyne said.

‘We can’t have you dying just yet. The story has just begun.’

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the backyard of yesterdays

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