Cairo (5 page)

Without invitation, Caroline stepped inside. ‘Honestly,' she said to me, ‘you shouldn't go around inviting girls into your apartment. It's highly inappropriate.'

I started to protest my innocence, but she ignored me and waddled over to stand beside Eve and join her in examination of the jewellery. I regretted not throwing the teapot at the child when I'd had the chance.

Ignoring me, they oohed and aahed over the various trinkets, Caroline giving her daughter an impromptu spelling lesson as they did so. ‘Locket. Can you spell
locket
, Eve? What do you think it begins with? Locket. Locket. Oh, this tiny key is nice. It must be for a box of some sort.'

I tore open a packet of crackers and began popping them into my mouth. They were dry and tasteless. Out of the window I could
see the peppercorn tree lit up savagely in the morning sun. As I watched, a magpie landed on a branch, lifted its tail feathers and expelled a shit as if in agreement with my unspoken misgivings. The creature reshuffled its feathers briskly, warbled and flew off.

After a few more spelling lessons, Caroline took Eve's hand and tried to coax her home for breakfast. The child, however, was having far too much fun. She wrenched free from her mother's grasp and collapsed to the floor with fury, where she pounded her tiny feet and fists on the boards. ‘But I don't want to go! I don't want to go!' she wailed.

Caroline kneeled beside her daughter and tried to reason with her. Above the squalls of childish distress and the thumping of Eve's feet on the floor, Caroline said she would take her to the park to ride her bicycle. She asked her daughter to behave herself. She tried being more stern. All this was to no avail, and the crying increased in vigour. I was horribly uncomfortable, while Caroline was unruffled, as if I were somehow experiencing the embarrassment on her behalf.

In desperation, I held out the box of crackers. ‘Would Eve like a biscuit, perhaps?'

Caroline flung out a hand as if I had offered the child a dose of arsenic. ‘No, thank you. We only eat organic food.' She turned again to her daughter. ‘Eve, if you promise to come with me now without any more fuss, you can have an extra taste of' — she lowered her voice — ‘
special milk
when we get home.'

This was obviously some sort of parental trump card. The girl's tantrum was downgraded to sniffles in a matter of seconds. She sat upright in the glittering pool of jewellery and rubbed her eyes. ‘Really?'

‘Yes.'

‘Do.' Eve sniffed. ‘You.' Sniff. ‘Promise?'

‘Mummy would never lie to you, would she? Come along now.'

Eve stood and wiped her snotty nose with the back of one hand. Whatever special milk was, it had worked a treat. My uninvited guests dusted themselves off, packed away the jewellery and were gone almost immediately. I was left staring around my apartment as if in the aftermath of a storm. I closed the door and locked it before heading into the bathroom to shower.

*

After dressing, I sat on the sofa with a cup of tea and sorted through the mail that had piled up in the hallway in the months since Helen's death. In addition to out-of-date flyers advertising department-store Christmas sales, there were bills and half-a-dozen postcards from a variety of South American cities (
Hola de Buenos Aires! La Paz, the world's highest capital!
) sent by a person named Pat. The postcards were only semi-legible, written in a sprawling script, their most notable feature the effusiveness of the sign-offs embroidered with kisses.

Most mysterious of all was a letter addressed to someone called Max. The envelope was cream coloured. Its triangular, sticky flap had not been sealed but rather tucked into the body of the envelope, as if delivered in haste. It smelled faintly of perfume. I sipped my tea and balanced the envelope on my palm. I knew I would inspect the letter (for who could resist the lure of someone else's private correspondence, especially when it was as good as open?) but nonetheless played out a brief charade of indecision.

Eventually, I took out the single folded sheet. The letter was brief and written on unlined paper in an exaggerated feminine hand (loops and curls, large dots on the i's).

Dearest Max
,

Thank you so much for last night
.

I had a lovely, lovely time. You are so sweet. Call me soon
.

xx D

Envious and mildly aroused, I stared for some time at what was evidently a love letter. It must have found its way into the wrong mailbox, but who on earth was Max? I re-read it.

Careful not to reveal any sign of the letter having been tampered with, I re-folded the sheet and slipped it back into its envelope. I gathered up all the junk mail to throw out, and put any other mail to one side. The love letter I placed into my shirt pocket.

I stood in my lounge room wondering what to do next. I needed to buy food and general supplies but was gripped by irrational anxiety. Where would I shop? Was I suitably dressed for this bohemian part of town? What if I got lost? It occurred to me with force that, aside from Uncle Mike and his wife, I was on my own. There was no one else to help me if things went awry.

Eventually, hunger got the better of me and, feeling brave, I stepped onto the walkway outside my apartment, carrying the junk mail. Halfway down the stairs I encountered a tiny, walnut-faced Greek or Italian woman dressed head-to-toe in black. She was shuffling up with a cane laundry basket grasped between her outstretched hands, like a beetle with a disproportionately giant crumb. A silver cross on a chain around her neck bounced about with her exertions. On seeing me, she smiled one of those smiles calibrated to demonstrate not only her effort, but also her strenuous attempts to conceal that effort from her fellow humans and soldier on.

Ever the polite country boy, I enquired if she needed assistance, but she shook her head.

‘Oh no. I will be OK. Thank you, young man. Very kind.'

I gestured at my front door. ‘My name is Tom Button. I moved into flat number twenty. My Aunt Helen used to live there. Helen Button?'

The woman made a face as if to imply this information could not have been more trivial to her had it been the results of a camel race in Dubai. I flushed with embarrassment and stood back on the sunny
steps as she manoeuvred past and, for a second, we were wedged in such proximity that I felt it rude not to attempt further conversation.

‘Beautiful day,' I said, as indeed it was; the sun shone and the sky was a flat, sheer sheet of blue. The garden was abuzz with insects and birds.

‘Yes,' she said with a shrug. ‘Summer. Good day to wash clothes.' Her basket squeaked against the metal railing. After re-adjusting her hold on it, she sighed, rested the basket on the rail and looked up at me. ‘I been here twelve years.'

‘Oh, right. Well, it's very nice here.'

The woman made a noise that might have been of agreement or not; it was hard to tell. Then she scrutinised me as if committing my features to memory. I had the disconcerting impression she was preparing to lunge at me, but she merely licked her lips and grunted again. ‘Yes. Quiet. Except for bloody kid running around. You got no children?'

Although phrased as such, I realised this was not a question but a statement, which she did not wish contradicted. I shook my head and told her I was living alone, an answer she heard with an expression of grim pleasure.

Heartened by this exchange but unsure how to finish the conversation, I brandished my rolled-up junk mail and asked her the whereabouts of the bins.

She put her basket down, gripped my upper arm with surprising strength, and spun me around so that we were facing the main entrance on Nicholson Street. It occurred to me that she was one of those hardy European peasants I'd read about in
National Geographic
— a woman who would live to a hundred and fourteen, chopping wood and slaughtering pigs in her kitchen until the day she died.

‘Round the side,' she said, jabbing with a bony finger. ‘See there. The bins. Throw it in there, bah.' She released me and picked up her laundry basket.

I thanked her and was about to continue on my way when a thought occurred to me. I took the letter from my shirt pocket. ‘Excuse me. I was wondering if you knew anyone called Max who lives here?'

She glanced at me with acute distaste, as if I had enquired about something intrusive — the state of her sex life, say, or the regularity of her bowel movements. Her eyes and mouth narrowed in concert. ‘Cheever,' she said.

I showed her the letter but she made a dismissive gesture, accompanied by another
Bah
.

‘So there's no one living here called Max?'

‘Yes.'

‘There is?'

‘There, there. Place number twenty-eight. Max Cheever.' With her chin she indicated a first-floor apartment at the bend of the U-shaped block. She put her basket down again. Then she looked around to make sure no one was in earshot and grabbed my hand.

‘You know what I saw one time?' she said.

‘No. What?'

She made a disgusting movement with her mouth, as if whatever she prepared to say possessed a physical component she was endeavouring to locate behind her bottom lip. Her eyebrows arched. ‘I saw one time those two doing very weird things with their pale friend. Late at night, at the full moon. Dancing over there in the park.'

She made a noise in her throat, a sort of grunt, perhaps attempting to impart some extra meaning to the episode she had witnessed. When it became obvious I was not registering this subtext, she crossed herself with her free hand and grasped my arm again so tightly with the other that my fingers began to lose all feeling. ‘They were like devils.'

This was interesting. ‘Devils?'

‘Like little, little
devils
. And a bottle of blood.'

This was very interesting. I was speechless. The woman was mad. She gave me a final significant look and released me. ‘Stay away from them. You a young man. They no good for someone like you. Parties and all that. Bah!'

And with that, she picked up her laundry basket and went on her way.

I was left to ponder the meaning of her dire warning, which only further piqued my interest in this mysterious neighbour. I returned the letter to my shirt pocket and stood on the stairs, tapping the rolled-up junk mail against my lower lip, trying to decide what to do. The apartment she had indicated looked no different from all the others: a yellowing door with its round window, disused service hatch, frayed doormat.

I retraced my steps back up to the walkway. At that time of morning it was shady up there, cool and peaceful. Through an open window I heard a radio playing pop music. Lining the walkway was an assortment of garden tubs with flowers and herbs growing in them. Parsley, thyme, mint, a burst of red geranium.

I removed the letter from my pocket and, on instinct, licked and sealed it. I waved it about in the air to dry it (I was nothing if not cunning in my naivety). Then I knocked on the door of apartment number twenty-eight.

I WAITED FOR SOME TIME BUT THERE WAS NO RESPONSE. AS I
was preparing to leave, I heard the thump of footsteps and a man calling out from within.

The door was opened by a black-haired, olive-skinned man in his late twenties. He wore blue trousers and a white shirt unbuttoned to reveal his hairless chest. A packet of cigarettes sat in his shirt pocket. He made no effort to hide his disappointment at finding me there. Clearly, he had expected someone else.

‘Yes?' he asked.

‘I'm sorry for knocking so early. I'm wondering if someone called Max lives here?'

The man seemed undecided whether to answer, then scowled. ‘And who wants to know, may I ask?'

His abrupt manner caught me by surprise. I was shy at the best of times but now, more than usual, I struggled to answer.

‘Well?' he said.

I held up the envelope. ‘I have a letter for Max. I moved into number twenty, along here. The old lady said a Max lived here, so I thought …'

‘Who's it from?'

‘I don't know. I didn't open it. As you can see.'

He made a face, snatched the envelope from me and squinted at it, taking his time over the single scrawled word. He sighed, and I smelled liquor on his breath. He appeared to be drunk, even though it was only nine-thirty in the morning.

From inside the apartment there came a drift of woozy jazz trumpet. Someone coughed, and I made out a man's voice, followed by an intimation of movement. A gaunt figure popped his head around the entrance-hall corner, then vanished so rapidly I wondered if I hadn't imagined him.

‘It was with a pile of other mail,' I went on gamely, realising I had made a mistake in bringing the letter here; I should have thrown it out.

He turned it over. ‘When did you say it arrived?'

‘I'm not sure. It might have been there for a while. Although it was on top of the pile so it was probably recent. Are you Max?'

The man wafted the envelope under his nose, touched it to his lips. He glanced back over his shoulder, then eyed me with suspicion. ‘Yes. I am Max Cheever. Luckily for you.'

This caught me off guard, too. After a short silence, I held out my hand to shake. ‘I'm Tom.'

Max ignored my proffered hand. Instead, closing the door partly behind him, he lurched out onto the walkway.

‘Listen,' he began, leaning in as if preparing to impart some confidential information. But then, changing his mind, he shoved the letter into his pocket and went back inside, slamming the door behind him.

*

Although disconcerted at being rebuffed in such a fashion by Max Cheever, I set about the rest of my day. The excitement of living in my own apartment was dizzying. I was desperate to explore my new city but felt overwhelmed by the choices
available to me, so I opted to stay close to home.

I shopped for supplies in Smith Street and, after making a cheese sandwich for my lunch, set about cleaning the apartment with gusto. I put on my Pink Floyd record and rolled up my sleeves. My father had given most of his sister's clothes away; the wardrobe was empty aside from a few coathangers and an ancient winter coat that had been left behind. I scrubbed the bathtub and toilet, brushed away the spider webs that had accumulated in the high corners, and tidied up the few personal items scattered about. Although dusty, the apartment wasn't especially dirty, and it was small; it didn't take long to make it habitable.