He waited until she looked at him before he handed her a small red coral box. It was carved with tiny birds with fat bellies that were larger than their wings, and each bird looked up with golden eyes.
Go on, open it.
The slightest touch to the clasp on the side of the box released the lid which sprang open, and sounded a tune.
It is from Swan Lake the ballet. I thought you would like that.
Inside, on its bed of silk, lay a silver ring. She looked at her left hand with the gold wedding band that sat loosely on her finger.
Take it,
he encouraged, and then put the ring on her finger.
This is for the right hand,
he said, adding how he had had it made especially for this day. She looked at the design. Two thin bands were separated by crescent moons that encased a small silver brolga, and a swan.
Do you like it?
It is very nice. Thank you.
She imagined that she had spoken politely, like Red, but said nothing. She wished the mobile phone would call so that the voice of the snake would sit between them.
I have another little present for you,
he said.
In case you are thinking about where all of this is heading, you need to know one thing. You will never be going back to where you came from. I will tell you the reason why. It no longer exists.
Oblivia looked straight at him.
His smile was victorious now, having conquered her indifference at last
. Simple! The place does not exist anymore. There is no time for places like that. So I did them a favour. I had the place closed down the day we left. Listen!
He tapped the phone, held it to his ear, and spoke.
Is everything ready?
His voice was cold with authority. A shiver ran up her back. Then he placed the phone to her ear. She listened. The countdown finished, and then, a male voice said,
Do it: Now!
She heard the explosions whistling through the receiver and vibrating down her fingers. She had to hold the rattling phone away from her ear, but even over the noise of the moving car, could hear the piercing sounds of everything that had flown to the sky. Warren's face had hardened. She had only seen men around the swamp using their physical powers to destroy. How could this man destroy something so enormous that contained her world? All she saw was a very fine looking man in the suit he had chosen for his wedding day. His thumb silenced the mobile and after taking a deep breath, he placed it back in the pocket of his jacket.
That was for you,
he said at last.
What is for me? That? What do you mean?
The words did not surface, but the sound of her voice rose through a bottleneck as though gasping for air.
They had not protected you. Nobody did. You know it is true or deep down in your heart you do, just like I know it. Their job was to protect you. That was the law.
He took her hand with the ring, and twisted it around her finger, and she saw a third bird, an owl, and she could not understand how she had missed seeing it before, but instantly, she felt calmer, emptied, as though nothing remained of herself which had been scattered far away.
So it's very simple. Really. Anyone would understand why places like that cannot exist. It is what the whole country was thinking â even if the Government was never prepared to do anything about it.
What will happen to them â those people?
He asked the question for her. She imagined the swans agitated and frightened by the panic of people being cleared out of their homes. Flying off. Their flight shifting in clear blue skies from the sound of the explosions, the black columns of smoke chasing them away. What would happen if they had continued swimming around the hull, confused, waiting for her to return? Did he destroy the swamp and the swamp-people too?
They had two choices. Either being moved into the nearest town where they would have to learn to live just like everyone else. Or, being returned to homelands where their real laws and government exist. There will be no Army looking after anybody anymore. Stupid idea in the first place. Intervention! Safer futures! Can't for the life of me see why stupid thinking like that has lasted a century.
What if they don't like it there? What if they go back?
Again, he felt the need to frame questions on her behalf, to explain his apocalyptic decision. She was still thinking about the swans and about what would happen to her, if she could go back, and if the swans were not living there anymore.
What if, what if? What does it matter to you, or us? They only have themselves to blame. But if you want to know: Everyone on earth is obliged to live a life without endangering somebody else's life. I work at trying to make people safe. Why do you think I went up there? I wanted to have a look. See what the place was like for myself. That was how I found out that I was right all along from the time when the old people told me about you. I had already known that you were to become my wife when I saw what had happened to you. I knew about the arrangement our families had made from a long time ago when I was a boy. You know, I could have closed them down a while back, but I just wanted to make sure, and I needed to go and collect you, and in any case, it was better to do it this way. You have a future ahead of you now. They were doing nothing to change things by themselves for the future so they had given up the right of sovereignty over their lives.
She only half listened, without having any idea of what he was talking about. His boring words went in one ear and straight out the other.
Bloody sell out!
There were two others in the car. The old woman. Old Harbour Master. Both sitting in the front seat with the driver. They were discussing this matter too.
Who does he think he is? God! Where did he learn about bombing people's homes? Where does he think he is? A war zone. In Afghanistan? That old war! How long has that been going on for? Does he still think he is in Europe or America? Doesn't he know this is Australia? Who gives him the right to decide on other people's sovereignty?
The old woman was saying how her bones would be blown up now, and she would have to go and find them,
Let me get out of this car
, then she disappeared.
The girl looked at the passing buildings â the black and grey concrete statues lining the footpaths. She could feel the cold dampness coming off each building as they drove on. It was the same feeling of fear she had had from the abandoned dogs savagely sniffing through the sedge grasses while circling the swamp, huddling the black-feathered chaos until the water was red and putrid from the smell of rotting flesh and wet feathers. Inside
a small pocket of bravery hiding in the crevices of her brain, she imagined herself being united with the swan ghosts flying away from the massacre. It was the only way she could wish herself out of this place. The brolgas would just leave naturally and rejoin the masses further east â back in Warren's country â and dust off their old rookeries.
What about the genies?
Haphazardly, she held up three fingers to his face, and waved her other hand around, and blew mouthfuls of air.
There are no genies. Genies don't exist. The things you see here are what exist. Nothing else. Trust me and I will show you everything you need to know.
Oblivia winced at Warren's denial, and stared at her three fingers while slamming them into her other hand.
Where are they then?
I told you they have been moved to town.
The owls? All the eggs we counted? Those men?
Very casually he lent over and covered her face with his. The Harbour Master raised his eyebrows and spat in disgust,
A kiss to seal a dream with
â¦
Look! Girl! He's got lips like Nat King Cole.
She started to disbelieve herself. Her memory was unreliable. Why would she have travelled over salt lakes? She had beaten the odds. Had not been left to die in the bush. She lived in this city with a rich man. The wedding seemed like a daydream. The red-headed family were just ghosts of people from storybooks that she thought of meeting one day.
She remembered Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions once saying that no story was worth telling if no one could remember the lesson in it. These were stories that have made no difference to anyone. Old Aunty was fading away forever. Butâ¦even true stories have to be invented sometimes to be remembered. Ah! The truth was always forgotten. She was in a car with a stranger.
Gypsy Swans
I
n amongst grey city buildings as solemn as each other, and at the end of silence, they reached a laneway of old and rundown buildings, to stop in front of what Warren Finch called his home.
He called it The People's Palace.
The first thing Oblivia noticed about the building was the iron bars lacing the windows and the single door of the shopfront. The building was a cage. It reached up to the sky like a giant finger that had come out of the ground to orchestrate the heavens. Cold winds flew down the street with sheets of rain. The building frightened her. Would she be locked inside its guts? Like the women locked in the guts of Country?
In the grinding rain there were many poor people in shapeless brolga-grey coats milling around the laneway, who stared sideways through the limp wet hair falling down over their faces. Some held out their hands for money, but then withdrew them quickly, and passed by without raising their heads. Underneath their hair, some stared at her from the corner of their eyes. Theirs was a primeval kind of surveillance, like wild dogs. She pretended not to notice how wet the people were who slept against walls, some standing, and others lying under pieces of cardboard while styrofoam and
plastic rolled over them in the wind. They lay on the concrete sideways with an ear to the ground, as if trying to hear the stories that lay underneath. Oblivia did not understand then that what they were really listening for was the hint of another tidal surge flooding in the sewers below the city. Harbour Master looked around, then bent down and put his own ear to the concrete footpath and said Warren Finch's home was a piece of shit. These people threw venom from their souls at him. A woman walked by with a pink towel wrapped around her nostrils and mouth, and stared at the bride.
The air is bad here girlie,
she muffled.
They stood in the rain as Warren unlocked the cumbersome gate and the heavy green door with apparent ease, giving the impression that he knew the building well
. Welcome to my home,
he said.
Is this a shop?
she thought, picking up the voice of Dean Martin singing along with the Harbour Master,
Well! It's lonesome in this old townâ¦I am going back to Houston, Houston, Houston.
No, this is not a shop. It is a place.
That was all he said.
They stepped inside a lantern-lit world of water gardens and concrete ponds from which rose enormous antique fountains, while overhead roaming in mist, were large and colourful puppets of birds, dragons and people with wings that swayed from long strings attached somewhere in the ceiling. In this idyll of constant movement, jets of water spouted in the air from wrought iron or brass horns carried by larger than life cupids, giant maidens and young men, or spurted out of the beaks of enormous swans and geese, and from lotus flowers, or from the mouths of frogs and dragons. Whenever the water reached its zenith, it loosely and noisily fell into a
Klangfarbenmelodie
of music, dropping into the multitude of shallow ponds, from where it was sucked into pipes, then spouted back up into the air again, taking with it Dean Martin's song of what it was like to be going home, to
Houston
â¦
In this crowded space, where eyes swung hocus-pocused through the kaleidoscopically fantastic creation, there was even more drama unfolding, with statues of ancient Greek men and women watching on with faces of wondrous serenity over ibis, eagles, the imagined animals of fairytales, and giant lions with heavy manes that lay on the floor with heads upright, staring into the distance. Wherever there was space not taken up by the human ability to marvel in its imagination, ropey plants, palms, aloes drooping and stringy battled to survive in the atmosphere of wetness and dimness, by stretching half-starved stems towards whatever light came through the windows.
There were cats asleep on pedestals, mantlepieces, steps and shelves, and any place free from being sprayed by mist. The cats watched Warren Finch with yellow eyes as he led the way. A brighter light came on from somewhere above, and when the girl looked up, she saw a break in the clouds passing over the glass dome roof. He led her to a wire cage that belonged to another century. It surrounded the elevator that he explained was a masterpiece of engineering.
A bloody marvel that still works perfectly even after practically two-and-a-half centuries,
he claimed.
It must have been the pride of the city when it was first built.
He pressed the dirt-and-grease-coated brass button that shone on the mark where fingers had been pressing it forever.
Bloody impressive!
She saw him quiver momentarily, while they waited for what did seem like forever, for the lift to come. It slowly descended, whining with pain, until suddenly falling the last metre with a thud. A manlike creature like those she had just seen on the street outside, pushed open the concertina door, and said very slowly:
Hello, Mr Flinch. You're back.
Hello Machine. How have you been? Pretty good? Meet the Missus.
He did not mention her name.
The man grunted and said that he had nothing to complain about. He looked at Oblivia with old dog-type eyes for a split
second, and then continued looking at the floor. By the time the lift had struggled several floors up to the top of the building, he had managed to say
Hello, Mrs Finch.
The fountain garden far below was bathed in yellow lights that reflected off the water, but looking down made her feel dizzy. Beside the lift were several flights of dimly lit steps. In the darkness, Warren placed a key into a door with the number 59 barely visible, screwed onto it. Inside, he switched on the lights and walked through the rooms.