Whole Wild World (10 page)

‘What am I supposed to do with this?'

‘People are coming to visit us, it won't go to waste,' says Mama, who is thrilled by the return of the prodigal pair.

She's anticipating the multitude that will come to collect letters and gifts sent from relatives.

I had been banking on a watch for my Communion. The accompanying sense of entitlement I have built, brick by bloody brick, is a monument to behold. Teta is feeling around a stack of her underwear and pulls out two rectangular black boxes.

‘We bought them in Singapore for you and Šime. Pick which one you'd like,' says Teta, always happiest, and at her best, giving presents. The watches are as different as Milenka and Danica: one is open-faced, classic, uncomplicated; the other is smaller, nervy, with a third hand busily counting the seconds – that's the one I choose.

A big change has greeted the rovers. While they were overseas we moved house – back to Chalmers Street, after almost six years away. The rundown house next door has become a block of flats. I can't believe the size of our yard. We have a cricket pitch, with a long bowler's run up the side of the house. The yard is five pitches wide, maybe seven, if you count the area where the giant palms reside; it is play-ready for soccer, footy, even Aussie Rules if we pull out the five-foot wooden stakes supporting tomato plants in the garden to use as goal posts. The tomato stakes will also double as javelins in our backyard Olympics, coming to you in 1972.

I had a week's start on Sam to check out the possibilities. The workshop, musty and dark, is an Aladdin's cave of hardware. On one of the workbenches is a wooden cross that appears to be some sort of steering wheel, which can be turned but is too stiff to be spun around. You can pretend to have a kid on the rack, like in the movies, or that it's the captain's wheel on a pirate ship.

The shed is cool on a hot day. Tiny holes in the corrugated- iron roof make pinpoint shafts of light, turning dust motes into graceful swirls. It's a fair way from the house; the reward of mucking around in peace exceeds the risk of injury or being bitten by a spider. For one kid, Chalmers Street is like a posh estate; for two boys with ample time, it is an empire. The only downside is an outside dunny, particularly on cold nights, and the attendant indignity of the piss pot that will be under Sam's bed for years until Tata adds plumbing to his do-it-yourself skillset.

Sam and I are finally sharing a bedroom. There's a spare sunroom-cum-kitchenette and another bedroom, which will soon be rented out to a young couple – a Slovenian man and a Croatian woman, the reverse of Ineska and me, engaged to be married. Joza is a cool dude with a moustache, who drives a two-door Ford Escort. Zorica is olive-skinned with fuzzy dark hair. She wears a lot of make-up. Both are especially kind to me and respectful to my parents. The place is big enough for the seven of us to coexist in splendour, given the house is only where I eat and sleep. Joza and Zorica work during the day and at weekends spend most of their time out with friends.

I've been chosen to do one of the readings for the Communion Mass on a Saturday morning. The teachers have taken me through it a few times in class. On the day, the boys wear black winter shorts, white shirts and school ties. I'm showing off my new watch. The Italian girls are mini-brides with veils, while the Australian girls are in a variety of prim white dresses. Tata has a Saturday shift at Kellogg's and won't be at the Mass. I'd been looking forward to this day for two years, ever since Sam entered the big league for Catholics.

The reading goes without a hitch. When our turn comes to take Communion, we kneel at a rail at the front of the altar. Taking the Host for the first time is a moment of awe and reverence, as close to transcendence as I'd come in seven years. I
keep a serious face all the way back to the pew and kneel down to pray. I don't look around at other kids or anyone else in the church. This is my time with God.

Still, to put things in perspective, the highlight of the day for me is the morning tea for communicants, held in the double- sized kindergarten classroom. All the footy boys get a photo taken together. We munch on classic party food, including chocolate crackles, which Mama and Teta can never master. There is something from every one of the twelve basic lolly groups. We each get a bottle of soft drink, which due to runaway inflation and speculators will rise to seven cents or even eight cents a bottle during the Whitlam years.

Our families are on the landing, watching us play and eat. I was once an onlooker. On the outside, separated by windows, unable to hear the joy in the room, but trying to lipread the buzz from the animated faces. Now I am inside. Being watched in this way makes the day more special. Hey little kid, this is how you eat a party pie with sauce in one go!

In a week the magic will wear off when I try to take the Host for the first time at St Anthony's, the Croatian church. When I approach the priest at the altar he demands my credentials: ‘Have you made your Communion?'

He thinks I'm an interloper. The Mass seems like it's come to a halt. I'm destroyed. My face burns, feeling the eyes of the congregation upon me. I can't speak for a moment, so I simply nod.

‘Have you made your Communion?' he asks again.

‘Amen,' I reply.

Wrong answer. Illegitimate.

He serves Communion to the person next to me. It's over. I'll never be able to do this again, I tell myself, as I go back to my seat, kneel, bow my head, and fake-pray for a couple of minutes. I curse this haughty priest and his ridiculous toupee.

5

Smoking gun

It's the day of the 1971 rugby league Grand Final between South Sydney and St George. We have visitors, an odd thing at midday on a Saturday. Our uncle Dado, George, his eleven-year-old nephew and our cousin, and Rudi, a man from Tata's village, have popped in. Rudi is a grinning, good-time guy with wild curly hair. I suspect – I know actually – that he likes a drink. George, who lives in Marrickville, is mad for the South Sydney Rabbitohs, an excitement that rubs off on all of us. On a whim, Dado and Rudi decide to take George and Sam to the Grand Final. No tickets, no worries, freestyle. I beg my parents to let me go.

Dado gives me a wink and a nod. Get changed. I put on my new watch.

‘Just ask me if you need to know the time,' I tell the men and boys, showing off my prize.

Even when they don't ask, I'll ape the free-call service I've discovered in the red telephone booth near our house. ‘At the third stroke it will be eleven fifty-three and thirty seconds. Beep. Beep. Beep.'

On the walk to Belmore station we saw a car painted red and white, the colours of the Dragons, who represent St George, the district next to ours. Who would change the duco of a car for one game? Another uncle, Zvonko, Blanka and Maza's dad, is a Saints man and he puts streamers on his Holden on Grand Final days.

This is the first time I'm standing in the train on the way to the city. Near the doors, too, which is thrilling. I know we are closing in on Central when we pass certain factories and the houses get smaller. You can see right into people's backyards. As we pass through St Peters, Erskineville and Redfern, the home of Souths, I see slums filled with junk. Graffiti covers fences and walls, with slogans demanding ‘Free' such and such, names that don't register.

George and Sam have not stopped talking about the players. Our cousin's favourite player is Souths' five-eighth Dennis Pittard; he becomes the number 6 when we play footy with him. I like Eric Simms, the fullback who kicks goals. Sam is keen on Ron Coote and Bobby McCarthy, lightning-fast back-rowers.

At Central I usually feel queasy. The stench in this part of the city knocks my insides about. Out of habit, I cover my nose and mouth to keep the smell at bay. But today the brewery is not pumping out the awful gas that rests over this part of town, like foam on a beer. The day already feels like a gift, an unplanned adventure. George knows where to get the bus to the Sydney Cricket Ground.

There aren't as many people around at the bus stop. Maybe we're late? Lucky I've got a watch: almost 2.45. We hop on a green double-decker. The conductor is not selling tickets, a fare holiday, so we run up the stairs to secure front seats on the top deck and the best view. The streets are steep, near deserted, but the bus moves slowly. Hurry up. Outside the SCG, there are few people, except for hot-dog and program sellers. The game has started. Men offer Dado and Rudi tickets but they shake their heads.

‘Aren't we going in?' I ask the boys. ‘Where do we get the tickets?'

There are no general admission tickets left. The plan is to wait until half-time, when the gates are opened to all-comers. I fret.

‘How do we know they'll let us in then? It's the Grand Final?'

George explains it's just a basic rule of life, which only older boys can understand. I look at my watch to work out when it's half-time, although I have no idea how long a half of footy is. George says forty minutes. I settle on 4 pm as the point to panic.

A tight crowd of men and boys has formed in front of an ABC broadcasting van that is as big as a demountable classroom. The game is showing on a small monitor, but we are so far back it's impossible to make out the action. Given neither side is the home team the cheering inside the SCG is about even.

Finally, a roar: Simms has kicked a field goal. A field goal? Isn't that a last-gasp play to break a deadlock? And then a siren, like an approaching ambulance. Souths are leading 1–0 at half-time. It's like a soccer match. We turn, caught in a surge towards the gates.

‘Just in case we lose you, we'll meet right here,' says Dado.

In an instant we're inside the SCG. The Grand Final. But there's nowhere to sit. Dado and Rudi disappear while the three of us try to get a glimpse of the field. It's a whirl of jerseys, scarves and banners, the Rabbitohs' green and red and the Dragons' red and white. Streamers have clogged walkways. The noise bashes your head in, like being under a passing train at Belmore Park. When field action incites the crowd, the sound is so loud even private thoughts are battered.

George finds a place for us to watch in the Brewongle Stand, on stairs right in the thick of the Dragons' den. I can only see goalposts, backs, shoulders and heads. It's only when people move that I see the grass. Yet for me, the body language of a nearby fat, middle-aged Saints fan, encased in footy buttons and a rosette, reveals the drama of the game. There must be fights on the field because he's punching the air and screaming at the referee.

Because I can't see the game, I give up, but not in a sulk. Progress. I begin watching faces in the crowd; people don't notice
me watching them because their eyes are on the play. Souths score, our supporters cheer. The plump Saints man gets up from his seat, all the time now, shaking a red wooden dragon on a stick with streamers attached to it. Saints score two tries and make the conversions. The wooden dragon has no time to rest. I find Sam and George.

‘What's the score?'

Souths are leading 11–10 with only minutes to go. Squeezing in with the boys behind a railing, I see the field. Souths have the ball. Coote makes a break, turns the ball inside. McCarthy is in the clear. Go Bobby! He's running for his life, like Frank Sinatra in a war movie, except there's only one German giving chase. McCarthy scores under the posts. Simms makes it 16–10. We can't lose. A siren. The ambulance is coming for the Dragons.

The teams swap jerseys. Souths players will carry off the field captain Johnny Sattler, who broke his jaw early in last year's Grand Final and kept playing, and The Little Master, coach Clive Churchill. We'll see it all on TV that night.

George says we have to leave immediately to find Dado and Rudi. The men are waiting for us at a ticket booth. Dado has a shy smile, while Rudi's eyes are bloodshot. With mostly Saints fans outside, and in a hurry, we start singing ‘Glory, Glory to South Sydney'. An old lady tells us to shut up. It might be in jest. I can't yet read these things. We run to the buses, throwing passes with scrunched up streamers.

It's dark when we get home. We stay up late to watch Rex ‘The Moose' Mossop's
Club Show
on Channel Seven, with its tuxedoed lounge singers and lame magicians. Some of the Rabbitohs' stars are guests on the show. There are highlights from the game, as well as greyhound races live from Wentworth Park.

Glory, glory, four premierships in five years. South Sydney marches on. I'll be fifty the next time the Bunnies win the comp.

Our tenant Joza smokes Peter Stuyvesants. Zorica wasn't a smoker but every now and then she'd light one up, take a few drags and pass it to him. When Zorica took a drag, she closed her eyes as if in prayer, lost in a moment of quiet and calm. I can't deny it: there was something sexy about the passage from a woman's lips to a man's. It's the best ad for cigarettes I've seen.

I'm in. I've studied smokers for a while – on TV and in social situations – and know all the moves. My smoke stash from Croatia is long gone. Some were offered to visitors but most have been extinguished in ‘research' and ‘testing'. I have dissected many, trying to understand how they are made. As well, there have been lame attempts at lighting cigarettes and actually smoking. They taste awful – I must be doing something wrong.