Whole Wild World (14 page)

For horse and jockey, boys paired up and practised in the playground. If you were lucky to be in the same colour house as your best mate the choice was easy. It was sensible to choose a boy in the same weight range. The event was over 100 yards (the metric system had not yet steamrolled its way into school athletics). One person carried the other to the halfway point, then the roles were reversed. Kevin and I broke the mould; he was skinny, powerful and fast, while I was tall, strong and quick for my size. Keeping up with the field, Kevin lugged me to the changeover, my long legs only just clearing the ground. Given Kevin weighed a bit more than a wet footy jumper, I lifted him high like a camel jockey on the hump, and galloped to the finish line at virtually my normal running pace.

Our victories were as emphatic as they were improbable. The on-course bookies down the hill would have been slaughtered, the stewards examining our lunch boxes. We went on to the district championship for two dozen schools, run by the Josephite nuns. Kevin and I got to the final on a day when we were competing in multiple events. I just couldn't catch the kids whose formula was simple: sprint. Built like greyhounds with lightning speed, they were hungrier for victory.

Jane was the athletics champion girl and the subject of my first news feature article. (I even clipped a
Sun-Herald
picture of Olympic track star Raelene Boyle, captioning it: J. Clarke, to go with the story.) It was a puff piece looking for affection from the
subject. We could choose any form for composition, and the best one would be read to the class. It was the easiest piece of writing I'd ever done, oozing the clichés of the sporting press of which I was already a devotee.

Every afternoon I'd get home half an hour before Sam, eat a bag of chicken chips or cheese Twisties, then lie on the couch and read the newspaper from back to front, maybe do a word puzzle, before getting out of uniform and hitting the street for games. Homework was always done in a flurry after dinner, while watching TV. Sam was the same, going through the motions in his books while completely absorbing the magic of television.

One winter day I got home from school and Tata wasn't at work. A telegram had arrived from Croatia: Baba Luca had died. Mama asked me to be quiet as Tata was in the lounge-room. He was sitting in the dark, cold room wearing a suit, clutching a pair of rosary beads, and crying. I'd never seen him like that; it was as shocking as it was comforting. Tata gave me a hug, squeezing the air out of me like a pool toy. He stayed home from work the next day, too. After dinner, a stream of relatives arrived, mainly adults on a school night. Tata hadn't seen his mother since he'd escaped: twenty years. Baba was the last grandparent, the only one I had a connection to. The thread to Croatia was frayed a bit more.

For a long time, Mama and Teta wore black clothing out of respect. Teta worked and only wore black to Mass and to visit relatives. But Mama wore it exclusively for at least a year. I associated black with widowed grandmothers at Croatian Mass. Black didn't suit my mother's age or personality, but it was our custom. It looked especially incongruous on women in their twenties.

Mama had an evening ritual where she would light a flame
in the kitchen to honour the dead. She'd fill a decorative glass with water and pour in a thin layer of olive oil; on top she'd float a flat cork with a wick in it. It was lit to commemorate the day a person close to her had died. She knew all the dates for dozens of people, so many that it was odd when a flame wasn't burning in our kitchen at night.

‘Who are you lighting that for?'

‘It's for my brother Leo. He died on this day when he was eleven, just like Šime is now.'

‘What did he die from?'

‘His lungs got sick and he never got better.'

‘When did he die?'

‘The thirty-third year.'

That's how she said 1933. Forty years. Prehistoric. Even the war seemed an eon ago.

But not for my parents. They had nostalgia for youth interrupted, and a way of village life they yearned for. There was a solemnity to these losses, which were carried deep inside. The grieving, and something else I couldn't name but was as real as life itself, held them back from the world around them. It also held them back from me, because I didn't know this part of them. With my limited Croatian I was running out of words to prise open their hearts.

The questions piled up. Milenka carried the flame of memory for Leo and Boris and Janko and Jakica and Milica and Marija and Bartolomeo and others buried in faraway places. The baby girl lost, who Mama said was my big sister, would always live inside her. Mama's first child was miscarried after a fall on public transport.

To many people, my quiet mother lived in the shadow of her gregarious husband. Tata lit up a room with one-liners, often at Mama's expense. It seemed mean to me at times. But even though she'd heard every joke and ditty, she laughed more than
anyone in earshot, happy tears, biting on the medallion of her gold necklace to compose herself.

By contrast, Milenka's forte was the epic story, frequently a scandal or adventure tale about the old country, told in a hush-low voice, different to her standard high pitch. She spoke about her smuggling career and the misery of being a conscripted worker – ‘I never volunteered!' – in the construction of Tito's Brotherhood and Unity Highway, where she was injured and forever after battled leg ulcers. When she told these, and more recent, stories, there was the pleasing, slow rhythm of repetition and inverted syntax for maximum effect: hot, hot, my God, how hot it was. Brush strokes of detail: plump, perspiring, a priest. There were long stretches of well-paced narrative, unexpected turns and twists. Digressions: that's the village where Black Maria comes from. A climax: pregnant. She'd pause, deepen eye contact, nod without speaking, touch your arm constantly to make sure you were following the tale: twins. But there was more, a new chapter, wait till you hear what happened before the birth. Gone.

By age nine, I'd already had more formal education than Mama, but that didn't count for much in the oral tradition. Milenka had mastered the art of telling true stories because she had paid attention or lived them. Because of her, this is what I know. First, listen and listen well. Second, notice things. Third, total recall is respect. Last, but not least, know the listener and leave them with a taste for more.

The Lukins told each other stories in their hideout caves during the war. They spoke constantly as they rowed across the green water to the ‘Foša' in Zadar's old town. While working in the fields at Crno, they took
marenda
, a no-frills brunch, and gossiped. Milenka embodied family history and genealogy. In time, she was the one left carrying the load, the glorious and agonising past tugging her back.

7

Year Five blues

Jean Emmanuel Castagnet was a rotund, bowling ball of a man in a rumpled dark suit. On the verge of sixty, his best teaching years were behind him. He was slow to anger and even slower to get lessons underway, but quick on his feet. I've seen him scurry across Canterbury Road at peak hour, a jerky heel-first movement impossible to mimic; he had the slyness of a jewel thief and a schoolboy's lust for mischief. Mr Castagnet brutalised and coddled the thirty-five boys in 5 Blue (surnames A to H), the wildest class in a boisterous school.

St John's College Lakemba was run by the De La Salle Brothers, a Catholic order founded by John Baptist de La Salle, patron saint of teachers. It had six grades: fifth and sixth class in primary, and forms one, two, three and four. Each grade had three classes, Gold, Red and Blue, the school's colours. Our totem was an eagle; our master the bald, flightless Mr Castagnet.

On our first morning at St John's, Sir did the rollcall, running through the names in alphabetical order in a hefty Mauritian accent, like a border official in a French-speaking colony. First, Bates John, which Sir changed to a mellifluous Jean. We had a Louis and Louie, a John-Claude, several Johns and two Giovannis, which all gave the francophone obvious pleasure, before hitting a mogul at Doosavick Tom. Steadying himself, it was a slalom run through the Es, Fs and Gs before hitting the end of the roll at Hogan Craig.

We soon began calling each other in this reverse form: ‘Hey, Fraser Paul. Have you seen Castagnet Emmanuel?'

Most of the boys were new to me. St John's was fed by six parish schools, with a few outliers from the district. We sat two to a wooden desk, on a bench seat, with a cavity underneath the desktop to hold books; flip-top desks would be our inheritance in higher grades. I sat with my neighbourhood mate, arty Carlo, one of half a dozen boys from St Joseph's in my class.

Just before recess we got a surprise visit from Brother Gregory, the primary school principal. He was Sam's teacher in 6 Gold the year before and the consensus was scary ‘Egor', from the middle part of his name, was severe with the leather strap. Mr Castagnet wilted before Egor, his head downcast, eyes averting contact.

‘Litt-le boys will lis-ten when I speak,' Egor said, stressing every syllable. ‘An-y-one here do-ing the wrong thing will be sent to see me.'

The room was deathly silent as Egor, squinty eyes behind spectacles, laid down the law. Then he was gone, without so much as a good luck or happy motoring. Due to his stealth entrance and rude exit I got the impression Egor could materialise at will, like one of the ghost group villains in the
Phantom Agents
, the modern-day ninjas on TV.

I'd brought my cricket bat to school and at recess we started a game among the Belmore boys. After every ball bowled a new kid would seek my permission to play, as if I were the owner of cricket. What a weird idea. Soon the game grew beyond anyone's control, as there was no reason to deny anyone a go. I'd soon put names to faces, gathering many new mates in a short time.

We'd done no work that day as Mr Castagnet was buried in paperwork that involved the racing form guide. As soon as we came into class after lunch he asked the boys sitting next to the windows to roll down the wooden blinds. He locked the door and turned on the TV on top of a cupboard near the blackboard.
I thought we would be watching a current affairs show on Channel Two, the way we identified the ABC then. But he switched it to Channel Seven.

‘Who likes boxing?' he asked, searching our baby faces for affirmation. ‘Muhammad Ali?'

Sir had tuned into the broadcast of the heavyweight fight between Ali and Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden in New York, a non-title rematch after ‘the Fight of the Century' in 1971. We sat still, at first, and watched intently, as Sir described the action.

‘That's a jab. Watch Ali's feet. He's dancing. Ali has him by the neck. Frazier's getting tired. Ooooohhhh! Great right.'

Mr Castagnet was immersed in the fight. As the rounds ticked by, we drifted to the front for a better view. There was jostling, cheap slaps and elbows, but Sir was oblivious. The bout was more like a wrestling match as Ali kept Frazier in a clinch for long stretches. Ali won on points and Sir was thrilled.

‘Too smart, too fast.'

There was half an hour to go in the school day. Was this what St John's was going to be like for the next six years?

‘You can start your homework if you like.'

‘But you haven't given us any, Sir,' said Peter, sitting closest to him, the kid busting to be first in line no matter the occasion.

‘Okay, do the first three exercises in the maths textbook.'

Groan.

The walk home from Lakemba took half an hour. In late January the heat was stifling, but at least we weren't carrying many books. Sam took us via a cornershop oasis. I tried to keep money in reserve to buy a Paddle Pop ice-cream, often two. As the heat settled in over coming weeks, Carlo and Frank were spared the trudge home, wasting hard currency on a bus whose journey was ludicrously serpentine in the opposite direction, towards Roselands Shopping Centre, and then to Belmore. For company
I once caught the bus, but its worth was lost on me. I used bus money for a post-school treat instead and still ended up getting home before those
mammas
' boys.