Something in the World Called Love Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Something

  in the

  World

  Called

  Love

  Sue Saliba lives on Phillip Island in Victoria with

  her husband, her two cats, Minou and Charbon,

  and her dog, Sally. She has previously published

  the young adult novel Watching Seagulls, and the

  children’s book The Skin of a Star, as well as short

  stories and poetry. something in the world

  called love is her second novel.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Sue Saliba

  Something

  in the

  World

  Called

  Love

  For Bruno

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (Australia)

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Group (Canada)

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  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2008

  Text copyright © Sue Saliba, 2008

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  penguin.com.au

  ISBN: 978-1-74228-235-0

  Autumn

  it’s true, there’s something in the world called love.

  esma felt it when she moved into the house with the blue stairs and the broken balcony, carlton gardens opposite so she could see all the way to the sky.

  there was kara beside her, behind the wall, and simon below with his room that looked out to the road, two roads actually so you had a choice as you were leaving or arriving, which way to take,

  or not.

  but anyway, esma at the beginning saw only one way. she’d arrived via the blue clothes peg kara had spied in her hair the day of the house interview. blue and plastic and chipped at the base, although kara couldn’t see the chip because it was lost inside the thinness of esma’s hair which she’d dyed black to hide her blondeness.

  ‘i like your hairclip,’ kara said, and esma, raising her hand to her back, to kara’s voice, laughed. she was on her way out over concrete and past the iron spikes that made the front fence, a garden of branches in her eyes.

  ‘i like your hairclip. you can have the room if you give me your hairclip.’

  and so it was, esma moved in a week later minus her hairclip. she’d posted it to kara as a kind of bond: a promise or maybe an acknowledgment of what was to come.

  it was the blue peg she’d found amongst the debris of her mother’s yard. she’d found it on an april day between the plastic wire and the hated geranium bush. you had to hate that geranium bush, for it attracted all kinds of moths and bees, beasts with wings that pushed through air and landed on a coloured petal to take away all its redness or worse.

  ‘why does it attract all those ugly things?’ her mother wanted to know, and esma should have known because esma was always knowing, or thinking. or at least thinking she should be knowing, that was it.

  and that was where she came to join kara, in that ambition of knowing.

  so that even at the beginning, esma saw kara’s perfect fingers around a painted tea cup and knew there was something that joined them.

  ‘we clean the kitchens on tuesdays,’ kara said. it was the house interview. ‘we keep a book for extra expenses and a tally for phone calls made.’

  and esma was grateful right then because she knew she’d come to the right place, a place to learn and become.

  since she was in need of becoming, and determined too. eighteen years of living had not yet made her wise or full or unscared, or beautiful of all the things she was meant to be beautiful of,

  and kara offered the key. kara with her dark dark hair and her tiny wrists, her labels for everything that stopped it spilling out everywhere.

  the day esma moved in she arrived with a blond boy, david. he carried her boxes up those blue stairs to her new room, dim and vacant and smaller than she’d remembered it from the day of her interview, dizzy as she’d been from kara’s words on that thursday afternoon. ‘my room is next to yours and simon’s is downstairs, although you’ll never see him.’ esma walked behind david, who sat beside her in night school where they studied thai together. he’d picked up her five boxes and two garbage bags from her mother’s garage in footscray and brought them all the way to carlton. innocent, expecting, he lay the last load on her bedroom floor.

  she should have thanked him, it was true. thanked him in the way he wanted, but she was tentative and cautious and ushered him out onto the road, fearful that she might be discovered and deemed unsuitable after all if seen by kara with david, stumbling, stupid, born in bundoora and altogether wrong.

  since it was essential to be nothing but right if esma was to become and belong in that ivy-covered house in starling street,

  filled with kara and her books and her dark dark hair and her history of boys and knowing, and her teenage loves that esma was sure were true and solid, unlike her own fictions made of wishing and fear.

  there she was at sixteen kissing the back of the toilet door, silent, alone on a saturday night except for her mother in the other room who watched parkinson loud on the green settee. esma, her mother, her brother’s shadow and the memory of her sister, now gone to the other end of the world. esma would step up in darkness and sometimes in light to declare love to the back of the toilet door. ‘i love you,’ she’d say, not even imagining it was rehearsal. ‘i love you,’ and she’d close her eyes and kiss brendan, andrew, steve or craig, who all responded alike with the kind of passion she expected every boy would when she came to know him later, but of course never did.

  so kara’s romantic superiority was a certainty and it was no surprise to see the boots of a man at her bedroom door. esma, having just abandoned david in the street below, crept into her room, new but stale from previous lives: a broken clothes hanger in the corner, someone’s torn fingernail on the windowsill, a magic crystal the colour of urine left tied to the mantelpiece. she investigated the creaking floor and, sure enough, it would prove impossible to be silent.

  kara, on the other side of the bedroom wall, moved very quietly, only loud enough for esma to hear the creak of a mattress, the shifting of perfect sheets, a man’s breath caught inside the walls. and esma forced herself to focus on her own room, pushing faith to overcome reality. the huge crack in the ceiling would not open with the rain, t
he black stain growing up the wall could not possibly be mould, the bolted window frame would not stop her flinging open the window on the next perfect autumn day that came along.

  and then she saw the fireplace and there was no need to apply imagination at all. how beautiful with its broken bricks and simple grate, its charcoal mess that she couldn’t help but reach out to. there was something consoling and even exciting in the fact that all this blackness had once been alight, full and bright, burning. she pressed her hands into it and brought the ashes to her face. she’d sniff them and bring them back to life, mix breath with substance, after with before, deadness with the wishing of a young, hopeful girl and surely that would have to mean life, wouldn’t it?

  and then a knock at the door returned her to the frame of herself.

  ‘esma.’

  she clambered to her feet.

  ‘esma, do you want…?’

  she opened the door and there was kara. beside her, a man. shaved head, booted feet, looking down at her with eyes of ice.

  ‘maurice, this is the new housemate, esma. esma, do you want me to show you your space in the kitchen?’ and as esma followed kara downstairs, kara said, ‘i have five minutes. maurice and i have to be at his exhibition at six. it’s his first this year and it’s really important. a critic from le monde will be there. the french will love his work once they hear about it. he’s very much a conceptual artist, not truly appreciated here in australia.’

  they arrived at the kitchen.

  ‘so this is your food cupboard, esma. the one in the middle. the lock doesn’t work but try to keep it closed somehow so no one knocks their head on it. and here’s the fridge. it’s divided into three. you can have the bottom shelf but be sure to wipe it regularly because the fridge drips quite a bit.’

  and kara in her slinky red dress and black lace stockings hurried to join maurice at the front door, but not before she stopped very still and said, ‘what’s that on your face?’ and esma, lifting her hand to her cheek, remembered fire but did not object when kara said, ‘oh, it’s dirt,’ and hurried away.

  alone in the kitchen, esma was not surprised to realise she was bloodless, for she was often like that, lost and vacant, all the blood running somewhere else when she was in the presence of someone,

  especially someone like kara.

  someone who offered her a way out of herself, or more frighteningly, a way in.

  for although kara was ordered and exact, she was also something else.

  and esma will come to experience that something else, that part of kara that will make her feel connected and special – that will give her flight.

  long mornings and late into the night kara and esma will sit at the kitchen table, or talk in the bedroom doorway or on the balcony. they’ll speak of love, of their families and, of course, of loss. kara will bring each topic to the surface bit by bit, but the first one, love, will come soaring out of her the day maurice in the black boots leaves her life. that’s how she’ll put it: ‘he’s left my life.’

  esma will be wiping milk stains from the polished sink when kara enters the kitchen, tears in her eyes. ‘where’s maurice?’ esma will say. it will be four weeks since she first met the silent artist in her bedroom doorway. ‘he’s left my life,’ kara will say. and esma will scrub harder but make sure she looks away so she won’t catch herself inside the shiny steel.

  ‘sometimes love isn’t enough, esma,’ kara will say. it will be the first time she’s spoken to esma in such a way, and she’ll continue: ‘i don’t know if anyone else could understand that, but i sense you can. you seem perceptive, esma, and wise. i feel i can talk to you and that you’ll understand.’

  and esma will say that she could easily stay home for the morning, just to be with kara in the house, to keep her company. it’s only a philosophy lecture she’ll be missing and it’s easy to catch up on that.

  ‘that’s really kind of you,’ kara will say and look to the floor before she continues, ‘that would be great actually. i don’t have any classes until this afternoon.’ and she’ll wipe her eyes and smile and say, ‘let’s go to the gardens. we could take morning tea over there.’

  so kara and esma will sit side by side in the gardens, eating the perfect croissants kara has toasted and buttered and eventually holding hands amongst the shadows of the trees. and in the quiet esma will wonder at the leaves and branches and sky and grass, how they all fit together in different ways depending on how you look at them. a whole world of shifting relations and forces that made you think you could re-make the world any way you liked.

  and re-making was something kara became intent on. three days after maurice had left her life she stared down at the empty guitar case leaning in the hall. ‘i can’t stand this situation any longer,’ she said. ‘i want this to be a home.’ and esma, beside her, saw the labels and stickers, the airline tags to other cities that remained stuck to simon’s case.

  he was rarely there, just as kara had said on that day of the interview. ‘his room is downstairs although you’ll never see him.’ he was busy – ‘too busy for us,’ kara would say later – between playing gigs in smoky hotels and studying law and rehearsing with the other boys in the band who happened to live down the road and volunteering for the local maltese community centre where his parents were regarded as upright and shining citizens, he was too busy for anything else. especially a girlfriend. ‘imagine being with someone like that,’ kara would say.

  and she spoke again of making their house a home. ‘we could have a weekly house dinner,’ she said. ‘that would make everyone feel a greater sense of… of belonging, of feeling comfortable with each other.’

  and esma remembered the one dinner they’d had together so far. simon arriving late, kara having weighed, measured and chopped broccoli, beans and tofu an hour earlier. esma having bought the most expensive chocolate ice-cream she could find, but having forgotten that it needed to have soy instead of cow’s milk. still, after the initial awkwardness, things had settled down, even moved along almost light-heartedly at points. until simon – with sudden abandon and enthusiasm – had brought out his photos. ‘so this is the beautiful malta,’ kara said, edging closer to simon to see the pictures of his latest trip back to visit his grandparents.

  ‘the water looks gorgeous,’ she said. ‘and who’s that with you? is that one of your cousins?’

  ‘no, that’s carmen. a friend.’

  ‘oh, does she work in your grandfather’s shop?’

  ‘no. she lives in new york. she was just visiting. she left malta when she was fourteen to study art in new york. she’s incredibly talented.’

  there was silence, then, for a moment, before simon pushed a spoonful of rice into his mouth and said how great it tasted. ‘how’d you make this rice, kara?’

  ‘i boiled it,’ she said. and he went on to talk about how the band would be playing at the esplanade next saturday night and how they were studying the ethics of ownership in law and how he was thinking of writing a song about ill-fated love. and kara swallowed small mouthfuls and stared at a tiny spot on the table beside her plate.

  it brought some meaning to the recent influx of letters from new york. esma hadn’t noticed them but kara had seen the postmarks as she’d deposited simon’s mail at his bedroom door. she’d joked that there must have been a deal in the offing and the band was about to make it huge in the big apple. ‘he’s such a dag,’ kara said. ‘imagine simon as a rock star.’

  but at their house dinner, kara hadn’t been joking and everything was quiet, subdued.

  ‘i’ve got to finish that essay on pessoa,’ esma suddenly said and excused herself from the table.

  ‘which one of your personas will write the conclusion?’ simon said, since he loved the strange portuguese poet with his numerous invented identities almost as much as esma did. it was something they’d discovered, esma and simon, in the few moments they’d spent together. that, and the fact that they both shared a passion for the gardens oppo
site, and rain against the kitchen window. and hope.

  ‘it’s the most necessary thing,’ simon had said one morning as they’d stared at a picture in the newspaper. a mother waiting by a hospital bed for her unconscious son to wake four months after a car crash had sent him to sleep.

  ‘i think so too,’ esma said.

  and it was this that led her to embrace kara’s words.

  ‘i want this to be a home,’ kara said again, and esma felt something unspiral inside her, since she had always desired and dreamed of home but never been able to know it.

  on a windless thursday afternoon, sun shut out from carlton gardens, she remembered her childhood and wrote in her diary:

  ‘mother lay beneath the eiderdown summer and winter with the blinds closed hard. jen collected her coins and knowledge to take her to another place. ross edgar swore he’d never grow to be like our father, and he never did. father left across the red dirt and never came back, only sometimes.’

  she thought of her mum and dad and her brother and sister, she being the youngest and prone to hiding in boxes and crying over the neglected guinea pigs or the dehydrated turtle or the birds that hit glass and never woke to fly again.

  esma should have learnt to grow up like jen elizabeth – who became a scientist and went to study icicles at the other end of the earth – or ross edgar – who saved every dollar he earnt and put it into places where it earnt more, until it earnt enough to make him cross that line to happiness and be free ever after.

  but esma hadn’t taken those ways. maybe because she couldn’t see them at the time, or maybe because she didn’t believe in them. for that was something she knew from a very young age – you could never really do something if you didn’t believe in it.

  her father, who had taught her that, lived penniless and happy between red earth and blue sky, sheep brushing at his knees. ‘you and me are the same, esma,’ he’d say when he returned from the shearing sheds. ‘you can’t fight nature, you know.’

  but that was exactly it. esma of the blonde hair gone black, and her mother’s body starved to bone, was determined to fight nature, to turn the world upside down until she found an inconspicuous place in it, a place in which to be safe,