The Mascot Read online

  I decided to take matters into my own hands. I called a travel agent and booked a flight for the following evening to Melbourne. My research trip to Tokyo would have to wait.

  My father was waiting for me in the arrivals terminal at Melbourne airport. We were both bleary-eyed—me from the journey, which had taken nearly twenty-four hours, and my father from having to rise so early to meet my 5:00 a.m. flight. But he bore no other sign of surprise at my unexpected arrival. I suspected that he knew why I was there.

  I hadn’t seen my father in just over three weeks, since his brief visit to Oxford. I felt very strange to be in his actual physical presence, self-conscious and even a little ashamed, as if my arrival was a demand for access to his secrets. But I also felt that what had transpired in Oxford and London had been a tentative invitation to be his companion. To the out sider my father may have seemed emotionally intense—paradoxically making him appear gruff rather than sensitive at times—but I had gotten used to it. He did want to express his emotions, but they seemed trapped. He said, “What are you doing here, son?” then stretched out his hand to shake mine while I opened my arms to embrace him, bungling our greeting.

  “What are you doing?” my father exclaimed, attempting to smooth over the awkwardness. “Trying to push me over or something?”

  With that, he grabbed my luggage and headed for the parking lot, with me following behind, benumbed and disoriented. It took me several moments to notice the familiar scent of the pungent eucalyptus trees, the dawn chorus of birds—kookaburras, rosellas, wild parrots, the slightly ungainly pink and gray galahs that often thumped into trees for no reason—and the vast high Australian sky. I gave an involuntary shiver.

  We drove home in silence. Somehow the incident on the subway in London had become the lodestone of our relationship, and until it was mentioned we wouldn’t have much to say to each other.

  I rolled down the window and stared out at the passing landscape of sprawling suburbs, built when the Australian dream—the triple-fronted brick house nestled on a quarter-acre plot—was in full bloom. The “brick veneers,” as they were called, dominated either side of the freeway. Even as a child I knew I didn’t ever want to live in one, though I had envied their atmosphere of proper Englishness. They all seemed so quiet and ordered compared to the chaos of my own arid childhood suburb, Altona, in the west. Altona was in essence a vast, open volcanic plain, full of dry scrub and tiger snakes, on which were dotted little pockets of newly built homes, some still incomplete, with dry, weedy gardens. When I was growing up, the roads were largely unpaved and the sewage was not yet connected, so the inhabitants would have to wait for the “dunny man” who came weekly to change over the smelly metal toilet tanks.

  Altona was the site of the city’s petroleum industry and had been named after the German Altona, a sister oil town in Germany. The town surrounding the industrial complexes had been built to support the factories.

  As we drove, my father drew my attention to some new buildings under construction. “Melbourne’s really coming on, isn’t it?” he said, obviously searching for a neutral topic. I didn’t respond but instead gazed at his profile, which was reflected next to me in the passenger window. I saw him turn his head briefly in my direction before facing the road again.

  As he turned into the main artery leading into Altona and then into a smaller road that took us directly to our street, a familiar sight came into view—the oil refinery complex, with its spidery web of pipes rising high into the sky. A single flame burned continuously from the top of a slender pipe at its upper end and cast a thin glow over the houses that otherwise lay in the refinery’s shadow.

  When I was a child, this flame had always comforted me—like an Olympic torch or the eternal candle on a church altar—sending me off to sleep, safe in the knowledge that it was giving off its protective light. Sometimes, when I awoke during the night, I would raise my blinds and peer out of the window, just to make sure that it was still burning.

  At the other end of our street lay the abattoirs, whose smell of freshly slaughtered carcasses added to the acidic taste of petroleum that regularly coated the inside of our mouths. Always upwind of our neighborhood, the stench would blow down and settle over the street by midmorning. Sometimes it was so bad you would have to cover your mouth and nose with a handkerchief.

  We turned into the driveway and came to a stop. My mother was already standing on the front porch.

  “Go and say hello to Mum,” my father said, unlocking the trunk of the car. “I’ll look after your bags.”

  “You didn’t feel well enough to come to the airport, Mum?” I asked as I kissed her.

  “Sorry, luv,” was all my mother replied. She was not averse to complaining about her various aches and pains—her Irish stock was not a sturdy one—but now her stoic response made me think that something more serious may have been affecting her.

  The house was full of familiar smells.

  “I’ve got your breakfast on,” she called across to me from the stove. “A full Aussie fry-up. How many snags do you want?”

  “Two sausages are fine, Mum,” I answered.

  “Oh, you call them sausages now, do you?” she said, teasing me. “That’s your posh Oxford way of talking, is it?”

  I sat down at the kitchen table. After my father had taken my luggage through to my old bedroom at the back of the house, he joined us. He poured himself some coffee and sat down opposite me, pretending to immerse himself in the morning paper. My mother served me my breakfast and sat down beside me.

  Just as she sat, my father rose, gulping down the remains of his coffee.

  “Well,” he announced gruffly. “Some of us have work to do. I’ll be in the workshop if you need me.”

  “Workshop?” my mother snorted, winking at me conspiratorially. “Is that what you call it? It’s a junk heap. He hasn’t tidied it since the day we moved here in 1963.”

  He pretended not to have heard her and turned his back on us. “He’s never gonna do it!” she silently mouthed across the table, shaking her head in a gesture of mock disgust. I laughed, suddenly pleased to be home.

  A short while later, I took my breakfast dishes over to the sink where my mother was standing. I came up next to her, gazing with her into the backyard. We could see my father tinkering in his workshop, an old ramshackle garage that was literally falling down around him.

  She began to wash my breakfast dishes. “It’s a bit of a surprise,” she said, “you coming home like this.”

  My mother expressed herself in her typical low-key fashion, but I felt her eyes intently examining me for clues.

  I tried to shrug her off. “Things are a bit slow moving in Tokyo. My research won’t begin for some time yet,” I said, being deliberately vague. “Thought I’d come and see how me old mum and dad are.”

  My mother laughed lightly before her expression became serious. “Just as well you did,” she murmured, looking down into the sink.

  I shot my mother a questioning look, which she must have sensed.

  “It’s your father,” she said. “I can’t explain it at all. He’s been in a strange mood the last few weeks. Ever since he went to see an old friend in Sydney.”

  “Any idea why?” I asked. I hated lying to my mother like this.

  She shook her head. “He’s not said a word. In fact, it almost seems like he doesn’t want me here. He doesn’t want to do anything, not even go out on Sundays.” Sunday had always been their day together.

  “Perhaps he’ll talk to me,” I said. “After all, I’ve come halfway across the world to visit.”

  My mother stopped what she was doing and seemed to reflect on my answer for some moments before responding.

  “Give him time, luv,” she said in a way that conveyed the modest wisdom I always associated with her. “In good time we’ll learn what this is all about.” Then she changed the subject. “You must be wrecked,” she said. “Why don’t you have a nap?”

  When I awoke it
was just before lunchtime. I lay on the bed staring at the ceiling. Everything was just as I had left it years earlier, when I had left home for the first time. I sensed that my mother had never given up hope that I would return permanently, and on every visit home she would always ask me at least once, “Do you ever think you’ll come back home to live?”

  I usually took this line of questioning as her test of my attachment to family life with them, but I wondered now if instead it betrayed a fear of being left alone with an unknown quantity. My mother was a highly intuitive woman—she knew something was wrong.

  A light tap on the door roused me from my thoughts. My father poked his head in. “Lunch, son,” he said and went away again.

  I was acutely conscious of the fact that my father had avoided me all day. I wondered how I was going to broach the topic when he seemed so determined to remain silent.

  Almost a week had passed since my return to Melbourne, and during that time my father and I had resumed the bizarre pas de deux of our time together in Oxford and London. But this time the dynamics of our choreography had subtly altered. He still set its terms, but now that we were under the same roof he could escape only as far as his workshop, and he couldn’t stay there forever.

  In the meantime, I spent my time catching up with my brothers, aunts, and old friends. Everybody was surprised by my unexpected visit, but I would just shrug in response to their probing. It was as if a bomb had been dropped into the midst of my family that had yet to explode. Only I knew about it, but couldn’t warn them.

  Pulling into the driveway late one night toward the end of my first week home, I noticed a faint light coming from the kitchen of the dark house. I let myself in quietly. I could hear my mother snoring gently along with her radio in the front bedroom. I was tiptoeing across the living room toward the kitchen to get a glass of water when I heard my father’s nervous cough. I opened the door a fraction to see what he was up to.

  My father was seated at the kitchen table. His reading glasses were perched on the end of his nose, and his head was bent down over his case. He was rummaging through it with the lid wide open, but from where I was standing I couldn’t get a clear view of its contents.

  For several moments I stood at the door, but he must have sensed my presence. He turned abruptly and caught me hovering there. He snapped the case shut and laid his arms across its lid protectively.

  For a moment I was offended. It was as if I were an enemy threatening to intrude on his territory.

  “How long have you been there?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Only a moment,” I replied.

  He chose to accept my response, though I sensed that he suspected otherwise. “I didn’t hear you come in,” he said.

  I walked over to the sink and poured myself a glass of water. “What are you still doing up at this hour?” I asked. “It’s nearly one in the morning.”

  “Can’t sleep,” he said wearily.

  I sat down opposite him.

  “You’re in late tonight,” he said. He set his case casually on the floor next to him, trying to make it as inconspicuous as possible.

  “What were you looking for just now?” I asked, nodding in the direction of the case on the floor.

  My father stretched his arms above his head, feigning nonchalance as if the case were of little significance to him.

  “Nothing,” he answered casually, but his nervous cough betrayed him.

  “Nothing?” I said evenly. “Always the same thing. Nothing!”

  My father looked at me with sharp, appraising interest, but he didn’t say a word. I was too tired to pursue a game of cat and mouse at this hour. I rose and walked over to the sink to deposit my empty glass. My back was still to him when I heard him mumble something. I turned around and saw that he had again brought his case to the table and was opening its lid.

  “Sorry, Dad, I missed that,” I said, approaching him as he began to rummage in the case.

  “My identity paper,” he said, looking up briefly.

  “What do you want them for at this hour?” I asked.

  He shrugged and unfolded the yellowing paper. “Uldis Kurzemnieks,” he read.

  “Don’t forget—Alex Kurzem,” I added.

  He gave a bitter laugh. “I’ve got more names than most people, but I don’t know my real name.”

  I nodded my head grimly. I decided to grasp the opportunity. “But you know who you were at least—a little pigherd boy,” I said, suspecting since his outburst in London that this was not likely the case.

  My father shook his head. “Not at all, son,” he said. “Not at all.”

  “Tell me, Dad,” I prodded gently.

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin,” he said.

  “Start anywhere,” I almost pleaded. “I promised you in London that I would help you find out the significance of those words. But I need more to go on.”

  He looked up from the identity paper he still held in his hand. His face suddenly looked drawn. “But they are only pieces…” he said.

  “Don’t worry, Dad,” I urged him.

  “It was terrible.” My father paused reflectively and then began in earnest. “It started during the night. We were in the kitchen. I was playing on the floor with my little brother. I can see my mother now. She was sitting quietly in the candlelight, watching us with a worried, shell-shocked look on her face. She was nursing my baby sister. Suddenly the door flew open and two soldiers stormed in, shouting crazily. They had truncheons. They began smashing up the place. My mother didn’t make a sound, but my brother screamed. She must have been quick-witted because somehow she scooped us all up in her arms and dashed to a stool and sat down. She pushed my brother under her skirt and then I saw her thrust the baby under there as well. She tried to cover me with what was left of her skirt but there wasn’t much space. Then things went quiet. They must have stopped smashing up the place. From where I was I heard the soldiers’ footsteps coming closer and felt my mother freeze. I heard this thudding sound and every time I heard it, I felt my mother’s body shake. They must have been hitting her over and over with their truncheons. She took all the blows. I just gripped the two little ones tightly, praying that they wouldn’t make a sound.

  “I must have blocked the rest out because the next thing I remember it was quiet again. Not a single sound. The soldiers had gone.

  “At first I was too scared to come out. I just waited there, holding my brother and sister and gripping my mother’s leg. Then I heard my mother whimpering softly.

  “Slowly I put my head out from underneath her skirt. I put my head in her lap and gripped her tightly around her waist. I felt something strange on my forehead. It was wet. It ran down my cheek and trickled onto my lips. It was warm but I had no idea what it was.

  “Then my mother moved. She got up from the stool, and I saw that her face was covered in blood. Then I understood what the sweet taste in my mouth had been. My mother’s blood. I had tasted my mother’s blood. But she seemed oblivious to her injury. The little ones were now screaming in fear and panic, and she took them both in her arms and tried to calm them. She began to sing to them.

  “Suddenly I heard screams coming from our neighbors’ homes and I ran to the door to see what was going on. But my mother called to me to stop and close the door. I tried to, but the door had been half torn from its hinges by the soldiers. I remember that rain was pouring in through the doorway and the wind was bitter.”

  I was struggling to grasp what my father was describing, but I didn’t dare interrupt him.

  “Later that night I was sitting in the kitchen alone. I remember looking at my feet swinging backward and forward. My mother was in the next room—just a small space divided off by a curtain—still singing to my little brother and baby sister. Try as she might, she couldn’t calm them after what had happened; they hadn’t eaten all day and were hungry. I remember that empty feeling, too, like rats gnawing at your insides.”

  “When did this happen to you?
” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” my father replied. “I guess I was about five, possibly going on six.”

  “What year did this happen, then?”

  My father shook his head.

  “Do you remember what time of the year?”

  “Autumn? Perhaps it was early autumn. I have this vivid memory of leaves all over the ground.

  “Finally,” my father continued, “my brother and sister must have gone to sleep. I must have dozed off as well, right where I was, in the kitchen chair. When I opened my eyes, my mother was sitting opposite me in the dark. She was very quiet. I could only see her silhouette, but I felt her looking at me. She beckoned me over gently. She pulled me onto her lap, hugging me. She stroked my hair, over and over. I remember the rhythm of it, her fingers moving gently. Then she said, ‘We are all going to die tomorrow.’”

  My father fell silent. A moment or two later, he raised his eyes toward me, looking mystified.

  “You know,” he said slowly, “my mother called me by my name, she must have done so, but, for the life of me, I can’t remember it. I can hear her voice speaking to me but I just can’t hear my name.”

  “Do you remember any names at all? What about your family name?” I asked.

  My father shook his head despondently.

  “Your brother or sister, what about them?”

  “No names. Nothing at all.”

  “How old were they?”

  “They were younger than me. My little brother was just beginning to walk—he would toddle about. My sister was still a baby in my mother’s arms.” My father paused and a slight smile crossed his lips at the memory.

  “My mother told me that I was the head of the house because my father had gone…”

  “Where was your father?”

  “He was dead.”

  “How did he die?”

  “I don’t know. My mother told me one day that he was dead. That’s all I remember. I just have this vague impression of him not being there.”

  “When was this?”

  “I’m not sure.”