Cairo (6 page)

Occasionally I found myself standing, rag in hand, stunned to discover myself on the verge of a life I had so often dreamed of.
Surely
, I would be thinking,
surely this has to go wrong somehow?
It was all too easy. I half expected to hear one of my sisters (Meredith, most likely) slopping up the stairwell with her overstuffed suitcase.
I've left Bill and decided to move in here
, she would announce in this awful fantasy.
Have you got any biscuits?
The thought made me shudder and prompted me to peek — quite irrationally — out the door every so often. Perhaps I should change the locks?

It was while I was organising the kitchen that I found a set of keys on a hook beside the doorway. I recognised them at once and laughed with delight. The blue Mercedes. Of course. I had completely forgotten Aunt Helen's old car.

I dashed downstairs and located it parked in a side street. I must have walked past it earlier on my way to the supermarket without noticing. A hubcap was missing, and it was covered in bird droppings and dry leaves. The left side mirror was cracked. Otherwise, it looked undamaged. I unlocked the driver's side door and sat inside. The interior smelled of sun-baked leather.

The steering wheel was hot under my palms and moulded to the grip of my fingers. Inside the glovebox was a mess of registration
papers, pencils, a crumpled soft packet of Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes and a bottle of dried-up Liquid Paper.

When I used to visit her, Aunt Helen drove me around in this beautiful vehicle: once, to the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne for scones and tea; and sometimes to St Kilda Beach, where she would paddle in the shallows with her dress tucked into her underwear as I flung myself about clumsily in the gentle waters of Port Phillip Bay. Even as a boy I was aware of the car's special qualities, and a trip in it was always accompanied by a degree of fuss and pomp. Helen was a reckless driver who cruised through red lights, cut off cyclists and generally behaved like a dignitary who owned the road — all without the car suffering a scratch. ‘The Krauts know how to make a car,' she would say warmly as (gimlet-eyed, chin tilted upwards) she careered front-first into a parking spot with absolute precision.

Sitting in the red leather driver's seat, I was once again overcome by my good fortune, even as it was tempered by the knowledge the car had come to me as a result of Helen's death. I tried the ignition and, miraculously, the car started. The Krauts certainly did know how to make a car.

I wound down my window and leaned back with my left arm flung over the passenger-side seat. I was wary of driving in city traffic, but for now it was good enough to sit in the fabulous car, dreaming of the places I could go. I imagined escorting girls around with the radio on, elbow on the window ledge, a cigarette between my fingers.

While adjusting the rear-vision mirror, I saw in its rectangular frame the figures of Max Cheever and the other man I had seen that morning in his apartment. They were walking on the opposite side of the street at a rapid clip, engaged in intense debate.

Max was gesticulating wildly, tossing his head to throw his hair from his eyes. His companion was very tall, extremely
thin and wore a suit in defiance of the summer heat. He walked with his torso tilted forwards at the waist, as if so accustomed to accommodating the lesser height of most people that it had become an established part of his demeanour. Even at that distance, what struck me most about him were his eyes, which were of a pale, almost luminous, blue. The pair of them resembled charismatic aliens, both dangerous and alluring. Although it was unlikely they would see me sitting in the car, I instinctively slouched down in my seat as they drew closer. Still talking, they crossed the road in front of me and walked around the corner into Nicholson Street without noticing me.

I had never smoked a great deal, but I dislodged a cigarette from the packet I'd found, located a book of matches on the floor and lit up. The tobacco was stale; I had to force myself to enjoy it. I crouched there for a long time, thinking and smoking. I was deeply, fatally intrigued by them.

*

As fascinated as I was by Max Cheever and his friend, I had at that time much more pressing matters to address. My envelope of eight hundred dollars (by then stashed in a biscuit tin on top of the fridge) would not last me very long, certainly no longer than two or three months at the most. I wasn't paying any rent but I needed to buy new clothes, and the Mercedes needed some attention. In short, I needed a job. It was a daunting prospect. There was not much I knew how to do except wait on tables in a country cafe, but my former employer, Eddie, had written me a glowing reference.

With this reference tucked in my shirt pocket, I spent the afternoon walking the streets of Fitzroy, asking for work at a number of local establishments: the Great Northern Hotel, the Colonial Inn.

Eventually I entered a gloomy French restaurant called Monet, on Nicholson Street. It was three o'clock in the afternoon. The chef was a portly, moustachioed man named Marcel, who I later learned was Swiss. He was sitting at the rear of the empty restaurant with his maitre d', an effete Frenchman in a black suit whom he introduced as Claude. Both of them were smoking — Marcel a cigarette, Claude a pipe. Marcel read my reference, pursed his lips and took me out the back to the kitchen, where he showed me the industrial dishwasher and gave me a rundown of the hours. I was hired, with a trial shift scheduled for the upcoming weekend.

I retired to bed early but woke disoriented in the middle of the night. The anaemic glow from the streetlight through the peppercorn tree cast a shadow of restless leaves on my bedroom wall. I was wide awake, too excited to sleep.

Without bothering to turn on the lights I groped my way to the kitchen, where I poured myself a glass of water. The liquid was cool and refreshing. I drank and refilled my glass. My fridge whirred like an outmoded but determined robot. Having slaked my thirst, I was preparing to return to bed when I heard murmuring and footsteps drawing closer along the walkway outside my apartment. As the voices became clearer, I discerned they belonged to Max Cheever and his friend. They were obviously drunk, unaware of how loud they were talking.

‘I mean it's not the bloody
Girl with a Pearl Earring
,' Max was saying in his toffy voice. ‘We don't need Gertrude to equal Rembrandt, do we?'

‘Vermeer,' said the other man.

‘What?'

‘Vermeer painted the
Girl with a Pearl Earring
, not Rembrandt.'

They stopped directly outside my door. As if compelled by an invisible force, I stepped into my hallway to listen. Through the porthole window in my front door, I could see the silhouettes of
their heads bobbing around. They were no further than a metre away, and I felt a thrill not only at the illicit act of eavesdropping, but also at my proximity to them.

‘No,' Max said. ‘I don't think so.'

‘I bet you one hundred dollars.'

‘You're on. But who can we ask to be our referee? Who would know such a thing?'

‘Gertrude.'

‘Well, she can't be. She's on your side.'

‘But she's the expert.'

‘What about Anna Donatella? Let's ring her up when we get in.'

‘Look, Max. I'm telling you. It was Vermeer. Everyone knows this.'

One of them belched.

‘Bloody kebab,' Max said in a drunken whisper. ‘Anyway, back to our girl. Back to old Dora.'

‘Oh God. Dora. Yes.'

‘This has fallen into our laps. Tamsin says it would be a cinch.'

‘The art student.' His companion snorted.

‘Yeah, OK. Maybe not a cinch, but she says they don't have any special security or anything. But listen, Edward. The thing is …' Another burp, followed by a groan of discomfort or disgust. ‘Think about it. For what we could get for her, it could be so simple.'

‘That's easy for you to say, Max. You don't have to deal with, you know …'

‘I'm aware of that. Believe me, I am.'

‘This isn't just some old Norman Lindsay painting of ladies with big tits sitting in a river. This is the towering genius of the century.'

There was the strike of a match and the dry crackle of a cigarette. I smelled smoke as I pressed my ear to the wooden door.

‘I'll deal with them,' Max continued. ‘I promise. Imagine that much money. This could be the making of us.'

‘Or the unmaking.'

They started to wander away, and their conversation dissolved into an urgent sibilance of whispers, from which I could only make out fading words or phrases. ‘Millions … Only one risk … A real crime not to seize this opportunity …'

I stood in the hallway until I heard a door slamming shut. Then just the wind through the leaves of the peppercorn tree. When I was confident they had gone inside, I opened my front door and peered out into the warm, jasmine-scented night. No one. A possum scurried along the railing, stopping to glare at me before going on its way. I closed the door and returned to my bedroom, where I sat on my bed, thinking about what I had overheard.

After ten minutes or so, I turned on the light and pulled out my yellowing copy of
The Story of Art
. I located the entry for the
Girl with a Pearl Earring
. Sure enough, Max was wrong — it was Vermeer who had painted it. I admired the colour reproduction, enraptured by its unearthly charm: her smooth face and eyes; those parted lips; that earring.

I switched off the lamp, lay back in bed and closed my eyes.

ABOUT A WEEK LATER, AFTER BREAKFAST, I CLOSED THE DOOR
on my cool haven and made my way along the walkway with some herb seedlings, a tin watering can, a sack of potting mix and a trowel I'd found in a bathroom cupboard. I was intending to rejuvenate Helen's plant tubs on the rooftop with some fresh herbs.

Even at 8.30 a.m. I recognised the pensive, almost post-nuclear hum of a Melbourne midsummer morning. Some people dislike Melbourne in summer — and there's no doubt it can be a difficult season, with its gritty northern winds, abrupt mood changes and wilting public gardens — but for me it has always been the most wonderful part of the year, and on that morning the heart in my chest swelled, a balloon of pure joy. I was seventeen years old, alone in the city, the world at my doorstep. Innocence, I have since discovered, is a condition to be both relished and feared.

The rooftop was a concrete expanse, edged by a railing, measuring ten metres by twenty metres or so and, in accordance with the overall design of the block, in the shape of a deep U. It was littered with a number of cracked and dried-out garden pots, deckchairs and the detritus of numerous parties — grubby streamers, bottle tops, butts and empty bottles. Although still
partly shaded, in an hour or two it would became unbearably hot up there.

To my surprise, I spied Max Cheever sitting in a tattered canvas deckchair on the far side. Although he was already in the shadow cast by the peppercorn tree, he sat in the richer shade of a large, rose-red beach umbrella jammed into a hollow pole possibly intended in the past to support some sort of structure, an awning perhaps. In front of him, his slender back to me, sat his friend Edward. Each of them held in one hand a fan of playing cards. On a rickety coffee table between them lay disordered piles of playing cards.

Max was talking in a wry, fluting voice: ‘But, Edward, for God's sake, democracy has run its course. There's absolutely no reason why it should be the default position, any more than any other form of government. Take a look around the city one day. Better still, catch a tram in the morning with the peak-hour crowd and you'll see precisely what I mean. Those people are not only
allowed to vote
but are required by law to do so. And yet half of them have never even heard of — I don't know — Charles Dickens. All they care about is the hedge of their suburban house and Allan Border's batting average. They're reading novels by Jackie Collins. They think Rambo is a great guy. And you think
they
should be deciding who is in charge of the country? No. I'm sorry, but no siree. We need a better system, a sort of … aristocracy, if you wish. A benign dictatorship. The mouth-breathers cannot be trusted to know what's best for them. I wouldn't trust most of them to look after my
dog.'

After delivering this tirade, Max lounged back in the low-slung chair with his right foot — sporting a blue espadrille — jiggling upon his left knee. He was wearing a white open-necked shirt, cream trousers and a frayed straw boater; the overall impression was of a scene transplanted from the 1920s.

Although a pair of sunglasses obscured Max's eyes, I was aware
of his gaze sliding over to me, registering my presence and flicking back to the cards in his hand. These movements took no longer than a second, but I felt I had been, blatantly, appraised, found wanting and disregarded as unworthy of any acknowledgement whatsoever. He showed no sign of remembering me from the morning I dropped off the letter at his apartment. With eyes still fixed on his cards, he reached down beside his chair, picked up a teacup with a floral design from its saucer, and took a sip before replacing it.

‘It's your turn, you know,' he said to his friend.

Feeling exposed as I stood on the rooftop in the opulent sheen of the morning sun, trowel in one hand and bag of potting mixture in the other, I hesitated. A trickle of sweat zigzagged across my ribcage. It was excruciating, akin perhaps to forgetting one's lines in the glare of the footlights. So thrown was I by the presence of Max and Edward that I forgot why I had come up to the rooftop in the first place. A tram ground past on Nicholson Street behind me, dinging its bell.

I have always viewed most human beings with the mixture of fear and puzzlement that I believe most people view lions, say, or other wild animals: they are mysterious creatures, sure of themselves and their place on the planet. I, on the other hand, have never been confident of anything and lurch from age to age, always hopeful that each new decade might bring me the knowledge of how to be in the world. It has taken me a lifetime to understand that most individuals are beset by similar insecurities, but it is now too late to use this to my advantage.