Heritage (40 page)

Which didn't alter the power of its seduction, Klaus thought as he watched one of the professional dancers expertly guide an apparent newcomer around the floor. It was Elizabeta, a working girl who'd accompanied him home on many an occasion, and she gave him a wave over the man's shoulder. She was an exotic-looking creature, but then they all were, with their heavy eye makeup and their lithe dancers' bodies. And they bore themselves with a sexual arrogance, confident in their ridiculously high-heeled shoes, their strong shapely legs exposed in skirts split to the thigh.

Klaus returned the wave, and Elizabeta smiled before twirling her back to him. Her partner, inept in a sea of expertise, was startled by the speed of the movement but enjoying the feel of her groin against his.

She was doing more than guiding the man in the tango, Klaus thought, she was making love to him on the dance floor, and he was reminded of his own first experience in a tango hall. How could a dance be so erotic and yet legal, he'd wondered, and he'd been convinced that the girl was deliberately arousing him, seeking an offer. But when he'd tried to negotiate a transaction, she'd very icily put him in his place.

‘I am a dancer,
señor
,' she'd said with contempt, and she'd walked away.

He'd learned to tango after that, quickly and well. It had come easily to him – he was a natural athlete, balanced and light on his feet. And he'd learned to distinguish which of the girls might be available for other activities. He would not make the same mistake twice, he'd decided – he would not have a dance hall woman look at him with contempt. He'd also learned the correct approach. He treated the dancers as if that's what they were, dancers and not prostitutes – it was the way they liked it. And word got around that he was a generous man, one who treated women well. He rarely made a wrong judgement these days, and even if he did, he caused no offence.

‘I cannot go home with you,
señor
, I am married,' a dancer might say, ‘but Annita, she likes you very much.'

To Klaus, they were all whores.

Ten minutes later, Elizabeta joined him. Close up, she was even more exotic than she'd appeared on the dance floor, her dark hair pulled back tight, highlighting her impressive cheekbones. The kohl-rimmed eyes, the blood-red silk rose behind one ear and the velvet choker about her throat created a highly theatrical effect, as was the intention. But candlelight was kind. Klaus, who had seen her in harsher lighting, knew that she was showing her age. At thirty, Elizabeta was the oldest of the dancers employed at Oswaldo's and her days were numbered.

He poured her a glass of ‘champagne' from the bottle that sat in its ice-bucket on the table. The management did not mind if the dancers sat with the customers, so long as the customers were generous with the ‘champagne'. Klaus looked around for the man with whom Elizabeta had been dancing, surprised that she had not joined him at his table, but she answered the question before he could ask it.

‘He does not like champagne,' she said with a disdainful shrug. It meant that the man did not know the rules. The girls received a bonus for every bottle of ‘champagne' a customer bought them.

Elizabeta chatted and flirted with him as she drank the wine. When she had finished the glass, he poured her another, upon which she excused herself briefly.

‘I will be back in just one minute,' she promised, ‘you will dance with me, yes?'

‘Of course.'

She kissed him on the cheek and departed, glass in hand.

He watched, amused as she pretended to chat with one of the other girls beside a clump of palms, knowing that they were both surreptitiously tipping their wine into a pot plant. They all did it – it was amazing the plants continued to survive.

Upon her return, they danced to an excellent tango arrangement of ‘Perfidia', after which he poured her another glass of ‘champagne', which she took with her as she excused herself to visit the powder room, where Klaus knew she would pour her drink down the lavatory. It was all part of the game. Occasionally an irate customer would realise what was going on and make an accusation, to which the girl would respond with a fiery denial at the top of her voice and one of the bouncers would appear from nowhere to defend her. It was a humiliating experience for the customer, who either left in high dudgeon never to return, or learned that in the future he must abide by the rules.

Klaus ordered a second bottle of ‘champagne' and danced with a number of the other girls but, two bottles later, towards the end of the evening, he returned his attention to Elizabeta. There were no new girls on tonight, which was a pity, he would have liked to have tried a new girl, and a younger one at that, but of those available Elizabeta was the most exciting in bed, so she would have to do.

They took a taxi to La Recoleta, and it was three o'clock in the morning when they pulled up outside his apartment block. A converted nineteenth-century mansion in French-style architecture, it was a handsome building with balconies overlooking the elegant Avenida Alvear.

He led her through the side entrance and up the stairs to his apartment on the second floor, and as soon as he'd turned on the lights and closed the door behind them, he started to undress.

Elizabeta was disappointed. It was going to be another of ‘those' nights, another of the nights when he treated her like a whore. She didn't like him when he was like this. She was not a whore, she was a dancer, and the first several times he'd brought her to his apartment he'd treated her with respect. He'd played records on his gramophone and they'd danced, and he'd talked about the music. The Comedian Harmonists were his favourite recording artists he'd told her as they'd danced to a German rendition of ‘Amapola' which she'd found rather strange. ‘Amapola' was a Spanish song and she hadn't liked hearing it sung in German, but she'd nonetheless taken it as a good omen. ‘Amapola' had always been her own special favourite and she'd fantasised about the possible implications of such a coincidence. He was handsome and rich and a gentleman, and it was not the first time Elizabeta had entertained such fantasies.

There had been no mention of money, and as he'd said goodbye at the door, he'd slipped ‘a little present', as he called it, into her evening bag. She'd been equally gracious in her acceptance. ‘Thank you,' she'd said, ‘you are very kind,' and she hadn't even looked in her evening bag until she'd left the apartment. But out in the street, when she'd counted the notes, she'd found each time that he'd been most generous.

He was still generous in the amount that he gave her, but it was no longer a ‘present', it was a payment, and he no longer saw her to the door. These days he thrust the notes into her hand and Elizabeta had stopped deluding herself. He was just another man interested only in her body, but she wished he would treat her with a little more dignity.

She started undressing. Perhaps he wanted to make love right here in the lounge room; they'd done so before. They'd danced naked to ‘Amapola' that very first time, and she'd fantasised that the two of them belonged together, that she lived in this luxurious home, surrounded by antique furniture and works of art, and that this man was hers. And as they'd danced she'd straddled him, taking pride in the pleasure she offered, her unspoken assurance being that he would receive such pleasure nightly if she were his.

‘In the bedroom,' he said. Naked to the waist, he flung his shirt over a chair. ‘And don't turn the light on,' he added as he crossed to the gramophone which sat on the heavy oak dresser in the corner.

She obeyed, leaving the door open so that some light spilled through from the lounge room, and as she undressed and slipped naked between the sheets, she heard the music. The Comedian Harmonists again, but this time it was ‘Barcarole'. She wasn't sure what to expect. He'd played ‘Barcarole' once before as they'd made love and he'd behaved differently. ‘Love me, love me,' he'd said over and over, and she had. She'd made love to him fiercely, the way she knew he liked it. But he hadn't liked it that night. ‘No,' he'd said as she'd clawed his back and bucked like a wild mare. ‘Not that way! It wouldn't be that way!'

Elizabeta now lay in the gloom of the room, hearing ‘Barcarole' and wondering what it was that he wanted of her.

He stood naked in the doorway, silhouetted for a moment, then as he closed the door the room was plunged into darkness, ‘Barcarole' still clearly audible; he'd turned up the volume just to be sure.

He was fully aroused as he joined her in the bed, there was no need for foreplay, and she opened her thighs to him.

‘Love me, love me,' he whispered as he entered her.

She moaned. She would play it differently this time, she decided, and without moving her body, she undulated the muscles of her vagina, clenching and unclenching, caressing him, teasing him, locking him inside her, then releasing him only to suck him in deeper, and deeper.

‘Love me, love me,' he said over and over as the image of Ruth consumed him. This was right, he thought, this was the way it would have been if she had loved him.

For a year, Klaus had lost himself in the hot-blooded sexuality of the women he'd brought home from bars and clubs, but lately his fantasies of Ruth had returned. He'd tried to imagine it was Ruth he was making love to, but it had been impossible – Ruth would not respond in such a way. He'd played ‘Barcarole' on a number of occasions when he'd taken women to his bed, but their fierce Latin passion and their dark, dramatic looks, the very elements which had so attracted him, had been distracting when he'd thought of Ruth. Tonight it seemed Elizabeta was about to fulfil his fantasies.

‘Love me, love me,' he whispered. He was lost in her.

Elizabeta's own fantasies returned with a vengeance. He was hers, she could feel it, he was completely in her power, this was what he wanted. She wound her arms gently around him, stroking his back, feeling him quiver inside her. She moaned again as she drew him in deeper.

‘
Te amo
,' she whispered.

The spell was broken in an instant, and she knew it as he growled and thrust himself frantically into her the way he usually did.

The bitch, Klaus thought, why did she have to speak? She'd spoiled the final moment.

He was near ejaculation and Elizabeta obediently met his urgency, aware that her power had evaporated, wondering what she had done wrong.

He rolled away when it was over, silent, his back towards her.

‘Don't turn the light on,' he said finally. He didn't want to see her. Minutes ago she'd been golden-haired and blue-eyed and he wanted to relive the moment.

She'd made no attempt to leave, but she realised it was an order so she climbed out of the bed and opened the door to the lounge room, affording enough light to find her clothes.

‘There's money in my wallet on the table,' he said, staring at the wall, his back still to her, ‘take what you want.'

She longed to scream at him, but she didn't. ‘
Buenas noches
,' she said with dignity as she pinned the silk rose into her hair.

In the lounge room, she took from his wallet only the amount he would have given her; she could not afford to lose such a benefactor. But she did not like him. If he were not so generous with his presents, she would refuse to go home with him – he did not deserve her. It was no way to treat a professional dancer of the tango.

New Year's Eve was always a hectic time for Bob and Rita Duncan and Dodds Family Hotel, and the send-off for 1954 was promising to be no exception. It was barely nine o'clock and the dining room was packed, although most had finished eating. The lounge was crowded, as were the bars and the backroom which, officially, were ‘closed'. There was still a month to go before late-licensing became legal, but the Cooma cops tended to turn a blind eye on New Year's Eve. Indeed, big Merv Pritchard was firmly of the opinion that it was preferable men celebrate the New Year in pubs rather than at separate drunken parties all over town. ‘Easier to control things if they get out of hand,' he'd say.

So Cooma's constabulary was conspicuous in its absence as men spilled out into the street, beers in hand. Merv and his mates would avoid the necessity of booking those who bent the law this evening, but they'd be there within minutes at the first hint of trouble.

As yet there was none, and the pubs of Cooma were doing a roaring trade. None more so than Dodds, and it would get even busier as the final hours of 1954 ticked by. They would arrive in droves, and they would cram themselves into every nook and cranny and sing with gusto, while Rita Duncan would sacrifice finesse for volume as she pounded away at the piano.

For the moment, however, the air was one of expectation. Rita was not at the piano, the singing had not yet begun, and, despite the general din, conversation was possible.

In the dining room, Peggy Minchin was chatting to Maureen. Lucky, Pietro and Violet were seated with them, but they were paying little attention. Lucky had pulled his chair to one side and was in deep conversation with Rob Harvey and an American who were sitting at the next table, and Pietro and Violet were in a huddle with eyes for no-one but each other.

The two women had not previously been well acquainted, but they were enjoying each other's company. Peggy liked Maureen's forthright manner, and Maureen found Peggy an intelligent young woman with an enquiring mind, which was hardly surprising in a schoolteacher, she supposed. She was glad now that she'd allowed Violet to bully her into joining them.

‘It's New Year's Eve, Auntie Maureen,' Violet had said, ‘and I'm not leaving you at home on your own. You're coming to Dodds with me and Pietro.'

Maureen hadn't wanted to intrude upon the young couple. ‘Particularly under the circumstances,' she'd said. ‘And besides,' she'd added, ‘I never observe New Year's Eve. I'll be in bed by ten.'

‘You won't be intruding,' Violet had insisted. ‘We're not going to sit there all lovey-dovey. Crikey, it's
New Year's Eve.
It's a
party.
We're having dinner with Lucky and Peggy, and everyone'll be there. You're coming with us, I won't take no for an answer.'

‘Listen to you, Miss Bossy Boots,' Maureen had said, but she'd given in, and she was pleased that she had.

While the two women chatted, Pietro sat with his arm protectively about Violet.

‘Eh,' he called to a man who barged past, jostling Violet's chair on his way to the bar, ‘be careful.' But the man didn't hear, or if he did he paid no attention.

‘Oh Pietro, stop it,' Violet said with a smile. ‘I'm not made of glass, I won't break.' He'd been like this all day, ever since she'd told him about the baby.

Violet had been sure she was pregnant for the past several weeks and she'd longed to tell Pietro during their holiday in Sydney. But the doctor she'd seen at the hospital just before she left, a close friend of Maureen's, had said it would be another week before tests could prove conclusive, so she'd said nothing. She was thrilled now that she'd kept her secret. The fact that the positive results of her test had come through on the very morning of New Year's Eve was, to Violet, extraordinarily significant, and she'd relished the drama of the moment as she'd announced to her husband their impending parenthood.

‘Tomorrow is more than the beginning of a new year, Pietro,' she'd said, ‘it is the start of a whole new life for us.' The words had been an echo of any number of her favourite films, but they'd been apt and they'd come from the heart.

Pietro's response had been no less dramatic. He'd dropped to his knees and clasped her to him, his head resting as if in worship against her stomach. Violet had found it splendidly European. But since then, his behaviour had been quite foolish, she thought. On their way to Dodds he'd taken her arm every time they'd stepped off a kerb to cross the street – it was embarrassing.

‘You have to stop fussing, sweetie,' she said, as he glared at the receding back of the man who'd barged past.

‘I am sorry, Violetta,' he replied. ‘But I am worry, you know?'

‘Worried,' she automatically corrected. ‘Yes I know you are, but you mustn't be, it's silly. If you get worried because someone bumps my chair, we might as well go home right now. In a couple of hours this place'll be packed, there won't be room to move, and what'll you do then?'

‘Yes. Of course,' he agreed, but he looked about, his concern deepening.

Pietro's initial reaction when Violet had told him they were going to have a baby had been one of pure joy. But now that the news had sunk in, he was lost in awe. He, Pietro Toscanini, who had neither family nor any childhood memory of one, was going to be a father. He was going to have a family of his own. The prospect was overwhelming, and he longed to tell the world.

‘I am to be a father!' he would have liked to yell to all those within earshot, but Violet had sworn him to silence. No-one but Auntie Maureen must know, she said.

‘Not even Lucky?' he'd asked hopefully.

‘Not even Lucky,' she'd said, shaking her head. ‘Not until I've told Dad we're married.' Then she'd hastily added before he could interrupt, ‘And I'll go and see him soon, in the New Year, just like I said I would.' Pietro had been nagging her about her father as often as Auntie Maureen had. ‘After that,' she'd said as she'd kissed him, ‘after that you can tell the world, I promise.'

And so Pietro sat in the crowded pub, surrounded by his friends and workmates, bursting with his news and maintaining his silence. It was difficult, particularly with Lucky sitting right beside him.

‘We're off to the bar.' Lucky, Rob Harvey and the American stood, Lucky giving Peggy's hand a gentle squeeze as he excused himself from the table. ‘I won't be long,' he said.

It was an Aussie custom which, upon their arrival in the country, Europeans had found most strange. Australian men deserted their women at dances and pubs to gather in isolation and guzzle beer, quite often for the entire evening. And when they, the Europeans, paid attention to the women, inviting them to dance or join them for a drink, it created a great deal of friction. The Aussies didn't like it at all. So why did they leave their women alone? the newly arrived migrants quite justifiably wondered.

Before long, the migrants themselves would become infected with ‘Snowy' camaraderie, and they, too, would gather for ‘a beer with the mates', but they never fully embraced the Australian custom. The Europeans were happy to join their fellow workers at the bar for a drink or two, but, unlike the Aussies, they always returned to their women.

‘Are you coming, Pietro?' Lucky asked.

Pietro would normally have jumped at Lucky's offer – he loved being ‘one of the boys' – but tonight he stayed put. ‘No, thank you, Lucky, I stay here with Violet.'

‘For goodness sake, Pietro,' she said with good-humoured exasperation. ‘Go and have a beer at the bar – all the other blokes are.'

‘No, no, I stay here,' he insisted. He did not intend to leave Violet's side for one second, but as he watched Lucky weave his way through the mob he wished he could tell him why. Lucky was his very best friend.

Despite the chaos that appeared to reign in the main bar, business was being conducted as efficiently as always. The bar staff moved like lightning, Bob Duncan and Robert Junior changed another beer keg as swiftly as they had the last, and Peter Minogue negotiated the crowds with his usual expertise. Two full trays of drinks, one on top of the other, sailed magically over people's heads as the Irishman squirmed through a sea of bodies on his invisible way to the lounge.

In the backroom, at a table jammed in the corner, a poker game was progressing in deadly earnest. Word had spread like wildfire that Flash Jack Finnigan was at Dodds tonight and a number of heavy gamblers had turned up.

Jack had actually called in to Dodds several hours previously just to have a New Year drink with his good friend and fellow countryman, Peter Minogue, before the evening became too hectic. But he hadn't been able to resist the opportunity that presented itself, and besides, he didn't want to disappoint the men.

The stakes were high, and the ever-silent, ever-watchful Antz stood to one side guarding the table. It was apparent that, to those hunched over their cards, the advent of 1955 meant little, and they would no doubt remain oblivious to the bedlam that surrounded them even upon the very stroke of midnight. Poker was always serious business, but never more so than in the presence of Flash Jack Finnigan.

The babble of the bar rendered conversation impossible and, despite the overhead fan, the air was thick with cigarette smoke. Lucky, Rob Harvey and the American, a likeable, lanky mining engineer called Rusty, took their drinks outside. ‘I'm meeting up with a few buddies out front,' Rusty said, so Rob and Lucky decided to join them.

Now employed as a site engineer with the American construction conglomerate, Kaiser, Rob Harvey had included in his team many of those who'd worked with him on the Guthega project, among them both Lucky and Pietro. Rob was well respected by the Americans and Lucky had found many a new ‘buddy' among the Yanks, which was not unusual – Lucky found buddies everywhere.

It was a hot summer's night, but not oppressively so, and on the pavement outside, Snowy workers were gathered in groups, smoking and chatting as they downed their beers. Some were earnestly ‘talking shop', some telling bawdy jokes and some mingling from group to group.

Rob and Lucky chatted to Rusty and his three American buddies for ten minutes or so, but as soon as the Yanks had finished their beers they were off on a pub crawl.

‘It's our first New Year's in Cooma,' Rusty said, ‘and we're gonna have a beer at every bar in town. You guys wanna come?' he asked.

Rob and Lucky bowed out, and when the Americans had left they moved away from the crowd a little, enjoying the respite and the ease of each other's company. They talked shop, as they usually did these days. There was a lot to talk about since the Yanks had come to town.

As had been anticipated, Kaiser and its equipment and work methods had had an extraordinary effect upon the Snowy. In just one month of construction, the massive Eucumbene-Tumut tunnel, twenty-two feet in diameter, was progressing at an unprecedented speed. The Americans had not only imported the most sophisticated machinery, they'd set up a whole new work system designed to offer incentive and encourage competition, in keeping with their ‘time is money' adage. Tunnelling went on round the clock six days a week. There was the day shift, from eight to four, the ‘swing' shift, from four to midnight, and the ‘graveyard' or ‘cranky' shift from midnight to eight. The teams were paid a ‘footage bonus': the further they advanced past an agreed minimum footage, the more money they received on payday. A large blackboard was set up outside the tunnel entrance and, in endless competition, each shift would mark up its footage, eager to be the best.

Already the Snowy's huge network of tunnels was winding its way through the mountains like a vast underground railway system, but the progress to date had been slow and laborious. Kaiser was bringing about a massive change in the rate of construction. World records for the speed of tunnel excavation would soon be broken and new records for hard-rock drilling created, but with it would come danger, and it worried Rob Harvey. He'd spoken of his misgivings to Commissioner Hudson.

‘Safety is being sacrificed for speed,' he'd said. ‘It's an invitation to disaster.'

Hudson's opinion had differed. ‘We have to move with the times, Rob, and the Yanks are leading the way. They have the equipment, the knowledge and the organisation – we must learn from them.'

‘But at what cost? It's become a race and safety procedures are being ignored.'

‘Basic precautions need to be observed, I agree,' Hudson countered, ‘but we've been held back by parochialism far too long. The days of the government bludge are over and men need to become canny on their own account.' Hudson approved of the American attitude, which encouraged the survival and success of only the fittest.

Now, barely a week after his discussion with the Commissioner, it appeared that Rob's fears had been well founded.

‘I visited the hospital this afternoon,' he said, as he and Lucky sipped their beers. ‘The doctor said that he won't lose the arm.'

‘It shouldn't have happened.' Lucky shook his head. ‘He was a new miner, inexperienced, but it still shouldn't have happened.'

They were discussing the accident that had occurred during the morning shift that day, when a man had been injured in a rock-blasting operation. Lucky was in agreement with Rob Harvey. He blamed the accident on the American system.

‘They consider many basic safety procedures “time wasting”,' he said. ‘I've actually heard some of the bosses use the term.'

‘Gedday, Rob, gedday, Lucky – do you want for another round?'

It was Karl Heffner. Since his own accident six months before, shortly after his arrival on the Snowy, the Austrian had worked hard to master his command of English. With his thick accent, he'd provided many a laugh as he constantly mangled the Aussie colloquialisms he insisted on adopting. But he continued unperturbed. Ever the pragmatist, Karl was determined to become a local.