Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & (12 page)

Sweat, Joy, and Thunderation

My uncle Kickalong was so tough, at every hundredth sheep, he'd wring his shirt into a pot, adding only one teaspoon of sugar and no milk at all, for tea. When he sheared, the air was so hot that if you dropped an egg on a piece of roofing iron, it wouldn't fry. It jumped right off and ran away. His sister Auntie Flo made griddles by dropping a rock onto a bit of road, watching the rock melt into a nice pool of iron, and then adding a couple more pebbles in a line to make a handle. She was so tough, she'd pick that griddle up with her bare left hand and fling it into the creek, where the blazing metal made the fish jump out and onto the road for a bit of dinner, without any extra work at all! Ah, she was a bit of a lazy one all right, Uncle used to say, just to hear her laugh. Her laugh made your hair stand up on end so that a nail dragged along a piece of screeching tin sounded soft as a piano played by a touch of rain.

They were specially fine to see when he was shearing and she was in the mood to make a whole family of frying pans one after the nother. She'd fling her fishes into the shearing shed over the moving flock, and he'd look up from the ram he was shearing and catch those fishes in his teeth, without so much as a chew in between or a nick in the old boy's skin. Kickalong'd be so stuffed with fish by the end of a day when Flo would be hard at it, he could hardly stand when it was time to straighten up. But Flo was rewarded by a whole pot of tea, compliments of Kickalong.

Now, with sheep not being wanted anymore than iron frying pans, uncle and auntie are still tough, but with nought to be tough for. The fish have gone lazy and fat, and the grandnephews and nieces don't know what work is. Still, the heat knows how to be hard, so Kickalong sits out in the sun of a morning, soaking up the rays in his working clothes, working up a sweat for tea for two. And as they drink, they laugh about old times, and their laughs are still the same. Hers has cramped the once-so-lazy flat horizon as it now holds hands up tight against its ears. And his? Rock-splitting, ear-ringing, deaf-making thunderation. That's the sky, mad with jealousy, trying to compete.

Valley of the Sugars of Salt

- 1 -

This is one of those places where you feel behind your back and roll knuckles against the soreness. Where the truck driver reaches for a sandwich or another pill to stay awake. Where the children sleep pillowed by beach towels and dreams of riding weightless on the waves, or fight with each other out of peevishness.

It is a place like that flat line woven in the towel, running between banks of monotonous green loops of mile after mile of forest.

It is a place like most places we see past, for they are not places at all.

Today, a few hours south of Sydney, in this place distinguishable from the traveller's point of view only as someplace where you are not there yet, the whirling social firmament in which Tim Thornbourne once shined so bright can only be heard whizzing past in dim comet-wisps, but mostly isn't noticed since the highway, no matter how tourist-ridden or long-hauler-loaded it is, is never as busy as this little valley ...

~

Over the years, the more Thornbourne's success grew in the world of selling the right concept at the right time, the more he liked the idea of communing with Nature. Growing feasibility studies was easy for him. Words blossomed under his tongue and fingertips. But as for Nature, he had never gotten down and dirty with her to the point of getting her earthy scent under his fingernails. Before the sale of IntelliCom and his divorce, on his trips to the property, he'd always loved Nature through the windows of "The Shack". The magnate-sized mansion was the only way that Jocelynne had agreed to visit the place at all—although the first brush with a wolf spider ended her visits for good.

So, until Tim's "second outrageous success project" as he termed it to himself, Thornbourne's actual contact time in the bush was low, but he did like the idea of it. He didn't want to metamorphose into some hermit poking a long yellow fingernail into logs, fishing for a dinner of witchetty grubs. His plan was that with an initial burst of uncharacteristic physical exertion, and then lots of just communing, his project would thrive as well as the wild animals and bush on his farm. The annual two-week invasion of the wealthy would be an ego-enriching toll to pay for success.

Tim did his research. No competition anywhere. The existing world population of his chosen trees were lone survivors, as noticed and celebrated as World War I veterans as they lurk crookedly by crumbling stone walls and drop wrinkled fruits on senile mountain roads. As he reckoned, in five years, the world's only upmarket U-Pick-'Em would be an annual Easter holiday pilgrimage for all self-described foodies. And he, Tim Thornbourne, would be The Man Who Rediscovered the Medlar.

He ordered his trees like mail-order brides, never having met any medlar trees in the flesh. A couple of devotedly fanatic apple aficionados, Stephen and Gwyneth Frawley of Timespast Nursery, grew 250 graftings of three different types just for him, from the few trees in their weird zoo of horticultural pets for people with a taste for the old, the different, the conversation piece.

Rabbit-fencing, and then planting the orchard was easier than he had imagined. The medlars thrived with a studious lack of interference on his part. He never pruned and he never sprayed. Only when the trees were very young and needed their feet to grow and their toes to dig in without competition, did he hack away the tangle of grasses from around their trunks.

The grass had, after all, occupied the paddock for many years, grazed by kangaroos, wombats, wallabies; slithered over by brown snake and red-bellied black hunting for mice; skittered over by fierce shrew-like antechinuses, terrors of beetledom.

The trees grew in their species-distinctive, but also individually idiosyncratic forms—their long, shiny, deeply veined leaves, a myopic palmist's delight should the same chiaroscuro of light and shadow appear in a human hand. Open-faced white or pink-tinged flowers that look like wild roses or large apple blossoms told the story of the medlar's heritage.

The Nottinghams showed a disposition to thin tallness, limbs reaching upwards; the Great Dutch more expansive, with a here-and-thereishness to their drooping limbs; the Royals were stolid characters, barrel-chested. Each tree fully took advantage of its right to be an individual, and made up its own mind as to its developing shape, how many flowers (self-fertile) it chose to make, and thus how many fruits it chose to produce. Even the shape and size of the offspring varied considerably, from the lychee-sized pears of the Nottinghams to the bramley-sized balls of the Royals, to the heavy, palm-filling half-globes of the Giants, whose fruits were most easy to see the reason for the botanical name,
mespilus
from
meso
, half, and
pilos
, ball. As the fruits grew and ruddied, and their calyxes opened luxuriantly, the reason for the colloquial names of the medlar became increasingly obvious—"open arse fruit" or the equally impolite French
coup de chien
—dog's arse.

~

The first flowers blossomed; the first fruits appeared hard as pubescent breasts, and then grew in the same impossibly quick manner. The calyxes with their long green-leaf eyelashes opened, wide, wider, till there was an inside-outish aspect to the full-cushioned arse-rose. When autumn came, the glossy green leaves turned brilliant red and began to fall. And when the fruits themselves took on the slightest droop from their stems, when a whim of wind dislodged them easily, Tim picked them all.

Unless you are a donkey, medlars are only fit to eat when they are
bletted
, the proper name for rotten. The outside skin goes brown and wrinkly. The inside flesh ranges in colour from the dusky rose of embarrassment, to pâté de foie gras or baby poop, to the sobbing darkness of a forgotten pear. That first crop Tim bletted arse-down, in beds of sweet-smelling chaff, golden-green riffling against the russetted globes. He sent little boxes to the most revered gourmets in the land, and waited for their enthusiasm to boomerang back. There were dinner parties all over the city, conferences in the many-starred hotels.

And the word came back. Aside from the Italians who as children sat in Nonna's arthritic medlar tree in the old village, the tastemakers scorned the fruits. But perhaps "scorn" is too strong a word. "Disgusting looking" were two used. "Don't like the pits" (of which each fruit hosts five). "Not really attracted" was the most common comment. The exclusive hotels said, "We could never serve these to guests. We can only offer people what they're used to—the attractive foods—you know ... kiwi fruit, apples with red skin ..."

Tim had saved himself a selection from each tree. To him—a complete surprise. Novelty combined with good packaging and a reputation was what he had counted on to waft these forgotten fruits up to the Mt. Olympus of gourmetdom. But the medlars were startlingly
wake-up
delicious—a mixture of date, black walnut, a good tanninish claret, medium sweet sherry, the tang of a fresh macintosh and the smooth comfort of baked pear, all combined in a different recipe for each fruit. The texture, too, ranged from babyfood smooth to that of Greek rice pudding, to an exciting feral stringiness resembling
spaghettini al dente
. Some he ate at night with a glass of something that flowed a touch of warmth down his throat, but he didn't need it. The medlars didn't need to accompany anything for Tim Thornbourne to enjoy them. He preferred to smell feel taste them as solo artists, accompanied only by more of themselves. In this way, the unique delight of each individual could be savoured all the more.

~

The second year, he sent out beautifully packed samplers again, as the first harvest he decided to consider as more of a training crop for each tree.

The variety of tastes and textures was even more exquisite. Tim discovered his favourite way to eat medlars: the vampire method. Nip a small bite into the thin skin, and squeeze gently. Watch the bruised flesh ooze out, or suck it out slowly. In the house, every table overflowed with bowls of fruit. As he contemplated them, they were all the littered bounty on so many
memento mori
paintings of the Dutch school, with the casual half-peeled lemons rolling hard by gonadal clusters of grapes, a skull never far away. He searched his books, and in not one painting could he find a medlar, though they should have been in every lush still-life.
So what if medlars are brown?
In the hard state, the texture of the skin like a goosebumpy windchapped Mongolian, felt good to his fingers and lips. And in the bletted state, all soft inside, Tim felt slightly protective towards the fruit—its delicacy without preciousness, its uncomplaining stoicism.

~

The feedback from the second year's send-out was almost non-existent. As for the responses he chased up ... "Err ... "Then there were variations on the theme of "sorry, but
...
", or the voicemail message that is meant to be as believed as Santa Claus: "
...
and we'll return your call."

The minds of the tastemakers whose opinions determine the tastes of gourmets he needed for his venture to be successful, were made up.

He could still run his U-pick-'em for the few true gourmets who don't give a damn about price if they like something. But true gourmets, he had found, are as thin on the ground as Tasmanian Tiger sightings. The ethnics who would buy the medlars for sentimentality balked at paying more than they thought they should—that is, more than everyday fruits. In fact, they expected to pay less for obscure food that most people dislike on sight.

So Tim's feasibility study to himself was unusually unflowery and honest: Unless you have a certain aesthetic, which isn't limited to primary colours and fancy packaging, the medlar appeals in the same way as a truffle without a reputation. Something only a pig would like.

~

Tim sat in the middle of the orchard, an occasional red or orange leaf blowing into his lap as the last scraps of their clothing were shed by the medlar trees in the light autumn breeze. A willy wagtail swung his tail back and forth as the little bird regarded Tim like some eccentric bug, from its perch on the bare elbow of a Dutch royal.

Tim regarded his fact.
It was a good idea at the time.
Instead of a second outrageous success, he had achieved such an outrageous failure that it made him laugh. IntelliCom had possessed the intrinsic substance of all shiny bubbles, and the buyers happily knew it. The game was to pass the ever thinning, ever more expensive bubble.

He looked at the stripped-naked trees, and nothing shimmered. The thought surprised him. Originally, like sweet syllabubs of future successes whipped from the ether of greed, the medlars were just tools to enable him to admire his own skill.

Something unfamiliar in the pit of his stomach roiled.
How could those tastemakers be so tasteless?
The medlars made Tim feel much more—what was the word—
romantic?
than Jocelynne at her most enchanting. She with hair like the whole moonless sky; breasts like waterlily flowers at dawn; voice of an angry cockatoo ...

The wind sighed in the tall stringybark eucalypts by the edge of the creek; and on the highway at the top of the hill, a truck without a muffler burped noisily.

Tim Thornbourne unbent his legs and stood up, looked around him and decided.

"To hell with gourmets. We're all staying."

There were four hours left before it became too late to see, but in that time he turned his beautiful road leading from the highway into an anonymous track so uninvitingly tyre-biting, so deviously ankle-twisting, so devilishly tortuous that not even the most hell-for-leather rough road enthusiast would contemplate venturing down, and as for meandering holiday sticky-beakers and fashionable four-wheel drivers, Tim knew they would now just be wooshes dimly heard at the top of the hill, like flies buzzing the dew-soaked grass on a summer morning.