Prochownik's Dream (2 page)

He looked away. Out in the courtyard the water was spilling from Teresa's stone fountain and splashing into the sunlit basin: the courtyard and the house in the sunlight, the tall windows of the kitchen and the French doors reflecting the studio. How carefully, how lovingly, Teresa had planned it, speaking of it as their home and as his place of work while it was still little more than an idea in her mind. She did not reproach him, but he knew that he had not fulfilled his portion of her dream. He had begun to wonder lately if it might be the very perfection of the conditions she had organised for him that had silenced his imagination. He had felt a traitor for even thinking it. He hated and feared the silence in his mind, but he could not pretend to work when there was really nothing there. He could not do that. Not even for Teresa's dream.

His daughter called to him and he turned from the doorway. She was standing behind her chair holding her drawing by its top corners for him to see. He beckoned to her with the book.

The little girl crossed the studio and handed him the drawing, then she stood in front of him, watching him examine it. Her manner was expectant, reserved and attentive. She had drawn the figure of a man, the man's outline rendered by a single firm blue line. There had been no attempt at a likeness of himself, no reference to his pose in the doorway. The figure had no hands and its pointy feet were poised, like a ballet dancer's feet, on a green sward of spiky grass. It leaned to one side from the waist up, as if it were being bent by a powerful wind, or was about to execute a difficult leap that would test its agility to the limit. Spears of red hair issued from its head like flames—its hair anticipating the violent energies of its intended leap, or perhaps the panic in its mind. Above the portrait, in black pencil, she had written the word
Dad
. The confidence of her line astonished him, and he envied her the unconsidered liberty of her pencil. There were no crossings out, no correcting, no second thoughts. The image must have stood whole and complete in her imagination before she made her first mark on the paper.

‘It's wonderful, darling,' he said with feeling.

‘It's you,' she said, the certainty of her work in the assurance of her gaze.

The telephone rang and he reached past his daughter and lifted the handset from the wall by the door. ‘Hello,' he said.

‘Is that you, Toni? It's Marina Golding.' There was a slight pause, ‘We're back.'

He was very surprised to hear from her. ‘Yes, it's me. You mean you're back in Melbourne?'

‘We're back in our house in Richmond.'

‘You're living here again?' He held his daughter's portrait of him at arm's length and smiled. It was so absolutely right. Her Dad was a perplexed and desolate pixie with his head on fire and no hands to beat out the flames.

‘For the moment, yes,' Marina Golding said. ‘I'm sorry, Toni, we should have been in touch sooner.' Her apology for their neglect was sincere. ‘We thought you might have heard by now. We've been back a few weeks.'

He wondered why it was Marina and not Robert who had called. It was a year, more, since he had heard anything from them. ‘How's Robert?'

‘Robert's fine. He's incredibly busy. He says to give you his love.' She allowed a pause. ‘I'm interrupting your work?'

‘I'm in the middle of getting a big new project under way.' It was a lie, of course, or rather it was a joke, but a joke addressed to himself. A private irony he was unable to resist.

She made an exclamation of satisfaction. ‘Robert was sure you'd be working on something big.'

Marina had taken him seriously, but he let it go. Within a month of Robert and Marina going to Sydney four years earlier, his daughter had been born, his father had died, and he had given up painting and turned to installations. His world had changed forever. Now, suddenly, Marina's voice on the other end of the telephone, reminding him of those years of hope and excitement that they had shared.

‘We've got some news,' she said. ‘Can you come for lunch? Say next Wednesday?'

‘I'd love to. Wednesday would be good.'

‘Come about one.'

His daughter tugged at the pocket of his jeans. ‘Can we go to the swing park now, Daddy?'

He cupped the phone and leaned down to her. ‘Yes, darling. In a minute.' He straightened. ‘I have to go now. I'm taking Nada to the swing park.'

‘She must be four already. Is she at school yet?'

‘She's at kinder. We have this bit of time together before Teresa gets home.'

‘And how is Teresa?'

‘She's fine. Busy.' He resented the forced, unnatural, stilted manner of the conversation with Marina and wanted to say something that would provoke a bit of reality between them. He could think of nothing that would not sound crass and pushy, however, so he said nothing.

Marina said, ‘I saw your installation at Andy's.'

He waited. He would not ask her what she had thought of his work.

Nada dragged at his pocket with both hands, her head thrown back, presenting the pale curve of her throat, pulling away from him with her full weight.

‘It was powerful,' Marina said. ‘I found it very disturbing.'

Powerful and disturbing!
He let the book drop to the floor and transferred the child's portrait of him to his telephone hand, then he leaned down and took hold of her wrist. Bending to her level, he begged her, ‘Wait for Daddy a minute!
Please
, darling! I'm coming!' The puerility of his eagerness to hear what Marina had to say about his work shamed him.

‘There was no one else there. It was a weird feeling being alone in that vast space of Andy's with your crowd of faceless people. I could smell them. They seemed to be standing there sweating and waiting for me to do something. I felt I was being accused. Of inaction, I suppose, was it? Something like that? A failure to acknowledge their plight? Is that what we were supposed to feel? Were they supposed to make us feel guilty? Well
I
felt guilty anyway. But perhaps that was just me. Though we've all got this guilt nowadays, haven't we? About everything. I don't know whether that's what you meant. I should have called you before this and said something. There was a kind of eerie silence about it.'

Nada released her grip, suddenly, and his hand slipped from her wrist. She walked over to her little table and began putting away her coloured pencils, her manner poised and self-sufficient, her head down, concentrating on her task, ignoring him.

‘Robert didn't get to see it?' He was dismayed to hear the self-pitying resentment of his tone.

‘It's not been easy, Toni. The move back, I mean. It hasn't been straightforward. There's nothing wrong between us, it's not that. It's just that Robert hasn't had a minute. He
meant
to go. You can't imagine. He just didn't get a chance. Then you'd dismantled it and taken it away.'

‘You needn't explain. It's okay.'

‘It's not okay.' She allowed a pause. ‘I'm sorry, Toni. We seem to be like strangers.' There was another pause. ‘Robert's father has come to stay with us. So that's complicated things as well.'

‘I thought Robert's father lived in Germany?'

‘He did. He's ill. He's dying.'

He watched Nada put her pencil case in the drawer of her desk and close it. She picked up her Snoopy Dog and, holding the toy to her chest, set off towards the door.

‘Sorry, Marina, I'd love to talk but I've absolutely got to go. See you Wednesday.'

‘See you Wednesday, Toni,' Marina said. She sounded disappointed. ‘It's good to at least be in touch again.'

He hung up the telephone, stepped across the studio and swept the little girl into his arms. ‘Gotcha!'

She cried out with delight, ‘Daddeee!' She clung to him and bit his shoulder hard.

He set her drawing of him on her table, then carried her across the courtyard into the house. On the way to the front door along the passage he paused beside a small framed gouache that hung on the wall. It was a modest tonal image of a straight-backed chair and the corner of a kitchen table with a jug and a bowl.

Nada pointed at the picture. ‘Granddad!'

‘Yes, Granddad, darling. He would have loved you like crazy.' At the door he set Nada on her feet. ‘Let's have a really big swing.'

They went out through the gate and walked hand-in-hand along the footpath. At the main road he scooped Nada up and waited for a gap in the traffic, then he ran across with her held against him. On the other side he set her down on the grass. ‘There's no one on them!' he shouted. ‘They're
ours
! I'll get there first! I'll get there first!'

She screamed in terror and excitement and ran from him across the dry summer grass towards the safe ground of the empty swings. He followed her closely, watching anxiously as she clambered onto the swing. Marina's phone call was a distracting resonance in his mind behind his anxiety for his daughter. What was Robert and Marina's news? Did they want to share it with him? Did they want to pick up the old friendship where they'd left it four years ago? He could see them both: Robert's faint smile, knowing something. Marina standing by his side admiring him. They were focussed people. A successful team. He had never known them to be without ideas and projects. The telephone call puzzled him. What did they want? He caught Nada on the back swing and pushed her away gently.

‘Higher, Daddy! Higher!' she demanded.

He caught her and pushed her higher, the tails of her red jacket flying out behind, the wind of her flight lifting her brown hair, her friend Snoopy Dog clutched against the chain of the swing. His heart contracted in his chest with love for her.

two

A little after midday on the following Wednesday he bought a bunch of expensive out-of-season Iceland poppies at the florist and drove across town to Richmond. It was hot again and his car was not airconditioned. He worried that the delicate flowers would wilt before he reached Robert and Marina's and thought that he had made a mistake buying them instead of robust proteas or natives; except that there was for him something emblematic in the vivid fragility of the poppies, and their name, Iceland. In the relentless heat it seemed like a message of hope.

Before he reached the river he turned out of the traffic into a side street. Three blocks later he turned right again and pulled up at a small square of park tucked between a row of houses. He sat looking through the windscreen, gathering his thoughts and remembering the park. Theirs was the last house in a terrace of painted brick and timber cottages, dwellings that had once been the homes of factory workers but which had been expensively restored and redesigned to accommodate young professionals. The scene before him was unchanged from his memory of it. The withered oleanders in the park and the small patch of bleached grass shimmering in the heat, the solitary palm tree, and beneath the palm tree the bench, still broken . . .

That summer night four years ago, Robert and Marina's friends had spilled from the lighted house into the park. Robert Schwartz and Marina Golding, the brilliant collaborative team, were relinquishing their position of influence in Melbourne's art scene for the vertigo of the great metropolis. That, at any rate, had been the understanding, a sense that it was Robert's largeness of vision that compelled them to go. A feeling that it wasn't so much that they had
decided
to go as that they were being drawn along the golden path of those who had found success in Syd Of being abandoned even. And, for a few, no doubt the departure of Robert and Marina for Sydney must have seemed a confirmation of their own failure. For the older ones especially. For it was what they had all aspired to. So there was a certain envy among the less-generous spirits. Despite their worldliness, despite their fervent scepticism, they had all privately clutched at a shamefaced hope of that sign of a divine care that placed upon a body of work a recognition that was not disputable.

When the last guests were leaving, Robert entreated him to stay with them in the park under the stars. It was he whom Robert had chosen to be the very last to sit with them on the grass, drinking wine and talking far into the night—Had it been that he and Marina could not bear to arrive at that moment when they would be alone with their happiness and without a witness to its splendours? Now they had returned.

Today the park was deserted.

He reached across to the passenger seat and picked up the bunch of flowers. As he lifted the blooms a scatter of petals was left on the grey nap of the seat. He was nervous now at the thought of seeing Robert again. He stepped out of the car, locked it and walked the few paces to their verandah. He pressed the bell and stood waiting.

Marina opened the door. ‘Toni! How lovely to see you!' She stepped forward eagerly and embraced him lightly, touching her hand to his arm, touching her lips to his cheek. She moved away and examined him. ‘It's cruel the way the critics ignored your show.'

‘It's okay. It's their loss.'

‘Exactly. And you've got your new project. Good for you.'

He handed the flowers to her.

A gust of wind tore off a scatter of bright petals. Marina exclaimed and sheltered the flowers protectively in her arms. ‘You remembered! I love being given flowers. And Iceland poppies are my favourites.' She was moved. ‘Thank you.'

So the Iceland poppies had been for Marina after all. He had not remembered, but had imagined himself to be choosing the flowers at random.

‘What is it?' Marina asked. ‘Have I changed so much?' She was older than he, by as much as ten years, slim and dark, her short hair freshly styled.

‘No,' he said. ‘You haven't changed at all.'

She smiled, enjoying the exacting quality of his attention.

The passage was narrow and she walked ahead of him. The disconcerting sensation of stepping back into their world, the familiar, elusive, clarified smell of their lives, a smell of cleanliness and good order. Today she was being welcoming and encouraging. Previously she would have stood aside, her manner silent and interior, observing him with Robert. Marina had seemed to him in those days to be in Robert's shadow. A faithful collaborator, content to be the apprentice of Robert Schwartz's studio. Perhaps, after all, she had stood within the shadow of some private inhibition of her own, an uncertainty too intimate to be disclosed. And of course she was older now.