Читать книгу Searching For Sophia - Andrew Saw - Страница 11

6

“Hah!” was the first word I heard from Dr Franken when he opened his front door.

I was looking at Joe thirty years in the future, assuming Joe wears a ponytail of white hair, pince-nez, a black tailcoat, and paints on a Groucho Marx moustache.

“Hah!” the doctor said a second time, peering up at me through an antique pair of pince-nez eyeglasses.

“Dr Franken?”

“You the coach?”

“Sorry?”

“The coach – the dialogue coach?”

“No, I’m Tim Wilde, Joe’s friend from university.”

“You don’t teach dialogue?”

“No, sorry.”

“By Jehovah, you’ll think I’m out of my mind.”

“Sorry?”

“I’m not a clown, son – I’m an obstetrician.”

“Well, I.”

“Never mind – come in, I upset the neighbours enough as it is.”

He walked fast, leading me down a long corridor with polished wooden floors. There were African sculptures and Aboriginal dot paintings on the walls. As he strode in front of me I understood what he meant about the clown – his bulbous comedy shoes were slapping the polished floorboards like slabs of meat. A cool costume, I thought.

“It’s for a charity night,” he said over his shoulder. “The Royal Australian College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.”

Moving at speed, he turned a sharp left and we were catapulted into large living room with open dormer windows looking out over the harbour. He stopped in the middle of a Persian carpet and waved at the empty seating, clearly puzzled, the gesture magnified by his swirling black tailcoat.

“Where is everybody?” he asked.

He walked over to the open windows and peered carefully through each; but he plainly saw nothing. There was the heavy ticking of a mantelpiece clock. The Supremes’ “Baby Love” leaked softly out of a distant room. He turned, scratching his head, and started as if seeing me for the first time.

“Dialogue?”

“Sorry, Dr Franken, no.”

“Call me Jack, or Dr Frankenstein – everyone wants to.”

“I’m okay for now, thanks.”

“My wife, the plastic surgeon, tells me Dr Frankenstein gave his monster Botox. That’d account for the big shiny forehead. What do you think?”

An answer would have been easier if Dr Franken hadn’t been smiling. Was he laughing at me, testing for some Aryan prejudice?

“I don’t know, I’m sorry.”

“So who are you again?”

“Tim Wilde, I’m doing vet science with Joe.”

“Ah right, well sit and I’ll go for help. They could be anywhere. The place is a bloody maze.”

I was left alone with the distant sound of The Supremes. Like the hallway before it, the living room was defined by African and Aboriginal art, plus some Japanese prints; most of it was surrounded by carpets and wall hangings from Asia and the Middle East. It was as if I was in a nineteenth-century salon, where Monet might become distracted on his way to lunch.

I stepped out onto the veranda and was shocked by the view of the Opera House and the Bridge. They were too close for comfort and too beautifully lit, like a computer-generated illusion. The Frankens’ flat is the top half of a Victorian mansion in Kirribilli facing the Opera House across the harbour, the bottom half having been converted to consulting rooms for their practices. Soon I would get used to the maze of stairways and rooms and random encounters with wandering patients; but on that first day, in the middle of a summer afternoon, I was on a movie set.

I stepped back and turned into the gaze of two women watching me through a dormer window. The older one smiled. “Hello.”

For a confused two seconds I was caught out. I’d never seen women like these, except in magazines. I remember fine honey skin, auburn hair and Middle-Eastern eyes. It was a shock. I must have looked like a startled meerkat.

“Hello?” the older one repeated.

“Oh, sorry, I’m Tim, Joe’s friend from vet school.”

“Well, Tim from vet school,” she said, “I’m Ashira and this is Joe’s twin sister, Jarrah. Come in and we’ll have a cup of coffee.”

I stepped – well, stumbled really – back into the living room and tried to seem like an adult. It was years ago, but I can still describe the scene in detail. Ashira, in her fifties, was slightly built with fine features, as was Jarrah, but she was about my age, a girl clearly blossoming on her mother’s genes, her beauty flowing out of an ancient world. If you’re familiar with the famous portrait of Queen Nefertiti, you’ll know what I mean.

“Joe says you’ve become great friends.” Ashira smiled.

“Yes, I think so.”

“You’re a good-looking boy.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Do you play a lot of sport?”

“A bit.”

“Your mother must be very proud.”

“Sometimes.”

Jarrah was watching carefully, her dark hair framing the side of her elfin face. She was sitting on a silk piano stool, her hands under her thighs, her honeyed features bathed in flickering sunlight. When the trees outside moved in the breeze, soft shadows danced across her eyes. I was mesmerised.

“Jarrah is at Sydney University too,” her mother said, beaming. “Studying medicine.”

Jarrah’s gaze became merciless. “Are you gay, Tim?”

“Sorry?”

Ashira rolled her eyes. “Jarrah, please.”

“It’s a simple question,” the girl persisted, staring at me with a laser-like gaze.

“Jarrah, stop it.”

“So are you, Tim?”

“Me? No, I don’t think so, I like women.”

“Me too.”

“Jarrah!”

“Mum’s just anxious because I’m out.”

“Oh.”

“Out this morning, as it happens,” she continued, “over the bagels and lox. How about you – any outages planned?”

“I’m pretty much in, I think.”

“Good for you, but you’d make a great gay man.”

“Thanks.”

“Jarrah, please. Tim, your sexuality is none of our business, but it seems that Dr Jarrah Franken has made it hers.”

“Frankenstein, Mum – it’s Frankenstein.”

“I know your name, dear – it’s your father’s, and I’m proud to make it mine – but I’m just not sure it’s suitable for an attractive young medical student.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh dear. Tim, do you have a sister as dreadful as this girl? I bet you don’t.”

“I’m an only child.”

Jarrah was watching, ready to pounce. I knew exactly what she wanted to say, so I said it for her. “But many only children are gay.”

“And where would musical comedy be without them!” Dr Franken boomed, surging back into the room. For a small man he has an amazingly penetrating presence. He’d taken off his black tailcoat and wiped off his Groucho Marx moustache. The pince-nez had been transformed into sensible spectacles, and the clown shoes were gone in favour of bare feet; yet he was still an intense theatrical force.

“So how are the ladies treating you, Tim?”

“Very well.”

Jarrah stared at her father hard. “A lady and a lesbian called Frankenstein, Dad, and we’re treating him fine.”

“I take it Jarrah’s told you her news?”

“Yes, just then.”

“It’s taken up a lot of airtime today; but that’s okay, it’s our first family outing.”

“Aside from the vaudeville,” said Jarrah.

“I’m sorry about that, Tim, I’ve been working on a little comedy routine about Texan fundamentalism and the right to life.”

“Plenty of laughs in abortion, Dad – should go down a treat.”

Dr Franken’s smile faded. “It’s going too far, isn’t it?”

“You know it is.”

“But they’re insane.”

“Who, all those male obstetricians?”

“No, the fascists who politicise love.”

“What’s love got to do with it?”

“It’s how they justify their fascism, Jarrah – the love of creation, God’s love for the sanctity of unborn life.”

“It’s still not funny, Dad.”

Sitting in the Frankens’ elegant salon with a fine china cup of Turkish coffee on my lap, I could only think about my parents. The words lesbian, abortion and gay had rarely left their lips, at least not with me in the room; if my mother Sally had been introduced to a Jewish obstetrician called Frankenstein, her mouth would have set in concrete.

“What about you, Tim?” asked Dr Franken. “Any ideas from the veterinary science point of view?”

“We haven’t got to the reproductive bits yet, we’re still learning about feet.”

“Oh-ho, a sense of humour, excellent.”

“Hilarious,” said Jarrah. “Come on, Tim, what do you think?”

My mind was somewhere between a riot and a ride on a rollercoaster. I knew a little bit about fundamentalist Christianity, thanks to my mother, but I’d never been in a family debate in my life and, even if I had, the family Wilde would never have tackled the politicisation of love. I’d certainly never thought about it, but I just couldn’t sit there like a lumbering boofhead.

“I don’t really know how love works,” I began carefully, “and I’m not sure that anyone really does, but …”

“Well, that’s a cop-out,” Jarrah said through a wicked smile.

“Let him finish,” Dr Franken cautioned.

Let me finish? Let me finish what? I had no idea what I was going to say next. All I could do was grab the next wave and try not to land on my head. “But love doesn’t seem easy to control,” I continued, still cautious, “and if you can’t control it in yourself, I don’t see how you can legislate to control it in anybody else.”

There was silence. I’m not saying it was a stunned silence, but it was certainly long enough for me to catch my breath.

“Good on you, Tim, you hit ’em with the perfect combo – left, right, left. Round one to you.”

Joe had appeared at the dormer windows and was now leaning bare-chested against the polished timber, wearing a set of boxing gloves, with sweat pouring down his muscular chest.

“Don’t walk in here like that, Joe,” his mother said quickly, “I don’t want you dripping on the rugs.”

“It’s okay, Mum, I know, I know. I’ll have a shower and in the meantime leave my mate alone, okay? He’s just a good-hearted goy from the beach.”