Читать книгу Life Underwater - Ken Barris - Страница 9

Eli

I am in my mother’s lap. We all call her Ma, or Mom. I have other names for her, Mi, Meh, Mo, Moom, softer names that are my own to use. I remember this, it speaks to me: resting with my head on her breast, my knees folded just below her armpits. She smells of roses and cigarettes. Her name is Rose too. I feel her soft breast under my cheek, under the pucker of her bra. She sings to me:

Que sera, sera

Whatever will be, will be

The future’s not ours to see

Que sera, sera

What will be, will be.

The future is a dim place, it is badly lit. One day I will wear spectacles and be treated for a lazy eye which will never grow diligent. But now I sit in her lap and cling to her breast, and feel wonderful.

Long before the future, on sunny mornings we go to the beach, to Bird Rock. We go to the Secret Pool, where all mothers and children go. We call it the Cigarette Pool. It is protected from the sea by a reef, and its ribbed sand lies under only two feet of water. It is much warmer than the proper sea. I sit in the middle of the pond, myself warm and salty as the water, digging up mud from the bottom and letting it drift out of my fingers. The light is colourless, hard as diamond. I have to close my eyes. Even then, it spears through my lids, turning red inside.

I do not like to come out of the water. My mother has to stand between me and the sun until her shadow cools me down. She promises me an Eskimo Pie, and I come out at last, sulking. She covers my skin with lime-green Sea & Ski, to protect me from the sun. When an ice-cream boy comes ringing his bell, she calls him over and buys two Eskimo Pies. Brittle shards of chocolate always fall off mine, landing on the sand. Sometimes I lose my temper and cry, and my mother picks me up and sings to me. But she never buys me a new Eskimo Pie.

When our father comes home, he smells of biltong and brandy. The skin of his cheeks and nose is reddened by broken capillaries. His eyes gleam boldly, the skin under them sags into pouches. He has thin lips and a hooked nose, thin shanks and a little potbelly. His forearms are scribbled over with wiry black hair, and he has narrow wrists for a grown man. His watch always hangs a bit loosely around his left wrist. He is proud of the watch, which he calls a Jager Leculter. He found it in the war. It ticks with an odd noise, a double-locking sound that is perfect every time. But you have to hold it up to your ear to hear it tick like this.

In the top left-hand drawer of the dressing table in their bedroom there are nail clippers and cigar clippers, and cuff links, things that men use. His voice is deep and gongs like brass. He is quick to laugh, and when he laughs I often fear that he might cry, because it does not look terribly different.

They go out at night to the Sky Roof, a place where you dance and eat dinner. It is on the fifth floor of the Marine Hotel down the road, at the bottom of our street. Children aren’t allowed to go there. I dream sometimes of the Sky Roof, when they go there for a dinner dance and I am alone with my brothers and Euphonia. I dream of a place in the Marine Hotel that is a wild jungle under a blue moon. Everything there is silver and blue, including the giant armoured crocodile that slithers around on the border of the Sky Roof, cutting me off from my parents. The dream goes on and on, as long as the crocodile that circles round it, sketching its boundary and sending out waves of fear.

When my mother returns from this dream she comes into my room. She sits on the edge of my bed and rubs my back, singing a Perry Como song.

All the stars are in the skies ready to say “goodnight”

Can’t you see your doll is sleepy, too?

Close your drowsy little eyes, mama will hold you tight

While she sings a lullaby to you.

My mother sings me a song by Perry Como. It is soft and kind. When my mother sings it and rubs my back, the blue moon of the Sky Roof fades away. The chorus melts into soft hissing sounds, like waves running up the beach and dying to silence:

Oh, chi-baba, chi-baba, chi-wawa

An’ chi-lawa kook-a la goombah

Chi-baba, chi-baba, chi-wawa

My bambino go to sleep . . .