let me see, let me help … what in God’s name have you done to yourself?”
“Never mind what she’s done to us …”
“It wasn’t my fault. My beads …”
“My beads, you mean, which by now are probably tangled to oblivion. Let me remind you, Dotsi daahrlink, who gave you those beads in the first place …”
“Jaj! You’re pulling my hair!” Dotsi is now on all fours, and Anyu can’t bear it any longer. She struts out of the kitchen and I fantasise for a moment that she’s going to shut the front door and leave us in peace, but instead she grabs a pair of scissors from the counter top, mumbling to herself something about peasants, and I brace myself for the carnage.
“Precisely what I’m saying,” Punci says, snatching the scissors from my grandmother. “If you weren’t so smart about lending her, out of all people, your favourite beads, or should I say ex-beads, then we wouldn’t be in this mess …” Snip.
Everyone is safely inside the apartment, and I start to help Anyu clear away my plates and fit the green felt cloth over the table. My idea is to discreetly slink out the door without being noticed, but I know deep down that there is no getting out of here alive. I can see the wheels turning behind those hideous hairdos.
“You look too skinny, Lily daahrlink.”
Too late. Punci starts the onslaught. “Doesn’t she look too skinny, Zsuzsi? Agi, why aren’t you feeding her?”
“What on earth do you mean?” Zsuzsi says. “Don’t you know there’s no such thing as too rich or too skinny? Or is it too pretty? Never mind … You’re okay, aren’t you, Lily? Come on, leave her alone, girls.” But the relief is only momentary. She suddenly turns my way, licking her lips, her eyes inflamed. “So tell me, come on, how did it go with the Muchovsky boy?” She sings Much-ov-sky, rocking her shoulders to the beat of each syllable.
“Muchovsky? You promised you’d tell her about Daniel Leventhal. You know, Helen’s grandson.” Punci always has better ideas.
“Leventhal? Don’t you worry about him, Punci daahrlink, he found someone last week.” Zsuzsi turns my way. “So tell me, was he nice? I told you he was nice!” She emphasises the last word with an affectionate tap on my shoulder, almost knocking me to the ground.
“Daniel Leventhal found someone? What a shame …” Punci mumbles.
“I didn’t call him,” I say, without looking up. Of course he found someone. They always find someone sooner or later.
“I wonder who?” Punci scratches her head.
“You see, Lily, that’s why you’re in this situation. I can’t do everything!” Followed by something in Hungarian.
“Who what?” Dotsi joins in. She’s confused.
“Who did he find?”
“How should I know!” Zsuzsi now turns to Anyu. “She bloody asks me who. What am I, God? Can’t you do something, Agi? Tell her to call the Muchovsky kid.”
Anyu looks at me with longing eyes. She knows there is no way I will call him. I have never met him, but I already know the type: a good, solid job, maybe even a Master’s degree. Plays some instrument like a dream and lost quite a lot of weight recently, or was it hair? Just out of a long relationship and bitter break-up with a non-Jewish girl from the office who was pretty but, as predicted, simple. And of course, we have so much in common because we are both single.
I pretend to rearrange the contents of my handbag as the four of them sit down to deal the first hand. I have to get out of here. I can stomach a little monologue, but a real live ensemble is too much for tonight.
“You’re not leaving yet, are you, Lily?” says Punci. “Dotsi may need some help!” She laughs heartily and the barrage continues from all directions, this time in Hungarian, as Dotsi scurries urgently down the hallway to the toilet.
Anyu accompanies me to the doorway with a take-home pack of a week’s supply of goulash and rye bread. I wave a broad goodbye in their general direction, dreaming of the day I’ll be able to join in the banter in their own tongue, beat them at their own game. Eva will teach me a little something worthwhile: scathing but elegant, razor-sharp but cool. Knock their socks off. Imagine, if only they knew what I have up my sleeve. If only they knew my source. I can’t wait till Saturday and my first Hungarian lesson.
“Forget the Muchovsky kid, daahrlink,” my grandmother whispers at the door, just out of earshot. “His grandmother cheats at rummy. Romanian peasant stock. Trust me on this one. This Zsuzsi always thinks she knows everything.”
I kiss her goodbye and leave her to her band of cronies. She won’t be lonely tonight, but I feel sad for this once beautiful woman who reluctantly traded Old World elegance for sensible underwear and comfortable pants. Sometimes I catch glimpses of her former, lively self, but mostly I see this once prominent member of society relegated to the position of the irritating grandmother who nags and cooks too much. She spends her days attending the funerals of people she hated and her evenings at the rummy table with other bitter, fading souls. She’s forever waiting for that miserable, monthly government cheque and for her daahrlink Lily to get on with it and live a happy life for her.
I step outside into the humid night, throw her leftovers into the rubbish bin on the corner, light a cigarette and start climbing the familiar hill towards the cliffs and home.
I guess when my grandmother sees me, she feels sad too. They say getting old is depressing, but it’s better than the alternative. She must know that, just like my Papa, I might not make it that far.
Chapter Four
I have the whole day off. The whole day, that is, except for an early brunch with my mother at the Tea Gardens in Watson’s Bay. This is Mama’s idea of refinement: a salad sandwich on multigrain bread followed by Devonshire tea prepared painfully slowly from scratch by a brother-sister team whose family has owned this house for a million years. She’ll make a point of asking for extra milk with her tea, of noting how the scones and cream are a luxury her hips can’t really afford, and of casually mentioning the fact that she herself was born right here in Sydney. We’ll spend the hour arguing about what we’re wearing, what we’re reading, what the Prime Minister should and shouldn’t be doing, and then she’ll empty out a purse full of silver and spend the next ten minutes excruciatingly assembling the total of the bill from ten and twenty cent coins. I’ll head back home drained, hungry and irritated with no energy left to paint.
I’m working on a set of portraits of women. Their faces have been haunting my thoughts now for what feels like an eternity, but it’s only in the last few weeks, since I quit my medical course, that I’ve had the chance to start bringing them to life on canvas. Most are still rough sketches with smatterings of colour, and two of them are still just eyes. I always start with the eyes: the centre, the window. My inspiration comes from those two little sparks. If the eyes don’t work, the rest of the face will never see the light of day. I’ve been practising, playing with colour and depth and highlights. Now I look at an eye and see the person, not the vitreous, sclera, cornea and how they all relate to the optic nerve. Gone are the days of learning a person by parts.
This morning I feel like painting, like taking bits and pieces from the world of the real and rearranging them on paper to please my imagination. I’m not bound to anyone’s vision of how things are but mine. I can take an eyebrow from here, a wrinkle from there, and create the look of how I’d like things to be. Mostly I paint the women of my family how I see them, not necessarily how they look. I paint my mother and my grandmother, I even paint myself – but I am not happy with those. The times I try to faithfully reproduce what I know, I am left dissatisfied. It is never enough.
My bedroom wall is plastered with eyes – scraps of photos, magazine cuttings and sketches: the beautiful, the interesting, the plain, the absurd, images