The End of the World (9 page)

‘I don’t want you here anymore. Go back to your family.’

My mobile rings. Georgie starts talking about which film we’ll see and I let her run on while I watch Kareen gingerly dab her face with a wet dishcloth. I think about what I should wear to the pictures. When Georgie arrived in Melbourne I went to her friend’s house wearing cargo pants and a woolly cardigan I’d bought at the op shop that morning, the kind of clothes she’d always worn and I never had. She hugged me and asked if I was eating properly.

‘You’re not anorexic, are you?’ she said. ‘Aren’t you hot in that cardigan?’

This was the kind of thing she’d always said to me. Full of judgement–without a clue about what was going on. I tugged at the sleeves, pulling them down over my knuckles, and shook my head.

‘You look tired,’ she said.

I knew what I looked like.

Georgie buys the movie tickets.

‘You must be doing it hard on a kitchen hand’s salary,’ she says. ‘Hey, how’s your friend, the one who was sick?’

‘Cherie? Oh, she’s all fixed up.’ Kitchen hand. I wonder if my sister is an idiot. Everyone else takes one look at me and knows–how can she miss it?

We sit in the dark cinema watching the heads on the screen nod and sway. Fleshy mouths open and shut too fast. I can’t listen to what they’re saying. The shooting starts and when the screen explodes with bullets and bombs and screaming I turn to my sister and say, ‘I’m a whore and a junkie, sis. I’m a whore and a junkie.’ I stare at her profile, saying it over and over, but she’s caught up in the world of the movie and she can’t hear. We stay until the last credit has faded and the house lights come up. Georgie looks around blinking as if she has just woken up. She laughs and says, ‘It’s only the film tragics like us who stay till the end.’

I leave her outside the theatre.

‘Great to see you. Won’t have another chance before you leave. Take care, big sis.’

She frowns and tries to grab my hand but I pull away.

‘I thought we could go to a pub,’ she says. ‘I wanted to have a chat. About Dad. I never—’

‘Maybe next time,’ I call back over my shoulder. I have to force myself not to run.

I can’t give her what she wants. We always used to want what the other one had. She still doesn’t know any better.

When I get home I take a Valium and try to think about Cherie again. I can picture the flake of gold stuck to her fingertip. The man in old-time clothes put the gold in a glass vial for her to take home. Her lucky charm. I drink a few shots of whisky and have a cry in the bath.

At midnight I wake Kareen and show her where to hide money so Joe will never find it.

Women’s Trouble

‘This is a real problem,’ Mieko had whispered on the telephone that morning. ‘Difficult to explain. She wants a job, but no one will take her. She’s...she has done some peculiar things. She asked for money in the 7-Eleven. The man was so surprised he gave it to her. Then she went back the next day and asked for more. She gave my business card to him, said I’d pay him back!’ Mieko’s voice sounded breathy, close to tears.

‘Who is she? She sounds like a nutcase,’ I said.

‘She came to my school to ask for a job. Now she comes back every day. She says, “Is there a job yet?” I gave her some money, but she still comes back.’

‘She seems to be making quite a profit.’ I laughed.

‘Please help us, Shanti. Please talk to her.’

‘Mieko, I don’t need any staff.’

‘No, not a job–just talk to her. Maybe she’ll listen to you because you...tell her to go to Tokyo. Tell her there are jobs in Tokyo. She won’t stand out so much there.’

‘What do you mean, stand out?’ I asked.

‘You know, there are more foreigners than in Sendai. Please talk to her. Please, Shanti, this one favour.’

Now I had been waiting in the coffee shop for thirty minutes. On a television bolted to the wall a soap opera star wept and stirred her blue drink with a straw. The roar of a dishwashing machine issued from the kitchen. Flora was late, and the man at the next table was snoring and sliding further down his seat with each exhalation of foul air. His lit cigarette smouldered in an ashtray full of butts. I moved to a table in the corner and asked for another glass of water.

Years before, when my husband first brought me to live in Japan, I’d spent half my time in coffee shops. Business meetings, coffee with friends, introductions to business contacts–they all happened in coffee shops.

‘It’s because I’m black, isn’t it?’ I said to Shoichi. ‘They don’t want me in their houses.’

‘You’re not black, you’re a gorgeous latte. Anyway, it’s nothing to do with you. These people have cramped apartments and shabby offices. They don’t want to take guests there.’

Those coffee shops had brocade seats and fine china. A cup of coffee cost the same as a meal at a fast-food café. The coffee shop where I sat now was the kind where businessmen came to hide and read the paper or nap. Kids wagging school could buy one cup of coffee and sit here for hours. The room stank of urine and rotten fish, and the coffee was lukewarm and bitter. All I wanted to do was get into the fresh air but I had to wait a little longer. Mieko would be upset if I left and missed Flora.

In the to and fro of obligation, Mieko was way ahead of me. When I was setting up my school Mieko helped with the loan, found the premises, introduced me to everyone, gave me gifts, gave me more useless gifts for no obvious reason–I thought she must be the most generous person in the world.

‘How can I repay you?’ I asked, and Mieko laughed and said, ‘Don’t be silly, I don’t want anything from you.’

Soon I realised that little presents and kindnesses were the norm for everyone. The presents were becoming too much. I didn’t want another kabuki print cotton handkerchief, or a pack of six chocolate doughnuts, or an imitation lacquerware plate, or a free ticket to a calligraphy exhibition that was free anyway, or a kimono hand-sewn by someone’s grandmother, or a dinner at the city’s best steak restaurant, or a pair of skis. I wanted none of that. The weight of the presents was like wearing too many clothes, like being swathed in a tight kimono, a constriction that limited my movements and made me hot and sweaty in the presence of other people, afraid that I might say I liked something, afraid that they might give it to me. I decided that eventually these people would all want something in return.

‘Just one meeting with her, please,’ Mieko said.

‘Will you be there?’

‘No, no. I cannot do anything. It is up to you now.’

As soon as I agreed, Mieko told me where I was to meet Flora–she had been so sure of me that she had made the arrangements already. This coffee shop was the only one Flora liked, and it must have been the seediest place in the city.

Flora was now forty minutes late. I went to the counter and paid my money to the ancient, hairless, toothless man who sat by the cash register watching baseball on a miniature television. When I turned to face the door, Flora walked in and I understood everything.

Flora was a man. Flora was a six-foot, stocky man with thick make-up, a dowdy pastel skirt and blouse, white shoes, a cheap black wig, and the biggest hands I had ever seen.

She half-ran toward me, her arms outstretched as if she wanted to embrace. I stepped back and thrust out my arm to shake hands. She was gasping, as if she had run to get there, and the momentum of her bulk propelled us backward to the nearest table. She sat down opposite me, arranged her handbag on the seat next to her, called the waiter and ordered two coffees and a sandwich, powdered her nose, gasped several more times, then leaned forward and looked into my eyes.

‘You must help me,’ she said, in a deep voice. I couldn’t place her accent.

‘Oh,’ I said, thinking, yes, Mieko was right, she doesn’t know how to behave.

‘I need money. I cannot live like this. Please help me. Mieko, she says you help me. These people, this city, they don’t like foreigners. They telling me to go away. I cannot go. I have no money. I’m trying for the job. Every day, trying.’

There was a famous man in that city who used to dress up as a woman. Every Sunday he would take the train to the central railway station before midday, when the centre of the city was most crowded. He climbed the steps to the public park where families came for a break from their shopping, put down his portable karaoke
system and his large sports bag, straightened his suit and sat down for a relaxed cigarette before he began his performance. He had been doing this for years.

When the town hall clock struck twelve he would start the show. First he stripped off down to his underpants. No matter how cold the weather, and in that city it snowed heavily in winter, he would do his face make-up while standing there in his underpants. The snow-white skin on his sagging belly used to quiver sometimes from the cold. You could see goosebumps all over his body. The make-up was high drag–sequins on the eyelids, pancaked skin, false eyelashes. Once the face was done, he chose his outfit for the show from his bag, which seemed to hold an endless number of costumes. He favoured dresses just below knee-length, with flowing skirts, and he always wore a petticoat.

When he had dressed, he fired up the karaoke machine, warbled for twenty minutes, usually Elvis Presley and pop songs from the 70s, then undressed, cleaned his face, put the suit back on, and caught the train home.

People said he worked an ordinary salaryman’s job during the week, and that he had a wife and children. The first time people saw his improbable drag show they usually laughed. But the way he came back week after week gave him a kind of dignity, and now even the police nodded at him as they walked past him standing in his underpants with a scarlet lipstick in his hand.

I saw him one day when I was eating lunch in the park. He set up opposite my bench. As he rummaged among the rainbow of tulle and shantung and satin spilling from his sports bag, he kept glancing at me. I smiled at him and he looked away. I was used to people staring at my dark skin. People wanted to touch me too but didn’t dare. Still, it seemed odd that someone as strange as him would stare at anyone. Afterwards I realised that, of course, he didn’t think he was different. Apart from one hour a week, he was like everybody else.

Flora bolted her sandwich as I watched.

‘I have no food for two days,’ she said. I ordered her a plate of spaghetti with meat sauce.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll pay,’ I assured her. ‘Where are you from?’

‘My father is Russian. My mother is Italian. I came here before, and I was working. Now I have no job, no money.’

‘What happened?’ I asked.

She had drunk her coffee with three sugars. I ordered another. Flora was huge. If she really had been without food for two days, she must have been starving.

She shook her head. The thick hairs of her wig flopped heavily against her shoulders and I saw the line below the hairpiece where her make-up ended. Underneath, her skin was milky white.

The coffee arrived and Flora reached for the sugar bowl. I leaned back and glimpsed her feet under the table. In the white court shoes, they looked massive, like loaves of bread.

‘So, how long have you been in Japan?’ I asked, since it seemed I would get no answer to my last question.

‘Very long. I travel here, there. Many jobs. I teach English. I am good teacher. Can you give me a job?’

‘It’s a difficult time for schools. Student numbers are down. Do you speak Japanese?’

‘No.’

When the spaghetti came, Flora picked up the fork and twirled the strands delicately before raising the fork to her mouth.

‘Mieko told me that she can’t help you find a job because you won’t give her your passport. She needs the passport number for her forms. Did you know that you need to show your passport before anyone can give you a job?’ I was speaking hesitantly. Mieko said that Flora was touchy about her passport.

Flora slammed the fork down on the table and flung her hands in the air, knocking the light shade just above the table. The light swung backwards and forwards, throwing us in and out of shadow and light.

‘I have no passport. My parents bring me when I am young. From Russia. We run away from Russia.’ Her voice was higher than before, and shrill.

‘Well, then, you must have some sort of papers,’ I said.

Flora looked at me with her head tilted, as if she had just learned something new about me. She patted down her wig, then picked up her fork and started eating again. I guessed that the hand-throwing display would have been effective with the Japanese, sending them into a panic.

‘Are your parents still here?’

‘They died. I am a woman alone. I have no family, no money. You understand...’ she paused, her fork halfway to her mouth, and smiled at me. ‘We are women and we are foreigners. It is hard for us. Hard.’

I was trying to guess Flora’s age. She was wearing so much make-up that it was difficult to tell. I thought perhaps she was in her forties. None of the little she had told me made any sense. If she had come as a child she would have been able to speak Japanese. Yet her accent did seem slightly Russian. The oddest thing about her was that she seemed to think I believed she was a woman.

Flora had finished the spaghetti and was reapplying her lipstick. There were only two other customers left in the restaurant. The snoring man had woken and scuttled away as soon as he saw her. The remaining couple was sitting in the opposite corner, leaning together and whispering. They were teenagers. They had probably never imagined anything like this burly cross-dresser with the loud voice and the hands like plates.

‘I can’t help you if you won’t show anyone your passport.’

‘I cannot. Why won’t you help me?’ Flora raised her hand to her throat, as if she could feel the knot tightening. ‘Nobody helps me. I must beg for food. These people,’ she gestured around her, ‘this country, they are so cruel.’ Her muscular face squeezed up and her nose started to redden.

I imagined her shaking Mieko’s tiny hand, how Mieko’s arm would disappear almost up to the elbow. Despite the pity I felt for poor ugly Flora, a laugh was beginning to well up inside me. I pictured Flora stepping into the women’s toilets at a department store and trying to cram into a squat toilet cubicle. I saw her on the subway at rush hour, the fake pointy breasts crushed against a businessman’s head. I imagined her lining up with a row of women a third her size at the beauty parlour.

Flora coughed politely opposite me. Her lipstick had bled in little cracks out of the corner of her mouth and she was patting down her wig again. The teenage couple had given up whispering and now were staring in silence.

‘Flora,’ I said. ‘I want to help you. I don’t know what to do. Do you have somewhere to stay?’

‘Yes, yes. I stay with the nuns. They let me sleep there.’

She was so passive. I felt a strange, unreasonable anger.

‘Your name is Shanti?’ she asked.

‘Yes, my parents are Indian Australian.’ I had been asked so many times I always jumped in first.

‘You belong in Australia. I don’t know where I belong.’

‘My husband is Japanese,’ I said. ‘I think I belong here now.’

‘Soft skin.’ She reached over and touched my hand. Her nails were bitten down so far the fingers looked like stumps.

I gave Flora my telephone number and told her I’d think about what work she could do. She was to call me the next day. She asked for money again and I gave what I had left after paying the bill, enough for two or three meals. When she opened the clasp of her handbag to put in the money, I saw the red Russian passport. Flora saw that I saw. She closed the handbag and slid the handle up her forearm so that she was holding the bag tight against her body the way my mother did when she walked up the street. There was something so pathetic in the way Flora played a woman that I felt like weeping.

That night I told Shoichi all about Flora. He laughed as I described her white shoes and her clumsy make-up and how her badly cut skirt rode up on her thighs when she walked.