Antidote to a Curse Read online

  ANTIDOTE TO A CURSE

  JAMES CRISTINA

  MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

  www.transitlounge.com.au

  Copyright © James Cristina 2018

  First Published 2018

  Transit Lounge Publishing

  This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher.

  Cover image: Bizarre Love Triangle by Alix-Soubiran Hall.

  Private Collection/Bridgeman Images

  Cover and book design: Peter Lo

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  A cataloguing-entry is available from the

  National Library of Australia: trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN: 978-1-925760-11-8

  Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

  Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

  JOHN KEATS, ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

  The shop I frequented didn’t have a name. As I ascended the steep staircase I noted the new R sign above the glass door. The panel above the doorway was painted yellow with black lettering: We Are Open 24hrs. Two main rooms branched off on either side of the landing, video booths on the right and merchandise to the left. I closed the glass door behind me. The seductive whirr of a ceiling fan lured me through the plastic strips on the left.

  The air here was cooler. The fleshy guy with rimless glasses and evenly parted hair sat behind the counter, reading. The fluorescent tube reflected in his lenses, giving him white diamond-tipped haloes for eyes. He nodded briefly and returned to his newspaper.

  It was only eleven in the morning and the shop was empty. As I walked towards the back, I glanced at the convex mirror and wondered if I was being watched. The reflection appeared still. I hazarded another look but needn’t had worried. His head was so small; I could view him surreptitiously, without making eye contact – but without premonition, or because of it, I stopped and looked straight over my shoulder. He put down his newspaper; I held his eye for a second or so. He smiled faintly.

  The videos and DVDs had been reorganised and there were some new titles. I picked up a few, scanning the covers before putting them back again. Most of them were American, with preppy muscle boys in various summer poses. Outdoor sex, wet sex, group sex – it all seemed the same. Besides, it was summer in Melbourne and I felt like something different.

  I came across a glossy cover depicting a pastoral scene – rolling hills straight out of the heart of Europe. Prominent in the foreground were two guys wearing commando gear, seemingly distracted.

  I looked for a title but couldn’t find one; I turned the cover around, hoping for something new. A single guy wearing a bulletproof vest was pointing vehemently with an outstretched finger to a flat road in the cleft of a valley. A well-timed shot, though the exact point of interest escaped me. It was obvious that he was coordinating with people outside the photograph’s frame. I wondered what language the film was in.

  A fluorescent tube glared above us. ‘Half an hour or an hour?’ the fleshy guy asked, flipping the box over.

  ‘An hour.’

  He turned the cover to the front and raised a brow above the rim of his lens. ‘It’s different,’ he conceded, as if impressed. ‘Have you used …?’ he pointed, as if unable to locate the word.

  I continued to look at him. His hair was a uniform sandy blond, apart from his black roots. His eyebrows were black. He had a silver sleeper in his left ear that matched the arms of his glasses. He pressed his shoulders back and raised his hands. He looked like he was about to juggle the empty box. ‘I’ll show you.’

  He fast-forwarded the first bit so that no time was wasted on credits, then took his glasses off and put them in the drawer under the register. His green eyes were sprinkled with yellow freckles. I noticed a white card in the palm of his hand. ‘It’s just in the next room.’

  I walked out ahead of him, the thin whisper of his micro-synthetic combat pants catching my ear as he followed. Sweeping the strips aside he closed the door and locked it, slipping a Back in 5 min sign in the groove between the door and the frame. He held the ornate key before me.

  ‘Edwardian,’ he pronounced.

  I realised I hadn’t asked for change, but as we stepped into the room I could hear fragments of the anticipated éclat.

  He repositioned the remote on the seat before pushing the chair forward. Its metal legs groaned against the floorboards.

  Orange flesh lit up a spray of fire spilling like the end of an ignited cigarette into darkness. Within minutes a totally naked soldier had donned his commando gear. It was obvious from the shop assistant’s proximity that he intended to stay and watch the film, at least the beginning. We cut to a field, a seemingly unspoilt panorama shattered by the unmistakable spatter of sniper fire. And yes, down below, right in the valley’s cleft, winding its way like a silver river was the road promised on the cover. The film stalled and the monitor flickered with a field of static and snow. A series of blurred frames skipped across the screen, exposing some random scenes of news footage dubbed crudely over the top of the video I was so keen to see.

  The shop assistant caught my eye, smiled and leaned towards me. The light split and caught the silver chain glinting above his neckline, the splattered yellow of his freckled eye. Distracted, I leaned towards him. He misread the move and kissed me, awkwardly on the cheek, before releasing the rivet of my jeans.

  His hair, stiffer than I expected, tickled; I felt like I had been brushed in the dark by a whisker. I looked at the screen, hoping to see a scene from the film I had hired.

  I combed my fingers through his hair, releasing the strands in layers. After skipping through a few frames the screen settled on a pair in polarised roles. The two men were dressed in black and neither of them spoke. One reacted to a signal before coming to rest on all fours. Roughly spliced, the film revealed a close-up. I saw myself prying the slackened folds of crenulated skin. The tendons twisted as he worked the pivot to his one buried digit.

  I reached for a vial tucked into my front pocket. I pulled it out only to relinquish it. The shop assistant rose to his feet, unscrewed it, took a breath and offered it to me as if it were his. My heart fluttered. I felt a pulse, a tic, something beating in my brain. I watched the screen, the couple’s progress. Our play provided a syncopated counterpart; we trailed in our muddled roles, the metal chair legs screeching.

  He stands to his full height and walks around his subject, who remains crouched on his heels. He examines his subject’s gear, his teeth, and with his free hand gives him a reverberating slap. He is staking the intractability of his claim. The footage reveals a close-up, the subject’s face. He rewards him with a sweet. Now he needs only to submit and, possibly, enjoy.

  One crude splice rendered the man protected: a movie-land apparition. I hesitated, out of step with the unexpected editing … The beating in my head continued as my breathing turned irregular. A bird flutters, turns, only to beat against its cage. I pulled away, realising he was bare. I muttered a few sounds, some text, and a few words reeling through my head.

  ‘OK?’ he asked.

  I stammered.

  ‘Sure?’

  I cleared my throat before voicing, ‘Some air.’

  Even though I was tired I slept lightly that night. A palm branch wove through a series of recollections, insistently tapping like a leitmotif through the mire of imagery. I wasn’t sure if it was the palm branch or my thoughts – of Zlatko, the bookshop and the cafe – that kept me awake. I thought of reaching for my earplugs, but found the light tapping mildly hypnotic. I thought of Zlatko turning t
he key, closing up the shop.

  Footsteps broke lightly on the footpath, breaking darkly through the fierce light …

  After the dimly lit cubicle, the outdoor light was an affront. Squinting through the midday sun I tried to maintain a shoulder-to-shoulder manoeuvrability. He colluded by playing truant, sticking the Back in 5 min card right into the frame of the outside door, pocketing a flimsy key.

  His pink shirt …

  We had just stepped onto Russell Street and were heading for a cafe on Lonsdale. For some reason I couldn’t help but associate the invitation with his recently donned, flawlessly pressed shirt, the straight edge riding evenly along his waistband. ‘Do you have time for a drink?’ he asked, seconds after stepping out of the video booth.

  In the intense light it was the colour of his shirt that I appreciated the most. I waited for my eyes to adjust and wondered whether he was having the same difficulty. He lit up a cigarette and after an interrupted puff met my inquisitiveness with a smile – a lingering look. Now that we were out, greeted by the plane’s dry rustling leaves, the sun, he inhaled deeply. His pink shirt was well faded, with a picot-edged pocket and a pointed collar. He wore it as a jacket, over a white T-shirt with a low V-neck. I traced a silver chain nestled among the fine chest hair. I was certain that the chain was gold. His shirt, apart from the lower two buttons, was undone. He had a slightly stout build which his loose clothing complemented.

  His reflection …

  He placed his right hand on the doorknob, riffling his hair in the shopfront. He greeted a faded outline, seemingly pleased with what he saw; he adjusted his collar before ushering me onwards along Lonsdale Street.

  The waiter…

  We walked towards a doorway where a thin man with a black apron and tailored pants was standing with one foot on the footpath. His hair was heavily gelled around a parting, slightly off-centre, and his skin was shot with capillaries that gathered in the hollows of his cheeks. He displayed the suave, reserved air of an Austrian waiter, the type that proliferated in the cultural and cosmopolitan hubs. He threw his cigarette onto the footpath and crushed it underfoot. He greeted us with a smile that cut across his gums. Given the tacit nod he directed towards the guy, I could tell that they were well acquainted.

  Stalactites …

  Bright, with a rocky fibreglass interior and bulbs with long electric filaments shaped to resemble wicks. It reminded me of a cafe for the religious police in Riyadh that I once stumbled upon with a group of friends, except the music here was a welcome change from faux birdcalls and the sound of water cascading from a non-existent fountain. Perhaps the waiter was a fan of the piano. I identified the piece: Schubert’s German Dance, Op. 33 No. 7. The volume was low and the piece unobtrusive. It lent a vibrant atmosphere. We took our seats in the lit enclave by the counter.

  ‘I rarely come out for lunch.’ The shop assistant twisted his wrist to get a better view of the time.

  ‘Ah, what do you usually do?’

  ‘Read the newspaper, The Age, … or write letters.’

  For some reason I wasn’t expecting him to say this. His long, ragged hair often fell forward and he seemed happy enough to let it sit there. I felt like I was being viewed through a clearing. His fringe made him seem sheepish, slow to commit.

  ‘Not allowed to leave the shop?’

  ‘Don’t like walking around.’

  The waiter stood by our table, six foot three on flat heels and a shoe tapered to a pointed toe. He took our order without making eye contact, allowing the briefest of nods after making a mental note. I traced the line of his spine, his balance, with intrigue, before focusing on the man sitting before me. I noticed, as he turned towards the bar, a plastic wire sticking out of his left ear, the end capped by a translucent bulb. A snail’s eye stalk, I mused, with the bulb glinting intermittently. It was no more than a centimetre long. I looked at his piercing, to distract attention away from his hearing aid, I thought. He noted my curiosity as he lit another cigarette. The tip burned fiercely as he inhaled.

  ‘Your hearing aid.’

  He plucked it out. The earpiece was an inch long and shaped to his ear canal. It looked like a peanut apart from the tiny transmitter. I brought my finger within millimetres of the translucent bulb. He shoved it back into his ear looking somewhat pleased.

  Coffee was served in two disparate cups. His choice sediment was black; mine, white and frothy.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  I expected something Slavic, Milos perhaps, or Milan. I had taught many former Yugoslavian refugees, years ago –

  ‘Zlatko.’

  ‘Ah! Serbian?’ I knew that he was from some part of the former Yugoslavia but could not pinpoint the location. I felt like I was labouring. I looked for some reassurance, assuming him a friend.

  ‘Bosnian.’

  I gave an appreciative little nod, knowing that I had made some fundamental mistake, but I knew little about the region. ‘A refugee?’ I asked, prepared to make a bold guess.

  ‘Yes,’ he responded, appearing unscathed as he gave a little shrug. Zlatko turned a napkin over and asked, ‘Pen?’

  The waiter pulled a silver pen, barely tapered, ever so sleek, from his apron and placed it on the table without a single word. Zlatko claimed it, clicking the flat-brushed tab, to write, Zlatko Omerovic.

  It felt like looking into a murky pond and, once the ripples had subsided, recognising some stone you liked. I immediately took to the gesture, so deliberate, of writing his name down. All was clear. Despite his sheepish look he appeared exceedingly upfront.

  ‘I’ve never come across that name before,’ I offered, a little excited. ‘Mine’s Silvio! Silvio Portelli.’ I wrote my name down as well.

  ‘Portelli.’ He turned the word round on the tip of his tongue as if he was trying a new taste. ‘Italian?’

  After writing in my journal for over an hour, I fell back to sleep. Remnants of the day churned in my head. ‘Have you used …?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I will show you.’

  But this film was different, it was outdoors, underexposed, the camera was pointed at a lonely stretch of poorly lit road and as soon as I saw the skeletal outline of a car with its headlights dimmed, I realised this was yet another amateur shoot, shot in infra-red. This wasn’t like televised news footage at all. This time the camera was fixed on a barren scene through a wide-angle lens. Without notice, the surrounding hills lit up with a short but intense burst of fire. The driver turned the lights off, but within seconds the car stalled. It was not easy to tell whether the driver had been hit. The camera zoomed in. The eerie nature of the footage made it feel like I was the only person viewing it. Even though it didn’t meet my expectations I found myself captivated. A man wearing a beret approached the passenger side of the car. He lifted an arm and shot. The shot, distant and without reverberation, punctured the silence. The camera zoomed in to reveal the driver slumped forward in his seat. Out of the darkness, in apparent silence, two soldiers rushed to the driver’s side of the car. One opened the door shining a flash light into the car, while the other sought to retrieve the body. It was only once the driver had been pulled from the seat that I realised, from the long hair and the way an arm pleated so accommodatingly, it was a woman.

  I once taught some Bosnian teenagers for a couple of years while working at a language school in Tottenham. The largest segment of the student population was Asian. The language school provided a bridging course to the local comprehensive in northern London. Even though I had taught these students, I hadn’t bothered to take much notice of the war or ask questions about the former Yugoslavia. I had asked a Croatian friend of mine what the fighting was all about and her answer was, ‘Oh, it’s been going on for years.’ By 1996 the Dayton Agreement had been ratified, but the country stood in ruins.

  I had looked up Bosnia on my old world map, but of course I hadn’t found it.

  I remembered a dedicated student I had taught in Tottenham, Vladimir. He�
��d drawn a picture of Yugoslavia on the board. Bosnia was the ‘heart-shaped land’, landlocked in the body of a long sprawling country. On my map Yugoslavia had been blocked out as a solid single entity.

  ‘Which part of Bosnia do you come from?’

  The question seemed to take Zlatko by surprise. ‘The Cazinska Krajina, Pećigrad, a village outside Bihać.’

  We were at Stalactites. Balalaika music seeped from the speakers. Darko was polishing the owner’s prized ornate beer mugs.

  I hadn’t thought Zlatko would be from a village.

  ‘Nice?’ ‘Oh, yes.’ I had to stop myself from smiling as his eyes

  widened. ‘I used to spend hours walking around in the forest just by the river listening to the birds, mapping their breeding grounds and … humming?’

  I gave an encouraging nod.

  ‘Humming a tune.’

  I recalled a fleeting image from the previous day: his reflection, his pink shirt, whisking from shop to cafe.

  ‘I thought you hated to walk around.’

  ‘In the city, but not in a forest,’ he said, leaning back with an unabashed smile.

  He reclined, with one arm swung over the back of his chair. He tilted his head. He viewed me straight on, held me for a second or two, expressionless, before gesturing to Darko with a wave so condescending I thought it fit for a servant. Zlatko then gave Darko a meaningful look that seemed well received.

  Darko stepped forward carrying a crystal decanter with a tapered neck and a faceted round stopper that he unplugged and placed ceremoniously between two tumblers of fine cut glass.

  ‘Let’s have a drink.’

  I still hadn’t eaten, but the amber liquor filled the room like a genie detectible only to the nose and induced a dreamy spell all of its own. Dusk.

  ‘How could I refuse?’

  Zlatko took charge, filling the glasses with expertise.

  Before I could even ask what we were drinking, the amber brew was poured and winking before us. Zlatko made a toast: ‘To friendship.’ I noticed Darko’s lip curl transparently as he stood eyeing the scene from his vantage point behind the bar. Somehow the uncustomary lapse on Darko’s account only heightened Zlatko’s steely reserve.