Cydonia - Three

Three
His name is Rob, the mutterer with the spectacles and the how ya goin. He waits with us in the morning for our lift to the school. He’s worked for Roger before he tells us, good bloke, won’t fuck you around. We nod, none of us really ready for conversation at such a ridiculous hour. But Rob likes to talk. He talks about travelling, hitchhiking around the country on his own, odd jobs here and there. He’s passed through Katherine many times, it’s a little spot he likes. We’ll have to see the Gorge, he tells us, Katherine Gorge, beautiful. I nod and sniff, drinking my coffee and smoking my cigarette. A moment of silence finds us. Rob takes off his spectacles and cleans them against his green t-shirt. We sit and stand, breathing in the morning. It’s beautiful at this time, the sky barely blue, a star still there, the sun just starting his shift, ready to roast the coolness from the morning air. But we’ve got the jump on him, a few more breaths of cool before he catches us. We’re tired and faced with work, but six in the morning is beautiful.

Eventually a pickup rolls up with Roger’s son at the wheel, introducing himself with a grunt. We climb in the back and we’re off, drifting through Katherine, the wind rushing the sleep from our eyes. Twenty minutes later and we’re at the school, a great metropolis of regrettable architecture and beige. Others are gathered, backpackers like us, kicking dust and smoking, waiting for the army to assemble. And so we join them, Rob still at our side, our new friend it would seem.

Roger eventually appears in his van with another son and enough cleaning products to erase mankind. He delivers a well practised speech, the importance of cleanliness and teamwork, the battle against grime and time. The foreigners nod and smoke, pretending to understand. We’re designated our areas and thrust weapons of mops and industrial detergent. Our group is split, I’m sent with two Dutch girls to clean windows in the east wing exterior. I imagine they speak perfect English but they don’t say much, barely acknowledging my hello. They walk close together, as if wanting to be closer, I wonder if they are lesbians. One of them is a little pretty, the other a lot not. It’s going to be a long day.

As the sun rises higher and the morning melts towards noon the school starts to stink. It’s subtle at first, a whisper of rotten flesh on the warm air, hiding behind soap and sinking tarmac. The Dutch lesbians notice it too, I see them scrunching their noses and muttering exclusively. I clean the windows and try to ignore it. The job’s not so bad really. It’s outside so I can smoke cigarettes and take breaks to look around at my surroundings. Beyond the school is nothing but dust and bush, a wasteland of red and creeping poison. It’s so vast and empty that the eye struggles to gain purchase, slipping helplessly around the landscape like ice. The cleaning itself is therapeutic, wiping glass clean of built up dust and dirt. The first spray of detergent, the first wipe with my thick yellow cloth, more sprays, more wipes, then rinse. Even though the temperature is rising the warm water is nice as it runs over my hand and tickles along my arms. With each window the school is cleaner. But with each window the smell is stronger.

Lunch. I leave the Dutch lesbians in peace to nibble their triangularly cut sandwiches as I search for my brother and Pete. I find them at the back of the school, beside the football pitch, sitting on a wall with Rob, all three squeezing sandwiches into their mouths like hungry orphans. They’ve been cleaning the carpets in the ground floor level, dragging around Hoovers and steamers, moving furniture back and forth. Rob’s closer to them now, a little further into friendship, the three of them grumbling about the rising temperature. I skim around their outskirts, feeling a little left out. I mention the smell but they haven’t noticed it. It’s in the air now I tell them, right now, smell it. They stop chewing briefly, mouths full of compacted bread and cheap ham. They sniff the air, searching for death, but find nothing. I sit with them and eat, not saying much else. When Rob’s mouth is empty he talks again, this time about his home, Tasmania. He’s far away, here in the bush, but there’s nothing to miss and nothing to miss him. He feels more at home on the move he says, meeting new people, new roads, new beds. We nod, pretending to understand, all three of us homesick for our mothers and fathers and the familiar halls they inhabit.

Back to work and the stink gets stronger. The Dutch lesbians have been taken somewhere else. I’m left with the sun and the stink and the last of the dirty windows. As the glass gets cleaner so does my view of beyond; little desks and walls covered in thick brush paintings and number charts. I want to go inside, paint a picture with my hands then fall asleep at the teacher’s desk. Instead I finish the last of the windows and lean wearily against the balcony railing above the courtyard playground bellow. The Dutch lesbians pass by, not so close this time, dragging vacuums with squeaky wheels and smiley faces. A long haired Euro shuffles by quietly, struggling to light a cigarette with a gasless lighter, maybe he’s German. A French couple chase each other with childish giggles and wet sponges. A dog passes slowly, old and hot, sniffing in the air for food or friendship. He looks up and sees me standing there. He tilts his head and examines me, I examine him back. His black eyes are dull, his black nose is wet. He makes a noise, like a cough or a sneeze, then continues on his way. His dull eyes saw me. He looked like a nice old dog.

As we gather at the front of the school with our weapons and tired hands someone finds the stink. A bin behind the courtyard we’re told, something dead and rotten. We drop our arms and go to look.

Crippled in the black bin is a dead roo. His eyes peer up from death into the departing sun that cooks his skin and hair with fire. Most of him moves under a vast army of feeding grubs, all climbing and slipping and eating and burrowing like a greedy yellow army. People choke back their sandwiches with coughs and groans, fleeing back to where we started. The smell is amazingly vile but I’m more accustomed to it than the others. I take it in with sharp little breaths, revelling in its heavy power. He must be a baby, I think. Lost and abandoned in the heat with only sharp teeth for company. His eye still stares, the army leaving him with that at least. He stares up, saying nothing, not apologizing for his stink of crying for his mother.

I admire him sadly, before rejoining the others.

Back at the Court we feel like battle weary soldiers, washing ourselves and comparing blisters. Rob joins us for dinner; it seems he really has become our new friend. I’m not sure if I like him or not. He seems friendly enough but he has that distant element of uncertainty that feeds my paranoia. He eats with us, slurping down spaghetti hoops, coating his thin lips with dull orange through stories of Tasmania and the friends he used to know. We nod and eat, contributing here and there but mainly listening to his steady, consistent voice, his words flatlining from his mouth to our ears. When he stops to light a cigarette I do the same. The beautiful Brazilians are over Rob’s shoulder and I watch her, sitting in the fading light, skin precious gold, eyes so brown they might as well be black. Rob talks about farming, animals, crops, poison soil, decline and the death of his mother. He sold the farm and began wandering his country without map or mission. He’d been travelling for years, ripped his country open and trampled across its many faces like a fugitive, never stopping long enough to call somewhere home. I take my eyes from her and to Rob. He smokes with method, his hands like leather. His face is beaten but his eyes still burn. Through thick glass they burn with the light of a man with no home.

He asks about us and the conversation shifts dramatically from the interesting to the mind numbing doldrums of our middle class lives. We went to school. We went to university. Our families love us. And we love them. Money has not been a problem throughout the course of our lives. We like girls. We like football. We are not interesting people. Like you. Like the beautiful Brazilians glowing in the corner. But Rob listens anyway and for this I like him.

I go for a piss and when I return my heart isn’t sure why I’ve told it to beat so fast, the beautiful Brazilians are sitting at our table, that’s why. I pretend not to be absolutely horrified as I saunter towards them. I take my seat with a smile and a hey and a hi. He is called Leon and is Australian. She is called Tabitha, and is Canadian. So, not Brazilian then, but beautiful? Yes, more than is morally fair to the rest of mankind. Instead of the reduction in distance exposing skin not so perfect, noses not so straight and eyes not so brown, it does nothing but drown our inferiority into their cream, their radiance. Leon is handsome and pretty and virtually leaking with health. Tabitha swings even harder, knocking us into the night and catching us back handed with a face so fucking pretty she smells of everything that was ever good. We the others sit there as we sweat and grow and pollute and scorch their perfect browns with our imperfect blues. It seems I am the only one uncomfortable with this. This is often the case.

But they fuck everything up by being nice. Leon and Tabitha, nice nice nice, beautiful and nice. Really nice even. Unbelievable. We play cards and talk. Leon is only nineteen, taking a year out before starting university in Melbourne, chemistry. Tabitha is touring the world and has been for nine months, she was on her own until she met Leon in Byron Bay. Jesus that must have been sweet. The sun, the sand, the sea, the fucking. I almost get a hardon just thinking about them. She’s twenty three, older than me, older than all of us, all of us except Rob.

We play cards and talk until we’re the only ones left. We drink beer and those of us who smoke smoke. We have nothing planned for tomorrow. No six am. No dirty schools or rotting animals. We’ll sleep until our eyes, browns and blues, are ready to open.

Rob mutters in the darkness. Sitting on the edge of his bed he whispers at someone standing in front of him that only he can see, or that only I can not. Everyone else is asleep, my brother above snoring gently, tonight more calf than bull. I lie with my eyes closed.

Rob soothes me with his ghosts.