From the Booker Prize-longlisted author of THE SLAP
E-Book, Englisch, 384 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-80546-186-9
Verlag: Atlantic Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Christos Tsiolkas is the author of eight novels, including the international bestseller The Slap, which won Overall Best Book in the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize among other honours. In 2021 he won the Melbourne Prize for Literature for his body of work. Christos is also a playwright, essayist and screen writer. He lives in Melbourne.
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‘You know why, Dad.’ Kat is clearly exasperated. ‘She’s still angry with you. She’s angry with everyone.’ Ivan is rocking on his heels, testing the floorboards; there is a pronounced wobble there and a creak every time he pushes down. He squats and turns up a corner of the clammy acrylic carpet. There is heavy mould on the underlay. He raps his knuckles on the wood. The boards are solid—old hardwood. He looks up at his daughter. ‘It needs restumping. But the boards are good. I can do the sanding for you. They’ll come up beautiful.’ He sees it in Kat’s eyes, knows by the glum twist of her mouth that she’s pissed off with him. He rolls his shoulders, sighs. ‘It’s okay, lutka,’ he says, and he’s glad to see her smile at that familiar endearment. ‘Perry doesn’t have to come. He’ll understand.’ The smile is gone. She even stamps her foot, and Ivan has to stop himself from laughing. Kat finds it impossible to hide her ire, a trait probably inherited from both parents. He still has delicious memories of her as a child, with her hands on her hips, face grimacing as she uses that same foot stomp to convey her fury. ‘That’s not the point, Dad. I want Perry to be there. Tash wants him to be there.’ Ivan nods, appreciative of his daughter’s kindness. And her loyalty. Tashie’s only met Perry once and he is certain she has little memory of him. Not yet five years old, she only cares about routine and security. Her innate curiosity is indeed a pleasure—Ivan is indefatigably proud of her—but as yet it is contained. He is sure that Kat has diligently explained to her that Perry is Deda’s new boyfriend. He is equally confident that the information is irrelevant to Tashie. She has to get to know Perry, to meet him again and again, before he becomes real for her. He silently rolls that word—boyfriend—along his tongue, and winces. They are too old for such a word. He shakes away that unwelcome thought. He needs to get on with looking through the house so he can figure out how much work is required before Kat can bid for it at auction. Bloody Dana. Yet again he wishes he’d never met her. And then, immediately, as always, comes the indisputable realisation: but then, with no Dana there would be no Katerina. And that is unthinkable. He shakes his head. ‘Thank you—it means a lot to me that you want him there. But it’s Tashie’s birthday and she’ll be devastated if her Nonna’s missing.’ He walks over to his daughter, who is still looking mutinous, her arms crossed tight, her body tense. He puts his arm around her shoulders. ‘You, Tash, Perry and me will go for a birthday picnic another time.’ He feels her relax into him. He kisses the top of her head, inhales the sweetness of her perfume. He gently pushes her off him. ‘Okay, now let’s take a look at this house.’ He is confident he has not revealed it, the knot that has tightened inside him, the shadow that has enveloped him. He shudders at the ferocity of his anger. He walks along the dark, narrow corridor, which reeks of the chemicals the real estate agent has used to disguise the stink of the mould and rot. He goes into a small room. There is a large double-sash window with light spilling through it. It looks out directly onto a zebra crossing on the street outside. The thought is automatic: that’s good for Tashie. He tries opening the window but there is a bolt lock and no sign of a key. The wooden frames are freshly painted, the most basic and cheap of acrylic off-white. He runs his thumbnail along a groove that has bubbled along the surface. The paint peels off immediately and his nail scratches along the seam of the wood. It can’t dig in far. He nods in satisfaction. He gives Kat a thumbs-up. ‘Good windows.’ An archway leads into the kitchen. It is tiny, but then so is the whole place. He takes the measure of the room. There is hardly space to fit a small table. One of the cupboards has a door missing, and the basin is scuffed and stained. He opens the door under the sink, and the hinges shudder and squeal as he peers at the pipework: cheap and shoddy casings, an ominous crack visible on the S-bend. He sniffs. It stinks of mice. The whole bloody kitchen will need to be replaced. A small screen door opens to the narrow yard. Standing on the top step he understands why Kat has fallen in love with the place. The sea isn’t visible; it’s a few hundred metres to the highway and there’s the whole of Bayside Plaza to cross before you hit the beach. And there’s the uninspiring red-brick wall of the back of the bicycle shop across the alley. But the house sits at the top of a shallow rise, and the breeze from the bay is bracing and fresh. Kat comes up beside him and puts her head on his shoulder. ‘I know it needs a lot of work, Dad, but I really like this place.’ She jumps off the steps, throws her arms out wide. ‘And I know it’s small, but there’s a yard for Tashie.’ Ivan is making swift calculations in his head. The property is small. At the moment there’s enough room for Kat and Tash, but when his daughter gets together with someone in the future that will present a problem. And the kitchen and that foul bathroom, all of it will need to be redone before they move in. There’s the restumping, but that’s par for the course. The walls are solid, at least; when had Kat said it was built? The 1950s? They built them to last back then. And it’s only a five- or ten-minute walk to the shops, to the station. Fifteen minutes and you’re at the beach. It’s rare to find homes so close to markets and malls in the suburbs, but the house is part of an old industrial estate, a subdivision of a much larger property, the auto shop next door. The real estate agent had explained to Kat that the previous owners had been two artists and that they had moved in illegally, that it had never been zoned for residential. Fortunately for the artist couple, and now maybe for Kat, a provision in one of the local by-laws transferred full ownership of the property if it could be shown that there had been continuous domestic use for seven years. The couple had been living in it for nine years when they applied for the exemption and now it is the only fully residential property on the block. Ivan runs his thumb across his bottom lip, feels the rough scratch of his stubble. His hand instinctively goes to his head. He needs to shave it tonight. All of that recent history boded well for the house. It revealed that the shop owners in the block weren’t arseholes; none of them had reported the couple to the council. And it meant that inevitably the area would be rezoned at some stage, that apartments would be going up all around. Great resale value. Watching him, Katerina stays silent. ‘How much are they asking for it?’ She knows he knows. She also knows that this is a necessary part of his decision-making. ‘Around six hundred thousand.’ She shrugs. ‘But you know real estate agents, they always underquote.’ The only competition will be developers. But the size is a risk for them. The owners of the warehouse next door or of the bike shop behind would have them over a barrel when it came to negotiations. The other side of the house runs along the street, so there is no potential for expanding on that side. Families want to move into Frankston, but the place would be too small for them. And luckily the yuppies still look down their noses at the suburb—too far from the city. Kat had rolled her eyes when he used that word, and only the other week, Perry had laughed too. ‘Yuppies?’ he’d exclaimed in feigned shock. ‘Who the fuck uses that word anymore!’ Ivan is adamant: he is going to keep on using it. He hates calling them hipsters; that was just yuppies wanting to self-aggrandise. Young urban professionals. That’s what the cunts are. That’s what he’s going to call them. ‘Offer them seven hundred.’ ‘You don’t think we should wait for auction?’ ‘We might have to.’ He drops his voice to a low whisper. Never know who’s listening. ‘I think you should be prepared to go up to seven hundred and fifty—maybe seven-sixty. But let’s see what they say after the first offer.’ Katerina rushes to her father, embraces him with so much enthusiasm he is both embarrassed and delighted. ‘Seven hundred and sixty thousand for Frangas?’ she replies. ‘Can you believe it. It’s just not right.’ ‘No,’ Ivan responds, the word resounding so emphatically that Katerina pulls out of their embrace, looks quizzically at her father. ‘You okay?’ ‘Yes.’ A growl to that syllable as well. He strides the short distance to the back fence and squats next to an untended seedbed, a few spindly and meagre twigs the only evidence of the plants that used to flower there. Ivan pulls out a handful of weeds, and then scrapes and digs into the earth, examining the soil. It’s not right. The words are swirling in his head, and as his fingers rub the clumps of sand, he repeats them—it’s not right, it’s just not right—till they become a mantra. Ivan grew up in Clayton, hardly salubrious itself, and not blessed with a beach to escape to. Yet for most of his life,...
