A Great Intimacy
and other stories
by
Rosanne Dingli
©Rosanne Dingli 2011
Smashwords edition
All rights reserved. Except by way of fair dealing for review purposes or study, no portion of this publication may
be transmitted, entered or stored in a retrieval system, photocopied, or reproduced in any way or by any means whatsoever, without prior written permission of the copyright holder and publisher.
The stories in this book appeared, in slightly altered forms, in The Bookbinder’s Brother, published by Jacobyte Books in 2003. Playing from Memory appeared in Sibling Stories 2, (edited by Barbara Holland) published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press in 1997. A Great Intimacy won the 1994 Springvale Award. Il Funerale di Un Vescovo was very highly commended at the 1998 Lyndal Hadow Awards, run by the Fellowship of Australian Writers in Western Australia. The Bookbinder’s Brother appeared in Voices, Canberra 1993, and Twenty Minutes, Two Years appeared in Voices, Canberra, in 1992.
An illustrated edition of this book is available in paperback
This is a work of fiction.All characters and incidents are imaginary,and any resemblance to any real person,living or dead, is entirely coincidental.The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this work are largely the products of the author’s imagination. If real, such as well documented events, famous artists, works of art, orplaces, they are used fictitiously.
A Great Intimacy
and other stories
For Ramon and Ravenna
Also by Rosanne Dingli
Death in Malta
According to Luke
Vision or Delusion
Rosanne Dingli is an award-winning Western Australian author.
Her work has appeared in print and on the Internet since 1985.
She has worked in various publishing roles, and has lectured
in writing. For more information, please visit
Contents
The Bookbinder’s Brother
After Agnes
A Cello
Il Funerale di un Vescovo
A Great Intimacy
Twenty Minutes, Two Years
Playing From Memory
What critics have said about Rosanne Dingli’s writing:
The Bookbinder’s Brother
Plain titles belie the intricacy of these carefully crafted tales, as they explore the relationship between past and present selves and belonging – to a person, to a job, a landscape, or a set of values.
Dennis Haskell
Editor of Westerly,
Professor of English
University of Western Australia
Death in Malta
… you gave the island and its people real substance, the exuberant sounds of the fireworks, the smells of the tenements, the steep narrow alleys and the clip-clop of the pony’s feet on the roadway. All give intense flavour.
Ian Mathie
Author of Bride Price, Man in a Mud Hut and Man of Passage and other stories out of Africa
According to Luke
A remarkable combination of star-crossed romance and international thriller. Absorbing.
Janet Woods
Author of Salting the Wound and Paper Doll
The Bookbinder’s Brother
We could hear Serge’s chainsaw going in the cleft of the valley. Eric stood as close to me as our axes allowed.
‘I keep waiting for him to stop,’ he said, and shook his head. ‘To pause, even – but he goes on and on.’
The sound of the saw continued un-interrupted and we craned our necks towards its buzzing in the forest, like horses. We had become like horses, hauling logs and obeying Serge with hardly a whinny.
‘He can work,’ I said.
Eric nodded and wiped off more sweat. ‘He likes that new machine.’
The break we cut was wide enough for a tractor now. The timber would serve for the barn. ‘When do we start on the barn?’ I was very impatient. I wanted to know how long it would be before I did anything else but fell trees and shave bark off prostrate cylinders of new wood.
‘Soon as those fellows arrive from Belfort.’ He was breathless with exertion. ‘They should have been here days ago.’ He sat on a log. Its skin lay around him like huge pencil sharpenings. ‘Look at my hands.’ He sounded like a woman ruing dishpan skin. Eric was too urban for this. He should have been sitting at some desk, writing. He knew what I was thinking.
‘I should be writing, you’re thinking, eh?’ He looked at me and wiped sweat off his chin. ‘My brother’s hands: now those are hands doing things that will last forever.’
I wondered what he meant. He listened for a pause in Serge’s sawing. It never came.
‘He never stops.’
I nodded.
‘My brother is a bit like that, but he does stop, if you watch closely. His intervals are part of the work ... you know? He’s thinking about the next step even when he pauses.’
‘What does he do?’ I was intrigued. But we heard crashing from the undergrowth. Two bays in a double rig dragged a chained triangle of logs whose ends were stained green from grass near the river. The horses’ breathing filled the air. Then we heard the woman panting.
‘Bonjour.’ For a while, the noise of her team masked Serge’s saw. When she passed we listened for him together. It was the sound of a dying fly at a kitchen window. Without enthusiasm, I reached for my axe. Eric’s hand shot out and touched my wrist lightly.
‘Listen!’ A finger flew to his lips. The buzzing had stopped. Before he said anything else we heard it again, insistent as before.
‘He jumped the stream,’ Eric said.
I reached inside my breast pocket for the squashed packet of Gauloises. He took one and spent some time tapping it extremely lightly on the knee of his trousers, whose kneecaps were stiff and greenish, the seat threadbare. He had worked in them for six weeks. He said the war had made him used to things like that. Mine were no different. Serge said if we wanted to do washing we had to carry water up to the camp. It was hard enough lugging drinking water for us and the horses. We went for days without a wash or shave, save for a quick splash on our faces in the cold morning. Some Saturdays, when Serge disappeared, the rest of us got in the truck and went to the village where we had a shower and a decent shave. The skinflint who ran the baths made sure the water ran cold just as our joints were starting to feel elastic again. After a pastis at the café where the redhead worked, we all piled into the truck again.
‘We should get her to wash our shirts,’ someone once said, gesturing towards the girl, lifting his arm and wrinkling his nose as he tucked it into his armpit.
I thought she would wrinkle her own nose at that, but kept the sentiment to myself. None of us dared approach her except to order pastis. The redhead at the cafe: we all dreamed about her.
‘What does your brother do?’ I asked Eric again.
He looked at his broken shoes. ‘What my father did. And my grandfather, and his father before him.’ He opened his hands, palms upward, and peered at peeling callused skin on his hands. ‘See, Walter?’
I was surprised to hear my name. No one had said it for months. My mother used to use it frequently, but the war took her.
He turned his hands over and stretched them, thumbs touching. One thumbnail was blackened and twisted. ‘Hah!’
‘And what is it they all did?’
‘Hah!’ He grimaced and exclaimed again.
‘And where?’ I asked.
‘Colmar, of course.’
‘Up here?’ I flicked a thumb over my shoulder in disbelief.
He nodded. There was something strange in his eyes, like regret, or animosity.
If my family were in Colmar I would not have spent my nights in a freezing shed with a stamped earth floor, pissing in the bush and having a shower every ten days in a tiny village with a short supply of hot water. Eric was crazy.