Downloaded the Information, Mainly Articles and Reports to Do with ETA

Fiction

“Conversations With the Prince of Russia”

Dissertation

“Modes of Storytelling and Joseph Conrad”

Lorraine Catherine O’Brien

Bachelor of Arts, Murdoch University, 1990

Graduate Diploma of Education, Murdoch University, 1991

Master of Arts, Murdoch University, 1998

This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of

The University of Western Australia

School of Humanities

(English and Cultural Studies)

2014

i

ii ABSTRACT

Fiction: “Conversations with the Prince of Russia.”

The novel “Conversations with the Prince of Russia” is written using realist and epistolary narrative conventions, insofar as emails are epistolary. It represents the experiences and communications of Josef Kozak, an investigative journalist working for an international news agency, and Jess Groves, a West Australian woman teaching, and painting, in Fremantle. The work of Joseph Conrad is central to both characters. Jess finds pleasure in reading Conrad’s work. To her, he is the Prince of Russia, as a seaman is reputed to have described him: a Polish man who survived the exile of both parents, who travelled the world as a sailor, spoke in French and represented, in English prose, many of the literary and political complexities of his time. Jess reads his work and realizes that even in their contradictory nature and historicity, they help to define her own sense of the world. She seeks solace in the work and life of Conrad when faced with loss and loneliness. Josef finds the words of Conrad speak most eloquently of his growing desire for Jess, his estrangement from his family, his distance from

Australia and the political intrigues he confronts in the course of his work. The immersion in Conrad’s fictive world affords both characters a common discourse and facilitates their complicated and highly textual romance.

Dissertation: “Modes of Storytelling and Joseph Conrad”

The critical component of this thesis is an exploration of modes of storytelling, the oscillation between fact and illusion and how an individual’s experiences and

iii history may be articulated. A discussion of Conrad’s Polish heritage and its distinctive modes of narration, namely the Polish genres of skaz and gaweda, introduces a discussion of parody because of the manner in which Conrad writes retrospective narratives. They are recalled histories appropriated and re-told by a storyteller to a listener for some particular effect. The novel, “Conversations with the Prince of Russia” is also a repository for recollected personal history and the history of the reading of each character. Conrad’s discourse is assimilated into “Conversations with the Prince of Russia.” It acts as a sympathetic parody in its imitation of Conrad’s methods of storytelling, particularly in his use of first person narration. Bakhtin comments on the effects of assimilating another’s discourse. In making reference to the work of Conrad, the fiction becomes “double-voiced” and, according to Bahktin in “Dialogic

Discourse,” parodic. (1994, p. 80) The central concept of the fiction is to add to the dialogue between the past and the present, bearing in mind that Linda

Hutcheon argues that: “Parody is the formal analogue to the dialogue of past and present.” (1986-1987, p. 184). The dissertation discusses Conrad’s past and how his life and works hold relevance for a contemporary reader.

iv

DECLARATION FOR THESES CONTAINING PUBLISHED WORK AND/OR WORK PREPARED FOR PUBLICATION

The examination of the thesis is an examination of the work of the student. The work must have been substantially conducted by the student during enrolment in the degree.

Where the thesis includes work to which others have contributed, the thesis must include a statement that makes the student’s contribution clear to the examiners. This may be in the form of a description of the precise contribution of the student to the work presented for examination and/or a statement of the percentage of the work that was done by the student.

In addition, in the case of co-authored publications included in the thesis, each author must give their signed permission for the work to be included. If signatures from all the authors cannot be obtained, the statement detailing the student’s contribution to the work must be signed by the coordinating supervisor.

Please sign one of the statements below.

This thesis does not contain work that I have published, nor work under review for publication.

Student Signature......

v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to Winthrop Professor Brenda Walker at the University of Western

Australia for her supportive and professional supervision of the fiction and the dissertation.

During my PhD study I undertook research at the Polish Library, Posk, in

London. I would like to thank Jadwiga Szmidt, the Librarian, and Hugh Epstein,

Treasurer of the Conrad Society, UK, for their assistance and enthusiasm in all things Conradian.

I wish to acknowledge the assistance of Geoff Andrewartha of the Maritime

Museum of Hobart for directing me to the Derwent River, and the volunteers who work at the Maritime Museum of Adelaide for their generosity and willingness to discuss the seafaring exploits of Joseph Conrad.

In 2011, I travelled to Poland to present a paper at the Fifth International

Joseph Conrad Conference at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland.

Whilst in Poland, I undertook research on the life of Joseph Conrad and wish to thank the organisers and participants of the conference for their assistance.

For their love, support and encouragement, thank you to Lindsay, Jonathan and Benjamin O’Brien, and members of my family. I would like to thank Karen and George Johnson for their friendship and hospitality in Lyttelton, New

Zealand; Jennifer and David Berliner for their friendship and hospitality in

Mount Barker; Gisela Zuchner-Mogall for her friendship and conversations about

Conrad and art; and my friends and my colleagues at Christ Church Grammar

School.

vi TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract i

Acknowledgements vi

Abbreviations viii

Fiction: “Conversations With The Prince Of Russia” 1

References and Sources 191

Dissertation: “Modes of Storytelling and Joseph Conrad” 199

Chapter One: Introduction 200

Chapter Two: Cohesions of Identity: Reality and Illusion 204

Chapter Three: Generic Influences On Conrad: The Continuity

of Cultural Discourse 216

Chapter Four: Conversations and Letters: Irony and Parody 226

Chapter Five: Stylizing Discourse: Expressions of the Personal 235

Chapter Six: Parody: The Past Informs the Present 267

Chapter Seven: Conclusion 283

Bibliography 287

vii ABBREVIATIONS

Dates in the dissertation follow the conventions established by the University of

Oxford, The Board of the Faculty of History, and are given in the form: 12

October 1925. Unless the contrary is indicated it is to be assumed that the date refers to the year beginning on 1 January. Double dates in Old and New Style are given in the form: 11/22 July 1705. Periods of years are given thus: 1732–54,

1743–9, and 1760–1820.1

1 University of Oxford BOARD OF THE FACULTY OF HISTORY, “Conventions for the presentation of essays, dissertations, and theses” https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/access/content/group/01a2c7e3-3066-493a-9809- 3d6ff12141d2/thesesconventions.pdf

viii

CONVERSATIONS WITH THE PRINCE OF RUSSIA

Unlike his colleagues, Captain Korzeniowski was always dressed like a

dandy. I can still see him (and just because of the contrast with the other

sailors my memory is precise) arriving in my office almost every day

dressed in a black or dark coat, a vest that was usually light in color, and

fancy trousers; everything well cut and very stylish; on his head a black

or gray bowler tilted slightly to one side. He invariably wore gloves and

carried a cane with a gold knob.

From this description you can judge for yourself the contrast he

made to the other captains, with whom, by the way, he was on strictly

formal terms, generally not going beyond a greeting. He was not, of

course, very popular with his colleagues, who ironically called him “the

Russian Count.”

Extract from a letter from Paul Langlois to A. Esnouf.

1

2

CHAPTER 1 - JOSEF

I walk along this ferry’s corridor like an unbalanced, no, a burdened person. I could be Joseph Conrad when he was a sailor, on the deck of the Otago, rounding

Cape Leeuwin. Holding on to his gold tipped cane, bracing himself against the lift of the swell. Conrad was accustomed to the motion of the sea. So much of his life was spent on the ocean. For me, the sensation’s weird and the progress is slow, forwards yet sideways. I’m working my way to the aft deck.

A woman dressed in black leather pants and a matching jacket lies on a bench in front of me. Her blonde hair is short and spiked. She has a kind face.

Even from where I stand I can see light through tunnels in her pierced ears.

Stretched lobe piercing. An opened tub of yoghurt and a plastic spoon rests on a

Formica table beside her. A guy sits opposite her. He’s in rough denim but his leathers are folded nearby, ready to be pulled on when we berth. He’s holding

Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. His reading glasses are simple wire frames, sedate, almost elderly. Framing his shaven head. The leathers suggest rebellion, apart from the careful folding. This couple has a motorbike stowed in the ferry’s lower deck, along with the dairy produce trucks, cars, bicycles and a train of carriages laden with containers.

3 A train driver manoeuvred those containers on board, unhooked the engine and reversed out of the entrance to the ferry. The rumbling and grinding of the train could be heard by the passengers already inside, settling into their seats before heading for Picton and the South Island of New Zealand. Into that area known only as the Washbasin where the currents meet and toss. Where they agitate. I sway and steady myself. I took stability for granted, on the land. As a foreign correspondent I flew into areas of agitation: Bosnia, Timor, the place where Cambodia and China meet. Standing my ground. Reporting, from that steady place that I thought I was myself. Now I’m on a ferry in sleepy New

Zealand, sliding with the tip of the ferry floor. My life, I know, is hitting turbulence.

§

The Otago is a vehicular ferry, built in Denmark in 1984. It’s one hundred and forty eight metres long and twenty point five metres wide, with a speed of up to twenty knots. It has nine decks and it’s heavily loaded. I would’ve thought the cargo would make the ferry stable, but it lists a little, even in a calm sea. I’m on

Deck Eight, above the children’s play area: a slide and a small climbing frame, red and yellow glassless windows made out of marine ply. I’m drinking in the diesel exhaust fumes and strong black coffee. Above is the Recreation Deck, with its food court, which smells of gravy beef, rice and curried chicken, of popcorn. I think the design of the bow could be improved. White paint is flaking from steel ladders. Maybe it’s the coffee encouraging this feeling of powerless

4 attentiveness. I’m on edge. Watching everyone. Assessing the pitch of the deck beneath my feet.

The ferry is crossing Cook Strait and making for the calm waters of Queen

Charlotte Sound. This stretch of water has a bad reputation for sudden wind. A southerly gale can blow up a swell. The wind and the sea meets the tide head on and it causes an area of unnatural water, a rip that can be picked up on radar.

Right now, it’s full speed ahead to escape the storm that’s coming. It’s

December and there’s a cyclone gathering to the north, still a category two, but it’ll strengthen as it heads out to sea and then further south towards the port of

Picton.

Joseph Conrad commanded the Otago, a barque with the same name as this ferry. At that time he was called Captain Joseph Konrad Theodor

Korzeniowski. It was his first and only command. He was ambitious, but he didn’t like responsibility. He must’ve felt as I do. Alone and uneasy about what lay ahead of him, beyond calm waters. In Australia. In Mauritius.

Conrad feared calm weather more than gales. Calm weather could stall his boat; it could mean starvation for his crew. Sickness. Mutiny. In Bangkok, ready to take command of the Otago, Conrad read of a crime at sea, on board the clipper Cutty Sark. There was a fight; a man was killed. The skipper, with some compassion, allowed the survivor to swim ashore to the Java coast as the ship was passing through the Anjer Strait. Conrad used the story.2 He wrote about the captain of an unnamed ship, anchored at the head of the Gulf of Siam, who thought he saw something move in the water. It was a naked man swimming towards him and waving an arm to get his attention. The swimmer confessed to having jumped ship because he’d murdered a man. The captain hid him for

5 several days in his cabin and then, when the time was right, he risked his own ship by bringing it in close to the coast of China so that the murderer could swim to safety. Conrad calls him “a free man, a proud swimmer, striking out for a new destiny.” 3 I think about Conrad all the time.

Other captains called him the Russian count because of his foreign accent, polished manners, formal coat dress and carefully trimmed beard. I once heard an Australian seaman call Conrad the prince of Russia. Did Russia have princes? I think of him swinging his gold-tipped walking cane, keeping watch from the deck of Otago. The sea below, swell after swell, the white foam which could at any time take the shape of a human face, an arm. The undrowned, riding the swell, brought back to human destiny by the decisions of a captain and a writer.

Standing on the Observation Deck, I can only wonder at the coincidence of this vessel’s name. Otago. I uncovered a story in the North Otago Times about the barque Otago, after Conrad left her. She arrived at the port of Lyttelton in

October 1889. She’d left Sydney on August thirteenth, bound for London, with a cargo of copper, tallow and wool. She was in the longitude of the Snares,

166°35'E, the closest sub-Atlantic islands to New Zealand. The Otago was caught in a gale, thrown on her beam ends and the seas washed over her. Her sails were ripped and blown away and everything moveable was swept overboard.

Bulkheads, berths, tables, cupboards, ship’s papers, charts, the captain’s logs, clothes and instruments for navigating the ship. The ship’s carpenter was hurled against a locker and died instantly. Another crewman was washed overboard, along with lifeboats, bulwarks and the deck-house. The remaining crew and two passengers found themselves stranded hundreds of miles from land, out of the

6 track of trading vessels and with no clear means of navigation. Storms came and went. Water seeped into the saloon and the lazarette, below the weather deck in the stern of the vessel. The repair equipment stored there was inaccessible. Sails, spare lines, cable splicing equipment, spare blocks and tools. Pumps were going night and day to disperse the water and keep the vessel afloat.

I imagine how powerless you must feel as the boat’s steering fails, when it’s time to gather the trembling fearful crew. Rig a jury rudder, something to help with directional stability.

I suppose with modern yachts you could lash a door or a floorboard to a spinnaker pole. Use this as a steering oar. On the Otago the captain ordered the crew to rope some deck planks together with the kedge anchor at the bottom, and suspend it over the stern. It worked but progress was slow. After thirty nine days of voyaging by dead reckoning, land was sighted, the Sister Islands, to the west of the Chathams. Finally the Otago sailed into Lyttelton on the twelfth

October 1889. She discharged her remaining cargo. It’s the sort of thing to ponder over strong coffee, when the waves of Cook Strait lap at the sides of the ferry, sea spray hits the glass screens of the deck and the currents meet up ahead, forming unquiet waters.

Konrad Korzeniowski took command of his Otago in January 1888, after the death of its captain. The crew were ill. Almost everyone suffered from fever, dysentery or cholera. Korzeniowski found himself sleeping in the bed where the former captain died. Tossing and turning. The chief mate declared the Otago haunted. There was a cargo of teak to load. The Otago had to be towed, by tug, twenty miles down the lively Meinam River, past heavily loaded keng boats that probably looked like Venetian gondolas, and past the more common rua-pet,

7 boats with round basket tops. It was to be anchored outside the sandy bar blocking the river mouth. There it would be readied for sail to Singapore; twenty-one days to cover eight hundred miles. Korzeniowski recklessly manoeuvered among the islands off the Cambodian coast: Koh Chang, Koh Kut,

Koh Ring. He spent the last seventeen days of the journey on deck, the final forty hours without sleep. He brought his ship into Singapore on the second of March,

1888, had his sick crewmen transferred to hospital, took on six new members and sailed for Australia. Off the Australian coast, the Otago ran into a heavy gale that continued for two days. Two days of high winds, grey clouds and green sea.

On May the eighth, 1888, The Sydney Morning Herald reported the Otago’s arrival in Sydney, under the command of “Captain Conrad Konkorzentowski.”

Names. The Herald’s article was all about the weather.

Korzeniowski held command of the Otago for fourteen months: eight months on long seagoing voyages and six in trading along the Australian coast, from Sydney to Melbourne, and back again. He visited Adelaide. He gained some notoriety for a little shrewd business: he had a clause inserted into the shipping agreement whereby the charterer stood the cost of the pilot and tug. Finally, on the seventh of August, 1888, in the face of another fierce gale, he sailed his Otago from

Sydney to Mauritius. He arrived back in Adelaide and left the ship. Journeyed to

England and changed his name.

Seamen are superstitious. There’s the belief that you shouldn’t change the name of a boat. There are ways around it, of course. There are ways around most things. That’s something to think about. Captain Konrad Korzeniowski changed his name to Joseph Conrad. Maybe he wrote his Polish name on a scrap of paper,

8 folded it, put it in a cardboard box and burnt it. Then floated the ashes on the

Thames, on an outgoing tide. That’s what I’d do. Or maybe he wasn’t so ritualistic.

Conrad’s Otago is now rusting in a small Tasmanian bay on the Derwent

River. She became a cargo carrier, a ferry and, much later, an undistinguished coal hulk. A means of escape for himself: an exile from Europe. Conrad’s Otago was a barque, not a ship. A ship is another thing entirely. And so is a vehicular ferry.

§

Back in April ’68, tropical cyclone Gisele moved south over New Zealand and the inter-island ferry, the Wahine, went down. I remember reading about it back in

Fremantle. There was a storm. High winds set the Washbasin foaming. There was a big load coming up, the rinsing of seven hundred and thirty four passengers. The ferry lost its radar, headed towards a reef and foundered.

Tugboats were alerted. They came from Wellington but the seas proved fierce.

There was chaos on board. People were running for the lifeboats. The crew failed to prepare the passengers to abandon ship. They hesitated and the lifeboats took on water and fifty-one people drowned.

I knew a bloke in Perth who was married at the time and visiting New

Zealand. He met a girl in Christchurch, a nurse at the central hospital. She promised to show him some of the tourist sights. The cathedral, the Arts Festival.

She didn’t know he was married. He didn’t think she needed to know. But when

9 she tried ringing him at his Perth office he became uneasy. So he came up with a plan.

He told his receptionist to tell the girl he’d gone down with the Wahine.

The girl was devastated. She thought she loved him.

Years later, when she’d moved to Perth, she was crossing St George’s

Terrace. She looked up and there he was. “Frank! They told me you’d gone down with the Wahine! I was really sad. For a long time.”

She’d spent years mourning.

They moved to the footpath and Frank listened to her story, shrugging.

“The receptionist got it wrong. That was my brother. Jeez, but it’s a small world.

It’s good to see you again. How about coffee?”

“Ah, Frank,” she said, touching his shoulder, “I liked the other story.”

I like stories. I write articles for the syndicated press. Carry my laptop and mobile phone, a leather overnight bag and move around a bit. I’m heading for

India shortly, on holiday, and catching up with a mate who writes children’s fiction. He’s lived in New Delhi for several years. He married a local woman.

That’s another story. Before I got on the Otago ferry, I visited the High

Commission of India in Wellington. A bomb exploded outside New Delhi’s High

Court. There were dead and wounded. India has socialist and free market phases but, consistently, ultra-Left violence. According to the New Zealand government website, I’ll have to avoid rallies and demonstrations, monuments and major tourist sites, on days of national significance. I don’t only write articles for the syndicated press. I do other work. I’m not a spook, exactly, but I’m close. Very

10 close. And that’s all I’m saying on the subject.

If I had a Facebook profile I’d probably describe myself as an investigative journalist and maritime enthusiast. An idealist? A Conradian? I could use an old photo, my creased, white linen shirt sleeves rolled up to expose tanned forearms. The sort of image a woman might take in. Enough to make her raise her eyebrows, take an interest. I wouldn’t add that acts of terrorism and warfare sometimes claim my attention. Conflict. Stories of destruction.

It’s the beginning of the tropical cyclone season. Tonight I’ll stay in a motel in Picton, near the ferry terminal, grab some fish and chips and a local beer down near the wharf, and tomorrow, return to Lyttelton. It’s a port town that I visit on a regular basis. It’s been hit by earthquakes lately. Last time I was there, I wasn’t dealing with the after-effects of an earthquake. I had a human, not a natural disaster on my hands.

§

It’s December and warm. Many chimneys are down or being dismantled by the volunteer fire brigade. There’s severe damage to the Empire Hotel, the façade is cracked and dangerous. It’s been cordoned off. The main road between Lyttelton and Sumner is closed because of rock falls. The house I stayed in three years ago is intact despite its position on the side of the hill, overlooking the harbor. The nearby Timeball, built in 1876 to signal the time to ships in Lyttelton Harbour, has been damaged beyond repair.

11 Three years ago, on my first visit to Lyttelton, I rented a house that overlooked the harbour and the Timeball tower. I could sit in an armchair, drink a beer, my eyes to a small telescope or binoculars, and watch the comings and goings of overseas ships. There were some grand and white passenger liners but mostly I saw cargo ships.

The local ferry moved between the port and Godley House, on the opposite shore. Then the ferry docked at Quail Island, a recreation reserve and the site of a quarantine station, during the measles and whooping cough epidemic of 1907. Until 1925, it was a leper colony. Barracks were built and used as a hospital.

I went over there and hiked around the island. Fence lines remained, traces of early European farming ventures. The restored hospital block near the water’s edge still carried a distinctive and unpleasant musty odour. Local kids had graffitied the walls and overhead beams. I saw lights there at night and wondered what was going on inside.

I had my laptop set up in a small alcove off the kitchen. Tacked some calico to the window for privacy. It was easy to be distracted. A small black cat made herself a nest in the wilderness of the garden, among the red geraniums and the blue agapanthus. She led her three kittens to the back door in the mornings. One day they sat on the stoop, eating a steak she’d pirated from a nearby barbecue. It was hardly surprising that they spent so much time licking their paws and faces. One kitten was very playful. It skittered beneath the step, leaping at spider webs and the undersides of a freshly painted patio chair. I wondered why the natural cedar was covered with dark brown paint. And I was fascinated by the cats. By cats in general. They only approach a stranger who

12 doesn’t like cats. They left me alone. Different to dogs. I didn’t have too many distractions but I did have unfinished business to complete before I came back to

Australia.

I remember one particularly cool November evening, a Saturday night. I heard a siren. Volunteer Fire Fighters took to their cars and rode the back streets down the slopes to the central station. They were gathering for their weekly training and a beer afterwards at the Wunder Bar where a sign above the door read “Please only nice people allowed.” Who would enforce this? I watched through binoculars. There was no fire.

I sent out some emails, aware of time differences and distance. Maybe it was the beer and the isolation. The mournful sound echoing in an empty room.

Nick Cave on the sound system. A painting over the stairwell behind the desk simply called The Beach. It reminded me of Fremantle, back in Australia, of sunnier dispositions than mine.

I sat in a lounge chair and re-read my wife’s email. If she could’ve seen me then she would’ve seen a man with shirt sleeves rolled up, his arms scratched from hiking through scrub in darkness and his jeans pale with wear. His head bowed as he read her message: “How do you think it feels to always make love by proxy?” She didn’t remember that Lou Reed said it first. 4

I unrolled my sleeves and buttoned up the cuffs. There’s importance in small formalities. I made myself some beef tea. Walked to the table, took slices of corned beef from a plate on the pine cutting board, broke the meat into small squares and placed them, like browned leaves, into a tea strainer and drowned

13 them in boiled water. It tasted of tears. Have some tea dear, it’s very calming.

Don’t cry… Why do you cry? Then I phoned Jess.

I told her I was in New Zealand, in the South Island, drinking wine and doing some research in the Otago area. How I’d just re-read Conrad’s A Smile of

Fortune. I remembered her liking for Conrad. She read in a chair in a walled garden in Fremantle. There was something in her attitude, the tone of her voice.

Her pretence at indifference.

I had all this stuff in my head about Conrad’s trip to Melbourne on the

Otago. Of the way he’d been lumbered with sacks of potatoes along with the official cargo of sugar. Of how fortuitous this was because Melbourne was in the grip of a potato shortage and he’d been able to sell the extra cargo for a profit.

There was a letter waiting for him from his uncle Tadeusz, to say he was sick and he wanted his Konrad to return home. It was the excuse Captain Korzeniowski needed to avoid returning to Mauritius. To that place where he’d fallen in love and been rejected. He resigned his captaincy and took a passage to England by steamship. He changed his name on the outgoing tide.

I threw out the information in disjointed grabs of conversation on the phone, and Jess seemed interested so I let slip that I’d been listening to audio books on my iPod. I told her that the radio in the car didn’t pick up much in the way of music. I’d taken a few drives over to the West Coast. North and south from there. Hokitika. Ships have come to grief on its sandbar. The beach was strewn with driftwood. I told her I was thinking of pre-settlement here. I was talking to Jess and looking at the photo of my wife pinned to the noticeboard above the phone. It was one of those Sunday Supplement shots from a local newspaper. A fund-raising ball for the medical fraternity. She was wearing a red

14 dress. Smiling a red lipstick smile. The guy she was with had his arm around her waist and looked as though he could hardly believe his luck. He was wearing a matching red silk scarf over his tuxedo, for Christ’s sake.

Of course, we haven’t been faithful. I’ve been with Jess, some of the time. I don’t ask my wife who she’s with. I thought, at heart, she was with me.

I told Jess I’d seen the wreckage of a ship at Picton. It was a Russian vessel, it would’ve been of the same era as Conrad’s Otago. Then I told her that my wife left me, three weeks ago. I’d just re-read her email. She moved out, took our daughter and the cat. It must’ve been willing to go with her. She left me my books, the music system and headphones, bits of shipwrecks and the silver plated cutlery set my uncle gave us as a wedding gift. She says she no longer values EPNS.

Jess said I’m so sorry, Josef. Take care and let’s keep in touch. The following morning I walked down the hill to the town and the post agency and sent Jess my copy of A Smile of Fortune. I included a note.

Jess

There’s an albatross colony at Taiaroa Head, the only mainland breeding colony for any albatross species found in the southern hemisphere. Beneath the nature reserve lie the tunnels of Fort Taiaroa, established over a hundred years ago to counter the anticipated threat of invasion from Tsarist Russia. What better find for a Conrad enthusiast? I might check out more tunnels when I head to Madrid.

Hope you enjoy the book. It’s something to read whilst sitting in a walled garden.

It was good to talk to you.

Josef Kozak

15

When I left the post office I called in to the Irish Pub. Murphy’s. Of course. The cook from the Thai restaurant next door wandered in and gave me a menu. I ordered deep-fried fish and mango salad. I had a local beer and the food at a wooden table on the deck out the back. I looked towards the harbour, thinking of secluded gardens and imposing limestone walls. Thinking of Fremantle.

Now. Gazing out of the sea swept windows of the ferry, I feel more like

Saul Bellow’s Augie March, off on one of his adventures. Doing a little self exploration. On the Otago and heading for Picton. Sitting in the passengers’ lounge and whiling away the hours. Thinking about Lyttelton, the Thai restaurant that no longer exists. The gaol that became a school. The Timeball

Station just down the road from the house, built by prisoners and used to gauge the accuracy of the navigator's chronometer for maritime safety. I’d measured each day by the sound of the ball dropping at one pm. At one pm, I’d grab a beer, some lunch and something to read. That place where I first experienced shock waves, an earthquake of personal loss.

Inside the passenger lounge of the Otago, I’m reading an essay by Joseph

Conrad, 1914, on the “Protection of Ocean Liners.” Reflecting on the collision between the passenger ship, Empress of Ireland and a collier, the destruction of a ship and a thousand lives. Conrad wrote: “As long as men will travel on the water, the sea-gods will take their toll. They will catch good seamen napping, or confuse their judgement by arts well known to those who go to sea, or overcome them by the sheer brutality of elemental forces… the resentful sea-gods never do sleep, and are never weary.”5 If only there’d been an alert man on deck with a cork-fender. That sort of soft balloon made from a net of thick rope and slightly

16 more than a foot in diameter. Something to hang over the side of a ship, at the end of a lanyard, to act as a cushion between colliding bodies.

I think about my wife and her older lover. Have I mentioned him? No. Not yet. Maybe never. A storyteller lets information slip out, like a rope, a line, into water. Like Conrad, I like to put my trust in canvas and in lots of big rope. I want to sit in the lounge, drink imported beer and think about women.

17

CHAPTER TWO - JESS

Josef Kozak has been thinking about me. I drove home from work yesterday and parked in my driveway. The wrought iron gate in the limestone wall was swinging on its hinges, suggesting someone had paid a visit or the Fremantle

Doctor, that cooling breeze that wafts over the port town in the afternoon, had blown a little briskly. Then I saw Josef’s parcel. Tucked behind the potted ficus at the front door, inside the gate, beside the front step. It was wrapped in plain brown paper and tied up with string. Airmailed from New Zealand and addressed in a bold hand to Jess. Just my first name and address. I opened it. It was a copy of Conrad’s A Smile of Fortune. He’d included a note.

He’s a wandering albatross. Bosnia, Timor, Cambodia, Fremantle,

Wellington, India, Madrid. And he’s always interested me. The way he sets out from Fremantle, with his brown leather satchel and computer, scavenging scraps of information. Stories. An albatross. They feed at night, mostly. They only land in order to eat. I wonder what Josef Kozak does at night.

I sat with him in the car at the train station two years ago. It was late and the car- park was deserted. There was no need to buy a ticket. The ticket dispensers were solar powered and it had rained all day and it was dark so they probably

18 weren’t working. The engine was running. I was going to drop him off. I could have driven him home but I’d had a few drinks and it was quite a way.

We didn’t know that the trains would stop running and that he’d have to catch a taxi. He told me about his daughter who was applying to The Australian

Youth Orchestra. They were advertising themselves with the words, ‘Practise,

Rehearse, Butterflies, Perform, Encore, Repeat’. I thought it sounded like life.

He’d told me earlier over drinks that he was going to Spain. To Madrid. A vagabond. He’d read Quiet Days in Spain by C. Bogue Luffman and he thought about Luffman’s description of Spain as holding “the gospel of never-mind.”6 He thought he might file reports from different places around the world during the year. He could send them to a Madrid newspaper. His Spanish was good. There was work there. Someone had a house he could rent for a while.

I wanted to go with him but he talked as though this had never entered his head. Before Spain he was thinking of heading to the warmth of Malaysia, even Singapore. Maybe back to New Zealand. Then to India. By the time we got to the train station, we’d exhausted conversation about travel. I could be formal and say it was “one of those profound pauses that fall upon the rhythm of passion.”7 Conrad wrote that. We were silent. He asked me if I’d like a kiss. I left the engine running, undid the seatbelt and twisted towards him. He was quiet, restrained. Waiting. And I said yes.

My hands were in his hair and moving along the curve of his shoulder, the muscle definition of his upper arm, firm flesh and he asked how does that feel and I said strong.

The memory’s intense. Red. It’s a compromise even to attempt a translation. It’s like analysing poetry, especially a great poem. A poem about

19 dancing and memory and time. All I can do is offer the sort of translation that deals with the constraints of meter, rhythm and register. Tone. The smoothness of his skin and normalcy of speech punctuated with gentleness, caught breath.

Pleasure. Yes.

When he got out of the car and moved towards the deserted station entrance, he took his tie from his pocket and waved it around his head. Exeunt.

He was going home to his wife and then travelling further. And yet it was all I could do not to leave the car and ask for an encore. Repeat.

What does Josef think of when he thinks of me? Someone who is generous with her time and who will listen to a friend and comfort them in a time of crisis? Go into battle on their behalf? Maybe. I could describe myself as a Leo, with a particular fondness for animals and children. I have a dog, Semi, a bobtail goanna that lives in the garden called Bob, and I teach children. Boys only. I could be athletic. But I like food and wine. Locally brewed beer. I put my liking for beer down to my ancestry. One of my forefathers started up a brewery in Fremantle in the early days of the colony. Interestingly, his children were teetotallers. I live in Fremantle, in an old red brick and limestone house that once belonged to a sea captain who sailed out of the port, in a town that’s focused on sustainability. I fit in.

My house has a widow’s walk, just in case I want to climb the wooden stairs to the space above the roof line, walk outside and look towards the harbour, to Rottnest Island. Watch for ships. For a husband’s return, or the place where a mourned husband was lost. But I have no husband, now. I grow herbs

20 and vegetables in my garden. I place broken egg-shells with their white glazed interiors uppermost inside flower pots. This is to trick cabbage moths into thinking the plant they have designs on is already occupied by a larger white moth. I scatter sugar cane mulch around the base of my citrus trees and keep it moist with seaweed solution and grey water. I sprinkle coffee grounds around my potted magnolia because the tea lady at the school where I teach says they’re called poor man’s roses and they like a strong drink. Someone else said she’s wrong. Poor man’s roses are carnations. I’m not into carnations but they grow well in this area. I never paint flowers. I have a studio at the back of the house and I paint portraits in oils. I’m painting Josef from memory.

I read Conrad’s long short story, “A Smile of Fortune” last night, sitting up in bed.

I can’t quite see how the story’s captain could become fascinated with a reclusive woman. Maybe it was her mass of black hair twisted on top of her head with little untidy wisps hanging down on either side of her serious face. Or her “young supple body.”8 Alice, the illegitimate daughter of Jacobus, a colourless, “fat, pushing ship-chandler,”9 and the woman he loved, a circus performer. Alice, seated in a walled garden, uttering monosyllabic and sullen responses to the captain’s every question. “Shan’t. Don’t Care.”10 A woman surrounded by the splendour of nature, gorgeous colour and sweet scents, who professed to “love nothing.”11 The captain seemed to overlook her indifference, made excuses for her bad manners. “She had never seen a visitor. She did not know how men behaved.”12 He “loved to watch her slow changes of pose, to look at her long immobilities composed in the graceful lines of her body…”13 I thought the captain had a nice turn of phrase but, really, Alice was no ship. And I didn’t quite

21 see him as he saw himself, “the slave of some depraved habit.”14 What? Besotted with a woman and unable to forget her first kiss. Thinking only of her when he should have been sourcing bags for a shipment of potatoes? He wrote Alice a letter of farewell and dropped it into a mailbox in Collins Street, Melbourne. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. Then he went on board his ship, resigned his position and sought passage on a ship bound for Europe. Why did Josef send me this book?

Men and women. Walled gardens, slow changes of pose and graceful lines. It’s enough to recall the annual staff garden party at the school where I teach, the party that brings closure to final report writing, meetings and farewells. When the frantic final weeks of teaching end, the students stay at home, administration duties slow and turn festive. The men and women who work at Avon College, on the banks of the Swan River, gather for lunch on the final day of the school year, on the lawns of the old boarding house. Gardens enclosed by old limestone buildings, sweeping deep verandahs and low garden walls enclosing mature gum trees, green ivy and delicate flowers. The male teachers dress casually as though they can hardly wait to jump on a bike, on a boat and go fishing, go camping with their kids or play in the following day’s golf tournament. The men in IT abandon their uniforms and one opts for paisley patterned pants and a plain orange shirt. The women wear sleeveless summer party frocks in pinks, melon, lime and pale blue. Some wear tinsel as brooches.

Wooden beads and silver rings made of old dominoes. A bracelet made of typewriter keys. A party where high-heeled sandals stick in the lush lawns and are discarded. The boarding school cook flits around in checked pants and a chef’s high hat. He carries trays of fresh oysters on ice with wedges of lemon and

22 chilli mussels. He holds them high as he manoeuvres through the groups of teachers, assistants, office workers and grounds’ staff. People applaud him as he passes. As the afternoon progresses and the heat sets in, all that remains on his trays are deep fried spring rolls and samosas, plastic containers with fried chips and over-cooked squid rings. There are no cakes. It’s a celebration and a version of a Conradian garden of gorgeous colour and scents.

At last week’s party, Gary, the Head of Sport, teamed up with another

Phys. Ed. teacher and they dispensed drinks from behind a white linen-covered trestle table. Phil, a football umpire in his spare time and super fit, moved fast, forwards, backwards, sideways to fetch a bottle from the esky. He said he had everything I could possibly want. Local beer, white wines from the south west of the state, and champagne. He found an uncorked bottle of champagne, just for me.

There were water coolers at the end of each table; it was hot. I filled a glass with water to balance the champagne and made for the deep shade of the verandah.

As I headed away from the drinks table, Patrick, who works in the boarding house, stopped me and pointed to the ornamental plum tree. A small owl sat in the top branches. Its head moved from side to side and daylight- riddled eyes seemed aware of everything going on down there on the ground. Of course they weren’t. “It’s probably waiting for dusk. An opportunity to get the hell out of here,” I said.

“It’s not on its own,” said Patrick.

Patrick and I have shared a few stories over the years, over a glass of wine, a beer, sitting in a hutchie on school camp, eating warm tinned stew.

23 Standing alongside a running track and recording place getters at an athletic carnival. “I haven’t told you about the time I was in Grade Seven at Primary

School and I was part of the school’s bird calling team, have I?”

It wasn’t really the sort of conversation you’d expect a man and woman to have after champagne. We discussed Vincent Serventy, the West Australian environmentalist. How he used to come to my primary school on Arbor Day and plant a native tree, an Illawarra Flame Tree, Grevillea or Acacia. Talking to the children about nature and conservation. He was involved in establishing a wildlife exhibition and children from state schools were encouraged to attend.

When I was in our school’s bird calling team. We used to practise our speeches before whistling into the microphone. It was on a stand. There were six of us. I was given the call of the mopoke owl. I remember it was difficult when all those eyes below the stage were focused on me and the spotlight was in my eyes. I couldn’t see clearly and stood my ground, waiting for just the right moment.

Perhaps dusk.

Once when I was jogging around Lake Monger, early one evening. I stopped jogging, put my cupped hands to my mouth and blew and the sound was loud and haunting. A bird flew from the branches and down towards my head.

Maybe it was an owl and I’d spoken to it. Maybe it was speaking to me but I didn’t listen.

At the garden party, beneath the ornamental plum tree, I put my two glasses on the limestone wall. “This is how you make a Mopoke call.” I cupped my hands together to form a sort of echo chamber before blowing into the raised thumbs. I wet my lips, placed them on my right-angled thumbs, blew into my

24 cupped hands and Patrick watched. His head on one side. He had a new haircut and it looked as though he’d just jumped out of bed in a panic.

He said, “It’s too soft. If it was louder, it would almost be a cuckoo.”

“I’ll have to practise some more.” I smiled, picked up the glasses and returned to the verandah. Perhaps indifference was seductive, to him.

Em was standing alone and as I watched she focused on the ornamental plum tree, then came over to me. “Patrick has a new girlfriend. For the past six months, apparently. I met her at the boarding house sundowner. A woman was passing around hors d’oeuvres. She obviously wasn’t working with the catering staff, so I introduced myself and asked who she was with. She said she was with

Patrick. I couldn’t resist. I said, ‘Oh, I thought I was with Patrick’.” I imagined Em also took a cube of melon and a sliver of smoked salmon speared on a toothpick from the girlfriend’s tray, raised it for further analysis, muttered “Interesting,” and moved on.

Patrick has had many girlfriends. He was engaged once and brought his fiancé to my house for dinner. I cubed cuts of pork belly and braised them in soy sauce and fragrant spices. Star anise, chillies and cardamon. Cooked them on my barbecue. The savory-sweet combination seduces the taste buds. That’s what the night was like. I sometimes love Patrick even when he loves someone else. He’s moved in and looked after my house when I’ve gone on holiday, fed and walked the dogs and watered the garden. Once he brought along his surfboard and kept it in my studio and then left it there for a year or so. He ran up a high electricity account and forgot to pay it. I was angry with him, he gave me a hug and took me to dinner and we paved my back garden in the moonlight. One night, I took him up to the widow’s walk to look at the ocean, drank some wine and told him

25 about my husband, who ran an inshore commercial diving service. He died while he was inspecting a mooring. The air cylinder on his back was faulty. The regulator was corroded. I got his accident insurance and bought this house overlooking the ocean. It happened a long time ago. We finished the wine and walked downstairs to the living room. Then Patrick took my hand and pulled me down beside him on the rug, on the floorboards.

Weeks later, blowing into my hands in Paris, I thought of bird calling. It was cold and I just wanted to warm my fingers. To have them held on New Year’s Eve. I was looking into the Seine from Pont Neuf and a barge was all lit up with coloured lights woven around the potted trees and herb gardens on deck. Those potted trees needed a small Australian Mopoke in their branches. I’d drunk too much champagne and left my leather gloves and book in the Metro. It was snowing and lovely and, despite the building crowd, lonely. I thought of the warmth of home. Patrick. And Josef, in Lyttelton, New Zealand. India and Spain.

26

CHAPTER 3 - JOSEF

Every time I step into the lobby of this hotel I feel as though I’m on board the

Titanic. Four levels of white walls and balconies overlook the groups of wicker chairs and glass topped tables. The roof is a segmented skylight. We could be beneath the sea. Resting on rippled sand. This hotel, in the north east section of

New Delhi, feels like it’s been pulled straight out of the history books. It could be a meeting place of the leaders of Indian Independence, strolling among the palm trees and carefully clipped hedges. You can wander along a corridor through the hotel’s collection of paintings and lithographs. Sit at a table beneath a wrought iron canopy, surrounded by more palms in red earthenware pots, a small playful fountain. This would be a quiet place for a man to distance himself from a group, to take out his mobile and telephone a woman. To speak softly of quiet comfort and controlled colour. This hotel would be a good place for a man to take a woman.

I brought my wife here once. Before our daughter was born. I was reporting on a meeting between Indian, Australian and New Zealand government officials, establishing business-to-business links. They were working towards a MOU, a Memorandum of Understanding on trade practices.

Officials meet regularly in New Delhi and Mumbai. My wife spent the days

27 relaxing. She liked to go shopping but on this trip she preferred spending her day in the hotel gym, swimming laps in the pool and sitting in the sauna and then the jacuzzi. She said it was too hot outside to wander around markets and tourist spots. She was a competent swimmer and she looked good in bathers. She didn’t like crowds, just a few admirers. She’d lived in India for three years when she was younger. Her father had an overseas posting in the Delhi Department of

Foreign Affairs and she went to an international school. It was just a few years but enough to learn also about disruption to family life, homesickness and comfort. She got used to having servants. She has a sheen of privilege.

The market of Chandnit Chowk couldn’t be more different from the hotel.

I walk there in ten minutes. It isn’t comfortable and it isn’t quiet. The streets are bustling with rickshaws, small vans and boys on bicycles. I watch a man sitting on a wooden cart, pulled by a buffalo. He’s passed by a late model silver hatchback. There’s a confusion of overhead wires and colour: crimson and gold, red, yellow, pink, pale blue, ochre and green. Glass bottles are arranged on a make-shift shelf; they’re tumbled into baskets. I pass roadside tea stalls, limes and water for sale and food vendors ladling curried meat into aluminium containers. India is a good place to walk, there’s constant distraction. A

European in a hat smiles broadly, his even teeth lending his face an unusual distinction in a country where dental treatment is not a priority. Especially in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. And in more affluent areas, where junk food is more regularly eaten. Few people brush their teeth at night.

What is it about teeth? White-bone markers of class. You can see a guy on a television talent show, with his blonde hair swept across his face. He smiles a too perfect white smile. His teeth are capped. Despite the Fender and the song,

28 you know he’ll never be cool. Keith Richards is cool. Joseph Conrad had bad teeth. He was notoriously neglectful of his teeth. He bit his nails and he was a heavy smoker. When he was eating a meal he was at his most strained. Perhaps his teeth ached. He would sit with the back of his chair to the table and absentmindedly make pellets of bread, which he’d fire in all directions. He was a dining-table pirate.

Adolf Verloc in The Secret Agent probably had bad teeth. His women characters, however, were “dentally superb.”15 His heroines had very fine teeth.

The female piano player in Victory, “more disagreeable than any cannibal.”16 The governess of Flora in Chance has teeth that look as though she aches to take a bite. Even Winnie Verloc in The Secret Agent can unexpectedly bare her teeth and unsettle her father. Then there is Captain Falk, on board a stricken vessel, the crew dying and starving. Captain Falk had strong enough teeth to eat the ship’s carpenter. He kept himself alive until rescued. He got back to civilisation and became a vegetarian. When he fell in love with a young woman, he confessed to her, “I have eaten man.”17 Then he found himself hungering for the girl.

Jess has nice teeth. Not too white. Smooth at the back. I like to watch her eating cake with her coffee. Or kebabs. Opening her mouth, biting down on a piece of meat, closing her teeth and dragging it slowly back along the wooden skewer and into her mouth.

Outside a carpet store on the edge of Chandnit Chowk, three young men are repairing a tyre. They don’t look happy. Their car is parked beside market tables on wheels. A henna scorpion ranges across a woman’s hand. She has thousands of bangles on display. Silver toe rings and painted nails, close up.

Brown eyes. There are piles of desiccated coconut. Another European man

29 lounges on crimson silk cushions at the entrance to Saree Shop. The cushions are more than colourful. Comfortable.

I wander towards a temple and take a photo of its coral and limestone walls. Books are for sale at Nai Sarak. British Empire, British Battles on Land and

Sea, 1066-1885 by James Grant. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane. I pick up the worn copy. It smells of cumin powder. The stall owner stands a short distance away, willing me to buy.

Crane met Joseph Conrad in London. Conrad read his book and said: “His ignorance of the world at large – he had seen very little of it – did not stand in the way of his imaginative grasp of facts, events, and picturesque men.”18 Did he mean “picaresque”, the dealing with the adventures of rogues? Conrad admired the way Crane used language. Conrad and his hesitancies with English, his preference for speaking in French. Mon Dieu. Crane taught his eldest boy, Borys, to ride and, when he was just two years old, presented him with his first dog.

And Crane loved the sea. When Conrad last visited his friend was ill. Dying. He had his head turned on his pillow and he was gazing wistfully at the sails of a cutter yacht, a shadow gliding past the frame of the window.19

Conrad arrived in Madras on April the eighth, 1884. He’d been promoted to second mate on the Riversdale, a one thousand, four hundred and ninety ton clipper. Perhaps the extra money and the new position went to his head. He accused the captain of drunkenness. The captain didn’t look the best. Captain

Lawrence Brown McDonald said his twitching was due to an eye problem. “My good man, it’s nothing to do with delirium tremens. Ask the on-shore doctor.”20

30 Conrad wrote a letter of apology. Captain McDonald relieved him of his position.

Later, this captain stranded the Riversdale. Maybe it was the old eye complaint. He accused the new second mate of sleeping during watch. Conrad left before it foundered. He’d sourced another ship, in Bombay. The Narcissus. He signed on as second mate for five pounds a month and sailed to London on June third, 1884. Scribbling notes in his journal, seated in his cabin, grinding his teeth.

Trying to set down his life. Looking at characters.21

Long before he re-wrote his history, including his experiences on board the Narcissus, before he deleted six foreigners from its crew and represented his service at sea “as unequivocally English in character,”22 Conrad was in the process of re-invention. He went to a market in India and bought himself a small pet monkey. Perhaps he sat it on a shoulder in lieu of a parrot when he swaggered into the offices of Barr and Moering in Dunkirk on October sixteenth

1884. He’d signed off from the Narcissus and its five pound a month. Waiting for him at the lawyers’ office was a lump sum of three hundred and fifty pounds, sent by his uncle. Tadeusz Bobrowski intended this sum to be the last. Enough of this spendthrift! He gave instructions to lower his nephew’s allowance to thirty pound a year, thinking, at last, he has completed the required length of service needed to achieve a certificate for first class officer. He was almost self-sufficient.

There was only a written examination to be undertaken. But his nephew didn’t like studying. Paperwork was tedious. He wanted to tear up the paper into small pellets and shoot it every which way.

In the lawyers’ office, the monkey didn’t like paperwork either. It destroyed documents on the lawyer’s desk. Conrad sold his pet to a merchant.

Then he sat his written examination. Three times. He failed navigation, thinking

31 East was West. He was disorientated. Polish gentry, now a sailor in the British navy. Finally, he passed. He wrote his uncle a carefully worded letter, boasting of his success. He was ready to set about searching for a new job. So he said.23

Conrad liked to produce a good story. He was a yarn spinner in the Polish tradition, weaving a gawęda. Sometimes about looking for a job on a ship. Unlike his Charlie Marlow, in Heart of Darkness, who got his appointment “very quick,”24 Conrad’s search lasted for nearly five months. Marlow had an aunt to turn to, to expedite the search. The men “did nothing.”25 Conrad had no helpful aunt. Only an older woman, recently widowed, to whom he could write long letters of suffering, “Please do something.”26 He turned to Uncle Tadeusz, who seemed exasperated with his young nephew’s lack of self-discipline and poor health. His own swollen legs and thinning hair. Tadeusz wrote, “I find no remedy for this; and patiently await whatever the gods of hair-growth decide!” This nephew who was intent on being sickly. An ambitious, albeit dispirited, dreamer. 27 Enough of romanticism and yarn spinning! You’ve passed your examinations now get a good job, my boy!

Uncle Tadeusz wanted his nephew, above all things, to work hard and to gain British citizenship. His nephew couldn’t return to the Ukraine. Austria didn’t want him and Poland was no place for the young Korzeniowski. That was it. It was no place. Poland was a memory, a sentiment. How to smooth out and retouch a past? Add further colour to his life and weave it in silk threads of red and white. A tale of Polish heroism, a gawęda.

Conrad got himself a job on another clipper, the Tilkhurst, as second officer on five pound a month.28 Bobrowski, head of his family since 1850 and

32 Conrad’s former guardian, must have been exasperated. How can a man live on five pound a month? Would he never be rid of this familial financial burden?

So Conrad sailed again, from Hull to Cardiff for a cargo of coal. In Cardiff, during his five-day stay ashore, he visited a watchmaker and delivered him some money owed by a fellow Polish sailor. The Polish émigré turned watchmaker was a former Polish insurgent. Conrad was introduced to the man’s family. And he made quite an impression in his frock coat and felt hat. He looked like an

Anglican clergyman. With refined manners and a foreign accent. Surely this man was no sailor. 29 He impressed the watchmaker’s son, Joseph Spiridion

Kliszczewski. Perhaps they shared more than a name and heritage; a common passion for felt hats and refined manners.

The Tilkhurst left Cardiff and sailed for India. Uncle Tadeusz was worried.

Warning his nephew in a letter to resist the temptations of wine and rum that had wrought such havoc with his liver in a previous journey to India. Stay out of the markets! Conrad reassured him. Letters were exchanged. He sent five letters to Spiridion, from India. They were the first preserved texts of Conrad, written in

English. They also indicated a change in his political and social philosophies. His thoughts written down. Poland became a place of insurrection and confusion, dominated by Russia. Anglo-Russian relations were worsening. The European political situation was beyond hope or salvation. He aligned himself with Great

Britain. His new home.30 Britain and the sea. Surely Uncle Tadeusz would be pleased.

The displaced Korzeniowski may have wanted to impress Spiridion with his gloomy predictions about the Polish and European situation. He wrote letters that demonstrated ignorance of contemporary political events. His conservatism

33 and fear of anarchists. He identified Joseph Chamberlain with social democrats.

He didn’t know the First International had been inactive for nine years. Didn’t remember its name.31

The letters represent a change in Conrad’s self-perception. His first letter to Spiridion on September twenty seventh was signed Conrad N. Korzeniowski.

He’d dropped the ‘K’, Anglicised his Christian name. I’m not sure where the ‘N’ came from. His second letter on October the thirteenth was the same. The third, on November twenty-fifth, was signed Conrad Korzeniowski. The ‘N’ disappeared. The letter of December the nineteenth signed Konrad H.

Korzeniowski; and January the sixth, J. Conrad and C.K. The next to last form, repeated in the address (Mr J. Conrad, 2nd Mate, ship Tilkhurst, Sailor’s Home

Dundee), is the first recorded case of Korzeniowski’s use of his future pen name.

Perhaps he followed Joseph Spiridion Kliszczewski and used his second name as his surname.32

This bookshop is in the new street, Nai Sarak, built by the British, after the 1857 war. It’s the linking road between Chandni Chowk Road and the Chawri Bazar.

I’m surrounded by modern two storey buildings and the lower levels of the buildings house the shops. The area specialises in books and stationery. There are more saris on display, silks and cottons hanging from vertical ladders and adding colour to the marketplace. A few shops sell old and new musical instruments. I look at violins and think about my daughter. Her small face and quick-eyed summation of things. How she used to love me reading to her when she was young and before she could read the words but follow the pictures and

34 how she knew that when I came to the letter ‘M’ in the alphabet, it was the letter of her name and she would be tickled. She used to say to me, “Dad, where you go,

I go.” That’s how it was until I started travelling. Then she was left behind with her mother and they went shopping. I used to say to her when I returned, “What is it with pink?” Now she’d say, “It’s okay, Dad, I was just getting ready for red.”

She’s lovely and she looks like her mother. She’d love this shop. It has books in

English, mostly old college textbooks. Fiction, letters, criticisms. Major works of scholarship piled high. It’s chaotic and yet strangely ordered. The bookseller directs me to his Nineteenth Century English Literature section. He is very proud of these books. Yes, yes, he’s read them all. I said I wanted a book of Conrad’s letters. Ah, Conrad. Yes of course. Now, where did I put them? What about this?

The Mirror of The Sea: A Personal Record and his Notes on Life and Letters?

India is just the place to lose yourself. Korzeniowski was in search of an identity and some way to make money. Perhaps he could take on whaling, forget about a future in the merchant service, if only his uncle would advance him more funds, if the money invested in London would realise more than six percent interest and he could raise more than his fifty one pounds. Maybe he could convince old

Mr Kliszczewski to lend his son’s friend some money. How could he impress upon others he was serious about taking up a new venture? What to add to a frock coat, flat felt hat and an accent? This was when he went to the market and bought himself a monkey. He reinvented himself. Joseph Conrad.

Did Conrad write letters from India? Perhaps he walked through the market at Chandnit Chowk and jotted down notes. Returned to his hotel and

35 wrote, “My dear Spiridion, I kiss your hand. It’s January and winter is peaking.

There was a heavy fog this morning, due to our proximity to the Himalayas. The day is mild and yet I have no need of a frock coat. JC”

I travel the streets of New Delhi in a mechanised rickshaw, taking in the sights, missing many. Little children ask to be photographed and I can only wonder why because no money changes hands.

I capture a stranger’s face in the rear view mirror. I could be looking into a still pool and seeing my reflection, but it’s the driver I photograph and he’s watching me. Our eyes meet and then I turn to look straight ahead. Red beans, blue packages wrapped in plastic on the back of a truck. Could be contraband. A donkey holds up traffic, its head down, so stubborn. Maybe it found grass to nibble. All these contrasts in colour. And a white van.

I leave the rickshaw at another market, find a stall that sells bangles, and buy some for my daughter. A heavier silver one for Jess. Return to the hotel and write an email.

Dear Jess

I’m in Delhi. Rajasthan was another experience altogether. I’ve attached some photos. What do you make of the eyes of these people? I haven’t used a telephoto lens, just a digital camera. The people look resigned. Maybe they feel humiliated.

Foreigners arrive and deem their ordinary lives exotic. I found someone to take my own photo, looking wistful in my white shirt. I was thinking of home, of looking beyond a window to a river and the sails of a cutter yacht gliding across its frame. Where the only harmful creatures are cobbler, maybe a river shark.

36 And the taste and smell of oranges, growing in your garden.

I went to the markets at Chandnit Chowk and found myself turning right into Nai Sarak, into the book market. I’ve bought an old copy of Conrad’s writing.

I’m only a little way into his thoughts on anchors and yachting. He doesn’t have too much time for organised racing, sees it as “a function of social idleness.”33 He says dealing with men and ships is a fine art. We live in an “unstable element, are subject to subtle and powerful influences.”34 The sea. India. Like ships, men

“want to have their merits understood, rather than their faults found out.”35 Are you smiling? Maybe thinking of my merits? Tomorrow, I’m leaving early and flying to Madrid.

Jess, I kiss your hand. I embrace you,

J.K.

37

CHAPTER 4 – JESS

The light comes to me through a window directly in front, overlooking a main street and neighbouring gardens. I sit at my desk and type to fill in the time, recalling Josef leaving, the airport and my hand on his back. Capturing him. Flash flash. As though my memory is a card and all I have to do is press a button and

I’ve got him. In the flesh. His drawn sigh, his face in my hair. Gently touching my face. Such urgency as he murmurs, “Don’t worry. I’ll be back soon.” Taking my cold, gloveless hands. Regarding me intently, waiting for a reaction. That was before he headed for Christchurch and now he’s gone beyond New Zealand. I’ve sent him emails and text messages. He’s in Spain. He hasn’t come back.

Here it’s one of those saffron days when the golden light is tinged orange from the smoke of inland bushfires. I’m just getting up the energy to go to the beach. I read yesterday's newspaper and Josef’s on-line article on Rajasthan with accompanying photos of Indian women. Cooking food in black earthen pots.

Pushkar. Where a dip in the waters of the lake and worship at Brahma’s temple ensures salvation. Staircases leading from the lake. The clean formal lines of white and light blue houses. The ochre of a narrow, dry valley and the

38 overshadowing rocky hills.

When I was there a few years ago, I visited a settlement beyond the village outskirts. Kabeliya people. An ancient clan of gypsy dancers known as the snake charmer caste. The head of one household kept his fifty-year old cobra for special occasions still, such as in the times when his ancestors entertained maharajas. He was elderly and half blind, a former traveling barber. He talked to the hissing creature like an old friend. Then he offered to cut my hair. Said he could range his hands over my face, imagine the bone structure and cut the hair accordingly. I let him. It was a good haircut. I have the memory of his hands tracing their way in feather touches over my cheeks, down my nose, caressing the slight cleft in my upper lip, across and around my mouth. Hands down to my chin and separating, moving to my jaw and then up to cheekbones, across and resting on my temples. To think of the barber is to remind myself of Josef, stroking my face.

In Fremantle, sailors are boarding at the house opposite. Two women from New

Zealand, two men from Germany and their coach. The coach likes to direct the team bus up into my driveway, right up to the garage door, so it can reverse in the street, turn around and head back to the Fremantle Sailing Club and pick up more passengers. The boarders ride bikes to visit friends and team members, living nearby. I can see them at night, all gathered around the dining table, as my neighbour walks from her kitchen with another platter of food. She’s set up beds in the former garage, which is now a studio. There are white canvas bags of sailing equipment strewn over the verandah. I’m thinking of Conrad’s comments on organized sailing, which he called social idleness. In Fremantle, there are new

39 restrictions. The Olympic Games-qualifying ISAF Sailing World Championships are being held off the coast and the State Government has issued a ban on all water activities from eight am to dusk each day for two weeks. No watercraft may use the water from Mosman Park to Woodman Point, for about five kilometres off shore. There will be no windsurfing, kite surfing or fishing off the coast. At least they can’t stop vessels moving through a major shipping lane to the inner harbour. Josef would find it difficult taking his boat to Rottnest. He certainly wouldn’t be able to swim to the island. It’s an international event and any disruption won’t look good on the world stage. Conrad would have contempt for this.

I want to tell Josef that things are happening in this city, too. The

Commonwealth Heads of Government are meeting in Perth. Kings Park restaurant, on the top of Mount Eliza, beside the war memorial, has been extended and extra waiters and kitchen staff hired to serve the dignitaries.

Sixteen chefs and eight stewards. The dinner menu will be uniquely Australian, seafood and fresh local produce. No kangaroo though. We won’t serve up our coat of arms to foreigners. Helicopters are constantly flying overhead. Security is in place. The railway has been up-graded, new native plants line the roads and footpaths. There are olive trees planted in single lines. No groves where insurgents might like to hide. No orange trees, nor blossom. The place is abuzz with tension and self-importance. It’s both the same and different.

On a clear, hot summer’s night, standing on my widow’s walk, imagination steals everything. There’s nothing mere in my daydreaming. I read and re-read Josef’s articles by starlight. His messages. And I go everywhere that he’s been and

40 further.

Josef now spends his nights roaming Madrid’s city streets. In some ways they’re just ordinary city streets, but he imagines them as threatening and seductive. He’s anonymous. He likes it but he misses me. He’s spending

Christmas there, in the Eurostars Madrid Tower. Alone.

I read his news copy of December the sixteenth. He wrote about an incident in Ceuta, earlier in the day. A Moroccan boy, believed to be about fifteen, and two Spaniards, were arrested at the northern coast border crossing. Police dogs sniffed out the boy who was hiding in a modified gas tank – emptied and fitted with a door so the boy could crawl in from behind the rear seat. The car had a compact, improvised container that held a small amount of gasoline, presumably just enough to make the trip over the border and return for another passenger.

The desperation and ingenuity of people amazes me. To enter Ceuta, a man recently stuffed himself inside a mattress strapped on top of a car. Crossed into the city. How thick is such a mattress? How finely boned is this human cargo?

Josef’s working for The Associated Press. He sends his copy to the editors at the International Desk in New York. They want stories of global interest. All degrees of violence fit that agenda.

He’s returned to Madrid, following his posting in 2004, where he covered the Madrid train bombings; the explosions detonated from mobile phones.

Arrests were made there and in Ceuta. But that was some time ago, the troops have been withdrawn and it’s the season of peace and goodwill.

41 I want to send Josef a message, to catch him on-line. Checking out his mail with his laptop on his knees, and seated in a grey suede chair backlit with a mirror.

Hi Josef.

Is it too early to wish you Happy New Year? When I was in Paris in December, I coped with the biting cold of a northern winter. Ice on the roads and the trains weren’t travelling to schedule. I coped because the snow, as it fell on the rooftop of the cathedral, was beautiful. I watched from my hotel window as the gargoyles on the cathedral parapets came to look like something less sinister.

Iced confectionary. Now, I’m home and the heat is almost unbearable. I have the air conditioner turned up and the dog spends her afternoons inside. Siesta on

Chinese slate floors. We go to the beach every morning.

I remember celebrating Songkran in Thailand in April, the hottest time of the year. A farm stay where I sat on bamboo matting and our hosts urged us to drink. A European man paid a local man to stop his wife from singing. The laughter. The husband ran a finger across his throat in a threatening gesture and she stopped until the money changed hands and then began to wail again. Older members of her family rubbed our right forearms and wished each member of our group good luck and fortune. The husband of the singer held a roll of white thread, put it between his thumb and forefinger, smoothed wax along its length, and crafted a knotted bracelet for each of us. We threw water over one another to bring good rains and I thought the bracelet carried the good graces and wishes of our hosts and refused to remove it. It’s tattered now.

I’m on holiday. I've just finished painting an old cane chair white. It now has a fashionable distressed look about it, which is symbolic of the painting

42 process. The paint brush stands in an olive jar, filled with creamed water. The ground sheet’s spattered with paint and dog hair because Semi likes to keep me company. Three chairs to go.

So, I'm taking time out. The paintbrushes stand in water, the silver lid is very firmly back on the can and the coffee pot’s packed with ground beans.

Percolating. I’m not sure where you are in Spain. In Madrid, in a favourite tasca, reading my emails and eating dried muscatels?

I checked your name in Facebook today. There are so many of you but the one I fancied was from Leeds and pictured in a supermarket, surrounded by high shelving and some sort of produce. Well, really, he could have been at a bookstore.

As for me, here in Fremantle, Mt Barker seems good and I'm thinking of visiting Annie. You remember my sister, the artist? She has an exhibition opening on Thursday. Transformations of polypropylene and some new work in water colour and ink.

I've been wondering about you. I’m sorry, I have to ask you some questions. Has there been reconciliation with your wife? Do you miss your daughter? Am I asking too many questions?

The sprinklers have come on next door, my window is open to their clicking, motorbike frogs in the pond are winding up and I can’t sleep. I can smell the salt of the sea, which is a very good thing. I like to taste salt on my lips. Sea salt has a particular bitterness like nothing else on earth. I dreamt you were standing on the deck of a ship, crying and you wanted someone to read you a story.

All this to say I’m thinking of you.

43 Jess

He read my email and sent me a text message:

“You’d like my hotel room. The light comes from very high up, sifted, white as the high walls. Two pictures hang there, the figures distorted… Fascinantes!”

§

It’s early in the morning, a pale blue cloudy day and cars are beginning to make their way into Fremantle. Such a restless night. Outside my house, doves are cooing in trees. There are all manner of bird calls in this suburb, the lively repetitive “prrip, prrip” of a singing honeyeater, and the screech of cockatoos. A rooster crows, a dog barks. I’ve been thinking of men, my father, my husband,

Patrick and Josef, by fits and starts, between snatches of dreams about tunnels and gardens. I’m tired. Strung out. I’m not the monolithic woman of a Conrad novel but I do like to read in a walled garden.

My husband gave me a signed book of poetry for my twenty-fourth birthday. It was all about native birds. It had illustrations from the National Library of

Australia’s Pictures Collection. We liked Judith Wright’s poem about magpies, the way they walk like gentlemen with their hands in their pockets. I think they walk more like gentlemen dressed formally, with crisp white cuffs, their heads bowed a little with indecision and their hands clasped behind them and under the tails of their frock coats. Captain Korzeniowski aboard his ship. And then there’s Wright’s poem about blue wrens:

44 “The creek is full the day is gold,

the tale of love is never told.” 36

My husband. Poor man. He died underwater and I tasted that salt in the throat for years, when I cried. I held his watch tightly, some nights, furious with it because its hands moved and my husband was so lost, so still.

45

CHAPTER 5 – JOSEF

The Metro is almost empty. A dark haired woman stands in front of me, close to the yellow line on the edge of the platform. She’s wearing a white dress with gold embroidery along the hem. Her flat woven gold shoes match the dress and she’s holding a black briefcase. It’s winter and she’s dressed for summer. She reminds me of Jess, only this woman wears a short coat to keep her warm. She’s also reading a magazine and now and again she looks up to the rectangular neon sign hanging from the domed roof. Arguelles, Madrid. She wants to know where her train is. It’s somewhere on the other side of the tunnel to her right. Beyond the yellow glare of the station. I take her photo with a Canon EOS 40D.

I’ve taken pictures of trams in Australian cities and of trains dislodging containers on vehicular ferries. This woman, and a man reading the train timetable pinned up on a noticeboard on the wall of the station in Madrid. Years ago, in Cottesloe, before the government updated the railway lines, I filmed a man scampering from a signalman’s box, crossing the platform, quickly putting on his conductor’s cap before assuming that role and crossing the line to take money for tickets from passengers travelling towards Fremantle. I have some happy-snaps, taken with my mobile phone whilst waiting at the Fremantle

46 station on a Friday night, with all the other revellers. Jess had dropped me off, I’d kissed her and I was very happy.

I took plenty of pictures of the train station when I was in New Delhi.

Development hadn’t reached the railway system. There were no bricked tunnels, nor intricately carved domed ceilings. Indian life was exposed. I took a picture of a man in grubby pale blue jeans and an oversized striped shirt. He carried a large green canvas bag on his shoulder as he wove his way through people and a huddled group, a family, sitting on cardboard cases. Wire mesh everywhere, forming walls around platforms and wooden stairs, security grills on train windows. Men pissed up against walls and iron railings on the edges of the tracks, their backs to the other commuters. People stood on the railway lines, waiting for their train, as though forcing it to stop. Discarded and rusty bikes were piled up on an embankment. Empty plastic water bottles had been gathered up and left in a heap at the side of the lines, for collection and recycling.

Small trucks, three-wheeled passenger cars and scooters lined the parking area beyond the train station itself. Bagged and crated goods were brought to the train on wooden trolleys and left on the platform. People rested up against the piled hessian bags of grain, chatting and waiting patiently. The following day there were bomb explosions at the train stations at Nirman Vihar and Rajiv

Chowk. Sixty-five people were killed, thousands of passengers were stranded and trains were delayed at all major stations. Police arrested three suspected terrorists, alleged to be members of the Indian Mujahideen group that carried out a similar blast in Pune, earlier in the year. Police were unable to find the man who arranged hideouts for the terrorists in Delhi.

§

47

I’m sitting on a bench in Madrid’s train station, under the white and yellow lights, eating a grilled chicken burger from a paper bag. It’s been a long day and I want to get back to the hotel, make a few calls, one to my lawyer, and email Jess.

Go out again and grab some more food. What I’d rather be doing is sitting outdoors in Fremantle sun, eating Christmas cherries from a pewter bowl.

Walking to South Beach for a late afternoon swim, going to the dog beach and swimming with animals. Lying on a towel on the sand and talking about the

Sydney to Hobart yacht race. Jess lying on her stomach, curling her naked toes into the warm sand. I’d rather be going back to Jess’s place to taste the salt on her skin. I’m wearing winter clothes but I should be dressed for summer.

I’m staying in a university town close to the RENFE station, with easy access to the city and the Comunidad of Madrid. The hotel’s in Alcala de Henares.

It was difficult to find but I followed directions from one of the local journalists at the office, just looked out for Hipercor and Corte Ingles and there was no problem. I’m right in the thick of things. There’s plenty to see but there are times when it gets too touristy for me. The hotel staff’s helpful and friendly and the rooms aren’t too bad. I can make my own tea and coffee. It’s amazing for Spain.

Staying anywhere on my own is a challenge. That’s what any counselor would call it. And the constant travelling is wearying. I should find a hotel that offers access to spa therapy and massage. A pool for swimming laps. Something soothing. I’m still coming to terms with a failed marriage and the loss of my child. At night I think of Jess. I want to write to her. Well, I do write to her but I don’t always press “Send”. I want to say, “For a long time, I’ve been uninterested in the end to which my road leads. I have gone along it with head lowered,

48 cursing the stones.”37 I seem to channel Joseph Conrad. When he was lonely and depressed, suffering from some ailment picked up in the Congo. When he realized he was never going to be the hailed hero of some boyhood and imagined adventure. Unlike Conrad, I don’t think of the woman I correspond with as some sort of compassionate mother.

I’ve been thinking about how he writes. That impressionistic style that really sums up how we communicate. Patches of coloured words on a page, in a sentence, a text message in three parts. “Hope you had a good day. Merry

Christmas.” And then, “I’ve been celebrating the story of Christmas. The colours of red and green.” And later, “of bile.”38 How we look for words to express a feeling. Disconnection. String them together like glass beads on a wire frame, on a key ring.

I lost my keys two days ago. There were keys to my apartment, my office, the white circular tag for the gym back home, on a key ring attached to a small square of thick wire woven with thinner wire, strung with red and green glass beads. My daughter gave it to me as a Christmas present a few years ago. She went shopping with her mother in Fremantle and found it in a shop that sold products made in third world countries. Christmas gifts. The beads moved along the wire like a sort of abacus and I used to hold the frame in my hand and let my fingers run over the smoothness of the beads. De-stressing. Thinking, I could tell a counselor what’s worrying me, how I’ve become obsessed with another woman, and the counselor would give me strategies for coping. Relaxation therapy. Help me to distance myself from the root cause of my anxiety, get me out of this profoundly dejected mood. Suggest I go to a doctor and get some medication to cope until our next appointment. Instead, I’d hold my key tag in

49 my hand and run my left thumb gently along its ridges. Build a red and green rhythm for thinking. Bilirubin, biliverdun. Red and green. The balanced colours of bile in a healthy liver. The strong contrast of complementary colours.

I lost the keys. I clenched my teeth. My liver took a hammering. That’s what happens when you get stressed. Something to do with a build up of fatty cells. So I looked in my bags, in the drawers of the hotel, under the bed, shook out the towels lying in the bottom of the bath, ready for the maid to replace. Had

I left them in the taxi on my way from the train station? Did they fall from the side pocket of my lap top bag? Did I do that old trick of my younger days and come home late after a few drinks, unlock the door to the room with my one free hand, not even bother with the light, sidle in holding a woman by the waist and toss the keys up onto the top of a wardrobe or cupboard? For safe keeping and off the dance floor, until the morning. Until I had to take the woman to a taxi waiting downstairs in the early morning street.

I wrote a story about displacement. My editor read it and wrote comments like, “What’s the architecture of the city?” and “Where’s this person, psychologically? You’re being cryptic.” And so my story changed. I went back to reportage and political analysis. I’m just a paid spin-master. Writing for the press junta. Stories for mass circulation of the horrors human beings can inflict upon one another. Close up. What constitutes evil. As if I’d know. As if anybody knows.

Editors love it. But then I do other work, on the side. Or is this other work my real work? I get involved, and the Press is supposed to be independent. A witness to events.

Early this morning, I woke from a dream. I’d been wearing my charcoal linen

50 pants and a linen shirt, unbuttoned at the neck and the sleeves and legs of my pants rolled up because of the heat. I was picking oranges. The trees were growing fast and I was designing a metal spiral staircase so I could circle the tree, climbing to get to the fruit. When I woke it was early but the sun was blinding, stabbing horizontal and vertical shafts of brightness through the shutters and forming a crucifix of light on the wall opposite. I thought about the lost keyring and glass beads. How Conrad uses words. Charlie Marlow in the darkness of the Congo, witnessing the exchange of “rubbishy cottons, beads and brass-wire” for a “precious trickle of ivory.”39 I thought about free trade and

MOUs. I got up, telephoned Jess and left a message. I had a virus and I was feeling low. Really, it was nothing to do with a virus. That word has become some sort of code for inability to cope or inertia. Maybe she listened to the message and whispered, “I’m so sorry, Joseph.” Well, it would’ve been something.

I opened the shutters and searched for the keys on my desk, shifted around some books. Red and blue spines, the letters ‘He’ could’ve been the beginning of a name, a pronoun. It was ‘Hemingway’ cut short. I pushed aside my copy of his stories, my notebooks with back pockets for pieces of paper with phone numbers, scribbled down in some rush. Numbers to get back to. Moved my sunglasses’ case to my right. The sunglasses up against it. Back to the case, unzipped it and there were the keys and the red and green glass beads on their brass-wire frame.

Books pile high on my desk and right now there’s nothing to say about any of them. It’s just a feeling I have. Higgeldy piggeldy seems to capture it best. e.e. cummings would weave some word around it. “Mud-luscious, puddle wonderful.”40 My daughter loved those sounds. cummings de-capitalised his first

51 initial and my editor would’ve drawn a black circle around the letter and placed a full stop after each initial, given his surname an upper case letter. She didn’t know that cummings believed in the democracy of letters. No letter was more important than any other. I disagree with him there. It’s all about capital I.

I’ve talked to a counselor about myself, back in Fremantle, and the sessions are helpful but there’s stuff I leave out. I answer her questions as best I can. And that’s the point. There are no words for me to convey mind-fog. To say

I’m a cannibal and I hunger for someone. Jess. I think I want to eat her in small bites, nibbles, to taste slowly, run my tongue over her flesh and lap up the salt and remnants of perfumed body sauce. Am I interested in what she has to say?

Mostly. I watch her speak. The sound is low and she laughs, never shrill. It’s a sort of accompaniment to devouring her face. Wanting to touch her breast so lightly and my fingers straying down her neck to those long sharp bones that form a slight vee at the base of her throat. Place my mouth there and suck her in.

Hold her arse, a cheek in each hand and hold her tight up against me, lift her high. I wonder what the counselor would make of that.

I don’t take sleeping medication any more. I’ve stopped crying over the loss of my wife and half my property. The cat. I keep in touch with my daughter.

Besides, I don’t want to live in fog-land. It’s too misty-pleasant. Sounds become grey, muted. I no longer hunger for my wife. Want to kill her. To exact revenge for leaving me, for not needing me, for not finding me useful to her life. For throwing me on some human scrapheap. Fog-land can be shadows and clammy murkiness. It’s safe but you can’t get anywhere. Jess knows what it’s like in fog- land. When I write Jess an email, even when I’m being too cryptic because I’m searching to find words, she gets me.

52

§

Dearest Jess

I tried to call you last night. There’s more to me being in Spain than the tourist brochures let on. I think Hemingway got it. I’m getting some good responses to my articles. Despite the paper’s recent fiscal rationalization, the Editor assures me that they’re keeping me on. She says readers value an outsider’s perspective.

You know, this is the birthplace of Cervantes. He wrote in his Preface to

Don Quixote of the types of stories one could conjure in a prison, “Where every misery is lodged and every doleful sound makes its dwelling.”41 So, Madrid’s the place for me to recapture stories of human emotional excess. Not just my own.

I got a call after midnight last night. Late but what can you do? I grabbed my keys and set off in search of a story. Returned to the hotel hours later to write it down.

A young woman was set alight by her fiancé, just after eleven pm in

Camino Viejo de Camarma. It’s an isolated area, frequented by couples. They were both Romanian. They had a serious argument about wedding preparations and faithfulness, which ended when the man threw an inflammable liquid over her. He set her alight. Her body was found completely burnt, out on the waste ground. Almost unrecognizable. He confessed to the crime. He was taken to the

La Paz hospital to be treated for slight burns to his hands. It was the eighth violent death in the Madrid region so far this year and the second like it in Alcalá in less than a week. A man killed his partner and her eleven- year old son, last

53 Friday, just before the weekend. He wanted to watch Real Madrid play on

Saturday, and they got in the way.

I’m being paid to write cautionary tales. I want to write something beyond telling readers to beware pickpockets, to never put their wallet or keys in a back pocket. To say that women should put their keys inside their high boots. And leave them on. Perhaps I should write noir vignettes? A sort of Lou

Reed approach. Tunnels and the underground.

There are secret tunnels that run under the city centre. They existed before the Muslim occupation, around the eleventh century. There’s the suggestion that Madrid takes its name from the Arabic word, Madjrit, which means place where there are tunnels.

I remember the tunnels that ran beneath Fremantle Prison and travelling its length, with you, Jess, in a small row-boat. Cameras weren’t permitted and long hair had to be tied back. You took the knotted string bracelet from your wrist, the first time you’d removed it, and used it to tie back your hair. You’d just shampooed it and the tunnel smelt of citrus and peach. You laughed, and said I made it sound like a good riesling.

I’ve interviewed an old woman who recalls being at school, here in

Madrid, during the war. She’d been told by a nun, one of her teachers, that the school was a hospital during The Spanish Civil War. The teachers and students hid in the tunnels beneath the school during bomb attacks. She said it was dusty and there was an unpleasant odour, but it was safe. The tunnels connected key places within the old town. The plaza Mayor, the Palace, the hospital, the town hall. This network of tunnels allowed some people to move freely without the fear of being caught. To move people and goods undetected. To smuggle guns.

54 Well, some people had to know of its existence. Joseph Conrad wrote about smuggling guns in Spain, but there was no mention of tunnels.

The citizens of Madrid still refer to their city as a Gruyere cheese, because of the many holes underneath the surface. I wonder who uses the tunnels now?

I’ve been back to the town hall site and there’s a bit of activity around the area at night. Maybe they have bird-calling sessions inside? You told me once that was the purpose of town halls. Performance.

Most of the drama here takes place in the Real Madrid stadium. And there are birds there as well. One hundred and sixty species of birds breed in the

Madrid Province. It’s like Tairoa all over again. Six species of owls, including eagle owls, barn owls, long and short eared owls. I wasn’t aware that owls had ears. Owls are trained by a local falconer to guard the stadium at night. Eagles and falcons have the day shift. They guard against pigeons that build their nests in the stadium. Pigeons sleep in the eaves, leave their droppings and devour the pitch, especially when it’s been re-seeded. There are many references to owls for the names of clubs and shops. A popular band is Owl City. There are sites such as

Prying Owl and The Travel Owl. I’m keeping a look out for Owl of the Remove.

I checked out an art installation in a local plaza yesterday: seven tonnes of stainless steel, laser cut and painted black and white, for a cameo effect.

Constructed to capture an urban-guerilla theme. It was reflective and designed to throw back a gawking or marveling face, in a disfigured and idealised manner.

Like your dishwasher when you bend down to open the door. You’d like it.

It’s a world of contrasts here. Madrid is also called Matrice. It’s a pre-

Muslim word for the waters of the area and the stream running down the Calle de Segovia. But it’s landlocked. Then, the coffee’s good and the tapas bars,

55 chaotic. Really, eating tapas isn’t terribly satisfying. The portions are too small, they arrive slowly and they’re expensive. People sit around waiting, talking against one another and the background music. It’s usually some Spanish guitarist, re-working a riff. I almost expect a flamenco dancer to appear from behind a beaded curtain. Throw her arms in the air and twirl her red dress. Tap her black shoes. I prefer to head to a restaurant for a fuller meal. Torre del Oro’s a narrow alley of green and white tiles lined with huge stuffed bull’s heads, cured hams and photos hanging on walls of what happens when the bull beats the matador. I can find a restaurant, get a plate of sizzling garlic prawns and gazpacho with a glass of beer.

You can imagine me in India. Then in the Indian Ocean, some Conradian devouring enigma of space, flailing around with thousands of others and heading for a distant point on Rottnest Island. Perhaps on a boat. It’s all I can do not to sigh.

Saludos cordiales

Josef

56

CHAPTER 6 - JESS

I’ve been watering the garden. The sunflowers growing along the back wall are over two metres tall. Flowers are beginning to bud. I’d like to take a photograph of them when the flowers come out, to stand beside them, looking up at the sun disks. Put the photos on Facebook with a caption that reads, “I exchanged a cow for sunflower seeds.” The old woman who lives at the back of me will see the flowers from her kitchen window and think they’re lovely. Sneak out at night, stand on an old bottle crate she keeps by the side of her garden shed, reach up and cut them for her kitchen vase. Her daughter will call out, “Muuummmm. You can’t do that. I mean it.” The barking of my dog won’t check her. The daughter will see me in the garden in the morning, pulling weeds, and apologise for her mother.

“Oh, they’ll grow again,” I’ll reply.

Behind my limestone walls, on the patio of my Fremantle house, I drink sweetened coffee beneath a ghost gum, and admire the flowers. I wonder about

Josef’s writing. Do his articles legitimize the forces of law and order in Madrid?

Build consent for the extension of coercive state regulation? De-legitimize outsiders and dissidents? And violence. I think about the screams that came from the main street last Saturday night as revellers headed out of Fremantle. A

57 woman shouting, “Leave me alone, just fuck off will’ya.” Tyres screeching rubber onto bitumen and a woman crying.

When Josef reads my emails, does he see me as Mrs Emilia Gould, the wife of the administrator of the San Tomé silver mine, in Conrad’s Nostromo? Faithful, appreciative and supportive. After years of marriage, still attracted to her husband. I could think of Josef in terms of his fine-drawn, keen red face and his whole, long-limbed, lank personage.42 I could listen intently on the telephone to his descriptions of Spanish Casas with their sonorous arched gateways. Hear of the need for him to continue to work overseas, to make no end of money to finance our future. I’d say to friends, “He overworks himself.” I would be supportive. But I’m less agreeable and then of course, Josef Kozak’s face is not red and we’re not married. But I feel as though I know Josef, really know him for what he is.

I could be wrong.

When did we meet?

I could say it was just like that movie with Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro. Or elaborate: “Oh, it was the cliché of Falling in Love. Meeting by chance at a bookstore, in the final hours of the trading day before Christmas. Buying for other people. Looking for something suitable to read over the holidays. In a hurry to catch that last train home and, in the rush of paying at the checkout, picking up each other’s gifts to set the scene for an exchange of correspondence and further meetings.” But it wasn’t Christmas and we were browsing for ourselves. Josef was looking for something to read on a plane and I was looking for Nostromo.

58 I saw him standing at the end of an aisle. His hair was greying and he had lean hips and strong thighs. He had his back to me and I think the word is callipygian, having shapely buttocks. But there was a sort of aggressive androgyny about him. I suspected he was younger than me. He meandered from shelf to shelf. I can’t say walked because he seemed to wander in an aimless manner as though he was just killing time. We made eye contact.

How do you introduce yourself to such a creature? I smiled and noted the title of the book he was holding. On the Road. I could’ve said, “There was a fine exhibition of Kerouac’s work to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of that book. I stumbled across a little place off a side street in Greenwich Village when I was there. All his handwritten notes were strewn across a table. I’ve always been drawn to his Book of Dreams. He just continues the same story but with phrases like, ‘Walking through slum suburbs of Mexico City I'm stopped by a smiling threesome of cats who've disengaged themselves.’43 I like that but I’m a dog person, really.”

That would’ve been too much. I think I just smiled, nodded towards the book and probably said, “Good choice.”

He looked at me, head a little to one side and the fingers of his left hand quietly strumming on the cover of his book. His eyes scanned the room and then he seemed to come to a decision and lowered them to look me full in the face.

Lingering on my mouth and then to my eyes and he smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling just a little. His voice was unexpected. Not at all distinguished but gravelly, where the smoothness of sound is rasped from each note and what is left is huskiness. Not softness but kindness. His voice carried kindness. “I’ve just finished Machiavelli’s The Prince. He has some interesting things to say on how

59 to live in a time of instability and violence. He separates ethics from politics.44

I’m looking for something light to read on a plane. Ah, Conrad. My mother adored Conrad. It’s unusual in a woman. She liked to quote him, to say she was

“too much of a woman not to like excitement.”45 Then he smiled. “Josef Kozak.”

“Jessica Groves. Jess.”

“Jess? Like Conrad’s wife. There’s a coincidence. That Conrad suggests you’re a serious reader, despite liking Kerouac.”

We were surrounded by books, it was quiet and there was no background music. There was a café around the corner. He asked me if I’d like a coffee.

And as we walked down the stairs, I stumbled, he held out his hand and I took it and keep the memory of it held tight within me. The café around the corner was really a former grocers’ and had been fitted out with several tables and comfortable wood and steel chairs. There was a passageway to the right which led to a small vine covered courtyard out the back. That’s where we headed. We ordered. My choice of coffee is espresso, sometimes a long black, and his ranges from that to flat white and macchiato, depending on his mood because, as he says, coffee isn’t just plain coffee, it’s very different according to the beans and how they’re roasted. And the addition of milk. Josef’s taught me how to taste difference. With coffee it begins with something called cupping.

“You don't actually drink the coffee. You take a spoon and you slurp,” he explained. “You spray it across your tongue, across the roof of your mouth. And that way you get the full flavour sensation.”

I was transfixed by white, even teeth. Goodness, with that grin he could’ve been any wolf in disguise. Anyway, he said that when he was in

60 Indonesia he had done a little reading into the produce and of course he’d heard of the legendary Kipi Luak bean that sells for up to $600 a pound. That old story.

We talked about my artwork. My job as a lit teacher at a boys’ school. He said he studied literature at school in the seventies. Heart of Darkness had been on the syllabus back then. Was it still one of those love or hate texts? That narrative that just meanders along. Yes, it was. I was reminded of a recent examination topic set for my students: Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has been described as a novella of poor narrative structure, with a tendency to get stuck round eddies of description and supposition. The novella does not flow gracefully. Discuss.

We talked. He liked to sit with one leg over the other, leaning back in his chair. Watching everyone. A man walked by and they exchanged hellos. Josef said his family migrated to Polish Hill in South Australia, back in the 1860s. It’s a wine growing district. He’s a journalist. He enroled in Law, but found the course content tedious. At nineteen what do you have in common with conservative social practice and all things legal? Now older, he liked his itinerant lifestyle but he said his wife found the long periods of separation unbearable and his child missed her father.

Perhaps what he needed was another woman in his life who listened. I looked around. The shop next door sold flowers and there was a pot of red tulips on a table out the front, near the door. Josef’s mobile phone rang. He excused himself, muttered monosyllabic responses to the caller. Looked at me. Raised his eyebrows to suggest the conversation was commonplace. When the call finished he said, “Well, I have a plane to catch,” and he asked for my number.

61 We’ve kept in touch for several years. His correspondence flies across seas and settles with me. We’ve met for coffee and casual meals, the occasional opening of an exhibition. We visited a local gallery before he left for Christchurch. In the coffee shop afterwards, he said, “When you look at a body of work, you sometimes notice a thread running through it. Don’t you think so? I mean there’s a constant idea that the artist is working on, over and over again. Do you feel that way about life? The way we re-work experience?” He said he liked one piece called Save. It was a rusted metal grid leaning against the wall. Reinforcing wire with two brass rods and a piece of carved and smeared marble on the one end.

The rods, old and as though found in some front verge skip, were originally made for sheer curtains and had spears on each end. He said it made him think of protection and damage. “You kill or you protect. Society thinks that if we put something in a cage we can protect it but if we put it in a cage we might be killing it. It’s about relationships and complex situations.” I had the sense that Josef

Kozak was switching from expressionism to literalism. When his wife left him, he gave me a ring.

Well, perhaps these memories are embellished because memory tends to do that over time, but the bookstore meeting is a given, as is his name, its Polish origins and the offer of his hand. Bookstore? Maybe it was a library.

§

I came back from Mount Barker yesterday. My sister Annie’s husband, George, telephoned to say his mate was working on a house in nearby Kenndenup.

Renovating. He was removing an old concrete trough from the laundry and he

62 wondered if I wanted it. I’d only mentioned it to Annie last week. I've always wanted to put one in the garden and grow herbs in it. So, he’ll pick it up for me and bring it to Perth when he brings the wine for my cousin’s wedding. She’s getting married in my garden. Annie has been able to get her quite a good price from the local winery. I thought I’d put the trough along the northern wall and, as it has two concrete pedestals, I can pretend I have returned to an old coach house and this will serve as an outside portable laundry. Or perhaps I can get some rubber plugs from the hardware store on the corner and fill the concrete hollows with ice to chill the wine as we dress inside the house. Josef in a new suit, made to order, and me in something quite fitting. I like the word, bespoke. It sounds like a formal engagement, like a matter of emotional and social tailoring.

I’ve been thinking also of a brass tap positioned in the limestone wall. I'm not a minimalist and maybe, yes, I’m overly sentimental. There’s that pine box filled with my father's old tools, wooden rulers and keys, a tattered copy of the

McPherson’s Home Workshop Guide, sitting in this room. The treadle sewing machine that works and which I love to use. Josef once said it’s obviously great exercise for the legs. Then there’s the ship in a bottle on the top of the bookcase and the brass portholes from a wrecked ship. A framed Certificate of

Competency that entitles the owner to be master of fishing or trading vessels.

Simple things worth keeping.

I need some help to remove the imposing blue couch. It’s heavy because of the folding-bed mechanism, which works but gets no use.

If Josef were reading this, would he remain silent? Startled? Would he think: so that’s where my certificate found itself. Would he read of the wedding

63 preparations and be overwhelmed by a sort of awed happiness, a Martin Decoud to my Antonia Avellanos? Those lovers in Nostromo. Antonia, the woman who

Conrad believed “capable of inspiring a sincere passion in the heart of a trifler.”46

Antonia, with her scorn for the conventions of Spanish-American courtship.

Antonia the idealist, and Decoud, the skeptical journalist of Sulaco, trying to spirit her out of Costaguana, “to carry her away out of these deadly futilities of pronuniciamientos and reforms.”47 Antonia resisting due to her devotion to her father. Decoud joining the Ribierist cause as a journalist and dedicating himself to Antonia with the words, “I have only the supreme illusion of a lover.”48 Well, perhaps Josef would gloss over my words. Believing them to be a little pedestrian like steps along the ruts and holes of ancient pavement. Still speaking on his mobile, his voice “a mere murmur in the silence of dark houses.” 49

§

I’m sitting in my study at a desk I bought several years ago, during a visit to

Annie. She collects antiques. We visited a guy who has a few acres on the outskirts of town, a couple of horses in a nearby paddock and lush palms and standard roses scattered about the garden closer to the fibro house. Loamy soil.

A gravel driveway leads to his large shed in the back garden. It’s full of restored furniture.

When I came across this piece, I liked its proportions and solidity, the framed burl front panel and carved detail. I prefer lighter wood, especially old pine, but solid walnut is fine when it’s a former sea captain’s desk. It has handmade, dovetailed drawers that open to the right hand side. The slanted

64 writing surface is natural saddle leather, when raised, and there are little cubicles for letters and inkbottles. I can imagine it was popular aboard ship because of the efficient use of space. I place my laptop on the writing surface, link it up to the internet and to Josef.

I bought an old inkbottle of clear, heavy glass and with a silver lid. Placed it in one of the cubicles inside the desk. The inkbottle is empty. It’s a paperweight for parking tickets and receipts. When the Fremantle Doctor blows, that summery westerly breeze straight off the Indian Ocean, the tickets are held in check. The canvas blinds, outside on the verandah, gather in the wind.

Domestic sails. Full blown and blustery, tainted with dampness from the recent and unseasonal rain.

A dog is barking to be let in or perhaps it’s barking at Lyn next door. She’s standing on top of her garage roof, wearing rubber soled shoes so she doesn’t slip and a broad-brimmed straw hat, trimming back the ivy that grows from my garden and threatens to choke her gutters and downpipe. She’s preparing the house for winter rains, even though they’re a long way off. She’s heading off to

Melbourne to visit her sister and she doesn’t want to return to water seepage down the inside limestone walls of the garage. I feel a little guilty. It’s my vine and I should be out there, my secateurs in hand, keeping it in check. Lyn tells her dog to stop making such a noise.

My chair’s square and straight with no cushion. No turned legs. I don’t lean back too far because I’ve put an old stoat-skin stole across the backslats. I thought they were ferrets but Annie said, no, they’re stoats. I bought them in

Sydney from a shop called “Grandma Takes a Trip.” I could picture my grandmother, all dressed in her good wool coat and wearing a hat. Tossing one

65 stoat over her shoulder and letting the other nestle in her ample bosom.

Grandma, alone in a big city, applying her face powder, crimping her hair, dressing carefully before leaving her hotel. Standing in the street and waiting, boarding a tram and taking a trip to meet up with someone for high tea. The shop’s painted concrete steps led up and into a smallish room. Racks and shelving along its walls displayed retro dresses and shoes, the occasional, single strapped handbag and feathered and netted hat. There were so many furs. It was unexpected. I asked the assistant if she had any fox stoles and recalled a music teacher in my primary years who wore leopard skin stretchy pants and a little fox face that seemed to settle at the side of her neck. The assistant just laughed and said no. I went upstairs to where the ball gowns and long dresses were hanging. Paisley and plain, lemons and apple greens, a crimplene ensemble. My first ball gown was apple green. Empire line with long sleeves and pearl buttons along the extended cuffs. A slightly plunging vee neckline. Gathered shoulder seams.

I wore the dress to the student dentists’ ball. And soft kid leather shoes.

My hair was lightly curled for the occasion. Jane Austen would’ve approved. My partner was a Greek guy I met at a party who took me to his car and, in the back seat, told me I was vivacious. He was older than me. I suppose he was learning how to be a dentist. A young woman caught up with me in the Ladies and made some comment on my hair. “Very nice. Did you do it yourself?” When I said yes, her kohl-lined eyes narrowed and she nodded and smiled.

In the shop, I dismissed the ball gowns. There, on a shelf, hidden towards the back, was the stole made of two stoats. Small and secretive. Such faces! Tiny

66 curled ears, elongated noses and whiskers. No man made fabric. I picked it up, walked downstairs and paid a reasonable price for it. The creatures were wrapped in tissue paper and bundled carefully into a brown paper bag. I hoped the customs’ dog wouldn’t pounce on them as I made my way through the Perth airport the following day.

When I returned home, Josef was waiting. His plane had come in two days earlier. He laughed when I took the stole from the bag, advanced slowly towards him, eye to eye, and furled the stoats around his neck. Their little feet and claws dangled across his bare chest, so beautiful. A contrast in colour and texture. He looked uneasy. “Ssshhh,” I said, “it’s alright. They’re dead. Can you sit there on that stool and fold your arms? Pretend you’re Somerset Maugham and don’t smile. Be still. I want to capture you like this.” I picked up my charcoal, and looked down to the slab of paper on my desk.

I’m becoming more reclusive. I believe that painting’s for the spirit; I often paint with the door shut. To me it’s like wearing a hat. When you want to contain errant thoughts in your head. The most important single thing for me is the light source. My studio’s in a corner of the garden with skylights and south facing windows. There’s no sense of sunlight beating in, no harsh glare and shadows.

I’ve had fluorescent tubes installed above the windows. Warm white. My easel stands alongside a table, which holds glass jars for turpentine and a tin box my father made. It contains tubes of oil paint, a small bottle of varnish and my knife.

My brushes are stored in an aluminium, red-labelled tea canister that belonged to my mother. I found it in my father’s shed, full of dusty screws. There is no lid.

I don’t know what happened to the canisters for flour, sugar and rice. I

67 remember them in her kitchen, on a shelf above the stove. Nurse’s cornflour in the rice canister.

I mix my paints on a sheet of glass because that’s how I learnt to do it and glass is easier to clean than a palette. I just scrape off the unused paint and wipe it down with turpentine. I’m working on a portrait of Josef. Mixing flesh colour from Indian red, yellow ochre and a trace of French ultramarine and, of course, white. But it’s difficult to capture fleeting changes of image and sensation. His forehead, rounded eyes, cheek bones, those lines that run vertically to his mouth.

I’ve traced them so many times. And that look that speaks of everything between us.

A photograph isn’t anything like him, sitting before me, even when he is calmly posed like some dignified Portrait of a Man. I recall him sitting at the helm of a boat, on a cool March morning, all rugged up in his fisherman’s cable sweater. Searching the horizon. His vessel surrounded by silver fish. The herring were running and being herded into a bay by a small pod of dolphins, circling continually, taking turns skimming inwards. Lunging at the fish. Swallowing.

When I told Josef I wanted to learn to sail he said, “Come with me.” He’d taken a course in maritime operations and seamanship. Well, he had a Certificate of

Competency pinned to the wall of the cabin. He borrowed a friend’s ketch. A two masted, fore and aft rigged vessel. It was elegant but, as he said, a bit of a handful to sail.

Josef was confident in his maritime skills. The splicing, use and maintenance of rope and wire. The rigging of gear and loads. The operation of winches and windlasses and the safe handling of hawsers and moorings. I

68 watched him plan our trip along the coast. He would stow and anchor the boat in some secure harbour.

I developed a love for the sound of a knot’s name when I was a Brownie and then a Girl Guide. There’s something a little unwieldy about a round turn and two half hitches or a sheep’s shank. A reef knot is another thing entirely. I trust the security and flexibility of a reef knot.

On that March morning, I rose early, had a light breakfast, showered, dressed and drove to the yacht club. Josef was bringing lunch.

When I saw him waiting on board the ketch, leaning against one of the masts, I waved. If I’d had a cord around my waist I would’ve tightened it, right over left and left over right. Be prepared. Then if I needed to release the reef knot in a hurry or urgency of passion it would simply be a matter of pushing the two looped ends toward each other and the belt would loosen, drop to the floor and I could lift the top above my head. But it wasn’t as though I was in danger of falling overboard. If that was the case, I could’ve opted for thick rope around my waist, knotted with a devil’s claw or senhouse slip. They’re used to anchor cargo against movement. But no knot is proof against expressions of longing, of attraction and turning moments. Salted flesh. I wanted to capture Josef simply by the force of what I was, to inspire passion in the heart of a trifler. Really, I was boarding the boat to learn how to sail through love.

I straightened my top and climbed onto the deck.

Well, when I think of Josef Kozak on that boat, I’d like to be Caravaggio. To show things as they appear, not as if they’d undergone a transfiguration. Josef and chiaroscuro. I’d like to pull him out of his European darkness, into the strong

69 lateral and overhead light above the Indian Ocean. As close to me as possible.

I’d like to destroy the space between the event and my recollection of it, of where he is and where I am now.

Dear Josef,

I’ve read your article on the anniversary of the Madrid train bombings. You quote Conrad’s The Secret Agent. “A bomb outrage to have an influence on public opinion now must go beyond the intention of vengeance or terrorism. It must be purely destructive.”50 Do you really think that such an act is outside the ordinary passions of humanity? I can identify with the vengeance of radical professors at the moment. Your story about the death of a teacher in Ogíjares, from drinking contaminated fruit juice laced with cocaine, seemed to resonate with me. I’d have to suspect something beyond refreshment from any health drink labeled,

“Tahitian Noni.” It sounds like the name of some exotic dancer turned espionage agent.

I think I’ve eaten something disagreeable. Well, it’s affected my mood.

Maybe my lethargy is to do with a lack of resilience to emotional turmoil.

Thoughts of loss and you. I tried exercise.

You know, I walked the four blocks to the beach yesterday and felt exhausted. I came home. Had a sleep, a cup of peppermint tea, another sleep.

Began to feel rested but thought about the week ahead and just fell back on the cushions. I listened to Leonard Cohen. To my body. I rang the doctor's surgery on

Friday and they could fit me in, so I arranged for my class to be supervised in the library and took off. I got your text message whilst sitting in the waiting room.

70 That sad face emoticon was with a semi-colon and the bottom comma looked like a tear falling. Me too!

I’m reminded of Conrad’s The Shadow Line: “One day I was perfectly right and the next everything was gone – glamour, flavor, interest, contentment – everything.”51 The doctor says I have a virus. Maybe food poisoning.

I’m having my hair cut short at that new place in Subiaco I told you about, where a former student now works as an apprentice hairdresser. Apparently his work experience stint in the tattoo studio didn’t go so well. He thought he could take his painting ability into new territory. But the work was repetitive.

Monochromatic. A few of the clients were obnoxious.

Annie says it’s just the time of year for me to cut my hair. Something to do with a Leo moon and if I have it done now, it will grow healthily and to shape.

Really, there seems no point in having long hair in this heat. You won’t be unfastening my ribbons in the near future. And short hair can look more business-like. I have to meet up with parents of students on Wednesday night.

Talk about their results from last year and their goals. Goals? I want to ask them,

“Can your son make shoes? Raise a tree?” I just want to tell them to go away.

I want things to be perfectly right. To take some time off to finish your portrait in daylight. I want you in my studio. I’ve been painting at night and shadows are capturing my soul. Am I being melodramatic? I seem to be moving away from naturalism, where you portray things as they are. Where people are unaffected, honest and life is simple. I’m painting, taking medication, and a sombre approach to the canvas. All dark in tone. Grainy. The portrait calls out for impasto, a broad and bold treatment.

Josef, perhaps you should come home soon because being down has

71 become a default option. I’ve been listening to Leonard Cohen from the blue couch, in the car and the kitchen.

Jess

If Josef were here, he’d talk into my ear from behind, softly, with a half smile.

Familiar. He’d touch my hair. He’d recall my liking for Leonard Cohen and whisper, “Thank you for those items that you sent me. The monkey and the plywood violin.”52 He’d turn me around. He’d answer my letter.

72

CHAPTER 7 - JOSEF

You can commute between Alcala de Henares and Madrid. It’s a quick and easy ride. Trains run every ten minutes or so. Last night I caught the train into the city. I was meeting Damián Angel at Terraza del Casino. He is high up in a construction company, building a rail link between Madrid and the north. He usually packs his car and drives his family to their weekend place in the country on a Friday night. Leaves the city to the tourists. Last night he made an exception. Terraza del Casino looks like a gentleman’s club. White furnishings, mirrors and black and white chess-board flooring. It’s where people meet, eat fine food and conduct business, but it’s not a club. It’s a good restaurant.

Angel knew I’d been in Madrid in 2004. He read my reports of the train bombing. He asked what I thought of more recent media coverage of negotiations between ETA and the Spanish government. Failed negotiations. He didn’t want me to write about any of that. My stories, he said, should focus on the positive implications the railway would have on the economy of the region.

The opening of further trade and travel routes across Spain. It would be in my best interests to put a positive spin on the connections between north and south.

73 “These are times of fiscal uncertainty, Josef. Tell me, you’ve done some travelling. Have you ever been to Cahan in Normandy?”

Angel was cool and polite. When he asked a question he liked to look people in the eye, his fish knife poised over his trout roe in its crunchy tempura batter. Cahan? I spoke carefully, barely touching my food. I have my reasons for taking care.

I told him about my recent report of the murder conviction of three members of a Basque separatist group. He was aware they were found hiding out in Cahan. That they were responsible for the explosion at Madrid’s Barajas airport which killed two Ecuadorean immigrants and wounded forty one others.

That was back in December, 2006. The Basques were campaigning for an independent homeland. They got maximum prison terms, for terrorist crimes.

Each sentenced to 1,040 years in prison. Grim. More than grim. There are no words to describe the consequence of these sentences.

My eel was served with pan-seared foie gras. I lingered over it. Tasted my wine. Then I mentioned my recent visit to Cahan, to the regional hospital renowned for its research into cancer. I told him it’s where my brother is having treatment. He lives alone in a small village in Vieux Ponte, near Argentan. Gave up his import export business to run a bed and breakfast, a Gite, until his bowel cancer was diagnosed and he had to sell off half of the property to a couple of

British ex-pats, his small flock of sheep to a neighbour. He kept his dog. He’s lived in the village for years and he’s formed strong friendships with some of the locals. Before he got sick, he was helping them to restore their church windows.

The mayor of the town asked him to speak at the annual Memorial Day, because of his Polish ancestry and the Polish resistance in France during World War ll.

74 He accepted the invitation, mindful of the honour but really, what did he know of intelligence missions, sabotage, the distribution of underground newspapers in Polish, French and German. Parachute drops. David Angel looked interested. I finished my eel. My brother’s condition, I said, is terminal.

We had a bitter hojiblanca, Spanish olive oil, with our main course of fish.

That sweetness in the beginning, a slight bitter taste of unripe fruits and an almond aftertaste. Angel said the oil’s name comes from the white colouring on the underside of the leaves. He said, “We have excellent olive oil. Export it all over the world. To Australia.” The waiter suggested the softer arbequina for desert. The conversation, like the food, was robust. Sometimes delicate. When we parted company, I headed to a bar on Calle de Alcalia, Madrid’s longest street.

A sort of sixties Rat Pack bar that doesn’t only cater to nice people.

Over a beer, I thought about David Angel. Angel was plump from too many meals of tripe, pork and cocido. And he thought a high speed railway was all that was needed to portray Spain as cohesive, innovative and forward thinking. I could show him some pictures of railways. The Trans-Siberian

Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok. Drinking cheap vodka, crossing eight time zones and heading for the Pacific. The Great Southern Railway, from Spencer’s

Brook to Albany in Western Australia. Now used for transporting goods, grains and woodchips. Not passengers. The Albany Station has been restored and it’s a bus station. People travel by car, coach or small plane. When Jess visits her sister in Mount Barker she drives her own car along Albany Highway. There’s a sign in a paddock by the side of the highway that reads “If you’d flown you’d have been here four hours ago.” Jess says that if the passenger train still ran, she wouldn’t have to risk falling asleep at the wheel of her car. Running off the road at high

75 speed, into the gravel and having a small white cross erected in remembrance of her by the side of the road. Those markers of human road kill. The goods train stops in Mount Barker but the railway station is now a tourist bureau and coffee shop. There are different ways of forward thinking.

David Angel. Spanish Angel. Ray Charles sang about seven of them. “He looked down into her brown eyes. And said, “Say a prayer for me.” She threw her arms around him. Whispered “God will keep us free.”” 53 I thought about separatist movements. My detachment from Jess. Her belief in me. I went home and wrote her an email.

Dear Jess

I’ve been in Marbella. My weekend was quiet. I had a bit of a cold on Saturday and my back was playing up. I went to the hotel’s gym. Even swimming in the pool didn’t loosen it. In the end, I got a doctor at the local hospital to give me some more anti-inflammatories. They seem to be working.

They’re running an experiment in the children’s section of the hospital.

Using a range of perfumes to capture the smell of childhood. Apparently it’s comforting. This week it’s talc and a woody scent with a touch of peach. Sounds like the sort of thing the real estate agents tell you. Make your house comfortable. Surround prospective home buyers with the smell of home baking and vanilla.

I’ve been invited to an opening of Carmen on Friday. I’ll be transported back to Seville in the Nineteenth Century and then forward to Fremantle.

Carmen tossing flowers to Don Jose. Seducing him. I’ll be just another foreign

76 writer forced by fate to witness a story of passion, jealousy and bloodshed.

They’ve got Paz Vega to play Carmen again. That beguiling gypsy in her red dress, with her kisses and castanets. The seats will be unforgiving so I hope my back holds up.

I’ve been to dinner with a young executive from a local construction company. They’re building a fast rail link between Madrid and Northern Spain but the project’s not popular. The restaurant, however, was buzzing. It’s near

Calle de Alcalia, Madrid’s longest street. It’s the same street as the old Café

Fornos, the writer’s meeting place. Hemingway. Writers and politicians debated for hours. You’re a dog person so you’ll like this story.

In 1879, on Saint Francis of Assisi’s Day, a small black male dog wandered into the café, watched by the Marquis de Bogaraya who was drinking cognac at a side table. The Marquis reached out his hand for the dog to sniff. Paco gave him a lick and the Marquis gave the dog some meat. The dog walked home with him but it wouldn’t come inside. The Marquis called the dog Paco. The next night, the dog returned to the café and the ritual continued. A little food, scraps from the table, a little stroking of its black coat and Paco was his friend. Of course! Paco’s circle of friends grew. Writers, artistes, bullfighters. The dog was thought to be politically astute. Journalists followed his ventures. In short, Paco became a national icon. Then he was killed by a frustrated apprentice matador. The dog was sitting next to the Marquis, who was, by then, Mayor of Madrid. The matador took his sword and aimed for the space between the bull’s shoulder blades. The aorta. It was the moment when his training, courage and discipline came together. The moment of truth. And he missed his target.

Paco, from his position next to the Mayor, began to bark. His bark was an

77 expression of the crowd’s disdain. The apprentice matador scrambled into the stands and stabbed Paco with his sword. The crowd rose up in fury and the apprentice had to be escorted from the ring. Madrilians followed the dog’s progress and mourned when Paco died, several days later.

The old café, Paco’s home, has been taken over by Starbucks. There are no black dogs walking amongst the patrons, looking for scraps from a Formica table.

Well, time goes on, here in Madrid. Conrad summed it up in The Shadow-

Line, when he talked of rash moments, those times when we’re young and act in haste, and damn the consequences. He says it’s the time when people marry suddenly or toss in their job. Then again, The Shadow-Line isn’t a marriage story.

The apprentice matador should’ve tried to remain calm. He should’ve remembered that the art of bullfighting is the ability to increase but control personal danger, maintaining the balance between suicide and mere survival.

The struggle is not with a bull, nor a dog. It’s within yourself. And me? I shouldn’t have married so quickly. I should toss in my job.

Now, I’ve got a train to catch. I’m off to Barcelona and then to Marseille.

The journey takes the better part of a day but Barcelona is a worthwhile stop.

Anywhere along the Spanish costa, really.

I look forward to eating with you when I return. No fish knives. Perhaps we’ll go to a tapas bar.

Josef.

78 There. Press Send. There should be a button for “Detachment”. Jess should just turn off bloody Leonard Cohen. I find myself skimming her emails. Conrad used that word to mean an attitude of emotional detachment. Skimming. He probably took it from the name of the first ship he sailed in, out of England. Skimmer of the

Sea. Maybe his heart wasn’t in that first voyage. He refers to Captain MacWhirr of Typhoon “skimming over the years of existence to sink gently into a placid grave.”54 Jesus. Enough of Madrid. I’m catching a train out of here.

79

CHAPTER 8 – JESS

A cyclone is coming. People are battening down, taking their garden furniture inside. Here in Fremantle it’s blustery and the salt that usually hangs in the air is being driven back to sea with a gusty east north-easterly wind. Watering plants up on the widow’s walk is a haphazard affair. The fronds from the potted palm lash out at my face. The wind is warm and it comes from the north and inland. A dry desert gust. I miss the fresh air of a westerly breeze. What is it with smell?

That whiff of something that draws us back. There’s a muskiness of salty flesh or damp clothes that have dried without sunlight that seems to remind me of a seventeen year old I thought I loved when I was fourteen. I was with my family, camping down south near the ocean, and he was with a group of mates. They’d travelled down in their panel vans with their new driving licences and pitched their large tent between a stand of peppermint trees. They arranged their hessian stretchers around the perimeter of the tent and strung up lines to hold their damp bathers, towels and wet suits. I sat on a stretcher and plaited the boy’s salted bleached hair. Sneaked out at night and met him under those trees and he wrapped his arms around me and taught me to kiss. To part my lips.

Sea smells are like fresh beginnings. Sea spray, damp towels and the smell of peppermint trees that line the cycle path on the way to the beach.

80 Yesterday the street was full of tradesmen’s cars, utes and four wheel drive vehicles loaded up with piping and cement mixers, shovels, rubber hoses and nail guns. There’s a good deal of renovation going on. Men were up on scaffolding, shouting to one another, one singing. An industrial strength yellow radio was strapped to a tiling elevator, its antennae turned to pick up the best reception for the FM station. The music and DJ banter filled the air and it was irritating. Setting up a radio on a building site has become part of the pre-work ritual for roofing carpenters. A brickies’ labourer had placed bricks along a wall and made sure there was enough yellow sand, a bucket of water and cement, near the mixer. Today the building sites are quiet.

The house next door is a long way from completion. It used to be an asbestos cottage, sitting on a foundation of sand. The owners bought it for a song, twelve years ago. The stumps were rotten, so the wooden floor dipped in places, offering little hills for the young daughters of the house to ride their tricycles through the central hallway, up and down, up and down. Allez, allez.

Their father, Dean, is a cyclist who dresses in lycra and leaves the house early on Wednesday and Saturday mornings. He meets up with friends at a café in Fremantle and they ride around the river, along the freeway and back along

Stirling Highway, through Nedlands and Claremont, then down to Cottesloe and along the beach where they sprint for an imaginary line near the beach kiosk.

They’re preparing for the Tour de Perth and like to discuss energy bars and the latest in carbon fibre frames. Fixed wheel bikes are making a come back, for

Christ’s sake. Yeah, well I’d like to see how they handle the hill out from Steve’s

Pub.

81 Dean is also an architect. He knocked on my door one morning, holding a balsa wood replica of what his new house would be. He said he was inspired by the sea. The roof was beautifully curved, in the model.

The roof has been a disappointment. It would’ve been a fine thing to see a wave above my eyeline as I pegged out the washing or watered the orange tree, instead of the angular structure that emerged. Blue painted poles and aqua mouldings don’t quite capture the ocean’s fluidity, its transience. It’s become the blue house in the street. There’s no garden as yet and the fence is a makeshift affair of corrugated iron and wooden stakes. Their curious beagle is bored and house bound. When the beagle howls, I know they’ve gone out and I want to release him. I can see him from my window, as he jumps up into a big terracotta pot. He reaches out a paw and scratches at the fence, able to see over but not to make the leap he needs to escape, to go hunting in the wasteland near the bike path, at the end of the street.

The wasteland is a former dumping ground for bottles, china and old army vehicles that have been buried deep and are now, presumably, corroded. I’ve done a little digging there and found ceramic pots which I’ve cleaned and lined up under my kitchen window, along with a pearl shell button, some green glass, a glass stopper for a bottle and an assortment of tiny shells. Then there are the old pottery and glass bottles and a crucible once used to hold molten metal but now full of champagne corks. I like my kitchen. But if Leonard Cohen is turned off and my soul wants to sing, there’s no better place than the wasteland.

The horse trainer in the next street has his strapper bring the horses there for a quiet gallop in the early salted air. I stand aside when I see them

82 approach because my cattle dog might just revert to instinct, and give a horse a nip on the hind leg.

Sometimes we head for a large depression on the other side of the hill, an amphitheatre of lupins and sweet spring grass that the dog and I like to run through. The high perimeter is made of dirt, signs of decomposing rubbish and resilient plastic. Castor oil bushes are beginning to cover the former dump and I can imagine sitting in the open, nose to the ocean breeze, and listening to Joe

Cocker here. I saw him on YouTube, at Woodstock, standing in front of the band, a former welder, like my father. He wore a Superman tee shirt and black pants.

Leon Russell, in trademark high blue hat moved at his side. It was night and

Cocker was playing air guitar, his arms flailing, occasionally brushing aside stray hair, his gravelly voice questioning, “What do I do when my love is away?” The backup singers cried out, “Does it worry you to be alone?”55 Joe … Josef. It wasn’t

Woodstock. At Woodstock he played outdoors, in daylight, with the Grease Band, had no back up singers, wore a tie-dyed shirt and was cleaner shaven. Leon

Russell was with him on the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour. 1970. My husband paid three dollars fifty for a front row ticket and I saw the film of the tour at the

Astor Theatre a year later. Well, Cry Me A River. Josef’s in Spain now, in Madrid.

He hasn’t ask me to join him. I’ve just been scanning photographs of him, saved on my computer. He’s seated at a table, getting shelter under an awning and I’ve caught his eyes, looking down, reflective, a slight smile playing along the edges of his mouth and I’m wondering who or what he’s thinking of here? Who’s taken the photograph? It’s a close up and I can retrace the lines of his face.

§

83 Josef’s sent me an email. He says that in Madrid, only anarchists don’t marry. He went to the wedding of a woman colleague over the weekend. Another foreign correspondent. I imagine she married a local Spanish man in a small, whitewashed chapel and the reception took place at his home. She wore a frilled, flamenco style silk dress. Red. I like this. She would’ve handed out pins with a flower to the unmarried women. They’d attach the flowers to their clothing. The belief is that in the rigours of dancing, the pin will loosen and the flower will drop, and this will predict that the woman will soon marry. Did they eat seafood paella, crabs, prawns and mussels? Were the couple toasted with sangria? Josef made no mention of jamón ibérico nor those little slices of dried toast with anchovies that he loves. Tapas of ortiz anchovy and salsa montadito. Perhaps I’ll cut some flowers from the orange tree along the side wall, pin the spray to my red dress, put on my red shoes and spin wildly. Think of him. When he returns, we’ll dance the sequidillas manchegas. Right now, he’s packing for Barcelona.

84

CHAPTER 9 - JOSEF

The Madrid to Barcelona AVE class high-speed train has eight cars, with driver and passenger integrated cars at either end. An opaque glass screen separates the driver from the passengers and the driver can flick a switch and electronically blur the screen if necessary. That suggests to me that something must have happened to make it necessary for the driver to block passengers’ view beyond the coach. To prevent them having the same view as the driver. A train-track suicide? It’s something to think about when you’re travelling north east, through the cities of Guadalajara, Calatayud, Zaragoza, Lleida and

Tarragona. Sitting in a velour covered seat, surrounded by strangers and travelling to Barcelona. To the sea. I was rocking slightly, comfortingly, in my seat. The German couple opposite unwrapped a knife and a sausage and fed each other pieces of meat. I tried to read a book but I lost concentration.

I was thinking about another carriage. When I was in Wellington, I visited the Maritime Museum. On the second floor, at the top of a wooden staircase, there was a reconstructed captain’s cabin from the Te Anau, built in 1879 and it was donated to the museum by the daughter of its captain. He had the cabin set up in his back garden. Maybe his children played in it or, when he retired, he ate his lunch in it, pretending he was on some voyage. It was made of rosewood.

85 Like a mini train carriage with a wooden arched ceiling and everything compact and functional. I sat on the velvet covered bench inside the cabin, looking at the eight mahogany drawers, a ship’s clock, sextant, heavy brass fittings and a brass porthole.

Jess’s husband gave her two brass portholes he found on local shipwrecks. That poor guy. She went through so much when he drowned. She’s had them mounted on jarrah wooden bases and uses them as photo frames. One holds a photo of her parents’ wedding, her father looking too young. Maybe he proposed to her mother in a rash moment. Her mother is beautiful in a white lace dress and carrying a bouquet of frangipanis. Jess has her mother’s eyes. The other frame has a photo of her husband. Of course.

In the captain’s cabin there was a small glass-doored bookcase containing

Conrad’s Twixt Land and Sea Tales. On a wall plaque were the words: “Thy way is in the sea. Psalm LXXVII – 19.”56

My way at the moment is fast and by land. I’m travelling tourist class and food’s available in the cafeteria car. I’m skimming across the countryside in a velour chair. My book is in an elastic-strung pocket at the back of another passenger’s seat. I’ve been reading Conrad’s comments on Guy De Maupassant.

He admired the man’s practical and resolute mind. Called him, “a very splendid sinner” who “does not require forgiveness because he is never dull.”57 Well, sitting here on the new high velocity train to Barcelona, I’ve just under three hours to kill. Time enough to settle into the air conditioned space, try to block out the noise from the German couple, from a group of seven American tourists who are playing cards at a nearby table. Three boys and four girls. They’re more

86 intent on flirting than winning a hand. I booked the trip online and left my hire car parked at the station.

Beyond the clear window, it’s cold. Frost lies over furrowed fields. The fields of the honest workers whom Conrad admired. His father’s anti-Tsarist leanings and nationalist commitments. He dreamt of creating a conservative utopia within Poland. Apollo Korzeniowska and his wife, Ewa, were ethnic Poles.

Their families had lived for two centuries in the Berdichev region, one hundred miles or so south west of Kiev, in the Western Ukraine. Their son, Joseph, was born and baptised there.58 It was a predominantly Jewish town but Conrad denied being a Jew.

I’ve been to a few Polish towns and their Jewish quarters. Each “Old

Town” had a haunted atmosphere, as though I was walking alone through winding streets and over cobbled roads. Narrow alleyways leading somewhere, to other stern, red-bricked houses and doorways, with venetian blinds or net curtains over the windows. There were few people. In the town squares there was some sense of the buildings being restored to create more colourful expressions of ethnicity and welcome. Cafes were open to the public and to tourists. Tables and chairs were set up in the open air, there were pots of flowers and cleaned and uncluttered windows.

How did Korzeniowski, the child, react to the hammering on his door early one morning? Russians took his father away. His wistful and dignified mother dressed in mourning clothes. Five Poles in Warsaw, who had the temerity to demonstrate against Russian rule, were put to death. She dressed her son in a mourning frock.

87 There were so many influences on the boy. When he was older and he could read English, he re-visited Russian literature. He read Constance Garnett’s translations of Turgenev, Chekhov, and Dostoevsky. He tried to get his head around Russian thinking. His indifference to Tolstoy’s Christianity was expressed to a friend, “I am not blind to its services but the absurd oriental fable from which it starts irritates me.”59 He commented on what he saw as the highly organised mediocrity of Germans and, more favourably, on the more comprehensible Frenchmen. 60He liked to speak and write in French; it is a tidy language, in his view. I don’t know if I agree with him. I learned some French at school. Special attention was paid to the tenseness and purity of the vowel sounds. Revision, translation. It’s come in handy. Chère Jess, j’attends avec impatience votre letter…

I carry Conrad’s Notes on Life and Letters with me, and dip into it, now and again, because I like to think I have an orderly mind and Conrad believes he appeals to orderly minds. He thought that publishing his notes and letters offered readers a clearer view of himself. The reasons for revealing his thoughts?

“Because the leaves fall, the water flows, the clock ticks with that horrid pitiless solemnity which you must have observed in the ticking of the hall clock at home.

For reasons like that.”61 That’s clarity for you.

My watch ticks and the train hums towards Barcelona. I read Conrad’s notes on Guy de Maupassant. “Facts, and again facts are his unique concern.”62

As a journalist, Conrad speaks to me. He makes sense. Conrad says women like

Maupassant because they’re discerning. They understand power and courage,

“genuine masculinity without display” and “virility without a pose.” 63 It’s something to think about when you’re attracted to a woman.

88

CHAPTER 10 - JESS

Semi’s restless at my feet. She moves from side to side, trying to find some space between my satchel and leather handbag. Conrad believed children and dogs have a special power of perception. It must be true. I move my feet to allow her more room but say nothing. I’m speechless and it’s not even an opening night.

Josef is leaving Madrid. Travelling by train to Barcelona and then to Marseille.

He says he’s going to an exhibition. I’ve tried reaching him.

Josef,

Are you reading this in an Internet café? Wi-Fi on the train? I should be sleepy, not simply incoherent. I had such crazy dreams last night. Things to do with being trapped in an asylum after going there for work experience. And having things stolen - a travel clock, a silver photo frame and a red nightgown with pin tucks down the front. Then looking up at the sky. Instead of stars, there were holograms.

Why are you leaving Spain?

Jess

89 §

I woke early when a fire engine drove through the main streets. Its siren was on and there was obviously a car in its way because the horn blasted. I was fully awake then. I got up, turned on the light, had a drink of water from the bottle I keep on my desk, got dressed and let the dog in. Then I sat down to look at the

Internet. Josef has filed a story from Madrid. A bombing has been attributed to a

Basque terrorist group. It’s dated May fifteenth, and it’s about a Civil Guard officer, a sergeant, stationed at the barracks on the outskirts of the small village of Legutiano, seventeen kilometres north of Vitoria. Listen to me. English

Literature teacher, reverting to Guy De Maupassant. Facts, facts. Any minute now, expect to read of some vengeful grass-widow abandoned in Bonafacio or

South Fremantle, my black and white dog, Semi, by my side.

So, Josef wrote, the sergeant remembered being in the guard tower when the bomb exploded. He saw his friend, Juan Manuel Piñuel Villalón, torn apart before his eyes. They’d been discussing their rifles, and how his wife found comfort in lying with it under their bed, when Piñuel Villalón got worried about a white van parked outside the wall of the barracks. He’d just reached for his mobile when the vehicle blew up. It destroyed the guard tower. It tore apart the front of the building and created a three-meter wide crater in the ground.

Josef wrote: “The murder of the Civil Guard officer yesterday brings to six the number of people killed by ETA since the group broke a ceasefire with a car bomb attack at Madrid's Barajas Airport in December 2006, which left two dead.

In December 2007, ETA gunmen killed two undercover Civil Guard officers in

90 France, while in March an assassin murdered a Socialist former councillor in the

Basque town of Mondragón, two days before the general election.”

I suspect Josef threw his brown leather overnight bag filled with clothes into the passenger seat of his hire car. He put his laptop and camera on the floor in front of the seat. Then he drove to the train station. I don’t know if he made it to

Marseille.

§

Police knocked at my door yesterday afternoon. The dog barked and at first I thought it was because the paper-man had opened the gate to place the daily newspaper on the front door mat.

It was actually a different scenario altogether. It was like some Don

DeLillo novel where I expected one of the policemen to say, “All you have to do is tell the truth and I’ll put my gun away and take the next train out of here.”64

What they did say was that they wanted to talk to Josef. People at the Madrid

News said he’d left Spain and they’d been unable to contact him. Josef had me listed with his employer as a person to contact, in case of emergencies. Could I be of assistance?

The police wanted to know why Josef might disappear. There’d been a bomb explosion in Madrid and several people had been killed. An emergency? I imagined Josef fleeing smoke and debris, the smell of burnt flesh and the deep moans of bloodied and dust covered pedestrians lying in alcoves of abandoned buildings. Josef stepping around cases and trolleys, brushing aside a plastic bag

91 blowing in the air, holding his briefcase close and the lapels of his jacket closer.

Josef walking steadily, head down, from a train station. I thought he would survive. All I could say to the police, in all truthfulness, was that he was an experienced traveller. I didn’t know the name of his hotel or whether he had

Internet access. I said we keep in touch but I haven’t heard from him recently. I was concerned of course but also running late for work and I had to excuse myself. Semi was pawing at the door. I put her outside and agreed to call the police if I heard from Josef.

I told them what I could. The routine was familiar and I was calmness personified. Mrs Verloc. Nothing in my appearance could lead them to suppose that I was capable of passion. Of unease.

I say “familiar” because I’ve had two other visits from the police. I was seventeen and my parents came to my bedroom door and said the police wanted to speak to me. They asked me where my car was parked. I told them, quite calmly, it was in the driveway, behind my father’s and they said, no, it was in Victoria Park, at the train station, the door was open and there was no one inside. Had I abandoned the car?

The car had been stolen while I slept. Such is the fate of a red car. I have a superstition about red cars. It’s to do with Annie having a predictive dream about her son who died in a red car. I think I’ve appropriated her dream. Red is a disaster.

When my father drove me to the abandoned car, we tried to start it. The engine burst to life but it was difficult to get it out of first gear because the gear- box had been stripped. I didn’t understand the term but it smacked of assault. A

92 violation.

My father returned home for heavy rope. In the meantime, I sat slumped in the front seat of the red car, still sleepy, my arms curled over the steering wheel, watching a man wearing long grey trousers stand in the park opposite the station, casting out a fishing line into a small pond. Practising. I wondered if he was fishing for Koi, all orange white and black spotted, enlarged and emboldened by being tossed bread by bored children.

My father returned with the rope, tied it securely to the red car and guided me back home.

That night, sitting at the kitchen table, my father drew me a diagram of a gear-box, in H pattern, with the placement of slots for the gear stick to move along and lodge itself within a groove and remain until the clutch was depressed.

It allows the driver to connect and disconnect the engine and the transmission.

The gear stick had been forced out of its allotted path. Perhaps the driver was only used to automatics, what my father referred to as lazy men’s cars.

I had the sense that my Morris 850 had taken the only course open to it.

Like a child in a stroller, putting both feet down, refusing to be pushed around any more in a crowded, noisy department store. The feet come out and brace themselves on the floor and the mother looks surprised because the pram, despite its Italian design and wheels that rotate every which way, won’t budge.

The child’s act of resistance wasn’t factored into its design. My car wasn’t Italian but it was like that.

I’m thinking about the car because I don’t like to think about the other time the police came to my door; the time they came to tell me that my husband had drowned.

93

§

It’s been an unsettled day, right from the start. At work, the Headmaster caught up with me as I made my way to Assembly. It’s interesting to walk beside a man who’s formally dressed when you’re in a pretend casual, cool-cotton mood.

Wearing yellow sandals. He’s much taller and perhaps untrustworthy in high shine, black lace up shoes and an academic gown that catches and spreads itself in the wind. His Black Beetle to my smaller, Asian Lady Beetle. A ladybird. I think

I would be happy with the name of harmonia axyridis. I was feeling really agitated about Josef. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. His ex-wife? No.

The Headmaster was full of an old boy’s story of finding some dead insects on imported excavation equipment. He said that obviously quarantine controls had been effective. “If they became established in this state, Jess, they’d be impossible to eradicate. Imagine the impact on the natural environment. On organic farming.” The Headmaster is a former Biology teacher. He’d met up with an old boy, now a subsistence farmer, living near Walpole, somewhere close to the Bridge of Trees. The Headmaster pursed his lips. “Sadly, he’s an alcoholic.”

The farmer had planted hundreds of mallees in the hope of fixing his salinity problems. He told the Headmaster he’d like to contribute money to establishing an academic prize for Biology. He’d kick in $100 and other old boys would do their bit. The Headmaster wanted to know what I thought of the idea. I said do it.

Fine. I used very few words, I couldn’t trust my voice and I couldn’t afford to cry in front of this odd black-cloaked flapping man.

Salinity and country soil might interest Annie. She’d recently removed the

94 roses from the front of her house because the soil has soured. George concreted the garden and was building her a deck, surrounded by gravel paths with a water feature in one corner. I wanted to call her but she was busy taking her daughter to swimming lessons at the Mount Barker swimming pool and picking up local stone and water plants for the new pond. I went back to the office and sent her an email.

Dear Annie

Josef’s gone missing. He’s distant, even secretive, but it’s all so bizarre. Normally this week would include parent/teacher interviews, supervising an after-school test and a flu vaccination on Friday. Then visiting you, checking out antiques and paintings.

Sorry. I’ll have to put the trip on hold. My brain can only have one thought at one time. Josef.

Jess

§

Annie’s telephoned to remind me that Josef is a resourceful man. He can take care of himself. She says it’s raining in Mount Barker. Her daughter has been swimming in the rain. George has gone out to Kendenup, sixteen kilometres away, to connect a dishwasher for a woman who runs a bed and breakfast on forty acres of natural bushland. It’s a small job and he’ll just get a callout fee and

95 the price of washers.

I’ve been eating dinner alone, in my kitchen, and reading the newspaper.

Reading of the disappearance of an Australian backpacker, last seen hitching a ride out of Madrid. A body has surfaced in the sea in Marseille, in a nearby cove.

It’s thought that despite its missing hands and an unrecognizable face, the backpacker has been identified. I wonder how accurate that can be. Josef’s had dental work. He has a missing ear lobe. It’s a genetic thing. He said his father had the same. There’s nothing sinister about it. Perhaps I should tell the police this?

§

Hitchhiking. When I was young I didn’t always follow our mother’s advice. She bought me a blue raincoat, a sort of oilskin fashioned into a cape, with a slit on each side, for my hands and later my arms. I would’ve been Red Riding Hood off to Granny’s with my willow basket, but for the colour and the school bag. And the rain. My mother was firm on one thing. “Never accept lifts from a stranger.”

We lived in Como at the time and quite near to the primary school so Annie and I walked to school. That day, Annie missed school because she had a cold and I walked on my own.

“Always walk facing the traffic,” my mother said.

The left hand side of the road, following the cars, was always more interesting. Past the phone box and the Words. “Annie luvs Garry… wanta screw… phone 67… Michael is a spunk crossed out poofter.” I hid my crayon inside the cape, in the pocket of my uniform. Even then I liked the effect of a stray line. A car pulled up beside me and the window wound down just a fraction

96 of a second. The man looked familiar and I was getting wet so I accepted a lift. He drove up the hill and I kept close to the left hand door in the back. Close up to the grey vinyl and silver ashtray. He drove slowly and pulled into the courtyard, onto the basketball courts and as close to the prefabs as possible. It was a No

Standing zone. I reached for the silver lever, pulled, and sprang out. “Thank you very much.” Then I slammed the door closed. And cried. I saw my thumb hiding between the door and the door jamb, not wanting to go to school. I re-opened the door. Closed it. I remember a wave and a wave. Saying goodbye and sheer shooting pain. Miss Randolph, my teacher, had no patience with any of us arriving late to class. I was sobbing and interrupting her music lesson. She held up a tuning fork, trying to demonstrate perfect pitch to the eight-year old students. With her free hand, she directed me to the corner. I had to be quiet.

When I got home my mother shook her head and said, “You got a lift with a stranger? Wait ‘til your father comes home.” My father bundled me into his blue car and took me to the doctor’s surgery. Doctor Singh stuck needles around the nail and put it to sleep. Wrapped it in a bandage and then fashioned a sling around my arm to protect the nail-less thumb. Now, I have a small cross section running vertical, dividing the nail. It’s the sort of small disfigurement that draws attention from a schoolgirl working part time at the till in the supermarket. If I’m handing out a pamphlet at an exhibition or a “how to vote” card for the local council elections. I’ve tried a false nail or filling the ridges with acrylic. It’s a distinguishing mark and it’s what I got for not obeying instructions. Josef used to run his thumb along its ridge. He thought it looked cool, sort of set me apart. Just the sort of thing to include in a Wanted poster, if I went missing. To recall, if he was on the ocean, driving along a road or in a train and he missed me.

97

§

I’ve been back to Wray on Essex. Trying to re-capture Josef, seated in the outdoor area, at a wooden table, on the mobile phone. Waiting for me.

Frowning. Interrupting some serious conversation to direct me to a vacant car bay nearby.

Josef in a white shirt, untucked, under a black suit jacket with jeans.

Dressed to express. Stylish slides that echoed his tread as he walked to the counter and placed our order. I loved to watch him move.

Then there was Josef, leaving a message for his daughter, beckoning a waitress who absently took his food elsewhere. I wanted to say, “You’re always so hungry.” He told me a story of a meal at another restaurant where even the fiery lamb curry, the Laal maas, failed to reignite his marriage. What could I say?

He glanced at his watch. Reached for a small wiry terrier that was tethered to a table and recalled, in detail, a dog story that had me spellbound.

Something to do with a lean dog he knew in France who was tethered to a kennel in the snow and who liked to hunt foxes at night and only sat when he uttered, “Assez!”

Josef walked me to my car, close by, kissed me goodbye, took hold of my hand. I touched his arm and said, "You feel so good. It must be the shirt."

There’s the image of Josef laughing and walking away, up the street, answering his mobile. Me driving home with a pot of Kashmiri chillies I bought at the nearby supermarket on my way to meet him. I’ll cook for him when he returns and he can tell me travelling stories. If he returns. I’m worried. It’s not

98 the first time a man I love has gone to work and not come home to me.

I think now of our parting. I suppose that’s how it goes, the parting.

Conrad would’ve known the language to capture my impressions. He wasn’t just an onlooker. He knew what it was like to yearn for another. He also knew how to walk away. That’s what he said.

When Josef once asked if I would like a kiss, it was a common enough question. Nothing new can be said by man or woman in such circumstances. I said yes. I’d been waiting for the question and I said yes.

§

You know, when you walk into a room and there’s someone you’ve been thinking about who looks directly into your eyes and smiles as though this was all planned and written down in some little diary, under ‘drinks at seven thirty’; there’s something directing the timing.

Or you’re browsing through magazines in the newsagents and for some reason your eyes are drawn to the left, to a table at the café opposite, and you see that person you’ve been thinking of for some time, immersed in a menu and giving all his attention to a friend. The body language is wrong. Awkward. It’s excluding you but at the same time not managing to include the person by his side. It’s not as though the conversation has exhausted itself of politics, sport, theatre and now the two of them are giving themselves over to leaning side by side. Friendly. You know it’s an act. He’s seen you but doesn’t want to acknowledge your presence. It’s not as though you would cross the road and interrupt the flow of his conversation. After all, you only came to the shopping

99 centre to buy a newspaper. Nothing more. But you’ve happened upon him by chance and now can take home a memory and file it away in a little red case with all the other stuff.

It’s like the memory of a seminar at some golf resort and after dinner drinks. I was standing on a balcony and it was cold. I had a glass of local wine; and it was a little thin. In conversation with the music teacher and someone from the Biology Department. Then the Head of Design and Technology made some comment about living on site above the maintenance area and how his window overlooked the footpath that runs alongside the highway. How he sometimes watched me walking to school in the morning when he was standing at the kitchen sink. Naked. Perhaps his wine was too thin. I could’ve said that I’d seen him standing at his window, in the evening, with his arm around a woman.

When I caught up with a friend for breakfast she told me about her night with the Head of Design and Technology. She went swimming in the resort pool.

Naked. She dived in, hit her head and the guy seized the opportunity to rescue her. His hands were all over her. He put his arm around her and led her to his hotel room and she was cold, in shock, so he put her under the warm shower.

And joined her. She told me this over tomato juice. When we returned to our school, she was surprised that the guy never mentioned the incident. What he did say was that his new course was problematical, that his students failed to understand the importance of innovation and entrepreneurial activity in a range of contexts. She puzzled over it. Was it the pool? Was she too easy, too intense or not quite to his liking after all? A little too thin, like his wine?

§

100 It’s Sunday morning in Fremantle and I’ve just spent about three hours in the garden, checking the sprinklers, weeding. Perhaps I won’t need to water the garden because clouds are coming in. I’m walking to the beach this afternoon.

There's a homeless person who's set up camp amongst the rocks along the breakwater. The colour of his flysheet is cerulean blue. A strong stout colour for a tough flysheet. A reflection, too, of blue green summer ocean. I might pay him a visit and offer him some oranges from the tree in the garden.

Yesterday I went to the fresh food market near the golf course and bought some vegetables for juicing. There was fresh bread and cheeses from down south for sale. Legs of lamb and hindquarters of beef, even goat. Bulk fruit and vegetables displayed in cane baskets. And screen printed canvas bags. No plastic. My vegie patch is going well but there’s just not the quantity needed for juicing. Don’t want to strip it completely for a glass of sustenance. I marked a few test papers and finished reading a novel. I might see a film. My next read is a tale of a lone man in a wilderness, and something tells me it’ll be a novel I can't finish. It's been a solitary weekend. I’ve made chicken, lemon and cracked green olive tagine for dinner. I’m teaching myself Spanish. I’ve been thinking of a courtyard tandoori oven. Maybe Josef and I could sit around it at midday or early evening. When he comes home. I have to believe he’ll come home. It won’t be like last time, I can’t lose two men. Or so I think. But cruel things happen.

Josef, where are you?

§

It’s 2:10 in the morning in Annie’s house and I’ve just woken from a dream,

101 something to do with wandering through a cemetery and looking for fresh flowers on gravestones and looking around and seeing Annie. She’s arranging a posy wrapped in white paper. I’d like to have better dreams. Dreams of reunion.

I’m reminded of Conrad’s Amy Foster, consumed by a dedication to her infant son. Or was it her husband, Yanko Gooral, a castaway from Central Europe, from a remote province near the Carpathian Mountains, washed ashore on England’s coast, during a storm?65 I want to say to Josef, “If you become ill or meet some bitter trouble, you will find that I’m not a useless fool. You have only to let me know, I will come to you.” I would go to Josef if I knew where he was. I’d go immediately, as I am, light, without luggage.

Du Calme… du Calme.

§

It’s dark still. There’s no moon to speak of and the motel next door to Annie’s house is quiet, the out of town workers bunkered down for the night. It’s a meeting place for men and their partners, sometimes from the city. Three cats are curled up in a basket lined with a patchwork quilt just inside the door.

Annie’s friend made these baskets out of local brushwood and grasses. I’ve lit the fire again. This time I’ve gone for a pyramid pile of wood and used firelighters instead of newspaper. The bucket by the hearth is filled with mill ends of jarrah.

The cast iron fire is almost as old as the basket and the lever that regulates airflow is broken. The fire doesn’t draw well in the still air.

102 This room is green. A sort of underwater cave of shifting shadows and light. There’s a framed print of the Lady of Shalott on the wall, a painting of blue and mauve irises on a pale blue green background. Muted pastels as though in misty air. A chess table sits in front of me, all set up for a game. Check mate, king two this is white rook, over. Echoes of a television series called Combat and Vic

Morrow playing the hardened sergeant trying to radio to headquarters, leading his platoon through occupied France. Ruined buildings and disturbed fields.

These castles or rooks are beautifully carved and the knights, finely sculpted horses’ heads, rearing up in the first preparation for battle.

Outside, there are two horses in paddocks. One is a youngster and her teeth are still growing, her dappled face not finally formed. She’s shy of strangers and tends to hover amongst the clump of trees, paper barks and small jarrah, peering out to see what’s going on in the distance, who’s staring at her from the gravel road that runs along the boundary of the property. There’s a chook run with a small house on stilts on the edge of the road. It has a doorway at the top of a slatted ramp for the chooks to enter. I don’t see access for humans to collect eggs. Annie has a vegie garden. George built a fence around it out of palings and wine barrel slats from the local winery. It looks like installation art. A passionfruit is taking over the fence. Passionfruit need something to climb over.

A fence, a water tank, a trellis, anything will do. George has it climbing over reticulation piping that’s flexible enough to form arches between the palings and a fence of twisted saplings.

George has been busy, laying Toodyay stone paths. He thinks that the back garden needs to be divided into rooms. He’s heard that from a gardening programme on the radio. How you can create discrete spaces of reflection in a

103 garden. Each space flows into another and this may be helped by flows of water or ponds. Water features. He says Annie is obsessed with water. It’s been so cold that frogs have risen from the ponds and lain comatose on the path. Annie’s held them in her cupped hands until the creatures warm up and kick themselves back to life. I can understand how she could do this. She’s taken my hands, on occasion, and held them. Willing me back from whatever cold state I’ve been immersed in.

I’ve wrapped a patchwork quilt around my legs to warm me and the fire’s starting to burn. My legs ache. I’ve been walking through paddocks and up mountainsides, thinking of Josef. Of black dogs. Locals might think I’m looking for truffles. They grow here, it’s the latest new industry. My head’s aching and

I’ve been coughing on and off, during the night. I need sleep because the trip back to the city tomorrow, in my rented four-wheel drive vehicle, will be long and tedious. The white crosses alongside the road serve their social function, warnings to drivers, reinforcing the road signs, “Don’t Drive Tired.”

Back to this room. There’s a black lacquered table laden with vases of all shapes, a plate in a rack and a covered bowl. The pieces are navy and black and covered in bright pansies or other flowers. Annie collects Moorcroft pottery and enamel. She started this when she inherited our mother’s wedding china. On the table, in a corner, lies a small pale feather. It’s floated here from the birdcage in the corner of the room in which three budgerigars chatter. There used to be two blue birds but one died. They’re social creatures and so Annie went to Albany and bought two yellow birds as companions for the grieving blue bird. They get along famously. They scatter birdseed and feathers on the tiled floor beneath the cage and their noise, at first a distraction, is comforting. They’re silent now

104 because I’ve put a sheet over their cage. It’s a signal to sleep, a darkened cage.

Perhaps someone should drape a sheet over my head and then I could sleep.

§

I woke beside Josef one morning in Fremantle. What had woken me was the sound of a rooster crowing in some front suburban garden. Probably in the next street where the residents were into sustainability and a few households had chooks roaming their front gardens, amongst the basil, lettuces and beans.

Another bird called and Josef said, “Listen, it’s a Twenty-eight. They get their names from their call. Twenty-eight, twenty-eight.”

He imitated them and I said, “I’m the expert at bird calling. Let me do it.”

“That’s twenty-six, twenty-six.”

“What about the rooster?”

“That’s one thousand, three hundred and forty-four.”

Remembering this, I switched on Annie’s computer and checked my email.

Everything is fine. Suddenly. I’m flooded with relief, if relief was a drug I’d feel it rush through my body like a stiff gin. Thank God. I should call the police. Josef has sent me a message: “J. I’ve been swimming in the ocean, north of Barcelona, in Calella. The beach is quiet but there are seagulls. The scenery’s beautiful and the water cleaner and deeper than southern beaches. I’m fine. J”

§

105 I wander to Annie’s kitchen, lighter, happier. Drunk with relief. The fuel stove, a renovated AGA, is still warm and I heat some milk in a red enamel saucepan. The saucepan is part of a set of three that Annie picked up at the local store, on sale. I make hot chocolate in a stoneware cup and add a dash of whisky from the bottle on the pine sideboard.

The kitchen smells of linseed oil and turpentine and beeswax. Annie’s been restoring an old chair and the sideboard. She’s replaced the braid along the edges of the chair, cleaned the embossed wood and oiled it. She’s even oiled its castors. It’s a present for George, for his birthday. It’ll sit in his study, next to the other fireplace, and the green fabric will match the tartan of the wallpaper and the Chinese screen that stands in one corner. Willow pattern. She’ll move the portable fridge to the laundry out the back and next door to the slab hut, which was the original house but now it’s a storage shed. Waking from sleep in an armchair beside a cold fire, with the chatter of uncovered birds drifting through the house, is not the ideal start to a day of travelling the Albany Highway, back towards Perth and Fremantle. – But I’m happy. There was no emergency and

Josef is safe.

Du Calme… du Calme.

§

It’s two weeks since I returned from visiting Annie and George. I’m busy and I’m back at school. My head's aching. It must be the sleepless nights this week or maybe I'm dehydrated, perhaps it’s a reaction to being locked out of the

106 classroom by students today who'd had enough of Bruce Dawe's poetry. With his dramatic monologues to all things commonplace like "The Cornflake". Just because it’s written in sonnet form, doesn’t make it special. Thank goodness for crazy Year 10 students wearing wigs, carrying video cameras and making documentaries. Two of them walked around as though they were their fathers, in white coats and with stethoscopes around their necks. One wore a policeman’s helmet. A bobby on the beat.

Another ray of sunshine this week is the prospect of a quick jaunt to

Sydney. Darling Harbour or The Rocks. To ride on the ferry. Check out Conrad’s plaque on the waterfront.

It’s been a week of marking, report writing, editing and loss of sleep. Of an overwhelming sense of relief on the drive home on Tuesday.

I’ve been sifting through my artwork, mainly prints and etchings. I’m going to send them to Annie, maybe drive down there. She’s asked if I want to exhibit some work with her and I’ve said yes.

§

What do I do when I’m not teaching or painting? Thinking about Josef? Getting my hair cut or browsing through antique shops, looking for stoat and ferret stoles or the occasional table? Sometimes I go into the garden and sprinkle seeds for sweet basil or parsley. Coriander and nasturtiums. Buy bales of sugar cane mulch and spread it ten centimetres thick around every plant, a little thicker where Semi likes to lay herself down between two olive trees. Perhaps the smell of the calf’s liver planted beneath their roots lures her there. Josef would ask,

107 over coffee and a small almond croissant, “How have you been spending your time, other than gardening?” Thinking about me?

§

I’ve been dealing with the art of collagraphy.

I went to an exhibition just by chance, because a sign placed on the verge of the highway pointed towards a Christmas sale of artwork and I recognised the name of a ceramic artist who’d done a residency at the school. She taught the students how to make small sculptures of pale green dragons and strange, intricate creatures with long arms and spindly legs.

A French printmaker was exhibiting her work. Scenes of Parisian rooftops, the city and the countryside, captured in sepia ink and hand coloured. I browsed through the collection and went home, checked out her website and found that she offered workshops in collagraphy so I made a booking for a

Saturday.

I should have arrived with an idea, something to capture in print and all I could think of was Josef and I wanted something less abstract. So I wandered in her garden with a pair of scissors and picked up a selection of fallen leaves, some flat tree bark, then I cut myself a large leaf that had been badly eaten by caterpillars. The light seemed to play through the spider web of leaf veins and I thought that maybe it would be something to capture on the page. In sepia ink.

Possibly, maybe.

I took a scalpel to the leaf and trimmed away the thickened spine, trying to flatten it further on the cardboard. It reminded me of filleting fish for my

108 father. With a sharp knife. Two caterpillars raised themselves from the underside of the leaf, poking up through holes in the surface. I lifted them gently with the scalpel and returned them to the garden. To more leaves. They will be cabbage moths shortly and fly away.

I mixed up two thirds Bondcrete and one third water in a glass jar, and painted the sides of a piece of cardboard. I wanted a shiny, hardened surface. I could etch into it an image, a little like making stamps with potatoes but the leaf surface suggested another, perhaps more traditional style of printing plate. Then

I glued the leaf onto the card and carefully rearranged the spider web surface, patted it down, pressed out air holes, and dried it with a hairdryer. Then more layers of Bondcrete. What I had in the end was a printing plate and all I had to do was smooth ink over the surface with my fingers. Globules of white, black and brown oil-based ink, mixed together with my palette knife on a piece of glass.

Easy to clean and not unlike mixing oil paint. Moving the palette knife down and around, scraping the outside ink on the glass surface and bringing it back to the centre and around again. Working and re-working. Josef and absence. Josef and women and stories. Josef.

When I’d cleared the plate of the ink, it was just a matter of placing it on the glass of the press and then topping it with some art paper, laying a thick sheet of felt over the top and turning the wheel of the press to feed it through the rollers.

The wheel moved freely until the paper reached the rollers and there was some resistance. I imagined myself on the deck of a ship. It was a Conradian moment, steering myself into port or towards the wider ocean. Beyond heartache. Smooth and constant turning and turning. Don’t let go of the wheel.

109 I finished steering and lifted the felt blanket, peeled back the paper and revealed a brown image of a leaf and little clear pools where the caterpillars had eaten away their landscape. It was as if I looked from the window of a plane and the burnt land below me was divided by veins of rivers or fence lines, the occasional waterless dam and stronger surface of treetops.

I didn’t need to use a sheet of copper for my etching, to dip it in an acidic solution. Copper tiles that only reminded me of the roofs of some Polish castle or grand house. Of a renovated house in Zakopane that had once protected Joseph

Conrad and his family as they waited for an opportunity to flee Europe and approaching war. To make their way safely back to England. From that place where copper is so plentiful and inexpensive, unlike in Australia.

The French printmaker asked what I would call my work, how I would sign it. It was unique, after all. I thought I could appropriate “Definitely, Maybe,” something from Jeff Beck, but settled on “Lunch with the Prince of Russia.” I was thinking about Conrad. Josef and things to do with travel. Caterpillars, cabbage moths and flight.

§

It’s my birthday but we’re not celebrating. Our mother's health is deteriorating.

She’s refused food and drink for the past two days, and is quite frail. The doctor’s confirmed that she’s slipping away. All I could think of as I drove along

Albany Highway to the nursing home was whether Annie would get a flight to

Perth in time. And Josef. I wanted to speak to Josef. Why would that be when he didn’t know her at all?

110 When I entered her room, the lights were dimmed and calming oils were burning in an oil burner. Enya’s music wafted over us. “Miraculum,” and

“Journey of the Angels.” At about the ninth track, I switched to the radio. Plenty of Elvis Presley songs to mark the thirtieth anniversary of his death and Nat

King Cole's “Ramblin' Rose.” “Why I love you, heaven knows.”66

I think this is her time. She was sick last October. And she rallied. She’s breathing awkwardly yet there’s no fluid in her lungs.

The contact between us yesterday was intense. Eyes locking. I sat beside her bed, holding her hand and combing out her long white hair with my fingers.

Untangling. Talking. Recalling blue dresses scattered with little tulips she made for Annie and me. She cut off the loose threads, ironed the dresses and then we went for a walk through the streets and up the hill to the church and back.

Practising for Sunday; her girls in their best outfits. Her showing me how to chain stitch. You can pull a thread and the whole thing unravels. How to turn the dial on the spin drier and pretend the clicking was an oven’s timer. I cooked soup made of water, grasses and pelargonium leaves on top of the anodized drier lid. My mother said the smell of geraniums and pelargonium would keep possums away. She planted them amongst the lettuces and tomato bushes.

Possums?

When she frowned at me, I smiled. She was the mother of my past. So disapproving that I had to say, "What is it now?"

We’ve been told that this weekend will be her time of passing.

Mum looks towards something over my right shoulder. The social worker refers to Special Visitors. I suppose it sounds a little bizarre but it’s also comforting to think there might be familiar souls to take us on the next journey.

111 Familiars.

Part of me feels for the doctor, trying to find words for her situation. The sister in charge is more matter of fact. She points to Mum’s blackening toes and swollen feet; the indicators that her body is shutting down.

Part of me is drowning. Floating in the waters off Rottnest. Off Marseille.

I’ve sent a text message to Josef. My mother is dying.

§

I’ve been to Madrid with Annie. It’s opposite Atomic and recently renovated. It’s nothing like the café that Josef and I used to go to, near the library. We sat in a corner. It was surprisingly draughty and the air must have come in under the café blinds because the walls were insulated with carved wooden panels. I wore my mother’s eternity ring. The setting’s unusual, a sort of raised gold rectangle on top with engraving along the sides. I’m not really into gold, I’m a silver person. It was just a temporary sentimental gesture. Annie, as the eldest daughter, wore our mother’s wedding ring. The waiter introduced himself with,

“Good afternoon, ladies. I hope you’re having a lovely day.” How can you tell a pony-tailed young man that the day has been awful? We’ve just cremated our mother. My ten year old nephew, Annie’s son, saw the sprigs of rosemary that were to be placed on the coffin and asked his mother whether it was to make his

Nana tender. We played along with the waiter.

We ate our lunch and then we went to an art supply place. Annie wanted to get some canvases to take to Mount Barker. She’s on her way back home now.

I bought some paints and a new palette knife. Then I drove home.

112 I sat in the garden next to the orange tree with a cup of chamomile tea and a book. I’ve become interested in abnormal psychology. Don't ask me why.

One case study was called “Echoes from a dungeon cell: The experiences of a manic depressive.” The patient learnt to untie knots in a straight jacket, Houdini style, with the great toe and first little toe on each foot. He remembered the agonizing experience of being wrapped tightly in cold sheets and how the shock raked his body with chills, and left him feverish. I sipped my tea and thought of

Josef. How I feel when I wake alone. Not necessarily feverish. When my house is quiet and there’s a hum from the port and perhaps a ship is moving out. A train slides stealthily into Fremantle. Semi moves in her bed, the metal legs scrape on the tiled floor of the laundry, and I know she senses breakfast and a morning walk.

How is it in Spain just now? I’ve read about the forthcoming exhibition at the Prado. A retrospective of Joaquin Sorolla. It includes his Impressionist paintings of children on beaches under bright sunlight. Will Josef see it? Will he gaze at the images and think of me here in Fremantle? Not in bright sunlight just yet, but like Sorolla’s works, optimistic with the thought that soon I will hear from him.

§

I’ll write his words down in a journal I bought on one of those gloomy days of just browsing, filling in the hours in the days after my mother’s death.

New Editions Bookshop had a shelf with discounted items on it and a few journals. I’ve always liked them. They were selling them at half price, so I bought

113 two. They came in cloth bags to protect their leather. Not unlike the bags you get when you buy a new handbag.

I’ve used other journals, plural here, one, no two, three. In my shoulder bag, in my briefcase. One was in the style preferred by Hemingway, a Moleskine with elastic around its cover. He liked to tuck one into his shirt pocket, ready for notes on just about anything. Notes on some Indian Camp recollection or the capturing of a bull fight in Spain. A fiesta perhaps.

Mine is covered in Spanish leather and it’s very soft. It’s red like my case of memories, where I keep old birthday cards, photographs and my husband’s first letters to me. It’s red and that’s just fine. The paper is thick. This journal came with a fabric leaf, which I suppose is a bookmark. Perhaps it’s overkill because there was also a feather included in the deal with the larger journal. It’s a pseudo quill that I’ve tapered with a knife and dipped in black ink. It’s fun to use in a line drawing but the ink stains my fingers and then I have to rub them in salt. As you do when stained with garlic or onion juice.

When I sit up in bed, propped against two pillows with the electric blanket on and it’s blustery outside, I can usually write comfortably. But Josef’s absent.

I sent Josef a message and I’ve had a reply, of sorts. I’ve received a copy of Notes on Life and Letters by Joseph Conrad. It was mailed from Madrid and I can smell

Josef on the leather. It reminds me of his brown jacket that he tended to leave draped over chairs at the movies or a café and I would pick it up and hold it close. Then hand it over. Why has he chosen this book and what does it suggest to me?

114 Miss, aren’t you reading too much into it? Well, maybe.

§

Yesterday, I finally tracked down our mother’s former doctor. He told me he was retiring in a few weeks so I'd found him in time. I spoke to him about her death and the need for him to sign an affidavit in the presence of a lawyer to the effect that she made her will in sound mind. As one of her executors, we need the affidavit in order to change the title deeds of her property. To sell it.

Our mother’s dementia was undiagnosed twenty years ago. Now, I think it could have been just some sort of menopausal state, as Annie calls “going dippy” and she wasn’t aware of hormone replacement therapy.

When she used to sit at the piano and play a dramatic tune that echoed a concerto, she would say she was Sibelius, inspired by cranes flying overhead.

Scene with Cranes. She said Sibelius saw them again, thirty years later and only days before his death. Sibelius who was so taken with his own creation that he said, “God opens the door for a moment and His orchestra plays the Fifth

Symphony.”67 All Mum had to foreshadow her death was the mournful carr carr carr of black cockatoos in the nearby pine plantation and then her brother muttering, “Jesus, it’s our bloody sister flying overhead. She’s coming to collect you, Bridget.”

A student arrived at the Department office with a washing basket full of books this morning. He told me he was now on his own, as all the Year 12 boarders had moved on. Caught planes back to places like Dubai or Singapore or the bus

115 to Kellerberrin. He was obviously feeling lonely and walked some of the way with me as I headed for the car. He told me he wanted to study medicine but there was some confusion with his entrance test and interview. He was heading back to Hong Kong so there were several days to fill in with tidying up his room and buying Australian gifts for relatives. In the meantime, he was delivering books for other students and waiting for a girl from the school nearby to finish her music exam. He said she was going to be a great musician some day because there was something about the way she played the piano that made him think of birds. He was just a nice guy.

The weekend was interesting in a way. I was in the studio, doing some sketching and trying to block out the sound of the compacter next door. My neighbour was doing his weekend house renovation. A little bit of brick paving this week in basket weave pattern. I was sketching birds and wondering what they’d look like in a tattoo. My birds were flying like music.

Conrad had a thing about birds. Birds and snakes. It makes me smile. He likened Stephen of The Sisters to a bird in a cage and Yanko Gooral and his baby son were fluttering caged victims of Amy Foster. Heyst, in Victory, before his liaison with Lena, is referred to as “a bird that had never had a nest.”68 When

Ricardo attempts to persuade Lena to run away with him, he tells her, “You are no cage bird. We’ll rove together, for we are of them that have no home. We are born rovers!”69 I thought about this, my home in Fremantle, rovers, wanderers and pirates. Josef. I put down my pencil. Enough.

§

116

I lit a candle for Josef, once, when I was in Melbourne. He was in New Zealand and I wanted to do what I could to keep him safe. I had dreams of him crying and wearing a grey striped shirt, buttoned at the wrist. He wanted me to read to him.

I was so disturbed by the dream and then he telephoned. When I asked if he was okay, he replied, “Yes, I’m fine. I’ve been watching some cats in the garden.” I was glad but the dream lingered. Later that day I came upon St Patrick’s when I got off a tram, a little early. It’s the oldest Catholic Church in Victoria. I entered quietly through a side door. It was crowded and peaceful. Dry wax hung from the candelabras and a woman lay prostrate on the tiled floor, connecting to her god.

A man was singing in the background and his voice harmonised with the electronic piped music. It seemed a little incongruous to pay for a candle. How would the prayer be received if I stole one? Perhaps the importance is in what you do, not in what you think. I couldn’t help but think of Marx and his theory of commodity fetishism.

§

I’ve started travelling. There’s nothing to be gained by staying home, waiting for another email from Josef and feeling restless. I have a conference to attend and

I’m taking a holiday. Now I’m in Adelaide. The flight was short and interesting.

There was a troupe of American wrestlers on board the plane. They were performing in the city. One man was so huge he took up the two seats and leg space near the exit sign. That place everyone wants to pre-book. They were loud and expansive, telling stories to each other and anyone else who cared to listen.

117 The big man turned in his seat and said to the wrestler behind him, “So I said to

Rocco, the guy’s gotta practise his falls ‘cause there’s no way I’m laying there waiting for him to jump me. And keep your hips up, I said to him. The other guy’s in a staggered stance. You’ve gotta circle towards his trail leg. Stop him shooting a leg takedown. It’s basic stuff.” He turned back as the stewardess stopped beside him and offered him food. He thanked her, asked for an orange juice, put on his headphones and picked up his electronic tablet.

In Adelaide, the weather is miserable, cold and wet, the coldest day in three years. I suppose if I were writing a postcard to Josef, I’d begin with, “Wish you were here.” My hotel room is quiet, so unlike the room of several years ago where the night sirens and early morning garbage collection kept me awake all hours. After I checked in, I plugged in my laptop and couldn't get access to the

Internet. It is my only link to Josef and part of the reason for lugging the thing across the country. The manager offered me another room because, of course, I needed the Internet for work purposes. I was upgraded to a Queen Deluxe room for the same price. The room is a little older, but it’s quiet. The drapes and carpet match the avocado walls. White scrim curtains give privacy and let in the light.

They match the white linen covered duvet and pillows, two white and chrome bedside lamps. There’s a black and white print of the botanic gardens above the bed, striped cushions in avocado and crimson and white. A narrow crimson throw lies over the foot of the bed and a small desk and chair stand opposite. A slim line television is mounted on the wall above the desk. It’s tasteful and standard hotel décor. Outside the window to the left of the bed there’s a laneway that runs up to the next street. There’s no vegetation, just another concrete building and an undercover car park. Glimpses of grey sky.

118 I’m directly across the road from the Convention Centre, where the conference takes place; the old Railway Station, which is now the Casino; and the

Art Gallery. There’s a new exhibition worth seeing, apparently.

I attended some interesting sessions yesterday, before hitting the shops.

New red shoes for me, Haigs’ chocolate covered coffee beans to remind me of

Josef. Of course they will keep. Haigs is Adelaide's answer to Lindt. When I woke up I heard the following words in my head: “Who’s that man behind you? There are a thousand magpies nesting on his shoulders.” It was the last moment of my dream. Magpies are attracted to bright things. Coins, ribbon, aluminium foil, shards of glass. In Devon, people spit three times for luck when they see a magpie. In Sweden they associate the magpie with witchcraft. But in China, magpies are a symbol of happiness. Here in Australia, they swoop on people: red-haired women, babies in strollers and cyclists. At the Sydney Olympics, the road cycling teams were menaced by magpies. Legend has it that when a magpie’s mate dies, it summons an assembly of other magpies at which the dead bird is honoured before a new mate is selected. There’s a wake of magpies.

Maybe the man in my dream was my husband, dead for years, now. Maybe the dream was an oblique reference to tonight’s academic dinner.

Over coffee and a croissant, I thought it would be good to miss the morning’s literary breakfast. There were things I wanted to discuss. Nothing to do with the convolutions of a writer fixated on adolescence or an academic's reaction to a newspaper's dismissal of Literacy and Art teaching across the nation. I could grab a map from the hotel foyer and find Port Minlacowie, one hundred kilometres west of Adelaide. It was the last port of call for Conrad, on board the Otago, before he headed back to Europe from his two months stay in

119 Australia. How did he find this country? Did he eat a full breakfast? I finished my coffee and stood up, pushed in my chair. I asked the hotel’s receptionist about

Port Minlacowie and she said, “You’d be better off catching a bus to Port

Adelaide and visiting the Nautical Museum. It’s closer.”

Port Adelaide reminded me of Fremantle. There’s renovation and restoration happening. There are fashionable cafés and little boutiques. The Maritime

Museum of South Australia is a former warehouse. It has displays that capture some of the atmosphere of a sailing ship and life at sea. You walk down concrete steps and you’re transported back to a time when sailors slept in hammocks, side by side, and the captain’s cabin was small but thankfully for him, isolated from the lower decks. One display case contained two smoking pipes hand carved from albatross leg bones. I seated myself at a computer and read the Port

Register. Joseph Conrad’s barque, Otago was towed into Port Adelaide harbour on a Wednesday morning and her cargo was transhipped to the Gambier. The captain had been ordered to Guam with the intent of proceeding to Port

Elizabeth in East Africa. I wondered why I thought he’d been ordered to

Mauritius. I re-checked the register and found that the Otago changed masters.

Captain Trivett received his appointment on Thursday, April fourth, 1889. And then I read, “Captain C. Korienowski was Josef Teodor Konrad Kornzeniowski, later known as the author Joseph Conrad.” The assistant at the front desk was excited because he and his colleague, Phil, who was on leave, like to read

Conrad’s fiction. There’d been some talk of Conrad sailing into Port Adelaide and he’s pleased to find the information under “Vessel Specifications”. I checked out the passenger lists and there were be no entries for Korzeniowski’s ship. Then I

120 searched the ‘Former Masters’ of the Otago and discovered that Captain Thomas

Bicknell sailed her from Port Adelaide to Lyttelton, New Zealand, on March fourteenth, 1874. I thought about degrees of separation. Port Adelaide, Lyttelton,

Conrad and Josef Kozak.

§

Since I’ve come back from Adelaide, I’ve been looking for solitude. Yesterday I went for a drive to Casuarina and stopped at a market garden run by a

Vietnamese couple. They have a small shed at the front of the property on the main road. The woman and her daughter sort the vegetables and strawberries, tossing out those that are rotting and putting the merely bruised into cardboard boxes. I bought a tray of strawberries and made some jam. I gave Lyn next door a jar and she said, “Come and have a look at this. I’m deciding on a design for a new tattoo.”

I said, “Birds are okay but I’m not sure about butterflies.” I like them but the artist has to be proficient to capture the bi-lateral symmetry of its wings. I wouldn’t want to go for the classic eptomologist view of head, thorax and abdomen with the wings spread as though the creature has been pinned through the back and the wings fully opened. I said, “That position is never taken by a butterfly in life.”

Lyn laughed. “It’s a tattoo! It’s not real. Look at this one. It complements the first note of Madame Butterfly, on my lower back.”

“Lower back?”

“I love that tattoo.”

121 “My husband had a tattoo of a bird on the inside of his right wrist. He bought me an enamel ring with a red bird etched into the silver and he took the design and had it copied. He said it would bind us together. I could take off my ring but his bird was on his wrist. Fixed. You know how it is when you’re young.”

“Was he a nice man?”

“Yes. He was clever and sweet and he played guitar and wrote songs for me. He loved boats and the sea and animals, especially dogs. He loved me.”

“There’s something about men who like dogs, don’t you think?” Lyn smiled and patted my arm. “Come on. Let’s try that jam.”

My house sits up next to Lyn’s house and close to the road. The two front rooms are shielded from the footpath by scrim curtains. The rooms are on either side of the central hallway. One is a guest room cum storage room and the other my sitting room. Or is it a parlour? A lounge room? There’s a couch to lie on and a single chair with a footstool. It’s casually decorated but there’s something missing. I’ve removed Josef’s bike and put it in the guest room. Both rooms have wide wooden floorboards and the walls are painted white. My mother’s piano sits along one of the walls in the sitting room. Above its fireplace I’ve arranged photos of my mother and father in their wedding clothes, my wedding photo and one of Annie and George. They were married in a civil ceremony at a restaurant on the Fremantle wharf. Annie’s knee length dress was made of cream coloured lace. I loved the tea roses in her hair and in her bouquet and when I got married,

I carried the same flowers from her garden.

I’ve bought two rugs patterned with tea roses from the rug seller at the local shopping centre. The man working in the shop has a very sore back, and

122 you can tell by the way he holds himself not quite straight, a sort of leaning to the left like a tree on a vast Geraldton plain. He talked about the rugs in terms of knots and loops per inch. How I should only sponge marks with white vinegar and then it should be diluted with water. I heard somewhere that stains on a

Persian rug should be removed by blotting them with fistfuls of snow. There is never snow in Fremantle. I was thinking of Semi, of her muddied paws and the way she lies on the rug at my feet. He said there’s a rug drycleaner but it’s a long way away. I said I knew the place because I worked nearby. I took one rug on appro, small and to fit the hallway, and then I walked back home with it under my arm. Semi was jumping in front of me, excited because she thought it was a large newspaper, all rolled and ready for her to carry. I unfurled the rug along the floorboards and liked the way it invited me along the hallway, past the front rooms and towards the back of the house and the kitchen. I took the car back for the second larger rug, drove home and dragged it across the front verge grass, through the gate, up the steps to the verandah, across to the front door, through it, down the hallway and into the lounge. Spread it out. It looked good. I thought a piano stool with cross-stitched roses on its cushion might be a future project. It was a feminine room. I lay next to Semi on the rug, in front of the fireplace, with the smell of new wool on my hands and in my nose. All I needed was a lit fire, a vase of field flowers, the heavy side curtains drawn and Josef beside me.

123

CHAPTER 11 – JOSEF

Marseille has more bars and restaurants than I can manage, even if I spent weeks here. I can have a pastis in the afternoon, and watch the hustle of the city.

The hotels can be a little small. I’ve rented an apartment in an old building with views of the Vieux Port. I’d like to set up my 3D camera somewhere in the street below or on the balcony, perhaps glue it to a rotating egg timer, and take three hundred and sixty degree footage of people heading out to work at the fish markets. Locals buying up fresh produce to make bouillabaisse. Some street theatre. I might even take a boat trip to Chateau d’If, mentioned by Alexander

Dumas in The Count of Monte Cristo. Maybe walk to the Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde to see its collection of little ships and paintings that come to represent all who have been saved from the sea. It just depends on whether I want to play at being a tourist. If I can disregard the pervading sense of menace I get from this place.

When he first visited Marseille, at the age of seventeen, Joseph Conrad took up lodgings at 18 rue Sainte. The house no longer exists. But this is the place where he met Arthur Rimbaud, in that week in June 1875, between Rimbaud going to hospital with sunstroke and the young Conrad leaving in the Mont Blanc as an

124 apprentice sailor. Sailing to Martinique. Although Conrad held Rimbaud in the highest regard, their meeting must have been brief.70 Possibly in the Café Bodoul, that meeting place for the fashionable, writers and followers. I can’t imagine what Rimbaud might have to say to Conrad. Conrad bowing his head, tucking into his lobster and snails and spending his money quickly. Becoming anxious because his Uncle Tadeusz Bobrowski was threatening to pay him a visit, to straighten out his free spending nephew who’d whittled away three years’ allowance so quickly.

Bobrowski had become impatient. His nephew reminded him too much of his father’s side of the family, “spoiling and wasting everything.”71 So unlike his dear, careful mother. He thought of the Polish proverb, “The humble calf sucks two mothers.” He wanted to distance himself from the wastrel. He wrote to his nephew and demanded to know what he was going to do. “What are you studying? And what will you do with yourself till December? Will you find employment and sail or remain on shore – whatever you do, go on studying and work on your character, my dear boy, for your whole future depends on work.”72

So Marseille is the place where the young Konrad Korzeniowski wandered the rise and fall of the cobbled streets in the old town and port. Struck up acquaintances with ships’ pilots in bars. Learned the art of sailing.

This is where he spent a further six months, on his return from

Martinique, wallowing in hedonism. When Tadeusz had news, by way of a telegram, of his nephew’s gunshot wound, he conjured a narrative of jealous lovers and a duel of honour. Maybe Conrad’s story-telling was a family trait after all. From his mother’s side. Was he a duellist? Who were the other participants in such an affair? Was the uncle of a young szlachtic unable to bear the

125 humiliation of his nephew’s suicide attempt? Conrad had mounting debts from shady enterprises. Perhaps it would be more romantic to say there was a failed love affair? There is redemption in dying for love. Christ, we all know that.

Uncle Tadeusz wrote in another letter that Conrad received on his return from the West Indies, in the barque Saint Antoine, “Certainly, there is no reason for one to take one’s life or to go into a Carthusian monastery because of some folly one has committed – even if that folly causes acute pain to someone very close to you!” 73 A Carthusian monastery? I can’t imagine young Conrad developed religious convictions. There was always the Catholicism of his forefathers to turn to. When Conrad became a father, he told his son, John, that profanity was the domain of the devil and that he, although non-practising, believed in God as “all true seamen do in their hearts.”74 His religion was the sea.

There was more reckless expenditure before Conrad finally took responsibility for his finances and secured work in the clipper Duke of

Sutherland. He boarded the 1047-ton clipper, engaged in the transport of wool, and sailed on the 15th October for Australia. Across the Atlantic, round the Cape of Good Hope and on to Sydney. It was Conrad’s first genuine service at sea.75

Ah, Marseille and the life of Joseph Conrad. The setting is durch und durch.

Through and through. Conrad reworked his time in Marseille. He borrowed experiences from acquaintances and wrote as though his whole future depended on it. It was the setting for The Arrow of Gold and the unfinished Two Sisters, it’s mentioned in two chapters in The Mirror of the Sea and in a couple of fragments in A Personal Record. In The Arrow of Gold, the beautiful and desirable Dona Rita, a Basque, succumbs to the narrator of the story and lives with him in idyllic

126 surroundings in a hut in the mountains. Perhaps the Tatras, in summer.

Marseille and lovers. Marseille and romance.

§

When I stood on the wharf yesterday I could see a three masted yacht being towed into harbor. It had been hijacked off Somalia’s coast. The French military had monitored the yacht’s movements and armed forces rescued the crew and passengers on board. The military said it had captured six of the pirates who’d left the ship and returned to the mainland. The original group was big: between twelve and sixteen people. When I saw her, there were no passengers on board.

There were no exchanges of experiences of the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. The crew had been released. How dejected she looked in the water. I could see shadows in the expanse of her whiteness.

Now the yacht is moored in the harbor and I can see it at some distance from the hotel window. With the windows open at night I hear the creaking of the boats against their ropes and the lapping of water against hulls. Sea birds.

Cries in the night.

It would be something to record these sounds, for Jess to listen to them in her studio while she paints. She said once that it’s music that feeds her soul when she’s seeking inspiration. I think she’d like Bjork’s “Possibly, maybe” more for its title than the lyrics. I’ve been capturing 3D images of the Vieux Port and I thought I could combine it with footage of Fremantle. Jess could have it and the music as some background to her art, when she has an exhibition.

127

I’ve been reading about Conrad and women. Lying back on my bed with the bedside light switched on and the rest of the room in gloom. Each bed has a tapestry hanging above the headboard. There’s a television and internet access.

A religious painting hangs above the sofa. The kitchen is a separate room with white painted cupboards, yellowish green tiles and a small dark wooden table with two chairs. Another tapestry lies down the centre of the table. I’ve left it there. I just put my plates around its edges. From where I’m lying, I can see yachts in the harbor. There’s a small balcony running outside the long windows.

Not really big enough to stand on, comfortably. There are pots of flowers. It’s great here.

I feel I could call myself a happy wanderer. A sort of Conradian convert. In his essay “A Happy Wanderer” Conrad talks about converts, vagabonds and women. Conrad’s talking about itinerants but he doesn’t sound too happy.

Mainly because he takes exception to the vagaries of women. He comments on a young girl who has listened to the tales of a wanderer and who says to her mother, “Wouldn’t it be lovely if what he says were true!” Conrad’s response is,

“Here you have Woman! The charming creatures will neither strain at a camel nor swallow a gnat.”76 Conrad thinks they lack imagination. I have the feeling he’s disappointed at the lack of attention women have given him. Maybe he should’ve rolled up his shirt sleeves. Got himself a perfectly drawn tattoo instead of a monkey. He thought love was all about chivalry and eloquent phrases of truth and expressions of the personal. He said, “I have in my time told some stories which are (I hate false modesty) both true and lovely. Yet no little girl ever wrote to me in kindly terms. And why? Simply because I am not enough of a

128 vagabond. The dear despots of the fireside have a weakness for lawless characters. This is amiable, but does not seem rational.”77 Ah, Conrad. You spent too much time at sea, my friend. What’s rationality and truth got to do with it?

I should write to Jess and say, “My dear despot of the fireside, how do you feel about vagabonds? Lawless characters? I’ve no fixed address as yet but I’m not idle. I’m keeping a low profile. There’s an underlying tension in this place.

I’ve written something about ETA and the Basques, about economic depression and watchfulness. Businessmen existing on their wits and their ability to spin a yarn. Some people in Spain aren’t happy and I’m keeping a low profile.” What I say is that I’m in Marseille and that I’ll be in touch.

129

CHAPTER 12 – JESS

Josef’s in Marseille. I should keep a travelogue. The Journal of a Vagabond and a

Pirate. Tear out the pages in my journal and start again. It’s blustery outside and heading for a grey wild autumn day. It’s almost the season for wearing fox furs.

They’re lying in wait at the foot of my bed. Glass eyes watching the bedside table.

The framed photo of Josef, taken when he’d been sailing and looking towards the sea.

I’ve dragged a jarrah table beneath the window. When I bought the table, the owners of the shop said they’d deliver it after they closed for the day. They could just fit in a delivery before the after-work barbecue. They were planning something exotic like prawns with lime juice and palm sugar. One said he had to get to the greengrocer’s for some fresh jalapenos. We had a discussion about wood and their work, how they know the guy next door with the roof that was supposed to be a wave and how he’s really into laminated wood in his fine furniture. So, they delivered the table, placed it on the carpet downstairs where it fitted perfectly until I told them it was for upstairs, in this room. They asked for a tape measure to gauge the width of the stairs. It fitted beneath the window

130 that overlooks Lyn’s back garden and pool. The blinds are down now to protect the decking from the rain so the room is shadowed.

My hand is going to sleep.

I’ve put my journal on the new table. The leather cover an invitation to unravel, open and begin. I have and this is it. Buenas noches, Josef Kozak. Good night.

§

I've just returned from walking along the beach, looking for cuttlefish to use as moulds for printmaking. The holidays are upon me, once again. I spent the football Grand Final hours shopping for something to wear to a colleague’s wedding. I bought a cream jacket to go with my black skirt and a camisole to go underneath. But it all seemed a little too stark. I'll wear Mum’s earrings.

§

I was invited to a baby shower last Sunday. A young woman colleague was on maternity leave. There was plenty of cake and champagne and coffee. Em was there and she’d made gluten free cupcakes and little cheesy savoury biscuits that she urged everyone to try, including a husband who arrived later to pick up his wife. He seemed overwhelmed with her attentions. She'd had a glass of champagne. She was expansive and flirty. Fun.

I rang Annie when I got home and said, “I don’t know about you, but I feel old. Since Mum died.” Maybe I was feeling a little wiser. Like some English oak

131 standing alone in the front garden of an Australian worker’s cottage. Displaced.

There’ve been a few slippages. “Annie, we need to get probate organised. Contact people.” I said I’d collect Mum’s ashes from the crematorium and that we should arrange a memorial plaque at the cemetery. “And I want to visit you and George.”

Then I went into the garden and weeded the front rose bed. Weeds have taken over everything. I raked the soil and sprinkled some everlasting seeds around.

There weren’t many because Semi grabbed the seed packet and half the contents spilled onto the paving. Maybe they’ll sprout flowers from between the bricks, which would be lovely.

§

I’m missing my mother. I guess I’m an orphan now. I felt abandoned when I lost my husband, sore in my soul at the absence of him. And I was a grown woman.

What must it be like for a child? I’d intended traveling to Mt Barker to stay with

Annie and George for a few days. To have long chats about our lives and what's not going on and my anxieties and her latest acquisition. That sort of stuff. Well, it’s not some 1930’s Tasmanian oak bureau that’s been installed in Annie’s spare bedroom. It’s a child.

Annie’s son was killed in a road accident. He swerved to miss a kangaroo early one morning, on his way to work in Albany. His red car flew off the road, skidded in the gravel and hit a tree. My nephew died instantly. Annie and George have two other sons, one a teenager and the other is nearly nine years old. Annie says she has always wanted a daughter. When she was asked by a friend, a social worker, if she’d be interested in fostering a five year old girl whose mother had

132 left her father, she talked it over with George: the impact it might have on their sons, inheritance issues, and they decided to offer the child a home. The girl’s father had abandoned her at the Albany Police Station and then he walked to the

Gap and threw himself over the cliff face and into the ocean. The child’s grandmother stepped in and took the child but this arrangement didn’t last. The grandmother has found love at a late age, with a local farmer who has plenty of land and a few houses but no great liking for children. She’s sought help from the

Department of Community Services. The social worker thought of Annie and

George.

I've heard this via telephone and several emails and text messages.

Anyway, Annie has had to fix up her sewing room as a bedroom for the little girl.

She’s moved all her fabrics into the front room where I usually stay. It’s in need of re-stumping, the floor is a little downhill in parts, and the upshot is that I’m postponing my visit because the child will be meeting up with Annie and George and their son over the next few days. It's a time for them to be on their own.

I've spent some time over the past few weeks reading about the life of Joseph

Conrad and I’ve done a little research into Polish cultural life in the 1830's.

Poland’s agricultural produce, Anti-Tsarist sentiments and Conrad’s mother,

Ewa. Ewa’s husband's egocentricity. What would you expect of a bloke called

Apollo? I’d like to write a story that focuses on the two years Ewa spent surviving with her son, after Apollo abandoned her for Warsaw. At least she didn’t leave her son at the local police station.

Then there has been the drama of discovering termites in the house and having it treated by a Polish chap who likes to reflect on ecosystems and the

133 state of the earth whilst mixing up a little concoction of poison porridge which the ants take to their nest, consume and die. Well, hopefully. He told me all about ants and their work ethic, their lifestyle, much like bees, and how he loves them.

What’s to love? Are they travellers, vagabonds? Well, yes, apparently that’s just what they are. They build a nest and travel out through tunnels into the soil of someone else’s yard, looking for food to bring back to their queen. Sometimes they come across dead wood and it’s a rich source of cellulose when they eat it up. The shelter tunnels found in my wood shed are made by mixing the digested wood of the house with white ant saliva. They just want to keep their moving tunnels, or shelter tubes, humid and damp. I suppose if I didn’t have to put up with creaking floorboards and a listing balcony, I might admire the creatures.

§

Dear Josef

It's quite early and I'm trying to start up a regime of painting first thing in the morning. It was easy today because I woke from a dream and you were in it, asking someone how to say the word 'return' in French and I wanted to say it's revenir. What you want to say is je reviendrai but you didn't hear and besides you were seated in some sort of school chemistry laboratory surrounded by students, surprisingly like my old school, and there was an expansive woman, dressed in red with a carnation in her hair, I wanted to hear less of. I just wanted her to go away. Well, make of that what you will.

The painting is going along at a steady pace. It's becoming an interesting

134 diversion, even all-consuming. Things like doing the dishes and thinking about what will happen next or how to capture some sense of character.

I caught up with a former colleague at the beach yesterday morning. He was telling me about his role on the committee for past staff with over twenty years experience. He needed a title, a name for the group and thought

“Sandgropers”, was fitting. I had to laugh and say, "Perhaps herring or sand whiting might be more appropriate." He is, what might be termed, a gentleman, full of grace and a quiet good humour. So, imagine our surprise when a young man with two children and a pit bull dog picked up the stick Semi was playing with and walked off with it. When I asked him politely for the return of the stick, he turned, threw it out to sea and said, "You want it, go fetch it." I know it was early in the morning and I probably looked a little rough behind the hat and the sunglasses but I'm no dog. Bert was astounded at his behaviour and I ... I was taken aback.

Well, as these things happen, the stick thrower and I met up at the path leading away from the beach. I took a leaf out of Bert's book and acted with dignity and admonished him. Seething inside and wanting to take that stick.

As I write this, I'm thinking, this is perhaps where my unconscious focus on

“revenir” comes from.

It’s Sunday morning. A few spots of rain but nothing to compare with four inches per hour, as in Mackay this week. Just listening to personal stories on the radio and reading yesterday's paper again.

The deal on Mum’s house fell through early yesterday and we accepted another offer last night, a little better than the previous offer. Fingers crossed.

It's such a frustrating business. I understand there are many other issues to

135 consider when it comes to moving money around but wonder why people don't get their finances approved before heading out to make random offers on real estate. The contract offers an escape clause of course. The upcoming holidays may be spent, initially, in clearing out Dad’s shed, once and for all!

Well, I'm just rambling here. Touching base, so to speak, and letting you know that I’m flying to Hobart via Melbourne, tomorrow. The Madrid News has reported on the disappearance of a foreign journalist. It’s believed he’s been captured by ETA. It’s something to do with a report on the construction of a railway and allegations of corruption. They’re demanding ransom for his safe return. I hope you’re being cautious. You should keep in touch with people, vagabond.

Jess

§

I’m killing time at Melbourne airport. It’s six a.m. and I’m waiting to check in. The place is abuzz with the sounds of plastic trays being pulled along steel gurneys, full of laptops, folded jackets, some jewellery, handbags. Cameras are okay. There is a constant squeaking of an escalator as it brings to the upper level, many black-attired passengers and flight attendants. Well, it’s Melbourne. It’s as though everyone’s going to a funeral. The only concession to summer is that the young women don’t wear stockings. Their high heels click on the terrazzo tiles. And mobile phones aren’t turned off. One woman is struggling with a suitcase on wheels, trying to force it past the steel barriers. Chimes can be heard to indicate a message. A voice booms from the

136 loudspeaker but the sound is distorted and the urgent message lost. It’s like watching

Deadwood all over again. A rangy young man shouts to a woman nearby that he’s going on holiday. He carries a crocodile skin case and his chisel-toed boots point to the ceiling. Already flying. There are no cafés open and no chance of coffee. I’ll have to wait until I reach Hobart.

A bird is cheeping somewhere. Perhaps it’s contraband in a suitcase. There is a bird here. It’s flying around and above the other travellers.

§

Melbourne was also a place of arrival and departure for Joseph Conrad, in 1888.

Then Captain Korzeniowski, he signed his name in the book of pilots on the river

Yarry, on the second of July, as Comrad.78 Did he mean Yarra? Conrad?

Was he recalling the etymology of the word comrade, from the Latin camera, meaning “chamber room” and the derivative camarada reflecting roommates, especially barrack mates? Well, he was on a ship, where survival can depend on camaraderie. Still, it’s hard to imagine the displaced Pole aligning himself with the Russian for friendship or brotherhood unless the re-lettering of

Comrade was his way of reconnecting with his father. Apollo the socialist. His

Uncle Tadeusz said his father “affected Redness in order to prove to himself and to others that he was not a mediocrity.”79 A harsh assessment. Perhaps the re- lettering of comrade foreshadowed his friendship with Cunninghame Graham, a

British writer and an advocate of general strike and revolution. Nationalism, socialism. 80 It was more than a little slip of the pen.

137 I know his parents named him Konrad after a national Polish hero celebrated in the poetry of Mickiewicz.81 When he was learning to write his name, perhaps he used to doodle a thick and heavy “K” with chalk on slate.

What would Josef, the investigative journalist, make of this? Of

Korzeniowski, in the Otago, transporting two thousand, seven hundred and fifty bags of wheat to Sydney, and then, in some rebellious mood because he wanted to follow the course set by James Cook, through the Torres Strait between North

Australia and New Guinea, setting sail for Mauritius?82 Maybe Josef would just shrug his shoulders and smile, drape one arm around my shoulder, pull me close and whisper, “Sssh. It’s a long journey. Maybe he was tired.”

§

Rain drizzles over Hobart. Rivulets on each side of the sloping streets speed towards the harbour, swirl into oil-licked pools at the catchment of roadside kerbs. There are floods to the north of Tasmania and in Mackay, far north on the mainland.

I didn’t want to take the hire car north to Launceston. I’ve already driven south to

Port Arthur, thinking that when I arrived it would just be another small town and I could park in one of the side streets. Wander around the former convict settlement.

Buy some wool for another scarf or samples of Tasmanian goats’ cheese. See the art exhibition that was advertised at the city tourist bureau. More landscapes.

Obviously it wasn’t on the same level as the exhibition I visited at Mona in

Berriedale. Mona is the most famous and extreme exhibition space in the country, built on the site of an old winery and cemetery. When I went, two women dressed in

138 fashionable black sat on high stools at the entrance, just inside the cast iron doors, handing out leaflets. Smiling, inviting us in. The changes take place inside you know.83

There were no labels on the artwork and I formed my own impression of the carcasses of rancid meat hung from the walls. As though an abattoir wasn’t the only place where a stun gun might be employed.

When I arrived at Port Arthur I was ushered by a man in a high-vis vest to a car park of gravel, amongst blue gums and distanced from the more structured parking bays, full of cars and tourist buses. It was a good walk downhill to the entrance. A souvenir shop and glassed ticket booth. It wasn’t quite what I expected of a fortress nor prison.

It was as though I was entering a theme park.

I bought a ticket for the day, which included a guided tour of the historic site and then a ferry ride around the bay. Twenty dollars extra and I could join a workshop on lime washing and the restoration of historic buildings. I joined a group waiting at the bottom of some steps, cameras around necks, umbrellas, sturdy walking shoes all ready. The guide had been saying the same things, several times a day, for several years. There had been two hundred escapes and only twelve prisoners unaccounted for. Someone called Lempriere who was a storekeeper and amateur scientist at Port Arthur, carved a sea level mark into the cliff face on the Isle of the Dead at Port Arthur. It looked like the three-pronged footprint of a prehistoric creature climbing from the sea. Lempriere wanted to gauge the times and heights of high and low water. The mark is important to contemporary scientists who are interested in global warming trends. Josef would find Lempriere’s mark interesting.

Then we were told about two fisheries and a boat building enterprise that were set up on the island to give the prisoners something to do and raise money for the

139 settlement. I made my escape from the group and clambered around the ruins. I stood high on a wall and gazed over manicured lawns, European deciduous trees and cottage gardens where flowers share the space with vegetables and herbs. Tomato vines, rosemary, petunias. At home, there would be cuttings passed over the fence by a friend.

The former Governor’s residence was on a hill overlooking the settlement and bay, as though he was a supreme authority. In The Shadow-Line, Conrad wrote about the Harbour-Master, Captain Elllis: “But that was nothing to the opinion he had of his own greatness.”84 The Governor had a gun turret built of stone at the bottom of his garden, the officers ready to shoot any escapees who made for the bay, stole a boat and headed inland. They were hunted down and brought back to the cells. The thick wooden beams of the cells are now without roofs. Grass grows up through flat slabs of stone. The landscape, once forbidding, was open and curiously quiet. A deep culvert filled with rainwater ran the length of the site. It was once the water source for the settlement. The water was used for brickmaking. I picked up a piece of convict-made brick that has been part of a chimney and put it in the pocket of my raincoat. I would put it on my desk as a reminder of harsher days, of escape to the mainland.

I wanted to find out about the use of lime in heritage buildings, the preparation of lime wash. My house in Fremantle, built in the early days of the colony and another convict settlement, needed its internal walls painted with a wash without oil. Distemper.

So the rain and my journey across Tasmania continued. When I parked the car at a strategic lookout point, all I could see was white mist in front of me, a London pea-

140 souper, no green valleys nor view across to the coast. I returned to Hobart via a few wineries. A celebrated vineyard was gaining a reputation for its function centre with a floor made of local wood inset with parquetry depicting local flora and fauna. I could have danced there and no one would’ve seen me. The other tourists were all downstairs tasting wine. Another enterprising couple were expanding their operation, building storage facilities for wine making, rather than shipping their grapes elsewhere. They were also breeding corgis and they had a litter of eight pups, already sold, along with some award winning wine and local cheese. Wine tasting took place in a large tent beside their produce shop. A bus-load of tourists sat around a trestle table and listened to the owner’s history, sipping his different wines and nibbling on crackers and cheese. Rain pattered against canvas and the corgis hid in their kennel.

It’s another day and the unseasonal rain continues. Thoughts of Josef still in Marseille,

Fremantle’s sunshine and sailing make me decide to see the Maritime Museum. The building is near Constitution Wharf, near a pub that sells good local beer and bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches. No fish. The wharf is the place for fish.

The museum is manned by volunteer seamen and retired servicemen. The U- shaped room houses shipping paraphernalia, brass portholes, a telescope set up in a windowed alcove for viewing the harbour and the arrival of sailing boats. Several seafarers’ journals. Shipbuilding and maintenance tools, a sailmaker’s kit, clasp knife, pitch ladle, caulking mallet, caulking irons, breast drill, auger, spoke shave and a joiner plane. A restored companionway. It’s the superstructure of the Officers’ cuddy of the Barque Otago, the only command of Joseph Conrad, seaman and novelist. The brass plaque on the cabin wall states that restoration has been done by P.C. Fowler

141 and the companionway was presented to the Tasmanian Library Board by Sir William

Crowther on twenty first March, 1975.

I take my notebook from my bag and in its back pocket find the piece of paper where I’ve written down, “Notes prepared by William Crowther for handing over restored companionway.” I’ve written this on page seventy nine of a discarded Polish newsletter, used as note- paper in the Polish Library in King Street, London, a place founded in 1942 by the Polish émigré government. It belonged to the Polish Social and Cultural Centre and Josef recommended that I visit it, two years ago.

He gave me written directions. “Turn right and left out of Ravenscourt Park tube on to the main road, King Street. About fifty yards and POSK is immediately on your right. Ironically, given the Russian occupation of Poland, it’s a grey Stalinist building. Go to the reception desk in the foyer and ask for the Polish Library. It’s up the right hand staircase and they’ll give you access through a door on a buzzer. Such security since nine eleven. It's on the first floor, with the Conrad Room on your left and Polish Library on your right. Go through the doors on your right, and then left through more doors and down a little corridor that runs alongside the reading room.

The door on the right, at the end, takes you into the library. Advance. Courage! It all sounds like Kafka, this movement through the book-stacks to the desk, and if you tell whoever's on the desk who you are and what you hope to be able to see, that you have recommendation from a noted journalist, I trust they'll help you! Get access to the Conrad Room. They're paranoically security conscious.”

I caught the train to Ravenscourt Park, left the station and headed around the corner to POSK. It wasn’t a Conradian Park. There were no “smashed branches, torn leaves, gravel, bits of brotherly flesh and bone, all spouting up together in the manner

142 of a firework.”85 This park was white. Snow blanketed the busy streets and people moved carefully along icy paths.

Inside the Polish Cultural Centre I followed a corridor towards a bookstore. I followed arrows directing me downstairs. People were setting up a darkened room for a jazz concert: chairs, a curtained stage and a set of drums in one corner. There was no library. Upstairs again, I passed through glass doors into a café that sold

Polish sausages, mustard and cabbage soup, kapusniak, with good bread. I saw two women in beautiful felt hats, men who obviously had come in from work to have a good meal. It was recommendation enough. I sent Josef a text message, “Dear Spy, I’m eating Polish sausage with mustard. Kapusniak is all you said it would be. I should have worn a hat to contain errant thoughts. Of you.” He didn’t reply immediately.

Perhaps it was the time difference.

After lunch, I made my way back to reception in the main foyer, to be directed to the library. I walked the maze of corridors towards one of the largest collections of

Underground and Solidarity publications. I could’ve been a secret agent, planting a bomb. Jess the professor, a radical at heart. A woman with no husband to provide for her aging mother, no imbecile brother to take up all of her time. Reaching into a canvas bag and withdrawing something explosive, a notebook perhaps, writing something down to do with celestial Poles, maybe something to do with astronomy.

Blowing up the first meridian.86

Conrad would’ve liked the thought of his work housed here. I made enquiries at a desk. It didn’t seem appropriate to take the fiction further, to lean negligently against the counter in the attitude of a resting wayfarer. Processes in the library were too formal.

143 The assistant to the Librarian introduced me to her “Superior” who took me into her office and demanded to know why I was there. When she seemed satisfied that I posed no threat she showed me around the heavy glass-fronted bookcases that housed Conrad’s work. We talked about the Otago, of another ship of the same name found on display at Picton in New Zealand. She said, her voice softened wonderment,

“Well, you know, Conrad’s work is also very much appreciated in Japan.” Perhaps it has to do with the Japanese respect for seamanship.

These are my thoughts in Hobart’s Maritime Museum as I run my hands over the cuddy, along the polished wood and coolness of marble. Push the sliding wooden roof back, to stand in the space where stairs may have been, leading to an interior.

Perhaps this is where the captain hid the man he pulled, naked, from the sea, a murderer hauled on deck by the captain of the Otago who’d come on deck for a smoke. For some solitary reflection. An escaping man to be secreted in the captain’s

L-shaped cabin, to be written about in some future story, perhaps as captured impressions of the naked man in the water, seeing before him a fine means of escape.

Conrad likened this ship to “an Arab steed in a string of cart-horses.”87 I think of the lines of a fine body, of Josef and secrets. I take photos on my mobile. Wander into another room. When I find myself back at the front desk, I can’t contain myself. I say to the volunteer working behind the counter, “I’ve found William Crowther’s companionway.”

“Ah, yes,” he says, “it was lying on the bottom of a duck pond. Crowther hauled it up. Restored it. He’s done a fine job, don’t you think?”

I show him my scrap of Polish paper and he motions over another man,

Geoffrey, smaller and with a neatly trimmed beard. “You’ll want to go to the wreck of

144 the Otago,” he says. “It’s lying in Otago Bay, just over the bridge spanning the

Derwent. Opposite the new MONA gallery.” He says he played on it when he was a boy but the later owner of the vessel set up a small hut on board so that he could fire a shot over the head of anyone trying to steal metal from the wreck. She was brought to Hobart in 1905 by the owners, Huddart Parker and Company. They set her up as a coal hulk and then sold her for one pound to the local shipbreaker, Henry Dodge, for scrap in 1931. She was towed to Otago Bay and dismantled, over many years.

“It’s just a rusting hulk to most,” he says. “But we have people come from all over the world to stand beside her. Only last month, two Danes. An American. Part of the ship’s said to be in a museum in Italy. I’ve scoured that country with my wife.

Can’t find it. The wheel’s in the Master Mariner’s Headquarters, on board the

Wellington moored in London. Here, take this map.” He makes a cross where I can find the treasure and so my literary pilgrimage begins.

More directions. I drive over the bridge spanning the Derwent River and turn left towards Otago Bay. It isn’t raining but the banks of the river are muddy, slippery to clamber down. Conrad’s ship lies in the silt of low tide, pointing towards the farther bank and the city of Hobart. A skeleton, a colossus resting comfortably in grey water. She has barnacles along her reaches and there are mussel shucks strewn throughout her insides. I try to reconfigure her lines. I find shards of rusted metal and hold them tight, trying to capture a past. Joseph Conrad.

Conrad happened to be in Singapore when he received notice from the British

Consulate to proceed to Bangkok and take up command of the Otago. Her captain had died during a voyage in the Gulf of Siam and it was left to the First Mate to sail her to

Bangkok. Joseph Conrad, then known as Captain Korzeniowski, took command for

145 fourteen pounds a month and set about making her seaworthy. The ship’s papers were not in order, there were delays with the cargo and the steward had recently died of cholera. It was a death-haunted ship. William Willis, MD, physician to Her

Majesty’s Legation in Siam, wrote a letter to Conrad in which he stated, “I can speak of my own knowledge that you have done all in your power in the trying and responsible position of Master of the Ship to hasten the departure of your vessel from this unhealthy place, and at the same time to save the men under your command.”88

Captain Korzeniowski’s command of the Otago was confirmed. He sailed to

Sydney on March third, 1888. Then to Melbourne, back to Sydney. He wrote to a friend in Australia: “One day, all of a sudden, all the deep-lying sense of the exploring adventures in the Pacific surged up to the surface of my being.”89 He wrote to the shipowners and said he wanted to sail to Mauritius by way of the Torres Strait, instead of following the southern route. He must have had faith in his seafaring ability because it wasn’t the season to sail the Arafura Seas. There was a chance the waters would be too calm. The ship owners agreed and Captain Korzeniowski left Sydney during a heavy south-east gale.

Captain Korzeniowski was off to Mauritius, following Captain James Cook’s course in the Endeavour in 1770. Fifty four days of high adventure to retrace the voyage of a hero, to off-load soap, fertiliser and tallow and to take on board four hundred and ninety thousand kilos of sugar, molasses and tea. To find himself there, hopelessly infatuated with the languorous daughter of a captain. She refused his offer of marriage. He set sail, once again. Back to Australia. Sailing between her capital cities. From Melbourne to Adelaide, to load the South Australian wheat harvest.

Sometimes it’s a comfort to have orders to follow when you’re depressed. The young woman you thought you loved just wasn’t that interested, after all. So, where to go?

146 Clear out for Guam or proceed to Port Elizabeth in East Africa? Mauritius? Captain

Korzeniowski followed orders, part of the way. He took the Otago from Melbourne to

Port Adelaide and arrived there on a Tuesday evening, anchored and awaited a tug on the following morning’s tide. He would’ve walked the deck that night, smoking, thinking that the shipping register in the port would state that he’d made a good voyage. He’d returned the Otago to her home port. He’d hold fast to a rail or run his hand along the salted wood of the officer’s cuddy, breathe in the sea air. The remembered smell of a woman. Sugar, wheat and potatoes. Mauritius, Guam, Port

Elizabeth in East Africa? He wanted to sail to the South China Sea.

When Korzeniowski received news of his Uncle Tadeusz’ illness, he seized the opportunity to leave the Otago and his 15 month career as a captain. He must’ve been quietly satisfied that he’d done a good job there. Then he booked passage on the

Nurnberg. At thirty on years of age, Korzeniowski travelled back to Europe on an immigrant ship refitted to carry mail. Back to his uncle. To write in English and

French of his experiences. To partially anglicise his name. To eventually meet his wife, then Jessie George, who recalled initially knowing him as Konrad Korzeniowski.

She saw the initials K.K. in his hat.90

Jessie George wrote later in The Blue Peter, “Poland has produced very few sailors, but a good many men of letters, and not a few outstanding men of action.

During his sea life Conrad must perforce have been more active than in later years and… quite alive to his responsibilities.”91 She seemed wistful. Perhaps she would’ve liked to know Captain Konrad Korzeniowski before he became a man of letters. When his skin smelt of salt.

147 On the banks of the Derwent River in Hobart, looking at the relic of the Otago, I think

Joseph Conrad simply liked adventure. I take photos of Conrad Drive that leads inland from Otago Bay, past stately houses with lawns that seem to flow down towards the river and where long summer days can be spent in languid solitude, perhaps dressed in white, resting in a cane chair on the verandah or leaning on a bannister, having a smoke.

§

Hobart. It’s where I last sat alone in a hotel room at night and wrote emails to Josef, hoping for a reply. I told him about my Maritime Museum find, about the marker of tides, the types of yacht moored in the harbour, how good the fish bought at the dock was, about the local brewery, the vineyards and how I missed him.

I’ve come back to Perth and my painting. I’ve read some of Conrad’s letters to

Cunninghame Graham, his first British intellectual friend. Graham said the artist

“speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation.”92 He saw solidarity in emotional and life experience. I feel as though I know him.

My mind drifts in and out, shifting tides of caught wonder, despair, grief and anger. Josef is beyond my grasp as though he’s swum too far away from me, and this time I’m not quite strong enough to keep up. I continue teaching boys, walking Semi along the beach, chatting to my neighbours, cutting wood for the fire and cooking meals for myself. Sometimes friends. The weeks come and go. I have my hair cut again. I listen for the sound of incoming mail on my phone. I play Josef’s music and re-

148 read his messages. I drink coffee and look at images he sent me from India, of women wearing colourful head-scarves. Geometric designs, florals, pink, green, black and red.

And every time a car parks outside my house I feel unsettled, as though someone is coming to tell me the truth.

§

Police re-visited me this morning with news of Josef.

Oh, God. The fourth, the most terrible visit from the police.

The body of a Caucasian man has been found washed up near the Plages

Escale Borely, two miles south of the city centre of Marseille. A satchel containing a wallet and passport, a book and clothing, was found abandoned on the beach.

Police searched the area and found the body washed onto nearby rocks. They’re yet to identify it; it was in the water for some time and the hands are missing.

There are so many sharks in the sea off the coast of Marseille. The passport in the satchel belongs to Josef Kozak, an international journalist last known to be working out of Madrid. Interpol traced his emails to me.

Now I know about Josef. He was more than a journalist, working overseas. More than a man abandoned by his wife. Josef Kozak was using his cover as an international journalist to gather information and provide intelligence to ASIS. He was part of their counter-terrorism effort. Really? How could I know this? Isn’t this sort of information top secret? Perhaps Secret Agent

Kozak was also working with New Zealand’s GCSB, their security bureau, on a bilateral approach to counter-terrorism? I know he’s recently visited Wellington.

149 The senior policeman looked uncomfortable. Yes, he said. We’ve traced his emails.

It’s confirmed. Josef is dead. Police know he was staying in a hotel in the Vieux

Port. His room was ransacked. A computer may have been stolen. Police found an external hard drive hidden in the bathroom. They’ve downloaded the information, mainly articles and reports to do with ETA. It seems Josef was doing some surveillance of incoming boats. There was some thought that drug or arms’ smuggling was taking place on a regular basis through the port. Josef was in regular contact with local authorities and some in Australia. He’d recently published two articles, one locally on the shooting of a seventy-three year old man because he failed to make extortion payments to ETA. Another was an examination of what makes a terrorist. I’ve read the article. He concludes it by saying: “As the daily news demonstrates, terrorists have turned the pathological dream of Conrad’s character Karl Yundt from the Secret Agent - “to discard all scruples in the choice of means”93 - into a malignant reality in pursuit of their aims.” Josef believed those aims weren’t predicated on poverty or economic deprivation. It’s all about ideology, Josef said.

Josef Kozak’s phone wasn’t found but the police have records of his calls, the last one was at eleven thirty p.m. to a local number. A woman visited him around twelve. There was a folder that contained emails from me. He’d kept them separate, along with recorded voice messages from his daughter. The concierge of the hotel says Josef left the hotel early the following morning. He said he was going swimming. No, the concierge had not seen any suspicious activity in the hotel at that time. Mr Kozak was very polite, perhaps a little

150 preoccupied at times. The police said I was listed on his passport as a person to be contacted in an emergency. His fiancé. Even this was a surprise. I was his

Intended.

§

Mr Kozak was a secret agent. He was dishonest and I didn’t know him at all. I’d always thought that if I’d been engaged to marry a man I’d know about it, I’d know everything about him, about his intentions. I sound like my father. What are his intentions, my dear? How do I know, Dad? All I know is what he told me and what I saw and felt. I know I loved him. When he walked towards me … tingling stillness. That broad smile and the crease of his eyes against sunlight, at something I said. I amused him. I felt neglected when he answered his mobile. I’d sit opposite him and drink my coffee and think well, whoever is ringing must be important. Or I’d ring him because I’d wake in the night and think about him and feel unsettled. He’d say, “Yes, it’s a bit like that.” Then he’d send me packages from all round the world with little messages to do with Conrad and journeys. I think I liked playing that game then. Now I feel sick and my heart aches. It’s true.

The heart hurts to breaking point and there’s just no way to stop crying when there’s this sort of pain. Just rocking and holding yourself tightly because that longing just wants to re-surface. Again and again. Vomiting in the toilet. In the garden. No eating. What’s the point of food? My fingers ache as though they’re full of splinters. I do some hand washing and the foam of detergent looks like the edges of surf and I hang onto the sides of the basin and shake with sorrow. With rage. Beat my fists against stainless steel. Nothing changes.

151 I telephoned work because I had reports to write and exams to mark and the headmaster was sympathetic. Take as much time as you need, Jess. You need to be with your family. He sent me flowers, a bouquet of irises and I sent him a thank you email.

I phone Annie every day and cry. She tries to hush me. Poor darling, she says. Then she gets just a tiny bit angry and tells me to make myself a cup of tea, to sit quietly. To go into the garden and sit in the winter sunshine. Read a book.

Do something to take my mind off this. Off Josef Kozak. She’s never trusted him, she says. He seemed just a little too contained.

Ah, Annie, that’s what I liked about the man. Mind you, I didn’t know he was working for the government on the side. Doing a little espionage.

It would be so lovely to find myself crossing South Terrace in a few years time, heading for the beach, and hear him call my name. Call me back from the past. His portrait is unfinished. It’s standing on an easel in the studio, covered with a cloth like some mirror in the house of a mourner.

Coffee makes me sick. Even sipping it slowly. Besides, I’m too alert for caffeine. Every sound is him. Walking up the stairs, turning on the electric jug, the sound of a car turning into my street. It’s only the paper-man in his white van at five o’clock in the morning. No taxi from the airport discharging its passenger with his bags and a coat.

I have nothing of him but his books.

Josef’s wife came to see me. When I answered the doorbell a tall slender woman stood a little way from the door, bent over the clump of strelitzia in the garden.

She said, “Birds of Paradise. The flowers look as though they’re talking to one

152 another. So lovely.” Then she looked at me, introduced herself and I invited her inside. She’d been talking to the police and they’d told her I was Josef’s fiancé and gave her my address.

“Well, maybe he wrote my name in his passport. I loved him but he never asked me to be his wife. It was a surprise, really.”

“Yes, he could be secretive,” she said. She wanted to know what arrangements had been made for the return of Josef’s body. I said I hadn’t thought about it and she reminded me that she and Josef had a daughter. Would I mind if she dealt with it? There were also Josef’s relatives to consider. I said yes, that’s fine. It’s the right thing to do. I made her some tea, we talked and I cut her some blue and orange strelitzia to put in a vase.

There was a death notice in the paper with details of his funeral. I went. People lined up to pay their respects to his wife and daughter. I could have made a scene and introduced myself as his fiancé. I sat in the chapel with the other mourners and listened to the eulogies. An old friend talked about their university days and his work ethic. An uncle remembered his love of sailing and how he taught him to swim. His daughter read an extract from “The Rime of the

Ancient Mariner” because it was his favourite. She finished and her voice caught and she said, “Love you, Dad.” Her pale brown hair was tied back and her eyes dark rimmed and sorrowful. She had her father’s way of looking past you. We were invited to place sprigs of rosemary on his coffin but I couldn’t move.

Rosemary for remembrance. The person I remembered wasn’t the corpse in that coffin. I left the chapel, with Coleridge’s words in my head, “Alone, Alone, all, all alone… my soul in agony.”94 I drove home and lit a candle for Josef and for me.

153

§

It’s the fourth of July but back home in Fremantle, I’m not celebrating. I know there’ll be a barbecue and a festive atmosphere at school because the term is over and the teachers will all gather together, mostly outside, ready for the holidays. Some will travel away from this city. Someone in the Music Department will play a recording of Johann Friedrich Peter’s, “The Psalm of Joy”, written for the first such celebration in Salem, North Carolina. No one will be listening.

They’ll drink wine and beer, some champagne, eat barbecued prawns and fish dipped in chilli sauce. There’ll be conversations centred on a nearby boys’ school, on a colleague who is reconsidering her options now that her children’s nanny has announced her retirement. Someone will talk about his plans for a cycling tour following the route of the Giro d’Italia. Patrick will wander from group to group. Maybe he’ll call me at home and I’ll tell him why I’ve resigned. I’ll invite him for dinner some time soon. Maybe.

I am joyless. No recorded music can shake me out of this lethargy and self-pity.

Lyn next door has passed me a jar of grapefruit marmalade over the wall. She says it’s not too bitter. Ironic, I say. Em baked me a pear tart and we ate it with cups of tea. She showed me a photo of a man she met over the Internet. They’d had coffee and caught a movie. She thinks she likes him. He’s interesting. But, enough of that, she says. Semi lies at my feet and follows me around the house and into the garden. She watches as I knit Annie’s foster-daughter a cardigan,

154 knit two together, knit two, slip a stitch and pass a stitch over. It’s the routine of shaping an armhole. Re-shaping my life.

I write in my journal as though I’m writing to Josef. I tell him how I feel when he answers his mobile phone in the middle of a meal, how scuffed shoes just don’t cut it with me, how I’m glad I’m always there when he needs a sympathetic ear and the irritation I feel when he says my name in that childish manner as though it conveys wonder or intimacy. And his obsession with physical fitness. The visit late at night from a woman. I write my anger in black ink as though this behaviour will continue. It won’t.

I feel as though I’ve been linked to him for such a long time. Telling him about my life, discussing Joseph Conrad, being there when he needed some sympathy. Holding him tight all the time. Just loving and thinking about the Josef

Kozak I knew.

§

I’ve started taking yoga lessons again, every Wednesday. I’m learning to meditate on a flower or some distant point of reference. Sometimes a wall. I’ve discovered that through pranayama, there are three parts to each breath.

Inhalation, retention and exhalation and that I can control my breathing. But those flickers of the eye? A distant look that can reveal the emotional pain of separation from a lover? I focus on something distant and I’m able to transcend, without muttering, “Ah, I shall go grey, I fear, before the ring is on my finger.”95

Before I love another man.

155 It’s a muggy day. I’ve had an email from Annie. Watched a film set in a South

American city that looked like La Paz or Buenos Aires, with houses clustered all along the ridges of a mountain range and overlooking the city. Close cluttered.

People in the street starving. A man on a skateboard flitted in and out, between traffic and people. He had no legs, just a torso, arms and head. He smoked a cigarette. His large teeth were yellowed and decay had set in. Everywhere.

Everyone was corrupt, the police took bribes and pulled cars over if they were flash because there was a chance, just a small one, that something contraband was on board. The policemen asked the woman in the back if she was okay.

There was a hint of concern but it was false because when they had the chance to rescue her, they opted for dumping her in the usual place you dump kidnapped people in that city. The police ushered her into the back of their van, locked her in. She couldn’t see them through the slits in the side panels of their truck, see them making lewd movements, clearly impressed with their night’s catch. She wasn’t safe anywhere.

I’m checking out Josef’s music. There’s Johnny Depp reading Kerouac’s

Madroad Driving and that voice brings back echoes of Dead Man and its haunting guitar riffs where a man sits with friends in a snowy wasteland, talking about someone he’s after who appears to him as just another taste of meat. He’s into cannibalism and there’s a sinister echo when Depp speaks of the Utah moon.

The guy next door is sitting in his dark garden, under a blue canvas umbrella, playing a guitar riff. He’s not that proficient. He’s trying to slide his finger along the strings and they squeal. He says to his wife, “How did that song go?” A bell signals a freight train passing into Fremantle and I wonder what it’s carrying. What’s under those tarpaulins? Surely not lead pellets moving through

156 the night? Perhaps the freight has travelled from somewhere near Welshpool all along the back fences of those houses in Thornlie.

§

Poignancy. I felt that in Matildas yesterday, wandering around, looking at dark heavy antique furniture. My thoughts kept drifting back to a deed box on a table.

The shop’s owner came over and began to chat.

When I mentioned the box, he told me it belonged to his assistant, Albert, who had brought it in from his personal collection. Did I know him? Albert is almost eighty and he works in palaeontology at a local university. He also works part time at the shop. He’s the sort of man who goes off on ventures to African waterfalls and looks for insects embedded in rock.

I have this sense that things, like creatures, sometimes choose their place.

The dealer commented on the fine workmanship; the dovetailed joints. Made in

Western Australia. He turned over Albert’s price ticket and looked astounded and then simply said, "Just buy it!" And I did. Then I told him about the Moreton

Bay fig tree at the university and how it was planted with a dead cow beneath it to provide iron, fertilizer. That story. I’d planted my olive trees with a calf’s liver beneath the root balls. Annie did the same.

I’ve printed out Josef’s emails and put them in the deed box. I’ve joined the

Conradian Society (US). I received two volumes of their publications in the post this afternoon. The Foreword makes no mention of F. Scott Fitzgerald who, in

1923, performed a dance in Conrad’s honour on the lawn of F.N. Doubleday’s home on Long Island, when Conrad was his publisher’s guest. Well, it was the

157 Jazz Age in America, after all.

I’ve cashed in some shares and decided to travel overseas. If experience has taught me something, it’s that anguish can be a passing thing. Josef Kozak holds a special place in my heart, he was distinguished in his own way but he wasn’t noble. All I can do is take something from my relationship with Josef that will enhance my life. I’ve decided to follow Conrad’s footprints. I’m foregoing

Marseille and going to Poland.

158

CHAPTER 13 – JESS

At the Warsaw-Okecie Fryderyk Chopin airport, a security guard asks if it’s my first visit to Poland. Do I speak English? Why am I here? When I reply I’m going to Lublin, he smiles as though visitors from outside Poland usually give it a miss.

I almost expect him to ask, “You have a special interest in Jewish heritage? The

Jerusalem of the Polish Kingdom?”

I say I’m going to a conference at the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University and that seems to satisfy him. He stamps my passport.

There are several hours to wait until the bus arrives. I note the gun-toting security guards, find my case and wheel it to a baggage holding place, have it scanned again by a customs’ guard, take my receipt and make for a nearby kiosk.

Change my currency into PLN and find a café. Breaded pork and chicken fillets seem to be the main meals on offer, with Zestaw surówek mixed salads, and sliced boiled potatoes. Woda Górska Natura mineral water, fruit juices, bottled

Polish beer. There’s time to go by the number one seven five bus into the city to take a look around, but I’m unnerved by the flight. The language is unfamiliar.

There’s a new and modern hotel across the road. Unmasked workmen are cutting into the pathway with circular saws, concrete dust is rising and covering

159 my case, their faces and hair. I make it inside the hotel and order a double espresso. A television is replaying the Tour de France highlights and the commentary is in German. A man sits at a far table, drinks his beer slowly. A family, parents and two children, eat what seems to be a Greek salad with feta and a waitress hovers. What I want is a room for the afternoon, somewhere to feel at home, to lie down, have a shower, take off my shoes. I want to curl up next to Josef, have him hold me close, feel his breath on the back of my neck. I’m here alone and I won’t sleep. Caffeine is coursing through my body and there are hours to wait.

I’m in the main hall of the arrivals floor of the airport. It’s five p.m. but there are no conference organizers in sight. I’m trying not to panic but I remember their email: “We will not pick participants from any other place in Warsaw. We will not honour requests to wait for conference participants arriving after this time, even last minute requests of the ‘please wait fifteen minutes as my plane is coming late’ type will not be honoured.” I retrieve my case from the kiosk, sit on a bench and keep an eye out for someone carrying a big label. There are shifty eyed taxi drivers drumming up trade. One, in a crumpled linen suit and wearing the very latest in pointed toe shoes, seems to be a principal operator. He scans faces of lost tourists, all new arrivals. We’re obviously not Polish. A small and stocky man walks in through a door. He’s carrying a board under one arm, its yellow printed message, the big label, is obscured by his jacket sleeve. I guess it’s the conference organiser. I walk up to him, introduce myself and I’m ushered out of the airport, “Please, please, the bus is waiting.” I want to tell him I’ve been

160 waiting. It isn’t what I expect. I suppose I expected a coach not a small blue bus with a smaller covered trailer on the back, for luggage.

I find a seat, arrange my shoulder-bag and bottle of mineral water and settle down for another long journey. Along trunk road number seventeen to

Lublin, situated on the old trading trail that leads from the Black Sea to the Baltic

Sea. Further into Western Europe. Lublin, the first capital city of the Polish

Commonwealth and the city where the workers’ strikes began in July 1980, which led to the end of communism in the country. The borderland of the West and the East.

I keep reading about the history of the city. I have photocopied sheets on

Lublin and South Eastern Poland. Headlines that read, “It Happened Here:

Poland and Lithuania Form Early European Union and Getting There and Getting

Around.” I’m focused on the Getting There of things. Perhaps I should’ve taken a train and then a bus to Majdanek. It’s hot, the air conditioner functions sporadically and fumes are gathering in the rear of the bus. The driver, a surly

Polish chap, seems to think he’s been kept waiting. That there isn’t much time left in the day to make it to our destination and so he pulls out the stops. He turns the radio up to maximum level, takes his foot off the brake and scuttles along the road. In and out of the traffic. Avoiding the heavy trucks bringing produce from across the borders, in and out, cutting off small cars, ploughing ahead. The bus is overheating. I’m stranded in a truck bay at a remote café, watching as the conference organizer and the bus driver exchange heated words.

I look at a Korean woman and she smiles at me and shrugs. Five of us set up a relay to the washrooms to fill up emptied mineral water bottles and re-fill the radiator. When we set off again, the Korean woman who’s seated in the back,

161 opts for a place closer to the front and away from the overflowing air conditioner that so rudely woke her. Her blouse is wet down the right hand side and her hair is damp. She twists it up and holds it in place with a tortoise-shell butterfly clip. An elderly Swiss man offers her his coat. She smiles in a resigned and distanced sort of way and I think this might be an interesting trip. Perhaps she’ll send an email home and say she’d caught a blue coach from Warsaw airport. She might reflect on the hospitality of the Poles. The road’s poorly surfaced and there are large unpainted wooden crosses erected at intervals along the road edge. Farmlands skim by, houses in disrepair with occasional glimpses of red geraniums in pots or white flowers in the fields. Broken down farm machinery is abandoned near each house. Groups of cyclists head to Lublin.

Some sit at the side of the road, their bikes lying on the gravel. Others walk.

Where have they come from to be walking so far from a town? So close to the thundering traffic. The forests of beech are dense. They wouldn’t be the place to run through with your eyes closed.

We reach Lublin at about nine thirty p.m. Late. The bus driver drops me and three others at our hotel. It’s modern and I go to my room, take off my shoes and have a shower. There’s beer in the fridge and small bottles of hard liquor.

Zubrowka or Bison Grass vodka, orange juice and peanuts. The bed is firm and well proportioned, and BBC World News has the latest results of the Tour de

France. I want to see Cadel Evans have a good ride. There’s Wi-Fi in the hotel and

I take out my iPad.

§

162 If I were writing to Josef, I’d sit on the bed with my iPad on my lap and imagine his face. That smile and his head on one side, looking at me. I’d twist the bangle on my arm that he sent me from India, that I can’t remove and that beeps every time I walk through the security scanners at an airport. Then I’d write, “Hi Josef.”

I’d say that Poland also has its fascinations. Unlike you, Josef, the people here are, on the surface, quite dour and stern, real sticklers for protocol and routine although nothing seems to go to plan at the conference. There are daily changes in the programme and the bus from Warsaw to Lublin kept breaking down or over-heating. As there have been several trips in a bus, the general approach to a bus trip is one of trepidation and resignation. Will today’s trip run smoothly?

Instead of writing to Josef, I write in my journal. It’s a one-way conversation really. There’s no expectation of a reply, that little flicker of hope that is sent with every email. Read between the lines, Josef. I’m connecting with no one else.

The conference had its opening ceremony in the building of the historic

Royal or Crown Tribunal in the Old Town Marketplace of Lublin. This is where civil marriage ceremonies take place. Brides wearing white gowns walked around the square. I watched from a nearby café as a tall and spare woman emerged from the doorway, her new husband following. He was portly and his hair had been combed forward and swept around his face. She seemed to speak harshly to him and he moved over to stand beside her and others, in front of the columns of the building, to have taken a ceremonial family photograph. All photographs of groups are called family photographs. The conference delegates also had their photos taken. There was much interest in the two Korean women in our group. The locals don’t see many Asians in their town. It reminded me of when I went to China and crowds gathered to see Josef, so tall and pale and

163 Western. Here, the crowds don’t gather but occasionally a beggar sidles up with arm outstretched. A beautiful porcelain-faced woman in wedding dress stood still in the square, a statue. I’ve never seen such a sculpted image. She held a fan in her hand and when I dropped 5 Zlotys into a hat at her feet, she waved her fan, smiled widely, Thank you, Madam, and curtsied. Resumed her pose.

Josef once said he liked Lublin. He said each place has its story. Legend has it that in 1637 a devil’s trial took place in the Crown Tribunal. It was really an intervention in a lawsuit of a poor widow against a rich magnate. The devil intervened in support of the woman, overruling the verdict issued by the venal jury. He simply placed his hand on the table. The burn’s still visible on the table, now housed in Lublin Castle.

Tonight a group of us are going to the Old Town to find a renowned Greek restaurant. The food here is very nice. “Very nice” is a commonplace term in

Poland. The conference organiser says tonight we will have a very nice meal and we will get a nice surprise. I’ve had enough of surprises. To have Josef knock on my door would be very nice. Alive and a surprise.

§

A group of us are in a restaurant in the Old Town. This place was a small theatre and when I arrived I took a photograph from the doorway. Steps to the right lead upwards and behind an archway. It’s called Hades. When we arrived we sat in the cobbled street on wooden benches at a table. A young woman asked us if we wouldn’t prefer to come inside, to sit in the courtyard. We walked into the theatre that soon became an entrance to the restaurant, down a circular flight of

164 concrete steps to a larger room and then beyond to the promised courtyard.

Hades. No Dante’s Inferno. No Conrad Grove of Death scene although it’s shady and the vegetation is plentiful. The light is scarcely dim. The walls of the building have new ivy beginning to grow upwards, towards iron barred windows.

Burglaries have taken place.

I order trout with wild rice and almonds and some Polish beer.

Argentinian wine, Salentein Malbec Reserve, is on offer at a hundred and twenty five zlotys a bottle. It’s obviously the most desirable in the karta win. A man orders a bottle, opens a small case and takes out his harmonica. He begins to play. The music is hauntingly beautiful. We drink our beer and wine and listen.

Diners at nearby tables clap him as he finishes. People in the street outside must wonder where the music comes from, so deep in the earth. Perhaps the devil has returned after all.

The harmonica player asks for requests and I mention Shenandoah, a sea shanty written by Captain Jack who spent some years living in a small stone house abutting the main road of Watchit, England. It’s somewhere I’ve been, a long time ago and before I met Josef. I went there with my husband and we walked along the main street with its little wooden boxes full of salt to spread over the snow. Cars had chains around their wheels for traction as they moved through the town’s rises. I sifted through antiques at a little shop. All I bought was an apostle spoon. I collected a few stones from the beach. There was a small house with its entrance right on and yet below the road and this is where the captain lived. The port drew Coleridge to it and he wrote about his Ancient

Mariner and the albatross, the bird that contains the souls of lost sailors.

165

I think about my husband and Josef. They’re lost to me. I think about my soul and how it flew when Josef touched me. Walking up stairs, handing me a coffee, alerting me to something happening in the street, painting my toe-nails bright red. I’m burdened with the memory of him. He was at Rottnest a few summers ago and staying with new friends on a moored boat. There were no walls around the bay but limestone cliffs offered protection. Perhaps the boat wasn’t far enough into the lee of the hill because a storm blew up, a right cock-eyed Bob.

Unsettling it from the mooring Josef had only checked the day before. Boxes of sailing and marine equipment slid over the side. The owner was distraught. He couldn’t quite understand that such precious cargo should also be tethered. The boat’s tender floated away and a wave caught it in one rush of its water hand, scooped it up and upended it. The morning brought calm but the tender had sunk. There they were, the friends, a man, wife and their child, and Josef, looking at the sight of a rubber thong bobbing along the surface of the water. Marking the resting place of the tender beneath them. Josef found a mask and snorkel, spat onto the glass to clear and protect it, and lowered himself into the water.

The smaller boat rested on the bottom, white sand already beginning to claim its interior. All he could salvage was a pair of flippers and he was happy with that because he had none with him and he invoked the rule of salvaging from the sea.

They were now his.

Back on the deck of the yacht, towelled dry and drinking beer, Josef said he’d listened as the owner recalled the sight of a dead albatross on the tender the morning before. He was never superstitious but there was a chill to the

166 morning and those boxes of precious cargo were nowhere to be seen. Josef and an albatross.

Back in Hades the harmonica player moves from side to side with the music, and

I take his photo. A man from California who works as a linguist with a focus on

Slavic languages mutters, “Ah, Shenandoah. The war between the states.” Some think the song refers to the civil war and slavery. I think of it as a sea shanty.

Why else would I request it? The Polish member of the group asks a waiter to bring bottled water and translates for an American woman who wants her salad on the side. He’s drinking and talking about his former wife who was a ballet dancer. “She used to make me laugh.” A young woman from an English university says she’s going hiking in the Tatras, the highest range of the

Carpathian Mountains. They lie along Poland’s border with Slovakia, about two hour’s drive from Krakow. When we return to Warsaw, she’ll meet her boyfriend at Franz Joseph and they’ll catching a coach to Zakopane. A man who’s interested in her slumps in his wooden chair. All his talk of fear of the dark, mimeticism and psychasthenia in The Nigger of the “Narcissus” has failed to win her over. His darkened figure wilts in the foreground and the metaphysical darkness that has been Poland remains in the background.

It’s morning. I’m waiting with others in the foyer of the hotel. The bus was due at eight fifteen a.m. and, again, there’s a deadline and the bus will wait for no one.

As though it had a mind of its own. The former husband of a ballet dancer looks tired and dishevelled, his leather jacket has been tossed onto the floor by his chair and his mobile phone lies on the table in front of him, its screen

167 sporadically lit up with incoming messages. He seems disinterested. He looks up and smiles and then says, “I’m wearing black because we’re going to a cemetery.

Don’t read too much into it.”

We’re going to visit Karol Zagórski’s grave at the cemetery at Lipowa

Street. He was Korzeniowski‘s second cousin, once removed. On his return to

Poland in 1890, Korzeniowski visited several relatives including Aniela and

Karol Zagórski, in Lublin. That visit of two days had been preceded by another visit, in Brussels, to more distant relatives, Aleksander and Marguerite

Poradowski. It was timely because Aleksander was gravely ill. Korzeniowski had written to Poradowski that he’d decided to return home, via Brussels. There was some concern with his visa. He was having difficulties dealing with The Russian

Consulate. He wrote, “I shall let you know how I am getting on as soon as I settle matters with these pirates.”96

Pirates. Not only in Marseille.

Aleksander Poradowski died two days after Korzeniowski’s return. He turned to his widowed “Aunt” Marguerite for friendship and guidance. For inspiration.

“The Intended” in Heart of Darkness is a version of her in mourning. Najder writes, “She was a woman of beauty and charm, highly cultured, well-read, and with good connections; moreover she was a writer.”97 Korzeniowski took a copy of her story Yaga, and its depiction of Ukrainian peasantry, with him on his journey to Poland. He wrote Marguerite long letters, sketched her and professed his desire to kiss her hand. He was quite confidential and courtly in his relationship with her. She offered to help secure his position in the Congo. Her help wasn’t needed. The Danish captain of the Floride had been killed by

168 “natives”, three months earlier and there was a position waiting to be filled.

Perhaps Conrad reflected on her offered assistance in Heart of Darkness. She had good connections and she comforted him. Perhaps she heard the rumours of

Conrad’s flirtation with a French girl, Emilie Briquel, who was eighteen years his junior, and stopped writing to him.

Emilie Briquel was entranced by Conrad’s stories but not by the man. She translated his Almayer’s Folly into French. Korzeniowski felt flattered. Then the young girl met someone else and became engaged. He heard the news from her mother and replied with his customary effusiveness, “Before your daughter there now lies open a sweet and tranquil land of delightful promises… I also am getting married.”98 People were surprised. Jessie Emmeline George, his third romance within the span of a year, became his intended. She was twenty-three years old, young enough to be his daughter and English, not Polish nor French.

Perhaps this is why we’re visiting the gravesite of Karol Zagórski, in Lublin.

Captain Korzeniowski wrote to him of his intention to marry Jessie George. He said, “I cannot say I am terrified, being as you know I’m accustomed to leading a life full of adventure, and to wrestle with terrible dangers. Besides, I must add that my fiancée does not appear at all dangerous.” 99 She didn’t appear dangerous, not at all like Marguerite Poradowska, who represented his own kind and even his mother.100 Was the notion of an older woman, a mother terrifying to him?

Conrad was beginning to write fiction. Despite the Polish name written on his passport, he tried to pass himself off as an Englishman. He had an English wife. Maybe it suited his role as a seaman or he thought it sounded more roguish.

169 He became an Englishman with a foreign accent, inventing colourful stories about his sea travels and exploits.

When Conrad wrote to Aniela and Karol Zagórski on twentieth December

1896, having published several books, he wrote, “I planned to come to Poland for the holidays – by Poland I mean you. It was a vague and timid plan although the desire behind it was warm enough. I did not write about it – scarcely allowed myself the thought that perhaps it might be possible. Nevertheless the disappointment is acute…. In the meantime I must work, for praise does not feed a man (not to speak of a man’s wife!) Therefore I have been writing, writing endlessly – and now the sight of an inkwell and of a pen fill me with anger and horror; - but I go on writing!” 101

I stand in the shadow of European trees and look at the pitted gravestone and moss-covered monument to Karol Zagórski, Joseph Conrad’s second cousin once removed. When Conrad learnt of his death, he wrote to his widow, “And now I feel quite alone.”102

And now I feel quite alone.

§

The conference has concluded. I would like to write to Josef and say that the presentations on the Borderlands and the difficulties arising from a translation of Conrad’s fiction into Polish were of particular interest. Those nuances of language best captured by him in French. Adieu. I want to re-read Almayer’s Folly and check the biographical detail of the manuscript. Conrad believed creative

170 writing offered a means for revealing the truth. He was irritated by what he saw as Rousseau’s insincerity. He believed the Frenchman wrote in an artless manner. It’s enough to make me smile because I’m not sure I agree with him. It’s

Rousseau, after all.

Today we went on a coach trip. Not a bus, but a coach. The journey was smoother and the seats comfortable. We had the same bus driver. There was a moment of tension when we picked up some of the participants from a small hotel near the University. We rounded a corner and in the side street, workmen were digging up the road. It was a case of reversing at careful speed, back and around the corner, avoiding pedestrians on a crosswalk and taking another route from the city. To Lubartow, another site of a Polish engagement with

Russians.

There’s a formality to the tour. People are very polite but seemingly distanced. It's both interesting and tiring. Poland can be so enigmatic. Political.

Precise. Even my use of language has been tainted.

There are many suspect people in the streets of the town and I've been approached by three beggars so far, one a dishevelled woman with a badly bruised and disfigured face. Crying, with her hand outstretched. Asking for money. Her distress was short lived, as I moved on. The people are very watchful and it's a little unnerving at times. It stands to reason, really. Flush tourists walking the streets. The local economy is depressed. We’ve been warned to beware of pickpockets and thieves. During a former conference three participants were robbed, two in trains and one in church, when they left the group and went on their own in Kraków and Poznan. Polish pickpockets and thieves are referred to as inconveniences. They’re active and ingenious.

171 We travel as a group but there’s no sense of what others are thinking of these different destinations. Sometimes of each other. I take scenic photographs and some of the group. I search for groups of women wearing headscarves. I make an effort to join in but I feel quite alone.

§

I’m following Prince Roman’s footprints in a small bus, sometimes a coach.

Roman Stanislaw Sanguszko was a Polish aristocrat, patriot, political and social activist and the subject of one of Joseph Conrad’s short stories, “Prince Roman.”

Conrad rewrote his character, sent him off on a noble pilgrimage and used him as a metaphor for the Polish experience, as an icon of the sacred Polish-

Lithuanian Union of 1569. The historic and the fictional characters seemed to blur. Conrad’s re-writing seemed more to redefine himself. The bus driver takes to a straight piece of road and I read notes Josef wrote long ago on “Joseph

Conrad’s and Prince Roman’s Footprints in Lublin and Its Region.” I wonder at

Conrad’s motive for fictionalizing Prince Roman Sanguszko and much of his historical context. The historical Prince Roman Sanguszko didn’t take part in the

Lithuanian campaign.103 Well, I just suppose Conrad wasn’t always into realistic representations of reality, what one of the conference speakers refers to as the

“invisible fear of the dark that is, for Conrad, the true, essential reality at the heart of men.”104 I’m a restless woman and I can’t elaborate upon this. My darkness is to do with more than solitude in a strange place.

I arrive at the Sanguszko Palace, the place where the central character in the

172 short story left for the war. It’s quite grand. I stand with others in a large and ornate room with chandeliers illuminating a painting on a wall of Prince Roman, resplendent in fur trimmed long red cape and leather, thigh length boots.

The Polish police force are preparing for a weekend of meetings at the palace. Not quite a jamboree although there are crates of beer and soft drink stacked outside the main entrance and men in uniforms are erecting tents.

Patrolling officers wearing holstered guns on their hips screened the bus as we entered the grounds. I am in a palace, surrounded by lovely gardens and police erecting tents. I almost expect one to walk up to me and pass me a note.

Something to do with being careful on the bus. It’s surreal.

There’s time to stroll around the grounds at the back of the white building, away from the police. A little red squirrel darts amongst the undergrowth and bird boxes are nailed to the forest trees. Red squirrels! Smaller than the English variety. Formal hedges and rose gardens lead to a fountain and pond. There’s a statue to another figure in Polish history, someone to do with socialist reform. It’s hot. I’m seated on a bench in the shade of large trees, eating an apple I saved from the hotel breakfast. It’s what I would call floury, with a surprisingly mild pear flavour. A man stands under a tree nearby and writes in a notebook. I catch his eye and he walks away.

We’ve regrouped and boarded the bus but had to wait because three members of the group went missing. When they turned up, they explained.

“Hey, we found a bar. Steve here was thirsty.”

“Oh, you guys,” said Steve, “every time I meet up with you, the prices of vodka and scotch soar. The world supplies drop overnight.”

We waited, Steve clambered on board and now we’re making our way

173 slowly past the police cordon. Even the bus driver is alert to possibilities. To a man watching as we pass. Maybe a licence check. Vehicle inspection. Passport clearances. Drunken passengers.

Now we’re visiting two monuments in the small village of Gródek. The locals haven’t seen a coach full of foreigners stopping in its main street.

Reversing in rural driveways. I take a few snaps and look around and wonder where the hell I am. A rural, rye growing area? It reminds me of the countryside in France, without the careful attention to clipped hedges. Not at all like

Australian paddocks full of sheep and cows. There’s the occasional cow here, tethered with a chain. There is no roaming taking place in Gródek. The village is mentioned by Conrad in “Prince Roman”, when the central character says, “It has begun already down there. All the landowners great and small are out in arms and even the common people have risen. Only yesterday the saddler from

Grodek (it was a tiny market-town near by) went through here with his two apprentices on his way to join.”105 There are no obvious signs of saddlers watching us from the side of the narrow village roads but there are plenty of people, some of the men hold hoes and farming equipment and the women wear aprons. Some are laughing. Such a spectacle!

Our next stop is a bar restauracja, Zapraszamy, on our way to the museum of

Socialist Realistic Art, in Kozlówka. A sort of glassed walled, colourbond shed.

Men and women have to queue for the toilets and pay before entering. A woman stands at the front of our line and puts five zlotys in the meter, the door opens to a small powder room and she holds it open with her foot, holds up a forefinger and says, “We will do this the Polish way.” We are paying for the door to open.

174 Lunch is bought and eaten at tables inside and outside, under colourful umbrellas and in fresh air. Sunlight. A peacock and peahen stroll amongst the tables, looking for scraps of food, the peacock swishing its teal-eyed tail at diners. I’m watching you. I’m thinking of the local university in Perth where peacocks stroll through parts of the garden, shrieking at each other.

Back on the bus, we drive to the Palace Museum. A huge statue, dedicated to the communist regime, can be found secreted in the garden. Between two large trees, out of sight. It represents Polish history and invasion and used to stand in Lublin’s main street, near the park. Now it’s not something to be admired or celebrated, simply acknowledged, and so the statue is hidden.

Tickets to enter the museum and palace are for sale in a small building in front of the palace. Tours finish at four thirty p.m. and it’s almost that time when we arrive. The tour organizer is incensed. Don’t they know how many telephone calls he has made to arrange such a tour for these very important international guests? His face grows redder and he thinks he can convince the woman ticket seller by opening the door to her screened office. He’s rattling the door handle.

Banging his fist on the wooden partitioning. I’m going outside to wait. Maybe one of his assistants will intervene and he’ll return to the group, apologetic, patting his hair back into place. He’ll say there’s been a misunderstanding.

“I am very sorry, but thank the heavens for this man, my assistant. What would I do without him? He has the patience of an angel.” We are granted special dispensation and a late tour.

It’s the second palace of the day. Extreme wealth is on display in every room. Ceiling height ceramic stoves, the Meissen tiles imported from Germany, a bath and internal water supply. It’s something to marvel at for the times. For the

175 present, too. The villagers must be proud of such heritage. They are at pains to present it to others. This is what we are.

The former owner of the palace, Constantine Zamoyski, came across a knight wounded in battle, with three spears embedded in his body. He said the pain was nothing in comparison to the pain felt by his country. Zamoyski was impressed with the knight's patriotism, his Polishness, and saw that he was nursed back to health and rewarded with land. Zamoyski adopted three spears as his family's crest and had them crafted into the woodwork of the two large front doors to the palace. The palace is now owned by the state but the descendants of the Zamoyski family, mostly living in Canada, can return and stay in a lodge on the side of the palace. The Canadian in our tour seems very interested in the prospect of spending his holidays in a palace.

The tour guide is a lovely young, fair haired woman, new to the role. She speaks in halting English and her more experienced colleagues follow behind the group, giggling at her mistakes. She looks up towards the ceiling, perhaps to the heavens, when she’s searching for the correct word. Only when her colleague’s mobile phone rings, “Oohh, love to love you baby…”106 do they stop their giggling.

That’s another interesting thing. So many English songs are played over the radio. And the houses have copper roofs. The palace roof has been restored with new copper and pallets of fresh tiles are deposited in the forecourt near the edge of the circular driveway.

We clamber on board the coach again and head back to Lublin, to individual hotels to shower and dress for another meal in the Old Town. To catch news of the Tour de France and send messages to family and friends back home.

176 Annie has sent me a message and a photograph of Fremantle’s Blessing of the

Fleet. There are dozens of fishing boats making their way from the mouth of the

Swan River to the ocean, under the traffic bridge. They have bunting tied to their mainsails. Young women wear headscarves on South Terrace and carry between them a statue of the Madonna di Capo d'Orlando. The men carry their own statue.

The fleet is blessed and there is hope for a plentiful sea harvest. Annie says she’s bought an olive tree to plant in her garden. She says she’s back at work in Mount

Barker. She arrived home Sunday afternoon and hit the deck running. Her trip to

Fremantle was wonderful on all fronts. She exhibited some work at Kidogo at

Bathers Beach. The early morning swimming at South Beach was amazing in the rough seas. Challenging at times. She says she wants to swim with the horses from the local stables. To hold onto their tails and lie against their smooth sides, to be dragged slowly through the water. Horses have been training and swimming at South Beach since the early days of settlement. Annie stayed in my house and looked after Semi and she’s taken her back to stay in Mount Barker until I return. She says there’s a package for me at the post office. I must produce my driver’s licence and sign for it. It must have been too special to leave behind the potted ficus at the front door.

I’ve checked the weather forecast and Perth is experiencing heavy rain and wind. Lightning and thunder will have greeted Annie this morning.

§

“Please be ready with your luggage at eight in front of the hotel. The bus will depart for Kraków to arrive there around noon.” A note has been left under my

177 door. I’m going to the Rakowicki cemetery to see Apollo Korzeniowsk’s grave.

The grave lies in shadow and up against a perimeter wall behind other plots. It’s overgrown. Tourists take photos of the site and of a nearby family crypt that has nothing to do with the father of Joseph Conrad. The Polish patriot.

Two women stoop to tend the grave, pulling weeds from its surrounds, rearranging plastic flowers, and another woman takes their photo.

“No, no. You must not take our photo when we fix the grave. It is not in our culture to take photos like this. Please, delete the photo.”

What would Apollo Korzeniowski make of such outrage? That poet, that master of four languages: English, French, German and Russian. That Romantic.

Would he murmur, “Do not leave me here in this wordless grave?” Apollo would have likened this plot to a prison. He was obsessed with writing. Even the

Russians allowed him to translate whilst imprisoned. I’ve seen photographs of

Apollo and I have to agree with his brother in law, Tadeusz Bobrowski. He was not a beautiful, nor even a handsome man.107 He seemed rather short and chunky. Apparently, he had very kind eyes. And he had contempt for rich people or social upstarts. The person with the camera is neither, however, she’s spinsterish. Apollo had no sympathies for spinsters. How would he see me? As he wrote to his future brother-in-law, on eleventh May, 1849, shortly after meeting Tadeusz’ sister, “It is impossible that God created old maids.”108 Perhaps

Apollo was planting a little seed. He could save Ewa Bobrowski from such a fate.

And he did. Despite family opposition. Two years after Ewa’s father’s death,

Tadeusz, who had become head of the family, consented to his sister’s marriage to Apollo Korzeniowski. Their engagement lasted more than a year, during which time Apollo repaid Tadeusz for his support and helped his future brother-

178 in-law to secure the affections of a wealthy woman. These men!

Apollo and Ewa married on fourth May, 1856 at Oratów. One aunt failed to turn up. She probably had heard of Apollo’s thoughts on spinsters. Apollo and the priest argued when the priest insisted on calling the bridegroom Apolinary.

That name sounded less pagan.

Apollo was a Polish patriot and the Russians arrested him and sent him into exile. He was incarcerated in Warsaw. Then his beloved Ewa died, at the age of thirty-two and he had to take on the responsibility of raising his seven-year old son, Konrad.

Konrad suffered from what his father deemed an illness “very rare with children: gravel forms in his bladder and causes gripes.”109 Kidney stones? Did the boy not drink enough water? The illness caused Konrad to miss a great deal of schooling and his father, Apollo, became his home tutor. Apollo first drew

Konrad’s attention to tales of the sea, heroism and high adventure. He recited poetry, particularly the heroic epics of Mickiewicz, the Polish nationalist.110

Konrad began to write. In a letter to his friend Stefan Buszcynski, Apollo wrote:

“He writes without my encouragement and writes well.”111

Apollo had his own illness. Tuberculosis. As he weakened, his concern for the welfare of his small and sickly son intensified. He sent him to stay with his grandmother then his uncle. He visited doctors, contracted German measles. His

Uncle took him to Odessa in the summer of 1867, where he saw the sea for the first time.

When I look at the sea I think about my father, my husband and Josef. I think about spearfishing with my father, wearing a mask and snorkel and learning to

179 spit into the mask, rub the spit around the glass and wash it in the sea. It puts a film on the glass and stops it from fogging up. My father taught me to float, swim and dive. To take three breaststrokes and jackknife down to the sea bottom or to scour rocks for crayfish. I wore a weight belt he made by melting lead in a crucible on the kitchen stove and pouring it into square moulds. He made me a speargun, before the days when they were illegal. He took me fishing in his homemade boat on the river, into the ocean in an aluminium dinghy to catch herring when they were running. We fished with rods from the beach, cutting up bait with a sharp knife on a small wooden board, winding it onto hooks and casting out into soft waves. We stood on the shore and watched cargo ships make their way into Fremantle Harbour. My father taught me about tides and currents and he taught me not to panic if I was caught in a rip. The ocean will bring you back to me, he would say.

When I met my husband he was only seventeen. He was a spearfisherman and apprentice boatbuilder. We were holidaying down south, at a coastal camping ground. He was sweet and wild and experienced. One night he showed me how to throw a diving knife and I threw at an angle and it hit the kero lantern and plunged his tent into darkness. He took the opportunity to lead me to a stretcher bed, kissed me slowly and slid his hand inside my jeans. When I arrived back at our caravan the next morning my father was outraged. Back in the city, my boatbuilder telephoned and my father refused to pass on his messages. He said that boy’s not for you and he was right. I defied my father, married him and he died young.

Then years later I met Josef. He loved to swim. He liked the

180 weightlessness he felt in water. He liked threshing around, giving a kick and torpedoing forward. He liked to dive under a wave and come up where I least expected him to be. He liked to swim with others and to swim alone, reaching out slowly to pull a handful of water back to him, down and out again, moving forward. When I first met him we went swimming at South Beach, near the old power station and where the statue to C.Y. O’Connor rests in the water. It’s a bronze sculpture of a man seated on a horse. Josef said, “I’ll race you to the monument,” and he took off, dived under a wave and swam strongly. He looked back to see if I was watching from the shore and I was almost beside him. He swam to me, pulled me into the shallows and towards him. He lifted me up and I wrapped my legs around his body. I was in a weightless world. His skin tasted of brine and kelp. Everything about him was of the sea.

My father’s ashes, my husband’s death and memories of Josef lie with the sea.

Back in the graveyard, I’m looking at a tombstone. It’s Poland. I’m obsessed with death. In 1869, Apollo Korzeniowski died. There was a huge crowd, moving along Grodzka and Poselsks streets, to the graveyard. “The clergy, trade guilds with their banners, students and gymnasium pupils, and representatives of educational societies and of the voluntary fire brigade surrounded the coffin; several thousand people followed in silence.”112 And little Konrad walked at its head. To the site where we stand, looking at the greyed damp stone, taking photographs and cultural liberties. In a city where there is no sea.

§

181

The Polish journey has almost concluded. Now I’m seated in an airless blue bus and bouncing along straight roads, around sharp bends, from Lublin to the foothills of Zakopane, a holiday destination for many Europeans. Skiers in winter, bikers and hikers in summer. A Polish health resort.

Josef travelled through Zakopane some years ago. You could lease a

Peugeot from the factory in France and drive it for the duration of your

European stay and then sell it back to the company as a second hand car. It was cheaper than a hire car and more comfortable than travelling by bus. So he drove from Slovakia to Zakopane, across the border. He carried only his luggage in the boot and his bike. No illegal immigrants. Unlike Joseph Conrad who spent two months there, in a villa, before fleeing the “tremendous actuality”113 of German occupation in Europe, travelling by train to Vienna and then to Genoa. Catching a

Dutch mail steamer homeward bound from Java and sailing to London. He only spent a night there, at a reasonable hotel, and then drove to Krakow.

His wife wanted him to bring back some amber and he said Krakow was the place to get it. This was years ago, when he was married and happy to buy her things. He said he parked in a nearby street, close to St Mary’s Church. Went into a café for an espresso and cake before going to the market but forgot his wallet. Left it in the car. When he returned to the car a few minutes later, he was surprised to find the rear key access to the boot had been punched out, probably with a compressed air cylinder gun or maybe a gas fuelled captive bolt pistol.

That's commonly used to kill cows before slaughter without risk of flying bullets.

The sort of weapon used by Anton Chigurh, in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country

For Old Men. He was told that this was a practice of organised car thieves. They

182 take the lock to a nearby locksmith, have keys made up and return and replace the lock. They follow the car to its next stop and as soon as it’s unoccupied, unlock the car with the new keys and drive it to a holding area where it’s shipped to Russia. A seemingly new car with low mileage, it would realise a profit.

Anyway, he exchanged the car at the hire car branch in the city and continued to Warsaw.

What happens to shared stories when one of the sharers dies? We told each other so much. Now I’m repeating his stories to myself.

Zakopane. I’ve found myself holed up in a sort of ski chalet that has seen better days. The travel agents had used old photographs. Whilst the massive stone structure is sturdy, the undulating floors suggest rot has set in. I’m hoping there’ll be no need to try the fire escapes running, at broken intervals, along the high rooftops. The exit doors are locked, anyway. I have to make my daily escape down carpeted yet threadbare stone steps, through the musty and huge reception hall and out through massive oak doors. It’s dirty and depressing. I can’t believe I’ve paid to stay here. There’s no wi-fi. The mountainside, on the other hand, is very lush and beautiful and good for a solitary walk. Tonight I’m going to walk to the villas in which Conrad stayed in 1914: “Konstantynówka” and “Stamary”. The house once owned by Madame Zagórska has become a place to visit. Conrad stayed there for two months, after fleeing Cracow.114

The old hedge bordering the road still stands beneath pine trees. Madame

Zagórska’s house is under renovation and as yet there’s no verandah to span the house. It’s an interesting style of building. There’s no mortar between the

183 wooden planks and beams but circular wads of straw are packed into the spaces between the planks and this reinforces the house against cold and heat. A plaque, commemorating Conrad’s stay, is brought around to the front door by a workman. Words to anchor another family photograph. The carved oak door stands locked in the background. An older man stands alone and reflects on the atmosphere. A woman walks in front of him and stumbles on some building site debris and he offers his hand to the woman. She places a hand on his arm and looks at him in a coquettish manner as though to suggest his arm is firm and strong. I find a piece of original tile lying on the ground and place it in my bag.

The man smiles, “You are a thief.” I think about honesty.

I’ve decided to go walking in the Tatras. Just a little way. Past a shepherd’s hut made of roughly hewn pine, with a path made of wooden slabs and gravel leading to a small covered verandah that holds a sink of sorts and piled cut wood for a fire. It could be a sleeping hut for hikers but the sight of an old man making a meal on his primitive stove suggests to me that perhaps this resident is permanent and not some backpacker with tinned food, a sleeping bag and a portable trangier stove. I walk out of the foothills and past another tourist stand and accompanying café. Past parked buses. All I buy is a cherry ice cream to lick on my way down to the hotel. Cherry ice cream, cherry pie. “Ah, the girl's outta sight, yeah…” I’m singing Neil Diamond’s song, I’m walking downhill and

I’m on my own. This is some ice cream. I’m almost happy. Josef would’ve liked this flavour. Bitter sweet. It’s how I feel without him, in this beautiful and dangerous place where the Poles watch strangers with an intensity that’s almost unsettling. If he were here with me, I probably wouldn’t see the gaze of the people at all. My eyes would be on him. Now he’s outta sight, yeah.

184 I’ve sent a photo of Madame Zagórska’s house to Annie and she replied:

“Interesting looking house, Jess. Kind of oppressive but the woodwork looks rustically wonderful. Is that a typical Polish house of its period? It would make good subject matter for a collagraph. Do the printing and then add some colours.

Maybe those pine trees could be represented through different fabric. How did it all go? Must have been great. George tells me the Polish are incredibly hospitable and he's sure you would have experienced that. Are you doing more travelling?”

Maybe she hadn’t read my letter.

§

The out of town accommodation in Warsaw is a little Spartan. It’s not a place for me. I’ve been able to get hold of a kettle from a nearby room. I can make up hot chocolate at night, to drink while reading. My washing is draped on the line strung across the rusted balcony railings. It’s hot and my tops and underwear will dry easily. A child plays on the balcony opposite.

I took a taxi to the city this morning. The driver spoke little English and he thought I wanted a guided tour. No, no, just drop me here.

I walked around the square and there was the Old Town again, some perimeter walls crumbling, narrow winding streets, another shop selling amber.

I bought a small heart on a chain. I found a café that served pizza on heated slate tiles, had lunch and wandered the streets. A man played an accordion in the square. Swaying and dipping, shoulders flexing and arms moving in and out with the soft rhythm. Young men practised their tricks on skateboards, thump thumping through the early afternoon. A concert was playing in the centre

185 square and people were beginning to gather at outdoor cafés, to take in the music. To eat dumplings in a variety of sauces. Or soup. I walked and walked and then found a taxi in a nearby side street. Gave the driver written instructions to the hotel. The drive back was unfamiliar, there were no recognizable landmarks or signposts. I was just starting to grow uneasy when the driver turned a corner and the student accommodation was before us. I paid the twenty five zlotys indicated on the meter, walked up the stairs, past the reception desk with no tourist maps available, past the vacant-eyed and disshevelled man who’d been sitting in the reception’s vinyl lounge chair all morning, to the lift with its iron grille door and up to level 3.

The corridors are dull and airless. The room is also plain but the window and door to the balcony allow air to filter through. This afternoon I stood on the balcony and thought, this is all I need to feel at home. A light breeze and direct access to the outside. And maybe a view of the sea.

How lovely to imagine the seaside. On the bus ride to Zakopane I travelled alongside a river towards the Tatras. It was hot and the sandy banks of the river were strewn with reclining sun beds and people were swimming or rafting. Some just sitting in chairs placed in the water. Not fishing but camping out for the summer. For one day. The mountain ranges were in the background and beyond them, the borderlands.

So, imagine the washing is drying. There’s space to settle on a wooden chair in the sun, between the brick wall and the line, to read Conrad’s “Prince Roman.”

To follow his journey and link it with my own.

It’s been a sad few weeks. It's been the sort of tour where I've traipsed

186 around for hours and seen chateaux, grand palaces, churches everywhere, and places which may have had some special Conrad significance.

I’ve been drinking a lot of Polish beer.

The accommodation has been adequate. The food has been mostly good, wholesome and plentiful. The trout has been especially lovely. The soup or zupa is a favourite, especially the borsch. I remember the little restaurant in

Northbridge Josef and I found. Borsch, Vodka and Tears.

I’m not so keen on beef tripe soup. Vodka is plentiful. And cherry pie is cherry pie. The coffee is all I could hope for in an espresso. I'll have to work out when I get home. Rid myself of the Polish dumpling look. I can hear Patrick asking, “Are there Poles in your family history?” There's amber on sale everywhere, good for Leos, especially those who are flying home to Australia on their birthday! Really, the whole country is dependent on tourism and everything comes at a price. Extra zlotys for butter with the bread, to use the toilet, to take a photograph of a sacred church. It's not forbidden to take photographs in a church, just necessary to pay to do so and there are camera police waiting to pounce. You must pay!

Well, it's now Friday, I'm in Warsaw, in another cheap room, and I'm flying out tomorrow. Leaving Poland. Putting Josef to rest.

Possibly, maybe.

§

Fremantle. I’m back in my home city. I’ve been getting ready for an exhibition and a birthday. I’m going to hang a few portraits at the winery in Mount Barker,

187 alongside Annie’s landscapes. I remember Annie saying, “You approach portrait painting as you would a landscape or a still life. Half close your eyes.” Josef’s portrait is finished and I think I’ve pinned down his character. I've checked out my photos and they're not exactly worth sending to anyone, however, I've framed a photo taken in the Jewish cemetery, on my way to Zakopane. Not a stone remained in the cemetery. Just high grasses and electrical derricks. There was a tree with a pair of jeans thrown over a branch, as though I’d come across some sort of makeshift camp in hallowed grounds.

I’ve bought myself a birthday gift of twenty-two volumes of Conrad's work. All bound in red. I got them from a bookstore that I came across, just an old house converted to rooms full of rare and old books. I had to climb a ladder and stand on a cupboard to reach the collection. The seller gave me a generous discount and boxed them up for me. Then I celebrated the purchase with Patrick at lunch and ate witchety grubs on a bed of salad. I said to Patrick, “They taste surprisingly like fish. Like Polish trout.”

§

Tonight I'm going to see a movie about a tight-rope walker. It reminds me of going to see a play many years ago about Blondin and his bid to walk a wire that crossed Niagara Falls. The theatre was tiny and the audience seated so close to the action and below his eye level, it was as though we were with him, urging him on. The movie tonight is at the Essex Cinema, constructed in such a constricted way that to sit and watch anything is to lay back with your head uplifted - "Oh, it was great. That focus on courtship, and uniting the twin towers.

188 It was quite bizarre, especially the birds. Such an uplifting experience,” I might say if I was talking to Josef.

It's another early start to the day for me. I started thinking about painting and other stuff around 3:50 am. Tick tick tick. Phrases, responses and stories to sift through. I came across an old news item that Josef had written. It focused on the bombings in Madrid's train station. Then I started re-reading Conrad's novel, The

Secret Agent, the first novel based on terrorism in modern English Literature.

Where man is likened to a tight-rope walker, attempting to retain his position in society by keeping his balance.115 Yeah, Josef must have identified with tight- rope walkers. Another article was a piece to do with working in a Spanish shoe factory. One of the workers took him to visit his family. The older brother had left to become a radical communist. Perhaps a member of ETA. The remaining four brothers lived together in an old house. Their mother had died and they’d got rid of their sister. Arranged a quick marriage. They lived in Spartan conditions but their shoes were magnificent. Very nice.

I would’ve liked their red shoes.

§

I picked Patrick up from the airport last night. We got back to my place, he put his cases in the hallway and I pulled him to me. Let my hands wander down his back, up and across his shoulders. Down. Unbutton his shirt. It was so good to touch. Sex was frantic, pleasurable and tender. I felt as though I was caught in a

189 rip, being taken out to deep sea and then back in again. Wave upon wave, from deep caverns to the shallows, to the shore.

Now I’m making a Polish breakfast. Fresh fruit and yoghurt, cold meats, cheese and heavy bread. Strong coffee. It’s early but I have a cherry pie to bake before lunch. Then I’m going to shower, put on a red dress and take a tortoiseshell comb from the deeds’ box. Put it in the side of my hair. I have

Spanish music playing, not too loud. Vagabond. Castanets, mandolin, lute and guitar. My feet are bare and my arms are in the air. I pretend I have castanets in my right hand and click my fingers as I practise the sequidillas manchegas.

Stepping right, forwards, backwards, stamping my feet lightly on the tiled floor, dipping and turning. Twirling. Patrick is upstairs, sleeping.

§

190

REFERENCES AND SOURCES

Foreword

1 Mérédac, Savinien. “Joseph Conrad et nous,” L’Essor, 15 February 1931.

Chapter 1

2 Conrad, Joseph, Twixt Land and Sea Tales, “The Secret Sharer,” The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.143. 3 Ibid.

4Reed, Lou, “How Do You Think It Feels.” Berlin, Prod. Bob Ezrin. R.C.A., New York, 1973.

5 Conrad, Joseph, “The Protection of Ocean Liners,” Notes on Life & Letters, The Gresham

Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.251.

Chapter 2

6 Luffman, C. Bogue, Quiet Days in Spain, John Murray, London, U.K., 1910.

7 Conrad, Joseph, Nostromo, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.185.

8 Conrad, Joseph, “A Smile of Fortune,” Twixt Land and Sea Tales, The Gresham Publishing

Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.44.

9 Ibid, p.36.

10 Ibid, p.47.

11 Ibid, p.78.

12 Ibid, p.51.

13 Ibid, p.59.

14 Ibid.

Chapter 3

15 Meyer, Bernard C. Joseph Conrad: A Psychoanalytic Biography, Princeton

University Press, New Jersey, 1970, p.171.

191

16 Conrad, Joseph, Victory, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.75.

17 Conrad, Joseph, Typhoon and Other Stories, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London,

1925, pp.145-146.

18 Conrad, Joseph, “Stephen Crane: A Note Without Dates,” Notes on Life & Letters, The Gresham

Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.50.

19 Ibid, p.52.

20 Najder, Zdzislaw, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge,

Cambridge, 1983, p.82.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid, p.85.

24 Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.53.

25 Ibid.

26 Letter to Mme Poradowska, 26 September 1890.

27 Najder, Zdzislaw, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge,

Cambridge, 1983, p.37.

28 Ibid, p.85.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid, p.87.

31 Ibid, p.88.

32 Ibid, p.517.

33 Conrad, Joseph, The Mirror of the Sea, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.23.

34 Ibid, p.27.

35 Ibid.

192

Chapter 4

36 Wright, Judith, “The Blue Wrens and the Butcher Bird,” Birds, National Library of Australia

Canberra, 2003, p.10.

Chapter 5

37Conrad, Joseph, Nostromo, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.67.

38 Accessed at http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/bile.aspx 19/1/2013.

39 Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.68.

40 cummings, e.e., “in Just - ”, Selected Poems 1923-1958, Faber and Faber Ltd, London, 1960, p.1.

41 de Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel, Don Quixote: The Ormsby Translation, Revised Backgrounds and

Sources Criticism, Norton Critical Editions, March 1981.

Chapter 6

42 Conrad, Joseph, Nostromo, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.72.

Meyer, Bernard C, Joseph Conrad: A Psychoanalytic Biography, Princeton University

Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1970, p.98.

43 Kerouac, Jack, Book of Dreams, City Lights Press, US, 1960.

44 Machiavelli, Niccolo, The Prince, P.F. Collier and Son, New York, 1910.

45 Conrad, Joseph, “Author’s Notes,”Nostromo, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.xiii.

46 Ibid.

47 Conrad, Joseph, “The Isabels,” Nostromo, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925.

48 Ibid.

49 Conrad, Joseph, Nostromo, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.162.

50 Conrad, Joseph, The Secret Agent, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.32.

51 Conrad, Joseph, The Shadow-Line, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.5.

193

52 Cohen, Leonard, “I’m Your Man,” I’m Your Man, (Columbia, 1988)

Chapter 7

53 Charles, Ray, Nelson, Willie, “Spanish Angel,” Half Nelson, Columbia, 1984.

54Conrad, Joseph, Typhoon, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.19.

Chapter 8

55 Cocker, Joe, “With A Little Help From My Friends,” Lennon & McCartney, With A Little Help

From My Friends, Olympic Studios and Trident Studios, 1969.

Chapter 9

56 “Book of Psalms,” Psalm LXXVII, Verse 19, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Michael D. Coogan.

(ed.). Oxford University Press, New York, 2007. Print.

57 Conrad, Joseph, “Guy De Maupassant,” Notes on Life & Letters, The Gresham Publishing Co.

Ltd., London, 1925, p.26.

58 Najder, Zdzislaw, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge,

Melbourne, 1983, p. 392.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid.

61 Conrad, Joseph, “Author’s Notes,” Notes on Life & Letters, The Gresham Publishing Co.

Ltd., London, 1925, P.vi.

62 Conrad, Joseph, “Guy De Maupassant,” Notes on Life & Letters, The Gresham Publishing Co.

Ltd., London, 1925, p.27.

63 Conrad, Joseph, “Guy De Maupassant,” Notes on Life & Letters, The Gresham Publishing Co.

Ltd., London, 1925, p.30.

194

Chapter 10

64 Delillo, Don, White Noise, Penguin Books, New York, 1999.

65 Conrad, Joseph, “Amy Foster”, The Nigger of the Narcissus and Typhoon, (The Gresham

Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925) pp105-142.

66 Cole, Nat King, “Ramblin’ Rose”, Capitol Records, 1962.

67 Sibelius, Jean, Fifth symphony op. 82, 1915-1919.

68 Conrad, Joseph, Victory, (The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925) p. 397.

69 Ibid.

Chapter 11

70 Najder, Zdzislaw, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge,

Cambridge, 1983, p.40. 71 Ibid, p.42.

72 Ibid, p.46.

73 Ibid, p.43.

74 Conrad, John, Joseph Conrad: Times Remembered, University of Cambridge, Cambridge,

1981, p.152.

75 Najder, Zdzislaw, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge,

Cambridge, 1983, p.61.

76 Conrad, Joseph, “A Happy Wanderer” Notes On Life and Letters, The Gresham Publishing Co.

Ltd., London, 1925, p.63.

77 Ibid.

Chapter 12

78 Najder, Zdzislaw, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge,

Cambridge, 1983, p.521.

79 Ibid, p.14.

195

80 Ibid, p.210.

81 Ibid, p.10.

82 Stape, John, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad, William Heinemann, London, 2007, p.53.

83 Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.58.

84 Conrad, Joseph, The Shadow-Line, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.29.

85 Conrad, Joseph, The Secret Agent, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.260.

86 Ibid, p.37.

87 Conrad, Joseph, The Shadow-Line, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.49.

88 Baines, Jocelyn, Joseph Conrad: A Critical Biography, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1959, p.94.

89 Conrad, Joseph, “Geography and Some Explorers”, Last Essays, The Gresham Publishing Co.

Ltd., London, 1925, p.18.

90 Conrad, Jessie, “Memories of Joseph Conrad” The Blue Peter, Vol. x, No. 99, June 1930, p.304.

91 Ibid.

92 Najder, Zdzislaw, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge,

Cambridge, 1983, p.212.

93 Conrad, Joseph, The Secret Agent, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.42.

94 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, The World’s Contracted Thus,

McKenzie, J.A. and McKenzie, J.K. ( ed.), Heinemann Educational Australia, Victoria, 1986, p.145.

95 Conrad, Joseph, Nostromo, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.448.

Chapter 13

96 Najder, Zdzislaw, Joseph Conrad, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, Cambridge,

1983, p.118.

97 Ibid.

98 Najder, Zdzislaw, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge,

Cambridge, 1983, p.191.

196

99 Meyer, Bernard C, Joseph Conrad: A Psychoanalytic Biography, Princeton University

Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1970, p.110.

100 Ibid, p.115.

101 Ibid, p.203.

102 Stape, John, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad, William Heinemann, London, 2007, p.105.

103 Brodsky, G.W. Stephen, “Saint Roman: Memory, Myth and History in Joseph Conrad’s ‘Prince

Roman’”, In The Realms of Biography, Literature, Politics and Reception: Polish and East-Central

European Joseph Conrad, Boulder: East European Monographs; Lublin: Maria Curie-Sklodowska

UP; New York: Columbia UP, 2010. Vol 19 of Conrad: Eastern and Western Perspectives, Wieslaw

Krajka, (ed.), pp.57-59.

104 Nidesh Lawtoo, “Fear of the Dark: Mimeticism and Psychasthenia in The Nigger of the

“Narcissus”, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland, 2011.

105 Conrad, Joseph, “Prince Roman,” Tales of Hearsay and Last Essays, The Gresham

Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, pp. 39-43.

106 Summer, Donna, “Love To Love You Baby”, Love To Love You Baby, Written by Summer,

Donna; Moroder, Giorgio; Bellotte, Pete; Produced by Bellotte, Pete, Munich, May-June, 1975.

107 Najder, Zdzislaw, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge,

Cambridge, 1983, p.6.

108 Ibid, p.7

109 Meyer, Bernard C, Joseph Conrad: A Psychoanalytic Biography, Princeton University

Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1970, p.27.

110 Ibid.

111 Ibid, p.28

112 Najder, Zdzislaw, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge,

Melbourne, 1983, p.28.

113 Conrad, Joseph, “Poland Revisited” Notes on Life and Letters, The Gresham Publishing

Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p.172.

114 Najder, Zdzislaw, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge,

197

Cambridge, 1983) p.400.

115 Conrad, Joseph, The Secret Agent, The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, Ch.6.

198

Modes of Storytelling and Joseph Conrad

Till I began to write that novel I had written nothing but letters, and not very

many of these. I never made a note of a fact, of an impression or of an anecdote

in my life. The conception of a planned book was entirely outside my mental

range when I sat down to write; the ambition of being an author had never

turned up amongst these gracious imaginary existences one creates fondly for

oneself at times in the stillness and immobility of a day-dream: yet it stands

clear as the sun at noonday that from the moment I had done blackening over

the first manuscript page of “Almayer’s Folly” (it contained about two hundred

words and this proportion of words to a page has remained with me through the

fifteen years of my writing life), from the moment I had, in the simplicity of my

heart and the amazing ignorance of my mind, written that page the die was cast.

Never had Rubicon been more blindly forded, without invocation to the gods,

without fear of men.

Joseph Conrad1

1 J Conrad, Some Reminiscences, [1912], later renamed A Personal Record, [1919], The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, pp. 68-69.

199 I

Introduction

It is the loss of memory, not the cult of memory, that will make us

prisoners of the past.

Paolo Portoghesi2

“Conversations with the Prince of Russia” is, in part, a textual dialogue between a man and a woman. It exists as hope, memory, observation, recognition and email exchanges. These exchanges are a kind of conversation. The foundation of the conversation and the apparently incorporeal third member of the relationship is

Joseph Conrad, whose work is imaginatively central to the man and the woman.

Three distinct texts interlock in the novel: Josef’s story, of an international journalist and intelligence agent travelling the world, recovering from one fractured relationship and maintaining an increasingly intimate connection with a woman living in his home state of Western Australia; Jess’s story of a woman who maintains an emotionally supportive correspondence with Josef in which she comments upon her world, their shared literary interests and experiences; and the writing of Joseph Conrad which enables their imaginative and actual connection.

2 P Portoghesi, After Modern Architecture. (M. Shore, Trans.), Rizzoli, New York, 1982, p. 5.

200 Joseph Conrad, most commonly known for his work as a novelist, was born in

Berdyczów in the Ukraine on 3 December 18573 in a period of nationalistic fervour and idealism, following the invasion of Poland by Tsarist Russia.4 His father, Apollo, a Polish patriot and man of letters, was imprisoned by the Russian government and later exiled to Perm in the Urals and kept under constant police surveillance.5 Apollo’s wife, Evelina (Ewa) supported and shared his political sentiments.6 She was also exiled.7 Both parents died from tuberculosis, his mother when he was seven and his father when he was eleven.8 Conrad was left in the care of his grandmother and later his uncle Tadeusz. Conrad’s journey from fractured childhood to Polish gentleman-student; seafarer adventurer on

French ships out of Marseilles to British sailor and later Captain in the Merchant

Navy; Congo River boatman to, finally, a writer and renowned novelist of English prose, rendered him a man of multiple cultural identities and strong political and moral convictions.

To read his work is to appreciate his cultural and historical context, and his ability to tell a good tale. He deals with issues central to a contemporary reader’s mind: the problem of identity and national identification; the terror of the unknown; political violence and economic oppression; isolation and existential dread and, primarily, what it means to be a human being. His novels

3 Information taken from a document in the handwriting of Thadeus Bobrowski which is now in the Jagellon Library, Cracow and cited by J Baines, Joseph Conrad: A Critical Biography, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1959, p. 1. 4 Z Najder, “In The Shadow of Alien Ghosts: 1857-1874” in Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, H Carroll- Najder (trans) Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 1983, p. 11. 5 Ibid., p. 16. 6 Ibid., p. 17. 7 Ibid., p. 18. 8 Ibid., p. 28.

201 depict men engaging in adventure and journeys of self-awareness and discovery, and women seemingly silenced yet willing supporters of their men.

My creative work, “Conversations With The Prince Of Russia,” sympathetically parodies Conrad’s biographical and psychological material, his character types and narrative style in its depiction of two contemporary readers, their growing awareness of Conrad’s cultural context and with one another. Parody, according to Linda Hutcheon:

… is not the ridiculing imitation of the standard theories and definition

that are rooted in eighteenth-century theories of wit. The collective

weight of parodic practice suggests a redefinition of parody as repetition

with critical distance that allows ironic signaling of difference at the very

heart of similarity.9

My own fiction seeks to reflect Conrad’s experiences of place and draws attention to contextual similarities and differences. Furthermore, each central character comes to represent a multifaceted life journey. Conrad’s life, according to Meyer, consisted of at least five distinct and separate lives that may have belonged to five separate individuals:

a Polish gentleman-student; a seafaring adventurer on French ships out of

Marseille; a British sailor who, by dint of his labors, attained the rank of Captain

in the Merchant Navy; a Congo River boatman caught in the sordid history of

Belgian cupidity; and a lyrical master of English pose, the novelist Joseph

Conrad. 10

9 L Hutcheon, “The Politics of Postmodernism: Parody and History” in A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms, Methuen, New York, 1985, p. 185. 10 B Meyer, Joseph Conrad: A Psychoanalytic Biography, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1970, p. 3.

202 In “Conversations With The Prince of Russia” the first narrator, Josef, is of Polish heritage, a writer caught up in acts of espionage. The complexity of his life becomes known as the novel progresses. The second narrator, Jess, is a teacher, artist and traveller. Her correspondence with Josef parodies that of Conrad and

Marguerite Poradowska, who in turn provided the stimulus to Conrad’s depiction of the Intended in Heart of Darkness. Jess draws upon her reading of

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and the earlier writing of Almayer’s Folly, Nostromo,

The Secret Agent, Under Western Eyes and “The Shadow-Line.” The central concerns of Conrad’s writing inform the evaluation and, at times, reassessment of her life. Her narrative, portrayed through memory and emails, concerns a seemingly pedestrian domestic world.

My creative work seeks to sympathetically parody the technical innovations of

Joseph Conrad: the manner in which he draws upon historical cultural exchanges and his history; the employment of modes of storytelling; his method of first person narration which suggests a plurality of exchanges; his proclamations of the personal through letter writing and remembered conversations and the employment of motif as a textual link. “Conversations

With The Prince Of Russia” represents a contemporary Australian woman’s reading of the work of, and text that is, Joseph Conrad: how these intertextual conversations reference or inform the woman’s life. It also represents a man with common characteristics of Conradian male characters.

203

II

Cohesions Of Identity: Reality and Illusion

Works break through the boundaries of their own time, they live in centuries,

that is, in great time and frequently (with great works, always) their lives there

are more intense and fuller than are their lives within their own time…

Mikhail Bakhtin11

In his discussion of the novel, the Russian philosopher and literary theorist

Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) identifies the timelessness of a “great work” of literature; the way narratives from the past reflect and heighten an engagement and understanding of the present. My fiction “Conversations With The Prince of

Russia” pays homage to the work of Joseph Conrad, celebrates the writer in its title and affords his words significance in their elucidation of personal experience. The central characters make reference to Conrad’s life and writing as a means of enhancing their lives and common connections. Similarly, Conrad’s writing was influenced by stories of romanticism and patriotism of his forefathers, by the direct influence of his parents, Apollo and Ewa Korzeniowski.

11 M Bakhtin, “Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff” in M. M. Bakhtin, & C. A. Emerson (Ed.), Speech, Genres and Other Late Essays (V. W. McGee, Trans), University of Texas Press, Austin, 1986. p. 2.

204 Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski owes part of his name to his father,

Apollo’s, admiration for Adam Mickiewicz, the Polish Romantic poet. 12

Mickiewicz’s dramatic poem Dziady (The Forefathers’ Eve) features the hero

Gustaw, a young, self-centred and lonely poet who finds himself persecuted by

Russian authorities. Under such political scrutiny, his character and work are transformed. In recognition of his new values, the hero changes his name to

Konrad and according to Najder in Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, “becomes a romantic patriot, a poetic spokesman for his oppressed people.”13 Perhaps taking the tradition of Polish romantic poetry a step further, Apollo penned his own poem to his son, “To My Son Born in the 85th Year of Muscovite Oppression,

A Song For the Day of His Christening.”14 The poem reads:

(…)

Baby son, sleep… let Holy Water flow

On your soul, on your forehead;

Heaven and Godliness surround you…

Bless you, my little son:

Be a Pole! Though foes

May spread before you

A web of happiness,

Renounce it – love your poverty.

Hushaby, my baby son!

(…)

12 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 10. 13 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 11. 14 Ibid., p. 11.

205 Baby son, tell yourself

You are without land, without love,

Without country, without people,

While Poland – your Mother is entombed.

(….)

The time will come, the days will pass,

This thought will make your courage grow,

Give her – and yourself – Immortality.

Hushaby, my baby son!15

It is difficult to imagine such fervent expressions of patriotism giving a child a sense of peace. This is no lullaby. The poem becomes a call to the growth of nationalistic fervor, a sense that such expressions are inevitable for this child.

Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski was born in the Ukraine, of Polish heritage, a literary “prince” in the culturally wrong nation.16 His father’s words suggest the infant Conrad will be alone in the world and will have to rely on himself and his

“motherland” for spiritual sustenance. Najder, in Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle comments on the austerity of the poem:

There is nothing in the poem about the warmth of the family hearth, only about

the bitterness of captivity; nothing about happiness, only about the ability to

bear suffering; and nothing about education or work, only about unrelenting

fidelity and struggle. 17

Apollo Korzeniowski’s poem to his son on his christening is prophetic, given the

15 Najder, “Notes” in Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 499. 16 Najder, p. 10. 17 Ibid., p. 11.

206 early death of Conrad’s mother, Ewa on 18 April 186518 and his own death, in

Kracow, from tuberculosis, on 23 May 1869.19

In the twelve years in which Joseph Conrad lived with his parents, he was raised within a political atmosphere, concerned with Polish independence from

Russia. 20 His parents’ meditation on the Polish situation turned to active participation in their endeavours to politically educate the Polish peasantry.21

Apollo Korzeniowski wrote poetry and translated the work of others.22 He became a worker and shareholder of a publishing company that was shut down by Russian authorities.23 His writing output decreased and he became more involved with politics.24 In 1861, he moved to Warsaw in support of the Polish resistance movement. This movement consisted of two factions: the “Whites” were a conservative group who favoured negotiation with Russia to grant the

Polish demands, and the “Reds” mainly students and intellectuals who favoured open opposition to Russian authority. Apollo supported the “Reds”.25 In October

1861, Apollo was joined by his wife and young son. Ewa and Apollo

Korzeniowski offered their flat at Nowy Swiat 45 for the first meeting of the underground Committtee of the Movement. Joseph Conrad, in A Personal Record, recalled the Committee:

Its first meetings were held in our Warsaw house, of which all I remember

distinctly is one room, white and crimson, probably the drawing-room. In one of

18 T Bobrowski , “The Document” in Conrad’s Polish Background, Z Najder (ed), H Carroll (trans), Oxford University Press, New York, 1964, p. 185. 19 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 27. 20 Ibid., p. 29. 21 Baines, p. 7. 22 Ibid., p. 7. 23 Ibid., p. 7. 24 Ibid., p. 10. 25 Ibid., p. 10.

207 its walls there was the loftiest of all archways. Where it led to remains a

mystery; but to this day I cannot get rid of the belief that all this was of

enormous proportions, and that the people appearing and disappearing in that

immense space were beyond the usual stature of mankind as I got to know it in

later life. 26

Apollo Korzeniowski was arrested and imprisoned for six months in the Warsaw

Citadel, three days after the first meeting. He and Ewa faced a military tribunal on 9 May and were exiled to Vologda in North East Russia where they took up residence. 27 Apollo Korzeniowski was to write to his cousins, Gabriela and Jan

Zagórski:

What is Vologda? ... Vologda is a huge quagmire stretching over three versts, cut

up with parallel and intersecting lines of wooded footbridges, all rotten and

shaky under one’s feet: this is the only means of communication for the local

people… A year here has two seasons: white winter and green winter. The white

winter lasts nine and a half months, the green winter two and a half. Now is the

beginning of the green winter: it has been raining continually for 21 days and it

will do so till the end…. Apart from us there are men from 1830, 1846 and

1848… for them our arrival was like a few drops of water fallen on quick-lime….

Anyway we do not regard exile as a punishment but as a new way of serving our

country. There can be no punishment for us since we are innocent…. Our serene

faces, proud bearing and defiant eye cause great wonder here…. So do not pity

26 J Conrad, A Personal Record, p. x. 27 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle. According to Najder: “the fact that Ewa Korzeniowska had also been sentenced to exile was disclosed by Rafal Bluth in his article, “O tragicznej decyzji krakowskiej Konrada Korzeniowskiego,” Verbum, no. 2 (1936). Bobrowski ascribes the leniency of the verdict to the fact that the investigating commission was headed by Colonel E. Rozhnov, an army friend of Stansilaw Bobrowski.” Apollo and Ewa Korzeniowski were exiled under strict police supervision to the Perm province and later transported to the city of Vologda. p. 16.

208 us and do not think of us as martyrs. 28

Apollo Korzeniowski has a calm sense of righteousness and place. It is difficult to not associate Apollo Korzeniowski with Adam Mickiewicz’s young hero, Gustaw, to see Apollo as imitating the life of the fictional spokesman for an oppressed people. However, his life was short and his political influence was negligible, aside from his influence on the politics of his son.

On the death of his father, Conrad was put under the guardianship of his grandmother and his mother’s brother, Tadeusz Bobrowski.29 Bobrowski was highly critical of the politically active life led by the Korzeniowskis and was intent on influencing the young Conrad to a more pragmatic view of life, to resignation and duty, stoic endurance.30 According to Najder in Conrad's Polish

Background: Letters to and from Polish Friends, Bobrowski wrote in a letter to his nephew, 26 October/7 November 1879:

… please bear in mind the bad effect land has on you and keep me constantly

and steadily in your heart. As far as the idea of sailing the Mediterranean is

concerned I answer as usual – do as you think! As you wish! I have no

knowledge of it. I have read more than once that it is only ‘a great lake’, so a

sailor enamoured as you are of your profession I suppose might like the ocean

better? Besides, as I have mentioned before, I would like to see in you a sailor

combined with a salesman, and as the roads around here are better trodden and

known, I should have thought that the more distant and less known ones would

28 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p.17. 29 Baines, Joseph Conrad: A Critical Biography, Ch1, “Polish Years” p.25. 30 Z Najder (ed), “Tadeusz Bobrowski’s Letters to Conrad” in Conrad's Polish Background: Letters to and from Polish Friends. Bobrowski wrote in a letter to Conrad 28 October/9 November 1891, of his motto usque ad finem, the devotion to duty “according to circumstances and time.” p.155.

209 be more appropriate for you…31

In this, Bobrowski appeals to the adventurer in his nephew. He considers the experiences offered to a young man working on land to those offered by an engagement at sea. He demonstrates his faith in, and support of, his nephew’s choice of profession. Conrad’s melancholic letters, describing his ill health, a month spent in hospital and an inability to get a job on his return from the

Congo,32 disturbed Bobrowski. He urged his nephew to help the doctors “by not yielding to lassitude or depression – for as you say: le moral réagit sur la physique.”(sic) 33 Bobrowski continued to offer moral support. He wrote in another letter, dated 28 October/9 November 1891:

Both in you as an individual and in what you have inherited from your parents I

detect the dreamer – in spite of your very practical profession – perhaps

because of it? ... You will never control the forces of nature, for whether blind or

governed by Providence, in each case they have their own pre-ordained paths;

and you will also never change the roads along which humanity goes, for there

exists in social development an historical evolutionary compulsion which is

slow but sure, and which is governed by the laws of cause and effect derived

from the past and affecting the future… 34

In an indirect criticism of Conrad’s father and in an effort to persuade Conrad to a more pragmatic view of life and the practicalities of work, Bobrowski stresses resignation and acceptance of the world as it is and one’s place within it: the

31 Ibid., p. 58. 32 Najder, in Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 144: “After his stay in the Congo, Korzeniowski’s letters to Poradowska… acquire a stronger tone of gloomy affectation.” In April 1891, Conrad wrote to Marguerite Poradowska: “I see everything with such discouragement – everything in black. My nerves have completely gone to pieces,” Lettres, Rapin, p.83. 33 Najder, in Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 144, cites letter from Bobrowski to Korzeniowski, 24 March 1891, reply to letter of 5 March 1891. 34 Ibid., p.152.

210 importance of duty and a sound work ethic.35 Given the polarities of ideologies of his father and then his maternal uncle/benefactor, it is hardly surprising that

Joseph Conrad would develop “deep skepticism, frequently tinged with pessimism. Believing in the necessity for dreams and ideals, and knowing them to be illusions.”36 This conflict comes to be a central concern within Conrad’s writing , often manifested in the conflict between dream and nightmare, illusion and the horror of reality, as notably depicted in The Secret Agent. Winnie

Verloc’s love and support for her husband dissipates when she learns of his terrorist activities and especially when she learns that he killed her brother.

Similarly, in Heart of Darkness, Marlow’s dream of adventure in Africa turns to a voyage of nightmarish proportions as he reacts to the horrors associated with colonial enterprise.

A central issue in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is the conflict between reality and illusion and the psychological impact of truths and lies on individual characters. The frame narrator employs the language of illusion and dreams, perhaps the only language available to him, to offer an introduction to Marlow’s method of storytelling:

The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies

within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity

to spin yarns be excepted) and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside

like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow

brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that, sometimes, are

35 Najder, Conrad’s Polish Background, p. 154. 36 Najder, Conrad’s Polish Background, p.19.

211 made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine. 37

Conrad has purposely avoided a direct narration, as though the horror of

Marlow’s experiences will hardly be believed if they are not filtered through a narrator whose storytelling is identified as hazy. There is a sense the frame narrator has been captivated by Marlow’s tales in the past, and that he is creating the anticipation of a similar experience. He is also distancing himself from the veracity of the story, which may be like “moonshine” – that is, unreliable. This distancing is ironic. The frame narrator’s description of

Marlow’s stories best introduces the reader to one of his “inconclusive experiences.” According to Najder:

Marlow’s artistic and literary origins and the general problem of “a story within

a story” have attracted much attention. Polish critics have pointed, quite justly,

at the affinity between this particular convention and the gawęda (“yarn”), a

very popular genre in Poland; thus the Polish tradition was perhaps singularly

conducive to Conrad’s development of this particular form of narrative… 38

Marlow, who tells the story of colonial horror that is the Heart of Darkness, undercuts the illusion of a contented, unblemished and surreal atmosphere established by the frame narrator with, “And this also… has been one of the dark places of the earth.”39 The reader is encouraged to stand back, to re-assess an understanding in the light of Marlow’s recollections and experiences: the illusion of altruism offered by the Company, a common belief in duty to one’s country; an acceptance of the world as it is and one’s place within that world.

37 J Conrad, “Heart of Darkness” in Youth A Narrative and Two Other Stories [1902], The Gresham Publishing Company Ltd., London, 1925, pp. 43-162.

38 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 230. 39 Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”, p. 48.

212 Marlow’s tale of horrifying disillusionment details the experience of being duped by colonialism and morally compromised. Sitting cross-legged in the pose of Buddha, and confessing to others on board the Nellie his part in furthering the illusion of Kurtz as an honourable and praiseworthy man, of knowingly maintaining the imperial conspiracy, and manipulating truth for personal gain,

Marlow absolves himself of guilt in the Company’s African affairs and positions himself as culturally “other” in the sense he does not condone the imperialist enterprise in Africa and he is no longer deluded by the illusion that it is in the interests of Africa’s indigenous population.

Perhaps a central concern for Heart of Darkness is the means by which

Conrad relieves Marlow’s story of its illusory quality. It is an experience recounted and reflected upon from some distance, away from Africa and central

Europe, away from the proximity of Kurtz’ Intended, albeit within a dreamlike atmosphere. James Guetti defines Marlow’s final reality as “a state of suspension between the disciplined world of mind and language and the world of essences at the centre of experience.”40 Unlike the dismissive reaction of others on board, lulled almost to sleep by Marlow’s story of unbelievable events, the frame narrator’s response is one of growing awareness of the physicality of the storyteller and his authority to tell the tale. Marlow’s story, like the gawęda, is a parable commenting upon the excesses of colonialism and human tendency towards self-endangering corruptibility. This is the standard critical interpretation. Conrad uses the story within a story method of narration to fictionalise and elaborate upon his experiences within the Congo Free State. The

40 J Guetti, "Heart of Darkness: The Failure of Imagination" in H. Bloom, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Modern Critical Interpretations, Chelsea House Publishing, New York, 1987, p. 27.

213 frame narrator, the ordering consciousness of the narrative voice, offers a formal dialectic of home, of London, (patria) and the primary narrator, Marlow, offers a dialectic of elsewhere, (herotopia).41 Marlow’s experience of elsewhere, firstly the company’s offices in Europe but most notably Africa, functions as a listener/reader re-evaluation of concerns regarding the Victorian era, and the progress of so-called civilisation. Conrad’s adventure story and his modes of storytelling reflect Bakhtin’s ideas on the fluidity of semantic phenomena across ages: “Works break through … etc.”42 What has “broken through” in Heart of

Darkness is an atrocity story which is self-consciously illusory, and the illusion does not blunt the force of the political critique.

The oscillation between reality and illusion permeates my creative work,

“Conversations With the Prince of Russia.” Through the use of first person narrative and the adoption of the epistolary style of writing in personal letters and emails, Jess recollects and writes of literal dreams and hopes for the future; her memories capture her past and the history of others. In her expression of the everyday, there’s a sense of suburban existence, of people in ordinary and unexceptional circumstances. These expressions are tinged with reverie and illusion, the embroidering of reality in order to deal with mundane life and the longing for something different. Josef Kozak speaks of his current circumstances, his relationship with women and his occupation as a journalist. He likes stories, recalls them, re-writes them and lures Jess with a few tales, alluded to in Chapter

41 G Gasyna, Polish, Hybrid, and Otherwise: Exilic Discourse in Joseph Conrad and Witold Gombrowicz, Continuum International Publlishing Group, New York, 2011, p. 167.

42 Bakhtin, "Response to a Question from the "Novy Mir" Editorial Staff", p.2.

214 1 with: “A storyteller lets information slip out, like a rope, a line, into water.” The confessional first person narrative accounts create the sense that he is a man of integrity. Conrad’s seamanship, travel writing and his liking for adventure yarns become characterisation markers of the central male character, Josef Kozak. He is an experienced recreational sailor, he is a writer of political articles and travel stories and he is wary of women. His name and characterisation sympathetically parodies that of Conrad and his fictional heroes, in an intertextual narrative strategy. However, Kozak is also involved in intelligence work, and his subterfuges posthumously destroy his fiancé’s trust in his veracity.

In “Conversations With the Prince of Russia” Josef Kozak imitates

Conrad’s male characters: he is adventurous, he has an affinity with the sea and an enigmatic disposition. His first person accounts of experiences in foreign countries and his revelations of personal relationships position him to be, like

Marlow, a man of truth, in a compromising situation. However, he is not a disparaging parody of Conrad, just a less grandiose version of a Conradian type.

215

III

Generic Influences On Conrad: The Continuity of Cultural

Discourse

Shakespeare, like any artist, constructed his works not out of inanimate

elements, not out of bricks, but out of forms that were already heavily laden

with meaning, filled with it.

Mikhail Bakhtin43

Bakhtin argued in favour of the continuity of a cultural discourse through the appropriation of generic forms from a cultural past, and his ideas are supported by a discussion of the works of Joseph Conrad. Conrad was a writer with exceptional cultural and quotidian experiences. His English affiliation is complicated by his Polish heritage and its distinctive modes of narration. Forms of Polish story telling familiar to Conrad were the gawęda, meaning a yarn, story,

43 Bakhtin, "Response to a Question from the "Novy Mir" Editorial Staff", p. 5.

216 chat or gossip, and the skaz narrative.44 The gawęda belongs to the Polish baroque narrative genre that, according to Gasyna in Polish, Hybrid, and

Otherwise: Exilic Discourse in Joseph Conrad and Witold Gombrowicz, relies heavily on an “impression of unmediated orality which likens the resulting text to a dramatic performance.” Conrad’s ability to tell a story, even as a young boy, was recalled by Konstanty Buszczynski who said he: “had a habit of spinning fantastic yarns, whose action always took place at sea and was presented so realistically that the listeners thought it was happening before their eyes.”45

Gasyna defines skaz as follows:

Skaz narration is characterized as a written, often parodic genre, in which the

narrator is “not in control” of a work which is being created “in process… and

without revisions.” The similarity with gawęda is reinforced in the stipulation

that, even though a written genre, skaz is nonetheless most often (but not

always, depending on whether the value of the utterance is parodic, as well as

on the specific subject being parodied) oriented toward the “idiosyncrasies” of

orality, dialects, and stylization in particular.46

Both narrative forms, gawęda and skaz, endeavor to capture the speech of the common people. The storyteller is, as Gasyna quotes Bakhtin: “not a literary person (but) belongs in most cases to the lower social strata.”47 It could be argued that the fiction of Joseph Conrad, re-telling his life and others’ experiences through the person of a commoner, usually another seaman, utilizes and even parodies other, older European methods of storytelling.

In his short story “Prince Roman” Conrad rewrote the tale of the

44 Gasyna, p.159. 45 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 34, cites K. Buszcynski’s recollections included in: G.P. Putnam, “Conrad in Cracow,” Outlook, 3,March 1920. 46 Gasyna, p. 156. 47 Ibid., p. 156.

217 historical Prince Roman Sanguszko, sending him off on a noble pilgrimage.

Conrad used Sanguszko as a metaphor for the Polish experience: an icon of the sacred Polish-Lithuanian Union of 1569. In the story, the frame narrator is involved in a discussion about patriotism that eventually leads to a discussion of the aristocracy. A participant in the discussion recalls innocent childhood pursuits as an eight-year old boy staying with his cousin at his uncle’s house in the southern provinces. He remembers another house guest who arrived in lavish fashion, during the night:

My little cousin and I had no knowledge of trains and engines, except from

picture-books, as of things rather vague, extremely remote, and not particularly

interesting unless to grown-ups who travelled abroad. 48

The guest has experiences beyond those of simple children. Perhaps this comes to stand as a metaphor to common folk, the poorer, less travelled and worldly.

The speaker reiterates:

Our notion of princes, perhaps a little more precise, was mainly literary and had

a glamour reflected from the light of fairy tales, in which princes always appear

young, charming, heroic, and fortunate. Yet, as well as any other children, we

could draw a firm line between the real and the ideal.49

The Prince is elderly and, surprisingly, speaks of serving with the child’s grandfather in the thirty-one uprising, which led to the ceding of all Ruthenian lands to the kingdom of Poland. 50 Conrad employs the layered narrative

48 J Conrad, “Prince Roman” in Tales of Hearsay and Last Essays, [1914], The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd., London, 1925, p. 32. 49 Ibid., p. 33. 50 S Brodsky, "Saint Roman: Memory, Myth and History in Joseph Conrad's Prince Roman" in In The Realms of Biography, Literature, Poliics and Reception: Polish and East-Central European Joseph Conrad, Wieslaw Krajka (ed). Vol. 19, Columbia University Press, New York, 1992 pp 35- 36. According to Brodsky, The union of Ruthenian lands resulted in Prince Roman’s descendants becoming Polish nobles. The Ruthenian nobility’s survival had meant eventual assimilation; and history was repeating itself in the nineteenth century.

218 technique associated with the gawęda and the skaz to weave a tale of fantasy, using the recalled words of a nobleman as perceived by a commoner, carrying with it an underlying political comment.

The short story “Prince Roman” reflects Bakhtin’s idea of semantic phenomena existing across ages and functioning in a cultural context. According to Wieslaw Krajka:

The historical Prince Roman Sanguszko simply did not take part in the

Lithuanian campaign; and Conrad could hardly have misunderstood something

he had been told about Sanguszko marching north with the army […] The

question presents itself, then, as to Conrad’s motive in fictionalizing not only

Prince Roman Sanguszko, but also much of his fiction’s historical frame.51

Conrad’s multi-voiced narrative promotes the illusion of a heroic nobleman, fighting alongside his countrymen for the freedom of Polish people. The narrator remembers the Prince as a common man:

… who was deaf, bald, meager, and so prodigiously old. It never occurred to me

that this imposing and disappointing man had been young, rich, beautiful; I

could not know that he had been happy in the felicity of an ideal marriage

uniting two young hearts, two great names and two great fortunes; happy with a

happiness which, as in fairy tales, seemed destined to last for ever…. 52

The story takes on a moralistic tone as the Prince, once an aristocrat and then a soldier, wanders the countryside, a broken man who has suffered the death of his family and incarceration in the Siberian salt mines for his role in the national uprising:

The peasants working in the fields, the great unhedged fields, looked after him

51 W Krajka, "In the Realms of Biography, Literature, Politics and Reception: Polish and Eaas- Central European Joseph Conrad" in Conrad: Eastern and Western Perspectives, W. Krajka (ed), 2010, p. 57. 52 J Conrad, “Prince Roman”, p. 35.

219 from the distance, and sometimes some sympathetic old woman on the

threshold of a low, thatched hut was moved to make the sign of the cross in the

air behind his back; as though he were one of themselves, a simple village soul

struck by a sore affliction. 53

Conrad portrays the returned Prince as a man who has faced the darkness of familial and national bereavement, a man “for whom the soundless world is like an abode of silent shades.” 54 The secondary narrator recalls the old man’s words years later, as though prophetic: “I ask you because, you see, my daughter and my son-in-law don’t believe me to be a good judge of men. They think that I let myself be guided too much by mere sentiment.” 55 According to Jocelyn Baines,

Conrad’s “Prince Roman”:

is a moving tribute to the ideals of honour, service, and patriotism of a Polish

aristocrat; qualities which Conrad admired, above all, when they were untainted

by ‘vulgar refinement’. 56

Conrad’s story within a story comes to represent what Bakhtin refers to as a genre or semantic phenomena “already heavily laden with meaning.” Like the gawęda and skaz, Conrad’s short story functions as a moral tale that celebrates the positive qualities of integrity and selfless endeavour.

In “Conversations With the Prince of Russia” the central character, Jess, travels to Poland to follow the footsteps of Prince Roman and compare the authenticity of Conrad’s re-worked narrative with the collected historicity surrounding the authentic Polish nobleman:

53 Ibid., p. 37. 54 Conrad, “Prince Roman”, p. 55. 55 Ibid., p. 55. 56 Baines, p. 374.

220 I arrive at the Sanguszko Palace, the place where the central character in the

short story left for the war. It’s quite grand. I stand with others in a large and

ornate room with chandeliers illuminating a painting on a wall of Prince Roman,

resplendent in fur trimmed long red cape and leather, thigh length boots.57

Jess’s perception of the painted Prince Roman is influenced by the details of

Conrad’s story. In her journey, Jess comes to learn more of the early life of

Joseph Conrad and his cultural background, issues that may have had an impact on his narrative, which are, in turn, embedded in hers.

When Conrad explores the way that stories interlock and may be said to converse, through a commonality of theme, subject matter or character experience; through reader identification with a character, setting or event; he sets up a deliberate exchange of story. In Heart of Darkness the frame narrator introduces those on board the Nellie through their occupation. Marlow appears to be marginalized because of his seemingly common occupation as a seaman, his direct experiences of the sea and his articulation of the effects imperialism has had on the African people. The frame narrator says of Marlow: “The worst that could be said of him was that he did not represent his class.”58 This otherness, this distancing from working class seaman, gives him entrée to the world of management of the commercial enterprise. He is further rendered atypical because he is also a wanderer on land. Marlow’s stance as enlightened

“Buddha,” sitting cross-legged on board the ship, with arms outstretched as he considers the reality of the “civilising” enterprise all on board are part of, acts to further distance him from the casual poses of others. The Director of Companies

57 Lorraine O’Brien, “Conversations with the Prince of Russia”, PhD Thesis, University of Western Australia, 2014, p. 172. 58 Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”, p. 48.

221 “stood in the bows looking to seaward”59 as though in contemplation of further enterprises. The aged Lawyer who represents the justice of colonial enterprise rested on “the only cushion on deck, and was lying on the only rug”60 and the

Accountant, who embodies the fiscal backbone of European society and the infatuation with capital gain at the time, was “toying architecturally”61 with dominoes. Each character seems to be immersed in their own narrative yet the frame narrator leaves his description of others, of the setting and the “venerable stream”62 to afford Marlow some consideration and scrutiny. He describes

Marlow as someone isolated and unworldly and states: “For a long time already he, sitting apart, had been no more to us than a voice.” It is as though Marlow’s tales or yarns have been the focus of others, rather than the substance of the storyteller himself.

The narrative forms of skaz and gawęda facilitate a story within a story, often with a narrator recalling another character who tells his story or recollection of a specific event. The internal narrative may be told in a manner that replicates the yarn in its colloquial diction and ease of telling. According to Najder:

Tale-tellers had appeared earlier in Conrad’s works – in “The lagoon” and

“Karain.” But stories put in the mouths of Malays, whom Conrad did not know

too well, could have but a limited subject range and had, perforce, to have been

exotic. 63

Distancing the narratives of the exotic from those of mainstream society could

59 Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”, p. 45. 60 Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”, p. 46. 61 Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”, p. 46. 62 Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”, p. 47. 63 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 230.

222 be a method for Conrad to voice personal concerns in an abstract manner. In a discussion of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Najder states:

Marlow functions as a more direct expression of the preoccupation with writing

as the voice of memory that informs most of Conrad’s earlier fiction. In this

respect Heart of Darkness formally harks back to that most ancient of the forms

of storytelling which begins “I remember”; and Conrad may have been

influenced by a traditional Polish form of such tales, the gawęda, which is told by

a clearly defined narrator, and is usually of a retrospective nature. 64

Jocelyn Baines lends further credence to the idea that Conrad wrote from memory. He states:

Conrad at first thought of entitling his projected collection of short stories,

which would include “Youth” and Heart of Darkness, “Tales from Memory,”

because he wished “to convey the notion of something lived through and

remembered.” 65

Conrad attests to the relevance of direct experience for the writer when he writes of Heart of Darkness in his “Author’s Note”:

This story, and one other, not in this volume, are all the spoil I brought out from

the centre of Africa, where, really I had no sort of business… I won’t characterize

the mood precisely, but anybody can see that it is anything but the mood of

wistful regret, of reminiscent tenderness. 66

Conrad’s well-documented experiences in the Congo, his horror of the atrocities perpetuated under the guise of imperialist good intentions, are represented in his depiction of Marlow as a character whose outlook and self-perception have

64 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 16-17. 65 Baines, p. 55. 66 Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”, p. xi.

223 been sharpened through his engagement in Africa. In a comparison of the use of memory in the writing of Youth and Heart of Darkness, Conrad states:

“Heart of Darkness” is experience, too; but it is experience pushed a little (and

only very little) beyond the actual facts of the case for the perfectly legitimate, I

believe, purpose of bringing it home to the minds and bosoms of the readers.

There it was no longer a matter of sincere colouring. It was like another art

altogether. 67

This “art,” not new but a continuation of the gawęda narrative form, sought to capture shades of sensory response, to offer verbal hints to, and impressions of, experiences unforeseen and indescribable. Conrad hoped the narrative would offer, “a continued vibration that… would hang in the air and dwell on the ear after the last note had been struck.” 68 Such a narrative should continue across time.

In Heart of Darkness, Conrad’s Charlie Marlow functions as interlocuter between characters on board the Nellie and the reader, drawing upon past narrative forms and recalling personal experience for the entertainment and edification of a group of listeners. Ian Watt states:

Conrad smuggled in the ancient privilege of the narrator by the backdoor, and

surreptitiously reclaimed some of the omniscient author’s ancient rights to the

direct expression of the wisdom of hindsight. 69

Retrospective narration, one of the oldest forms of narrative, as present in the gawęda and skaz forms, offered Conrad an intimacy of communication one associates with the implied truthfulness of recollected experience.

67 Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”, p. xi. 68 Ibid. 69 I Watt, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, Chatto & Windus, London, 1980, p. 212.

224

The story within a story format has been utilized in “Conversations With the

Prince of Russia,” in order to fragment the narrative, increasing suspense, and promote a sense of the conversational or to capture the shifting nature of thought processes, however, the filters of focalisers, Jess and Josef, also serve to offer differing points of view to a common and shared experience. Whilst perceptions of shared experience appear to differ for the central characters, it is the articulation of emotional response and significance of place that situates the characters as different.

Communication between Jess and Josef becomes a focus for the narrative and facilitates the relationship between the characters. It also acts to contrast

Watt’s general concern with Heart of Darkness, as the “breakdown in society’s modes of reciprocity.”70 Where Marlow finds communication difficult due to

“invisible barriers of egoism, indifference, misunderstanding, insensitivity and suspicion,” or “a boundless admiration for Kurtz (that) infects them all,”71 the central character of Jess in “Conversations With the Prince of Russia,” initially constructed as a contrast to Kurtz’s Intended, finds communication reciprocated.

The intersecting of personal narratives reinforces the familiarity and intimacy between Jess and Josef. The gawęda genre is accommodated in my fiction as each main character reflects on past narratives of travel and adventure, domestic dramas and recollections of family histories: narratives that act as scaffolds to their contemporaneous present.

70 Watt, p. 245. 71 Ibid.

225

IV

Conversations and Letters: Irony and Parody

Irony has penetrated all languages of modern times (especially French); it has

penetrated into all words and forms (especially syntactic; for example irony has

destroyed the cumbersome “high flown” periodicity of speech). Irony is

everywhere – from the minimal and imperceptible, to the loud, which borders

on laughter. Modern man does not proclaim, he speaks. That is, he speaks with

reservations.

M.M. Bakhtin72

Bakhtin’s concept of language and individual acts of communication is resolutely social. It relies on the interpersonal context for meaning and is sensitive to differences of power. Language is dialogic; it is inherently conversational.73

Bakhtin’s ideas are in accord with Conrad’s use of language, primarily his use of first person narrative and the way he expresses the personal in order to reflect a tension between appearance and reality.

72 M Bakhtin, “Notes Made in 1970-71” in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, Emerson, & M. Holquist (eds.), V. W. McGee, (trans.), University of Texas Press, Austin, 1987, p. 132. 73 Ibid.

226 As the gawęda and skaz narratives became the stories from the past, relayed from one narrator to another and the story itself became differentiated through the historical context and manner of its telling, so Conrad chose to write of his adventures as though experienced by another re-worked and fictionalized protagonist. He wrote belated introductions to his narratives that serve to place events within his history, to lend the fiction veracity, and offer a proclamation of authenticity that works as an introduction or building block for his novels.

Conrad’s “Author’s Notes” which preface all his books, both reinforce and parody the aesthetic of sincerity encouraged by the use of first person narrative point of view. In the “Author’s Note” to The Mirror of the Sea written in 1919, thirteen years after the collection was first published, Conrad states:

Less perhaps than any other book written by me, or anybody else, does this

volume require a preface. Yet since all the others including even the “Personal

Record,” which is but a fragment of biography, are to have their Author’s Notes I

cannot possibly leave this one without, lest a false impression of indifference or

weariness should be created… I am, however, bound to proceed from a sense of

duty… For this book is a very intimate revelation; and what that is revealing can

a few more pages add to some three hundred others of most sincere

disclosures? 74

The intimate revelations of The Mirror of the Sea and A Personal Record were captured on a Dictaphone. Portions of A Personal Record were transcribed by

Conrad’s close friend and collaborator, Ford Maddox Hueffer.75 According to

Meyer, Hueffer remembers Conrad as exclaiming after one of their

74 J. Conrad, “Author’s Notes” in The Mirror of the Sea – Memories and Impressions [1906], The Gresham Publishing Company Ltd., London, 1925, p. ix. 75 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle p. 343.

227 collaborations, “By Jove, it’s a third person who is writing!”76 Their combined efforts realized some of Conrad’s greatest literary achievements: The Mirror of the Sea, Nostromo, The Secret Agent and A Personal Record.77

In the “Author’s Notes” it is almost as though Conrad re-wrote his life experiences in order to re-order events, make sense of them and re-claim his experience, in ordered form, in writing. In the “Author’s Notes” to The Mirror of the Sea he wrote:

…this book written in perfect sincerity holds back nothing – unless the mere

bodily presence of the writer. Within these pages I make a full confession not of

my sins but of my emotions. It is the best tribute my piety can offer to the

ultimate shapers of my character, convictions, and, in a sense, destiny – to the

imperishable sea, to the ships that are no more, and to the simple men who have

had their day. 78

The first person narrators of each narrative are not as complex perhaps as

Conrad but certainly rounded characters, with personal qualities associated with a sense of duty, moral purpose, a concern for one’s fellow human beings and an admiration and love of the sea.

In the “Author’s Note” to A Personal Record, written in 1919, Conrad comments on the importance he places on the personal friendships of Sir Hugh

Clifford and Cunningham Graham: “These friendships which have endured to this day I count amongst my precious possessions.” 79 It is interesting to note that the collaboration with Ford Maddox Hueffer receives no recognition in the

76 Meyer, p. 152. 77 Baines, p. 272. In an undated letter from Conrad to Hueffer, Conrad states: “It is a fact I work better in your home, in touch with your sympathy.” 78 Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea – Memories and Impressions, p. xii. 79 Conrad, A Personal Record, p. vi.

228 “Author’s Note” and perhaps this is due to the collapse of their friendship in

1909, ten years earlier. Hueffer is generally regarded as editing Conrad’s prose and revising his awkward use of the English language. Hueffer published an account of his contributions to Conrad’s writing of “Heart of Darkness,” Lord Jim,

Typhoon, Nostromo, The Secret Agent, A Personal Record, The Secret Sharer and

Under Western Eyes and other shorter works including “Amy Foster” in his A

Personal Remembrance. Whilst Hueffer was denounced as a “pathological liar”,

“a fat patronizing slug upon the Conradian lettuce” and “a megalomaniac with systematized delusions of grandeur,” 80 Jessie Conrad in Conrad and His Circle stated:

The Mirror of the Sea owes a great deal to (Hueffer’s) ready and patient

assistance – not perhaps to the actual writing, but that book would never have

come into being if Joseph Conrad had had no intelligent person with whom to

talk over these intimate reminiscences. 81

Conrad distances himself from Hueffer’s moral and financial assistance by claiming intellectual ownership of his work through its expressions of his imagination and experiences. In A Personal Record he writes:

Only in men’s imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable

existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life. An

imaginative and exact rendering of authentic memories may serve worthily that

spirit of piety towards all things human which sanctions the conceptions of a

writer of tales, and the emotions of the man reviewing his own experience. 82

80 Meyer, p. 151. 81 Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad And His Circle, London, 1935, p. 87. 82 Conrad, A Personal Record, p. 25.

229 Conrad’s “Author’s Notes”, written in first person narrative and published years after the initial publications of the main texts, claim sole ownership of the text to follow. In a seemingly sincere manner Conrad converses with his readers, drawing attention to his adventures and historicity, and distancing himself from the narratives of others that may impinge upon his claims to authorship and authenticity.

The “Author’s Notes” act in a political manner and are a conscious attempt to lay claim to authentic experience. These experiences are further established in his personal letters and narratives. Conrad’s engagement with an attempt by Martial Bourdin to bomb the Observatory in Greenwich Park on 15

February 1894 is represented in The Secret Agent. Conrad wrote to his publisher,

Algernon Methuen:

I confess that in my eyes the story is a fairly successful (and sincere) piece of

ironic treatment applied to a special subject – a sensational subject if one likes

to call it so. And it is based on the inside knowledge of a certain event in the

history of active social or philosophical intention. It is, I humbly hope, not

devoid of artistic value. It may even have some moral significance.83

Conrad was able to represent the ideological perspective of an anarchist, not only by drawing upon the lives of members of his family; his father, Apollo

Korzeniowski, a Polish nationalist, and his Uncle Stefan who was chief of the underground Left in the 1863 Insurrection; but through his close association with R.B. Cunninghame Graham, in the period 1897-1907. 84 In his essay,

“Contexts for The Secret Agent, with a Letter from R.B. Cunninghame Graham to

H.B. Samuels,” Cedric Watts states:

83 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 324 Conrad to Methuen, 7 November 1906. 84 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 209.

230 Cunninghame Graham had extensive political knowledge, and in particular,

knowledge of left-wing, Socialist, Marxist, and anarchist circles. He was founder

in 1886 of the Scottish Home Rule Association, which later evolved into the

Scottish National party… and he founded in 1888 Britain’s first Labour Party, the

Scottish Labour Party… Cunninghame Graham’s political associates during the

period 1880 to 1907 included Karl Marx’s patron and collaborator, Friedrich

Engels, who described Graham as a “Communist, Marxian, advocating the

nationalization of all means of production”. 85

Conrad’s relationship with Cunninghame Graham, referenced in “Conversations

With The Prince Of Russia,” seems to be based upon Conrad’s identification with

Graham’s left-wing commitment. Conrad wrote to Cunninghame Graham about his belief in the solidarity of human emotional experience. 86 Perhaps this was

Conrad’s way of fostering a friendship, seeking to align himself with

Cunninghame Graham through ideological perspective and through a conception of common identity. This identification of solidarity is also referenced in

Conrad’s 1897 “Preface” to The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ where he seems to echo the sentiments of Cunninghame Graham:

But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on

wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition – and, therefore,

more permanently enduring. He speaks to out capacity for delight and wonder,

to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty,

and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation – and to the subtle

but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of

innumerable hearts, to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations,

85 C. Watts, "Contexts for The Secret Agent, with a Letter from R.B. Cunninghame Graham to H.B. Samuels", in The Conradian , 36 (1), Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam, 2011, p. 84. 86 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 211.

231 in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds

together all humanity – the dead to the living and the living to the unborn. 87

Watts cites Conrad as writing to Cunninghame Graham: “Je respecte les extremes anarchistes. – ‘Je souhaite l’extermination generale.’ – Tres bien.”88 Perhaps the sense of total commitment in such extreme anarchists was admirable for Conrad, rather than their deeds. In Heart of Darkness Kurtz wrote: “Exterminate all the brutes!” and Marlow’s reaction to the report is one of disbelief mingled with admiration for the manner in which it is written. He says: “But it was a beautiful piece of writing.” 89 Conrad, like his fictionalised Marlow, would seem to abhor the underlying ideology yet the artist in him can only admire the eloquence of its expression. Cunninghame Graham responded enthusiastically to the 1907 publication of The Secret Agent and Conrad wrote to him in a seemingly defensive manner: “I don’t think that I’ve been satirizing the revolutionary world. All these people are not revolutionaries – they are shams.” 90 Conrad’s background and familial relationships and family history would have coloured his understanding of what it means to be an authentic revolutionary.

Whilst “Conversations With The Prince Of Russia” deals with betrayal, anarchy and the suggestion of conspiracy or secrecy, these ideas are less developed than in Conrad’s fiction, they come to merely echo a former time and a reading of his work. References to the Madrid train bombings and Josef’s fascination with ETA

87 J. Conrad, “Preface” in The Nigger of “The Narcissus” – A Tale of The Sea, [1897], The Gresham Publishing Company Ltd., London, 1925, p. viii. 88 Watts, p. 85. 89 Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”, p. 118. 90 Watts, p. 86.

232 and Spanish domestic dramas act as intertextual conversations between the male character, his journalism and the writing of Conrad. Jess says of Josef:

He’s returned to Madrid, following his posting in 2004, where he covered the

Madrid train bombings; the explosions detonated from mobile phones. Arrests

were made there and in Ceuta. But that was some time ago, the troops have been

withdrawn and it’s the season of peace and goodwill. 91

Josef’s articles, read by Jess, offer an outsider’s perspective of a particular

European political reality. The articles and correspondence with Jess serve to present the character of Josef as enigmatic and worldly, an initial contrast to her more domestic persona. Josef Kozak speaks of his occupation as a journalist and the experiences he has in Madrid. Jess follows Josef’s travels through reading his articles online. She connects to Josef through commenting on his work:

I’ve read your article on the anniversary of the Madrid train bombings. You

quote Conrad’s The Secret Agent. “A bomb outrage to have an influence on public

opinion now must go beyond the intention of vengeance or terrorism. It must be

purely destructive.” Do you really think that such an act is outside the ordinary

passions of humanity? I can identify with the vengeance of radical professors at

the moment. Your story about the death of a teacher in Ogíjares, from drinking

contaminated fruit juice laced with cocaine, seemed to resonate with me. I’d

have to suspect something beyond refreshment from any health drink labeled,

“Tahitian Noni”! It sounds like the name of some exotic dancer turned espionage

agent. 92

The relationship of Conrad’s fiction to the writing of Josef Kozak serves to position them as co-agents in the process of memory and recall. Jess comments

91 O’Brien, p. 41. 92 O’Brien, p. 70.

233 on both writings and writers as though they co-exist within her reality and in

Bakhtin’s sense of the continuity of cultural discourse, they do.

Conrad attests to the reference of personal experience within his fiction, albeit past experience seen in a new perspective. Conrad states in his “Author’s Notes” to The Shadow Line - A Confession:

The effect of perspective in memory is to make things loom large because the

essentials stand out isolated from their surroundings of insignificant daily facts

which have naturally faded out of one’s mind. 93

Such a proclamation serves to stress the significance of memory and its worth.

“Conversations With The Prince Of Russia” draws upon this reference to recollected personal experience of a woman living in Fremantle, Western

Australia. The recollections are captured in the form of personal letters and journal writing. The “insignificant daily facts” are noted and stressed in order to render them of some significance in the mundane aspects of suburban life and to juxtapose these recollections to the seemingly exotic life of a global traveller.

93 J. Conrad, “Author’s Notes” in The Shadow Line – A Confession, [1917], The Gresham Publishing Company Ltd., London, 1925, p. xi.

234

V

Stylizing Discourse: Expressions of the Personal

The importance of struggling with another’s discourse, its influence in the

history of an individual’s coming to ideological consciousness, is enormous.

One’s own discourse and one’s own voice, although born of another or

dynamically stimulated by another, will sooner or later begin to liberate

themselves from the authority of the other’s discourse.

M.M. Bakhtin94

In its commentary on modes of social behaviour, primarily between men and women, the central characters in “Conversation With the Prince of Russia” enact what Bakhtin refers to as “stylizing discourse”. The discourses of sexual attraction and love, longing, travel, adventure and political intrigue referenced by Conrad in his many stories are appropriated and played out by my characters through an exchange of letters and emails, and first person accounts. The

94 M. Bakhtin, “Dialogic Discourse”, in The Bakhtin Reader, M. M. Bakhtin, & P. Morris (eds.), Edward Arnold, London, 1994, p. 79.

235 conversations between characters and texts, the internal conversations of each character in relation to Conrad, serve to critique his discourse. In quoting from

Conrad, my fiction stylizes his discourse and becomes double-voiced in the way characters express an appreciation of, and commentary on it. According to

Bakhtin, this contestation of voices and dialects within a language is parodic in the way the conversation between languages and discourses opens up language and culture. 95 The language of Joseph Conrad assumes relevance for the fictional characters and the reader. Linda Hutcheon states:

The pluralist, provisional, contradictory nature of the postmodern enterprise

challenges not just aesthetic unities, but also homogenizing social notions of the

monolithic (male, Anglo, white, Western) in our culture. And parody is one of its

mechanisms for doing so: what appears to be an aesthetic turning-inward is

exactly what reveals the close connections between the social production and

reception of art and our ideologically and historically conditioned ways of

perceiving and acting…. Parody is the formal analogue to the dialogue of past

and present. 96

Conrad’s discourse may be seen as persuasive in that the central characters, Jess and Josef, foreground his work, make continued reference to it, play with it, re- model and render it contemporaneous in order to develop a private repository of shared reading reference.

“Conversations With the Prince of Russia” through its very title suggests a plurality of exchanges with the texts of Joseph Conrad, interpretations of his life experiences and how it informed his fiction and, in turn, the lives of the two

95 M. Bakhtin, “Dialogic Discourse”, p. 80. 96 Hutcheon, p. 184.

236 central characters, Jess and Josef. As Conrad’s fiction resonates with the two fictional characters, several motifs within each fictional life become apparent.

The motifs serve as intertextual links, enabling the narratives of the individuals,

Conrad, Jess and Josef, to speak to one another in a direct or indirect manner.

There is the internal speech of each character, representing thoughts and emotional responses, the direct communication via letters and emails that serves a purpose of connection and alignment in a common discourse of seduction. Bakhtin comments on the effects of assimilating another’s discourse:

Another’s discourse performs here no longer as information, directions, rules,

models and so forth – but strives rather to determine the very bases of our

ideological interrelations with the world, the very basis of our behavior; it

performs here as authoritative discourse and an internally persuasive

discourse.97

Jess Groves and Josef Kozak acknowledge the authoritative words of Joseph

Conrad and the acknowledgment serves the purpose of uniting the characters in an ideological framework; they hold his works in some esteem and appropriate them in order to comment on their contemporary lives.

The behaviour of the central characters becomes coloured with the appropriation of Conrad’s discourse. Sitting on a bench in Madrid’s train station,

Josef draws upon the words of Conrad’s Nostromo as he reflects on his cold, internal world and its contrast to the warmth he finds in Fremantle. He considers returning to his hotel and writing to Jess:

At night I think of Jess. I want to write to her. Well, I do write to her but I don’t

always press “Send”. I want to say, “For a long time, I’ve been uninterested in the

end to which my road leads. I have gone along it with head lowered, cursing the

97 M. Bakhtin, “Dialogic Discourse”, p. 78.

237 stones.”98 I seem to channel Joseph Conrad, when he was writing to Marguerite

Poradowska. When he was lonely and depressed, suffering from some ailment

picked up in the Congo. When he realized he was never going to be the hailed

hero of some boyhood and imagined adventure. Unlike Conrad, I don’t think of

the woman I correspond with as some sort of compassionate mother. 99

Conrad’s discourse captures, for Josef, his emotional torment and alienation from Jess. In the appropriation of Conrad’s words, Josef lends them authority in the sense that they speak for his immediate emotional state. Jess, on the other hand, back in Fremantle and making preparations for her cousin’s wedding, reflects on the lovers in Nostromo, as she thinks of Josef:

Would he read of the wedding preparations and be overwhelmed by a sort of

awed happiness, a Martin Decoud to my Antonia Avellanos? Those lovers in

Nostromo. Antonia, the woman who Conrad believed “capable of inspiring a

sincere passion in the heart of a trifler.”100 Antonia, with her scorn for the

conventions of Spanish-American courtship. Antonia the idealist, and Decoud,

the skeptical journalist of Sulaco, trying to spirit her out of Costaguana, “to carry

her away out of these deadly futilities of pronuniciamientos and reforms.”101

Antonia resisting due to her devotion to her father. Decoud joining the Ribierist

cause as a journalist and dedicating himself to Antonia with the words, “I have

only the supreme illusion of a lover.”102 Well, perhaps Josef would gloss over my

words. Believing them to be a little pedestrian like steps along the ruts and holes

of ancient pavement. Still speaking on his mobile, his voice “a mere murmur in

98 J. Conrad, Nostromo – A Tale of the Seaboard, [1904], The Gresham Publishing Company Ltd., London, 1925, p. 67.

99 O’Brien, p 48. 100 Conrad, Nostromo, p. 67. 101 Conrad, Nostromo, p. 53. 102 Ibid.

238 the silence of dark houses.” 103 104

The text seems to offer a way of articulating her situation, her solitude, and suggests her romantic re-capturing of a past engagement with the man who is now absent from her immediate surroundings.

“Conversations With The Prince of Russia” acts as a sympathetic parody in its imitation of Conrad’s methods of storytelling and its intertextual reference to him and his work. Intertextuality concerns the ways texts speak to other texts and the appropriation of other texts. Josef Kozak is an adventurer and a sailor, as was Conrad, and his occupation as a journalist echoes Conrad’s preoccupation with writing. Some of his characteristics echo those of Conrad’s characters, namely Decoud from Nostromo. The central woman character, Jess Groves, is an intertextual reference to Kurtz’ Intended in Heart of Darkness, however, she is less delusional and more adventurous. Her relationship with Kozak is played out through the exchange of letters in which she comments upon her domestic world, contemporary social concerns and events.

The relationship between Kozak and Groves parodies that of Conrad and

Marguerite Poradowska, the woman who acted as a stimulus for Conrad’s portrayal of the Aunt in Heart of Darkness and whose sympathetic reception of letters from Conrad, whilst based in Australia and Europe, possibly echoes the character of Kurtz’ Intended. 105

Conrad made the acquaintance of Marguerite Poradowska, nine years his senior106 in February 1890, whilst employed as warehouse manager in London

103 Conrad, Nostromo, p. 162. 104 O’Brien, p. 63. 105 Meyer, p. 109. 106 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 151. According to Najder, Conrad was 9 years younger than Poradowska, but according to Meyer, p. 100, Conrad was 11 years younger.

239 and before he went to the Congo. She was related to Conrad through marriage and had gained a literary reputation for two volumes of prose and two stories translated from the Polish.107 In a letter to his uncle Aleksander Poradowski, 16

January 1890, Conrad wrote:

My dear Uncle,

I have just had a letter from Kazimierówka, in which, in reply to my inquiry,

Uncle Tadeusz tells me that you are living in Brussels and gives me your

address…. I returned to London six months ago after a three years’ absence. Of

these three years I spent one among the islands of the Malay Archipelago, after

which I spent two years as master of an Australian vessel in the Pacific and

Indian Oceans. I am now more or less under contract to the Société Belge pour le

Commerce du Haut Congo to be master of one of its river steamers… I intend to

visit Uncle Tadeusz soon… I shall have the pleasure of seeing you, my dear

Uncle, and of making myself known to Aunt Poradowska whom I only know

from that portrait of her which you had with you in Cracow. 108

Conrad’s relationship with Marguerite Poradowska was to prove one of the more influential of his life. According to Najder, Marguerite Poradowska:

a rich, sophisticated, and beautiful society woman nine years his senior, was the

only person among Korzeniowski’s acquaintances outside Poland who belonged

to his own cultural milieu – the milieu to which he was linked by interests,

manners, and aspirations. He had had no contact with people of this milieu for at

least twelve years – not since he had left Marseilles. 109

107 R. Rapin, Lettres de Joseph Conrad a Marguerite Poradowska. (R. Rapin, ed.), Geneve, Droz, Geneva, 1966, pp. 216-217.

108 Najder, Conrad’s Polish Background, Letters to and From Polish Friends, p. 206. 109 Ibid., p. 151.

240 Literary subjects became topics for discussion, according to Najder: “as soon as his fourth letter, written a fortnight after their first meeting.” 110 They corresponded in French, Conrad’s second and preferred language and Conrad referred to Poradowska as his “little Aunt”. The title is one of affection and courtesy towards an older woman of social standing and influence. She also represented a maternal influence on Conrad. According to Meyer, “In her he had found at last a woman to whom he could open his heart – by correspondence, at any rate – and from whom he could receive expressions of maternal concern.”111

Marguerite Poradowska probably became a replacement figure for the mother who died when he was seven years old. In a letter written by Conrad from Africa in 10/12 June 1890, cited by Gee and Sturm in Letters of Joseph Conrad to

Marguerite Poradowska, he states:

You have given my life a new interest and a new affection… I am grateful… for all

the sweetness… of this priceless gift… For a long time I have been uninterested

in the end to which my road leads. I have gone along it with head lowered,

cursing the stones. Now I am interested in another traveler; this makes me

forget the petty troubles of my own road. 112

Conrad sought solace and future direction following the “horrors”113 of his

African experiences, through eloquent and increasingly intimate conversations with Poradowska.

110 Ibid. 111 Meyer, p. 100. 112 J. A. Gee, Letters of Joseph Conrad to Marguerite Poradowska, (1966), (J. A. Gee, Ed.) Geneva, 2011, pp. 11-13. 113 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 137. Najder cites a letter from Korzeniowski to Poradowska, 26 September 1890, edited by Rapin, in Lettres, pp. 70-72. Conrad writes: “No use deluding oneself! Decidedly I regret having come here. I even regret it bitterly… Everything here is repellent to me. Men and things, but men above all… ”

241 In “Conversations With the Prince of Russia,” the central characters are linked through conversations of many things, including travel experience. Josef Kozak, the traveller, speaks to Jess Groves of his emotional turmoil. She, like

Poradowska, responds with understanding and concern. The two characters of the novel meet whilst purchasing books and it is their mutual pleasure found in reading that acts as a catalyst for the relationship. Josef seeks comfort from the domestic tragedy unfolding for him in New Zealand and for others in Madrid, by confessing to Jess and sharing with her an affinity with the sea, his engagement with Conrad’s works and history and through expressions of mutual cultural identity. Jess replies with narratives concerning her domestic, professional, social and familial worlds.

Conversations about the sea act as intertextual links and references. Jess recalls yachting with Josef and her personal engagements with the sea; spearfishing with her father; looking towards Rottnest and imagining Josef swimming in the sea. Josef responds to Jess in an email:

You can imagine me in India. Then in the Indian Ocean, some Conradian

devouring enigma of space, flailing around with thousands of others and

heading for a distant point on Rottnest Island. Perhaps on a boat. It’s all I can do

not to sigh. 114

Rottnest is a place where Josef demonstrates his seaworthiness. For Jess,

Rottnest is the site of settlement for her ancestors, lighthouse keepers during the early settlement of the colony of Perth. As Joseph Conrad drew upon the shared engagement with writing and knowledge of the French language in his conversations with Marguerite Poradowska, Jess draws upon shared cultural

114 O’Brien, p. 56.

242 experiences, most notably with the sea, in her exchanges and identification with

Josef. Josef speaks to Jess of his longing to return to the sea, as did Conrad to

Poradowska in a letter dated 26 September 1890 in which, sick and disillusioned after his experiences in the Congo, he wrote:

I feel rather weak and equally demoralized; and then I believe I am lonesome for

the sea, desiring to see once more that vast expanse of salt water which has so

often rocked me gently, which has smiled upon me so many times in the dancing

sunlight of a beautiful day.115

The personified sea is a nurturing maternal force, a constant loving and enveloping presence in their lives.

Conversations across the sea act as further scaffold within the novel and parody those of Conrad to Poradowska. In November 1891, after Conrad was offered a position as first mate on board the clipper ship Torrens, 116 he wrote to

Poradowska complaining of ill health.117 His letters suggest a desire for maternal sympathy and comfort in times of anxiety and stress. Despite his professed physical ailments, Conrad undertook two voyages on this ship and capably discharged his duties. Conrad wrote four letters to Poradowska during his service on the Torrens,118 stating in one: “My work is not very varied, but none

115 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 155. Najder cites letter dated 26 September 1890, Rapin, Lettres, pp. 15-18. 116 J. Conrad, “The Torrens: A Personal Tribute” in Tales of Hearsay and Last Essays, [1914], The Gresham Publishing Company Ltd., London, 1928, p. 26. Conrad recalls this as 2nd Nov in his, “The Torrens: A Personal Tribute”. In November 1891 Korzeniowski “accepted the berth of first mate on the passenger clipper Torrens (1,334 tons), at the salary of 8 pounds a month. Two days later he left London for Australia.” 117 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 156. Najder cites a letter from Korzeniowski to Poradowska 3 February 1893, Rapin, Lettres, pp. 110-111. 118 Rapin, Lettres, p. 95. Conrad to Poradowska, 14 November 1891,; ACC, Torrens, BT 100/39, Public Record Office, London.

243 the less it is quite demanding. It could not interest you in the slightest.” 119 The exchange of letters serves to capture emotional and intellectual pursuits, articulations that according to Najder, “sometimes give the impression of literary exercises composed of assigned subjects.”120 His letters furthermore reflected the expectations of the person to whom he was writing.121 In a letter dated 4 September 1892, Conrad wrote:

When one well understands that in oneself one is nothing and that a man is

worth neither more nor less than the work he accomplishes with honesty of

purpose and means, and within the strict limits of his duty towards society, only

then is one the master of his conscience, with the right to call himself a man. 122

Conrad’s reflections on the importance of a sound work ethic may have been borrowed from letters from his Uncle Tadeusz. Such assertions could reflect

Conrad’s interpretation of Brobrowski’s discourse, his continued calls upon his nephew to get a job and become self-sufficient. Conrad appears to be adopting memories of his past to build upon and best reflect a dutiful man.

Tadeusz Bobrowski’s views on the relationship between his nephew and

Poradowska, however, were not positive. He wrote his nephew several letters, warning of the consequences of encouraging Poradowska. In a letter written from Kazimierówka on 18 July 1891, Bobrowski wrote:

Why do you say that you are one-eyed: do you suffer with your eye – or is it only

a metaphor inspired by your being Tante Margot’s ‘support’? Well, it seems to

me that you both fail to see that you are only flirting with each other since the

death of poor Olés – as an old sparrow friendly to you both I advise you to give

119 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 46. 120 Ibid., p. 155. 121 Ibid. 122 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 155. Najder cites letter dated 4 September 1892, Rapin, Lettres, pp 102-103.

244 up this game, which will end in nothing sensible. A worn-out female, and if she is

to join up with somebody, it will be with Buls123 who would give her a position

and love – of which he has given proof. It would be a stone round your neck for

you – and for her as well. 124

Bobrowski viewed the relationship between his nephew and Poradowska as sufficiently worrying as to censure the correspondents with a comment on the age of the woman and her usefulness, presumably to marry and bear children.

In reply to another of Conrad’s letters, Bobrowski wrote on 26 August 1891:

If the Prince of Benevento (i.e., Talleyrand)125 of ‘accursed memory’ was right

when he said that ‘speech (in this case the written word) was given to us to

conceal our thoughts,’ then, Panie Bracie, you have coped most efficiently with

the task, telling me on five whole pages about all the young and old, ugly or

beautiful, English women you know, who importune you to flirt with them

successfully or unsuccessfully, - God knows which! – and all this to omit The

Only One whom I suspect of such practices with you: - and she not a flat-footed

English woman but a certain Margaret well known to me!! There is no need for

you to carry into effect the aphorism of that lame Prince and to lie both to me

and to yourself, for I am an old bird, and I have got eyes to see with (this time for

reading with). 126

The astute Tadeuzs Bobrowski read between the lines of Conrad’s letters, perhaps realizing he was being overly effusive in his admiration of London women and perhaps also realizing the effect the administrations and attentions of an older woman would have on his motherless nephew. Bobrowski saw that

123 M. Charles Buls, the burgomaster of Brussels and an old suitor of Mme Poradowska. 124 Najder, Conrad’s Polish Background: Letters to and from Polish Friends, p. 148. 125 Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p. 529. The lame Prince of Benevento was the French statesman Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, who repeatedly changed his political allegiance; he was unfriendly to Poland. 126 Najder, Conrad’s Polish Background: Letters to and from Polish Friends, p. 149.

245 Conrad was likely to be diverting his uncle’s attention from the genuine object of his affections.

Bobrowski rejoiced in his nephew’s return from Australia to Europe but made a further attempt to dissuade him from his affiliation with Marguerite

Poradowska by referring to her letters to him as though she was a prolific letter writer and his nephew was not the only recipient of her words.127 He again saw

Poradowska’s future best served as the wife of M. Charles Buls. Furthermore, he dismissed her as a romantic girl. In a later letter, written from Kazimierówka,

6/18 September 1892, Bobrowski wrote:

My Dear Boy!

Thank God you are in Europe! I had begun to worry quite seriously about you

and in fact the same messenger who took to the post a letter to Mr Krieger

brought me your epistle…I believe and share your longings for a command, but

one cannot expect everything to happen at once. Possibly had you decided to

stay for some time in Australia you might have got a command but this would

have kept you for a long time or even for ever away from Europe, from me, from

your friends… Since April 7th – that is since the day when you sent your letter

from Port Adelaide- I wrote to you as follows: once to Cape Town, the second

time to St Helena, the third time to London, the fourth time a few days ago to

good old Krieger, and this is the fifth. I have been besieged as well by Mme

Marguerita’s voluminous letters which to top it all have been so illegible that I

had to read them through a magnifying glass – but I answered every one of them

– now she has somewhat cooled down in her fervor as she has not written, I

think, since April. The little darling is a ‘bas bleu’; it would be better if she

127 Ibid., p.165.

246 changed this title for that of Mme La Bourgmestre Buls – I tried to talk her into

it, but she would not listen. She is as romantic as a girl of sixteen.” 128

Despite his Uncle’s dismissal of Poradowska’s suitability as a partner, Conrad continued to rely upon the conversations he held with Poradowska to express his anxieties, seek reassurance and to test his writing skills. Poradowska was based in France, her husband had died and she had found herself willing to help

Conrad secure a position on board a ship, expressing maternal concern for his health and well being and dabbling with the discourse of romance. She was a writer, after all. She became a sounding board for his expressions of sentiment and philosophical discussions.

Following his return from the Congo, Conrad maintained a regular correspondence with Poradowska, according to Meyer: “writing often every week and keeping her informed of virtually every detail of his physical and mental suffering.”129 Conrad wrote:

I have never before spoken to anyone like this… My nervous malady torments

me, depresses me, and paralyses all action and all thought. I ask myself, why do I

exist?130

His expressions of the personal, whilst beguilingly confessional, echoed similar comments written to his uncle. Furthermore, his uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski, always included references to his personal health in letters to his nephew. It seems that to include such content was accepted practice between the family members. To write to Poradowska of intimate issues but to go only as far as detailing physical and mental ailments, seems to counter allusions of romance and expected courtship ritual.

128 Najder, Conrad’s Polish Background: Letters to and from Polish Friends, pp. 164-165. 129 Meyer, p. 101. 130 Meyer, p. 101. Meyer cites letter of 25 July 1894, pp. 15-18.

247 Conrad’s frequent written conversations with Poradowska reveal an expression of the personal from some considered distance and a margin of safety from more direct physical experience. Conrad took the time to carefully write about his sensations and impressions, wanting to be exact in the manner of his revelations; he wrote a corrective revision of reality. Perhaps he reflected on

Tadeusz Bobrowski’s comments on letter writing: “The illusion of conversation makes my heart lighter.”131 Perhaps he was engaging in some sort of self- appreciation – marveling at his ability to control language in contrast to his stuttering vocalization. Whilst he spoke Polish, French and English fluently,

Conrad had to overcome childhood stuttering, which transferred to anxiety neuroses as he grew older. 132 He could speak with confidence and in a considered manner, in letters.

Conversations in letters afforded Conrad a means to express romantic illusions and to recreate for Poradowska a version of his own character. Whilst

Conrad had ample opportunity to visit Poradowska whilst in Europe: Rouen,

Paris and London, he excused himself. According to Meyer:

This discrepancy between the intensity of their correspondence and the paucity

of their meetings leads to the conclusion that however much Conrad cherished

his acquaintance with his “Aunt” he earnestly desired to maintain his

relationship with her from afar, confining his expressions of tenderness and love

to the medium of postal service. It is probably significant therefore that the most

ardent letters to her were written from the safe distance of central Africa. 133

The actual man was perhaps less self-assured, less heroic than his fictionalized characters. Proximity to Poradowska, an obviously important determinant of

131 Najder, Conrad's Polish Background: Letters to and from Polish Friends, p. 20. 132 Meyer, p. 56. 133 Meyer, p. 108

248 attraction, was absent. The letters may have acted as agents of familiarity and expressions of sincerity, but their writer may also be seen as an idealized fabrication of desires and imaginings.

Conrad and Poradowska lived in what Linda Hutcheon refers to as a

“world of socially defined meaning systems (past and present).”134 He was a younger man, travelling the world as a seaman, exchanging letters with a beautiful, influential and practical woman. He took lessons from the past: from his father’s written expressions of the romantic, captured in his effusive salutations; from his Uncle Tadeusz’ letters to his nephew with their constant reference to subjects of health. He consciously or otherwise created a composite fiction of himself for Marguerite Poradowska and tinged the romantic ideal with a little realism, with his recollected tales of seamanship and travel.

At times Conrad’s letters to Poradowska became expressions of anguish,135 as though in the articulation of personal history and psychological state, he was able to confess, cleanse himself of emotional turmoil and move on.

The letters also served as a bonding exercise, the affiliation of Conrad to another of his kind, a writer not a seaman. According to Meyer, their relationship remained one of distant expressions of mutual attraction and affection. He states:

… their romance existed more on paper than in the flesh. Despite the fervent and

often imploring tone of his letters, despite his declaration of a sense of mystical

union with her, and the embraces and kisses with which he concluded so many

of his letters, Conrad was remarkably rarely in her physical presence. During the

five and one-half years which elapsed between their initial meeting in 1890 and

134 Hutcheon, p. 180. 135 Najder, p.151

249 June 1895 when their correspondence apparently came to a temporary halt,

Conrad wrote her close to 100 letters. 136

Conrad recalled and elaborated upon his experiences in his correspondence with

Poradowska. Following the death of his Uncle Tadeusz, Conrad wrote to

Poradowska: “He seems to have taken my soul away with him.” 137 Again, Conrad sought solace through written conversations with the compassionate

Poradowska. At this point he was no longer a seaman but a writer in London.

The comment registers the impact of his Uncle’s death. He also wrote to

Poradowska, “I regret every moment which I spend away from my writing.” 138

He may have found solace and confirmation through writing.

It was not until Conrad found himself back in London, after the death of his Uncle Tadeusz, that he moved beyond expressions of sorrow and grief in personal letters to capturing such sentiments in extended pieces of fiction, through the construction of characters with similar experiences. Whilst on his second voyage on the Torrens, Conrad showed the manuscript of Almayer’s Folly to a young male passenger travelling to Australia “for his health”.139 According to

Conrad in A Personal Record, the man asked, “What is this?” and Conrad replied,

“It is a sort of tale… It is not even finished yet. Nevertheless, I would like to know

136 Meyer, p. 107. As Najder states in Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle: “Korzeniowski (Conrad) was bold in writing but reticent in his actions.” (Najder, p. 150) During the same interval, aside from the two visits in 1890 when he was enlisting her aid in his Congo venture, Conrad seems to have seen her but four times, according to Meyer; immediately upon his return from the Congo in January 1891, and again in June of that year; once in March 1894; and finally in June 1895. Najder states this reckoning to be incorrect and believes Conrad saw Poradowska “only a few – at most seven- times (Najder, p. 150). Including In January 1890 on his way to Poland; in April on his way back; in May 1890 he came to Brussels twice but it is not certain whether he saw Poradowska; in January 1891 on his way from Africa (this time for two days); in May on his way to Champel; in June coming back from his cure.” (Najder, “Notes 29”, P.529) Najder states: “He visited Madame Marguerite quite often, but only when he was on his way somewhere else, and usually only for a few hours.” Save for his two-day visit of January 1891, none of his other visits with her exceeded a single day.” 137 Gee, p. 63. 138 Gee, p. 64. 139 Conrad, A Personal Record, p. 16.

250 what you think of it.”140 The man, known only as “Jacques”, was “the first reader of ‘Almayer’s Folly’ – the very first reader I (Conrad) ever had.” 141 The manuscript was unfinished. Conrad wrote:

It was in latitude 40 south, and nearly in the longitude of Greenwich, as far as I

can remember, that these quiet rites of Almayer’s and Nina’s resurrection were

taking place. In the prolonged silence it occurred to me that there was a good

deal of retrospective writing in the story as far as it went. Was it intelligible in

its action, I asked myself, as if the story-teller were being born into the body of a

seaman. 142

Conrad worked to complete Almayer’s Folly, drawing on the death of his Uncle

Tadeusz. Having finished the book, he wrote in a letter to Poradowska: “I have the painful duty of announcing to you the death of Mr. Kaspar Almayer, which took place at 3 o’clock this morning.” 143 According to Meyer:

His announcement of the death of Almayer was a paraphrase of the message he

had received not long before announcing the unhappy news from the Ukraine.

This would suggest that Conrad was attempting to master a painful real loss by

“advertising” a fictional one, thus becoming the active-author, rather than the

passive recipient of a piece of bad news. As a defense against painful

experiences, the device of “active repetition” is a familiar psychological

phenomenon. 144

Conrad took the event and acted upon it in the truest sense of the word. He re- staged his Uncle’s death and fictionalized it. According to Meyer:

140 Ibid. 141 Conrad, A Personal Record, p. 15. 142 Ibid., p. 17. 143 Gee, pp. 65-66. 144 Meyer, p. 103.

251 Here an affirmative action apparently served Conrad as a protection against the

threat of emotional annihilation occasioned by the loss of virtually the last close

link with his family.145

Conrad probably sought reprieve from the grief he experienced at the loss of

Tadeusz Bobrowski through writing, through re-working characters and events, in a personal and fictive engagement.146

In a Personal Record Conrad asserted that until he had begun to write

Almayer’s Folly in 1889, he had: “written nothing but letters, and not very many of these. I never made a note of a fact, of an impression, or of an anecdote in my life.” 147 It is as though Conrad wanted to create an aura of significance around his uncle, as though the man’s legacy was more than a memory of constant financial and moral support. Conrad resorted to his past to capture the present and work towards a future as a writer, however, he wrote in a highly stylized manner, conscious of his literary tactics, as I have suggested earlier.

Conrad’s grief at the loss of his foster father and mentor was further captured in the characterisation of Charles Gould in Nostromo. Conrad described

Gould’s anguish:

It hurt to feel that never more, by no effort of will, would he be able to think of

his father in the same way he used to think of him when the poor man was alive.

His breathing image was no longer in his power. This consideration, closely

145 Meyer, p. 103. 146 A. Guerard, Conrad the Novelist. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1958, p. 11. He suggests the quick completion of Almayer’s Folly was due to the death of an “inhibiting substitute father” whose “critical presence was out of the way.” 147 Conrad, A Personal Record, p. 68. However, Jean-Aubry, Life and Letters, 1, Vie de Conrad. Paris, 1947, p.98, writes that Captain Craig of the Vidar, reported having seen Conrad writing in his cabin and writing far more than could be ascribed as writing to his uncle.

252 affecting his own identity, filled his heart with a mournful and angry desire for

action. 148

According to Meyer, “Conrad was aware of the therapeutic efficacy of activity and action.”149 On hearing of Tadeusz’ death he set to work, took up the writing of Almayer’s Folly he had begun five years previously, and finished the book.

Later he would recall his grief in the writing of Nostromo, in the description of

Martin Decoud’s realisation that his life of revolutionary zeal in Sulaco and his love for Antonia is behind him. Decoud has nothing to sail towards and after ten days of solitude and in despair, he commits suicide: weighing his pockets with ingots of silver, shooting himself in the chest and slipping over the side of a boat.

Conrad wrote: “in our activity alone do we find the sustaining illusion of an independent existence as against the whole scheme of things of which we form a helpless part.” 150 Writing fiction, essays and letters became an enlivening and primary focus for him.

On 12 July 1894, Conrad sent the revised manuscript of Nostromo to

Fisher Unwin. No response was immediately forthcoming.151 He slipped into a depressive state and in a desperate attempt to have the work published, suggested to Poradowska it be published in French with her name appended to the text and his own as a junior collaborator. 152 According to Meyer, the desperation:

would have meant surrendering his identity as an author and remaining merely

as a disguised minor appendage to an already established writer… in a man so

148 Conrad, Nostromo, p. 47. 149 Meyer, p. 104. 150 Conrad, Nostromo, p. 497. 151 Meyer, p.105. 152 Ibid.

253 seemingly obsessed by the issue of manliness, the sacrifice of the authorship of

his first work to a woman must have loomed as a disturbing thought. 153

Meyer suggests Conrad had not waited long enough to hear from the publishers and that his suggestion to Poradowska was caused by “a pretext to yield to an unconscious impulse to play a subordinate role toward a strong and beloved woman.” 154 Meyer believes Conrad’s gesture to be written into the portrayal of behavior of “every love-struck hero in Conrad’s fiction.” 155 If he is correct, it is as though Conrad sought to live out his fantasies within his fiction, as though the world of fiction offered him control over life events and the means to right uncertainties.

In November 1894, one month after hearing that Nostromo, had been accepted for publication, Conrad met Jessie George. 156 In 1895 his correspondence with Poradowska was interrupted. There is some conjecture that a proposal of marriage to Poradowska was declined, however, it is acknowledged that Conrad secured his position in the Congo with the assistance of his “Aunt” Marguerite Poradowska and on his return to Europe he turned to her for comfort and offered to sacrifice his “unpublished” book to her. The interruption of correspondence between Conrad and Poradowska lasted five years. Conrad’s relationship with Jessie George became closer and in a letter to his cousin Karol Zagorski, 10 March 1896, Conrad wrote of his impending marriage:

I announce solemnly (as the occasion demands) to dear Aunt Gabrynia and to

you both that I am getting married. No one can be more surprised at it than

153 Meyer, p. 106. 154 Ibid. 155 Ibid. 156 Baines, p. 169.

254 myself. However, I am not frightened at all, for as you know, I am accustomed to

an adventurous life and to facing terrible dangers. Moreover, I have to avow that

my betrothed does not give the impression of being at all dangerous. 157

Conrad stated in the letter he had been offered command of a sailing vessel but had refused due to unsatisfactory terms and despite Jessie’s support. Conrad stated:

The literary profession is therefore my sole means of support. You will

understand, my dear Karol, that if I have ventured into this field it is with the

determination to achieve a reputation – in that sense I do not doubt my success.

I know what I can do.158

So began the literary career of Joseph Conrad and the end of his flirtation with

Marguerite Poradowska. On 24 March 1896, after a brief courtship of six weeks,

Joseph Conrad and Jessie George, “a small, not at all striking-looking person,” were married. 159

Meyer suggests that the women of Conrad’s fiction who most inspire

“worshipful sentiments” are “not the monolithic Rita and her like, but those creatures who spring from a much lower station in the hierarchy of social organization, women like Aissa, Winnie Verloc, and the simple hired girl, Amy

Foster.” 160 Conrad’s physical relationship with Jessie George occurred, according to Meyer, because she was a woman “who failed to inspire such worshipful sentiments” as he had expressed to Poradowska. 161 Meyer argues that:

157 Najder, Conrad’s Polish Background: Letters to and from Polish Friends, p. 215. 158 Najder, Conrad’s Polish Background: Letters to and from Polish Friends, p. 215. 159 Ibid. 160 Meyer, p. 109. 161 Ibid.

255 Just as Razumov in Under Western Eyes confides his love of Nathalie Haldin not

to her directly but to his diary, so did Conrad confine his love for his “beloved

Aunt” to the written page. His own evident discomfort in her presence,

moreover, is mirrored in his fiction in the undisguised awkwardness which

pervades those love scenes in which his “goddesses” – the women “of all time” –

are involved. 162

Conrad’s relationships with the women in his life informed the characterisation of his fictional women, be they characterised as androgynous, destroyers, as objects of worship, childless or sexually inhibited.163

Conrad met Ford Hermann Hueffer in 1898 when both were looking to escape from a wife and new-born child.164 Jessie Conrad disliked the attention her husband afforded the writer yet praised Hueffer for his help when her child,

Borys, became ill. She stated: He was always at hand to shift my small invalid, fetch the doctor and help with the nursing.”165 During her second pregnancy, however, Hueffer, “behaved toward her in a manner that she found baiting and hostile.”166 Their relationship was one of tension and jealousy, as both were vying for the attentions of Conrad.

Conrad’s collaboration with Ford Hermann Hueffer was marked for its misogynistic portrayal of women. Conrad wrote to Hueffer: “I want you and have wanted you for some time.”167 Their collaboration, Romance, begun in 1900, was

162 Ibid. 163 Meyer, p. 388. 164 Meyer, p.138. 165 Ibid. 166 Ibid. 167 Meyer, p. 139.

256 “dedicated to the women who presumably had caused all ‘the misery and heartache’,”168 their respective wives, Elsie Hueffer and Jessie Conrad.

In “Conversations With the Prince of Russia” the central male character speaks of the misery and heartache wrought by women. He writes about domestic dramas reported in Spain and he speaks of his misery when his wife leaves him.

A thematic concern of “Conversations With the Prince of Russia” is the way characters borrow from past emotional experiences to articulate and lend foundation to the present. Conversations through emails and expressions of the personal captured in first person narrative point of view sympathetically parody

Conrad’s letter writing and his method of recalling personal experience. Josef’s inner conversation or memory of related events and places serves to stress his vigilance and awareness in a seemingly chaotic environment. Despite being surrounded by families and couples, Josef is alone on board the Otago, a ferry travelling between the north and south islands of New Zealand. He is observant and critical of the lack of work undertaken by those serving on board the ferry and wonders whether she is sea-worthy. This leads to another inner conversation, the recollection of news coverage of the vehicular ferry Wahine, which sank in 1968 with the loss of 51 people. Josef recalls a friend using the narrative of the accident to distance himself from a woman.

Layered narratives and stories within stories act as ways of self- identification and placement. The name of the vehicular ferry, Otago, draws attention not only to the New Zealand area within the South Island but suggests

168 Ibid., p. 140.

257 to Josef the barque, which came to be Joseph Conrad’s first and last command.

Josef considers the coincidence and says:

It’s the sort of thing to ponder over strong coffee, when the waves of Cook Strait

lap at the sides of the ferry, sea spray hits the glass screens of the deck and the

meeting of currents up ahead agitates, forming unquiet waters. 169

Intertextual references to Conrad’s seamanship in Australian territorial waters, his admiration for the exploits of Captain James Cook and desire to emulate his voyage from Mauritius to Australia act as means to link the two writers across time and foreshadow Jess’s engagement with the wreck of Conrad’s Otago when she visits Tasmania. She writes of a possible scenario:

I checked out the passenger lists and there were be no entries for Korzeniowski’s

ship. Then I searched the ‘Former Masters’ of the Otago and discovered that Captain

Thomas Bicknell sailed her from Port Adelaide to Lyttelton, New Zealand, on 14

March 1874. I thought about degrees of separation. Port Adelaide, Lyttelton, Conrad

and Josef. 170

Jess’s visit to Tasmania takes in the sights of a former penal colony, Port Arthur, and there are echoes of the imperialist-capitalist expansion into Africa, noted by

Conrad in Heart of Darkness, as justified by a philanthropic idea of “giving the criminals something to do.”171 She thinks:

The former Governor’s residence was on a hill overlooking the settlement and

bay, as though he was some presiding god. A supreme authority, a very great

person in the eyes of all who lived at the settlement. Conrad summed it up, in

The Shadow-Line: “But that was nothing to the opinion he had of his own

169 O’Brien, p. 7. 170 O’Brien, p. 120. 171 Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness, p. 16

258 greatness.”172 The Governor had a gun turret built of stone at the bottom of his

garden, the officers ready to shoot any escapees who made for the bay, stole a

boat and headed inland. 173

The words of Conrad seem to reverberate as Jess immerses herself within two worlds, the past of Conrad and the present without Josef, whose whereabouts are unknown. Josef’s momentary disappearance is suggested as a repercussion of his interest in counter-insurgency in India and Madrid. He is secretive, a

“secret agent” who maintains a cool demeanor yet his ruminations suggest he is becoming increasingly reliant upon Jess.

As Conrad wrote to Poradowska of his insecurities and used his letters as avenues of confession, Josef’s correspondences with Jess reveal a man of robust constitution and inner strength. He maintains equanimity. He has had his share of suffering at the hands of a woman, namely his wife, and the experience has left him guarded. He’s intent on self-protection, identifying with Conrad and putting his “trust in canvas and in lots of big rope.” 174 Josef thinks of Jess during moments of self-doubt or angst and it is this thought process that introduces her character.

Literary texts come to act as catalysts for further conversations between

Jess and Josef. Jess receives a parcel from Josef, a copy of Conrad’s A Smile of

Fortune, airmailed from New Zealand. The title is an oblique reference to their meeting and shared interests: they met by chance and, as fortune would have it, have remained friends and confidants. When Josef travels overseas, the friendship continues as conversations of travel, work and shared social

172 Conrad, Joseph. The Shadow-Line, p. 29. 173 O’Brien, p. 140. 174 O’Brien, p. 17.

259 experiences. Memories of intimate social events, notably art exhibitions and drinking coffee or sharing a meal, come to act as a confirmation of the attraction between Josef and Jess. Jess remembers meeting Josef for coffee:

I’ve been back to Wray on Essex. Trying to re-capture Josef, seated in the

outdoor area, at a wooden table, on the mobile phone. Waiting for me.

Frowning. Interrupting some serious conversation to direct me to a vacant car

bay nearby. Josef in a white shirt, untucked, under a black suit jacket with

jeans. Dressed to express. Stylish slides that echoed his tread as he walked to

the counter and placed our order. I loved to watch him move.175

Her letters to Josef are of a more friendly and conversational tone, as though her inner conversations are to remain as such. Similarly, Josef’s thoughts of Jess are voracious and a contrast to the written words of his letters:

There are no words for me to convey mind-fog. To say I’m a cannibal and I

hunger for someone. Jess. I think I want to eat her in small bites, nibbles, to

taste slowly, run my tongue over her flesh and lap up the salt and the remnants

of perfumed body sauce. Am I interested in what she has to say? Mostly. I watch

her speak. The sound is low and she laughs, never shrill. It’s a sort of

accompaniment to devouring her face. 176

Unlike the letters from Conrad to Poradowska, Josef’s letters to Jess are restrained and deal with issues to do with travel and work, the occasional visit to an art exhibition, cultural or social event:

Josef’s sent me an email. He says that in Madrid, only anarchists don’t marry. He

went to the wedding of a woman colleague over the weekend. Another foreign

correspondent. I imagine she married a local Spanish man in a small,

whitewashed chapel and the reception took place at his home… Did they eat

175 O’Brien, p. 98. 176 O’Brien, p. 52.

260 seafood paella, crabs, prawns and mussels? Were the couple toasted with

sangria? Josef made no mention of jamón ibérico nor those little slices of dried

toast with anchovies that he loves. Tapas of ortiz anchovy and salsa montadito.177

Josef’s continued references to Conrad’s writings suggest another text or hint at a deeper engagement with Jess. His thoughts capture the intensity of his attraction to her.

References to Conrad’s writing re-surface as Josef recalls Jess’s Fremantle environment, the secluded gardens and limestone walls of her home. Her character is not representative of Conrad’s monosyllabic and fictional Alice

Jacobus, seduced by a ship’s captain, nor does Jess reflect the twenty six year old

Eugénie Renouf for whom Conrad developed a deep affection during his stay in

Port Louis, Mauritius, from 30 September to 22 November 1888. Conrad’s proposal to Mademoiselle Renouf was rejected and he sailed back to Australia.

Conrad refused to consider re-sailing to Mauritius in the Otago, to re-visit the setting of a humiliating personal exchange between a woman and a man. He opted for resigning his commission and returning to Europe where he became a writer. Jess questions the purpose of Josef’s gift and looks for hints within the text to their relationship.

In “Conversations With the Prince of Russia” an illusion of sincerity is generated through a confessional mode of writing, be it in written conversation or an internalized investigation of experience and memory. These expressions of the personal and intimate are reinforced through the first person narrative point of view. Part of this personal journey for both characters is that of reading and the work and life of Joseph Conrad seems to resonate for them, to offer examples

177 O’Brien, p 84.

261 from a past, which informs their present. In this sense, “Conversations With the

Prince of Russia” seeks what Linda Hutcheon determines to be a marker of postmodernist art: “The past as referent is not bracketed or effaced… it is incorporated and modified, given new and different life and meaning.”178 Whilst the fiction does foreground the “historical, social, ideological contexts” 179 of a contemporary Australian woman’s existence, and that of her male companion/lover, the shiftings between their pasts and their present takes into account how the past of others, notably Joseph Conrad and his writing, resonates within their lives or captures a context beyond the one in which it was written.

The situation in which the two characters find themselves is not new. This is a conventional love story and a tale of seduction. The language of Joseph Conrad is admired, critiqued and appropriated, for a specific purpose.

“Conversations With the Prince of Russia” consciously invites an understanding of the central characters through the use of first person point of view. Each character is understood through what they know, say, experience or infer, and each is a witness to the matters she/he relates. Hutcheon states:

Postmodernism self-consciously demands that the ‘justifying premises

and structural bases’ of its modes of ‘speaking’ be investigated to see

what permits, shapes, and generates what is ‘spoken’. 180

The fiction sympathetically parodies Conrad’s use of first person point of view, most notably that of Marlow in Heart of Darkness and of his other works.

Furthermore, each central character is a self-conscious narrator, writing letters

178 Hutcheon, p. 182. 179 Ibid., p. 183. 180 Hutcheon, p. 189. Hutcheon quotes Charles Russell, “The Context of the Concept,” in Romanticism, Modernism Postmodernism, ed. Harry R. Garvin, Bucknell University Press, Lewisberg, Pa., 1980.

262 and aware that she or he is composing a work of art, maybe in all its connotations of fabrication and weaving of life stories, and taking the reader into her/his confidence in the production or reception of such tales. The question arises as to the reliability or fallibility of each narrator, whether each character’s excessive reference to travel experiences, adventure and responses to the works of Conrad serves to frustrate the reader or acts in an ironic sense, parodying the high adventure, world travel and romances inherent in Conrad’s fiction.

The occupations of the central characters may be seen as representative of a form of narrative. Josef is a journalist who says, “I like stories. I write articles for the syndicated press. Carry my laptop and mobile phone, a leather overnight bag and move around a bit.” 181 According to Bakhtin in “From Notes Made in

1970-71”:

The journalist is above all contemporary. He is obliged to be one. He lives in the

sphere of questions that can be resolved in the present day (or in any case in the

near future). He participates in a dialogue that can be ended and even finalized,

can be translated into action, and can become an empirical force. It is precisely

in this sphere that “one’s own word” is possible. Outside this sphere “one’s own

word” is not one’s own (the individual personality always transcends itself);

“one’s own word” cannot be the ultimate word. 182

Josef’s questions come from the past, the present and the future as he comes to make sense of his personal life. His universal questions of the social and political situations in New Zealand, Spain and India are replaced by questions relating to his personal and daily life; questions are no longer expressed as feature articles

181 O’Brien, p. 10. 182 M. Bakhtin, “Notes Made in 1970-71”, p. 152.

263 or news stories but through personal correspondence, self- questioning, inner conversations and reverie.

Jess is a teacher by profession, speaking from the hierarchical places of academic, artist, sister, daughter and lover. Her comments on art and literature, her family, colleagues and neighbours, embellish and inform her inner conversations relating to Josef. She makes sense of her world through reflections, re-ordering experience, writing in journals and sending Josef structured personal reflections in emails. Jess makes overtures of connection through comments on the ‘universal’ and Josef takes on the role of teacher, connecting with Jess through his reading and discussion of the works of Joseph

Conrad and art in general.

Jess parodies the Intended in her lack of understanding of her lover’s true nature and whereabouts. She remains at home, waiting for her lover’s return, in limited communication with him. With Josef’s continued refrain, “That’s what I said” there is the suggestion of a lack of sincerity on his part yet the intimacy conveyed through his letters and gifts suggest re-evaluated conversation and re- appraisal of his emotional attachment to Jess.

Jess Groves comments on her immediate surroundings in the port town of Fremantle in Western Australia:

My house has a widow’s walk, just in case I want to climb the wooden stairs to

the space above the roof line, walk outside and look towards the harbour, to

Rottnest Island. Watch for ships. For a husband’s return, or the place where a

mourned husband was lost. But I have no husband, now. 183

183 O’Brien, p. 20.

264 The reference to ships and her place as waiting woman parodies Conrad’s continual reference to women as situated on land, alienated from high adventure on the sea and reading of men’s exploits via letters. Jess receives a copy of

Conrad’s “A Smile of Fortune” and her reading of the text first establishes a connection with Josef Kozak through the works of Joseph Conrad. Her

“conversation” with the story has her commenting on the narrative’s central woman character, Alice, and her indifference to the captain. Jess is critical of the captain’s obsession with the reclusive woman:

I thought the captain had a nice turn of phrase but, really, Alice was no ship. And

I didn’t quite see him as he saw himself, “the slave of some depraved habit.”184

185

The connection between the Captain and Conrad is commented upon, as the

Captain dwells upon Alice Jacobus when he should be locating his cargo of potatoes and writes her a letter of farewell from Melbourne, resigns his commission and seeks passage on a ship bound for Europe. This is Conrad’s own history represented in fiction. The book Jess receives in the post connects her to

Josef Kozak in ways that draw attention to his love of the sea, his travels and their increasingly intimate relationship. The book also serves to represent the fiction of Joseph Conrad and its impact on a woman reader. Jess imagines herself, like Alice Jacobus, commenting on her surroundings:

Gardens enclosed by ancient limestone buildings, sweeping deep verandahs and

low garden walls enclosing mature gum trees, green ivy and delicate flowers.186

184 Conrad, Joseph. “A Smile of Fortune,” in Twixt Land and Sea – Tales, [1912], The Gresham Publishing Company Ltd., London, 1925, p. 86. 185 O’Brien, p.21. 186 O’Brien, p. 22.

265 The Australian native trees establish Jess’s place, in Australia. The men are dressed casually, the luncheon informal and there is an Australian mopoke owl in the tree. The bird is a connection to past narratives and to Australia, when Jess finds herself in Paris. Jess tells her stories of domesticity, interweaving recollections of family, the death of her husband, the loss of Josef and the journeys she takes to loss, diminishment and perhaps self-understanding. Each character’s emails and letters are consciously constructed by that character to evince an aesthetic of sincerity, familiarity and the personal.

266 VI

Parody: The Past Informs the Present

On the surface, postmodernism’s main interest might seem to be in the

processes of its own production and reception, as well as in its own parodic

relation to the art of the past. But I want to argue that it is precisely parody –

that seemingly introverted formalism – that paradoxically brings about a direct

confrontation with the problem of the relation of the aesthetic to a world of

significance external to itself, to a discursive world of socially defined meaning

systems (past and present) – in other words, to ideology and history.

Linda Hutcheon 187

The act of writing and recognition of the past, in order to evaluate and construct a sense of the present may be linked with Linda Hutcheon’s comments on the history of architecture. Hutcheon in “The Politics of Postmodernism: Parody and

History” discusses the architecture of the 1970s as representative of a move away from the past and towards new architectural forms, that reflected “a changed and changing social awareness.” 188 Hutcheon compares periods of architecture and those of art and literature; essentially each form can be read in context and as representing the thinking of its time. Each movement signals an aesthetic approach to meet the needs of its time, built upon ideologies and

187 Hutcheon, “The Politics of Postmodernism: Parody and History”, p. 179. 188 Ibid., p. 184.

267 aesthetics of its past and flexed to meet the needs, ideologies and aesthetics of its present. Hutcheon cites the Centre Pompidou as representative of the movement beyond Modernism wherein architecture acknowledged the “desire to make culture part of the business of everyday living.”189 She draws attention to the historicity of movements; modernism rising to meet the ideologies of the “new machine age”,190 and postmodernism, in its referral back to history, coming to reflect parodic practice and its “redefinition of parody as repetition with critical distance that allows ironic signaling of difference at the very heart of similarity.”191 Conrad comments on his world within his fiction by reinventing or using recollections of personal experiences and acquaintances to enhance or direct his work.

Conrad writes from an historical perspective literally distanced from a contemporary reader. In his 1905 essay on Henry James, Conrad stated, “Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing.” 192 In his fiction, Conrad draws upon autobiographical incidents, personal relationships, his cultural displacement and the political intrigues of his era. He is a writer who represents what traditional critics such as Harold Bloom might term human experience and the human condition,193 but his political understanding is topical and specific. This relates directly to Bakhtin’s ideas on the continued cultural relevance of texts, where semantic phenomena may carry meaning throughout time.

189 Hutcheon, “The Politics of Postmodernism: Parody and History” p. 185. 190 Ibid. 191 Ibid. 192 J. Conrad, “Henry James: An Appreciation”, [1905] in Notes on Life and Letters, (1921), The Gresham Publishing Company Ltd., London, 1925, p. 17. 193 H. Bloom, “Shakespeare’s Universalism” in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Fourth Estate Ltd., London, 1999, p. 17.

268 A further use of parody in “Conversations With the Prince of Russia” is the employment of motif as a textual link between his life and the lives of his characters. Joseph Conrad imbued many of his novels with the motif of family, essentially the quest of a character to identify with family, to be rescued by another and taken in and established as part of the rescuer’s life. In his fiction,

Conrad incorporated the family “romance”194 wherein the search for new and all-powerful parents echoed his own history, the loss of his parents and the subsequent fostering of him by Tadeusz Bobrowski and his quest for a new identity. According to Meyer:

… one may assume that his reiterated depiction of the Family Romance was a

projection of his own wish to achieve a fulfillment of that fantasy himself. 195

Meyer cites examples of Conrad’s relationships with others:

… as the disciple of Dominic Cervoni, whose powerful paternal image appears

throughout Conrad’s fiction; as the protégé of his beloved ‘Aunt,’ Madame

Poradowska, and as the adopted child of English literary circles.” 196

These relationships, along with the mutually supportive friendship with Ford

Maddox Heuffer, demonstrated his desire to be protected and nurtured.

Within his fiction, Conrad employed the fantasy of the family romance,197 the wish for reunion with the “real” parents or creators who characteristically are imagined as persons of famous or illustrious stature. According to Freud:

… the whole effort at replacing the real father by a superior one is only an

expression of the child’s longing for the happy vanished days when his father

194 Meyer, p. 9. 195 Ibid, p. 348. 196 Ibid. 197 Ibid.

269 seemed to him the noblest and strongest of men, and his mother the dearest and

loveliest of women. 198

Conrad used the experience of being orphaned or abandoned in his writing.

Razumov was the alleged son of a Prince, and Cosmo of Suspense was descended from the Medici; Almayer, Willems, Jim, Lena, Alice Jacobus, are examples of persons “slated for rescue from disgrace or lonely isolation” while Rita de

Lastaola epitomizes the Pygmalion version of the family romance, “of being the raw uncut material out of which a great artist creates a living soul.” 199 The motif of family suggests wish fulfillment and a re-writing of a past to render it palatable and to offer comfort in the thought of what may have been.

Whilst the motif of family resonates within the work of Joseph Conrad, it also comes to link past and present narratives for both characters in “Conversations

With the Prince of Russia.” Josef’s only reference to family is to his estranged wife and daughter, and to his mother who has a liking for the work of Joseph

Conrad, which is seen as “unusual in a woman.”200 This acts as an oblique reference to the literary influences of Apollo Korzeniowski on Conrad. The gender of the influence has been subverted. Josef’s fascination with Conrad and continual reading and discussion of Conrad’s life and work may be seen as inherited cultural practice. He has a Polish name yet that is the extent of his familial association with Polish culture. Josef’s relationship with Jess has also been coloured by his experience of marriage. There’s a sense that he continues to be distressed and angry with his former wife and wary of further emotional

198 H. Gleitman, Psychology, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1981, pp. 670-692. 199 Meyer, p. 347. 200 O’Brien, p. 60.

270 commitment. He focuses on the impact of human relationships and issues of faithfulness. He writes stories of domestic violence and the gruesome repercussions of infidelity. He sends them to Jess as though they represent cautionary tales she should engage with, just in case she has designs on him.

Josef writes:

I’m being paid to write cautionary tales. I want to write something beyond

telling readers to beware pickpockets, to never put their wallet or keys in a back

pocket. To say that women should put their keys inside their high boots.201

Like Joseph Conrad, Josef Kozak sees writing for public consumption as having a socially beneficial function. Jess remains objective in her comments relating to

Josef’s wife. Her comment in regard to Patrick, a colleague and friend, seems to capture her objectivity and distance when she says, “Perhaps indifference was seductive, to him.”202 On the other hand, Jess has more to say of family and their influence upon her life. The memories and recuperation of her history serve to establish Jess’s place and links to Western Australia, to lend depth to the construction of her character. Stories of Fremantle and Rottnest act as linking devices for narratives of Jess and Josef and tether them in a ritual of placement and identification. This scaffolding of past narratives is what Linda Hutcheon refers to as sharing one characteristic: “they are all resolutely historical and inescapably political precisely because they are parodic.” 203 The narratives reanimate the past and hold up the present to further scrutiny and instances of change. Hospitality towards lone travellers and acts of domesticity reverberate for Jess. She and her sister, Annie, are constructed as accommodating women

201 O’Brien, p. 54. 202 O’Brien, p. 25. 203 Hutcheon, p. 180.

271 who offer comfort in a similar manner. Annie offers the comfort of her home to

Jess who visits her sister in Mount Barker when in need of support or reassurance. Annie also takes in a homeless child. Josef and Patrick are seemingly comforted by Jess’s actions of hospitality and conversation. To comment on them, in letters or introspection, is to lend their presence an importance in her life. Jess comforts her dying mother and draws upon early family scenarios that capture her character and the familial influences on her life.

When Josef is introduced, he is surrounded and isolated by families.

Josef’s crossing of Cook Straight between the North and South islands of New

Zealand offers him the opportunity to reflect upon the disaster of the Wahine and parodies similar physical and spiritual journeys, notably those of Captains

Korzeniowski, Trivett and Norman of the Otago. 204 He stands alone on deck, above the play area and reflects on the lives of others. He is estranged from his family; his wife and daughter remain in Australia. In New Zealand he learns of his wife’s infidelity and her desire to end their marriage. In Lyttelton, abandoned by his wife, Josef makes contact with Jess Groves and their ensuing conversations include reference to her family, her parents and her sister, Annie.

Discourses of family and place, of domesticity and life at home lure Josef from overseas to Jess, in Australia.

204 Ship’s Register, on Thursday 4 April 1889, Adelaide Maritime Museum. According to the register, the barque Otago was sailed under the captaincy of Captains Korzeniowski, Trivett and Norman. Captain Trivett received his appointment in Adelaide, following the resignation of Captain Korzeniowski. North Otago Times, Vol xxxiii, Issue 6870, 15 October 1889, Page 2. According to the North Otago Times, Captain Norman sailed the Otago into Lyttelton Harbour, New Zealand, 14 October1889 after encountering a storm en route from Sydney to London.

272 Whilst the motif of family is crucial to the correspondence between

“Conversations with the Prince of Russia” and Conrad’s life and works, the motifs of place and name are also significant. The name of the barque Otago refers to past narratives of Conrad’s captaincy and to his writing. Josef’s place on board the ferry Otago in New Zealand waters, alone and reflective, establishes the beginning of an intertextual conversation that moves beyond internalized speculation to articulated identification with place and historical reference.

In The Mirror of the Sea, Conrad captured his experience of sailing in the barque Otago:

Thus I well remember a three days’ run got out of a little barque of 400 tons

somewhere between the islands of St. Paul and Amsterdam and Cape Otway on

the Australian coast. It was a hard, long gale, grey clouds and green sea, heavy

weather undoubtedly, but still what a sailor would call manageable. Under two

lower topsails and a reefed foresail the barque seemed to race with a long,

steady sea that did not becalm her in the troughs. 205

Conrad exhibits confidence in the barque’s seaworthiness and ability to withstand the ravages of the sea, praising the vessel. Conversely, Josef Kozak is critical of maintenance of the ferry. He assesses the risk management undertaken by her captain as the boat crosses the Cook Strait and in doing so, he recalls a past tragedy in those waters.

The names of both craft in turn link to Jess’s conversation of discovery:

Conrad’s former command of the Otago and each journey of research and recuperation undertaken by her in London, Hobart and Adelaide, tracing

Conrad’s exploits on the sea. The name of the vessel comes to represent what

Linda Hutcheon refers to as a “contradictory enterprise informing the present

205 Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea – Memories and Impressions, p. 75.

273 with the past, one place to another.” 206 The Otago steamship of the past is independent from the modern ferry of the present in structure, sea route and purpose, yet the name signals an understanding of Conrad’s past that informs a character’s present. Like postmodernist art forms and literature, the characters’ reference to a vessel with the name “Otago” installs and subverts the convention of naming in parodic ways. A sense of belonging is engendered, as though Josef and Jess are linked in a self-conscious and ironic manner to one another through experience and through an engagement with the history of Joseph Conrad.207

The significance of naming is further established when Jess travels to Port

Adelaide, where Captain Joseph (Conrad) Korzeniowski relinquished his captaincy and returned to Europe. Having sailed the Otago from Port Louis and after a voyage of forty-four days, Conrad sailed into Melbourne on 5 January

1889. From there he undertook a short voyage along the south coast to

Minlacowie where he loaded a cargo of wheat destined for Port Adelaide.208 On reaching Port Adelaide, the Otago’s home port, Conrad resigned his captaincy

206 Hutcheon, p. 180. 207 According to the “Vessel Specifications” obtained from the Maritime Museum in Port Adelaide, the Otago was built in 1869, in Glascow by Alexander Stevenson, O/Number 60463. Its dimensions were 147.0 x 26.0 x 14.0 and tonnage 348. The Otago was registered as an Iron Barque. - Notes from “Register 26 March 1889”: Master Korzienowski, Conrad; Port: Port Adelaide; Xport Melbourne.

208 According to Notes from Register Wednesday 27 March 1889, obtained from the Maritime Museum in Port Adelaide: “The OTAGO, barque, which belongs to this port, made a good voyage from Melbourne, to Minlacowie, one of the outports in Spencer’s Gulf, where she loaded a cargo of wheat and cleared out for Guam with intent to proceed to Port Elizabeth in East Africa. Shortly before sailing she had orders to proceed to Port Adelaide, and having sailed on March 21, arrived here on Tuesday evening, when she came to anchor to await a tug on the following morning’s tide.” - Notes from “Register 28 March 1889”: “The OTAGO, barque, was towed into harbor on Wednesday morning, and was to transship her cereal cargo to the GAMBIER.”

274 and sought passage back to Europe on a passenger ship.209 Several explanations for Conrad’s resignation have been offered by his biographers. Jean-Aubry paid attention to Conrad’s own statement in “A Smile of Fortune” where the Captain recalls the memory of Alice Jacobus’ kiss. He believed Conrad had endeavoured to persuade the barque’s owners to allow him to travel to China. In similar fashion, the protagonist Captain in “A Smile of Fortune”, tired after a restless night thinking of Jacobus and his daughter, sits down to write a letter to the owners of his ship, “giving them a carefully-thought-out scheme for the ship’s deployment in the East and about the China Seas for the next two years.” 210 As depicted in the fiction, Messrs. Simpson and Sons, owners of the Otago, wanted

Conrad to return to Mauritius. Mauritius came to symbolize a place of thwarted love. It was where Conrad fell in love with Eugénie Renouf, a twenty-six year old woman. He had invited her and her family to tea on board the Otago. He asked one of her brothers for her hand in marriage but was told she was already engaged to marry her cousin, a pharmacist. Before he left Port Louis, Conrad sent a letter to his old friend, Captain Gabriel Renouf announcing he would never return to Mauritius. Conrad captures these series of events in “A Smile of

Fortune”, building upon the personal experience to write:

How could I go back to fan that fatal spark with my cold breath? No, no, that

unexpected kiss had to be paid for at its full price. At the first letterbox I came to

I stopped and reaching into my breast-pocket I took out the letter – it was as if I

were plucking out my very heart – and dropped it through the slit. Then I went

209 Jean-Aubry, Vie de Conrad, p.140, gives 26 March as the date of the resignation but supplies no source of this information. A letter from the ship-owners on 2nd April suggests the resignation was delivered towards the end of March. According to Najder: “Among Korzeniowski’s certificates of service the one from the Otago is missing. AAC carries no date of the termination of employment. Lloyd’s Register for 1888 gave the name of the Otago’s captain as Korneowski.” “Notes,” p.522. 210 Conrad, A Smile of Fortune, p. 85.

275 straight on board. I wondered what dreams I would have that night; but as it

turned out I did not sleep at all. At breakfast I informed Mr Burns that I had

resigned my command. He dropped his knife and fork and looked at me with

indignation.

“You have, sir! I thought you loved the ship.”

“So I do, Burns,” I said. “But the fact is that the Indian Ocean and

everything that is in it has lost its charm for me. I am going home as passenger

by the Suez Canal.” 211

Conrad cited the need to return to Europe to visit his ailing Uncle Tadeusz and he resigned his captaincy on 26 March 1889. It is this version of events that comes to inform the narrative of “Conversations With the Prince of Russia.”

In an ironic re-reading of the past, Jess researches ships’ documents in

Port Adelaide and verifies the association of Conrad and the barque Otago. Jess makes a link to another ships’ Master, Captain Trivett, who received his appointment on the Otago on Thursday, 4 April 1889, following the resignation of the former Captain, Joseph (Conrad) Korzeniowski.212 Captain Trivett and, later, Captain Norman, sailed the Otago to Lyttelton, the port town where Josef stays whilst in New Zealand, the place from where he travels to India and then

Europe. It is also the place where he makes contact with Jess Groves as a newly separated man and sends her, through the post, a copy of “A Smile of Fortune” wherein Alice Jacobus’ kiss which missed the Captain’s lips comes to be parodied in Jess’s memory of a lingering first kiss shared with Josef.

211 Conrad, A Smile of Fortune, p. 87. 212 Notes from “Register Thursday 4 April 1889”: “The OTAGO has changed masters – Captain Trivett having received the appointment. Captain C. Korienowski was Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, later known as the author Joseph Conrad.“

276 Jess travels to Hobart and visits the Maritime Museum where she discovers further material on the Otago. The chapter links her research in the

Polish Library in London, following written directions from Josef, to her uncovering of the Otago’s ownership and final resting place in the Derwent

River.213 Jess writes to Josef of her intention to travel to Poland, to further follow the footsteps of Joseph Conrad. She says of Conrad: “He saw solidarity in emotional and life experience.”214 Her conversation with Josef suggests she identifies with Conrad in a personal way and her search for further historical information on the writer has become almost an obsession, as though to know the writer’s history is to inform her own and make sense of her relationship with

Josef Kozak. The motif of place and name, Otago, leads Jess to further travel, a re- evaluation of her place and self-identity. The confluences that arise from the name/place motif seek to enact what Linda Hutcheon references as the paradox of postmodernist parody: “… it is not essentially depthless, trivial kitsch… it can and does lead to a vision of interconnectedness.” 215 In the connection of personal histories and reflections, “Conversations With the Prince of Russia” as a work of fiction seeks to deliberately undercut genuine historicity. It seeks to enact Hutcheon’s view of Postmodernism:

It teaches and enacts the recognition of the fact that social, historical, and

existential “reality” is discursive reality when it is used as the referent of art, and

so the only “genuine historicity” becomes that which would openly acknowledge

213 The Otago’s history of ownership is as follows: “A. Cameron, reg. Glascow. 1872 Jan.: Thomas Grierson, J.L. Simpson & William Taylor, reg. Port Adelaide. 1886 Nov.: J.L. Simpson and Elder & Smith. 1900 Aug.: Huddart, Parker & Co., reg. Sydney. 1903: Used as a lighter in Hobart. 1931 Jan.: Sold to H.G. Dodge, who had her run upon the east bank of the Derwent (25 Jan), where she slowly went to pieces.” Notes obtained from the Maritime Museum in Port Adelaide. 214 O’Brien, p. 148. 215 Hutcheon, p. 182.

277 its own discursive, contingent identity…. The past as referent is… incorporated

and modified, given new and different life and meaning. 216

The dialogue of past and present within the fiction becomes a means of characters engaging and re-evaluating their present. Furthermore, in the production of a discursive reality, a love story, the aesthetic turning-inwardness of each character’s confessional writing serves to critique the history and art of

Joseph Conrad, in a way that both informs and elucidates.

Further connection to the work of Joseph Conrad is made through the motif of creatures, namely dogs and birds. Birds, according to Meyer in his discussion of Conrad’s writing and drawings “generally represent an innocent creature whose freedom is imperiled by capture or destruction.” 217 Conrad makes reference to birds in several fictional texts. Meyer states:

Stephen of The Sisters is likened to a bird in a cage, Yanko Gooral and his infant

son are described as the fluttering caged victims of Amy Foster, and Cuba Tom is

compared to a bird stalked by the feline gypsy girl in “The Inn of Two Witches…

In Victory, on the other hand, before his fateful liaison with Lena, Heyst is

referred to as “a bird that had never had a nest,” and when Ricardo proposes to

her that she run off with him, he tells her: “You are no cage bird. We’ll rove

together, for we are of them that have no home. We are born rovers!” 218

Whilst the birds in Conrad’s fiction come to reflect loss of freedom, in the fiction work “Conversations With the Prince of Russia” the birds symbolize, most often, cultural superstition. The albatross represents the superstitions of seamen and links the occupations of Joseph Conrad as a seafarer and Captain to the

216 Ibid. 217 Meyer, p. 331. 218 Ibid.

278 recreational pursuits of Josef Kozak. Josef writes a letter to Jess from Lyttelton,

New Zealand, saying:

There’s an albatross colony at Taiaroa Head, the only mainland breeding colony

for any albatross species found in the southern hemisphere. Beneath the nature

reserve lie the tunnels of Fort Taiaroa, established over a hundred years ago to

counter the anticipated threat of invasion from Tsarist Russia. What better find

for a Conrad enthusiast?219

Josef seeks to position himself as investigative journalist, more serious and politically inclined than a seaman, perhaps. Jess, on the other hand, refers to

Josef as an albatross:

He’s a wandering albatross. Bosnia, Timor, Cambodia, Fremantle, Wellington,

India, Madrid. And he’s always interested me. The way he sets out from

Fremantle, with his brown leather satchel and computer, scavenging scraps of

information. Stories. An albatross. They feed at night, mostly. They only land in

order to eat. I wonder what Josef Kozak does at night.220

In terms of plot structure, the mention of “albatross” functions as marker of conversation, as though what has been heard is built upon or commented upon.

The bird qualities of flight and freedom of movement are characteristics of Josef and act as contrasts to the more sedentary Jess.

The motif of the owl, so often associated with wisdom and helpfulness, with the powers of prophecy and some would say, doom, is embedded within the fiction.221 An Australian mopoke owl with daylight riddled eyes sits in an ornamental plum tree in the gardens of Avon College. Like Jess and her friend,

Patrick, it waits for dusk and the chance to escape:

219 O’Brien, p. 15. 220 O’Brien, p. 18. 221 http://www.owls.com/owls_superstition.html

279 A small owl sat in the top branches. Its head moved from side to side and

daylight-riddled eyes seemed aware of everything going on down there on the

ground. Of course they weren’t. “It’s probably waiting for dusk. An opportunity

to get the hell out of here,” I said.

“It’s not on its own,” said Patrick.222

Jess remembers the owl when she stands on the Pont Neuf in Paris on New

Year’s Eve, alone, cold and wistfully thinking of home, a warmer climate and

Josef in Spain. She remembers telling another man, and Patrick, a story from her childhood concerning the call of an owl:

We used to practise our speeches before whistling into the microphone. It was

on a stand. There were six of us. I was given the call of the mopoke owl. I

remember it was difficult when all those eyes below the stage were focused on

me and the spotlight was in my eyes. I couldn’t see clearly and stood my ground,

waiting for just the right moment. Perhaps dusk.223

She tells the story to the men in her life and Josef recalls the owl story and sends her one in return; the owls that inhabit Madrid.

Most of the drama here takes place in the Real Madrid stadium. And there are

birds there as well. One hundred and sixty species of birds breed in the Madrid

Province. It’s like Tairoa all over again. Six species of owls, including eagle owls,

barn owls, long and short eared owls. I wasn’t aware that owls had ears. Owls

are trained by a local falconer to guard the stadium at night. Eagles and falcons

have the day shift.224

Josef links bird species from place to place, weaving a story around the creatures and sending them back to Jess as expressions of mutual wonderment.

222 O’Brien, p. 23. 223 O’Brien, p. 24. 224 O’Brien, p. 55.

280 The motif of the dog is a feature of my fiction. The dog with its connotations of loyalty, reliability and devotion is closely associated with the character of Jess. Her dog Semi is constantly by her side, offering companionship when Josef is absent. Jess identifies with dogs. When she first notices Josef in a bookstore, he is reading Kerouac. She considers introducing herself to Josef with:

‘Walking through slum suburbs of Mexico City I'm stopped by a smiling

threesome of cats who've disengaged themselves.’ I like that but I’m a dog

person, really.” 225

Jess says: “Conrad believed children and dogs have a special power of perception.”226 Josef, a “cat person” who has had to give up his cat to his ex-wife yet finds cats in the garden in Lyttelton to hold his fascination, recognizes Jess’s love of dogs and says in a letter: “You’re a dog person so you’ll like this story.”227

He sends her a story of Paco the dog, from Spain. Again, the subject matter of animals is a means of connection and conversation for stories and characters.

Josef Conrad wrote of a dog in A Personal Record. He recalls a story told to him by his grandmother of “three stragglers from the Grand Army” who came upon her village and when accosted by a dog, promptly killed and ate him. He says of the killing: “At this stage of the narrative, which I heard many times (by request) from the lips of Captain Nicholas B’s sister-in-law, my grandmother, I used to tremble with excitement.” 228 He writes:

He was large…. He was eaten…. The rest is silence… A silence in which a small

boy shudders and says firmly:

225 O’Brien, p. 59. 226 O’Brien, p. 89. 227 O’Brien, p. 77. 228 Conrad, A Personal Record, pp. 33-34.

281 “I could not have eaten that dog.”

And his grandmother remarks with a smile:

“Perhaps you don’t know what it is to be hungry.” 229(34-35)

The dog narrative is appropriated for the purpose of comparison of Conrad’s immediate past to that of his forebears. It is not really a narrative about the consequences for the dog of a human being’s extreme hunger. Conrad uses the tale of his forefather, from the Polish gentry, to point to his own humanity, empathy, gentrification and modernity.

A motif employed in “Conversations With the Prince of Russia” and one that has direct reference to Conrad is the continual reference to his words. The words of

Joseph Conrad come to act as leitmotif – a guiding motif that unifies the present and past of Jess and Josef, linking them with the historicity of Joseph Conrad.

229 Ibid., pp. 34-35.

282 VII

Conclusion

Storytelling is an exchange between the teller and the told within a context that is historical, social and political, as well as intertextual. Joseph Conrad writes from an historical perspective, drawing upon the past and present history of

Poland, autobiographical incidents, personal relationships, his cultural displacement and the political intrigues of his era. He is a writer who captures what traditional critics might term human experience and the human condition.

The notion of human experience and the human condition, as Harold

Bloom uses the term, is investigated in the fiction, “Conversations With the

Prince of Russia.” Unlike the fiction of Conrad, which is essentially male-centred in its depictions of men undertaking adventures and making due deference to the women in their lives, “Conversations With The Prince of Russia” foregrounds the experience of an Australian woman who comments on her reading of

Conrad, how it speaks to her and informs her life. While the central male character of the fiction is an adventurer, as in Conrad’s fiction, and stories of his exploits are received by the woman, by way of letters, the woman is influenced by the adventures and experiences she reads about and chooses to actively seek her own.

In “Conversations With the Prince of Russia” Jess’s consideration of

Conrad’s fiction positions her reading as pleasurable. She finds that Conrad’s words, even in their contradictory nature and complex historicity, define a personal truth. She is romantic and a realist. She is encouraged by his fiction,

283 seeks her own adventures, becomes a detective in tracking down Conrad’s history and the whereabouts of her lover; she is the “other” to Conrad’s men and the antithesis of Conrad’s women. She is no passive and ideologically ignorant

“Intended”.

The literary genres of skaz and gawęda, Polish historical forms of storytelling, are parodied in the fiction “Conversations With the Prince of

Russia.” The use of letters suggests a conversation and the oral storytelling associated with the skaz. Like the essential features of that genre, the fiction

“Conversations With the Prince of Russia” parodies the letters of Conrad and their romantic insistence or distance. Letters of commonplace things such as one’s health and daily routines, implicit in Conrad’s letters to his uncle Tadeusz and sometimes to Marguerite Poradowska, are echoed in the exchange of letters between Josef and Jess.

The story within a story format of the gawęda has been utilized in

“Conversations With the Prince of Russia” in order to fragment narratives of the personal past and present, and promote a sense of the conversational or to capture the shifting nature of thought processes. The filters of the focalisers, Jess and Josef, also serve to offer differing points of view to a common and shared experience and in this way enact parody in a briefly historic and social manner.

The assimilation of Conrad’s discourse by the central characters in

“Conversations With the Prince of Russia” serves to position Conrad’s words as authoritative and internally persuasive. Jess and Josef recognize the usefulness of Conrad’s words in capturing their emotional and sensory experiences. Jess’s fascination with his fiction leads her to trace his journeys in Australia and

Poland. Josef relates his experiences on board a sea vessel to those of Conrad

284 whilst Captain of the Otago and sailing out of Port Adelaide. Their behavior is somewhat determined by their engagement with the words of Joseph Conrad and parodies that of Conrad and his fictional characters. Their immersion in

Conrad’s fictive world affords them a common discourse and acts to facilitate their conversations and forward their relationship.

The worlds of significance created by Joseph Conrad in his fiction; worlds of unrest; political instability, social and class divisions; gender inequality and alienation, are confronted by the characters of Jess Groves and Josef Kozak. As each character internalizes and communicates their understanding of Conrad’s words, comments on his life, makes a reference to a piece of artwork that speaks to something of domestic significance for either character, they confront high art and render it functional. The aesthetic serves a purpose for both characters.

In terms of how the fiction is constructed, an aesthetic of sincerity is generated through the use of personal letters/emails, the first person articulated emotions of desire, misgivings, dislike and love. As Jess comments when at a garden party at Avon College: “It wasn’t really the sort of conversation you’d expect a man and woman to have after champagne.”230 The conversations of Jess and Josef are sobering experiences at times, belying their intense attraction to one another. Their letters parody those between Conrad and Poradowska, effused with worship from a distance, expressing longings that Conrad found himself unable to act upon.

Conversations between texts and characters are furthered through the use of motif. “Conversations With the Prince of Russia” acknowledges the discourse of Conrad through parodying his employment of motif as a textual link

230 O’Brien, p. 24.

285 between characters and events. Whilst the motifs of birds, animals, places, names and phrases, are not particular to the work of Conrad, they are used frequently and repetitively, and the effect of this is to establish a body of work that is distinctly Conradian. His characters stumble over stones, find themselves in darkness, outraged, commenting on a bird, being judged on their morality or the state of their hair. Conrad’s use of motif as a unifying device within a text and, in a stylistic manner, between texts, insinuates a mood or atmosphere that is captured or utilized by the central characters in my fiction.

The central concept of my fiction, “Conversations With the Prince of

Russia” is to render the words of Joseph Conrad as authoritative and externally persuasive, to engage the reader in a narrative that deals essentially with the pleasure a contemporary Australian woman gains from immersing herself in the discourse of Joseph Conrad.

286 Bibliography

Baines, Jocelyn. Joseph Conrad: A Critical Biography. Weidenfeld and Nicholson,

London, 1959.

Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. "Response to a Question from the "Novy Mir"

Editorial Staff". M. M. Bakhtin, & C. A. Emerson (Ed.), Speech, Genres and Other

Late Essays (V. W. McGee, Trans.). University of Texas Press, Austin, 1986.

Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. "Dialogic Discourse." In M. M. Bakhtin, & P. Morris

(Ed.), The Bakhtin Reader. Edward Arnold, London, 1994.

Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. "From Notes Made in 1970-71." In M. M. Bakhtin,

C. Emerson, & M. Holquist (Eds.), Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (V. W.

McGee, Trans.). University of Texas Press, Austin, 1987.

Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. Fourth Estate Ltd.,

London, 1999.

Bloomfield, Mike and Kooper, Al. "I Wonder Who". The Live Adventures of Mike

Bloomfield and Al Kooper. By Ray Charles. San Fransisco. 1968.

Brodsky, Stephen. "Saint Roman: Memory, Myth and History in Joseph Conrad's

Prince Roman". In The Realms of Biography, Literature, Poliics and Reception:

287 Polish and East-Central European Joseph Conrad. Wieslaw Krajka, (ed.), Vol. 19.

Columbia University Press, New York, 1992. 27-92.

Charles, Ray and Nelson, Willie. "Seven Spanish Angels". Half Nelson. By Troy

Seals and Eddie Setser. Columbia, 1984.

Cocker, Joe. "With A Little Help From My Friends". With A Little Help From My

Friends. Olympic Studios and Trident Studios, 1969. By Lennon, John and

McCartney, Paul. Prod. George Martin. E.M.I., London, 1967.

Cohen, Leonard. "I'm Your Man". I'm Your Man. By Leonard Cohen. Prod. Beck,

Reusser, Robidoux, Cohen. Columbia Records, 1988.

Cole, Nat King. "Ramblin' Rose." Ramblin' Rose. By Noel Sherman and Joe

Sherman. Prod. Lee Gillette. Capitol Records, 1962.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. The World’s

Contracted Thus. McKenzie, J.A. and McKenzie, J.K. Victoria (eds.), Heinemann

Educational, Australia, 1986.

Conrad, Jessie. Joseph Conrad And His Circle. London, 1935.

Conrad, Jessie. "Memories of Joseph Conrad". The Blue Peter. June, 1930.

288 Conrad, John. Joseph Conrad: Times Remembered. Cambridge University Press,

Cambridge, 1981.

Conrad, Joseph. "A Happy Wanderer". Conrad, Joseph. Notes on Life and Letters,

[1921]. The Gresham Publishing Company, London, 1925.

Conrad, Joseph. "Amy Foster". The Nigger of the Narcissus and Typhoon, [1903].

The Gresham Publishing Company, London, 1925.

Conrad, Joseph. "A Smile of Fortune". Twixt Land and Sea - Tales, [1912]. The

Gresham Publishing Company, London, 1925.

Conrad, Joseph. "Author's Notes". Notes on Life and Letters, [1921]. The Gresham

Publishing Company, London, 1925.

Conrad, Joseph. "Guy De Maupassant". Notes on Life and Letters, [1921]. The

Gresham Publishing Company, London, 1925.

Conrad, Joseph. “Heart of Darkness”. Youth A Narrative and Two Other Stories,

[1902]. The Gresham Publishing Company, London, 1925,

Conrad, Joseph. "Henry James: An Appreciation". Notes on Life and Letters,

(1921). The Gresham Publishing Company, London, 1925.

289 Conrad, Joseph. Nostromo - A Tale of the Seaboard, [1904]. The Gresham

Publishing Company, London, 1925.

Conrad, Joseph. "Poland Revisited." Notes on Life and Letters, (1921). The

Gresham Publishing Company, London, 1925.

Conrad, Joseph. "Stephen Crane: A Note Without Dates." Notes on Life and

Letters. (1921). Gresham Publishing Company, London, 1925.

Conrad, Joseph. Tales of Hearsay and Last Essays, [1914], The Gresham Publishing Company, London, 1928, p. 32.

Conrad, Joseph. The Arrow of Gold - A Story Between Two Notes. (1919). London:

The Gresham Publishing Company, 1925.

Conrad, Joseph. The Mirror of the Sea - Memories and Impressions, [1906], The

Gresham Publishing Company, London, 1925.

Conrad, Joseph. The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'. [1897]. The Gresham Publishing

Company, London, 1925.

Conrad, Joseph. "The Protection of Ocean Liners." Notes on Life and Letters.

(1921), The Gresham Publishing Company, London, 1925.

Conrad, Joseph. The Secret Agent. (1907), The Gresham Publishing Company,

London, 1925.

290 Conrad, Joseph. The Shadow Line - A Confession. [1917]. The Gresham Publishing

Company, London, 1925.

Conrad, Joseph. The Sisters. The Gresham Publishing Company, London, 1925.

Conrad, Joseph. Typhoon and Other Stories. The Gresham Publishing Company,

London, 1925.

Conrad, Joseph. Victory. The Gresham Publishing Company, London, 1925.

Cox, Cedric. "Heart of Darkness: A Choice of Nightmares?". In H. Bloom, Modern

Critical Interpretations: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Chelsea House

Publishers, New York, 1987.

Cummings, Edward Estlin. Selected Poems 1923-1958. Faber and Faber, London,

1960.

Delillo, Don. White Noise. Penguin Books, New York, 1999.

Eagleton, Terry. "Capitalism, Modernism and Postmodernism." New Left Review

152 , 1985.

Gasyna, George. Polish, Hybrid, and Otherwise: Exilic Discourse in Joseph Conrad and Witold Gombrowicz. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group,

2011.

291

Gee, J. A. Lettres of Joseph Conrad a Marguerite Poradowska. (J. A. Gee, ed.)

Geneva, 2011.

Gleitman, H. Psychology. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1981.

Guerard, Albert. Conrad the Novelist. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958.

Guetti, James L. "Heart of Darkness: The Failure of Imagination". In H. Bloom,

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Modern Critical Interpretations (pp. 17-28).

New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 1987.

Hutcheon, Linda. “The Politics of Postmodernism: Parody and History” in A

Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms. Methuen, New

York, 1985.

Jean-Aubry Georges. Vie de Conrad. Gallimard, Paris, 1947.

Kerouac, Jack. Book of Dreams. City Lights Press, San Francisco. 1960.

Krajka, Wieslaw. "In the Realms of Biography, Literature, Politics and Reception:

Polish and Eaas-Central European Joseph Conrad." Conrad: Eastern and Western

Perspectives. 2010.

292 Lawtoo, Nidesh. "Fear of the Dark: Mimeticism and Psychasthenia in The Nigger of the "Narcissus", Université de Lausanne, Switzerland, 2011.

Luffman, Charles (Bogue). Quiet Days in Spain. John Murray, London, 1910.

Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. Vol. 36. P. F. Collier and Son, New York, 1910.

Meatloaf. "Like A Bat Out Of Hell". Like A Bat Out Of Hell. Prod. Todd Rundgren,

Cleveland International, New York, 1977.

Mérédac, Savinien. "Joseph Conrad et nous". L’Essor. 15 February 1931.

Meyer, Bernard. C. Joseph Conrad: A Psychoanalytic Biography. Princeton

University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1970.

Moon, Brian. Literary Terms: A Practical Glossary. Chalkface Press, Cottesloe,

Western Australia, 2001.

Najder, Zdzislaw. Conrad's Polish Background: Letters to and from Polish Friends.

Oxford University Press, London, 1964.

Najder, Zdzislaw. Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle. Press Syndicate of the University of

Cambridge, Cambridge, 1983.

293 North Otago Times. "The Barque Otago, A Perilous Voyage". North Otago Times ,

XXXIII (6870), October 15 1889.

Paszkowski, Lech. "Conrad in Australian ports, part 2, Kapitan barku Otago."

Wiadomosci, 1967.

Portoghesi, Paolo. After Modern Architecture. (M. Shore, Trans.) Rizzoli, New

York, 1982.

Rapin, René. Lettres de Joseph Conrad a Marguerite Poradowska. (R. Rapin, ed.)

Geneve, Droz, Geneva, 1966.

Reed, Lou, "How Do You Think It Feels". Berlin, Prod. Bob Ezrin. R.C.A., New

York, 1973.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Finding Feminist Readings: Dante-Yeats".

American Criticism in the Post-Structuralist Age, (I. Konigsberg, ed.), 1982.

Stape, John. The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad. William Heinemann, London,

2007.

Summer, Donna. "Love To Love You Baby." Love To Love You Baby. By Donna

Summer, Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. Prod. Pete Bellotte. Munich, 1975.

294 The New Oxford Annotated Bible. Michael D. Coogan. (ed.). Oxford University

Press, New York, 2007. Print.

Watt, Ian. Conrad in the Nineteenth Century. Chatto & Windus, London, 1980.

Watts, Cedric. "Contexts for The Secret Agent, with a Letter from R.B.

Cunninghame Graham to H.B. Samuels." The Conradian , 36 (1), Rodopi B.V.,

Amsterdam, 2011.

Wright, Judith. "The Blue Wrens and the Butcher Bird." Birds. National Library of

Australia, Canberra, 2003.

Web Document

Blakemore, Colin and Jennett, Shelia. The Oxford Companion to the Body, 2001, viewed on 19 January 2013, http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/bile.aspx

Sirén, Vesa . Sibelius Project. [Sibelius, Jean, Fifth symphony op. 82 (1915-

1919)], viewed on 20 January 2013.

http://www.sibelius.fi/english/musiikki/ork_sinf_05.htm.

Smith, Rose. HalloweenHowl.com, 2005, viewed on 21 January 2013, http://www.owls.com/owls_superstition.html

295