Stories: The Collected Short Fiction by Helen Garner

Author:Helen Garner [Garner, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Short Stories (Single Author), Anthologies, Australia
ISBN: 9781925626179
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2017-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

A THOUSAND MILES FROM THE OCEAN

AT KARACHI THEY were not allowed off the plane. She went and stood at the open back door. Everything outside was dust-coloured, and shimmered. Two men in khaki uniforms squatted on the tarmac in the shadow of the plane’s tail. They spoke quietly together, with eloquent gestures of the wrists and hands. Behind her, in the cool, the other passengers waited in silence.

The Lufthansa DC10 flew on up the Persian Gulf. Some people were bored and struck up conversations with neighbouring strangers. The Australian beside her opened his briefcase and showed her a plastic album. It contained photographs of the neon lighting systems he sold. He turned the pages slowly, and told her in detail about each picture. I should never have come. I knew this before I got on the plane. Before I bought the ticket. ‘Now this one here,’ said the Australian under his moustache, ‘is a real goer.’ His shoes were pale grey slip-ons with a heel and a very small gold buckle. She found it necessary to keep her eyes off his shoes, which were new, so while she listened she watched another young man, a German, turn and kneel in his seat, lay his arms along the head-rest, and address the person behind him. He looked as if the words he spoke were made of soft, unresisting matter, as if he were chewing air. While she waited for the lavatory she stooped and peered out through a round, distorting window the size of a hubcap. Halfway between her window and the long straight coastline a little white plane, a sheik’s plane, spanked along smartly in the opposite direction. If I were on that plane I would be on my way home. I am going the wrong way.

She woke in the hotel. Her watch said 8.30. It was light outside. She went to the window and saw people walking about. The jackhammer stopped. She picked up the phone.

‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Is it day or night?’

The receptionist laughed. ‘Night,’ he said.

She hung up.

In the Hauptbahnhof across the road she bought four oranges, and walked away with them hanging from her hand in a white plastic bag. I will be all right: I can buy. Ich kann kaufen. I should not be here. I can hardly pronounce his name. I am making a very expensive mistake.

In her room she began to dial a number.

On the way up the stairs he kept his hand on the back of her head. He laughed quietly, as if at a private joke.

‘I am so tired,’ he said. ‘I must rest for one hour.’

‘I’ll read,’ she said.

He threw himself face down, straight-legged, fully dressed, on his bed. She wandered away to the white shelves in the hallway. There were hundreds and hundreds of books. The floor was of blond wood laid in a herringbone pattern. The walls were white. The brass doorknobs were polished. The windows were covered with unbleached calico curtains. She took down Dubliners and sat at the kitchen table.

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