The Colour of the Night Read online

  Arman wanted to be normal; there was no other way. He sat on his bed and tried to invoke the other Benton – the sophisticated, affable one. Surely he wasn’t like all the others; he’d seemed so calm, so reliable. He recalled the conversation they’d conducted about the sadness of people. On Ben’s video contraption they’d been observing a man in his seventies standing at the bus stop doing little else but stare at his slip-on loafers. He remained there, stooped and unmoving, and Benton finally said: ‘What happens to us, Arman? Why does the larger part of the population end up like that?’

  It was then that Arman told Ben about his own family and the Pashtun people, how they had lived in a three-room brick dwelling in the western Paghman district of Kabul. They were fourth-generation herbalists, he told his flatmate in his best English, and revealed that his father, a traditional healer, was killed by Western allied forces. He told the Englishman of his childhood, how it was not filled with fables and fairytales but stories of cruelty and torture. He told him of his fourteen-year-old cousin Amina who was raped by troops when they were supposed to be helping the people, and how later her throat was cut by the opposing militia because she had aided the enemy. He spoke of his mother’s sister and her baby who froze to death in a mud-walled hut near Nasaji Bagrami in the winter of 2008. Only his uncle had survived because he was away seeking help from the Americans.

  Benton nodded gravely, though Arman knew he could not understand; he was talking of things that people read so regularly in the newspapers that all they could do was turn the page, find a better story. Those readers, commuting to work in the back of his cab, did not keep count of the dead – more than fifty thousand in Afghanistan since the arrival of the allied troops. Yet that afternoon, Arman felt that the bond between he and Benton had strengthened; he had whispered things he’d never told anyone.

  He thought of it now as he sat on the bed listening to Benton coming up the stairs. The man stumbled past without turning, went into his own room and closed the door. Arman returned to the kitchen to clean up and restore things to their proper place, to reinstate the serenity that Benton had spoiled with his abominations. He didn’t want to think about what had happened; he wanted to see the Ben he liked, the one who rested his hand on his shoulder at the kitchen stove. ‘What’s on tonight?’ the man would ask, and Arman would describe his latest creation.

  Arman held the damp dishcloth and felt tears welling. As he pushed them away there came a sudden knock at the door. Nikos marched into the kitchen and slapped a manual on the wooden table.

  ‘Everythin’ I need to know,’ he declared. ‘Where’s Ben?’

  ‘Gone to bed.’

  ‘He sick or something? No worries.’ He grinned, accentuating the hardline creases of his sun-bitten skin. ‘Got an excavator hired, anyway,’ he said, with some pride. ‘And I don’t even need a licence for it. Gonna dig out all that earth myself.’ In Nikos’s opinion, if the silly bastard two doors down was too pissweak to help him out and earn a bit of extra money – cash in hand – then he could go to buggery. Where, Arman wondered, was that, grateful for the distraction.

  The job was no big deal, Nick went on. Nothing to it really; shit easy. First he would attend to the window, pop the whole frame out to gain access and sell it on eBay, get back a part of the machinery hire. Then he’d begin the dig.

  SUNDAY WAS CALM without the work traffic and even the sparrows hopping along the footpath appeared to appreciate it. That bright morning, as Nikos prepared for the job at hand, Arman and Benton both stood casually by, ready to assist. Earlier, the Afghan had been in the kitchen cooking a simple roht just as his anaa used to do – flour, yeast, cardamom and sia dona – when Benton finally appeared. He was wearing a pale-grey tracksuit and old tennis shoes with the laces missing. He hadn’t showered. He filled the kettle and put it on the stove next to Arman.

  ‘You angry?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ Arman kept his back to Benton who reached for the teabags. Arman caught a whiff of him; a smell unique to the man.

  ‘I got drunk, Arman, that’s the fact of it.’ He paused. ‘It’s the European way. The modern world drinks, Arman, I’m talking, everybody … all the time. It helps us … deal with things; helps us relax. Do you understand? No logic, you might say, but that’s the whole point. Are you with me? No logic.’

  ‘You do not want to get drunk; it is no good –’

  ‘I know, I know. Listen, People aren’t saints, Arman. People are just people … We live at a time in history when everyone in the developed world does exactly what they damn well please. Do you follow? I’m no different. I’m not … I’m not … perfect, Arman.’

  ‘But you could try. You could try to –’

  ‘Try? Try what? I’m doing what I like. We do what suits us, Arman, even you.’

  His fellow tenant looked at the patterned vinyl around the fridge. He had a lot to learn, that seemed obvious. ‘We should hurry up,’ he said at last. ‘We must help Nick with the window.’

  Nikos had blocked the entire footpath with his elegant structure hammered together explicitly for catching the double-frame as it was eased from the wall recess. Benton and Arman stood quietly in the morning sun while their landlord removed the mortar from around the sash. It was hard going but soon the full-length glass frame sat calmly in the brickwork and was ready to dislodge. Nikos placed a ladder against the stucco wall, climbed up and drove a long screwdriver into the space above the woodwork. He eased it back and forth and felt the frame loosen.

  ‘Got it!’ he said. ‘Get ready for the weight.’

  It was at this moment that Arman saw his own reflection in the glass and watched it tilt slowly away from him until he could see only blue sky. The three men stood mouths agape as the frame fell inwards and whumped onto the dirt floor, the plate glass exploding into millions of diamonds. Dust filled the room and floated out through the opening. Nikos stepped forward and surveyed the mounds of sparkling blue chips.

  ‘Well I’ll be. Look at that, safety glass! And I thought it was an antique!’

  Within minutes, Nikos began his next chore: removing the broken woodwork and shovelling glass into the wheelbarrow. Very soon he would at last be ready to initiate the delicate task of digging out the cellar. It was just a matter of passing the excavator’s robotic arm through the gaping square and removing the soil a bucket at a time. Shit easy, as he’d explained to Arman. But his tenant, accepting the words literally, knew that even that biological necessity did not always eventuate as one might expect.

  THE CARD READ simply, Christina Bright, Private Companion, and it included a mobile number. Simon examined the elegant typeface while standing in line at the bank. A small cheque had arrived from his art dealer and, as Simon presented it to the teller with his plastic ID, the business card fell to the floor. It reminded him instantly of the woman at the gallery. He could clearly envisage her: the look, the poise, her clear intelligence, her professionalism, and the way she’d strode off confidently into the crowd. What else was there? Nothing really, nothing except those parting words: If you want me to accompany you another time, here’s my card. As if he would pay for companionship!

  Later, reclining alone in the sitting room, the woman again came to mind. You don’t have regard for methods unlike your own? The impudence! He thought of the stainless-steel sculpture for which he’d received the cheque. It was a maquette submitted for a potential commission. But the whole thing had fallen through, predictably. So much about his profession was speculation, so little could be relied upon. He had complete control in the studio but beyond it, in the real world, control belonged to others.

  He squirmed on the couch and again produced the woman’s card. The deposit receipt for the sculpture came out with it, and somehow the two things mingled: the cheque from his dealer and the woman’s business card. Private Companion, was she on the level?

  Adele answered immediately. Simon imagined her in Bentleigh or Brighton, but if he’d listened carefully, he might have
heard her phone ringing through the wall.

  ‘Christina, it’s Simon. We met the other night. Last week.’

  ‘Simon?’

  ‘Yes, at the art gallery. We were looking at –’

  ‘Oh yes, I remember. I gave you my card.’

  ‘Yes, so now I’m responding. I just wondered whether we could meet again?’

  As the words left his lips, Simon grimaced. What, exactly, was he doing? He was hardly an intuitive man, preferring to make decisions carefully. But nothing interesting had happened in ages and the woman had sparked his curiosity: no one had ever posed such an unlikely proposition.

  ‘You want to contract me?’

  ‘Well, I thought we might just meet somewhere – perhaps for a drink – and talk about it.’

  ‘We can talk about it now, Simon. I’m usually hired to accompany men to formal occasions, but not always. It just depends on what the client wants – dinner and date, luncheons, formals, whatever is required – and the price is worked out accordingly.’

  Simon could not help considering how sex might be factored into the mix – surely such arrangements could include that. And how on earth should he broach the subject of price?

  ‘Naturally, I wouldn’t be so crass as to ask the price,’ he said, casually. ‘Perhaps we might just start with a dinner date and see what happens. My shout of course.’

  ‘It would be two hundred dollars up front until 11 p.m., plus cab fares and a renegotiation after that. How does that sound?’

  ‘Wow, you must be one hell of a good companion. Most women are happy with the price of a dinner.’

  ‘Yes, but think of the complications, Simon. I’m your unreserved, fully attentive date, no embarrassments, no questions, no obligations, discretion guaranteed. And hopefully some good conversation. The evening would be all in your court. Of course you’d be welcome to tell me how you’d like me to dress, what perfumes you prefer, if any, and to let me know of any other expectations you may have.’

  ‘What about Friday night?’

  ‘Friday night is free. Where shall we meet?’

  STEF LEANED against the studio wall and studied her new painting. A dog’s breakfast. She often marvelled at the cruelty of creativity, how an afternoon might disappear, leaving her with the best picture she’d ever done, yet the next day when she tried to repeat the miracle, the paint would slide into its own cantankerous mess, as though yesterday’s success was now a part of someone else’s history. She could stand in front of the better painting and ask herself: did I really do that? It was the only thing that kept her at it: the knowledge that real substance was achievable. But was her judgment correct; was she deluding herself?

  Life with Simon had proved something of a disappointment. She hadn’t expected it would always be harmonious; she was cynical enough to know that was a fantasy. But the powerful art guru who had once pinned her to a staffroom partition, shaking the year’s curriculum off the little knobs of Blu-Tack and setting the school’s reputation aflutter, now seemed just like others she’d known: nervous, troubled and impatient. His once stout dick of average size that had prodded at her urgently, now pointed mostly at the floor and was used, primarily, for peeing in the middle of the night, the bathroom light cutting across the bed like a severance in their relationship.

  To complicate matters, the owner of the gallery where she occasionally showed had a profound and undisguised crush on her which manifested the moment she walked in. On the one hand it meant that Stef and her art were both treated very well – feted, one might say – but on the other, it caused the business dealings to require a degree of sensitivity more delicate than the brushwork on one of her own canvases. And confusing things further, the gallery owner was in fact, of the same sex; an attractive, single woman, a year or two younger than she.

  Stef was not opposed to gay relationships, in fact she quite liked the idea: two women enjoying the comfort of each other’s embrace, mutually sharing knowledge of bodily intimacies. But it was just the idea that she liked, she didn’t yearn for the same gender, and her inclination ventured no further than lying in the dark while Simon snored, and contemplating the attentions of another woman who might impassion certain aspects of her body that, unhappily, were now rarely stirred. And now in her studio, in front of the canvas that was not going well, she pressed her fingers against her sex – who can say why. At forty-three she was not unattractive and she was acutely aware that her body still held years of untapped vitality. But it was being wasted, like the day just gone: seven hours of endeavour without a single lick of paint correctly placed. Frustrating.

  What did she have in her life? A studio full of unfinished and unsold artworks, a stale marriage shared with a self-absorbed husband, a son who had ignored the coveted cultural path they’d laid out for him, a daughter who refused to make of herself something more than a site for drug-pushers and tattooists, and an ardent gallery director who might drop her from the stable of artists if she sensed that Stef did not like her. The stable of artists: tethered thoroughbreds, some winners, some for show, some soon to go out to pasture.

  Stef checked herself in the little mirror on the door; she often found a paint smear. Her shortish hair looked brown, mousy brown. It appeared to be a fact of life that as she grew older it became harder to manage. Once, her hair was tossed without thought or care; now it required straightening, taming, colouring. Mouse-brown; is there a worse tint?

  Quite unexpectedly, a tear formed and set off downhill towards a dimple that she’d had since childhood, where a fairy kissed you, her mother once lovingly purred. What had precipitated that salty secretion? She guessed it was none of the issues at hand; all those things were merely the self-inflicted backhanders of daily life. No, it was more likely something far more pervasive: a sense that human beings, in general, were stuffing up the extraordinary gift of existence. Backgrounding all the things she did not like in her life, stood one principal theme: humanity’s stupidity – perhaps that’s why she was trying to bring beauty into the world. As Simon had said, apart from people, only locusts will willingly devour the environment on which they depend. That sad fact was worth a tear.

  She picked up a rag fragrant with pure gum turps, wiped the tip of a hogshair filbert and stood it up in a jar. Time to clean up and leave, pick up her ambitious, postmodern, neglectful husband at his own studio and head back to the mortgage. Just as well Simon’s mother had died last year or they may very well have had to sell.

  AS SOON AS he stepped into the car it was clear that Simon was anxious. It wouldn’t be obvious to everyone but Stef could spot a fractional rise in his blood-sugar level.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Up? Nothing’s up. Just too much on, that’s all. Have to go to a dinner tonight – Gavin from the gallery invited me. Wants me to meet some clients before my show. Let’s hope it’s not going to be a late one.’

  ‘You want me to go with you?’

  ‘No, it’s not that kind of affair. Wouldn’t put you through it, Steffie.’

  ‘As long as you’re sure. To be honest, I’m looking forward to a night in, a big stretch out on the couch.’

  ‘It won’t be late – at least I hope not. Damn work dinners. Waste of time.’

  Simon’s mind was already a block further advanced: what should he wear; should he shave? Stef would know he never shaved before these events: it was a sign of disdain for the bourgeoisie. And what would come of this … contract? Why was he doing it at all? If he was to have ‘an affair’, he imagined a chance event rather than an appointment as structured as a visit to the eye specialist.

  He arrived at Blue Chillies a little out of breath. He had to park a block away and then march back to the restaurant, which made him a few minutes late. Through the front glass he caught sight of the elegant woman he’d met at the gallery. He hesitated and sucked in the night air, being out of breath was no sign of virility.

  ‘Christina. How nice to see you again.’

  ‘Hello, Simon
.’ She stood briefly and kissed him lightly on the cheek. He instantly recognised the practised art of decorum; she was not about to shake his hand, thus signalling to everyone that they didn’t really know each other.

  ‘Parking! I walked four blocks! Anyway, you look lovely, Christina.’

  ‘Thank you. I tried to think what dress a prominent conceptual artist might appreciate.’

  ‘You chose very well.’ Simon felt his chest expand, tightening the buttons on his black bodyshirt.

  ‘What’s your preference? A glass of bubbles?’

  ‘Perfect – you already half know me.’ Adele narrowed her eyes and held him with an ambiguous smile.

  Simon ordered a bottle of Tasmanian sparkling. He hadn’t planned any particular conversation and he had not considered what he might say regarding his marital status. So it surprised him when he suddenly blurted, ‘I told my wife I was going to an art collectors’ dinner.’

  ‘Do you attend many of those? I imagine you’d be bored talking with such people.’

  Simon regarded her carefully.

  ‘Yes. They’re a strange breed. Most of them are just old money people, used to having too much. What are they to do with all that cash? They can buy property or shares or stock, but cash looks much prettier on a wall. And some realise that the purchase of contemporary art can make them seem … cultured. And of course the art dealers lay rose-petals before them. More than art, collectors really value being able to walk into a top gallery and have the director rush over as though a celebrity has just stepped out of a limo.’