A Finer Balance.
The street ended with our house, and a new road began with our neighbour. The local historical society would tell you that the strip of a dozen houses that ran parallel to a reserve, used to be a dairy farm. So what used to be a patch of grass used for grazing is today, a delicately balanced spectrum of ethnic and cultural diversity resonating with a fragile but certain peace. One end of the spectrum identified with the victims of persecution from various sources, whilst the other end of the spectrum saw those that arrived here in less desperate a fashion, but also very much in search of something they might just have found here in Australia. A Sudanese family is at number 61 and a Romanian resides at number 49. The Dutch widower sits purposefully between the Italians and the Greeks, while the Asians are dispersed randomly along the strip. A Sri Lankan family punctuated the sequence, with the Germans adding a comma, the Russians an apostrophe. The Ukrainians who recently moved in next door to the South African in number 55 completed the chaos. As for the trio of Christian fundamentalists who everyone eye suspiciously - they made for a silent post-script to what was already a dangerous cocktail.
Some relationships thrash individuals restless while others meaningfully define communities. One of the more intense relationships keeping the strip on the edge of its congeniality is that which involves Dorin, the middle-aged agoraphobic Romanian, his violin and the South African pensioner Mr Kempis. I would often mow Mr K’s front lawn and in return, he would keep me entertained with colourful and lengthy stories about another life in Johannesburg. The old man who adores his garden, spent endless hours working amongst his tulips and roses. He would complain of chest pains, yet you wouldn’t ever find him without a cigarette between his lips. An interesting contrast, certainly, between the love and patient care he showered upon his plants and the nonchalant approach he took to his health. It was in and amongst his reflections on a distant home in South Africa, that I would become familiar with his contempt for his neighbour’s violin playing. Dorin practiced his music every afternoon without fail. I happened to be there one Saturday when the sounds of this music carried into Mr K’s front yard. I watched as the old man stopped in mid sentence and began muttering something about wanting to go over and pour liquid concrete into a sound box. I must say that I thought Dorin’s music was quite pleasant, but then I hadn’t served as a sound technician in a Durban Concert hall for twenty odd years.
While I took care of Mr. K’s front lawn, Emilio, the Italian who lives with his mother at number 65, helped Mr. K with his hedges. Emilio and his family have been in the country for over twenty years. Emilio’s father built their house before he passed away a few years ago. A cement worker by day and a Casanova by night, Emilio often did odd jobs for the residents of the strip... “I like to be of use. Earn my place, you know?” Wednesday night saw Emilio on the ground floor of their home entertaining his guests whilst his mother would be upstairs watching Mcleod’s daughters on Channel 9. The show reminded her of her youth, she once told me. She and her four sisters grew up on a vineyard that their father owned in Italy. A passionate soccer fan, Emilio used to feed dreams of playing for Australia before “women and bastard knee pains” took over. There was a third passion for Emilio, outside women and soccer. In no certain terms, this concerned a complete and utter repulsion for the Christians sharing a house next door. Apparently they “want to save (his) soul from the devil. Well I’ve got news for them. They’re two lives and 34 years, too bloody late”. A few late night espresso sessions had given me an insight into a carefully detailed plan to “cement up all their windows and doors while they’re asleep so that they’ll keep their ‘soul saving’ words of wisdom to themselves”. The blueprints gave me some direction to the origins of Mr. K’s ‘cement in the sound box’ idea.
Coming from the other end of the street, I can’t say that I would find all the members of the shared house to be entirely dislikable. I often played chess with the Turkish Adel who was very keen that I made an approach on the Ukrainian girl from across the road. I had told him about how she and I had been doing the ‘eye-contact, smile’ thing ever since she had moved in a few months ago, and he wouldn’t let me forget it…“What are you waiting for exactly? There’s a Turkish proverb…‘patience is bitter, but it bears sweet fruit’…well, that’s bullshit”. His keenness for me to “heat the stove” (as he put it) with the Ukrainian, made me question Adel’s place amongst the pure and pious. Apparently he had turned up to church with a friend one Sunday morning during his first week in the country and found a group of young people in search of a roommate. He knew what he was in for but felt that he didn’t have much choice…“if beggars were choosers they would die - at least in Istanbul”. He’d “be the Pope, if they wanted (him) to be, ” and so he “play(s) their game”. According to Adel, “We are what we are, as well as what people assume we are…if their assumptions fit our cause”.
In this delicate balance that nurtures peace, you come to realise that there is a common fabric that held all these people together. The space that they shared as well as the events that occasionally brought them together to share a common predicament. These might include a power failure that ran the length of the strip, or the fire that was lit in the reserve the other night. It might even touch the commonly sustained distrust of the fundamentalists in number 57. As for what these people all think of the country they might call home? From my discussions with some of the residents over the years, identifying with a national identity is far from their concerns. The message was saliently clear in Mr K’s thoughts on the matter….“Well, see boy that question is a little confusing. I’ve been all over the place over the years, so I don’t really see myself as anything of the sort (Australian or South African). I am just who I am, who I will be till I die. A father. A brother. A friend. I do like it here, this country…(he turned and shifted his gaze towards Dorin’s flat)…well, mostly”.
