Story for performance #221
webcast from Sydney at 08:03PM, 27 Jan 06

carnival air
Source: Thanassis Cambanis, ‘West Bank rivals unite to mourn slain campaigner’, Boston Globe in The Age online, 27/01/06.
Writer/s: Frazer Ward

It’s dark, and they are burning cars on Bondi again. Brown and orange flames halo six metal tangles and mottle small areas of beach with flickering shadows. Sitting around the fires in broken circles, they huddle together in tattered coats despite the summer heat. It’s a melancholy little carnival.

Hours ago, groups of three and four began to stir, separating out from the small clusters lying under lean-tos rigged from scraps of cardboard and plastic, as if preparing, as usual, to forage. Then a little tremor seemed to connect them, first one then more figures ran from group to group, flapping their arms, kicking up sand, and soon the beach was half-empty. Single file, skinny arms and legs bundled and belted in makeshift coverings, they wound toward the wall, clambered up onto the promenade, picked familiar routes through the rusty thickets of razor wire.

They were brought up short at the edge of Campbell Parade, tumbling into one another before standing still, heads lowered. A rickshaw went by, slowly, pedalled by a wiry, nut-brown woman. Under a yellow-and-white-striped garden umbrella securely tied to the frame, two men in tan coveralls and shaved heads bent over a laptop computer screen, a small motor sputtering at their feet. Weaving between holes and dilapidated barricades, the rickshaw eventually dwindled from view. Another tremor ran through the little crowd, they started, and ran higgledy-piggledy across the road and out of sight behind the shell of what had been a pub.

Two hours later they came back, ten or so at a time pushing and dragging at old cars without engines or tires, the interiors gutted, badly weathered, two already badly burnt. Rusty wire fastened what looked like an animal skull to the front of an ancient Toyota. Laboriously, with bursts of frenetic gesticulation, they used old boards pulled from derelict facades to lever the wrecks over ledges and razor wire onto the beach. Then they all rolled them, one at a time, to what must have been polite distances apart.

As night fell, one by one, from north to south as they were arrayed along the beach, the cars began to burn. You can imagine these strange characters, banging metal on metal for a spark to ignite a residue of petrol or some scraps of kindling, rubbing sticks together, whatever. And you can imagine them jabbering away in some debased patois, both guttural and whining.

There, I betray myself. I just sit here, after all, in a generously proportioned if rather worn brocade armchair, a gin and tonic from my stash in comfortable reach, with my shock of white hair and my face tanned leathery and deeply lined, full of character, in the cool of my own kind of cave, high up in one of the derelict blocks of flats lining the promenade. Some of the rest of it might be furtively occupied, or not, there are windows boarded up with wood now rotting away, or corrugated iron, torn and rusted—but I can’t sustain the details. Too bitter, too familiar. Perhaps I am too old, too far away from the ragamuffins on the beach for them to seem much more than ants. Perhaps another narrator could make out details, a faded red terry-towelling hat, a drab and tattered coat from an army disposal store of long ago, its meaningless insignia lovingly polished, and a pair of shoes, without socks, of course, and too big. But we’ve pulled the precarious, knotted rope ladder up behind us, haven’t we, and I at least can’t see down there very well, these days. But you, my friend, I can make you out, standing almost silently by the curtain and the over-ornate lamp, breathing shallowly through your mouth. You can see. You should take it upon yourself to be more informative, more helpful.

You see, when I was young, at the university, I had two friends. They were lovers, we spent the summer together. I was the third party. We would come to Bondi, the three of us, not to swim, but to walk, to eat gelato and visit the cafés. It was a very good summer and they taught me about socialism. Once, and more than once, of course, they came without me, the two of them, usually after visiting his mother, I think, in the afternoon. But this time, walking down to the promenade, they saw a man, wearing a terry-towelling hat, a brown-patterned Hawaiian shirt, pale blue shorts and sandals with socks, though I might have made that up, flapping his hands as he watched his car burn, apparently at random, parked as it was in a row with all the others. People paused to watch for a minute, some holding damp towels, flippers, buckets and spades, before rinsing the salt and sand off under the tap, some continuing their stroll toward the pavilion.

I tried to get the sand off my feet, too, but elsewhere I preferred the silkiness of skin where the salt had been left to dry. If no one was watching, or depending upon whom, I might tuck my head, draw cheek and lips against my shoulder, smell the sun, as it were, in my own skin.

You should tell me if the pavilion is still there.

It’s not that I mind, or resent them. They were not lovers for much longer, separating rancorously for some reason. I haven’t seen either of them for years. We lived in different countries for some time, though on running across one another back in Sydney would still count ourselves friends. Perhaps if the pavilion’s grubby white stucco still reflected the summer sun blindingly, the civility of our gestures would not seem so fraudulent.

You stir, I can tell. But you can’t tell me, can you, why this memory—this one and not even my own—should accrue failed stories? Or why late tomorrow, even so, some of my ragamuffins will burn themselves as they roll the smouldering wrecks into the shallows with all the others.

Adapted for performance by Barbara Campbell from a story by Frazer Ward.