Creative Differences and Other Stories Read online

  That was when Klara did a brilliant thing. She took her mobile phone from her handbag and photographed me sitting on the security guard. Meantime, the manager had appeared. I couldn’t follow the conversation, as the guard was still shouting, but apparently Klara told them that she would send the photo to a newspaper gossip column—that they would be amused by the hotel’s guard being defeated by a physics professor. The net result of her negotiation was that we were able to leave without further harassment.

  Going to an alternative restaurant was out of the question, but as we walked to the taxi rank we both started laughing—simple decompensation, no doubt, but an unexpectedly positive development. Somehow Klara invited herself to share dinner at my apartment.

  I don’t often have visitors, but the apartment is always clean and tidy. Klara poked around and put on a CD while I commenced dinner preparation. We were behind schedule, and I considered saving time by killing the lobster in fresh water rather than in the freezer, but decided that there had been more than enough disruption to routine on this occasion. I began recalculating times for the various tasks on the kitchen whiteboard, but Klara stopped me. Realising that I was simply adding one hour and twenty-seven minutes to the original times, she turned the clock back by that amount, so that it would display times according to the normal schedule.

  While the lobster went to sleep, Klara persuaded me to open a bottle of wine. I keep some 375 ml bottles of the recommended accompanying wines for three of my seven dinners, but had not scheduled an opening for this evening. Again, she solved a social problem, as the alcohol was quickly effective in reducing tension. We talked for seventy-eight minutes with almost no reference to physics. She told me that she had also studied judo as a child, when she lived in Hungary. She did not have the same need to use it for self-protection at school, but understood the benefits of disconnecting the mind on a regular basis.

  Somewhere in this conversation, I realised that her clothes were substantially different in style to those that she wore at the university. The frames of her glasses were lighter, and she was wearing a black dress and impractical shoes. Once I had noticed the dress, I was in danger of becoming fixated on her breasts, and it would have been inconvenient to employ the sunglasses solution recommended by Gene inside the apartment. Fortunately the cooking tasks provided a timely interruption.

  Klara insisted on joining me in the kitchen, and I assigned her the non-time-critical task of preparing the deep-fried leek strands in the wok while I sliced the orange peel and herbs for the cooking broth. She found it unusual that I should have planned such a high-quality dinner for myself, the more so when I pointed out that I prepared the lobster salad with avocado, mango and wasabi-coated flying-fish roe every Wednesday. It gave me an opportunity to impress her with the seven major advantages of the Standardised Meal System:

  No need to accumulate recipe books.

  Standard shopping list—and very efficient shopping.

  Almost zero waste—nothing in the fridge or pantry unless required for one of the recipes.

  Diet planned and balanced in advance—no time wasted wondering what to cook.

  No mistakes, no unpleasant surprises.

  Excellent food, superior to most restaurants at a much lower price (see 3).

  Preparation involves minimal cognitive load.

  The last advantage is crucial, as the time taken to prepare the meal is irrelevant when it requires no thought. On several occasions, my brain has generated novel experimental designs while I was segmenting limes or boning a quail.

  Klara thought my explanation was hilarious, and I found myself deliberately expanding on and even exaggerating the points on my list, in a sort of self-parody. We had created a positive-feedback dynamic in which Klara’s laughter encouraged my exaggeration, which in turn encouraged Klara’s laughter. This I could understand.

  At Klara’s suggestion, we ate on the balcony and the meal was predictably delicious. I take credit only for the correct execution of the recipe. There was no moon, and I mentioned to Klara that I could distinguish the Great Orion Nebula, a good indicator of a clear night in the city. She asked me what stars I knew, and, though I’m not an astronomer, I have an excellent memory. I took her across the constellations, offering some comments about the location of pulsars, novae and the like, and something of the history of our understanding of the universe. I have been teaching physics long enough not to be surprised that students know only narrow parts of their subject, and ignore the broader perspective. (Although I can usually see the validity of others’ world views, I consider it likely that I will never understand why so many people find the results of a sports match or the events of a fictitious television story more interesting than the extraordinary properties of the universe.)

  I suddenly realised that two hours and eight minutes had passed, that our dinners and the wine were long finished, and that I might have committed a social error by rambling on for too long. But Klara was just sitting, totally fascinated, and pressed me to continue. For the first time since I was too naive to realise my limitations, I began to believe that I might survive a date well enough to be able to ask for a second.

  At twenty minutes to midnight (the rates go up after then) I called a taxi for Klara. It was only after she had gone that it occurred to me that her alteration to the clock had meant that it was really well after 1 a.m.

  As she turned to leave, she put her hands on my shoulders and kissed me quickly on the cheek. I was too surprised to react, which was probably fortunate. Since phoning for the taxi, I had been obsessed by the possibility that something would go wrong in the last few minutes. But it did not. I was left alone to reflect on an extraordinary fifteen and a quarter hours.

  Counting the Jacket Incident and the Premature Taxi Incident, I had made three social errors. But I had wined and dined a beautiful woman. I had defeated a man in hand-to-hand combat (without inflicting injury). I had toppled the king. It was the best day of my adult life.

  I hung up the yellow jacket and set the alarm for 6.43 a.m. Then I rang Gene to tell him about it.

  Runner-up in the Jennifer Burbidge Short Story Award, Fellowship of Australian Writers’ National Literary Awards, 2007. Published in The Envelope Please, ed. Colin Peterson, FAW, 2008.

  A Confession in Three Parts

  ‘Stavros.’ The priest shook my grandfather’s hand solemnly, then turned to me. ‘Doctor Patalis.’ He stressed the title, and I was conscious of the emotions that it still stirred. As a student, I had coveted the elevation from Ms to Doctor as signifying not only the completion of a journey, but a change in myself. I would play the sound of it in my head. Doctor Patalis: a reason to turn the light back on and study for another hour. Later, when it was a literal part of my identity, I realised that it represented only one step towards something that would be always beyond my reach.

  I had planned to come alone, but should have known that the responsibility of accompanying Pappou would fall to me. Doctors are supposed to be inured to viewing the dead and qualified to comfort the grieving. The priest brought us glasses of water, and I noticed that my grandfather’s was cloudy with ouzo.

  Inured or not, there is something unsettling about seeing the shell of someone you have spoken with only days or hours before. My aunt’s face was impassive, as it had been when she issued her characteristically precise instructions. She had gone without a fight, in almost frightening contrast to the determination that had marked her professional life.

  There is a Buddhist story in which a travelling monk is asked to bless a family. ‘Grandfather dies, father dies, son dies’ is his blessing, acknowledging the inevitability of death, and recognising that we can hope only for the natural order to be followed. Pappou had not been so blessed. He had lost a daughter, and, as I learned yesterday, a grandchild as well.

  I took the photo from my handbag. I had cut it from my aunt’s wallet, cut it because the surface of the photo had become incorporated with the plastic window. Pappou nodded gravely: he knew what it was.

  ‘She had a baby?’ I asked.

  ‘He died. She was very unhappy.’ He paused, and, consciously professional, I left space for him to speak. ‘Even before.’

  ‘She wasn’t married?’

  ‘She was married. They had to. It was a long time ago.’

  It is a grey Melbourne afternoon in 1968: another time, another funeral. For most of the black-clad mourners, this is still a new country. An ancient grandmother joins the bereaved couple. ‘You’ll have another, Helen,’ she says.

  The young woman looks straight back, through tears. ‘No.’

  The husband intervenes: ‘In time.’

  Helen’s eyes tell a different story.

  I put the photograph in the coffin. It was a day of threes: three of us in the church; three generations in the Buddhist blessing; three objects to accompany my aunt. For the afterlife? Or just to be buried?

  I had tied the degree into a scroll, as it was in her graduation photo. Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery, 1970: the basic medical qualifications and almost a facsimile of my own, name included. It attested to a significant achievement, particularly for a woman at the time, but surely not as significant as her specialist qualification, the professorship, the awards. The priest’s use of doctor came back to me. How had the other Dr Helen Patalis felt, being addressed that way for the first time, forty-four years ago?

  Pappou read my thoughts. ‘It was harder for a girl then.’

  The Associate Dean is in his mid-forties, weighty in body and speech. Helen is twenty-three, slim and serious.

  ‘You were asked to discontinue because you were psychologically unsuited to the profession.’

  ‘I was kicked out because I was pregnant.’

  ‘
If a woman wants to study medicine, she must make some hard choices.’

  ‘I’m not married. And I don’t have children.’

  ‘Frankly,’ says the Associate Dean, ‘your history counts against your psychological soundness. The faculty has yet to embrace the permissive society…although I am personally sympathetic to a more liberal attitude…A divorced woman…an attractive divorced woman, could be a distraction…’ The heavy-handed signal is unmistakable. There is an opportunity if she wants it enough.

  I wondered whether my grandfather knew how hard it had been for me to pursue the same course, passionate about medicine but desperate to escape the expectations that went with my name. Those expectations included a saintlike dedication and apparent absence of human failings. I had taken a step from my aunt’s shadow with my choice of psychiatry over surgery, but could not hope to escape the broader legacy.

  Perfection is not attractive and I hadn’t particularly liked my Aunt Helen. She had taken no interest in my studies, and it had been a surprise to see her sitting with my parents at my graduation ceremony, particularly when I realised that her rightful place was in academic regalia on the stage. I had been similarly surprised when she charged me with delivering her effects to her coffin. I supposed she trusted the other doctor in the family to do the job properly.

  The third object was a small cardboard box, tied with string.

  Professor Helen Patalis, paediatric surgeon, famous for her detachment, self-sufficiency and refusal to countenance any distraction from her work, is seeing her psychotherapist for the 472nd time. She and Joan Walker have met weekly for exactly ten years, excepting Joan’s holidays and Helen’s conferences, since Helen returned home from her ceremonial admission to the College of Surgeons and drank cheap white wine until she vomited. Joan will soon give up her practice to teach full-time, and will use this anniversary to begin the process of disengagement.

  ‘It’s been ten years,’ she says. Then, with only a trace of irony: ‘I wonder if you might be ready to tell me why you came to see me.’

  Helen stiffens.

  ‘I do know,’ says Joan.

  Helen’s arms are folded.

  Joan senses the impasse. ‘I want to tell you about another client,’ she says. ‘He had an affair. A brief affair—he wasn’t caught. But he believed he had a duty to tell his wife. I asked him what the consequences would be, and he gave me a predictable answer: a lot of pain for people he loved, with nothing in return, except relief for himself. Confessing was the selfish choice. I told him that his punishment was to never be able to tell.’

  Helen, who has been listening impassively, tenses again.

  ‘I gave him one of these.’ Joan walks to a cupboard and returns with a small hand-painted cardboard box. ‘I suggested that he put the memories, the pain, the guilt, into the box. And go on. If he had the courage to make that choice.’

  There is a long silence.

  ‘Do you have any more boxes?’

  I turned the box over a few times. I knew what it was and even where it came from. Dr Walker ran the family-therapy training program and had shown us her distinctively painted confession boxes.

  Pappou broke the silence again. ‘Perhaps it was a blessing,’ he said. ‘Otherwise, Helen would never have been a doctor. All those children she saved. The people she inspired.’ He looked at me pointedly, and I surely stood in his eyes not only for her protégés, but for our family, lifted in status in a new country through his daughter’s success. ‘God works in strange ways,’ he said, and I turned away because the pieces had come together.

  Aunt Helen didn’t believe in God. She believed in herself.

  She must have believed in me too, and known that I would work it out. Dr Walker had told us many stories about the confession boxes—for the unacceptable, the illegal, the unconfessable. One I remembered particularly because we surmised that the patient must have been a nurse or doctor. The woman had postnatal depression. In the depths of a despair that we only now recognise as mental illness, she killed her baby. But, unlike most mothers, she knew enough to make it look like a cot death.

  I composed myself and turned back to Pappou, who took the box from me, then asked the obvious question: ‘What is it?’

  I spread my hands, feigning ignorance. He returned the box, and I placed it in the coffin. Pappou just nodded to the priest on the way out, lost in thought. We had almost reached the car before he spoke: ‘A gift, I think.’

  Published in The Road Home, ed. David Vernon, Stringybark Publishing, 2012.

  Three Encounters with the Physical

  Tomorrow you will add another line to your life résumé, check another item off the bucket list. At fifty-one years old, with a PhD, a successful business, passport stamps from forty-seven countries and a novel in progress, you will run your first marathon.

  You are not a sportsman, not someone who played football until he was forty, kept fit playing squash, and has a routine confidence in his body. But you have trained, literally by the book, for eight months, getting up at 6 a.m. six days a week, lapping the park, pushing out to thirty-five kilometres on a Sunday morning three weeks ago. You have lost nine kilograms and your body mass index is down to twenty-two.

  The GPS watch on your wrist will monitor your heartbeat and pace. You have made a paper bracelet with the optimum split times for each kilometre to get you across the line in the three hours and fifty minutes that your training times have assured you is achievable. Science, in the training, the nutrition and the tactics, should enable your middle-aged body to perform at its peak. In the 1904 Olympics, the strychnine- and alcohol-fuelled winner managed only twenty minutes better than your target time. You will reflect on that to reinforce your confidence. You will not reflect on what will turn out to be a far more relevant lesson of history. The legendary runner of the first marathon did not survive.

  The forecast temperature for the 7 a.m. start is two degrees Celsius. You will run in shorts and singlet, and pass the windcheater to your wife when the starting gun sounds. In New York, where you plan to run next year, you will drop your sweater and the organisers will give it to someone less fortunate. Here, there will be only a few hundred starters. That is one of the reasons you have chosen this marathon: no crowds, good organisation and not too many hills. Your friend, a veteran of seven marathons, will be running too. It won’t be a walk in the park, but it should be the logical conclusion to a precisely executed campaign.

  There will be a pep talk from Robert de Castella telling you that at some time you will need to dig deep, to find something extra. You will not need this reminder: you have prepared psychologically, imagining yourself finding whatever is needed to cross the line. Imagining is what you are good at.

  You wake in your Canberra hotel room to note the stiffness from the glycogen in your quadriceps and recognise it from your reading as an occasional side-effect of carbohydrate loading. To the traditional pasta meals, you have added the maximum dose of a liquid supplement that contains more carbs than you could possibly consume as food.

  De Castella fires the gun, and you start running, conservatively, passing the slower runners who have started at the front, waiting for the pack to spread out and let you run alone. You deliberately take the first kilometre a few seconds slower than your final target pace, resisting the temptation to get ahead of the clock while you feel fresh. It takes five kilometres and almost thirty minutes for your heart rate to creep up to one hundred and fifty-three beats per minute and settle there, while your legs put away the kilometres at a steady rate of five minutes and twenty-three seconds.

  Just after the five-kilometre mark, you realise, dimly at first, that something is wrong. The stiffness in your quadriceps is not dissipating as you would expect it to. On the contrary, it is slowly but definitely turning to pain. Stiffness from carb loading was in the books. Pain from it was not.