Returning to Carthage

By Ben Sharafski

In his dazzling new collection, Israeli-Australian writer Ben Sharafski explores in six interconnected stories the underlying dramas of everyday life - from love to loss to betrayal - with insight, poignancy, and lyricism.

 

"Excellent! Desperatel

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lewis & Greene
• Release date: May 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9780645097719

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About the author

Ben Sharafski is an Israeli-Australian writer who lives in Sydney’s Northern Beaches. His stories have been published in Australia and overseas.

www.sharafski.com

Returning to Carthage

BEN SHARAFSKI

Lewis & Greene

© Ben Sharafski 2021

Published by Lewis & Greene

PO Box 70

Newport Beach NSW 2106

Edited by M. A. Hislop.

The title story first appeared in Off the Edge magazine. Love and Lies in Laos and Two Lives, Intersected first appeared in Quadrant magazine, edited by Les Murray.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission.

ISBN 9780645097719 (eBook)

Illustration and cover design : © Owen Gent

eBook design : Nohemy Adrian

Contents

Love and Lies in Laos

Two Lives, Intersected

Returning to Carthage

On Childcare and the Human Condition

Annabelle

Waiting

Love and Lies in Laos

ARRIVAL

I was awakened by a jolt in the rhythm of the carriage wheels hitting the rail joints. A man’s strident voice was announcing something in Thai. A thin strip of light came sneaking through the gap between the curtain and the window frame. I pulled back the screen separating my upper berth from the rest of the carriage.

A conductor was walking the aisle, waking the passengers, his back stiff in his neatly pressed beige uniform, the shiny black visor hiding his eyes giving him a somewhat sinister appearance. I was finally reaching my destination, Nong Khai in Thailand’s north-eastern Issan province, the end of the railway line — and the gateway to Laos.

Below me, my fellow passengers were pouring tea out of orange and pink aluminium flasks and eating sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves, leaning protectively against their bulging red-white-and-blue shopping bags. Their weather-beaten peasant faces moved jerkily as they talked to each other, exposing sparkling dark eyes. A middle-aged man wearing a faded black Kubota baseball cap said something in a mock complaining tone, frowning and gesticulating, and aroused universal laughter.

As soon as I’d stepped out of the carriage half a dozen tuk-tuk drivers came charging towards me, yelling at the top of their voices: Very cheap, Sir! You come here! My eyes darted from one peering face to another: a middle-aged man with limp greasy hair and decayed teeth, a surly-looking youth in a white singlet, his arms covered with home-made dark-green tattoos. I asked a plump boy with a flat, round, open face how much it cost to get to the Lao border. His fare was so cheap I didn’t bother to bargain.

We hurtled across the dusty streets of Nong Khai, past hardware stores, outdoor noodle restaurants, service stations — all semi-deserted at this time of day, their advertising signs gaudy in the already harsh light.

You get Lao visa already? the tuk-tuk driver asked, turning his head back to look into my eyes.

No, I replied. My Lonely Planet guide said you could get it at the border crossing.

You get visa here, said the driver. He pulled over in front of a long low concrete-block building, home to a few shops, a couple of them shuttered down. The iron rods that protruded from the roof to build a second storey had turned brown with rust. One shop sign read Airline Ticket, Car Rent, Local Tour, Lao Visa.

At the entrance a long-earlobed, effeminate, golden Buddha statue was staring impassively at me while the dark pink incense sticks in front of it were curling slowly into grey ash. A sweet smell permeated the air. Two girls with long black lacquered hair were sitting at their desks and talking to each other, giggling. They turned their heads towards me and smiled, their parted scarlet lips exposing dazzling teeth. I moved my eyes from one girl to another, struggling to maintain eye contact.

The visa cost twenty-two dollars and would be ready in twenty minutes, said the girl on the right, her fluttering eyelashes quickening my pulse. From one of her desk drawers she pulled out in unhurried practised movements a couple of forms and a rubber stamp. I was surprised to see that the Government of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic had outsourced the issuing of visas, but it seemed that now, following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, even the Lao regime had to move with the times.

As I was racing through the forms the girl on the left spread an array of fragrant curries and condiments on her desktop. She and the tuk-tuk driver were deftly rolling little lumps of sticky rice with their fingertips and dipping them in the dishes. Would you like some? the girl asked, having caught my curious glance. When I dipped a small sticky rice ball in one of the curries both girls burst into joyful laughter.

A lanky Japanese backpacker, with a prominent Adam’s apple and metal-rimmed glasses, walked past the shop. The tuk-tuk driver gulped his mouthful with some difficulty and leapt from his chair: Hello, Sir! You get visa here! Sir! The Japanese tourist kept on walking, his face fixed forward.

I handed my filled-out forms to the girl on the right, who stapled my photos, folded the forms in two and attached them to my passport with an elastic band. Okay, let’s go! she said in a business-like tone.

The driver, the girl and I got on the flimsy tuk-tuk, which was raising little puffs of dust as it sped along the almost empty road. Soon we reached the checkpoint — a modest concrete cube at the Friendship Bridge spanning the Mekong River. A mangy yellow dog was lying motionless in the dirt, its eyes half closed, not bothering to shake off the flies that were gathered on its side. There were two counter windows at the front of the building. One was shut; the Japanese backpacker was standing in front of the other, his shoulders stooped, his eyes darting from the form he was filling out to his open passport. I looked with bewilderment from him to the girl holding my documents. You wait one minute here, she told me, her voice sounding a bit too loud, almost jarring. Her eyes were invisible behind the mirror-like lenses of her designer sunglasses. She sashayed to the back of the building and handed my documents to a Lao official in military uniform who greeted her like an old friend. I looked at the sign: A visa cost twelve dollars here — ten dollars less than what I’d been charged.

It was not an extortionate price to pay for sampling the local cuisine with a couple of attractive, friendly locals — and yet I was crestfallen, unable to believe that I had let myself fall for such a rudimentary ruse.

I had always been a hopeless liar; I had a friend who used to have two girlfriends — one in Sydney and one in Newcastle. With voyeuristic absorption, I would follow his tales of the elaborate stories he had to concoct, convinced that I would never be able to replicate such feats of deception. Looking at the tuk-tuk driver’s open, good-natured face, I recalled the moment I entered the travel agency and saw the two wholesome, beautiful girls with their affable smiles and blissful laughter. My annoyance and humiliation were mixed with fascination by the con artist’s craft — the perfect control over facial expression, physical posture and tone of voice that I knew I would never be able to achieve.

I retrieved my stamped passport, thanked my two companions curtly and paid the tuk-tuk driver without a tip. A faint shadow flickered over his face — or was it just my imagination?

VIENTIANE

A small fleet of battered taxis was waiting at the Lao side of the bridge, their drivers leaning against them, smoking listlessly, holding their cigarettes between their thumbs and index fingers: ancient Peugeots and only slightly newer Soviet-made Ladas, relics of two bygone ages in the oddly tumultuous modern history of this small landlocked country. When we reached the outskirts of Vientiane, the Lao capital, perhaps half an hour later, the driver turned back and, exposing bad teeth, asked where I wanted to be dropped off. I opened my guidebook. A circle at the middle of the map appeared to be the city centre. According to the book it was known as Fountain Circle and was surrounded by French colonial buildings.

A few minutes later I found myself standing alone, my backpack lying on the dusty cracked bitumen at my feet, in front of a miserable little roundabout, its patchy lawn yellowing, the small plain fountain in its middle bone-dry, surrounded by a few non-descript, run down, two-storey buildings. The place was almost deserted. A lone scooter chugged past me, ridden by two young women without helmets. They were both dressed in a sarong and a blouse, their long hair tied back in a ponytail, and they were wearing no makeup.

Why are you going to Laos? There’s nothing to see there!

We were at a dinner party at the Randwick flat of one of Cathy’s friends from work, still going through our first glasses of chardonnay. The speaker was an overweight doctor in his mid-thirties whose black-framed rectangular glasses looked at odds with his pink, plump, baby-like face. We had just been introduced to him that evening, and he had already confided in his slight Dutch or German accent that he had found India disgusting and Thailand much better than India, but still very dirty. As he was making his pronouncement about Laos I could sense by my side the subtle change in Cathy’s posture. Without looking at her I could picture her placid blue eyes imploring me to control my emotions.

I just want to spend some time somewhere peaceful and quiet, I replied with all the calm I could muster. Glancing sideways I noted Cathy’s tacit approval. Yet now in Vientiane, looking around me at this wretched misnamed city centre, I had to concede that the abrasive Dutch doctor may have had a point.

I had met Cathy three years earlier, my first long-term relationship after years that stretched like an ocean of loneliness, sprinkled with an archipelago of aborted liaisons. Our relationship did not start with mad infatuation on my part, but months had passed, then a year, and before I knew it I realised I was happy. In another sign of emerging from my extended adolescence I was establishing what could be referred to as a career. I had set up an internet design business, creating web sites for friends who ran small businesses, but gradually, through word of mouth, securing a couple of larger corporate clients. Cathy’s father had been very supportive in referring to me clients from his accountancy practice.

When I asked Cathy to marry me it seemed the obvious next step. We decided to have our wedding the following year, once she had got her master’s degree out of the way. Meanwhile she wanted to devote the summer holidays to completing her thesis. With enough frequent flyer points to book a return flight to Bangkok, where could I go? Burma did not allow overland entry, Vietnam didn’t share a border with Thailand and I had already visited Cambodia. How about Laos? In A Dragon Apparent, his classic account of travel in French Indo-China, Norman Lewis was underwhelmed: Laos was too quiet, too backward, lacking the excitement and ebullience of Vietnam. Yet he did add somewhat cryptically that the French colonial officers viewed Laos as paradise on earth, and once settled there found it hard to leave.

I started walking, the straps of my backpack cutting into my shoulder blades. The silent street was lined with vapid, cheaply built one- and two-storey houses; the unsparing light was exposing their cracks and peeling paint. The clear blue sky, boundless and featureless, filled me with dread: my two weeks here stretched ahead like a prison sentence in solitary confinement.

I left my backpack at the first hotel I’d bumped into — a disintegrating Soviet-looking concrete block. After a hurried cold shower (there was no hot water) I ventured outside again and almost immediately bumped into the office of a domestic airline.

The clerk was another young woman in a sarong and a blouse, her long hair framing her serene delicate face. There was a softness in her eyes which gave her the innocent, diffident air of a village maiden from a pre-industrial age. She told me there was a flight the following morning to Luang Prabang — the ancient royal capital and the country’s main tourist attraction. I bought a ticket, thinking that if my first impressions of Vientiane were totally wrong, I could explore its hidden attractions on my way back.

As I entered Vientiane’s central market I was overwhelmed by the smell of open sewers, fish paste and incense. A middle-aged lady was hosing down the concrete floor, and I had to dodge the snaking rivulets as I made my way down the aisle. I ordered noodle soup at a little stall. It was bland, just about tasteless, and had in it a slice of something white and rubbery that looked like processed meat. I ate only a few mouthfuls of noodles before rising from my chair to try my luck elsewhere. As soon as I had moved away, a toothless old man in rags rushed to the table and started eating my discarded soup, slurping noisily, his body twisted into an awkward furtive crouch. For a moment I froze where I was standing, gasping, my heartbeat reverberating in my ears — mesmerised, unable to believe my eyes.

A whiff of early evening breeze soothed my perspiring face as I found myself strolling along the banks of the Mekong. The dishwater-coloured river was broad here, and I could discern no movement as its current — fed by the melting snows of Tibet — made its way towards the South China Sea. The muddy riverbank was lined with little restaurants on wooden decks just above the water. Two excited children were chasing a yellow puppy in front of one of the restaurants; at another four teenage girls were standing by the counter, all in Lao dress, and when they saw me walk past, they looked at me in unison and smiled shyly. I kept on