This piece was commissioned by Melbourne Recital Centre in collaboration with the Emerging Writers Festival for the 2019 Writers in Residence program, and was written in response to Vardos as part of Melbourne Recital Centre's Music Always program. To learn more about the writers and the program, visit Soundescapes, where stories, music and people intertwine
Image by a colori, used under Creative Commons
I feel awkward and out of place, so I’m flipping through the books on the 4 SALE table. Planting for Pleasure; Before You Call the Doctor; Long Life: Expectations of Old Age. The patchwork quilt on the wall says ‘imperfekt church transformed world’. On the whiteboard near the front desk, someone has written:
1) In what do you get the taste of the fullness of life?
2) What in your living requires correction?
3) When is God’s care evident?
The residents are on the other side of a glass wall, having lunch. I can hear two dozen overlapping conversations bubbling underneath the airconditioned silence of the foyer I’m sitting in. Watching them, especially given the notebook on my lap, feels ethnographic, feels gross, so I sit on a chair and start reading Expectations of Old Age instead.
Joe moved to Melbourne from Italy when he was seventeen years old. He was on his own and knew no English, but found work in a fruit shop in Footscray and gradually began to learn the language. Now, he has two children, three grandchildren and a great-granddaughter, all living in Australia. He moved to the nursing home after suffering a stroke. ‘Couldn’t speak for three days,’ he says. ‘Takes a long time, now, to get from here to here.’ He points to his temple, then to his mouth.
Vardos introduce themselves as a Hungarian gypsy folk band. ‘In Hungarian villages, we sing boring songs. Songs aboutis the washing dry? Songs about bread and salt.’
An old tale: a shepherd has fallen asleep, and while he sleeps his sheep go wandering. He is distraught when he wakes to find them gone, and goes looking for them. Twice, he thinks he sees them in the distance: but, alas, just cotton plants; then, just some shopping bags blowing in the wind.
The wailing violin that marks the shepherd’s recognition of the cotton, of the plastic, is a sound of excruciating despair. We all laugh because the shepherd is not real, at least not to us, and because it is melodramatic and a little ridiculous. But I remember in this morning’s rush, I thought I’d found my car keys under some papers on the desk. I was running late, and it had just been a bottle opener. Violins wail.
I don’t know where Joe ended up sitting on the day of the concert—he and I were separated as everyone filed into the venue. I’m going to write him into the front row. This spot doesn’t suit him—he was reticent and much more likely to hang back, I think—but it suits my purpose. Now, from my seat up the back, I can watch him watching the performance. I can write them both more easily. When Vardos play an Italian song that I am the only person in the audience not to recognise, I can write memories of Joe’s home country into his mind and watch them flash across his face (never having been to Italy myself, I borrow images from the 2003 rom com Under the Tuscan Sun and give them to Joe—I see his memories of growing up in a once-glorious but now decrepit villa, surrounded by olive trees; I imagine his childhood neighbour, of whom he was very fond, was American actress Diane Lane).
The gym I go to is frequented mostly by women, who are mostly middle aged and older. On my first visit, I saw an 82-year-old woman deadlift 100 kilos. It was her personal best, everyone cheered, and the coach had tears in his eyes. I thought: I’m going to write about this place.
Months later, a lot of the women have become my friends. It’s one of the most amazing communities I’ve ever been a part of, but the more time passes, the less inclined I am to write much about it. I keep waking up with aching muscles, stronger friendships, and less and less to say.
The third time the shepherd thinks he sees his sheep in the distance, he is correct. The music erupts.
At the end of the performance, I know I should find out the name of the Italian song everyone sang along to. I loiter, waiting for someone’s conversation to finish. None do. After a little while, I see Joe coming back out into the foyer. I ask him how he liked the concert, and he stares at me for a second before saying something in Italian that I don’t understand. He shakes his head. ‘Sorry.’ Points to his temple, then to his mouth. I smile and say, ‘That’s okay.’ Then, hoping I remember correctly from Grade 1, I say, ‘Addio.’ By the time I think to ask him the name of the song, he’s walked back across to his friends. Writing this now, I still don’t know what the song was, but everyone else did, and it was a privilege to be there as they sang it.
Caitlin McGregor is an essayist. Her work has been published by a range of magazines and literary journals, including The Big Issue, The Lifted Brow, Kill Your Darlings, Voiceworks and Overland. She has edited nonfiction for Voiceworks, The Lifted Brow and Farrago, and in 2018 was an Express Media judge for the John Marsden Prize for Young Writers. Caitlin is currently a writer-in-residence at the Melbourne Recital Centre, and is working on her first essay collection.
