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 ~: FICTION / MODERN :~  The Mangoes They Serve in Heaven by Kim Miller 'Those mangoes, I've never had anything like them. Never. Isn't that true Marjory?' 'Yes, Harold.' 'The mangoes they serve in heaven. That's what I've always said. Isn't that what I've always said, Marjory?' 'Yes, Harold.' 'There you are, even Marjory says so.' Marjory turned her head to her magazine. She was idling through the puzzles in the back pages. I took a sip of beer and looked across the glass to my wife. She returned my glance with that little half nod half shake that she does. But there was nothing I could do or not do by this time. Harold was too far gone, into his stride with arms swinging and all he needed was a swagger stick. Coupled with his military moustache and that frightful voice that would complete the full set. It wasn't me that needed stopping now. My wife glanced over at Marjory. 'Marjory, I was wondering ...' 'It was the moment we arrived that they recognised something in us. No sooner had we got into the place, marched up to the receptionist's counter and told the woman who we were. Turned out to be the manager's wife. Imagine that, they knew we were coming at that time of day and there she was to welcome us. "Harold and Marjory Pruett" I said. "We've got a booking." And even before we'd been taken to our room I could tell that she recognised something different in us. Oh, yes, it was quite visible. Wasn't it Marjory?' "Visible, Harold? What was visible, Harold?' 'Come on old girl, head up out of that. You'll be losing track of our visitors the way you're going. Crosswords are not for company.' 'It's not a crossword, Harold, it's a sudoku.' 'Marjory,' said my wife, 'I was going to ask about ...' 'Ha. Sudoku. Everyone's doing sudoku. Has there been some secret plot to take over the world? Sudoku everywhere. Can't get away from blessed sudoku.' Harold was on fire and there was no putting him out. 'It's just a puzzle, Harold. I think they're an Asian thing. At least the name sounds Asian. Maybe Japanese. 'There you go. One holiday on the Orient and she's gone and got hooked. Ha ha. Just like old Marjory, that is. It'll be mahjongg next, ha ha. Easily led, is our Marjory, that's what I always say. Isn't it Marjory? Isn't that what I always say?' 'Yes, Harold.' Marjory glanced in our direction. My wife gave her a little smile. The kind of smile that Harold would not notice. She's like that, my wife. 'So, there we were in the hotel lobby and the manager's wife greeted us personally. She was a woman of class, she was. She could tell, you know, as soon as we walked in. Oh, yes, she could tell. And I knew that we were going to get recognition in that place. Oh, yes. It was very obvious. Well, it didn't take very long. That very afternoon as I was exploring the place I noticed that there was a small garden tucked in there. No way to get to it that I could see, but from the balcony outside our room you could see that there was a fenced off garden. Perhaps more a courtyard. Well, it didn't take too much thinking to sort that one out. It was behind the office area of the hotel and the way in must be through the office. So I set off to check it out. And sure enough, that's exactly what it was. A little courtyard off the front office. "I must see what that garden is like" I said to myself. But, first things first and Marjory had unpacked by then, so we were ready to go for a walk to the shops. "Off to market" I said, and off we went indeed.' 'Really, Harold, you mustn't bore these people with stories of our holidays. They've much more interesting things to do instead.' "Bore them? Definitely not. I'll get straight on to those mangoes. The mangoes they serve in heaven I call them. First morning, there they were. Had the choice of breakfast up in our room or down in the dining room. Well, naturally, we chose the dining room so we could be with other people for breakfast. Much more reasonable way to start the day in my mind. It was Marjory talked me into it that first day. "Just look at those mangoes", she said. And I must say I did look at them. Never seen anything like them. Bright gold and red they were, not those greeny yellowy things that the rest of the world calls mangoes. Sliced like diamonds and bursting from their skins they were, plates of them. So that is what I had for breakfast that first day, and that first day is when I called them the mangoes they serve in heaven. Isn't that right, Marjory? Isn't that what I said to those people at the next table? Marjory? 'Yes, Harold, that's what you said.' 'That very first day I said it to those people, just as I'm saying it to you now. And would you believe it, that's what we had for breakfast every day in that hotel. The mangoes they serve in heaven.' 'There was a little boy, you said, Marjory. The manager's family had a little boy, you said.' Marjory turned towards my wife as she spoke. It was almost a whisper, 'Yes, there was a little boy, too.' 'He was a trick, that one, the manager's little boy. We met him on our second day. Well, I did. It was when I found the door into the office courtyard. He was in there playing. Playing with trucks and cars in the garden, making little roads between the plants he was. He was a trick, that one. So I said "Hello" to him and he said it back to me in English, just like that. Probably not even five years old and he knew English. He was a trick that one. Wasn't he Marjory? Don't you think he was a trick?' "Yes, Harold. He was lovely.' Marjory turned to her puzzle and looked as if to burn a hole through the little squares that sat in front of her. All those squares and so many of them empty. 'And then we met him with his mother down in the markets on our third day. She was buying things, probably for the hotel, and we had a nice long chat there in the market. Oh, yes, I certainly remember that day, that was the dragon day. Memory association, it's how I keep track of things. The boy had a lolly on a stick and it was shaped like a dragon. There was a man in the market selling lollies. He reminded me of those glass blowers you see in shopping centres with all those glass sailing ships and swans and things. Well, this man was making lollies in his market stall with a little burner to heat up the toffee and he had dragons and lions and crocodiles all sitting there on their wooden sticks. And the little boy had one that was a dragon. I remember because when I looked in on the garden later that afternoon he was still eating it, and he had a bottle for the stick to stand in. Do you remember that, Marjory? That bottle?' 'Yes, Harold, you told me about the bottle.' 'It was in the kitchen. Would you believe that there was a little kitchen off the garden? Well the manager's wife was cooking in there. And I stood at the door for a minute or two to see how she did it. She had something cooking in a wok and the little boy was sitting on a stool watching her. I remember she had this tube of something and she squeezed from it into the wok, but that tube was not in English so I couldn't read it. "Egg sauce," she said to me when she saw me looking at it. Egg sauce, now what do you think that could be? Egg sauce in Asian cooking? Never heard of such a thing.' 'Perhaps it was something like mayonnaise,' said my wife. 'That's just what Marjory said when I told her about it later that evening. "Mayonnaise," Marjory said straight off. Didn't you Marjory? Isn't that what you said straight off? And the manager's wife tipped what was in the wok onto a plate for the little boy's dinner and he left the dragon lolly sitting in the bottle on the bench. Not that there was much left of the dragon by then. No sir, that dragon was on the way out, he was. No more breathing fire for that dragon. Ha ha. His days of immolation were over. Ha ha.' Harold laughed and took a long drink. Marjory sat staring into her squares and her numbers. While Harold drank I watched Marjory. I was waiting for her to blink. She didn't. My wife and I looked at each other. 'Perhaps it's time we went,' I said. 'Went? That's just what I did.' Harold had put down his beer. 'As soon as I saw that here was a mother feeding her little boy I just went. Left them to it, mother and child. Oh yes, mother and child and half eaten dragon. Ha ha. Mustn't forget that dragon, that's what we were really talking about wasn't it?' 'The little boy, Harold. It was the little boy we were talking about.' 'Oh yes, the little boy, that's how we got onto the dragon. Ha ha. Wrong way round from poor old Harold there.' He spoke out over our heads as if to a larger audience. 'Just a little senior's moment there folks, no need to adjust your set.' He smiled to his imagined audience and spoke again to my wife. 'Oh yes, that little boy was a trick he was, with his cars and his little roads and his half-eaten dragon and being able to speak in English. He was a trick, he was.' 'You know, I don't think many people got invited into that garden. And not into that kitchen either. It was a special kind of place just for the manager's family. Might even have had a bedroom in there somewhere for the little boy. That was the impression I got. It was very well set up in there with the garden and the kitchen and whatever else they had in there. But that manager's wife, when she saw us come through the door on our first day. Expecting us and everything like she was. Well, she knew something was different. There was something special about that place that week we were there. And those mangoes. The mangoes they serve in heaven. That's how I remember what hotel it was. Association, you see? It's a bit of a trick I do.' Harold lifted his glass, the level falling rapidly as he drank. My wife looked across at Marjory, her voice close to silence. 'And they're all gone?' 'All of them. So many. So many. Even the little boy.' And once again the silence and the staring into the places where there should be numbers. Harold emptied his glass and put it heavily on the table between us. 'Mangoes?' His voice was thickening. 'I'll ... I'll tell you about mangoes. This hotel, you've got to understand it wasn't our normal kind of place. No sir. Too many young people for my liking but the travel agent said it was a place with class. "Class," he said, and we believed him. No reason not to. Well, each weekend they had this disco there in the dining room. You know the sort of thing. Loud music that nobody has ever managed to sing to, coloured lights flashing on and off, laser beams all over the place. The agent told us about it, didn't he Marjory? But we thought we can manage that easy enough. So, you know what we did? We booked up to that day, and then we moved out to one of the islands so we would miss the disco. Ha ha, sorted that one out. Well, as I was saying about mangoes, in the dining room they had signs outside the toilets. Ha ha. Of course they did. But get this. Instead of having signs that said Men and Women, they had signs that said, Mangoes and No Mangoes. Ha ha. What do you think of that eh? Mangoes and No Mangoes. Laughed? I tell you I laughed when I saw that. "Concession to the young people," is what I said to Marjory. Didn't I Marjory, isn't that ... isn't th ... isn't that wh .. what I said when I saw those signs? 'Yes, Harold, that's what you said.' 'Hear .. hear that? Hear that?' Harold concentrated for a moment and we were rewarded with a modulation of his bluster. 'Concession to the young people. That's what I said all right. And it was, too. Making them welcome it was. That's where so much of the money is these days, right there in the pockets of all those young people. Not like in my day when young people couldn't afford holidays on the Orient and didn't need all those laser beams. And that's what they had on those signs. Mangoes and No Mangoes. And did I laugh at that? I remember it clear as day. Remember it, don't I Marjory? Eh? Don't I?' 'Yes, Harold. We know you remember it.' 'It was the disco that did it for them in the end, people said. All that loose Westerner behaviour, the newspapers said. Bikinis and booze and drugs, is what they said. Well, I said, you've got to see where they are buying those drugs from. It's not as if they bring them with them from home. It's a local product. But still they blamed all those young people. And I tell you another thing. Those toilet signs, well I reckon, ha ha, get this, I reckon there was a few men going where they shouldn't have gone that night, that's what I reckon. Ha ha. And that's when it all went up. The whole place. Gone. They reckon they set these things off with mobile phones, just like all those young people carry these days. Just like that. Gone. The night of the disco it was. Laser beams and mobile phones and God-awful explosions. We'd only left about ten o'clock that morning. Our last morning of those mangoes, the mangoes they serve in heaven. The hotel out on the island didn't have them, you know, those mangoes. All gone now.' We sat in the heavy air and watched Harold pick up his empty glass and look into it, as if by staring he might measure some depth of emptiness. 'They're all gone, Marj ... Marj ... ry.' 'Yes Harold, they're all gone now,' said Marjory, her voice a whispy thread as she reached out her hand and gently touched his knee. |
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| Kim Miller grew up in country NSW before moving to the city to study
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| More Modern: Tries to Stand, but he Can't by Ben Barone-Nugent Hamish's hunched figure became a spectacle in the playground. Students from all over the school left their games and gossip circles and gathered around their gagging classmate. They watched on silently, as if the boy's gurgles and wheezes were fragments of some important speech.... >> Life in Melbourne by Glenn Horne I grew up in country Victoria on a three acre hobby farm on which my father still lives just outside a small town, Timboon, three hours west of Melbourne, and had moved to Melbourne to study my VCE. I had moved to Sydney four years ago after finishing school. I then spent five years working part tim... >> | |