Profondo Dolore

 

Margaret Pollock

 

“Pride cometh before a fall Sheena,” my Scottish grand-mother used to say to me whenever she thought that I was looking especially pleased with myself.  My grand-mother was a renowned  kill-joy with an  endless  repertoire of biblical quotations  and cautionary tales which she used to intone in a doleful voice at birthday parties and other festive occasions.

 

I had been  feeling extraordinarily  pleased with myself  that day and  I am sure that I must have had an exceedingly smug expression on my face when Marleen apologised to me. I had every  right to feel pleased with myself  because the previous day I had landed what I considered to be  a dream job and  that morning  I had solved a crime. Not a major crime it is true, and until I  proved it to them not even my closest friends had believed that a crime had even been committed. They  had all  thought that Marleen’s precious work of art had been lost through my carelessness. Now they knew differently.  I was feeling vindicated, exhilarated, and verging on the   euphoric but I came crashing back to earth with a thud when  Murph showed me the front page of the evening edition of the Herald-Sun with my photograph plastered across it.

 

 

If only I could have remained  hidden behind that  tomb-stone, I thought.   If  only the baby hadn’t started crying.   If  only my wig hadn’t fallen off when those two fat women pummeled me.  Perhaps  if T-Bone Jones had fewer tattoos  and had not been  wearing  his usual sleeveless leather vest with the skull and cross-bones on the back of it the photographers might  not have zoomed in on the two of us with such enthusiasm.  Perhaps, perhaps. If only, if only.

 

It had been  embarrassing  enough knowing that  my exploits had briefly flickered across the screen during the Channel Ten News At Five but at least my name had not been mentioned and I had felt  certain that my prospective boss,  Celia Hayes-Haughton,  would have still been in her office at that time. Celia had already discovered that I had fudged the facts a little on my CV by inferring that I  was Italian. Presentation is vitally important if you want to be short-listed for a job like that so  the  surname I had used on my  job application was  the one on my marriage certificate, not my birth certificate. I divorced Carlo several years ago but I still use his surname when it suits me and since I  was applying for a job at the Lorenzo di Firenze Academy, an elite establishment which runs  language  classes for wealthy  retirees in preparation for  cultural tours to the art galleries of Paris and Florence, it seemed logical that I should submit the job application under my former name.

 

I took great  care to present myself appropriately at the job interview too, wearing an  elegant designer label skirt and jacket ensemble accessorised with a single strand of pearls.  Perhaps Celia could detect that the pearls were fake but it was obvious  that my outfit was the real thing.   Celia  was not to know that  immediately after the interview I would be returning the  clothes  to the dry cleaning shop so that  my friend Gemma   could press them  and shroud  them in plastic before their rightful owner arrived to collect them from her.   

 

It was my dream job and surely no one could blame me for embroidering the truth a little  at the  interview. Everyone exaggerates at job interviews don’t they? And I wasn’t actually lying, I  was just trying to create the right impression when I told Celia that  at weekends I often help out in  my lover’s antique business.  I hoped that she would   picture Murph and I   sitting  together each evening at a gleaming rose-wood table with a vase of  tall white lilies at one end of it, just like in her office,  sipping French champagne from etched crystal goblets and  discussing the finer points of Georgian furniture and  Sevres porcelain.   I had no idea that she might  find out  so soon what Murph’s Collectibles is really like.

 

And Celia had obviously been impressed with me. She had offered me the job, hadn’t she?   I just wished that the employment  contract had already been signed. It probably never would be  now, not if Celia saw the front page of tonight’s  Herald-Sun.  If  she discovered the truth about my private life  she would no longer consider me the right and proper person to employ as a tutor for her conversational French and Italian classes, let alone pay my expenses to accompany her society matron  clientele  on their next “ boutique art tour” to Europe.  I would have to reconcile myself to another term as part-time teacher of   Italian and remedial arithmetic at St. Aloysius Boys Secondary College. 

 

The events which culminated in the humiliation of that  front page photograph  began  one Saturday afternoon at the end of June when  I was visiting Murph at  his shop.

 

Like Celia’s business, Murph’s Collectibles  caters for a   niche market,  but the similarity  between the two enterprises ends there. Whereas the Lorenzo di Firenze Academy is housed in an exquisitely restored Victorian villa situated  in one of Melbourne’s leafiest and most prestigious suburbs, Murph and his business partner Charlie operate out of a cruddy graffiti-encrusted building which backs onto a railway line in an area which has defied all attempts by even the most  honey-tongued and zealous of real estate agents  to make anyone believe that it has any potential whatsoever to become  gentrified.

 

The back section of the building  is a cluttered graveyard for clapped out refrigerators, pre-remote control TV sets and other battered paraphernalia which most people would dispatch to the tip.  Actually some of  it comes from there. Murph is a committed environmentalist. He believes in recycling and says that he is providing  an important community service by selling what  he describes as “pre-loved household items” to customers who include  recently released prisoners and  people  whose  appearance is so disreputable that no bank will let them walk through the front  door let alone issue them with  a credit card.  T-Bone Jones fits into both of these categories and since T-Bone lost one eye in a fight and subsequently his job as an inter-state truckie Charlie has been helping him out by  occasionally giving him casual work heaving furniture around the store-room.  Charlie and T-Bone have known each other for yonks and I have thought it best not to ask too many questions about where they first met.

 

However despite its disreputable appearance Murph’s Collectibles is  a very profitable enterprise with  an  international reputation and even its own web-site. Its fame and most of its income  derives from  Elvis memorabilia. Elvis fans  travel  from as far away as New Zealand  to search amongst a phantasmagoria of tack for the  pieces they need to  complete their collections. Three-dimensional iridescent wall-hangings, luminous Elvis clocks and mirrors, scratched vinyl records, sets of Elvis stubby holders, tattered fan magazines and movie posters in a variety of languages -  these are just a few of the items prized by keen collectors and it  is comforting to know that the more grotesque of these mementos are extremely rare.  But  the most sought after of all the merchandise in the store are the costumes which  Charlie’s wife Marleen  designs and makes to sell and  to hire out to Elvis impersonators.

 

Unless you get the wrong impression about my taste in men, I should point out now that Murph’s interest in all of this trash is purely commercial.  The décor in his  flat above the shop is tastefully minimalist. There  is no clutter or any evidence of Elvis in Murph’s bedroom.  Unlike Charlie and Marleen, Murph is not even an Elvis fan – but please  do not reveal that piece of information to anyone, especially not to Marleen.  Murph has still not had the heart to tell Marleen that he is sceptical about most of the recent Elvis sightings  posted on the Internet.

 

Although Marleen has a blind spot as far as Elvis is concerned, her skills as a seamstress  are unsurpassed.  I could provide you with a long list of well known Elvis impersonators  for whom she has designed stage wear but I expect that their names would mean as little to you as they did to me when I first met Murph. You may however have heard of Lindy Fischer. Lindy, the famous drag-king, was at the shop for a fitting on that fateful Saturday afternoon when Marleen’s treasured collage went missing.

 

Marleen had been working on her collage for over a year with the aim that it would eventually form part of a triptych. The middle section was  almost completed. Lovingly constructed from remnants of silk and satin and intricately embroidered with gold thread and diamantes, the collage depicts The King at the height of his fame during   what is commonly referred to by Elvisologists as the Early Las Vegas  Period.

 

Lindy, one of the shop’s most loyal customers,  had commissioned Marleen to design a series of  costumes  for her, each one more amply padded than the last, so that  she might  faithfully represent  every twist and turn in the  successive phases of  Elvis’ career. You see   Lindy’s burning ambition is  to become the  first female to hold  the Elvis Impersonators’ World Title.  Personally I think that Lindy should stick to what she does best and not try to compete with the men. Lindy is tall and slim  – she has sometimes  been mistaken for k.d. Laing – and I have been reliably informed  that when she performed as the young hip-swivelling truck-driving Elvis at a certain venue in  San Franciso there was not a dry pair of knickers in the house. But Lindy is determined  to go mainstream. Marleen’s padded costumes will certainly be an asset as far as presentation is concerned  but they do nothing to enhance  Lindy’s allure. Anyway, I am digressing. The point I want to  make is that on that particular Saturday I clearly remember that after Lindy admired the collage, Marleen left it on her work table before ushering Lindy into a curtained  cubicle near the back of the shop for her fitting.

 

I was stretching the truth a little when I told Celia that I often help out in Murph’s shop. Quite early in out relationship Murph made it clear  to me that he preferred it if I kept my distance from his customers. He  put it very tactfully, even romantically,  by  saying that in most other situations  he admired my outspokenness and that he loves the  way  my face reflects my feelings, but apparently these traits had offended certain of his customers.  I think that Murph  must have overheard what I said to a woman who was asking us if we could order a fridge magnet like the one her sister  had bought  in Memphis. The fridge magnet consisted of a manikin of Elvis in his underwear and  it  came with a complete clip-on wardrobe of different  outfits. I probably should not have sniggered when I asked her  whether Elvis was wearing ordinary jockey shorts or  a corset.   

 

Anyway, on   that particular Saturday Murph was glad of my help because  the shop was very crowded. A mini-bus had just disgorged two families from Echuca who make the trip down to Melbourne twice a year.   A stock-take and general culling of the racks containing the costumes-for-hire had been almost completed, and Murph asked me if I could finish checking the inventory, tidy the racks, take the  soiled costumes to the dry cleaners, place a plastic bag of  discards  in the nearest Brotherhood Bin, and throw a bag of other rubbish  in the skip out the back.  I did exactly what I was told. I did not go anywhere near Marleen’s precious collage. But later, when she found  it was missing, she accused me of throwing it away. Although Murph defended me, I think that deep down he suspected me too. If he hadn’t suspected me why would  he have phoned Gemma to ask if I had accidentally given it to her  with the dry-cleaning? And why  did he  send T-Bone to the tip next morning to rummage through the garbage?

 

Marleen took the loss very badly. I could understand why she was upset but I think she went a bit over the top when she said that she now understood how her sister had felt after her baby’s cot death. Her sister thought so too. She has not been back to the shop since then which Murph and I are  both very pleased about because neither of us  can stand Marleen’s sister.

 

I knew that I had not been anywhere near  the collage so it was obvious   to me that one of the customers must have taken it while Marleen was in the fitting room with Lindy.  I told Murph that I thought that the  people from the mini-bus were the prime suspects and suggested  that he inform the police.

 

“What do you expect that to achieve?” he asked me. “They’re hardly likely to set up a road block between here and Echuca. In any case, Marleen wouldn’t  want the police involved because of Charlie.”

 

So I kept quiet after that. Like Charlie’s past, the collage became a touchy subject and I didn’t mention it again although I thought about it a lot. Murph did not let  my alleged carelessness affect the way he felt about me  but nevertheless it hurt that I had been wrongfully accused of something I had not done. I felt angry too that anyone could get away with stealing something which had taken Marleen hundreds of hours  to  complete. I am fond of Marleen  and although her collage was not to my taste I agreed with Murph when he said that it was a very beautiful piece of needle-work , that is if you like that kind of thing, and that when  the entire triptych was completed and hanging on the wall above the altar near Marleen’s sewing machine it would give  the shop a little more class. 

 

 I couldn’t stop  thinking about the Echuca entourage and remembering something  I had overheard  one of them say –  that they planned to  visit Melbourne again on the anniversary of Elvis’ death  so that they could lay a wreath on his shrine. Therefore, when  August 16th arrived, I set off to look for them there.

 

It was the first time I had ever visited the Melbourne  General Cemetery. It’s  a vast place equivalent in size to the CBD, an  undulating landscape  of wide avenues and narrow lane-ways lined with  marble and granite. Like  many other urban environments  its neighbourhoods are divided along ethnic lines. Huge  black marble tombstones with Italian inscriptions - “Ripsa Eterno in Pace”….  “Profondo Dolore” -  border  the path which leads in from the Lygon  Street entrance and as I strolled along, enjoying the winter sunshine and feeling glad to be above ground and not below it,  I recalled  a rumor I had heard years ago about  a local firm of Italian undertakers. It was said that  the Mafia paid them to put more than one corpse in some of the coffins.  I wondered how many corpses the mausoleum in the distance might hold.

 

There was no one else around in the Italian section  except a family putting fresh flowers on one of the graves. It would have been insensitive to ask them the way to the Elvis shrine  so I kept on walking. As I got closer to  the mausoleum I heard  music.    I knew then that I was on the right track.

 

Beyond the mausoleum, facing one of the wider avenues, was a fake  rock grotto, and fans were converging on it  from all directions.  I expected the grotto  to shelter  a  life sized plaster statue of Saint Elvis but there was just a simple gold plaque recording the fact that Elvis Aron Presley who had been  born in Tupelo on January 8th  1935 had died, contrary to Marleen’s belief,  in Memphis on August  16th  1977.  A single photograph  usually adorns a niche in the grotto but on this auspicious day, twenty five  years after the saint had   consumed his last  fried peanut-butter sandwich, the restraint imposed by the cemetery board of management guide-lines  was obviously not appropriate.  There were fluffy teddy bears, cuddly toy hound dogs, bunches of daffodils, candles, incense, and  photographs  of the King at every stage of his life.  There were hand-written prayers and mis-spelt love letters and a display of framed album covers which were chained together to prevent them being stolen.

 

Fans were arriving  to  place even more offerings on the ground. Some paused to be photographed in front of the shrine – whole families from grand-mothers to babies wearing matching Elvis T-shirts -  while others sat silently  on near by  graves in solitary contemplation.   Some of them seemed to believe that  the grotto had healing powers like the one at Lourdes. One  woman on crutches who was wearing a hospital admission  wrist-band arrived by ambulance accompanied by a uniformed nurse.  There was little conversation however because it was difficult to converse  about the sound of  Elvis simultaneously singing  “Tutti Frutti”, “Danny Boy” and “Big Hunka Love”  from  the three  portable  cassette players which  had been placed around the  shrine. 

 

Worshippers  were  competing with each by displaying  icons  and wearing garments which proclaimed the depth of their  devotion and I felt increasingly confident that when  the Echuca entourage  arrived they would bring  the collage with them and put it on display.   I wasn’t sure if I would be able to retrieve it from them, but even if I just photographed them with it I would be able to  prove to Murph and Marleen that I had not been responsible for its loss.

 

Because I was hoping not  to be recognised by any of Murph’s customers I had covered my short auburn hair with a brown wig and worn  clothes which under any other circumstances would have rendered me invisible in a crowd – jeans and a plain black skivvy. But amongst the satin bomber jackets emblazoned with the royal name, the hand-knitted fair-isle sweaters with Elvis’ portrait front and  back, and the T-shirts proclaiming  that the wearer had visited Graceland, not to mention several Elvis impersonators in full mufti, I began to feel very conspicuous.  I noticed a particularly tall granite obelisk  not far from the grotto . If I hid behind it I would be able to view the comings and goings  without  being spotted  myself.  I could probably take photographs unobtrusively from there too.

 

Unfortunately, just as I was walking in that direction, T-Bone Jones arrived.

 

T-Bone is hard to miss. He is built like a bull, has long greasy grey hair tied back  with a filthy red bandanna, and wears a patch over one eye which on this occasion was decorated with a holograph enhanced photograph of Elvis circa 1959. I scurried away from him but he followed me.

 

“I’d know your cute little back-side  anywhere,” he told me with a lewd chuckle. “Better not tell Murph I said that, eh?”

He attempted a ribald wink with his one remaining eye.

I smiled weakly.

“Not leaving already are you?” he asked.

I shook my head, then told him why I was there.

 

“Collage? What’s a collage?”

 

I explained. Comprehension slowly dawned.

 

“You mean that fuckin fantastic flag thing that Marls was making?  I’ll stick around and help you find it. You might need back up.” When he flexed his muscles the  dragons on his forearms rippled, and the breasts of the naked lady on his biceps grew even bigger.

 

TV crews and press photographers were starting to arrive. The twenty fifth anniversary of Elvis’ death was big news that day and they were trawling the crowd for the weirdest fans  to interview. I  beat a hasty retreat and hid  behind the nearest  tomb-stone in case they made a bee-line for  T-Bone.

 

It was quite soon after that when I noticed one of the Echuca contingent, a large woman with a Marg Simpson hairdo who was wearing skin-tight purple pedal pushers topped by an over-sized red T-shirt  with “Elvis Forever” screen-printed on the front  of it. She was accompanied by an even larger  woman I assumed was her sister who  was  carrying an enormous picnic hamper. Several younger women, probably  their daughters,  plus a gaggle of grand-children were trailing along behind them. One of the daughters, or perhaps she was a grand-daughter, was heavily pregnant and  pushing a baby in a stroller.  She looked exhausted – no wonder poor thing after traveling in  a mini-bus all the way from Echuca with that lot and then hiking in from Lygon street.  While  Ma and Auntie placed their wreath on the shrine she sat down on a tomb-stone with the picnic hamper, leaving  the baby asleep in its stroller quite close to where  I was hiding.

 

 I was watching Ma and Auntie lining up the grandchildren for photographs in front of the shrine so I am not quite sure about the precise sequence of events after that but at some point  T-Bone must have noticed that Marleen’s collage was draped across the back of the baby’s stroller because he   seized it with such force that he  sent  the  stroller rolling unsteadily in my direction.  Naturally I had to do something to prevent  the baby from falling out when the stroller collided with  the  tomb-stone so I sprang out from my hiding place to take charge of it.  At this point T-Bone was waving the collage around over his head and making whooping sounds  and the baby’s mother was nowhere to be seen. I found out later that  she was crouched down somewhere in the Chinese section having a piss.  The Channel Ten TV crew was zooming in on T-Bone and to distance myself from him  I began to move  in the opposite direction, pushing the stroller with the baby who by now was screaming so loudly   that he could be heard above the combined sounds of Elvis singing “Trouble”, “Surrender,” and “Don’t be Cruel” and T-Bone’s  rendition of the Rebel Yell.

 

The Echuca Matriarchs, believing  that one of their  brood was being kidnapped, hurtled  through the crowd like enraged elephants. While one of them sat on me, the other one pummeled me.   My wig came off, my clothes were  ripped, photographers and TV cameramen were jockeying for position, and if the baby’s mother hadn’t returned soon after that  to say that she thought she might be in labour  I dread to think how it all might have ended up.

 

 The  women left in such a hurry to get to the maternity ward that they totally forgot about the collage.  T-Bone draped it around me to cover the rips in my clothing and  I fled the scene at top speed.  Unfortunately T-Bone’s act of chivalry had been  captured on film and instead of leaving with me  he  stayed around to pose for more photographs. He told  the Herald-Sun journalist my name and  worst of all he gave her the impression that we were a  devoted couple who had been brought together by our mutual love of Elvis and the fact that we both worked at Murph’s Collectibles.

 

When Murph showed me the article I let out an anguished  wail of disbelief.

 

The   shop was closed for business but  Marleen was still there discussing costumes with Lindy who was wearing a padded satin  jump-suit which  made her look like the daughter of Moby Dick.  She wanted Marleen to put more stuffing  in the mid-riff section,  but otherwise she was delighted with her changed appearance. 

 

While  Marleen put a few finishing touches to  the sequin-studded cummerbund Lindy joined Murph and I for a beer.   As usual Lindy waffled on  at length about her reasons for wanting  to be accepted as a serious mainstream entertainer on the international Elvis circuit.

 

“It was flattering when the gay press in L.A. acclaimed me as the hottest new  lesbian sex symbol to arrive in town that month but I got bored with it after a while,” she told us. “I’m fed up with being pursued by women who only want me for my body - women who don’t share the same sense of the spiritual. I mean, it’s demeaning isn’t it to have strangers sending you little notes wrapped up in their lingerie?”

 

Murph said that he agreed with her, said that he knew exactly what she meant.  I raised my eyebrows.  I mean, when was the last time any  Hollywood starlet mistook Murph for  k.d. Laing?  However although  Murph may not be everybody’s idea of a sex symbol at least he was very understanding when  I bemoaned the fact that as soon as  Celia read  the article  she would change her mind about employing me. Lindy was sympathetic too although she tried to cheer me up by putting  a positive spin on things and that  made me angry at first.

 “Are you sure you really want this new job?” she  asked me.  “It might not be as easy as you think.  Rich  old biddies can be very cantankerous.”

 

“Are you crazy?” I said spluttering  beer over the three of us.  “Of course I want the job. Wouldn’t you rather be sitting in a comfortable chintz armchair sipping Earl Grey tea and chatting in French and Italian with a bunch of old biddies, even if they are cantankerous, instead of picking chewing gum off the seat of your pants while a class of thirty intellectually  challenged trainee thugs thump each other?  And instead of supervising  the a-fore-mentioned trainee thugs at the school boot-camp near  Benalla, wouldn’t you rather stay at a luxury pensione in  Florence? Do you think I’m an idiot or something?”

 

Lindy put up her hand to ward off my tirade. “OK! OK! You’ve made your point.”

 

Murph handed me another stubby and after drinking it I mellowed a little.  

 

“I’m sorry I yelled at you before,” I told Lindy as she was leaving.  “It’s not your  fault that T-Bone and I are such a photogenic couple. And now that my students think he’s my boyfriend they’ll probably be much easier to manage.”

 

When Celia phoned me at  Murph’s place early next morning I had resigned  myself for bad news.

 

“How did you know to find me here?” I asked,  positive  that  I had not given her Murph’s phone number.

 

“I figured it out after I read about you in last night’s paper.”

 

I was  certain that  I could predict   what  her next words were going to be.

 

But  I was wrong.

 

“I’m phoning to let you know that your employment contract is here ready for you to sign.”

 

 “My employment contract!  Does that mean  that  you still want to employ me?”

 

“Of course. To tell you the truth I had a few doubts about you initially. I wasn’t sure if you would be tough enough to stand up to bullying by some of those cantankerous old biddies - they can be quite demanding  and difficult when you get them together in a group overseas. But now I’m sure that you are more than equal to the task.”

 

Cantankerous old biddies -  where had I heard those words recently? 

 

  “By the way,” she added casually as if it were just an  afterthought  “I was at a club last night when someone  came over and introduced herself to me saying that she  knows you.   I need to contact her about something but I don’t have her  telephone number and it appears to be unlisted.  Her name’s Lindy Fischer.  Can you bring her address and home phone number along with you when you pop in to sign your employment contract?”

 

So I owed Lindy for this. Her  intervention on my behalf  had obviously saved the day.  But I would  to have to think very carefully about how I handled this situation. Lindy  would be furious with me if I passed on her home phone number and Murph and Marleen would be even more furious if  their  most lucrative customer took her business elsewhere.

 

“Pride cometh  before a fall, Sheena” I remembered  a gloomy Scottish voice telling me. “What  you win on the roundabouts you lose on the swings,”

 

I know Grandma, I know.

 

Please note that permission to publish stories from the Scarlet Stiletto Awards 2002 online has been expressly granted to Sisters in Crime Australia Inc. You may not republish, reproduce electronically or in paper form, or otherwise make use of these stories without the permission of the author.

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