And, of course, our own cows and pigs. Volker oversees it all.’
Why do I suddenly feel so inadequate, looking out over our suburban block, and wondering how to meet my son’s newly expanded expectations. Perhaps we could slip a small piggery into the space between the fence and the clothesline, but I’m buggered where I can put the pine plantation.
‘If my father needs a door, he’ll just make one out of timber instead of buying it at the shop,’ says Batboy, trying to explain how it’s done, before giving in to my insistent interruptions. ‘I know, I know,’ I say, somewhat petulantly. ‘You don’t need to tell me. I’ve done it myself. Look at the door on the shed. Built by me. Out of timber. Volker’s not the only father who knows how to build a door.’
‘Ah yes,’ says Batboy. ‘But Volker’s timber comes from the plantation not the timber yard. And what about the hinges? I suppose you bought yours at the shop? When my father builds a door we search the farm for scrap metal, melt it down in a furnace and then cast our own hinges. They’ve been doing it this way for centuries.’
I’m fast losing patience with Volker and his thrifty German ways. I fight off an urge to mention the war.
With the combination of farm work and healthy food, Batboy has lost six kilos and put on a layer of muscle, all in ten weeks. And this despite the cakes. ‘My mother makes a couple of cakes every day,’ he brightly tells Jocasta, as she stands, weary from work, stirring that night’s bolognaise. ‘She makes chocolate cake, caramel cake and a cake called The Waves of the Danube, which has chocolate on top, forming these tiny little waves. It’s delicious.’
‘I bet it is,’ says Jocasta bleakly. She rolls her eyes and whispers to me so that Batboy can’t hear. She’s only been home from work for half an hour and considers it ‘a bloody miracle’ that any food at all is being provided, never mind a cake in the shape of little waves. Besides, it’s not as if she wasn’t planning to provide some dessert for the boy. Already a box of No Frills brand chocolate paddle pops lies waiting in our freezer.
‘For dinner,’ Batboy continues, unaware of the growing threat to his life, ‘we would have meat from our own animals. My mother would make it into these beautiful stews.’ He then starts describing the process of slaughtering pigs, collecting the blood for blood sausage, and removing the organs; at which point I take over the stirring of the bolognaise as Jocasta, turning green, retires defeated from the kitchen.
Of course, as each day goes past, Farmboy starts to convert back into Batboy. He stops using German words quite so often; and stops getting hungry at about five—his body clock no longer on the lookout for a slice or two of The Waves of the Danube. When he uses the word ‘our’, it increasingly refers to this rectangle of Sydney suburbia; ‘my father’ is increasingly his hinge-buying, supermarket-shopping Australian father; and ‘my mother’ his overstretched, non-cake-baking Australian mother.
He sprawls in front of the TV, an apple in his hand, and warily contemplates a small bottle of Coke. Some day soon he will be pleased to be home, but right now he still has the tastes of a rural German traditionalist—and a ruddy, frostbitten complexion to match.
Jocasta shakes her head. If only she’d insisted on that Chapstick.
A couple of decades ago, when Jocasta would go interstate for work, the result was a big upswing in my standard of living. When the neighbourhood women discovered she was away, they would bring me food. Spanakopita, Monday. A nice Italian casserole on Tuesday.
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