Purple Prose by Liz Byrski Page A

nerves and pressure points. I am sweating, lost in a strange world of low-level, insistent pain.
    â€˜We have a quick break,’ he says.
    It’s early evening. The noise and heat is intense. Scooters, jeeps and taxis beep and roar by, ferrying people between the day and the night. Street-side, the tattooist smokes, his bare hands streaked in the powdered flock from his plastic gloves. His little brother comes to sit with us on the bench, waves his fist at his leonine dog to squat on the concrete at his feet.
    â€˜
Selemat mallam, guark
,’ says the little brother, looking at the outline of a crow on my foot.
    â€˜Good evening, crow?’ I ask him. ‘Is that what you say?’
    â€˜Yes,
guark
, a crow,’ he smiles. He is softer, younger than his brother. ‘I like birds.’
    â€˜What is your best bird?’
    â€˜Pigeon. I have plenty of pigeons.’
    â€˜You have pigeons? Do you race them?’
    He looks confused.
    I say, ‘You know … ah … competition?’
    â€˜Ahh, yes! All around Bali. Very fast birds. When I was little –’ he holds his hand a metre above the ground, ‘I have lots of pigeons. My mother say, “Take birds away! Too many pigeons!” So I took them to the market and sold all the pigeons. The next day, they all come home!’
    â€˜Ha! Homing pigeons. So you had money
and
pigeons!’
    â€˜Yes!’ He laughs. ‘Now, I have fifteen pigeons. I sell them every week at the market. Sometimes they do not come back but most times, I get my pigeon back and I sell them again.’
    â€˜That’s so cheeky! Don’t you get pigeon buyer come to your house with big stick?’
    He shakes his head. ‘Another man sell them for me.’
    His brother, smoking, watching the street with the kind of detached cool that only tattooists possess, stubs out his cigarette in the bakelite ashtray and nods me inside.

    It seems that I am now the proud owner of a book about pigeons.
    I rang Ray a few weeks after he’d told me the story of the Kalgoorlie race riots. I begged him for a longer loan of his book because I hadn’t finished reading it yet. Also I’d promised him a copy of my own book,
Salt Story
, in return for his allowing me to interview him.
    â€˜Keep the pigeon book for as long as you like,’ he said on the telephone. ‘I’ve been a bit sick anyway. Been in hospital. Had a minor heart attack apparently. That’ll open yer bloody eyes, won’t it!’
    â€˜Sorry to hear that, Ray. I won’t stay long. I’ll just knock on the door and drop off my book.’
    â€˜Nah, mate. It’s too cold for me to go out today. Just put the book on the back veranda for me.’
    The weather was rancid that day and it started hailing as I drove to Ray’s house. I parked in the driveway and hunched around through the chill to the back of the house, past brightly painted concrete gnomes, potted geraniums and cast-iron garden chairs. I left my book, wrapped in a plastic shopping bag, under the veranda clothesline. The plastic sandals he’d worn the last time I’d seen him lay beside the doormat, the imprint of his feet pressed into them.
    Five days later, his death notice was in the local paper.
    Ray had told me that he was the last person alive who had witnessed the Kalgoorlie race riots. I’m not sure if he was right about that, but I reckon he’d be close. His passing away, he being a man with whom I’d had a cursory but … what is the word … instructive? … enlightening? conversation with just once, reminded me of those pigeons who were given medals after World War I, for carrying one small but vital story strapped to their bodies. Ray wasn’t a loved one to me. We’d not even shared a cup of tea but he told me that story because he wanted someone to remember it.
    I rang the president of the Albany Pigeon Racing Association and told him of how