Twelve Caesars.
Book three..: "Twelve Caesars"
Part quartus.
The marriage of the eldest daughter of Richard and Grace Thomas to an Italian cemented more than a covert engagement that took place over a couple of years of secret meetings and assignations, it legitimized and sealed the relationship between new and old Catholicism.
It must be agreed that the late convert to this or that religion is in the main so much more strident in their belief than the person nurtured in that same religion from childhood . I cannot speak with confidence of the other two Abrahamic religions, but I can reassure you that the Catholic convert, of which Grace Thomas was a excellent example, inculcated robust pious devotion in both their own person and their children’s devotions. However, it was a faith awry with the distorted values and priorities of the fervent convert. Richard Thomas, despite his conversion to “the faith” in able to marry Grace, did not have a religious bone in his body, neither for the Wesleyan Methodist nor the Catholic faith. Indeed, his major belief in life centred in himself and next toward Grace as a kind of “supporting act”..his behaviour toward his children over the long-term was as an “invisible father.”
Enrico Corridini had been raised in the shadow of the state religion from birth that became, through it’s total amplitude in the village ; a kind of background white-noise that was absorbed into the daily activities and became an almost automatic reflex of habit of duty rather than a devotion to a singular creed..indeed, it could be said that in Italy, in some districts, the state religion had to compete with an age-old pagan belief in “the evil eye” and other superstitions and all the ramifications. Whatever the understanding in these “old religion” countries, the stringent adherence to doctrine is taken far less seriously than the intense devotion of the convert.
This unwavering devotion became a bone of contention in the Corridini household over the years, affecting the relationship between husband and wife and also their children. But the more damaging unwavering devotion of Rosaline was to her mother..a devotion nurtured into the very skin of all Grace’s children. It was as if drawn with an indelible pencil onto the soul of her girls..for the boys hearts were, naturally , drawn toward the charms and attractions of other women…” Your son is your son till he finds a wife, but your daughter is your daughter for all your life.” The elder son unfortunately died in a motor accident while quite young and the surviving son went his own way to marry a woman disliked by Grace..so much that she never went to the wedding.
Richard Thomas carried this burden of motherly devotion to their children with a fatalistic narcissism…I remember him walking past me one day, he walked past with his signature limp and helping stick.he paused just then, turned to me and in a passing thought said to me..:
“ You know…Irish women make good mothers, but terrible wives.”..and he turned and walked on.
The marriage of Enrico and Rosaline was followed swiftly by the birth of their first child, just inside the “legitimate” time-line of acceptance. It has been noticed within the immediate family blood-line, that all the women run very close to breaking that “contract of legitimacy “..But it must be acknowledged as a proverb of truth that grew into tradition in the Murray Mallee district in those days that ; “with marriage and childbirth, one could never be sure of the first-born, as they could come at any time, but the next ones always took nine months”.
After the first child, there followed three others in quick succession so that there were four children in the first five years. Then there was a break, perhaps due to weariness and helped along with the length of time spent breast-feeding the last child..a period of three years..in an attempt to slow or stop the breeding program..But there were two known miscarriages between the forth and the fifth child. It was after the first of these miscarriages that Richard and Grace Thomas came from the bush to live in the Corridini house to assist their daughter look after the young children. They stayed for ten years and were an added irritation to Enrico Corridini, who, coming from a tradition of builders and labourers of the Dolomites , would find it somewhat “difficult” to come home at sunset, weary from a hard day at a building site, to see Richard fiddling at his motorcycle and side-car whilst whistling a serene tune as if life was one big bowl of cherries..
“Boia che Boia!!” he would cry in desperation to his Italian workmates when telling them of his home situation…he would smack the balls of his hands against the sides of his forehead as he did so…his eyes pinched in frustration as if to shut the image of the blasphemy of idleness of Richard Thomas out of his mind.
It was during this period of difficulty, that Enrico took to drink.
I have been persistent in my advice through the years to anyone contemplating immigration as a solution (unless in life or death situations) to their dire poverty, to reconsider..as I do not believe that the economic advantage outweighs the loss of cultural stability. I concluded this from observation of the elderly Enrico, who in later life would, come a Sunday morning, retire amongst the fruit trees and vegetables down the garden, with transistor radio, small chair and a glass of sweet sherry to listen in peace and quiet to his radio program. I do not recall it’s name, but it opened and closed with it’s theme song..; “Arrivaderci Roma”.
I can recall him lamenting to a visitor ; Guido Passardi, who had travelled several times back to the “old country” , that he wished he could go back to sit under the olive tree in the square and talk with the other old men…Guido quickly threw cold water on this fancy by informing him that most of their old acquaintances back in the village were either dead, gravely ill or suffering senile dementia.
Of the four children born in quick succession, Christopher was the youngest . Being the last of that first group, he was the one kept on the breast for three years..a situation he was in later life to describe as “a learning curve” but which the other siblings saw as spoilt..and did tease and trick the child at every opportunity driving him more to seek the protection and comfort of his mother . A situation that could have developed into a nasty little psychosis save for the resumption of the birthing program when Christopher was but seven years old and securely bundled into the sadistic arms of the ironically named ; Sisters Of Mercy convent school.
Here begun an education runneth over with all the scheming machinations of an organization extremely well practiced in the arts of subliminal subversion to religious fetishism. It was a pity that more time was not spent on teaching actual scholarly education, rather than the fire and brimstone of sin and repentance! The nuts and bolts of academic learning were omitted for slide-shows of the most gory tortures of saints and sinners, from a clunky projector eagerly manned by a young, weedy-looking, lip-licking “brother”, followed by regular genuflections before “The Stations of The Cross” in the big church out the back of the school.
To the point that when the teacher of mathematics, on one of the first days at the state high school, handed out the slim, yellow covered volume of the three coloured volume set of ; Mathematics (red), Geometry (green) and Algebra, the young Christopher looked down in eye-watering dismay at the hieroglyphics of algebraic symbols on the page…and when the teacher commanded the class to turn to page five to tackle some of the simpler algebraic problems …a situation those students coming from the state primary schools seemed at least familiar with …but to young Chris’ were as mystifying as the giggling of girls..but even more perplexing , because he had never before seen or heard of such twisted logic in those years of religious instruction and simple arithmetic…and for one whose passing scholarly marks reflected more his commanding knowledge of the lives and the suffering deaths of the saints and martyrs of Catholicism, this was “all Greek” to him..
“Owlgebra!”...he cried in a just too loud voice so that the whole class turned toward him to gaze..”…how long’s this been going on?”
You’d be on solid ground to ask, as I have many times myself since ; what sort of adults would turn their children over to the care of a bunch of lunatics? For that is what those “inmates of Christ” were..contemplate the situation for a moment..: You have a cloister of healthy women, all who have sworn to maintain a chaste, childless life in the service of an “unknown”..You have a likewise mob of males, all once and perhaps still testosterone driven to submit their desires to the will of their God..yet..yet we know..we know only too well that under those cowls, under those habits there beat the heart and temperament of a human being, with all the wanton vices and desires of the human body. Along with the ‘call to serve the Lord’, was a certain resentment in how they were expected to serve..how it could sometimes seem as all give and no receive on the earthly side of the ledger..and here they were left in charge of herding and corralling all these offspring of lascivious copulation..all these screaming, demanding sprays of semen and ovulation flowing over the school-yard and into the classrooms…and here they were having to wipe the bottoms and the noses of the little grommets..all day , every day till the parents…those incorrigible sinners and fuckers, those “Sunday Saints” came to collect their moments of flailing desire and nocturnal fornications…these running, jumping, yelling , one singular spermatozoon success story amongst volumes of body-fluids and menstrual waste…But not for the holy “Sister” or “Brother” or “Father”..not for those incestuously suggestive relations of God the rhythmic caress of deep sexual contact..to see but never to touch, to feel the desire but never to consummate..nothing save furtive self-fondling in the dark silence of their cell, all resulting evidence flushed down to the septic tank or burned in the lighting-up of the morning cooking fire in the communal kitchen, a sigh of both release and simultaneous regret at both “getting away with something shameful” and in quick succession the knowledge of getting away with nothing at all., for here they still were and here they will stay..and the hunger never go away.
“Please, Jesus, please Jesus, please Jesus!..drive out this sin of lust from my body…mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa…”.
The body of Christ amen.
But He doesn’t , He never can…for how can one but believe, if one does believe, in one’s heart of hearts, that it was He; that creator , that omnipotent God , who put it there! And could the question just as easy be put; If the sin of lust could result in the creation of bastard life in the human body…what was the Sin of God that caused Him to create such bastard life in the celestial body : Earth?
Such theological questions were beyond the imagination of the small cluster of children herded to pray and genuflect before the Stations of the Cross during their weekly prayer lessons in the big church out the back of the school. Indeed, such questions were not even considered by the parents of Christopher as they signed their children over to the care and education of such a bunch of crazed lunatics that inhabited that five acres of ecclesiastical asylum near the railway station.
The one question, the imperative answer to which sealed the decision of a young Rosaline to marry a man twenty years older than herself, was one she put to the old German herder whilst waiting to board the station ferry to cross the Murray River. She had been “engaged” to Enrico for nearly a year , while she still worked at the big station on the Murray River..Enrico and Rosaline met every few days when he would come to the river to collect a truck-load of water for the wood-cutting camp where he worked and lived during the war years. Enrico had “popped the question” a while back and while she had cautiously consented, she had yet to make her final decision.
Rosaline Thomas grew up by the river. She worked as a house-maid at both Punyelroo and Portee stations near Swan Reach and Blanchetown. Many times she was called to accompany the lady of the house to cross the river on a flat-topped ferry, used for ferrying supplies across the river there at the station. She told of an old German hand there at Portee who, whenever he had to cross the river, would pick up a small stone, a pebble, carry it across the river and place it on the other side..Rosaline asked him why he did it…he was at first reluctant to tell her..but she persisted..
“Well, girlie..it is my own little thing...I think of the small stone as my soul,...you see, I cannot swim..and so I take the stone, carry it, and if or when I reach safely the solid ground on the other side, I leave it dzair....when I come back, I do the same”
“What would happen if the ferry starts to sink?” Rosaline asked.
“Dzen I will try to throw it with all my might, to the other side....and I think if it reaches there , then I feel I too will reach there...”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Dzen, I think I vill be lost in the waters of the river...”
It was the thought, the visual imagination of that thrown pebble, desperate, hopeless and valueless, falling into the waters of the river and a life lost as a consequence of that one little pebble…
What was her life to be ? Would it be lost in a desperate gamble with a married life on the edge of the river…a dirt farmer’s wife in the ‘heartbreak country’ of the mallee? Uneducated, in poverty, her family property-less and impoverished…
She was decided.
Christopher stood as instructed before the first small icon of the Stations of the Cross.The pictures were at some height above his tiny frame, he craned his neck to see it. Sister Mary Joseph placed one arm around his slender child body and in a secretive whisper described the goings on in the painting..she did this to each child in turn , from one station stop to the next, with each station becoming more and more intense with the humiliation and torment of The Christ, her voice too grew in intensity and anger..
‘Look!” she’d say, “look how they laugh and mock our Lord Jesus……..” and the children’s eyes all wide and staring at the horror of the gore and blood on the crown of thorns and the leering faces of the torturers. The children’s hands clasping and wringing in fear and horror…several of the little girls clung to the habit of the squatting sister as she related the means of cruelty inflicted on the body of the Son of God as “He suffered for our sins here on Earth…He suffered for us..” her eyes alight also with the self-inflicted emotional pain of the scenes she described.
The young nun then proceeded to instruct the small group of children in the ritual of the journey through The Stations of the Cross..she would say the Leaders chant :
“We adore thee O Christ, and bless thee.”
Then she would ask the children to repeat after her..:
“By your holy cross Thou has redeemed the world”.
Then she would gather the little cluster of children around her and softly tell them a little maxim of life ; “As a child, we sometimes feel alone..sometimes others do not stand up for me when I am picked on and afraid..so help me Jesus to be strong and protect me in thy light”.
The chant was repeated at every Station, along with the repeated response and then another little homily on the lessons of life through the eyes of reverence for Jesus. “ As a child, I sometimes repeat stories that are unclean and disrespectful..Help me to keep myself pure and clean…” All while standing before another frame of the torment or torture of Our Lord Jesus Christ. These lurid paintings left nothing to the imagination, from the first of the condemning to death before Pontius Pilate to the meeting of his mother and the women of Jerusalem on the road to crucifixion and the stripping away of his garments to the hammering in of the nails to his hands and feet and the sinking in of the spear into the side of his body…
These chants, prayers and visuals were displayed in graphic intensity to the ears and gaze of those five year old children, fresh from the comforts and protection of Mother , Father and the safety of home..To Christopher, they were a shocking assault on his quiet nature..He had never seen someone so deliberately hurt..He had never seen someone held down and tortured, He had never seen a person stripped, beaten, speared , gored and nailed to a wooden cross…Yet here was Sister Mary Joseph explaining it all with the soft, gentle, assured voice of a confident adult…it must be so.
But strangely, the terror didn’t bite into young Christopher. Those carefully designed pictures, those beguiling, persuasive homilies and all the Sister’s gently pitched whispers into his child ears were to be of no avail…for even as a child, Christopher was more of a “touching” child..he was more interested in the tactile nature of things..on the habit of Sister Joseph, he would touch to feel the heavy-starched white cloth parts of her cowl as she cooed , as with a lover’s breath, the corrupting words of indoctrination into his ear, wondering why it was so sharp…he would stand by her side and feel the heavy wooden beads of the Rosary belt that wrapped around her waist then dangled down the side of her habit-skirt..He would be mesmerized at the large, pendulating black cross that swung against her breast as she leant down to him. His was the world of touch, sights and sounds, the child’s world of wonder , when the wind told stories to his ears..alike to the animal kingdom.. windy days telling hurried stories of trees and hills, grasses and ferns, of white-capped ocean waves and gliding seagulls under drifts of wind-blown clouds scattered over azure skies. A child’s ears and innocence tuned to that elusive pitch and timbre that becomes dulled and destroyed by adulthood and those wailing whispers on the wind are seldom heard again.
What is lost in the eyes of the child, when such macabre icons are drawn to their gaze..The innocence that must be destroyed so guilt can be created, hatred infused before a depraved love constructed, fear before security, doubt in place of certainty, death before life. What is religion that would need to do such to a child..for it is surely children to which all it’s cunning indoctrination are delivered…as the adult convert must be a relatively low number in proportion, so it is the child that must be coaxed out of it’s dreamy cocoon into the adult world of conditioned certainty..where “trigger words” or scenarios are imbedded into the vernacular to be drawn upon when needed by civic state or religion..for they do work fist in glove in collusion with each other..how else could it be explained or excused, for what were these series of cameos of horror and degradation but in reality a kind of ecclesiastical pornography pushed into the subliminal thoughts of the children’s minds, a “sleeper” awaiting the right moment to respond.
After the last Station was reflected upon, the last homily spoke, the last humiliation imbedded into their child minds..the children were lined up and marched back single-file to the classroom near the row of huge old pine trees..Christopher looked at the radiating branches ascending high up into the depth of the foliage..
“ Wow! what a great place for a tree-house “ he was thinking.
This was the beginning of a long period of stability for Rosaline and the Corridini House..both social and economic. The home they had built near the southern coast of Adelaide was to remain her home till the death of them both.
It was a long period of stability for many migrant families, but by the end of the decade, it was already too late..their world of authority was fast unraveling…the next generation would relinquish their cultural ties and become more enamored to their new country..but they didn’t know it yet although before too many more years had passed, it was to come upon them like a clap of thunder, for except for a minor skirmish in Korea that would kick off a long festering sore of “the cold war” on two fronts, there was a kind of “Pax Australiana” in place where the demand economy was creating the need for a larger labour force which was filled by mass immigration from Europe and then England.
The adults who made this epic journey were pushed out in the main to the rough, largely un-serviced outer suburbs..some of which had neither mains water , sewerage or even electricity at the start!...this created ghettos not only of migrant families from all corners of Europe, but also the less well-off of Anglo-Australians. The mix of ethnicities made strange bedfellows of the children of those families…so that Christopher found friendship through the primary school with Dutch, Latvian, Scottish, German, Irish and some of dubious parentage altogether!...but they became ‘fellow travelers’ in the poverty enriched neighbourhoods in the foothills on the edge of the sea.
By a coincidental twist of fate, while the adults, survivors of a world war, in some cases two wars, an economic depression that impoverished so many, were a motley collection of spiritually broken , in many cases physically broken individuals, who were subjected to the corrupting influence of conservative thinking and propaganda that drove a wedge of fear into their susceptible hearts, their “multi-mix” children, with an improved diet of high protein, clean water, fresh air and unsupervised, unregulated freedom on the wide beaches of the gulf, grew into wild free-spirited youths, who found rebellion against the restraints of conservative lifestyle as easy as diving off “sharkey rock” into a crystal- clear , cool ocean. The name of that rock lent its moniker to a young boy of the area..his name was Kevin, but a continuous conflict between his alcoholic parents drove him to seek the solitude of that rock whose geological shape of stone gave the impression of a shark’s fin..I knew of Ruth Holmstrom from my youngest years, but she died before I was old enough to work out what domestic violence meant… I have to tell you the story (as I know it) of Ruth Holmstrom. I have to give her a bit of longevity in this world lest she be forgotten altogether, for the little I know of her as a child of around six or seven years is through my one clear memory of meeting her on the footpath at her letterbox as I was making my way to the beach one summer day.. She looked down to me and smiled weakly.
The Holmstroms lived on Jervois Tce. About halfway between our house and Rowland’s Deli’ at the top of the hill-slope to the beach there by Mrs. Fookes Fish & Chip shop.. The house was of red-brick, plain frontage, with dull, dark-green painted doors and windows. The blinds were always drawn. There was a low red-brick front fence with a small white gate. Mrs. Holmstrom grew watermelons out the back yard that didn’t have a side fence to the road , and so the ripe melons were subject to some young boys stealing one or two..to which Ruth would give chase when she could, yelling and cursing at them…young Potter was a main culprit and he was swift of foot..to his credit, he did share the booty amongst us other kids.
There were three children with Vernon and Ruth Holmstrom…the oldest was a girl whose name slips my memory a tad..I’ve got it written down somewhere..just a tic an’ I’ll find it….ah, yes..Julie..and then there was Kevin and Trevor. I knew the two boys better because they joined the other local boys down the beach.. They were known by their nick-names of ; “Sharkey” (Kevin) and “Porpoise” ( the younger Trevor)..there is a large diving-off rock there at the Marino Rocks beach called “Sharkey” and I thought and still do think it was a given name for the older Holmstrom boy as he could be so often sitting there alone on the rock.
The one time I remember Mrs.Holmstrom was the summer day I was walking down the path to the beach..I had my towel over my shoulder and I was jumping over the lines of tiny ants that I had noticed had made a right-angled track every so often regularly across the path…I was jumping one of these tracks when I bumped into Ruth Holmstrom at her letterbox there by the gate , collecting her mail…She was a big blowsy sort of woman with a wavey, ruffled mass of shortish dark hair and she had on a loose, floaty, white cotton dress with large red flower prints on it..neither she nor I said a word..she just looked down at me and smiled weakly and it was then I noticed one side of her face was swollen and marked by a large bruise along with a black-eye. She just smiled at me, glanced nervously around and then quickly made her way back inside the house.
Potter lived just a couple of houses up from the Holmstroms and I asked him recently about Ruth and Vernon and told of my memory..and he remarked that he wasn’t surprised, because he witnessed Vernon hit Ruth in the face with a full, closed fist once when he was there with the boys..he said the sound was like a crunching whack!, and he fled out the back door. Vernon was a violent man, extremely violent..he could be heard up and down the street yelling and threatening all the family..he would not stop short of striking the children as swiftly and as viciously as he did his wife..yet he was never reported to the police and the community kept quiet, as was the custom..or shall we say ; “culture” in those days when it came to domestic violence.
When My sister was here over Christmas I spoke to her too about this recurring memory and she told me that yes, Mrs. Holmstrom had come to our mother several times to complain about Vernon’s drunken violence…but my mother had told her to try and keep the peace and hold the family together for the sake of the children.. Ruth, along with her husband was also an alcoholic…so there was that too.
But it was not long after the meeting at the letter-box , when our mother was getting the bath ready for us kids one night that she matter-of-fact quietly informed us that Mrs. Holmstrom had died that week and she had died because she had slipped in the bath and chipped the bone in her elbow and that small chip had worked its way up to her heart and she had died from a heart attack because of the bone chip…so you see..you have to be careful not to muck around while having a bath otherwise you could fall over and chip your elbow and die like Ruth Holmstrom.
But I no longer believe a word of that story.
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