Fire

 

“I have composed my stories as reporters write

their accounts of fires – mechanically, half-consciously,

 

“with no concern either for the reader or myself,”

fire being the given, the sudden cause of all decisions

 

the story tells as people run one way snatching belongings

or would stay put and fight heat they cannot beat.

 

Leave now, it is too late to leave, abandon your plans

is the language of fire coming over the hill towards us.

 

Staying doesn’t make you a hero. Fire came from nowhere.

We’ve lost everything. The whole place has just gone.

 

Fire quietens the township’s dreams of a world trip.

Fire has leapt the road and closed all access.

 

Summer in the city, a fine time to read Chekhov,

Anton Chekhov short stories over hardly before begun.

 

The provincial in few pages hides how he’s lost everything.

Loss is official once it’s named by a celebrity.

 

The look on the face of the spokesperson hardly finds words.

Subscripts serve up statistics at a blinding rate, old mate.

 

The secret life of a firebug is blazingly on view

whilst elsewhere stories emerge of unlikely saviours.

 

Fire remains unmoved where it comes to rest

air brown with dry meanings for days afterwards.

 

Certainty is that at the end of these short stories

everyone will stand up, brush down and keep going,

 

at least one of whom will write a letter to a friend

explaining his technique of showing without emoting.

 

Pages caught and puffed and burst in the firestorm.

Online reports disintegrated inside of burnt-out terminals.

 

Fire, the character, looks like nothing but smoke till close up

changing direction with unpredictable speed.

 

Stare at it how we will when fire’s under control

plain speech wants a way forward, left with nothing.

 

A blank page survives fire’s disappearing act

where writers make accounts, deft on show, light on emote.

 

Chekhov

 

The school play in 1971 was Anton Chekhov’s ‘The Seagull’, in Russian ‘Chaika’, or ‘Chayka’. Bob Crosthwaite, a director of charm and insight, was brought in to make things happen, starting with a plan to perform the play in-the-round on the floor of the old Assembly Hall. A boys-only school was not going to stretch to the Elizabethan practice of women’s roles played by boys, which would have caused a stir. Girls from our sister school of Shelford were invited to play the main female parts. I played the minor role of Sorin (pictured right), the landowner on whose estate most of the action takes place. This involved too much streaky make-up, necessary to give a 16-year-old the look of a 61-year-old. Sorin’s sister, Madame Arkadina, was an aging actress and part-time superbitch, a characteristic that is pivotal to the unfolding family drama. She was played by Miss Clarke, the sister of the captain of Caulfield Grammar’s basketball team. (I cannot remember her first name. Jenny, I think.) Arkadina’s son, Treplev, is an emerging symbolist playwright. His play-within-the-play in ‘The Seagull’ is an extreme contrast to the drily ironic dialogue of Chekhov. His mother scoffs at this play, generally showing an indifference to her son’s writerly ambitions. Treplev was played by Paul Salzman, today Emeritus Professor of English at La Trobe University. Like most of the characters in this play, Treplev takes exceptional interest in Nina Mikhailovna, played this time by Leigh-Anne Stuckey. Love triangles are in the air, Chekhov describing these with outcomes that are sometimes comic, sometimes not. Nina is more interested in the novelist Trigorin, Trigorin is currently with Arkadina, Treplev only has eyes for Nina, and Treplev is the only object of interest for Masha. I cannot remember who played Masha (pictured), the daughter of a neighbouring landowner, and I ask her forgiveness. The third person in the photograph is Ronald Kitchen, who is playing Dr Dorn, a family friend who on reflection keeps the moral balance in the play. Sympathetic with the tortured poet Treplev, his is the character with lines for the audience that hint at how to “read the room”. Trigorin was played by Rod Faulkes, which he did memorably with the deft control required of such a duplicitous figure. Much in the play hinges on Trigorin’s undisclosed motives, especially given the disastrous conclusion two years later. I remember on opening night seeing a bemused Norman Kaye sitting in the front row, a Caulfield music teacher whom some of us saw play Astrov once in another Chekhov play, ‘Uncle Vanya’ at the St Martin’s Theatre in South Yarra. How many performances were there of ‘The Seagull’? Three, maybe four. Acting together in such a great play was a thrill for all of us and I was struck by how much laughter the genius Russian playwright could inspire from such a stack of messy relationships.