He’s still wearing his north coast attire: t-shirt, shorts and sandals, ineffectual the moment he steps from the car’s heating. He extracts a sweatshirt from his suitcase, then another. He has no umbrella and no raincoat. The downpour pauses long enough for him to get a block from the car park before it starts in again, rifling in from the south, soaking him through, rendering the sweatshirts cold, soggy and heavy. He trudges with his head lowered, his case rattling along behind him, a small river washing down the hill as he ascends Foveaux Street. Intermittent awnings offer shelter, not that they make any difference now; there is no part of him that isn’t wet.
The street is both familiar and unfamiliar, the footpath widened from when he first bought his apartment here fifteen years ago, the boutiques and cafes and noodle bars seemingly ever-changing, new entries emerging from the bankruptcies of corona, the remaining pubs evolving further and further from their workers’ origins. He passes a homeless couple in brand-new sleeping bags, tucked into the doorway of a design business, a craftily constructed dam made of polystyrene boxes diverting water out and around them. He pauses under an awning, giving his arm a rest from pulling his case. ICHIBAN COMPUTERS AND SCARVERY says a sign, but there are no displays of either electronics or fashion accessories; the windows are painted black and caged in tempered steel grilles, more like a crack den than a shop. Maybe it’s a front for stolen goods; it has that sort of look. A skateboarder captures his attention, pelting down the hill in the middle of the road, bare-chested and his arms extended, as if flying, carried by the torrent and propelled by life. Martin watches him go, reckless in the night, down towards the lights of Central. By the time Martin reaches his place, he’s given up trying to control his shivering.
The apartment block looks unwelcoming, a two-storey brown brick remnant of the 1940s, two apartments on the top floor, two on the bottom, none of them with lights in their windows. The gate opens with resistance, screeching on its hinges. There are steps up to twin entrances sheltering under a pair of expansive porticos. Someone has been sleeping in the left-hand entryway, their swag pushed to one side, surrounded by the halo of homelessness: a mattress of flattened cardboard, plastic bags, empty bottles, the smell of piss and poverty. He threads his way through it, treading carefully, unlocks the door, pushes through.
There is a slurry of junk mail scattered inside on the floor. His downstairs neighbour must also be away. He sorts through it, but there is nothing of importance, not even a bill, just lotteries for dream houses on the Gold Coast, an invitation to join a Zumba class and various takeaway menus for everything from pizza to Portuguese chicken. He climbs the stairs, unlocks the door to his apartment.
Inside, it’s dank, dark and cold. There’s that pungent inner-city smell, a mix of mould and cockroaches, with the added tincture of leaking gas. It’s a smell he’d found intoxicating as a uni student, fresh from the north coast, but no longer. It’s been two months since he was last here—a fleeting visit, back when autumn was perpetuating an Indian summer, when the climate was at its most agreeable and he could open the windows. Now he extracts a small blow heater, gets it going, blowing enough dust to make him sneeze but not enough to warm him: the cold and damp are in the walls, in the bones of the place, and will not easily be exorcised. He finds a second heater in a cupboard, an oil-filled column variety, sets it going in the single bedroom.
Sydney in winter: the most miserable of seasons. As a correspondent, he’d reported from truly frigid places: Moscow, Mongolia, Northern Quebec, but he’s never in his life been as cold as in a Sydney winter. In the northern hemisphere, the denizens respect the seasons, embrace their variability. The same in Canberra and Melbourne, where houses have central heating and double glazing, but not here, not in these remnants of the twentieth century. Here, there is a collective agreement that if winter is ignored it will disappear soon enough.
He shivers, desperate for a shower, before remembering the boiler will need to be powered up. No hot water, not until morning. He really needs to install reverse-cycle air-conditioning: the place is small enough and it gets stinking in summer. He wonders why he’s never thought of it before. He heaves his suitcase up onto the old leather couch, strips off his wet clothes and pulls on
