Bright Flame Dark Shadows
MELBOURNE, NEW YEAR’S DAY, 1997, several minutes after midnight. Stefan Novak was on the balcony of his third storey unit leaning against the rail in partial shadow, alone and still.
He was peering up at rockets bursting into blazing spheres of red, green and blue beneath a cloud-streaked sky, before waning in a glitter of dust and smoke. More soared above the city’s skyline, their detonations thumping among car horns blaring on Lygon Street beyond the courtyard below. Dazzling showers of sparks lit up his face. Deep-set eyes, striking cheekbones and the shadow of a beard gave him a sombre, hawkish look.
It’s time, he thought. Time for a new beginning. Time to get my act together. Time to do something out of left field, to swim for it across the rip to avoid going under.
Then the telephone shrilled over the clang of pots and pans and voices yahooing on the balconies below. Desperate for a call from Tania, he scrambled through the sliding door.
‘Steve Novak?’
He could barely hear the caller over the baying of the Dobermann next door, hysterical at the ruckus.
‘Yes. This is Stefan.’
‘Stefan. You’re still up. Good. I haven’t dragged you outta bed.’
‘No, I’m watching the fireworks.’
‘Good onya. Look, I know the timing’s lousy and I won’t keep you, but I’ve got a favour to ask. Something for you to mull over before you give me the answer I want.’
Stefan hesitated, frowning. ‘What answer?’
He was disappointed and bewildered by an unexpected caller whose voice, though vaguely familiar, he failed to put a face to, although the intonation and accent was distinctly aboriginal.
‘A simple yes will do me. That’s all I’m after, bro. No argument.’ And then, as the dog quietened, ‘Is that noisy fella yours?’
No argument from you perhaps, and bro? Why bro?
On guard, he replied, ‘No, the dog belongs next door. What’s the question? A simple yes sounds complicated to me.’
Who am I dealing with? Some crank who’s hacked my name and number?
About to slam down the receiver, he thought better of it and, as though sensing Stefan was about to ask who on earth he was and what he wanted at that time of night, the caller introduced himself.
‘This is Lennard Currie, but you can call me Ace.’
Stefan was taken aback. While they’d never met, he knew Lennard’s name and reputation. He had admired his work for years and now he recognised his voice—a resonant baritone with a characteristic outback intonation he’d heard for the first time last September when Lennard took part in the SBS television debate on Truth and Reconciliation. He’d spoken with passionate conviction that night, his argument laced with irony, his powerful frame standing out among the panellists. Some friends had considered his point of view convincing, but Stefan was sceptical of his line of reasoning that raised more questions than it answered.
There were voices in the background—laughter and the faint sound of a guitar with someone singing to it. Archie Roach? Surely not!
Where was he calling from? What was he after? If he was chasing a donation for some political cause he was pushing his luck.
‘I’m not expecting a snap decision,’ Lennard continued. ‘You’ve got three days to chew it over.’
‘That’s generous of you. So I do have a say.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘Glad we got that sorted. What am I agreeing to, then?’
‘Just a minute, hold your horses.’ Lennard shouted and silence fell, broken by the muted song and the guitar. ‘It’s not so much a favour as a proposition; an offer too good to knock back. Hear me out. You’ll get my drift.’
‘Ask away.’ He heard Lennard speak to someone across the room and there was a burst of laughter.
He stiffened.
Is the joke on me?
Lennard Currie! He’d been at the cutting edge of Australian art since the early 1970s—Aboriginal Australian art. He was one of its leading lights; a maestro whose glass sculptures were acknowledged worldwide, fetching five and six-figure prices. Several of his pieces were on show in London’s Victoria and Albert and New York’s Metropolitan and Corning Glass Museums, and the Acquisitions Committee for the Quai Branly Museum of indigenous art proposed for Paris had recently approached him to prepare an installation as part of its landscaping.
A month ago, Stefan had visited his latest exhibition. He’d walked through the colonnades of the National Gallery into a breathtaking blaze of colour flashing through a forest of slender head-high glass sculptures radiating light. It seemed a flame lit by the fiery desert sun glowed in the recesses of Lennard’s imagination and by some magical sleight of hand and eye he’d brought the quartz outcrops, scorched red dunes and sweeping skies of the western desert indoors with him.
One sculpture, in particular, caught Stefan’s eye—the centrepiece, an exquisite, statuette of dichroic glass lit alternately from within and without, each flash lasting thirty seconds. It glowed in a magenta wash when light was transmitted from within, and reflected sensuous tones of aquamarine and turquoise when lit from without. The raw beauty of its colours and the patterns that materialised like fiery hieroglyphs through its core in waves of light on light enthralled him. How much colloidal silver and gold had Lennard used in the glass batch to create the effect? Or had he come up with some other experimental chemical composition to achieve it?
Publisher: Dune Publishing (31 January 2023)
Language: English
Paperback: 304 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0957736429
Brief Summary – Elevator Pitch:
1996 – 2000, Fremantle, Western Australia.
Malgana Yamaji man of High Degree, Lennard Currie, is determined to build a solid glass cenotaph to commemorate the 20,000 or more Aboriginal warriors who died resisting colonisation during the Frontier Wars. He invites brilliant glass technician Stefan Novak to assist him. A beacon of truth and reconciliation for the Aboriginal and wider Australian communities, it will give a voice to Australia’s First Nations people, their ancestors and future generations. When his project is threatened, Lennard and Stefan fight fire with fire.