Fire Fire by Eva Sallis Page B

prohibitions:
    Thou shalt not use soap.
    But in the end the simplest methods work best.
    When the shower broke down she refused to get it repaired. This lasted two years.
    But the wiles and cunning of the young are infinite.
    It started with the great nudist rebellion, pioneered by Lilo. Having broken the nude barrier in the privacy of their bedrooms, Lilo, Siegfried, Helmut and Arno were fledglings ready for first flight. One day, when Acantia and Pa weren’t home, Lilo’s glimmering white body walked outside into the sunlight and tried to act casual, to go about its ordinary business. The naked boys emerged almost immediately from their hiding places and the fledglings stretched their new wings in solemn joy. After that whenever Acantia and Pa were out the clothes fell off and they scampered outside in all their ribby adolescent beauty, pale white skin radiant in the sunlight. They played Gotthilf’s KISS tape in the auditorium. They ran about the yard shrieking, ran up the hill, strolled in a leisurely way, took the air, and sprinted for cover, the excited dog leaping and snapping dangerously close, when they heard the car labouring up the other side of the hill. They soon extended these stolen pleasures to the group scrub-up under the garden hose.
    Then one day Lilo walked out in front of the kitchen window and calmly showered under the jetting hose in front of Acantia and Pa. Before they could react the boys joined her, and their four youngest children twirled their new pubic hair, glistening skin and shining bellies in a silent and aggressive dance in front of them.
    They passed the soap around and made eye contact only with each other. It lasted a few frozen minutes and then they scattered, shrieking and whooping with victory and giddy freedom.
    They didn’t put their clothes on again that summer. For a while Acantia was at a loss and then she started painting them.

    They speculated over what might have happened to Acantia. She was the rebel, the beautiful young woman who refused to be a debutante and didn’t shave her legs. Acantia who toured around Australia on a motorbike in the fifties, accompanied only by her dog. Floosie was a border-collie cross with natural bikie glasses. In an old (and later scorched) photograph Acantia is shooting her mysterious, riveting smile at a camera which also takes in her long thigh and tanned leg. She sits at ease on the machine, looks at once utterly feminine and warriorlike. This was the Acantia who flashed a knife in the moonlight at the men trying to force their way into her isolated tent. Acantia who hitched alone and broke across Europe, who taught kids in London slums, who beat up a truckie who tried to tongue-kiss her. It was all suggested in those black and white photos of a wild, dark girl, so stunning that Beate always said, ‘No wonder Pa fell in love with her!’ and sighed.
    On the other hand they had the Acantia they knew.

    Acantia now and then developed a manic desire for cleanliness. But even washing the dishes clean was impossible, for she didn’t believe in any kind of cleaning agent. The house muttered, Don’t bother it can make no difference , and the children listened and stashed the dirty saucepans under the plum tree. Many years of no soap and rancid tea towels had left everything with a receding useable centre and a periphery of caked, greasy, cooked-on grime. Glasses left prints on their fingers. The windows were almost opaque, filmy and dim. Only at night could they see clearly through the glass, and that was when they watched the Tarsinis the way other people watched television.
    Acantia began to make her own soap from goat fat. Old honey vats were filled with the fresh lard from the latest slaughter, filling the kitchen with the reek of billygoat and murder.
    Varnishing the floor was the exception. It was a big job and Acantia and Ursula were a team. Ursula worked in wordless harmony with Acantia, transforming the house