Two extracts from The Pomegranate Tree: Memoir of a Neighbourhood
John Mateer
The Greek Restaurant
It embarrassed Iain to admit to himself that although he told everyone he knew that the Greek restaurant on Beaufort Street, just down from Mondo Di Carne, was the best restaurant in the neighbourhood, if not the entire city, he himself had only been there on a few occasions, always in the company of either family or friends visiting from elsewhere. It wasn't that he was telling an untruth, nor that he didn't like the proprietor – actually, the opposite was true – but rather it was a consequence of his attempting to be a vegetarian again after a break of two decades. Alas, all the best dishes on the menu were for the carnivore: roasted lamb shoulder, various kinds of Greek sausage, and a beef mince moussaka. Using the common rouse that fish needn't necessarily be characterised as meat, on those few occasions when Iain did partake of a meal there, he insisted on sharing the enormous seafood platter of mussels, prawns, crab, oysters, and chunks of fresh, white-fleshed fish that was recommended for two diners but actually was quite enough, along with a salad, for a quartet of hungry friends. On not one occasion did they leave a morsel on the massive oval platter, only ever abandoning their exhausted, squeezed-out lemons, bits of lettuce, and a sprig of parsley. To Iain, visiting that restaurant was akin to paying homage to its owner, someone whom he regarded as one of the great professionals of Inglewood. Alongside the pork pie hat-wearing king of Mondos, it was the owner of this Greek restaurant that seemed, at least to Iain – and surely he couldn't have been alone in this assessment – the neighbourhood's most gentlemanly businessman. There was hardly a night when his restaurant wasn't full of noisy, happy patrons. Moreover, whenever Iain decided to dine there, that portly, grey-haired man with a thick, grey moustache, that Greek gentleman, who looked exactly as one would imagine the owner of a hospitable taverna definitely should, greeted Iain and his guests warmly, smilingly, and then would shake Iain's hand firmly to welcome him in as a neighbour, as that special kind of friend.
That House Across the Road
It wasn't clear to Iain whether or not diners inside the Greek restaurant on Beaufort Street would have been able to see into the premises across the road, into that house – to use an old expression – of ill repute. The house was undoubtedly ugly, built of the kind of red-brown brick most common in cheap suburban housing of the 70s, quite different from most of the other houses in the neighbourhood. Its roof was of faded black tiles and there was a brick wall between it and Beaufort Street, with a head-high wire gate that allowed a view, or a glimpse, into the paved parking area and the driveway at the side the house. Its street-facing window was partly visible and only ever open a tiny bit and, if Iain recalled correctly, its glass was coated with a dark film that prevented anyone from observing the goings-on inside. The large illuminated sign high on the metal pole that indicated its street number in bold, black script against a brash yellow was as much an indication of its activity as the suspiciously nondescript nature of the property and those taxis that would pull up there of an evening, discharging, it always seemed, equally nondescript single gentlemen. In all the years he'd lived in Inglewood and had nightly walked along Beaufort Street, often on his way to and from the Second Avenue IGA, Mount Lawley's Planet Video, or The Ellington Jazz Club – each of which, while themselves far from Inglewood, Iain still regarded as part of his world – Iain had only ever once glimpsed a person through that window – a woman, a slim woman, not as young as might be expected. She pranced out into the light of that room at the front of that ugly house. It was on a hot summer night, so the sliding window had been left completely open, perhaps because the air conditioning wasn't working. As quickly as she'd appeared, she had, with two steps, disappeared into a dark doorway. And Iain had thought: What must the patrons of that Greek restaurant have seen over the years? How would they have characterised this sort of entertainment to themselves, sitting there in the restaurant's bright light, placidly eating their meals and trying not to pause in their conversation?
John Mateer is a poet, writer, and curator. His latest books are Unbelievers, or 'The Moor', João, and with the Dutch art historian Arvi Wattel, Invisible Genres: Two Essays on Iconoclasm. His The Quiet Slave: A History in Eight Episodes, a book in collaboration with the Cocos Malay communities of the Cocos-Keeling Island and the town of Katanning, has just been translated into German.
Favourite sea creature
The Inaccessible Island Rail — the world’s smallest living flightless bird found on an island south-west of the island of Tristan da Cunha. John’s great-grandmother’s family lived on the Island of Tristan for several generations.