Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 4, Issue 5 Page 2

  ‘It’s a 9mm Beretta. My novelist friend lent it to me. It’s just for sport shooting, I think. Isn’t it?’

  ‘How the hell would I know? And what difference does that make anyway? If I’m going to shoot a man with a sports pistol should I tell him to run first so we can make a game out of it?’

  ‘God, Peter, stop blowing things out of proportion and just take the gun. For your own safety. Put it in your pocket. He’ll never see it.’

  I stared at her without speaking a word.

  * * *

  The dim streetlight lit one side of his face and left the other in darkness.

  ‘Nice night for it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Nice for… well… what is it exactly you’re doing, Victor?’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  I was silent. Victor spoke next.

  ‘I’ve seen you looking across at my house at all hours of the night?’

  ‘What? Are you mad? But how… ’

  ‘It’s amazing what you can see with a decent pair of binoculars.’

  ‘Well, it’s nice to feel spied on.’

  ‘Isn’t it? Perhaps you’re trying to see into my daughters’ bedrooms, to see them undressing? Perhaps you’re that kind.’

  With a wife like mine waiting for me, I thought, but I did not say it as I felt this was not the time to insult him. I noticed his hand go into his pants and stay there. God, I thought, what if he’s armed. After all, I was. But he took his hand out and I breathed.

  ‘Listen, Victor, there’s obviously been a misunderstan–’

  ‘I don’t know what you think you saw.’

  I was silent. Was he talking about it? The candle dancing?

  I swallowed.

  ‘I didn’t see anything. What are you talking about?’

  He eyed me askance.

  ‘But I wonder if you thought you saw something that you didn’t.’

  ‘Is that a question?’

  Silence descended once more. And there we stood, even then unable to speak it. He did tax returns and polished his vintage car and cut boards for flooring. I gave advice to Singaporean investors on the stock exchanges—steel and wines mostly. What I had seen, what he had done, did not fit in our world, and yet, when the darkness descended and the world was asleep, like the deep and illogical dreams doctors say are necessary to keep waking men sane, the thing, I realised then, was necessary, so necessary Victor was out on the road at midnight, possibly armed, and willing to defend it: the dance of flames and darkness he had performed that night, be it Thai or Cambodian or magical, was some ancient and essential thing that we moderns have tried to forget, to drown out in internet podcasts and business newspapers and real estate speculation and every other thing we distract ourselves with, but, at last, we never can quite banish. Yet to have spoken of it, to have brought what must live in darkness into the light would have been to speak a forbidden name and cross a border to a country from which no man could return… Only now, with the darkling city taking on the visage of a dream, could the unspeakable thing take form in an unspoken and shared thought… Didn’t I understand? His eyes seemed to ask me, plead with me. I watched that hand that moving again toward his pocket, perhaps with the intent to grasp a weapon.

  ‘I saw nothing, Victor.’

  ‘But I think you did.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You did. Admit it!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You know of what I speak, Peter. A dark eye, lidless, wreathed in flame!’

  ‘Hey?’

  He took a step toward me.

  ‘Stay back!’

  ‘Peter,’ he whispered.

  ‘Stay back, damn it!’

  He took another step, and suddenly I realised this imp from the nether regions of consciousness, this unspeakable darkness was moving toward my house, my wife and unborn child.

  ‘Back, Victor!’

  ‘If you strike me down now I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.’

  ‘What? That’s Star Wars, isn’t it? Victor, no!’

  But his hand flew to his pants and mine to my own and I pulled the pistol and shot him through the heart, and he fell just as Obi-Wan had, in a pile beneath his dressing gown. I thought I caught the snatch of a smile as he fell, as though he truly believed he had achieved a death proper to a mystic knight.

  * * *

  Prison is not as bad as the American television shows have it. Which is a great relief. The fact that Victor had been unarmed didn’t put me in good standing with judge or jury, but the basic premise for my defence—that I had been acting on what I at least thought was self defence—stood, and so I’m now serving five years for third degree manslaughter and illegally owning and operating a firearm. Jenny feels her own guilt terribly and comes to visit with the boy whenever she can, and I remind her that I’ll be on probation in nine months and all will return to normal. In the meantime I’ve joined the prison rugby team, which keeps me in shape, and I’ve launched myself into a study of John Ruskin’s papers on political economy, which I may, in the end, turn into a thesis. Something I’d always wanted to do, but somehow lacked the spark for when I was back at University. I’m not worried about my career: practically all the senior partners at the company have been in jail at one time or another, and my sentence isn’t even finance-related. I hear I’m held in higher regard than ever over there. So all is well, but still, there are hours in the night, between lying down and dreaming, when I can’t help but reflect on what got me here, for the truth is I would rather not be in prison, and I would sure as hell rather never have killed a man, a thing I am truly sorry for, and then I think back to that slightly bloated, curly-haired man standing grinning in his window with a candle, and think, ‘what the hell did I ever do to you?’

  The Way That You Found Me

  Leah Swann

  I.

  * * *

  The day the three of us became friends, I wandered out of the classroom shading my eyes from the harsh light with my hand. All around me, students were running towards the ovals and someone called out:

  ‘Coming, Suzanne? There’s a rumble. Behind the studio.’

  The chant of ‘rum-bull’ could be heard from where I stood, underscored by some other rhythmic beat. Clapping, perhaps. It took me a moment to hear that the other sound was separate and unrelated: someone playing the drums. When I got to the music studio I paused to listen. Was that Led Zeppelin? Surely not. I didn’t know anyone at our high school who could manage the varying tempos of the kick, snare and high-hat in “When The Levee Breaks”, let alone make it sound effortless.

  When I turned the corner I glimpsed Dolfo Merlo’s unmanly shape—tall, thin, round-shouldered—encircled by bristling onlookers. The boys were lining up. It seemed they couldn’t wait to get a swing at Doll, as she was known even then.

  A massive thug called Bruce Carbody who was once someone’s beloved baby boy looked to me like Grendel risen from the deep, veins throbbing in a broad sweating face, legs thick with muscle under his school shorts. Doll stood no chance though she got up a few times and swung back, her long ivory limbs seeming frailer than bone, frail as matchsticks. She cried out when he booted her over, and while she lay sprawling on the grass one of Carbody’s mates had a crack. He was a rugby player with that thick rubber neck they get. Trevor Wicks. There was no ethic of ‘pick on someone your own size’. No ethic of any kind. Just pure hate flowing snakelike from an uncorked bottle.

  We weren’t yet friends and I was just another face in the crowd. I didn’t even yell ‘stop!’ though I should have: I was scared. Sixteen-year-old Carbody and his gang were the toughest kids at Kingswood High. Doll got to her knees and threw back her head. Blood sprayed from her nose, briefly staining the air. Trevor Wicks kept kicking her until she fell forwards, making such terrible groans I wondered if she was in danger of dying.

  ‘Stop!’ cried a younger boy beside me, half swallowing his voice in fright.

  Trevor paused and lo
cked eyes with the boy. The boy’s muffled oh nooo got louder as he turned to escape through the crowd, pushing and elbowing. Let him pass, I hissed, turning back to see Doll getting to her feet. Rather than making a run for it, she put up her fists. A roar of excitement went through everyone and even I felt strangely delighted (it’s terrible to recount these emotions but I have to be truthful). My shout rose up with the crowd’s. Sock him in the jaw, I thought. Kick him in the balls!

  The background drumming stopped. The crowd ceased shouting and a sense of menace flowed into a brief silence. Carbody broke it, yelling:

  ‘Look. He wants more!’

  The drummer, Benjy Wilson, emerged from the studio. He seemed astonished to see Doll bouncing from side to side with upraised fists, her skin as white as milk and her bravado vanishing fast. I saw a dark figure moving swiftly through the green football fields and heard a muted cry run through the crowd:

  ‘Mr Scott! Watch out. Mr Scott…’

  The onlookers dispersed like sand in the wind, hiding behind the studio or simply running away as the burly science teacher strode up and grabbed Carbody’s arm. The rage sharpening his nose and mouth made him look like a hawk.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded, squeezing Carbody’s arm till the skin reddened under his short sleeved shirt. The boy jerked but couldn’t escape the teacher’s grip. He turned his head to one side and spat.

  ‘I tell you what, Carbody, you’re up for expulsion, mate. You alright, Dolfo?’

  ‘Yes, yes sir…’ Doll put up a hand to catch the blood and her foot moved backwards to steady herself.

  ‘Suzanne!’ barked Mr Scott.

  I jumped.

  ‘You help Dolfo. Benjy Wilson, by God, I hope you weren’t a part of this!’

  ‘No way, sir—I just…’

  ‘Wicks, follow me. We’re off to the principal’s office. Suzanne, Benjy, take Dolfo to the sick bay and tell the nurse to ring her grandmother.’

  Mr Scott didn’t seem to notice his own slip of the tongue. We all knew Dolfo was a boy, though under her grey shorts her legs were as long and slender and hairless as Bruce Carbody’s were gnarled with fur and muscle.

  Mr Scott set off still holding Carbody by the arm and now grabbed Trevor Wicks’s collar. We stood looking at Doll.

  ‘Lean on me,’ said Benjy.

  ‘Sure,’ said Doll, throwing an arm over Benjy’s shoulder. She was at least half a foot taller than him. We walked slowly to the sick bay. No-one was there. Not sure what to do, I wet a flannel and pressed it to her nose. She closed her eyes. Blood dripped onto her white school shirt.

  ‘God that was great, wasn’t it?’ she murmured. ‘I mean… what a show, right? Pain. It makes me high.’

  This was so unexpected that I looked at Benjy in alarm. Such raw masochism was utterly beyond me.

  ‘That’s a weird thing to say,’ said Benjy.

  Doll’s dark eyes opened. She reached out to each of us, a tentative joining of hands. I felt the dry palm and the feather lightness of what was inside, like the skeleton of some small dead thing, a mouse or bird. Benjy seemed ill at ease but he held her hand too, and I thought more of him for it.

  * * *

  II.

  * * *

  After we left school, all three of us studied at Melbourne University, and we often met up at Milk, a Carlton café that turned into a nightclub after dark. It was not far from the uni, and the beer was cheap.

  At Milk, the whole vintage craze had been taken to a new level. Not content to simply decorate her café with Formica tables, the owner, Jackie, forbade anything invented after nineteen-seventy. This included in the kitchen, where she had a forty year old sandwich press. Even the milk bottles were sourced in antique shops. (You don’t say found, you say sourced. Sourcing has become a creative act.)

  ‘She’s got Bree Breslin playing tonight,’ Doll said, painting her short fingernails scab-red. ‘I’m obsessed with Bree Breslin. What a look she’s got. What a name!’

  ‘That’s why you’ve dyed your hair!’ said Selima.

  ‘An homage, darling, that’s right.’

  ‘But it was so pretty the way it was!’

  ‘I used Lotta’s hot rollers. Those things are great.’

  ‘Forget the hair. We’ve got to decide on a band name,’ I said, looking over at Benjy. He’d said he’d be in our band and I didn’t want to lose him. He sipped Coke out of his vintage glass tumbler, regarding Doll with placid amusement.

  ‘I’ve told you what it should be: Broken at the Wheel,’ said Doll. She was studying renaissance torture techniques as part of her arts degree, and going through her first bad breakup with Richard.

  ‘Too heavy. It sounds like a Norwegian heavy metal band. I like Star of Fortune,’ said Selima, swinging her feet onto a chrome chair. She’d finished her shift and taken off her apron.

  ‘I don’t like that,’ I said. ‘At all.’

  ‘Velvet Underground was the best name ever,’ Selima said, chewing her pencil stub. ‘Forever taken, like This Mortal Coil. What do you think, Benjy?’

  He shrugged. He didn’t look interested, but then, he never did.

  ‘We’re a rock band,’ I said. ‘I’m not into eighties dream pop.’

  Milk had live music on Fridays. Unplugged, mostly. Acoustic folk, Billie Holiday rip-offs, stuff like that. Even though Selima worked there and theoretically we’d have an ‘in’, Jackie would never let us play. My electric violin would send her into meltdown.

  ‘I like The Lean Look’d Prophets. Shakespeare. Benjy likes it, don’t you?’

  ‘Too boysy,’ said Selima. ‘And pretentious.’

  ‘And This Mortal Coil isn’t pretentious? Names get cool over time.’

  ‘And we’d have to be lean. The first thing they’d say, looking at me, is: shouldn’t their lead singer be a bit leaner?’ said Doll, pinching her soft upper arm.

  ‘You’re the leanest one of all of us. Anyway, I thought I was going to be the lead singer,’ I said.

  ‘I’m off,’ said Benjy, getting up.

  ‘But Bree Breslin’s on soon!’

  Benjy laughed. ‘I’m not staying for her, Doll. You know I won’t.’

  ‘Me neither,’ said Selima, jumping up and throwing her bag over her shoulder.

  ‘You won’t leave me, will you?’ Doll clutched my arm. ‘What if Richard comes in? I can’t be alone!’

  ‘She’s good, Doll, I’m just not into her.’

  ‘Please. I’ll buy you a cocktail. My shout.’

  ‘You don’t have any money.’

  ‘Well, I’ll borrow it from you and pay you back. I will! I promise!’

  I shook my head at her, smiling.

  ‘Ok, have I got this right: you’re borrowing money from me to treat me to a cocktail?’

  ‘Yep. And let’s get some more hot chips. I’m starving!’

  Richard did come in, with some gorgeous girl. We ignored him and drank our cocktails. Breslin, a tiny woman with tiny dark eyes and ice blonde hair, sang “Fever” and “Black Magic Woman” with her chanteuse’s voice of smoke and honey. Doll swooned over her, borrowing more money to fund the twenty-dollar drinks, while I sent the occasional, agonised text to Benjy who unsympathetically texted back: sucked in, Suzanne.

  My pay (I had a part-time job at the IGA delicatessen) was running out fast, but when I saw Richard sending Doll furtive looks I decided I didn’t care. My presence would get Doll through the night. I loathed Richard. To me he was a living cliché: a corporate banker by day who loved lady-boys at night. No doubt he’d one day get a wife and family and keep his habits secret.

  Anticipating this moment was why Doll had bleached her hair, I thought. She was offering herself to him again, outdoing the girl he’d come in with, even outdoing Bree Breslin. She leaned back in her chair and laughed with me. The fluttering fingers and slightly widened eyes let me know that she was aware of scrutiny, and not just from Richard. A light above struck her in all the right places: brow and clavic
les and cheekbones, her nose casting a shadow like a soft, dark butterfly. Again and again, her shapely lips met the rim of the glass.

  * * *

  It was late when we stumbled outside. The street lights made a blurry, twinkling floss above us. We walked down Elgin Street, clutching at each other and giggling. Ahead we saw a dark shape on the footpath that people were stepping around: an old man, drunker than we were and probably homeless. I wanted to step around him too. Doll wouldn’t let me.

  ‘Oh, let’s stop for this poor fallen angel.’

  She made me help her move him up to a nearby bench. At times like this I remembered she was male: she crouched in her stiletto heels and slid her hands under his armpits and lifted with barely a grimace. I took his feet. His coat fell open and the movement sent his unwashed stench upwards. Doll was unperturbed. Having known extremes herself, she wasn’t frightened of them in others. She sent me off to the nearest service station to buy cheese sandwiches and a bottle of mineral water.

  ‘I’ve only got five dollars left.’

  ‘So? You’ve got a credit card, haven’t you?’

  I set off for the two block walk, wondering if the servo would still have sandwiches. I glanced back and saw that Doll had arranged things so the man’s head lay in her lap. She was chattering and laughing, occasionally bending her head over him. I felt humbled by the shadowy pieta they made, lost to the indifferent passersby.

  * * *

  III.

  * * *

  We were practicing in Dad’s garage when the police came.

  All three of them had just done a line of coke, and I was furious. Doll had brought the stuff, laughing as she unrolled the sealed plastic bag with a flourish. She wasn’t taking the band seriously. We started up after the line and it wasn’t till our next pause that we heard the knock.

  Dad led them in, thumbing to them over his shoulder. As usual, Dad looked rather like a bed that needs new sheets. He turned up the dimmer switch. Doll blinked and stopped gyrating her hips, her eyes glittered madly inside the Breslin-style rings of kohl. Benjy put down his drumsticks and assumed a sober expression, but Selima kept strumming her bass guitar softly, blowing at the wisp of black hair that fell over her face. Both cops were around forty-five: a shortish plump guy who seemed more senior, followed by a redhead with a bizarrely bushy, orange moustache.