Peter Carey - Amnesia

FREDERIC’S MOTHER HAD her temperament upgraded with a huge TV, a VCR, a refrigerator, two air conditioners. Then everyone was perfectly sedated, playing Mario Bros. Suddenly Meg liked me, Gaby said. It was an unexpected side effect.

Stringy Meg Matovic folded her black balletic legs beneath her and snuggled up beside the Blondie child. She flicked ash onto the floor and begged the child to teach her Mario Bros. Technically, she was unteachable, the most awful player you ever saw, yelling, screaming, falling into blackness, hitting the invisible block, being killed by the Firebar, missing all the Bloobers, a giggling fool, happy to die at the hands of Goombas and Koopas and Buzzy Beetles, shouting like a soccer mum. Meg was possibly bipolar. She was certainly the first parent Gaby met who was a blatant stoner. She crashed her van on the Eastern Freeway. She stayed at home on school days, getting high, waiting for Telecom to show up.

Teleprofit, Telescum, Frederic called it, hissing and narrowing his kohl-lined mystery eyes. Hackers hated Telecom, he said. Telecom were morons who could not even use their own technology. The line noise was so bad you got logged off continually and the faster your modem the worse the problem was. Soon they’d have a modem with error correction, but not that year, not yet. Telecom were jackboots. They could raid your house, tap your phone line and seize your equipment any time they wished. Service? They could not even give you a phone line when you asked for one. Oh no, you must wait three fucking weeks.

Mrs. Matovic resigned from Mario Bros. She took up Wizard’s Crown and hogged it so much Peli, direct from work at six o’clock, had to play it with her. Meg was way too flirty for her age. Groan. She never knew a black person in her life. Scream. She absolutely loved them. She got poetic about the Samoans’ size and colour and their frizzy hair. She wanted to live in the tropics, and always had. She and Frederic were going to run away to Nimbin and live off papaya and “be really healthy like Samoans.”

Peli had been back to Samoa only once. He had been pissed off beyond endurance by houses with no windows.

Gaby noted Meg laid her hand on Peli’s knee so when Solosolo stormed outside and slammed the door, well, of course she knew the problem i.e. Meg was a hundred. Peli was nineteen. She followed her best friend across The Avenue to the place where she had once had rabies.

She’s awful, she said. I’m sorry.

Solosolo spun around and her face was bunched up like a fist.

Don’t you shit on my brother, she said.

I didn’t shit on anyone.

Telescum. Teleprofit. You never bloody stop.

So?

Didn’t you notice but? My brother bloody works for Telecom.

He’s Peli. He’s not Telecom.

Don’t make me hit you, bitch.

Soley, I’m your friend. Please don’t call me that.

Well, you get Frederic to show him some respect.

We do.

You’re going to put 240 volts down the phone line? That’s your plan. You’re going to kill Telecom workers.

That was a joke.

Why do you think our father brought us to this awful palagi country?

Gaby saw the point of view. But she also knew how much her Samoan friends didn’t like Samoa. Didn’t like it here. Couldn’t stand it there. Women had to spend their whole life making food, all day, every damn day, hot rocks, fire, how many Samoans does it take to get a pizza?

OK, I’ll be the bunny: why did your father bring you here?

Shut up. Peli did what was asked of him. He got the education. He got the job. So when you call it Telescum you piss on my whole family.

No.

And then you make him go and rob Telecom.

I make him?

You think he likes Frederic? You’re joking. Frederic’s just your pimp. You sit beside Peli in the van. And then you piss on him. You’re lucky I’m a Christian. Soley’s eyes were black, unknowable. You’re lucky I’m a Christian or I would bite your pretty face.

Gaby thought, she has a temper. It will pass. But when she came back into the sleepout she saw all the bullshit in Peli’s eyes. Before she went outside she had been sitting on the floor beside him, but now she moved away. He looked at her all mulish with his heavy chin and fluttery eyes. What had she ever said or done to make him act like that?

So now she stopped sitting in the front seat and then, without a word being spoken, they were at war. Why? What right? He drove stop and start, went too fast, scraping along a tram on Swanston Street.

They had all—everyone agreed—retired from trashing so what then happened should never have happened. Dad went direct to Peli. If Peli did it, he did it for himself, but then Frederic could not let him run it on his own. Then Gaby had to go. Then Solosolo came too, acting as if it was all Gaby’s fault. Well, hello. Who was paying Peli?

Frederic rode in the front. Solo and Gaby were not talking but they had to ride together, alone, between the racks of cabling equipment, wrapping themselves in mover’s quilts and straps. Peli made the ride as nasty as he could, taking them through seasick curves. At the end of the journey they hit a speed bump and they were in the lane behind the East Kew exchange. Gaby had big black yard bags. When Frederic popped the lock Peli’s face was imprisoned by the Tetris glow.

The trashing at East Kew was fast and easy except, as was made clear later, something happened to Peli while the others were inside. The police had cruised past the lane, seen the van, seen the illuminated black face, and come to have a “chat.” They were polite, allegedly they “made inquiries.” They were informed that Peli was “waiting to drive his boss home.” It was three in the morning but Peli was a Telecom employee in a Telecom uniform and a Telecom van. The police did not regard this as “suspicious activity.” If they parked their car in the street, it was only so they could buy some Cokes and Chiko Rolls. They were eating them when they heard the van engine and saw the “vehicle” emerge from the back lane faster than they would have expected, given the size of the speed bump. The “black gentleman,” spotting the police car, waved his hand in greeting.

He had no-one in the passenger seat. To the police this meant the boss was bullshit. They observed the van “proceed in a southerly direction,” at an estimated sixty kilometres per hour, and they were wondering, they later said, what to make of the absence of the boss, when the van made a right-hand turn and, as it vanished from sight, the driver accelerated so hard the squealing tyres could be heard from blocks away.

They turned on all the bells and whistles and set off in pursuit which had the comic effect of making the Telecom van accelerate even more. Clearly it was not rational for the driver to expect that his Japanese bread box might outrun a Holden Commodore VN SS, but that is what he seemed intent on, heading along Studley Park Road then left onto Walmer Street where it became clear he was unstable, for he chose, he actually selected , the Yarra Boulevard, a serpentine progression of loops that had already, two weeks ago, brought a Porsche unstuck.

The magistrate asked if they had considered slowing.

No, they had wished to apprehend the suspects.

Suspect, the magistrate corrected.

Yes, Your Honour.

Inside the dark van, Gaby could feel the fury, see the flashing lights, as they began to tip. She accepted a blanket and wrapped herself head to toe. Then they lay together, the three of them, clinging onto the wire-mesh door of the equipment cage.