Peter Carey - Amnesia

Frederic said, Here it is.

Then they felt, very briefly, their stomachs float, and then their bodies became hostile to each other, on and on, then stillness and a loud hissing.

And it was Solosolo who was on her feet first, who kicked the back door open to confront a bright-lit stage.

Solosolo twisted her ankle. Gaby knew she would be blamed. Frederic saw Peli, his eyes closed against the quartz-white glare, by the riverbank. He was holding his hands in the air, slowly turning around as if to show that he had no weapon. He did 360 degrees then kept on going. Then, with his broad beautiful back to the police, he jogged twenty paces to the Yarra River and dived in.

Frederic, whose high forehead revealed a single trickle of bright red blood, grasped his glittery fingers behind his vampire back and slowly followed to the bank where, not having yet become “the prisoner,” he was free to stare at the water, black as anthracite, the lethal current no more visible than electricity beneath its gleaming skin.

THE HAWKESBURY RIVER writer-in-residence had made himself at home, which is not to say that he appeared physically comfortable, but that he had a folding chair, and had become familiar with a domestic situation that required him, while clad in unflattering boxer shorts and a matted sweater with unravelling sleeves, to lay his trousers on a rock to dry. His beard had filled in somewhat, and his hair had reached a stage where an undergarment was required to keep it out of his watery eyes. Also, he had a dog, which was in itself sufficient to make him appear (if he was ever unfortunate enough to be observed) a local. The dog was the right sort, a short-legged blue-heeler bitch. Of course she was not his dog at all. She was an opportunist who had the manners to remain and doze a while after she had eaten. He called her Lizzie.

It had long been the fugitive’s “character” to eschew all vanity, and yet he would have admitted, had he been caught in the act, that he was indeed keen to tan his city legs. This was not vanity, but part of blending in, and with time his knees acquired a certain smooth brown texture such as might be expected of a river rat.

On the other hand, of course, he had the larger of his two cassette players in his lap and he was zipping back and forth through what had once been eighty-five metres of screeching tape searching for a few centimetres where Celine was not talking about her marriage. The tape had been accidentally exposed on a sunny windowsill, so the length to which it had been stretched was anybody’s guess. But somewhere (fast forward, pause, rewind, play) he expected to find an account of the death by drowning of a young Samoan. In his mind’s eye he could already see the police car with its blue disco lights flashing in the dark black skin of the Yarra River. He listened with his head cocked, at the same time keeping a windblown eye on the Hawkesbury River, the ultramarine sky, the hard blue water, the tiny chop, numerous anonymous craft, any one of which might contain his enemies. Also, the water police were out today and there was a single Tupperware cruiser put-putting out beyond the mangroves.

None of this was as he would have imagined, for the terrifying truth (it seemed) was that he was so unsuited to solitude that he would have almost welcomed a visitor. Now, at the sight of a heavy-set dark-haired man crossing the deck of the Tupperware cruiser, seeing the bright orange heels of his sneakers, he felt such a wild surge of dangerous hope that this might be Woody Townes.

Celine was talking about her marriage and Gaby’s difficulties at school and he could choose to look at that as narcissistic, or consider that she was being a better human being than he was. What had he done, once, to acknowledge his missing wife and children? Was this because he was an arsehole? Or was it beyond the habits of reportage? Or was it that when his family threw him out he just closed the door and sealed it? He had no tolerance for pain.

A light aircraft passed over, too high to interest him. Meanwhile Celine was talking about acting in commercials, and what a relief that was for her.

The man on the cruiser was a dead ringer for Woody Townes.

Was he waiting for Woody to rescue him, even when he knew Woody was his enemy? Felix Moore assumed he was now known to the government of the United States and although it seemed hysterical, it might not be fantastical to discover that he could be rendered and imprisoned until he betrayed Gaby, even if he had been unable to find any sign of her expected animus against that nation, which had suffered, so to speak, collateral damage. It was not fanciful to think that paid mercenaries might strip him naked, put him on suicide watch so he could not even kill himself. Not so many days previously he had tried to catch a fish with a handline. He was, as always, inexpert, and the sight of the worm’s response to the hook filled him with fear of pain. He tortured the worm and drowned it and didn’t catch a thing.

Now he hoped the Duracells would run out so he would have an excuse to wave for help, or Woody would save him, as he saved him before, rescued him from his own reckless pursuit of principle, helped him avoid his own destruction, pulled him back from a situation his conscience had demanded he embrace.

Fast forward. Play. Where else (the voice groaned basso)? Where else but Carlton would it be a big scandale to be cast in a commercial? Fast forward. Her tribe had sat in a circle on the dusty floor and excommunicated her from the collective. Only the junkie would not raise his hand in condemnation. Stop. Fast forward. Play. In the straight world, meanwhile, the commercial was a big success. Forward (squawking). Play. She had secretly (seeeeee-creeet-ly) deposited half the money from the commercial in her own savings account. How else would she ever be able to afford to run away? Fast forward. Play. Sandy had caught her. Henceforth he was good. She was bad. She was marooned in Coburg. Fuck. Fast forward. Play. She had to act the wifey with the branch members who could never seem to meet at the electoral office but must come back to the house. Woody was on the finance committee. Arsehole, she knew he had engineered the move to Coburg.

Without pausing the machine, the fugitive rose from his seat. When he turned to pay attention to his drying laundry, he revealed the back of his brown legs to be pale as the belly of a flounder. He turned the damp side of his trousers to the afternoon sun.

Peli was about to drown. He had found that spot before then lost it.

Matrimonial difficulty had caused Celine to double her sleeping pills which made her groggy all day but wide awake at 2 a.m. when the police called. How come Sando didn’t stir? she would have liked to know. The voice on the phone asked her was she Celine Baillieux. Yes she was. This was Sergeant someone of the Victoria Police. Did she know where her daughter was right now?

She thought rape. She could not say the word. Her throat closed over. She was drugged, and confused, also angry that Sando could lie naked like that, chaste and naked with a pillow across his head. She said she would come to the station straight away. Later he would blame her for leaving him to sleep. It was an aggressive act, he would say.

She rushed from the front gate, thinking she had failed to make her daughter sufficiently afraid of life. She drove along Moreland Road and headed south on High Street then into wide empty Hoddle Street where the railway line ran parallel beneath its lethal web of wire. The grass in the median strip was mangy as a worn-out dog. She remembered passing Ramsden Street where she recognised the site of the Hoddle Street Massacre: that banal suburban railway crossing, that dreary low billboard from which hiding place the assassin had shot thirty people, one by one. She was spooked by the low dark roofs beneath the poison sky, the plain unlovely park, all these somehow melded with her daughter’s fate.