Peter Carey - Amnesia

I do what I want to do with my prisoners, he said.

Celine washed her husband’s cold, egg-encrusted breakfast dishes. There was no news on the radio. Sandy went into his office to take a call—in private. He returned to say that Matty Matovic (whom he had once called comrade) had been arrested for receiving. He was now on remand awaiting trial, but no-one could locate his wife with the result that Frederic, if Celine was even interested, was being held at Turana, aka, Parkville juvenile detention facility.

She shrugged.

He judged her for that, but why would the criminal Matovics be her concern?

Then Sando turned his attention to their daughter’s bedroom, kneeling at the locked door, whispering like a monk.

Why this was so intolerable Celine still could not explain, years later. Nor could she excuse her own behaviour, for she had gone to her bedroom and locked that door. Thus she had been a child and was doubly in the wrong.

They did not know how she needed them both. She could never tell them even now. She had sat on the bed, listening to every sound. She heard her daughter open the door and admit the supplicant. Then they had locked themselves against her.

Her failure was unbearable. To her shame she took three sleeping tablets which provided a wet narcotic habitat. The earth moved around the sun. Satellites maintained their orbits. She heard the telephone, once, twice, a hundred times, who knows. When she dragged herself to the surface, she was astonished to find her husband was still in the house. He told her Peli Tuputala had drowned in the Yarra River. Did she know him?

No.

Neither of them knew the dead boy’s rank and status, but Sandy was the one to sigh, as if it was Celine’s job, only her job, to know their daughter’s friends.

Why do I make myself appear so ugly? Celine wished to know on tape.

The writer thought, she had never seemed ugly, only spirited, emotional. She had always been so beautiful, so brutally self-critical, he would have forgiven her for murder.

Sandy left for a meeting with constituents. Celine sat at the dining-room table and tried to not need anything from her daughter. When she finally knocked on Gaby’s door she was astonished to find herself wanted, even more surprised to see Gaby at her little student desk, already in a black dress and blouse, strapping on a high-heeled sandal. Her knees were bruised, her eyes were swollen and her mouth lopsided. Celine was permitted to make her sliced tomatoes on toast and Earl Grey tea.

Celine had not liked Frederic from the start, but she assumed Gaby had dressed like this to visit him in Turana. She asked would the girl like to be driven somewhere. Yes, she would, to Peli’s family in Thomastown.

They set off around four o’clock, that is, peak hour for the building trades, travelling north along roads lined with warehouses: auto parts, steel sheds, garden equipment, Melbourne transport, interstate transport. Behind these light-industrial ramparts she discovered clusters of false-bright optimistic houses with dying lawns. Celine had never been to Thomastown before. She did not wonder at the large number of cars parked along Peli’s street, signs that the grieving family was playing host to relatives, some of whom were approaching in that Boeing 727 presently leaving white scratch marks in the sky.

She was instructed to wait. She double-parked and watched the poor creature wobble on her unaccustomed heels. Celine had no idea of what was at stake. There were three steps to the front door and the girl tottered to the uppermost where, unprotected by a rail, she rang the bell. The street was quiet and empty, each house a mausoleum. In the Tuputala home a curtain moved. Gaby made her way across the front lawn, to the high side gate. She let herself in.

Then the front door opened and a solid grey-haired man walked down the steps and out along the concrete path. If he had been a Sikh from Kuala Lumpur she would not have known. He had a slow, wide strut, big thighs, pigeon toes. He walked diagonally across the street and entered another house and of course she had no clue of where she was or what was happening, not even that every human being inside those houses knew the dead boy had been the victim of his love for Gaby Baillieux.

When Gaby emerged from the side gate her mother recognised Solosolo, hobbling on crutches, behind her. Gaby pointed to her mother’s car and then Solosolo threw down her crutches. Sitting, crying, she flung a fist of dirt. Celine started the engine and unlocked the door. By the time Gaby was in the car the street was once more empty.

Celine asked her what was that.

Can we just go?

Celine stalled the car, started again and turned into a driveway, then reversed. At the same time she provided a handkerchief.

Shall we find Frederic? she asked brightly.

She had been so bloody weak, she thought. She had made herself a doormat when she should have taken charge.

You can just drop me where he is.

Do you know where that is?

You know, Gaby said.

Once Celine had delivered her to the parking lot of Turana youth detention centre—like a suburban bank, she thought—she found herself dismissed.

How will you get home?

I’m not a baby, Gaby said, and followed the Volvo out onto Park Street and waited until Celine turned the corner.

Celine stopped at a newsagent in Brunswick and found Peli and Matty Matovic in The Herald . She learned the Tuputalas were sort of royalty. At home Woody’s assistant was calling on the phone. Then Woody made her wait and wait. When he finally came on the line he was beyond his normal smarmy “Mrs. Quinn” sort of bullshit. He “let her know” that he had been forced to squander a great deal of his “social capital” to keep Sando’s name out of the news.

This was a lie. Gaby was a minor. No-one could publish her name and her father must remain anonymous.

Next Monday morning Gaby went to school as normal. I most definitely, Celine told the tape, I most definitely encouraged her to “see someone.” Please don’t think I didn’t. I knew she had to be in therapy, but I could not force her. I could not make her change a shoe if she didn’t want to.

Meanwhile Sandy seemed protected by a carapace of blame. Fair enough, she thought. He was giving himself hives working for Bob Hawke’s re-election. She was an awful wife, but she made him a healthy breakfast and watched him leave for the electoral office in the rain.

How could I have left him then, even if I had the money?

It was only three or four days later she had a telephone call from a woman who introduced herself as “your daughter’s bookkeeping teacher.” Her name was “Miss Aisen” and she said she had just received some visitors and she hoped Mrs. Quinn would receive them too.

Who are they?

They are on their way to see you now.

They turned out to be two young men with “depressing zip-front track jackets” in “dead” colours, sad maroon, gloomy green. One or both of them were from the Parkville youth detention centre.

The young men placed a worn tennis ball upon her scrubbed hardwood table and showed her how it had been slit. They invited her to squeeze the ball and look inside where she discovered a note, written in her daughter’s hand.

Her daughter had been throwing balls into the Parkville centre in the middle of the night. Balls like this, the young men told Celine, normally contained marijuana but in this case they held letters addressed to a boy who had only stayed in Turana on a single night. He had been discharged from the facility before the balls arrived but the staff had been disturbed, they said, to recognise the “ink.”

Actually Miss Baillieux, it’s blood.

Whose blood?

They looked at her with pity.