Peter Carey - Amnesia

Now, log on.

I thought she had no right. I thought Frederic would kill me. She watched me while I went through Minerva and introduced myself on Altos. I was almost at the limit of my skills.

Speedball: Welcome back Fallen Angel. Wassup? WTF with Undertoad?

Aisen asked: Who is Undertoad?

I would not say.

This is the boy who was in trouble?

I glared at her and she touched my head like someone who never had a pet before. She said, Show me what else you can do?

Will you let me use the modem still?

If it’s a local call, yes.

She had a way of looking at you I can’t describe, as if there was an error in your genetic code and she was searching for it, line by line.

You’ll find him, she said. Her eyes were pale and brown, too clear to hide a thing.

How do you know?

You will.

She could not have known. Actually, he was with hippies in Nimbin and could not get online. But I believed her.

The lightning was raging but the line noise was OK and I tried to take my five-foot teacher travelling. I wanted to show her I could do it, but I didn’t want to give anything away.

Good heavens, she said. Look at you.

God knows what she was thinking. Then, jeez Louise, the bitch logged me off. I sort of shouted at her, not thinking where I was. She goes, Do you really want to go to jail?

It’s not illegal, what I did. I dialled a phone number. That’s not wrong.

And the password, did you steal it?

A baby could have guessed it.

But those same eyes were on me. She could be a scary old dame. You better go home to your mother now, she said. I will not help you to break the law.

You promised I could find my friend.

Yes, but now you should go home.

I understand now that she liked me, and that she was afraid of the police like everybody but at the time I was outraged, deceived, betrayed. Also, completely inept.

You’ll still teach me BASIC? I said. I have to know BASIC, which was a lie of course. But she was in love with teaching, so I faked it, never thinking my lie might one day become my life.

She said I won’t help you to break the law.

Well what am I going to do? I said, and I was really crying because I could not find Frederic without her. I have to learn BASIC I cried. I bawled and bawled to make her sorry for me, so she would let me back and I could have another chance.

OK, she said, I’ll think. You better go home for now.

Back home the rooms were dark and empty and loud with rain. I did not know what I would do. I was angry, and I was frightened I had shown her Frederic’s secrets. There was cask wine on the fridge and I filled a tumbler. It was red and bitter and I didn’t like it but afterwards I slept and dreamed. I was writing in some amazing language which was also, somehow, music and a kind of graph. The object was to make the graph go high. I was actually programming and playing the game as well and suddenly I understood it was all so easy and the graph started to go high, then it went higher and higher and I felt something so maximum, elegance, perfection, perhaps I gasmed, it was like that. The graph went off of the top of the screen and a voice said, You have broken through!! And I thought, I have got him back again, I have found my hedgehog boy. And I woke up, so sad and disappointed to learn I had killed Peli and it was all crock, crap, disgustitude inside the empty house.

MY LIPS in the bathroom mirror were dry and scuzzy with red wine. I splashed my puffy eyes then air-conditioned them with the open fridge. It was eight o’clock at night but I left the blinds as they had been all day, drawn against the heat. The phone had been ringing through my sleep and now it began again. As before, there was no message, not from my mother who was shooting at Mount Macedon, not from the Great Sando who was at a conference called Socialism in Shorts. I suppose that was meant to be lighthearted, in any case he would not be home tonight. I collected the coins from his office floor, enough for pizza.

Then bam bam bam on the front door and Miss Aisen called my mother’s name and I was Gregor Samsa in the dark, peering through the chink below the blinds. There she was: sodium-yellow in the electric light, sun dress, wiry legs, homemade hair. She left the porch, and passed through the squeaky side gate. Then bang bang on the back door.

Gaby, she called. I know you’re there, she said. The door rattled in its frame.

When she finally gave up and walked away I knew I was in more trouble than before. She would tell my parents I was a criminal.

So I stole Dad’s parliamentary envelopes. I locked myself in the bathroom and used the toilet lid to write snail mail to Frederic Matovic c/o post offices in Nimbin, Uki, Murwillumbah, Byron Bay, Bangalow, needles in haystacks, all the hippie towns I knew in northern New South Wales. I begged him to come back. I had one more glass of wine and imagined I was doing stuff with him.

So I slept.

Next morning, my mouth an old carpet, my stomach acid, fuck my life, I kept the blinds down and windows closed against Miss Aisen. I cooked eggs they made me retch. I went back to my room and smoothed out the envelopes which had got all crinkled in the night. Then came three sharp knocks on the bedroom window. Thank God, Troy. He would go to the post office for me.

I lifted the blind and it was Aisen. Perhaps I should have cried or charmed her but I fled to the bathroom and locked the door and finally she went away.

Later I looked in Sandy’s drawer for stamps. I had a glass of wine and cleaned the crud off my teeth. All I thought was, Undertoad, where are you? I tore out the best pictures from my Macworld s. I collected wine cartons in the kitchen and a Stanley knife and a Sharpie and a roll of silver gaffer tape. By lunchtime—this will sound insane—I had made a life-size model of the Mac IIx. This was desperate, but it was how my dad and I spoke when we loved each other, sitting on the floor, eating pizza, drinking Coke, making stuff all Saturday afternoon. It was what they call a cry for help. Ha-ha.

I was starving and vomitous but I constructed a cardboard monitor, a keyboard, twin drives with Apple logos. I made three realistic floppy disks. I had it completed, on his desk by midafternoon when he walked through the door in his socialist shorts and thongs. I was hiding in the corner behind the sofa so I saw him smile. I jumped him and he laughed and hugged me and I thought, yes! He will definitely buy me a computer now. He ordered pizza and Coke and then I unplugged the phone so Aisen could not tell him I had broken the laws of the Commonwealth of Australia.

But then he washed my dirty eggy plates and pans which I understood to mean he would not buy me what I required.

You need to get out in the sunshine more, he said, and that was the same thing said another way. Why bother being surprised? We were always broke, but I was also a wilful little cow, so I persisted. When the Turkish pizza arrived I transferred my votive object to the kitchen table. When Sando laughed, I hoped. And I kept on hoping, even while he was saying no in various different ways e.g. wibbling at me about how pale I was. You need to get out in the sunshine, etc. as if getting skin cancer was good for my future. I should go to the Coburg pool, he said. I did not tell him the Samoan girls were waiting there to bash me up.

I asked could I have a glass of wine. He said just one. He had two or three himself. He called me darls. He was upset my mother could not get a day off the shoot to appear with him at an event. The greenies were being unreasonable. He had to demonstrate to them, again, that he was publicly opposing MetWat’s plan to concrete the Merri Creek. If it had been Greeks or Turks inviting him, he would have been there like a shot, but these were “environmentalists” which was code for white people. Of course they were his constituents, and if they wanted him and his wife to come and plant some trees, then he better bloody go.