Peter Carey - Amnesia

They know if you’ve been bad or good

So be good for goodness sake

At the sound of an outboard motor roaring to life, the property developer, without releasing the hermit, produced a telephone from his clever canvas waistcoat. His thumbs were distressingly large, but he dialled precisely. Mate, he said to the slender phone, let the kid go.

The hermit tugged free. You see me when I’m sleeping? he cried. What the fuck is that meant to mean? He had already seen the cruiser with satellite dishes on its cabin. Who told you where I was?

Woody Townes did not bother answering. He took the single chair and shook his head in a style that might be “rueful.” He had lost weight. The stomach staples had evidently worked, or he had been at the gym. When he returned his telephone to his waistcoat holster, new biceps stretched his shirt.

Pull up a pew, he said, and placed a liquor flask and a peculiar revolver on the desk.

The hermit showed no reaction to this ugly weapon. Instead he fetched two smudgy glasses from the sink and dragged a plastic crate to serve as a chair.

You always liked that bit, Feels.

What bit?

Come on, this is for you. Your all-time favourite interview. Murray Sayle snares Kim Philby in Moscow. Intrepid Aussie journalist tracks down Pommy traitor at the Moscow post office. The spy agrees to the interview. When the journo arrives the spy is waiting with a bottle of vodka and a revolver on the table. You didn’t get the reference?

What are you doing, Woody?

The literal answer would have been, I am now raising the revolver and pointing it over your shoulder. Woody Townes, however, did not reply directly: I always thought Philby must have been a drama queen, he said.

The hermit’s hand may have been less steady than his friend’s but he displayed a modicum of courage. That is, he unscrewed the flask and poured. As he raised the glass (formerly a receptacle for peanut butter) the most colossal explosion occurred.

Shit, the hermit cried. His body jerked. He stood. He sat. He turned towards the sound of running water, a trickling garden hose which turned out to be red wine spurting from a punctured box. He stared at the wine morosely. It was the visitor who spoke:

So give me my fucking pages.

The hermit reflected that it had been awful wine in any case.

Give me my fucking pages.

How can I have pages? I haven’t got a source.

So why are you here?

To get some fucking peace.

Woody Townes laid his weapon down, and dragged the Olivetti Valentine across the table. He unscrewed the pair of orange knobs which secured the spools of ribbon. Having removed these, he affected to read the ribbon like a strip of film.

Were there people somewhere like San Antonio, Texas at, say, a former Sony computer-chip factory, who could really decode a typewriter ribbon? Of course there were. Whatever weird shit you could imagine, they could do it. The spools flew like yoyos across the room and Woody Townes tilted back to ask: Tell me this, why am I the one who always has to get you out of the shit?

You’re not.

Shut up. This is not the New South Wales branch of the Labor Party you’re trying to fuck with.

I wrote two hundred pages. They sent a kid to pick them up. Not that kid, another one. He said he was from you.

Bullshit. You won’t want to be here when I send someone.

There’s nothing here. You can look for yourself.

You’ve got the hots for her, fine. So now’s your chance to be a hero. Give us a chance to defend her. We need info-fucking-mation, mate.

I’m not sure I should be trusting you Woody.

You’re not?

Nothing personal.

Talking of personal. I was chatting to Donno at the Telegraph the other day. Donovan? Yeah I know. I was sort of hinting there might be an interesting Felix story. He was saying, We know everything there is to know about the grandstanding little cunt, you know how he talks. But of course that’s not true, is it? We’ve got all sorts of shit on you.

The fugitive became still.

Do you remember, Feels, when you thought you could take on Hawkie? People don’t know about that. Felix Moore vs. the future Prime Minister of the nation.

This is what you told Celine, isn’t it?

Woody shrugged. There were a mob of you, as I recall. No-one had more moral authority with the unions than the head of their collective body. Hawke used all that clout to stop the general strike? Right. He was a mate of the US ambassador. Etc. etc.

He was. You know he was.

And then you, my nervy little mate, do you remember? You were auditioning for Drivetime Radio . Someone was on holiday. Matt Cocker? No, not him. They gave you three weeks to try out Drivetime Radio with Felix Moore . It went to your head, no? Just a teensy bit? Somehow you thought you could call a general strike from the fucking ABC. You were worried, as I recall, how you would fit eighteen left-wing union leaders into a little studio on William Street. Eighteen. That was optimistic.

You weren’t against it, mate. As I recall, you sort of egged me on.

Let’s just say, I was very interested in everything you had to say. You were born in a country that never had a war. You were blessed, but you thought we should suffer like the Bosnians, the Rwandans, the Palestinians, everyone. I never heard anything so fucking stupid. You really wanted civil war.

Whatever. You were on my side.

Oh, mate, he said and he cocked his head and the expression on his face was almost fond.

What?

What do you think?

You weren’t playing on the other side?

Other side of what? Other side of bloodshed? You bet. Fortunately you didn’t have the balls for it. You were shitting yourself, I remember that, looking for any chance not to follow through.

You told Celine this?

You were frightened of where your imagination was leading you. Remember we sat up half the night before? You got so pissed you couldn’t walk. You slept at my place in Neutral Bay. Do you remember the morning?

We drank all your tequila.

No, not that, mate. Your car caught fire.

Of course I remember. You were with me. You’re the one who dragged me out the passenger side. It was not my fault the car caught fire.

No, it was my fault.

Bullshit.

Yes, me. I fucking saved you from yourself. You should be grateful I gave you your excuse. Although you could have still got to the studio if you’d really wanted to.

We had to wait for the police.

Ah, look at you, said Woody Townes, delighted. The boy who cried pig. You’ve spent a lifetime screaming at everyone for being so gutless in ’75. To the barricades, and all that shit. If there was any credible opposition you had them, every available pinko and ratbag, waiting to go on Drivetime Radio . What will your little girls think of their daddy when they hear all this?

The wine was dripping, but only very slowly. The hermit turned his attention to the visitor’s flask from which he slowly refilled two large glasses, one of which he drank.

Why? he asked his biggest fan.

Woody leaned back, as if to give the writer a sporting chance to grab the gun. Mate, you know me.

He slid the second glass across the table. Felix Moore did not reject the gift.

So you’ve got nothing to give me, Feels? Not a single page?

Sorry mate. Wish I did.

Woody stood. He kicked irritably at the tangled typewriter ribbon as he slid the gun back inside what was, clearly, a highly specialised garment.

You’re not up to this game, he said. You’d like to play at this level, but you never could. Here, take my phone. When you realise what shit you’re in, call me on my landline. It might not be too late.

It was an iPhone, the latest model, but Woody left it without regret.