Peter Carey: Amnesia

We sneered at the new video cameras and called them “products.” We introduced the word agitprop to common parlance. Our “appropriate technology” could not record sound so our agitprop would be completely visual. We would destroy MetWat on the television news.

We would go further, play harder than anybody else. We would destroy my perfect skin. We paid for one roll of film which was exactly two minutes and fifty seconds of footage. We performed our action in rehearsal. We timed it to fit that single roll.

1. Three seconds of Agrikem sign.

2. Establishing shot of factory, zoom in to sewer.

3. Gaby walks into frame and strips to her undies.

4. Gaby rolls on the poisoned soil.

We planned this on paper and then we followed our own directions. This is how it has always been for me. Once it gets to the real-life action you are beyond fear. You are simply in the mechanism. First you do this, then you do that. It is no more scary than stripping down a gun. On the day of the action it happened to be cold. My naked skin was like a plucked chicken, smeared with mud and poison. I crouched and hugged my knees while Frederic ran across McBryde Street to find a house that had a telephone. He took ages. I hoped he might get a blanket to bring back but we hadn’t thought of that and so he came back empty-handed, waiting to execute the next part of the plan.

5. The ambulance arrives.

6. Paramedics run across paddock.

7. Paramedics carry Gaby to ambulance.

8. Ambulance drives away with Gaby inside.

9. Agrikem sign.

10. Title: 30 days later.

11. Gaby’s skin with chloracne bubbles and pustules.

Frederic took his shirt off so he would be as cold as me. That one was worthy of my dad. We waited for the ambulance together. He offered me his shirt which made me start to cry. He touched me and I pushed him away and thought things that surprised me. I thought, you carried a bloody tripod on your bike but not a blanket. I imagined I could feel the blisters starting on my back and tummy. I was less together than I would have expected. I cried because my father wouldn’t listen to me. I cried because Frederic would admire me for being brave but now he would not marry me, or would marry me and have affairs with women with unblemished skin. I thought, fat chance our film will ever be on television.

The bone-thin starving horses stood against the fence of the next paddock, their sad faces towards me, their backs to the wind.

The ambulance came. I was hysterical and the neighbours came to watch and Frederic had to cry as well, just so he could travel with me.

WHEN WE REFUSED to process our film, Crystal got unexpectedly shitty.

We said we weren’t ready to hand it in. We were waiting for something.

For what?

A scene. We can’t tell you.

Probably we displayed bad attitude. The class all thought we were wankers. Fair enough. But what could we reveal to them? That we were waiting for the vile sores to break out on my back and stomach. Then, only then, could we shoot the scene, finish the roll, process it, and get it on the Channel 9 news. The class could see it then. They had no idea of who we were.

We were waiting for the sores and lesions. Every time I came back from the loo he was looking at me, his eyebrows raised. He already had our press release, but jeez, back off, Freddo.

Don’t get me wrong. We were in total agreement with each other. We had performed “a necessary action” but, honestly, now we had cooled off, I was not exactly thrilled by the prospect of being marked for life.

I went to the State Library, sans Freddo. I saw gross pics which freakerated me. Later I would get labelled ignorant and hysterical, which was more or less correct, although that was trumped by my mother who called me a masochist. If I had been a soldier I would have been a hero for putting my body at risk for the greater good. But I was just a girl and so I must be a masochist.

Crystal had been an ideal teacher but when we wouldn’t hand our project in she became a snub-nosed hard-arse. Why? We had school-based assessment so I could not see why she should get so stressed. Finally she flipped and “ordered” Frederic to bring his backpack to her desk. No-one ordered anyone at R. F. Mackenzie.

I called for a vote.

Crystal said shut up. Bring up the bag, like now.

I made a note. She saw me doing it.

The Canon was in Frederic’s bag, and in the Canon was the film. That was the point. Frederic did not move. He also made a note, and then gazed up at Crystal.

The room was frozen-still. Crystal did not threaten or repeat herself. Frederic remained at his desk. Then he made another note and laid his pen back down. It was sort of thrilling to see his defiance. Next he uncoiled himself and his eyes were narrow and his movements informed by some undeclared intention which made him glorious.

He threaded his way through the desks to the coat rack and I thought, shit, I love you, I love you, you are going to carry our film right out the bloody door, or maybe, just expose the film in front of everyone. I knew he was thinking what I was thinking, that’s the way we were.

As he delivered the bag to Crystal I was in the zone. He placed it on her desk. Right. He unzipped it. Right. He removed the camera and held it high, taunting.

Then he fucking gave it to her. I watched it in its full awfulness. Frederic held his head to one side, and if it was meant to be sarcastic, it was not. He stood in all his powerlessness and waited while she rewound the film.

Crystal removed the film and gave him back the camera.

The film is our property, he said.

Tough.

We paid for it with our money.

You’ll be reimbursed. Now, please take your place.

Please take your place. Who said that? I made a note, of course, but this was no longer our school. R. F. Mackenzie was not like this at all, and the whole home room were like POWs, shocked, and hating Crystal except—to be honest—maybe those who thought Frederic and I were too up ourselves, and of course they must have been the majority.

But even then it did not occur to me that the chunky spike-haired little band moll would actually process our film.

Later, on the due day when everyone presented their projects, nonstop, 9 a.m.–5 p.m., I watched her set up the projector and lace our processed film, and she was still hard-arsed, but when she saw the Agrikem sign her face softened and she glanced at me and I was pleased because I wanted her to like me after all. I knew I must be the most radical, the coolest student she ever had.

Frederic had shot the scenes in sequence so what was projected on the pitted wall was a kind of rough assembly of what we actually shot. Not quite the script, but close enough. Each take was short, three or five seconds, and Crystal’s face changed in sync with what she saw, as if she were entering the rhythm of the argument. 1. Agrikem sign. Good . 2. Wide shot of factory, good , zoom to sewer. Good . 3. Gaby takes her clothes off, OK . 4. Gaby rolls in the dirt. No, no . 5. Ambulance. 6. Gaby escorted through fence. 7. Ambulance leaves McBryde Street. 8. Royal Melbourne Hospital. Ambulance arrives. No, no, no . Crystal in total panic.

When Crystal ran from the room everybody stared at me. Freddo drew on his pad as if he had just had some really cool and urgent idea. Crystal came back with the temporary coordinator, a person not well suited to that role. When the temporary coordinator had seen the film she said she had a legal responsibility to show it to our parents.