by Rohan Wilson
Praise for
ROHAN WILSON
The Roving Party
‘Wilson’s portrayal of the horrors of colonialisation lies along that powerful boundary between fiction and history; and it is this combination of research and imagination, as well as Wilson’s balanced prose and evocative portrait of a man caught in the middle of the Black War, that makes The Roving Party so haunting. It is a book that continues to hold the reader, long after they have put it down.’ Hannah Kent, bestselling author of Burial Rites, in Kill Your Darlings
‘shocks, angers, fascinates … His prose is elegant and supple, which allows him to reach deep into his characters.’ West Australian
‘Wilson’s debut makes us wait with whetted anticipation for what next he does.’ Canberra Times
‘a splendid first novel, evocative and impressive’ Sydney Morning Herald
‘I’m still talking about this story to people long after finishing it—the spark in it has stayed with me.’ Cate Kennedy, award-winning author of Like a House on Fire
‘exceedingly powerful’ Chicago Tribune
‘Its powerful insight into the greed and other pernicious motivations of early Australian settlers make it a worthy award-winner.’ Good Reading
To Name Those Lost
‘Grim yet boisterous … What [Wilson] has achieved in each novel is sombre, strange, yet full of elan. Another Vogel winner seems fairly launched on a long career.’ Sydney Morning Herald
‘A ferocious and brilliant sequel … there is a purity of vision in To Name Those Lost.’ Australian Book Review
‘This is a strong book in which the wild, stoic beauty of a Cormac McCarthy is brought home to a distinctively Tasmanian landscape and extreme violence and physicality are clothed in a rich vernacular poetry.’ Adelaide Advertiser
‘Goes to the heart and soul of Australian history, awakening an appreciation of the grit and guts it took to survive that volatile frontier … Wilson’s first novel, The Roving Party, was ambitious and clever; this novel is accomplished and skilful.’ Herald Sun
‘Wilson’s superbly taut novel keeps up its pace with spare punctuation and brutal dialogue in a vigorously drawn landscape feverish with the heat of a bushfire summer.’ Saturday Paper
‘To Name Those Lost also shows fealty to the gothic intensity of Cormac McCarthy … Wilson remains a gifted translator of historical detail into fictional terms.’ The Australian
‘Wilson’s second novel is as violent, bleak, and absorbing as his highly praised first … a satisfying, grimy adventure about a reciprocal violence that pollutes.’ Publishers Weekly
‘Wilson’s evocation of the Tasmanian setting is pitch-perfect, as are his characterization and the suspense maintained throughout this exquisitely wrought novel.’ Booklist
‘Readers who admired the propulsive plotting, atmospheric sense of place, and fierce family loyalty in Patrick DeWitt’s The Sisters Brothers and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road should be equally taken with Wilson’s superb novel.’ Library Journal
‘This is a novel you’ll stay up all night reading for its suspenseful plot, then find yourself wanting to do a forensic rereading the next day to more closely examine and admire its exceptional literary power.’ Minneapolis Star Tribune
First published in 2019
Copyright © Rohan Wilson 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
ISBN 978 1 76052 913 0
eISBN 978 1 76087 120 8
Internal design by Bookhouse, Sydney
Set by Bookhouse, Sydney
Cover design: Christabella Designs
Cover image: www.matthewstewartphotography.com
Rohan Wilson is an award-winning writer and critic. He is a bestselling author of three novels, The Roving Party (2011) To Name Those Lost (2014) and Daughter of Bad Times (2019). Rohan lives in Brisbane where he lectures in creative writing. He can be found on Twitter: @rohan_wilson
Contents
Yamaan
Rin
Yamaan
Rin
Yamaan
Rin
Yamaan
Rin
Yamaan
Rin
Yamaan
Rin
Yamaan
When Hassan asks if I could live in a coconut palm, what he’s really asking is whether we’re the loneliest men in history. I look at him in workstation twenty-eight, fumbling with the pink shell of a TabaPet, and I know what he wants to hear and even how to say it; still, my heart isn’t up to the job. You see, when he asks this question, he wants to hear about particulars. Your method of sleeping. Your method of eating. How to avoid the sun and winds of monsoon season. Mosquitoes and flies and ants. He wants me to say you could live a long time—months even. You could live for months at the top of a palm tree eating coconuts and rats and lizards. Maybe ants. But my heart isn’t in it.
‘I don’t know,’ I say.
‘Well I do,’ Hassan says. ‘You could live for months. You could drink the rain. If you had a machete, you could cut the coconuts. Months. Easily.’
Van Hooj patrols past with his baton drawn and we put our heads down. Work, work, work, and don’t talk—that’s the rule.
Without a thought, our hands take a blue or red or green shell off the conveyor, fit a motor for the left and right tracks, align the treads, and set the finished TabaPet back on the belt. It’s odd to watch your hands work like a pit crew. Above the stations a bank of monitors shows technical schematics and 3D models of the TabaPet’s internals. Our time on each unit is clocked to the hundredth. We do not consider these things. To consider these things is to forget who you are. If you want to remember who you are, you have to live in your mind.
‘I taught my son how to climb a coconut palm when he was eight,’ Hassan says as soon as Van Hooj is far enough away.
‘You’re a good father,’ I say.
‘I told him, Always choose a palm that’s leaning. Even a child can climb a leaning palm.’
‘Good advice.’
‘He fell a lot. Children will fall. I told him. I said, Don’t worry. Pain is the greatest of teachers.’
Hassan wipes his forehead. Above the surgical mask his eyes dart as he checks the parts he needs. The tracks are the trickiest. You have to slot them in and tighten a screw with the pneumatic tool. Hassan fumbles with the tool and the screw and the track. His hands are the big hands of a builder. He was a builder once. None of us are anything anymore.
‘So climb, I told him. Cut the largest coconut for your mother.’
We’ve had this conversation before. Many, many times.
Next, Hassan will tell me a boy could live in a coconut palm as long as he had a machete. A machete to cut off the husk.
‘A boy like my boy. A strong boy. He could live in a coconut palm as long as he had a machete.’
‘To cut off the husks,’ I say.
‘Precisely. To cut off the husks.’
‘You could live for months.’
‘You could drink coconut water.’
‘You could eat the lizards.’
‘Months. A boy like my boy. Why not?’
‘Why not?’ I say, but my heart isn’t in it.
‘As long as he had a machete. Any old thing would do.’
The pneumatic tools whizz.
My heart isn’t in it because today is 5 February. In better worlds, in better times, 5 February had been my father’s birthday. Moosa Umair, the legendary hero. The voice of the people. In this world—a flatter and duller world, full of the hiss of pneumatics, the ring of shift-change bells, and the hard glares of the DEOs—in this world no one celebrates birthdays. You celebrate the moment when the conveyor jams and you can stand still for two minutes. You celebrate an extra egg at breakfast, even if you have to steal it. You celebrate the fact you can recite couplets from the great poet Rumi, even with a mind numbed by schematics. Moosa Umair would not have celebrated these things. Moosa Umair would have revolted, risen up, and pressed his thumbs through the eyes of his oppressors.
I am not my father.
To fill my mind, I ponder what I would have found Bappa for his birthday. That flavoursome dried skipjack Mohamed Naseer sold at the market. Limes from India. Coffee beans from Africa. He would have loved it. Fresh coffee, fresh limes. A meal of tuna curry. Even when he was in jail, he would have me bring fresh limes and fresh coffee for the taste of home it gave him. Home, I’ve come to learn, is not so much a place as a batch of feelings you carry with you. We here in Eaglehawk MTC carry our homes with us. This is not a small burden. In fact, it weighs as heavy as a whole world. It’s enough to flatten you on your bunk for hours as you remember the streets and alleys of a place you’ll never see again.
Let me tell you this. You develop a sense of awareness standing in the boredom of the assembly line all day. Even the smallest change strikes you. A new brand of powderless latex glove. A misshapen TabaPet arm. These things set your heart thumping and your neurons firing with the possibilities. So now, as the men in our row turn in their workstations to look around, I’m hyper-aware that this is something new. The clock reads 11.37. One hour and twenty-three minutes until lunch. The others lean back and look around and I lean back and look around just as they do. We are all dressed in anti-static gowns, hairnets, and masks—as if we were cloned from the same genome. We simmer with anxiety.
‘Back to work.’
It is a team of Detention Enforcement Officers. They walk up row 14C in a triangle formation. My hands find another shell and fit another track but I’m staring at the DEOs and wondering what they want. The first of them, the captain, draws his flick baton and extends it to length and he counts off in loud English the workstations they pass: ‘Twenty-two, twenty-four, twenty-six.’ He points at the numbers affixed to the metal shelving overhead. He stops. They all stop.
‘Twenty-eight,’ he says.
Twenty-eight is Hassan’s station.
The officers form a ring around Hassan. He’s watching them over his shoulder and his eyes have grown round and white. He keeps working because to stop working is unionism. Hassan is not a unionist. With a wave of his baton, the captain calls him forward.
‘Out here,’ he says.
The moment Hassan steps from the workstation a productivity alarm begins to sound. One of the officers disables it, but not before the sound has set our anxiety bubbling.
‘Move. That’s the way. Move over here.’
The captain is called Rahmatullah and he is a Shia of Iraqi heritage. Like a Shia, he looks at me with distaste. We all know this man. The head of security for the centre. He was named head, we think, because he’s a Muslim the same as us. Affinity. Tolerance. You get the idea. Who would be daft enough to put a Shia in charge of Sunnis, hoping for tolerance? Only an Australian. The captain scans Hassan’s face with his glasses. His forehead furrows.
‘What’s your number?’ he says.
‘Ahannakah neyngunu.’
‘English,’ the captain says. ‘Speak English.’
I try to turn, try to speak, without ceasing my work. I’m no unionist either. ‘He said that he doesn’t understand,’ I say over my shoulder while my hands continue to assemble a sapphire-blue TabaPet.
Hassan is holding his arms straight out while an officer pats him down for weapons.
‘What’s his number?’ the captain says.
‘It’s 40768. We have swapped our workstations today, sir.’
And then it strikes me: Hassan is standing in my workstation. I offered him my place because of the way the conveyor runs. In station twenty-eight you have longer to pick up the next TabaPet than you do in station twenty-six. Hassan needs those extra seconds more than I do.
‘Then which of you blokes is 40455?’
‘I am,’ I say, and my voice sounds small.
‘And who said you could sign in to a different station?’
‘No one, sir.’
‘Did the floor manager clear it?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Clear that shit with the floor manager, all right? You clear it or you sign in to your regular station.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Mask,’ he says.
I lower the surgical mask while the captain reads my face with his glasses and for an uncomfortable second our eyes connect. On his shirt is the Cabey-Yasuda Corrections logo—a C and a Y and a C set across a dark rectangle, like three doves outlined on a black sky. He calls up my record. He makes a page-turning motion. I can’t see the virtual objects that he sees as he pushes them here and there and then he says, ‘Yamaan Ali Umair.’
It’s the first time in the three months I’ve been here that a DEO has used my name. To them, I’m the number on my shirt—40455. Always 40455.
‘Date of birth: 5 June 2049,’ he says.
‘Is something wrong?’ I say.
He looks around at the other officers. ‘Occupation: chef.’
They share a laugh.
‘She’s probably after his recipes,’ says another.
This has the captain smiling. ‘They only eat bloody curry.’
‘I’m not actually a chef,’ I say. ‘I was a PhD student. Literature, in fact. And a housekeeper.’
They laugh.
‘They’re all something,’ an officer says.
‘Have I broken the rules?’ I say to the captain.
He ignores me.
Even now, as I’m being led away, it’s not my safety I’m worried about but the quota. Missing a daily quota means a deduction from my wage. I don’t want a deduction. Hassan is trying to screw tracks to body frames while watching me at the same time. I shake my head to tell him, Keep working! and yet he seems to take it as a sign that I’m in danger and he stops work entirely. He leans on the low partition wall and his mask sucks in and out as he breathes. Shells pile at his station like crashed cars. Now both of us will miss our quotas.
‘Where are we going?’ I say.
I grow angry. I twist my arm out of the officer’s grip. Not clever. The officer lifts a spray can off his belt.
‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Hands behind your back.’
‘I’m not resisting,’ I say.
But I am resisting. My father fought police in front of the People’s Majlis, the Maldivian parliament, carrying nothing but sticks and stones. What would he do here? I already know what he would do here.
I’m grabbed around the neck from behind. It’s the captain. He holds me while the other men zip-tie my hands in front. All along row 14C, men are staring over their masks.
Captain Rahmatullah shoves me forward.
We walk and I’m listing the things I might have done wrong. Wasted the glue at my station? Assembled a faulty unit? On Wednesday I’d been thirty seconds late to start work and that wouldn’t go unpunished. Yet, I’m being led from the building in handcuffs by the captain of security. Whatever I’ve done wrong, it must be big.
We exit into the hard sun of Tasman
ia and there’s the smell of gum leaves from the bush outside the fence. This is the Eaglehawk Migrant Training Centre. This smell. This gravel dust. There’s a sign on the outer perimeter fence showing a symbol of a man in pain. Dangerous Currents, it reads. Do Not Touch. You can hear it humming. Even over the noise from the manufactory, you can hear it humming.
In a way, I’m glad my father is dead. This place would have killed him.
‘Thirty-seven,’ the captain says.
He must be talking about the weather. It’s fiendishly hot.
‘Thirty fucking seven,’ one of the officers says.
‘Fuck me,’ says the other.
‘Jesus fucking Christmas.’
The Australians are men of great eloquence.
It’s prayer time in the recreation yard. I try to keep my eyes down as we pass a group of men kneeling on cardboard boxes. They ask God, Most Gracious and Merciful, for help finding the Straight Way. They look at me as they stand and throw their arms in the air and you can see that, even for the smallness of their own lives, as small as this place has made them, they believe me the smallest of us all. Am I small? I fear my father would say so.
Another sallyport. Another security point.
‘That’ll do,’ the captain says.
The other officers turn and walk away and I’m steered into the sallyport by the captain alone. The head of security. It seems they consider me a threat. Funny, because I’m the least threatening person in this place. The final door, a door of glass and steel, unseals and sucks back and a blast of air-conditioning washes by.
The administration block. I’ve been in here before, just once. The cameras in the dormitory had recorded me crying. Everything has been taken from us, you realise. Everything. Crying? It’s natural. Anyway, natural or not, I came to the attention of the facility’s health monitoring system. The cameras feed an omniscient machine that notifies guards when we show signs of poor mental or physical health. They bring us to a diagnostic room. We answer questions on a touch screen. Then, invariably, the machine gives us anti-depressants. I mean, what could such a device say to a man who has nothing? A man reduced to a binary state of sleep, work, sleep, work? Our conversation was short. It gave me anti-depressant tablets and I swapped the tablets with Abdullah for a bag of desiccated coconut, from which I now and then take a handful to eat. In this taste of home, I find comfort.
