Amnesia: A Novel

by Peter Carey

Of course he did not know how to fix anything but he was, instinctively, creating an event. He was seventeen. It was Field of Dreams, if you build it they will come. He had recruited Cosmo. Cosmo didn’t know that yet.

  I told him how I loved him.

  He said, We could get into a lot of trouble.

  I said I knew. I was totally high on danger, on justice, righteousness and rage. It was not my fault my father failed. It was not my fault that this was left to us to do.

  The following night I brought Frederic to Darlington Grove and we sat around the kitchen table. It was scorching hot and the sprinkler was sighing in the garden. Miss Aisen wore a tennis dress and her father shorts and a navy singlet. Miss Aisen sat on her hands and would not look at me, and I thought, we have made a big mistake here. She will not break the law. Plus Mervyn had been having trouble looking at Frederic. I hadn’t thought of that: Freddo was back on the eye shadow and nail polish. Mervyn directed everything to me.

  Later I discovered Miss Aisen was waiting for me to say I was pregnant. She was working out her position, although she never told me what that was. Was she Catholic? Maybe. All I could feel was the very heavy vibe and I was incapable of asking for what we really wanted. I babbled. I regurgitated everything they had taught me: MetWat’s brutal mistreatment of the creek, its totally misconceived attempts at flood control, its deceit over Agrikem’s effluent. I did not reveal that we finally had the proof.

  Miss Aisen asked me, Is this what you came to talk about? She put a hand on her father’s arm, and I thought, he is too creeped by Freddo. He can’t even look at him.

  It’s to do with that, Frederic said. In that area.

  To do with MetWat? Miss Aisen asked while Mervyn studied a salt shaker.

  Yes.

  Oh, she said, and totally beamed at Frederic.

  Mr. Aisen, Frederic said, Gaby tells me you took the dragline in hand.

  Sabotaging the MetWat dragline had been a serious crime. No-one had ever told me Mervyn had committed it. Now I must have seemed a gossip and a dangerous girl.

  She did, did she? said Mervyn. After which he went back to his salt shaker.

  I said I was very sorry if I had been wrong.

  We all sat in awful silence until Mervyn finally allowed his smile to show. You tricky old codger, I thought. So I told him about Frederic’s hack. Frederic offered to go online to show them how, but Miss Aisen did not want to break the law.

  Her father said she was a nervous little mouse. He winked at Frederic.

  So she let Frederic do it, in the kitchen. Then she was so excited and angry she donated a floppy so we could have a screenshot of our evidence.

  You’ll need a plumber, Mervyn said.

  I’ve got one already, Frederic said.

  Today we could have dealt with Agrikem differently. We could have hacked their system and instructed the plant to shake itself apart. But twenty years ago remote access to physical assets was a different matter—a business like Agrikem would not have had the level of instrumentation of the modern sort. Everything was operated in person. You opened a valve by hand. You set the speed of the centrifuge manually. Twenty years ago we needed four metres of 80mm PVC pipe, four metres of 80mm flexible agricultural drainpipe, a two-into-one 45-degree PVC junction, a joiner, a tub of Bostik PVC Weld, a plastic bucket, a roll of gaffer tape, a metre of 3/8 steel rod from Surdex Steel in Edward Street Brunswick, two 3/8 nuts and washers, a scrap of 8-ply, a hacksaw, a jig saw, tap and die set, an adjustable spanner, a drill, a 9mm drill bit, a jemmy, eight Undertoad suits and Cosmo natch.

  SO, FREDDO GAVE Cosmo the chance to build a PVC drain system with a plunger that would induce a suction action to expose Agrikem’s toxic dioxin effluent to the public eye. Cosmo became scarily excited. He began to make dumb jokes so often, he was a liability. I took him up to the Ferguson Plarre and bought him a neenish tart and said he must not even say our names. He could not even tell Doug what he was doing.

  What should he say to Doug?

  Say it’s steampunk, I said and Cosmo looked so winded that I bought him a malted milk and then, quite clearly, the great wilful dork went back to Doug the Organic Mechanic and spilled the beans.

  Doug was like one of those whiskery barkless dogs with a traumatic stare. Whatever dog that was, Gaby did not know, only that his most prosaic shop instruction was whispered. Draw a line all round and cut it off square. Doug had lived in Japan. He taught woodwork with Japanese handsaws. He was also a furtive sci-fi fan and manga otaku and Cosmo’s sole supporter amongst the staff.

  Now, suddenly, Doug began publicly distancing himself from Cosmo. He used his loud voice so everyone would hear he would no longer let Cosmo Palermo drag “all your crap” into the classroom. Go find somewhere else, not here. We’re not a plumbing business, mate.

  But it was Doug who found us a safe place where we could assemble the pipes: an abandoned building site just near the school on David Street. Under the awning was a rough workbench. Below the bench were a few empty beer bottles and a lot of fag ends sort of composting themselves.

  Doug was fulltime engaged with his own innocence. He said Cosmo better take more time with his English literature he would end up an unemployable moron.

  Go to my office. I’m sick of you, Palermo.

  Then they spent about an hour compiling the list of stuff that Cosmo would need to make his pump.

  We were not worth a plumber’s bootlace, but somehow we managed to assemble the basic structure of his pump with not much more than a hacksaw and a tub of Bostik PVC Weld. We had it done in one weekend and it stayed there unprotected for five more days until Mervyn brought his mate the Catholic Worker. The Catholic Worker had some very complimentary things to say about how Cosmo had attached the brass spigot to the PVC. Being an activist himself, he understood we must have a steel cage to protect us from the cops.

  The cops never did arrive but that cage, chained to that sewer manhole, is what most people remember of the action: a steel-mesh cube imprisoning two operators in Hazchem suits. One of these operators was Mervyn and the other was his Catholic Worker mate.

  It was later said I was the innocent tool of left-wing unions, but in fact the opposite was true: it was my will that drove our war machine. I was the one who “borrowed” the Hazchem suits. I was the one who would reveal her face to the cameras when I removed my hood. I wanted to be responsible. Look at this young girl. If she can do it, why can’t we?

  There were many people who I represented. I would have given credit if they wanted it, not just to Mervyn, but about fifty people we never even spoke to, not least the now famous band who supplied a van and driver to take the unassembled pieces to McBryde Street. This is how it would be all my life. I would be the one who everyone could love or hate. But you cannot be a solo artist and release asylum seekers from their corporate jails. I was, always, in every single action of my life, spoon-fed by others. It is hard for my mother to accept this, but it is my job to take the heat and do the time.

  It was frosty again on the day of the action. Even before I got off my bike, the two men inside the cage were waiting for the PVC weld to set. No-one in this part of Fawkner was awake. There was no traffic. Frederic and I dressed in our Hazchem suits in the middle of McBryde Street.

  The so-called steampunk pump was already rising from the earth. Now Mervyn withdrew the steel rod with its plywood circle and there was a thrilling sound of liquid passing up the PVC tube, a lovely slowly elevating slurp. Driven by the forces of cohesion and adhesion, the toxins travelled vertically, then turned horizontal, then emerged from the brass spigot, like bathwater heading down towards the sewer. Suddenly the air was filled with the vaporous horseshit poison. We let it run, but it was in our public power to turn it off, poor Daddy, now I am sorry for the hurt I had to cause.

  THERE ARE WRITERS who will thank their editors, bow and brownnose and then enjoy the blue pencils driven through their wrists. The author Felix Moore was never one of them. Trapped in the Koala Lod
ge, with editors next door, he has been turned into a mill puppy, a poor bitch locked up for breeding purposes, who must forever have her children removed. The hammered sentences, the deeply imprinted pages, are delivered to others with no guarantees of what parts will be excised, what calumnies inserted. This was not what he had expected when he accepted that fat brown envelope from Woody Townes.

  There is no direct exit from this room, one door to a shared bathroom and the other to what one might call “the editorial suite.” It is from this grimy bathroom that he collects his gruel and frozen peas. Here also, on the closed toilet seat, he leaves his daily pages to be removed and edited without his approval or involvement. It has been said that this is for his own safety. He is a national treasure, too important to be a witness to a felony, to face the dangers of the front. Yet in spite of this cosseting it seems likely to him, now, as he writes, that he will soon be shot and killed. Stet. His wife will read his last words, he loves her [sic]. Leave tenses as is or are. He treasures her, regrets more than he can say. Nothing is lost to memory, the nest of sheets, smells, baby throw-up on his shoulder, in the middle of an interview, in the midst of history. He has not forgotten, even near the end of his wasted days, the nights spent worrying about the dyslexic daughter, her too-pretty sister who was just too confident to survive another day.

  As he writes he is bilious, sick with memory and uncertainty, fear that the end will come before the end is told, that there will be no end. He had wanted Gaby Baillieux to do what he had failed to do on Drivetime Radio. He wanted more than that. How pathetic his ambition now seems, how small his own imagination. He had been a journalist with one story, one cause, one effect. He had been born in the previous geologic age while she was born into the Anthropocene age and easily saw that the enemy was not one nation state but a cloud of companies, corporations, contractors, statutory bodies whose survival meant the degradation of water, air, soil, life itself.

  She, Gaby Baillieux, was once a schoolgirl. She stood on the crispy cold grass, in the middle of the Agrikem paddock just after dawn, in the company of blowflies, sad horses, amidst the perfume of dioxin. She wore a yellow Hazchem suit. The poison flowed from fresh white plumbing, as dull as ditchwater.

  Disguised humans clustered around the sewer inspection hole, blue and yellow figures like cartoon gnomes in Hazchem suits. All Melbourne’s TV channels were there, their OB vans parked in McBryde Street, their satellite dishes turned towards the rising sun. Inside the barbed-wire perimeter, shivering crews crowded around the cage.

  Inside the yellow suit, sweaty, blinkered, the girl was afraid of someone sneaking up beside. There were sixteen blue and three yellow-suited figures. She no longer knew which one was Frederic.

  A large car, a black Ford LTD, entered from the direction of the factory, driving very fast, steering directly at the cage of gnomes. The starving horses scattered. The girl’s throat was dry and she wondered would she even be able to talk when her moment came. She turned to face the Ford as its front right wheel dropped in a ditch and the whole pitched sideways. The roaring engine seemed quite distant. She clearly saw the driver crawl up an incline to the passenger-side door. He was very wide-shouldered and although not tall, possessed by a powerful fat-necked big-chinned fury. As he came he shouted something. She saw he had fat thighs and a distinctive pigeon-toed walk. He was carrying a rod, or tyre lever.

  She thought, he does not know I’m just a kid. He will bash my head.

  He was using the word trespass. She had time to think, good handle. I am Trespass. I own you.

  The crowd of men and women in blue Hazchem suits shuffled and crinkled and now enfolded the Agrikem executive in what the Chinese call a cabbage defence, that is they wrapped loosely around him like the leaves of a cabbage, at once passive and impenetrable, so he was locked in the place where his effluent streamed back into the sewer.

  The ABC picture had a cool aesthetic quality. The viewers saw the blue plastic petals open to reveal the Agrikem man. At Patterson Street Coburg, the local member sat on the floor before the television, waiting to hear the angle on the nurse’s strike.

  The yellow figure removed her hood. The cameras became agitated. The girl was too shockingly young. She had blonde curls and thoughtful soft grey eyes. The manufacturer was broad-faced, thick-necked, his face unexpectedly sensual. His lips were bows, his cheeks buffed like apples. When he saw the girl he laughed in disbelief.

  In Patterson Street, Sando watched his daughter read aloud the chemical analysis her boyfriend had stolen from MetWat. As she recited the contents, he thought, she has made a huge fool of herself. At the same time the ABC rolled the analysis like film credits. He thought, this has taken hours to set up. In all that time not one of the stations had sought a comment from the government.

  And where did you get this information? the Agrikem executive asked. He was a hard-nosed bastard, Sando knew.

  Gaby said, The state government has a zero tolerance for dioxin. Is that right?

  This is all a nonsense. We have MetWat analysis. Talk to them.

  This is the MetWat analysis.

  Where did you get these?

  The girl had a small pimple on her tumescent upper lip. It only emphasised her beauty.

  She said, Will you promise to stop this poisonous effluent?

  I’m calling the police.

  So you won’t turn it off?

  Of course not.

  Very well, she said, then we will.

  How could you do that you idiot? he asked. Clearly he had not really taken in the nature of the plumbing. Now he watched as Mervyn turned the brass valve and the flow was stopped completely.

  The man later identified as Ken MacFarlane walked to his beached car, paused, and proceeded to his manufacturing facility. Simultaneously the Premier of the state was being called by all of Melbourne’s media. Gaby Baillieux appeared on the television, again and again, on the huge screen in City Square, on Swanston Street. The Premier of the state cancelled all appointments and spent the morning in conference with MetWat and his environment minister.

  This was how Gaby and Frederic and Cosmo and other unnamed individuals closed down the Agrikem plant. Her later exploits would be less visible and more far-reaching, but this was the first, the intoxicating spectacle that would lead her, eventually, to the Koala Lodge.

  NONE OF THE FOLLOWING was available when the first edition was rushed so urgently to publication.

  Woody Townes had burst into the Koala Lodge, dragging Celine Baillieux after him. The great bull danced and pranced, enraged that the journalist, in a state of fright, continued typing, transcribing lines of dialogue written as spoken. This was not intended as provocation.

  Felix Moore was not noble. He feared for his own safety first of all. The connecting door had crashed open. He was finally unprotected, exposed, as vulnerable as a rat fleeing across a ballroom floor.

  Woody Townes wore that premeditated jacket with all its useful zips and pockets. He snatched loose pages from the writer’s desk and shoved them into a plastic shopping bag which already held the great bulk of this manuscript. Meanwhile Celine was signalling desperately. She nodded and grimaced. What did these signals mean? Was Felix Moore meant to give Woody what he wanted? Yes? No? He handed him twelve numbered pages in a manila folder. Then he rolled a fresh sheet of paper into his machine. He wrote because he could do nothing else. He wrote to tell his wife what was transpiring. Woody Townes read over his shoulder as if he owned him every word.

  Woody said, Tell her you are sorry to have been a coward and a waste of space.

  Felix Moore reported this, and made gnomic notations on all the abuse that followed. This was not his usual style.

  Gaby Baillieux then entered the room and he was moved, again, by the small bare feet the chipped nail polish. He experienced a deep and complex familiarity with a woman he had met only once before. At her side was a wiry whippy man, perhaps thirty-five years of age with deep-set eyes and sunken cheeks. The barcode
tattoo on his wrist identified him as Frederic Matovic, but could this man have ever been the girl-boy with the eye shadow? If so he had been distilled, reduced, burnished and he confronted Woody Townes like a hard man, with his right hand held down along the seams of his jeans. Felix Moore had never seen an actual “shiv,” but the whole of Frederic’s body suggested he held one in close against his thigh.

  OK, famous Frederic said to Woody Townes. What you got?

  The property developer’s eyes were small, pouchy, bloodshot, dangerous. They settled on Frederic and stayed on him throughout the following silence. When he reached into his jacket he produced two Australian passports and tossed these on the desk.

  Using an aluminium jeweller’s loupe Frederic inspected one and then the other. He took his time.

  Judith, he said, delivering the first passport to Gabrielle Baillieux.

  If this was a joke, no-one smiled. Woody offered a fat brown envelope. Gabrielle Baillieux counted the contents and Frederic’s eyes did not leave Woody Townes.

  OK, said Gaby.

  Airline tickets, said Frederic.

  Celine was already searching in her handbag in the manner of a woman who fears she has lost her keys. Shit, she said, I put them in the glove box in the car.

  Woody groaned.

  I thought they would be safer, the actress said.

  OK, said Frederic, this is what we are going to do. Gaby and Celine will stay here. You will give me your keys, mate. I will go and get the tickets.

  You’re joking I hope.

  All right, you tell me how to do it.

  Woody narrowed his eyes and Frederic held out his left hand, leaving the right down by his side.

  Flashlight too, he said.

  I haven’t got a flashlight.

  Bullshit.

  Woody paused and when his hand emerged from inside his jacket the writer was relieved to see only a flashlight.

  Frederic departed with key and flashlight. The writer typed. Woody Townes instructed him to cease. He was unable to comply and was abused. Woody Townes then turned on Gabrielle Baillieux to whom he delivered a sarcastic lecture on the future of the earth: the planet had always been going to die; there was nothing she or anyone could do about it. In 5 billion years the sun would go cold and the story would be over. So save the fucking whales. Was she such a spoiled superior up-herself cunt to think this would not apply to her?