The Infernal Optimist

by Linda Jaivin

  ‘Mate, you should write a poem about it.’

  ‘I started to.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t been able to write lately. Writing poetry is like stretching your wings and—what is the word?—soaring. You can’t do that in a cage. I don’t read as much as I used to, either. I keep telling myself I’ll write and read again when I’m free…I don’t like to let the other asylum seekers see it, Zeki, but I’m tired. I’m so tired.’

  ‘You wanna go to sleep?’ I asked. ‘I’ll leave if you do.’

  ‘No, don’t. It’s not that kind of tired.’

  ‘How’s your case going?’ I asked.

  ‘Do you really want to hear?’

  I told him I was all ears, what is true cuz they’re so big I used to get called Dumbo when I was young. It is also true cuz I be a good listener. She Who says this is one a me best treats.

  Oh maaan. I was thinking how I was gonna give her one a me best treats soon enough. I was gonna give it to her all night long. I was thinking about this and in my imagining Marlena turned into April and then they was both in there and I was in the middle like köfte in yoghurt. Cuz a this I missed some a Azad’s explanation, what had too many legal details in and was flying over me head anyways, making me feel like one a them suburbs in the flight path what hears the roar a the planes but can’t see what the people are doing inside them.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Azad said them three words like they was real heavy, like they was barbells what he was dropping on the floor, thump, thump, thump.

  I musta missed something.

  ‘What was the most time you ever spent in prison, Zeki?’

  ‘Thirteen months.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Break-and-enter, and violating the conditions a me parole.’

  ‘Think about this. I committed no crime. But I’ve been in twenty-seven months so far. I could be in another twenty-seven. Sometimes I think I will never get my freedom, and I swear, Zeki, the second I know that, really know it to be true…’ He made like he was cutting his wrists. ‘I did it before, in Port Hedland, after my RRT. If I do it again, I won’t fail.’

  I didn’t know what to say when the asylums started talking like that. It made me real uncomfortable. I reckoned a change a subject was in order.

  Like I just thought a something, I said, ‘Seen that new English chick, mate? Overstayed her visa by five years, apparently, working illegal and everything before they caught her.’

  ‘You don’t have to worry about her. She’ll get out. She has the right skin colour for this country.’

  ‘That’s not me point, mate.’ I was trying to cheer him up. ‘They say she’s a model. Not just any old model. Long-jer-ay!’ I made bowls with me hands and held them in front a me chest. Last backpacker they picked up, nympho Canadian babe, did half the single male population a Villawood before they deported her a few days later. If she’d a been Inside just one more day I’m sure I’d a had a chance too. Azad didn’t say nuffin, like he didn’t care one way or another. I tried again. ‘She’s one hot mama.’ Still no reaction. I made two fists, pumped me elbows backwards and me hips forward. Then I repeated the gesture for emphasis.

  He shook his head. ‘Not interested, Zeki.’

  ‘Mate, if you’re not interested in this one, I’m gonna have to take your pulse. You might be dead.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ he goes. ‘I checked already. I’ve been dead a long time now.’

  Me phone vibrated in me pocket. It was She Who. ‘Cuddlywuddly-poo?’ she goes. ‘Big Bear?’ I told Azad I had a call, told Marlena to hang on, stuck the phone back in me pocket, and went back to me room to take the call.

  Twenty

  When I said I was sorry I couldn’t take the call right away, Marlena said she didn’t mind. She loved that thanks to the mobile we could talk anytime. She even liked the sounds what got into the phone through me trackies just then, swishswooshswishswoosh from the nylon and fookfookfookfook being the sound a me runners. She said she could hear what was going down around me too but not totally clear, like when you come outta the water with some a the ocean in your ears. I loved it when She Who was in that sort a mood. When she just be loving me and not criticising everything I do. It got me going. So I told her all about the treat I was gonna give her, though I left out the bit about April being in it too. I told her how I was gonna take the little man in her boat for a long row in the river. That little man, he was gonna go through whirlpools and rapids and them long, slow, wet bits what rivers have. She said I was too naughty, but I knew she liked it cuz she was breathing funny and calling me encouragable. She wasn’t wrong there.

  After we got off the phone, I headed straight out to find that backpacker chick. She was already talking to Chaim, the Israeli. There’s only the quick and the dead round here. Survival Rule Three: Be quick.

  I wished I could get on the Internet. We had a ‘computer room’ up near the soccer field. In it were six computers older than me dede’s bones and not much use except for playing games on. There was no Internet access. When I was Outside and She Who Watches Over Me Every Waking Moment finally made some Zs, I’d get into them chat rooms. You meet some hot chicks that way. I chose the name AussieStud, except me spelling’s not that hot and so the first time I logged on I was AssieStud. That turned out okay, cuz I got loads a responses from ladies with a preference for back-door action. But me typing was dead slow. By the time I finished replying, the chicks had pissed off outta the room. On me last stint in the nick I took a typing course, but fat lotta good that did me there.

  It’s funny. The asylums what was transferred to Villawood from immigration detention centres in Woomera and Port Hedland all called Villawood ‘half the visa’ when they first arrived cuz it was that much better than those places. I wouldn’t know. I’d never been locked up anywhere but prison before. Personally, I prefer prison. You know why you’re there and when you’re getting out, what is the most important thing. Plus, there’s courses and work and stuff to fill up the day. On me last stint in the nick I almost got to be a fully qualified air-conditioner repairman by the time they let me out. Time before that I learned auto mechanics.

  By comparison, the courses they got in Villawood were bullshit. Like yoga, what was a lady what told us to breathe with our stomachs instead of our noses, what was dumb cuz you can’t. Then she showed us how to do the doggy style what wasn’t the doggy style what I like. The only good part was when we got to lie down at the end with a blanket over us, but then she told me off for going to sleep. Apparently me snoring made it hard for the others to mediterrate.

  I was feeling antsy. So I took a walk, what didn’t mean much in that small place. Same old faces, same old buildings and me runners wearing a rut in the same old rut they was wearing in the day before. Some new people came, like Chaim what got here two weeks ago, and some went, like the Moroccan bloke, Ali, and some people came and never went anywhere again but crazy, like Bilal. But even with them comings and them goings, in the end it was same old, same old.

  I wandered past the playground and the telephones and laundry, and turned left up the path past the women’s centre and the building what had families in, and the Rec Room what had billiards and TV what the Chinese was always watching them movies on, and then on to the bullshit computer centre and soccer field. It was late and some people was out having conversationals. But there was nuffin happening. Night-time, what I used to love and what be when all the fun be happening on the Outside, is the worst time on the Inside, I swear. It be time what needs filling. But everything was quiet under them yellow lights. I headed back towards Shoalhaven down the other side a the soccer field, past another dorm where someone was playing African music, and then by Medical and the kitchen. I came up to the place what we called David Jones after the department store, what even the asylums knew from TV, but in factuality was a storeroom full a secondhand clothes what was donated.

  Angel was sitting outside David Jo
nes with Hamid. They was facing each other. She’d kicked off her thongs and rested her bare feet on top a his, what was bare too and balancing on the topper part a his sandals. She was wearing a strappy top and a denim mini. She’d pinned her hair up but some strands had fallen free around her neck, what looked pretty. She was holding one a them styrofoam cups from the mess. They was talking quietly. I noticed Angel had a flower in her hair, what was unusual cuz there weren’t no flowers growing Inside. I wouldn’t a been surprised if you told me it just grew outta her, I swear. I didn’t wanna disturb them, so I stopped to consider me options.

  There was a crunch a boots. Clarence came round the corner from the other direction. When he saw Angel and Hamid, his fugly mug turned even fuglier, what I wouldn’t think possible. ‘Oi—who gave youse two permission to be out by yourselves?’

  ‘We don’t need permission,’ Hamid said, his jaw going all tense.

  ‘Oooh,’ Clarence goes, like he be mocking Hamid. Then he turned his attention to Angel and waggled a thick finger in her direction. ‘Hey, Angel, don’t I know you from way back?’ except he said the last words funny, like ‘svay pak’. She didn’t say nuffin but her hands started tearing the cup into pieces like she was mad at it. Hamid stood up like he was gonna fight Clarence but Clarence moved away before Hamid could get his sandals back on.

  I didn’t know all the details. But by then I knew Angel was sold by her own mum when she was nine. They was very poor. Her dad had pissed off somewhere. Her mum was sick and needed money for medicine. So her mum handed Angel over to a man what seemed nice and what said she’d be working in his factory in the city. He gave her a doll to play with. But he didn’t take her to no factory. He took her to a place what is like a red-light district in the bush and what specialises in young girls and what was called Svay Pak. It made me sick just thinking about it. I had a nine-year-old niece, me brother Attila’s daughter, and I’d a fucken killed anyone what touched her, I swear. Or what tried to touch me little mate Abeer, the Palestinian girl what was also a detainee and was eight. There is some things what is just wrong, what even crims know.

  When she first went to Svay Pak, Angel was always screaming and crying and scratching at people’s eyeballs. They gave her smack to calm her down. She had a full-on habit by the time she was thirteen. The bosses sold her the smack and took the money outta her earnings, what was already fuck-all, pardon me French. When she got to be sixteen, them johns over there was thinking she be too old. The bosses had a plan. They knew that in Australia, sixteen was still young for being on the game. So one a the men, he got a fake passport what said she be his own daughter. She went along with it cuz she heard this was a big country and thought she might be able to escape. They put her in a house with locked doors and barred windows and stooges to guard it. Angel tried to escape but got caught and they beat her and did shit to her what I don’t wanna think about neither.

  A customer what seen her bruises tipped off the cops. They raided the place and nabbed the men. Some a the girls escaped. Angel hid behind the wardrobe in her room. When the coppers found her, they threw her in Villawood. We met her right after that.

  She was scared to go back to her country cuz she still owed the men a lotta money and their mates there would be waiting for her. Sue was helping her make a claim for protection. But apparently the men told the police she had wanted to come to Australia—what was true in a way, but what made her case complicated. Her lying about her age made it complicated too, cuz the story got some holes in it as a result. The good thing was that she had no papers and DIMIA couldn’t work out what country she really came from. Even though she said she be from Cambodia, the Cambodian embassy didn’t known nuffin about her. Some a the Vietnamese said she might be from Vietnam, cuz apparently she spoke Vietnamese real good, and then DIMIA thought she might be from Thailand, though the Thais said she spoke Thai with an accent. She could speak a little Chinese, and French too, and she knew English even before she came to Australia. Svay Pak was an international kind a place.

  She still had the doll, what was missing one arm. When she played with it she seemed like a little girl. It made me eyes burn.

  Twenty-One

  The day after Boxing Day was a Thursday. There wasn’t many visitors cuz people was going back to work or off on their hols. Anna was on the gate again. She let me through to Visits even though I didn’t have no visitors. She was good like that.

  Farshid and Reza were squatting down by the edge a the yard and staring into the no-man’s-land between the inner and outer fences. I went to see what they was looking at. Abeer ran over as well. Turns out a currawong had walked into the middle a the coil a razor wire. He was looking all round and up into the sky like he was deciding whether to fly. We could all see that if he opened his wings they’d be shredded like lettuce in a felafel shop, except black and white instead a green. Abeer’s eyes went big.

  ‘Stupid fucken bird,’ goes Farshid what was sixteen and pissed off with life. ‘It can fly anyvere it vants and it comes here and gets stuck in the razor vire. It deserves vat it gets.’ Farshid and Reza are Iranians what say ‘vee’ where words got double-yous but what otherwise speak English like they was born here. Reza shot his brother a look. Reza was thirteen. He wasn’t as tough as Farshid, though they both been in Detention with their mum almost three years already. I got an idea. I reached into me pockets for some toasted sunflower seeds what I been snacking on and chucked them through the fence onto the ground outside the coil. The currawong tipped his head to one side, picked up his feet and, keeping his wings tight to his chest, stepped outta the coil and pecked up the seeds.

  Reza grinned and I could tell Farshid was happy too, even though he was pretending to be cool about it.

  Abeer reached into her pocket and pulled out her gecko, Visa.

  ‘I bet that currawong would love Visa.’ I made a grab for it what wasn’t really a grab, what was just for teasing.

  Abeer punched me with her free hand. ‘He’s my pet!’

  I pretended to be knocked sideways by the punch.

  She stuck out her tongue. I stuck out mine. Then I strolled off like Lord Muck, King a the Birds. There was probably a lesson in there somewhere, but I never been too good at lessons.

  The next afternoon there was gonna be a soccer game between Stages Two and Three. Everyone was talking about it at lunch. ‘You playing?’ Angel asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, patting me stomach, what was getting round, ‘I’s the ball.’

  She giggled again. ‘I like you, Zeki,’ she said. ‘You always make me laugh.’

  Hamid pretended to look hurt then. ‘You like Zeki? I thought you liked me.’

  Thomas rolled his eyes. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, slapping his thigh. ‘It’s going to start soon.’

  ‘Yela, yela,’ Azad said. ‘Let’s go.’ He and Hamid ran ahead, cuz they was sposed to be playing.

  During the game, Farshid punched that Iraqi boy what danced with the Albanian chick. They was on the same team, too. The Iraqi got a black eye what swole right up. The blues threatened to report the incident to the police, but both boys told them to fuck off, in exactly them words and at the same time. The whole thing was stupid cuz the Albanian chick and her family got their visas and left the morning after Boxing Day anyway. They was already in Brisbane, where they got cousins. They wasn’t never coming back, not for Farshid, not for the Iraqi.

  Them bushfires burned for days. You could smell the ash and eucalypt oil. You could also smell other things what was in the Villawood air, like fear and stressation. But you know what I said about the bad moods what people catched like colds on the Inside? Sometimes it worked the other way round. On the thirtieth a December, in spite a the fact that nuffin was happening on anyone’s cases and it was thirty degrees in the shade what there wasn’t much of, and the Mess had just put on one a them most ineligible lunches, and lotsa the regular visitors was away on hols, and we was people what was feeling like animals in a cage—in spite of all the
m things we was all in a pretty good mood. I remember that afternoon in particulate cuz it was the last fully happy memory I got of us all together.

  We was sitting around shooting the shit—me, Azad, Thomas, Hamid, Angel and Farshid. ‘Where’s your brother?’ I asked Farshid.

  ‘Dunno. He’s gone all veird lately,’ Farshid said. Just then Reza wandered up with a tiny bleeding cut above his mouth.

  ‘Ohhh. What happen to you?’ Angel asked.

  Reza touched his face and blushed.

  ‘You vere shaving!’ Farshid figured it out first. Though he was only sixteen, Farshid already had sidies and a semirespectable goatee.

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Azad, giving him the thumbs up.

  ‘And I thought it was just dirt,’ Thomas teased. ‘I was wondering when you were going to wash your face, man.’

  ‘You should talk,’ said Hamid, what was being naughty.

  ‘Black is beautiful. You’re just jealous because someone put milk in your coffee.’ They did the high-five. ‘But let’s get back to Reza. Where else you getting hair, man?’ Everyone cracked up at this, though Angel opened her eyes wide and threw her hand over her mouth like she be shocked, what we knew she wasn’t really.

  ‘Shut up,’ Reza said. ‘Stop looking at me, everyvun!’ We all looked even harder. ‘Cut it out! Cut it out! Talk about something else!’

  ‘Yes, we no tease Reza any more.’ Angel, what was sitting next to him, leaned over and gave him a hug what made him blush all over again. ‘We talk about something else.’

  ‘But it’s fun teasing Reza,’ Thomas said, what wasn’t gonna quit.

  Reza gave Thomas the finger. Thomas grabbed his hand. ‘Okay, we’ll settle this by arm wrestling. If I win, we get to tease you all day.’