by Peter Kocan
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I know you never liked her.”
“It was never a matter of liking or not liking. She helped you through. She was necessary, but only up to a point.”
“I see that now.”
“That’s it then.”
“I’ve got money. I’ll go and buy it first thing.”
“It’ll be there.”
The Diestl mood began to break up and fade, as it always did, but the youth limped on down empty streets and the hours of the night went by.
IT WAS nine days later. He had a blue airline bag with a shoulder strap. The bag was cheap and had a nasty synthetic feel, but that didn’t matter because he only needed a few hours use from it. He’d bought it at Woolworths and taken it back to the room he’d rented in an inner-city residential. He’d left it on the bed while he sawed the barrel and stock off the rifle. Then he’d put the cut-down rifle and the box of bullets into the bag and had zipped it up. He had walked back and forth across the room with the bag first in one hand and then in the other, to accustom himself to the weight and feel of it. Then he had tried it with the strap over one shoulder and then the other. It was okay.
He carried the bag along a city street. It was three o’clock in the afternoon and at around eight o’clock that night he had to be at a certain location where all would be revealed. That phrase kept running through his mind: All will be revealed. Oh yes, he was thinking, I have the bag of tricks right here. Actually it’s just the one trick, but it’s a bobby-dazzler. You’ll read all about it tomorrow. He kept his eyes level and didn’t mind exchanging glances with the oncoming people. He felt as confident and cheerful as he ever had in his life.
He could keep on walking, but it was a cold and windy day and he didn’t want to wear himself out. He had to be fresh for later. He came to a cinema and stopped to look at the posters and photos outside. The film was called Summer Island and the poster said it was a breathless tale of young love. He felt for the money in his pocket. He had just enough left for a ticket into the movie, with a bit over for a sandwich later on. He had to be sure to eat something later. It wouldn’t do to bungle things because he was shaking with hunger. He went into the foyer and to the ticket box and asked for a seat in the stalls. The woman watched him count the coins out. This would normally have withered him with embarrassment, and he would have wanted to slink away, but now he felt above all that.
The session was just about to begin. He went past the usherette at the door and down the aisle. He took a seat in the middle of the stalls and put the bag on the seat beside him. There were perhaps a dozen people in the theatre. He slumped in his seat and rested his neck against the back of it and stared at the red velvet curtains. There was muted organ music coming through the speakers. A uniformed boy came down the aisle carrying a tray of sweets and ice-creams, but no-one bought anything.
The lights dimmed and a short item about hydro-electric power came on. Then there were previews of a couple of upcoming features. Then it was interval. The boy came with the tray again. Two or three men went down the aisle to a door with “Gentlemen” lit above it. The youth wished the main film would start. He was starting to feel a bit aimless, sitting there, as though the momentum was faltering. That mustn’t happen. It might be hard to get it going again later. Then the lights went down.
Summer Island started with a scene of the sea crashing on rocks behind the opening titles, the theme music swelling and receding in time with the waves. The story of the young lovers was very touching and as it unfolded his emotions responded. He sat with his eyes wet and a lump in his throat. It came to a scene in a summery glade where the boy and girl lie naked in each other’s arms. There are beams of sunlight slanting down through the trees and the camera is right on their faces as they kiss and you can hear their tender sighs and murmurs.
How sweet life was, the youth thought. Not real life, but life in a movie or a book or a song, or in the pages of history. Life in those was truer because it brought out your feelings in the purest way. He’d had so many pure moments like that. He’d had moments so sweet it gave him a pang of despair to realise there’d be no more of them after tonight.
But the scene of the lovers in the glade had helped him. It had reminded him about The Great Reciprocation and the way it works, the endless interaction of the light and the dark. Happiness is precious only because there is tragedy in the world, and tragedy is profound only because there is happiness. The kiss of lovers is sweet because other people are bereft and lonely. The plight of the loveless is poignant because others are kissing. Pain and joy, death and life, gain and loss, and all of it bound in the great circle of reciprocation.
Because a certain dark thing happens tonight at eight o’clock, the light will be truer. And since the side of dark and pain and loss is the harder station in the Battle of Honour, and the harder to keep faith with, it is assigned only to the truest hearts.
On a sudden impulse he stood up and went along the row of seats and down the aisle to the Gents. It was empty. He went to the urinal and opened his fly and stood there. He could hear the soundtrack of the movie. He stayed at the urinal for what seemed like a long time, then he closed his fly and went to the washbasin and spent a long time washing his hands. He heard the movie ending and the theme music welling up to its finale, then silence. He heard the outer door of the Gents open and he darted into a cubicle and sat on the edge of the toilet until he heard whoever it was finish and go out. He leant forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands under his chin and stared at a bit of graffiti on the cubicle door. Then he decided he’d given it enough time. He got up and went out of the Gents. The lights were on and the theatre was empty.
The blue bag was still there on the seat. Nobody had taken it.
“So be it,” he said to himself. “So be it.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Kocan was born in Newcastle, New South Wales, in 1947 and grew up in Melbourne. He left school at fourteen to work on country New South Wales properties and in factory jobs. He served a decade in custody for a shooting offence and it was then that he began to write. He has published three previous novels and five collections of verse.
