by Steve Toltz
“Hundreds…millions…Christians salivating…heaven a fancy hotel where…won’t be bumping into Muslims and Jews at the ice machine…Muslims and the Jews…no better…no budging…modern man…good teeth…short attention span…supposed to be…turmoil of alienation…no religious worldview…neurosis…insanity…not true…always religion among creatures…who…die.”
“Save your energy,” Ned said. He could have said “Shut up” and I wouldn’t have held it against him.
Dad’s head fell back into my lap. He couldn’t have had more than a couple of minutes left and he still couldn’t believe it.
“This is really incredible,” he said, and took a deep breath. I could tell by his face that the painkillers were kicking in.
“I know.”
“But really! Death! My death!”
He slipped into sleep for a few minutes, then his eyes sprang open with a blank expression behind them, as bland as a bureaucrat’s. I think he was trying to convince himself that the day he died was not the worst day of his life but just an average so-so day. He couldn’t keep it up, though, and groaned once more through clenched teeth.
“Jasper.”
“I’m here.”
“Chekhov believed that man will become better when you show him what he is like. I don’t think that’s turned out to be true. It’s just made him sadder and lonelier.”
“Look, Dad—don’t feel pressured to be profound with your dying words. Just take it easy.”
“I’ve said a lot of drivel in my life, haven’t I?”
“It wasn’t all drivel.”
Dad took a few wheezing breaths while his eyes rolled around in his head as if they were searching for something in the corner of his skull.
“Jasper,” he croaked, “I have to admit something.”
“What?”
“I heard you,” he said.
“You heard what?”
“In the jungle. When they came. I heard your voice warning me.”
“You heard me?” I shouted. I couldn’t believe it. “You heard that? Why didn’t you do anything? You could have saved Caroline’s life!”
“I didn’t believe it was real.”
We didn’t say anything for a long while. We both gazed silently into the moving waters of the sea.
Then the pain started up again. He howled in agony. I felt afraid. Then fear grew into panic. I thought: Don’t die. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave us. You’re breaking up a partnership. Can’t you see it? Please, Dad. I’m absolutely dependent on you, even as your opposite, especially as your opposite—because if you’re dead, what does that make me? Is the opposite of nothing everything? Or is it nothing?
And I don’t want to be mad at a ghost, either. That’ll never end.
“Dad, I forgive you.”
“What for?”
“For everything.”
“What everything? What did I ever do to you?”
Who is this irritating man? “It doesn’t matter.”
“OK.”
“Dad, I love you.”
“I love you too.”
There. We said it. Good.
Or not so good—strangely unsatisfying. We’d just said “I love you.” Father and son, at the deathbed of the former, saying we love each other. Why didn’t that feel good? This is why: because I knew something that nobody knew or would ever know—what a strange and wonderful man he was. And that’s what I really wanted to say.
“Dad.”
“I should have killed myself,” he said between clenched teeth; then he repeated it, as if it were his private mantra. He would never forgive himself for not committing suicide. In my mind, that was appropriate. I think all people on their deathbeds should not forgive themselves for not committing suicide, even one day earlier. To let yourself be murdered by Nature’s hand is the only real apathy there is.
His actual death was quick—sudden, even. His body trembled a little, then spasmed in fear, he gasped, his teeth snapped shut as if trying to bite death, the lights of his eyes flickered and went out.
That was it.
Dad was dead.
Dad was dead!
Unbelievable!
And I never said I liked him. Why hadn’t I said it? I love you—blah. How hard is it to say “I love you”? It’s a fucking song lyric. Dad knew I loved him. He never knew I liked him. Even respected him.
Saliva was left unswallowed on his lips. His eyes, devoid of soul or consciousness, still managed to look dissatisfied. His face, deformed by death, damned the rest of humanity with a twist of his mouth. It was impossible to believe that the long, inglorious tumult in his head was over.
A couple of the Runaways came forward to help me throw him off the side.
“Don’t touch him!” I screamed.
I was determined to perform the burial at sea by myself, without assistance. It was a worthless idea, but I was stubborn about it. I knelt down beside his body, cupped my arms underneath him. He went all sinewy in my hands. His long, loose limbs dangled over my shoulders. The waves swelled up, as if licking their lips. All the passive, sunken faces of the Runaways looked respectfully on. The wordless ceremony roused them from their own languid dying.
I put my shoulder into it, flung his body over the edge and buried him in the roar of waves. He floated momentarily on the surface, bobbing up and down a little like a carrot thrown whole into a boiling stew. Then he went under, as if taken by invisible hands, and went off hurrying to greet himself in strange corners of the sea.
That was it.
Goodbye, Dad. I hope you knew how I felt.
Ned put his hand on my shoulder. “He’s with God now.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“Your father never understood what it’s like to be part of something bigger than himself.”
That shit me. People always say, “It’s good to be a part of a something bigger than yourself,” but you already are. You’re part of a huge thing. The whole of humanity. That’s enormous. But you couldn’t see it, so you pick, what? An organization? A culture? A religion? That’s not bigger than you. It’s much, much smaller!
The moon and the sun had just begun to share the sky when the boat approached the shoreline. I made eye contact with Ned and waved my arms around majestically, motioning to the bushland that surrounded the cove. Ned stared blankly at me, not understanding that I was suddenly overcome with the irrational feeling that I was his host and, almost bursting with pride, wanted to show him around.
The captain stepped out of the darkness and urged everyone to return below deck. Before I disappeared, I paused at the top of the steps. There were silhouettes on the shoreline. They stood frozen in clusters along the beach, dark figures wedged like poles in the wet sand. Ned joined me at the railing and clutched my arm.
“They might be fishermen,” I said.
We watched silently. The human statues grew in size. There were too many of them to be fishermen. They had spotlights too, and were shining them right in our faces. The boat had made it to land, but we were sunk.
V
The federal police and coast guard were all over the beach. They took no time in rounding us up. The coast guards strutted and shouted to one another like trout fishermen who had unexpectedly landed a sperm whale. The spectacle of them sickened me, and I knew my fellow travelers were in for a nightmare of bureaucracy they might never awaken from. To be poor and foreign and illegal and at the mercy of the generosity of an affluent Western people is to be on very shaky ground.
Now that Dad was absolutely gone, no longer there to make my life a living hell, I automatically took on that role myself. Just as I had always feared and Eddie had predicted, with Dad dead, it was up to me now to be indecent with my future. That’s why it seemed perfectly natural on that beach at dawn not to do what I didn’t do.
I had plenty of opportunities to speak up, to explain that I was an Australian and had every right to walk free. I should have separated myself from the Runa
ways. I mean, there’s no law prohibiting an Australian from returning to Australia on a leaky boat. Theoretically, I should be able to return from Asia propelled by a giant slingshot if it works, but for some reason I chose to say nothing. I simply kept my mouth shut and allowed myself to be rounded up with the others.
But how was it that they mistook me for a Runaway? My father’s genetic hand-me-down black hair and olive skin worked marvelously with the inability of my own countrymen to shake the idea that we are overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon. Everyone assumed I was from Afghanistan, Lebanon, or Iraq, and no one thought to question whether I was. So away we went.
And that’s how I came to the strange prison surrounded by a seemingly endless stretch of desert on all sides. They call it a detention center, but try telling a prisoner he’s only a detainee and see if he feels consoled by the distinction.
They had difficulty classifying me, as I refused to speak to them. They were dying to deport me from day one, but they didn’t know where to. Various interpreters hounded me in many different languages. Who was I, and why wouldn’t I tell them? They guessed country after country, save one—no one ever guessed that my point of origin and point of destination were the same.
For weeks, when I wasn’t in English classes pretending to struggle through the alphabet, I wrote my story, on pages stolen from class. At first I wrote crouched on the floor behind the cell door, but I soon realized that between the hunger strikes and the suicide attempts and the recurring riots, I was hardly noticed. They thought I was just depressed; you were allowed, if not encouraged, to mope in your cell. As far as they were concerned, I was just a sad, unwanted enigma left unsolved.
When Ned received one of the coveted temporary protection visas, he kept hounding me to admit my citizenship. The day he left, he begged me to leave with him. And why didn’t I? What was I doing in this awful place? Maybe I was just fascinated—you never knew when someone might slash himself, or swallow detergent or pebbles. And there were three hearty riots in my time; a burst of furious energy compelled the Runaways to try impossible things like pulling down the fence, before they were torn away by the strong hands of the guards. After the last riot settled down, the administration built stronger walls and a higher-voltage electric fence. I thought about what Terry said, that the have-nots are getting their act together. I wished they’d hurry.
Every now and then I tried to convince myself I was in this prison as the ultimate protest against government policy, but I knew I was only rationalizing. The truth was, Dad’s lack of existence terrified me. This was an aloneness that required time to adjust to. I was hiding in here, avoiding facing up to the next step. I knew staying was perverse, shameless, and cowardly. Still, I couldn’t leave.
As usual, God comes up in many conversations. To the guards, the Runaways let out endless proclamations: “God is great!,” “God will punish you,” and “Wait until God hears about this.” Sickened by the treatment of the Runaways here and in their homelands, contemplating with horror the sad state of compassion in the world, one night I spoke to this God of theirs. I said, “Hey! Why is it that you don’t ever say, ‘If one more man suffers at the hands of another, it’s all over. I will finish it.’ Why don’t you ever say, ‘If one more man cries in pain because another man is standing on his neck, I’m pulling the plug.’ How I wish you would say that, and mean it. A three-strikes-and-you’re-out policy is really what the human race needs to pull its act together. It’s time to get tough, O Lord. No more half measures. No more ambiguous floods and unclear mud slides. Zero tolerance. Three strikes. We’re out.”
I said all this to God, but there was so much silence afterward, a cold silence that seemed to get caught in my throat, and I heard myself suddenly whisper, “It’s time.” Enough was enough. It was duing English class, in a small, bright room with a U-shaped arrangement of long desks. The teacher, Wayne, was standing in front of the blackboard instructing the class on the use of clauses. The students were silent, though not respectfully so; it was the bewildered silence of a group of people who had no clear idea what they were being taught.
I stood up. Wayne looked at me as though readying himself to take off his belt and start whipping me with it. I said, “Why are you bothering to teach us about clauses? We won’t need them.”
His face turned pale, and he tilted his head back as though I had just grown a meter taller. “You speak English,” he said dumbly.
“Don’t take it as a testament to your teaching abilities,” I said.
“You’ve got an Australian accent,” he said.
“Yeah, mate, I do. Now tell those mongrels to come in here. I’ve got something to say to them.”
Wayne’s eyes widened; then he did an exaggerated dash from the classroom like a cartoon tiger. People act like children when you surprise them, and bastards are no exception.
Ten minutes later they came running in, two guards in tight trousers. They had looks of surprise too, but theirs were already beginning to fade.
“I hear you’ve been running off at the mouth,” one said.
“Let’s hear it,” the other commanded.
“My name is Jasper Dean. My father was Martin Dean. My uncle was Terry Dean.”
Their looks of surprise got all freshened up. They hauled me away, down the long gray corridors into a stark room with only one chair in it. Was that for me, or would I be forced to stand while an inquisitor drilled me with his feet up?
I won’t detail all seven days of the interrogation. All I will tell you is that I was like an actor trapped by contract in a bad play with a long run. I said my lines over and over and over. I told them the whole story, though leaving out all mention of Uncle Terry being alive. It wouldn’t have done me any good to resurrect him. The government leaned heavily on me to tell them Dad’s whereabouts. They had leverage too: I had committed two crimes, traveling on a false passport and consorting with known criminals, although the second was not actually a crime but just a bad habit, so they let it go. I was hounded by groups of detectives, and agents from ASIO, our unimpressive spy agency, which Australians know very little about because it is never the subject of movies or television shows. For days I had to put up with all the clichéd tricks in their repertoire: the staccato questioning, the good cop/bad cop routine and its variations (bad cop/worse cop, worse cop/Satan in a clip-on tie), performances so terrible I wanted to boo. We don’t torture people in our country, which is a good thing unless you’re an interrogator pressured to get results. I could tell one of them would have given anything to be able to tear out my fingernails. I caught another gazing forlornly at my groin while dreaming of electrodes. Well, too bad for them. Anyway, they didn’t need to torture me. I played along. I spoke myself hoarse. They listened themselves deaf. Pretty soon we were all running on empty. Every now and then they let me pace the room and shout out things like “How many more times do I have to say it?” It was embarrassing. I felt silly. I sounded silly. It was so corny. Movies have made real life corny.
They searched my cell and found what I’d written, two hundred pages about our lives; I had only gotten as far as my early childhood, when I learned the Terry Dean story. They studied the pages intensely, read them carefully for clues, but they were looking for Dad’s crimes, not his flaws, and in the end they thought it was nothing but fiction, an exaggerated story of my father and uncle composed as a clever defense; they concluded that I had depicted him as a lunatic so no one could find him guilty of anything by reason of insanity. They ultimately couldn’t believe in him as a character, saying that it was impossible for a person to be a megalomaniac and an underachiever. I can only assume they didn’t understand human psychology.
In the end they gave the pages back to me; then they interviewed all my fellow travelers to see if my story of Dad’s death held up. The Runaways confirmed it. They all told the same story. Martin Dean was on the boat, he was very sick, and he died. I threw his body into the sea. I could tell this news was a tremendous disappointment to
the authorities—they hadn’t caught me out lying. Dad would have been the ultimate prize for them. The Australian people would have loved to see my father served up to them on a plate. Dad’s death left a conspicuous hole in their lives, an important vacancy that needed filling. Who the hell were they going to hate now?
Eventually they decided to let me go. It wasn’t that they had no real interest in charging me but that they wanted to shut me up. I’d seen firsthand how the Runaways were treated inside the detention center, and the government didn’t want me talking about the systematic abuse of men, women, and children, so they bought my silence by dropping the charges against me. I went along with it. I don’t feel bad about my complicity, either. I couldn’t conceive that the facts would make a difference to the voting public. I can’t imagine why the government thought they would. I guess they had more faith in people than I had.
In exchange for my silence, they gave me a dirty little one-bedroom apartment in a dirty government housing block in a dirty little suburb. The federal police flew me from the desert into Sydney and dropped me off here, and, along with the keys to my grubby, minuscule flat, handed over a box of papers raided from my old apartment when we’d skipped the country: my real passport, my driver’s license, and a couple of telephone bills they hinted I should pay. When they left me alone, I sat in the living room and stared out the barred windows into the apartment opposite. It seemed I had not done all right out of the government. I had blackmailed them for this shitty place and a welfare allowance of $350 a fortnight. It seemed to me I could’ve done a lot better.
I caught sight of myself in the bathroom mirror. My cheeks were sunken; my eye sockets went deep into my head. I’d gotten so thin I looked like a javelin. I needed to fatten myself up again. Apart from that, what was my plan? What was I going to do now?
I tried calling Anouk, the only person left on the planet I had any connection with, but this proved far more difficult than I’d anticipated. It’s not easy getting in touch with the richest woman in the country, even if she once cleaned your toilet. Her home number was unsurprisingly unlisted, and it was only after calling the Hobbs Media Group and speaking to several secretaries, that it finally occurred to me to ask for Oscar instead. I received a few noes before one young woman said, “Is this a prank call?”
