The Twentieth Man

by Tony Jones

  Sharp turned to look at the screen; Manet’s Olympia she was not. He feigned embarrassment.

  ‘Oh shit, how’d that get there?’

  He fumbled for the remote and clicked on to the next image, an organisational flowchart. Boos and jeers came from the audience now, and cries of ‘Bring her back!’ and ‘Show us your tits!’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Sharp said. ‘I can’t imagine how that happened.’ He waited for the booing to subside. ‘But at least you’re all sufficiently awake now to study this chart. By the way, a file of all this material will be available for the investigative teams.’ He pointed. ‘What you can see here is the organisational structure of the Ustasha in Australia.

  ‘It’s not simple because they’ve had to learn to hide themselves. They’ve divided into splinter groups and cells to avoid detection, but as you can see, at the top of the pyramid is the HRB—the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood. The three key leaders of the Brotherhood, as you might expect, are Katich, Kraljevic and Bilobrk. At the pointy end of the pyramid is Ivo Katich. He’s the real leader. The other two are his key lieutenants. We believe that Katich signs off on every significant Ustasha action. He is our primary target.’

  Sharp clicked to the next slide. ‘Now, as you can see from this family tree, Ivo Katich has two sons.’

  10.

  January 1963

  Marin Katich stared out the car window at the treeless, boulder-strewn plain of the Monaro. The sky above it rose to infinity. The boulders were marbles from a game abandoned by careless giants.

  That was his father’s story. Lewis had a different one. He claimed these granite spheres were rolled into place by the glacier that scythed away the surface of the earth as it moved towards the coast, slowly, inexorably, taking everything in its path and levelling the land. The first settlers found it like this, empty and flat with topsoil so thin that not even a gum tree could take root.

  It was the summer of 1963, Marin was twelve years old, and they were driving south to Khandalah, close to the Victorian border. Ivo had bought this property soon after his first son was born. It was just a couple of shacks on a hill above a bend in the Towamba River, with a stretch of wild country on either bank. Every January they took the same long journey, Marin and Petar sitting up front on a salt-stiffened towel stretched across the hot vinyl seat.

  As he drove, their father sang the ojkanje, taught to him by his own father when he was a boy. The old man, Ivo would tell his sons, had been a mystic. ‘He told me that the ojkanje are wolf songs,’ Ivo whispered, as if imparting a great secret. ‘In the old times, when men were closer to the earth and its creatures, we learned them from the wolves.’

  The two brothers had heard the ojkanje many times, whenever their father had been in the mood to sing, but these songs were still strange to their ears. Long, breathless notes vibrated in Ivo’s throat. Marin watched him anxiously, as he always did when Ivo was doing something unpredictable, which was often enough. From deep inside Ivo came an eerie, quavering sound, and you could hear in this, Marin was convinced, the howling beasts in the mountains.

  Lost in his father’s song, Marin stared out the window at the parched, empty grasslands, at the piles of boulders, at the vast blue sky and imagined they were on another planet.

  When he was not singing, his father talked and talked. For the whole drive Ivo was rarely silent. He told them strange tales from the old country. He was at once captivating and disturbing. A psychiatrist might have diagnosed manic depression. When he was up, when he was in the manic phase, that was something to see. Marin imagined at those times that his father was all bright colours, and everything else was black and white.

  At Khandalah, on one of the hottest days of summer, Ivo took Marin for a walk in the bush. It was full of noise. Bellbirds, currawongs, whip-poor-wills and many others—the usual sounds. But there was a constant background roar, because this was one of those years when the cicadas came out of the ground in swarms, like a great plague, and they were more deafening than ever. It was a cicada summer and the air throbbed with their song.

  In summers like this Marin and Petar caught as many as they could—Green Grocers, Yellow Mondays, Floury Bakers, Redeyes, Cherrynoses. They kept them in shoeboxes. They dared each other to put them on their arms and let the claws dig into their skin. Marin felt the thrill of holding a live one in his fist, feeling it vibrate and struggle, the twitch of its wings and abdomen against his hand.

  Ivo loved the cicadas as much as they did. They reminded him of his boyhood in Croatia. They were called cvrčak in the old language. That was what he still called them. Sometimes Marin saw tears in his eyes when he walked out in the sun and into the great racket they made. One time he saw Ivo standing outside, clamping his hands on his ears and then taking them away; then repeating this, over and over, tears streaming down his cheeks. That was something beautiful and terrible.

  That day was special because he had asked Marin to walk with him, just the two of them. He’d never done that before.

  ‘They are like me, these cvrčak. They love the heat,’ Ivo told Marin as they followed the path beside the river.

  Eventually he stopped in a grove of mountain gums and river peppermint.

  ‘You hear that? When it gets hotter, their song becomes louder?’ Marin nodded. It seemed the noise was much louder in that place, as if a great swarm had massed there.

  ‘They like it close to the river too,’ Ivo explained.

  The cicadas were hypnotically loud, yet it was hard to spot the individual insects. Then a butcherbird was in among the trees, and a lone cicada panicked and took flight. Its broken cry was cut off as the predator caught it mid-air.

  Ivo clapped. ‘Well done, bird. Well done. Perfect!’ he called out, as if the butcherbird might stop and take a bow.

  Then Ivo went quiet and made a show of listening, as the massed song of the cicadas grew louder again, pulsing in regular waves of sound.

  ‘Do you hear that?’ he asked.

  Marin listened. ‘What?’

  ‘Do you hear what’s different, Marin?’

  ‘It’s sort of up and down. Loud and quiet, loud and quiet.’

  ‘That’s right. That’s right!’ Ivo cried.

  He put a fist in front of Marin’s face, opening it and closing it in rhythm with the noise.

  ‘It’s called the pulsing phase. Old Lewis told me about it. Only one tribe makes this sound. It’s their language and this is their place. This is where they come up out of the ground. These trees are their trees.’ Lewis was their nearest neighbour. Years ago he had taken it on himself to teach the newcomers bush lore.

  Ivo searched around, peering at the tree trunks.

  ‘Here, see here,’ he said, pointing at the empty shells still clinging to the trunks. Marin looked at the split and discarded exoskeletons, from which cicadas had emerged to spread their wings. He and Petar had been picking them off trees for years.

  ‘I know all about these shells, Papa,’ he said, wondering what his father was trying to tell him.

  ‘Yes, yes. Of course you do, Marin. But not these exact ones.’

  Ivo walked around under the trees, his eyes searching in the lower branches. Then he stopped and reached up.

  ‘Here is one.’

  His hand closed on a dark shape.

  ‘Come close.’ He opened his hand and took the creature between his thumb and forefinger, holding it firmly over the wing joints so it knew it could not fly away.

  ‘You see him?’ he said. ‘Look close.’

  The cicada was a shiny black creature. Its alien eyes had a glowing sheen.

  ‘Some cvrčak we see every year. Not these ones. Not this tribe. They’re hidden deep underground for many years, longer than the others. Lewis says these come out maybe every fourteen years. Somehow they know when their time is, and then they burrow out of their deep holes. They start two metres down, or even further—and then they come all that way up into their trees. You know what he’s call
ed, Marin?’

  The creature rattled in Ivo’s fingers, struggling even though the effort was futile.

  ‘Black Prince,’ said Marin.

  ‘Good boy. He’s a Black Prince, this one.’

  ‘He’s a beauty. Can I keep him?’

  ‘No,’ said Ivo. ‘He doesn’t have long out in this world.’

  Without warning he threw the creature into the air. It went up like an inanimate thing for a way and then, with a burst of energy, took flight and disappeared into the branches. The pulsing sound grew louder.

  ‘Marin, I want you to think about this carefully.’ Ivo paused and put his face close to his son’s, holding him by the chin. ‘You are like him, the Black Prince. Remember this. This life here in Australia is not real. You are deep underground. One day it will be time to come out.’

  When Ivo moved the family to a house in Leichhardt he planted a little orchard of plum trees in the backyard and built a still. By the time the trees were bearing fruit, his wife had gone.

  Every year the plums were picked and fermented, and Ivo fired up the still. He would feed the furnace with ironbark logs and turn the handle until the stench of šljiva cooking away in the copper boiler hung over the house and clung to everyone’s clothes. It was like a sickly sweet cologne and Marin would always associate it with his father, in the same way that the smell of floor polish brought with it a wave of nausea and vivid memories of his mother.

  Ivo and Branko Kraljevic would arrange time off work to tend to the still during the days of the distilling process. It was their annual tradition. They took turns at cranking the handle of the boiler and poured each other shots of last year’s rakija from an old stone jar. They would drink steadily while the copper pipes groaned and squealed, as the vapours forced their way through to liquefy in the cooling tank. A pure, clear liquid dripped from a tap into a bucket.

  Marin once caught Brutus licking drips from the tap. The drunken dog looked up guiltily before staggering in circles around the yard. Behind the shed Marin found his father and Branko lying unconscious on the grass, an empty stone jar beside them.

  Marin had always been wary of Branko. He had fingers like sausages and there were many dark rumours about him, all of which he gleefully embraced. He had worked with explosives in the mines and spent time in prison; he had killed a man—well, many men, but they were all communists. He had fought alongside Ivo Katich in Stalingrad and they had both been in the bodyguard of the Poglavnik. Ivo never talked about Stalingrad, but he was happy to admit his closeness to the Poglavnik—that was his greatest pride.

  Sometimes Branko was a friendly uncle, sometimes a thug. The rakija was the anaesthetic that put his better angels to sleep.

  Walking home from school one day with Petar, Marin saw white puffs rising from the still’s narrow chimney. The familiar stench carried on the wood smoke filled him with dread. As he opened the gate, he heard loud laughter coming from the backyard, and found his father and Branko Kraljevic slumped in folding chairs, playing cards.

  ‘Dobra dan, boys!’ Branko called as they came in. His voice slurred ominously. ‘Come, lads. Come. We need help, some extra hands here.’

  His purple-veined cheeks were flushed, his eyes were swimming.

  The stone jar was nearly empty. Marin was instantly on edge. Their rakija was sixty per cent proof. It could strip the varnish off old furniture—and strip away a man’s inhibitions even more thoroughly.

  Ivo looked up from his cards. ‘Go and wind the handle for us, Petar,’ he said with an odd deliberation, trying and failing to give the appearance of sobriety. ‘And Marin, throw some more wood into the oven.’

  As Petar walked past Branko, the giant suddenly lurched up and grabbed his arms, squeezing the boy so hard that he winced.

  ‘Look at this skinny thing,’ Branko cried. ‘Couldn’t take the skin off a rice pudding! You need some meat on these bones, boy.’

  Marin expected Ivo to jump up and separate them, or at least to tell his friend to leave Petar alone. Instead his father gave a bitter laugh. ‘He’s a mummy’s boy, that one,’ he said. ‘A sensitive soul, like her.’

  Petar’s face crumpled; he was close to tears. Branko kept hold of him, staring into his eyes as if looking for evidence of the reviled Samira staring back out at him. Then he let the boy go, as though dropping something unclean.

  ‘That’s not good for you, Petar,’ Branko growled, poking a sausage finger into his chest. ‘You don’t want to be like her. She left you. She walked out and left you without a word. You remember that. You must never forget it.’

  Petar was sobbing now, but Branko was relentless. ‘Your father is here for you. You must follow him and forget all about her.’

  Marin watched Ivo sitting there mute.

  Petar suddenly cried out, ‘Mama!’

  Branko reverted to the old language—‘Jebo ti pas mater! May a dog fuck your mother!’—and grabbed Petar’s arms again.

  At this Marin yelled at him. ‘Leave him alone!’

  Branko shook the boy like a doll. Petar was weeping. But Ivo still hadn’t moved.

  A mist of anger rose in Marin. He grabbed a piece of firewood and in one swift movement smashed it into the back of Branko’s head. Marin watched the man go down. A sack of shit. Freed from his grip, Petar scampered away.

  Ivo rose unsteadily and bent over his groaning friend, registering after a moment that Branko was still alive. Then he came at Marin and tore the log from his hands. He grabbed his son by the throat.

  The huge hands around his neck burned hot as an iron. Marin was lifted off the ground, his legs dangling in the air as he was carried into the house. Floating down the corridor, he kicked out like a hanged man until his father threw him on to his bed and thrashed him with the dog leash, raising welts on his legs, his arms and his face.

  Marin yelled and yelled back at his father, ignoring the pain, daring Ivo to murder him. There was a perverse power in tipping his father over the edge. Marin was flirting with death, playing chicken on a highway, but he was not afraid. He welcomed the pain.

  When Ivo’s fury was finally spent, he slumped down beside his son, weeping. ‘Marin, Marin,’ he sobbed. ‘This hurts me more than you.’

  Ivo sat there, streaming tears, wiping snot from his nose. He was as regretful as a child trying to repair the favourite toy he had just smashed against the wall.

  In the end, as always, Marin felt sorry for his father.

  *

  Soon after he turned fifteen Marin found himself backstage at the Sydney Town Hall, hiding behind the organ. Above him, thousands of pipes reached up into the darkness, silent and waiting. He peeked out at the crowd flooding in through the entrances, jostling to take their seats. He was nervous, silent as the organ pipes. He had to make a speech to these people.

  His suit was buttoned up tight as a straitjacket. It was the first one he’d ever owned. Ivo had taken him and Petar all the way out to a factory in Granville, where a Bosnian friend gave them a special deal. He had never known his father to spend money on fancy clothes. For his confirmation he’d worn a hired suit stinking of mothballs.

  That was how important this day was—more important than sealing the spiritual bond with Christ’s flesh and blood. This was about the spiritual bond with the homeland. The suit was black, with sharp creases in the trousers and a three-button coat, underneath which was a starched white shirt and a thin black tie.

  Petar said they looked like bodyguards to the president. The two of them emerged from their hiding place and drifted about in the crowd, pretending to talk into their sleeves, until Ivo caught them at it and clipped Marin so hard over the ear that his vision blurred with sudden tears.

  ‘Don’t be the goat!’ he growled. ‘Not tonight.’

  Ivo was in the vestibule, greeting new arrivals like the host at a wedding. There was great excitement. Loud voices and laughter filled the big room right to its high ceilings. Some appraised the fittings like dealers at an auction, calculating
the value of the crystal chandelier, the gold leaf, the ceramic tiles patterning the floor. The Town Hall had been built in the nineteenth century for the city’s English gentry, but tonight it was being occupied by a horde of Balkan migrants in their Sunday best.

  Marin felt they were—all of them—out of place and out of time. In a pocket of his jacket, folded over his heart, was the speech his father had helped him write. He had been made to recite it over and over again. Now Ivo looked at him, nodding as if to say: You’re up for this, aren’t you?

  The crowd was large and boisterous, but he was mostly nervous about speaking in front of his father. The prospect of letting him down or, even worse, embarrassing him, was terrifying. For this was their national day—10 April 1941 was the sacred day on which the Independent State of Croatia, Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, was born. Today was the twenty-fifth anniversary of this great event.

  Hard-looking men encircled Ivo Katich. As more arrived, they went into orbit around him. Ivo greeted them all with hugs and kisses, friends and supplicants alike. Waiting to greet him, they smoked like chimneys, before dropping their spent butts and grinding them into the tiles with their shiny shoes.

  Branko Kraljevic was there too under the blue cloud, hugging the new arrivals and squeezing their shoulders with his sausage fingers. A huge man with a scarred face was nearby; Vlado Bilobrk was another of Ivo’s wartime comrades. Marin stared at the man. His face had been torn apart by shrapnel and reconstructed into a Frankenstein monster with a permanent scowl. Katich, Kraljevic and Bilobrk were revered names in this company.

  The younger ones paid their respects. They too were hard men, toughened by physical work, their weathered faces darkened by the sun. Decked out in polyester suits and wide-collared body shirts, they swaggered and postured. They passed a bottle of rakija from hand to hand. They laughed at their own crude jokes and whispered confidences, fixing Marin with suspicious stares until Ivo took him by the arm to introduce him to their leader, an intense fellow in his mid-twenties called Ambroz Andric.

  ‘Marin is to make a speech tonight,’ Ivo told him.