‘It doesn’t happen like that,’ she said, ‘and it’s never been the centre of our life anyway.’
‘I guess not.’
‘If it ever gets bad we’ll take poison together,’ she said and kissed him.
They kissed in the dinner party air, rich with the breath of conversation, warmed by bodies, a smell of candle wax, aroma of food and spilled wine, the air slightly fogged with the comfortable smell of cigarettes.
The only sound was a cistern dribbling.
The Machine Gun
‘Here are the magazines from Cuba.’
He handed Turvey the magazines.
Turvey tossed them on the table which was obliterated by other papers, magazines, and books – all of it looked like postponed reading. ‘How long you down?’ Turvey asked.
‘The weekend – just till Sunday.’
Turvey’s dim bachelor house. He looked around. A bachelor poet’s house. Che Guevara. A dirty cup and a dirty glass. A sketch of Adrian Mitchell. A poster poem of Christopher Logue’s.
‘You need a woman, Turvey.’
‘Haven’t the time – travel light.’
Turvey could almost have meant it.
‘Can’t pull yourself off all your life.’
‘I get the stray fuck,’ he said, unsmiling.
He sat down while Turvey leaned on his hands against a bookcase – as if he was doing a physical exercise.
Turvey hadn’t bothered to open the magazines from Cuba. He was a bit like that.
‘What’s happening, then?’
Turvey wriggled his shoulders – a shudder, a twitch – kicked the bookcase lightly. ‘Conferences, Left Action, demonstrations run by the cops,’ he gestured, ‘you know it all.’
Turvey walked to the other side of the room and leaned against the window, not looking out.
‘Where’s your revolutionary zeal?’
Turvey shrugged, pulled out a book from the nearest case, as if at random, didn’t open it, put it back, and with a wild turn, broke out, ‘I want to show you something.’
He went to the drawer of the obliterated table and took out a key.
‘Come on.’
He got up and followed Turvey.
Turvey led to the garage. He shuffled away some newspapers and hauled out a long box by its rope handles, and opened it.
The box contained a Bren light machine gun.
‘Jesus,’ he said to Turvey, ‘Jesus, where did you get that?’
‘From a crim.’
‘Holy Jesus.’
Straddling the box, Turvey lifted the gun by its carrying handle and, opening out the bipod, stood the gun on the concrete garage floor.
‘But why for Godsake?’
Turvey lay behind the gun, pulled it into his shoulder, cocked it, and shot the bolt.
‘What about ammunition?’
‘Two thousand rounds,’ Turvey said.
‘But why – why did you get it?’
He knelt down beside Turvey and took the gun, sighting along the barrel. He cocked the gun and shot the bolt.
‘Things could get hot.’
He looked up disbelievingly at Turvey, ‘You’ve got to be joking.’
He didn’t know what answer he expected. What answer would make sense? Turvey was one of those people who didn’t feel obliged to make sense.
‘The student-worker alliance – job power – people being screwed – Chinese infiltration.’
‘Chinese infiltration! – you’re crazy.’
It was hard to say to Turvey that you thought he was crazy because sometimes he really did seem … crazy. He lay there looking up at Turvey, the gun against his shoulder, hurt. He expected Turvey to be breathtaking but it hurt him when he was foolish. He was in awe of Turvey – Turvey’s political intensity – the fact that he was a revolutionary poet. But he knew more than Turvey about theory and so on. ‘What do you mean, Turvey – Chinese infiltration?’
‘The Chinese are sending in guerrillas – landing them in twos or threes off the coast.’
‘Bullshit.’ He pictured it like a movie. ‘That’s all bullshit, Turvey.’ He saw them jumping from rocking boats up to their waists in water and scrambling on to the beaches. The submarines barely visible in the fog. ‘Who told you this bullshit?’
‘Party sources.’
‘The CP?’
‘The Maoists.’
‘You in with them?’
Turvey didn’t reply.
‘Come on, tell me more,’ pressing his disbelief hard against Turvey’s sureness.
He didn’t want there to be a distance between Turvey and him. He was more hurt by the distance than by the nutty theory or Turvey’s private certainty.
Turvey kept staring away, as if wondering whether to say more.
‘Where’s the support,’ he said, ‘if they come?’
‘People are becoming molten – it’s beginning to flow – the Americans are sucking the country, the average guy is being sucked by everyone.’
He couldn’t get himself to believe it. About the Chinese, that was. He believed Turvey about the economic thing, the resentment. He looked back to the gun. It was easier to imagine himself back with the school cadets than guerrilla fighting in the streets.
The smell of the wet greatcoat. The abundant Q-store, arms, accoutrement – for playing with. Kettle drums.
It seemed that everything was going well and five men had been sent to replace the ones stationed in ambush on the road, when shots were heard. We went there rapidly on horseback and came across a strange sight: in the midst of silence, four dead soldiers were lying in the sun on the sands of the river.
‘It’s a good gun,’ he said to Turvey, letting his hands move over the parts, searching out what he remembered from cadet instruction. The cool metal. Smell of gun oil. ‘Fired it yet?’
‘You’re the first person I’ve shown.’
Turvey saying that was comradely and he felt back close to him again. Turvey was one of the few people he thought of as a comrade. He found it a hard word to use. He wanted Turvey as a comrade. Turvey was bad with committees but in street fighting he would want to be with Turvey.
As normally as he could, he asked, ‘Have you met any … any infiltrators?’
‘No,’ Turvey said, again with a sureness lying behind it.
Turvey didn’t add.
He decided to let it drop. ‘Say, why don’t we go to National Park and shoot? I’ve got the car.’
They stood up, dusting their clothes. Turvey took some boxes of yellow brass .303 bullets and two magazines. They loaded the magazines. The realness of the bullets almost convinced him of the rest, as though the existence of the material of revolution was evidence of its reality. They loaded them very quickly.
Turvey put the magazines down his shirt and together they carried the Bren gun in its box, draped with a blanket, out to the Citroen.
‘It was stolen from army stores,’ Turvey said.
They drove to the park. Each surburban family in each suburban washed and polished car made him conscious of the machine gun but pushed him away from the belief in the nearness of revolution. Turvey tapped his fingers and jigged his foot throughout the drive.
They found a sandy track and drove low-gear along it as far as possible to cliffs overlooking the sea.
No lighting of fires except in authorised fire places. Penalty $50.
They carried the gun to the cliffs overlooking the empty Tasman sea.
They fitted a magazine to the gun. Turvey lay behind it and fired, and a single shot whined out to sea. The gun stopped firing.
Their cadet training came back to them and they said, almost together, ‘number one – stoppage – gun stops firing – recock gun.’ They grinned.
The gun fired a single shot again and stopped.
‘I’ve been taken,’ Turvey said, flaring, thumping the gun with his fist. ‘The bloody thing’s no good.’
‘Replace the magazine – that’s number two stoppage, isn’t
it?’ he said to Turvey. ‘Check the magazine.’
They changed the magazine and fired a single shot whining out to sea but could not get the gun to fire repeat or automatic.
‘Shit and damn,’ Turvey yelled.
‘I’ll change the gas chamber to a larger port.’ He did so.
‘Try now.’
Turvey recocked the gun savagely and fired. This time the gun fired and kept on firing.
‘Beauty,’ Turvey said, instantly jubilant, trembling.
‘Number four stoppage – give only rank and serial number.’ They both laughed again.
Turvey put the gun to automatic and fired a burst. ‘Get some beer cans or something to shoot at.’
He went to the scrub and found some cans and bottles – bones of a picnic.
Here’s a nice spot, Kim. Find some firewood. I hope somebody remembered the salt.
‘Point that bloody thing somewhere else,’ he yelled at Turvey, propping up the bottles and cans along the cliff edge, and coming back behind the gun.
Turvey fired a burst and blasted the asparagus, beer, beetroot, camp-pie, and baked beans tins into the sea.
We are surrounded by 2000 men within a radius of 120 kilometres, and the encirclement is closing in; this is combined with napalm bombings. We have 10 or 15 losses. We went to the place where the rotting corpses were but couldn’t carry them all and so would go back tomorrow to burn them.
He propped up some more. ‘Let me fire this time.’
He took the warm gun. He sighted and blasted the cans and bottles into the sea, feeling the gun throb like an animal, ejecting its hot shells in a flood around his elbows. Some of the shells rolled into the tracks of ants.
He stopped firing. A ringing silence. Cordite.
‘You don’t honestly think you’re going to use it, in fighting, I mean?’ he said, rolling over and giving the gun back to Turvey.
‘Yes,’ Turvey said, ‘unquestionably.’
He decided again to leave the matter alone but something clever occurred to him which he thought might be correct and which would intellectually satisfy him and put him back on the same band as Turvey. ‘Isn’t the gun more a metaphor – a sort of political metaphor?’
‘No, it’s not a metaphor,’ Turvey said sharply, ‘it’s a reality.’
Turvey then began firing and didn’t stop until the magazines were spent. Not at any target, just into the sea.
‘You bastard, Turvey – I wanted another shot.’
They kicked the spent shells over the cliff. He didn’t talk to Turvey for a few minutes because of disappointment.
In the hotel they talked about how things were politically in the city and the groups, but Turvey pushed aside the talk: ‘We could buy up old weapons – create a cache – begin weapons drill.’
He tried to stop himself saying anything but couldn’t. ‘Look, Turvey – attractive as I think the idea is – I simply don’t believe the Chinese are here – or coming here. And I’m not convinced there’s a revolutionary situation – yet.’
Turvey said with a quiet iciness, ‘They are here, I tell you – being harboured by the local Chinese.’
‘Crap.’
‘Have it your own way.’
They drank half a beer in silence. Of course he wanted a revolution – all his reading since school, all his serious talking, all his political work, and all his teaching were directed towards it. He wanted to own a machine gun too – say as a political symbol – but it was the rationale – the feasibility of it all – of Turvey’s political fantasy that he couldn’t accept. He was for violent assault on the system as much as anyone.
Perhaps it was true. Perhaps he should talk to some of the others.
Perhaps he’d got out of touch, teaching in the country.
Take out your books for dictation. Someone to clean the board. Turn to page 73.
‘They’re going to engage in military sabotage of the bases,’ Turvey said.
‘I’ll get some beer nuts,’ he said.
The soldiers advanced with little caution, exploring the edges of the river while looking for tracks and penetrated the wooded area before reaching the ambush. The firing lasted only a few seconds with one dead, and three wounded lying on the ground, plus six prisoners. My Garand jammed.
He half listened to Turvey but most of all he wanted to be behind the machine gun again. He wanted to be blasting away. He recaptured the release, the destructiveness, and the invulnerability he’d felt lying in the sun behind the gun firing into the sea. The living gun.
He wondered if Sylvia would like to fire the gun.
Sylvia making a toasted cheese sandwich in the electric frying pan.
Sylvia reaching for a can from a high cupboard.
Sylvia tucking the candy-striped sheets of their bed.
Sylvia pushing back the moons of her fingernails.
They decided to go to a party.
‘It’s at Angela’s – the American girl.’
‘What about the gun –?’ he worried. ‘We can’t go screaming around the city with it in the back of the car.’
‘What if we were in an accident,’ Turvey laughed, ‘and the bloody thing fell out.’ Turvey seemed to like the idea.
‘Very funny.’ He grinned. ‘Remember in that film The Big Risk they had a machine gun in a compartment behind the front seat?’
He didn’t like it one bit, realistically, but they couldn’t be bothered going to Turvey’s place across the city and back.
They stopped in a lane and unpacked the gun, hiding it under the back seat.
The party burned with dancing, political talk, drinking, pot smoking, sexual hunting. But he was alive only to the gun.
It was the gun he was thinking about as the Canned Heat and Bob Dylan tried to engage him and he drank beer from a paper cup and talked about his country high school and conditions in Cuba.
‘Where’s Sylvia?’
‘Didn’t come,’ he replied, ‘I’m free.’
‘A bourgeois illusion.’
He wanted to say to people that he’d been shooting a machine gun in National Park.
‘No, I’m staying with Mum and Dad – pressure – you know …’ he replied to someone.
A Rugby Union pennant. A stuffed rabbit from childhood. The White Company. A travelling clock from his twenty-first.
He went to the back of the house and looked across the dark repetition of the two-up-two-down, back-to-back houses. Distant Saturday night laughter.
A third army truck stopped to see what was happening, then the road became obstructed. We forced the sergeant to give the watchword and took the post with ten men in a lightning action, after a good skirmish of cross-fire with a soldier who resisted. We captured five Mausers and one Z-B-30.
‘Oh no, oh no, I don’t believe it.’ He heard Angela. He turned towards the screams. Angela was standing just off from the front door, her hands to her face. Her long hair wrapped around her face, her ‘Oh no’ rising to screaming pitch. He saw people nearby stop talking and turn around. Except some, some kept on – those too involved, or drunk. Two men kept shouting at each other despite the silence falling around them.
He looked through the hall of the house through the standing people and to the front steps and saw Turvey coming up with the Bren gun under his arm, a hand on the barrel, as if in combat.
Angela had cringed into the doorway-hall corner.
He moved, pushing through the people in the hallway. ‘Turvey,’ he shouted, ‘Turvey, put that damn gun back in the car.’
‘Jesus, it’s a gun.’
‘Turvey, for Godsake – you’ll have the cops here,’ he said, reaching Turvey.
He couldn’t quite take in the incongruity of it – the suburban house – the party at a standstill, except for the record player, two shouting drunks, and noises from the other room.
The gun fired.
The firing deafened him in one ear.
The gun had fired. The reverberations skeltered down the
hall and out of the house into the dark yard and further.
He didn’t understand at first, nor did those nearby. No one seemed to understand at first, that the gun had fired.
It must have sounded more like a gun firing to those in the other room because the room fell absolutely silent and then the people appeared at the door of the room.
‘That was a shot.’
‘Turvey’s got a gun.’
The gun had fired. The .303 bullet had gouged a long scar about seven feet along the plaster of the wall and then passed out through a shattered brick. There was a ragged trail of wall paper.
‘Holy fucking Jesus,’ he shouted. ‘Turvey, put the bloody gun down, put it down.’ He tried to force the gun down but Turvey stood there holding it rigid and staring at the gouged wall.
Angela was giving off moans.
‘He’s pissed out of his mind.’
‘The bloody thing’s loaded.’
Angela was moaning and two girls were trying to help her. She had pissed herself. Urine had streamed down her legs to the floor.
He took the gun from Turvey.
‘You could have bloody killed someone, Turvey,’ someone said, real terror riding in the words.
No one had anything else to say.
Turvey looked around, ‘I’m not scared of killing.’
‘He’s mad.’
The message of the firing had passed through the whole house and brought back a wash of cackling questions. The whole party crowded into the hallway. ‘Turvey’s got a machine gun.’
Someone had started to laugh about it.
Angela had begun screaming, ‘Get it out of here, get it out of here, get it out.’
Get it out of here, get it out.
He and a couple of the others took the gun out to the car. He locked the car.
‘It’s a beaut weapon – the Bren,’ one said.
‘There must have still been one round in the breech,’ he said obviously, in way of explanation to those with him.
They went back to the party.
The talk was all of the firing. They were looking at the path of the bullet along the wall, poking their fingers in the gouge.
There was no music. He couldn’t see Angela. Some people were going.
He found Turvey alone, crouched, drunk, in the yard.
The Americans, Baby Page 10
