On the Java Ridge

by Jock Serong

  He felt confused now, lost in time.

  A head in a suit, neat hair and white teeth, grinning at him from a corflute. Cassius didn’t recognise the candidate. Looked again—it was a real estate ad. The wide concrete footpath lifted gently over Lake Burley Griffin, the waters calm and still. Ducks and swans moved through the haze that lay on its surface.

  Halfway across the bridge and surrounded by water, his headache was so severe that for a moment he had to clench his fists around the handrail. Joggers swerved to avoid him, paying little attention. He waited for the bright points of light behind his eyes to fade before he continued.

  Captain Cook’s fountain, lit by the soft sunshine: so optimistic, so pointless. He leaned his forearms on the balustrade of the bridge and watched it for a moment. The cold air on his cheeks told him he was crying, but it didn’t matter; he was pretty sure it didn’t matter. He needed to be somewhere but he couldn’t remember where it was.

  He took his tie off and stuffed it in his pocket. A truck roared past and the driver made eye contact, swivelled his head a little to follow Cassius as they crossed paths.

  After the bridge returned to shore on the north side of the lake it passed over a roadway. He stopped to look down at the patterns of shade on the asphalt. Nausea swam with the tilt of his head but he had seen a flight of concrete stairs nearby, passing through the branches of a tall willow. He took these down to the level of the road, where cars were swinging through a bend on the lake’s edge at a speed he thought unwise. He skipped across nervously, casting a glance up at the elevated path where he had been a moment before.

  Now he was on the shore of the lake, the geyser of the fountain spearing into the sky, high above him. The sky. Oh no oh no oh no. He stepped around some footpath blocks that were roped off for repair; the grass slipped under his feet, and he looked behind to see that he was leaving dark prints in the remnant frost. A woman hurried past in jogging gear, pushing a pram. Her ponytail bounced through the back of a baseball cap as she ran. She flashed him a nervous smile and was gone.

  Guess what I just did in your name.

  He was walking east now, a park on his left and the lake on his right. His feet were beginning to hurt: the shoes were good for a press conference but not much chop over distance. The leather was covered in blades of grass and his feet were wet and cold in their thin socks. He sat down on the concrete lip at the edge of the water and the cold now began to seep in through his trousers and spread over his arse. He untied each shoe carefully and laid them one beside the other. Then he unpeeled his wet socks and stuffed each in a shoe, debating momentarily which one had come from which foot. His toes were pale and soggy. He wasn’t entirely happy with the placement of the shoes. He shuffled the right one a little so they were paired neatly on the concrete, the toes pointing at the fountain.

  Once he had his belt off he pondered what to do with it. He liked to coil a belt and place it inside a shoe, but the socks were in there. In the end he wound it up carefully and wedged it between the two shoes so that it couldn’t unroll.

  A cluster of cyclists came past, the expensive bikes hissing faintly through the air rather than whirring and clanging like bikes used to do. Each of the riders wore a helmet and wraparound sunglasses. A couple of them looked at him as they passed, riding with two fingers poised pistol-style over the brake levers, but none of them slowed.

  He was shivering now, although the crying had slowed to an occasional sob.

  He stood so he could remove his trousers. They came from a good suit: finely made, recently drycleaned. He folded them pleats-inward so the pockets aligned, then folded down the legs until they were pressed into a neat square. This he overlaid on the shoes. The hairs on his legs quivered in the brittle air.

  Six buttons down the front of the shirt and then two cufflinks made eight tasks for his cold fingers to fumble and resist. He slipped the cufflinks, St Augustine’s—Provehito in Altum, into a trouser pocket. Folding the shirt was more complex but it was a skill practised over many a long trip: rowing regattas with formal commitments, trade delegations. Coathangers. The world’s most ubiquitous implement; always elusive exactly when you need one. He succeeded in approximating the way the shirt might have arrived in its packaging. Difficult without pins, but close enough. He placed it on top of the trousers.

  His head throbbed as he stood upright again, but he felt now that the worst of it was behind him. He was in good shape, yes, good shape.

  The boxer shorts were cotton. Pale blue and pinstriped, as he liked them. He wasn’t so concerned about them, so he tossed them loosely on the top of the pile.

  Cassius stood to his full height on the footpath and drew in a deep breath of the clean, cold air. He let it out slowly, allowing his fingers to curl and uncurl. Across the water he could still see Parliament House, the hopeful sweep of its flagpole and the bright façade in the hillside. He didn’t envy the people who had to work in there.

  There were noises behind him. He looked around to see a small crowd had gathered nearby. Keeping themselves at a safe distance, although from what particular danger he couldn’t imagine. A teenage boy was holding up a phone. Filming him, he guessed—people filmed him sometimes. He found himself talking to the boy, though he was having trouble following the conversation. The boy’s expression was changing from amusement to discomfort; he was backing away. The other faces in the crowd didn’t betray any real concern; only a dumb, bovine curiosity.

  He looked up to where the land met the sky. Out there, the tortured eucalypts kept vigil beyond the oaks and elms of the pasted-on empire. They watched from the ridges, out wide in the plains. In a thousand years they’d be down here again, erupting through the concrete after all this had passed into memory.

  The first step, down off the concrete and into the water, was so cold that it felt hot. Both feet suffered this shock before they surrendered to numbness, making it hard for him to feel the stones on the bottom among the velvety silt. As he shuffled forward a few steps he could see his feet were making muddy swirls in the clear water. The ducks came towards him, and he smiled because they thought he was a benefactor of some kind. He was nothing of the sort, of course, and he shushed them away with his hands.

  He felt awkward about the water reaching his balls—that moment when he’d squealed and retreated as a kid at the beach. He gritted his teeth and strode forward. It was as bracing as he’d thought it would be, and he let out a gasp. There was some muffled laughter from behind him. Never mind them.

  As his chest submerged the muscles around his ribcage contracted forcefully. His hands finned to keep him balanced. The cold took his breath away, but there was a strange relationship between the temperatures of air and water, and the parts of him that were underwater felt more comfortable than those exposed to the air.

  He never dived under, never heaved a giant breath to prepare for immersion. He walked steadily onwards through the lake as the ground fell away beneath his feet. He looked around briefly as the surface tension made bubble noises in his ears, saw the trees and the park, the traffic above on the bridge, the fountain and the House on the hill. He turned a little and he could see the onlookers, a larger crowd now, people slowing their walk and stopping to join them, people on phones. A child wheeling a tricycle in a precarious beeline.

  A long, slow exhalation to ensure he didn’t float. The water had frozen his eyeballs but he made sure not to blink.

  It was Saturday morning in Australia.

  His head wasn’t hurting at all now.

  LATE MORNING, SATURDAY

  Parliament House, Canberra

  When she walked into the office at ten-fifteen on election day, Stella Mullins was surprised to find the lights on. She’d expected everyone would be out voting, checking polling stations or getting ready for the night to come. Maybe the minister had been in last night; she hoped not, because he hadn’t been looking well lately. The pressure must be awful, she thought. No wonder he smashed the phone.

 
; Stella was wearing jeans and boots, a Parramatta Eels top under a puffer: the clothes she liked to wear and couldn’t between Monday and Friday. She was heading out to Goulburn after lunch to stay with the cousins and she wanted to make sure the minister had his briefing notes and his timetable sorted for Monday. Tasks she could clear by email, of course. But she knew he liked a handwritten list sometimes. A joke and a smiley face.

  She sat herself at her desk, turned the radio up loud and logged on. The screensaver was a shot of her nephew Charlie waterskiing at Tumut. In the arc of the spray from his ski the icons lined themselves up as the system booted.

  One of them was flashing.

  She squinted at it: it was an icon she hadn’t used before and it took her a moment to recognise it. The video conferencing. When she clicked on it the screen filled with a coloured panel: tools and options along the top, and a large empty box in the centre containing a one-line entry. The system had made a recording. She recognised today’s date, but it started at 1:06 a.m. and ran until it timed out automatically at the three-hour mark. Even measured by the minister’s odd working habits, it was an unusual time to be fiddling with the conferencing system.

  She checked for the remote. It had moved from beside her thesaurus, where she’d put it after last week’s installation. It now lay at a haphazard angle by the bright plastic filing tray. She was someone who by habit squared everything on her desk. This was not her.

  By now she was curious but still not concerned. Was this her business? Plenty of what went on in that room was not her business, but this, she figured, was another example of the minister’s fraught relationship with technology. She’d have to take him through the manual.

  She double-clicked the entry and waited. The screen now showed the interior of the minister’s office. The couch. A figure on the couch, backlit by the table lamp, who was not the minister. She leaned forward in disbelief, scrolled on the speaker icon until the volume was turned up to full.

  The man on the couch was the prime minister.

  In half an hour, Stella Mullins had heard the entire conversation between Cassius Calvert and the prime minister. She’d watched the PM leave the room, tailing his suit coat over one shoulder, had seen Cassius disappear off-screen into the bathroom and return to slump in the chair behind his desk, dazed and broken. She had watched him sit there, running his fingers endlessly through his hair and sobbing. She fast-forwarded through the remainder of the recording and she could see that he never moved. Tears ran down her own cheeks: she would later reflect that she was crying not just for him but for the impossible situation he’d placed her in.

  She dialled his number—the mobile she’d given him—and it rang out loud in his office. She stuck her head around the corner and saw the room was vacant. There was an empty beer bottle on the coffee table. Wherever he was, she had no doubt he would be in terrible distress. She tried to calm her racing mind and work out what to do about this recording before she started thinking about finding the minister.

  She clicked back to the home screen of the software and looked at the settings. Lights, Zoom, Volume, Save To, Live Play, Share Level.

  Share Level. She tried to remember what the technician had told her about the system as she clicked on the words: ‘Share level’ is who gets to see the video.

  A list appeared: Private, Archive Only, Administrator, Ministerial Staff, Cabinet. None of these was highlighted.

  The last option on the list was highlighted, but the thought of it paralysed her.

  LATE NIGHT, SATURDAY

  Sydney

  The rich blue velvet curtain. The flags again, always the flags. Flags that will never feel a breeze, made to be hung indoors and propped with clips and tape.

  The prime minister-elect stands behind a lectern badged with the hotel’s logo. It has been a long day but, framed between those flags, he is perfectly attired and groomed. He plucks a folded speech from his pocket and sweeps his glasses onto his nose.

  The crowd is crammed into the room and it swells and it stirs, individual voices calling above the ambient sound. The PM smiles in recognition of some of them, raising and lowering his palms to indicate he needs silence. But he can’t help smiling. The work is done, the faithful seek their reward.

  ‘My friends…’

  Hysteria takes over. They are his friends, all of them.

  ‘My friends.’

  They want to hear it. They want to hear it so much that they contain themselves to create a silence into which he can deliver the words.

  ‘I can confirm that we have been re-elected.’

  Uproar. The camera flashes sparkle blue-white over the darkened floor like the night sky is inverted. Balloons and streamers appear from nowhere.

  He waits patiently for a full thirty seconds while the release of ecstasy takes its course. They chant his name and he grins in delighted amazement from one side of the room to the other.

  ‘You obviously enjoyed hearing it, so let me say it again: I can confirm that we have been re-elected.’

  Another barrage of applause. Someone wolf-whistles with piercing effect.

  ‘The Honourable Leader of the Opposition called me several moments ago to concede the result and to wish me well, and I thank him for his good grace in doing so.’

  Polite clapping. This doesn’t interest them at all, but it’s due recognition of the niceties.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have been handed a generous mandate. A majority of five seats and another four from which we can anticipate some success in the days to come. The men and women of Australia have given us their approval to continue our reforming work on behalf of this great nation.’

  A forest of extended arms holding smartphones, their screens made blue by the curtain backdrop.

  ‘I do not take this result, as one of my predecessors infamously did, as a victory only for the true believers. I take it as a victory for all Australians, and we will strive as hard for the people who voted against us as for the people who voted for us. We are a great nation, a lucky and affluent nation, made greater year after year by our hard work and our fundamental decency. Challenges are thrown at us and we prevail by applying our toil, our common sense and our values.

  ‘Managing a growing economy is one such challenge. Educating the children of tomorrow is another. And so too is protecting ourselves and our borders from those who would do us harm. It has been difficult—difficult and painful—to enact a border integrity regime which is deliberately harsh in its operation, but we have done it for the good of all Australians, and you have willingly joined us in that vital project. I value our conversations around border protection, and I’m committed to better outcomes going forward.’

  There’s another outburst of cheering, because all of this makes perfect sense on its surface.

  ‘Now—yes, thank you, thank you—now one person in my Cabinet above all others has had to carry the burden of that difficulty and…’

  He falters, lowers his eyes and holds a finger against his lips. A hush falls.

  ‘…and you saw the price of that commitment this morning. I speak of course of Cassius Calvert: Olympian, Minister for Border Integrity and a great Australian.’

  Thunderous applause. His raised hands call for restraint.

  ‘Who knows, ladies and gentlemen. Who knows what pressures he was under? Maybe some explanation will emerge in the coming days and weeks. We’re talking about my good friend here. My mate, and I am hurting right now. And to those commenters online who saw fit to mock his obvious distress, I say to you—politicians are fallible human beings. Underneath the stereotypes that have built up, we are real people with fears and aspirations. We laugh and cry like you do. We worry for our children in the night like you do. We hope for a better future, just like you do. Our collective ranks are not a faceless mass: we are people, real and hurting. Perhaps it would be fitting to think about that before you deride us.’

  The silence hangs for just a second as he finishes. Then it’s punctu
red by tentative clapping at the darkened margins of the room. Others join and a tide swells. Before long it is unanimous and deafening. Arms upraised, the crowd pounds out its rapture.

  Perhaps in response to the surge of ecstasy, a cannon fires a plume of coloured glitter over their heads. It swirls and settles on their shoulders, in their hair. Some look to the person next to them, a faint crease of confusion in their smiles, answered by a shrug. The PM can indulge himself in a little oratory.

  But now something is happening in the room that differentiates the punters from the invited media. While the revellers are looking up at the sparkling fallout, scooping handfuls of it to throw again, the journalists are looking at their phones. One of them taps another on the shoulder and points at the screen. Another runs for the door, phone in an outstretched hand as if it will guide her. Before long there are enough of them with a finger in one ear and their phone pressed to the other that bystanders are beginning to stare.

  The entire room has turned its collective back on the prime minister-elect and his speech fumbles its way to a forgettable end. His eyes scan the room nervously. An aide leans in and whispers in his ear before guiding him from the lectern and away to the exit.

  In her cubicle outside the empty office of Cassius Calvert MP, Minister for Border Integrity, Stella Mullins sits at her desk. Her face is in her hands. Tears run between the bases of her fingers and down to her wrists as the sobs roll through her body. She has her earphones on, the cord snaking to her mobile on the desk. The phone is streaming a live feed from the victory party in Sydney.

  The only light in the room is the white glow from her terminal, the last screen she opened.

  The final option on the distribution list for the video of the previous night. The option that tortured and baffled and terrified her for so many hours. Until she could stand it no more and she laid the cursor over it and pressed the enter key, just as the prime minister-elect was confecting his grief over the loss of his Minister for Border Integrity.