Brother Fish

by Bryce Courtenay

  This resentment of the Chinese who stayed behind after the gold rush caused the politicians of the day to focus on the fact that the celestials had opened opium dens in Sydney, largely for use by their own kind. They asserted that these devilishly wicked opium dens were a conspiracy by the celestials to reduce the young female population of the city to dependence on the poppy. In doing so, their sweet maidenhood was supposedly rendered into the lascivious clutches of the Chinese, who, having used them to satisfy their own carnal appetites, would then employ these hapless innocents as prostitutes for their own gain. This accusation was based on the fact that many young Sydney prostitutes smoked opium, just as today many of the same profession use heroin.

  As Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan had pointed out later when we discussed the book, ‘Double standards are a prerequisite in the business of politics, Jack. Outcomes are seldom brought about for the good of the people, but invariably for the benefit of enhancing a political career or maintaining a political party in power. When the two ideas coincide, this is considered a fortunate accident. When a political leader arrives among his people who doesn’t put his own self-interest or that of his party above those he represents, then we think of him as a great man and raise a statue in the park to his memory. Those very same politicians who called for the return of the Chinese to their homeland wouldn’t have dreamed of standing up in parliament and calling for the closure of Sydney’s notorious sly grog shops or the banning of opium-based cough mixture or children’s soothing syrup. For them to do so would have quickly terminated their careers. Politicians may be vainglorious and self-serving, but they all have a well-developed sense of survival.’

  The politicians at the time had vociferously demanded that the celestials be sent packing by being forced to return to China. It was here that the idea of the White Australia Policy had been born. It would take another generation before, at the time of Federation, the policy was written into law. Fifty years on it remained unaltered and immovable, tenaciously clinging to the layers of prejudice carefully constructed in the emotional education of most Australians.

  Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan called our campaign to allow Jimmy to stay ‘Admission Impossible’. ‘We might as well know what we’re up against, Jack,’ she announced. ‘If we accept that the most obdurate position will be taken by the forces of evil then we will not become disillusioned. When the fight gets hard and we keep on butting our heads against an adamantine wall of government intransigence, we must never let them see us emotionally affected and must remain strong and resolute at all times.’ It was her way of saying that, come what may, we should keep our cool and never give up.

  We started with a small piece of luck when we discovered that Jimmy didn’t have to go back to Japan to be demobbed – he could take his discharge from the army at the US consulate in Melbourne. In the meantime, posing as a journalist, which I suppose she was, being the owner of the Gazette, Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan began gathering background information. We discovered that after the scare of the fall of Singapore in World War II and the possibility at the time of a Japanese invasion, Australia’s population of seven million had been seen as dangerously inadequate. The nation embarked on a strong, almost desperate push to increase its population. Migrants were coming in from far and wide under the ‘populate or perish’ incentive initiated by the immigration minister, Arthur Calwell, in 1945. While we hadn’t seen any of the effects of this on the island it seemed just about anyone could come in, so we were terrifically encouraged that things might have changed. The next piece of good news was that ever since the war, US ex-servicemen were to be considered one of the categories the government was anxious to encourage to immigrate.

  ‘Whacko!’ I exclaimed, when Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan told me this.

  ‘Don’t get your hopes up too far, Jack. We’ll just have to wait and see,’ she cautioned.

  But it seemed her caution was misplaced. When she rang the Commonwealth immigration officer in Hobart he checked that Jimmy had a visitor’s visa, and when she told him that Jimmy was an American and a Korean War veteran and wanted to remain in Australia – immigrate, that is – he sounded quite encouraging. ‘He’s Category A, shouldn’t be too much trouble. You’ll need to come into the office to complete the forms and we’ll have to do a check on his background.’

  ‘We only have one worry,’ I said to Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan when she told me what the immigration official had said. ‘Jimmy’s past life has not been without the odd incident. On the other hand, the judge said if he went to Korea they’d wipe his reform-school history and later street-gang convictions from the records and he’d be a cleanskin.’

  ‘Let’s hope for his sake the judge kept his word,’ she answered, adding, ‘though I can’t imagine James doing anything truly disgraceful.’

  Buoyed by the news of American ex-servicemen being in a priority immigration category, we still hadn’t told Jimmy about the White Australia Policy. ‘No point in jumping the gun. Hopefully, he’ll never have to know,’ I said to Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan.

  We took the Douglas DC3 to Launceston then the bus to Hobart, staying at the same boarding house we’d been at for my medal ceremony. Nothing is very far from anything else in Hobart, so the following morning the three of us walked to the immigration office on the ground floor of the Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Society at 97 Macquarie Street. Jimmy and I were dressed in our army uniforms, me hoping the ribbons on our chests would impress the immigration officer. Blokes like him might just know what they meant. Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan wore the same summer suit she’d worn at the medal ceremony, only she wore short white gloves and was without her straw hat with the pheasant feather. She saw me glance at her silvery-blonde hair as we left the boarding house. ‘Women don’t wear hats when they mean business,’ she said quietly to me, out of Jimmy’s hearing. I was pretty confident that our visit would be a good one, and so was surprised at the note of caution in her voice.

  The office turned out to be small and crowded and seemed pretty busy with clerks coming and going, calling out names from the reception desk. The receptionist, a thin woman in her fifties, wore heavy-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses with her dyed black hair pulled back into a severe bun on the top of her head. I glanced at Jimmy. ‘Gobblin’ spider,’ I teased, grinning.

  Jimmy grinned back. ‘Spider got dem big googly eyes but ain’t got no legs,’ he said, out of the corner of his mouth.

  I approached the desk and the receptionist looked up at me without interest. ‘Yes?’ she said.

  ‘We have an appointment with Mr Cuffe.’ Then I added gratuitously, ‘It’s about my friend here, migrating. My name is Jack McKenzie – I’m the sponsor.’

  She removed her glasses and, moving her head to one side so she could see past me, looked over at Jimmy and Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan. ‘The soldier or the lady?’ she asked.

  I grinned. ‘The soldier.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ she then asked.

  ‘Yes, of course. We phoned Mr Cuffe from Queen Island.’ This bird’s real strange, I thought to myself.

  She looked down at her appointment book. ‘Mr Oldcorn? Mr James Pentecost Oldcorn?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  She bent with her mouth close to a small intercom on her desk and, pressing the button, announced, ‘Mr Oldcorn and his sponsor have arrived, Mr Cuffe.’

  ‘Sponsors,’ I said quickly. She glanced up, sighed, and pressed the button again. ‘Sponsors,’ she added in an impatient voice.

  A crackly male voice came back. ‘Send them in, please.’

  The receptionist didn’t rise, but instead pointed to a door to the side of the desk. ‘You may go in.’

  I opened the door, allowing Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan to enter first, then Jimmy. The bloke behind the desk facing us was busy writing and I could see he had a bald spot on the top of his head that resembled a monk’s tonsure. He was big – or rather he was fat – sitting in his shirt sleeves, and had those elasticised metal bands halfway up his arm keeping his cu
ffs clear. When he glanced up I saw the bushiest eyebrows I’d ever seen, even bushier than Bob Menzies, the prime minister. He started to smile at Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan as he rose ponderously from the desk to greet her. Then he saw Jimmy enter the room, and his smile abruptly disappeared. His mouth formed a distinct ‘Oh’, although he remained silent. Oh shit! What now? I thought.

  Cuffe’s manner became formal and official as he indicated the three chairs in front of his desk. ‘Please, be seated.’ He returned to his seat without shaking hands and began to shuffle a pile of papers, finally bringing one to the top.

  ‘Lovely day,’ Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan ventured. ‘You have a nice glimpse of the water.’

  Cuffe looked surprised, and glanced in the direction of the office window. ‘Never look at it,’ he said abruptly. I could tell right from the start things were not going to go well. He cleared his throat and addressed Jimmy directly. ‘Mr Oldcorn, I was just wondering, what is your ancestry?’

  Jimmy looked surprised. ‘My ancestry?’

  Cuffe cut in quickly. ‘I notice that your, er, skin is a honey colour, and I was just wondering what proportion of you is European and what proportion is, well, other?’

  ‘Dat a hard question, sir. I’s an orphan, born and bred.’

  ‘It is African, isn’t it?’ Cuffe persisted.

  ‘I suppose,’ Jimmy said, bemused. He glanced at us. ‘Most American Negro, dey come from Africa long time back.’

  ‘I see,’ said Cuffe, now coldly correct. ‘I must ask you to do a dictation test.’

  Jimmy smiled, obviously relieved. ‘Sure, I guess that’s pretty normal under the circumstances,’ he said, his grammar and enunciation correct so that I was forced to smile.

  ‘In English?’ Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan asked, frowning.

  ‘In the language of our choosing,’ the immigration official replied, and spoke into the intercom. ‘Send in Helmut, please.’

  Helmut entered the room and greeted us with a pronounced European accent. Mr Cuffe handed Helmut a folder and pushed a notepad and a freshly sharpened pencil in front of Jimmy. ‘Would you please write down what you hear, Mr Oldcorn.’

  ‘Sure,’ Jimmy said, sounding confident as usual. He picked up the pencil and waited as Helmut began to read slowly.

  ‘Das Urteil

  Es war an einem Sonntagvormittag im schönsten Früjahr. Georg Bendemann, ein junger Kaufmann, saß in seinem Privatzimmer im ersten Stock eines der niedrigen, leichtgebauten Häuser, die entlang des Flusses in einer langen Reihe, fast nur in der Höhe und Färbung unterschieden, sich hinzogen . . .’

  Helmut looked up at last, just as Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan said, ‘Er hatte gerade einen Brief an einen sich im Ausland befindenden Jugendfreund beendet . . . That’s terribly unfair, Mr Cuffe. That passage is German – Franz Kafka’s opening paragraph to The Judgement.’

  Cuffe looked surprised, but quickly recovered. ‘I was not aware that you were taking the dictation,’ he said officiously, and then looked over at Jimmy who lifted his pencil from the paper in front of him.

  ‘Hey, man – yoh guys really do yo’ homework, sir. How yoh know I live wid dem German folk?’ He handed his paper to Helmut.

  Cuffe looked concerned and then confused as Helmut handed him Jimmy’s dictation with a nod. As for me, I sat there dumbfounded.

  ‘How’d I go?’ Jimmy asked. ‘I might have missed one or two o’ dem dots, but I think da rest’s okay.’

  ‘You seem to understand German,’ Cuffe said, giving Jimmy a mirthless smile. ‘But I’m afraid we require you to take another dictation test.’

  ‘This is iniquitous!’ Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan exclaimed. I could see she was close to losing her cool. ‘Then there’ll be a third, until . . .’ her angry voice broke off.

  Cuffe shrugged. ‘It’s the law, madam,’ he said.

  ‘You mean the White Australia Policy, don’t you?’

  ‘There is no such thing – only the dictation test,’ Cuffe said evenly. Then, handing the pad and pencil back to Jimmy, he nodded to Helmut, who began reading.

  ‘Le Colonel Chabert

  Allons! encore notre vieux carrick—’

  ‘Those are the opening words to Balzac’s Colonel Chabert,’ Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan interrupted with more than a hint of sarcasm. ‘Perhaps, Mr Cuffe, you’d like James to do Cantonese next. Perhaps the Chinese Communist Manifesto?’

  Jimmy could probably do Cantonese, I thought to myself. But Helmut continued to read the passage from Balzac, the French words coming from his mouth sounding like complete gibberish to me, but then so had the German. Later, Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan would tell us that while Helmut spoke good German, his French pronunciation was so bad that any Frenchman listening would have had difficulty understanding him.

  Jimmy placed the pencil down on the blank pad. ‘I don’t speak no French language, sir.’ He glanced at Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan and smiled. ‘Hey! Maybe Cantonese I can do.’

  Cuffe actually had the temerity to look relieved. ‘I’m afraid you have failed the dictation test, Mr Oldcorn, and, in accordance with the law, you are ineligible to remain in Australia when your visa expires. Should you remain in Australia after that you will be a “prohibited immigrant” and liable for deportation.’

  ‘You bastard!’ I shouted, jumping to my feet and grabbing him by the front of the shirt and pulling him halfway across the desk, his fat stomach jammed against the far edge so I couldn’t pull him any further. ‘I fought for shitbags like you!’

  Cuffe looked terrified, though I wasn’t near his size. But then I felt Jimmy’s hand on my arm. ‘Dat okay, Brother Fish. Take it easy, man.’

  I released Cuffe, who pulled back, smoothing the front of his shirt. ‘I’m only following instructions, Mr McKenzie,’ he whined.

  Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan rose, her voice icy-cold. ‘You ought to follow your conscience, sir. That’s exactly what the SS officers said at Belsen and Treblinka. “I was only following instructions.” Ha! You perfidious and shameless excuse for a man!’

  But by this time Cuffe, realising he wasn’t going to be physically attacked further, had regained his composure. ‘I’m a busy man, madam. Please leave my office,’ he said, with a peremptory wave of the back of his hand, not bothering to rise from his desk.

  But it wasn’t over yet. Jimmy, still standing and towering above Cuffe, now bent over and placed his huge hands on Cuffe’s desk, leaning over the bureaucrat. The immigration official pulled back hastily, the back of his chair banging into the wall behind him.

  ‘Dese folk, dey been lovin’ and kind to me, sir. Dey done show me more love den I evah done have before in mah life. Yoh and yo’ kind cain’t take dat away from dis yella nigger – not now, not evah!’ Cuffe shuffled in his chair, and in the process scattered the papers from his desk all over the carpet. Jimmy turned away with a grim smile. ‘Come, we leave now. Dis honky, he need to change his britches.’

  So much for remaining strong and resolute. What was it again? Something like ‘We must never let them see us emotionally affected and must remain strong and resolute at all times.’ Or my pathetic version – come what may, we must keep our cool and never give up. What a joke! We’d failed at the very first hurdle and Jimmy was the only one among us who’d kept his temper and remained calm.

  With both of us fuming on the footpath outside, Jimmy said quietly, ‘Brother Fish, maybe we got to make ourselves some dif-fer-rent plans.’

  ‘Whaddyamean?’ I yelled. ‘Mate, it’s not over yet!’ I pointed up at the window of the insurance building. ‘That fat fuckwit’s not gunna get the better of us!’ For once Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan didn’t pull me up for my language.

  Jimmy shook his head sadly. ‘I had me a good, good time on yo’ island, Brother Fish. It time now to go home.’

  ‘James, you’re sounding mawkish,’ Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan said sharply. ‘Jack and I disgraced ourselves in there. We let you down, I’m afraid. I apologise, and promise it won’t happen again. So both of you pull yourselves to
gether, please.’ Then she smiled, her tone of voice changing. ‘Come along, you two – we have a morning tea to go to, and there’s no time to lose.’

  We looked at each other. ‘You’d like a cup of tea?’ I asked. In my mind I was thinking more of a beer – or ten.

  ‘No, of course not! We’ve been invited to morning tea.’

  ‘By whom? Where?’ I asked, puzzled.

  ‘Curiosity killed the cat, Jack. You’ll just have to wait and see.’ She turned to Jimmy. ‘James, do you think you could find a taxi?’

  ‘Yes, Nicole ma’am,’ Jimmy said, moving away to look for a cruising cab.

  With Jimmy out of earshot I fell to pieces and started to weep. I didn’t mean to – I didn’t even know it was coming. I just fell apart. ‘But he’s my mate – without him I’da been dead. Fair go, you don’t let a mate down like this. You just don’t do it!’

  ‘Pull yourself together please, Jack. James has found a taxi.’

  The taxi pulled into the familiar drive leading to Government House. Before I could open my mouth to ask what the hell was happening, Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan said, ‘We’re having morning tea with Lady Louise.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The governor’s wife, Lady Louise Cross.’

  ‘How’d you manage to swing that?’

  ‘Manage? One doesn’t manage, Jack. Occasionally one has to use a little judicious influence.’

  ‘You know the governor’s wife?’