Silences Long Gone

by Anson Cameron

  And wants to know who was blackest-skinned of the three Kunimara who came to visit my mother and did her fear of people increase in direct proportion to their blackness or in direct proportion to the justness of their cause -which may, he thinks, coincide. Did she seem scareder of that plum-black Pearl Guriwerd than of the others? Or did she treat them just the same?

  He leafs through photos of my boyhood to see what the various protagonists, he calls them, looked like and what sort of gear they got around in. Which are almost exclusively photos of people now dead standing in front of buildings now bulldozed in the shade of trees now felled. In pretty shitty gear it’s got to be said. The females in flares and bell-bottoms and velour and puffy shirts and the males in western outfits from Morrisons Travelling Menswear that was a Bedford that pulled into Hannah once a year. And he rubs his finger across Molly in her purple flares and tells me she was going to be a rare beauty, that Molly. And asks me, did she have theatrical aspirations?

  He never lets up coaxing the puniest facts from me. And each of the people I tell about becomes less real every time I give up another puny fact. Until I don’t know if I love any of them any more, but just know they happened and are a mind-boggling accumulation of puny facts.

  So when he asks me now what were Thaw’s views on this or that, or asks me the titles of those Long John Holmes videos Thaw and his old man were addicted to or what was the name of that preacher in the Philippines my mother was tuned in to, or how big was the field Molly beat in the All State Schools under-twelve hundred-metres final, I cock my head and slit my eyes and pucker my lips and wait there cocked and slit and puckered until he breaks out and asks, ‘Well?’ and then I uncock my head and open my eyes and tell him, ‘Damned if I can remember. Tried … but just can’t.’

  He delivers his first theory over a dinner of grilled baby snapper while we sit at a window table in Kolorado. Outside the window a couple of surf types are milling around his lemon-coloured MG. Reaching into it and touching the walnut dash and pushing in the chromed cigarette lighter and working the tiny gear stick and making engine-racing and gear-change noises as they do it. Every now and then he taps on the plate-glass restaurant window with his knuckle and then taps on it with his knife and when they look up shakes his fist at them to get their hands out of his MG cockpit and to keep their jean studs off his lemon duco.

  His theory is Thaw got trapped in a Jesus Trap. Like Jesus did. He thinks this is what happened to Jesus. He thinks maybe Jesus never made the Son-of-God boast. Never made the Saviour boast. Was only ever a good man. Had a genius for being just good. Like some people have a genius for just calculus. And caused, by casual conversation, a few people crippled with laziness to toss the crutches aside. Made, with some off-hand inspirational remarks, a few people blinded with apathy accept sight again.

  And word got out. Word got right around. Word grew big. The whole deal began to snowball. He got surrounded by people longing for him to be great above just good. Trapped by people insisting he be Saviour. Was bemused at first at how the whole thing had escalated. Then angry. Looked around, momentarily, for a way out. Kicked the ground and swore, ‘Jesus H. Christ.’ Swore, ‘Fuck you people and your childish needs.’ Then said, ‘Sorry, sorry. Forgive me. Slip of the tongue.’

  Took a deep breath then and said, ‘Okay, okay. I accept the mission. Take on the whole Son-Of-God contract.’ Knowing even as he said it what the Romans would think of such a claim. But shrugged his shoulders and nodded his head anyway. Said, ‘Yeah … I was sent by Him.’ Seeing he was caught on the rock of their expectation. Knowing he wasn’t prick enough at heart to get off.

  Because the Jesus Trap is designed to catch those of us who aren’t pricks at heart. Relatively few of us have a good enough heart to get caught in a Jesus Trap, the Famous Scottish-Australian Novelist tells me. Significantly, you weren’t.

  He taps on the window with his fish knife and a boy with long blond hair untwirls his cravat from around his neck and takes off his tam-o’-shanter and lays them back on the MG passenger seat and climbs out of the driver’s seat over the driver’s door and salutes the Famous Scottish-Australian Novelist through the window who shakes his fist back at him through the window and tells me, ‘Cheeky young bugger,’ and picks a snapper bone off the window and a crumb of white snapper meat and wipes the mark his fish knife made into a long smear and tells me, ‘I prefer it cooked in just lemon juice.’

  Jesus, he says, is only the most famous person to get caught in the Jesus Trap. There were a million before him and have been a million since. Thaw, he says, wasn’t a prick at heart. Got caught in the Jesus Trap. By my mother’s heartfelt thanks. By her gratitude. By her need. By her belief in him. By the way she rushed up to him to light his cigarettes. By the way she baked him Anzac biscuits. By the way she thanked him for the Glorious Silence and by the way she cried about him ending a blasphemy. By the way she tracked him in her peripheral vision and by the way she asked, ‘What do you think, Oliver?’ and hung on his silence. And maybe by the way she didn’t take off for a northern winter with some opal prospector.

  He wasn’t prick enough at heart to get free. I mean, you heard him say, ‘Fuck your mother and her childish needs.’ But in the end, when he was back in Lorne and that beautiful news reader came on the television with her tilt-of-head to tell how New South Wales had turned sharp and decisive right into an Economic Rationalist and a Law and Order government that wasn’t going to mollycoddle recidivists, he took his deep breath and he shrugged his shoulders and accepted the mission.

  The Famous Scottish-Australian Novelist dabs at his baby face with his napkin and asks me, ‘What do you think?’ and I, who have become accustomed to agreeing with the whole run of drug theories and love theories and genetically-twisted-fucker theories can only tell him back, It’s a trap-and-a-half that Jesus Trap, to trap a man with only Anzac biscuits for bait.’ And he taps the window with the second knuckle of his middle finger and jerks his thumb get off the car to a youth who is lounging on its boot there and who jerks a finger back, and he lets me not answer his question by telling me it still seems to be all the go to mollycoddle recidivists down here in Victoria.

  But that’s only the Famous Scottish-Australian Novelist’s first version of the Jesus Trap. He spends some days walking around Jean’s gallery with her and asking her questions and looking up at the paintings of beach scenes with storms boiling up over them and scenes of Lorne with fire spilling down out of the Otways onto it and spends some time leafing through the Sad Purple Dads and Sad Purple Mollys out in the back room where they are leaning against a stolen park bench and spends some time asking her more questions and she spends some time making her answers long and involved for him and not wearing bras for him and he spends some time appreciating it all.

  Then he invites me to lunch at El Cid and over bolognese unloads on me his second Jesus Trap theory, which he has come up with, he tells me, by gleaning info and gleaning insights from my beautiful lady friend.

  It’s basically the same as his first Jesus Trap theory but he has dropped my mother’s gratitude to Thaw from this one, and has dropped her need of Thaw and her belief in Thaw and her lighting his cigarettes and her thanking him for the Glorious Silence and has dropped her crying about him ending a blasphemy.

  Has replaced them all with me. Out beyond the break on my Malibu staring down through the lit green water to the ribbed sand and the rolling vines of seaweed and watching the falling curtain of sparkling sand and thinking about committing my mother to an asylum, and Thaw paddling up to me over the perfect harvest of waves and sitting astride his Tidal Warrior with his hands on his hips watching me, and asking me, ‘Mister-Couldn’t-Give-A-Shit, eh?’ and watching me silently some more despite our questions, and then telling me, ‘You poor haunted bastard.’ Has replaced my mother’s need of a saviour with mine.

  Because he didn’t do it for your mother as much as for you, he tells me. Wasn’t trapped by her need of him. Was trapped by min
e. Saw what taking my mother away from what she believed in was going to do to me. Saw what locking her up was going to do to me. And took the power to do it out of my hands.

  The Famous Scottish-Australian Novelist lays down his fork and takes up his sky-blue napkin and clasps it across his mouth and holds it there while it soaks up bolognese sauce and then runs it down over his old-growth monument and lays it down at his elbow and raps his knuckles twice on the wooden table because I’m looking hard up at the giant crab breaking out of its wicker pot on the wall. And when I look back at him takes the rapping knuckle and unfolds it into finger and points it at me and says, The big variable is what your friend Thaw knew about himself. What he believed himself to be. And there are three options,’ he tells me. ‘Three scenarios.

  ‘One is he believed he was guilty of killing that aboriginal girl in Wilpenia. Another is he knew he was innocent. The third is he just didn’t know one way or the other. Wondered about himself all these years and watched himself in mirrors all these years and even when he was approaching orgasm with whatever marginalised female he had under him at the time watched his hands to see they weren’t sliding across the sheet or across the grass or sliding down her raised arms toward her throat, and listened inward in horror for a voice that might boom Do It Do It. And spent the first hour of every day of the last decade taking apart last night’s dreams and searching for a clue … for a flashback … for a stain oozed up from a naturally black soul … or for a redemption. Just didn’t know.

  ‘Then there’s guilty If he was under the misapprehension he was guilty of that crime in Wilpenia then he didn’t have much to lose by committing the second one. Because the truth of his guilt was about to come out and they were about to offer him all those years in the clink for it. So there isn’t much sacrifice in murdering your mother. And the thing probably doesn’t even qualify as a Jesus Trap. He just did you and her a good turn and it cost him nothing because he had already made his pact. Had promised himself clink wasn’t an option.

  ‘Innocence,’ he tells me, and he takes a drink of wine and makes a pincer movement with thumb and middle finger that traps and sharpens his old-growth monument. ‘Innocence is in many ways the hardest scenario for you to cop. If he knew he was innocent … Well, let’s just say for a moment that he knew his old man, who didn’t have energy or health, apparently, to get off the sofa for a shower or for instant noodles or to change the video of Long John Holmes in College for the video of Long John Holmes in Acapulco, had found energy and health enough to get off the sofa to rape and strangle a drunk girl. And he decided not to zero the investigation in on his old man by proving himself innocent with his DNA. And after his old man was burnt to death decided this time not to zero the investigation in on his name and in on his memory by proving himself innocent with his DNA … for whatever reasons … whatever the father-son contract stipulates. Obedience? Duty? Conditioning? Biological imperative? Actual barefaced love? The same force, probably, that gets you boiling two-minute noodles for a man like that day after day. Whatever. Let the schools of thought contend. Doesn’t matter. Anyway, was driven to wear the suspicion and the harassment and the hushes in bars and the weight of it all to keep his old man’s name clean.’ Down between his tits he’s still pinching his old-growth monument sharp with thumbtip and fingertip, leaning forward and looking up close at me as he does it, twirling fingertip and thumbtip against each other now as they meet to make a mighty beardpoint.

  ‘But then, Jack,’ he tells me,’ When that auburn-haired news reader came on your TV and announced the election results and let him know his DNA test was coming … then the cover-up was over. Surely. The truth about that murder back in Wilpenia was coming no matter what. His old man’s name was about to be blackened no matter what. And he had no reason not to tell himself he’d fought the good fight, tell himself he’d done his best for his old man, tell himself he couldn’t’ve done any more. There’s no reason he shouldn’t’ve just sighed and just shrugged and then fronted up with his sleeve rolled high and his forearm veins exposed and said, “Here. Dig deep, Law Enforcers. I think you’ll find me blameless.” And accepted his innocence, and accepted a life of freedom.’

  He stops constructing that beardpoint and holds his hands out with his palms facing the roof and looks up there and smiles at the life of freedom up there. Then drops his palms slap, slap on the table top and stops smiling and leans back in his chair and looks at me and says softly so I can hardly hear, ‘Except there was you. There was your mum. There was your predicament.’

  The Famous Scottish-Australian Novelist takes a drink of his Cockatoo Ridge Chardonnay and looks up and down the length of restaurant and out across the road at the water and sighs and slumps to let me know the weight of this is on him too. Stays deflated and staring and silent out at the sea while the restaurant chinks and tinkles cutlery on china and rasps chair legs across wooden floor and gasps cappuccino out its machine and talks distracted conversations and stares at me for what my friend did to my mother and stares at him for his books and for what his liquidambar did to his shed-slab.

  Then he raises out of his slump using his chair arms and his resolve and brings his gaze in off the sea at me and asks me, ‘Do you think he knew he was innocent?’ And when I only stare back at him asks, ‘Do you want to know what I think?’ And sees I can’t answer him even if I want to because of the watching restaurant and because of what’s happening in my throat and what’s happening in my eyes and because of what would happen if I opened my mouth.

  So I look at him with my lower molars ground hard against my upper molars and my lips tight across my incisors and my eyebrows locked up. Holding on. And he tells me, ‘I’ll consider myself advised to go and get rooted. I’ll consider myself told I’m a nosy, fat prick.’ And he leans across our table and lays the palm of his right hand on the back of my left fist and gives two little squeezes that get my lower molars quivering against my upper molars and get my lips puckering out from the tight line I’m trying to hold. And in El Cid then it’s only cutlery tinkle and chair-leg rasp and cappuccino-gasp and isn’t conversation at all.

  Two weeks later he brings his first draft to town. Walks up behind me and sits down next to me on the grass in the park that runs along the beach front across the road from Lorne Realty during my lunch break and tells me he’d like to read me some excerpts. Would like me to tell him what I think. Goes and gets his Macintosh Powerbook off his MG passenger seat and opens it up onto his lap and turns it on and begins to read to me what he says are the more poignant excerpts from the hundred and twenty megabytes of what he’s written there.

  The first line he reads is, ‘They’re flying me across the country to fight a hag.’ Which I like and which I can live with, because she was a hag then, that first time I was on their jet, and was a hag for all those years before I got on their jet. Only stopped being one when I stepped onto her outrageous green lawn and she delivered her pathetic and emaciated ‘Ever, I said,’ out of the blackness behind her flywire door.

  But after that first line I see I’ve shown him one thing and he’s seen another thing … or I’ve shown him one thing and he’s seen fit to make another thing out of it. I only eat a few mouthfuls of hamburger and a half-dozen or so chips before I start tossing them for the seagulls. Little tosses that bring them in close and make their apeshit-caterwaul loud enough that he’s forced to stop reading what he’s written there and to stare at the assembled gulls and to stare at me with my chip in my hand and then watch me lob it just beyond his sensible walking shoes where it is fought over and won.

  Then he begins to shout. Through the apeshit-caterwaul of gull and the shadows they send across his liquid crystal screen he begins to shout out what he’s made of my past.

  He has Dad die of self-sacrifice so we could grow, when really he just died of cancer. And makes my mother sound lonelier than I ever saw she was. Has her spend whole days in that wardrobe in that desert. Makes Hannah a lonelier town than I ever felt i
t was. And says distance and isolation were a psychological pressure that sat on everyone who lived in it. And has Molly run in front of that ute for everywoman when she really ran in front of it by accident. And makes whatever the Kunimara say healthy with truth and makes whatever is said to them diseased with self-interest. And he leaves Adrian alive up there enforcing law and order and mortality on his town and every night praying forgiveness from Dad for not helping with his death. And has Thaw walking around Lorne with his chin high in full knowledge of his innocence. Which is never how he walked around. Full knowledge or not. Me he probably gets right.

  When I’ve thrown the last of my chips and the apeshit-caterwaul of seagull has broken into outlying squabbles I look at my watch and tell him my lunchtime is over and I’d better get back to work or Geoff Yeomans Senior will be after me on my mobile to know where I am and Geoff Yeomans Lazy, Fat, Stupid and Junior will be carping about me lying around over there in the park when I should be up and selling.

  He stops reading and turns off his Powerbook and closes it up and sharpens the old-growth monument that keeps the babyface talk at bay and asks me, ‘What do you think?’

  I want to tell him that’s not how it was. Not any of it. But I know he’ll ask me straight back, Well, how was it then? And the questions will start again. Will get tiny with intimacy.

  So all I tell him is he’s certainly made me come out of it looking like an A-1 prick. And he looks at me with his face set hard as if he’s about to ask me, ‘Where’s the lie in that?’ but looks down instead and brushes something off the top of his Powerbook and tells me, ‘Literary device.’