Chapter 7 City of light

Swimming inside a novel like moving about in a big room. Walking through a world of imaginary characters like in a virtual soap opera. Listening to their conversations. Witnessing their personal moments, their monologues. Tracing their movements. Conventional narratives, love stories ending with marriage, good triumphing over evil. But wanting to write a novel which has a point, in the tradition of the serial novel, concerned with social justice.

Rini sits with Alex in her study. They are surrounded by Rini's papers and books. There are boxes of papers and books on shelves which run floor to ceiling, filing cabinets, stacks of papers on the floor, notes pinned all over the casing of the computer and the fronts of the drawers of the filing cabinet. The room is drenched with light from the white sheets which are hung over the windows to screen the direct sun. The back of the closed door full of postcards, drawings and small art.

"But we are concerned primarily with social justice," says Rini. "That's what our group is about. Not about socialising or therapy. Not about keeping ourselves busy. Not about producing art which is solely commercially successful or fashionable. It's overwhelming when you think about it, the vastness of human activity, the variety and multiplicity. If you want to make a cross-sectional analysis of anything at any one time, there are so many factors to consider in any single instance. Everywhere in the world at this moment, think how much is happening right now, not just what is exposed in the media. Like everything, everyone. How can any research every really get to the bottom of it. Consider a relationship of any kind between any two people. Think of all their activities, their artefacts, their background knowledge, their background - family, education. The history they bring to any situation, their personal characteristics, their synchronism with the world around them, the political factors, the society they live in, the books they've read. Then there's everything which can pass between them, the power relations between them, the positions they adopt towards each other, towards others, the immediate context, the wider social context. It's endless. When you go into it, you discover more and more. Like pulling on the tip of a dream as you wake up, remembering the dream, then remembering the previous dream and the previous dream and more and more. Each dream, complex and intricate in itself but only lasting a few minutes."

Alex leaned forward to stub out his cigarette.

"Like visual patterns," he said, "as complex as you like."

Suddenly the door to the study opened and a young man appeared. He had the same curly black hair as Rini, the same fine hooked nose, the same large brown eyes.

"Is this the meeting of the Fourth International?" he asked.

"My brother Jack," said Rini to Alex. "Jack, Alex."

"Alyosha?" Jack asked.

"More like Alexandroglu," said Rini.

The intense sunlight on the white tiles dazzling in the eyes, then the darkness of the living room with its cool browns and greens. The cool harbour breeze wafting through the windows, through the whole building. Refreshing in the intense heat and humidity. Tan working on translations in Billie's big room with papers spread on the floor. Billie sitting at her workbench making a mobile for Rini's birthday out of wire and tissue paper with her long-nosed jewellery pliers.

New Year's Eve. They stood and watched the fireworks over the city through the casuarinas. Sydney Tower flaming red purple. The soft shower of light falling from the roadway of the Harbour Bridge like a curtain across the harbour, dividing the east from the west. A few hundred years ago, people were sitting around here beside the wetlands, catching fish, opening oysters, eating around the campfire softly glowing under a million stars.

"Some of the ghosts of the past are really ghosts," Billie said to Tan

"You mean dead," said Tan. "Well, they can't haunt you once they're dead."

Rini walked away from the camp site and up to the top of the headland. Dawn was breaking over the sea but the sun was shielded behind the pink clouds which stretched all the way back to the mountains in the west. There was purple-grey sand between the yellowing tufts of grass, the sun and the wind returning the lawn to its natural state. She went down the concrete steps which led to the sea pool at the base of the cliff. The sea was swelling over the walls of the pool which had remnants of blue paint along its concrete walkway. She slipped into the water, still freezing from the Antarctic currents streaming high up the east coast. She swam a couple of laps of breaststroke keeping her ears out of the water then started swimming freestyle. The sea foam washed over the surface of the water. Below her she could see the rocks covered with yellow green mosses and small fish cruising slowly and unafraid. Then the chasm in the floor of the pool, suddenly so deep and so black that an involuntary groan rose from her chest and propelled her back to the shallow end. She stood shivering on the rocks watching another swimmer continuing to do laps. In a still rock pool near the cliff, a snowy white seagull was floating in a sheet of pink silver.

When she returned to the camp site, the birds in the trees around the tents were twittering but there was no movement from the tents. She looked inside the blue tent and saw Alex and his two brothers in their clothes from the day before, still asleep. Each one so different. Then she went to the next, larger tent which had two rooms. In the first room were her sister and their cousin sleeping on separate blow-up beds, with sheets covering them. In the second room were her parents. Her father's head was thrown back and his mouth was open, snoring. She moved to the third tent and crawled in next to her partner, George who was lying awake looking out the opening of the tent at the view of the headland.

"I'm worried that an article I wrote, some information I used, could harm Billie," said Rini. "I made speculative reference to material which was in the files Billie got hold of. Could those people be reading my work, listening to papers I give at conferences? Would they then connect me to Billie and Billie to her job?"

"Information is useless unless it is used," said George.

Rini lay down with her head on his shoulder and gazed past his chest hair at the waves breaking at the foot of the headland.

Billie stood in the Art section of the library with her head bent to the side reading the spines of the books on metal casting. She found the section she wanted in a book and stood reading. When she lifted her head again, James was leaning against the end of the shelves, staring at her. He was wearing a cream linen suit and a brown silk T-shirt.

"So you decided to come out with your Asian girlfriend at the Mardi Gras," he said. "That's very appropriate."

Billie stared at the drops of perspiration on his upper lip, suspended in the stubble of his moustache.

"That was a man I was with at the Mardi Gras," she said.

Then he looked down at her loose T-shirt, at the curves of her stomach and breasts.

"Hey, I hope you're not pregnant. That's miscegenation. You could produce some very confused kids."

"Confused like me, you mean?"

"Well, you do have an identity problem, don't you? I mean, no one ever picks you for an Australian, do they?"

••••••••••

"My uncle's my only family in Sydney," Billie said to Tan.

They looked through the doorway of the workshop. The whole place was brown and dark and stacked to the ceiling with rolls of leather. Yellowing tags hung from the ends of the rolls. In the centre of the room was a big cutting table. Around the walls beneath the shelves were benches cluttered with lasts, small anvils and tools. Along one side of the central table were chests of drawers with transparent fronts containing rivets, needles, thonging, punches, tacks, knives and other leatherworking gear. At the back of the room, there was a doorway to a brightly lit room beyond. A little old man with a hunched back was sitting in the room on a tall stool working at a last under a strong lamp. As they stepped through the main entrance, a buzzer sounded and the man looked up over his half glasses.

He came to greet them, grabbing hold of Billie's hands in his and squeezing them tightly. His small brown face creasing heavily as he extended his arm around Tan and Billie, pushing them into the back room and onto an old leather lounge. He made some tea and sat smiling at them from his tall stool.

"There's an interesting double-speak going on right now," he said. "The government's playing good cop, bad cop. One hand deals out racism while the other embraces the cosmopolitan. They can even contradict each other if necessary. They want it on the agenda of the election but they want it as a hidden issue, just like in the last election campaign."

He pulled out a Greek language newspaper and flourished it in front of them.

"These bastards," he said. "Low standards of journalism are not confined to the English language newspapers. I might as well be reading a cereal packet for all the analysis it gives me."

Then he flung the paper into a garbage bin full of leather offcuts and started rummaging around in some drawers under his table.

"I must show you this," he said. "I found this old folder of stuff at home the other day. I forgot I even kept it."

He produced an plastic envelope and started leafing through old newspaper clippings and letters. He found the paper he was looking for and took it out to show them.

"My credentials, young man," he said to Tan and laughed as he offered it to them.

On a piece of yellowed paper was a small red rat stamp and some writing underneath it which read, "Go back where you came from, wog scum".

Billie smiled and then took a folded piece of paper from her shoulder bag. On it was written, in thick black letters, WERE ONTO YOU BOONG LOVER.

"It's a family tradition," she said.

A man was standing among the casuarinas with a small fluffy dog groomed to look like a powder puff. His hands were buried in Tui's neck fur.

"Is he your dog?" he asked Billie. "You can see the breeding, can't you. He's a smart little border collie, hey boy. Come here boy. Good dog. He's got a lovely muzzle. Beautiful markings. Look at those feathers on his legs. Hey, shake hands, shake hands. Good dog. Yes, he's a gorgeous boy, he's a fine specimen of a dog, aren't you."

"His mother was a border collie but his father was something else," said Billie.

"Oh, yeah? Kelpie? Cattle dog? German shepherd?"

"I think he was a mongrel," said Billie, studying Tui's head as he tilted it sideways and gave her his border collie look out of the corner of his eye.

"Oh, well, you could probably breed it out," said the man as he knelt to pick up his own dog's tiny turds in a plastic bag.

Tan and Billie worked the same floors together on the 8pm shift. At break time, they stopped to drink from a thermos of iced water. They looked out the windows at the lighted office blocks formed into dazzling canyons, the moon rising in the east above them. As they put away their thermos and biscuits, they heard someone unlocking the glass front doors of the office suite. Their supervisor appeared around some filing cabinets.

"The boss wants to speak to both of you at the end of the shift," he said. "There's been a problem with some missing files on Level 4. They got lost, what a surprise."

Then he waved to them and went back towards the lift area where a red light was flashing on the wall panel.

"Wasn't it Level 10 you took those files from?" Tan asked Billie.

As they turned back to look out at the view, they saw a helicopter circling in the eastern sky, it's lights flashing. It was beaming a searchlight down into the office blocks in readiness to land. The beam flashed across the window wall they stood behind, lighting their faces white.

 

 

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