Читать книгу Straight Jacket - Adrian Deans - Страница 15

Instead of music, there is the sound of rushing water.

The girl with the dirty claret hair is watching me. There can only be one reason for her interest.

I leap from my chair, and I’m flying through a window — landing on the ground in a shower of shards, unharmed, and racing through familiar but unfamiliar streets, as though someone had torn to shreds the suburbs of my experience and reassembled the pieces at random. In my confusion, I run across a field, making for the back lane home. But instead of home, I see the old public toilet block at Kenley Park — an eerie sanctuary in the violet gloom before the street lights come on.

Then I hear the baritone drone of motorbikes in the distance, and I know I have to get away, but there is only the toilet block in the light. All else is darkness and shadows.

The motorbikes are getting louder, and as panic grips my heart and jaw, I lay my hand against the door. But as I do, I am aware that there is something on the other side … something I don’t want to know.

•

So, have you judged me already?

You have yet few of the facts, but perhaps my manner is enough? I don’t expect people to like me, but I do expect them to be fair as they consider my tale — which includes many good deeds as I gather together those odd threads of destiny, ignored by God, and fashion my justice.

After all, there are two types of people in this world: sculptors and clay. And when the clay loses shape it is the task of the sculptors to caress and cajole the mass back into a form pleasing to the just sensibilities of the highly evolved.

As for myself, I discovered life sculpture early in my career. I was working for a firm called Hempel Grice where there was this arsehole of a senior associate who was quite expert at taking credit for the hard work and ingenuity of the poor sods under his authority, and well on the road to making partner. I didn’t have to work with him myself, but I was aware of the impact he’d had, not least on a girl (Tanya) in whom I’d been vaguely interested at the time.

The Arsehole was a smoker and three or four times a day would disappear downstairs for a cigarette. One morning I happened to be walking through his department when all of his minions were involved in some cake-eating ritual, and I noted him heading for the lifts with his cigarettes and lighter.

Without even thinking, I walked into his office and brought up his Inbox. Immediately, I recognised the name of a major client, pressed Reply and composed the following message:

Dear X

I have decided that the partners at Hempel Grice are too much my intellectual inferiors to suffer working for them any longer. I am determined therefore to establish my own firm and would like to know that I can count on your business. You will be paying substantially more than you are now but you will, of course, be getting the premium service that only my first class legal brain can provide.

I pressed Send and left his office, having been in there less than thirty seconds.

In fact, I never gave the incident a second thought until a couple of days later when Tanya told me the Arsehole had suddenly left the firm in mysterious and acrimonious circumstances. She seemed quite upset about it, but none of her colleagues did. They were rejoicing in the fact that they’d been unexpectedly reprieved from his regime of despotic mediocrity, and I realised that I had a gift — a type of power that can be used to achieve great and noble things.

And of course, I comforted Tanya.

For a while.

•

I woke feeling strangely unrested and decided to exercise my discretion not to attend the office. I’d only have to listen to more of Jock and his manifest-fucking-destiny, and I wasn’t prepared for him. It was Friday — perhaps I’d go in on the weekend and get a few things done.

But that didn’t leave me any time for idling.

After a fast and frugal breakfast, I took a travelling bag from under the bed in the spare room and jumped into my nondescript Mazda. From there I drove to Hornsby, against the peak hour traffic, parked in a little nook I know (not far from the station) and opened the travelling bag.

Inside was a present from Xeno which had afforded me many hours of entertainment. Long grey trousers with a broad red stripe, dark grey jacket in military trim complete with epaulettes, peaked cap with red piping and the bold Red Shield of the Salvation Army blazoned on the brow. To this ensemble I added a red wig, a fake moustache and a pair of non-prescription spectacles. I dressed quickly, assumed an air of humble serenity, then left the car and headed for the station.

Xeno had been very thorough. Not only had he obtained the uniform, just as importantly he had also acquired one of those special collection boxes the Salvos hold out with such tranquil piety, which I was attempting to emulate on that sunny Friday morning as I scanned the crowd for likely faces.

With the exception of life sculpture, there’s nothing I enjoy more than posing as a Salvo. And, obviously, posing as a Salvo affords me many opportunities to engage in some low level sculpting. There were any number of godly types who’d want to engage me in conversation — which can be dangerous. I have only a lapsed Catholic’s smattering of bible-speak, so it’s too easy to offend the small-g-god-but-Large-C-Churchgoers who infest the North Shore. And sometimes, I just can’t help myself:

Elderly church-goer: ‘You do such wonderful work.’ ($20 donation)

Morgen: ‘Cheers, cunt.’

Elderly church-goer: ‘I beg your pardon.’

Morgen: ‘I said, Jesus can’t … without your help.’

The best part was preying on the guilt of the unwilling donors — those that felt they just couldn’t pass without giving something, so hid their donation behind their fingers to sneak it into the collection box. Alas, I had perfected the knack of twisting the box to make them miss the slot, and the five or ten cent piece would lie shamefully exposed.

‘God bless you,’ I would say to the victim scrabbling at the coin with guilty non-dexterity. And they never made that mistake again. Always afterwards they would approach me ostentatiously, making sure I could see the gold coins or folding dollars before stuffing them piously into the box. And I honoured the spirit of their giving by ensuring that every cent was spent either on drugs or in pursuit of my most evil perversions in seedy brothels.

Anyway, trade was brisk that morning, and I settled further into my role as charitable medium — trying to make ‘fuck you’ sound like ‘thank you’ — but I hadn’t encountered anyone of interest, apart from one young bloke in a purple singlet who was obviously contemplating snatching the collection box. There was also some interest in the local rag. Everyone seemed to have a copy, and there were a couple of hoardings with huge posters saying:

MURDERER SPEAKS

More Bodies Found in Gorge

Then I saw her.

Like most things that fascinate, she was unspectacular in the conventional sense, but she had that special quirk of vulnerable power I always find irresistible — big grey eyes, apologetic air, and a trim figure swathed in vaguely hippyish clothes which I guessed she had been wearing long before they had come back into fashion.

I felt like I already knew her. You can tell a lot about someone by their clothes, haircut and demeanour, and not just the things they want you to know. People ‘type’ themselves for those who know what to look for, and this girl was what I call a Searcher — quite my favourite subject.

The Purple Singlet was definitely standing closer now, but keeping his back to me — he’d done this before. The Searcher in the hippy dress had joined the queue at the ticket window and was standing in that vacant muse which typifies the human condition — waiting in line, staring at infinity — and I felt my heart go out to her. In one glance I had taken in her ennui, her ordinary pain, her need to turn further and further from reality to find some respite from despair, and I decided to take an interest — to improve her fortunes in the same way that I had anonymously lowered those of Gavin Millet.

The Purple Singlet was only two metres away now — in the zone. His shoulders had tensed, but it’s the feet you have to watch. I decided I had better put a stop to this, much as I enjoyed the game — the last thing I needed was a scene. In two strides, I was at his side and had clamped my hand over his shoulder, squeezing the collar bone and feeling the bolt of fear go through him like the life tugs at the end of a fishing line.

‘Jesus loves you!’ I told him in my semi-public voice. ‘But I don’t, you thieving cunt,’ I added sotto voce, dragging him towards me like a bishop with a boner. The poor kid couldn’t believe his ears, but he was limp in my clutches — his street savvy short-circuited by his deepest conditioning. With my humble public smile fixed in place, I said to him softly, ‘Give us your fuckin’ money or I’ll get the cops round to search your house.’

His eyes widened with amazement and his muscles were suddenly rigid at the prospect of protecting his own. But he still couldn’t struggle — you don’t struggle with Salvos, even Salvos who say fuck.

‘I said … give us your fuckin’ money, cunt.’

Maybe he wasn’t so experienced after all, because his hand dipped into the pocket of his jeans and came out with a handful of silver.

‘That’s … that’s all I’ve got,’ he said, quivering like a car-struck dog.

‘God bless you!’ I cried in full public announcement mode, holding out the collection box as several queuers and passers by looked up in mild interest.

He stared up at me, his hand out like greedy Oliver wanting more, his eyes filling with rage and vengeance as he poured the silver into the box.

‘Now fuck off!’ I told him, barely moving my lips, and he took off like he was going straight to his mates to arrange a reprisal. The girl was nearly at the head of the queue, so it was time to stroll within earshot.

‘Um … return to Town Hall,’ she said, in a small voice that was filled with all the limp sadness I had first intuited, and I quickly made for the men’s room to change out of my uniform. The next train up the North Shore would be along in four minutes.

‘Thank God for the Salvos!’ exclaimed an endearing old boot, standing in my way and fumbling in her purse. This one would want value for money and I didn’t have time for a conversation.

‘Erm … Hallelujah … Arbeit macht frei,’ I muttered, snatched the twenty from her fingers and bolted for the shithouse.

•

In recent years, I’ve always made it a point to travel on public transport without a ticket. At first, I enjoyed the risk of running into the ticket inspectors, and had had a number of thrilling escapes, but after they caught up with me a couple of times it became apparent that I was some kind of blind spot for them. I’d fumble in my pockets — a well-dressed and obviously affluent man — vainly looking for my ticket while they stood there politely and without suspicion. Lastly, I would open my wallet and poke among the fifties and twenties in a last desperate search, and say in my most affected tones, with the wallet hanging open, ‘Look, I … seem to have lost it.’

No one with such obvious wealth and so patently upper class would travel intentionally without a ticket, so they always wrote me out a replacement on the spot.

‘No charge, sir,’ they mostly would say, smiling the opposite of the fascist grin they use on the young and the poor. As I said, at first it was a thrill, but now I simply don’t need to buy a ticket.

With the Salvo togs back in the travelling bag, I left the men’s room trying not to laugh. The Purple Singlet was in front of the barrier with a couple of bored-looking policemen looking vainly for the evil Salvo. Once again my timing had been perfect.

The train was slowing alongside Platform One as I jumped down the stairs and trotted past several cars to where I’d seen the Searcher climb aboard. It was past nine, so the train was three-quarters empty. I managed to get the seat directly behind her and buried my head in the Sydney Morning Herald, while she stared out the window at the embankment graffiti and the half-built high density and the grey/green oblivion.

Pulling in to Pymble, a vague chittering woke her out of her reverie and she reached into her embroidered hessian satchel to produce an upmarket mobile phone.

‘Hello?’

It’s incredible the way these down-at-heel types need to maintain the trappings of affluence. I’m a senior manager in a law office for chrissakes, and I’ve never needed one of the things — always refused one, in fact. If people know your number, they know where you are, and there are times I don’t want to be contactable.

‘No … I’m takin’ a sickie …’

And for some reason, the more impecunious people tend to be, the more they seem to run up crippling phone bills with their pointless chatter and texting. The Searcher, for all her attractive neatness, exuded poverty so, as she stared angrily out the window, I reached over her seat and slipped all my non-coin Salvo takings into her bag — well over a hundred dollars.

‘I just had to have a day off. Why … what’d he say?’

My good deed accomplished, I leaned back in my seat, basking in the warm sunshine and the opening of intimacy. It was clear that the conversation being repeated to her over the phone did not fill her with joy.

‘He’s such a bastard! Well, I don’t give a shit. It’s my last chance to see Homo Tarot and that’s more important than answering fuckin’ telephones!’

Homo Tarot? She was a Searcher and on her way to the Body and Soul Festival at Darling Harbour. I turned to the Amusements section of the Herald and, sure enough, a half page spread informed me how I might experience the rejuvenating power of the pyramid, find my centre through tantric yoga, cleanse my soul with a range of organic books and vegetables and otherwise hand over fistfuls of cash to a bunch of money hippies. Homo Tarot was listed as a short film produced by the Centauri Society of Interstellar Beings (Earth Chapter). I was fascinated that she could take it so seriously.

She ended the call, promising to call her interlocutor later, and resumed her stare into the grey middle distance of her soul.

Okay, now I knew where she was going it was time to get out of her presence and find an alternative route. I was still wearing the wig, moustache and spectacles, so I contemplated heading in to work and hanging around some of my colleagues’ lunchtime haunts to find out what they thought of the impending regime. Instead, I simply decided to get off one station early at Wynyard, stroll down from a different direction to that she would take from Town Hall and amuse myself at the Searcher-fest until she showed up at Homo Tarot.

I left the carriage without a backward glance and strolled up through Wynyard. Yes, I really must try out one of my disguises at work one day — maybe at one of Mandy’s social functions? I could turn up at the pub or restaurant as one of my alter egos and really have a bit of fun with them.

I was still chuckling at the thought as I made my way down through Chinatown, across Darling Harbour and ultimately into the garish light and colour of the festival. The Convention Centre always reminded me of a giant public toilet, only without the ambience. But today they had essential oils and incense and Enya turned up to eleven to bring on profound insights and ethereal visions and soothe the dollars from the pockets of the damned.

I removed my glasses (once more altering my disguise) and entered the world of arcane wisdom, fighting to keep the grin off my face. I don’t believe for one second that anyone really lives their life according to the stars or the runes or the crystal-fucking-ball. Plenty reckon they do but, when it comes down to it, it’s money and pragmatism that rule every life, and any life not so ruled is not worth living.

I strolled the booths and stands for a while, trying not to laugh at the implausible, the obsession, and the naked lust for cash. The stall keepers had much in common with the trolls of Oxford Street — farming the dollars of delusion — and I amused myself with knowing eye contact, which was mostly avoided.

The Centauri Society of Interstellar Beings (Earth Chapter) had one of the larger stands, with an inner sanctum done up like a flying saucer, where the film Homo Tarot was played every forty-five minutes. I paused in front of the large plastic placard which informed me that the Centaurians were a select group who had been receiving arcane messages from Alpha Centauri for decades. Apparently, they had been given some clues as to how intelligent life began on earth, and why this had been so important for the galaxy. The clues were enshrined (so they said) in the Tarot cards, and they were looking for more people to interpret and spread the message.

But only special people.

Only people who could pass the test.

Two such people were standing at the front of the stand in shiny metallic suits — all green and silver — spruiking to passers by and making notes on aluminium clip boards. They were male and female and looked like shiny blond actors from a toothpaste commercial. As I stood reading the placard, the female approached me with a big fake smile.

‘Vilicha Gurbanyi!’

I turned and stared at her, feeling my cheek go into spasm as I wiped the cynical smile and forced my eyes to go all wide and credulous.

‘That’s Centaurian,’ she told me, utterly without self-consciousness. ‘It means: Welcome Home!’

‘Oh … thank you,’ I responded lamely, repressing the wisecracks that would certainly have revealed me as an infidel.

‘My name is Maia. Did you know we all came from the stars?’

‘Really … the stars eh? Good for us!’

Maia glanced at me quickly to gauge whether I was taking the piss, but seemed satisfied by my gormless (if difficult to maintain) expression and launched into her spiel. I’ll spare the details, suffice it to say that the Centaurians had been started in the fifties by Walter Beamish, a ham radio enthusiast from Wisconsin, who had received and recorded a powerful signal from outer space which he proved, somehow, to have come from Alpha Centauri. The signal had been accompanied, apparently, by a vision and the certain knowledge that the signal was a code containing an urgent message to human kind. Some three years later Walter cracked the code, and what he discovered changed his life.

‘… and soon it will change the world!’ she enthused, all dazzling teeth and madness.

‘Soon? Why is it only changing the world now if the message was urgent fifty years ago?’

‘Aha!’ she said, with a conspiratorial grin. ‘You’re pretty sharp! That’s a good question, but the truth is the Centaurian concept of time is different from ours … the time wasn’t ripe. It’s only now that we’re real y starting to push the message, because the Centaurian Dawn is almost upon us … it is time to prepare the way!’

‘And how do you do that?’

‘Well,’ she said, lowering her voice and coming nearer, ‘… you may not know this, but some earthlings are actually Centaurians. That was one of the things Prima discovered in the code.’

‘Prima?’

‘Walter Beamish changed his name to Prima Centaurus … so other Centaurians would be able to find him. Our mission is to identify the true Centaurians and get them all together for the Centaurian Dawn.’

‘I see.’

At that moment I noticed that the Searcher had arrived and was about to be accosted by the male half of the toothpaste twins.

‘Would you like to see the film?’

‘What? Oh … sure,’ I said, and she led me into the space ship where two or three others were already seated, writing.

‘This is just a little questionnaire we ask you to fill out,’ she said, handing me a sheet of paper. ‘It helps us to gauge your Alpha Index.’

‘My what?’

‘Your Alpha Index.’

She further lowered her voice, motioned me into one of the chairs and sat very close.

‘Many people have some Centaurian genes … as you’ll learn from the film … but Prima tells us there are actually Centaurian purebloods, who have been teleported here especially for the Centaurian Dawn. But the teleportation process makes them amnesic … they lose all knowledge of their true identity and purpose. We’re desperate to find them … they’re very special and the Dawn can’t happen without them. Who knows? You might be Centaurian!’

With that she left, to recast the net, and I turned my attention to the questionnaire.

Question 1: Have you ever been aware of yourself as somehow different?

There was lots of space to answer, but I simply wrote: Yes — despite the overwhelming temptation to amuse myself. Maybe later.

Question 2: Have you ever felt that there is something fundamental missing in your life?

They weren’t trying very hard to distinguish the true Centaurians from every other paranoid, schizophrenic, self-worshipping loony toon out there — which is obviously the whole point. I wonder when they’re going to ask for money?

But again, I wrote: Yes — to make them happy.

Question 3: Are there gaps in your memory from your earliest years?

Aha! This is where the unfulfilled bottom feeders prick up their ears. I could almost hear the cogs clunking into place in the brains around me. ‘Why yes … there are gaps in my memory. I can’t remember the first years of my life at all … how strange I’ve never thought about that before!’

I thought about writing that down but I just wrote: Yes, and underlined it for good measure, subtly emphasising my Centaurian potential and exploitability.

OPTIONAL SECTION

The following questions are demographic and are needed to help us establish the patterns of Centaurian settlement across the planet, but as they are of a personal nature, we understand if you would prefer not to answer.

By way of explanation, our studies have clearly shown two constant factors:

• that true Centaurians tend to be in the higher income groups; and

• that true Centaurians from the lower income groups tend to move quickly into the higher income groups as soon as they become aware of themselves as Centaurians.

We can’t explain why this is so, but income remains our best indicator of true Centaurian status. We are NOT interested in your money — we just want to know whether you might be Centaurian.

Question 4: What is your occupation?

Question 5: What were your annual earnings for each of the last three years?

Now they’re getting serious. I was tempted to write Investigative Journalist for Question 4, but settled for Writer (most wackos think they’re writers), and after some thought, I put $600k per annum (approx) for Question 5. (In fact, I’d made substantially more than that, but it should be enough to get me on the Centaurian callback list.)

Question 6: Would you be interested in learning more about the Centaurian Society of Interstellar Beings (Earth Chapter)?

If yes, there was a place for your name and contact details. I put my name down as Cosmo Solanis, but gave Xeno’s address and phone number. I was grinning to myself at the thought of Xeno answering the door to the Centaurians, when the Searcher entered the inner sanctum with an expression of profound, sepulchral awe. She listened earnestly to Maia’s Colgate colleague and gave the questionnaire her total attention, but suddenly the lights dimmed, and a sighing sirenic music swelled. The movie, Homo Tarot, commenced, with the Searcher watching avidly — as I watched her.

•

On the train back to Hornsby to collect my car, I picked up a copy of the local North Shore rag, which someone had stuffed down the side of the seat. The front few pages were all dedicated to the sensational developments in Galston Gorge, and even featured a letter to the editor which, purportedly, had been written by the killer. Very amusing but certainly a hoax, I would have said.

I folded the paper and reflected on my successful day. I was no longer trailing the Searcher. I knew where she lived.

After the movie, we’d been obliged to hand in our questionnaires, and I had timed my move to make sure that I was directly behind the Searcher, and was thus able to see her name and address in the moment before I placed my own form on top of hers. She was Melanie Arthur of 42 Dent Street, Hornsby Heights. She didn’t know it yet, but her life was about to get much more interesting.

I picked up my car at Hornsby station and considered driving over to have a look at her house, but decided there was no point in the dark. Besides, I didn’t want to spoil the anticipation.

Twenty minutes later, as I pulled into my driveway, the headlights played over a figure in black sitting on the stairs. The garage door opened automatically and I shot through into the light, hitting the button to lower the door before I’d come to a halt, but there had still been ample time for the figure in black to stroll into my fortress.

‘How’s it goin’, Morgen?’

‘Not bad, Xeno,’ I said, fighting off the bourgeois butterflies — I didn’t like him coming into my world unannounced.

‘What’ve you got for me?

Xeno held out a large brown paper parcel, from which the most heavenly scent was rising. ‘I’ll say one thing for Beljean coffee,’ he grinned, ‘it’s a lot harder to get than heroin.’