Читать книгу War/Peace - Matthew Vandenberg - Страница 34

'How did you get these?' I ask.

'I took them when I was in Bondi,' Danielle says. 'This is totally crazy. It's like a bunker. I'm sorry the pictures are so poor. I couldn't get any closer.'

'What's it called? Has it got a name?'

'Bondi Beach House,' Danielle says, tapping a photograph.

'How long has it been there?' Jerri asks.

'Who knows how long the beach house has been there for. But the bunker, that's gotta be new. I haven't noticed it before. It's definitely only a few weeks old, tops.'

'You think this is where they could be hiding?' I press. 'Why Bondi? It's so far south.'

'Yeah, like they're gonna try and hide out in Central,' Danielle quips. 'They need to be somewhere the south-siders aren't gonna check, somewhere as isolated and peaceful as Bondi.'

'So Adrian? Shaun? Ben? You think they'll be there? Did you try and get in?'

'I watched some south-siders walk up to a guard,' Danielle recalls. 'They were turned back as though they were drunk school girls trying to enter a nightclub. I'm clearly a south-sider so there's no way I would have been allowed in.'

'Is there a way we can contact the house: are they on Facebook? It's on the south-side so their page won't be censored, right?' Jerri asks.

'I don't know,' I say. I open the browser on my BlackBerry.

'Look!' Danielle says.She's sitting in front of a computer. On the screen is an enlarged photograph of one side of the bunker. The bunker's at least 100 metres away from the photographer. However, the wall is still crystal clear but for some areas covered in graffiti thin as oil: the paint and words nevertheless as prominent as a spill. 'I can read it.'

'What's it say?' Jerri asks.

'The greatest persecution of the church doesn't come from enemies on the outside but is born from the sin within the church,' Danielle reads. 'Pope Benedict XVI.'

'They're against the church,' Jerri says. 'They want the separation of church and state, for sure. There must be north-siders in the bunker.'

'I'm through!' I yell. 'I'm through! I'm through! Thank you Zuckerberg! Thank you, thank you!'

'What?' Danielle asks.

'Bondi Beach House! There's a page on Facebook. You're right, north-siders are inside. It's a safe haven. Not too many know about it. Not too many here in Australia anyway. But . . . says here that it's like a Big Brother house, the people inside cannot make contact with anyone outside, but people around the world can tell the people inside what to do, by first talking to the big brother, the lord . . . now that's just silly.'

'Who's in there?' Jerri asks. 'Does it say?'

'We have to contact Big Brother,' I state. 'We paste a comment on Facebook and he'll get in touch with us. Oh . . . look!' - I point to the screen – 'Friends of the people inside the house will be welcome, especially south-siders! That's us, Jerri! All of us! They want us in there.'

'But that's only if Adrian, or Shaun are inside,' Danielle says. 'How do we know they're in there.'

'We don't,' I say. 'We can't. But think about it: Adrian loves learning about other cultures, do you really think that he wouldn't be in the south side right now. A war breaks out, he'd be the last person to take sides. He'd be curious, he'd have to know what's going on. And if north-siders are being round up and placed into bunkers like this one then . . .'

'You don't think it's a concentration camp, do you?' Danielle asks.

'No,' I say. But that's all I say.

'Please don't go inside,' Danielle says. 'Look: I shouldn't have even told you about the place. This is silly, Shelly. We have no idea what's going on. Right now, we just gotta play it safe. We can go there, take some more shots, study the area. Then maybe we'll find something out.'

'We've gotta go in,' I say. 'Look: I'm sending Big Brother a message. He can access the Facebook pages of Adrian, Shaun, whoever and he'll see that we're friends of theirs. I have to try and get in touch with them.'

'How will he be able to access the Facebook pages if we can't?' Jerri asks. 'He's in the south too.'

'Maybe he's not,' I say. 'Maybe he's overseas.'

'Let's hope he's not in China,' Jerri says. 'We might as well be.'

'This place scares me,' Danielle says. 'Seriously.'

'Me too,' I say. 'But look.' - I point again at the BlackBerry screen. - 'It says: they believe in transparency, like the founders of Facebook. To quote Eric Schmidt, Google CEO: “If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place*.” That's why this is a place where people mingle, and speak their minds, where the world is their audience, where freedom of speech is a right. Does this sound like a place where they kill people? Seriously?'

'There are some people in the north who . . .' Danielle remarks.

'Danielle!' Jerri interrupts. 'We went to school with Adrian, with Shaun, with Jamie. These are north-siders. Don't go telling me they're evil. I've heard enough of that from the pastors.'

'Yeah,' I say. 'Look. I'm a Catholic, through and through, but the church has way too much power now, Danielle. Things don't seem right here in the south.'

'And you think this beach house is the solution?' Danielle says. 'How could north-siders be living in a beach house, here in the south anyway? How have the authorities not raided the place yet?'

'Money,' I say. “Perhaps they're being paid to stay away.'

'Money!' Danielle says. 'You're sounding like a capitalist now.'

'Maybe she has a point,' Jerri says. 'Think about it, the north-siders believe in freedom of speech, and all those things Americans believe in, like democracy. The idea of democracy's pretty popular last I heard, despite what the church is telling us. Remember in high school when they told us about that Burmese woman, Aung San Suu Kyi, who was a democracy icon for the people in Burma? These Burmese people wanted democracy, and not to be ruled by the military, just like how we don't want to be ruled by the church right now . . .'

'But . . .' Danielle protests.

'And,' Jerri continues. 'Just like how we don't want to be ruled by the American military. Maybe we want the same thing as the north-siders, freedom. And maybe a country like Japan is giving money to the Catholic churches in the south in order to maintain diplomatic relations with Sydney's south.'

'That's just what they were teaching us in high school,' Danielle says. 'It has nothing to do with what's happening now.'

'Maybe it does,' I say. 'And Japan might only be providing so much aid to the south on the condition that safe houses are built and maintained so that any stranded north-siders have a place to go.'

'You're crazy,' Danielle says. 'Both of you.'

******

References

1 Pack Up – Eliza Doolittle

2 All I Want For Christmas – Hurts

3 $Marshall, A. (2010). Postcard: Bangkok. Behind the scenes of a tribute to Burma's democracy icon. Time, 176(26), 11.

4 *Grossman, L. (2010). Manifest Destiny. Time, 176(26), 30-55.

5 $$Oishi, M., & Furouka, F. (2003). Can Japanese Aid be an Effective Tool of Influence? Case Studies of Cambodia and Burma (Case Study 2: Burma). Asian Survey, 43(6), 890-907.