The Origin of Me

by Bernard Gallate

  ‘Okay.’ I stood up, and looked at the horse picture. ‘Is that the same photo or not?’

  ‘The imagination is a powerful thing. Sometimes it reconstructs our memories.’

  Jespersen was waiting by the entrance gate in his paint-stained coveralls, holding a pair of industrial hedge trimmers. ‘Come to discover the meaning of life?’ he said, unlit rollie stuck to his bottom lip. ‘Don’t get lost searching.’

  ‘There’s only one way to go.’

  He unlocked the gate and pushed it open. ‘Through here,’ he said, then held up the trimmers. ‘Perhaps take these with you and do a little trimming on the way?’ No hint of a smile.

  I stepped inside and whispered, ‘Oh, mysterious Labyrinth, please show me the way out of squad.’ I walked only a few metres before a camphoraceous scent from the hedge caught in my throat and panic instantly constricted my airway muscles. A memory was pushing its way into my consciousness – something worse than Nigel Lethbridge’s mothballed jacket.

  I coughed and spat then continued the walk, breathing only through my mouth to avoid the smell. The path kept turning back on itself in a curving zigzag. Eventually I got close to the centre and tried to separate the hedge to see what lay on the other side. The foliage was too dense, though, and made the back of my hands and forearms itchy. The next turn led me directly back to the perimeter and the smell of Jespersen’s clove cigarette. I could see its smoky tendril on the other side being drawn up into the attic window of Crestfield House.

  Recalling the view I’d taken in from the servants’ bedroom during Lethbridge’s tour, I figured The Labyrinth was a circle divided into quadrants by avenues radiating from the centre. I’d completed only one section, so I began jogging through the second. As my breathing quickened, the smell of the hedge overwhelmed me. I tried to outrun it but was overcome by vertigo, which sent me scraping and crashing into the leafy walls, arms prickling every time I made contact. I scratched at the itchy weals until the skin broke. And then it struck me – my first memory of that camphoraceous smell. Pop Locke’s funeral. I froze, captive to a cinematic viewing of my memory.

  Pop Locke was displayed in an open coffin for those wanting one last look and for the morbidly curious. Neither category included me – I’d never seen a dead person and had no desire to – but, after the service, everyone in the family slid out of the pew to have a look and I didn’t want to be alone. Glancing into the casket, I received a terrible shock. Someone had stolen my grandfather and replaced him with a waxwork replicant. The brown trousers and diamond-patterned vest were definitely his, but not the waxy yellow skin or the weird expression on his face. Somebody who’d never met my pop when he was alive had been paid to make him smile, but they’d given him a smirk, and Pop Locke never smirked. His eyes were now glassy and devoid of light, like Gus when he died.

  ‘He looks so peaceful,’ Mum said. But I think ‘spooky’ would’ve been more apt. The worst thing was the smell. The familiar scent of Pop’s Swiss Valley Hair Pomade™ had been overpowered by something that caught in my throat like lantana.

  ‘It’s one of the chemicals in the embalming fluid,’ Dad said. I was offended by how clinical his explanation was, and how he’d seemed so removed from everything, as if flying above it. Now I knew his grief must have been churned up with his regret at arguing with Pop just before he died. Dad was running on autopilot that day, keeping his shit firm for the sake of everybody else he had to deal with. And now, a year later, that smell had paralysed me in The Labyrinth.

  I had to move on. My life would be hell if I didn’t get myself out of squad by Monday. But the hope of discovering a solution only diminished as I resumed my miserable journey towards the centre. When I turned the final corner, I was stunned to see a sculpture beneath the gazebo: a bronze statue of a man in a long flaring coat, his commanding jawline accentuated by a beard with no moustache. Curling waves of metal hair and incongruously glaring white eyeballs made him look deranged. An earlier visitor must’ve painted them with liquid paper – Starkey probably. The pupils were holes, one of them plugged with a marble.

  Despite standing two metres tall, the man was dwarfed by a gargantuan bull whose rump his hand rested on. The bronze had darkened with time, but the bull’s horns, snout and the ring that pierced it were gleaming like gold from all the hands that had rubbed them through the years.

  ‘Hello, big fella!’ I said, rubbing his snout.

  A loud snort knocked me flat on my arse.

  ‘HELLO!’ he rumbled. ‘MY NAME IS KING HENRY, THE FIRST THOROUGHBRED STUD IMPORTED BY JOSEPH MILLINGTON DRAKE IN EIGHTEEN NINETY-FIVE. OVER A DECADE I SIRED MORE CALVES THAN ANY OTHER BULL BEFORE ME, LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS FOR THE NATION’S SUPERIOR STOCK. AFTER WINNING THE BLUE RIBBON AT THE DUBBO AGRICULTURAL SHOW, MY MASTER DEEMED ME HIS FAVOURITE SON, MUCH TO THE AMUSEMENT OF HIS WIFE AND THREE BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTERS.’

  I rubbed King Henry’s snout once more to hear the spiel again. No wonder Millington Drake was proud of the beast. Beneath his right foot was a plaque detailing his measurements, right down to the twenty-eight-inch girth of his scrotum. I went behind the bull to check out his equipment. Sure enough his balls were enormous, and, like his snout and horns, were burnished gold by all the rubbing. I restrained myself, half-fearing he might come to life and kick out my teeth, or that I was being filmed.

  On my way back out of The Labyrinth I scratched the hives again, only making them worse. And then I had a revelation: The Labyrinth had answered my question, in the form of the rash. That was how I would get out of swimming – by claiming an allergic reaction to the pool water!

  I took a photo of my arm to present as fake evidence to Simmons. When I finally emerged, Jespersen tapped his watch. ‘About time,’ he said. ‘I have to pick my wife up from yoga.’

  Later I met Isa and Phoenix at International Velvet. They were sitting in the corner booth, still wearing sweats from their after-school dance class, sharing earphones as they watched a YouTube clip and practised the routine with their fingers. I ordered a macchiato at the counter and returned to hear them discussing David York and Heather Treadwell’s budding relationship. Apparently the staunch atheist and the zealous Christian had hooked up.

  ‘Sorry to state the obvious, but they epitomise incompatibility,’ Phoenix said. ‘They’re complete opposites.’

  ‘That’s probably the attraction,’ Isa said, then turned to me. ‘How was your session with Dr Limberg, Lincoln?’

  ‘Surprisingly productive,’ I said.

  Phoenix huffed. ‘I don’t trust the Cheeseburger. She always looks so perfect. Why did you have to see her, anyway? Do you have issues?’

  ‘Don’t embarrass him,’ Isa said. ‘It’s probably confidential.’

  ‘Don’t pretend you’ve never gone through her files.’

  ‘Ignore her,’ Isa said. ‘She thinks she’s Velma from Scooby-Doo. Obsessed with conspiracy theories.’

  ‘You have to admit I am a diligent investigator.’

  ‘True.’ Isa gave me a little shove. ‘You won’t believe what Phoenix dug up on our school’s beloved founder.’

  After the tour by Nigel Lethbridge, Phoenix had wanted to find out more about Joseph Millington Drake. There was almost nothing online, so she searched the school library catalogue and found a listing for a book he’d written called On Building Tomorrow’s Man. The only problem was that instead of a shelf location, the book was labelled R.A. for restricted access. Mrs Deacon told her it was so old and fragile it could only be viewed under a teacher’s supervision. Thinking it might contain something juicy or controversial, Phoenix passed on that and instead looked it up on the City of Sydney Library site. She found only one reference copy, listed at the Customs House branch.

  ‘It was pretty much a white supremacist manifesto,’ Phoenix said. ‘I took photos of a couple of the pages. Given my family background, this one interested me the most.’ She handed me her phone and the girls inserted their earphones to let me read.

&
nbsp; The influx of Celestials on our goldfields was but a mere trifle. The hundreds of millions of China, like a sleeping giant, will soon awaken and arrive upon our unprotected shores as a formidable enemy. Though we may be small in number, we are superior to the Asiatic in physical strength, moral constitution and intelligence. We must populate our vast nation now, taking great care to remove any defective traits that may threaten to weaken it. To neglect this imperative would be akin to racial suicide. Man has always been attracted to beauty and woman to strength, but in the modern age we have interfered with this process of natural selection. In the name of charity, the weak, defective and undesirable have been overly protected and are now outbreeding their superiors.

  For the sake of our nation, we must actively assist nature in what she already does. In selectively breeding cattle and the like, we seek to reproduce beneficial traits and remove the defective or weak. We must now do the same with our human population. The fit must be given incentive to breed and the unfit discouraged, or prevented from doing so.

  No bloody wonder he had the statue of his prize bull King Henry erected in the centre of the school! I swiped across to the other photo Phoenix had taken of the book.

  The Australian aborigine is a primitive race that will eventually disappear. The process may be expedited by allowing half-caste girls only to marry white men, thus diluting the coloured blood in future generations. And regardless of race, marriage restrictions must be applied to all peoples affected by tuberculosis, epilepsy, sex pervertism, insanity, alcoholism, pauperism and feeble-mindedness.

  Of all the boys turned down by the selection committee of Crestfield Academy since its inception, 73 per cent had one or both parents who were imbeciles, dullards or tainted by alcoholism. My stringent selection methods have been criticised heavily by supposed do-gooders, but nurturing the weak will only serve to increase their number until they become an unmanageable burden on society.

  It is negligent to allow the unfortunates to replicate themselves. For the health and purity of our nation, they must be segregated and undergo full or partial sterilisation. Only when our most noble values are exalted will we become a great people. Crestfield Academy was established in the true spirit of progress, with the highest hope of raising a new brotherhood. Rigorous mental stimulation is merely the foundation. All boys must be strenuously trained and participate in every form of physical competition, not solely to produce medal-winning athletes, but for the development of the body and the improvement of the national physique.

  ‘That’s some seriously crazy shit,’ I said.

  Isa and Phoenix took out their earphones, nodding at me.

  ‘Millington Drake was a member of the Eugenics Association,’ Phoenix said. ‘He wanted to create a master race before the Nazis got hold of the baton.’

  ‘That doesn’t make him a Nazi.’

  ‘Only because they hadn’t invented themselves yet.’

  ‘A lot of other people probably had similar ideas, though,’ I said, playing devil’s advocate.

  ‘It was more than an idea for Millington Drake,’ Isa said. ‘He founded our school on those principles.’

  ‘There was a chapter on the selection test,’ Phoenix said. ‘Every prospective student had to be measured, from their height right down to the length of their fingers. He had a formula to figure out the perfect proportions, and you had to fall within an acceptable range.’

  ‘I had to be measured last year for the student profile,’ I said.

  ‘Back then, if you had blue eyes you got extra points. Forget about applying if your skin wasn’t white – you lost fifty points immediately and stood no chance. Ever wondered why there are so few of us Asians at Crestfield?’

  ‘Not really. It’s about the same as my old school.’

  ‘And that’s on the insular peninsula,’ Isa said.

  She had a point. The demographic of my old school was more smoking pot than melting pot.

  ‘Are you suggesting Crestfield still has a racist selection process?’

  ‘It’s called the panel interview,’ Phoenix said. ‘It allows them to consider a student’s appearance. Who knows how much that influences their decision? At some other selective schools, the vast majority of students are Asian. Crestfield supposedly has an emphasis on its students being more well rounded, demonstrating an interest in sport and the arts. That’s how I got in.’ She performed a hand flourish.

  ‘Crestfield is a business above all else,’ Isa said. ‘It’s a brand.’

  I already knew Isa was on a scholarship and that her mum paid minimal fees because of her high score on the entry test. But she explained that an opposite principle also applied, whereby rich parents could pay big bucks for their kid to attend even if they bombed the test. The school’s academic record was protected by the Year 9 cull: students with the lowest results were asked to leave unless their parents forked out for the dubiously named Parallel Growth Program. Isa confirmed what Tibor had told me earlier, that Nads was on it.

  ‘His father’s company sponsors the sports department and practically built The Hive,’ she said. ‘Dashwood suspended Nads but he’d never expel him. Crestfield would lose a massive chunk of funding and the board would have Dashwood removed.’

  ‘The cull is a deviously clever way of making money,’ Phoenix said. ‘No matter how high the Year 9 standard, there’ll always be a bottom percentile. Only a few leave, and the following year the blow-ins take their place. That explains you,’ she said to me with a smile.

  ‘Yeah, cheers.’

  Isa explained that Phoenix’s research had inspired her idea of knitting the DNA chain, with the intention of displaying it in a prominent position to draw attention to the dodgy eugenicist foundations of the school. It was serendipitous that I’d just visited the statue of Joseph Millington Drake and King Henry in The Labyrinth. I held on to this little gem until both Isa and Phoenix had exhausted their cache of dark secrets. And then I said, ‘I know the perfect place to hang our work.’

  After school, I put my ‘get out of squad’ plan into action by calling Tibor Mintz. I reminded him of our conversation on the far side of Old Block and asked if he ever felt like fighting the system. He said he’d already started to, and with a bit of prodding revealed all. For no reason other than the challenge, Tibor Mintz had hacked The Owl. Using a combination of logic, psychology and probability, he’d figured out the password of a senior faculty member in less than an hour.

  Fostering a new level of trust, I told Tibor exactly what the goons had done to me. He said Nads generally left him alone because he relied on him, but Starkey made his life hell whenever Nads wasn’t around. He’d put banana peels, glue and dog shit in his satchel, broken his nose by slamming his face on the water fountain and stolen his wallet five times. Tibor completely understood my reason for wanting out of squad, and agreed to the favour I requested without hesitation.

  Over breakfast on Saturday, Mum told us that a plastics manufacturer had begun fabricating the Venus shell and the giant inflatable pool.

  ‘I saw Vienna on the videowall at Westfield,’ I said. ‘She’s exceedingly fit.’

  ‘I think we chose the perfect Venus.’

  ‘You remember how I came up with a solution to your shell dilemma? Would I be able to help out at the event and see her in person?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Mum said. ‘Let me think about it.’

  Joy glowed in my heart for two minutes, before Mum pulled the plug and drained it away down the sink: ‘I forgot to mention Grant’s coming for lunch.’

  ‘Grant who?’

  ‘Grant Marsh, the fellow I’ve been seeing.’

  ‘I’m so not hanging around for that.’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ Venn said. ‘You can’t abandon me.’

  ‘It’s very important for me that you both meet him,’ Mum said.

  Grant Marsh arrived at midday in a cloud of fragrance so obnoxiously musky it made Oscar run away. He was wearing a bright-pink Versace polo with
a popped collar, and turquoise shorts that exposed calves knotted with varicose veins. A blue-bezelled Rolex Yacht-Master® on his wrist completed the picture. Even his hair looked purchased.

  During lunch, Grant praised Mum’s baked salmon, the earrings he bought her at the markets and her golfing form. Having been starved of compliments by Dad for so long, she lapped it up. Grant pretended to be interested in my life for roughly thirty seconds before banging on about the Chinese economy and moving on to his love of the great outdoors.

  ‘Grant’s quite the athlete,’ Mum said. ‘He cycles to West Head and back every morning.’

  ‘That explains those magnificent calves,’ I said.

  Mum glared at me and said, ‘I think we should all go for a lovely bushwalk this afternoon.’

  ‘Sorry, I can’t,’ Venn said. ‘I’m going to yoga with Jessie.’

  ‘I have to finish reading Frankenstein,’ I said, thinking on the spot. ‘And my book’s at Dad’s.’

  According to Mr Field, even the most unlikeable characters in literature often possess some sort of redemptive quality. The most impressive thing Grant Marsh possessed was the Ferrari I saw parked in our drive as I was leaving. And the fact he owned one made him an even bigger twanger.

  On the bus home, I read My One Redeeming Affliction. I was up to the part where the spinster Althea starts driving a wedge between Walter and his daughter Esther – who he’d banned from seeing William.

  Althea Beauclare’s increasing presence at Fernleigh stuck in Esther’s craw. She’d never trusted the woman’s constant ebullience, nor considered her conspicuous acts of charity anything more than a ploy to inveigle her way into Walter’s life. Always the essence of kindness in front of him, Althea hectored the servants behind his back, reserving particular disdain for Dora Hinkley, the housekeeper.

  Inevitably, Walter became engaged to Althea, and shortly after they’d made the announcement, Walter gave Mrs Hinkley a month’s notice. Dora had given twenty-one years of her life to the family, serving my grandmother Martha before Esther had been born. By yielding to Althea’s wish to replace Mrs Hinkley with her own housekeeper, Walter severed the most reliable tie to the memory of his children’s mother.