by Alan Duff
Not that Polly had stayed there yet, as neither she nor Simon played golf, and the thought of paying over a grand for a bed for the night, no matter how good the view or how expensive the sheets, did not really appeal to her. At least she thought it didn’t. Though if she’d cared to look at herself in one of the two French-period mirrors she’d have seen her face positively glowed with the talk. Of expensive cars and the money that buys them; money, money (wallowing in the stuff); deals, share tips, the Aussie stockmarket, London Footsie, the Dow’s effect on the rest of the world, but mainly on New Zealand’s market. Self-congratulatory talk, claims of insider knowledge on a hot share. That is, the men talked money whilst the women were their admiring, complimentary audience, or they talked amongst themselves of their latest clothing or home-furnishing purchases. Kind of the same thing, except passive expenditure.
Polly was politic enough not to distance herself from the women, even if most were confused at why she should be bothered with boring business talk, confused that she had a business herself, their tacit code being let the men take care of that. And we’ll handle handling them. Polly had to alternate between genders and conceptual worlds, frankly preferring the males’ universe. She knew from previous experience that it didn’t matter who was talking, they said much the same and all were disciples of capitalist thinking. Right, bright (and white), though they daren’t state the latter without risking offence. Not that Polly thought it in any way but a statement of fact and that she was going to prove the exception.
Her friends were positive, happy, sometimes raucously drunk and frivolous, a free-spending social circle, and much fun to be with. They were unabashed materialists. A few more bottles of champagne and that contempt for car-scratchers would open the vent for their shared contempt of welfare beneficiaries — living off our taxes! — in the same breath boasting about not having paid tax for several years through creative accounting and plain financial brilliance more akin to fancy dance steps, that sort of talk. Some would even raise the dreaded topic — dreaded only because Polly was amongst them — of Maori crime and Maori unemployment and the latest arrest for a murder or a bad home invasion, that it was as sure as the sun came up to be a Maori offender.
Well, all this was fine by Polly, she didn’t have much regard for (Pine Block) types who couldn’t be bothered to lift themselves up in life, let them rot then. Pine Block could be looked at in two different ways: a nightmare or a dream. It was up to you which one you chose. But it did bother her a little that her friends, even her own lover/business partner, saw welfare dependence and Maoris in the same frame. On more than a few occasions she had chipped in on talk like this to ask where non-Maori welfare bludgers fitted in the scheme of things. She could tell, though, they didn’t really want to hear, even if agreeing to her face that the unambitious type was deserving of their total disdain, no matter what race they were.
However, she had no disagreement on the subject of a Porsche, a Beamer, a Merc, Lexus — oh, but definitely not the 300 series, too much like a dentist’s would-be car of choice, and no, not an Audi, they’re doctor’s cars, or retired accountants who drive them at ten k’s under the speed limit because risk-averse is risk-averse never forget.
How her group despised those who did not take risks; there was not one man in the circle who wasn’t in business. Nor was there any likelihood of a salaried, or God-forbid waged, outsider being invited unless it couldn’t be helped, brought in by marriage unions.
Each inhabitant of the planet — being this country and anywhere in the western world — was ranked (and judged) by the car they drove. And it was implied that if you didn’t yet own a second holiday home then, really, you had better get going and acquire one. Or two. Say a home over the hills in any of the lake developments, or in Taupo, which was closer to the ski fields, maybe an apartment crash-pad in Auckland or Wellington, preferably or de riguer, on the waterfront, or a golf resort.
Polly and Simon being a decade younger than most of their friends — ahead of their years in terms of financial success (and personality, you better believe it) — had no choice but to talk and therefore think the same. And if like Polly you had not experienced it before, this money world was heady stuff. Money (sweet money) what it could buy, the good life, assets, toys, self-esteem.
Rising values, capital gains therefore, profits, money-for-jam schemes, business, always business was the constant theme. All of life was a money opportunity. Everything written referred to the Money God and when it didn’t it was the Material God. Money spun, it was a cake walk, it was a licence to print the stuff, it had bullet-proof qualities, it could walk on water and you walked with it; you only had to take the God by the hand and He’d lead you to more and more treasures in his Kingdom of gold-paved streets and fields of greenbacks. And aren’t they (we) His energetic, dynamic subjects, ever so clever for our lives being blessed — or was it found? — with capital gains, a material reward, for everything we did, even our holiday homes kept going up in value.
As for cars, puh, but a necessary devaluing toy one had to have — had to — and the money to keep trading up. But what a buzz it would be with quarter of a million dollars of engine growling under you. Oh, how Polly loved these people for their positive, go-getter personalities. Because they were rich and getting richer. More, they were rich in outlook, wealthy in attitude and spilling over with self-belief.
Every time they went out as a group, fairly tight-knit, about a dozen strong if all the numbers were present, there was a catch-up on the latest economic trends, of property values rising or falling in different areas around the country, and always someone had purchased a commercial property or a business somewhere. They talked about auctions of furniture, wine collections from deceased estates, the trendiest bars and restaurants, which must be printing money. For wasn’t every one of them, the crowd that secretly regarded itself as the in-crowd, printing money in their different endeavours out there in the big wide wonderful world of business and capitalism and unashamed materialism, weren’t they? (Weren’t we?)
And weren’t we therefore more clever, dynamic, smarter without question without actually being so tasteless as to state it (lest someone overhear and take it the wrong (right) way that some people are just born genetically superior and that’s all there is to it. You were what you were).
Richard Fisher was in the middle of finally revealing a hot-tip share to buy; a moment he’d drawn out to maximum suspense and everyone played along with it, but Simon less so and he whispered to Polly he found it crass to have bated breath awaiting to be told how to make more money when they were already looking at a life ahead of making more than enough.
Polly was about to state her own, contrary, view when Simon’s attention was drawn out the window to the street: a woman walking in slow motion, as if drugged.
Simon said, I know her from somewhere. He kept staring, till the woman zombie-walked out of sight; either drugs, booze, or a mentally troubled state.
The share tip was Streven Resources, a gene-tech company based in Christchurch, its value certain to rise at least fifty per cent in the next month according to Richard Fisher. And most of the table indicated they’d be taking a punt on it, well it was hardly a punt, a dead cert like this. So everyone was looking at each other with those same old self-congratulatory eyes.
Simon was still frowning out the window. Then he remembered, told Polly he’d seen the woman at the petrol station by the farm. Bill’s place. Miserable sod, mean with money, couldn’t spare even a lousy smile. He refused to take her credit card for some reason. She was embarrassed, humiliated. So I paid her petrol.
That was very kind of you. Polly, buzzy from the champagne, kissed him lingeringly on the mouth — till he pulled away and muttered her gesture was a bit inappropriate. He was looking at Polly askance as he chided her. She didn’t see the glaze come over his eyes, the glaze that always came these days when she was acting like this — a nouveau riche materialist, a crass white woman — rather
than the down-to-earth Maori he liked. He wanted Polly of the rhythmic walk, the different grammatical rules.
She looks like she’s in trouble, he said, nodding towards the window at the woman no longer there.
So, go and give her another twenty bucks. Polly’s lack of interest bled right through her champagne-affected eyes. She’ll be back tomorrow for more, I can promise you. Then Polly murmured, Streven Resources. Now, how much have I got in the bank? I think I’ll margin trade it, put it all on this little gene-tech horse. What do you think, Si?
Oh, isn’t knowledge the ultimate weapon? Lifting a glass in Richard’s way: To Streven Resources. May it rocket (to the stars) to the heavens.
Simon reminded Polly they had two properties in Pine Block that settled tomorrow.
Polly laughed and said one day they’d end up owning Pine Block.
Simon frowned and said he doubted that. They were up against social forces beyond even their ambitious plans. But Polly laughed and told her lover, Nothing is beyond you if you want it badly enough. Again, she didn’t see he didn’t like this version of Polly. Not a bit.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE OUTCAST TRIBE
UNDER STREETLIGHTS THEY’RE in every small town and city suburb, groups of young males getting together, on the outer margins of the marginalised, the worst attracted to their ilk, predator birds of a feather, mindless — since minds aren’t needed when males of this type are together, young (and afflicted) like this.
You simply join up to become a single physical experience and wallow in what happens to you, being together in heartless numbers like this. Oh, and it’s the numbers, the sense of invincibility, the sense that you are not alone in your real darkness, down in the vaults where unexplained anger rules. And it’s the night gives you ownership (of yourself, the true, awful you), the beautiful bad night, better if they’re streetlights, not in the main street where the youths hang out conspicuously easy for the cops to pick, too public, too well lit for you, the lurking monster waiting, aching to express yourself.
It’s the suburban shopping mall, or within eyeshot but not too close, of a busy pub, since your prospective victims emerge drunk, unknowing, unwitting to you waiting lurkers. You, murderers waiting to fulfil your genetic destiny. Unless it’s of an upbringing so bad you got no choice, and nor then does society.
You hang out and roam around, looking, always looking, for action to happen; if it takes too long in happening, the very worst of you, those who can’t wait for destiny to declare itself in a blaze of violent, unlawful glory, make a decision you’re bank robbers, or specialise in all-night service stations, so you steal guns, steal a car, take your crude plan to a bank you’ve chosen and look, there’s the sweet headline: Bank Teller Shot at Point Blank Range. Such description lifts you into the stratosphere.
Every once in a regular while one or three of your number disappears to do their inevitable life sentence in a max-security jail, testimony to your dangerous status. The ever-replenishing group of you have names of jailed dudes you admire, wanna be like, emulate, mirror their terrible existence. Dudes doing minimum seventeen years (oh man, how big a status is that!) for wasting two, three citizens; taking two, three lives. The bunch of you sitting around reading the newspaper court page, laughing, wide-eyed in admiration and glee at hearing your buddy’s recorded words in police custody as saying he felt nothing wasting some dude’s life away — laughing. Beside yourselves with pride at this dude you’ve been hanging out with, the élite club he’s joined: Murderer with a capital M, bro.
Or the destiny stumbles your way, like a blind man, unaware, into the oozing reaches of you, the collective beast. Not one thought has come from you, not any, or none that a youth’d own up to for he can’t, he’d be a real outcast, cast out from the outcasts, and that would be the ultimate rejection, would it not? Ain’t what society thinks ’cos you ain’t part of them. It’s your — everyone’s — peers.
Though from time to time you lose those who see they can’t go as far as you, the heartless hardcores, can and will. Gone, often to another town, never to be acknowledged by you again. Spat on if they should ever see you. Beat up if you get the chance. The ultimate in failures in your eyes: young men who refuse to go that whole destined way and do murder.
Under the streetlights and the lights from the hulks of shopping mall, which feel like a ship you kind of belong to, anchored there in the night under the stars, the moon usually in some form up there, cool-az when it’s full, not in terms of beauty or weight of galactical meaning; it just feels like the meaning of your danger together, bad-intentioned like this. Feels like a good reason, scientifically so it’s said, for you to go mad. Just as soon as the dumb innocent blind drunk man comes lurching your way, or a woman whose face has no connections in this area, to rape, sodomise, beat to death if it’s not her lucky night. Just as soon as that happens.
It’s dangerous and yet laughter and nervous chuckles and outbreaks of bravado disguised as laughing come from you. Of you the tribe member, an individual nothing who is yet desperately, pathologically out to prove himself a necessarily staunch, rugged, dangerous individual.
You who have separated yourselves off from the main flock. Or the main hunting pack. For you hunt a different prey for quite different reason: not to feed hunger, or even a sense of doing something. But to satisfy this clear and specific need in you that says: I must do harm to someone, anyone. Serious harm. The ultimate harm. That’s what it says. That’s what you are.
Most of the girls melt off, or they get dragged off for a quick venting, a quick dip, the ones who stay around are themselves of the same physical, mindless beast. They’re head-kickers and female high-pitch screamers down at the victim, who represents to them what it does to you, the boys, the guys, the fullas, the dudes: your pain becomes his effin’ pain. Eff him a thousand times over. Tell yourselves the victim provoked this. He brought it on himself. That anything you do is justified or else it isn’t but doesn’t have to be. Hey? Is that one coming across the park?
Is that one fumbling with his car keys? Hey? He shouldn’t be driving, he’s drunk. Hahahaha! Hey? What’s he doing hanging around in a park? I bet he’s a pervo, a effin’ child molester, a homo (never a homo sapiens entitled to exist in as drunk a state as he chooses. We all have our devils, monkeys riding on our damned backs, burdens that drink helps shoulder, situations at home less than satisfactory, pasts that have to be kept in a state of stupor so they don’t tear us completely apart. We all have that).
Just existing in this circumstance, this proximity to the outcast tribe, is ill-fated and ill-judged enough. Hey, bud! Hey, you! The eff you doin’, man? Oh, hear the pitter patter of feet, shoes running across the street, no sound quite like it. No sight, not under streetlight how every third moment seems snatched away by the night and so it’s all slowed down. Movement. Intent. Who you all are. What you’re gathered here to become. No, not become. You’re already that.
What you’re all here to let out of yourself, the each of you who are the singular beast about to go for the prey. You were already that. Or else youths your age would be out in their vast numbers everywhere. And they’re not, are they? Just you. Maori youths. Not white youths. They’ve evolved past mindless murder in packs like this. Maori youths. Not all Maori youths — you lot. Your kind of Maori youth.
On fire, electrically zipzapping all over not with mind signals but somewhere beyond, of overwhelming desire to do hurt to someone.
You’re warriors, admit it, boys, from days of old, looking for an excuse to let your limited genes cut loose. You’re not human. You’re from when they didn’t have to be humans. You’re from warrior stock, dumbest spear-and-club-fodder stock. Your ancestors never lasted long in the long ago ’cos they had no intelligence. They were mindless. Like they passed down to you, bad-gifted, mongrel-legacy, no minds that can reflect.
You’re not of the true warrior strain. Your ancestors were the scum of their time, the outcasts turned out. Y
our strain is going to pass on down, unless someone does this back to you on a grander scale. Lies in wait for when you return to being as innocent as you’ll get, in your stinking dirty sheet or no-sheet beds, three, four in the morning, when you’re in the arms of sleep and she’s near throttling you to death, Mrs Dream, ’cos she doesn’t like you, she knows you’re naught but collectively evil, who still shouldn’t be anything to be reckoned with, except Mrs Dream knows you hurt drunken nobodies, and often they’re not nobodies they’re decent hard-working guys who’ve been out on the town and stumbled into the wrong location, they mightn’t be drunk at all, just in the wrong place wrong time, you who destroy innocence and good.
That’s when to get you genetic monsters, when you’re tossing not with guilt but resistance to Mrs Dream trying to put end to you. The good guys, good gene guys should climb through your window and put you quietly to sleep, safe from us, sent into the arms of Mr Death. Mr Justified Death. Before you kill any more of His good innocent subjects.
They should get you before the morning paper comes out telling of another of your foul deeds done to a poor innocent stumbler. They should take you out before you can get to boast and leer at what you fullas did last night, deny you the pleasure of seeing your deed plastered all over the country’s front pages and number one on both news channels.
Vigilantes should get hold of you and firstly whip your bad-arses so bad you won’t be able to take a seat down there in the Devil’s Hell for a month. Then they should quietly see you off this mortal coil and none should say anything, not breathe a word of your taken existences, just as they wouldn’t any other loathsome, unnecessary creature — squish. You’re ended. Just like that.
Oh, but no one does beat and then crush you, for there is a political process that insanely protects you, grants you rights because they mistake you for humans. In no court of law can the truth be spoken when otherwise untruths are punishable by the same powers the law of the land invests in the court. This is a lie you can tell and no one will do anything about it. You can stand up and say: Your honour, these young men are victims themselves, of upbringing and the far-reaching effects of colonialism. And there’d be no audience to chorus a booing outcry at the lie your highly paid, white advocates tell.