‘He failed the army, and he failed me.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘He failed you, too.’
I looked at him, this giant. I thought of Logan and our little wrestle over Jack, a teaser for this.
‘I have no idea what you are talking about. He’s one of your men isn’t he? But now you don’t seem to care.’
‘Care? Do you know what it costs to make a man?’
He was mad.
‘Because that’s what I do, Sebastian, create men. Soldiers. And I protect them too.’
He looked away, seemed to drift, seemed to be talking to himself when he spoke again. ‘I care very much about my men.’
He stood up and walked to the filing cabinet in the corner of the room. He returned to the table and placed a document in front of me, two pages with a staple in the top left-hand corner. On it was a list of names.
‘My men,’ he said.
Then, without looking at it, his eyes on me, he began:
‘Abrahams, Samuel. Lieutenant. Twenty-six. Born in Balaclava, Melbourne. Second of three boys. Both his parents are doctors. Received the Commander-in-Chief’s Award and a university medal while at ADFA. Quite brilliant. Enjoys military history. This is the best opportunity he’ll get for action for a while. If he survives his mother’s expectations and marries well he’ll be Army Chief one day. Adair, Anthony James. Corporal. Combat engineer. Thirty-four. Born in Maitland. Father is a boilermaker, his mother stayed at home to raise him and his five siblings. One brother, four sisters. Married to Kayla, with three children of his own. Races motorised go-karts on weekends. Likes the security of the army, the regular pay and being able to say he’s got a career. Glad to have six months away.’
Without missing a beat, he continued.
‘Adams, Jack. Twenty-two. Born in Victoria Springs in the Lockyer Valley. Hides his middle name, Maria, which was given to him by his Catholic mother who died in a house fire when he was nine. Private in Signals. A crack shot. A local hero. The older of two brothers. Joined the army to see the world. Volunteered for this contingent because he wanted to do something serious with his life.’
Grose paused. Maria. I’d forgotten about that. Our father had chosen ‘Jack’ and Mum had selected ‘Sebastian’, and because I had no middle name, Jack’s had disappeared.
‘Often intense,’ Grose resumed, ‘he became increasingly aloof. Was last seen at camp on Tuesday, the twenty-ninth of December 1992 at 2200 hours.’
He leaned back in his chair, and folded his hands across his chest.
I took a deep breath.
‘You’ve given up, sir? Is that what you’re saying?’
Grose shut his eyes and his nostrils flared. His eyes remained closed as he reached for his Coke and took a deep sip. They remained like that as he lowered the bottle to the table, as it tapped against the wooden surface, and settled. As he lifted his hand and rested its palm against his breast bone. Breathed. And breathed again. I watched his chest rise, and fall. Then suddenly, almost violently, his eyes were open.
That gaze held me for a long time. Then he left his chair and walked around the desk. The thickness of his neck showed, the bones at the back of his skull. He reached up to one of the maps taped to the wall – grasped it, tore it down and turned in one movement and spread it roughly on the desk.
‘See the dots, boy. Can you see them? They’re not even towns, most of them. They’re settlements, handfuls of human beings huddled together in the sand. Refuges against the desert. The rest is desert. Know this about your brother: he went out into that desert and he did not come back.’
‘You said that. But what happened then?’
‘How does a thing happen?’ He was soft again. ‘How is it the sun burns your skin? How is it your organs collapse without water? How is it the wind here that licks your throat and your temples without pause will drive you mad?’
He was stroking the desk, following its grains with his forefinger.
‘How is it our mothers bring us into the world, only to desert us?’
‘Is Jack dead or not?’ I asked, my heart thumping, unable to comprehend why Grose would play with me like this.
‘Is that all you want to know?’
Grose reached for the disc on his desk. His vast hand covered the thing as he drew it towards him, the metal smooth on timber. His great fingers began spinning it like a top, round and round, faster and faster. Those hands were agile.
‘Is Adams dead?’ he said to himself, as if considering the idea for the first time. ‘Is Adams dead? When he left he accepted whatever dangers the desert presented. I train my men to take risks. But not stupid ones. You want me to tell you he was bitten by a scorpion. Or got lost. Or was captured by bandits. You want me to tell you he stepped on a UXO –’
Then Grose scooped up his toy and tossed it to me in one action. There was no time to think. I caught the thing in my lap, its ribbed sides, my fingers tightening, knuckles stiffening. I looked at the contrasting colours, the smoothness and the roughness of its surfaces, the perfect symmetry of it. I guessed then it was a landmine and placed it carefully back on the table, as far from Grose’s reach as I could. When I looked up he was studying me. I was no match for his gaze.
‘Well, Sebastian, he may have. Those things are everywhere down here. If you wander off the track there’s a good chance you’ll step on one. But that is not the point.’
‘Where was he?’
‘Here.’
I looked at the map, his index finger against the paper obscuring a name, teasing me, as if to say, Is this what you want? He laughed, and slowly lifted his hand, surveying me. But I would give him nothing. I leaned forward and read the name his finger had revealed.
‘Tifariti,’ I said. To myself, to the contours on the map, to each of the letters which made up the name. It was one of the names in my notebook from the first news my father had heard, but the place was too small for any map I’d seen before then. It looked strange there on Grose’s map, sounded different now as I pronounced it quietly, as if it was being spoken for the first time.
‘You can look yourself in the eye here, Sebastian. You can do that here. There’s nowhere else to look. Here’s your chance. You either see things straight or you go blind. Eyes that see, Sebastian. Ears that hear. You will wake from your ignorance. You will shed your bliss.’
He laughed, a booming laugh that drew out long until it was almost jolly, rolling in undulation. But when it ended, it stopped cold.
‘Is he dead? That’s not the question, Sebastian. Why did he leave? That is the question. Logan!’
His voice was like a gunshot, and the room was still in echo when Logan entered.
‘Adams’s brother thinks we haven’t done enough. He thinks we might be responsible, rather than his brother. Give him a copy of the report.’
Grose turned his back. He moved to the wall and raised the map with his two outstretched arms, pinning it up high like an altar reredos.
NINE
I read the report in one of the souk cafés.
Jack was on leave from midday on Sunday 29 December, 1992. He and Sergeant William Logan had been stationed at Tifariti for six weeks. The two men who relieved them – Corporal Adair, and a Private Duffy – had flown in from El-Aaiún that morning. Their plane had landed at the airstrip at 0900 hours. There’d been a debriefing, after which Jack and Logan were off duty. Logan returned to El-Aaiún on the plane that afternoon, joined a few other soldiers and disappeared to the beaches and bars of the Canary Islands for a week. Jack stayed in Tifariti. Jack disappeared.
Adair and Duffy were the last to see him. Their accounts were in the report, but neither had much to say. They’d eaten together that night in the mess at 1930. They were surprised Jack wasn’t returning to El-Aaiún with Logan. Jack told them he wanted
to explore, told them there was a rock formation a couple of hundred kilometres away he wanted to see, some ancient archaeological site. When I read that, it pulled at my gut. He told Adair and Duffy he’d be away three or four days, no more, and in the morning he was gone. The army discovered a small Polisario convoy – two vehicles – had left soon after dawn, 0600 hours. No, Jack hadn’t told Adair and Duffy exactly where he was going, where precisely the rock site was supposed to be. No, they hadn’t asked. Shouldn’t they have? No, he was on leave, and anyway he was a different sort of bloke. Wanted to keep to himself. They respected that in a man.
Logan was interviewed too, the transcript attached to the report. What had Jack said to him? Where might he have gone? What was this interest in rock formations? Was it a ruse? What sort of relationship had Jack developed with the Polisario, the independence movement? Did Logan know what might have happened to him?
But Logan knew nothing, couldn’t sensibly guess, told the Captain who interviewed him only that something must have ‘gone wrong’ –
In your opinion, Sergeant Logan, what happened?
There are so many possibilities, sir.
Go on.
I don’t know . . . all sorts of things.
What are some examples, Sergeant?
He could have got separated from his lift, sir . . . he could have got lost, or been killed, or had an accident, a mine . . . it could easily have been a mine, sir . . . or taken prisoner . . .
Do you really think so? Seriously, Sergeant Logan. What else? Give me something else, something plausible.
Anything’s possible, sir. It’s the desert, after all.
We would have heard, don’t you think? Polisario would have given us any information they had.
It’s a big desert, sir. With respect, sir. Not even Polisario know everything.
I must ask you this for the record, Sergeant Logan. Do you know where he is?
No, sir.
I took the report back to my hotel room, and reread it that night. Again and again, as if it was a poem I meant to get by heart.
*
I sought courage the next day, clarity. The number of times I left the Hôtel Atlas to return to Grose’s office. But then, usually before I’d even left the souk, I began to doubt myself. I was a spluttering match against the ferocity of his fire. I’d practise conversations in my head but find nothing to ask that wouldn’t shrivel before him. Every hole in the report would suddenly fill, every angle I thought needed exploring would straighten, every question no longer needed an answer.
I gave up and decided to walk instead, to wander, hoping something tangible might fall out of the report that way, some clue.
The street was more alive in the late afternoon than at any other time during the day, men playing draughts under awnings, children running circles in the street, chasing each other or evading the Peugeots. The wind was up. There was a trace of sea in it, faint, but it was there, hanging onto the breeze this far, twenty kilometres in from the ocean. Dogs emerged from their shade to sniff at the ankles of the old men, and cock their bony legs against fading walls. I looked for froth at their mouths and flinched when one approached, dingo-lean, and barked. A boy struck at it with his foot and the animal whimpered away. I passed a post-office where the mailbox was being painted over finally, after so long the Spanish word correos disappearing forever beneath brushstrokes of red.
In time I reached the old cathedral, the tallest building in the city, and stopped before its high wooden doors. I craned my head at the twin white towers, their squared lines sharp against the blue. Flakes of whitewash were coming off its flanks, the white towers, the dome above the apse. It had been fifteen years since the Spanish withdrew, and the doors were long-sealed.
Through the wall of the apse hundreds of shadow-dark Latin crosses had been cut for ventilation, so you could see through the gaps into the belly of the church. The rays of afternoon sun cast delicate crosses onto the tiles of the cathedral floor. Peering through one of the tiny cross-portals, I said a prayer for my mother. And remembered Jack.
*
We’d bused to Brisbane, the entire school – a hundred uniformed school children for an Ash Wednesday mass by the archbishop. We scattered like marbles out of the bus, the teachers unable to contain us. Jack didn’t even bother to run, just calmly disappeared behind the cathedral. I leaned against the cathedral wall, feeling the rough porphyry blocks against my back, gazing at the aerated clouds billowing across the purple sky. A yo-yo came off the string of a boy playing close by and clattered against the apron of stones, and soon the teachers were gathering us to march inside, where we would be trapped for the next hour and a half.
But not Jack. He was twelve, his last year of primary school, and couldn’t be found. One of the teachers called me from the pew just before mass started. I didn’t know where he was. The teacher then looked each of his classmates in the eye and asked them the same thing. As mass started, two of the teachers left to continue the search in the streets surrounding the cathedral. They even went as far as the river, we heard later. All us kids were distracted those first few minutes of the mass, excited, wondering what he was up to. But soon enough the ritual prevailed, and we were drawn in to the readings, and the gospel and the homily and the prayers of the faithful. The standing and the sitting, and our scabbed knees on the wooden kneelers.
We’d forgotten about Jack entirely when, as the archbishop stood behind the altar to consecrate the bread and the wine, he appeared at the door of the sacristy. Who knows how he’d got inside or for how long he’d been there. He didn’t linger in the doorway, but stepped confidently out into the sanctuary. I gasped. We all did, one by one, as we nudged each other and looked up and saw Jack standing behind the oblivious archbishop at just the moment he lifted his arms and raised his eyes to God for the first time. Jack followed. Lifted his face and closed his own eyes and raised his hands.
We were transfixed. The audacity. Though there was nothing furtive or smirking about it. It was imitation, of course, but somehow it was more than that too, more solid. Jack seemed as sure as the archbishop, had taken his place and raised his arms no less confidently. None of us dared move, not even the teachers. We watched as the archbishop lowered the great disc of liturgical bread to the table, knelt, kissed the white altar cloth, then took the silver chalice and raised it up also. Jack followed, his hands lifting his imaginary second chalice to the heavens. We gazed in absolute silence, utterly entranced. If the archbishop had looked out at us he would have seen a sort of terror on our faces. We had somehow become complicit.
The archbishop first realised something out of the ordinary had happened when Jack stepped past him, having finished whatever it was he’d intended, to surrender. One of the attendant priests, who’d been murmuring in prayer near the altar, opened his eyes, stood quickly. As Jack stepped down from the sanctuary the priest grasped him by the back of the arm. The archbishop had paused, and our school principal was already striding down the side aisle – to receive Jack from the priest, to wheel him round and lead him out of the church. Jack was grinning by this time, wide as could be; he winked at one of his mates as he left, gave a thumbs-up to another. But all that was just decoration, trimming.
Jack was suspended for the rest of the term. He would have been expelled but they still had pity on him in the long wake of our mother’s death. Our father didn’t bother going through the motions of disapproval. Em was embarrassed, then angry that Jack would be around the house more, the difficulties of that. But soon something happened, I don’t know what – a thawing. She began smiling at how the town was telling the story of larrikin Jack and the big priest in the big city. She too was under his spell.
TEN
‘Oi.’
It was Logan, the door of his landcruiser slamming shut after him.
‘There hasn’t been a Hail Mary or an O
ur Father in there for fifteen years.’
‘Just checking it out.’
‘You want to attract attention, do you?’
‘No . . . I . . . it’s strange to see it here, that’s all.’
Logan stood with legs astride, hands on hips, as if striking a pose for a camera.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘come for a drink.’
The sun had begun to fall when we drove through a sentried gate and pulled in at the UN bar. Half a dozen white four-wheel drives stood in front, noses to the curb. A group of peacekeepers got out of their vehicle as Logan parked, a looseness about them all, slipping their duties already. They pushed open the door of the building and music escaped briefly, the first familiar stuff I’d heard for days.
I followed Logan. Inside the music was loud enough to feel against my skin. Our music, I thought. There were soldiers in groups, drinking. A bartender – also a soldier – stood behind a trestle-table with glasses laid upside down on a bar mat. Behind him were large refrigerators, a mosaic of beer stickers on their doors from all the peacekeeping nationalities. On a wall near the fridges was a large flag of a boxing kangaroo, standing yellow on a green background, its gloved paws shaping up, ready for all comers.
‘Look who we’ve got here,’ the bartender called out over the music.
All heads turned to me. The bartender was short, but his shoulders and neck were thick with muscle, and his hairless forearms, swollen in the fluorescent light, glistened with sweat.
‘You alright?’ he asked, and cocked his head.
‘Yeah . . . I’m –’
‘We know who you are, mate, Adams’s brother. Come from Oz to find him. That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah,’ he repeated, some judgement hanging suspended in the air. I was being studied. All the conversations in that small room had paused, their weight pressing the air. Was Jack’s story known to the entire peacekeeping force?
‘Yeah,’ he said again, looking me over, then at Logan. After a moment the bartender nodded, his body easing, satisfied enough, perhaps only that I was no threat. ‘Have a beer.’
Closer to Stone Page 5