Closer to Stone

by Cleary, Simon

  Logan tipped his head back and downed the first in one, then led the way to a table beside the wall, a second beer in hand, his pale skin glowing, every freckle.

  ‘Wherever we go mate, it’s our responsibility, isn’t it? Heh?’

  I sat facing the door. I’d be the first to see Jack if he happened to walk in off the street.

  ‘What’s that?’ I said.

  ‘To bring the beer. Run the bar. This’d be a dull old shit-hole without it. Decent piss, that’s our job. Always has been.’

  ‘Uh huh,’ I said, still looking for something I could grasp.

  ‘You don’t look impressed, mate. Well, let me give you a history lesson. Know your history, do you?’

  I shook my head, trying to retreat, wondering how much room I had.

  ‘What about your geography?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Let’s test you. Where are we?’

  ‘El-Aaiún.’

  ‘More information.’

  ‘The UN bar in El-Aaiún.’

  ‘You’re getting colder,’ he said, laughing at his joke. ‘Try again.’

  ‘Western Sahara.’

  ‘Warmer that time. Keep going.’

  I stumbled around, no idea of what he was driving at, enjoying none of it.

  ‘North Africa?’ I said eventually.

  ‘Bing-bloody-go,’ he said. ‘Now, you heard of a bloke called Rommel?’

  I nodded, ignoring the sarcasm.

  ‘Well, last time we were here, we showed Rommel the toes of our boots, mate. The toes of our bloody boots. It took some doing – he was good, Rommel – and he had us cornered for a bit, but we sunk the boot into him in the end.’

  How strange to hear this account of my grandfather’s war. A new teller, the same tale. Both Logan and my father coming at it from the same place: how Rommel needed to be taught a lesson. As if we Australians were reluctant teachers, but when we stood up, by God, people listened.

  ‘Rats of Tobruk, mate.’

  ‘The Ninth,’ I said, without thinking.

  That stopped him.

  ‘What?’ Logan said.

  ‘The Ninth Division, Second AIF.’

  I hadn’t looked for it, but there it was.

  Logan nodded his head slowly.

  ‘My grandfather,’ I added.

  He paused, and sized me up, closer now.

  ‘What battalion?’

  I gave Logan a number. He grunted, gave me one in return.

  We sat there looking at each other, nodding our heads, wondering if our grandfathers had known each other, if they’d ever shared a beer in a makeshift desert bar one night.

  ‘Jack didn’t tell you?’

  ‘Got a lot to talk about here, mate. Don’t need to know every little detail. Who’d want to, anyway.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, you gonna finish the bloody story?’

  ‘I’ve got no idea what it is.’

  He paused.

  ‘Cantoniera thirty-one?’

  If I’d heard the name before, I’d lost it. I shook my head.

  ‘The White House?’

  I shook my head again.

  Logan grunted to himself, then started afresh, but he was no longer giving me a tutorial. Now he was sharing something.

  ‘Cantoniera thirty-one was a road maintenance depot. Thirty-one kilometres out of Tobruk. We had it before Rommel. He took it when we retreated to Tobruk. It was one of them stock-standard, whitewashed buildings you see all over this part of the world. We ran the show from there, it was our headquarters. The White House . . . get it? . . . Well it was white . . . at least until we arrived.’

  He laughed.

  ‘Mate, one of our blokes – Doc Dawes was his name, a sapper – gave it a paint-job. They say he’d been a sign-writer. Anyway Dawes climbed onto the back of an old Valentine and painted great big bloody murals all over the outside of the building. Ads they were, for Aussie beer, covering the building. Copied out of magazines. VB and Abbots and a photo-finish of the Melbourne Cup. And they were bloody good. Art, mate, art. That’s how good they were. Who else’d create works of art, in the middle of the desert, in the middle of a bloody war? Bloody genius. So what we gave Rommel was a taste of VB, mate. You can have the building, mate – that’s what we said to him – but you damn-well won’t forget we were here!’

  I didn’t care if it was bullshit, I was just grateful Logan had shared it. War breeds bullshit, and no one is immune. My father had told a beer story too, a tall tale. Operation Bulimba had taken place between Tobruk and El Alamein, and involved my grandfather’s battalion. They named the operation after a home beer, my father said: Bulimba Beer. The beer named after the suburb on the river, the river named after the city. My father loved that. That Rommel’s positions were under assault by a Brisbane beer. Anyhow, that was the story my father told, just the basic elements – his grandfather’s battalion, the operation to capture a heavily defended German position, the name of the operation. He made it sound glorious, in a larrikin way. So I had this picture of a successful operation in my head, and I could imagine Rommel and his men after their defeat, after their surrender at Operation Bulimba, sitting in some prisoner-of-war compound, drinking tallies of Bulimba Beer under the desert sun, nodding their heads despondently at the first swig.

  What really happened I overhead from a conversation one night at the RSL. It was true the battalion had taken the position, but what my father hadn’t told us was that they had to give it up again just a few hours later. By the end of the operation there’d been a sum gain of no ground, fifty-nine men killed, two captured, and one hundred and twenty-nine wounded.

  ‘Rommel, mate,’ Logan went on. ‘We respected him, the Desert Fox. He was a soldier, not a Nazi. That was the difference.’

  ‘What’s the difference exactly?’

  ‘The soldiers were just doing their job, mate – like us. The Nazis – they were goddamn fanatics. Wanted to take over the world, didn’t they? They were bloody evil bastards.’

  The door from the street opened and another group of men loudly entered the bar.

  ‘What’s Grose’s story?’ I asked when we could hear each other again.

  ‘He’s alright. He’s . . .’

  ‘You scared of him?’

  ‘He knows what he’s doing. He’s been here since the start.’

  ‘So you are scared of him.’

  ‘You’d be a fool not to respect him. Did you read the report?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Learn anything?’

  ‘That you were with him in Tifariti.’

  ‘So what do you make of that?’

  I shrugged my shoulders again, sipped my beer.

  ‘You could tell me what it was like,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a shit-hole.’

  ‘Why’d Jack stay then? Why didn’t he go to the Canaries with you?’

  ‘Two more,’ Logan called out to the bartender. He lit a cigarette and looked around the room. ‘It’s bullshit the way they make us drink in secret.’

  ‘The UN?’

  ‘The Arabs who run this bloody country. Bloody Muslims. Nice way to treat guests. Just makes a hard job harder.’

  ‘Well?’ I said, when we had our beers. ‘Why did he stay down there?’

  ‘Because he was different, your brother. His own man.’

  The room had swelled with off-duty soldiers, so many nationalities and languages, so much thickening smoke.

  ‘Have you heard from him, Logan?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Do you know where he is then?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Could you guess?’

  He took a long swig, angling the botto
m of the can towards the ceiling fan, looking at me all the while, the can cover for his gaze.

  ‘Mate,’ Logan said, ‘that’s what I want to know from you.’

  ‘So you think he’s alive?’

  ‘Yeah, I think he’s alive.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘I just think.’

  And so we jousted. Trading information, measuring what we were giving, rationing it out. What did I learn? That Logan was from country Victoria. Had got to know Jack from the barracks back in Australia. Was fond of him. Might even have been in awe of him, despite their ranks. Missed him. Didn’t understand what had happened. Was trying to make some sense of it. Was hurting.

  ‘Are you protecting him, Logan?’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘I’m his brother.’

  ‘So?’

  It’s a fair question.

  ELEVEN

  I was woken by knocking. Loud strikes of knuckle on door, but blurred. The morning’s early light smudged the walls of the room when I opened my eyes to the groaning day. Knocking again. Loud and insistent. I rolled from bed, pulled on the jeans I’d slung across the chair, and stepped into my boots without lacing them. There is security in boots, a source of hardness you can draw from if you need to.

  I slid the bolt and opened the door – to three gendarmes, yet another uniform in a land of uniforms. The tallest of the three bent his head, hat in hand, calm and full of mannered politeness. As he bowed, the other two peeled around either side of him. By the time he raised his head again, they were behind me in the room. My shoulder blades twitched. I didn’t know where to look, front or back.

  ‘Excuse us, Monsieur Adams,’ he said. ‘It is early, we know. We did not, comment ça se dit en anglais . . . want to miss the opportunity.’

  I turned my head. One of his men was lifting my bag from the floor onto the bed.

  ‘What opportunity?’

  ‘To invite you.’

  The second of the men behind me stepped back into my line of view. He had my Jack book in one hand, the army’s report in the other. He handed them to the tall one.

  ‘To invite me?’ I said, my eyes on the notebook.

  The tall one before me turned the pages of the book, quiet, deliberate movements. His expression was unreadable. He browsed a little, turned to another page, and considered a little more. His nonchalance was absolute, his control of this drama complete.

  ‘To invite you to speak with us.’

  Now, slowly, he raised his eyes to me.

  ‘I am the Controller of Foreigners. Come. My colleagues will carry your bags.’

  He turned, a graceful pirouette, and left. He had not even entered my room, had remained outside in the corridor the entire time, the demands of courtesy. He moved down the hallway, his footsteps on the tiles the gentlest of sounds, as if he wore slippers, rather than high, black-polished boots.

  *

  Their headquarters was set behind white, wrought-iron gates, a sentry box just inside. The façade of the three-level building was also white. The Controller led me through the high entrance doors and down corridors of nodding heads, each bowing to him as we plunged deeper inside, their desks laden with ancient typewriters. Some looked at me as I passed, their faces either curious or indifferent, nothing in between. Towards the rear of the building the Controller descended a flight of stairs. I paused, seeing him reach a basement level, then stepped down to follow. But something clipped the back of my ankle – and I tripped, tumbling hard down the steps. At the bottom I picked myself up and crouched, preparing to be struck again. But nothing. It was like my fall was a performance the Controller was ignoring, while his two men stood silently at the top of the stairs, their eyes sparkling, mouths tight with smiles.

  The Controller directed me into a bare room, to a simple wooden chair, which creaked as I lowered myself into it. Its legs were loose, but it held my weight. The two men had followed us in, and one lifted my bag onto a table in the far corner of the room and left it there, in sight but out of reach. Immediately in front of me was another table, small and flimsy like a portable card-table. The only other object in the room was a wooden bench running the length of the wall. It reminded me of the spare pews the priest would ask Jack and me to carry into the back of the church for Christmas and Easter masses. Seating themselves on this bench, however, were the two uniformed men, rifles brought to rest in their laps. On the wall above them was the king on his throne.

  ‘You are not a sculptor.’

  Sweat was forming on my skin, rolling down my rib-cage.

  ‘Monsieur Adams, you have not told the truth.’

  ‘Yes . . . yes . . . I –’

  He broke across me.

  ‘It is one thing to lie in a hotel guest register, it is quite another thing to deceive me.’

  ‘I –’

  ‘Why are you spying on us, Monsieur Adams?’

  Speech caught in my throat as I tried to answer, tripped on itself.

  ‘You are a spy, Monsieur Adams, no?’

  I tried a second time, with only a little more control over the sounds.

  ‘No . . . no . . . I am not a spy. I am not a spy. No. No. I am not a spy . . . I am . . . an artist.’

  He paused. He smiled. He chuckled.

  ‘An artiste?’

  ‘Yes. I am an artist.’

  ‘An artiste?’

  ‘Yes. A sculptor.’

  The Controller turned and spoke to one of the men, who rose and left. The Controller looked back at me, still smiling. The guard returned with a piece of blank paper. He handed it to the Controller who set it on the table between us. From his pocket he took out a pencil and placed it on the paper.

  ‘Draw for me then, artiste.’

  ‘No, I –’

  ‘The king. Draw me a picture of the king.’

  My heart and chest and sweat glands and throat and brain – all throbbed. I leaned forward and reached for the pencil. I picked it up in my shaking right hand, and leaned over the page. I placed my left forearm over my right, and leaned hard, trying to still the trembling. A drop of sweat fell from my forehead onto the paper and detonated. I pushed down on my arm. I looked up at the photo on the wall, then at the Controller and his smile. I pressed the pencil to the paper, firm, as if I was looking for footing. Still my hand shook. I leant harder against my forearm and drew a short lead line, from the wrist, on the page. The mark I left was a helplessly jagged contour of lead on paper. It was impossible. I lifted my arm, dropped the pencil on the page, and sat back.

  ‘I’m a sculptor.’

  ‘Mais oui.’

  The Controller picked up the paper and pencil and handed them back to his man. Then, from his inside coat pocket, he produced my Jack book. I watched its path from his coat to the table. He placed it carefully in the dead centre, equidistant between us. When I lifted my eyes from the book the Controller was looking at me, hard.

  ‘Why are you spying on us?’

  My heart was thumping.

  ‘You must believe me, I’m not a spy.’

  The Controller took out the army report and placed it beside my notebook.

  ‘Do you know what will happen if I take you into that room?’

  He pointed to a door I hadn’t noticed before.

  ‘Do you know what will happen if I take you into that room, and search you?’

  I was pouring sweat.

  ‘Do you know what will happen if I take you into that room, and search you, and find something?’

  All was still. My interrogator, his men on the benches, the notebook and the report in the centre of the table. Even my thumping heart slowed. I saw the gun balancing in the guard’s hands. That gun suddenly became the centre of the room, of the very universe. The Contr
oller’s question seemed to withdraw, and instead it was that single rifle in that one guard’s hands I fixed upon – so still, the perfect balance of it.

  But the guard was not balancing his rifle at all – he was cradling it, and that . . . that was another thing entirely. He was nursing it, keeping it ready for what was to come, nurturing it so it was ready for its work.

  ‘I am a sculptor, not a spy.’

  ‘Oui, so you say. Does an artiste keep a notebook such as yours, Monsieur Adams?’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Why are you here, Monsieur Adams?’

  ‘I’m looking for my brother.’

  My interrogator did not break stride.

  ‘Where is your brother?’

  ‘I don’t know. Missing. Dead. I don’t know.’

  ‘Does your brother have a name?’

  ‘Jack . . . Jack Adams.’

  ‘You are looking for him here in El-Aaiún?’

  ‘He was with the UN.’

  ‘And what did he do with the UN, Monsieur Adams?’

  ‘He was a peacekeeper.’

  He paused, considering. And when he finally spoke I knew I had broken through, even if it was only a reprieve.

  ‘We can verify that, Monsieur Adams.’

  The Controller smiled and left the room. But his two men lingered. They sat, and patiently waited until the sound of the Controller’s footsteps had faded into silence. Then, only then, did they rise to follow their leader out of the room, one after the other. They’d done this before, these perfectly orchestrated movements. One of them stopped at the table as he passed, and leant close, his hot breath.

  ‘You,’ he sneered. ‘You a dead man.’

  *

  There’s a paradox, one that troubles all carvers eventually, the sculptor’s version of the question all artists must face. What does it mean to change the natural beauty of a stone by sculpting it? What is it you have to kill in order to give existence to something else?

  At first, when I started, I only wanted to get closer to the stone. After walking through the sandstone ranges as a kid, and collecting rocks, and laying that spectrum of colours out on my bedroom floor – from cream through pink through purple – it felt natural to lift a larger stone in both my hands. To nurse it, feel its weight, its contours, its texture. To see the colour cascading through it. It seemed the most natural thing in the world then, having caressed it into knowledge, to break it open and explore what was inside. To learn if what I’d sensed was there, did in fact exist.