Beyond Carousel

by Ritchie, Brendan

The poet was already moving when I got there. Hunched over in the golf cart. A screwdriver wedged into the ignition.

  ‘Hey!’ I yelled.

  His head snapped in my direction. Eyes wide. Shoulder twitching.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I shouted and ran after him.

  He ignored me and crunched the cart up and over a parking island. It slowed him down and I made some ground. I had the bug spray held out in front of me like I was chasing some giant insect. I closed to within ten metres when he ploughed over another island.

  ‘You’re going to blow the tyres,’ I yelled.

  I was right behind him now but there was just the kerb left between him and the street. He rammed up and over it at full speed.

  The front tyres popped in unison.

  I got alongside him and tried to grab onto the cart. He saw me and freaked, pulling the cart hard left onto the sidewalk. It shuddered and slowed, but I was slowing too. The sidewalk began a decline. He bumped down onto the road and picked up some speed. I fell behind and sprayed the can desperately. I was too far away and most of it blew back into my face.

  The rampaging poet sped onward as I hunched over, defeated. My breath was ragged and shallow. There was a popping noise ahead of me. Another of the tyres had gone. I watched as the guy chugged onwards ambitiously towards the distant charcoal hills. Off to find some dude that probably didn’t even exist.

  ‘Great,’ I sighed.

  I stood up and looked around. My skin rippled with panic. The streets had swiftly resumed their oppressive calm. I quickly set off back to the supermarket before it got any worse. It was a long walk back to the casino, but it wasn’t like I had any other options.

  I gathered our shopping and looked around for something to help me carry it all. I found some dusty laundry bags in the cleaning aisle. They were effectively just cotton sacks with a drawstring opening at the top. One of them was able to house all of our stuff. I pocketed the bug spray, swung the bag over my shoulder and took off westwards towards the river.

  The sun dropped fast this time of the year and I cursed myself for leaving the casino so late in the day. I could see the resort from where I walked, and it seemed like I could make it back before dark, but I hadn’t had to judge this kind of thing for ages. And I didn’t think to take a torch.

  This side of Victoria Park was mostly residential. I passed quickly through streets full of proud Federation homes. Cobwebs strung across their long verandas. Volkswagens abandoned in the driveways. These gave way to small high-rises peering westward at the city lights. Shifting winds jittered balcony furniture and windows on the higher levels. I lost sight of the horizon and focused hard on the street names so as not to take a detour.

  I started noticing street art on the sides of buildings and fences. It was complicated and dramatic. Big swathes of colour morphing their way into intricate typography. It covered walls, but also ran across windows, doors and down onto the sidewalk. It made me think of the graffiti Artist Tommy had mentioned. I wondered whether this might be his work. Whether he might be staying somewhere nearby. But there was something disconcerting about these apartment buildings. They weren’t that old, but they felt like they could topple down on me at any minute. The whole suburb did. It creeped the hell out of me.

  Finally I reached the top of the rise and started heading back downhill. I cut across a playground where a Transperth bus had ploughed through the waist-high fence and come to rest against a bordering townhouse. Grass had grown around its tyres, giving it the look of a giant forgotten campervan. The high-rises fell away and I relaxed a little. There were some shops and cafes ahead, before the car yards began. I swapped the laundry bag to my other arm and kept a lookout for a chemist. Rachel would be pissed about the golf cart. Maybe if I found her something for her cold it would soften the blow.

  A lot of the shops looked like they had been smashed into some time ago. The glass was dirty and clustered into piles by wind and rain. I passed a Baskin-Robbins where the ice-cream had melted into a sludgy rainbow across the counter and floor. Gloria Jean’s, where the chairs and tables had been pushed aside to form a path in and out of the ransacked kitchen. A lonely health insurance outlet with just a token rock thrown in through the window.

  We had been late to the party on all of this stuff. Sheltered and oblivious inside the talcum-white walls of Carousel. Walking those streets I got the unnerving sensation that I had arrived at some kind of post-post-apocalypse. A place where a new civilisation had been trialled, and swiftly failed, with no obvious successor rising up to take its place. Perth drew a nervous breath and hung in limbo all around me.

  I found a chemist and some supplies to take back to Rachel. Mostly vitamins. Most of them were out of code, but a few looked to be fine. As I exited the dank and dusty store something caught my eye.

  A solitary white ute was parked across the street.

  It was out the front of a neat Federation hotel. A posted timber balcony wrapped around the upper floor. A bar with decorative brickwork and brewery logos sat tucked away beneath.

  I stopped and looked at the car. Something wasn’t right about it. Not with the vehicle itself, but where it was. It was parked squarely inside the car bay. Not abandoned and part of the old world. But somehow new and foreign. As if it had only just arrived.

  I crossed the road and looked it over. It was a late-model trayback Toyota. Nothing fancy. There was some dirt on the lower panels and windscreen. I peered inside and saw the cab was empty but for a road map, some food wrappers and a pair of sunglasses. I stood and listened, but the quiet streets told me nothing. It was dimming rapidly toward dusk and my instincts told me to forget the car and get the hell back to the casino. But I suddenly remembered something Rocky had done when we found the Fiesta in Carousel, and placed my hand on the bonnet.

  It was warm.

  Somebody was inside the hotel.

  20

  ‘So I guess you’re the Curator?’ I asked.

  The guy sitting at the bar picked up his beer, finished the inch or so that remained in the bottle and placed it back down on the coaster.

  ‘Can I buy you a beer?’ he replied.

  I hesitated, still just a step inside the door. The guy waited calmly on his stool. He was shortish and had the weathered, everyday face of a dad who coached the cricket team. I quickly recognised him as local folk singer Ed Carrington.

  Ed was a bit of an icon in Australia. It felt like he had been around forever. He wrote the simple, melodic songs that soundtracked just about everybody’s barbeques, Christmases and road trips. His music was nostalgic and truthful in a country without a lot of either. Everyone in Australia was supposed to like Ed Carrington. And there I was wanting to punch him in the face.

  ‘It’s not cold. But it’s not warm either,’ said Ed, looking at the empty bottle like he was about to write a fucking song about it.

  ‘What have you done with everyone?’ I asked.

  Ed exhaled and weighed up his answer.

  ‘I can’t answer that. But I can tell you a bit of what I know, and some more of what I think,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘Are you the Curator?’

  I was still standing by the door with the bag strung over my shoulder. Ed slid off his stool and pushed out the one beside him as an invitation for me to sit. I placed my bag carefully by the door and edged my way over. Ed’s eyes flashed a welcoming smile and he held out a hand. I took it and shook, despite myself.

  ‘I prefer Ed,’ he replied.

  I sat on the stool while he circled the bar and disappeared beneath the counter, then emerged with two beers.

  ‘Melbourne Bitter okay?’ he asked, opening the bottles before I could answer.

  I nodded. Ed placed them on the bar and made his way back to his stool.

  ‘People drink a lot of fancy stuff these days. Now that it’s free and everything,’ he said. ‘But you have to ask yourself, when the shit is hitting the fan, is that really your drink?’

/>   We clinked bottles and I took a small sip.

  ‘I didn’t catch your name,’ said Ed.

  ‘Nox,’ I replied.

  ‘Where you from, Nox?’ he asked.

  ‘The hills,’ I replied, bitingly.

  Ed put down his beer. There was empathy in his gaze.

  ‘North or south?’ he asked.

  ‘South,’ I replied. ‘Roleystone.’

  Ed took a moment to think this over.

  ‘I’ve spent some time in the hills. Was up there last weekend,’ he replied. ‘The fire took out a lot of land. Nearly all of the north and down into the valley. But I’ve heard that some pockets in the very south made it through okay. Maybe some of Roleystone.’

  ‘My friend Tommy was up there,’ I said. ‘He was looking for you.’

  ‘I hope he’s okay, Nox,’ replied Ed. ‘We got a lot of people out before it really took off. But it’s hard to know how many are about these days. People have scattered.’

  ‘Not what you expected to happen?’ I asked.

  Ed looked at me, then took another swig.

  ‘I got to level with you, Nox. I’m a regular guy. Just like anyone else left wandering around this city,’ he replied.

  I didn’t buy it.

  ‘How come you have a car when nobody else does?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m a mechanic by trade, so that helps. But these days it’s mostly about the fuel. Petrol goes bad pretty quickly. Diesel is better, but there’s not a lot of that around now either. I read somewhere that a country should have a three-month stockpile of fuel in case of a catastrophic weather event. How much do you reckon we have in Australia?’ he asked.

  I shrugged.

  ‘Around three weeks worth,’ said Ed.

  He seemed staggered by this, but I felt like he was avoiding my question.

  ‘So why do people call you the Curator?’ I asked.

  ‘There’s a lot of grief in this city. People are lost. They need a lighthouse,’ he replied.

  ‘A lighthouse?’ I asked.

  Ed looked at me and waited.

  ‘My family is gone. One of my friends died in a shopping centre. The others were lost in a fire. People need more than a fucking lighthouse,’ I snapped.

  I shoved my stool away and paced across the bar. My head was swimming with confusion and bitterness.

  Ed remained seated, calm as ever. Eventually I stopped and glared over at the solitary figure seated at the bar. Shafts of late afternoon sun stretched in through the windows. Ed took a long draw on his beer, then turned to face me. It felt like we were standing off in some bizzaro western.

  ‘I’m sorry, Nox,’ said Ed.

  He sounded genuine. Actually, Ed was kind of genuine personified.

  I took a breath and thought about my conversation with Lizzy. About how we project stuff onto famous people depending on what we need from them. How we make them out to be something they’re not.

  ‘You said you could tell me what you know,’ I replied.

  Ed nodded. ‘And what I think,’ he replied. A showman’s sparkle danced in his eyes.

  I returned to my stool and necked my beer. Ed finished his off and settled comfortably against the bar. I watched him and waited.

  ‘Have you ever heard of something the French call the Prix de Rome?’

  In that shadowy abandoned pub, over a series of lukewarm Melbourne Bitters, Ed Carrington filled me in on the history of the Prix de Rome.

  The Prix de Rome was an award for artists that dated all the way back to the seventeenth century. It was started in France by a king who decided that the country’s best artists should get the opportunity to develop their art from the masters in Rome. Winners were given residencies in the city in order to study, develop their craft and create definitive artworks. These residencies often lasted several years before the artists returned home to continue their careers.

  Ed was quick to add that it wasn’t all ‘beer and skittles’. Returning artists were often expected to use their new skills to glorify the relevant king to the public in future work – no pressure. The award was also adopted by other countries and became super competitive. In the Netherlands artists had to pass a series of exams just in order to qualify. The final of these tests involved being locked in a cubicle for months, where you were fed meals through a hatch while you tried to paint a masterpiece that justified your place in the residency.

  Since then the award diversified from painting to include all kinds of art forms, and ebbed and flowed throughout history until France abandoned it in the sixties.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  Ed carefully returned his bottle to its coaster.

  ‘A lot of stuff went down in France during the sixties. The government was conservative. Had been for a long time. But the people were headed in another direction. They wanted to be progressive; to feel represented. So they protested,’ he replied. ‘It started with the students. Protests. Rallies. Debates. And a lot of great artwork,’ said Ed.

  He paused for a moment. ‘Nobody protests like the French.’

  ‘Suddenly an award like the Prix de Rome seemed kind of bourgeois. It was restrictive and part of the establishment. Art was supposed to be challenging, not conformist. Gradually the people lost interest. The government abolished it in sixty-eight. But really, it was the people who decided.’

  I took a breath and stared into space. I was wrapped up in the story and the beer and had all but forgotten why he was telling me this.

  ‘For the art world, sixty-eight was a line in the sand. The sixties in general I guess,’ said Ed. ‘But lately things have crept back into dangerous territory. Artists are being forced to chase fame harder than ever before. Fine art is all about winning awards and being represented by galleries. Cinema is full of sequels, prequels and remakes. Music has lost its gatekeepers, but also a lot of its soul.

  ‘You see, Nox, residencies don’t exist so that painters can practise painting kings. They exist so that artists can be challenged. So they can be transported a million miles from their reality. Away from the stuff that clouds things over and makes all art feel the same. Not just the famous artists, either. All kinds,’ said Ed.

  ‘But a while ago they stopped being able to do that,’ said Ed. ‘The world needed a new kind of residency.’

  He stopped and let these words hang in the air.

  I looked at him.

  ‘You can’t be serious?’

  ‘Afraid so,’ he replied, eyes all sparkly.

  ‘So when is this new kind of residency supposed to finish?’ I asked.

  ‘September second,’ he replied.

  ‘This year?’ I asked.

  ‘This year,’ he replied.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Two years to the day it started. The minimum length of the Prix de Rome,’ said Ed.

  I felt dizzy and pressed down on my temples.

  ‘That’s what I think. Not what I know,’ said Ed.

  ‘Say you’re right. What do we do on September second?’ I asked.

  ‘Go back to your Residency. Take your art with you. It was customary for artists to present their work at the completion of their stay,’ he replied.

  ‘To who? And then what?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Nox. But if I took a punt, I think that might be our ticket back home,’ he replied.

  ‘Does everybody know about this?’ I asked.

  Ed shook his head gravely.

  ‘I tell who I can. But people have spread out. Bunkered down,’ he replied. ‘I can’t get to all of them.’

  ‘What month is it now?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s the first of July,’ he replied.

  ‘Two months,’ I whispered.

  ‘Two months,’ echoed Ed.

  We sat in silence. The bar was all but dark now. Bottles glinted with moonlight bouncing in off the street. A dog yelped somewhere distant and suddenly my mind jolted.

  ‘I have to find the Finns,’ I said.

&nb
sp; ‘Taylor and Lizzy Finn?’ asked Ed.

  My head shot up. ‘You know them?’

  ‘Sure I do,’ replied Ed.

  ‘Do you know where they are?’ I asked.

  ‘A photographer told me about some twins that were staying in the city. It sounded like the Finns,’ he replied.

  ‘When was this?’ I asked.

  ‘A while ago now,’ he replied.

  I stood up and swayed backwards. There was a long line of empty bottles on the bar.

  ‘Steady there, Nox,’ said Ed.

  ‘I need to get moving,’ I replied, looking around for my bag.

  ‘It’s dark out now. No place to be walking. Let’s break some bread and we’ll make our way to the city in the morning,’ he suggested.

  Ed didn’t wait for me to reply. Instead he disappeared outside and returned with an esky and a small portable barbeque. I watched as he moved about the bar. He was a diminutive looking guy, but he had a serious aura. It made everything he said seem somehow grandiose and resonant. Talking to Ed was like hearing fables unfold. Things that sounded simple and obvious, but then when you thought about them they made sense of the world in a way that didn’t seem possible.

  No wonder people here called him the Curator.

  I sat by as he fried eggs and salami by the light of an old gas lantern. We ate at a proper table and talked of football and politics like they were things that were still in our lives. Ed opened some wine and downed a couple of glasses while I sipped on mine carefully. The guy just didn’t get drunk.

  My head started to droop badly after dinner. Ed cleared the plates and tossed me a mat and blanket from his ute. I stretched them out on the floor, and spiralled rapidly into blankness as Ed took up his stool back at the bar.

  21

  The morning was bright and spiking cold. I woke and tried to shake off a hangover while I helped Ed load up his ute. He had said good morning, but otherwise been silent. There were clearly things on his mind that he had taken leave from the night before. When everything was packed into the ute Ed took a jerry can from the tray and started refuelling.

  ‘I can take you to the city, but then I have to head south,’ he said. ‘There are Artists down that way that I need to get in touch with.’