Catch the Zolt

by Phillip Gwynne

  ‘Yeah, where is he?’ added Toby.

  I said nothing. I couldn’t. This grandfather-back-from-the-dead revelation was almost too much for me to process.

  Dad and Mom looked at each other, before Dad said, ‘Well, he’s been in South America. But very soon he’s going to be next door.’

  ‘Your father bought the Dowd house,’ said Mom, and I could tell from the tone of her voice that she wasn’t happy about this.

  But I also remember thinking that it was a relief to hear her voice, as I was starting to worry that Dad had lost his mind or something, because he wasn’t making much sense.

  ‘And this grandfather of yours will be moving into it,’ said Mom.

  Which is exactly what happened.

  Dad had told us about Gus’s missing leg, but there’s a big difference between being told about something and actually experiencing it. And then there was Gus himself: if he’d been happy about being brought back from the dead, he certainly didn’t show it. He’d seemed shy, almost embarrassed.

  Then I saw it, sitting on the desk. Gus must’ve forgotten to put it back. The key to the desk drawer. I placed it into the keyhole, turned it. A click. I slid the drawer open. The red leather binder was there. I took it out. Opened it.

  The Debt.

  I removed Pagherò Cambiario from its plastic sleeve. Ran my fingers across its surface. Held it up to the light. The paper was thin; the light streamed through it. I could’ve torn it into a thousand pieces. Put a match to it and watched it go whoosh!

  But I didn’t. Instead, I used my iPhone to take a photo of the document. I was about to put the binder back in the bottom drawer when I noticed the edge of another binder. I pulled the drawer further out. This binder was also leather, but it didn’t look as old as the other one. It was also bulging with material, zipped shut. Guiltily, I took it out.

  If my grandfather had wanted me to see this, he would’ve shown me, I thought.

  I placed it on the desk, unzipped it. Clippings, papers, photos spilled out. I picked up the first photo. A boy in old-fashioned running gear. Except for the clothes, it could have been me: the same long legs, the same angular face, the same mop of thick black hair. I remembered what Imogen said about me looking like a ‘collision of triangles’.

  I turned it over. Written on the back was Giuseppe Silvagni, 15.

  It must’ve been taken just before he lost his leg.

  Even as I thought this I realised that I still didn’t believe that The Debt, the ’Ndrangheta, whatever you wanted to call them, had taken their pound of flesh, had taken Gus’s leg. It just wasn’t possible. Not in the twentieth century. Not in Australia.

  The next photo was also in black and white, of a family.

  ‘We lost most of the family photos in a fire,’ Gus had told me when I was researching that school project. ‘It was a terrible thing.’

  In the background of the photo was a house, surrounded by sugarcane, though ‘house’ is probably too grand a word for something that was more like a shack, that looked like it was made from scraps of corrugated iron and hessian sacking.

  I knew Gus’s family had been poor sugarcane farmers, but I hadn’t realised that they’d been this poor. I focused my attention on the people standing self-consciously in front of the house. Immediately I recognised Gus. He was shoeless, shirtless, and looked as though he was about ten or eleven years old. Next to him were two other boys, similarly dressed.

  They looked younger than Gus, perhaps by a couple of years, and they looked like twins. Not identical, but the same height, the same sharp features. They were Gus’s brothers. They had to be: the resemblance was unmistakeable. They all looked alike. They all looked like me.

  But how many times had Gus told me, when I was complaining about Miranda or Toby, that I was lucky to have a brother and a sister because he’d been brought up as an only child?

  Maybe these kids were cousins, or some other relatives, I thought.

  I studied the photo again. No, they were his brothers; I had no doubt about that. Behind the three children were two adults. Gus’s mother, my great-grandmother, looked old and worn. The man, Gus’s father, glared fiercely at the camera, as if he somehow resented the photographer. He had his arms folded tightly in front of his chest, so that his hands weren’t visible.

  Just then came the sound of a car pulling into the garage. I stuffed the papers and photos back into the binder and zipped it up. Shoved it into the desk, locked the drawer and put the key back where I found it. Just as I picked up the copy of Running World, Gus entered.

  ‘Hell’s bells and buckets of blood!’ he said, startled. ‘You scared the hell out of me! What are you doing here?’

  ‘I didn’t run this morning,’ I said, a pretty blatant statement of the obvious.

  I saw Gus’s eyes take in the key on his desk.

  I may not have run that morning, but my heart was racing.

  ‘They’ve given me the first instalment,’ I blurted.

  Immediately I could see the concern on Gus’s face.

  ‘They want me –’ I started, but Gus stopped me from going any further by saying, ‘I don’t want to know.’

  ‘It’s impossible!’ I said.

  Gus took a while to answer.

  ‘It’s not impossible, it’s –’

  ‘It is impossible!’

  ‘It may seem impossible, but it’s not. You’ve got to think of it in business terms. No creditor wants to destroy its debtors, because then there’s no chance they can make their repayments.’

  I thought about that. It made sense except for one thing.

  ‘They destroyed you,’ I said.

  As soon as I said this, I wished I hadn’t, because Gus seemed to shrivel before my eyes.

  I was about to apologise, to tell him that wasn’t really what I meant, when my phone started ringing, playing ‘You’re the One That I Want’.

  I knew it was Imogen calling because the week before Miranda and Toby, amusing siblings that they were, had taken my phone and given Imogen her own ringtone.

  And I hadn’t bothered to change it because, let’s face it, she was the one that I wanted. Perhaps just not with the uh uh uhs. Okay, maybe even with the uh uh uhs.

  ‘Hi Dom,’ said The One That I Want. ‘What you doing after school?’

  ‘Not much,’ I said. ‘You want to hang out?’

  ‘Well, there is this thing …’

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘Can’t really say,’ she whispered conspiratorially, as if our phones were being bugged by one of those spy agencies like ASIO, or the CIA, or Google. ‘Probably better if you come over and I can explain.’

  ‘I’ll be there at four,’ I said, before I hung up.

  Gus was still standing there.

  We looked at each other. I shrugged.

  ‘I didn’t mean what I said to you.’

  He shrugged. ‘This Debt business is a bugger.’

  We both agreed: a real bugger, before we went our separate ways.

  WAILING

  When I pressed the buzzer it was Imogen’s mother’s voice that crackled over the intercom. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Dom,’ I replied.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and it almost seemed as if she was disappointed, as if she had been expecting somebody a bit more threatening, like Freddy Krueger or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre dude.

  ‘Come in,’ she said.

  When I opened the door she was standing well back, wearing a dressing-gown and fluffy slippers.

  Mrs Havilland, like Mom, had been an actress. But while strangers still come up to Mom to ask if she was on TV, nobody comes up to Mrs Havilland. For a start, she doesn’t go outside. And she doesn’t look much like a TV star any more.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Havilland,’ I said.

  ‘Dom,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you shot up?’

  Enough with the shooting up already.

  She continued, ‘How’s your mum?’

  ‘She’s good.’


  ‘She hasn’t dropped in for a while. She must be very busy.’

  ‘Very busy,’ I said, but then I thought of something.

  ‘When did you first meet my mum?’ I asked.

  ‘A long time ago,’ said Mrs Havilland, doing that thing adults do that I hate, making out that they’re incredibly, immeasurably old, that they were actually around when Gondwanaland split, when dinosaurs became extinct, when TVs didn’t have remotes.

  ‘You met on a show in Sydney or something, didn’t you?’ I asked, and as I did something occurred to me: I didn’t actually know that much about my mum, about her past. What I did know were the same old stories: Charlie’s Angels, walking into Taverniti’s and seeing scruffy Dad, falling in love with him and getting married.

  Mrs Havilland thought about my question for a while, but all she could come up with was, ‘It was such a long time ago.’

  Pre-remotes, pre-dinosaur-extinction, pre-Gondwanaland-split.

  ‘But do you have, like, newspaper clippings or anything?’ I asked.

  Mrs Havilland was about to answer, but she was interrupted by Imogen’s voice from upstairs. ‘Is that you, Dom?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me,’ I called.

  ‘Clippings?’ said Mrs Havilland.

  ‘Yes, from when you and Mom were in that show.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can find,’ she said.

  Imogen appeared at the top of the stairs, looking beautiful, looking radiant, looking Imogenic.

  I followed her into her room, but it wasn’t the Imogen I’d known forever, the Imogen I’d gone to kindergarten with, the Imogen the four-year-old me was certain he would marry one day.

  That Imogen was calm, this Imogen was all over the place. That Imogen didn’t talk much, this Imogen wouldn’t shut up. There were multiple hugs, and thank-you-so-much-for-coming repeated about a thousand times, before she said, ‘We have to go to Town Hall Square.’

  Town Hall Square is the place people go when they want to get together to celebrate or to protest.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘It’s a party.’

  ‘For what?’

  Imogen didn’t answer, just gave me this sort of guilty look.

  ‘But what’s the party for?’ I said.

  ‘Promise not to get mad?’ she said.

  ‘Mad at what?’

  ‘Just promise.’

  ‘Okay, I, Dominic Silvagni, hereby swear that I will hereby not get mad.’

  ‘Otto escaped,’ she said, and the affectionate way she said ‘Otto’ made it sound as though she’d known him forever, as if it was he who was her soulmate, not me.

  ‘The Zolt escaped?’ I said.

  Imogen handed me her iPhone.

  Twitter was like a canary on amphetamines.

  zolt has excaped.

  zolt has dissapeared.

  hound davillieer has bean found naked in boat smeared in nutella.

  Over and over again, the same message retweeted.

  zolt excaped

  zolt dissapeared

  hound davillieer naked in boat smeared in nutella

  ‘He really has escaped?’ I said.

  Imogen smiled, and said, ‘You doubted him?’ but I wasn’t really listening to her any more.

  Catch the Zolt!

  I had my first instalment.

  Okay, that was big, about as BIG as it gets, and for a few seconds, maybe even longer, I was enveloped in its BIGNESS.

  But then something else.

  ‘You and the Zolt?’ I said looking hard at Imogen.

  Whenever I’d said how crazy all this Zolt-love was, she’d aways agreed with me.

  Imogen looked even more guilty. ‘I was going to tell you,’ she said, ‘but I thought you’d think I was silly.’

  You didn’t have to be a psychiatrist, psychologist, a psych-anything to understand why Imogen would adore the Zolt. He was free and she wasn’t.

  ‘In your case, I’m willing to make an exception,’ I said, smiling at my once-future wife. ‘Who’s coming to this thing, anyway?’

  ‘Everybody.’

  ‘Everybody?’

  ‘Well, everybody on Facebook,’ she said, and then she had this look on her face, as if she was deciding something.

  Eventually she said, ‘Promise not to get mad,’ again.

  ‘I already promised not get mad, remember,’ I said.

  ‘But that was for something else. Promise again.’

  ‘Okay, I hereby promise again.’

  ‘Tristan’s coming,’ she said.

  ‘Tristan!’ I said with as much contempt as I could muster.

  ‘You hereby promised,’ warned Imogen.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s go meet the now-apparently-okay Tristan. And then, after, we can listen to some rap, preferably of the hardcore gangsta variety. And then congratulate all those dads wearing Speedos.’

  Imogen glared at me, but there was still a half-smile on her face.

  ‘And it’s okay with your mum?’ I said.

  Imogen gave me an are-you-kidding? look before she said, ‘Can you help me sneak out?’

  All the times I’d wanted Imogen to sneak out – to the opening of the new Styxx shop downtown, to see me race – and she wouldn’t because she didn’t want to upset her mum. Now she wanted me to help her sneak out to see, of all people, of all creeps, Tristan.

  Still, it only took me about a nanosecond to say, ‘Okay, I’ll help you.’

  And let’s face it, it was also a pretty perfect opportunity for me to learn about the Zolt. But it wasn’t as if I was going to get off my shiny white high horse to inform Imogen of that, though.

  No, I was doing her the mother of all favours.

  Because Mrs Havilland spent the day downstairs in bed, mostly watching television or doing crosswords, you wouldn’t have thought that sneaking out would be particularly difficult. But she’s like a spider who had spun an invisible web, whose filaments reached into every nook and cranny of the house. She can hear, feel, every little vibration. Sneaking out wasn’t going to be easy.

  I checked out the window.

  It was a long way down.

  If only this was a movie, I thought. There would be convenient gutters to clamber down, convenient trees to climb into.

  There were a few handholds, a few footholds, and I was confident I could make it down, but I wasn’t so sure about Imogen. Strangers came up to her and offered to make her the world’s next supermodel, not the world’s next superathlete.

  ‘We could knot the sheets together,’ said Imogen. ‘Climb out through the window.’

  We could, but it would mean that the knotted sheets would be left dangling.

  In Halcyon Grove it would take no time at all before somebody reported it and security came knocking at the door. Scaring the hell – or what was left of the hell – out of poor Mrs Havilland.

  In the end I went downstairs and knocked on the half-opened door to Mrs Havilland’s bedroom.

  ‘Come in,’ she said.

  Mrs Havilland was on the bed, propped up by pillows, smoking. The room smelt of perfume and cigarettes. The television was on.

  ‘And haven’t you got the peachiest complexion?’ said one of the characters in a voice I sort of recognised.

  I turned my attention to the screen. Now I realised why the voice was familiar: it belonged to a much-younger Mrs Havilland. Who was wearing a halter top and a miniskirt.

  ‘Is that you?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, that was me.’ Mrs Havilland exhaled a long thin stream of smoke.

  ‘Wow, Mrs Havilland, you were hot,’ I said.

  ‘I was, wasn’t I?’ She seemed to drift off for a moment, then she hit the off button on the remote control and the video ceased whirring.

  Okay, Dominic, out with it.

  I took a deep breath and blurted, ‘Imogen and I would like to go to the city.’

  Mrs Havilland looked shocked. ‘The city? Do you realise how much crime there is in the city?’

 
; I half-nodded, half-shrugged.

  ‘I’d look after her,’ I said, drawing myself up to my full height, the full height the runner in me wasn’t particularly pleased with.

  Mrs Havilland took another deep drag of her cigarette. ‘And how do you intend to get there?’

  ‘Buses,’ I replied, but I realised that probably wasn’t the right answer, so I added, ‘A taxi if we have to.’

  She considered this for a while. ‘And who are you going to meet?’

  I’m not sure ‘just a whole lot of people from Facebook’ was going to work for Mrs Havilland. ‘Just some kids from Grammar.’

  I could see a small nod of approval – obviously ‘kids from Grammar’ was a good move – but I still had the sense that I needed a clincher.

  My eyes fell on Mrs Havilland’s phone on the bedside table.

  ‘Imogen can send you a text, like, every hour, telling you where she is, that’s she’s okay,’ I said.

  ‘A text every half an hour,’ Mrs Havilland said.

  Every thirty minutes was ridiculous, but I said ‘Okay’ and went upstairs to tell Imogen the good news.

  ‘Really?’ she said.

  ‘Really,’ I said.

  I don’t think either of us could quite believe how straightforward it had been.

  After reminding us of the text-every-half-hour condition and kissing her daughter goodbye, Mrs Havilland let Imogen go.

  As we walked through the door and up the path, as we went through the Halcyon Grove main gate, I kept expecting to hear Mrs Havilland’s voice calling Imogen back.

  Even when we were on the bus, five kilometres up the road, I still half-expected to hear it.

  ‘Please don’t leave me, you’re the only thing I’ve got left.’

  But I didn’t.

  OVER FLOW

  Town Hall Square wasn’t big enough for all the people who had turned up; they were crowding the footpath, spilling out onto the road. There were uniformed police loudhailing through loudhailers, ordering people to stop blocking the traffic. They were even suggesting that we should all go home.

  Go home? I don’t think there’s much chance of that, Mr and Mrs Plod.