Thought Crimes

by Tim Richards

  ‘Is he here on exchange?’

  ‘Udo’s not a boy. He works with my father.’

  ‘Have you been with him long?’

  ‘Do you people know how to mind your own business?’

  When Hana asked the best way to get to Errol Street in North Melbourne, I said we’d told Mum we’d be eating in Fitzroy.

  ‘You’re sixteen and you still tell her everything?’

  I could have left her then, but I’d begun to enjoy the pain Hana’s feet were putting her through. I was curious to meet the man who thought Hana worth following to the underside of the world.

  Waiting at the bar was a stout, dark man whose head barely reached Hana’s huge chest. Roughly my dad’s age, Udo’s cheeks shone like tomatoes, and his fly was at half-mast. Hana greeted him with a greedy kiss on the lips, and when I was introduced, Udo looked me up and down before apologising for having no English.

  Without asking what I’d do for money, Hana told me to see a movie. She’d meet me at Flinders Street station at twelve and we’d share a cab home.

  I didn’t know what to do. If I’d told her to get a cab to Black Rock whenever she chose, she might not have come home.

  After Udo stroked my cheek, I left them to it. I ate tea at Maccas and saw an awful Adam Sandler film. By eleven, it was freezing cold. I knew Mum would be pumping messages onto my mobile’s answer-service, and my one idea was to say that we’d been given free tickets for the movie, and had forgotten to switch the phone on afterwards. Scared to stay in one place for fear of drug-peddlers and madmen, I walked laps around the big city blocks.

  Near quarter to one, I was ready to catch a cab home and face the music by myself when Hana’s taxi pulled up in Flinders Street. She stank of alcohol, and looked like death. Twigs and bits of grass were knotted through her hair.

  ‘Are you all right? … Where were you?’

  ‘At a club.’

  ‘Mum and Dad will kill us.’

  ‘Just say we met one of your friends and she invited us back to her place.’

  ‘They’ll know it’s a lie. And they’ll smell you.’

  Then Hana muttered something in German that I took to mean, ‘Keep your mouth shut, or you’re dead.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Udo and his friend Manny took me to a park and raped me.’

  I asked if she was serious. When she said nothing, I said we had to go to the police.

  ‘No! He’s my father’s friend,’ Hana said, as if that made sense of things. ‘Shut up, or something bad will happen. They know where you live.’

  My head was spinning. I didn’t know what to believe. Though she looked ready to throw up, she spoke so calmly. Maybe it was shock. When I helped comb the muck from Hana’s hair, the Iranian driver said we’d pay extra for messing his cab.

  Just after one-thirty, Mum and Dad met us at the front gate.

  Not even the darkness could mask Mum’s fury.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  I said we were.

  ‘Go to bed now. But you’ll hear about this in the morning.’

  I raced to bed, but Hana spent twenty minutes in the shower. Then I heard Mum speaking to her. I couldn’t catch much of it, but I heard the phrase ‘only sixteen’ and guessed she was being told off for corrupting me. I was sick and frightened, not for what might happen to me, but for what happened to Hana. Could you really be raped by two disgusting men and be so matter-of-fact? And then I remembered rat-faced Udo with his fly undone, and how we’d asked him to dinner, and how he knew where we lived.

  When I went downstairs for breakfast, Hana was still in bed, and Mum insisted we take Mickey to the beach. Nothing was said for four blocks, until at last Mum spoke. Hana had told her everything, and it wasn’t my fault. What this ‘everything’ was, she didn’t say. I knew what Hana hadn’t told her.

  ‘Your dad will call Rotary and say that if anything like this happens again, she’s going straight home. We tried to call her parents, but they’re somewhere in Egypt … I’ve made it clear to her that you’re still a child. Hana said you had nothing to drink, and I have no reason to disbelieve her.’

  That morning, the bay was so glassy-still you could have skated from Black Rock to Williamstown, and the only thing cutting the silence was Mick’s yelping when two pelicans swooped low overhead, teasing him.

  ‘I don’t like her,’ I said.

  ‘No. You don’t have to. But we’ll do our best to make this thing work.’

  Having had ten years to think about it, I still don’t know what the facts were, or if the truth meant the same to Hana as it did to me. There was no obvious change in her mood that morning. By the time we returned with Mick, she’d made camp in front of the television, and was shovelling muesli into her mouth like someone who hadn’t eaten for a week.

  ‘How about a trip down the Ocean Road?’ Mum asked. ‘It’s one of the world’s great scenic drives.’

  ‘I get car-sick,’ Hana advised.

  ‘We could explore some goldfields towns. Or visit the wildlife sanctuary at Healesville.’

  Hana then left the lounge to throw slices of raisin-bread into the toaster.

  ‘Maybe you’d prefer walking at Wilson’s Promontory, or seeing fairy penguins at Phillip Island?’ Mum called after her.

  ‘I’d prefer to relax for a couple of days.’

  Mum then fired her flame-thrower at the ice. ‘Hana, I’m going to book you on a bus tour through Central Australia and Kakadu National Park. If you decide you’re not interested, you can cancel, but if you cancel, Rotary said we should book you a flight home.’

  Anyone else would have taken that as a kick in the teeth, but Hana spent the next few days gorging herself in front of the big screen as if nothing Mum said could make any difference.

  One time, I asked if she wanted to see a doctor, and Hana laughed.

  ‘You’re a fool. You’d believe anything I said.’

  By Friday, Hana had exhausted our video collection, and the moment of truth was at hand. If she cancelled the outback tour before midday, Mum would lose her deposit. If she cancelled after that, Mum’d lose the full fare. Would Hana make an effort to save the exchange, or would she cancel and go home?

  ‘What could be more boring than riding a bus through the desert?’ Hana answered.

  ‘Hana, I think you’re depressed, and I’m sorry about that,’ Mum said. ‘But now it’s for your parents to sort out.’

  ‘They’re in Egypt.’

  ‘And what they think about it is their fucking business,’ Mum answered. I’d never heard her swear at anything except traffic.

  The slaves who built the pyramids saw time pass more quickly than it did for us those next few days. The family policy was to ask Hana if she was interested in doing something – whether that be shopping, or walking Mick – and to ignore her when she declined.

  I’m not sure she believed Mum would re-schedule her flight home until Dad finally reached her parents in Luxor. When Dad passed her the phone, Hana went pale, and spoke to her mother in soft, compliant tones. After that, she hid in her bedroom. But for occasional trips to the bathroom and fridge, she wasn’t seen again until the day she was due to fly out. But her bags were sitting neatly beside the front door several hours before we were due to leave for the airport.

  ‘I’m sorry it came to this, Hana,’ Dad told her as he left for work. ‘But I don’t think you wanted to come here in the first place.’

  ‘No,’ she conceded.

  After breakfast, Mum had to collect the revised ticket from the agent. Given the choice between staying with Hana or going with Mum, I chose the latter. Out of habit, Mum asked if there was anything Hana wanted us to get, and she actually smiled when she said, ‘No, thank you.’

  Much as I wanted to see Hana’s huge arse vanish through the customs door, I remember feeling that I’d failed her in some way that not even she could understand. I wanted to ask if she hated me, but I was frightened she’d say ye
s. No one had ever hated me before.

  We were gone an hour, and when we returned, Hana was seated exactly where we’d left her, remote in hand, flicking through the channels, hoping to find one of the low-brow talk shows she liked best. But something was different, and I noticed that she’d changed from flats into the heels she wore so awkwardly. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would choose to wear heels on a long flight.

  When the taxi tooted in the driveway, Mum called ‘All set?’ and Hana leapt to her feet. She then made the unprecedented gesture of turning the television off. We were at the front door, about to set the alarm, when Mum paused, unsure if the dog was inside or out.

  After calling twice, she walked back through the house. From the front door, I could see down the corridor through to the family room window, and saw Mum walk out onto the back balcony.

  ‘Is something the matter?’ Hana asked in careful German.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d better see,’ she said.

  By the time I reached the balcony, I could hear Mum crying. I found her slumped in the garage, cradling Mickey’s limp body. A kitchen knife had been forced through his throat.

  I would have quit German, but Dad insisted that I continue. He was sure German writers must have written poetry to help one deal with darknesses that cloak the sun. I’ve since read my share of Goethe and Rilke without finding a thought that could erase the knife that killed our beautiful boy.

  It wasn’t until recently, while watching the sleazy character Robert Blake plays in the film Lost Highway, that I recalled something else from the bar in North Melbourne. Udo said that I should come too, that I’d brighten their party. But it was Hana who insisted, ‘No, not her. She doesn’t belong.’

  ASTRONAUTS

  She might have driven further south still, to Monkey Mia, to swim with the dolphins. But much as she loved dolphins, she couldn’t cope with a tourist crowd. What she really needed was to have the water to herself, and there were hundreds of miles of beach to choose from along the western coast. Slow to sight a track off the highway, she nearly lost control making the high-speed turn, the car’s back end drifting precariously. Only her intuition told her that there would be water beyond the dunes at the end of the track. The faintest whiff of Indian Ocean breaching a wall of heat.

  She changed into a red one-piece in the car. Not even in remote areas would she swim naked. Especially not in remote areas. Then she grabbed her towel and dashed across the dunes, excited as a child, knowing that beyond them she would find the beach of her dreams: soft, white-hot sand, tall curling waves at the edge of an emerald sea. An ocean.

  Throwing down her towel and kicking off her thongs, she drove her legs through the scorching hot powder until her feet hit the crust, then the firm wet sand. Waded through the shallows before diving headlong into the crashing surf, the water warmer than she’d expected, waves taller than she’d hoped for knocking her off her feet, then the surge of undertow as the next line of water collected and rose, whitening at the crest before it broke over her, forcing her head down into the blue-green riot, driving her knees into the coarse sand. Then, as the commotion stilled, she pushed her head back towards the sunlight. Nothing was composed or orderly below the surface. Sensational chaos.

  When she found her balance and stood, he was standing next to her. A bald-headed man with a massive chest, calm in the face of her rapidly swallowed breath. He was a mature man, mid-to-late fifties, with a soft, American voice: ‘Hello, I’m James. I’m an astronaut.’

  The man spun around to catch the next wave, two or three elegant strokes, then, arms pinned to torso, he skied the breaking wave like a porpoise all the way to the beach.

  Melissa saw him get to his feet and flick the water off his face as he adjusted the back of his blue Speedos. A giant man with broad shoulders leaving a trail of wet footprints behind him. And she was watching him cross the beach when the next wave broke over her, forcing her down into the churning water until her feet were above her head and she was slave to the motion of the surf.

  With the car unbearably hot, Melissa had a hunger to match her thirst. She found a store on the highway, with just a four-wheel drive and a station wagon with caravan in tow parked outside, and headed straight to the junk food. There she overheard a conversation between three Americans at the front counter, an elderly couple with broad accents and the man she’d met in the surf, James the astronaut.

  ‘Remorse? That’s near Tulsa, isn’t it?’ the older man asked.

  ‘Closer to Oklahoma City. But Remorse is where I grew up. I haven’t been back there for thirty years.’

  ‘My wife’s family are from Galveston. You been there?’

  ‘Sure. I was stationed up at Houston.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be,’ the woman said.

  ‘You were in the forces?’ her partner enquired.

  ‘I was a test pilot. And then I went into the Space Program.’

  ‘Well, truly!’ the woman said. ‘The people you meet. We thought we’d come to the end of the world.’

  ‘But you never went into space? You didn’t get to the moon?’

  ‘Not the moon. But I was in space.’

  ‘An astronaut!’

  ‘Jim Mathers.’

  ‘I remember that name. Jim Mathers. Yes, I do. If this isn’t the strangest thing!’

  ‘Who’d have thought,’ the woman said.

  Keen as she was to eat, Melissa stood back to listen. She couldn’t believe how easily the old couple bought the storekeeper’s bullshit. Having lived with an expert bullshitter for five years, she knew the lingo.

  Finally, the woman turned to Melissa. She needed a witness, someone to acknowledge the fact that she’d met an astronaut.

  ‘Did you know this man was in the Space Program?’

  ‘So he told me,’ Melissa said, affecting disinterest.

  Jim smiled. ‘It’s been real nice to meet you two,’ he told his compatriots. As though to say, You’ve met an astronaut, now it’s time to go. Leave your hero alone with the pretty girl who doesn’t give a shit.

  But the ancients wouldn’t leave until Melissa took their photo standing either side of astronaut Jim Mathers in front of the store – Jim’s Landing, as it was known. Even when their caravan was nearly out the driveway, they circled back to say one more goodbye.

  ‘You should be ashamed,’ Melissa told him. ‘Kidding old people that you’re part of their forgotten history.’

  ‘There are times when I’d rather not be Jim Mathers. But those two are CIA. Always best to stay onside with the Company.’

  He might have judged from her expression that she didn’t believe a word. But he saw her, and she saw him liking what he saw.

  ‘Come up to the house after closing. I’ll show you my telescope.’

  Melissa agreed to that right away, never thinking that James meant the kind of instrument that enhanced one’s view of the stars. She saw this trip as a big adventure, and you couldn’t have adventure if you didn’t make choices that were ill-advised.

  The thing to be said about Melissa at this point is that she’d known astronauts. Her first boyfriend, Mick, was Cosmic to his mates. Mick had worn her out with his talk of Burroughs and Jim Morrison. Years later he was found dead in a public toilet, a syringe in his arm. Mick’s girlfriend of the time wrote his epitaph: You weren’t designed for flight. You were meant to hover.

  Then there was her cousin Peter, a right-wing solicitor who’d go to parties and claim that he’d been taken into a spacecraft by aliens. He’d tell girls that the aliens had ‘bequeathed exquisite and unworldly sexual prowess’.

  What astonished Melissa was the number of not-unintelligent girls who wanted to be deceived. After discovering the truth, many perpetuated the myth of Peter’s sexual gifts in order to rationalise their own stupidity. A shy dental nurse named Helen told Melissa that Peter had a penis unlike any penis on earth.

  Melissa wouldn’t confuse anthropological curiosity with
ordinary lust. Jim looked like he had a night of good sex in him, and might leave her with some tales worth telling. There was no way she could go back to Melbourne without lurid stories. They had to be stories that signified her new spirit of adventure, stories that told people she’d consigned Rob to history, stories that would incline her friends and his to say that Missy was now over Rob, or post-Rob. Even better, that she was meta-Rob.

  There was a telescope. An impressive instrument it was too. It stood on the back verandah of the huge house Jim had built from pine. Although it was too late to fully appreciate the panoramic ocean views, Melissa expected to be shown the galaxies after dinner, a hastily prepared pesto accompanied by white wine and Miles Davis. The loudness of the music might have been meant to inhibit conversation.

  Melissa had imagined Jim would be a man who’d surround himself with books. Although compact discs outnumbered texts by a ratio of five to one, Jim did have an impressive cabinet full of antique volumes. Big atlases. And his walls featured framed maps: ancient documents that preceded the discovery of Terra Australis, even this west coast that mariners had discovered by accident many times over. The guest began to imagine a man with a head full of journeys, a mess of travels and dreamed travels that might allow a man to believe he was an astronaut.

  ‘Are you going to show me your telescope?’ she asked, placing her wine glass on a table.

  ‘There’s no need for instruction.’

  ‘I was hoping for the guided tour.’

  ‘I could’ve given you one once,’ he said, removing dishes from the large oak table. ‘I knew the name of every star and constellation. It was important to know that stuff. But I’ve made a point of forgetting the names. I’ve learnt to respect forgetting more than I used to.’

  ‘What do you need to forget?’

  ‘Shit, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to erase my tragic past or anything. I just don’t fret when stuff goes now, when I can’t retrieve things. We’re always making out that it’s a great thing to have a good memory. Maybe it is if you’re a hunter trying to survive on your wits.’