Fuckin’ waste of goey, Whitey thought. He plugged his headphones into the CD player and picked up the bottle of bourbon.
When he came-to the next morning, Nat was gone. Whitey hadn’t heard her leave. The bourbon bottle was tipped over, but there was no spillage; its contents had been spilled unremembered down his throat. He did vaguely remember some air-drumming to ‘Eye of the Beholder’ though. His room looked grey, like the hard, lonely hangover that was waiting to strike — or rather, constrict.
In the lounge room Pete sat with a glass of pale wine rolling White Ox into thin cigarettes.
—Get lucky, ya bastard? Pete said.
—Not exactly.
—She woke me up tryin’ ta open the door, Pete moaned, spitting a piece of tobacco.
—Dodgin’ a mornin’ glory as well as last night, Whitey said.
—Glass a gooney, mate?
—Nah. I gotta eat somethin’. Hungry?
—If ya makin’.
Whitey threw two Black Ben pies in the oven for Pete and stirfried some frozen vegetables for himself. He tried the bread, but mould had won over a new colony. He drank straight from the tap until his stomach rejected. He groaned. He had to ring Ronnie, his drug supplier, and exchange some cash for stash, but the idea filled him with despair. Maybe after food ideas would feel better. He ate despite the tastelessness.
—I dunno how ya do it, Whitey said, putting the two pies down on the scarred coffee table.
—Do what?
—Not suffer from hangovers.
—I get ’em. Just don’ fuckin’ whinge, Pete replied.
—Well, I’m off it for a while, Whitey said.
—Fuckin’ have a glass a gooney, ya weak white cunt, Pete laughed.
So Whitey had some wine and Whitey arranged to get some more drugs the next day. And later, Pete packed some clothes and a gooney bladder in a once-blue sports bag for his trip up north.
Dogs.
—Every dog has its day, the guy with dog-ears said. Bark — Bark.
The guy climbed through the ceiling, and Whitey moved closer to consciousness because, as he’d begun to suspect, he was in a dream. He awoke to hear the tail-end of one of his snores. Every dog in the street was going off. Whitey rolled over and looked at the digital clock on the floor next to his bed. Five forty-three am. He rolled back over. It was Tuesday. There was no reason to get up this early on a Tuesday. He closed his eyes, but the dogs continued. He heard the side-gate move. He got up, looked out the window. It was dream-like, but: dogs, white cars, vans. Cops. Fuck. Ronnie’d dropped off a shit-load on Sunday. He pulled on his jeans.
Should he hide the drugs? Or himself?
Or vomit the speedy bile?
The front door was belted out of the door-frame. Whitey stuck his head around the bedroom doorway. Eddie was there, in the lounge room, now with cuffs and a gun on his belt. Whitey was slammed to the floor. A knee was on his cheek and another in his back. They were going through everything. With the dogs. The television. Broken drawers. The knee now on his jaw. There’d been drugs everywhere in here. The dogs were too efficient. Too professional. Black, small. Labrador. Maybe too small for a labrador. They were finding rewards. The knee on his jaw shifted, the weight transferred fully to his back.
The pigs — and their dogs — could take all liberties.
Whitey slid the dry, plastic-skinned sausage and the poached egg into the toilet bowl, but they didn’t flush. The purgatory of the Bellevue Remand Centre was holding off severe turbulence — for both semi-processed meats and criminals it seemed. The ecru paint was thick on the walls. You could feel the below-ground level coldness in them, but for Whitey, it was not enough to make them real. Like the feeling in his head. He was numb but somehow sharply aware. He’d not felt this helpless, stripped and disabled since he was a kid, and his father had been taken from him. And like then, he could do nothing but let it happen — to live the experience from as much distance as his mind would allow. He didn’t want to think too far ahead either. As much as he was hating the situation, he knew it could get worse. There was that threat everywhere. On the faces of his fellow detainees. In the hardness of the limited amenities.
And that night, after a full day in remand, Whitey lay on the mat they gave him for a bed and wondered how his luck had gone so bad. He didn’t want much out of his life. But one thing was clear now. What he did want was freedom. And that was thinning out. He wondered if his own carelessness had brought on this bad luck. Of course Eddie was a cop. The thought hadn’t really entered his mind then, but why would Nat bring someone over out of the blue? She never had before. He should have just told them both to fuck off. But he wouldn’t. He’d never told anyone to fuck off when they’d come to buy drugs. It was just plain fucking bad luck. And anyway, it was out of his control now.
TWO
Sonja Marmeladova looked out the window of her Year 10 English class at the dogs humping on the oval. She liked English, it was her favourite subject, but today she was over Othello. The dogs were real, living their poetry. The bitch broke from the male and went back to sniffing and eating recess scraps.
—So. Is Othello a hero or a villain? Miss de Groen asked the class.
But still Sonja couldn’t be bothered. She looked back out the window. To the dogs and their simple happiness.
When the bell went, Sonja headed for the library. As much as she wanted to learn more about and embrace Australian culture, lately she liked to read Russian novels. Dostoyevsky’s nineteenth-century St Petersburg was not exactly the Moscow she had left only half a decade ago, but she could live it in her head. The author’s words, in translation, were difficult, but there’d be sentences that would grab some inner part of her, and bring back scents, and the un-harsh light of her earlier childhood. She’d finished the large book, and although not entirely grasped it, got something from it she wanted to live again.
She took Chekhov’s Plays off the shelf and read the introduction. She borrowed it when the bell rang, then headed for her history class.
—Hey, Sonja, howsitgoin’?
It was Raz, a Year 11 boy. She’d sat with his group once or twice at lunch — or found herself sitting in their hangout by mistake — and had had some decent conversations. But she couldn’t remember actually talking to Raz in particular.
—Good, she replied.
—I was lookin’ for ya t’day, Raz said.
—Me. Why?
—I just wanted ta ask ya somehin’.
—Well, here I am, she said.
—I’ll find ya t’morrow, okay? I, um, gotta get ta class, Raz said, and motioned up the hall, to his next class Sonja supposed.
—Okay.
It was hard to focus on history. Raz. He was pretty good-looking. Not that she’d ever really thought about him in that way. His friend Brett had sex-appeal, and she’d thought about him. But Raz … She put Chekhov on her lap and began The Cherry Orchard under the desk, to take her mind off Raz. What could he want? From her?
Sonja picked up her younger sister, Polly, from the primary school on her way home. Today, Polly’s hair looked like a forgotten doll’s: Sonja hadn’t had time to brush it before school, and there would be a tug-o-war tonight to cure the knots.
—Do you think we’ll have pancakes for dinner tonight? Polly asked.
—If Dad brings home some milk, I told you, Sonja replied patiently, not for the first time.
But she wasn’t hungry now. Raz. She hated hope. Or at least the emptiness that usually followed hope. She couldn’t help hoping Raz liked her though. It was such a sudden feeling. It was something she’d never wished for before: a guy liking her. But its implications were massive. It would mean someone thought of her as pretty. It would mean that her Russianness was not an abnormality. It would mean she was part of someone, who was part of something.
She grabbed Polly’s hand as they dared the highway — a little further east than usual, as the linesmen working on the overhead power lines that framed th
e highway had spread orange witches hats over what seemed like an excessive area of the highway shoulder.
Sonja lived with her parents and her younger sister and brother in a small two-bedroom flat in Brunei Court, the Housing Commission complex in Mt Druitt. The three children shared one bedroom, and there was one more that their parents shared — except when the father, Zakhar, was drinking. Then there was the combined lounge room/kitchenette, and a bathroom-cum-laundry. They’d all lived with the mother’s cousin for the first two years in Australia, but the father had pissed on the lounge and spilled his wine too many times. They no longer spoke to Katerina’s cousin. After a few weeks in the hostel, the Commission had offered her family the unit in Brunei Court. It was only meant to be temporary, but after Zakhar had apparently severely insulted Commission staff, their place on the waiting list for a larger house had slipped.
Zakhar Marmeladov had been an academic. He’d taught mathematics in Moscow and worked as a civil engineer. And as far as Sonja could remember, her father had not wanted to migrate to Australia. Sonja’s auntie had written to them of the liberty, the shared wealth, and the healthy dry heat of Australia. Katerina Marmeladova had decided they would make the seemingly endless and certainly uncomfortable journey south, and south. It had been her dream, she always told them after vodka, to live and educate her children abroad. Katerina was a voracious reader of anything from the West, and her aspirations had flourished since Yeltsin. Zakhar, Sonja remembered, relented when he was transferred to the army — something he’d avoided obstinately — to teach engineering. In his stubbornness the tickets were bought and her mother expedited their visa application.
The ride from the airport to her auntie’s place in the south-west corner of the suburban spread had been so contrary to what Sonja had been looking forward to. She had had to ask if they were in Sydney, or was there another leg of the trip to be taken? It was all trees and grass and highway, and flat, sterile buildings hiding low amongst the growth. And the greens, yellows and greys were like nothing she had ever imagined. They were almost a single colour. The shapes of the trees were so un-conforming, so like naked human limbs. And then her auntie’s house. Her auntie apologised that they’d all have to be squashed. But there was enough space for another family as far as Sonja could tell. And it was quiet. The days were eerie. Sonja would listen for cars, for voices in the street. They barely came.
The excursions, finally, into the city were something though. How super-new it looked with its sharp, angled glass buildings compared to Moscow. Her father disliked it. He criticised the architecture, the endless rows of shops, the pompous cafés. He was right, Sonja thought. But it was nicer than the necropolis of her auntie’s suburb, Leumeah.
Their immigration visa was granted. Her father’s status as an engineer had ensured it. She heard him cursing his degrees the day the letter came. Zakhar had begun working for a builder — a Russian friend of Sonja’s auntie. From his first day he had complained about the builder. He’d lived too long in this everyday-is-Christmas wonderland, he said. He’s interested only in profit, profit, and substandard offerings.
Zakhar had always been a drinker. Her uncles, her aunties, her cousins, her friends’ parents had always drunk. But here, in the silent suburb, her father began to detach from them, and to celebrate his un-fulfilment and regret daily, and nightly, with vodka and beer.
—Beer, this piss, they love their fucking beer here, she heard him murmuring through his beer alone in the lounge room one night.
Soon her father was no longer working for the builder. And towards the end of their stay at her auntie’s, she heard her auntie say that Zakhar had lost the job because he’d been drinking at work, and had stored bottles and bottles of urine under his desk.
The move to Brunei Court was liberating. The flat made you aware that you were part of a family. Sonja could hear her siblings and parents from every room. And although it was just as far west of the city as her auntie’s was south-west, the noise of the highway behind the flats was constant comfort. It was proof of life. She’d had to change schools, but she’d wanted a second go at that anyway. The first school she’d attended had taught her little academically. There was too much social nuance to take in. The kids had freedom to learn, in a variety of methods, or not to learn at all if they chose. And instead of the straight stick, the straight back, and the straight mouth, kids could slouch and giggle. There was even time to lie on the carpeted floor and read! Sonja could understand the English they spoke here, but articulating it was an exhaustive process. She’d learned it was better to not say much. Teachers rewarded this as much as correct answers.
But at her new school Sonja decided she would learn more of what her teachers could offer her, and less about what her fellow students demonstrated. Though that, of course, proved impossible. There was always something revealed to her. These kids knew so much about sex. They were having sex. They had relationships. There were whole class-times behind the teachers’ backs devoted to the dramas of these relationships. Sonja had not attended high school in Moscow, but she could not imagine this happening in a Russian high school. At least not so publicly. The kids asked her if she had a boyfriend. If she had a girlfriend. The girls asked her who she liked. She didn’t know. They were all so foreign. They looked okay. But they acted like the characters she saw on the television. So wondered if they were real. Or would she become an actor too if she was taken into a relationship? Of course there was always the classes and books to distract her, luckily.
Her father didn’t work even after they’d moved into the flat. They were able to get a payment from the government each fortnight — marked by three days of increasingly predictable mood swings from her parents. The payment day would be a celebration. They would have roasted pork, potatoes and sour cream, and bread rolls. There would be vodka. Then beer. Then wine. Then horrible sweet-smelling wine from a box. And her father’s mood would sour. Her mother would also come down from the feast day. Sharply reminding them all that if Zakhar would embrace Australia, every day could be feast day. Sonja could see that her father was searching for the celebration again in the days of continued drinking. But it revealed how he saw his life in Australia. As a waste.
On a bright summer night, at the tail-end of a bender, Zakhar was run over near their home. His liver and stomach, having been belted far up into his chest cavity, had stopped his breathing. Some other tenants of Brunei Court who were just beginning their bender had heard the thump of his body hitting the asphalt and had gone out onto the highway to protect him from being further ruined by the onslaught of traffic. Zakhar survived and his repaired diaphragm eventually healed enough for the liver infection to set in. He’d become sick so quickly that Sonja was sure the nurse had mixed up her patients when she was telling them the news. Sonja, even after the accident, hadn’t really considered that her father would die in Australia. She prayed to God that he at least would get to see Russia again. And when he was able to communicate again, she would never forget what he told her of what he’d dreamed, or experienced, while in the induced coma. Of the vastness, the immenseness of the universe. And, helpless, being helped, carried back; a subconscious consciousness had been turned back on and his life force had reclaimed his intubated body. And how he wasn’t scared to die anymore. But didn’t want to drink.
Six weeks later, the Welfare Centre sent him to the job at the tallow factory where he worked on the bottling line that forced out detergents under high pressure. The family had been eating, and he hadn’t been drinking. But one night Sonja heard him say the first Australianism she’d ever heard from him: the job was enough to drive a man to drink.
It was before rollcall and some of the girls were in the toilets still deciding whether or not to wag. Sonja regarded herself in the cracked and graffitied mirror. The girls next to her looked at themselves with confidence. They knew boys would be watching them, wanting them — they’d be turning boys down. Sonja wasn’t sure whether she was attractive or not. So
metimes at home, alone in front of the bathroom mirror, she thought she looked pretty. But here, alongside the other girls, she thought she looked weird — short, slight, but maybe a little older than them. She had the features of a woman, she’d been told. It was possible that Raz liked her look; she liked guys who had their own original look.
Sitting in class, Sonja tried to picture Raz in her head. But she couldn’t. It wasn’t that she didn’t know what he looked like — it was the opposite. She’d been thinking about him, looking for him, all morning. But the exact lines of his face wouldn’t come — like looking at a picture too closely. She hated how she was thinking now. How such a small and stupid thing — a boy noticing her — could consume so much of her energy. She couldn’t focus on maths: it was droning on like it never had before, even though she’d had a long toilet break. She wished she knew what class Raz was in now. She kept picturing him in the science labs, but that was probably because she’d just come from science. She tried to read The Cherry Orchard again under her desk. But Chekhov’s words were just too subtle compared to what was going on in her head. Eventually, the lunch bell rang.
Sonja wandered around the quadrangle, trying to look casual. Raz was nowhere to be seen. She spotted his friend Brett, and kept him in eyeshot. But no Raz. Then she saw him. Or was it him? Yes. But suddenly, she wished it wasn’t him. He saw her and headed over. Shit, she thought.
—Hey, Sonja, Raz said. And he did look kind of different from what she’d remembered. He seemed younger. And his mouth. It was cute. He really had no top lip. But it gave his mouth a childlike look she hadn’t noticed the day before.
—Hello, she answered, as casual as possible.
—How ya goin’? Raz said, and finished the mandarin he was eating.
—I’m good. You?
—Good. Good.
Luck in the Greater West Page 2