'You don't,' she answered. 'That's the trouble. I am trying to vet them using linguistic clues, the manner of language. I know for sure, some psycho is in here. Usually there are hints. Like a fellow, playing out his fantasies of being a woman can use an on-line name, say Molly. But they've got more subtle than that. Not only do they pretend to be women, they want to be lesbians and now, revolutionary feminists. Why? Don't ask me. Look at this.' The chat scrolled.
Chandra clicked on the print icon and in about ten seconds I had in my hands a hard copy of what we had just read on screen. She disconnected and backed herself out from her desk and led me from the room.
'Someone is spoiling our plans.' She whipped the page out of my hand. 'Which is a he? Which is a daddy's girl?' She was furious.
'I don't get it,' I admitted.
Her kitchen benches were uncomfortably low for a standing person. She put a kettle under the tap in the shortened sink and swung herself around to plug it in. 'Sit,' she ordered.
My taking a seat brought us to eye-level parity. The chair had the firm, worn-wood feel of a family heirloom and the table was solid and scrubbed. I waited, knowing whatever I had to say would come into the ignoramus category. Chandra looked at me with brown eyes like a magpie's, set deep in her handsome, strong-featured face, betraying no humour, but it was there. My instinct told me she was hiding something, suspicious of me.
'I'm an IT moron, okay?' I smiled, fishing for the problem. The computer? Drugs, drink? I wanted to get back to the level of confidence I felt began when we had dinner.
'Tea? Peppermint? China? Earl Grey? Indian? Or coffee?' She slammed the canisters down one after the other.
'I'll have water,' I said, getting utterly sick of wearing her temper.
Distrust was palpable in the air. She wasn't going to tell me what was really bothering her, so I talked about the girl who was a boy in drag. Who carries hankies these days? What did Dello and Maz call him that day? What was his pseudonym? You can be anybody you want to be in a mask, in cyberspace, while you are alive to act it out.
She said in a voice that rocketed me back to her presence, 'There is enough living to do, Margot! Why do people need to live others' lives?' She placed a cup of Earl Grey in front of me. 'Subversion and subversion.' It was all double dutch to me.
'Listen,' I begged, 'Please don't think I noticed, or would tell anyone, about the produce I just saw. I won't. I don't care.'
Chandra accepted my reassurance with an abrupt nod. 'Right-oh,' she said. 'That's good to know. Self-protection.' When she had squeezed her own tea-bag, she clicked her fingers as if she remembered that something had gone missing. 'But it is not a self being protected, is it?' Her hostility might have been suspicion of me.
'Tell me about your fight with Meghan?' I inquired.
'Meg and I had a disagreement, a passionate one. I knocked her out. Meghan's a flake. And a fake. Okay I'll tell you. It's about who she works for. Top secret, haha. Peddlers in human lives, more like it. I found out on the net. I faced her with it, and she denied everything. But then got so angry she could kill. I hate liars. All they have to do is deny. Except they're aggressive about it. I went through every detail of what this mob is up to and she denied it all, but she was losing it at the same time. Well how do I know? My facts came from the underground network, groups who work against transnational corporations. Who do I believe? My friend of years? Or a bunch of do-gooding hackivists? She shouldn't have put me in that position. Do I choose personal loyalty or public principle? I chose the latter. And I punched her smug mug.' Chandra suddenly laughed. 'Boy, it was a rip-roarer!'
She opened a jar and offered me a dried pear. I took it and looked at it. A picture of female genitalia, quite beautiful. She took one for herself and ran her fingers round its lines. She pointed to a stained glass window which repeated the pattern.
'Meg did that for me. She was into lead-lighting for a while. When she is into something, she's totally dedicated. Then forgets it, off onto something else.' In Chandra, beneath the surface layer of crankiness and the secondary one of peace within herself, there was a smouldering rage. It would not take much to get her fired up. Her straight look and savage eyes would give anybody pause about wasting her time, but I couldn't help myself. I'm nosy by nature.
'Show me how that works,' I begged indicating what she had been working on in her office.
'No,' she responded, crisp as can be.
Offended, I said goodbye and left.
Before I was off the verandah, she was back typing and reading electronic print. Urgency, or addiction? I walked slowly through the luscious garden, remarking at the lustrous greens of silver beet and parsley and the smokier hues of lavender and coltsfoot. There was a macadamia nut tree here which had had time to grow and seasonal tomato plants on stakes in a row. Underneath the spreading fig were chairs and a table. Potsdam Harry, Spotty, was in his paddock. I got into my car feeling, I appreciate this place. But why was she so horrible to me?
Chandra cannot concentrate on her business until Margot is off the property. As soon as she is sure the Suzuki is gone, Chandra leaves her office to go into the garden. She recalls her mother's words: be careful what you wish for, you might get it. If Mary Smith were not monopolising the mob at Sofia's, she would go there. She will, she decides, but first she must change her mood, rid herself of the dismay she feels losing control of her website. Dragging herself along the paths between her vegetable beds, on a billy-cart adapted to a personalised kneeling tray, weeding, getting the thrill of killing cabbage moth, she dreads the implications of the immaculate structure she set up for revolution being taken over by a psychopath or sociopath, or anyone without her strict ethical politics. 'Vermin!' she utters, squashing green grubs.
32
…hell hath no fury…
Although Ian Truckman did not think he would need the street directory and atlas available on the marvellous computer on his instrument panel, as he is never lost, he does. He types in a street name in the city of Melbourne, and his screen lights up a page of Melways with a cursor flashing. A box appears requesting his present position. Keilor, he writes. Then he is told to follow the moving arrow. The sound card, once the truck is in motion, says in measured weird English, things like, 'A right turn is unavailable to freeway, advise…'. The White Virgin weaves its way through the western suburbs. 'Take a left at the intersection of Smith and Leanda Crescent.' Eventually he finds himself at the dead end of a lane in a maze of factories, facing an eight-foot cyclone fence. The computer tells him to reverse six metres and forward again, then to type GTX and enter. The fence slides apart into roller-gates with a laser locking mechanism. He must have a remote mounted somewhere on the cabin.
Ian Truckman has no choice but to obey. After he has passed, the gates return to an impression of an uninterrupted wire. He drives on.
Shipping containers like giant-sized building blocks are piled and lined up in an area he estimates as at least five acres. He is mystified until a golf cart appears driven by a man in a black skivvy and white jacket who signals to him to follow. He does, wondering what a tanker is doing among all these square containers, but beyond them is a wharf. He drives along it until the cart stops and the man raises his palm, stopping him, then brings both hands to shoulder height, turns them and flaps him to park at a designated spot. There Ian is directed to lower the stilts of his trailer and detach the semi. Now rigid, without articulation, he is told to drive away. This is tricky. He backs his vehicle all the way to dry land. The golf-cart man follows his bumper. Truckman waits, after a three-point turn has him facing the way he came, for instructions. The guy tells him to go, and wait for a phone call.
Ian, who had figured the load was water, is now convinced. The gate opens for him to pass and closes behind him without any manipulations on his part. Whatever the operation is, it is huge. Not one of the containers had an identifying mark. The substance he transported from the north coast of New South Wales to the docks of Victoria is certainly illegal, probably drugs, hidden in a few thousand litres of water which they will now ditch. They must think him a fool not to work that out. A few million bucks worth of heroin was going to hit the streets of Melbourne because of his journey, because no way would they road-transport something they were putting back to sea. So, he has a handle on his boss and his job. He might ask for a hike in salary, not that he is unhappy with what he's got so far. Money of itself should make him happy, let alone the horsepower under the bonnet and the gigabytes on the dash. Now, through no conscious decision of his own, he is on the gravy train. It is so easy to have it all for the taking. He drives towards his mother's house.
In her converted tram amid the secondary growth of black wattles, Ilsa opens her new book, and her mind is in Vienna a hundred years ago. Virginia White, a kilometre away as the crow flies, cleans her shelves trying to find photos of Maria. At the third point of a roughly equilateral triangle, Judith, in her woolshed, opens an army-issue ammunition case where small white goods in shiny packets are neatly stored. She removes packaging from the never-used kitchen gadgetry, wraps each in cloth, rearranges the contents of the tin and closes the lid. In the firm cardboard cartons with graphics of juicers, blenders, electric jugs, toasters, she places heads of dope, pressed in plastic sandwich envelopes. After putting in a handful of rusty nails to lend the boxes weight, then sealing them up as if they have never been opened, she stacks them in a suitcase which she hides. Completing a rhombus on the cartogram of the north-western section of the inhabited reaches of Lesbianlands, Ci Amigdalos creeps up to the saddle where Hope solecistically murmurs garble.
Hope Strange is staring at a horse skull lying on a hessian bag.
'I'm a gypsy at heart,' Ci interrupts, intending to startle. Hope looks at Ci and sees a snake in the grass.
Hope holds the skeletal head. She says, 'Look, no teeth.' She places it with reverence inside a design of white quartz pieces, carefully laid out in a pattern, and searches the sky.
'So?' Ci has a canvas bag strapped to her back, but she does not reveal its contents. Her eyes are crafty. She arrogantly wanders around Hope's camp, angling for clues, ready with sly fabrications. Stealing from women on Lesbianlands is as cinchy as getting on well with clever use of flattery. Hope, however, is younger than she, and spinny with concerns of bones and stones, evidently unaware of her enviable grace. Ci instinctively hates her.
'For protection,' Hope explains, counting the hills.
'Protection against what?' Ci raises her eyes and catches sight of an eagle soaring.
'Aliens, hollow women, helicopters, spirits of darkness,' Hope answers.
'You're a nutcase.' Ci laughs, engagingly. 'But this place is full of crazies. You going to the funeral tomorrow?'
'Tartara Tartara. Hades, hell hath no fury. Tartara Tartara, like a woman's scorn,' chants Hope as she circles her rocks. Wind sings in the she-oaks. The moon is skinny and new in the blue. Ci is edgy, ready to be on her way.
'Why did you come here?' Hope indicates her home.
'Lesbianlands you mean?' Ci shrugs, 'Where else can you live rent-free? Do what you want? Live out your dreams? Get stoned?'
'Tartara tartara, didn't you hear it?' Hope demands.
Ci decides she is talking about the helicopter. 'Yeah, that belongs to the guy over, er, that ridge. His spread is bloody miles, a personal national park,' Ci tells Hope. 'You want to come tomorrow?'
'Yes. Maybe. I don't know.' She quivers like prey in the sights of the predator.
'If you get to the front gate in time, I'll give you a lift,' Ci rearranges her load and strides off confidently. 'Be there, a bit of communal ritual won't hurt you.'
Ci leaves a space in the air like an oxygen vacuum. The trees shiver. Hope is aware of entities in the elements and wonders if she has the courage to stay. Or go. She knows something is in store for her. The bush is full of unearthly noises. If she stays another minute at this site, she will be absorbed, she will be transubstantiated. She goes down to Rory's house, carrying her bed-roll. It is becoming dark. Fruit bats are moving in the strangler figs.
When I got to Sofia's the place was bedlam. A rainless electrical storm chucked lightning about in the evening sky. A Pajero with an opened horse-float was parked down the road. Not enough kerb-room for so many cars, some were double-parked along the nature strip. Number-plates from different states and territories. One or two burst into paroxysms of dog-barking when I walked between them.
The horse was in the garden. Tilly and a tribe of little girls were pulling at its rope halter. House and yard were as busy as a painting by Bosch or Breughel. Well-meaning acquaintances mixed with the closest friends weirdly crowded the limited space. Tarot cards were out. Keening, wailing, tears. Hugging. Agitated organisers rushed from one conference to another on the phone. Flowers kept arriving. Rehearsals of dirges and memorial ballads. Poems being written and read. Collages of Maria's life on pin-boards. Columns of plastic cups, of throw-away plates and cartons of cutlery and cooking utensils cluttered the hallway. An ersatz familiarity flowed across persons, space and time coloured by the exotic. The unusual. A tall Negro woman in Balinese batiks glided around. Alison read palms with a mantilla resting on her hair. Barking lunacy all around. Chandra hobbled past me.
Sofia was raving. 'The liar in her lair, the slanderer, philanderer. Watch for the one who is everywhere but not there when you need her. She has the mind of a man. He is a bitch. Sweet as mustard, if you know what I mean.'
She grasped my arm with skinny hand and glittering eye like the Ancient Mariner who stoppeth one of three, I could not choose but hear.
'Only a fool would trust the snoop, who turns up in corners like a jack-in-the-box, nice as poison-pie. They troop off to their demonstrations of reconciliation as if they were not racist themselves to throw insults at the steel white virgin who has it in for single mothers and bludging boongs, who is like a mascot on the prow of a pirate ship full of rapacious, brutish thieves lusty for blood. Who is, herself, the sacrifice, the witch to be burnt at the stake. I need to go down to the cybercave, the lonely cage in the sky, and spread my thoughts across the world like a mole burrowing a maze for those who think like me. In virtual underground. A further circle of hell. They say the trillion angels are each of single species. We can't imagine that, except to suppose we are all one angel.'
She was high. I would not have been surprised if the sheer volume of personal auras hadn't lifted her above the milling throng. The most insane seemed those offering platitudes of condolence and commiseration. But I was here for Sofia.
'When not a body of flesh and blood, nerves, afraid of the prophylactic leakage of radiation which have got into our heads through the cathodes in electro-magnetic screens, I'm free,' she said, keeping her eyes on the African-American. 'Doom looms for Big Brother. A huge brother, a monolith with a Mount Rushmor
e face, teetering on feet founded in a honeycomb coalmine, the very ore of which is ripped from the earth, with untimely haste.'
Yvonne passed a pair of patterned singing sticks to a tipsy Koori. Bossily, I thought. Sofia, still holding me, went on, 'Greed without so much as a thank-you. Big Brother is about to fall and squash us all. Any little individual who chooses a path for the greater good goes broke. Dies, perhaps. You can't know the spirits and have money too, Margot.' She let me go. Well, there was wealth, or the prospect of it, I thought, trying to assess the women I knew to be from the Lesbianlands. 'Taking.' Sofia was paranoid.
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