Three Dollars

by Elliot Perlman

  To avoid this I was prepared to lose the house, all of it, including Tanya’s share. She only needed the bed. In panic, with a damp forehead for cover, it occurred to me to bow down before the granite altar of the young cashmere receptionist who could silently patch anyone through to anyone else and to beg for the chance to do whatever was necessary not to be in this position. Then I clearly heard Amanda’s voice coming through a small speaker positioned between me and the young receptionist. She was ready for her next appointment. Time was sick of me. Born so long ago with her in the Eden of innocence, too young then to be blamed personally for my family’s non-success, now the carpet was choked with weeds, perfect for any number of serpents, so far were we from then. I had to go.

  Past the receptionist, through the glass doors and down into the fire escape ran the thirty-eight-year-old chemical engineer, husband, father of one, former ‘Joy Division’ scholar-in-residence, a son, a brother, a tax-paying citizen. Back in William Street the ground was drying but the sky was growing darker again. Why I had left or where I had gone was not Amanda’s business. I had left her business premises and if she did not personally check the appointment book or page or wherever it was my name was recorded, then she need never know it was me who had enabled her to call someone unexpectedly and say ‘Hi, my eleven-forty just shot through.’

  And back in the wintry democracy of William Street, as I headed toward LaTrobe Street, I came very close to praying that this was all I would be to her, the absent, nameless eleven-forty who perhaps remembered that he had a job after all. I huddled beside the grey walls of Flagstaff Station. In addition to the disfigured vendor of magazines and the self-exiled office workers whose need for nicotine outweighed their need for warmth, there were a couple of strange-looking men in tweed and plaid jackets, checked shirts and striped ties who stood beside placards invoking users of the station to think more about Jesus and his father. But I, who had almost prayed by the walls of the station just to remain anonymous to Amanda in absentia, could ultimately find no comfort in the ontological commitment they urged. Even in my chilly desperation, out of step with the escalator and in no fit state to be let loose near the underground platforms I knew so well, I understood that secular humanism, liberalism and social justice had not abandoned me. Though I walked through the valley of the City Loop too early to go home, they had not abandoned me. It was just that everyone else had abandoned them.

  In the Flagstaff Gardens I found the wind even more determined to press home its heartless advantage. It blew in fresh off Port Phillip Bay and it seemed that I was the first thing to stand in its way. I was also the only person in the gardens. The indigent and homeless welfare cheats whose artful greed had so sorely taxed the benevolence of successive governments were not to be seen and neither were the previously demented but now stable citizens whose urgent reintegration into the inner city was the only social programme to be taken up vigorously by those same governments. The trees shivered. At regular intervals the ground shook underneath me. The trains were running on time. Ominously, that had been accomplished on a number of previous occasions during the twentieth century. Alone, I stood shivering in my shirt sleeves at the edge of the central business district of the biggest small town in all the world. It looked like the place for a village.

  When I could no longer stand the bare branches thrashing about in the wind in futile protest against their own loneliness, I crossed William Street and walked aimlessly down LaTrobe Street in search of life. At least then the wind was at my back. I thought of pneumonia. As a child I had once been publicly, famously unable to spell it and it saw me come second in the class spelling competition. Amanda had won. Could she spell it now? It came from the Greek, meaning completely and utterly miserable down to your lungs.

  Next to the branch of the post-office I had personally supported ever since my parents moved north was the Customs Office. One of its most faithfully observed customs was the regular gathering of nicotine addicted staff around the perimeter of the building. Through the windows of the building you could see the contraband on display in glass cabinets. Beautiful items lay skilfully arranged for the passing public to admire. Gems, old coins, shiny muskets, stuffed snakes and even a leopard had been variously placed in different-sized display cases over the years. I had taken Abby to look through the windows once when the leopard was on display. She had trouble seeing it because it was quite a way in. Even when I had lifted her up she said it was too small to be a real leopard but remarked favourably on the shininess of the floor.

  People from the Customs Office all wore uniforms and we could imagine that once they had finished their cigarettes they would be back on the job, hiding out at airports and roving the high seas in hot pursuit of leopard stealers. They were grinding their cigarette butts into the pavement when I passed. I stared but they would not meet my gaze, as though there was something in my eyes that might hurt them, something which they could discern from twenty paces might harm them more than any leopard could. A man in just a shirt on a day such as this is a man in extremis, in extreme poverty, distress or desperation or perhaps all three, and if they had met my eyes they would have found it difficult to be indifferent. Two small pools on the middle of a frozen face but in that tiny moist warmth there was a sea of despair which they were right not to look at.

  Walking past Customs House I looked across LaTrobe Street at the high walls of the old Royal Mint Building in William Street. Once money had been made and stored there. Later when it was not needed for that, it housed the local historical society and the civil Marriage Registry. Tanya and I were married there. I had not looked across the street on our wedding day and seen my reflection in the window of Customs House. If I had I would have seen the reflection of a different person. I reached Wills Street, a tiny dead-end street notable for the number of derelict buildings boarded up with corrugated-iron sheeting. A group of men were warming themselves around a makeshift fire. So many things burn. Some others were kicking a football to each other. Here and there shuffled solitary men talking to themselves, some in anger, some with resignation. A small white dog craved attention by the side of the road.

  I could have kept walking down LaTrobe Street but something told me that I would have to walk a long way before finding any other people who were so unashamedly not going anywhere. Though their clothes were ill-fitting, torn and filthy, I was drawn to them because they seemed to have time for everything except someone pretending not to be desperate. Timidly, I turned the corner into the dead-end street. Unlike the customs officers, these men had nothing to fear from seeing themselves in my eyes. Looking at them around the makeshift fire I had no idea how they managed to stay alive. Then I saw the Salvation Army Hostel a little way down from the corner. Walking past several groups of ragged men without staring at anything but my shoes, I looked inside and understood where the real growth in the country was. Large industrial-strength heaters, a city of vinyl chairs and a television high in the corner showing a woman making a cake with a mixmaster; all of which helped some of the men to sleep, others to play cards and others to fossick around in old satchels for something they had managed to keep in spite of everything they had managed to lose. The linoleum floor shone and reeked with pot-pourri disinfectant.

  I did not want anyone to think I was staring so I walked back out hastily to the street not even pausing at the swastikas on the wall just down from the entrance. The men were still there in their groups, different-sized men, different ages, different shapes and at different angles to the street. Why did I know them? Why did I recognise them? They did not avoid the broken glass on the ground where they walked. Some shouted at their own shadows. Despite my erstwhile middle-class circumstances, I knew them. Some smoked. Some chewed gum. One group played two-up. I had never played two-up, never even seen it played and yet I knew them or needed to know them.

  I walked back out feeling a fraud. If anyone spoke to me, my voice, my accent, would give away my parents’ attempts to ensure that I would
never have to associate with men like these. I did not belong there even though I sensed that I knew them. In the street I was so cold I thought of going back in to see how the cake had turned out. My tie blew around in the wind, a relic of a previous incarnation.

  I was glad my father could not see me. I was not a prepossessing sight, not that anybody was looking. In that, my wife had a headstart on the rest of the world. She had turned her back on me days before. How prescient she had always been. A small dog came from nowhere, it was the same dog I had seen before, and started sniffing at my shoes.

  ‘Eddie? Hey … Eddie!’

  I heard my name called and though I knew it could not have been meant for me, it felt sadly comforting to hear it anyway. They were not of my world, the footballers here and the quiet talkers, the firesiders and the stay-insiders, men who had left their shame behind in another world. They had left it in my world. It had been my world once but now I was between worlds. Still, someone there had my name.

  ‘Eddie? Jesus Christ! Will you look at you! I thought it was you. It is you, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, not knowing if I could be who he wanted.

  ‘It’s you alright. I never forget a face, hardly ever. You don’t remember me, do you?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘You still eating curry?’ he laughed. ‘Don’t worry about me, okay. Forget about me, but I’ll be really insulted by you if you don’t remember my dog,’ he laughed again picking up the small white dog and holding it to him. It was Nick. I would have known his old dog anywhere.

  ‘I still got her,’ he smiled. There were a few moments’ silence as he tried to formulate the question, gave up and asked seriously with serious no-nonsense empathy, ‘What the hell happened to you, Eddie?’

  He took me inside under one of the heaters, being careful no one saw his dog which he secreted under his arm. When I was seated and when he had made us both a cup of tea, he sat down next to me, sucking on a sugar cube and I started what I realised in the telling was really a story of post-industrial decline, the last convulsions of the middle class as the sun set on the second millennium. Over the steam from my tea I began from the beginning, at first tentatively, as though I did not know the story myself, and he sat there and listened patiently to every word. Every … nine and a half years … I see Amanda.

  CHAPTER 33

  I told Nick about Amanda, the four times of Amanda, about Tanya from the cradle of my civilisation to the bed, about Gerard and Kate and Paul and the joy of Abby, about the Department of Environment and Planning and Mr Claremont and his gulf, about epilepsy and my father and blueberry muffins and the primacy of weaving. I told him about employment consultants masquerading as childhood sweethearts and about the unadvertised sanctuary of fire escapes, where, more than at any holiday resort, you can really get away from it all. He got up without saying anything, checked to see that my cup was really empty and then took the two cups over to the sink where slowly he washed and dried them. I thought he had aged but then I had never seen him in the daylight.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ he asked on his return.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll have to get another job in the next ten days or we’ll lose our house.’

  ‘No, I mean what are you going to do right now?’

  ‘I don’t know that either. My wife’s at home in bed and there is no food in the house.’

  ‘You can’t buy any?’

  ‘I’ve got three dollars.’

  He looked away into the distance thoughtfully, not saying anything, as he patted the dog who shared the seat with him.

  ‘You like garlic bread?’ he asked suddenly with a big smile.

  ‘I’ve got three dollars. I shouldn’t be buying garlic bread, Nick.’

  ‘I’ll get you the garlic bread.’

  ‘No, really Nick, I couldn’t—’

  ‘You just listen to me for a while. But you’ve got to do as I say. We’ll go over to Tiny. You can borrow a coat from him and he can look out for Helen.’

  ‘Who’s Helen? Who’s Tiny?’

  ‘Helen’s my dog.’

  Tiny was a big man, dark, drunk and sad. He was either Aboriginal or a Pacific Islander. I couldn’t see his face clearly even though we went and stood right in front of him. He was sitting, rocking gently, in the swastika-decorated shuttered entrance of a dilapidated building. Wrapped in an old blanket he had four plastic bags beside him filled with old clothes, pillows and things he must have thought he might need.

  ‘Tiny, this is my mate Eddie,’ Nick explained.

  I stuck out my hand and Tiny nodded.

  ‘We’re going out for a bit but we’ll be back later. Was wondering if you wouldn’t have a bit of a coat for Eddie here. Just something, stop him freezing his balls off. As you see,’ Nick continued, hands in his pockets and gesturing at me with his head, ‘he’s just in his shirt.’

  Tiny did not get up nor did he speak. He just kept rocking and we waited in front of him. Nick didn’t seem at all concerned at the absence of a response. He just stood there as though we were waiting for a fax to finish its transmission while Tiny rocked in his blanket.

  ‘Is he alright?’ I whispered behind Nick, who closed his eyes and nodded slowly to silence my doubt. Then Tiny, still swaying, reached into one of his bags and pulled out what looked like a rolled-up army greatcoat. He held it up and now it was my turn for a delayed response.

  ‘Take it,’ Nick whispered.

  ‘Are you sure you won’t be needing it?’ I asked, but Tiny said nothing and just kept rocking.

  ‘We’ll have it back to you by the end of the day,’ Nick assured him and with that he handed Helen over to him, Tiny picked up the dog and included her in the inner sanctum of his blanket.

  We made our way to LaTrobe and William streets and south down William past the station, the Metropolitan Hotel and the Courts, heading toward Bourke Street. Tiny’s greatcoat swam around my body, the sky grew still darker and I didn’t care much where we were going. On the way Nick told me about Tiny.

  ‘Fact is he never talked much, not a great talker is our Tiny.’

  ‘So he can talk.’

  ‘Well, he could but … no one’s heard him lately, not for about six days. Six days ago he was bashed by some NA skins.’

  ‘What’re NA skins?’

  ‘National Action skinheads. NA skins come round the hostel at nights, sometimes buying drinks for blokes or bringing their own bottles and trying to get a bit of action.’

  ‘Action?’

  ‘Membership, rallies … attendance at rallies or meetings or whatever. Or sometimes just for fighting. It was those bastards done me. Remember?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Jeez, Eddie, you don’t remember anything do you? And I’m the bloody alcoholic. You’re the … what are you again?’

  ‘Chemical engineer.’

  ‘Right. Well, a month or two before we first met that night near the curry shop I’d been attacked on my way to an AA meeting by three NA skins. They called me “wog” and carved a swastika into my chest with a knife. I’ve still got the scar. I showed it to you that night. Some of the blokes at the hostel when they saw me in the showers accused me of being one of them.’

  ‘One of what?’

  ‘A Nazi … neo-Nazi or whatever they are. I said to the bastards, “Not me—No fear.” I’m Greek, anyway, but there’s still some in there that say I’m one and it sticks. And worst of all are the bastards who come up to you and talk about all that shit.’

  ‘What, other residents in the hostel?’

  ‘Yeah. Some of the young ones, not many, but one every now and then, will come up to me and want to see my chest and want to talk about getting rid of Slopes and Wogs and Yids and who else … oh yeah Abos, of course, poofs, Commos, fuckin’ everyone, Eddie. These psychos want to get rid of everyone and they think I’m one of them. If you took them seriously there’d be no one left.’

  ‘Do yo
u think that’s what they really want?’

  ‘I don’t know what they want. They talk about the Jew government that’s robbed us of our own country, our own homes. One lot said the Queen’s in on it … some world conspiracy. Christ, it’s not the Jews or the bloody Queen, it’s my wife that got a restraining order taken out on me. Can you believe that? Can’t see my own children. What else have I got but drink? You tell me. Just Helen. My wife’s not a Jew for Christ’s sake and she sure as hell ain’t the Queen of England. But I’ll tell you this, Eddie, a lot of the blokes listen to the crap the NA skins talk and they’re not all skins either. Some of them wear suits and the full catastrophe. You’ve got to take them seriously. They can look just like businessmen … some of them. People don’t take them seriously. I do. Jesus, I really do. And Tiny does. He’s not talking now.’

  I wondered whether Tiny had been wearing the coat I was wearing at the time he was assaulted. What chemical changes had taken place in the brain of the first of his attackers from the moment he had first noticed Tiny to the last of the blows? I was hungry and tired. I listened in horror and in fear. I was jobless, unable to provide for my family, desperate, but still I could not imagine taking pleasure from assaulting someone, neither from the act nor the effects of the act. Perhaps people like me would not survive. We were a young species still evolving. Would all those who could not take even the smallest pleasure from inflicting pain on others die out? What would Tiny say?

  Nick led us to Bourke Street and we headed east toward the Mall. The darkness of the day, my hunger, exhaustion and bewilderment mixed with Nick and Tiny’s story gave the day a confused night-time air of unreality. As we walked I looked for traces of blood on Tiny’s coat and, not paying attention to where I was going, collided with a couple of people heading away from the Mall. Just a few blocks the other way the jacket to my suit was being painstakingly woven by a girl from Vietnam. One block further up on the twelfth floor Amanda was drinking coffee, looking out onto William Street as she skilfully avoided the eyes of her next appointment.