by Alan Duff
She signed off with a simple, I love you. Keep your heart always. I was crying my eyes out. I think it was from grief, too.
I can’t keep her out of my thoughts this Saturday morning as I watch Friday’s takings from both pubs, plus the tally-up from the two books being counted by my boys; wishing she were here to enjoy this growing wealth, this harbour and beach city of Sydney. The things I could buy for her now. I ask her if my Hungarian has Australian colour and how much of this wonderful race has rubbed off on me. Am I still Magyar? Though I’d answer no, not now, I’m Aussie, through and through, even if my mates tease me about the accent and call me a new Australian.
I tell her that no woman has ever captured my love; only casual relationships that never come close to our love affair, brief though it was but yet felt like a lifetime. Not even close. (You have my heart, Aranka Pálfia.)
But I know she won’t approve of this set-up, being illegal, paying off the cops, making lots of money from workers too stupid to figure it’s the pub owners and bookmakers who drive the expensive cars, never them. I think of the life she and Péter might have had, that it would have been boring, even if they’d fled Hungary. He was too conservative and perhaps she was as well, and would have reverted. But who knows?
One pub is in working-class Leichhardt, the other’s along the same Parramatta Road in Glebe, well out from the city action, where word is the gangsters are in a power struggle for control of the pubs and bookmakers. Let anyone try and take what’s ours. I don’t care if they’re gangsters or rule the whole fuckin’ country. This is mine and Johno’s patch and they’ll have it over our dead bodies.
I keep hearing Aranka, seeing her outrage, at the fact these police in a free society are corrupt, too. But they don’t have a licence to kill people, Aranka. It’s just how it works, it’s the Irish in them, the larriken they call it. A country where someone like me fits.
So now we have a bunch of Greek knockabouts who fancy themselves and are coming over to throw around some muscle. Big Johno is in that nervous, excited state with which I am familiar, nerves buzzing before going into battle. Not that I’ve told anyone about my former life, not even Johno. There’s no reason to. And who would believe it? Not killing on that scale. And then Aranka begging me to end her life, which I did. (Nor am I sorry, honey. No. In fact I’m proud. I think it’s the greatest act of love possible.) Best to keep these things to yourself and use the experience for times like this silly raid to come.
Seeing my boys arrive, the way they wear the same calm exterior disguising a boiling interior, reminds me of a certain brief, but momentous, war. And Johno, he often reminds me of Pál Pogány, my dear friend who gave his life for us.
It annoys me these fools announced themselves as if this was a race war, Greeks against Hungarians; they could have just said they were coming to have a crack at me, and if they had brains not said anything at all — just done it. And if they had real brains, stayed right away from me. But it’s nothing to do with race or politics. It’s money. And anyway, I’m first and foremost an Australian, and so should these mugs be, instead of describing themselves as the Greek boys. This is a nation of immigrants and we should be grateful for the opportunities that our own countries never gave us. Greeks, Italians, Lebanese, who cares? This is just men against men. Which should never be. Plenty enough here for all.
Johno, have you ever known me to take what’s not mine?
No, my mate Johno has not, of course he hasn’t.
Am I a man of honour, boys? I’m asking you?
You’re a top bloke, Tillo — they put o and a on the end of everyone’s name, to make you feel closer to the person. Like more their mate. Honour and mates are important here. The rest is just shit for mainstream society.
This stupid fuckin’ raid is getting my juices going again over injustice. I never took what’s mine and I sure as hell don’t give away what’s mine. This is terrorism. And Attila Árpád doesn’t lie down to that sort of crap.
Though as we wait in the mid-summer heat, I’m thinking of her again. Telling her of these Aussies’ love of a gamble, on anything, punting they call it. And me being here these years, in manual jobs, trying to find where I fit, or at least an angle to lift myself from the mundane, much that I appreciate having life as a free citizen and getting Australian nationality after my five-year qualifying period. Aranka, you knew I wouldn’t fit, you said I wouldn’t.
But I found blokes who didn’t fit the mould either, who wanted more out of this life, even if they weren’t as hungry — or as ruthless, my good mate Johno Ryan would and does say. I prefer to think I’m just from a different background. I found certain men, Aranka, and we ended up figuring there was only one way to go that didn’t end us in gaol, nor in a lousy job slowly rotting to death — it was selling them beer and providing a betting service in the same place.
Punting is for losers, so I reckoned I had to be on the winning end, have my own joint. Then there’s the cops to take care of, which is simple: give them what they ask, being free money for just existing, but negotiate it down, keep claiming you’re poorer than you are. But never fuck with them, not even Attila Szabó.
OK, so the cops here are no angels, but they’re not Ávós, honey. The Secret Police could not survive a week in this country. You have to give as well as take, and this is why it works here. I don’t make the rules, I just live by them. And the day I come to hate them, I’ll fight again, or I’ll find a country where men do live free, more or less.
In this town the cops are the most powerful gang of all. Then there’s the underworld gangsters with whom they do most of their business. Like an army you can go down the scale till you’re out of the loop, an ordinary citizen. Us, we’re maybe corporals. Though I admit, I do have times of thinking to try for a higher rank, if just to protect what I’ve built up. (We’ll see.) Is that such a bad world, Aranka, as you keep telling me in my nightly dreams?
These Aussies are proud to be descended from convicts. I’m not sure though, with your background, you’d be comfortable with the ones I work with. Too rough for you, too crude, too loud. They can get mean when they have to. Though this is the truth of them, honey, they’re not with airs and graces, of any kind of pretence. You might have come to enjoy them, if you’d hung in long enough to see their good side. If their own government reclassified them, these people would joke that a new category would have to be invented to describe them. They’re a physical race, a nation of warriors, but like a laugh and more than a good time. I tell you, good widow, they make us Hungarians realise how dour we are. Nothing is sacred except the concept of mates and doing the right thing by your peers. You call a bloke a mate then you mean he’s like your blood brother. (Remember that, Aranka?)
So my mates are here, all around me, and I’m seeing Pál here, too. Pál, you would have loved these people. And János Örkény. He turned up only last year, a miracle, a ghost from Siberia whom I’d written off as dead. János and I understand mateship. He was finally released from a Siberian prison and jumped off the train from Russia near the Austrian border. He wasn’t going to return to a country even worse than what he and his family had fought against, but worked in Austria and found out through the Red Cross where I had been repatriated. Now he works for me.
We’re playing pool and laughing at a memory from home, from our Budapest high-school days. Then we’re laughing at knowing we’re not scared, not for one single moment, only a little worried if the impending attack gets out of hand, of the consequences, the possible kickback. Violence is about to happen for sure, but it must be measured. This freedom is too sweet to throw away with stupid acts.
And we’re laughing at our good Aussie mates filling the bar of our main pub in Glebe. We’re only worried that the Greeks’re going to do this publicly, come heavying in on our best trading and betting day, Saturday. (I promise them, if they do, the punishment is going to be a lot worse.) My boys are grinning at the prospect of a good fight. A blue they call it. These lat
est fools with ideas of taking what’s ours have phoned a warning through that they’re on their way. I joke with János that they must have learned the tactic of taking their time in delivering on their threat from the Ávós, thinking they’re making us sweat. Well, sure we’re sweating, but that’s because it’s summer and it must be over ninety degrees.
Then I get her image again, in her moment of death, shimmering like a fleeing light — though I have to ignore what I’d done to the top of her skull, the soiling of that ink-black scalp — and I feel again the dreadful cold, the snow coming down thicker, and next I’m clawing through the snow for that fence. Now, here I am, playing pool, got both freedom and money to burn and mates who are top blokes, in sweltering heat the ceiling fans are doing little against. Think I’ll drive to Bondi after this and cool off in the sea.
I play my shot, it goes in. I think she’d cock that right eyebrow and challenge me to do it again. Unhurried, thoughtful, just a little sad, I’m healed enough by time. What would she think of this, me having a share in two pubs, these Australians, the kind of people they are: loud and aggressive, cheerful, confident, how I love them.
No, she would not approve and if we’d lived here together, she wouldn’t have stayed with me. The bookmaking and paying off the cops aside, she would hate the continued violence. For we do get fights here and sometimes brawls. One thing in this town, you have to make sure they respect you or they are all over you. That’s why I have to retaliate first, as the saying goes.
I’m thinking of her, the injustices she suffered and I, too, my father and mother and nearly everyone I ever knew, and anger starts creeping in. My old friend Rage, who has stood me in good stead here, is ready. I’ve come to realise the more you have, the more you have to fight to keep it. Injustice is a fact of life so you better make some of your own before they can do it to you. But it’s worth it, even if there’s been occasions when I have to ask myself what kind of person I am, what kind of human being to do the violent acts I’ve done against those who try to take what’s mine, or show me disrespect in front of everyone.
But now I don’t let the asking start. Shut it down. You have to, or it would start a whole lot of things up. I might even question that incident with Friss, when why should I? They got what they deserved, the Ávós sluts, too, for what they did to us. Hey, you cunts murdered my father, you murdered Aranka’s husband, you slaughtered us and slaughtered us. Go to fuckin’ hell.
For all my dreaming of freedom, I never imagined it could be as good as this. I’ll die to protect it, just as I was prepared to die in seeking it. I’ll do whatever it takes, right or wrong. (Come on, Greek arseholes, bring yourselves into the lion’s den, try and take his meat.)
I catch my reflection in a mirror and see my father. His cheek grooves, the scours of nature I used to call tough lines. Now I have them. I have his muscular build, the same (steady) pale-blue gaze. Except no man, no regime, could break my gaze, nor the will behind it. I play number ten and it drops. A beautiful long shot down the cushion.
And when the front door starts to shake, it doesn’t feel like it probably does for the others, not even my friend János. I just know it doesn’t, because I have heard it before and I feel different and always have. Destined, I recall Pál and I used to call ourselves.
So I don’t take my eyes off the next ball, nor blink or show expression at it making any sound in entering the pocket. The door breaks open with a loud bang that some might liken to a gunshot, but not I. It’s just a violent sound caused by men who have made a mistake. Seven of the stupid cunts.
Nor do I pay any attention when the voice of one of them fills the room, announcing we’re a bunch of cunts; a favourite word in this country, at least in the circles I mix. A word with sweeping meaning, depends how you say it, which I like. I think because it has power.
This swarthy Greek is yelling some shit about us poaching their customers; he’s justifying himself, and whipping up some courage. I drop another ball, though only just. My next shot shudders at the mouth of the pocket but doesn’t go in. Only then do I respond to these would-be invaders and ask them, Now where have I come across your type before? It all slows down before me, clarity is my sole domain.
My men are poised like attack dogs, barely able to restrain themselves, waiting for my order. By my silence, I tell them: Not yet, boys. Not yet.
I sweep the remaining balls into a group and reach under the table as if for the triangle to set them up again. But it’s not a triangular shape of wood I grasp but precision-made steel.
I pick the one doing the mouthing off, thinking he’s about to lead his mob to glory and my fucking money, and I shoot him. Where it hurts, the genitals. I’ve done this before.
Szabad, I say in my own tongue, which only János understands and that’s only if he’s listening, which he isn’t. He’s crossing the floor and throwing a punch.
I’ve insisted János speak only the language of our adopted country, tell him that I dream mostly in English now, and better than I speak it in real life because my mates tease my heavy accent. Some dreams, though, are in my mother tongue, when I have to revert to explaining something to my father, or Grandma Lili. Never to Mama, though, as she’s not in my dreams. And never to Béla, I won’t explain myself to him. For some reason Aranka and I speak in English when I dream of her. And always she is tanned by the Australian sun, no longer the pale-olive I knew. (Not bloodied nor begging me to end her life.)
My boys are all over these lairs and it’s no contest. I’d put an Aussie against anyone, though János has done his Magyar roots proud. I go over to the one I’ve shot and tell him if he was a man he wouldn’t scream like that. Tell him, Next time, make an appointment and let your intentions be honourable.
It’s hot in here, the temperature’s risen several degrees in just moments. I mop at my damp forehead with my favourite and only handkerchief, which I’d fetched out for this moment. Not for the wiping of sweat that it does, but for what it means. The different presences in it; frayed at the hand-stitched edging, a permanent dark staining at its centre. Papa, my mother, Aranka, the gypsy hands that made it. The life it knew.
Johno asks what we should do with these knockabout blokes? Send them back with a broken limb or two, go and wreck their joint, their homes, their families, or what?
Or what? Where I am in my head is back there, Budapest, suffering all those injustices. I’m waiting for my papa to come home from gaol, and seeing the shell I must control or lose what I have. I no longer think it is just the entity I named Rage that wants me to do murder to those who cross me. Not if I’m honest with myself.
It’s Attila Szabó who wants to murder. Occasions keep coming up, incidents, that have me wanting to inflict great physical hurt, to do murder. I think Hungary claimed too much of my soul. I think that’s why I tell my boys, Yeah, we’ll teach these blokes a lesson. (Ten times for every one of yours, even if you never got to throw the first one.)
I look at them getting done over by my boys, the one with the shot balls on the ground screaming his fuckin’ head off, and Rage and I are standing together, side by side, furious that they should dare try and attack us.
My fuckin’ hand’s shaking with wanting to empty the mag into every one of these Greek shits’ heads. But I must keep control, I must (I must, Rage). I tell him the time’s not yet right, but will be and sooner than later.
Is that Rage’s voice or mine in my head saying: These scumbags tried to do you the ultimate injustice, take away what freedom, what living in a free country gave you. What you going to do back? Or what? Or what? Johno just asked you, Attila Árpád Szabó. Or what?
I don’t know whose voice, it might be both, but it’s being said that these cunts have got family, these cunts have broken the moral code, not me, not us, not our side. So I give Johno our secret look, of later, mate. Later. We’ll bash them now and find out where the key players live, their homes, the ones they love. Lots of ways to skin a cat, you don’t have to do it in p
ublic.
Phew, is it the heat or the thoughts making me sweat like this? I wipe with my thirteenth birthday handkerchief. Get a thought: when this handkerchief can no longer hold together its now threadbare structure, what of Attila Szabó then? (Perhaps I should have it framed.) But then can a soul be preserved like that? I think not, Attila.
At the border fence I thought it was all over, that the price was too high and the dream unreachable. But I made it and it’s beautiful, it’s more than I dreamed. And yet …
And yet, Attila Szabó, I hear your friend Rage saying a part of you can never be free. It’s owed to him, for waiting so long. Or else you were born with rage, ordinary rage, not the one you made an entity and named with a capital. Attila, that word you kept in your mind as you struggled for the border fence, szabad, szabad, free, free.
Free to be what?
Copyright
A VINTAGE BOOK
published by
Random House New Zealand
18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland, New Zealand
www.randomhouse.co.nz
First published 2001
© 2001 Alan Duff
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
eISBN 978–186979–876–5
Design: Elin Termannsen
Cover illustration: Garth de Forges
Printed in Australia by Griffin Press