Notorious

by Roberta Lowing

  Watch your back, Devlin thought. Always such a stupid phrase. And impossible.

  He took to going out at sunset. At first he went to contemplate cutting down the dead pilot. He took crampons and a small axe and got halfway up the tree supporting the plane’s tail. But the metal above him quivered, the black web vibrated and slipped. As he retreated, he caught the gleam of silver a stone’s throw away. He searched, thinking it might be debris from the plane, or more of the small stone statues and the shrunken faces of gouged bone and tufted hair wedged onto sticks which lay, precisely placed, in this part of the jungle.

  That was when he found the rock pool.

  The water was clear to the bottom, not veined like the muddy grey river with the chemicals dumped in from the sites up north. He plunged his hand through a coolness which coated him, entered his bones, put out whatever smouldered there. He took off his boots and socks and shirt and waded in. He floated on his back for hours gazing up to where the light fell in ribbons through the canopy.

  He thought, It is a cathedral for the unreligious.

  The jungle folded around him like roses. Night fell within seconds, into a blackness alive with rustles and clicks and long moaning cries building around him, and the moon leaving traces of silver in the rock pool that lay a few paces from the dead airman, the water matching the gleam of the liquid eyes of the creatures hidden in their secret places, watching him.

  He felt he could walk blindfolded through this green land. He could sleepwalk through it, as though in a dream. He learned how to move with the forest: by touching, by travelling on the sound of his weight on the fine twigs and fallen bark. He learned how to sit still, to breathe deeply for the first time in years. He slept better, ate better. ‘Not so much drunken white bastard now,’ said Kenje approvingly as he stacked the Friday afternoon boxes in the storeroom.

  One sunset, as Devlin watched a baby fern slowly uncurl to the fading heat of the day, he became convinced that the rainforest could erase memories. And excavate them.

  At night, staring up at the pilot sleeping above him, Devlin closed his eyes and smelled wattle. He saw swaying silhouettes against dark blue sky and heard the frogs’ claps and bellows. Ahead of him was the creek bank with its myriad tiny white lights ringed by blue haloes. He was back in one of the few pleasant memories of his childhood.

  The air was cold on the creek bed. The tiny lights were steady.

  Glow worms, said his mother, lighting another cigarette.

  They’re like – he stopped, remembering the talk his father had given him, his big-knuckled hand gripping Devlin’s arm. Occasionally he would dig in on a key phrase like, Get it out of your head.

  Go on, said his mother. She coughed a little. She was already coughing then. She blew on the lit end of her cigarette, making it smoulder.

  She said, There’s no-one else here.

  They’re like . . . tiny people.

  Go on, she said. She touched his cheek briefly. He let himself stretch out and stroke the soft moss. His hand sank into the warmth of the earth.

  He said, Tiny people living in tiny homes between the roots of the gum trees.

  Exactly, said his mother.

  Don’t turn into another old white bastard with shaking hands, Mitch had said on his next call. Don’t get jungle madness. You’re a good organiser, no-one better at keeping lists. Do your job and the slate gets wiped clean. Retirement, relocation – not a dishonourable discharge. Everyone’s impressed by how you’ve juggled all three sides. You leave the gate open, who’s to know? Jakarta wants this, the army wants it, Canberra, Washington. No-one minds if you have a few drinks but just remember: the back of Borneo is ours. Not the locals’.

  That day he almost missed the village. He had wandered farther in than he realised, following what looked like a track. When it meandered into a vine patch, he stepped off to stare at the family of monkeys in the branches above. The rain came down, suddenly, fiercely, large splots of water making the ferns shake. The old grey-chested male glared at him, too stubborn to move.

  The rain stopped. Devlin leaned against the damp bark, breathed the warm mouldy smell. He liked the heat. Already Mitch was talking about the next job – ‘No ambiguities, nothing to trouble your conscience over: a looter, an art thief. You should read what he did to his son.’ Trust you, thought Devlin, to pick up on that theme. Trust you to find the wound. Devlin saw Mitch as a little boy, poking at an ant’s nest with a stick. Mitch had taken his silence for hesitation and said, ‘And perks, dude. There’s a wack-job daughter, an easy fuck for sure.’

  Devlin rubbed his head irritably against the bark and felt a knot. He peered up: vines were twisted into ladders against the tall trunk. Then he saw the huts: bark and wood and palm leaves blending into the landscape. The land had been partly cleared but working around the trees, not against them.

  He slowed his breathing, the way he did at night when he moved through the forest. A twig cracked on his left and he saw the silhouette of a man, haloed by the sunlight, next to a tree. He saw other faces merging with the brown jungle shadows. He thought he saw Kenje, dappled with light and bruises, retreating into the dimness. He saw a baby asleep on a flat rock under a fern, a dog watching him in a square of light, its muzzle held by a thin little girl with bottomless eyes. He saw a stream of smoke idling up through the branches. He thought for a moment. He said, ‘I’ll never tell,’ and kneeled on the steaming earth.

  The cage rocked again but there were no crocodiles beneath him; they were all on the bank. Instead, there was a rush of water, tinged with green and malevolent yellow. He smelled rotten eggs. Some site flushing out their sewage and tailings, up river? Dumping their acidic water. The crocs were lucky to be out of it.

  He stared at the bank. The crocodiles had been ripping and tearing. Now each backed away, bloodied flesh in their teeth. A crumpled heap of bones and pink fur lay stamped into the mud. The pungent smell of hot blood drifted across the water, overpowering the chemicals. The forest was silent. Devlin saw eyes watching him from between the roots at the water’s edge. He blinked, the water shifted and the eyes vanished.

  Where had he gone wrong? Was it on that first day, twenty years ago? He saw himself sitting in the squad room: the new recruit, holding his breath, upright on the metal chair, the cold from the concrete floor creeping through his new boots up his legs, into his marrow.

  ‘Today we have naming of parts,’ said the sergeant, a freckled-faced square of a man with thinning orange hair and white arms under his red-brown markings. They had seen him in the pub the night before, standing for hours on a bench, wedged against the wall, singing quavering bush ballads about farm foreclosures and disappearing women.

  The sergeant said, ‘Tomorrow you’ll have daily cleaning and then maybe if you’re lucky and don’t cock it up, you’ll have what to do after firing. And then if you don’t cock it up again, then you might even have firing. But we’ll have to see about that.’

  The hut was at the back of the base, an after-thought, a reminder of their lowly status. But its windows faced the fence of one of the base houses – maybe the colonel’s – and there was an apple tree growing over it. The blossoms were just opening and Devlin could see – as clearly as if he saw it now, as if he was inches away instead of staring across dead ground and graveyards of bones – the bee crawling from the blossom, dusted and drugged in pink and white and rose-red pollen.

  ‘And this is the lower sling swivel,’ the sergeant was saying, ‘and this is the upper sling swivel. You’ll see what that is for when you get your slings. And this is the piling swivel, which you haven’t got yet.’

  The sky was very blue. He had never seen a painting that captured that peculiar blue, a blue so intense that even though you knew it was millions of miles away, it was as though it was there, pulsing, forcing colour under your skin . . . .

  ‘The safety catch is always released with your thumb,’ said the sergeant. ‘DO NOT LET ME SEE YOU USING YOUR FINGER. Even you little
tossers should have enough strength in your thumb. God help us if you don’t.’

  Devlin remembered thinking, If I was painting that sky, I would use the broadest brush I could find and the thickest paint, paint so thick you could only fall into it.

  But he didn’t paint it. He went to the pub with the others and sat in the corner, with nothing to say for himself, and he drank. And he kept on drinking – he felt dizzy now when he tried to visualise the endless rounds of beers, the endless pubs, the box of half a dozen bottles of Scotch delivered every Friday afternoon. He felt that all he had done in twenty years in the army was drink. It had been nothing but drinking until the Monday morning when he squinted up from the bucket and realised that Kenje was gone.

  ‘You bastard,’ Devlin said when he saw Mitch. He was shaving his four-day beard in the marble bathroom of the office in Anurandpura Street. The smoked-black walls and floor reminded him of the goggles on the pilot in the trees. He moved the mirror to get a better view of the office.

  Mitch was at the desk, feet propped on the polished mahogany, raising a crystal glass.

  ‘Quid pro quo,’ said Mitch.

  Devlin glanced at his reflection in the mirror. His skin was grey, his eyes were bloodshot. He thought, I hate you.

  He said, ‘He’s got kids, Mitch.’ Ten years younger than me, thought Devlin, and four kids.

  He heard the creak in the chair as Mitch sat up. ‘You haven’t gone native have you?’

  In this light the wet facecloth looked like the cream silk of the parachute filled with rain. Mitch’s chair creaked again. He was getting up. Devlin thought of the vines tightening around the pale cloud in the trees.

  He said, ‘I need Kenje back.’

  ‘Everything we do is for your own good, Devlin,’ said Mitch, from behind him. ‘Just remember, today’s the fifteenth.’

  Devlin knew if he looked up, he would see Mitch in the mirror. He turned on the taps, began to wash his hands. He said, ‘You don’t need to worry about me.’

  He came out onto the cluttered street. The air had a nasty yellow haze to it; the traffic cops were wearing surgical masks again. He stepped back to dodge a scooter which had mounted the pavement to avoid the small tuk-tuk colliding with a car and a bicycle. The air shuddered under the weight of shouts and whistles.

  In the city, in any crowd of people now, he had the feeling of being blindfolded and handcuffed, of fingers trying to entwine themselves around him. He always wanted to get away. Am I a solitary? he thought. The only place he wanted to be was in the rainforest.

  He looked at the address Mitch had given him. Too late, he thought, for reverie.

  There were other things in the glare of the city, tucked away, behind the squat stone police headquarters. He slipped on damp steps curving down through the dank air to cells as old as the stone figureheads scattered through the jungle. It was hard to see; fifteen watt bulbs were strung along the ceiling. Even the doors were iron. Medieval. Remorseless.

  He looked through the grille in the first door. A clot of thin brown bodies was squatting or sitting on the floor. A smell of sweat and shit and fear and some other pungent odour.

  ‘How long can you hold them?’ he asked the bored guard by his side.

  The guard raised his nearly hairless eyebrows.

  ‘How long can you hold them before the families make a stink?’

  The guard shrugged, lovingly smoothed the creases in the banknotes in his hand. He smiled; he was missing most of his bottom teeth. He put the notes away.

  ‘I need to see more,’ said Devlin.

  ‘You terrorist,’ said the guard. ‘You American spy.’

  ‘Oh, fuck off,’ said Devlin. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  The guard made a pistol with his forefinger and thumb and pointed it at Devlin’s head. ‘You go bye-bye soon.’

  ‘Just piss off, will you?’

  The guard showed his black holes.

  Devlin walked down the hall, looking in the cells. No sign of Kenje.

  ‘Nothing there,’ shouted the guard.

  ‘You’ve been paid,’ said Devlin, not bothering to turn. ‘Take it and shut up.’

  The bulbs were strung more sparsely here. The walls seemed darker, rougher, the doors smaller, wider, the pungent smell stronger. Animals. They were keeping some kind of animal down here.

  The light was a dim mustard glow. Devlin pulled out his pencil torch, played the light in a wide arc. The beam caught the wet walls, the jagged surfaces. The cells were built into caves.

  ‘Nothing for you,’ shouted the guard through the gloom. Devlin ignored him, put his torch up to the next grille, caught the slinking turn of a low black shape, a rumble cut with breaking glass. Golden eyes glared at him, the teeth a curved white blur in the dark.

  There were birds of paradise in cages in the next cell and a heap of matted fur in the corner. He was walking towards the next door when the guard shouted, ‘All right.’

  Later when he bandaged Kenje’s fingers and got him drunk on the first Scotch he had ever tasted – it had taken five shots: four for Devlin and one for Kenje – he had helped him carve ALWABSADNIB – Another Lazy White Australian Bastard Sitting Around Doing Nothing In Borneo – into the leg of the desk.

  Devlin told him that he was worth his weight in panther pelts and paradise feathers. Kenje smiled carefully, holding his broken ribs, and that was all they ever said about it.

  The crocodiles on the bank had finished tearing at the monkey, at each other. They had eaten but they were not satisfied. As he watched, another rush of green water hit two of the wooden poles. The cage rocked, Devlin was thrown to one side, his weight making it worse, he sensed buckling just as the pole was forced out of place. He leaned away from the tottering support but it was too late. The cage bucked and swayed and sagged, sharply.

  The movement attracted the crocodiles on the bank. Their heads swivelled, they turned on their short fat legs, put their great jaws in the air, sniffing the wind. They set off at a run for the water, heading straight for him.

  The lead crocodile had almost reached him. Its ridged snout came up out of the water in a rotting fog of snapping jaws and yellow teeth. But its feet were off the bottom, it had no leverage and it could only lunge and fall back, lunge and fall. The second crocodile tried to clamber up over the first which twisted, mouth open, trying to bite. They disappeared in the violently churning water. When a tail hit the already-teetering pole, Devlin knew it would only be a matter of moments. The third crocodile had hung back to watch but as the cage dipped even lower – water was soaking the vines in the corner – it put its shoulder to the sinking cage and pushed, experimentally. The cage tilted further, water was over Devlin’s feet. He heard monkeys hooting in the trees. He gripped the roof bars, shaking them wildly, not caring if the cage rocked now, trying to break off a section of bamboo, anything that he could defend himself with. The crocodile’s snout poked through the brown water and bit down with a crack. A splinter must have pierced it; it shook its head violently, mouth open, bamboo shards falling from between bloody teeth. It swerved away, became part of the threshing grey bodies. The cage dipped. Devlin thought, I have wasted my life.

  As he fell, a blur of slicked grey aluminium came alongside him, seemingly out of the water. He heard rain falling on a tin roof, a ripping and snarling as the crocodiles were wrenched away by their tails, more rain, only later did he realise it was rifle shots, and then a bandaged hand pulling him up, past the outboard motor, into the dinghy.

  They blindfolded him and walked him through the jungle. He stumbled frequently, more when he smelt the smoke. He was jerked to a stop. The blindfold was taken off. When he finished blinking in the light falling through the hole in the jungle, he saw that he was alone in a charred clearing. It was worse than he thought. The forest looked as though it had exploded from inside: debris from the huts lay scattered on the smouldering ground. Here and there were broken crockery and smashed plates but almost eve
rything else – clothes, tools, people, dogs, pigs, chickens – had vanished. He saw a trickle of dark liquid glinting across the splintered wooden planks and dismembered vines, leading away from the embers through a path made by branches forced back by something barrelling through the bush. He followed the blood and was not surprised when he came out on the riverbank to the dozen crocodiles lying in the mud. They gazed at him incuriously, resting on their swollen bellies.

  He knew he should look in the water for any remains of the villagers. He promised himself he would collect evidence. But for now, he had to sit in the mud and the broken leaves and the blood, and bow his head. He felt as though a giant bowl of desolation was above him, descending slowly. As though he would forever be on a bender, forever waking with acid in his mouth.

  He went back to the smoking ash and picked up a smouldering stick and blew on it. The stick dropped an ember on his flesh. He watched it curl like a leaf, singeing the hair on his arm. He blew on the point and deliberately pressed it into the skin of his upper chest. He picked out several glowing sticks and went back to the riverbank. He sat down, close enough so that the nearest crocodile, a grey and brown speckled male the length of a horse, smelt the smoke and retreated in uneasy arcs to the tide-line.

  Devlin blew on the stick and pressed it under his skin.

  He had cut a jagged line under his collarbone when a branch snapped behind him. He didn’t turn, he waited for whatever was coming. An arrow went past, so close he felt the feathered tail stroke the air near his cheek. It struck the crocodile on the tide-line; the animal snarled and squirmed backwards into deeper water.

  Kenje sat down next to him. He was carrying a machete but no bow. So there were others, nearby.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kenje,’ said Devlin. ‘This is a story about bastards.’

  Kenje said, ‘This is a story about work.’

  ‘I didn’t do it for the money. Well . . . ’ He struggled to be honest. ‘Yes, I suppose.’

  ‘We all have to work,’ said Kenje. ‘Make choices.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe those choices – ’ he slapped his hands together – ‘sometimes.’