Cold Light

by Frank Moorhouse

  It was good to be reminded that, when young, she had been valiant in some way and considered one of the intelligent elite. She had never been sure how she had been viewed by her classmates.

  She continued to study him. It was not only his importunate nature, it was his intense, self-serving mind, which combined with his mutilated ugliness to radiate – what? War. He radiated war and vengefulness.

  How she allowed herself to go to his room was inexplicable. When she found herself there in his worn hotel room, staring at the brown linoleum floor, the weak, bare, electric light, the dull canvas blind pulled down on the single window, she felt she had been drugged. The room, which was littered with charts, maps and books wide open, was like being inside Scraper’s demented mind.

  She knew that the Department of Interior actually owned the Kurrajong. What a strange beast the Department was, in all its sprawling rooms and activities. The very activities of life went on its rooms, including this room, this drab room of demented ideas.

  He was pouring into a water glass yet another Scotch – she did not see what label – from a bottle he had in the room. He scrabbled among his maps and diagrams, now a hand on her back, now touching her shoulder, now creeping around to touch her breasts, which she pushed away, his crippled hands always wandering to her body like some large flying insect.

  ‘I will go straight out the door if you keep on with this touching.’

  He sat her on the worn sofa and sat beside her, spreading out other maps of Canberra and diagrams over their knees. A map of Stonehenge. Circles, triangles, intersecting lines. His voice droned on and on. She held her glass out for another Scotch, alarmed that she had already drunk the first. Trying to kill the incessant irritation of all this. Anaesthetising herself. He struggled up and poured another Scotch.

  ‘The omphalos or centre – phallus – of the universe has been recreated by the Griffins. They have made Capital Hill the phallus of the Australian universe. Radiating out are the minor capitals – those avenues named after the states. There is probably a solar year line in there somewhere if you measured the angles.’ He again repeated the sex words, saying ‘phallus, vulva’, watching her like a naughty boy.

  He said that the temples, which would eventually serve the capital omphalos, were the library – temple of knowledge; the high court – temple of justice; the temple of science; the temple of art. All these temples would surround the temple of law-making – the parliament. The museum of the nation would house the sacred relics of the national experience. ‘The war memorial is already there, housing plunder from our overseas conquests and the metaphorical bones of our dead warriors with its Processional Way.’

  He kept hitting the city plan with his crippled hand.

  ‘They think that their plan contains within it a higher stage of human spiritual development, which will suppress the maladies of the modern civilisation.’

  She probably thought the same.

  He giggled. ‘The good thing about the plan is that the religious churches are pushed out of the sanctified triangle and will be replaced by the secular temples.’

  While one of his crippled hands worried her torso near her breasts, the other pointed out the placement of the churches. ‘Ah, but see the closest temple to the sacrosanct capital triangle?’ He jabbed at the plan. ‘See what it is?’

  ‘It seems that it’s the Masonic temple,’ she said, reluctantly, quietly surprised.

  He was gleeful at this evidence. ‘See, see, the Church of England’s cathedral site is much further away. See!’

  His hand was back on her leg under the maps.

  She pushed it away, but at the same time she had become interested in all this siting; how siting of buildings – planning – invited godlike play.

  He went on in his cracked drone, ‘They have replaced the word “sacred” with secular words. Diana’s sacred grove is the botanic gardens – but, as with Diana’s grove, it should be mirrored in the calms and deep of the Lago de Nemi. If the lakes are made here in Canberra that would be the echo. We have a fortified entrance with the military encampment on the east of the city – very Roman. But where, we may ask, is the sacrificial site?’

  Although he seemed very absorbed by all the plans and diagrams, she suspected that he had, perhaps, lost his mind. And still his hands kept straying onto her breasts and her legs, as if independent of his mind and mouth.

  In the middle of all this he blurted out, ‘Even the street- walkers will not take me. I frighten them.’ She heard it as if it came from another room. It was not self-pity. It was perhaps used for persuasion. It could have been basic frustration.

  Again, as if drugged, she realised, passively, that he was undoing her blouse, exposing her slip straps and the top of her brassiere. His hungry, misshapen hands were playing with her nipples through the silk of the slip and brassiere, which, contrary to her state of mind and wishes, had become erect and responsive. Her lingerie was exposed and she had done nothing to stop it happening.

  She was caught in the torpor of the strange words that had tumbled from him, and the diagrams and the dimness of the room, and the Scotch. She was aware that he had unbuttoned himself and had his erect penis in his bony hand. He was stimulating himself, bringing himself to ejaculation.

  She wanted to, but did not stop him playing with her breasts as he milked his penis. She felt herself becoming wet and was annoyed with her body for responding in any way to what was happening. That her body was behaving in this lewd way confused her.

  He kept asking her to ‘sit on the phallus, my grave mound’, which she ignored, although again, with a cold horror, she did feel drawn to doing just that. But didn’t.

  Thankfully, his climax came very quickly. He grunted, eyes closed. She hoped that none of his semen had reached her. She struggled up from her leaden collapse there on the sofa, to go to the handbasin in the room and wash her hands, even though she had not had any contact with him or his body.

  Oh God. Damn, damn, damn.

  Eyes closed, his hand still on his penis, in a sated voice he said, ‘Vulva. Phallus.’

  She did not speak to him but buttoned the top of her dress, gathered her things and left the room in a silent rage at herself for having allowed all this to happen. Again. As it had happened those years back. Or something like it.

  On the stairs, she was dizzy from having drunk too much Scotch too quickly. Why had she drunk so much Scotch so quickly?

  She asked the receptionist to call a taxicab, and as she stood there in the lobby, she kept looking up the stairs anxiously to see if he was coming down to further harass and enmesh her. She felt as a whore might feel, except that a whore would have simply done her work, been paid and put it all out of her head. What she had done was not her work and she had not been paid. She felt no virtue, no sense of it being an act of kindness to a damaged man. She might have felt that way back when it had happened the first time, but not this time. This time, there was not a shred of virtue in the act.

  She was deeply relieved that she wasn’t back with Dr Vittoz and that she would not have to tell him; relieved that there was no one in the world who would ever know or whom she was required to tell. Not even dear Ambrose.

  No one need ever know about this. What it revealed about her, she was unsure. Certainly, an enfeebled will, a salacious compliance.

  The bushy sunset of the evening was falling on Canberra and on her evening, which was in ruins. Her mind was addled with words such as omphalos, vesica, orifice, vulva, phallus.

  But then, in the taxicab, a realisation came to her. The sexual thing didn’t matter a damn. Did not matter a damn. The distress, the vague recriminations, which were circling her, melted away. If this was the attitude of the whore, so be it. She turned and looked at the bushy sunset of the evening falling on Canberra, and, for the first time since being in Canberra, savoured it.

  What had happened simply did not matter.

  She was a woman of some maturity now, she was not a puritan, and th
e sex thing with Scraper just didn’t matter. To think otherwise about her so-called pride would surely be a falling into the Abyss of Self-Conceit.

  It did not matter a damn.

  And nor did any of Scraper’s rambling theories. All architecture and planning contained symbolism and could have stories laid onto it. She would not be telling anyone about the geomantic theories, though, without a doubt, she had been into the room of a geomancer.

  She pondered the power of physical ugliness, which was said to have been used so well by Mirabeau in the French revolution. Perhaps Churchill was also ugly.

  She was able to arrive at these conclusions despite the talkative taxicab driver, to whom, there in the back, she only half-listened. But she also had to concede, at this point in the journey home, that while any of what had happened might not matter, nor was it as yet, by a long shot, a laughing matter.

  The Broken Cumquat

  When Edith opened the door of her office, she saw the small broken trunk of the cumquat tree bending towards the floor as if in shame. All the fruit had been stripped from the tree and stamped into the rug. Brutishness. Targeted brutishness. The inflicting of an injustice on the small, vibrant tree was itself a sort of violation separate from the violation of her. It was a brutish message to her – or an incoherent rage.

  There was a postcard-sized white card with a hand-printed message, saying ‘rat’. The card came from the department stationery cabinet.

  She looked around for more, but that was it. Rat.

  She put the card on her desk, and then took off her gloves and placed them on top of her handbag on the desk.

  She took off her beret and hung it on the hatstand, her hands shaking.

  She picked up the squashed cumquat fruit and wondered what to do with them. She didn’t want them staring up at her from the wastepaper bin like bloody, broken eyes. She found a large manila envelope and put them in it, and put the envelope in the wastepaper bin. She considered what to do about the stains on the rug. If they could not be removed she would remove the rug.

  The trunk of the cumquat had a greenstick fracture and she closed it carefully back to shape, binding it with her handkerchief in the hope that there was a slight possibility it could heal itself. She could, she supposed, use Scotch tape, but would have to go down the hallway to get it from the senior clerk’s secretary.

  She sat down and felt a sense of offence, which folded into fear. She was frightened of what implications lay behind the vandalism. Was there rampant gossip about her and her communist brother, or about the allocation of the house? Ah, the house.

  What was the meaning of the word ‘rat’ in this message?

  She called Ambrose, who was a great admirer of the cumquat tree. He was furious, but she agreed that it was difficult for her to react in an office where her authority was so minimal; her connection temporary and slight; her allies few, if any; and her enemies unknown.

  The other person she could think of asking for advice was Mr Thomas. And her brother.

  She made a reluctant decision: she decided to call her brother and ask him for information about Mr Thomas. Even though she instinctively liked Mr Thomas, Frederick might know more about him. Might also know who in the Department was likely to be her enemy. She now assumed that her brother had an unmapped, unofficial network in the workforce of Canberra.

  She rested her hand on the telephone. She had heard about the secret service being able to listen in to telephone calls, and Frederick had warned her about it, but she couldn’t imagine that someone in a lowly job such as hers would be singled out for listening. In a wider sense, though, she was a Somebody by being a wife of a diplomat with friends in high places. She could be a Person of Interest.

  She put aside any caution and rang the number Frederick had given her. To her surprise, she was linked directly to him; she had expected a more clandestine arrangement.

  She explained the situation.

  He apologised. ‘I would suspect that you were targeted because of me.’

  ‘How would they know I was your sister?’

  ‘Word gets around. Sorry, Edith. But welcome to the struggle. We have members in the department and I’ll check with them. We’ll straighten this out, though there’re six hundred people working in Interior so it may take time.’

  She asked about Mr Thomas.

  ‘Thomas? I’ve chatted with him. He’s sympathetic to progressive causes, but, well, he’s . . . how shall I put it? He’s a little limp-wristed.’

  She had not seen Mr T this way. But she could see why her brother said it. She nearly said to Frederick that his brother-in-law was a nancy-boy. Would she one day have to tell him? She doubted it.

  He went on to say, ‘Thomas has an astute knowledge of the department. Keeps his ear to the ground. I find it useful to talk with him when I call in.’

  Her brother prowled around the department. ‘Would he know you are my brother?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have mentioned it.’

  ‘Someone thinks I’m a communist. Is this what happens to communists?’

  ‘I’ve had much worse down at the Snowy. The reffos from Eastern Europe give me and my car a hard time.’

  ‘I would appreciate it if you could ask your conspiratorial friends about who it was who tried to murder my cumquat tree. And you can then put the culprits up against a wall and shoot them.’

  She called Mr Thomas’s extension and asked him to come to her office.

  He was distressed when he saw the tree.

  ‘How do we find out who did it, Mr T? And if we do find out, what would we do to them?’ She did not at this point show him the card. The abuse of it – even if its meaning was not known for certain – was too painful.

  ‘I will find out over morning tea, make a few discreet calls. As to what we do about it . . .’

  She smiled with what was left of any smile in her. ‘You mean we let his bicycle tyres down?’

  ‘Something like that – or worse. Put salt in his tea.’

  He noticed the stains of the squashed cumquats on the rug.

  ‘We must put cold water on those stains immediately, followed by hot water. And then we must find some hydrogen peroxide.’

  He left the office and came back with a bucket of water and a brush. ‘Here, splash that on the stain, and I will go find some very hot water.’ Off he went again, returning with half a bucket of hot water and waving a bottle of hydrogen peroxide ‘from the medical kit’.

  ‘Mr T, you are a marvel,’ she said, down on her knees, scrubbing.

  ‘I am something of a Mister Spotless.’

  ‘The stains seem to be coming out.’

  He went away again and this time came back with a pot of tea, cups and biscuits for them both on a tray.

  ‘The tea lady will punish you for interfering with her tea things.’

  ‘The tea is my own – Darjeeling.’

  She got to her feet and flopped into a chair.

  He poured the tea. ‘Sugar and milk?’

  He then asked her what she did with the squashed cumquats.

  She gestured at the wastepaper bin. ‘In the envelope.’

  He leaned over and picked up the envelope, the stain from the fruit already showing through the paper. ‘I’ll see that they get a decent burial.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr T.’

  She at last felt restored enough to show him the note. ‘There was a message left with the damaged tree.’ She handed it to him. ‘The word rat is so odious.’ She felt defeated.

  He nodded. ‘Rat has at least three meanings I can think of – to betray a political party; to be a cad; to be Communist, as in “a commie rat”. Oh, and I suppose there’s a fourth – to be a furry rodent.’

  He seemed to hesitate and then said, ‘We know you’re not a furry rodent, but some people think you’re a communist. It’s none of my business. You are not, after all, working in military matters. It’s none of my business.’

  She realised her responses in the conversation c
ould reveal things about her to Mr Thomas. She hated talking judiciously.

  ‘Do you think communists shouldn’t work in military matters?’

  He again hesitated in answering. ‘I suppose I do. Communists seem to have other allegiances – outside the tribe. I suppose I’m something of an old-fashioned patriot. If there is such a thing. And I think it’s quite possible that we will be at world war with the USSR.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I think it could happen.’

  She was interested that he used the name USSR – most people said Russia. She thought it showed that he must be something of a student of politics.

  ‘You speak like a student of politics.’

  ‘I suppose I am. In a haphazard way. Not a joiner. I read the Manchester Guardian. I’m a polling booth inquiry officer at election time.’

  ‘Some old-fashioned Australians would see themselves as British – another allegiance – and some are now slavish about America. Some feel attached to Ireland. Some take their instructions from the Vatican.’

  ‘True. Our Prime Minister believes that being British is more important than being Australian, or that it’s the same thing. I guess I’m of another fashion, then. Not old and not new.’ He made a facetious face. ‘Whatever that fashion may be.’

  ‘It will be a short war if the Bomb is used.’

  ‘I am worried about the Bomb.’

  ‘Do you think that I should put the blackout blind back up?’

  He laughed. ‘From what they tell us, it will be all over in a blinding flash. The blind might protect you from the flash.’

  ‘Brighter than a thousand suns.’

  ‘I haven’t heard that expression.’