by Greg McLean
The men tip their hats. The woman glances through large sunglasses, and Mick sees her lips twitch downwards as she nods and looks away. Their smiles go hard. Unless you were looking you wouldn’t see it. And then the woman’s gone and the men uncoil.
It’s enough for Mick. He’s right on the money, for sure.
‘Superintendent of Mine’s wife,’ the younger man explains. ‘Walks past every day. Teasing.’ He grins to show he’s joking. Then his eyes flick down to Mick’s wallet, bulging with his last two dogging payments – more than a month’s wages in the new dollar notes. ‘We order now, yes? Come in afternoon. All fixed, prijatelj.’
So they just want a bit of money? Fine. He’s got his confirmation something’s up with them. Now he just needs to get outta this.
‘Thanks. Er . . . preeya-tell,’ he tries.
‘Da. Good!’ The man grins and pumps his hand. It must be the magic word because he looks to his brother and the older man nods and jumps in the truck to park it. Mick sees now the lettering on the door: Celepči Brothers: Towing and Mechanical Services. ‘You almost speak Serb now,’ the younger man says. ‘Say, we go for lunch. You come with us. Have great feed, play cards, have drink while we wait. We teach you more.’
That’s not quite the plan. He points up the road at the town. ‘I’ll just wait —’
The man nods knowingly. ‘Aussies not good drinkers as they think.’
Mick frowns. ‘I can drink.’
The man claps him on the shoulder. ‘Then you come with us.’ He points to a squat building in the middle of town with concrete pillars like something out of ancient Greece. The man’s brother rolls down the shed door, having supposedly called for the spare carbie. Right. But Mick does get a glimpse into the building and sees a bunch of half-repaired cars, a couple of hoists. And drums in every corner. Definitely possibilities in there.
The brothers flank him down the street like bodyguards. ‘I am Drago,’ the younger man says, shaking his hand again. ‘This is my brother Vuka.’
‘Mick.’
‘Well, Aussie Mick. Let’s see how you drink.’
At first Mick is tense, wondering if they’re leading him into some dead-end building. But there are a number of cars parked outside the big meeting hall, and as they approach he can hear music and talking inside.
Mick looks down at his jackaroo skins. ‘I’m not really dressed —’
‘No one cares about that. Look at us. Once you have first šljivovica nor will you.’
‘Shliver-what?’
Drago grins. ‘Slivovitz. You call your beer “amber of the gods”. Well, you have not tasted our plum rakija. Our brandy.’
He bangs through a door with a bronze plaque reading ‘Boratič Klub’ and into a long smoky room. The ceiling’s low and the cigarette smoke hangs just above head height, cramping the area further. On the walls are soot-stained old photographs, presumably of the homeland, and a large tattered map of somewhere he’d never seen and never would. Two lines of tables stretch up to the kitchen at the end and are dotted already with early drinkers. Some of the men nod at the two brothers as they enter, but Mick notices one old bloke watch them pass then quietly pack up his cigarettes and leave before they see.
Drago greets the large grandmotherly woman behind the kitchen countertop with a kiss on each cheek and a rapid-fire burst of ethnic. It sounds like they’re talking backwards. He’s given a black bottle and some glasses and Mick’s herded to a table.
Mick sits, uncomfortable after being by himself or just Rose for so long – unused to so many people in a small place. But the air at the back of the room is thick with something mouth-wateringly savoury and he sniffs, interested.
Drago grins. ‘We have ćevapčići soon enough. But first, we drink.’ He chinks glasses with Mick, and Mick hesitates, knowing it could be drugged. But he has to risk it. The burn hits up past his eyes and he blinks as his sinuses fry. The brothers laugh. ‘Iveli!’ Drago laughs.
‘Yeah, cheers mate,’ Mick says, getting the translation, and gives a smile.
Intent on robbing him blind, someone’s soon dealing out cards. Dollar bills start flying. ‘You know poker, yes?’ Drago asks. Mick nods. ‘Well, this not like that. But you get idea. Put your money in.’
The other brother, Vuka, is the more silent of the two and Mick keeps looking over to see the man watching him throughout the confusing game. Mick’s careful to keep cheerful. Hopefully the brothers didn’t suspect him from the moment they saw him. Hopefully this isn’t their way of getting rid of snoopers: invite ’em into their spider web, then ground ’em up in the kitchen. But Vuka loses interest in him and instead becomes locked in a debate with the man sitting next to him – or an argument, Mick can’t tell, as their language always sounds angry. An envelope changes hands.
‘We not only Yugoslavs here.’ Drago is jabbering away. ‘So you not feel so out of place, Aussie Mick. Yes, we are Serbs, Croats, Bosnians. But there are Greeks, those two over there are Czechs. Even Russians, Latvians. We welcome all, even Australians. But they not want to drink here. They all stay up the other end of town in their Aussie pubs. Where they safe, separate. So if that’s how it has to be, that’s how it has to be.’
The brandy’s starting to fuzz Mick’s brain and he’s already lost a fair amount of his money, but he’s still aware enough to see Drago staring more openly when he takes out his wallet. The brothers’ piles of money – mostly Mick’s – build in front of them. Drago won’t let him go until the rest is gone. They probably could’ve just clubbed him on the head and stolen it, but there’s no sport in that. This way he’d just stumble out a few hours later clueless as to what happened and with no way to reclaim it. If he even lasts until then.
On the next turn Mick puts down a jack instead of a ten and Drago laughs. ‘Still not getting hang of this, no?’ Mick’s lost half his wages by now. Begins to wonder if he should call it quits.
He checks his watch. ‘So when’s this part —’
‘You have to go?’
‘I have to get home.’
‘But you have come in here. Tasted of our drink. Sat at our table. Would you forgo our food? Our hospitality?’ The younger brother’s smiling, but it’s not meeting his eyes.
Mick forgets his watch.
‘You know, Aussie Mick,’ Drago says, still smiling sidelong as he deals out the next hand. ‘This lucky country here. We come to it with nothing from our wartorn homes. But we hardworking, so we see opportunities. Build ourselves a name, a business. And you know what we get for that? We get called wog. We called eye-tie, spick, dago, greaseball, wop.’ The smile disappears. Mick tenses. ‘Unless white here, you are not Australian. Why is that? Even your native people – your abbos, as you call them – not considered Australian. How can that be?’
Some of the other men are staring at Mick now. ‘I don’t call them that.’
‘And your women. They so stuck up. Look at us like we animals. Like that bitch walking past —’
Vuka leans across and grasps his arm. Drago calms, looks at Mick again, smiles with those cold eyes.
‘No, we going to keep playing,’ the Serb says. ‘You can lose some more money, yes? Maybe you owe something back to us.’
‘I don’t owe you anything.’
The man doesn’t answer. Mick can feel the eyes of the room on him, and thinks maybe it’s better to let this play out, not make a scene.
He tries to concentrate hard on the rules the next game but still loses the round. Hands over five dollar notes at once this time. Drago smiles and places them on his pile. Mick’s trying not to be resentful, but if they get back to the mechanics afterwards and he still gets charged for the carbie, he’s gonna be mighty pissed.
‘We have a saying,’ Drago says. ‘Bog je prvo sebi bradu stvorio. God created the beard on himself first. You understand this?’
‘Nope.’
Drago smiles. ‘It means everyone looks out for themselves. You talk of mateship in this country. But you
are as much a tribe as anyone else. Afraid of outsiders, fighting for your patch. We know this well. In the war our people turned on each other, some siding with Nazis.’ The man on the other side of Mick frowns at this but says nothing. ‘The conflict still goes on now. So we not above that. We just wish it different here.’
He’s not quite sure what the man’s talking about and shrugs. ‘That’s the way the bikkies crumble, I guess.’
Drago crooks his head. ‘I do not know this expression. Fatalism, no?’
‘Something like that.’ Mick takes another slug of slivovitz. Might as well get his money’s worth. ‘I’m not part of any tribe. I worked on a station for a bit, but that didn’t work out.’
‘So now you alone?’
Mick hesitates. ‘Just me and me car.’
‘Then maybe we not so different.’
Vuka’s arguing even more intensely with the man on the other side of Mick. Then the door opens and two men come in – big, dressed in suits despite the heat outside – and Vuka’s suddenly kicked out his chair and is reaching for something against his back. The men race for him and Drago vaults the table and slashes a knife across one of the men’s arms. The man howls and stumbles amongst the chairs. Goes down, dropping his own fighting blade.
Vuka moves to head off the second man, and suddenly the bloke next to Mick – who’d frowned at Drago talking of Nazis – bares his teeth and draws a knife, intent on attacking the brothers. Mick tries to get out of his way but the man slams his shoulder into him and Mick throws him off. The bloke whirls, whistles the knife inches from his face, and Mick ducks back and pulls Cutter’s knife from his belt. He darts in, opens a deep cut across the guy’s chest, then ducks out of range again. The man howls, backing away and Vuka kicks him in the back of the knee, dropping him. Then the head.
Mick presses towards the safety of the kitchen, wielding his knife in front of him as the other drinkers stand and retreat. Drago’s straddling his man now, leaning in and speaking rapid-fire dragon-tongue into his face. He holds a huge knife – some big-bladed American thing – against the man’s face. He says something then in English: ‘Next time: double,’ then slices the cheekbone. The man yowls and blood splatters, mixes with the rest on the floor. The other drinkers stand silent, as if used to this. Mick looks behind and the woman in the kitchen stares with a resigned sadness. Gets a mop.
Vuka plants his blade against his attacker’s stomach, threatening to plunge it home. The man shakes his head, pleading hands raised. Instead, Vuka pistons his knee into the guy’s balls. The man hoomphs and clutches himself, rolls over and vomits a grey spray across the blood. Drago and Vuka stand over the three men and kick them a couple of times before one hauls his retching friend to his feet and they all head for the doors. The brothers grin at each other. Then cast a silent gaze around the room.
They rest on Mick.
He’s at the side door but it’s locked and he spins as the brothers come to him. Drago’s bowie knife dwarfs his own and the man smiles at the comparison. He puts his away. Mick stands blinking, Cutter’s knife still held before him, as Vuka walks up and claps him on the shoulder. ‘You did well with that, boy,’ he says, nodding at the blade. Mick quickly pockets it.
Drago takes his arm, steers him towards the doors. ‘We clean this. Not for coppers.’ The old woman slops water over the floor, which Mick now notices has a few dark stains in different places. The other drinkers help by moving chairs aside.
‘Wait!’
Mick turns, wonders if after everything he’s going to be forced to defend himself. But Vuka just hands him his much-reduced wallet. Holds it a moment too long.
‘Remember: na nevidišu nema krivice. If it isn’t seen, there is no guilt.’
‘Rightio.’
Vuka smiles that dead smile. ‘We understand each other, then.’
Mick follows Drago out and doesn’t look back at Vuka watching them. There’s a thin trail of blood leading out the door and down the street, but no response from the rest of the town. ‘You see?’ Drago says. ‘No one even care what happen here. We are left to look after ourselves. And so the strong take what we can. That is way of world. Your country makes us tough like that. Like you, I think.’
They reach the brothers’ yard and Mick sees his car. Drago bends under the bonnet, making no effort to conceal replacing the fuel hose.
‘Your car okay. You not owe us.’
Mick nods, slides in and starts the engine.
Drago leans in through the window. ‘Come back again? You good Aussie bloke. You just like us.’
Mick pulls a weak smile. Hopefully he’ll never have to speak to the mad bastards again.
Mick circles the town and parks his car behind one of the hotels up the other end, and makes sure it can’t be seen from the street. He heads in to book a room and the miners scattered around the bar watch him sullenly. It’s like he’s walked into some wild-west movie where the whole room goes silent. No wonder the ethnic workers down the street feel like they’ve been dipped in shit. The hostility’s like a wall. He takes his key and climbs the stairs.
It’s easier just to sit in his room until dark, then quietly slip around the back of the main street buildings towards the mechanics’. The lights are on late and he waits in the darkness behind some crates for a heart-stopping stretch of time, but no one creeps up behind him and eventually the light cuts out about ten and the brothers retreat to a house at the back.
Mick moves in silently, slipping his gangly frame under the padlocked gate. He checks each drum in the yard, upending and tipping to listen for a clatter, running a stick through the fuel holes and around in case the knife’s taped to the inside. Nothing. Then he slips into the shed, pausing to listen for footsteps before flicking his torch on. But the drums in here are no joy either, and though there could be a thousand places the knife might be hidden in the junkpile of the shed, Mick soon loses hope.
He’s been racking his brain this whole time, wondering if the brothers counted as the second and third of the three killers Cutter had said are working the country. But there must be another because the knife’s not here.
And that means he’s back to square one.
As he leaves he sneaks up to the window of the house and peers in at the two men sitting at the table eating after a late day’s work. There are no drums inside, but Mick does notice a water flask on the tallboy behind the men. The kind tourists have. As Drago passes to the sink he runs a finger along its metal mouth and there’s a glint in his eyes as he looks at it. Like he came alive for that moment and the rest of the time he’s just drifting.
The look scares Mick. He’s felt the same thing. When he’s killed someone.
He’s about to slip away when the two men get up from the table and start closing the blinds. He ducks when they come to the kitchen window. But it’s not for his benefit. The blind doesn’t close all the way and through the crack Mick watches them set up a film projector in the lounge room and cut the lights.
If he cranes he can make out the grainy projection on the wall: white oversaturated flesh. Then someone on-camera adjusts the light and he sees two figures staked out on a cave floor: a naked man and woman spreadeagled and shivering. A pair of legs move into shot and the shape bends and secures the pegs tight, then readjusts the tripod lights, and leaves.
Mick watches the brothers bunker down on opposite ends of the couch. Movie night, then. Next thing, Drago shimmies his pants down to his ankles and Vuka does the same, and then their shoulders dip up and down. Never looking at each other but way too close for comfort.
On the screen the grainy woman – a once-pretty brunette – screams and screams, soundless. The man – a hairy Serbian-looking guy, perhaps another business associate who’d crossed them – roars with savage, useless anger. The cave’s walls drip.
Abruptly the sorry victims stop their protests and Mick can see the whites of their eyes as they tilt their heads back, trying to see something behind them. Tiny shapes scurry
out of the darkness and surround the couple on the edges of light. The people buck against the pegs. But it’s no use. Maybe the brothers found this cave swarming with rats and trained them, giving them raw meat. They know exactly what to do.
They crawl on the woman first, but it’s the guy that makes Mick feel even more uncomfortable. His genitals hang like ripe, tempting fruit. Seems . . . natural for the rats to attack there first. Like that’s the reason they’re on the outside: to make men vulnerable.
It must fascinate the brothers too. On the couch they lean forward, reliving past glories. The woman gets them to the edge, but it’s the man that sends them over. First one, then the other, spasms, then sinks back into the couch and watches the rest of the long, exhaustive film, eyes glazed.
As does Mick. He stays for the whole thing, unable to look away. And as confusing and gut wrenching as it is, something in its horrific spectacle settles deep into his brain and fixes there like a magnet.
12
Mick cruises up to his spot overlooking Rose’s house and cuts the headlights, waiting in the dark. The lights in the house blaze into the night, beckoning every bug within ten miles. He watches clouds of them bump into the windows and sizzle against the outside lamp, trying to stop thinking about the stuttering film, to get the seared images out of his mind.
Cutter would have known about the missing tourists too, so he would have found the brothers eventually. Even if he’d just travelled up north and observed people they would’ve stood out. So they must collectively be the second of the Others the shooter talked about.
Now he has to find the third.
And in thinking about this something nags at the back of his brain, but he can’t pin it down. Something he’s seen somewhere. Even as he waits near her place, checking for anyone following, the thought keeps scratches at the inside of his skull – like a rat gnawing inside him.