New Hokkaido

by James McNaughton

So that’s what you sound like when you lie, he thinks. The same as you usually do.

  ‘To avoid bad weather,’ she adds a moment later. The car shakes with a particularly strong blast of wind. She nods emphatically. ‘But I’ve stayed longer than I planned.’

  It’s a good enough admission of her Settler status for now. He knows that it’s dishonourable, a slur on her character, and won’t push the issue. ‘You were in Christchurch?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You mentioned a sheep-fucker on the ferry.’

  ‘Ha. Damien was his name. A farmer.’

  ‘How did you meet him?’ He is aware that the conversation would flow better in Japanese, but speaking English adds to the thrill of wrongdoing. He’s stirring again at the sight of her next to him, a futuristic Japanese woman naked from the waist down under the blanket.

  ‘I got lost on a job. Well, I let myself get lost, yeah? I was in the country and got a flat tyre. I can change a flat tyre very well. Damien stopped to help and saw I was Japanese. It was a little awkward, but I soon found out he is always a little awkward, with any human. Ha.’

  ‘You visited his farm?’

  ‘Yes. I would stay on weekends. It was quite isolated. A beautiful spot. There was a dam for swimming. I would arrive late and leave late the next day or two days later.’

  ‘What are Japanese men like in a relationship?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I mean, I see a very formal side of my colleagues. I have to leave dinners when the drinking gets serious. I don’t really know them, you know?’

  She nods.

  She’s proud of that discipline, he thinks, proud of her nation’s men.

  ‘They’re all different, right?’ That’s obvious, her tone says, and the subject is closed.

  She wants a smoke. The problem is that they’ll have to open a window. He jumps out, bare-bummed, hops in the driver’s seat, and turns the car sideways. Back in the seat beside her he opens the window on the sheltered side. He’s run out of cigarettes so he takes one of her menthols. The first drag tastes like a minty treat but by the third it tastes weak and unsatisfying. And the wind is too strong. It grabs at them with cold fingers and buffets the smoke away from the window so that it collects around them. He throws his out, half smoked. She follows suit. ‘I’m thirsty,’ she says.

  He drives her to the park at Island Bay. ‘There’s a public water fountain through that gate,’ he tells her. ‘Turn right. And hold on to your wig.’ When she returns he goes out and drinks his fill. It’s very dark. Other nights won’t offer the same kind of weather protection. Their chances of being seen will be much higher, no matter where they go.

  ‘I don’t have a farm,’ he tells her on the way back to the zoo car park. It’s near where she lives, in a block of apartments.

  ‘Me either.’

  He pulls up under the dark trees. It’s a relatively secluded spot. He entertains a coupling on the bonnet, a position which will enable him to move freely. ‘Quite summery here,’ he says.

  ‘In Japanese?’

  ‘It’s like summer here, relatively speaking. We could have a picnic on the blanket.’

  She looks out the window.

  Too much, he thinks, and tries another angle. ‘Maybe we could rent a house up north?’

  Her face lights up. She leans forward and kisses him.

  ‘Goodnight, Hitomi,’ he says.

  ‘What about the blanket?’

  She doesn’t like the car bonnet idea, and she’s right, it’s too exposed. He throws it on the ground in the nearby children’s playground, at the top of a rise in a spot sheltered from view and the wind. She removes her jeans and underwear in her usual forthright manner and lies on the blanket. He drops his own trousers and kneels over her.

  ‘What about the licking?’ she says.

  He manages to conceal his surprise. ‘Yes.’

  She spreads her legs and he concentrates on her clitoris with his tongue, which works well, judging by her breathing and groans. However, his bare butt’s in the air and getting cold. Feeling his own excitement dwindling, he moves up and rubs against her and it slips in. He comes quickly and is surprised at the roar he emits as he pulls out in a spontaneous and inexplicable attempt to prevent a pregnancy. We’re crazy, he thinks. He can’t pull his pants up quickly enough. He dabs the sperm off her stomach with the blanket. There is also some on her jersey. She’s in no hurry to get dressed. Lying there as he impatiently spot-cleans, she runs her hands over her stomach and down the insides of her thighs. Okay, he thinks, I’m not going to make her ask again.

  Chapter 15: Mutiny:

  Waiting for battle

  Marty is shocked to hear that the attack on the Security Centre has failed. The plastic explosives didn’t detonate and the assault force had to wait at length for one of the three doors to open. A guard was shot and a grenade was thrown in, but the ensuing rush was repelled, with five players being mown down, including two Typhoons. Moments later, the door burst open and six soldiers charged out into the firing line of the machine gun covering the corridor. The soldiers were killed, but three-quarters of the gun’s ammunition was spent and one of the gunners was bayoneted.

  The stand-off is tense. As many as thirty-five well-armed soldiers are thought to be inside the centre and ready to make a break. The other machine guns don’t have good firing lines on the other two exits and are too close to them, so the Typhoons’ forward pack is roped into a second ring of defence in a tourist lounge adjacent to the Security Centre. Behind the barricade of tables and couches, only the three loosies are armed. The twenty or so other players that hold the position have only the knives they brought on board or found in the ship’s kitchen. The metals rails Bogie sawed off make up the rest of their armoury.

  Jimmy organises this second ring of defence, yelling with something approaching Brian’s intensity. It’s this change in Jimmy that makes Marty suspect the situation is bad. ‘Where the fuck is Brian?’ Jimmy says. No one knows.

  The two dead Typhoons were backs: Flash, the Second Five-Eighth; and Ginger, the Centre. It’s a big loss to the team. They had been an awesome midfield combination. Marty loved the lines they ran. Sometimes he received the ball in their scything set movements. Flash would often bust the first tackle and Marty would be on his shoulder. Ginger was a particularly nice guy, and deceptively fast; he had a knack for taking players on the outside. Ginger, Marty’s brother-in-arms in the team’s hair-based piss-takes, was a reliably happy and affectionate drunk. Someone happy right through. It’s a real loss, and one that threatens Marty’s hope that the Typhoons will keep playing in Australia, keep winning, keep growing. He has dreamed of them all getting heavy machinery licences and working the mines in summer, then returning to Sydney or Melbourne to play winters. Eventually going to one another’s weddings, hanging out with their kids and wives in sunny free prosperity.

  Stew puts down his iron rail and vomits into a bag. Marty feels queasy himself; it’s only a matter of time before he does the same. We’re a pretty feeble safety net, he thinks, looking down the line of players, pale-faced in the night light of the tourist lounge, with their motley collection of iron bars and blades. But we won’t be a pushover, he tells himself. Every few minutes now someone pukes. A line has been crossed. He remembers finding himself face down on the lino while the Russians were slaughtered where they sat; how he’d suspected that the blunt force that had floored him was a shot in the back, like the shove a diver once described upon losing a leg to a Great White. Death is close. He pictures Brian bent over a fresh corpse, looking hard at the face, savouring something inexplicable, shouting in his high-pitched voice.

  As well as feeling sick and rotten, Marty is suddenly tired as well. Brian’s decisiveness seems superhuman to him. Maybe the price of freedom he’s prepared to pay is to let Brian have his way with the tourists with his knife, sniff the life rising out of them, although he suspects that Brian will be worse with women for some reason. He pukes and feels be
tter—but still tired. Very tired. He rests his head on the sofa in front of him.

  ‘Better not sleep, Marty,’ Plate tells him.

  ‘True.’

  ‘Be nice though.’

  Tunny vomits then lights a cigarette. They watch him turn green and valiantly puff on, slouched against the wall beneath the window.

  ‘Where’d Brian get to?’

  ‘Probably looking for a can opener to attack the Security Centre with.’

  ‘There’s a dozen tourists,’ says Marty. ‘A few chicks too apparently.’

  ‘Love to fuck a Jap,’ offers Tunny, who looks on the verge of vomiting again. He groans. ‘Oh, that cig was a mistake.’ He drops it into the heavy bag.

  ‘I have to say, Brian’s “mercy killings” got to me,’ says Marty.

  Plate grins. ‘You yelled at him on the bridge, bro.’

  ‘He practically sawed that dead captain’s head off, man. The guy was stone cold dead.’

  ‘Fifteen years in a death camp will do that to you. A lot of his mates were beheaded, eh.’

  ‘Rough justice.’ Tunny spits into his bag.

  ‘It’d take me a while to forgive them if you guys were beheaded,’ says Plate.

  It’s a very real possibility if they’re captured at sea, Marty thinks.

  Plate is grinning now. ‘Australia’s going to be sooooo nice, man.’

  For the first time Marty suspects they might not make it.

  Brian, cat-like, the machine gun he cleared the bridge with slung over his shoulder, makes his way along the back of the barricade, stepping lightly over sleeping and stupefied bodies. The sight of his self-contained lethality immediately restores Marty’s faith. The rush of gratitude and wellbeing he feels surprises him. Even his stomach settles.

  Brian crouches with them in the dim light. ‘I knew you fellas would be awake. The rest of this lot aren’t much use.’

  They accept the compliment. He’s steady, himself again. Marty realises he is vital to them making it, and that the other, bloodthirsty side of him is vital too. His presence is necessary, even if he’s just come from torturing women and children.

  ‘Where’ve you been, Brian?’

  ‘Supervising the diesel transfer.’

  ‘From the trucks?’

  ‘Yes. We siphoned the diesel into barrels and again into jerry cans. A three-hundred-strong chain of men shifted the cans up to the engine room where there’s access to the ship’s tanks. We’ve got enough fuel to make it now. As long as those jokers in the Security Centre don’t have a say in the matter.’

  ‘Should we attack them?’

  ‘I say yes. The others say no. While we’re discussing it, I think they’ll have a go—around three or four this morning. In any case, here’s some more ammunition.’ He demonstrates once again how to load a new magazine. ‘Easy. Keep to single shots. A bullet per man is enough.’

  It’s 2:30. Marty hopes that Brian stays with them, with his sub-machine gun.

  ‘Are you seasick?’ Tunny asks him.

  ‘Hard to say,’ Brian replies.

  Tunny groans and spits into his bag.

  ‘Are there any tourists on board?’ Marty asks.

  Brian nods wordlessly.

  ‘They could be useful later, as hostages,’ Marty suggests.

  ‘They could be useful now,’ Brian replies quickly.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Brian takes a metal comb from his back pocket and tugs it through his thick hair until the side parting is cleanly delineated. Normally he would stop combing at this point but he keeps combing.

  ‘Um, the tourists are useful now, Brian?’

  Combing, he’s miles away. His hand looks old and knotted on the comb. Despite being twenty-odd years older than Marty’s father, Eric, Brian is more vital than he and many of the so-called Lost Generation who were born into the most brutal phase of the occupation. Eric has all the appearances of a broken man. He limps, has a bad heart and drinks too much. But he’s not broken like some of the vets who made it through the POW camps; it’s as if he never formed properly to begin with. Like his growing legs, which were broken in a beating at primary school, he didn’t knit together properly. The defects grew larger and made him weak. He learned to be a shadow to escape things, a sweet kind of shadow in his best moments, a grateful shadow.

  Tunny vomits.

  Brian is animated by hatred, whereas Eric has been worn out and exhausted.

  ‘Wonder if the folks know yet?’ Tunny asks.

  It’s a silly question. The ferry isn’t due at Lyttelton until late morning and it’s not even 3 am.

  ‘How do you think they’ll take the news?’ Marty asks him.

  ‘Mum’ll cry. Dad’ll have a drink.’

  ‘Your dad’s home now, eh?’

  ‘Yeah, fucked his elbow. I’m the money-earner now. Gonna send heaps over from Australia.’

  ‘Same, bro,’ says Plate.

  ‘Yeah,’ Marty says. ‘My dad had his legs broken at primary school for speaking English. They’ve never been right. Even driving’s hard for him, eh.’

  ‘He’s all right though, your old man.’

  ‘Pretty mellow,’ says Marty. ‘Never used to hit us or anything. Takes a lot of painkillers.’

  ‘Jesus, that’s what my old man needs, morphine for breakfast.’

  ‘Mum basically raised us,’ says Tunny. ‘She says the old man’s a gorilla with a bad heart.’

  Their laughter seems to snap Brian into the present.

  ‘I’m going to send the money to me mum,’ say Tunny. ‘It’ll go on piss and gambling otherwise.’

  Brian nods.

  ‘You don’t drink, do you, Brian?’

  ‘No.’

  They wait for him to expand on this exceedingly rare life choice. He doesn’t.

  ‘Did you used to?’

  ‘Didn’t agree with me.’

  Marty sees Brian in a pub toilet, cutting the throat of a man taking a piss at the trough because he said the wrong thing at the bar. ‘Good on you,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t agree with a lot of blokes but they keep on drinking.’

  ‘I might have one when all this is over,’ Brian says.

  ‘On ya.’

  ‘All right, boys. Wake this lot up. I’ll go and check on the front line.’

  He’s gone, leaving them with their unfired pistols, upturned couches and metal bars.

  Chapter 16:

  The Lord’s Angels

  Mist turns to drizzle and back to mist. Karori feels like a place of defeat to Chris. Clad in permanent cloud, yet for all its height viewless, it’s a basin that looks in on itself, at the road climbing out to a better place. The headquarters of the Lord’s Angels is at the far end of the suburb, near the turn-off to Ohariu Valley and the feral fishing community at Makara. The Lord’s Angels always set up in places where anti-Japanese sentiment runs highest. In Karori the rentals are very low and few people work. The farmland that once bordered the outermost old and draughty bungalows has been given over to communal vegetable gardens that produce a staple crop of potatoes and onions, vital for trade and survival. Winter is tough. Cases of rheumatic fever, skin infections and respiratory illnesses spike, and there are annual outbreaks of whooping cough. Free New Zealand published the figures for such diseases in Australia: zero; they don’t exist. His discomfort grows as he drives further and the houses become shabbier. They’re not insulated; paint-peeling, sun-warped, rotten old weatherboards are all that keep out the cold and damp. The Lord’s Angels are violent and angry men. He feels he’s about to step into a den of lions.

  Their headquarters is down a long driveway, hidden from view. He parks on the road, leaving space in front of the car for a quick getaway if necessary. He has brought beer and dressed in black: black jeans, boots and jersey. It’s 1 pm and the smell of fishbone stew issues from one of the houses bordering the driveway. He wonders if he looks the part to the curtain-twitchers. Short hair and black clothes: yes. Religious tattoos: no
. The look of a life dedicated to racial hatred: maybe. The Lord’s Angels will soon see him for what he is. But he has height and beer. The headquarters come into view: it’s only a three-bedroom bungalow, four at the most, and he’s relieved.

  The curtains are drawn and no one answers the door. It’s quite possible they aren’t up yet. Or only reply to a secret knock. The porch is tidy and he wonders if the headquarters have in fact moved. The house looks normal. He knocks again, and this time a man his age wrenches the door open. Not tall, but broad and strong in his white T-shirt, and covered with religious tattoos. He has a shaven head and a long, beaky nose, which his eyes peer down in puzzlement. Chris notes his woollen socks, which mean he hasn’t been out yet. The man looks at him and his beer for a moment. There’s something of the vulture about him as he straightens up. With strange precision he places a socked foot on the porch. Standing two steps down, Chris is as tall.

  ‘Gidday,’ Chris says.

  No reply. The man, quite close, looks over Chris’s shoulder. Chris steps back, expecting to see someone. There’s no one, and he realises he’s being shooed away from the door. The man is definitely not a rugby player, but a boxer. Chris hands him the crate of beer.

  ‘Praise be,’ says the man.

  ‘I’ve come for some advice.’

  The man turns to go inside and Chris follows. The man stops and Chris stops. He turns his head sideways, showing the long beak of his nose, the broadness of his shoulders and the thickness of his neck, tipped by tattooed wings that Chris guesses belong to the Beast of Revelations. All the while, the same bemused expression in his eyes. He continues into the house and turns into the lounge, Chris a few steps behind in case he stops suddenly again. Another skinhead sits at the end of a brown vinyl couch with a cup of tea and a cigarette. Under his hard face and weight-sculpted frame Chris senses an angry and confused child. There is a large hole in his sock through which Chris glimpses black painted toenails, before the man moves his foot. Or are the nails bruised? The smell of fishbone stew, cigarette smoke and onions permeates the house. The man on the couch glares at Chris as he draws on his cigarette. Probably has me pegged as a prospect, he thinks, the next in line for ritual and improvised humiliation. Two men are behind him now. The man who opened the door stands in the corner in front of the TV, places the crate of beer between his feet, pops one of the bottles with his lighter and hands it to the man on the couch. ‘Praise be,’ says the benefactor. The man pops another beer, straightens up from his fighter’s crouch, tips his head back and drains half the bottle, revealing his powerful biceps and chest as he does so. He has the room’s full attention. Back in his fighter’s hunch, he regards with his puzzled eyes the men standing behind Chris.