Ithaca in My Mind

by Peter Temple

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Glenys from uni, Vincent. Just a reminder you’ve got Sarius Godber’s one-on-one at eleven. And Dr Truss wants a minute after you’ve finished.’

  ‘I’ll see him if I’ve got time before lunch,’ said Duncan.

  ‘He wants to see you today.’

  ‘Wants? Wants? Do I detect a command?’

  Glenys sighed. ‘He asked me to tell you to see him after your student meeting.’

  ‘Truss told you to tell me?’

  ‘Ah, yes, Vincent.’

  ‘Well, tell the acting head of department to make a bloody appointment to see me.’

  He put the phone down.

  The brainless, illiterate little poseur.

  No newly arrived twat from Adelaide who’d published a book called Contestation and Transcendence: The Body in Seijin Manga was going to summon Vincent Duncan like a junior lecturer. The whole department should fall to its knees every morning to give thanks that Vincent Duncan was on the staff. He gave respectability to the degrees they awarded to sensitive, pop-eyed, dirty-haired, late-developers for writing sub-David Foster Wallace tripe.

  You couldn’t fail the unread scribblers because that meant reading their rubbish and commenting on it. And if you did fail them, they went sobbing to the likes of Truss and he had their efforts re-examined by some lickspittle guaranteed to pass them.

  Duncan made the journey to the university. The feeling of power the small, thrusting Mini John Cooper Works gave him always cheered him up. He parked in the deputy vice chancellor’s space. Why not? She wasn’t using it.

  In his office, he read the first four pages of Sarius Godber’s second draft of her novel. It was like eating deep-fried cheesecake, but, to his amazement, there were three or four acceptable passages. Even a hint of irony. Sarius arrived, dressed like a rock climber. He gave her his twenty-minute lecture on irony, told her the work was promising but the mid-section needed reimagining. Novels turned on their mid-sections. Etc.

  She nodded throughout, taking notes, and went off glowing. She really wasn’t bad looking. A hard body.

  A day’s work done.

  He found Dr Leon Truss toying with his earring. He was wearing a black T-shirt with the words LOVE YOURSELF A LITTLE on his chest.

  ‘Vincent, mate!’ said Truss. ‘Thanks for dropping in.’

  ‘I’m not dropping in,’ said Duncan. ‘I was ordered to present myself to your Royal Acting HOD Highness.’

  ‘Oh nonsense,’ said Truss. ‘Complete misunderstanding. I simply wanted to have a little chat. About things.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘A couple of things, actually. Trivial stuff.’

  ‘Don’t trifle with me. I’ve seen your PhD. Humiliation, Pain, Pleasure and the Quest for Personal Identity.’

  ‘Vincent, that is pure, pure aggression. Can you bring yourself to not see every one-on-one we have as a cage-fighting bout?’

  ‘It would be a bad mismatch,’ said Duncan.

  ‘Yes, well, firstly, we were thinking, just thinking idly, you understand . . .’

  ‘The idleness of your thinking,’ said Duncan, ‘I understand perfectly.’

  Truss’s right hand stroked the left in a loving, comforting way.

  ‘Vincent, we were thinking that since you only use your large office a few hours of the day, an average of one point six actually and that’s during term . . .’

  ‘Have you been spying on me, Truss?’

  ‘Please, don’t be paranoid,’ said Truss. ‘It’s Rump.’

  ‘Rump?’

  ‘The Resources Utilisation Monitoring Program? It’s been discussed at staff meetings, Vincent. Where colleagues meet. The cornerstone of the collegial tradition. We’d so love you to pop in on one when your outside commitments allow.’

  ‘Rump my arse. Spying on the staff.’

  ‘So. We were thinking that, going forward, your office would comfortably house four staff units. That’s you and Meredith, Jude and Roberta.’

  ‘Who the hell is Roberta?’

  ‘Ah. When he gets back from long-service, Bob is Roberta. Didn’t he tell you?’

  ‘We’ve never talked about quests for personal identity,’ said Duncan, ‘that end with the subtraction of two testicles and the addition of a single vowel.’

  Truss smiled, showing an alarming amount of gum. ‘Cruel wit undulled,’ he said. ‘That’s so good to see in older people. So it’s settled, then. On the same page re resource utilisation.’

  ‘My answer, Trussboy,’ said Duncan, the words hissing through his teeth, ‘is that I will not share my office, that’s MY office, with Meredith, Jude or anyone else, surgically and chemically regendered or not. Is that clear to you? Are we on the same bloody Adelaide Protestant guilt-ridden hymnsheet?’

  Truss put his palms together and bowed his head in a humble eastern non-Protestant way.

  ‘Vincent,’ he said, ‘I’m really, really sad that you can’t embrace the department’s inclusive and egalitarian ethic. So it’s my sad, sad duty to say that we will have to discuss whether to renew your contract.’

  Duncan controlled his need to lean across the desk and take the man by his long lizardy throat and squeeze the life out of him, see his tongue come out, his face turn purple, the capillaries in his skin pop.

  ‘I think you’ll find,’ said Duncan, ‘that my contract has years to run.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that the years have slipped by,’ said Truss. ‘It has one term left to run. I can say that the feeling in the department is its expiry presents an opportunity for change and renewal. For both parties, of course.’

  Duncan tried to slam the door on his way out. But Truss had placed a little rubber wedge against the door jamb.

  In the Mini, Duncan considered his situation. A brilliant career in the balance. No: ended. Usurers demanding two hundred thousand dollars or his house. The prospect of sucking up to the entire department, man, woman and those on the plane to Thailand, or losing the large sum that appeared in his bank account every fortnight.

  Haig. She could provide the breathing space. Two sell-out exhibitions, forty-odd assemblages of animal, vegetable and mineral substances shifted to the gullible at ludicrous prices. Even subtracting the criminal commission taken by her gallery, she’d have a stash of several hundred grand. She certainly contributed nothing to the household.

  A loan. He would propose the transaction as a loan, a short-term loan while accountants were dragging their heels transferring massive sums to him.

  He rang her mobile: the answering service. He would have to go to her chamber of horrors in the former asylum.

  The Alfa was in the parking area. He couldn’t find a space, so he occupied the loading zone. He’d been here once for some art-world function.

  Except for two Coles shopping trolleys, the entrance hall was empty. Up the stairs and last door on the left was his recollection.

  The place smelled of dope, turpentine, burnt pasta sauce, welding gases and, faintly, of ancient urine containing old-fashioned pacifying drugs. From somewhere came weird electronic music with an unsettling pulse beat.

  A card on the door: H. Alexander.

  He tried the handle. Locked. He knocked. Knocked again. Again and louder.

  It opened a crack. Haig, sleepy, wearing a T-shirt and track pants.

  ‘Having a nap,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’

  He should show interest. ‘Thought I’d see what you were working on,’ said Duncan.

  ‘Vincent, you know I don’t like . . .’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ he said, ‘don’t be shy.’

  He pushed the door open and went in, began a tour of the works in progress. One featured thick-painted male figures wearing plastic shopping bags, bubble wrap and strips of hessian. Another appeared to be composed of blowtorched plastic toys – dolls, cars, guns – and what were possibly sex aids of a phallic nature.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Duncan. ‘I sense change and renewal.�
��

  He was passing a door and he opened it.

  A pale-skinned young man was lying on a blow-up camping mattress. He was naked, tumescent, smoking a cigarette and reading a comic book.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘Vincent, this is David,’ said Haig from behind Duncan. ‘He, ah, he’s modelling for me. David, this is Vincent Duncan.’

  David gave a little wave with his cigarette.

  ‘My mum loves your books,’ he said, in a respectful way.

  Given a gun, Duncan would have left him bleeding on the deflating mattress, dying in his own blood, cadmium red, deep hue.

  ‘Enjoy your comic,’ said Duncan and closed the door.

  He continued the tour. Icy calm was required. This could work to his advantage in several ways. At the door, he said, ‘See me out.’

  They went down the stairs in silence, into the day.

  ‘I see a very powerful show coming up,’ said Duncan. ‘Very, very strong. An added depth and maturity. Painful with insight.’

  Haig was combing her hair with her fingers. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘My pleasure. Listen, I need a little loan from you,’ he said, no hint of neediness in his voice. ‘The bank’s being awkward and the accountant’s two months behind with a very large cheque.’

  ‘How much?’ said Haig.

  ‘Just two hundred grand. Short-term loan. Bridging finance. A few weeks.’

  ‘Two hundred thousand dollars?’

  ‘That’ll do. Two hundred, two-fifty.’

  She stared at him. When had her lips become so thin?

  ‘Vincent, I can’t lend you twenty thousand,’ she said. ‘I’ve bought a place in Liguria. Somewhere to escape to. Liguria is very expensive.’

  She turned and went up the stairs. Barefoot. He hadn’t noticed that. At the top, she turned and flashed teeth at him. ‘Ask the bank for time, darling.’

  Duncan drove home. It was lunchtime, no breakfast, he should eat.

  He opened a bottle of Mumm’s and took it and a glass onto the terrace. Waiting for the end.

  Shall I pluck a flower, boys, shall I save or spend?

  All turns sour, boys, waiting for the end.

  He sipped and watched the light on the water. Betrayed by everyone. All the wasted years, the words torn from his soul. Tears formed in his eyes, swelled, broke, ran down his cheeks.

  The phone. He went in, sniffing.

  ‘Vincent, dear man.’

  Marjorie.

  ‘Vincent, marvellous, marvellous news,’ she said. ‘You’ve won the Claris Buckhard Prize for Uplifting Fiction.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Claris Buckhard Prize for Uplifting Fiction.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For your fabulous new book. For A Reducing Fire.’

  Uplifting fiction?

  A Reducing Fire uplifting fiction? Were they barking mad? It was a cry of existential despair, it was the plaintive hopeless howl of the last polar bear on the last, melting ice floe.

  ‘I know, I know, a prize under the radar, darling,’ said Marjorie. ‘Our clever Emily had the bright idea to send them all our unpublished manuscripts. It’s new, this is the first year. It’s Canadian.’

  Oh Lord. The Canadian Country Women’s Association Prize for Uplifting Fiction. A framed certificate, a LumboJack chainsaw and a case of Brownie Bear’s Best maple syrup.

  ‘It’s one million Canadian dollars, Vincent,’ she said. ‘And one million dollars to the creative writing institution of your choice.’

  It took time to register.

  Oh Lord, in your wisdom and mercy, you have given us this woman Clovis Hardbuck, whatever.

  ‘But hold your breath,’ said Marjorie. ‘We’re on a roll, darling. Cal Braverman at Random and Cissy Cowling at Harper both heard about it and they’re in a dogfight.’

  ‘A dogfight.’ He was trying to be calm.

  ‘Yes. A dogfight. Cal offered one million, Cissy said one-five and now Cal’s coming back to me.’

  Ah, the exquisite timing of it. The fearful symmetry.

  ‘Marjorie,’ he said, ‘dear Marjorie, let me read something to you. It is with regret that I must inform you that I have decided to terminate our agency agreement as of . . . Heard enough, Marj, old girl? Old sausage?’

  ‘Oh Vincent, don’t be silly, just an impulsive foolishness. We’ve had so many little tiffs, haven’t we? But we’re still together. I’ve sent you an email on the subject, darling.’

  ‘Fourth-rate piece of sentimental rubbish,’ said Duncan. ‘As I recall, darling, those were your words. Well, darling, since you’ve terminated yourself, you won’t be getting fifteen exhorbitant per cent of my earnings derived from the fourth-rate piece of sentimental rubbish, will you?’

  He listened to her pleading for a while, then he said, ‘Kindly redirect Claret Hardacre and Random and HarperCollins to me. Goodbye, Marjorie. And my best to your boob of a husband.’

  Back to the terrace with his mobile. Another glass of Mumm’s. How sweet the song of the magpie. He dialled Truss’s number.

  ‘Hello, Painboy,’ he said. ‘Vincent Duncan. I thought you’d like to know that my new novel has won the Mavis Hardsuck Prize.’

  ‘Very nice, Vincent,’ said Truss. ‘Some rural thing, is it? I’m in a meeeting, so if . . .’

  ‘It comes with a million dollars for the creative writing institution of my choice. That’s a million dollars, Trussman.’

  ‘A million dollars?’

  ‘For the institution of my choice.’

  ‘Lunch, Vincent, let’s do lunch. I’ve just been telling the people in this room that I will fight to my last breath for the renewal of your contract.’

  ‘Bye, bye, Trussiewuss.’

  A refill. The golden liquid, the minute bubbles of gas entering the bloodstream. He rang Haig’s mobile. She answered.

  ‘Vincent Duncan,’ he said. ‘I want to say to you, you talentless bitch, that people only buy your hideous rubbish because I rigged an auction.’

  Haig gasped.

  ‘I also want to say, art harlot,’ he said, ‘that I am throwing all your possessions onto the pavement. Get your dickboy to park the Alfa outside my house or I’ll get a court order.’

  Duncan went to his study and found his list of students with phone numbers. Sarius Godber. A rock climber’s body. Perhaps an invitation to supper at the Enoteca. They could talk about writing. His, hers. His, in the main.

  His computer pinged. Email.

  Cal Braverman? Cissy Cowling? Which dog in the fight? What advance on one point five million?

  Marjorie, the poor cow.

  Vincent: I’m afraid there’s been a mistake. Manuscript cover pages swapped. The Buckhard winner is Amerine Panikbar for A Quest of Flamingoes. Sorry about that.

  Marjorie

  Through the window, he saw another magpie alight on the hand-cut Castlemaine bluestone paving.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  A & U Shorts Series

  About the Author

  Title

  Imprint

  Main Story