Hinterland

by Steven Lang

  Husbands was well received. Foreign rights were sold, both in America and for translation. There was talk of a film. Requests to speak at festivals arrived, taking the heat out of the struggle with the new book. An invitation to Venice. He found a way to go by himself, but clumsily, managing to tell Helen about it only a few days before he was to depart, making it sound as if it had slipped his mind, as if the journey would be a nuisance, something that cut into his work schedule, making out he hadn’t known how much she would want to go with him to that fabled city, excusing himself with a lame story about thinking she wouldn’t be able to take time off. Resentful of being put in that position. As if Helen was the problem.

  The city was packed. It was spring holidays and barely possible to move in the alleyways. To get on the Vaporetto one had to push, like Japanese in their subways. In an attempt to foster fellow-feeling the writers were housed together in a pension hidden within the labyrinth of the Dorsoduro. The place was less than Guy had hoped for – the room grubby, the shower and toilet down a hallway, the former a pathetic dribble, the latter a smelly latrine whose floor sloped – the whole building sinking into a canal.

  Dinner that night was in the courtyard, at one long table, all the significant literary figures gathered at the opposite end. He wondered if their rooms were better than his own. Nobody, it seemed, aware of who he was, or particularly interested in finding out. The abundant wine leading to the kind of raucousness only writers are capable of. Exhausted after the broken night on the train he went up to his room, only to discover it overlooked the restaurant. He lay on the sagging bed, tormented by drunken renditions of funiculi, funicula rising from below, wronged at every turn.

  Hardly had he slept than he was awake again, grey light seeping in the window. Unwilling to be insulted further he dressed and went out, finding the city transformed; the Fondamente all but deserted, Giudecca lying mistily across oily water, a tug-boat passing in the channel. No sign, yet, of the sun. Bent old women in grey sack dresses, characters out of Brueghel, swept the squares with brooms made from bound twigs, gathering litter into carts. Discarded gondolas held conference in narrow canals, tied up to heavy rings rusted into the stone. When the sun did rise it came from behind San Giorgio, announcing its arrival with a great orange glow across a watery sky, the colours picked up by the troubled surface of the lagoon.

  In the Piazza San Marco he was, mysteriously, extraordinarily, alone, just him, the pigeons, the stacks of café chairs tied up along the cloisters and a young man in a leather bomber jacket looking up at the griffin perched atop a single tall pillar near the ferry dock. He was an American from the haircut, all but shaved around the neck and sides but long on the top, a blond lock fallen across his forehead.

  ‘You’re Guy Lamprey, aren’t you?’ he said, extending a hand. ‘Edward Greave. We’re both of us staying in the same dump, I think.’ Smiling broadly, as if it was impossible anyone could take anything other than pleasure in their meeting. Something familiar about him that Guy couldn’t locate. He was, he explained, an historian, from a mid-western university, in Europe on a Guggenheim, doing research for a book on the mercantile practices of the sixteenth-century city states. He spoke educated Eastern American English, a pleasant accent in itself, redolent of the promise of that country, punctuating his sentences with an occasional toss of the head, a slightly disconcerting tic, akin to the sort of movement you’d make as a way of giving directions. He was to spend the day visiting significant buildings.

  ‘You should come along,’ he said.

  Guy had never been anywhere. He’d made it to Sydney from western New South Wales and had caught a plane from there to London where he’d found a sad little room to inhabit. A journey large enough in itself. An exploration of the bookshops, libraries and museums of that city had been all he’d managed until he met Helen. With her he’d visited Paris for a weekend, been to Bath and Edinburgh.

  ‘I love your work, by the way,’ Edward said. ‘I’ve not read your latest but the first one was terrific. Bracing.’

  He was a natural guide, enthusiastic, informed, fluent in Italian, granted entrance through dark-timbered gates to courtyards and villas, the ancient homes of the Medici. In the late afternoon they caught the ferry to Cannaregio to visit a church where they might hear monks perform a piece by Palestrina, not a composer Guy was familiar with. The church had been built by some Doge or other in penance for escaping the plague, or being immensely wealthy, or something else entirely – by that time he wasn’t paying attention. He harboured a barely contained horror of churches, no matter the sect, having in fact sworn to himself that once free from the Christian Brothers he would never again darken their doors, naive enough in his youth to believe it might be so easy to shuck off their yoke.

  The building’s interior was much as he’d expected, fairly grim, although in this case even more so from being constructed of a dark stone that absorbed what small light entered through a bank of high windows. He was, however, unprepared for the beauty of the music; a single voice announcing its beginning, picked up by others, built upon, giving rise to harmonic resonances which filled the whole church, transforming it into another instrument, playing its different parts; the sound separating and coming back together, adding to itself, reverberating, carrying the notes forward and up in a series of ever-expanding steps. Caught by the purity of the moment he thought of Helen for the first time that day, alone in their flat in London, and was pierced by a deep sense of regret that she couldn’t be there with him to hear this.

  Edward proposed sharing a room. Anything, he said, would be better than where they were staying. When Guy agreed he found an attic overlooking the Fondamente itself. Sleep, however, was not to be, at least that first night. When they were at last inside, the door closed behind them, Ed produced a brass snuff box containing a nut of dark hashish.

  ‘The very best Turkish gold,’ he said. ‘Purchased from a man I know in Florence.’

  Guy was a very occasional smoker, nervous of the places his mind went under the influence of this drug, both the intensity of feeling and the inane self-analysis that it provoked, the interminable circular thought about thought, but succumbed, if only to please Edward, who’d sought so hard to please him. He took a long pull and held the musty smoke in his lungs, feeling the drug’s warm glow spread through his body, expanding out into the pores of his skin, as if awareness of the moment could be a force in itself, one with the capacity to dissolve etheric barriers which, all unbeknownst to himself, he had been hungering to traverse. Ed taking the joint back and drawing on it himself, his dark glasses gone, those clear eyes – a little close together, as if he were staring intensely into the distance – focused now on Guy; here, at last, the resemblance. Edward had the same pale skin, the same high forehead and the ever-so-slightly lopsided mouth as the boy, Simpson, for whom he’d nurtured a terrible crush that first term at boarding school in Sydney, when he was all of twelve. Could it really be so, that all attraction was based on barely remembered affinities from childhood? Wondering this as Edward leant forward to take his, Guy’s, face in his hands and kiss him full on the mouth, kissing Guy, and Guy letting him, Guy responding as if such a thing were the natural corollary of this man’s company, of being there in Venice with all its libertine history spooling behind him, as if, when Ed slipped down the length of his body, undoing his belt and the button at the top of his trousers, it was a natural extension of the day.

  If it hadn’t been for the hash he’d never have allowed it, but what the drug gave him was simply licence to do what he wanted to do anyway. He’d never thought himself capable of such acts, of holding another man’s cock in his hands, so different from his own and yet so much the same, so fascinating and erotic, this uncircumcised, squat thing, nestled in its small blond forest; Edward almost hairless on his body except there, very neat, as if he’d been modelled on Greek statues, his beauty encouraging Guy to an anthropological curiosity, noting that far from being repelled he was arous
ed. Strange revelations indeed. If self-knowledge was the goal then clearly he had been blind to avenues of learning about his own appetites.

  Later, lying together on one of the single beds, he admitted that he’d never done this before, even during those years at boarding school when he had craved human contact. ‘I was too fucked up for that sort of thing,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t even touch myself without Jesus having something to say about it.’

  ‘Well then, we have a bit to make up for, don’t we?’ Ed said.

  Away from London Guy could see that his frustration with Helen had been as much a reaction to his struggle with the novel as with her. Edward presented the perfect resolution to that problem. He allowed Guy to see a man as a woman might, however briefly. Helen would, he thought, understand this, if not forgive it. Edward would be the model for Sheldon, his protagonist in the new work, not Edward the person, but Edward’s physical manifestation, standing at the tiny sink, shaving, the ends of the small hotel towel barely meeting across his thigh, emphasising the beginnings of a portliness that would no doubt come upon him in middle age; or, again, as he sat naked in the armchair reading, his legs splayed, his cock and balls resting at their apex, such a small part of the whole and yet so significant. It was not that he’d discovered (so late) that he was homosexual, a suggestion as ludicrous as insisting, now, that he was rigorously heterosexual, it was more that he was, that they were – that man in his armchair casually adjusting his tackle – animals, more polymorphically perverse than he’d previously understood, subject first and foremost to their bodies, regardless of how much they might like to see themselves otherwise. Even more interesting was the man’s self-satisfaction, his ease with his body and the pleasure it gave him.

  They went to each other’s sessions. Edward was a skilled performer, bringing history to life, seducing audiences with story. After one of his talks Guy went to congratulate him. Ed, radiant with attention, made to take his hand. For one awful moment Guy thought he might try to kiss him. He pulled away sharply, couldn’t help himself, never mind the look of dismay on Ed’s face. The shame about what they were doing together might have been subsumed, even absent, in the privacy of their room, but it was intolerable to consider in public.

  He made a call to Helen on the hotel’s phone, sequestered in its own small box in the lobby. Connection gained through various operators in Italy and London, a process not without its own complications. It had been four days. Helen pleased to hear from him. Embarrassingly so. He had not been certain she would be.

  She was alone in the flat. She said she had tried to call the hotel a couple of times. He had to explain why he wasn’t there. She wanted him to give an account of everything, who he’d spoken to, how he was being received at the festival.

  ‘I was so worried,’ she said. ‘The way you left … I thought you might go there and find some other woman. I’ve hardly slept.’

  ‘You poor darling.’

  ‘You haven’t met another woman, have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t mind my asking, do you? I’m sorry. I’m stupid. It’s just I love you so much and I couldn’t bear it.’

  ‘Sweetheart,’ he said, ‘I love you too.’

  He looked at the old bakelite device on its pegboard, surrounded by scratched numbers and business cards advertising restaurants, tours, nightclubs. He was not often forced to lie, hadn’t had much use for the skill since leaving school and home. He could see no advantage, however, in even beginning to explain what had happened. It wasn’t of any significance, was little more than research; at worst, a passing indulgence.

  eight

  Will

  Will takes the ute round the camp to have a look-see, no more’n that, doesn’t say a word about it to Jaz, not even to Damo and Ren, just rocks up at the gate where a couple of chicks are sitting under a beach umbrella next to a table, flyers and stuff laid out with lumps of rock on them so they won’t blow away.

  Taking things into his own hands.

  A hot day, wind from the west, dry. Leans his arm on the window and says, What’s up? and the dark one smiles and tells him maybe he ought to come see for himself, points to where he can put the car.

  That’s how simple it is.

  He parks in the paddock and comes back over the gate, easy like, making as if he hangs out in these sorts of places all the time. It helps the chicks are good-looking otherwise it’d be hard to hide his feelings, joshing with them when they ask his name to put on a sheet of paper with the time and date of his arrival, which is the first sense he gets of how the camp’s run; casual on the outside, efficient inside. Ange the prettier of the two, dark hair in dreads, olive skin, wearing a man’s singlet and no bra, Thai fishermen’s pants with the top rolled down so there’s a gap between them and the singlet that lets you see the curve of a sweet little belly and the top of some tattoo at the base of her spine. Strong eyebrows and dark eyes, white teeth flashing. He asks where abouts she’s from and she says, Away, as if that was the end of it but then adding, This’s where I am now. Come and I’ll show you what we’re about. She asks the other girl, Ellie, to keep the gate while she’s gone, except before they take more than a couple of steps Ellie calls out, Hostiles! and Ange runs back to the table and gets on a walkie-talkie and Ellie has a video camera out filming, while for his part, he’s about to dive under the fucking table, but sees it’s only a four-wheel drive coming along the road, slow like. Nothing written on the door, men in white shirts taking a gander at the camp, coming almost to a stop, letting them get a good look to show they’re not worried by cameras or girls in tank tops or him because, he guesses, he looks like one of them with his hair back in its ponytail and his dusty jeans. Some sort of game, he thinks, this with the hostiles. No threat, no bombs, no guns, just faceless men in shirts and black sunglasses.

  The camp’s been set up on a big flat area near the road, a hundred or so metres above the creek, upstream from where the dam wall’s gonna be, which is right where the weir is, backing up the flow. You’re not s’posed to swim there on account of it being the town’s water supply, but it’s a good hole and people always have and now the fucking hippies are in and out of it all day, naked as they come. Ange takes him down there after she’s showed him round the camp. Soon as they get there she strips off, just like that, so he can see everything, tits, pubic hair, the lot. He takes off his shirt, no harm in her seeing his pecs and abs, but keeps his jeans on, no way he’s going skinny in front of this lot. The tatt on her back is six lines, all together, equal, making like a rectangle right where her hips begin.

  Hours later, in the tent, when she’s lying on her belly and he’s tracing it with his fingertips, she says it’s a hexagram from an ancient Chinese book that gives you instructions about how to live.

  ‘That one’s the Creative,’ she says. ‘That’s me. I write songs.’

  It’s not like he’s ignorant about Asian stuff. One of the rooms at The House-on-the-Hill is set up as a dojo for Aikido. Will gets this stuff.

  ‘About, like, protests and the rest?’ he says.

  ‘Not so much,’ she says. ‘I write songs about stuff that moves me. That’s what’s important, hey? I go where the Muse leads me. I was studying literature at uni and that, but I dropped out. They were, you know, telling me what to think about books, telling me when I had to read them. But books are, like, sacred, a book comes to you at the time it needs to be read and if you’re forced to read one when it’s not the right time then the message that book has for you gets lost, don’t you reckon?’

  He nods his head, but he’s not big on reading. The only books he reads are manuals and even then he prefers the thing itself, the machine. She rummages around in the back of the tent, she’s naked, completely, her gorgeous fucking arse in his face while she’s digging in her bag, he can’t believe he’s there with her like that, he’s never had much luck with women, never been like this with one before ever, really. When he was at school he kept pretty much to hims
elf. He had acne real bad. He kept so far away from the girls he couldn’t get near them; even if he’d managed to cross the distance he knew they wouldn’t be able to see him, wouldn’t want a pimply boy from off of one of the local dairy farms, mud between their toes, unless they were pissed, or he was, or they both were. Later, in the army, when he’d built himself up, when his face had cleaned up, if you don’t count the craters where it’d been, he’d gone to cat houses, but even there it didn’t always work out. When you got in the room with the girl it wasn’t what you thought it was going to be, no matter that she was selling herself. Perhaps he didn’t pay enough; maybe if he’d gone to a better class of place, an officers’ joint, things might have been different, but the girls he met were like plastic dolls, seamless. No way in. One time this girl got him off with a handjob, but casually, like she was pumping up a tyre or something. It all happened within the first couple of minutes. When she was done, she wiped up his mess, very efficient, then asked him what he wanted to do next, he still had twenty minutes to go, did he want to talk? and he said yes so they sat down together and she asked him about what he was doing and if he liked it and it was about the best fucking thing that had ever happened to him with a girl so he went back the next week to see her again but she wasn’t there, she’d moved on.

  When Ange took him into the tent and started having sex with him he came in about thirty seconds flat, shooting his load all over the inside of her thigh, not even getting it inside her, like he was some kind of adolescent.