by Roland Perry
He followed her along the drive. The gates clanged behind them.
Rhonda flinched and turned around.
The guard motioned her on.
Rhonda felt a prickling sensation down her spine as she looked up at the glass-fronted construction on three levels, the highest of which protruded as a semi-circular balcony. A lift, which ran up the side of the mountain, was the only access to the house.
The guard ordered her to raise her arms and ran his hands all over her. Satisfied, he opened the door to the lift and pushed the button. He stayed where he was and watched her go up.
Rhonda, never one for heights, caught her breath as the lift ascended slowly. It stopped with a bump at a steel door.
No one could break into this place, she thought as she heard three bolts being slid free.
A wizened Javanese servant greeted her with a silent nod. He ushered her to a sweeping staircase to the third level. He left her in a lounge room leading to a glassed-in balcony and a clear view of Mount Gulunggang.
Rhonda moved around the room examining artifacts, many of which were made of aluminium. There was a wall clock with its inside mechanism exposed. A mesmerising contraption made up of miniature girders, springs and ballbearings sat on a hexagonal aluminium table. These and paintings of planets and stars gave the white room a feeling of coolness. Rhonda sat on a sofa on the balcony admiring the view.
‘Miss Mills,’ a soft voice said. She turned to see a tall, fine-boned and handsome woman in her late fifties. Her black hair was sprinkled with grey and she wore a short batik dress. The elegance of her bearing made it look like haute couture.
They shook hands, and Rhonda felt that her face reflected as much Chinese as Javanese ancestry. Rhonda accepted an offer of coffee.
‘I’m here for the Australian-Indonesian trade conference in Jakarta,’ Rhonda began. ‘It begins next week. I was hoping you might consider a TV interview . . .’
Tien listened expressionless until some steaming Javanese coffee was placed in front of them. She picked up a cup and walked to the door of the balcony.
‘I hope you like our volcano,’ Tien said. Her English was smooth.
‘Magnificent,’ Rhonda said. ‘Is it still very active?’
Tien nodded. ‘It is predicted it will destroy even this home one day.’ She smiled fleetingly.
‘One day I may be forced to move. My husband blasted the rock into which he built this home. I had planned to die here. But with his recent death . . .’ She bowed her head. ‘I have lost my love for the place. It is empty without him.’
Rhonda took out her tape recorder and asked questions about Tien’s aluminium business and her husband’s oil concern, and then, when she was opening up more, said, ‘General Utun seems under great pressure these days. He seems to be making desperate moves. Do you feel your organisation could be threatened?’
Tien glanced at the tape recorder.
‘Turn it off,’ she ordered. Rhonda obeyed at once.
‘If that is the style of question you intend to pose in an interview, it will not happen,’ Tien said.
‘I would be interested to hear your views,’ Rhonda said, ‘off the record.’
‘It’s impossible to predict our short or long-term future,’ Tien began, ‘except that survival is a tradition in my family. The Dutch once wanted to take over my family’s business when it began to thrive, but my husband married me and prevented it. During the war, when the Japanese wanted to take control of my husband’s oil interests, my family’s connections thwarted them. My husband was imprisoned. Our factories were burnt down. But we got him out of prison and built again.’
‘How are your family’s relations with Utun?’
Tien looked startled. ‘There was enmity between my husband and Utun. My husband opposed his rise to power. Retribution has been apparent, and steady.’
‘How did your husband die?’
‘The pressures crushed him,’ Tien said. ‘The government put him under stress. His heart gave way . . .’
‘How was he put under stress? How was he pressured?’
‘Utun threatened to nationalise our businesses.’
There was no turning back. Tien seemed about to end the conversation.
‘Is that why your daughter returned to Indonesia?’ Rhonda asked.
‘I have no more time,’ Tien said, standing.
‘Did she come back to Bandung to help you?’ Rhonda said, without budging from the sofa, ‘or was she forced?’
Tien clapped her hands. Servants appeared.
‘Has Utun ordered her back . . .’ Rhonda began.
Tien gave orders to a servant, and a guard was summoned.
‘Is your daughter working on a laser project for Utun?’
‘You’ll have to leave,’ Tien said as she opened the door.
A servant led Rhonda down stairs to the lift, and Tien disappeared. As she went down, Rhonda could see the commando waiting for her.
He was looking down at the faceless body in a shallow grave. It was squatting and blood was dripping on the earth from his thighs. The head looked up and spoke to him. ‘It’s not me,’ it repeated in his son’s voice. Cardinal was bedevilled. Was he speaking with Harry or Burra’s son?
Cardinal awoke and it took him many minutes to accept that he had been asleep, so vivid were the images that tormented him. He had been sweating. He rolled over and switched on a light. It was five. He tried to sleep again. When this was impossible, he wandered down to the hotel pool for a twenty-minute swim, which included an exhausting burst of butterfly. He returned to his room just in time to catch the phone. It was Topfist.
‘Burra wants you to meet someone who may help you,’ he said. Cardinal was surprised. He thought the heated discussion a few hours earlier had thwarted his chances of getting help from the Bididgee leader. ‘He wants to drive you to Cahill’s Crossing.’
‘When?’
‘He’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes.’
Thirty-six truck and juggernaut engines coughed to a start as O’Laughlin finished addressing the convoy over a loud-hailer. In the half light, Cardinal and Burra could see the drilling rig, parts of which towered higher than a house.
Burra had taken him on a short detour to check on the departure of the convoy for the Aboriginal reserve. They parked in an all-night roadhouse and petrol station about a kilometre along the Stuart Highway heading east out of Darwin. The truck headlights went on and the convoy began to roll.
‘Twenty-five cops counting the chief,’ Burra said. ‘It’ll take them seven hours. We can do it in six. It’ll be slower than normal. I’m taking a caravan to attach to our home at the reserve.’
Cardinal thought he should clear the air one way or another before their journey began.
‘You asked me what I thought last night,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry if it upset you. But I had to be honest.’
‘Rhonda Mills made a good documentary on me,’ Burra said coolly. ‘I owe her a favour. That’s why I’ll help.’
‘Did she tell you why I have come here?’
‘No,’ Burra said. ‘She just said you were interested in knowing about the Indonesian visit.’
He paused and added, ‘She tells me you’re an art dealer. I want to introduce you to a prospective client. You help him sell his paintings, he’ll help you.’
Burra turned his vehicle around and sped back to his apartment in an ugly block on the outskirts of Darwin. He attached his caravan to his ute and lay on his back to secure the pinion linking the two vehicles. Then he prepared the canvas flaps in the back of the ute. Later they would provide shade. As dawn settled over the north, the sun promised a boiling day.
Cardinal was put in the back with Burra’s mother-in-law, Judy. She was skeletal and wrinkled, and her hair was lank and grey. Judy’s eyes shone with intensity from a worn face. In the front seat next to Burra was his shy wife, Elaine, and their two children, three-year old Gabby and baby Nia, fourteen months. The boy, all eyes and teeth, wa
s intrigued with Cardinal and insisted he sit in the back with him. Gabby pushed and prodded the stranger for several minutes, much to everyone’s amusement. Burra told Cardinal it was typical of Aboriginal children.
‘They are more alert and tactile than white kids,’ he said. ‘They learn everything about their environment far quicker. He could survive alone in the bush.’
Cardinal had doubts about this but could see the sharpness in the child’s eyes.
‘They also have better memories,’ Burra said. ‘Forty thousand years have taught us very young to remember landmarks in the bush, smells and certain signs to guide us. It has been necessary for survival.’
Cardinal gazed at the plains of dark green and yellow, a patchwork broken by clumps of paperbarks and pandanas. They had come sixty kilometres by seven-thirty in the morning; the heat was fierce. Flies were becoming an irritation, and Cardinal was becoming proficient at the Australian salute. He longed for the corked hat that Burra was wearing.
The flaps at the back of the ute were released; cool drinks from an ice box handed around.
‘See buffalo?’ Judy said to Cardinal with a nod towards the bush. It was the first time she had spoken in an hour. Cardinal squinted but couldn’t see any animals.
‘Keep your eyes on the horizon,’ Burra said. Minutes later Cardinal could make out a grazing herd close to the road. Judy spoke again, this time in her own language.
‘She says there will be a storm tonight,’ Burra said, and then had to swerve the ute and caravan to avoid two buffalo, which had strayed onto the road.
‘Useless bastards!’ Burra called after them as they hardly moved their massive frames.
A mob of kangaroos dared to pace the ute for a hundred metres or so, and then veered off into the bush. Cardinal had never seen one before, and he was fascinated. Burra slowed the ute, and this encouraged two of them to come closer to the vehicle. They bounded along beside them for about a kilometre.
‘They’re Big Reds,’ Burra told him.
‘They have to be more than six feet tall!’ Cardinal said, holding back a flap to get a better view. Their hop developed into a rhythm as strong back legs thrust them forward and their big tails acted as a counterweight to their bodies.
There’re a lot of them,’ Cardinal said.
‘There are about forty-five million. That’s about three for every human,’ Burra said, ‘which the government says is a plague.’
‘Do you hunt them?’
‘Only for food. Never for sport.’
‘Do you use a rifle?’
‘I have tried to get my people to avoid using bullets and use the traditional ways with spears and boomerang. But they can all afford rifles.’ Burra paused to glance at Cardinal. ‘Do you shoot?’
‘Not animals. Clay-pigeon.’
‘You good?’
‘I keep my eye in.’
The next landmark was the Arnhem Highway where they encountered dead kangaroo and buffalo, which had collided with roadtrains. Their rotting carcasses gave off a stench like open sewage, which lingered a kilometre past them. Burra spent some time speaking to Judy and Elaine.
‘Judy says you are searching for someone,’ Burra said, taking his eyes off the road for a few seconds. ‘She reckons you’re a hunter.’
Cardinal was surprised. If his manner registered this, it was running ahead of his conscious feelings. He was determined to do all he could to understand why his son had died.
Judy’s comments returned his thoughts to his mission. His eyes fixed on the horizon. It danced in the heat. Kangaroos and vehicles ahead seemed to vapourise in it. Cardinal’s mind filled with the images of the nightmare and the faceless corpse.
Cardinal was distracted by Gabby who wanted to go to the toilet, and baby Nia’s crying. Burra decided to stop at the next pub where they could buy drinks for the rest of the journey.
Just over the Adelaide River, they pulled into a pub named after it, where a sign said, ‘Last quality watering hole between here and the Alice.’
Although it was not yet ten, there were trucks and roadtrains parked outside. Burra told his family to use the toilets at the back.
‘You stay here,’ he told Cardinal.
‘Can’t I help?’ he said pulling out his wallet.
He thrust forty dollars into Burra’s hand.
‘Prefer you to stay here,’ Burra said ‘to look after the family.’
Cardinal frowned.
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘This is redneck country,’ Burra said. He turned and disappeared into the main bar.
Cardinal stretched his legs. He decided to visit the toilet before the family returned. On the way back, he glanced into the bar. Burra was arguing with a barman. Several heavyweight drivers perched on stools were throwing abuse at the black. Cardinal hurried around to the pub’s front entrance. The drone of talk fell away as Cardinal entered, and the hum of three old-fashioned ceiling fans could be more easily heard. There was a smell of sweat from a dozen uncovered torsos. He moved close to Burra.
‘Everything okay?’ he asked.
‘Bastards won’t serve me,’ Burra said.
‘We need drinks,’ Cardinal said. ‘There’s still a way to go.’
Burra took him by the arm.
‘C’mon, mate,’ he said. ‘This is trouble.’
Cardinal went up to the bar and asked for cans of Swan beer and Solo. The barman’s eyes met his, but he went on serving others.
‘Tinnies,’ Burra whispered. ‘You ask for tinnies.’
‘Sorry, barman,’ Cardinal said, ‘I should have asked for tinnies.’ The barman still didn’t react. ‘Why is it that everyone truncates everything in this country?’ Cardinal asked. ‘Chocolates are choccies, Carnations are carnies, tins of beer are tinnies . . .’
‘It’s our way,’ the barman snapped.
‘When in Rome, eh?’ Cardinal said with a grin.
‘If you don’t like it, mate,’ the barman said, ‘you can leave with the boong.’
‘It’s not that I don’t like it,’ Cardinal said with equanimity, ‘but somehow “tinnies” doesn’t sound too macho. It sounds more effete. You know, the way faggots speak.’
‘Faggots?’ the barman said, wiping the bar vigorously, ‘you mean pooftas?’
‘Yup,’ Cardinal said, looking around the bar, ‘like I said, faggots.’
‘I wouldn’t go saying that in here, mate,’ the barman said.
‘I didn’t say anyone in here was a faggot,’ Cardinal said. ‘If you or anyone else in here is a faggot, then I apologise.’
The barman’s jaw twitched. He eyed Cardinal’s attire of denim shirt, jeans, sneakers and that stylish white hat. It was not Territory rig. Most of the men wore brown or khaki shorts and thick socks inside lace-up boots. Filthy sleeveless vests predominated.
‘I think you’d better leave,’ the barman said, his face going crimson. Cardinal repeated his order.
‘You a septic tank?’ one of the drinkers said. His behind swallowed the bar stool. He had short-cropped red hair and was the biggest man in the room. Other drinkers sniggered at his remark. Cardinal took it in good humour.
‘Yup, I’m a “Yank”,’ he said.
Burra had retreated to the door.
‘Which part?’ the barman asked.
‘New York.’
‘Never heard of it,’ the redhead said, sipping his beer. ‘Is it near Carnarvon?’
This brought grunts of appreciation from other drinkers.
Burra came over to Cardinal and suggested that they leave. ‘That’s Mad Mick Malone,’ he said quietly to Cardinal, ‘a mean bastard. Don’t rile him.’
‘Mick asked you a question,’ the barman said.
‘Have you heard of Paris?’ Cardinal said goodnaturedly. ‘I lived there for a couple of years.’
‘You mean Paris, New South Wales?’ Malone said.
Cardinal laughed. ‘I did see a film about that Paris.’ It was all about these cars that ate the towns
people.’ He looked straight at Malone. ‘Get a good feed in here, wouldn’t they?’
Malone snorted. Cardinal took the opportunity to repeat his drinks order. The barman scowled.
‘I’ll get your order when the Abo leaves,’ he snarled.
‘Let’s go,’ Burra said.
‘I’m buying,’ Cardinal said, tapping himself on the chest.
‘I don’t serve boongs and foreigners, Yank,’ the barman said.
Cardinal put some money on the counter.
‘You’re not welcome,’ the barman said, pointing at Burra. ‘You’re bloody trouble!’
Cardinal’s manner changed.
‘You’ll serve me,’ he said aggressively, ‘or I’ll get the police. They’ll be here with the convoy soon.’
The barman hesitated. He glanced at Malone. Then he selected Cardinal’s order from a refrigerator and banged the drinks on the counter. Cardinal collected the tins and bottles and picked up his change.
‘Like your lipstick,’ Malone said, pointing to Cardinal’s protective cream.
‘It’s the hot sun,’ Cardinal said, resuming his act of equanimity. ‘I don’t like getting a lobster face.’ He paused to look at Malone. ‘And I really hate rednecks.’
The bar fell silent.
‘See you guys,’ Cardinal said with a half salute. He strolled out behind Burra who shouted at his family to get in the back of the ute. Two blacks who had been annoying Elaine retreated as Burra jumped into the driver’s seat. Cardinal climbed into the passenger seat.
‘There you go, tiger!’ he said to Gabby, handing drinks through to the family. Burra began to reverse the ute. Malone and two other heavies lumbered from the bar. The big man hurled his can of beer. It hit the canvas flap and fell to the ground spilling its frothing contents. Burra backed into the road. Two other cans were hurled. They crashed into a side of the caravan. Burra changed gear and drove off. He kept an eye on the rear-vision mirror.
Burra spoke to his wife for a minute or two in their own language. He asked about the blacks who had been pestering her, and she explained that they were harmless drunks. Burra tried to make up time by driving faster. The caravan began to pull.