First Person

by Richard Flanagan

  Kif, I must ask of you that you respect the secrecy of our project.

  This was unexpected news, and all the time he kept holding my hand, as if I were being inducted into some secret order, and all the time he continued to smile. It was one of those smiles that fixes like a palsy or rictus grin on a face and demands agreement with its certainty and good humour—a smile which, when I think about it, was the smile of the era. But I never saw it focus with such compelling force as it did when visited on you by Ziggy Heidl, and it would not depart until you acquiesced. It was a vehicle for domination, an expression of power, and my only response was to look away, but you could only do that for so long. Ziggy Heidl, as I was to discover, could smile forever.

  Nobody knows, Kif, he said. Nobody is to know. It’s very important. I have—he turned his head this way and that, as though scanning the road and warehouses and offices for apex predators—reasons.

  And as he spoke I wasn’t so much listening as looking, trying to get a feel for Heidl. But I couldn’t. I tried not to stare at the twitching muscle caught like a fish in that otherwise empty net of his fleshy face. For he was more a lack of features, a mystery of conventionality, a face of odd emptiness. He never stopped smiling while he spoke, as though everything he was telling me was wonderful news for us both.

  Nobody in this building, Heidl was saying—other than the managing director, the publisher, and the editor—is to know who we are and why we are here. You see, Heidl said, we have to keep this secret.

  Why?

  Because, Heidl said, looking astonished, we do.

  I glanced at Ray, who nodded his agreement.

  It has to be, Heidl said. He rolled his hands out in a gesture of expanse, as though to cup a beach ball, a cheesy evangelist of sinister mystery. There are things, he continued so quietly that I had to lean in to hear. People.

  People?

  He looked around as if someone had been eavesdropping, and nodded.

  People.

  Why are we here then, Siegfried? I asked.

  Call me Ziggy. You’re my friend now.

  I mean, Siegfried, what do I say when they ask me questions about what we’re doing?

  People ask me all sorts of questions, Kif. If I tell them the truth, they call me a liar. But if I tell them a lie, they’re happy.

  Again that smile, that noxious smile. In the manner of an abbot inducting a novice into the sorrowful mysteries, he continued:

  It’s baffling to me why anyone thinks the truth matters. It’s unclear why we invented it when to survive we need to deceive, tell white lies, and wear masks. You understand?

  Not exactly.

  Tebbe says words are just crude metaphors that people forgot are just crude metaphors. Roger that?

  Roger what? No. Not really.

  But that’s the thing, Kif, Heidl said, smiling on and on and on. Words take us away from the truth, not towards it. Like madmen walking backwards.

  I looked away to avoid his eternal smile, that intolerable certainty.

  That’s why there is no truth, only interpretations. That’s why we do better liberated from the truth, he went on. Believe me. That’s why we’re here to do a book of poetry.

  Poetry? I said.

  Roger that. An anthology. That’s why we’re here.

  An anthology of what? I asked.

  Westphalian folk verse, fifteenth century to be precise. We’re the editors. That’s our cover.

  We need a cover?

  Everyone needs a cover.

  And Ray? I asked.

  For in all this Ray seemed a sudden liability. He had read Hermann Hesse, it was true. Why, I can’t say, nor yet what he derived from it, for he was not a man who could hold a conversation for a minute about anything literary. For that matter, he was not really a man who could hold a conversation, full stop.

  Consultant.

  I said nothing.

  Assistant, said Heidl, who seemed to have reconsidered. It seemed a better story, a half-truth, because as minder of Heidl Ray was a sort of assistant. It was just that in my experience, admittedly highly limited, Heidl didn’t come across as any sort of poet or editor. On the other hand, I had never met an editor of mediaeval German poetry, and I sensed even in a publishing house I wouldn’t be alone in this.

  I don’t know anything about German poetry, I said. Far less mediaeval Westphalian folk verse. Do you?

  I am the forest, Heidl said. And a night of dark trees.

  For the first and not the last time, I found myself unexpectedly impressed.

  But he who is not afraid of my darkness, Heidl continued, will find banks of roses underneath my cypresses.

  Perhaps I was already falling under his spell.

  That’s a mediaeval Westphalian poem?

  No, Heidl said, his smile tautening into something else—contempt? victory? No, he said, that’s Nietzsche.

  He kept on talking, and he kept on smiling, and the muscle of his cheek kept twitching, a strange metronome counting in my acquiescence as we headed up the steps into STP’s offices.

  3

  Heidl’s manner now became that of the CEO he had once been; the confident swagger as we walked to the lifts, the seeming familiarity with all people and all things and Ray and me following behind, already an entourage, not equals but accessories to power. On another floor we strode down the corridor, past a secretary and straight into a large office in which a tall, thin man was quickly getting to his feet. Buttoning his suit jacket with one hand he brought his other round to clap Heidl on the shoulder, in a welcome of necessary and insincere complicity.

  As they made small talk, I looked around the office, a tired nod to something I later came to learn no one really believed at TransPac: their tradition. A large bookcase of French-polished Huon pine, unlike any other in that building, old, grand, overly ornate, chipped and inkstained, ran the length and height of one wall; its wearied, slightly sagging shelves housing a small museum of Australian literary history.

  There was what appeared to be a near complete set of the early Pacific Library paperbacks with their laughing kookaburra colophon that had revolutionised the Australian market and reading habits in the 1940s and 1950s, and four shelves devoted to the hefty hardbacks of the 1970s when Pacific had merged with the once glorious powerhouse of the 1890s nationalist revival and by 1971 nearly defunct Schneider & O’Leary to create TransPacific Publishing and pioneer the 1970’s Australian literary renaissance. There were the international blockbusters that had come with their acquisition by the German media conglomerate Schlegel in the 1980s to form Schlegel Trans-Pacific. Posters of Nobel Prize winners who had no knowledge of Australia other than the rights agreement they had signed in New York or London or Barcelona sat cheek by jowl in equal size with local contemporary bards such as Jez Dempster, whose fate would very soon be that of the walrus moustachioed profiles of the nineteenth-century balladeers who had once made Schneider & O’Leary a household name. Perhaps books still lived, but the publishing house seemed like a soon-to-be-abandoned gold-mining shaft that had almost exhausted all its profitable veins and in which odd skeletons rattled and timber props groaned.

  I’ve brought you our ghost, Heidl said, extending an arm towards me in a gesture that is still sometimes described in books as avuncular, but by anyone else as creepy.

  Ah, Kif, said the executive. So very good to meet you. Gene. Gene Paley.

  He shook my hand, said hello to Ray, whom he seemed to acknowledge as one might a dog, say, or a shopping bag.

  He pressed a button on the intercom, softly asked for something or somebody, and a moment later a woman of perhaps thirty joined us.

  Kif, let me introduce you. Your editor, Pia Carnevale.

  When I remember Pia Carnevale the first thing I think of is her laugh. Throat open throttle, nothing polite or feigned. And yet I can’t have heard her laugh until later. What I do recall is, oddly, her long fingers, and her face, one of strong lines, olive in colour and shape, which, framed b
y the gold brocaded upturned collar of the dark maroon jacket she was wearing, put me in mind of a Byzantine icon. Later I discovered this was somewhat misleading. She was very far from a Byzantine saint, delighting in vulgarity and gossip, and was in her way far more assertive than accepting, but the impression remained.

  Gene Paley asked Pia to take Heidl and Ray to the office we would be using to work in, while I was to stay back to sort out “the boring paperwork.”

  4

  Why me? Gene Paley asked after the others had left. Why have I been chosen? That’s what you’re asking yourself, I know.

  It wasn’t, but I agreed it was. Gene Paley leant back in his chair. He seemed to be appraising me. He raised a hand as if he were a traffic policeman halting traffic in an empty street.

  Hold that thought, Kif.

  He stared at me a few moments more, and sighed.

  I always say it’s a mistake to write your own autobiography. Far better to let a professional pen a good story well. But Siegfried insisted that he write it himself. Months went by. Produced nothing. Well—one thing. A twelve-thousand-word press clipping file. He called it a memoir. And why do more? Whole life built on not leaving a paper record. Said he had writer’s block. One after another we sent three of our top editors to work with him. Each gave up within half a day.

  Why? I asked.

  To say they ran out of the room screaming is too colourful, Gene Paley said.

  So?

  They crawled out of the room weeping. No! Joking! But he did intimidate them. Bully them. He ignored them, he was impossible to work with. He was awful. He worked hard at being awful so that they would give up. After that, we insisted he work with a proper ghost writer. Best in the business. This ghost has worked with some of the biggest names. Sports stars. Politicians. Movie stars. Monsters! He knows how to deal with the biggest egos. But Siegfried isn’t an ego, or at least not in that way. The ghost writer lasted two and a half days. When he gave up, he said he would happily work with Pol Pot or Vlad the Impaler. But he had limits. Joking!

  Comprehending Gene Paley sometimes felt like reassembling Finnegans Wake after it had been put through a paper shredder. Still, if I was confused, I did now want to know.

  Why me, then? I ventured.

  I said to Siegfried, if you won’t work with one of our writers, you find a writer you will work with. He said he didn’t know any writers. And his bodyguard—

  Ray.

  Right. Anyway, the bodyguard piped up, I’ve got a mate in Tasmania. He wants to be a writer. So, I got Dead Tide. Read Dead Tide. Have to tell you I wasn’t really keen, but Siegfried was. To be frank, we had no alternative.

  At this point Gene Paley seemed to revert to the publisher’s more traditional technique of gloving the fist with flattery.

  And besides, you’re impressive. A young writer of obvious promise. Yes?

  I didn’t know if it would look presumptuous or arrogant if I agreed, and so instead I said nothing.

  Gene Paley changed tack.

  Somewhere in Siegfried is a book. Yes?

  Yes.

  Mmm, Gene Paley said.

  His gaze was drifting to his bookcases, he seemed unsure for a moment what a book was: he swivelled on his chair, reached out to a shelf, half-grabbed a volume only to push it back in.

  I would like—

  Mmm, Gene Paley said, swivelling back to his desk.

  Well, a credit. On the cover page.

  As the writer?

  Writer, I said, though I sensed a chasm of divided interpretation opening up in that simple word. Yes.

  Hold that thought, Kif. I always say don’t insult the public. Don’t pretend that there wasn’t a little professional help. Not an easy task. We can talk about that later. For now, a few formalities. Here, he said, sliding a small stack of papers across his desk. We pay you five thousand dollars when the book goes to the printer, and five thousand on the day of publication. No royalties.

  He handed me his fountain pen.

  Sign here, he said, flicking through the pages to where an arrow-shaped stick-it note pointed to dotted lines.

  As I tried to make sense of what I realised was my contract, Gene Paley grew reflective.

  As I was saying, a ghost writer exists somewhere between a courtesan and a cleaner. Privy to much, revealing only what is appropriate.

  I looked up. Gene Paley was glancing at his watch, trying not to show his impatience. I felt it would be rude to read the contract, taking up so much of such an important man’s time.

  You know what they call ghost writers in France?

  I didn’t.

  Nègres. And here, he said, after I signed the first page, turning the contract to another page and pointing. And here.

  I signed and I signed and as I signed again, I felt gratitude, even pride.

  Blacks?

  Slaves, Gene Paley said softly, turning the page. And here.

  6

  1

  WHEN I ENTERED our office on the first day of our first week, Heidl—in a pattern that would quickly become familiar—was already leaving.

  I have a lunchtime meeting, he said, picking up his cap, sunglasses and beard from the large executive’s desk. You’ll need to get organised here.

  For a moment we both looked at the overwhelming order of the room, the chairs that were only for us to sit on, the conference table only for us to talk over and a Mac Classic only for me to type on, the room only for us to write the book in, replete with a side table on which sat Heidl’s manuscript in one neat pile and research notes on Heidl in another, alongside which was a tray of club sandwiches—everything, in short, that existed in defiance of what Heidl had just said.

  There was nothing to organise.

  Please settle in, he said in an avuncular manner, as if he were the host and TransPac his home. I’ll be back to start in the afternoon.

  I was going to suggest perhaps we could get a few hours’ work in, when for the first time I saw his eyes. I almost never can remember with certainty the colour of someone’s eyes, even my own children’s. Heidl’s I never forgot. They had the depthless calm of black water in fatal rivers. Later I noticed that on some days his eyes were like those of a wild dog, the pupils preternaturally dilated. At such times, he seemed almost to circle his prey like a wolf. Mostly though, his eyes had the glaze of road kill. Without hope, they both terrified and mesmerised me. As I helplessly stared, his face lifted his mouth into its rictus smile, half-mockery, half-triumph; it was as if all the skin had been peeled away and all that moved in the horror was the twitching nerve in his cheek.

  2

  Heidl returned late afternoon with Ray. I put down the research notes I had been reading and suggested that I was happy to stay back late and work on. Without saying a word, Heidl turned to Ray and with a slight movement of his head indicated the open door. As if he were a trained animal, Ray rose from his seat in the corner and shut it. So little was ever said between the two, and yet Heidl only had to point, to look, and Ray would rise to do his bidding. With the door closed, Heidl sat and smiled. He always made the simplest of human transactions feel conspiratorial.

  Roger that, Kif. And I think the best way of working is us getting to know each other over dinner.

  And so we left. There were drinks in a bar. There was dinner in Chinatown and more drinks. There was awkward conversation, where I was intent on asking Heidl about his life, and Heidl was intent on not answering and instead questioned me about my life, questions I in turn evaded by asking him further questions.

  A night of hapless negations ended as abruptly as it had begun with Heidl standing, saying we all needed an early evening as there was much work to be done. We came out of the restaurant into a drizzly side street. A waiting photographer began snapping away. Heidl took out his wallet, handed Ray a wad of fifty-dollar notes, and smiled. As if he were a puppet, Ray turned and went back to the photographer. Heidl continued walking and gestured I follow. The fading sound of Ray and the phot
ographer arguing gave way to the sound of something smashing.

  No need to look, Heidl said, hailing a cab, and opening its door for me, he smiled. No need to worry about Ray.

  As my cab was driving off I saw through the rear window Heidl hail a second taxi for himself, abandoning Ray. It took me some moments to realise that I was doing the very same thing, that I was not doing what I wished, but what Heidl wanted. I told the cab driver to go back, and we found Ray wandering up the street. He got in, swearing about the photographer as he did. With Heidl Ray was ominous. Without Heidl Ray was Ray.

  I asked what happened.

  He shouldn’t be taking photos without Ziggy’s permission, was all Ray would say for some time. He let slip that he had asked for the film. When the photographer refused Ray had grabbed the camera, exposed the film, and smashed the camera on the pavement.

  I asked what would happen if the photographer went to the police.

  He won’t do anything, Ray said. I threw more cash on the ground than his camera and the photo were worth combined. And told him if he ever tried again more than his camera would end up broken.

  I asked why he would do that for Heidl when he said he couldn’t stand the prick.

  Fuck knows, Ray said.

  I don’t.

  You will.

  Outside it was a Melbourne winter, benign and immemorable in equal measure. And looking out the window at the mizzle and the cars and the lights that couldn’t stay still in the dazzle of nocturnal bitumen, Ray brightened at the possibilities of the night.

  Where are we going? he asked.

  But I had no idea. No idea at all.

  3

  In the end, we went to a pub Ray knew called the Gutter and the Stars. With Heidl out of the way we were as we had always been. But something was different, something that felt less obvious and more deeply etched than the odd manner he had shown towards me at the publishers, something more than the faux vigilance he adopted whenever Heidl was around.