First Person

by Richard Flanagan

  Your story doesn’t have a side. It’s got more angles than a smashed mirror.

  What is it then?

  He had me. I had no idea.

  It’s a novel, I said.

  There was perhaps a touch of admiration I couldn’t disguise within what I said. He had something I doubted I’d ever have; that cold pleasure that maybe was necessary to finish a novel. To steal. To kill, perhaps.

  Heidl leant back, his executive’s leather chair wearily flatulent.

  I mean it’s something, isn’t it, I said. Some people rob banks with sawn-off shotguns and balaclavas. No one sees their face. After, if they get away, they hide. They’re careful how they spend the stolen money.

  But you—you rob a bank out in the open. You rob banks with handshakes, with photographers and TV crews in tow. Then you spend their millions in front of their eyes on madness. Your face is everywhere. They even give you an Order of fucking Australia.

  The suggestion that the theft of seven hundred million dollars might in any way be a criminal act was sometimes taken by Heidl as a vicious and unfounded slur. But I was losing my fear of giving offence, and that day, in any case, he seemed in an affable mood.

  Madness after madness, I went on. Armed troops—

  PJs, Heidl corrected me. Parachute jumpers. Emergency workers trained with paramilitary structure and discipline. And we were proud of that discipline. They were the best, all five hundred of them.

  A submarine then—I mean, a sub?

  Heidl smiled. Two mini-subs and one submersible, he said.

  A sub’s something, I said.

  Heidl laughed.

  It is, he said. Nasty inside though. So confined. We employed a psychologist part-time to deal with the issues our submariners had. And that’s because health and safety were always primary drivers for us. Kif, that’s too easily forgotten. Put that in, it’s important that be noted.

  And that set him off for some time, as if he were still the CEO dictating an annual report, pointing out industry best standards, award conditions, professional development programs, strategic goal setting, and so on, and so forth, and soon enough he was back talking toxo. Ray called such gabble heidling. While Heidl could, on occasion, be charming, even interesting, and once or twice—as when he told me that ghost writing a memoir was simply a case of an I for an I—even witty, his talk was mostly a ceaseless nonsense. I sought, yet again, to take us back to the autobiography.

  3

  What I don’t get, I said, was why ASO’s board went along with it all. They’re legally responsible. Why didn’t they ever ask any questions?

  The board? he said, and shook his head slowly, as if recalling a wistful memory.

  He went over to a dozen archive boxes of documentary material that had accumulated in a corner of our office, opened one, sorted through some papers and finally produced a photograph that he handed to me.

  Here’s why, he said.

  The back of the photograph was a typed sheet, sticky-taped on, which read “ASO Council, 1986” and contained a list of names.

  At first, as I scanned the conceited faces of the ovine dozen that formed the ASO’s governing board, I was at a loss to understand.

  He pointed to one blue-blazered, silver-haired figure, replete with bow-tie.

  Eric Knowles, he said. Chairman.

  He riffled through another box, lifted out a framed photograph and passed it to me. It was a photo of a moored mini-submarine.

  The ASO Eric Knowles, Heidl said. Every council member had a boat or plane named after him or her. Some had a boat and a plane. Knowles had the lot—a sub, a towboat, a helicopter ship as well as a chopper, a yacht. And our biggest plane. I just had to keep them coming, keep them feeling important. It wasn’t so hard.

  He showed me more photos of board members at launches and events in their honour.

  Didn’t they think—I began, but he cut me off with a smirk.

  Think? Most people are other people’s opinions, Kif. As long as I supplied them with theirs they were perfectly happy.

  He ran his finger along a row of people till he picked himself out.

  That’s me. Just another bloke, he said.

  In those weary photos of corporate record I first began to grasp the genius of Heidl’s method, the reduction of himself to the claustrophobic smallness of the mythic Australian everyman. Just another bloke, one more Australian conformist, as unremarkable as he was elusive.

  Heidl handed me a large cupped glossy of a smiling Eric Knowles about to swing a champagne bottle on the bow of another ship named after him.

  Flattery, he said. So obvious, so easy. It’s not foolproof, but it is proof of fools.

  He looked at me wistfully.

  You’ll make a wonderful book out of all this, he said, as if I were launching one more spurious vessel.

  4

  That fucker Knowles, Heidl said when he walked in at 11:50 a.m. on Tuesday, almost four hours past the time he had appointed as our start that day. His hatreds were unexpected. He strove for a benign tone in conversation that often came close to simpering. But occasionally he could seem almost murderous were it not that after declaring his homicidal intent he would immediately smile, and return to the tone of mealy-mouthed platitudes that were more his stock in trade. But that morning he was angry in a way I hadn’t before seen.

  Look at this, Heidl said, dropping a newspaper next to my keyboard. Look!

  The headline read—

  LOCK HEIDL AWAY FOR LIFE, SAYS KNOWLES

  Giving interviews everywhere, Heidl snarled, his hand shaking, as if he had nothing to do with it!

  Today’s adopted emotion seemed to be disgust.

  The trial’s only weeks away and he’s saying I was clearly some fucking criminal genius who deceived him as much as the banks.

  With a movement at once apathetic and aggressive he dropped himself into his executive’s seat, and just as abruptly stood back up.

  Well, I said, I guess we really do need to sort the book as quickly as—

  I need to speak to Gene Paley, he said, his gaze skidding around the room as if something was hiding from him behind the tawdry bookcases. I need twenty grand to keep going. It’s a fraction of what he owes me.

  Heidl went to the door and turned to me as he was leaving.

  How can he expect I waste my life sitting here when he won’t pay me my advance?

  And with that he was gone, only—and uncharacteristically—to return a few minutes later. He slumped in his chair, staring straight ahead, drumming his fingers on his desk. His fluttering lips were, I realised, forming silent sentences.

  Why does any of it matter? he finally said out loud.

  I asked him if he got his money.

  If a face can be said to be one of despair, his was as he spoke.

  He wants that outline before he’ll give me a cent more, Heidl said, and his voice grew agitated. Have you done it yet?

  I pointed out that it wasn’t so easy to write anything if he was never about.

  In a series of elaborate gestures so overwrought it suggested a kabuki performance, Heidl rolled his executive’s chair forward, rested his elbows on the desk, unfurled his hands outwards, and after several moments slowly dropped his weary, lost face into them. Head cradled so, he massaged his face as if it were heavy clay. This went on for a good minute or more, until, with a sudden jolt, his head jerked up with an entirely different face—a smiling, energised face. Disgust was gone, though what had arrived in its place was uncertain.

  Enough small talk, he said, though nothing had been said for some time. Enough!

  With a clap he brought his hands together in an executive’s clasp.

  We really need to get you to work, he said, smiling a thin executive’s smile.

  And so, after a week of prevarication, presumably mindful of needing another advance from Gene Paley, we—after a fashion—began.

  You know people criticise the ASO, he began, but we employed hundreds of people
. Hundreds! At our peak, just over 840—no—838 full-time positions and another ninety-six part-time. And that’s without the small businesses in Bendigo we kept going with engineering works and other things. What do they call that? The magnification effect? That has to be a good thing. And that’s what we did. Good things. Write that.

  You didn’t make money, I said, feeling irritated that he was telling me nothing that wasn’t on the public record.

  Does the government make money?

  You weren’t the government. You were a business.

  Roger that. We were a model business. We won an export award.

  You didn’t export anything.

  That was a mystery to me as well. But we were a successful business. That’s why they gave me the Order of Australia.

  You weren’t Australian.

  I didn’t have a passport. There’s a difference.

  Mostly there isn’t.

  Roger that. The citation for my Order of Australia speaks of “the innovative reinvention of a late-twentieth-century business.” It—

  Businesses have to stand the test of the market.

  Well, we stood that test well. The market gave us seven hundred million dollars.

  You never gave it back.

  The market never worried about that. It seemed like the future.

  You lied to the banks.

  I told the truth about our abilities. Showed them our shipping containers. We created jobs. Saved lives. Fought fires. We rescued sailors. Mineworkers. Took industrial training to another level. Set new levels of excellence. And the banks endorsed us, backed us all the way.

  With other people’s money.

  All the way. Besides, what company uses its own money? I can’t see how I am any different. And if we had more time, we might have been a global success story.

  How?

  How? We might have made money, that’s how. Why is what we did wrong, but when others do it, it’s okay? I don’t see the difference.

  They’re honest.

  You believe that? Really?

  How could you convince the banks you did earn money?

  Heidl looked up at me while he spoke and for once his black eyes were bright and glittered with some conviction that was at the same time a question.

  I turned their money into a magic circle. They gave, they received. That’s all business is, isn’t it? That’s why the world loved me. Isn’t it?

  5

  I had just made it home to Sully’s place that evening when Ray rang to say the train was leaving and we had to be on it. In other circumstances, other nights, I would have refused. But I needed a drink badly. I met him at the Beast, and after an hour there we went on to the Gutter and the Stars, and from there to a nightclub somewhere in the city that Ray promised was all the good things nightclubs never are. It wasn’t. But by then it was too late to leave.

  Just as the Melbourne dawn began melting like dripping through the crowded back seat of our taxi, over me, Ray and two women Ray called Pink and Purple because of the colours of their dresses, I asked Ray about the containers Heidl kept mentioning.

  I don’t get it, I said. Hundreds of containers packed with millions of dollars of gear, and the ASO still couldn’t make money.

  I lifesurf, Pink said.

  Yeah, Purple agreed. That’s what we do. We just, you know, whoosh! Wherever.

  Whoosh! giggled Pink. Whooshy-whoosh!

  Pink and Purple were both there for Ray, or for each other, or because they, like us, were too far gone to be anywhere else.

  They were empty, Ray said, one hand sliding under Purple’s miniskirt.

  It was a great idea, I said. All that gear and expertise.

  The containers were empty, Ray said in an affected accent, as if he had a mouth full of marbles.

  It just didn’t make money, I said.

  Where you from again? Purple asked.

  Norway, Pink said. They already told us. He’s a Norwegian writer.

  I’m a Jez Dempster girl myself, Purple said. Not that I’ve read him, but I know I will.

  That’s why he talks funny, Pink said. Say something, Rayban.

  Olly-bolly, Ray said.

  Wow, Purple said.

  Really, Ray said, his voice even more ridiculous. Empty.

  What? Purple asked. What are you doing, cheeky boy?

  I turned to Ray, who seemed to be licking Purple’s ear.

  What?

  Heidl said I wasn’t to tell you, Ray said into Purple’s lobe.

  There was nothing in them?

  Maybe some spiders.

  Speak some Danish stuff, Purple said.

  Nothing?

  Yeah, nothing, Ray said, pushing and playing with Purple as he spoke. Two hundred empty fuckn shipping containers.

  That’s not Danish, Pink said. I’d know if it was fucking Danish.

  Outside the taxi Melbourne was slopping around in the ceaseless Melbourne rain, dissolving tail lights and traffic lights. Things drifted and floated and nothing was fixed, and still we went on into that kaleidoscope of suppurating red and green wounds. Pink said they had to stop the taxi because she was going to vomit.

  The cab driver slammed on his brakes, and ordered us all out.

  Empty? I said.

  Get the fuck out! the cab driver screamed.

  We stood on the edge of St. Kilda Esplanade, as Pink vomited and Ray laughed, and when I looked up I saw shaping out of the darkness and sheets of rain a great gaping mouth, a smile perhaps five metres high, framed within a giant white face, replete with staring, satanic blue eyes, above which red and yellow rays radiated into a vaguely oriental proscenium.

  It was Mr. Moon, the celebrated entrance to the famed Luna Park. There was something hellish about his vast, blood-red lips, the deeply etched lines of his cheeks, his odd arched plucked eyebrows—a grubby, grinning Mephisto.

  He’s a bloody funhouse mirror, Ray said. Look at Heidl long enough and all you can see is yourself.

  Purple took offence and said they were going home now and we could fuck off back to the North Pole.

  Only uglier, Ray said.

  We watched the two women stagger across the highway to flag a taxi going in the opposite direction to us.

  I learnt things just watching him using a fork, Ray said.

  Shit-eating two-head Tasmanians! Pink yelled out at us as a cab pulled up for them and Purple gave us the bird.

  Fuck off, one-heads! Ray yelled back, giving them a cheerful wave.

  What did you learn?

  I can’t tell you, Ray said, blowing a kiss to the departing cab.

  What?

  Lots.

  6

  I had slept two hours, my tongue was a seatbelt buckle and I had arrived late to work to discover Heidl already behind his executive’s desk, his back to me, talking on the phone.

  That’s what I said, he was saying in a hushed, if agitated way. Knowles. Eric Knowles.

  Not wanting to disturb his call, I quietly set up for the day’s work, arranging paper, notes and notebooks, as Heidl went on.

  Blown away. Ten thousand. Okay?

  I booted up the Mac Classic, and as it whirred and clattered he swung his chair back round.

  Thank you, he said, giving me a long stare. Great to chat.

  I looked away and when I looked back he smiled his dreadful smile.

  Big night, I said, and, by way of explanation, added, Ray.

  I hit the keyboard at random to give the impression I was back at work. Thinking: Blown away? Eric Knowles?

  I thought so many things about Siegfried Heidl—but this!—the ordering, perhaps, of a murder!—this chilled me. But almost immediately, I was unsure. What exactly had I heard? Heidl stood up and said he had to go to a meeting with a celebrity agent who wanted to represent him.

  I thought Tommy Hiller represented you?

  I know that, Heidl said. But what does he know?

  I waited for ten minutes after Heidl left, then I went to his desk. I n
oticed how he had over the days personalised it with some executive toys, papers, and two photographs of him and his family, one formal, and recent; the other a faded Instamatic shot showing them camping years before when their kids were babies, sitting around a campfire in front of a pied red and white 55 series LandCruiser. I picked up the phone and pressed redial. As I waited for someone to pick up, there was a knock on the door.

  Hello, a recorded message answered in my ear. Bertie’s Pizza ’n’ Pasta Takeaways, Glen Huntly.

  The door opened and Gene Paley came in—the first time he had ever visited our office. I was holding the phone out from my ear, in, I felt, a picture of shock, as though I had been caught midway through some social call.

  Saw Siegfried leaving, Gene Paley said. Just wanted to say how much I’m looking forward to reading your outline tomorrow.

  Our shop is closed and will reopen at—

  That’s very helpful, I said to Bertie’s Pizza ’n’ Pasta Takeaways answering machine. Thank you. I put Heidl’s phone down.

  It’s going well? Gene Paley asked.

  I think I’m finally onto the truth.

  Great, Gene Paley said. Gene Paley made a clicking noise with his mouth and winked. Outside the primacy of his office he seemed to cultivate this odd nervous affectation.

  Yes, I said. Really great.

  Siegfried doesn’t seem to be here that much.

  He says I need my space to write.

  Without him here though, Gene Paley said, there isn’t that much you can write about.

  It was a warning. As Gene Paley went to leave, I blurted out a question. I asked him what length an ideal memoir should be, as if that might wildly diverge from the length of any other memoir.

  Well, he said, pausing at the door, with a celebrity memoir it’s more weight than length. Heavy always helps. Look at American novels—six hundred pages and more and who reads them? We say they’re substantial but a lot of people are frightened to lift them. I’m terrified I’ll dislocate an arm in bed if I open one. But they get great reviews because no reviewer can be bothered getting to the end, so they have to say it’s good. Australian memoir is the same as American novels. Big is the bluff that always works.