Prophets and Loss (A Johnny Ravine Mystery)

by Martin Roth

  Chapter Thirteen

  I woke the next morning with the dreams of the night before still lightly clinging to my brain, like baby caterpillars on a leaf. Most of the dreams seemed to concern shares that soared and soared, until I bought some, whereupon the price promptly collapsed.

  I got up, made my bed and washed. Then I went into the kitchen and brewed some coffee and fried an egg for breakfast.

  I had arranged to visit Papa Guzman in the middle of the morning. It was the best time to avoid the endless hospitality that he and his wife Maria invariably lavished on their guests. Typical were multi-course meals with wine and beer and conversation that stretched on all night, after which mattresses were spread out on the lounge floor and everyone slept for a few hours, before starting again.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t drink alcohol, or was anti-social - well, yes, it probably was - but hearing Papa Guzman’s reminiscences about his exploits as an East Timorese freedom fighter had become about as dynamic and uplifting as listening to one of Melbourne’s Golden Oldies radio stations.

  I started up the Datsun. It was at least a month since I had driven to his small house in the West of the city. It was like making a trek across Asia: first the Chinese and Vietnamese shops of Box Hill, followed by the Indian and Nepalese restaurants of North Melbourne, before arriving at the Turkish restaurants and Middle Eastern food stores of Coburg and Brunswick. You hardly needed a map. The changing food fragrances were your guide.

  Papa Guzman had been my first commander when I joined the resistance, though severe injuries had forced him to leave the movement, and he and Maria had been living in Melbourne for many years. What a joy it had been to meet them again when I came to Australia.

  They lived behind the Lebanese bread shop in Sydney Road, in one of those post-war three-bedroomed weatherboard houses built in an era when everyone wanted a home that looked the same as all the others in the neighborhood. Much like the present era. They kept it as clean and as tidy and as well maintained as could be managed on a government pension.

  “Johnny,” cried Maria as I walked in the front door. “Johnny Ravine. The stranger. The handsome man who never visits his Auntie Maria even though he’s living in the same city.” She gave me a huge hug. But it was a hug that spoke of a life of suffering and privation. In just the year that I’d been in Melbourne her hugs had become progressively weaker. She was only sixty-one, but her body was stooped and she shuffled around the house like someone a decade older.

  “Johnny Ravine,” she continued. “The man who’s still not married, even though his Auntie Maria could introduce a dozen pretty ladies who are looking for a husband. The man who’s so ashamed of his nationality he takes a Western name.”

  “I’m an Australian,” I protested. “It’s my father’s name. There’s no shame in taking your father’s name. And I won’t marry any girl who’s not as beautiful as you.” I pried myself loose from her grip and looked at her. She might have been beautiful once, but the hard existence of a resistance leader’s wife had not treated her well. Her long dark face was furrowed with hard lines and her hair was grey and matted. But the sparkle in her eyes remained unrelenting.

  Maria was the widow of a schoolteacher who had died in the resistance. One by one she saw her five children also killed in the fighting. Papa Guzman married her after Indonesian soldiers killed his first wife. “They raped and murdered her in front of me,” he once said. “That’s the character of the people we’re fighting. Even the Japanese didn’t do that during World War Two. They might have been brutal. They raped plenty of our women. But not wives in front of their husbands.”

  A gruff voice sounded from deep inside the house: “Hey, I thought this young man was here to see me.”

  “Coming,” said Maria, as she took my arm and led me down the dark, musty hallway, past a phalanx of photographs of relatives and ancestors. We entered the living room, heavily decorated with a large crucifix, a painting of the pope and photos of heroes of the resistance. Papa Guzman was seated on a blue-upholstered armchair in front of the TV. It was tuned to Mornings with Kerri-Anne.

  Standing was an ordeal for him, and he did not try. Instead he raised a hand in greeting. I knelt down and embraced him and touched his cheek with mine. He was short and stocky, and my arms could manage little more than half the circumference of his body. His large round face was embellished with a giant bushy moustache, giving him the image of a fierce Mexican bandit. Long strands of black and grey hair grew from his head in a clutter of comical trajectories. He was wearing baggy blue jeans and a check lumberjack jacket.

  Maria walked to the kitchen to prepare coffee. Already I had caught the fragrant, nutty scent of jasmine rice being cooked, and I knew it would be hard to escape from this house without a full meal.

  “Johnny, you’re looking good,” said Papa Guzman.

  “You’re looking good too,” I lied.

  “But still not married. How can that be for such a handsome man?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Just waiting for the right girl to turn up, I guess.” I sat on a long brown leather sofa that was ripped in several places and looked as old as the house.

  “You obviously haven’t been talking to that wife of mine. She seems to spend most of her life fixing young men up with the right girls.”

  I smiled and waited. I knew I would have to listen to Papa Guzman’s tedious gossip before I could raise my own concerns.

  As if on cue he began: “You remember Joao? From Suai. He was your age. He lived in Canada for many years, but now he’s back. He’s trying to reclaim his family farm. Remember that night when he tied a long string of firecrackers to a horse and then let it loose by the jail at Same.” He laughed at the memory. “That horse went crazy. It ran round and round the prison. All the soldiers were in a state of panic. They thought they were under attack from a huge army. They were firing in all directions.”

  Maria arrived with a tray laden with cups of coffee, a plate of Tim Tam chocolate biscuits and a bowl of apples and pears. She placed it on a small wooden table between us, then retreated to the kitchen

  Papa Guzman had stories to relate about other former compatriots who had survived the massacres: Jorge, whose wife had given birth to five children in five years, and who now managed the family grocery store at Los Palos; Eduardo, who always made sure he stayed close to the center of power, and was now in line for a top government job; Victor, who had decided to become a priest and was at the Senhora de Fatima Nossa seminary at Dare.

  I nodded at the appropriate moments in his monologue, gazing out the window at a striking raven-haired woman hanging out her washing on a clothesline next door. Then I glanced at the television, which was still on. A muscular man was talking to a young, blonde woman about a new kind of exercise machine that flattened your stomach.

  Papa Guzman paused, and in my boredom I was perhaps a little too abrupt. “Heard anything recently about the Dili Tigers?” I asked.

  He froze. “Johnny. Why do you ask me that question?”

  “I want to know. Have you heard anything?”

  “Johnny, we talk about our families and about life back home. We rejoice in our freedom. But we are careful with whom we discuss politics. And as for terrorists? It is better to leave some things unsaid, except within your own family.” He clasped and unclasped his hands in an agitated manner.

  “Come on. You know you can trust me.” I pointed to my weakened ankle. “The badge of a freedom fighter. Not as impressive as your own injuries, but still genuine. I’m family.”

  “I know your past, Johnny. And though we worry that the militia movements have infiltrated our groups here, no one suspects you of being an agent. But I also know that Australia does strange things to people. Life here is good. It’s easy. The fire in the belly disappears. It’s a materialistic society and even refugees start to feel they must have the good life. The moral conscience starts to disappear. You lose your ability to discern evil. People can be turned. They may
arrive as freedom fighters, but they can be bought.”

  “Papa...”

  “I am not for a moment suggesting that you can be bought. But let’s face it, you’re an illegal immigrant. You are in a position to be blackmailed.” He was talking bluntly, but he avoided looking at me.

  “No.”

  “Now I am not saying you have been blackmailed. I trust you. But who knows the future. Who knows where you’ll be next year or next month or tomorrow. Who knows your circumstances. Already I feel the fight has gone from you. I am being honest with you Johnny. Just one year in Australia and life is too easy. You aren’t a fighter any more Johnny. I can see that.”

  He was sounding like the pastor. I took a Tim Tam from the tray.

  “Johnny, there is evil in this country. Evil. There’s that casino on the riverbank in the city. We’ve lost a few of our boys there. Do you remember Jose Andrade? From Batugede. He came here as a refugee. Shortly before you arrived. I got him a job as a kitchen hand at one of those restaurants down in Chinatown. And you know what? They have these special buses that leave Chinatown after midnight to take all the waiters and kitchen staff straight to the casino. You might expect that with the Chinese, but not with a Timorese boy who has fought in the war of liberation. Next thing he’s stealing from the restaurant, and then he’s arrested. Suspended jail sentence. His family are still hiding their faces.”

  Papa Guzman was restless. He clearly wished he could stand and pace up and down and wave his arms about.

  “The same with Benny Lobato from Ainaro. Maybe you don’t know him. Another refugee. Working in a car parts factory. Leaving his wife and their baby at home each night to visit the casino. He’s still got his job, but they don’t have their savings any more. Johnny, what sort of society places such temptation before innocent kids like these?”

  I wanted to talk about free will and freedom of choice. But I had heard it all before. It was the privilege of the elderly to be allowed to ramble. They were permitted their eccentricities. Australia might be one of the most generous countries in the world in accepting refugees, but Papa Guzman still found endless opportunities for complaint.

  I recalled an early visit to this home when he had been drinking red wine from a four-liter cask that had cost him twelve dollars at the local supermarket. He then started to declaim that the Australians didn’t know how to make proper wine, and could learn a few things from the Portuguese. That was when I realized it was pointless to argue.

  “The trouble is that Australians don’t understand evil,” continued Papa Guzman. “In that respect we are more privileged in Timor. We have experienced real evil. First the Japanese. Then the Javanese. Without an understanding of evil a society cannot survive.”

  Papa Guzman, who had braved enormous dangers in the fight for freedom, who was famous for calling a spade a spade, was rambling like a senile man. And when I looked hard into his eyes I understood.

  “You’re scared,” I shouted, so loudly that I wondered if Maria mightn’t come running. “Something’s happening, and you’re frightened.”

  Immediately I wished I had kept silent, but it was too late. Papa Guzman bowed his head. The television remote control was still on his lap. He picked it up, as if he wanted to change channels, but then it slipped from his fingers to the ground. I was about to retrieve it for him when he looked up at me, and I saw tears in his eyes.

  “Life has caught up with me,” he said slowly. His voice was choked. “Life is too easy, even for me. Yes, Johnny, something is happening. You are right to be suspicious.”

  He was now gazing into the distance, somewhere above my head. He seemed suddenly to have aged by ten years. It was difficult for me to look directly at him.

  “Johnny, there are new men on the edges of our movement. They are undisciplined. Dangerous. They are planning something, and they are taking advantage of us. I don’t know what they will do. I don’t want to know. I don’t ask questions.”

  “But you know we have to stop them,” I protested. “They may be planning something against our cause.”

  “Yes, Johnny,” he said after another long pause. “You’re right.”

  “Papa. My best friend Grant has been murdered. I believe he was a good man. There’s been a bullet through my window and a phone call that sounded like it could have been from the Dili Tigers.”

  He nodded, but did not speak. He didn’t even look surprised.

  “I need to learn what has happened. Papa, you can find out. You know everyone. They all respect and trust you. They’ll all tell you what they know. Something is happening against Australia. This is our country. We have to help.”

  He was silent for a long while. Then he spoke softly. “Johnny. I shall find out what is happening.” But there was no defiance in his voice. Instead I heard the tone of defeat.