by Peter Carey
DET. VOGELESANG: Ah, so you do admit that there is a suggestion of indecency about the poem.
WEISS: No, I don’t.
DET. VOGELESANG: What does it mean when it says, ‘Part of me remains, wench, Boult-upright’?
WEISS: I’m very sure that some people could place an indecent interpretation on anything.
At this comment the public gallery burst into laughter and the judge made a stern speech about his courtroom not being a place of entertainment. Personally, Chubb needed no reminding. The machinery of justice intimidated him; and the more intimidated he felt, the greater his admiration became for Weiss, who refused to bend to its dull and bullying will.
It quickly became clear to Chubb that his victim was the only other person in court who understood how well made the hoax had been. The rest of the cast, he said, the defence included, could not have read a poem to save their lives. Allegedly esteemed psychologists from the Melbourne Tech were called to attest that these verses were high art. These opinions Chubb called worthless, but Weiss mostly explicated the issues very elegantly, laying out the cross-references to Pericles or The Tempest, the parodies of Eliot and Read, the manner in which the hoax itself was both subject and key to the mystery of the poems.
Yet while he was at times effective he suffered a single but considerable disadvantage: McCorkle’s verse was almost impossible to explicate, with the result that Weiss sometimes seemed like a bright but lazy post-graduate hiding behind obfuscation.
The florid prosecutor then asked Weiss to take one of the stanzas of ‘McCorkle’s’ ‘Egyptian Register’ and tell the court what it meant.
WEISS: The poem starts off with the man examining the body.
PROSECUTION: What man?
WEISS: The man in the poem.
PROSECUTION: Where does that come from—examining the body? I don’t see that in the poem.
WEISS: Each thing he takes up suggests to him the inexplicability of human life….
PROSECUTION: Where does it say anything about the inexplicability of human life?
PROCEEDINGS INTERRUPTED
How were they interrupted? The transcript does not say but Chubb remembered everything and thus this lunatic event may be roughly reconstructed.
Dunce, cried a rasping untutored voice.
Weiss flinched.
Silence! cried the judge.
Answer the question, demanded the prosecutor.
But Weiss was staring at the heckler, his complexion turning the colour of boiled tripe.
Mr Weiss, you may continue.
Haltingly, Weiss argued that the actual point of the poem was ‘vagueness and inexplicability’ He was interrupted by a chair scraping violently in the front row. He tried to argue that the spine mentioned in the sixth line was actually ‘a part of the brain’ and that the poet had linked it with the ‘harsh and enquiring element of the brain,’ which attempts to pierce ‘the obscurity of life.’
PROSECUTION: Where is the harsh and enquiring element
of a brain? Where do you get that from?
PROCEEDINGS INTERRUPTED
The transcript makes no mention of the heckler or his raw, uneducated voice. Ask the bloody author, he cried. Ask the author, you fucking philistine.
No mention of the bailiffs either. They rushed loudly in. A woman screamed and a chair crashed to the floor. From this scrum the bailiffs emerged, somehow joined to a massive man with wild dark eyes and black, shoulder-length hair.
Here’s to culture, the wild man roared. Sieg Heil.
He turned to face the court, raising his arms not in the salute suggested by his cry but as if in benediction. Then, like a man shrugging off a coat that had suddenly become too hot, he dropped the bailiffs to the floor and walked—with remarkable grace, lightly on his toes, back and shoulders straight—out of the completely silent court.
What transpired next seemed even more shocking to Chubb: the prosecutor, apparently in complete denial of this interruption, simply resumed his questioning.
PROSECUTION: You don’t think that it would be possible for any fair-minded person to think that the author in using the word ‘index’ was referring to a penis in the state of erection?
PROCEEDINGS INTERRUPTED
And here Weiss angrily jabbed a finger at where Chubb sat, huddled miserably in his cedar bench.
I will not continue, the defendant informed the court, while that man is sitting there.
And so, in a state of considerable embarrassment and confusion, Christopher Chubb stumbled out onto William Street. He never entered the court again.
12
During this story Slater had wandered off, and I was not at all pleased to see him returning with a brimming goblet of red wine in his hand.
Apart from complaining that the wine was off, a process which involved two waitresses and took an extraordinary length of time, he pretty much behaved himself. Only when I asked Chubb to explain why Weiss had acted as he had in court did Slater begin to roll his eyes and tap his head.
You want to hear? Chubb snapped. Yes? No? Which is it?
Slater was not in the least discomfited by having been caught out.
Of course, of course. Always very interested.
Chubb leaned forward, as if speaking directly to my notebook, which prop I seemed to be using more energetically than was my original intention. I went, he said firmly, back to Gordon Featherstone’s place in Collins Street.
A very hospitable man, Gordon, said Slater.
You wish to hear why Weiss went so queer in court, but perhaps you know already?
I scowled at Slater but he would not shut up.
Gordon’s place, he said, was in what was laughably called the Paris end of Collins Street. It’s very posh these days, Micks, but after the war all sorts of reprobates were living there. And that gorgeous creature. He turned to Chubb. God, what was her name?
I don’t know.
Oh yes you do.
That would be Noussette, I suppose.
Whatever did happen to Noussette? God, she was beautiful. I could have married her. Chili-padi type, no? Isn’t that the expression? Hot like a chili. He kissed his fingers.
Cheh! You talk too much.
Wasn’t Noussette a girlfriend of Weiss’s before she was with Gordon?
You know nothing about her, mate.
Mate? Slater folded his arms and smiled delightedly. Mem! Mate!
Weiss climbed the fire escape, Chubb told me. Came in through Gordon’s bedroom window. Drunk-lah. Had the wobbly boot on, as they say. There was a great ruckus. I slept right through. I woke up to find myself being shaken.
Weiss, Chubb told us, was very fastidious, known for his habit of changing his shirt twice a day and carrying a toothbrush in his pocket at all times. But there was no toothpaste on his breath as he shook the sleeping hoaxer, waking him to a noxious effluvium of garlic and red wine. Why are you trying to destroy me? he said, seizing Chubb by the shoulders and slamming him back down in the bed.
By now Chubb felt he deserved almost any punishment. He was completely responsible for Weiss’s nightmare and so did nothing to protect himself. When Weiss clambered onto the bed and lay with his muddy boots upon his pillow, he did not protest. Indeed he took this opportunity, once again, to offer to accept whatever public blame he could for the so-called obscenity.
The trouble was, Weiss was an editor. He loved those poems. He would stake his life on them. On the one hand he would not concede that Chubb had written them, they were far too good; on the other he blamed him for publicly humiliating a friend. Weiss’s voice rose higher in complaint. Why? He pushed his muddy boots against Chubb’s head. Why did you do it, Christopher?
To prove a point, Chubb said.
It’s sheer jealousy, Weiss said. I am more intelligent. I am better-looking. I am better-known. I understand that you were jealous but why, when you finally had me in the bloody dock, would you keep twisting the knife? You are mentally unwell, Christopher. You are a sadist.
David, what on earth are you talking about?
I mean your bloody little theatre piece this afternoon. Did you pay that appalling actor? If so, you were robbed.
What actor?
What actor? The bloody giant! In the front row of the court. Author, author? I have already been humiliated like no-one has ever been humiliated, but that is not enough for you, is it? You must employ this creature to taunt me.
What creature?
Ask the bloody author, mate. There has never been a decent actor over five foot eleven and this one’s a fucking ham. You found someone to look like McCorkle’s photograph. It was very clever, but so malicious. It is the malice, Christopher, that sickens me. You came to my home. You had Seder at our table. You take my breath away.
Only now did Chubb understand that Weiss had seen the interjector in the court as his hired assassin, but in Melbourne you did not need to imagine conspiracies to explain this character. That part of the city was always filled with drunks— derelict, unstable people from the Salvation Army home on Victoria Avenue. You saw them in the reading rooms of the public library and Chubb, earlier in his history, supplied one of them with a daily buttered bun. So the big man with the long hair concerned him not at all. What was shocking, though, was that Weiss should imagine his own motives were malicious, ad hominem, which in turn meant he hadn’t the foggiest notion why Chubb had perpetrated the hoax in the first place. This he could not bear. He rose from the bed and managed to get Weiss into the kitchen, where he unearthed a bottle of two-shilling red plonk from Jimmy Watson’s. Once this had been decanted into two jam jars they sat on opposite sides of the table while Chubb attempted to explain his concerns about the decay of meaning. This was, as he would say in Kuala Lumpur, when his own language had become marinated with the homilies of Kampong Baru, like a chicken talking to a duck.
Weiss would not hear a word he said. The only positive thing that arose from their conversation was that Chubb finally managed to convince him that the madman was a madman and nothing more. He also congratulated his old friend, telling him that he’d been a lion before the court. He had shamed them all.
By way of thanks Weiss informed him that his poetry was second-rate. He said the only thing Chubb would ever be remembered for was the work of Bob McCorkle.
I thought him entitled to this, Chubb told me. He caned me with such obvious satisfaction that by the time he left Gordon’s flat he was in a very fine mood, ready to go and fight his next round. We walked down the cluttered stairs together and I let him out into Collins Street as the first trams came around the corner past the treasury building. See you in court—that is what Weiss said to me, Mem. Not the sort of comment made by a man who is going home to hang himself.
13
Well, said Slater, we all must go to bed now.
I looked at him with astonishment for he was suddenly a great storm of physical activity, miming bill-signing to the waitresses who were clustered by the suit of armour beside the molded plastic fireplace.
John!
He leaned forward and took my hand. You will go to bed, he said, smiling while secretly hurting me. You are still a sick girl.
I tried to peel his big fingers back but he easily pulled me to my feet. Actually, John, I feel much better.
Doctor’s orders, he said. His eyes cold.
I was furious, and if I contained myself it was only because I wished nothing to intensify Chubb’s very obvious humiliation. I could easily have slapped John Slater’s face. Instead I stretched and yawned. Perhaps we could hear more another time, I said.
Yes, said Chubb, though his eyes would not engage with mine, and he busied himself hiding his documents within his suit. I doubt Slater noticed, for he would have been alert to any sign of paper. He was impatient only to send the man away.
It was wonderful to meet you again, he said. And to remember dear old Gordon.
Chubb immediately turned towards the entrance. I cast Slater a hateful glance and caught up with my visitor, walking at his side with my own eyes cast down on the impossible tartan carpet. I had the most complicated thoughts about him, feelings which went beyond the covetous emotions stirred by that single page of manuscript. This old man had somehow touched me. Impulsively, I tucked my arm through his and did not release my hold until we were both together in the soupy night. Slater trailed behind; had he been an Intourist guide, he could not have attended us more closely.
Perhaps we can talk some more tomorrow, I said.
Chubb looked at me directly. Thank you, he said, then turned abruptly and limped along the narrow concrete path beside the taxis.
Returning to that vulgar foyer, I glimpsed Slater’s following figure in the reflective golden columns and rushed towards the lift.
Sarah! He beat the door and got inside the car.
You shit, I said.
Sarah, listen to me.
No. You are an irredeemable shit.
When he pushed the button for my floor, I chose the one for his, but of course my floor was first and he got out with me.
I don’t want to talk to you, John. Please do not come in.
He might easily have forced his way into the room, so I left the hulking key inside my purse and returned to the lifts. He then accompanied me back down to the foyer, where he had the nerve to take me by the hand again.
I could see the Sikh at the door watching us but did not care if I made an exhibition. Let me go, John, or I will make you very sorry.
He knew me of old, and obeyed. Sarah, he said, do you really believe this fellow?
I have no idea. You didn’t let me find out.
He is totally bonkers. Can’t you see it in his eyes? Look at his skin—it’s all soapy like a priest’s.
So? You think he is sexless? Castrated? What on earth do you mean about his skin?
Micks, I know so much more about him than you do. Wouldn’t you like to know why he’s so dangerous?
No.
No?
No.
Please yourself, he said, and to my enormous relief he walked away. As the lift doors closed he was already heading out into Jalan Treacher, in the direction, as I found out much later, of the notorious Eastern Oriental Cabaret which had, long ago, lent its name to his enormously popular erotic poem.
14
That night I dreamed that I was dead. My body lay in a potter’s field in the Essex marshes and all the contents of my Charlotte Street office were strewn about in the vile morass of mud. There was a sexton who soon turned into a tinker sorting through the remnants of my life. He snaffled the ugly little Staffordshire figure my brother had given me, but all my careful files he cast aside. Enraged that my estate was being handled by someone so uneducated, I grappled fiercely with him—but while scratching his face I saw it was Lord Antrim, and I understood my dream and began to cry.
It was raining when I woke, so I called the desk to ask if I might borrow an umbrella. They claimed to have none. I ordered breakfast in my room where I would be safe from Slater. The bowl of cornflakes arrived on a big trolley with an orchid in a vase, and the waiter, perhaps driven by a sense of humour I did not give him credit for, wheeled it over by the window where the view was of a wall of water, the smudgy outlines of trees on a steep jungle hillside, and the drifting, ghostly fish which were the cars and trucks below.
I called the desk again. They promised the rain would shortly cease and I sat down to await this miracle. I picked up my Milton but was far too agitated to concentrate. The rain was often rather green, and sometimes a yellowish white. One could occasionally make out more of the road below, or else nothing at all, but as I gazed out I thought I saw one of those huge black rubbish bags abandoned in the middle of the broken footpath. When I checked again it seemed to have shifted a little farther along the street.
Sometime after nine o’clock, I looked up from my book and saw the bag move by itself. It did not travel far, perhaps a yard or so, and I was appalled to understand that a human being was
living inside it, a kind of hermit crab. I waited for more movement. There was none. I had my shower, dressed, and went down to the Balmoral Gift Shop, where I bought a second-rate umbrella for twice what one would’ve paid at Asprey, but I had such a short time left in Kuala Lumpur and I was determined to reach that manuscript again.
The doorman of course wanted to put me into a taxi, and only then did I realise I could’ve had ten taxi rides for the price of an umbrella, but having no more money to waste I grimly set off into the monsoon. In less than a minute my feet were soaking wet, and then a passing truck drenched my skirt with water.
As I came splashing along the opposite footpath, careful not to slip on the big yellow flowers the storm was stripping from the trees, my useless little umbrella prevented me from seeing where I was going. Which is how I collided with the human rubbish bag. It had been almost comic from the imperial detachment of my room but was not in the least amusing on the street. I tried to step around the thing, but it would not let me. From deep in the folds of plastic, a pair of strangely determined eyes confronted me.
It said my name, or so I thought. The rain was loud and the storm water roaring along the deep drains and I had that feeling of alienation, of disconnectedness, one gets when talking in the middle of a set in Ronnie Scott’s. But there was no mistaking the sodden tweed trousers protruding below the plastic.
Mr Chubb?
Miss Wode-Douglass.
In the shouted conversation that ensued, he made me understand that the Sikh had refused him entrance to the hotel.
You could have telephoned me.
I tried. You had instructed the operator not to disturb you.
Of course I had made no such request. This could only have been Slater’s doing, and for the first time I appreciated how unbearable a busybody he was.
I escorted my peculiar friend back across Jalan Treacher to the gleaming canopy of the hotel. Here, under the watchful eye of the turbaned doorman, I shook out my umbrella and waited while Christopher Chubb carefully removed the plastic bag and, much as he had with the manuscript’s protective wrapper, fastidiously refolded it for later use. For all this great care, his ancient suit was sodden.