This is good work, said Lucian as he folded the sheet of paper until it was small enough to fit inside his shirt pocket. But I need you to go a lot deeper. Dates and names are fine, but more important are the tiny details that glue the big events together. You need to change the way you think. Rather than pick my life apart, I want you to try and put it back together…so to speak.
Michael leaned forward to accept the spliff Lucian had just set alight. I was trying to find out what happened to you in Sicily but all I could come up with were medical records.
Then go back through my books. Look for scenes that include violence, or threats of violence, and I bet you’ll find something to give you an idea of what happened. Hospitals, doctors, how I write about nurses, pain, it’s all bound to be in there somewhere. I’m relying on you to read between the lines.
Michael recalled The Bombardier’s story of a US pilot being shot down in a Vietnamese jungle and found by a lost and wandering unit of Australian soldiers. Of the men substituting the pilot for their dead superior officer, and making him confront the horrors of a war he had only ever observed from twenty thousand feet. As part of his thesis Michael had researched Australia’s role in the conflict and found equal measures of accurate and erroneous historical facts within the novel, though the extent to which the events were based on Lucian’s own experiences as a nineteen-year-old soldier was something he had never been able to determine.
But how am I supposed to distinguish between what’s real and what’s fiction?
Lucian turned to the sunroom windows. He was exhausted from his afternoon of walking the streets of Hobart and wished he could switch off the lights to silently observe the night-time dramas unfolding amongst the trees outside. At present all he could see was a blurry reflection of Michael and him sitting on the couches. Everything is real, he whispered to himself.
Pardon?
Lucian exhaled his exasperation. You think the things that have occurred in my life are more real to me than the events I’ve imagined for my books?
I…
If a story doesn’t live for an author then it sure as hell won’t live for a reader.
I…I…
You need to be alert to everything you find in that room. I don’t care what I called it when you first arrived. Nothing in there is junk. It’s all relevant. And it’s been kept for a reason. A purpose. Your job is to find out what that purpose is.
The marijuana hit Michael’s bloodstream the moment he stood up, and made his exit from the sunroom unusually clumsy. Lucian suspected his secretary was heading for the bathroom to throw up his dinner, and scanned his vinyl collection for a record to mask the sounds of heaving and retching.
All right, said Michael as he dropped heavily back into his seat. Explain to me the relevance of this.
Lucian lowered the stylus onto Charalambides’ Market Square, then accepted the faded clipping from a local newspaper that told the story of a woodchopper who had taken second place in the national championships. The article was dated 11 April 1977, and Lucian was surprised that he still recalled why he had cut it out.
Well, what do you think? he asked.
Inspiration for the groundskeeper in Foxtrot?
Lucian shook his head. Try again.
Wasn’t there a scene in Lady Cadaver that involved a couple who liked to feel the cold steel of an axe between them while they had sex?
You’re being too literal, said Lucian as he drew deeply on his spliff. Remember, I need you to read between the lines.
I just grabbed it off the top of the pile. I haven’t even read the lines yet.
Lucian handed back the fragile piece of paper. Just skip to the third-last paragraph.
Michael focussed his addled brain and read how after the award ceremonies were complete the woodchopper had stepped down from his podium and given away his second-place ribbon to a young boy in the audience. The description, however, failed to prompt any memory of a comparable scene in Lucian’s novels…and Michael admitted so.
Look at the picture again, Lucian insisted. At the man’s face. Don’t you see it? That’s the face of a man who doesn’t know his own worth. Even when life has placed him second only to a champion, he still cannot recognise his own value. Now do you know what the clipping is for?
Dismantling Ivan’s Circus?
Lucian raised his glass of wine in salute.