ANNA WAS FINISHED by 11 am. She always managed to work faster when she was alone. As predicted, no one else from The Tribe’s editorial team had made it in yet. Mrs Kent, the stolid middle-aged woman who managed the paper’s advertising for a percentage of the profits, had come in to check that all her ads were properly placed, and she stayed to help Anna pack each of the pages into hard cardboard covers for delivery to Quality Press.
‘Thanks for the help, Elaine,’ said Anna when the boxes were packed and ready to go. The older woman pushed a shank of blue-rinsed hair back behind her ear and sat on a desk to light a cigarette.
‘No problem, love,’ she said. ‘It’s a good edition, that one. Keep it up and the metros’ll be recruitin’ ya next.’
Anna laughed. ‘That’ll be the day.’
‘Oh, you’d have to rein in your red-ragger bullshit, I reckon,’ Elaine advised, squinting through a veil of smoke. She meant it kindly.
‘Can you really see me doing that? This means something to those poor bastards facing the draft. The establishment owns all the big papers. They’d never take a stand on anything that challenges the status quo.’
Elaine looked at her shrewdly. ‘Well, love, you know my son’s in Vietnam? He doesn’t like it much, but he doesn’t like your protesters either. Reckons they’re a bunch of spoilt kids who’ll always figure out a way to stay out of danger.’
‘That’s just smart, isn’t it?’ Anna replied. ‘To stay out of a war you don’t believe in.’
‘Well, I’d have to think about that, love. It’s okay for some, I s’pose, those with the means to figure it out anyway. Look, I’ll leave you to it. I’ve got to go book you some more advertising. Keep those profits rolling in for the worker’s collective.’
Elaine Kent crushed her cigarette in an ashtray and made for the door.
Anna called out after her: ‘What’s your son’s name?’
‘Clark,’ called Elaine as the door closed behind her.
Anna smiled and shook her head. Was she taking the piss? She liked Elaine Kent for her laconic ways, but would she joke about her own son like that? Either way, Anna hoped Clark really was bulletproof.
•
She was back in her office reading through her correspondence when Pierre poked his head through the doorway.
‘Bonjour, la classe,’ he said brightly.
‘Ah, la tête de merde.’
Pierre pondered this. ‘That might actually translate, you know.’
‘I should hope so.’
‘Why so cruel? This is about getting up before dawn, isn’t it? I recognise the symptoms.’
Anna looked at her watch. ‘This is about wondering if you were ever going to turn up. It’s nearly twelve.’
‘Right on time, then.’
With the help of two volunteers, they carried the boxes down to the loading bay and carefully stacked them into the back of the old panel van, which some friend of Pierre’s had loaned to the enterprise. Pierre’s job was to haul everything to the press in Glebe, where the final pages would be compiled and printed. It was his turn to work on the stone, watching over the compositors with Anna’s ‘book’ as his guide. That was the last thing she handed him.
‘Good luck. It’s going to work well.’ She leant into the window to stress the point. ‘Don’t let anyone fuck it up.’
‘I’m the stone sub. Trust me.’
‘I do.’ Anna gave him a one-armed hug through the window. ‘Just don’t fuck it up.’
She watched him drive off and went back upstairs. In the last hour the newsroom had transformed into a zoo for exotic human animals. A cloud of marijuana smoke hung over the ping-pong table where two freaks with tangled hair down their backs were playing in slow motion. A few people were at their desks speaking loudly into phones or tapping valiantly at typewriters.
She noticed that the more languid types had occupied the battered armchairs, rolling joints and talking nonsense with great intensity. Most of that nonsense was being drowned out by Iron Butterfly. Someone had just put ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ on the turntable, an endless droning track she hated. Anna looked at her watch: seventeen minutes to go. She stepped into her office and closed the door.
She discreetly pulled out Pierre’s gift and tapped a small quantity of powder onto the desk. She quickly snorted it through a drinking straw and winced at the burn. Her eyes watered and she sniffed, relishing the metallic taste in the back of her throat. When after a few moments her head miraculously cleared, she reached for a pile of material from the contributors’ box and started reading.
In this way, the day passed quickly until most of the staff and hangers-on had drifted off to other pursuits. Anna had been thinking it was time to pack it in herself when one of the volunteers, a young, gay Arts/Law smarty, cracked open the door and put his head in.
‘Excuse me, Anna. You’ve got a visitor.’
‘Who is it?’
‘A gentleman caller, don’t know him.’ He winked. ‘Very butch.’
Anna stared back at him, irritated. ‘I’m not expecting anyone. Did he say what he wants?’
‘Says he wrote an article. Want me to send him in?’
‘I guess so. Thanks.’
Moments later the door opened again and she saw him for the first time. Her impression was simply of a strong presence entering her space, then she registered physical details. The man standing in front of her was striking in several ways. He was tall and well made, but not in the standard way. He had the appearance of a trained athlete, as if something had tempered him and left an easy physical confidence.
These were qualities that Anna normally found intimidating, even repellent. She had learned from schooldays to associate that form of confidence with the Australian version of machismo, which she despised, but her instinctive distrust was offset by his appealing smile and the intelligence she read in his startling green eyes.
She stood and offered her hand: ‘Anna Rosen.’
‘Marin Katich.’
She felt strength in his hand and let it go quickly. Why was that name familiar?
‘Katich?’ she asked. ‘Is that Yugoslavian?’
‘Croatian.’
She sat down, gesturing for him to do the same. ‘I’ve never heard the name Marin before. It’s unusual, in a nice way.’
‘It means “of the sea”.’ He sat down opposite her and leant forwards, elbows on the desk. ‘But what’s unusual these days? I don’t imagine anyone blinks at Rosen anymore.’
‘Only at the Royal Sydney Golf Club.’
‘Those rich bastards would blink at Katich, too.’
‘They don’t have bylaws to keep Croatians out.’
‘Yeah, well, I can’t really see you playing a lot of golf.’
‘Strangely enough, my father plays golf … On public courses.’
Marin smiled, resting his chin on his fists. ‘Got to love the workers’ paradise, eh?’
Sarcasm? Anna felt a little warier. No trace of an accent. Born here, then?
‘So, what can I do for you?’ she asked.
‘I sent you an article about three weeks ago, but I never heard back so I thought I’d drop by and say g’day.’ He spoke so quietly that she found herself leaning forwards to hear him better.
‘A lot of people send us articles. What was it about?’
‘Vietnam,’ he replied. ‘About flawed thinking in the protest movement.’
‘Wait,’ she said, suddenly remembering why the name was familiar. She reached into the drawer beside her and pulled out a typed manuscript. She looked at the title page. ‘This is you then? M.A. Katich?’
She handed him the manuscript; he glanced at it and passed it back.
‘That’s me.’
‘I’m surprised.’
‘Why?’
‘I had in mind a much older man.’
‘Someone like B.A. Santamaria, you mean?’
Sarcasm again.
‘Yup,’ she said. ‘Catholic Right, in any event. Are you saying that’s not the case?’
‘I was brought up a Catholic. My old man is pretty religious.’ Marin had returned to soft, measured tones. ‘But I don’t belong to any party. So, tell me—did you read the whole thing, or just chuck it in the Do-Nothing Drawer after a page?’
He smiled again as he said this. It was a nice smile. She smiled back at him.
‘That’s not the Do-Nothing Drawer. That’s the I’ll Come Back to It Later Drawer.’
‘So, did you read it all?’
‘Not all of it,’ she admitted. ‘But a fair bit. That’s why I didn’t bin it. It’s well written.’ She looked at him cautiously. How tough could he get, she wondered, if push came to shove? She decided to give a little. ‘Now that you’ve prompted me, I’ll definitely go back and read the whole thing. How’s that?’
‘That’s good. But be honest—what did you think about what you did read?’
All right then, since you ask. In for a penny …
‘If you really want me to be honest, you come across as an apologist for US military aggression in Vietnam.’
‘What makes you say that? I don’t support the Americans, let alone apologise for them.’
‘That’s the implication I got.’
‘Look, in 1963, the bloody Americans assassinated Diem, a democratically elected president! They put the generals in power just because it suited them better, and that was Golden Boy Jack Kennedy who did that. They’re as corrupt as the Soviets as far as I’m concerned.’
Anna felt herself being drawn in against her better judgement. She was still buzzing a little from the speed and had the fleeting thought that maybe the drug was playing a role now.
‘Well, Ho Chi Minh led the fight against the Americans,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should be praising him instead of branding him a dictator.’
Marin leant back in his chair. ‘But that’s exactly what he was. Surely you don’t buy that Uncle Ho bullshit, do you? Where do you stand on freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, the right to vote? Uncle Ho was against all of those things. Oh wait, I remember where you stand on freedom of speech. You’ve got a special drawer for that, haven’t you?’
Anna slammed the drawer shut. ‘That’s nonsense. I explained that to you.’
‘Well, it’s out of the drawer now. Pandora’s drawer. You should have kept it shut.’
‘Ho Chi Minh was fighting for national survival against the most powerful military-industrial complex in the world.’ Anna had raised her voice. He was getting under her skin. ‘What do you expect? Those are not exactly perfect conditions for democracy.’
Marin let out a long breath. ‘Don’t be naïve,’ he said, marshalling his arguments. ‘Ho’s got plenty of history behind him. He wasn’t conjured up out of thin air. He was a Moscow-trained revolutionary. As for national survival, that saintly old coot purged all the non-communist nationalists in the early fifties, so bad luck for them. Then he orchestrated the mass murder of landlords and a host of others he designated traitors with a stroke of the pen, so bad luck for them, too. And all that was done in the name of land reform. Ring any bells? Where’ve we seen that before? There’s no way this bloke was ever going to transform into a democrat sometime down the track.’
‘His people loved him, Marin, that much is bloody obvious.’
‘Oh, his people? Well, that’s if you ignore the million of them who voted with their feet in 1954 when he set up his people’s-fucking-dictatorship. A million of them moved south. What do you think they were running away from, for heaven’s sake?’
Anna knew this of course, but she wasn’t prepared to admit that this Katich fellow was mounting arguments she’d used against her own father.
‘Oh, come on,’ she said, choosing the more complex path. ‘Those people were stampeded to run south by a massive CIA fear campaign. You should check your own version of history. The Pentagon orchestrated the whole thing. “Operation Passage to Freedom”—does that ring any bells for you?’
Marin hit the edge of the desk with both hands. ‘Of course it does, Anna. But I prefer to look at facts and documents, not slogans. Do you seriously think a million people would pack up their homes, leave their property, their land, the graves of their ancestors and turn their families into refugees just because of American propaganda? Whole villages full of rational people did this. They ran away because they’d seen what his so-called fucking “land reform” really meant—murder and starvation.’
Anna didn’t like it when he slapped the table. She thought of telling him to fuck right off out of her office. Instead, she heard him out and took him on. No one argued about this stuff anymore, but she knew that they really should.
‘Don’t underestimate the CIA,’ she admonished him. ‘Do you know they dropped pamphlets all over the north with maps of Hanoi showing the concentric rings of destruction from an atomic blast. I’ve got one of the damned things around here somewhere. They wanted people to think that if they stayed put they’d all be nuked. This was 1955. Ten years after Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I’d have believed them.’
Marin put his elbows back on the desk and leant in again.
‘I don’t doubt that,’ he said, calm again. ‘I don’t trust the fucking CIA, and I don’t like the fucking Yanks generally. But what really burns me up is seeing those kids marching down the street chanting “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh … The Viet Cong is going to win.” I just want them to think about who it is they’re chanting for. Not to mention they’re out there raising money to send to the bastards.’
Anna looked at him. Who the hell was this guy? Reasonable on the surface, but didn’t he know people were dying? The most important thing now was to stop the war. She looked at the green eyes burning away in his otherwise impassive face. Didn’t he know you have to choose sides at some point?
‘Well, you might not like what they’re chanting, but it’s true.’ She realised now that she really wanted to convince him. ‘The Viet Cong and the NVA are going to win the war, and our boys are being sent over there to die for nothing. Worse than that, they’ve been sent over there to prop up a corrupt military dictatorship. You said as much yourself. The dictatorship will fall the minute the US pulls the plug, and they will pull the plug sooner or later. You must know that.’
Marin sighed. ‘I do. I think you’re right about that, and when it happens you’ll get another massive wave of refugees running from the communists. Look, the Americans have fucked this up, just like the French fucked it up before them. And they’re doing it on a far grander scale—’
Anna cut him off impatiently. ‘There’s nothing grand about napalming children, about massacring whole villages, about the rape and murder of women and children by insane all-American boys.’
‘You’re right. A far bigger scale, is what I meant. But they’re not the only ones with blood on their hands. That’s the point of my article. Those kids out there marching should have at least some idea about the real nature of the man whose praises they’re singing. Who it is they’re backing. How all this is likely to end up. There’s been a long, long history of murder and massacres in those Vietnamese villages. Ho’s communist cadres killed hundreds of thousands of people in those same villages.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Anna angrily. ‘Now you’re quoting Nixon. The “Bloodbath of ’54”. I’ve been paying attention. Hasn’t it occurred to you that Tricky Dick has the resources of the whole CIA to write his own version of history?’
Marin put his head in his hands for a moment and then looked up.
‘Nixon will use whatever he can to advance his own arguments. All I can do is examine the evidence. And the evidence is there in Ho’s own words: he wrote it down in party documents and directives. You know his famous slogan, don’t you? “Seek an understanding with the rich peasants and liquidate the landlords.” Liquidate them! That’s pretty clear, isn’t it? Uncle Ho’s just following his big brothers, Stalin and Mao. You know what Mao said, right? “The execution of one such big landlord reverberates through a whole county and is very effective.”’
Katich reached over the desk and picked up his manuscript. He held it up.
‘The evidence is here—the firsthand accounts of witnesses and defectors from inside the Party, people who saw fresh corpses every day. Landlords with death sentences pinned to their chests. Local people who saw the wives and children of the dead men locked away to starve in their homes. Anyone who dared help them was arrested and punished. So, tell me—if you find your friend is a murderer, how long can you keep him as a friend?’
Anna paused and looked down at her hands. That was pretty much the line she had used herself about the Stalinists. But she could also make the opposing case; she’d heard it made back to her often enough. Who are those witnesses? Defectors, you say? They’ve got a vested interest in lying. And what about the documents? You know how easy it is to confect documents, don’t you? The French, the CIA, MI6, the tsarist secret police, for Christ’s sake! You’ve heard of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, haven’t you? Want to start up a pogrom? Just get your secret police to counterfeit an inflammatory document first … On and on and on. She’d heard all the excuses before.
In the end, she was inclined to believe much of what Marin Katich was saying about Ho Chi Minh. That didn’t lessen her anti-war convictions one bit. So what if his article muddied the waters? They were pretty muddy to start with. All of this went through her mind before she decided on détente.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘You’ve convinced me to run your article. You’re entitled to put these points, to make this argument on the grounds of free speech, at the very least. It won’t go in this issue. It’s chock-a-block. But I will put it in the next one. Deal?’
‘Deal.’ He put out his hand.
She reached across and shook it for the second time. The electricity she felt at his touch surprised her.
‘Now …’ she said, opening the drawer on the other side of the desk and pulling out a plastic bag filled with dark green herb. ‘I need a joint. Want to join me … Marin A. Katich?’
‘That’s right. Your short-term memory’s okay. So, what do you call that drawer?’
‘That’s the Drawer of Happy Outcomes.’