18 SEPTEMBER 1970
ANNA WAS WORKING in her glassed-in editor’s office at The Tribe when Pierre Villiers burst in and threw a pile of copy onto her desk.
‘Fuck this man!’ he cried.
‘Who?’ said Anna, genuinely perplexed.
‘Bob-fucking-Dylan man.’
‘What about him?’
‘He’s pro-war, that’s what,’ said Pierre. He spat a wad of masticated gum into the rubbish bin as if expelling some rancid thing. Anna picked up the bundle of fax paper.
‘What the hell is this?’ she asked.
‘It’s a piece by A.J. Weberman,’ said Pierre. ‘We’ll have to run it; but fucken hell, it’s a bummer.’
‘Weberman? Never heard of him.’
‘Weberman’s the underground’s Bob Dylan investigator,’ said Pierre, unaware that over his shoulder a large, dark-complected figure had just appeared in the doorway. ‘Runs a course in New York called Dylanology. Got caught going through Dylan’s rubbish bins with his students.’
‘That’s a low act.’
The voice came from behind Pierre. Anna looked up at the figure in the doorway. She felt a flush of warmth and noticed at the same moment Pierre’s grimace when he recognised who it was.
‘G’day,’ she said to Marin Katich, who walked straight in and took a seat, his presence immediately altering the vibe between her and her deputy editor. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’
‘I was on campus. Thought I’d drop by.’ Marin caught Pierre’s eye. ‘How are you going, mate?’
Pierre responded with a sullen nod. ‘I’ll take those back,’ he said, retrieving the bundle of papers from Anna’s hands. ‘I’ve got to get on with this.’
‘Hang on,’ said Marin. ‘Who’s this bloke going through Dylan’s garbage?’
‘The gonzo journalist A.J. Weberman,’ said Pierre, somewhat pompously, as if he alone was hip to this.
Marin looked puzzled. ‘Gonzo?’ he queried.
‘It’s a big thing in the States,’ Anna explained. ‘The journalist puts herself or himself in the centre of the story, completely subjective reporting, immersive, no need to pretend you’ve got no stake in the outcome.’
Marin smiled at that. ‘Hasn’t that always been your guiding principle here?’ he asked mischievously.
‘More an aspiration,’ said Anna.
‘Come on,’ said Pierre. ‘Gonzo’s way more radical than that.’
Anna judged Pierre had sensed the chance for sport at Marin’s expense.
‘It works best,’ he went on, ‘if you ingest some mind-altering substance and infiltrate yourself into somewhere you don’t belong,’ he said, turning to Marin. ‘If it was you, for example, I’d slip you a tab of acid, dress you in cheesecloth and sandals, and send you off to report on the Moratorium.’
‘I’d be up for that,’ said Marin. ‘So what? This Weberman bloke dropped acid and climbed into Bob Dylan’s rubbish bin?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ said Pierre. ‘But I wouldn’t put it past him. Weberman used to be Dylan’s biggest fan; now his schtick is that Bob’s sold out, turned into a rich, secret conservative who doesn’t believe any of the shit in his old protest songs.’
‘Wow,’ said Anna.
‘Yeah, Dylan’s been captured by the military-industrial complex, hostage to its agenda anyway. So Weberman starts up the D.L.F.—Dylan Liberation Front—to free Bob from himself.’
‘That part’s cool and funny,’ said Anna. ‘But saying Dylan’s pro the Vietnam War? He’s just taking the piss, isn’t he?’
‘You ever seen Dylan at a protest?’ said Pierre.
‘Joan Baez says he’s not into politics,’ said Anna. ‘I can dig that.’
‘Hang on,’ said Marin. ‘This Weberman might be onto something. Dylan did an interview two years ago and this fella asked him if artists had a responsibility to use their influence to stop the war. Dylan turns around and says, “I know some very good artists who are for the war.” The interviewer nearly fell out of his chair.’
‘Trust you to know that,’ said Pierre.
‘Why wouldn’t I?’ said Marin. ‘I’m writing a thesis on hypocrisy.’
‘I’ve never heard of Dylan saying that stuff,’ said Anna.
‘It was an interview for Sing Out magazine,’ said Pierre.
‘So,’ she said, ‘you’re agreeing with Marin?’
‘I’m not taking pleasure from it like he is,’ said Pierre.
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said Anna. ‘He wrote “Masters of War”, for fuck’s sake. He’s got to have been taken out of context.’
She looked at Marin, but saw he was staring hard at Pierre.
‘Taking pleasure?’ said Marin. ‘That’s total bullshit, Pierre. These are just facts. Dylan lets his guard down sometimes. He told the same interviewer about a painter, an old friend of his—apparently this painter’s all for the war. So much so, he’s ready to go over there himself to join the fight. And Bob says, “Well, that’s something I can comprehend.” No wonder he’s not marching.’
Pierre winked at Anna and stood up, tucking the Weberman article under his arm.
‘Don’t you know someone like that?’ he said and turned to walk back into the newsroom. He stopped at the door and called back at Anna. ‘By the way. Don’t forget there’s a meeting of the V.M.C. tonight, at Bob Gould’s house.’
‘Oh, bugger,’ she said. ‘I’d completely forgotten. What time?’
‘Starts at six, supposedly,’ said Pierre, glancing at Marin. ‘But it’ll probably get going later than that and drag on for hours, as usual.’
Pierre left them to think about that and drifted back into The Tribe’s crowded newsroom, brandishing the Weberman diatribe and ready to plot the downfall of that famous Nixonian reactionary, Bob Dylan.
When he was out of sight, Anna stood up and held Marin in a tight hug. She put both hands on his buttocks and pulled him closer, went up on her toes and whispered in his ear: ‘I had a different idea for tonight.’
Marin kissed her.
‘Why don’t we meet for dinner,’ he said. ‘Once you’ve finished with the Moratorium revolutionaries.’
‘They’re not—’
‘I know,’ Marin interrupted her. ‘It’s a broad coalition. Of course it is, but you’re meeting at Bob Gould’s, right?’
‘Yeah. So?’
‘So he’s a paleo-Trot, isn’t he?’
Anna didn’t bite. She was well aware that the fabled broad coalition had been rapidly disintegrating in the months since Moratorium One. The union movement had lost interest. Frank Rosen’s faction of the Communist Party was trying to gain control of the Vietnam Moratorium Committees. So were the Trotskyites and the Maoists, with notably less success. Meanwhile, the right-wing of the Labor Party was on a unity ticket with the conservatives in their hatred of the French Socialist–inspired idea of ‘contestation’. They were anxious to stop a radical vanguard, out of their control, successfully mobilising mass action for change.
‘How about dinner at seven-thirty?’ she said. ‘Over the road from my place.’
Marin pulled a face. ‘That veggie joint?’
‘The Toucan, yeah,’ she said. ‘I thought you liked it.’
‘No, I love it,’ he said, kissing her again. ‘See you there.’
•
Marin left Anna at The Tribe, ran down the stairs, kick-started the big bike and roared out onto City Road. He had some free time after handing in two big essays, and he wanted to get home to Leichhardt while his father was still on shift on the Bridge and Petar was still at school. Twice in the past week, Anna had asked him about his mother and her questions had lodged in his mind like a splinter. He was in the habit of not thinking about the woman who had walked out on him and Petar, but when he did it was like a sweet sickness. None of his memories of her made sense.
He parked the bike in the driveway of his house, closed the gate and yanked on the roller door until it went up with its usual tortured scream. In the back of the garage were stacks of mouldering boxes. They were full of old toys and adventure books and other belongings the brothers had grown out of. He found many things in them: his and Petar’s school reports; forgotten sporting pennants and trophies; exercise books full of childish compositions; drawings and paintings. He sorted through this musty old stuff, oddly discomforted by nostalgia for his disturbing childhood, until he at last found what he was looking for: a shoebox full of photographs.
Marin sat there among the scattered relics of his childhood and flicked slowly through the photos. Most were school class portraits, or sports photos of Petar and him playing cricket and rugby, or snapshots of awkward birthday parties. Buried among this dross, he found a single photo of his mother. He had hoped it would still be there, having somehow escaped Ivo’s purge. It had been taken one summer when Petar was an infant. She was holding the chubby toddler on her lap while he, Marin, was standing beside her, bare-chested in a pair of khaki shorts. She was a beautiful woman with calm green eyes. Her arm was over his shoulder.
There had been no warning to the boys that she was going, and since then no phone calls and no letters. Questions to his father went unanswered and soon the boys were forbidden to speak her name. Marin’s parents had had plenty of arguments that he had witnessed as a child, so he knew there had been tensions; but there had been no final confrontation, no dramatic departure from the house. From one day to the next, she had simply vanished.
As he grew older, Marin began to harbour dark fantasies about what might have happened to her, and with Ivo’s black moods murder became the dominant fantasy. Only once did he confront his father directly, Ivo so drunk that he was barely coherent, yet he had given Marin his only account of what might have happened: ‘She’s back with the fucking communists! Back in Bosnia! She betrayed us, Marin, betrayed us all.’
Marin carefully tucked the photograph into a pocket and packed away the boxes. He left a note on the fridge, vaguely explaining that he would not be home tonight.
•
At 7.30 pm, he was in the Toucan Café on Glebe Point Road, immediately opposite Anna’s apartment. From where he was sitting, he had a view through the bay windows of her room under the slate witch’s hat. Anna had left a desk lamp on and he could see the top of the big cedar wardrobe and the globe of the rice-paper lantern hanging from the ceiling. It was strange looking into the room from the outside.
He had a mental image of Anna hunched over her typewriter in her silk dressing gown, enveloped in smoke from a hash-enhanced rollie, puffing on it as she banged away at an essay, or an editorial for The Tribe, or an overwrought anti-war speech. He thought about her energy, her maddening enthusiasms, her passion for ideas and her private gentleness. He felt a fluttering sensation in his stomach, anxious to see her walk in through the door, anxious to know she was real—anxious, for no reason, that he might lose her.
Marin ordered a soy-milk banana smoothie with wheat germ. He grimaced when it arrived and wished he had arranged to meet at the pub down the road; no way to change that now. At eight o’clock, there was still no sign of her and he walked outside to have a smoke on the pavement, staring uselessly up into the empty room, as if some activity might suddenly begin there. He went back into the restaurant and a few minutes later the waiter came over to tell him there was a phone call for him. It was Anna, apologising for being late. She’d been held up in a meeting.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. Relieved just to hear her voice, he told her not to worry about it. ‘I’ll be able to get away soon. Will you wait for me?’
‘Maybe at the pub?’
‘Or at my place?’ she suggested. ‘Rob in the apartment at the back has a spare key. He’s home now and I rang him and asked him to give it to you, so if you want to go in …’
‘Sure.’
‘I’ll make a nice supper for us later.’
•
The front door of the Glebe house was always unlocked, so Marin entered and climbed the stairs, up past the handpainted eye above the first-floor iridology studio, up to the apartment at the back of the house on Anna’s floor. Through the door, he heard classical music. He knocked loudly.
It opened a crack and a pair of bloodshot eyes peered out of the gloom. ‘Yeesssss.’
‘I’m Anna’s friend,’ said Marin. ‘She told me she rang you about a spare key …’
‘Oh. Oh, right, so you’re Marin.’ The door opened to reveal the shiny, inflamed, pockmarked face in which those intense, red-rimmed eyes were set. It was an unhealthy visage framed by an unruly mop of greasy black hair.
‘I’m Rob. Come in. Come in. Would you like a cup of tea, a glass of sherry? Something stronger?’
‘No, thanks, I’m fine.’
‘Now don’t be shy. Anna said I should be nice to you.’
Rob came out into the hallway and took Marin by the arm. ‘She said she’d be some time, and I told her I’d take care of you. Don’t make a liar of me. At least come in while I find the key.’
Marin saw now that this odd creature was wearing a red silk dressing gown loosely knotted around his waist and, evidently, nothing else but a pair of Chinese slippers. Marin reluctantly allowed himself to be guided through the doorway and, now that he could hear the music properly, he was struck by its beguiling quality.
The hallway was dimly lit and painted as deep a red as Rob’s silk gown. There were pictures, mostly old oil paintings in gilt frames, hung along it at intervals. Marin glimpsed an untidy bedroom with rumpled satin sheets, gold like the picture frames. The hallway opened into a large room dominated by an upright piano and huge bookcases, more than half of which appeared to be stacked full of long-play records. One shelf held a spinning turntable and at either end of the room were large speakers that filled the space with a sound so perfect that he had the sensation of sitting in the middle of an orchestra.
Marin stood still for a moment, mesmerised by it. ‘What’s this music?’ he asked.
Rob paused, gathering the silk gown tighter around him and retying it. His head tilted to one side and his hands fluttered up as if he were conducting the invisible orchestra. ‘Sublime, isn’t it,’ he mused.
‘It is.’
‘It’s Mahler’s fourth symphony, the third movement. It’s hard to believe this came out of the head of a mortal man. Sit, sit and listen.’ Rob gestured to a pair of faded wing-backed chairs on an oriental carpet. ‘I’ll get you a drink and find those keys.’
Marin sat down and relaxed in spite of himself. The symphony swelled with an enthralling beauty, but at the same time he heard undertones of something darker. It immersed him and directly engaged his emotions. He had never experienced classical music in this way.
Rob returned and put a large glass of whisky in his hand. ‘I thought you might prefer this to a cup of tea,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind if I leave the volume high?’
‘No, no, I like it.’
‘That’s good, then. It needs to be heard like this, loud and present, not as background sound, especially if you’re listening to it for the first time. Now, I’m still trying to find where I put that key,’ said Rob and slipped out again.
Katich sipped the whisky, which was surprisingly smooth, and he felt its warmth suffuse him. He became aware of themes in the music coming and going like tempting glimpses of a familiar tune, lifting the spirits for a moment then giving way to a slow, harmonious peace that made him imagine drifting to sleep in some sheltered place. Then, without warning, it turned menacing, a sudden storm gathering with clashing instrumentation and a drum beating a relentless slave-galley rhythm.
Rob came back into the room at that moment, carrying his own glass of whisky and the bottle. He put the bottle down on a side table, folded himself into the opposite wing-backed chair and took a long drink. He caught Marin’s attention with a languid gesture of his hand.
‘Mahler once described this section in a letter,’ he said. ‘He wrote that it’s as if the sky goes dark and horrible, suddenly ghastly, like being overtaken by an attack of panic on the most beautiful day in a light-filled forest.’
‘That’s a good description,’ said Marin.
‘But wait for it all to change,’ said Rob as the cacophony reached a climax. ‘We’re about to ascend to heaven.’
Rob carefully arranged the silk gown over his knees, unsuccessfully protecting his modesty, as he fished out of a pocket a packet of Marlboro Red. He tapped one out and reached across to offer it to Marin. ‘They don’t let fags into heaven,’ said Rob with an ironic wink. ‘Best to bring your own.’
They sat silently, drinking whisky and smoking, as the movement turned from sinister to ethereal; Marin understood what Rob had meant by the ascent to heaven. The highest shimmering strains of the violins became higher and higher still, accompanied by sparse notes on the harps until the flutes chimed in, creating the sensation of slow, slow flight.
‘It’s almost an out-of-body experience,’ said Rob as he leant over to refill his companion’s glass. Already light-headed from the whisky, Marin nodded, drank some more and looked down. He was thinking of the photograph in his pocket. His mind had gone back to the day it was taken.
They were on a summer holiday. He was shirtless, having run back from the surf, and his mother was sitting in the shade breastfeeding baby Petar. In that moment, the harsh sunlight filtered by the gum trees, she was like a Renaissance Madonna. He felt tears welling up in his eyes and put a hand to his forehead to cover them.
The music had done this to him, somehow recovering that memory of innocence in a shadowed forest. How had Rob described it? Suddenly ghastly, like being overtaken by an attack of panic on the most beautiful day in a light-filled forest. Then it came to him. Someone else was there, the person behind the camera. Of course, it had to be his father. Ivo had taken the picture. He was there all along. The thought sent a chill through Marin, drying his tears even as the music reached its final note of yearning joy and sadness.
As the note died out, Rob resumed his disquisition.
‘It’s coming to the end now,’ he said as the orchestra picked up the strands of an earlier tune. ‘One of the strangest endings to any symphony, a poem sung by the soprano. She has sat still, patient, in front of the conductor through the whole movement. Imagine all of that emotion filling her up and now she stands to sing.’
Marin looked up as the woman’s voice filled the room with a ringing, joyful sound, an antidote to the earlier menace.
‘It’s German,’ said Rob. ‘Do you understand any of it?’
‘No, I don’t speak German.’
His father did, of course …
‘It’s a song Mahler wrote before he even started work on the Fourth Symphony. Das himmlische Leben—‘The Heavenly Life’—a child’s vision of paradise as a garden in which your every need is provided for: fish that swim happily into nets, deer that run down the street, overflowing fruit bowls and so on. Listen,’ said Rob, holding up a long finger. ‘No worldly turmoil is heard in heaven. We all live in sweetest peace. That’s what she’s singing.’
Rob was conducting again with small and subtle movements of his left hand and he shut his eyes. Then he returned to reality and refilled his glass, offering the bottle again to Marin who waved it away.
‘I’ve had enough, thanks.’
‘Some critics hate this song,’ said Rob. ‘They say it’s too mawkish, but I think they just don’t get it. There’s nothing mawkish about Mahler’s heaven. Alongside the beauty, there’s malevolence and danger: John lets out the little lamb. Herod the butcher lies in wait for it! We lead a patient, innocent, patient darling little lamb to its death! Do you see? Herod, the mass murderer, the slaughterer of the innocents, he’s right there among the children in heaven. What should we make of that?’
Marin looked at him for a moment before answering. ‘Evil is everywhere. It’s a part of life.’
Rob looked at him thoughtfully.
Marin heard the song finish and the weighted arm of the turntable slid off and began jerking. Rob jumped up and placed the arm carefully into its cradle, then turned back.
‘Bravo, Marin,’ he said. ‘That’s rather a deep answer. I think you’ve understood this music better than many who’ve heard it a thousand times.’
Now the spell of the music was over, Marin stood up from his chair. ‘I better go,’ he said. ‘Anna will be home soon.’
Rob reached into his pocket and produced the key. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘You’ll need this.’
‘Thanks,’ said Marin. ‘And thank you for explaining the music. You’re a good teacher.’ He gestured to the piano. ‘Is that what you do?’
‘No, no,’ Rob laughed. ‘I teach linguistics.’
‘Oh, I don’t know much about linguistics.’
‘No, nobody does,’ said Rob. He shook Marin’s hand. ‘It was nice to meet you, Marin. Not many people would sit and listen to music they have never heard before with such attention. It really did engage you, am I right? Come back again when you have some spare time.’
‘I will,’ said Marin, doubting it.
•
It was after ten o’clock when Anna got back home. Marin was lying on the couch in the sitting room, reading in the pool of light from an angled lamp. It was an unseasonably warm night and he had opened the doors to the balcony. She leant across the back of the couch and ran her fingers through his hair.
‘Oh, hello,’ he said, putting the book aside and sitting up.
Anna kissed him, threw down her satchel and slumped into the old armchair opposite the couch. ‘Sorry I’m so late. That meeting was a nightmare.’
Marin raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s the problem with revolutionary committees,’ he said. ‘It’s never more than one or two steps down the track before they start the purges.’
Anna laughed. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘I wish that was just a joke.’
‘It’s no laughing matter,’ said Marin with mock solemnity, retrieving the book he’d been reading. ‘Especially if they come searching and find stuff like this in your bookcases.’
Anna recognised the cover: a man sitting in a dark room, his face deliberately scratched out—Francis Bacon’s Man in Blue V.
‘Darkness at Noon,’ she said. ‘Imagine you zeroing in on that.’
‘I just didn’t expect to find an anti-communist classic among the usual suspects.’
‘Well, most of Orwell’s books are there too,’ she said. ‘Have you read Homage to Catalonia?’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘It’s Orwell’s memoir of the Spanish Civil War. If you’re interested in Koestler, you’d better read it. There’s a connection between the two of them. Koestler was in Spain at the same time as Orwell. Sent there by the Soviets as a spy. Did you know that?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ said Marin, impressed again by the depth of her knowledge.
Anna explained how Franco’s security police had Arthur Koestler under surveillance, tumbled that he was a Soviet spy and threw him in prison.
‘Koestler was sure they were going to execute him,’ she said. ‘That’s why Darkness at Noon feels so real. He knows exactly what would have been going through Rubashov’s head as he waited to be dragged down into the cellar.’
‘I just read those last pages again,’ said Marin. ‘Do you remember? Rubashov insists they let him take a piss even though he knows they’re about to put a bullet in his head.’
‘It’s hard to forget,’ said Anna. ‘Then, when the executioner is behind him, he smells the oiled leather of the man’s gun belt and all he can think is: where’s the Promised Land? The poor bastard knows he’s been duped. No Promised Land; nothing but desert and darkness.’
Marin stared at her with frank admiration. He loved her mind, the way it worked.
‘You know,’ she said. ‘Despite what you might imagine, it was my father who gave me that book. He was the one who taught me to question everything.’
‘Yet he stayed in the Party,’ said Marin. ‘After Budapest, even after Prague.’
‘That’s right,’ said Anna. ‘He could have walked away. That’s what I did. But he’s a reformer. He believes the only way to change things is from within.’
‘He’s got his work cut out for him.’
‘That’s true,’ she acknowledged. ‘So … you met Rob, then?’
Marin saw amusement in her eyes. ‘I did.’
‘And?’
‘And what?’
‘Rob usually makes an impression.’
‘Oh, he made an impression all right,’ said Marin. ‘He’s a cross between Bertolt Brecht and Frank Thring.’
‘The red silk gown?’
‘Yeah, that and nothing else.’
‘I always avert my eyes.’
‘He translated a nice German song for me. It was quite a performance—the soprano, a glass of scotch and a pair of low-hanging hairy balls.’
Anna laughed again and stood up. ‘Well, if you can put up with a few eccentricities, he’s worth it. He’s a genius, actually. Now I bet you’re hungry. Come on—I’ll make something to eat. I’m starving.’ As Anna busied herself assembling a salad in the small kitchen, Marin straddled a chair and watched her bend to light the oven grill.
‘Do you want a hand?’
‘No, no, it’s fine.’
‘Can I just grab your bum then?’
‘Don’t you dare.’
He reached out, but she swung around and threw the lit match into his lap.
‘Hey!’ Marin yelled. ‘Fuck!’ He jumped up, flapping his hands at the flame.
‘I warned you,’ she said as she lit the gas and slid a tray of bread under the griller.
‘That was dangerous,’ said Marin.
‘You were playing with fire,’ she said, coming back to sit on his lap. ‘And I was protecting my dignity.’
They kissed until he smelled something burning. ‘Speaking of fire …’
‘Oops, the toast!’
Anna jumped up, pulled the tray out, flipped the smoking bread slices and pushed it back in.
‘See what happens when you distract me,’ she said, handing him a bottle of wine. ‘Here, open this.’
Anna grilled cheese and tomato on the toast, sprinkled it with tabasco and salt, and set it on the table with the salad as Marin poured the wine.
‘Not exactly gourmet fare, I’m afraid,’ she said.
‘You’re wrong. The tabasco makes all the difference.’
They ate and drank until the hunger pangs subsided. Marin refilled their glasses; he watched as Anna picked at the salad for a while until she detected his mood had changed.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘I’ve got something to show you.’
‘Okay,’ she said, still fishing in the salad bowl, her fingers on an oily lettuce leaf. He pulled the photograph out of his pocket and held it out to her. Anna wiped her fingers clean and took it from him, holding it carefully by the edges.
‘Your mother?’
‘Yep, that’s her. I found the picture at home.’
‘She’s beautiful, Marin. Will you tell me about her now?’
‘Her name is Samira.’
Anna pointed at the chubby little kid.
‘And that’s Petar?’
‘Yes, just a toddler then. He was five when she left.’
‘Look at you—little tough guy. Is it really true that you have no other pictures of her?’
‘Petar has some that he found in the house years ago.’
‘But your father tried to destroy them all. That’s terribly cruel.’
‘She left him, Anna. And she left us. We were just kids. Would you forgive that?’
Anna felt a surge of indignation. ‘She must have had her reasons,’ she said. ‘There’s always more to stories like that.’
‘Maybe, but she never wrote to us. Never made contact in all these years. How do you explain that? Is that how mothers behave?’
‘No, that’s horrible. But I would still want to speak to her and hear what she had to say.’
‘All these years I’ve thought about her as if she’s dead. That’s all I can do.’
‘But you still kept the photo.’
‘Yeah, but I only went to find it to show you.’
‘Do you think you’ll ever want to go and find her? To ask her all those questions?’
‘She went back to Bosnia with some man. I don’t even know his name.’
‘She was still young. She may have had other children. You could have half-brothers or -sisters over there.’
‘I don’t want to think about that.’
‘Don’t you think something will always be missing if you never know?’
‘Maybe it’s best not to know.’
Anna pondered this. ‘Her name—Samira—is that a Catholic name?’
‘I wondered if you might ask that.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s a Muslim name.’
‘You’re kidding! Your mum’s a Muslim?’
‘Not a practising Muslim. She was quite secular, as you’d imagine since she married a Catholic. And she’s blonde with green eyes, same as mine. Who could tell if it weren’t for the name, but I do remember her telling me years ago that her father used to go regularly to the mosque.’
‘Your grandfather.’
•
On Friday morning, the day of Moratorium Two, Marin woke to find Anna already up and in her battledress, although he knew she would vehemently object to such a militaristic description of her costume. Somehow peacedress just didn’t trip off the tongue.
He was looking at her through the bars at the end of the brass bed. His gaze moved up from the laced ankle boots to the tight black jeans and the denim jacket embroidered with a large peace symbol and freighted with multifarious buttons and badges. Then up to the Palestinian keffiyeh around her neck and the woven band around her forehead. She was the very model of the modern militant.
He interrupted her preparations: ‘You off for a job interview?’
‘Oh,’ said Anna ‘You’re awake.’
‘An extra in Zabriskie Point, maybe?’ he said.
‘Smart-arse.’
‘Can’t you just come back to bed?’
Anna jumped up beside him, knees bouncing on the mattress so the metal frame rattled, a reminder of the long night. She leant over him.
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘You knew what you were signing up for.’
‘I’m not complaining,’ said Marin. He reached up, grabbed two handfuls of the keffiyeh, pulled her down and kissed her.
She jumped back up, smiling down at him. ‘We can come back to this later, can’t we?’ she said. ‘Tonight, when it’s over. Keep the spare key. I promise I won’t be late.’
‘I’ll probably have to bail you out first.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘We’ve got contingencies for that. But I won’t do anything silly.’
He wanted to say: It’s not you I’m worried about.
‘Okay, see you later,’ he said. ‘Take care.’
‘Of course,’ she said.
That was the only false note, and it seemed to hang in the air after she blew a kiss from the doorway and left.
•
Marin levered himself off the creaking bed, went to the bay window and leant over her desk to look out. He saw her on the street below: lithe and full of energy, a colourful, captivating presence moving swiftly past the dull morning commuters at the bus stop. He noticed the gold, woven peace sign on her back was glowing in the morning sunlight and it seemed to him in that moment like a moving target. She turned the corner onto Parramatta Road and was lost to him.
He went into the little kitchen and found it cluttered with last night’s plates and wineglasses. He filled the Atomic coffee machine, which looked, as the name suggested, like a bomb. He washed up, emptied the ashtrays and got things shipshape as the Atomic sat quivering on the gas burner until a wild burst of steam shot out of its safety valve.
Marin drank his coffee black and bitter, and smoked a cigarette while he thought about what to do. He thought about the Moratorium and how it was all going to shit. The Maoists and the Trots were at each other’s throats, and the Anarchists were at war with both of them. The Anarchists, at least, he felt some sympathy with. Sure, they were against the war, but they also opposed the Stalinist regime in North Vietnam and they liked to rile up the other rads with the chant: ‘Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh, chuck him in the garbage bin.’
Down in Melbourne, Albert Langer’s lunatic Maoists at Monash Uni, infamous for collecting money to send to the Viet Cong, now had the student council in permanent session passing revolutionary motions. Here in Sydney, the nutters wanted everyone to dress up in black pyjamas and carry NLF flags. Marin understood that the hard left was no longer satisfied with marches and speeches. They wanted a serious confrontation with the police army, the imperialist state and the bourgeoisie.
Nor did the state seem any less crazy to him. Government ministers were ramping it up with hysterical rhetoric about Moratorium ‘mob rule’. Billy Snedden, the minister in charge of conscription, had condemned protesters as ‘political bikies pack-raping democracy’. Others had warned that the new social movements behind the Moratorium were bent on destroying society by weakening the cement between its bricks. As if to remedy that in single-armed combat, Attorney-General Tom Hughes had set upon protesters outside his house with a cricket bat.
For all this headline-grabbing nonsense, Marin knew the outcry from the federal politicians was just piss and wind. He was more worried about their state counterparts. Here in New South Wales, the premier, Bob Askin, had given his police free rein for Moratorium Two. Askin told the press he’d been too lenient ahead of the first big demo in May; he had changed the Summary Offences Act to make it easier to arrest demonstrators, urging his judges and magistrates to make an example of these ‘lawless minorities’.
Late last night, Marin had learned from Anna that the police commissioner had refused, at the last minute, to approve the Moratorium organisers’ applications for the marchers to use city streets. The police were now demanding that tens of thousands of protestors confine themselves to narrow footpaths. When she told him this news, Marin responded that Blind Freddy could see that both sides were spoiling for a fight and that an ugly, violent confrontation was inevitable. Anna had not welcomed his advice; she said she had enough to think about without that kind of negativity.
The conversation had started badly and, when it threatened to get worse, he shut up and kept his darkest thoughts to himself. Marin’s biggest fear was that the police would target Anna as a key activist and organiser, and that, as the daughter of a senior communist, the target on her back was even bigger. He decided she would need an angel looking over her shoulder.
•
In the late afternoon, Marin was moving among the crowd of spectators at Railway Square, waiting for the marchers coming down Broadway from the university. He could see them now snaking towards him, a tight-packed mob incongruously resembling a medieval army behind its banners and under its forest of flags. Marin had dressed in a black suit with a white shirt and tie, like an office worker out to gawk at the demo, or one of the many journalists who were buzzing around the crowd as purposefully as worker bees. He saw that the media people, especially those carrying cameras, appeared immune from the rules about staying off the street. They hovered unchallenged behind the rows of hundreds of blue-suited police whose job was to keep people pressed onto the sidewalk. Marin watched a TV crew dip into the crowd and question a group of bystanders. A young woman with shopping bags in each hand giggled and leant into the outstretched microphone. ‘I’d march,’ she said. ‘But I wouldn’t be game enough really.’ A young man nearby with a pockmarked face and hair to his shoulders sought out the camera: ‘I’m here because there’s a Moratorium going on,’ he said in the voice of a man twice his age. ‘And I don’t believe in it and I want to show my disapproval when it comes by.’
This unexpected exchange caused a flurry of activity from other TV reporters, who fretted they might miss a defining moment. A supercilious-looking fellow in a tweed jacket plunged into the crowd and thrust his wind-socked microphone in Marin’s direction like a blunted bayonet. When Marin turned away, the camera’s eye settled instead on a middle-aged woman, stern-faced with a stiff perm held in place by a chiffon scarf.
Tweedy asked her why she was here.
‘To see that it’s carried out orderly,’ she said, her downturned mouth barely moving. ‘Just to see what the young ones have got in mind.’
‘Do you support the Moratorium?’ asked Tweedy.
‘I do,’ she said.
Now they could hear the repetitive chanting of the approaching demonstration: ‘One, two, three, four … We don’t want your fucking war!’
Marin felt the arousal of the crowd. People bent towards the road, craning their necks, policemen tensed, photographers ran down the road, kneeling like supplicants before the oncoming marchers.
Tweedy turned away from the little group that had gathered around his camera and stood alert. Marin imagined his ears going up like a retriever. But two men in his vicinity refused to be ignored. Marin had seen them emerge, half-cut, from the nearby pub and make a beeline for the posh-accented reporter with the leather patches on his elbows, evidently spotting the sure signs of a wanker.
The taller of the two, a horse-faced tough with dangerous smile and a black tooth, grabbed Tweedy’s arm.
‘One of my mates was shot in Vietnam, mate,’ he said, eyes moist. ‘You reckon that’s funny, do ya? You reckon these marchers care, do ya?’
His drinking companion jumped in: ‘You couldn’t be a bigger clown if you tried!’ He had a pudding-bowl haircut and a beer belly that put his shirt under strain at every button. Marin saw that the pair had worked themselves up for a fight with the first pacifist they came across and it might have gone south for Tweedy at that moment but for the intervention of a big man with an impressive Roman nose who pushed in front of them.
‘What about the Czechs?’ he demanded of Tweedy. ‘Only Vietnamese people suffer? Why not one of you people got one placard Freedom for the Czechs!’
‘Not my people …’ Tweedy began, before being pulled out of danger by his cameraman. The reporter pedalled backwards holding the microphone like a defensive weapon.
The first marchers had reached the crowd on the footpath and were forced to push on through, into what had now become a serious bottleneck.
ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR … WE DON’T WANT YOUR FUCKING WAR!
•
Marin stepped out onto the road ahead of the crush, moving alongside Tweedy and his crew as if he too was part of the fourth estate. He scanned the crowd searching for Anna. As the body of the demonstration hit the bottleneck, it was obvious that this many people could not be funnelled through such a narrow space. When individuals spilled onto the road, the police began cutting them out like rogue cattle, roughly pinioning and manhandling them into the back of waiting wagons. Shouts of outrage, screams and cries came from the milling crowd.
In the uproar, voices were indistinguishable, but Marin guessed that Horse Face and his mate had found their real enemy. There were scuffles and flurries of violence, which worsened when the police—in squads, in pairs or on their own—elbowed their way into the disintegrating march to rip flagpoles out of the hands of protesters. Marin heard them shouting that they were confiscating weapons, that flagpoles were potential spears or pikes.
He saw a tug of war between a policeman at one end and a young woman at the other, fighting to keep hold of her red-and-black anarchist flag. The flag was finally ripped off the pole, and the woman wrapped it around her neck and threw up a fist to the cheers of those around her.
Then Marin heard a familiar voice on a loudspeaker: ‘STAY ON THE FOOTPATH! STAY COOL! DON’T BE PROVOKED. SLOW DOWN AND STAY ON THE FOOTPATH!’
He spotted Anna up above the crowd. She had climbed onto a big green box built to house telephone junctions. One arm was wrapped around a light pole and the other held a megaphone. She was directing the marchers into the narrow space on the footpath. He found it strange watching her from a distance in this role; regardless of his own political views, he felt a surge of pride, but he was careful to keep out of her sight. He knew Anna would not thank him for being here and would probably flip her lid at the idea of being stalked by an overprotective boyfriend.
‘STAY OFF THE STREET! THEY WILL ARREST YOU IF YOU SET ONE FOOT ON THE STREET! THE COPS ARE TRYING TO PROVOKE US! STAY OFF THE STREET! DON’T LET THEM! DON’T FALL INTO THEIR TRAP!’
The police were still wrestling flags from the hands of protesters, but he saw that Anna and other marshals had restored some order. Most of the protesters managed to avoid arrest, edging through the bottleneck to continue the long march up George Street.
Marin skipped ahead of them, running with the media. He passed department stores, office blocks, a cinema, cafés and other small traders and then, on either side of the street, he saw the Yugoslav travel agencies his father had branded as treacherous communist fronts. Further on, in the forecourt of Sydney Town Hall, a large body of police and empty paddy wagons were waiting, ready to arrest any radicals who might try to occupy this prime protest real estate, where only a few months earlier protesters had gathered during Moratorium One to make their speeches and burn their draft cards.
By mid-afternoon, protesters began to pour into Wynyard Park. One large group had walked over the Harbour Bridge. Others came down King Street, some from Circular Quay, or to Wynyard itself on buses and trains. The numbers swelled and Marin heard estimates from journalists, who claimed some mystical ability to estimate crowd sizes—fifteen thousand, said some; twenty thousand, said others. They all agreed the police would halve those estimates.
The large numbers of police around the park were determined that no one should leave the tight cordon in which they planned to contain the growing crowd. Marin tried to keep Anna in sight as she moved from place to place, speaking to other organisers. He found a marshal with an orange vest and a Moratorium armband, and learned from him that when the whole group had assembled the protesters would defy police instructions en masse and march down the centre of York Street back to Town Hall to occupy its forecourt and stairs.
There was no traffic in York Street. The police had closed it at either end. As a result, there was no ostensible reason why the marchers should remain on the footpaths. Marin realised this was what the police and the premier had wanted all along and had planned for: a fig leaf of legality to crush the demonstration. They would provoke a violent confrontation to send the message to the cautious middle class that they should stay away from this radical movement.
As people continued to make their way into the little park—spilling out of buses, walking in from side streets—it filled up like a packed peak-hour train, and Marin sensed a claustrophobic edginess. He watched a middle-aged woman with three kids in tow; she was searching for a way out, and being rebuffed by police. They happily let people in, but not out. He looked around at the faces in the burgeoning, restive, hemmed-in crowd. Many looked tired and pissed off, or simply confused. A smaller group were hyped up, ready to go. He had the odd thought that they were like replacement troops sent to the trenches, nervously waiting for the order to go over the top.
He glimpsed Anna from time to time, bent in urgent talks with groups of worried organisers, and he was trying to keep her in sight when a troupe of Viet Cong swept in front of him, performing for Tweedy’s camera. They wore black outfits, the dark stripes of their headbands stark against white grease-painted faces. Painted tears of blood tracked down from their blackened eyes and blood dripped from the corners of their mouths. They moved in slow circles, stalking an imaginary enemy with invisible machine guns before dying sequentially, each with their own artistic variation, silently screaming and writhing on the ground.
Without warning, people around Marin began to move, as if some hive mind had activated them. Up ahead, banners were unfurled, hand-drawn signs unrolled, fluttering flags raised. The march was forming. As Marin pushed his way through the press of people, someone held up a large photo of Uncle Ho and began a chant:
HO! HO! HO CHI MINH! HO! HO! HO CHI MINH!
Marin pushed past the chanters and saw through gaps in the bodies joining the march that hundreds of police were running into position as a superintendent raised his megaphone.
‘REMAIN ON THE FOOTPATHS! DO NOT WALK IN THE STREET!’
In the no man’s land between the roiling crowd and the agitated cops, photographers ran, crouched, shot, ran, crouched, shot, twisting between the opposed forces. Tweedy was there with his TV crew and Marin broke through to stand with them.
‘This could be bloody!’ Tweedy said to him, journo to journo, a strange light in his eyes. Marin looked at the lines of cops. Many were raw-faced country boys, conscripts in the police army, bussed in for the big day, on shift since dawn. Most were as tired and confused as the protesters, but some of them wore faces set in righteous anger.
ONE TWO THREE FOUR, WE DON’T WANT YOUR FUCKING WAR! ONE TWO THREE FOUR, WE DON’T WANT YOUR FUCKING WAR!
The head of the march moved slowly forwards and the superintendent issued a formal warning:
‘YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF THE LAW!’
ONE TWO THREE FOUR—
‘YOU ARE INTERFERING WITH VEHICULAR TRAFFIC!’
—WE DON’T WANT YOUR FUCKING WAR!
Marin saw a rippling movement along the frontline of police, the hive mind again, as they unhooked their numbered ID badges and shoved them into pockets. Then he saw Anna emerge, small, fragile, defiant, from behind the wide Moratorium banner. She stepped forwards with her megaphone pointed at the cops.
‘DON’T OBEY ILLEGAL ORDERS! OUR FIGHT IS NOT WITH YOU!’
A roar came from the crowd. He watched a police sergeant point her out to subordinates, an unheard order issued with fierce intensity. A chant went up from the Maoist cohort.
PIGS! PIGS! PIGS! PIGS!
The march was now well into York Street, ten people wide at its ragged head and winding back into the tight mass of demonstrators in the park.
The first flying wedge of police broke onto it like an angry wave. There was a sudden uproar of screaming and shouting. Distorted, amplified voices broadcast orders over loud hailers. In the violent confusion, skirmishes and one-on-one brawls erupted throughout the street—but still the body of the march pressed forwards, pushing more people into the melee. Marin quickly lost sight of Anna and ran to search for her. A cop grabbed his arm and he spun around and yelled the magic word: ‘Press!’ To his surprise, he was immediately released and ran on.
On the side of the road, two cops had knocked an elderly man to the ground. One aimed a kick into his ribs. Marin saw a familiar long-haired, bespectacled figure run into the fray. It was Pierre Villiers, the first time he had spotted him that day. With an inchoate shout, Pierre grappled with the cop who was kicking the grounded man. The second cop hit Pierre full in the face with his baton. His smashed glasses flew off and blood burst from his nose as he staggered back. The two cops had left their elderly victim on the ground and were dragging Pierre away when a tall, heavily built fellow forcefully intervened, using his elbows and arms to free Pierre. The cops started in on the big fellow, but then they stopped, recognising his famous face. Tom Uren, the Labor MP, a figurehead in the anti-war movement—too risky to take him on. The cops left off and moved on to the next battle. Uren helped the old man up from the ground and took him, bloodied and shaken, back into the park.
Pierre picked up his broken specs and was staring at them transfixed when Marin grabbed his arm.
‘Hey!’ he yelled. ‘Where’s Anna?’
Pierre put on his bent specs and peered at the blurry figure in front of him. Blood from his nostrils bubbled over his lips and dripped from his chin. Marin saw his eyes were wild and muddled.
‘You!’ said Pierre. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
‘What are you on, mate?’
‘Peyote, man, and this is some bad fucking trip.’
‘Have you seen Anna?’
‘No, fuck, man,’ said Pierre, stepping back suspiciously. ‘You’re not you, are you? Who are you?’
Marin took Pierre by the shoulders, trying to shake some sense into him.
‘Shut up, you stupid stoner,’ he shouted. ‘They’re after Anna!’
‘Fuck, man,’ said Pierre, sending a spray of blood onto Marin’s white shirt. ‘Tell her to watch out for the blue devils! They’re all fucken dead, man. You see them? Zombies! Fuck, man. It’s the day of the fucken dead.’
Marin left him babbling and ran towards the small band of protesters at the head of the march, who were struggling with police to keep hold of their banner. Still more people pressed on from the park, filling the street; it seemed that the sheer weight of their numbers would overwhelm the police. Marin saw that a small group of young cops had removed themselves from the street brawl and were sitting on the roadside, distraught, hats off. Others were forming up for a second flying wedge.
Then he saw Anna. She was walking along the edge of the disintegrating march, megaphone up, calling on the protesters to link arms, to stay strong, to not respond to violence, to keep moving. The second wave of cops was almost on them, yet still she exhorted the marchers: ‘ON TO TOWN HALL! THEY CAN’T STOP US! WE HAVE TO OCCUPY THE TOWN HALL.’
‘Anna!’ Marin cried, sprinting towards her. But he was too late.
The blue wave hit Anna from behind. He saw her buckle and go down. Though panicked bodies were flying in all directions, Marin tore his way through. But when he reached the place where he’d seen her fall, she was gone. Through the police ranks, he saw two cops dragging her away. He shouldered his way through the police, crying ‘Press!’ over and again into the faces of young cops until he had forced his way behind them. Up ahead, two cops were pulling Anna into a side lane where the paddy wagons were waiting out of sight. He was running again, shouting as he went. He reached the darkened lane and turned into it, his eyes adjusting, and finally spotted them at the far end of the lane, behind the wagons.
One of the cops had hold of Anna’s arms. The other had his face pressed close to hers, and Marin saw the man’s contempt, both wrathful and sexually charged. The cop said something that caused Anna to buck violently, though her arms were pinioned. She screamed her revulsion back at him. Marin yelled as he sprinted down the lane between the police wagons, but his voice was drowned out by the clamour of screaming and sirens from the street. He saw the angry cop grab at Anna’s T-shirt and tear it up to her chin, exposing her breasts. She reared back, spat in his face. Then, with a sudden violent movement, the cop cracked her hard across the top of her skull with his baton, once, twice.
She was limp in the arms of the second cop when Marin hit the assailant with the full force of his right shoulder. ‘Like a freight train’—that was the description later given in a witness statement by the second cop, who now let go of his unconscious prisoner, dropping her as he drew his own baton.
Marin’s momentum took the first cop into the brick wall at the end of the lane where he pinned him, raining swift, savage jabs into his ugly, predatory face, bouncing the man’s head against the brick wall again and again. Such was his rage that he barely felt the blows from the second cop flailing at his back. But when a wild baton-strike hit his neck, the pain finally cut through. He let go of Anna’s tormentor, whose body slid slowly down the wall.
Marin turned to ward off the attack from the second cop, grabbing the baton with his left hand and swinging his right elbow into the man’s face. The cop dropped to the ground.
Marin bent over Anna. He gently pulled down her T-shirt and listened to her heart. It was beating fast. Her breathing was hard and ragged. When he pulled up an eyelid, he found her pupil contracted. He rolled her onto her side and kissed her forehead.
He was kneeling there, whispering to her, when they came and hauled him to his feet. Many rough hands were on him as his arms were bent back and the cuffs went on.