Two days later, someone hears it on Radio Australia: Martin Luther King the American civil rights leader is assassinated. Before I go to sleep I cry. I remember crying when President Kennedy was shot. I’m not sure why I’m crying because America is so far away and I don’t want to live there, but it seems that the leader of the free world can’t stop killing its best people. I hate communists, but, apart from its wars against communists, it seems Americans should be more afraid of Americans than anyone else. They should be wary of the bloke over the road, down the street, in the next suburb, because he’s the one most likely to kill them.
Students are still rioting in the streets and now crowds of Negroes are calling for Black Power. American cities are at war with their citizens. They are not alone. Europe is on fire too and in Germany a violent communist urban guerilla gang led by Andreas Baader and his girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin are blowing up department stores.
Here in Moroki I think of Margaret Baker. She is black. I am white. I don’t know her, only just met her, but I want to be with her.
There is another coupling, with another white girl at a dance. She is a visiting sister up at the hospital and we dance all night at another nurses’ party. We are both drunk and she drags me back to her room up on the hill behind the hospital. Inside she rips my clothes, grabs the lizard, pulls viciously, no softness, no caressing, just a grab and tug causing me considerable pain. There is no way I am going to yell out because this might be standard practice in expat mating circles and the lizard will just have to get used to it. What do I know? She tries to force herself onto him. Tries to shove him inside her. It seems he might make it. There is a small window, but no, it slams shut, or was never really open, and again he hits a wall. I am sure she knows what she is doing because she is older than me and has an experienced look about her but the drunkenness takes its toll. On both of us. After another frantic bout of pulling and pushing she lets him go, falls flat on her bed and faints. I stand, staggering, watching her until I am sure she isn’t dead, just asleep, grab the clothes I am pretty sure are mine, put them on, and walk out into the highland rain. By the time I get back to the bank mess my clothes are soaked and my testicles are screaming. The pain is so bad I have to lie awake until three o’clock before I can settle their nerves. The only way is the traditional way. I take the lizard in my hands, work him hard, but gently, and let him go.