Hogarth leaves me at the motel. I thank him. I find the lounge bar and order a drink. The waitress who comes out to serve me is a very attractive young girl who smiles with ease, takes my order with ease and has me assume that the next step will also take place with ease.
After my fifth beer I ask: What time you finish?
She smiles again but says nothing. Not long after, she walks out, takes my empty glass and says: What your number?
Seventeen, I say.
She looks pleased. Seventeen is around the back. As I get up to leave I can feel the lizard rising. In no time at all she is in my room, I am on top of her, and we are at it like two undomesticated brutes. Well I am, she lies there, submissive, as though this is all part of the motel room service. Maybe it is. When I am done and roll off she gathers herself quickly and stands beside the bed, looking down at me.
You a angry man, she says.
Angry? No, me not angry.
No hangry, hungry, she says.
You mean hungry?
Yes.
She stands looking at me and then I realise something else, she wants to be paid. I take out five dollars and hand it to her.
Thank you, masta, she says.
No, not masta. Jack.
She giggles and leaves the room. When she has gone I find my underpants and notice a yellow stain on the sheets. Strange, I think, not seen that before. I leave my clothes off and walk into the shower where I wash myself with vigour, once, twice, then again and once more the lizard just in case the waitress has left me something I didn’t order. My mouth stays open and I swallow large quantities of water hoping for an early piss and that the urine flow will clean my tube. Once clean and dry I piss and feel clean and allow myself to lie on the bed and doze. This country is crazy. I’m out in the sticks, I look at a woman, she looks at me, we want to fuck, we fuck. No bullshit, no flirting, no mucking around, straight to the point, in goes the lizard. I live in a country with free love and no one has to riot for it, it just is. Well, not always free, it just cost me five dollars.
I’m in the jungle. Alone. The tall trees are leaning into me, the bushes, the shrubs, the palms are moving in, closing, surrounding, crushing. Now I’m in the belly of a huge beast. The vegetation is slapping at me. I hear water running. It’s getting ready to digest me. Footsteps. I flap my arms. The only way out of this is to fly. I can’t fly. I run, but I don’t move. Why can’t I fly? I always fly. The footfalls are louder and closer. I scream. I flap my arms. I begin to fall. No, I’m not falling, the ground is sinking, the trees are falling. The beast is swallowing. I must wake up. Have to wake up. My feet are running but I’m not moving. I can hear them pummelling the belly of the beast.
I wake up. There’s someone knocking on the door. Hogarth?
Jacko, yells Exeter. You ready for dinner. Got someone I want you to meet.
I’m sweating. My eyes are full of dust.
Right, I say. Who?
Just wait and see.
I splash water on my face then walk to the dining room hoping the waitress, whose name I missed, or forgot to ask, will not be there. Exeter is sitting at a table with an impressive-looking young man. They both stand.
This is George Kanluna, says Exeter, the first prime minister of this country. And, George, this is Jack Muir, the first head of your central bank.
We both laugh. I take a good look at the often mentioned George Kanluna. We put out our hands at the same time. His is soft but firm and I can see stringy, protruding muscles running up his arm.
Tom is good with the jokes, says Kanluna, but he may well be right. One day. For me. For you, I cannot know.
He speaks well, with a quaint way of putting words in a sentence. Not old-fashioned, nothing like pidgin-speak, but in an educated style all his own.
Yeah, I say. One thing you can bank on is that I’ll never be the head of any bank.
We all laugh and sit down.
George is somewhat overactive politically, says Exeter. He heads a group of radical, university educated locals.
I look at his face. It is very black and handsome and I guess he probably has a white girlfriend.
The time has come, says Kanluna, for the people of these islands to run their own affairs. The islands belong to us and we are grateful for the work of the Australian expatriates, the Australian Government, even the bank johnnies, but this new parliament we have, with its appointed representatives, is no more than a token to appease our longings for a rule that must be by us, for us.
You see what I mean? says Exeter.
Just then the waitress walks by and smirks at me in a knowing way and I look at Kanluna and I can see that he has seen and I know he can also see the blood rushing into my face and setting it on fire.
I leave quickly, looking about for the door with the familiar markings. I am lost in the dining room and my embarrassment is growing and just as I decide to make a run for my room the waitress comes up to me and says: You like piss?
Yes, I say, I like piss. But not here. The room for pissing.
She giggles and points to a room with no markings but I can see that it leads somewhere safe. Inside I take my lizard in my hand and squeeze it and say: You fucking piece of shit. What are you doing to me? Why can’t you just go on a trip and mind your own fucking business and keep yourself soft and fucking flat and fucking quiet. All those years I waited, patiently, to break my virginity and now I can’t stop. Fuck anything. Except men. No desire for men. Or a woman’s back passage. I should have stayed home, bided my time, allowed things to develop at a more sedate rate and when she turned up, the one who loved me, married her and lived happily ever after.
When I get back to the table they have drinks. Kanluna looks at me and smiles. He knows all right. Does he hate me for it? I pile salt on my butter plate.
You know, this island was once a part of Australia, geologically speaking, he says. And that is why we share many species of flora and fauna. But geology has rendered us separate and separate we should be. I am not one of those who would see us swallowed whole by an Australian mainland state.
I told you he’d be interesting, says Exeter.
I had no idea, I say. We never did any of this in history.
You didn’t do Australian history in history, says Kanluna.
We did some, I say. I remember Daisy Bates, Simpson and his donkey, and the Kokoda Trail.
I am of the firm view, says Kanluna, like your Mr Whitlam, that Australia can never truly mature as a nation until it divests itself of its colonial appendages. By that I mean all these islands that surround it that it controls for a wide variety of reasons, not all of them benevolent. To be free, you must set free.
I wonder what it is that I have to set free. My parents? My anger? My salt dependence? I can see Kanluna marrying Margaret Baker and becoming island royalty. He reminds me of someone and I’ve been trying all through the meal to remember who and then it comes to me. It is my favourite actor of all time, Sidney Poitier. Just before I left Perth I saw Poitier in To Sir with Love and In the Heat of the Night and in both Poitier had courage and intelligence. I’d hated, loved, cried and stood my ground with Poitier. That was the me I took with me into the movies, but out here, in real life, I am a filthy lowlife piece of shit.
Are you all right, Jack? asks Kanluna.
I am holding a teaspoon full of salt in my mouth.
Oh, I say, the salt. I had a disease when I was a kid. The doctor told me to eat plenty of salt. Now I can’t stop.
Exeter and Kanluna nod. I look at them. What are they doing together? One is black, handsome, strong, wears sandals, an educated man, a politician. The other is pale with neatly combed hair, showing the beginnings of a beer gut, wears shoes and long socks, an accountant. What do they have in common? Why are they friends? And why am I sitting with them? One knows enough about me to have the other one hate me. I can’t figure it out. After dinner I go for a walk around the motel and hurry back to my room when the jungle thing plays havoc with my mind, the monster that wants to tear raw flesh from my living body. I know it’s idiotic and I know that if there is no God then there’s no devil, but I can’t let it go. The head shaking doesn’t seem to help.
We are on our way back to Moroki, winding our way along an empty mountain road. Every so often there’s a Byrne Brothers store. You know one is coming up because the on-foot traffic increases steadily and then explodes in the immediate vicinity of the store. Exeter is driving. I offer to drive but he says company policy would not allow it. Occasionally we see broken-down Land Cruisers on the side of the road.
There’s a few of them, I say.
They’ll all be gutted, says Exeter. The locals leave them there but take everything they can and use it. Eventually the whole thing will disappear and become part of something completely different. Or used in another vehicle.
Why did you want me to meet George Kanluna? I ask.
Exeter doesn’t answer. He keeps his hands on the wheel.
Jack, did you fuck the waitress?
I can tell by the tone of his voice that he knows and that he doesn’t approve.
What?
You heard me.
I don’t ask the next question, the one about why he and Kanluna are friends.