I swam a couple of lengths of Bondi Beach early this morning, without Dad. The Invitational is approaching and if I don’t perform well in the relay the Gooch Gang won’t be happy. Sitting on the promenade eating a smoky-bacon triple-fillet chicken burger, I noticed seven boats grouped near Ben Buckler Point. A humpback whale breached next to them, close enough for me to see its barnacles. Must’ve been the first whale of the season. I remembered that in the film Pinocchio, Monstro the whale swallowed Geppetto, Pinocchio, his cat Figaro and goldfish Cleo. The Bible has Jonah being swallowed by a whale. And in Edwin’s account of the puppet show, the sailor was eaten by a sea monster. Maybe it was a common plot device, like Punch and Judy assaulting each other back in the day? After my freak-out last night, I reassured myself there were probably hundreds of sailor puppets, and Bert’s just happened to be similar to the one in the book.
Riding the bus home, I recalled that Pinocchio’s lies not only caused the nose action, he also grew a tail. What had triggered the growth of his humiliating appendage? I found the origin of the curse on a YouTube clip. On his way to Pleasure Island, Pinocchio was coaxed into smoking a cigar and drinking beer by a punk called Lampwick. Partaking in those vices triggered his metamorphosis into donkey boy.
‘You’ve been cursed for getting drunk at the party last year and swallowing those pills Nads gave you,’ Homunculus said.
‘Settle down, Jiminy Cricket. It started growing much earlier. Around the time I lied about the letter from Crestfield.’
‘Bingo! You’re Pinocchio Mark Two and Bert, with his collection of mangy puppets, is a bald, alcoholic and deranged Geppetto.’
Crazy old Bert – he’d looked so gaunt the last time I saw him, like he hadn’t eaten for a week. A momentary surge of compassion jump-started my little wooden heart and led me to the Vietnamese bakery across the road to buy him a pie, sausage roll and pork banh mi. I walked down to his street, congratulating myself on my second kind act for the year, after having visited Nana Locke last month. But then I figured that neither act was entirely altruistic: I’d seen Nana Locke for a knitting lesson and today I was planning to finally ask Bert if he’d ever read My One Redeeming Affliction. Approaching the junkyard, I saw this sign posted outside his neighbour’s house:
INTRODUCING PARADIGM
THE ELITE NEW LIFESTYLE PRECINCT
WITH STUDIOS, 1-, 2- AND 3-BEDROOM
OPPORTUNITIES
FOR SALE OFF THE PLAN NOW!
ULTRA-MODERN DESIGN WITH FLUID INTERIORS, EXPANSIVE ENTERTAINING OPTIONS AND STUNNING VERTICAL GARDENS CREATING THE PERFECT SANCTUARY IS OUR VISION
PARADIGM IS YOUR NEW REALITY
PRICES RANGE FROM $590,000 TO $3,500,000
Beneath the blurb was a web address and phone number to register interest.
Bert’s house would be dwarfed by the development. It wasn’t even included in the artist’s impression.
There was now a locked chain on his gate. 1-2-3-4-5 seemed too obvious, but the lock fell open when I dialled the combination. Around the back, Bert was hunched on the crimson chair muttering away to Percy, three empty longnecks lined up on the ground. ‘What are you doing here?’ he said, his working eye fierce.
‘I thought I might pop in to—’
‘You’ve popped in and now you can pop out again.’
‘I brought you something to eat.’
‘Broke my lock, did ya?’ He was fidgeting with a bunch of square-holed Chinese coins on a wire loop. ‘You’re a real regular Alan Turing.’
‘It wasn’t hard.’
‘Only sequence I could remember.’ He kicked a milk crate towards me, so I sat and tried to ignore the discomfort of the hard edges cutting into my tail. Bert was giving me a quizzical look. ‘What’s in your bag then?’
‘A meat pie, sausage roll and Vietnamese roll, if you want them?’
‘Lost me appetite.’ He slid the coins along the wire as you would an abacus. ‘Worry beads. Help me to mull things over.’ He used one to prise the cap off his next bottle.
‘I see you’ve got some new neighbours moving in.’
‘Sanctuary, my arse! They’re destroying my sanctuary, building that pile of shit smack-bang on top of me like a gravestone.’
‘They can’t do that. This is your home.’
‘Not anymore. We got a little behind on the mortgage repayments – bank foreclosed on us. Have to be out in a month.’
‘Not much warning.’
‘Two years ago the developers came with their offers. Chickenfeed at first but went up. Neighbours dropped like flies. Took the cash and ran. I stuck to me guns. Just wanted to stay put. I was happy here. Then those young larrikins started giving me grief. Called the coppers on ’em a few times. Reported them to the principal.’
‘How could I forget?’
‘I’m no weatherman, but I’d say this is my last winter.’
‘It’s only just autumn.’
‘The collector will be collected, terminally disconnected, thoroughly disinfected, rudimentally inspected, scientifically dissected, bagged and ejected.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘I’m banking on instantaneous obliteration. Never ascribed to the idea of eternal torment. Done that to myself for long enough. Poof!’ He made a gesture like an explosion. ‘I’m gone. No comeback tour.’
Bert chuckled himself into a violent coughing fit and waved me away but I couldn’t just leave. Then he spat a gob of screamingly red phlegm onto the ground, turned to Percy and said, ‘What are you laughing at, you little shit?’ He ripped the bird off his perch and threw him at my chest. ‘You can piss off now, the pair of you. And you can take these with you.’ He threw the coins at my feet as if I was some sort of Judas. I picked up Percy but left the coins. ‘You’ve got more worries ahead of you, boyo. Pick them up.’
I shook my head.
‘PICK THEM UP!’ he shouted.
So I picked up the coins.
‘NOW GET OUT OF HERE! GO!’
I hightailed it out of the yard, leaving the food behind, and walked up to the apartment. Percy was looking even more ruffled than me, so when I got back to my room I wrapped him in tissue paper and put him in a small box. Then I lay on my bed, fiddling with the Chinese coins and worrying over what would become of Bert. Fearing that time was running out for him, and with it the opportunity to find answers to my gnawing questions, I read on.
My mother learnt of my father’s addiction to gambling only after his untimely death. Ah To, a.k.a. Johnny, his friend of seventeen years, came to pay his respects and share his account of the last few hours of my father’s life. Since their goldmining days, both men had been keen players of fan-tan, a devilishly simple game of chance wherein the operator inverts a bowl of coins on the table and the players bet on how many will remain after being divided into lots of four with a bamboo hook. Johnny and William’s favourite venue was located on the top floor of a warehouse in Chinatown. One wet June night the operation was raided.
Spotting two policemen scaling the roof, Ah Jung, the lookout, raised the alarm. Sergeant Hale, walrus-like both in stature and appearance, got momentarily stuck in the skylight, affording the gamblers and operators precious time to hide the evidence. By the time he and the younger Constable Maclean stormed into the hall, most of the men had taken up books. Hale approached my father, the only Caucasian player, whose head was buried in a Chinese newspaper, and told him to read the headline.
‘Rabid dog bites man on Liverpool-street,’ my father replied, without missing a beat.
Walking across the room to examine a ceramic urn, Maclean trod on a loose floorboard and lifted it. He ferreted between the joists and discovered a gaming mat, then declared the entire company under arrest. But whether it was a case of racial prejudice or William being known to him, Sergeant Hale offered clemency to my father. ‘You’re surely not acquainted with these Oriental heathens?’ he said. ‘Stumbled in here to escape the rain, didn’t you? I suggest you stumble back out quick smart, or your name won’t be worth the stink of shit on my boot.’
My father gathered his jacket and hat and walked to the stairs, leaving Johnny at the table. But before descending he said, ‘My apology for contradicting you, sergeant, but I do know one of these men very well.’ He indicated his friend with a nod. ‘Johnny is the hardest working, most honest man I’ve ever had the fortune to meet. If you’d kindly overlook this one indiscretion and allow him to accompany me, we would both be eternally grateful.’
Despite his subordinate’s protest, Sergeant Hale permitted both men to leave without further questioning. Instead of demonstrating the sort of caution one might expect after a close call by heading straight home, my father and Johnny celebrated their exemption from arrest at the Light-house Hotel. After downing three pints, my father farewelled Johnny and rode a tram towards Bridge-street, intending to catch the last ferry from Circular Quay back to Mosman. But as the tram approached the terminus, with three pints of false confidence under his belt he leapt without looking, into the path of an oncoming engine. The south-bound tram smashed my father’s spirit clear out of its physical home forever.
I felt an almost physical blow to my chest that knocked the wind out of me. I recalled that, earlier in the book, Edwin had written:
Bloody arrival to bloodier departure, my father William’s life was punctuated by accidents – some grave, others fortuitous.
So I should’ve been in some way prepared for it. But William’s sudden death by tram resonated heavily with Pop Locke’s demise by 4WD. I’d only known William through the book, and yet reading the account of his death made me exceedingly sad. I threw off my quilt and hid Percy and the Chinese coins in the guest room, hoping that would prevent them from seeping into my dreams.