A Year in the City

Benjamin Peek

Doctor of Philosophy.

2006 Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

Acknowledgements.

It is said that you pay your debts to people in the front of books by mentioning them, and so it must be the same with a thesis. By far the greatest debt I owe is to that of my supervisor, Anne Brewster. Without her valued input and time on this project of mine, it would have been a very different and lesser thing.

In addition, I owe a huge debt to Bruce Johnson, Christine Gregory, Cat Sparks, Deborah Biancotti, and Paul Dawson. Each read early drafts of the work and gave me invaluable feedback. Likewise, I wish to show gratitude to my mother and to my friends, Jason Vella, Darrell Barton, and Lindsay Craig, all who offered support to me in various different ways while writing this thing. Lastly, I’d like to thank everyone who found themselves caught up in the project, and didn’t resist it. Thanks to all. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

Parts of this thesis have been published in different and earlier forms:

‘The Dreaming City,’ a different version of ‘The Dreaming City, Part One’, was published in the anthology, Leviathan Four: Cities, edited by Forrest Aguirre in 2004, by Ministry of Whimsy Press, a imprint of Nighshade Books. The story was reprinted in 2005 in The Year’s Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, Volume 1, edited by Bill Congreve and Michelle Marquardt. The book was published in Australia by MirrorDanse Books, and in the United States by Prime Books.

‘Adala’s Memory: A March Collection’, an earlier version of ‘The Woman Who Wasn’t There’, was published in the online collection, Spiny Babbler, edited by Brian Dibble and Kelly Pilgrim, 2005. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 4

Contents.

1. A Year in the City – 4.

2. A Dissertation to A Year in the City – 262. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 5

A Year in the City. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 6

"'It is beautiful, of course it's beautiful--the harbour; but that isn't all of it, it's only half of it; Sydney's the other half, and it takes both of them to ring the supremacy-bell. God made the harbour and that's all right; but Satan made Sydney.'"

—Mark Twain. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 7

J,

This is yours. There are a few

notes through it, which I’d be

grateful if you could remove, or

fix, as you see fit. I’ve no idea

what to do with the book now and I

suppose that it doesn’t much

matter. It’s done. You can only be

obsessed with a city and a life

for so long.

B.

Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 8

Postcards from the Red Dawn

Card One.

(Rugged sandy yellow cliffs drop into an ocean that churns before it. Like stone guards, they suggest that there is no break in the wall, no way of gaining entry through the wall that, on the card, stretches from bent edge to bent edge.)

Dear Mum—1

There is no paper to write on in this apartment except stacks of postcards that Aunt Jean has collected and kept wrapped in thick red elastic bands.2 I’ve counted thirty piles, but find more every day. Each pile has (I suspect) a hundred or so cards, arranged in no particular order. I figure she won’t miss the ones I’m using, but I’ll replace them before Linds and I leave in six months so that you don’t get one of her obsessive and pointless phone calls about how her postcard collection has been ruined. At any rate, we should have net access up and running by the time these cards arrive, anyway, but the jet lag is awful, and there’s nothing on the telly here at four thirty in the morning. 1 b. 1948, Manchester, England, UK. Karen Thompson’s (Mamwell) parents left England when she was seven and immigrated to Sydney, Australia, as five-pound migrants. On the first night in the huge, gunmetal steamship, the young girl slept in a crowded cabin beneath sea level and dreamed that she had been swallowed into the belly of a beast. She would grow into adulthood surrounded by white bones and red organs. In her dream, she broke the bones into spears and, with the red organs behind her, ruled over everything that fell into her new world. She was the princess. The only princess. But upon arriving in Sydney, her parents discovered that the life they had been told that waited for them by Karen’s aunt was a lie, and her father’s trade was now unrecognized. They moved into a tiny room at the back of her aunt’s sandwich shop and, quietly, began to plot their escape, which took five years. 2 b. 1952, Manchester, England, UK. Since arriving in Sydney in 1978, Jean Dodgson (Mamwell), the younger sister of Karen Thompson, has purchased 2, 385 postcards and never written a single word upon one. “I am not here on holiday,” she once told a friend. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 9

This first card shows the entrance to Sydney Harbor. Did it look like this in 1955?

Love,

Martin.

Card Two.

(Bondi Beach. A pair of red and yellow flags jut out of smooth, empty sand, while in the right foreground corner, the white wooden leg of a lifesaver’s perch sits. Looking out, the ocean is smooth and calm, as if it, and the flags and the lifesaver, are simply waiting for people to arrive.)

Aunt Jean’s apartment looks out over Sydney Harbor. After getting in yesterday, Linds and I sat on the balcony, drank cold Australian beer, and watched the sun set from behind it, with the lumbering ferries moving through the bright ocean, the ridged top of the Opera House flaring out, and the arc of what we’re told are the Rocks stretching out into bays. Directly below us, traffic patterns the bridge, and has done since we’ve got here. It is the Bridge that links the land that has been divided by the long, winding scar that the Harbor has cut through the middle of the city.

Linds and I figure that, as soon as the shops are open, we will head in and do a bit of shopping. Aunt Jean only has a bookshelf of bibles, all of them referenced with yellow and pink post-it notes. An obsessive hobby for an agnostic, but not the kind of thing to read when your brain is fried. So I’m dying for a book I can read, and Linds wants a toothbrush that doesn’t look like it’s been used to squash things. I married too fussy a girl.3

3 b. 1980, Killarney, Ireland, UK. Lindsay Thompson, originally having the last name Craig, had been born into a large family that did not, under any circumstance outside funerals and marriages, travel; at which case, it must be said, that everyone they knew lived in Killarney, so they did not need to travel for either of these circumstances. The Craig family liked to know where they were. They had a strong sense of place, bred into them with generations upon Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Martin.

Card Three.

(Sydney Harbour at dusk. The sky is a vibrant orange and the bridge an intricate shadow puppet formed by hands.)

Since our arrival, we have had two conversations with Sydneysiders. Both have been about property. The first was with a tall Asian girl about my age, and the second a fat, white man. Both talked about the history of land development here and price climbs and each told us, with an assuring and assured white teeth smile, that Aunt Jean’s apartment is worth a small fortune, should she wish to sell. Both paused, as if waiting for us to say, perhaps, that “Jean is dead, and we’re the family, here to make a quick bob on her stuff.” Linds joked that they would probably rob us, if they thought they could get away with the apartment. I suppose it’s hardly surprising in a country where land has been a commodity from the start.

On the plane in, a Greek woman, about thirty five, thirty six, told us that if we walked round the Botanical Gardens, we would find dozens of men and women who were there, not to enjoy the empty, bright sky, or the fresh breeze, but to hunt for property. She said that they go there to examine from afar, perched with price guides in their hands, professional hunters, generations that did not travel. And so it was that they looked upon their wandering sister/daughter/granddaughter/niece/cousin, who bought books of other countries with birthday money before she could drive, with a deep sense of confusion. But on her sixteenth birthday, her father, Henry, took her photo in passport size, and helped her fill in the paper work, while also photographing and filling in one for himself. It was true, he said later, that he had never wanted to visit the States, and it was true, he added to his wife, Noreen, as they lay in bed, that he would never return to the place. But he said it quietly and in the dark so his daughter couldn’t hear. Still, her father was quite pleased when she brought home Martin and he had an existing passport. The tattered edges, done through usage, were what prompted him to tell Martin, one day and much, much too early in the relationship, which caused in Martin months of wariness, that he thought of him like a son. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 relying only upon their knowledge and cunning to win it removed. Generation wealth is still an alien concept, and having it firmly in their—

Card Four.

(Sydney from the air: an unplanned collection of buildings and streets working their way across the land in a dirty, tangled, sprawling mess. The Harbour is a pure slash of blue down the middle.)

Sorry about the previous card, Mum, but I ran out of space.

I was thinking, the other day, that there’s a sense of being able to restart in Sydney. It’s why Linds and I came here, why your parents did. Is everyone who comes here looking for a new beginning? The Greek woman told us that, if her parents had not come to the country, then she would have been raised in an environment that didn’t offer her half the benefits she had gotten here. In Greece, her parents had just been too poor. That was why there was such a struggle in the city to get something, to own, to escape the past.

Then she told us a theory she had, which basically said that, in Sydney, it is impossible to find five people who were born within it conversing with each other. Weird, isn’t it? Anyway,

I’m going to grab some food, see if the telly has gotten interesting.

Love,

Martin.

Card Five. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

(This card blank, except in the bottom right hand corner, where the words ‘What Is Sydney?’ are written in flowing script.)

Dear Mum,

Jet lag still sucks, so does the telly. I bought a bunch of stamps yesterday, so after I write this, I’ll go out and find a post box. Anyhow: yesterday, Linds and I met a young white man in Hyde

Park. He was selling postcards from a small case and, partly out of guilt for the ones I’ve used, I stopped and, as the lamps turned into pale electric moons, he showed us his hand painted postcards and, when he found out we were new to the city, began talking about it.

“Everyone’s got a theory ‘bout Sydney,” he said. “Mine is that it’s nothing but fragments.

It’s really just tiny little sections joined together to form a whole. In fact, Sydney doesn’t really exist outside your head—it’s fake.”

He then sold me this postcard. I think it was irony.

Linds sends her love, Mum, and so do I.

Expect more cards.

Love,

Martin.4

4 b. 1978, Manchester, England, UK. Martin Mamwell has come to Sydney to live, simply, for a year. He told his friends that the reason for it was that he wanted to sit on a beach without rocks. The truth of it, however, was, that for nine nights in a row, he had dreamed of a pale blue sky, empty and clean and bright, and which he had lain beneath with the feel of grass against his naked back. It was a summer sky in Sydney, he knew, and after the ninth night, he awoke to tell his wife, but found her, instead, at the kitchen table, looking at big glossy book about the city.

Is this about me, now? Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

The Dreaming City, Part One

1895.

In his dreams, he had always been Mark Twain; awake, he had always been Samuel Clemens.5

It had been so since the day he had first used the pseudonym. Originally, he had thought of it as a warning, but the first dreams had been sweet like the Missouri summers of his childhood, before his father’s death. There was a rare quality to them, and he awoke refreshed and invigorated and filled with the kind of joy that not even the most vivid memory of his childhood years could supply. Of course, as time continued, not all the dreams of Mark Twain were so pleasant, but even the nightmares provided him with a substance that the waking world could not.

And now, at sixty, asleep in the White Horse Motel in Sydney, the small, grey haired, white skinned man no longer felt the slightest sense of warning as he dreamed.

It was natural, normal—as familiar as the shape and weathered form of his hands. It simply was.

Mark Twain dreamed:

He stood on the creaking wooden docks of Sydney Harbour. It was early evening and the empty blue sky was being washed away by smeared brushstrokes of orange and red. In the water before him was a crowd of closely packed, swaying hulks: rotting old troop transports and men- o-wars, their masts and rigging stripped away, the remaining wooden shells turned into floating prisons that had, one hundred years ago, marred the Thames in a cultural plague.

5 b. 1835, Florida, Missouri, USA. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

1788.

The Eora watched the arrival of the First Fleet from the shores of the Harbour, and were told by their Elders that they had nothing to fear from the great ships: they held the spirits of their ancestors, reborn in fragile white skin. In response, the young Eora questioned and argued, but the truth, the Elders said, was inescapable.

Look closely, they whispered, and you will recognise the members of your family.

But how? the young demanded. How can this be true?

The Elders never hesitated with their response: They have sailed out of the Spirit World itself.

1788.

Pemulwuy, the scarred, black skinned Eora warrior, climbed into the thick arms of a eucalyptus tree. 6 There, he watched his dead brothers row into the ocean on ugly, unsuitable boats, and fish.

The warrior had never doubted the Elders before, but he did now. He could do nothing else. On the ground, beside the grey eucalyptus, lay his spear, tipped with the spines of the stingray, while out in the ocean, the dead dragged one of the great fishes from the water.

6 b. 1760, Eora Tribe. The portrayal of Pemulwuy in this passage is not historically correct. All characters based on real life and historical figures that appear in this book have been altered to fit the concerns of narrative and should not, under any circumstances, be considered an accurate portrayal.

I worry about this. I have changed so much, altered so many people, each of them caught in my narrative need. Is it the right thing to do?

This book shouldn’t be about me. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

The creature was huge and grey and sacred. It had been—and would ever be—since the

Eora and other tribes had begun telling the story of the ancient fisherman Jigalulu. In the story, one of the sacred stingrays gave its life to the fisherman so that he could fashion a spear to kill the great shark Burbangi, who had murdered his father and brothers.

Yet, from his perch, Pemulwuy watched the dead kill the stingray with a knife, and later, in the evening, watched them cook and eat it.

The Elders told Pemulwuy that the dead, being dead, could do as they wished with the fish, but he disagreed. It was not just an insult to the Spirits, but an act of supreme arrogance that told the warrior that the dead did not care at all for their kin.

Nor was it a solitary act.

Worse happened during the day, when the dead would take the young Eora, take their food, take their land, and in return give them coloured ribbons and blankets that left them ill in ways that none had ever seen before.

Finally, on the branch of the eucalyptus tree, watching the dead eat the sacred flesh of the stingray, Pemulwuy knew why they acted this way.

They are not my kin.

They are invaders.

1895.

He followed the long, twisting gangplank that looped around the hulk and showed him the rotting and discoloured frame of the ship. Below him, the water was a motionless pitch black and a palpable menace of finality emanated from it so that Twain’s old legs trembled whenever the planks he trod on creaked beneath his weight. Half way around the hulk, Twain knew that he did not want to continue, but his feet would not stop, and he found himself muttering in disgust to them in weak reassuring humour as he made his way onto the deck. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Beneath the bleeding, evening sun, the deck was a ragged emptiness filled with invisible from unseen spirits. The till turned left and right, spun by the hands of an invisible sailor. Above, the remains of the rigging flapped, trailing through the air like decayed streamers and confetti at a party long finished, while the cabin door to the captain’s quarters was twisted off its frame and hung, like a broken limb, on one hinge. The glass window had long ago been shattered and the jagged ends pointed into the middle. Twain walked across the rotting planks and past the broken railings circled with rusted chains.

It was a parade of death, cheering him towards the hulk’s rotting belly with relentless determination.

The smell of unwashed bodies, urine and faeces overwhelmed him when he stepped onto the sagging, creaking stairs that lead into the ship’s belly. Had he been anywhere else, he was sure he would have fallen or vomited, so tangible was the odour; but instead he continued down the stairs, one step at a time.

At the bottom of the stairs, the air had a heavy quality to it, and the smell grew stronger.

The belly, however, was empty. He had expected to see hundreds of pitiful men and women, sick, dying, and huddled together, but instead he encountered only a thin pool of black seawater rubbing up against the disintegrating ribs of the ship.

In the far corner of the hulk, there appeared the stained shadow of a man.

Twain’s feet splashed noiselessly through the water, and the silence around him grew as the oppressive odour slipped away. He was not sure if the silence was worse: it filled his head like wet cotton, weighing down his senses as he came closer to the shadow, until it revealed itself to be that of black skinned man.

He was darker that any black man Twain had seen before; black like the water he stood in. He was naked and across his skin had been painted white bones, and as Twain gazed at them in a fuzzy distracted way, the paint became solid, and the bones became real. Moments later, they Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 began to move, shifting and twitching and cracking slightly like a man does when he awakes, but all the time this man’s flesh remained still.

Twain’s gaze drifted away without his consent as a buttery yellow light filled the hull and illuminated a painting on the back wall. It had four rectangle panels, each panel laid above the next like a pile of bricks.

In the first panel were two men and two women, one black and one white in each gender.

The two women held babies, and wore white gowns with hoods, while the men wore trousers and shirts and had a dog beside them. The second showed an English Naval Officer (Twain did not know who) shaking hands with an Aboriginal Elder. The third panel showed an Aboriginal man being hung for killing a white man, while the fourth panel, identical to the third, showed a white man being hanged for killing an Aboriginal. It was, Twain knew, a message of equality, but it felt cold, and hollow for reasons he was unable to voice.

Forcing himself to focus, he turned to the black man—an Aboriginal man—and said, “Is this your painting?”

“No,” replied the other, the skull across his face moving in response. His thick lips remained still and tightly pressed together. “It was painted by an Englishman for Englishmen, as you can clearly see.”

More confidently then he felt, Twain said, “It doesn’t have ‘English’ in big lights now, does it?”

“Look at their clothes, Mark Twain.”

Unnerved by the use of his name, Twain returned his gaze to the painting: in the first panel, as he had noted, all the men and women were dressed identically, while in the third and fourth panel, the dead Aboriginal people wore nothing but a loincloth and the painted symbols of their tribes.

“Equality and law are born from the English viewpoint,” the bones of the Aboriginal man said, his tone laced with anger and resentment. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

“That’s hardly a unique experience,” Twain replied, the confidence he feigned earlier finding a foothold in his consciousness. “By the by, you are speaking English.”

“I am speaking the language of dreams. It is nothing and everything you have heard before,” he said. “However, that is not my concern. The Oceans of the Earth have spoken to me and told me of the English and their Empire. They tell me how it crumbles with revolutions, but that does not happen here, in Sydney. Other things happen here.”

Behind the Aboriginal man, the painting twisted, and became alive: the white man stepped from his noose, and shook hands with the officers, and they passed him a flask of rum. In the top panel, the black man was beaten by the white man, and attacked by the dogs, while the black baby in the Aboriginal woman’s arms disappeared, and was replaced by a baby of mixed colour and heritage that faded until the baby was as white as the baby next to it.

“That’s a nice trick.” Twain’s foothold slipped into a vocal tremor as the scenes played themselves out in an endless loop. He cleared his throat loudly, and asked, “What’s your name, then?”

“Once,” the Aboriginal man’s bones replied quietly, “I was called Cadi.”

1788.

Perched once again on a eucalyptus branch, Pemulwuy, three weeks later, watched the skyline turn the violent red and orange of flames, and listened to the cries of the dead pierce the night as they rushed from their tents to the wooden dwelling that held their food.

Pemulwuy’s decision to fight the dead was not popular among the Eora. Elders from other tribes sent messages and warned him that the Spirits would be furious, and many warned that his own spirit, strong now, would not survive.

Last night, an Elder had sat in front of him, and told him that he would die nine years from now if he followed this path. He had been told that the divisions he created in his own kin Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 would strike him down. The words had rung disconcertingly true, as splits throughout the Eora were already beginning to show.

But he had no other choice. He was a warrior and, as such, he would fight the dead like he would any invader into his land: he would strike their weakest targets: the houses where they kept food, and the crops they were trying to grow. He would burn them, and then he would burn the men and women around them, and, finally, the very land itself if necessary. Whatever the white beeàna7 decided in response, he would also deal with.

He drew strength from the fact that, stretched throughout the bony arms of trees and in stunted bush around him, a dozen other warriors also watched the fires. He knew, gazing out at their outlined shadows that more would come after the night. Perhaps from the dead themselves.

He did not believe that any of the dead were kin, and did not wish for any aid from the white skinned ones that claimed the Harbour as their own, but there were black-skinned men amongst them that he felt a faint kinship for. It was not unreasonable, he believed, to think that they might join him—and it would certainly assuage some of the worries from the Elders if he could bring one back as an ally.

He would have such a chance now:

In front of him a black figure emerged from the fire lit horizon, the harsh crack of leaves, twigs, and scrubs. With a cautioning wave to his warriors, Pemulwuy dropped from his perch, leaving his spear balanced along the branches.

The dead was a huge figure, twice the size of Pemulwuy. His face, craggy and scarred, was a pitted black stone, with wet pebbles lodged deep within that, in the dark, gave the initial appearance of the dead as having no eyes; but he did, and they blinked rapidly, scanning the trees and path around him, before settling upon the Eora. His clothing was covered in soot and he

7 b. 1738, London, England, UK. Meaning father, it was the name given to Governor Arthur Phillip. The title was given because Phillip was missing a front incisor. During the ritual of manhood, the incisor would be knocked out of the mouth of a boy, and it was therefore assumed that Phillip, who led the returning spirits, was part of the Eora due to this missing tooth. d. 1814. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 smelt of smoke, while around his wrists was a long chain that was attached to the manacle on his right arm.

His teeth, when the dead smiled, were a dirty white—almost yellow—and misshaped.

“Deve ser o bastard que põe o fogo,” he said slowly. “Agradece.”

Pemulwuy had learnt a small amount of the dead’s language, but it was difficult to learn without a guide for context and meaning. Yet, knowing as little of it as he did, he knew that this was not their language.

Come with me, he said, pointing into the dark scrub. I will offer you shelter.

Along the branches above him, Pemulwuy’s warriors circled the dead, watching, waiting, protective. Unaware, the dead shook his head, and said, “Eu nao entendo o que você dizem, mas eu nao vou em qualquer lugar com você.” Slowly, as if trying to conceal the action, he began wrapping the length of chain around his right fist.

Pemulwuy, giving him one more chance before he killed him, tapped his chest silently, and then pointed into the bush again.

“Tive suficiente com ser cativo. Você e o Inglês.” The dead’s gaze swept the surrounding area, and he repeated his last word with a different enunciation: “English. São somente os mesmo a mim nesta prisão.”

“Inglês?” Pemulwuy repeated, tasting the unfamiliar word. “English?”

The dead nodded, his dirty teeth splashed against his skin. “English,” he agreed, and glanced behind him. The message was clear to the Eora: the English were the white men at the fires.

Still glancing behind him, the dead suddenly swung his chain-covered fist at Pemulwuy.

The warrior ducked smoothly. Without pause, he darted forward and jammed his foot in the back of the dead’s knee, causing him to cry out in pain and slump to the ground. The cry sent a hot flush through him, and he bared his teeth in joy. Around the fallen man, the dozen Eora warriors dropped to the ground. One of them tossed Pemulwuy his spear. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

The black man—and he was a man, Pemulwuy knew, just a man—began to speak, but the spear of the Eora warrior never hesitated.

Leaving his spear in the body, Pemulwuy turned to the warriors. None of them had struck the dead, but they knew, by watching him, by hearing the exchange, that it would only be a matter of time (changed) until they too killed the invaders.

Running his fiery gaze along the semicircle of men before him, Pemulwuy said, The name of our enemy is the English.

1895.

The bones across Cadi’s skin snapped together in faint clicks as he walked through the black water of the hulk’s belly to stand before Twain.

Twain, despite his wariness, was fascinated by the features behind the white skull. It was as if the man’s flesh was sleeping: his full, closed lips showing no strain; the skin was likewise smooth; and his eyes were undeniably closed. But there was nothing childlike or innocent about the Aboriginal man’s flesh. Scars covered him in slender lines, as if a series of blades had been run again and again through his skin, only to be stitched back together with a care that ultimately could not hide the damage.

“Revolutions.” When Cadi’s faint, skeleton whisper of a voice reached Twain’s ears it was a mixture of raw emotions: sad and violent where it had before sounded like a teacher. “I have tried to organise revolutions.”

“That’s a mighty large thing to do,” Twain replied. “And not always together successful, from my understanding of history.”

As he spoke, the ribs of the hulk melted away, and the black water drained from his shoes. There was a beat, the sound of a heart passing a moment of time. Then, rather than Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 experiencing dryness in his boots, he felt wetness beneath his feet and water against his skin, all of which signalled, before he saw it, a dull silvery run of steady rain that washed over him.

In front of him was an inn made from wood, with a wide, tin roofed veranda around it, and hitching posts for horses out the front. It had glass windows, and lanterns provided light behind them.

“I have tried to make symbols,” Cadi’s grating voice whispered to his left. “A revolution must have a symbol, even if it is English in nature.”

Twain began to reply, but stopped.

On the veranda, dark shapes slithered into view between the rain. Allowing the

Aboriginal man to lead him through the mud and grass, Twain approached the figures, and found them to be man-like, and moments later, to be men. They wore ugly, black metal armour that covered their torso and head: dented and poorly shaped, the chest plates were heavy panels, and the helmets were nothing more than an upended tin with a slit cut across for their vision (changed from eyes).

In a certain light, the armour was crude and laughable but, standing in the rain, Twain could not acknowledge the fact. Instead, he watched the figures load their pistols and rifles and step from the porch in heavy, awkward footfalls, the water washing over their dark bodies, leaving them slick and clean.

“Symbols,” Cadi repeated, and stepped before the figures. They paused, and he ran his bony fingers across the black armour. “A symbol to defy the English, that is what this is.”

“There’s certainly something in it,” Twain replied quietly, shivering, but not from the cold.

“It should have succeeded.” Cadi turned and raised his right arm, pointing behind Twain.

He gazed through the rain, at the graveyard of fallen branches and trees that littered the ground around the inn. At first, Twain could not see anything. But then he saw them, ghosts emerging in the darkness, outlined by the storm… Police Officers. The representation of English Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 authority, scattered throughout the branches and trees, easily fifty in number, each with rifles and pistols aimed at the four men.

“But instead, they were an act of stupidity,” Cadi said.

“Stop them!” Twain cried, spinning on him. “This doesn’t need to happen!”

“It already has. All my Irishman had to do was ride into Sydney, and walk down the streets, his guns drawn, dressed in this armour, demanding the release of his mother—no matter that he was not there—and the heart of the nation would have gone to him. But he did not understand that, and instead, he took my revolution—my plan to remove whites with whites— and wasted it here, where no one would understand.”

Twain curled his hands into fists, and fought back the urge to scream out a warning to the black armoured men. Instead, trying to hide his distaste of the situation, he said, “And what exactly happened to these youngsters who didn’t go to Sydney?”

The Aboriginal man’s voice was faint, and touched with sadness, “Like all Australian folk legends, they died at the hands of authority.”

There was a loud crack from behind him, and, with a violent shiver, Twain felt a bullet pass through him. He clutched his chest, horrified, terrified, ready to scream out; but there was no injury, only the disconcerting echo of pain. It’s a fantasy! Nothing more than a cheap trick!

The thought, rather than calming Twain, made him angry. Around him, more guns fired, the bullets fat silver streaks in the air, and the four black armoured men raised their arms and returned fire before falling back into the hotel. As they did, the windows shattered and screaming from men and women inside the inn tore out and ignited the night.

“What is the meaning of this?” Twain demanded angrily. “Why show me this tragedy?

Let me go—I’ve no interest in this!”

“You must understand the need for revolution,” Cadi replied, the sockets of his skull gazing intently at him. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

“I don’t care!” Twain hollered. “This isn’t my country, this isn’t my government! This isn’t my goddamned concern!”

“No, not now. But it will be.”

Cadi thrust his bony hand into the mud. There was a faint crack, and he straightened, lifting a smooth hatch from the ground. Beneath was a tightly wound spiral staircase made from wood and iron railings.

“Come, Mark Twain, and I will show you more.”

“Where’re you taking me?” Twain asked, his feet moving without consent.

“Into the Spirit World,” Cadi replied without emotion. “Where one step can be a day or a year or a lifetime. At the end of the stairs, you will understand the importance of this event, and why the death of an Irishman will always be remembered, if not understood.”

Twain gazed at the inn, and watched as one of the black armoured men stepped out of the front door, pistols held in his hands. Alone, a dark, iron-covered man torn by emotions and a lifetime of injustice, he strode down the stairs, firing into the Police.

Unable to watch him fall, Mark Twain accepted his descent.

1797.

Toongagal had been turned into simple sprawl of ugly, poorly built English buildings parted by a muddy stretch of road and surrounded by dirty bushland.

Pemulwuy emerged from the muddy scrub, followed by the lean shadows of twenty warriors. Each man was armed only with a knife but, on his back, carried sticks and cloth. They held nothing that would hinder their speed or their use of the land and the cloudy night (change) as cover, for their goal tonight was one that relied upon stealth.

Silently, Pemulwuy led the warriors along the edge of the muddy road, leading them around the town, aiming for the isolated outpost at the opposite end. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

In the years of his war, the Eora warrior had become a fearsome figure in the minds of the

English and his fellow tribesman, but he was not pleased with the progress he had made. Burning crops, stealing food, killing farmers on the edge of the townships: these had not stopped the arrival of English men and women and convicts. If anything, it only made the white men and women establish stronger claims on the land. He had small victories, he would not deny that, but as each year progressed, Pemulwuy became increasingly aware that he was not winning the war.

To complicate matters, he was also coming to the realisation that it was not the English and their weapons that he was losing to, but rather their clothing, food, and luxuries, such as tobacco pipes.

And rum.

Rum was the enemy that Pemulwuy could not fight.

It was the currency of the land, spreading not only through the Eora and tribes inland, but the free farmers and convicts who worked for the English. It was indiscriminate, an endlessly dark and intoxicating river that weaved around everyone and flowed from the hands of the

English authorities.

He had learnt of that only recently, when fellow tribesmen had moved into the towns, lured by rum and tobacco that they received in payment for erecting buildings, plowing the land, and hunting. Tasks that tribesmen had done for their tribes were now being done for the English

Redcoats and their invasion.

Having followed the wayward Eora to threaten and force them back to the tribes with little success, Pemulwuy had suddenly decided that a frontal attack on the English was what was required. The idea had come to him, a gift from the Spirits that, after making his decision, was accompanied by the Elder’s warning nine years ago about his death. Being a warrior, he pushed aside the doubt, and focused on acquiring English weapons. His warriors would need them even if he did die. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

The outpost was a long, squat figure lying beneath the night sky. There were no lanterns inside it, but on the veranda, on a wooden chair, slept the white body of an Englishman.

Pemulwuy motioned for the warriors behind him to wait, and he then slipped up to the veranda. The mud around the barracks pushed coolly through his toes. It clung to his feet and left dirty prints along the railing that he climbed, and across the porch that he stalked along before his strong fingers clamped over the Englishman’s nose and mouth and his knife sliced deeply into the man’s neck.

The muddy prints multiplied as the Eora warriors joined him. They pushed through the door, into the dark, half empty barracks, and the prints circled the beds that held men. It was there, in nothing more than a concentration of smeared mud, that the struggle and deaths of sleeping men were marked.

At the back of the outpost, behind a poorly made wooden door, the fading prints ended at the weapons of the English: thirty gunmetal black rifles and fifteen pistols, each with wooden stocks; a dozen sabres; one cat-o-nine-tails; chains and manacles; a dozen daggers; a small cannon on wooden wheels; and bags of powder and bullets and balls for the cannon.

The cloth and sticks were laid out, and rifles and pistols and sabres and knives taken. The cannon and its ammunition proved difficult, but Pemulwuy ordered two Eora to carry it, and their feet, free of mud, made an invisible, slow exit from the building.

They were ghosts, unable to be tracked in the bush. The only sign of their passing for the returning English soldiers was the dark stains that they followed into the barracks with mounting terror two hours later. They knew who it was in their bones. It was a knowledge more spiritual than they had ever experienced, as if something in the land itself was taunting them, and they knew what it meant:

Pemulwuy was armed for war. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

Before dawn, Pemulwuy and his warriors—joined by an additional twenty men—swept into

Burramatta.

The wooden outpost of the English town emerged in the misty morning as an atrophied man curled in upon himself. Pemulwuy slipped up to it silently and, vaulting the veranda railing, plunged his spear into the belly of the lone Englishman on guard. Withdrawing the weapon with an ugly sound, he turned to the figures of his warriors, shadowed in the morning light, but with their white war paint like blades of bones across their skin.

There was a moment of pause, a heart’s beat, nothing more, and Pemulwuy grinned… then he motioned for them to sweep into the outpost, and they butchered the ten Englishmen inside.

After the outpost, they continued into the town, breaking open the pens, scattering livestock, and killing the men and women who investigated the chorus of agitated animal noises that swept through the cloud scudded morning sky. It was there, watching the animals, and his men, and the dirty orange sun rising, illuminating the muddy streets and crude houses of the town, that Pemulwuy realised how poorly he had planned the attack.

He would die here, on these streets, as the Elder had said.

Shaking his mind free of the thoughts, Pemulwuy gripped his spear, and walked down the cold, muddy path. Around him, his warriors were firing into the houses, the battle having already broken down into individuals, rather than a combined force. Pemulwuy had feared that this would happen—he had stressed that they had to fight as one, that they needed to remain together to take and hold the town, but his words had been forgotten, lost in the rush of emotions they were experiencing.

To his left, the cannon fired and the sound of splintering wood and a spike of screaming followed.

You will die here. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

Ignoring the unsummoned thoughts, Pemulwuy advanced on a white man emerging from his house. Thick set, bearded, barely dressed, the man raised his rifle, but before he could fire,

Pemulwuy hurled his spear, skewering the man. He retrieved his spear and the man’s rifle, and turned to face the chaos of the town.

The cannon fired again. The smell of smoke began to fill the street. In front of him, bodies littered the ground. There were white men and women and children and, between them, dark slices of the earth drawn out and given form, his own warriors.

You will die here.

The thought was a cold chill that worked up his spine and through his entire body. But he was a warrior, and he would not leave. Instead, pushing the thoughts from his mind, he rushed through the churned mud and into the chaos of the battle, where he plowed his spear into the back of an Englishwoman.

When the shape of the battle changed, Pemulwuy asked himself if he had seen the English soldiers arrive before the first bullet tore through his shoulder to announce their presence, or if he had not. In the split second the question passed through his mind, he realised that he had been so caught up in the bloodlust, in the killing, that he hadn’t.

When the bullet tore through his left shoulder, he fell to his knees, his spear dropped into the churned up mud; in his right hand, however, he still gripped the English rifle. Around him, fire leapt from crude building to crude building, acting as his warriors had done when they swept into the town, but with a more final devastation.

They had failed.

Pemulwuy rose to his feet, clutching the rifle.

Before losing control of his warriors, he had planned to organise a defensive structure, to take prisoners, to prepare for the wave of red coated soldiers that swept into the town.

The men that will kill you. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

The bullets that sounded around him were organised, punching through the air in a series of volleys before puncturing the bodies of his warriors. Across the street, he watched a tall Eora warrior hit by a volley of bullets, his body lifted from the ground by the force. It was the sign, the moment that Pemulwuy’s attack was truly broken, the moment he should have fled; but instead, he began running across the street to help the fallen, a bullet sinking into the calf of his right leg before he was half way across, the impact causing him to spin into the mud.

Don’t die face down.

Pemulwuy pushed himself up, using the rifle for the leverage. The wave of Redcoats had become a flow of individuals for his gaze, and he was aware, dimly, that some of his warriors had fled. Around him, six others were caught on the same street, firing into the red tide that worked itself towards them like the lines of a whirlpool, sucking everything into the centre. His warriors dropped slowly, as if an invisible finger, a spirit’s finger, had reached out and knocked them down, taking their life away as English children did to toys in a game.

A third bullet punched into Pemulwuy’s chest.

Die fighting!

Roaring, Pemulwuy raised the English rifle, leveling it at a red coated figure in front of him. He took no recognition of the figure’s details, of who he was, or what made him; he was

English and it did not matter; he squeezed the trigger, and the soldier pitched backwards—

Four bullets smashed into Pemulwuy in response.

The Spirit World.

To Mark Twain, the spiraling staircase was endless. The rickety, wooden panels sliced through the inky black world around him, dropping until he refused to believe that he was still seeing a staircase, and his body trembled from fright. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

There was no way to measure time. His body did not grow weak, or strong, and, more than once, Twain believed that he was repeatedly stepping on the same two steps. When he mentioned this to Cadi, the Aboriginal man laughed, a warm, smooth, calming sound.

“Would you believe,” he said, “that I am walking along the beach of my past? The sand is unblemished, the water pure, and the horizon beautiful.”

Unhappily, Twain muttered, “So this is for us tourists, huh?”

“In the Spirit World, you see what you expect to see.”

Twain stopped, and turned to face him. The bones that had been so prominent on his skin were now sunken, having turned into a smooth white paste that covered his muscular body. His skin was no longer scarred, and his eyes, once closed, were open, revealing a dark brown colouring that bordered on black.

“What happened to you?” Twain asked, not surprised by the change.

“This is my world,” Cadi replied. “Why would I look dead here?”

Twain began to respond, then shrugged, and said, “I don’t suppose you’ve got a smoke?”

Cadi shook his head. “No. It’s not a habit I’ve ever seen anything good rise from.”

“Right then,” Twain said, and continued his walk down the stairs.

Eventually, a light blinked into life in the unfathomable black around him. Twain wondered, upon seeing it, what Cadi saw, but refrained from asking. He had not liked the

Aboriginal man’s previous response—it had made him feel young and foolish, that latter an emotion he worked hard to avoid. He continued down the steps, drawing closer to the dot, which in response, grew brighter, turning from yellow to gold.

Finally, Twain reached a position on the case where he could make out the dot’s features.

It was a small, brown bird, the kind that Twain had seen many times. As he drew closer, he discovered that it was caught in mid-flight, unable to move, to rise or fall.

“I’m not the only one seeing this, right?” he asked, unable to conceal his irritation. “Or is this a private showing?” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

“I see it,” Cadi responded quietly.

“What is it?”

“A bird.”

“Thanks,” Twain muttered dryly. “What does it mean?”

Cadi smiled, but it was a small, sad smile. “This is the last of my Aboriginal myths. It took place before the turn of your century. In it, an Eora warrior, my first revolutionary against the English, is lying in an English hospital, shackled to the bed, dying.”

“So the bird is his fantasy?” Twain lifted raised his arm, reaching for the bird. “It’s not terribly original.”

“You misunderstand. This is the Eora warrior. On his seventh day in the hospital, he turns into a bird, and flies out of the window to return to his people.”

Twain’s fingers touched the bird, and its beak opened, and a small, angry chirp pierced the inky blackness, startling him. With a second chirp, the bird bit Twain’s finger, and, flapping its wings, flew around the spiral staircase, and off into the darkness.

“The Aboriginal tribes began to die after this,” Cadi continued sadly. “They were always my favourite, but it was a mistake to take one of their men as a champion. I poured into his spirit everything that the Aboriginal culture had, everything that gave them form and purpose. It was a mistake. There was nothing for the others, and he, alone, could not change the inevitable. He could not defeat the English.”

Twain sucked on his finger and muttered around it: “It doesn’t sound like any of your so called revolutions worked.”

“No,” Cadi agreed. “Gone are the days when the disfranchised could change a path. I must rely on a celebrated person, now.”

“And that’s me, is it?” Twain asked, shaking his hand.

“You are a celebrity, are you not?” the Aboriginal man asked. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

Twain shrugged, then nodded. “Yeah, I am. But why bother with me? Just make your own kind and leave me in peace. People react better to their own kind.”

“The Eora are Sydney’s own,” Cadi said softly. “But no Englishman would embrace them, just as no Aboriginal or Irishman would embrace the English. So tell me, whose kind should I make a celebrity out of?”

Twain began to reply, then stopped. He could think of nothing to say in response, and instead said, “Well, if that’s the case, why even bother?”

Cadi was silent. Twain watched him look around, wondering what, on his beach, he was gazing at, for nothing was offered to him but the endless black and a spiraling staircase that stretched to the end of his sight and beyond.

“If you could save your daughter, Mark Twain, would you?” Cadi finally asked.

Stiffening, Twain replied hotly, “Of course—”

“What if she was no longer the daughter you remembered? If she did things you didn’t agree with, or understand. What if, except in name, and dim memory, the presence of your daughter was a totally alien thing? Would you still offer to save her?”

Swallowing his anger, Twain nodded in wordless response.

“Then we must continue onwards,” Cadi said, pointing to the stairs that he did not see.

1802.

Pemulwuy could not stop the English. They continued to spread, a white herd of disease and invading culture that knew no boundaries.

Once, the Eora warrior had believed that the strength of the English would unite the tribes, would force them all to fight, but it was not the case. Each week, young men and women left the tribes, lured by things on offer in the towns. Their family and friends would then journey back and forth, visiting, partaking in what was offered. Weekly, the base of the tribes was Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 eroded, worn away not by individuals, but by the inevitable march of time, which Pemulwuy, for all his strength, could not stop affecting even himself.

Ten years ago, he could run all day, and rise in the morning, ready to run again. Tracks were sharp and bright to his eyes. The night wind was soothing, and he would lie naked beneath it, gazing up into the bright dusting of stars in the night until he fell asleep. But not now. Now he took breaks during his running and, after a whole day, he would awake with aches, and the awareness that he slept longer. He needed a blanket at night, and the tracks he had followed so easily, were no longer clear. The horizon, when he gazed out, was a shifting, blurred thing that he was unsure of.

Worse, age arrived with another barb that Pemulwuy had not expected: the animosity of the young.

They argued against everything he did. They brought back the trinkets of the English, and when he ordered they be put aside, they told him that he did not understand. That he was old, that he no longer understood, that he was trapped in a time no longer important. To make matters worse, he could not pick up his spear and issue a challenge to respond to them directly. To attack the youth was to attack the future of the Eora.

He stared into the fire before him, his thoughts switching to the sound of wood breaking in sharp cracks. Other problems had also arisen with the bushrangers. The escaped convicts, or white men who had taken to the bush had, despite Pemulwuy’s instructions, been shown how to live off the land by the young. These men—yet they were not always men—did not fall into conflict with the Eora warrior and showed to him the flaw in his early logic. The mistakes his hate had created, for the free men and women in the towns favoured the white bushrangers. They looked to them for protection and, in some cases, a future. From the towns, he had seen mugs, plates, and pipes work their way through the tribes, decorated with the faces of the favoured bushrangers. No such thing existed for him, nor for any other Eora or tribesman warriors that fought the English. But was it possible that, if he had aligned himself with the free men and Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 women, instead of attacking them, he might have fought a more successful war against the

English?

So closely did his thoughts mirror the argument taking place around him, that Pemulwuy did not notice it until his name was shouted through the night. That, and only that, drew his attention to the group before him.

They were Eora men and women, but they were not dressed like him. Instead, they wore the clothes of the English: buttoned shirts, pants, boots, dresses, with their beards and hair turned smooth and decorated with reds and blues. At their feet were bundles of their belongings, bulging in various shape and form, leading the aging Eora warrior to surmise that what was contained within would not be welcomed by him.

He gives us his attention! cried an the Eora man. He did not have a beard, but a mustache, and through his ears were gold coloured rings. The Great Pemulwuy finally looks upon us, his subjects.

The words were spoken hastily and angrily, but Pemulwuy knew them well. You’re old, you’re a relic, you don’t understand. Though while he had thought them about himself, he would not allow another to say the words to him. Unfolding his body from its position, the older man, weaponless, lean, a map of scars from English bullets that refused to kill him, stalked over to the younger man, who, to his credit, did not sink into the company of his friends.

Quietly, he said, Miago, yes?

I am called James now, he spat in reply, angrily returning Pemulwuy’s gaze.

Shaking his head, he said, It is a great shame—

Spare me! James retorted hotly. Spare all of us your words. We have been perfectly content away from here.

Then leave, Pemulwuy replied, his voice cool, controlled, his gaze running over the eight

Eora behind James—it was such a fitting, ugly name for him—where he found them unable to meet his gaze. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

We cannot! James said. Thanks to you and your ways!

Pemulwuy’s eyes flashed in response, and the younger Eora faltered for a moment, stepping back as the older man spoke: I have not done anything to you. I have not seen you since after I escaped the hospital, and your father helped me with my injuries.

You should have died! James cried, and the Eora listening murmured disapproving in response. That’s what the Elders said!

Rather than being angered, Pemulwuy felt a heavy sense of defeat fall over him. Ten years ago, he would have struck James, killed him for the words, no matter his age. But now?

Had he seen too much death? Was it possible that he was not only losing the war, but the will to wage it? You would do well to watch your words, Pemulwuy said quietly. Show respect, for you are the one who came here, not I.

King has driven us out, James spat venomously in reply. 8 Because of you! You and only you are to blame for this!

King? Pemulwuy repeated, anger re-igniting in him. King doesn’t run those towns, boy!

The soldiers with rum do! He cannot do anything without their approval.

Not true! James turned to the Eora behind him. Tell him.

Yes, said a young woman slowly, clearly not wanting to be drawn into the argument. It is true. King has driven us out—but it is not as bad as Mia—

He has done it because of you! James shouted angrily, cutting her off. Because of your attacks, your raids, because of everything you have done!

And what would you have me do about it? Pemulwuy snapped. I’ll not bow to the English willfully!

We cannot go back until one of you is dead!

Then so be it.

8 b. 1758, Cornwell, England, UK. About the Aboriginal people, King wrote, “I have ever considered them the real Proprietors of the Soil.” Australian history, however, would not remember him for these words. King would be remembered, instead, as a politically weak but cruel man who married his cousin. d. 1808. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

Angrily, Pemulwuy spun away from the young Eora, and stalked over to the fire where he snatched up his spear. The sudden movement caused pain to run along his chest, but it only angered him further. This was his land! Eora land! It was their past and their future and no one, much less King, would dictate how an Eora walked across it.

Gripping the spear tightly, Pemulwuy stalked up to James, who, shrinking back, knew that he had pushed the warrior too far. The warrior who, for all his age, for all his failures, had still been struck down in Burramatta by seven bullets and, refusing to die, chained to a bed in a hospital, had escaped with the Spirit’s aid. The warrior who had fought the English from the day they landed, the warrior whose very name caused fear in the settlements.

That warrior, Pemulwuy, said to James harshly, Do you wish to fight me?

The young Eora shook his head.

We cannot fight among ourselves, Pemulwuy said, to James, to those behind him, to all in the tribe. That is how the English will defeat us. If we separate, if we betray our heritage, then they have already won.

Thrusting the young Eora to the side, his companions parting before him, Pemulwuy stalked into the darkness of the bush. It welcomed him and his intent with the comfort and support of a mother.

The Spirit World.

In the middle of the spiral staircase a door appeared. It was a faded red and had a long, brass handle.

Note: took it out of this paragraph: Wooden stairs were behind it, but Twain could not make out a way to reach them, not without climbing onto the edge of the stairwell, and risking the grasp of the inky darkness. He considered doing this, arguing with his fear as he gazed Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 downwards, but the disorientation and nausea was a powerful response, and Twain was left gripping the railing tightly, unable to climb it and step out.

“Mark Twain,” Cadi said after a moment, “we wish to go through the door.”

Biting his lip, he said, “Why wait to tell me that?”

“Sometimes, when a man is different, he will go around it.”

“But not me?” Twain muttered with annoyance, releasing the railing. “I’m just an ordinary man, huh?”

Cadi shrugged. “Does that bother you?”

“I guess not, since I’ve got no desire to go ‘round.” Twain grabbed the door handle, and paused. “Still, there must be something about me. Being a celebrity and all, right?”

“No,” Cadi replied, shaking his head. “A celebrity is just an ordinary man, or woman, given an extraordinary place. I do not understand why, or how, or what even makes other ordinary men and women so fascinated by them. It is beyond me.”

“I think you just lost me,” Twain replied, leaning his back against the door. “I was almost starting to come around, too.”

“The knowledge is here,” the Aboriginal man said, touching his chest with his fingers at the place where his heart beat. “It’s locked away from me.”

Twain shivered, and pushed aside the finger. He was aware, more than ever before, of the stretching black emptiness on either side of him, of the frail stairwell he stood upon, and of the fact that there was only one other man in the world with him at that moment. “I think I ought to open this door, don’t you?” he said.

Cadi smiled, but not with amusement.

The door handle turned smoothly under Twain’s grasp. On the other side, he found a set of stairs. But unlike the stairs he left, these were made from dirty grey cement, and led downwards for five steps, before running into a narrow alley where buildings made from brick and smooth cement loomed over him like parents over a cradle. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

The noises of the world reached into the alley with thin, sticky fingers, teasing with their familiarity. It was the sounds of cars, of people, of music, and the things that mixed between, like dogs, birds, and cooking… but for every familiar sound there was the hint that it was not right, that it was, somehow, not exactly the sound Twain remembered.

Stepping from the alley, Twain stopped. In front of him was a street, similar to the ones he was familiar with, but at the same time totally different. Moving along in a tightly packed group were automobiles, but they were smooth and rounded like giant bullets. They were an array of colours, from blue, red, green, to grey, and white, and even, in one small automobile that looked like a dented bubble, aqua. Inside the vehicles sat men and women, singular or in groups, just as they walked along the streets, but a large portion of them talked into small boxes in their hands, or had wires leading down from their ears and into their strangely cut jackets and oddly designed purses or bags. There was no sense of uniformity, with some men and women wearing simple, dark versions of suits that he was familiar with, and others appearing more casual, in blue and green and orange colours and with clothes he didn’t recognise. However, for all this difference, there were still similarities. Huddled within doorframes and the edges of alleys, holding bags to them, were the homeless men and women that Twain knew anywhere. Each was ignored and stepped around by the walking crowd.

“You brought me all this way to show me another fantasy?” Twain asked, unimpressed.

There were smells in the air, a mix of food and fumes and perfumes, that irritated his nose, and he reached into the pocket of his jacket. “You’ve really outdone yourself on the smells.”

Next to him, Cadi had resumed his bony shape. The man’s eyes were closed, his mouth compressed, and scars mapped his body. Clicking as it moved, the skull said, “This is not a fantasy of mine. None of them have been.”

Twain wiped his nose, and gazed outwards: buildings stretched out in a crowd of figures, sweeping out as far as he could see. Finally, gazing at the buildings, he experienced a flash of recognition. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 4

“This is Sydney?” he asked.

“In the twenty first century,” Cadi acknowledged. “We are standing in Kings Cross.”

“I’ve never heard of such a street,” Twain replied, walking down the path, and gazing through a glass window. Inside, rows and rows of brightly coloured plastic items rested, but he could not, for the life of him, understand what they were for.

“It is not a street,” Cadi said from behind him. “It is the heart of Sydney. In your time, it is known as Queens Cross, but it will be changed.”

Twain looked into the reflection on the glass, but neither he nor Cadi was there.

Accepting it as he did everything, he said, “They don’t say good things about the Cross in

Sydney, which I’m sure you’re aware of.”

“And with good reason.” The Aboriginal man began walking down the path, weaving between the people, leaving him to follow. “The Cross, as it is so known, pumps life into Sydney straight from the English authority that founded it. The name tells anyone walking into Sydney this, yet most of its citizens instead choose to accept it, to treat the Cross as a dark novelty that they can enjoy on a weekend basis. But they shouldn’t. It is not an amusement ride for the masses.”

Twain’s gaze ran from each man and woman that he passed, each of them unaware of his presence. Listening with half an ear, he said, “We’ve places like this back home, and they never hurt no one.”

Cadi stopped, and gazed intently at him.

Twain shrugged. “It’s true.”

“So naïve, Mark Twain.” Cadi swept his hand along the storefronts beside them, and pointed down the street, where buildings ran in an endless line. “Why is it that nobody asks what fuels the city? Where is its heart, and what marked it? In Sydney, Kings Cross feeds off an act of violence that took place in 1788, shortly after the First Fleet arrived. Six convicts raped five Eora women in the swamp that was once here. It was here that what the English delivered in its fleet Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 4 sunk into the ground, was sown into the land and connected with the rotten umbilical cord that wormed from its mother country. It killed the land. I saw this, and I could do nothing in response to it, until I learnt to…”

He held up his bony hands, and his skull opened in an attempt of an expression; smile or frown, he did not know.

Twain said, “It’s not a good thing, and it shouldn’t happen to anyone, but it doesn’t have to be like this.”

“But it is.”

“Are you—”

Without warning, Twain was thrown to the ground. A boot cracked into his temple, sent him reeling.

Struggling, Twain was grabbed by his feet and dragged to the side of the street. Legs passed him, people walking, uncaring, while the dark, bony legs of Cadi strode at the edge of his consciousness. He cried out and, in response, his head was smacked painfully into the brick wall.

A rough, white, young face shot into his view, and snarled, “Money!”

Twain shook his head. How to explain that this wasn’t real, that he wasn’t here, and that he was Mark Twain!

“Fucker!”

Twain’s head exploded in pain. A second punch plunged wetly into his face. He sagged, and once again the boot caught him in the temple. He should have lost consciousness, should have faded into blackness that held nothing, but he didn’t; instead he felt the young man furiously search his pockets, ripping the wallet and money out. Then, glancing down at his boots, he tore them off too.

Without a backward glance, the boy turned, and ran down the street, the flow of people continuing past the fallen Twain. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 4

“This is real,” Cadi said from above him. “It is happening right now. It happens every day in Sydney. The dark amusement ride that is the beat of the city spreads itself out in acts such as daylight robbery, drugs that kill, underage prostitution, and worse. You could not imagine what is worse. And it is kept alive not by the people, but by the scarred heart that beats here, in Kings

Cross.”

Cadi’s bony arms reached down and helped Twain to his feet. Glancing behind him, he saw a young, dark haired Asian man lying on the ground, blood pouring from his face, his skull split open.

“He will die,” Cadi said flatly.

Twain did not respond. He felt sick, and wanted to vomit, but knew that he would not, knew that there was more to be shown to him. In response to his silent acceptance of continuing,

Cadi lead him to a second door, this one a bright red door, and painted onto the side of a building.

It opened for him.

1802.

After the battle of Burramatta, Pemulwuy had begun to hear the land around the harbour referred to as Sydney Cove.

It pained him to think that the English could rename Eora land so easily. It pained him even more to think that anyone who came, now, to the land would see it as English land, and know it by their name. What was worse, however, was that Pemulwuy was seeing a change on the land that was altering it in ways he had never imagined: the stingrays dwindled, the bush was cut away, the trees replaced with crude buildings of wood while other, more sturdy buildings made from pale yellow sandstone were built. The sandstone, to him, was the sign that the English Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 4 had found something of themselves in the land and, soon, he worried, the entire area would be changed so that it resembled nothing of the land he had grown up with, the land he had loved.

Pausing at the top of a hill, the Eora warrior dropped into a crouch and gazed at the ragged ugliness of Sydney Cove.

According to the English, it had been named after a man who had never seen it, and who would never do so. One young Eora had told him that Sydney was a ‘genteel’ man—though neither had understood the word, only that it was supposedly something to aspire to—and a friend of the white beeàna. He was also, the young Eora said, a man who held all the land, and everything upon it, in contempt. It was not an uncommon opinion for the English. After so many years of fighting them, Pemulwuy had grudgingly accepted that the only native born Englishmen who did not hold the land in contempt were the Rum Corps, who he hated with a passion. He had learned, too late, it appeared, that there were divisions as wide as the Harbour between the

English here and those in their native land, and despite his animosity towards them, he believed that if he had known this years before, he would have exploited it.

But of course, he had not.

I have lost my taste for the war, Pemulwuy whispered, rising from his crouch, his muscles burning from the strain. I don’t want it anymore. I have watched my tribe die and walk into the towns, yet the English living here no longer appears as the crime (took out is) I once thought it was.

Time had, he realised, defeated him. And yet, as he gazed down at the stunted collection of buildings before him, he realised that he would not be able to turn away from his current actions: he would kill King. But it was not for hatred that he would do it, he realised, or for the

Eora way of life, or even the land. In truth, he did not know why he would do it.

He felt no anger or fear as he made his way quietly down the hill. His hard feet left only the barest hint of a track in their wake, and when he skirted around a pair of Redcoats in the street, he did not attack them. They were young men, ugly like all the English, but that was not Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 4 why he stayed his hand. Part of him wanted to believe that he did so because he did not want to alert others to his presence, and in a small way, that was true; but mainly, his refusal to step into the street with his spear was the physical manifestation of his unwillingness to continue the war.

He wondered, briefly, if a new Spirit had settled upon him. When the land had belonged to the Eora, the Elders had told Pemulwuy that the Spirit of the land demanded protection, that it would be angry if he allowed any tribe to take the land, and it had been this that had fueled him in the first years of his war. But he did not feel it anymore, and indeed, admitted that there was a different feel to the land now. Was it possible that it rose out of the quiet houses of the English that he passed, dark with sleep, and with dogs chained to the back doors for protection?

Pemulwuy did not know, but it was entirely possible.

King lived in a two-story sandstone building in the middle of Sydney Cove. It was where all the Governors had lived, and was surrounded by large lawns and vegetable gardens just beginning to show produce, and from afar it looked as if the building were gazing protectively across the land around it. Perhaps this was having an effect on the gardens. Pemulwuy had seen similar patches around houses throughout the settlement, but their vegetables showed sagging, discoloured tops or nothing at all, while at King’s dwelling, there was more life, the promise of things to come.

Pemulwuy slipped over the surrounding fence, and made his way silently to the back of the sandstone building. Coldness was seeping into his fingers, and he flexed them as he scanned the garden slowly. Once, he had been able to scan the surrounding ground quickly, but now, even with the aid of moonlight, he needed more time. Time to distinguish the shapes, such as the fence palings to the left, and the firewood next to it.

When he was sure that the yard was empty, Pemulwuy continued to the back of the house. There were no lights coming from the house, but on the second floor, the Eora could make out the hint of something, either movement or a candle. The windows were too thick for him to see through properly. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 4

His hard feet lead him quietly to the back door, which, when he pushed upon, swung open with a faint creak.

Warmth still had its fading grip on the house, lingering in the sandstone bricks of the narrow hallway that Pemulwuy made his way along. Doors were to his left and right, and when he gazed into them, he found a small kitchen, followed by even smaller rooms that were packed like an overflowing parcel with couches and tables, and in the case of one, a piano.

Pemulwuy had seen a piano once, pushed into a ravine, and almost on its side, the wood cracked and broken like the skin and bones of a dead man. The dirty keys had still produced a sound when he touched them, however, and, despite himself, he had straightened the broken instrument, and tapped sounds out of it in the midday sun.

Afterwards, he had been angry with himself for indulging in such an English thing. The

Eora had instruments of their own, traditional ones that he enjoyed, and ones that he should use.

Seeing the piano brought back the memory and, as he made his way quietly up the steps, he felt a faint twinge because he could not go and tap on it to produce sounds again.

On the second floor he was presented with two doors. In the first, he found a large, spacious room with two occupants: a white English baby, lying in its crib, and a large, meaty woman, asleep on the couch that lay next to the crib. Around them were thick curtains, and drawers, and plush toys. Pemulwuy, easing the door shut quietly, knew the two to be King’s wife and child.

He truly had lost the taste for the war. Years ago, he would have thought of nothing of killing the woman and child, just as the English thought nothing of killing Eora women and children. It would not have been difficult to turn around and kill them still, Pemulwuy knew, even as he made his way to the second door that emitted a hint of light but, even thinking of the women he had known and who had died at English hands, he could not find the anger or will to do it. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 4

He would kill King, and that was all. After King, he would find a different way to battle the English.

But why not now?

With a faint sigh, Pemulwuy realised that he could not return to the tribe and face Miago and the other young Eora without having accomplished what he said he would. Besides, didn’t

King deserve it? Wouldn’t be a fine warning for the future governors that they sent in his place?

His fingers tightening against his spear, Pemulwuy pushed open the door.

In the room, holding a long muzzled rifle, was King. The aging, tall, grey haired, white skinned man regarded Pemulwuy with his bright blue eyes. Quietly, he said, “You’re a disease upon this land.”

Before Pemulwuy could react, King fired.

The lead tore into his chest, punching him out of the door, throwing him to the floor. His hands searched for his spear, but he could not find it, could not feel the ground, and his breath came out in harsh gasps. His mind went blank as, from the darkness above him, a figure emerged… But it was not King. No. Not King. Instead, it was the young, smooth featured black face of Miago.

“If you’d gone and learned to ride horses,” the young Eora said in broken English as he leveled a pistol at him. “Not Pemulwuy. It is beneath you to do it.”

Hatred flared in Pemulwuy and he roared. In response, Miago’s pistol bucked, and the world exploded in blood and pain from which Pemulwuy would not walk away.

1803.

Beyond the red door was a cool, dark room. As Twain’s eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, he was able to make out the shapes of shelves, filled with books, and a large oak desk, with a Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 4 high-backed chair behind it. In the middle of the table, in a large glass jar, was the head of an

Aboriginal man, his mouth and eyes stitched shut, floating gently in light brown alcohol.

“The poor devil,” Twain said quietly, approaching the desk. “What’d he do to deserve this?”

“This is my first revolutionary,” Cadi whispered from the darkness around him. “The

Eora warrior you saw earlier.”9

“Where are you?” Twain said, scanning the room.

“I am here.” Cadi stood behind the desk, the darkness making his bones more prominent, as if there was no skin at all behind them. With his bony hands, he stroked the glass jar as if it were a child that he could pick up and hold close to his chest. “After he had been killed, King had his head removed, to make sure that he would not rise again. He did it that very night, in his backyard.”

Twain shuddered. “Where are we?”

“We are in London, in Joseph Banks’ study. King had the head sent here afterwards, to study, to learn what it was that made him hate them so much. In doing so, he took everything I had given the warrior, and isolated it from the Aboriginal people, destroying the last remains of his power.”

“Surely something could have been done?” Twain asked, approaching the desk.

“No,” Cadi replied coldly. “The warrior himself was the symbol. I realised the mistake afterwards, and rectified it with my Irishman but, in this case, the Eora’s skin, his entire body, was the symbol that could unite them.”

Twain stared at the floating head. After everything he had seen, everything he had been forced to go through, he wanted the head to leave an impression on him; to suggest to him the quality of the Aboriginal people who lived in Sydney and the white men and women that lived in

9 The British kept Pemulwuy’s head until 1950, when it was returned to Australia and, it is believed, lost. It was believed to be found again in 1998, but there is some dispute as to if it is, indeed, the head of Pemulwuy or not. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 4 the city too. Mostly, however, he wanted it to explain the figure that had taken him along this journey, but the longer he stared, the more it resembled that of a simple head.

“Do you understand why Sydney needs a new heart?” Cadi asked, passing through the table to stand before him. The head of the Eora warrior appeared to float in his stomach, part of the spirit.

“Yeah,” Twain said uncomfortably, wanting to step back, but unable too. “I understand why you want one, but maybe you’ve looked at it wrong. Maybe things aren’t as bad as you say.

At any rate, there’s nothing I can do about that.”

“That’s untrue,” the other replied quietly, an underlying menace in his voice. “You bring with you a culture that can be embraced. A symbol for a revolution that can wash away the old hatred, and bring a new beat to the city.”

“But—”

Cadi’s bony hand plunged into Twain’s chest before he could finish. The pain was immense: it spread through ever fibre of his body, terrible, and inescapable. It was death. He knew that. He would never see his wife or daughters again, never write another word; it was all over… and then, through the pain, he felt the beat of his heart fill his body like the sound of a drum, beating the tempo of his life…

It stopped.

Cadi pulled his bony arm out of his chest, the flesh and bone parting until it released the still beating heart of Mark Twain.

Seeing it, Twain’s consciousness failed, his legs went weak, and he began to fall.

“I will not let the English win,” said Cadi without remorse, his voice reaching through the pain and shock.

The ground rushed up at Twain. Black and solid, he could not avoid it, he could not escape it, and he did not want to escape. Let it be over, let it finish, let him go. He could still feel his heart beating, but it was no longer his own: it was stolen, ripped from him to be placed into a Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 4 city he barely knew. It would do no good. The spirit was wrong: revolutions were not achieved with symbols and stolen cultures, they were seeded from within, grown from what was the land and what people created anew. Change would only rise in Sydney when the city was its own creature, when the people in it embraced it, when they understood all that had happened. Change could not be forced; to do so would result only in a cosmetic, shallow, tainted beast, the exact kind Cadi fought against. Realising this, Twain wanted to cry it out, to tell Cadi that it was futile, that he was wrong, that he had to acknowledge the past, that he had to accept it and resolve the issues that arose from it; that only by doing this could he destroy the rotten hands that held

Sydney in its stranglehold; but he could not cry out.

The black slab of the ground raced up.

Mark Twain dreamt no more. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 5

Brothers

I’ve forgotten the name of this shithole pub that I’m waiting in, again.10 My short term memory’s fucked, so it’s no new experience, and I’m good with it mostly, but today it’s pissing me off. I’m waiting for Charlie. I’m angry with Charlie. I’m waiting and I’m angry and there’s nothing to do till he gets here so instead of focusing on why I’m angry, I’m trying to remember the name of this fucking pub. A game for my head. A game I’m failing. Fucking game. I’ve got to check the red lined slip of paper in my jacket if I want to win, but knowing that makes the knot of frustration in my guts worse. Fingers press into the table in front of me; my eyes tighten; I try and focus on it, try to remember, but there’s no point. It won’t come. I reach in, open, read the words Bar Cleveland, corner of Cleveland and Bourke, then fold it up and slip it back into me pocket as the tension slips away.

The pub—Bar Cleveland, repeat it, Bar Cleveland—is on the corner of an intersection, and the doors and windows have been opened so that the sound of the evening traffic rides in with the warm evening breeze.. The sky is just beginning to lose its blue; orange is showing at the base in a thin line mixed with exhaust and pollution, which is turning it an ugly orange-grey.

The rest of the sky is still clear and I can see the pale bone face of the moon with its blind gaze above me. It’d be a tranquil sight if it weren’t for the long lines of traffic running both ways on the street, filled with unhappy grey workers. If it weren’t so stuffy, I’d get the doors shut. I figure the service’d be quick, too, since all the bar staff have been doing for the last ten minutes is watching me. A single Koori sitting in a pub without a drink is a fascinating sight for two white girls, also without a drink.

Have I spoken with them? Fucked if I know. If I have, it’s like the pub’s name—and I’ve forgotten it, again. Don’t want to look at that slip of paper. It’ll come to me. I’m angry at Charlie.

10 b. 1969. Winnellie, Darwin, Northern Territory. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 5

Don’t focus on that. Think of the pub. This is an old story. I might repeat—I will repeat. Cut me some slack. For my whole life I’ve fought to remember. The trick is repetition and letting the little things go. Put your keys in the same place every day. Don’t stress that you forgot that new show on the telly. Learn to carry a pen and pad. Learn to use them. The name of the pub ain’t important. You’re in it, you’re there. Don’t stress the name. Don’t be afraid to repeat the question. Ignore the jokes. Keep it simple. Live simple.

I hope I didn’t say anything to those girls. They’re a bit young and a bit white, but cute. I should go and get a beer and set their minds at ease—

My hand touches glass and it clinks against another: two beers, both half drunk. Shit.

Don’t stress the little things. Pick up one glass, pour it into the other, hope it’s the same drink.

Doesn’t matter anyway. I’m here waiting, not drinking. If I was drinking I’d go to a place that knew me, that would say, “Nick, mate, your glass is there,” and not pour me a second, not charge me, and then not stare at me till I did something else funny.

It’s Charlie’s fault that I’m here. I’m waiting for him. I’m angry. He picked the place, told me it was friendly, but that’s not the reason for my anger. The attraction of this pub for him is that it isn’t in Redfern, but that it’s close enough not to make it too much of a slap. I know that

—I’m not stupid. He’s walking the line between comfort and appeasement. It makes me sad.

Charlie grew up in the Block with me and it’s his home. He’ll always be welcome, far as I’m concerned. We could go to Mum’s place and have a drink and talk with everyone. But when he signed up for that blue uniform and black pistol, that old home became difficult to place next to the new one. Like I said, makes me—

Tapping on my shoulder: I jump.

Through the window, I hear good-natured laughter. Turning, I find Charlie grinning at me, his big hairy hands resting easily on the scratched brown paint of the window frame. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 5

“Wanker,” I say. “You scared the shit out of me.” That makes him laugh more, and he passes out of view. Outside cars have begun turning on their pale headlights.

Through the pub door, Charlie enters and nods at the girls, who smile and greet him. No surprise. He always did like those young white things.

Charlie is a big bloke.11 A mix of muscle and fat, the recent years have added more of the latter, but even in the grey suit, charcoal shirt, and slim grey tie he’s wearing, the man is still an imposing sight. He has got a big, broad face that was clean shaven for a long time, but with his jowls sagging a little more with age, he’s grown a beard of silver and black to hide it. He also has new glasses: a thin, grey frame that gives him an official air.

He shakes my hand like he always has: firm, turning it into a hug, the kind of hug that lets you know that anger doesn’t matter. I forget it. I will forget it. I won’t let it get in the way. When

Charlie releases me, he gives me the once over and says, “You look good, Nick. What are you drinking?”

“Beer.”

The skin round his eyes crinkle when smiles, then he heads to the bar, begins talking as a white girl starts pouring.

My short-term memory is fucked. If I don’t watch him, I might forget he’s there, but my long-term memory is fine, so is my emotional memory. Once I get the memory, it sticks. Same with the emotion. If it’s there, it’s stuck. Occasionally I’ll forget why I’m angry or happy, but the emotion will be there, undeniable. It’s why I like pop music. A three-minute song of emotion. I put it in the stereo, repeat it, learn it, feel it. Books and movies are shit for me cause they take too 11 b. 1969. Ashfield, Sydney, New South Wales. For six months after Charlie was born, his mother insisted that she did not have a baby. She had had a natural birth, assisted in her home by a white woman who had changed her name to Sky (because when she died, she would, she insisted, return to the sky) so there were no official documents for her to worry about. But it wasn’t documentation that worried her: it was one of her neighbours, one of Sky’s friends, a stranger, anyone who saw her with her new born boy. She worried about them seeing her. About them thinking that she didn’t deserve him, that she was a bad mother, that he could grow up in a better family. The news came out, slowly, and in bits, as it is bound to (change), and she knew it was useless to keep hidden when, one day, she came home to find a cradle left by her brother and his friends on the doorstep with a card that said, Don’t Trust A Hippie. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 5 long to work through to that connection. But once the connection is there I’m not going to forget.

I’ll remember the things I’ve done. The big things I’ve lived. I remember meeting Charlie when I was eight.

Mum brought us down from Darwin after Dad died and money got hard. Dad’d been white, and his family there didn’t want anything to do with us after, and Mum’d lost most of her own through the Government’s shit, so there wasn’t much she could rely on up there. She had a sister in Sydney, living in Redfern, who said she should come down and stay with her, so when she was a month behind in rent, she packed up everything we could carry, and we hitched and rode trains until we arrived. It felt like it took us a year, but Mum says it was only a week and a half. It was a pretty unexciting trip, with the only real problem being my wandering round late at night when everyone slept and crying, out of sorts cause I couldn’t remember the dirty, dusty world I was experiencing. When we arrived in Sydney, my Aunt put us up in her place and that’s where I lived for the next ten years. Mum still lives there with her.

Charlie is telling a story to the girl behind the pub. He points to me and grins his wide white toothed smile, looking like a hungry dog. It’s another Nick’s Memory story. I smile back, try not to get angry. It isn’t what I’m here for, but the story is good for breaking the ice with white girls.

First time I met Charlie, he was eight and trying to convince a red haired white girl in the same grade to eat worms. He was telling her that it was good stuff. We were sitting on a row of narrow cement steps, little boys and girls in ugly school uniforms, and Charlie had a tin filled with worms. He had gotten them from behind one of the classrooms by diggin’ the dirty, squirming brown threads out of the ground with his fingers. He held the tin in a tiny hand caked in mud and said, “It’s good food. Try it.” I had been at school for two days and barely spoken a word, but the red haired girl turned to me and asked if it was true.

I had never seen anyone eat live worms, so I told her yeah. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 5

She got down about five before Charlie and I burst out laughing. There was dirt all round her face and her eyes scrunched up and she began to cry and ran to the toilets and puked it all up.

I forget things. Would have forgotten this if Charlie hadn’t told every boy in the year over the next week, with me standing beside him, his new little mate, bonded through the event and the blame we’d gotten after.

Charlie’s holding two schooners and is walking back to the table, his toothy smile hidden behind his lips. I raise my eyebrow as Charlie places the glasses down and, in reply, he says, “It’s not what you think.”

“It looked like you were hitting on her,” I reply. “She turn you down cause you’re old enough to be her father?”

“It never even came to that. Besides, you know I’m in a very happy divorce right now.”

“How’s that working out?”

“I’m just waiting for Child Support to rip the guts out my wages.” He lifts his drink in a tiny, mocking salute before drinking. “But enough of that. Has everyone calmed down?”

“About what?”

“About Tay.”

Tay. I’d like to forget Tay. I’d like to forget my anger at Charlie over Tay. But there’s no chance of that, and I shake my head.

“This is getting out of hand, Nick.” He stands, takes off his suit jack off, slings it over the back of his chair. “It’s a circus. A fucking circus. The media is everywhere. I can’t take a piss without a reporter misquoting me about my dick. It’d be okay if they were interested in helping people come to terms with what has happened, but they’re just using the anger and sadness to make everything worse.”

“Tay’s dead.” I bite back my own anger, try to remain calm. “It can’t get much worse.”

Charlie shakes his head, but his face is carefully devoid of emotion. This face belongs to the new Charlie, the one who left the Police blues behind to become the NSW Police Aboriginal Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 5

Liaison Officer, located in Redfern Station. It’s got to be a bitch of a job, but those of us with long term memories still remember Charlie as a guy who found it difficult to keep his emotions to himself, the guy who lived on emotion, with everything played out across the chubby face, from anger to happiness to just plain boredom; but now we’re all being shut out, and there’s not a one of us who can look at Charlie’s face now and not think it’s sitting there like a dull mask.

Both Charlie and me grew up on the Block. Over the years, Redfern round it has changed, the land being bought up for expensive apartments that have palm trees air lifted onto them, but our actual neighbourhood hasn’t changed much. Just gotten older. Just crumbled. We grew up and lived in houses on narrow streets that were dirty and rundown and sat next to each like crumbling headstones of men and women long gone and that isn’t much different from how it is now. When we were kids, we noticed it, but didn’t notice it, in the way that we had no conscious recognition of the poverty our friends and family lived in. It wasn’t until High School that we became aware of it, and learnt that we were sitting at the bottom of the public school system, class wise.

Most of the time, it meant nothing, but if some fuck said something against the Block, it was on for one and all, as Charlie used to say. He was the first in, too. There was a kid called

Haines in year ten who caught the end of Charlie’s fist in a nasty one, not that he didn’t deserve it. Haines was one of those straight, brown haired white boys who grew up loving football and girls and was headed straight for the Public Service, babies, and vacations to Bali, but he had always been a cock.12 Well, he was to me. He fucking picked on me something fierce throughout

12 1969, St. Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria. Paul Haines moved to Sydney when he was four, and grew up in Redfern, frustrated by the pressure put on him by his Catholic, working class father, and his failure to live up to his standards. Paul never understood why he should go to Church, why God watched him, why cars were important, and why his interest in woman’s fashion caused his father so much embarrassment. He grew up as an angry, confused youth who was eventually (change) brought up on assault charges after a fight in which he broke another man’s jaw. Faced, finally, with the question of why he was so angry, Paul entered court appointed therapy and, in his mid twenties, emerged on stage as Madam Gutterfly, a drag queen comedian who used her father in her popular act of oppressed cross gender knowledge. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 5 year ten. In the second half of the year it came to a head after he spent an entire math class kicking the back of my seat and I turned and told him to fuck off. After, him and two of his mates bailed me up in the hall and I ended up getting my head slammed against the wall.

“Fucking Abo,” he said and placed his forearm against my throat. “I hear you’re all sleeping in the fucking dirt out there. That true, dirt boy?”

I might have replied had his arm not been choking me, but then again, I might not. I never backed down from a fight, though I tended to stay out of them. Nothing worse than being in the middle of a fight and suddenly finding yourself with no fucking idea why you were punching another guy or he was hitting you.

But I didn’t reply and Haines slammed his knee into my balls, then kicked me in the side of the head. Eight stitches. I’ve never forgotten that.

I was in the sick bay when another fight broke out, so I didn’t get to see it, but I did see

Haines when he was brought in. They put his bloody teeth on a saucer next to him, little chips of white and red on a clean white surface. His face looking as if it had been smashed repeatedly into cement steps. Which, later, was what I learnt that Charlie had done to him.

When I got back home with my stitches I learnt that Charlie had been suspended for a week. He didn’t care. He was just pissed. Anger was written in every muscle of his face when he talked about Haines. He told me that after he’d heard what had happened—Haines and his mates bragging—he walked up to Haines, called him a Dirt Boy, then beat the shit out of him. Just like that. Snap. Haines’ friends didn’t know what to do. By the time everyone had separated, Haines was needing a dentist something fierce.

That Charlie, though, that Charlie isn’t sitting opposite me.

“It breaks my heart,” the new Charlie says, sounding like a news sound bite. “What happened to Tay—it breaks my fucking heart, Nick, it really does. It shouldn’t have happened.

Madam Gutterfly is J’s drag queen persona. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 5

No one should get shot. The cop that did that, he’s sick with it, which no one is hearing. Instead there’s just this angry. And anger doesn’t solve anything. Not for Tay.”

“Not for Tay?” Anger in the last word, an accusation.

Charlie repeats quietly, “Not for Tay.”

“That’s bullshit.” My hand touches the schooner. It’s warm, but I drink it anyway, cause I want to gather thoughts, not let myself run on emotion. Outside, the pale headlights are finding darkness to latch onto. “I can’t believe you’re saying this. Tay is dead. He’s another dead kid in the Block. You understand that? They’re not just thinking about Tay.”

“They should be.” Charlie’s mask slips, slightly, to reveal a hint of frustration. “For fucks sake, we’re individuals, mate. The individual that was known as Tay had a thousand bucks worth of cocaine on him. No wait, don’t speak. Let me finish. Not only did he have that, but he had been caught dealing three times before—and not small shit like pot. Hard drugs. He was bringing bad shit into the neighbourhood. He’d been doing this for a year. Tay wasn’t innocent. He was part of a very real problem in the area—one that needs to be dealt with and not given over to this anger.”

“We know!” I sigh and scratch at my thinning hair and think. I don’t want to argue, don’t want to be here, but if no one is here—I was thinking about it earlier, I know, and I was pretty sure I wrote my thoughts down. Live simple. Live in habits. My hand moves up to the folded red lined piece of paper with the pub name and directions on it. That’s not it. I had a second piece of paper. I was sure, but Charlie is waiting, getting agitated, and instead of looking through me jeans pocket, I say, “We know Tay wasn’t a saint, but he was only sixteen. You shouldn’t be shot by cops when you’re sixteen.”

“It was an accident,” Charlie shoots back, quick as a cop. “Bloody accident.”

“It’s not the first—” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 5

“He isn’t worth rioting over,” Charlie interrupts, pleading, his mask slipping fully to reveal his desperation, the giant tear that is running down the middle of him. “For fucks sake, mate, you can’t let them do this because of him!”

“It’s not just him.” I begin patting down my pants. I had paper. I had names. “This isn’t the first—they know it won’t be the last. They flip on the TV and they hear shit that isn’t true.

They remember—they remember Gundy—”

“Tay Clarke was no Dave fucking Gundy!”

“Gundy was still shot by Police same as Tay, mate. You can’t tell them it’s different. All they’re seeing is the dead.”

“It’s a different Police Force now,” Charlie says. “Back then isn’t comparable. It was different circumstances. The men who shot Gundy were hunting for a Cop Killer and they fucked up good and proper. There’s no excuse for those who charged into Gundy’s house—”

“There’s an excuse for Tay?”

“Fuck,” Charlie growls.

“Yeah, got caught there, didn’t you?” I’m barely able to keep my anger held in. I want to reach out and shake him. I want to kick him. I want—I want to fucking scream, but I don’t.

Instead, I say, “You wonder why they’ll riot, yeah? You listen to yourself, mate, cause you’re justifying the death, just like it’s always been justified. Justifying another dead black. They’re angry and they’re pissed cause that’s all they’re hearing—that it was okay to kill Tay, just like it’s been okay to kill everyone else.”

“Don’t think like the mob, Nick,” Charlie says. “Think outside this, please. Don’t go thinking like them.”

“I’m thinking with my family, mate.”

Charlie doesn’t reply. It’s been twenty two years since he lived in the Block, seventeen years since he met his soon to be ex-wife Denise, and moved near Randwick. It’s been eleven years since I met my wife, but me, I know only the place I have roots, so I stayed in Redfern to Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 5 run community programs. I’m one of the few who’ll still talk with Charlie—the only one of our mates we grew up with. Is it just that I never remember that each time I see him he’s forgotten how to recognise the family that he had once been so fiercely proud of and had defended with all that he had, his fists?

“They honestly thought he had a gun,” Charlie says quietly, justifying the event, unable to do anything but. “The whole thing breaks my heart. It was just an honest fuck up—they thought he had a gun and a shit like Tay might very well. That kid was just waiting for an adult sentence. I know his type. He’s no good. It breaks my heart that this’ll happen because of him.”

“You can stop it,” I tell him.

“No, not if you guys go ahead with this protest. They’ll send the riot squad. We’ve got a riot squad to deal with this shit, and we got powers to lock down the suburb, no one in or out.

It’ll be no good for no one.

“I can’t stop this,” I say. “I don’t want to stop this.”

“Christ,” Charlie mutters. “You didn’t even like Tay.”

“I don’t even remember meeting him,” I reply, truthfully.

Frustrated, Charlie pushes his chair back, grabs his jacket and leaves. The memories are fading by the time he reaches the door. Through the window, I watch him walk down the street, alone, his fists jammed into his pockets, the sky dark for the night now, with the headlights from cars slicing brightly through and hitting Charlie as he crosses the road. He shines, but only for a moment, and then I’ve forgotten him and I’m sitting alone in a pub that I don’t know the name of. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 6

The Pattern of Tongues

At the end, my father tells me, “I can’t change who I am, Tony. You know that. You know that and you did it anyway.”13

Every day I leave for work or University, I pause at the fly screen door. I look at the silhouette of my father. It waves with a thick left hand. Its gold band may or may not flash. It wishes me well.

In March of 1990, two pregnant brown suitcases sit at the front door, old white tags hanging from the handles old streamers. I do not understand the significance of this.14 Is this even really a child’s memory? I can’t be sure, but my mother, without a word, opens the door.

My father lives beneath a flight path in Sydenham. He has not left his brown brick house for fifteen years.

In March of 1990, my mother steps into the white sunlight and never looks back.

In April of 1990, my grandmother begins calling. She speaks only in Greek. My father replies to her only in English. She calls on a Sunday or Monday, and they talk for one hour, until my father says, “This must be costing you a fortune,” and then they say their farewells and hang up.

My mother has no words.15

13 b. 1960, Piraeus, Athens, Greece. 14 b. 1985, Sydenham, Sydney, New South Wales. 15 b. 1962, Andros, Andros Island, Greece. No further information available. I can lie no more. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 6

I study Accounting at the University of Sydney. On Wednesdays I have a two-hour break. For the last month, I have lain on a hill and held hands with a slim Italian boy named Paul. I am not entirely comfortable with this.

My father’s name is Anthony. He is a short, pale man, slowly turning to fat as his hair turns grey and falls out. “Your mother won’t know what to think,” he says, sitting in the kitchen and smothering red-brown, sloppy baked beans over toast. “She always loved my hair. A woman loves a man with good hair, she would say.”

“You should let it grow,” Paul whispers, touching my scalp. His breath is wet in my ear, his tongue a lingering presence. “You could dye it—I think you’d look good with some blond.”

I met Paul in a statistics class.

“I met your mother in a bar,” Father says. He is sitting by an open window and pale, weak afternoon sunlight filters around him. “Do you hear that? That’s got to be the flight from Japan coming. I looked up the schedules on the internet. Look at the belly of that plane—I never get tired of seeing that. But, where was I? Yeah, I met your Mother in a bar, after work. I was working on a construction site and she was a waitress.”

“A drink?” I repeat, looking around the empty hall after class. “I don’t know—I mean… It’s just, that—”

“She wasn’t impressed with me at first,” Father continues. “I had come in covered in dirt and sweat and looking like I crawled out of the dark ground. In the bar, she was this bright, Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 6 curvaceous woman with dozens of men paying her compliments. Giving her tips. Trying to sweet talk her. The way guys are with a beautiful woman. But I didn’t let it go—I kept at it. I just knew, knew that she was worth the patience. You’ll know what I mean soon enough.”

Paul sucks lightly on my ear on the lawn of Sydney University. Above us, the white belly of a plane passes high in the sky, scraps of cloud scattered around it.

The layout and items inside my father’s house have not changed since 1990. The lounge is fading brown leather, the armchair matching but the springs long gone. Cushions hold it in place. The coffee table between the two is a dark brown, and holds photographs of a curvaceous, sad woman that were taken in 1989. The television is a black giant box, and there is an old video player below it. On the floor is a rug (change) that has been rubbed bare so that it resembles a series of spotted bald patches. The beds creak loudly. The bookshelf and stereo cabinet are lined with books and records that were all purchased before that day in March. Next to it is an old turntable and my father plays his albums and reads his novels (change) that were made by artists who have now faded away.

“He stopped buying music in 1990?” A grin splits across Paul’s face. Around us, men pause, glance, then return to their drinks and conversation. “My god—that must be awful, all that glam rock!” His fingers touch mine as we laugh.

“I don’t want anything to be changed.” I am fifteen and embarrassed to bring my friends home.

At school, they ask me about him, and I lie. My father adds quietly, “I want her to be able to recognise everything.”

“He panics,” I tell Paul, who listens intently. “If he goes anywhere near the door, he panics.” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 6

“I’m waiting for her,” my Father tells me.

In the car park, Paul and I kiss deeply.

“I waited in the beginning. I waited in the bar. I would have waited a lifetime, if that was what was required by her.”

“There’s no rush,” Paul says, his touch light on my face. It lingers as I leave him, warm with his sharp smell, his peppermint taste, and I want more. I want less.

“Your grandmother hated her,” my father says on a Sunday, before her call. He always talks about her before she calls, and smiles as he does. “She still hates her.”

My grandmother calls. My Greek is only good enough to allow me to understand her hello, followed by my father’s name, but it has always been this way. I take him the phone, passing it to him as he lifts the needle from his record. His reply is in English. After every call, he tells me that my grandmother is proud of me and loves me and hopes that I find a sweet Greek girl soon.

“I don’t know what it was. The way she dressed—the way she dressed was…” my father’s voice trails off faintly. He smiles, showing no teeth. “It caught my attention. It caught the attention of all guys. My mother—your grandmother—hated that. She would call her names when she wasn’t there. She’d tell me that she was a tramp. That she was no good. That she was leading me down the wrong path. But she didn’t know her, she wouldn’t even hold a conversation with her, didn’t even try, no matter how much your mother did.” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 6

“I can pick you up,” Paul says over the mobile. “Maybe then, y’know, maybe I could meet your

Dad?”

“Your grandfather died when I was young. When I was about five, maybe six. That left your grandmother to raise me and my brother and sister. She was—and I guess still is—a very independent woman. This, of course, being a time when independent women weren’t on the television.” My father shook his head at the memory. He stood at the kitchen top, turning over soil in a pot plant that the doctor gave him, and which I would eventually take out into the backyard to plant. “She was very opinionated. No one in my family—not my brother or sister or uncle—would tell her that she—that she—she was wrong. No one dared. An uncle had told her that once, and she didn’t argue back, she simply sat there and stared at him. Stared and didn’t answer another one of his questions until he took it back. She had her way, her set ideal on how to do everything, is what I’m saying. We’ve all got our ways, I guess, but your mother was not what your grandmother had as an ideal for me.”

“There’s no need to be embarrassed,” Paul says. “Shit. Wait a minute, there’s a plane—” and his voice is drowned out.

“I told her that I loved your Mother. She told me that I didn’t know what love was, that I was too young and, in her opinion, much too stupid.”

I enter a bar where men are the only patrons. I try not to stare and so I keep my gaze on the floor.

In the corner of my eyes, however, the men are joined into one long male figure that fills the room and wraps tightly around me. Holds me. When I look up, I find Paul sitting at a table with two of his friends. He stands, hugs, and introduces me to a (change) dark haired man, Jason, who Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 6 looks like he has come from work in an office, and a blond haired man, a few years younger,

Mikey, who is wearing an Astro Boy t-shirt.16 They do not stay, and I soon learn why as Paul turns our conversation to us. “It’s time for everyone to accept who you are,” he says.17

My father stands and shuffles to the record player, where the needle has jumped free of the groove. He blows on it, wipes it down, and as he does this, he says, “I can’t believe they’ve stopped mass producing records.” The needle drops back onto the black vinyl, as smoothly as if it had never been free. “The CDs you bring back lack the texture of a record—don’t smile like that, Tony, I’m right. There’s a sound to a record not in those CDs of yours. The sound is in this black texture here.”

“Paul, you don’t understand. I’m all he has. Just… please, try to understand that.”

“Your grandmother did everything she could against your mother.” The record is playing a

16 Jason Vella, b. 1977, Toongabbie, Sydney, New South Wales; Michael Brock, b. 1984, Wentworthville, Sydney, New South Wales.

I met J in the first grade. Maybe the second. He reckons the second, I reckon first. We did not become friends until the second grade. He is my oldest friend, my brother, my family. I worry about disappointing him. I worry what he will think when he arrives in a couple of days. I sent the postcards this morning. This house is a mess. There’s not much food. I haven’t been eating well. It doesn’t matter.

17 b. 1984, Yarraville, Melbourne, Australia. When Paul first arrived in Sydney at the age of seventeen, he had with him an old beige folder full of photographs. Behind each page of pressed plastic was a visual shrine to a boy he had fantasised about, but never touched. He had wanted, desired, needed… but he had only the images to keep him sated. One night during his first week in his new city, drunk with vodka and new friends, he burned the entire folder in a bright stainless steel sink. He still dreams of melted boys trapped behind plastic. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 6 woman’s voice softly; she is murmuring about love. “She banned her from the house. She refused to give the phone to me. She badmouthed her to everyone. But despite this, I didn’t stop seeing her. I couldn’t. I love your mother. I couldn’t live without her. I can’t live without her.

But that didn’t stop your grandmother. Eventually we had a huge fight, and I told her that I couldn’t stay at the house anymore. That I couldn’t live with her around.”

“How could he understand?” I replied, trying not to let my frustration show, but failing. “How could I even begin to explain this to a man who hasn’t left the house in over fifteen years?”

“You’ll do almost anything for a woman you love.” My father looks out the open back window where the bright yellow-white sun is draining the colour from the bare yard. Outside, the trees and flowers I have planted over the years have knitted together into a wall that hides the neighbouring houses. “It was not our only fight, but it was the one that finished the long year of fights we’d been having. Your grandmother would never be able to see it from my point of view.

She would never understand that I was my own person now. That I had made my own choices.

That I had my own life to lead.”18

“It’s not that I don’t sympathise,” Paul replies heatedly. “It’s hard at first. Of course it’s hard. My parents… my parents still don’t speak to me. But you can’t hide from who you are. You can’t ignore something beautiful.”

“Your mother and I were planning to get married, but I knew we couldn’t do it there. If we were

18 b. 1941, Piraeus, Athens, Greece. The day after her son left, Acacia Nikolaou discovered a tiny indentation in her chest. It was so small at first that she thought nothing of it (change), but as the long and empty days of her favourite son's absence grew, so did the indentation. Lotions would not help, pills fell heavily into her stomach, Doctors scratched heads, and clothes were becoming more and more inadequate in hiding the mark. Finally, she admitted that there was a hole growing in her chest, and unless she took steps to repair the cause, it would one day kill her. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 6 married with your grandmother and the family in our presence, it would just mean that we would always be carrying their baggage around with us.” He sighs. “I wanted to be free of that, but it was hard to convince your mother. She had strong ties with Greece. She had a history, but then so did I.”

“This is beautiful, this is right, this is you.” Paul’s voice drops to desperate whisper, “How can you sit there and act like there’s nothing wrong, that nothing needs to change, when clearly everything does!”

“I wanted to free. To begin again.”

“Don’t deny yourself!”

“So we left Greece.”

I walk down the streets to my house. It is dark, and the houses around me are blinking with pale eyes of light as they awaken for the evening. Alone, I turn the corner to my street, and see Paul’s car outside my house. My heart skips and thuds and skips and I run and fling open the wire gate to find him standing there at the door, talking to the silhouette of my father.

A plane passes overhead, set upon a prescribed path. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 6

The Man Who Disappeared

I am disappearing.19

I am not speaking metaphorically. I wish it was a simple literary device that explained the frustration and anger that is mine on a daily basis, but it is not. Yes, the words do emerge from the long throat of a middle aged Caucasian man, his sun-browned skin wrinkling and sagging, his hair greying and receding, and his blue eyes fading in colour and sight… but they also emerge from a man who, in the mirror, can no longer see his left arm. There are patches of skin peeling off his forearm still, off my forearm, and that arm, from shoulder the wrist, has disappeared. I can feel the muscles, but there is no sight: it is as if the skin were made from sunlight filtered air, and took on whatever quality it was in front of, like a chameleon in a b-grade movie.

It began two weeks ago. A Thursday. At six the alarm clicked and radio noise began, though I had already been awoken by my bladder and the deterioration that age was having on my toilet habits. It was there that I noticed the flap of skin around my wrist: a dead, discoloured white piece of refuse that had detached from the bottom of my wrist. When I pulled at the end, it came free, leaving a jagged trail up the side. Beneath lay the pure white underside of the skin from the other side. No bones, no muscle, no veins, no blood, just skin. Upsetting as it is now, at first it did not bother me. Rather, I was fascinated with it.

By the end of Thursday, I had picked clean the skin around my wrist, leaving a blank band much like a watch that I could hold up to the world and see people through. It was there that the strangeness of what was happening fully began to occur to me. At the time, I was sitting at an outside café in Circular Quay. Behind me, the dark water of the Harbour was choppy and scattered with rubbish; docked ferries were rocking and thudding in hollow punches against the wharf; and dead leaves slipped across the pavement between the crowded feet of tourists and

19 b. 1957, Cecil Park, Sydney, New South Wales. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 6 locals, none of which gazed down. At the table directly in front of me was a young Asian woman, her nut brown skin smooth and without blemish. It was her and her perfect skin that made me realise the strangeness of what was happening to me, and how it was connected to my work, and, yes to this woman, Annie Nguyen.

“Is there anything wrong?” she asked, nodding to my right hand that was, once again, being scratched and picked at my left wrist.

“No,” I replied, stopping. “It’s nothing. A rash.”

“Do you know what kind?”

“I’m seeing a Doctor tonight.”

I never did. I don’t like Doctors. Annie Nguyen did not know this, however. I used it simply to brush off her enquiry into my life because I did not enjoy the idea that she knew anything about me. I had initially disliked Annie because of her conservative political and capitalist views, but this dislike had grown as I continued to work with her—though perhaps it was more correct to say I worked against her. What angered me most about Annie was her casual display of wealth. Children starved throughout the world and, on any given day, Annie wore clothes that cost as much or more than (change) it would take to feed half a dozen families for a year. On that Thursday, she wore black suit pants, a hand-made olive green shirt, a pair of elegant, slippery black shoes, and a thin, green faced silver banded watch. In the opening of her shirt, there was also a thin silver cross, something that did nothing to change my opinion of her.

She was a pretty woman before clothes and wealth, and somehow these things made her prettier and capable in appearance. This woman holding her olive green framed glasses could have chosen to excel at any function in life—so long, of course, as it benefited her and whoever employed her.20

20 b. 1979, Castle Hill, Sydney, New South Wales. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 7

Annie Nguyen picked up the tiny silver pitcher of milk before her, and poured it slowly

(change) into her white cup in a pure white line. The pitcher clinked against the glass table when she finished, a small signal to begin talking, and she said, “I am going to have to see the site.”

“It’ll take some time,” I replied. My left hand had settled like a dead weight on my lap.

“They’re afraid traffic through there will disturb it.”

“I’ll have to see it, Jack. The Government needs a reason to stop the sale—”

“There are hundreds of reasons not to sell the land.”

“If it were up to me, I would sit here and discuss the issues with you forever.” She lifted the white cup to her lips, paused before drinking, and said, “I really would. Your concerns and your love for the area—it’s all very compelling. But I do have a schedule, and people to answer to it. There are companies and contracts involved and the longer the delay, the more it costs, which is something nobody wants.”

I want it.

Instead, I said, “We’re talking about a historical area. Money, when lost, can be regained.

History, on the other, once lost, stays that way. Wolli Creek has a lot of history.”

“For a place that doesn’t exist,” she added.

“You know that’s not true.”

“There is no Wolli Creek. It’s part of Turrella.”

It had always been difficult to work with her, but in the last week, it had gotten worse.

Pressure, no doubt, from those above her. Our anger had gotten to such a point that it was being voiced in stock phrases. For Annie, it was, “There is no Wolli Creek.”

For me it was the reply, “The places that don’t exist need the most protection.”

Annie shook her head and sighed. “I want to see the site. I need to see the site. If it’s of as much historical worth as you say, then I’ll have no choice but to step back and halt the work.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 7

She was not impressed. Within a minute, she had stood, shaken (change) my right hand, left a tip of the waitress, and began (change) walking towards the Botanical Gardens. A silver mobile appeared in her expensive manicured fingers and she began to inform the person above her about my reluctance and, no doubt, about me personally.

Bitch.

In 1978, I had moved into a single story house in Goddard Street, near Wolli Creek. The mortgage was under my name, but for the first five years, it had been shared with four other

Environmentalists. At the time, I had not been thinking of settling down. The plan had originally been for the five of us to use the house as a lodging for anyone who shared our ideals, but when the others began leaving to travel abroad, I found myself lacking the desire to leave. The mix of wild greens that tangled within urban bushland, the lack of major roads and the quiet lazy warmth when I lay on the uncut grass smoking pot that had been grown out back… It was home.

I had no desire to go anywhere else.

The roommates left in the late eighties, and in the mid nineties I stopped taking in roommates. By then, the slow industrial crawl of Sydney had reached the area, and I was busy working for local environment concerns, so I did not mind the absence of people. I did mind, however, the years in which the air would be discoloured by the building of the M5, which I considered the supreme act of land vandalism.

Speak to Annie Nguyen, however, and these problems did not exist.

In the bathroom mirror, I plucked another piece of loose skin from my chest, and revealed more of the unblemished underside of my back. After two hours, it looked as if I had been washed in acid, and my skin was flaking away, leaving me to disintegrate into nothing.

My reaction should have been different. I should not have been—been… What? Calm?

Was I calm? There was no rationalisation for this it, yet I did not feel as if the loss was a threat.

There was a sense of panic, but it was pinned beneath another set of emotions, partly disbelief, Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 7 and partly a sense that I was returning to a primordial state. Returning to where my skin didn’t matter, even though the skin being shed was, in many ways, being noticed for the first time. The first time I had truly studied the lines that patterned me in thin marks, the first time I had wondered if they meant anything… With each part of me that was lost, I took note of what I was losing, and as the patches of my skin continued to shrink like water stains, I began to slowly wonder what it was that was being lost.

The phone rang, and slowly, reluctant to leave the mirror, I walked into the bedroom and answered it.

“Hello?”

The voice that replied was agitated. “Jack, is that you?”

“Kim?”

“Yes, Kim. You remember me, right? If not, let me remind you of the fact that you work for me—and that you’re late!”

I glanced at the clock. Nearly ten. “I’m sorry.”

“Try to sound like it,” she snapped. “Jesus, Jack, get it together. You’ve got that meeting with that rich bitch today.”

My hand tightened on the receiver. “Well, maybe—”

“You have to go.” Her voice had no room for argument. “If you bail, they’ll demand a new liaison, and you know what that’ll mean?”

“That won’t necessarily happen…”

“That bitch is a slippery cunt, and you know it. She’ll walk right through a new liaison without ever going to the site. We need you. You can’t pass the job off now. Come on, we’ve almost got them ready to concede.”21

21 b. 1973, Minato-ku, Osaka, Japan. After hanging up the phone, the tall Kim Selling fought back the urge to vomit and swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. Kim hadn’t seen Zel for two years, and had lost regular contact years before when the other had formed her own punk band, Aborted God, and began traveling. But they’d been best friends before that, had gone to the same school in Cairns, where the one Asian girl in the year didn’t make friends Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 7

They were going to concede because I was lying.

No-one suspected that I was lying, but the truth was that the entire defense I had structured to stop the Government’s sale of Wolli Creek was based on nothing but lies. It tasted like black ash in my mouth whenever I spoke it, but was a necessary lie: despite the important arguments for ensuring stability to the biodiversity of the greater Sydney region that was provided by Girrahween Park, it was not a debate that moved people. Having spent enough time with activists over the years, I had come to realise that while they spoke about the safekeeping of land and its natural resources for future generations, it was primarily lip service. Land was offered on the bargaining table as soon as money was needed to be raised for other causes.

“What’s a few acres of land here and there?” A long, carefully manicured finger would point to a piece of land that served to keep the ecological balance in harmony in the city. “A few acres won’t destroy what is vital here, and we’ll be very careful when relocating animals and anything else of cultural significance.”

That is how Sydney’s bushland and wildlife has been cut away, how the hair has been plucked from the body of the city so that it can be left smooth for the piercing that is provided by the housing market.

“It was a small Daruk tribe,” I told Annie Nguyen originally. We were sitting in the

Botanical Gardens, looking out over a stretch of the Harbour, the water a dark, shifting green. A cold autumn wind blew the smell of salt at us. “At least, that’s what we’re assuming right now.

We can’t be sure. I’ve contacted a few historians and Aboriginal elders, but no one quite knows if they were there or not. History is such a fractured thing.”

fast. Didn’t, except for Zel. Zel, who she’d moved to Sydney with, gotten drunk first with, smoked weed with and who she’d eventually drifted apart from in small moments that she had always meant to recover, each year. But not now. Now Zel was dead. Zel was dead and there was a weight in Kim’s stomach that hadn’t been there before and it felt like a bowling ball that was going to split her open and leave a bloody trail of tears across the floor. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 7

“It’s certainly quite difficult to be sure,” Annie agreed. Wearing a black skirt and light white top, and a silver, white light faced watch, she stared at a stack of scans in front of her. “But as I have said before, it’s not like this is the ground of the only Daruk tribe in Sydney.”

“No, naturally not,” I replied, pushing my hand into the dirt. I was not a very good liar— in fact, I was, ethically speaking, against lying, and to lie at such lengths left my stomach a hard lump of knots. To ensure, however, that I did not slip up, I had written my entire lie out as a script, and memorised it earlier. The scans that Annie held had been made for me by a graphic artist who, until the lie was finished, would answer his phone as a Professor of Australian

History. “However, as I’ve been telling you, this Daruk tribe was one of the few tribes to embrace convicts. Indeed, it was the only tribe in Sydney to do it successfully.”

“Escaped convicts?”

“Escaped female convicts.”

When I made this point Annie sucked her bottom lip harshly in response.

“The images you’ve got,” I continued, pressing my point, “are scans taken from a diary written by a female convict. Her first name is Emma, though we don’t know the last. Her first name can be connected to the First Fleet, but there were three women named Emma on board, so there is some confusion. What gives the find its authenticity, however, is the dating of the paper, and the way it was written. I don’t know if it’s possible for you to tell, but every inch of that diary paper is used. Paper was such a rare thing back then that none of it could be spared. On one page alone there is a month’s worth of entries. She has written between the lines of previous words, in corners, using a broken down code of her own language.”

“It’s virtually unreadable.”

I forced a laugh.

“Still,” Annie said slowly, flipping through the images, “this is a huge thing. Of course it is. When are you planning to release it to the public?” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 7

“Well.” It was a question I hadn’t anticipated. “Well. We want to be sure of everything first. Name, birth, if the children she mentions have relatives still living. There would be too many repercussions to bring it out publicly before we’re sure. What will probably take us a year will suddenly blow out into three, maybe even more.”

She nodded in response and handed the scans back to me. “Yes. That wouldn’t be good for either of us.” She paused. “You know, the M5 opened a financial vein in Sydney that hadn’t been explored—a vein that can still be further explored with what we plan.”

“You’ve told me that before.” My hands were sweating. They left dirty prints on the images. “But as I’ve said, no one owns public land. It’s a cultural property. What I—and people like myself—do is work like a trust, keeping it for the future. For everyone in the future.”

“Yes, I know.”

Annie was silent. The fingers on her left hand cracked as she bent them. For a moment, I thought that I had won, that everything had become much too difficult for her plan to continue.

Then a slight smile curved across Annie’s dark lips. “I want to see this place, Jack.”

A month later, after constant harassment, I agreed.

Two weeks later, I stood in the bathroom on the day we were to see the site and peeled layers of my skin off. I wanted to be free of the lies I had told… but, like that lie, my disappearance was flawed. I would have to see Annie one last time.

The middle of my chest was gone now. I could see the green towels on the rack behind me, could trace the lines between the brown tiles with my gaze. To the naked eye it looked as if the centre of my chest had been removed, leaving me a messy collection of half formed limbs.

In the kitchen, I picked up a small, stainless steel knife. I used it mainly to peel hard vegetables, though the packaging had assured me it would also cut through raw meat cleanly. As a vegetarian, I hadn’t tested that promise, until, when I was back in the bathroom, I placed the knife against my empty chest. I could feel the blade against my skin, but there was no indentation. At first, when I pressed down gently, there was no mark, but then, the deeper I Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 7 pushed, urged on by a part of me that suggested that nothing would happen, blood began to appear.

It slid out in a thin, dark red, heart shaped stain that held but for a breath before it lost its shape and ran down my empty chest in a line of nothing.

I had arranged to meet Annie Nguyen at eleven at the office. I arrived just after eleven, a minute before she arrived in her black BMW.

After a quick greeting, she said, “You ready?”

“If we could just—”

“I’m on a tight schedule today, Jack.”

I nodded, but didn’t move. In the cool confines of the squat, demountable that was currently serving as an office, I would have been able to delay her. Phone calls, messages, Kim.

Kim had her uses like that. But standing by her sleek car, dressed in a cherry shirt, her lips a darker shade of red, Annie was not having any of it. It was as if she knew that the moment I walked into the office, her day would be frittered away, and that she would not see the site.

“Well,” I said, looking behind me. “I mean, if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

We did not talk inside the cool, sleek electronic world of the BMW. It had a walnut dashboard, and a pale red light around the radio, which Annie’s hand, topped with a red faced watch, turned down when I sat in the car. It was ugly music she had on, anyhow. The quietly blowing air was the only sound as I gave her aimless directions through to Girrahween Park, ensuring that she drove along round dirt tracks, trying to lead her in circles.

Finally, I said, “I’m sorry, I think I must be lost.”

With a faint sigh, she stopped. “Jack—”

“I’m really sorry. I don’t drive, so I’m awful with car directions.”

“Step out of the car,” Annie said, opening the door. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 7

Outside the BMW was a thick, lush green and brown world, filled with sharp, natural smells. I could take no comfort in it, however. The open doors of the car gave a loud beeping and a faint red light splashing on the ground. Shutting my door made no difference, for Annie, walking around the front of the car, had left her side open. Finally, she stood before me.

“Let’s be honest,” she said. Her brown eyes never left mine. “Shall we?”

I said nothing, my hands bunched together, my fingers piecing my skin, ripping into the remaining flesh.

Annie’s face was a serious mask. “This has gone on long enough. Despite what you might think, I’m not stupid.”

“I never—”

“This is utterly unprofessional.”

“Unprofessional,” I repeated. “This isn’t about a profession!”

“Don’t take that tone—”

My hand cracked against her face.

Her eyes wide, the door beeping, Annie’s face screwed up in anger. Before she could speak, before she could move, I hit her again. Then I grabbed her around the throat and began choking her. She struggled, her nails digging at me. Dig. Go on. Bitch. Feel me. I can feel you— and the feel of her beneath my hands did feel good. There was a horrible sense of satisfaction in me as I pushed her to the ground, pushed her into the dirt. The dirt she wanted to cut up and sell off to the highest bidder as if she owned it. Her eyes began to bulge. Her hands grabbed weakly at my head, nails scratching. I felt the skin behind my neck come loose, my hair rip… and then

Annie was holding half my face.

Sunlight hit her face. Sunlight shining through my head. The terror in her eyes was more than her just death; it was her death at the hands of someone who was nobody, who was nothing, whose empty fingers crushed her windpipe as the sun shone (change) through him. My empty body held her down through the long, final moments of her life, but this was not me who did this. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 7

There was nothing left of me. All that I was had been ripped away by her and others like her and left on the ground in the tattered remains of a life. Of my life.

Of a life I no longer recognised. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 7

The Fond Farewell

Pape—Born Joanne Lynn Johnson, Joanne or Jo to her family, PaperMadeGirl for two years online, and from there the final name that she and her friends used—Pape—was just, just, just a little bit, but not much, certainly not over, she’d certainly been worse, she’d spaced her drinks, well, her brother’s tightness had spaced them… She was drunk. Slightly. Just. Just. She felt good and right and finally understood what had happened to Samantha in way that she couldn’t articulate if asked. Yet, at the same time, she definitely had a palpable realisation that she’d come to an edge. The edge. That her ability to drink had manifested and stood next to her on the beach where the sand and water met in exhales and inhales like a liquid lung and informed her that one more drink would disturb the harmony and she would be right there at ugly drunk. She’d think about Sam, about the cold, dark polished wood of the casket and fuck, fuck—

She wouldn’t think it.

She wouldn’t drink.

She’d stop. No more.

She put Sam out of her head. Breathed out with the dark tide, breathed in, breathed out, slow and steady. She wasn’t going to think about Sam. That’s why she had come to her brother’s shit party. She’d lost herself in it, and it was only now, at the end, with the dying glow of the bonfire’s blackened logs behind her that the dull ache returned. She should’ve done what Em had suggested. What Em was doing right now. Tall, olive skinned Emily who was sitting in the lap of a guy she met earlier in the night and making out. She had been sitting there for hours, a little drunk, a little stoned, not one thought. Pape’s mind had been just as empty, but done with more alcohol and no making out and that was all fine for her, except that now, with people gone home and gone to new parties and gone somewhere solitary and quiet along the long strip of beach, the Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 8 thoughts she’d been avoiding clustered around her like the pamphlets fluttering across the sand in a cold sea wind.

Pape had read one. She couldn’t read one now, but she’d read one at the start, before she’d begun drinking. It was a mistake. Anti nuclear stuff: badly folded and stapled, holding a black and white collection of people fucked up with radiation poisoning. Skin peeling. Rotting.

Tongues black. Silent, page trapped screams in white and black. Kids lying on white beds splashed with black blood. It was fucked up stuff. There was even a list of disease names next to each picture, naming the afflictions the picture people had. Like it fucking mattered, Pape thought then, thought now. Names for that meant shit—meant nothing in the pain and death and she could see the coffin being lifted and moving down the middle of the church. Music. A body inside. A body like the photos? Fuck. She had tossed the pamphlet, began drinking, stuck two fingers up at the University students giving it out and laughed harshly when Em, equally horrified, asked what the fuck a beach party had to do with protesting a nuclear power plant?

Brittle. Tim, her brother, Timothy Joel Johnson, had said it to a red haired girl holding the pamphlets. Just leave them be, he said. They’re brittle.

And now he’d gone off to fuck that red head at the end of the beach.

Pape didn’t know many of the people still on the beach. Just Em, really, and she was busy. She certainly didn’t know the Asian guy sitting down by the water, but she had a connection, and anything, anything, was better than those images and thoughts.

The connection was simple: Tim had hassled him when he arrived. Tim: racist fucking prick Tim. The Asian guy had arrived with Tim’s friend Mallory, even. They walked down onto the beach together, Mallory dressed in his usual surfer style of torn (change) denim shorts and a flannelette shirt which he’d ripped the arms off and didn’t button, and the Asian his opposite, dressed in black jeans, Docs, and a band t-shirt a few sizes too big and depicting a band that she hadn’t heard of. He came from Mallory’s film course, and he was out of place, out like her, but

Mallory was vouching for him and that meant something. Mallory, who liked to be called Mal, Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 8 but Pape had known him since she was six and it’d been Mallory then—actually Mal-or-ee—and

Mallory it was now. Mallory wouldn’t vouch for just anyone. That meant the Asian was cool, but even Mallory, Tim’s oldest friend, wasn’t enough to stop her brother from being a racist fuck.

With the sand slipping beneath her feet, Pape made her way unsteadily to where he sat.

Approaching a guy wasn’t what she’d normally do. She kept to herself, really, quiet in her blacks and whites and long clothes. She was shy, yeah, and she hated the way guys looked at her chest—hated that she had a chest to look at—hated the silences creeping between words until it became obvious that no one had anything to say except Are you looking at my tits? Still, it was her fault that she had nothing to say. When the silences came, she wanted to leave. She wanted to leave when they weren’t there. Run clear of the city, dive into the dark waves and slide down and down… but instead she just let the silences grow and so they thought of her as being stupid and just flesh. Fuckable flesh. But flesh ripped easily, burnt, turned against you, held the disease that dug into your bones and ovaries and fuck she didn’t want to think about that.

Her hand fell onto his shoulder.

—Hey, she said.

He turned his head: big brown eyes and black hair everywhere. His skin was soft and smooth and he said, Hey.

—I wanna—I want to apologise.

—Why?

She hesitated, shrugged, then sat down in the sand next to him. Tim—the guy—

—I know who he is, he replied in a murmur.

—Yeah. Yeah, you would.

Tim had called him a yellow cocksucker. Passing English skills at work right there. She hated his racism, really, more than anything. Fucking Tim was just like Dad. Hearing it from Dad was enough. She didn’t need Tim to be his echo.

—Where do you know him? The boy’s soft voice interrupted. You know Mal, too, right? Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 8

—Yeah, yeah, Tim… She trailed off, twisted to look behind her, to gaze at the dying embers of the fire and Em still up there, moving slowly on the guy’s lap like she was the dying bunny that fought the Energizer Bunny. When she turned back, her gaze fell to the three bottles he had buried into the sand. The first had the narrow head sticking half way out, the second the bottom of the glass, and the third had been pushed a quarter down, beer sloshing just above the sand line. Finally: Tim is my brother.

—Yeah?

—Yeah. That’s why—well, why I wanted to apologise.

With a tiny jolt, Pape felt his hand touch her knee through the fabric of her skirt.

—It’s cool, he said. No one’s responsible for their family.

—Yeah, she replied, focused on the warmth of his touch, the tiny grains of sand rolling down the same leg. The left leg. A little vague, she said, Yeah. It’s just, y’know, that he was, he was such an asshole—

—It’s fine, he said, and his hand tightened slightly.

—Okay.

Silence.

In front of Pape the ocean crawled onto the sand in white lines, no longer a breath, but a pulse, her pulse, rising. The boy’s hand shifted from her knee, just above, to her thigh, tangled a little in the cloth, but it felt good and soon he would come into contact with her and he’d stop.

Stop right there. Stop right where she wanted him to stop—

—I’m Ki.

—Joanne.

Not Pape, not Jo, Joanne. What the fuck was with that? What was with her? Was she just pushing away those earlier thoughts through whatever she could grasp? Her hand dropped to his and it turned, palm over. Their fingers laced, a mix of pale and slightly darker colouring. She looked up and his face was close, so close, and then his lips were on hers and they were soft and Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 8 she most certainly wasn’t drunkenly making out with some guy she had just met, his tongue touching hers with a wet, tentative probe that slithered up against her own welcome, returning tongue.

There was a nudge, a push from Ki, or just Pape lying back into the sand and drawing him down, but whatever the reason, as her mind identified the taste of beer and cigarettes in his mouth, she felt sand against the bare portion of her back, where her black t-shirt had crawled up and exposed skin and Ki’s free hand settled there and the sand moved and her hand came up against his back and their lips parted for a moment for air, before pink tongues slipped against the other and her hand slipped down to his pants, for the first time, first time touching the outline of his groin and—

—No, he whispered, moving her hand away. No.

She hesitated, confused, wanting, confused, just confused—this wasn’t what she thought would happen.

—Not here, he said. His brown eyes didn’t blink, held her, the iris gone in the burnt down bonfire light, leaving it dark, pitch black. Not now.

—But—

—Not now.

In the morning, with his lingering taste in her mouth and the memory of his finger prints patterned up and down her arms and legs, those two words would pin the memory into her mind with such force and clarity that Joanne Lynn Johnson, one and a half months from seventeen, would describe as a scar. Beautiful and real and a mark that she would be able to identify for the rest of her life.22

But. Before that. Returning by the way of empty, white lined roads with electronic eyes winking 22 b. 1988, Sutherland, Sydney, New South Wales. I met her when we were teenagers. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 8 to each other in a trio of coloured invites and denials until the stretch of North Cronulla beach returned. The ragged edge of the continent. The end of Pape’s word. The beginning of Ki’s.

Returning to the site where bonfire logs had turned dead black, where in middle of the sand they dropped as large cinder chunks into each other like still born births. Where Ki Li, staring up at the sky, blew out cigarette smoke to the dull sounds.23

Joanne, he thought. Jo-anne.

He felt good. Had felt like shit before, when he had stepped onto the sand, and Tim had turned his straight, surfer’s body towards him and said, What’s that yellow fucking cocksucker doing here? Ki was ready to turn, to walk away, just fuck it, he didn’t need that stress, but Mal, solid, never fazed Mal, simply replied, Fuck off, Tim, I’ll bring whoever I want.

It was a sour note to begin with. He had wanted to leave, but he didn’t have anything else to do but go home and watch Kurosawa films, so he stayed. Fuck it, spite worked too. He’d stay to spite that cunt. It didn’t help, however, that Mal fucked off within an hour with some white girl, and it didn’t help that the only girl he met before Joanne had been some crazy hippie who’d talked about radiation breaking down bones like it was tissue—what the fuck was with that? He told her he didn’t give a shit, then had gone back to drinking Tim’s stolen beer and smoking.

That had eventually led (change) him to thoughts about Anna and the empty patch in his stomach that opened when he thought of her returned. He would never be able to fill that patch, to occupy it the way he had done when he was with Anna. He knew that, and was hitting a serious alcohol fueled depression when Joanne had come up on him. The water looked good, he had thought, and then her voice, her touch, her taste. Better: revenge: Tim’s fucking sister!

Mal wasn’t coming back, but Ki had the keys. The cigarette was an ashy stub burning between his fingers, and he tossed it into the logs, stood.

The engine in Mal’s old orange jeep kicked over.

23 b. 1986, Xidan, Beijing, China. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 8

The attraction was that he had been making out with Tim’s sister. That fucker deserved to come back and see Ki’s Asian hands and tongue all over and in her. But of course, he hadn’t been there. He’d been off. Been fucking some white hippie chick he’d found and had responded to his monosyllable conversation skills. So Ki had stopped. He was thinking that maybe that hadn’t been such a good idea now, but he had done it. Said something to her and watched her eyes go bright. There’d be another chance and he could make the revenge sweeter.

Ki drove sedately to where his parents were renting a place in Hurstville. It was a single storey, red brick house that lay across the ground like two lovers twisted on a bed. Up and down the street people were buying up land and then knocking down to rebuild. It had left the little red brick place looking like an isolated box, an old lady’s treasure chest in a street full of new. When he stopped outside, dawn was licking its orange tongue along the sky and Ki knew the house would be empty. A good sign. His Old Man wouldn’t be able to force him into the Take Away, or give him a lecture. Mum wouldn’t tell him he was a mess. She’d mean clothes, but he’d take it as everything.

Ki was a mess. Stumbling through the house, heading for his room, the thought stuck.

How could he have fucked everything up so badly of late? Nearly nineteen: failing to find how to express himself in his film studies course, failing his parents, failing his last relationship, failing his friends, and failing himself.

Fucking failure.

Fucking asshole Tim.

That girl, Joanne, lingered in the burn of his unfailing hate.

Pape: blindly searching for her mobile, having awoken in her cold and stuffy room in the middle of the day, back in Sutherland and wrapped in her black and red quilt and with a heavy head and dry mouth. No taste of vomit, though. Good. Tips of her finger dragged the black phone to her.

Unlocking the pad, she flicked through to the message from Emily. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 8

i feel like/ shit. blame you/ mum pissed. guy/ from last night call?/how r your/ folks?

Rolling onto her side, Pape kicked her quilt out of its tangle and pushed herself down, curled her legs up against her. Outside her dark bedroom, she could hear the television faintly murmuring. Mum, probably. She couldn’t make out the sound, but Dad was louder. Turning the sound off on her phone, she replied.

Haven’t seen/ them yet. Be/ the same I’m/ sure. Seeing/ your guy again?

Em’s reply was quick: no. bad/ kisser. what/ about your/ guy?

Hasn’t called./ What do you/ mean, bad/ kisser?

teeth.

You had no/ complaints/ last night :)

one night/ only :P

You could/ teach him.

He is 25!

Pape laughed, couldn’t help it.

The guy had, of course, been older. Em wasn’t attracted to guys her own age. It wasn’t something she consciously did, or so she said. Pape had her doubts that it worked out like that always, but didn’t bother pressing it. Outside her room, the quiet creak of feet on a floorboard sounded, and her mother’s voice followed, Are you awake, Jo?

To herself, Shit.

Aloud, Yeah, Mum. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 8

The white painted door cracked open, illuminating the black and white face of Johnny

Depp from the film Dead Man on the wall. The short figure of her mother leaned into Johnny’s mass produced gaze and said, You made a bit of noise last night.24

—Sorry.

—I know, but your Father wants to talk to you when you get up.

Pape lay still, the hand round her mobile slack, her stomach knotting tightly.

—Brush your teeth first. In the darkness, Mum’s voice had the whispered quietness of a conspirator. Use the mouth wash, too. You don’t want to give him anything to get angry about.

—Okay.

The door closed softly.

Shit. Dad. Pape glanced at the clock: the red numbers showed 11.47. There were worse times. The afternoon, the night, when he had finished work or begun drinking, those were the times she didn’t want a conversation. Didn’t want to see his face turn a blotchy red like blood would ooze out at any moment. It was worse when he’d had a few.

Her phone shook lightly, signaling a new message. Em, probably. Flipping it open, she found a number that she didn’t recognise, but a message that (change) made her stomach go light: Hey. Is Ki from/last night. This/is my #. Thought/u might want to/go see a film,/maybe?

Totally. But first, before even replying, she had to face Dad.

There was a bathroom connected to her room. It was white: tiles, walls, bench tops, even the vanity and frame of the mirror. Colour came from the towels, a splash of dark red against the

24 b. 1964, Kensington, Sydney, New South Wales. Gail Linda Johnson cannot sleep without sleeping pills, and has not done so since the first night of her marriage, in 1985. She was not yet twenty one when she married Dan, much too young her parents said, much, much too young; but she ignored them, caught up in the love that she felt, the promise of it, the potential of her life, but as she lay awake in the dark, her new husband beside her, she felt that love solidify. Her body became a heavy iron lump and in response, the bedsprings sank, creaked loudly, and threatened to break. But worse—worse than any fall that was hinted, Gail was, for the first time in her life, immobile. She could not move, no matter how she tried. The weight of her love would not allow her. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 8 pure surface that Dad had mirrored in the two other bathrooms. In there, she brushed her teeth, gargled with red mouth wash, spat it out mostly white, and then stood under the shower. The warm water turned her pale skin pink, and the cuts on the inside of her thighs stung. Pape was used to that, wanted that at times; and when they healed, she would take one of the tiny razors she had, and reline her skin. There were sixteen cuts, eight on the left, eight on the right. She made them after Sam’s funeral. More than any she had made before, but the number had purpose. Sixteen cuts for Samantha.

Out of the shower, she dried, brushed and used mouth wash again, then pulled on black jeans and a black t-shirt with Mickey Mouse smoking on the front. Aunt Rebekah had brought her that back from the States.25 It was not a shirt Dad liked, but he didn’t hate it. She didn’t have any clothes that he totally approved of in the first place, so there was nothing she could wear that would put him in a good mood. All she had was clothes that he had a greater or lesser degree of dislike for.

Leaving the room, Pape made her way down the floorboards of the hallway. Tim’s room was open, empty. Bed made. The lounge room had the TV on, playing a movie she’d never seen, but which had Elvis in it; the two white cushioned, black metal framed chairs and the matching two seater, however, were empty.

—Dad? she called.

—Kitchen, came the reply.

Kitchen. She did not want to go to the kitchen. She wanted to wait, but she knew, knew that not walking around the corner would only make him angry. The five steps turned to twelve 25 b. 1970, Kensington, Sydney, New South Wales. Rebekah Evelyn Johnson, never a woman to hide her feelings, or to back down when she knows something is wrong, has been quietly, for ten years, trying to give her sister strength. She does this because, one night, after she had met her sister and husband for dinner, Rebekah had returned home and, within hours, believed that she was having a heart attack. The next week, she learnt that the pain was caused by the fact that the skin inside her heart was disappearing (change). It is almost like it is decaying, the doctor said, scratching his head, unable to explain it. But Rebekah knew what was the cause, knew that it was linked to the sister that she loved so dearly, and who had once been so bright and alive, and who now appeared in slivers of life. Despite her doctor’s advice, Rebekah is not on a transplant list. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 8 and she turned the corner and found him at the counter. He had a loaf of rye bread out and was sawing through it with a long, bright bread knife. He had cut four pieces already, but Pape knew that he wouldn’t stop until the whole loaf had been cut. Next to him sat a small jar of strawberry jam, its texture so thick that it was nearly black behind the glass.

Dad wasn’t tall, but there was something big about him. The hands that held the knife were thick, calloused, and connected to sun-browned arms that led up to a strong, body builder’s shoulders. Shoulders that had once carried her. Dad had had thick blond hair, then, but it was cut short so now the receding hairlines and balding patches were acceptable to his vanity. His face was also big—though perhaps broad was the better description, as it reminded her of old pictures of the moon’s face, except that Dad’s was sun browned and creased with fewer lines.26

—Hey, Dad.

—Pumpkin. Want some toast?

—No, she said, and regretted it the moment she did.

—Still feeling seedy from last night, eh?

—No. I mean—well, there was nothing to feel seedy about.

The knife stopped mid saw, then resumed, tearing through the thick crust with jagged teeth. Don’t lie to me, Pumpkin.

—I’m—

—Don’t, he said quietly, a spot of anger discolouring his tone like blood in a napkin. You know I hate lying.

She nodded.

—I don’t like you drinking. It’s not good for a young girl like yourself to be drinking.

—I know.

—I tell you not to drink, he continued, the knife continuing to carve downwards, shedding breadcrumbs on each side. You’re only seventeen. Seventeen year old girls shouldn’t

26 b. 1961, Leichhardt, Sydney, New South Wales. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 9 be drinking. There are guys out there that look at young girls like you, drinking, and they give you more drink and they take you home and—

—That didn’t happen—

—I’m trying to look after you here! he snapped.

Pape fell quiet, looked down at the old bread board, dark crumbs scattered around Dad’s thick hand and knife. His right hand left the loaf and came down over her hand. She flinched, but

Dad didn’t let go. He said, I’m just trying to do what’s best, Pumpkin. That’s all. I don’t want what happened to your friend to happen you. I know, it was nothing like this, but still, you’re fragile. That’s what I learnt with that poor girl, and you got to remember that. You shouldn’t drink. You got to be careful when you go out. I’ll have to speak with Timmy about it, because he knew, he knew…He cleared his throat. You know you can’t do this, right?

She nodded.

—Good. He withdrew his hand (change), grabbed hold of the bread tightly. His pale gaze lingered on her before he resumed cutting. As he began, he said, You need to start wearing some colour, too. All that black is depressing.

—Dad? she said.

—Yeah?

—Can I go out tonight?

There was a faint hint of displeasure in his tone, a stain on his face. No.

Pape knew better than to push it.

—You got homework to do? he asked.

—Yeah, some Math and History, she replied.

—Better get to it after breakfast.

Ki: walking down King George’s Road in Hurstville in the bright but cold mid afternoon sun.

Converse sneakers dragging, pre-faded and ripped blue jeans, plain black t-shirt, cigarette in his Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 9 mouth and a pair of cheap, black sunglasses across his gaze. They were his third pair. He kept losing them: in bars, at Uni, with Mal, wherever it was possible to misplace, he misplaced. These were two months old. If they survived another month, they’d be the oldest pair he owned. The glasses were the way that he kept track of his life, and their continual disappearances were a signal that everything was still shit. When a pair finally stayed, he figured life would be turning around for him.

Since he was walking to the Chinese Take Away that his parents ran and was an hour late for his shift, Ki figured that life hadn’t changed, despite the presence of sunglasses. The thought was supported when the shop came into focus and he found his Old Man standing in the doorway, smoking one of his foul French cigarettes.

He was a tall and lean man and his face and neck were marked with deep scars from acne.

He had a short goatee, and looked, with his greying hair, like an aging pillar that God had breathed life into and pushed out into the world thousands of years ago. Not that his Old Man believed in God, or anything that might resemble one. He was a stubborn atheist of a man who, when he had no longer been able to fly planes after the loss of his right eye in a car accident, and which had been subsequently replaced with a glass one, took his family from their home in

Beijing, immigrated to Australia, and opened a Chinese Take Away to start a new life.27

—You’re late, he said to Ki, the brown cigarette never leaving his lips.

—Yeah, sorry.

—It’s okay. Business has been shit.

27 b. 1960, Xidan, Beijing, China. Aoliu Li, a man often thought of by strangers as humourless, has two hundred and seventy three glass eyes and eighty two glass eyewash cups, which he purchased over the last fourteen years. His favourite is a glass eye that is a perfect black, like a dark jewel. He calls it his Formal Eye and wears it to weddings and special functions, and it fits perfectly. It is not to be confused with a second, slightly rounder, and therefore (change)sadder, glass eye, also black, which he refers to as the Funeral Eye. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 9

The Old Man always swore in English. He said it was the perfect language to curse, that it was heavy and awkward like a medicine ball and that the curse words hit in a dull slap against the tongue.

Ki spotted his mother through the door. A short, plump woman, she was in the middle of counting up the till, getting ready to go home and leave him to his shift. The inside of the shop was a dirty white, desperately in need of paint, more so since they’d had the new price board put in. It shone with an almost holy brightness and made everything look much older than it was.

The writing on the board was red, and half of it was written in English, half of it in Chinese.

The Old Man asked, You have fun last night?

—Yeah, it was okay.

—Pick up?

Ki shrugged, shrugging off the question and irritation it caused, and walked past the Old

Man.

Inside the Take Away there was a fan on a long metal stand in the corner. It was turning slowly, a mechanical sunflower straining for the sun it would never reach, blowing out stuffy and hot air made from the cooking and lack of windows. At the register, his mother noted the till amount on a small brown book that she would later transfer to a computer file; while she did this, she said in soft, fluent English, He’s furious.28

—Wouldn’t know it.

—You know your father.

28 b. 1963, Miyun, Beijing, China. Bai Li loves Sydney, because it was here, in Sydney University, that she discovered her passion: Communism. Not the maligned, misused form of communism that is found in China and other governments throughout the world, and which is demonised by the West’s Capitalist Democracy, but the pure, revered ideology that Karl Marx had proposed. Once a month, she attends a meeting of men and women who want to promote Marx’s communism. Her husband, Aoliu, who has no time for any form of politics, once asked her why she did this, as she nearly always returns from the meetings angry and with pamphlets that she spends hours analysing, to which she had said, Because I believe. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 9

Ki glanced back: the Old Man had resumed leaning on the door frame and was slowly smoking his cigarette. There was nothing in his stance that spoke of anger, nothing that said he resented his lateness. Indeed, everything said otherwise, said he wasn’t worried, that he didn’t consider it a problem that his son had been so late.

—Take those glasses off, Mother said. And couldn’t you have at least dressed like you were going to work? You’re a mess.

Ki shrugged, took off the sunglasses.

His mother sighed. There’s forty three dollars and fifty cents here.

—Not much. How long have I got to stay here?

—Until close.

Ten. Right. Ki swapped sides of the counter with his mother, sat on the warm stool. She kissed his cheek and spoke to the Old Man at the door in Mandarin too quickly for him to fully follow. After a minute, she began walking down the street, leaving the Old Man leaning on the frame. If anyone came, he’d politely ignore them until they ordered, then would move into the kitchen. Until then, he’d stand and smoke in the doorway without a word.

Ki gazed out past him, gazed at the traffic, at the people in the streets, at the empty blue sky, and wished he was anywhere but there. There was a whole world out there. Anna always said that it was bigger than his little films… Shit. Anna. Great. In the pocket of his jeans, he willed his phone to make a noise.

After half an hour, it finally did.

Two weeks: text messages wore down Ki’s credit twice, email saw Pape in Kirrawee High’s computer room at lunch with Em next to her, continually complaining that her favourite sites were banned by the school’s firewall. MSN had them talking at night. Phone calls didn’t happen.

Pape didn’t want to bring Ki to the attention of her Dad, knew that he’d react badly to the fact that it was a boy, and knew that he’d react worse when he found out the boy was Asian. But she Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 9 knew that he thought the net was stupid. He didn’t even have an email address. The girl at the office has one and that’s enough for me, he said, once, and that was the last time it was ever spoken about.

Pape kept Ki from her Mum, from Tim, from everyone but Em, who read her emails with her, and told her to spice them up and stop talking about films.

One the other side of these dialogues, Ki’s conscience said that that was enough. Stop typing. You’re done here. Tim’s a fucker, but Joanne isn’t. Don’t be an asshole. But he didn’t stop, he kept replying, initiated conversation, tried his best to be funny, to be interesting, to fill up his days. It took his mind off the emptiness of his life, off Anna who faded more and more with Joanne’s communication, and it gave him something to do when working in the Take Away.

She even took his mind off the mess that was his script. He was trying to write it so he could make a short film for the end of the semester, but it was a struggle. He told himself that he had to do it, that he couldn’t fail again, that he had to focus, that he had to find focus if he couldn’t do it, that if he didn’t he was going to be stuck at the Take Away forever.

It wasn’t working.

The only thing that occupied his thoughts and spared him those troubles were thoughts about Joanne, and even then, those were not without complications.

Mal had called him a week after the beach party. He had been around and picked up his jeep the morning after, but the two hadn’t seen each other since then. When the phone rang, Ki was lying on the sandstone coloured couch, having just begun watching Apocalypse Now.

Muting the sound, he answered, Hello?

—Fucker, Mal said pleasantly.29 What’re you doing?

29 b. 1985, Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia. Until Mallory Jones was ten, he had lived just outside a small town in the country called Coonabarabran. His father had worked at Siding Spring Observatory and, in school holidays, he would take Mal and his friends into the Observatory at night, and show them the planets, while telling them stories about Greek Gods and aliens and the promise that the Universe held. I love this memory. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 9

—I’m watching Martin Sheen stoned. You?

—Scratching myself. That the director’s version?

—It’s called Redux, man.

—It is if you’re a wanker, Mal said casually. Us regular folk just call it a director’s cut and ask what the fuck happened to Coppola’s film making ability.

—You’re always down on director’s cuts. I like this one.

—So do I, but it’s not exactly necessary, is it?

Ki shifted the cushion beneath his head so he could watch the screen and talk comfortably. He said, None of them are exactly necessary.

—My point. Used to be that you would get excited about a director’s cut, but nowadays, it’s like they make two films: one for cinema and one for DVD. Director’s cut for DVD to get you to pay again. It’s fucked up.

—I’ve heard this rant before.

—True. It’s not even why I called. There was a pause, the sound of Mal opening a can.

He said, What you up to with Pape?

—Who?

—Joanne Johnson.

—Her? On the screen, Martin Sheen punched the mirror, the blades of glass digging into his fist as it fractured. Ki switched the phone to his left ear. I’m talking to her. Being nice. How’d you hear this, anyhow?

—Heard you were being friendly at the party.

—Yeah?

—Yeah.

—You gossip, man.

—That doesn’t change the point of this conversation.

—You her Old Man? Ki tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 9

—No. You’re fucking lucky I ain’t. Dude is a maniac.

—Never met him.

—I have. Trust me.

—Okay, fine. What’s your point? I’m just talking with the girl.

—You ain’t doing this to fuck off Tim, are you?

Ki was silent.

—Don’t do it to fuck off Tim, Mal said.

Grunting, Ki moved into a sitting position and said stubbornly, Fucker deserves it.

—Look, he’s an asshole. Granted. Used to be I knew him and he wasn’t like that, but now

I just surf with him, y’know? But Pape’s not that kind of asshole.

Quietly: I know.

—Don’t fuck her round, man.

—Shit, Ki said, his agitation showing (change). He stopped Apocalypse Now as Sheen stepped off a helicopter. Ki stood and began pacing. Look, I’ve not done anything. I’m just talking.

—Yeah, but you talking to fuck her over? Mal’s tone was disapproving, matching Ki’s own internal argument. Maybe you think it’d be good for Tim to find this out and then he’d get all angry and you could go Bruce Lee on him?

—I hate Bruce Lee, you know that.

—Don’t be a cock.

—I’m not. I’m just talking. Talking films, mostly.

—Yeah?

—Yeah. It’s good, man. Stops me thinking about— He caught himself before he said her name. Then shrugged. It wasn’t like Mal hadn’t heard him talk about Anna, but rather that this time he didn’t want to bring it up. Anyhow, you know, there’s nothing in it. I’m just, y’know, talking. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 9

Mal sighed. Just don’t be an asshole to Pape. I like her. She’s the only person in that family worth shit. If you’re doing this to fuck over Tim, the person who’s going to get hurt isn’t him, it’s going to be her. Her Father will go fucking nuts when he finds out and she’ll cop it in a nasty way.

—It won’t happen like that.

—Bullshit. The sound of Mal drinking. Look, man, you may think that won’t happen, but it will. People will talk. People are already talking. How the fuck you think I found out? Once it gets back to her Old Man, he’ll tear up the fucking city looking for you. He’ll take it as a personal insult.

—You’re shitting me?

—Like I said: Dude’s a fucking maniac.

After they hung up, Ki’s conscience continued to tell him that he should stop. Mal was right: Joanne—always Joanne, never Pape—was cool. She knew about film and music and books and could talk about Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law and why Tom Waits was unutterably cool.

She could talk about Waits’ early music and there was no sense that she was doing it to impress him. She just liked it, genuine. That’s the vibe he got from all her emails: genuine. Nothing fake in her. By the middle of the second week, his conscience had gone quiet because by now he admitted openly that he wasn’t talking to her to get back at Tim. He was talking because he liked her. Talking because she made him laugh. Made him forget that he hadn’t worked on his script for over a week. Made him forget about Anna. He opened his desk one night and found a photo of the two of them in the Botanical Gardens and felt nothing. Instead, he thought of Joanne, and later, asked her to a movie. After he sent the email (change), however, he remembered Mal’s warning about her Old Man and, after a moment, shrugged. Fuck him. Ki wasn’t about to stop his life just because of a racist bastard.

When the email arrived with Ki asking her to go to see a film, for a second time, Emily whispered, Oh my god! He’s asking you on a date! Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 9

The two were in Computing Studies, sitting up the back on cream plastic chairs and ignoring everything that Miss Oum was saying from the front of the class. Emily had her legs curled under the skirt that it was getting too cold to wear, her naked brown toes sticking out, a silver ring on the second toe of each foot.30

Pape (who always wore pants to hide the cuts) read the email again and whispered in reply, I’m not stupid, you know.

—He’s asking you despite the fact that you talked about Tom Waits!

—Tom Waits is cool.

—Tom Waits makes freaky music about circuses.

—You haven’t even listened to a whole album.

—I did so.

—Which one?

—Look, we can talk about your unachievable love for Tom Waits, or we can talk about the fact that this real guy here is asking you out.

—Shhh, Pape whispered, glancing over the monitor. Miss Oum, a young, slim Asian woman, glanced in her direction and smiled, but said nothing.

Em’s voice dropped and she asked, Well?

—Dad’s never going to let me go, she said. That was the end of it, really. There was no way around Dad. He stood in the centre of her life, an immovable object that protected her from everything, including the sunlight.

—Don’t tell him, Em whispered.

—It’s hard lying to Dad.

—Truth won’t work, will it?

30 b. 1988, Sutherland, Sydney, New South Wales. Emily Saunders’ Ipod Nano, 2005: Death Cab for Cutie, My Chemical Romance, Linkin Park, the Used, Funeral For a Friend, Coldplay, Taking Back Sunday, Missy Higgins, Yellowcard, Story of the Year, Dido, Lifehouse, Evermore, and The Phantom of the Opera soundtrack. Soon to be outdated. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 9

Pape shook her head. Before Sam had—well, before Sam, Dad had been strict, watchful, but he had let her go out. She had had a life. She could breathe. Afterwards, it was as if he thought that any moment not carefully monitored would become an instance of life and death.

Death was everywhere, in every form, in every influence, and he watched everything that occurred in case it was approaching her. He said no to her learning to drive, and she had lost a dozen albums and twice as many movies in the following months. If he had any idea about the net, about blogs and downloading and chat rooms, she would lose the computer entirely. It was only a matter of time until he did that anyway, Pape knew. She kept it through the graces of her mum, who kept the knowledge to herself, but it wouldn’t last. Soon Dad would learn—he always learnt—and his fist would close around her and she would begin to suffocate in his grasp.

Pape said, I know, I know, it’s just—you know?

—We’ll use my olds, Em replied quickly. They’ll lie for us.

They would. Em’s parents were a kind of inner city hippie, and Em’s Mum didn’t like her dad at all. He offended her feminist sensibilities on a deep level, she had said once, and which translated to, She thinks he’s a cunt.

Which was her dad’s opinion right back.

—I don’t know, Pape said. Dad—

—You’ve got to try! If you skip this you’ll never get out of that house. You’ll—

—Girls, Miss Oum said suddenly. She had appeared behind their dirty monitor without a sound. Around them, the rest of the class had begun working on whatever task it was that she had set. You have work to do, don’t you?

—Yeah, Pape said. Yeah, sorry.

—Miss, Em said quickly, flashing a bright white smile after the word. Miss. If you really wanted to do something, but your dad didn’t want you—

—Shut up! Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

—I’d lie, Emily, Miss Oum said, smiling. Now, please, do your work.31

When she had gone, Pape closed down her hotmail and, with a faint pink blush up across her pale face, whispered, You’re such a bitch.

—But you’re going to do it, aren’t you?

She hesitated. As much as she didn’t want to upset Dad, as much as that one object was one of the most important things in her life and it became more and more important, she wanted to go out with Ki. He was in her thoughts all the time. He filled a part of her that had felt hollow over the last couple of months. She had thought it grief, but her grief was still there, lurking in the back of her mind, a hot flash every time her thighs caught the cuts wrong… but if it wasn’t Conversation between Selina Oum and Ben Peek, January 31 9th, 2002, after going out for dinner. Conversation took place in a stairwell two and a half hours after dinner had finished.

My friends are always asking me why I don’t date more.

Yeah?

Yeah, they think I should date more, I guess.

Well, this could be a date.

What?

Well. It could, y’know, be.

Dude, I thought we were platonic?

Yeah.

Of course.

Totally.

Platonic.

Yeah. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 grief and that absence that caused her hollowness, then she didn’t know what was the cause.

There was no denying, however, that Pape thought about Ki all the time, thought about him in relation to films and in relation to herself. She checked her email as frequently as possible, motivated by both, and hoped that every beep on her phone was him.

If she denied herself the chance to meet him that would mean that the thoughts remained only thoughts. Worse, it also meant that there would be no new thoughts. He would think she wasn’t interested, that she didn’t like him, and then that would be it. The emptiness in her days would return and life would return to the dark windowless box that Dad wanted to keep her in.

—Pape?

Finally, she said, Yeah, okay.

Ki planned the movie for Friday night. Traditional. Simple. Obviously a date. He wanted that to be obvious, even as his conscience complained. Still, he listened to that nagging voice and picked a movie on his side of the city. It’d mean the stress of driving to pick her up and drop her back at her friends place, but it would be low on the stress. And fuck Tim, right? Tim wasn’t even a consideration, didn’t even register. Mal was right in that Joanne was not Tim, that she was an entirely different person, and as the days drew up to the planned Friday night, Ki found himself increasingly thinking of the feel of her on that beach: the press of her breasts, the line of her waist, the dry touch of her palms against his.

Fuck Tim indeed.

Going out on a date would be good. Just the idea shook the dry, clinging thoughts of

Anna from his head. In the days beforehand, he even felt a renewed vigor for his script, and began jotting notes and redrafting ideas and reading Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. He found a small blue hardcover on a table at the front of a Collins bookstore, and decided that if

Coppola could be inspired by it to make Apocalypse Now, then perhaps he could be inspired by it as well. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Everything was good until he realised, on Wednesday, that he had told the Old Man that he would work Friday night. The only reason he did remember was that he found a note on the fridge from his mother that he had to work that night and the following two. Great. Just fucking great. He held off, however, bringing it up until he was sitting in the Take Away, having arrived on time. The metal fan was still, silent, a cold wind from outside blowing through the door, having come across the city lit urban peaks and valleys outside, shown now only in artificial light.

Ki had been putting it off for an hour, finding excuses in cleaning, in thinking about what to say, but the seven o’clock dinner crowd would be arriving in about twenty minutes, and there wouldn’t be another break until close at this rate. The Old Man knew it too: he’d come out of the kitchen for his pre rush cigarette, and stood in the doorway, looking out into the road filled with cars and trucks, watching everything through his one eye.

—Hey, Ki called from his stool.

—Yeah? Old Man replied in English, never turning.

—I’m not going to be able to work Friday night.

Old Man’s cigarette lowered, his heard turned slightly. You’re written in.

—Yeah, I know I said I could. But I got plans, sorry.

Silence. Traffic and people drifted past outside. Finally, he said, That isn’t good enough.

—Hey, I said I’m sorry.

Old Man flicked his cigarette onto the pavement, turned into the Take Away. The world behind him was made from slow moving silhouettes, lines of people escaping the deepening dark by any means. They would return only in the light. I don’t give a shit about sorry, he said.

—Look, Ki said, trying his best to keep a level tone. I’ll do the day. I’m not ditching. I just have plans. I’ll swap with Mum and it’ll be covered.

—What if your mother has plans?

—She won’t. You’re working. She never goes out without you. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

—You sure?

Ki hesitated, tried to remember the last time he had seen Mum go out.

—That’s right, Old Man said evenly. You don’t know.

—Someone will cover—

It’s not a question of that. He stepped closer to the bench, the stillness of his glass eye suddenly disconcerting with its level, unmoving place in his skull. He said, You’re selfish, Ki.

You’re my son and I love you, but you’re selfish. You haven’t thought of anyone but yourself for years. This is a prime example of it. You have something to do, and everyone has to work around that. It doesn’t occur to you that your mother has things to do, which she does, and even if it did, you fully believe that she should change her plans for you.

—I don’t need this, man, Ki said, trying to sound flip, but sounding whiny even to himself.

—Shut up. This is for your own good. You’re turning into a selfish fucking bludger. I didn’t raise you to become a slacker like Mal—

—Mal’s not—

—No, Old Man interrupted him, his gaze and glass eye identical in their stillness. Listen to me. I like Mal. I’ve got nothing against him, but he’s one of the many bludgers this country is creating. He’s the kind of guy who’s going to hitch a free ride through life and end up nowhere.

All his ambition is tied into fame on a movie screen and it isn’t even real. He’ll chase that for a while and examine himself when it doesn’t happen and feel sorry when he realises there was no chance for him because he was a mediocre guy who didn’t want to work hard. You’re becoming just like that—

—I am not! Ki shouted.

—Keep your voice down, Old Man said, placing his hands flat on the counter. You’re not totally like that, no. Mal isn’t as selfish, for one thing. I’ve never seen him not come through on something his says. You could learn that from him, at least. But the rest of it… you’re just sitting Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 around, waiting for fame to come to you and it isn’t happening. It won’t happen. Look at you: you spent your entire holidays staring at movies and doing nothing but wonder what the fuck is wrong with your life since Anna left.

Ki began to protest, but the Old Man raised his hand to stop him.

—She didn’t leave, Ki. You dumped her. I don’t know the reasons and I don’t need too, but you broke up with her. This shit you got going on now, I don’t understand it. Neither does your mother. She’s worried about you.

—She doesn’t need to be, he replied quietly.

—She’s your mother, you idiot.

Ki sucked on his bottom lip loudly, then said, Look, I just want Friday night off. Is that okay?

Behind his Old Man, a middle aged white man walked into the shop. He was wearing a blue shirt and black pants, and had a laptop bag over his shoulder and chest. A First World

Pilgrim come in from the dark wilds. Old Man didn’t turn to him. His gaze held Ki’s until he broke it with a shrug and walked towards the kitchen. At the door, he said, If your mother agrees.

She would. Mum never turned him down, and he would ask, even though he knew that he shouldn’t, that the conversation he had just had was a plea for him to take what he had been dealt and live within those offerings, like his parents had. Well, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t live life one way just because he had been born into it.

Friday was marked by a cool wind and a dark, cloud-scudded sky in the morning that had emptied and turned warm by the time Pape and Em walked out of Kirrawee High at ten past three. In Pape’s backpack was a change of clothes and makeup, neither of which she was sure of for the night, now that the afternoon had arrived. What did people wear on a date? Where were they going? What if she didn’t have enough money? There was a mild level of panic rising in her, but it was flattened the moment Em said, Your brother is here. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

—Shit.

The two of them had stopped. Across the road sat Tim’s green ute. He was sitting in the flatbed back, smoking a cigarette while one arm dangled over the long white surfboard strapped in place.

—Shit, Pape repeated. Shit.

—I thought your Dad said it was fine.

—Mum said it was fine.

She had asked on Monday, and her mum had nodded in her tiny nods, and said quietly,

Okay. Outside that one word it had gone unsaid that Dad didn’t need to know until Friday night, when it was much too late for him to do anything about it. Since then, Pape had done everything she could to stay out of Dad’s way, and as far as she knew, Mum hadn’t said anything to him about it. But there was Tim. Obviously Dad had found out and had decided that spending the night at Emily’s was too much of a risk, that it was somehow a threat to her. Frustration weighed heavily on Pape as she and Em walked onto the street and towards Tim’s green ute.

—We could pretend we hadn’t seen him, Em said.

—What’s the point? she replied softly.

She knew Em had heard her, had glanced towards her with frustration webbed across her olive skinned brow, but it didn’t matter. Tim had seen them. He stood up in the back of the ute, wearing faded red and blue shorts and a loose shirt that might have once been yellow and said

Live Like Darth Vader.

—Hey, he said, grinning.

—Hi.

—That’s not happiness, Tim said, dropping off the back, his shoeless feet slapping down on the asphalt. What’s up?

—Dad sent you? She asked, looking at his toes.

—Yeah. Didn’t tell you? Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

—No.

—You have plans?

Pape nodded, but didn’t say. She couldn’t.

Em, however, could: She was coming over to my place.

—That right?

Pape nodded, risked a glance up to his face. She didn’t know the look there, if there was, indeed, a look. His face was curiously blank as if it had decided to represent her knowledge of him. He’d become so much like Dad that she occasionally wondered if the little boy who had painted himself in red lipstick had been a different brother, one that had disappeared when he turned fourteen.

—You ask Mum?

—Yeah. Pape shrugged.

—Nice try. He offered her his cigarette, but she shook it away. He passed it to Em who took it and took a long draw. After a moment, he said, Well, why don’t I give you a ride there anyhow?

—Dad’ll chuck a shit.

Tim shrugged. Who cares?

—You guys have a fight again?

—He’s always fighting, the other replied, unconcerned, retrieving his cigarette. You know what he’s like.

This Tim she knew. She hadn’t seen him for years, but she knew him. This was the Tim who surfed and smoked pot and didn’t have an ounce of anger in him. This Tim she liked. It was the Tim who had been friends with Mallory until the anger and racism had broken its way through to the surface and driven away his old friends (change). It was a Tim she thought she would never see again.

—You got really stoned today, didn’t you? Pape said, holding back a smile. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

He laughed. Get in. You too, Emily.

Tossing their bags into the back of the truck, the girls climbed in. Once they were in, Tim reached over the back of his seats and pulled out a rolled up poster and dropped it onto Pape’s lap. She said, What’s this?

—Found it down at Bondi today.

Unrolling it slightly, finding the white border and with three men in black and white,

Pape said, Oh my fucking God!

—What is it? Em asked, leaning over.

—Look!

—Is that Tom Waits?

—It’s the poster for Down by Law! She turned to Tim, fought the urge to hug him, then shifted the poster to Em and did anyway. Still hugging him, she said, This is so cool, Tim! I’ve never been able to find one!

Tim shrugged and turned the key. Just saw it in a shop. Anyhow, come on, let’s piss off the Old Man.32

It was just after five and the sky was still empty but starting to dim, and would be dark around six thirty. Ki lay on his bed beneath the open window, a light breeze drifting over him as he read

Heart of Darkness in the last of the daylight, his music turned low, and trying not to think about the night. Perhaps this book wasn’t such a good idea. It wasn’t the most interesting thing he had read and, given the circumstances, he would have been better had he picked up something easier,

32 b. 1985, Sutherland, Sydney, New South Wales. At the party on the beach, the red haired girl handing out pamphlets (Bronwyn, Bronnie, but mostly Bron) said, You’re a racist, Tim. They were sitting alone on the beach and had been talking about nuclear power and the importance of protesting, when Tim had placed his hand on her leg. He was a little drunk. A little stoned. He liked the way she had life. How she thought things. Fuck, but he liked that. And when he placed his hand on her leg, Bron had stopped speaking, smiled a touch sadly at him, and said, That doesn’t belong there. You’re going to have to remove it, cause I don’t sleep with racists. She was the first person, ever, to say it to his face. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 something that he could consume without too much thought. As it was, his mind kept wandering between the sentences, drifting out in the empty white spaces to become occupied with what clothes to wear, what he should say, if he should kiss her—

His silver mobile began playing the Star Wars Imperial March ring tone.

Flipping it open, he said, Hey.

—Hey, Mal said lazily. You not working tonight?

—No, I swapped. Ki’s Mum had, of course, swapped with him, and left him to a very quiet and cold shift in the Take Away with the Old Man. But before Mum had agreed, she had given him a lecture mirroring the one he had received from Old Man. She was worried about him, she said, worried that he had fallen into a slump and that all his potential from High School was going to be wasted (change). Somehow, hearing it from her had been worse than hearing it from the Old Man.

—That’s cool, Mal said, yawning. Fuck, but work sucks. You got plans tonight? I got the urge to drink.

—Nah, man, going to have to pass. I’m going out with Joanne.

—Shit, still?

Ki dropped Heart of Darkness down on the bed and sat up. The dying sunlight shone from behind him and hit the metal edges of his narrow, metal computer table. He said, Yeah, still.

—Didn’t I tell you this was a bad idea?

—You said not to do it if I was just doing it to fuck over Tim, and I’m not. I like her.

—That’s nice.

—Your approval means everything.

—But still, it’s kinda stupid. You going to her place?

—No, I’m picking her up from some place in Grays Point.

—Emily’s. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

—Who?

—It’s one of her friends. Cute.

—Well, okay. Anyhow, I’m picking her up from there. I don’t even know where she lives, really.

—Gymea.

—Well, I’m not going there.

—No. He heard a bottle open, the hiss first, the sound of a cap hitting the sink second.

Mal said, Fuck, man, I can’t even believe you’re doing this. This is just—this is just going to end badly, you know that, right?

Ki began pacing. What do you want? Her Old Man is fucked up. Fine. I get that. But I like her and she likes me. Am I just supposed to sit round and be afraid of this old guy I haven’t ever seen?

—Dude is a maniac. There’s nothing old guy about him.

—You keep saying that.

—There ain’t no description, man. Ki waited as Mal took a long drink, then burped. Mal said, Fuck. That’s nice. Look, man, this guy, he isn’t rational. He’s a fucker. He’s more than a fucker, he’s a fucking fucker. I got this one story. It’s like, my Fucking Fucker Story, okay?

After you hear this, you still want to go out with Pape tonight, well, you’ve either got the jones something serious, or you’re just stupid.

Ki laughed. Sure, let’s hear it.

—It’s not funny. This happened when me and Tim were in year ten together. We were in the same bottom classes, you know? We were cruising on our apathy. Anyway, about half way through the year, our regular science teacher leaves, and she’s replaced with this Indian guy. I forget his name. We had a couple for him—you know the type—but his real name I’ve forgotten.

Might’ve been that I didn’t even know it proper. The thing about this guy was, you see, that he didn’t speak very good English. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

—In our class, that just meant you didn’t do the work. Fuck it. Far as I was concerned, it was great. Anyhow, year ten, it’s school certificate time, and Tim’s Old Man starts to develop this interest in his grades. Suddenly Tim has a tutor on the weekends and is being forced to do his homework and I’m not seeing him much on the beaches where we surf. He tells me it’s because his Old Man has this pressure on him to succeed. He wasn’t dealing with it real well.

—At any rate, the half yearly exams happen. It’s the usual shit from the teachers: if you didn’t do well here, then take it as a sign and put in more effort. They say it after every fucking exam, so I fail to see how it was suppose to motivate me when I failed half of my exams. Not that my Olds cared much. Not that I cared much. But Tim does care now, and his Old Man chucks this huge shit when he comes back with these results. It took Tim a couple of days to come back to school after taking them to him, but when he did he had these bruises along his back. Big ugly black things. He said it was a surf accident, but no one believed it.

—Anyone do anything? Ki asked.

—Shit, man, we didn’t even talk about it. The sound of drinking again. I mean, what do you say to another guy? Hey, heard your Old Man beat the shit out of you. Fucking shame. Let’s cry a bit and go and tell a teacher?

—Point.

—A girl gets that easier, I reckon. If I got to be beaten by my folks, I want to be girl.

Anyhow: Tim starts getting frustrated in classes. You can see it in him. It’s worse in the classes where he’s got a foreign teacher, and the worst is science (change). The weeks after he got back, all he’d talk about was how fucking awful it was, what a stupid Indian cunt the guy was, and so on. After a while of that, I was telling him to calm down, but he didn’t. He just kept going. On and on about how this guy was ruining his future, taking away a choice he had been born with, about how he didn’t know his place.

— Then, about a month later, Tim fucking explodes in class. Goes apeshit. One moment he’s sitting next to me and then the next moment he’s standing up, screaming at the guy. It’s at Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 the top of his lungs: this angry, venomous racist shit just pouring out of his throat. If Tim’s head had turned round like that girl in The Exorcist that would’ve explained what was going on. That would have made sense. But it didn’t, and soon the Principal and everyone was in the room and they took Tim away.

—I thought you said this was going to be about his Old Man? Ki asked, flicking Heart of

Darkness out of his way before sitting on the bed. So far this is all about Tim having a mental breakdown.

—Who do you think caused that? ‘Sides, I’m not done, am I? I’m getting to his Old Man.

See, they take Tim out and over to the Principal’s office, and the dude just breaks down. I know this because five minutes later I’m called to the office over the PA, and I’m taken to him in sick bay, where he is crying. Since I’m his friend they reckon I’ll know how to help him, but all I can do is just stand there and say shit like, it’s not so bad, it’s okay. When that doesn’t work, the

Principal brings in the science teacher, thinking that maybe if they have some sort of heart to heart then everything will be okay, but Tim doesn’t say anything.

—And it’s while we’re all standing there that his Old Man walks in.

—He’s pissed. You can see it straight away. He’s been called in from work because his son has done something wrong and he walks into the sick bay and finds me, the Principal, and the Indian science teacher around his crying son. The look on his face was like… Jesus, it was just hate. There was nothing but hate there. His face had turned red like it had been filled up with blood and that at any moment it was going to explode and spray everywhere.

—Then, without a fucking word, he punches the science teacher in the head.

—Fucking what? Ki asked.

—Punched the motherfucking guy in the motherfucking head.

—You’re shitting me?

—No fucking way, Mal said. I was there. He just punched the guy in the head. The science teacher goes down and then the dude starts kicking him on the ground, beating the living Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 shit out of him. The crazy fuck still hasn’t said a word throughout this entire thing, and the

Principal is trying to pull him off, but he’s this old guy and he can’t stop him. He starts screaming for help, but by the time they’ve gotten there, Tim’s Old Man has started in the

Principal, shoving him round and demanding to know why he’d let a guy like that teach his son.

—What was Tim doing?

—Just lying there, like he was afraid to move. I didn’t blame him. I was afraid to move.

—What happened then? Ki asked.

—Well, Tim’s Old Man took him out of the school. He ended up at this Catholic School.

The school had some charges brought up against him, but I never learnt how it went. Tim just sort of drifted away afterwards, y’know? I’d see him surfing and we stayed friends, but it was distant. I’d see his sister round at cinemas and film festivals more than I would see him out surfing.

—That’s all pretty fucked up.

—Like I said. That’s why you ought to skip this date thing, man. It’s bad news for Pape.

Bad news for you.

Ki was silent. He lay down on the bed and gazed out at the darkening sky. A breeze blew over his face and he sighed and cradled the phone in his shoulder and ear as he stretched. Fingers knocked Heart of Darkness and he stared at the shadowy, indistinct picture that was meant to be a dark river on the cover.

—Dude?

—I like her, he said, finally.

—That ought to be reason to stay away, you know.

Ten past six. Pape and Em had gone through the clothes Pape brought with her, the clothes Em owned, and were now working through a mix of the two which also included Em’s Mother’s clothes. Em’s Mum told Pape to call her Renee, and Pape tried to do that as she walked in and Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 out of the bathroom to change, but was finding it difficult. In addition, the cuts on the inside of her left leg opened due to the continual changing and she had been blotting them with tissues before pulling on each new pair of pants. She worried about the thin stains left, but the other two did not bring it up if they noticed. Instead, they critiqued what she has emerged in (blue jeans that curved with her legs and ass and a small yellow shirt that hugged every other curve—the whole thing left her very uncomfortable) and then sent her back into the pink bathroom with new clothes. Outside, Em moved through the mix of clothes on the bed while Renee sat comfortably at the head, leaning on the pillows with a bottle of Carlton Light in one hand.

Renee was an older, leaner, olive skinned version of her daughter who looked more like a sister than a mother. However, unlike Em, Renee’s hair was longer and her eyes, with makeup, were darker. Renee’s dress style was made up from browns and oranges and reds and left her with the sense that she was in touch with the Earth. That aura was aided by the small rose that she had tattooed around her right wrist and which, whenever she lifted her arm to drink, Pape’s eyes were drawn to.33

—I got it when I turned twenty-one, she had explained once. I sound so old when I say that. But anyhow, yes, when I was twenty-one. When I turned twenty-one, in fact. It felt like my skin was being sliced open.

Pape nodded. She had always wanted a tattoo, but knew that Dad and Mum would never allow it.

33 b. 1963, Dubbo, New South Wales, Australia. Renee Saunders’ never took her husband’s last name when she and William Bird had married; instead, he took hers. Bill Saunders’ had been more than proud to take her name, and leave behind the family history of alcoholism that the Bird name had become to symbolise for him, though he had not, despite Renee’s firm beliefs, joined the Greens Party. He just couldn’t. He had voted Labor his entire life. Would vote Labor until he died. That was why, when Peter Garrett joined the party, it was he who rescued the Midnight Oil albums from the bin. Renee, much to her disgust, was somewhat pleased that he had. There were live shows, in the eighties, when Garrett needed an oxygen tank afterwards, that were burnt into her memory. So she played the albums on her Discman, using headphones only, and when she was sure she was alone, so that no one could hear or see her betrayal. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

When she emerged from the bathroom again, she was wearing simple black. Black jeans, black t-shirt. She liked that, was comfortable in it. While in the bathroom, it had taken her a moment to realise that they were the original jeans she had taken to school, but the shirt was

Renee’s, and clung to Pape a little tighter than she would have liked. When she emerged, however, it was Renee who shook her head first.

—No, she said. We need some colour. I like the jeans, but the shirt—you don’t want to look frigid.

—Mum! Em cried.

Pape said nothing, didn’t know what to say.

—Black says frigid. Goth girls are frigid. Renee smiled and winked at Pape. I think what you need is a bit of red.

—Yeah?

Renee nodded. What have you got, Emily?

Em rustled through the pile and found a baby red shirt with a series of faded black hearts across it. I don’t know, she said. It’s a bit old.

—Where’s your black jacket? Renee asked.

Em thought for a moment, then began rummaging through her wardrobe.

—So, Renee said, turning back to Pape, how do you think your brother is doing?

—Dad probably yelled at him for a while, she replied. That’s if he went home. He reckoned he was just going to drop in and then head off to see this girl he knew.

—The hippie girl, Em added, placing the black denim jacket on the bed. There was a pause, and the three laughed.

—Try them on, Renee said, taking a sip from her bottle. What are you doing for shoes, by the way?

—Docs, Pape replied before closing the doors. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

In muffled voices, Pape heard Em’s voice: I can’t convince her otherwise on the shoes.

It’s like the Docs are her safety net.

—He won’t be looking at her feet, Renee said.

Pape smiled. She was nervous, but within that nervousness was a sense of calmness that stopped it from sweeping through her. The continual changing had taken her mind off what was about to happen, about the fact that she and Tim had lied to Dad, and that when this was over, when she returned tomorrow, there would be nothing but trouble. It would go beyond the usual yelling, she was sure of that. But it didn’t matter. In the mirror she stared at herself: she was wearing a black bra and black jeans, her dark hair tumbling down her back in a mess, and her skin was so utterly pale that she could see her veins.

She was a kept creature. That was the thought that occurred to her, and it didn’t leave. It wasn’t a new one, however. It was a thought that was familiar this year. There was a twinge of pain on her thighs and she wondered what the reaction would be if everyone knew. Dad would freak, for sure. Everyone would freak. Ever since Sam everyone freaked a little bit easier, even

Em. She wouldn’t say it aloud, but she did.

—Are you done? Em called.

—Just a moment, she replied, pulling on the shirt and jacket. She raked a hand through her hair and stared at herself in the mirror. Maybe the pale pink paint and pink toilet coverings and tooth brushes made her look paler. Maybe under normal lights she didn’t look so bad. She had never worried about it before, but suddenly, she hoped that under regular lights, she looked like a normal, beautiful girl.

Just a little bit.

—Hey! Em called.

—Coming, she replied, turning from the mirror. She opened the door and stepped out, and both Renee and Em agreed that it looked good. Pape didn’t know if she agreed but, at the very least, she wouldn’t have to change clothes. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

—Okay, Renee said. That’s settled. You’re taking your mobile, right?

Pape nodded, then said, I thought about not. I mean, what if Dad… y’know?

—Don’t worry him. Take the phone. If something goes wrong, you’re to call me, and I’ll come and pick you up. She paused, looked at the Carlton Light which was not the first, then added, Well, maybe Bill will drive me. But you understand, right, that if anything goes wrong, you’re to call here?

—Yes.

—And your dad is my problem.

—Dad can kind of… Pape hesitated. He can get kind of angry, y’know? I mean, he’s going to get angry over this.

—I know his type. Renee looked up at the still blades of the ceiling fan. I grew up in a country town, Joanne. It was the kind of shit hole town where men like your father lived, and I saw their type all the time. They think the colour of their skin and their gender makes them important, that it has given them something that the rest of us are lacking, one way or another.

They’ve got respect only for the same kind of beast. I was lucky that my father, for all the similarities he was born with, wasn’t one of those men. But I know their type, and I’m not afraid of them.

—I am, Pape whispered.

—I know.

Silence fell over the room. Pape looked from Renee to Em and then back again, and felt an uncomfortable lump of emotion in her throat. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had told her not to be afraid, couldn’t remember ever admitting to the fact that she was, in fact, afraid. She bit her lip and blinked rapidly.

—But more importantly, Renee said, are you sure about the Docs? Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Ki was there ten minutes before seven. He parked at the end of the street, beneath a paper bark tree and waited, listening to the radio until the clock in his Mum’s maroon hatchback said five past seven, and then drove up and into the driveway. The house in front of him was a languid, one storey creature that was made from dark brick, the lighted windows hidden behind brown wooden shutters. When he stepped out of the car, he looked out into the street and saw that the lights formed a pair of twin lines, with yellow irises that gazed down at him with unblinking intensity. He was reminded of his Old Man, but shrugged off the latent guilt. He had done what he had done. He wouldn’t do it again—things were changing. This was a sign of that change. At the door, he knocked, waited, and was met by a tall, dark haired woman who shook his hand and introduced herself as Renee, but he didn’t take in much of what she said. Joanne stood behind her, smiling shyly as she pushed her hair behind her right ear. A moment later she whispered to her taller friend, whom he assumed was Emily.

Finally, Renee said, And that’s why I chained him in the kitchen and cut him into tiny pieces with a butcher’s blade. You’ll remember that, yeah?

Silence. An expectant silence, waiting for Ki’s reply. He said, Um, sure.

—Good. She grinned white teeth.

—Thanks, Mrs—uh, Renee, Joanne said, stepping around her. She grabbed Ki’s hand and led him back out the door.

—Yeah, thanks, he said as the door closed.

Joanne’s hand slipped out of his, went to the black pockets of her jeans, and she smiled at him. He liked that smile, he decided.

She said, Hey.

—Hey, he replied, then nodded at the closed door. I really missed something there, didn’t

I?

—Yep.

—Don’t suppose you’ll tell me what? Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

—Nope.

He grinned at her grin, felt stupid for grinning so much, and said, Cool. Wanna get going?

—Yep.

—I figured we’d grab something to eat first, he said, stepping off the verandah. I was thinking something real simple like Maccas. Figured we could drive on down to Cook Park and eat it there on the beach, then head to the film. That cool?

She agreed. At the passenger door of the hatchback, she said, You figure a film yet?

—No. He unlocked the door for her, the light blooming inside. It was a clean car, but it smelt of spices and the perfume Mum wore, and he hoped she wouldn’t say anything. Everything looked kinda bland. There was a new Brad Pitt film.

—Brad Pitt?

—I know, I felt the shame of saying that.

—You should. I thought you were trying to impress me?

—I’m lowering expectations, he said, shutting the door. Quickly he walked round to the driver’s side, found that Joanne had unlocked it, and climbed in. He said, The thing about Brad

Pitt is that I like him in films now. It’s awful. Like, I’ll go watch these films with him in it, and the film—the film is usually shit, but at the end, I think to myself, you know what, Brad Pitt was pretty good.

—You want to give me really low expectations, don’t you?

He started the car and the engine came to life with a chuckle. Seriously, what was the last film you saw him in?

—I don’t know. She paused. I think I saw Oceans 11 on TV a few months ago. Em likes him, but she’s got no taste.

—It’s a shit film all right.

—Yeah, but then so is the original. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

They hit the main road. There the street lights bloomed in their bright electric yellow and cars passed in blurred streaks. Ki said, You’ve seen the original?

—Midday movies, Joanne said, a little defensively. I was sick. It had Frank Sinatra. I thought that this would be one of the good ones.

—Doesn’t Sinatra sing in this one?

—Everyone sings.

Ki laughed. Okay. Okay, so, the remake is kinda shit too. It’s just really bland. You sit there watching it and you think to yourself that a bunch of rich Hollywood people got together for a holiday and decided to make a film to finance their plastic surgery and cocaine habits.

Anyhow, that’s what I thought. But at the end of this film, I thought to myself, Brad Pitt was okay. He had that witty banter going with George Clooney. He was funny. He was charming.

—Charming?

—What, you didn’t think so?

—I thought he was old.

—Well, yeah, but he was still charming. Ki paused as he merged into the next lane. He said, It was after that when it hit me. I had seen a whole heap of Brad Pitt films in the last couple of years, and I found that when I heard about a new one, I would think, Hey, Brad Pitt and that would become a reason to go—which is pretty fucked up, you know, but there you are.

—Are you trying to convince me to go and see the Brad Pitt film?

They laughed. They laughed a lot in the car ride to Cook Park, which included a stop at a

Drive Thru McDonalds. It was an easy back and forth banter and series of jokes that they had between each other. After a while of this, Ki’s awkwardness faded away and he was aware that, at the same time, Joanne was becoming more relaxed in his presence. She sank into the seat and turned her body to face him slightly, whereas before she had been straight and rigid. Ki caught her glancing at him regularly, though it was entirely possible, of course, that she thought she was catching him looking at her. It was true, of course, but he tried not to stare at the shape of her Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 breasts. By the time they drove up into the red and yellow lighted entrance to the Drive Thru, he was consciously trying to keep his gaze off her and not leave her with the feeling that his eyes couldn’t find their way above her neck.

Pape was aware of where his gaze was, but it did not bother her and, in truth, she was no different. She looked at his crotch, at his chest, his arms, his shoulders, at the smoothness of his face. He was a lot prettier than she remembered, and part of her couldn’t believe she was sitting in his car, couldn’t believe that he found something about her interesting. Still, she kept her independence, just as Em and her mum had suggested, and paid for her own meal at McDonalds.

Ki offered, but she told him no. I can pay my own way, she said, and was surprised to find a tone in her voice that left no room for argument. It wasn’t even that it was much money, but she felt, somehow, that it was important to not let him pay. In the bright light of the order window, she passed him the money and he squeezed her hand when it lingered in his palm, then passed both across to the girl serving them. She barely paid attention. Her gaze rested on the monitors above her as if she had just awoken from a coma and found herself in indentured servitude to pay off her medical debts, and her thank you was a flat, monotoned pair of words. At the next window, the brown paper bag was passed to Ki who passed it to Pape, and she placed it on the floor as Ki drove them to Cook Park.

After Ki had parked, both he and Pape walked down to the beach. They weren’t holding hands, but she was conscious of the fact that she was close to him and that they would touch, just in little bumps and passes. Some times he would instigate it, other times she would.

In the night sky the beach had been turned into a long white, shadowed ribbon of sand that curved a black, empty expanse. The only way to know that it was the ocean, Pape realised, was to taste the salt in the air as it mixed with their McDonalds, and listen to the quietly crashing sound of the waves. There was, however, a sense that the beach had become a bubble for them, as if invisible walls had been erected that would keep the rest of the world away.

—I like this, Pape said softly. It’s like I’m looking over the edge of the world. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Ki nodded, and they began walking across the sand. I’m not much of a beach in the day kind of guy, he said. Mal’s always on about surfing, but I like it at night.

—Yeah, me too, Pape said. She was beginning to regret wearing the Docs. As much as she loved them, they were not the kind of shoes you walked on the sand with. Five steps away from the tide, they sat down and, without thought, she unlaced the boots and pulled her socks off.

Ki followed, unlacing his Converse. Down the beach were a pair of fishermen, and their lines bobbed a pale green and blue in the water. After she had placed her Docs to her left, away from the McDonalds bag Pape said, When I was little, I’d go down to Cronulla all the time. Dad would teach Tim how to surf, but I was never into it, so I’d just come down with Em and Sam and we would swim.

Ki leant back, his hands splayed out in the sand, the left near her back. You’ve known Em for a long time?

—Yeah. I met her in Kindergarten. Pape opened the McDonalds bag. It’s strange, I guess.

Well, people tell me it’s strange.

—What about Sam?

Pape paused, her hand in the bag, her fingers limp.

—Did I say something wrong?

—No. Slowly, Pape pulled out her chicken burger. It’s okay.

—You sure?

—Yeah. She hesitated, then said, Sam—Sam died last year.

Ki’s hands withdrew and he sat up straight. That familiar look of concern crossed his face and a tiny thread of disappointment worked through her. He wasn’t all that different, after all. He said, I’m sorry.

—That’s okay. The burger twisted in Pape’s hand. It’s okay, really. You weren’t to know.

I don’t talk about it.

—How—How did it happen? Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Pape cringed. She didn’t want to talk about it. She wanted to go back to the easy back and forth that they had developed in the car. She wanted the conversation to be easy and funny and without any of the things that made her life difficult. But she knew that if she didn’t speak about it, it would sit there for the rest of the night, an unspoken question about how fucked up she was.

She placed the burger back into the bag and unconsciously rubbed at her thighs.

—You don’t have to say, if you don’t want, Ki said, and pulled out a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. No eating yet, and he was nervous. His hands needed something to do. He added, I’ll understand if you don’t want to say.

—You ever known someone who died? she asked

—No.

—It’s the worst thing in the world. Pape paused as Ki lit his cigarette. He offered her one, but she shook her head. She said, I met Sam in the second grade. She was in the same class as

Em and me and from there on in it was the three of us. We fought a bit—I think we all hated each other in year five, but there was always the three of us, even then. It was impossible to imagine that anything could happen to any of us. When it did, it was as if a huge chunk of the world had been cut out of me. That in the night someone had come into my world and sliced open my skin and removed an organ. I woke up perfectly fine, but inside my body, I knew there was something missing. It was impossible to explain to anyone but Em, and even then—even then it was different for her. She didn’t have the same hole, the same scar. It’s fucked up, really, because you think losing the same person means that you’ll both feel the same, but it doesn’t.

Ki’s hand touched her leg softly, and she placed a hand over it. There was nothing sexual in the move and she was grateful for that.

—But then everyone changes. Everyone changed. It wasn’t just me and Em who had different experiences, it was everyone. At school we were treated differently. We got away with more. We were watched more. We were told nicer things and people avoided us more. Even at home it was different. Em’s parents started to get more involved in her life. I mean, you met her Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Mum tonight, and she’s cool, but she wasn’t always like that. She went out with her husband a lot and they partied and they drank and they, they didn’t worry too much about Em, you know?

After Sam, that all changed. Suddenly they didn’t party as much, they were home more, they got involved. Em told me that for the first time in years they actually cared about her report card. She hasn’t said it, but it’s really good for her. She’s really gotten to know her Mum, and they do things, and they have—they have this bond now. But that’s not how it happened for me. My

Mum didn’t start spending more time around me because of it. It’s not like she didn’t talk to me, but nothing changed. Only my Dad changed. Dad started paying more attention.

—He hasn’t… Ki hesitated when she looked at him, and he made a clutching hand motion.

—No! Pape shook her head. God, no. He’s not like that at all. He’s just protective. I guess that would be the word. He’s protective. He doesn’t want me to get hurt. That’s what he told me after… after the funeral. We were at the wake and he was holding me because I was crying. Funerals are just—just so sad. I didn’t know how sad they would be, and at the end, when they took her away… It was that final realisation that Sam wasn’t coming back. I wouldn’t see her anymore. She was gone and I wouldn’t see her ever again. She’s gone. She’s… Just gone, y’know? You try and find the words but you can’t. It was there that Dad told me that he would never let anything bad happen to me, that he would never let anyone take me away like Sam had been.

—I didn’t think much of it until he started telling me I couldn’t do things. The first time was when I was going to go shopping with Em. She had this friend who was going to drive us.

She’d just gotten her Ps, and I asked Dad, and he said no. He had never said no like that before.

There was a wall in his voice made from iron. I argued so much that he got angry and—and I remember he wrapped his hand around my arm so tightly that I thought he was going to break my arm. He’d always had this temper, but it had never been directed at me before. It was mostly Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 at Tim when he wasn’t doing what Dad thought he could, and occasionally Mum, but never me. I was his little girl and I was free of all, until then.

—I’m sorry, Ki whispered, his voice tasting like smoke.

—It’s like I can’t breathe, she replied. Like he’s sucked so much out of my world that there’s no even air. He won’t let me do anything now.

—You lied to come tonight, didn’t you?

—Yeah.

—Will he—what will he do when you get home?

—I don’t know, she said. You never know, but I think things are changing. Tim… I thought Tim was just going to be Dad.

—He sounds like it.

Pape bit back a spark of anger, knew that it was justified on Ki’s part. If it wasn’t for him

I wouldn’t be here tonight.

—Really?

—Yeah. Maybe things are changing.

—I hope so.

Pape smiled, and Ki’s hand tightened on her knee. She said, What about you, then?

—Me? He blew out smoke and looked embarrassed. I’ve got nothing like that.

—You got something though, right?

—Yeah.

—What is it?

—It’s just a rut. He ground out the cigarette in the sand. That’s all it is, you know. Just a rut. Little things piling up.

—Is it changing for you? Pape asked, pushing into the topic out of curiosity but also a desire to end the previous conversation. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

—I hope so. I’ve been like it for a while. Everything I did—everything I’ve done to try and change it has just made me unhappier, you know? Made the rut worse. She watched him hesitate with thought, then said, I thought removing some things would make me happier, but it didn’t. Just made things worse and after I’d gotten rid of those things, I couldn’t have them back even though I wanted them. I was just fucking things up.

—And now?

—It doesn’t feel like I’m fucking things up.

She smiled at his light tone, at the hint of a flirt, the indication that he wanted to return to how they had been in the car, an invitation that she was willing to take up. Pape had even begun to reply, her mouth beginning a sentence when it was cut off by the loud beep of her mobile, as if it were a warning, telling her to stop.

—Em? Ki asked.

—Probably, she said and pulled out her phone. Her thumb moved across it quickly as

Ki’s hand crept from her knee to her thigh—

your dad/ is here.

—Shit, Pape whispered.

—What’s up?

—Dad.

—What?

—Dad is at Em’s. She brushed off his hand and stood. Fuck. Fuck, I should’ve known that he wouldn’t stay home.

—He won’t do anything there, Ki said, pushing himself up. Pape thought that he sounded like he was trying to be calm, something that was not entirely reassuring to her, as the colour had drained out of his face. I mean, he wouldn’t do anything there, right?

—You don’t know him. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Before he could answer, the phone in Pape’s hand began ringing. The screen flashing a neon green with Dad on the caller ID. The sound shattered the remains of the quiet little bubble and the waves from the ocean crashed against the sand loudly, her Dad’s anger reaching out through the world to find her.

—Are you going to answer it? Ki asked.

—What?

—Don’t answer it.

Pape dropped the phone and it landed in the sand, the ring cutting through the sound of the waves. He won’t stop, she said when Ki stepped up next to her, his hand slipping around her waist. He won’t.

—It doesn’t matter even if he does.

—You don’t understand.

—You can’t live with this.

The ringing stopped and the sound of the waves retreated. Pape stepped into Ki’s grasp though she was not sure that she wanted that. With the smell of his cigarettes close, she said,

What do you mean?

—We could leave.

—We could leave?

—Yeah.

The mobile’s ring began. Pape sighed, then placed her hands on Ki’s chest and took a step back, out of his arms. With the distance, she looked into his face, into the dark, concerned eyes, and the intensity that was held in every muscle. But she knew—and she didn’t know how— that his desire to leave had very little to do with her, only that she was a reason, an excuse. If they did run, then Ki would not be doing it out of concern or even desire, but that he would be doing it because it presented him with an opportunity to leave his own problems. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

And truthfully, Pape didn’t want to run. She couldn’t. Not because of Dad, though she didn’t want to go back to Em’s and face him, but rather because she was tired of avoiding her father. Tired of running. Tired of living her life in quiet corners that he had yet to find. This date with Ki had shown her how much she resented what he had done to her life, how much he had taken away from her, and she hated that. If she ran, she knew, he would only be taking away more, and he wouldn’t stop. He would find her wherever she went.

Ki’s face was changing before her. The intensity was fading, replaced with a moment of hollowness as he realised that he would not be leaving anywhere, and for a moment, Pape felt guilty for not agreeing with him. She liked him—she really liked him, but she didn’t know him.

She wouldn’t be leaving Mum and Tim alone with Dad, and she certainly wouldn’t be leaving

Em and her life for him.

—No, Pape said, finally. She bent down and picked up her phone, and turned to face the black, shifting mass of the ocean spread out before her. If it was Dad’s anger that scraped up onto the beach, then so be it, but there was more than that behind it, a whole world that lived beyond him, and which she didn’t know. It was time, she realised, that she did.

—There’s no running, she said to Ki, and smiled faintly. She wished he understood more, but the look on his face clearly said that he didn’t. That was okay. She would make sure that he understood, if he wanted. Holding the still ringing phone in her grasp, she placed her thumb over the button, and the moment before she hit it, told him, I don’t need to run. Things just need to change. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Red Needles, Black Threads

You push the needle through his top lip. It is slow and difficult until the tip breaks the skin and then speeds out with an unpleasant sensation. The feel of moaning pain not yet gone numb exhales on your knuckles. The needle bluntly pierces the bottom lip in a grunt of spittle and blood. Nameless holds the dark haired head of the man you thread still. His thick, black wiry haired hands are tense with the pressure. The man is flinching. There is no quickness in the sewing as a whole. He flinches. Nameless’ hands keep him still. The needle is not ripped out.

The procedure continues. He bleeds on your already stained fingers. You do not stop.

Nameless whispers to the man that he is doing fine. That it is almost over. That he is very brave. His voice is a soft murmur of reassurance in the stuffy darkness of the bunks.

You wish you could remember the name of Nameless. He told it to you when you first arrived at the jail (when you still called it Villawood) but you have forgotten it. In the first days of winter sunlight nothing sank into your exhausted mind but it is not an excuse for forgetting. In the second week you should have been polite and apologised and asked again. There was that moment when you and Nameless sat at the open benches in Stage Three and discussed the fence that kept you and the people in Stage Two seperated. You could have held out your hand and corrected the mistake. You should have. You did not. You believed that you would be released soon. You were not seeking asylum status for just yourself. You sought it for your wife and daughter still in Iraq. Yours was not an individual journey. In the second week you realised that this did not make a difference to those in charge. You should have realised that when you saw the children in the jail. You should have known. Your blindness was willing.

The needle exits and you tie off the end. The blood stained black thread wires the man’s mouth shut and he struggles with the desire to talk and breathe through his mouth. You are glad Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 it is not you. You are glad when Nameless releases him. You watch the silhouette of the man stumble towards the shadows of other men sitting on the floor. Half way across moonlight washes through the window and you see that the nine men are waiting for him. Nine men with their lips crudely stitched together. Nine men now ten. Ten men in protest.

Afterwards, you wash your hands. The stains are difficult to remove. You think of your wife.

You think of your daughter. You dream of stitches.

The Stitched Men are found in the morning. Stage Three is filled with the gossip. In the barracks you share with Nameless and eight others the reactions are mixed. Older inmates sigh and shake their dark heads and mutter that it is pointless. New inmates enjoy the morbid break in monotony. Those not old or new are mixed between the two. All understand the frustration.

Outside you can hear loud and angry English.

You lower yourself from the bunk and dress. You will have work to do today. A rarity.

You realise that this is the first time in four months that you have been up before ten. In Iraq you were up before dawn six days of the week. You were a baker. When the war began you barely slept more than a handful of hours. It was the tension that kept you awake. Today the same tension returns and you think of making bread and listening to machine gun fire. The memory of baking causes your stomach to rumble as you walk across the wet and green grass to the hut of the Stitched Men. You think once again how much more pleasurable life would be if the

Officials would let you work into the kitchen. It would give you something to do with your day.

Your skills would be used. Food would have variety. But they do not trust you with knives and food. They think you will do any number of things to hurt the other inmates or officials.

At the door of the Stitched Men barracks stand three security men. They are meaty white figures. Their pale hands rest on dark nightsticks. They gaze out at the people with flat and ugly Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 emotions. You realised early on that they do not like working in the jail just as you do not like being kept here. The realisation of this connection has not allowed you to bond with them.

Outside the barracks you wait with Nameless for the official to call you in. Only you and

Nameless know you will be called forward but you are willing to wait. You do not like the idea of confrontation but you do not think things will change without it.

The voiceless men inside have chosen you to be their voice.

Tel Afar. You stand in your living room and watch an American tank drive down your street.

Soldiers are spread out like lily pads around it and a boy sits casually on the turtle shaped black cannon. He is leaning on a machine gun and wears dark sunglasses beneath his helmet. He has a cigarette in his hand. You have seen the sight frequently of late. At first you thought the boy was older but after a while you realise that he would not be any older than nineteen. It is the smoothness that white men have before they reach their twenties that assures you of this.

A moment later machine gun fire erupts from a building on the opposite side of the street and the boy topples from the tank like a doll.

The window you are standing behind cracks with bullets. It registers a moment later and you drop to the ground. Your last vision is of the tank turning with ponderous slowness. The soldiers have scattered around it and you can hear their shouts. Then there is gunfire. The tank rips the air open. Silence. Deafened. Then part of a building explodes. You crawl along the floor.

You ignore the glass jamming into your hands. You head towards your screaming daughter. Dust falls around you like the aftermath of a sandstorm. The tank fires again. You stand and run the last steps to your daughter. You pick her up and press yourself into a corner and nurse her until the fighting stops.

You do not know how much time has passed before the American soldiers find you. All you know is that you were about to stand when the soldiers kicked open your door and swept into the room with their guns out. You stayed still. The black muzzles of their machine guns are Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 tiny soulless eyes that linger on you. A black American speaking like a child manages to convey to you that they want you to stand and hand your daughter over to him. You do so. A different soldier lowers his gun and checks you for weapons with unkind hands. You watch the translator search your daughter for hidden weapons. You are glad your wife is not here.

The translator hands your daughter back and smiles his straight white teeth at you as he does so. He says that you should stay in the house. Stay until you are told it is safe.

You grimace at the irony despite yourself.

The Stitched Men have picked you because your English is good. You think they should have picked Nameless. He is more articulate than you.

Nameless is too valuable to the community to endanger with this plan. Your ability with

English is good enough. (change) You worry about your involvement. You worry that it will have a negative effect upon your application for asylum. You worry. When you see Mr. Ryman you put this worry aside. Mr. Ryman is the man in charge of the jail. The sight of him reminds you that you cannot keep living in his world of uncertainty while your wife and daughter live in

Iraq.

Mr. Ryman is an elderly white man with faded blue eyes. He is fleshy and is bald with grey and brown hair on his head. He wears expensive grey suits. You know they are expensive because you had an expensive suit once. Mr. Ryman emerges from the barracks slowly. His aging bulk pushes through the world as if fighting gravity. He stops in the doorway and stares down at you unpleasantly. The stare is not personal. He stares at everyone in the same way. He speaks to everyone in the same air of condescension. He speaks to you like so now.

Mr. Ryman is not a stupid man. He knows that you will not speak without a translator even though you can speak English. He also knows that while men and women in the jail like

Nameless can translate they will not. A translator will have to be brought into the jail from outside. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

He knows that soon this is how it will appear in the papers and on the television. In the doorway he resembles a cornered animal. You do not offer sympathy.

You walk down the road to your sister’s house in Mosul with your wife and daughter. It is hot and dusty and you want to stop for a drink. You do not. The expressions of men (change) and women as you pass are not friendly. You approach. They watch you with hard eyes. You pass.

They say nothing. You wonder how many are armed. You suspect most.

The journey is long and difficult but it must be made. It is impossible to remain in your house in Tel Afar. Two tanks sit like boulders outside your house. The American soldiers have raised a checkpoint further up the road. With some difficulty you explain your concerns to the

Americans and their translators. They tell you it is safer to remain. A tank is not safe. You try to explain this. Eventually you pack your car and drive it to the edge of Mosul before the petrol runs out. You thought you had enough. Mosul is not far. You thought you had enough. In the noon sun you begin walking. Twenty minutes from your sister’s house your feet ache and your tongue is thick from dehydration. You have not talked to your wife for hours. You are both too tired for conversation. Your wife is a tiny dark haired woman. She has your child strapped to her chest. On her back she labours under the burden of a bag filled with clothing. You struggle under the weight of more clothing and goods and you push a red stroller filled with cooking utensils and plates. You believe your car has been stolen or shot at or bombed by now.

You arrive at your sister’s house just before nightfall and it is like a huddled (changed) figure lying on the ground. Once there had been houses next to it. They are gone now. They are rubble. Bombs dropped by Americans did this. Your sister’s house has no running water and electricity but it also does not have American soldiers and American tanks. Both will arrive soon enough.

Your sister lives with her husband and two children in a three bedroom house. As a family they are all tall and narrow and dark haired. Your sister and her husband have been unable Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 to find work since the war began. They survive by bartering items scavenged from the debris around them. Her husband takes you out on the first day you are there. In the clear hot day he stands on rubble like a tall and straight bird. He shows you how to pluck at the misery of the world for scraps to survive. He is a primary school teacher and during the day while he is out he has his two sons perform basic English and Math skills until lunch. His sons are nearing him in height and will soon be beyond what he can teach them. He worries that he will have to join the police force soon to provide for them.

At night you all sit around until the sun is gone and then sleep. There is a small supply of candles but no reason to light them.

Your wife and you discuss the future after a month with your sister and her family. The four of you had earlier come to the consensus that it would take a generation to bring the standard of living back to what it was under Hussein. None of you considered that standard to be the best life had to offer. How long until life surpassed what he gave you? Two generations?

Three? You do not know but you know that your daughter will not be educated and raised in an environment where she can do anything.

In the bedroom your warm bodied wife brings up the option of asylum. A nice Western country. You feel her smile against your chest as she murmurs. You agree. The idea of living anywhere near Iraq is simply moving to the next piece to be taken in the American Empire. But where to go?

You discuss it over the weeks. It is your sister who suggests Australia. She pulls out a small and red About Australia paperback. It has a picture of the continent on the cover. It is marked with dozens of yellow sticky notes that your sister’s husband has placed there to make notes to teach their children. There are dozens of tiny About books similarly marked throughout their house.

You read the book during the next two days. There is not much information in it that is useful for one seeking asylum but the country looks beautiful. You are struck particularly by its Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 history. It is a country founded on the back of criminals and the unwanted. It has drawn in people from around the world over the years to flesh it out and raise its world profile. It is this that draws you back again and again to Australia. Both you and your wife eventually agree upon it as a place to live.

Your wife will stay in Mosul while you seek asylum. Your daughter is sixteen months old and much too young to make the long journey. You cannot know that when you see her again she will be walking and talking and have no idea who you are.

You are sitting at one of the tables and benches in the Visitors’ Area. Wire fences stretch around you and there is a chill in the air. You have still not gotten used to the cold.

Mr. Ryman has moved you for your meeting with the translator. He believes that if the

Stitched Men are not close then their influence will be less. He is wrong. You pushed the needle through their lips yourself. You can still feel the sensation of the metal passing through skin in your hands. You will not forget.

You have been in Visiting Area before. Two months ago you met a boy and girl. They were both white Australians. They had arrived with food and clothing and knew a little bit of your language. They spoke it very badly but you were both humbled and embarrassed by their presence. You were aware of the fact that in any other environment you would have had nothing to do with the two youths. In another environment you know that they would have had nothing to do with you. To them you are a person that represents their political concerns. Your identity is no more important to them than to those in charge of the jail. To you they were people who were more politically active than you had been in your entire life. They had a passion you could never understand. Your meeting with them lasted fifteen minutes. You wondered afterwards what was said to people outside the fences about you.

You told Nameless and the others that they were polite but there for the experience. You shared their food and the couple never returned. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Before you leave you return to your house in Tel Afar. The streets are empty. The American tanks and American soldiers are gone. The neighbourhood is marked in black burns and trash.

Your house has been looted. You cannot salvage anything from it to help pay for your passage to

Australia.

You end up relying on your sister and her husband for help. Their scavenging has given them a small collection of jewellery. Your sister tells you they were saving them for later but suspects that there will not be a later where they are useful. You take them and do not think about the people who owned the jewellery originally. You promise your sister and her family that you will have them brought over with your own wife and daughter. For a moment you believe it will be that easy.

The young man who organised your trip was once a black market trader who specialised in medicine and sold it for obscene prices. He tells you that he still does this but there is more money in people now. Once a month he organises a sweltering truck filled with men and women and children with no identification to cross into Pakistan. After that they are transferred into the cargo area of a rattling skeleton of a plane that takes them to Thailand. There they are led at night onto an old trawler that has so much rust that its natural colour and name is gone.

At the end of the journey you have lost weight. You have hated every moment of the trip and you have become weak in body and spirit. You watched two children die. One is two. The other is four. They died over weeks. The first was buried in an unknown grave by unknown people while the truck waited. The second was wrapped in sheets and kept in the corner of the hold on the trawler. When the trawler is sunk by the Australian Navy no one rescues the decaying body. It sinks into the ocean beside the wreckage.

The translator is named Mrs. Abdul. She arrives with Mr. Ryman by her side. You watch the two walk across the grass. Mrs. Abdul is a middle aged woman of Afghan descent in brown and Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 orange coloured Muslim garb. You note that she stands apart from Mr. Ryman. For his part the director walks briskly to the table and talks quickly and sharply and never looks in your direction.

Mrs. Abdul translates. She tells you that he is angry over what has happened. She tells you that he has said that none of your actions will help. That it is obscene that ten men would mutilate each other.

You shake your head and tell the translator that Mr. Ryman is wrong.

He has a cold smile when he looks at you. You hate him. You have never hated anyone like you hate him at that moment.

You tell Mrs. Abdul that you have a petition signed by the inmates of Stage Three. She smiles faintly as you pull out the piece of paper that you want her to translate and type up and send to people.

Mr. Ryman snatches it from her grasp. She holds out her hand calmly and you feel your heart race with the thought that he will rip it up and ban all pens and paper after this.

Mrs. Abdul asks you to explain the petition to him.

In English you say, “We are not criminals. We are people.” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

The Hard Goodbye

12:38 p.m.

Two days out from a three year stint in Silverwater Prison, Michael Zaarour returned home to

Bankstown in his brother’s white Mazda 808.34 It was raining. When he opened the passenger door, the water washed over him. It didn’t matter. He was already wet, could stand some more.

The door closed with a soggy, hollow punch and, the rain soaking through his clothes anew, he spent a moment looking at his parents’ house beneath the slate grey sky. It was the same long, sprawled out brown single storey building that it had been before. It looked like two men had crawled out of the dark Earth and lain together: it was all hard angles, with nothing gentle for the gaze to linger on. But then maybe he had just been in Silverwater too long: everything looked harsh and unfriendly and masculine. Fucking wonderful. Just another thing on the outside to remind him of the inside.

He stepped onto the porch with his brother, Tarek, rang the doorbell himself. He didn’t look at the man next to him, couldn’t stand the sight of him, didn’t want to acknowledge him now. Later, maybe. Footsteps echoed and he heard Máma’s voice, telling them to wait, that she was coming, coming, just hold on. Hearing her voice, Michael wished that he had better clothes, something nicer than the ragged things he had bought from St. Vinnie’s on his first day out: brown t-shirt, faded blue jeans, and a pair of boots that originally came from an Army Disposal store or a dead soldier. Perhaps both. He wished he had kept his jacket, at least, to hide the tribal tattoos that ran in thick black loops up his left arm to his shoulder.

34 b. 1975, Bankstown, Sydney, New South Wales.

Mrs. Vella’s maiden name was Zaarour. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

The wooden door pulled open, caught on a rug, revealed a glimpse of a warm yellow- orange light inside behind a small silhouette. Máma.

She looked out of the partially open door through the screen door designed to keep people

and rushed back into ”!طارق — طارق لماذا لم تأخذ مظلة للتقاط أخيك؟ أنت ستمرضه“ ,inside hidden, then cried out the warmth of the house before Michael could stop her. Despite the fact that he wanted nothing but to go inside, he waited in the cold, rubbing his wet arms, until she returned with thick brown towels. Máma pushed the door over the rug with a grunt, unlocked the screen door. It was there that he finally saw that she had aged: the lines around her eyes and mouth had deepened, become prominent.35 Her hair was shorter, dyed darker than what it had been, streaked with hints of a lighter brown. She’d done it recently, he realised, judging by the strength of the streaks. Done it for him. For her son. Smiling her white teeth, Máma passed a towel to Tarek and then one to

يتأكد كلكما لنزع أحذيتك من.“ .him, her small, warm hands lingering on his larger, wet ones for a moment

”.أنا ل أريدك تسحب ماءا خلل منزلي النظيف والجاف

He nodded, bent down and began unlacing his boots. He was aware of Tarek kicking off his sneakers with the laces done up before pushing past Máma and into yellow light. Anger sparked briefly in Michael, but he ignored it. Fuck him. It didn’t matter. Fuck h—

Máma’s hand touched his head, stroked his hair, broke his thoughts.

she asked, her dark eyes shining with love and pleasure when he ”هل هذه كيفتحيي أمك؟“

”رجوع للبيت بعد ثلث سنوات بتلك الوشام المخيفةتشوف ومنقعة إلى العظم؟“ .looked up

Standing in wet socks, Michael kissed her delicately on the cheek, received her hard hug without complaint before hugging her back. For a moment, he thought that she would be able to wipe away the past hour, that she would be able to solve his problems just as she had when he

35 b. 1952, Hay al-Soulom, Beirut, Lebanon. On April 13th, 1975, the morning that many believed that Lebanese Civil War officially began (change) with an attempt on the life of Pierre Gemayel, Nahleili Zaarour learnt that she was pregnant. Returning home through the quiet city, knowing that the violence would only grow, knowing for certain that it would consume the country, Nahleili realised that she could not give birth surrounded by this hate. That she could not let that atmosphere sink into the skin of her child, let him or her be raised around bullets and bloodshed, knowing nothing of the beauty she had as a child, learning violence before choices could be made. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 was a kid. Just for a moment, he let the thought linger, but only for just a moment. There were things your parents would never be able to fix.

And there was still dried blood under his fingernails, after all.

11:13 a.m.

The white metal frame of Lidcombe station shone in the rain. Michael gazed at it through the closed doors of the carriage, pulled his thick green army jacket around him to keep the rain off him when they opened and he, beside three Asian kids in blue white school uniforms stepped out.

Under shelter, he gazed back at the tagged, run down carriage that carried him from Auburn. One thing sure hadn’t changed in three years: City Rail was still serving the West with shit. A con he was sharing a room with had told him about new, slick trains that were like science fiction films.

Told you what station they pulled into, he said. Michael hadn’t seen one yet, doubted he would out here.

Pushing his fists into the jacket pockets, he began walking up the stairs, the last in the line of passengers. Most of them had cheap umbrellas held to their sides, the majority folded in, or being shook open. Part of him regretted not spending the ten bucks on one earlier, though he was pretty sure Tarek would have one. Tarek hated the rain.

His brother would be the first member of his family that he had seen in two years. He had told them to stop visiting after one year in Silverwater. The other cons told him he was fucked up: weeks were broken up by visits, by phone calls, but a year of seeing his sweet Máma make the trip into the prison every week had brought only guilt. Finally, he told her to just write him, which she did. She wrote him weekly, signed Bába to each letter, occasionally his sister and brother, though he was never sure if anyone other than she had input into the actual letters. She wrote every week and every week he spent his time being model inmate of the fucking century.

When his first parole hearing had come up, he’d walked in shiny, a new man. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Tarek was waiting at the bottom of the station stairs, across from the shops and bars. He was a tall, well built young man, with a closely shaved head, white Nikes, shiny black Adidas tracksuit pants, tight red shirt, and a thick gold chain around his neck.36 He had his back to

Michael’s approach, so Michael had a few moments to study him. He considered turning, walking away. The family were going to treat him like nothing had changed, but everything had.

Part of him needed that fact to be acknowledged. It wasn’t going to happen if he turned and left, though. Tarek still hadn’t noticed him and when Michael, finally pushing aside his doubts, stepped up next to him, he realised that his brother had been gazing into the silver mobile in his hand.

“Do you have a hello?” he said.

”—مايكل! لقد حان الوقت“ ,Tarek almost dropped his mobile. Shaking his head, grinning, he said

“English,” Michael interrupted quietly.

إنه لمر حسن رؤيتك، تجمع من“ .What? You forget it?” Tarek wrapped his arms around him“

”.التغووط

He returned the embrace. “It’s good to see you, too.”

“Shit, you’re gonna make me, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” he replied. He stepped back, met his brother’s gaze, felt like he was back in

Silverwater with another con, standing in one of the divisions, waiting for the other to start up or step down. “Yeah, English.”

“Fucker,” Tarek said, rolling his eyes in a way no con would. “Just makes me think twice about the present I’ve got for you.”

12:41 p.m.

The hallway had a new rug. It was the one that caught the heavy wooden door, and ran down the middle, a mixture of reds and browns and dark greens. Michael’s damp feet sank into the plush

36 b. 1981, Bankstown, Sydney, New South Wales. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 and it pushed up between his toes as he walked behind Máma, listening to her tell him what was new and what was not. The gold edged mirror on the wall was new, but the image in it was familiar, if a bit older than when it had last come through. There was age, a bit more muscle, a goatee growing in, and black hair that was beginning to recede. The table beneath the mirror was the same, however, and the mixture of sweet spices and sharp perfume and cat that filled the house were the smells in his dreams. They were all, however, struggling against the smell of raw meat being cooked.

11:56 a.m.

Phillips Park: Michael stood in front of the closed boot, the rough grey sky letting out rain so heavily that it had already soaked through his army jacket and dug a chill in his bones. In his right hand, he held a sun-faded red crook-lock; in his left, he held the keys to Tarek’s white

Mazda. Around him, shadowed, silent, the dripping trees stood like magistrates in audience.

Tarek sat in the driver’s seat, his head bowed against the steering wheel, unwilling to turn or look or talk.

Michael opened the boot.

Inside lay a girl: small, blonde, Australian. Hands and feet were bound together with grey electrical tape. Mouth gagged with grey strips tightly wound round her skull. She was dirty, cut around her arms, and looked up at him with frightened blue eyes that pleaded with him in a way that no voice could. The rain fell heavily onto the roof of the Mazda, ran down him, fell on her, a dirty pool emerging in the boot.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Michael jammed the crook-lock into her face. She screamed, thrashed, but he didn’t stop.

The blunt, round end hit her a second time: he thrust forward with both hands, stamping into her face for a third, then a fourth time. Blood splashed, bones cracked. He ignored it all, ground his teeth together, bit into his bottom lip. The crook-lock smashed down for a fifth time. The girl’s Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 body went limp. Finally. Limp. Finally. Tightening his grip, Michael placed the end on her neck.

The blood matted blonde hair tangling with it, a feeble struggle by a body unable to resist. He applied as much pressure as he could, but the crook-lock slipped, made a loud thunk as it jammed into the car’s frame. Silently, he climbed onto the edge of the boot for more leverage, jammed the crook-lock in place; he began twisting, grinding, forcing it into her neck with all his strength and weight until he heard a thin splintering that was followed by a much louder and final crack that left her neck bent at an awful angle.

She couldn’t have been any older than fourteen.

12:42 p.m.

Michael found Bába in the kitchen, breaking toast into small pieces with his thick fingers.37 They cracked and snapped like tiny, sand coloured bones and the remains were dropped into a large mango coloured bowl. He was making al fattoush as he always had. A stocky man, Bába had gained an extra layer during Michael’s absence, but the true difference was that he had shaved off the beard that had survived all three births of his children, leaving only a thick black mustache and hair that, once sprinkled with grey, had returned to being black in a definite sign that his parents had, at some point, found hair care products.

.Bába said upon seeing him”،مايكل“

He smelt of lemon and parsley and vinegar and he kissed Michael on the cheek and hugged him tightly, just as Máma had. On the chopping board behind him, lay a knife and the guts of a chicken, pushed into a wet pile on the side. 37 b. 1950, Hay al-Soulom, Beirut, Lebanon. On the day that his wife learnt that she was pregnant, the same day of the attempted assassination, Ali Zaarour received a package from his oldest and dearest friend. Inside, it held a darkly polished revolver, the type no longer used, a weapon of ceremony, rather than violence. It had six polished bullets laid out neatly beneath it. There was a small card over it, but Ali did not open it, never would. He knew what it was, wasn’t surprised. Unlike his dear Nahleili, he had watched the violence of the country grow, had watched his friends become consumed by it. In truth, he could no longer remember a time without the conversation in the back of his head. Gently, he closed the mahogany box the pistol and bullets had been placed in and sat, empty. Outside, there were only strangers. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

10:03 a.m.

Matthew Lake was Michael’s parole officer: a big, middle aged Aboriginal who had shaved his skull clean and believed in his job.38 “No idle hands,” he explained in a deep, baritone. “Jobs straight out. I’ve no time for guys who want to sit down, think about their options. That was what your time done was for and, having done it, you ought to realise you don’t have a whole lot of options. Here.”

Lake rose in a series of creaks from his shiny, brown leather chair. He placed a thin collection of black and white paper in front of Michael, then returned to his seat in a second series of creaks, different from the first. Behind him (change) hung an ivory coloured cross of a crucified Jesus. It looked new.

“I’ve got an economics degree,” Michael said without glancing at the paper.

“Doesn’t mean a thing, mate,” he replied casually. Tilting his leather chair back, he came close to the feet of Jesus, almost had them touching his head. “I make a habit of being upfront with my boys, so I’ll be honest: the chances of you getting a job using that degree are fucking zero.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” assured Lake.

“But I can look?”

“Sure. Look all you want. I wish you the best with it. But you are going to need some money quick, and this place is willing to take you on full time knowing your record. It’s shit

38 b. 1964, Blacktown, Sydney, New South Wales. When Matthew Lake was eight, he discovered Jesus. It was in the stuffy, year two classroom that his teacher, Mrs. Evens, had kept her class in. The windows had been nailed shut so that no one could break into the room, and Matt, as he was known then, spent the school days drifting in and out, barely listening to what was said. On the wall in front of him was a picture of Jesus, white, and with a beard, and Matt couldn’t stop looking at it. He had heard about Jesus, of course. His foster parents made him go to church every weekend, but he didn’t get it until, on a hot, Thursday afternoon, the white picture of Jesus turned and said, “I was never really white, you know.” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 factory work, sure, but it’s money and work you can do,” Lake said. “I like to get my guys something as soon as possible, Mike. Is it Mike?

“No,” he replied, the word slipping out, an admission of his dislike for the other man.

“No.” He pursed his thick lips together in an expression of displeasure. “Well, Michael, listen to this: You’ve spent three years around your fellow inmates and you got to fuck them off now. I see a lot of cons of a lot of different colours (change), and in my opinion, the only hope for any of you is to get each of you away from the other.”

“My family has offered me a place.”

“That’s good,” Lake said. “One last thing about your buddies—the ones you ran with?”

“Yeah?” he replied, cautious, unwilling to offer more.

“From what I understand, you had two guys with you in that car when you were caught.

Before you ask, it’s in the file. One of them got off as a minor and the other ‘cause he claimed he didn’t beat the guy, that you had a gun, and it was all your idea. Bullshit or not I don’t care.

You’ve done your time. They haven’t. You’re best avoiding those two—they got a disease with no cure. Understand?”

Michael did not reply.

Lake’s hand spread out over the dark wood of his table. “Don’t play tough, boy. This isn’t no yard. I’m not your friend, but you get nothing from pissing me off. I’ve had a few Lebs come through here and each one of them has had attitude and each one of them hooked up with their friends and forgot all the things they learnt.” His deep tone offered no room for argument.

“You don’t want to be one of those guys, right?

Michael replied with light shrug. He looked again at Jesus.

“What I’m saying to you,” Lake continued, “is that you should stay away from those two friends of yours. Time passes different and they haven’t learnt the things you have and they’ll send you right back.” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

“I’m not going back,” Michael replied, his gaze leaving the new, clean Jesus. “Not for anyone.”

12:42 p.m.

Hands grabbed him from behind. Michael tensed, forgetting for a moment where he was… then he heard a girl’s laughter.

Tina.

She was tall, slim, with pushed up breasts he tried not to notice, a nose that was too big for her face, and a mouth full of multicoloured braces.39 After hugging him, she stepped back, grinned, said, “You like?” and showed off a pair of flared blue jeans and a tight pink shirt that revealed her flat mid section. In her belly button was a surprising shot of silver.

“When did you get that?” he asked. “None of Mum’s letters said anything about that.”

“Isn’t it cool?” she replied, screwing up her nose as she smiled even wider. “Dad hates it.”

”.هو غير مناسب“ ,Bába, still crumbling toast into the bowl, muttered

Michael laughed, but his laughter was cut short as Tarek, now changed into a new pair of black tracksuit pants and a bright, plain white t-shirt, entered the kitchen.

11:13 a.m.

Beneath the wet white covering of Lidcombe train station, Tarek took a step back, looked at

Michael critically, then screwed up his face in disgust. He said, “You look like a Skip.”

39 b. 1989, Bankstown, Sydney, New South Wales. Tina Zaarour had grown up with the contradiction of knowing that she had not been planned, that her conception had been an accident, that her birth had been difficult on her then thirty seven year old mother… but she grew up also knowing that she was completely doted upon by her mother and father and brothers, and that she had not wanted for anything. Well. Except a snake. When she was seven, all Tina had wanted was an albino python. She had demanded, cried, wheedled, done everything that she could to get her parents to by her a snake, but without any luck. Years later, she wasn’t quite sure why she had wanted a snake, but she made sure to bring up the fact that her parents had not bought her one every birthday. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Michael returned his hands to his jacket pockets, shrugged. Another tagged, silver line of carriages pulled up to the station and the electronic male voice sounded out the stops in clipped sound bites. After the train had pulled away, he searched for something to say, but found that the only thing he had was annoyance.

“Fuck.” Tarek slapped him on the shoulder hard. “You look miserable like that. You should care what you look like, bro. Being in prison doesn’t mean that you’re not part of the real world.”

“It does,” Michael said. “That’s what prison is.”

Tarek rolled his eyes again. In his hand, his phone beeped. He glanced down, nodded, then held it in front of Michael. “Smile.”

“What?”

“It’s a camera.” Tarek turned it around, showed him an image of himself, damp and huddled in an ugly, patched up army jacket. His face was curiously neutral as if he were still learning how to use it for expression. “Ain’t you just happy, huh?”

“Why’d you do that?”

“’Cause I’m happy to see my bro.” He hugged him again, impulsive. “You look like shit.

Come on, we’ll go across the road and get a drink. I’ve got money, so you don’t have to dip into your welfare check just yet.”

Michael ignored his annoyance. “What about the folks?”

“They’re all making food,” Tarek replied, stepped out onto the dark, wet edge of the road.

“They won’t miss us.”

Michael didn’t want to follow his brother, but at the same time, he didn’t want to return home just yet. He didn’t want to see his parents with the sour mood that had come over him. It’d arrived the moment that Tarek had opened his mouth, increased with every word he had spoken since. It was probably just that Michael wasn’t used to how people were on the outside: the casual words, the jesting, the taking the shit out of you. He just wasn’t used to that without there Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 being consequence. Yet there was also a part of him that didn’t think that his mood was caused by that, but rather that it had been caused by the fact that Tarek was just an asshole. In the two and a half years since Michael had last seen him, his brother had received a fresh injection of dickhead and he was reacting badly to it. Still, he followed him across the two-lane road and through the green painted wooden doors of the Lidcombe Hotel. He wanted to shake the mood off. A drink sounded like a good way to do that.

The inside of the pub was dark, the majority of the light gathering like a yellow umbrella around the bar, which was empty, even of staff. The one staff member there was a middle aged white woman with brightly dyed red hair. She was sitting at one of the tables near the bar, reading a paperback novel and, with a lazy glance at Tarek, she put it down on the table when he approached.40

Michael headed towards the table near the window. It was closed, smeared with rain so that he could see nothing clearly outside, but he wanted it anyway. In the background was faint music, but he had no idea who it was, and didn’t much care for it. He didn’t much care for any music these days.

Tarek returned, placed two schooners of beer on the round table, sat opposite, then placed his mobile on the table. A moment later it beeped, and Michael said, “Does it ever stop?” His hand curled around the glass. It was cool, wet, inviting. He would dive into it if he could.

Keying his response, Tarek said, “Saad’s just happy.”

Michael sipped the beer. The cool liquid ran down his throat, falling through the long tracks to his empty stomach. “Saad,” he repeated. 40 b. 1961, Swan Hill, New South Wales, Australia. Mary Birmingham had come to Sydney in 1985, the guitarist in the band, Hemingway’s Shotgun. They had enjoyed a little success, but by the 1993, the band splintered by births, drugs, and jobs, she had ended up writing reviews for music magazines in working in bars. Even though she had been reading Raymond Chandler’s The Lady in the Lake, she had not been paying attention, and could not tell anyone what had happened over the last twenty pages. Before work, she had been talking to Greg about the death of ex-Aborted God frontwoman, Zee, and how none of her albums would ever reach an people, how all that good music would just disappear. Greg had told her that was how it happened, some times, but Mary reckoned, if she had her own label, a small one, just a tiny one, this oughtn’t be how it happened. Her own label. There. She said it. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

“He was pissed when you told him to stop visiting,” Tarek continued without looking up.

“But we talked, and figured you were just mad that you were the only one who got caught.”

“It wasn’t that,” Michael replied quietly.

“No?”

“No, but it’s not important.”

“You sure?” Tarek asked. The silver phone sat isolated next to him as his thick hands curled out the schooner. “Saad’s gone in on this present with me.”

An expression of displeasure crossed Michael’s features. Those facial muscles deciding to work at the wrong time, like always.

“Don’t look like that,” his brother replied seriously. “Saad’s a good guy. He copped a lot of shit for what happened.”

Michael nodded, didn’t press the issue. Fuck it. It was history, but so was Saad. He didn’t like his parole officer, Lake, one fucking bit, but the man had a point about his ex-friends. About

Saad and Tarek especially. Since he couldn’t avoid the latter, he would make sure the former was well and truly gone (change) from his life. It was more than fair, Michael rationalised. Saad had owned the gun, aimed it at the white guy outside the club, but it had been Michael who had thrown the first punch, Michael who had picked the gun up off the ground after it had been knocked out of Saad’s hands, Michael who had fired… His grip tightened around the glass. He rose and drank more.

”.يا“

“English,” he said.

“Why the fuck should I?” Tarek’s pleasant nature dropped, his demeanor turning punk.

“You forget how to fucking use it? It’s our native language.”

“No it’s not.” Michael stared into the brown liquid, white scraps marked across it. “It never was. We were born here. What you’ve got is a language that people reckons is all about Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 violence and terror. I’m not shitting you, Tarek. In this country, anything that’s not English, is that. I learnt that in Silverwater.”

“That’s fucked—”

“No.” Michael cut him off flatly. “When you walk into prison and you’re a Leb, you fall in with the other Lebs and you speak the mother language, but it’s all shit. It’s not about culture.

It’s about having the upper hand.”

“It’s solidarity,” the other shot back. “It’s about being with your own kind. It’s family, man.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Come on—”

“I would still be doing my stretch in Silverwater if I was speaking that shit. Three to eight, Tarek. That was my time. When I walked, they said I would be doing the full eight, and I would’ve if I spent all my time speaking the mother language, spent all my time being part of the inmate Leb family. But I got out in three, and I did that by proving what a good little boy I could be by stepping away from that whole patriotic motherland language bullshit.”

“We were told you got out early because you changed.”

“I did change.”

“You been brainwashed.”

“Fuck you,” he said tiredly. “It’s a Skip world with Skip rules.”

Tarek shook his head, looked like he was going to argue, but instead rose his drink. “Jail

”.مورس الجنس معك فوق .fucked you up, man

12:46 p.m.

Bába rarely cooked, but when he did, it was an event. The main course—dajaj mehshi, Michael’s favourite—had begun in the early hours of the morning. The chicken had been gutted and stuffed with an assortment of brown colours in the shape of almonds and pine nuts and pistachios and Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 mixed with the chicken. It had then been placed into a large pot where it was mixed with a sauce of spices and mince.(Changed)

When Bába cooked, everyone was kept out of the kitchen. Even now, Michael stood outside the corked floor of the kitchen, leaving that space for Bába to move around in. Which, after dusting off his hands, he did, using the towel to lift the steam filled lid of the pot with the chicken in it. Spices flooded the air, and he began to stir, humming to himself.

It was the exact process he had gone through since Michael’s childhood. When Michael had been young, he had always made fun of Bába for it, but now the familiarity was a comfort that could not be expressed fully.

In the dining room that was joined to the kitchen, the table had been laid out by Máma. A cloth the cover of soil and patterned in orange swirls had been laid across the table, and long, dark yellow candles sat in brown holders that had been shaped into little men. On a dark green plate, arayes kafta had been placed on the table and his stomach reacted automatically to the sight, sending him to grab a slice of bread and dip it into hot yogurt.

“You want one?” Michael asked Tina, holding a second piece up.

“Yeah.” She took the offered piece and stared at his left hand, her gaze tracing the black tribal markings up to his shoulder. “They’re cool,” she said, tracing a slender finger around his wrist, her smooth nail leaving a faint line. “Did they hurt?”

“Well—” Máma passed behind Tina and nodded slowly and deliberately at him. “Yeah,”

Michael finished, “it did. A lot.”

“A lot?” Tina repeated, disappointment in her tone.

“It makes you bleed.”

“Really?”

He nodded shortly and closed his fingers into a fist (change). He’d forgotten, for a moment, what lay beneath his nails. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

11:38 a.m.

The rain had finally set in when Michael and Tarek stepped out of the Lidcombe Hotel. It fell in thick, silver lines that formed a barrier between the two as they walked down the street. The uncomfortableness grew with every step. It was not how Michael wanted to begin his return home, but he couldn’t think of a way to change it. Truth was that the drink with his brother had simply reinforced his earlier opinion that Tarek was an asshole. In Silverwater, Michael would have kept his distance, but on the outside, he found himself following him onto Mary Street where he had parked his car.

Mary Street. Michael slowed. In front of him was the grey, square block of a building that was the children’s court. Its windows were like dozens of black eyes gazing intently at him in recognition, in a greeting that was equal to any cop that remembered him from one of the charges that he had been picked up on. It said, I’m waiting for you to fuck up, Zaarour. You will fuck up and I will be waiting for it.

“Hey,” Tarek called.

He wasn’t aware that he had stopped. Fuck. He thrust his hands into his pockets, lowered his head, kept walking. Ahead of him, his brother waved him at a reconditioned Mazda that had, before the work, been a few years older than him. Now, with the frame lowered, the windows tinted, the interior made from smooth crimson leather, it looked younger, given a fresh injection of life with money and love that Michael was envious of.

The door slapped shut. The engine started. Tarek flipped the vents open and pressed his wet hands against the fan, shivering.

“Saw you looking at that,” he said, nodding at the children’s court. “Saad’s little brother was in there a week ago. Threatened a teacher with a knife, if you can believe that.”

Michael could, but felt nothing for the little shit. He’d always been one of those violent dicks, idolising his brother, trying to exceed every fucked up act that he had done. Still, he felt Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 that he should have some sympathy for the kid. His own memories of the courthouse consisted of old white judges who sat quietly, uncaring to the point where they overlooked lost files and unprepared public defenders. “It’s a stain,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Michael said, pressing his own hands against the fans. Tarek had missed the court when he was fifteen because the cops had cut him some slack over family problems, and an older brother who had led into the wilds. At least that’s what his parents told the cops. But since he’d never gone in there, Tarek just wouldn’t understand how it stained everyone who went in it, how it left marks of pain and suffering that turned into a second, more dangerous, more practiced and punished disease than was found in other courts.

Tarek dropped the handbrake, turned on the windshield wipers. They screeched faintly across the glass as he eased out into traffic. “Sorry for the noise, I need new blades,” he said, forcing his tone to be light. “Fuck but I hate that court though. I still remember Bába’s reaction when you first got sent there for stealing a car.”

“Yeah,” Michael said. “He was pretty pissed.”

“Was worse ‘cause the cops there were Skips.”

“No,” he replied. “That had nothing to do with it.”

”.أنت لم تسمع ما قال عنهم بعد هم يذهبون“

“He wasn’t mad at them. He was mad at me.”

“Won’t be baited, will you?”

Michael swallowed his anger, said quietly, “I’m serious, Tarek.”

“Of course you fuckin’ are, but it’s bullshit.” The lights ahead were red. “You got to be proud of where you come from.”

“It’s just a place.”

He laughed. The light turned green. “Man, it’s more than that. Shit, you know that. It’s got our heritage in it. It’s part of our life there.” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

“You’ve never been to Lebanon.”

“Neither have you, but I’m gonna go. Six months, a year tops. Saad and me are going to pool some money. You should come.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Can’t leave the country.”

Before Tarek could reply, a dull thud resounded through the Mazda. Tarek’s left hand dropped smoothly to the stereo, nudged the volume up. The dull thudding was joined by a deep bass.

Joined.

It wasn’t part of the music.

Michael’s stomach twisted. He reached out, turned the dial down flat. The thudding continued strongly, persistently, clearly rising from the back of the Mazda.

“What the fuck is that?”

”.هي هدية“

“What the fuck is this gift?”

12:55 p.m.

Michael scrubbed his hands three times, using the brown soap flecked with dried flowers and the wooden nailbrush. He only stopped once the skin beneath his nails began to hurt. They were clean, without a speck of dirt, but Michael could feel the blood there. There wasn’t much more that he could do, not until he and Tarek left after dinner. He still didn’t know what the fuck he was going to do, but he knew that he had to do something. The tired face in the mirror wore the realisation across every inch of its skin. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Leaving the bathroom, Michael headed into the kitchen, and heard Máma’s stern voice, “

When he stepped into the kitchen, he found that all of the family was ”،بالضافة إلى ذلك، أوشام ليست سيدة مثل sitting at the table except for Máma, who had just left the kitchen and was holding a large brown, green, and yellow plate of kibed makli in deep green towel-covered hands. The trail of spices hit

Michael and, despite his previous thoughts, he felt his stomach react appreciatively as Máma

”.هناك بعض أنواع البنات اللواتي يحصلن على الوشام، وأنت لست واحد“ ,continued speaking

“That’s just giving into stereotypes,” Tina replied tiredly. The plate was placed in front of her, and she eyed it doubtfully. “I can’t believe anyone in this house likes fried chicken liver.”

”.أخك يحبه“

Michael pulled out the chair next to her, and she said, “Say it isn’t true, please.”

“Sorry. Love it.”

“That’s so gay.”

Bába said. He picked up the mango coloured bowl of al fattoush ”،أختك ل تحب أية علقة مع لبنان“

”.هي ليست بارد، على ما يبدو، ولبد أننا برودة. نحن حتى لكلم النجليزية متى أصدقائها إنتهى“ .from the middle of the table

“You make them speak English?” Michael repeated, shocked despite himself. Bába had always been a proud man and he had always viewed English as a secondary language that was used at work only. It was his Capitalist Language, he had once called it.

“Dad would never speak it otherwise!” Tina replied, her voice slightly whiny, as if she had had to defend herself more than once. “Besides, he’s always talking behind my friends’ backs if they’re white. He keeps asking why they’re dressed like that, why they aren’t doing homework, and why they don’t have good husbands. He thinks it’s funny and laughs and it is so embarrassing.”

Michael glanced at Bába, who shrugged unapologetically as he placed the bowl of al

.he said ”،عليهم أن يتعلمون لغتي إذا هم يريدون الكلم مع أحب بالغا“ .fattoush back on the table

“They’re sixteen,” he said.

”.. حسنا،يتحدثون عني أعرف بأنهم يعملون“ ,Bába said Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

“We do not talk about you!” Tina cried out. “Ohmygod, you’re so vain!”

Michael rubbed at his forehead, the gesture a comical one. It was obvious Bába was working his sister up, indulging in a sport that he had stopped participating in with Michael by the time he was fifteen. Sitting at the opposite head of the table, Máma had her hand over her mouth and was trying not to laugh and cough up her food at the same time.

“Michael, really,” Tina said, grabbing his hands, “we never talk about him.”

“You so do,” Tarek interrupted stiffly from the other side of the table as Michael. “You and your friends sit in your room and hassle him about his mustache.”

“Do not!”

Tarek glanced at her innocently.

Bába said, slipping into the light tone of serious lecturing that all his children”،الطفال“

”.رجاء. الهدوء. وأنت تينا، يجب أن يتوقف عن إحتقار تراثك كثيرا“ .were familiar with

“I don’t disrespect it,” Tina muttering, looking into her empty, coloured plate. “I just live in Aus-tra-li-a.”

11:42 a.m.

“Hey, hey,” Tarek shouted in reply, waving one of his hands in Michael’s face while watching the road. “Calm the fuck down, will you? It’s nothing big. Nothing. Just something Saad and me got for you last night. It’s just rolling around back there.”

“Rolling around—” Michael broke off angrily before he could finish. Closing his eyes, he tried to calm himself, focused instead on the sounds of the Mazda: the motor muttering in groans of acceleration, the windshield wipers moving across the glass in faint, worn out screams—

Michael’s eyes opened.

“Tarek, pull over.”

“What, here in the middle of fucking Lidcombe?”

Michael’s hands tightened into fists. “The park—go to the park.” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Tarek’s face bunched up sourly. He looked as if he was going to argue, but nodded instead, giving in.

The drive to Phillips Park took five minutes, but it felt longer. The old blades let out faint screams across the glass while banging echoed throughout the Mazda. I’m not going back to

Silverwater, Michael told himself, repeating the words like a prayer as they approached the entrance. I’m not.

The park was empty. The wet, dark green grass spread out like a lake around them. The beating continued. The tension in the car grew. Tarek drove towards a toilet block surrounded by trees, pulled the Mazda up beside it. He killed the engine with a savage twist of the keys.

“Give them to me,” Michael uttered through clenched teeth.

The keys dropped with a clink into the palm of his hand.

Wordlessly, Michael stepped out of the Mazda. The wet fields and wire fence which ran along the park reminded him of Silverwater. Tension crawled up his back as he walked around to the boot of the Mazda.

He placed the key into the lock, turned it, caught the lid it as it sprung up.

Inside, staring up at him, mouth, arms, and legs bound, was a girl.

Michael slammed the boot shut. He leaned on the back heavily, his legs weak as anger and fear tried to gain dominance in him. He couldn’t believe it. He could. The rain fell in slick lines down his face. If he just stayed there, if he didn’t move, then the whole world would stop, then nothing else would happen.

He heard pounding.

Slowly, Michael pushed himself off the boot, walked back to the passenger door. When he had sat down, he said, quietly, “You are a fucking idiot.”

” — هي كانت هدية“ ,Tarek whispered

“A fucking gift? A fucking gift! You shit!” Michael grabbed Tarek’s shirt. “Have you any fucking idea what you have done? Any goddamned idea? No, you don’t! A! Fucking! Gift!” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

“But—”

“How long have you had her?” Michael snapped.

“I picked her up last night,” replied Tarek, clawing at his arm. “She’s just a fucking Skip.

I offered her a bit of pot and she followed me out. What kind of fucking girl does .فاسقة صندةق نفايات that? A girl who—”

“Don’t. Just don’t say it.” Michael released him, turned away, gave his brother his back.

He kicked the car door visciously. Tarek began to protest, but Michael’s voice drowned him out,

“I heard about guys who did this. I heard. It was all over the fucking news. I thought to myself, what fucking idiot does that? Turns out he’s my fucking brother!”

“I’m sorry,” Tarek whispered.

Michael spun. “Sorry? You think sorry is going to solve this? We’ll just let her out, pat her on the head, and say, ‘oops’?”

Tarek’s head sank to the wheel of the Mazda. “We were going to drug her.”

“Brilliant,” Michael said sarcastically. “Just brilliant.”

“It worked before.”

Michael ground his teeth together. “What happened to her?”

“She…” Tarek paused. “She OD’d. Sa—Saad said it was an accident.”

“He did, huh?”

“Yes,” Tarek said weakly.

“You’re an idiot,” Michael replied heavily. “You think Saad would tell you otherwise?

Even he’s not stupid enough to believe that you can do this and afterwards drop her off on the street corner and walk away.”

1:20 p.m.

Michael took the brown plate of kibed makli that was handed to him by Bába and scooped a generous portion onto his own coloured dish. It was expected that he would eat a lot and he Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 would not disappoint, even if he moved between being hungry and being nauseated. He offered the plate to Tina, who wrinkled her nose and took more al fattoush from the mango coloured bowl.

The plate of arayes kafta appeared before him, held by Tarek’s smooth arms. He took it and glanced at his brother’s plate, where small portions of food sat, the majority of the plate left empty and brown, a crafted scab of what had they had done. Michael swallowed his sigh, wished his brother would eat more, looked up at his face and found that the other had averted his gaze.

Fine. Let everything be an open wound for the family to see. Selfish bastard. Michael picked up his fork and began spearing pieces of kibed makli for his plate.

12:03 p.m.

Michael’s blood-covered hands opened stiffly: the crook-lock tumbled to the black mat next to the girl. It lay still. She lay still.

With bloody prints, he closed the boot softly. Red prints remained, but the rain washed them away, turning them into weak, red trails that slid down, disappeared into the mud, into water at his feet. Around him, the silhouetted trees watched, magistrates with dark predictions.

Through the back window, Michael saw Tarek, his face pressed against the steering wheel, unmoving.

Without thought, he wiped his hands on his jacket, stopped, swore. Sighed. Fuck. His hands were worse: her blood had gotten all over his jacket, sprayed up his arms, over his chest. It was useless now. He pushed his stained fingers along the stains on the jacket and wondered why it was so different. The blood on his hands had a rich red colour even when mixed with water, while the blood on the jacket was turning black.

“Michael?” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

The rain had soaked through Tarek’s clothes, left him pale, left him looking as if he had just crawled out of a river. He screwed his hands together into a tight lump of flesh as he spoke.

“Michael?”

Quiet, without emotion: “What?”

“What—What’re we going to do with her?”

Michael began to remove his jacket.

“Man, please…”

“Give me your phone,” he said, bunching the jacket up. He thrust out his stained hand.

“Give me your phone.”

Tarek stared at his hand. “I don—I don’t wanna go to jail.”

“Then why the fuck did you take her?” he yelled. Dumping the jacket into the bloody mud, he stalked up to his brother. “I fucking hate you right now. You’re a fucking asshole and you deserve jail, but I’m not calling the cops. I’m not going back to jail. Never.”

“I—”

“I’ll call Saad.”

“Saad?”

“He’ll know someone.”

“Yeah,” Tarek replied dully. “Okay.”

The silver mobile dropped into Michael’s hand. Using it slowly, not sure what to do, unwilling to ask, he found Saad’s name, hit the call button. Emotions were falling around him as the shock dissolved: anger built, fell, panic came in strong. He pushed it away, picked his jacket up out of the mud. The phone was still ringing. He turned back to the boot of the Mazda, turned his back on his brother again, wanted for nothing more than to have never had a brother, to disown the other. The key slid loudly back into the boot’s lock. It sprung opened. With no free hand to catch it, it sprung suddenly, revealed the wet, bloody body of the girl.

“Hello?” Saad. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

“Hey.” Unfriendly from the start, the word laced with a malice that he wouldn’t take out on his brother.

” — مايكل! أنت تمتعت بهديتك“ ,Saad said

“Shut the fuck up,” Michael growled. He tossed the jacket into the boot. It landed on the girl’s bent neck, covered her open eyes. Without a second glance, he pulled the white boot down, closed it, and continued speaking.

4:49 p.m.

Afterwards, Michael helped Máma clean up the plates: he picked them up from the table and placed them on the kitchen bench while she filled the sink with soapy water and scraped off the large scraps into a plastic bag. Once the sink was filled, Michael began washing, and she dried, while Bába sat on one of the stools, his thick body turned so that he could talk to both his wife and son and, at the same time, pick over the plates and bowls and lick sauce off his fingers when he thought no one was looking. Tina and Tarek had left, disappearing into their rooms, and the topic of conversation had turned to the latter.

Máma said, her green and blue patterned river and land towel ”،أنا ل أعرف ما هو الخطأ في أخاك“

”.أنت تعتقد بأنه ما كان سعيد لرؤيتك“ .drying a coloured plate in swirls

“He said he was just ill,” Michael replied. He picked up a dirty plate that Bába had finished picking off. “He looked a bit pale when he picked me up, so, you know, it’s probably just that.”

Bába said, his tone leaving no doubt as to what he thought of ”،يقضي وقتا أكثر من اللزم مع سعد“

”.يخبرني له فقط بين الحين والخر، لكنه ليس“ .the man

Michael dunked the plate into the water, lied, “Saad’s harmless.”

He picked up a piece of ”،حتى أمك ل تحب سعد“ ,Máma made a loud sound, and Bába said

”. وتحبأمك كل شخص“ .broken toast

.Máma added ”،كل شخص الذي ل يحصل على إبني أدخل السجن“ Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

“You can’t run his life.” Michael handed the clean plate to her. “He’ll just resent you.”

”لكن ما يكفي من ذلك. ماذا بشأنك؟ هل أنت يرجع هنا الليلة؟“ .Bába muttered sourly ”،من الواضح ليس“

“Yeah, I’ll be back.” Michael dunked a new plate with meaty brown stains into the soapy water. “But I’ve got to pick up my stuff first.”

.Bába asked ”هل تريدني أن آخذك؟“

He scrubbed that plate furiously. “No. Tarek said he’d do it.”

”أنت بالتأكيد؟“

“Yeah.”

أعتقد ذلك الصحن“ ,Máma said softly, reaching into the water and catching his hand”،العسل“

”.نظيف

“Oh.” He handed the clean plate to her with a sheepish smile. “Sorry.”

.she said, patting his cheek ”،هو جيد بأنك تستطيع التنظيف، عزيز“

In the hallway, the phone rang in its loud shrill and Tina’s footsteps thundered down the hallway towards it, her voice crying out “I’ve got it!” to warn off any potential interference. The receiver beeped as it was picked up, there was a pause, and then she shouted, “Dad! It’s for you!” as she walked into the kitchen.

”!مرحبا ?Thank you,” he murmured dryly, taking the phone. “Hello“

Bába left the kitchen and headed into the lounge room, his voice fading. Once he had vacated his position at the bench, Tina sat and began eating the leftover pieces of food from the plates while Michael and Máma continued to wash.

After licking her fingers, Tina asked, “What’s with Tarek, Mum?”

Máma said. She opened a high cupboard and stood on her toes as she placed a ”ماذا تعني؟“ pair of plates away.

“Well, he’s just lying there on the bed in his room.”

Michael dunked a new plate in the water, said, “Maybe he’s tired?”

“Maybe he’s stoned!” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

.Máma reprimanded ”!تينا“

Michael smiled faintly. “He had better not be stoned. He said he’d give me a ride to get my things.”

”.لنه ل يعمل ذلك النوع من الشياء“ ,Máma said sternly ”،وأخك ليس محشش“

“Sure, Mum. Sure. Tarek’s a saint.” Tina laughed, but was the only one. Then: “Hey,

Michael, can I come with you?”

“No,” he replied, scrubbing the plate.

“Come on!”

“No.”

“Michael!”

“No,” he snapped.

Silence fell like a shroud around the kitchen and Michael glanced from Máma to Tina, and both stared at him in shock. “Well,” he said, heart skipping beats, “You know, it really isn’t the kind of place you should be going, you know? There’s lot of… unpleasant things there.”

“You don’t have to yell,” Tina said, sulking.

“I’m sorry.”

Before anyone could say another word, Tarek appeared in the kitchen doorway. He was pale, tired, and looked as if the life of him had been drained out. It would pass as sickness to the family, but to Michael, it looked as if a small part of his brother had been killed. Despite how much he resented Tarek, hated him for what he had done, he could still feel sorry for that. Tarek was family.

“You ready to go?” his brother said, voice emotionless. “We don’t want to be too late.”

Michael nodded and released the plate he had been scrubbing. The coloured disk slid beneath the dirty white water and sank to the bottom.

1:47 p.m. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

The al fattoush stayed on the table, half eaten; the kibed makli and arayes kafta were gone but for a few pieces and Máma placed the remains on the kitchen bench. Michael offered to help and he stacked the plates his family had been eating off. In piles, they had more weight and density than they had when separated.

6:10 p.m.

Saad lived in a two floor, sandstone coloured apartment block on Ligon Street, Fairfield. Nearly identical apartment blocks ran up half the street like a line of struggling men and women until they turned into houses made from various brown coloured brick.

When Michael had called earlier, Saad had said, “Look, I’m at work now. I can’t do shit about that. Come round my place later. I’ve a guy who can help.”

“Did he help you last time?” Michael asked.

Heavy silence stretched from phone to phone; the rain stung as it hit. Finally, Saad said,

“Just be there this evening.”

Tarek drove to his house, though Michael had wanted to take his place, but with his parents on the porch and the desire of everything to appear normal, he didn’t say a word. He needn’t have worried: his brother drove sedately, pulled the Mazda up to the apartment block curb without a jolt. After killing the engine, he reached down to where Michael’s legs were, but stopped, his hands closing into a fist as he realised that there wasn’t a crook-lock for him to place on the car.

“Should one of us stay?” Tarek whispered, his hands returning to rest on the small, brown polished steering wheel.

“No.” Michael opened the door. Darkness stretched around them, but (change) pale light shone in discoloured halos from the street lamps. A cold wind worked its way through the street in a wet rustle of trees. He said, “If we’re lucky it’ll get stolen.”

“But—” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

“What?”

Tarek was standing in the yellow light of the Mazda. He didn’t meet Michael’s gaze, just shrugged in response, said nothing.

“It’s better if it’s stolen,” he explained, hardly recognising his voice. “It’s out of our hands. We can deny everything.”

Tarek nodded. The door creaked shut, the light cut off. He didn’t see the lie, thankfully. If the car was stolen, they would be good and fucked, unless it was stolen by someone with a record significantly worse than Michael’s and who, for laughs, pulled on his bloody jacket. The odds that a psychopath would steal Tarek’s car were slim. They had more chance of being attacked by escaped monkeys. Still, he wanted to calm Tarek, wanted, even, to reach out and comfort him.

But he didn’t. Truth was that he wouldn’t be in the situation if not for Tarek and the knowledge drained the kindness out of him.

“It’ll be okay,” Michael said roughly. “Come on.”

He led the way to the glass security door. Inside was bright, clean light, and he buzzed. In a dirty, static filled reply, he was let up. The inside was clean, tiled in a coffee cream brown. As he approached door number six, he heard the chain rattle, the lock click. A moment later, the door swung open.

Saad had changed.41 It had been over two years since Michael had seen him and while his former friend had always been solid, he had filled out more, his stomach finally merging with the promise of lifestyle, turning into a generous pot belly. His face had fleshed out more, turning into a block. He was cutting his dark hair short to hide the fact that it was thinning, had even engaged in the first step of a comb over by slicking it forward. Saad’s large brown eyes, however, had not changed: they stared at Michael through round silver framed glasses with nothing but soft, kind friendliness. He was wearing an untucked expensive white shirt, blue suits pants that trailed over

41 b. 1975, Bankstown, Sydney, New South Wales. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 his bare feet, and in his left hand he held a long necked, half drunk bottle of Carlton Dry, the white scraps of spit and foam clinging to the inside of the bottle.

”.مايكل“ .He grinned, opened his arms for the hug

“Saad,” Michael replied coldly, placing his hand against the other’s fleshy chest.

Saad’s eyebrows arched. He glanced at Tarek, opened his mouth, but was cut off by

Michael who said, “Don’t start,” and pushed through the door. Saad stumbled backwards, a look of annoyance crossing his face.

The inside of the apartment was furnished with a moderate sense of expense. There was a bone coloured leather couch in the middle of the main room, a sprawling black sound system slash entertainment centre around it. There was no bookcase, but rows of legal and illegally copied DVDs lined the entertainment shelves, next to a mix of store bought and copied CDs. The walls were empty, but there was a glass door leading to a balcony that made sure the room wasn’t bare. The kitchen and two bedrooms were connected to the main entrance. The only thing that did not fit the look of the apartment was lying on the couch, flicking through the channels. It was a young Vietnamese guy, no older than twenty, his spiked hair tipped a bright red. He was wearing an orange t-shirt with the word ‘Evil Robot’ written across it, a picture of a giant, shadowed figure raising its foot over cute, dancing robots beneath it. He wore brown pants and had a loose khaki jacket covered in badges and patches.

“Who’s he?” Michael demanded.

“Lee,” Saad said, strolling into the kitchen. “He’s going to help, aren’t you?”

Lee’s hand rose in a distracted wave, his attention on the huge television screen, the channels flipping past in a multicoloured blur.42

42 b. 1986, Cabramatta, Sydney, New South Wales. Lee Vuong liked drugs because it dulled the abuse from his childhood. In the afternoons until he turned twelve, his uncle, who babysat him, would ask him to sit for photos. He would have clothes for Lee to wear, sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes costumes. It did not happen every time, the abuse, no. Sometimes they just played. Sometimes he had loved his uncle more than his parents. That was why he let his uncle touch him. Why he said nothing. Why he has still said nothing. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

“Don’t mind him,” Saad said casually. “He’s stoned, but chatty when you take the controller off him. Want a beer?”

Michael grunted no.

“Hell yeah,” said Tarek, stepping around him, heading into the kitchen. The sound of the fridge door opening followed.

Saad grinned, nodded in Tarek’s direction. “Beer will ease all the pain, my friend.”

“This ain’t the fucking time for that,” Michael spat, the anger he wasn’t taking out on his brother falling easily on the new man.

”.قطعة ممارسة الجنس مع إحترام متى أنت في منزلي“ .Hey,” Saad snapped“

“He’s right,” Tarek agreed, emerging from the kitchen with a long necked bottle in his grasp “And he’s here to help us.”

“Like he helped you before, right?”

Saad raised the bottle to his lips, shrugging innocently.

Michael grabbed him by the shirt, snatched the bottle, flung it across the room where it hit the wall with a heavy thud, leaving a dent. “This isn’t a fucking joke! I’m not going back,

Saad! Do you understand what will happen to me if I am even caught with you guys? You think the court is going to say ‘Don’t worry about the ex-con, he didn’t rape any girls—”

“It’s never rape,” Saad croaked, his fleshy hands curling around his arm, unable to break

هو فقط قليل من .the piercing grasp of his fingers. “You sound—argh—like some hysterical mother

”.المرح، مايكل

”.أخبرتك ذلك“ .Tarek added ”،وهم فيه“

Michael’s hand tightened on Saad’s throat, the force of his brother’s words the cause. “I am not going to Long Bay for what you’ve—”

” — الخليج الطويل، متأكد، يمين“

“—You fuck, you raped—”

” — ل أنت“ Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

“Don’t I what—”

“Hey!”

On the couch, Lee had stopped his coloured blur of channel hopping, and sat up. With a lazy look plastered across his face, he tried his best to focus on Michael. When that failed, he slumped back, spoke to the ceiling: “I don’t understand half of what you guys are saying, but you fucks, you got nothing to worry about. Just chill, man. My brother is going to take care of it for us.”

“And why would he do that?” Michael demanded.

“Cause he’s my brother,” Lee replied. His hand rose with the long grey controller, pointed at Michael. He made a gunshot noise. “You should mute.”

“Who’s your bother?” Michael pushed Saad back, stalked over to the couch, snatched the controller. “Come on, who is he?”

“He’s the leader of the Yellow Dragons.” Lee paused, then, with a hint of over the top theatrical whispering, said, “He’ll solve all your problems, for a price.”

Michael’s face went blank. “What price?”

1:52 p.m.

Bába drew the dajaj mehshi from a black, glass topped pot and the odour of spices flooded the kitchen strongly. It smelt great. Despite everything, Michael enjoyed the smell and, for a moment, forgot all that was waiting for him after the meal. Carefully, Bába placed the chicken down on a tray, then scooped ladles of meat sauce across it. Once he had finished, he lifted the tray and brought the brown, spicy meat to the kitchen bench.

There he picked up a large, silver carving knife and cut deeply.

7:13 p.m.

They stood in the bright stairwell of the apartment block, waiting for Saad. When he emerged, Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 dressed now in a bright yellow shirt and blue Adidas tracksuit pants that stretched tightly across his ass, Tarek tossed him the Mazda’s keys. Michael watched the exchange without word, reminded of all the times he had passed the leadership role without thought. Why had he done that? What was it about Saad that allowed him to automatically assume the dominant role around others?

Saad was smarter, that was why. He knew what to do. Right now, Saad took charge because neither he nor Tarek could deal with the problem in the back of the car. Michael didn’t like that. He wanted to push Saad down the stairs that they crossed, smash his head into the glass, but he wouldn’t. He would stay quiet, ride it out until they had solved the problem. Afterward was a different matter. Afterward he would do exactly as Lake said: act like Saad didn’t exist.

At the Mazda, Tarek and Lee climbed into the back. The latter held a joint, while the former still clutched his beer. Neither showed any desire to talk. Michael took the front passenger’s seat. The ignition sparked. Saad reached for the volume to the stereo, only to have

Michael’s hand brush him away from it.

.Saad said casually ”،أنت ل مرح بعد الن“

“Bite me,” Michael replied harshly. Behind him, Lee giggled.

The Mazda swerved onto the street, headlights flicking on a moment later to reveal the dark, wet surface they travelled on. Saad began speaking, but Michael interrupted him: “What’s this price?”

He had tried earlier to learn the answer from Lee, but the his responses had been vague, dismissed with a wave of a hand. Karma, he said when pushed, which made nothing clearer. The skinny Asian laughed at his confusion. If Michael wasn’t sure that beating him would fuck their chances straight out, he would have done that. Yard mentality, he knew, but he didn’t care.

“It depends,” Saad said, gaze on the road, never on the person.

“You made deals with them before?”

Saad shrugged. “He can get rid of a body. I know that.” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

“What’d it cost you?”

“Drugs,” Lee said, drawing the word out in a long, growl of a word.

The smell of pot drifted into the front of the car. Michael rolled the window down. He wanted the fresh air, the clarity that came with the cold. “You peddle this guy’s drugs now?”

“Drugs are drugs,” Saad replied stubbornly. “What does it matter where I get them from?

”.فقط سبب أرباح أقل لمنحدر طماع، كل

“Hey,” Lee said, slapping his shoulder. “Don’t talk about my brother in your fucked up language. I thought I made that clear?”

“Yeah,” Saad muttered.

Michael felt a nasty smile crease his lips, but moments later it faded with the realisation that soon he and Tarek would owe Lee’s brother just like Saad. They would all be his bitches within a day. Glancing into the back, he saw Lee open his patched jacket, fish through the pockets; after a pat of every pocket, he nodded, smiled, then looked up. Catching Michael’s gaze, he held out his joint.

“No,” he replied.

“Tough guy, aren’t you?” Lee said, slouching into his seat. Without turning his head, he passed it to Tarek, who accepted. “I heard jail makes you all tough. Builds muscle. I figure it’d be good for me.”

“Don’t be a—”

Saad’s hand dropped onto his arm. “Don’t do that. This whole thing is shit. Don’t make it worse.”

“Fine.”

Michael faced the dark road, silent.

After five minutes, Saad said, without accusation, “You over reacted.” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

“Fuck you. I’m not going back. I’m especially not going back to somewhere like Long

Bay. I’m not fucking around when I say that. Silverwater was shit, but I wasn’t in for murdering no one. I’m not going back with that on me.”

“Nothing would’ve happened.”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

“Try some fucking politeness, ma—oh, shit.”

A siren screeched through the night and blue lights lanced through the windows, staining them in coloured touches.

“It’s the po-lice,” Lee crooned.

“Po-lice,” Tarek echoed, laughing.

“The joint,” Michael hissed, glancing back. Lee shrugged, stubbed it out against the door, for all the good it would do. Still, the Asian appeared calm and flopped against the back seat.

Next to him, Tarek was quickly agitated, twisting his hands together, glancing behind quickly, murmuring quietly.

Michael turned to Saad. “How’d you fucking not notice this?”

“It’s un-fucking-marked, you asshole. I didn’t even know it was there. Shit.”

The Mazda eased over to the side of the road—Hamilton Road, the yellow sign ahead read. Michael’s hands began to tremble. Everything in his body began to beat faster, moved by the race of his heart.

“Just let me talk,” Saad assured him over the beat as he wound the window down. “I’m sure there’s no problem.”

But it was. Fuck it, it was. How could it be anything but. Michael’s heart was pounding so hard he thought it would burst through his rib cage, explode in a bloody red heap over the dashboard. It moved with the blue light behind them, jumping with every new sound (the doors opening) and his mind urged him to confess, to give into his guilt, to throw himself at their mercy just as he had done in court three years ago with his lawyer. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

A cop appeared next to Saad. It happened as if he were being pencilled into place.

Despite the fact that he was driving an unmarked car, he wore the uniform, and was a meaty, blond, white man. His dark eyes scanned each of them casually, without a hint of emotion.

Finally, he sniffed loudly, spiking Michael’s heart. A thin sliver of a smile crossed his face.

“Three Lebs and a Chink,” the cop said lazily. “Up to no good.”

“Is there a problem, Officer?” Saad asked politely.

“Get out of the car,” the cop said, stepping back.

“Officer—”

“Don’t Officer me, boy.” He pulled out his nightstick. “Get outta the car.”

“Officer,” Saad said, a hint of annoyance entering his voice as he unlocked the door, giving him the air of an upstanding citizen that was being unnecessarily bothered. “I don’t understand what this is about. I wasn’t speeding, I didn’t run a light. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. So why did you pull us over?”

“I don’t need a reason to pull over a pack of Lebs,” the cop replied. “It’s my civic fucking duty.”

Michael’s heart wouldn’t stop. His hands twitched. He reached for the door, let it go.

Reached again. Fuck. What could he do?

“Officer, that’s not—”

Saad’s body slammed against the Mazda.

“Fucker!” cried Tarek, climbing between the seats.

“No!” Michael grabbed him, thrust him into the back. Then he fumbled with the door, flung it open.

“Stop!”

The voice came from the police car and he did what it said. He stopped: his heart stopped: everything stopped as the blue light stained his face.

“Hands in the air!” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Michael rose them, turned. In the shadow of the flashing light stood a second cop, his body protectively behind the open passenger door, pistol drawn. It was a tiny dark shape, so small that if the cop’s arms were not raised in the position, Michael wouldn’t have known it was there. “Don’t move! You move—I’ll shoot you.”

The cop on the other side of the Mazda laughed. “Fucking Lebs. One in all in. It’s always the same.” He pressed down on Saad’s back with his arm. “What’re the four of you doing out here?”

Saad groaned, didn’t answer.

“Come on, what is it?”

“We’re just visiting a friend,” Michael answered, hands still raised, heart still without movement. “Nothing else, I swear.”

“Friend?” The cop stepped back from Saad, who groaned as he sank to the road. “You must think I’m stupid, right? You guys smell of enough fucking pot to doing more than visiting.”

“It’s the Viet,” Michael said, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice, but failing. “I don’t know him! I just met him!”

“Sure.” The cop laughed. “You guys are fucking stupid. What you got in the trunk?”

A body. “Nothing.”

“Lying Lebs are ever so easy to spot.”

“No—”

“Open the trunk.”

Michael’s heart made one heavy movement. The trunk. Fuck. His could feel his heart falling to the ground. He stared at the cop, knew he looked guilty, couldn’t change a thing on his face, in his stance, couldn’t speak, his words stuck in his throat.

“Fucking hell.” The cop reached into the Mazda, grabbed the keys. Neither Lee or Tarek made any movement. Everything was fucking up. Each one of them knew that. Each of them was powerless to stop it from happening. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

At the boot, the cop stopped, looked at him. “Anything you wanna tell me?”

Michael’s heart hit the ground. It burst like a gunshot.

2:02 p.m.

Bába had finished carving. Michael watched as he placed portions onto his and Máma’s prized brown plates, ignoring the conversation between Tina and Máma. There was nothing special about the plates in appearance, and they had not cost much, unlike the yellow, green and brown ones had. However, what made them special was that they had been the first purchase that Máma and Bába had made for their first house in Sydney.

.Tarek said ”،ليس لي“

هل أنت“ .(Bába frowned, but removed some of the meat he had just placed down (change

”شعور بالرتياح؟

,He paused, turned to Michael ”.أنا بخير. فقط يشعر قليل من، أحزر“ .He smiled, but it was strained and said, “Sorry, man. I forgot.”

7:31 p.m.

The cop’s face was a messy red. In the blue light’s shine he stumbled backwards, screaming, his hands over the left side of his face, blood spilling through his fingers. Michael’s heart remained shattered on the ground, unmoving. A second gunshot sounded: the cop’s hand disappeared. He lifted the bloody, broken stump as a third shot cracked out. He crumpled to the ground, his body landing on chunks of broken glass from the back of the Mazda as if they were sharp, solidified tears.

Silence.

The blue light of the unmarked police car spun, the houses on either side of Hamilton

Road sat like the heads of witnesses (change) staring in bright, electric horror at what had Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 happened. Michael felt his hand clutch the white door frame. He heard Lee’s voice: “Did you fucking see that!”

Bullets cracked into the back of the Mazda. Michael’s heart jammed itself back into his throat, a bloody trail tasting like the desire to vomit; he dove back into the car, heard the glass in the passenger window that he had been standing against punch out. Fuck! Tarek screamed and

Lee laughed and there were more gunshots, this time closer.

Then—

Then—

Then silence.

“Didn’t know who he was fucking with,” Lee said.

Michael peered through the shattered back window, saw the flashing light spinning over the empty car. No cop. Quickly, he pushed himself out of the car, and began walking slowly to the other. He passed the cop on the ground, his head a bloody smear over the pavement. He kept walking. He closed in on the where the second cop had been. As he drew closer he made out the broken window glass, the thin stains of red-black blood, a pair of shoes that were the start of the second cop, lying on the ground, curled into a ball.

He was still alive, breath coming in gasps. A white guy, whispering something that

Michael couldn’t make out. Could’ve been a prayer.

The cop’s gun lay near the door, away from him.

“Michael!” Saad, running up to the car, jiggling with every step, panting hard. When he came around the door, he blanched. “Shit. Shit. This is so fucked up. So fucked up.”

“We can deal with this,” he said. “We have to deal with this. I’m not going back.”

“How we going to deal with that?” Saad pointed off into the distance.

There was nothing to see, but in the distance, he could hear the faint sound of a siren. A thin wail that was joined by a second and third.

“Got a fucking plan for that?” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Michael scooped up the cop’s pistol.

“What the fuck? We don’t need more guns! What are you going to do, fucking shoot him?”

“Don’t be stupid,” he said, casting a dismissive glance at the cop on the ground. “If he’s dead, they won’t stop long.”

Michael pushed past him, ran for the Mazda. At the first cop, he bent down and snatched the keys, ran to the driver’s seat. Saad wasn’t far behind. He jammed the key in, twisted, heard the engine kick over with a rough laugh. Saad threw himself into the passenger seat, grabbing for the door that flapped like a broken limb as the Mazda tore down the street.

2:10 p.m.

Under Bába’s instructions, the dajaj mehshi was served with kousa mihshi bil laban that Máma removed from the oven while he was serving the meat. She brought the pot to the table, holding it between two red oven gloves, and placed it in the middle. There she lifted the lid to reveal the white mix inside.

Michael had never smelt anything better.

Bába emerged from the kitchen and placed brown plates in front of each of them before,

”.مرحبا بعودتكم إلى دياركم“ ,finally, he placed his own down. When he sat, he looked at Michael and said

7:50 p.m.

Lee’s brother lived on Hughes Street in Cabramatta. The house was a large, two storey sand coloured building that reminded Michael of the houses that early English Governors had housed themselves in. It was from these that they could decide how best to run the new country that was populated by criminals and savages.

Michael ploughed up the driveway, no respect for the old Governors. He jammed his foot down on the brake just before the white gate that led to the backyard. In the back of his head he Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 could still hear the sound of sirens—even over Tarek’s sobbing and Saad’s muttering and Lee’s blissful silence—but he doubted that until this night was well and truly gone from his mind that he would be free of the sound.

“Open the gate,” he ordered Saad.

“What?”

“You want to sit out here in a shot up car?”

Saad grunted, flung open the door. He looked over his shoulder every five seconds as he opened the gate. Without waiting for him, Michael drove through and into the backyard. It was a wide, spacious affair: a swimming pool against the fence, with a chest high safety fence running around it, a garage next to it. Like a magistrate and jury that he couldn’t escape, huge trees loomed at the back of the yard in multi-limbed shadows.

Michael parked the Mazda, killed the engine, stepped out. The others following as the back door opened and a lean, shirtless Vietnamese man covered in black tribal tattoos stepped out. He had a cigarette in one lip and held a silenced pistol in the other, which he had trained on the four of them.

Michael levelled the cop’s pistol at him, spat, “Put that the fuck away!”

The other man acted like he had had guns pointed at him all his life: with an even voice, he said, “Explain this to me, Saad.”

“Long, shit, don’t over react,” Saad said, stepping forward. “There’s no need for that. Put your gun away, Michael. Come on, man. This guy can help us. This guy will help us, won’t you,

Long?”

“Fuck I will.”

“You will,” Saad said. For the first time Michael had seen him, there was a strength to his voice, a part of him that wouldn’t be budged. “You’re going to help us because your brother just shot the fuck out of two cops.”

“Lee?” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

“These guys are cool,” Lee replied. “Don’t get stressed, man.”

“Did you shoot two cops.”

“Yep. You should’ve seen it.”

“Where did you get a gun?”

“It’s yours!” he shouted and laughed, the only one who did.

“Shit.” Long nodded his head in Michael’s direction. “I lower mine, you lower yours, right?”

“You helping?” he replied.

“No choice.”

“You can get rid of a body?”

“And a gun.”

“What about the car?”

“All at the same place. There’s wrecker in Campbelltown.”

“Okay then. You first.”

Long’s pistol dropped smoothly. Michael followed. With the guns lowered, the tension drained out of him quickly, water from a cup with the bottom smashed off. He was flat, tired, weighed down by everything. Three days out of Silverwater. Fuck. He pictured again Lake’s smooth head beneath the clean brown feet of Jesus, but there was no real saviour for him. Just an

Asian gangster.43

2:40 p.m. 43 B. 1978, Cabramatta, Sydney, New South Wales. The only man that Hue-Long Vuong has ever killed was his uncle. He had known nothing of the abuse, suspected nothing of the beloved family member until, one night, his parents away in Vietnam, he had been forced to take his brother to the emergency ward because he was bleeding anally. It was there, after the doctor had seen Lee, that Long was asked very pointed questions. He was not a stupid man. He knew where to find the answers. He found the costumes and pictures in his uncle’s house the next day, and waited for him to return from his in the afternoon. Without a word, Long put six bullets into his uncle’s body. When his parents died in their flight back from Vietnam, the responsibility of Lee fell to Long, and it was a responsibility he tried hard to serve properly. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Michael ate slowly, savouring each bite of the dajaj mehshi and kousa mihshi bil laban, hardly touching his chilled water, not wanting to wash away the tastes that he had gone so long without.

Beside him, Tina talked about teachers, about schoolwork—Bába and Máma and even Tarek dropped opinions here—and about a singer with a very Australian sounding name, but who he had never heard of.

Michael savoured this, too.

8:38 p.m.

Lee was lying on the grass, smoking while listening to his ipod, the faint beat of the music filling the air. Tarek was sitting at the front of the Mazda, silent, unwilling to communicate to either

Michael or Saad, barely acknowledging their presence. That left the two to change the number plates while Long organised details with the wrecker. The front plate was easily done, but when it came to the back one, Saad was slow, interrupting his work to look at the boot. Finally, he placed his screwdriver down, said, “I can smell her.”

“It’s your imagination,” Michael replied, picking up the tool.

“No it’s not.”

“It’s your guilt, man. That’s all.”

“Fuck off,” Saad said tiredly. “When did you get so fucking righteous? Did they teach you that in Silverwater?”

Michael’s hand tightened on the screwdriver.

“Oh, what, you don’t like that?” Saad shook his head. “You’re an asshole. All you go on about is how I’m a shit ‘cause I got in the car—”

“You raped her.”

“You killed her.”

Michael stared at him, hiding nothing of what he felt for the man. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

“You don’t like that, huh? Fuck you. You killed her. I didn’t do it. Despite your theory, I have never killed someone. But you, you just broke her neck. Like that.” Saad snapped his fingers. “You run around going what a fucking asshole I am, but I haven’t heard you say one thing about her.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Where’s your remorse?”

Michael jammed the screwdriver into place, began to turn. “You don’t know me.”

“No, I fucking don’t. You’re a stranger to me. Since you walked through my door I haven’t known who you are.”

“Good.”

The door to the house opened and Long emerged. He was wearing an open black and white flannelette shirt and had a fresh cigarette between his lips. Without glancing at the front of the car, where Lee and Tarek sat, he stalked across the lawn towards Michael and Saad. As he drew closer, Michael saw that his gaze was dark, unfriendly, all the previous willingness to help them now evaporated.

“You were on the news,” he said. “You three have got to go.”

“Three?”

“Lee stays. There’s a description of your car, your plate, and two Lebanese men,” Long said. He plucked the burning white stick from between his lips. “Your brother can’t stay. It’s his car, his name that they have for sure, so you’re fucked. You don’t worry about his gun. I can cover that.”

“Where we supposed to go?” Michael asked, his hand moving for his belt.

Long’s pistol was pointed at him first. He reached down, grabbed the cop’s pistol. He said, “I don’t know and I don’t care. You got five minutes.”

2:57 p.m. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Michael stood and excused himself, heading to the toilet. The bathroom had been painted a light brown. The tiles were slightly darker, the bathtub a lighter colour of brown that looked, at first, like off white. He was still getting used to stepping into bathrooms that weren’t white. If he saw that colour again, it would be too soon.

On his way back to the table, he stopped outside Tina’s room. It had been painted in a faded orange, the colour scheme was repeated on the thick covers of her bed. On the walls were posters of white and black men, costumed in ridiculous gangster hip hop clothing that would, in five years time, have the same cringe factor as the rap of his youth.

8:47 p.m.

Long was standing by the door, his pistol gripped in his hand, watching. Lee was still lying on the lawn, oblivious. Tarek walked over to Michael, held out his hand. “Give me my keys. I want to drive.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea—”

.he repeated ”،أنا أريد القيادة“

“Guys,” Saad interrupted, “I don’t think it matters who drives.”

Michael hesitated. He didn’t want to give the keys over, wanted to keep in control, wanted to make sure it didn’t become more fucked than it already was. More fucked. He laughed at the thought. Both Saad and Tarek took a step back, but he didn’t care. How could it become more fucked? How could things get any fucking worse than they were right now?

“Sure,” he said, tossing Tarek the keys. “You drive.”

3:12 p.m.

The dajaj mehshi and kousa mihshi bil laban were finished, the five plates collected by Máma

عندي شيء خاص لليوم، أن يكون عنده“ ,and taken into the kitchen. After she had left, Bába stood and said

”.بالصحراء Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

“What is it?” Michael asked.

Waving away the question, Bába walked over to brown stained wooden pantry, opened the door, and reached deeply in. While he was doing that, Michael turned to Tina, and asked,

“Do you know what it is?”

“No,” she replied.

He glanced at Tarek, who shrugged in reply.

.Bába said and placed a bottle on the table”،هنا“

It was ma zaher, the family favourite as a desert drink. Only Bába could prepare the beverage, and it was the crown of his meals, served hot and with a generous helping of sugar within. Michael had forgotten all about it. It had been an arguing point between Bába and Máma for years, as Máma disapproved of the amount of sugar he used. She told him—told them all-- that it was bad for their health, but none of them listened. The sweeter ma zaher, the better as far as all four were concerned.

8:57 p.m.

They hurtled down Cabramatta Road, reckless, heading for Canberra, completely fucked, going for distance, nothing more. In the back seat, the wind rushed across Michael through the broken window and he tried to think of what they would do.

The speakers whispered in the faint crackle of the radio, music at the moment, each of them waiting for a news report, each of them without a word to say. Around them, the empty road passed by in shunts of wind—

And then there was a police car.

The blue lights and siren filled the sky, a solitary thing in the night. The Mazda jerked across the road as Tarek recognised it.

“Stay calm,” Michael said, leaning next to him. “Just keep calm—”

“Fucking drive!” Saad shouted, grabbing the wheel. “Outrun this fucker!” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

The Mazda jolted forward, but it was too late. The siren was joined by another, and another, and then a harsh yellow light lit up the Mazda from the sky.

Fuck. Michael had no thoughts. It was over. They were fucked. He was heading back to prison, but it wouldn’t be Silverwater this time. No fucking way. It would be the worst shit hole the system could find. He’d walk in there a cop killer and his life would be misery. He wouldn’t see the empty sky until he was on his back in the ground.

The sirens grew. Ahead of them appeared a wall of headlights, topped with blue flashing and sirens.

“Tarek,” Michael said, “stop the car.”

”!نحن نستطيع إجتيازهم“ .Tarek shouted ”!ل“

“You can never outrun them,” Michael replied, but his voice was drowned out beneath the sirens and there was never any answer, never any chance.

The Mazda became airborne.

3:30 p.m.

Michael held the glass and glanced at each of his family. There was so much he wanted to say, so many things he couldn’t find the words for, so much that didn’t have words. Lifting his glass, he

”.إفتقدت أنتم جميعا“ ,said

9:13 p.m.

Michael crawled out of the broken back window of the Mazda. His face hurt, he could feel glass in it, feel the blood on him; he didn’t know what to do. The world outside the car was filled with light and sound and he couldn’t focus on anything but the shards of glass digging into the palms of his hands as he pushed himself up.

“Get down!” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Voices. Voices coming slowly to him. He blinked. The world began to take form, to solidify around him. It was better when it couldn’t. Dozens of armed cops stood around him, their pistols drawn, advancing slowly.

“You! Get the fuck on the ground!”

He didn’t know who was speaking. He couldn’t pick the direction. He turned, looking for it, but found instead the Mazda. The driver’s side was folded around a long, straight telegraph pole that he didn’t even remember seeing. There was blood over the broken front end of the car.

So much blood.

“Get down!”

“My brother,” he muttered, dazed. “Tarek.”

A heavy nightstick smashed into the back of his legs. Arms grabbed him roughly. He was slammed into the ground, glass driven into his face. His head swam. Everything began to dim, the headlights, the blue lights, the vision of the Mazda, but he struggled, struggled to keep awake, struggled because he was pinned, struggled because a part of him knew that if he didn’t, he would wake up in a hospital room with cops around him… and when that did happen, a day later, the last words he remembered hearing were said in an angry growl: “Fucking Leb. When I say get down, you get the fuck down and stay there!” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

The Woman Who Wasn’t There

Sunday 2nd

There is a lump in my armpit. It is smooth and soft and made from the same dark skin that I am.

It looks as if it has always been part of me.

Tuesday 4th

Doctor Chaudhary is my mother’s friend and for two years that has been the extent of our relationship.44 When I first fell ill in Sydney my mother called and made my appointment and he has always been her man. Yet when he began inspecting my lump it was clear that this relationship was to change.

The doctor has thick hands that press into my skin coldly. As he does this I look at his thinning black-grey hair.

Finally, he looks at me. His eyelids have a heavy droop of sadness behind the small gold- framed glasses he wears.

This will require tests, he says.

44 b. 1947, Orangi Town, Karachi, Pakistan. As a young man, before he became Dr. Chaudhary, when he introduced himself as Mr. Chaudhary, the Mr. Chaudhary from Organi had fancied himself a bit of a ladies man. He was influenced by the American cinema he had seen and his favourite actor was Cary Grant. He idolised Grant, loved the easy way in which he approached women, the way that they responded to him and his charm. It was this ease that the young Mr. Chaudhary sought to reproduce when he returned to his home and met the younger Ms. Farooqi, who would later become Mrs. Syed. As with many of the girls in his home town, Ms. Farooqi’s parents had arranged her marriage, but Mr. Chaudhary, following in the footsteps of Cary Grant and believing himself to be in love, a force not to be ignored, would not be deterred.

Dr Chaudhary = real psychiatrist. Not seen since 2002. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

I nod but do not speak.

It could be cancerous, he continues.

I stare and the word sits like a cold weight on my tongue.

It does not happen often in the young so you should not worry, he says and smiles.

I cannot think of anything to say.

Doctor Chaudhary wordlessly schedules me an appointment for my tests. He speaks quietly and quickly and I am both surprised and frightened to learn that they will happen that afternoon. He tells me not to worry because I am young. I not yet twenty-six. But it does not matter. The wind is blowing and the trees on the other side of his window are shaking like people caught in a storm waiting for a bus. When the wind blows harder the leaves are stripped back and the branches look like brown aged bone.

The tests take place in a small medical centre in Westmead and I try to put them out of my mind.

I step off the train and walk up South Street. The sky is turning heated meat grey above me.

At the end of the street is A.F. Anderson’s Funeral Parlor. It is a squat red brick building and at the front door there is a wide piece of worn faded red carpet flanked by brass railings.

Men and women are entering and I follow them.

Wednesday 5th

My mother calls.45 45 b. 1956, Orangi Town, Karachi, Pakistan. Mrs. Syed, once Ms. Farooqi, had originally thought of Dr. Chaudhary as bumbling sort of man. He had greased his hair back in an unflattering way that she could not, under any circumstance, condone, and he sweated in the palms of his hands, and would say the most inconsiderate things. His initial attempts at wooing her were laughed off as one might laugh off the crush an a child, assisted by the knowledge that her parents had arranged a husband for her, and that they had found for her a man who was not nearly as poorly socialised as this one. Not, of course, that that man made her laugh. He was just a man. Just a man. The thought ran through her head quite often in the months that Mr. Chaudhary visited, told her jokes, brought her things from America, and grew beards and mustaches so he could ask her opinion. Finally, she told him the hair had Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Adala. Her disappointed sigh mixes with the static of distance. She says, You should be at school.

The phone is cold in my hand and I crawl beneath the crimson sheets in an attempt to warm it but mostly to hide childishly. It was a game that my mother and I played when I was growing up.

Why aren’t you at school?

I didn’t enroll.

You can’t continue like this. Khalil—

I don’t want to talk about him, I say, closing my eyes, trying to block out the sheets. They are the exact same colour of red crayon and it is around me like a cocoon. But it does not nourish and the changes within me will not reveal a butterfly. I hate them.

Adala, my mother says.

I feel cold, I reply.

Let me help you.

I do not say it but there is nothing she can do.

Friday 7th

In the backyard the weeds are growing strong and green but I do not walk out there to remove them. Months ago I would have removed them with my little spade but there is no longer any need and I am pleased to see that something is growing.

At lunch time the postman stops outside with his faded red motorcycle. Inside is a cheque from Khalil but no note.

to be changed, and weeks later, he told her he had met a girl on one of his trips overseas. She was Australian, he said. And it was there, Ms. Farooqi supposed, that she realised that she loved him a little. Just a little. But by then she was well on her way to becoming Mrs. Syed. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

He left three months ago with a slim white girl with long blonde hair but we are still married. The postage is still Australian but it is never from the same place and I have long ago stopped trying to understand why he sends me money.

With the cheque tucked in my purse I head into Granville. On South Street just before the bank I see Leila.46 She is wearing a long earthy brown dress and a white hijaab that looks like snow but when she sees me she crosses the road.

I have not spoken to her since Khalil left.

I have spoken to no one but Doctor Chaudhary and my mother in over a month.

Afterwards, I stop by A.F. Funeral Parlor. The door is open and I head towards it, pausing at the rail. It is smudged with the prints of mourners, each overlapping the other. My hand is simply one more.

Monday 10th

My mother calls.

Adala, she says, why don’t you come home?

The phone cord runs across orange sheets. It is dead white flesh, the curling umbilical cord of Australia linking me to a woman in Pakistan. I shift and sigh and it sways as if it were alive and nourishing.

My mother says, Are you still there? I think the line has gone out? Adala?

Tuesday 11th

46 b. 1979, Auburn, Sydney, New South Wales. Leila Malik collects butterflies. She buys them from a site on the internet and they arrive, in tiny glass cases, pinned out in colours that have caught her fancy. She was once asked if the eighty-seven butterflies she owned—an extensive collection, it was added—might be representative of her life, here in Granville with a new husband she rarely saw. On that day, she ordered a white butterfly, with wings so transparent that, on first glance, you might believe have been cut away. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

The tests have come back, Doctor Chaudhary says.

In his left hand is my file. It is a pale yellow and sways past the diet chart and plastic skeleton before it falls onto the black mat at his desk. He sits in front of his window folding his hands before him. The trees behind him are still shaking, the wind stripping back leaves to reveal sunken brown arms again.

It is not good news I am afraid, he says.

I have nothing to say. I feel no different than before.

His face is composed in a sombre arrangement and he says, I am sorry, Adala. The

Lymphangiogram shows us that the cancer has spread to your stomach and liver. I do not know why you did not show any symptoms earlier, but it has spread aggressively. You have been graded at stage three.

He opens the yellow folder and pulls out a purple sheet with a plastic covering. He offers it to me but I shake my head in response having no desire to see the markings that fill my stomach like broken glass.

It is very uncommon for this to happen in someone so young, he says.

Is this meant to be comfort? But I do not say this.

I know you have friends in this country, but the time ahead of you is going to be hard. I would like you to tell your mother.

No.

The branches slap against the window. Doctor Chaudhary’s hands part and his gold watch winks.

In times like this your family is essential, he says. There are people who go through this without any family. It is lonely and hard for them. You don’t have to endure this alone.

I feel cold. All the time, I say.

That’s part of the disease, he replies. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

That’s not what I meant.

What do you mean then?

I shake my head. The words won’t form. They stopped forming after the first test.

Everything inside me has frozen to preserve itself but I cannot tell him that.

I would like to make an appointment for you with a friend of mine, Doctor Chaudhary says. His brow is creased in concern and his voice is soft yet strong. He continues saying, He is a psychiatrist and I think you would benefit from talking with him.

No.

I think—

No.

He frowns and for a moment he is my mother and the frown belongs to her. Before he can speak I tell him no again.

Relenting he informs me what is to be done. I have not been as ill as others in my situation have. This is a good sign but we should not be careless. My body is fragile and needs assistance to fight the disease. He schedules an appointment at Westmead Hospital and assures me that he will do everything that he can.

Afterwards I stand on the sidewalk of Carlton Street. My breath is hard to find. There is tightness in my chest. Is it shock or the cancer?

The buildings around me are old and each of them is constructed from various shades of a bland fading brown. The fences are made from wood and lean to the left and right and in some cases they are bent until they touch the ground.

Thursday 13th

I sit at the back for the funeral as I always do. My hijaab is folded in my purse and my hair feels unfamiliar but I have removed it in honour of the dead and will not replace it until after. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

There are seventeen old white men and women in the room. Their heads are bowed and their faces are sagging and lined. They look as if they are being held together by out of date suits and dresses.

The Father stands at the front of the room with a simple brown coffin behind him. Tall and narrow and white he is dressed in sombre black and speaks about the deceased in words similar to what he has said at previous funerals. His tone is identical to Doctor Chaudhary’s when he tells me that treatment will be successful.

When the funeral is finished I am the last to leave.

At the door the Father stops me.47

Adala, he says quietly. You have to stop coming. It’s not right.

I grieve for them.

You do not know them.

I shake my head. In front of me, the old men and women walk down the black strip of the driveway holding each other in embraces and by the hand. They fade away slowly on the ragged and dirty path of South Street.

Please, Adala, no more, the Father begs.

I can’t stop, I reply.

Please try.

No.

Saturday 15th

My mother calls.

47 b. 1962, Wentworthville, Sydney, New South Wales. Father Reynolds has overseen two hundred and three funerals this year. At night, he returns to a quiet, empty house, where the photos of those he has buried stare out at him in a silent, rectangle crowd pinned to the wall behind his television. He wishes he knew the right thing to say to them, even now. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

She says, I am thinking of coming down to visit you. Your father is busy at work and I’ve been spending my days watching the fan turn. It’s ridiculous. I think it would be nice to get out and visit my daughter.

I have a sudden attack of nausea. The phone cord twists around my neck as I curl into a fetal position on the bed. Static increases on the phone and for a moment I am not required to speak.

Has Doctor Chaudhary called my mother? I do not know. Even if he has not she suspects something. Outside the bedroom window lies the neighbourhood that mother hates so much. She calls it a dirty collection of weatherboard houses capped by tin roofs.

Are you still there? She asks.

Yes, I reply.

What do you think then?

I hesitate but the ice inside me is smooth and unblemished and I cannot break it to tell her the truth.

I’m busy at the moment, I tell her instead.

Monday 17th

In Westmead Hospital they conduct tests on me in preparation for Radiation Therapy. I am also given three injections as part of my chemotherapy.

When I step off the train station at Granville I want to lie beneath the stairs in the dirt and dust. I feel heavy and cold and when I step onto Railway Parade I feel dizzy. The street pulls itself out into a fading and crumbling line around me and I stop to catch my breath.

Cherubs appear when I start walking. They are made from stone and their child faces have been formed into smiles for my approach because they know they know but what could they Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 know? The cherubs are connected to stone pillars and stand (change) around the black memorial wall at the corner of Carlton Street.

Around the wall everything is clean and smooth. The wooden benches have been freshly painted. I sit down and close my eyes as I do.

When I open them a stone cherub is staring at me. Its eyes are vacant stone but they understand.

We will grieve for you.

Its voice is a young boy’s dripping with sadness.

I close my eyes and feel a part of me crack inside. It is soft and audible. It is wet and seeping from my eyes.

Tuesday 18th

My mother calls.

What did you do today?

I went to a funeral, I reply. The bedspread is a mix of dark green and black and spreads around me like a stormy water and I feel small in it. An island lost in the sea.

I’m sorry, mother says her voice soft with concern. Did you know them well?

No. Not well at all.

Thursday 20th

Radiation begins. My body tingles and my skin cracks and at the end of the treatment I feel unpleasantly warm.

I catch a taxi back to home instead of taking the train. The driver is in his plastic shell looking like a bug and he will not talk. I sit in the back feeling nauseous. We weave through the Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1 streets and traffic as a small white ball pushed from one side to another without a care to what happens to us. I can make nothing out in my surroundings and everything remains a hazy blur until I return to Granville.

The colour leached shops and weatherboard and brick houses are a mild comfort to me.

The sagging wooden fences and shoes that hang from the power lines bring a faint smile from me but I take no comfort from the people who walk the streets.

One of them is Leila. She is with two other women and none of them look up as I pass.

In the back of the taxi I feel more akin to the cancer that is killing me.

I struggle from the taxi after paying.

The grass around my house is yellow and burnt. Inside the letterbox is a cheque from

Khalil without a letter. For some reason I feel a great sadness well up in me and think that if he would just write just write once it would be better.

At the door I realise that the fly screen has another hole in it. Lizards climb through it when the wooden door is open to invade. I see none as I walk in.

The wet soil coloured cover of my bed waits for me. I sink into it and feel small and alone and broken.

The phone begins ringing in shrill tones.

I do not answer. My eyes are closed and they will not open.

Friday 21st

I ring my mother.

Everything inside me is broken. It weeps in the stuttered beats of my life. I have not moved since I fell asleep last night. The brown of my covers mixes with the weak light.

The phone rings for a minute.

Hello? Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

I need you, I tell her. I need you here.48

48 b. 1979, Orangi Town, Karachi, Pakistan. d. 2005, Granville, Sydney, New South Wales.

My father died of cancer. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

Footnotes for ‘Welcome to the West, A Strange Occurrence’

1. Welcome to the West is a red covered handbook that was distributed anonymously throughout

the area of Sydney defined by the Government as Parramatta. The handbook does not list any

publication details and no author has claimed it to be his or her work. When interviewed the

following day, residents in Parramatta claimed that the handbook was ‘just there’, delivered

in the night while they slept. Not one of two thousand men and women asked reported seeing

any vehicle used to deliver it.

2. Burramatta was the original name of Parramatta. Any depiction of Governor Arthur Phillip as

a barely literate man who renamed Aboriginal land in a combination of xenophobia and poor

pronunciation skills is historically unfounded, no matter what Welcome to the West claims. P

2-4.

3. Parramatta is considered the second largest business district of Sydney, and the geographical

centre of the city as a whole.

4. Census Night, 2001: The population in Parramatta is recorded at 144, 490. 80, 305 indicated

that they were Australian born (it does not say if they were white or not). 6, 130 indicated

that they were born in China. 5, 998 indicated that they were born in Lebanon. 4, 475

indicated that they were born in the United Kingdom. 1, 147 people were from an indigenous

background.

5. This image of Prime Minister John Howard leading a collection of Australian politicians

from the Coalition and Labor Parties in a group urinating session on the flags of other Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

countries in the Pacific Rim is obviously a fake.49 P 112-113, Welcome to the West.

6. Likewise, the image of Howard leading the same members in group urination on the

Aboriginal flag is also a fake. P 114-115, Ibid.

7. Image three of Prime Minister John Howard with the Australian flag draped over his

shoulders is, however, real. P 116, Ibid. Likewise, the image of One Nation founding

member Pauline Hanson standing with the Australian flag draped over her shoulders is also

real.50 P 117, Ibid.

8. Regarding the Prime Minister’s comments on 12/10/05, where he said, “No doubt this book

—this hate filled thing, that has created such a—such a thing here, this book was no doubt

created by un-Australian men and women coming from a unhealthy left position.” Senator

Bob Brown, Leader for the Australian Greens Party, is reported to have said to friends one

night, “You don’t think he means me, do you?” Publicly, Brown has denied the comment.51

9. Koala Printing has denied being paid to print Welcome to the West. They claim that they do

not have the facilities.

10. James Ruse is the name of the first man to grow crops on the land and sustain himself in

1791. He also began Experiment Farm with Australia’s first ever land grant. See Robert

Hughes, The Fatal Shore, Harvill, 1987, p 106-7, for more details. As Welcome to the West

49 b. 1939, Earlwood, Sydney, New South Wales. Howard once described himself as “the most conservative leader the Liberals have ever had,” and said that “the times will suit me.” 50 b. 1954, Woollongabba, Brisbane, Queensland. Hanson believed that Australia was in danger of being “swamped by Asians” and that the country should withdraw from the United Nations. When asked during an interview on 60 Minutes if she was xenophobic, her reply was, “Please explain?” 51 b. 1944, Blacktown, Sydney, New South Wales. On October 23rd, 2003, Brown, along with Kerry Nettle, was suspended from the Australian Parliament for disrupting President George Bush’s speech. He and Nettle were protesting the Iraq War. After the speech, Brown shook the visiting President’s hand. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

claims, Ruse lost his land and prosperity to rum and ended his life working as an overseer for

another farmer, though the claim that he was the first of Sydney’s ‘new slaves housed in the

West’ is unsupported.52

11. David Burchell has noted that advocates for the Western Suburbs of Sydney find themselves

describing the people living there as poor. Ironically, he notes, the people living in the west

believe they are ‘doing well for themselves’. Western Horizon, Scribe Publications, 2003, p

36-7.

12. Census Night, 2001: The median weekly individual income recorded for people aged 15

years and over in the Parramatta region is $300-$399.

13. Translated from Arabic, pages 50-119 repeat the information from pages 1-50 that appeared

in English. Pages 120-215 repeat the information in Cantonese. 215-318 in Mandarin. 318-

410 in Korean. Other translations were also supplied at individual houses based on their own

primary language. None of them, as Reverend Darrell Barton claimed, ‘function as the stilled

I can’t find details about Ruse’s life. 52 Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

heart of terrorism, waiting for an individual to pour life into it to start the beat.’53

14. Census Night, 2001: The population in Parramatta was recorded at 144, 490. 78, 344

indicated that the only language spoken at home was English. 14, 420 indicated that they also

spoke Arabic. 11, 677 indicated that they also spoke the Chinese languages. 2, 766 also

indicated they spoke Korean.

15. In a radio interview on the 11/10/05, NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney was recorded

as saying, “Look, don’t go pointing no fingers in the media around this city. We got no idea

how they came and so does no one else. The rumours of eight black vans driving the suburbs

and delivering these things are ludicrous. Check your Goddamn facts.” This interview was

later proved to be fake, with the real Ken Moroney telling the media that they should be wary

of impersonators. He is reported to have left the press conference muttering, “Little fucks,” at

53 b. 1967, Rozelle, Sydney, New South Wales. The Reverend Darrell Barton lives in a tiny, one bedroom flat in Newtown, his rent paid by the Vatican. He has nailed wooden planks to his windows to keep the sunlight out. He has all the drains stopped with plugs and hardcover copies of the St. James Bible. The trees watch me, he murmurs, they stand dark and in groups, and they watch me. The Reverend does not want to be watched. He does not leave his apartment. He eats only food that comes from cans and which is delivered by elderly white women. These women remind him of his mother. His teeth are broken and rotting and his gums black. He washes three times a day with coarse white soap. He shaves every night at seven fifteen. He reads different versions of the Koran with a different version of the Bible for comparisons daily. The Sydney Morning Herald calls him twice a week for his comments relating to the Muslim community in Sydney.

I met Darrell in the third grade. I don’t know why I have written this.— It has nothing to do with him. I can’t sleep. I haven’t slept in three days. I have been reading for three days. I tried to call Darrell. I tried Jason. The phone is disconnected. I forgot. Am I doing the right thing? Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 1

the media in attendance.54

16. It was reported in the Daily Telegraph (14/10/05) that Daniel Cassar was stopped in a black

van. He is allegedly reported to have said to Officer Natour, “Mate, I am not going to lie to

you. This car is stolen.”55

17. On page 1, 120, in eighteen different languages, is written, Shoot Straight You Bastards!, in

italics, like such.

18. Welcome to the West grows and shrinks in page numbers. I think there is something in the ink

when you touch it. I no longer sleep.56

19. These footnotes are not real footnotes. They are the story. You are reading the story. You are

reading a novel. It has a title. You know it. You are sitting down and reading it. You can feel

This footnote is unable to be completed due to the 54 obvious fact that Ken Moroney is not Ken Moroney and Ken Moroney is not Ken Moroney and Ken Moroney is not Ken Moroney and—

55Whatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatisthruthwhatistrut hwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistrut hwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistrut hwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistrut hwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistrut hwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistrut hwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistrut hwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistrut hwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistrut hwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistrut hwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruthwhatistruth? My name? My age? 56 Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

its weight in your hands. It has a good weight. You have locked the door so you can sit with

the weight, the words. You can smell the hint of smoke. Ignore it. There is always a fire.

20. When I was a child, my mother would sit me on her knee, and whisper the names of things I

would never grow up to be.

21. Do you know what this book is about? Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

Awake While the Dream Ends

From: Danielle Wright57

Sent: Tuesday, 12 December, 7:35:43 PM.

To: Christine Gregory

Subject: It’s Ending.

For the last three nights, I have had a recurring dream: It begins on an empty plain & I walk & walk until I come to a line of females. They stretch from horizon to horizon & some I know & some I do not, but each is different in age, size & skin. Each is sitting on a low stone fence that has begun to crumble & each is smoking. Their hands move in harmony as if, beneath their difference, there was only one woman. When I focus, I can hear one & only one heart beat. As I draw closer, they point up & following their straight fingers, I see that I am beneath a red sky.

When I look away, the women in front of me are red: their skin stripped away, just raw muscle & veins, broken & open. Yet all sit & smoke, uncaring.

It’s a bitch of a dream & not very subtle.

So, yes, here I am, three days into being separated. Each morning, I awake & think that if he had just left, that if we had broken up after months of arguments, if there had been another woman, even if he had died… I think that any of those things would be easier to deal with than what I have now. The confusion & anger & loss & self loathing—all of this together is not something that I want with the physical reminder of what has happened. I just want to feel that pain & deal with it. It is enough for me to look in the mirror & see that I am covered in bruises from his

57 b. 1963, Windsor, Sydney, New South Wales. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 hands. That is all I need, Chris. Really. It’s more than enough for me. But I do not get it alone. It comes with the loss & hurt & emotions & every day I return to the question of why.

Why did this happen?

Why do I still miss him, even after?

And why, when I returned home today to find the house empty, did I not call the Station & have my boys bring back my stuff?

Yes, Rick took everything. Well, almost everything. He left a long, narrow, white shaded lamp.

He had put it in the middle of the living room & turned it on. When I came home the house had only shadows across the polished floorboards. The TV, stereo, furniture, paintings, bookshelves, toothbrush, etc., everything was gone. For a moment, I thought I had been robbed. It was only for a moment, however. It’s hard to think break & entry when nothing has been broken open & you know your ex has your keys. You don’t have to be a cop to figure it out, but it probably cuts down on about five minutes of thinking.

I can’t call Rick to demand them back. I won’t. He expects me to call him, but I won’t, not even to tell him that it’s such a stupid & ridiculous thing to do. Likewise, I won’t call my boys down at the Station & tell them to go & get my TV back. They don’t know what has happened. They think the bruises are due to an accident on my bike last week. I can’t handle the idea of telling them the truth. I know you’ll tell me otherwise but I know what they think & I know what they would say afterwards. It will be what they say after all domestic violence cases. They’re full of pity & resigned to the fact that everyone is fucked up & we sit around & wait for the girl to go back to the boy & for it all to start again. Some times we even make bets about it. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

I had the laptop with me, fortunately. I started taking it to work a couple of months ago, after I caught Rick searching through my files, looking for the ‘other’ men. I should have ended it then,

I guess. Maybe I should have realised earlier. Maybe you were right when you warned me. I’m sorry for yelling, for what it is worth. Eight months for an apology isn’t too long, is it?

I’ll be 42 in two weeks, Chris. The day after will be Xmas. I am not looking forward to either day.

Dani.

(PS: I made a new email account. Rick might be able to access my account, though it’s in my name, & I’ve changed the passwords over. But still, just in case, I’m using this one now.)

From: Danielle Wright

Sent: Tuesday, 13 December, 6:55:13 PM.

To: Christine Gregory.

Subject: Re: do you need me?

Thanks, Chris, but there’s really no need. Things aren’t as bad as I made them out to be yesterday. Besides which, it’s hard enough looking at myself in the mirror (one of the things

Rick COULDN’T take) & it would be harder after explaining to mum the reason you came back from Indonesia. I haven’t told her, either. She didn’t like Rick any more than you. So please, stay. The camps need you more than I do. I’m fine. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

You cannot see the bruises in public, btw. Long sleeved clothes are odd in summer, but not unknown. The rest, smudges of ash around my left eye, a bottom lip slightly puffed, are passed off by the accident. In short, I’m a regular woman when out in the daylight.

:)

Today I rented a fridge. Everything might be gone in it, but the house itself is mine. It has always been mine. It will always be mine. No one man will take that away from me. I decided that what

I needed was to furnish it with basic things to give myself some balance, so this morning I called the station & told Rachel that the old one had packed it in & that I would be a little late. Rachel is the new officer I’m introducing around, the first girl for my little precinct since I took over, & straight out of the academy. She moved down from Nyngan to be in the big smoke, & believe it or not, that’s exactly what she says. I tried to tell her that Riverstone was not the big smoke, but she laughed & told me that anywhere NOT Nyngan was the big smoke.

Rachel is five foot seven, a straight up and down girl with no bust, lucky thing. My back envies her. She has brown hair & a smooth open face & is tanned in the way that those girls from the country often are. The strangest thing about her is that, even in her blues, she wears American style cowboy boots: brown, red, black snakeskin, she has about eight different pairs. When she came down for the interview, she asked if there would be any problem with it, & I just found the idea so funny I couldn’t argue it. If she was in any other station, she’d be in proper shoes, but the boots have made her popular with kids, even as she tells them that it is okay to call her ‘Rach’, not ‘Miss’.58

58 b. 1985, Nyngan, New South Wales, Australia. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

Anyhow, got to go. In addition to a fridge, I rented a microwave & television & bought some food. I’ve a steak for dinner & it’s time for that & some telly. You know, they still repeat THE

SIMPSONS here every night? They tell me there are new episodes, but I haven’t seen any for years.

From: Danielle Wright

Sent: Tuesday, 13 December, 11:55:13 PM.

To: Christine Gregory.

Subject: To Keep My Mind Busy.

Hello.

2 emails in a day. You should feel special. Well, maybe you won’t feel special when you learn that I am typing because I tried to go to sleep about an hour ago, but instead ended up lying on the floor & staring up at the ceiling cause I couldn’t turn my head off. The thoughts just ran around like bugs beneath a light so I figured I’d just write more. Write until I got sleep.

I was telling you about Rachel, earlier. I took her out to answer a call at one of the Housing

Commission places today, after I’d gotten back from renting appliances. They’ve done away with the streets of Housing Commission places these days, though a few still exist. Mostly, however, the Housing Commission buys in streets with owner occupied places, & sets up the people there. You can always spot the Commission house, especially since Sydney began expanding out our way. The owned houses are kept, expanded, given a shine, while the

Commission houses are smaller, the fences old & wooden, & the grass out front longer & Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 gardens less cared for. It is like finding an old man or woman, bent beneath age, in a group of teenagers. Of course, the people inside the houses are not as innocent as that & I tried to impress that upon Rachel as we drove up there to find a guy who had be ID’d for selling drugs to high school kids. I know you disagree, Chris, but I’ve worked here for 12 years now & the Housing

Commission is where the majority of our call outs are, the majority of them for domestic violence…

Shit.

Well, there’s something I might want to stop being so high & mighty about, yeah?

I could do with a smoke. 10 years without a cigarette & I’m dying for one, right now. I’m dying for a drink & a cigarette. There’s a service station around here that I could hit for the first, but the second I’d have to drive a bit further for. I’m holding out cause it wouldn’t be right, would it?

Fuck it.

I’ll quit again.

From: Danielle Wright

Sent: Wednesday, 14 December, 11:43: 49 PM.

To: Christine Gregory.

Subject: Re: cigarettes and alcohol are not to be had alone.

Yes, I bought both, dressed in shorts & a t-shirt that smelt. I didn’t even have shoes. I was such a Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 bogan, but I walked into brightly lit whiteness & purchased both from young Indian men who called me ‘miss’.

I should have gone for a lower mil on the cigarettes. 12 tastes awful. It’s too strong. Still, I’m sitting here on the cold floor of my living room, smoking, with an empty Vegemite jar washed out & placed next to me as an ashtray. I also have a bottle of red. It cost me $8 & it tastes like it cost me $5.

I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. I shouldn’t say that because you’ll worry, but it’s true.

It’s not just that my dreams are so awful, but that everything in them is so tense, as if a part of me has been stolen, & I only realise it once I lie down. I dream that things are stolen from me, like the house. I dream that the house is taken from me all the time, that I return one day to find everything gone, the ground black, & that I have nothing. No history, no future. This dream began after I bought the house, years before Rick took the bed.

He called today, but I didn’t answer.

Have you ever noticed how the night makes you sad? It does. It’s all that empty darkness that stretches out forever around you. You know, when I left the bottle shop, I caught a look at myself in the glass. I looked old, Chris. For the first time in my life, I realised that I was middle aged.

There probably won’t be another man in my life, but then, maybe that’s okay? I was only finding the dregs anyway.

I wish I had something funny to say & end this email, but I don’t. I’m going to go & try & sleep.

Thank you so much for listening to me. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

From: Danielle Wright

Sent: Thursday, 15 December, 8:12: 21 PM.

To: Christine Gregory.

Subject: Re: cigarettes are not as bad as some men.

No, I’m fine. It was just late night thoughts.

Yes, Rick did call again. He called the station & one of the boys answered, which meant I had to talk to him. He sounded sad & lonely, but there are still smudges of ash around my eye, & I got him off the phone in under a minute. I have not forgotten, I will not forget. I told him this. He told me that he was sorry.

I do not care. Right now, I do not want my things back, not even the Aborted God album I’d just bought.59

In more interesting things, Rachel & I were called to a butcher shop today. The owner was one of the ugliest men I had EVER seen. The Butcher (as Rach & I named him later) had a face that looked, well, like it had been butchered. It was square & scarred heavily with acne, but the nose had been broken & it looked like he had been burnt at one stage. His hair had been shaved back,

59 This new reissue of the band’s first album, Jar of Umbilical Cords, was released on December the 3rd, 2005. It was released by the newly formed independent label ExplodeTwice and the album jacket is accompanied by memoirs from the band about recently deceased frontwoman, Zelda Walsh. The second release from ExplodeTwice, scheduled for February of 2006, will be the first album of Burnt Chrome, solo project of former Aborted God guitarist, Bernadette Crane. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 but you could see it grew only in patches. The only way to describe it was that his face was a mass of scar tissue that a doctor had once pushed into a shape that vaguely resembled a head.60

We were following up the lead from the guy we picked up the other day. He fingered the Butcher as his supplier & said he kept his stash in the freezers. We found a plastic garbage bag half filled with various pills, chilled.

If we’re lucky, we will be able to trace the drugs back to the guy who sold them to the Butcher & then follow it up to the next link, until it is taken out of our hands because it becomes too big.

Personally, I don’t think it will amount to anything, but you never know. Finding a drug manufacturer would be good for the boys & would make them feel like cops on the telly.

Some days, even I want to feel like a cop off the telly.

From: Danielle Wright

Sent: Thursday, 15 December, 10:30: 33 PM.

To: Christine Gregory.

Subject: Re: cigarettes are bad for you, sister, and so are men.

60 b. 1949, Quakers Hill, Sydney, New South Wales. The Butcher, AKA Samuel Archapolopis, had his bail set at three thousand dollars. Unable to contact his wife, who managed his finances, Archapolopis called his lawyer, and discovered, by way of his secretary, that he had left the country. That he had, in fact, left the country with one Mrs. Archapolopis, and that no, she could not inform him where they had gone, or when they would return. Returning to his cell, the Butcher sat, and plotted and cried and plotted again with plots that would, ultimately, amount to nothing. Despite his name and profession, he had never been a violent man, and had never had any respect for those who were. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

Rick has been calling for the last hour. My mobile is on silent & the house line is off the hook.

About half an hour ago, he started to email my Optus address. He’s sent 15 emails already, each marked with a bright red exclamation mark of urgency.

I should just not reply.

I won’t.

Why is it so hard?

From: Danielle Wright

Sent: Friday, 16 December, 11:01: 11 AM.

To: Christine Gregory.

Subject: Re: get that country girl to go round and break his fingers.

When I arrived at the station this morning, Rick had left 9 messages on my machine, & left another 7 with Rachel, who had begun answering the phone when she arrived. I was greeted by flashing red lights & red writing. Apparently, just before I arrived, Rachel told him to stop calling & Rick began yelling at her, telling her that I was his woman & he could do anything he wanted.

I was so embarrassed. I felt like crawling under my desk. Fortunately, Rachel kept it to herself, & the others don’t know. I only hope she continues to keep it to herself, as I asked her to. I think she will. I hope she will. She left about ten minutes ago & I’m alone in the Station. Until 5 minutes ago, I had my mobile off. I flipped it on when she left & it is still receiving messages, Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 rattling my desk to hitting the crumpled remains of the McDonalds breakfast. They’ve begun writing the dietary contents on the wrappers now, you know. It’s the kind of thing that makes a girl more depressed.

I’m tired. I’m so tired, Chris. I can’t sleep. I try, but I can’t. I’m waiting for him to show up at my house. To just knock on the door. Maybe even open it. He still has keys. Every sound I hear is Rick. It makes me angry & it terrifies me at the same time. Angry because this is MY house & he has no right & if he comes through that door he’s a criminal… but part of me wants him to come to remove the fear. But that frightens me even more.

I didn’t tell Rachel any of this, of course. I simply said Rick & I had broken up & that it was difficult.

After she heard that, she brushed back her hair & said that the best thing to do was to cut off all communication, just chop. She made a hand motion. Do it for a while, do it forever, do it for whatever turned out best. It echoed what you said.

But I have 58 emails from Rick & I need him to stop. I need to speak to him about this. I have to tell him. If I he doesn’t… well, I know what is required to get an AVO.

From: Danielle Wright

Sent: Saturday, 17 December, 1.51: 55 AM.

To: Christine Gregory.

Subject: Please Don’t Judge Me Harshly. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

I’ve been talking to Rick through email for the last 2 hours. He’s calmed down & apologised & it’s easy & even good.

He wants to meet me after work on Monday.

I said yes. I don’t know what to think, what to hope for… I just don’t know. I said yes, even though I know I shouldn’t. Even though I know everyone would tell me not to do that. But I did it. I’m 43 in a week & I agreed. If I don’t try, I’ll regret it, right? I remember watching women on

Oprah talking about forgiveness & how important it is & we can all make mistakes, right? To be happy you have to forgive mistakes, right?

From: Danielle Wright

Sent: Tuesday, 20 December, 1:39: 01 PM.

To: Christine Gregory.

Subject: Re: is everything okay?

No.

From: Danielle Wright

Sent: Wednesday, 21 December, 10:10: 09 AM.

To: Christine Gregory.

Subject: Re: i’m leaving to come down if you don’t answer.

I am living in a caravan. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

It’s a dirty little white thing, stained by thousands of lives in transition. It has a basic cleanliness to it & with the blinds down & everything in flat shadows, it isn’t so bad, but there’s no way to remove the fact that so many people have passed through. It is the smell of so many lives. It lingers in every corner. I wonder if they were like mine. I hope not. It was Rachel who brought me here. She is living in an identical dirty white caravan next to mine & at night I can hear her play the harmonica.

I—

I am sorry for causing you such concern, Christine. Really, I am. I shouldn’t have gone & met

Rick after work. I can’t believe I did. I feel like those weak women who ring up the station, sobbing because their boyfriend or husband has beaten the shit out of them & then three days later they’re back together. They talk about forgiveness, but the ugly truth is that they just don’t have any self worth. They wonder who would take their damaged, middle aged flesh outside the man who had broken it? I know this because, afterwards, I realised that it was why I went & saw

Rick & why I allowed him to buy me drinks & why I listened to his kind words & why, finally, I allowed him to come back to the house. There were no problems until he saw the rented fridge & television & made a joke about how I was recovering quickly.

I replied that I didn’t need him, obviously.

It was just a little joke. A tiny one. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

He. Well. Maybe he had drunk too much. Maybe we both had. I’m making excuses, I know! I know, I know. Fucking hell, I’ve made about a thousand of them in the last couple of days.

Rachel said that some people are right cunts and that’s all there is to it.

I wish—I do wish I could believe that, but I can’t escape the sense that somehow it was my fault.

That every bruise, every cut, every piece of pain I feel when I sit down is MY fault. I know it shouldn’t be that way, but I can’t argue it away.

What is worse, however, is that I have lost my house. I have run from it. It holds too many memories—it holds all those memories that I can’t bare to voice. The house contains them now

& I dread going back to it. The mere thought of opening the door fills me with such anxiety that I have thought about ringing a Real Estate agent & selling right now.

I was going to tell you not to come down, to stay. But I need you, Chris. I need you to make everything all right for me like when we were in Primary & older girls would threaten to bash me in the toilets.

Please come. I need you.

From: Danielle Wright

Sent: Wednesday, 21 December, 10:40: 32 AM.

To: Christine Gregory.

Subject: More. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

I would still be in the house if not for Rachel. After that night, I called in sick to work, & I called in sick again the next day.

(Rick never called me & I don’t know why that hurt. It still hurts. I’m so FUCKING MESSED

UP—AND IT HURTS SO MUCH! It fucking hurts, Chris. It hurts so much & I’m so angry & so confused.)

After I called in sick, I didn’t go anywhere. I just lay on the floorboards. I would smoke. I would watch television. I could barely move. I ignored phone calls. I didn’t change clothes. I just lay there & stared at the screen & would fall asleep a lot. My dreams were not red—at least that is what I think. I don’t remember them, except for the fact that I woke up feeling awful. I ate a bit, but not much. I didn’t wash, either. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. Rick’s presence & smell lingered all over me & I hated it, but I would just lie there in it.

Truthfully, I haven’t done much more since coming to live in this caravan.

I would still be there, like I said, if Rachel hadn’t run into Rick at the pub the night before. He was with another girl. She was wearing, Rachel said, clothes that looked like mine & that was made her go over, as she recognised Rick from old photos on my desk. Before she got there, however, Rachel heard Rick talking about me & figured he would come and check on me. She hasn’t told me what he was saying about me, but I can imagine.

Do you know, the front door wasn’t even locked. When she came in, Rachel didn’t say a word.

Just lifted me up & took me to her caravan. If it hadn’t been for this red cowboy boots she was wearing, I wouldn’t have even known who she was. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

From: Danielle Wright

Sent: Friday, 23 December, 8:43: 21 AM.

To: Christine Gregory.

Subject: Re: five days

Yes, I understand & no, five days is not too long. I’m fine here.

I’m sorry I didn’t reply to this email earlier, but I just… well, I just couldn’t. I wanted too. It made me happy & I wanted to tell you that, but I just lay in the bed instead. I cried for a bit, I think. If I didn’t, then it was the silence that made Rachel go & get a Police Shrink come out & see me. She was a slim woman, a few years younger than me, & I didn’t much like her because she wore this dark red suit & I am so SICK of that colour right now.61 After the end, she told me

I was to go on paid leave for two weeks. It’s good, I suppose. That way no one will be able to kick me out of my caravan.

The problem with this is that now everyone knows. Rachel said that it was impossible to keep it from the boys at the station & that the only reason they’re not here right now is that the shrink told them I needed space.

61 b. 1970, Surry Hills, Sydney, New South Wales. For the last year, Deborah Biancotti has not enjoyed her job. It is a sad, ugly thing to listen to sad and ugly lives, she has decided, and the hope that she had of being helpful and of making a difference when she left High School has well and truly left her. Nothing has filled the absence that these hopes have left in her and so, at night, she surfs the web and looks at images of countries she has never visited and reads about jobs she has never heard of. She is in transition. Thirty-five is not too old for transition, she tells herself, and is slowly coming to believe this.

I wish I believed. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

I asked about Rick.

She shrugged, didn’t answer.

I asked again. I asked because I know the boys at the station. They want to rescue girls daily.

Finally, tapping her blunt fingernails against the table, Rachel said that I shouldn’t worry about

Rick & that everything would shortly be back in my house & the locks would be changed & everything would be clean & I would never hear from him again.

I told her to remember that we were the representatives of the law & as such, we had responsibilities. Without hesitation, without any give in her voice, this girl from the country who wore American cowboy boots told me that the law was, at times, served by flawed men and women.62

From: Danielle Wright

62 b. 1964, Penrith, Sydney, New South Wales. Richard Wright awoke to the sound of his door being kicked in and five men and one woman (a girl really, no more than a girl) bursting through his house. They were not wearing uniforms, but Rick knew them, knew who they were, and feared two of the men, big, thick set men of violence, more than any others he had known… but as he began to get up, it was the girl who smashed the nightstick into his face with such a tremendous force that it broke his nose and knocked him out. When he regained consciousness, he found that the six officers were busy cleaning out his house, stealing his things, the things he had rescued from that bitch of a soon to be ex-wife—but when he tried to sit, he found that he had been handcuffed to the bed. The six officers ignored him and his shouting as they cleaned out his house of all the things he had rescued, plus a few he had always owned. This was her doing, he knew; that bitch. His anger grew and grew and he pulled at the cuffs and left scratches in the bedpost, but could not free himself. Finally, the six returned to him, and there, in no uncertain terms, laid out the direction of his life for him and, to prove that they were not making an empty, idle threat, shot him in both his legs, shattering a right kneecap and fracturing his left leg. Richard Wright never pressed any charges. In fact, for the rest of his life, Richard Wright led a very quiet, solitary existence, and was, for many years, always introduced to new officers in the area. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

Sent: Saturday, 24 December, 11: 54: 05 AM.

To: Christine Gregory63

Subject: One More.

Birthday. Rach & the boys bought me cake & took me to my house & it was so clean & perfect

& without rented furniture. I cried. I cried so much. I am sitting here & typing this email & the house it doesn’t feel like mine yet. I can still see the memories. The way I fell, the way I cried.

Those memories are here. But the house, it’s mine. I will fight to keep it. This is what I have decided. I’m not too old that I would give up that which meant the world to me. So I sit here & I think of the things that must go because of Rick & the ways in which I can make this my sanctuary again. You’ll help me, yes? You won’t answer this until you’re here, but I hope you will. Xmas & birthdays will have come & gone by the time you get here, but you will be here for the new year. New year, new start.

Lately, I don’t dream. Maybe it’s the antidepressants, maybe just me. Either way, my sleep is quiet & dark & expectant.

See you soon,

Love,

Dani.

63 b. 1961, Windsor, Sydney, New South Wales. At the time Dani sent this email, Christine was riding in the back of an aid truck. It was the beginning of her return home and it would be the first time in fifteen years that she had stayed in the country for over a month. Despite the circumstances, she smiled at the thought. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

The Dreaming City, Part Two

1896.

Awake, he was Samuel Clemens; but in his dreams, he was no longer Mark Twain.

Samuel Clemens had not dreamt for a year. It was not insomnia that ailed him, for he did not suffer from any of the effects that the illness caused. No, rather, what ailed him was more than simple insomnia, more than the simple affliction that he had previously known, and whatever it was, it was tied to Sydney, he was sure. The doctors that Clemens saw told him that there was nothing wrong with him physically, that he was in fine health, the best a man his age could ask. Then, in hushed voices, usually with their broad backs to him, they would ask him about Susy. His daughter’s death was, by then, common knowledge and Clemens, in response, would shrug, scratch at his shaggy white hair, try to look casual, and inform them that he was grieving just as any father would over his daughter.

In short, Samuel Clemens would lie.

He wanted to tell them that a piece of himself was missing, that someone—something, even—had reached deep into his chest and removed his heart. Such dramatics, he knew, would be explained as grief, and yes, even he, even he, would have explained it as such except that in the quiet, still part of him, that personal part only where he was honest with himself, he knew that the thought had nothing to do with Susy. Clemens knew this because at night, when everything was silent, even the flying foxes and insects, his tiny, old chest, did not beat. It was as if he were empty.

After four months, he stopped seeing doctors, told the ones that he knew that he was fine, that he slept eight hours a night that, yes, of course, meat and wine were the cure, thank you; but Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 by now he was visiting psychics and witches and other self styled charlatans whom he had no respect for, but he was desperate, willing to try anything… though they, like the doctors, could not help. Like the men before, these people, mostly women now, spoke of Susy, and offered him herbs and charms, all of which he took, and all of which sat beside him or in his body like stagnant water as he lay awake at night.

Then, finally, one year to the night of his arrival in Sydney, Mark Twain dreamed.

1862.

The Forbes Gold Coach robbery by the Gardiner Gang, soon to be known as the Hall Gang, was the defining moment of Ben Hall’s life.64 On a trail through the muddy, cold section of the bush known as Eugowra Rocks, seven men in brown coats, with handkerchiefs round their faces and ash smeared into their skin, stepped out with shotguns and pistols and robbed the coach, before seeping into the bushland like ghosts.

“Fourteen thousand pounds,” Hall said later to Frank Gardiner. The ash from his face was gone, though his brown hair still held scraps of it, and his sun-browned skin was marked behind the ears. He was sitting in the other’s small camp, just the two of them, he and Gardiner, the five other men having already gone. “That’ll put us in the history books, that will.”

“That’s what worries me,” Gardiner replied. In his hands he held a white, dented cup of tea. “A bail up like that and they’ll be looking for us.”

“Us?”

“Yeah. Us. We’re not unknown in these parts, Ben.”

64 b. 1837, Breeza, New South Wales, Australia. Information on the members of the Hall Gang was easy to obtain. It was as if the knowledge of their deeds had been preserved, polished, allowed, even, to act as a beacon for Australian history and culture. It was almost as if history was pointing to the Hall Gang and other bushrangers, such as Ned Kelly, to say that here, within the lives of these men, was a key to understanding Australia culture and society. Yet, despite this, the members of the Hall Gang were, in comparison to the Aboriginal warrior Pemulwuy, much less moral and admirable figures. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

Hall shook his head, smiled, too happy to be concerned.

“It’s no lie,” the older man continued. “None of us can stay here. I’m going to take this money, head out to San Francisco. This kind of money doesn’t make for old free men.”

“This is my home,” Hall replied easily. The weight of the gold and notes was heavy on him, but not unpleasantly so. He felt sated, full, content, and for the first time in his life, it made him feel as if he had opportunity. “I’ll not leave.”

“You lay low, then,” Gardiner advised, tossing the dregs of his tea into the grass. “You run too wild, and this country’ll have no choice but to kill you.”65

2005.

I have been writing about Sydney for four years. In that time, my girlfriend has left me, I’ve gotten fired, employed, fired, quit once, collected the dole, left a psychiatrist, gotten another job and, perhaps most strangely in relation to this work, moved out of Sydney. I moved up into the

Blue Mountains, into what Peter Carey called the jail walls of the city. There I found a small, quiet, two bedroom place surrounded by thick green trees and a large backyard where my dog,

Samantha, a golden retriever turning golden white with age, can stalk brightly coloured birds across the dry backyard. I lost friends moving here, made new ones, and I taught, grew older, drank and ate and passed most of the four years, it must be admitted, alone, here, in this house.

And now, finally, in these final pages, it comes to me to finally admit that I do not know what will happen when I finish this book. I had thought, at the end, that I would close the file, return to the city, begin looking for a publisher, and restart my life. I thought the consuming desire to write this novel would leave me at the end and, in that, I was right. What I did not realise, however, was that the novel had consumed me to the point where I had sacrificed everything for

65 b. 1829, Rosshire, Scotland, UK. In 1864, Gardiner was apprehended in Apis Creek, and sentenced to thirty-two years for his part in the gold coach robbery. He served only ten years of this sentence. He lived out the remainder of his life in San Francisco, a saloon operator who married into wealth and had two sons. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 it. Once I am finished with it, there will be nowhere else to go, no more to write about and, finally, no-one to welcome me home.

I have lied throughout this novel. It has been done mostly in the tiny, necessary ways that fiction demands an author when he uses historical figures. Life is not a sound narrative, and fiction often requires one. But I have also lied in larger ways. The influence behind these lies has been the slow, growing awareness that I have not been concerned with representing an objective image of Sydney, but rather that I have hunted, sought, and tried to capture the unspoken pattern of life that has persisted throughout the city since the day that Arthur Phillip arrived. A pattern that I see—and perhaps, only I. It is a pattern that my life has been part of since the day that I was born.

I thought, at first that I would be able to distinguish the two, but it has not been so. At first, in the quiet of the house, and with Samantha lying on the floor behind my chair, I would laugh and tell her that I had become part of my own novel. It was a joke, you must understand. I thought the influence would leave. That it would be gone in another draft. But now, sitting here, typing this, knowing that the end of the book is within sight, and also knowing that beyond its completion lies nothing but a flat, empty darkness for myself, I know that there will be no new draft, and that the true form of this novel is a combination of me and the city that I grew up in.

My life is not complete within the novel. It is but a strand of truth, an autobiography that is obscured, blurred, and surrounded by fabrication. The facts of my life are nothing more than a fingerprint of evidence left within the words, made for those who know me, for those who have touched my life, and those who have experienced Sydney as I have. It is an autobiography only for those who can see their appearance within the pages and for those who care to untangle my life from the city’s truth and the novel’s fiction.

1862. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

They had burnt Hall’s house down. The bloody traps had ridden onto his property while he was in their cell, and razed it.

At first, Hall hadn’t believed Happy Jack. He spent three days in a cramped jail cell, having ignored Gardiner’s warning and returned home to his wife, Biddy, to his life, to everything he knew, which is where the traps found him. They released him after three days due to a lack of evidence and Hall was at least thankful that he had had the sense to bury the gold and notes in the cloth sack in the bush. Without that evidence, and with his features obscured during the robbery, the only thing that could have given him away was his limp, but none of the traps had noticed any limping men in Gardiner’s Gang, so he had been released. It was two miles out of town before he found Jack. The tall, thin, pale skinned, scraggly bearded man had been waiting for him, standing with two horses against the cold, empty blue horizon, a dark slash that the limping Hall could walk towards.66

He knew then that Biddy was gone. Knew it deep within his being, knew, perhaps, even when he had agreed to join Gardiner that this would be the final act for her if she heard it. He did not need to hear Jack’s carefully measured words about her, about how the house was empty, but of course he had. He had believed everything the man had said until he told him that the traps had burnt down his house. He couldn’t believe that, couldn’t believe anyone—even a trap— would burn another man’s house down when he wasn’t there; but as he came down the muddy road to his property with Jack, the smell of burnt wood filled his nostrils and he knew, then, as he had known that Biddy was gone, that this was no lie. The smoke clung to the land the way it did when a large fire had passed, staining the air and each breath he took, choking the sounds of birds, and marking the tears around his eyes that he rapidly blinked away when he arrived at the charred remains.

66 b. 1842, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

He might have spoken at first, but he couldn’t remember. Time blurred. He was standing, then he was sitting on his horse, then he was running a hand through his hair in the middle of the rubble. At first, he must have slid from his mount, then walked into the black ash, his bad leg leaving miniature trails of destruction in its wake. He was dimly aware of Jack telling him that the cattle were dead. The traps had broken open the feeders, let the food and water drain out where they could, and left them to starve. Those beasts that hadn’t died by the time Jack arrived in the morning were in such a state that the only mercy he could provide was with his rifle. Of all the things about the destruction that Hall couldn’t understand it was this that went beyond him. It was an act on such a level of viciousness that he couldn’t understand the thinking behind it.

Cattle were worth money, at the very least. They meant something to someone when they were alive. Killing them like that was just such a needlessly cruel thing. Ashes clung to his boots and to the cuffs of his pants as he walked and when he stopped in the middle of the wreckage, a piece of charred wood was sticking up like a broken arm in a shallow grave.

He kicked it and it broke and spun through the air, black ash trailing after it in a thin rain.

“Bloody traps!”

“It weren’t all their idea—”

Hall spun on Jack. “You don’t think they picked the moment?”

Standing outside the wreckage, the other man raised his hands, palms out, and shook his head. “I’m not saying that. I’m just saying you don’t want to do anything rash. Doing something rash won’t help here.”

Hall laughed, but there was nothing funny in it. Instead, it was harsh and unpleasant to hear. If Biddy had been there, she would have recognised it, would have tried to calm him down, but there was only Hall and Happy Jack, and the other man said nothing. Hall continued to laugh until he finished. Rash! What a ridiculous thing to worry about when you stood in the middle of the waste that had been your entire life! How could something rash even come into Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 consideration? A rash action was defined rash because you did it without thinking, when you had something to lose. What did Hall have to lose now?

2005.

I was born in 1976 to Karen and Michael Peek. My father was born in Ryde, in Sydney, and my mother was born in Manchester, England. She moved to Australia in the late fifties as a five pound migrant with her parents, where they lived in the back room in a two bedroom place in

Redfern and, with her parents quickly learning that their trades were no longer recognised here, they began (change) rebuilding their life by working a sandwich shop. It’s nothing new, a story told by thousands, millions, told since it all began. Tyrannosaurs operating sandwich stores trying to get a new start at the dawn of a new world, all teeth and claws in a world rapidly becoming fingers and clubs. My mother even had two first names, due to a mistake by her father on the birth certificate, where he had written her middle name, Elaine, as her first name, and

Karen as her second. She gets mail for both, still. I don’t think my mother particularly enjoyed her childhood, as anyone who has been a child in a family struggling to rebuild everything will understand. It was lonely and difficult and, as much as we might like to remark that lonely and difficult lives get better, her adulthood of raising two children on a minimum standard wage after the death of her husband certainly won’t suggest otherwise, and will, sadly, be familiar to many others. Yet despite all this, my mother did not once consider returning to England and, indeed, at the turn of the millennium, became an Australian citizen. It is true that she became this so she could have a job in the government, so the motivation to be an Australian on paper was motivated by money, but as she told me after, Sydney had always been her home, hard luck or otherwise. Paper just said what she always knew.

My father’s family, by comparison, had been here in 1860 when William (Bill) Peek, the child of German and American parents, came over during the gold rush to make his quick Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 fortune. (change) There is not much that I can say about my father’s own personal history because, really, what is there to say about a man who dies from cancer when you are ten? The memories are washed out, faded, footnotes to your life, an aside your partner is curious about, but not much else. You learn funny stories about drinking in Tasmania, but little else. Of the

Peek family themselves, however, they have joined the trend of Australian families who proudly display the years of family on the land as if, somehow, this gives them more right and more ownership of their place here. With a hundred and forty five years to their name, the Peek family has forgotten that they arrived here not because Bill Peek had any love for the country, but because old Bill wanted to make quick cash, which he subsequently spent on alcohol and women, much in the same way that those first convicts did. They have also forgotten that dear old Bill took part in the infamous roll up against the Chinese on Lambing Flat in 1861, where he and hundreds of others did terrible things for gold not theirs, and where he, according to family history, met the bushranger, Ben Hall, whom my father named me after. Still, patterns exist.

Patterns of racial violence, of land being fought over, a pattern that continues even to my mother’s and Bill Peek’s desire to build a better life for themselves in the country. Bill never did.

He died on a farm out near what would become Dubbo, trying to make money out a scrap of land with six kids and a wife. None of them with an ounce of farming ability in them and who, by all accounts, moved to Sydney after his death. (change) My mother, unlike Bill, did change her fortune, and she did this using the oldest currency of all: land. It is not rum, as John Birmingham once wrote, but land that runs this city. Land ownership has been held against Sydney’s heart like nothing else since the day Arthur Phillip landed and took it from those who had lived on it for thousands and thousands of years.

1863.

“Bail up!” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

The words were the start of the routine, part of the ritual when robbing a coach, a person, anything from the side of a trail. In truth, Hall found shouting them a bit ridiculous, but there was no denying that it made the robbery move faster. Resistance stopped, cash boxes opened, valuables dropped, and weapons never appeared. It didn’t matter where he robbed, from the borders to inland NSW, the words ‘bail up’ were a code that everyone understood. Even the traps knew it, though they couldn’t always be relied upon to do as passengers did.

Ben Hall had just encountered two such traps.

Moments before, the coach had made its way along a narrow, muddy road. The sun was bright and high and with a touch of warmth. The bush around Hall and the coach was beginning to green and bloom with its yellows and reds and browns. It was too hot for coats, so Hall had waited in the middle of the road, wearing thick boots, a pair of plain brown pants, a heavy white shirt, and a handkerchief to mask his face. He had his double barrel shotgun resting lightly on his shoulder, and when the coach ambled into view, he dropped it down and shouted.

In response, the coach slowed, the horses reined back into a stop. Hall limped forward, his gaze on the driver. He looked familiar: a small, hairy, sun browned man with the flab of his belly showing. There was definitely something familiar about him to Hall; his black bowler hat was of the kind Hall had seen before, he was sure of that. Still, could it be that in the months since he had taken up serious robbery that he had already come (change) to the stage where he was recognising the drivers as previous victims?

Lost in those thoughts, Hall missed the coach door fling open and two men emerge with their revolvers drawn.

Had he been alone, in all probability, Ben Hall would not have survived the day.

But he wasn’t. A rifle fired from within the trees and tore a chunk of wood out of the coach’s door, alerting the two young traps to the presence of the Hall Gang.

Including Hall, they were five in number and, except for him, around the age of twenty.

The first, Mickey Burke, emerged from the opposite tree line to the shot fired. Red haired, pale Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

Irish heritage skin colouring, and quick tempered, he had grown up in the bush, stealing horses and selling them for wages that men who read and write would not have earned in a year. To his left stood his mate, John Vane, a tall, thickset man with a thick brown beard, deeply tanned. He had grown up with Mickey, following him from horse theft to the gang, though not, Hall had long ago decided, out of any desire for money. Rather there existed a strange loyalty between the two men that Hall was not quite sure of. On the other side of the coach emerged John Dunn, a dark haired, slender, pale youth who had a slower but more permanent anger. Hall and Happy

Jack had known him since he was ten, and had seen him win riding competitions and build a serious reputation as a skilled horseman. It was a skill that would take him only so far in the town he had grown up in, and at the end of that path was a choice: trap or bushranger. Dunn was too angry, too violent to be contained within the life of a trap, so he had found himself to Hall and

Jack’s side. Lastly, emerging from the blooming colour of the bush, was Happy Jack, Hall’s right hand man, the shooter who took a chunk out of the coach as a warning.

Hall returned to his senses. He moved quickly, passing the driver, deciding that a man shouldn’t be robbed twice, if he had indeed been robbed, and received a nod of recognition and appreciation as he passed.

The traps had their hands raised, and offered no resistance as he kicked their revolvers away, but Hall was unsure what to do with them. They were sixteen, seventeen, both of them white, brown eyed, and brown haired. Opposite sides of the men who rode with Hall. Behind them, inside the coach, were two men and a young boy, British by clothing and skin colour. The younger of the men sat protectively in front of the eight-year-old, and all three gazed fearfully at the bushranger. With a wave of his revolver, Hall ordered them out and Dunn and Vane moved in to take their valuables, while Mickey took what the traps had on them. But it wasn’t enough—

Hall had not forgotten what had been done to him, wanted, even now, to return the favour.

“Strip.”

The two traps didn’t reply. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

Hall eased back the hammer on one of his barrels. “Strip,” he repeated.

Quickly, fear growing in the back of their brown eyes, they pulled off their clothes and they were naked, with nothing to hide their shame. Both the passengers and the bushrangers laughed at the sight of the two traps tied to a large tree and at the mercy of anyone who came past and they were still laughing when the Hall Gang ordered the coach away and, with a faint, crooked grin hidden behind his handkerchief, Ben Hall stepped into the bush, where he was swallowed by the brown and red world he knew so well.

The Spirit World.

There was a hole deep in Mark Twain’s chest. Sluggishly, he probed the opening, his fingers heavy, as if they belonged to someone else, and unable to feel the torn pieces of his flesh delicately, just as there was no sensation around the wound where his heart had once been. There was blood, however, and it wept continually in thin lines of dark crimson, but other than the visual presence of the wound, nothing else confirmed its existence. Realistically, he told himself that he couldn’t be seeing this. A man couldn’t exist without his heart. Yet, no matter how many times he closed his eyes and opened it, the flesh remained torn open, and the wound fresh, ever weeping.

He had awoken, naked, in the middle of a field of endless grey. It was possible that the term endless was hyperbole, but it stretched for as long as his fading eyesight could make out, and showed no sign of stopping. Indeed, there was nothing in the grey for him to distinguish if he was sitting on land or lying on the sky, looking downwards. If not for the fact that there was hard pressure beneath his buttocks and legs, he would have had to admit that he was floating, and that there was nothing—

An outline emerged before him. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

It was impossibly bright, blinding, forcing him to turn, and when his gaze adjusted, when he looked back, he saw that a white line in the shape of a rectangle, quite like a door, had appeared in the sky. With a faint click, it swung open.

“Susy.”

The name emerged from Twain a harsh identifying whisper as the figure stepped through the doorway, clutching a bundle of clothes. It was not Susy, not his Susy as he had last seen her, but rather Susy as a girl, no older than eight, pale skinned and dark haired. But it was still his girl, his Susy, of that there was no doubt in his mind. She looked just as she had on the summer day that her mother forced her to wear a white dress covered in a pattern of red rose petals and marched her out of the house to attend a lunch that her father had prepared for his friends.

She had been awful that day.

“Susy,” Twain whispered again, the harshness gone.

“No, father,” the girl replied. “I am not her.”

The voice, while ostensibly her own, was not. There was something just slightly wrong with the pitch, with the way each word ended, the hint of an accent Twain couldn’t place. As the girl stepped out of the doorway, a red light shone from behind her. It pulsed and beat and, for a moment, Twain was caught in the hypnotic movements in front of him… and then, suddenly, he knew that it was no accent that distorted his daughter’s voice, but rather that it was her form. Her body. The voice that spoke to him had been set, like a stone on a ring, in the body of an eight year old, and its accumulated sense of history and knowledge, gathered from the dawn of time, had been forced into the fragile skin of her body. It lingered there, uncomfortable in the skin it had, wanting to break free, confined, tasked to speak to him.

“What are you?” Twain asked.

She held the bundle of dark clothes out to him and tilted her head as Susy had done. “We have met before, Father.”

“You’ve no right to call me that.” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

“What else should I call you?”

“I care not,” Twain said. “But that word is not for you.”

“Do not be angry.” She stepped forward, close enough so that he could smell her, only to find that she was absent of any odour. “I have brought you clothes.”

Suddenly conscious of his nudity in front of her, Twain snatched the bundle. There were only pants, shirt, and a jacket. No shoes or underwear. Regardless, he pulled on the black pants and white shirt, which was soaked with blood instantly. His fingers were slippery and awkward and he struggled with the buttons.

“We will do something about that,” the girl said kindly. “That is why I am here.”

Twain pulled on the black jacket. It fit well, but he felt as if he was dressed for a funeral.

The thought occurred to him that, perhaps, he was going to his own funeral. Roughly, he said,

“You said you knew me? If you’re not my Susy, how is that true?”

“Once,” she said, “you called me Cadi.”

1863.

The Hall Gang entered Canowindra just as dawn pushed through the sky. They entered on foot, their horses tied a short walk outside the town, but not far enough that they would be in trouble if they needed to escape. Still, it was a risk leaving the horses there, but they were intent on keeping as silent as possible. As if sensing the need for quiet, the land around them sounded with the shrill, sporadic calls of wildlife and hum and buzz of insects that increased in rising summer morning heat to provide cover for their footsteps.

Hall’s plan was to take the Police Office and the trap that lived inside. It wasn’t a plan that would bring them much in the way of riches, but it appealed to four of the five men who had gained a certain amount of fame for leaving the two traps naked by the side of the road. It was almost as if doing that justified the robbery to people, a show and payment, Happy Jack joked. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

Of the five, only Dunn didn’t like the plan. It wasn’t, he said, that he liked the trap, because he didn’t, didn’t even know him, and he had no problem with storming this trap’s office. No, his problem was that it was a risk that would earn them the animosity of all traps and nothing in the way of cash. It was one thing to leave traps naked to a tree, he said the night before, but another thing altogether to burst into their homes, revolvers out.67

As Hall approached the dark buildings of the town, he thought again about Dunn’s words, and realised that perhaps they ought to have more than just a bit of fun.

If Hall had been asked to describe Canowindra, he would have said that it was just another one-street town in a series of one street towns that populated the bush like the bones of unlucky kangaroos. But if the town had been anything else, he knew that he would not have made his awkward way up the front steps of the trap’s tiny office with his revolver drawn. If it had been any different, Jack and Dunn would not have followed him up those stairs, and Mickey and Vane would have not taken up positions on either side of the building as guards.

And certainly, had it been a different town, he would not have kicked the door in—

—and—

—immediately—

—came—

—face to face with Constable Higgins.

The trap stood in the doorway that led to the front office wearing only a pair of blue pants. He was in his early twenties, white, slightly overweight, more muscle than fat, really, and was smoothly shaved, with close cut blond hair. When he caught sight of Hall, his faded blue eyes widened and he began turning.

Hall’s revolver dug a shell into the doorframe. “Don’t you move. Not a bloody inch. Put your hands up slow.”

The trap lifted his hands, slowly.

67 b. 1846, Murrumburrah, New South Wales, Australia. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

“That’s good.” He motioned for the Constable to step out of the doorframe, and then forced him into a corner. Beside him, Jack and Dunn watched the scene, one eye on the men and the other on the street outside. They hadn’t expected Hall to fire and they had no idea what was going to happen next. “Where you keep your shackles?” Hall asked.

“In the desk,” the trap said softly. “Look, mate, there’s a few dollars here, but nothing else. You’re welcome to it.”

“You don’t understand. You’re my cherry.” Hall limped over to the desk, opened the drawer, glanced down, found cuffs and a revolver missing its chamber. Hall motioned for the other man to turn so he could shackle him. “I didn’t come here looking for money from you.”

“Then what?”

Hall didn’t answer. Instead, he pushed the trap forward and, under the curious gazes of

Jack and Dunn, shoved him out the door. The Constable stumbled, fell down the hard wooden steps and landed in the dirt. Rolling onto his back, he gazed up at Hall, confusion in every inch of his face.

“What’re you doing?” Mickey asked, appearing next to Hall. “This isn’t keeping things quiet, mate.”

Hall grinned widely and lifted his revolver high into the air. A thrill ran through him equal to the moment he had stepped out from behind the tree with Gardiner and taken the gold coach. Before any of the others could stop him, he began firing, each pull of the trigger shattering the morning air: birds lifted into the sky, the buzz of insects fell silent, and the people of

Canowindra were awoken and disturbed in their houses. When he had emptied his revolver, Ben

Hall said to his men, “We’re taking the whole town.”

2005.

When I was born in 1976, my mother and father had moved, just the year before, into a house in Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 the suburb of Toongabbie. They paid twenty seven thousand dollars, a sum that, according to the bank manager who gave them the loan, a thin and hard man in one of those brown suits popular in the 70s, was too much for them to repay. He suggested that they buy a cheaper house, one not made entirely out of bricks. A brick house, it appeared, was out of my parents’ price range. Still, they turned down fibro, took out a loan that would eventually be paid out in life insurance and it was in this house in the Third Settlement that I grew up.

I grew up in a household without religion or politics. My neighbours were from the

Philippines, England, Egypt, Greece, Pakistan, and a range of other places I’ve since forgotten.

My oldest friends, Darrell Barton and Jason Vella, could trace their family history back to

England, Lebanon and Malta in at least one parent each. We all attended Toongabbie Public

School, where, when the country had its bicentennial for occupation or foundation (take your pick) in 1988, we all learnt that we were part of the Third Settlement. We celebrated this by making a time capsule, maypole dancing, and wearing a white t-shirt with brown shackles on it.

It would be years later before any of us would actually realise that our families had nothing to do with convicts, that this white t-shirt with brown shackles had a different meaning to the two

Aboriginal boys (change) in my year, and that none of the people we knew had any connection to the heritage we were all busy celebrating because we were all the children of migrants, able to trace back our heritage immediately overseas. Years later, Jason said that it would have be more correct to celebrate this, rather than wear cheap t-shirts.

But that’s hindsight for you. It always has a better idea.

Growing up in Toongabbie wasn’t bad, really. There was a cement basin to play in, cricket in the street, American cartoons on the TV, and girls, eventually. Well, there were girls for Darrell and me, and in Darrell’s case there was a son, when he was nineteen, and whom he and Emily, the mother, named Sebastian. He’s a single father now, works as a water filter salesman for a large company, and lives on the edges of Blacktown. For Jason there were boys.

He lives with a nice boy, Michael, out in an apartment in Stanmore, where he works in Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 community outreach programs for migrants, helping them adjust to the new world that they find themselves in. He tells me that they’ve left, in many cases, worlds of poverty and violence that most of us will never know or understand. One day, having woken up on his floor, after my girlfriend and I split, and I had to find a new place to live, and this book was in its early lies, he opened a paper for me. He was showing me a story. It was the story of a group of young

Lebanese men who had kidnapped a pair of young Australian girls, kept them in the boot of their car as they drove to a house, and kept them there for a week as they drugged and raped them. The media were in full feast, as the media is when they can play the race card, and he told me how the story had raised white violence against Lebanese women. It was not uncommon, at least once a day, he said, to hear about some racially charged encounter, though you open the paper and it was all one side. Open an Arabic paper, he added, pouring juice for me, and it was one side, too.

Always one side, like a page had only a front, and not a back.

1863.

When the Hall Gang took the town of Canowindra, it had a population of forty-one. All would be held prisoner in the Robinson Hotel for three days.

At first, Hall didn’t know what to do with that many people. The Hotel could barely cope with the number, and half way through the first day, the tensions of those inside began to rise with the heat. Mickey and Vane had flung the doors and windows open, but with that much flesh, that much individuality pressed close, squabbles and arguments broke out. Inevitably, when the forty-one people needed someone to blame, they had five bushrangers, holding them hostage with revolvers, six shots a piece, and for which not one of them could find anything good to say.

They had only to move their gaze off Hall a little to the windows that opened onto the verandah and they would see Constable Higgins, marching through the heat in shackles, stopping only Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 when exhaustion forced him to. When their gaze left him and returned to the hotel, it was still a sweaty, cramped, wooden bar that they were sitting in.

Hall had no idea how to change that, and if it wasn’t for Mickey and Jack opening the bar and sharing the drinks around, he would not have held that town for a day. But once drink came out, Hall brought in food, got the musicians to play, and turned the event into a three-day holiday.

The problem, when it came, emerged slowly from the rest of the Hall Gang, and by the third day, the four were beginning to show signs of frustration and nerves, most visible in Vane and Dunn. With Vane, it was his continual glances through the windows of the hotel and his, at first infrequent, and then frequent trips out the back and around the building to walk in through the front, where he would end by counting the prisoners as if they were nothing more than cattle he had stolen. His dark eyes, set deep within his heavily bearded face, were unable to settle on one object for more than a minute by the end of the third day. With Dunn, however, it was a slow burn of dislike for the situation that, finally, saw the young man disappear in the morning on the back of his horse. When he returned at midday, Hall had begun to think, seriously, that Dunn had left. Through the window, he watched as the man stood in the middle of the hard packed dirt road for ten, then twenty minutes until he began walking towards the hotel.

Mounting the verandah steps, Dunn glanced at the trap with a flat, empty expression, and it was clear to Hall that he had lost all his humour over the situation.

When he entered, Dunn motioned for Hall to follow him outside. The bushranger picked up his pint and followed him down the hard steps without sparing a glance at Higgins who slept in the hot corner.

“I’ve had enough,” Dunn said, when Hall joined him in the middle of the road. The sun was hot, there was no breeze, and Dunn’s voice had no room for argument. “It’s got to end. It’s gone on too long.”

“I’m not finished with the trap,” Hall said easily. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

“Kill ‘im and bloody well be done with it.” Dunn spat on the ground. “Just don’t fucking stay here no more.”

“I don’t kill.”

“If you lack the balls, I’ll do it.” Dunn pulled out his revolver, but Hall’s hand clamped tightly on his wrist. Still friendly, he said, “You need to calm down, boy.”

Dunn wrenched his arm away, took a step back, and gazed at the man, his revolver gripped tightly. “Don’t speak to me like that. Just don’t. We’re equals here and you’ve got to make a decision. Otherwise we’re just pissing our time away here.”

“You’re not seeing what this’ll do for our reputation—”

“I see that it’s going to make us real popular with the traps. That’s what I see.”

Hall shook his head and pointed at the hotel with his mug. The sun glinted off the metal like it was a disused shell casing. “Those people in there are having a good time. We made a fool out of their Constable for them, sure, but they’re not going to hold it against us. They’ll remember us well.”

Dunn laughed harshly. “You’re an idiot. All this stunt is doing is making us a big target for the traps. Those people won’t do shit for us when they come.”

Hall waved the comment away.

“You listen to me: One day they’re going to realise that what you do is rob them. They’ll finally get it through their thick skulls that you’re not their friend, that you’re not here to help them, and that you don’t like them. All you do is take what they earn in sweat and time and blood and it doesn’t matter how much you smile when you do it, or how much charm you got, cause one day, they’re going to realise you’re just a thief.”

The last of Hall’s good humour drained away. “You don’t understand, John.”

“No, mate, it’s you who doesn’t understand.” Dunn shook his head and began walking back to the hotel. Dirt kicked up behind him with every step. “I’m going tonight. This is it. No Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 more. Vane’s with me. That means Mickey will ride out with us, too. I don’t know what Jack plans, but I can’t figure you guys wanting to hold this town with just the two of you.”

“You don’t run things here,” he called out loudly. “What makes you think you can tell anyone what to do?”

Dunn stopped, didn’t turn. The back he showed Hall was rigid, made from iron, without yield. “I am not dying in this town. Maybe that’s your plan, but it isn’t mine. Now I’m going— face it, Ben, we’re all going. Are you coming with us?”

Hall wanted to tell him no. He wanted to say that no one was going anywhere. That it was the Hall Gang, and it was Ben Hall who decided when and where they went, that he had seniority… but he wasn’t a stupid man. He knew the truth of the situation. He couldn’t hold the town and people if the others left—Jack would leave tonight if the others did—and the truth was, he didn’t want to stay alone. Finally, he said, “Yeah, fine.”

“Good,” Dunn said, without turning. “You want me to deal with the trap?”

“No,” Hall replied. “I’ll do it.”

Dunn continued walking back across the hot dirt road. At the stairs, he turned to the sleeping form of the trap and made a gun with his thumb and index finger. Slowly and deliberately for his audience, he fired.

The Spirit World.

Twain wiped his bloody fingers clean on his jacket. He did it slowly, methodically, trying to remove all trace of the stains, but was unable to do so (change). The blood had coloured his skin permanently. Finally, he said, “You’re my tormentor, then.”

The creature in his daughter’s skin said, “No, Father.”

“Do not (change) call me that,” he said coldly. “I won’t have you calling me that.”

“I am not truly Cadi.” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

“Then what happened to him?”

“He changed.”

“Is he dead?”

“I cannot die.” Behind the girl, the pulsing opening to a world of red began to seal, slowly, turning into a puckered wound in the sky, then nothing. She said, “I am Cadi, but at the same time, I am not. If you do not wish to use your daughter’s name, you may call me Sydney.”

When Twain did not reply, she asked, “You think I will hurt you?”

“I think you have killed me,” he replied plainly.

“Then our conversation will be limited.”

“I suppose it will.” Twain was silent for a moment, then said, “Why must you look like that?”

“Because I desire it.”

“To upset me?” he demanded.

The girl smiled slightly, a hint of white teeth. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“To teach a man his place.”

“You’ve his anger and pride, girl.”

“Do no presume you can speak to me with such familiarity, Father.”

Twain’s restraint faltered; he fought back the desire to reach out and grab her, to grab this creature that called herself Sydney. He knew that it would be folly to do so, and that it would only cause him harm, but the taunting of her words, the way she phrased his daughter’s mouth into the word ‘father’ was almost more than he could withstand.

Beneath his feet the grey shapeless world had begun to alter. At first it darkened, turned cold, then slowly transformed into a shiny, silver metal. Walls of glass rose around him and curved up to join like a cocoon. With a stained hand, Twain reached out and touched the glass. It was ice cold. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

“What is happening?” Twain asked.

“We are beginning our journey,” Sydney replied.

“Is this another tour?”

“No.” The girl flared out her red petal dress and sat down, tucking her legs beneath her, so that they were lost beneath the fabric once she sat. It was an action that Twain had seen Susy do countless times. “I am returning to you what was taken.”

“I don’t understand?”

The grey world outside the glass disappeared in a burst of flame. Twain stepped back, bumping his head. He barely noticed the pain. In front of him was an incomprehensible sight: it was a machine of some kind, he was sure, a boiler, perhaps, or another kind of engine powered by coal and the fire it produced. But the image of an engine provided only a finger hold for him to understand what was before him, as the rest of it defied him. Its size was impossible—words like giant and mammoth and immense were not enough—and everything after the size defied any explanation he could make. On the walls next to him, metal shafts ran like veins through a burning floor beneath and, if he thought that perhaps in his glass cocoon he was escaping the fires to Hell, he had only to look up to see the walls higher burning brightly and no sight of a ceiling, just a long, long tunnel with no end. On the wall opposite to him, he could make out faint silver shapes, like tears, but they sat still and solid on the long veins in the wall.

Struggling to find his voice, Twain finally whispered, “What is this?”

“This is the belly of the New World,” Sydney replied from her seated position. Her tone was bored, indicating to the man that, clearly, the sight before meant nothing to her.

“Across from us—are there more people like me, here?”

“No. They are empty.”

Twain turned his gaze to the girl.

“I was wrong to take from you,” she said, raising her head, her tone of boredom gone, replaced now with a measure of sorrow. “It was a mistake, but I have been wronged as well. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

Both Cadi and I have been wronged and what you see, Father, are the tears I have not yet shed, but which, on the day that I do, will begin to quench my fire. But for now, it burns deep within me and lingers in my chest.”

The glass cocoon began to move. Outside, the world flickered past at impossible speed.

Inside, however, Twain felt nothing.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

Sydney smiled reassuringly. “Just for a short walk.”

Abruptly, the cocoon stopped. Sydney rose lightly to her feet and directed Twain’s gaze upwards. There, a wooden trapdoor waited. It was dirty and had a rusted copper ring in its centre, but Twain knew that she would be unable to reach it. Standing on his toes, stretching, he snagged it with his and pulled it open. Only darkness lay beyond. Before he thought twice about it, and knowing it was the only way she would reach it, he picked up the girl who looked like his daughter. She weighed nothing in his grasp, but when he released her, his stained hands left bloody prints across her white dress, mixing in with the crimson petals to suggest that to anyone who saw her now that her entire dress was patterned in his blood. In the dark opening, she looked down, and beckoned him to follow.

Twain did not hesitate. He jumped, grabbed the ledge and pulled himself up like a man much younger. Whatever it was that waited in the darkness, it was no worse than anything he had already encountered.

1863

The warm night air was filled with the soft buzz of insects when Hall limped out of the hotel and onto the verandah. The orange lantern light from within spilled out over the wooden floor, and the trap sat just out of its reach, shackled to the wooden beams in the corner. Unlike those inside the Hotel, Higgins looked awful: covered in dirt and blood and bug bites and wearing the same Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 blue pants he had when Hall had broken into his office three days earlier, he was a man who had clearly suffered at the hands of the Hall Gang.68

Hall limped over to the railing opposite him and, without a sound, sat. He gazed at the man—the trap—without any sympathy. “What am I to do with you?”

Higgins stared at him intently with his faded blue eyes. Next to him, the burning light flickered across the wood.

“We’ll be leaving shortly,” Hall continued. “That noise you hear is the last party. It’s gotten loud ‘cause I’ve paid them a bit back for what we’ve taken. One of my men almost shot me when I did that, but I’m not a bad guy. I wanted them to know that. Still, what am I to do with you?”

The trap murmured a reply.

“I didn’t catch that?”

“I said why don’t you just shoot me.” Higgins’ voice was rough, harsh, barely above a whisper. “It’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“That’s the problem.”

Higgins made no reply.

“I’m no killer,” Hall said quietly, his voice almost lost beneath a cheer from inside the hotel. “I’m a lot of things, but I’m no killer. Truth is, I’ve never killed a man in my life.”

Higgins gave a dry, rasping bark of a laugh. He said, “I don’t believe you.”

“What you believe doesn’t bother me.” Hall dropped off his perch on the railing. “I could have you killed. One of my men in there, he’s got no problems with killing. I’ve seen him do it.

We bailed up a post office a few months back, and he was on guard. Everything was going well

68 b. 1842, Canowindra, New South Wales, Australia. Tim Higgins did not consider himself a religious man, or a man given to the absurdities of life. He liked solid detail: how many head of cattle a farmer had, how much money kept in a box, how many shells for a revolver, and so forth. He could not read, only recognise numbers, but a young, brown haired girl, Miss Nerida Williams, was teaching him letters and words in the evening. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 until a trap showed—an older guy who came tearing down the street on his horse. Dunn didn’t even pause: his shot lifted the man clear off. Dead before he hit the ground.”

“I heard that was you. That’s what the report said.”

“Report is wrong.”

“You hate my kind though, don’t you?”

“More than you can imagine.” Hall drew out his revolver, opened the chamber, spun it round. When the clicking died, he said, “I hate that power you got. That power you all lord over my life, telling me how it should be lived. Telling me what’s acceptable and what isn’t.”

“I’ve never said anything to you like that,” Higgins began.

“I’m not talking about you.” He pointed the revolver him. The trap didn’t flinch. “That power you got is what sent my parents here. My dad got transported, same as my mum. Story goes that when my dad finished his time, he decided to stay and begin a new life. You start fresh here, right? That’s what we’re told. The past sins are all forgotten. After a while, he went to the

Woman’s Factory in Parramatta and picked my mum to be his bride. Picked like a horse. There was no real love between them, but they tried, and they had children that they needed to feed.

Eventually, Dad took to bushranging to make things easier for us. He got caught, of course, and things became a whole lot harder.”

“It’s the law—”

Hall shot forward, jamming his revolver into the man’s mouth. Higgin’s eyes were wide with terror, now, and he squirmed weakly. Grabbing a bunch of his hair tightly, Hall whispered harshly, “The law is just words. It shouldn’t rule any man’s life, but it does. It’s got no kindness or sympathy, no awareness of us. It was the law that took my home, took my land—you know what a man is without land?”

The trap couldn’t reply; tears began to slide down his face and his teeth slid against the metal shaft of the revolver. Hall wanted to pull the trigger, to splatter the man’s brains across the back of the hotel, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t bring himself to do it. To kill a man like this Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

—it was impossible. Hall jerked his revolver back and swung it round, butt first, into the side of the trap’s temple. With a grunt, the man crumbled into a heap.

Standing, Hall cleaned down his revolver and returned to its holster. For a moment, he stood in the flickering orange light, then turned, and walked into the hotel, where the light burnt strongest.

2005.

I started dating Joanne Lee in the last year of High School. We were together for eight years: we shared University, bad haircuts, bad clothes, and bad music in an apartment in Newtown for six of those years. She’d been born in Australia, but her parents had migrated from Vietnam. Her father was an environmentalist, her mother a designer who began her own clothes store a year within her arrival, and which has grown to five stores at the time that I write this. I met Jay through a friend at a Jeff Buckley gig, a year before his death, two years before she began her own band. She was with her brother during that first meeting, and I took him to be her boyfriend, since a year separates them, and he is taller than she is. Much to her amusement, I thought that he was giving me the angry silent treatment for the entire night, and it was only at the end, when I said so to our mutual friend, that I learnt that he was mute. He lives in Japan, now, designing video games for a large company.

It was hard dating a girl whose parents wanted her to date a nice Vietnamese boy. There was the language barrier at first, the cultural barrier second, the skin colour third, and when their daughter moves in with you with no hint of marriage, a fourth barrier that has nothing to do with any of those things is made. But it was good, eventually, with the family, and good, always, with

Jay. Even now, three years out, not having seen or heard from her since I left that house, I can still tell you that it was good, that the eight years I spent with her were years I could not regret, not ever, not even when they were hard. We found her father, one day early into our relationship, Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 lying in vomit on the kitchen floor, having killed himself with sleeping pills. I can still remember that tart smell as we entered the door and the joke I made about her parents getting trashed during the day. He had been fired, we found out later, for stealing the funds from the charity he was working for. But for scenes like that, there are scenes of us lying on an empty beach in

Bundaberg, just lying there with the water in front of us, house sitting for our friends Lauren and

Robby, not knowing a person in the world but each other. There was the feel of her skin, the way her nose would crinkle just like that when she was being funny and playful, the soft sound of her voice at night, when she played her guitar, and the first time she played to a crowd that wasn’t made up of our friends.

But it ended.

It ended slowly, an abortion the final act. It was the right choice, no regrets from us, but still, there was the birth of a thought in that moment and the idea of children and everything it meant did not leave us easily. It stayed, a scar we could not heal. Final parts of innocence lost.

We saw ourselves as adults and parents, as being irresponsible, responsible, as being mortal, and we saw the dreams we had and what we were willing to do to find them. It didn’t create the problems in our relationship, just showed them, finished them. Pro choice even still, don’t believe anyone who tells you it’s easy, a walk in, walk out event. On the night I walked out of our apartment and walked the half hour to Jason’s with nothing but the clothes and shoes I wore, believing that this is all I would ever have… That night, Joanne had told me that even the idea of my touch made her dry up.

But I did return. Once. Just once, for clothes, the early notes of this book, and the dog. I tried to rebuild in Sydney, tried to make my life again, but I couldn’t—nothing worked out, and the people I knew and loved kept dying, hurting, and leaving. In 2002, I came up to the Blue

Mountains to finish this book.

1865. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

The Hall Gang was only three members strong when they bailed up two Chinamen and learnt about the Felon’s Apprehension Act.

In short, it was their death penalty. The dirty, folded poster identified them as outlaws, and stated that the Hall Gang, consisting of members Ben Hall, Jack Gilbert, and John Dunn, were to be shot on sight if they did not surrender. The bush around them as they read was hot, full of sharp wildlife calls, and the memories of their fortune gone sour. It had begun when

Mickey had died, a year and a half back, killing himself after being shot in the stomach, and

Vane had gone bush.69 Word had it that Vane had turned himself in a month ago with the help of a priest, but neither Hall, Dunn, or Jack knew the truth about that.70

The traps had become more persistent, more willing to draw weapons against the gang since the town, and the three found themselves in gunfights regularly. The fun had been drained out of bailing up men and women like poison from a snakebite and all three members had now killed men. Hall, the last to do this, had shot a trap six months prior. And now, of course, there was this new Felons Apprehension Act, especially created to deal with the Hall Gang.

The two middle aged, thin and dirty Chinamen that Hall had taken the poster from were sitting on a log, dressed in brown robes and with their black hair tied back. They had a pack full of mining tools, and were making their way to a new gold field, without a scrap of gold on them;

69 b. 1843, Fell Timber Creek, New south Wales. On the 24th October, the Hall Gang attacked the residence of one Mr. Keightley, Gold Commissioner at Dunn's Plains near Rockley. Mr. Keightley and his guest at the time, Dr. Peachey, returned fire on the notorious gang, and it was Mr. Keightley himself whose bullet plowed into Mickey’s stomach. Rather than die a slow death, Burke turned the gun on himself in front of the four men. One John Vane shortly killed Mr. Keightley and Dr. Peachey. 70 b. 1842, Fell Timber Creek, New South Wales, Australia. After Mickey’s death, Vane went bush for three weeks, before surrendering himself to Rev. Father McCarthy, for all the sins he had committed with Mickey, some of which could not be tried, except, McCarthy told him, by God. Vane was sentenced to fifteen years, but was released in 1870 for good behaviour. He would return to prison in 1875 and 1880 for theft, and die in 1906, in Cowra Hospital. He left no descendants. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 when Hall and the other two began arguing over the poster, the two prisoners began talking quietly in Cantonese, and only stopped when Hall leveled his revolver at them.

“How long you had this?” he asked.

“Two days,” the left Chinaman replied.

“This is bullshit!” Dunn cried. “Fucking shoot on sight? No other outlaw in history has ever had that!”

“No other outlaw has robbed as much,” Jack said, sitting on the side of the road.

“Bullshit.” He darted backwards and ripped the sheet from Hall’s grasp. “Robbing people never got us this, but that last trap—”

“We’ve killed traps before,” Hall said. The killing still sat badly with him, a weight he had not yet adjusted too. “You can’t blame me for this.”

“You’re wrong.” Dunn sat on the ground next to Jack, opposite the Chinamen, his anger drained as quickly as it came, the poster’s physicality like a cold bucket of water. “That last one was different. I don’t know how, but it was different. You could feel it the moment he hit the ground and that woman began screaming. I’m not saying it was you—could’ve been any of us.

Like that trap was a limit, Ben, and we passed it.”

Silence fell between the three bushrangers. Around them birds flew and chirped, a thick lizard darted across the path. Hall began walking up the road, thinking, while Jack stood, stretched, and cracked his bones sharply. Dunn remained sitting. The two Chinamen remained quiet, desperately trying not to bring attention to themselves.

Finally, the last of his bones cracked, Jack said, “It’s over, Ben.”

“What?” Hall turned. The stretch of trail back to the others was longer than he thought.

“What do you mean, over?”

“The Hall Gang is done,” Jack said. “It’s time to go our separate ways. Be done with it.

We can’t operate like this.”

“You can’t be serious?” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

“What would you have us do? This—” Jack pointed to the poster “—there’s never been a thing like this!”

“Splitting up won’t help.”

“It’s not just this,” Jack continued. “It’s you, Ben. Last couple of months, you’ve been different.”

“Nothing’s different—”

“No,” Dunn interrupted. His gaze rose from the poster and met Hall’s. “You don’t want what we want. All you ever wanted was to stick it to the traps.”

“You can’t talk!” He paused to lower his voice, began walking down the trail back to them. “You’ve killed your fair share of those men.”

Dunn shrugged. “I was just killing a man. A man who was shooting at me, or a man who was a threat to me. That he was a trap didn’t mean a thing. But for you…”

Hall shook his head in denial.

“He’s right, Ben,” Jack said. “You’re my mate, but he’s right.”

“It’s not important!”

“Damn you!” Jack yelled. He snatched the poster from Dunn and tossed it at Hall. It fell on the ground, nothing but waste, well before him. “You don’t get this kind of treatment unless you seriously piss off the traps. That’s all you ever wanted! That’s why we’re leaving! That’s why it’s over! That’s why we’re getting as far away from you as we can!”

And with those shouted words, the Hall Gang, responsible for over 600 robberies, ended.

The only witnesses to this event were a pair of Chinamen sitting on the side of the road, the last victims of the famed outlaws, robbed only of a Wanted Poster.

2005.

This is the end. Samantha is nudging me, her nose wet, wanting to be let out. There is no need to Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 discuss details. This is the end. I did not come into these mountains and make a new life and that, that was my mistake. I came into them and looked back, never forward. There are words, I guess, that I must say, people to ask for understanding from, others to tell how dear they are, but it is all here, all already written. I know that. Everything I need to say is in this book.

I will reread the book once more. Just once, so that I hold its complete form in my head.

Then I will stand. I will run my hand through Samantha’s golden white coat, and with her by my side, walk out into the yard that is filled with the evening blue and orange light and I will not come back in.

1865.

If he had known that Jack Gilbert, the man he called Happy Jack, would be dead in a week, and that John Dunn would be hanging from the gallows in Sydney by the end of the year, Ben Hall might have been more forgiving of what he considered their betrayal.71

But he did not know, and he only had anger for his former friends. They had betrayed him, left him to be hunted, his time was running out as if he was holding his breath under water, and there was no way up. He could think of only one plan: steal enough money to leave the country. He would follow Gardiner’s route to San Francisco, start a new life: there he would find new friends, new women, and he could live honest and simple.

One of his few remaining friends was Mick Connolly. Hall had ridden to his farm first, and Mick had given him directions to a small hut that he could hide in for a few days. He made it clear, however, that he didn’t want Hall staying any longer.

71 Police shot John Gilbert (Happy Jack) on the back of Billbong Creek, May 13th, 1865. He died as one of the few bushrangers never to go to prison. John Dunn, however, managed to survive for a further eight months, before he was caught on Boxing Day in a shoot out, just outside what would be known as Dubbo. He was tried in January of the following year, and was hanged on May 19th, 1866, at the age of nineteen.

Do we all die so violently? Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

The shack that he had been offered had, last year, been used by jackaroos when herding

Mick’s sheep into new grazing areas, but it had fall into disuse since then. The inside of it had no comforts: it was nothing more than a solid wooden box with a dirt floor that he could sleep on.

He could have started a fire had he wanted, but truth was, Hall wasn’t hungry and didn’t feel cold. As he lay down on the dirt, the darkness above, the closed in darkness that gave no hint of a wider world, was a comfort.

Lying there, Hall thought about his life, about Biddy, about the men he had rode with over the years. Most were dead, now. It was funny that he had never stopped to think about that.

They had died violently, filled with bullets the way that Mickey Burke had. Hall supposed that there was some comfort in the fact that none of the traps had killed them—

A sound.

Movement across the floor.

Hall eased himself up, revolver drawn, and waited… the shadows shifted and a cool breeze drifted in. A storm was coming. The shadows shifted, then moved, and a long, slender shape pushed over the ground. A snake. A black snake, Hall reckoned, by the way that the darkness was drawn to it. It was darker than the night.

He had the impression that it was staring at him, but couldn’t be sure. It didn’t matter anyhow, for a moment later, it was gone, having slithered out the bottom of the door and into the cold and empty world. Easing the hammer of his revolve down, Hall lay back, stared into the darkness, and tried to regain his thoughts, but they slithered, a mass of muscle across his mind, pushing into darkness, to sleep, that began black as night, then shifted to grey and reds and he twisted and turned across the dirt floor until the morning, when smoke woke him. It was drifting through the wooden slats of the shack (change), and outside, the horizon was red with the morning light and fire. The fire had been started by a bolt of lightning, nature attacking itself.

The bushfire was no threat to him, but that it would be best if he moved on now, rather than later. He relieved himself against a tree, then watered and fed his horse. After he had Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 finished, he grabbed the reins and began leading it to a track. Hall realised that he was moving quicker than he usually did. Something was spooking him—the snake or the fire, he wasn’t sure, but it was—

Branches snapped.

A revolver sounded: a bullet punched through Hall’s wrist, pain burst, fingers numb, the reins ripped out as the horse bolted.

Hall did the same. Bullets kicked up the dirt around him. In the trees around him he could spot half a dozen figures. Damn Mick! They had been waiting for him, tipped off—bloody hell!

—he stumbled, a bullet hitting him in his bad leg, another catching his shoulder. He crashed against a smooth grey trunk tree, coughed, and spat out blood from the tongue he had bitten and reached for his gun.

It wasn’t there.

The shooting had stopped. In the silence, he could hear footsteps closing in. Where was his gun? He wouldn’t die at the hands of a trap! If that was all he could do now he would deny them that!

Casting his glance around, Hall pushed off the tree. He spotted his revolver on the ground, but as he found it, a black face appeared from the bush—a tracker’s face, the face of a man who had bought the traps here, that would follow him if he left, but who was not a trap himself. Looking at that face, time paused. Hall could feel everything moving around him. Rifles were lifted, feet moved, animals scurried, and the tracker’s dark gaze met his. Acceptance passed.

Time rushed back:

The tracker’s rifle rose, fired, and the bullet punched through Hall’s left eye a second before the bush around him exploded with the fire of revolvers and rifles. When the body of Ben

Hall hit the ground, it held thirty-six shots. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

The Spirit World.

The darkness around Twain began to fade, picked away by an orange light that slowly, but surely illuminated the world around him.

Ahead of him stood a tree. It was a large thing made from an old, twisted brown trunk, its branches and dead leaves having formed into a head like a wide fan. It was on the edge of a mountain, and Twain could see a wide expanse of bushland, like the ocean, running out behind it.

Slowly, he drew closer, and found that the creature in his daughter’s body was sitting beneath it, wearing her white dress that was patterned in crimson petals and stained anew in blood. She sat calmly as if the tree and the sky and the world around her were perfectly normal. As if, from the dead branches, there did not hang hundreds of still beating hearts, the blood falling off the organs like water dripping from a tree after a violent storm.

“What is this?” Twain asked.

“It is Cadi’s Tree,” Sydney replied quietly. “It is my tree, too.”

“Why am I here?”

“To retrieve your heart.”

Twain glanced at the horrific display of organs in front of him. “Am I simply supposed to just take one?”

“You will know which is yours.”

“Why are you doing this?”

Sydney lifted her head. It was covered in blood, but the blood had not come from the tree.

Rather it existed beneath her skin, a permanent stain that she could not remove, no matter how hard she tried. The girl said, “If I ignore what I have done, I will never heal.”

“Why—” Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

“There is no trick in hiding them.” Sydney stood, and Twain saw that no inch of her skin had been spared. “I do not wish to hide things. I am Cadi and I am Sydney, Father. Take your heart, and accept my apology.”

Twain nodded. He could have argued, and part of him wanted too; but another part knew that she was right. Sydney did have to atone. Slowly, he walked around the dead tree, the orange light falling over him until, at the back, he reached up for a single organ and plucked it from the black string that held it in place. Holding it in his hands, he looked for Sydney, but found that she was gone. Part of him wasn’t surprised. He had known that she would leave, felt her absence, but felt Susy’s absence more. He felt his anger and resentment fade. It was still there, of course. He doubted that anything would be able to wash it away, but for the moment, at least, it did not consume him. Turning away from the Tree of Hearts, Mark Twain gazed into the horizon, and the bushland before him. There was a flicker, and before his eyes, it began to change. Buildings grew, roads were laid out, paddocks disappeared—in blinks, the land before him began to change, to build, and Twain realised that what he was seeing was the evolution of a city. He knew that behind him, the tree still stood. He could feel its presence, doubted he would ever forget it, and wished that it was not so. Yet before him rose a city built by those who had been cast out. It was a city for the Devil out of Heaven, surely, but the Devil had not yet realised that he was only repeating Heaven’s mistakes in his construction and rule. He would cast others out just as God had done to him, unaware of the repetition, unaware that his actions influence the sprawling mass beneath him, unaware that individuals within were trying to occupy a dominate, influential position, that these people were trying to be miniature Gods and Devils as they searched for one identity that would, somehow, someway, justify all that they had done, justify all that they would do, justify everything that had taken place within the boundaries of a great metropolis, without realising that they did not need a single identity. Theirs was diversity, an absence of singularity, an ability to step away from monocultural voices, to embrace the multiple, to see that they needed not one identity, one life, one existence, for they had one name, Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 one title, a word that could be used to contain them all. It was a word, yes, a word weighed down with their history, a history not yet fully acknowledged and which must, absolutely must be, but it was a word that held the promise of everything they could become, could reach, that one word acting as a burning symbol for their plurality.

Sydney. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

The Black Out Curtains Letter

7/1/06

Darrell Barton

PO Box 243OV

Melbourne,

3001.

Victoria

Darrell,

The phone line has been disconnected here, so I’m writing, sadly, at

Ben’s kitchen table, with Ben’s pen, on Ben’s paper. I’ve packed what was left of his into boxes. All that there was of his fills five, not including the books, which fill nine. There is something quietly unpleasant about knowing that everything your friend had can be so easily reduced to fourteen boxes.

The Salvation Army will be round in a bit to collect the furniture.

As I write, I have the window open, and the faded red curtains flutter with a moist breeze. There’ll be rain. I can hear birds, but cannot see them.

Life in the Blue Mountains, I guess. I can’t believe he died up here. Just— what kind of words can you use? We both got those blank postcards with the apology on the back. I keep thinking that maybe if we had forced him out of here nothing would have happened, but that’s probably not true. He liked living up here. He had all his books, his music, quiet, and he could get some money teaching. Ben liked it: he told me that and he was stubborn enough that he would have stayed here, just to prove the point, if we had told him we were concerned.

(Is that all I can say about him, now? That he was stubborn? Shouldn’t I be able to say something else? Anything?) Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

When I walked in this morning I found the house covered in photographs.

I counted a hundred and seven. One box out of five with all the frames. The photos were of you, me, Linds, Cas, his mum, dad, sister, ex girlfriends, everyone he knew, even the dog he had growing up, Samantha. So many images, so many people, repeated again and again. I kept thinking I should have called them, told them to come up, help me pack everything. Maybe they would have had reasons, like you, but how many of them have a son going into surgery? Maybe they just wouldn’t have been able to do it, like his mum. Maybe they would have been just unable to face the emptiness. Maybe they would have come in force. Some of these people I’ve never met, but on the back are phone numbers, email addresses. So organised.

I think I hate that.

I’ll start calling and writing when I get back, tomorrow, and let them know about the service the next week.

On the table in front of me is a pile of pages, the book he was writing,

I guess. It is neatly printed, double spaced, and has a picture of a house with black curtains on it to stop the pages from flying around. The house looks like this one, but I’ve not seen any curtains, so I don’t know if Ben took it or not. The photo annoyed me, you know. Such a stupid thing. I suppose if he had put anything there, it would have annoyed me, but black curtains covering the hint of light? It’s just not funny. I bet he thought it was funny. I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t even notice. Maybe he thought it was profound. I hope not.

I’ve no idea what I should do with the book. He left me a note, telling me it was mine, but what do I know about books? Are there files on the laptop?

I imagine so. I suppose some of the people in the photos will be writers or editors or publishers and maybe they will know what to do. Whatever is needed,

I’ll do it, I guess. It was important to him and that makes it important to me, even now, even though I’m angry with him. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

He could have just told us. How difficult would it have been to reach out?

Sorry. It’s just… well, y’know.

Why am I even writing this letter? I’ve got my mobile right here. I’ve had two text messages and a call from you today already. Mikey’s called twice.

I’ll see you in a couple of days when you come up for the funeral next week.

What am I doing? Why do I keep writing? Do you know, the girl next door came by to return some books. Can you believe that? She told me she knew how much

Ben valued them, how much books meant to him, and she wanted to return them.

She couldn’t have been any older than sixteen. I told her to keep them. She was crying when she left and I just, I just didn’t know what to say. He’s dead. He’s dead and now all we’ve got left are the thoughts and words that were left by him on a stack of pages. How can they ever be used to fully explain Ben’s life and the world he lived in?

Yours,

Jason Vella. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

Dissertation for A Year in the City. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

The Start/The End

Mark Twain dreams, I write. My novel, A Year in the City, began with a zine called The Urban

Sprawl Project that I published in 2000. The zine’s purpose was to map the cultural myths of some suburbs in Sydney using a mixture of photography and prose. It was directly influenced by

Iain Sinclair’s Lights Out for the Territory, a collection of nine essays in which Sinclair maps

London in a combination of walking and analysis that is called psychogeography. Writing after

Sinclair, Joseph Hart described psychogeography as a way of understanding the city that

“encourages us to buck the rut, to follow some new logic that lets us experience our landscape anew, that forces us to truly see what we'd otherwise ignore.”1 The Urban Sprawl Project had a fictional form rather than a psychoanalytic form and, in addition, relied on photography heavily, to the point that it often used images to define the setting. Ignoring the financial realities of the project, I distributed the zine for free in the neighbourhoods where I had walked and photographed, which assured that the zine did not survive the year. However, The Urban Sprawl

Project was the birth, the black and white foetus of thought that, once pushed into the world, grew into the novel, A Year in the City.

A Year in the City, then, grew out of the desire to explore and map the Sydney that I lived in. It is a cliché to write about the city being fragmented and discontinuous in nature, but it is, however, how I experience the city. Sydney is made up of suburbs as diverse as Newtown,

Parramatta and Fairfield, and divided into areas such as the CBD, the Inner West, the Outer

West, the Eastern Suburbs, and the North Shore. In my mind it is a cut up city that, when the pieces (change) are assembled, only then reveals Sydney. This has resulted in a novel that is, itself, a fragmented experience, constructed as a mosaic of descriptions and narratives that have Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 been welded together into a whole by me as the writer, and by the experience of the reader. Each part explores what Michel de Certeau calls “fragmentary and inward turning histories” which hold “pasts that others are not allowed to read,”2 though one of the goals with writing A Year in the City was to explore those fragments as text, to render them as an object that could be read.

This research dissertation, then, is another part which complements the novel. It is another inward-turning history that explores the context of the writing of A Year in the City and some of the ideas that informed the novel. It is an exploration of the theoretical concerns that relate to portraying an imagined city—a city that is also a real, sprawling thing with millions of people.

The Sydney portrayed in the novel is a real city that is filtered through my experience and understanding of it; it is also an imagined city that must be able to connect with the reader’s suspension of disbelief. By this, I mean that the reading experience of the fictional city must not appear forced to the audience: it must be able to believe in it fully. Furthermore, this dissertation is concerned with elucidating the mosaic narrative of the novel and its formation in relation to the city. It is also concerned with race, an overarching theme of the novel which makes A Year in the

City a novel, rather than a collection of short fiction. This dissertation, then, is the final fragment of A Year in the City, and is a map of the creative and theoretical concerns and dilemmas that I encountered while writing a fictional portrayal of a real city.

Why write about Sydney? My desire to write about the city began in 1999, a year before the Olympic Games. In preparation for the world’s electronic eye turning toward the city, Sydney was given what any vain, aging socialite heading out to a big party would want: a face-lift. In slow fits and starts, the city began to shed its old skin and emerge as a new, slick, global city. In parts of the city that rebirth is ongoing, urged along by the influx of people and world exposure that continued after the successful Olympic Games. In 1999 Olympic Park had been built to host the games and the CBD and its surrounding areas such as Kings Cross were cleaned and repainted. The focus of the city turned towards the creation of shiny, tourist images to sit beside a clean Opera House. This was not my city. I felt disconnected from it. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

My Sydney was darker. It was not unremittingly crime-ridden or ugly, but it had troubling race, land ownership and violence issues. I connected to the city through my experience of these issues and I wanted to give them voice in A Year in the City. As I began writing, I became aware that the collection of images that I carried around with me were, borrowing from

James Donald’s description of the imagined city, “part carapace and part burden.”3 Violence, race, land: these issues were the carapace. They were what taught me to navigate the city, taught me how to live in it, but at the same time, violence, race, and land issues stopped me from connecting with the alternative views being offered of the city in preparation for the 2000

Olympics.

To further explore this divide, I want to look at two descriptions of Sydney Harbour that I was drawn to early in my writing. The first was written by British author Anthony Trollope upon his visit in 1871:

I know that the task would be hopeless were I to attempt to make others understand the

nature of the beauty of Sydney Harbour. I can say that it is lovely, but I cannot paint its

loveliness. The sea runs up in various bays or coves, indenting the land all around the city

so as to give a thousand different aspects of the water—and not of water, broad, unbroken

and unrelieved—but of water always with jutting corners of land. And you, the resident—

even though you be a lady not overly strong, though you be a lady, if possible, not over

young—will find, unless you choose your residence most unfortunately, that you have

walks within your reach as deliciously beautiful as though you had packed up your things

and travelled days and spent pounds to find them.4

It is a picturesque, beautiful Sydney, an idyllic Sydney removed from the violence of colonisation. But this picture is also one that, like the Olympic Games Sydney, I am disconnected Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 from. I cannot imagine living in this city. In fact, I do not live in this city. It belongs to someone else. In comparison, consider what Mark Twain wrote twenty-four years later in 1895:

Sydney Harbour is shut in behind a precipice that extends some miles like a wall, and

exhibits no break to the ignorant stranger. It has a break in the middle that even Captain

Cook sailed by it without seeing it. Near by that break is a false break which resembles it,

and which used to make trouble for the mariner at night, in the days before the place was

lighted. It caused the memorable disaster to the Duncan Duncan… There was no saving

the ship. The great seas swept her in and crushed her to splinters and rubbish upon the

rock tushes at the base of the precipice. Not one of all that fair and gracious company was

ever seen again alive.5

The image of the false entrance, the jagged rocks on either side, and the lurking sense of menace in the ocean threatening the white writer, are metaphors for a city that is at times beguiling, a city that should not ignored, for to underestimate it will result in a punishing act of brutality. Here was a description that was accessible to me. Here was a Sydney that I connected with.

What, exactly, made this difference? It wasn’t until a year after the Olympics, when Peter

Carey’s 30 Days in Sydney: A Wildly Distorted Account was released, that I was able to describe it. It was, however, an awareness that originated from an absence in Carey’s book. It is not surprising, in hindsight, that Carey’s book was responsible for the final shuffling together of my thoughts as 30 Days in Sydney begins by paying homage to Trollope’s vision of the Harbour. The absence in Carey’s text happens while the author is being driven through the middle of Sydney:

We tooled along the charmless de-natured landscape which is the Parramatta Road.

This is Sydney, declared Sheridan, throwing his empty Coke can in the back of the seat. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

The harbour is peripheral. The harbour is not a place that anyone can afford to live.

Parramatta is the geographic centre of Sydney.

This is not an attractive drive, Sherry.6

Parramatta, the Western Suburbs of Sydney. Carey's admitted geographical centre of Sydney gets six pages in two hundred and forty eight page book. Six pages for half the city's population. Six pages for the mass of culture and humanity (change) that forms the backbone of Sydney. Six pages for where I grew up. Six pages for where I live. Six pages for the part of the city that had defined what I understood to be Sydney.

I was born in Blacktown, but was raised a couple of suburbs away in a place called

Toongabbie. From my birth, issues of race, land ownership and violence were marked across the landscape around me. It was easiest to see in Blacktown. Blacktown. Black Town. In the early

1800s, Blacktown was a piece of land set aside for “trusted” Aboriginal families to settle and farm. They called it Boongarrunbee. Likewise, Toongabbie had the Aboriginal name

“Toongagal”. Arthur Philip renamed it, however, when he made the Third Settlement and stole the land of the tribe that was living there: it became Toongabbie. I was not taught the theft version of history when I was in primary school and the bi-centenary of the suburb took place.

Instead, I was given, with the rest of my friends, white t-shirts with prints of brown shackles across them to celebrate the convict part of our heritage. I don’t remember anyone actually claiming that they were related to the convicts, however, and those of us that did identify with an

Anglo-Celtic heritage did so because of the recent immigration of our families. All my friends could track their immediate family to a country overseas. This was the part of Sydney in which I was born and raised, and which I understood. It was a history and social climate that left me disconnected from Sydney’s rebirth for the world. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

The decision to make A Year in the City a personal vision of Sydney was the first choice that I made. All other choices flowed from this. The size of the Sydney represented was the second, and was also made in relation to practical concerns in writing about a city as large as Sydney.

But it is also true that the North Shore does not feature greatly in my life in Sydney, just as neither rural culture, queer culture, dance culture and religious culture do, amongst many others.

Each of these cultures could have filled an entire different book. A Year in the City is, therefore, my view of Sydney and does not attempt to speak for any individual or any culture other than myself.

This research dissertation has four chapters. Chapter one is titled “The Imagined City”.

This chapter is concerned with the imagined city and how narratives of it are formed. The imagined city is formed from the memories and experiences of my personal history. In addition, this chapter examines how an area can become infused with meaning so that it influences the individual before he/she encounters it, and thus influences the way the individual experiences it.

The imagined city, as I view it, is a loop of influences, never ending, never complete, never satisfied.

The second chapter is titled “The Real City”. The focus of this chapter is the creation of lived space in a fictional city, and the limitations within text descriptions in doing this.

Theoretically central to this chapter is the work of Henri Lefebvre, who notes that any attempt to decipher a space in text results in it becoming a message, a reading. While it might appear at first contradictory to include Lefebvre’s work due to his opinion that writing about the city means effectively removing the lived experience, his work has, nonetheless, offered a valuable contribution to the exploration of a lived spatial environment that I develop in A Year in the City.

The third chapter is called “The Fractured City”. This chapter focuses on the mosaic structure in A Year in the City that has been conceptually inspired by a combination of Michel de

Certeau and Walter Benjamin’s work. Benjamin’s flaneur, a figure who walks the city, Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 examining it anew, is the father figure of the psychogeography that was an early influence on the novel, and I return to his work as a way of positioning the author in the process of writing the fragmented chapters. In A Year in the City, I am the flaneur strolling through the crowd, viewing the events of each chapter and bringing together the fragments of the city. The mosaic structure also owes much to Michel de Certeau’s critique of walking in the city and his discussion of how the individual maps their personal landscape.

The final chapter is “The Mongrel City”. It is centred on the creation of a Mongrel City, the term inspired by Leonie Sandercock and Salman Rushdie. This chapter explores the racial theme of A Year in the City, and focuses on the portrayal of whites and non-whites in the city. It examines Richard Dyer’s theory that “whites” as a racial group are regularly portrayed as if whiteness were “nothing in particular, that white culture and identity have, as it were, no content,”7 and examines the creation of a racial weight within the fiction. It also examines the position of “the other” in the city in relation to imagined national boundaries.

This research dissertation is designed to be both an illumination of the creative process of writing A Year in the City and a critique of writing the city. It can be viewed separately or as part of the novel that precedes (change) it. I have written it throughout the process of writing the novel. As A Year in the City changed, so did this dissertation. And as the dissertation changed, so did the novel. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

The Imagined City.

Mark Twain dreams, Samuel Clemens sleeps. In the quiet night of the latter’s dream, the white man, Mark Twain, walks down an empty Sydney street. The White Horse Motel is a diminishing shadow behind, his footsteps sound in the solitary walk of a subjectively imagined dead man in a city formed from subjective imaginings. These imaginings are mine, the author’s, but they are also the character, Mark Twain’s. Does Twain dream the stories of Pemulwuy and Ben Hall?

Does he dream the sixteen narratives that take place between his dreams in A Year in the City?

The human brain is said to dream dozens of disconnected stories each night—does that, then, make A Year in the City one night’s worth of dreams for a man who doesn’t exist? It is an imagined city, but it is also drawn from the author’s experience. The city portrayed is no dream, no simple creation of imagination, but is one influenced and influencing the daily experience of my life.

In Imagining the Modern City, James Donald begins analysing the imagined city by placing himself in the centre of his study, and noting that he is more interested in understanding the imaginary city that he carries around with himself.8 It is a personal book, focusing not on the rigors of a sociological study of the city, but rather on the importance of the creative self which manages an understanding of the city. For Donald, analysing representations of the city requires him to look inward, and to examine the influence of images and narratives found variously in prose and film and experience:

Their first and most important feature is that they involve a creative act of appropriation Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

or meaning making, rather than the mental reproduction or representation of a thing

external to the mind.9

This creative act that Donald identifies is one that has an immediate similarity, at least in my approach, to writing fiction. Creative acts are founded on experience, rather than facts, and no one individual creates in the same way that another does. An interest in this subjective formation informs much of my theoretical and fictional work. Donald’s words echo my subjective experience of creating fiction. In my experience fiction has never been about reproducing an idea or person that exists (or has existed) in reality. Rather, I am interested in subverting the facts that are threaded through reality. Mark Twain in my novel, for example, is not an accurate portrait of the real Mark Twain: he is a character that represents the dominant whiteness of Australia. I have not used a British character to open and close the novel because I experience the dominant whiteness to be American-influenced and I find, by using Twain, that he allows a connection to be made between an older and a more modern white Australia. Thus, the purpose of having a

Mark Twain character is not to have a historically-accurate representation: neither is this the purpose in having characters based on Pemulwuy and Ben Hall, though many of their actions echo the events recorded in history. Reality is thus subverted by my intentions and my intentions are subverted by my experiences and my desire to represent them. This creative act of appropriation in relation to experiencing the city is not, as Donald notes, done in a vacuum of reality, but with “a constrained interchange between the subject and the social.”10 In A Year in the City through Mark Twain—the metaphor for white power dreams—a fictional vision of a multicultural Sydney is unfolded.

Donald’s understanding and narration of the city develops from the influence of literature and film and other media. But he is also careful to note that the creation of his imagined environment has not been done at the expense of the “real city”. It is hard to deny the reality of something that is part of an individual’s everyday life. However, Donald describes the imagined Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 city in his mind as “part carapace and part burden.”11 The shell of information acts as a “category of thought,”12 which has “material consequences”13 in his daily reality of the city. The “real” environment of the city is contaminated by the imagined environment, which results in the production of a third environment that the individual is experiencing when in the city. The process of interaction alters the way in which the individual understands both the imagined and real city, which in turn “produce[s] a modified city which is again seen, understood and acted upon,”14 allowing for the cycle of imaginings to begin again. The result can be likened to a large, city shaped Ourobouros that devours itself, but gives birth to a new, slightly different image at the end of its feast. For Donald, this continual rebuilding of an individual’s understanding of the imagined city finds anchor in the form of a narrative, which “structure[s] [the individual’s] way of seeing, understanding and narrating the city.”15 This process gives the individual, like a character in a work of fiction, a place and a purpose.

The imagined environment that Donald identifies is not static. It is one of constant exchange, of constant devouring and rebirth that forms a never-ending economy of “symbolic constructs.”16 The question that arises, however, is how exactly does the imagined environment of Donald’s mind create a narrative that can then used to navigate the city that he experiences?

To explain this, he uses the historical example of Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth. Working in

London in 1842, Shuttleworth chronicled the city and, in his work, presented London as a huge body, an image that owed much to his profession as a doctor. For Shuttleworth, London’s poorer areas were plagued by social and economic problems. By viewing the city as a metaphorical body, and the poorer areas as a diseased limb, he understood London as a patient, with specific

“diseases” that could be cured. This was how he presented the city in his official reports. The result of this writing was that, for a period of time, those who read Shuttleworth understood

London as a body in need of curing. Their way of interacting with the city was now structured by the body narrative with its various meanings drawn from social, cultural, and economic discourses. However, the “body” narrative of London has not been restricted to the meanings of Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 social ills and disease that Shuttleworth gave it. London has been presented as a “young man refreshed and risen from sleep,”17 for example, by novelist and historian Peter Ackroyd, who, in contrast to Shuttleworth, understands London as a city in economic growth, as a city that has overcome the past and is now slim and beautiful, moving towards a bright future. Ackroyd’s representation of London draws on the same narrative tools that Shuttleworth used, but it is given a different emphasis that serves as an insight into the social and economic conditions of the author’s time.

In Seven Versions of an Australian Badland, Ross Gibson builds upon a similar theoretical base. His focus is a stretch of road in Queensland, located between Mackay and

Rockhampton, an area that has been the site of a series of violent acts since colonization, the result of which has been the creation of a “badland”: a section of land that is tainted by the violence of its past to such an extent that it has no other identity. Gibson begins his analysis of the badland by focusing on the newspaper reportage at the time of one of the murders on the road, focusing on the potency of the imagery used. Recreating the scene, Gibson writes:

It was the horror stretch again… bullet marks studded nearby road signs; crows were

moaning commentaries all around the roadblock, their noise—like the terrier’s barking

and the previous night’s gunshots—getting sucked quickly into the massed silence of the

brigalow trees.18

Gibson suggests that in a short period of time “the country itself was cast as the serial killer.”19

The lack of tangible evidence in relation to the murder is not enough to sway the reader when bullet marked signs and crows—a murder of crows—are evoked. The importance of dramatics in the construction of powerful and convincing narratives of the imagined environment is something that cannot be ignored, as Gibson demonstrates by recalling the murder scene. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

Gibson’s imaginative recreation of the scene demonstrates how Donald’s carapace of influences asserts itself in the individual’s interaction with reality. There is, however, a difference in the kind of texts that Gibson uses and those that I have for A Year in the City.

Gibson’s badland, and even his imagined environment in work such as The Bond Store Tales— an installation (change) creating fictional lives for transported convicts and soldiers in the early days of Sydney that was also produced as a book—is based on history, even if the information is presented as fiction. Facts are near the surface of his writing, motivating the imagined environment he has created. For Gibson, this allows the imagined environment to exist outside the actual location: “A badland is a narrative thing set in a natural location. A place you can actually visit, it is also laid out eerily by your mind before you get there.”20 One of the most significant ingredients to the narrative is that the badland exists before the individual arrives at the scene. In regard to my own work, factually based research has influenced the novel, but it is purposefully obscured, and so lost beneath the lies and misdirection and the needs of the narrative, that it serves no point in referencing them because they have ceased to be a motivation in the creative act of the novel. A Year in the City is concerned with the unspoken moods of

Sydney, the way that I experience it, and there has been an attempt to make these moods into a cohesive form that will aid the narrative. While the book itself exists to wait for the reader, the narratives within it do not exist independently of my work. My view of Sydney does not wait in another’s mind, waiting for them to come into contact with Sydney itself. In addition, my imagined city does not corroborate with Gibson’s analysis of history connected to an area.

There are, however, similarities between the formation of Gibson’s imagined environment and my own. This is aptly demonstrated in Gibson’s analysis of the communal nature of oral story telling and its influence on the imagined environment. Gibson is interested in the stories surrounding a piece of land and the events that are passed from individual to individual without a reliance on written text, though for him stories and events are linked to the land, and are part of the larger whole of facts concerning the area. In his book, Gibson focuses on Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 the Goulbola Legend, which emerged in 1869 in the stretch of badland that he is studying. The legend detailed a massacre of Aboriginal people, though written evidence, according to Gibson, to “prove” the mass killings, is apparently not available.21 For Gibson, the lack of “proof” does not diminish the importance of the story, but rather gives it more credibility:

True, there are dubious elements to the story, such as the fire that conveniently eliminated

material proof of the massacre. But to disregard the account is to misunderstand how

communal narrative works. The fire is included in the story because it gives listeners a

palpable sense of the secrecy, frustration and disappearance that must be felt and known

to be part of frontier history… A forceful story will evoke as well as record what

happened, offering a version of colonial experience including the structures of feeling

that settled into the social environment. Secrecy, ambiguity and inconclusiveness are part

of what happened—so the story must figure these experiences in the listeners’ thoughts

and feelings. A forceful story will conjure these feelings in a communal consciousness, a

dramatic union of speakers and listeners.22

Even here, the narrative linked to the land is kept alive by the feelings and experiences in the social environment. This information is stored in the internal library (or the “carapace”, to use

Donald’s term) and emerges in stories about the environment which use the land as “their world of meaning.”23 The narratives are kept alive by landmarks, by their communal aspect, providing a union between the narrative and the imagined environment that, when reliable facts cannot be found, is not diminished because the land itself becomes a reference point. In addition to this, the story that fuels the imagined badland is one that can find a communal truth in the history of

Australia: it is not difficult to believe that an Aboriginal community could be massacred and no punishment brought (change) down on the white perpetrators. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

A Year in the City’s narratives share similarities to Gibson’s, but do not attempt his analysis of the city. In demonstrating the influences, however, I want to focus on the chapter

“Brothers”, which is about The Block in Redfern. When I had decided on the mosaic structure and the part of Sydney I wanted to write about in the novel, I spent two months going through old newspapers, as well as watching and listening to that suburb. The first influences on me at the time were articles in newspapers that reported a brawl in The Block. This took place in 2002, and the incident began with two local police taking “two women who were brawling” off

Everleigh Street, which resulted in a riot where “Police were assaulted, a car was set on fire, windows were smashed and 120 residents were involved in an all-in brawl in Redfern.”24

Eventually, respected Aboriginal community leaders, Sol Bellear and Michael Mundine, were brought in to “quell the violence.”25 Within the article, two narratives can be found. The first narrative is based on violence, and is connected to the image of Aboriginal individuals portrayed in the area. This image was repeated in 2004, when the riot over death of Thomas (T.J.) Hickey took place. Hickey’s life, as Tony Birch describes, was a “very minor ‘criminal history’ [that] was dragged [through] the press as if he was top shelf ‘Boys ’n tha ‘hood’ gangster.”26 The second narrative, less obvious, is based on community, connected to the cultural ties with an area that is part of the Eora nation, but which is not noted in these newspaper articles, possibly because as Birch notes, “many in white Australia have little knowledge or interest in the cultural and historical specificity of this geographical information.”27 The first narrative, however, presents Redfern as a violent suburb in which the “law” no longer has power, and where the

“mob” is in control. The image of violence presented is dramatic and colourful and can be found throughout similar articles.

My first attempt at writing about the violence and community is markedly different to the one that I ended with. It was (change) a satire, of sorts, and concerned a man who wanted to move into Redfern but, because he was Aboriginal, was automatically given housing in The Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

Block. The following scene occurs when the narrator is sitting in Redfern Police Station trying to rent a new apartment because there are no longer any real estate agents in the suburb:

I could not respond. Abo. Abo. Had he really said that? I said, quietly, “What did

you call me?”

“A fuckin’ Abo?” he repeated, innocently even. “That’s what you are, yeah?”

“I’m a Koori, my name is K—”

“Nah, fuck that, mate,” he said, offering a smile. A friendly smile. “I don’t go for

that political bullshit. That’s for men different to me, y’know? I got me ways, an’ I don’t

mean no harm by it. Unfortunately, I can’t change yer housing. We got—we got a system

here, an’ you’re part of it.”

“Nowhere,” I said coolly, “is there a law abiding system to support this.”

“Shit, this is Redfern.” The Officer leaned back into his chair, stretching. The

movement revealed his paunch: pink stabbing through the blue buttons of his shirt. “An’

yer part of it now. Maybe I’m wrong, y’know, but didn’t you wanna come ‘ere so you’d

be with yer people and shit? Like, part of their community ‘ere?”

“Yes, but I didn’t mean that I wanted to live on Everleigh Street.”

“Well,” the Officer said, wilting over his desk, “well, that should’ve been said. I

would’ve told you to stay in Bondi.”

This story was a direct response to the newspaper reading I had been doing but, as A Year in the

City took a larger, more defined shape, this chapter did not fit. It was, instead, a direct response to the articles I had read and was a simple attack on “the Aboriginal Community is Bad in

Redfern” mentality.

The further I went into writing A Year in the City, the more I became concerned with reacting to and portraying violent narratives. My interest is in the conflicts born out of the Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 multicultural city, but I did not want to replicate the work that had already been produced in work such as John Birmingham’s Leviathan. Birmingham recounts the murder of David Gundy effectively by lingering over the details of the weaponry that the Police carried, describing the shotguns used as “a big, heavy-hitting piece of artillery” that unleashed “a super-hot wad of eighteen lead pellets at a muzzle velocity of over 1200 feet per second.”28 But he continues beyond that, creating an unbelievable depiction of Sydney when he reports on the corruption of the NSW Police Department in a chapter entitled Pig City.29 Here he employs the image of a boulder thrown onto Bondi Beach in El Nino30 storm patterns as a metaphor to convey the unpredictability of his violent and corrupt city. My first version of a chapter about Redfern did not match the tone of the rest of the novel but, rather, followed in the steps of Birmingham’s portrayal of Sydney (and in my case The Block) as a strange, violent, and ultimately unbelievable imagined environment. It and was therefore removed from the real city.

What I would like to talk about now is the fractured nature of the imagined city. To return to Donald’s analysis of Shuttleworth, the latter views the city metaphorically as a patient. This gave the Government, who had contracted him to write about the city’s social climate, an image by which they could understand the city; it also gave them an understanding of how they could

“cure” the social ills that gave birth to the metaphor of disease. To do this, the Government gave the population an identity. The identity given was not one that represented the population as private, individual citizens, but as a collective. This allowed the Government to develop an understanding of the numbers of people that matched specific economic and sociological values.

Thus, they were identified through “their geographical distribution, their conduct, their capacities, their morals, their rates of fertility and mortality, and their susceptibility to contagion.”31 The metaphor of the body fractures the city in a way that Gibson’s badland does not. In the diseased body there exists a wide range of males and females of all different races and economic backgrounds, each with a different view of the city. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

The decision to portray the imagined Sydney as a fractured city with a multiplicity of views was the main goal of A Year in the City. Focusing on this has allowed me to acknowledge my most personal motivation in representing the city, which resonates with Kevin Lynch’s description: “The city was not built for one person, but for a great number of people, of wildly varying backgrounds, temperaments, occupations, and class.”32 Donald is aware of the conflict that arises between different groups within the city and addresses the question of the individual’s sense of self-identity in a city that is increasingly expanding upon the lines of race and economics and religion.33 I, however, was concerned with the city that was fractured along the lines of racial identity, which became an important thematic concern in A Year in the City. I am representing the most important part of my own imagined city that I interact with every day: I live in a multicultural and multiracial Sydney, with a range of voices and experiences being lived simultaneously, each with equal validity and a right to be heard. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

The Real City.

Mark Twain dreams in A Year in the City of a Sydney that represents the real Sydney. It is an echo of the real space, with real social concerns and interests, just as Sydney is an echo of my personalised, imagined space that has been informed by the critical work of James Donald and

Ross Gibson. The next figure in my discussion is Henri Lefebvre. It is not by happenstance that I have chosen to place Lefebvre third; rather his position here reflects my use of his work to bridge the gap left between the imagined city and its physical presence discussed by Walter Benjamin and Michel de Certeau in the following chapter. By introducing Lefebvre, it is my intention to bring into focus what he considered to be the most important part of spatiality: as he puts it:

“(Social) space is a (social) product.”34 His discussion of space is a response to what he considered two main focuses of discourse, firstly mental space, “as defined by philosophers and mathematicians,” and, secondly, physical space, “as defined by practico-sensory activity and the perception of ‘nature’.”35 Lefebvre, in his statement that “a certain space had been shattered,”36 believed that the analysis of space should be focused on social space, which had taken on a reality of its own. This idea of social space is a third concept of space that includes the aforementioned concept of mental and physical space and is formed by an overlapping mix of all elements. The difficulty, however, came in identifying these aspects in text. For Lefebvre, writing results in the reality being inscribed on the page as description and this meant that space is reduced to “the status of a message, and the inhabiting of it to the status of reading.”37 A manifestation of this concern can be found in Ross Gibson’s work. He sees the badland as a warning of violence and a marker for the history of violent death. Gibson reads the area between

Mackay and Rockhampton as text. It is a text of violence and death, not an act of real violence Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 that results in death, and the text carries and conveys the subtext of the murders, not the murders themselves. The murders are an act filled with emotion and blood, and to read the badland described in Gibson’s book is to know of a road and history in an intellectual form, rather than experiencing the actual physical place itself.

I refer to Lefebvre here not to render Gibson’s theories ineffective. My wish is not to place either approach in an elevated position but, rather, to establish, at this juncture, an idea about social space—to describe space that is lived and experienced. My use of social space at this point serves much the same goal that Lefebvre himself undertook when he wrote The

Production of Space. Here, he approached spatial theory in such a way that would allow him to give a voice to the less argued aspects of writing about the city. In The Production of Space

Lefebvre says that his goal was to

Discover or construct a theoretical unity between ‘fields’ which are apprehended

separately, just as molecular, electromagnetic and gravitational forces are in physics. The

fields we are concerned with are, first, the Physical—nature, the Cosmos; secondly, the

Mental, including logical and formal abstractions; and thirdly, the Social.38

In the following discussion, the work of James Donald and Ross Gibson (as well as Walter

Benjamin and Michel de Certeau) occupies the same theoretical space as those three concepts: the physical, mental, and social. Donald and Gibson are concerned with how the formation of the city is affected by the images that the individual has in his/her mind, and this manifests in regards to navigating the city. In my discussion of physical space, I will be focusing on Walter Benjamin and Marcel de Certeau. Both have written about the physical aspect of the space when navigating the city and how this effects the conscious interaction of the individual within it. Finally, I will elaborate the idea of social space with reference to the writing of Henri Lefebvre. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

Lefebvre’s notion of social space that forms a social product is built out of the

“conceptual triad”39 of the three ideas of spatial practice, representations of space, and representational spaces. In explaining the three, Lefebvre uses the body as a metaphor. He likens spatial practice to the use of the body, “the use of the hands, members and sensory organs, and the gestures of work and of activity unrelated to work.”40 Social practice is, he says, “the perception of the outside world, to put it in psychology’s terms.”41 The second term Lefebvre uses, representations of space, refers to the representations of the body and the knowledge about it, “from knowledge of anatomy, of physiology, of sickness and its cure, and of the body’s relations with nature and with its surroundings or ‘milieu’.”42 The third term, representational spaces, however, refers to those spaces which represent the lived experience of the body, where culture has an undeniable influence on the body. Using the heart as an example, Lefebvre explains what he means by “representational spaces”: “the ‘heart’ as lived is strangely different from the heart as thought and perceived.”43 Representational spaces are the lived experience of the heart, the experiences of love and hate and the emotions in between. In his assemblage of the three terms, Lefebvre did not want to create a “holy trinity”, but instead wanted to lay down a base from which spatial theory could “continuously expand the production of knowledge beyond space what is presently known.”44 Despite this, however, the three terms have become the foundation of Lefebvre’s spatial theories, and have been repeated by the theorists who followed, reinforcing the trinity that he wished to avoid.

Spatial practice is described as space that “embraces production and reproduction and the particular locations and spatial sets characteristic of each social formation.”45 Edward Soja defines spatial practice further as “the process of producing the material form of social spatiality.” He suggests it “is thus presented as both medium and outcome of human activity, behaviour, and experience.”46 This idea is further elaborated in the chapter “The Man Who

Wasn’t There” from A Year in the City. In this chapter, the narrator works for an organisation dedicated to the conservation of nature within Sydney. The narrator’s convictions have been Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 formed out of the decline of natural resources and the need, within the city, to keep a balance between nature and human-made constructions. The narrator’s position is in opposition to an organization that wants to develop the city, which is represented by the character Annie Nguyen.

Nguyen represents a response to the growing population of Sydney, namely the desire to live close to the CBD and to invest in real estate. Thus, both the narrator’s and Annie Nguyen’s positions are a response to the environment and population of the city. The narrator has responded to the decline of nature, and Nguyen to the expansion of business.

Representations of space are connected to “the relations of production and to the ‘order’ which those relations impose, and hence to knowledge, to signs, and to ‘frontal’ relations.”47

Representations of space are the spatiality that scientists (change) and planners occupy, where the “frontal” is that which the individual sees and interacts with in spatial practices. Planners and scientists have an authoritative “control over knowledge, signs, and codes: over the means of deciphering spatial practice and hence of the production of spatial knowledge.”48 Building on the relationships that each character has in response to ownership and the demands of the city, represented both by the narrator and Annie Nguyen in this story, the representations of space position within the narrative are occupied by real estate agents and planners who wish to use the land they have identified as valuable and make a profit and increase the overall value of the inner city. It is also the space occupied by the narrator, who views it as environmentally important.

Like the planners and estate agents, his belief is that he has a right to ensure the stability of the bio-diversity of the greater Sydney region and he sets up his specific terms against Annie

Nguyen’s. With his knowledge of bio-diversity and the codes inherent in such a specific knowledge base, the narrator has placed himself in a position of power. In opposition, Annie

Nguyen believes that she is also in a position of power, which is supported by her own knowledge and codes.

Lastly, representational spaces involve “complex symbolisms, sometimes coded, sometimes not, linked to the clandestine or underground of social life, as also to art.”49 Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

Representational space is “directly lived through its associated images and symbols, and hence [it is] the space of ‘inhabitants’ and ‘users’, but also of some artists and perhaps of those, such as a few writers and philosophers, who describe and aspire to do no more than describe.”50 Soja suggests that Lefebvre is attempting to “retain, if not emphasize, the partial unknowability, the mystery and secretiveness, the non-verbal subliminality, of spaces of representation.”51 (I should note here that the Donald Nicholson-Smith translation of The Production of Space uses the term

“representational space”. Edward Soja, however, translates the term as “spaces of representation”. The two terms have the same meaning.) Helen Liggett suggests that representational spaces are the spatial examinations for “‘real’ or ‘genuine’ life experiences.”52

At the same time, however, Lefebvre has made it clear that representational space is also the space of artists and writers who have “experienced or subjected space which the imagination

(verbal or non verbal) seeks to change and appropriate.”53 It is this concept of space in Lefebvre’s work that most interests me in this dissertation.

It is from Lefebvre’s representational spaces that Edward Soja created the term

“Thirdspace.” “Thirdspace” is actually a term with two meanings. The first is Soja’s definition of

Thirdspace as a place where the unknown, secretive qualities, discussed by Lefebvre in the concept of representational spaces, exist. This term is also the name of his own spatial theory that was inspired by Lefebvre’s The Production of Space. My decision to turn to Soja is not with the aim of embracing his theory but, rather, by using him as a way to step back and look at the problems that are inherent in a critical approach to space that uses Lefebvre’s theory. Like

Lefebvre, Soja experiences a sense of despair when it comes to analysing social space as it is represented in text.54 This despair rises out of the awareness that text is sequentially arranged on the page. Text breaks up ideas and places them in order. This breaking up of ideas can be seen in the separation of Lefebvre’s three terms, which are meant to be seen as one. However, analyses of texts privilege the final concept, representational space. This is perhaps because Lefebvre Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 placed much of the importance of understanding social space on the concept of representation spaces. In describing Thirdspace, Soja wrote:

Thirdspace: the space where all places are capable of being seen from every angle, each

standing clear; but also a secret and conjectured object, filled with illusions and allusions,

a space that (change) is common to all of us yet never able to be completely seen and

understood, ‘an unimaginable universe’.55

Anything, Soja finishes, that fragments Thirdspace “destroys its meaning and openness.”56 When writing about Thirdspace/social space, Soja argues that any analytical enquiry destroys the unknowable quality that allows social space to contain all the factors that both he and Lefebvre have taken an interest in. What interests me, however, about this space is its similarity to the suspension of disbelief that exists within a reader’s mind when, in fiction, words create a private world. To try and write about that quality is to destroy the experience, to the point perhaps that the reader will not able to regain it. It is then fruitful to suggest that social space and fiction have a similar quality and a bond? Perhaps fiction can write about social space without this fragmentation.

Lefebvre did theorise his own approach to solving the problem of writing about social space. Towards the end of his life, he began working on a theory called rhythmanalysis. He would write two pieces using the idea of rhythmanalysis with Catherine Régulier, but the theoretical formation of rhythmanalysis is attributed to Lefebvre alone. Rhythmanalysis continued his work on social space, but combined it with his work on everyday life. Never fully realised due to Lefebvre’s death, rhythmanalysis is a theoretical concept that aimed to bring his body of theoretical work together. I consider this concept the postscript to The Production of

Space. In the concept of rhythmanalysis, Lefebvre approaches the issues of writing about space, and theorises a way to use the sequential arrangement on the page to capture that part of social Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 space that was previously fractured when written down. Rhythmanalysis thus becomes useful as an instruction manual for the next generation of spatial analysers. His approach begins with the everyday and an exploration of the demands on the individual:

The everyday establishes itself, creating hourly demands, systems of transport, in short,

its repetitive argument. Things matter little; the thing is only a metaphor, divulged by

discourse, divulging representations that conceal the production of relative time and

space.57

For Lefebvre, space is not a thing, but rather a set of relations between things and objects.58

Space and life are still part of one another but, in the theory of rhythmanalysis, Lefebvre is making the individual the focus of the analysis, arguing that the individual is an object that contains the same repetitions that are enacted in space, thus reducing the individual to a thing, an object situated in the everyday. But in contradiction to his statement that things matter little, the thing that is the individual is of utmost importance in rhythmanalysis. It is the starting point.

Rhythmanalysis is performed by the rhythmanalyst. For Lefebvre, the rhythmanalyst must “give an account of [the] relation between the present and presence.”59 The rhythmanalyst has a dialectical relationship with space that is “neither incompatibility, nor identity—neither exclusion nor inclusion,”60 and performs the task or rhythmanalysis by focusing upon his/her senses:

He draws upon his breathing, the circulation of his blood, the beatings of his heart, and

the delivery of his speech as landmarks. Without privileging any of these sensations,

raised by him in the perception of rhythms, to the detriment of any other. He thinks with

his body, not in the abstract, but in the lived temporality.61 Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

As in his analysis of social space, in his discussion of rhythmanalysis, Lefebvre does not privilege any one aspect of the rhythms within the analyst. What is of most interest is that

Lefebvre theorises the position of the rhythmanalyst in a similar way that he theorises the position of the artist in representational spaces. The focus for the rhythmanalyst is the elusive part of social space. Lefebvre is aware of this comparison, stating that the rhythmanalyst has more in common with the poet than the statistician. The difference, however, is that the “poet concerns himself above all with words, the verbal. Whereas the rhythmanalyst concerns himself with the temporalities and their relations within wholes.”62

That distinction, however, becomes opaque when individual poets, rather than poetry as a genre, is considered. The Melbourne based poet πo is a good example of this. The poet’s pseudonym implies, before his work is approached, that he is concerned with a different form of the English language. He is interested in the use of English as a second language, the language that belongs, primarily, to immigrants. πo’s name, constructed out of a symbol and a number, forces booksellers (especially online booksellers) to create a spelling so that they can catalogue him (Pi-o or Pio). His book 24 Hours is a work that, like his pseudonym, does not concern itself with “written” language, but rather with sounds and the use of phonetics to capture the immigrant language in the daily life he is writing about, while also using ellipses, line breaks, and colons to create a sense of time and pause, a rhythm of the body.

1:

The waitress

Gives her daughter

Some money for

The Jukebox: tha hh’orr-epsoom-e?

………………...A Disco-Number comes on. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

They start dancing…

2:

The waitress

Gives her daughter

Some money to

Play the pinball machine…

She then goes over

To the Table, sits diwn, lights-up

A cigarette, and starts smoking::::::::::!

You can

See her “thinking”:

She traces the outline

Of her “lip” (with the back of

Her finger), and ashs

The cigarette.

Outside (the

Window): A small kid pushing a “pram”.

A woman

……………with a baby in her arms.

A kid comes out

Of the backroom, upto her.

He wants some “change”.

He…scrunchs-Up his face (cos he knows

She couldn’t be FUCKED!). Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

3:

The Waitress

Is playing “Pool”

…….with her daughter.

2 blokes come into the shop…

She plays a “shot”……..and goes round.

They order a beer.

She lifts-up

Her “sleeves”, bends down (under the

Counter), pulls-out

A couple of cans, and cracks them Open.

She puts them down

On the counter infront of them…

Stands back, and

…………..folds her arms, underneath her.63

After this, the daily life continues as a series of customers enter and buy drinks. The phone rings.

The boss enters and we discover that the waitress doesn’t like him and, her shift over, she leaves.

The night continues with junkies and prostitutes entering, while “Thin” Lizzie waits for someone outside to show. Here in the minute, mimetic rhythms of πo’s work, a real sense of the everyday has been captured. πo’s work is concerned with the temporalities that Lefebvre claimed as the domain of the rhythmanalyst and not with explaining analytically the social space that has been presented. Throughout 24 Hours, πo makes connections with history and power structures such as local governments and captures a lived spatiality through the individual and community. πo Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 aims to capture the essence of a living, forcing the page to recognise that which Lefebvre believed was destroyed when written.

Lefebvre, with Catherine Régulier, attempted an example of rhythmanalysis, but it is not so much a personal as an abstract work. Because of its incomplete nature—it is called “Attempt at the Rhythmanalysis of the Mediterranean Cities”, and opens with the disclaimer that it is a fragment of a larger, incomplete work64—there is nothing to be gained by a rigorous critique of the piece. It is a flawed work, certainly, and is marred by statements that are nothing more than generalisations that do not analyse in detail any example of writing about social space. One of the few examples that hints at what Lefebvre aims for in his discussion of the rhythmanalyst is where he writes that Venice has become a theatrical city. The public space of Venice has become a space where people “theatralise” themselves in “walks and encounters, intrigues, diplomacy, deals and negotiations.” 65 But Lefebvre and Régulier do not go beyond this, either, using neither textual nor visual examples such as Victor Burgin did in Some Cities. However, Lefebvre and

Régulier’s example, coupled with Lefebvre’s outline of rhythmanalysis, can be viewed as an alternative definition of the flaneur, though Lefebvre himself never engaged in such a discussion.

Traditionally the flaneur walks the city and focuses on its rhythms. He is concerned with what has been created in the city and with deciphering the message and codes in its physical form. In response to this, Lefebvre’s rhythmanalyst aims to capture the nature of life within the city, to pay attention to the patterns in the present, the influences these have, and how the present results in the creation of a social space. The rhythmanalyst is not concerned with writing the city, or turning it into a metaphor. Rather, he/she is interested in finding a way to write about lived experience that transcends the limitations of prose. The flaneur, however, is not truly concerned with lived experience. In opposition to the rhythmanalyst, the flaneur wants to make meaning from the city and read it as text. He/she is not concerned with capturing a lived experience, but rather with giving the reader an experience within the text by fracturing the space into small narratives. What remains, then, however, is the question as to whether it is possible to write Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 about lived experience without fracturing it. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

The Fractured City.

The Structure of the City.

Mark Twain dreams Sydney and, in A Year in the City, the city is presented to the reader in fragments. In reading the novel, the individual navigates the city through the narrative shards.

Twain dreams a mosaic of Sydney and it is only at the end, once the reader has reached the final page of A Year in the City, that the image of the whole city is revealed. It is here that the influence of Michel de Certeau is found. Lefebvre’s despair in relation to writing about the city was not unfounded (though, as shown with my analysis of πo, it is not unsolvable, either). There is a despair if the writer wants to capture the pure, lived experience of the city on the page.

Writing is an act that happens after the lived experience and, at one level, writing can only record or transcribe an event. But it is also true that reading is a lived experience. Its affect on the reader is as tangible as that of any other lived experience, though its definition, the ability to record it can be as intangible as the lived experience Lefebvre despaired over recording. Writing about the experience of reading fragments the event and, in a small way, this explains the backlash against critically writing about fiction. A critical piece does not capture the complete experience of reading fiction. In approaching the writing of A Year in the City, I was conscious of the fragmentation of both lived experience and reading, and I searched for a structure that would allow me to connect both acts. That would, in fact, allow me to investigate this very conundrum that was for Lefebvre a cause of despair. To that end, the work of de Certeau in relation to spatial practices, and Walter Benjamin in relation to the flaneur, became structurally important to the novel. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

De Certeau died fifteen years before the opening paragraph to his chapter on spatial practice, “Walking in the City”, was altered into a piece of black historical humour. In the text, he positions himself and, subsequently, the reader’s point of view, in Manhattan as he stands on the 110th floor of the World Trade Centre. From here, de Certeau uses the city as a metaphor of the United States, describing it as a sign carved into the urban landscape that signals “a giant rhetoric of excess in both expenditure and production.”66 In this image, he critiques both

American politics and culture in terms of production and excess, which, after September 11th,

2001, would be used by both America and Al-Qaeda to justify the attacks. Despite this, however, it is hard to imagine that de Certeau would have supported the hijacking of four planes and the series of events that ended with two of those four airliners punching into the World Trade Centre, seventeen minutes apart; but it is no longer possible to read his description of Manhattan as “a universe that is constantly exploding”67 without acknowledging the black irony that now exists in his description. The change of meaning in de Certeau’s text is something that the theorist himself would have acknowledged, for he was conscious of the way that both spatial practices, and the way an individual saw the city, changed as history, culture and, indeed, the individual were altered.

De Certeau’s writing on spatial practice resonates with other theorists already discussed in this dissertation. (change) Like Donald and Gibson, de Certeau makes note of the imagination’s influence upon the individual’s experience of the spatial and how that, in turn, is shared between the individual and the social collective, as with the example of Gibson’s badland.68 And like Lefebvre, de Certeau is also interested in the practices within the reality of the city,69 though the difference between de Certeau and Lefebvre in this case is, as Ben

Highmore notes, fundamental: “For one thing, de Certeau is sympathetically engaging with a tradition of thought (structuralism and poststructuralism) that met with little but scorn in the work of Lefebvre.”70 Despite the differences in ideologies, each of the theorists discussed so far has approached the city as a set of fragmented experiences, thus illuminating the issue of how to Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 create a whole that would capture the fragmented, personal nature of, in my case, Sydney.

Michel de Certeau begins to answer the question by using language practices to analyse the practice of understanding and navigating the city. He effectively turns the experience of the city into an experience of text. Beneath de Certeau’s gaze from atop the World Trade Centre the city can, as Deborah Stevenson notes, be “read (or deconstructed) to reveal both a complex tapestry of meanings and underpinning relations of power.”71 This conceptualisation by de Certeau has formed the basis of the operational functions of the mosaic structure that I have used in A Year in the City, from the arrangement of chapters and the choice of locations, to what is included in the novel and what is not. It is in this way that I have hoped to bring the experience of living in the city and the experience of reading together.

De Certeau begins his analysis of spatial practices by linking them to language. He writes that walking in the city is “what the speech act is to language.”72 It uses the parts of the city, the streets, the signs, the buildings, the numbers, to make a path, which functions as a word, an indication of what the individual has done. As more “words” are added, it creates a conversation through the city: a conversation of streets and buildings, a conversation of interaction that tells the daily experience of the individual’s spatial life. Walking is both a “process of appropriation of the topographical system” and a “spatial acting out of the place”73 in a larger act of definition.

In a work of fiction, this process is at work in the descriptions that are used to define setting.

These descriptions set the boundaries of the world, be it in the interior of a room, or the larger exterior of a world. In A Year in the City, each chapter enacts the topographical appropriation and acting out of a part of Sydney. The chapter, “Brothers”, is set in a bar on Cleveland Street. The narrative begins by introducing the reader to the bar and the street but, as it progresses, it also introduces Redfern, focusing on The Block. Once the chapter is complete, the reader moves to the next chapter, introducing a new part of Sydney. As each chapter follows, the description of

Sydney is unfolded in an extended sequence of imagined walking. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

With this structural path of A Year in the City, de Certeau’s use of synecdoche and asyndeton are also important. Synecdoche is a trope which uses the part to represent a whole: de

Certeau uses the example of “sail” meaning “ship” “in the expression ‘a fleet of fifty sails’.”74 In relation to the city, de Certeau is using synecdoche to explain how a part of the city can represent a larger whole. A single house in a street can represent the entire street in an individual’s mind, for example. The other houses exist, but for the individual, this one house is the focus. Ahearne writes that de Certeau’s use of synecdoche allows the individual to understand and approach

“urban experiences by following the way in which parts come to stand for wholes.”75 In A Year in the City synecdoche is used in combination with the structural acting out of Sydney. Each part of the city is a representation of the larger whole. The chapter, “Red Needles and Black Thread”, introduces the Villawood detention centre to the reader, and through an act of synecdoche, this chapter speaks as a representation of Sydney as a whole. As it does the novel connects with the plight of refugees and Australia’s response to these plights in its domestic policies. At the end of the chapter, “The Hard Goodbye” replaces “Red Needles and Black Thread” in an act of synecdoche, introducing its own concerns. At the end of the novel the eighteen chapters come together in a larger synecdoche to represent Sydney.

Asyndeton, in opposition, is a trope of suppression. De Certeau describes the technique as one that involves “the suppression of linking words such as conjunctions and adverbs, either within a sentence or between sentences.”76 (change) In spatial practice, it “creates a ‘less,’ opens gaps in the spatial continuum, and retains only selected parts of it.”77 To describe every aspect in the city would be time consuming at best, not to mention a sign of unhealthy obsession and so, in returning to the example of the house in the street, where with synecdoche the part represents the whole, I would argue that synecdoche is not employed because the individual cannot notice the other buildings. Rather, the other buildings do not convey a specific meaning to the individual.

Beyond the main house, the others become a backdrop of houses in the street, and thus their presence is suppressed. For Ahearne, this means that the cohesive element of the city falls Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 away,78 but I would argue, rather, that the suppression is what allows an individual map of the city to form. Asyndeton aids the cohesiveness. In A Year in the City, much of Sydney has been suppressed. The movement from the block in Redfern to Kings Street in Newtown requires an act of suppression. Streets must be removed, buildings ignored—the very real things that link the journey between the two have no place in the story, because they do not hold any narrative importance. To include them would be to create a disruption in the narrative as well as significantly increase the size of the novel.

With synecdoche and asyndeton managing the structural formation of A Year in the City, the reader’s journey through each chapter is enacted in the discourse of walking that de Certeau introduces. De Certeau connects the process of navigating the city to three terms: the present, the discrete, and the “phatic”. I will describe how the three work in prose using Peter Carey’s 30

Days in Sydney and A Year in the City. Firstly, the present is connected to the path that an individual walks. De Certeau describes it as:

A spatial order [that] organizes an ensemble of possibilities (e.g., by a place in which one

can move) and interdictions (e.g., by a wall that prevents one from going further), then

the walker actualizes some of these possibilities. In that way, he makes them exist as well

as emerge.79

For de Certeau, the present is the order of directions that the individual uses to make a path. For that specific period of time, the individual knows only that part of the city. In Carey’s 30 Days in

Sydney, Sheridan takes the character Carey along Parramatta Road while traveling to the Blue

Mountains. Sheridan acknowledges that it is the longer path, but he takes it because, to him, it is

“the city’s spine.”80 This route offers a different awareness of Sydney than that which Carey has experienced before and, uncomfortable now, Carey notes that is not an attractive drive.81

Parramatta Road runs like a spine through A Year in the City as well, but it is not experienced as Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 in Carey’s narrative. For Carey, Parramatta Road is only a spinal column, and he is not concerned with the surrounding organs and flesh. In my own novel, Parramatta Road is not mentioned, but the spatial organisation of the chapters branches out from the real physical presence of the road, creating a different awareness of the city than the one that Carey has detailed.

Parramatta Road is condemned by Carey. It is too dirty, too ugly for his book about

Sydney and, even though, through the mouthpiece of Sheridan, the author notes that this is the geographical centre of the city, he has no love for it. In his way, Parramatta Road occupies the position of the “discrete”, which de Certeau describes as a part of the city condemned to “inertia or disappearance” described by “spatial ‘turns of phrase’ that are ‘rare,’ ‘accidental’ or

‘illegitimate’.”82 Carey is driving down Parramatta Road, but his reaction is comparable to that of a person who, when walking, avoids a street where he or she was assaulted. The event of violence ensures that the street contains the memory, but it also means that it will be avoided, even if the individual is required to walk a longer path. Ahead of Carey, the Blue Mountains offer an image of sanctuary, described as “exceedingly blue with all those millions of drops of eucalyptus oil refracting the sunlight.”83 In A Year in the City, the North Shore occupies the discrete position, as none of the narratives take place there. It has been done deliberately to keep the novel of manageable size, but also because the North Shore is not important in my imagined city—it has been suppressed in an act of asyndeton in the larger image of Sydney. The North

Shore sits on the horizon, a social and economic class level outside my own, and one that I would not know how to accurately portray.

For de Certeau, the third aspect of navigating the city, the phatic, positions the individual in the present and the discrete. It is based on the relationship that the individual—the “I”—has to here and there: Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

The fact that the adverbs here and there are the indicators of the locutionary seat in verbal

communication—a coincidence that reinforces the parallelism between linguistic and

pedestrian enunciation—we must add that this location (here—there) (necessarily implied

by walking and indicative of a present appropriation of space by an “I”) also has the

function of introducing an other in relation to this “I” and of thus establishing a

conjunctive and disjunctive articulation of places.84

For de Certeau, the phatic is the link between the present and the discrete, and functions to bring together these two aspects when traveling through the city. A street marks the direction of an individual, but the absence of another street is also important in defining the world around him or her. In both Carey’s 30 Days in Sydney and my A Year in the City, it is both the reader and the author who occupy the phatic: the map of Sydney that is presented is the author’s, and what is experienced and what is not has been decided by each author. The reader, however, also occupies this space, for it is only through them that the discrete can be known. It is a combination with this absence and the reader experiencing the novel that the full image of Sydney is created at the end.

The Author in the City.

If Michel de Certeau’s analysis of spatial practice has lead to the mosaic structure of the novel, and the reader and author occupy the phatic position, then what else does the author in the phatic position need to successfully convey a city? My answer, as the author of A Year in the City, is that the city needs to be presented as a knowable object, as an experience that the reader can connect with. Much of this concern is expressed in Walter Benjamin’s concept of the flaneur. For

Benjamin, when the flaneur encountered the city, he “looked around as if in a diorama.”85 The Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 flaneur is alienated from the view before him, but rather regards the city with an intimacy that is more commonly associated with “home”:

The street becomes a dwelling for the flaneur; he is as much at home among the facades

of the houses as a citizen is in his four walls. To him the shiny enameled signs of

businesses are at least as good a wall ornament as an oil painting (change) is to the

bourgeois in his salon.86

To Benjamin’s flaneur, the city is rendered a known subject. It is read as a textual object that can be deciphered and coded and understood by the reader and author. The frightening, foreboding image of a large, external and uncontrollable creature that the city is often seen as, is stripped away. The city is intimate: a home, a sanctuary. The city, in the experience of the flaneur, is

“removed from the profane eyes of non-owners.”87 The city embraces both the flaneur and the reader as part of it.

Traditionally the flaneur is an idle figure, “a man of leisure,”88 who, in his day-to-day experience of living in the city, would have liked “to have the turtles set the pace.”89 The flaneur is in no hurry: he does not need to be at a certain place at a certain time; he has no concerns for his safety, does not worry about money, or weather. The flaneur was a wanderer. In this aspect, the flaneur is an image suited to me as the author of A Year in the City, for I am not in a rush to reach a destination. Indeed, in the novel there is no climactic destination, such as in a quest or search narrative, for example, in detective fiction where a killer must be found before they escape. Rather, A Year in the City lingers on the formation of the characters that populate my imagined Sydney. The idleness of the flaneur is also suited to my writing, for within that idleness is a watchfulness and each chapter represents the flaneur/narrator watching the crowd and detailing their actions in an act that, for both flaneur and narrator, reveals the joy of watching.90 Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

For Benjamin, “the social base of flanerie is journalism.”91 Watching the crowd, studying it, and then reporting on it are important factors for the flaneur. These practices, for Graeme

Gilloch, make the flaneur a gossip.92 While the flaneur can produce writing that is nothing but gossip, reporting on who is with who, and where they went, it should not be reduced to gossip only. The end product of the flaneur’s practice, whether it is gossip, or “experience” and “not knowledge”93 as Edmund White notes, is up to the flaneur.

The flaneur watches the crowd in the city. He is on a quest to understand it, to experience it, to understand the city in a way not previously done. The crowd is the second half of the city and without it, the city is just concrete and empty pathways. It is not difficult to understand why detective fiction became important to Benjamin, for the nature of the detective is to find a truth in a group of individuals, to reach an intimate understanding of the situation by knowing the motivations of those around him or her. The path to understanding is traced through a series of different men, women, and children, thus creating a crowd in the background of the novel that has a shared history, and one in which the detective must use his or her observation skills. There is no clearer example of the connection between the flaneur and the detective, than that of Sir

Conan Arthur Doyle’s creation, Sherlock Holmes. In “A Scandal in Bohemia”, for example, he greets his assistant (and narrator), Watson, after the latter has arrived, and remarks, accurately, on the pursuits of his absent friend has been involved in:

‘It is simplicity itself,’ said he; ‘my eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe, just

where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously

they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of

the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction

that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-

slitting specimen of the London slavery. As to your practice, if a gentleman walks into

my rooms smelling of iodoform, with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his right Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

forefinger, and a bulge on the side of his top hat to show where he has secreted his

stethoscope, I must be dull indeed if I do not pronounce him to be an active member of

the medical profession.’94

The traits of the flaneur are immediate: with his analytical eye, Holmes presents Watson’s profession and home life to the reader. He is a doctor, well enough off that he has his boots cleaned by those in the proletariat and, in addition, he has recently returned to active practice.

For the reader, Watson is rendered an understandable, sympathetic character that they are at home with, while Holmes, with his drug habit and isolation from society, remains the true mystery because Watson cannot perform such an evaluation on him. It is not anonymity, but rather mystery that surrounds Holmes. That puts Holmes at odds with Benjamin’s flaneur, who is characterised by anonymity.95 While Holmes is capable of changing his identity so that attention is not drawn to him, he lacks true anonymity, for the story returns to him and his individuality.

Benjamin, however, raises the problematic issue of the flaneur’s anonymity by using Poe’s “The

Man in the Crowd”. Poe strips away the intruding elements of the crime, so that “only the armature remains: the pursuer, the crowd, and an unknown man who manages to walk through

London in such a way that he always remains in the middle of the crowd. This unknown man is the flaneur.”96 In contradiction to this, Benjamin believes that the flaneur retains his individuality,97 and that when he loses it, he becomes instead known as a baduad, which is defined as an “onlooker” or “rubberneck”.98 By referencing Poe’s “Man in the Crowd”, however,

Benjamin introduces the contradiction into his discourse, for the narrator of Poe’s story does lose his individuality in the crowd which is the subject of his pursuit. He becomes the “the anonymous consumer who enters a café and will shortly leave it again,”99 and we learn nothing of him in the narrative. He is not just anonymous: he is characterless, lacking proper definition, and contributes nothing to the world around him, and it is for this reason that Gilloch writes that the flaneur “must on no account be equated with ‘Man of the Crowd’.”100 Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2

Although I do not disagree with Gilloch completely, I believe he is wrong to dismiss

“The Man in the Crowd”. I agree that the reader never becomes intimate with the narrator and never understands the man in the crowd, because the narrator admits, in defeat, at the end that, “it will be in vain to follow; for I shall learn no more of him, nor of his deeds.”101 Despite this, however, Poe’s story does present the reader with one of the most important facets of the flaneur: that the city becomes an intimate and knowable subject under his gaze. In A Year in the City, the flaneur does not occupy the position of a character, such as in Poe’s story. The flaneur is the author and the city is a personal one and, in this, there is no anonymity.

For Benjamin, the flaneur is aware of the personalised history associated with the city.

The city is a keeper of memories, which, for the flaneur, are not those of a tourist. It is not organised tours, shopping adventures, or experiences in museums that define the memories of the flaneur. Instead, it is the plain street along which he walks to the train station; it is a car accident he witnessed, or the theatre where a date took place. The flaneur’s memories of a city, when written, have more “in common with memoirs.”102 Despite this, however, Benjamin notes that not every memory connected to the city will have a personalised association with the flaneur.

“For him,” Benjamin writes, “every street is precipitous. It leads downward—if not to the mythical mothers, then into a past that can be all the more spellbinding because it is not his own, not private.”103 A Year in the City is, then, not a memoir. Though it is formed from my own imagined city, formed from a mix of experiences the real city, and images and narratives I have found in relation to it, it does not aim to tell my life. Occupying the position of the flaneur assures that the image presented of Sydney does not speak of my own individual life, but rather aims to introduce the reader the city that I experience, and to make it knowable to him or her.

In this, the flaneur position that I occupy is also the position of the psychogeographer, whose aims is to disturb the everyday knowledge and experience of the individual in the city.

Iain Sinclair notes this desire at the beginning of Lights Out of the Territory, when he writes that his goal is “to cut a crude V into the sprawl of the city, to vandalise dormant energies by an act of Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 2 ambulant signmaking.”104 Sinclair’s use of the word “vandalise” signals his intent to overwrite the individual’s knowledge of the city with his own. Sinclair’s portrayal of London is one that is laced with cynical, black humour that leaves no doubt of the personal nature of the city to him:

The tagger, the specialist who leaves his mark on a wall, is a hit and run calligrapher—

probably young, MTV-grazing and male. His art is nomadic, a matter of quality not

quantity. As often as not, the deed is carried out on the way back from a club in the early

hours of the morning; the announcement of a jagged progress across home territory…

The pseudonymous signature is rapidly perfected: Soxi, Coe, Sub, Hemp. Standards are

rather more demanding than in Bond Street. Earlier efforts, already in place, if they are

deemed inadequate, will be deleted with a single stroke. White boy business. Middle-

class cultural diffusionism. The walls that have been set aside as open-air galleries, sites

where aerosol activity is encouraged or at least tolerated, don’t cut it… Battles are not

territorial; the climate here is clubbish, mildly hallucinogenic. Inner-city impressionists

who have moved on from the posthumous representation of light and pleasure.

Everything happens in the present tense. No history, no future.105

Here, Sinclair characterises a type of person in London, which he links to issues of cultural isolation from middle-class affluence, youth apathy, and a desire to leave a mark in a society that is becoming increasingly impersonal and anonymous. Sinclair takes a simple event like tagging, and links it to a clubbing subculture and the lives of modern youth.

Sinclair does not want to present a normal world. Truth, he notes, was never the point:

“Such autobiography as I want to deliver comes through portraiture, exaggeration, caricature.

The city as a darker self, a theatre of possibilities in which I can audition lives that never happened.”106 Here, Sinclair’s psychogeography returns to the genre of memoir that Benjamin discussed. In his work it emerges strongly in the reoccurrence of his friends who both define Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

London and Sinclair’s own life. The author and magician Alan Moore appears in Liquid City with “a scrying mirror and conjuror’s kit of angelic tables, books of the law, cabalistic treatises.”107 Here, Moore becomes the journey. In London Orbital, Moore’s novel, Voice of the

Fire, is referenced in relation to “pigs and pig gods.”108 And yet a third time, Moore appears in

Edge of the Orison, where he acts as a guide through Northhampton, which he has turned into “a monologue or graphic script”109 through his work. The reader learns as much about London as he or she does about Sinclair in each of his books. His vision, while twisted, half truthed, and a self- defined act of vandalism, is always autobiographical. It goes beyond the personal vision that I have expressed in A Year in the City, but Sinclair’s act of vandalism—his decision to overwrite the individual’s experience of the city with his own—is similar to what I have done in the novel.

It is not an objective image of the city—it seeks, in part, to change the way the reader views the city and the people within it, and is thus always subjective.

While A Year in the City aims to be an act of vandalism in the real city, it also aims to produce an intimate, knowable imagined city that the reader can understand. The question that remains, however, is: what, then, in the mosaic structure of emphasis and suppression, where I have purposefully not made the city alienating, do I want to make knowable? It has not been enough for me to simply reproduce my imagined image of Sydney without a thematic concern, and it is here that the vandalism that Sinclair creates is found in A Year in the City. My vision of

Sydney aims to overwrite both the real city and the imagined city. In addition, is the final structural choice to make the individual chapters cohesive. This produces a Mongrel City. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

The Mongrel City.

Mark Twain dreams of the future in A Year in the City. Positioned at the end of the 19th Century, he dreams of a city at the start of the 21st. He dreams of a world where the boundaries that divide country from country are crossed by flesh, by phone line and by the internet. It is a world where borders are under threat. It is the multicultural world. Up until now, this dissertation has been focused on the concerns and influences relating to the city that surrounded me with during the writing of A Year in the City. I have discussed the formation of my imagined world, the concern with capturing lived experience in prose, and the creation of a mosaic structure that would guide the reader while also mirroring the fractured nature of the city. Now, however, I want to turn to the thematic concern of A Year in the City: race. It is through my interest in racial representation that the individual narrators are brought together in the form of a novel, rather than left separate, diverse, and scattered in a design more fitting to a collection of short fiction. Indeed, the reader can, in fact, experience A Year in the City as a collection of short stories, and may read each of the chapters as separate, stand-alone stories, apart from the two that feature Mark Twain, “The

Dreaming City, Part One” and “The Dreaming City, Part Two”. It has always been my intention, however, to write a novel that was read sequentially, that reached a conclusion, and that was considered a whole, rather than individual pieces. I have sought to do this through a number of techniques outside those already discussed. These techniques include footnote narratives, recurring images and sequential imagery, but the strongest unifier in A Year in the City is the theme of race.

The theme of race returns me to the work of James Donald. In Imagining the Modern

City, Donald argues that within each individual there is a personalised city that organises the individual’s understanding of the real city. It is from this personal, imagined city that the theme Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 of race has emerged in A Year in the City. I have made it a goal to show a multicultural city in a complex, ambiguous, but ultimately positive light. I have been following the thematic pattern laid out by Salman Rushdie in The Satanic Verses, and I have made it my aim to present the

Sydney of A Year in the City as a city of hybridity, a Mongrel City. Leonie Sandercock, also following in the footsteps of Rushdie, defined the Mongrel City in the opening of Cosmopolis 2:

I will use the metaphor of the mongrel city to characterize this new urban condition in

which difference, otherness, fragmentation, splintering, multiplicity, heterogeneity,

diversity, plurality prevail. For some this is to be feared, signifying the decline of

civilization as we know it in the West. For others (like Rushdie and myself) it is to be

celebrated as a great possibility: the possibility of living alongside others who are

different, learning from them, creating new worlds with them, instead of fearing them.110

The term “Mongrel City” is deliberately confronting. It attacks the idea of purity, focusing in particular on white purity, and gives it an undesirable status, elevating the mongrel to the preferred status of being. The mongrel, a term associated with dogs, is used to define a dog who has bred outside the watchful gaze of a breeder and has lost its singular bloodline. The mongrel is, to the eye of those who assign worth, an ugly creature, the wrong combination of colours and shapes. It is an unwanted animal, found roaming the streets: a stray that could turn wild. By removing the term from its negative connotations, the word “mongrel” questions the value of white purity. The term thus has particular resonance for whites as it challenges white supremacy.

To deny association with the Mongrel City is to align oneself with the Monoculture City, which is built upon the ideas of singularity and white racial purity. To align yourself with such an agenda is to look backwards to the White Australia policies and laws that attempted to shore up the white nation and protect its British heritage and bloodlines. To support the Monoculture City, then, is to subscribe to the phobia of racism. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

The term “Mongrel City” is more evocative, for my purposes, than Sandercock’s original

1998 term, “Cosmopolis”. The latter was coined to define a utopian goal, an imagined environment in which “there is a genuine connection with, and respect and space for, the cultural

Other, and the possibility of working together on matters of common destiny, a recognition of intertwined fates.”111 The term “Cosmopolis” has been formed from the word “cosmopolitan”, a word that is used to describe a person (or people) who are knowledgeable about, and experienced in, different cultures in the world. It is, however, a word that has always struck me as being one that also implies a certain amount of middle class mobility: to be cosmopolitan, the individual must have the means to move around the globe and, to my mind, this person is well educated, and with financial means. Cosmopolis is the perfect word for Sandercock’s utopia, for it is a bloodless, polite word, born out of the upper-middle class, and completely impractical and unachievable, as many utopian goals are. The multicultural city is not a refined lifestyle choice. It is, instead, a dirty, sometimes physically violent, other times emotionally bloody city. It is a city of power asymmetries and social injustice. It is a city that is fractured, scarred, and stitched back together as if Dr. Frankenstein were creating the world, hovering over us as he did his monster, building it from pieces that twitched and moaned beneath his needle and thread, with the mismatched eyes watching his labours intently. In my experience of living in Sydney, multiculturalism is both feared and embraced, and it has been my goal to represent the imagined

Sydney in A Year in the City as a place of conflicting beliefs, values and practices.

My experience of Sydney is not one of racial harmony seven days of the week, twenty- four hours a day. Race in the novel is used to portray the violent actions of individuals, and the denial of basic rights to minority peoples. Race in Sydney is in a relationship of conflict: representations of race are at times violent and damaging and always informed by social and economic inequity. Explaining this conflict better than I, Richard Dyer writes:

Racial imagery is central to the organization of the modern world. At what cost regions Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

and countries export their goods, whose voices are listened to at international gatherings,

who bombs and who is bombed, who gets what jobs, housing, access to health care and

education, what cultural activities are subsidized and sold, in what terms they are

validated—these are all largely inextricable from racial imagery. The myriad minute

decisions that constitute the practices of the world are at every point informed by

judgments about people’s capacities and worth, judgments based on what they look like,

where they come from, how they speak, even what they eat.112

Everyone has experienced this, either from the realisation that being white in a Western country endows one with privilege and entitlement, or from experiencing its direct opposite as non-white individuals. The example that occurs to my mind comes from my trips over the last five years to

Centrelink. Every four months I have had to go into the Family Planning office of Blacktown

Centrelink to renew my Low Income Healthcare Card. The office is filled with open cubicles and there is a pale brown front desk in the centre that everyone is required to line up at to be served.

The staff of the office is racially mixed: white, Indian, Asian and Indigenous. Each share the common trait of all Centrelink staff: they are stubbornly unhelpful. They serve an equally diverse group of people that live in Blacktown: white, Indian, Asian, Samoan and Indigenous, among others. The Family Planning office, for the very reasons that people find themselves there, is not a friendly environment. The staff do not laugh and joke with the people who come in and vice versa. What struck me immediately, however, was that all the posters and pamphlets around the office were of smiling people, and that not one of these people were white. There was a smiling

Aboriginal family on the wall next to the sliding glass doors and a smiling Indian woman on the pamphlet in the rack. Through either purposeful design or being thoughtless, there were no white people in the Family Planning advertisements. This lack of white people spoke to a subtle, unacknowledged expectation that the clients would be non-white men and women. It would be Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 non-white men and women who were poor and in need of Government help. It was expected that they would be in the majority, while I, a representative of white Australia, would be the minority.

Although race no longer holds any validity as a scientific concept, it still impacts on the belief systems within the nation. Describing this, Toni Morrison writes:

Race has become metaphorical—a way of referring to and disguising forces, events,

classes, and expressions of social decay and economic division far more threatening to

the body politic than biological ‘race’ ever was.113

Earlier, James Donald noted how the diseased body was used to describe the city and the conflict of class and economy within it. Likewise, the racial body can also be used to represent the class divisions within a city, with blackness being linked to poor standards of living, a lack of education. The coded body of the other can also be used fictionally to convey the lived experience of racial difference. In Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, the central characters, Saladin

Chamcha and Gibreel Farishta, are turned into metaphors of a thematic dialogue between their cultural locations in each of their adopted countries and the one they were born in. Chamcha, who was born in India and grew up in Bombay, but moved to London and married a “white”114

English woman, is transformed into the devil:

Chamcha had grown to a height of over eight feet, and from his nostrils there emerged

smoke of two different colours, yellow from the left, and from the right, black. He was no

longer wearing clothes. His bodily hair had grown thick and long, his tail was swishing

angrily, his eyes were a pale but luminous red, and he had succeeded in terrifying the

entire temporary population of the bed and breakfast establishment to the point of

incoherence.115 Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

Chamcha’s literal change into the devil comes about because he has forsaken the country of his birth and become a migrant, and no matter how much he does not wish to be associated with his

Indian heritage, he cannot escape being associated with it in London. In juxtaposition, Gibreel, whose name echoes that of Gabriel, is turned into an angel:

Then the strange held the trumpet up over his head and shouted I name this trumpet

Azraeel, the Last Trump, the Exterminator of Men!—and we just stood there, I tell you,

turned to stone, because all around the fucking insane, certifiable bastard’s head there

was this bright glow, you know?, streaming out, like, from a point behind his head.

A halo.116

Gibreel, the “biggest star in the history of the Indian movies,”117 is a less moral character than

Chamcha but, because he has not left India in pursuit of a new life and has remained culturally pure and connected to the country of his birth, he becomes an angel. Here, Rushdie uses the devil and angel metaphors to engage the reader in a conversation about national reactions to immigrants and non-immigrants.

In A Year in the City I have taken a similar approach to representing race. Due to the size of my cast, however, I have determined not to make any of the characters representations of a particular race, or figureheads in a racial debate. No one character metaphorically speaks for a group as Chamcha does. Instead, I have elected to tie the theme of race to land ownership, immigration, and belonging in a white dominated city. The racial conflicts that take place within the city happen on the invisible borders within the imagined white nation. That is why, in “The

Hard Goodbye”, Tarek Zaarour reacts badly to his brother’s change in prison. He believes that

Michael has given up his Lebanese heritage and replaced it with an “Australian” one. Michael, in response, views Tarek as identifying too much with Lebanese heritage: he points out that his Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 brother has never been to Lebanon and can make no claim to it. What they have in common is that they both form their opinions against a dominant white culture that neither character sees himself as belonging to. It is against this backdrop of whiteness that the theme of race in A Year in the City has been developed. When I write about Sydney as a Mongrel City, it is about a city that has had its creation in white culture and the dispossession of Indigenous people. Being non- white in Sydney has consequences.

The Blanc Citizen in the Blanc City.

Writing about Sydney has meant that I have been writing about a city that is, first and foremost, a white city. Built upon invaded land by the British, it was created to serve a penal colony for the outcasts of British society, and was named after a white British man in an act that Tim Flannery dismisses as “political brown-nosing,” as the man “was an incompetent bureaucrat, unequal to the most ordinary duties of his office.”118 In addition to this history, the city has, as Tamara

Winikoff writes, been “designed on a British colonial model until the advent of international modernism in the twentieth century with its cultural source in urban America.”119 Sydney, therefore, has been formed by whiteness in name and design, through its population and culture is, not surprisingly, predominantly white. To be Australian, as Toni Morrison notes with the word American, means to be white.120 The racial implications are deep within the word, removing any perceived need for a prefix or suffix. When an immigrant individual is referred to as Australian, however, a second word is added, such as “Asian” in Asian-Australian. The conflict of non-white people with whiteness is present at all times in the word. I have seen it expressed the most in the students that I teach in creative writing. In the course that I have taught in for the past four years, there has been a task where the students are asked to write about their experience with whiteness, or being white. Each year I have had Asian students, and each year, at Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 least one of them will describe him or herself as a banana: yellow on the outside, white on the inside. Yellow to convey the skin colour inherited from their Asian genes, white to convey the

Australian culture that they have been brought up in and feel part of. It is a culture that they feel disconnected from because of its whiteness. It is a conflict that ends with the Australian-born individual adding the word “Asian” in front, using hyphens much in the way that minority people use hyphens to describe themselves in America.121 The result of this hyphening is to reinforce the white association of the word “Australian” and to sustain the cultural weightlessness of whiteness. To be just Australian recalls the French word “blanc”, which means both “white” and

“blank”. To be Australian is to be like a blank page: complete, but altered instantly when another colour is applied to it, its so-called purity and completeness lost, and replaced with an entirely different page that is part Australian, and part something else.

The connection of whiteness to a cultural emptiness is not an idea found only in

Australia. The lack of cultural weight in whiteness is characteristic of all Western countries and arises, as Richard Dyer notes, because of the portrayal of “white people [as] just people.”122 This cultural blankness was my first concern when writing about the Mongrel City, because, just as representing minority people such as Asians and Indigenous people was important to me, it was equally important to represent whiteness. Dyer elaborates upon this problem:

Whites are everywhere in representation. Yet precisely because of this and their placing

as norm they seem not to be represented to themselves as whites but as people who are

variously gendered, classed, sexualized and abled. At the level of racial representation, in

other words, whites are not of a certain race, they’re just the human race.123

In the perfect world, I would be able to write about all races as if they were “just” human.

However, since the Mongrel city is built out of the interaction of race and culture, and because I cannot remove the meanings associated with non-white individuals, my choice has been to create Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 a weight for whiteness in A Year in the City and to make it a similar weight to being non-white, in the hope that non-white people will, in the end, be viewed as people who can also be identified by jobs, sexuality, gender, and traits other than race. However, my intention is also to bring attention to the fact that there is not a level playing-field and to the difference in how “the Other” is portrayed in the media.

This is an ethical issue related to my position as a white author, and the position of power

I occupy in this space. I run the risk, however good my intentions are, of creating a form of

“Orientalism”. Edward Said wrote that “Orientalism” was “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.”124 It could be argued, then, that from my position of power, I am creating only a new white authoritative portrayal of minorities, which results in a representation that is both incorrect and damaging. Domineering, white power portrayals are everywhere in existence. In relation to Indigenous culture, Tony Birch writes that the portrayal of Koori culture in tourism has resulted in it being viewed as “a product that can be altered and represented in an acceptable form, as a commodity, but [one] that has little or no intrinsic value.”125 Lost is the complexity, range, and diversity of the culture as it is turned into “a superficial appropriation of the Indigenous culture.”126

Here, the despair that Henri Lefebvre discussed when trying to write about the lived experience in the city returns. It is a despair about being a white author who wants to represent the lived experience of a minority. How to correctly and ethically represent becomes the question, and there is no easy answer. The safe response, as authors who are older, who are younger, and who have published more and less that I, have suggested, is to not write about minorities. By this, I imagine, they do not mean to have a cast that consists of straight, white characters who are predominantly male but, rather, that I should not have non-straight, non- white, non-male characters as my protagonists. It is fine if a female minority character is a love interest, if a black character is that of a wise man or woman, or the gay character helps the straight male protagonist meet women. It is a choice that I cannot help but ridicule in my fellow Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 authors, because it is safe. It is easy. It does not take risks. It does not open the author to failure.

In my own belief as an author, that good writing comes out of taking risks, out of challenging your limitations, your knowledge, and your safety. What is more, when other white authors inform me that they will not write about minorities, they contribute, through their inaction, to the already existing stereotypic representations of minorities which have been created, in relation to the media, to draw in viewers, and sell newspapers. Nevertheless, it is also true, as I have mentioned, that the white author, writing from his/her position of power, can also be creating a new form of “Orientalism”, and this is also unacceptable. As Jackie Huggins writes, she

“detest[s] the imposition that anyone who is non-Aboriginal can define my Aboriginality for me and my race.”127 The continuing domination of minority people by mainstream representations is destructive and this is where the despair arises from, for how does the white author then sit down to write minority characters?

I do not have a formula for success. I doubt there is one. In A Year in the City I want to represent a multicultural city, because that is my experience, and if I were to allow the despair over representation to control my writing, it would become a form of paralysis and result in silence. I would not, then, be writing a multicultural city—I would be writing a monoculture city, where my silence was a contribution to the already existing stereotypes surrounding minority portrayals. My way of navigating this despair, then, has been to approach the portrayals of characters through the portrayal of whiteness.

There is a blankness in the quality of whiteness that is found readily in the fiction of white, Western authors. Here, whiteness as a description of race is rarely used. This lack of description is an example of white people not recognising their own racial weight and demonstrates the freedom in being white that Dyer mentioned. It is common to find whiteness noted from the point of view of a character who is not white, and who recognises their own race because it is juxtaposed with the dominant white culture. In ZZ Packer’s story “Brownies”, a

Brownie Troop decides to “kick the asses of each and every girl in Brownie Troop 909.”128 They Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 were targeted because, as the narrator explains, the other girls were white: “Their complexions a blend of ice cream: strawberry and vanilla.”129 Though the narrator does not describe the girls as black in the story, the weight of their skin colour can be felt from the beginning. The title

“Brownies” no longer means a group of girls who have joined a youth social group, but rather it conveys the skin colour of the girls. In this context, “Brownies” is not a pleasant word, and has connotations of dirtiness and ugliness, which Packer uses to make a comment on how she views the black girls’ racism. It is also used to explain how the black girls see themselves in relation to the white girls. The narrator notes how the long, straight hair of the white girls was, alone,

“reason for envy and hatred.”130 Most telling about the race of the characters is that the girls are noticing the whiteness of the other girls. The simple act of noticing is a weight that identifies non-whiteness in the narrative. This awareness is not only limited to non-white characters being defined against white characters, but also in the fact that non-white characters are aware of the race in other non-white characters.

At the end of Packer’s story, when the Brownie Troop have confronted the white girls and failed to entice them into a fight because the white girls are mentally disabled, Packer examines the cause of their antagonism. To do this, she has the narrator speak about the day white Mennonites painted the porch for her father for free. When asked why her father would want his porch painted, the narrator repeats his words:

“He said,” I began, only then understanding the words as they uncoiled from my mouth,

“it was the only time he’d have a white man on his knees doing something for a black

man for free.”131

Here a black character is aware of his blackness. His blackness is, in fact, his motivation, and the motivation for the girls. This racial motivation can be found in a white character. It is not difficult to imagine a group of white Brownies picking on a group of black Brownies for the Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 same reasons as in Packer’s story. However, it is difficult to imagine a white author creating a white character that said, “It was the only time I’d see a black man on his knees for a white man.” It is politically incorrect, yes, but the attitude does exist and is expressed, but when it is, such an awareness of whiteness in the white character of his/her race would not be so knowingly expressed and identified as a motivation as it is at the end of Packer’s “Brownies”.

Whiteness, however, is not entirely weightless. It does manifest itself in stories about white characters, but its cause is often from a cross-cultural experience. This can occur when an object or custom that is traditionally associated with the non-white character is encountered and this causes, in the white character, an awareness of whiteness. An example of this can be found in Mandy Sayer’s short story “Scarlet”. The story is a reworking of Little Red Riding Hood, set on the streets of Kings Cross. In it, Scarlet, who occupies the narrative position of Red Riding

Hood, is the daughter of a drug dealing and drug-using mother. One night when her mother has passed out, she receives a call from her transvestite grandfather, also a drug user and desperate for a hit, and she agrees to take him the drugs. To do so, she must go through the Cross, and it is here that Scarlet encounters whiteness:

She could smell stale urine as she passed the railway station. A white man lay in the

entranceway, his limbs wrapped around a long didgeridoo, as if it were a lover. Scarlet

had often seen him there, coaxing howls and moans from the hollow piece of wood for

small change. One day she’d noticed he’d darkened his skin with make-up, and figured he

was trying to pass as an Aboriginal in order to increase his tips. Now he was asleep, a big

wet patch rising through the crotch of his jeans.

“What’s the S stand for?” asked a drunk outside the Capital Hotel. “Sexy?” He

threw his cigarette down and shot her a lewd grin.132

Whiteness is noticeable because of the didgeridoo, which is part of Aboriginal culture. At the end Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 of the section, however, the drunk is not described racially; nor are the two firemen who tip

“their helmets”133 to Scarlet as she passes later. The reader understands that all three, like the man with the didgeridoo, are white. It is only when whiteness is placed next to an item associated with another culture, that the character’s whiteness has a weight. The question, however, is why?

The description contributes to the sense of desperation that Sayer uses to characterise the Cross.

The white man who “blacked-up” his skin to be Aboriginal is ethically dubious, but there is more happening within this moment. Without the whiteness of the character noted in the description,

Sayer’s figure sitting with a didgeridoo would be read as an Aboriginal man, representative of

Aboriginal people in the Cross. His whiteness, however, is suddenly visible. He is the only character in the story to be described as “white”, the only character for whom being white is significant, but this is because he is trying to pass for a non-white individual. At this moment, whiteness has weight.

For the rest of the story, however, whiteness is unnoticed. It is a world that has been created from a white world image.134 Thus, whiteness is unnoticed, forgotten, no longer a descriptive act. This is something that I am guilty of myself as recently as 2004, when the novelette, “The Dreaming City” was published (it was written, however, in 2003). “The

Dreaming City” is a different version of the opening chapter “The Dreaming City, Part One”, and offers an alternate history of Australia that is mixed with real historical events. In the opening section of story, however, I describe Mark Twain as a “small, grey haired man”135 with no description of his whiteness. Shortly after, however, I refer to Pemulwy as “the scarred, black skinned Eora warrior.”136 Developing an awareness of this in my own writing as well as the writing around me, has been the first step in creating the Mongrel City in A Year in the City. This has resulted in the decision to give whiteness a mongrel weight in the narrative, to explore the relationship of whites to multicultural Australia, the relationship of whites to a colonial history of terror, and to their own white power. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

It Was Stolen Once, You Know.

It was not a difficult decision to connect race to land ownership in a Year in the City. In the history of Sydney (and Australia) land ownership has always been an important issue. As John

Birmingham notes with the Rum Rebellion, the riot wasn’t about rum at all, but land rights: the rioters were reacting to Bligh’s attempts “to seize their precious harbourside homes.”137 In more recent years, the right to own parts of Sydney has been a point of conflict throughout history, influencing “the green bans of the 1970s [and] the violent anti-eviction campaigns of the

Depression.”138 Behind this conflict exists a colonial history where land ownership has been viewed as a natural extension of white people.

This view has been formed out of the myth of terra nullis, where “the entire continent

[Australia] was perceived to be empty of meaningful human occupation.”139 The Indigenous people living on the land before British occupation described as “savages who did not exploit the land to its potential”140 and thus had no right to occupy it. It is a ridiculous concept, especially given that the so called “civilised” people were using the land as a prison. However, the myth of terra nullis lingers in Australia Day, where the “founding” of the nation is celebrated, as if it were empty and pristine before the British arrived, waiting for a fleet of unwanted criminals. The portrayal of Aboriginal people in mainstream representation, however, has changed. As Michael

Dodson writes, Aboriginal people were either portrayed, historically, as “the noble, well-built native: heroic, bearded, loin-clothed, one foot up, vigilant, with a boomerang at the ready,” or, presently, as “bent, distorted, overweight, inebriated, with a bottle in one hand,” and “ochred, spiritual, and playing the didjeridu behind the heroic travels of a black Landcruiser.”141 A mix, it appears, of Crocodile Dundee and Ray Martin’s A Current Affair. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

What all these images lack is an awareness of how important land is to Aboriginal individuals and the Aboriginal community. Aileen Moreton-Robinson explains that the importance of land goes beyond a white understanding of ownership:

Indigenous people are the human manifestations of the land and creator beings, they carry

title to the land through and on their bodies. Thus the physicality of Indigenous people is

testimony to the existence of particular tracts of country. The relationship between people

and their country is synonymous and symbiotic.142

The images of the savage, the noble hunter, the drunk, and the spiritual being do not acknowledge this relationship, and thus do not acknowledge that, as Fabienne Bayet-Charlton writes, “without land there is no base for the structure of Aboriginal culture.”143 In contrast to

Moreton-Robinson’s explanation of land importance, and perhaps the reason why such a view has not readily spread, is the “unstated assumption that nature is white nature.”144 Kevin Deluca further explains:

‘White Wilderness’ highlights the history of the term, from the Bible through the

Enlightenment and the Romantics to mainstream environmentalists in the 20th Century

United States. It highlights who constructed and maintains such an ideograph, who

benefits, and who is excluded. For example, construction of ‘white nature’ and ‘white

wilderness’ is linked to the domination of nature and the positing of nature as an object to

white humanity’s subject… However, the domination of nature involves not only the

domination of external nature but also the domination of other humans and the

domination of one’s own inner nature. An obvious example is how the subjugation of the

native Americans was justified by defining them as savages of nature, not humans.145 Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

The immediate parallel can be made between Native Americans and Aboriginal people in

Australia. Both people have been portrayed as savages who did not use the land, and this idea gave rise to the myth of terra nullis. The myth is coupled with the view that those who came to

Australia not as convicts, but as settlers, were getting a second chance—as were the convicts after they had finished serving their time. With the land that both took over they could change their lives: they would be free from poverty and class struggle in a way that they would have been unable to establish in the country of their birth. Here, white land ownership merges with immigration to offer a second chance. This relationship with land is portrayed in Peter Carey’s

The Tax Inspector, especially with the character Frieda (Granny) Catchprice.

Granny Catchprice is the figurehead of the Catchprice family. Slowly going senile, she spends her time living in the memories of her past in Dorrigo, and dealing with the audit on the family business, Catchprice Motors. She views land as something that she can control, and something that, in its natural state, is a blank slate, and signals a new beginning. She carries around sticks of gelignite to represent this power over land and Indigenous sovereignty, and to also represent her belief that with the removal of unwanted growths, the land can be made clean again. The notion has been given to her by her father, who had planned to do this in Dorrigo to make the family a new home:

When the trees were dead he was going to blast their roots out of the earth with gelignite.

The ten acres he chose were surrounded by giant trees, by dramatic ravines, escarpments,

waterfalls. It was as romantic a landscape as something in a book of old engravings.

Within his own land he planned rolling lawns, formal borders, roses, carnations, dahlias,

hollyhocks, pansies, and a small ornamental lake.146

It is the expression of her father’s white domination of the land. He thinks nothing of killing trees Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 and replacing them with flowerbeds. He—like his daughter later—treats the land as if it were his by right. It is this same attitude that leads Granny Catchprice, at the end of the book and when her madness has been amplified by grief, to blow up Catchprice Motors with the gelignite that she owns. Here, she is removing the unwanted growth of Catchprice Motors, to return the land to a pure, fresh ground that she owns, and can begin building upon again.

Granny’s relationship with land influences her relationships with other characters. She believes that she can remake the life of the young, unemployed Armenian, Sarkis, by offering him a job. Her white view of land leads her to a white view of people. She believes it is her right to rescue other people, and to give them a clean slate to begin their life. Her white power allows her to overlook the past, to view Sarkis as if he were an object. Granny notes, for example, that

Sarkis lived on the “second piece of land that she had wanted to grow flowers on.”147 For

Granny, Sarkis, like the land, is something she can have a natural ownership over.

Richard Dyer, writing about America, notes a second connection to land. For him, land acts as a desired metaphor for the representation of the white body:

Thus too the land, as imagined, calls forth qualities of character, themselves carried in

physiognomy—the body of the white male (the person ‘of a certain kind’ who Tompkins

refers to), lean, sinewy, hard, taunt, the cowboy as white male ego ideal.148

For the non-white character, this weight of land connected to whiteness results in pressure to fashion oneself to fit the dominant image. In relation to the city, this is especially powerful. One of the most important aspects of white people living in the city is the belief that you are in control of your environment, that you define what happens, how and when. The creation of a city itself is an expression of this, for even the creation of buildings is subject to control, to managing the environment, to having something you own. In the non-white character, this can result in a conflict of identity that results in the individual trying to be more white. When Sarkis arrives at Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

Catchprice Motors to begin his job, he finds that in front of Cathy Catchprice, he alters himself to give the impression of being part of the white environment:

“Who are you?” she asked Sarkis. She looked both hurt and hostile and Sarkis’s strongest

desire was to turn away from all this poison and walk to the sane, cloves-sweet

environment of his home.

Instead he said something he had promised never to say again: “Hi, I’m Sam

Alaverdian.”149

Sarkis is forced to reinvent himself to fit into Granny Catchprice’s white world. His dislike in doing so is the dislike of conforming to white dominance; he feels he has given up his independence, and lost a part of himself, but retains his last name so that he is not completely remaking himself in the white world view.

The connection of whiteness to land ownership and the power to control is introduced at the beginning of A Year in the City. The spirit Cadi is responding to white dominance and power, which is why he requires Mark Twain. Cadi knows that white men have control over the land and are reshaping it in the image of Britishness, and he plans to use Twain to subvert this with an

American white power, while the story of Pemulwuy details the loss of Aboriginal control over the land. This conflict is present in the real Sydney. Brenda Croft writes about the change of real estate in Redfern, and notes that, before the change, Redfern had a strong community feel identified with, among other things, the Redfern Aboriginal Dance Theatre and Radio Redfern, which was also known as “Aboriginal Radio, with its call sign of ‘Makes your Black Heart burn!’.”150 As shown earlier in this discussion, Redfern has also been portrayed as a “violent ghetto”, which Kay J. Anderson traces back to 1973, when the Australian government set aside

Redfern for Aboriginal residential use. She writes that for “many White and some Black

Australians, Redfern promptly became a ‘slum’, a ‘ghetto’, with physical and social problems Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 wrought by racial tensions and the ‘breakdown’ of traditional Aboriginal culture in the city.”151

Brenda Croft, however, having moved into Redfern in 1985, focuses on how this “ghetto” was made even more pronounced, and the community element driven out, by the introduction of a freeway that split Redfern in two:

One side of which underwent extensive redevelopment—the right/white side—with the

old houses being snapped up and renovated, or replaced with rows of new townhouses

meant to evoke 19th century ‘heritage’ architecture. The side that was left—the

wrong/black side, the wrong side of the tracks literally—included Eveleigh Street and

effectively became a no-person’s land.152

The freeway was put in without regard for the Aboriginal community. It was an act of whiteness in relation to domination of the land. It assumed the ownership of the land by whites. The split of

Redfern resulted in the low income Aboriginal families on Eveleigh Street (which is also known as the Block and is community housing) being cornered off from the white development. On the other side of the freeway, where development took place, events like paying ten thousand dollars to have “two huge palm trees craned onto the roof”153 took place. In the narrative context of A

Year in the City this relationship between land and whiteness has resulted in a connection between the conflict of who has rights within the city and who doesn’t.

The Borderland People.

The white landscape is a controlled landscape. It arises from the sense of ownership discussed, but manifests itself, also, in the formation of borders. Richard Dyer writes:

White cultivation brings partition, geometry, boundedness to the land, it displays on the Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

land the fact of human intervention, of enterprise, the frontier, and all the drama and

excitement its establishment and maintenance entail, is about the act of bringing order in

the form of borders to a land and people without them.154

Dyer is noting this in relation to the establishment of whiteness in “new”, colonised land, but the argument can be made about the city. The city itself is a bordered city—its fragmented nature is created by the lives that individuals lead, with imagined and real borders erected by the same individuals, by governments, and under benign and malicious intentions, to bring order. These fragments can be known as “The Asian” section of the city, as Cabramatta is in Sydney, or “The

Greek” section, such as Norton Street. It is further created by a lifestyle that, through economics and state enticement, ensures that individual groups keep to different parts of the city. Deborah

Stevenson writes that, in these zones, it is rare, if ever, that whites “unexpectedly encounter the

‘other’.”155 In the Mongrel City, this process of border demarcation is not limited to a white and non-white divide. It crosses all racial groups and is formed, in part, by the arrival of migrants.

This arrival, Leonie Sandercock writes, “lead[s] eventually to the spatial restructuring of cities and regions, in which, sometimes the very presence of new ethnic groups is destabilizing of the existing social order.”156 The last part of Sandercock’s argument has a certain amount of paranoia with its suggestion that migrants “destabilise” communities. I would suggest, by contrast, that it is panic from a dominant white culture that creates a sense of “destabilisation”. It is, however, in these bordered areas that the conflict of the Mongrel City arises, because no matter how they are formed, these bordered existences are in conflict with the larger bordered voice of the dominant white culture. For Sandercock, these voices become Voices from the Borderland, which she describes voices “of the multicultural city… who have been marginalized, displaced, oppressed or dominated.”157 Here, however, Sandercock is at risk of implying that the idea of

“multicultural” means “ethnic other”, with whites not taking part. This is further suggested by her use of the “Voices from the Borderland” title. However, while I do not believe that this is Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

Sandercock’s intention—I believe she means to include whites—it is definitely my intention to include all people in the multicultural society.

Returning to the conflict, it can be argued that the borderland voices are often connected to the city in the same way that whiteness is connected to nature. By this, it is meant that “the other” is “natural” to the city, and that, in this case, white individuals want no part of it the intrusive, artificial way of life that the city is often connected to. Stevenson notes that the city was often viewed as “anonymous, unfriendly and superficial,” with its physical form acting as

“symbols of danger and the unknown.”158 Elaborating further, and comparing the rural way of life to the city, Stevenson writes:

Initially, cities were regarded as unpleasant and unnatural places, which were either to be

destroyed or rebuilt in the image of the country, and in this, early theorizing directly

compared the quality of life in the city to that of the (imagined) country. City life (as

gesellschaft) was regarded as superficial and impersonal while the country (gemeinschaft)

was celebrated as fostering positive and enduring relationships between close friends and

kinship groups.159

In the same way that the land and nature was linked to whiteness, the city becomes linked to the other. The city is strange, never fully knowable, lacking purity as a way of life. This idea grew in response to the utopia of living in the country, in touch with a real life. The city, being created, cannot be associated with nature and, thus, with the supposed naturalness of whiteness—despite the obvious contradiction of cities being designed by the white dominant culture. Rather than being a blankness that can be anything, as we see with ideas about nature, the city, from a developmental point view, is built over nature. A city has much in common with the non-white individual. Against whiteness, the non-white person is defined, as Toni Morrison notes with blacks, as “evil AND protective, rebellious AND forgiving, fearful AND desirable—all the self- Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 contradictory features of the self.”160 Like a non-white individual, a city is defined against nature.

A city is friendly; a city is dangerous; a city has a central business district; a city has a code of conduct. It is because of this that whiteness is more readily connected to undeveloped land, where undeveloped land has more in common with terra nullis, while the problems of multiculturalism are connected to that of the city, and the fragmented, bordered worlds that exists within it.

Sandercock’s Voices from the Borderlands are “the subjective voices of experience.”161

Like the Imagined City and the personalised map that the individual uses to navigate the city— just as all lived personal experience and consequences define experiences, so too are the borderland voices defined. In explaining this further, Sandercock identifies what she sees as the common area of conflict between the borderland voices and dominant voices, and that is in relation to the white individual’s self identity:

When a person’s self identity is insecure and fragile, doubts about that identity (and how

in relation to national identity may be part of the insecurity) are posed and resolved by the

constitution of an Other against which that identity may define itself, and assert its

superiority. In order to feel ‘at home’ in the nation and in the wider world, this fragile

sense of identity seeks to subdue or erase from consciousness (or worse) that which is

strange, those who are ‘not like us’. Attempts to protect the purity and certainty of a

hegemonic identity—Britishness, Danishness, and so on—by defining certain differences

as independent sites of evil, or disloyalty, or disorder, have a long history.162

Conflict arises when the Voices of the Borderland challenge what the dominant culture believes is a “natural” part of life. The conflict of Muslim women wearing a scarf and full-length clothing is one of these, with the Muslim woman’s body becoming a site for struggle and control. It becomes such a site because, in the dominant white culture, the female body is an already Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 contested site and white female rights can be used as an excuse to attack the clothing of a Muslim woman, which is seen to deny these rights, while the issue of white woman’s control of non- white female bodies is ignored. One of the reasons that Sandercock’s Cosmopolis is an unattainable utopia is because it doesn’t have room for this conflict. The conflict of power and dominance will not cease to exist. There will not—and there should not—be a day when white people are no longer aware of difference and inequality. The type of society where all identity conflict is gone is likely to be more restrictive than open, for an open society always develops new challenges. At the heart of the Mongrel City, then, is that conflict over identity and a desire to promote acceptance of the multiple identities living in the city. Acceptance does not mean that you must like another culture. I do not like many of the aspects of Muslim culture, just as I do not like many of the aspects of Christian culture, but I respect the right of someone to be part of that culture, and to live next door and practice it. (They do: my current neighbours are Muslim and Catholic.)

A Year in the City aims to explore this conflict by having it take place against a dominant white background. In “The Fond Farewell”, Joanne’s white, Australian born father is defined by a racism that emerges from a pure ideal of his country. In his country, his “home”, he does not want anyone who is not white occupying a place of importance around his children. This causes his violent attack on the teacher that doesn’t like his son, and causes Joanne to fear for her safety when she wants to date Ki. This is expressed by Mal before Ki heads out to his date with Joanne

(Pape):

Mal sighed. Just don’t be an asshole to Pape. I like her. She’s the only person in that family worth shit. If you’re doing this to fuck over Tim, the person who’s going to get hurt isn’t him, it’s going to be her. Her Father will go fucking nuts when he finds out and she’ll cop it in a nasty way.

—It won’t happen like that. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

—Bullshit. The sound of Mal drinking sounded. Look, man, you may think that

won’t happen, but it will. People will talk. People are already talking. How the fuck you

think I found out? Once it gets back to her Old Man, he’ll tear up the fucking city looking

for you. He’ll take it as a personal insult.

—You’re shitting me?

—Like I said: Dude’s a fucking maniac.

In juxtaposition to this is the way that the brothers Michael and Tarek react to the idea of

“home”. Both characters have doubts about their identity in relation to the nation and doubt creates, in Tarek, a sense that Australians are less than him, that he doesn’t have to show the respect he would show to another Lebanese person. It is this reaction to the dominant culture around him that leads him to kidnapping the girl, which he justifies by claims that she is just a

“skip”.

The conflict of these characters is a conflict over the idea of home. It is a conflict based in the discourse of belonging, of who does and who does not belong. Within that question, however, is a second one that raises the idea of the nature of home. In a Year in the City, it is not a question that relates to a physical house, but rather seeks to examine the imaginary space within the nation. It is an imagined national space that Sandercock describes as being, “actually, literally, embodied in the local spaces of one’s street, neighbourhood and city, where it is either reinforced or undermined.”163

The Imagined National Space.

It is with a strange sense of symmetry that I find myself returning to the concept of an imagined space. Like imagined space discussed by James Donald, the imagined space discussed here has consequences over the real city that the individual is part of. It affects the lived experience, and is Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 a way by which the individual makes decisions about where and how to travel in the city. The multiple imagined national identities, however, are located within the struggle for dominance and power within the city. The imagined national space is one that affects the real world in both negative and positive ways. At its most basic level this emerges in racist and anti-racist practices.

In A Year in the City, different imagined national identities are built in much the same way as the imaginary city. Through the fragments, individual stories and characters, the novel becomes a mosaic that the reader navigates until its end where the fragments, as with Sydney, are assembled into a whole. The combination of the two forms the Mongrel City.

The discourse of the imagined national identity has been drawn from Ghassan Hage’s

White Nation. About the book, Sandercock writes:

Hage argues that in Australia both White racists and White multiculturalists share a

conception of themselves as nationalists and as managers of the national space, a space

which is structured around a White culture, and within which Aboriginal people and non-

White ‘ethnics’ are merely objects to be moved or removed according to White national

will.164

Hage’s assertion that white people are “managers of national space” is suggestive of a level of racism that exists in all white people. It is true that I have written A Year in the City from a position of white power, and it can be argued that, as much as my experience of Sydney is the

Mongrel City, it is also a view that I am able to present because I am white. I do live in the

Mongrel City, but I also believe in the Mongrel City. A Year in the City is the creation of an author who cannot believe in the Cosmopolis, but who wants to portrayal the city as a site of multiple homes and multiple national identities and multiple cultures.

Hage’s imagined national space is centred on the discourse of “home”. It is one that is both connected to the “house” that an individual lives in, and also the way the individual views Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 the nation. This anxiety about “home” and about who legitimately belongs and who does not, reflects, I believe, the dominant white culture’s guilty awareness of the fact that the country is not rightly their “home”, and that it was, undeniably, violently stolen from its Indigenous owners. This guilt, unexplored in society, ignored by Governments, and left to fester in the social consciousness of both white and Indigenous people, has resulted in a white paranoia about who belongs and who does not, about who has a right to call Australia “home” that emerges in violent ways. Further explaining this anxiety, Hage writes:

In the desire to send the other ‘home’, subjects express implicitly their own desire to be at

home. In every ‘go home’, there is an ‘I want to and am entitled to feel at home in my

nation’. Such an imaginary nation is never formulated in its totality. Attempts at offering

systematic accounts of what the nation out to be like are only carried out by

‘professional’ nationalist ideologues. Furthermore, because ‘home’ refers more to a

structure of feelings than a physical, house-like construct, it is fragmentary images, rather

than explicitly formulations, of what the homely nation ought to be like that we obtain to

listening to people’s comments. Together, however, these fragments show the national

home to be structured, like many other images of home life, around the key themes of

familiarity, security and community.165

In The Tax Inspector, the discourse of white multiculturalism is found in Granny Catchprice’s history of taking in troubled youth. Returning to the scene where Granny offers a job to Sarkis, there is no immediate racism. Granny is aware that Sarkis not white as she asks him how long he has lived in Franklin,166 but she is not offering him a job because he is not white. Rather, she is offering him a job through her own sense of white authority, power and entitlement. Her belief that she is the natural owner of the land around her and that she has the power to destroy everything upon it, is what allows her to make the offer. Granny, in control of the space around Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 her, has created the imaginary national space that Hage theorises, and through her control of it, she tries to bring in a sense of community.

Viewing the Catchprice family as a whole, however, reveals a white family that has lost control of their imagined space. They are ruled by paranoia, anxiety, fear, and a sense of crisis and threat that has emerged from the vulnerability of their ownership claims over the land. This has emerged because Catchprice Motors, the home for all but one of the family, is under threat by Maria Takis, a Greek born woman from the tax department. In Hage’s imagined space, she represents the arrival of immigrants into the white world. This space is also connected to the diminishing quality of Granny’s power, symbolised by the old, sticky gelignite that she carries around with her, the explosives having lost their stability through age. Granny can no longer be relied upon to keep everything in order. With the arrival of Maria and, later, Sarkis, the imagined borders around the Catchprice family are breaking, and the non-white intrusions are sought by the family to be controlled in acts that reassert their power. In this conflict, Sarkis is tortured by the youngest son, Benny, and Maria finds herself the object of desire for Jack Catchprice. His desire to control her is revealed after sleeping with her, where, sitting in bed, Jack gazes down at her and refers to her as “his prize” that he plans to “keep”.167

In The Tax Inspector, whiteness has weight. In A Year in the City, I have brought this weight out more overtly, using it to motivate the conflicts of the characters in each chapter.

These conflicts are the conflict over “home”, over security, a sense of familiarity, and community. They cause each character’s struggle for his or her identity within the imagined city.

It is through this interaction that the final elements of my imagined Sydney together are placed into the narrative. Ghassan Hage argues that white multiculturalism is subjective, and, in its complete form, A Year in the City is a narrative that details this. I am, as Hage argues, writing from a privileged position, but it is a position that I would happily see removed in the future.

However, I do not believe that this position of power on my part will suddenly become non- existent, and likewise, I do not believe that racial conflicts will ever stop, as there will always be Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 people who struggle for power and equality, though the identity of these people is subject to change around the world. My goal, then, as a writer of fiction, and my goal with A Year in the

City, in particular, is to portray the racial and ethnic conflicts that exist against the backdrop of whiteness, to facilitate conversation in relation to these, and to challenge the racialised stereotypes that exist in the mainstream. It is a goal that can lead to despair when writing about non-white, non-male, non-straight characters. However, even if my characters and locations to do not ring true, if they slip for the individual reader into a hollow, unbelievable moment, it is, nevertheless, a more worthwhile goal than silence. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

The End/The Start.

Samuel Clemens awakes and A Year in the City ends. With everything complete, now, I sit here, in the Western Suburbs of Sydney, unsure how it will be received. In the past three months, as I have worked through the process of rewriting, an old stain has reemerged in Sydney. The centre of this stain most recently has been the Cronulla riots in December, 2005. The word “riot” is, I think, misused, in that the racist white “pro-Australian” men and women who attacked Arabic individuals did not attack the city in a fashion that would resemble the Rodney King Riots in Los

Angeles, or the race riots reported in France late last year. There was no burning of buildings and businesses, and while there was violence, the scale of it was quite small when one considers that the mob in attendance was reported to be five thousand strong. There is, however, nothing pleasant about what has happened in Cronulla, and the Howard Government and the media’s response, which has been to excuse the actions as that of a group motivated by alcohol and a few undesirable leaders, is depressing. It was hate and racism and it should have been treated as such.

In my own reactions since then, however, I have noticed that whenever I pass anyone wearing the Australian flag as a cape, I automatically categorise them as a Potential-White-Supremacy-

Nazi-Hate-Group-Supporter. I take two steps back, and I keep a watchful eye on them. There have been other incidents since Cronulla which point to a change in the atmosphere of Australia: first among these is the call of the Australian Prime Minister for a return to a taught history that, while it acknowledges the existence of Indigenous culture, focuses on “the great and enduring heritage of Western civilisation, [and] those nations that became the main tributaries of European settlement.”168 He continues: Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

When it comes to being an Australian, there is no hierarchy of descent. Whether our

ancestors were here thousands of years ago, whether they came on the First Fleet or in the

19th Century, or whether we or our ancestors are among the millions of Australians who

have come to our shores since World War II, we are all equally Australians, one no better

than the other. 169

It is, at best, a naïve statement, a politically safe paragraph that urges everyone to consider their equality, to look beyond culture, beyond race, and beyond class. But it also returns terra nullis, slightly altered, only now it is more inclusive in its “otherness” and includes all non-white-

Australian individuals. Outside politics, there has also been situation where the great Sri Lankan spin bowler Muttiah Muralitharan has been constantly jeered by Australian crowds calling “no ball”, to the point where one is forced to question if it is really about his controversial bowling action, or rather if the action is just an excuse for a slowly rising mood of racial intolerance to find voice. Still in the world of sport, a friend told me earlier today how that at the World Cup qualifier between Uruguay and Australia, the Australian fans booed so loud during the

Uruguayan national anthem that it couldn’t be heard. If it is true or not, I do not know, but after the events in the last three months, it is believable that such an event could happen and now, as I sit here and I write this conclusion about a novel that explores racial conflict, but which has risen out of the love of the multicultural city that I live in, I wonder if that city is now, in 2006, finally yielding under ten years of the Howard Government’s conservatism on race and culture?

I am white, born in Blacktown and raised in the working class, “bad” end of Sydney, the

Western Suburbs. I was educated through a public school that was listed as disadvantaged the year that I left, and the career’s advisor who was employed two days out of five told me that I should consider retail employment as an occupation, because I had no other skills (this opinion was later repeated by the first dole officer I met; she suggested a job in a hardware store). In my first job interview at a fast food outlet called Chili’s, I was asked if I had a criminal record. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

Apparently, I could be truthful and not worry about the repercussions of having been in jail in relation to my job application, which I took to mean that the mean (change) in front of me had already decided I did have a criminal record and wasn’t going to hire me. Currently, I have an income level that allows me to collect a Health Care card, and security guards still have a habit of watching me in bars and clubs and stores and gigs. Yet still, despite all this, I write from a position of power, and I will always do so within Australia, because I am white. I am an author, writing from the mainstream, and it is because of this, that I worry, in the light of what happened in Cronulla, about creating a benign form of Orientalism from that position. Moreso, I am worried that A Year in the City, a novel filled with conflicts, will be read as an indictment of multiculturalism, and used by others to support racist stereotypes. Yet I know, despite these concerns, that I will not go back and alter the novel and change it so that it is more easily digested as a positive—even lighter—work of fiction.

A Year of the City, even though it is fiction, is still my city, and it is a portrayal that aims, to use Iain Sinclair’s word, to “vandalise” the reader’s internal city, to press upon them my view, to change the way they have seen Sydney, and to see it in a way that they have not done so before. It is that word “vandalise” that causes me concern now. It is too violent, too authoritarian, and I wonder what, exactly, gives me the right to think that I should “vandalise” another person’s experience of Sydney. Is it the result of writing from a position of power? Is it my whiteness that allows me to occupy this space? I cannot escape that power fully, only acknowledge that it has an influence on me that manifests in a degree of ways, and which I try to manage in relation to my portrayal of non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual characters.

However, is it not also the goal of every writer to “vandalise” the mind of his or her reader? To somehow, in some way, leave an impression that will affect the reader long after the work has been finished? If it is not the goal of every writer, and it may not, for I have met my share of writers who want to “entertain” and nothing more, then it is at least my goal. With A

Year in the City I wanted to take the culture that I live in and present it in such a way that, for the Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3 reader, it would offer an experience that was not common, and which would linger within his or her mind. Yet still, the concern that what I have written will be read in a negative light remains. I wrote earlier about the despair of writing from a position of white authority and writing

“minority” characters and how the issues relating to their portrayal can result in a paralysis within the writer. The way in which to deal with this paralysis does not have a “right” answer.

There is no clear choice that everyone will agree with. It is entirely possible that the Zaarour family will offend Lebanese men and women, or that an Indigenous man or woman will resent the fact that the Pemulwuy portrayed is not historically accurate. Likewise, white Australians might react negatively to Joanne and her family. It is a risk that I was aware of as I wrote, and one that, as I have discussed in relation to whiteness and the Mongrel City, I have tried my best to navigate. Benjamin Peek – A Year in the City. 3

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Cambridge, Basil Blackwell, Inc., 1991, p 26. His parenthesis. 35 Ibid, p 27. 36 Ibid, p 25. 37 Ibid, p 7. His italics. 38 Ibid, p 11. His italics. 39 Ibid, p 33. 40 Ibid, p 40. 41 Ibid, p 40. 42 Ibid, p 40. 43 Ibid, p 40. 44 Soja, Edward. Thirdspace. Cambridge, Blackwell Publishers, Inc. 1996, p 60. 45 Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Cambridge, Basil Blackwell, Inc., 1991, p 33. 46 Soja, Edward. Thirdspace. Cambridge, Blackwell Publishers, Inc. 1996, p 66. 47 Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Cambridge, Basil Blackwell, Inc., 1991, p 33. 48 Ibid, p 67. 49 Ibid, p 66. 50 Ibid, p 39. His italics. 51 Soja, Edward. Thirdspace. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Blackwell Publishers, Inc. 1996, p 67 52 Liggett, Helen. Urban Encounters. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2003, p 84. 53 Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Cambridge, Basil Blackwell, Inc., 1991, p 68. 54 Soja, Edward. Thirdspace. 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England, Routledge, 2002, p 145. 71 Stevenson, Deborah. Cities and Urban Cultures. England, Open University Press, 2003, p 54. 72 De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1988, p 98. 73 Ibid, p 98. 74 Ibid, p 99. 75 Ahearne, Jeremy. Michel de Certeau: Interpretation and its Other. England, Polity Press, 1995, p 180. 76 De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1988, p 101. 77 Ibid, p 101. 78 Ahearne, Jeremy. Michel de Certeau: Interpretation and its Other. England, Polity Press, 1995, p 180. 79 De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1988, p 98. 80 Carey, Peter. 30 Days in Sydney, A Wildly Distorted Account. New York, Bloomsbury, 2001, p 142. 81 Ibid, p 143. 82 De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1988, p 99. 83 Carey, Peter. 30 Days in Sydney, A Wildly Distorted Account. New York, Bloomsbury, 2001, p 143. 84 De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1988, p 99. 85 Benjamin, Walter. ‘The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire.’ Selected Writings, 1938-1940. Eds. Eiland, Howard and Jennings, Michael W. Cambridge, Belknap Press, 2002, p 35. 86 Ibid, p 37. 87 Ibid, p 46. 88 Ibid, p 49. 89 Ibid, p 54 90 Ibid, p 69. 91 Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, Belknap Press, 1999, p 443. 92 Gilloch, Graeme. Myth and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City. UK, Polity Press, 1996, p 155 93 White, Edmund. The Flaneur. New York, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2001, p 47 94 Doyle, Arthur Conan. ‘A Scandal in Bohemia.’ The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, New York, Sterling Publishing, 2004, p 7. 95 Benjamin, Walter. ‘The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire.’ Selected Writings, 1938-1940. Eds. Eiland, Howard and Jennings, Michael W. Cambridge, Belknap Press, 2002, p 49. 96 Ibid, p 27. 97 Ibid, p 83 98 Ibid, p 41. 99 Ibid, p 49. 100 Gilloch, Graeme. Myth and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City. UK, Polity Press, 1996, p 152. 101 Poe, Edgar Allan. ‘The Man in the Crowd.’ The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings, England, Penguin Books, (1967) 1986, p 188. 102 Benjamin, Walter. ‘The Return of the Flaneur.’ Selected Writings, 1927-1934. Eds. Jennings, Michael W; Eiland, Howard; and Smith, Gary. Cambridge, Belknap Press, 1999, p 262. 103 Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, Belknap Press, 1999, p 416. 104 Sinclair, Iain. Lights Out for the Territory. London, Granta Publications, 1997, p 1. 105 Ibid, p 2. 106 Sinclair, Iain. Liquid City. London, Reaktion Books Ltd, 1999, p 7. 107 Ibid, p 83. 108 Sinclair, Iain. London Orbital: A Walk Around the M25. London, Granta Publications, 2002, p 434. 109 Sinclair, Iain. Edge of the Orison. London, Hamish Hamilton, 2005, p 215. 110 Sandercock, Leonie. Cosmopolis II: Mongrel Cities of the 21st Century. London, Continuum, 2003, p 1. 111 Sandercock, Leonie. Towards Cosmopolis. England, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 1998, p 125. 112 Dyer, Richard. White. London, Routledge, 1997, p 1. 113 Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York, Harvard University Press, 1992, p 63. 114 Rushdie, Salman. The Satanic Verses. Great Britain, Vintage, Random House, (1988) 1998, p 141. 115 Ibid, p 291. 116 Ibid, p 448. 117 Ibid, p 11. 118 Flannery. Tim. The Birth of Sydney. Melbourne, Text Publishing, 1999, p 19. 119 Winikoff, Tamara. ‘Big Banana and little Italy: Multicultural Planning and Urban Design in Australia.’ Culture, Difference and the Arts. Eds. Gunew, Sneja and Rizvi, Fazal. Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1994, p 131. 120 Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York, Harvard University Press, 1992, p 47. 121 Ibid, p 47. 122 Dyer, Richard. White. London, Routledge, 1997, p 2. 123 Ibid, p 3. 124 Said, Edward. Orientalism. Ringwood, Victoria, Penguin Books, 1978, p 3 125 Birch, Tony. “‘Nothing Has Changed’: the making and unmaking of Koori Culture.” Blacklines: Contemporary Critical Writing by Indigenous Australians. Ed. Grossman, Michele. Melbourne, Melbourne University Publishing, 2003, p 149. 126 Ibid. pp 149. 127 Huggins, Jackie. ‘Always Was Always Will Be.’ Blacklines: Contemporary Critical Writing by Indigenous Australians. Ed. Grossman, Michele. Melbourne, Melbourne University Publishing, 2003, p 60. 128 Packer, ZZ. ‘Brownies.’ Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. Melbourne, Text Publishing, 2003, p 1 129 Ibid, p 1. 130 Ibid, p 5. 131 Ibid, p 28. 132 Sayer, Mandy. The Cross. Sydney, HarperCollins Publishers, Sydney, 1995, p 6. 133 Ibid, p 9. 134 Dyer, Richard. White. London, Routledge, 1997, p 9. 135 Peek, Ben. ‘The Dreaming City.’ Leviathan Four: Cities. Ed. Aguirre, Forrest. Florida, The Ministry of Whimsy Press, 2004, p 25. 136 Ibid, p 27. Misspelling of Pemulwuy’s name has been done on purpose as this version of the story played heavily with misinformation and alternate history. 137 Birmingham, John. ‘A City Obsessed.’ In The Year’s Best Australian Essays, 2002. Ed. Craven, Peter. 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Melbourne, Melbourne University Publishing, 2003, p 175. 144 DeLuca, Kevin. ‘In the Shadow of Whiteness: the Consequences of Constructions of Nature in Environmental Politics.’ In Whiteness: the Communication of Social Identity. Eds. Nakayama, Thomas K. and Martin, Judith N. California, Sage Publications, 1999, p 224. 145 Ibid, p 224. 146 Carey, Peter. The Tax Inspector. Brisbane, University of Queensland Press. (1991) 2001, p 56. 147 Ibid, p 92. 148 Dyer, Richard. White. London, Routledge, 1997, p 34. 149 Carey, Peter. The Tax Inspector. Brisbane, University of Queensland Press. (1991) 2001, p 156. 150 Croft, Brenda L. ‘Cultural Signposts: Whose Heritage?’ Debating the City: An Anthology. Eds. Barrett, Jennifer and Butler Bowdon, Caroline. Sydney, Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, 2001, p 117. 151 Anderson, Kay J. ‘Constructing Geographies: ‘Race’, Place, and the Making of Sydney’s Aboriginal Redfern.’ Constructions of Race, Place and Nation. Eds. Jackson, Peter and Penrose, Jan. London, UCL Press, 1993, p 81. 152 Croft, Brenda L. ‘Cultural Signposts: Whose Heritage?’ Debating the City: An Anthology. Eds. Barrett, Jennifer and Butler Bowdon, Caroline. Sydney, Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, 2001, p 119. 153 Ibid, p 118. 154 Dyer, Richard. White. London, Routledge, 1997, p 33. 155 Stevenson, Deborah. Cities and Urban Cultures. England, Open University Press, 2003, p 47. 156 Sandercock, Leonie. Towards Cosmopolis. England, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 1998, p 15 157 Sandercock, Leonie. Cosmopolis II: Mongrel Cities of the 21st Century. London, Continuum, 2003, p 110. 158 Stevenson, Deborah. Cities and Urban Cultures. England Open University Press, 2003, p 4 159 Ibid, p 6-7. 160 Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York, Harvard University Press, 1992, p 58. 161 Sandercock, Leonie. Cosmopolis II: Mongrel Cities of the 21st Century. London, Continuum, 2003, p 110. 162 Ibid, p 97. 163 Ibid, p 112. 164 Ibid, p 112. 165 Ibid, p 40. 166 Carey, Peter. The Tax Inspector. Brisbane, University of Queensland Press. (1991) 2001, p 100. 167 Ibid, p 221. 168 Howard, John. ‘Towards One Destiny.’ The Australian, 26/1/06., p 3. 169 Ibid.