A Many Coated Man (21 page)

The driver comes to Slaven’s door and stands gripping the release while he looks down the length of the wharf. ‘Now,’ he says. He opens the door and the colleague within gestures politely to Slaven and follows immediately behind him. One each side of him, all three walk into M.F. Products without proof of being wholesalers, past the freezers and pallets and blue and yellow plastic box trays, down wooden steps until they stand on a landing less than a metre above high tide. The landing has gaps between the timbers and the sea can be seen moving there. The landing is hung in the shadow beneath the wharf and amongst the massive, hardwood piles while the water slops and sucks and the sunlight glitters at a distance on the swell beyond the wharf.

The driver is a slimmer man than the other, with eyes and nose very much towards the top of his head which gives him a supercilious, ostrich expression. He has also the scent of a rather pleasant after-shave, with fennel almost, amongst its complexity. There is a dinghy moored to the landing and Slaven assumes it’s for their use, but instead the driver pulls Slaven back to face the stairs and hits him in the face: not with his fist, but with his gloved hand partly open and heavy, as if he holds a bag of marbles. Slaven begins to
fall backwards, but the bulk of the second man is solicitously there and the driver is able to hit Slaven again without altering his stance, or the arc of his swing. Slaven feels a numbness of impact, then the pain and a prickling as blood begins to flow from his nose. He would have made a fight of it sooner, in better circumstances outside by the car, if he had forseen the landing below the wharf and the blows in the shifting shadows there. He attempts a kick at the driver, thinking it might be unexpected, but the man behind locks ankles with him and with an ‘uh huh,’ exposes Slaven’s face again by pulling back his hair. Slaven does his best in the unequal struggle. It’s not his thing though, is it, and even at the beginning he’s more driven by the horror of likely damage to his balls, or his eyes, than any conviction that he can escape.

So is there noise and somewhat methodical movement? Are there the heavy sounds of the driver’s filled glove, the footwork of them all on the landing with the salt water glinting as a dark oil underneath, the pleasant fragrance of the driver’s after-shave, the frothy burst of Slaven’s breath through his own blood? Yes, he lies dealt with soon enough and the driver kneels and takes his Cyma gold watch and the wallet from his jacket.

‘I’d break a few fingers, but his hands seems pretty much useless already,’ the driver says. His high, bird’s eyes are sharp even beneath the wharf. The solid man takes one of Slaven’s hands and turns it from side to side.

‘Burns,’ he says. ‘Burns is what these are. Poor bugger.’ The driver slips the watch onto his own wrist and passes the wallet to his friend.

‘Let it be a lesson to him’ he says, as they walk back up the stairs and through M.F. Products.

Under the wharf it becomes darker and cooler as well. Slaven regains consciousness and lies with his eyes and his mouth open, resting, and checking with small movements and messages which parts are okay. Nothing seems to be broken, but any movement brings pain. His face feels immensely swollen. He has become an elephant man. The greatest mistake is to cup his hands and take sea water from the rising tide to wash blood from his face — sharper
pain than anything the driver dished out to him. The small mussels clustered on the hardwood piles are almost all submerged, the patches and strips of light from above the wharf slide and undulate like photographic paper on the surface of the swell. The dinghy is higher in relation to him, nodding and veering on its rope. The sound of a simple, repetitious diesel as a cray boat comes in. Drifting, querulous gulls. Though Slaven can smell and taste nothing but his own blood, the waterfront fragrance is always there, compounded of fish scales, refrigeration fluids, ozone, salt, rust and tarred rope, poor food, sneakers, mussels and the farts of god-forsaken creatures in the depths of the sea.

There is a place in the hills where no one wins farmer of the year; high up where the road is still unsealed and has bulges on its length occasionally so that if you’re unlucky enough to meet something coming the other way it can be decided by eye contact and gross tonnage who will back down — and then back up. Much of the land has beaten its proprietors and so is given over to pine forest and if the stands are immature the pruned branches are rust filagree beneath the velvet green of the firs. The farm houses are weatherboard and the sheds mainly shot. The dogs are kennelled in a gully head where the mutton bones go to die and the white leghorns flap up into nooks of the equipment shed to roost, where they mute on the harnesses and the post-hole digger which have no other use. There are boxes and bags of apparently unused seed, but the birds and the mice have long since been in and all can be winnowed away. There’s a tractor seat cover made from possum pelts and stirrup pumps that have never worked and refuse to start doing so now. In the shearing shed the wood is richly stained with fleece oil and dags and a little blood and sweat. A track winds over the gorse-covered top of the gully to the manuka country beyond and slopes of pigfern rooted over by the namesake, and screes of serpentine rock which make a cheap fence because the sheep will hardly cross and a high pond or two which you’d never know were there, but the stock tracks wind their way to them and the mallards which can be covered with a couple of guns. Pretty much dry
country most of the time and the hack still better than the farm bike, but there are days when the cloud comes in, the gorse and briar glisten almost as much as the serpentine, the manuka stems gradually darken as the rain seeps through, the pigfern is bowed down by the weight of the drops it bears.

There are ridges and faces and gullies and spurs that don’t appear on maps. They’re given names by the family who have to climb them and when the people go they take away the names. There’s a place where beech were sledded down to make their first houses and there’s a place in the creek, a small falls, where the biggest boar was stuck whose tusks hang over the shearing shed and glint in the evening sun. No matter who does the muster, no matter how keen the dogs, there are a few old woollies on every place that never come down to the yards. But you know all that.

Kellie and Marianne Dunne arrange for Slaven to be admitted to Burwood. There is no strict medical justification, but Dr Dunne, like many in her profession, is not convinced that all medical practitioners have equal skill and also she wants the opportunity to see how things are with Slaven in other ways. After all the genesis of the CCP policies and the Slavenisms which are now heard everywhere, lies in those first talks in her hospital — Miles Kitson, Aldous Slaven and herself. Just a day or two then, so that she can be sure that his injuries have no complications and in this time she will appraise his mental health and hear of Western Springs, of the amazing growth of the CCP and the meeting with the Prime Minister. Even a celebrity needs reassurance following an afternoon beneath the Lyttleton wharves. ‘Some people don’t like a prophet. I told you that when you were here,’ says Marianne. She inspects the nasal passages with the flexoptic and gives him a scan in case of more deep-seated damage. Stitches had been necessary below his right eye and in the corner of his mouth on the same side. There is fracture and compression of his cheekbone. ‘Most of the discomfort will come from your mouth and the bruising and you’ll find that the neck muscles are very sore. You didn’t get kicked lower down?’

‘No. Just a feathering, the driver said.’

‘I’ll be able to have a better look when the swelling subsides, but you’ll heal surprisingly quickly. Don’t be alarmed by the spectacular discolouration as it happens. Burns are a different matter. There’s a far more complex response from the system to burns. You can’t just sew things together with burns.’ Talk of burns leads Marianne Dunne on to look at Slaven’s hands. He likes to feel her touch. She always does the same quick, professional things, like a seamstress checking a garment join, care and pride combined. She bends the fingers back from the palm to check the tension of the new and grafted skin, the time of renewed blood suffusion. She follows the raised lines and checks the muscle replacement at the base of the thumbs. ‘Are you doing the exercises?’

‘When I have time.’

‘Make him do them,’ she says, turning to Kellie, ‘otherwise he’ll end up with hands like a fish eagle’s.’

And his mind? What grafts and seams and fractures are there? He may resemble worse than a fish eagle; some creature that takes flight only in the internal sky. Even Marianne Dunne knows precious little of that. She has read Esterhaub and Browne of course and the more recent studies by Langbein in Sydney, but her professional responsibility lay with the outward signs of searing. Even now there is little understanding of how electro-convulsive therapy does the trick, although still used for the very elderly because unlike the drugs it has no side effects. The psychiatrist Hans Berger established much of the early knowledge of the brain’s electrical activity, but the realisation of his increasing mental illness drove him to hang himself in 1941. Ugo Cerletti was the first to undertake experiments with shock treatment on humans. In April 1938 the police brought to his clinic in Rome a madman who could not even be identified. Cerletti gave the man a brief shock and the man jolted, fell back on the bed and began singing. While Cerletti conferred with colleagues about a second treatment, the man said clearly, ‘Not another one. It’s deadly.’ But he was given another one — 110 volts for 1.5 seconds — which brought on a typical epileptic attack
from which he slowly awoke, peaceful and smiling.

Maybe it has been beneficial, that accidental charge while Slaven was painting his house. Extra connections could be made, new pathways, shortcuts even, stored treasures of the subconscious spilled to the light. There are parts of the brain which by physical stimulation have been proved to hold exact recollection, of which conscious recall is only a dim precis, and activation of the visual cortex will result in a visual sensation, phosphene, even in the totally blind. Slaven has read of people who have had their life again: every colour, every word, every random scent of the passing wind, every ache of their deepest grief and the most individual and piercing joys. At the cost of probing the brain of course.

‘Things have been done inside, of course,’ Slaven tells them. ‘A lot of myself I’m not in touch with anymore, but there’s new possibilities in return.’

‘Such as?’ says Dr Dunne.

‘Not this last business, but the accident, the shock. It must have been close to a complete meltdown upstairs, you realise that.’

‘Are you still having the syncopations and the loss of emotional identity?’ asks the doctor.

‘Some odd effects persist,’ says Kellie. She has discussed them with Marianne Dunne and Mr Garrity before, as well as with Slaven. The singing and the marching, for example. Slaven can sometimes be found marching on the spot, his knees lifting quite high and a look of pride and resolve on his face. He might continue for ten or fifteen minutes at a time if not interrupted and has no recollection of it afterwards. And sometimes at night she is woken by him singing
Half
Moon
Bay
— softly, brokenly, with the tune gradually being flattened out as he repeats the verses over and over. Occasionally one of a series of movements in a routine physical activity is omitted; the motor syncopations that Marianne Dunne refers to, so that Slaven might take out his handkerchief, but not raise it to his nose as he blows mucus on to his top lip and chin.

Not often you understand, and for Slaven blips of consciousness which pass with virtually no recall. Set
against the sustained power of understanding and expression they are nothing, surely. Such things will almost certainly disappear of their own accord as the brain recovers from trauma. Just circuitry problems, the jocular Mr Garrity has assured them, though even Garrity can make no guarantee.

Dreams however, Slaven can certainly remember, not for any Freudian topics or events, but the association of certain colours with intense emotions. A Van Gogh yellow for instance becomes a whole world of pathos and he wakes with tears free on his face. A high-sky vellum blue stiffens his cock. Purple crystals glow with the malign intent which drives him to an awakening with his limbs jerking in an act both of escape and denial. As Garrity told Kellie and Marianne Dunne though, it was most unfortunate that Slaven went through the Lyttelton thing so soon after his accident. ‘It’s set you back again,’ says Marianne.

‘You’ve got to start taking more care of yourself,’ says Kellie.

Cardew claims that the police are doing little to track down the driver and his mate. He’s sorry for his father he says, but emphasises that the greatest threat is to the standing of the CCP. He argues that the situation has been partly created by allowing the organisation to become too closely identified with Slaven personally rather than the principles for which he stands. It would have an element of plausibility from any source other than Cardew. His father’s charter points are to Cardew completely negotiable, as is the faith of all the Coalition’s supporters, as is the fortune of all in life except himself.

Cardew’s title within the organisation is Financial Assistant, his job specification to help Kellie with the financial side of the administration and his resolve to assist as much money into his own pocket as he is able. Everything in life is a scam as far as he is concerned, from the Government down. Cardew sees no essential difference between his father’s Coalition for Citizen Participation and a second-hand car yard.

It’s not easy though. Kellie runs a tight ship despite the
range of her responsibility and Slaven runs an open executive structure with full disclosure and consultation policies. And the old gasper, Miles Kitson, provides expertise from his management team from time to time as a favour. Corruption doesn’t thrive in the open, at least not at the stage of germination. Cardew wants a more close-knit, family business. One that is of course entailed and he has his supporters from amongst those in the CCP most opportunistic and from those outside who see change to their advantage.