Demons (11 page)

He was about my age, mid-thirties, a raffish guy with a big personality. He was hard
not to like. The plan was to do the show guerrilla-style, one performance only, advertised
underground on the networks, on an island (the Ranevskaya estate) in the middle
of the Yarra. From the direction of the city, as the show neared its end, we would
hear the approaching sounds of the machinery of change—chopping, slashing, grinding—and
the looped wail of a broken string.

The front bar of Young and Jacksons was starting to fill. It was just after four.
Aiden poured the dregs from the jug. One more? he said.

I was supposed to be back at the office, I had copy to fill, there’s no way I should
have been drinking like that on a Tuesday afternoon. I watched Aiden take the empty
jug back to the bar. Here’s my chance, I thought, turn now and run and you could
be back at your desk working before he even realises you’re gone. But I seemed stuck
to the stool.

Well, said Aiden, filling our glasses from the new jug, I suppose you can guess what
happens next. With my divorce money I offered to fund Dane’s production. It was crazy—and
that’s exactly why I wanted it to happen. Aside from being its principal investor
I helped out generally around the place, making props, doing the lunch runs. I was
still living in the Coburg sharehouse, as far as I could possibly be from the Canberra
public servant of old.

One morning I headed off on the tram a little earlier than usual and when I got to
Trades Hall Rani was sitting on the steps. The others hadn’t arrived. We started
talking, about the play, mostly. I felt strange, there was a prickle under my skin.
She had her hair up; her neck was pale, almost powdery white. That morning we worked
on the scene, a tender scene, where the ‘perpetual student’ Trofimov (Jordan) speaks
with young Anya (Rani) and waxes lyrical again:
It’s so very clear that to begin
to live in the present we must first redeem our past
. We sat around the edges of
the space while Dane worked the actors hard, occasionally turning to us and asking
for an opinion. At one point he got Rani up and asked her to forget that she was
only seventeen and to seduce shamelessly the older, bumbling Trofimov until she had
him on the floor. She did as Dane suggested but I could see she wasn’t ‘in’ it. He
called a break.
Onward! Don’t fall back!
said Jordan, putting a consoling arm around
her, and everybody, including Rani, laughed.

That night when I got home I encouraged my housemates to drink with me, dragging
out the bottles I’d kept in my bedroom. I felt strangely free. Come on, one more,
I kept saying. I was last into bed—it was well after midnight—still dancing on my
thoughts.

The big performance came around pretty quick after that: 21 April, 2001. Over the
previous week, each night under the cover of darkness, we had ferried the gear over
to the island and set up: generator, lighting, sets, costumes, props. I was among
those who slept out there; we laid low, kept quiet, lit no fires, used torches only
when we had to. On the night itself—a cool autumn evening and no sign of rain—the
audience members gave a gold-coin donation to the boatman before being rowed over
six at a time.

It was a good crowd, a full house. They loved it, from the bustle of arrival to the
final image of Lopakhin, the freed
muzhik
, taking a petrol-powered whipper snipper
to the papier-mâché orchard while the electric guitar screamed and wailed. The cast
took three curtain calls. The audience went mad. Dane joined them for the last, taking
centre of the line, bending himself into a bow, holding the pause, letting his hair
hang, rising and flicking it back.

While the audience were ferried back off the island, the cast and crew stayed on
for the party. Four big ice tubs were dragged out into the main performance area
and the
doof-doof
started. I went back to the dressing room—a tent behind a stand
of trees—to congratulate the actors. Rani had taken off her costume and was sitting
in front of the mirror in a skirt and powder-blue bra, the top hook undone, the underarm
edging slightly frayed. When my lips brushed her cheek it smelled of perfume, makeup
and sweat. Dane handed me a beer. You see! he said. I hung around in the dressing
room, listening to them talk, before pushing my way through the bushes to the riverbank
on the city side where I sat looking at the lights.

It had been a trip all right, from a public servant with a wife and kids in Canberra
just two years before to this. I sat and thought about it. Then I heard a rustle
in the bushes behind: it was Rani. The
doof-doof
had grown louder, as had the voices
of the people partying back on the grass. Someone’s going to ring the cops, she said,
sitting down next to me with her cup of wine: do you reckon we could swim from here?
She was pointing at the far bank, the freeway above it, the cars whooshing past.
She’d bunched her hair up and secured it with pins. The moon was high, a half-moon.
All our fine conversations are just to divert our own and others’ attention
.

Everything got mixed up in my mind—I leaned over and asked could I kiss her. She
didn’t say yes or no but she didn’t move away so I took this as a sign. She kissed
me back at first, but then I felt a resistance—a resistance, ha! a rebellion! Her
lips tightened, she turned away. But I kept going. She was only—what?—ten, twelve
years younger. I put an arm around her and pulled her towards me. I kissed her hard.
She bit my lip. I pulled back and she started to scream so I put a hand over her
mouth. Please, I said. Please. Her eyes were wide. Please, I said, I’m sorry, don’t
scream. I’ll take my hand away but don’t scream. She was huffing through her nose,
trying to catch her breath. Please don’t scream, I said, again. My palm was wet with
her spit. I drew it away. She gasped. Please, I’m sorry. I lay down next to her and
hugged her close. I was crying, a grown man crying! I’m sorry, I kept saying, I’m
sorry.

She got up. It’s okay, she said. They were the only words she’d spoken since the
whole thing started. Then she turned and hurried away.

The first person I saw when I made my way back was Jordan. He’d come down to the
river for a piss. I told him I had to go. But the party’s just starting, he said.
He picked up the beer he’d pushed down into the grass—he’d already had a few. I told
him something had come up, with my ex-wife back in Canberra; I had to leave Melbourne
tonight. He said he’d row me back.

He was high on the success of the night and chattered at me all the way back across
the island to where the dinghy was tied up. He was still talking when he raised the
oars. It worked, didn’t it? he was saying. They were with us, weren’t they? Aiden?
We must look for a deeper truth, beneath all the banging and shouting, we have to
see our faults, change ourselves from the inside, before we can expect to change
anything in the world.

He was talking madly, rowing badly; the current was moving us downstream. We’d gone
at least half the length of the island before we were close enough to the opposite
bank for me to throw a rope and lasso a bush. The dinghy pulled up with a jerk. Be
careful going back, I said. Jordan waved and smiled. I threw the rope; he turned
the dinghy around. The
doof-doof
was fainter, but you could see the glow from the
bonfire and hear the voices above the trees. Someone would complain, for sure. I
took one last look at Jordan, still in costume as the perpetual student, Trofimov,
rowing hard across the current.

The story was, continued Aiden, that the cops raided the party soon after. The water
police came in from the city side while three divvy vans covered the other bank.
The partygoers were trespassing, they had no permit, they were disturbing the peace,
all that. The cops didn’t treat them nicely. It was in the middle of all this ruckus
that someone realised Jordan was missing.

The dinghy was found next morning downriver, in the shadow of the city, jammed between
the bow of a pleasure cruiser and the berth. The body didn’t turn up till two days
later; it had washed almost out to sea. Because I was the last to see him alive the
cops came round to see me. I answered all their questions, said he was drunk and
reckless and that there was nothing I could do. The coroner called it death by misadventure—an
understatement, if ever there was one.

I went to the funeral. Rani was there. We spoke a few words but didn’t touch. I have
never felt so sad or bereft. After the service Dane asked was I interested in investing
in his new idea: a mash-up version this time of a Dostoevsky novel, about nihilism,
revolution, disenchantment, murder. The great disillusionment drowning the world.
He pointed out the dramaturg, a tall, skinny guy. They would do it flash-style, he
said, in Canberra, on the steps of Parliament House. He pulled the paperback from
his pocket and read to me from the scene where the suburb over the river catches
fire:
It’s all arson! It’s nihilism!
Well? Aiden? What do you think?

I said no.

What else could I say? I had left my job, my wife and kids, I had treated a young
woman badly and let a young man drown. I had bought a drop of self-importance with
a bucketload of spoilt money. What right did I have to an opinion about anything?
What entitlement? I woke late the morning after Jordan’s funeral with a goon-sack
hangover and watched the light seeping through the blanket at the window. What morals
do you have, Aiden? I showered and dressed. And without morals what
do
you have?
Anything? I made breakfast, sat out in the backyard in the sun. I had a good think.
Well, I thought, I’ve still got money. I’ve got no responsibilities. I can do what
I like. Ah! I said. That’s what I’ve got: freedom. Freedom—what about you?

I moved out of the sharehouse into a city apartment with a view of the river and
the bay. I bought the best food, wine, drugs. I hung out with gangsters, pimps. I
lived like a king. I spent whole days in the casino (the casino!—ha!) and rented
a new girl every night. Sometimes I rented two. Sometimes I got one that looked like
Lil, sometimes one like Rani. We always drank the best champagne. Did you ever do
it with two? Leon? Three? I’ve still got cash, he said, pulling it out. Here.

It was at that point, said Leon, that I realised not only that we were both pissed
but that we’d slipped down a rabbit hole into another place—a place I quickly realised
I didn’t want to be. The bar had filled; it was five o’clock and the after-work punters
had arrived. Aiden had a crooked smile. So you see? he said. We’re fucked, aren’t
we? Hypocrites. Liars. We’ve let the whole thing go to shit, and now there’s nothing
we can do.

Aiden’s voice changed then—no, not just his voice, his whole demeanour. He straightened
his spine and lifted his chin. He was doing Vershinin. Remember?
Well. Thank you
for everything
, he said.
I’ve talked a great deal, a very great deal—forgive me for
that too.
He did the crooked smile.
So, I’ll go off by myself
, he said—and then he
was gone.

Leon’s words just sort of hung there. It was only now in this seeming silence that
they realised it was not silent at all. The rain was belting down, falling in sheets,
cascading off the balcony and out of the gutters and smattering the big windows every
time the wind whipped it sideways. It had built up all morning, and now they were
in the middle of a storm.

Shit! said Marshall, heaving himself up off the couch: Tilly’s still in the car!
That’s it, she’s coming in.

All this caught everyone by surprise. It was as if the flurry of activity had left
a momentary hole in the room. Marshall went down. The soup, said Lauren. She and
Megan went into the kitchen. The others listened to the rain.

Shit day for footy, said Evan. Adam nodded. People used to tell the weather by looking
at the sky and studying the behaviour of animals, said Hannah. Evan pointed at the
window. Rain, he said. A mackerel sky, said Hannah, I love that expression. Is that
like when it’s raining fish? It’s when white clouds in a blue sky look like the markings
on the side of a mackerel, said Hannah; they tell us a front is approaching, although
it may be a long way off; a mackerel sky may mean rain, but not always. That’s handy,
said Evan. If cockatoos come down from the mountains to the coast, it’s going to
rain, she continued; they even say you can tell how many days of rain there will
be by how many cockatoos there are. Ants tell you that too, don’t they? said Adam.
All this will be gone soon, said Leon, because of what’s happening to the world.

The blender went on in the kitchen and Marshall came back upstairs. She’s not in
the car, he said. Lauren came to the kitchen door. She’s put my stuff outside the
room, and a chair or something up against the inside. She won’t speak to me; she
won’t come out. What’s going on? said Megan. She’d come in from the kitchen too.
Tilly’s moved into the room downstairs, said Hannah. Well thank Christ for that,
said Lauren, and she went back to the soup. Maybe I should have a word to her? said
Megan. Sure, said Marshall. Megan went downstairs. The fire alarm rang again. Ah
for fuck’s sake, said Marshall, who’d just sat down. Are you burning something in
there? The alarm kept screeching. For fuck’s sake! said Evan.

They were all out of their seats now, looking at the ceiling. Evan found a broom
and used it to push the button but the alarm didn’t stop. What the fuck? said Megan,
who’d come back up the stairs. It’s faulty, said Leon. Can you stop it? said Megan.
We’re trying, said Evan. Is there a ladder? said Marshall. He and Evan went to find
one while Adam, Leon, Megan and Hannah just stood there, staring up. Lauren came
out of the kitchen. Can someone turn that fucking thing off?

The alarm didn’t stop, not like last time, it just kept going on and on. Marshall
and Evan came back, huffing and puffing and wet from the rain, carrying an aluminium
stepladder that they bumbled around with for a while until Evan managed to click
the thing into the thing. He held it while Marshall went up. He seemed to take forever
to figure out how to open the flap. Then the screeching stopped. Well thank Christ
for that, said Lauren, again. Marshall threw the battery down. Have we got a fresh
one? asked Hannah. The alarm’s broken, said Leon. But what if there
is
a fire? said
Hannah. The storm’ll put it out, said Evan. Everyone looked at him, trying to figure
out if this was a joke. Marshall climbed back down.