Chapter 9
The All Ordinaries had fallen forty-six points on the day’s trading and Milan Krulis was mustering for early disposal the following morning. The December boom had not materialised the way he had expected. The August Budget had augured well but few had envisaged the repercussions from the collapse of the Federal Treasurer.
Earlier in the week Milan Krulis had been labelled with the sobriquet ‘Mr Cruel’ by a jaunty television face with acne on her nose. The weekly Bulletin enjoined the government to establish a Royal Commission into his business affairs. Rumour placed the Krulis touch within the state legislature and judiciary.
‘He’s in conference, Mr Krulis.’ The voice was polite and final.
‘Thank you, my sweet, but you’ve told me that once before. I haven’t forgotten in those two or three minutes. No! Wait! I’m speaking!’ Milan Krulis pushed his lips into the mouthpiece of his phone. ‘Could you please relay the fact that it is I who is on the phone?’
‘Wait one moment ... ’ The melody of the experienced voice chimed like a front door bell.
Milan Krulis reached for his Sobranies and lit one. He filled his mouth with smoke and puffed it away from his face with the rhythm of the cha cha cha. Puff puff, puff puff puff; puff puff, puff puff puff ...
‘Mr Krulis?’
‘Yes?’
‘His Honour regrets his time is unfortunately unavailable to you now. His Honour extends to you his availability in his chambers at seven thirty tomorrow morning. May I inform His Honour of your reply?’
Her voice was closing on him.
‘Yes!’ Milan Krulis stated after a moment’s hesitation. Then he continued. ‘That should be suitable to me. His Honour should expect my presence at that time. At that place.’
He replaced the phone and, walking across his office, opened the wall safe. The twin combination Chubb was camouflaged within a montage, as if the safe were not a safe but a structural edifice of artwork. He pulled at the handle and the door opened slowly. He selected a thin manila folder and closed the reluctant door.
Milan Krulis crossed the empty space of his office that he’d voided of furniture so as to highlight the Persian ostentation on the floor. Visitors would step around the rug as they would a sandcastle or electric train set. And they would comment on the rug and somehow this would neutralise their nervous and often acrimonious intentions.
To the side of his elaborately carved rosewood desk and chair, adjacent to the wall-size windows with their giddy view of Sydney Harbour and The Cross, coffee and sandwiches lay spread on a smaller rosewood table. Two comfortable sofa chairs sat warm in the muted light of the late afternoon sun. Milan swept his gaze in a tireless arc across Woolloomooloo, following lines of pudgy houses until the bright green lawn of the Domain fell under the shadow of the city. Blue blazers moved about the grounds of the cathedral school as the streets choked with traffic and a turbid smog.
Milan swivelled his head and found the lazy warmth of the harbour where ferries ploughed through happy water. White sails skittered among merchant ships that were moored stoically in optimism of an end to the Dockers’ strike.
With the noise of the city a gentle murmur at the back of his mind Milan tucked into his sandwiches. A headline stared at him. Absent-mindedly he rummaged through the paper. There appeared to be no mention of his name. With the last of his sandwiches in his mouth Milan sat back and rested. Slowly his sharp features softened slightly and age sauntered back to his face.
Then the intercom broke his reverie.
Back at his desk he answered. ‘Yes, Margaret?’
‘Mr Krulis. I have a gentleman on the line. A Mr Frank Donleavy.’
*
The hot white afternoon sun rattled the iron roof. Pigeons sheltered under the eaves in the lane at the back of The Cross. In the shadows were gutters of litter. Hawked-up phlegm from a thousand throats pebbled the pavements. Hunched windows opaque with grime daunted the atmosphere. Few ventured into this lane since the mutilated girl had been found scattered among the debris.
Milan Krulis picked his way through the rubbish that piled upon the steps down to the old disused nightclub. He unlocked the bolted door and stepped confidently into the darkness. He sniffed the stale air and made for the switchboard. Soon, coloured lights doused the room in a strident pattern of psychedelia and Milan was momentarily imbued with the swish of the seventies. Slowly, the air conditioners came to life and shook in protest as they tried to suck mawkish air through decayed ducts. Milan spat dust from his mouth as he entered the kitchen to prepare coffee. Cockroaches scurried from his outstretched fingers.
When Frank Donleavy walked down the stairs he found Milan sitting patiently in a chair near the stage. Smoke from a Sobranie hovered about the crinkly face and drifted upward through a red beam of light. The soft sound of Mantovani came from somewhere back of the stage.
‘I suppose you’re feeling the heat, Mil?’
Frank added honey to his coffee. Steam rose from the pot on the table and mingled with its Sobranie mates. The tablecloth was sticky enough to paint his elbows.
‘The heat?’ Milan laughed derisively into his cup. He wore jeans and an open blue shirt. His greying hair thinned on top and his face was woven in an intricate pattern of wrinkles. He put his cup on the table and leaned back into his chair. ‘I love irony, Frank. Life’s full of it. From US Presidential politics to Marxist unions controlling the wharves. Full of irony. Soap operas. Inventions. All irony.’
Frank finished his coffee quickly and rose. He examined his past in this room as a familiarity infused him with a sense of displacement, as if he had been divested of all his life since this room.
Once they all had congregated here and their lives had radiated from this room. It contained the rites of passage and was sacred in memory. It was ironical that peace was worked out during long hours in this room. Violence was instigated by agitated people in this room. It was a hub for the paybacks and acts of reciprocity that The Cross reified as structural necessities. Now it was in operation again.
‘You must remember, Frank, that where I came from, the hopes of young men like myself were meagre.’ said Milan, a bit pompously. ‘Our homeland was being crippled by communism and our neighbours were cutting into us with the permission of those communist bastards. We wanted to fight but it was hopeless. It wasn’t easy. The irony of it is rich, Frank.’
‘I fail to see where irony exists.’ said Frank.
‘I reject communism and come to Australia where communism was vilified. I become a businessman. This is very Australian. I behave as an Australian. Australia becomes communist and I am vilified by Australians. That is irony, Frank!’
‘Who said Australia was communist, Mil?’
‘Why am I subjected to harassment, intimidation and threats? It is because it is no longer the same Australia as it was forty and fifty years ago.’
‘Doesn’t make it commie, Mil.’ Frank insisted automatically though disinterestedly.
‘What would you know, Frank?’ Milan threw his arms about his head as though he were chasing flies. ‘Is this Africa?’
‘Oh, shit, Mil! ‘ Frank shook his head of the argument, leaned on the table and fixed his eyes on Milan Krulis. ‘I didn’t come here to argue politics with you, Mil.’
‘My theme is simple, dear Frank.’ Milan Krulis eased Sobranie smoke through his mottled teeth. ‘It is ironical that I sacrifice my life with my sisters, my mother, and the graves of my forefathers, and then to face the absurdity of Australian wharfies rudely insisting we go back home, even before we disembarked from those cattle ships which brought us here from Europe. Home? Most of us laughed and cried, Frank. What home? Our country no longer existed. It had become something else with another name.
‘Even fellow countrymen who had settled here earlier were antagonistic toward me. Suddenly I was a foreigner; not just with you Australians but with my fellow countrymen who had become New Australians. Never before had I been a foreigner. What’s a foreigner, I asked! That had always been someone else who looked different. Not me! Never! And they? They were mere peasants from the fields of Ireland and England, and they yelled ‘Dago’ louder than the others.
‘You were there, Frank. You saw how I was treated. I was the little wop and the butt of every joke in The Cross. I never forget the many times you scraped me from the floor, Frank. The bully boys! You haven’t forgotten them, Frank? No! I didn’t think so. You, of all people, would never forget. You never forgot to help, Frank. My tap lessons were always paid for, Frank. Because I dared to approach the forbidden fruit of the Australian male, the Sheila!’
Frank said nothing, only smiled. His little friend was still the expressive drama queen. More coffee was poured and a gentle silence pervaded them both. Outside, the day darkened. Pigeons rested easily against the fanlight windows. Milan saw Frank watching the pigeons and said quietly, ‘Frank, I am very successful today, as you know. You also know how resented I am. Is it because of that success? Is it because I have transcended their mediocrity by moving, pushing, violating areas previously under constraints of archaic taboos structured by lily-pink-shit-scared social planners? Haw! They glare at me from their armchairs.’
Frank removed his eyes from the pigeons and pointed them at Milan. ‘Probably that’s why they are limited to watching others instead of being themselves, Mil.’
‘Accurate, but soft, Frank.’
‘I have the same regard for the remote scrutinisers of the media as you have, Krulis. And you know it. Don’t fucking preach that jazz to me. Even a wop like you couldn’t forget the lessons I gave you on the fucking lecherous leeches of the press. It was I, remember, who imbued you with the phrase The Faceless Pundits!’
‘Pundits, Frank? I frown upon them all. I frown upon the mutilators of style. I frown upon their arrogant misuse of the vernacular. For years it was infradig for their kind not to sound English. Their schools tried their utmost to soften the twang of Australia.’ Milan groped inside his trousers pockets for his spare Sobranies. His long thumbnail tore the packet open. A flame rose from his gold lighter and sparked the tobacco to glowing life. ‘Switch on the radio or television and what do you hear? The poofs with their plums and pucker and elocution! That’s what!’
‘Only the diehards listen to 2KY? Is that it, Mil?’
‘That’s not what I am saying!’ Milan snapped. Then he eased the expression on his face into a blancmange of comic confusion; every wrinkle vibrated. ‘I don’t represent the push for Strine. I strive for authenticity in our culture and that authenticity must spring from within Australia instead of being ushered in from Britain and the United States via the charlatans who abhor the authentic Australia.’
A drone and a thump had developed in the air-conditioning and Milan thrust his hands together in a gesture of ardent prayer. ‘But your sentence was utter rubbish. A meaningless piece of piffle.’
Milan Krulis stood and began searching the ceiling with his eyes. Then he sighed, deeply, and took his seat again.
‘Take Hawke. In your opinion, and that is in concurrence with most Australians, the former Prime Minister was the quintessential Australian. An ocker, if you prefer. His influence upon us was immense and incalculable. We took a certain amount of our standards from him; even those who opposed him, or even hated him, were influenced by him. He directed debate. And most importantly he was listened to. Not just heard, mind you. But the reality is obfuscated by the influences that bid Hawke toward a particular lingual usage.
‘Take for example his usage of the ay sound. Why did Hawke say ay dog instead of uh dog, which was the common usage of Australians up until the Hawke era?
‘The answer is simple. Hawke in his own mind equated power with the United States. To Hawke power emanated from and was legitimated by the United States. To Hawke, power was essential and it was consumptive.
‘And power is expressed through the medium of language. Thus, a simple reflex change from uh to ay illustrates the unconscious influence of power linguistics upon even the most complete of Australians, such as our beery bodgie at the Lodge. And once he’d gone, it was only a matter of time before the rest of us were braying the ay sound as if it had been imbedded within our language forever. You’ll see, Frank. People will deny there ever were an uh sound to begin with. Language is like that. It is ironical.’
A serious knock now came barging into the club from the air-conditioning. The unpleasant odour of ozone was with them. Milan lit another Sobranie while Frank worried his coffee with the end of his spoon. The spontaneous compatibility of the two men had overlapped into the world of social introspection as Milan drew Frank into his auditorium of dramatic and political reverie. Frank guessed that few people would have ventured into that theatrical space. The angst of society’s Mr Cruel was directed by a social conscience toward a society that bade him no good at all.
‘Utter rubbish!’ Milan continued into his fever. ‘Today, their ilk attempt a gauche Strine. Suddenly, it’s fashionable to make a sound that constitutes an Australian accent. Mind you, Frank, it’s not the rich vocal sounds that spring eternal in places such as Dubbo and Kingaroy, but an artificial noise structured upon notions of what an Australian accent should sound like. It’s as if the ordinary working Australian doesn’t exist. The latter-day Ockers would prefer to re-construct the language rather than take notice of the people who actually speak it. They edit our language, softening the harsh and rounding the sharp. It’s a belated chauvinism, Frank. But soon they’ll discard it as they did when they fled to Britain to learn how to speak like a Pom. This time they’ll emulate the Americans. That’s why Hawke was the mainspring for the gradual usurpation of the Australian language by the American language. He had given his imprimatur to all of us to discard our traditional lingual sound for an imported one. It’s particularly important for this reason; Hawke sounded Australian and his use of imported lingual noises provided us all with the notion that the sound always was with us because it now sounds Australian because Hawke used it.’
‘The circularity of argument was always your forte, Mil. But I agree with your reasoning. Cunning and guile are political instruments alright! But lingual usurpation by stealth has always provided languages with alternatives, options, choices ... ’ Frank had been sucked in. His vocabulary had become elongated. It was now contest between them, adversaries in a linguistic conatus, so to speak! He continued. ‘... the choice made by Australians is an Australian choice, nevertheless, Mil.’
‘Don’t be naive, Frank.’ Milan spoke unctuously. ‘There is no choice. Language is a symptom of relationships. It is also an instrument. Language acts on behalf of people within relationships. The nature of the relationship is translated through language. By examining language use between those in a relationship the nature of that relationship is revealed. It should come as no surprise to you that the nature of power in a relationship is expressed through language. It is an axiom of power relationships that the powerful control the creation and the usage of language.
‘Thus Hawke’s responsible for a couple of things. He released Australians from the bondage of lingual Britain. He’d told Australians that it was permissible to emulate Americans in the use of the indefinite article. The sound uh, as in ‘I went to look for uh dog’, has almost become an anachronism. The quantum leap of communications impelled Australians to emulate their leader. Those who resisted soon found themselves out in the cold, alone with their correctness. They alone spoke the correct way. But it all began with Hawke.’
Milan stared at Frank for a moment with absent eyes. Then, ‘The chauvinism in language. Yes. The cry for the dingo. I’m not for the lost cause, Frank. I suppose I am a realist. Have to be, I suppose. In this game.’ Milan drifted his eyes across the club’s scrappy interior. Then he squeezed his lips into a smile. ‘I’m simply anti-phoney! Take journalists.’
It was clear Milan was organising himself for a lengthy harangue.
‘They attack me when their front page is vacant. These second-rate no-bodies missed out when the real talent was selected. They hide their lack of talent within criticism of others. They prey upon others and tell on them. They are the dobbers of society. They are the nose rags of society. They collect the refuse of their neighbours. They are the spals of the media, the bicycle-seat sniffers of journalism.
‘Oh, while they’re cotton-wooling through subsidised university education they dress themselves as hippies and march for the Left. Always in groups, sharing and hesitating before the awesome realities of the free spirit. On their own they can’t cope with that.
‘Mr Cruel! Really, Frank! What utter nonsense to infuse their perceptions into the phonetics of my so-called foreign name. It’s so obvious and pithecanthropic, isn’t it?’
Frank couldn’t help his widening smile. His friend had an amazing turn of phrase. And he bet Milan hadn’t been allowed many chances to exercise that facility. He decided to throw one in himself with ‘Well, they are the gods of antennae, aren’t they?’
Milan bounced in his chair. Another Sobranie was lit and the churning and grinding agony of air-conditioners bore into the atmosphere. ‘Ah! Richard Nixon.’ He leapt to his feet and threw his arms up in mockery of Nixon’s victory stance. ‘A great, no, perhaps the greatest tragedian to emerge from the United States.’ Milan resumed his chair and grinned in a wizened face. ‘I loved that character, the voice, the hunch of the shoulders, the almost comical denouement of his presidency. Frank, the precedent established by Bernstein and Woodward has every journalist in this city sniffing his arse for shit.’
Milan’s face settled into a Bela Lugosi mould. His eyes deepened into Europe where superstitious folk feared the arrival of the stranger. ‘I remember when raisin toast was a feast at The Cross, Frank.’
‘Is there shit to find?’ asked Frank suddenly.
Milan stubbed out a Sobranie and lit another. His pale green eyes showed traces of merriment. He reached over the table and gave Frank a friendly clout on the chest. ‘What’s on your mind, Frank?’
‘You circular bastard, Mil!’ Frank laughed rudely. ‘Remember Max Hollard?’
‘One of the more remarkable men I’ve met, Frank.’ Milan was suddenly like a little boy at communion with his fingertips pointed together in an attitude of piety.
‘To be brief, Mil, his son came a cropper against some nasty work.’
‘How is he, Frank?’ Milan asked with lack of expression while his hands drummed a staccato of nerves on the table.
‘Fucked!’ Frank declared bitterly. ‘For life, it seems. He’s lost an eye. His spinal chord is snapped and he hasn’t spoken a word since he came out of a coma.’
‘And Max? His wife? Is he married?’
Frank thought of the woman who had married Max. He knew nothing about her. ‘She died years ago. Max has taken on her role since then. Poor bastard.’
Milan Krulis signalled the end to the afternoon by collecting the coffee cups and rinsing them in the kitchen. He cleared the ashtrays and smiled as he sprayed the air with sweetener. ‘How ironical, Frank. You men protected me when I was defenceless. Now you are defenceless and I can help you. I am ready. Where are the nasties, Frank?’
*
The building had disgorged itself of its business life and now the corridors would be silent for an hour before the cleaners moved in. The security guard signalled his recognition of Milan Krulis and promptly returned to his routine. The lift stopped on floor twelve and Milan alighted, walked briskly along the corridor to his offices. His secretary had left and the computer room behind the frosted glass was still. His clerks, all female and young, had left tidy desks.
Milan assumed his position at his desk and began dialling his crafted ebony telephone. A gravel-throated woman answered promptly. Milan asked for Hans Dorfman.
‘Hang on, willya!’
There was a long wait.
‘Dorfman!’ in a flat voice through the phone.
‘Hans! Milan here. I need you.’
‘When?’
‘Now.’
*
Maurice Murphy sat watching television as he did every night. He stared at the newsreader and was irritated. He didn’t understand why this was so. A particular woman affected him severely. Her singsong voice was irrelevant to the content she was reading. Another affected him because the woman was monotonous, seemed to become exhilarated only by glib phrases and ceremoniously clicked her tongue when the mood struck her fancy. The can of beer warmed in his hand as his fingers clenched and unclenched with each annoying sentence.
‘ ... and the Minister for Immigration repudiated the Opposition’s charge that the government had neglected non-Asians for Asian migrants ...’
Maurice Murphy hurled the beer can at the screen and watched ruefully as froth dripped down over the face of the newsreader.
‘Fucking Asians!’ He screamed at the set, his only companion in his dreadfully lonely life. ‘They should burn the lot of them. Don’t talk shit ... ’ he screamed again, ‘ ... you lying bastard!’
The he suddenly lurched forward across the room and kicked the speaker cabinet until the woman’s voice squawked and died.
‘Fuck you!’ Maurice Murphy glared idiotically at the silent, frothy newsreader.
