The Infernal Optimist (17 page)

Feeling lower than a dachshund’s balls, I dialled Marlena’s number that evening outta habit more than hope. No answer. She mighta been at work, what was cool, but she mighta been out with some bloke, a friend a Pink-nuts maybe, what might be taller than me and better looking and have a steady job and smaller ears and maybe never even been Inside, but what could never give her sweet loving the way I did. Muvvafucker.

I played a game a poker with a new Bangladeshi dude and two Russians. I cleaned up and I hardly even cheated, I swear. I packed me winnings into the sock in the video player. I had a fresh stock a ciggies thanks to an old mate on the Outside what owed me a favour and brung me a couple a cartons the other day. I flogged some smokes to a new guy what told me he was from Innonesia. ‘Where you from in Innonesia?’ I asked, not cuz I been there or nuffin but I heard lots about Bali, what apparently be a good place to party.

‘Aceh.’

‘Bless you,’ I said, even though it wasn’t much of a sneeze. I asked him again about where he came from but he just shook his head and walked off. People can be so weird sometimes and they just get weirder when you lock them up, I swear.

I hung out in me room smoking a joint what Edward gave me. His woman was a real pro at getting the stuff in. I put on Public Enemy, what I was beginning to think I was, just like the asylums what was always complaining about being villainified in the media. It was past midnight. I didn’t have no one to talk to. Ivan got released on a Bridging Visa two days ago. It was too depressing talking to Hamid and Azad, and Thomas was giving me the shits. I figured I’d hunt down some vids. I walked back to the fence with Stage Three and whistled for Edward.

‘Whassup, bro?’

‘Can’t sleep, mate. Watcha got on vid?’

‘
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Pearl Harbor
and somefin else…
The Mummy Returns
. Want ’em?’

‘Oh, mate.’ I gave him the thumbs up.

‘Wait there.’

He came back with the vids. Swinging one arm right back, he chucked
Pearl Harbor
straight over both fences to where I caught it. Not everyone throws that good. High up on the fence there was one shoe dangling by its laces, a baseball cap and a plastic bag snagged on the razor wire with some roast chicken in, what was beginning to smell. Then Edward let fly with
The Mummy Returns
. They
shoulda had the Detention Double Fence Throw in the Sydney Olympics, I swear. He’d a been a gold medallionist for sure.

I was thinking we got a trifecta when
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
fell just short a the fence on my side and a blue appeared behind him.

I ducked behind a tree. Edward was shrugging like he didn’t know nuffin. Good man. After the blue wandered off, I got me a broom from the laundry. Lying flat on the ground like a lizard what be drinking, I managed to extradite it by pushing it along the ground with the broom handle.

I was getting to me feet and brushing the dirt off me trackies when me heart stopped. Hadeon, the muvvafucker, was standing there on the Stage Three side, smoking and looking at me with them cold, dirty-ice eyes. He waved. His wrist had a tattoo like a bracelet a skulls on. They should never a moved him to Stage Three even. The man was an animal. ‘Nice to see you, Bogan,’ he goes, showing me every one a them skulls.

‘Togan to youse,’ I go, pretending to be tougher than I was in factuality. ‘Nice to see youse too, Hatchet. Catch youse later.’

First Clarence, now him. Me past was tailgating me present. It was time to put the pedal to the metal.

I was heading back to me room, me head filled with thoughts about the highway to hell what I be on and where the exit be, when Angel whispered me name from the fence between Stage Two and Lima. ‘Zek. Zeki.’

‘Hey, Angel.’

‘Zeki, please. Can you help me?’

‘No worries, Angel. What’s up?’ I was thinking she wanted me to get Hamid to the fence to talk.

She looked around to make sure no one was watching and gestated like she was putting a needle in her arm.

‘Whoa, whoa, you know I don’t touch that shit. Besides, Hamid would have me balls for breakfast if I did that. You know that.’

‘You know people, Zeki,’ she said like she didn’t hear nuffin I was saying. ‘You get it for me. Please.’

A noise made me jump. ‘What’s goin’ on ’ere?’

I turned to see Clarence’s ugly mug what was in me own.

‘Muvvafucker,’ I go.

‘Yeah, so? She loved it, your mum did. Moaned like a right ho.’

I saw red for a second. Like a kung fu master, like I was Jet Li or him cousin Bruce, like I was Zek Li, I smashed Clarence hard on the cheekbone with the corner a the
Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Then I whacked him up the family jewels with
Pearl Harbor
and
The Mummy Returns
. I got him on his ugly knees with me hands round his thick neck. He was begging for mercy with them creepy girl’s eyes.

That was all happening in me head, anyway. In factuality the joint I smoked earlier in me room had just kicked in. I realised I was just waving the videos at Clarence, what was pissing himself laughing and calling me a fuckwit.

I mighta been stoned but I got dignity. I turned and walked away.

Clarence headed up the walkway what passes by Medical and up towards Stage Three. That’s when I realised how Hadeon got himself transferred outta Stage One when he be exactly the sort a person you need maximum security from. They was old friends, mates what was always doing favours.

Two days later, Clarence got him moved to Stage Two.

Farshid was in me room. He had his guitar. We was listening to the Eagles and singing along to ‘Hotel California’. He put it on for the third time. We got to the bit about checking in any time you want, but never being able to leave.

‘Just like us,’ said Farshid.

‘That’s it, Farsh,’ I go. ‘That’s what makes it worse than prison, and you know I speak with authority about prisons.’

‘I should do something to get myself into prison,’ he said darkly. Farshid wasn’t in a top mood. The night before, Reza started pulling out his hair in clumps. Then he ate it, and then he vomited it up like furballs. Reza eating his own hair, what was gross as well as crazy, really flipped everyone out. The Shit House hauled him off in the middle a the night to some hospital what has a loony bin what is for children too. They told Nassrin she could visit Reza in hospital. But they wanted to put her in handcuffs. Everyone argued with them—it was too humeliorating and she wasn’t gonna run nowhere with
one son in the looney bin, the other in Villawood, and her husband still in Port Hedland. In the end they listened to Nadia the psych what said it would send Reza right off the deep end to see his mum in cuffs. We gave her heaps, but Nadia was all right, really.

I gave Farshid a ciggie for free.

The Eagles sang about how you could find them there any time a year.

‘Fuck this shit,’ Farshid said. ‘I’m sick of it. Sick of it. Sick of it.’

I hit the eject button on the CD player.

‘I got the new Eminem.’

‘I don’t mean the music. This shit.’ Farshid swept his hand through the air. ‘Villawood. Detention. I vant to be out. I vant to go to school. I vant to have a life. Detention is the opposite of life. Fuck this place and fuck everyvun in it.’

It occurred to me that I might still be able to buy some wire cutters with that two thou. Farshid would probably say yes to escaping. I could go back to me original plan. All I needed was two people in, besides two to keep a lookout. Farshid would be good. He was fast and strong and smart and young, only sixteen.

And he had a girlfriend now, what he’d be pretty keen to see outside the razor wire. Laura was from Chile. Her mum was being deported. Laura was fifteen and a babe, but she wasn’t Inside cuz she and her brother had been in Australia long enough to get citizenship. Their little sisters, what were three and seven and nine and what were being deported with their mum, were Inside. The little ones was wetting them
pants all the time with the stressation. Laura visited every day after school, and she and Farshid, they was spending a lotta time behind a particulate tree in the Visiting Yard what offered the only semi-privacy in the whole place, even though what was private to the rest a the Yard was open to the street beyond the fence. Plus they talked on the phone every night for hours.

‘Vat’re you looking at me like that for?’

‘Mate, I was just thinking…’ It then occurred to me that having him in on the escape meant I be abdicating a minor. And even if it’d make Laura one happy girl, it’d detonate Nassrin. I may have been a crim, but I had me family values. I couldn’t do it. ‘Nuffin,’ I said. I gave him another smoke. He stuck it in his mouth, lit it, and attacked the strings on his guitar like they was something he wanted to hurt.

It took us a while to notice someone banging on the door. ‘Farshid! You in there?’ It was Tip’s mate, that other Maori dude. ‘Hey, Zek. Hey, Farshid. Yer ears painted on? They been calling both your names for half an hour. You got vusutors.’

Farshid looked at his watch. Laura would still be in school. ‘Fuck visitors.’

The blue threw up his hands like it didn’t mean nuffin to him one way or the nuther. ‘I’ve seen her, though. She’s a babe, bro.’

‘Fuck visitors.’

‘Total babe,’ he goes. ‘I’m talking ten outta ten?’

‘Fuck visitors.’

‘Up to you, bro.’

As soon as he was out the door, Farshid and I did a high-five. He went back to his room to change his shirt. I combed me hair and put in some product and changed into me Adidas shell suit, the black one with the blue trim. We wasn’t really that interested. Just bored. Bored was the name a the game in that place, what I spose made it a bored game. What was a joke, what I wasn’t making too many of at the time.

We saw her through the fence. She was seated on a chair. Her hair was long and curly and shiny. Every time it fell in front a her face, what was a lotta times, she threw it back with a move what stretched out her smooth, milky neck, what was long even when she wasn’t stretching it. She wore one a them midriff tops and hipster jeans what revealed a lotta information, all good. Her tits was big and bouncy like her mum’s, except perkier, what she was too. It was Marley, April’s daughter, the handcuff protester babe. Azad was sitting facing her, his elbows on his knees and his head pulled forward like she had a rope through his nose. His face had a loopy smile on.

‘So, Azad is a human being after all,’ Farshid observed while we waited for the blue to let us through the gate.

April was there too. Thomas was talking in her ear, and she was nodding, but her eyes kept drifting to Azad and Marley.

‘At least it looks like Azad’s snapped outta his depression.’ Azad hadn’t come out for visits or even to meals in two days. Not since George W Bush, what is the most powerful man in the world and what our own Prime Minister be the deputy of, called Iraq and Iran part a the Axle of Evil, what meant they were the exact part a the Car of Evil what makes the wheels turn round. Azad hated Saddam but he didn’t want to see the country bombed to buggery by the Yanks like Afghanistan. Even though he kinda foresaw it all on September Eleven, it still upset him.

The blue finally found the right key and the first padlock clunked open. In the short time we’d been waiting, a small crowd a male detainees had pulled up chairs and joined Marley’s circle. More was collecting behind us.

Farshid made a face at me. ‘Know vat’s wrong with this place? Too little honey and too many bears.’

‘Zeki! Farshid!’ April gave us hugs and kisses. ‘This is my daughter, Marley.’

Marley stood up to kiss us hello too. She smelled nice, like lemons and cinnamon with a faint pong a girl sweat, what is nicer than boy sweat. ‘We were just talking about poetry,’ she said. She looked at Azad again. ‘Do you know Rumi?’

‘I do,’ said Azad, like he be tying the knot then and there. April bit her lip and I felt sorry for her.

‘He vas Iranian poet,’ Farshid said. ‘From my country.’

‘Poetry belongs to no country,’ Azad said. ‘It belongs to the world.’

‘That’s
so
true,’ Marley said. She talked about all this stuff what I didn’t know much about. I never heard anyone talk as fast as her. It was like she was filling in all the gaps what be in her mum’s sentences and then some. She was a machine gun shooting out the syllabuses. Eventually, the subject shifted to her plans for next year. ‘I’m gonna be a student at COFA next year, that’s the College of Fine Arts, you know, You-En-Ess-Double-You? Doing conceptual art? We’ll be, like, doing Chomsky and Klein as well as Barbara Kruger, who’s so my hero. I’m trying to get my teeth into Chomsky but it’s, like, pretty dense. I don’t know if any of you know Chomsky?’

By now there were about twenty detainees, mostly asylums, all male, what had pulled chairs up. They nodded and shook their heads in lotsa different ways what didn’t necessarily mean yes or no. Chomsky sounded like some kind a nougat and I wasn’t sure what Calvin Kleins had to do with art. I kept me mouth shut in case I said something stupid.

‘Your mum is very nice,’ the Liberian guy said. It got April’s dimples going. ‘She comes to see us often. This is your first time to come Inside, Miss Marley?’

‘Yeah. I can’t believe Mum is doing this, it’s so cool, but I’d never have guessed cuz compared to my bio-dad, she’s so conservative. Mum probably told you guys I was living in Nimbin with my bio-dad. He’s way cool, doesn’t mind who I have to stay over, and we even do billies together.’ She laughed. Her tits looked like they was making a bid for freedom from that tiny top.

I looked over at April what was making her lips thin. Another visitor came for Thomas, what went to sit with him, so April was fully concentrated on Marley. Then I looked at Azad, cuz I knew he didn’t approve a drugs at all. I don’t think he’d a understood even if she’d a used the word ‘bong’ instead of billy, what be Australian slang. He was just smiling like she was handing out choc tops, what in factuality woulda been a good thing in that heat. Maybe he was just listening to the sounds and not the words what I used to do sometimes when She Who be talking about stuff I wasn’t interested in much. Marley’s voice was pretty and clear like it had bells in, like it be one a them rivers what you see on TV what have wildlife in. Azad was on that river, and he wasn’t swimming against the current neither.

She still hadn’t stopped talking, what was amazing even for a woman, what talk more than men by nature. ‘I’m heaps pissed off at the way this fascist government treats refugees. I’ve been in lots of marches and protests. But this is the first time I’ve ever been, like, actually
inside
a detention centre. I wasn’t sure they’d let me in but they did and…’ Then, like someone hit her pause button she stopped suddenly and looked round her. ‘
Fuck!
’ Some a the guys exchanged looks what said they couldn’t believe a young girl like that would swear, and in front of her mum, too. Azad winced cuz he didn’t like it neither, I knew. ‘It’s terrible. All these gates and fences and razor wire and guards. It’s like a concentration camp.’

‘Oy. Marley,’ said April.

‘I know, I know, I know, I shouldn’t say that. We’re Jewish? Well, I consider myself kinda Hindu-Buddhist actually. But I
know the concentration camps were a lot worse. I mean, they tortured and killed people…’

‘Like your great-grandmother.’

‘Like my great-grandmother.’

Everyone’s heads be swivelling from one to the other, like we was watching one a them tennis matches at Wimpledown.

‘But anyway,’ Marley goes, ‘whatever you compare it to, this is like…anyway, it’s like a
crime
.’

‘Maybe,’ April suggested in a voice what was as thin as her smile, ‘you should let other people have a chance to talk, darling.’

Marley clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Sorry, I’m so rude.’ She turned to the detainee on her left. ‘Where are you from?’

‘Palestine.’

‘Cool!’ she exclaimed.

The bloke what was Palestinian looked like he didn’t get what was so cool about coming from a place what was so fucked up and where people be dying all the time.

‘I’m from Kashmir,’ Bhajan said.

‘Oh, wow, where they’ve got all those houseboats?’

‘Yes. You are speaking of Srinagar and the Dal Lake, I think.’

‘That’s amazing,’ goes Marley, turning her attention to Bhajan, what left Azad looking like someone just stole the cake off his plate. ‘I’ve always wanted to go there. It sounds like such a romantic place. Really chilled.’

‘Not always,’ goes Bhajan, what had been tortured there.

‘Huh.’ Marley nodded. ‘My bio-dad? He hung out there when he was travelling? When he was young? Said the hash was wicked.’

‘Excuse me, Miss Marley? What is “bio-dad”?’ The Afghani dude what asked just been transferred from Curtin in West Australia.

April’s eyes met me own and did a tango. I raised me eyebrows, what is in factuality one eyebrow. I put me hand over me thigh and wiggled two a me fingers upside down, like they was walking. She gave me a look like I was her dad what just said it be okay to wag school, what dads never do in factual real life.