The Library of Forgotten Books (6 page)

Faulkner remembers the conversation with Lucy, the one he thought had changed him. For some time after he first met her he’d felt his defences crumbling like a sand castle being battered by the waves. They met in the tea-houses and ended up at her apartment and she had been wary of him and his weathered face and his tired eyes. He hadn’t expected to have a chance, and at each meeting expected her to call it off. But they slowly saw more of each other until almost without notice it was every day. And then that night Lucy smoked a cigarette that emerged from a long cigarette holder as she lay in bed, great white pillows around her. The smoke drifted slowly in the air, long billowing lines like ribbons, refusing to disperse. Faulkner lay beside her, staring off into the distance.

“I’m a private eye,” he said. “I can’t move in.”

“Sure you can,” said Lucy.

“I’ve lived on my own for how long?”

“It’s not physical proximity you’re talking about.”

“What do you mean?” Faulkner looked sharply at her.

Lucy turned her head away, looked up to the roof as if there might be something of interest up there. “I’m not explaining it to you.” For a while they sat in silence, and then Lucy said, “My mother moved from China for a better life. There were all those stories of gold and spacious houses, and the inland sea filled with fish, and she came out here by herself. Thousands flooded in from China. She ended up here, met my father, and then the sickness took her when I was a child. She found a better life, of sorts, but in her heart I think she always longed to see Shanghai one more time. He didn’t understand.” Lucy hummed to herself for a while and then added, “We make our decision to be alone quite young, and we hold to it, don’t we, through thick and thin, we hold to it?”

Faulkner looked around and thought of his childhood in the orphanage with the Catholic fathers and their canes. He thought of the sound of those canes and the cries of the other orphans. So many fathers, so many canes—they had all merged into one in his mind. He looked at Lucy and said, “I drink, I gamble, I snort dream-dust...”

Lucy took a drag of the cigarette, looked back towards him.

“I’ve always been a private eye,” he continued. “What else can I do? What am I qualified to do? I’ve always worked alone. I’ve always
been alone
.”

“But we’re not alone now, are we? Either of us?”

Faulkner looked down like a little boy, as if he was embarrassed.

“Are we?” said Lucy, this time with a hint of anger.

“I think I’ll move in,” said Faulkner. “I think I’d like that.”

Later, Faulkner dreamed of the great inland sea, crystal under the sun. He and Lucy were sun-bathing, the cities like clusters of jewels running along the beaches around them. He had always hoped to retire to those beaches. Now he had—and Lucy was beside him. He looked out over the sea and something huge shifted beneath the waters. He leapt up. It seemed big as a train, or bigger perhaps. “Lucy! Lucy!” he’d screamed. But she only rolled over and began tanning her back. “Lucy!” But she still hadn’t heard. He had woken and the room was silent and dark, but he could smell the shampoo in her raven-black hair and feel the soft rise and fall of her breath.

Faulkner comes out of his reverie as the train grinds to a halt out in some dark industrial wasteland.

Lines of three-storey trams sit on tracks: driver’s booths sticking out like enclosed balconies on the second floor, darkened lamps swinging from high up on their sides, little spiral staircases leading up inside them. Faulkner leaps from the train and ducks between the trams. His breath is loud. His feet crunch on the gravel, despite his best efforts to tread lightly. But the thickset man keeps walking, oblivious to his presence, and enters a huge shed. In the distance the ant-hill factories pile upon each other like tangled mountains of concrete and steel.

Faulkner waits a moment as the man disappears. There’s a time for waiting and there’s a time for doing. Faulkner never really knows how to tell which is which. Or when is when—or the right grammar, for that matter. Faulkner sneaks after the man, through the gaping doors, into the warehouse, its roof disappearing above him in the darkness.

To Faulkner’s right, the thickset man makes his way into a corner office, built out of ramshackle wood, and looking very temporary. Above the door is a painted sign in red: Communist Party of Australia, Tramworkers. Faulkner slinks along the wall so that he can see through the windows, into the yellowy light of the office, where a suited man, his fingers yellow from cigarettes, his hair slicked back with some unnatural sheen, sits with a series of newspapers on his desk. One of them,
The Tribune
, has a headline that reads:
Say No to War. Defend Communist
China!

“Yep, they’re after Laurence. And then they’ll come for us,” says the thickset man, shifting on his feet, nervous again. His accent is broad, from the country perhaps, or northern Australia.

The man behind the desk looks up and speaks in more subtle tones: “They can’t drive us underground, we’re too big for that. But we’ll call a Central Committee meeting: we’d better make a decision.”

“There’s some guy who’s tracked him down,” says the thickset man. “Followed him to Laurence’s place but lost him.”

“Yeah? Secret service.”

“No—too ratty for that. Shorty says he’s a PI, related to Laurence. Wears a suit, but looks like it hasn’t been pressed in ages. Like the guy doesn’t care about it.”

Faulkner takes a step forward. “Well, at last someone who truly understands me.” Faulkner lights a cigarette as he leans against the doorway, one leg crossed over the other. He doesn’t look at the two men, but his face takes on a red-orange glow from the light of the match.

The two men stare at him.

“So you communists didn’t kill the Chinese Princess,” says Faulkner.

“That’s ‘im!” says the thickset man excitedly, as if he’s just found the solution to some impenetrable puzzle.

“It’s all right, Jake, this here doesn’t work for the State.” He looks at Faulkner. “I’m Hooks, Sam Hooks, Mr...?”

“Faulkner.”

“Ahh, Laurence told me about you. I was just on the phone to him.”

“That’s not too bright.”

“We know what we’re doing, Faulkner. And in response to your first question, no, we didn’t kill Laurence’s daughter. Why would we? We’re communists.”

“Ah...what is it they always say about the means to an end?”

“What end would murder serve?”

“So Laurence is a communist.”

“Hardly.”

“But he’s in touch with you.”

“Listen Faulkner, what do you want from us?”

“I want God-damn, nothing you can give me.” Faulkner inhales deeply; his cigarette crackles and burns red.

“Look, I’m sorry about the sheila.”

“She was a doll.”

“But that’s what it’s all about, don’t you see, Faulkner. It’s politics. It’s them against us. The rich against the working man. Capital and labour.”

“I don’t have the strength for that...comrade.”

“You might not care for it, but it cares for you.”

“Where’s Laurence going?”

“Inland, maybe. How would we know?”

“Because he’s
your
source, isn’t he? He was how the Chinese knew about the war. He leaked you the information. He wasn’t working for the secret service. He was working for you. He’s the reason that my china...Look,
you
aren’t gonna look after him.
Someone’s
gotta help him get out of here.”

Hooks leans back in his chair, looks over to Jake, then back to Faulkner. “I can only guess. But he’s got friends across the bay. There’s a steamer that leaves in the morning.”

Faulkner knows that the man has just told him the truth, but he is already away in his thoughts. The secret service used her to get to her father. But she wouldn’t tell. Of course she wouldn’t. You ever try to get a doll to speak?

Faulkner runs through the entranceway of Flinders St Station, its facade golden in the light. The fifty clocks on its corner face read the times for the next trains, as always, while the large clock beneath them reads four a.m. Giant fruit bats, big as children, circle above in the dark morning and head across the river towards the botanic gardens. He rushes back through the streets of the city, the spire of the Town Hall hovering above him to his right, piercing high into the sky like a knife. Faulkner has only a few hours. Return to their apartment, hidden in Chinatown, like a clue nestled away and surrounded by the turbulence of a city that never sleeps; and then to Port Melbourne, to Laurence, if he’s still alive. He needs that last clue, that final confirmation.

He returns to the alleyway, and the stairs, and there he sees the same policeman standing guard.

Faulkner takes out his dream-dust.

“Hey, you–”

Faulkner starts to climb the rickety stairs.

“Hey, stop. I’ll shoot.”

Faulkner looks at the dream-dust. He thinks for a moment and puts it away, taking hold, beneath his suit, of his pistol. One step at a time, one foot at a time, he climbs.

“I’ll shoot, you mongrel.”

Faulkner is almost there. He chances a look, and five, four, three steps before him the policeman stands, his revolver pointed at Faulkner. Faulkner doesn’t care. Faulkner has only one thing left to live for anyway. Two, One.

“I’ll goddamn–”

Like a snake, Faulkner strikes, his arm just a whir in the darkness. There’s a crack as the butt of the pistol hits the policeman’s head and a thump as the body goes down.

“You should have told me that would have worked before,” says Faulkner. “I wouldn’t have wasted the dust.”

Faulkner slips past the policeman into Lucy’s apartment. Everything is as it was before: the blood on the couch, the glasses on the coffee table, the book face down. The book, he thinks. He steps across to the table. The front of the book shows a sea-creature, rising from the water. Faulkner looks at the Leviathan, thrashing in the water with tentacles waving, as it emerges and fills our view. Life is nasty, brutish, short, he thinks. All the clues have fallen into place. Faulkner knows only one man who would read such a book. The Leviathan has emerged from the sea.

The Port Melbourne docklands are filled with bustling activity. Faulkner jumps from the tram which sits at the end of the line, several others around with suited men, women in floral dresses, climbing aboard or disembarking. On the pier a jazz band plays
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.
The sound of it hits Faulkner in the stomach; it reminds him of Lucy. The sun is shining, but heavy clouds are rolling in over the bay. A steamer with huge wheels and towering funnels, painted blue and white, is anchored by the side of the pier. Faulkner runs along the pier, dashing in between the strollers. On the prow of the steamer stands Laurence, staring off into the distance, the wind whipping his wispy hair. There is no sign of the rat, but Faulkner can sense that he’s around.

There is a tremendous sound of a horn, and boatmen unwind the thick ropes that attach the boat to the pier. Faulkner breaks into a sprint. The great wheels start to churn. A boatman steps in front of Faulkner, hand up to indicate for him to stop. But Faulkner steps left.

“Hey!”

Faulkner leaps the blue and white water and scrambles onto the boat. There is a pain in his chest. Christ, he thinks, I’m not getting any younger. He begins to climb up to the foredeck. Laurence stands alone; there is no rat. Perhaps Laurence has escaped Melbourne, city of monsters.

Faulkner lights a cigarette. “Heading somewhere are we?”

Laurence freezes, his eyes widen, and then Faulkner leans up against the rail beside him.

“Relax, it’s only me.”

“What are you doing here, Faulkner?”

“I thought I better send you off. Sorry about that cut you got yourself there.”

They stare out at the sea for a long while as the steamer cuts into the bay. On the far side of the bay, the megalopolis of Point Lonsdale can be seen: another great collection of buildings, rising into the sky above the shimmering water. For a moment the sun disappears behind a cloud, and then comes out again.

“Looks like a storm is coming,” says Faulkner.

“There’s been a storm coming for years,” says Laurence. “The question is, where are you going to be when it breaks?”

“I’d be with my friends if I had any. Now the only ones I have are communists and broken-down dream-dust dealers.”

In front of the steamer a few of the sharks that populate the bay warp in and out of existence beneath the water, dorsal fins circling.

“Look at those things, Laurence. They’d eat you up without noticing, wouldn’t they?”

“You know,” says Laurence, “they just keep producing new sets of teeth. So if they break some, no big deal. Another set comes right through.”

“No wonder they live around here.”

One of the sharks surges out of the water for a moment, baring its blood-red gums, its yellow teeth. It crashes back down, a spray of water flying high into the sky.

“Leviathans,” says Faulkner quietly. Then he adds: “Believe in heaven?”

“Dunno.”

“Just wondering if she’ll be waiting for me.”

“Who knows? Even if she is, she’s probably up there doing her own thing. She always had her own mind.”

They look out over the thousand small waves that emerge out of the sea for a second and then disappear again.

“So you were working for the Chinese?” says Faulkner.

“Of course not.”

“Well, the communists.”

“Look: I was working for the secret service, sure. I just thought it was the wrong thing to do, to invade China. Didn’t the communists help beat the Axis powers in World War Two? Can’t they work out whatever they want to do? It’s nothing to do with us. I mean, whatever they’re like, those Chinese communists, it’s up to the Chinese to get rid of them, if that’s what they want. And, well, I was thinking this and the next thing you know, I kind-of told the Communist Party about the plans to invade.”

“And so now you’re running.”

“It’s the secret service, Faulkner. You don’t just walk away.”

There’s silence for a minute, as Laurence and Faulkner look out over the bay.