The Tyrant's Novel (27 page)

They?

The people you'll be dealing with. Nothing to do with me.

All this was, of course, very much in the tradition of some of the films I would have liked one day to have the chance to subtitle. But the glamour only attends a film. There's no glamour in anticipatory fear and plans in which any minute shift is lethal and in which the escapee doubts the capacity of his own mind not to go crazy during the process. The most piteous creature on earth is the one contemplating unlikely flight, and without documents.

I went out again and found my driver had returned to the pier but seemed to be asleep in his car. Thus began a day and a half of tedious and earnest car hunting. I took my driver's sagacious advice and went and saw a friend of his who owned a large yard of vehicles behind a two-storey house in Beaumont. He was selling cars somewhat cheaply, particularly the older models. In some cases inflation had reduced their value to a couple of hundred U.S. dollars. I particularly liked a white Toyota, like Captain Chaddock's. One could make a journey up north in such a sturdy vehicle, I told my driver and his friend. I saw the anticipation of kickback in my driver's eyes.

And no shortage of petrol, said my driver's friend.

But I made the driver take me to other dealers too. I ran hot and cold over this model and that, still conveying to him that the white Toyota probably had my vote.

On the morning itself, I invited my driver upstairs for coffee, on the supposition that yesterday's car hunting had made us compadres. He seemed so flattered by the gesture that I indulged the hope someone more senior than he would be blamed if I vanished.

As we sipped away, I was aware of carrying ten thousand dollars on my person, divided into wads of five thousand each, one in my breast pocket for handing over, the other, according to the absurdity of this drama, in my right sock. The only thing I carried which resembled a document was a folded-up dust jacket from the American edition of my book.

There's a great place I used to go when I was younger, I told the driver. The Bay View. By the Eastside markets. Do you know that place?

My driver said he did.

And so he took me, and so it befell me.

At nine-thirty, breakfasted lightly and having drunk as much fluid as I could, I went to the men's toilet. As I urinated and waited very calmly for any changes to be rung, a young man stood at a urinal near me. When I had finished, he zipped his own fly and turned to me.

Finished? he asked.

Yes, I said.

Do you have the money?

Are you the man?

Of course. Hurry!

I pulled out the five thousand and he leafed through it.

Very well, he said. The lid's on fairly tight, but when it's time to get out, our man will release you. Okay? You run up onto the deck of the tanker yelling, I seek asylum, I seek asylum! The captains are bound by international law to take notice.

I understand, I said.

As I was still nodding, he punched me vigorously on the side of the jaw. What a big wrist you have, I thought for a second. But this was no bar-brawl punch, which merely confused the sight with sudden lights. I had no time for further thought. I must have simply dropped where I stood.

Unconscious of its beginning, I made the journey in a barrel. In that I woke in fear and pain and confusion, jammed upright in an agonizing position, light entering through five minuscule holes in the lid. We were static. I could feel no rocking of water so I must have stood on the dockside. Though there was some form of padding in the barrel, it gave little comfort. Immediately ill, I found by chance with my hand a liter bottle of water which had been mercifully included.

Since they had left me my watch, I knew it to be eleven o'clock, and clearly daytime, but staring at it, I felt my head expand and shrink with pain. I had been uncomfortably located, my knees and back holding me upright, but however I moved, I could not get a painless position nor achieve a full kneeling one. McCauley had promised it would not be easy.

Heat grew within the barrel. Little by little, I was able to shed my jacket and had an urge to douse myself with the remaining water, but did not know whether I would be suspended in pain and thirst like this for another day. I went into a stupor and woke to the outer world as my barrel was toppled sideways. I could feel but not see the abrasions this movement brought. I was rolled and rolled over planks, keeping my elbows in, crazed with giddiness, sometimes my conveyance falling from one surface an inch or two, or in the worst case, five or six inches, to another. When it stopped, I was sick again and became insufferable to myself. And then, upright, I heard McCauley's voice but could detect mere threads of light. I had found my bark of exile, humble though it might be. I could feel the tug and the suck of the river on which
Joanna,
or whatever barge it was, rode. But another barrel was placed atop mine, and I felt a panic of claustrophobia. The people involved had my money, it occurred to me. There was no reason they would regret it if I perished on a tanker's deck or in a hold, buried amongst the piled-up barrels of crude.

I suffered unutterably and banged the sides of the barrel, but I knew justice had been done—I was buried with my few possessions. I slept miserably, and I woke to darkness, and the fluorescent dots on my watch said nine o'clock. I rationed the water, and lost all sense of my own putridness. I propped myself to my knees again and urinated in the bottom of the barrel. I banged its sides, but the padding numbed the sound. I beat against the lid, and it resonated dully, as if it lay in the bottom row of a pyramid of barrels.

Thus hours of panic passed. I could have brought a pocketknife, a plain utensil to end all the fear and wasting ahead of me, but I hadn't thought I would need it. I began to rave, and the dots on my watch meant nothing more than the random cells of some insect. My barrel swayed and I began to hear the gluey crude moving all round me, and I began to sing a song about it, some oceanic plaint that made sense to me at the time. I finished the water, tried to piss in the bottle, and waited for my air to run out.
Why the oil?
as the medic had asked in “The Women of Summer Island.” What was the oil doing, this Satanic honey, out at sea and separating me from the sweet air of earth?

At some stage beyond all time there was new movement and jolting all around me, and sharp noises around the lid of my barrel. In glittering early air, McCauley looked down at me, Bernie peering over his shoulder, curious to see what had befallen me.

God, you stink, said McCauley.

Oh yes, I admitted.

The two of them dragged me out. I wavered on the deck, and sat as Bernie hosed me totally with seawater.

Barrels rose on pallets from the deck of
Joanna
up the side of a red and white tanker. McCauley pointed to the stairs which led up the side of the ship.

There it is. Look lively.

I caressed him as if he were my lost father.

Get away, you mad bastard, he said. Go on! Up the steps, yelling
asylum
all the way.

I swayed up the tanker's ladder, howling the word. They called the captain, who accepted me with a shrug. I spent three months in a psychiatric ward in Greece. Everyone shook their head at me, even the nurses, and said, Without documents, and stateless.

After-tale

And you see, said Alan Sheriff, isn't that the saddest and silliest story you ever heard?

He was finishing the tale for which he had made such claims under eucalypts in the detention center. It had occupied us some weeks, but Alan Sheriff had been determined to tell it.

How did you get to this country? I asked. Without documents?

I bought fake ones in Greece.

And the book?

It was published under Great Uncle's name and did medium well, but no one believed he'd written it. So I read in
Time
magazine. The thing is, your friend—Alice. She thinks I can be innocently attracted by her breasts? I have two ghosts to stay my hand. Does she think that if I get a temporary protection visa, I'll ask her for a date?

We're naïve, I said.

I looked at the other folk in the yard—matriarchs in the encompassing Middle Eastern or Afghan robes in which they had made their long escapes; a few solemn Sudanese gentlemen, philosophy aching in their eyes; young Palestinians in jeans who could have passed for Italian waiters except for a darkness in their faces.

I wonder, I said, shaking my head as if to rid it of the extraordinary impact of Alan's story. I wonder if all these people have saddest and silliest stories to rival yours?

Oh no, he said. He grinned at me. Some of them have been involved in genuine tragedy.

Acknowledgments

The concept of this novel arose as a result of reading “Tales of the Tyrant” by Mark Bowden (
Atlantic Monthly
, May 2002).

A Note About the Author

THOMAS KENEALLY is the acclaimed author of more than two dozen books, including
Schindler's List,
which won the Booker Prize and inspired the film;
The Great Shame: The Triumph of the Irish in the English-Speaking World; American Scoundrel,
a biography of Civil War general Dan Sickles; and most recently,
Office of Innocence,
a compassionate novel about a young priest during World War II. He lives in Sydney, Australia.

Also by Thomas Keneally

Fiction

The Place at Whitton

The Fear

Bring Larks and Heroes

Three Cheers for the Paraclete

The Survivor

A Dutiful Daughter

The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith

Blood Red, Sister Rose

Gossip from the Forest

Season in Purgatory

A Victim of the Aurora

Passenger

Confederates

The Cut-Rate Kingdom

Schindler's List

A Family Madness

The Playmaker

To Asmara

Flying Hero Class

Woman of the Inner Sea

A River Town

Office of Innocence

Nonfiction

American Scoundrel: The Life
of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles

The Great Shame and the Triumph
of the Irish in the English-Speaking World

Outback

Now and in Time to Come

The Place Where Souls Are Born:

A Journey to the Southwest

PUBLISHED BY NAN A. TALESE
AN IMPRINT OF DOUBLEDAY
a division of Random House, Inc.

DOUBLEDAY is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Keneally, Thomas.
The tyrant's novel / Thomas Keneally.—1st ed. in the U.S.A.
p.  cm.
1. Fiction—Authorship—Fiction. 2. Detention of persons—Fiction.
3. Political prisoners—Fiction. 4. Novelists—Fiction.
5. Despotism—Fiction. I. Title.

PR9619.3.K46T97 2004
823'.914—dc22        2003059670

Copyright © 2004 The Serpentine Publishing Co., Pty. Ltd.
All Rights Reserved

First published in Australia by Random House Australia

eISBN: 978-0-385-51344-9

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