The Knife Sharpener (25)

25.

Collingwood was dark when they turned onto Smith St. The streets were quiet. A few taxis and some cars crawling, switching their high beams on and off. The sidewalks were empty. This close to northside, it was too dangerous to be out late. Desperate remnants of the Delinquency still sought repute and noise. And the wind jackals. Nichola leaned into the van’s window watching the shadowy streets drift by. The bumping lights of the motoboys around them. Boarded up windows. Blown street lamps. Burnt out tram stops.

            And the graffiti. Crude, almost illegible tags scarring walls, street signs, and shop walls. Amidst images of shattered stackhats and cracked cameras. Fires and children in school uniforms, all the same, with their ties undone, fists in the air, mouths roaring. Humans screaming distorted music notes. Suited up men, with Ministry nametags and red eyes. Devils horns and stacks of paper wielded like a gun. Like a cricket bat. Imposing crowds of them. Splashed with writing. There needs to be opposition. Our independence. The Delinquency. Can’t be another waste. Ministry (won’t)Know.

            Helmut had been quiet. Listening to his music. Smoking and driving. The mystery of the man was starting to grate on Nichola. The overriding sense that he had a role to play, rubbing up against the sheer unlikelihood of him being anything more than what he presented himself to be. She didn’t know how to get anymore out of him than what she already had.

            It was becoming clearer to Nichola that he was a singularly pragmatic man. Their partnership was the best of limited options. She wondered how much this dictated his current life. The knife sharpening. The reticence. The smoking and male singers singing lonely songs. The beaten to shit Toyota panel van, she had broken into by merely yanking the locked door open. It all amounted to a kind of simplicity that disguised other pathways. Rationality was easy when there were limited options.

            In this, he was the opposite of her father.

            ‘Are you from Melbourne?’ Nichola asked.

            Helmut dragged on his current Champion, tapped ash out of the window. They slowly advanced down Smith St.

            ‘No,’ he said.

            They sat in the quiet of that question for a moment.

            ‘I came here when I was younger.’

            ‘By yourself?’

            ‘Yes.’

            ‘Why?’

            ‘I was sent,’ said Helmut. ‘I needed to come.’

            ‘Oh,’ said Nichola. ‘It must’ve been hard. To leave your home.’

            ‘Yes,’ he said. Dragged and finished his cigarette. Out the window.

            ‘Do you like it here. In Melbourne?’

            He thought on that question.

            ‘It is home,’ he said. ‘It is my familiar.’

            ‘I understand that,’ she said, surprised at his poetic inflection.

            ‘Do you?’ he asked.

            ‘Yeah. That feeling of knowing something inside out and, like, almost needing it. Even with its faults.’

            He drove on. The motoboys turned into a black, cobblestoned side street. Helmut followed them. The van bounced around on worn springs.

            ‘Are your family still back – wait, where did you come from? To Melbourne?’ asked Nichola.

            ‘Someplace else,’ he said.

            The motoboys pulled up in front of a dilapidated warehouse that once housed a café. Inside, lights flickered. Maybe candles. A throng of helmeted motoboys milled around the front doors. Sentries. They carried steel poles. Tire irons. One had what looked to be an ancient handgun. Their motorbikes and scooters were parked down the road. Orderly in straight lines, with their backpacks strapped to their seats. Helmut pulled up behind them.

            ‘You can’t possibly be that cryptic,’ said Nichola.

            ‘We’re here,’ said Helmut and stepped out of the van. Nichola stared at him as he slid out. Then followed.

            Bohner waited for them near the entrance. He had the chef’s bag with the knife in his arms. His cattle prod he had seemed to have left on his bike.

            ‘Come along, then,’ he said. ‘Ol Chance, he’s a waiting.’

            The big motoboy pushed open the doors. Strolled inside. Nichola and Helmut followed a few paces behind.

            It was a big open space. Clean wooden surfaces and tiled floor. An old broken espresso machine behind a long-marbled bar on the right wall. Long blackened, overwarm fridges just in sight behind it. Tables and chairs stacked off to the left. Empty pots, full of dirt, some with weeds, hung from the ceiling between cords with blown light bulbs at their ends. Some broken down waiters’ stations adorned a couple of corners, with black screened computer monitors and upside-down water glasses.

            Motoboys lounged about the place. Sitting on helmets or chairs they had pulled over. A couple were eating sandwiches or instant noodles. Some sipped out of water bottles, looking at their phones. Others took hits of a goon sack they passed around. A little group of three shared a joint. A few slept. All their eyes slipped right by Helmut and Nichola. There were scattered ‘hellos’ for Bohner. Friendly, familiar tones of respect. Nichola could see he was something of a boss here.

            Occasionally, a phone would chime or vibrate, and a motoboy would get up and leave. Tugging on his helmet. Playing at their phone. Getting coordinates for pickup and delivery. There was a persistent hum of engines from outside reverberating through the building. Occasionally, a distant electrified howl.

            ‘Wind jackals?’ asked Helmut to Bohner after one particularly drawn out bellow, drowned in static.

            ‘Don’t you be worryin bout them, now. They steer clear,’ said Bohner. ‘They scared of too many motoboys. They hunt them some lonesome types.’

            At the rear of the warehouse there were stairs going descending into a basement. Bohner led them there and down to the door of a walk-in fridge.

            ‘He’s in there,’ said Bohner. ‘Off ya hop, now, folksies.’

            Nichola stood behind Helmut as he yanked open the door of the fridge. There was no cool air. It had been off for years. Only slight protesting sound of plastic and air release. They entered together.

            Bohner came in behind him them. He handed the chef’s bag to the short, wiry man who waited for them. White haired and pinched face. Granite eyes. Though not old. Nichola placed him in his early forties. Maybe. He wore motoboy denim and had a biker’s jacket slung over the back of the elaborate office chair he sat in like a throne. All around him were computer monitors and TVs. Countless cords running off into the ceiling. The screens blinked between videos of Melbourne’s streets. Different Medias. Restaurant reservation details. Food ordering sites. News and current affair. The Ministry homepage, always updating.

The Other Net, too. Dark Forums. KillingTime. Nichola was familiar with these. Her dad had shown them to her when she was growing up. Mostly, as a warning to be able to identify when these sites transgressed into the regular internet. According to Rudiger, they were sources of confusion and malcontent. Fake news and lies. Make believe identities. He felt the Medias were too influenced by them. Sought out The Other Net’s disrepute as a means of gathering a fake street legitimacy. It was part of his job to come down hard on Other Net hackers and users. People spoiled by what they were exposed to there.

‘You have to see through them, Nichola. They – its defenders – say, “free speech,” but there isn’t any freedom there. No. Only self-spun webs they manage to trap themselves in. Like idiot spiders. It’s Stockholm Syndrome. Little curated online realities, which they come to believe is reality. I must dissuade them of this misperception. Our administered reality is best for them. Ministry Knows.’

The short man watched Helmut and Nichola enter. Bohner left and closed the door.

‘G’day,’ he said. ‘You don’t ‘member me do ya, Nicky?’

She pulled on her memory. A foggy one, perhaps. A younger version of this man, whispering to her father in the loungeroom. Right before her father’s spectacularly violent abandonment of the Ministry. He wore motorbike boots. Had long hair. A rebel’s pose. Did not seem significant. All a bit hazy.

‘Kind of,’ she said.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I only come round once. We woke ya. Wouldn’t ‘spect you to ‘member much. But I was a fab friend to your pa. We come to work together a lot. ‘Specially when it come to righting wrongs ‘gainst me boys.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Chance Pistol is me name. The motoboys is me little organization. And I reckin, lil Nicky, that I may have some answers regardin you and that knife.’