The Knife Sharpener (38)

38.

They drove into St Kilda slowly. To Nichola, it was all familiar garbage and slimed ocean. Cat calls of drunks and drug addicts on Fitzroy St. Mostly empty, open plan bars filled with pinball machines, rotted stools, and discarded stackhats. Few punters bent over rum and coke. British voices singing out, crowding the pavement, in search of kebabs. Curling smoke on the beach. Bonfires and joints.

            ‘St Kilda,’ said Helmut. He leaned over the steering wheel. Manoeuvring around people stumbling out onto the street. It was the first time he had spoken since Victoria Parade. He had smoked and driven and played cassettes. They were listening to someone called Jimmy Buffet.

            ‘Yeah,’ said Nichola.

            ‘Used to be a sapphire.’

            ‘Dad said so, too – well, not “sapphire.” Called it special. Used to love the festival when he was a kid.’

            ‘Too many shiny things,’ he said and pulled up at a red light. A stocky man wearing only thongs and boxers stumbled past, shivering, nipples pierced and erect, fireman carrying an emancipated platinum haired woman. She was screaming about the Tasman Strait conspiracy and not on her life was she going to ever visit Tasmania, land of gargoyles and the haunted damned.

‘No one knew what to do with it all. Wasted it,’ Helmut said. They took off at the green.

            An armoured police Ford drifted by. It ignored the hollered taunts. Acted as a presence. A reminder of Ministry, even though Ministry kept muttering that it wanted nothing of the bay. Tried to make a more accommodating reality as they went about their business of adhering to their own contrasting truth. Nichola knew they couldn’t have another Delinquency. Needed a lot less blood. A whole paradise to renovate. Not a demolished lot inhabited by the monstrous remains of humans.

Clearly, the Ministry propaganda hadn’t settled. The rumoured imminence of being shifted off to the Wastes hung heavy in the air. So, the people partied and revelled as though it were the end times it almost was. Not many places this close to the city left for those not of money or Ministry. Near that apparently precious, carefully controlled Melbourne culture. And, for this intoxicated moment, they were ignored. Enforcement of Ministry law was lenient.

It wouldn’t for be long, though. The backpackers and destitute couldn’t be allowed this kind of freedom. It disrupted the image of Melbourne that they were trying to paint in exact, careful strokes.

‘Sometimes, for their own good, we have to let people believe that they know what their “good” is. Let them celebrate it. Act upon it. Be it. Then, when we must show them our “good,” the one that matters, that keeps peace, they are inevitably pliable. Sated. And, if not, we dissuade and leave them only with their falsified memories. It is, after all, for theirs, ours, everyone’s good,’ her father said.

It was a tricky balancing act. They couldn’t give the citizens of St Kilda a reason to rebel. Particularly, the visitors, lest they spark another international incident with Europe – not after the Vermont Vermin incident, and those lost to the wind jackals. So, the Biffs kept their distance. The police treated the citizens with nonchalant shrugs, as though they were witty teenagers testing the water. Everyone flaunted the rules, crying nirvana. Enjoyed the moments ahead of their Armageddon. Anticipated when immigration, the police, and the Biffs would come and break up the party.

Not many Melbourne-bred folks lived in St Kilda now.

Her dad had found her an apartment there. Correctly figuring that the Ministry’s wilfully, temporarily blind gaze on the rough housing frontier party suburb, would assume that it would be no place for an Otwey. She had come to feel an affinity with the area. The sense of the wild south. There may be the Ministry cameras and officials in the streets, Collectors and Word Advisors, the statutes and dense practices of a limited government’s bureaucracy, but the frivolous beach bum, live music soul kept creeping up past the noise restrictions and cultural allowances.

They said you could hear the Espy poltergeist on windless nights.

Nichola pointed Helmut down Grey Street. Scantily dressed men and women, rouged and made up, strutted the sidewalk. Eyeballed the Toyota panel van suspiciously. Looked more favourably upon a Lotus trawling slowly up and down. A few whistles and claps. Attention being loudly sought.

The night was still for being this close to the bay. The few functional street lights providing speckled illumination.

‘Over there,’ said Nichola, pointing to her apartment building. It always put her in mind of an enormous Spanish mission. Tall concrete wall and remote controlled, inward swinging steel gate. Brightly coloured in pastel and beige. A beach front property dressed up like it belonged in an oasis. Courtyard and palms. The paint was shredded. The colours muted by direct sun and wind. Cigarette butts and broken bottles lined the bottom of the wall. Helmut’s own Champion rollie flicked out the window to join the pile.

Helmut went to pull in, then kept driving the van past the gates, further down Grey. A black, blocky sedan slipped past them going the other way. Its headlight dimmed low.

‘Ministry car,’ said Helmut.

Nichola watched it turn the corner into Fitzroy St.

‘It’s gone,’ she said.

He was fixated on his rear-view mirror. ‘Still,’ he said and kept driving. Eventually slipping into a one-way street about 100 metres past the apartment and parking the van.

‘Your face on the web – could be tracked,’ he said.

She checked the knife on her lap. It was becoming a habit. A reminder. ‘No. I hardly exist in any, like, official sense. Paperwork. Lease. That sorta stuff. They may have my face. But not my name.’

‘How?’

‘Dad never told anyone about me. I was a liability to his work. His mission. No one knows I’m here. Who I am.’

‘Never told anyone?’

‘I was a secret,’ she said.

Helmut sat in the driver’s seat. Seeming to think.

‘I mean some found people found out. Like Chance. But that was after he left the Ministry.’

Silence.

‘I mean, you didn’t know,’ said Nichola.

‘No.’

‘This place is safe for us. For now. We can’t just keep driving around the city. Too visible.’

‘Ministry can track my van,’ said Helmut. ‘The cameras.’

‘Exactly. It’s why drifting is dangerous. But they’re all broken here. The prostitutes dismantle them. It’s too much effort for the Ministry to keep fixing them,’ said Nichola. ‘It’s why dad liked this spot so much. I could be anonymous. Still.’

Helmut hesitated. His eyes drawn into his usual thin slits. He picked at his shirt. Fidgeted, appeared to seek his cigarettes again.

‘It’s a cliché, Helmut, but those will kill you,’ said Nichola.

He looked pointedly at the knife and snorted. It was as much emotion as she had seen in the man.

‘Let’s go,’ he said and pushed open his door.

They both slowly went back down the side street towards Grey. Nichola could hear the street walkers calling out. Music from some of the pubs off near Fitzroy St.

At the corner, Helmut bent his head around and checked out the street. He turned back to Nichola and lightly shrugged. Then his eyes widened, and his arms came up, down, confusion, maybe recognition.

A perfume of beer and aftershave washed over Nichola and a familiar voice, ‘chill now, love. Bohemian Bob got ya back. But best not be stumbling out there. Biffs be making this their night, I tell ya. And I’ve had a few run ins – it ain’t ever nice. Nope. Not even with your gentleman pa.’