The Knife Sharpener (45)

45.

‘Forest Hill,’ said Bohemian Bob, coming over to stand beside Nichola. ‘Before the Wastes.’ He slugged on his beer. Helmut stood off a few paces, leaning against the kitchen bar. Nichola saw the heaviness of his eyelids that draped pupils staring intently, with familiarity, at the image on the coffee table.

            She held her silence. Her dad hadn’t kept any photos at the house. As if he didn’t care for his own image or artefacts of family in stasis. Nichola’s dad as a younger man, then, it was all memory. They were certainly less carefree than what this photo revealed. More bulky and unhinged. Less present. This was a photo of a strong, confident, and grinning man she recognized, but didn’t know.

            For a moment, Nichola felt resentment towards Bohemian Bob. He had got a part of her dad that was long lost by the time she was aware of the world and their place in it.

She leaned in closer and saw The Chase in the background. Still a shopping centre in that photo. No longer the last foreboding, canon armed fort between the Wastes and the rest of Melbourne, standing lonely guard on Canterbury Rd. Holding back the raff, Toll Booth Gangs, and the twisted gold hunters, driven crazy by the crumbled expanses and the hopeless search. Along with whatever else roamed those blasted plains now.

‘We worked together. For the Ministry,’ said Bohemian Bob. ‘I was employed by the Cultural Bursary in their propagandist arm.’ His voice had changed slightly, slipping into his slight lisped drunkenness as another beer passed into his system, but losing some of its old mate charm. It was almost officious.

‘I used to clean up messes and polish up ugly stories. Spit shine Ministry ideas, policies, politicians – well, when they were still called that anyway. They had me craft rumours and whispers, build fictional backstories for people to embellish their problems and advantages, develop and distribute marketing to discredit, celebrate, grow, convince. All for the benefit of the Ministry – the Ministry Good. These stories, Nicky, I would watch them grow so vast that they would become entangled in contradiction and impossibility, develop unexpected B-plots, insinuate unintended conspiracies, become forms of doctrine. They were more believable because of these flaws; flaws that I deliberately built in,’ he said. Seemed thoughtful. ‘You know, it wasn’t hard to make everyone forget about me. Not that I was ever front and present like your dad. But I had my role in all … this.’ He gestured vaguely at the world. At the picture. ‘When you spend your life controlling someone else’s narrative, it’s not that hard to dictate your own. I became Bohemian Bob, the Mayor and Chaplain of Chapel St. Robert Asher – him, I left behind. Took my pension, buried my mistakes, and hid myself away.’

He walked back to the fridge and grabbed another beer.

‘Mind if I smoke?’ asked Helmut. He was already rolling a Champion cigarette.

‘Nah,’ said Bohemian Bob, opening another bottle. ‘This place will always smell like plaster dust and pine. Smoke won’t hurt it.’

Helmut nodded and lit up. Visibly relaxing as the nicotine entered his system. It was the longest time that Nichola had seen him without a smoke. Clouds congealed above his head against the ceiling of the terrace.

‘You picked that up recently?’ asked Bohemian Bob. ‘Don’t remember you being a puffer.’

‘After the Wastes,’ said Helmut.

‘Yeah, same here,’ said Bohemian Bob, nodded to his beer and drank again. ‘Of course, I’ve always had the taste. At volume, too. But it doesn’t really do much, anymore. Only so long you can drown something before it either dies or fights its way back to the surface.’ He looked at Nichola.

‘Mmmm,’ said Helmut and smoked.

Nichola finally slumped into a beaten old armchair in front of a small TV and a radiator heater.

‘Rudiger told me to watch out for you,’ said Bohemian Bob.

‘He did?’ she asked. Her voice sounded strained. Almost bruised.

‘Not a word since we parted in the Wastes. Then, out-of-the-sweet-fucking-anywhere, he finds me on my way back home from the nightly pilgrimage. Scared me near to liver failure. I’ve not known a man less inclined to announce his presence. Forever suddenly, unexpectedly there. No sidle. No warning. Just his beared and honeysuckle voice emerging out of night.’

The front door slamming and the tread of his boots. The whine of the cupboard door opening where he stashed the bat. The rustle of moving the vacuum cleaner out of the way. No called greeting. A heavy presence, creaking boards, a kettle set to boil for Earl Grey tea. It was enough to let Nichola know he was home.

‘He launched right into it,’ said Bohemian Bob. ‘No catch-up on old times. No “how ya been”. Nope. He tells me about a Church near where I drink on Chapel, some special knife, a daughter I never knew he had who would be poking up around near there soon. Commands me to keep an eye on her and help when I can. No uncertain terms about it. Never were with Rudiger, but. You did as he told.’

Helmut grunted. ‘Some did,’ he said.

Bohemian Bob kept his head over his beer. ‘It was all nothing more than that, Nicky. As it was way back, he only gave me what he thought I needed to know. Add to it all that I’m drunk. Wobbling home. Seeing a man who we all thought was chained to cement at the bottom of the Yarra. I’m stricken with muteness. Me. The Gentlemen’s Storyteller. I couldn’t make the words to ask him what he meant. What this Church and knife were. Your role. How I could help. I guessed it was dangerous, but. Your pa gathered danger like he was some kind of fucked up collector of the stuff. Haven’t heard from your pa, since.’ He lifted his eyes to her. ‘You showed up a few days later and I knew you were his get from the moment you started to obsess over that building – like how he used to obsess. Methodical with that journal. Every day. Clockwork.’

‘She didn’t see the cameras,’ said Helmut. ‘The lookouts.’

Nichola glared tiredly at him.

‘We all make mistakes,’ said Bohemian Bob, after a moment. ‘Miss the cameras through the surveillance. Get so used to being watched, you forget sometimes.’

Helmut shrugged and rolled another cigarette.

‘Anyway, I figured Rudiger wanted me to make sure you kept clear of it all. Obfuscate and the like. Let him do his work.’

‘Ministry has him,’ said Nichola.

Bohemian Bob let a wheezing breath free. ‘I also thought that may be the case.’

‘I have to get the knife to him. He’ll know what to do.’

‘Yeah, he may at that,’ he said. ‘Seems to be a pretty powerful implement, but –’

‘But what?’ asked Nichola and felt Helmut’s wary glance.

A cold break and cigarette smoke wafting.

‘He’s not the type to let something like that go easily is all, Nicky,’ said Bohemian Bob. Pointed at the chef’s bag. ‘I don’t want to doubt his intentions – interests in that thing. Only that, sometimes, his feelings – beliefs about that kind of force, it doesn’t line up with everyone else’s.’

‘He isn’t an arm of the Ministry Good anymore, Bob,’ said Nichola. ‘He came to his own insight about this city, the Ministry, what was better for everyone.’

‘Exactly. His mission of repentance, though, it wasn’t without its own questions.’

The bat never went away for long. She hadn’t been able to find it when she tried to scout his house after he disappeared.

‘You didn’t already know about the Church?’ asked Nichola. The luck of her father’s old work colleague, who he clearly had a history with, already being in place to survey where the knife eventually ended up – it seemed too fortuitous.

‘Not really, love. I’d had that run-in with – who was it? – Paul. But they set up that little institution only recently, well after I’d already made my ritual on Chapel. Before your dad found me, they were just another part of the scene. A weird one. But no weirder than the 78 tram sprite, or Neil the Boulder at the 7/11. So, I ignored them. Thought they were just freaks getting their freak on. Not my business,’ said Bohemian Bob. ‘They only took on an air when your dad told me about them. When you started showing up.’

He finished another beer, went to the fridge, pulled another three between his fingers. Helmut sipped at his and came over to Nichola. Sat on a lumpy futon across from her. Did not look at the picture on the coffee table. Bohemian Bob slouched down beside him, one of the beers already half drunk.

‘How’d you know to look for me tonight?’ asked Nichola.

‘I’ve got passing familiarity with the two sentries that Church employed,’ said Bohemian Bob.

‘The bums in the tracksuits?’

‘Them, yep. Liu and Jenkins been around doing the Chapel crawl for a long while. Not quite fixtures like yours truly, but close,’ he said. ‘You did quite a number on em, Nicky. Scrambled their brains some. But they managed to get a hold of some hard liquor and were properly celebrating up and down Chapel like a pair of royalty. I ran into them when I was near Commercial. They nearly fell over themselves to tell me that they were unionizing; that they were gonna tell their boss at the Church they weren’t responsible for the theft and they were entitled to smoko breaks and more pay. Theft? I asked. And they told me all about how one of them was punched and the other bottled by a brute lady who ran off with property from the building they were hired to security guard. I didn’t think much of their chances to still have a job tomorrow, but, then, what do I know of the job market?’

He opened the second of the three beers.

‘I knew you’d gotten into it, then. Not the severity, necessarily. But, as I said, if Rudiger had me watching you and this Church, I suspected there was more to it than the, um, contextless instructions he left me, yeah? One thing for a man to say, “keep an eye on things.” Another thing entirely if Rudiger says it. I abandoned my pilgrimage for the first time and got to waiting near where you lived. A few hours later I saw them Biffs. Then you.’

‘How’d you know where I lived?’ asked Nichola.

‘I made inquiries after Rudiger gave me his commandments and I met you. Had a few folk I know follow you back to your flat when we first encountered. Told me it wasn’t too far from mine. It ain’t just Liu and Jenkins I know on Chapel. I’ve got like a whole set of additional eyes right down to the foreshore. Plus, them motoboys – I got connections there –’

‘Chauncey,’ said Helmut.

Bohemian Bob nearly spat his beer. ‘How?’

‘We met Chance earlier,’ said Nichola.

Bohemian Bob skulled off his beer. ‘Floating to the surface,’ he said.

The mess of connections played out in front of her. Like what Bohemian Bob said about his stories, the more outlandish it became, the truer it felt. Like the fatalism she perceived in her own life. The limited series of paths she had chosen – all forked off her dad’s grand journey – that she, and these others, had followed to bring them here.

The knife splitting and diverting all roads.

‘How do you all know each other, then?’ she asked.

‘That starts and ends in the Wastes, Nicky,’ said Bohemian Bob. Helmut smoked and leaned back. Let his eyes close a little.