The Knife Sharpener (47)

47.

Bohemian Bob Tells His Version of the Wastes (2)

Nicky, if that knife is gonna show you anything, it’s that people in this city, they place unbelievable value in bloody things, especially things they don’t have. It doesn’t matter if they don’t completely get it or know for sure it really exists, cos if someone else has it, then they need it too.

            At least that knife looks real, you know. Something that may be worth chasing – coveting.

            Your dad and I, we went out east as envoys of the Ministry. Apparently there to have some chats with the family patriarchs about relaxing the tolls. Few fine dinners, drinks, a show or two, friendly banter about reaching some kind of middle ground for all parties. Couple of bucks thrown in for good measure. For show.

Both families knew this was bullshit. Ministry would never send someone from the Cultural Bursary as an ambassador. We were marketers, advertisers, speech writers – lets be frank, Nicky, I was a propagandist. We weren’t negotiators. And I wasn’t high up enough to have a seat at the fine Tassie oak table to be taken seriously as a mouthpiece for the Ministry.

I had three things in my favour, but. One, I was raised out near Burwood. I knew the lingo and culture out there. Two, I had the gift of the gab, which you’re probably getting the gist of now, yeah. And, three, I had your dad, whose legend was already preceding us. It was still a novelty back then – an object of celebrity fascination. Less nasty than it got over the years.

So, though they was distrustful soon as they saw me waving Ministry colours and claiming to be some kind of diplomat, I was able to lean on my heritage and, also, your dad’s rep. I told told em that, yeah, I was out there do Ministry bidding and, yep, I knew it was hopeless, so I was taking the chance to visit some old haunts. Don’t get enough holidays, yeah? Am I right? Or am I right? All this hard yakka. Sometimes, ya gotta get home. Relax and unwind. Visit the Burvale for a pint. Any excuse. Oh, by the way, have you met Rudiger? He’s a friend of mine.

It wasn’t quite open arms, Nicky, but they didn’t toll us for coming onto their lands, if you know what I mean.

            Now, your dad, he built that brooding, orator myth he was known for: the penchant for rhetorical assaults and the brute force of his body language. I was proud of him for it. He embodied the Ministry hood become bombastic wraith of rebellion. But it was so heavy. Weighed down by pretention and its own thick, near curdled majesty. A real-life cliché of the hardman spewing biblical passages to terrify, or in the case of your father, convince his charges of their own guilt. There was no room for a human under that.

            Back then, but, when free of his Biff duties, there was hearty, unchanneled charisma to the man. A willing smile and an easy manner. I guess there were moments when you’d see the future in him. Sparks of temper and darkness and doubt he needed to convulsively explain away. The rest of the time, he was Rudiger. A gentleman and fine conversationalist, who liked a beer. Big into loyalty. Considering that he had just brutally crunched what we thought were the last vestiges of discord against the Ministry Good, I felt it seemed like he was also out to have a bit of a holiday. Giving away the Biff mask. He hardly pulled his bat out during the first few weeks. When he did, it was to show it young Taylors or Walkers excited to be meeting a Melbourne hero.

            Infiltrating the families was easy. Stoking the hatred, it turned out, wasn’t too hard either, especially once Rudiger got involved. They had doubt about whatever I said. When he said it, but, they swallowed the whole fishing pole. I gave them a pinch of doubt. He gave them a clump of certainty.

First, we told the Taylors that the Walkers had managed to acquire some great treasure, which they were keeping all secret like. Sitting on it. Waiting for the right moment to open the war chest.

Then, we told the Walkers the same thing about the Taylors.

I tried to steer them both to think that the other had come on this sudden wealth by tolling a particularly wealthy merchant. You know, make em jealous. Think about trying to poach some stations. Start a little war.

Somehow, but, and I think your dad may have had something to do with it – he had his own embellishments – as I let the story do its things and discover its meaning in its audience, be regurgitated differently, and then carry more possibilities to different audiences – somehow that treasure alchemised into gold and secret gold mines.

Neither Walker nor Taylor were hard strapped. Yet it would be dumb to think they were satisfied. Both were always looking for more. They may have quietened their tussles somewhat to aggravate a common enemy in the Ministry, but there was no love lost between em. Their relationship still perched on the verge of being outright explosive, waiting for someone to strike the fuse.

The rumour of gold really caught their imaginations. The idea of a source of wealth that was, like, its most pure, earthly symbol, pulled up from the ground, rather than collected from the resistant patrons of their Collection Stations, it’s fake endless quality, all of it gave them this idea of absolute power. They looked at it like a tap, that when switched on, would pour money into their hands.

I mean, gold wasn’t far from my original design. The concept was always to get them thinking the other had something they desperately wanted. But when they became convinced it was gold, they went gold mad. Like, Nicky, you ever read about the old rush in Ballarat? The Eureka and the murderous prospectors? Them Sandhill Boys who caused all that ruckus over the Capitan: the 50kg nugget that led to the decimation of Ararat? The stories are always the same: people already marred by a reduction in sense, with appetites for violence, they whiff that sterile soft metal, and they find themselves ballistic, but always calculatingly so. Nothing quite drives the need for complete destruction and ownership of land, materials, those fucking things, Nicky, like gold does.

Same thing went for the Walkers and Taylors.

They thought I’d been trying to mislead them or spoke in riddles whenever I tried to steer it to treasure. Either way, they didn’t believe the roots of the lie I fed them that they now held to be complete truth.

We were with the Walkers when it really started to kick off. The innuendo and suspicion flying around. The surety that them fuckin Taylors had found it near their compound in Lilydale. Nah, definitely in Ringwood, near the ruins of the old bypass. Dug up under the new Costco that was meant to bring some stability out east – Ministry getting their noses in it, ay.

They started plotting their assaults and their manoeuvres with that old-timey gold mad focus and obsession.

The cauldron was bubbling. I thought I’d done me job, Nicky. They’d be at each other, weaken each other, and the Ministry would creep in to put out the fires, install them as little puppets. Your dad and I had been plotting out exactly what it’d look like. Some of the rewards we may get.

Of course, it all spun completely out of control. Gold envy is one thing. The east became something different. Became the Wastes. Cursed land.

Maybe, it shouldn’t all be put down to gold. The families were getting restless, after all. Not often had so much time passed between conflicts. It was like breathing for em. Throw in the gold hunters who started to appear, often heavily armed themselves, indiscriminate in the way they blew up Walker and Taylor compounds. The ongoing quarrels over the tolls. The restless and agro population sick of them high and mighty Walkers and Taylors. People running from the Ministry trying to force a home for themselves. The ongoing spread of the rumours I was telling about the sick predilections of various family members …

You’ve got a light awful close to fuse now, yeah.

Then your dad hooked in with that Walker girl, Sharmayne – yeah, the one from all the stories … it took an enormous, career ending effort to get your dad out of those stories, I’ll tell you what, make people forget he was there when it all happened – and, well, that fuse became like a presidential button bout to launch the nuclear fucking weapons.