Montaigne's Friend

Mr. Osman had booked his flight for the end of the month. This time last year—thirteen months ago he calculated—Mr. Osman had last been back home. At present he was awaiting his visa for Sudan. As there was no diplomatic office for Sudan in Australia, the passport needed to go to Kuala Lumpur. A week should see it all done, which would have Mr. Osman flying out on the 31st as scheduled.

            This turned the talk to the route, either directly to the Middle East, or else a stop-over in KL. Either way, Qatar then Khartoum. In the latter city Mr. Osman had two shops and an unfinished apartment. The shops were let and brought in some income. Work was needed on the apartment—adding a toilet and septic tank the main requirements—before it too could become an earner. Neither the shops nor the apartment had a toilet at present; as things stood the tenants went over to the near-by mosque to "piss.”

            These works were the ostensible reason for Mr. Osman's trip. Of course the return home offered all kinds of additional attractions, not all needing to be detailed here.

Back over the border in Eritrea there would be the tenth anniversary of independence, this year to be held in Mr. O.'s home town of Masawa. The Qatar stop-over presented something especially wonderful too. In Qatar Mr. Osman's friend from the early days in Saudi would be waiting. Almost fifty years the pair had known each other. The friend was a fellow Masawan, though the men had not been acquainted in boyhood back home; in the time since there had been a number of connections made between the families. Meanwhile the friend had become rich, a ship chandler's business developed into oil-trading; there was a villa on the water and other assets.

            — He very likes see me! Mr. O. declared with bursting pride. A wide, full radiance showing, of the kind not often encountered in men of that age.

            Mr. Osman had experienced the joys of life; there was no doubt. Mr. Osman could become a little rapturous. On the one hand even-tempered, patient and deliberate, Mr.O. was also given to hilarity, to sly playfulness and boisterousness.

In his late sixties now, a father of eight, the children progressing “beautiful” in education and life. A lot to do with Mr. O.’s good management, one could safely assume. The three eldest, two boys and a girl, Mr. Osman had successfully married; two of these after trips back home escorted by himself. 

Khartoum was as much home to Mr. Osman as Masawa; even before the war the family had relocated in Sudan.

           In his chair Mr. Osman was quietly dwelling on his upcoming trip. Having reached the Qatari stop and the introductory outline of his friend, a pause had ensued.

           At the airport the friend would await his visitor; unless Mr. Osman kept his arrival secret and intended to surprise. Beyond the keen anticipation Mr. O. did not indicate how that would go.

            Mr. Osman sitting two feet across the table, eyes cast aside. Not focused exactly; not a reverie or fixity. There was nothing really to hint at the workings of mind and memory.

            Not much could Mr. Osman say about this friendship in Qatar. How to tell a recent friend, one of the last five years, something of it? How to summarise?

            Dark skin. Perhaps faintest red in the tint, as could sometimes be found in North Indians and Pakistanis; steel-rimmed glasses. Baseball caps that were adopted in Saudi had kept Mr. Osman’s face unwrinkled even after twenty-five years in that punishing heat.

            Waiting then on Mr. Osman at the Qatar stop. There had been a short in-take of breath. Something further was to be added, something misplaced by Mr Osman it seemed.

Prompting Osman somehow was not possible. The fullness of the moment, the sense of anticipation, was strong and just a trifle strained.

            Mr. Osman’s face remained unchanged. Perhaps only the slightest, the most subtle and indescribable change. There had been some kind of alteration in the man as he sat silently.

            All at once, suddenly and unannounced, the long thin line of a tear became visible standing on Mr. Osman’s face. The overflow of emotion all at once seemed to have no precedence.

Thin and in a more or less straight line that had crossed the better part of the dark cheek, the tear had formed a small globule at the end. Uncannily, the other eye seemed to have remained dry.

            Mr. Osman held his position in the chair. In the shadow against the wall the left side of his face was shrouded.

            Mr. Osman did not wipe the tear. The glasses had been removed at some point during the long pause.

            No one in the café could have noticed. Eagle-eyed Faisal at the counter directly opposite might have observed what appeared an impasse, or blockage of some kind. Two of his regulars facing off rather strangely.

            If Mr. Osman had flushed it was not apparent; everything suggested balance and order, collectedness and calm. No shifting in the chair, no twitch or adjustment. The shifting in chair was all on the other side.

            Mr. Osman resumed again with the details of how the money was made by his Qatari friend. This he wanted to tell, Mr. Osman declared, recharged with purpose.

            A little lunge from his chair now. 

            Some sharp astuteness first of all had been important; recognition of opportunity and canny deal-making when the time was ripe. Steady coolness of head had been a factor. Subsequent manoeuvering that had got by the authorities and competitors drew little whoops and chortles from Mr. Osman. Broad smiles and beaming pride in the recall. 

           Wealth and riches would not divide this pair, nor geography either. Montaigne’s friend could not have been dearer to the old magistrate.

The Levant

The solitary old festooned and bejewelled Arab or Greek slow-stepping the pavement in Flinders Lane. Long pointed polished shoes almost tripping him up, poppy-red flower button-holed in his jacket. Clipped beard and crowned with royal blue flat-cap, neater and more pedantic for his city jaunt. The Smith Street grunge dive among the youthful hipsters was his usual haunt, cigar puffing at an outdoor table without raising his eyes or looking out. Savings or inheritance. Once or twice he has sported some kind of jodhpurs which could only have come from the family trunk. The Levant and nothing else (ignoring the hint of gypsy in the silver and gold).

         South-side the Grand Prix carnival has most of the stands erected, the barriers only needing a lick of tyre-black. Before lunch the sea plane joy-flight over the water at Port Melbourne made deceptive pelican curves. Through the evening at least two dozen passes from the paired choppers back and forth between Laverton and the CBD. Solo sorties dangerous no doubt in the hot zones.

         Brit, American and French petroleum have brokered what kind of split with the Benghazi opposition post-Gaddafi? Wikileaks where are you?

City Moods

Tail end of lunch fanfare—not For the Common Man—boosting the trade in Block Arcade early afternoon. As usual the Tea Room full; the other shops vacant as usual, awaiting the very few select and discerning customers that keep the operations ticking over. 
         Out on Collins the Novotel spread a faded red carpet longways beside the gutter. Dangerous the other way for the passers-by. In their vaudeville uniforms, bellhops awaiting the patrons, larking a little in muted tones. (No taxi whistling here as over at Langham’s on Southgate.) 
         At the truncated City Square on Swanston corner, down near the bottom of the fountain, the tubby hound had attracted tourist cameras, a colour un-co tubby chap himself pointing a long, expensive lens down at ground level. 
         Surprising posture when you haven't noticed the re-positioning of the little armoured bronze cur. (Or has he always been there?) 
         Possibly Russian like the photographer, a couple of lasses stepping down from the raised platform in Georges, tall and short; early thirties. Hair up with knee length boots; the other a long sheer scarf, smiling at her companion’s concern for her footfall.

         To date they refrain from the background music for the pictures of the Japanese quake and tsunami. Grieg or Shostakovic had been expected; Gorecki had been done to death.

         Military choppers continuing in passes along Bourke hill through the afternoon, momentarily unnerving.

Chirpy Choppers

The low flying choppers of the last few days were not practising acrobatics for the Air Show, nor the upcoming Grand Prix—they employ more exciting noise and fire-power for those entertainments. This recent has been valuable crew practise for urban environments: dummy rounds trained on the streets and alleyways presumably, identified targets cross-haired.

         Army birds give city a buzz

         And more than a wee buzz for us on the ground. It was a little reminder what the people we are protecting from terrorists in other places endure day by day—sans threat of missiles and strafing.

         A little buzz, in the language that pervades news, politics, social, familial and conjugal relations in this culture. The market. Promotion. Deformation. Degradation.

         Bright pic accompanying. Gov. House with its leafy surrounds foreground.

 The Age p. 9.

Wed 9 March 2011

Military Frolics

Poor young black chap tied to the purse strings of an old fella, late sixties/early seventies. The lad still in his 20's, central African perhaps. A warm natural smile to something across the table, otherwise all at sea in the environment. Natterer the old guy, recalling his childhood.

— Feijoa. It's a fruit.

Not so nice as a fruit. Mother used to make a jam.

USC tee purchased, crimson with yellow lettering.

Oh for a pair of sunnies! 

Time-piece impossible to judge. Large over-sized face. Heavy gold necklace outside the tee.

FILA shorts. (30 degrees was forecast.) Like dressing up your bunny-honey in a mini.

Minor shin wounds. From a camp somewhere?

Leaning forward teaching table etiquette. Large paunch on a short frame.

— Pepper.

Salt on the side of the plate. And tomato relish.

—Revised: early / mid-thirties. Central or Southern Africa, one of the war zones.

Purring across the table ignored by the companion.

CAREFUL now….

Old guy might need to be revised too. Perhaps still mid-sixties. Antiques.

— They're worth a lot.

Difficult conveying.

— That was lovely, thank you. Delicious.

— Anything else to drink?

— No thank you. We'll have the bill and be on our merry way.

Bald by the register, buzz cut. Check shirt, fawn slacks, brown loafers, pale. Off to the bank—reiterated a couple of times.

All afternoon low flying khaki choppers, no more than 50 meters. In the hot zones they would never venture that. The Air Show out in Laverton and straight from there to the Grand Prix. Over the weekend the resistance in Libya scored one of Gaddafi's jets. Hardware from Catholic peacenik Blair's last biz venture in office.

Art and Street

Lots of the Brunny Street kids out the front of the gallery for Friday night’s opening. Design and Art schools pumping out a great number of these young hipsters—as befits us as one of the global Design meccas now. In the narrow passageway to the galleries proper upstairs Marcel Reluctant hung a quiet little show that had lots of force and stopping-power. Inside the door a pair of paintings of striking blackfellas shoulder to shoulder, their twisted, squinting eyes and firm jaws an exclamation of authority. The common saying of the Aboriginals out in the bush that was behind the two pairs of images isn’t well known in the cities. The blackfellas with their pals out there apparently commonly say:

         — Four of us, but one soul.

         The other paintings along that wall drew in a viewer too. Underneath the stairs an assemblage of Western Suburbs Workers sculptures set one pondering. The smallest piece, constructed of bearings and other iron, made a nicely symbolic fist, clutching a spear rather than hammer. (Almost archaeological in this town now.)

         Well worth a look. Brunswick Street Gallery, opposite Bar Open and Mario’s. Until 17 March.

         A pit-stop on the walk up from town had an appearance from the Gippslander. Kath the waitress was fond of the Gippslander too and the pair of us quizzed him about Phil, another beggar doing that hill there on Bourke. For some reason we all agreed on Phil’s unfortunate manner. The Gippslander has seen him operate extensively. What he didn’t like about Phil was his lack of ethics. Phil commonly targeted the elderly. One day Phil was watched by the Gippslander tracking an old woman bent over her walking stick. Not only did Phil make a bee-line for the old dear, but when he reached her he bent down and got into her face. Normally Phil’s ask was a dollar. If he managed to stop someone he ups the ante and offers change if that was the fob-off.
         What the Gippslander also did n’t like was Phil’s pestering of people with children.

         — You don’t do that, Gippslander holds sternly, shaking his head.

         Before 6 that morning the Gippslander was moved on from his dark corner in the Parking lot across the road, the Security guard apparently concerned about the Early Birders. Makes it hard.

Victor Serge 2

Much to wonder at in the case of Victor Serge. First and foremost, how a novelist of this rank could remain almost completely unknown the half century since his last book, particularly given that engrossing novel, The Case of Comrade Tulayev, set during the Stalinist mayhem in the mid/late thirties, seems anything but written out.
          Susan Sontag presents a characteristically brilliant case for Serge in her introduction to the NYRB edition of Tulayev, where the biographical details alone make for heady reading. Richard Greeman, the translator of Conquered City, written 15 years earlier, can’t be far from the mark when he opens his Foreword to this novel (1932): “V. S. led one of the most remarkable lives of the 20th century.”
          Serge was a young man during the revolution. In the period after Lenin he came to know many of the leaders of the movement. (For a time his wife was a stenographer for Lenin.) The Stalinist scything of the ranks shortly before the WWII, its method and logic, gets vivid treatment in Tulayev.
          The book is clearly the pinnacle achievement of a writing career, though Conquered City lacks little of brilliance too. Serge wrote Tulayev in his early fifties in the middle of the war. (It was published posthumously in 1947.) As Sontag stresses, although this is a political novel—surely one of the greatest ever penned—where the most acute insights and searching penetration is brought to bear, Tulayev is very much a work of high order art.
          A powerful work of the imagination, Tulayev is captivating and highly compelling. That is the first thing. Within the first few pages one realizes a sorcerer is at work, immediately holding sway and making things appear. The momentum of his paragraphs, the breadth of political insight and judgment, the vividness and dynamism of his portraiture (of the natural world as well as the human actor) — the result is that almost narcotic command that only masterful work produces.
          With Tulayev the matter is straightforward: the first pulsating chapter establishes the case from the outset. Immediately startling scenes of a life under siege, a desperate struggle of partitioned rooms, cardboard shoe insoles, meagre rations and bleak love-for-hire. The wry, painful comedy underscoring the action, the unequal, fumbling struggle in the predicament of dire entrapment, recalls other modern masters like Celine, Beckett and Bernhard, all of whom Serge preceded. What Serge also shares with these writers is an exceptional verve and narrative dictate that throws a reader headlong into his pages.
          In the opening chapter Kostia starts by shopping for shoes and ends being gifted a glowing bluish-black gun that insists itself upon him. In between, his friend Romachkin on the other side of the partition of the room they share in an enormously over-crowded apartment strives to find an answer to the catastrophe that has descended on the city and the country at large. After a medical check, where the doctor suggests sex twice a month for health, Romachkin’s experience with a five-rouble prostitute primes him for the purchase of the gun at the Great Market. (A market now dealing in watches that run for seven minutes, worn and patched sweaters, &etc.) Finally—returning to Kostia—a blameless young woman’s suicide at his workplace impels action in order to protest injustice.
          Weaving the fevered episodes with the greatest virtuosity, the author is one who understands desperation and all-encompassing paranoia, the betrayed faith and hopelessness with which his characters contend. (Serge’s parents before him were among an earlier generation of political refugees, like their son barely managing to escape the executioner.)
          A political education is provided by Tulayev. The matter needs stating. Not only is this a novel of great panache and artistry, but forged as it is in the maelstrom of the greatest social upheaval of the last century, the illumination of the political sphere is highly revealing. Here are politics in action, personalities and ideas, visions and entrapment, great hopes, lust and intrigue, all given play in a tragic drama. The dazzle and flair is something to behold. A lesser work depicting this period of Soviet society would claim attention for what it offered of sheer curiosity value. What Serge has made of the material delivers far more.
          Who or what to possibly compare? Orwell was a fan it seems. One hesitates to say…. Beside Tulayev, Animal Farm seems a work drawn in crayon; and 1984 an afternoon trifle really. The energy and verve of Serge is startling.
          So far as political insight goes, at the very least Serge measures up, shall we say. The Spanish Civil War chapters of Tulayev make an interesting comparison and cross-reference with Homage to Catalonia. (There is a great deal in common.) Vasily Grossman is no doubt highly valuable for what he offers; judging on the basis of excerpts, however, the prose there has nothing like the force or compulsion of V. S.

         Having read Serge, it is clear how large a hole there has been in our political survey of the epoch—of politics in the large one should add.
          A buried and neglected novel of brilliance dealing with such central preoccupations—a work in Indonesian or Arabic perhaps—one could comprehend. But an author writing in French on such a subject poses questions.
         Sontag is always illuminating. Something she does not mention as a possible factor in the neglect is the firm residual hope and passion that animates Serge despite all the horror, the suffering and destruction unleashed by the revolution. For despite all, Serge finally does not relinquish his faith in the eventual transformation of man and the society that awaits. A difficult sell in any circumstances and understandably unpalatable on our side.