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| Home > Writings > Novels > Marsupiual of La Mancha 1980-83 |
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| excerpt published in Antithesis, 1990 |
I reached the side entrance of the hotel and walked into the gloom of the private bar. My eyes, scorched with the incandescence of the day, plunged into the cool air inside the hotel like hot coals falling into a dark pool. I waited, as the optics adjusted.
The Three Legged Dog, like Sancho, was dark and unkempt. And speaking of Sancho, there he was. He sat at a table in the gloom, cracking pistachios. He waved me over.
The publican’s eponymous three legged dog growled, leaned towards my ankle and fell over. Not an effective deterrent for the serious drinker, but savage enough to keep property developers away for about five seconds. I bypassed it and made it to Sancho’s table.
“What will you have?” he asked.
“I’ll have some of that,” I said, pointing to the carafe in front of him.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “It’s Tequila.”
“In a carafe?”
“It has no effect on people of Spanish blood,” he explained.
“None?”
“Well, hardly any.”
“I might stick to Resch’s.”
I went to the bar and orded a jug of beer and a schooner glass. I returned to the table and downed a couple of schooners to bring myself up to speed.
“OK,” I said. “What’s the plan?”
“We wait,” he said, “and we watch.”
“Here?” I asked. “What are we looking for?”
“Here, there and everywhere,” Sancho said. “We’re looking for movements of liquor, hotel to hotel. Once we schedule the liquor transports, we can stake out the joint, get some evidence, and bust Bogelvy.”
“Here at the Three Legged Dog?”
“Unlikely. There have been two heists from here already this week. Bogelvy wouldn’t risk another one in his own back yard. We’ve got to cover all their movements.”
“And how will we do that?”
“Like I said, we wait, and we watch.”
I skolled another schooner and emptied the last of the jug into my glass. “Won’t the Union have members we could talk to? Surely they would know what’s going in and out?”
“All the heists so far have just happened to be from shifts worked with scab labour. We’re here to find out things the Union can’t find out for itself. That’s why they’re employing us. Just have patience, Quixote.”
“Fuck that for a joke,” I said. “I could find out what we need to know in two minutes.” I stood up. My legs felt much firmer, now that they had Resch’s in them. “I’ll be right back.”
“Quixote,” hissed Sancho, “You blow my cover and I’ll have you put away.”
“Sancho, relax. We’re partners. Trust me.”
He poured himself some more Tequila, sank back into his chair, and glowered at me. I took this to be approval.
I sauntered up to the bar. It was tended by a woman whose name I knew was Brenda. I had seen her occasionally on those mornings when I needed some liquid assistance to get me from Glebe over to the University.
I put the empty jug on the bar. “Gidday,” I said.
Brenda looked up. “Another one?” she asked.
I perched myself on a bar stool. “Not right away,” I said. I tapped a Gauloise out of the packet and rolled it between my fingers, and smiled. “You look tired,” I said, keeping my voice low.
She replied with a look of resignation, finished wiping the glass in her hand and took the empty jug. “Late nights,” she said. Leaning forward, she rinsed the jug, opened the washer, and slid the jug in on a rack. She was a tall woman, thin hips and long legs. I edged forward on the stool, to catch a glimpse of her breasts swaying against the fabric of her blouse. Her eyes swept up and she saw where I was looking. She pointed at my cigarette. “Are you going to smoke that thing, or just play with it?”
I laughed and she laughed.
“Late nights working here?”
“Double shifts,” she explained.
“Overtime?”
“Are you kidding?”
“That’s a bit rough.”
She shrugged. “What do you expect? It’s a living.”
I sighed, and gave her the look. “I know how it is,” I said. “I’m after work myself. I heard there’s unloading work here some nights. Anything in tonight?”
“You want to work here?” Her eyes achieved a very attractive look of relaxed recklessness. She leaned forward again, closer to me. “I could find out for you.”
I leaned forward, beckoning for her to lean closer. I could smell patchouli oil rising from her white skin and see the indentation of her nipples pressing against her blouse. I spoke quietly in her ear. “Don’t let on I’m out here. I’m doing the rounds of the hotels. I could get lucky and pick up a whole shift somewhere else.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. She filled a schooner and put it on the bar. The foam trickled down the side of the glass and seeped into the bar towel. “On the house,” she smiled.
“Thanks.”
“I’ll be back in a minute.”
I sipped the schooner as Brenda went along the bar, serving drinks, making change, and showing me her legs. At the end of the bar, she passed into a dark room. After a few moments she returned and leaned forward to take my empty glass.
“Stock is coming in at 11 tonight,” she said quietly. Her voice was soft, like the skin of a young eel. “I don’t know if they need any extra hands. You could turn up.”
“I could turn up anyway,” I whispered back.
She smiled. “You could.”
“When do you finish? 10.00pm?”
“10.30,” she said. “There’s the public bar to be hosed out.”
“Thanks for the tip,” I said. “Maybe I’ll see you then.”
“Maybe.”
I got down off the stool and turned. Sancho was just disappearing into the Men’s. I followed him in.
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I like the company of women. Some of it is sexual tension, of course, but the simple fact is that I enjoy to be with women. That doesn’t make me a gigolo.
As the cab sped up Wigram Road, Sancho outlined the methods I was to use to gather information.
“Do you really expect me to seduce every bartender from here to Norton Street and back?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he answered. “I do.”
“I won’t do it.”
“Yes you will.”
I looked at him.
“Alright, then,” I said. “I will.”
We pulled up opposite the gates to the dog track, paid the cab, and got out.
The Harold Park was in the process of renovation. Outside they were constructing a huge machine for making money—the pub restaurant.
The front bar, however, was still maintained as a living treasure. I talked with two barmaids there in a manner that was bordering on lechery. I felt embarrassed and didn’t discover anything of any value.
The back bar was clearing up after last night’s rowdy poetry meeting. Peter Corris, a writer who wrote a poetic kind of detective story featuring a PI named Cliff Hardy was wandering around as though he had lost his wallet.
He had lost his wallet. I had a few words with him. He had been reading his poems last night and things had got out of hand. I told him that it was his own fault for writing poetry, and pointed out to him it couldn’t have been worse than the night they brought six police cars to arrest Frank Hardy for not paying parking fines.
Corris agreed with me, but that didn’t help us with our investigations, so we moved on.
Our next stop was in Booth Street, at the Town and Country, whose only claim to fame was the fact that Sancho had been drinking there at the moment that Trevor Chappell had bowled the last ball to Lance Cairns in a one day match against New Zealand.
Sancho and I discussed the merits of that underarm delivery for some time—about the same time it takes to consume six middies of New, and eventually agreed to disagree.
I then went up against Mabel — the woman who ran the bar — with some trepidation.
Mabel, a woman in her mid fifties, turned out to be very sympathetic, and told me that Bogelvy was the lowest kind of scum that ever walked the earth, that the Three Legged Dog was a breeding house of crime, devil worship and scab labour.
I took Mabel into my confidence to a certain extent. She rewarded me with the information that Bogelvy received about three or four times the number of liquor deliveries received by the Town and Country. The reason for this she claimed was that the unsold alcohol was consumed by devil worshippers in after-hours orgies.
I thanked Mabel and we moved on to the Empire on Parramatta Road. The empire was run by very nice people who didn’t mind what gender you were as long as you drank. So that’s what we did. We didn’t ask any questions. We behaved ourselves. We had a couple of rums each and both dozed off for a few moments, leaning back quietly in our chairs. It was a welcome respite.
But we had work to do. It was a brisk walk from the Empire to the Bald Faced Stag, though I made heavy weather of it. I was glad to retire to the small garden at the back of the Stag with a pint glass of draft Guinness.
The beer garden was no more than a patch of cement and a small thicket of stunted banana trees. But the Guinness was good, even if all the Irish people had deserted the Stag to drink at the Thurliss Castle.
We pulled up a couple of plastic chairs. I waited while a huge plane screamed close by overhead on its way down into Mascot airport, before reviewing the evidence.
“So far,” I said, taking a large swallow of Guinness, “we know that Bogelvy is getting a load in at 11pm tonight, that he gets about three times as much alcohol as he should, and that his hotel is used for after-hours orgies for devil worshippers.” I looked at my watch. It was getting on to 4pm already. “Not bad for a day’s work.”
Sancho grunted non-committally. Something was bothering him. It was beginning to get on my nerves.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
Sancho drained his pint glass.
“Well?” I asked, “don’t you like my analysis of the situation?”
Sancho snorted. “Analysis? Is that what you call it?”
I finished my Guinness. “What would you call it?”
“Beginners luck, perhaps?” he said bitterly. He took out a cigar and made a great show of lighting it with a wooden match. “Sheer arse is another phrase that comes to mind. Your first day on the job, and the only information of any worth falls into your lap in the first ten minutes.”
“You mean the delivery tonight at the Three Legged Dog?”
“Yes of course I mean the delivery tonight at the Three Legged Dog,” Sancho sighed.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” Sancho said. “Nothing at all. Except that I had a perfectly well organised day of surveillance lined up, and now it’s been ruined.”
“I’m sorry I ruined your day, but isn’t the object of surveillance to gather information?”
“Of course it is,” Sancho said.
“Well, we got the information,” I said. “Isn’t that the point.”
“You’re a smug little shit, aren’t you? Of course it’s the point.”
“Then what are we going to do about it?”
“What would you do about it, Holmes?”
“I would go back there at 11pm tonight,” I said, “and I’d stake the place out.”
“Brilliant.”
“Isn’t that what you would do?”
“Of course it is.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I’m hungry, that’s the problem.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” I asked. “Let’s eat.”
“A very good suggestion.”
“There’s a little place just up the road. In the back of the Imperial,” I said. “The best Italian food in Leichhardt.”
“Italian?” Sancho sneered. “What about your culture? Your heritage?”
“Eating a piece of lasagna doesn’t amount to betraying your heritage, Sancho. Besides, Spanishtown is a good hour and a half away. Look at the traffic. The Imperial is a hundred yards.”
“Is that all your heritage means to you?”
“My heritage is fourth generation Australian,” I said, more than a bit annoyed now. “My Spanish ancestors came out here in the Gold Rush. I’m about as Spanish as Ned Kelly. Let’s just eat round the corner. What do you say?”
“No way. I’ve got a taste for chorizos.”
“All right,” I acquiesced, “Let’s go.”
I stood up. I didn’t want this to develop into a conflict situation, although I could feel that sick feeling prickling my spine. I tended to avoid conflict. That’s not to say I avoided trouble. I loved trouble. Getting into trouble was simple and spontaneous. You got into trouble by something foolish said or done, and almost as soon, you were out of it. Often as not carried out of it. But that’s part of the thrill.
Conflict was something else altogether. Conflict was the clammy feeling that something is not quite right, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. I could tell that Sancho was getting tetchy about our relationship. Like me, he was probably one of those people who preferred working alone. Now he had a partner, and his partner had got lucky with the clues. But doesn’t it always happen like that?
“Let’s walk,” I said. “If we have to be back at the Three Legged Dog at 11pm, the walk will kill some time.”
Killing time wasn’t the only reason I had for walking, to be honest. I also wanted to sober up a bit. We had been setting a fairly cracking pace in our pub crawl, and if it went on much longer I wasn’t sure if I would make it through to 11pm with a liver still intact.
We passed through the clinking dark of the bar, illuminated only by a gigantic TV screen. Conversations surfaced like bubbles from lost scuba divers. Sancho disappeared into the Men’s. I went on through the bar to wait for him outside.
Parramatta Road was a glaring river of moving metal in a sulphurous soup of car exhaust. I leant back against the plate glass of the Stag’s front. All around me the cash registers in the chemists were ringing with sales of skin cleansers and gas masks. I tried bathing in the effluvium like a bald faced stag bathing in the crisp sunlight of a winter morning in the Western Argylles. It didn’t work.
Sancho emerged from the hotel by way of the bottle shop, evidently having purchased a bottle of Mescal, which he was stuffing into his trousers.
We set out.
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The inside of the toilet was a hermetically sealed cesspit, floating on the smell of urine and crawling with graffitied phone numbers, drawings of penises and suggestions about what to do with them.
Sancho was standing at the urinal. I stood next to him, opened my fly and began pissing up against the wall.
“Suck me off, big boy,” I said.
Sancho’s head jerked towards me. “What?”
“Not you,” I laughed. “I’m just reading what’s written on the wall here.” I pointed at the graffiti.
“Don’t do that, Quixote.”
“What?”
“Don’t wiggle about like that. You’re splashing my feet.”
I looked down. The sudden movement caused another wiggle. I splashed my own feet.
“Shit,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Sancho edged away, did up his fly and backed out of the toilet. “See you outside,” he said.
I finished what I was doing, fastened my fly, and walked back through the private bar into the searing sunshine outside. Before I could get my mirror shades up to cut the glare, Sancho sprang at me, threw me against the wall of the pub, and sank a left jab deep into the pit of my stomach. I staggered to the gutter. I couldn’t breathe, so I threw up instead.
“What was that for?” I gasped.
“For pissing on my feet.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“And for blowing our cover.”
“I didn’t blow our cover,” I complained.
“What do you call it then?”
“I had a conversation with the bartender. We got to know each other. I said I was looking for work, but to keep it on the QT in case I picked up work elsewhere. She told me they’re unloading stock tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“She told you that?”
“Yes.”
A look of doubt crossed his face. “I suppose I owe you an apology.” He helped me to my feet.
I brushed myself off. “Well?” I said.
“Well what?”
“Are you going to apologise?”
His mouth worked for a moment, before sound came out of it. “Hell,” he said. “Sure. I’m sorry.”
“It’s nothing,” I said magnanimously. “I’m sorry I pissed on your feet.”
Sancho had taken out a small notebook and made a note. He looked at me strangely.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I just can’t fathom it,” he said. “You go up to a woman in a bar, spin her some line of bullshit, and she goes and tells you what’s going on behind the scenes in the hotel? Why?”
“She liked me, I guess.”
“She liked you?”
“I was being friendly. She seemed like a nice person. Is that so strange?”
“You mean… You seduced her?”
“Oh come on. Nobody says ‘seduced’ any more. I was being nice.”
“But you made a line for her?”
“Maybe.”
He looked at me with renewed interest. “And she bought it. I suppose she was ready to jump into bed with you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“The thought never crossed your mind?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Sancho circled me slowly, inspecting me from all angles. “I suppose you must have something,” he said finally. “I can’t see it, but then I’m not her.” He turned away. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got work to do.”
He hailed a passing cab. It screeched to a stop on the corner of Wigram Road and reversed towards us. We got in the back.
Sancho consulted his notebook. “Next stop,” he said, “the Harold Park.” He laughed. “Let’s put your talents to work.”
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The walk wasn’t as sobering as I had hoped.
Quite apart from the Mescal—of which I had a couple of snorts before declining any further offers—the toxic cocktail of chemicals produced by the traffic was getting up my nose, into my bloodstream, lymph system and quite probably perkinjie cells. Once there, the chemicals mingled with my chromosomes like young things at a square dance in Sarina.
My demurral regarding the Mescal had no appreciable affect on Sancho. He kept plugging away at the bottle as we walked along. That is, I walked. Sancho rolled like a ship without ballast in a heavy sea.
I was very hungry by now, but Sancho seemed in no hurry. He insisted on having a beer in the front bar of the Ancient Briton. That was alright, but then he strolled out to the back garden and began exchanging pleasantries with the yuppie philosophers who hang out there. They wouldn’t, he suggested to them, recognize a philospher if one bit them on the bum. He then asked them as a group what they were doing their post doctoral research on—chardonnay and pink socks perhaps?
It took a struggle to get him out of there and back on to Pyrmont Bridge Road. We were back on track. It didn’t last long. Instead of heading straight to Spanishtown, we deviated via the Wentworth Park Hotel for what Sancho referred to as a nice drop of Resch’s in the form of a cleansing ale, and from there to the Covent Garden in Dixon Street where we soiled ourselves again with some more Guinness.
We had long ago given up any pretense of gathering information. I had my hands full keeping Sancho from falling over. Sancho had his hands full of vitreous vessels and his mind occupied in emptying their contents into himself.
Night fell suddenly over the Haymarket, and almost as suddenly, Sancho fell into a stupor.
As I dragged him by his armpits up through the Chinatown Mall towards Liverpool Street I kept wondering why it was that Sancho wanted to eat in Spanishtown anyway. And why he was obviously intent on eliminating any cerebral activity on the way there. As soon as we got to the Sir John Young, I thought, if I didn’t get some sense out of him, he could take his Liquor Trades Union and his theories about Bogelvy and stick them up his arse.
That left me with the embarrassing question of what to do with the fifteen hundred dollars he had given me. Obviously I didn’t want to give it back to him.
His heels, clad in shiny black winkle pickers, scraped over the welcome mat as I dragged him into the ladies’ lounge of the Sir John Young. I just about dropped him there, but the smell of grilled fish and fresh mussels revived me. I hauled him to a seat and plonked him down.
The ladies lounge had long since been made over into a small Spanish eatery. It was still a good place to eat, even though the menu was now written in Japanese for the benefit of tourists and prices had risen accordingly.
Usually a noisy, boisterous little eatery, the lounge had now fallen strangely silent. I looked around. Stony Spanish faces stared silently at me from around the room.
Moving to the bar, I put down a fifty dollar note.
“What’s wrong?” I said. “Somebody die?”
The bartender was a big Spaniard with a glossy moustache and menacing black eyes in a pockmarked face. He flicked the fifty dollar note back at me. It hit my chest and fluttered to the floor. I bent to pick it up and replaced it on the bar.
“I’ll have the mussels and grilled snapper for two,” I said, reading off the blackboard.
Again the bartender flicked the money back at me.
“I do not want your money, Senor,” he said. “Now please leave this place. Take this linaje perveso with you.”
“Linaje perverso?”
“Bad blood,” said the bartender.
It seemed he was referring to Sancho, who had now woken up and was banging on the table with a knife and fork and yelling: “Me pacer! Me nutrir! Me alimentar!”
“What is he saying?” I asked the bartender.
“He is saying nothing. He is being disgusting,” the bartender said.
“Look,” I confessed, “I haven’t got any idea why he is behaving like this. Do you want to fill me in?”
“Fill you in, senor?”
“You know, tell me what’s going on.”
“His family is disgraced. He is not welcome. Please, go now. We do not want trouble here.” The bartender reached behind the bar and pulled out a lump of bloodstained Iberian hardwood. He layed the club gently on the barcloth.
“Ok,” I said, “I get the message.”
I climbed off the barstool and approached Sancho wearily.
He was still banging on the table and yelling bad Spanish. When he saw me, he lunged at me with the fork. I sidestepped the attack, picked up a heavy saltcellar from a nearby table and tapped him lightly on the occiput. He slumped into my arms and I dragged him outside, down into the lane and out of sight beyond Casa Del Fine.
I left him there and went across the road and into the Spanish Club to think about the situation. I’d have to admit, the situation was giving me the shits.
I was signed into the Club and entered the clanking engine room of Iberian poker machines. I was hoping for inspiration from the portrait of Cervantes hanging in the hall, but I didn’t get any. I bought a glass of white wine and tried that instead.
It didn’t help either.
I should have been happy to leave Sancho lying in the laneway and to go home, but two things worried me. First, I really wanted to find out what Bogelvy was doing, and second, I wanted to find out why Sancho was in disgrace in Spanishtown. I had another glass of wine and tried to forget about it, but the wine only served to sober me up. Somehow I couldn’t get Sancho off my mind, lying there in a dark alley with an inhuman amount of alcohol in his bad blood.
What bad blood? Did he have AIDS?
This wasn’t getting me anywhere. I gave old Miguel Cervantes a wave, and went back out into the steamy Sydney night.
Liverpool Street swarmed with its night time crowd. I crossed the road and went into the alley. Sancho was where I had left him. He was stirring groggily. Approaching from the other end of the alley were a number of young men carrying cricket bats, lengths of pipe and useful looking pieces of timber. It didn’t look as if they were planning on having a cheery game of cricket in the alley.
A tall dark handsome kid who seemed to be leading the pack sprang towards Sancho. I came up quickly behind him and kicked him between the legs. The iron bar he had been swinging at Sancho flew past me and bounced off the cement wall with a sharp metallic sound.
The man behind handsome turned and lunged at me. I hit him in the stomach with a left. He fell forward obligingly, so I brought up my knee. It hit him in the face. There was a crunching squelch. He dropped his cricket bat. I picked it up and used it to smash the hands of another kid who was trying to hit me with a piece of lead pipe. I hate to do that. You never know if they’re studying classical piano.
I picked up the lead pipe with my left hand and used it on him, smashing his left knee.
Handsome was just getting up so I hit him in the face with the cricket bat. His nose crunched under the willow and his teeth caved in. It would add that touch of mystery to his good looks.
Three of them were lying in the alley bleeding. Handsome, number two, and the pianist. The other three decided to leave. They dropped their weapons and ran.
Sancho was fairly well aware of what was going on around him, by this time.
“Shit!” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“You bet,” I said. “Which way?”
“We’ll have to risk George Street. Movies are just about to let out. Taxis will be lining up.”
He was right.
We ran into George Street and grabbed the first cab off the rank.
“Glebe,” I told the driver. “Ferry Road.”
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| Author's bio (used in the magazine) | |
After appearing in Australian, US and UK small press publications between 1974 and 1981 Robert Whyte settled down to a life of writing journalism for money and novels for the hell of it. His first novel MANACLES was published in Melbourne in 1985 in a numbered edition of 600. (College du Pataphysique Melbourne 1985.) Since 1986 he has been living in Brisbane, working as a journalist, editor, scriptwriter and Desktop Publishing consultant with the Cane Toad Times freelance co-operative. He has completed the first two books of a trilogy based on Dante’s Divine Comedy set in Sydney, Vienna and Brisbane, and will finish Paradise when he gets a spare moment. Two previous excerpts from Quixote have appeared in the Cane Toad Times.
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