Infidelity

Crossing the Border

Monica's walls are covered with primitive art. No posters of Che or Jimi or the Viet Cong women in the cone hat.
'So is Tim your only child, Nisi? Would you care for a cookie, dear?'
As Monica reaches above the sink for the cookie tin, she comes face to face with Balthazar Beauregard, who is trespassing, staring over the next-door fence with a pleading, uncomprehending expression. Monica smiles at him, flutters her fingers, snaps shut the venetian blind.
'Oh that guy is really gettin to me. I made the mistake of ballin him a while back Nisi, and now he won't leave me alone. So what do you in town Friday? Shop?'
Nisi, swallowing hard, sips her coffee then speaks, without looking up.
'I'm involved in the Vietnam Protest Movement, Monica. I belong to the Vietnam Action Committee. We have a small office in Goulburn St behind Bob Gould's bookshop. Do you know it?'
'Goulburn Street, Goulburn Street ... No, I don't think I do.'
'We hold rallies on Friday afternoons but unfortunately, because of my timetable, I can't be there. So I usually spend Friday in the office, mailing out protest information.'
'Wow, it's really heated up since Tet, hasn't it? My husband has a younger brother in Nam at the moment. Just a grunt. He's comin out here for his R&R. Coffee OK honey?'
'Lovely! This is the best coffee I ever tasted, outside a coffee shop. And do you have other children, Mon?'
'I have a son nine.'
'Goodness! So do I.'
'We both started too young. We must get together some time. I don't seem to talk with many other women. Maybe I'm wrong, Nisi, but I have the impression Australian women don't like Americans.'
Nisi is pondering the appropriate demarche when a strange sound makes her glance up. Her new friends eyes are filling with tears, but it's worse than that, far worse, she can tell, and before Nisi knows quite what she is doing, and responding purely through instinct, she has struggled with a sign of effort, to her feet, and is holding Monica, who is now free to howl.
'There, there,' says Nisi. 'It's true that some of us blame Americans for what is happning in Vietnam, but people are people.'
'My God, I'm so sorry. I'm so embarrassed. My daddy died recently, Nisi, and I haven't ... I mean, I can't seem ... MmBraaa!'
'Hey, come on now.'
'MmmPprrra!'
'Come on, it's OK.'
'Nnnggha!'
'That's better.'
'Hrrra. You're so kind. Can you be my friend? Even sluts need friends. I invited so many of the other mothers but none of them would ever come. Mmpffaa.'
'We are a bit scared of Americans. And you're so beautiful. They probably feel threatened by you, Monica.'
'Oh Nisi, I'm in a mess, honey. I need to talk to a woman real bad.'
'Go on then. Talk.'
'But you have to go to work.'
'No I don't. I'm only a volunteer. I don't have to do anything. I can stay here all morning. Would you like me to freshen up this cup of coffee for you?'
'Oh Nisi honey, you're an angel.'

Nisi Papadimitriou: late twenties. Anti-war activist. Horse enthusiast. Mother of the poet 'Orion' (Timothy Papadimitriou), mother of Aloysius O'Looby. Common-law wife of Olaf Abernathy.
Monica Ecks: late twenties. Glamorous blonde American nymphomaniac. Mother of Cindy, mother of Alex. Recurrently estranged wife of Calvin Ecks.

That afternoon, a knock is heard at the door of the cell in the Physics Building to which Derek Frodsham, acned theoretician, has been consigned.
'Just a moment, would you?'
Calvin Ecks, in the corridor, swears, sighs, shakes his head, settles down for a short wait. He's in no state to work today anyway. Through a door off the corridor, he watches a group of first-year Physics students, sitting on antique wooden stools at antique wooden benches, determining the charge on an electron through a replay of Millikan's oil drop experiment. Back home, coeds still kiss Millikan's statue's nose, for luck.
Frodsham is absorbed. Fridays p.m. he sets aside for what he calls 'Applied Physics' and since he works most nights till 10 p.m. and all day Sunday, he can spare the time. Later, donning a boilersuit with the pockets sewn up, he will lock the door and head off towards Bob Gould's bookshop, but in the meantime, he is drafting his infrequent 'Letter from Abroad' to the editor of New Left Review.

Book List 1

The tongued and grooved floor is still there, supported by piers of cemented bushrock, and, what would give a building inspector grey hairs, the bearers pass from these to the cave rear. Three cups and a blackened billy, all spattered with soil from thunderstorms, brood darkly. From the ledge, which harbours the cream Calvert's heath (my favorite epacrid, pandani excepted) stepps a stillicide which has rotted away the outermost part of the flooring. I note the patterns that the shadows of the leaves form on this floor would have enraptured a baby. The big footprint - that's the footprint of the bigfoot - a genuine antique this, monitors the cave entrance, touch of the Ancient Greece, and in the dirt, around the cave, are footprints going back 100,000 years, and ash, and cubic wombat turds. Two rusty old beds, each furnished with a damp matress, remain, and there's a griddle, a car seat, a bent aluminium saucepan, and books.

Fiction by Castenada and R. Buckminster Fuller (ArBuckyEf). Metal Techniques for Craftsmen. How to Build Your Own Furniture. The Art of Blacksmithing. Knots and Splices. Home Handspinning. The Structural Potention of Foams. Plastics for Architects and Builders. How to Build Yourself a Concrete Boeat. The Wilderness Cabin. The Indian Tipi. The Art of Building a Fireplace. The Fundamentals of Carpentry. Veterinary Notes for Horse Owners. How to Raise Rabbits. Goat Husbandry. A Modern Herbal. A Manual of Beekeeping. Organic Plant Protection. Compost Science. Concepts of Ecology. How to Be a Survivor. Someone has removed the forty-four the women boiled the nappies in.

Book List 2

Among the volumes failing to fetch a reserve at the D'Arcy D'Oliveres dispersal sale will be:
G. Harden (ed), Flora of NSW, UNSW Press, 1990.
D. Freney, A Map of Days, Heinemann, 1991.
E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Strahan, Cadell & Davies, 1797.
J. Frazer, The Golden Bough, Macmillan, 1911.
A. Toynbee, A Study of History, OUP, 1939.
I. Howe (ed), The Basic Writings of Trotsky, Secker & Warburg, 1964.
A. Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, Penguin, 1987.
C. Driver, The Disarmers, Hodder & Stoughton, 1964.
J. Schell, The Fate of the Earth, Picador, 1982.
Fitzroy Falls and Beyond, Budawang Committee Press, 1988.
J. Sturgiss, The Man from the Misty Mountains, Budawang Committee Press, 1986.
M. Quick, Green Crowns, Juniper Press, 1955.
S. Lloyd, Ancient Turkey, British Museum Publications, 1989.
J. Seymour, Self Sufficiency, Faber, 1976.
R. Kantor, Commitment and Community, Harvard UP, 1972.
Faces of Findhorn, Findhorn Publications, 1980.
P. Manly Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Philosophical Research Society Inc. LA, 1973.
The Portable Nietzche.
The Works of Pindar, Plato, Lucretius, Catullus, Seneca, Virgil, Juvenal, Persius, Petronius, Apuleius, et. al. (various editions).
The Holy Bible.
The Dome Books.
John Muir's Alternative Volkswagen Manual (title page missing; somewhat foxed & begreased)
Great Circles, Glover, Taylor Publications, Wellington, 1972.
Grass Roots magazines aplenty.
The Last Whole Earth Cattledog.

1 December 1996 On an impulse I walked into Gould's book shop. There must be few places like it anywhere in the world. At any one time there are more than a million second hand books crowded between its walls. One gets the feeling that any book you ever wanted is there - somewhere. The books overflow from the shelves onto floors, are stacked in high piles in the aisle and some just lie about on the floor and tables looking as lost and forlorn as a dog in a pound. Browsing, not quite knowing for what, I came across a hardback copy of The Spear of Destiny by Trevor Ravenscroft. I had tried everywhere else for a copy, including the State library (theirs had mysteriously vanished a week or so before I made my inquiry) as I needed it for research into my book Hitler and the Occult. I had been working with a paperback version, but needed to check that some material was also in the hardback edition.

With a whoop of joy I prised it from the tight-packed row on the shelf. Then I did a silly - and stingy - thing: ignoring the 'out of print' stamp inside its cover, I took out my notebook and pad, made a note of some brief but vital information that I had suspected was not in the paperback and replaced the book. A few days later I realized I should have bought the book on the spot. But when I returned to Gould's it was gone and no amount of searching or inquiries to the staff turned it up. I felt they may have burned it after it had been rejected once too often.

Perhaps I had been influenced by a similar incident at the store some months before. Looking for another rare book, Ellic Howe's Urania's Children, which had been published in the 1960s, I went once again to Gould's and asked the attendant if she had heard of the title. She had not so I asked directions to books on astrology and the like. As I neared the section my heart sank. This was obviously a popular section. Hundreds of books were stacked in their usual haphazard fashion, many jammed in sideways on the ledges; others comprised teetering stacks on the floor, and several of these had collapsed and had to be negotiated by pushing volumes aside with my foot. A path cleared, I noticed several books lying for some reason in glorious isolation on top of the shelf itself, just below eye level. In that moment of focusing I saw Urania's Children. I stared open-mouthed, my mind racing. I glanced back at the counter where the assistant was busying herself with some chore or other. She could not possibly have raced ahead of me and placed it there. I glanced around for other customers; there were few. Had one of them overheard? ... No ... ridiculous. This rare book was sitting apart, not on the shelf or buried in the piles, but on top, away from the apparent confusion surrounding it. Like The Spear of Destiny it also carried an 'out of print' stamp. I returned to the counter and bought it, having been in the shop less than five minutes.

Gould's Books on the Web

Ah, but I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now.

This afternoon, on my way to the pool, I walked into Gould's Book Arcade. Bob Gould, a legendary warrior of the Australian Left, has run an enormous, disorganized, secondhand bookstore in various locations for as long as I can remember. Its current incarnation is five minutes from where I live.

Gould was sitting with his ample belly resting comfortably against the front counter. His hair and beard have turned a beautiful silvery white. I hadn't seen him for quite a few years.

"I'm after a copy of Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being," I told him.

"Third aisle from the left at the back of the shop," he replied. "If I have a copy."

As I walked towards the rear I heard him yell out, "I know you! What's your name?"

I turned back to face him. "Jonathon Delacour," I said.

"That's right. I remember now. You've put on weight. You were thin and intense then. And you called yourself 'John'."

He's right. I've put on a few pounds. And I'm Mr Mellow compared to how high-strung I was when Gould and I used to run into each other at demonstrations in the seventies. I always hated the names my parents gave me-John Anthony-so I collapsed them into a single name. (After a dream in which I was standing in line waiting for my name to be called. A voice said: "Jonathon." I thought to myself, "That's me." And, to confirm it, I looked down at the 3x5 index card I was holding and saw it spelled out: J-O-N-A-T-H-O-N.")

I located a copy of Kundera's novel, filed - miraculously - under K. Gould's shop is such a shambles that you can never be sure of finding anything. I took it back to the counter and handed it to him with a $50 note. He gave me back two twenties and some change. Later, when I looked inside the front cover, I saw it was $6.95, a third of the new price.

We chatted for fifteen minutes or so about the old days. He told me he's written 500,000 words of a memoir. He'd recently gained access to the dossier that ASIO (the Australian Security Intelligence Organization) had compiled on him through the sixties and seventies. "They did me a great favor," he said, "although they didn't realize it at the time. I didn't keep a diary then and now I have a complete record of my comings and goings."

He gave me a stack of printed sheets, some chapters of the memoir. Knowing Gould and knowing just a fraction of what he's seen and done, it'll make extraordinary reading if he manages to finish it. I promised to read what he'd given me and to come back again to discuss it. Then I headed off to the pool. I can't bear the thought of being intense again but I'd certainly like to be thinner.