And now the saddest part, the tragedy: all my reforms were systematically dismantled, all my innovations, all my warped progress. That was it! The shortest social revolution in history! This little slice of Australian history was going down as a blight. They no longer liked the farce I had orchestrated. It was all coming clear to them now: they’d been hoodwinked. We were right back where we started. Further back, even. They were fast reducing me to a meaningless aberration, rewriting history at supersonic speed. Whole months were wiped out with every thirty-minute current affairs report. Every TV channel had the sad face of a pensioner telling of her sacrifice in sending in her one dollar a week, all the things lost she could have bought: milk, dishwashing liquid, and, with no trace of irony, lottery tickets. Yes, the national lottery was back in business. People had their crummy odds again.
In the mirror, I tried to smile; the smile made my sadness look like a permanent disfigurement. It was my own fault! I shouldn’t have fought against my meaninglessness any more than I should’ve fought against those tumors. I should’ve nursed my tumors until they grew huge and meaty.
I spent the majority of those days stretched out on the floor of my bedroom, my chin resting on the beige carpet until my chin felt beige, and my insides too: beige lungs, beige heart pumping beige blood through my beige veins. I was on the floor when Jasper charged in, intruding on my peaceful beige existence to pass on all the death threats he’d received on my behalf.
“And who the fuck is Tim Lung?” he asked.
Rolling over onto my back, I told him everything I knew, which wasn’t much.
“So my mother died on one of his boats in the middle of one of his gang wars.”
“You could put it that way.”
“So this man murdered my mother.”
“She committed suicide.”
“Either way, this bastard has ruined our lives. Without him, I might have a mother, and you might not be Australia ’s newest love-to-hate-him guy.”
“Maybe.”
“What does Eddie say about him?”
“Eddie’s not saying anything.”
It was true. The authorities were giving him a hard time too, not only as the administrator of the scheme. Having overstayed his visa, he was already a criminal- they confiscated his passport, called him in for questioning every other day, but had not yet deported him to Thailand, as he was needed for their investigations. Even so, he was the only calm one among us. His calm was natural and impermeable. I suddenly admired him, because even though I suspected that his tranquillity was just a mask, it was the most solid and durable mask I had ever seen.
“This is some mess,” Jasper said. “What are you going to do?”
Good point. This was major fraud. Everyone said it: Martin, you will have to prepare yourself for prison. How do you prepare yourself for such a thing? By locking yourself in the closet with some stale bread and water? But I’d have to do something. The odds against me were stacking up- stupidly, the state was even reopening the file on The Handbook of Crime. It suddenly occurred to them that they had a case after all. I was like a derelict building scheduled for demolition, and everyone was crowding around to watch.
My only hope was to try to pay back some of the money, on the off-chance that would appease the people a little. I would maintain that I had been as duped as they had, that I would do everything in my power to pay back every cent, even if I spent my life doing it. It was a weak ploy, but I gave it a shot. I had to sell my labyrinth. It was heartbreaking to have to part with what I had so meticulously designed and brought to life, not to achieve a dream of happiness but to achieve a dream of deep suspicion and loathing, a dream of hiding, a dream I had realized- it had hidden me loyally for years.
The day of the auction, I was advised by everyone with a mouth not to show up, but I couldn’t resist seeing who would be the new owner. Jasper was there too; after all, his hut would be sold in the bargain, the hut that we had both pretended to build with our bare hands. The prospective buyers numbered a thousand. I don’t know how many were bona fide bidders and how many turned up just to gawk.
I was overcome with queasy shivers as I arrived. Everyone looked at me and murmured. I yelled out that murmur is the devolution of speech. No one said anything after that. I took my place under my favorite tree, but it didn’t soothe my defeat; the enemy was drinking sparkling wine in the middle of the fortress designed to keep him out. People soon got caught in its teeth, though; it was satisfying how many had to be rescued from the maze. That delayed the proceedings. When the auction finally began, the auctioneer made a little speech referring to the house and the labyrinth as “the kingdom of one of Australia ’s most controversial minds,” which gave me an uneasy, anxious feeling as well as a perverse sense of pride. I folded my arms regally, even though I knew they found me laughable and not like some dethroned king. This labyrinth betrayed the extent of my inflated fears, insecurities, and paranoia, so I felt psychologically naked standing there. Did they know they were all gathered in the place that proved my contention that I was the most scared man alive?
In the end, because of its curiosity, insanity, or infamy, my labyrinth and the two properties hidden within went for an astounding $7.5 million, nearly ten times their worth. This predictably convinced both the press and its loyal subjects, the people, that I was a wealthy man, which of course only served to reinforce their hatred of me. The buyers, I learned, ran a chain of overpriced furniture stores, and they intended to open the place as a tourist attraction. Oh well. As indignities go, it’s not the worst.
I moved my books and my junk into storage and myself into an apartment Anouk rented for me and Caroline. I didn’t even get a chance to offer my $7.5 million to the people like a piece of meat to a dog who’d much rather bite off my leg. The government seized all my assets and froze my bank account. Seized and frozen, and just waiting for the authorities to charge me, I couldn’t be more powerless.
So, then- if I was being taken all the way down, I wanted to take someone with me. But who? I didn’t bother hating my countrymen for hating me. I saved every droplet in my vast reservoir of fury for my abhorrence for journalists, those phony, self-righteous moral watchdogs in heat. For what they did to my mother, to my father. For loving Terry. For hating me. Yes, I would have my revenge against them. I obsessed about this revenge. That’s why I didn’t crack. I wasn’t ready to fall apart yet. I conceived one last project. A hate project. A revenge project, despite the fact that I’ve never been good at revenge, even if it is mankind’s oldest pastime. I’ve never been into defending my honor, either. Personally, I don’t know how anyone can even say the word “honor” with a straight face. I ask you- what’s the difference between “stained honor” and “dented ego”? Does anyone really still believe this shit? No, I wanted revenge simply because the media had repeatedly wounded my ego, my id, and my superego, the whole shebang. And I was going to get them good.
I borrowed money from Caroline and told her it was for legal expenses. Then I called on a private detective named Andrew Smith. He worked out of his home with his wife and poodle and looked like an accountant, not a private investigator. In fact, he looked like he did nothing privately. When I sat down in his office and removed the hood and glasses, he asked what he could do for me. I laid it all out for him. And consummate professional that he was, he refrained completely from judging me for my little, mean-spirited, hate-filled plan. He listened quietly, and at the end gave me a thin-lipped smirk where only one side of his lips raised, and he said, “I’ll get right on it.”