Narrowly dodging someone sleeping dead centre of the footpath, he
rounded the corner into Oxford Street in a wide arc. While balancing on the
edge of the footpath, the wall of traffic noise crammed into his right ear. It was
on the borderline of unbearable. Never ever had he experienced anything like
this. So, Sydney truly is a rat-race place.
As a result, he crabbed to the left. Driving on the left leads to walking on
the left of the footpath, usually. Still, he almost collided with someone. After
almost overbalancing, he stopped to get his bearings. He looked at what lay
before him. So, this is the famous Oxford Street. Kings Cross-lite was his image
of it. Kings Cross he had heard of, but was not sure whether it really existed.
Neither was he sure whether he wanted to find out. Perhaps if he coped with
Oxford Street, he might.
Something stale, gritty and worn-out hung around in the air. Perhaps the
pollution of the inner-city. Perhaps the clutch of the soul of the city. Perhaps a
murky prophecy.
The top of Oxford Street descends smoothly towards out-of-view Sydney
Harbour. Given its reputation, he wondered whether the journey down would be
equally as smooth. Still not sure whether he wanted to find that out either, he
started on his way nonetheless.
Not far down Oxford Street he came to a row of men, lined hard up
against a shopfront like ten pins in a bowling alley. Assorted bottles protruded
from their midst. When he came a bit closer, he saw how unkempt they were.
Apparently lacking home comforts. At this time of day perhaps they should be at
work. The expression ‘down-and-out’ popped into his head. He had heard that
term, but never seen anyone in real life. Getting closer, a rank smell seemed to
hover in the air, but he tried to hope he was imagining it. Understandably,
perhaps, washing clothes, washing selves and brushing hair seemed too
onerous.
A couple of them encroached over the shop entrance, but could not care
less. One rolled his empty beer bottle back-handed right up to the door. From
deep inside the shop owner peered all the way out to the entrance. Perhaps it
was almost time to close anyway, he thought.
While passing abreast of them, a gravelly grunt launched a beer bottle. It
flew right across the full breadth of the footpath, smashing in the gutter. Liquid
foamed – it had not even been empty. Yet indifference reigned. The indifference
fazed him as much as the bottle missile itself. Hope had evaporated, and caring
was superfluous.
‘Just keep walking,’ he thought. ‘Pretend nothing happened.’ That advice
came from back home. Had that person ever been to Sydney? Had he put it into
practice? Did it work? Only now did he wonder about that.
He was relieved that he did not seem to touch their world as he walked
past. He had leapt that hurdle. Nobody heeded them; they heeded no-one else.
So, were they beyond help?
Further down someone similar manifested in front of him. They were
strangers, yet the fellow’s demeanour tried to suggest otherwise. He was trying
to conjure cordiality out of thin air. The fellow stood firmly planted right in front
of him as he did so, barring his path. Just pushing on regardless was not an
option. That would be rude. Not what he wanted to do.
‘Brother,’ the fellow said, ‘Do you have any spare change?’
Dumbfounded, he just stood there. ‘Brother, do you have any spare change?’,
the fellow repeated, taking a half-step forward, and with face thrust forward,
too. He clearly felt entitled. Was that a successful tactic? Should confrontation be
allowed to succeed?
‘No,’ he said, stepping back. He was moving sideways at the same time,
having decided to make a run for it. It was not really a run, more like a skip. The
fellow’s affronted shoulders rotated as he passed, firing off a word he had heard
of, but had never been sent his way before. What a brusque transition – from a
brother to an obscenity. Another hurdle cleared.
‘Well, what next?’ he thought. Oxford Street was living down to its reputation.
As he kept descending down Oxford Street he wound up outside a
live-performance theatre. Blasts of flashing lights and raucous music.
Fluorescent flashing images only just acceptable in public chased each other
around the entrance framework. They more than hinted at the content of the
live performances.
He did think about going inside. He wondered whether someone would
dart out from within the foyer to try to take him aside discreetly. Would they try
beguiling him into entering? He did glance through the doorway to see what lay
inside. Was that a mistake? Instead, he veered almost at a right-angle to the
near side of the footpath, colliding with the roar of the traffic.
That was another hurdle behind him.
Finally, he arrived at the intersection of Oxford and Liverpool Streets. On
the opposite right corner was Hyde Park, where he could see the gun from
the World War One German battleship Emden. The gun points at Oxford
Street. He was looking right down its barrel.
Just a bit further down from the opposite left corner the Young Women’s
Christian Association hotel lay hiding, pulling back from the street into a recess.
Was it hiding from Oxford Street, or from the Emden? It reassured him
nonetheless. A more modest YWCA was to be found back home. As a long-time
member, his sister had filled in as a receptionist from time to time. He had
visited her there many times and become familiar with its ambience.
As he eased himself into Liverpool Street, arms started swinging
spontaneously, legs started sauntering and eyes started slowly surveying.
Perhaps more metaphorically than literally. He felt the tension ebbing as he
descended. He fancied he was adapting himself to the journey now.
Then the air exploded. From the left. Commotion and frantic hounding.
Something tumbling down a hotel’s front stairs. The something was a somewhat
academic-looking man. Not the sort to frequent hotels. Not particularly
strapping. Not athletic. Something else was right on his tail. Very nearly right on
top of him. The something else was the bouncer. Looking muscle-bound. The
man was a target. He was tumbling because of the bouncer’s charge. The
Barracuda Hotel bouncer. A barracuda attack.
He watched the target hit the footpath, and then purposefully roll free, as
if hunted by machine-gun fire. The bouncer’s tree trunk legs were hunting him,
though, pursuing him onto the footpath. Onto the footpath, not part of the
hotel’s private property. The man’s roll tailed off, but the tree trunks still
pursued behind unseen.
He watched schools of pedestrians streaming blindly on either side, either
Staring fixedly straight ahead or down at the footpath. They were waters parting
round a tree-trunk stuck in river mud. Except that tree trunks are passive, not
aggressive.
The target rotated himself off the ground on shaky legs. He was not fully
upright when the bouncer speared his fist into his jaw. A reverberating sound.
He staggered back, steadied himself and regained balance. The bouncer was not
finished yet. He struck again, but on the side of the head. A loud crack. This
time the target ricocheted with flailing arms and eyes staring skyward onto a
telegraph pole.
He had not experienced anything like this before. Shockwaves had blown
him to the other side of the street, or so he supposed. Finding himself over
there, he was unsure how he had dodged the traffic. The cars were charging
past him tightly-packed at breakneck speed. Yes, he did vaguely remember cars
halted at traffic lights.
What to do now? He had no experience of this. So, then he pulled himself
together and surveyed the scene. At that very moment his eyes lighted on a
cafeteria. Did it have a telephone? Could he call the police? Doing that would be
his first time ever. Would they know what to do? He was clutching at faith they
could help – to his knowledge, the sergeant back home had never dealt with this
sort of situation.
As he crossed the cafeteria threshold, he picked out a sole member of
staff. What was going on directly across the road must be plain for all to see.
‘Can I use your phone?’ ‘No,’ shot back the answer. That spooked him – was
she blind to what was happening? Why else was he asking? ‘It’s to call the
police,’ he stressed. ‘No,’ she repeated, trickling out of view. The customers, too,
were abandoned now, even as they pretended not to notice the other side of the
street. ‘She can’t do that,’ he thought. ‘Well, this is a dead-end.’
Back on the street, ‘I need to work out what to do now’ followed. He had
not seen any public telephones. Did he have time anyway? Did he know what he
was doing? He half-stepped one way, then another, then a third and then round
and round again a few more times. When he was too giddy to continue, he did
not know how many half-steps he had taken, but had returned to his starting-
point.
He saw from afar that things had changed. The target looked like he had
been struck a few more times while he was away. He saw him spread over the
footpath, having flowed down almost to the next corner. The tree trunks were in
view, too, yet not venturing within reach.
None of that was what captured his attention, though. An island of Asian
tourists had surrounded the target from out of nowhere, linked together as a
single organism. They ignored the bouncer. Yet the one directly facing him wore
a disapproving stare. Pedestrians carried on streaming past on either side.
The bouncer stood like a statue. The disapproving stare set up an ethereal
wall, threatening to turn him to stone. No reason why he could not have kept
coming. Rage had driven him, but now censure held him back.
‘Don’t you help him!!!!!,’ the bouncer said, firing his index finger. An
empty gesture. The Asians took no notice. The words exploded, yet evaporated
in the air.
He should call the police straightaway. A phone was needed urgently.
‘Someone will call the police.’. The bouncer felt a hand touching his elbow.
Would that move him? The touch scaled up. ‘Someone will call the police.’
Nothing and no-one had stopped him before. She must be the girlfriend, he
guessed from the other side of the road. The bouncer had swivelled around
towards her slightly. Her compact effort had arrested him. ‘Someone will call the
police.’ Did she have intuition, or foresight? The third time proved it, anyway;
her hand levered him by the elbow back inside the hotel by itself.
Helped to his feet, the target blew relief that no further waves of attack
followed. He thanked the Asians for their assistance. They, in turn, wore
question marks on their faces when half-turning to leave. After a couple of false
starts, they moved on out of sight. Nothing held them there anymore. They had
not passed when it counted. Still on edge, the target watched them leave, gaped
at passing pedestrians with a quizzical expression, but then departed more than
hurriedly, too.
He alone remained rooted to the spot. He frowned. ‘So, who got it right,
and who did not?’, he asked himself.
In his own mind he was an actor in the performance, but, in truth, he had no
lines, like all the pedestrians streaming around the scene. Most people did
nothing, so was the question even relevant to them?
He pictured the perimeter of tourists protecting the target, holding the
bouncer at arm’s length. In his mind’s eye he saw the girlfriend’s delicate touch
on the bouncer’s elbow, levering his arm away.
What his grandfather used to say popped into his head: actions speak
louder than words. He understood that everyone had revealed themselves, and
all the more powerfully for not realizing it. Some were actors, some extras and
some spectators.
This last experience was yet something else he had never encountered
before. Another hurdle cleared, but it was not all his own work this time.
Sincerely, none was his work.
What did it all mean? He decided that soft power had counterbalanced hard power.
Bearing that insight, he descended to the next intersection. Cars shot
along the street like missiles firing blasts of wind in their wake. The road was
their domain. Nothing and no-one could stop them. When the traffic lights
changed, the colour red effortlessly arrested their charge. Now arrived another
insight: force is not the last word.