Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 12, Issue 2 by Jason Fischer

Author:Jason Fischer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781922171702
Publisher: Review of Australian Fiction

The ships ferried Percy Altschwager and the other soldiers back to Australia and civilian life. He had nothing to show for his time in Egypt but a medal and a deep scar across his right hand.

Fyodorov went back to Russia in the 1920s and no one heard from him again, but Deegan kept up a scatter of correspondence from Victoria.

He sent Percy a photo from just before their demobbing, the famous shot with hundreds of Australians sitting on the steps of the Great Pyramid. Percy remembered when the photo was taken, the feeling that a great secret was buried underneath him. But later he laughed with the other soldiers in the marketplace, and drank too much, and spent a regrettable night at one of the local brothels.

The returned soldiers filtered out to their districts, and he and Bernie returned to Millicent and a hero’s welcome. Reunited with Florence and his growing child, he planted the seed for his next child that night, the second of his seven. Life became a ballet between the mundane and the knowledge that he’d been over to the other side, had seen impossible things. He drank a little, but spent most of his time working in his shed, trying to kill the memories with a mixture of German industry and steady denial. He would honk mournfully on an accordion, and encouraged his children into a love of music simply in an attempt to connect with the distant old man.

Murdoch, the horse-prince, Resheph of Egypt, whatever the beast had been, it had given him this chance, delivered him back to life from the far side of death. Still, the life he lived was unremarkable from that point on, and Percy couldn’t decide if that was a blessing, or a missed opportunity.

He won a share in a Model T Ford, a lottery with two friends. Being the only one who knew how to drive, he became the first motorist in his district. When work dried up, he travelled to the docks of Port Adelaide, only to find that the post-war hatred of Germans was strong. Defeated, he returned to the south-east of the state, and life followed the slow tides of planting, harvesting, logging and planting.

Years passed, and the need to feed his growing family sent Percy to work for the Overland Telegraph. He travelled the dry interior with the other linesmen, keeping that single thread of communication open with the rest of the world.

The centre of Australia was open and limitless, with nothing more to Percy’s world than that sagging line of cable, the posts that leaned and fell to termites and dry rot.

This endless repetition set his mind to thinking, and he realised that if a canal could bisect two continents, one enormous line of cable could do the same.

He was working on another weak-point! The scar on his hand twinged. As the team of linesmen righted poles and set the line straight and true, Percy realised they were setting the same insult on this land.

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