Alberto Drops In To Save The World: Part 11

PREVIOUSLY

From the beginning, Part 1: Alberto Drops In To Save The World.

Part 10: Alberto Drops In To Save The World.

Alberto settles in, Bridgewater Gerry makes some bold moves and Rosandra Gutfeld comes out swinging.

Part 11

Jackie Nitaki took a look around her Auckland hotel room. Tasteful nothingness, in the way that these things were. There was at least enough room to do some yoga, which was useful given that it was going to be here home for the 14-day quarantine period.

She lay back wondering which of her books she was going to start on first. There were nagging feelings of regret at having suddenly resigned from Housing All Tasmanians. In some ways, though, things were better than ever. The government had provided a lot of support to emergency housing to help get people off during the coronavirus crisis. And without the tourist trade, apartments were flooding back onto the rental market and rent prices were dropping back to within reach of mere mortals.

She’d still hadn’t reached a decision on the book when there was a knock at the door. Strange. She wasn’t expecting anyone.

Nitaki peeked through the spyhole and there was nobody there.

She opened the door and looked both ways. A hotel staff member was disappearing into the elevator.

As she was about to shut the door she looked down and saw a bunch of flowers and an empty vases. Nitaki picked them up and brought them into the room.

A note was attached to the paper around the bouquet”

Happy new life in NZ! Just wanted to let you know to look out for your video on PNN. I presume your hotel-prison has a few channels! – love, Gerry

* * * * *

Marus Burdic had printed out the photo to have a good look at it. In fact he’d gone back to try to find the spot where he’d first noticed the paw imprint in the mud to see if he could get another picture in daylight. Alas, what he reckoned was the spot had been absolutely trampled by pademelons.

A bit unusual, he thought. There surely can’t be that many who live near the rivulet. At least not at this time of year.

Narrow-shouldered, he’d lived most of his adult life on the island after arriving from Latvia in the early 1980’s. Well, back in those days just about everyone tried to escape from Soviet Bloc countries if they could, including Marus. He’d fallen in love immediately with the wind and landscapes and the scent of wildness itself that he breathed in deeply on his expeditions as a walking guide to the remotest parts of the island.

He’d always wanted to be a photographer but after a while he realised he didn’t have the eye. No, it was an ear that he had. While the rest of the world seemed intent on filling their ears with noise, he tuned his ears to the subtle symphonies of the landscape. The comforting blanket of a she-oak sshh. The frogs plopping in and out of the burble of the tannin streams. The deep silences in which pencil pines and buttongrass finally found the courage to speak in their whispers.

Marus had asked around, and a friend had recommended a young designer who did good work with photos.

“Hello, Intertwine Design, where ideas and beauty come together.”

“Er hello. My name’s Marus, I have–

“– Salamah. What can I do for you?”

“Do you retouch photos? Enhancement, that sort of thing?”

“Sure I do. How many?”

“Just one.”

Salamah Salamova sighed. Work, yes, but a ten-dollar job. Maybe she should have become a security guard or something. They seemed to have endless work these days, sitting around quarantine hotels 24/7 doing pretty much nothing. It wasn’t as if they were on the lookout for sneaky shoplifters or were keeping the peace at nightclubs in the witching hours.

“But it’s an important one. I think it might be the paw-print of a thylacine.”

“Oh,” she said, trying to be too chatty to cover up her disappointment. “Right up my line, I had a video job like that just finished yesterday.” As her voice tailed off she realised what she’d just said.

“Really?” said Marus Burdic, bursting with incredulity.

“Sorry, can’t talk about it. Please send it through to my email with instructions about what you want done with it.”

She put the phone down and hung up the call.

“Xazçu dašo jürgara läxha bäkqina,” she muttered to herself. A nice word enticed the snake out of its hole.

* * * * *

The rest of the press conference after Rosandra Gutfeld’s speech had been a twilight zone for Richard Kanitji.

He’d only gone three steps down the fire escape before he realised he had to face the music. Ninja move, he thought as he talked himself into it. Let her running away be the story not me. He bolted back into the room just as the assembled media were getting ready to pack down. He waved at them to stay in place.

But all the words he had mentally prepared were now just the wrong ones. And he didn’t have any snappy comebacks ready for Gutfeld. No, he’d had quite the opposite ready to roll: effusive praise for her leadership and dignified withdrawal.

Then she’d dropped him in a vat of boiling oil and danced away.

“Good afternoon,” he’d said as he stepped up to the microphone. “They were fine words.” He was giving himself time to think. “Fine words, but our system of representation is not built upon fine words.”

“It is built upon leadership, and action. We can thank Rosandra Gutfeld for acknowledging her failure in both of these areas.” He started to feel like he might even enjoy this a weensy bit.

“She has chosen the easy path of sitting on the crossbench to defend nothing, rather than to fight for the platform upon which she was elected. She has chosen the gay abandon of no longer representing those who voted for her under the banner of our party.”

“We know,” he said, increasingly theatrical as the journalists leaned in, “that she has been in secret negotiations with the government for a special role once she left our party.”

Brent Gee, who generally thought he’d heard everything, let his mouth drop open.

“That’s right. While engaging in hanky-panky with a member of our own party,” – he let that linger deliciously so that everyone could hear it and internalise it the significance – “she was up to hanky-panky of another sort with the government. Well may she flail about trying to claim to be an ‘independent’, but the voters of Tasmania – and we will one day go to the polls again, long after this coronavirus crisis has passed – will remember her as Madame Imbroglio. While we struggled for life itself against a deadly pandemic, there she was, belting out the siren song of her own shipwreck. Selfish. Pathetic. Debacle.”

“On behalf of our party, and its grand traditions dating back over a century, I apologise for Rosandra Gutfeld. We can repair the damage she has done, but it will take unity. It will take the kind of strong leadership that Gutfeld herself was unable to provide. I therefore wish my interest in seeking the leadership of the party. Of course, Deputy Leader Jim Dodgman remains as leader until the parliamentary wing can meet, presumably by video, to select a new leader.”

“I will not be taking questions. But like Rosandra Gutfeld, I seek to ask one. Should the video, recently leaked by a former parliamentarian and now circulating on social media, be sufficient to prosecute both he and Gutfeld for a flagrant breach of coronavirus restrictions?”

* * * * *

Jennarenn Jetsam was standing in the city pedestrian mall waiting for someone to come by. She had her video camera set up on a stand and was herself an adequate social distance away.

She started to approach a man in a black puffer jacket, beanie and dark grey shorts. He took one look at her, pretended not to see her coming and sneaked on by.

Two police officers ambled up to her from behind.

“What are you up to here?” said Sergeant Mark Di Loreto.

Jetsam wheeled around quickly and sized up the burly man and his female partner, who had her collar pulled a little higher than seemed natural.

“Interviews. Won’t be long.”

“Who do you work for?”

“Freelance.”

“Isn’t that another word for unemployed?” he muttered. “Look … is there any reason you can’t be doing this by internet or something? No-one should be out and about unless it’s essential.”

“Excuse me!” she exclaimed and flicked the camera around so it was pointing at him. As much as anything, the red ‘on’ light was faintly menacing. “The free press have a job to do and I’m doing it. I’m quite certain the Premier has said people can continue to go about their employment. This is my employment. I am being paid by one of the world’s largest TV networks to do some street interviews, if you must know.”

“Yep, we must know. Is there any way we can verify this?” insisted Di Loreto.

“You can verify it when you see this footage on PNN.”

“PNN? Why would they be wanting from our lousy slice of the pandemic.”

Jetsam shook her head.

“It’s not about that. They want me…they want me to ask people on the street if anyone has seen thylacine.”

A look flashed across Di Loreto’s face as if he’d been slapped in the face with a Highland Lakes trout.

Behind him there was a yelp from Officer MacLairy. “Ah dinnae fooking believe it.”

* * * * *

Zach hopped over the fence and knocked on the door of the neighbour’s shed, then let himself in. Alberto was curled up in his basket.

“Are you asleep,” asked Zach.

“No, no, just checking my eyelids for holes,” came the weary reply.

Zach put down a little container.

“I brought you some salty miso-stuffed zucchini blossoms,” offered Zach.

“Do they go well with cat?”

“Not sure. Bit out of my area.” Zach had also brought an aluminium bottle which he used to tip water into Alberto’s bowl. It made a satisfying glup glup glup sound.

“How’s the book going?”

Alberto rolled over slowly.

“Not too bad. As I sit here like a bandicoot on a burnt ridge.”

“What?”

Alberto waved a paw at the book of 1980’s slang, as if that were an explanation.

“Lonely,” came a stage whisper from the doorway. “Forlorn.”

Zach looked around at a rather pretty pademelon face that was poking in.

“Be careful!” he warned. “Shoo! This is a dangerous carnivore.”

Alberto yawned, rolling his head at the end of it to see if he could direct it at Zach.

“Hello Lady Jane, good of you to drop in. This as you can see is my somewhat uptight friend and host, Mr Zachary Greene, mild-mannered accountant.”

“Lady Jane Macquarie. Hello sir.”

“Ah. Can’t shake your paw because of…the virus…and all that,” said Zach, now wondering if marsupials got coronavirus. Paw sanitiser? How do you wash fur anyway?

“All things share the same breath – we of the grasslands; the trees; the humans…the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. Apologies to Chief Seattle. And to you sir for my unannounced entrance. I needed to bring a message to Alberto.”

Man and thylacine became a little more alert.

“There was a man. Thin. I have seen him before as he often walks near the rivulet. He was looking closely at pawprints in the mud.”

“You mean…my pawprints?” queried Alberto.

“One believes so. He returned the following day, in better light, as if to take another look. By then we had covered them over with tracks of our own. The usual. But this man…I think he knows about animals. Whenever he sees us he stops to observe.”

Zach tried to remember if he might have seen the man. There were a lot of people out walking these days, studiously keeping to fringes of the footpath as they passed.

“You say he was…thin?”

“Yes. very.”

“Thin as a streak of pelican shit,” offered Alberto helpfully.

“Usually heavy boots,” Lady Jane Macquarie continued. “Knobbly knees. A narrow face too, pale. He does not look Australian. Sometimes he carries a long stick.”

“Sounds like a…bushwalker,” said Zach. “In the city.”

“It could be. He appears to be happy by the water and the trees. There is a place where he sometimes sits.”

“And does … ?

“Nothing. That is the thing. Most humans are not good at doing nothing. Always have to mess with things, can’t leave them alone.”

“And now we’re all kind of forced to do nothing. No wonder everyone’s on edge.” Zach adjusted his coat. It was getting late to be outdoors.

“Oh, something else. There was a death today. First death on the island. Not only is coronavirus here, it’s starting to kill people. The Premier said he expects it won’t be the last.”

They pondered this a while, in silence. No-one could predict how many deaths were coming. The worlds’ best doctors were all scrambling to do what they could against an enemy they barely knew. The future was a furiously-painted canvas by a madman whose colours were shades of black.

A slight puff of wind dislodged a gumnut and dropped it musically onto the tin roof of the shed.

“Right Lady Jane, to thank you for your assistance, we have prepared a fine repast of – “ Alberto looked at Zach.

“- er, salty miso-stuffed zucchini flowers.” He lifted the lid of the container. The nuggets were still warm and eager to share a comforting savoury aroma.

Lady Jane took a sniff and then looked on approvingly.

“May I trouble sir for a few minced salad herbs mixed into a teaspoon of mayonnaise with a dab of bush plum chutney?” she asked.

Alberto was about to burst into laughter when Zach produced a small container from his pocket with a flourish.

“Here’s some I prepared earlier.”

The secret’s out, and Alberto is on the run! Join Alberto and Zach’s coronavirus adventure in Part 12 of Alberto Drops In To Save The World next weekend.