Henry has accepted the new story for publication, but with changes.

Transcription

1 The Author and the Publisher On Monday 7 May, here on Books & Arts, you ll meet Robert Gott and his publisher Henry Rosenbloom (founder and head of Scribe Publishing). Henry published Robert s first three novels. They are comic crime stories about a hapless and reluctant sleuth named Will Power. But when Robert presented Henry with the fourth Will Power book, Henry decided not to proceed. So Robert decided to write a more serious book based on the same material. The result is a manuscript called Argument 7. Henry has accepted the new story for publication, but with changes. Robert and Henry join us to discuss the project. They welcome want your feedback. What do you think of Robert s writing? Is it too serious? What do you make of the mixture of fact and fiction? Is this a book you might read? Be prepared to join the talkback or comment on-line. The extracts from Argument 7 remain the copyright of Robert Gott. Robert Gott explains the premise of Argument 7 In Melbourne, the newly-formed, undermanned, Homicide division is called to investigate a vicious double murder on Christmas Eve, Inspector Titus Lambert is convinced the murders are in some way personal. Army Intelligence disagrees. One of the victims was one of theirs. The investigation uncovers simmering tensions among secretive, fascist sympathisers and the rump of the right-wing political organisation, Australia First. Their magazine The Publicist promoted anti-semitism, fierce nationalism and fascist aesthetics, until it was closed down and its board interned. The novel explores this little known, and sometimes violent, corner of Australian history, and finds oddly modern echoes in its paranoia, xenophobia and ugly fervour. This story is less a whodunit than a who ll-be-next.

2 Australia First was a real organisation and The Publicist, its magazine, a real publication. Extract one In this extract we meet the extremely unpleasant recipient of the tattoo that gives the book its title Argument 7. The ghastly meaning of Argument 7 is revealed later in the novel. As John Simper shaved the hard belly of the man on the table in front of him, he managed, just, to give every appearance of not having been really inconvenienced. In fact, tattooing someone s belly was the last thing he wanted to be doing on Christmas Eve. This client, this lout, hadn t done himself any favours from the outset. Simper had been asleep in a close, stale-aired room above his shop in Smith Street, Collingwood, and had been woken by hammering on the door below. He d expected to find a couple of drunken doughboys in search of a bicep tattoo. The man who stood in the doorway was no American soldier. He was tall and lean, with pale skin and brutally cropped blond hair. His eyes were a peculiar, pale blue, so pale they seemed almost blind. He hadn t waited to be invited in. He hadn t exactly pushed John Simper aside, but he d moved past him and into the front parlour with an assertiveness that brooked no opposition. I want a tattoo. John Simper, who at sixty was no physical match for this man, attempted to stamp some authority on his own premises by saying, It s Christmas Eve. I m not working. You ll have to go elsewhere. I m here. You re working. If you re any good it won t take long. I told you, I m not working. The man looked around the parlour and said nothing. He didn t have to speak. He took off his shirt and placed it over the back of a chair. I want the word argument and the number 7 tattooed here. He drew an arc under his navel. Argument 7, in plain letters. Nothing fancy, but clear so you can read it. So who can read it? What does it mean? I means a lot, and maybe I ll tell you about it when you ve finished.

3 Whatever Argument 7 was, John Simper had lost the argument about not doing the work. All right, he said. Lie on that table. It s going to hurt, you do know that? You re not going to go crazy when it starts and think I don t know what I m doing? I don t care how much it hurts. Do it. Argument 7. Did you have a particular font in mind? Simper said as he razored the belly hairless. What do you mean font? That s where they baptize babies, isn t it? The letters. Did you have a style in mind? Simple. Like a newspaper headline. Simper carefully drew the outline of each letter on the skin and inked the needle. The man didn t flinch as the needle bit and the ink took. He inked, wiped, inked, wiped and very quickly he made it to the u. He stood back. What s up? the man asked. Nothing. You want to see so far? Sure. Simper positioned the mirror. Looks fine, the man said. Hurry up. Simper suddenly realised that the man had no intention of paying him. He would get up off the table and walk out. That s why he decided to put an e in after the u. Someone would point out the spelling mistake later. There was no chance, he thought, that a person who didn t know what a font was would know how to spell argument. Having inked in the e, he enjoyed the rest of the job. It s done, he said. The man stood up. The rawness will settle, Simper said. The man walked to a mirror and examined his torso. There it was, Arguement 7, in reverse, but even in reverse he knew what John Simper had done. He betrayed nothing. Thanks, he said, and put his shirt back on. What do I owe you? His voice was quiet and it made Simper nervous. Call it a Christmas present, Simper said. The man came towards him, and was suddenly behind him, and Simper felt a hand on either side of his head. With appalling ease, the man twisted John Simper s head and broke his neck.

4 Merry Christmas, the man said and walked out into Smith Street. Extract Two In this extract Sergeant Joe Sable, a young detective in the newly formed Homicide division, reads an issue of The Publicist, the magazine of the Australia First movement. The material printed here is a real extract from that magazine. Joe Sable s flat in Arnold Street, Princes Hill, was extravagantly large for a single man. He d bought it because it was around the corner from where he d grown up, and because he didn t want to live in the family home after the death of his father. The dull monotony of his parents stultifyingly silent hostilities hadn t eased for him after his mother s death. The silence was the same. By then, Moshe Sable had become so distant that physical proximity to him made not the slightest difference. The closer Joe was, the further Moshe retreated. Neither of Joe s parents had been observant Jews, but as a small child he went regularly with them to the Kadesh in Lygon Street. At some point they stopped going, and Joe s sense of his Jewishness was only renewed when someone at school called him a kike. He was puzzled by it, and even as an adult he found it hard to associate the occasional insult with his own life. It angered him now. At 25, although he had no faith, his Jewishness had begun to reassert itself in the face of the persecutions in Europe. He d begun mentioning the fact that he was Jewish in conversation with people, partly to gauge their reaction, and partly to get used to the sound of it. It was something he d never said as a child, and it still felt slightly novel to him. He felt keenly that it was simply an accident of birth that had so far protected him from the horrifying depths that human nature could plumb. Now, sitting at a table in a curved window, overlooking Pigdon Street, he turned the pages of a copy of The Publicist that Inspector Lambert had asked him to peruse. He couldn t quite believe what he was reading. It made him sick, and when he looked up from the page the world had shifted somehow. He read: Do the Jews control Australia? No, but their influence is disproportionate to their number. Do the Jews sweat their employees? Many do, particularly their gentile employees. Is Nazi race theory scientific? Yes, fundamentally. What are The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? A brilliant exposition of Jewish aims and ways. Why has the Jew been chosen as scapegoat? Because he chose

5 himself to dominate the world. Who is stirring up anti-semitism in Australia? The Jew refugees by being anti-gentile. What should be our attitude to refugees? Uncompromising hostility the Germans are right in this. What is being done for Jewish refugees? Stupid gentiles are helping them. What is the solution to the Jewish problem? There can be none while a Jew lives. This last sentence made Joe gasp. The Publicist cost sixpence. Sixpence. That was all it cost to enter the vile world of this magazine. Joe s heart was racing. The people who wrote this, and the people who read it, weren t safely thousands of miles away in Europe. They were here, in Melbourne.