Filth

Carole Remembers Australia

The things my Bruce has seen, the things that have hurt him. They don’t know. They would never know. But he shared them with me. Always.

He explained to me why he went with that prostitute back in Australia. He needed to be with someone. It meant nothing. I failed Bruce by not being there for him. I was with my mum.

Bruce had been working all the hours God sends. He had been operating undercover in the Kings Cross district, on the trail of these gangsters.

He told me about that terrible day. There he was, trying to open the huge, swinging doors of the garage. He couldn’t get them open properly, only just enough for him to squeeze through. He looked into the darkness, venturing right into its black heart. Looking back, behind him, he could see a ray of sunlight across the garage forecourt. The odd car drove by, perhaps the odd working girl swinging along in her short skirt and high heels.

Inside, at the dark end of the garage, Bruce heard the low groans. He told me that it was the worst sound that he had ever heard in his life. They were scarcely human groans. Something was in the office at the back of the garage. He moved towards it.

Bruce opened the door and switched on the lights.

There he was. Costas. Or what was left of him.

His torture had been systematic. He was lying across the table, face down on his belly. His chin is on the table, his head tilted up, facing Bruce. His jaw has been broken and his teeth have been pulled out. They lie next to his amputated fingers. His eyes witness this. The eyelids have been cut away and the eyeballs have been carefully removed from the head without severing the optic nerves. These had somehow been stretched like a cartoon character’s and the eyes lie, each one on a pile of books, each one facing some of the fingers and teeth and eyelids and ears, which have also been removed and cut off with surgical scissors. The scissors lie with the pliers, and the nail gun which has secured Costas to the bench by his hands and clothing. The genitals have not been severed, possibly to avoid him bleeding to death. His tongue has been cut out.

They wanted to keep him alive as a message to his associates.

Bruce stood there, facing him, thinking how could anybody do this to another human being. But all he said to Costas was, You’ve been keeping bad company mate.

He puts the gun in the man’s mouth and fires. He cannot look but the groans are no more. Bruce shakes and moves out of the office across the forecourt. The door is stiff, and it is a tight squeeze to get into the Sydney sunshine. He panics, trembling with anxiety. He tries to phone me but I’m at my mum’s. If only I’d been home for him.

Bruce walks for a little bit, then runs into a prostitute, a half-Aboriginal girl called Madeline. He takes her to a hotel and pays her five hundred dollars, just to talk to her.

Just to talk. She sits warily as he speaks in measured tones, telling her about Costas and about the war he is having with the others and the consequences for him.

It should have been me that was there, not that whore.

I think that for Bruce that image of Costas became a symbol for extreme possibilities of evil. That’s why Bruce is how he is.