For Everyone Concerned by Damien Wilkins Read Free Book Online

writer and had truthfully outlined the story of the pages I had written when I was aged twelve years on the subject of revenge.
    I needed to forget these words, since I had to admit to myself that the actual reason for writing those pages was utterly base and totally self-centred; I had wanted to pretend to the Principal that I was anything but as weak as my brother and, for this reason alone, I had wanted to become Headboy of my school.
    Between the times of my third and fourth visit to Melbourne, I sent my older brother by airmail a book by the American writer who had spoken of revenge. In this time I also received by airmail from my brother, a book by the writer who is the subject of this story.
    The woman who was living with my brother at the times of my second, third and fourth visits to Melbourne, between the years 1984 to 1989, did not read the book I sent my brother. She did not generally read works of fiction and told me she preferred works of non-fiction because of their truthfulness and the fact that nothing in these books had been made up.
    On my fourth visit she did not mention the writing I had done but occasionally mentioned its financial success, which was negligible in real terms, in terms of what real work paid, but astounding to the woman who saw the writing I had done as totally worthless and a complete waste of time.
    *
    On one of the days of my second visit to Melbourne, which the woman never tired of reminding me were being wasted in reading works of fiction and drinking the beer in my brother’s fridge when I should have been outside doing something , as she often said, I had put down my book on the arm of the chair, placed the empty can of Fosters beer in the rubbish tin, and had indeed walked outside.
    I remember that this day was like any other day of those summer months of my second visit; it was unbearably hot and humid. The sky was not blue-coloured as I had imagined on those days which I had spent inside without so much as looking out a window of my brother’s flat, but a hazy washed out grey with a pale tint of blue showing behind. As I looked at the sky on this day, I remember imagining a swimming pool into which has been poured powdered milk.
    I can recall no details of how I arrived at the room in a neighbouring suburb in which a three-hour seminar was being held on door-to-door selling of imitation leather credit card-holders. I remember on this day visiting the Student Job Centre at Melbourne University, as I had often been advised to do by the woman. And I remember, as I was reading the notices of available jobs on small filing cards pinned to a large board on the wall of the Centre, feeling, firstly, the freedom that paid work would bring me from my brother’s flat and from the woman’s constant remindersof my debt to my brother and the worthlessness of my pursuits—which exhilarated me—and, secondly, terror at the distance I had walked on this hot day and the thought that I was now separated from the work of fiction I had put aside on the arm of the chair in the lounge of my brother’s flat—which crushed me—and that instead of reading books which I sometimes dreamed I had written, I was now reading notices about the rates offered in the suburb of Prahran for lawn-mowing services.
    The man who was taking the seminar on door-to-door selling was wearing a shirt and tie during the first hour of the seminar. During the second hour he was wearing a shirt, having taken off the tie. In the third and final hour he had taken off his shirt because of the heat and the humidity and underneath he was wearing a white teeshirt. I can recall no details of what the man in the shirt and tie said, though I remember the particular moment of his taking off the shirt and revealing the tattoos he had on the biceps of both arms. In that instant I knew that the man was taking more money in commission from his sellers than he said was the case in the seminar. And I realised that without his shirt and