those nice police people

I haven’t given much of an account of my interview after my arrest – after all, it’s all on video and audio, so I won’t try to best the technology. I should say though, that after all that was switched off, I was DNA-tested, finger-printed, shot in the mug and searched all around the inside of my pants by a plain-clothes man (the same who had questioned me) wearing a very threatening pair of rubber gloves.
Although all this was humiliating of itself, there was no nastiness directed toward me, though I wouldn’t go so far as to say they were coming round to the idea that they might’ve made a mistake. Hard to read the minds of the more important players. The lesser figures were just struggling to get the procedures right, and to figure out the technology. They had a geewizz fingerprinting machine that was giving a policewoman the gyp. I had to try and help her, which meant that she had to acknowledge me as a human being.
Of course I’d just been charged with rape, and it’s true, I suppose, that these people are often faced with the nastier side of humanity, but at the same time it seems to me that police culture seems to encourage a hostile or at least disdainful treatment of the general public, and this has always raised my hackles. For example when, some days after all these humiliations, I brought in a letter for the investigating officers, the letter mentioned on June 12 (the dates are wrong of course), I was forced to wait for ages at the front counter. Nobody was at the counter but I could see a couple of people sitting around in the open space office behind the silver striped glass. They were chatting desultorily, and could clearly see me through the glass. Finally, a dishevelled, middle-aged woman shuffled around to my side of the glass and asked me what I wanted in a distinctly gruff tone. I gave her the envelope, hand-addressed to constable Welsh and asked for a receipt, so that I could be sure that it had reached its destination. This business of the receipt I’d only just thought of, and the woman instantly took umbrage. We don’t give receipts, she said surlily. I tried to explain that it was a major case and I wanted to be sure… We’ve never given receipts, she repeated. I’ll put it in his pigeon-hole, but we don’t give receipts. My name is Barb. He’ll get the letter.
So I accepted that, having no alternative (and maybe I was being a bit cheeky), but during the time I’d been waiting I’d read a poster behind the counter, a poster that was presumably deliberately posted there to catch the eye of the public. It criticised the government for their meanness with regard to the pay and conditions of police. It was a public servants’ union poster, which finished with some such remark as ‘the nurses deserved their pay increase – so do we’. This strongly reminded the public that the police were public servants. Servants of the public. And the public – that’s me. Now considering all the modern talk about productivity and performance-based salaries, the question of whether an organisation that treats its wage-payers and customers with such surly disdain deserves better pay really begs to be asked.

nine songs

I’ve decided it’s not such a good idea to read a heap of reviews before I write my own, so I’ll avoid that, though I might do some research on directors and such.
Michael Winterbottom is apparently gaining something of a rep as an enfant terrible of current Brit cinema. I’ve never seen a film of his before. I recall that Butterfly Kiss (1995) caused a bit of a sensation a while back, and Welcome to Sarajevo (1997) sounds familiar. My guess, from Nine Songs, is that he’s one of those directors who invites big loyalties, scathing detractions with a great gulf between.
Interestingly, he also directed Jude (1996), based on the Hardy novel which had such a powerful effect on my callow youth.
I had no idea what to expect from Nine Songs, a short film at about 69 minutes (though it really dragged at times). The nine songs of the title were performed live by various contemporary British bands (and the film composer Michael Nyman) at concerts attended by the young couple whose story is the focus of the film. Apart from Nyman and the Dandy Warhols I’ve never heard of any of the bands – and mostly the songs had a sameness to me (assisted by the blurred acoustic that was a deliberate part of the feel of the film) which made these moments the most tedious in the film. Having said that, I don’t blame the film-maker, I blame myself. It reminds me of why I gave up going to rock concerts twenty-five years ago (though I still enjoy seeing live bands at pubs). I was too much of a wet blanket, too egotistically resistant to the group mentality, the requirement – almost the raison d’être of the rock concert – to lose yourself in the moment and the atmosphere.
So these rock concert scenes only served to remind me of my alienation from that vibe, though I could well understand intellectually their purpose in the film, which was to help chart one of those intensely felt, young and physical relationships, full of instants of vitality, of pleasure and searing clarity and nakedness and trust and a oneness that, momentarily, seems eternal.
I’m sure that many would identify with this type of relationship. I’ve never experienced it myself, but I’ve witnessed it, though of course not quite in the detail in which we’re permitted to witness this.
I’m talking about a relationship between a perhaps unprepossessing yet surprisingly stimulating young man and a beautiful young woman who’s taking advantage of the situation and preparing, right from the beginning, to move on, knowing, or feeling, that she has the looks and the smarts to land someone else, completely different and equally interesting.
And having witnessed such a scenario, I’ve in the past tried to write about it as if I’ve experienced it myself, being abandoned after an intensely sexual, revelatory experience and feeling you have to take it in your stride because that’s what’s expected of you though it’s the last thing you want to do. Of course maybe this isn’t what it’s about at all, but my feeling is that it’s a modest, personal sort of film about abandonment, for a while, to the physical, a while that goes deliciously on and on and yet in the end is only fleeting.
When I first saw this couple (Matt and Lisa, played by Kieran O’Brien and Margo Stilley), between the sheets in their cramped but adequate-for-the-purpose bedroom, I was immediately reminded of Godard’s A bout de souffle, especially considering that O’Brien rather resembled a young Jean-Paul Belmondo. I’m not sure if there was an influence there, but Godard’s couple seemed like rank outsiders, in a vaguely exalted way, whereas Winterbottom’s lovers seemed a more everyday pairing, outsiders but tediously so, too commonplace in their outsiderdom to generate much romanticism from their status. Typical young concert-goers. This would’ve created an overly melancholy effect if we didn’t get hints of another life. Lisa is an American student, doing a course in England (presumably London) while Matt (whose story this essentially is) appears to be a scientist of some kind. The lovemaking and the concert-going are occasionally leavened by scenes of the Antarctic ice, with Matt’s voice-over, reflecting on ice-olation (sorry) and such, but also suggesting that there’s life after sex.
An intriguing film in a minor key, if a little voyeuristic for those of us with an inadequate sex life. I was amused that of the half-dozen viewers at this screening, there were two elderly Chinese-looking couples who probably, like me, wandered in with little idea of what they’d be seeing. I hope they enjoyed it.

poor foster carers

It has often occurred to me – and the police’s line of questioning simply confirms this – that foster caring, especially caring for troubled wards of the state, is the sort of job that few sensible people would take up. Thus it’s left to the mad, bad and dangerous to know, at least that might be the perception. And no doubt there are foster carers just like that.
Many have said to me ‘it’s not a job I’d do’, and they’ve mixed a sort of admiring, praising talk with just a smidgeon of puzzlement.
I took on the job, partly because I was confident I’d never find myself in the position I now find myself in, but also because I’m a poor dilettante who wanted to remove the stain of unemployability. I could continue my dilettante existence under just a little less pressure. But I find that as always, it’s the poor and the vulnerable, the easy-to-target, who do in fact get targeted. They do the work that nobody else wants to do, and they get punished for it. It seems almost harshly Darwinian.

illness inter alia

We entertained last night, Sarah and I. We had a cocktail party – obviously planned before my arrest. I was to be barman. I didn’t last the night, because my coughing cold has returned with a vengeance. I mixed everyone a round of cocktails then had to more or less retire. I’d taken two mersyndols and some heavy-duty cough suppressant, to little avail. Illness is very introverting, it’s hard to focus on government reshuffles or Beazley’s performance in opposition when you’re exploding into convulsions every few minutes, and god knows it doesn’t take much of an excuse for me to make the inward turn.

some vital discrepancies

During our videotaped interview I was asked if the date September 23 (2004) meant anything to me. I said no. Apparently this was the day I did the alleged deed. I said that I wasn’t sure, but it might’ve been that we (the boy, Sarah’s grandson Michael, and myself) were at Victor Harbour at that time. They then said that, according to the boy, the rape had occurred after the Victor Harbour trip. I then had the great satisfaction of being able to say that I returned with the boy and Michael on a Friday morning or early afternoon, that he was picked up by his mum later that day for his usual weekend stay, and that I have never seen him since.

Since returning from the arrest I’ve of course consulted my journal – what a huge advantage it is for me that I’m a compulsive writer! – and I’m able to date the Victor Harbour trip precisely. It took place from Monday September 27 to Friday October 1. However, the exact dating isn’t so important – it’s amazing and rather unlikely that the boy could come up with a precise date. What’s important is his claim that the rape took place after the Victor trip. If he insists on this, his whole case will collapse. On the other hand, he won’t be in a position to insist on this, since, I presume, he won’t himself be called for questioning by a court, being too young. Presumably then the prosecuting lawyers will argue that, though he may be confused about dates and the sequence of events, he’s quite clear about the act itself. And then it’s back to being my word against his – a most unsatisfactory way of ‘getting off’.

why the porky?

This was a question the police asked of me during our videotaped and audiotaped interview. The question, asked by a plainclothes man who shared the interviewing with a constable, was put thus: ‘Can you tell me why xxxxxx would want to tell such a lie against you?’ My response was lame. I said that I’d often wondered about it and discussed it with friends, without of course knowing the precise nature of the accusation hanging over my head for so long. All I could come up with was that he was attention-seeking. The plainclothes man said that he’d questioned the boy and felt that he was embarrassed and reluctant about recounting the details of my alleged rape of him (supposed to have occurred in the toilet), so he didn’t see it as attention-seeking. He also said (and the implication was that this made his testimony more convincing) that the boy spoke warmly and positively about me, for the most part (!!). He then asked if I thought this accusation was out of character for the boy. After some reflection, I said that, though the boy was a bit of a bullshit artist (and I gave examples of his bullshit), this enormous porky did seem out of character, yes. This was probably impolitic of me, but there you go. So when he asked me to speculate further on the boy’s motives, I could only say that I was no expert in child psychology.
But during my sleepless night after returning from the police station, and after debriefing with Sarah, this absolutely key question kept recurring. I think I’ve worked out the answer.
The key to the boy’s accusation lies in his troubled, dysfunctional relationship with his mother. Some years ago, this woman put the boy into state care, citing his difficult behaviours and her own emotional and health problems. Previously she’d sent him off to live with her ex-husband, the boy’s father, in Coober Pedy. This had proved disastrous – a huge flair-up had occurred between the boy and his father’s new wife, and the boy had been sent packing back to the mother.
So there he was under the guardianship of the minister, having been rejected by both father and mother, and obviously very damaged by the experience. By the time he was in my care, he was staying with his mother on weekends, and the aim was to gradually effect a complete handover to maternal care. Many of the professionals involved had their doubts about the benefits of such a reconciliation to the boy, because of his mother’s hot-and-cold, love-hate treatment of him, but it was clear he was devoted to his mum.
Given this background, my theory is that the inevitable has begun to happen. After six months or so back together, cracks are appearing again in the mother-son relationship. There might even be hints being dropped about sending the boy back into state care. So, enormously fearful of being rejected and abandoned yet again, the boy hits upon telling a story so awful that it will win forever his mother’s sympathy, her assurances that she’ll never abandon him again. ‘Mum, when you send me out into that nasty world of foster-caring, you don’t know what danger you’re sending me into. I get raped, mum.’
As for my role, he’s just using me as the instrument. It’s nothing personal. And it would be easy to target me in this way, especially as he’s gotten away with a false accusation against me before. He claimed that I punched him on the back of the head while we were together in Victor Harbour, an outrageous claim, but clearly a minor one in comparison to rape. Also, this earlier claim was an exaggeration of a real flare-up, so it had greater plausibility. He got what he wanted out of that accusation – resettlement with his mother. This time, what he wants is to stay with his mother, in a working-class culture he feels comfortable with. Above all, he wants, desperately, not to be abandoned again. So he’s gambling everything on this story, and it’s unlikely he’s going to give it up. He knows, or he feels sure, that if he admits he’s lying, his mother will react badly and want to have no more to do with him, so he’s locked himself in.

now here’s some news

For anyone out there wondering why I’ve not been posting much lately, I must tell you I’ve often wondered myself, but I think it’s best explained by a restlessness and distractedness I’ve felt ever since, two months ago, I was informed of a mysterious, but very serious, accusation against me, the exact nature of which I sometimes felt everybody but myself was aware.
Well, the mystery of it has been resolved in the past few hours, at last. Upon visiting by request the Port Adelaide police station at 7pm last night, I was arrested and charged with rape and unlawful sexual intercourse. I’ve been released on $1500 bail on my own surety and am to make my first appearance in court on July 6.
I’ve been advised, by the police and by Sarah, to obtain a lawyer/solicitor. Sarah has spoken of Legal Aid. However, I well recall being way less than satisfied by the Legal Aid lawyer who represented me in a minor matter several years ago. The trouble with Legal Aid people, it seems to me, is that they’re overworked and underpaid, they spend the absolute minimum time with you beforehand, they tend to be pessimistic and conservative about outcomes (probably because they realise a better outcome requires more input, and they haven’t time for that) and they encourage you to follow the line of least resistance (‘if you plead guilty you’ll be sure to get off with a suspended sentence, and there’ll be less stressful court time for you…’).
Not that I think any lawyer with an ounce of intelligence or integrity would ask me to plead guilty on this one, but I suspect that they’d still go for a simple result - ‘let’s not get bogged down in the details, it’s your word against his, so it won’t be beyond reasonable doubt, ergo they can’t convict.’ This would be a poor relation indeed to being completely exonerated, and I want nothing less than that. Of course, I can’t afford a proper lawyer.
The way I see it, the only way I can be completely exonerated is if the fourteen-year-old plaintiff is brought, without coercion or pressure, that’s to say of his own free will, to admit that he’s told a ginormous porky, and that he’s sorry for all the pain he’s caused. Now, the likelihood of him doing that is perhaps less than zero, but that’s really what I must aim for, nothing less. This is the greatest crisis of my life, obviously, and it requires an appropriately sterling response.

in the meantime

The Corby case has brought to light another, reversed. On the radio this morning I heard of a Japanese tourist charged with drug smuggling in Oz, found guilty, and finally shipped back to Japan, where she’s been freed and has been trying ever since to clear her name. Apparently it’s big news over there and two books have been written about the case, which, guess what, involves baggage handlers, innocence ‘traduced’, claims of racist bias, etc etc. Never heard of the case before – who’s reporting it here?

The ACTU seems to be quite happy with the latest, and apparently the last, negotiated rise in the basic minimum wage ($17), decided upon by the Industrial Relations Commission. From now on, it seems, minimum wages will be regulated by a ‘Fair Pay Commission’, which the ACTU considers will be a purely political institution of Orwellian hypocrisy. David Murray of the Democrats rightly, I think, argues that such a commission will seek to ensure that the minimum wage never rises again across the board as it has done in the past.

I’ve been following the Eugene McGee Royal Commission with half an ear, and of course it’s been a pleasure. Michael Jacobs of the Adelaide Review has been excellent in his coverage. It really does seem that McGee’s reputation as a heavyweight has clouded the pursuit of truth and justice in this case, at least from the police perspective. And now the famous expert evidence is being roundly questioned, and some basic issues, somehow overlooked in the actual trial, are being scrutinised. Some lawyers have suggested that the Rann government is seeking to undermine the jury system, but of course juries can only adjudge the evidence before them. The problem here seems more to be the adversarial system. Wouldn’t it be great if lawyers were paid to use their analytical skills to arrive at the truth?

One of the more interesting developments on the domestic political front is the fact that DIMIA is under siege. The scandals just keep on coming. A possible cover-up re Cornelia Rau’s identity as an Oz citizen. No help being offered to discarded Oz citizen, the soi-disant Vivian Solon, in her return to Oz and rehabilitation, suggestions and allegations that this is just the tip of the iceberg, etc etc. It all points to a pervasive atmosphere of intolerance and insensitivity. Margo Kingston is scathing about it. The question to be asked is, how did it all go wrong, and who’s responsible? I’d like to blame Ruddock, but that could quite possibly be prejudice on my part. I don’t have the inner knowledge, really, to point to anyone in particular.

Margo ends a bit purplishly (with rose tints):

The poet Shelley wrote that life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, stains the white radiance of eternity. There was a radiance about Australia’s immigration policies at one time. DIMIA is not radiant now; it’s whitewashed. It’s time it was given the many colours of life through the examination of conscience and the revelation of truth.

To translate: let’s have a full and frank public enquiry.

other priorities

Haven’t been writing much on the blog, and probably won’t be so much in future, as I’ve started a new ‘fiction’ cum memoir which I’m quite excited about. I’ll post some of it from time to time – in fact here’s my first attempt at a beginning.

the pursuit of happiness

1. the boys
1975 was, of course, a memorable year in Australian politics. For much of the year, the Whitlam government was storm-tossed. It was putting on a brave face, but the triumphalism was gone, as was no doubt much of the reforming zeal and energy. From the kind of corporate perspective that no true believer would deign to adopt, federal Labor (still Labour then) was apparently on the nose.

As a spasmodically keen follower of the political landscape, I was taking in the scandals and headlines with a growing bemusement, and a natural cynicism about what I was reading and who was writing it, especially in Adelaide’s conservative press. However, I had plenty to distract me. In July of that year I passed my nineteenth birthday with scant celebration or notice in a well-appointed home on sweeping grounds in Norwood, an inner suburb of Adelaide. The home was run by a Christian Organisation called Prisoner’s Aid. My cohabitants included half a dozen teenagers, of whom I was the eldest; a young married couple who lived in the west wing of the moderately palatial residence, a section forbidden to the juvenile delinquents; and three other live-in social workers – Christians all of course.

Briefly, I’d landed up at this place after a misadventure some two hundred miles north of Adelaide, which saw me pass seven days for ‘insufficient means of support’ in a sleepy and semi-abandoned old prison, now a half-hearted museum, in the sleepy old wheat and sheep town of Gladstone. Upon my release, I was given a train ticket back to Adelaide, where I was to be met by a representative from Prisoner’s Aid. I gave them the slip however, and slept a few nights rough. I recall a long night in a shelter by a lawn bowling green, with the rain lashing down, and another evening, perhaps the same one, in which I was taken in by a middle-aged Greek man who spoke proudly, though not overbearingly so, of the many properties he owned in the neighbourhood of his house. He’d simply fallen in step with me on the street – I’d been tramping all day. I was wary of course of his offer of a bed for the night – the classic case of the kind stranger offering sweets – but he looked respectable, and I felt cunning. I would take advantage of his kindness and brush aside any other agenda. In jail all I’d done all day was talk with the other prisoners, all much more serious offenders than myself, and I’d heard hair-raising stories – without raising a hair. Those seven days had given me a wily, if borrowed, self-confidence.

So the Greek gentleman cooked me a simple meal and offered me something alcoholic, which I accepted. He’d been amused to learn that I was of drinking age, as I was small and slightly built, and would easily have passed for a sixteen-year-old. I remember that his home seemed very Spartan for a man of such property. He showed me the bed I was to sleep in, a single bed in a small, unadorned room, and assured me that the sheets were clean and that there were extra blankets if necessary.

We sat together on his sofa, chatting haltingly. He asked questions about my background and I gave polite but evasive answers. He refilled my glass. He was watching me very closely and I thought I understood the look in his eye. He told me that I was a very pleasant young man, not like so many young people these days who were selfish and loud and ungrateful, with no respect. He said it was sad that such a nice boy as myself should find himself so alone in the world, with not even a roof over my head. And he with a bed to spare, just waiting there, night after night, with nobody using it…

I liked the man, or at least I didn’t feel afraid of him, though I felt a little uncomfortable, that there was something unspoken in the air. Doubtless the alcohol emboldened me, and I said, Sorry to interrupt, but I was just wondering, are you homosexual? I don’t mind at all, but I’m not myself, you see, or not much, I mean, I just wanted to make it clear…

He reacted rather badly. He drew himself up. He wondered how I could think such a thing. He stood up and strode out of the room. He came back and looked down upon me. He wondered how I could possibly say such a thing, think such a thing. Such a shocking, shocking thing. Again I tried to explain that it wasn’t shocking, it was simply… But No, no, it was too much, I would have to leave. No, he couldn’t have someone who thought such a thing of him… No, I had to leave.
He stood on the porch and watched me go. I presume it wasn’t snowing, but I do recall wishing he would go inside so I could curl up on his porch like the little matchmaker. In fact though I felt quite light-headed, just a little miffed at having made a silly move, like a novice chess-player. It hardly occurred to me to wonder what kind of a night he’d spent after he’d turfed me out.

I had a Prisoner’s Aid card in my pocket, so I finally got in touch and was welcomed into their fold. My first memory of the place was of them saying Grace at the enormous dinner table. A terrible shock to my pagan heart, and possibly the first time I’d experienced such a thing outside of American movies. A couple of the delinquents glanced about and sniggered silently. I soon found the right pose, of open-eyed contemplative condescension, which I maintained on such occasions throughout my stay.

I was assigned a bottom bunk bed in a room of, I think, three bunks, and maybe five boys sharing. I remember being much distracted by the beauty of the boy in the bottom bunk across from me, his name was Murray and he was only fifteen, the youngest of our tribe.

bloggers do it better

By far the best review I’ve read of Downfall, by the way, is by blogcritic Alan Dale here. It’s bloody long, but its exhaustive summary of the film’s strengths and weaknesses is superb.

Downfall

Haven't been going to the movies so much in recent years, and would like to turn that around, so I'm making it every Tuesday.

It’s started with a bang, a real heavy-weight. The German film Downfall certainly has plenty of ready-made drama about it, and threading so many stories through the last crumbling and exploding days of the Third Reich must have been something of a logistical nightmare, but the director Oliver Hirschbiegel has wisely chosen to leaven the general cruelty and stupidity of Hitler and his cronies with the odd hero (in particular a Doctor Ernst-Gűnter Schenck), and a handful of naïfs (such as Traudl Junge, Hitler’s young secretary, and Peter, a boy soldier) caught up in the insane fervour.

I always like to start with criticising the critics, and while they’ve been overwhelmingly favourable, you get the odd carper who writes something like ‘okay it’s accurate enough, but it offers no new insights’, or ‘yeah it’s fine on how things happened, but not so hot on why’. Also, it seems that some critics feel the film isn’t sufficiently hard on Hitler, or that it’s somehow not ‘momentous’ enough.

So why not use another critic against them. The generally reliable Roger Ebert responds:

I do not feel the film provides "a sufficient response to what Hitler actually did," because I feel no film can, and no response would be sufficient. All we can learn from a film like this is that millions of people can be led, and millions more killed, by madness leashed to racism and the barbaric instincts of tribalism.

And this brings me to another point. A couple of critics have pointed out that Germans have rarely portrayed Hitler on screen, implying that they haven’t been able to come to terms with their Nazi past. I suspect quite different reasons. To ‘portray’ Hitler is inevitably to fictionalise him to some extent. There is plenty of real footage of the man and the events, and the reality is what they’ve needed to confront. It’s notable that Hirschbiegel has insisted that every element of Downfall is based on fact. Clearly this is an important matter for the German director, and for a German audience, a point lost on some American critics. For example, Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly [EW probably shouldn’t be allowed to review such a movie] writes:

The moment of Hitler's greatest vulnerability — his double suicide with Eva Braun — occurs off camera. What did he say just before he pulled the trigger? Missing from Downfall is a vision of this ultimate murderer's relationship to death.

Of course Hitler’s last words are unknown, so Hirschbiegel would’ve had to invent them. Yeah, no probs, wanker.

But getting away from the critics - sorry I’ve read no German ones, not knowing the language – the film was as absorbingly ghastly as one might expect, and certainly the most chilling scene, the one that lingers longest in the mind, was the murder by Frau Goebbels of her picture-perfect kids, because she didn’t want them growing up in a non-Nazified world. It’s this readiness to sacrifice even one’s own children to an ideal (any ideal, let alone such a puerile and putrid one as Nazism) that scares and sickens most effectively.

The main perspective we’re given of these last claustrophobic days is that of Traudl Junge. She might be criticised for being ‘too naïve to be true’ (or to engage our sympathy), and irritatingly star-struck before Hitler, though we also see the scales starting to fall from her eyes as old Uncle Adolf (played unforgettably by Bruno Ganz) spits out his venom upon the Jews. Her naivety and passivity are, I think, meant to be symptomatic of a large proportion of the German population – and we find such types everywhere, though hopefully in lesser proportions as we’re increasingly educated to back our own judgments and to distrust authority – who were overly awed by those who spoke in certitudes, crystallised vague fears and hatreds, promised the earth, and promulgated that ever-enticing myth (now promulgated in Israel itself, as well as in the USA), of the Chosen People.

At times sprawling and untidy, because sacrificing neatness and tightness to the reality principle, the film has left me with some memorable characters above all – Traudl and Peter, the bizarrely untouched Eva Braun, the noble yet questionable Schenck, the career soldier Weidling, the fanatical Goebbels and his wife – but with all the ‘based on reality’ emphasis, I’m left wondering at how true they are. Hitler dominates and so his portrayal ends up being most questionable of all. In the end we’ll never know, and for my part I’m left with a kind of self-annoyance at how unfathomably fascinating and compelling such unworthies are. It’s a bit like staring into an abyss – get away from there, you’ll hurt yourself.