He felt nervous amongst this blended array. He crossed from Macquarie Street into the Botanic Gardens. The grass was spongy underfoot. He wore his long coat and hat. He went and sat on a bench by Governor Phillip’s statue, pigeons gathering at his feet, the sun high overhead. Thoughts of the car crash haunted him: metal lurching with that sudden, surprising momentum that comes of no control; pictures in his mind of the car’s flip. Negative images, half-witnessed. He couldn’t be sure if they were invented or real. He wanted them to be true. It upset him to think his near death could occur without conferring on him a memory or some form of life-altering insight, however small. Caving steel, breaking and rippling glass. There had to be something there to seize on and use. He wasn’t going to the gulag. He knew that much because he knew what happened in those prisons and it wasn’t a fate he would stand. For two years when he first arrived in Moscow, he had helped manage the messages for the camps.
