Yarra Noir - Or Mime Your Own Business

The performer on the high unicycle caught the third knife between his teeth and raised his hands to appreciative applause. The Southbank crowd started to disperse, a little happier for the momentary distraction. One man, dressed in a black t-shirt and Hawaiian shirt over jeans, strolled towards Crown Casino, passing a sidewalk artist in the midst of creating (or recreating) visions in vivid chalk. The artist’s hat sat beside the gorgeous cityscape, pointedly asking for financial recognition. The man dropped a gold coin donation in the hat and continued along the busy riverside strip, shaking his head at a spruiker trying to garner interest in a Yarra River Cruise. A few steps further, and the hapless traveller groaned as he found himself facing off against a white-faced man in a bowler hat and striped shirt.

The mime held up his hand, warning the passerby to halt. In slow exaggerated movements, he framed the outline of a door in the air and wrapped his hands around an imaginary handle. He then proceeded, with no little skill, to silently mime the opening of a very stiff door, and then hold it open, gesturing grandly for his vict.. audience to pass through. The man he had waylaid had unfortunately long since ducked back and around the mime (presumably through an invisible wall - quite a feat!) and out of this tale, his introductory role completed.

The mime performed a superb sigh (hands on back, stretch back, huge exhalation of air 'til he is doubled over with his hands on his knees) and trudged back to his bag. He wasn't sure, on days like this, what had possessed him to become a mime-artist. He had been an eloquent man with words - always finding a witty or poignant remark for a given occasion. He carefully folded his velvet blanket into a purse, mock-furtively peering from side to side as he inwardly winced at the lack of jingling the movements caused. With some of the new university-trained buskers performing in the prestigious Crown/Southbank area, the old self-taught mummers were feeling the pinch. Or they would have been, if… But he wasn't going to think about that. He pulled his hat off his head and stuffed it into his bag along with the purse. Slowly standing up with one hand on an aching back, he ran his hands through thinning black hair. This was no life for a fifty-year-old father. He wasn't even sure why he had quit a stable career as an accountant, over a decade ago, to perform on the streets in this much-maligned art form. If he'd been a lawyer, then yes. At least he'd be moving up the social ladder.

He shrugged off his braces and slid a cosy plaid jacket (complete with elbow patches) over his striped shirt. The make-up could wait until he got home to his daughter. With a final sigh, he hefted his bag - arms outstretched, legs splayed, the bag seeming to weigh a ton - and shuffled towards the Yarra. Whatever the reason, he thought, he was a mime. He did his job with the same dedication he'd had for accounting.

He had taken the vow of silence and hadn't spoken in the ten years he'd worked the streets. That may have something to do with the problems at home, re reflected. Ten years with only one slip, he mused, and that one slip might just kill me.

He stepped up onto the concrete platform where the tour-ferries slept and looked out over the serenity of the Yarra at dusk. He'd done this every evening since he'd worked this patch of the Southbank Walk. The rowers had gone home, and the night cruises hadn't yet started. No matter how bad the world seemed (and there were some very bad things happening in the buskers' world now) the murky, pestilent waters of Melbourne's main waterway always calmed him.

He was still lost in his reverie when two squeegee brushes hooked his ankles, and he was dragged - silently of course - over the edge.

The mime looked up from the ground at two wiry, menacing figures that stood over him, grinning. He brought his hands to his cheeks and made a wide ‘o’ of terror with his mouth as he recognised the scraggly beards and flannel shirts tied around the waists of a pair of windscreen "cleaners".

"Yer a mime, Markel!" snarled the taller of the two. "Maybe you should have kept yer trap shut." The other man, slapping his squeegee against his fingerless glove-encased palm, nodded.

"Now you gotta pay." He grinned, showing unpleasantly yellow teeth. ‘Markel’ shook his head vigorously and made warding signals with his hands. His eyes widened further, if that were possible, as he saw what the thugs were doing.

Fingers outstretched; they traced the outline of a box in the air. A glove-held squeegee shot out and snagged the mime by the jacket. A small part of his mind dismayed at the smudge of grime that came off on his lapel. Grime usually saved for otherwise clean car windscreens. That thought fled as the other man drew a door in the middle of the box and clumsily mimed opening the box.

"Get in!" he snapped, and Markel was pulled - jacket first - in front of his new prison. He was poked and prodded through the invisible door, which his captors closed behind him; then locked, throwing away what was presumably the key.

The mime looked around wildly for help, then started pushing against his non-existent cage.

The tall squeegee man stared at him with curiosity. They had told him it would work, but he hadn't been so sure.

"Talk to me, mime!" he said conversationally as he and his partner kneeled at either side of their creation. "Tell me who you called, and I'll let you live." Markel frowned at him, weighing up this proposal (fist on chin, elbow on knee, one eyebrow raised). He shook his head sadly. He hadn't taken his job lightly and had only spoken out because he feared for his daughter's life. For that same reason he would be all the mime he could be - right up to the end.

"Right you are then," growled the squeegee thug, and they heaved the corners of their ‘box’ off the ground. The mime cleverly followed the path of their hands with the speed of his falling backwards off the pier and into the Yarra, moving his hands along the inside of his prison frantically.

With grim determination, the mime played out his act, and the last his killers saw of him were two hands moving smoothly along a flat surface as he sunk to the bottom of the Yarra's murky waters.