Peter Carey - The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

‘Come on, Gabe, all I want to do is interview him, just like you do,’ Wendell said.

‘Well, Meneer Deveau, the tapes will settle that question. My advice to you,’ he turned to Bill, ‘would be to let me talk to him. We Voorstanders are not always the villains.’

‘I don’t have to work in Saarlim,’ Bill said. ‘You refuse me residency, I’ll go home.’

‘You know,’ Gabe Manzini said, ‘I wouldn’t advise that. Those DoS guys can be real pricks, especially when they’ve been made to look stupid. Just because they’re sometimes unprofessional doesn’t mean they couldn’t hurt you. The opposite, really.’

‘Could I have a second of your time?’ Wendell said to Gabe Manzini.

Gabe Manzini looked up at Wendell Deveau and smiled pleasantly. ‘Of course, Bruder,’ he said. ‘Later. We’ll talk all about it at 583. For now, I think we should give Mr Millefleur a moment to reflect.’

Gabe Manzini rose and walked around the apartment. He stopped at a sandstone figure of the Dog-headed Saint. Picked it up. Turned it over. Replaced it. He was a neat figure, slim, athletic, with shining brown shoes and corduroy trousers. He was like a curator, not a murderer. Everything he looked at, the precious dining table, the art-deco china, the Badberg first editions, the De Kok ‘Crucifixion in the New World’, revealed a connoisseur’s discernment and therefore an educated approval which Bill would, in other circumstances, have found highly flattering.

Indeed, my father had always prided himself that, no matter what his disappointments in relation to his acting, he was living a cultured life at the centre of the world. He had seen Michael Cohen play Hamlet. He had dined with Una Chaudry. He had seen the greatest actors of his time. He had shaken the hands of two kings, a mayor, a duke from England. He had skated on the ice in Demos Platz on Christmas Day. He had dined at Le Recamier, at all the finest restaurants in the city. He had been born in a leaking caravan in Efica, but he had spent his life with the very best of everything in the world.

But now he saw it was impossible for him to do what he was asked. He sat and looked at the possessions which had hitherto given him so much satisfaction and realized that he did not give a tinker’s fart about them. He saw a whole wall of dominoes tipping and falling like a long black tail which led back to the ageing Circus School with the rusting roof.

In his mind he and Tristan Smith were already back in the seedy little theatre in Gazette Street. It was raining. Moosone. The drains were overflowing. A plastic rubbish bin was blowing down the street.

Wally had turned his back on me. Jacqui had brushed past me and ignored my greeting. But it was Clive Baarder who had been the most upset to see me when, nearly a week later, I finally emerged from Peggy Kram’s boudoir.

He sat at the top of the long table in the trothaus boardroom with his back towards the grey gritty Saarlim sky. He placed a yellow legal pad in front of him and removed the cap from his pen.

‘So what is this about?’ he said to Peggy Kram, who had positioned herself right next to his elbow.

‘You tell him, Bruder, hunning,’ she said to me.

I looked up the long table from my seat. ‘The idea …’ I began.

‘Wait,’ Clive Baarder said. To Peggy Kram he said, ‘Is this his idea?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘So why is he presenting it? Why is this … personage … sitting in our boardroom?’

‘In the past,’ Peggy said, resting her hand upon Baarder’s rigid forearm and patting it, ‘this would not have been unusual.’

Clive Baarder let her hand rest a moment. Then he withdrew his arm and made a neat black line across his legal pad.

‘What past do you mean?’

‘In the Great Historical Past,’ she said. ‘When Bruder Mouse walked amongst the Settlers Free.’

Clive Baarder looked down at his legal pad for a considerable length of time.

I had earlier imagined Baarder to be a kind of private secretary, but now I saw what all of Saarlim knows: he was a powerful man.

‘A mouse is a little thing,’ he said at last. He fitted his pen back in its cap and held it up between thumb and forefinger, as if it were a dead field mouse he was pinching by the tail. ‘You know that, Peggy, in real life.’

Mrs Kram swivelled through 180 degrees and back again.

‘Clive-ling,’ she said soothingly, even flirtatiously. ‘Dear Clive, you know yourself the great benefit of conducting business in one’s home is that one’s clever friends, like Bruder Mouse, feel free to contribute to our meetings.’

‘Peggy, you conduct business from home because you are agoraphobic.’

My mentor said nothing, although her colour rose.

‘Peggy …’

‘I’d rather have Bruder Mouse than a man,’ she said, and shook her hair.

‘Oh Peggy, please, don’t be embarrassing!’

‘You’re the last one to talk,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t if I were you. I wouldn’t even begin to talk.’

‘Just the same: this is not a mouse, Peg.’ Now he turned and took her hand. ‘We know that, don’t we? A real mouse is not like this little gjent.’

‘Let him outline the concept before you race to judgement.’

‘Peggy.’ Clive Baarder opened his pen again. ‘What is this meeting for?’

‘If you listen, you’ll find out.’

‘I only say this because I have another meeting starting in the Tentdorp in thirty minutes and I can see how tired you are.’

‘I’m always tired, Clive. You know I never sleep. And don’t think your cynicism is attractive.’

Clive Baarder smiled implacably.

‘You think you can reduce everything to DNA, but you can’t. I tell you, this is what the Great Historical Past was like. It doesn’t really behove you to doubt me. History is my business. It was my business when you were an out-of-work Verteiler buying drugs from scum in Kakdorp. Who else but me preserves the Great Historical Past? No one would know what happened yesterday if it wasn’t for the Ghostdorps.’

‘Peg, my dear, you are exceptionally tired.’

‘And don’t patronize me, Clive. I am not tired, and you have always had a rather smug attitude towards the Ghostdorps which I find offensive.’

‘My attitude towards the Ghostdorps is totally to do with profit …’

‘A Ghostdorp is a safer environment for women and children.’

‘Peggy, please, not today. Let’s fight when it’s just us.’

‘When the Saints walked Voorstand, that is how it was, just like it is in the Ghostdorps. We were decent people then. The Sirkus was not just an entertainment. Bruder Mouse was not a clown. We knew him when we saw him. We did not argue about which was wild flesh and which was Bruder’s flesh. We did not have all these codicils and revisions to the old laws. We ate beans and rice and raagbol pudding. We did not rape and murder. We did not thieve. We were better then.’

‘You know that I don’t disagree.’

‘Bruder Mouse, the Saints, they walked amongst us.’

‘Oh Peggy …’

‘Fuck you,’ screamed Peggy Kram. ‘Don’t argue with me. Here he is. Solid as a miller’s wheel. He is looking at you and politely waiting to outline an idea that will have you planting bulbs and making toasts.’

‘This is not a mouse.’ Clive Baarder was shouting now, not at me, at Peggy Kram. He was standing up, gripping the long table like he wished to tip it over. ‘A mouse is four inches long.’

‘One mo nothing,’ Mrs Kram shouted back, ‘next mo there he was, in all his furry finery.’ She sat down. ‘Look out there,’ she said, nodding her head towards the grey and humid sky. ‘You are looking out on a corrupt and decaying city and you have lost the ability to believe in a future.’