Peter Carey - The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

He was a decent man, she did not doubt it, but decent was not what she was looking for. She began to go up the stairs too quickly, her mouth open, the little bracelet jingling on her ankle.

She was doing what she always did — she was attaching to this dump because she feared that if she didn’t she would end up somewhere even worse. She had been inside for three whole days. She was attaching to it, to him, one more poor bozo, because he was here. She could feel herself doing it. She became angry with the building, with the birds. She had that feeling again: like bubbles in her blood.

She felt the flames flicking around, tickling the edges of her vision, and God knows where this feeling — itchy, irritating, more-ish — would have led her had she not, in stooping to pick up the twenty-first box, caught her fingernail and torn it to the quick. The pain was like iced water. It snapped her out.

That’s it,’ she said. ‘That is it.’

‘What’s it?’ he said.

Once again: she had not even known that he was in the room. ‘I don’t have to stay here,’ she said.

‘No one’s asking you to.’

All his hidden hurt was suddenly as clear as freckles. She laid her hand on the back of his wrist, the only apology she could make.

‘You could stop right now.’

‘I think I will.’

‘You could take a break.’

‘Yes.’

‘You could just do me one favour.’

‘What’s that?’ she asked.

‘I need to go out for an hour,’ he said, ‘and … I’m expecting a delivery.’

‘I got to be honest — I’m getting tired of being cooped up, you know?’

‘It’ll be fifty minutes, maybe less.’

‘I got to be honest — I just can’t baby-sit your pigeons.’

‘The pigeons will be with me, sweets. I want to show them to a mo-ami.’

‘You’ll be back in fifty minutes?’

‘I’ll be back by four o’clock. I promise. You could sit outside, on the steps.’

She looked at his face, the pale lips, the hurt grey eyes. ‘You’ll be back in fifty minutes?’

‘In an hour, easy.’

She did what he said: sat out on the front steps, in the air. It was not so creepy out there. She bought a sandwich at the Levantine shop across the street. She watched some black ants crawling across concrete.

At half past four there had been no delivery and he was still not back. She was going to take a walk, but then the evening thunderstorm arrived and she retreated inside and sat on the unmade bed and waited for him. There were books there but she did not look at them. There was a radio too, but she was apprehensive about being alone inside the big old building and didn’t want anything to interfere with her hearing. She sat cross-legged on her mattress listening for noises. She did her nails, and when they were done she let her hands sit limply on her knees, waiting.

At six o’clock it was pitch dark outside. The bastard was still not back. The rain had stopped and she would have gone out, except now she was scared to walk down the damn corridor alone.

But finally she was more mad than scared. She took her shoes off and crept down the dark stairs to the foyer.

She opened the velvet curtain which shielded the foyer from the theatre and there she found Wally standing on a high ladder, fixing a blue gel on to one of the lights.

‘Want to know what I’m doing?’ he called down.

She could have had great satisfaction in pushing his ladder over. Once upon a time she would have done it, and he would have found out, faster than a blink, what he had not noticed about her in the two days until now. But she sat down instead and he could not guess, grinning down at her from the top of his ladder, his great good luck.

‘Guess,’ he called. ‘Three guesses.’

She shrugged. There was a six-pack at the base of the ladder. She leaned forward and ripped one off.

‘Setting up a show,’ he said.

‘That’s nice,’ she said. The beer was warm.

Six nights from now, all this would seem like a bad dream. She would be in an auction room with all her funds invested in a nice dress and some shoes.

‘Will you come into the ring a moment, sweets?’

‘Why?’

‘Please. Just be careful of the wires. I’ve got the mixing console up there.’

She shrugged, and stood up and stepped on to the damp sawdust in her bare feet.

‘A smidgin to your right, careful of the wires, now a little further forward. Great.’

He shone the light right in her face. She held her hand over her eyes.

‘Now what?’ she asked.

‘Now go back and sit in your seat. Just watch out for the wires.’

When she was out of the ring, the lights still dancing in her eyes, he sat beside her. Smelled of toothpaste again.

‘Here.’

She took the package.

‘Choccies for the show.’

And then he was over at the wall, flicking the house lights off.

‘Don’t do that,’ she said. She was scared now. She could see his bare knees shining in the gloom over by the curtain.

‘It’s a show, Roxanna.’

‘Well, come and sit by me.’

‘I’m in it,’ Wally said. ‘It’s me.’

And then the theatre plunged to black.

He had taken off his shirt and put on a white T-shirt, a pair of khaki bloomer shorts, a red pre-tied bow tie. He had knobbly knees showing at the level of his shorts. He had a wooden box which he had painted in brilliant green and sparkling silver stars. At first, as he put his foot delicately on the mixing panel and faded up the lights, she thought it was, like, magic. She was charmed, well maybe not exactly charmed, but touched by what she saw as nerdy but good-hearted. She started to unwrap the chocolates, smiling in the darkness.

But then, before she had the first chocolate in her mouth, he put his liver-spotted hand in the sparkling box and pulled something out. She saw what it was, but her brain would not let her believe it. Her brain did not want to be the bearer of bad tidings. It gave excuses, alibis. Her brain told her the thing in his hand was a glove, or a puppet.

Then she finally realized what it was. God damn, God damn his fucking freckled eyes.

It was not a glove — it was a pigeon. HE WAS TRYING TO CHARM HER WITH THE FUCKING PIGEONS.

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Oh no no no.’

She spat the chocolate into her cupped hand and dropped it underneath the seat.

He did not know what he was fucking with. He left her locked up in a room. He shoved pigeons in her face. He did not know her history. He could not see her for what she was: a bonfire in a starbuck.

‘Oh no,’ she said, but he was oblivious. He picked up the bird and whispered to it, kissed it, for Jesus Christ’s sake, on its bony beak. He looked it in its one mad eye, eye to eye.

It was like something in a crappy cambruce circus. Something the Voorstand Sirkus had long ago driven out of business.

Then he started to fold the bird up in his hand. She could not believe what he was doing. He folded it in half, like origami. He was killing it, for her, on stage. He was not killing it, but he was folding it. She watched the way he did it — how he held it up and, with his other finger, pointed out into the air above her head.

He threw the pigeon towards her. It was like a yo-yo on a string, except no string. It flew out, up, it rose, tumbled, spread its wings to show bright red undersides. Good Christ almighty, it was like a dream. The bird returned into his hand. He held it, and took out another. He folded it like the other, and did the same. This one looped, arced, tumbled, fell, revealing blue under the wings.

And then he bowed.

She sat with her mouth open.