Peter Carey - The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

‘No applause?’ he said. He stepped forward and, with his toe, brought the house lights up.

She really could not speak to him. She could not believe the stupidity of men.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘say something.’

She shrugged. ‘They’re your pigeons,’ she said with great restraint. ‘They’re none of my business.’

‘No, no.’ He held his hand up. ‘These are not the pigeons.’

These are not the pigeons?’ She felt her voice rising.

He stepped out of the ring. ‘Not your pigeons. I got rid of your pigeons. I traded. These are tumbling pigeons,’ Wally said.

‘You don’t know who I am,’ Roxanna said.

‘I think you’re a businesswoman. You can say I don’t know you, but I see it in you. You think about money. You’re smart about it, so you’ll see what we have here. It’s the beginning of a bird show, like the one you saw with the toucan. A real old-time petite tente. We’ll get another toucan.’

‘Stop. Stop right there.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I won’t stop. I know who you are.’

‘You don’t know who I am.’

‘Roxanna,’ Wally said, ‘we already have a venue.’

She stood up, she started backing away from him, the box of chocolates still held in her hand. ‘You don’t know who I am,’ she said. ‘You don’t know what you’re fucking with.’

‘Roxanna.’ He reached out his arms towards her. ‘I like you.’

She did not punch his nose. She slapped it, with the heel of her hand. She sort of half pushed half thumped it. Blood came out, on to her hand, arm. He came in at her, dripping, in a cloud of tobacco, toothpaste. He held her, hard. She tried to squirm away, to stay clear of the blood. She could smell it, feel it dripping down her neck, fat warm drops of it.

‘You’re ruining my dress.’ She still had the box of chocolates in her hand.

‘I’ll buy a new one,’ he said.

She could not move. She knew that feeling, from her history. His rough skin was against her forehead. He smelled of ash and peppermint.

Roxanna and Wally sat on the empty stairs while the last Feu Follet posters flapped on the foyer noticeboard, pulling themselves free from their drawing pins. Wally held a deep red tissue against his injured nose.

‘Why did you do that?’ he said.

She shrugged and gave him a new tissue. ‘I said I’m sorry.’

She was too. She watched him dab at his lip but in her mind’s eye she saw the wooden crates in his bedroom, the plastic tubs with their little labels — ’Socks’, ‘Shirts’. She let him pay top dollar for the pigeons. She couldn’t have done it if she had seen his room — ’Wool’ns’, ‘Letters’.

She patted his bare knee. ‘We’ve got to be realistic — we don’t even know each other …’

‘I know I look stupid in these shorts.’

‘It’s not your appearance, mo-cheri. It’s your type. I knew what you were like when I met you in the car park in Melcarth. Believe me.’ She poked him in the ribs. ‘I know your type.’

‘What type?’

‘Fifty plus years old, single …’

‘No, no. Let me speak.’

‘No, no — you’re an individualist,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’

‘You’ve got it wrong, Roxanna.’

‘I’m not criticizing you.’

‘No, you’ve seen me — I’ve got a family. I’ve got the little boy. Let me finish. You ask the company. I stick by people. I was married to a woman fifteen years, a dog trainer. She left me. I didn’t leave her. You can rely on me. I’m not some young fellow who’s going to run away and leave you. I’ve got a proven record.’

She raised an eyebrow at him, trying to joke him out of all that dangerous sensitivity. ‘Dog trainer?’ She grinned and combed her thick straw-yellow hair back with her fingers.

He started fishing in his pocket, and for a moment she thought he was going to produce a marriage certificate, but all he brought out was a second wadded lump of tissue which he patted on his injured nose.

‘I know your type,’ she said. ‘It’s just not the type I’m shopping for.’

‘Do we have a roof, food, cash … a way to make more?’

‘Wally, I’m sorry. I’m grateful for the free accommodation …’

‘I know you,’ he said. ‘I knew you from the beginning.’

‘Some shitty birds,’ she said. (They were all the same. Lunatics dreaming of getting rich off pigeons.) ‘I want peacocks, and fountains. See — you’re smirking. You don’t know me. You do not have a fucking clue. If we lived together for five years, you’d still be smirking.’

‘Would I?’

‘Yes you would.’

‘We can make a decent life. I trained that parrot you liked. You know I can do it.’

‘I was never decent , mo-cheri. You wouldn’t have hit on me if I was decent. You thought I was a shooting star, admit it.’

‘I thought you were beautiful.’

She looked at him, and saw a saline lens building up across his eyes.

‘Well thank you,’ she said. She put her hand on his wrist. ‘That’s very sweet of you.’

‘I thought you were Irma, that’s the truth.’

Did you, mo-chou?’

He nodded.

‘That’s sweet of you,’ she said. She opened his hand and touched it with her fingertips. It was papery dry, with deep, worried lines across the palm. ‘You’ll find someone if you want someone,’ she said. ‘You’re actually a very charming man.’

‘The pigeons are not the point,’ he said. ‘The pigeons are what we have available.’

She closed his hand. ‘No,’ she said.

‘Let me finish … the pigeons are just what we have.’

‘You don’t know me,’ she said, not looking up at him, her lips compressed. ‘I’ll cut their heads off with a pocket knife.’

But when she looked up the fucking musico was grinning at her. ‘It’s the Efican tradition,’ he said.

She sighed, then laughed in spite of herself.

‘We make do with what we have.’ He smiled.

‘So I should make do with you?’

‘Our great-grandparents fought fifteen years of wars *with the poor bastards whose land this really was, and then all the captains and generals sailed away and abandoned them, left them with the ghosts and bones.’

‘You’re such a bullshit merchant.’ She removed his cigarette pack from his shirt pocket.

‘The French, the English — they thought the land was worthless, but we changed it.’

‘Don’t you ever give up?’ She accepted the light.

‘If you have to be poor, better be poor here than England. You have to be sick, better pray it’s not in France. You’re a woman, you’ll get equal pay.’

Roxanna began laughing. She could not help it. ‘Look at you. You’ve got arms covered with cigarette burns. You sleep on a mattress on the floor. You tell me, so confident, this is the best country on earth, and we’re about to have the best life imaginable. Wally, what have you got? You’ve been robbed. You tell me you’re in paradise.’

‘Look at me.’ Wally held her firm little jaw between his thumb and finger.

‘Ouch.’

‘If you could see my past, you’d know that my life is a fucking miracle.’

‘Let go, you prick. You’re at least sixty years old. You’ve got nicotine stains on your fingers.’

He released her jaw. ‘You want me to stop smoking? I’ll stop smoking.’

She stood up. ‘Why me? What have I done to you?’

Wally stood also. He held out his hand. ‘I know you like me,’ he said.

‘You know I like you?’

He grinned at her.

‘I know you like me. You’ve just got to admit it.’

She shook her head, but she was laughing too. She took the big dry hand and held it a moment.