Peter Carey - The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

‘Did anyone hurt you?’ she asked.

‘That’s … part … of … his … head.’

She picked up the piece I pointed at. We progressed this way, for ten minutes or more — me pointing, she placing the crumpled papier-mâché on the white cartridge paper.

‘The thing about being an actor,’ she said, as I tried to figure where the last few pieces belonged, ‘is it’s a very hard life. It’s OK,’ she said hurriedly, ‘you will be an actor because that’s what you want, but I’m telling you, it’ll be hard for you, harder than for other people. Do you know what I’m saying, mo-sweets?’

‘This … piece … is … from … the … mouth.’

‘It’s very difficult,’ she said, ‘and that’s why I didn’t want you to do it. I knew it would be a very hard thing for you to do. Do you understand?’

‘I … know … I’m … a … mutant.’

She did not look at me when I said that, but I felt her stillness, all the air held in her lungs.

‘Are you angry at me?’ she said at last. ‘Because I made you how you are?’

‘I … want … to … learn,’ I said. ‘All … the … things … you … can … learn. I … want … to … talk … so … anyone … can … understand.’

‘Maybe there are some things you won’t be able to do.’

‘I … can … learn … to … talk … better.’

‘The problem with diction is physical, darling, you know that.’

‘I’ll … learn.’

‘OK, OK.’ She looked at the hateful Mouse, carefully assembled on the bench. Anyone could see it was ruined. ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ she said, not looking at me. ‘We’ll leave the mask. We’ll let it set and while it’s setting we’ll do a workshop. I thought you might like to play the part of Puck. I think I’d like to make you gold and silver.’

I did not ask her about how the mask could possibly set. It was a ludicrous notion, best left alone.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’ll do it out in the ring.’

She picked me up and put me on the floor. I watched her choose the make-up pots and sticks with my heart beating so hard that a big vein pulsed weirdly in my neck. She sat the pots down on the bench — small tubs with colour spilling down around their white shiny lids. She placed the fat sticks beside them. She opened the tiny closet where the fabric oddments were stored, collected two or three pieces of tat. Then she carried me out into the ring and removed every single item of my clothing.

I sat still on a white enamel chair while she ran back for the make-up, and then again up to the booth where she fiddled with the lights. When she returned she pushed me into a single tight spot. My skin tingled. I felt the pool of black, the heat of light around me. She knelt in front of me. She gave me Nora’s little silver-backed mirror from Doll’s House so I could look at myself as she painted me.

She ran a single line of silver across my forehead. Above it she painted blue, below it green. She put a towel around my neck, splashed water on my hair, and gelled it, teasing it out in long spikes like Efican ragwort blossom. Then she had me hold the towel across my face and sprayed it silver.

I looked in the mirror and saw a creature, a fairy, something from another level of existence, pixie, elf, homunculus.

She painted a single blue spot on each cheek and surrounded this with pink. I thought of butterfly wings.

She made my chest into something blue and black like the night sky. My scars she turned into lightning bolts.

It took a long, long time. I did not mind. It was like being polished into life, like being a statue whose feet are washed with milk and yoghurt every morning.

‘You’ll have to push yourself against the pain,’ she said, rubbing the fatty colourants into my skin. ‘Acting will hurt you. All your muscles will ache. Do you know what I mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll be frightened that you’ll break yourself in half, but that is what you’ll have to do. Can you do that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Everyone will want to marginalize you, but you must never allow yourself to take the little parts. When they call you to a Mechanical, show them how you can play Bottom,’ she said. ‘Do you know who Bottom is?’

I did not. She told me. ‘You must study,’ she said, ‘so you are more intelligent than other actors, and you must learn to have an open mind, so any director can understand that you will not be difficult to work with, that you are interested in new approaches to the work. You must keep on learning about being brave. This is something you can’t learn once. You have to learn it over and over. You must never be frightened to look how you look, and if you can do this, you will always look powerful. You will have to make yourself into something beyond anyone’s capacity to imagine you.’

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t have to even understand all this now. But you will learn it, slowly.’

But I did understand it.

‘You worked out your action for Sad Sack and you thought you could act.’

‘No.’

‘But it will be years before you can act. You must not appear in anything in Chemin Rouge for years. You’ll have to work hard, every day. Lots of exercises, lots of reading, every day, harder than anything you’ve done. And when it’s all done you will, if you’re lucky, get one role a year. Do you hear what I’m saying? You’ll be poor, like Sparrow.’

I was looking in the mirror. I was feeling the heat.

‘Uh-huh.’

She dropped a light blue cloth around my shoulders. She stepped back out of the light.

‘Look in your mirror.’

I needed no encouragement.

‘What do you see?’

I didn’t know what she meant.

‘An artist?’ she suggested. ‘An actor?’

I looked so wonderful, so unimaginable, so beautiful that it seemed presumptuous to say anything.

‘A mutant?’ ‘No.’

‘And certainly not ugly.’ She came out of the dark, held me, one hand on each of my arms.

‘Would you like to sleep over at the theatre for a few nights?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re an actor.’ She kissed me on the forehead. ‘This theatre is for you. Do you hear me? You won’t have to be poor like Sparrow.’

‘Yes.’

‘When you grow up, you’ll always have a theatre. Now you can stay with Wally, and I’ll come visit you at least once every day. Maybe Sparrow will find time to help you. In any case, we can work out your exercises as we go along. You know I’m going to run for parliament, but I’ll make the time to help you every day. Are you angry with Vincent still?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘OK, we’re going to scrub up, and we’re going to go and tell everyone that you and I are OK. So now you can take one last good look,’ she said. ‘A good slow look.’

She left Tristan Smith alone in the spotlight. My bladder defeated me before I was bored with my reflection.

Four days later, my mother was famous.

She had been famous before, of course. Strangers in the street still called her Yvette, the name of her character in the soap opera. Also, she was famous in a different way for the Feu Follet, and a different way again for her role in demonstrations against the Voorstand presence on our soil.

But she had never been as thoroughly famous *as she was when she stood for parliament.

I was woken by Roxanna shaking me.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Quickly.’ I was always slow to wake, but Roxanna could not wait for me. She picked me up and carried me into the kitchen where Wally was already cooking — not breakfast, dinner. He had shaved, and he had Ducrow’s old wood-burning stove alight, something he did in the wet season when the porous old walls were getting too wet. The big pitted yellow and red tiles were freshly mopped and he had set up a large vid on top of the old-fashioned copper. A thick blue 240-volt cable ran from the vid out to the theatre power box.