Peter Carey - The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

‘Why … won’t … he … talk … to … me?’

‘Please don’t whine. He can’t come up.’

‘It’s … because … I … ran … away … from … that … house.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Tristan, he is not angry. It’s nothing to do with you. Not everything is to do with you. There are all sorts of things happening that are nothing to do with you. There is a whole country out there. Eighteen islands.’

‘It’s … the … mask.’

‘Oh merde,’ my mother said. She picked me up roughly.

‘I’m … sorry … I’m … SORRY.’

But she was already carrying me and as we came into the gloomy foyer I could hear the rain spilling from the rusted down-pipes in the street. If my mother heard this, it did not slow her. She pushed on out into the rain, shouting Vincent’s name.

‘Talk to him,’ she called. ‘For God’s sake talk to him.’

Vincent’s car was nowhere in sight. She banged on the wet window of a station wagon.

‘Talk to him,’ she said.

There, through the rain-beaded window, by the light of the street lamp, I saw Vincent’s pale beard, his bulging eyes. He was pointing a gun at me.

*

Pigeon Patissy

is a famous Efican dish, something that is bound to arouse strong opinions. Catholics tend to cook it one way, Protestants another. Wally’s version tended towards the Catholic: half a teaspoon of cinnamon blended with the sugar which is sprinkled across the top layer of the filo pastry

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[TS]

*

In truth, I did not know the Kroon Princess at that time. In Chemin Rouge the character was named after the European fairy-tale character of Snow White who, as you know, does finally become a Kroon Princess.

[TS]

What bound Vincent to my mother was the shared belief that what you said could matter, might change the course of history itself, but when he had — two nights before — faced his trembling wife, it seemed as if his very life depended on what words he chose.

Natalie was pale, pretty, weak-mouthed. Her arms were thin, perfectly un-muscled. She had big eyes and short hair like a child. She stood in her husband’s untidy book-lined study and folded her arms across her chest and clutched a white lace shawl which she more normally wore across her shoulders when dining in the garden. It was not cold, but her perfect little teeth were chattering. She pushed the base of her spine against the bookshelves.

‘I’m going to kill you,’ she said.

It was four in the morning. Vincent, who had crept home to pick up his cash parole, was sitting at his desk with his hand in his top drawer.

He found the cash card, slipped it in his jacket pocket. He began to stand, and then his wife dropped the shawl and revealed the long-finned barrel of a 9-mm Globlaster.

‘I’m going to kill her too,’ she said.

‘Natalie, don’t be silly.’

‘I can do this,’ she said. ‘It’s called a spurt-and-splatter. It just kills everything.’ Her small bare feet were poking out from under the long white nightdress he had bought for her in Egypt.

‘So I went away,’ Vincent said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m back now.’

Natalie’s hair stood up on end. Vincent saw it lift, on her neck and the crest of her head. ‘You think I don’t know ,’ she said.

‘Just put the gun down,’ he said. ‘Your hands are shaking.’

‘I told you — it’s spurt-and-splatter. You think I am a moron. You think I lie here every night and don’t know you are living with her.’

He had to get himself standing, but it felt too dangerous a thing to do.

‘Natalie …’

‘Aren’t you surprised your flighty little wife managed to actually buy a gun? Aren’t you going to ask me how I did it?’

Across Natalie’s shoulder Vincent could see through the window to the driveway. He could see the Corniche and my mother’s face illuminated by the instrument lights. ‘Natalie, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ve really been a shit.’

‘Oh Lord, I am a louse ,’ she mimicked, curling her mouth in an ugly way that shocked him, not just for its ugliness, but for its heedlessness. ‘ Oh Lord, I am a worm. Forget it. All that Catholic bullshit doesn’t cut with me any more.’

As she spoke, her trembling increased, but the curl of her mouth warped itself into a small half-grin and Vincent saw, with fascination, that his wife had chipped a front tooth.

‘I’ll always look after you,’ he said.

‘You can’t look after me if you’re dead.’

‘Natalie! Don’t say that.’

‘Dead,’ she said. ‘D-e-a-d.’

‘If you kill me, Natalie, you’ll go to jail.’

She shrugged her little shoulders.

‘You stole my life,’ she said. ‘It’s gone. You pissed on it. You stopped me working. You wouldn’t let me have children.’

‘Natalie, you know that isn’t true.’

‘You didn’t want stretch marks on your china doll.’

Natalie did not have a chipped tooth. Did not speak like this.

‘I let you lock me up here with all this crap, then you run away and live in your “house of few possessions”.’ She turned the gun towards his Lalique angel. He thought she was going to shoot it, but she merely used the barrel to tip it on to the tiled floor. It did not fall in slow motion. It hardly made a noise. It just changed itself into pale sharp pieces which rushed across the terracotta floor. Vincent rose and stooped towards the fragments but as Natalie turned the long barrel towards the angel’s twin he swooped up and grabbed her, pinned her round the forearms, as she began to laugh.

‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘I guess it’s just not perfect any more.’

The laugh was so natural, so relaxed, that he smiled too.

‘Natalie …’

‘You’re going to die,’ she sighed. ‘And so is she.’

He could feel the gun, still in her hand. He could feel it against his thigh. He walked her across to the settee. ‘Drop the gun on to the settee,’ he said.

She did. It did not go off.

‘I can wait another day or two,’ she said. ‘I used to wait for you to go to sleep.’ She sighed. ‘Then I would go to the linen closet and take out the gun and bring it back and point it at you. Tons of times.’

He could feel her frail body. He held it tight, frightened to let it go, wary of what it might do. He turned her, so she was facing away from the window.

‘I used to put the gun an inch away from you, while you slept. And you know why I didn’t?’

‘Natalie,’ he said, ‘you need help now. I’m going to get you help.’

‘The only reason I didn’t shoot you is that if you fucked me, I might have a baby.’

He could feel her crying quietly, feel her thin shoulders shuddering against his chest.

‘Natalie … please …’

‘I know you had a child with her, so watch out, buddy boy,’ she said. He could see her face, bright, sharp, wet-cheeked, broken-toothed, shining at him from the mirror. ‘Watch out for Natalie.’

Vincent was now so frightened of this pale, fine-boned woman, he dared not let her go. He imagined she would somehow stab him, murder my mother in the car. He held both her wrists in one hand while he telephoned his brother.

‘I know who you’re calling,’ she said, ‘but it won’t work, no matter who you know.’

At five a.m. Natalie Theroux was a client in a psychiatric institution in Goat Marshes. Twenty-nine hours later she was free again, riding through downtown Chemin Rouge in a taxi cab.

This was why Vincent sat in the rented car outside the theatre while my mother went in to conduct the first of my acting lessons — he was keeping guard. He kept the car doors locked and sat low in the seat with his eyes on the rear-view mirror, and only after I had appeared, wet and frightened in the rain, and he, in terror, had nearly shot me, did he come inside.