Peter Carey - The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

‘Whatsit say?’ Leona asked.

‘He wants you to throw the Bruder out,’ said ‘Jacques’, and smiled at me, not insolently. It was the look you see on monks — a calm and luminous neutrality.

‘You want me to footsack Bruder Mouse, Wink?’ Leona brought the car round a large banked curve and came on to a high wide bridge, below which you could see one more ribbon of highway: transports carrying their spherical gases, cylindrical liquids, bright sanserif type on their shining silver surfaces.

‘I might footsack you first,’ she said. She flicked on her super-charger in accordance with a highway sign. ‘This here Bruder Mouse is like a Saint to us,’ she said. ‘He ain’t just the Sirkus. He means stuff to us.’

‘It … means … stuff … to … us … too … we … suffered … from … that stuff … already.’

‘What does he say?’

‘He’d rather not have the Bruder in the car.’

‘Fuck … the … Mouse … fuck … the … Voorstand … Hegemony.’

‘What’s he say?’

‘He … says … it … makes … him … sick.’

I turned to Wally, who had his bent old spine propped in the corner. ‘You … want … this … stinky … thing … in … the … car?’

‘It’s their country,’ Wally said, and closed his eyes, pretending that he was sleeping. ‘We should respect their customs.’

Jacqui crossed the Simi’s arms across its chest, and gently pushed down on its snout and up on its chin, so just the faintest trace of white tooth was protruding.

‘“ One mo nothing ,’” she recited, “‘next mo — there he was, buttons gleaming, cane tapping, as solid as a yellow oak on a Tuesday morning.”’

To be driven across the El 695 gave me a feeling in my stomach that was almost unbearable.

The thing was — the El 695 would not stop. It curved, looped, but it kept on rolling, now three lanes, now five, now one lane of congestion and construction, but it did not stop. In Efica, you could not drive far without coming to the sea. Even on a large island like Inkerman you lived with a constant sense of limitations, the thinness of soil, the hardness of the rock, the long sail-less expanse of the Mer de Lapenise.

Voorstand, in comparison, was terrible, like being tickled relentlessly or plunging in an elevator. We were forever arriving at the this ‘zee’ and the that ‘zee’, not actual ‘seas’ but great lakes whose further shores were lost in summer haze — which signalled, to my Efican sensibilities, the end of the journey. Now there should be a ferry. Now a wharf. But this was Voorstand, 2000 miles from north to south, 865 lakes, 10,000 towns, 93 major cities.

I watched the edges of the road slide past my ear, endlessly, limitlessly, and, indeed, it was in these very roadside verges that I would finally begin to learn the truth about Saarlim City.

I saw the first signs of deterioration some hundred miles from our destination. At first I did not take it seriously, but soon there was no denying it — the condition of the roads got worse, consistently worse — and by the time we were embarked upon the elevated entrances to the great city the verges were cracked and weedy and littered with abandoned pieces of cars and trucks.

For you, who imagine I came to cause you harm, it may be hard to believe that I found this decay so upsetting. Why would I, a member of the January 20 Group, give a rat’s fart about the state of roads in Saarlim City?

Madam, Meneer, you are part of our hearts in a way you could not dream.

It is as if you, at your mother’s breast, had imbibed the Koran, the Kabuki, and made them both your own. We grow up with your foreignness deep inside our souls, knowing the Bruder clowns, the Bruder tales, the stories of the Saints, the history (defeating the Dutch, tricking the British, humiliating the French, all this gets you big marks in the islands of Efica). We recite your epic poets for the same reason we study Molière or Shakespeare, listen to your Pow-pow music as we fall in love, fly your fragrant peaches halfway across the earth and sit at table with their perfect juices running down our foreign chins.

We have danced to you, cried with you, and even when we write our manifestos against you, even when we beg you please to leave our lives alone, we admire you, not just because we have woven your music into our love affairs and wedding feasts, not just for what we imagine you are, but for what you once were — for the impossible idealism of your Settlers Free who would not eat God’s Creatures, who wanted to include even mice and sparrows in their Christianity.

As we Ootlanders approached the legendary capital of Saarlim on the crumbling El 695, we each, silently, privately, recalled the story of the farmyard Bruders coming to the city, the Hymn of Pietr Groot , the suicides of the captains of the first great insurrection. Yet just as your history came to inspire me, I was depressed to see the cracks, the weeds, the litter of radiator hoses, broken glass and rusted mufflers.

‘They … should … sweep … up,’ I said.

No one translated for Leona.

The cars around us on the road were not like the ones I had seen with starburst reflections on their chrome work in the zines. They were old, rusting, crumpled, belching blue smoke, dropping black oil. I had imagined that my own country was backward, provincial, but we would not have tolerated this in Efica. Cars that would have been dragged off the highway by the Gardiacivil — cars with rusted body panels, broken headlights — were permitted to cruise beside us unmolested by the Saarlim Police who moved through the junk-heap traffic in cars bristling with computers and satellite dishes, their roof lights perpetually flashing.

Yet the more extreme the neglect became, the more Jacques liked it. As we came closer to Saarlim, his colour rose, he began to beat his feet on the floor. He sat on the edge of his seat, one hand resting on the Simi’s shoulder. The Simi stank of smoke, of melting plastic, of damp fur, of old rags left too long in a bucket. Broken wires stuck out from its elbow — probably infectious. It made me ill to look at it, made me weak in the arms and legs — insufficient oxygen, the early-warning sign of phobia.

Leona drove us into leaking tunnels, under rusting bridges. All around us were grim brick buildings, some with windows, some merely with broken glass, and where the glass was not broken it was dirty. In Chemin Rouge we like to keep things clean. In Chemin Rouge we do not throw our garbage out on the public highway. Saarlim City was littered with abandoned papers, cans, bottles, cars, mattresses, stuffed furniture.

‘We’re going to do just fine,’ Wally said. But the old bird had a tired, strained look. He ran his hand over his bony head. ‘This is going to be my kind of town.’

But we had no money and the light was tired, yellow, poisonous. We crossed a long high rattling metal bridge across grassy marshlands in which one could make out the rainbow-slick of chemicals. Through the yellow mist we saw tall buildings clustering on the horizon. It was the fabled city, but I would have given anything to be back inside the mouldy safety of the Ducrow Circus School.

Leona swung the wheel, hit the horn, braked, accelerated, cursed, and then, hitting the current as it were, accelerated along a long avenue, weaving in and out of the traffic, bicyclists, reversing rollerskaters, wheel-squirrels of every size and colour.

We Ootlanders became quiet, like chickens squashed into a metal box for market. Finally it was Wally who asked, ‘Will we be near the Grand Concourse when we stop?’

‘Near it?’ Leona said. ‘Honey, you in it.’