Peter Carey - The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

They were outside. They washed their clothing there, in a pink plastic tub, and spread it out to dry on the hot concrete.

I was inside, on the floor, trying to find a place where I could begin to unpick the body of the Simulacrum.

I sat next to Jacques, so close to him that his short cuffs brushed against my wrist, his hand against my hand.

‘Not there,’ he said as I fiddled with the Simi’s blue sequin waistcoat. ‘You’ll rip it.’

‘Mollo … mollo.’ I tugged at the creature’s white plastic boots.

‘Don’t hurt it,’ Jacques said. ‘This is worth a fortune in Chemin Rouge.’

‘Worth … good … money … here.’

Wally sighed loudly. I looked up to him through my sweaty white hair. He was sitting on the rumpled bed and rubbing his bare feet. He stared belligerently at the Simi which he had once, so blithely, invited into our life.

‘Please,’ he said, ‘don’t tell me you’re going to be a tin-rattler.’

‘If … we … don’t … have … money … we’re … as … good … as … dead.’

‘For God’s sake,’ Wally said, ‘no one needs to beg.’

‘You’d … thieve.’

‘Yes, I’d thieve, I’d con, I’d be a lever man, if it was necessary.’

‘I … don’t … want … you … to … thieve.’

‘I never said I was going to thieve. I said I’d rather thieve than beg.’

‘The … Simi … paid … for … this … room.’

‘You don’t need the Mouse to pay the rent.’ He was trying to catch my eye and hold it. I ignored that. I held up the Mouse’s grey spongy paw.

‘Our … meal … ticket,’ I said.

‘Our Sirkus ticket, more like it.’

‘Yes … that … too … I … can … get … the … money.’

He shook his head. ‘We’re not going to the Sirkus.’

‘You … know … that’s … why … we … came.’

He shook his head. ‘You hate the Sirkus, Tristan.’

‘We’ve … come … to … do … the … Sirkus … Tour.’

‘Bullshit.’ He was all closed down, hooded and bony — narrow eyes, shining cheeks. ‘Ten fucking years,’ he said to Jacques. He took some beef jerky from his back pocket and bit down on it. ‘Ten fucking years the Mouse was the devil. You would think it was Bruder Mouse killed his maman. He wouldn’t even let me say its fucking name.’

‘The … Sirkus … is … for … you … It’s … my … gift … This … Simi … is … going … to … finance … your … Sirkus … Tour.’

‘Bullshit.’ Wally tugged at the jerky. ‘You think I’d go through all of this for some Sirkus?’

‘Not … for … only … one.’

‘Not for a hundred. Let’s stop playing games, Rikiki. Let’s just admit it, we’ve come to Saarlim so you can make peace with your father.’

‘NO.’

‘Oh yes,’ Wally said, passing his hands repeatedly over his bald skull. ‘It’s time to say it. We’ve come to see Bill Millefleur. So don’t give me all this crap about the Sirkus. You hate the Sirkus.’

I did not answer. I was still trying to find some stitching, a seam that would allow me to unpick the Simi’s skin. My hand was shaking.

‘Tristan … just telephone him. That’s all it’ll take.’

‘I’m … going … to … make … money … and … I’m … going … to … take … you … to … the … Sirkus.’

Wally sighed. ‘You can’t go tin-rattling with a Mouse,’ he said at last. ‘You know you hate that thing.’

‘Please,’ I said.

‘You think it’s legal, it’s not. It’s just as illegal as thieving.’ *

I ignored him.

‘You’ll get sick,’ he said. ‘Is that what you want? You climb inside that stinking thing, you’ll catch a virus. You want doctors poking at you in a foreign country?’

He watched me as my mouth began to dribble, my head to nod. I hated how I was, how I looked, how I trembled.

‘You want strangers looking at you? Is that what you really want?’

‘SHUT … UP,’ I said. The words came out of me. Without warning, hot and shameful as shit itself.

Wally passed his big dry hand thoughtfully across his mouth. Then he stood, picked up his stick, and walked towards the door.

I called to him, ‘Don’t …’

He stopped at the doorway. He had his hand across his mouth again.

‘Please …’

‘Please what?’

‘Promise … you … won’t … see … him.’

‘Who?’

He knew. He knew exactly.

‘Bill … Mille … fleur.’

‘So,’ he said. ‘You can actually say his name.’

He walked out. I threw the Mouse aside.

‘What is it?’ Jacques said. ‘Can I help you?’

I was trembling. I shook my head.

‘It’s your father? Your father is in Saarlim? Then let’s go see him.’ Jacques pulled the Mouse to his side. He folded its grey arm across its blue metallic chest. He stroked its fur. ‘We could borrow the jon-kay from him?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

I could not tell him. But now, I see, I must tell you, Madam, Meneer. I must return to that night, that death, the single event I spend my waking hours avoiding.

*

The soliciting of alms in public places is prohibited by law in the Canton of Saarlim and is punishable by a minimum sentence of six months (the first offence) and twelve months (the second). All sentences to be served in Work Camps. No remissions or reductions of sentence can apply.

Bill had not been there the night my maman died. He had been in Saarlim City, eating cheese and herring for his breakfast. I had telephoned him after Wally cut the death rope with a box cutter, after I began to hit the Bruder Mouse mask with the brick, pulverizing it against the theatre’s concrete floor.

There was the smell of the shit.

There was no sequence of events.

There was Rox arriving, before the rope was cut, after the rope was cut.

Vincent had been already in the theatre, had arrived by car soon after.

Wally had a definite memory of laying my maman on the sawdust and of Rox fetching a stainless-steel mixing bowl of soapy water. She wanted to clean my maman.

She said, ‘I am a nurse.’

Rox was not a nurse.

Vincent was in a terror, circling my maman like an injured dog, fearful of blame, angry with everyone around him. He would not let Rox touch the body. Everyone remembered that. Rox and Wally discussed it afterwards, often. Rox always said, ‘What was he afraid of?’

My maman’s body lay in the same place they had once placed old Ducrow’s remains. So much for history.

Wally remembers me talking to Bill on the telephone. Was I left alone? Wally cannot remember. He can remember thinking: Bill will soon be here.

Wally did not like Bill, but Bill was my biological father and Wally had a strong sense of what was right and wrong — he thought he must be there.

Wally can remember Vincent trying to light candles on the stage and refusing to let Rox wash her, my maman, his lover.

‘Don’t touch,’ he said. ‘You must not touch her.’

Rox tried to get me out of the building. I would not leave. Maybe it was in response to this that Vincent covered my maman’s face with a green plastic garbage bag. In any case, too late, too late — none of us would forget what we had seen before the bag came down — the bared gums, the bleeding eyes.

When the garbage bag was across the face, I was present. They gathered around me. I had talked to Bill by then. Bill was maybe on his way already, flying 30,000 feet above the frozen lakes of the Canton of Saarlim. Wally steeled himself against this intrusion.

Vincent’s candles were finally burning. The police arrived. They asked endless questions about the candles.