Peter Carey - The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

Vincent did have a strong sense of right and wrong, but he lacked the empathy which would have given his moral sense more reach and subtlety. He judged Bill’s theatrical appearance at the funeral to be beyond forgiveness.

It was Wally, that violiniste and small-time thief, who forced Vincent to see through the Zinc, to see Bill’s courage, to see that he was swollen with grief and guilt and wanted nothing more than another chance to be Tristan Smith’s father.

But as for Bill himself, he was never so explicit, certainly not with the adults.

With me he was a little more forthcoming, but most of the important things he had to say he said sub-textually. He held me hard. He blew his nose. In the penitential stoop of his broad shoulders, in the clarity of his gaze, in all the subtle grammar of his body, he gave the clear impression that life — his life, my life-would now be different.

He was my dab now.

He had twice deserted me but now he had come back. He did not say this, but it was definitely the impression that he produced. He gave himself to me as intensely as ever he gave himself to an important role. He was dedicated. He took on the most intimate matters of my toilette. He studied. He read books about ‘The Special Child’. He played guitar and encouraged me to sing. He was obsessive. He sent Wally and Roxanna off to their own room. He slept on a mattress beside me on the sawdust stage. When I woke with night terrors, he was there. Twenty-four hours a day.

He had black silk pyjamas made for me. He acted with me. He found me an audition piece in Hamlet. He inspired me. We began a preliminary reading of a two-hander by Bardwell. *He cooked delicacies he had learned in Saarlim, feather-light crepes with apricot filling, Beanbredie and so on.

I was ill, still filled with horror and grief, fearful of my own survival, anxious for protection, overcome by my father’s affection, beauty, belief in my abilities.

There was nothing innocent about me. I knew I was being seduced, stolen. I was fully cognizant of the pain all of this caused Wally. I saw his grey-flecked eyes, his tired skin, his nicotine-yellow eyebrows and I knew that I was ditching him.

He had Roxanna. I had my father back. I would not be an orphan after all.

Bill mourned my maman, there is no doubt. He could not forgive himself for how he left her, for having patronized her work, blamed her for his scar. He told me he had been a snot. He said he had run away from me. He said it was time for us, the pair of us, to face the real world. And in all of this he focused on me, his beautiful features so close to me, his bright blue eyes always on my face so that I felt, in turn, transmogrified.

We took excursions out across the Boulevard des Indiennes to the downtown mall. ‘This is my son, Tristan Smith.’ That is what he said, in that clear melodious actor’s voice. Every time he was accosted by an autograph hound, he introduced me. ‘This is Tristan Smith, my son.’ He was not thinking beyond that point. He did not think beyond his character, or think that, for me, it would be different. I basked within his golden aura. I fell in love with him, my actor dab. I imagined our life continuing — Shakespeare, Brecht, agitprop, audiences, reviews, a life. If this was naïve, Wally was no more acute.

‘He is your father,’ he told me when he found me coming out of the first-floor bathroom. ‘He loved your maman. If he asks you to live with him, you should feel free to go.’

Vincent had no advice at all. Day after day the vids and zines brought news of more scandals in the Blue Party as the invisible Gabe Manzini did his job of maintaining the Voorstand alliance. He manufactured evidence of crooked land deals, bribes from foreign arms dealers and aircraft manufacturers, the normal VIA menu of destabilization.

Vincent was a ghost who came and went at unpredictable hours. Once, when we were alone, he held my head against his chest and stroked my hair and wept, but he never said a word to me about Bill and he was not there in the kitchen when Bill said goodbye.

Wally was sitting at the table peeling potatoes for Sunday’s evening meal. Bill, who had already prepared the apple pie, was leaning with his back against the porcelain sink. I was sitting on the counter top beside him stringing beans.

Bill began talking about letters. He talked about famous letters in history, a correspondence between Manuel Grieg and Sonia Nuttall which had been published in Saarlim the previous season. He talked about love, growth, understanding. He began to talk about the letters we could now write each other. He talked about it for some time, the ideas we could now exchange, not by speech, which is lost like drama is lost, but by putting ink on paper.

I don’t know what I thought or understood but I saw the weakness in his mouth, the anxiety in his eyes. I saw Roxanna and Wally looking at me. I saw myself put down the beans. My hands began to pat-pat-pat against my narrow chest.

‘Bill,’ Wally said, ‘what are you telling him?’

‘I’ve got a contract in Saarlim,’ Bill said. ‘You know that.’

I tried to say something but the words got stuck.

My handsome dab filled himself a glass of water.

‘You’re … leaving … me.’

‘What?’

‘You’re … going … to … make … the … Voorshits … laugh.’

Bill drained his glass and placed it in the sink. ‘I’m a performer.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘You’re … a … traitor. ’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said.

‘My … maman … knew … you … didn’t … love … us.’

Bill did not have a cool temper. It took nothing to get it going. ‘Shut up, Tristan. Don’t say things you don’t mean.’

‘They … killed … her …’

‘They didn’t do anything.’

‘They … did … you … did.’ I was beside myself, four feet off the floor. I jumped. I fell. I hit my nose. I punched his great hard thighs, pinched, thumped.

He jumped away. I grabbed his cuffs.

‘Stop,’ he said, trying to shake me off his leg. ‘Stop now.’ But he was guilty, angry. He picked me up and held me out to Wally.

‘I’ll speak to you later,’ he said, his face crimson. ‘After you have apologized.’

It took perhaps three seconds to pronounce this ultimatum. I watched it happen. I watched, like you watch a glass falling to the floor.

When my father’s car left for the airport, at seven o’clock the following morning, nothing had been mended.

He left me behind in a client state that made itself the servant of your country’s wishes. His letters arrived. Even their stamps were repugnant to me — their folk-art imagery, their clear-eyed Settlers Free.

Thus I lived fatherless through that shameful period of Efica’s history as armies of our conscripts were raised to fight Voorstand’s war in Burma and Nepal. I saw the great Efican health-care system weakened and demolished at the insistence of Voorstand’s bankers. I saw the Sirkus Domes spread across our little islands and the Bruders appear to spread their stories, your stories, not ours, in every corner of my nation’s life.

*

Jacqueline Bardwell — contemporary Efican poet, playwright, essayist, most famous as author of

A Long Way from Anywhere.

While Jacques and I fiddled with the Simi inside the Marco Polo Hotel, that secretive, stubborn old man with the shining skull set out to do the thing he had been intent on doing ever since we first discussed the Sirkus Tour.

He came down to the foyer and there, in a varnished vestibule beside the bell captain’s desk, he spent five minutes peering up at a framed map of Saarlim City. He took a sheet of paper from his pocket and, leaning the paper against the yellowed map, made some careful notes. Then, with the paper still in his hand, he walked carefully across the stained and slippery marble floor to the revolving door.