Peter Carey - The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

Half a second later he was in a dark, hot, smelly, bustling street — the Jean Pitz Colonnade. Bicyclists and other wheel-squirrels sped through the crowds blowing shrill whistles, shouting warnings of their approach. Beggars sat against the dark distempered back walls rattling their cups.

If you are from Saarlim, this is life. If you are from Efica, it is terrifying. The old man was spun around like a paper cup dropped in a river. Twice he was bumped, three times abused. Then, as he turned to raise his finger to a stranger, he was bowled right over by a pair of Misdaad Boys and he felt, as he fell, their flickering fingers enter and retreat from four of his pockets — his three Guilders were gone.

He retreated to the musty air-conditioned chill of the Marco Polo where he sat for a very long time doing nothing more than nursing his bruises and watching the guests come and go. Soon, however, he began to tap his shoe, and then he thumped his cane twice on the marble floor, and stood. Then he set off into the Jean Pitz again. This time he stayed close to the outer rail and as he went he muttered and tapped his Efican oak stick. He was beetle-browed, vulture-necked, and although he felt a total Ootlander, he became without knowing it one of those belligerent street characters that Saarlimites know to leave alone.

Five blocks later he was through the Kakdorp. He crossed the small gilt bridge into the Bleskran and here, where the walls of the buildings were clad in marble and granite, his style could be more civilized. Now he paused to look in shops whose bevelled glass windows held expensive items of gold and silk. He crossed the colonnade so he could look down on the long sleek-hulled boats of the Bleskran Kanal, and then he wandered up Shutter Steeg to look at No. 35, the narrow Gothic house my maman had lived in until her seventeenth year. Then he followed Shutter Steeg back up to the top of the Bleskran where, at the point where Bleskran ends and Demos Platz begins, he came to a tall wrought-iron screen stretching right across the colonnade like something in a Catholic church.

Here he stood, running a white handkerchief over that slightly dented bony skull, wishing he had changed his clothes. Through the grille he could make out the long mosaic title of the building which he knew was his destination. ‘The letters ran in pink and gold from the top floor vertically to the canal: The Baan’. The ‘B’ was topped with a small gold crown. And after the ‘n’ were a pair of crossed sceptres.

‘Jo, Bruder!’

Wally made no attempt to disguise the distaste he felt for the security guard who thus addressed him — the belly protruding above the belt, the rolled-up zine in the back pocket. ‘I’m looking for this number.’ He produced a crumpled postcard which he read with some little difficulty. ‘247 Demos Platz.’

‘OK, you looked.’

Wally began to walk towards the gate. The guard then put a meaty hand on his stooped shoulder and, as he did so, pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt.

‘Move, Bruder.’

YOU move, mo-ami,’ Wally said, stepping forward, pushing his neck forward and scowling.

The guard drew the night stick and held it in both hands, as if he intended to crush it into Wally’s windpipe.

‘For Christ’s sake’ — Wally held up his hands — ‘all I’m doing is visiting.’

‘Move.’

‘Read,’ Wally said, pushing the postcard at the guard. ‘His name is Bill Millefleur. He’s asking me to visit.’

‘Footsack,’ the guard said. ‘Scat. Shoo-fly.’

‘Footsack bullshit,’ Wally said, but he saw it would not matter what he said. He turned on his heels, humiliated.

He came into the dingy hotel room with all his failure and embarrassment sheathed in anger. When he discovered that Jacques and I had progressed no further with our plan than to pick open the outer skin of the Simi, he exploded.

‘Can’t anyone do anything?’ he said. ‘Here. Give it to me.’

‘No, no,’ Jacques said. ‘Just lie down. I’ll run the bath.’

All I could see was that he had no money and was angry. He snatched the Simi from our grasp and pulled his traveller’s jackknife from his pocket.

‘Please,’ I yelled. ‘Be careful.’

‘Don’t hurt it,’ Jacques said. ‘Please, Mr Paccione. We haven’t cut it because it’s so easy to damage it. It’s valuable …’

Wally ignored us both. First he used the big blade, cutting through the wire-reinforced rubber in a two-foot long slit. He put his hand inside and found the ‘core’ — a pink glutinous substance in a plastic sac.

‘Oh God,’ said Jacques.

The core was joined to the rib frame by six or so small plastic tendons. He snipped these with the jackknife scissors and flipped the sac out on to the floor where it lay like an enlarged liver, quivering on the blue and green striped carpet. Next he began cutting away at the thin plastic connections between the computer cradle and the wire — reinforced body. Where the servo-motor made its connections with the web of wire embedded in its rubberized inner skin, he used his pliers, cutting each wire as close as possible, feeling with his big fat thumb.

First his temper invigorated him, and then his pride in his expertise began to soothe him, and when it was finally done, and he had removed sacs of pink stuff from the head, and the articulated plastic rods from the legs, he tidied up the mess he had made, bundling everything into the trash can. He lay on the bed and let the pillows take the weight of his ruined spine.

‘There,’ he said. He felt better, more like himself. ‘That’s how you do it.’

Jacques, having just witnessed the butchering of his precious souvenir, was pale and ill-looking. I did not notice. I was too busy strapping wads of toilet paper to the side of my ankles. When that was done I stripped down to my underpants and lay down on top of the Mouse so my privately devastated nurse could fit me inside it. Then I rolled on my stomach while Jacques fiddled around with a needle and thread.

When I stood, I was already my new character.

BRUDER MOUSE stepped forward, bowed, moved to one side. I was quirky, quick, bow-legged, a little too weird to be a legitimate descendant of the Free Franciscan Church, but I held out my arms to Jacques, silently asking if he might like to dance.

Jacqui’s precious Simi was now as boneless as a fish fillet, its insides reduced to pink gunk like the inside of an old-style golfball. In place of all this cyber-junk dwelt I, yours truly, Tristan Smith.

Jacqui had valued that Simi like you yourself might value your Delft, your Doulton, and you might reasonably expect her to be devastated by its evisceration, but Jacqui was an artist on a slack rope *and she did not have time to stop to pick up broken pieces. She was in Saarlim, undercover, and the very thought of this extraordinary fact was enough to bring back the glow to her skin, the brightness to her long-lashed eyes. She did not know what would happen next.

She grasped my hand — not mine exactly, but the gloved hand of the limping bow-legged Mouse, which looked like a creation of the laser board, twisted, exaggerated, but rolling, lurching, both comic and benign.

We stepped out together, two actors, both did our respective walks down the hotel hallway, through the stained marble foyer, deep in our respective characters.

Ahead of her she saw the deskmajoor. He was tall but pudgy, not like an operative, but Leona had not looked like an operative either, and the cops on the street did not look like Gardiacivil. Any moment she could be contacted, perhaps by this very man. He was coming her way, and if this was the guy she was ready for him. She inhaled the foreign air in the Marco Polo foyer as greedily as she had earlier inhaled the diesel and coal smoke of the Grand Concourse.