Peter Carey - The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

When she became pregnant he did not act like any man she had ever known.

‘Have it,’ he said. ‘It’s what you want.’

It was what she wanted, but when Jacqui was three months old it became obvious — if Rene did not go back to work, they would starve.

‘I’ll look after her,’ he said.

And he did. What was wrong with that? he asked her. What could she say? That she felt her child had been stolen from her?

The father cooked the food, played with the baby, read her stories in French and English. The mother came home tense, jealous, angry about the floor not swept, sheets not washed, a shitty bandock sitting on the changing table.

All this Jacqui only learned when her father was dying and her mother shocked her by confessing that for most of her marriage she had prayed to God each night for Him to take her husband from her.

Jacqui found that hard to stomach.

Even then, when her mother’s prayers had finally been answered, when her papa’s lips were purple, when his breath smelled sweet and rancid, like sour milk, when his lungs were gurgling with the mucus which would finally drown him, he had more life in him than her. Her mother knew it too. She was frightened of his death. She would not come into the bedroom. She stayed in her rocking chair in the next room, sipping sweet vermouth and ice while the Moosone rain fell like glass beads from the overflowing gutters.

It was the daughter who sat up with the dying man, who told him she loved him, who talked him through the panic of his gurgling drowning breath. It was the wife who sat in the next room, crying, drinking vermouth.

When the refrigerated truck arrived at her father’s graveside and the ageing Oliver Odettes stepped out in his short shorts and his red demi-bottes, Jacqui Lorraine produced her copy of Master and Man and began to read out loud.

‘He twisted his head, dug a hole through the snow in front of him with his hand and opened his eyes.’

‘Oh God, please Jacqui,’ her mother said. She clutched her daughter’s arm. ‘Please, don’t do this.’

A different daughter might have found room in her heart to pity her, but Jacqui was not that daughter.

I touched her left breast, that’s all, by ‘accident’. Nothing had happened between us, but even though she carried me, on her shoulder, like a souvenir, out of the restaurant and into the lunch-time crowds of Saarlim, even though I was enclosed in sweaty fur and rubber, even though I could not smell her skin or feel her hair, I was — please do not be embarrassed for me — in love with her.

All the powerful irritation I had felt when I had seen her, bright-eyed, wilful, dragging the Simi from the car, all this passion now roared through the bottleneck of love and I wanted her with an ache and want so powerful, so exquisite, that I could never have wished to be spared the pain.

I had been raised to love a woman like this — her guts, her humour, the luminous power of her life which I had observed slowly shine through the heavy glaze of her professionalism.

But how could I have fallen for so demonstrably devious a character?

It was not deviousness I saw, Madam, Meneer. It was mystery, and I loved her for that mystery. I sucked it in and forced it into the mould of my own desires, and you are right to fear for me.

We returned to the Marco Polo from the restaurant, where we found Wally sitting on the grubby flock velvet settee in our room. When I saw his face I knew something important had happened in our absence: he now had a secret, too.

His skin was tight, he had a pleased look, a stillness, a sort of deadness which was how he was when withholding his joy. He had showered and shaved. He had a clean white shirt and trousers. I was certain he’d been stealing.

I looked around the room as well as the eye-holes would permit me. I expected to see factory-sealed cardboard boxes, vids, electronics, wrist-watches, but there was nothing in sight. The old turtle had a stillness, a foxy shine. He lifted his chin and tilted his head. When he lit a cigarette there was a fastidiousness in his smoking, his thumb and forefinger around the weed like tweezers.

‘What’s up?’ I said.

‘Not much,’ he said. ‘How about you?’

‘Not much.’

I never kept a secret from him before and the pleasure, the pressure, was incredible. I could not keep in my skin. I had touched her lolo, that is what I could not say to him.

My extraordinary nurse now sat down at Wally’s feet. He barely glanced at her. He did not notice the perspiration on her exquisite upper lip. He did not see he was a she, that all those shirts were there to cover her, that the long jacket must disguise her waist, her hips, her peach.

Jacqui had had no time to count or arrange the money neatly, but now she spread it out and sorted it by denomination. I admired her hands as I never had before — their shape, their suppleness, the lovely olive skin, the delicate pink shell fingernails. She ordered the Guilders. The maroon, the yellow, the violet. She had a beautiful neck, slender, downy.

‘One hundred and twenty-three Guilders,’ she said.

‘Tray bon,’ Wally said. He was pleased, but like you might be pleased with a child who has brought home too many shells from the beach.

Then Jacqui went to run my bath. But she could no longer bathe me.

‘What?’ Wally said.

‘Nothing.’

I looked at him, not knowing what to say. He winked at me.

‘Give … me … my … bath … please.’

He jerked his bony head towards the bathroom, meaning it was the nurse’s job.

‘No … please … you … must.’

He shrugged. ‘Come on then, get your suit off.’

I lay down on my face on the carpet with relief. Wally sighed and grumbled as he kneeled beside me, but I realized he was pleased to do it. He always like to be the shapoh, to make the lunch, to run the bath. It was only age and weakness made him hire the nurse in the first place. Now he was happy to open his knife and cut me free.

I felt each stitch give way, and then the air on my wet skin.

‘You silly fucker,’ he said. ‘What have you been doing?’

‘What?’

‘You stupid little ballot,’ he said. ‘You can’t do this.’

I tried to stand up, but he held me down with his palm flat on the small of my back, held me flapping like a fish on the wharf. ‘Didn’t you feel anything?’ he said.

I had felt a lot of things. I had felt the crowd. I had felt her breast. I had felt the small solder points and amputated wires rubbing at my skin, but there is no analgesic like an audience, the way it comes out to you, envelops you, wraps you in its cocoon, is warm, alive, fits you like a glove, holds you like a fist, strokes you like a cat.

When you look like I do, no one touches you.

When you look like this, your whole body cries out for touch, like dry skin for moisture.

The last stitch was cut. I wanted to stay inside the suit until I got into the bath, but I was lifted out before I could protest. Wally held me in the air, my naked body covered with a glaze of blood.

Jacqui stood at the bathroom door, a big grey towel across her shoulder. I could have died, to be like that, in front of her.

‘He was amazing,’ she said.

I turned my face away from her. I was so ashamed, so grateful, I could have wept. My face was a rag, my skin as slimy wet with blood as a new-born child, my limbs so sad it would make you cry if you had half a heart.

‘He performed,’ she said. ‘He juggled for them. He was astonishing.’

‘You’re meant to look after him,’ Wally said. ‘You’re his nurse. That’s why we pay you all that money. You’re meant to stop him getting hurt.’