Peter Carey - The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

She was going to be his — this woman dressed as a man. She was cute, he could not bear it. She had sweet little flat feet, no more than size five.

‘What you are going to do,’ he told her, ‘is wire him for sound. Have you ever wired anyone before?’

‘No,’ she said.

He hesitated.

‘Ever been wired yourself?’

‘I can do it.’

‘This is an aA345 I am thinking of. A button transmitter. You would have to sew it with copper wire.’

‘I can do it.’

‘First I have to get the transmitter.’

Fine.’

‘Could take a day or two,’ he said. ‘You have them in Efica?’

‘Some.’

‘Could they dispatch one to you?’

‘Wouldn’t it be faster to get it from here?’ she said.

But for Gabe Manzini to get his hands on an aA345 was not an easy matter. The wire-men he had known were gone, or dead, or unfriendly. In spite of which, he would get an aA345 somehow. Then they would wire the rabbit. Then they would let him go right down the hole.

If the rabbit got no information, nothing lost.

But if he did, Gabe Manzini was back in the centre. If he could get incriminating evidence of Zawba’a they would have to bring him back into the goddamn game. They would be furious, but they would have no choice, and then there were people whose ass he was going to kick from here to Neu Zwolfe.

As they left the meeting and returned to the foyer, he was enjoying these thoughts, thinking of the punishment, the pleasure of removing that big jacket from the young woman’s slender shoulders. Then he saw Tristan Smith, rolling through the foyer.

What a creature.

‘Leona, go! Quick!’

As the operative exited, Gabe Manzini watched Tristan Smith. When the very weird white eyes turned on him, he overcame his initial desire to turn away. He gazed into them, as into the eye of a squid. They were alarmed, passionate, electric.

There’s a great Sirkus on in town,’ he said to Jacqui.

He felt the creature’s hatred of him.

‘The Water Sirkus.’ He smiled at Tristan Smith as he folded his hands across his narrow chest.

You horrid little slug , he thought, you’re going to save my life.

When the lights came up in the Water Sirkus, the BUSINESS-GJENT was sitting on a chair. As he opened his zine, SPOOK-GANGER DROOL materialized behind him, softly, subtly, like smoke. So deftly did he materialize that I was sure he was a hologram image, but then the ghoulish Drool snickered and produced a very solid rope. How this was done I do not know, but the audience of Saarlim connoisseurs all whooped and whistled their appreciation.

Spookganger Drool was such a clown. I had not appreciated that in Chemin Rouge, where his character was synonymous with fear. *In Saarlim, he had the audience tittering even before he began to make the noose.

I sat in my seat, finally free from autograph hounds — hot, sweating, in pain, but also … well, she was beside me: my nurse, my partner, the inexplicable, unattainable woman with her little honey-coloured lolos hidden underneath three shirts. What sweet pain it was to sit beside her, to see her delicate profile as she lifted her eyes to the spectacle.

As the Dreadful Drool now looped the rope around the Gjent, as Wally cackled, Jacqui turned to me and smiled. Drool ran round and round until he had the man imprisoned. Using Drool-knots he bound the poor fellow’s upper arms against his chest. He knotted him to the chair, the seat, the back. The Gjent, it seemed, could not care less. He read his zine.

Drool slapped his hands together and slithered to one side of the stage where a toilet bowl suddenly appeared in the darkness. The spook unbuttoned. He peed. He rolled his eyes upwards in relief. Wally roared with laughter. This, surely, was better than the room in Gazette Street with its smell of fusty zines, all of them covered with words describing the great Sirkuses of Voorstand, the death-stalkers, posturers, contortionists, the ventriloquists, laser-dancers.

‘Oh my,’ he said, and wiped his head.

The Gjent in his chair tried to turn the page of his zine, and couldn’t.

Drool’s urine slowed, then surged. Every time he thought he had done, there was more to deliver. He continued this business on and on, until the smallest drip was enough to unleash a paroxysm of laughter from the audience.

When, at last, he was finished, he flushed the toilet. He looked into the bowl with interest. We heard the noise of torrents of water, babble, discord. Then water began to bubble up from the toilet bowl. Drool looked guilty. He put the lid down. He sat on it. He clung to the bowl, but the lid was lifted upwards, and he with it.

While the water gushed forth from beneath the rising lid, Drool hung on, his long protoplasmic arms stretching until they snapped like rubber bands and he was catapulted high into the air and left dangling from the catwalk beneath the lighting rig.

Now a fountain rose from the toilet, bringing with it, from deep inside the bowl, the brawling holographic figures of Bruder Duck and Bruder Dog. Round and round they fought, on top of the geyser, twenty feet above the stage floor, quacking, grunting.

The crowd roared and shouted.

The knotted Business-gjent remained absorbed in the problems of his newspaper. As the water rose in a sheer wall before our eyes it became clear that the stage was walled, not with glass, but with some new Voorstandish invention, something glass-like that did not refract or reflect any of the multitude of spots now focused on the tethered Gjent. The water covered his ankles, then his calves, then his knees.

Bruder Dog and Bruder Duck fell in the water with a splash. *At first they fought, beneath the surface. And then as Bruder Dog began to flail and sink, Bruder Duck began to save him.

Jacqui grabbed my arm. Then her hands were busy clapping. Then she was cheering, standing, and then, as the lighting drew attention to the poor Gjent, she gravely took her seat. The water was up to the Gjent’s neck.

There was a great silence, and the sound of water, one drop dripping like a metronome.

The level rose over the Gjent’s bearded chin, over his tightly clenched mouth. As his eyes stared at us across the surface of the lake, there was some nervous giggling, but for the most part that whole dark space was totally quiet and 2000 people watched the performer subjected to a total immersion which could not but help recall the Waterhouse of ancient Amsterdam.

We Eficans were Ootlanders, but we knew — as all the world knows — that death, the possibility of death, is always on the menu in your entertainment.

We saw the bubbles come out of the Gjent’s mouth. We saw his hands begin to grapple with the Drool’s knots. We saw his eyes widen, as the water now poured in above his head through pipes as big as sewers. Soon even these were submerged and the entire performance area was like a giant aquarium. At the very top of this were chairs where the chorus (Bruder Dog, Bruder Duck, Bruder Mouse, Spookganger Drool, Heidi) sat, looking down into the water.

The Gjent had now been without air for minutes. We could see him panicking. We could see his hands flailing at the knots. We could see the bubbles coming from his mouth and now, as we watched, he opened his mouth in a silent scream and a great rush of air escaped — bubbles floating upwards to the Gods above.

His limbs jerked, his head rose, his hair floated.

He was free.

We roared. He was alive. He streaked upwards towards the air. He jumped out on to the catwalk above the water. He bowed to us. He stood in profile to us, turned and opened his mouth and, in a perfect replica of the De Kok sculpture, made himself a fountain — water poured from his open mouth back into the tank, and then he put out his hand and caught … a small goldfish.