Peter Carey - The Tax Inspector

He unlocked his desk drawer and removed a magazine. The viewer would have no idea what this religious or scientific person was looking at. It was unimaginable. When Benny had first looked at it, he had felt a numbness, a dizziness, like a new piece of music that he must somehow own or name. It was shiny and thrilling, as if something that had always been a part of him was now being revealed.

It was a women being fucked up the arse. She had short blonde hair. She had a thin waist and a plump arse that was as smooth and round as something in a dream.

Whoever looked in the window would not know this. They would not know how clean he felt, so clean that he could feel the thin, shiny scar-skin on his arm as it brushed his poplin shirt. He smelt of Pears shampoo. He had no hair on his arms, his legs, not even the crack of his arse.

The woman’s legs were bound with woven metal straps. They looked like battery straps from a fifties Holden, but where the terminal points would be, they disappeared into some fabric – it was unclear how they were attached.

The woman was held at the shoulders and arms. She was held at the top of the calves and the ankles. The base was made of moulded fibreglass. It was more or less in the shape of a shallow ‘n’, not a hard thing to make, really easy. You could do it in your back yard, your cellar. The end result was that her arse stuck up in the air and she could not move. She could not fucking move .

You could not see the man’s face, just his torso and cock. There was a pic of him putting Vaseline on his cock. They showed it close and it was good quality printing – you could feel the coolness of grease on the knob.

Benny thought: this is not nothing.

It was now sunny. Steam lay along the borders of Loftus Street. The traffic continued between these hedges of steam, unaware of the lives inside Catchprice Motors.

Benny thought: they could not imagine me.

When he heard a boot scrape on the concrete floor of the Spare Parts bays, he slipped the magazine into the drawer and locked it. He turned in his chair (only his tumescent lips could have betrayed him) and as he turned he saw Jesse.

Jesse was only five foot five inches tall. He was fifteen years old and had a freckled, scrunched-up little face, but he was fast and graceful. He was the wicket-keeper in the Franklin XI. He was Mort’s little mate. He had carrot-coloured, springy straight hair. He got his job because Benny failed his apprenticeship, and he thought – they all thought, Cathy, Howie, Granny Catchprice, the men, the cleaners – they all thought it was because Benny was dumb. They thought they were above him.

Jesse had been fitting new fuel pumps to the recalled Commodores. He had been standing in the pit, soaking himself in petrol. He feinted a light punch to Benny’s shoulder and then tried to grab his nuts with his grease-black hands.

Benny jumped back from the greasy hands as if they were 240 live. He stood in front of the window. He put his legs astride and held his Aloe-Vera’d hands behind his back and looked Jesse in the eye.

Benny was older. Benny’s family were Jesse’s employers. Benny was taller. None of this counted. The first thing Jesse said, he tried to put Benny down.

‘You reckon you’re a salesman, that it?’

Benny smiled. ‘You got no future, Jesse.’

This was new territory for both of them. Jesse blinked three times, quickly, before he spoke. ‘You got fired, not me.’

‘Fired?’ Benny said. ‘Do I look like I am fucking fired?’

It was then he saw Mort coming back up the lane-way from the workshop, swinging his arms. Jesse said something but Benny did not hear him. He folded his arms behind his back and stood right in his father’s path. The heavy aluminium door swung and hit his shoe, but Mort did not even look at him. He walked straight to the bookshelf behind the desk where young Jesse was looking through the dusty spares catalogues for old Fords and Chevrolets. He did not ask Jesse what he was doing there and why the fuck he was not getting the fuel pumps changed. He put his big hand on the apprentice’s shoulder. It fitted round it like a ‘U’ bolt. ‘How’s tricks, titch?’ he said, and stood beside him, right against him, looking at the old Chevrolet catalogue.

‘Stephen Wall done another oil seal,’ Jesse said.

Mort was red and blotchy on his neck. He didn’t seem to hear what Jesse said. When he looked up at Benny his eyes were frightened and angry and his trunk was already twisting towards the door. ‘Who in the fuck do you think you are?’ he said.

Benny looked at his father with his mouth open.

Mort walked out the back door, into the Spare Parts bays.

He came back in a second later.

‘You look like a poof,’ he said and banged out of the office and into the yard.

Benny felt like crying. He wanted to tie his father up and pour water over his face until he said he was sorry. He felt like a snail with its shell taken off. He was pink and slimy and glistening. Even the air hurt him. He felt like dying. It was not just his father. It was everything. He could feel depression come down on him like mould, like bad milk, like the damp twisted dirty sheets in the cellar. He wanted to go to the cellar and lock the door.

‘If anyone’s a poof,’ he said to Jesse, ‘it’s him.’

But Jesse was so dumb. He looked at Benny and grinned. ‘That’ll be the day,’ he said.

‘You’re a fucking baby,’ Benny said.

‘You got mousse on your hair?’

‘No I haven’t.’

Jesse considered this a moment. ‘You look pretty weird, you know that? You looked better before. How do you get it to stand up like that if you don’t use mousse?’

‘Gel.’

‘You’re going to do that every day now? It must take you an hour to get ready to come to work to sell petrol.’

‘Listen, little bubby,’ Benny said, ‘you’re going to remember me, I’m going to be famous and you’re going to remember that all you could do was worry about my fucking hair.’ He knew already he would be sorry he had said that. Jesse would tell the others and they’d fart and hee-haw like about Bozzer and his bullshit story of his father who was meant to be a yuppy with a 7 Series BMW.

But if he had to be sorry, he was fucked anyway. I cannot be what I am . In the corner of his eye he saw something. He turned. It was Maria Takis, walking slowly back to her car. She waved at him. Benny liked her face. He liked her wide, soft mouth particularly. He waved back, smiling.

‘Christ,’ he said, ‘that’s all woman.’

‘That’s all woman,’ Jesse mimicked. ‘You’re a poof, Benny, admit you’re a poof.’

Benny heard himself say: ‘She’s mine.’ He meant it too. He committed himself to it as he said it.

He watched the Tax Inspector getting into her car. He had a very nice feeling about her. He had had a nice feeling about her this morning, the way she spoke, the way she looked at him. He took an Aloe-Vera facelette and wiped his cheeks.

Jesse said: ‘You want to fuck a whale?’

Benny looked at Jesse and saw that he was very young, and very short. He had soft, fair, fluffy hair in a line from his ears down to his chin. Benny felt his power come back. He felt it itch inside his skin.

He said, ‘When you’re grown up you’ll like their bellies like that.’

‘You don’t like girls, Benny.’

‘Their tits get big,’ Benny said. ‘Their nipples too. They like you to drink their milk while you fuck them.’ He was smiling while he spoke. He felt his skin stretch. His face was full of teeth.

Jesse frowned.

Benny thought: you dwarf. He thought: I am going to rise up from the cellar and stand in the fucking sky.

‘She’s from the Tax Department,’ Jesse said. ‘I had to carry all the ledgers and that up to your Granny’s flat for her. She’s going to go through your old man like a dose of salts.’