Peter Carey - The Tax Inspector

‘I never heard of it,’ said Pavlovic.

‘I never heard of it either,’ said Sarkis.

To the taxi-driver she said: ‘Just head south. I’ll direct you,’ but she was stricken with that horrible feeling that sometimes came to her on her night-time walks. It was as if all her past had been paved over and she could not reach it, as if she was a snake whose nest had been blocked while she was out and could only go backwards and forwards in front of the place where the hole had been, finding only cold hard concrete where she had expected life.

19

While Maria sat in the Blue Moon Brasserie, discussing Catchprice Motors, Benny Catchprice was playing Tape 7 of Actualizations and Affirmations . Tape 7 was not to be played unless or until you experienced ‘Blockage’.

‘You are not transformed,’ Tape 7 now said to Benny. ‘So whose fault do you think that is?’

Benny had come back from work feeling powerful and confident and he had undressed to do the mirror exercise and then suddenly – zap – he lost it. As he faced himself in the mirror he felt ‘the fear’. It was hard to stand straight. He put his hand across his navel. His balls went tight in his newly hairless scrotum and he sweated around his arsehole. Five minutes ago he felt fantastic to be so clean and smooth, like a fucking statue. It had been just a blast to look at himself in the mirror and see his power. Then suddenly the thing that made him feel great – how he looked – marble white skin, wide shoulders, slim waist – made him feel like shit.

He turned to Tape 7 and pressed the ‘Play’ button.

‘You paid us $495,’ Tape 7 said, ‘so if you’re cheating, who are you cheating? Can’t be us, we’ve got our money. If you’re cheating, you’re cheating yourself.’

‘Fuck you,’ Benny said and pushed at the cassette player with his foot. There was a grease mark on the foot, dust on his hands as well. That was the old Benny – he drew dirt on to himself like iron filings on to a magnet. Snot, sleep, grease, blackheads, he made neglect so much a part of him that no one, not even Mort Catchprice, wished to touch him and everything he made contact with became tarnished, mildewy, mouldy, ruined in some way. Something that had been shining clear silver in its polythene-wrapped box became ‘used’ the minute Benny touched it. Even his Christmas presents had been unpleasant to receive – rammed shut at the corners and torn and gummed up with glue and sticky tape so they felt like an oil-skinned table on which jam has been spilled and not properly cleaned.

‘You’re so used to cheating,’ the tape said.

‘Shut up.’

‘What story do you tell yourself? Nobody loves you? You’re too stupid? These are just stories you use to cheat yourself.’

‘What do you fucking know?’

‘That’s why you’re the way you are. You have no authenticity. You are unable to separate the bullshit you tell yourself from the truth. You’ve paid your $495 so now you can see – you either do the job properly or you see how you cheat yourself.’

The step he had omitted was no big deal. It was embarrassing, but he would do it if it was important – he had to fold his clothes carefully in separate parcels and then float them down the river. ‘This does not mean flush them down the toilet,’ the tape said. ‘And if you are asking, is it O.K. if I put them in the sea, it is not. It means a river, not the sea, not a lake, not a drain. If you have any doubts as to whether it is a river or not, you can assume you’re trying to cheat yourself out of your life and it is not a river.’

To wrap a shoe in black paper and tie it with gold ribbon seemed like an easy thing to do when you heard it on the tape. Benny swept nails and pins and cake crumbs from the bench with the flat of his hand and wiped the surface with a ‘Fiery Avenger’ T-shirt.

‘You are going to wrap your old clothes to do honour to yourself. If you cannot do honour to your past, how are you going to do honour to your future? Each one of these parcels is you and I want you to dress it like you are dressing it for the funeral of a King or Queen.’

It sounded easy. It sounded inspiring, until you tried it and all of your old self kept soaking out of you, crumpling the paper, tangling the ribbon. When it was done, and wrapped, he saw the parcel had no ‘Integrity’. It was a lumpy shitty thing. This was why the transformation could not be complete.

Slowly he unwrapped the shoes on the table and then he tried to flatten the paper with his hands. The paper would not go flat. It was Benny-ised.

‘Shut up,’ he told the tape. ‘I’m going to fucking iron them.’

He dressed in his suit again. He took his time dressing properly, and when he remembered that he had not cleaned the smudge on his foot, he unlaced his shoes, took off his trousers, rubbed off the smudge with a wet washer, and dressed once more. Then he walked up the stairs.

He knew Granny Catchprice was out walking and he knew that Vish was up there in her apartment, skulking, waiting like some kind of missionary. He had been up there all day long, hiding. If you asked him why he was hiding he would deny it, but Benny knew he was hiding, from Mort, from Benny, from the cars themselves. He had been cooking curry and now he was standing in front of the bride doll cabinet doing stuff in front of the picture of his guru. There was a bowl of yellow food beside the picture and there was a sprig of jasmine in a Vegemite jar. Vish believed the picture could taste the food with its eyes.

Benny said: ‘Whatcher doing?’

Vish turned and saw him.

‘Hi,’ he said. He looked wide awake, alert, without that dumb, blissed-out look he normally got from chanting.

‘You should have come and seen me,’ said Benny, and patted the wings of his platinum hair flat on the side of his head. ‘History is being made round here.’ I look like her .

‘I’m pleased you came,’ Vish said. He was pleased too. He walked towards Benny as if he was going to hug him, but then he stopped, a foot in front of him, grinning. He made no acknowledgement that his brother had undergone a total transformation.

‘You should have come down.’ Benny said. ‘I was expecting you.’

‘I didn’t want to hassle you.’ Vish smiled. It was impossible to know what he was thinking.

‘You shoulda dropped in, you know.’ Benny said. He was standing in front of his brother in a $300 suit and his brother was saying nothing about it. He had never owned a suit before, neither of them had. ‘I’ve been thinking about you all day. About all that stuff we talked about …’

‘Now we can talk,’ Vish nodded to the dining-table and pulled out a chair.

‘I was just hanging out down in the cellar after work,’ Benny said. ‘You should have come down.’

Vish sat down and patted the chair beside him.

‘I’ve changed,’ Benny said. ‘For Chrissakes, look at me.’

Vish looked up and squinted his eyes at Benny. ‘Your appearance?’

‘Oh Vish,’ Benny said, grabbing his brother by his meaty upper arm. ‘Don’t be a pain in the arse. Come on, come and help me iron some stuff. Will you do that? Remember when you used to iron my school shirts? Come down to the cellar and help me iron my shirts.’

‘You want me to come to your cellar?’

Benny sighed.

‘It’s just that you never wanted me to be there before.’

‘There’s stuff I want you to see,’ Benny said, patting his brother softly on the cheek. ‘You’ll never understand if you don’t come.’

20

‘Welcome to the Bunker,’ Benny said.

It was worse than anything Vish could have imagined. The air was as thick as a laundry. The concrete floor was half an inch deep in water. It was criss-crossed with planks supported by broken housebricks. A brown-striped couch stood against one end, its legs on bricks. The bricks were wrapped in green plastic garbage bags. Electric flex was everywhere, wrapped in Glad Wrap and bits of plastic bag with torn ends like rag; it crossed the planks and ran through the water. Two electric radiators stood on a chipped green chest of drawers, facing not into the room but towards the walls where you could see the red glow of two bars reflected in what Vish, at first, thought was wet floral wallpaper. It was not wallpaper. It was handwriting, red, blue, green, black, webs of it, layer on layer. In the corner to the left of the door was a white fibreglass object, like a melted surfboard in the shape of a shallow ‘n’.