Peter Carey - The Tax Inspector

She walked past the fallen stone wall at Elizabeth Hindmath’s house. The rocks had tumbled out on to the street just as George Takis had said they would. The path was slippery with moss and lichen and Maria stepped very carefully. There was a movement in her womb like a great bubble rising and rolling – but not breaking – and it made her exclaim softly and put her hand on her rising stomach.

Sometimes at night she would lie on her back and watch the baby move around her stomach, watch its ripples, and guess its limbs, and although she would always try to do this fondly, with wonder, she would often end up in tears. She knew her fondness was a fake.

The moon was full and the air was heavy with honeysuckle and jasmine. Someone was playing Country music in a house down the street. There was a smell of oil in the air – at least she thought it was oil – which seemed to come from the container ships at the bottom of the hill.

She did not realize that the Country music was coming from her house until she was right outside it. Then she saw the small red light – the ghetto blaster – in the centre of her own front steps. The hair stood on her neck.

‘Don’t you recognize a tax-payer when you see one?’ a male voice said.

Maria walked straight on.

Every Tax Inspector knows these stories: the mad ‘client’, whose business you have destroyed, who seeks you out and beats you or puts dog shit in your letter box. She kept on walking with her breath held hard in her throat. The cassette player turned off with a heavy thunk.

A woman called: ‘We didn’t think you’d be out so late. Being pregnant.’

Maria stopped a little distance off and stared into the shadow of her own veranda. She could see the axe she had left leaning against the stack of firewood.

‘Are you going to ask us in?’ the woman said. Her voice sounded thin, stretched tight between apology and belligerence.

‘Maybe,’ Maria said, ‘we could all meet for a cup of coffee in the morning.’

There was a light on at number 95, but it was twenty metres away down hill and the lane was so slippery with moss it would be dangerous to run.

‘We’ve got to work tomorrow.’ It was a teenage boy. She could see his hair – shining white as a knife in the night. ‘We’ve got customers to attend to.’

A cowboy boot shifted out of the shadow into the white spill from the street light.

‘Mrs McPherson?’ she asked.

The boy with the blond hair stood and walked down off the concrete steps.

‘Benjamin Catchprice,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘We’ve been waiting two hours.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Woooo,’ said Benny, dancing back, grinning, fanning his hands, ‘language.’

‘You scared me shitless, you little creep,’ Maria said. ‘Who gave you my address? What right do you think you have to come here in the middle of the night?’

‘We’re sorry about that,’ said Cathy McPherson. She was holding a goddam guitar – standing like a giantess blocking the access to the veranda, holding a guitar, wearing a cowgirl suit, her great strong legs apart as if it was her house, not Maria’s. ‘Really, we’re sorry. We really didn’t mean to frighten you. It wasn’t the middle of the night when we got here.’

‘Mrs McPherson,’ said Maria. ‘Don’t you realize how prejudicial it is for you to be here?’

Cathy McPherson stepped down off the step. ‘I’d be obliged,’ she said, ‘if I could use your toilet.’

28

Cathy was in this ridiculous position because she had done what Benny had said. She could not stand being told what to do by anyone, and she was here because Benny told her to be there – little frightened, crying Benny whom she used to take into bed and soothe to sleep – Benny who ground his teeth – Benny who wet his bed – Benny who did so badly at school she had to take him to Special Needs to have his I.Q. tested.

Now the alcohol had worn off and she was following the Tax Inspector into her house holding her guitar. She knew right away this woman had no personal connection with Benny. He had dreamed it. He had manufactured it inside his head.

Benny came behind her carrying his cassette player. He was smiling, not at anything or for anything, but smiling like an evangelist on television. He had been like this already when he had appeared in front of her. That was at ten o’clock and she had had a row with Howie about all the songs he had copyrighted ‘Big Mack’, and she had been sitting up drinking Scotch and Coke by herself because she was upset – about her mother, about the tax audit, about the ownership of songs she had written but now might not own, about the shambles she had made of her life – and Benny crept up the stairs – she had The Judds’ version of ‘Mr Pain’ playing really loud – and gave her such a fright. He just appeared in the kitchen in front of her and spoke. She nearly shat herself.

He said, ‘What are you doing to control your destiny?’

As if he read her mind.

He stood before her in his fancy suit and folded his hands in front of his crotch. The hands were even more amazing than the suit. She could not help staring at them – so white and clean like they had been peeled of history.

His hair shone like polyester in the neon light and when he spoke, it was in a language not his own – his mother’s perhaps (although who could remember after all this time how Sophie spoke?). In any case, it was not the language of a problem child, not someone whose I.Q. you worry about.

He said: ‘I can take you to talk to the Tax Inspector.’

Normally she would have poured him a drink and tried to talk him out of it, whatever the latest ‘it’ was. But she was dazzled, no other word for the experience. She turned off The Judds.

He said: ‘Her name is Takis. There are only three in the phone book and I’ve ruled out the other two. She’s not back yet because I’ve been ringing her every twenty minutes to check.’ He wiped some perspiration from his lip with a handkerchief with a small gold brand-name still stuck in the corner.

She had sipped some more of her Scotch. Howie always said the Coke killed the Scotch but she could taste it. ‘Ben, what’s happened to you?’

‘Getting fired was the best thing ever happened to me,’ he said. She started to say sorry – and she was sorry – it was the worst thing she’d ever had to do – but he held up his hand to stop her. ‘I’ve come to repay the favour,’ he said.

She pushed out a chair for him but he would not sit. He grasped the back of the chair with his hands and rocked it back and forth.

‘You can see I’ve changed?’

‘You could have been your Mum,’ she said.

He nodded his head and smiled at her. His eyes held hers. They were as clear as things washed in river water. ‘We all possess great power,’ he said. Jesus Christ – he gave her goose-bumps.

‘Get your guitar,’ he said. Not ‘please’ or ‘would you mind’, just ‘get your guitar’.

Later she told Howie: ‘It was like your dog stood up and talked to you. If the dog said get your guitar, you would. Just to see what happened next.’ She lied about dog. She did not think dog at all. What she was thinking of was that holy picture where the angel appears to Mary. Only later she said dog.

She sneaked into the bedroom where Howie was asleep, straight up and down on his back – taught himself to do it in a narrow bed. She got down the Gibson. She brought it back into the kitchen and he was trying to unplug the ghetto blaster from over the sink. He had all the power cords tangled – toaster, kettle, blender.

‘Benny, I don’t know this is smart,’ she said.

‘What’s smart? Waiting here so you get busted?’ He pulled the ghetto blaster cord clear of the mess and wound it round his wrist. ‘Spending the rest of your life stuck here paying off the tax bill? You want to stay here till you die?’