Peter Carey - The Tax Inspector

‘You should develop Sydney like this,’ she said when he came back, kneeling beside her in a sarong and bare feet. She rocked back and forth. ‘I didn’t know that places like this even existed on the earth.’ A moment later she asked: ‘Is the architect famous?’

‘Only with architects. Watch the tea. I’m putting it just here. When you’ve finished it, we can look at the painting.’

He was standing at the back of the rocking-chair and she stood, to be able to talk to him properly.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘there goes the possum family.’

She turned. Along the top of the wall, at the place where the eyelid of roof opened to the sky, she could make out a brush-tailed possum.

‘See,’ he said, ‘the baby is on her back.’

He was standing behind her, with his two hands holding her swollen belly and nuzzling her neck. ‘It’s very beautiful,’ he said.

In another situation the sentimentality of this observation might have made her hostile, but now it actually touched her. She began to do exactly what she had planned she would not do and as she, now, turned and kissed him, she felt not the weight of her pregnancy but the quite overwhelming ache of desire.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you a surprise.’

He had a very beautiful mouth. Up close he smelt of apples. She kissed him hungrily but insistently, hanging on his neck and feeling him take her whole weight in his shoulders and in his arms. She was not willing to be parted, made a small humming sound of pleasure in the back of her throat while mosquitoes drew blood from her shoulder and the back of his hands.

He noticed first. He held up his thumb and forefinger to show her a crumpled wing and bent proboscis, a smear of blood.

‘Normally I light coils,’ he said, ‘but I think they may be too toxic … for this fellow.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said. He made her feel negligent.

‘I have mosquito netting,’ he said. And before she understood what he meant he had led her along the galley-like kitchen and down into a bedroom which was hung with a cobalt blue silk net.

‘Hey, hey,’ she said when she realized his intention. ‘Whoa, Jack, stop now.’

But he was already inside the net. He sat cross-legged, smiling at her.

‘There are no mosquitoes in here.’

‘I’m not going in there,’ she said.

‘Just a cuddle,’ he said.

She laughed. There were mosquitoes in the air around her hair. She could feel them more than hear them.

He grinned. He flicked on a switch at the bed head. A light illuminated the cabbage tree palms in the garden. Then he lit three fat yellow candles above the bed head. Their flames were reflected in the pool immediately outside the bedroom window.

‘Jack, I’m too old for this bachelor pad stuff.’

‘I never bring strangers here,’ he said.

‘I bet,’ she said, but then she thought, what the hell. She got in under the net but now she was there the spell was broken. She had been so happy kissing him but now she was inside the net she was lumpy and graceless. She was too big. There was nowhere to put her feet.

‘Look, Jack,’ she said. ‘Look at me.’ She snapped at the support stockings which had hitherto been hidden under her long dress. ‘Do you really wish to seduce this? You’re a nice man. Why don’t we wait a few months?’

‘You look beautiful.’

‘My back hurts. I can’t even see my feet when I stand up. Even while I’m kissing you I’ve got this thing inside me kicking and nudging me for attention. I can’t concentrate.’

‘We could try. We could just lie here.’

‘I don’t know you.’ She put her arm around him, but she felt the wrong shape to kiss sitting down. ‘You don’t know me. It’s not smart for people to just jump into bed any more.’

‘Is this a discussion about the Unmentionable?’

‘I don’t want to offend you.’

‘You don’t offend me at all. We could play it safe.’

‘Saf er , not actually safe,’ she smiled. While still involved in her monogamous adulterous relationship with Alistair, she had complacently pitied those who must go through this. She had never thought that the tone of the conversation might be quite so tender.

He touched her on the forehead between her eyes and ran his finger down the line of her nose. ‘I’ll make love to you 100 per cent safe.’

She had never imagined you could say these words and still feel tender, but now she was lying on her side and he was lying on his and he had those clear blue Catchprice eyes and such sweet crease marks around his eyes. She touched them. These were what women called ‘crow’s feet’. They were beautiful.

‘Is there 100 per cent?’ she asked.

‘Is this safe?’

‘Mmm?’

‘Does this feel safe?’

‘Jack, don’t.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll keep my word. Is this safe?’

‘Of course.’

She let him undress her and caress her swollen body. God, she thought – this is how people die.

‘Is this beautiful to you?’

‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘You glisten.’

He cradled her stomach in his hands and kissed her back and then he turned her and kissed her stomach, not once but slowly, as if he was following the points on a star map that only he could see.

Maria unbuttoned his shirt.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you’re very beautiful.’ He had a tanned chest covered with tight curled golden hairs. He was already releasing his sarong. She began to kiss him, to kiss his chest, to nuzzle her face among the soft apple-sweet hairs, discovering as she did so a hunger for the scents and textures of male skin.

‘Get the condom,’ she heard herself say.

‘You sure?’

‘Mmm.’

‘I’ve got it.’

‘I’m crazy,’ she said.

It was the second night she had stayed up late with members of the Catchprice family.

45

‘Why would you ruin your life?’ Benny said, smiling, holding the sawn-off shot gun an inch or two above his expensively tailored knees.

Sarkis took down his velvet jacket from the wire coat hanger with arms that trembled and twitched so much he could not fully control them. His legs were not as unreliable, but they hurt more and the pains in the legs were deeper, hotter, more specific – the left ankle would turn out to be gashed like a knife wound.

He looked at the ugly jagged cut across the barrels of the gun. ‘I don’t care about my life,’ he said.

He had thought of all the things he would do to this juvenile delinquent for all the time he was held captive on that humiliating board. He had thought it through the terror of the dark, through the drum-beat of his headache. In just eight hours he had turned into someone no decent person could understand. He was the Vietnamese man who had gone crazy with the meat cleaver. He was the Turk who had thrown petrol over the children in the day care centre. He did not care what he did or what happened to him because of it. He looked at the sawn-off end of the gun. It was cut so badly that there was a sliver of metal bent over like a fish hook.

The pale and pretty Benny took a plastic shopping bag and laid it across his knees so he could rest the oil-slick gun there for a moment. He had pale blue cat’s eyes, as full of odd lights as an opal.

‘You’re my F&I man,’ he said.

‘I’m going to kill you,’ Sarkis said, rubbing his wrists and opening and closing his hands which were still very white and puffy, like things left too long in water. They did not have the strength to squeeze an orange.

‘You’re my F&I man.’

Benny held the shot gun up with the right hand and pulled something out from under the couch with his left. He threw it out towards Sarkis so that it fell half on the wooden planks and half in the iridescent water beneath them – a bright blue collapsible umbrella. ‘You’ll need your suit dry in the morning.’