Peter Carey - The Tax Inspector

He went back to the doorway and looked at the rubble. He pulled out a brick, but it was hopeless. There was concrete and steel reinforcing rod twisted in together. When he turned back he saw she had stepped out of the dress, and lifted it up high as if it might get soiled just touching anything that belonged here. She had an industrial strength bra with white straps. He was shocked by how her stomach stretched, by the ragged brown line down her middle, by the size of everything, the muscles in her legs, the redness of her face. She had buckshot wounds in her arms and thighs. She was trying to spread her dress across his couch with one hand, but the dress was too small and would not stay still. She held it out to him.

‘Cut it,’ she said.

‘Fuck you,’ he said.

‘Just do it,’ she screamed. ‘Cut the fucking dress down the side.’

‘Fuck you,’ he said, ‘I’m not your servant.’

‘You want this baby to die,’ she said. ‘You want to kill this baby too.’

She knew he could not stand her saying that. ‘Don’t you say that,’ he said. ‘You don’t know a thing about me. You think I’m some creep because I live down here.’

‘If you’re not a creep, what are you?’

‘Angel,’ he yelled. ‘I told you.’

She stared at him, her eyes wide.

‘I am a fucking angel.’

They were looking at each other, a metre apart. She had the iron bar in her hand, dressed in pale blue knickers and a white bra.

‘Huh-huh-huh.’ She hunkered down. She held the bar up. There was a vein on her forehead like a great blue worm.

‘This baby needs a hospital, and doctors,’ she gasped. ‘If we keep it here it’ll choke on its cord. It’ll be your fault.’

‘Why would I kill a baby? I am an angel.’

‘Sure,’ she said.

‘I changed myself,’ he said. ‘It’s possible.’

‘See,’ she said. She looked him in the eye. ‘Now you’re going to shoot it.’

‘Don’t say that, I’m warning you. Don’t say that.’

‘Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh.’ She held the bar in both hands. She stepped back, leaned against the wall. ‘Huh-huh-huh.’

Water and blood gushed out from between her legs, passed through her blue knickers as if they were not even there.

‘Shit,’ he said.

‘Huh-huh-huh.’

He went to the door again, but it was useless. He dirtied his shirt. Behind him, the Tax Inspector was hollering.

‘Huh-huh-huh.’

Up in the street he thought he could hear sirens, he was not sure.

‘Huh-huh-huh.’

She was backed against the wall, all her pants soaked with blood and water, dripping.

He turned back to the bricks. You could see pale daylight but the stairs were jammed with a mass of masonry and steel. They would have to wait for the emergency rescue squad to free them.

‘I didn’t do this,’ he said. ‘This is not my fault. All it was: I liked you. You never listened to me. I never wanted to do nothing wrong.’

Then she started hollering again. He could not bear it. She was shrieking like he was murdering her.

‘What do I do?’ he said. ‘I’ll help you. Tell me what to do.’

She did not talk. Her eyes were so wide in her head he thought they were going to pop out. Then she calmed down.

‘Cut up my dress. We need a clean surface.’ He had razor blades in the old coke stash. He had gaffer tape on the bench. He sliced open her dress and stuck it to the couch with gaffer tape.

‘Now – your shirt.’

‘No.’

‘We don’t need to cut it.’

‘Forget it.’

‘It’s coming. It’s too soon. It’s coming. Help me down.’

He helped her. He put his arm around her. It was the second time he touched her, ever. She was dead heavy, a sack of spuds. He helped her towards the couch.

‘Oh Jesus,’ she said, ‘oh fuck, oh shit, oh Christ, oh no.’

‘Are you O.K.?’

‘Oh no,’ she screamed. ‘Oh noooo …’

This time he knew she was dying. It was terrible. It was worse than anything he could imagine.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘It’s O.K.’ He took off his coat. He put it under her. It was terrible there, in her private parts. He was frightened to look at the hole. It was like an animal. It was opening. Something was pushing.

‘I won’t hurt you,’ he said. ‘I never meant to hurt you.’

‘Shut up,’ she screamed again. ‘No.’

He could see the actual head, the actual baby’s head. It was black and matted, pushing out from between her legs. He did not know what to do. From the noises that came out of her throat he knew she was going to die. You could see in her face she was going to die. He knelt beside her to stop her rolling off the couch.

She screamed.

He looked. The head was out. Oh Christ. It looked like it would break off, or snap. It turned.

‘Cord.’

He did not know what she meant. He was kneeling on rough bricks on his bare knees. It hurt.

She said, ‘See the cord.’

He could not see anything.

‘The umbilical cord,’ she said, her hands scrabbling down in the bloody, slippery mess between her legs. ‘Christ, check my baby’s neck?’

Then he saw it. There was a white slippery thing, the cord, felt like warm squid. He touched it. It was alive. He pulled it gingerly, frightened he would rip it out or break it. He could feel a life in it, like the life in a fresh caught fish, but warm, hot even, like a piece of rabbit gut. He looped it back over the baby’s head. Then, it was as if he had untied a string – just as the cord went back, the child came out, covered in white cheese, splashed with blood. Its face squashed up like a little boxer’s. It was ugly and alone. Its legs were up to its stomach and its face was screwed up. Then it cried: something so thin, such a metallic wail it cut right through to Benny’s heart.

‘Oh Christ,’ he said.

He took off his cotton shirt. He threw his bloodied suit jacket on the floor and wrapped up the frightened baby in the shirt.

‘Give him to me,’ Maria said. ‘Give me my baby.’

‘Little Benny,’ he whispered to it.

‘Give me my baby.’

She was shouting now, but there had been so much shouting in his life. He knew how not to hear her. Tears were streaming down Benny’s face. He did not know where they were coming from. ‘He’s mine,’ he said.

He closed his heart against the noise. He hunched down over the baby.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s going to hurt you.’

61

Maria felt already that she knew every part of her tormentor intimately: his thin wrists, his lumpy-knuckled fingers, his long, straight-sided, pearl-pink nails, his shiny hair with its iridescent, spiky, platinum points, his peculiar opal eyes, his red lips, real red, too red, like a boy-thief caught with plums.

He sat on the edge of the sofa, by her hip. He had one bare leg up, one out on the floor, not easily, or comfortably, but with his foot arched, like a dancer’s almost, so that it was just the ball of the foot that made contact with the floor, not the floor exactly, but with a house brick balancing on the floor. He hunched his bare torso around the child and talked to it.

‘Give me my baby,’ Maria said again.

‘Benny,’ he said. ‘Little Benny.’

He talked to the child, intently, tenderly, with his pretty red lips making wry knowing smiles which might, in almost any other circumstances, have been charming. He cupped and curved himself so much around her baby that she could barely see him – a crumpled blood-stained shirt, an arm, blue and cheesey, and small perfect fingers clenching. She would do anything to hold him.

She asked him once more: ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Give him to me. He’s getting cold now. He needs me.’