Peter Carey: The Tax Inspector

But it was she who felt the coldness, the cold hurting emptiness. She stretched her arms out towards him. In the yellow smoke-streaked light of the hurricane lamp, Benny Catchprice’s naked skin was the colour of old paper. When her fingers touched him, he flinched, and moved so far down the sofa that the umbilical cord stretched up tight towards him.

‘Please. He’s cold. Give him to me.’

But he was like a man deaf to women, a sorcerer laying spells. He was murmuring to the baby.

‘Give him to me,’ she said. ‘I’ll do what you want.’

He looked up at her and grinned. It was then, as he twisted slightly in his seat, Maria finally saw her baby’s face. She thought: of course . There were her mother’s eyes, bright, dark, curious, undisappointed.

‘My baby.’ She sobbed, just once, something from the stomach. She held out her empty, cold arms towards the little olive-skinned boy.

Her captor turned away and the baby’s bright round face was hidden once again. She could not bear it. She reached out and touched Benny’s forearm. ‘You want to do it to me, do it to me.’

‘Come on,’ he said incredulously.

He pulled away. It hurt her.

‘Please,’ she said. The tug on the cord either triggered or coincided with a contraction. She knew the placenta would be delivered and soon, any minute, there would be nothing to join her to the child.

‘They lose body heat so fast, Benny, please.’ That caught him. He actually looked at her. ‘Give him to me.’ She held out her arms. ‘I’ll find you a really nice place to live. Would you like that? I’ll get you out of here.’

He began to smile, a bully’s smile she thought.

‘Just give him to me, I’ll pay you,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you money.’ She felt close to panic. She must not panic. She must be clear. She tried to think what she might offer him.

‘Two thousand dollars,’ she said.

‘Shush,’ he said. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘Don’t shush me,’ she snapped.

He laughed, and kept on laughing until there were tears in his eyes. She had no idea that he was as near as he had ever been to love. She saw only some pretty, blond-haired, Aussie surfer boy. ‘Oh, shush.’

On the floor beside his foot, next to his shoes, she could see the shot gun. He had placed it on a garbage bag on top of a plank. It was only as she thought how she might edge towards the ugly thing that she realized she still had the rusty iron bar beside her on the couch, had had it there all the time.

‘Shushy shush,’ he said to the baby. ‘Oh shush-shush-shush.’ All her baby’s brain was filled with Benny Catchprice’s face.

Maria lifted the iron bar like a tennis racket above her head. She saw herself do this from a distance, from somewhere among the cobweb rafters. She saw her ringless hands, the rusty bar.

‘Give him to me,’ she said. Her voice, scratchy with fear, was almost unrecognizable.

Benny looked up at her and smiled and shook his head.

How could this be me?

She brought down the bar towards his shoulder blade. She brought it down strong enough to break it, but he ducked. He ducked in under and she got him full across the front of the skull. It was a dull soft sound it made. The force jolted him forward. All she felt was still, be still , and yet when he turned to look at her, nothing seemed different afterwards from before.

I have to hit him again .

Benny held the baby on his left side, against his hip. He did not have the head held properly. He lifted his right hand up to his own head and when he brought it away it was marked with a small red spot of blood. He actually smiled at her.

‘Abortion!’ He shook his head. His eyes wandered for a moment, then regained their focus. ‘You’re such a bullshitter, Maria.’

Maria’s legs were trembling uncontrollably. ‘I’ll kill you,’ she said. She picked up the iron bar high again. Her arms were like jelly.

‘You’re the real thing,’ he said. ‘I knew that when I saw you.’ A dribble of bright blood ran from his hairline down on to his nose. He nodded his head with emphasis. Then slowly, like a boy clowning at a swimming pool, he began to tilt forward. His eyes rolled backwards in his head. He held out the child towards her.

‘Take,’ he said.

As Benny Catchprice fell, the child was passed between them – Maria slid her arms in under the slippery little body and brought it to her, pressing it against her, shuddering. Benny hit the floor. He made a noise like timber falling in a stack. Maria put her hand behind the damp warm head. She could feel lips sucking at her neck. She brought her arms, her bones, her skin, between her baby and her victim.

It was then, as Benny lay amid the planks and bricks with his bare arm half submerged in puddled seepage, she saw his tattooed back for the first time. At first she thought it was a serpent – red, blue, green, scales, something creepy living in a broken bottle or underneath a rock. Then she saw it was not a serpent but an angel, or half an angel – a single wing tattooed on his smooth, boy’s skin – it was long and delicate and it ran from his shoulder to his buttock – an angel wing. It was red, blue, green, luminous, trembling, like a dragon fly, like something smashed against the windscreen of a speeding car.

She took her little boy, warm, squirming, still slippery as a fish, and unfastened her bra, and tucked him in against her skin.

Peter Carey is the author of eleven novels and has twice received the Booker Prize. His other honors include the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Born in Australia, he has lived in New York City for twenty years.

www.petercareybooks.com

BOOKS BY PETER CAREY

PARROT AND OLIVER IN AMERICA

HIS ILLEGAL SELF

THEFT

WRONG ABOUT JAPAN

MY LIFE AS A FAKE

30 DAYS IN SYDNEY: A WILDLY DISTORTED ACCOUNT

TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG

JACK MAGGS

THE UNUSUAL LIFE OF TRISTAN SMITH

THE BIG BAZOOHLEY

THE TAX INSPECTOR

OSCAR AND LUCINDA

BLISS

ILLYWHACKER

THE FAT MAN IN HISTORY

ALSO BY

P

ETER

C

AREY

BLISS

For thirty-nine years Harry Joy has been the quintessential good guy. But one morning Harry has a heart attack on his suburban front lawn, and, for the space of nine minutes, he becomes a dead guy. And although he is resuscitated, he will never be the same. For, as Peter Carey makes abundantly clear in this darkly funny novel, death is sometimes a necessary prelude to real life. Part The Wizard of Oz , part Dante’s Inferno , and part Australian Book of the Dead , Bliss is a triumph of uninhibited storytelling from a writer of extravagant gifts.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-76719-0

HIS ILLEGAL SELF

Seven-year-old Che Selkirk was raised in isolated privilege by his New York grandmother. The son of radical student activists at Harvard in the late sixties, Che has grown up with the hope that one day his parents will come back for him. So when a woman arrives at his front door and whisks him away to the jungles of Queensland, he is confronted with the most important questions of his life: Who is his real mother? Did he know his real father? And if all he suspects is true, what should he do? In this artful tale of a young boy’s journey, His Illegal Self lifts your spirit in the most unexpected way.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-307-27649-0

ILLYWHACKER

In Australian slang, an illywhacker is a country fair con man, an unprincipled seller of fake diamonds and dubious tonics. And Herbert Badgery, the 139-year-old narrator of Peter Carey’s uproarious novel, may be the king of them all. As Carey follows this charming scoundrel across a continent and a century, he creates a crazy quilt of outlandish encounters. Boldly inventive, irresistibly odd, Illywhacker is further proof that Peter Carey is one of the most enchanting writers at work in any hemisphere.