Peter Carey - Bliss

He rested on his knees. A little honey-eater came and hung off the acacia. He did up the cuff buttons on the shirt. Perfect. He stood up, slowly screwing up his face, waiting for something to happen to him.

When nothing happened he remembered the wedge and started looking for a piece of rock. He did not wish to be accused of being irresponsible again. Many people thought he was irresponsible. They had long memories. They did not give him enough credit for his fence.

Further along he found a pair of light creamy trousers.

He took off his shorts.

'Excuse me,' he said to no one.

The trousers were too long and a little too big around the waist. He rolled up the cuffs.

These are good quality trousers, he thought. He undid them a little so that he could look at the brand name. He did not know brand names anyway, but he looked. There was none. Of course, he thought, these are tailor-made trousers. What sort of person would discard them? This could be heavy. They would have another meeting down at the Hall and accuse him of being irresponsible. He would deny being stoned. He would talk about the fence but they would not listen to him. Maybe it was some heavy-type criminal come to spy out the dope crop.

'Mooo,' he heard.

The man was almost beside him, a man with a huge mous-tache clutching a broken suitcase to his chest. He was lying next to a fallen log and his face was bruised and his tongue was swollen in his mouth. His clothes were ripped. He had one shoe. He had a tick feeding on his face, just beside his right eye. The tick had been there for some time. It was fat and bloated with blood.

Daze hopped sideways like a magpie and looked at him.

'Unny,' the man moaned, but his good eye was on the silk shirt. 'Unny.'

'Money?' Daze suggested, thinking that the man, in spite of his condition, was trying to sell him the silk shirt.

'Unny.'

'I was just trying it on.'

'Huh,' the man said with effort. 'Huh-unny.'

'You want to buy Honey?'

Neither Paul Bees nor his daughter sold honey here. Only narcs and estate agents came here trying to buy honey. Paul Bees and Honey Barbara travelled around with their bees and their van, taking the bees to the coastal ti-tree in the summer, the ironbark and stringybark in the winter, letting them on groundsel during the autumn. They sold their honey in the markets, visited other communities. Paul had become, because he had travelled for a long time, because they knew him, because he was needed by everyone, like an ambassador, a diplomat who was accepted everywhere not only by the Buddhists at Chen Rhezic, the Horse people at Lower Arm, but also by the Krishnas and the Ananda Marga who guarded their places, they now did at Bog Onion Road, with a barred gate and, sometimes, a lookout. Paul's descendants would be a travelling family and before too long they would reveal themselves as not only beekeepers but magicians, musicians, story-tellers, newsgatherers and peacemakers, never quite belonging to anyone place and treated with both respect and reserve in the places they came to.

'Unny Ba-ba.'

'Honey Barbara?'

'Unny Barba.' But the baleful eye did not leave the silk shirt and, looking down, Daze saw he had left two dirty thumb prints underneath the collar.

'Ah,' he said, 'Honey Barbara. You're a friend of Honey Barbara's.'

He did not have a high opinion of friends of Honey Bar-bara's. He had not forgiven her for Albert, her most famous friend and even though they had got many useful parts from his crashed Peugeot he had also brought the police and the newspapers to Bog Onion Road.

'I'll just take this tick out for you,' he said, 'and then I'll try and carry you down as far as Clive's.'

It took him a while to pack, fitting the sledgehammer and wedges into the broken case, but in the end, after a few false starts, he managed to, carrying both the man and the suitcase, and they made their way back down the ridge with rests every two hundred yards or so.

It was cooler in the·brick house, and the dirt floor they lay him on felt softer than anywhere he had lain for days. They put him on his back and he could see, through his good eye, that the naked man named Clive was too big for his silk shirts. He was barrel-chested and hipless, broader rather than taller. He pulled the shirt on, but his arms filled the sleeves.

'This is a little boy's shirt,' he said. 'It is just a little boy's shirt.' The shirt hung open across his furry chest, hanging like a curtain beside his uncircumcised penis, which looked like a decoration for the window ledge.

Daze was sitting out of Harry's vision. He still wore the shirt and trousers. Clive was trying to look at the back of the shirt with a round shaving mirror. 'Do you think Heather would split this down the back for me,' he said, 'and put a patch down the back, and widen the arms?'

'You better ask him first.'

'He's a spy,' Clive said. 'Anyway, we gave him water. We saved his life.'

'He's a friend of Honey Barbara's.'

'Honey Barbara's got too many friends. Do you think Heather would do that for me? I'll swap her two hours' work.'

'You already owe her a day's work,' Daze said tentatively.

Harry saw Clive lift his head and jut his jaw and let his gapped rabbity teeth show for a moment. 'I pay my debts,' he said.

'I'm going to get Honey Barbara.'

Harry saw that Daze, when he crossed his field of vision, had taken off the tailored trousers. He was wearing the silk shirt hanging over the shorts. 'I'll just wear this,' he said to Harry, 'until I come back. O.K.?'

'Take him with you.'

'I'm not walking down the hill with him. I'll get Honey Barbara and come back.'

Harry's mind was wandering. His throat was parched. He could hardly breathe. Sometimes he felt he had to make himself breathe or his body would forget to do it for him.

Some time later Clive's face, very big, loomed in front of his.

'If you turn out to be a spy,' Clive said, 'I'll hang you up by your left foot on that beam over there.'

Harry could see the beams above his head. They were huge tree trunks.

'And I'll get my brush hook and I'll run a little line down your lovely soft tummy and then I'll open you up and wind your guts out on to a jam jar.'

He smiled at Harry. He pushed his gap-toothed smile very close. He had a square head with a short, bristly hair cut.

'I bet you don't even know what a brush hook is,' he said.

He held up a long-handled tool with a curved blade on the end.

'This is a brush hook,' he said, and then he sat down on the floor and began to sharpen it with a file. While he did this, he talked.

'All sorts of vermin come looking out here,' he said. 'You understand? You know what a vermin is. A vermin is a rat, or a louse, or anything that carries diseases with it. All sorts of vermin, yes,' he nodded his head, 'that's right.'

Harry could hear the file on the brush-hook blade. His head ached. He wanted to vomit.

'I'll use a file on this first and then when I've got it really sharp I'll get a stone, yes, and make it ...'

Harry was frightened that if he vomited he'd choke.

'You ask anyone,' Clive said, 'about my brush hook.'

Harry passed out. When he woke he could hear cooking. He could smell fat frying. The minute his eyes opened Clive was talking again. 'You people think you can just come here. You see that concrete tank. You can't see that concrete tank because you're too weak, but if you could see it you'd know what work is. You look at those beams, mate. That's work. You look at that stone. You know how long it takes to lay that stone, to carry it? and all you buggers sitting in the city, sitting on yours arses laughing, and when you finally realise what's happening you come running along to mummy. Mummy, mummy,' Clive called, piling potato chips on to his plate and sitting on a cushion near Harry's head.