Peter Carey - Bliss

'No use you eating,' he said. 'You'd only chuck it up.'

'You see those bolts there. No, there. You can see them, near the window.' It hurt Harry to even move his eye, but he did not want to upset Clive. He looked at the bolts. He didn't know where he was. He knew it couldn't be Bog Onion Road.

'That's right. See, you can do it if you try. Well that's a machine-gun mounting. That's right ,' he laughed with his mouth full. 'That's right, a machine gun. Yes. And if any of your vermin friends come running up the hill, I'll be here, mate. And when I run out of bullets I’ve got a lovely brush hook. I can take off into the bush and I won't die. You'll die. I won't. You can't even pull your own ticks out.'

'Won't be long now,' Clive said, 'Any day now, next year, the year after, they'll come running up here, but you can't drive in your little motor car, can you?'

'I've got a dam down there,' he said, 'with five million gallons of unpolluted water. Perfect water. I've got fish in it, big fat bass. I won't starve. You'd sit down there and starve because you wouldn't know how to catch them.'

Clive ate his last potato chip with regret and relish.

'You want some water? Don't fucking glutton it.' He snatched the water back. 'That's enough.'

'Years ago,' he said, sitting down on the cushion again and cutting up a large pawpaw, 'when I was on the dole, there was a bloke just like you who used to interrogate me.'

'"Mr Boswell," he'd say, "we can't have this. You've been on our files for five years without a job.'"

Clive jabbed the knife at Harry's nose.

'"Well you tell me," I’d say, "what have you done to get me a job? How much do they pay?" I'd say. "It's your job ," I'd say, "to get me a job, and you are incompetent."

"What do you do out there all day, Mr Boswell?"

'"Well," I’d say, I haven't got a car and I’m just trying to feed myself, but since you people have been harassing me I've been trying to teach myself to read so I can get a job."

'"Very good," he'd say, "very good, Mr Boswell."

'''But,'' I'd say, "I only had a Bible and a friend came over and told me how it ended, in the Apocalypse, and when I heard that, I couldn't see the point."

'I said that,' he told Harry, 'because I thought was a fucking Christian.'

'"What have you done?" they'd say.'

"'What have you offered me?" I'd say.'

'They couldn't handle me, mate. I was on the dole longer than anyone in this district until they kicked us all off. I built this place on the dole.

'I don't need anything. You need everything. I don't smoke. I don't drink. I don't take drugs. I don't eat meat. I have fruit and vegetables. You look at that pawpaw. That pawpaw is fucking nectar. Look at this pumpkin. That's food, mate. Yes,' he said, 'that's right.'

He buried his face in a quarter of pawpaw and didn't emerge until he had only thick skin left in his hand.

'Your shirts won't fit a man,' he said, 'but we'll take them anyway, for our trouble, for saving your life, and when Honey Barbara's daddy goes around with his honey he'll sell them and we'll have some pretty little Krishnas sneaking into town in your lovely suit, looking so straight everyone will think they're narcs like you.'

It was the worst possible introduction to Bog Onion Road, but Harry Joy did not know that. All he knew was that he was going to be sick. He managed to turn his head sideways before he threw up water and bile.

Later he was being carried down a steep track in near darkness. He was on some kind of stretcher. His head was jolted with every step. When they put him down there were sharp rocks digging into his back. He was delirious. He could smell damp, rotting, a smell of berries like sweat, eucalypt, a richer, muskier smell like death itself.

Above him there were giant trees crowding over the narrow track, their upper branches crossing the sky like clenched fingers joined in prayer.

Paul Bees had wanted Harry Joy. Now he could sit in the comer of his hut with his back against the wall and watch him like a treasure, a puzzle, a book, a number of books, expensive books with leather covers and gold embossing, containing information he had never thought to enquire about, as arcane as the social organization of armadillos and the crystalline structure of aluminium.

It is the nature, he thought, of bee-keepers that they will end up hopelessly addicted to stories, gossip, odd bits of information; a thirst that the local markets can never properly satisfy so that, after all these years, he was working over old diggings, being made jubilant by some pitiful spot of colour panned from the worked-over clay, the mullock heaps made by local life.

They had not been able to lift Harry up on to the sleeping platform, and Honey Barbara had been too angry to really try. She did not appreciate this visit from her friend, and it was true, her father reflected, that it did not help her reputation, but, as usual, they would forgive her, even if they would not forget. She had only stayed long enough to make a bed for him on the floor and to bend over his swollen face in the candlelight and look at it for a long quiet moment.

'You wouldn't believe his life,' she said with both disap-proval and awe, and that was as much as Paul managed to gather about his daughter's relationship with the stranger.

It was a small hut, one of the smallest in the community, and he had built it for himself in the rain forest, because he had always wished to live in rain forest, and also (the admission was painful to him) because Crystal at forty-eight still had the disturbing and hurtful habit of adopting new lovers and he thought he would be better away from her for a while. He retreated into the rain forest and built this small hut with a sleeping platform at one end, below which was a small book-enclosed alcove which opened on to a tiny verandah. It was here that he placed Harry Joy, and here that he sat, a scrawny little man with a large black beard who gave the contradictory impression of great frailty (and be called Little Paul) but also not inconsiderable strength so that people felt compelled to remark on it admiringly with such expressions as 'he's a strong little bugger.'

They admired, respected, and pitied Paul Bees, holed up in his rain forest while Crystal lived in the old house up the hill, bathed in bright sunlight, conducting a peculiar affair with a woodcutter from the Ananda Marga who had been seen, at night, slipping through the moonlit bush with his axe still in his hand.

On the other side of this little alcove, now illuminated with a soft yellow kerosene light, was a wood stove, a sink, and some cupboards. You could admire the way he had whittled cedar to make the handle for a drawer and the patient search he must have conducted to find the quandong branch which now made the curved banister of the stair to the sleeping platform.

The stove was alight and the kettle hissed gently. He rose and walked softly on his surprisingly large (huge toes) feet to the sink where he took a pair of scissors and began cutting lemon grass into three-inch lengths. When he had done this he stuffed them into a large brown teapot and poured boiling water over them. He carried the teapot, two cups, and a jar of stringybark honey, into the alcove where Harry Joy watched him from one good eye, the other being reduced to a mongoloid slit by a swelling, the legacy of the bloated tick.

'Bulk tea,' he announced.

'Thank you.' The gratitude in the man's voice was almost embarrassing. He had stopped him making speeches but he could not stop this excess of appreciation.

Harry had heard the things that Paul Bees had said in his defence. They had drifted to him through the ether of his delirium. It had not been a formal meeting at the Hall, no night procession of lanterns and blanket-bundled children, but an impromptu deputation as the story of the hunted terrorist came into Bog Onion Road by radio, spread through the valley and up the ridge. No one had criticized directly, not at first. That was not the way things were done. They talked instead, about American Albert, and in doing so, of course, criticized Honey Barbara for threatening their safety by bringing criminals into their midst.