Peter Carey - The Fat Man in History aka Exotic Pleasures

The place revealed its secrets fast enough, but Carla, of course, did not divulge hers quite so readily. Frankly, it suited me. I was happy to see what I was shown and never worried about what was hidden away.

I mentioned nothing of Hups or revolution and she, for her part, seemed to have forgotten the matter. My assumption (arrogantly made) was that she would put off her Chance indefinitely. People rarely plunged into the rigours of the Lottery when they were happy with their life. I was delighted with mine, and I assumed she was with hers.

I had never known anyone like her. She sang beautifully and played the cello with what seemed to me to be real accomplishment. She came to the Park and Gardens and beat us all at poker. To see her walk across to our bed, moving with the easy gait of an Islander, filled me with astonishment and wonder.

I couldn’t believe my luck.

She had been born rich but chose to live poor, an idea that was beyond my experience or comprehension. She had read more books in the last year than I had in my life. And when my efforts to hide my ignorance finally gave way in tatters she took to my education with the same enthusiasm she brought to our bed.

Her methods were erratic, to say the least. For each new book she gave me revealed a hundred gaps in my knowledge that would have to be plugged with other books.

I was deluged with the whole artillery of Hup literature: long and difficult works like Gibson’s Class and Genetics , Schumacher’s Comparative Physiognomy , Hale’s Wolf Children .

I didn’t care what they were about. If they had been treatises on the history of Rome or the Fasta economic system I would have read them with as much enthusiasm and probably learnt just as little.

Sitting on the wharf I sang her “Rosie Allan’s Outlaw Friend,” the story of an ill-lettered cattle thief and his love for a young schoolmistress. My body was like an old guitar, fine and mellow with beautiful resonance.

The first star appeared.

“The first star,” I said.

“It’s a planet,” she said.

“What’s the difference?” I asked.

She produced a school book on the known solar system at breakfast the next morning.

“How in the hell do you know so little?” she said, eating the omelette I’d cooked her.

I stared at the extraordinary rings of Saturn, knowing I’d known some of these things long ago. They brought to mind classrooms on summer days, dust, the smell of oranges, lecture theatres full of formally dressed students with eager faces.

“I guess I just forgot,” I said. “Maybe half my memory is walking around in other bodies. And how in the fuck is it that you don’t know how to make a decent omelette?”

“I guess,” she grinned, “that I just forgot.”

She wandered off towards the kitchen with her empty plate but got distracted by an old newspaper she found on the way. She put the plate on the floor and went on to the kitchen where she read the paper, leaning back against the sink.

“You have rich habits,” I accused her.

She looked up, arching her eyebrows questioningly.

“You put things down for other people to pick up.”

She flushed and spent five minutes picking up things and putting them in unexpected places.

She never mastered the business of tidying up and finally I was the one who became housekeeper.

When the landlord arrived one morning to collect the rent she introduced me as “my house-proud lover”. I gave the bastard my street-fighter’s sneer and he swallowed the smirk he was starting to grow on his weak little face.

I was the one who opened the doors to the harbour. I swept the floor, I tidied the books and washed the plates. I threw out the old newspapers and took down the posters for Hup meetings and demonstrations which had long since passed.

She came in from work after my first big clean-up and started pulling books out and throwing them on the floor.

“What in the fuck are you doing?”

“Where did you put them?”

“Put what?”

She pulled down a pile of old pamphlets and threw them on the floor as she looked between each one.

“What?”

“My posters, you bastard. How dare you.”

I was nonplussed. My view of posters was purely practical. It had never occurred to me that they might have any function other than to advertise what they appeared to advertise. When the event was past the poster had no function.

Confused and angry at her behaviour, I retrieved the posters from the bin in the kitchen.

“You creased them.”

“I’m sorry.”

She started putting them up again.

“Why did you take them down? It’s your house now, is it? Would you like to paint the walls, eh? Do you want to change the furniture, too? Is there anything else that isn’t to your liking?”

“Carla,” I said, “I’m very sorry. I took them down because they were out-of-date.”

“Out-of-date,” she snorted. “You mean you think they’re ugly.”

I looked at the poster she was holding, a glorification of crooked forms and ugly faces.

“Well if you want to put it like that, yes, I think they’re fucking ugly.”

She glowered at me, self-righteous and prim. “You only say that because you’re so conditioned that you can only admire looks like mine. How pathetic. That’s why you like me, isn’t it?”

Her face was red, the skin taut with rage.

“Isn’t it?”

I’d thought this damn Hup thing had gone away, but here it was. The stupidity of it. It drove me insane. Her books became weapons in my hands. I threw them at her, hard, in a frenzy.

“Idiot. Dolt. You don’t believe what you say. You’re too young to know anything. You don’t know what these damn people are like,” I poked at the posters, “you’re too young to know anything. You’re a fool. You’re playing with life.” I hurled another book. “Playing with it.”

She was young and nimble with a boxer’s reflexes. She dodged the books easily enough and retaliated viciously, slamming a thick sociology text into the side of my head.

Staggering back to the window I was confronted with the vision of an old man’s face, looking in.

I pulled up the window and transferred my abuse in that direction.

“Who in the fuck are you?”

A very nervous old man stood on a long ladder, teetering nervously above the street.

“I’m a painter.”

“Well piss off.”

He looked down into the street below as I grabbed the top rung of the ladder and gave it a little bit of a shake.

“Who is it?” Carla called.

“It’s a painter.”

“What’s he doing?”

I looked outside. “He’s painting the bloody place orange.”

The painter, seeing me occupied with other matters, started to retreat down the ladder.

“Hey,” I shook the ladder to make him stop.

“It’s only a primer,” he pleaded.

“It doesn’t need any primer,” I yelled, “those bloody boards will last a hundred years.”

“You’re yelling at the wrong person, fellah.” The painter was at the bottom of the ladder now, and all the bolder because of it.

“If you touch that ladder again I’ll have the civil police here.” He backed into the street and shook his finger at me. “They’ll do you, my friend, so just watch it.”

I slammed the window shut and locked it for good measure. “You’ve got to talk to the landlord,” I said, “before they ruin the place.”

“Got to?”

“Please.”

Her face became quiet and secretive. She started picking up books and pamphlets and stacking them against the wall with exaggerated care.

“Please Carla.”

“You tell them,” she shrugged. “I won’t be here.” She fetched the heavy sociology text from beneath the window and frowned over the bookshelves, looking for a place to put it.