Peter Carey - The Fat Man in History aka Exotic Pleasures

Her make-up was gone now and she wore a loose white cheesecloth dress. The ice clinked in her gin and tonic and even the small chink of the glass as it touched the metal filigree table sounded cool and luxurious to her ears. She put her blistered feet up on the railing and stroked the bird gently, letting the pleasure saturate her body.

“Mort.”

“Yes.”

“You feel OK now?”

He leant across and put his arm on her shoulder. His face was sunburnt and there was a strange red V mark on his chest. He nodded. “Put the bird inside.”

“In a minute.”

He took his hand back and filled his glass.

Lillian was feeling triumphant. She had a fair idea of the worms that were eating at Mort and she was surprised and a little guilty to discover that she didn’t care excessively. She felt cool and rich and amazingly free. After a few minutes she picked up the bird and put it in front of the bathroom mirror where, she discovered, for all its unearthly qualities, it behaved just like a budgerigar.

She went back to the balcony and stood behind Mort, rubbing his broad back and loosening the tense muscles in his neck.

“Tell me I was terrific,” she said. “Please say I was great.”

Mort hesitated and she felt the muscles under her fingers knot again. “Let’s not talk about it now.”

She smiled just the same, remembering checking into this hotel, Mort dressed in his salesman’s suit, she in her clown’s make-up, the bird quietly hidden in a plastic shopping bag.

“Lillian,” she said, “you were terrific.”

The river was almost black now and, when two birds cut across it towards a certain tree, it was too dark to see the stunning colours by which she might have identified them.

Their days were lined with freeways and paved with concrete. They limped south with a boiling radiator and an un-muffled engine. They worked markets, factory gates and even, on one occasion, a forgotten country school where the children let down their tyres to stop them leaving.

Mort no longer complained about the clown, yet his resentment and embarrassment grew like a cancer inside him and he seldom thought of anything else. He had long since stopped touching the Pleasure Bird and the full force of his animosity was beamed towards its small colourful eyes which seemed to contain a universe of malignant intentions.

“God, Jesus, it likes freeways.” Lillian held the bird in the air, displaying its ruffled feathers, a signal that it was going to shit.

Mort didn’t appear to hear.

“Well stop the car. You’re the one who’s always worried about where it shits.”

Slowly, irritatingly slowly, Mort pulled the car into the white emergency lane and the bird hopped out, shat quickly and effectively, and hopped back in.

“This bird seems intent on spreading shit from one end of Highway 31 to the other.”

Mort pulled back on to the road.

“It’s really crazy for doing it on nice clean roads. Do you notice that, Morty?”

“Why don’t you put it down for a while. You’re getting like a bloody junkie.”

Lilly said nothing. Her clown’s face showed no emotions but those she had painted on it, and in truth she did not allow herself to think anything of Mort’s jealousies. She stroked her index finger slowly down the bird’s sensuous back and the slow waves of pleasure blotted out anything else that might have worried her. Even the police siren, when it sounded outside the window, did not startle her. It reached her distantly, having no more importance than a telephone ringing in someone else’s dream.

She watched the police car park in front of them and watched the policeman walk back towards their car, pink book in his hand. She heard him talk to Mort about the muffler and saw them both walk around the car looking at the tyres. Even when the policeman stood beside her window and spoke to her she did not think that the words were really addressed to her.

“What sort of bird is that?”

It was only when the question was repeated that she managed to drag her mind to the surface and stare blinking into the strangely young face.

“It’s a Pleasure Bird,” she smiled, “here.” And she passed the passive bird into the big white hands.

“Sure does give a lot of pleasure.”

“Sure does.”

The bird was passed back and the pink notebook opened.

“Now,” he said, “how about we start by you telling me where you got this.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s an exotic.”

“No. It’s from New Guinea.”

“Look madam, you’ve chosen the wrong fellow to lay that on. This bird comes from Kennecott 21. I was there two years.”

“Fancy that,” said Lilly, “we were told it was from New Guinea.”

The notebook closed. “I’ll have to take it.”

Lilly was struck by the early rumbles of panic. “You can’t take it. It’s how we earn our living.”

But the policeman was already leaning over into the car, his hands ready to engulf the plump jewel-like body.

Then he was suddenly lurching back from the car window with his hands to one eye. Blood streamed down across his knuckles. The bird was pecking at the fingers which covered the other eye. The noise was terrible. She saw Mort running around the car and he was beside her starting the engine, and the bird, as if nothing had happened, was back sitting on her lap.

“Don’t go,” she said. “Mort. Don’t.”

But Mort was white with panic and as he accelerated on to the highway Lilly turned helplessly to watch as the policeman staggered blindly on to the road where a giant container truck ran over the top of him.

Even as she watched she stroked the bird in her lap so she had the strange experience of seeing a man killed, of feeling guilt, horror and immeasurable pleasure all at once. The floodgates lifted. Seven colours poured into her brain and mixed into a warm sickly brown mud of emotion.

They turned east down a dusty road which led through the rusting gates of neglected farms. Grass grew through the centre of the road and swished silkily beneath the floor. Lillian began to remove her make-up. Mort, pale and shaken, hissed inaudible curses at the dusty windscreen.

Yet their life did not stop, but limped tiredly on through a series of markets and motel rooms and if their dreams were now marred by guilt and echoes, neither mentioned it to the other.

They bought a small radio and listened to the news, but nothing was ever said about the policeman and Lilly was shocked to find herself hoping that his head had been crushed, obliterating the evidence of the attack.

Mort drew away from her more and more, as if the crime had been hers and hers alone. When he spoke, his sentences were as cold and utilitarian as three-inch nails.

He took to calling the bird “the little murderer”. There was something chilling in the way that dreamy childlike face moved its soft lips and said such things as: “Have you fed the little murderer?”

He was filled with anger and resentment and fear which had so many sources he himself didn’t know where the rivers of his pain began, from which wells they drew, from which fissures they seeped.

He watched Lillian perform at the markets, saw the bird shit on every hard surface that came its way, and he watched it narrowly, warily, and on more than one occasion thought he saw the bird watching him. Once, removing the bird from bedroom to bathroom for the night against Lilly’s will, he thought that the bird had burned him.

At the markets he did less and less and now it was Lilly who not only attracted the crowds but also took the money and kept time. He felt useless and hopeless, angry at himself that he was too stiff and unbending to do the things that he should to earn a living, resentful that his wife could do it all without appearing to try, angry that she should accept his withdrawal so readily, angry that she showed no guilt or remorse about a man’s death, angry when she met his silences with her own, angry that he who hated the bird should continue to want the money it brought him.