Peter Carey - Theft - A Love Story

He could never know peace in life or even death, never understood what it might be to become a grain of sand, falling whispering with the grace of multitudes, through the fingers of the Lord.

At Bathurst Street my brother claimed I had TRACKED IN SAND to the former Arthur Murray Dance Studio and then he showed SIGNS OF INSTABILITY like our mother, poor Mum, always sweeping, always tidy in case called. IT IS I LORD. Oblivion ooh wop bop da. Butcher's eyes were bright with blame so I plied the broom as he demanded and when he hurled the pot-smoker's camera crashing to the lane below, I knew not to question him for I understood he had been unhinged by his rejections and he could not bear it anymore.

Soon he finished his $8.95 McWilliams Cask and announced we were going out to eat. He was sufficiently cashed-up so might have shouted me a real mixed grill, kidneys, bacon, chops, steak, pork sausage, but he was saving his funds for IMMORTALITY and I knew he was about to put us both through the agony of an OPENING NIGHT and it was with a heavy heart, bless me, that I observed his little blame-filled eyes, watched him sponge his suit, smelled the wet-hop perfume, like a public bar, bless me, it made me think of Bellingen.

Come on, young 'un, said he, and bring your bloody chair.

I wished to refuse but did not have the guts, blumey, God knows what injury I may still cause to him. We drove to the Australian Galleries in Paddington with not a word between us.

The cat had my brother's tongue and would not release it, not even when I farted BETTER OUT THAN IN as our father liked to say, also—FARTING HORSE NEVER TIRES. He was in a grim bright state when we entered the VENUE, all toothpaste and hair oil with a single red capillary showing on his nose. He was the formerly famous Michael Boone and he located the FEATURED ARTIST, and drank three glasses of Tasmanian pinot noir while he praised him bare-faced. This painting a bloody ripper! That one a fucking beauty! Only I could recognise the secret rage, the ROILING SEA between the Butcher's fangs and fur. The recipient of his false witness was a PRETTY BOY with long curling blonde hair and he ignorantly bathed in Butcher's scorn, and I could not bear it, bless me, I was afraid for them both, for myself as well, because if I lost my brother I was lost myself. On account of my previous MISUNDERSTANDING no-one would have me anymore. I attempted to divert my brother but he had gone dangerously sweaty in the pouches beneath his wine-dark eyes so I took my chair from the region of the pinot noir and I sat in the alcove where not even the waiters would look for me. I was so hungry, but even more afraid, so I sat rocking on my chair, back and forth, the human clock, all the blood sloshing squirting circling and I took deep breaths causing it to OXYGENATE and turn a bright, bright crimson, and if you had cut my throat I would have hit the wall, bless me. What a mess I would have made. Such were my thoughts when a woman's voice spoke. She said: No singing God-save-the-queen to men with colds in the head.

This was a QUOTATION from the great book by the terrible painter Norman Lindsay.

Don't you know me?

The speaker was pretty and very slender, what is called a GAMINE with tiny boobies and a silk dress you could have fitted in your pocket with your hanky.

How is your brother?

Bless me, it was Marlene Leibovitz although she looked very different from the time her rented car was bogged. She was now more of the ARTISTIC TYPE with her hair done in the SLEPT-IN STYLE but just the same she was very friendly and she squatted at my side and let me share her plate of snacks. I suppose I must have seemed HALF-WITTED to be so pleased when I knew Butcher had blamed her for stealing the painting and ruining our lives. I told her we had trouble with the police and had been forced to leave the district with nothing but the paintings and what materials would fit into the ute. She lay her hand upon my strong arm and she said her life had also been destroyed by those exact same events. Her husband could not take the strain of the responsibility and from the time of the theft they were ESTRANGED.

Her hair was very particular, corn yellow, never dyed, so she had no need to spend a KING'S RANSOM every month to maintain a lie. Her eyes very blue and liquid. I thought she might be Dutch or even German like the bachelor. She soon found herself a chair and together we had a picnic and waiters in ponytails and black suits leaned down to serve us while we talked about The Magic Pudding and I told her how Butcher had built his former son a tree house in the jacaranda, almost exactly identical to the PUDDING YARD on page sixty-three, she knew it well.

This led to me confiding in her the loss of both boy and pudding yard and all the other misfortunes that had fallen upon the brothers Bones. I told her very frankly what a LOW EBB we were at, how the police had not returned the masterpiece and the galleries would not spare my brother the time of day.

He is a great painter, she said. As no one had expressed this opinion since 1976, I was surprised. She added, He should not suffer that.

Just then I caught sight of Butcher Bones who had borne false witness against her. He was busy sucking up to someone new and he had an awful glaze to him, nodding his big head and listing at FORTY-FIVE DEGREES, so his victim would think himself the most interesting man alive. Who could guess that the round red stickers on the wall were like hot spikes driven beneath my brother's broken fingernails. I stood to move my chair out of his line of sight but of course my movement caught his eye and he turned, a great gleaming drunk, holding out his arms, bellowing.

My God! he cried. The missing Mrs. Leibovitz.

I could have shat myself.

I had been an almost decent man the night Marlene and I had talked in Bellingen. But at the disgusting Stewart Masters show I was snickered, three sheets to the wind, and everything I cast my eyes on seemed false, meretricious, nasty as sequins on a dunny door, but then, there she was—narrowed eyes, swollen lips, and those twin honey-coloured wells made by her clavicle. She smiled and her eyes slitted as she offered me her hand and I thought, You stole that fucking Leibovitz.

And Hugh—Goddamn—he bloody winked at me.

Oh, I thought, fuck you. You think it is all hubba-hubba?

But he was folding up his chair for travel, sending his glass sliding, slamming, shattering against the gallery wall.

Marlene Leibovitz stood to dodge the flying shards.

"Let's go!" My brother kicked the glass beneath a desk. "The Buchanan," he said. "Bo-bo-lula." I abbreviate to spare you, don't be sorry, there is no translation except that when he said "the Buchanan" he meant "the Balkan", a restaurant on Oxford Street where he intended that I entertain Mrs. Leibovitz while he, the great fat carnivore, filled his face with grilled Croatian meats. And you know what? Five minutes later the three of us were in the ute, thundering along Oxford Street, Hugh's chair crashing around the tray behind and the art thief—for that is how I knew her then—-light and silky as a wish beside me. My passengers were both talking, Hugh about the need to pound the flesh of unborn calves with a wooden hammer, over which brutality I clearly heard Marlene Leibovitz tell him she was having trouble with the police. This interesting news cut straight through the pinot noir but then I had to run a red light beside Ormond Street, and by the time we were nosing up to Taylor Square I was beginning to wonder—my fellow drunks will understand—if I had imagined it.

I would have asked her about the police but then I had to park and, as I wound down the windows to permit the junkies easy access, she told me anyway. The Art Police, she claimed, had burgled her apartment. "But you know all this," she said.