Peter Carey - Theft - A Love Story

Of course I am only repeating what she told me. I was not there to check the facts. I was in Sydney, in East Ryde, with a scabbykneed son and apples rotting in the summer grass and— anyway—it doesn't matter why anyone did anything only that, by accident—let's say—the Benalla High School dropout came between the orbits of two men, one beautiful and damaged, the other an egotistical monster and, within the confusion of their gravitational pulls, somehow managed to slide upwards and sideways, so although she remained an assistant to an assistant, and continued to live three houses from the corner of Ninth Avenue, she quietly, triumphantly, entered a completely unmapped ocean, and was gobsmacked, like Cortez, or like Keats himself, to see what the conditions of birth and geography had hidden from her, i. e. the true wonder of bloody everything, no less.

Having once become a German for the sake of art, Butcher now wished to convert into a Jap. I watched with interest as he removed the downpipe from Marlene's gutter and replaced it with a length of chain, all so the storm water would flow down along the links AS SEEN IN a so-called masterpiece of Japanese Cinema. Did this mean he would go to Tokyo where no-one knew his name? That'll be the day that I die.

Just the same, I silently observed how everything was now turned oriental without relent, resulting not only in raw fish and parasites inside his bowels but also the FAXES growling through the night, hot paper falling, curling, not inches from my aching head.

Until I heard the fax machine I never understood the expression MILLS OF GOD but as this nightmare roared inside my brain I saw my mother as she embroidered THOUGH THE MILLS OF GOD GRIND SLOWLY, YET THEY GRIND EXCEEDING SMALL; THOUGH WITH PATIENCE HE STANDS WAITING, WITH EXACTNESS GRINDS HE ALL.

Poor Mum, she could not breathe without imagining her end.

After she died Butcher got in an awful rage with Jesus, throwing handicrafts on the Darley Tip, but our mother's life had already been absorbed into our blood, five quarts of memory pumped through our bodies, spewing out across my brother's canvas, forgive him, Lord, a dickhead in your sight.

Butcher and Marlene were in the bedroom with the door shut, her eyes always alight when she looked upon his ugly face his GORMLESS COUNTENANCE. When I inquired of Butcher if she permitted him to put it up her bottom he smacked me across the lughole. I WAS ONLY ASKING. Many mothers with boys at Sydney Grammar are happy to oblige. The autumn rain made it impossible to overhear them talking, even from the garden. The FOUNTAINS OF THE GREAT DEEP were broken up, the WINDOWS OF HEAVEN were opened and the cord of water from the roof was ducking and diving along its ARTISTIC chain and splashing the walls and flooding the actor downstairs who lost the part of KENNY in The Removalists as a result.

Were they leaving me? I could not hear.

One sunny morning we three travelled in contravention of the court order across the Gladesville Bridge, Marlene's arm lay across his shoulder, her fingers playing with the hog's bristles at the base of his thick neck.

This was to do with Japan, that's all I knew.

Out the back of Jean-Paul's house the shade was deep as dirt and in the green shadow of the palms and bougainvillea there were HINDOO GODS with black-and-white checked coverings on their stone particulars. Dead wasps, bless us, in the swimming pool. All light waving, nothing constant.

The collector was wearing a bathing suit to show himself to best advantage.

Will I be left behind?

Marlene explained to the patron that there was a green cast on the Japanese reproduction of I, the Speaker and she was taking PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for its correction.

Jean-Paul had begun by admiring Marlene's legs but now his eyes turned as dead as the grey wood of his own back fence. He would not sign his MONIKER until the colour was corrected.

Then words were spoken HALLELUJAH. I thought, That's it, it's over, thank the Lord. Watching Jean-Paul attempting to scoop the proofs out of his pool I thanked God for my brother's temper.

Alas there was soon a SECOND ATTEMPT at Go-Go Sushi on Kellett Street and even before Jean-Paul arrived I had a very bad feeling because my brother tried to once again prove that I would hate Japan, insisting I eat LIVE sea urchin from its shell a soup like monkey brain or worse.

I sat before the vomitous creature waiting to hear my sentence.

Instead I saw a man, no more weight than a streak of GUANO as the saying is. It was the vandalising policeman my brother had vowed to fold and staple to a hardwood floor.

Marlene clocked Detective Amberstreet, her eyes lowering as she smiled and blushed.

Butcher leaped up and I thought he was going to murder him, but instead he laid his hand on his shoulder like they had been best mates from school. My brother beaming, Detective Amberstreet all creased with smiling like a lizard in the mouth of a dog.

So, the policeman says to Butcher, meanwhile tucking his satchel underneath a chair. So, I hear you and Marlene are going to Japan.

So I learned my fate.

Having shoved his arm inside my painting and pulled it inside out, you would expect Detective Praying Mantis to be afraid, but in spite of his scaredy-cat haircut, his eyes showed no more agitation than might be caused by the sight of something nice to eat. And no, it did not help to have my moron brother smashing his fist into his open palm. Marlene moved away. Hugh followed her. I did not even pause to think of why they should. I was wholly occupied by this little vandal with the creased-up eyes.

After he sat down he constructed an "X" with the chopsticks and then retrieved one in order to wag it in my face.

"Michael," he said.

"That's me."

"Michael." He ducked his head, and used the chopstick to construct a "V."

"Michael, and Marlene."

"Oh, you are a clever boy."

"That's right, Michael," he said, using my first name in a style beloved by the New South Wales police. (Now pull over, Michael. What do we have, Michael? Have you been using drugs, Michael?) "I've got an MA, Michael," he said, "from Griffith University."

"I thought you left the force."

He blinked. "No, mate, you're not going to be that lucky."

"How do you know I'm going to have a show in Tokyo?"

From beneath his chair he produced a cheap canvas satchel, a design I would later recognise as being popular with elderly single visitors to the Museum of Modern Art. From this he conjured up a recent copy of Studio International, an issue not yet available in Sydney.

"You've been overseas?"

He blinked twice rapidly but held my gaze, and I was so concerned with combatting his character, whatever that might be, that I was slow to see the full quarter-page ad he was sliding out towards me: "MICHAEL BOONE," I finally read, "Mitsukoshi, Tokyo. August 17-31."

My mouth, I'm sure, went slack.

"Congratulations, Michael."

I was mute.

"You've gone international, mate. You must be proud."

Well I was. No matter who was saying it or why Beyond description. If you are American you will never understand what it is to be an artist on the edge of the world, to be thirty-six years old and get an ad in Studio International. And, no, it is in no way like being from Lubbock, Texas, or Grand Forks, North Dakota. If you are Australian you are free to argue that this cringing shit had disappeared by 1981, that history does not count, and that, in any case, we were soon to become the centre of the nicking universe, the flavour of the month, the coalition of the willing, etc., but I will tell you, frankly, nothing like this had been conceivable in my lifetime and I did not care there was a dirty green cast across the reproduction—I should have cared, but I am saying that I did not give a fuck and on the facing page there was a late Rothko. Do you understand? I mean—how far this was from the life of reproductions taped to the sleepout wall? From Bacchus Marsh? From the life of a celebrated Sydney painter?