Peter Carey - Collected Stories

Stoned on hope and anxiety he saw a concert where the applause became locusts and the audience became fields of grass and were devoured by the locusts and left barren and desolate. Wind came through the municipal auditorium blowing gritty sand into the faces of the rock’n’roll band as they travelled out into the desert, cruel bandits looking for new audiences, coming at last to a city in the north surrounded by orange groves and date palms where they would be taken in and adopted by the people and taught crafts such as cabinet making and net weaving and some would learn how to pick an orange, at what time, by what method, for the people in that place had no music in their lives and didn’t understand the purpose of the band, seeing them simply as vagabonds to be befriended and taught a purpose in life.

Such were Claude’s dreams of the rock’n’roll band, against whom he was already building defences.

6.

She made up her eyes with charcoal in the manner of Indian men, so they suggested secrets and sorcery.

She pored over newspapers, reading between the lines of local news.

The mayor, she suggested, was a Cocairo.

How was she so sure?

“Look at his cheekbones. Cocairos are like that. That’s how you tell them. The skin stretches tight over their cheekbones. They got a crazy look in their eyes.”

A local murder was obviously centred around heroin.

“How? Why?”

“It’s very weird, you know, the guy wasn’t from here at all and the girl was. I think she lured him into the bush where the other guy killed the first guy. He probably double-crossed him. It was a heroin deal, I bet.”

“How?”

“It’s just very weird, that’s all.” And she couldn’t say any more, retreating simply into her own certainty, unable or unwilling to explain why it was a heroin killing or possibly not believing it anyway, but simply wanting to transmit the incredible life she had lived with Carlos.

“This town is a fucking bore.”

“You don’t have to stay here.”

“I can’t afford to go anywhere else … unless …” she flashed wide sparkling Indian eyes and snapped her fingers, click, click, click, “unless you want to come and get some amphetamines with me, honey.”

He thought of Bonnie and Clyde Barrow taking photographs of themselves in hotel rooms, posing as gangsters in a movie, cigarettes dangling from their mouths, guns pointed on camera.

“You’re a French gangster movie,” he told her.

“You don’t make any sense,” she said. “There’s half a million dollars’ worth of amphetamines. We can get them.”

She was chubby. She cried in her sleep. Her palms sweated continually. He saw her cowering in a corner while Carlos beat her up.

“Where are they?”

“I’ll tell you when we’re on our way.”

“I can’t leave anyway,” he said. “I’ve got a building to finish.”

“You’re a boring old man, Claude, come and get drunk.”

“We got drunk last night.”

“We could try and score some coke.”

“You said you didn’t want any more coke.”

And there she was again, in her underwear, the grey hat tipped forward on her curly blonde head, the revolver dangling in her small damp hand. “Just a sniff, honey. Cocaine is a really amazing drug. It’s a really nice drug.”

“We could always go and see the mayor,” he said.

“Oh, that mayor. Claude, you don’t know anything about what goes on in this town.”

7.

“Are you really serious about these amphetamines?” he asked her.

“It’s a very heavy scene.”

“Do you really know where they are?”

“Do you think everything I tell you is a lie?”

“No, but you do exaggerate.”

She smiled.

“Are they really worth a million dollars?”

“That’s retail,” she grinned.

“How would you sell them?”

“You’d never come with me, would you? We could go to South America together. It’s a really amazing place.”

“No,” he said. “I’m an architect with responsibilities to my clients. And I won’t come with you because I’m a coward.” They were curled up on the couch in front of the fire listening to Mozart. “Why don’t you go and get them yourself? I’ll wait for you here.”

“People there know me. I was there with Carlos. They know the stuff is hidden somewhere but they don’t know where. It’s very heavy. They kill people for money like that.”

“But not respectable middle-class architects,” he said thoughtfully.

For one fleeting, terrible moment she thought his interest might be serious. The thought chilled her. “Oh baby, don’t you ever get mixed up with these people. They don’t care about anyone.” She cradled his head in her lap. “Let’s get stoned and watch TV.”

8.

One day he returned home and found that she had swept the house. A stew was cooking on the stove. There was a bottle of wine open on the table.

“Why did you do that?” he asked her. He was astonished. It seemed out of character.

“I cut the grass, too, some of it.”

“What with?”

“The scythe,” she said simply, “only the postman came and saw my boobs because I got hot and took my shirt off. Do you mind?”

“No, I don’t mind. Did he mind?”

“He’s a really nice man,” she said, “he came in for a drink.”

“He came in for a fuck,” Claude said more sharply than he had expected to.

“You really don’t understand twenty-two-year-old ladies, do you?” she said, frowning at him. “All you understand is cheating on wives and getting divorced.”

As usual in matters of sexual morality, he felt she was right. “Was there any mail?”

“Evelyn’s left Surabaya,” she said. “How’s your shitty building?”

“Shitty. Did you fuck the postman?”

“No, baby. I didn’t fuck the postman.”

The house smelt clean and good and the stew made a slow comforting noise. He filled a glass of wine and looked at Evelyn’s letter without reading it.

Julie stood over the stove, thoughtfully stirring the stew with a wooden spoon.

He was going to ask, what happens when the band arrives?

But he didn’t. Instead he said, “Do you want a joint?”

9.

Julie with her T-shirt off cutting grass with a scythe.

Julie planting five small trees and watering them with a plastic bucket.

Claude buying records by the rock’n’roll band and staring at photographs.

“Is that like Evelyn?”

“Is that a good photograph of Eric?”

“Does Evelyn screw Paul? It looks like it from the photo.”

Julie reading Social Banditry by the river.

Julie in blinding sun on the roof of the house, removing leaves from guttering.

Julie trying to draw pictures of parrots and Claude and hiding them afterwards.

Claude buying detailed maps of a northern city where a million dollars’ worth of amphetamines are hidden.

Julie with sunburn.

Claude with maps.

In the late spring many things were changing and Julie went into town and bought a long white cheesecloth dress with small blue flowers embroidered on it.

“Feel my hands,” she said.

“Yes,” he wondered.

“Dry.”

They lay on clean sheets nowadays but Claude didn’t sleep well, his dreams were twisted in the tangled roads of his threat and his salvation: the rock’n’roll band and a million dollars’ worth of amphetamines.

10.

She saw him as soft and slow and sleepy as a lizard. She would have dressed him in pale mohair sweaters and soft leather slip-ons. She saw him playing svelte snooker at 3.00 a.m., his dark eyes smiling in concentration. She saw him by firelight. By deep dusk light on warm evenings. She was wrapped in blankets with him and by him. She would have done nothing to unwrap the cocoon they had built. He had asked nothing of her, ever, and she would have given him anything.