Peter Carey - Collected Stories

A strange letter ten years ago but it accurately describes scenes that have since become common in this country. Yesterday I drove in from the airport past shadow factory after shadow factory, large faceless buildings gleaming in the sun, their secrets guarded by ex-policemen with Alsatian dogs.

The shadow factories have huge chimneys that reach far into the sky, chimneys which billow forth smoke of different, brilliant colours. It is said by some of my more cynical friends that the smoke has nothing to do with any manufacturing process and is merely a trick, fake evidence that technological miracles are being performed within the factories. The popular belief is that the smoke sometimes contains the most powerful shadows of all, those that are too large and powerful to be packaged. It is a common sight to see old women standing for hours outside the factories, staring into the smoke.

There are a few who say the smoke is dangerous because of carcinogenic chemicals used in the manufacture of shadows. Others argue that the shadow is a natural product and by its very nature chemically pure. They point to the advantages of the smoke: the beautifully coloured patterns in the clouds which serve as a reminder of the happiness to be obtained from a fully realized shadow. There may be some merit in this last argument, for on cloudy days the skies above our city are a wondrous sight, full of blues and vermilions and brilliant greens which pick out strange patterns and shapes in the clouds.

Others say that the clouds now contain the dreadful beauty of the apocalypse.

2.

The shadows are packaged in large, lavish boxes which are printed with abstract designs in many colours. The Bureau of Statistics reveals that the average householder spends 25 per cent of his income on these expensive goods and that this percentage increases as the income decreases.

There are those who say that the shadows are bad for people, promising an impossible happiness that can never be realized and thus detracting from the very real beauties of nature and life. But there are others who argue that the shadows have always been with us in one form or another and that the packaged shadow is necessary for mental health in an advanced technological society. There is, however, research to indicate that the high suicide rate in advanced countries is connected with the popularity of shadows and that there is a direct statistical correlation between shadow sales and suicide rates. This has been explained by those who hold that the shadows are merely mirrors to the soul and that the man who stares into a shadow box sees only himself, and what beauty he finds there is his own beauty and what despair he experiences is born of the poverty of his spirit.

3.

I visited my mother at Christmas. She lives alone with her dogs in a poor part of town. Knowing her weakness for shadows I brought her several of the more expensive varieties which she retired to examine in the privacy of the shadow room.

She stayed in the room for such a long time that I became worried and knocked on the door. She came out almost immediately. When I saw her face I knew the shadows had not been good ones.

“I’m sorry,” I said, but she kissed me quickly and began to tell me about a neighbour who had won the lottery.

I myself know, only too well, the disappointments of shadow boxes for I also have a weakness in that direction. For me it is something of a guilty secret, something that would not be approved of by my clever friends.

I saw J. in the street. She teaches at the university.

“Ah-hah,” she said knowingly, tapping the bulky parcel I had hidden under my coat. I know she will make capital of this discovery, a little piece of gossip to use at the dinner parties she is so fond of. Yet I suspect that she too has a weakness for shadows. She confessed as much to me some years ago during that strange misunderstanding she still likes to call “Our Affair”. It was she who hinted at the feeling of emptiness, that awful despair that comes when one has failed to grasp the shadow.

4.

My own father left home because of something he had seen in a box of shadows. It wasn’t an expensive box, either, quite the opposite — a little surprise my mother had bought with the money left over from her housekeeping. He opened it after dinner one Friday night and he was gone before I came down to breakfast on the Saturday. He left a note which my mother only showed me very recently. My father was not good with words and had trouble communicating what he had seen: “Words Cannot Express It What I feel Because of The Things I Saw In The Box Of Shadows You Bought Me.”

5.

My own feelings about the shadows are ambivalent, to say the least. For here I have manufactured one more: elusive, unsatisfactory, hinting at greater beauties and more profound mysteries that exist somewhere before the beginning and somewhere after the end.

We are quite content. The meal is finished and we have all washed up the dishes together. It is typical of us that we should all wash up the dishes together, even though it is less convenient than two of us doing it, one washing and one drying. The kitchen is small and we all crowd in, eager that we should do our share. That is so like us, you have no idea. We stick together through thick and thin. After all, that’s what families are for.

We sit around in the lounge room now and don’t say much. Doreen has put on the Perry Como Show but the sound is low and no one is paying much attention to it. All that comes from the TV is a faint electrical hum.

We are all quite well known to each other by our various characteristics, some of which are common to the whole family, others of which are held and treasured by individual members. Jack, for instance, is good at getting information from books. He is often reminded of this. To give one example, he learned about playing golf from a book Doreen gave him. This gave him a head start when he played for the first time.

In small ways like this we know of each other’s talents. It is a great comfort to us.

In all likelihood we are not so different from other families. We like to joke about family jokes and we have a great respect for the police. I mention the police at this stage because they have a difficult job to do and don’t get much thanks for it. The police strike of the thirties brought this fact home to many people for the first time. If any of us were to enter the police force he would lose no respect in our eyes.

Joe doesn’t seem to have any characteristics. I don’t know if we’ve ever actually said that out loud. But when it comes to the time of night when we discuss such things, Joe doesn’t seem to come up. Also, there are no little stories concerning him. Perhaps it is because he is too young at the moment to have characteristics. I would be forced to admit that he does not look too much like us. We all have characteristic long noses; both Mother and Father have them, Roman noses we call them, and also pointed ears, which is why we have all been called Pixie at school or in our work from time to time. Joe has the ears, but not the nose. That is perhaps his one characteristic. Mother often says, Joe doesn’t have the family nose. Joe himself will point this out when various things are discussed.

Actually the reason we all washed up tonight is because Joe raped Harry Bush’s youngest last night during interval at the pictures. Last night was Thursday night. I must admit I was surprised.

Most nights Joe sits at home and picks the scabs on his knees — he’s still at that stage where he has scabs on his knees from falling over all the time. In addition, he was never circumcised but I have never heard Mother or Father discuss this characteristic or the reason for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if this lack of circumcision was the psychological reason for Joe doing over Shirley during the interval. It was out the back, by the rainwater tank. Harry Bush brought her panties round before tea and shoved them in my father’s face. Later on, my father said they were none too clean anyway and it was hard to tell. In happier days, with a different subject, this observation of Father’s would have had all the makings of a famous family joke. He has some good ones which he remembers; we all remember them.