Peter Carey - Collected Stories

As Mort handed the bird to the next person in the queue, the quiet solemnity of the recipient’s face reminded Lilly of a face in her childhood taking communion in a small country church. He was an Italian, a labourer with a blue singlet and dusty boots and he had only had the bird for thirty seconds when he cradled it in one arm and dragged a bundle of notes from his pockets which he placed on the table in a crumpled heap.

“Tell me when time’s up,” he said, and sat on the trestle table, hunched over the bird, lost in his own private world, impervious to the mutterings of the impatient crowd.

After that they limited the time to three minutes.

They could have worked the market all day but Mort, rather than sharing Lilly’s ever increasing sense of triumph, became more and more upset with her costume.

“Take it off. You don’t need it now.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“Don’t be silly, Mort. It’s part of the act.”

“You look a fool. I can’t stand people laughing at you.”

They hissed at each other until one o’clock when Mort, his face red and sullen, suddenly dumped the bird in Lilly’s lap and walked away.

At two o’clock she closed the stall and limped painfully back to the car. The bird shat once or twice on the way back, but apart from that seemed none the worse for its handling. Mort didn’t seem to have fared so well. He was sitting woodenly inside the boiling car and when she asked him how much he’d taken he simply handed her the money.

She counted two hundred and thirty dollars in notes and didn’t bother with the silver.

5.

The balcony of their room looked across the wide graceful river which was now silvery and cool in the late light. A rowing eight moved with svelte precision through a canopy of willows and two black swans descended from the sky above the distant city and Lilly, watching them, imagined the pleasant coolness of the water on their hot bodies.

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.

6.

Their days were lined with freeways and paved with concrete. They limped south with a boiling radiator and an unmuffled 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.” Lilly 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 onto 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 onto the highway Lilly turned helplessly to watch as the policeman staggered blindly onto 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.