by Peter Carey
As the taxi drove him home across the bridge, the river below appeared as black as the Styx. Barges carried their carcinogens up river and neon lights advertised their final formulations against a blackening sky.
Harry Joy, his face ghastly with hives, his suit filthy, his chest bleeding, his back sore, lounged sideways in the back seat, drugged with sweet success. The buildings of Hell, glossy, black-windowed, gleaming with reflected lights, did not seem to him unconquerable. It seemed that a person of imagination and resources might well begin to succeed here, to remain dry, warm, and free from punishment. The old optimism flowed through him, warming him like brandy, and allowed him to feel some sympathy for the poor Captives who crowded the darkening streets, holding newspapers over their bowed heads in pitiful defence against the hail which noisily peppered the roof of the cab.
The rewards of originality have not been wasted on him and if he is, at this stage, unduly cocky, he might as well be allowed to enjoy it. So we will not interfere with the taxi driver, who is prolonging his euphoria by driving him the long way home.
Harry sat on the kitchen chair with the towel around him, red Mercurochrome marking the edges of his bleeding scar. There was a strange quiet when Bettina asked the question again.
'Now,' she said, 'tell me what happened.'
He wanted to tell her, but he dare not repeat the elephant story. He looked upwards. He shut his eyes. He sat in total mental blackness and waited for originality to visit him. A lost blow-fly circled the kitchen table until it settled above the door frame where Joel leaned.
The silence was terrible to him.
No new story would arrive. He sat on his hands and looked down at his feet and, after waiting a minute or two, Bettina and Joel went away.
He heard them talking in the next room, their words hidden in a hiss of television.
Harry was meant to start work at the bank on Monday. Then, on the Wednesday before, his mother won money in the lottery. And now, it seemed, his whole life was to change: he was going to art school instead.
He would rather have stayed in the town and worked in the bank. But he was going to art school tomorrow and he pretended to be pleased. Everyone knew. They shook his hand and were proud of him.
When he came home he found his mother dressed in a long gown, deep blue with splendid embroidery on the back and on the edges of its long wide sleeves. She had put her hair up, that jet black hair which was never to be quite so black again. Her eyes shone with excitement and she pulled up her sleeves, trying to keep them out of the cooking.
'Into the dining room, go on.'
She banished him. He sat alone in the dining room which was the living room, the parlour, the study, the drawing room. He sat in a comer in an old armchair and lit the fire.
He did not want to leave. He wanted to stay here. He loved this little room with its black polished-floor boards, the old floral carpet which lifted in ghostly waves in a high wind, the tiny fireplace with its metal grate which had to be blacked every Sunday, the ancient wireless with its vast round dial lit by a soft amber light. He walked around the table which was now covered with ·a spectacular white starched cloth, resplendent with shining silver knives and forks. Two candles sat in the middle of the table and he lit them.
That night his mother showed him things he had never known, as if she were giving him a dress rehearsal for another life. She cooked food of a type he had never eaten, a mousseline, light and delicate, duckling with whole green peppers. And there was wine, a golden wine in an elegant long-necked bottle.
'Ah,' she said, 'wine.' He was overcome with pride at his mother, yet he never asked her how she knew about such things, just as he never asked her who owned the house, when she was married, where the money came to live on, why his father had gone and when he might come back. And yet, that night before he left, she began to talk and he caught glimpses of other worlds, her wants, her loves, her disappointments. He was thrilled but also embarrassed. She drank the wine with pleasure and her eyes glowed with it. She danced like a butterfly through fields of conversation, fluttering for a second over one memory, barely touching it before she was on her way to the next.
'Ah, Harry,' she said, 'your whole life is in front of you. How I envy you. Do you mind your mother envying you? Of course not.'
She insisted on dancing with him. He was giddy from the wine. They whirled around the room and fell over each other. 'Oh Harry,' she collapsed on to the tattered couch, 'I'm so happy for you, so happy for you.'
But had he ever thanked her for sending him to the art school? Years later he tried to remember. Had he ever thought about what she had given up to send him there? She had pushed him on to the train, almost desperately, as if given a second thought she would have taken the money and travelled the world, visited his father at what ever place he was in then, seen the great galleries of Europe, the Uffizi, the Villa Borghese. Did it ever occur to him that she was the one who wanted to go to art school, that she had given him her dream and he had taken it without realizing what it was?
He had asked her if she’d be lonely.
'Lonely?' she laughed. 'How can I be lonely? All my friends are here.'
Yet it wasn't true. She had no close friends. She had people she helped, others she did favours for. There were those she felt sorry for and those she liked a chat with. As time passed pity would be her dominant emotion as she tried to help those she felt sorry for. She took to religion with a new enthusiasm that he soon found almost embarrassing.
Yet that night there was no talk of God, just giddy dancing and golden wine.
'Throw your glass into the fire.'
He didn't understand.
She showed him.
The glasses crashed in ecstasy. The wine sparkled in the lantern light. Outside the wind moaned in sheer pleasure and the great fir trees swayed under the night sky and great white clouds skudded across the heavens and Orion's belt lost its handle.
She found more glasses, long-stemmed and delicate, hidden in the back of a cupboard. She splashed a little wine into one and threw it.
'There,' she said, 'the end. Finito.'
It felt dangerous and thrilling. He followed her example. 'Finito,' he said.
'Now,' she said, and they toasted with two more glasses. 'Now, for both of us, a new stage.'
He did not understand. He looked at his mother's glowing eyes, her laughing lips and felt nervous, alone in territory he did not recognize.
'Now,' she sipped the wine and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. 'Now, you go to be an artist and I,' she emptied the glass and hurled t into the fire, 'I go to polish floors.'
'Oh no.' He stood up hugged her. 'Oh, no.'
But she did not look unhappy. She was bright, almost feverish. 'Oh yes,' she said, 'Oh Harry I want to. I am happy, happy, happy.'
'You don't want to polish floors.'
'Polish, polish,' she waved her hand. 'Not just polish. I am trying to explain, Harry, this is new stage. I have planned it. Harry, I am going to be good.'
She was crying now but still smiling. Tears sprang to his eyes in sympathy.
'No, no,' she said, 'don't cry. I'm happy. I'm crying because I'm happy. This is my new life. I'm going to be good.'
He did not understand.
'I promised God,' she smiled, 'if I won the lottery.' The wine was drunk. His childhood over. Few things ever happened afterwards to match this moment of tingling promise where Harry and his mother had trembled on the edge of life.
Alex Duval spent his Saturday morning as usual. He was the only person on the floor occupied by Joy, Kerlewis & Day and so allowed himself some laziness in dress. His grey gardening pullover was unravelling at the neck and a bright red shirt shone through the holes in the elbows. As he walked along the corridor to his office he carried two Italian doughnuts (the kind with a big blob of apricot jam hidden in the middle) and triple espresso coffee. Soon he would go down for another coffee and he'd probably (certainly) buy another doughnut or two.
The last of the corridor's neon lights finished its nervous flickering as he entered his office. He pulled a face at the stale aroma of pipe tobacco and placed his coffee and doughnuts on his large clean desk. He took from the top drawer a little L-shaped metal key which he now used to unlock the double-glazed windows. It was raining. He sniffed the air, yawned, and stretched.
Today, as usual, Alex Duval would write his second set of conference reports. A conference report is written in an advertising agency any time the agency and its client decide to take action on anything. It can record a budget allocation, the acceptance of an advertisement, approvals and rejections of media schedules, marketing strategies; all the business of a client and the agency's role in it is documented and then kept for up to seven years. In disputes between clients and their agencies, the conference report is regarded as a binding document.
And every Saturday morning for the last ten years Alex Duval, Account Director, had sat at his desk and written and typed a set of conference reports in which his role, seen by the revolutionary investigators he imagined would one day sit in judgement on him, would be blameless.
He was physically a large man, but there was a softness about him, the look of someone who has just stepped out of a hot bath. He was unnaturally pink, and his face with its pale intelligent eyes still carried, in some marks as subtle as the smell of white camellias, the signs of defeat. Alex Duval was a man of principle who had decided, a long time ago, that men of principle can never win. Yet he hoped and feared he was wrong. He voted for the Communist Party and rewrote his conference reports every Saturday morning. He ate cakes. Now and again he had an affair with a secretary. He no longer expected anything good to happen to him and sincerely hoped that the world would not be destroyed until after his death.
In spite of such pessimism, he derived real pleasure from the doughnut, which was perfectly oily, and the black coffee, which was very strong. He did not rush this second breakfast, but savoured each mouthful of it, and if he was impatient at all it was only to contrast the slightly bitter taste of the coffee with the sweet oiliness of the doughnut.
Before he began work on his conference reports he washed his big soft hands and carried a heavy black IBM electric typewriter from his secretary's desk to his own. Although she didn't know it he could type faster than she could: one hundred and thirty words per minute.
And so he began, his belly sagging over his trouser belt, the natural stoop of his shoulders inclining him towards the black machine, the high intelligent forehead marked with creases of concentration. The hands flew. An observer would never have remarked that this was a man involved with a tedious chore, but rather one in the throes of a sometimes difficult but often exciting creation. For as he wrote these conference reports Alex Duval emitted a strange series of little cries: an ejaculation of triumph, a snort of disgust, an attenuated giggle. He typed quickly, perfectly, in complete command of his mat-erial, using the fixed language of the conference report with consummate ease: Client requested that Agency should prepare such and such. Agency expressed the opinion that such and such. Agency warned client that this practice was unprincipled, that this promise should not be made, that this chemical was carcinogenic, that this product could cause liver damage.
He was not so mad as to not know he was mad. He knew, almost exactly, how mad he was. But he also allowed himself the 1 per cent chance that he was taking a useful precaution, and so his Saturday morning sessions had continued. Later, going down in the lift, he would feel the damp sour shame of a perversion finally practised, a lust satisfied. And in the street, walking amongst other men, be would feel at once self-hatred and a strange sense of superiority.
So when Harry Joy came to find out who were Actors and who were Captives on that Saturday morning, he came down the corridor walking softly on his sandshoes. He had adopted a white shirt and white trousers, and he walked loosely, not at all like someone come to spy. He heard the typing and imagined one of the copywriters. He followed the metallic clatter through the stale weekend air to Alex's office, where, standing at the doorway, he watched the process of creation.
Alex was chuckling. He kept typing with one hand while he reached for the coffee. Harry thought of Winifred Atwell playing 'Black and White Rag'.
Harry had left Lucy sobbing in her bedroom because he had remembered to treat her like an Actor. He could no longer act consistently – treating everyone as his mortal enemy one minute and then, totally forgetting where he was, as an old friend the next.
He hadn't seen Alex for three months and he smiled now, forgetting he had come to spy. He leant against the doorway and watched him work, giggling at his manic energy.
'Christ… Harry.' Alex rocked back and held his heart, dropped his head. 'Oh shit.'
He tried to cover the paper, to stand up, to shake Harry's hand. He was flustered and couldn't pay attention to what he was doing or saying.
'Harry, Harry.' He came and hugged him. Harry smelt the wet armpits around his ears, for Alex was a very tall man. 'Harry, Harry, we've missed you, Harry.' He started to lead Harry out of the office, away from the paper, out into the dull light of the corridor. 'Out here, where I can see you. Harry, you've lost weight. You look wonderful.'
Harry couldn't stop smiling. 'Thank you, Alex, it's good to see you.'
'Harry, Harry.' He put his big hands in his pockets and rocked to and fro on his creased old black shoes. 'The place hasn't been the same. It needs you Harry, you old bastard. Are you back?'
'Almost.'
'Harry, Harry, everyone will be so happy. You wait till you see them smiling. Nothing against Joel, but it's not the same. It isn't fun without you. What we miss, Harry, is your bleeding blind optimism.'
'Come and sit down, Alex.' Harry slipped into Alex's office before he could be stopped. He picked up the conference reports. Alex, flustering in behind him, tried to act as if they were nothing important, told himself to make no move towards them, to draw no attention to them. He was pleased to talk to Harry but he felt like a radio tuned to two stations at once.
'You look so well. You've lost your belly, you old bastard.'
'I've been walking.'
'And swimming. That tan makes you look ten years younger.'
'Sometimes I go to the beach with Lucy,' Harry flicked idly through the conference reports.
'So how is Lucy?'
'Mmm.'
'And Bettina?'
'Fucking hell, Alex, what's all this?'
'Nothing, Harry, just a joke.'
'You told them that saccharin causes cancer? You told them that, Alex?'
'It's a joke, Harry, that's all. I was just having fun.'
Harry sniffed. He could smell Alex's fear. He saw the big slumped sad man with his red shirt showing through his gardening sweater and saw him light one more Low Tar Cigarette. 'This isn't a joke, Alex. You're not doing this for a joke.' His eyes narrowed, wondering what category of torment was contained here. 'Tell me the truth, old mate,' he said, using his genuine affection as bait in the trap.
Alex sat down behind the desk and looked up at him.
'Oh Harry, you know me…' Alex felt as if someone had filleted his soul and thrown it on the desk. It was pale and slippery, a pitiful thing.
Harry was still reading through the conference reports with astonishment.
'Harry, it's not real. I didn't do it.'
'What happens when you send this out? We lose the busi-ness? Is that it?'
'No, no, Harry you don't understand. Here, take this key. Take it. It's the only one. You open that filing cabinet behind you. That's the key to it. Go on.' He waited while Harry did it. 'There are seven years of conference reports with stuff like that. They don't get sent out.'
'But why?'
'I guess I'm crazy.' He tried to smile, the smile of a fat schmuck who thinks he's a fat schmuck.
All Harry could see was his pain. It was almost a visible aura, a pale trembling force that burned around him. 'No,' he said,
'you're not crazy. You're frightened.'
'Harry, Harry, I'd rather you found me sucking cocks.'
'Alex, tell me...'
'How can I tell you, it's so crazy.'
'You've got to tell.'
'I can't damn tell you,' Alex thumped the desk and a tear ran down his shining face. 'I can't damn fucking tell you. It's ridiculous. It's my punishment, Harry, that's all.'
Harry sat down carefully on the edge of the desk 'Pun-ishment for what?' he said.
Alex was really crying now and Harry handed him a handkerchief impatiently.
'Punishment,' Alex said, 'for what we do here.'
'Ah.'
'You'd never understand. You're right. You're the normal one, Harry. I know you're right and I'm wrong, but I'm just crazy. It upsets me. I write… I write these conference reports for when they come to get me… to punish me.'
Harry felt cautious. He didn't move quickly. He accepted his wet handkerchief back and didn't say a thing. He was like man watching a splendid bird perform rare rituals in deepest forest.
Even when he spoke it was softly, and very carefully, as if the jab of a consonant or the scratch of a vowel might break the spell.
'Come on,' he whispered, 'let's go and get a drink'
He walked softly on his white sandshoes and Alex squeaked behind him carrying a box of Kleenex tissues. They went first to Harry's office, where they found ancient layouts stacked all over the desk The refrigerator was missing and two dirty glasses and a quarter of a bottle of campari were gathering dust in the once-generous bar.
'Joel's got the fridge.'
Harry nodded. 'Tell Tina to tidy this up and stock the bar.'
'Joel fired Tina.'
They went to Joel's office and found the refrigerator locked inside a newly built cupboard. It wasn't much of a lock. They broke it with a screwdriver and went back to Alex's office with a bottle of Scotch and a big bucket of ice.
Alex sat down in the chair behind the desk, and Harry lounged in the low guest's armchair. He crossed his legs and put the tumbler of Scotch on the arm of the chair. He looked like a man on holiday. He looked handsome.