Bliss

by Peter Carey

  As he began to split the first length of blood wood he was still naming yellow things to himself, testing the magical power of the Krishnas when it came to yellow. He tried to remember the significance of yellow in Colour Therapy but couldn't remember. He would talk to Crystal about it.

  When he was working, he worked hard, hoisting the sledgehammer and using its own weight to let it drop hard. Splitting posts was more a stop-start type of thing, and not as satisfying as using a scythe which is more rhythmic, and even sharpening a scythe is a pleasure, getting the edge at once sharp but also, just slightly, jagged, so that when the grass is cut it is not so much like a razor slice but a fine rip and the grass falls softly sideways, flop.

  As he worked, his mind wandered from one thing to the next like a rivulet finding its way downhill. He had to kill three billies tonight. He never got used to that, never got used to death no matter what he pretended to Heather. They swapped the goat meat for meat other people had killed. He could not kill a Billy without thinking about his second son, even now, and it was ten years since that had happened. (His tiny hands.) They buried him down in the valley and they sent out Health Inspectors who dug him up again. Now they knew not to register births. They registered nothing. There were eighty-nine children here and no one else in the world knew about them. Two had been buried. If they’d been registered they wouldn't even have been able to do that. The bastards took your own dead from you and made you put them in their holes.

  Shit!

  Both wedges were jammed in the wood. He should have taken the tomahawk to use as a third wedge. He had been too cocky. He turned around looking for a hard piece of rock or a piece of wood he could use instead.

  He wandered down the hill a little and it was then he saw, lying across a prostrate acacia, a creamy silk shirt.

  This is dangerous, he thought.

  He stood and looked at it, not touching it. Then he squatted down and looked around for a while, making small sudden movements with his head. He took his worn cotton shirt off then, and lifted the silk shirt from its prickly resting place.

  He slipped it on. Hasn't been worn; he thought, finding the neck button done up when he already had it over his head. Could be dangerous. He brought his hands round and undid the offending button.

  A perfect fit.

  He stayed squatting. There was someone around dropping silk shirts. The police did not carry silk shirts. The Health Department did not carry silk shirts.

  He rested on his knees. A little honey-eater came and hung off the acacia. He did up the cuff buttons on the shirt. Perfect. He stood up, slowly screwing up his face, waiting for something to happen to him.

  When nothing happened he remembered the wedge and started looking for a piece of rock. He did not wish to be accused of being irresponsible again. Many people thought he was irresponsible. They had long memories. They did not give him enough credit for his fence.

  Further along he found a pair of light creamy trousers.

  He took off his shorts.

  'Excuse me,' he said to no one.

  The trousers were too long and a little too big around the waist. He rolled up the cuffs.

  These are good quality trousers, he thought. He undid them a little so that he could look at the brand name. He did not know brand names anyway, but he looked. There was none. Of course, he thought, these are tailor-made trousers. What sort of person would discard them? This could be heavy. They would have another meeting down at the Hall and accuse him of being irresponsible. He would deny being stoned. He would talk about the fence but they would not listen to him. Maybe it was some heavy-type criminal come to spy out the dope crop.

  'Mooo,' he heard.

  The man was almost beside him, a man with a huge mous-tache clutching a broken suitcase to his chest. He was lying next to a fallen log and his face was bruised and his tongue was swollen in his mouth. His clothes were ripped. He had one shoe. He had a tick feeding on his face, just beside his right eye. The tick had been there for some time. It was fat and bloated with blood.

  Daze hopped sideways like a magpie and looked at him.

  'Unny,' the man moaned, but his good eye was on the silk shirt. 'Unny.'

  'Money?' Daze suggested, thinking that the man, in spite of his condition, was trying to sell him the silk shirt.

  'Unny.'

  'I was just trying it on.'

  'Huh,' the man said with effort. 'Huh-unny.'

  'You want to buy Honey?'

  Neither Paul Bees nor his daughter sold honey here. Only narcs and estate agents came here trying to buy honey. Paul Bees and Honey Barbara travelled around with their bees and their van, taking the bees to the coastal ti-tree in the summer, the ironbark and stringybark in the winter, letting them on groundsel during the autumn. They sold their honey in the markets, visited other communities. Paul had become, because he had travelled for a long time, because they knew him, because he was needed by everyone, like an ambassador, a diplomat who was accepted everywhere not only by the Buddhists at Chen Rhezic, the Horse people at Lower Arm, but also by the Krishnas and the Ananda Marga who guarded their places, they now did at Bog Onion Road, with a barred gate and, sometimes, a lookout. Paul's descendants would be a travelling family and before too long they would reveal themselves as not only beekeepers but magicians, musicians, story-tellers, newsgatherers and peacemakers, never quite belonging to anyone place and treated with both respect and reserve in the places they came to.

  'Unny Ba-ba.'

  'Honey Barbara?'

  'Unny Barba.' But the baleful eye did not leave the silk shirt and, looking down, Daze saw he had left two dirty thumb prints underneath the collar.

  'Ah,' he said, 'Honey Barbara. You're a friend of Honey Barbara's.'

  He did not have a high opinion of friends of Honey Bar-bara's. He had not forgiven her for Albert, her most famous friend and even though they had got many useful parts from his crashed Peugeot he had also brought the police and the newspapers to Bog Onion Road.

  'I'll just take this tick out for you,' he said, 'and then I'll try and carry you down as far as Clive's.'

  It took him a while to pack, fitting the sledgehammer and wedges into the broken case, but in the end, after a few false starts, he managed to, carrying both the man and the suitcase, and they made their way back down the ridge with rests every two hundred yards or so.

  It was cooler in the·brick house, and the dirt floor they lay him on felt softer than anywhere he had lain for days. They put him on his back and he could see, through his good eye, that the naked man named Clive was too big for his silk shirts. He was barrel-chested and hipless, broader rather than taller. He pulled the shirt on, but his arms filled the sleeves.

  'This is a little boy's shirt,' he said. 'It is just a little boy's shirt.' The shirt hung open across his furry chest, hanging like a curtain beside his uncircumcised penis, which looked like a decoration for the window ledge.

  Daze was sitting out of Harry's vision. He still wore the shirt and trousers. Clive was trying to look at the back of the shirt with a round shaving mirror. 'Do you think Heather would split this down the back for me,' he said, 'and put a patch down the back, and widen the arms?'

  'You better ask him first.'

  'He's a spy,' Clive said. 'Anyway, we gave him water. We saved his life.'

  'He's a friend of Honey Barbara's.'

  'Honey Barbara's got too many friends. Do you think Heather would do that for me? I'll swap her two hours' work.'

  'You already owe her a day's work,' Daze said tentatively.

  Harry saw Clive lift his head and jut his jaw and let his gapped rabbity teeth show for a moment. 'I pay my debts,' he said.

  'I'm going to get Honey Barbara.'

  Harry saw that Daze, when he crossed his field of vision, had taken off the tailored trousers. He was wearing the silk shirt hanging over the shorts. 'I'll just wear this,' he said to Harry, 'until I come back. O.K.?'

  'Take him with you.'

  'I'm n
ot walking down the hill with him. I'll get Honey Barbara and come back.'

  Harry's mind was wandering. His throat was parched. He could hardly breathe. Sometimes he felt he had to make himself breathe or his body would forget to do it for him.

  Some time later Clive's face, very big, loomed in front of his.

  'If you turn out to be a spy,' Clive said, 'I'll hang you up by your left foot on that beam over there.'

  Harry could see the beams above his head. They were huge tree trunks.

  'And I'll get my brush hook and I'll run a little line down your lovely soft tummy and then I'll open you up and wind your guts out on to a jam jar.'

  He smiled at Harry. He pushed his gap-toothed smile very close. He had a square head with a short, bristly hair cut.

  'I bet you don't even know what a brush hook is,' he said.

  He held up a long-handled tool with a curved blade on the end.

  'This is a brush hook,' he said, and then he sat down on the floor and began to sharpen it with a file. While he did this, he talked.

  'All sorts of vermin come looking out here,' he said. 'You understand? You know what a vermin is. A vermin is a rat, or a louse, or anything that carries diseases with it. All sorts of vermin, yes,' he nodded his head, 'that's right.'

  Harry could hear the file on the brush-hook blade. His head ached. He wanted to vomit.

  'I'll use a file on this first and then when I've got it really sharp I'll get a stone, yes, and make it ...'

  Harry was frightened that if he vomited he'd choke.

  'You ask anyone,' Clive said, 'about my brush hook.'

  Harry passed out. When he woke he could hear cooking. He could smell fat frying. The minute his eyes opened Clive was talking again. 'You people think you can just come here. You see that concrete tank. You can't see that concrete tank because you're too weak, but if you could see it you'd know what work is. You look at those beams, mate. That's work. You look at that stone. You know how long it takes to lay that stone, to carry it? and all you buggers sitting in the city, sitting on yours arses laughing, and when you finally realise what's happening you come running along to mummy. Mummy, mummy,' Clive called, piling potato chips on to his plate and sitting on a cushion near Harry's head.

  'No use you eating,' he said. 'You'd only chuck it up.'

  'You see those bolts there. No, there. You can see them, near the window.' It hurt Harry to even move his eye, but he did not want to upset Clive. He looked at the bolts. He didn't know where he was. He knew it couldn't be Bog Onion Road.

  'That's right. See, you can do it if you try. Well that's a machine-gun mounting. That's right,' he laughed with his mouth full. 'That's right, a machine gun. Yes. And if any of your vermin friends come running up the hill, I'll be here, mate. And when I run out of bullets I’ve got a lovely brush hook. I can take off into the bush and I won't die. You'll die. I won't. You can't even pull your own ticks out.'

  'Won't be long now,' Clive said, 'Any day now, next year, the year after, they'll come running up here, but you can't drive in your little motor car, can you?'

  'I've got a dam down there,' he said, 'with five million gallons of unpolluted water. Perfect water. I've got fish in it, big fat bass. I won't starve. You'd sit down there and starve because you wouldn't know how to catch them.'

  Clive ate his last potato chip with regret and relish.

  'You want some water? Don't fucking glutton it.' He snatched the water back. 'That's enough.'

  'Years ago,' he said, sitting down on the cushion again and cutting up a large pawpaw, 'when I was on the dole, there was a bloke just like you who used to interrogate me.'

  '"Mr Boswell," he'd say, "we can't have this. You've been on our files for five years without a job.'"

  Clive jabbed the knife at Harry's nose.

  '"Well you tell me," I’d say, "what have you done to get me a job? How much do they pay?" I'd say. "It's your job," I'd say, "to get me a job, and you are incompetent."

  "What do you do out there all day, Mr Boswell?"

  '"Well," I’d say, I haven't got a car and I’m just trying to feed myself, but since you people have been harassing me I've been trying to teach myself to read so I can get a job."

  '"Very good," he'd say, "very good, Mr Boswell."

  '''But,'' I'd say, "I only had a Bible and a friend came over and told me how it ended, in the Apocalypse, and when I heard that, I couldn't see the point."

  'I said that,' he told Harry, 'because I thought was a fucking Christian.'

  '"What have you done?" they'd say.'

  "'What have you offered me?" I'd say.'

  'They couldn't handle me, mate. I was on the dole longer than anyone in this district until they kicked us all off. I built this place on the dole.

  'I don't need anything. You need everything. I don't smoke. I don't drink. I don't take drugs. I don't eat meat. I have fruit and vegetables. You look at that pawpaw. That pawpaw is fucking nectar. Look at this pumpkin. That's food, mate. Yes,' he said, 'that's right.'

  He buried his face in a quarter of pawpaw and didn't emerge until he had only thick skin left in his hand.

  'Your shirts won't fit a man,' he said, 'but we'll take them anyway, for our trouble, for saving your life, and when Honey Barbara's daddy goes around with his honey he'll sell them and we'll have some pretty little Krishnas sneaking into town in your lovely suit, looking so straight everyone will think they're narcs like you.'

  It was the worst possible introduction to Bog Onion Road, but Harry Joy did not know that. All he knew was that he was going to be sick. He managed to turn his head sideways before he threw up water and bile.

  Later he was being carried down a steep track in near darkness. He was on some kind of stretcher. His head was jolted with every step. When they put him down there were sharp rocks digging into his back. He was delirious. He could smell damp, rotting, a smell of berries like sweat, eucalypt, a richer, muskier smell like death itself.

  Above him there were giant trees crowding over the narrow track, their upper branches crossing the sky like clenched fingers joined in prayer.

  Paul Bees had wanted Harry Joy. Now he could sit in the comer of his hut with his back against the wall and watch him like a treasure, a puzzle, a book, a number of books, expensive books with leather covers and gold embossing, containing information he had never thought to enquire about, as arcane as the social organization of armadillos and the crystalline structure of aluminium.

  It is the nature, he thought, of bee-keepers that they will end up hopelessly addicted to stories, gossip, odd bits of information; a thirst that the local markets can never properly satisfy so that, after all these years, he was working over old diggings, being made jubilant by some pitiful spot of colour panned from the worked-over clay, the mullock heaps made by local life.

  They had not been able to lift Harry up on to the sleeping platform, and Honey Barbara had been too angry to really try. She did not appreciate this visit from her friend, and it was true, her father reflected, that it did not help her reputation, but, as usual, they would forgive her, even if they would not forget. She had only stayed long enough to make a bed for him on the floor and to bend over his swollen face in the candlelight and look at it for a long quiet moment.

  'You wouldn't believe his life,' she said with both disap-proval and awe, and that was as much as Paul managed to gather about his daughter's relationship with the stranger.

  It was a small hut, one of the smallest in the community, and he had built it for himself in the rain forest, because he had always wished to live in rain forest, and also (the admission was painful to him) because Crystal at forty-eight still had the disturbing and hurtful habit of adopting new lovers and he thought he would be better away from her for a while. He retreated into the rain forest and built this small hut with a sleeping platform at one end, below which was a small book-enclosed alcove which opened on to a tiny verandah. It was here that he placed Harry Joy, and here that he sat, a scrawny little ma
n with a large black beard who gave the contradictory impression of great frailty (and be called Little Paul) but also not inconsiderable strength so that people felt compelled to remark on it admiringly with such expressions as 'he's a strong little bugger.'

  They admired, respected, and pitied Paul Bees, holed up in his rain forest while Crystal lived in the old house up the hill, bathed in bright sunlight, conducting a peculiar affair with a woodcutter from the Ananda Marga who had been seen, at night, slipping through the moonlit bush with his axe still in his hand.

  On the other side of this little alcove, now illuminated with a soft yellow kerosene light, was a wood stove, a sink, and some cupboards. You could admire the way he had whittled cedar to make the handle for a drawer and the patient search he must have conducted to find the quandong branch which now made the curved banister of the stair to the sleeping platform.

  The stove was alight and the kettle hissed gently. He rose and walked softly on his surprisingly large (huge toes) feet to the sink where he took a pair of scissors and began cutting lemon grass into three-inch lengths. When he had done this he stuffed them into a large brown teapot and poured boiling water over them. He carried the teapot, two cups, and a jar of stringybark honey, into the alcove where Harry Joy watched him from one good eye, the other being reduced to a mongoloid slit by a swelling, the legacy of the bloated tick.

  'Bulk tea,' he announced.

  'Thank you.' The gratitude in the man's voice was almost embarrassing. He had stopped him making speeches but he could not stop this excess of appreciation.

  Harry had heard the things that Paul Bees had said in his defence. They had drifted to him through the ether of his delirium. It had not been a formal meeting at the Hall, no night procession of lanterns and blanket-bundled children, but an impromptu deputation as the story of the hunted terrorist came into Bog Onion Road by radio, spread through the valley and up the ridge. No one had criticized directly, not at first. That was not the way things were done. They talked instead, about American Albert, and in doing so, of course, criticized Honey Barbara for threatening their safety by bringing criminals into their midst.