by Peter Carey
The door to the left led to a galley kitchen with hot-pink Laminex cupboards. There was a flagon of wine sitting on top of a washing machine. There were louvred windows with a view of the car yard. Ahead was the sitting-room. They reached it through a full length glass door with yellowed Venetian blinds. For a moment all Maria could see were rows of dolls in lacy dresses. They were ranked in spotlit shelves along one end of the room.
‘Who is it?’ Granny Catchprice asked from a position mid-way between Maria and the dolls.
‘My name is Maria Takis. I’m from the Taxation Office.’
‘And you’re going to have a baby,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘How wonderful.’
Maria could see her now. She was at least eighty years old. She was frail and petite. She had chemical white hair pulled back tightly from a broad forehead which was mottled brown. Her eyes were watery, perhaps from distress, but perhaps they were watery anyway. She had a small but very determined jaw, a wide mouth and very white, bright (false) teeth which gave her face the liveliness her eyes could not. But it was not just the teeth – it was the way she leaned, strained forward, the degree of simple attention she brought to the visitor, and in this her white, bright teeth were merely the leading edge, the clear indicator of the degree of her interest. She did not look in the least senile. She was flat-chested and neatly dressed in a paisley blouse with a large opal pendant clasped to the high neck. It was impossible to believe she had ever given birth to the woman in the cowgirl suit.
There was a very blond young man in a slightly higher chair beside her. Maria held out her hand, imagining that this was her accountant. This seemed to confuse him – Australian men did not normally shake hands with women – but he took what was offered him.
‘Dr Taylor will give you his chair,’ said Mrs Catchprice.
Not the accountant. The doctor. He looked at his watch and sighed, but he did give up his chair and Maria took it more gratefully than she might have imagined.
Mrs Catchprice put her hand on Maria’s forearm. ‘I’d never have a man for a doctor,’ she said. ‘Unless there was no choice, which is often the case.’
‘I was hoping your accountant would be here.’
‘Let me ask you this,’ Granny Catchprice said. ‘Do I look sick?’
Cathy McPherson groaned. A young male laughed softly from somewhere in the deep shadows beside the bride dolls.
‘No,’ said Maria, ‘but I’m not a doctor.’
‘What are you?’ said Mrs Catchprice.
‘I’m with the Taxation Office. We have an appointment today at ten.’ Maria passed Mrs Catchprice her I.D. Mrs Catchprice looked at it carefully and then gave it back.
‘Well that’s an interesting job. You must be very highly qualified.’
‘I have a degree.’
‘In what?’ Mrs Catchprice leaned forward. ‘You have a lovely face. What is your name again?’
‘Maria Takis.’
‘Italian?’
‘My mother and father came from Greece.’
‘And slaved their fingers to the bone, I bet.’
‘Mrs Takis,’ the doctor said. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I was conducting an examination.’
‘Oh,’ said Mrs Catchprice, ‘you can go now, Doctor.’ She patted Maria’s hand. ‘We women stick together. Most of us,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘Not all of us.’
Cathy McPherson took two fast steps towards her mother with her hand raised as if to slap her.
‘See!’ said Mrs Catchprice.
Maria saw: Cathy McPherson, her hand arrested in mid-air, her face red and her eyes far too small to hold such a load of guilt and self-righteousness.
‘See,’ said Mrs Catchprice. She turned to Maria. ‘My housekeeping has deteriorated, so they want to commit me. Not Jack – the others. If Jack knew he’d be here to stop them.’
‘No one’s committing you,’ Cathy McPherson said.
‘That’s right,’ Mrs Catchprice said. ‘You can’t. You thought you could, but you can’t. They can’t do it with one doctor,’ she patted Maria’s wrist. ‘They need two doctors. I am correct, am I not? But you don’t know – why would you? You’re from Taxation.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well you can’t see me if I’m committed.’ Mrs Catchprice folded her fine-boned, liver-spotted hands in her lap and smiled around the room. ‘Q.E.D.,’ she said.
‘The situation,’ said Dr Taylor, with the blunt blond certainties that come from being born ‘a real aussie’ in Dee Why, New South Wales. ‘The situation …’ He wrote two more words on the form and underlined a third.
‘Put a magazine under that,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘I don’t want to read my death warrant gouged into the cedar table.’
A Hare Krishna emerged from the gloom with some newspaper which he slid under the doctor’s papers.
‘The situation,’ said the doctor, ‘is that you are incapable of looking after yourself.’
‘This is my home,’ said Mrs Catchprice, and began to cry. She clung on to Maria’s arm. ‘I own this business.’
Cathy sighed loudly, ‘No you don’t, Frieda,’ she said. ‘You are a shareholder just like me.’
‘I will not be locked up,’ said Mrs Catchprice. She dug her hands into Maria’s arm and looked her in the face.
Maria patted the old woman’s shoulder. She had joined the Taxation Office for bigger, grander, truer things than this. She knew already what she would find if she audited this business: little bits of crookedness, amateurish, easily found. The unpaid tax and the fines would then bankrupt the business.
The kindest thing she could do for this old woman would be to let her be committed. Two doctors attesting to the informant’s senility might be enough to persuade Sally Ho to stop this investigation. Sally could then use her ASO 7 status to find something equally humiliating for Maria to do, and this particular business could be left to limp along and support this old woman in her old age.
But Mrs Catchprice was digging her (very sharp) nails into Maria’s forearm and her face was folding in on itself, and her shoulders were rounding, and an unbearable sound was emerging from her lips.
‘Oh don’t,’ Maria whispered to the old woman. ‘Oh don’t, please, don’t.’
The Hare Krishna knelt on Mrs Catchprice’s other side. He had great thick arms. He smelt of carrots and patchouli oil.
‘What will happen to you when you’re too old to be productive?’ he asked the doctor. His voice was high and breathless, trembling with emotion.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Cathy McPherson said. ‘For Christ’s sake, just keep out of this, Johnny.’
‘Christ?’ the boy said. ‘Would Christ want this?’
Cathy McPherson groaned. She closed her eyes and patted the air with the palms of her hands. ‘I can’t handle this …’
‘Krishna wouldn’t want this.’
‘Johnny, please, this is very hard for me.’
‘In the Vedic age the old people were the most respected.’
‘Fuck you.’ Cathy McPherson slapped the Hare Krishna across his naked head. The Hare Krishna did not move except to squeeze shut his eyes.
‘Stop it,’ said Maria. She struggled to her feet.
‘I think you should stop it,’ the doctor said, pointing a pen at Maria. ‘I think you should just make your appointment for another time, Mrs …’
‘Ms,’ Maria told the doctor.
The doctor rolled his eyes and went back to his form.
‘Ms Takis,’ said Maria, who had determined that Mrs Catchprice would not be committed, not today at least. ‘Perhaps you did not hear where I am from.’
‘You are a little Hitler from the Tax Department.’
‘Then you are a Jew,’ said Maria.
‘I am a what?’ said the doctor, rising from his seat, so affronted that Maria burst out laughing. The Hare Krishna had begun chanting softly.
‘Oh dear,’ she laughed. ‘Oh dear, I really have offended you.’
The
doctor’s face was now burning. Freckles showed in the red.
‘What exactly do you mean by that?’
‘I meant no offence to Jews.’
‘But I am not a Jew, obviously.’
‘Oh, obviously,’ she smiled.
‘Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna.’
‘Shush darling,’ said Mrs Catchprice, who was straining towards the doctor so that she might miss none of this.
‘I meant that if I were a doctor with a good practice I would be very careful of attracting the attention of the Taxation Officer.’
‘Hell and Tommy,’ exclaimed Mrs Catchprice and blew her nose loudly.
‘I have an accountant.’
Mrs Catchprice snorted.
‘I bet you do,’ said Maria. ‘Do you know how many accountants were investigated by the Taxation Office last year?’
‘Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna.’
‘I’ll report you for this,’ said Cathy McPherson to Maria Takis.
‘And what will you “report” me for?’
‘For interfering in our family, for threatening our doctor.’
‘Mrs McPherson …’
‘Ms,’ hissed Cathy McPherson.
Maria shrugged. ‘Report me,’ she said. If Sally Ho ever heard what Maria had just done, she would be not just reprimanded – she would be drummed out. ‘They’ll be pleased to talk to you, believe me.’
The doctor was packing his bag. He slowly put away his papers and clipped his case shut.
‘I’ll phone you later, Mrs McPherson.’
‘Would you like one of my dolls?’ Mrs Catchprice asked Maria. ‘Choose any one you like.’
‘No, no,’ Maria said. ‘I couldn’t break up the collection …’
‘Jonathon,’ said Mrs Catchprice imperiously, ‘Jonathon, fetch this young lady a doll.’
‘Could I have a word with you?’ Cathy McPherson said.
‘Of course,’ said Maria, but Mrs Catchprice’s nails were suddenly digging into her arm again.
Cathy McPherson obviously wished to talk to her away from her mother, and Maria would have liked to have complied with her wishes but Mrs Catchprice’s nails made it impossible.
Maria did not feel comfortable with what she had just done. She did not think it right that she should interfere in another family’s life. She had been a bully, had misused her power. The child in her belly was made with a man whose great and simple vision it was that tax should be an agent for equity and care, and if this man was imperfect in many respects, even if he was a shit, that was not the issue, merely a source of pain.
Cathy McPherson stood before her with her damaged cream complexion and her cowboy boots. Maria would have liked to speak to her, but Mrs Catchprice had her by the arm.
‘Not here,’ said Cathy McPherson.
Mrs Catchprice’s nails released their pressure. Jonathon had placed a Japanese doll on her lap.
‘It’s a doll bride,’ said Mrs Catchprice, ‘Bernie Phillips brought it back from Japan. Do you know Bernie Phillips?’
‘This is my mother,’ said Cathy McPherson, her eyes welling up with tears. ‘Do you have the time to look after her? Are you going to come back and wash her sheets and cook her meals?’
‘No one needs to look after me,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘You are the one who needs looking after, Cathleen, and you’ve never been any different.’
‘Mother, I am forty-five years old. The cars I sell pay for everything you spend.’
‘I don’t eat any more,’ Mrs Catchprice said to Maria. ‘I just pick at things. I like party pies. Do you like party pies?’
‘I’ve got a whole band about to walk out on me and steal my name because I’m trying to care for you,’ Cathy said. ‘You want me to go on the road? You really want me to leave you to starve?’
‘Bernie Phillips brought it back from Japan,’ said Mrs Catchprice, placing the doll in Maria’s hand. ‘Now isn’t that something.’
‘Fuck you,’ screamed Cathy McPherson. ‘I hope you die.’
There was silence in the room for a moment. The noise came from outside – the rain on the tin roof, Cathy McPherson running down the fire escape in her white cowboy boots.
6
When she was twenty, after she had run away from both her marriage and her mother, Maria Takis went back to the island of Letkos to the house she was born in and stayed for six weeks with her mother’s uncle, Petros, a stern-looking old man who bicycled ten miles along the dirt road to Agios Constantinos for no other reason than to buy his great-niece an expensive tin of Nescafe which he believed would please her more than the gritty little thimblefuls of metries kafe he made on his single gas burner.
Petros was the worldly one. He had worked on ships to New York and Shanghai, Cape Town and Rio and to have questioned or refused the Nescafé would have been somehow to undercut who he was. Maria had not come all this way to make her life fit the expectations of others, but just the same she could no more tell him she hated Nescafe than she could confess that she was already married and separated.
Instead she said, ‘It is too hot today,’ and held the handles of his bicycle as if this might prevent him buying it.
‘It is always hot,’ he said. He had to wrench the bicycle away from her and his dark eyebrows pressed down on eyes that suddenly revealed a glittering temper.
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘It is hotter than it used to be.’
That made him laugh. He mounted his bicycle and rattled down the chalky road towards the square still laughing out loud and when her parents’ friends and relations came to meet her he would tell them, ‘When Maria lived here the summers used to be cooler.’
Everyone in Letkos found this very funny and Maria found them very irritating.
‘I didn’t remember the heat,’ Maria said, too many times. ‘Only the air. We left in the autumn and arrived in Sydney in the summer.’ She told them about how hot it had been walking the streets of Newtown looking for work with her mother – like hell, like a heat so hot and poisonous you could not breathe – but she could see their eyes glaze over as they stopped listening to her. It was not their way of thinking about Australia and they did not want to hear. Australians were all rich, all drank Nescafe. That was why Nikkos refused to apologize for the state of her parents’ house. He was meant to look after it but he had stolen the furniture and let the goats eat the pomegranate tree and he could not see that this would matter to Maria or her family. But she had grown up mourning for this beautiful little house which Nikkos had filled with goat shit. It was the place her mother meant when she said, ‘Let’s go home,’ whispering to her husband in bed in a shared house in Sydney where you could hear the people in the next room doing everything.
On the ground floor of the house in Letkos her mother had cooked preserves, fried eggplant, keftethes – the room was always sweet with spices and oil. In the house which Nikkos had wrecked they kept almonds and walnuts and dry rustling bundles of beans. Maria had sat on the wooden doorstep in a great parallelogram of sunshine, eating pomegranate from the tree in the garden.
The first house in Sydney was a painful contrast. They rented a room from a friend of an uncle in Agios Constantinos. His name was Dimitri Papandreou. He smelt of sweat and old rags and was stingy. He used newspaper instead of toilet paper. He turned off the hot water when he left the house each morning. He had a secret tap no one else could find, not even Helen, who was smaller than Maria, and who was sent climbing under the floor boards to search for it. Dimitri Papandreou’s wife worked at Glo-weave. The family therefore expected Maria’s mother to look after all of the Papandreous. Dimitri Papandreou would cook lentils or beans and keep them in an aluminium pot in the fridge for weeks. It was his way of criticizing Maria’s mother.
‘Let’s go home,’ Maria’s mother said whenever she imagined they were alone, but she never had a chance – fifteen men from the village had come to Australia and they were all working on the production line at the British Motor Corporation in Zetlan
d. They were like men in a team.
Helen would ask their father if they could go home, but Maria was less principled. She sat on his lap and he stroked her hair.
‘O Pateras son ine trellos,’ (‘Your father is crazy’) her mother would say as she and Maria and Helen looked for work in the merciless heat (so endlessly hot, inescapably hot) of the Newtown streets. She had no English and Maria would walk with her to interpret and to help push Helen’s stroller.
‘What does that sign say?’
‘Just a room to let.’
‘It looks like a factory.’
‘No, Mama.’
‘It’s a factory,’ she said half-heartedly. ‘No, Helen, no, no wee-wee yet. He’s crazy. His life was better. He had a house – better oil, better fruit. Look what we had to carry out here – oil, ouzo – in our bags – he asks me to carry oil to him. Now he sends me out here to be humiliated.’
‘Please, Mama, don’t.’
‘Don’t don’t.’ Her mother’s eyes were more and more shrunken, like throubes, shrunken in on themselves around the small hard pip. ‘Don’t you say “don’t” to me. You think he is happy? Listen to them all when they sit around. What are they talking about?’
They came to the house. They sat in a circle in the kitchen. They were all from Agios Constantinos. They said, remember the year this happened. Remember the time that happened. They never talked about Australia.
‘What is better here?’ her mother asked. ‘Help her. Help her. She has to wee-wee.’ She was ashamed to have Helen pee in the street and turned her back even as she said, ‘Help her.’
‘The future,’ Maria said, holding her little sister suspended over a gutter between two parked cars.
‘That’s what he says, but you never wanted to go. You were only four and you didn’t want to go.’
‘I know, Mama,’ Maria said bustling her sister back into the stroller.
‘You lost the use of your legs.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘He went to Athens for his immigration tests and when he came back and we told you we were going to Australia, you lost the use of your legs. The doctor had to come all the way to Agios Constantinos in an ambulance.’