by Peter Carey
He should also have spoken clearly about what had happened. He should have said, ‘I was captured and tortured.’ So she would know, immediately.
Instead he said, ‘I’m not going back there.’
She began sobbing.
He tried to tell her what had happened to him, but he had said things in the wrong order and she could no longer hear anything. He tried to embrace her. She slapped his face.
He behaved like a child, he saw that later. He was not like a man, he was a baby, full of his own hurt, his own rights, his own needs. And when she slapped his face he was full of self-righteousness and anger.
He shouted at her. He said he would go away and leave her to be a whore for taxi-drivers.
The neighbours complained about the shouting as they complained about her Beatles records – by throwing potatoes on the roof. Who they were to waste food like this, who could say – they were Italians. The potatoes rolled down the tiles and bounced off the guttering.
In response she fetched a plastic basin and gave it to him.
‘Here,’ she said. Her eyes were loveless. ‘Get food.’
He saw that she meant pick up the potatoes—that they should eat them.
‘Mum. Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘You’re embarrassed!’
‘I am not embarrassed.’
‘You coward,’ she said. ‘All you care about is your suit and your hair. You coward, you leave me starving. Zorig, Zorig.’ Tears began running down her face. She had never cried for her husband like this. Sarkis had watched her comforting weeping neighbours who hardly knew Zorig Alaverdian, but she herself had not wept for him.
Sarkis could not bear it. ‘Don’t, please.’
He followed her to the back porch where she began struggling with her gum boots. ‘If he was here we would not have to pick up potatoes,’ she said. ‘We would be eating beef, lamb, whatever I wrote on the shopping list I would buy. Fish, a whole Schnapper, anything I wanted … where is the flashlight?’
‘We don’t need to pick up potatoes. Never. Mum, I promise, you won’t go hungry.’
‘Promise!’ she said. She found the flashlight. He struggled to take it from her. ‘You promised me a job,’ she said.
He took the basin and followed her out into the rain with the flashlight and umbrella. He said nothing about the wound in his leg. He helped her pick up potatoes.
Then she sat at the table under the portrait of Mesrop Mushdotz. He helped her clean up the damaged potatoes. They peeled them, cut out the gashes, and sliced them thin to be cooked in milk.
‘What is the matter with this job, Sar?’ she said, more gently, but with her eyes still removed from him. ‘What is not perfect?’
‘It is not a question of “perfect” …’
‘What do you think – a man to come home to his wife with no food because the job was not perfect. You think it was ever perfect for any of us? You think it is perfect for your father, right now?’
Sarkis Alaverdian left for work at ten past eight next morning. He could not bring himself to arrive at Catchprice Motors at the hour Benny had instructed him to. He walked up Frieda Crescent, Mortimer Street, Cathleen Drive. It was not until half-past ten that he finally carried the blue umbrella across the gravel car yard towards Benny Catchprice.
Even as he walked towards him he was not certain of what he would do. The smallest trace of triumph on Benny’s pretty face would probably have set him off, but there was none. In fact, when Benny put out his hand to shake he seemed shy. His hand was delicate, something you could snap with thumb and finger.
‘Hey,’ the blond boy said, ‘relax.’
Sarkis could only nod.
There was a young apprentice fitting a car radio to a Bedford van. He was squatting on the wet gravel, frowning over the instruction sheet. Benny and Sarkis stood side by side and stared at him.
Then Benny said, ‘You were a hairdresser.’
Sarkis thought: he saw me on television.
‘My Gran says you were a hairdresser,’ Benny said.
‘You got a problem with that?’
‘No,’ Benny said, ‘no problem.’ He took a few steps towards the fire escape and then turned back. ‘You coming or what?’
‘Depends where it is.’ When he saw how Benny’s gaze slid away from his, Sarkis wondered if he might actually be ashamed of what he’d done.
‘Look,’ Benny said, ‘all that stuff is over. It’s O.K.’ He nodded to the fire escape. ‘It’s my Gran’s apartment.’
‘I’m not cutting your hair,’ Sarkis said, ‘if that’s what you think.’
‘No, no,’ Benny said. ‘My Gran wants to see you, that’s all. O.K.?’
‘O.K.’ Sarkis put his hand into his jacket pocket and clasped the Swiss army knife and transferred it, hidden in his fist, to his trouser pocket.
48
The first thing Sarkis saw was the dolls lined up in a way you might expect, in an Australian house, to find the sporting trophies. They occupied the entire back wall of the apartment, in a deep windowless dining alcove. They were lit like in a shop.
Only when Benny turned the neon light on, did Sarkis notice Mrs Catchprice sitting, rather formally, in the dining chair in front of them. She looked like an old woman ready for bed or for the asylum. Her long grey hair was undone and spread across the shoulders of a rather severe and slightly old-fashioned black suit. An ornate silver brooch was pinned to her artificial bosom. The skirt was a little too big for her. Her slip showed.
Sarkis clasped his knife in his fist. The air was close.
‘You like my dolls?’ she said.
He smiled politely.
‘I never cared for them,’ she said. ‘Someone gives you one because they do not know you. Someone else gives you a second one because you have the first. It’s so like life, don’t you think?’
‘I hope not.’
‘I do too,’ she said, and winked at him. ‘That’s why I like to have young people working for me.’
‘It’s Granny needs a hair-do,’ Benny said.
Sarkis tightened his jaw.
‘Not me,’ Benny said. ‘I said it wasn’t me.’
When Sarkis lived in Chatswood, his mother’s friends would sit around beneath the picture of Mesrop Mushdotz and pat their hair a certain way and curl their fringe around their fingers. When they asked outright, he said to them what he now said to Mrs Catchprice.
‘I don’t have my scissors.’
‘She’s got to have a hair-do,’ Benny said. ‘It’s an occasion.’
‘All my gear’s at home,’ Sarkis said. ‘You should go to a salon. They have the basins and sprays and all the treatments.’
‘But you’re a hairdresser,’ Mrs Catchprice said, ‘and you work for me.’
‘I thought I was going to be a salesman.’
‘You will be,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘When you’ve cut my hair.’
No one offered to drive him – Sarkis walked, first to his home for his plastic case, then to Franklin Mall to buy the Redken Hot Oil Treatment. The air was hot and heavy, and the low grey clouds gave the low red-brick houses a closed, depressed look.
When he returned to Catchprice Motors he washed the disgusting dishes in Mrs Catchprice’s kitchen sink and scrubbed the draining board and set up basins and saucepans for the water. He could see Benny Catchprice in the car yard below him. Benny stood in the front of the exact centre of the yard and he never shifted his position from the time Sarkis began to wash Mrs Catchprice’s hair until he’d done the eye-shadow.
There were people, old people particularly, so hungry for touch they would press their head into the washer’s fingers like a cat will rub past your legs. Mrs Catchprice revealed herself to be one of them. You could feel her loneliness in another way too, in her concentration as you ran the comb through her wet hair, her intense stillness while you cut.
Sarkis stripped the yellow colour from her grey hair with L’Oréal Spontanée 832. When he applied the Hot Oil
and wrapped her in a towel she made a little moan of pleasure, a private noise she seemed unaware of having made, one he was embarrassed to have heard.
He did not ask her how she wanted her hair done. He styled it with a part and a french bun set a little to one side. It did nothing to soften the set of her jaw or the effects of age, but it gave her, in this refusal to hide or apologize, a look of pride and confidence. It was the same approach as you might take with a kid with ear-rings in her nose – you gave her a close shave up one side of her head, declared her ugly ears, did nothing to soften the features, and therefore made her sexy on the street.
He softened Mrs Catchprice a little with her make-up – some very pale blue eye-shadow and, from among all the grubby, ground-down Cutex reds she brought him, one Petal Pink.
‘How’s that?’ he asked, but only because he had finished and she had said nothing.
‘I look like a tough old bird,’ she said.
He was offended.
‘It’s just what the doctor ordered,’ she said. She opened her handbag and uncrumpled a $20 bill which she pushed into his hand.
‘Thank you,’ he said, although it was not enough to cover the cost of the Redken and the Spontanée 832. He brushed off her shoulders and swept up the floor and swept her hair on to a sheet of newspaper and put it in the rubbish. He folded the sheet he had used for a cape and placed it on top of the yellow newspapers on top of the washing machine. Then he let the dog out of the bathroom.
He came back into the living-room with the dog skeltering and slipping around his feet and found a pregnant woman with a briefcase, Benny Catchprice and Cathy McPherson all pushing their way into the living-room.
‘It is true?’ Cathy’s voice was tremulous. ‘Just tell me?’
Haircuts can alter people and this one seemed to have altered Mrs Catchprice. She led the way to the dining-room table and sat with her back to the row of brightly illuminated dolls. She looked almost presidential.
‘What are you dressed up for?’ Cathy asked.
The pregnant woman with the briefcase sat next to Mrs Catchprice. Benny sat opposite the pregnant woman.
Cathy took the big chair facing the dolls’ case, but would not sit in it. She grasped its back.
‘What are you dressed up for? Is it true?’ she asked her mother. ‘Because if it is, you really should tell me.’
‘The investigation,’ Mrs Catchprice said, ‘has been stopped.’
Sarkis did not know what investigation she was talking about but when he saw her speak he saw her power and thought he had created it.
‘Mrs Catchprice …’ the pregnant woman said. ‘How come you’re dressed up?’ Cathy asked.
‘How come you know?’
‘She doesn’t know,’ the pregnant woman said. ‘There’s nothing to know. Mrs Catchprice, Mrs McPherson, you can all calm down. The investigation has not been stopped. Once a Tax Office investigation starts, it has to go on until the end. Not even I could stop it.’
‘It’s been stopped all right,’ said Benny in a thin nasal voice that cut across the others’ like steel wire. He was trying to smile at the pregnant woman. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He used her first name, ‘Maria.’
Maria was pushing at the pressure points beside her eyes.
‘We like you,’ Benny said. He used her first name again. ‘We don’t blame you for what you did …’
‘Maria’ coloured and tapped on the table with her pencil.
Mrs Catchprice held the edge of the table with her hands. She seemed to spread herself physically. Sarkis thought of Bali, of Rangda the Witch. She had that sort of power. The whole room gave it to her and she threw it back at them. It was not the haircut. It was her.
‘Can I remind you all,’ Maria said, ‘that I’m the one who’s from the Tax Office.’
Mrs Catchprice gave her a smile so large you could think that all her teeth were made from carved and painted wood. ‘You’d better phone your office,’ she said. ‘Use the extension in the kitchen. It’s more private.’
The Tax Inspector hesitated, smiled wanly, then left the room. Mrs Catchprice turned to her daughter.
‘So now you can go, Cathy,’ Mrs Catchprice said. ‘You want to go square dancing, you go. I’m taking the business back for safekeeping.’
‘It’s not yours to take back.’
‘That’s irrelevant, Cathy,’ said Benny. ‘You get what you want. We get what we want.’
‘The business isn’t hers. It’s not her decision. She’s a minority shareholder.’
But Mrs Catchprice did not look like a minority of anything. Her jaw was set firmly. Her face was blotched with liver spots and one large red mark along her high forehead below her hairline. She looked scary.
The Tax Inspector, by contrast, looked white and waxy and depressed. She had not come all the way back into the room, but stood leaning against the door jamb with her hand held across her ballooning belly. Her hands were puffed up, ringless, naked.
‘I’ve been called back to the office,’ she said.
‘How lovely,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘You’ll be closer to the hospital. What hospital was it? I forget.’
‘George V,’ said Maria Takis. All the colour had gone from her wide mouth.
‘It’s a lovely hospital.’
‘My mother died there.’ The Tax Inspector clicked shut her briefcase.
‘Let me,’ Benny said. He took the briefcase from her, smiling charmingly. ‘I’d like to walk you to your car.’
49
At the bottom of the fire escape, Benny took the car keys from the Tax Inspector’s hand. She let him take her briefcase, imagining he would carry it to her car, but he immediately set off across the gravel towards the back of the yard where a faded red sign read LUBRITORIUM.
‘Wrong way,’ she said.
He turned, and his lower lip, in trying not to smile, made a little ‘v’ that was disturbingly familiar. ‘You can’t go,’ he said. He threw her car keys in the air and caught them. ‘It isn’t over yet.’
‘It’s over. Believe me.’ She did not know how the audit could possibly be over, and she was confused, and mostly bad-tempered that it was. It was not logical that she should feel this, but she felt it. She held out her hand for the keys.
Benny grinned, then frowned and held the keys behind his back. ‘I’ve got stuff I want to show you.’
‘Come on, I’ve got work to do.’ She was going to the Tax Office to shout at Sally Ho. That was her ‘work’.
Benny pouted and dangled the keys between his thumb and forefinger. She snatched them from him, irritated. The minute she had done it and she saw the hurt in his face, she was sorry.
‘You should be happy,’ she said. ‘Isn’t this what you wanted when you came to my house? Isn’t this exactly what you wanted to achieve?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Sort of.’
She began to walk slowly, purposefully, towards her car. ‘So?’ she said.
He was close beside her – a little ahead. She could feel his eyes demanding a contact she did not have the energy to give him.
He said, ‘I thought we might be, sort of, friends.’
She began to laugh, and stopped herself, but when she looked up she saw it was not in time to stop her hurting him. By the time they reached the car he had a small red spot on each of his cheeks.
‘I don’t see why not,’ he said. He held out his hand for the keys and she gave them to him, in compensation for her laughter. He unlocked her door and held it open for her. She squeezed herself in behind the wheel. He passed her the briefcase. She held out her hand for the keys. He wagged his finger and danced round the minefield of puddles to the passenger side. She watched him, wearily, as he unlocked the passenger side door and got in. He locked the door behind him.
‘O.K.,’ she said. ‘But now I’ve got to go.’
She held out her hand for the keys. He placed them in her open palm. She inserted the keys in the ignition switch then turned it far enough to mak
e the instrument lights, the three of them, shine red.
‘I came to talk to you last night,’ he said. ‘I thought we could, you know … I came by myself.’
‘Why?’
‘Why not?’
She moved the gear stick into neutral.
‘I got the company books for you,’ he said. ‘I brought them to your house. I was going to leave them on the veranda, but you didn’t come home all night.’
She felt her hair prickle on the nape of her neck. ‘I was at my father’s,’ she said.
‘That’s who you had dinner with?’
‘Yes. It is absolutely who I had dinner with.’
‘But you went out to dinner with Uncle Jack.’
She turned to look at him. He was smirking.
‘You don’t want to waste your time with him,’ he said. ‘He’s a creep.’
‘Benny, what do you want from me? What is it?’
Benny shrugged and looked out of the window at a pair of men at A.S.P. Building Supplies loading roofing iron on to the roof-rack of an old Ford Falcon. ‘How old are you?’ he asked, still not looking at her.
Maria started the engine.
‘How old are you?’ He turned. He looked as if he was going to cry.
‘I’m thirty-four.’
‘I like you,’ he said. ‘I never liked anyone like that before.’
‘Benny, that’s enough.’
‘This is serious,’ he said.
‘Enough.’
But he was unbuttoning his shirt.
Maria turned off the engine and opened her door. ‘I’m going to get your father.’
‘My father is a joke,’ said Benny. He pulled down his jacket and his shirt to show her his upper arm. ‘Just look, that’s all. Please don’t turn away from me.’
Maria Takis looked. She saw a smooth white scar the size of a two-cent piece surrounded by a soft blue stain.
Benny looked at her with large tear-lensed eyes. ‘My mother did this to me. Can you imagine that? My own mother tried to kill me.’
‘Benny,’ Maria said. ‘Please don’t do this to me. I am an auditor from the Australian Taxation Office.’