The Tax Inspector

by Peter Carey

  ‘She says he touched her bosom.’

  He sat on the chair. He leaned across and took her hand. ‘He was widely liked. I could draw a map for you Mum, and show you where he was liked, all the way over to Warrakup, right over as far as Kiama even,’ he smiled. ‘I find old codgers who remember him. They hear my name and they say, “You Cacka’s son?” I met one old man last week in the Railway Hotel at Warrakup, a Mr Gross.’

  ‘Hector,’ she said, but she was not thinking about Hector.

  ‘His wife is called Maisie.’

  ‘Minnie. She had bandy legs.’

  ‘He said, “Your old man sold me a Holden and when I complained about the rattle he bought it back from me, cash, in the pub.” He said, “I respected him for that.”’

  ‘He always had cash. We did a lot of cash business at the auctions.’

  ‘Probably not a good idea to mention this with the Tax Office snooping around.’

  ‘What did he do to you?’

  ‘He didn’t do anything.’

  ‘He touched her bosom.’

  ‘So she says.’

  ‘He did something to you too. That’s what she was suggesting.’

  ‘Did WHAT?’ he bellowed. It made her jump, the sheer noise of it. That was like him – the father – great rushes of rage coming out of nowhere, not always, not even often, but when you got close to things he wouldn’t let you touch.

  ‘Don’t panic,’ she said.

  He had his arms bent around his chest and his forehead lowered and his brows down and his eyes were brimming with enough hate – no other word for it – to burn you.

  A moment later he put his hands on his knees and said, ‘Sorry.’

  A moment more: ‘You like me to make a cup of tea?’

  Frieda said, ‘She’s quite correct when she said I knew it was happening.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘I didn’t believe a man would do that, but I knew. I knew but I didn’t believe.’

  ‘He loved us,’ Mort said. ‘Whatever he was, he loved us. I know that. I rely on that, to look at him and know he loved us.’

  ‘It’s why she hates me, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s not for us to judge him. What would they have done to him if it had all come out? How could they understand he loved us?’

  ‘It’s why you won’t sell cars.’

  ‘What?’ Mort screwed up his eyes and pushed his head at her. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Is that why you won’t sell cars … because you won’t do that for him? You’re angry with him still.’

  ‘For Chrissakes, he’s dead.’

  ‘But it’s what he always wanted for you. He always wanted you to be a salesman.’

  ‘You silly old woman …’ Mort yelled. ‘Someone takes that fucking workshop off my hands, someone hires a service manager and a foreman, I’ll sell cars like you never saw them sold.’

  ‘Do you think it’s going to rain?’ said Mrs Catchprice, looking up towards the ceiling.

  ‘Just lay off,’ he said.

  ‘I really think it’s going to rain.’

  ‘Get off my back, Frieda. I’ve got enough problems without this.’

  ‘Good for the gardens,’ she said.

  They were both silent for a while then, although she could hear him breathing through his mouth. After a while she leaned over and patted his knee. ‘There’s a boy,’ she said.

  Mort looked up at her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  She took his hand and stroked it. ‘You know I never wanted this business for myself?’

  ‘Yes, I knew that.’

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘Jesus, Mum,’ he took his hand back, ‘you told me a hundred times. You wanted a flower farm.’ He stood up.

  ‘You think I’m a silly old woman.’

  ‘No I don’t.’ He sat down. He took her hand in his. ‘You know I don’t. It would have been a very profitable business. You would have been well situated here.’

  ‘But he still would have been who he was …’

  ‘By the railway,’ Mort said. ‘Right on the railway.’

  ‘He wanted the motor cars so much, I made sure he had them. He loved that first Holden as much as Dame Nellie herself. I must have loved him, don’t you think?’

  ‘Of course you did.’

  ‘I don’t know I did.’ She paused. ‘I thought he wasn’t very interested in s-e-x. I thought it was the music he had, instead. I couldn’t have loved a man who was doing that to my children. I never worried about him playing around. I saw his face listening to the opera. I can’t explain the feeling, but I thought – he isn’t going to play around. What did he actually do?’

  ‘It’s too late now, Mum.’ He took his hands back and held them on his knees and rocked a little.

  ‘I’m not dead yet,’ she said. ‘I have a right to know.’

  Mort laughed and shook his head.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  He rubbed his hand across his face. ‘You’re incredible.’

  ‘I said I have a right.’

  ‘Oh no, you have no right.’ She had set him off again. He had his arms wrapped around his chest. His eyes were staring at her – hate again – a different person. ‘You have no damn right to anything. You are lucky I am still here. You are lucky I don’t hate you. You’re lucky to have anyone left who’ll tolerate you, so don’t say you didn’t love him, because that would just be … I couldn’t stand it.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Mrs Catchprice said. ‘I’m not a child.’

  ‘Jack pisses off. He doesn’t care. Cathy pisses off. She doesn’t care. I’m the one who’s stayed to look after you. So listen to me: don’t say you didn’t love him, because I couldn’t bear it.’

  He was breathing hard. She was frightened of him.

  ‘You want to know what he did?’ he said at last.

  Frieda thought it best to stay quiet.

  ‘DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT HE DID?’

  He stood up. He had ‘Mort Catchprice’ embroidered in blue on his overall pocket.

  ‘I’ll tell you. I’m going to tell you. You’re old enough to know,’ he laughed, an ugly loose-mouthed laugh. ‘He had a book, a dictionary of angels, with pictures. Did he ever show it to you? Of course he bloody didn’t. He made me dress up like an angel and sing the “Jewel Song”. Is that enough?’

  It was enough. She nodded.

  ‘You wouldn’t want to know what else he did. You wouldn’t want to even imagine it.’ He was crying. He was ruined, wrecked, a human being with nothing.

  She had made this, invented it. She knew she was 100 per cent responsible.

  ‘What would that have done to you?’ he said. ‘What sort of person would you have become?’ He had tears running down his big squashed nose. He was all crumpled up like rubbish in the bin.

  Frieda went to the kitchen to phone the Hare Krishna temple.

  55

  ‘What’s that film?’ the Attorney General said. ‘I forget its name …’

  ‘Jean d’Aboire,’ Jack said.

  ‘That’s the one,’ the Attorney General said. ‘It was pure Louis Quatorze. Most of them stuff it up, you know, the Yanks all the time, but the Frogs too – they put Empire and even Chippendale in with Louis Quatorze, but this Jean d’Aboire was spot on. They got the clothes right, everything. They got the little bodices,’ he made small pinching gestures with his big fingers, holding them up near his tailored lapels. ‘Just right,’ the Attorney General said, before returning to his smoked salmon. ‘They got everything right, it was just immaculate.’

  Jack was worried about Maria. His view of her was obscured by the return wall with the doubtful Tiepolo on it. All he could see was her shoulder and George Grissenden. Grissenden could be very funny, if he wanted to be.

  Across the table Digby was complaining loudly about Sotheby’s who were offering to finance his bid on the New York de Kooning. To his left, Betty Finch had her eyes glued on the Attorney General and Jack had, oc
casionally, to head off her graceless attempts to bring the conversation directly to the matter of Droit de Suite. Nobody had bothered to brief her on the manners of lobbying.

  He saw Maria stand and leave the room. He smiled in her direction, but she did not seem to see him. Then, through the open archway to his right, he saw her use the hall phone.

  ‘So when you see a movie,’ Jack said to the Attorney General, ‘you’re really more interested in the spoons than the drama.’

  It was intended as a joke, but the Attorney General took it seriously. ‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘This Jean d’Aboire got it spot on.’

  Jack looked towards the hall. Maria had gone. He looked towards her place – George Grissenden was removing smoked salmon from the plate in front of her empty chair.

  From the street he heard electronic beeps and a hissing, high-pitched Holden water pump. Maria. He excused himself and walked out on to the street still carrying his damask napkin. The taxi’s tail lights were speeding away in the direction of the cul de sac. He was so confident it was Maria, that he stood in the middle of the road, waving the taxi down with his napkin.

  He shaded his eyes, moving round the car towards a window which was already rolling down.

  ‘Enjoy your dinner,’ Maria said. ‘We can talk tomorrow.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing happened.’

  ‘It was George Grissenden. He’s such a fascist. What happened?’

  ‘Jack, I’m eight months pregnant. I’m very tired.’

  ‘I’m driving you home.’ He opened the door.

  ‘Please, no, please.’

  But he coaxed her from the cab, paid off the driver, escorted her to his car, and ran back into the house with his white napkin. He was back at the Jaguar in a moment.

  ‘I told them you were going into labour.’

  She did not smile.

  He started the engine. ‘I told them your family all had short labours.’

  He could see her in the corner of his eye with her hands across her belly and the high fine nose and curly hair silhouetted against the window. He felt the silence like a screw turning in his throat. He drove quickly, but with excessive care, as if there was some fragile thing in the trunk he was fearful of breaking.

  He turned right and headed down the hill towards Double Bay where Maria had left her car parked in front of his house.

  ‘They’re creeps, I guess,’ he said at last.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  He was frightened by the bluntness of her answer. He waited for her to say something else but nothing else was forthcoming.

  ‘Were they terrible creeps?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Oh no,’ Maria sighed. ‘Probably not,’ but there was a weariness in her voice that suggested to him that he had already lost her. ‘I’ve admired Phillip Passos for years. It was great to meet him.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing new.’

  ‘Were they rude to you?’

  ‘I’m always shocked to hear wealthy people complaining about tax. I should be used to it. I should be very thick-skinned. In fact, I thought I was thick-skinned, but I watch them eating with their Georg Jensen cutlery and I want to stand up and shout and make speeches about poverty and homelessness.’

  They had to stop for a red light at O’Sullivan Road. Across the road there were yachts bobbing at their moorings in the moonlight.

  ‘I knew this was a bad idea,’ Jack said. ‘But I wanted to see you so badly and I was impatient. I was being expedient again.’

  ‘Is expediency a problem with you?’

  She had that edge in her voice, the same as when she asked him about working for money.

  ‘Not normally,’ he said curtly.

  He did not need her to tell him – expediency ruled his life and made it shallow and unsatisfying. He could analyse all this a hundred times better than she could, more harshly too. He was a Catchprice – damaged, compromised, expedient – full of it.

  ‘Know a man’s friends and you know the man,’ he said, bitterly.

  ‘You are different?’

  ‘Don’t I seem different?’

  ‘Yes, you do seem different.’ It was the first time her voice had softened. When he looked across she was, finally, looking at him.

  ‘Have you heard me complain about taxes?’

  ‘Jack, tonight I listened to a very distinguished artist argue against Droit de Suite. In fact, I discovered, that’s what we were there to do.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We were there because I’ve fallen in love with you and I had to go to dinner.’

  She gave no sign of what this declaration meant to her.

  ‘He was against it,’ she said, ‘because he believed the “funny money” would not go into art if investors had to pay tax on that money first.’

  ‘You mean I’m taking bread out of the mouths of children.’

  He was embarrassed and humiliated. He turned right into Cross Street, swinging the wheel and accelerating so that the Michelins screamed and smoked.

  ‘I’m pregnant. Slow down.’

  He slowed down, until the car was barely moving and then slid into the kerb.

  ‘That was stupid.’

  He turned off the engine and turned in his seat.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘That was reckless. I love you both.’

  He felt it himself – it was a false note, but God damn it, it was true. ‘So now,’ he said, ‘you don’t like me.’

  ‘I don’t doubt you have these feelings,’ she put her hand on his. ‘I just feel odd about you. Jack, I’ve only just met you and I’m very tired.’

  ‘I want to look after you, and the baby too. It’s all I want.’

  She did not answer him. When he looked across he was shocked to see that she had begun to cry. She said: ‘Do you want a baby? Is that it?’ He tried to hold her but she pulled away from him, her face distorted.

  ‘Maria, please …’

  ‘I wish you could have it, Jack. I really do.’ She looked like a Francis Bacon smeared with neon light. ‘I don’t want the fucking thing. I don’t want to give birth to anything.’

  ‘It’ll be O.K.,’ he said, shocked by her language.

  ‘Don’t you dare say it’s O.K. Christ.’

  ‘I’m with you.’ He gave her tissues from the glove box.

  ‘No, Jack, I’m sorry.’ She blew her nose.

  ‘What if I let you audit me?’

  She looked at him with her mouth open, her cheeks wet. Then she started laughing and shaking her head. She blew her nose again, loudly.

  ‘Is that so funny?’

  ‘Yes, it’s very funny.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh Jack …’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Jack, please, if you care for me, just drive me to my car so I can go home and sleep.’

  ‘You can sleep at my house, not the Bilgola house, the one here. You could be in bed in five minutes.’

  ‘Jack, I’m tired, I’m not interested.’

  ‘Maria, please, I’m not talking about sex.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not coming to your house.’

  He put his hands on the wheel and his head on his hands. ‘I’m getting angry because I feel I’m ruining something very important in my life. We are just getting to know each other and I’m ruining it.’

  ‘Jack,’ she said. She unclasped a hand from the steering wheel and held it. ‘You’re very sweet and gentle, but you belong to an alien culture.’

  He took his other hand from the steering wheel and put both his hands around hers. ‘I can change. Don’t roll your eyes.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m tired.’

  ‘If no one can change,’ he said, ‘what point is there in anything? If we cannot affect each other’s lives, we might as well call it a day. The world is just going to slide further and further into the sewer.’

  She turned away from him. He saw her staring into the brightly lit sh
op where they advertised Comme des Garçons and Issey Miyake at 50 per cent off.

  ‘You don’t believe that we can change?’ he asked. ‘We can.’

  ‘You should have said these things to me when I was twenty. How would you change, Jack? What would you do?’

  ‘I could become a person you could trust, whom you could rely on totally.’

  ‘Are you that now?’

  ‘Not totally, not at all really.’

  ‘Why me? Why am I so important to the Catchprices?’

  He hit the steering wheel with his fist. He did not know his nephew had done a similar thing with a glove box lid. ‘I’ll drive you to the hospital when you go into labour. I’ll come round and do the laundry for you. I’ll make the formula. O.K., you’ll probably be breast feeding, but I’ll do what you need. I’ve got money. I’ll hire help. Maria, please, I’ve done some rotten things, but the only reason I’m sitting here with you is that I’m not going to be like that any more.’

  ‘You’re going to be transformed through love?’

  ‘Yes I am.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Parents die to save their babies through love,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing romantic about it. It’s a mechanism. It’s built into us whether we like it or not. It’s how the species saves itself.’

  She was listening to him. She was frowning, but her lips were parted, had in fact been parted so long that now she moistened them.

  ‘If we can’t change,’ he said, ‘we’re dead.’

  He leaned forward to kiss her. The Tax Inspector took his lips in hers and found herself, to her surprise, feeding on them.

  56

  At half-past eleven, standing in her kitchen, Maria Takis drank the bitter infusion of raspberry leaf tea and worried, as usual, if she had made it strong enough, if it would really work, if the muscles of her uterus were being really aided by this unpleasant treatment, or if it was some hippy mumbo jumbo that would – if it was too strong – give her liver cancer instead.

  She removed her make-up, put on her moisturiser in the bathroom and then lay on the living-room floor to do her pelvic floor exercises. In bed she massaged her perineum, swallowed three 200mg calcium tablets and a multi-vitamin pill. By the time she could begin her ‘Visualizing, Actualizing’ exercise it was already half-past twelve. She turned off the overhead light and flicked on the reading light. She propped herself up on two pillows and closed her eyes.