by Peter Carey
He retreated into the room, which rather incredibly showed the remnants of two breakfasts. He followed my eyes.
Yes, yes, he said, as he threw a napkin over the tray. I know, I know.
You had a visitor, I asked incredulously.
I’m a wretch, dear girl, I know I am. I thought a little massage might make me better.
Breakfast with a masseur? I have a visitor myself, I said.
This perked him up a little—though in retying his dressing gown he revealed a great deal more of his legs than I wished to see. You devil, he said.
No. It is Christopher Chubb.
Chubb? No!
He is downstairs still.
Slater sat heavily on the bed. Now listen to me, little Micks, he said. You tell him to go.
I’ll do no such thing.
This is not a nice man.
But rather interesting nonetheless.
Oh he’ll be bloody interesting all right, he said, grunting with effort as he reached for the telephone. Call the bloody desk. They’ll get that big Sikh fellow on the door to see him off.
I took the phone from him and returned it to its cradle. He’s my guest, I said.
Your guest is barking bloody mad. What’s he selling?
He isn’t selling anything. When you called he was telling me about the McCorkle Hoax.
Jesus, Sarah, you’re the editor of an internationally respected poetry journal. You don’t even want to touch a thing like this. Did he show you poetry?
No.
Are you sure?
Of course I’m sure.
Well, you stay away from Chubb. I should never have drawn your attention to the leech. Has he asked for money?
Only a cucumber sandwich.
Leave it at that, then. He is not at all well balanced. Why do you think he’s here? Why do you think an educated man is sitting in that ghastly shop with those pustules on his legs?
I think they’re tropical ulcers.
He is there, Micks, because he went mad.
To hear Slater speak so loudly and negatively about another poet was, to say the least, unusual. Setting Dylan Thomas aside, he was normally exceptionally careful. I was not deaf to him now, but if I can trust anything it is my taste—or, to risk a vulgarity, my heart. One’s pulse rate is a very reliable indicator of what one encounters.
For a madman, I said, he seems rather credible. Why didn’t you tell me how well you knew him?
I don’t know him! I spent an evening with him in Sydney at the end of the war and he tried it on with me.
You mean sexually?
Of course bloody not sexually. He is really a despicable person. He will drag you into his delusional world, have you believing the most preposterous things.
You make him sound even more interesting.
This is my responsibility, and I cannot permit you to speak with him again.
Though intent on saying much more he was taken, at this moment, by a powerful colonic spasm and bent over in agony. Still doubled up, he stumbled to the bathroom. While he went about his business, I propped the door open with the telephone book and opened the windows to the rain, which hadn’t relented in the least. The carpet was soon rather wet, but the room itself a little refreshed.
Slater returned, threw himself heavily on his bed, and burrowed under the covers.
Just send him away, he said. Trust me, Sarah.
I could not have been given a clearer warning of the consequence, and I really did go back to the foyer with the intention of terminating our interview.
You were talking to Slater? Chubb asked as I returned to my settee.
Yes, I was.
He told you I was mad?
No, of course not, I said, observing that the wrapped page of poetry had been returned to the middle of the table.
Wah—he got a fright the night he met me.
And why was that, Mr Chubb?
He looked at me keenly—suspiciously even—as if calculating the odds of my having heard the story already. I plan to tell you why, he said at last, but after I have told you what happened to the Jew. But I see Slater has put you off me.
No, not at all. Of course not.
He looked at me with an animal wariness, but of course continued with the story he had come to tell, pausing only occasionally to nibble at a sandwich. Although here again I was reminded of the way a dog or cat will eat, always cautious, concerned that a delicacy might be the bait inside a trap.
8
Jealous or not, said Chubb, I did submit my work to Personae, and Weiss took six months to reject it. But now I sent him the first two fakes by ‘Bob McCorkle,’ and seven days later there was the envelope in the Townsville P.O. mailbox I’d rented for just this purpose. And Weiss was as boh-doh as a crayfish, in a great rush to crawl inside a trap. So excited he could not write straight. Very difficult to read his scrawl. ‘My assessment is that this is work of the very greatest importance. I should be very glad if you would send me any more of his poetry that is extant.’ Extant, God save me. To Beatrice he writes ‘extant’? So aiksy.
Well, you designed the trap just for him, I said. Surely you can’t blame the poor man for falling into it.
Oh I blamed him-lah. I blamed him very much at the beginning.
But you set out to destroy him.
No, Chubb cried, with such passion that his voice cut across the lounge like a hawker’s, and a wall-faced Chinese gentleman in a boxy suit stepped out from behind the reception desk and stood watching, hands folded in the region of his crotch.
No! His watery eyes had turned a cold and cloudy blue. Please, no.
Mr Chubb—
No, he interrupted, you are plain wrong. I meant him no harm at all. No danger.
He died, I said, more angrily than I intended.
He stared so, it almost frightened me—white fissures in the iris, like those in fast-set ice.
I liked Weiss, he began again. Meant nothing but good. He was only twenty-one and so desperate to be in fashion. But don’t you see? The boy writes drivel, publishes drivel. Does this matter, Mem? Perhaps I valued truth above friendship.
He looked to me, as if expecting me to endorse this view. I held my tongue.
Think what you like, I set out to prove the truth. These people had become so hooked on the latest fashion. No substance. Action only. The truth was dead or rotting. There had been a complete decay of meaning and craftsmanship in poetry.
When you say ‘these people,’ I said, do you mean Jews?
He balked, staring at me fixedly, and I could not tell if I had hit the mark or gone so wide that he was stunned by my assumption.
Have you read the McCorkle poems, he asked at last. No? He leaned forward and laid his surprisingly moist hand against my arm. I stayed very still until he removed it.
‘Swamps,’ he recited mockingly in that wispy nasal voice, ‘marshes, borrow-pits and other/Areas of stagnant water serve/As breeding grounds….’ There, he said. The genius of young Bob McCorkle. What do you say to that?
Naturally enough I said nothing.
‘Areas of stagnant water serve as breeding grounds.’ Do you know what that is from?
I shook my head.
An army manual of mosquito eradication. You see, it meant nothing-lah. There is another poem I sent him, ‘Colloquy with John Keats.’ It begins, ‘I have been bitter with you, my brother….’ It is stolen. Any educated person would know from where.
How I disliked this prim pedagogy. Pound, I said: ‘I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman—I have detested you long enough.’
Yes, he said, then listen to Bob McCorkle’s lines to Keats: ‘I have been bitter with you, my brother,/Remembering that saying of Lenin when the shadow/Was already on his face: “The emotions are not skilled workers.”’ Of course Lenin never said such a preposterous thing.
With his frayed, gaping collar and his raised, crooked eyebrows he did look barking mad. Hold off! unhand me, greybeard loon! I disagree, I said. The Lenin li
ne is more witty than preposterous. And the opening line is quite different from Pound’s.
Of course I had praised him without meaning to, so easy was it to forget that Chubb was the real author here. When I made this slip he could not quite contain his pleasure and he suddenly reminded me of those cunning old tramps who used to turn up at the kitchen door in High Wycombe with some story of the great tragedy that befell me, Miss.
Yet I must not make myself appear too cynical, for this was exactly the story I wished to hear. This must also have occurred to Chubb, of course.
If I had shown the first McCorkle poems to you, he said, you would have smelled the rat, I know you would.
But, Mr Chubb, you cannot have the slightest idea of my judgement.
Aiyah—I saw your magazine.
But as you said, you have not had time to read it.
Again he balked and stared at me. Anyway, he said at last, Weiss wrote back to little Beatrice, who—he lapsed into that horrid accent—’was only too pleased to give the biographical information you requested.’ Better she never wrote back, but no choice now. Bob McCorkle must be born. ‘I could not stop Bob from leaving school at fourteen,’ Beatrice wrote, ‘and after that he was set on going to work. I have always thought he was very foolish not to have got his Intermediate.’
See how she writes to him-ah. So polite. Very respectful. Carrying his big leg, is what we say here.
‘I am so pleased you think the poems are good enough to publish. I never thought they would be of interest to people overseas.’ The writing in the letter, Chubb said, is even better than the poems. You can smell the suburbs in it. Cats’ piss in the privet hedge. Leaking gas. Reeking odours of the petite bourgeoisie.
Could Beatrice, I said, bear any resemblance to your mother?
In the hour or so we had been talking Chubb had taken nothing stronger than tea, but now he showed a drunk’s quick trigger. Don’t get clever-lah, he hissed.
This sudden rage reminded me of Slater’s warnings. I therefore signed and collected my purse.
Releks, he said urgently. Please. I know I am behaving badly. I promise I will stop it now.
Thank you, Mr Chubb, it has been very interesting.
You are the Sarah Wode-Douglass? You covered the Christie Murders for The Times? That was you? What the chances you ever come jalan-jalan past my door? And with John Slater? Me with Rilke? This is one chance in one million—but believe me, Mem, I have been waiting for you for the last eleven years.
I found myself, not for the last time, transfixed by him. I stood, holding my handbag, very aware not only of his earnest eyes but also of the tantalising parcel on the periphery of my vision.
It is not only poetry I want to tell you about, he said. Something much worse-lah. Sit.
9
It was to me that he issued his command to sit but John Slater also obeyed, appearing from nowhere to plop himself down untidily beside me, stretching his long arm protectively behind my back, extending his great bare legs beneath the table from which Chubb’s plastic-clad offerings had disappeared.
Those two vertical frown marks above Slater’s nose were the acid which had always stopped his good looks from being too saccharine. They drew attention to his very clear and active eyes and somehow, in the tugged and twisted skin of his forehead, suggested a sort of moral outrage. He could certainly look extremely fierce, and I should imagine his sheer size made him frightening to Chubb, whom he had obviously come to drive away.
First, as ever, he needed food and drink.
To the waitress he said: Satu lagi beer, one more Tiger, and do you have any of those little dried fish things. Ikan ketcheel. I forget what they’re called.
You want the fried fish, Tuan?
No, no, small fish. Snacks.
I scowled at him ferociously.
Christopher, can you tell the waitress what I mean?
Ikan bilis.
The girl did not seem to hear him. A moment later, however, she returned with a bowl of dried fish—small pungent creatures, each the size of a jasmine leaf. Chubb thanked her, and then I realised she was somehow avoiding him. This was the first hint I had of his strange local reputation.
Slater leaned forward to sample the fish, made a face, and pushed the bowl away. I don’t wish to be at all unfriendly, he said to Chubb, but if it’s dough you’ve come for, Christopher, you are definitely barking up the wrong tree.
I could never have imagined Slater talking like this to a British poet, but Chubb did not seem in the least disconcerted. He merely lowered his papery eyelids and smiled.
She—Slater frowned in my direction—is not really worth your trouble. She may talk posh but the family has been in hock for several centuries and what little dough remained was all spent on some very lovely parties many years ago. As for me, I am reduced to being poet in residence on the QE2.
This was a lie.
So when you have had the beer, he concluded, you have pretty much drunk the well dry.
Yes, said Chubb.
It was a curious directionless response, and it caused Slater, whose best work was sometimes distinguished by exactly this type of unsettling effect, to pause.
Yes, Chubb said, and there you prove Auden’s case against you, isn’t it?
The expression of Slater’s handsome face was that of someone unexpectedly and brutally slapped. Don’t be a shit, old chap, he said quietly.
But Chubb leaned in towards him and I marked the thin elastic spittle, like the linkage of a mussel to its shell, joining his upper to his bottom lip. Can’t remember Auden’s sentence, he said, help me-lah. ‘The author’s inability to conceive of altruism,’ isn’t it?
There was a silence then during which I remember thinking it must’ve been a very long time since anyone spoke to John Slater like this. In Britain he had somehow made himself so ‘well liked’ that it was hard to find another poet, even one who privately thought his work mawkish or pornographic, who would say a word against him. Certain I was about to witness the most awful row, I watched John sweep his great mane of grey hair back off his high and handsome brow, but when he finally responded it was in a rather small voice.
I’m sorry, he said.
Chubb gave nothing back except a sudden blink.
Wystan is a remarkable man, continued Slater, but he is capable of the most awful cruelty and he does not always hold himself to the ethical standards he demands of others. But that is not exactly the point in this case, he said, sadly watching the waitress pour the beer. He took a handful of the ikan bilis and dropped them back into the bowl. I behaved like a cunt, he said. You hit me back. Fair enough.
Chubb shrugged. I’m the hoaxer. No-one gives me face.
Oh, please. Enough. Do you really think anyone remembers that McCorkle business anymore? It’s forgotten. Micks here never heard of you. The editor of The Modern Review never heard of you, or of Bob McCorkle.
Thank you for lying.
You know it is not a lie.
So gracious of you. There was nothing Australian in how he bowed his head, no sign of that dry and deadly sarcasm. Such a famous poet, he said.
The compliment caused Slater to swell physically in a way that reminded me, exactly, of Harold Wilson. Now, now, don’t flatter me, he said.
Did I say good poet?
Touché, said Slater.
This conflict was not exactly boring, I suppose, but I had no interest in him fighting with Chubb, which he would surely do, at the next beer or the one after that. For the moment, however, he seemed mostly driven by a desire to prove himself a more decent man than Auden had thought. When he began to offer Chubb money, I was depressed but not surprised.
It would have to be a loan, of course, he said, but I could give you fifty quid. I could do it now.
He produced a pile of crumpled Malaysian dollars.
I do believe Chubb considered the money, but then he retreated, shifted sideways along the settee, shaking his head.
I’m not sayin
g you’re here for bloody money. I am saying that I will lend you fifty quid. Give face, old chap. Don’t insult me.
Like a duck talking to a chicken.
What?
I don’t want your money-lah.
What do you want?
He hesitated. Perhaps this lady will write up my story.
Dear chap, that is like asking Fangio to park your mini-moke. Don’t you know who she is? She’s not some bloody hack. She is the editor of an important magazine. Besides, no-one is interested in your story anymore. ‘Unaffected by “the march of events,” He passed from men’s memory in l’an trentuniesme.’ Really, if you’re hiding here, the war—as they say—is over. Come out. Surrender. Go home.
Don’t lebeh, you, said Chubb patiently. This my home now.
It was twenty-six bloody years ago, Slater insisted. Everyone is dead. He paused. Oh shit, I’m sorry. Really!
Apa? asked Chubb mildly.
No, no, I’m sincerely sorry. About the poor young editor fellow, of course.
I often carry notebooks, which normally contain nothing more interesting than my debts and schemes by which they might be settled. But when I produced one now Christopher Chubb’s eyes fixed on it as hungrily as I had wished.
Slater also noticed. Oh Jesus, Micks, he said, you are so bloody perverse.
But he had not read that mottled manuscript. He could not imagine a wonder he could never have made.
I don’t know what happened to David Weiss, I said.
I told you. The poor bugger hanged himself.
He did not hang himself, said Chubb.
Don’t play tricks on her, Chubb, really. You cannot play this particular prank more than once.
Chubb completely ignored him, turning all his attention onto me. Great good fortune, he said, that someone who can understand this story has finally come my way. He smiled. Good things will come of this. Important things.
He is flattering you, Slater cried.
I do not flatter, said Chubb. I do not lie. I am the only person who knows how this young man was killed. I can tell you that story, or not tell you. What for you not wish to know?