by Peter Carey
She ran then, darting around him and fleeing into the doorway that led to her great shelved refuge. He was behind her. There was no hiding. She came to a ladder. It was not her ladder. It led to no refuge, merely to piles of cement bags. She was high up the ladder when he reached the bottom. She didn’t look down. She could hear his breathing.
She tried to be somewhere else. She had to be somewhere else. When she dropped the cement bag down the ladder she was already walking down the sandy path to the mango tree. Somewhere far away, she heard a grunt. As she dropped the second bag she knew that the grunt had come from a tangled mess of the bright painful snakes.
“No snakes here,” she said.
She descended the ladder beside the path and found the snakes snapping around her ankles.
“Go away,” she said, “or I will have to kill you. No snakes here.”
But the snakes would not go away and writhed and twisted about each other making their nasty sounds.
It took her a while to mix the cement with sand and carry enough water, but soon she had it mixed and she buried the groaning snakes in concrete where they would do no harm.
When she looked at the concrete, trowelled neatly and squared off, she realized that it was as good a place as any to build.
She walked off down the path towards the mango tree. There she found some pieces of wood with “Williamson” written on them.
She started sawing then, and by the time dusk came she had built the beginning of her new home.
That night she slept on a high platform above the path, but two nights later she was asleep within her new house.
The moon shone through the sawtoothed sky and she dreamed that she was trapped in a white arid landscape, strapped in a harness and running helplessly up and down on a wire, but that was only a dream.
Exotic Pleasures
1.
Lilly Danko had a funny face, but the actual point where one said “this is a funny face” rather than “this is a pretty face” was difficult to establish. Certainly there were little creases around the eyes and small smile lines beside the mouth, yet they had not always been there and she had always had a funny face. It was a long face with a long chin and perhaps it was the slight protuberance of her lower lip that was the key to it, yet it was not pronounced and could be easily overlooked and to make a fuss about it would be to ignore the sparkle in her pale-blue eyes. Yet all of this is missing the point about faces which are not static things, a blue this, a long that, a collection of little items like clues in a crossword puzzle. For Lillian Danko had a rubber face which squinted its eyes, pursed its lips, wrinkled its nose and expressed, with rare freedom, the humours of its owner.
At the age of eight she had written in a school composition that she wished, when fully grown, to take the profession of clown. And although she had long since forgotten this incident and the cold winter’s afternoon on which she had written it, she would not now, at the age of thirty, sitting in a boiling old Chevrolet at the Kennecott Interstellar Space Terminal, have found anything to disown.
Here she was, knitting baby clothes in a beaten-up car, while Mort, dressed up in a suit like a travelling salesman, walked the unseen corridors inside the terminal in search of a job as a miner on one of the company’s planets, asteroids or moons. She was not likely to share any jokes on the subject with Mort, who was stretched as tight as a guitar string about to break. And she wished, as she had found herself wishing more and more lately, that her father had been alive to share the idiocies of the world with.
She would have astonished him with the news, made him laugh and made him furious all at once. Here, she would have said, we have the romance of space and pointed to the burnt ugly hulk of an interstellar cargo ship lowering itself onto the earth like a dirty old hen going down on its nest. Space had yielded no monsters, no Martians, no exotic threats or blessings. The ship roaring bad-temperedly on the platform would contain nothing more beautiful than iron ingots, ball-bearings, and a few embittered workers who were lucky enough to have finished their stint in the untidy backyards of space.
It wasn’t funny unless you made it funny and Lilly, four months pregnant, with twenty dollars in her purse, a car that needed two hundred dollars and a husband who was fighting against three million unemployed to get a job, had no real choice but to make it funny.
“C’est la bloody guerre,” she said, holding up her knitting and reflecting that two hundred miles of dusty roads had not done a lot for the whiteness of the garment.
Fuck it, she thought, it’ll have to do.
When the face appeared in the open window by her shoulder she got such a fright she couldn’t remember whether she’d said “fuck” out loud or just thought it.
“I beg your pardon,” she said to the bombed-out face that grinned crookedly through the window.
“Pardon for what?” He was young and there was something crazy about him. His black eyes looked as sleepy as his voice sounded. He was neglected and overgrown with wild curling black hair falling over his eyes and a bristling beard that was just catching up to an earlier moustache.
“I thought I may have said something.”
“If you said something,” he said, “I didn’t hear it. I am definitely at least half deaf in one ear.”
“I probably didn’t say it then,” she said carefully, wondering if he was going to rob her or if he was just crazy. “Are you looking for a lift?”
“Not me.” He stood back from the windows so she could see his white overalls with their big Kennecott insignia. He was tall and thin like a renegade basketball player. “This,” he gestured laconically to include the whole area of car park, administration building, docking platforms and dry parched earth, “this is my home. So,” he paused for a moment as if what he had said had made him inexplicably sad, “so I don’t need a lift, thank you.”
“Any jobs in there?”
“Let’s say there are an awful lot of people in there waiting to be told no.”
Lilly nodded. “Yeah, well …”
“You want to see something?”
“Well, that depends what it is.”
He walked smoothly back to a little white cleaner’s trolley he had left marooned a few yards from the car and trundled it back, whistling like one who carries rare gifts.
“If anyone comes,” he whispered, “you’re asking me directions, OK?”
“OK.”
“This,” he reached a large hand into the white cart, “is really something special.”
He was not exaggerating. For what he now pushed through the window and onto her lap was the most beautiful bird that Lilly Danko had ever dreamed might be possible, more exquisite and delightful than a bird of paradise, a flamingo, or any of the rare and beautiful species she had ever gazed at in picture books. It was not a large bird, about the size of a very big pigeon, but with a long supple neck and a sleek handsome head from which emerged a strong beak that looked just like mother of pearl. Yet such was the splendour of the bird that she hardly noticed the opaline beauty of the beak, or the remarkable eyes which seemed to have all the colours of the rainbow tucked into a matrix of soft brown. It was the bird’s colouring that elicited from her an involuntary cry. For the feathers that ran from its smooth head to its graceful tail were of every blue possibly imaginable. Proud Prussian blue at the head then, beneath a necklace of emerald green, ultramarine and sapphire which gave way to dramatic tail feathers of peacock blue. Its powerful chest revealed viridian hidden like precious jewels in an aquamarine sea.
When she felt the first pulse of pure pleasure she imagined that it came from the colours themselves and later when she tried to explain this first feeling to Mort she would use the word “swoon”, savouring the round smooth strangeness of the word.
“Don’t it feel nice when you touch it?”
“Oh yes.”
And even as she answered she realized that it was not the colours that gave such pleasure, but that the feeling was associated with stro
king the bird itself. “It’s like having your back rubbed.”
“Better.”
“Yes,” she said, “better. It gets you right at the base of the neck.”
“It gets you just about everywhere.” And something about the way he said it made her realize that he wasn’t showing her this bird out of idle interest, but that he was going to offer it for sale. It was an exotic, of course, and had probably been smuggled in by some poor miner looking for an extra buck. If the crew-cut Protestants who had begun the push into space with such obsessive caution had seen the laxness of the space companies with quarantine matters they would have shrieked with horror. But NASA had wilted away and no terrible catastrophe had hit the earth. There were exotic shrubs which needed to be fed extraterrestrial trace elements to keep them alive, a few dozen strange new weeds of no particular distinction, and a poor small lizardish creature raised for its hallucinogenic skin.
But there had been nothing as strange and beautiful as this and she calculated its value in thousands of dollars. When she was invited to make an offer she reluctantly handed it back, or tried to, because as she held it up to the man he simply backed away.
“You’ve got to make an offer. You can’t not make an offer.”
She put the bird, so placid she thought it must be drugged, back on her lap and stroked sadly. “OK, I’ll be the bunny. How much do you want?”
He held up two hands.
“Ten dollars?”
“Is that cheap or is it cheap?”
“It’s cheap, but I can’t.”
“You should have made an offer.”
“I can’t,” she said hopelessly, thinking of Mort and what he would say. God knows the world pressed in on him heavily enough. Yet the thrilling thought that she could own such a marvel, that she need never hand it back, crept into her mind and lodged there, snug and comfortable as a child sleeping beneath a soft blanket.
“I can only offer five,” she said, thinking that she couldn’t offer five at all.
“Done.”
“Oh, shit.”
“You don’t want it?”
“Oh yes, I want it,” she said drily, “you know I want it.” She put the bird down on the seat, where it sat waiting for nothing more than to be picked up again, and took five of their precious dollars from her handbag. “Well,” she said, handing over the money, “I guess we can always eat it.” Then, seeing the shocked look on the wild young face: “Just joking.”
“If you don’t want it …”
“I want it, I want it. What does it eat? Breakfast cereal and warm milk?”
“I’ve got feed for it, so don’t sweat.”
“And the feed is extra, right?”
“My dear Dolores,” he said, “where this bird comes from, the stuff it eats grows on trees. If you’d be nice enough to open the boot I’ll give you a bag of it and our transaction, as they say, will be finito.”
She opened the boot and he wheeled round his cleaner’s trolley and hoisted a polythene sack into the car.
“What do I do when it’s eaten all this?”
But he was already gliding across the car park towards the administration building. “Well, then,” he giggled over his shoulder, “you’re going to have to eat it.”
The giggling carried across the hot tarmac and got lost in the heat haze.
Lilly went back to the car and was still stroking the bird when Mort came back.
Through pale veils of pleasure she saw him walking back across the blistering car park and she knew, before he arrived at the car, exactly what his eyes would look like. She had seen those eyes more and more recently, like doors to comfortable and familiar rooms that suddenly open to reveal lift wells full of broken cables. She should have taken him in her arms then and held him, stroked his neck until the lights came back on in those poor defeated eyes, eyes which had once looked at the world with innocent certainty, which had sought nothing more than the contentment of being a good gardener, calm eyes without fear and ambition. She should have taken him in her arms, but she had the bird and she sat there, stroking it stupidly, like someone who won’t leave a hot shower until the water goes cold.
He came and sat behind the wheel, not looking at her.
“Take off your coat, honey,” she said gently, putting a hand on his. “Come on, take it off.”
It was then that he saw the bird.
“What’s that?”
Her left hand was still stroking it. She ran a finger down its opaline bill, across its exquisitely smooth head and down its glowing blue back. “It’s a bird. Stroke it.” She tugged his hand, a hand which each day had become smoother and softer, towards the bird, and the bird, as if understanding, craned its supple neck towards him. “It’ll make you feel better.”
But Mort put both hands on the steering wheel and she saw his knuckles whiten. She was frightened then. He was a dark well she had only thought of as calm and still, but that was in the easy confidence of employment, in times without threat. Now, when she said what she had to say, something would happen.
“Mort, I’m sorry. I paid five dollars for it. I’m sorry, Mort.”
He opened the door and walked slowly around the car. She watched him. He didn’t look at her. He walked around the car a second time and she saw his face colouring. Then he started kicking it. He moved slowly, methodically, kicking it every couple of feet as if he wished to leave no part of its dull chalky body unpunished. When he had finished he came and sat down again, resting his head against the wheel.
Lilly got out of the car and walked to the driver’s side.
“Come on, bugalugs,” she said, “move over. I’m driving.”
She slid behind the wheel, thinking that in another month she wouldn’t be able to fit behind it, and when he moved over she passed him the bird. By the time they had left the terminal he was stroking it. His face had relaxed and resumed its normal quiet innocence and she remembered the days they had worked together as gardeners on the Firestone Estate as if this were some lost paradise from which they had been inexplicably expelled by a stern fascist god.
“Let’s stay in a motel,” she said. “Let’s have a hot shower and a good meal and get drunk and have a nice fuck in a big bed.”
“And be broke in the morning,” he said, but smiled.
“One morning we’ll be broke. We might as well have fun doing it.”
Mort stroked the bird slowly, dreamily.
“Do you like our bird?” she asked.
He smiled. “You’re a crazy person, Lilly.”
“Do you still love me?”
“Yes,” he said, “and I like the bird. Let’s have champagne and piss off without paying.”
“Champagne it is.”
As it turned out, the motel they chose didn’t have champagne, but it had an architecture well suited to their plans. Its yellow painted doors faced the highway and when they backed the car into the space in front of the room there was nothing in their way to prevent a fast getaway.
2.
Lilly lay on the bed stroking the bird which sat comfortably between her breasts and her swollen belly. The bottle of wine which stood amongst the debris of a meal on the table beside her was very nearly empty.
Mort, his hair wet, sat naked in a chair staring at the television. She envied him his looseness, his easy sexual satisfaction.
“Why don’t you put it down?” he said.
“In a minute.”
“Come and rub my back.”
“You’re a greedy bugger, Morto.”
“You want to be careful with that bird. It probably should have injections or something. You shouldn’t fuck around with exotics when you’re pregnant.”
“You’re the only exotic I fuck around with.” She looked at him and thought for the millionth time how pretty he was with his smooth skin and his hard muscles and that beautiful guileless face. “Let’s get another bottle.” The drunk Mort was more like the old Mort.
Without waiting for an answer
she reached over and picked up the phone. She ordered the wine, put the bird in the bathroom with a saucer of seed, threw Mort a pair of trousers and picked up her own dress from where she had dropped it.
It was the manager himself who brought the wine. He wasn’t content to hand it through the door. “I’ll just pick up the trays,” he said, and Lilly noted that he already had his foot in the door, like an obnoxious encyclopedia salesman.
He was a short, slim man, handsome in an overripe way, with a mole near his eye and waving dark hair. Lilly didn’t like him. She didn’t like his highly shined shoes or his neatly pressed flannel trousers. She didn’t like the way he looked at the wet towel lying on the floor and the rumpled disordered bed freshly stained from lovemaking.
She sat on the bed while he busied himself with the trays. When she saw he was actually counting the knives and forks she started mimicking him behind his back.
When he announced that a saucer was missing she nearly burst out laughing, as if anyone would pinch one of his stupid tasteless saucers.
“It’s in the bathroom,” she said, and was wondering if she should add “where it belongs” when the man took the opportunity to inspect the bathroom.
When he came back he was holding the bird in one hand and the saucer in the other. Lilly took the bird from him and watched him drop the seeds into the rubbish bin.
“There is a house rule against pets. It’s quite clearly displayed.”
“It’s not a pet,” she said.
“I can’t have people bringing pets here.”
She saw Mort put his head in his hands as he anticipated one more setback, one more razor-nick defeat.
She took the saucer from the manager’s manicured hand. “Just stroke it,” she said, “it has special properties,” and smiled inwardly to hear herself use a word like “properties”, a leftover from her wasted education.
The manager looked at her with supercilious eyes and was about to give her back the bird when she firmly took hold of his free hand (which she was astonished to find damp with anxiety) and rubbed it down the bird’s back. When she took her hand away he continued to stroke it mechanically, the threatened light of authority still shining in his eyes.