The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

by Peter Carey

  ‘Relax,’ the harelip said. I did not like the way he sat so big and heavy on my bed. He was so ugly, perhaps not as ugly as I was, but ugly just the same. He was not like Vincent or Bill. He had bad breath. ‘You’re safe here. Everything will be OK, little Actor-Manager.’

  ‘Go … away,’ I shouted.

  He could not have guessed how much he scared me or I am sure he would have left. But perhaps he did know, and he was embarrassed, hurt to be, even here, unloved, and therefore he stayed, because he could not admit to being unwanted.

  ‘We’re your freres.’ He showed his gums to me.

  ‘FUCK … OFF.’

  The words were clear to them. They splashed around that little room, like boiling water, caused men and women in white gowns to exclaim, leap, stumble in their hurry to avoid the burn.

  ‘Fuck … off,’ I screamed.

  A minute later the room was empty, the door was shut, and I was alone – scared and shaking. All I knew was: I was not them, would not be them, would not be looked at in that way.

  There was a nurses’ station right outside my door. I could not leave that way. But there was also a window in the room, a chair. I foot-walked to the chair and crawled up on it. My knees hurt more than I expected. Then I noticed that they were bandaged and there was some black blood soaked through on one of them.

  The window looked out into a light-well with an open side reaching to a little lane. The drop, the danger, the hit of fear that rushed into my body – all this felt wonderful. I sought the sensation like a tennis champion feels the satisfaction of the racket gripped in his hand, like the smoker seeks the rough, raw feeling of smoke on the lungs. Perched on the window sill, elevated, alone on the eighth floor, I experienced the ecstasy of performance before there was one.

  On the opposite wall there were thick metal waste pipes running in a neat daisy chain from floor to floor, five storeys to the ground. I made a very small leap and caught hard on the round, rusty pipe. I stuck there a minute or two, held fast, a limpet on the side of the Mater Hospital.

  Watching the performance, you would not have seen the pain, but that pipe was rusty and sometimes rough and very, very cold. Twice there were leaks and, around the leaks, a slippery green mould or slime. The elbows at every level seemed to offer resting places but they proved almost the most treacherous of all. The elbows had inspection plates which were sometimes loosely held, or secured by only one bolt. When I grabbed the elbow, the whole plate swung sideways, and twice I nearly fell. It was much harder than a tree, rope or ladder, and I could not concentrate on anything but what to cling to, one inch at a time. Yet the hands that reached out towards me from the toilet windows were not an annoyance, nor the changing shift of adult voices a soothing distraction.

  I did not know what floor I was on at any moment. My arms felt like ripped lead. My hands were numb, bleeding, but I was transformed. I was no longer one of the pitiable wretches I had left behind upstairs. As I descended, I was an actor – Mark Antony, Richard the Third, the Phantom of the Rue Morgue.

  So intense was my relationship with that pipe that I only realized I was near the ground when the murmur of voices, of slammed car doors, reached my ears. Finally I permitted myself to look down to my audience. The ground was not more than twenty feet below me. Faces were tilted up towards me. I turned to them.

  The faces were all wrong.

  They were not faces looking at an actor. Nor were they looking at something as simple as a boy on a pipe. The faces looked at something like snot, like slime, like something dripping down towards them from which they wished to take their eyes and which, the clearer and closer it became, produced in their own eyes and lips such grotesque contortions that I knew – properly, fully, for the first time in my life – I was a monster.

  Wally, his mouth tight, his eyes brimming, stood on an oil drum at the base of the pipe. He held his pale freckled arms out towards me. When I fell into his arms he crushed me to him, as if, in holding my snotty face so forcibly against his neck, he could block out everything I had just learned.

  43

  They were a fast-food crowd outside the Mater, sweaty, pasty-faced, overweight, slippery in their ponchos. They shoved hungrily into the cul-de-sac, pressing in against the ladders and bricks, trampling on the yellow builder’s sand. They did not spare a glance for Wally as he rolled the empty oil drum against the wall.

  In those years Wally still had a tennis player’s grace, a lightness. He did not clamber on to that drum, but leapt so cleanly, in one light bound, that later, when Roxanna realized that the drum must have been at least four feet tall, she began to doubt what she had seen.

  He stood on the rocking drum and reached out his long arms towards the small bandaged figure as it edged its way down the wall. He made a kind of cooing noise.

  When first he heard this noise, the boy speeded his descent, but then he paused, and looked down, and there was something in the moment that suggested Sirkus to Roxanna – the way he hung out by one arm, like Darnell Dommartin at the top of her slippery pole. His dreadful face was flushed, his fine fair hair blowing in the breeze.

  A kind of shudder went through the crowd. It shifted its ground and emitted a little murmur of disgust.

  ‘It’s a mutant, Maman,’ someone called. ‘It’s Phantome Drool.’*

  The boy heard it. You could see it reach him, like hot water reaching a spider in your sink. He shrivelled.

  ‘Wooo,’ Wally said. ‘Woooo.’ He did not stretch out his hands, but he stood beneath the child in the attitude of an Efican ring-master beneath an aerialiste, ready to catch. Thus, when the boy did drop, it was, for all its speed, not unexpected.

  Wally’s knees buckled. He staggered, but he did not fall. When he turned back to face the crowd, his eyes were slitted, his mouth thin. His face was a shell, burnished, made almost beautiful with anger.

  A child beside Roxanna spoke. ‘Yuk, Maman. A mutant.’ Roxanna looked down to see who had spoken – eight years old, Anglo features, brown coat, white gloves, little turned-up nose.

  ‘I beg your pardon … ’

  ‘Something bothering you?’ the mother said. She was so neat, so fucking Protestant – thin lips, straight white teeth.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Roxanna said, ‘but she shouldn’t call that little boy a mutant.’

  The woman looked Roxanna up and down, lingering for an insulting moment on her scuffed red shoes and laddered stockings. Then she smiled and turned away.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Roxanna said. ‘Excuse me. I said she shouldn’t call the boy a mutant.’

  The bitch did not even turn her head.

  ‘You don’t know who you’re screwing with,’ Roxanna said. She put her small white hand on the woman’s bony slippery shoulder and pulled her round. She did not seek violence, only due respect, but when the woman pushed her hand away, Roxanna knew she had to hurt her – she had no other option.

  She pulled an eight-ounce vodka bottle from her purse. ‘I’ll cut that fucking smile right off your face,’ she said, looking for a brick to break the bottle on.

  ‘Shut up, Roxanna,’ said Wally. ‘Just shut up.’

  He moved ahead of her, carrying Tristan. She followed behind, pointing her finger back at the woman. ‘You’re so stupid,’ Roxanna said. ‘You’re so cowardly.’

  She walked from the cul-de-sac behind Wally and the boy, almost in tears. She was so angry. It was hard walking so fast in her red high-heels. She wanted to touch the boy, hold him, tell him she loved him even though she didn’t. She circled. She shadowed. She wanted to tell him he was beautiful, that he had so much guts she could not believe him.

  ‘You’re so brave,’ she said.

  She put the vodka back in her bag. She thought what she could give him, how she could let him know he was loved, how those morons were the ugly ones, not him.

  ‘They’re the mutants,’ she said.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Wally.

  She took it too, from him, from them, burnished, weld
ed together. She would take that sort of shit from no one else, but she took it then, from them. She saw that about Wally, that what he had claimed was actually true, he was not a single man at all.

  At Gazette Street she took charge, slowly, insisting for no reason other than she just had to.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I was a nurse.’

  She set Wally to work boiling water, found some bright red disinfectant, sterilized her eyebrow tweezers in the gas jet, laid a clean-looking towel on the kitchen table, and watched as Wally removed Tristan’s clothes and exposed his pale peculiar body, criss-crossed with surgeons’ scars. It was shocking, but not shocking, it was just, finally, how it was – bones, skin, scars, the heart beating like in a baby’s chest. She did not know what to do, had never been a nurse, but she just pushed in, because she had to do something, and she carefully washed his hands and legs with hot water – maybe the water was too hot, maybe she washed too many times – and picked out the rust with tweezers. She knew she was clumsy. He did not flinch or cry out, but all his forehead wrinkled each time she hurt him. His courage made her want to cry.

  She had Wally make bandages with a floral sheet which she had found lying in the corridor. It was dusty but folded and therefore probably clean.

  ‘There,’ she said, at last, ‘he’s done.’

  Wally dressed him and asked, ‘Do you want french toast?’

  He shook his head. You could see his shame. It surrounded him like an aura, like Milly when she had been raped by that moron at the Shell station. This one was the same – he had been so brave, but he was ashamed and could not look anyone in the eye.

  ‘Do you want waffles?’ she asked. She somehow knew he could not bear to be looked at, that even the air now hurt his skin. She had Wally’s money in her purse. She would have gone and bought a waffle iron, but he shook his head.

  ‘You want to watch a Sirkus vid?’ she asked.

  ‘Let’s watch the storm,’ Wally said, and picked him up, and she followed downstairs and out of the dark foyer and into the storm-bright light – all the sky grey but the walls of the garages across the street shining white and yellow – and sat down to watch the high-piled black clouds as they began to bleed in long grey streaks on to the Cootreksea Mountains.

  ‘He likes storms,’ Wally told her. ‘Thunder, lightning. It’s his favourite thing.’

  But Tristan crawled off Wally’s lap and crept back inside the doorway, and there he stayed, in the shadow, looking back into the gloom of the foyer.

  Roxanna put her hand lightly on Wally’s wooden shoulder. ‘God damn those people,’ she whispered. ‘God damn their ignorant mouths.’

  Wally shrugged. ‘What do you expect?’

  Roxanna could not be so philosophical. She went back inside the foyer – the boy was further inside now, sitting, curled up, in the middle of the dirty cobbled floor – and telephoned his mother, but the phone rang and rang. She telephoned the Human Wheel, without telling him what happened, but when he arrived, in a minute or two, he was depressed. The famously optimistic Sparrow was gaunt and stooped and had begun to smoke again, holding his badly made cigarettes in the cup of his hand.

  Roxanna squatted beside him on the steps.

  ‘Come on.’ She spoke loudly, so the boy in the foyer could hear. ‘I’m going to shout you all the Sirkus. Not a vid. The real thing.’

  Sparrowgrass looked at her, and then away, grimacing goofily up at the black sky.

  ‘Come on,’ Roxanna said, standing up and fluffing her hair. ‘I’ve got heaps of jon-kay. Let’s hit the Sirkus.’

  She did not know about this taboo on the Saarlim Sirkus. All she wanted to do was make the kid feel better.

  ‘Have you ever been?’ the Human Wheel asked her. He scratched the back of his bristling haircut, squinted up at her, creased his eyes, pulled lips right back up past the gum line.

  ‘Of course I’ve bloody been. Everybody’s been.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ the Wheel said. He screwed his body around to look back through the crack of door into the darkness of the foyer. ‘You haven’t, have you, Tristan?’

  ‘No,’ Wally said, ‘he hasn’t.’

  ‘Yes,’ the voice said in the darkness. ‘Nearly.’

  ‘Is it fun?’ Sparrow asked.

  Wally stepped down on to the footpath so he could shake his head at Roxanna without Sparrow seeing.

  Then the boy spoke. ‘I … understand … it … is … tray … commercial.’

  ‘Very unusual?’ the Human Wheel asked.

  ‘Comm-er-cial.’ Tristan crawled out into the light, squinting. His skin was so white.

  ‘Commercial? OK, but is it fun?’ the Wheel asked.

  Tristan’s face tugged and twisted. He turned his big white eyes on Roxanna. He quietly put his hand across his heart. Yes, he wanted to go, of course he did.

  ‘I don’t doubt that it’s reactionary,’ Sparrow said, chewing on the syllables of this last word as if they might be made of very sticky sugar gum. ‘What I want to know is: will it cheer me up?’

  The boy nodded vigorously.

  ‘Yes?’ Sparrow stood. ‘But I don’t think I’m dressed correctly.’ He brushed the cigarette ash from his baggy Army Disposals trousers and straightened the collar of his checked work shirt. ‘Should I dress up?’

  ‘No,’ Roxanna said, ‘it’s come-as-you-are.’

  But she dressed up, as well as she was able. She tried to do it quickly, but by the time it was done the storm had come and gone and the streets were wet and had that sweet jasmine sewer smell, and when they stepped out into Gazette Street you could hear that low gurgle of water in the drains beneath your feet. She wore her same black skirt – she had nothing else – but she borrowed a white shirt of Wally’s and put on a geld-band which emphasized her slim waist and her broad hips. She wore her red high-heels and put a little chain around her ankle and a small stick-on beauty spot on her cheek. She did, in short, everything to make her resemblance to the legendary Irma as marked as possible, and she saw how Wally, who had been reserved and silent since their return from the hospital, looked at her, and when they walked around the river to the Sirkus Dome he began to warm up again and told her things she already knew about the rising river, and pointed out the Chinese on the far bank stretching out their big nets on the high poles.

  At the entrance to the Sirkus, she took great pleasure in going to buy the seats, by herself, in opening her purse and laying out the big purple notes in front of the casser.

  Roxanna loved the Sirkus. The air was sexy and dangerous, smelled like freedom – fried food, gunpowder, ketchup, and the distinctive honeyed perfume of the wet season which emanated from the little bell-shaped flowers of the Enteralis Robusta. Of course she was not the only woman wearing a gold belt or an ankle chain. There were dozens of them, but most of them did not look at all like Irma.

  When she came back with the tickets she found the boy was in pain. Wally was pressing and pulling at his bandaged knees, trying to locate the injury.

  ‘Does that hurt? Where does it hurt?’ He was trying to look at the boy’s hands, but Tristan would not unclench them. They were shut as tight as briques bleus and the man had to use his strength to open them.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, staring belligerently at the open unmarked palms.

  For anwer, Tristan threw himself upon the grass and hid his face.

  ‘OK,’ Wally said. ‘I’m going to buy you a perroquet.’

  Tristan didn’t move. Wally turned and walked away.

  When Roxanna saw how he lay there, all rolled up and hidden, she knew exactly where it hurt. She knelt on the grass beside him. She laid her hand on his poor twisted leg. He jerked back. She knew how he was – the merest brush of a stranger’s eyes would hurt him.

  ‘You know it’s nice and dark inside that Sirkus.’

  ‘I … WANT … MY … MAMAN.’

  ‘I know what you need,’ she said. ‘And I’m going to get it.’ She turned to the Human Wheel, who w
as squatting beside her, rolling one more lumpy cigarette.

  ‘Cover him,’ she said. ‘Don’t let no one stare at him.’ She headed straight to the souvenir stall. But Tristan did not even see the embarrassed Sparrow. He saw only her and came after her on his hands and knees, wailing.

  ‘Stay,’ she said. ‘Stay with Sparrow.’

  ‘You,’ he said. ‘You.’ He came on across the bitumen, hard on her, scurrying between polished shoes, jumpy legs, retreating strollers, followed her into a souvenir stand – tea towels, ashtrays, caps, papier-mâché masks of Bruder Duck, Phantome Drool, Oncle Dog. He grabbed her ankles. She kicked at him – she could not help it – she hated people messing with her ankles. He was strong as a scrub rat. He scaled her leg, her trunk, clung to her neck. He smelt of snot and disinfectant. She got the item she wanted and went to stand in line at the cash register as if the bellowing child around her neck was nothing to do with her.

  ‘I … WANNA … GO … HOME.’

  ‘Shut up,’ she hissed.

  ‘I … HATE … YOU.’

  The queue melted before her. She struggled with her purse, the great fat roll of pigeon money. She gave over one more purple 10-dollar note.

  Then he would not accept the Bruder Mouse mask she had purchased for him. She dragged him by his arm over to the grass triangle and tried to wrestle him. ‘You gotta have this,’ she said. ‘It’ll cover your face.’

  But even this he did not hear, and it was Wally, finally, who came and held the shrieking boy still, while the three adults forced the papier-mâché mask on to his face.

  Tristan tried to rip it off. ‘I … HATE … YOU,’ he screamed.

  Then Wally picked him up and, holding him under his arm, ran to the toilet block. There, he held the kicking, scratching beast up to the mirror.

  ‘Just look. Listen, just look.’

  Tristan twisted his head, pressed against Wally, denting the papier-mâché into his face. But, finally, as he struggled to pull the thing off him, he somehow caught a glimpse of himself. Bruder Mouse.