by Peter Carey
Vincent was in a terror, circling my maman like an injured dog, fearful of blame, angry with everyone around him. He would not let Rox touch the body. Everyone remembered that. Rox and Wally discussed it afterwards, often. Rox always said, ‘What was he afraid of?’
My maman’s body lay in the same place they had once placed old Ducrow’s remains. So much for history.
Wally remembers me talking to Bill on the telephone. Was I left alone? Wally cannot remember. He can remember thinking: Bill will soon be here.
Wally did not like Bill, but Bill was my biological father and Wally had a strong sense of what was right and wrong – he thought he must be there.
Wally can remember Vincent trying to light candles on the stage and refusing to let Rox wash her, my maman, his lover.
‘Don’t touch,’ he said. ‘You must not touch her.’
Rox tried to get me out of the building. I would not leave. Maybe it was in response to this that Vincent covered my maman’s face with a green plastic garbage bag. In any case, too late, too late – none of us would forget what we had seen before the bag came down – the bared gums, the bleeding eyes.
When the garbage bag was across the face, I was present. They gathered around me. I had talked to Bill by then. Bill was maybe on his way already, flying 30,000 feet above the frozen lakes of the Canton of Saarlim. Wally steeled himself against this intrusion.
Vincent’s candles were finally burning. The police arrived. They asked endless questions about the candles.
I was like an injured cat. I did not want to be held or touched. Rox and Wally circled me like a bandage, a blindfold, a blanket. They stayed with me all through the night. Other things happened – police, doctors, sedatives, statements – but they all happened after this. At five a.m., against my wishes, my maman’s body was removed on a stretcher.
I rocked back and forth, pounding the now hateful Meneer Mouse with the brick, turning the balsa wood into a feathery pulp.
Vincent sat behind me. Sometimes he put a hand on my shoulder. He was so frail and guilty, unwashed, matted, so wan and washed out in his crumpled lint-and snot-marked black suit – no one could have guessed he would be married again before two years were out.
Bill arrived late the next day, the Tuesday.
He was tall, tanned, gravure-handsome, with huge padded shoulders and pointed snakeskin shoes with silver tips on the laces. He looked like the embodiment of everything the Feu Follet had fought – your culture, your Sirkus. He opened his arms and, with tears streaming down his crumpled face, fell on his tightly trousered knees. He pressed the snotty rag of my face against the puffy shoulder of his black silk suit.
Wally remembers this.
He remembers also how he swallowed hard, how he felt grief and jealousy combine deep in the darkness of his throat. His hard freckled body woodenly resisted Bill’s embrace. Yet when he said, ‘I’m pleased you came, mo camarade,’ he meant it sincerely.
But on the following morning, when Wally walked into his kitchen and found Bill already there – holding me balanced on his shoulders while he dredged skipjack fillets, one-handed, in a plate of flour – he was no longer pleased at all.
He looked at how I clung to my father’s neck and felt usurped, injured, insulted. He stayed in the doorway, fiddling with his cigarette pack.
Bill was wearing a loose crumpled white shirt with ballooning sleeves and a big collar. ‘We’re going to do some acting exercises,’ he told Wally. ‘We’ll need the theatre for the morning.’
‘Sure,’ he said, ‘a great idea.’
After breakfast, he drank two small tumblers of brandy and cleaned up the mess Bill had left behind him.
Half an hour later he remembers looking into the theatre and finding Bill and me kneeling opposite each other on the sawdust, inside the ring. We were both weeping. Wally walked quietly through the darkened house and climbed up to the booth, and there, sitting alone and unobserved, not even smoking, he spied on us moving about the stage.
I was not his actual son, but he loved me like a son. He put me to bed each night. He checked my breathing, bathed me during my fevers, talked to me when I had bad dreams.
The big glass window of the booth framed the illuminated stage like a vid screen. He switched on the house mike.
Now Bill was asking me to ‘do’ different funerals. What I performed were more in the nature of revenges than funerals – stabbing and shooting. I moved around the stage like a wind-up toy, rolling, walking on my knees, spitting, shouting, crying in a high wild voice Wally never heard before.
I remember none of this. Wally saw it all. He saw Bill and me begin to move around the stage, pretending to pick things up and place them in the centre. It was some minutes before Wally understood: we were collecting Bruder Mouses for an imaginary bonfire.
After we had set the fire alight, I became a little calmer, and soon I was loudly imagining the four of us, me and the three fathers, wearing white make-up to the funeral. ‘Thick,’ I said, ‘that … zinc … stuff … thick … like … mud.’
‘That’s beautiful,’ Bill said. ‘She’d like that.’
‘Would … she … like … that?’
‘She’d like that very much.’
‘Could … we … do … that … in … real … life?’
‘We can do what we like,’ Bill said. ‘Anything we like.’
‘Horse-shit,’ Wally said, alone, to no one, inside the booth.
24
Vincent was standing outside the upstairs toilet when Bill found him. He had wet hands and did not immediately take the jar of Zinc 3001 when it was proffered.
‘It’s Hamlet,’ he said, patting his trouser pockets in search of a handkerchief.
‘How Hamlet?’
‘Felicity had the mourners paint their faces for Ophelia’s funeral. Zinc 3001 – Hamlet.’
‘Then it is not inappropriate for us to do the same.’
Vincent finally located a wad of tissues in his breast pocket and used this slowly to wipe his square white hands. ‘The vid news will be there,’ he said at last. ‘They’ll have vans and cables. They’ll have it on the satellite.’
He threw the tissues through the open door of the toilet, lobbing them into the wastebin.
‘Catch!’
He turned to see the Zinc 3001 flying at him. He had no choice but to catch it.
‘I do not want this,’ Vincent said, pushing the heavy jar of make-up at the actor who made no move to take it. ‘It doesn’t help to treat this funeral like a Sirkus.’
Bill’s mouth tightened.
‘I didn’t mean that personally,’ Vincent said.
‘I know,’ Bill said, but he hooked his thumbs in his belt and did not take the jar.
‘They won’t tell the real story,’ Vincent said. ‘They’re not going to say anything about her production of Hamlet.’
‘Vincent, this is not about the media.’
‘It’s us they’ll show. The weirder you make us look, the more damage you’ll do.’
‘Vinny, please. Don’t make this part of your election campaign.’
Vincent had lost a lover and a wife and was now in the process of losing an election. ‘We’ll be on the goddamn news,’ he said, his pale blue eyes now full of tears.
‘This is mourning,’ Bill said.
‘Listen to me, fuck you,’ Vincent shouted, his face screwed up, the tears already flowing. His voice echoed through the stairwell, in the empty corridors. ‘You don’t know what’s going on here. You just fly in and start to meddle. An Efican citizen has just been murdered by a foreign power. You want to mourn something, mourn that.’
Bill frowned and nodded. He took the pot of make-up from Vincent.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’
Any reasonable person watching this would imagine that Bill was on his way to talk to me, to tell me that our ritual was not suitable. On the morning of the funeral, however, Vincent found Bill and me and Wally in the dressing
room, painting our faces with Zinc 3001.
The funeral was as Vincent knew it would be – not to do with us at all. There were journalists, politicians, camera teams, demonstrators with placards accusing Voorstand of the murder.
Every soup-server and spear carrier who ever walked through the doors of the Feu Follet was there – Claire Chen, Moey Perelli, everyone you would expect – but also actors from the Efican National Theatre, soap-opera vedettes, news readers. There were known DoS spies, Gardiacivil, ambulances lined up between the narrow driveways of the old French cemetery.
Bill was the most famous mourner there, and he picked me up, his son, the white-faced beast, and carried me on the long walk through the cemetery to the Unitarian plot.
Vincent was beside himself. And even those who knew nothing of the conflict, who saw only Bill Millefleur weeping by the graveside, thought him theatrical and self-important in his grief.
Wally, however, was not amongst them. Even though he did not like Bill, even though he felt self-conscious with white make-up on his face, he also saw what I saw – that Bill Millefleur was finally determined publicly to own me.
My father had come home.
25
Vincent did have a strong sense of right and wrong, but he lacked the empathy which would have given his moral sense more reach and subtlety. He judged Bill’s theatrical appearance at the funeral to be beyond forgiveness.
It was Wally, that violiniste and small-time thief, who forced Vincent to see through the Zinc, to see Bill’s courage, to see that he was swollen with grief and guilt and wanted nothing more than another chance to be Tristan Smith’s father.
But as for Bill himself, he was never so explicit, certainly not with the adults.
With me he was a little more forthcoming, but most of the important things he had to say he said sub-textually. He held me hard. He blew his nose. In the penitential stoop of his broad shoulders, in the clarity of his gaze, in all the subtle grammar of his body, he gave the clear impression that life – his life, my life-would now be different.
He was my dab now.
He had twice deserted me but now he had come back. He did not say this, but it was definitely the impression that he produced. He gave himself to me as intensely as ever he gave himself to an important role. He was dedicated. He took on the most intimate matters of my toilette. He studied. He read books about ‘The Special Child’. He played guitar and encouraged me to sing. He was obsessive. He sent Wally and Roxanna off to their own room. He slept on a mattress beside me on the sawdust stage. When I woke with night terrors, he was there. Twenty-four hours a day.
He had black silk pyjamas made for me. He acted with me. He found me an audition piece in Hamlet. He inspired me. We began a preliminary reading of a two-hander by Bardwell.* He cooked delicacies he had learned in Saarlim, feather-light crepes with apricot filling, Beanbredie and so on.
I was ill, still filled with horror and grief, fearful of my own survival, anxious for protection, overcome by my father’s affection, beauty, belief in my abilities.
There was nothing innocent about me. I knew I was being seduced, stolen. I was fully cognizant of the pain all of this caused Wally. I saw his grey-flecked eyes, his tired skin, his nicotine-yellow eyebrows and I knew that I was ditching him.
He had Roxanna. I had my father back. I would not be an orphan after all.
Bill mourned my maman, there is no doubt. He could not forgive himself for how he left her, for having patronized her work, blamed her for his scar. He told me he had been a snot. He said he had run away from me. He said it was time for us, the pair of us, to face the real world. And in all of this he focused on me, his beautiful features so close to me, his bright blue eyes always on my face so that I felt, in turn, transmogrified.
We took excursions out across the Boulevard des Indiennes to the downtown mall. ‘This is my son, Tristan Smith.’ That is what he said, in that clear melodious actor’s voice. Every time he was accosted by an autograph hound, he introduced me. ‘This is Tristan Smith, my son.’ He was not thinking beyond that point. He did not think beyond his character, or think that, for me, it would be different. I basked within his golden aura. I fell in love with him, my actor dab. I imagined our life continuing – Shakespeare, Brecht, agitprop, audiences, reviews, a life. If this was naïve, Wally was no more acute.
‘He is your father,’ he told me when he found me coming out of the first-floor bathroom. ‘He loved your maman. If he asks you to live with him, you should feel free to go.’
Vincent had no advice at all. Day after day the vids and zines brought news of more scandals in the Blue Party as the invisible Gabe Manzini did his job of maintaining the Voorstand alliance. He manufactured evidence of crooked land deals, bribes from foreign arms dealers and aircraft manufacturers, the normal VIA menu of destabilization.
Vincent was a ghost who came and went at unpredictable hours. Once, when we were alone, he held my head against his chest and stroked my hair and wept, but he never said a word to me about Bill and he was not there in the kitchen when Bill said goodbye.
Wally was sitting at the table peeling potatoes for Sunday’s evening meal. Bill, who had already prepared the apple pie, was leaning with his back against the porcelain sink. I was sitting on the counter top beside him stringing beans.
Bill began talking about letters. He talked about famous letters in history, a correspondence between Manuel Grieg and Sonia Nuttall which had been published in Saarlim the previous season. He talked about love, growth, understanding. He began to talk about the letters we could now write each other. He talked about it for some time, the ideas we could now exchange, not by speech, which is lost like drama is lost, but by putting ink on paper.
I don’t know what I thought or understood but I saw the weakness in his mouth, the anxiety in his eyes. I saw Roxanna and Wally looking at me. I saw myself put down the beans. My hands began to pat-pat-pat against my narrow chest.
‘Bill,’ Wally said, ‘what are you telling him?’
‘I’ve got a contract in Saarlim,’ Bill said. ‘You know that.’
I tried to say something but the words got stuck.
My handsome dab filled himself a glass of water.
‘You’re … leaving … me.’
‘What?’
‘You’re … going … to … make … the … Voorshits … laugh.’
Bill drained his glass and placed it in the sink. ‘I’m a performer.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘You’re … a … traitor.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said.
‘My … maman … knew … you … didn’t … love … us.’
Bill did not have a cool temper. It took nothing to get it going. ‘Shut up, Tristan. Don’t say things you don’t mean.’
‘They … killed … her …’
‘They didn’t do anything.’
‘They … did … you … did.’ I was beside myself, four feet off the floor. I jumped. I fell. I hit my nose. I punched his great hard thighs, pinched, thumped.
He jumped away. I grabbed his cuffs.
‘Stop,’ he said, trying to shake me off his leg. ‘Stop now.’ But he was guilty, angry. He picked me up and held me out to Wally.
‘I’ll speak to you later,’ he said, his face crimson. ‘After you have apologized.’
It took perhaps three seconds to pronounce this ultimatum. I watched it happen. I watched, like you watch a glass falling to the floor.
When my father’s car left for the airport, at seven o’clock the following morning, nothing had been mended.
He left me behind in a client state that made itself the servant of your country’s wishes. His letters arrived. Even their stamps were repugnant to me – their folk-art imagery, their clear-eyed Settlers Free.
Thus I lived fatherless through that shameful period of Efica’s history as armies of our conscripts were raised to fight Voorstand’s war in Burma and Nepal. I saw the great Efican health-care system weakened and demo
lished at the insistence of Voorstand’s bankers. I saw the Sirkus Domes spread across our little islands and the Bruders appear to spread their stories, your stories, not ours, in every corner of my nation’s life.
*Jacqueline Bardwell – contemporary Efican poet, playwright, essayist, most famous as author of A Long Way from Anywhere.
26
While Jacques and I fiddled with the Simi inside the Marco Polo Hotel, that secretive, stubborn old man with the shining skull set out to do the thing he had been intent on doing ever since we first discussed the Sirkus Tour.
He came down to the foyer and there, in a varnished vestibule beside the bell captain’s desk, he spent five minutes peering up at a framed map of Saarlim City. He took a sheet of paper from his pocket and, leaning the paper against the yellowed map, made some careful notes. Then, with the paper still in his hand, he walked carefully across the stained and slippery marble floor to the revolving door.
Half a second later he was in a dark, hot, smelly, bustling street – the Jean Pitz Colonnade. Bicyclists and other wheel-squirrels sped through the crowds blowing shrill whistles, shouting warnings of their approach. Beggars sat against the dark distempered back walls rattling their cups.
If you are from Saarlim, this is life. If you are from Efica, it is terrifying. The old man was spun around like a paper cup dropped in a river. Twice he was bumped, three times abused. Then, as he turned to raise his finger to a stranger, he was bowled right over by a pair of Misdaad Boys and he felt, as he fell, their flickering fingers enter and retreat from four of his pockets – his three Guilders were gone.
He retreated to the musty air-conditioned chill of the Marco Polo where he sat for a very long time doing nothing more than nursing his bruises and watching the guests come and go. Soon, however, he began to tap his shoe, and then he thumped his cane twice on the marble floor, and stood. Then he set off into the Jean Pitz again. This time he stayed close to the outer rail and as he went he muttered and tapped his Efican oak stick. He was beetle-browed, vulture-necked, and although he felt a total Ootlander, he became without knowing it one of those belligerent street characters that Saarlimites know to leave alone.