by Peter Carey
'Ninny,' Aldo said, his eyes dark and dangerous.
Later Aldo was to regret this, to realize that he had gone too far, even for him, and that marihuana and Armagnac can be a tricky combination.
'A moony ninny,' he said, wilfully tormenting his best and oldest customer. 'A dill, a drongo, a silly-billy.'
It was to prey on Aldo's mind, and later, when he was dying, he tried to get a message to Harry Joy, but by then Harry Joy was nowhere to be found.
'A dingo,' he called after the departing figure in the white suit. 'A po-face,' he told Billy de Vere, 'a dim-wit, a 'poo-pant,' but by then he was laughing too much and further speech became impossible. Through a curtain of tears he watched Billy de Vere pour himself another Armagnac.
'Look at this fucking cretin, will you,' Senior Constable Box said.
He brought the patrol car into the lane beside the crushed Fiat 500 which was making a painful-sounding 50 kilometres an hour. Sitting behind its wheel, his head and shoulders emerging from its crumpled sunshine roof like the tank commander in some private war, his white suit splashed with the black grime from passing buses, his hair slicked and flattened by the heavy rain, was a man with the profile of the god :Krishna.
'Give him a wave,' said Box who was probably not tech-nically drunk. Hastings closed his eyes and sighed. Box was giving him the shits.
'Watch ...'
Box tooted the horn and waved and the lunatic waved back, smiling and nodding.
'O.K.,' Hastings said, 'that'll do. Stop fucking about with him. Pull him over.' And he made Box get out in the rain and talk to him while he watched the conversation in the rear-view mirror.
Presently Box came back, opened the door, and burped.
'What is it?'
'He said an elephant sat on it,' said Box, grinning.
'Is he a smart arse or a looney?'
'Don't know.'
'Take him back to the station.'
'I'm not going in that,' Box said.
'Nobody is going in that,' Hasting said slowly. 'It is an unroadworthy vehicle. Now will you ask the gentleman if he would like to accompany us to the station in a nice new car?'
The police station was not what he had expected. It was like a house. A small neat path ran between borders of flowers. A sprinkler threw little jewels of water through the rain. The sun came out as they walked up the path. Harry, Senior Constable Box and the second policeman who had not introduced himself.
Inside the station innocent people filled out applications for drivers' licences. They took Harry through a side door and down a passage. They took him to a room at the end of the passage and left him alone. There was a table in the middle, scuffed vinyl tiles on the floor, a kitchen sink in one corner, and a number of kitchen chairs which had the appearance of newly delivered furniture. The wall had two different types of cream paint: shiny at the bottom and flat above the shoulder line. Sellotaped to the wall was a small printed sign which explained, in ten sarcastic points, how to produce a juvenile delinquent. A light with a frilly shade hung above the table, on which were an ashtray full of butts and a coffee cup with lipstick on it.
There was a curtain rod but no curtain. Harry sat on one of the chairs and looked out the window. He was wet and mis-erable. Water dripped on to the floor. Outside the window there was a clothesline and a young woman was hanging clothes on it. Harry watched her peg a pair of very large pyjamas on to the wire, a brown sock with a diamond pattern, and three small pairs of white panties.
A small fair-haired boy dragged a yellow plastic red-wheeled tricycle across the grass beneath the clothesline. It was all wrong. Water dripped from Harry Joy as he waited for his punishment.
After ten minutes the second policeman entered the room. He was Sergeant David Hastings but he still did not introduce himself. David Hastings had also been born in a small country town. Looking at him you could still see the fair-haired boy with sandshoes on his feet and scabs on his short, skinny legs. His face was freckled, his hair stood up at the back, and although he no longer blushed as readily as he had, his face would still go red when he felt he was being mucked around. A gentle glow suffused his face.
'Now, Harold,' he said, 'here's a cup of coffee.'
'Thank you.'
David Hastings pulled up a chair and sat with his back to the window. 'We're very busy,' he said slowly, playing with his own cup of coffee, turning the cup a full 360 degrees on its saucer. 'We don't have time to muck around.'
Harry patted his pocket, hoping that the marihuana had somehow vanished, but when Hastings looked pointedly at his hand he pulled it away as if he’d scorched himself.
'Now, Harold, would you just tell us the truth about your accident and everything will be O.K. You'll get a little fine and we'll phone your wife to come and get you.'
'I told him.'
'Tell me,' encouraged the policeman, his face becoming a little redder.
'An elephant sat on it.'
The policeman closed his eyes and sighed. 'Oh Harold,' he said, 'don't be silly. If you're going to tell stories to the police, tell us something original. Don't come and tell us old elephant stories, and if you do, get the car changed. The car in the story was a Volkswagen.'
'An elephant sat on it,' Harry insisted, but he no longer believed the story himself, 'The guy from the circus came and told me.'
'Name being .. . ?' Hastings opened his notebook with a tired flick of the hand. But all Harry could see was de Vere drinking Armagnac and his name would not appear.
'I forget.'
Outside the small boy rode his tricycle into a wet sheet. He stayed immobile with the sheet wrapped around him, blowing little white linen bubbles. The sun shone brightly, illuminating the white-wrapped boy and the three wheels of the tricycle.
'Weren't you going to claim insurance? Didn't you write down his name?'
Harry didn't say anything. He knew he was in for it. He had been planted with drugs and he could only wait for his punishment. He started to think about the two different kinds of cream paint they used on the walls, the flat above, the gloss below. It was the same scheme they had used at school. He didn't like the flat paint. It reminded him of finger nails being dragged across a blackboard.
He pulled a face, remembering it.
'What's that in aid of?' David Hastings stood up, took Harry's coffee, and walked over to the sink where he emptied it.
'What?'
'Pulling that silly face. What's that in aid of?'
'I just remembered something.'
'You better do a lot of remembering very fast Harold, before I charge you with driving an unroadworthy vehicle, resisting arrest, obscene language, and obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty.'
'Phone the circus, 'Harry said, 'they'll tell you.'
Hastings put down his pad and walked across the room to Harry. He put his hand on Harry's chest and twisted his shirt and skin together. When he had twisted it tight enough for his satisfaction he picked him up and forced him against the wall.
'Now,' he said, 'don't tell me what to do. Second, don't muck me about.'
Harry burped.
'You filthy bastard.'
Harry, pinned against the wall, raised a questioning eyebrow.
'You've been eating garlic. You fucking stink.' And he slammed Harry against the wall.
'I'm sorry,' Harry said. He was frightened. He waited. He would not be punished for stinking. He would be punished for the real offence.
Hastings walked to the other side of the room. Harry undid a shirt button and looked at the scar on his chest. It was bleeding. He felt he was getting hives. He felt them massing inside him. He stood still, trying not to attract attention to himself.
Senior Constable Box entered the room. He was no longer wearing his raincoat. His belly bulged out over his belt. He had combed his black curling hair and washed his face roughly. There were still two little drops of water clinging to his small moustache.
'Still telling funny stories
?' he asked.
'Not very funny stories,' Hastings said. 'Very old stories.'
Box pulled in his belly and hooked his thumbs over his belt. 'Maybe it could think of something original.'
Hastings shifted a chair around. 'Don't know if it’s capable of it.' He looked up at Harry and his freckles were almost invisible in his red face. He gripped the chair and placed it an inch further to the right. 'Maybe all it can do is tell old stories. Maybe I better pass him over to you.'
Box nodded in the manner of someone receiving a specific instruction. Harry watched. It was like a dance. Box retreated, Hastings approached. Hastings pulled Harry out from the wall and then stood behind him.
'Now,' Hastings said, 'I'll pass him over to you, Constable.'
He pushed hard. The sharp edge of the table-jabbed Harry between the legs.
He backed away from the table as Box moved behind him. 'No,' said Box, 'I might just pass him over to you.'
Harry hit the table again and Hastings pulled him back then shoved him forward, shoving him hard into the table with his boot. The corner of the table hit him in the balls. He tried to vomit. A boy stood on the tricycle, looking in.
'No, I think I'll pass him over to you.'
'No, I don't deal with drowned rats.'
Harry started to howl. He could not stand. They picked him up and sat him on a chair. His hives raged within him. He put his head back and howled to the heavens. He howled like someone locked in a dream. This, at last, was where he was sent to. Actors would punish him for all eternity while a child gazed through glass.
They were sitting down. They waited for him. He could not stand waiting for it to get worse. He had vertigo. He had to jump. He pulled the packet of marihuana out of his pocket and threw it on the table.
'There,' he yelled, 'there. That's the truth. That's the truth.'
There was a long silence while Hastings picked up the bag and Box leaned over his shoulder. Hastings had lost all his red colour. He tried not to smile. He sniffed the marihuana (a pitiful little packet, he thought, maybe half an ounce) and handed it to Box who looked like he was going to get the giggles.
'Alright,' Hastings said, only keeping a straight face with some difficulty. 'See if you can tell us something original this ,time.'
'Don't give us that old shit about elephants, Harold.'
'Something new.'
'A story.'
'Something interesting.'
'Something we haven't heard before.'
'We heard such a lot of stories, Harold,' Box said, sitting back-to-front on a chair, putting his arms on the table.
The man in the filthy white suit brushed his hair out of his eyes.
'About marihuana?' he said. 'About this marihuana?'
'About anything, Harold,' Box said, 'anything at all.'
'Alright,' the prisoner said, and shifted in his chair.
'But it must be totally original,' Box said.
'Come on…' Hastings said to Box. 'Let's just get his statement and…'
'No,' Box winked. 'You tell a story, Harold.'
The prisoner's face was showing huge red weals and Hastings looked at the tortured face with embarrassment. He stood up.
'I'll be back in a moment,' he told Box. He was going to walk out because he knew something nasty was going to happen, one of Box's degrading little tricks. Box didn't have a temper. (A temper, at least, was something clean and hot and fast.) Box liked tricks, slow, drawn-out entertainments.
'Alright,' the poor bunny was saying, 'I will tell you a completely original story.' Hastings had his hand on the door-knob as the man started his story; but that brown voice held him, like a cello on a grey afternoon, and he found himself releasing the door-knob and leaning against the wall.
He did not realize, for an instant, could not have guessed, that Harry was extemporizing the only original story he would ever tell. In fear of punishment, in hope of release, glimpsing the true nature of his sin, he told a story he had never heard about people he had never met in a place he had never visited.
There he is, a tightrope walker in the dark.
'He was very short,' Harry Joy began, 'and also shortsighted, although no one knew that then, not in the beginning, and that was why he always got into trouble for being late to school because he couldn't see the hands of the town hall clock.
'The town hall,' he decided, 'was across the road from the school.
'He did badly at school. He was not good at anything. Not sums, not writing, and not games.
'His mother was short too. She was a Cockney from Bow in London and she was only four foot seven tall; almost, but not quite, a midget. This story is set long ago, and one year there was a competition on the beach – the beaches were different then, with bathing boxes and competitions – the people were more easily amused – a competition,' he said, 'for the shortest woman.
'Now Daniel, or Little Titch as he was usually called, per-suaded his mother to go into the competition. The women were all lined up, ready to be judged, eyeing each other up, bending their knees, digging their feet down into the sand and so on, and everything was calm enough. But when they saw Little Titch's mother walk towards them a great cry of despair went up.
'Oh, no.'
And half the line of women just walked away. And Little Titch's mother took her place at one end of the line, very modestly, with that serious look she always wore on her face, and, naturally, she won.
'When they went home on the tram that night Little Titch carried the silver cup his mother had won. Although it tar-nished quickly you could still read the inscription years later. It read: The Shortest Woman, Queenscliff, 1909.
'Little Titch was both proud and puzzled by the cup. He was proud that the people had smiled at his mother and given her the cup. He was proud that the cup was silver and there, where it was engraved (and he traced the words with his grubby finger), it was gold. But he could not understand, as much as he might think about it, either then or in the months that followed, that his mother should be rewarded for the very thing he, her son, was punished for. People did not kick his mother because she was small, or pull her ears (let them try!) or her nose. They did not pinch her when she was asleep and then laugh at her when she cried. But these things, these punishments, were the daily lot of Little Titch. His brothers were bigger and older, more like his father, and they took it in turns to box his ears and tell him how stupid he was. So when he walked back into the house that day it was not with happiness but with his habitual sense of fear, which was laced with cunning and not a little slyness, and he crept off into the corner under the big grey laundry trough where he would hide, with his dirty little arms around his scabby knees, for hours on end. When this hiding place was discovered, and they were always discovered – under the tank stand, beneath the house, in the smelly space behind the outside toilet – he would find another one.
'He was not lazy. He always tried hard. And later, when his father took up aviation and bought a second-hand Bleriot monoplane, Little Titch would repeatedly break his arm, get-ting it caught by the great wooden propellors which had to be swung by hand.
'But at the time of this story his father did not have aero-planes, or even taxis, but a stables with horses. So the work of the family was all to do with horses, backing them into the shafts, tightening their girths, doing their shoes, mucking out the stables, feeding them, and so on.
'Little Titch tried to do whatever work they gave him but they said he was timid and stupid and only fit for shovelling out the stale straw and shit which he had to do each night after school and often he went to bed unwashed with only the cold smell of horse dung for company.
'The most difficult and troublesome horse in the stables,' Harry said, 'was a gelding named Billy-boy who was not only prone to kick, but also to bite with a ferocity unusual even in a horse. It was nothing for him, one morning when his girth was being tightened, to turn and bite the arm of whichever elder brother was doing it, not just the nasty bruising bite of
an ordinary horse, but a ripping horrible bite that drew blood. And there was also the chance, in the confusion, of a kick or two for whoever came to the rescue.
'You could not touch Billy-boy's face, or go behind him, or beside him, and it seemed that most parts of his muscular anatomy had received beatings at one time or another and he was not eager that they be repeated.
'Little Titch's father said that Billy-boy had once killed a man, which was why he had been so cheap, no other person daring to deal with such a brute.
'It's good training for the boys,' the father said. But after two bitings and a nasty kick the mother forbade the bigger boys to go near Billy-boy and the father had to do it himself.
'So, life went on. Billy-boy bit the father, the father hit the boys, and the two big boys hit Little Titch and pulled his nose and boxed his ears and Little Titch looked for places to hide.
'But on this night, this particular night, the brothers could not find him, and in the end the whole family turned out, looking high and low, waking the neighbours calling out: "Little Titch, Little Titch".
'It was the father who found him,' Harry said.
'The horse killed him,' Box said.
'Billy-boy was standing there,' Harry insisted, 'and behind him, right next to his hind leg was Little Titch, his arms around Billy-boy's huge rear leg, his face pressed into the deep black warmth of his flank.
'Come here, Little Titch,' they said, 'come here at once'.
'But Little Titch,' Harry said, 'didn't have to do anything at all because the bastards couldn't touch him,' he said 'and that's the end of the story.'
There was a silence in the room and the two policemen looked the way people look when the lights come on in the cinema. Hastings looked out the window and saw it was raining again. Box yawned and stretched.
'I think you better piss off now,' Hastings said quietly to the story-teller who was looking as perplexed (who was Little Titch?) and as embarrassed as any of them.
As he was escorting Harry out the door Hastings noticed Box, almost absent-mindedly, slip the packet of marihuana into his pocket.
Hastings thought: You silly cunt, but he escorted Harry silently to freedom.
