Bliss

by Peter Carey

  'No.'

  Macdonald looked at him and sucked his teeth. He had a big face with small ears like delicate handles on an ugly hand-made pot.

  'Look here, fellow... ' he began.

  He went no further. Harry had heard that tone before. It was the sound of a policeman who thinks he can get away with murder and he was not going to have it.

  'Do you know who I am?' Harry said, pushing his face close to Macdonald's. 'Do you know who my friends are? Do you realize,' he stood up and it would have been ridiculous for Macdonald to stand up too so that Harry remained towering over him, 'that the Chairman of Mobil was a close friend of mine. Not only my wife... ' he hesitated, 'is dead, but also my colleagues. Now if you wish to harass me, to cause me and my family trouble tonight I will be on the telephone and I shall have your arse kicked so hard you'll spit your teeth out.'

  Macdonald hesitated.

  It is a measure of Harry's confidence in his safe position in Hell that his slow anger at the behaviour of the police, his grief, his irritation that Macdonald had commandeered the dining room rather than the kitchen, that no one was going to light the fire if he didn't, came forth in such a controlled silk-gowned display of rage.

  Macdonald, having seen the house to be expensive but not of the first rank, was as surprised – more surprised – than the people in the kitchen who stirred expectantly and waited.

  When Macdonald gave in it was not because Harry's face was red and his eyes yellow, nor that he was a widower, possibly an innocent one, nor was it the quality of his hand-stitched suit, whose expensive subtleties were lost on Mac-donald, but that Harry said 'shall' have your arse kicked so hard you'll spit your teeth out.

  There was something in this combination of correctness and violence which he instinctively reacted to, and he decided to give him, at least for the moment, the benefit of the doubt.

  'We have an unpleasant job to do,' he said stiffly, lining up some pieces of paper on his clipboard, 'and we try to do it as pleasantly as possible. I understand that you're upset.'

  Harry nodded and stepped back to allow the man to stand.

  On this sort of night (wind rattling the tall windows in the dining room, the big fig scratching itself against the western wall) they would have eaten pea soup from big white bowls, baked vegetables and Honey Barbara's apple pie. They would have opened a magnum of Raussan Segla. Bettina would have sat in her wing-back chair, her face tired, a glass in her hand, while Joel nestled at her feet and gently rubbed her generous calves. And everyone would have been momentarily caught in a honeyed silence accompanied only by the oboe of the wind, the brush of the fig and the low percussive thump of the door.

  Ah, Honey Barbara would have thought, all those dreams! And seen behind all those flame-flickered eyes the shimmering shades of decadent utopias.

  But tonight the room was dark and the street light threw down a blue sheen, like a spilled light globe trapped beneath the wax of the polished floor, and there was a deadness in their eyes that even the lights, once turned on, did nothing to change.

  Only Joel burned bright and it occurred to no one that the energy he brought to lighting the fire and preparing the meal which no one had the stomach to eat (bacon, eggs, pancakes, maple syrup) was not fuelled by inexhaustible supplies of life but was more like that expended by blow-flies caught against the glass.

  They admired his optimism and were irritated by it at the same time. They wanted a warm place to weep freely without shame but he placed sensible, practical things in their laps.

  Yet nothing could prevent the mental image they all secretly carried: blackened, bubbling, Bettina's unseen corpse, this turd floating insistently before them, showing itself; unfolding, parading even before their open eyes.

  Among the practical things they discussed, huddled around the fire on blankets and mattresses, was the need to remain silent about Honey Barbara. It was Harry's suggestion and they all supported it, except Joel who could not see that it was so important.

  'I told them already,' Joel said, 'but they weren't interested.'

  'They were interested,' Harry said, 'they asked me. If they ask you again say you made a mistake.'

  'Why?'

  'Because,' Harry hissed, 'she's poor. That's how it works, isn't it. We're rich, they leave us alone. We've bought our safety.'

  'You were fantastic,' Lucy said, 'you were wonderful.'

  'But we haven't done anything wrong,' David said.

  'Don't matter,' Ken said. 'I was busted once by the cops for dope and it couldn't have been my stash because it was in the teapot, a great big lump of hash, and they were drinking tea out of it. The stuff they busted me for, they planted on me, but I couldn't say that in court. Harry's right. They bust poor people.'

  'But we haven't done anything,' Joel said.

  'They don't need a reason,' Harry said.

  'Because Bettina has killed a lot of rich people,' Ken said. 'And rich people don't like to see other rich people get killed. It makes them go crazy.'

  They shared out tranquillizers solemnly and drank them with cognac to make them work better and then they built up the fire and bedded down beside it, without even discussing why they might do such an unusual thing. They huddled together on an odd assortment of mattresses, lumpy shapes under blue blankets and pale eiderdowns, like travellers in a waiting room in a foreign country.

  Only Joel stayed awake, feeding the fire. At one o'clock Harry heard him cooking potato chips in the kitchen.

  *

  The noise was insistent and irritating, a continual bump, bump, bump. It was Lucy who wrapped a blanket around herself and went down the wet steps on that grey overcast morning.

  The noise came from underneath the verandah and was caused, she later discovered, by Ken's electric drill which was hanging from its cord and being blown against one of the house's high wooden stumps: bump, bump, bump.

  It was not the drill she saw, however, it was Joel, who had used its strong black cord to hang himself. His shining shoes were just an inch from the ground and the smell, the horrible stench of his shit, made it perfectly clear that, this time at least, he was not playing a joke.

  There was no sympathy from the police. They put everyone back in the kitchen and started all over again, but this time there was a pale excitement in their faces and when Harry saw the thin impatient set of Macdonald's lips he knew that there was no safety for him in Hell. He was persona non grata with Those in Charge.

  They yarded them like cattle, dragging them out for ques-tioning one at a time, sometimes just for one question, for ten seconds, then back into the yard.

  'In here.' Lucy was called into the dining room where Harry stood.

  'Say that in front of her,' Macdonald said to Harry.

  'I've never seen that map before,' Harry said.

  'O.K., take her back.'

  It was unnerving. Like standing in front of one of those machines that throw tennis balls.

  'How tall are you?'

  'Five foot eleven.'

  'When did you first meet Joel?'

  No one was nice any more. Herpes did not show the photo of his holiday house. Macdonald told no jokes. Other policemen with beards and long hair began a search of the house which was neither stylish nor gentle. In the garage outside they used a rattling power tool to dismantle the Jaguar.

  'You fink Joel was in on it, don't you?' Ken asked Herpes.

  Herpes pointed a thick finger and narrowed his red-lidded eyes. Ken was quiet.

  The police found passports, air tickets to New York, a can-, cer map. They did not doubt that Joel was in on it.

  When everyone had been interrogated once, Macdonald came and leant against the doorway in the kitchen.

  'This family,' he said, 'has been harbouring at least two terrorists, possibly more. I have had the unpleasant duty to spend most of last night in those homes where fathers and husbands have been murdered by two people from this house. So today,' he bit the inside of his cheek and looked thoughtful
ly at Harry, 'we won't be having any shouting or threats. At least,' he smiled, 'not from you.' It was a pleasant smile, and more frightening because of it.

  Finally, after one more round of interrogation, the police departed, leaving behind them a book-strewn house with a dismantled Jaguar still in the garage, its body panels stacked on the lawn.

  'She had cancer,' Harry said slowly, 'She damn-well had cancer.'

  No one was listening to him. They had other things on their minds. They turned up the radio to protect themselves from bugs. They turned on taps and had whispered conversations. They still wore big pullovers and thick socks although the afternoon had become suddenly hot. They prickled under wool.

  Ken and Lucy were arguing with David. Ken was pushing a dirty finger at David's cashmere chest. David was looking frightened but he stood his ground.

  'She had cancer,' Harry said. 'From this house, living with us.'

  David had stolen an air ticket from under Macdonald's nose, sliding it off the table while he looked the policeman in the eye. Ken was backing him against the refrigerator.

  'It's my ticket,' David was saying.

  'I don't want your ticket, sonny,' Ken said.

  'You can't have it.'

  Ken closed his eyes in pain. He went to the kitchen table and sat down:

  'The middle class are fucking disgusting.'

  'You can't stop me,' David said, but he didn't move from where he had been pushed. 'I was the one who hid his passport. If I want to go, I go.'

  'And leave us in the shit,' Lucy said. 'Typical.'

  'What shit? We haven't done anything.'

  'She had cancer,' Harry said, but no one was interested. The radio played the traffic reports. The bridges were blocked. David and Lucy forgot about the suspected bugs and started shouting at each other. Ken sat with his head in his hands at the kitchen table.

  Harry could feel the cancer in the air. It had been here all the time. It was impregnated in the walls, like spores, like a mould, invisible but always there in what they breathed, what they ate. He could feel the cells in his own body rising, multiplying, marshalling against him, to make him beg for mercy, for death, for release, slowly, agonizingly over an eternity of pain that they would call, euphemistically, A Long Illness.

  What was about to begin was possibly the lowest, most shameful period of his life, five hours of panic in which he would abandon Ken and Lucy to the Special Branch and fight his son for money.

  But his behaviour was not so different, in fact much milder, than the panic that was to run through the Western world (and parts of the industrialized East) ten years later when the cancer epidemic really arrived, and then it came at a time of deep recession, material shortages, unemployment and threatening nuclear war, and it proved the last straw for the West which had, until then, still managed to tie its broken pieces together with cotton threads of material optimism which served instead of the older social fabric of religion and established custom. Then the angry cancer victims could no longer be contained by devices as simple as Alice Dalton's Ward L, and took to the streets in what began as demonstrations and ended in half-organized bands, looting for heroin first, and then everything else, and Bettina's act in the Mobil office was no more than a brief eddy before the whirlwind of their rage.

  So as you watch Harry Joy running around his own house in panic you have the comfort of knowing he is something less than freakish. His cancer map has come to life like some deadly pin-ball machine finally (the penny dropped) activated. His skin prickles. His stomach hurts and he notices a strange coldness at the place where he imagines (incorrectly) his liver is.

  And there he is, looting, going through his son's (nice boy, going to be a doctor) drawers looking for money, and yes, actually wrestling with the boy as they fight for a bundle of notes which fall from the desk top and float across the room. They scramble to pick them up. He catches his son's foot and sits on his chest, and from this position negotiates a puffing red-faced deal.

  'Half. 50-50. O.K.?'

  'O.K.'

  But once released the scramble is on again, and there must be another fight, and the son must be subdued again, and this time with a backhanded blow which will partly deafen him and cause him great pain on the aeroplane he will shortly board.

  'You won't need it,' Harry grunted, scrambling across the carpet. 'I need it. I'm leaving.'

  'I'm leaving too.'

  'Where going?'

  'New York.'

  They fought over a photograph of Bettina, and David won the bigger piece. Harry went to his room and packed a bag, cramming in silk shirts as if they were currency. He arrived downstairs just behind his partly deaf son. David had his suitcase with him.

  'You think you're a real smart dude,' Ken said to David, 'but those coppers aren't dumb. They'll know you knocked off that ticket.'

  'Right under their nose,' David said, but he stayed near the doorway, sitting on his case.

  Harry sat at the table and let Ken pour him tea.

  'You're a fool,' Lucy told her brother.

  He spat at her. 'You're not so smart,' he said, 'limpet.'

  'Why don't you all shut up,' Ken said quietly. He rolled a cigarette and looked at it closely while he did it. 'Our only answer is just to be calm and stick together. We haven't done anything wrong. These coppers aren't like the drug squad – they're not all bent. They just think we're terrorists and they'll find out we're not. If you geezers run away we'll all be stuffed. They'll beat the shitter out of us and they'll catch you lot. It won't matter what you say, if they think you've done something they'll frame you.'

  'I know where to go,' Harry said.

  'Where?'

  'The country.'

  'With darling Honey Barbara,' Lucy said.

  'Honey Barbara thinks you're full of shit, Harry. They'd probably burn you as a witch.'

  But it was obvious then that no amount of reason or logic would stop either of them and David walked away without any farewell and Harry stayed. He stayed through a silent meal of sardines on toast. He stayed through the television until after it finished. He stayed sitting in the living room when Lucy and Ken went to bed.

  They lay in bed and listened for noises. Nothing moved in the house.

  'He's going to go,' Ken said. 'He won't be there in the morning.'

  At two o'clock they woke to a familiar noise.

  'The Cadillac.'

  'Fuck him. Let him take it.'

  They lay and listened to him go backwards and forwards across the lawn as he manoeuvred the car out on to the drive.

  'The creep,' Lucy said as the Good Bloke drove away from Palm Avenue for the last time.

  The Pan Am Jumbo took off on schedule, at 8 p.m., into the waiting thunderstorm. Lightning filled the sky beside David's seat. Below him, in breaks in the clouds, he caught a glimpse of the yellow spiderweb of lighted streets which had, at last, released him.

  He stood before the lightning and faced the monsters of the night.

  PART SIX

  Blue Bread and Sapphires

  Daze walked along the ridge looking for the blood wood. It was a hot November morning and the Razorback had a slight blue haze around it and the wind from the sea made the gums throw their khaki-silver umbrellas to and fro. He had slept in. Soon it would be too hot for this sort of work. He hefted the sledgehammer on to his shoulder and shook the small bag of wedges he held in the other. Only two wedges. People were careless with wedges. He could remember when there had been five of them, perfectly graduated from small to large. It had been a lot easier splitting fence posts then, but with only two wedges it became more difficult, particularly with blood wood which often had an almost corkscrew grain. It was harder with two wedges, but two wedges were still enough. Wedges were amazing things. He stopped on the trail to think about wedges.

  He was over forty but his body was hard and stringy and the brown legs beneath his tattered shorts were a young man's legs. He had a pointed chin which hid beneath a sparse, slightl
y fuzzy beard, and a sharp inquisitive nose either side of which were small humorous eyes. He was stoned and kept forgetting why he had come.

  The blood wood.

  And he had been thinking about the wedge, the small wedge, and how amazing it was that the smallest wedge could finally split that old grey blood wood open to show its red secret heart. He did not think anything very profound, but he enjoyed his thoughts and he discovered and rediscovered things for himself all day in this manner. If he had had company he would have talked about the wedges, punctuating his meditations with 'Mmms' and 'Ahs' and his companion would be sometimes amused, sometimes bored, sometimes even enlightened by these meditations. Possibly (almost certainly) they would have explored the possibility of making new wedges and gone through the various methods by which this might be done, starting with smelting the iron, or even earlier, prospecting, perhaps on that rusty outcrop the Krishnas had on their land, and then the methods by which negotiations would have to begin with the Krishnas, perhaps sending Paul Bees or Honey Barbara first because they were permitted to place their hives in the Krishnas' ironbark forest in return, of course, for a percentage of the honey.

  He nearly walked past the blood wood. It was just below the ridge, its dead grey trunk cut in ten places to show the hard red wood with the big empty pipe running up its centre.

  'Mmm.' He took the mandarin from his pocket and peeled it. He admired the fine spray it released as he pulled back the peel. One day they would have a goat fence right across the bottom of the property, up here over the ridge, and almost down to the rain forest at the bottom. There was no money this year because their crop had been ripped off, but it didn't cost anything to cut the wood and split it into posts. Later they would get the wire and strain the fence, but in the meantime there was plenty of work to do. He was still thinking about the Krishnas. They were not the most friendly people in the world but somebody over there understood something about growing corn. Their corn was huge and sweet and yellow, as succulent as yellow peas joined together on a cob.

  That's interesting, he thought – they have yellow robes. Yellow corn. He tried to think of other yellow things the Krishnas had. Yellow truck, he remembered, and yellow pawpaws, but their pawpaws were not so good.