by Peter Carey
‘This is our inheritance,’ Benny said. ‘I’m not walking away from that and neither are you.’
Vish shook his head and rearranged his yellow robe. In the kitchen his grandmother was turning the single switch of the blender on and off, on and off.
‘Did you talk to Him?’
‘Who’s Him?’
‘You know who I mean … our father.’
‘He’s irrelevant.’
‘Oh yes? Really?’
‘His only relevance is these.’ He held up a bottle of pills – Serepax prescribed for Mr Mort Catchprice.
‘Benny, Benny. I thought you quit that.’
‘Benny, Benny, I’m not selling them. I’m trading them.’
‘For what?’
‘Personal transformation,’ Benny said.
Vish sighed. ‘Benny, he’s not going to let you do any of this. What do you think you’re going to do?’
‘Tonight,’ Benny rattled the Serepax and pushed them down into the grubby depths of his jeans pocket, ‘I’m swapping these with Bridget Plodder for a haircut. Tomorrow, I’m personally moving some of that stock off the floor.’
‘You’re selling cars?’ Benny was coated with dirt. He had grimy wrists, dull hair, this film across his skin, but there was, once again, this luminous intensity in his eyes. ‘You don’t even have a driving licence.’
‘He can’t stop me,’ Benny said. ‘I’ve turned the tables. I’ve got him over a barrel.’
‘Stay away from him, Ben.’
‘Vish, you don’t even know who I am. I’ve changed.’
‘You’re sixteen. He can do what he likes with you.’
‘I’ve changed.’
For the second time that evening, Benny opened his mouth wide for Vish and pushed his face forward. Vish looked into his brother’s mouth. Whatever it was he was meant to see in there, he couldn’t see it.
4
At three-thirty on Monday morning Vish performed his ablutions, chanted japa, and made prasadum – a stack of lentil pancakes which he laid in front of the guru’s picture before beginning to eat.
At five-thirty Granny Catchprice had her Maxwell House standing up at the kitchen sink. She politely ate some of the cold pancakes her grandson offered her.
At six-thirty the pair of them, she in an aqua-coloured, quilted dressing-gown, he in his yellow dhoti and kurta, opened the heavy Cyclone gates to the car yard and locked the Yale padlock back on its bolt.
Just after the seven o’clock news there was a short, heavy thunderstorm.
At seven-thirty Mort Catchprice, unaware that his elder son had spent the night in his grandmother’s apartment, gingerly nursed a newly registered vehicle through the yellow puddles of the service road and out on to the wet highway which was already heavy with city-bound traffic.
At eight-fifteen Cathy and Howie came down from their apartment and crossed the gravel to unlock first the showroom and then the Spare Parts Department. She wore her snake-skin boots. He wore pointy-toed suede shoes. He walked with the weight on his heels to keep the toes from spoiling in the wet.
At eight-twenty the air compressor thumped into life.
At eight-thirty-three a high racketing noise cut across the yard from the workshop – an air-driven power wrench spun the wheel nuts off the right-hand rear wheel of an HQ Holden.
At eight-thirty-five Benny Catchprice rose from the cellar one step at a time, feeling the actual weight of himself in his own calf muscles as he came up the steep stairs without touching the grimy handrail. He rose up through the cracked, oil-stained, concrete floor of the old lube bay and stood in the thick syrupy air, breathing through his mouth, blinking at the light, his stomach full of butterflies.
He was transformed.
His rat-tailed hair was now a pure or poisonous white, cut spiky short, but – above the little shell-flat ears – swept upwards with clear sculpted brush strokes, like atrophied angel wings. The eyes, which had always alarmed teachers and social workers and were probably responsible, more than any other factor, for his being prescribed Ritalin when eight years old, were so much at home in their new colouring that no one would think to mention them – no longer contradictory, they seemed merely nervous as they flicked from one side of the car yard to the other, from the long side wall of the workshop to the high louvred windows of his grandmother’s kitchen.
His brow seemed broader and his round chin more perfectly defined, although this may have been the result of nothing more than Phisohex, soap, petroleum jelly, all of which had helped produce his present cleanliness.
His lips, however, were the most remarkable aspect of his new look. What was clear here now in the reflected quartz-gravel light underneath the cobwebbed rafters had not been clear yesterday: they were almost embarrassingly sensual.
Benny was fully aware of this, and he carried with him a sense of his new power together with an equally new shyness. He was waiting to be looked at. He lined up the toes of his shoes with the crumbling concrete shore of the old lube bay floor. He knew he was on the very edge of his life and he balked, hesitating before the moment when he would change for ever.
The old lube was directly beneath the cobwebbed underfloor of Cathy and Howie’s apartment, at the back end of the car yard farthest from the big sliding Cyclone gates. He looked out at the glittering white gravel of his inheritance.
The Camiras and Commodores were laid out like fish on a bed of crushed ice. They were metallic blue and grey. There was a dust silver Statesman fitted with black upholstery. On the left-hand side near the front office was a Commodore S.S. with spunky alloy wheels in the shape of a spinning sun. The G.M. cars were angled towards the road, like arrows which suggested but did not quite point towards the creature the family seemed so frightened of – the Audi Quattro 90 with leather trim. A $75,000 motor car they had traded from a bankrupt estate.
The compressor cut off, revealing the high whine of a drill press which had been going all the time. In a moment one of the mechanics would look out over his bench top and see him. Benny could imagine himself from their point of view. They would see the suit, the hair, and they would whistle. They would think he was effeminate and stupid, and maybe he was stupid, in a way. But in other ways he was not stupid at all. He had redevelopment plans for that workshop, and he knew exactly how to finance it.
When Vish had abandoned him five years ago, had run off to leave him unprotected, he had drawn Vish on his cellar wall, being fucked by a donkey with a dunce’s hat. He had drawn his father tied to a chair. He had drawn a black eagle but it would not go black enough. That was a long time ago, on the day he had moved into the cellar. He did not draw these dumb things any more. The donkey and dunce’s cap were now covered with a dense knitted blanket of red and blue handwriting. Among these words, one set repeated.
I cannot be what I am.
He was stupid, maybe, but he would not continue to be what he was, and when Cathy fired him he had already spent $400 on a Finance and Insurance course at the Zebra Motor Inn and he had passed it – no problems with the numbers.
He had also spent $495 on the ‘Self-Actualization’ cassettes, $300 on the suit, $150 on sundries and, as for where the money came from, that was no one’s business and totally untraceable. So when his father began by saying, no way was he going to sell cars, all he did was ask himself ‘How do I attain the thing that I desire?’
Then he followed the instructions of the ‘Self-Actualization’ cassettes, descending the imaginary coloured stairways to the mental image on the imaginary Sony Trinitron which showed the object of his desire. His father was finally irrelevant.
The rain which had been falling all summer began to fall again. Summer used not to be like this. This was all the summer he had inherited. The raindrops were soft and fat. They made three large polka dots on the padded shoulders of his 80 per cent silk suit. He would not run. It was not in his new character to run. He walked out across the crunching gravel. His legs felt a little odd to him – as i
f he had just risen from his sick-bed. Rain ricocheted off the metallic roofs and bonnets of the Holdens and flecked his shining cheekbones with glittering beads of water. He passed beside the Audi 90. It was jet black. Very sexy. He could see himself reflected in it, held in it. When he came in the door of the Front Office he was blushing crimson.
This was where Cathy thought he was going to sell petrol. The Front Office was at the front of the left-hand arm of the ‘U’ which made up Catchprice Motors. There were a couple of old Esso pumps out front and sometimes the apprentice would bring a car around to get a litre or two for a road test, but petrol was cheaper – and cleaner – at a regular service station. The underground petrol tanks at Catchprice Motors had been there nearly forty years. They were rusting on the inside, and the outside was under pressure from the water table. The petrol tanks Grandpa Catchprice had installed were now rising like whales and the concrete on the forecourt cracked a little more each summer. You would have to be mentally deficient to stand on the forecourt at Catchprice Motors.
When Benny took up his station in the Front Office, the two old Esso petrol pumps were in the very centre of the big glass window in front of him. Behind his back was a white door with a grubby smudged area around its rattly metal handle. Across the road, through the giant trunks of camphor laurels which he was going to cut down the minute Cathy was on the road, he could see the abandoned boot-maker’s and bakery.
Benny stood in the centre of the office with his legs apart and his hands folded behind his back. His skin smelt of soap. Rain sat on his cheekbones. In an ideal world, his brother would be beside him, might be beside him yet.
He was going to sell his first car.
When the rain stopped again, Benny planned to move out into the yard. He wanted them to see him. He wanted to see himself in the mirror of their faces.
It was still raining when the first ‘prospect’ appeared. A woman in a white Mitsubishi Colt pulled up under the trees on the other side of the petrol pumps. The rain was heavy now, far too heavy to walk out into, and Benny did not see the red ‘Z’ plates which would have told him the Colt was a government car.
He was the first member of the Catchprice family to see the Tax Inspector. He did not know there was anything to be frightened of. He adjusted his shirt cuffs. All he thought was: watch me.
5
The Tax Inspector parked the Colt on a small island of weeds which was more closely associated with the Building Supplies Store than with Catchprice Motors. This was an old Taxation Office courtesy which Maria Takis, alone of all the auditors in her section, continued to observe – you did not humiliate your clients by parking a Taxation Officer car right on their doorstep, not even in the rain.
A wall beside a pot-holed laneway bore flaking signwriting with arrows pointing towards SERVICE DEPT and SPARE PARTS DEPT but there was no mention of an OFFICE or ALL ENQUIRIES. Rainwater spilled over the blocked guttering and ran down the wall, rippling across the signs, and flooded back across the cracked concrete forecourt towards the car yard itself.
Maria Takis walked carefully through the shallow edges of the puddle in the direction of the petrol pumps. Behind the petrol pumps she found an oddly beautiful boy standing like a mannequin in an empty neon-lit office.
He came to the doorway to give her directions. When she thanked him, he reached his hand out through the open door so he could shake her hand.
As she walked through the rain across the car yard towards the old wooden fire escape he had pointed out, she could feel the skin of his hand still lying like a shadow on her own. Had she not been eight months pregnant she might have thought about this differently, but she felt so full of baby, of fluid, such a net of bulging veins and distended skin (she would have drawn herself, had you asked her, like an orange with twig legs) she did not expect to be the object of anybody’s sexual attentions.
In any case: she had more serious things to think about.
She could hear shouting, even here at the bottom of the storm-bright fire escape, above the din of the rain which fell like gravel on the iron roofs of Catchprice Motors and cascaded over the gutter and splashed her shoes. The rain cooled her legs. It made patterns on her support stockings, as cool as diamond necklaces.
The treads of the stairs were veined with moss and the walls needed painting. The door she knocked on was hollow, ply-wood, with its outer layer peeling away like an old field mushroom. The Tax Inspector knocked reluctantly. She was accustomed to adversaries with marble foyers and Miele dishwashers. She was used to skilful duels involving millions of dollars. To be sent to this decaying door in Franklin was not only humiliating, but also upsetting on another level – after twelve years with the Taxation Office she was being turned into something as hateful as a parking cop.
No one heard her knock. They were shouting at each other. She knocked again, more loudly.
Maria Takis was thirty-four years old. She had black, tangled hair and a very dark olive-skinned face which her mother always said was ‘Turkish’ (i.e. not like her mother) and which Maria began, in her teenage years, to accentuate perversely with gold rings and embroidered blouses so that even now, coming to a door as a tax auditor, she had that look that her mother was so upset by.
‘Pop po, fenese san tsingana.’ (‘You look like a gypsy.’)
There was nothing gypsy about the briefcase in her hand – it was standard Taxation Office – two gold combination locks with three numbers on each side, two large pockets, two small pockets, three pen-holders on the inside lid, a Tandy solar- and battery-powered 8-inch calculator, three pads of lined writing paper, six public service Biros, and a wad of account analysis forms with columns for the date, the cheque number, the cheque particulars and columns to denote capital, business, or personal. She had a book of receipt forms for any documents she removed from the premises, a standard issue Collins No. 181 day-a-page diary, a tube of handcream, a jar of calcium tablets, two packets of thirst Lifesavers, and her father’s electricity bill.
Her identification warrant was in her handbag and she was already removing it as she waited for the door to open. It was a black plastic folder with the Australian Taxation Office crest in gold on the front and her photograph and authorization on the inside. In the photograph she looked as if she had been crying, as if she had somehow been forced to pose for it, but this was her job. She had chosen it freely.
‘Yes?’
A plump woman in a chamois leather cowgirl suit stood behind the flyscreen door. Her hips and thighs pushed against her skirt and the chamois rucked and gathered across her stomach. Her bare upper arms fought with the sleeve holes of the waistcoat top. Everything about her body and her clothes spoke of tension. Her plump face reinforced the impression, but it did so as if she was someone sweet-tempered just woken from her sleep, irritable, yes, frowning, sure, but with a creamy complexion and pale, well-shaped, sensuous lips, and a natural calm that would return after her first cup of coffee. She had dense, natural straw-blonde hair set in a soft curl, and small intelligent eyes which stared out at Maria from behind the flyscreen door.
Maria wondered if this was Mrs F. Catchprice. The abrupt way she opened the door and took Maria’s I.D. told her this was unlikely to be the taxpayer’s accountant.
‘I’m Maria Takis …’ She was interrupted by an old woman’s voice which came out of the darkness behind the flyscreen.
‘Is that Mortimer?’
‘It’s not Mort,’ said the big woman, shifting her gaze from the I.D. to Maria’s belly. She said it wearily, too quietly for anyone but Maria to hear.
‘Mortimer come in.’ The voice was distressed. ‘Let Mortimer come in. I need him here.’
Rain drummed on the iron roof, spilled out of gutters, splashed out on to the landing around Maria’s feet. There was a noise like furniture falling over. The woman in cowboy boots turned her head and shouted back into the room behind her: ‘It’s not Mortimer … It … is … not Mort.’ She turned back to Maria and blew out some air
and raised her eyebrows. ‘Sorry,’ she said. She scrutinized the I.D. card again. When she had read the front she opened it up and read the authorization. When she looked up her face had changed.
‘Look,’ she said, coming out into the rain, and partly closing the door behind her. Maria held out her umbrella.
‘Jack,’ the old woman called.
‘Look, Mrs Catchprice is very sick.’
‘Jack …’
‘I’m Cathy McPherson. I’m her daughter.’
‘Jack, Mort, help me.’
Cathy McPherson turned and flung the door wide open. Maria had a view of a dog’s bowl, of a 2-metre-high stack of yellowing newspapers.
‘It’s not Jack,’ shrieked Cathy McPherson. ‘Look, look. Can you see? You stupid old woman. It’s the bloody Tax Department.’
Maria could smell something sweet and alcoholic on Cathy McPherson’s breath. She could see the texture of her skin, which was not as good as it had looked through the flyscreen. She thought: if I was forty-five and I could afford boots like those, I’d be saving money for a facelift.
‘This is ugly,’ Cathy McPherson said. ‘I know it’s ugly. I’m sorry. You really have to talk to her?’
‘I have an appointment with her for ten o’clock.’
‘You’ll need someone to interpret,’ Cathy McPherson said. ‘If this involves me, I want to be there. Does it involve me?’
‘I really do need to talk to her. She is the public officer.’
‘She’s senile. Jack hasn’t lived here for twenty years.’
Maria released the catch on her umbrella. ‘None the less she’s the public officer.’
‘She pisses in her bed.’
Maria collapsed her umbrella and stood in front of Cathy McPherson with the rain falling on her head.
‘Suit yourself,’ Cathy McPherson opened the door. Maria followed her into a little annexe no bigger than a toilet. Dry dog food and Kitty Litter crunched beneath their feet. The air was spongy, wet with unpleasant smells.
