The Tax Inspector

by Peter Carey

  ‘But, Maria, come on – the street knows …’

  ‘The street knows? Don’t be nice to me.’

  ‘O.K., all Newtown.’

  ‘Newtown? Mrs Hellos knows. She was in Balmain inspecting real estate. I always felt safe in Balmain …’

  ‘Oh God, Mrs Hellos. I saw her in D.J.’s with that buck-toothed nephew.’

  ‘Tassos.’

  ‘Tassos, that’s right. She said, poor Mr Takis, such a good man – first his wife, now his daughter. I said, but Mrs Hellos, Maria is not dead. No, said Mrs Hellos – so melodramatic, you know – no! So I said – Mrs Hellos, are you saying it is better that Maria is dead? I’m not saying nothing, said Mrs Hellos, I’m just thinking about Mr Takis and his kidneys.’

  ‘Oh God, Mrs Hellos. Oh shit,’ Maria said laughing. ‘Dear Gia, you always make me laugh. The birth class was so miserable without you.’

  Gia took Maria’s hand. ‘Did they show one of those horror tapes again?’ Maria’s skin was so moist and supple and her fingers so long that it made her own hands seem dry and neurotic.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ There was a veiled, weary look around her eyes.

  ‘Are you mad at me?’

  ‘Of course not. Really. Not even a tiny bit.’

  ‘Oh Maria, I’m sorry. Did you have a shitty day as well?’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t flirting with stockbrokers.’

  ‘But I thought they finally sent you out to catch some rats?’

  ‘They sent me to Franklin. Can you believe that?’

  ‘Franklin. My God. Who’s in Franklin?’

  ‘No one’s in Franklin. It was some shitty little G.M. dealer.’

  ‘Maria, you’ve got to just tell them “no”.’

  ‘That’s what they want. They’re going to keep giving me these insulting little audits until I blow up. I’m like the emperor’s wife. They have to kill me too.’

  ‘The emperor’s ex-wife.’

  ‘I cooked dinners for the creeps when Alistair was director. They came to my house and drank my Heemskerk Cabernet. They were meant to be my friends. Billy Huxtable, Sally Ho. It was Sally who sent me to Franklin. I said, “What if I go into labour in Franklin?” She said, “There are very good medical facilities.” What a bitch! Plus, the clients – really – they were mice! They looked like they were Social Welfare clients, not ours. They were trying to commit her – this is an old woman, eighty-six – to a mental home when I arrived. Her children were trying to lock her up, and she seemed more sane than they did. If I hadn’t arrived she’d be locked up right now.’

  ‘Good for you, Maria.’

  ‘Well, maybe – I’m investigating her, and I’m sitting here, talking about champagne, surrounded by people drinking vintage Bollinger.’

  ‘Well, let’s go somewhere else. I don’t like all this either.’

  Maria chose not to hear that. ‘It makes me feel sleazy,’ she said.

  ‘What? The clients or the restaurant?’

  ‘Both, together. The juxtaposition.’

  ‘Maria, you’re not sleazy. You’re the least sleazy person I know.’

  ‘I’m going to pull this investigation. I can stop it.’

  ‘You can’t stop it, and you’re being really dumb. Listen, my dear, you are the least sleazy person I know. You never spend more than twenty bucks here. You’ve got a village mentality. Remember when you told me Alex was wealthy … He had a new 1976 Holden and went to Surfers Paradise for his holidays. You know what you said to me … You said, “Typical Athens Greek.” And you wouldn’t go out with him.’

  ‘I was a little prig,’ Maria said. ‘All I’m thinking is how I can cancel the investigation.’

  ‘So you’re going to break into the computer, right?’ When she was anxious Gia had a tendency to shout.

  ‘Shush,’ said Maria. ‘I think that is what I am going to do. Yes.’

  ‘You don’t know how to.’

  ‘Shush, please, but yes I do. I’m not going to be made into a bully.’

  Gia picked up Maria’s bread roll and began to tear it up. ‘O.K. Maria … O.K… . If you’re really upset by crooks drinking vintage Bollinger, we’ll just go somewhere else.’

  Maria saw the stoop-shouldered man at the next table flinch as he heard himself labelled a crook. He looked up sharply.

  Maria said, ‘All the poor guy is doing is giving his daughter a birthday party.’

  Gia leaned across the table and spoke in her idea of a whisper. ‘That “poor guy” is Wally Fischer.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh. That’s right. Oh. We’re going to get him. He’s an inch away from jail. He can get away with dealing smack and organizing murder but he’s not going to get away with tax. He didn’t hear me.’

  ‘I thought he was an accountant being sweet to his wife and daughter,’ Maria whispered. ‘He heard us. He knows we’re talking about him now.’

  ‘This restaurant makes me sick,’ Gia said. ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’

  ‘No,’ Maria said. ‘I like it here.’

  Gia started giggling.

  ‘I do,’ Maria said.

  ‘I know you do.’

  ‘When the baby’s born I won’t be able to afford to come here, but it’s very cheap for the sort of place it is.’

  ‘I know,’ Gia said. ‘You can get focaccias for $7.50 and wine for $3 a glass and once you sat next to Joan Collins, right over there.’

  ‘Right,’ Maria said. ‘And you always give me the best scandal here.’

  ‘I’m less interesting elsewhere?’

  ‘There are artists and celebrities here. The atmosphere is good,’ Maria said. ‘It promotes gossip. It’s the only corner of my life where gossip is acceptable. It stops me being a total prig.’ She seemed to have abandoned her thoughts about breaking into her client’s tax file. ‘Also, I have a history here. Alistair and I used to sit there, it was our table.’

  ‘Don’t do this to yourself.’

  ‘He’s a part of me,’ Maria said. ‘Don’t make me pretend he isn’t.’

  ‘Maria, he’s a creep – he dumped you.’

  ‘He didn’t dump me. I dumped me. What did he do?’

  ‘Even now, you can’t see who he is.’

  ‘I know who he is,’ Maria said quietly. ‘Please. Gia, allow me to know him a little better than you.’

  ‘O.K.,’ said Gia, grinning like a cat. ‘So allow me to tell you where Paulo wants to kiss me.’

  She was gifted with perfect recall. She recited a whole phone conversation with her ‘love interest’. He wanted to kiss her armpit. He had said to her, ‘Guess where I want to kiss you?’ She had guessed everywhere but arm pit. She had shocked him with her guesses. This sort of talk was making Maria look alive and happy again. The headscarf showed off her beautiful face, her dark olive skin and white, perfect teeth. She could have any man she liked, even now, this pregnant.

  Gia spoke very quietly, so quietly no one could have heard them, but they laughed so much they could hardly see. Through her tear-streamed vision Maria saw Wally Fischer speaking to Tom, one of the owners of the Brasserie.

  Tom was a small, solemn man of thirty who had made himself look forty with a belly and a pair of round, wire-framed glasses. He leaned across the table and put a hand on the back of their chairs.

  ‘Gia, Maria, I’m sorry … would you mind, you know, a little cleaner.’

  ‘All we’re doing is laughing,’ Gia said. ‘It’s not as if we’re murdering anyone.’

  The words fell into the silence like stones into an aquarium. Maria could see Gia’s eyes widening as she heard what she had said. She looked at Maria and made a grimace, and up to Tom and shrugged, and across to Wally Fischer who had heard this very clearly – his thick neck was beginning to puff up and turn a deep plum colour.

  Gia was pale. She sat with her palms flat on the table. She looked helplessly in Wally Fischer’s direction and smiled.

  ‘Hey,’ she said. Her voice was so loud and scratchy, Maria
knew she was very frightened. ‘I’m sorry, really.’

  Wally Fischer moved his chair back and stood up. You could feel his physical strength. He had bright, shining, freshly shaven cheeks and you could smell his talcum.

  ‘One,’ he said to Maria, ‘I don’t like my daughter having to listen to smut.’ He turned to Gia: ‘Number two: I like even less for her to hear people say untrue and insulting things about her father.’

  ‘All I …’ Gia began.

  ‘Sssh,’ said Wally Fischer. He was no longer plum-coloured. He was quite pale except for the red in his thick lips. ‘You’ve done enough hurt for one night.’ He blinked his heavy-lidded eyes once, and turned to take his daugher by the arm.

  ‘Sheet,’ said Gia as they walked out of the door. She leaned across to the abandoned table and retrieved the Bollinger from the bucket.

  ‘Gia, don’t.’ Maria looked down, ashamed.

  Gia was pale and nervous, but she was already holding her trophy high and pouring Wally Fischer’s Bollinger into her empty water glass. ‘Have some. Don’t be such a goody-goody.’ Maria looked up to see Wally Fischer looking in the window from the street. He made a pistol with his finger and pointed it at Gia. Gia did not see him but she looked pale and sick anyway, and there seemed no point in making her more distressed. ‘Have some,’ she said to Maria.

  Maria took the champagne, not to drink, as an act of solidarity. It frothed up and spilled on to the wooden table. Gia drank without waiting for the froth to settle. Her hand shook.

  ‘You all right?’ Maria asked.

  ‘Yeah, I’m O.K. But I don’t want to come here any more.’

  Maria took her hand. Gia shut it into a fist, self-conscious about her bitten nails.

  ‘We don’t have to come here,’ said Maria.

  ‘It stinks,’ Gia said. ‘I can smell the dirty money at the door.’ Gia pushed away the champagne. ‘I don’t even like the taste of this.’

  ‘It isn’t the restaurant that’s the problem. It’s us.’

  ‘For instance?’

  ‘We keep doing things we don’t believe in. I didn’t join the department to be an anal authoritarian. I’m not going to bankrupt these poor people out at Franklin.’ Maria soaked up the spilled champagne with a paper napkin. ‘I’m going to pull their file,’ she said.

  ‘Maria, what’s happened to you?’

  ‘Nothing’s happened.’

  ‘You’ve had a character transplant.’ Gia took back the champagne and drank it.

  Maria smiled. ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’

  ‘A complete character transplant.’

  ‘Goody two-shoes?’ Maria asked, her eyebrows arched.

  ‘That was a long time ago I said that …’

  ‘Fourteen years …’

  ‘I was angry with you. You made me feel bad about cheating on my car mileage. But there are people in the department who would drop dead if they thought you were going to pull a file.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I think it’s very therapeutic, Maria. I think it’s exactly what you should do.’ Gia reached over and emptied the last of Wally Fischer’s champagne into her glass. ‘You know the computer codes? That’s the important thing. You’ll need old Maxy’s access code.’

  Maria smiled.

  ‘And you need a corrupt ASO 7 to open doors for you at night?’

  ‘Just lend me the keys.’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ said Gia, draining the champagne and standing a little unsteadily. ‘You think I’d miss this?’

  ‘It’s an offence under the Crimes Act.’

  ‘Come on,’ Gia said, making scribbling Amex signs at Tom. ‘Don’t be so melodramatic. All we’re going to do is work late at the office.’

  16

  Sarkis Alaverdian was depressed and unemployed, and when he came to sit on his back step, he saw Mrs Catchprice standing at the bottom of the back yard, below the culvert under the Sydney Road. He saw a still, pink figure, like a ghost. It just stood there, looking back at him.

  Sarkis stood directly under the light of the back porch. He was not tall, but he was broad. He had a weight-lifter’s build, although when he walked he did not walk like a gym-ape, but lightly, more like a tennis-player. He had not had a pay cheque in ten weeks but he wore, even at home, at night, a black rayon shirt with featured mother-of-pearl buttons on the collar points. He wore grey cotton trousers shot with a slight iridescence, and soft grey slip-ons from the Gucci shop. He had curly black hair, not tight, not short, but tidy just the same. He had a broad strong nose, and a small tuft of hair, a little squiff on his lower lip.

  He was twenty years old and he had been forced to come and stand out here while his mother made love with the Ariel Taxi driver. He was ashamed, not ashamed of his mother, but ashamed on her behalf, not that she would make love, not exactly, although a little bit. He had known something like this would happen when they moved from Chatswood. When she wanted to be away from Armenians, he had both sympathized with her and suspected her. He had readied himself for it and prepared himself so he would behave correctly, but he could not have imagined this taxi-driver. It was the taxi-driver who made him feel ashamed.

  The taxi-driver was ‘out of area’. He was not even meant to drive in Franklin, but he came down here and cruised around, mostly up at Emerald and Sapphire where the women were abandoned and lonely and often just getting used to the idea that they would now be poor for ever. Before Sarkis lost his job, he had been in this particular taxi a number of times. He had once taken it from Cabramatta Leagues Club to Franklin. The taxi-driver did not recognize Sarkis, but Sarkis recognized him.

  Sarkis liked women. He liked their skin, their smells, and he liked the things they talked about. When you are a hairdresser you talk with women all day long. At apprentice school they will call this ‘chatter’, but ultimately it is more important than finger-waving or working on plastic models with wobbly heads, both of which are things that are very important in apprentice school but don’t exist in salon life. If you have talent and you can chatter, you will end up being a Mr Simon or Mr Claude, i.e. you will own your own salon and you can have the pleasure of hiring and firing the ones who topped the class at tech.

  The tragedy was that it was chatter that ruined him. He had put Mrs Gladd in the No. 2 cubicle with her dryer on extra low. This was at half-past four. He did this so he could talk with this little blonde – Leone – who had almost perfect hair – naturally blonde, and so dense and strong you could do almost anything you liked with it. He was giving her his ‘Sculptured’ look. It was a dumb word, but reassuring. It was a tangled, curled sort of look, that looked like you just got out of bed until you noticed just how ‘deliberate’ it was. He talked her into it because it was going to suit her, but also because it was the sort of job you could pick and fuss over, and he was picking and fussing while he talk-talk-talked and he knew how nice it felt to have someone doing this, all these little pick-pick-cut-snips to your hair, and he had checked Mrs Gladd at ten to five and then gone back to pick-pick-cut-snip. Leone was getting this honey glaze around her eyes. He talked to her about skiing. He worked out she went with her girlfriend. He talked on and on. When he asked her to the Foresters for a drink he was holding up the mirror for her and she just nodded.

  She was beautiful.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’d love to.’

  He had made her incredible, like a film star, and he had (fuck it) forgotten, completely, that Mrs Gladd was still under the slow dryer. He went off to the Foresters and locked her in. The cleaners found her at half-past ten – pissed off beyond belief.

  Mrs Gladd got it in her head she had been ‘traumatized’. She got herself on television with Mike Willesee and they took a film crew round to Mr Simon’s one Friday morning at ten o’clock. Sarkis held his coat up so they could not see his face on camera, but the show made him famous anyway and once Mr Simon had fired him live on camera he could not find another salon to employ him, not even as a washer.

/>   That was why he had to stand in the back garden. Everyone he knew was in Chatswood or Willoughby. He no longer had a car to drive there in. When he heard the mattress squeaking, he could not even take a stroll around Franklin – it was not safe at night.

  Sarkis knew this taxi-driver did not like women. He made the boys laugh, saying things like, ‘If they didn’t have cunts you wouldn’t talk to them’. His mother did not know this. She was still celebrating her independence from the Armenian community. She was wearing short skirts and smoking in the street. Ready-snap Peas had closed their doors and she had lost her job as well, but it still seemed, to Sarkis, that she was having a good time. She had come all the way to Franklin because she had convinced herself that there were no Armenians here. But the first people they met were Tahleen and Raffi who ran the corner store in Campbell Street. The first thing they did was offer to drive Sarkis and his mother to the Armenian Church on Sundays. Sarkis thought it wouldn’t hurt – if only from the employment point of view. But he could not budge his mother. She said: thank you. She thought: no way, José. From there on she walked an extra mile to buy her ciggies from another shop.

  His mother’s feeling about the Armenian community made her judgement bad. She might have hated them, but she was one of them. When she met someone who was not Armenian, she got herself into a drama. No way she was going to serve Gargandak. She was reinventing herself as Australian. But if not Gargandak, what cakes were right? She did not know what to call the people, even. But she was so happy she did not care. The taxi-driver was a Yugoslav. She called him ‘Doll’. She was thawing out the Sara Lee Cherry Cheese Cake. She opened all her miniature bottles of liquor. She called the taxi-driver Doll even though he was lean and balding, with a slight stoop and nicotine stains on his fingers. The only thing like a doll was his eyes, which were very blue. They were doll eyes only in colour. They stared at you. No matter how you might smile, he never smiled back. Even when Sarkis’s mother offered the tiny bottles of Gilbey’s gin and Bond 7 whisky which she had kept from the time they had shared a house in Willoughby with Anna from East-West Airlines, even when she laughed, and showed him how to do the twist, he never once smiled.