Collected Stories

by Peter Carey

  Life & Death in the South Side Pavilion

  1.

  I was employed, originally, as a Shepherd 3rd Class. That was in the days of the sheep and even now that the sheep have been replaced by horses I believe that my position is still Shepherd 3rd Class although I have had no confirmation of this from The Company. My work place is, to the best of my knowledge, known officially as THE SOUTH SIDE PAVILION but it is many years since I saw this written on a delivery docket and I have never seen it anywhere since.

  Yesterday I wrote to The Company asking to be relieved of my post and I used the following description: “I am employed as a Shepherd 3rd Class in the South Side Pavilion.” I hope it makes sense to them. I had considered a more detailed description, something that would locate the place more exactly.

  For instance: “The pavilion is bathed in a pale yellow light which enters from the long dusty windows in its sawtooth roof. In the centre, its corners pinned by four of the twenty-four pillars which support the roof, is a large sunken tank which resembles a swimming pool. The horses require the greater part of this area. I, the Shepherd in charge, have a small corner to myself. In this corner I have, thanks to the generosity of The Company, a bed, a gas cooker, a refrigerator, and a television set. The animals give me no trouble. However they are, as you must be aware, in danger from the pool …”

  I didn’t send that part of the letter, for fear of appearing foolish to them. The people at The Company must know my pavilion only too well. Probably they have photographs of it, even the original architect’s plans. The pool in the centre must be known to them, also the dangers associated with the pool. I have already made many written requests for a supply of barbed wire to fence off the pool but the experts have obviously considered it unnecessary. Or perhaps they have worked out the economics of it and, taking the laws of chance into account, must have decided that it is cheaper to lose the odd horse than to buy barbed wire which, for all I know, might be expensive these days.

  I have placed empty beer cartons around the perimeter of the pool, in the foolish hope that they will prove to be some kind of deterrent. Unfortunately they seem to have had quite the opposite effect. The horses stand in groups perilously close to the edge of the pool and stare stupidly at the cardboard boxes.

  2.

  The television is showing nothing but snow. The pavilion is bathed in its blue electric blanket. Another horse has fallen into the pool. Its pale bloated body floats in the melancholy likeness of a whale.

  3.

  Marie arrived early and discovered me weeping amongst the horses.

  “Why are you weeping?”

  “Because of the horses.”

  “Even horses must die, sooner or later.”

  “I am weeping because of the swimming pool.”

  “The swimming pool is there to help them die.”

  When Marie tells me that the swimming pool is there to help the horses die, I believe her. She has an answer for everything. But when she leaves her answers leave with her and the only comfort in the pavilion is distilled into a couple of small sad marks on the sheets of my bed.

  4.

  I AM HERE TO STOP THE HORSES FALLING INTO THE SWIMMING POOL.

  5.

  Marie, who helped me get into the pavilion, now wants to help me out. Personally I would like to leave. I have sent my resignation to The Company and am, at present, awaiting the replacement. Marie said, “Fuck The Company.” She arrived today with colour brochures and an ultimatum: either I leave the horses or she will leave me.

  “Do you love the horses?”

  “No, I love you.”

  “Then come with me.”

  “I can’t leave them alone.”

  “They fall into the pool anyway. You can’t stop them.”

  “I know.”

  “Then you might as well come.”

  “I can’t come until they’ve all fallen into the pool.”

  “But you are trying to stop them falling into the pool.”

  “Yes.”

  “You can’t love the horses if you’re just waiting for them to fall in and drown.”

  “No, I love you.”

  “Ah, but I know you love the horses.”

  And so it continues.

  6.

  Marie sleeps beside me, enveloped in the sweet heavy smell of sleep and sperm.

  There is some movement in the pavilion. I lick my fingers and wipe my eyes with spittle. For the moment the tiny shock of the wetness is enough to keep me awake. I stare into the dark, among the grey garden of gloomy horses, trying to distinguish movement from stillness.

  There is a large splash. A high whinnying. I block my ears. Once they are in the pool there is nothing they can grip on to get them out.

  7.

  The men came with a truck fitted with winches. They dragged the horse from the pool and put it on a trailer. They had to break its back legs to fit it in properly.

  I imagined that they looked at me reproachfully. Probably it is simply that this is a part of their job that they dislike, and, having paid me five visits to remove dead horses, they are not kindly disposed towards me.

  I asked them if any of the dead horses would be replaced. They seemed too busy to answer me, but I have always assumed the answer is no.

  Today I explained that I wished to be relieved of the job. When they could offer no helpful suggestions I asked about the barbed wire. They looked shocked and expressed the opinion that barbed wire was cruel.

  8.

  Marie didn’t come tonight. She is giving me a free sample of her absence, letting me know in advance what it will taste like. She needn’t have bothered. It’s just as bad as I thought it would be.

  I leaf through the brochures she has left for me, staring at beaches I can never imagine visiting. I have never seen so many beaches. On the beaches there are beautiful girls, girls more beautiful than Marie. Perhaps she thinks that the beautiful girls in the brochures will provide the extra incentive. What she will never understand is that I want to go with her to these beaches more desperately than anything else in the world. She accuses me of having a misplaced loyalty to The Company but I care nothing for The Company which has never deigned to answer my letters. If I could leave the pavilion I would go to The Company’s offices and settle everything once and for all. If need be I would kidnap a member of The Company’s staff and bring him back here as a replacement.

  The strange thing is that once I have left the pavilion I know I will detest the horses. I can feel this new attitude waiting in the wings of my mind, waiting to take over. I have tried to explain this to Marie but she thinks I am being dishonest with myself, that I simply wish an excuse not to go with her.

  But now I am responsible for the horses. Each death is my responsibility and I have no wish to be responsible for so many deaths.

  And now that I am unable to make love she thinks it is because I have an unnatural attraction to the horses and that I find her unattractive in comparison. But I am unable to make love because every time I make love a horse falls into the pool.

  EVERY TIME I FUCK MARIE I KILL A HORSE.

  Perhaps the noise of fucking upsets them and they panic and lose their bearings. I told Marie about my feelings, that the lovemaking was unsatisfactory because of the danger to the horses.

  She said, “You attribute great power to your cock.”

  “While it is limp it will do no harm.”

  “No harm,” said Marie, “and no good either.”

  9.

  Another night without Marie.

  Her absence has cured my limp cock more quickly and effectively than either of us could have guessed. I toss and turn in my tangled bed dreaming of involved and passionate love on the distant beaches of her brochures.

  At this moment I am prepared to fuck until the pool is full of horses.

  10.

  The horses are standing in a circle around the pool, their tails swishing through the grey air. It is not difficult to imagine
that they have gathered around the pool to look into the black water and dream about death. The blackness of death must seem attractive to them after the grey nights and yellow days of the pavilion. Or perhaps they are simply aware of my decision and are now standing in readiness.

  The whip has always been there, thoughtfully provided by the same company that refused to supply me with barbed wire.

  I have no wish to remember the manner in which I drove the horses into the pool. It was sickeningly easy. They fell into the water like overripe fruit from a tree, often before the whip had touched them. In five minutes the pavilion was empty and the pool was boiling with horses. I retired to my bed and pulled the pillow over my head.

  In less than an hour there were twelve horses floating in the pool. They bumped softly into one another like bad dreams in a basin.

  11.

  They have brought replacements. They unload the twelve new horses from the truck with the flashing yellow light on its roof. Then they proceed to winch the drowned horses from the pool.

  I plead with the men not to leave the live horses in my care, to transfer them to another pavilion. I offer them everything I have: my television set, my refrigerator, my bed, the brochures Marie left with me.

  The driver flicks through the brochures sullenly: “The TV is company property.” He adds that he intends to confiscate the brochures.

  Room No. 5 (Escribo)

  I scratch my armpit and listen to the sound, like breakfast cereal. The hotel room has a title, Escribo. It was an office. Occasionally there is a rumbling upstairs, a vibration, and water cascades through the ceiling and splashes into the bidet beneath.

  Trucks rumble through the town. They are filled with soldiers. It is likely that Timoshenko is finally dying, in which case there may be a coup, or possibly none, possibly a dusty road stretching across the plain and a wrapper from one of those bright green confections lost somewhere among the grasses.

  The restaurant smells of piss and is humid. Condensation covers the tiled floor which is streaked with a fine grime. A large footprint with a rubberized pattern repeats itself. Jorge was here yesterday. Jorge may not be important to anything. He is a captain in Timoshenko’s army but his ability to affect things is probably small.

  Jorge’s customs post is six kilometres along the road over the bridge. It will probably rain. If Timoshenko dies things may alter. The wind may blow from a different direction. It may continue hot. The sound of gunfire could be mistaken for thunder, or vice versa. In the urinal humidity of the restaurant possibilities smear into one another. Some young boys drink Coca-Cola and lean against the coffee machine. Outside there are more, revving Zundapps.

  You lie on the bed and smile at the ceiling. I wonder what you think. Your smile is permanent and I have given up asking you about it. I have decided that you are smiling about a day five years ago. I have not yet decided what happened on that day. And, as you won’t tell me, it is I who must decide, but later. I can think of nothing that might make you smile.

  I asked you if you were frightened to die, now. You smiled and said nothing.

  I asked the question to stop you smiling.

  I don’t know who you are. You have not stopped smiling since I found you at Villa Franca. You have not stopped smiling except to make love, and then you frown, as if you had forgotten what you were going to say. Your smile is full and gentle. It is a smile of softness and of complete understanding but you refuse to explain it and I do not know what you understand and you continue to refuse me this.

  You wish for more yoghurt. Again, for the eighth time today, we leave this room and go to the café opposite the Restaurant Centrale. You eat yoghurt. I watch. The soldiers who sit at the other tables watch loudly. They watch us both. You frown, as if making love, eating yoghurt. I cannot bear the sight of it, the yoghurt, the texture of it is repulsive to me, like junket, liver, kidney, brains, Farax, and Heinz baby foods.

  Your yoghurt finished, you look at me and smile. Your eyes crease around the edges. The strange thing about your smile is that it has never once become less real or less intense. It is a smile caught from a moment in a still photograph, now extended into an indefinitely long moving film. You look around the café. I tell you not to. The soldiers are not schooled in the strange ways of your smile and may misinterpret it. They have already misinterpreted it and sit at tables surrounding us.

  If Timoshenko dies they will rape you and shoot me. That is one possibility, have you considered it?

  I watch the spider as it crawls up your arm and say nothing. You know about it as you know about many things. You insisted on going through the border post ten minutes after me. Is it for that reason, because of your inexplicable behaviour, that they held you there so long. I saw, through the window of the verandah, the officials going through your baggage. They held up your underwear to the light but did not smile. Things are not happening as you might expect.

  I wish you to frown at me. What would happen if I asked you, gruffly, to frown at me here, in public? You would smile, suspecting a joke.

  When the soldiers see us walking towards the café they call to us. I ask you to translate but you say it is nothing, just a cry. They wait for us to come and eat yoghurt. It is a diversion. While they remain at the café there cannot be a general alert. For that reason it is good to see them. They, for their part, are happy to see us. They call out “Yoguee” as we walk up the hill towards them. When we arrive at the table there are two bowls of yoghurt waiting. For the third time I send one bowl back. The waiter refuses to understand and jokes with the soldiers. You say that his dialect is difficult to catch. It is a diversion.

  The heat hangs over the town like a swarm of flies. Trucks rumble over the old stone bridge. It stinks beneath the bridge. If you couldn’t smell the stink by the bridge the scene would be picturesque. I have taken photographs there, eliminating the stink. Also a number of candid shots of you. I wish you to appear pensive but you seem unable to portray yourself.

  There are some good dirty jokes concerning the Mona Lisa’s smile and the reasons behind it. Your smile is not so enigmatic. It is supremely obvious. It is merely its duration that is puzzling.

  I do not know you. Your accent is strange and contains Manchester and Knightsbridge, but also something of Texas. You have been to many places but are vague as to why. You have no more money but expect some to arrive at the Banco Nationale any day. We wait for your money, for Timoshenko, for night, for morning, for the ceiling to rumble and the water to pour down. I have put newspaper in the bidet to stop the water from the ceiling splashing. I have begun a letter to my employers in London explaining my absence and there is nothing to stop my finishing it. I have hinted at a crisis but am unable to be more explicit. They, for their part, will interpret it as shyness, discretion, or the result of censorship.

  At this moment the letter lies conveniently at the top of my suitcase. If the suitcase is searched the letter will be found easily. It is possibly incriminating, although it is constructed so as to reveal nothing. Knowing nothing, it is possible to reveal everything. That is the danger.

  Night

  It is night. You lie in the dark with your face hidden in the pillow. You lie naked on top of the blanket; you like the texture of the blanket. It is hot and the blanket is grey and I lie beside you on the sheet, peering at the light entering the room through closed shutters. I have considered it advisable to keep the shutters pulled tight — the room is at street level and has a small balcony that juts out a foot or two above the cobbled roadway.

  I touch your thigh with my toe and you make a noise. The noise is muffled by the pillow and I do not understand it.

  I sleep.

  When I wake you are no longer there. My body is electrified by short pulses of panic. The shutters arc open and a truck drives by, beside the balcony and above it. I hear the driver cough. Men in the back of the truck are singing sadly and softly. I listen to them hit the bump at the beginning of the bridge and hear the hard thu
mp and clatter. The sad singing continues uninterrupted, as if suspended smoothly above the road.

  You are no longer there. I dare not look for your bag, but you have left a handkerchief behind. I could rely on you for that, to leave small pieces of things behind you.

  It is not the money. I am not concerned with the money. The Banco Nationale has not impressed me with its efficiency and I have no faith in its promises and assurances. They cashed your last traveller’s cheque and gave a hundred U.S. dollars instead of ten. You laughed and took the money back, but not from a sense of caution.

  In the bank there was an old woman in black who had her money in a partially unravelled sock. You stood behind her and smiled at her when she turned to stare at your dress. If the money were to arrive in an old sock I would have more confidence, but you say it is coming from Zurich and I have little hope. No, it is not the money, which we both undeniably need. The panic is not caused by the thought of you disappearing with or without the money, nor is it caused by the thought of the secret police, although I am not unconcerned by them.

  But the panic is there. I fight it consciously. In my mind I rearrange the filing system in my London office. There are some red tabs I have been anxious to order. I busy myself writing classifications on these red tabs. I write the names of my districts: Manchester, Stockport, Hazel Grove. At Hazel Grove I lose my place. I lie on the sheet covered by small pinpricks of energy and hear a man shout something that sounds like “Escribo”. I am sure he could not know the sign on the door of our room. Unless you have told them, and they have shouted it deliberately, to frighten me. For you say nothing of the police or the political situation when I attempt to discuss it. As for the newspapers, you say they are boring, not worth translating, and that, in any case, they are unlikely to report Timoshenko’s death immediately. You say you have no idea why they would not let us back across the border last Sunday and claim that you accept their story as reasonable and correct. You have also suggested that it was because “the border closes on Sunday” but that was not a very good joke. And, by now, it is essential that we wait “until my cheque comes from Zurich”. You seem bemused, as patient as a sunbather.