by Peter Carey
Now it was morning in the Lost and Found and Mr Jacobs was talking about money again. He was sitting at his desk behind the great grimy counter and she was leaning against the wall, hugging herself with her thin arms, her head on one side, her waving fair hair falling over one eye as she watched Mr Jacobs with curiosity. She asked her ritual question with the untiring curiosity of a child who wants to be told the same frightening story once again.
“Mr Jacobs, would you really do anything for money, really?”
“You bet.” He lit a long thin cigar and put his feet on the desk. Each time he put the cigar to his mouth the terrible forearms emerged from his grey dustcoat. She thought of octopuses lurking beneath rocks in shallow pools.
“Would you walk naked in the street for a thousand dollars?”
“I’d do it for five hundred, doll.”
“You’d go to jail.”
“No, I’d be fined. I could pay the fine and still make a profit.”
“Would you drink, you know …” she faded off, suddenly embarrassed by what she had said.
“No, I don’t know.” He smirked. She hated his smirk. He knew what she meant because he had said he would do it before. He had said he would drink piss if there were money in it. She wanted to hear him say it again.
“You know, drink ‘it’.”
“Piss, would I drink piss for money?”
“Yes.” Her pale face burned. “That.”
“How much piss?”
“A teaspoonful.”
“Forty dollars.” It was strange the way he said that, the same tone of voice that he used when he was quoting a price for unredeemed property. It meant he was cheating. It meant, she thought, that he would probably do it for ten dollars.
“I’d do a pint for eighty.”
“What about the other?”
“What ‘other’?”
“You know.”
“Shit?”
She nodded.
“That’d be more expensive. I’d want a hundred and fifty for that.”
“What about dog’s stuff?”
“Two hundred.”
She shook her head, appalled at the thought of it.
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe you.” She pulled a face. She couldn’t help it. The thought of it. The strange respectable little face, the neat clipped moustache smeared with stinking muck.
“Don’t pull faces at me, young lady.” She heard the tone in the voice and began to drift away. It was the nasty voice.
“I wasn’t,” she said, and then, seeing the rage growing on his face, corrected herself. “I was, but I’m sorry. I can’t help it.”
The confession pacified him. “Look, sweetheart, you don’t live in the real world. In two years’ time I’ll be free, just collecting rent.”
“Who’ll come here then?” Maybe, she thought, there will be someone nice. The thought cheered her. It had never occurred to her before.
“I’m fucked if I know. Somebody. You’ll be stuck here and I’ll be free just going around collecting rent.”
“Oh,” she said, “I won’t be here either.”
He laughed then. “You’ll be here, my little biddy, until you’re a shrunken-up old woman. How will you get out?”
She smiled then, so secretly that he started to get angry again.
“What are you smiling about?” He took his feet down off the desk.
“It’s nothing,” she said, but she was already edging her way along the wall, trying to escape. She couldn’t tell him.
“Tell me.” He was standing now and moving towards her. There was really no point in running. She would have to tell him something. Tell him anything.
“Tell me.” He was beside her now. His hand took her wrist. What would he do? She began to retreat. She started collecting coloured stones under water. She liked doing that. Swimming through the pale green water with the bucket, a beautiful turquoise bucket. The stones lay on the bright sandy bottom.
He was twisting her wrist. It was called “A Chinese Burner”. He had told her that before. He put two hands around her wrist and twisted different ways.
“I’ll get married,” she lied, picking up a glowing ruby-coloured stone, “and go away and have children.”
That satisfied him. He believed in confessions under pain. He believed in pain as he believed in money. He released her wrist and went back to sit behind his desk. Soon he would make a few false entries in the book, then he would go out to lunch, and then it would be afternoon.
During lunch she retreated into the depths of the Lost and Found. She crouched on the floor, reading in the dusty light: “Harvesting is not easy in a large mango tree, for the fruit must be picked carefully and placed gently into the picking boxes.”
There were no photographs of mangoes and she had never seen one.
She waited for the afternoon, placing glowing blue fruit into a pinewood box. She dropped pink tissues into the box and bedded the blue mangoes into it. She loved the feel of them, as soft and gentle as a baby’s cheek.
2.
It was afternoon and he stank of drink. He did not want it straight away. He made some phone calls and she waited, desperately flying through dusty corridors looking for beautiful things.
There was so much ugliness.
She saw shelves of dog turds lined up like buns in a bakery. She saw lengths of electrical flex hanging like whips. She looked for coloured stones but when she picked them up they were warm and squelchy in her hands and smelt of unmistakable filth. She searched on while he talked, looking for the forest, finding at last cool green paths below dripping trees. In the distance the bright blue mangoes shone like magic things and now she walked towards them, her bare feet caressed by a soft sandy path.
He was taking her hand now and leading her into the warehouse.
He wanted her to talk. He tugged at her clothes. The smell of liquor assailed her. She saw the bottled snake in her mind, soaked in formaldehyde. She hated the smell of the drink.
“Tell me you want to fuck me.”
“I want to fuck you.”
She said it. She shed her clothes and stood shivering. She didn’t see him. She tried to walk down the sandy path and reach the mangoes.
She felt the blow. He liked to hit her. They all liked to hit her. Why did they like it? Why did they always want to hit her? They didn’t like her walking down sandy paths. They were jealous and could not see the mangoes.
“I want to fuck you.” She tried to say it better. She tried to look at his hard brown eyes which glinted at her behind the horrible spectacles. She felt the moustache on her lips, trying to eat her alive, and she thought of it covered with muck.
He grunted above her now but she was able to feel nothing. She said the words he wanted her to say.
When it was over she remained lying on the old pile of carpet, looking up through the canyons of shelves towards the distant skylights.
He stood above her, pulling his trousers on.
“You’ve got no tits,” he said, “it’s like fucking a beanpole.” He threw her clothes to her. “Get dressed, for Chrissakes, I can’t stand looking at you.”
The clothes fell on her and she smiled at him. “Could I take home some of that wood?”
“Which bloody wood?” He was embarrassed now. He always was. If she smiled it made it worse.
“The four by two.”
“How will you get it out?”
“I’ll just cut a piece off.”
“All right,” he said, “I’ll cut it for you.”
She’d rather have cut it herself, but she let him do it.
“What do you want it for?”
“I just want it,” she said.
“Well, get dressed.”
As she got dressed she listened to him sawing the wood. He would saw it crooked but it didn’t matter, she only wanted it for practice.
3.
It was late at night.
She lay in her narrow bed in he
r YWCA room, her wide pale eyes following the footsteps in the corridor above. On the floor beside the bed were several very short sawn pieces of the four by two. She had cut the pieces as thin as possible, eking out her length of “Williamson” wood.
She gazed down at the cut pieces, reached down a long arm and picked one up. The cut was straight, but not straight enough. She got out of bed and picked up a piece of Williamson wood again, putting it over the edge of the dressing table. This one would be perfect. She drew the pencil lines using the set square she had bought at the newsagent’s. Then, very quietly, she began to saw. Sometimes the wood slipped but when she had finished she looked at the cut she had made. The faintest trace of grey pencil line was visible around it. It was a beautiful cut. She smiled at it with satisfaction.
The rest of the Williamson could be used for nailing.
She took the pillow from the bed and placed it on the dresser. Then she placed the wood on the pillow and began to drive in a three-inch nail. The pillow deadened the noise a little, but didn’t make the hammering any easier.
They were knocking on the wall but she finished six nails before she got into bed, taking the hammer and saw and cut pieces of wood with her.
Soon the floor superintendent would be there to complain. She would be sound asleep then, and their voices would not be able to reach her.
4.
He had taken to hitting her more lately, as if he had tapped a new and extraordinary vein of pleasure. While he grunted above her he called her horrible names, names so vile that they broke through the soft pink walls of her jungle dreams and hurt her even there. The passionate blows lay on jungle paths like brightly coloured snakes and their fangs sawed and ripped at her running legs. They would not leave her alone. She built houses on high stilts and climbed into the leafy heart of the mango tree but they were everywhere and pain oozed through the air, covering everything with its black ink.
Her sanctuary was violated. The blue sky was torn to ribbons.
Afterwards she retired deep into the recesses of the Lost and Found, like a hurt animal in search of a place to recuperate. He left her alone then and went to smoke cigars in the front office. She climbed the high steel ladders and lay stretched out on shelves twenty feet from the concrete floor. It was on one of these shelves that she found the old pillow. She placed it under her aching head and stared at the grey metal of the shelf above, dimly recognizing that she had come to a crisis from which she could not escape.
If only there could be another job, but there were no other jobs to be had. Even as he assaulted her, he liked to remind her of this. Even as he bent her arms behind her back, he increased his pleasure by taunting with this hard steel fact, as cruel as a serrated knife.
If he threatened the peace of her private places she would have to fight him. She had never fought. She did not know how. She had been a tree, or a rock, and hate and anger were strangers to her. Storms had assailed her, rivers washed over her, but they had not hurt her. Now she lay on the uncomfortable pillow and felt the hate come, like a visit to the toilet too long postponed because of other business. She was surprised at the pleasure it gave her. It came from her in a long slow flood and she felt suffused by a lovely warmth which she kindled with puzzlement and wonder.
Her revenges were far-fetched and extravagant but they began to radiate the blue light of her beloved mangoes.
5.
She hid from pain. Twice she avoided him for a whole afternoon, lying on the high shelf just below the ceiling. She lay in dread, barely moving while he bellowed with rage in the canyons below. He screamed her name and threatened her with horrible pains. He shouted tortures through the air and chanted the chilling litanies of dismissal.
Yet in the mornings he was a quiet respectable man with a briefcase. He pretended nothing had happened. She sensed a strange embarrassment about him, as if he knew that he had behaved badly. But that did nothing to stop the tangled schemes she continually constructed for his punishment.
It was on a third afternoon, lying in her hiding place, that her nervous fingers began to explore the peculiarly uncomfortable stuffing in the pillow. As Mr Jacobs began to climb other ladders and look into high shelves three rows away, her closely bitten fingernails plucked at the threads of the pillow. She explored the soft kapok interior more through agitation than curiosity and when her hands touched the bank notes she played with them for a while before she thought to pull them out and see what they were.
There were five hundred and six of them, all single dollar notes.
While Mr Jacobs threatened death, she calmly counted them.
When she had finished, she counted again.
6.
She lay the notes across her bed so they were like a patchwork quilt.
She put them in one single pile and wrapped them in tissue paper.
She spent three of them on a chisel.
She bought a three-foot section of four by two.
She stood outside the bank for half an hour before she got the courage to go in and then she told them what she wanted.
When she emerged fifteen minutes later she had deposited two hundred dollars in a savings account and she had a withdrawal form with her.
7.
It was morning. Mr Jacobs sat at his desk smoking his thin black cigar. She leant, as usual, against the wall. But this was not usual. Nothing was usual. She trembled with excitement at the impossible thing she was going to do. She watched him closely, her heart beating wildly, her fear dominating all other emotions.
Today she would teach him to leave her alone. Today she had money.
“What’s the matter with you, stupid?”
“Nothing,” she said. She was going to have to say something else soon. Say it now, she thought, say it now.
“What is it?” The voice was already becoming blotched with anger. She was not prepared for a Chinese Burner. She was the one who would give Chinese Burners today.
It was time to say.
“Mr Jacobs, would you really eat dog’s poo for two hundred dollars?” She said it as she always said it, with innocent curiosity.
“I told you I would.”
“I bet you wouldn’t.” There. She had started. She had never doubted him before.
“Listen, doll, I said I would, I meant I would. What’s the matter with you? What the fuck are you smiling about?”
She had it behind her back, wrapped in a little piece of clear thin plastic film. Now she held it out.
“There it is,” she smiled.
He looked at her in disbelief. He took the cigar out of his mouth and put it on the ashtray. He wasn’t looking properly and the cigar rolled off the ashtray and lay on the desk, quietly blistering the varnish.
“What’s that?”
“Dog’s poo.”
“Pull the other leg, honey.” But his eyes were riveted on the strange little parcel.
She walked over to his desk and unwrapped it gently. It wasn’t a very big piece, about three inches long and three-quarters of an inch in diameter.
“You dirty little bitch.” He was staring at her with astonishment.
“Will you eat it?” She was surprised how controlled her voice was, how quiet and firm and reasonable.
“Two hundred dollars,” he said, but the voice trailed off at the end and lacked conviction. He was staring at the turd which lay on the desk in front of him. The neglected cigar was making a strange smell but he didn’t seem to notice.
She took the bank book and withdrawal form and placed it beside the turd. She saw then just how little he wanted to eat it.
“It’s all right,” she goaded him softly, “I knew you wouldn’t.”
“Sign the form,” Jacobs said thickly.
“I’ll sign it when you’ve eaten it.”
“Sign it now.”
“No. Afterwards.”
There was silence then. She picked up the cigar and put it in the ashtray. Jacobs stared at the turd and poked at it with a pencil.
He didn’t say anything for a moment and when he looked up his eyes looked strange and dead. “Get me a glass of water.”
She got him the glass of water and placed it beside the turd.
Now when she realized that he was going to do what she hoped, she no longer wanted him to. She saw the flaws in her revenge. She saw that it would solve nothing. It would make it worse. She felt that she had a tiger pinned to the ground and her triumph was fractured by the knowledge that sooner or later she would have to let it go.
“Don’t,” she pleaded, “please don’t, Mr Jacobs.”
“Piss off.” His little eyes glinted behind his spectacles and he passed his tongue nervously over his lower lip. He bit his neatly trimmed moustache. He daintily pulled back the sleeves of his grey dustcoat. He looked like a high-jumper about to make his run.
“No,” she said, “please. I didn’t mean it. It was a joke.”
His eyes were alight with triumph. “I’ll do it, damn you. I’ll take your fucking money.” But still he didn’t touch it. She stared in horror.
It was not what she wanted. It was not what she thought. There would be no pleasure here.
He took the turd like an old lady picking up a lamington, and bit it.
She retched first.
When Jacobs retched nothing came up. He drank the water and smeared the glass. Then he bit again, and swallowed. She could not stand it. It was not what she wanted. She only wanted peace. She only wanted to be somewhere else, to walk soft sandy paths, to build a little house in a warm tropical place. She had wasted her money. She had thrown it away.
Mr Jacob’s face was contorted in a horrible grimace. He stood and knocked over his chair and then rushed from the room. She could hear him vomitting.
When he came back he was wiping his face with the back of his hand.
“Now,” he said, “sign the form.”
She signed it, full of dread. His voice had been like a surgical instrument.
“Now,” he said, “give me a kiss.”
