The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

by Peter Carey

  My mother was a practical woman in all sorts of ways – money, scheduling, the organization of people, the resolution of conflicts – but nailing, cutting, gluing, these were not her strengths, and she knew this, even as she took the designer’s chair. Other people-Wally particularly – would have made a better job of fixing the Mouse mask.

  She sat me on the workbench. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘Do you understand?’

  I was not sure exactly what she was sorry about, but I did not ask and I did not soften. I stared at her.

  ‘Maman is going to fix your mask,’ she said at last.

  Wally had fixed some expensive-looking kitchen cabinets to the wall above the workbench. Inside one of these Felicity found a large jar labelled ‘Milliners Solution’ and two sheets of white cartridge paper in a brown cardboard tube.

  ‘What we do is lay the paper on the bench,’ she said. We both knew that she was bluffing. ‘And then we make a jigsaw puzzle. See – there’s his eye.’ She laid the crumpled Mouse eye on the white paper, but when she looked up her own eye could not hold my gaze. ‘And here’s a corner of his cheeky mouth.’

  ‘There’s … his … ear.’ I pointed. I did not pick it up.

  ‘Did anyone hurt you?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s … part … of … his … head.’

  She picked up the piece I pointed at. We progressed this way, for ten minutes or more – me pointing, she placing the crumpled papier-mâché on the white cartridge paper.

  ‘The thing about being an actor,’ she said, as I tried to figure where the last few pieces belonged, ‘is it’s a very hard life. It’s OK,’ she said hurriedly, ‘you will be an actor because that’s what you want, but I’m telling you, it’ll be hard for you, harder than for other people. Do you know what I’m saying, mo-sweets?’

  ‘This … piece … is … from … the … mouth.’

  ‘It’s very difficult,’ she said, ‘and that’s why I didn’t want you to do it. I knew it would be a very hard thing for you to do. Do you understand?’

  ‘I … know … I’m … a … mutant.’

  She did not look at me when I said that, but I felt her stillness, all the air held in her lungs.

  ‘Are you angry at me?’ she said at last. ‘Because I made you how you are?’

  ‘I … want … to … learn,’ I said. ‘All … the … things … you … can … learn. I … want … to … talk … so … anyone … can … understand.’

  ‘Maybe there are some things you won’t be able to do.’

  ‘I … can … learn … to … talk … better.’

  ‘The problem with diction is physical, darling, you know that.’

  ‘I’ll … learn.’

  ‘OK, OK.’ She looked at the hateful Mouse, carefully assembled on the bench. Anyone could see it was ruined. ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ she said, not looking at me. ‘We’ll leave the mask. We’ll let it set and while it’s setting we’ll do a workshop. I thought you might like to play the part of Puck. I think I’d like to make you gold and silver.’

  I did not ask her about how the mask could possibly set. It was a ludicrous notion, best left alone.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’ll do it out in the ring.’

  She picked me up and put me on the floor. I watched her choose the make-up pots and sticks with my heart beating so hard that a big vein pulsed weirdly in my neck. She sat the pots down on the bench – small tubs with colour spilling down around their white shiny lids. She placed the fat sticks beside them. She opened the tiny closet where the fabric oddments were stored, collected two or three pieces of tat. Then she carried me out into the ring and removed every single item of my clothing.

  I sat still on a white enamel chair while she ran back for the make-up, and then again up to the booth where she fiddled with the lights. When she returned she pushed me into a single tight spot. My skin tingled. I felt the pool of black, the heat of light around me. She knelt in front of me. She gave me Nora’s little silver-backed mirror from Doll’s House so I could look at myself as she painted me.

  She ran a single line of silver across my forehead. Above it she painted blue, below it green. She put a towel around my neck, splashed water on my hair, and gelled it, teasing it out in long spikes like Efican ragwort blossom. Then she had me hold the towel across my face and sprayed it silver.

  I looked in the mirror and saw a creature, a fairy, something from another level of existence, pixie, elf, homunculus.

  She painted a single blue spot on each cheek and surrounded this with pink. I thought of butterfly wings.

  She made my chest into something blue and black like the night sky. My scars she turned into lightning bolts.

  It took a long, long time. I did not mind. It was like being polished into life, like being a statue whose feet are washed with milk and yoghurt every morning.

  ‘You’ll have to push yourself against the pain,’ she said, rubbing the fatty colourants into my skin. ‘Acting will hurt you. All your muscles will ache. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ll be frightened that you’ll break yourself in half, but that is what you’ll have to do. Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Everyone will want to marginalize you, but you must never allow yourself to take the little parts. When they call you to a Mechanical, show them how you can play Bottom,’ she said. ‘Do you know who Bottom is?’

  I did not. She told me. ‘You must study,’ she said, ‘so you are more intelligent than other actors, and you must learn to have an open mind, so any director can understand that you will not be difficult to work with, that you are interested in new approaches to the work. You must keep on learning about being brave. This is something you can’t learn once. You have to learn it over and over. You must never be frightened to look how you look, and if you can do this, you will always look powerful. You will have to make yourself into something beyond anyone’s capacity to imagine you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t have to even understand all this now. But you will learn it, slowly.’

  But I did understand it.

  ‘You worked out your action for Sad Sack and you thought you could act.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But it will be years before you can act. You must not appear in anything in Chemin Rouge for years. You’ll have to work hard, every day. Lots of exercises, lots of reading, every day, harder than anything you’ve done. And when it’s all done you will, if you’re lucky, get one role a year. Do you hear what I’m saying? You’ll be poor, like Sparrow.’

  I was looking in the mirror. I was feeling the heat.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  She dropped a light blue cloth around my shoulders. She stepped back out of the light.

  ‘Look in your mirror.’

  I needed no encouragement.

  ‘What do you see?’

  I didn’t know what she meant.

  ‘An artist?’ she suggested. ‘An actor?’

  I looked so wonderful, so unimaginable, so beautiful that it seemed presumptuous to say anything.

  ‘A mutant?’ ‘No.’

  ‘And certainly not ugly.’ She came out of the dark, held me, one hand on each of my arms.

  ‘Would you like to sleep over at the theatre for a few nights?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re an actor.’ She kissed me on the forehead. ‘This theatre is for you. Do you hear me? You won’t have to be poor like Sparrow.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When you grow up, you’ll always have a theatre. Now you can stay with Wally, and I’ll come visit you at least once every day. Maybe Sparrow will find time to help you. In any case, we can work out your exercises as we go along. You know I’m going to run for parliament, but I’ll make the time to help you every day. Are you angry with Vincent still?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘OK, we’re going to scrub up, and we’re going to go and tell everyone that
you and I are OK. So now you can take one last good look,’ she said. ‘A good slow look.’

  She left Tristan Smith alone in the spotlight. My bladder defeated me before I was bored with my reflection.

  47

  Four days later, my mother was famous.

  She had been famous before, of course. Strangers in the street still called her Yvette, the name of her character in the soap opera. Also, she was famous in a different way for the Feu Follet, and a different way again for her role in demonstrations against the Voorstand presence on our soil.

  But she had never been as thoroughly famous* as she was when she stood for parliament.

  I was woken by Roxanna shaking me.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Quickly.’ I was always slow to wake, but Roxanna could not wait for me. She picked me up and carried me into the kitchen where Wally was already cooking – not breakfast, dinner. He had shaved, and he had Ducrow’s old wood-burning stove alight, something he did in the wet season when the porous old walls were getting too wet. The big pitted yellow and red tiles were freshly mopped and he had set up a large vid on top of the old-fashioned copper. A thick blue 240-volt cable ran from the vid out to the theatre power box.

  Outside the day was grey, windy, what we call a ‘Mongrel Day’, hot wind, always changing. Inside: my mother was a flickering luminous vision in her yellow dress, her red hair. The hair had been cut since she visited me the evening before. It was shorter, tidier. She wore glasses, which she most certainly did not need for anything other than her ‘Character’.

  As I sat down at the table, Wally put porridge and a glass of milk in front of me. He said nothing, but nodded his head towards the screen. His face was aglow with pleasure, Roxanna’s too.

  ‘Isn’t she gorgeous?’ she said. ‘Who wouldn’t vote for her?’

  Rox herself was wearing an oversize midnight blue T-shirt with ‘Stand Back Voor Stand’ stencilled on the back.

  Rox was now alight in the way people get when they are close to fame. It does something to them, smooths their skin, brightens their eyes. Roxanna stood with the remote in her hand flicking channels. It seemed as if my mother was on every one.

  ‘She isn’t even formally preselected for the seat,’ she said.

  ‘She’ll get it,’ Wally said. ‘Vinny’s got it fixed.’ He had a pile of pale meat in a white bowl, and as he spoke he was browning it in a big copper pan, four or five pieces at a time. The room was rich with the smell of browning butter, the smell of raw onions.

  When the telephone began to ring no one answered it. It was as if this was our family business, us and the vid, the luminous blue and yellow picture, the flickering fire, the sweet hot butter, the frying meat.

  ‘She’s good,’ Roxanna said. ‘Your maman is awful good. Listen to how she speaks.’

  The phone rang and rang, and then the actors – for it had been they who had been calling – started to arrive. Sparrowgrass first, but then all the others – Annie, Claire Chen, Moey Perelli. It was only half past eight in the morning but they were all excited to be associated with my mother, offering their services, phone numbers etc. They stood around the table, patting and fondling me like in the old days, already imagining the possibility of a Blue victory. I wanted to tell them I was going to be an actor, but it was not the time, and instead I held my good news, my fortune, held it tightly and secretly against my chest.

  ‘All your maman’s friends work on the vid,’ Moey said to me. ‘All those sold-out hacks and spin driers. You watch the space she gets. You hear the noise.’

  Wally put the lid on his copper pan and left it simmering. He washed his hands, lit a cigarette and was leaning against the wall, supporting the elbow of his smoking arm with the palm of his left hand. He had about him the air of an organizer, as if he, through his own secret methods, had put my maman on the vid and encircled me with actors. This was not so, of course, but when the handsome messenger arrived – a young, muscular man, in a body-hugging blue suit – Wally did not look at all surprised but merely nodded his head to where the messenger stood at the open doorway, dimple-chinned, solemn-faced, holding out a silver and blue box.

  ‘Tristan Smith?’ the messenger asked.

  I turned my face away from the stranger, but Roxanna signed and brought the box to me.

  Then she took my chair and I climbed on to her lap and nestled my head into her breasts. She smelt sugary and alien, but she was soft and welcoming. I held the box in my lap, and no one asked me what was in it. They were drinking sweet Efican tea and staring at the vid. It was that sort of day. You could feel the world shifting its axis.

  ‘I wanted to be an actress myself,’ Roxanna said, spooning more blackberry conserve into her tea. ‘That was my big dream before I met Reade. I would have given anything to be an actress, but my ankles were too thick.’

  We both looked at her ankles. As for me, I would have given anything for ankles like that. Her feet were small, perhaps a little flat, but her ankles were full, generous, like her calves. For me, whose own legs were little more than bones, Roxanna’s ankles had always appeared to be perfection itself.

  ‘You need thin ankles,’ she said.

  ‘I … have … thin … ankles,’ I said.

  This made Roxanna pause a moment.

  ‘Well, mine are thick,’ she said at last. ‘And I’m stuck with them until they bury me. Your mother has very nice legs. She could do well in almost anything. Thick ankles are a real disadvantage, for a woman particularly. Today I really have to find my suit for the auction.’

  ‘You … don’t … have … to … buy … a … suit … for … an … auction,’ I said. ‘I’ve … been … to … auctions … with … Wally. I’ve … been … to … lots.’

  ‘For this one, I need a suit,’ she said. ‘All I’ll be thinking about is my boobs and my ankles, make the most of the one, the least of the other. Oh God,’ Rox said, ‘look at her. How can she lose? She’s just so beautiful.’

  My mother was now on a panel discussion, surrounded by men in suits.

  ‘Oh God,’ Roxanna said. ‘Oh God. I didn’t know – she is just so beautiful.’

  Wally was now separating the small bones from what looked like chicken. He worked deftly, shredding the meat with his big fingers as he went.

  ‘What’s for dinner?’ Sparrow asked.

  ‘Nothing for you,’ Wally said. ‘Something special for Roxanna, for tomorrow.’

  ‘For me? For dinner? I won’t be here.’

  ‘Oh.’ Wally smiled. ‘I think you will be when you know.’

  I felt Roxanna’s body harden.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Mollo-mollo,’ Wally said, smiling, but strangely. He turned to place the bowl of meat in the refrigerator and then began to tidy up the kitchen table.

  ‘What?’ Roxanna insisted.

  It was at about this stage – as Roxanna said what? one more time – that the actors began to vanish. They wrote their numbers or addresses on the refrigerator with magic marker. Neither Roxanna nor Wally said goodbye to them. Roxanna slid out from under me and walked across the kitchen to Wally.

  ‘What the fuck have you done?’ she asked.

  Wally held out his hands, so his fingers touched her elbows. Roxanna flinched.

  ‘What?’

  Wally put his foot on the kitchen tidy. I heard the lid fly up, saw Roxanna look down and her chin drop.

  I scampered off my chair and looked in too. It was filled with feathers.

  ‘No!’ she said, angry.

  Wally’s face was pale, waxy.

  ‘No!’ she said; she touched his face with her hand.

  Wally’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

  ‘I can’t eat,’ she said. ‘I’m going to an auction.’

  I was still confused as to what had happened. I put my hand into the bin and plunged in amongst the bed of soft grey and brown feathers – pigeon feathers. When I looked up I saw Roxanna’s face, tears flooding her cheeks, her mascara running like
spilt ink.

  ‘You crazy man,’ she said, ‘you crazy ballot …’ And then, without a glance at me, she took him by the hand and led him from the room. In their absence I could smell the feathers, like wet ashes.

  I climbed back on my chair and, in the empty kitchen, with the stove still burning and my mother’s image still shining from the vid, I carefully undid the box the messenger had delivered.

  There was a small ivory card with hand-torn decalled edging. On it was written: ‘For my favourite actor.’

  Inside was an object – wrapped in pale yellow tissue paper which, even though I tore it impatiently, did not reveal its secrets easily. What I found was a surface, burnished like a tea pot, lacquered with eggshell white, deep, lustrous blacks and greys.

  Only when the last paper fell away did I realize that my maman had sent me not merely a Bruder Mouse mask, but one far superior to the one I had destroyed. It was heavy, not light. It felt like porcelain, or wood, but – in any case – not papier-mâché. It was hard as the fender of Vincent’s Corniche, and glazed. On its inside, in the centre of the forehead, was a little red sticker with the phases of the moon in yellow – symbols of a Voorstand import.

  I did not know it was a valuable antique.* Indeed, apart from the folk stories in the Badberg Edition I knew nothing about the history of Bruder Mouse, or even my mother’s personal relationship with it.† I was already feeding, guiltily, greedily, fiddling with its buckles, pulling it over my head. It felt heavy, shiny, and it smelt of pine needles and expensive leather. There was no elastic band to hold it on, but a series of complicated straps and fasteners like the back of roller-hockey pads.

  When I had the mask on, I drew up a chair and sat alone in the slightly overheated kitchen watching my mother on the vid. We were in our new lives. I was the actor. She was the politician. I could see her frailty, a very slight tremor in her voice, a slight uncertainty in her hand gestures, but a stranger would not have picked it up – she would appear to be funny, charming and, with her new steel-framed spectacles, rather stern. She was presenting her paper on armed neutrality. She evoked the images of Oncle Dog, Phantome Drool, Bruder Mouse, the whole panoply of Sirkus characters. She painted the Phantome as a spy, the Dog as a soldier, the sharp-toothed blue-coated Mouse as a paranoid – its white-gloved finger hovering above a button which might destroy the planet.