The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

by Peter Carey

  ‘Put … the … rat … back … now.’

  Jacques smiled at me and buttoned his jacket.

  Above his head, tied to the balconies of a stained concrete apartment building, was a flapping canvas sign: ‘18th INFANTRY. PRISONERS OF WAR.’

  Leona was trying to unfold my wheelchair. Jacques was now holding the Mouse underneath its arms and pretending to make it walk. You see the problem – our nurse was a Voorwacker, a fan, a follower of the Sirkus and all its trivia. This was why he was here. This was his trip and this was what he wanted – Sirkuses, ancient crucifixes, early editions from the Badberg Press. He loved your country. Madam, Meneer, he loved you half to death.

  He looked my way, cheeks flushed, eyes bright, defiant in his public passion. Then he turned his back and made off through the crowd. He was going to stand on the line, the line we had come to stand in. BUT NO ONE HAD TOLD ME THAT. I knew only that I would not permit myself to be disobeyed by an employee. I walked, as I had previously only walked inside the long dark hallways of the Feu Follet, with my disabilities raw and undisguised. I rolled side to side like a comic-strip sailor. Anyone could see that I was three foot six inches tall, bandy-legged, club-footed, rag-faced, as I came across the grease-stained sidewalk towards Jacques, lacerating the skin on my ‘ankles’, feeling the pain only as you hear a telephone ringing in another room. I was not in control – I was already shouting.

  I was like a machine, a thing with a light flashing on its roof. The crowds which had scared me now parted before me. And even the queue of would-be POWs – Chinese, Malays, Afghans, Indians (no one Flemish, no one white like the crowds in the vids and zines) – whilst remaining locked fearfully in its proper order, flexed and shifted like a tail threatened with a red-hot poker.

  I came straight at Jacques and grabbed at the Cyborg. The Mouse – designed so no adult male could ever fit inside it – was my height.* I got its round black nose and tried to pull it from its captor. The nose was hard and black and dense and weirdly cold.

  ‘You … shit … snot … fucking … fool.’

  Jacques held the Mouse with both his arms. I tugged at the nose, but it would not tear away.

  ‘I’ll … rip … your … throat … out.’

  Jacques looked down at me. I saw a spark there. Something. I did not know what it meant.

  ‘Throw … that … thing … AWAY … NOW …’

  ‘You want to go to jail?’

  It was Leona. You could never say her face was white, or even pale. But it had a still, shiny, immobile look. ‘You don’t ever,’ she hissed, pushing the wheelchair at me so I was forced to hold it, ‘make a fuss in this line. That the only rule there is. Look it. They all so quiet. They like chickens when the snake get in the roost. You stand like them. OK. How you think I going to get you captured if you make this fuss?’

  That woman scared me. It was not what she said, but how she stood, the wild fire in her yellow eyes.

  ‘We got to get you captured,’ Leona said. ‘But that a figure of speech, a way of speaking, you understand me? It paperwork. You in enough trouble I would say – no sense you push it any more.’

  ‘OK?’ Wally said.

  I climbed into the chair.

  The balconies of the apartment buildings above our heads were filled with white soldiers, smoking, playing cards, sitting precariously on the crumbling concrete balustrades. As I looked up I saw one of them point at us. I looked down.

  ‘You be quiet now, Wink. Just hush, OK?’

  ‘What … trouble … am … I … in?’

  I asked the question twice but no one ever did answer it. Jacques patted at my face with a paper handkerchief. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘If … you’re … sorry … ditch … the … Mouse.’

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ he said, but then fitted the Simi beneath my wheelchair, under my legs, where I was spared the sight of it, if not its rancid smell.

  It takes ten to fifteen hours to become a POW.* Almost all of this time you spend in line. I had a wheelchair. I went straight to sleep.

  When I woke at two in the morning, an hour when the kanal fog has already rolled out across the turbulent streets, I found Wally on a sheet of cardboard, wide awake and grinning. God damn – his eyes were all creased up – he was happy to be just where he was, sitting on the banks of a river which was flowing with small-time crime.

  Not five feet from where we sat there were three pretty little spin driers with tight skirts and fuck-me heels. By the news stand there were musicos, jugglers, riveters. Between the traffic lights, on the busy street crossings, there were young gypsy pick-pockets with dark brown blameful eyes and tatty sheets of corrugated board which they pressed against the bodies of their marks.

  Everything that threatened me seemed to sustain my companions.

  ‘We’ll do just fine,’ the old turtle said to me. ‘You just breathe, the way the doctor said. Don’t worry about nothing.’

  He rocked forward on his heels. He seemed to me to be like a retired footballer called down from the grandstand ready to thread fresh white laces through his dusty boots, to don the jersey with the old number sewn on the back, to climb the picket fence, to make that famous stab pass, low, spinning fast, down to the forward line.

  ‘Forget … it,’ I said.

  ‘We need money.’

  ‘Please … I … don’t … want … you … in … jail.’

  Wally smiled. He retied his shoelace. He relit his soggy cigarette. He squinted through the acrid smoke. He had romanced so often about his days as a facheur that now it was easy for me to imagine what he was doing: studying the form, analysing how the money moved, locating the runners, the soldiers, the post-boxes, the whole secret mechanisms, social and structural, of the street.

  A swarm of pick-pockets began working the crowd not three feet from the queue. They were ten, twelve years old.

  I saw how he looked at them, the smile on his face. I could not do the things they did, not ever – I could not duplicate their normal faces, their bitter freedom, the light, careless way they split the scene, like a firework blasting apart – brown lithe legs flying through the alarm of horns and klaxons on the Grand Concourse.

  ‘You can’t … run … like … that … please … leave … it … be.’

  ‘Come on.’ He touched my hair. ‘Don’t fret.’

  ‘You’re … up … to … something.’

  ‘Sleep,’ he said. ‘Breathe proper.’

  Finally I did sleep. When I woke up Leona, who was always appearing and disappearing, had gone again. The Simi – this was Jacques’ idea of humour-was now sitting on the sidewalk on its own sheet of cardboard. He had arranged it so it sat cross-legged, had cupped its gloved hands open in its lap, pointed its bright blind eyes so they looked upwards at the passing crowd.

  And as I watched a middle-aged man in one of those tight-fitting sixteen-button suits which marks the business-gjent in Saarlim City stooped and squatted right in front of Jacques. He folded a Guilder and tucked it in the Mouse’s paw.

  ‘Where you from, Bruder?’ he asked Jacques.

  I looked to Wally but he was asleep with his chin on his chest.

  When I looked back the business-gjent was holding the Simi’s hand, his slightly wet alcoholic eye looking directly at the Simi’s dysfunctional electronic one.

  ‘Where you from?’ he repeated.

  ‘Efica,’ said Jacques.

  The man shook his head, squinched shut his eyes. That is the paradox: we are important enough for you to bring down our government, but you have never heard of us. You could see this gjent had no damn idea where Efica was. ‘You know how long it is since I saw this fellow on a Saarlim street?’ he said at last. ‘Ten, fifteen years. Do you know who he is?’

  ‘One mo nothing,’ Jacques said. ‘Next mo there he was.’

  ‘It was a different country then, a different country entirely,’ the man said. ‘Parks were safe. Streets were clean. You never saw a street like this.�
�� He nodded towards the POWs. ‘It was a different country then.’

  ‘My friends are culture-shocked,’ Jacques said. ‘They never saw anything like this before.’

  ‘And you … you’re unshockable, huh?’

  ‘This is a great city,’ Jacques said.

  ‘It feels a great city to you?’

  ‘Look at all these people in this line … they’re in love with Saarlim City. It’s why they’re here. They love you.’ Jacques clicked his tongue. ‘How about that?’

  The man looked at Jacques and frowned. He dug in his pocket and dug out a fist of crumpled Guilders. He pressed them into Meneer Mouse’s lifeless hand and, as the coins dropped to the sidewalk and the notes fluttered in the air, he turned and walked away into the crowd.

  Jacques gathered up the money, grinning. I did not grin back, but I saw then, straight away – it was very clear to me what had to happen now.

  *‘The aforesaid Simulacrum design is approved for manufacture as a free agent WITH THE PROVISO that no model, whether working model, prototype or branded product, shall exceed the height limitations contained in Codicil CXVIII, amendment 6, to-wit no variant shall exceed forty-two inches in height. Infringement of these restrictions will incur automatic suspension of Manufacturer’s Licence and a fine of 10,000 Guilders.’ Approval Certificate of the Opus 3a Simulacrum.

  *The official paperwork indicates that a much longer delay was once the rule: ‘Please wait at least 90 days after application before inquiring. If this form is folded at the lines in the margins, the address of the POW facility, or the address of the applicant, will show through a standard letter size (Type C1) envelope. All information should be typed or clearly printed in the English language, using ballpoint pen.’ Inquiry about Status of POW 531 Form.

  21

  How we got our POW papers was as follows. We came to the head of the line. I was nervous. There was a rope. A man undid the rope. We passed through: the four of us. There was a woman behind a metal desk. She had a big chest with many medals on it. She took the papers Leona gave her. She stamped them. She signed them. She then filled out forms for half an hour. She would not speak to Jacques. She looked at me, but did not react to my appearance in any way at all. She did not once speak to any of us except Leona.

  When she was done with us, she sent us to another queue. This queue was inside the building with black and white tiles on the floor and peeling paint on the walls. We were in this queue for two hours thirteen minutes. At the end of this time we were taken into a room where we were given a pink slip of paper* and instructed to place our right hand, underside upwards, on a silver cuff which was set into a wooden block. A machine was then clamped across the wrist. The wrist felt hot. When the machine was removed we had a number. Mine was A034571. My maman was born in Saarlim, but this was my status – a ‘Guest’ number – it gave no guarantee of residency or protection of the law but it was, just the same, there for life.

  *‘You have come in chains and the Republic has cast off those chains. You come defeated and the Republic grants you the spoils of the victors. You come without home and the Republic offers you shelter. You are, at all times, a guest of the Republic.’ The pink slip.

  22

  Using the Guilders the business-gjent had donated to the Simi, we purchased two nights at an hotel – the Marco Polo – in one of the rougher parts of Kakdorp. The room was large, but gloomy, backing on to a wide balcony on which robed men with blue-black skin and yellow eyes – landlopers – were living.

  They were outside. They washed their clothing there, in a pink plastic tub, and spread it out to dry on the hot concrete.

  I was inside, on the floor, trying to find a place where I could begin to unpick the body of the Simulacrum.

  I sat next to Jacques, so close to him that his short cuffs brushed against my wrist, his hand against my hand.

  ‘Not there,’ he said as I fiddled with the Simi’s blue sequin waistcoat. ‘You’ll rip it.’

  ‘Mollo … mollo.’ I tugged at the creature’s white plastic boots.

  ‘Don’t hurt it,’ Jacques said. ‘This is worth a fortune in Chemin Rouge.’

  ‘Worth … good … money … here.’

  Wally sighed loudly. I looked up to him through my sweaty white hair. He was sitting on the rumpled bed and rubbing his bare feet. He stared belligerently at the Simi which he had once, so blithely, invited into our life.

  ‘Please,’ he said, ‘don’t tell me you’re going to be a tin-rattler.’

  ‘If … we … don’t … have … money … we’re … as … good … as … dead.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Wally said, ‘no one needs to beg.’

  ‘You’d … thieve.’

  ‘Yes, I’d thieve, I’d con, I’d be a lever man, if it was necessary.’

  ‘I … don’t … want … you … to … thieve.’

  ‘I never said I was going to thieve. I said I’d rather thieve than beg.’

  ‘The … Simi … paid … for … this … room.’

  ‘You don’t need the Mouse to pay the rent.’ He was trying to catch my eye and hold it. I ignored that. I held up the Mouse’s grey spongy paw.

  ‘Our … meal … ticket,’ I said.

  ‘Our Sirkus ticket, more like it.’

  ‘Yes … that … too … I … can … get … the … money.’

  He shook his head. ‘We’re not going to the Sirkus.’

  ‘You … know … that’s … why … we … came.’

  He shook his head. ‘You hate the Sirkus, Tristan.’

  ‘We’ve … come … to … do … the … Sirkus … Tour.’

  ‘Bullshit.’ He was all closed down, hooded and bony – narrow eyes, shining cheeks. ‘Ten fucking years,’ he said to Jacques. He took some beef jerky from his back pocket and bit down on it. ‘Ten fucking years the Mouse was the devil. You would think it was Bruder Mouse killed his maman. He wouldn’t even let me say its fucking name.’

  ‘The … Sirkus … is … for … you … It’s … my … gift … This … Simi … is … going … to … finance … your … Sirkus … Tour.’

  ‘Bullshit.’ Wally tugged at the jerky. ‘You think I’d go through all of this for some Sirkus?’

  ‘Not … for … only … one.’

  ‘Not for a hundred. Let’s stop playing games, Rikiki. Let’s just admit it, we’ve come to Saarlim so you can make peace with your father.’

  ‘NO.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Wally said, passing his hands repeatedly over his bald skull. ‘It’s time to say it. We’ve come to see Bill Millefleur. So don’t give me all this crap about the Sirkus. You hate the Sirkus.’

  I did not answer. I was still trying to find some stitching, a seam that would allow me to unpick the Simi’s skin. My hand was shaking.

  ‘Tristan … just telephone him. That’s all it’ll take.’

  ‘I’m … going … to … make … money … and … I’m … going … to … take … you … to … the … Sirkus.’

  Wally sighed. ‘You can’t go tin-rattling with a Mouse,’ he said at last. ‘You know you hate that thing.’

  ‘Please,’ I said.

  ‘You think it’s legal, it’s not. It’s just as illegal as thieving.’*

  I ignored him.

  ‘You’ll get sick,’ he said. ‘Is that what you want? You climb inside that stinking thing, you’ll catch a virus. You want doctors poking at you in a foreign country?’

  He watched me as my mouth began to dribble, my head to nod. I hated how I was, how I looked, how I trembled.

  ‘You want strangers looking at you? Is that what you really want?’

  ‘SHUT … UP,’ I said. The words came out of me. Without warning, hot and shameful as shit itself.

  Wally passed his big dry hand thoughtfully across his mouth. Then he stood, picked up his stick, and walked towards the door.

  I called to him, ‘Don’t …’

  He stopped at the doorway. He had his hand across his mouth agai
n.

  ‘Please …’

  ‘Please what?’

  ‘Promise … you … won’t … see … him.’

  ‘Who?’

  He knew. He knew exactly.

  ‘Bill … Mille … fleur.’

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘You can actually say his name.’

  He walked out. I threw the Mouse aside.

  ‘What is it?’ Jacques said. ‘Can I help you?’

  I was trembling. I shook my head.

  ‘It’s your father? Your father is in Saarlim? Then let’s go see him.’ Jacques pulled the Mouse to his side. He folded its grey arm across its blue metallic chest. He stroked its fur. ‘We could borrow the jon-kay from him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I could not tell him. But now, I see, I must tell you, Madam, Meneer. I must return to that night, that death, the single event I spend my waking hours avoiding.

  *The soliciting of alms in public places is prohibited by law in the Canton of Saarlim and is punishable by a minimum sentence of six months (the first offence) and twelve months (the second). All sentences to be served in Work Camps. No remissions or reductions of sentence can apply.

  23

  Bill had not been there the night my maman died. He had been in Saarlim City, eating cheese and herring for his breakfast. I had telephoned him after Wally cut the death rope with a box cutter, after I began to hit the Bruder Mouse mask with the brick, pulverizing it against the theatre’s concrete floor.

  There was the smell of the shit.

  There was no sequence of events.

  There was Rox arriving, before the rope was cut, after the rope was cut.

  Vincent had been already in the theatre, had arrived by car soon after.

  Wally had a definite memory of laying my maman on the sawdust and of Rox fetching a stainless-steel mixing bowl of soapy water. She wanted to clean my maman.

  She said, ‘I am a nurse.’

  Rox was not a nurse.