The Unusual Life Of Tristan Smith Part 17

Of course I was a child of the Feu Follet. I had never seen the Sirkus.

'Irma,' I said. It was how Wally would have answered. 'Ir ... mah ...'

'Irma? Well I'll be d.a.m.ned.' He slapped the wheel and laughed and at that moment he sounded like the Dog himself Ho, Ho Ho, Ho, Hee, haw. Hee, haw. 'You'd like to do the pink Watutsi with Irma? You dirty little b.u.g.g.e.r. What's your gazette?' he asked. 'You'd like to do the pink Watutsi with Irma? You dirty little b.u.g.g.e.r. What's your gazette?' he asked.

'Tristan ... Smith.'

'I'm Wendell Deveau,' he said, 'and I'd give my left ball to do it with Irma too.'

I remember that, clear as day. You would not forget a name like Wendell Deveau. It was the same man who crossed my path later in life when we were both in love with the same woman.

But on this night the woman was still only eleven years old and Wendell, with all his considerable, ill-informed good will, delivered me into the safe hands of the orderlies at the Mater Hospital and convinced them, no matter how I wept or hollered, that it was their duty to detain me for treatment.

Finally, I was held suspended like a bat or bird between the orderlies. The entire Casualty waiting room looked on. Wendell Deveau stood before me, red-faced, out of breath.

'I hope you get better, ami,' he said. 'I really hope you do.'

*'Bruder Duck Rides to Kakdorp', from the Badberg Edition.*Visiting Voorstanders are always surprised to find Pow-pow music so popular in a foreign country. If you are a child of the Hollandse Maagd it is possible that you find Anglo-French Eficans more enamoured of the music than you are. And it is true, we do not always appreciate the nuances of race and cla.s.s, but we know the words, can hum the melodies. [TS] [TS]*Efican trucks are fitted with a siren which sounds when the vehicle exceeds the speed limit. [TS] [TS]

37.

In the Voorstand Sirkus, there is no pity. A man falls, he dies. This, you would say, is the point the reason a Sirkus star is rich is because of the risk he takes.

But when we Eficans watch the Voorstand Sirkus we do not watch like you. We watch with our mouths open, oohing and aahing and applauding just as you do, but we watch like Eficans, identifying with the lost, the fallen, the abandoned. When a performer falls, c'est moi, c'est moi. c'est moi, c'est moi.

Our heroes are the lost, the drowned, the injured, a habit of mind that makes our epic poetry emotionally repellent to you, but let me tell you, Meneer, Madam, if you are ever sick whilst visiting Efica you will quickly appreciate the point of view. If you come to the Mater Hospital with no money, no insurance, even if you stink of p.i.s.s and have no lips you will not be sent away, not even if you beg to be.

They asked where my mother was.

I said I had no mother.

Wendell Deveau began to click his tongue. I tried to crawl away. Wendell Deveau tried to stop me. I bit him. The admissions clerk became alarmed for me. She called two nurses, wide fellows with close-cropped hair and big soft hands. I did not want them touching me. When I struggled, they restrained me. When they restrained me, I screamed and hollered and of course it made me look a fright my hole of a mouth, my dribbling nose, the blood on my knee-pads, my flailing hands there were people in the waiting room covering their faces, leaving the room, holding their hands over their sick children's eyes. I saw this. I did not understand why it was happening. I pulled Vincent's newspaper-stuffed driving gloves back on, ready to scamper for it. Sc.r.a.ps of torn paper fluttered all around me. It was two a.m. I did not give the impression of mental health.

Wendell Deveau fled into the night to begin his life as an operative with the DoS. The nurses were young, embarra.s.sed. I smeared them with snot and blood. They must have feared hepat.i.tis, TB, viral cancer, but they were calm and hardly bruised me.

It's OK, they told me. It's OK.

When people in a hospital tell you, 'It's OK,' it's the same as when they say you're going to feel 'some burning' or 'some pressure'. It means that they are going to do something that will hurt like h.e.l.l. So when they told me, 'It's OK,' I screamed. I was placed in a wheelchair, strapped in like a lunatic until I just sobbed, pa.s.sive, pathetic, exhausted, hungry, thirsty, dirty. My big leather gloves stuck out in front of my strapped-down arms like Bruder Dog in the story we know in Efica as 'The Prize-fight Purse'.* I was wheeled along the yellow line, the course of which I knew better I would bet you than the people who were pus.h.i.+ng me. I knew these departments of the Mater and the short cuts between the fifteen buildings. That blue line led to Digestive Diseases (my bowel). The red line to Cardiology (my septal defect). The yellow line was to the Burns Unit which contained (Room 502) the Plastic Surgery Unit. I told them I was not from there, but I doubt they understood me. I was wheeled along the yellow line, the course of which I knew better I would bet you than the people who were pus.h.i.+ng me. I knew these departments of the Mater and the short cuts between the fifteen buildings. That blue line led to Digestive Diseases (my bowel). The red line to Cardiology (my septal defect). The yellow line was to the Burns Unit which contained (Room 502) the Plastic Surgery Unit. I told them I was not from there, but I doubt they understood me.

My captors were polite, but firm.

I myself was not polite. I was in the habit of thinking of myself as I have said this already the avant garde, the elite. I a.s.sociated with anarchists, populists, nationalists, but whatever position we had, we imagined ourselves better informed than anyone who walked outside the big door on Gazette Street.

I called them drool-brains, know-nothings, airheads.

'What are we?' they asked.

'Drool ... brains.'

'Drool-brains?'

'Yes.'

They started laughing.

I went into a frenzy. (Cretins. No-bodies. s.h.i.+t-rakers.) (Cretins. No-bodies. s.h.i.+t-rakers.) My mouth flapped. My legs shooks. My nose ran a river. They delivered me to room 502 with tears of laughter down their faces. My mouth flapped. My legs shooks. My nose ran a river. They delivered me to room 502 with tears of laughter down their faces.

In room 502 they did not know what to do with me. They let me keep my gloves on, but they shot me full of Valium, and took some Buccal sc.r.a.pings from inside my cheek (It's OK) (It's OK) to file-check my DNA. It was through this last procedure once a two-week procedure, now a quick routine that they located my hospital records. to file-check my DNA. It was through this last procedure once a two-week procedure, now a quick routine that they located my hospital records.

A chubby young man in a s.h.i.+ny dark suit brought me a doc.u.ment, a facsimile of my birth certificate. He had a square pleasant face with a springy fringe across his mild green eyes.

'Can you read?' this young man asked me.

Of course I could read. I could read from the age of three. I held out my driver's gloves to take the doc.u.ment. 'I'm ... eleven.' eleven.'

Reluctantly, he gave me my own birth certificate.

I read.

FATHER'S NAME: n/a. n/a.

FATHER'S OCCUPATION: n/a. n/a.

I knew what n/a meant, but why my mother wrote this, I could not guess. Perhaps she knew Bill would go away. Perhaps she wished Vincent to think he was my father. In any case: it did not shock me. It was like my mother, like my father too.

'This is you, right?' he asked. 'You're Tristan?'

MOTHER'S NAME: Felicity Smith Actor-Manager. Felicity Smith Actor-Manager.

'Is this you?' this angel asked me. 'Are you Tristan Actor-Manager?'*

I turned to look at his watery benevolent eyes and believed my period of trial was over.

'Are you he?'

'Yes ... I ... am.'

'Your name is Actor-Manager?'

I nodded.

He flicked his fringe back.

'What is your address?' he asked, and then scrunched up his face as he readied himself to understand me.

'Thirty-four ... Gazette ... Street.'

'Yes,' he said. 'That's right.'

*'Bruder Dog Kapow', Badberg Edition.*Felicity Smith tuas not the only Efican mother to confront the official lack of curiosity about her profession by linking it in her surname. Witness, amongst contemporary Eficans, Anton Dietrich-Notaire and Billy Marchand.

38.

When Roxanna woke at dawn the first thing she saw was Wally Paccione's freckled arm, bare above the sheets. For the third night in a row he had kept his word he had not left his own bed but she was still disturbed by the sense of intimacy, the skin, the smell of his warm sheets, the sound of his feathery breathing. It was one thing to go to sleep in the same room. It was another to wake. She had slept slept with him. with him.

She had her skirt beside the bed, and in a minute she would sneak it underneath the sheets and dress, carefully, quietly.

His life lay all around her. He was a poor man and a neat man probably a decent man but apart from that, what sort of man he was she could not guess. A dozen small pine boxes were stacked along the wall beneath the window in such a way as to make a kind of dresser, the kind of depressing life you saw in fis.h.i.+ng baches on the Isles Anglais. Inside the boxes he had placed grey plastic crates, each one labelled with its prosaic contents socks, s.h.i.+rts, trousers. A chipped china jug, a shaving mug, a brush, a comb were laid out neatly on the top of a rough wooden bench. He owned so little. He was over fifty and this was all he had. It made his breath seem so frail, so vulnerable, Roxanna could not bear to think about him any more.

She quietly withdrew her auction catalogue from her handbag.

The catalogue was her comfort. It was one inch thick. It cost $50 through the mail. Its glossy coloured pages had a slightly soapy smell which always produced in her a feeling of rather dreamy well-being.

She took out her pen. The pen joined her to the catalogue like a needle to a thread. She brought it back and forth across the pages, pausing here and there, at the seventeenth-century dragoon in the uniform of captain, which she estimated at $350, at the complete eighteenth-century regiment, all in the uniform of the Royal Scots Guards, which might reach anywhere up to $5000. These last pieces were crude and eccentric in design and, although they had 'Made in England' on their bases, they had probably been produced by French convicts in Chemin Rouge in the second century (EC).

It was now six days until the auction. She turned the glossy pages slowly, breathing the smell, thinking of a park with peac.o.c.ks. She let her lashes down, got herself to the point where she could smell mown gra.s.s, hear water falling in a fountain. Then his voice slammed against her eardrum.

'What's the book?'

He was dressed dressed s.h.i.+rt, trousers had been naked in the room beside her, was pulling on his socks. He had been s.h.i.+rt, trousers had been naked in the room beside her, was pulling on his socks. He had been watching watching her. her.

She turned to him, her hand to her breast.

'Don't you be so tense tense,' he said. 'No one's going to hurt you.'

She was wearing a T-s.h.i.+rt but she felt exposed, as if he could see, not her body, but what she had been imagining.

He smiled at her.

She tried to smile back but could not.

'You were a million miles away,' he said.

He held out his freckled hand and at first she thought he wanted to touch her, and then she saw that he expected her to show him what she had hitherto kept hidden from him the catalogue. He had no idea what an intimate thing that was. She was embarra.s.sed she held the catalogue up, just enough so he could read the cover, but then he sort of tugged tugged it from her and sat back down on his mattress and leafed through it. it from her and sat back down on his mattress and leafed through it.

'This is worth three-fifty?' he said, holding up the plate depicting the dragoon.

She just wanted to ask him: please give it back.

He kept turning the pages of the catalogue, not like the poor man he was, but like a rich man, someone with an education gently, respectfully, sliding his big hands between the s.h.i.+ny surfaces. But whatever he really thought of it he did not say.

When he gave the catalogue back, she slipped it into her handbag and changed the subject to something less tender. 'What you doing today?'

'I don't know. What are you doing?'

'Sleep. Read. Same as yesterday. There's not much I can do until you get your money.'

'It's just the sort of account,' he said. 'I told you that.'

'I know.'

'If I gave it to you now, I'd lose my interest.'

I know all that. So what are you doing?'

'Well, first I'm going to clear the stuff out of the tower,' he said, sitting down on his mattress and resting his long wrists on top of his knees. 'And then I'm going to figure out how to build a pigeon loft. No,' he said, although she had not done anything except fold her arms, 'no, just imagine it from Tristan's point of view,' he said. 'It's like a schoolroom. He can learn about biology, genetics, mathematics.'

He was repeating bulls.h.i.+t things she had told him when she was selling him the birds. She felt herself blus.h.i.+ng.

'I know you don't like the pigeons,' he said. 'No, that's fine, but you just imagine, how a rikiki like Tristan ... There's all sorts of stuff he'll learn ... magnetism.'

'Magnetism?' She wondered if he was teasing her.

'It's how they navigate. You must know that.' Was he sending her up? 'Woman like you, surely you know that? That would be an advantage to owning pigeons.'

'I didn't know that.'

He smiled, but not much more than a creasing of the eyes.

'Well, your big bazooley is tin soldiers,' he said. 'It's more artistic than pigeons.'

'Thank you.'

'Nothing to thank.'

Tomorrow is my pigeon day,' she said. 'I'm going to help you set up the automatic watering.'

'You don't have to do that.'

'A promise is a promise,' Roxanna said, pulling her skirt on underneath the blankets. 'Ask anyone who knows me. I always keep my word. That's one thing about me you couldn't have known.'

'Oh, I knew it.'

'Well, tomorrow I'll set you up. Soon as I'm finished, you're going to the bank and I'm going to buy a little suit for Rox.' She threw back the covers and dusted down her skirt. 'Next week I've got serious business to attend to. But today,' she stretched and yawned, 'I'm still on holiday. I'm sleeping in.'

Yet as it turned out she helped him clear out the tower, not because he asked her to, but because she had already slept two days and could not sleep any more. There were still six days to go, time to fill without spending her money.