The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (26 page)

The clowns of the first half were now assimilated Voorstanders – they became the orchestra, and as they assembled in their spiffy new eight-button uniforms we knew that we would have to tolerate, for a while, the chorus girls who followed them. Not that we did not think every each one of them to be beautiful, but because none of them was Irma, and by their very existence on the stage they distracted our attention from their queen.

Our Irma’s figure was voluptuous, but you can see today from the old vids that she was not perfect. Her rose-bud lips were a little small, her neck, if you wished to consider this, a little short. It is obvious now – it was not really her figure, or her sinuous movements which entranced us. It was her voice.

We waited for her to sing to us. Roxanna had her hand on Wally’s knee. Sparrow sat with his mouth a little open and repeatedly pushed his wire-framed glasses back on to his button nose. I took my Mouse mask off and waited for her to recite. In the darkness, I smiled.

She alone, of foreign performers, dared recite our own stories on the stage. It was the mark of the skill of your Sirkus managers to everywhere adapt the show to what was local. We did not know there was no Irma in any of the Saarlim Sirkuses. I don’t know if we would have cared. We were flattered, and moved to hear our own tragedies and Pyrrhic victories celebrated in her exotic accent. She did ‘Farewell, Sweet Faith! Thy silver ray’ and
also ‘The Story Teller from the Isles’. Her gestures, her movement at such times, were so minimal, her stillness, her small voice, a whisper. Our stories seemed bigger when she recited them, and it is easy enough to attribute all of this to politics and power, except that it takes no account of her enormous talent. You did not think about the individual words but rather the emotion that they generated, like they were so many drops of water, and yet each word was clear, and just as she could put flesh and blood on the bones of our drowned fishermen and make us weep for our abandoned dyers, she could also recite, to a mass audience, the great works of Voorstand literature, moving even that great Voorphobe, Sparrow Glashan, to tears.

When the show finished Sparrow rose with us in our seats and clapped and hooted. As the lights came up, I pulled my Mouse mask back on.

Roxanna and Wally were clapping shoulder to shoulder, and perhaps it was because he saw their preoccupation with each other that Sparrow, his cheeks still shiny, picked me up and held me high in the air. Irma extended a hand in my direction and blew a kiss to me.

We got in the cab, all of us squeezing in the back seat. Sparrow held me on his lap and bent his head over so as not to hit the roof. ‘They’re a great people,’ he continued doggedly. ‘That’s what we keep forgetting when we’re trying to get their hands out of our guts.
^*
That’s what a show like this teaches you. Theirs was a country that was founded on a principle. What you can still see in this Sirkus is their decency. I’d forgotten it. I spend all my time thinking about their hypocrisy. You don’t see decency when their dirigibles are bombing some poor country who tried to renegotiate their Treaty.’

‘Why does it have to teach you?’ Roxanna said. ‘Why can’t you just enjoy it?’

Sparrow opened his mouth, looked at Roxanna, closed it. Then he turned back to Wally. ‘Both countries have old-world parents,’ Sparrow said. ‘You would think we had so much in common, but we’re the little brother – we love them, but they don’t notice us. We’ve got the same colour skin, we speak more or less the same language. We know the words of all their songs. We know Phantome Drool and Oncle Duck. We love their heroes like they were our own, but we keep forgetting that we don’t count with them. It’s like seeing a Vedette in the supermarket. You know the Vedette like he’s your friend, but you’re nothing to him. What was unusual about this was … whatshername?’

‘Her name is Irma.’

‘Irma recited “The Story Teller from the Isles”. It was like, she’d
noticed
us, or that she knew us. Do you think that’s why I was moved?’

‘Relax, mo-frere,’ Wally said. ‘Just say: I enjoyed the show.’

‘It was not at all like what I expected. I
did
enjoy the show,’ Sparrow said. ‘What’s confusing is that I know really we’re beneath their notice unless they want to use us for something.’

‘Shut up, Sparrow.’

‘Don’t tell me to shut up, Wally.’

‘For Chrissakes,’ Wally said, ‘we just went to the
Sirkus.
Don’t bring us down. We went to cheer ourselves up.’

‘It was my treat,’ Roxanna said.

‘Quite right,’ Sparrow said. He peered down at me and adjusted my mask. ‘What do you say, nibs?’

I was trying to cling on to that vision of Irma, the way she stood in the centre of the great stage, sheathed in her glittering white gown, her arm extended to me. She had smiled. All I wanted to do now was go to Wally’s room and find the photographs of Irma he had hidden in his drawer and to look, again, at that magical smile, the memory of which was now being eroded by the acid of one more Feu Follet conversation.

‘So what do you say?’ Sparrow insisted.

‘Give me the mask,’ Wally said.

‘Now who’s being a tight-arse?’ Roxanna said. ‘Let him keep the mask. It’s fine with me.’

‘For Chrissakes,’ Wally said. ‘Felicity is there.’

We were already in Gazette Street. My mother was sitting on the theatre steps, standing, walking towards the cab.

‘Give me the fucking mask.’

But I did not want to let go of the mask. I held it. ‘No.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Sparrow said. ‘Felicity can handle this.’

But I knew better than any of them that she could not, and as I saw my mother peer into the far window of the cab, I tore the mask off my own face. It was only papier-mâché. It was sickeningly easy to destroy.

Felicity clambered into the back seat, cut her knee on a broken ashtray, laddered her stocking, squashed Tristan Smith to her. She touched his face, felt his legs, pulled up his shirtsleeves to examine his chamois-soft skin.

I, Tristan, was full of blame. It ran through my veins like bubbling sap, ruled my glands, my limbs, my actions. I pulled away. I crawled to the far side of the seat. My beautiful Mouse mask now littered the shining malodorous back seat like poor grey petals.

‘My baby. Are you burnt?’

I thought she was using ‘burnt’ poetically. I did not know that she and Vincent had tracked me to the Burns Unit.

‘Sweets, I’m so sorry.’

While she tried to pull up my shirt and look at my chest, I turned away. I picked up pieces of torn papier-mâché and stuffed them in my pocket.

‘Is your mask broken?’ she said.

As if it were not her fault.

As if it had not been her
cultural imperialism
, her
hegemony
, her hatred of the Sirkus, which had guided my hands in its destruction.

When I saw the famous cheekbones wet with tears I showed none of the compassion I feel for her now. She was suffering and I was bitterly, triumphantly, angrily, happy.

My poor maman squeezed herself into that tight space between the front seat and the back and – deaf to the taxi driver’s abuse, insensitive to Wally’s hand on her shoulder – helped me gather the bits of Mouse and place them carefully in her open handbag.

‘You can be an actor,’ she said.

My heart stopped. I turned to face her. She was wearing Vincent’s
jacket over her dress. She pulled it tight across her chest. ‘OK?’ she said.

I could feel my mouth shivering. I held my hand across it.

‘I’ll teach you, OK?’

I nodded, and then turned away, not wanting her to see me cry.

She gave me a handkerchief. I wiped my face. She wiped her own – even as she did this she was aware of Vincent sitting sideways in his car seat talking on the telephone. She knew she had a meeting with Giles Peterson who was important in her preselection as a candidate for Goat Marshes. This was her new life. She was serious about the elections. But she had her son back, alive.

‘Shall we fix up Meneer Mouse?’ she asked me.

I nodded. She carried me into the Feu Follet, and left Vincent to untangle the mess she had made.

Felicity rushed through the foyer, squinting, trying not to see the peeling paint, the flapping posters, the rusting drawing pins. She carried me into the theatre, crossed the sawdust ring and entered the workshop – a long brick-walled room divided by three high archways which made the workshop fall naturally into three areas. In the last of these, curtained by a sheet of paint-splattered clear plastic, was a long workshop bench where our designers had their studio.

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.