The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (60 page)

She opened the bedroom curtains and showed me Saarlim. She talked passionately about its former greatness, its present troubles. She pointed out the five Sirkus Domes she owned. She pointed out the roads the Mayor had sold to foreign speculators. There were tears in her eyes. I did not doubt her concern.

Was I simple? Was I an opportunist? Both, I suppose, but to charge that
‘[Tristan Smith did] wilfully, blasphemously, seditiously disguise his being and therefore lead others to believe he was Bruder Mouse and that all this was undertaken with the express purpose of defrauding the citizens of Saarlim and depriving them of liberties granted them by God’
– really, Madam, Meneer, you give me too much credit.

Yes, I came into your country with my secret rage. Yes, I lied to you and said I felt no rage. Yes, I acted as if my mother’s murder were not a personal matter between me and you. But is that not, in normal circumstances, polite?

Your own agent was the one who ran down the Simi, the so-called theft of which is the subject of charge three.
^*
I could not have planned this. Yet if I had not met the Simi, I could never have so charmed Mrs Kram. So common sense will tell you that I could not have entered Voorstand planning to climb into Kram’s bed.

Almost a week I spent with her. During that time no one – not Wendell Deveau, not Gabe Manzini – could discover where I was. Metaphorically speaking, I was in another country.

We sat amongst her folk rugs (so many mice and ducks you never saw) with her photograph albums. So many black borders, so many dead people. So many terrible things had happened to her in her short life. She had witnessed her handsome husband’s brains splatter against the front-row celebrities on opening night. She lost two babies in the home that caught alight while she was at the theatre.
Other things, you may or may not know about, more things than should have happened to anyone, had happened to this woman, whose wealth and power were envied everywhere.

She is thought to be ruthless, I know, and is, I know.

But Madam, Meneer, this misguided woman’s passion for the principles of your past, her vegetarianism, her prayerfulness, all this is genuine.

In each one of her Ghostdorps she had tried to create an ideal world – a model – where the actor inhabitants lived in accordance with the values of the Settlers Free. ‘They ploughed, they tilled, hulled, they shucked, they ground, etc.’

She promised me she would find work for my father, that she would keep me in comfort all my life. She told me she would employ my nurse.

She told me about the Saarlim Ghostdorp. It was not my idea. How could it be? Could it be anyone’s but hers? It was she who had assembled Frear Munroe, Dirk Juta, Clive Baarder, on her rooftop.

It was she who later took me into her trothaus boardroom and introduced me to Clive Baarder. Please wait, Madam, Meneer. In a moment I will tell you what happened in that room. But first a reminder of what you put my family through.

‘You are asking me to betray my son,’ my father said to Gabe Manzini, who was drinking Orange Pekoe tea from Bill’s best art-deco china ware.

‘A little melodramatic,’ Gabe Manzini said, ‘even for the Sirkus Brits.’ He lifted the saucer to read the mark and then placed it on the table very gently. ‘All I asked you was, have you seen him or his nurse?’

Bill looked away from him towards Wendell Deveau. The big pasty Efican was looking out of the window, eating the ham sandwich he had brought with him.

‘I can’t do it,’ Bill said, at last.

‘Come on, mo-frere,’ Wendell Deveau said, crumpling up the green sandwich bag. ‘Don’t stuff us around.’

Bill took the greasy paper from the DoS man and carried it to the fastidiously tidy kitchen.

‘It is your privilege not to assist us,’ Gabe Manzini called. ‘Just as it is my privilege to ask if your immigration papers are in order.’

‘You’d kick me out of the country, for not answering a question?’

‘Again: I did not say that. But we are a rough lot, Meneer Millefleur. We get very impatient with details.’

‘I’ve lived here over twenty years,’ Bill said, seating himself at the table again. ‘I’ve paid my taxes.’

‘Come on, Bill,’ Wendell Deveau said. ‘Don’t stuff us around.’

‘Twenty years!’ Manzini smiled, and what was unnerving to Bill was that it was a nice smile, the smile of a civilized man. ‘You must like it here. This is a very nice apartment. I was admiring the De Kok.’

‘I like it a great deal,’ Bill said.

‘As for your papers, to tell you the truth, I couldn’t say if they were in order if you showed them to me,’ Gabe Manzini said. ‘We have a whole building full of lawyers who look at that sort of thing.’

‘And what do you want with my son?’

‘Well, as you can see, we have two parties with an interest,’ Gabe Manzini said. ‘And if I were a little
less
upset with my colleagues in your estimable DoS I might not say this to you – but if I were you, Meneer Millefleur, I would be working damn hard to let me have your son. I think Agent Deveau here has orders to
eliminate
him.’

‘Come on, Gabe, all I want to do is interview him, just like you do,’ Wendell said.

‘Well, Meneer Deveau, the tapes will settle that question. My advice to you,’ he turned to Bill, ‘would be to let me talk to him. We Voorstanders are not always the villains.’

‘I don’t have to work in Saarlim,’ Bill said. ‘You refuse me residency, I’ll go home.’

‘You know,’ Gabe Manzini said, ‘I wouldn’t advise that. Those DoS guys can be real pricks, especially when they’ve been made to look stupid. Just because they’re sometimes unprofessional doesn’t mean they couldn’t hurt you. The opposite, really.’

‘Could I have a second of your time?’ Wendell said to Gabe Manzini.

Gabe Manzini looked up at Wendell Deveau and smiled pleasantly. ‘Of course, Bruder,’ he said. ‘Later. We’ll talk all about it at 583. For now, I think we should give Mr Millefleur a moment to reflect.’

Gabe Manzini rose and walked around the apartment. He stopped at a sandstone figure of the Dog-headed Saint. Picked it up. Turned it over. Replaced it. He was a neat figure, slim, athletic, with shining brown shoes and corduroy trousers. He was like a curator, not a murderer. Everything he looked at, the precious dining table, the art-deco china, the Badberg first editions, the De Kok ‘Crucifixion in the New World’, revealed a connoisseur’s discernment and therefore an educated approval which Bill would, in other circumstances, have found highly flattering.

Indeed, my father had always prided himself that, no matter what his disappointments in relation to his acting, he was living a cultured life at the centre of the world. He had seen Michael Cohen play Hamlet. He had dined with Una Chaudry. He had seen the greatest actors of his time. He had shaken the hands of two kings, a mayor, a duke from England. He had skated on the ice in Demos Platz on Christmas Day. He had dined at Le Recamier, at all the finest restaurants in the city. He had been born in a leaking caravan in Efica, but he had spent his life with the very best of everything in the world.

But now he saw it was impossible for him to do what he was asked. He sat and looked at the possessions which had hitherto given him so much satisfaction and realized that he did not give a tinker’s fart about them. He saw a whole wall of dominoes tipping and falling like a long black tail which led back to the ageing Circus School with the rusting roof.

In his mind he and Tristan Smith were already back in the seedy little theatre in Gazette Street. It was raining. Moosone. The drains were overflowing. A plastic rubbish bin was blowing down the street.

Wally had turned his back on me. Jacqui had brushed past me and ignored my greeting. But it was Clive Baarder who had been the most upset to see me when, nearly a week later, I finally emerged from Peggy Kram’s boudoir.

He sat at the top of the long table in the trothaus boardroom with his back towards the grey gritty Saarlim sky. He placed a yellow
legal pad in front of him and removed the cap from his pen.

‘So what is this about?’ he said to Peggy Kram, who had positioned herself right next to his elbow.

‘You tell him, Bruder, hunning,’ she said to me.

I looked up the long table from my seat. ‘The idea …’ I began.

‘Wait,’ Clive Baarder said. To Peggy Kram he said, ‘Is this his idea?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘So why is he presenting it? Why is this … personage … sitting in our boardroom?’

‘In the past,’ Peggy said, resting her hand upon Baarder’s rigid forearm and patting it, ‘this would not have been unusual.’

Clive Baarder let her hand rest a moment. Then he withdrew his arm and made a neat black line across his legal pad.

‘What past do you mean?’

‘In the Great Historical Past,’ she said. ‘When Bruder Mouse walked amongst the Settlers Free.’

Clive Baarder looked down at his legal pad for a considerable length of time.

I had earlier imagined Baarder to be a kind of private secretary, but now I saw what all of Saarlim knows: he was a powerful man.

‘A mouse is a little thing,’ he said at last. He fitted his pen back in its cap and held it up between thumb and forefinger, as if it were a dead field mouse he was pinching by the tail. ‘You know that, Peggy, in real life.’

Mrs Kram swivelled through 180 degrees and back again.

‘Clive-ling,’ she said soothingly, even flirtatiously. ‘Dear Clive, you know yourself the great benefit of conducting business in one’s home is that one’s clever friends, like Bruder Mouse, feel free to contribute to our meetings.’

‘Peggy, you conduct business from home because you are agoraphobic.’

My mentor said nothing, although her colour rose.

‘Peggy …’

‘I’d rather have Bruder Mouse than a man,’ she said, and shook her hair.

‘Oh Peggy, please, don’t be embarrassing!’

‘You’re the last one to talk,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t if I were you. I wouldn’t even
begin
to talk.’

‘Just the same: this is not a mouse, Peg.’ Now he turned and took her hand. ‘We know that, don’t we? A real mouse is not like this little gjent.’

‘Let him outline the concept before you race to judgement.’

‘Peggy.’ Clive Baarder opened his pen again. ‘What is this meeting for?’

‘If you listen, you’ll find out.’

‘I only say this because I have another meeting starting in the Tentdorp in thirty minutes and I can see how tired you are.’

‘I’m always tired, Clive. You know I never sleep. And don’t think your cynicism is attractive.’

Clive Baarder smiled implacably.

‘You think you can reduce everything to DNA, but you can’t. I tell you, this is what the Great Historical Past was like. It doesn’t really behove you to doubt me. History is my
business.
It was my business when you were an out-of-work Verteiler buying drugs from scum in Kakdorp. Who else but me preserves the Great Historical Past? No one would know what happened
yesterday
if it wasn’t for the Ghostdorps.’

‘Peg, my dear, you are exceptionally tired.’

‘And don’t patronize me, Clive. I am not tired, and you have always had a rather smug attitude towards the Ghostdorps which I find offensive.’

‘My attitude towards the Ghostdorps is totally to do with profit …’

‘A Ghostdorp is a safer environment for women and children.’

‘Peggy, please, not today. Let’s fight when it’s just us.’

‘When the Saints walked Voorstand, that is how it was, just like it is in the Ghostdorps. We were decent people then. The Sirkus was not just an entertainment. Bruder Mouse was not a clown. We knew him when we saw him. We did not argue about which was wild flesh and which was Bruder’s flesh. We did not have all these codicils and revisions to the old laws. We ate beans and rice and raagbol pudding. We did not rape and murder. We did not thieve. We were better then.’

‘You know that I don’t disagree.’

‘Bruder Mouse, the Saints, they walked amongst us.’

‘Oh Peggy …’

‘Fuck you,’ screamed Peggy Kram. ‘Don’t argue with me. Here
he is. Solid as a miller’s wheel. He is looking at you and politely waiting to outline an idea that will have you planting bulbs and making toasts.’

‘This is not a mouse.’ Clive Baarder was shouting now, not at me, at Peggy Kram. He was standing up, gripping the long table like he wished to tip it over. ‘A mouse is four inches long.’

‘One mo nothing,’ Mrs Kram shouted back, ‘next mo there he was, in all his furry finery.’ She sat down. ‘Look out there,’ she said, nodding her head towards the grey and humid sky. ‘You are looking out on a corrupt and decaying city and you have lost the ability to believe in a future.’

‘This is not Bruder Mouse, Peg,’ Clive Baarder said between his teeth. ‘And you damn well know it isn’t. You don’t want to admit that it’s a man, but it is some kind of man, a dwarf.’

Neither of them was looking at me now.

‘So what if you’re right,’ she said. ‘What does that do for you?’

‘For me?’ He shrugged.

‘It makes you right, that’s all,’ she said. ‘You see the stitching on his suit. Hooray. I see it too. Is that the point? We see the gold paint on the Saint’s crown. So what? The point is not the paint. The point is, we’ve lost our values. We’re eating Bruder’s flesh, we’re putting animals in Sirkuses. That Efican sitting in my garden, what’s his name, Millefleur – riding on horses, frightening lions. That would never have been permitted thirty years ago. He would have gone to jail for even suggesting it.’

‘Last week he was hearth folk. You said you liked him.’

‘I do like him. That’s why he’s sitting in my garden. I’ve been discussing his future with the Bruder and it will be my great pleasure to employ him in something decent for a change.’