Authors: Peter Carey
By 1949 Charles Badgery could afford to buy his wife a pearl necklace the price of which—he told me so himself—was one thousand guineas.
In 1949 I was sixty-three years old. I was now perfectly equipped to live in a world that did not exist, the world of Goldstein’s letters. Had you seen me you would have been amazed that a place like Rankin Downs could produce such a specimen. I was educated, frail and decent. My voice was soft. I had a pretty stoop. My handshake was as smooth and as animated as a kid glove. I had the complexion of a eunuch and a Degree of Arts from the University of Sydney. You wish to discuss the Trade Union Movement in the 1890s? I’m your man. I can do it as if we are walking across streets of autumn leaves and there is warm cocoa waiting in the study. An interesting theory about the Shearers’ Strike? Please be my guest. The role of lies in popular perceptions of the Australian political fabric? You have my speciality.
I was a marvel. Of course I was. I did not even mind that the Rankin Downs’ Parole Board thought the credit was theirs. They could never imagine the work, the endless boring work, it takes to achieve this sort of transformation. I modelled myself on M. V. Anderson. I got his way of hunching his narrow little shoulders together and sinking his chin into his chest and bringing his long
nicotine-stained fingers together and looking up, a little coyly, at his questioner, pursing the lips and raising the eyebrows, etc., etc. Oh, I was a cute little popsy. You would have loved me.
I told the Parole Board I was off to write a book; I was lying. What I really had in mind was no more complicated than drawing my pension, getting visiting rights to the Kaletskys, and effecting a reconciliation with my son. This last was a difficult matter. I wrote to him once, a short note I admit it, to say I was sorry for belting him across the ear. He never wrote back, and although Goldstein explained that it was due to excess of emotion—too many thoughts and feelings for his stubby HB pencil to control—I was angry just the same.
But damn it, I had a weakness for grand buildings and I liked the sound of his shop. It was not merely a building with a tower. It
was
a tower. Goldstein, of course, had not informed me about the situation on the fourth floor. I did not know I had a grandson named Hissao or that his mother lived in a cage. I did not even know that the whole edifice depended on the Americans’ enthusiasm for Australian birds and reptiles. I will tell you the truth—it would not have put me off my plan to get myself put up there.
Various women have threatened me with the prospect of a lonely old age. They have said it in the desire to frighten me and they have said it again when they’ve seen how it has worked on me.
So I admit it—I spent my ten years in Rankin Downs with one real aim, i.e., that I would end up with a place in this rotten lonely world. I invested an entire decade so that I would not end my life hiding amongst dead cabbages in the Eastern Markets. It was monomania, I admit it, but not overly ambitious. I did not seek wealth or even fame, merely a fire to sit in front of, a friend to trust, some company for the summer afternoons which are the loneliest time in a city of beaches.
I did not escape, although it would have been easy enough. It was not the type of dangerous thing M. V. Anderson would attempt. Neither, being a tea drinker, would he have an interest in a still, or kicking a football end to end inside the wire-walled enclosure. There was no adequate company there for M. V. Anderson. He was happier inside his books, resting his monstrous lower lip against the tip of his index finger. He was a person made for a sole purpose, to fit a very particular niche in life. He was no good for selling a car or anything practical, just this one purpose that I spent my ten years perfecting.
It was an eccentric jerky clock that marked those years, like one of
the faulty mechanisms that drag their heavy hands upwards and then, whoosh, drop them down. Slow, yes, very slow-ten years were an eternity. But fast too—it took hardly a second.
And then, on the very eve of my release, I received a letter from Leah Goldstein. I suppose the letter was written as something joyful, i.e., that she, now, had done her time too, that she was free, available, without children, without Rosa, was unencumbered by french windows or orange trees.
Lucky man, you say, to be so old and frail and yet, at the same time, to inspire such devotion. Bullshit, Professor. You think I squander ten years of my life on a fancy. Ten years, and there she is slaughtering children, diminishing a husband, burying a friend, rolling up a carpet, pulling down the wallpaper I had arranged myself to harmonize with. Lucky man. To become an asthmatic tea drinker, for nothing.
Suddenly I could not even remember what she looked like. I could remember nothing but how she came into my camp so long ago, criticizing me, eating my food without being asked. She took an extra piece of Bungaree trout. Four slices, she ate, and did not even beg your pardon. Four slices. I was shaking all over. I could not keep my hand still. It was not nerves, not one of those weak-tea emotions I had been refining through sixteen filters. No, this was rage of a type M. V. Anderson could not even imagine, the poor sissy. I could feel bubbles coursing through my blood and the skin around my finger joints stretched tight. I was Herbert Badgery and I was a nasty bastard, no doubt about it, and I traded my wireless—I had been taking it as a present—for a blade.
You would expect me to remember my exit from Rankin Downs, to remember that long jarring journey over wet-season gravel. I cannot remember a thing. I have been planning to tell you a story about those yabbies (they were as big as beer bottles) but there is no time now, and I cannot remember whether we saw any on the road out or not, or even who the “we” might be.
I remember the train when it came into the siding and the shock and disappointment when I saw how filthy it was. The seats inside were green. I was expecting brown, but they turned out green. They were sticky with jam and spilt ice-creams. I had the knife strapped on my leg with an old tie. I had the Vegemite bottle in my pocket—you shoud have felt it—hot enough to burn you—I had it wrapped up in handkerchiefs. It was full of dragons but I did not look at it. I sat on the edge of an unpleasant seat and waited. Oh Christ that train was slow. It creaked and whined and
shunted itself back and forth before it began to creak dismally towards Grafton. No one could tell me how long it would take to reach Sydney.
I walked up and down the train for a while then. Do not mistake this for a celebration of freedom. I was not admiring the lovely scenery or the pretty faces of the passengers. I was battling with spasms of anger that came on me when I thought how skilfully she had lied to me
EVERY DAY FOR TEN YEARS
and I knew why she had never had the courage to visit because
she could not look me in the eyes
.
In one of the carriages I came across two fellows playing knuckles, young fellows with old eyes.
I invited myself to join the game. I still spoke droll and wheezy like Anderson but God I was fast. My frailty seemed to fall away like dandruff. I smashed my fist down on one knuckle and then the next until they were sore and blue and they asked to be let off.
It calmed me for a moment.
The bigger one told me he had travelled round Queensland playing knuckles, with his mate as a tout. He said the Spags there would bet on anything. He showed me his roll and reckoned he couldn’t spend it as fast as he made it. I told him I was just out of the slammer and he gave me twenty quid. That was a lot of money in 1949—a doctor’s salary for a week—and I wrote down his mother’s address so I could return the money to him but I lost it and never did.
Did I tell you I was on my way to kill Goldstein? I did not form the words, but there was only one conclusion to my journey. For ten years I had suffered the exquisite pain of her letters, the mixture of jealousy and happiness, all those razor cuts, for nothing. I had bound my feet. I had cut off my balls.
I had made myself into an intellectual, for nothing.
The train journey took twelve hours. It arrived at Central. I got a taxi to Bondi. New-model cars were all around me. That is what I noticed most. They gave me the feeling of riding through a dream. The weather was warm, overcast, threatening thunder. I had the money to pay for my ride, but I jumped out at the lights at the esplanade just to spite the bastard. The driver was up and after me. Jesus, I ran. I left asthmatic M. V. Anderson at the first corner. I was over a fence and across a rusty-roofed chook-shed, on to another chook-shed, down into a lane, up the stairs of a block of flats with steel-framed windows. My back hurt, my leg hurt but I didn’t care. Everything I did was on the premise that I was an old
man who would soon die and I will tell you I savoured the rasp of my breath, like a rat-tail file in my oesophagus. I was Herbert Badgery, alive.
I waited in the block of flats for a while and then I went off to find the Kaletskys’ number. I have no recollection of the house itself. All I remember is the crumbling concrete path, the tall rank weeds, and the leadlight in the peeling front door. I broke the leadlight with my shoe and let myself in. There were stacks of newspapers around the walls.
The house sucked. It was a sour, dank, rotten place. You could smell it was unhappy and no little children had run along that wide corridor for a long long time.
In the front room, I found an old man sitting by the fire although, outside, as I mentioned, it was a summer day with big bruised anvil-headed clouds, the sky full of cold holes and giddy updraughts. I came into the centre of the room, holding my blade. It was a villainous thing, the best the youngsters at Rankin Downs could produce, made from car-number-plate metal and strong enough to saw its way into a rib cage.
This faded old fart with silver hair looked at me. He was sitting on an upholstered cushion of that type that is called, I believe, a pouffe. He leaned over and picked up the poker.
He put the poker between his teeth. I watched him. He looked at me and bent the poker into a U.
Then he spat out the blood and broken teeth into his lap.
I robbed Lennie Kaletsky of five quid, just to throw him off the scent. Then I wandered down to Bondi Post Office and applied for the pension. I gave my address c/o Southern Cross Hotel.
I was nervous of approaching my son, not because I thought Goldstein would be in his care, but because I now suspected the pet shop itself might be a lie, that no such glorious thing existed, or that if it did it would reveal itself to be a grimy little hole with widdling guinea-pigs in sour straw.
I paid cash money for my second taxi. I checked into the Southern Cross Hotel. First I tried to sleep, but after I had lain on my lumpy mattress for an hour I got up and went to the barber’s for a shave. Then I began to approach the pet shop. I pretended to myself I was not doing it. I window-shopped up Pitt Street,
looking out of the corner of my eye, scuttling sideways like a crab.
I saw the word
BADGERY
first, high on the pediment of the building. I felt ill, as if the thing might evaporate. My back pained me and my teeth set up a throb, my body protesting about whether it was to be frail or no, and would I please make up my mind.
I cross Pitt Street, threading my way between the queues of trams, not furtively, not like a murderer, not quite like a gentleman. I am non-committal in my movements.
I approach the shop, looking down at the footpath. Outside there is a crowd of fellows, all arguing about some motor car. I excuse myself and they make room for me so I can stare up at the building.
Of course it thrills me:
BADGERY
, as bold as brass, in Pitt Street. Badgery Pet Emporium. It is better than she described. This window is thirty feet long and is set out with a design of pretty flowers. I make out the map of Australia. There are some words, but I am more taken by the little rock-wallabies which hop to and fro across this pretty scene and one of them, in particular, eating an apple, holding it daintily between its two front paws.
The men go on with their argument about the car and I get out of their way. I cannot know that the wallaby will die of influenza in Beverly Hills and I am, of course, proud of my boy. I begin to remember things more fondly than I am used to—the day he brought the yellow-tailed cockatoo down from the tree at Bendigo School, how Izzie had his finger bitten, and how Charles sold the bird when we ran out of petrol in Albury.
I enter the shop. Do I suddenly look like a Narrabri cocky on his first day in Sydney? Well, why not. Look at those galleries, those beautiful birds behind shining white wire, the glistening snakes coiled beneath spotless glass, that huge skylight, just as Goldstein described it to me, and now, as I watch, two white-overalled men work with buckets and water, cleaning off the week’s supply of pigeon shit against a background of delicate stratocumulus.
The galleries are crowded. Ascending the stairs it is necessary to be polite, to allow two nuns to come down, to wait for three clattering boys with high voices and heavy boots.
I lean, at last, over the rail of the first gallery and look down. The cashier sits at a high desk in the middle of the floor, but he is deep in a book. I watch for some time. The cashier continues to turn the pages indolently, and yet the shop is obviously prosperous. The shop attendants are everywhere. They wear red-peaked caps and
dicky little yellow jackets. They squat beside a cage here, gesture like a fisherman there, close eyes to dredge up information from the cellars of their memories. These are not salesmen. They are enthusiasts.
I am too delighted to dwell on anything in particular. I wander from exhibit to exhibit. I find the famous regent bower-bird which is trained to dig sapphires. It takes its blue stones from a pile of sawdust and places them, one by one, on an apothecary’s scales. In the next cage I put two bob in a slot and see two apricot-coloured budgies tap an illuminated button. They get some seed. I get a drink coaster printed with the legend “Best Pet Shop in the World”.