The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (49 page)

All this Jacqui only learned when her father was dying and her mother shocked her by confessing that for most of her marriage she had prayed to God each night for Him to take her husband from her.

Jacqui found that hard to stomach.

Even then, when her mother’s prayers had finally been answered, when her papa’s lips were purple, when his breath smelled sweet and rancid, like sour milk, when his lungs were gurgling with the mucus which would finally drown him, he had more life in him than her. Her mother knew it too. She was frightened of his death. She would not come into the bedroom. She stayed in her rocking chair in the next room, sipping sweet vermouth and ice while the Moosone rain fell like glass beads from the overflowing gutters.

It was the daughter who sat up with the dying man, who told him she loved him, who talked him through the panic of his gurgling drowning breath. It was the wife who sat in the next room, crying, drinking vermouth.

When the refrigerated truck arrived at her father’s graveside and the ageing Oliver Odettes stepped out in his short shorts and his red demi-bottes, Jacqui Lorraine produced her copy of
Master and Man
and began to read out loud.

‘He twisted his head, dug a hole through the snow in front of him with his hand and opened his eyes.’

‘Oh God, please Jacqui,’ her mother said. She clutched her daughter’s arm. ‘Please, don’t do this.’

A different daughter might have found room in her heart to pity her, but Jacqui was not that daughter.

I touched her left breast, that’s all, by ‘accident’. Nothing had happened between us, but even though she carried me, on her
shoulder, like a souvenir, out of the restaurant and into the lunch-time crowds of Saarlim, even though I was enclosed in sweaty fur and rubber, even though I could not smell her skin or feel her hair, I was – please do not be embarrassed for me – in love with her.

All the powerful irritation I had felt when I had seen her, bright-eyed, wilful, dragging the Simi from the car, all this passion now roared through the bottleneck of love and I wanted her with an ache and want so powerful, so exquisite, that I could never have wished to be spared the pain.

I had been raised to love a woman like this – her guts, her humour, the luminous power of her life which I had observed slowly shine through the heavy glaze of her professionalism.

But how could I have fallen for so demonstrably devious a character?

It was not deviousness I saw, Madam, Meneer. It was mystery, and I loved her for that mystery. I sucked it in and forced it into the mould of my own desires, and you are right to fear for me.

We returned to the Marco Polo from the restaurant, where we found Wally sitting on the grubby flock velvet settee in our room. When I saw his face I knew something important had happened in our absence: he now had a secret, too.

His skin was tight, he had a pleased look, a stillness, a sort of deadness which was how he was when withholding his joy. He had showered and shaved. He had a clean white shirt and trousers. I was certain he’d been stealing.

I looked around the room as well as the eye-holes would permit me. I expected to see factory-sealed cardboard boxes, vids, electronics, wrist-watches, but there was nothing in sight. The old turtle had a stillness, a foxy shine. He lifted his chin and tilted his head. When he lit a cigarette there was a fastidiousness in his smoking, his thumb and forefinger around the weed like tweezers.

‘What’s up?’ I said.

‘Not much,’ he said. ‘How about you?’

‘Not much.’

I never kept a secret from him before and the pleasure, the pressure, was incredible. I could not keep in my skin. I had touched her lolo, that is what I could not say to him.

My extraordinary nurse now sat down at Wally’s feet. He barely glanced at her. He did not notice the perspiration on her exquisite upper lip. He did not see he was a she, that all those shirts were there to cover her, that the long jacket must disguise her waist, her hips, her peach.

Jacqui had had no time to count or arrange the money neatly, but now she spread it out and sorted it by denomination. I admired her hands as I never had before – their shape, their suppleness, the lovely olive skin, the delicate pink shell fingernails. She ordered the Guilders. The maroon, the yellow, the violet. She had a beautiful neck, slender, downy.

‘One hundred and twenty-three Guilders,’ she said.

‘Tray bon,’ Wally said. He was pleased, but like you might be pleased with a child who has brought home too many shells from the beach.

Then Jacqui went to run my bath.
But she could no longer bathe me.

‘What?’ Wally said.

‘Nothing.’

I looked at him, not knowing what to say. He winked at me.

‘Give … me … my … bath … please.’

He jerked his bony head towards the bathroom, meaning it was the nurse’s job.

‘No … please … you … must.’

He shrugged. ‘Come on then, get your suit off.’

I lay down on my face on the carpet with relief. Wally sighed and grumbled as he kneeled beside me, but I realized he was pleased to do it. He always like to be the shapoh, to make the lunch, to run the bath. It was only age and weakness made him hire the nurse in the first place. Now he was happy to open his knife and cut me free.

I felt each stitch give way, and then the air on my wet skin.

‘You silly fucker,’ he said. ‘What have you been doing?’

‘What?’

‘You stupid little ballot,’ he said. ‘You can’t do this.’

I tried to stand up, but he held me down with his palm flat on the small of my back, held me flapping like a fish on the wharf. ‘Didn’t you
feel
anything?’ he said.

I had felt a lot of things. I had felt the crowd. I had felt her breast. I had felt the small solder points and amputated wires rubbing at my skin, but there is no analgesic like an audience, the way it
comes out to you, envelops you, wraps you in its cocoon, is warm, alive, fits you like a glove, holds you like a fist, strokes you like a cat.

When you look like I do, no one touches you.

When you look like this, your whole body cries out for touch, like dry skin for moisture.

The last stitch was cut. I wanted to stay inside the suit until I got into the bath, but I was lifted out before I could protest. Wally held me in the air, my naked body covered with a glaze of blood.

Jacqui stood at the bathroom door, a big grey towel across her shoulder. I could have died, to be like that, in front of her.

‘He was amazing,’ she said.

I turned my face away from her. I was so ashamed, so grateful, I could have wept. My face was a rag, my skin as slimy wet with blood as a new-born child, my limbs so sad it would make you cry if you had half a heart.

‘He performed,’ she said. ‘He juggled for them. He was astonishing.’

‘You’re meant to look after him,’ Wally said. ‘You’re his nurse. That’s why we pay you all that money. You’re meant to stop him getting hurt.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ she said. ‘He’s twenty-three years old.’

‘It doesn’t matter if he’s a hundred.’

‘He was making money for you,’ she said, her face red. ‘You shouldn’t be shouting at him. Is he complaining? Are you complaining?’ she asked me.

Wally kicked at the bloodied Mouse suit. His toe connected underneath the head and the suit lifted and flew and thwacked against the hotel wall. Then he carried me to the bath, holding me under my arms, out and away from him, so he would not put bloodstains on his clothes.

When he lowered me into the water, delicate pink clouds rose from my lacerated skin. He ran his hands over me, searching out my injuries.

‘That’s the last time you’re wearing that thing,’ Wally said.

‘You … could … fix it … so it … doesn’t … scratch,’ I said.

‘You
hate
the Mouse.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Jacqui said to Wally. ‘He was a star.’

‘You don’t know shit,’ Wally said. ‘You don’t know what that rucking Mouse is in his life. You bring this crap into the car … I’m
sorry I ever let you. I’m sorry I didn’t make you throw it out.’ He turned to me and patted at my face with a corner of a wet towel. ‘You won’t be needing to make money. I promise.’

‘I … did … a … show,’ I said. ‘I … showered … and … cascaded … with … six … balls.’

Wally clicked his tongue and shook his head. ‘I know what you can do,’ he said.

‘I … never … did … six … balls … before.’

‘He tumbled,’ Jacqui said. ‘Did you know he could do that?’

‘Yes,’ Wally said, ‘I knew he could do that. Now will you please go and buy bandages and antiseptic’

‘He could be someone.’

‘Go. Go now.’

Jacqui bought the bandages and antiseptic. She also bought sandwiches, a very large bottle of beer, and a pair of needle-nosed pliers which she did not reveal until Wally was well into the last quarter of his beer.

Then she sat cross-legged on the floor with the Mouse suit open on her lap. Slowly, one at a time, she trimmed the wires flush against the rubber inner skin. She did not explain herself to Wally, and he watched her for a long time without saying anything.

‘I told you not to do this,’ Wally said.

‘I know.’

‘When you look back on this,’ he said at last, ‘you’re going to know what a waste of effort it was.’

When Jacqui had trimmed a wire she placed a small adhesive bandage over each connection, and felt each one with her finger. I watched her. Without knowing I was doing it, I began to sing. When I saw Wally watching me, I stopped immediately.

My life had been filled with sexual yearning, but yearning is not the same as hope. That is what Wally did not know when he saw me hold the flower in Zeelung. I was someone driven by impossible desire, someone whose very soul is shaped by the sure knowledge that his dreams will not come true. My mother could not have accepted this but it was so: I had learned to equate the pain of unrequited desire with pleasure. I had crawled into the same
pigeonhole as those who get their satisfaction from sniffing women’s shoes or underwear, or learn to achieve secret bliss from having their hair cut or their back washed. She would have hated to think of me like this. She would have had me focus on the startling quality of my gold-flecked eyes, the baby softness of my skin. She would have believed that I could make myself attractive with sheer will, with breathing exercises, and such was my dear maman’s enduring power that I continued to hide certain thoughts from her.

For instance, I kept all my excitements about the Simi hidden in the dark side of my brain, away from her. She would not have understood it. She would have felt it a betrayal.

Likewise, if she should have seen see me shadowing Jacqui Lorraine, she would have imagined I had become a creep. Perhaps I had, for when my nurse left the hotel room the following afternoon, I was right behind her, filled with yearning.

I told Wally I was going to the hotel lobby to buy a zine, yet once I was in the foyer I shot right through it, illico presto. My wheelchair was just two months old – light, fast, geared, the same model which Michelle Latour used in the paraplegic Olympics. The deskmajoor held wide the door and I went straight out on to the loud and stinking Colonnade, totally alone, completely unprotected, without so much as a hat to give me privacy. I sprang from the high board, hands together, toes straight – an arrow following a mystery.

She had said I was amazing. She had said I was a star. My hands were lacerated from yesterday’s performance but my arms were strong and I gave the chair the full benefit of my strength. The crowds were close. I had no bell, no horn. I made myself a goose on wheels. I honked. I came through the hawkers and wheel-squirrels at twenty-five miles an hour and those Saarlim gjents and gjils with their wide trousers and their tattooed noses, they stepped aside.

I could see Jacqui, half a block ahead. She was still ‘in character’, walking like a man with her chin thrust forward, her shoulders back, but once you knew, you knew. She was a woman, a rare reckless shining woman – she had a round female backside, a little apricot between her legs.

I thumped across the missing cobblestones on the corner of Shutter Steeg, my maman’s street. I had been to Shutter Steeg three times already, sat in front of No. 35 and stared up at its tall arched
windows. But today I had no time for Shutter Steeg. I swung around the tall glass water filtreeders,
^*
crashed down hard across the kerbing. What did I think was going to happen? Nothing.

Nothing?

Nothing but a pain that you, Meneer, Madam, would never think was pleasure. Nothing but a hope so wild I allowed it to draw me further from the safety of my room than I had ever travelled
alone
, in all my life. Was I mad? Yes, I was mad. It is this madness makes salmon leap and crash on to the rocks of rivers.

I summoned all my strength to follow her up the hard high ramp to an exceptionally tall building – a classic wolkekrabber with ornate gold and silver angels above the entrance-way. As I hurtled into the vast atrium I caused a pleasant-looking man with short blond hair and dark eyebrows to convulse – the very sight of me – like a victim of electrotherapy.

The atrium was cavernous, filled with tall columns, reflections, echoes. Jacqui was walking into an elevator car.

I sped across the shining granite floor, my wheels squeaking.

‘Wait,’ I called.

But my voice was lost in the clatter of steel-tipped shoes and my heart’s desire was already inside the elevator.

As the elevator doors shut, I heard a walkie-talkie crackling and saw, reflected in the doors’ shining surface, a burly man in uniform walking towards me. It was the deskmajoor. We can safely assume that he was driven by kindness, the desire to assist the lost and disabled, but I could not bear to see the effect of my monstrous self on one more normal face. So when the next empty elevator opened, I rolled inside. The doors closed swiftly, mercifully.

This time yesterday I had been a little god performing for devotees. Now I was a solitary mutant, trembling, carried upwards.