The Tax Inspector (31 page)

59

Howie raised himself from the ground beside his wife. The yard was filled with lime dust and petrol fumes. The lights stood on their tall poles, sloping, twisted on their stems like Iceland poppies. Granny Catchprice, dressed in a tattered black, white and red clown’s suit, moved into their beam, dust still swirling all round her.

The old chook could walk through hell
.

As she turned, she looked as though she came from hell: she had put on a mask, like a witch with long, carved, wooden teeth. She stopped to pick a lump of brick from the bonnet of the Commodore. It was too heavy for her. She pushed it off, scraped it across the duco, down the slope of the bonnet and on to the ground.

Cathy was sitting on the gravel beside him. She said: ‘I got no pants.’

Howie helped her to her feet. She tugged down on her T-shirt, more worried about her arse than everything around her. He put his arm round her shoulders and felt she was shaking like a leaf.

‘Come on, honey,’ he said. ‘Come on baby, it’s O.K.’ He walked her towards the street, towards Granny Catchprice who was now pushing at a clump of bricks which had fallen on the Audi’s sleek black hood.

‘I need a dress,’ Cathy said. ‘Where are my shoes?’

‘I’ll get the truck out,’ he said. ‘All the gear is in the truck. Once we get the truck out we’re O.K.’

It was then he saw the flowers on the gravel, a line of them from the crumpled Spare Parts Department wall to the buckled Cyclone gates, splashes the size of carnations. They fell from Granny Catchprice’s face – fat drops of bright blood.

There was a noise like a calf bellowing. Howie turned to see a black track-suited figure running over the rubble of what had been their apartment. The noise was Mort. A figure in yellow robes was also stumbling towards them. The noise was Vish. They were both the noise, coming towards Granny Catchprice. She recognized the noise and turned. It was then Howie saw how badly hurt she was – the gelignite had ripped her face back to the bone, up from the gums and teeth to the nose. In the middle of this destruction, her eyes looked out like frightened things buried beneath a muddy field.

‘He touched her breasts,’ she said.

Howie put his hand around beneath her ribs to steady her. There was nothing to her – rag and bone. As he lay her down upon the gravel, she trembled and whimpered. It seemed too cruel to lay her head upon the gravel. He placed his hand beneath her for a pillow and squatted down beside her.

‘It’s O.K., Frieda,’ he said.

‘Rot!’ she said.

Howie felt himself pushed aside. It was Cathy, Mort, Vish – the Catchprices. They pushed him out like foreign matter. Cathy took her mother’s head and cradled it. Mort held her hand. They made a clump, a mass, they clung to her, like piglets at an old sow.

‘Come on, honey,’ he pulled at his wife’s shoulder. ‘Come on.’ But they made a heap of bodies which left no room for him.

Howie walked back to the Big Mack truck alone. The engine was new and tight, but it started first off. He threw the long stick back into reverse, and edged the truck back until he felt resistance. Then he squeezed it forward, manoeuvring between the dust silver Statesman with black leather upholstery and the Commodore S.S. with the alloy wheels. It was a tight fit. He edged slowly past the red Barina Benny nearly sold to Gino Massaro.

But when he came to the Audi, he knew there was no longer room. He felt the resistance as the truck tray caught the Audi’s right-hand rear guard, nothing definite, but soft, like a sweater snagged in a barbed wire fence. He increased the pressure on the accelerator just a little. There was a drag, a soft ripping sensation. He knew he was cutting it like a can opener.

‘Sweet Jesus,’ he said. It felt as good as shitting.

It only made a small noise, a screee. The diff caught momentarily on a pile of bricks but the old Dodge lifted, lurched and rolled on like a tank, out across the crumpled Cyclone fence and arrived, its front tyre hissing, out on to the street.

60

There was this noise in the dark: huh-huh-huh. It came and went. She would do it for a minute. She would stop for a minute. Huh-huh-huh. Benny had Cacka’s hurricane lamp. He had that almost from the moment the lights went, but the problem was the matches. He found cigarettes but no matches and he had spent half an hour standing on tip-toe slowly working his way up and down the low rafters of the ceiling looking for the book of porno matches Mort had brought from the bar in Bangkok.

When he came close she struck out at him with the iron bar. It was pitch black. She could have killed him. He never found the porno matches. They were probably in her corner. He found instead an old box of Redheads still above the door frame. He struck the match, raised the sooty glass, and lit the wick. Maria Takis was standing by the work bench, her hands pushed against the wall making a noise like a dog.

‘Vishna-fucking-barnu,’ he said. ‘The fucking turd.’

She stared at him. She made this noise: Huh-huh-huh-huh.

‘Don’t think you’re getting out of this,’ he said. ‘This alters nothing.’

He came towards her. She held up the iron bar. She had muscled legs like a tennis player. She had them tensed, apart, her back against the wall. Her face was red, veins standing out. She looked so ugly he could not believe it was the same person. Huh-huh-huh, she said. A witch.

Then she stopped making the noise. She stood straighter and tried to lick her lips. ‘Get me something clean,’ she said.

‘There’s nothing clean,’ he said. ‘This is where I live.’

‘That.’

First he thought she meant him. She wanted him. She had her hand out towards his cock, his belly. He stepped back. She was pointing at his shirt. He could not believe it. He could not fucking
believe
it.

‘Get fucked,’ he said.

‘Please.’

‘It’s my shirt.’

‘It’s clean.’

‘You shouldn’t get me mad,’ he said. ‘Not now. You understand?’ he shouted at her. ‘You see what has happened? The jealous cunt blew up my
career
. He didn’t want it, so he killed it for me.’

She reached out her hand to grab at the shirt. He grabbed at her wrist but she brought the iron bar down with her other hand. The bar crashed down on to the work bench.

He saw then that she was crazy. Her eyes were so hard and dark, he could not look at them.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘This is my
shirt.’

‘Huh-huh-huh.’ Her face was going red again. Tendons stretched down her neck. She started hunching up her shoulder and putting her arm inside her dress, and then she stayed there: ‘Huh-huh-huh.’

He went back to the doorway and looked at the rubble. He pulled out a brick, but it was hopeless. There was concrete and steel reinforcing rod twisted in together. When he turned back he saw she had stepped out of the dress, and lifted it up high as if it might get soiled just touching anything that belonged here. She had an industrial strength bra with white straps. He was shocked by how her stomach stretched, by the ragged brown line down her middle, by the size of everything, the muscles in her legs, the redness of her face. She had buckshot wounds in her arms and thighs. She was trying to spread her dress across his couch with one hand, but the dress was too small and would not stay still. She held it out to him.

‘Cut it,’ she said.

‘Fuck you,’ he said.

‘Just do it,’ she screamed. ‘Cut the fucking dress down the side.’

‘Fuck you,’ he said, ‘I’m not your servant.’

‘You want this baby to die,’ she said. ‘You want to kill this baby too.’

She knew he could not stand her saying that. ‘Don’t you say that,’ he said. ‘You don’t know a thing about me. You think I’m some creep because I live down here.’

‘If you’re not a creep, what are you?’

‘Angel,’ he yelled. ‘I told you.’

She stared at him, her eyes wide.

‘I am a fucking angel.’

They were looking at each other, a metre apart. She had the iron bar in her hand, dressed in pale blue knickers and a white bra.

‘Huh-huh-huh.’ She hunkered down. She held the bar up. There was a vein on her forehead like a great blue worm.

‘This baby needs a hospital, and doctors,’ she gasped. ‘If we keep it here it’ll choke on its cord. It’ll be your fault.’

‘Why would I kill a baby? I am an angel.’

‘Sure,’ she said.

‘I changed myself,’ he said. ‘It’s possible.’

‘See,’ she said. She looked him in the eye. ‘Now you’re going to shoot it.’

‘Don’t
say
that, I’m warning you. Don’t
say
that.’

‘Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh.’ She held the bar in both hands. She stepped back, leaned against the wall. ‘Huh-huh-huh.’

Water and blood gushed out from between her legs, passed through her blue knickers as if they were not even there.

‘Shit,’ he said.

‘Huh-huh-huh.’

He went to the door again, but it was useless. He dirtied his shirt. Behind him, the Tax Inspector was hollering.

‘Huh-huh-huh.’

Up in the street he thought he could hear sirens, he was not sure.

‘Huh-huh-huh.’

She was backed against the wall, all her pants soaked with blood and water, dripping.

He turned back to the bricks. You could see pale daylight but the stairs were jammed with a mass of masonry and steel. They would have to wait for the emergency rescue squad to free them.

‘I didn’t do this,’ he said. ‘This is not my fault. All it was: I liked you. You never listened to me. I never wanted to do nothing
wrong.’

Then she started hollering again. He could not bear it. She was shrieking like he was murdering her.

‘What do I do?’ he said. ‘I’ll help you. Tell me what to do.’

She did not talk. Her eyes were so wide in her head he thought they were going to pop out. Then she calmed down.

‘Cut up my dress. We need a clean surface.’ He had razor blades in the old coke stash. He had gaffer tape on the bench. He sliced open her dress and stuck it to the couch with gaffer tape.

‘Now – your shirt.’

‘No.’

‘We don’t need to cut it.’

‘Forget it.’

‘It’s coming. It’s too soon. It’s coming. Help me down.’

He helped her. He put his arm around her. It was the second time he touched her, ever. She was dead heavy, a sack of spuds. He helped her towards the couch.

‘Oh Jesus,’ she said, ‘oh fuck, oh shit, oh Christ, oh no.’

‘Are you O.K.?’

‘Oh no,’ she screamed. ‘Oh noooo …’

This time he knew she was dying. It was terrible. It was worse than anything he could imagine.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘It’s O.K.’ He took off his coat. He put it under her. It was terrible there, in her private parts. He was frightened to look at the hole. It was like an animal. It was opening. Something was pushing.

‘I won’t hurt you,’ he said. ‘I never meant to hurt you.’

‘Shut up,’ she screamed again. ‘No.’

He could see the actual head, the actual baby’s head. It was black and matted, pushing out from between her legs. He did not know what to do. From the noises that came out of her throat he knew she was going to die. You could see in her face she was going to die. He knelt beside her to stop her rolling off the couch.

She screamed.

He looked. The head was out. Oh Christ. It looked like it would break off, or snap. It turned.

‘Cord.’

He did not know what she meant. He was kneeling on rough bricks on his bare knees. It hurt.

She said, ‘See the cord.’

He could not see anything.

‘The umbilical cord,’ she said, her hands scrabbling down in the bloody, slippery mess between her legs. ‘Christ, check my baby’s neck?’

Then he saw it. There was a white slippery thing, the cord, felt like warm squid. He touched it. It was alive. He pulled it gingerly, frightened he would rip it out or break it. He could feel a life in it, like the life in a fresh caught fish, but warm, hot even, like a piece of rabbit gut. He looped it back over the baby’s head. Then, it was as if he had untied a string – just as the cord went back, the child came out, covered in white cheese, splashed with blood. Its face squashed up like a little boxer’s. It was ugly and alone. Its legs were up to its stomach and its face was screwed up. Then it cried: something so thin, such a metallic wail it cut right through to Benny’s heart.

‘Oh Christ,’ he said.

He took off his cotton shirt. He threw his bloodied suit jacket on the floor and wrapped up the frightened baby in the shirt.

‘Give him to me,’ Maria said. ‘Give me my baby.’

‘Little Benny,’ he whispered to it.

‘Give me my baby.’

She was shouting now, but there had been so much shouting in his life. He knew how not to hear her. Tears were streaming down Benny’s face. He did not know where they were coming from. ‘He’s mine,’ he said.

He closed his heart against the noise. He hunched down over the baby.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s going to hurt you.’

61

Maria felt already that she knew every part of her tormentor intimately: his thin wrists, his lumpy-knuckled fingers, his long, straight-sided, pearl-pink nails, his shiny hair with its iridescent, spiky, platinum points, his peculiar opal eyes, his red lips, real red, too red, like a boy-thief caught with plums.

He sat on the edge of the sofa, by her hip. He had one bare leg up, one out on the floor, not easily, or comfortably, but with his foot arched, like a dancer’s almost, so that it was just the ball of the foot that made contact with the floor, not the floor exactly, but with a house brick balancing on the floor. He hunched his bare torso around the child and talked to it.

‘Give me my baby,’ Maria said again.

‘Benny,’ he said. ‘Little Benny.’

He talked to the child, intently, tenderly, with his pretty red lips making wry knowing smiles which might, in almost any other circumstances, have been charming. He cupped and curved himself so much around her baby that she could barely see him – a crumpled blood-stained shirt, an arm, blue and cheesey, and small perfect fingers clenching. She would do anything to hold him.

She asked him once more: ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Give him to me. He’s getting cold now. He needs me.’

But it was she who felt the coldness, the cold hurting emptiness. She stretched her arms out towards him. In the yellow smoke-streaked light of the hurricane lamp, Benny Catchprice’s naked skin was the colour of old paper. When her fingers touched him, he flinched, and moved so far down the sofa that the umbilical cord stretched up tight towards him.

‘Please. He’s cold. Give him to me.’

But he was like a man deaf to women, a sorcerer laying spells. He was murmuring to the baby.

‘Give him to me,’ she said. ‘I’ll do what you want.’

He looked up at her and grinned. It was then, as he twisted slightly in his seat, Maria finally saw her baby’s face. She thought:
of course
. There were her mother’s eyes, bright, dark, curious, undisappointed.

‘My baby.’ She sobbed, just once, something from the stomach. She held out her empty, cold arms towards the little olive-skinned boy.

Her captor turned away and the baby’s bright round face was hidden once again. She could not bear it. She reached out and touched Benny’s forearm. ‘You want to do it to me, do it to me.’

‘Come
on,’
he said incredulously.

He pulled away. It hurt her.

‘Please,’ she said. The tug on the cord either triggered or coincided with a contraction. She knew the placenta would be delivered and soon, any minute, there would be nothing to join her to the child.

‘They lose body heat so fast, Benny, please.’ That caught him. He actually looked at her. ‘Give him to me.’ She held out her arms. ‘I’ll find you a really nice place to live. Would you like that? I’ll get you out of here.’

He began to smile, a bully’s smile she thought.

‘Just give him to me, I’ll pay you,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you money.’ She felt close to panic. She must not panic. She must be clear. She tried to think what she might offer him.

‘Two thousand dollars,’ she said.

‘Shush,’ he said. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘Don’t shush me,’ she snapped.

He laughed, and kept on laughing until there were tears in his eyes. She had no idea that he was as near as he had ever been to love. She saw only some pretty, blond-haired, Aussie surfer boy. ‘Oh, shush.’

On the floor beside his foot, next to his shoes, she could see the shot gun. He had placed it on a garbage bag on top of a plank. It was only as she thought how she might edge towards the ugly thing that she realized she still had the rusty iron bar beside her on the couch, had had it there all the time.

‘Shushy shush,’ he said to the baby. ‘Oh shush-shush-shush.’ All her baby’s brain was filled with Benny Catchprice’s face.

Maria lifted the iron bar like a tennis racket above her head. She saw herself do this from a distance, from somewhere among the cobweb rafters. She saw her ringless hands, the rusty bar.

‘Give him to me,’ she said. Her voice, scratchy with fear, was almost unrecognizable.

Benny looked up at her and smiled and shook his head.

How could this be me?

She brought down the bar towards his shoulder blade. She brought it down strong enough to break it, but he ducked. He ducked in under and she got him full across the front of the skull. It was a dull soft sound it made. The force jolted him forward. All she felt was
still, be still
, and yet when he turned to look at her, nothing seemed different afterwards from before.

I have to hit him again
.

Benny held the baby on his left side, against his hip. He did not have the head held properly. He lifted his right hand up to his own head and when he brought it away it was marked with a small red spot of blood. He actually smiled at her.

‘Abortion!’ He shook his head. His eyes wandered for a moment, then regained their focus. ‘You’re such a bullshitter, Maria.’

Maria’s legs were trembling uncontrollably. ‘I’ll kill you,’ she said. She picked up the iron bar high again. Her arms were like jelly.

‘You’re the real thing,’ he said. ‘I knew that when I saw you.’ A dribble of bright blood ran from his hairline down on to his nose. He nodded his head with emphasis. Then slowly, like a boy clowning at a swimming pool, he began to tilt forward. His eyes rolled backwards in his head. He held out the child towards her.

‘Take,’ he said.

As Benny Catchprice fell, the child was passed between them – Maria slid her arms in under the slippery little body and brought it to her, pressing it against her, shuddering. Benny hit the floor. He made a noise like timber falling in a stack. Maria put her hand behind the damp warm head. She could feel lips sucking at her neck. She brought her arms, her bones, her skin, between her baby and her victim.

It was then, as Benny lay amid the planks and bricks with his bare arm half submerged in puddled seepage, she saw his tattooed back for the first time. At first she thought it was a serpent – red, blue, green, scales, something creepy living in a broken bottle or underneath a rock. Then she saw it was not a serpent but an angel, or half an angel – a single wing tattooed on his smooth, boy’s skin – it was long and delicate and it ran from his shoulder to his buttock – an angel wing. It was red, blue, green, luminous, trembling, like a dragon fly, like something smashed against the windscreen of a speeding car.

She took her little boy, warm, squirming, still slippery as a fish, and unfastened her bra, and tucked him in against her skin.