The Unusual Life Of Tristan Smith Part 6

As the yellow street lights flicked on and the rain began again, my father appeared to choose. My maman saw him do it. She watched him as she might have watched an image form on a sheet of photographic paper. She saw how he tried to hide his decision from her. He ran his hand through his hair and then across his face. He got himself engaged in a bit of business with a handkerchief which occupied his whole attention from the window, where he had been standing at that moment, to the bed, beside which he now knelt.

He placed his big hands flat on the white linen cover and looked at my ugly wrinkled face. His eyes were glistening, and there was a small smile on his archer's-bow lips which my maman was familiar with from more intimate circ.u.mstances and which now made her believe that he had decided to stay.

She felt dull, anti-climactic.

'Goodbye little boy,' he said.

Then she saw he was going.

As my maman's head bowed, as her beautiful face began to crumple, he kissed the crown of her head and walked away, out the door, down the stairs. When she looked up towards the door, he was already pa.s.sing through the foyer. She stood in the gloom and watched him run through the Moosone rain with a small black rucksack he must have had already packed and waiting since the day before.

She rested her face against the gla.s.s. 'You b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' she said.

The drains were overflowing. A plastic rubbish bin was blowing down the street. My father ran gracefully away, his head back, his white shirt already black with rain.

*One hundred years before, this act of Bill Millefleur's an historical enactment which involved performing with horses and monkeys would have been regarded as blasphemy in Voorstand. As recently as 255 EC EC one Piers Kraan was sent to prison for lion taming and the lions transported, at the expense of the state, to 'that place where G.o.d intended that they dwell'. one Piers Kraan was sent to prison for lion taming and the lions transported, at the expense of the state, to 'that place where G.o.d intended that they dwell'.

15.

When Bill left us, it was as if he had died, and life in the tower became tearful and depressed.

My red-eyed mother read the foreign bank advices pale yellow slips with her name misspelt 'Smit'. She entered the amounts into her ledgers, but could not bring herself to spend the money as she had planned. Instead, the company went out to play agitprop at fish cannery gates, at street fairs, in the streets around the mudflat suburbs like Goat Marshes where no one had money to spend on such luxury as a theatre ticket.

There was no Efican playwright, none of any talent, who shared our pa.s.sions or our politics, so the company devised its own material. These little plays were crude and funny. There was juggling and feats of strength and acrobatics, but everywhere with both a story and a purpose. We mocked our snivelling 'alliance' with Voorstand, publicly libelled the silk-shirted facheurs who ran the Red Party. We dressed one actor as an obese Bruder Rat, another as randy Oncle Duck. We had our audience write down the phone numbers of top DoS agents and sometimes had a little fun telephoning them from the stage. We broke the obscenity laws, the alliance laws, the secrecy laws, all in one act with two posturers.*

Life in the Feu Follet was pa.s.sionate, paranoid, sometimes dangerous. I did not understand it was not normal. I was picked up, put down, rushed into cars and trucks and up the stairs of net lofts, down alleyways to rooms behind hamburger restaurants, back to Gazette Street where, by the time I had survived another eight weeks, the Feu Follet was in rehearsal for a very athletic production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle. The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

I was to play THE BABY. There are not a lot of roles for babies in the theatre, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle The Caucasian Chalk Circle is not really one of them, but it was my mother's way of keeping me with her while she performed. Of course, it didn't work. I was often in pain, I cried and grizzled and distressed my fellow actors. Felicity, already guilty and depressed about my father's absence, became so stressed that her milk refused to flow. is not really one of them, but it was my mother's way of keeping me with her while she performed. Of course, it didn't work. I was often in pain, I cried and grizzled and distressed my fellow actors. Felicity, already guilty and depressed about my father's absence, became so stressed that her milk refused to flow.

It was not a good time for me by the night of the first dress rehearsal I had lost not only my first father, but also my first role to a straw dummy, and, worst of all: lost my mother's b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

I know I complained about them hard, white, made my stomach hurt etc. and I spoke truly. Also, you might as well know, they spurted too much, hit the peristaltic b.u.t.ton at the back of my throat so I gagged and vomited. But finally these b.r.e.a.s.t.s and I had reached an understanding, and I was (just as you were, Meneer, Madam, in your own time) happy there.

There was no warning that these pink and slippery friends were also to abandon me. One minute my world was centred on the soft spurt and trickle, the apple-scented skin against my nose, the next it was prosthesis: rubber, plastic, the chlorine-heavy smell of sterilizing solutions.

I did not take it lightly. Indeed it changed what was previously a pacific disposition. I became irritable, devious, needy, capable of blazing fits of rage. It was at this stage, an hour before curtain of the dress rehearsal, that my maman telephoned Vincent.

*At this time we had, in our company, Ernest Gibbs, an Englishman, who could disjoint almost his whole body. He could produce at will, without aid of cotton wadding, forms as diverse as Quasimodo and the president of your great country. He was a political cartoon made flesh, and was with us until his death in a boating accident in 374. [TS] [TS]

16.

Vincent was a busy man. He was not merely the chief executive of a large company, he was also an important strategist for the Blue Party. He spent a great deal of his waking life plotting ways to expose the servility and cynicism of the Reds, to somehow, with one stroke, produce the kind of crisis that can unseat a corrupt and gerrymandered government. The week in which Felicity's milk stopped was also the week before an important by-election to which he had personally contributed both money and time.

It was a dramatic Moosone. There was flooding and a cyclone which swept away the old sea wall and sank a ferry in the Madeleines. Vincent spent his days at his downtown office, his nights driving from meeting to meeting in his Bentley Corniche, negotiating flooded streets in Berthollet, fallen trees and power lines in Goat Marshes. He drove with his nose pressed up against the windscreen, with loud music blasting from the speakers.

He believed that the history of Efica was about to change direction. The weather intensified his pa.s.sion. He drummed tom-tom beats on the steering wheel, and whooped when he saw the lightning strike the earth. He imagined Efica would soon be free of Voorstand influence its spies, its cables, and of the Sirkus which was then threatening to wash across us like a tidal wave.

He wanted Efica to be free of Sirkus. But also he loved the Sirkus. This was what the VIA never understood about him. He was a serious scholar of Voorstand culture, painting, music, literature. He was also, in a country whose people were not usually aware that the Sirkus had an ethical and religious history, something of an expert on the theology of the 'Settlers Free'.

Vincent loved to read. It was the thing that bonded Vincent and Felicity the belief that talk was not just talk, that what you said mattered, what you thought thought could change society, that a book in a foreign language, a meeting above a pizza parlour in Goat Marshes, a theatre production in a decaying circus school, could be the thing that made the river of history break its banks. could change society, that a book in a foreign language, a meeting above a pizza parlour in Goat Marshes, a theatre production in a decaying circus school, could be the thing that made the river of history break its banks.

And, indeed, he was on his way to one of these meetings (above an oyster lease in Swiss Point) when my mother called him on his car phone in a state about the baby.

Vincent turned down the Pow-pow music,* spoke softly into the receiver. He was already late for a strategy meeting, but when my mother could not be calmed he detoured across the Narrows Bridge (which already had one foot of yellow water rushing over it) and drove the Corniche right up to the door of the Feu Follet. It was now six-thirty and he was late for his strategy meeting. spoke softly into the receiver. He was already late for a strategy meeting, but when my mother could not be calmed he detoured across the Narrows Bridge (which already had one foot of yellow water rushing over it) and drove the Corniche right up to the door of the Feu Follet. It was now six-thirty and he was late for his strategy meeting.

He put on his black hat, tightened his wide leather belt, smoothed his beard with his metal comb, and walked slowly up the ramp through the Moosone rain and into the foyer.

Here he was astounded to find a whole team edgy electricians, sound techs, production managers, soup servers for the most part seemingly all waiting for him. They had bags of bandocks, bottles, a carrycot, written instructions, which they all seemed to want to transmit the minute they saw him. Behind them, on a folding chair which wobbled on the cobblestones, sat my mother pale, stretched, tense.

'I cannot carry him on stage,' she said, when Wally had finished explaining how to sterilize a teat. 'I tried, but it can't work.'

Now Vincent loved the theatre. He was, in some ways, the original stage-door Johnny (loved to be around actresses, loved to watch Felicity on stage, was moved by her courage, aroused by the sight of her long legs in the public gaze). But the Therouxes traced their lineage back to the first century of the Efican Calendar, and his great-great-great-grandfather had been forcibly shipped from Ma.r.s.eille by Louis Quatorze and sent to practise his foul-smelling craft in h.e.l.l. Vincent had drunk politics from his mother's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and he was flabbergasted to realize that he was being asked to disrupt a major strategy meeting for ... babysitting.

'You know I've got a meeting,' he began. He paused, imagining it. His brother brother* would be there. He could not do it. would be there. He could not do it.

'Vincent.' She smiled and held out her hand. 'You don't need to be ashamed of him.'

Vincent looked at my mother the eyes sunken with weariness, the mouth small and down-turned, the arms thin and white and knew she had pushed her idea of herself to a place where it would soon publicly collapse.

He took her wrist with his left hand, and with his right then silently handed over his car keys to Wally.

As Wally and the others hurried outside with the baby under their umbrellas, Vincent was a curious mixture of sympathy and anger. He drew my maman to him, kissed her.

'Sleep,' he said to her, 'meditate.'

'For G.o.d's sake,' she said, hearing what he imagined so well disguised, 'he's your son. Is it such an ordeal to look after him just one night?'

'No,' he said, 'not for one night.'

When he went out into the night he could hear me screaming through the loud drumming of the rain. He found me in his car, my face like a flapping crumpled rag, my pale eyes bulging, all my skin wet with snot and sour milk. I was strapped into a safety seat right next to the driver.

Vincent felt he could not endure the smell. He opened the windows, then shut them because the rain was blowing in on me. He set the car in gear and drove.

Before he had even arrived at the first meeting I had thrown up on his velour upholstery and left tell-tale white formula stains on his black collars, but Vincent was, again, a better man than he feared. He endured the smell, the noise, the slime coating on his collar. He walked on to his own stage with me in his arms. He did not introduce me, but he held me, and continued to hold me partly because this was the only way I would be quiet.

No one commented on my appearance, but Vincent's brother a quiet, conservative man, five years older showed him how to pin a bandock and then touched him with uncharacteristic gentleness upon the shoulder.

Vincent did not take this moment to say: this is my son, Tristan. Indeed, for Vincent, that moment never came. However, he established, silently, that his relationship with me was intimate, and as The Caucasian Chalk Circle The Caucasian Chalk Circle continued its previews this relationship improved. continued its previews this relationship improved.

He was so happy that week, manic, exhausted. The prime minister had been accused of taking money from the VIA. There was a paper trail that led all the way from Saarlim via Berne and Amsterdam. Vincent had faxes, photocopies, statutory declarations.

'We've got them, mo-poulet, we got them with their parsley showing.' Vincent was high.

I began to enjoy the rides in his car, the green-glowing dials, the rented car phone which could talk to other countries.

I went to sleep to music, woke to music. I was lifted from the car, cried on cold stairways, interrupted meetings. Though I was never named in public, I was changed and powdered by famous names. I was touched, caressed, tickled.

But then it stopped.

I woke up one afternoon no tickle, no car, no green dials. The by-election had been lost.* Vincent had shrivelled, collapsed, disappeared. He had gone home to Natalie, depressed. This, everyone knew, was typical of him. But Tristan Smith did not know, and there was no way for them to tell me. Vincent had shrivelled, collapsed, disappeared. He had gone home to Natalie, depressed. This, everyone knew, was typical of him. But Tristan Smith did not know, and there was no way for them to tell me.

*The peculiarly rhythmic music created by POWs prisoners of war in Voorstand.*St John Theroux, b 332 EC EC, General Secretary Efican Postal Workers Congress. General Secretary Efican Postal Workers Congress.*In 371 the Red Party had a bare one-seat majority in the lower house, and this by-election (for the seat of Swiss Point) could have brought down the government. Whatever evidence Theroux had of government corruption, there is no mention of it in the zines of the time. Whatever evidence Theroux had of government corruption, there is no mention of it in the zines of the time.

17.

It had not occurred to anyone that the violiniste with the small round burn scars on his arms might secretly wish to be a father. He was the production manager of The Caucasian Chalk Circle. The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Right up until the dress rehearsal, he was trying to get a grandiose set built with a two hundred dollar budget, and on the stormy night I first went off with Vincent, he was still trying to 'locate' eighty yards of canvas. How he finally did this, at no cost, no one liked to ask, but as usual his ingenuity saved the show, and my maman said as she had said a hundred times before that the Feu Follet could not have existed without him. Right up until the dress rehearsal, he was trying to get a grandiose set built with a two hundred dollar budget, and on the stormy night I first went off with Vincent, he was still trying to 'locate' eighty yards of canvas. How he finally did this, at no cost, no one liked to ask, but as usual his ingenuity saved the show, and my maman said as she had said a hundred times before that the Feu Follet could not have existed without him.

When he was praised, Wally hid his feelings of pleasure. Likewise, he never hung around my crib, but hovered around the periphery of my life, watching everything. If he sometimes changed my bandock, my maman was grateful, yes but it did not occur to her that he was practising. practising.

On the night the by-election was lost, he seemed as depressed as anyone at the Feu Follet, but he was a poker player with a winning hand. He knew how Vincent would behave. So when, next day before the curtain, my maman was trying to locate a baby-sitter, Wally stepped forward.

While Felicity watched him, he expertly changed the sodden bandock. I was ten weeks old. He was already fifty, his flaming red hair gone mostly grey and nicotine brown, his skin marked by old cigarette burns and (two) knife slashes, his skeleton if you could have seen it showing the marks of three mended fractures, a man so damaged by life, so secretive and suspicious, that he had long ago stopped dreaming that he would find someone to love.

'How do you know how to do this?' my maman asked.

'Rest,' he told her, as he expertly pinned my bandock in place. 'You have a show to do.'

'Dear Wally,' she said. 'You really are amazing.'

'Don't you worry, ma'am.' He picked me up and felt my soft skin against his p.r.i.c.kly cheek. All his ears those great fleshy wattles suddenly red with blood. 'You do your show,' he said.

He already had my dinner in the fridge.

He took me down the stairs to the cavernous old brick floored kitchen. He had a brand new bright red high chair, which he had 'located' that afternoon.

'There,' he said, turning the chair. 'Look at the pretty tree.' He faced me towards the courtyard under whose flowering oak, it was believed, Ducrow had tethered the ancient lion that finally caused his death.

Then, with his face shining, immobile, his mouth compressed under the weight of his pleasure, he took one of his very sharp knives and began to fillet the fish, a playing card he had bought for my dinner. It was precise work, and he was good at it, just as he was good at soldering and using a key-hole saw. He separated the delicate white flesh from the pink and pearly skeletons. He placed two delicate fillets on a pale blue plate and I know, Madam, a ten-week-old child does not eat fish, but Wally did not know. I was his first.

When he had the fillets done, he wrapped the bones in paper, placed the fillets in the fridge, opened a beer, poured a bride. He flicked on the gas and quickly, deftly, cooked the delicate fish fillets in a little milk. Then he mashed it with a fork and, worrying it might be too hot, placed it in the freezer to cool.

I, of course, did not know what fish was. So when, at last, he offered me the meal he had so lovingly prepared, I rejected it. He called me Rikiki, but it made no difference: I wanted Vincent. I wanted my bottle. Wally gave me a cup. I had never seen a cup. I knocked it over. Wally yelled at me. I cried. And that is how it was always to be with us Wally was the one who made the rules and was angry, the one who cooked breakfast and lunch and yelled at me when I didn't eat it.

Amongst the actors, he was famous for his sentimentality, but in spite of all the 'Rikikis' he was not soft and conciliatory like Vincent, who had often, in his euphoric pre-election mood, stroked his baby's cheek with the back of his pudgy hand. Wally brought no gifts, like Bill would. He was not full of compromise and sweet smells like Felicity. Indeed, he did not bathe enough. And when no one was around to see him do it, he would scream and yell like a maniac, particularly at the end of a long weekend.

Wally loved me, but he did not find this prayed-for state to be the blessing he had imagined. Love aged him, made his forehead taller, his shoulders a little more hunched, his brow increasingly hooded.

It was Wally who confiscated the toy laser gun which Bill sent this was a year or so later for my birthday. It was Wally who stopped me going to the country with Vincent because Vincent had been drinking and could not figure out my new safety seat. And it was Wally later still, when I was just over ten Wally who told the doctors about my penchant for climbing. He wanted it stopped, and hoped to invoke a greater authority than his own. He knew Tristan was their precious thing, their cracked and mended pot, and that they would not want it shattered, and it is true from the moment I was born, the doctors had not been able to keep their hands off me.

Felicity, who had begun so independently and who was, any way, a great one for homeopaths, naturopaths and iridologists, unexpectedly capitulated to what she called 'straight medicine'. She still, at bedtime, dropped sweet little grains of Silica (for mucus) into her son's lipless maw, but once The Caucasian Chalk Circle The Caucasian Chalk Circle was over it was 'straight doctors' who began to deal with Tristan Smith's 'anomalies'. They began with the duodenum, which had a partial blockage. At eleven months of age, they put me to sleep, cut me open, sewed me up, resuscitated me in sterile rooms where I found myself held down like a frog in a dissecting room, pinned at the legs and arms. They had catheters up my porpoise, tubes down my throat, drips in my arm, and when that was over and my temperature began to rise, they did not give me Panadol but took samples of my blood, spit, s.h.i.t, urine, often by the most painful methods. was over it was 'straight doctors' who began to deal with Tristan Smith's 'anomalies'. They began with the duodenum, which had a partial blockage. At eleven months of age, they put me to sleep, cut me open, sewed me up, resuscitated me in sterile rooms where I found myself held down like a frog in a dissecting room, pinned at the legs and arms. They had catheters up my porpoise, tubes down my throat, drips in my arm, and when that was over and my temperature began to rise, they did not give me Panadol but took samples of my blood, spit, s.h.i.t, urine, often by the most painful methods.

At eighteen months, they pinned me with their soap-smelling hands and took marrow from my bones. I shrieked and screamed and begged for them to let me be.

Vincent was squeamish around hospitals, but Bill to his credit came flying in to sit beside me on more than one occasion. He was nice to me. It would be years before he would be able to act as if he were responsible for my existence, but he could look me in the face and touch me. He was less than a father, more than an uncle. He arrived with tricks up his sleeves wind-ups, frogs that blew bubbles, geese that farted, fake vomit, gross picture cards. He flew back to Saarlim. He sent postcards.

Wally was always there. He argued with the santamaries about his cancerettes. He held me down.

And this was my childhood: Dr Tu slid me into dark tunnels; Dr Fischer strapped me on steel platforms and tilted me upside down. They tortured me, not just in that first year, but on and off for the first ten years of life. They mended the hole in my heart, but took three goes to get it.

The doctors (Dr Tu, Dr Fischer, Dr Wilson, Mr Picket-Heaps, Dr Ayisha Chaudry, Dr Brown etc.) were able to tell my mother exactly what operation they wanted to do next, but they could find no pigeonhole to shove me in, and the summation of all of their investigations was 'Multiple Congenital Anomalies'.

They had wanted to give me lips, but my mother chanced to see their 'similar case' and was so distressed by this poor man's goldfish pout, she would not let them touch my mouth. Either way, there was no chance I would ever have a smile you would recognize. Nor was there any hope that they might make me taller. But these ingenious Efican toubibs made me function better, stopped the green bile bubbling out of my mouth, stopped my heart walls leaking, repaired my faulty duodenum, and although this was not a pleasant way to begin a life, consider this Tristan Smith had a loving mother, an entire company of actors who cooed and cosseted him and tickled his tummy and took him for rides on their shoulders. Plus I really had three fathers Bill and Vincent, sometimes, and Wally every day. And if Wally did shout at me he was also the one who bought me chocolate and icecreams, the one who tried to sneak me into the Voorstand Sirkus when I was five years old. My mother nabbed us at the entrance way.

One minute we were standing in line outside the bulbous free-form 'tent', already inhaling the pervasive odours of spun sugar and ketchup, watching the projected twenty-foot high shadows of Bruder Dog chasing Bruder Duck around and around inside of the luminous pink sh.e.l.l;* the next we were trudging back along the river bank and my mother's pretty face was spoiled by that disapproving expression which is described in Chemin Rouge as being 'like the a.s.s of a hen'. the next we were trudging back along the river bank and my mother's pretty face was spoiled by that disapproving expression which is described in Chemin Rouge as being 'like the a.s.s of a hen'.

After that, I did not get to the Sirkus for another another seven years. Wally went alone on Sat.u.r.day afternoons and came back with beer on his breath and a perroquet in his hand.

'For Bruder Rikiki,' he would say as he set the sugary green drink before me, 'with the compliments of Bruder Mouse.'

Later he would 'tell' me the whole Sirkus, describing the spectacles, the falls, the injuries, the songs. It was our secret, the thing that bonded us more than any other. I would fall asleep dreaming of the cheeky Bruder Mouse or the clever Bruder Duck, whose laser images I, probably alone of all the children in the eighteen islands, had never seen in life.

*From the very beginning, the Voorstand Sirkuses in Efica had laser clowns. By the time the Sirkus came to Chemin Rouge the days when performers put on animal suits were gone. We never saw a 'live' Bruder Dog or Mouse. As for Simulacrums, we read about them, but there were none in the eighteen islands. [TS] [TS]

18.

I grew up preferring the dry season, and not just because it was in the Moosone that I always had my operations. In the dry season the company hired a little one-ring tent and went out into the countryside with the Haflinger bus, a horse float, a rented truck, and an ever-changing show my mother named The Sad Sack Sirkus. The Sad Sack Sirkus.*

More circus than Sirkus, and more revue than either, The Sad Sack Sirkus The Sad Sack Sirkus was a patchwork of tumbling and posturing, skits, Shakespearean speeches, and best of all equestrian displays which country people always loved to see. was a patchwork of tumbling and posturing, skits, Shakespearean speeches, and best of all equestrian displays which country people always loved to see. The Sad Sack Sirkus The Sad Sack Sirkus made a little money; it got the company out of the city; and thanks to the occasional egg-throwing of Ultra Rouge made a little money; it got the company out of the city; and thanks to the occasional egg-throwing of Ultra Rouge fanatics it gave a sense of urgency to the company's political agenda. fanatics it gave a sense of urgency to the company's political agenda.

My mother now scheduled these tours to coincide with the summer recess of the Saarlim Sirkus. Thus Bill was able to come back for every tour and he and Sparrow Glashan and my mother rode three-men high and Bill performed flip-flaps, round-offs, pirouettes and somersaults on the back of a cantering horse, just as he did under the big Dome in Saarlim where the tickets cost 100 Guilders each.

Vincent, of course, could not come on tour. He stayed in the city, running his business, dining with his wife, waiting for his life to start again. When he could not stand the separation any more, he would visit, stumbling out on to a southern beach from the belly of an ancient aluminium-bodied aircraft with one colossal engine and oil streaks on its wings. Vincent was an urban animal, never at home in the countryside. He was nervous around the horses, and obviously disconcerted to feel himself disadvantaged with 'Young Bill', who had quickly become an international star.*

I liked Vincent better in the dry season. He was less sure of himself, often melancholy.