‘What’s that?’
‘Wigwam for a goose’s bridle.’ Benny pushed him towards the striped couch which stood against the end wall.
The melted surfboard had straps on it like safety belts.
‘Sit down, come on.’
Vish looked at the couch he was being offered. ‘I came to iron for you,’ he said, stepping gingerly away from the couch and looking for a clean flat surface to place the iron on.
‘What’s the matter?’ Pride and blame jostled each other in Benny’s voice. He jutted his round smooth chin a little and checked his tie. ‘You don’t want to look at me? Am I ugly?’
‘Benny, you can’t stay here. You deserve better than this.’
‘You’re my brother, right? You’re the guy who came up on the train to see me because I was in the shit? That’s you?’
‘I won’t let you stay here.’
‘We’re family, right?’
‘Yes, we’re family. That’s what we’re going to talk about.’
‘Then don’t patronize me, O.K.? I know I deserve better than this. I’m not going to live here for ever. I’m going to buy a double block at Franklin Heights. There’s some great places up there now. They got tennis courts and everything. Vish, we could do so fucking well.’
Vish put the steam-iron down on the work bench. ‘I won’t let you live like this …’
‘You’re scared of money. I understand. Don’t worry. I’ll look after the money.’ Benny smoothed a green garbage bag on the regency couch and sat on it. ‘I’ve changed, just like you changed once. I’ve made a tranformation.’
Vish looked up at Benny and was about to say something before he changed his mind.
‘What?’ Benny prompted.
‘It’s not the time.’
‘Say it – it’s O.K. You think I can’t handle money?’
‘No one can change.’
‘You can fucking see I changed. You’re not the only one who’s spiritual.’
‘You dyed your hair.’
‘Is that all you can fucking see …’
‘You cleaned your face. You got a suit. You know what that makes me feel? It just makes me feel depressed. Even if you had plastic surgery, you couldn’t change. I couldn’t either. We’re both going to be the same thing for all eternity. Even when we die and get born again, even if we get reborn a dog … we’re the same thing. Everything has a Sanatana Dharma,’ Vish said. ‘It means Eternal Occupation. It doesn’t matter what form we take, this is like our essence – it stays the same.’
Benny sighed and crossed his legs. ‘The way I see it,’ he said at last, ‘is that there are white ants breeding underneath their feet, but they can’t see it.’
Vish nodded, waiting to see how this connected.
‘They think they’re on a rock,’ Benny said. ‘Howie, Cathy, Mort. They think they’re on a rock, but they’re on ice. They don’t know what’s beneath them. Down here,’ he gestured at the walls – blue, red, green, words written over each other so they looked like ancient blotting paper. ‘Down here I make the future, our future. I’ve prepared myself for a completely new life. For you too. We can do this thing together.’
‘What about Mort?’
‘No, no, I won’t hurt him. I’ll look after him. I’ll look after all of them. Go ahead,’ Benny said, seeing Vish trying to read the writing on the wall. ‘Please … you’re my brother, partner … It’s not a secret from you.’
Vish could read: ‘Let a virgin girl weave a white wool carpet …’ Some foreign names: ‘Kushiel, Lahatiel, Zagzagel …’
‘There’s nothing to be frightened of. I’m going to run this business effectively, that’s all. I’m transforming myself,’ Benny said. ‘By various methods, not just that.’
‘Into what?’
Benny grinned. He nodded his head and looked self-conscious. ‘I can show you a new layout for the whole place. A proper workshop, a modern showroom. If we put all the insurance work through British Union, we can finance it all through them.’
‘Into what?’ Vish insisted with his forehead all creased and his eyes squinting at his brother. ‘Into what are you transforming yourself?’
‘Many things.’
‘For instance.’
‘Angel.’
‘Angel?’
‘I have changed myself into an angel.’
Vish was suddenly back in that odd dreamy world you enter when you hear someone has died, or you see someone shot in the street in front of you. He heard himself say: ‘What sort of angel?’
Benny hesitated. ‘There’s angels for all of us,’ he said, standing up and brushing at his trousers. ‘Like you found out at the temple, right? Angels they never told us about in Sunday School.’ He smiled and folded his hands behind his back like a salesman on the lot and Vish, seeing the clear confidence in his eyes, thought, once again, that his brother was mentally unwell.
‘Benny,’ Vish said, ‘you’ve got to get out of here. Whatever’s bad, this place only makes it worse.’
‘You ask me, then you don’t want to listen to my answers. I already told you. I’m going to buy a block at Franklin Heights.’
‘It stinks in here. I won’t let you live like this.’
‘Let’s be honest. It’s because of you I’m here. You put me here, Vish. And that’s why you’re here now.’
‘Oh no. Let’s be clear about this. I took you to the ashram. I would have got you in.’
‘I was a runaway minor. They shat themselves when they knew that.’
‘I would have got you in. You ran away before they had a chance.’
‘Bullshit, Vish, you kissed their arses. Where else could I come except down here? You think I was going to stay with Old Kissy Lips alone? Is that how you were looking after me?’
Vish bowed his head.
‘Hey,’ Benny said.
Vish had his eyes squinched up tight.
‘Come on,’ Benny said.
Vish felt his brother’s arm around his shoulder.
‘I’m not mad at you,’ Benny said. ‘I was never mad at you. We each got out of home, in different ways. All I want is you fucking listen to me, eh?’ He paused, and smiled. ‘O.K.?’
‘O.K.’ said Vish, also smiling, ‘Fair enough.’
‘Ask me what angel I am.’ He pushed his brother in the ribs, ‘Go on.’
‘What angel are you?’
‘Fallen angel,’ Benny said, ‘Angel of Plagues, Angel of Ice, Angel of Lightning.’
Vish shook his head.
‘Hey, it’s not for you to say yes or no. You think I made this up?’ Benny held up a book – A Dictionary of Angels. ‘This is not bullshit. Look up Krishna. He’s there, and all his atvars.’
‘Avatars.’
‘Atavars, yes. If I’m wrong, you’re wrong too.’ He opened the front of the book and let Vish read the inscription: ‘I cannot be what I am – A.V.’
‘Who is A.V.?’ Vish asked. ‘You’ve become an angel? Is that it? You’ve become an angel from this book?’
The truth was that Benny did not know. He had made himself into an angel, and he came out looking like his mother. But he was not his mother, he was an angel. The angels were his creation. By writing their names he made them come true.
He made Saboeth with a dragon’s face and the power of destruction. He made Adonein, a mischievous angel with the face of a monkey. They were his masters. They were his victims. He smoked dope and took their power. He broke their spines and crushed them as he tore them out of books. He played Judas Priest with the volume turned up full. He had a real blue tattoo wing which ran from his right shoulder blade to his round, white, muscled buttock. The angels had feet with five toes and toenails and heavy white callouses round their heels.
‘You’ve become an angel?’ Vish asked.
‘Hey,’ said Benny, ‘relax … I was just kidding you.’
‘Really?’
‘I was just scaring you. We don’t need to do anything extreme.’
r /> 21
When Benny was three years old, his mother was only twenty-three. Her name was Sophie Catchprice. She had bell-bottomed jeans and long blonde hair like Mary in Peter Paul and Mary. She had bare feet and chipped red nail-polish on her toenails. She stood at the door of her bedroom one Saturday afternoon and saw her husband sucking her younger son’s penis.
There was a Demolition Derby in progress in the paddock behind the house. The car engines were screaming, hitting that high dangerous pitch that tells you they are way past the red line, and you could smell the methyl benzine racing fuel right here in the bedroom. Sun poured through the lace curtains with the rucked hems. All around her were signs of her incompetence: the bed unmade; the curtains still stained; an F.J. generator-coil on the dressing table; Mort’s .22 still leaning in the corner next to the broken standard lamp. She had told him for two years – pick up that rifle.
She saw her husband, the father of her children, with his hand inside his unzipped trousers. Neither Mort nor Benny knew she was there. She was a fly on the wall, a speck, a nothing. She felt like her own dream – where she scratched her stomach and found her innards – her life – green and slippery and falling through her fingers. She picked up the rifle. What else was she to do?
‘Give him to me,’ she said. But she could not look at Benny. She was frightened of what she would see. He was three years old. He had a white Disney T-shirt with Minnie kissing Mickey: SMACK it said. Johnny had one the same, but Johnny was safe with his Grandma in Spare Parts.
‘You evil slime,’ she said.
‘Hey come on,’ Mort said. His trousers were undone, but Benny was not reaching for his mother. He clung tight to his father’s neck. Sophie felt like her chest was full of puke.
She had to do something. She heard the shell ‘snick’ into the firing chamber as if someone else put it there. She was not even angry, or if she was angry then the anger was covered with something rumpled and dirty and she could not recognize it. What she felt was sourer and sadder than anger, more serious than anger. Her fingers felt heavy, and spongy. She looked at Benny. His little eyes seemed alien and poisoned. He balanced on his father’s hip staring back at her.
‘Come to Mummy,’ she said.
But Benny was looking at the rifle. He shook his head.
‘Give him to me,’ she said to Mort, ‘and I won’t hurt you, I swear.’
‘Put that rifle down,’ he said. ‘You don’t know how to use it.’
Sure, she knew how to. She could not see what else to do but what she did. But even as she did it, as she took one action after the other, she expected something would happen that would stop her travelling all the way to the logical conclusion. She walked a little closer to Mort, frowning and then there was nothing left to do but fire. Even as she did it, she thought she lacked the courage.
She fired from less than a metre. The bullet missed her husband and caused a red flower to blossom on the arm of her son’s Mickey Mouse T-shirt.
It was Sophie who called out, not Benny. Benny looked as if he’d fallen playing – his lip pouted and his big eyes swelled with tears.
Sophie held out a hand towards him, but Mort crouched on the floor, holding his corduroy trousers together, shielding the wounded child with his big body. Benny clung to his father. He had his arms around his neck. Blood was smeared all round Mort’s ears and collar.
Sophie reached out towards her son but he flinched from her.
‘Go way,’ he screamed. He was three years old, alive with rage towards her. She could not bear to be the focus of it. ‘Go way.’
The windows were filthy. The sunlight illuminated the small balls of fluff which drifted across the uncarpeted floor. Their child’s blood was a bright, bright red, like newly opened paint. It flooded the chest of Benny’s shirt. Sophie felt soaked with shame. It was unendurable.
‘What did you do that for?’ Mort was crying, stroking Benny’s head.
She felt the first flicker of doubt.
‘You know what you were doing, slime.’
‘Tell me,’ Mort screamed. ‘Tell me what we’ve done.’
She brought another shell into the chamber, but everything she thought so definitely was now dissolving in the acid of her chronic uncertainty. What she had seen was already like a thing she might have feared or dreamed or even, yes, imagined.
‘I was kissing his tummy,’ he said. He had blood on his fingers. He was streaking blood through his son’s fair hair.
‘Kissing!’
‘I was fucking kissing him,’ he said. ‘For Chrissake, Sophie. Why do you want to kill our little boy?’
She looked at his big swollen lips and his bright blaming eyes and saw the way the terrified child held him around the neck, and she believed him.
It was like you pour water on a fire that is burning you. Sophie just put the barrel of the rifle in her mouth and fired. She messed that up as well. The bullet passed beside her spinal column, and out through the back of her neck.
She ran from the house, across the car yard. She waited for a wall, a barrier, but nothing stopped her flight. Her father-in-law was selling a Ford Customline to a man in a leather jacket. He held up his hand and waved to her. She ran down Loftus Street, splashing blood behind her. She had not planned to leave, not leave her little boys, not leave by train, but she was at the railway station and she had twenty dollars in her slacks and she had done a crime and she bought a ticket and boarded the 6.25 train to Sydney which was just departing from the platform next to the booth. She was dripping blood and nearly fainting but no one looked at her particularly. No one tried to stop her. She just kept on going. She just kept on going on and on, and as the train pulled out she could see the Demolition Derby in the back paddock behind Catchprice Motors.
22
When his little brother was being bashed up by Matty Evans behind the boys’ lavatories, Vish came running into the school yard from the hole in the fence next to the milk factory. He had a housebrick. He was not yet Vish – he was still John. He was nine years old. He was bigger than Benny but he still had to carry the brick in both hands. He pushed his way through the circle of yelling boys and threw the brick, point blank. It hit Matty Evans on the side of the head and he dropped so fast and lay so still that the little kids started crying, thinking he was dead. There was a dark red pool of blood glistening on the hot asphalt playground, and teachers were yelling and making everyone stand in line even though it was the magpie season and two kids were swooped just standing there. Johnny Catchprice vomited up his sandwiches, just as the ambulance arrived. It drove straight into the school yard and left deep ruts in the grass in front of ‘Paddles’ Rogers’s rose garden.
Matty Evans got six stitches and they clipped his hair like he was a dog with mange. Paddles paddled Johnny Catchprice for every one of those stitches. Johnny’s hand puffed up so much he had to be excused from English Composition and this was why Mort put on his suit and came up to the school to talk to Paddles during the double Algebra on Thursday afternoon.
Everyone thought he had come to threaten law suits, but Mort was not shocked by either the crime or the punishment. What panicked Mort was that he maybe had a ‘disturbed child’ on his hands, that a whiff of his home life could be detected in the open air. He put on his grey suit and went up to school, not to sue, but to plug the leak somehow. He was not sure how he would do it, not even when he opened his mouth.
Paddles was a little bald-headed man with a swagger and a hairy chest which grew up under his shirt collar. He felt himself an inch away from litigation and so he was chatty and pleasant and over-eager. He looked across at Johnny and winked.
Johnny laid his bandaged hand on his lap and looked out of the window at the ruts the ambulance had left on the green lawn.
‘No matter who bullied whom,’ Mort said, ‘I never saw him do anything like this in all his life. And when I say all his life, I mean, all his life. I don’t know if you know it, but his mother left us when he was five …
’
‘Noo-na,’ said Paddles sympathetically. He was confused about what Mort Catchprice was up to. This gave him an odd ‘hanging-on-every-word’ look.
‘She just pissed off.’
Johnny shut his eyes.
‘At that time I couldn’t cook, I couldn’t sew, and I wasn’t seeing my kids as much as I should have. I was coaching the Under-fifteens in the football and the cricket. I was setting up the panel shop. But suddenly there were all these fucking bureaucrats – pardon my French – wanted to take my boys away, because I was a man.’
‘Isn’t that typical,’ said Paddles. ‘Sure. I can imagine …’
‘You can imagine,’ Mort said. ‘You can imagine I soon found out how to cook and how to sew. I was there for them in the morning and I was there for them at night, so when I say Johnny doesn’t do this sort of thing,’ Mort kicked Johnny underneath the desk, ‘hitting a boy with a brick. When I say this is not him, I know what I’m talking about. You understand me?’
‘Yes,’ Paddles said. ‘Sure. Hell, yes.’ The minute he said yes he thought he had made a legal mistake.
‘Good,’ Mort said, kicking Johnny again. ‘So you understand why I’m upset – I work for years of my life to give you a sweet, gentle kid, you give me back a kid who hits another kid with a brick.’
It was only then that Johnny got the joke – his dad was lying.
‘It’s not in his character. I hope you agree?’
Paddles thought he could see Mort assembling evidence for court. ‘Without prejudice?’ He saw the kid trying to hide his grin. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘It will never happen again.’ He meant the strapping.
Mort meant brick-throwing. ‘That’s your decision,’ he said, ‘totally, but if I hear of any more behaviour like this, you’re the man I’ll be holding responsible.’
Johnny and his father walked out of the school, making odd little noises up behind their noses, holding their laughter in like you keep water in a garden hose with your thumb. They walked out across the lawn, biting their lips and creasing their eyes.