smell poured out, like from a peeled orange, and the hedgerows were made from long pale blue trunks and giant yellow flowers with the bees still feeding off them.
Mrs Catchprice held up the handbag by her forefinger and let it swing there. ‘You know how old this gelignite is?’ she asked Sarkis. ‘You can see it’s old by how it sweats. When it’s like this you can let it off just by throwing it.’
Sarkis’s previous employer had pierced nipples with metal rings in them. He showed Sarkis the photo. He had a metal stud which went through the end of his penis. Sarkis did not ask what the metal rings were for. He smiled and nodded. Likewise with this gelignite – smile. Later he would tell her that the twelve-year-olds were too stupid and doped-up to even understand what a stick of gelignite was. Now he would get her home. He would make her a cup of tea. After work one day he would even cut her frail, old, over-treated hair. It had lost its elasticity but you could still do something with hair like that. He could give her oil with hot towels. She would enjoy that. It was more personal than a steaming machine.
‘So,’ she said, taking back her stick of gelignite and putting it in her handbag where Sarkis could see a great number of crumpled twenty-dollar bills. ‘You were out of work, and now you have a chance again.’
‘Thank you,’ Sarkis said.
‘This is lovely,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘This is what I always liked best about having a business. I liked giving young people a chance.’
‘I won’t disappoint you,’ Sarkis said. ‘You won’t be sorry.’
‘This is lovely,’ Mrs Catchprice said. ‘This is such a nice town, even now.’
‘I’m Armenian,’ said Sarkis. ‘We are famous for being salesmen.’
‘Armenian?’ said Mrs Catchprice brightly. ‘How fascinating. Have you lived in Franklin long?’
‘Six months.’
It was this answer that seemed to make Mrs Catchprice step out on to the road, straight in front of an on- coming car. Sarkis grabbed for her but she was gone. She was bright pink and silver in the car’s headlights and it was only when it stopped that Sarkis realized it was a taxi and she had hailed it. She did not seem capable. She seemed too old and frail to be capable of making sudden movements and yet that was what particularly distinguished her – she leaped, jolted, slammed, and – right now, she jumped into the taxi and banged the door hard behind her.
‘Come on,’ she called as she wound down the window. ‘Don’t dawdle.’
When Sarkis entered the back seat of the cab, Mrs Catchprice was telling the driver: ‘You cannot call yourself a taxi-driver and not know about the Wool Wash. You wait,’ she said to Sarkis. ‘You’ll like this.’
Sarkis recognized the driver – whatever he had done with his mother had not taken very long. The driver sat there with his meter on, staring into the rear vision mirror. He did nothing to acknowledge that he knew who Sarkis was. Mrs Catchprice continued to talk about the Wool Wash. Sarkis could not listen. He looked at the back of the man’s little shoulders and pink shell ears. He looked at the fleck of dandruff sticking to the stringy hair below his bald spot.
‘If you don’t know where the Wool Wash is,’ Mrs Catchprice said loudly, tapping the driver on the shoulder, ‘it might be polite to turn off your meter while you find out.’
The taxi-driver flinched from the touch and spoke into the mirror. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘In my taxi, control your mouth.’
‘It is my eyes you should worry about, not my mouth,’ said Mrs Catchprice, fiddling with her handbag. ‘I have a cataract on one eye,’ she said, producing a crumpled pack of Salems,
Pavlovic’s shoulders stiffened. Then he turned the meter off. ‘Wullwas?’ he asked.
‘W-o-o-l W-a-s-h.’
When the driver could not find the Wool Wash in his street directory, Mrs Catchprice took it from him.
‘Everyone knows the Wool Wash,’ she told her new employee. ‘It is the most lovely part of Franklin.’ But it was not listed in the driver’s street directory. Mrs Catchprice stared at the map page, looking at the bend in the river where she thought the Wool Wash was.
‘I never heard of it,’ said Pavlovic.
‘I never heard of it either,’ said Sarkis.
To the taxi-driver she said: ‘Just head south. I’ll direct you,’ but she was stricken with that horrible feeling that sometimes came to her on her night-time walks. It was as if all her past had been paved over and she could not reach it, as if she was a snake whose nest had been blocked while she was out and could only go backwards and forwards in front of the place where the hole had been, finding only cold hard concrete where she had expected life.
19
While Maria sat in the Blue Moon Brasserie, discussing Catchprice Motors, Benny Catchprice was playing Tape 7 of
‘You are not transformed,’ Tape 7 now said to Benny. ‘So whose fault do you think that is?’
Benny had come back from work feeling powerful and confident and he had undressed to do the mirror exercise and then suddenly – zap – he lost it. As he faced himself in the mirror he felt ‘the fear’. It was hard to stand straight. He put his hand across his navel. His balls went tight in his newly hairless scrotum and he sweated around his arsehole. Five minutes ago he felt fantastic to be so clean and smooth, like a fucking statue. It had been just a blast to look at himself in the mirror and see his power. Then suddenly the thing that made him feel great – how he looked – marble white skin, wide shoulders, slim waist – made him feel like shit.
He turned to Tape 7 and pressed the ‘Play’ button.
‘You paid us $495,’ Tape 7 said, ‘so if you’re cheating, who are you cheating? Can’t be us, we’ve got our money. If you’re cheating, you’re cheating yourself.’
‘Fuck you,’ Benny said and pushed at the cassette player with his foot. There was a grease mark on the foot, dust on his hands as well. That was the old Benny – he drew dirt on to himself like iron filings on to a magnet. Snot, sleep, grease, blackheads, he made neglect so much a part of him that no one, not even Mort Catchprice, wished to touch him and everything he made contact with became tarnished, mildewy, mouldy, ruined in some way. Something that had been shining clear silver in its polythene-wrapped box became ‘used’ the minute Benny touched it. Even his Christmas presents had been unpleasant to receive – rammed shut at the corners and torn and gummed up with glue and sticky tape so they felt like an oil-skinned table on which jam has been spilled and not properly cleaned.
‘You’re so used to cheating,’ the tape said.
‘Shut up.’
‘What story do you tell yourself? Nobody loves you? You’re too stupid? These are just stories you use to cheat yourself.’
‘What do you fucking know?’
‘That’s why you’re the way you are. You have no authenticity. You are unable to separate the bullshit you tell yourself from the truth. You’ve paid your $495 so now you can see – you either do the job properly or you see how you cheat yourself.’
The step he had omitted was no big deal. It was embarrassing, but he would do it if it was important – he had to fold his clothes carefully in separate parcels and then float them down the river. ‘This does not mean flush them down the toilet,’ the tape said. ‘And if you are asking, is it O.K. if I put them in the sea, it is not. It means a river, not the sea, not a lake, not a drain. If you have any doubts as to whether it is a river or not, you can assume you’re trying to cheat yourself out of your life and it is not a river.’
To wrap a shoe in black paper and tie it with gold ribbon seemed like an easy thing to do when you heard it on the tape. Benny swept nails and pins and cake crumbs from the bench with the flat of his hand and wiped the surface with a ‘Fiery Avenger’ T-shirt.
‘You are going to wrap your old clothes to do honour to yourself. If you cannot do honour to your past, how are you going to do honour to your future? Each one of these parcels is you and I want you to dress it like you are
