The Tax Inspector

‘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.