The Unusual Life Of Tristan Smith Part 22

*A reference to the navigation cable, an issue which divided Eficans. Supporters of the Blue Party, like Sparrowgra.s.s, felt those unexplained cables to be a humiliating invasion, a reminder of our craven servility to another power. [TS] [TS]

46.

Felicity clambered into the back seat, cut her knee on a broken ashtray, laddered her stocking, squashed Tristan Smith to her. She touched his face, felt his legs, pulled up his s.h.i.+rtsleeves to examine his chamois-soft skin.

I, Tristan, was full of blame. It ran through my veins like bubbling sap, ruled my glands, my limbs, my actions. I pulled away. I crawled to the far side of the seat. My beautiful Mouse mask now littered the s.h.i.+ning malodorous back seat like poor grey petals.

'My baby. Are you burnt?'

I thought she was using 'burnt' poetically. I did not know that she and Vincent had tracked me to the Burns Unit.

'Sweets, I'm so sorry.'

While she tried to pull up my s.h.i.+rt and look at my chest, I turned away. I picked up pieces of torn papier-mache and stuffed them in my pocket.

'Is your mask broken?' she said.

As if it were not her fault.

As if it had not been her cultural imperialism cultural imperialism, her hegemony hegemony, her hatred of the Sirkus, which had guided my hands in its destruction.

When I saw the famous cheekbones wet with tears I showed none of the compa.s.sion I feel for her now. She was suffering and I was bitterly, triumphantly, angrily, happy.

My poor maman squeezed herself into that tight s.p.a.ce between the front seat and the back and deaf to the taxi driver's abuse, insensitive to Wally's hand on her shoulder helped me gather the bits of Mouse and place them carefully in her open handbag.

'You can be an actor,' she said.

My heart stopped. I turned to face her. She was wearing Vincent's jacket over her dress. She pulled it tight across her chest. 'OK?' she said.

I could feel my mouth s.h.i.+vering. I held my hand across it.

'I'll teach you, OK?'

I nodded, and then turned away, not wanting her to see me cry.

She gave me a handkerchief. I wiped my face. She wiped her own even as she did this she was aware of Vincent sitting sideways in his car seat talking on the telephone. She knew she had a meeting with Giles Peterson who was important in her preselection as a candidate for Goat Marshes. This was her new life. She was serious about the elections. But she had her son back, alive.

'Shall we fix up Meneer Mouse?' she asked me.

I nodded. She carried me into the Feu Follet, and left Vincent to untangle the mess she had made.

Felicity rushed through the foyer, squinting, trying not to see the peeling paint, the flapping posters, the rusting drawing pins. She carried me into the theatre, crossed the sawdust ring and entered the workshop a long brick-walled room divided by three high archways which made the workshop fall naturally into three areas. In the last of these, curtained by a sheet of paint-splattered clear plastic, was a long workshop bench where our designers had their studio.

My mother was a practical woman in all sorts of ways money, scheduling, the organization of people, the resolution of conflicts but nailing, cutting, gluing, these were not her strengths, and she knew this, even as she took the designer's chair. Other people-Wally particularly would have made a better job of fixing the Mouse mask.

She sat me on the workbench. 'I'm so sorry,' she said. 'Do you understand?'

I was not sure exactly what she was sorry about, but I did not ask and I did not soften. I stared at her.

'Maman is going to fix your mask,' she said at last.

Wally had fixed some expensive-looking kitchen cabinets to the wall above the workbench. Inside one of these Felicity found a large jar labelled 'Milliners Solution' and two sheets of white cartridge paper in a brown cardboard tube.

'What we do is lay the paper on the bench,' she said. We both knew that she was bluffing. 'And then we make a jigsaw puzzle. See there's his eye.' She laid the crumpled Mouse eye on the white paper, but when she looked up her own eye could not hold my gaze. 'And here's a corner of his cheeky mouth.'

'There's ... his ... ear.' I pointed. I did not pick it up.

'Did anyone hurt you?' she asked.

'That's ... part ... of ... his ... head.'

She picked up the piece I pointed at. We progressed this way, for ten minutes or more me pointing, she placing the crumpled papier-mache on the white cartridge paper.

'The thing about being an actor,' she said, as I tried to figure where the last few pieces belonged, 'is it's a very hard life. It's OK,' she said hurriedly, 'you will be an actor because that's what you want, but I'm telling you, it'll be hard for you, harder than for other people. Do you know what I'm saying, mo-sweets?'

'This ... piece ... is ... from ... the ... mouth.'

'It's very difficult,' she said, 'and that's why I didn't want you to do it. I knew it would be a very hard thing for you to do. Do you understand?'

'I ... know ... I'm ... a ... mutant.'

She did not look at me when I said that, but I felt her stillness, all the air held in her lungs.

'Are you angry at me?' she said at last. 'Because I made you how you are?'

'I ... want ... to ... learn,' I said. 'All ... the ... things ... you ... can ... learn. I ... want ... to ... talk ... so ... anyone ... can ... understand.'

'Maybe there are some things you won't be able to do.'

'I ... can ... learn ... to ... talk ... better.'

'The problem with diction is physical, darling, you know that.'

'I'll ... learn.' learn.'

'OK, OK.' She looked at the hateful Mouse, carefully a.s.sembled on the bench. Anyone could see it was ruined. 'I'll tell you what we'll do,' she said, not looking at me. 'We'll leave the mask. We'll let it set set and while it's setting we'll do a workshop. I thought you might like to play the part of Puck. I think I'd like to make you gold and silver.' and while it's setting we'll do a workshop. I thought you might like to play the part of Puck. I think I'd like to make you gold and silver.'

I did not ask her about how the mask could possibly set. It was a ludicrous notion, best left alone.

'Come on,' she said. 'We'll do it out in the ring.'

She picked me up and put me on the floor. I watched her choose the make-up pots and sticks with my heart beating so hard that a big vein pulsed weirdly in my neck. She sat the pots down on the bench small tubs with colour spilling down around their white s.h.i.+ny lids. She placed the fat sticks beside them. She opened the tiny closet where the fabric oddments were stored, collected two or three pieces of tat. Then she carried me out into the ring and removed every single item of my clothing.

I sat still on a white enamel chair while she ran back for the make-up, and then again up to the booth where she fiddled with the lights. When she returned she pushed me into a single tight spot. My skin tingled. I felt the pool of black, the heat of light around me. She knelt in front of me. She gave me Nora's little silver-backed mirror from Doll's House Doll's House so I could look at myself as she painted me. so I could look at myself as she painted me.

She ran a single line of silver across my forehead. Above it she painted blue, below it green. She put a towel around my neck, splashed water on my hair, and gelled it, teasing it out in long spikes like Efican ragwort blossom. Then she had me hold the towel across my face and sprayed it silver.

I looked in the mirror and saw a creature, a fairy, something from another level of existence, pixie, elf, homunculus.

She painted a single blue spot on each cheek and surrounded this with pink. I thought of b.u.t.terfly wings.

She made my chest into something blue and black like the night sky. My scars she turned into lightning bolts.

It took a long, long time. I did not mind. It was like being polished into life, like being a statue whose feet are washed with milk and yoghurt every morning.

'You'll have to push yourself against the pain,' she said, rubbing the fatty colourants into my skin. 'Acting will hurt you. All your muscles will ache. Do you know what I mean?'

'Yes.'

'You'll be frightened that you'll break yourself in half, but that is what you'll have to do. Can you do that?'

'Yes.'

'Everyone will want to marginalize you, but you must never allow yourself to take the little parts. When they call you to a Mechanical, show them how you can play Bottom,' she said. 'Do you know who Bottom is?'

I did not. She told me. 'You must study,' she said, 'so you are more intelligent than other actors, and you must learn to have an open mind, so any director can understand that you will not be difficult to work with, that you are interested in new approaches to the work. You must keep on learning about being brave. This is something you can't learn once. You have to learn it over and over. You must never be frightened to look how you look, and if you can do this, you will always look powerful. You will have to make yourself into something beyond anyone's capacity to imagine you.'

'Yes.'

'You don't have to even understand all this now. But you will learn it, slowly.'

But I did understand it.

'You worked out your action for Sad Sack Sad Sack and you thought you could act.' and you thought you could act.'

'No.'

'But it will be years before you can act. You must not appear in anything anything in Chemin Rouge for years. You'll have to work hard, every day. Lots of exercises, lots of reading, every day, harder than anything you've done. And when it's all done you will, if you're lucky, get one role a year. Do you hear what I'm saying? You'll be poor, like Sparrow.' in Chemin Rouge for years. You'll have to work hard, every day. Lots of exercises, lots of reading, every day, harder than anything you've done. And when it's all done you will, if you're lucky, get one role a year. Do you hear what I'm saying? You'll be poor, like Sparrow.'

I was looking in the mirror. I was feeling the heat.

'Uh-huh.'

She dropped a light blue cloth around my shoulders. She stepped back out of the light.

'Look in your mirror.'

I needed no encouragement.

'What do you see?'

I didn't know what she meant.

'An artist?' she suggested. 'An actor?'

I looked so wonderful, so unimaginable, so beautiful that it seemed presumptuous to say anything.

'A mutant?' 'No.'

'And certainly not ugly.' She came out of the dark, held me, one hand on each of my arms.

'Would you like to sleep over at the theatre for a few nights?'

'Yes.'

'You're an actor.' She kissed me on the forehead. 'This theatre is for you. Do you hear me? You won't have to be poor like Sparrow.'

'Yes.'

'When you grow up, you'll always have a theatre. Now you can stay with Wally, and I'll come visit you at least once every day. Maybe Sparrow will find time to help you. In any case, we can work out your exercises as we go along. You know I'm going to run for parliament, but I'll make the time to help you every day. Are you angry with Vincent still?'

'No,' I said.

'OK, we're going to scrub up, and we're going to go and tell everyone that you and I are OK. So now you can take one last good look,' she said. 'A good slow look.'

She left Tristan Smith alone in the spotlight. My bladder defeated me before I was bored with my reflection.

47.

Four days later, my mother was famous.

She had been famous before, of course. Strangers in the street still called her Yvette, the name of her character in the soap opera. Also, she was famous in a different way for the Feu Follet, and a different way again for her role in demonstrations against the Voorstand presence on our soil.

But she had never been as thoroughly famous* as she was when she stood for parliament. as she was when she stood for parliament.

I was woken by Roxanna shaking me.

'Come on,' she said. 'Quickly.' I was always slow to wake, but Roxanna could not wait for me. She picked me up and carried me into the kitchen where Wally was already cooking not breakfast, dinner. He had shaved, and he had Ducrow's old wood-burning stove alight, something he did in the wet season when the porous old walls were getting too wet. The big pitted yellow and red tiles were freshly mopped and he had set up a large vid on top of the old-fas.h.i.+oned copper. A thick blue 240-volt cable ran from the vid out to the theatre power box.

Outside the day was grey, windy, what we call a 'Mongrel Day', hot wind, always changing. Inside: my mother was a flickering luminous vision in her yellow dress, her red hair. The hair had been cut since she visited me the evening before. It was shorter, tidier. She wore gla.s.ses, which she most certainly did not need for anything other than her 'Character'.

As I sat down at the table, Wally put porridge and a gla.s.s of milk in front of me. He said nothing, but nodded his head towards the screen. His face was aglow with pleasure, Roxanna's too.

'Isn't she gorgeous?' she said. 'Who wouldn't vote for her?'

Rox herself was wearing an oversize midnight blue T-s.h.i.+rt with 'Stand Back Voor Stand' stencilled on the back.