The Tax Inspector (30 page)

In this garden Cacka did not exist. Her children had not been born.

57

As Maria Takis entered the cellar, Benny Catchprice remained behind her with his shot gun pushing into the base of her spine. He had already cut her cheek with it, and it did not even occur to her to plead with him.

It was like a subway tunnel in here. She could smell her death in the stink of the water. Even while she had fought to stop his grandmother being committed, all this – the innards of Catchprice Motors – had been here, underneath her feet. She did not see her name written on the wall, but in any case she did not understand the parts or what they did – the snakes in bottles, the cords tied with plastic, the writing on the wall, the ugly white fibreglass board with its straps and buckles. How could you ever understand it? It was like some creature run over on the road. The rough-sawn barrel grabbed and tore at her dress.

Benny saw the thing he had made: belts, buckles, trusses. He knew already that it was wrong. He had built it for her but he had not thought of how she was. He said he was going to fuck her. He did not want to fuck her, not at all. On the other hand: this was his course. He had visualized it, committed to it. He was going down this road at 200Ks. No way could he turn around.

Maria felt the beginning of another period pain. It was only now she realized these must be contractions. They were coming every five minutes or so. The pain tightened in her gut – this one made it hard to breathe. Through the pain she heard Benny Catchprice: This is where I come from,’ he said. ‘This is where I live.’ He was whining. When he whined, he seemed softer, blond and pink-cheeked, baby-skinned, but he was not softer. The whining was joined to the anger, the anger was joined to the gas-jet eyes that threatened her and tore at her with the barbed steel of the shot gun barrel. ‘I know you wouldn’t ask a human being to live here. But you just walked away and left me here.’

The pain in her womb was like a great fist clenching. If it had been within her power she would have squashed him like a cockroach.

As the pain began to leave her, he moved round her and sat in front of her on the sofa. He balanced the gun on his knee while he began to take his shoes off.

‘I like you,’ Benny said, looking up from unlacing. He was taking one step at a time. He should tell her get her clothes off, but he did not want to. He did not have a fucking hard-on yet. He took his shoes off slowly, as slowly as he could manage it. ‘You tried to run away from me, but I still like you.’

Maria thought he had pretty, slippery lips and dangerous, sentimental eyes. She saw a teenage boy beset with lust and shyness – they were squashed in together like buckshot into chewing gum. He probably did not even know himself what cruelty he was capable of.

‘I won’t run away,’ she said.

‘Bullshit,’ he shouted. He liked to shout. He liked to feel his voice fill up the room. He scared himself at the thought of what crazy thing he might next do. When he shouted at Cathy she always, finally, collapsed before him. Her face would turn from hard to sorry.

Maria flinched when he shouted, but then the face just hardened. You could see it set into place. He saw her eyes becoming dark and hostile. He could not let her stay like this.

‘You don’t like me,’ he said. He wanted to be friends with her. He wanted her to stroke his hair, maybe, kiss him on his eyes, that sort of thing. Not fuck, not unless she made him. Most of all he wanted her to smile at him. He was trying to find a way back to the place where that might just be possible.

She watched him pout. She watched in chilly fascination as he pulled off his thin black socks, and rolled them up one-handed.

‘It’s dirty here,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about that part of it.’ She noticed that his hands were trembling. He rubbed his heels and soles with his hands. He gave the impression of being fine and pretty, but his feet were big, netted with the red chain-mail imprint of his socks. ‘I didn’t want it to be dirty.’

Her mouth was dry. She thought of all the ‘useful tips’ in birth class, how you should take a spray pack of Evian water and a sponge to suck.

‘I wanted it to be clean.’

Now he was removing the trousers, with one hand, holding the shot gun with the other. He had shiny hairless legs like a girl.

‘This isn’t what you want,’ she said. ‘You don’t do this to someone you like.’

‘Shut
up,’
he said. ‘You don’t even know what I’m going to do to you.’

‘This isn’t what you want,’ she repeated.

‘Shut up,’ he screamed. ‘I’m the one in charge.’

Her eyes just seemed to narrow. When he saw her go like this, he knew he would have to make her cry.

‘Don’t tell me what I want,’ he said. ‘I know what I want.’

He would have to make her soft.

She said it again: ‘This isn’t what you want.’

‘You don’t get it,’ he said. ‘I
visualized
what is happening now. I
committed
. With a witness. Everything I commit to, I do. This is why I am a success.’

‘You committed? You made an affirmation, is that what you mean? You sent away for the tape?’ She stepped towards him. He pushed back at her with the gun. ‘You paid five hundred dollars?’ she said.

‘You think I can’t afford it?’

Oh dear God, I am part of Benny Catchprice’s affirmation
.

‘Benny, am I your objective?’

‘Mind your own business. How do you know about this stuff?’

‘What was your Desire?’

‘You bitch. Don’t you do this. Don’t you steal my stuff.’

‘I was your Desire?’

‘I am an angel. I’m a fucking angel now.’ He was standing and shouting. She had all her clothes on. He was almost fucking starkers. ‘I am an angel.’ He screamed at her. It was his mad act. He was a demon. He made himself dribble. ‘Ask me what angel I am.’

He had the gun up, pointed at her head.

Maria Takis knew she would have to die. Another contraction was here already, so soon. She felt the pain coming into the dark cloud of her present terror.

Benny Catchprice was still yelling: ‘Ask me! Ask me!’

She managed to say: ‘What angel are you?’

‘Angel of lust,’ he said. He licked his lips. ‘Angel of fire.’

‘You’re going to have to kill me,’ she said. ‘You know that. If you think you’re going to put me on that thing, you’re going to have to kill me. That means you’ll kill my baby too.’

‘No.’ He exploded. He was a spider, a lethal creature with his long shapely hairless legs protruding from a black silk carapace. He shoved his gun forward at her face. She screwed up her face against the darkness of the barrel, but then she saw him change his mind. He lowered the gun, and slapped her face. Her head jolted sideways and she felt a searing pain down her side. He did it again, so lights exploded against the screen of her retina. She stumbled and fell. ‘Don’t you ever, don’t you
ever
even think of it.’

On the floor, she scraped her arm across a board and found her hand in tepid water. It touched something – a bar, a rod. She grasped it. He took a step back and she clambered to her feet, holding out her weapon: a tyre lever, slimy with rust. She hardly recognized the voice that came from her throat. ‘You come near me,’ she shouted, ‘I’ll break your arm.’

She was breathing hard. The pain came again. It was a tight hard pain, so hard she could not have talked if she had wanted to.

‘You don’t like me,’ he said. ‘I like you but you don’t like me. What’s the matter? What’s the matter?’

The matter was the pain. ‘Shut up.’

‘I am my word,’ Benny said. ‘You’ve got to understand that – I committed.’

Behind her she heard the door handle rattle, a light tap on the cellar door.

Thank God. Dear God please save me
.

‘It’s me, Vish,’ a voice said. ‘Can I come in?’

‘Piss off.’

‘Benny, you got to get out.’

‘I’m not getting out.’

Maria screamed through the middle of her contraction. Benny lifted the gun towards her and she swung the bar hard at him. She missed.

‘You got to get out. This place is going to go sky-high.’

Maria screamed again. ‘Help me!’

Benny waved the sawn-off gun at Maria Takis while he shouted at the door. ‘I don’t need you, you fucking sell-out, you Jesus creep.’

‘I’m coming in,’ said Vish.

There was no warning: the shot gun exploded and blew a splintered hole in the wooden door. Shot rattled and ricocheted around the cellar. Maria felt a hot stinging in her upper arm, her waist, her thigh, her calf.

She looked at Benny Catchprice as he walked towards the door, bleeding from the cheek. He opened the door, but there was no one there. He turned back to her.

‘What do you think I am?’ he said.

She did not understand the question.

‘I don’t want to hurt the baby,’ he said.

‘Shut up.’ She panted. She did not want to pant. She did not want to let him know what was happening to her. But now the pain was so bad she had no choice but to pant through it. She had the iron bar. He took the gun into his right hand, but then he put it down.

‘You think I’m an animal, because I live here. I wouldn’t hurt your baby.’

The pain was going.

‘You’re doing it now,’ she said. She saw it frightened him. ‘You’re hurting the baby right now, this minute. You’re killing it.’

‘No,’ he shouted.

‘I’m having the baby now,’ she said. ‘It’s coming.’

She saw his face. He was a child again, undecided. His mouth opened.

‘This is very serious,’ she said.

‘Shut up, I know.’

Maria lowered the iron bar. ‘You get me out of here right now,’ she said. ‘You can save this baby if you want to.’

Thursday

58

Vish’s arm was like a run-over cat. It did not hurt. He could see pieces of white among the red. He thought: bone. The red ran through the yellow robe like paint on unsized canvas. He felt the blood drip on to his foot. It felt warm, oddly pleasant.

He walked up the steps from Benny’s cellar, crossed the old lube bay and went straight on up the stairs to Cathy’s flat. He banged on the door and walked right on in. He was hollering even going across the kitchen. ‘Get out,’ he said. ‘She’s going to do it.’

He turned on the lights in their bedroom. They had no air-conditioning on account of Howie’s asthma. They were lying on top of the sheets. Howie was bright purple across his chest. He had a fat ugly penis with a ragged uncircumcised foreskin. Cathy was wearing an outsize T-shirt with ‘Cotton Country’ written on it.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’ He meant there was blood dripping on their shag pile carpet.

‘What’s happened?’ Howie asked. He was fishing in the drawer for his underpants. His back was white. He had no arse to talk of.

‘Hurry,’ Vish said.

He shepherded them through their kitchen. There were big splashes from his arm across the floor. ‘She’s crazy. She’s blowing us all up.’

‘What did she do to you?’ Cathy said. She was looking at his arm. She thought Gran had hurt his arm. She wanted to tie a bandage but he pushed her away with his good arm.

‘Run,’ he said. ‘The fuses are burning.’

This was not true.

Howie had underpants on. Cathy’s shirt came to her knees. They came down the stairs to the lube bay and hippety hopped across the bright-lit gravel like people walking barefoot from their car to a beach.

Granny was at the bottom of her fire escape still holding the roll of safety fuse.

‘There she is,’ he shouted.

He shouted not for them, but for her. He was trying to signal Granny Catchprice that the plan had got to change now. Howie and Cathy ran towards her. Then Howie was holding Gran. He was taking the safety fuse from her. Cathy and Howie had already stepped over a two-metre length of it at the bottom of their stairs without noticing. It was bright red and white and striped like a barber’s pole but they did not see it. There were other pieces, one, two, three metres, sticking out from the air vents at the base of the workshop and the showroom walls. Each one ran into the cobwebbed underfloor, where it was crimped tight inside a detonator. Each detonator, in turn, was jammed into a clammy half stick of gelignite. The gelignite was wedged in among the crumbling brick piers which supported the building.

While Cathy and Howie shouted at Granny Catchprice, Vish stooped to light a fuse. He had not been able to get gelignite below the ground at the old lube bay. There was no sub-floor – only cellar. He had to pack it into the drainpipes which ran beneath the concrete slab. He lit the fuse the way his Grandma had taught him, holding the match tight against the fuse and scraping the box across it. He chanted as he scraped. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna. The fuse did not sparkle like a fuse in a cartoon. You could hardly see a flame at all. The fire slipped down into the tunnel of fuse casing. It made an occasional spark, a fart of blue smoke, a tiny heat bubble. It sneaked off like a spy, travelling 30 centimeters every ten seconds.

Vish thought he might die. He thought about God. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, running through this gravel-floored hell of bright painted things.

Howie and Cathy were pushing Granny back towards the fire escape. He hollered to them, ‘No, she lit them off already,’ and then he remembered he was not thinking of God, he must think of God, that all that was necessary was to think of God.

He prayed Benny would be safe. He was in the cellar with some woman. He did not know he would be safe. How could he know?

Cathy and Howie were now walking towards him. They had left Granny Catchprice standing alone at the bottom of the fire escape. Cathy had seen the plume of blue smoke coming from a fuse. She was pointing at it, stamping at it.

‘It was her,’ he pointed back at Granny Catchprice.
Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna
. ‘She’s crazy.’

Behind Cathy and Howie’s shouting faces he could see his grandmother in her severe black suit. She had walked across the car yard to the workshop wall. She was working her way along the side of the wall, stooping, like a gardener weeding. She was lighting fuses. She had damp matches from her kitchen. Sometimes, he could see, these slowed her down.

Howie was panting and shouting at him. It was a moment before he saw what he wanted – the matches.

He pointed across the yard at Granny Catchprice. ‘It’s her,’ he said. He handed Howie the matches. ‘I took them off her, the crazy bitch. There she goes again.’

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna. Not die. Not go to jail.

‘Where’s Benny?’ Cathy yelled.

‘You can’t go down there,’ he said. ‘You’ll get blown up.’

She tried to. She ran for the steps.

Howie grabbed Cathy. She had no underpants. He picked her up and carried her bare-arsed across the yard. She struggled and hit his head.

‘Mort,’ she called. ‘What about Mort?’

‘He’s O.K.,’ Vish said. He did not know he was O.K. He had fucked it up. He had changed the plan. It was Benny’s fault. He had tried to murder him. It was Krishna who came to punish the people who hurt the followers of Krishna.

Vish walked slowly across the yard. He felt heat like a furnace in his wounded arm. He did not hurry. The Lord would decide when it ignited.

He had reached the front gate when the first explosion came. It spat out bricks and showered them over the cars. They rained down, bang, bang, bang.

He turned and saw a hole, like a tunnel, in the wall of Spare Parts. Nothing more. Granny Catchprice was fumbling with her matches at the Front Office. Then the next one went. It made a deeper ‘crump’ you could feel in your feet, in the earth. When Vish turned to look, he found the wall of the workshop was missing. The yard lights shone into the dusty rafters. A brush-tailed possum stood on the great iron beam above Mort’s desk. Its eyes shone bright yellow through the mortar dust.

Then many things happened at once. Vish lay down on the ground and felt it move beneath him. He put his head under the Audi radiator. There was some fire, flame. He felt the heat in his bare legs and saw the orange light across the gravel. There was a ‘Whoomf’ noise.

It was then he thought about the petrol tanks beneath the cracked concrete at the front of the front office.

He stood up and started running towards the street.