But no one shooed and no one skat.

'p.i.s.s off,' he said.

But it was half past seven at night, and bow-legged Bruder Mouse was on the town.

'Tristan! Jacques!'

This was the first time we had a chance to show Wally the successful act we had spent the week developing the cartwheels, the tumbling, the juggling with tennis b.a.l.l.s or apples.

'Don't do that,' he said. 'For Chrissake.'

'Look at him,' Jacqui said. 'He's amazing. He's a star.'

'Just stop it,' the old man hissed.

'But why?'

'No reason just stop.'

There was a reason he had not planned it. It was not part of his secret. It upset him so much that, when that show was finally over and Jacqui and I escorted him along the streets of Kakdorp, his head was pushed forward from his shoulders, his brows down on his old grey eyes, and he looked so much like a bad-tempered old vulture, a predator, that he helped effect what physical force might not have done the comparatively peaceful entry of Bruder Mouse into a Water Sirkus.

Once he had me in my numbered seat, the seat he had planned, he began to regain his old humour. He sat in his seat, crossed his legs, arranged his stick. He took pleasure in not looking round to the row behind where he knew Bill Millefleur was sitting.

Perhaps it was prison that did it to him, or perhaps it was that brutal childhood which left those pale and slippery circles forever etched into his skin, but a secret gave Wally pleasure whether it was something as simple as the meal he had cooked for dinner, the origin of a brand new washing machine, or the real reason he wished to go to Voorstand. There was always a secretive air to Wally, and he could not give you the time of day without standing next to you too close and looking at the floor. He had the habit of whispering when he could have spoken normally, a habit of withholding information from you.

When I had come along the wharf at Chemin Rouge, pale, frightened, a snail just come out of his sh.e.l.l, I had already been without knowing it on my way to see Bill Millefleur. Wally had written to my father. They were long letters which, while hinting much, revealed nothing, not even the date of our arrival.

It was this cache of secrets that had given Wally's cleanshaven face that tumescent shine all the way across the ocean to Morea. And when he had seen Aziz's long-bladed bone-handled knife move upwards, sharp and slick as a surgeon's scalpel, insinuating itself between my bandage and chest skin, all he could think was that I would have to seek out my father, if only for the money.

He had let me believe that I was taking him to Saarlim to indulge his pa.s.sion for the Sirkus, but he was seventy-three years old and had a painful spinal condition which made even the most luxurious Starbuck uncomfortable for him he would never have set out across the world just to see the Sirkus.

Indeed, he felt most content at home in his kitchen or in the sandy streets around the port. There he had come to savour the preciousness of time, the sweet sappy papaya trees resting their heavy fruit on corrugated iron verandas, the smell of seaweed that still drifted up the Boulevard des Indiennes after the winter storms.

He could see Sirkus enough for an old man in Chemin Rouge. There was too much death in the Saarlim Sirkus and he did not wish to think about death. It pushed in on him everywhere these days: there were tastes in his mouth, discomforts in his stomach, he was secretly convinced was cancer.

He wrote a will. He went through his zines and threw away a number that were p.o.r.nographic. And, as his final act, he set out to extricate me from the Feu Follet and reunite me with my father.

It was this last project which gave him the glow, the light, the surge of stamina which I imagined had been produced by travel brochures.

And in the last few days before he finally led me to a seat directly in front of my most problematic parent, the days when Jacqui and I were tin-rattling in the streets of Saarlim, or standing side by side in Shutter Steeg gazing up at the handsome stone house where my maman had been born, Wally conducted secret telephone conferences with Bill, refusing to divulge my whereabouts until the 'right moment'.

This ponderous, controlling secrecy drove my father crazy.

'Just tell me where you are,' he said. 'I'll be right over.'

'You come right over, it'll all be be over,' Wally said. 'If he thinks I arranged this, he'll walk away. He has to think it's all an accident.' over,' Wally said. 'If he thinks I arranged this, he'll walk away. He has to think it's all an accident.'

When Jacqui came home with the tickets for the Water Sirkus, that was the venue Wally chose for the 'accidental' meeting.

'People are always b.u.mping into each other at the Sirkus,' he said to Bill. 'You get the seat behind us. It's beyond suspicion.'

'Mo-frere,' Bill said. 'You don't know what you're asking. This is the hottest show in town.'

'This will be perfect,' Wally said. 'No way could he believe we set him up.'

'I've got a dinner party that night. I can't get seats.'

But of course he did get a seat. He was sitting there now, exactly as Wally had planned he would.

Wally did not turn around. He looked up at the shimmering walls of the Water Sirkus, which changed colours constantly as the currents of dyed fluids rose and fell, plastic walls of a material which reflected or absorbed the light depending on no apparent process.

'Are ... you ... happy?' I asked him.

'Tray bon,' he said. Everything had this glow, this light his secret. 'You bet your dye-pot.' And all through the show he held his secret to him.

Yet when the moment finally came, when Bill Millefleur, unable to contain himself any more, lifted his son free of his seat, what Wally felt was worse than nothing.

He saw the Mouse hold its arms wide, saw its cheeky Bruder grin.

The job was done. Tristan Smith was safe. Wally's life, he thought, was over.

Only yesterday he came out of Goat Marshes Violin and found little Annie McMa.n.u.s with her curly blonde hair sitting in the Boite down at the port. He bought her a gla.s.s of roteuse and told her he was a poet and G.o.d loved him and put words of poetry in his mouth. She took him home and rucked him and he could have loved her if she would have let him.

Only yesterday he saw the great Ducrow, his big lips marked with dry red wine, mount the slack wire and walk from the sawdust ring up to the box, his long silk gown flapping between his veined old legs.

He stood in his seat and began to follow me. He mourned me, even while I was still there. He grieved for me, when I was not six feet from him. He tasted his own death, not just the steely fact of it or its imminence or its inevitability, but tasted it inside his mouth, the s.h.i.ttiness of it, the sour and bitter waste, the deep cold loneliness, the abandonment.

He had no real energy to push through the crowd. He was overcome with the notion that he had not only wasted his own life, but that he had wasted mine. Bill would see, any moment, I had no education worth a d.a.m.n. He had liked to sit, to just be, to drink beer with his arm around my shoulder, to pa.s.s the time.

Now time had pa.s.sed. He lacked the will to fight the crowds. He watched Bruder Mouse's head as I moved towards the east side of the auditorium, and then down a ramp which led into the underworld beneath the stage.

35.

Bill had been forewarned about the Mouse suit, but he had imagined that I carried a mask on a stick like Saarlim children do at Easter. He did not realize that he would not be able to see my eyes, my mouth, that even as the reunion finally took place he would still be in doubt as to whether he was forgiven or rejected. Even as he hefted me high above the crowd, his head was full of Wally's warnings about my enmity. No matter what the easy smile might indicate, he was ill with anxiety.

'Is this all right?' he asked as we started off down between the seats.

He meant: is it all right for me to carry you on my shoulder, is it demeaning? He did not express himself clearly, but I understood him.

Had he lived with me in Chemin Rouge each gurgle of my subsequent answer, each muddy slide of vowel, each slur of consonant, would also have been clear to him. But he listened to my answer like a stranger, and the crowd, b.u.mping, shoving, tugging at the Mouse's dangling boots, only made it worse.

A smooth-cheeked Efican in an eccentric suit he knew it must be Jacques the nurse was shooing the fans away, but he did not pay attention to the nurse, or to Wally either. He sought peace, clarity, a release from chaos. He headed for the door underneath the stage down amongst the humming underworld of pipes and pumps where, he had imagined, he might have a chance finally to be reunited with his son in private.

But when the heavy door shut fast behind him, he found himself intimidated by the enigmatic face of Bruder Mouse the painted smile, the broken tooth, the whole withholding wall of character.

He seated me carefully on a humming grey steel box, a pump perhaps, thereby placing my eyes almost level with his own.

'Would you prefer to walk?' he asked. 'It's not so far to go.'

I began to answer but he interrupted.

'Don't get me wrong.' He gestured with his two hands, smiled these phoney movements being the by-products of his enormous tension 'I'm happy to carry you, mo-frere, from here to the Bleskran if you want it.'

'It's ... OK ... go ... on ... carry ... me.'

'You can carry him,' the nurse translated. 'Mr Millefleur. I can't believe believe it's you. How do you know Tristan?' it's you. How do you know Tristan?'

Bill's handsome face shivered with incredulity.

'He's my G.o.dd.a.m.n son,' he said, turning to look at the nurse, 'for Chrissakes!'

'Where's ... Wally?' I said.

My father swung back to me, all politeness. 'Say again.' He placed his hand tentatively on my shoulder. 'Say slowly ...'

'You ... left ... Wally.'

'Oh Jesus,' Bill said, his eyes glazing over with tears. 'Are you saying I left you?'

'YOU ... LEFT ... WALLY.'

's.h.i.t!' said Jacqui.

'What is he saying?'

'We lost Mr Paccione.'

'We?' said Bill, his voice rising, his famous temper showing in his eyes. He turned on her. He raised his hands up to his temples. 'We?'

'I.'

'For Chrissakes,' he said. 'Aren't you the A-1 nurse they brought from Efica? Fifteen hundred Guilders a month? Is that you? The perfect Jacques? You're the one who looks after Wally and Tristan?'

'I'll get him. I'll get him now.'

'No, no,' Bill said.

'Yes,' Jacqui said, 'I'll get him now.' But as she turned my father brought his large hand down on her padded shoulder and turned her in her tracks.

'You stay right here,' Bill said in that quiet and dangerous voice that I remembered. 'And do not f.u.c.king move.' move.'

He turned and left us, me and Jacqui. I folded my arms across my chest.

'What?' she said.

36.

Jacqui knew my handsome father in a way that I did not. She had been to Dome Projections* of all his Saarlim horse shows. There she had seen him dance from back to back on Arab stallions, do Lucio Cristiani's somersault across one horse and on to the back of a third as they cantered round the ring. She had heard him speak the great lines of Voorstand's Epic Poet. She knew the pores of his skin, the scar on his chin, the sweet rise on his lip, the dimple on his chin which she thought almost unbearably beautiful. of all his Saarlim horse shows. There she had seen him dance from back to back on Arab stallions, do Lucio Cristiani's somersault across one horse and on to the back of a third as they cantered round the ring. She had heard him speak the great lines of Voorstand's Epic Poet. She knew the pores of his skin, the scar on his chin, the sweet rise on his lip, the dimple on his chin which she thought almost unbearably beautiful.

In short, she was his fan, and as she travelled with him through the crush, pushed against his glistening suit, being careful not to stand on his snakeskin shoes, she was in shock, not merely to have met him, but to have met him in these most peculiar circ.u.mstances.

Now she was crushed crushed against Bill Millefleur, was carried along in the same tumbling river of fluttering pink- and blue-paged autograph books. She tumbled down the ramp beside him, went through a grey metal door that said 'Sirkus Staff Only', was suddenly in a world of huge brightly coloured pipes, compressors, pumps, the smell of marine paint, the cold of concrete against Bill Millefleur, was carried along in the same tumbling river of fluttering pink- and blue-paged autograph books. She tumbled down the ramp beside him, went through a grey metal door that said 'Sirkus Staff Only', was suddenly in a world of huge brightly coloured pipes, compressors, pumps, the smell of marine paint, the cold of concrete backstage. backstage. Bill Millefleur put his hand behind her back and guided her into a link-wired alleyway. Bill Millefleur put his hand behind her back and guided her into a link-wired alleyway. (You see (You see, she wanted to say, to someone, to her mother most of all. You see?) You see?) But then a minute later she was revealed as an amateur, a f.u.c.k-up, and she wished no one to see anything. Bill Millefleur was furious with her. He turned away from her, went walking, beautifully, athletically, impatiently over the metal floor, back into the cavernous Dome.

And Jacqui was left there boneless, a lump, all her normal resourcefulness sucked from her.

The sharp-toothed Mouse sat on the water pump and stared at her, its grey furry arms folded across its spangled blue chest.

'What?' she said.

'Nothing,' it said. It stared at her impa.s.sively, and she was embarra.s.sed to have her weakness so clearly exposed.

Yet when Bill Millefleur returned with his arm around the old man's bent shoulders, she did not care who saw her apologize.

'You're right,' she said. 'I was an amateur. I didn't do my job.'

And the actor forgave her.

He held out his hand. It was soft and dry. As it closed around hers, she had a vision of her mother sitting in her kitchen wiping counter tops, the little plates of plastic-covered leftovers, some as small as a teaspoonful. (You see?) (You see?) 'I had no right to shout at you,' Bill Millefleur said. 'I was so excited to see my son, I didn't even catch your full name?'

'Jacques Lorraine.'

The touch of his hand made her numb in the neck, produced shame and grat.i.tude in almost equal quant.i.ties, and as she followed his athletic body carrying my misshapen one back into the labyrinth beneath the stage of the Water Sirkus, her cheeks continued to burn.

She watched how he held yours truly in his arms, how he squeezed my arms, my legs. 'Don't ... do ... that.'

'Tristan,' he said, squeezing me again, grinding my sore feet in against his hip bone. 'We have to sit down without our masks.'

And Jacqui, rather than being embarra.s.sed by his tacky talk, was much moved by Bill's love, his need, by his good looks, by my lack of the same.

She was a fan. She wished to be with him. Thinking her silence a mark of unworthiness, she walked beside him wondering what to say. Finally, she asked about the Water Sirkus, inquiring how the performers had been able to speak whilst underwater.

She saw even as he answered 'It's a voice patch, Jacques, that's all' that he did not want to talk to her. He wanted to talk only this was so weird, so bizarre to the snotty mutant that no one in the DoS could bear even to think about.

'Did you enjoy the Sirkus, Tristan?' he asked.

But Tristan Smith would not speak, and when his father turned to speak to Jacqui his eyes were weak with need, with shame.