My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey Read Free Book Online

bourgeoisie.
    Could Beatrice, I said, bear any resemblance to your mother?
    In the hour or so we had been talking Chubb had taken nothing stronger than tea, but now he showed a drunk’s quick trigger. Don’t get
clever-lah
, he hissed.
    This sudden rage reminded me of Slater’s warnings. I therefore signed and collected my purse.
    Releks
, he said urgently. Please. I know I am behaving badly. I promise I will stop it now.
    Thank you, Mr Chubb, it has been very interesting.
    You are
the
Sarah Wode-Douglass? You covered the Christie Murders for
The Times?
That was you? What the chances you ever come
jalan-jalan
past my door? And withJohn Slater? Me with Rilke? This is one chance in one million—but believe me, Mem, I have been waiting for you for the last eleven years.
    I found myself, not for the last time, transfixed by him. I stood, holding my handbag, very aware not only of his earnest eyes but also of the tantalising parcel on the periphery of my vision.
    It is not only poetry I want to tell you about, he said. Something much
worse-lah
. Sit.

9
    It was to me that he issued his command to sit but John Slater also obeyed, appearing from nowhere to plop himself down untidily beside me, stretching his long arm protectively behind my back, extending his great bare legs beneath the table from which Chubb’s plastic-clad offerings had disappeared.
    Those two vertical frown marks above Slater’s nose were the acid which had always stopped his good looks from being too saccharine. They drew attention to his very clear and active eyes and somehow, in the tugged and twisted skin of his forehead, suggested a sort of moral outrage. He could certainly look extremely fierce, and I should imagine his sheer size made him frightening to Chubb, whom he had obviously come to drive away.
    First, as ever, he needed food and drink.
    To the waitress he said:
Satu lagi
beer, one more Tiger,and do you have any of those little dried fish things.
Ikan ketcheel
. I forget what they’re called.
    You want the fried fish,
Tuan
?
    No, no, small fish. Snacks.
    I scowled at him ferociously.
    Christopher, can you tell the waitress what I mean?
    Ikan bilis
.
    The girl did not seem to hear him. A moment later, however, she returned with a bowl of dried fish—small pungent creatures, each the size of a jasmine leaf. Chubb thanked her, and then I realised she was somehow avoiding him. This was the first hint I had of his strange local reputation.
    Slater leaned forward to sample the fish, made a face, and pushed the bowl away. I don’t wish to be at all unfriendly, he said to Chubb, but if it’s dough you’ve come for, Christopher, you are definitely barking up the wrong tree.
    I could never have imagined Slater talking like this to a British poet, but Chubb did not seem in the least disconcerted. He merely lowered his papery eyelids and smiled.
    She—Slater frowned in my direction—is not really worth your trouble. She may talk posh but the family has been in hock for several centuries and what little dough remained was all spent on some very lovely parties many years ago. As for me, I am reduced to being poet in residence on the
QE2
.
    This was a lie.
    So when you have had the beer, he concluded, you have pretty much drunk the well dry.
    Yes, said Chubb.
    It was a curious directionless response, and it caused Slater, whose best work was sometimes distinguished by exactly this type of unsettling effect, to pause.
    Yes, Chubb said, and there you prove Auden’s case against you, isn’t it?
    The expression of Slater’s handsome face was that of someone unexpectedly and brutally slapped. Don’t be a shit, old chap, he said quietly.
    But Chubb leaned in towards him and I marked the thin elastic spittle, like the linkage of a mussel to its shell, joining his upper to his bottom lip. Can’t remember Auden’s sentence, he said, help m
e-lah
. ‘The author’s inability to conceive of altruism,’ isn’t it?
    There was a silence then during which I