Part 53 (1/2)

I moved and yawned, to let her know I was awake.

She looked across at me.

'Good morning, Bruder Mouse,' she said.

I did not say anything.

'One mo, there she was,' she said.

She continued to parade up and down, to enter the bathroom, to come back to the closet. I could not, for the life of me, see what she was doing in any of these places. She did not take clothing from the closet. She did not perform any toilette in the bathroom. She walked before me as if I were nothing but a dog, and I watched her.

Was this exciting? Yes, d.a.m.n it, yes it was. She was an attractive thirty-year-old woman with her clothes off. She was not tall, and she was a little thick in the waist, but she had big well-shaped b.r.e.a.s.t.s and a firm backside. She had a soft bush of blonde hair.

From the bathroom she called to me.

'Bruder.'

'Yes.'

'Do you have thoughts?'

'Thoughts about what?' I said.

'Do you have anything to have thoughts with?'

'I have as good a brain as you,' I said.

She came out from the bathroom, her hand holding her hair up, smiling. 'It was not brain I meant,' she said.

'Oh.'

'Does my hair look better up or down?'

'Come here,' I said, 'so I can see.'

'What about Madam Mouse?' she said.

But she came a little closer. She had not dried herself quite properly. I could see beads of water on her little nest of hair.

'Come here.'

She shook her head. She walked away. She walked to the window and pulled those drapes closed. She went to the bathroom and turned off the light.

The room was now pitch black: darkest, deepest, velvet night. Yet I could feel her come towards me. I could feel her warmth. I could smell her perfume, shampoo, soap, steam. I heard her small white feet upon her knotted folk rugs.

'Don't tell me,' she said.

'Tell you what?'

'Don't tell me anything, OK?'

She came into the bed. I held her, this woman who had no lovers. She held me hard between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. You might imagine me inside my suit, locked in, smelling my own breath, distant from this stranger, able only to feel her desire as she moaned and dragged me between her legs, and you may, never having been in my position, be thinking of the humiliation and discomfort and forgetting, entirely, that Jacqui had given me a zipper and that I could, there in the fragrant dark, slowly ease my porpoise into her, and feel her soft pink muscles grip me.

'OhmyG.o.d,' said Peggy Kram, her fingers holding on to my back, 'Bruder Mouse.' Lots more she said. She talked and sighed and laughed and begged me keep my secrets to myself. She squirmed and slid and exclaimed and made little bird noises high in her white woman's throat and, what with the conversation and all, we hardly heard the banging on the door and Jacqui's distant voice crying, 'Tristan, if you're there...'

'No Tristan here,' murmured Peggy Kram.

'Tristan, we've got to go, now.'

'You can stay right on my pillow,' said Peggy Kram. 'This is better than a man. I'm going to keep you.'

51.

She would not let me go, Madam, Meneer. I know now, she was not well. It is obvious to you, of course. It was obvious to Wally. But for me the case was different. She wished to dress in front of me. I am a man. I was more than pleased to watch. She wished to play games in the dirty dark and put her mouth around my porpoise and call it names in French. Why would I think that she was disturbed? disturbed?

Outside the door my nurse called and hammered, but Jacqui no matter how I admired her weird and dangerous spirit was there to get me out, away from Peggy Kram, out of the country, over the border, down long roads with high poplar trees standing on each side. All right, all right she wished to save my life, and I, the monster, was like a dog licking its d.i.c.k in the middle of the road.

Mrs Kram had other plans for me, and she could not let me go. This is what she told Jacqui, shouted at her, through the door.

'He's mine,' she said. I did not think this strange. It is not alarming to be found, at last, desirable.

She opened the bedroom curtains and showed me Saarlim. She talked pa.s.sionately about its former greatness, its present troubles. She pointed out the five Sirkus Domes she owned. She pointed out the roads the Mayor had sold to foreign speculators. There were tears in her eyes. I did not doubt her concern.

Was I simple? Was I an opportunist? Both, I suppose, but to charge that '[Tristan Smith did] wilfully, blasphemously, seditiously disguise his being and therefore lead others to believe he was Bruder Mouse and that all this was undertaken with the express purpose of defrauding the citizens of Saarlim and depriving them of liberties granted them by G.o.d' '[Tristan Smith did] wilfully, blasphemously, seditiously disguise his being and therefore lead others to believe he was Bruder Mouse and that all this was undertaken with the express purpose of defrauding the citizens of Saarlim and depriving them of liberties granted them by G.o.d' really, Madam, Meneer, you give me too much credit. really, Madam, Meneer, you give me too much credit.

Yes, I came into your country with my secret rage. Yes, I lied to you and said I felt no rage. Yes, I acted as if my mother's murder were not a personal matter between me and you. But is that not, in normal circ.u.mstances, polite?

Your own agent was the one who ran down the Simi, the so-called theft of which is the subject of charge three.* I could not have planned this. Yet if I had not met the Simi, I could never have so charmed Mrs Kram. So common sense will tell you that I could not have entered Voorstand planning to climb into Kram's bed. I could not have planned this. Yet if I had not met the Simi, I could never have so charmed Mrs Kram. So common sense will tell you that I could not have entered Voorstand planning to climb into Kram's bed.

Almost a week I spent with her. During that time no one not Wendell Deveau, not Gabe Manzini could discover where I was. Metaphorically speaking, I was in another country.

We sat amongst her folk rugs (so many mice and ducks you never saw) with her photograph alb.u.ms. So many black borders, so many dead people. So many terrible things had happened to her in her short life. She had witnessed her handsome husband's brains splatter against the front-row celebrities on opening night. She lost two babies in the home that caught alight while she was at the theatre. Other things, you may or may not know about, more things than should have happened to anyone, had happened to this woman, whose wealth and power were envied everywhere.

She is thought to be ruthless, I know, and is, I know.

But Madam, Meneer, this misguided woman's pa.s.sion for the principles of your past, her vegetarianism, her prayerfulness, all this is genuine.

In each one of her Ghostdorps she had tried to create an ideal world a model where the actor inhabitants lived in accordance with the values of the Settlers Free. 'They ploughed, they tilled, hulled, they shucked, they ground, etc.'

She promised me she would find work for my father, that she would keep me in comfort all my life. She told me she would employ my nurse.