Free Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey Page B

what was in my inky hands. A wise boy would have destroyed it, but was a wise boy ever born? I could not kill such a lovely thing. Nor could I bury it, for it was too beautiful. So I folded it until it would fold no more and then I thrust it in my britches and kept it like you keep a treasure you can worship under the bedclothes in the early light of morning.
    I was always tired, always busy, falling asleep when my head hit the bed, being awoken by my father to get myself washed. The printers had long given up finding our public ablutions , as they called them, amusing. So we were left alone to clean ourselves and, on Sunday mornings, to wash our clothes as well.
    The Sunday I will now recall was hot and overcast, and we found ourselves in company, not only with a hatch of mayflies, but a gentleman I had observed the night before at dinner, a tall Frenchman with a broad chest and a rich man's manner who was noteworthy on account of the glint in his small gray eyes and the mass of curling red hair around his big head--this latter making him look like a Scots laird--but all of these distinctions were trumped by his left arm which was completely missing .
    At dinner he had mostly engaged with Mrs. Piggott who I saw was tremendously excited, and although she was a little bantam with fretful eyes, she now began to bat them like a girl. She was suddenly so talkative she hardly touched her food. Back and forward they went-- parlez-vous and so on.
    We were told to call our visitor Monsieur but he did not seem so ordinary to me, and all the while he talked with Mrs. Piggott, sugaring her with d'accords and madames , he had his eyes on the men around the table, engaging each of them, even me, letting us know he was very fine and fancy and that we would be unwise to cross him or betray him or even dream of such a thing.
    We were at war with France yet we were in Devon very near the coast, and at Piggott's it was always ask no questions and you'll be told no lies. We never knew where the fruits of our labors would come to rest, in Louvres or Auxerre, or Oxford Street. The Piggotts were always feeding up their customers, plying them with brandy and Madeira, and after they had slept off their dinner they were on their way.
    I expected the Frenchman to be gone by morning. But there he was, nudey in midstream, and all I could see was the shocking violet skin shining in the place where his arm had been, and nothing left of it but a kind of flap, or turtle fin. Elsewhere his body had been pierced more times than Saint Sebastian, and each site of injury was like a patch of angry silk.
    My father was a terrible talker who wanted to know everything at once, but here he had a powerful wish to know not a bloody thing.
    "Bonjour," the Frenchman called to us.
    My father's eyes went dead and milky.
    "Bonjour," he called again, but my father was taken by the sights downstream.
    It was I who called back, not from wickedness, but because I could. Perhaps I might never draw a proper mouse, but I was a perfect mimic. That was a talent. Vowel for vowel, a parrot on the wing.
    Says I: "Bonjour."
    Says he: "Parles-tu francais, monsieur?"
    Says I: "Parles-tu francais, monsieur?"
    He had a face like stone. I squeezed a grin out of it. "Vous," said he.
    "Ah, vous ?" said I.
    I wish you could hear me now because you would understand the unholy jumble--that rough little English boy falling over his vous and tus in the perfect accent of the faubourg Saint-Germain. I dived into the stream in triumph, scraping my bare boy chest along a gravel bed as lightly as an old brown trout. Surfacing, I saw my father had retreated from me, scrambling to the bank to fetch our laundry.
    "Ou habites-tu?" the Frenchman asked me. You could hear the money in his voice.
    "Ou habites-tu?" I replied.
    The Frenchman was not sure what was being done to him, whether he should be offended or amused.
    My father came splashing toward me, the clothes clutched to his chest. It was rocky and