Free The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith by Peter Carey

shone, a star already, and the members of our collective, sitting under that dark and distant canopy, were happy for him, jealous, relieved to hear that such substantial funds would be brought into the Feu Follet.
    Just the same: when he concluded that the immense size of the salary meant that he was obliged, on moral grounds, to take the part – they smiled, some more cynically than others. When he said that he was frightened of the role, and, indeed, might still refuse it, his obvious excitement made him appear disingenuous and his colleagues’ laughter had a harder, less patient edge. Those who stood to speak afterwards were harsher than they might otherwise have been. They could not imagine he might really say no.
    *
Solveig Mappin (271–336), the young wife of Henry Mappin, Red Prime Minister of Efica (240–307).

14
    To reach your great capital, Bill would have to fly for three hours above the long island chain of Efica and then for five hours more across the landlocked web of lakes and inland seas, the great green and gold hinterland of Voorstand dotted with the mushroom shapes of Sirkus Domes – and what he said was true: he
was
frightened, not only that he would lose my maman, but also that he would somehow lose himself at the other end of this great maze.
    We Eficans, generally speaking, were frightened of Saarlim. It may make you smile to think how much: how we rubbed and burnished our idea of its cruelty and ruthlessness.
    My father was a colonist, an islander, an Efican. He was, by definition, not a Voorstander. When he spoke his lines in Saarlim, he would need to abandon his soft, self-doubting Efican patois –
Shapoh, mo-ami, mo-chou, cambruce
– learn to speak with a clip to his consonants, give up his Feu Follet habits of irony and self-mockery. To you he would be an exotic performer introducing live animals into the Sirkus. * But to himself (and to us) our circus boywould be acting out, with his own body, the surrender of our frail culture to your more powerful one. He would be singing your songs, telling your stories, and this went strongly against the grain, undercut the whole notion of who he thought he was. So even though the collective had told him,
go
, he could not let it be so easy.
    Back in the tower, he said the same things he had said before.
    My maman also: ‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘It is your
life.’
    It was perhaps the twentieth time she had said it, but this time something different happened. Bill began to comb his thick black hair with both hands, rapidly. ‘What does that mean, Felicity?’ He used only a slice of his great booming actor’s voice, a whisper, thin and nasty as a piece of wire: ‘What exactly does that
mean?’
    It was now three in the afternoon. My maman lay down with me on her unmade bed, fully dressed. She pulled the blanket up over us, and looked up at my father with her green eyes.
    ‘What?’
he said.
    She pulled her hair back from her forehead and held it at the nape of her neck. She was the mother of a scary child with special needs, the owner of a theatre whose existing debts would easily consume Bill’s 30 per cent.
    ‘What?’ he insisted.
    ‘I didn’t say anything,’ she said.
    ‘What you
thought.’
    She turned her head aside, exhausted.
    ‘You thought …’ Bill insisted.
    ‘You have to go,’ she said. She felt sick in her stomach, but she was an actor, too – she smiled. ‘Take the part.’
    ‘Take it?’
    ‘You
have to go
, mo-chou,’ she said, sitting up. It was not so hard as you would think – this moment. ‘You’ll see the best theatre in the world, every night. You’ll do voice with Fischer and movement with Hals or Miriam Parker. You’ll be a great
actor.
You’ll never be a great actor here.’
    ‘Flick, you know this isn’t acting. It’s a fucking
Sirkus.’
    ‘The Sirkus won’t last for ever,’ she said. ‘You won’t be seduced by Sirkus. The Sirkus is mechanical and manipulative. I wouldn’t love a man