8/27/2023 0 Comments A long way from home peter careyI was sorry they had been bred to be so stupid. I woke filled with light and happiness which was not ruined when I heard my complaining hens gathered outside my door. The man and boy uncoiled the serpent as if they were volunteer firefighters laying a canvas fire hose down the centre of Main Street. It was a huge fat snake, whiskery like a catfish, neatly folded up for travelling, wound round itself like a pastry snail. It was only then I got the joke which was: the mattress was not a mattress. They got just past the outhouse where they dropped their comic cargo beneath the walnut tree. I smiled as they danced out into the yard. They staggered down the ramp, and I was slow to understand their unsteadiness was not caused by their burden but by laughter. These swung slowly open and I saw a man and boy carry out a mattress. In that other world I saw the doors of the float, now quilted and studded like a banquette. I rolled on my side, waiting for the horse to show its face but when the doors were opened nothing was revealed but kitchen chairs. A horse float was driven past my bedroom window and two human figures then appeared. The night before had been filled with awful portent. I had certainly been anticipating my new neighbours, although I could not have imagined anything like this. And still I waited for my salvation, like the pastor’s son I was, with an impatience that made my toes squirm inside my thirsty shoes. I had fled my wife’s adultery, left the only job that ever suited me and come to Bacchus Marsh to teach the notorious second form. I had married when I would have been happier single. I had run away from Adelaide when I should I have stayed home in the parsonage. I had lived with the expectation that something spectacular would happen to me, or would arrive, deus ex machina, and I was, in this sense, like a man crouched on a lonely platform ready to spring aboard a speeding train. I spent my entire life in Australia with the conviction that it was a mistake, that my correct place was elsewhere, located on a map with German names. The kitchen table was a catastrophe, piled high with damp washing and academic quarterlies and musty pulp novels featuring Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte (“Bony”) of the Queensland Police Force. A putative visitor would be compelled to travel crabwise down the hallway, between the illegal bookshelves, from front door to the sink. She did not know that I was a mess of carnal yearning and remorse, that my small weatherboard house was now legally a fire hazard, its floors and tables crammed with books and papers. She did not know that I was sought by bailiffs, that I was a regular on Deasy’s Radio Quiz Show where my winnings were publicly announced each week. Bobs did not know the first thing about me, for instance that I was a chalk-and-talker, recently suspended for hanging a troublesome student out of a classroom window. He is the recipient of two Booker Prizes, as well as the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Peter Carey is the author of 13 previous novels. He'll be navigating the 10,000 miles, with speed-demon Irene Bobs driving and her husband riding as passenger. Willie Bachhuber, a teacher and quiz show champion, is joining his neighbors in brutal car race across Australia. The following is from Peter Carey's novel, A Long Way from Home.
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