Read Online Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey - Free Book Online Page A

"hold your lamp up high, you'll see there's a passage tailor-made for you, and even though it goes this way and that, it keeps on going just the same, and you come to a bit of a step which you climb up, and then there is another door. Doesn't look like a door at all, even when your nose is hard against it, but you give it a good hard knock. You will, I know you will. Because what's inside but a printer like your father, not so tall or so handsome. Mr. Watkins is his name. And he's going to give you something."
    "What?" I asked.
    "See," said Mr. Piggott. "It's not hard."
    "What will he get given?" my father asked.
    "Well, it's a funny thing when you say it, but it's as regular as your daily bread."
    "What is it?" I asked.
    "It's his chamber pot I suppose," said Mr. Piggott, "and the printer fellow would be very grateful if you could bring it back out here so we can nicely deal with it."
    I was tremendously relieved to hear all this, and I was ready to set off immediately, but my father was now edging me back out into the room and Mr. Piggott had no choice but follow, although the three of us continued bunched together as if packed into a box.
    "How was this job done previous?" my daddy asked.
    "We had a lad, of course. It requires no training," said Mr. Piggott, who must have seen which way my father's mind was working.
    "Ah, there you are," my daddy said. "Then he's better than an apprentice."
    "How's that?" said Piggott.
    "No training. Less eaten. Less laundered. Less found," my father said. "And why was he measured? Well, it's obvious. It was an act of employment. Speaking legally."
    "A penny," said Mr. Piggott.
    "Threepence each way," my father said, "and another threepence for each time he's needed."
    "I could get anyone to do this," Piggott said. "Threepence in and out this first time. And a penny each way thereafter."
    By now my father had his hair combed up into a big mess and he was scratching at his neck in an attempt to hide his happiness, but I had been there long enough to decide that the previous boy had been Sniffy, and although I allowed my father to lift me to the dark door, the tiny red hairs on my boy arms were standing up on end.
    It was a tight fit in there but passing clean, and the so-called passage bent and twisted and arrived at a wall that I did not understand. This was what Mr. Piggott had called a step.
    Then I was over this and soon I came to another dead end and, just as my throat was closing up with terror, I knocked. A hidden door swung open. And there it was--the printer's chamber pot, filled to overflowing, thrust right in my face.
    "Take it," the pressman said.
    He was a fright, I won't pretend he wasn't. For although he was a young man and had therefore often walked the earth and seen the sun, he seemed, at that moment, like one of those transparent creatures they say live in rivers far below the earth. His hair was fine as silk, and long and white, not like the English but the Swedes. His forehead was very tall, and so white and smooth it seemed as if it must be carved from ivory. He had pale projecting eyebrows, and eyes like water.
    "Now put it down," he said.
    "What?" I asked, having heard him perfectly.
    "Put down the filthy pot," he pleaded, "on the stinking floor."
    I saw no reason to be afraid of such a nervous creature, but when I obeyed he gave me an awful cuff across the head and took me by the ear and twisted it.
    "If you ever leave me waiting again," he whispered, "I will come out the hard way" --that was how he put it--"and Piggott don't want that. Smell it," he cried, his voice cracking. "Smell."
    He meant his room. I looked above his shoulder and saw he was like all men who work with black ink and white paper. That is, his printed sheets were as clean as sawn timber and his narrow bed was tightly made. He shared his snug space with a guillotine and the first iron hand press I ever saw. He was all hunched over, his arms were long and thin and he held them across his chest in a