The Big Bazoohley Read online

  Sam’s dad put his hands under his son’s arms and lifted him high into the air. “That’s my boy,” he said. “You won the Big Bazoohley. When things are bad, it’s sometimes hard to believe the bad times are ever going to end, but then, pow, here we are, the Big Bazoohley. You’re on a winning streak, my boy.” Earl Kellow snapped his fingers and pointed to the kitchen door. “I bet you something good comes out that door.”

  As the fingers snapped, a waiter came out, bearing a beautiful Bombe Alaska on a silver tray.

  “You see.” He snapped his fingers again. (He was such a great finger-snapper. He made a noise like a whip crack.) And then the restaurant lights were dimmed and the waiter lit a sparkler and the Bombe Alaska burst briefly into flame, and Nancy leaned across and squeezed Sam’s hand under the table, and his mother smiled at him, and the grown-ups stood and held their glasses high to the two kids.

  “To the Big Bazoohley,” they said, even the two judges.

  Then everyone ate cake.

  EPILOGUE

  IF YOU EVER SEE Toronto in a Matchbox, you will want to find Mr. de Vere. It isn’t easy. You won’t find him quickly, but he is there, peeking out at you from a curtained window on King Street. He’s the small, kindly but snouty-faced man in the window of a restaurant called La Fenice. He has a large white handkerchief in his hand and he is using it to wipe a tiny piece of Bombe Alaska from the tip of his small black nose.

  If you look through the chink in the curtain with your magnifying glass, you will see a celebration in progress: Sam and Nancy side by side, Earl and Vanessa dancing cheek to cheek.

  Muriel, of course, is in the painting, too, but not (thank heavens!) in the restaurant. She is in three different places in the painting. She is standing in the gallery above the ballroom. She is outside the hotel being helped into an ambulance. She is in a helicopter rising up above the snowbound city. If you look closely at the helicopter with that magnifying glass, you will see not only two unhappy grown-up faces but one very happy kid’s face as well: It is Wilfred sitting beside the pilot, wearing his Blue Jays cap.

  Where are Muriel and George and Wilfred going?

  The painting does not tell you.

  Is Wilfred about to begin a happier life? Will anyone ever let him take a chance?

  No one can be certain, but from that day forward there were never any more Perfecto Kiddo competitions, and to that extent the world that Wilfred lived in was a much, much better place.

  Author biography

  Twice winner of the Booker Prize, Peter Carey’s most recent novel Parrot and Olivier in America was described by the New Yorker as ‘a comic masterpiece’ and by the Sunday Times as ‘an exhilarating tour-de-force’. It was shortlisted for both the Man Booker Prize and a National Book Award in 2010.

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain in 1995

  by Faber & Faber Limited

  Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2014

  All rights reserved

  © Peter Carey, 1995

  Illustration © Abira Ali, 1995

  Cover illustration by Peter Hess

  The right of Peter Carey to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–30659–6