The Fat Man in History and Other Stories by Peter Carey Page B

those items they had neglected to describe. People overlooked in the census by impatient officials would also disappear. A strong pressure group demanded that a new census be taken quickly before matters got worse.
8.
My Father’s Theory
    The world, according to my father, was exactly like the human body and had its own defence mechanisms with which it defended itself against anything that either threatened it or was unnecessary to it. The I.C.I. building and the I.C.I. company had obviously constituted some threat to the world or had simply been irrelevant. That’s why it had disappeared and not because some damn fool god was waking up and rubbing his eyes.
    “I don’t believe in god,” my father said. “Humanity is god. Humanity is the only god I know. If humanity doesn’t need something it will disappear. People who are not loved will disappear.Everything that is not loved will disappear from the face of the earth. We only exist through the love of others and that’s what it’s all about.”
9.
A Contradiction
    “Look at those fools,” my father said, “they wouldn’t know if they were up themselves.”
10.
An Unpleasant Scene
    The world at this time was full of unpleasant and disturbing scenes. One that I recall vividly took place in the middle of the city on a hot, sultry Tuesday afternoon. It was about one-thirty and I was waiting for Karen by the post office when a man of forty or so ran past me. He was dematerializing rapidly. Everybody seemed to be deliberately looking the other way, which seemed to me to make him de-materialize faster. I stared at him hard, hoping that I could do something to keep him there until help arrived. I tried to love him, because I believed in my father’s theory. I thought, I must love that man. But his face irritated me. It is not so easy to love a stranger and I’m ashamed to say that he had the small mouth and close-together eyes that I have always disliked in a person. I tried to love him but I’m afraid I failed.
    While I watched he tried to hail taxi after taxi. But the taxi drivers were only too well aware of what was happening and had no wish to spend their time driving a passenger who, at any moment, might cease to exist. They looked the other way or put up their NOT FOR HIRE signs.
    Finally he managed to waylay a taxi at some traffic lights. By this time he was so insubstantial that I could see right through him. He was beginning to shout. A terrible thin noise, but penetrating none the less. He tried to open the cab door, but the driver had already locked it. I could hear the man’s voice, high and piercing: “I want to go home.” He repeated it over and over again. “I want to go home to my wife.”
    The taxi drove off when the lights changed. There was a lull in thetraffic. People had fled the corner and left it deserted and it was I alone who saw the man finally disappear.
    I felt sick.
    Karen arrived five minutes later and found me pale and shaken. “Are you all right?” she said.
    “Do you love me?” I said.
11.
The Nether Regions
    My father had an irritating way of explaining things to me I already understood, refusing to stop no matter how much I said “I know” or “You told me before”.
    Thus he expounded on the significance of the nether regions, adopting the tone of a lecturer speaking to a class of particularly backward children.
    “As you know,” he said, “the nether regions were amongst the first to disappear and this in itself is significant. These regions, I’m sure you know, are seldom visited by men and only then by people like me whose sole job is to make sure that they’re still there. We had no use for these areas, these deserts, swamps, and coastlines which is why, of course, they disappeared. They were merely possessions of ours and if they had any use at all it was as symbols for our poets, writers and film-makers. They were used as symbols of alienation, lovelessness, loneliness, uselessness and so on. Do you get what I