Illywhacker

by Peter Carey

  I was looking at this, considering a man's thumb print baked into a clay brick, when Charles came up the stairs he had exited so furiously an hour before and, rather than going grovelling to his wife, he came to me.

  I was pleased to see him. I made room for him on my pile of broken bricks.

  "You see this brick," I said. "You see the thumb print. You know how that got there? Some poor bugger working at Brickfields a hundred-and-fifty years ago did that. He turned the brick out of the mould and, as he did it, he had to give the wet clay a little shove with his thumbs, see. This one, and this one. They've all got it. So there you are. All around you, in your walls, you've got the thumb prints of convicts. How do you reckon that affects you?"

  We, both of us, looked around. It was a big building. It was a lot of thumb prints to consider.

  "Father," he said, "do you know how much money you've spent today?"

  I was very tired, but I did my best to be polite. I explained that once you start a job there is no going back. Then, to get us back on a peaceful plane, I started to talk to him about bricks. I told him how some of them have special marks, the shape of clubs or spades for instance, pressed into them.

  "For God's sake," he shouted in my ear, "at least have the grace to say you're sorry."

  "I'm not," and, by Christ, I wasn't. I looked out from where I sat. Anyone could see I'd improved it out of sight.

  "Not sorry?"

  "Charlie, look what I've done."

  "It's a mess."

  "I'll clean it up. All I need is…" I was going to tell him about the cables, but he wouldn't let me.

  "There's no water."

  "I'll connect it."

  "Don't touch it." He moved himself off the rubble and stood over me. I stood up too. "I'll get a tradesman."

  "Why pay a tradesman?"

  "You're retired, Father. You're on the pension."

  "I've got to do something."

  "Go to the beach."

  "I'm too old for the beach. No one wants to look at an old man on the beach. I'll trap birds for you."

  "I already employ people to trap for me."

  "Then let me finish this." My voice went a little strange. I didn't realize I felt so emotional about it.

  He came and put two hands on my shoulder. "Father…"

  Then I saw her. She was out of her cage. She was standing in the corridor between Leah's lattice and the gallery rail. She had my Vegemite jar in her hand, but if there was a time for getting it back, it was past.

  "Father… it's the money."

  Emma was smiling at me, but the smile was not friendly.

  "Have the grace to admit the truth."

  "What truth?"

  But we never got into it, because Emma came past me and embraced her husband. There, right in front of me, she hugged and kissed him. She gobbled his nose and licked his ear. I had to go away. I could not stand it. It was not the kissing and cooing. It was the bloody words.

  "Oh, Emmie," I heard my son say – a big man, fifteen stones – "Oh, Emmie, Emmie, I'm sorry."

  52

  Rosellas fucked, fertilized their eggs, laid them, hatched their young and did all the hard work feeding them. Fish, marsupials, and snakes all reproduced themselves for our benefit. We were, it seemed, sitting on a gold mine. There was no shortage of anything. My son bought me shirts and suits. Anything I wanted I could sign for at Hordern's or Grace Brothers'. A Parker pen? Yes, sir. Crocodile-skin shoes? Please be seated. A blue dress for the little girl? Fifth floor, sir.

  At home there was a special room for me, to compensate, I suppose, for my disappointment. When I say special, I mean it was the same room they put me into in the beginning, but they let me put a window in the wall so that I could look out into Pitt Street. I chose a modern window, steel-framed, and when they put the neon sign out on the front of the building – only a month later – Charles made them design it around my window although Claude Neon, the manufacturers, wanted him to brick it up.

  They were so nice to me. They bought me a bed with a drawer under it for my underpants and socks. They built in a cupboard, and then they left me alone. They all had lives of their own, worries, occupations, hobbies, whatever. The bed they bought me was only two foot wide. There was no question of me sharing with Goldstein, not if it was ten foot wide.

  Yes, I blamed her for having my scheme stopped. Yes, I was wrong. Yes, I knew at the time. Yes, I was a cranky, bad-tempered old man. All that much would be clear to you anyway. Goldstein, to top it all, had problems of her own and very shortly afterwards she moved out to be an independent woman on her ten pounds a week. As to whether she got leeches on her legs or frostbite on her hands, I have no idea.

  I, for my part, sat on my chair. It was a brand-new one (Danish Deluxe was the brand) and I could look out at the signs in the sky. They put up a big blue one a block or two away, alcoa Australia it said. It did not go on or off but it was both beautiful and enigmatic hanging there in the sky, not bothering to explain how it could be both Alcoa and Australia at the same time. It was the first of many. I pretended to myself that they amused me, these visions as fantastic as flying saucers.

  When I was bored I would go to Randwick and lose my pension to the bookies and then I would come back and stand in the street and look up at my window. Not so much my window, but rather the neon sign that surrounded it. Everyone said it was the best neon sign in Sydney. People came from interstate to look at it. It had a flight of king parrots whizzing in a circle round my window, red, green, red, green, you could see their wings flap and their genuine parrot flight pattern, up down, wings out, wings flat. All around the edges were little lights representing golden wattle and the wattle blossoms fell in the electric breeze. It was a beautiful thing – a hundred per cent pure Australiana – and you would never guess that the emporium it advertised was owned thirty-three per cent by Gulf amp; Western and twenty-five per cent by Schick amp; Co.

  Once I persuaded Charles to stand in my window while I went downstairs to look at him, framed by it. He would only do it once. He was busy with government departments who kept banning the export of his birds. I would have asked his wife to stand there but we were not on speaking terms. So it was Hissao whom I persuaded to stand there instead. I would have him stand on my Danish Deluxe. He would jump up and down on it -I didn't mind that – and I would make that interminable journey down the stairs -I always forgot what floor I was on – and go and stand and look at him.

  I was using him, of course, but not in any way that was harmful to him. I was looking at him, but imagining myself as a passer-by and looking up to see me in there. The question is: how would you take me, sitting there in my chair, neon lit, surrounded by these swirling signs? Am I a prisoner in the midst of a sign or am 1 a spider at its centre?

  Hissao and I had a natural affinity. We had lots more to do than pose in windows and I suppose Charles was pleased to see his father get on with at least one member of his family. The truth was that we both had time on our hands.

  So while Mr Lo played his imaginary baseball and Emma occupied herself with her courtesan arts, my grandson and I explored the city of Sydney. We ate waffles at the Quay and raspberry lemonade at the Astor in Bondi. We walked miles at a time and he did not complain when his sturdy little legs were tired. He did not grumble or want drinks when there was nothing but sea water available. We visited Phoebe for dry biscuits and mouldy cheese. We went, hand in hand, round the winding paths of Taronga Park Zoo, through the deep drifts of sand at Cronulla.

  We criss-crossed the harbour in ferries and knew the tricks of all the wharfs; the treacherous current, for instance, at Long Nose Point where the water from the Parramatta rushed at the turn of the tide like water roaring out a plughole. We travelled up river past Drummoyne inside the wheelhouse of theKaringal. We crossed the heads to Manly in the South Steyne, riding the big August swell while tourists vomited their pies into the grey-slicked harbour. We took the creaking Lady Woodward to Cockatoo Island and w
ere given a special tour of the dockyard. We saw the innards of a submarine, and afterwards, at smoke-oh, I entertained the men with my story of the bagman's battle with John Oliver O'Dowd. At the time I was fascinated by my grandson's appearance – it seemed to change with the light, or the company. In any case none of the men at Cockatoo Island expressed anti-Japanese feelings towards him.

  No one at home seemed very interested in our excursions or what we did. We tried to tell them, but they had other things to think about. They had done nothing to fix up the mess I had made with my opening out and they would not let me do anything to remedy it. The RSJ still bridged the ragged arch. The sink was reconnected but there were still piles of bricks on the floor. In the middle of this mess Charles now cooked the family meals. They did not have time to hear that Hissao was a genius.

  You see, I had discovered he could draw. I do not mean like you imagine, not with little red houses and bright yellow suns and a doggie and a chookie in the corner. No, I mean draw, in perspective. He was a prodigy, but no one in the mad house had noticed.

  He was only six years old but he did a drawing of me standing in the window. Then I had him do a drawing of the gallery with all the opening out completed. Anyone could tell he had talent.

  I knew I did not have a lot of time. I knew they would take him away from me. Some days I did not shave, I was so keen to get him out of the building and on to the streets. He was only six years old, but he understood everything I showed him and when he talked and discussed what we had seen he did not mumble or lose his way in a sentence or forget what it was he was trying to say. I showed him how to look at Sydney and also how to change his walk etc., etc. Goldstein heard all this and paid me a visit to change my mind. She said it was not necessary for the education of an architect, but she knew nothing. An architect must have the ability to convince people that his schemes are worth it. The better he is the more he needs charm, enthusiasm, variable walks, accents, all the salesman's tools of trade.

  I showed him, most important of all, the sort of city it was – full of trickery and deception. If you push against it too hard you will find yourself leaning against empty air. It is never, for all its brick and concrete, quite substantial and I would not be surprised to wake one morning and find the whole thing gone, with only the grinning facade of Luna Park rising from the blue shimmer of eucalyptus bush.

  I began his education in April, on the day I marched him up the five hundred and eighty steps inside the South Pylon of the Bridge. We were both knocked up when we reached the top, but we were not doing it for pleasure. I was showing him that the pylon was a trick, that while it appeared to hold up the bridge it did no such thing.

  Then I took him down to Martin Place to show him the granite facing on the Bank of New Zealand. I was keen for him to see that the granite was only a face, a veneer, and that behind this makeup was a plain brick building, but when I dug around with my pocket knife I discovered that the granite was not granite at all but terracotta tiles, clever forgery by the Wunderlich Brothers who made their "granite" from soft dirt they quarried at Rose Hill.

  Hissao could smile and laugh. He did not appear bookish or dull, but he was the equal of the subject. I bought him a blue book with unlined pages and I had him do drawings, of buildings that lied about their height, their age, and most particularly their location. There was not one that did not pretend itself huddled in some European capital with weak sun in summer and ice in winter.

  The family looked at his drawings and were pleased, so they said, although I could see they were uneasy. But it was not the drawings that gave them their reason to take him away, but another matter.

  You see, the little fellow was the spitting image of Sonia in certain lights, and you can say it was mad, but I bought him a little blue dress and a pinny and I had him put them on. There was no danger in it. I got him to do it in the privacy of my room. Then I got him to stand up on the chair and I went down to the street to have a look.

  I arrived on the footpath. I turned, pretending the sign had just caught my eye. I looked up, and there she was. What a pretty little girl my Sonia was. She tugged at the long sleeves of her dress and then waved her hand. I was still standing there five minutes later when Charles and Phoebe Badgery appeared beside my little girl. Then they all looked down at me but it is Charles whose figure now comes most strongly to mind – I will not easily forget the beckoning finger he put my way.

  53

  I was not myself. I was not as calm as I would have wished. I knew they were within their rights, but I thought it unnecessary for them to take him away from me so soon. I know they meant to do their best for the boy, but I had not hurt him. I showed them the book of drawings, but Charles was grim and pale and he said Hissao was going to a boarding school in Melbourne.

  Boarding school. He was so young. It was painful to think of him in his little cap and uniform, by himself, six hundred miles from home.

  I went to Charles's office and begged him to reconsider. He was not nasty to me. He was very gentle. But he would not change his mind.

  There was nothing left for me but to teach myself to be an author. It was the only scheme available.

  54

  Dear Mr Badgery, she wrote, her head on one side, her pencil crooked between her finger, her handwriting so tiny and exact you would never believe she had once danced so fluidly.

  Dear Mr Badgery, she wrote in a room in Pitt Street while I lay in bed two miles away with half my brain collapsed and nurses whispering around my peripheries.

  Dear Mr Badgery, (so sarcastic)

  Dear Mr Badgery, my name is Leah Goldstein. I am forty years old and, as you have already noted, my arse has begun to drop. Sometimes I exaggerate. Sometimes I like to imagine people are better than they are. Oftentimes I prefer to overlook some little fault and make them appear more beautiful than they really are. But I am not a liar, and these notebooks of yours are – excuse me -unpardonable.

  I do not mind that you have stolen so much of what I have written. Is that what you were doing crawling around on the floor pretending to kill cockroaches or kissing my feet when I already told you they were dirty? A hundred things come to me, things that amused me at the time, touched me – and now I see they were only excuses to thieve things from me. And even then you have not done me the honour of thieving things whole but have taken a bit here, a bit there, snipped, altered, and so on. You have stolen like a barbarian, slashing a bunch of grapes from the middle of a canvas.

  If only you had said what you wanted, I would have helped you, gladly.

  And why have you been so unfair to us, to yourself most of all? Why this desire to make yourself appear such a bad man? Do you think it is sexy? One would never know from your writing that you were a man worth knowing, a man worth waiting for. If you had not been do you not imagine I would have found another? They were there, don't make me list them, decent men too, and I was not in any case the Victorian Aunt you so smugly pass me off as. You do not, of course, mention where I went in '49 when I moved out. All you can bring yourself to say is that I was set on being an independent woman with my ten quid a week. You wonder, sarcastically, if I got my leeches and frostbite while what you worry about is that I took a young man's penis into me and you have the discomfort of knowing that young man and having met him and having his gentle brown eyes and strong features taunt you. So your casual superior tone does not match those great dramas you and I suffered in the name of "love".

  It is not polite of me to write these words in your own book. But vandalism begets vandalism and, anyway, I am drunk. I am angry and it makes no difference that you are lying in hospital with tubes in your arms and down your throat or that I only found your little hoard of notebooks looking for your lost pyjamas.

  Why do you pose as the great criminal, the cynic? Why do you always make me seem such a dull goody-two-shoes? Why do you not say how we laughed and danced together and lay in each other's arms on warm beaches and smelt jasmine and honeysuckle and admi
red fish with silver scales? You were a kind man, or I imagined you were, and you would cry like a woman for someone else's pain.

  You seem to delight in making yourself seem stupid and I suppose that is your business if you want to. But why do you give no credit to anyone else? You know very well how it was you were transferred from Grafton to Rankin Downs and it was not because "I knew I had to get out of there" but because Izzie worked very hard on someone at the Department of Corrective Services and that there was a large bribe involved which your son paid. Wasn't this worth remembering?

  Likewise with Mr Lo – you are content to have him with his imaginary baseball and his somersaults. This is all true, but why do you leave out the part your son played fighting the Immigration Department through to the High Court? You know how expensive it was, and also how proud he was to do it, and how proud you were of him as well.

  But instead you choose to dwell on things like the American ownership of the firm and our dependence on it. It's all true. But it is not the whole truth, and I admit that I spoke in a derogatory way about that dependence, that I said we were pets, but when I came back in '51 we did some good work together.

  You say you had to teach yourself to be an author, which you know is a lie. But I will not dwell on that. Would you have written about the books we wrote together -Gaol Bird, particularly? Probably not, but it is just as well because you would have made them sound like smart stunts and deliberately forgotten that each one of those books had a purpose, that we tried to do some good things and were not embarrassed about it either.

  Oh, Mr Badgery, what an old heartbreak you are. You have left out everything worth loving about the emporium. You left out the pianola. And when you leave out the pianola you leave out the very possibility of joy, and suddenly there is a dreadful place, gloomy, oppressive, without music. But don't you remember the singalongs we had that went to four in the morning with Charles rocking back and forth at the pedals and Nathan Schick in his seersucker singing those songs fromThe Student Prince? You used to love it. "Come boys, let's all be gay, boys, education should be scientific play, boys." But where the pianola sat you describe some sheets of plywood leaning against a wall, so you left it out on purpose, just as you leave out Henry and George, and this is really, I am sure, because Henry bit your finger.