Part 36 (1/2)

”Talk here,” he said. ”What can't be said?”

”All right,” said Leah Goldstein, no longer fair, no longer rational. ”All right.”

It was then she told him, in front of everyone, she could not bear his skin.

I think of a suit of scar tissue, ripped and broken, beside which agony a lacerated finger is nothing but a young man's prank.

42.

”What sustains you, Mr Badgery?” Leah asked me, rattling northwards in a hurriedly packed utility, hounded by small-town police who imagined us revolutionaries. They were waiting for us at Heathcote and Nagambie, Tatura, Kyabram and Shepparton itself. They found us entering town, or buying a pie or a few gallons of petrol. In Nagambie we got our camp set up before they were on to us, Brylcreemed Irishmen with cabbage soup on their breath. They were familiar with our names and our business which was, they informed us, the overthrow of lawful government. We packed our things and moved on, driven across the state like the legendary sparrows the Chinese eliminated by never letting land.

”What sustains you?” she asked, as I turned down one more unlabelled gravel road which promised an escape from the tyrannical coppers of the soft-fruit country.

I attempted an answer. The car crashed hard into deep potholes. I was thirsty. Dust went muddy in my throat.

”Nothing,” she said, ”sustains you, Mr Badgery. You are walking on hot macadam, quickly. All that sustains you is your filthy belt, excuse me, but it is true. You are sustained by a gadget. The gadget does not believe in anything. It does not have an idea. It is just a product. The workers who make it are serving a mindless thing.”

”It prevents dizziness.”

”Dizziness, you told me, fearfulness. The verdigris on the battery makes your leg green. Have you noticed?”

”What is 'sustain'?” Charles asked, leaning forward like a scabby sultan from the pile of bedding in the back. Leah had charcoaled a small moustache on to his face and it was Leah, now, who answered his question with such patience, at such length that I derived great benefit myself.

”What is wrong with us all,” she said when she had satisfied my son's curiosity, ”is that we are sustained by gadgets, or desires that are satisfied by gadgets, when someone like my husband,” she swallowed, ”whatever his faults,” a long pause, ”is sustained by something more substantial.”

”And what sustains you, Mrs Kaletsky?”

”Movement,” she said, displaying her white feet. ”I admit it. I am really the one dancing on hot macadam, not you: town to town, dancing, writing letters. I cannot stay still anywhere. It is not a country where you can rest. It is a black man's country: sharp stones, rocks, sticks, bull ants, flies. We can only move around it like tourists. The blackfeller can rest but we must keep moving. That is why I can't return with my husband as he wishes,” she announced, seeking rest in a simple theory, ”because I am selfish, addicted to movement.”

She was wrong about herself-what sustained her were the threads from the famous suit which she had woven into something new and personal, something finer than that sour greasy object which she had, if not misunderstood, at least imperfectly comprehended. With the threads of the suit she had woven kindness into a philosophy that was as simply practised as sending money to Rosa, picking up bagmen on the road, teaching me to read, sharing her food and being attentive to someone else's children. What she had made had little in common with Izzie's giant dream, was like one of her proverbial baby swallows beside his giant canvas of smooth grey forms, that complex ants' nest bathed in golden light.

”My husband is sustained by a better world, you see, not by fear or selfishness.”

”Yes.”

”He has probably killed his brother,” she said, as if talking to herself, ”and he thinks this is permissible. He thinks this is just. He thinks it is Correct.”

”And that is better than being sustained by a belt?”

”Probably,” she s.h.i.+vered, and tried to shut the scratched side curtains. ”The intention is better. The intention is generous, not fearful.”

”But why did he have to dob in his brother?”

”Not dob in.”

”Do the Russians have a patent out on communism? Why does he have to explain himself to them?”

”It is a science,” she said without conviction. ”And the Russians have performed the first successful experiment. You'd have to ask him, Mr Badgery,” she said bleakly. ”I don't understand either.”

”I liked him,” I said.

”People do,” she said and sat hugging her bare arms, no longer curious about the rabbits leaping from the bracken-covered paddocks we were pa.s.sing through.

”No one asked me,” me,” said the voice from the back. ”No one asked what sustains said the voice from the back. ”No one asked what sustains me.” me.”

What sustained my son, it seemed, was his new friends.h.i.+p with the c.o.c.katoo and Leah, guilty, weary, gritty-eyed, hugged him awkwardly across the back of the seat, and, with tears running down her cheeks, told him he was a good boy.

”I won't hurt her, will I, Leah?”

”No, Charles. I know you won't.”

”I won't let her down.”

”No.”

”I know what sustains Sonia,” Charles whispered, putting his arms around Leah's neck.

I turned to look at the sweet smile on my daughter's sleeping face.

”Disappearing,” said duplicitous Charles, attempting to see what reaction this would get. ”She tries all the time,” whispered the little informer. ”She says prayers to Jesus to make her disappear.”

I couldn't help smiling. I never had a high opinion of the power of the Christian G.o.d: electric crosses, holy pictures, Irish priests at country football matches.

”Jesus doesn't know the trick,” I said.

”I told her,” Charles said.

”And who should she pray to, Mr Badgery?” said Leah who had never, once, referred to my act since the Bendigo fiasco.

”You don't pray to Jesus, I promise you that.”

”But who,” she insisted, ”do you pray to?”

”Matilda,” I grinned.

She frowned.

”G.o.ddess of Fear.”