Illywhacker

"Always this one did things," Rosa whispered. "Steel wool in with his brother's Weetbix. You understand? The same shape. He tried to kill his brother. Now his brother is in Russia," she raised her voice, "who knows what has happened to him, but this one is only worrying about itself. He is safe and sound. His wife sends him money. He does not need to work. So rich. All around him, people worry. He is a king. His father makes sandwiches to sell. See: what is the son doing? He holds out his hands."

"Leave him alone, Rosa," Lenny said. "You know why he is upset."

"He is expelled. From what? From nothing."

"Why do you pick on him? Leave him alone. Talk to your chook. Gossip with it." Then, more quietly, he told his son: "Take a walk. I'll finish these. Maybe you meet the postie."

Rosa went back to her conference with Dora who had now produced a large volume, like a telephone book, that explained the significance of the chook's choice of colours.

"He won't give me my mail," Izzie told his father. "He says it must go into the letterbox. If I stand at the gate and hold out my hand, he won't give it to me. 'How do I know this is your letterbox?' He is a little bureaucrat exercising his power."

"You have much pain," Dora was telling Rosa, "much pain with children."

"Sixteen stitches. This one. I was torn."

"Oh shit," said Izzie and walked out. Rosa shrugged. Lenny put the tops on the sandwiches he would try to sell at Circular Quay. Izzie waited under the eaves of the house until he saw the postman drop two envelopes into the small tin letterbox. Neither of them was airmail and he approached them with no expectations. although he did not open it immediately. The second was, in fact, the letter he had waited for so long. Its stamp was perforated, not cut, and it bore a profile of an English monarch, but it was from the comrades in Sussex Street and it invited him to come and resolve certain matters in respect of his membership.

His first feelings were light and joyful, but by the time he had walked six miles in light drizzle he was cold and slightly bitter. He rehearsed a small speech he was to make to the comrades. He amended it, forgot it, and made another one. He looked forward to their apology.

And yet when he was in those little rooms on the fourth floor above Sussex Street it became obvious that there would be no resolution, no discussion, no apology. Instead they asked him to write a pamphlet on Japanese militarism and said, straight-faced, that the Unemployed Workers' Union needed someone to train speakers for the field.

He should have been happy. He wished to be happy. He looked at these two men and the greying woman whom he had respected and wished to emulate and found they could only meet his eyes with difficulty. It was not because there had been a mistake, but because they did not know what the mistake was. They were decent people who were embarrassed to be found acting contrary to their principles. He tried not to despise them.

His suit was soaked through and he began to shiver. The ink of the sentences in Leah's letter began to run, blurring the outlines of the letters and giving them a soft blue woolly character out of keeping with their meaning.

39

We lay in our truck, us Badgerys. The children kicked at me with their feet, and put their elbows in my eye.

"Do you love Izzie?" Sonia asked me.

"I don't know, Sonny. I haven't met him."

"Leah loves Izzie."

"Yes, I know."

"Izzie is Leah's husband," said Charles. "They were married, but not in church. Izzie is a communist. He doesn't believe in God."

"I know," Sonia said. "Do you love Izzie, Charlie?"

"No," said Charles. "And I want him to go away."

I lay on my stomach and looked through a chink in the back door. The hessian hut glowed yellow with the light of a kero lamp. Leah, dressed in white, sat up in bed, writing. The whole hut was her veil. Charles farted. Sonia giggled. I was a fool again, in love.

40

Izzie stood there, for some minutes, just inside the door. His wife was writing, jabbing impatiently at the paper; just so must she have constructed the cloudy outlines of his jealous dreams. His eyes were bloodshot with travel; they took in the dirt floor, the small objects on the packing case beside the bed, a tiny black-and-white photograph pinned to the hessian wall. The photograph reassured him. It had been taken during the party for the Silly Friends.

She looked up and smiled. She looked neither young nor old to him, merely very beautiful.

He was as frail as a sparrow. His face was very white, his lips very red. He wore his shiny dark suit with books protruding from the jacket pockets.

"You found us?"

"A good map, Goldstein," and although he grinned he was already irritable because he felt so shy. He shoved at one of the bush-poles that supported the roof. He pushed at it angrily.

Leah stopped herself asking him not to shake the pole. She patted the bed and when he sat – reluctantly she thought – took his hand in hers.