Illywhacker

But certain parts of the town are very clear to me: the bridge over which I walked to and fro, the graceless metal trough which allows few views of the mighty meandering river beneath.

It was there, on that echoing bridge, I decided to steal The Book of Dragons. Dusk went; dark came. I wandered the streets, past houses where families were eating. I waited under trees, hovered by corner stores, trod the purple carpet of jacaranda petals. Cicadas trilled. The air had a sweet slightly mouldy smell. I went up to the General Motors dealer but there was nothing to see. The doors of his shed were rolled shut and padlocked. I took my bicycle from the boarding house and went up to the highway to cycle. I was nearly killed by an Arnott's Biscuit truck. I came back, once more, across that dog-legged bridge.

I crept down through the tall grasses on the steep bank of the Clarence and approached the providore from the back. The Goon family were all downstairs, sitting in their kitchen. The daughter was doing her homework. Two sons were crouching over the wireless. Such signs of domesticity cut across my heart and I thought of you, Leah, of your nipple.

There were empty molasses drums at the back. Mosquitoes bred in their rusty lids. I climbed up on one and hoisted myself up to the catwalk that led to the old man's room.

My shoes were well shone and supple of sole; it was not they that squeaked but the filthy Chinaman's floor. I fiddled and fumbled on his desk. The mugs of tea were still there. So was Goon Tse Ying. I could hear him breathing. I knocked the pen -I had observed it earlier, can see it still, black with a thin gold band like a wedding ring – and it rolled and dropped, a little bomb, on to the floor.

He spoke, whispered, reed-thin, my insulting Chinese name.

I had The Book of Dragons.

I had great hopes for that book, and he, obviously, the same. He was on me like a spider, a hairless huntsman dropping, flop, off the ceiling, stinking of garlic. When you do battle with a master magician you do not enter the quest lightly. You know what he can do, how easily he can grease from your grasp, oil away, and take his information with him. I held him round the throat with both hands. The book dropped to the floor. You would not think a chap would get loose from a grip like that, my fingers interlocked like a golfer with a club, but he escaped me, hissing. I grabbed for the book and found it. His hand was at it too. There was, as they say, a struggle.

A moment came when I realized Goon Tse Ying was no longer there. I held The Book of Dragons in one hand, his bleeding finger in the other.

60

If I had not laughed out loud, I would never have gone to court and never known that musty labyrinth known as Grafton Gaol. When I entered my room in the boarding house I was not expecting laughter. I had walked the passage shoeless, had not stopped on the way for so much as a pee or a flush, had unlocked my door quietly with The Book of Dragons tucked inside my Fair Isle jumper.

Inside my room, the door locked, a chair under the knob, I sat down on the bed to study. My hands could not hold it still. I stood and laid the volume on the dresser.

On each left-hand page were Chinese characters. On each right-hand page were words in English.

A white ant hatch erupted in the night and the winged creatures pushed their way through the insect wire and flooded hungrily around the light, abandoning their wings and crawling around the shining white reflecting surfaces of my sweating face.

I approached the book no less desperately: "It is my secrets of business which I fear you, my sons, have not yet understood. Therefore I write them down for you. Please attend.

" 1 In purchasing stock, first of all, consider the demand. Do not stock a large quantity, firstly for fear of moths and secondly for fear of deterioration. If the goods are in demand at profitable prices it becomes an exception. In an exceedingly cheap article there is no harm to buy a large quantity."

The English made no more sense to me than the Chinese characters. I felt myself confronted with a code I could not decipher.

"2 Always serve your customers with courtesy and patience.

Show patiently as many samples as you can. " 3 In wrapping up articles for customers make sure there is no mistake blah blah blah.

"4 Where there are too many customers to enable you to attend to them all at the same time, then ask courteously…" (the rest obscured by a brown sticky fluid). "5 When a customer becomes lax with his account blah blah blah.

"6 At closing time lock and guard against fires." By now I was giggling. Some fool was hammering against the wall. It was my giggling, of course, that brought me undone. I could have cycled back to Nambucca. There was a splendid widow there, the owner of a shell shop and a pair of gooey romantic eyes.

" 7 In case of heavy rains. Ha-ha-ha. Loss by flood is unthinkable.