Illywhacker

I had made myself into an intellectual, for nothing.

The train journey took twelve hours. It arrived at Central. I got a taxi to Bondi. New-model cars were all around me. That is what I noticed most. They gave me the feeling of riding through a dream. The weather was warm, overcast, threatening thunder. I had the money to pay for my ride, but I jumped out at the lights at the esplanade just to spite the bastard. The driver was up and after me. Jesus, I ran. I left asthmatic M. V. Anderson at the first corner. I was over a fence and across a rusty-roofed chook-shed, on to another chook-shed, down into a lane, up the stairs of a block of flats with steel-framed windows. My back hurt, my leg hurt but I didn't care. Everything I did was on the premise that I was an old man who would soon die and I will tell you I savoured the rasp of my breath, like a rat-tail file in my oesophagus. I was Herbert Badgery, alive.

I waited in the block of flats for a while and then I went off to find the Kaletskys' number. I have no recollection of the house itself. All I remember is the crumbling concrete path, the tall rank weeds, and the leadlight in the peeling front door. I broke the leadlight with my shoe and let myself in. There were stacks of newspapers around the walls.

The house sucked. It was a sour, dank, rotten place. You could smell it was unhappy and no little children had run along that wide corridor for a long long time.

In the front room, I found an old man sitting by the fire although, outside, as I mentioned, it was a summer day with big bruised anvil-headed clouds, the sky full of cold holes and giddy updraughts. I came into the centre of the room, holding my blade. It was a villainous thing, the best the youngsters at Rankin Downs could produce, made from car-number-plate metal and strong enough to saw its way into a rib cage.

This faded old fart with silver hair looked at me. He was sitting on an upholstered cushion of that type that is called, I believe, a pouffe. He leaned over and picked up the poker.

He put the poker between his teeth. I watched him. He looked at me and bent the poker into a U.

Then he spat out the blood and broken teeth into his lap.

35

I robbed Lennie Kaletsky of five quid, just to throw him off the scent. Then I wandered down to Bondi Post Office and applied for the pension. I gave my address c/o Southern Cross Hotel.

I was nervous of approaching my son, not because I thought Goldstein would be in his care, but because I now suspected the pet shop itself might be a lie, that no such glorious thing existed, or that if it did it would reveal itself to be a grimy little hole with widdling guinea-pigs in sour straw.

I paid cash money for my second taxi. I checked into the Southern Cross Hotel. First I tried to sleep, but after I had lain on my lumpy mattress for an hour I got up and went to the barber's for a shave. Then I began to approach the pet shop. I pretended to myself I was not doing it. I window-shopped up Pitt Street, looking out of the corner of my eye, scuttling sideways like a crab.

I saw the word Badgery first, high on the pediment of the building. I felt ill, as if the thing might evaporate. My back pained me and my teeth set up a throb, my body protesting about whether it was to be frail or no, and would I please make up my mind.

I cross Pitt Street, threading my way between the queues of trams, not furtively, not like a murderer, not quite like a gentleman. I am non-committal in my movements.

I approach the shop, looking down at the footpath. Outside there is a crowd of fellows, all arguing about some motor car. I excuse myself and they make room for me so I can stare up at the building.

Of course it thrills me: Badgery, as bold as brass, in Pitt Street. Badgery Pet Emporium. It is better than she described. This window is thirty feet long and is set out with a design of pretty flowers. I make out the map of Australia. There are some words, but I am more taken by the little rock-wallabies which hop to and fro across this pretty scene and one of them, in particular, eating an apple, holding it daintily between its two front paws.

The men go on with their argument about the car and I get out of their way. I cannot know that the wallaby will die of influenza in Beverly Hills and I am, of course, proud of my boy. I begin to remember things more fondly than I am used to – the day he brought the yellow-tailed cockatoo down from the tree at Bendigo School, how Izzie had his finger bitten, and how Charles sold the bird when we ran out of petrol in Albury.