Illywhacker

Mr Lo bowed to Charles, bowed as he had not bowed except to Grandfather. Then he spoke a high-flown poem, badly remembered, which his accomplished sister had often recited before visitors. (The poem was in Mandarin. Charles Badgery did not notice the mistakes.) Finally he turned five somersaults and would have done a sixth except that he was out of practice and feared a disgrace.

"Please," said Mr Lo, suppressing his greedy lungs.

Charles was considering the thing that he never considered, the thing that he could not even admit that he thought about, but which had lacerated him since that day in 1943 when he emerged from the damp little church in George Street and discovered – it was his outraged mother who brought it to his attention – that his son was not named Michael, as he had thought, but Hissao. Now, six years later, he compared, point by point, his son with the man in the cage. He saw, quickly, that the visitor bore no resemblance to his son. His eyes were round, not almond-shaped at all, and they were sunken into shadows.

Seeing the proprietor's thoughtful face, Mr Lo realized that his tenure was in question. He began to sing a small sad song he had learned from his grandmother. Charles, hearing the sadness in the song, was at once moved and disgusted. He walked around the gallery rail but he would not look at the human being performing like a monkey in a cage.

He had ordered that the door of this particular cage be made big, like a normal door to a normal room, so when he decided to enter, he entered easily enough. Still, he found it difficult to battle the nimble Mr Lo who clambered up to the barred roof and hung on.

"Please," said Charles, "I cannot have you here."

While this all took place on the north side, Leah, on the south side, extracted Mr Lo's real story from Emma and – while Charles stayed inside the cage and Mr Lo hung on to the ceiling with aching arms -Leah came to the bars to explain the situation to the proprietor. Mr Lo, she said, wished to remain in Australia. The Australian government, having regard for the colour of Mr Lo's skin and the shape of his eyes, did not wish him to stay. They had given him the same iniquitous dictation test that they had given Egon Kirsch, although they had done it in Dutch not Gaelic, and they did not wish him to stay. They were wrong. Mr Lo was right.

This opinion had a confusing effect on Charles. First he had an excessive respect for the law which he must – there is no other explanation – have picked up from the Rawleigh's man who, having failed to abort him, had nursed him instead.

Second, he had immense respect for Leah Goldstein's firm opinions.

Everyone, he knew, was watching him. Leah was saying that Mr Lo shoud be harboured. His wife was edging around the rail towards him. There was a man from the Customs Department – a government officer – waiting in his office downstairs, "making inquiries" about certain activities and although he had nothing to hide he was fearful about it and was now made doubly fearful by this illegal activity being conducted above the government official's head. He did not want trouble. He began to sweat. He could feel his deodorized armpits were sweating.

"Perhaps", said Mr Lo, who felt himself unable to hang on much longer, "you think I want money. No money," Mr Lo said, even though he was frightened at what he had got himself involved with. He was beyond thinking. If only he could have a night's sleep without worrying about arrest.

"No," Charles said.

Mr Lo dropped wearily to the floor and examined the painful impressions the bars had made on his hands. He had soft hands. He was proud of them, but now his hands would become rough and callused, his long nail torn, and it was just as the fortuneteller had said – "Bad fortune, much hardship, great wealth follows."

It was cramped in the cage. Mr Lo was fond of garlic. Charles was not and so – although he did not wish to – he retreated from the cage and stood, with Leah, Emma and Hissao, looking in.

Mr Lo, although weary, managed a somersault.

"Let him stay," Emma said. It was a murmur, of course, but her husband knew what it meant. He turned and looked at his wife's eyes and thought, "Do you love me?"

For answer she released the strand of pearls that she had been clutching, and touched his sleeve, a habit she had, which, for all its restraint – no skin touched, little pressure applied – signified her most tender moods.

"It's not decent," Charles said, and his tone was exactly the same one he used when he found her stroking the goanna in such a way – no one else could do it – that its pale hemipenes emerged pale and spiky from their sheaths. He said it as if he was waiting, passively, to be contradicted, to be told it was perfectly decent.

"There's no privacy," he begged. "What if he raped you?"

"You lock me in," said Mr Lo. "Please." He shut the door and made a passable imitation of a padlock with his soft and slender hands.