Illywhacker

"I want to talk to you, laddie," said Leah and made him laugh even more and thump his foot as well. He was laughing at the joy of coincidence, the magic of chance, that Leah, who had never walked up this cabbage-dank, milky-drained laneway before should not only do it now, but choose to open Gino's unwelcoming door, just at the time she wished to speak with him.

Consider though, as they scrape their plastic chairs around and order espressos, that here are two people who can watch a Chinaman's finger change into a leech without suffering any great alarm. The woman once saw a man disappear before her eyes. The young man has a face that no one can satisfactorily explain. Yet they do not greet each other like beings who might, between them, change the shape of cities, of past, of future. They do not, as they might, embrace as the children of magicians, as magicians themselves who could, if they decided to, fill the night sky with brand new neon. No, they behave like servants. They giggle like idiots because of a… coincidence.

They drank strong black Italian coffee and ate great fat Italian doughnuts with that little blob of jam always lying unpredictably just at the place where you cannot, even if you wish, save it to last.

Hissao, perhaps influenced by his surroundings, looked rosy-cheeked and Tuscan. Goldstein wore a silver medallion with her black roll-necked sweater. She wore a white leather coat, not because of the weather, which she had been unaware of as she dressed, but because of a shyness about her widening bum which no one who knew her would have guessed at.

"But why can't he ask me himself?" Hissao asked when Leah had made Charles's request. He was pleased, just the same, to be asked. His father had never before thought of him in so adult a way.

"You know he's shy."

"I'm his son."

"Then you should understand him. He's frightened you'd say no."

"But why me?"

"Oh, you Badgerys." Leah was smiling, but the irritation she expressed was real enough. "Why do you always angle for compliments? Youknow why."

Hissao coloured, but he also grinned.

"It's because I'm personable." And Leah marvelled that it did not sound in the least conceited. It was conceited, of course. It was a classic Badgery conceit. (Perhaps not a conceit, in that it was true, but it was unpleasantly complacent.) She realized, looking at this young man whose ructious christening she had attended, that she did not know him at all, only in the way an aunt might know a nephew. He was so pretty and so sure of himself that she gave him no credit for any ambitions other than selfish ones, and even while she admitted that she was prejudiced against him, she believed her prejudice well founded.

"Whoever this man is from Time," Hissao said, still smiling at her, "I'll get on with him. That's why you're asking me."

"That's about it, I suppose."

"I won't lose my temper, no matter what he says."

Leah nodded.

"This is very important to him," Hissao said, spilling sugar from the shaker into a neat pile on the table. "It is probably the most important thing in his life. It is like an exam for him, what do you think?"

Leah shrugged. She lacked the young's enthusiasm for simple explanations. She was irritated by the growing pile of sugar on the table, by Hissao's very red lips, by the dark long-lashed eyes he held her eyes with.

Don't you try and con me, you little smarty pants, she thought.

"I wish he would ask me himself, just the same."

"Oh, he will," Goldstein said, standing suddenly, and she left the little coffee lounge without even shaking hands.

That afternoon his father visited him in his rented room and, as one man speaking to another, asked his help. Hissao was very moved. He shook hands with the grating firmness that men use to express their gentler emotions.

That night he went to find the clarinettist but she had returned to Melbourne and he found himself, at half-past ten at night, in bed with her friend, a very plump young lady who liked to drink rum with clove cordial in it.