Illywhacker

Eighteen is an age that gives a false impression of life, as if every day will bring with it similar surprises. The next day was only to confirm this. Hissao still had half a reefer, a gift from the departed clarinettist. He smoked it looking at himself in the mirror of his wardrobe. The room itself was very small and gave no indication of being the room of an architecture student. There was no hint, no sketch or notebook, no paperback or snapshot, to suggest the importance of the work he would later undertake: the building that might yet – who knows – change the history of his country. Neither would you guess, from the evidence presented by either the room or its occupant, at the fierce nationalism that fuelled him. This was not a boy who would be waylaid by Henry Ford or be seduced by the beauties of cockatoos or the soft hands of Nathan Schick. He had an education. There was money behind him. He did not need to rush out and make a quid and he had an ambition that he had nurtured within him as long as he could remember.

The room will reveal no secrets to you, but I will tell you, anyway, what was in it. It had a window on to a laneway, a very narrow bed beneath the window, a dressing table opposite, and a large walnut wardrobe with a mirror, this last on the wall between bed and dressing table. There was a mirror on the dresser too, but it was the mirror on the door of the walnut wardrobe he looked into as he smoked the reefer. His inquiry was not narcissistic but scientific – he wished to see what the drug did to his perceptions now that he had the opportunity to concentrate on something more neutral than the smooth texture and unexpected perfumes of a woman's skin. He was disappointed to find that nothing altered very much.

"We", he told the mirror, "are going to fix this bastard right up."

He was referring, of course, to the gentleman employed by Henry Luce and you will note, at once, the slightly unpleasant and combative tone of the salesman but there is also so much glee contained in it, an anticipation of the joys of a difficult battle, that even a person of fine scruples, sensitive to the vulgarity of the salesman type (such as yourself, Professor) need not be offended but rather challenged by the contradiction contained herein, ie. that this crass aggression can co-exist with an ability to draw very fine moral distinctions and to see, very objectively, the damage his father's business was doing to the fauna of the country he loved and that, further – like real estate for instance – it was one of those great Australian enterprises that generate wealth while making nothing new.

When Hissao set out to charm the fellow from Time he did it because he loved his naive father and wanted to protect him from hurt. But he did not approve of the pet shop and although he imagined his father as an innocent he thought him a very dangerous innocent. He did not extend the same generosity towards his two elder brothers who were embarrassed by the pet shop for other reasons but who took money, when their father offered it, to help buy suburban houses.

So the boy was acting in bad faith? Perhaps. But he was also an optimist. He knew that the signs in the sky of this city were made only from gas and glass. He knew gas and glass could be broken, the gas set free, the glass bent into other shapes and that even the city itself was something imagined by men and women, and if it could be imagined into one form, it could be imagined into another.

He arrived by taxi outside the emporium at eight thirty to find the footpath had already been swept and hosed. This was a warm morning and the water on the footpath was evaporating. It felt humid, luxurious, grubby, tropical. The window was full of little firetails and the background had been painted with the dun-khaki that is the firetail's dominant colour so that as the little birds flew to and fro their bodies disappeared and only their ember-red tails showed, like flying sparks. This was Van Kraligan's work, not his father's. Hissao checked his reflection in the window. He had worn a conservative suit to make his father feel confident and relaxed, but the bow tie was a secret code addressed only to himself and to those few who might read it – he had stolen it, of course, from Corbusier.

The door was unlocked for the staff. Hissao, however, did not enter immediately but crossed Pitt Street and stood amongst the crowds waiting for the Woolworth's sale. He looked across at Badgery's Pet Emporium, at the neon-signed parrots circling his grandfather's brightly lit window.

His grandfather, Hissao thought, was dying. So he was surprised to see him there, sitting bolt upright in his chair, like the captain on the bridge. He was dressed in a grey linen suit and a panama hat. The elastic of his tie was limp and showing at the edges of the knot, but his eyes were that splendid violet colour they would always show at the beginning of the day. Hissao, without knowing why, shivered.