Illywhacker

Hissao put the car into first gear, that insouciant click and clack, made a hand signal (it was the years before indicators became legal) and pulled out into the traffic of Pitt Street as if he was doing nothing more than driving to the corner shop for aSporting Globe. No one saw, no one but me. Goldstein was on her way to have lunch with Doodles Casey, her florid-faced publisher. He was my publisher too, but he thought my brain gone to porridge. Once he visited me in hospital where he wiped my nose; I have never forgiven him, the charlatan.

But Casey is a man of no importance, born for deletion; it is Charles and Hissao we are here to spy on as they cross Darling Harbour on the old Pyrmont Bridge.

They were quiet as they entered the dead-fish stench that hangs beneath the old incinerator at Pyrmont. They said not a word until they reached the hotel that is now known as Wattsies but was, in those days, the plain White Bay Hotel.

"How do I seem to you?" Charles asked.

"How do you mean?"

"How do I seem?"

It was an impossible question, and it was expressed in an unusual voice, light, with a reedy vibrato. Hissao put the car into gear when the lights went green.

"Have you seen my bottom?" Charles asked.

"What?"

"Have you", Charles sat sideways in his seat to look at his embarrassed son, "seen my bottom, my bum?"

Hissao smiled but it was not the charming smile of the urbane young man who had discussed the pet business with Time magazine. His eyes showed his embarrassment and his smile hurt his face. "Not for a while," he said.

"Was it wrinkled?"

"Oh, Dad! Please."

"Was it?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Yes," said Charles, with some bitterness, and then faced the front. They drove on in a silence that Hissao found almost unbearable. They crossed that bridge – I forget its name – the ugly steel box that lay, on that day, across joyless wind-whipped water the colour of a battleship.

"You shouldn't have told me to shut up."

"I'm sorry."

"I bought you your own car. I pay for your university fees, I give you money to live on. I don't ask for much from you. (Keep going up Victoria Road.) I never thought I'd ever hear you tell me to shut up."

Hissao had to change lanes to stay in Victoria Road. He tried to explain, at the same time, why it was necessary to stop his father's comments on Herr Bloom but Charles was not really listening. "Anyway," Hissao said, "he liked you."

"He thought I was a crook."

"No, really. He didn't."

"Thought I was a crook. Maybe I am a crook. Do you think I'm a crook?"

"No."

"Well, he thought I was a crook. All he saw was this big building. He thought I was a moneybags but do you know what I see when I look at that building, all those people employed, all those families fed, all those beautiful pets being shipped away all over the world? Do you know what I think?"

Hissao knew the answer. He had heard it before.

"I think it's a bloody miracle."

They kept driving along Victoria Road while Charles told the story of the business, right from the day when Emma's father had said she had a bum like a horse. He went through his first meeting with a bank manager, the guarantee by Lenny Kaletsky. He could remember every bird he had brought down from Jeparit, and the price of every animal, fish, bird and reptile he had ever sold. He would recall a year in his memory because it was the year that an important specimen had died or another incubated.

At Silverwater Road he had Hissao turn left and they proceeded down through that industrial wasteland across the polluted river and on towards the Parramatta Road.

"There never was a day", Charles said, "when I did not want to be the best at what I did. Do you believe me?"

"Yes, Dad, I do."

"When I was a little nipper no one paid attention to Australian birds and animals. It's all changed now. Me and Nathan, we did that."

"That's terrific," Hissao said and his father looked at him in a way that made him ashamed of the ineptitude of his response.

"I never meant anyone any harm," his father said.

It was a grey overcast day and a low blanket of cloud sat over the industrial puddle-dotted wastes of Silverwater.

"Nowadays you can travel all over the world and find Badgery's birds in all the big collections, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Tokyo."

Hissao, of course, knew all this. He had heard it many times before. His father never tired of repeating the names of cities he had never been to.

"Holland," said Charles, crossing his calf across his heavy thigh. "France, Tokyo."

"You said Tokyo."

"Yes," said Charles. "Turn right."

They drove out to Parramatta in heavy silence. When they arrived at Church Street Charles had him turn right again and it occurred to Hissao that his father was not thinking about where they were going.

"You're intelligent," Charles said as they passed the last of the Parramatta shops. "You can spell, you can write, you've got an education. Do you think there's a God?"

"No, I guess not."

"No," said Charles. "I suppose there isn't."

"Will I go back into Victoria Road?"

"Yes. We'll go to the tip at Ryde."