IT IS TRUE: he is indeed looking forward to being alone. In fact he hungers for solitude. But no sooner has Elizabeth Costello taken her leave than Drago Jokic, with a bulging rucksack on his shoulder, is at the door.
'Hi,' Drago greets him. 'How's the pushbike?'
'I have not done anything about the pushbike, I'm afraid. I have had other matters to attend to. What can I do for you? Would you like to come in?'
Drago comes in, drops the rucksack on the floor. The self-assured air is no longer so marked; he seems, in fact, embarrassed.
'Have you come about Wellington College?' he asks. 'Do you want to talk about that?'
The boy nods.
'Well, fire away. What is the problem?'
'My mum says you will pay my fees.'
'That's right. I will guarantee the fees for two years. You can think of it as a loan if you prefer, a long-term loan. It is not important to me how you think of it.'
'Mum told me how much it adds up to. I didn't know it was that much.'
'I have no use for the money, Drago. If we did not spend it on your education it would just sit in the bank doing nothing.'
'Yes,' says the boy doggedly, 'but why me?'
Why me? – a question on everyone's lips, it seems. He could fob Drago off with some polite form of words, but no, the boy has come in person to inquire, so he will give him an answer, the true answer or part of the true answer.
'In the time your mother has worked here I have developed a soft spot for her, Drago. She has made a huge difference to my life. She does not have an easy time of it, we both know that. I want to help where I can.'
Now the evasive air is gone. The boy is looking him straight in the eye, challenging him: Is that all you can say? Is that as far as you will go? And his answer? Yes, that is as far as I will go, for the present.
'My dad won't allow it,' says Drago.
'So I hear. To your dad it is probably a matter of pride. I can understand that. But you should remind him there is no shame in taking a loan from a friend. Because that is how I would like to be thought of: as a friend.'
Drago is shaking his head. 'It's not that. They had a fight about it, my mum and my dad.' His lip begins to quiver. Sixteen years old: still a child. 'They had a fight last night,' he goes on softly. 'Mum has walked out. She has gone to stay with Aunt Lidie.'
'And where is that? Where is Aunt Lidie?'
'Just down the road, in Elizabeth. Elizabeth North.'
'Drago,' he says, 'let us be frank with each other. You would not have come here today, I know, if you had not had troubling thoughts about your mother and myself. So let me set your mind at rest. There is nothing dishonourable going on between your mother and me. There is nothing dishonourable in my feelings for her. I honour her as much as any woman on earth.'
Nothing dishonourable. What a funny old form of words! Are they not just a fig-leaf to cover something a great deal coarser, something unsayable: I haven't been fucking your mother? If fucking is what it is all about, if fucking is what sends Miroslav Jokic into a jealous rage and brings his son to the edge of tears, why is he making speeches about honour? I haven't been fucking your mother, I haven't even solicited her: go and tell that to your father. Yet if he does not plan to solicit Marijana, if he does not aspire to fuck her, what in God's name does he plan or aspire to do, in words that make sense to a youth born in the 1980s?
'I am sorry to be a source of trouble between your parents. It is the last thing I want. Your father has quite the wrong idea about me. If he met me in person he would know better.'
'He hit her,' says Drago, and now control is starting to go – control over his voice, control over his tears, perhaps control over the motions of his heart. 'I hate him. He hit my sister too.'
'He hit Blanka?'
'No, my little sister. Blanka sides with him. She says Mum has affairs. She says Mum is having an affair with you.'
Mum has affairs. The Costello woman called her a faithful spouse. He should not waste his time trying his luck with Marijana Jokic, she said, because Marijana Jokic is a faithful spouse. Who is right, the spiteful daughter or the crazy old woman? And what an appalling picture! Miroslav, no doubt a great bear of a man, enraged and drunk, laying into Marijana with his fists, laying into his porcelain-featured daughter too, while the son stands by seething! Balkan passions! How on earth did he get involved with a Balkan, a Balkan mechanic and his mechanical duck!
'Your mother and I are not having an affair,' he repeats doggedly. 'She would not dream of it, I would not dream of it.' What a lie! I dream of it daily. 'If you don't believe me, that is the end of it, I am not going to try to persuade you. What are your plans now, your immediate plans? Will you be staying at home or with your mother?'
Drago shakes his head. 'I'm not going back. I'll crash at a mate's.' He gives the rucksack a kick. 'I brought my things.'
From the look of the rucksack he has brought a great many things.
'You can sleep here if you like. There is a spare bed in my study.'
'I don't know. I told my mate I would stay with him. Can I tell you later? Can I leave my bag here?'
'Please yourself
He stays up past midnight waiting for Drago. But it is not until the next day that Drago comes back. 'I've got a friend with me downstairs,' he announces on the entryphone. 'Can she come up?'
A friend, a girlfriend: so that is where he spent the night! 'Yes, come up.' But when he opens the door he nearly cries out with exasperation. By the side of a grubby, weary-looking Drago stands Elizabeth Costello. Will he never be rid of the woman?
He and she eye each other warily, like feuding dogs. 'Drago and I bumped into each other on Victoria Square,' she says. 'That's where he was spending the night. In the company of some new mates. Who were inducting him into the fruits of the Barossa.'
'I thought you said you were staying with a friend,' he says to Drago.
'It didn't work out. I'm OK.'
I'm OK. The boy is clearly not OK. He seems sunk in dejection, which a bout of drinking cannot have helped.
'Have you spoken to your mother?'
The boy nods.
'And?'
'I phoned her. I told her I'm not coming back.'
'I'm not asking about you, I'm asking about her. How is she?'
'She's OK.'
'Take a shower, Drago. Go on. Clean yourself up. Have a nap. Then go home. Make peace with your father. I'm sure he is sorry for what he did.'
'He's not sorry. He's never sorry.'
'May I put in a word?' says Elizabeth Costello. 'Drago's father is unlikely to be sorry as long as he is convinced he is in the right. That, at least, is how I see it. As for Marijana, whatever she may tell her son on the phone, she is certainly not OK. If she has taken refuge with her sister-in-law, that is only because she has nowhere else to go. Her sister-in-law is not sympathetic to her.'
'This is Lidie? Lidie is Jokic's sister?'
'Lidija Karadzic. Miroslav's sister, Drago's aunt. Lidie and Marijana do not get on, have never got on. In Lidie's opinion, what is being dished out to Marijana is no more than she deserves. "Where there is smoke there is fire," says Lidie. A Croatian proverb.'
'How on earth can you know these things? How do you know what Lidie says?'
The Costello woman brushes the question aside. 'To Lidie it does not matter whether in truth Marijana is having an extramarital affair. What matters is that stories are being whispered in the rather narrow circle of the Croatian community. Pay heed, Paul, don't curl your lip with disdain. Gossip, public opinion, jama as the Romans called it, makes the world go round – gossip, not truth. You tell us you are in truth not having an affair with Drago's mother because you and she have not in truth (excuse me, Drago) had sexual intercourse. But what counts as sexual intercourse nowadays? And how do we weigh a quick deed in a dark corner as against months of fevered longing? When love is the subject, how can an outside observer ever be sure of the truth of what has gone on? What we can be a great deal more sure of is that whispers of an affair between Marijana Jokic and one of her clients have been released into the air, who knows by whom. And the air is common, the air is what we breathe and live by; the more loudly the rumour is denied, the more it is in the air.
'You don't like me, Mr Rayment, you want to be rid of me, you make that quite plain. And I myself am not exactly rejoicing, I assure you, to find myself back in this hideous flat. The sooner you settle on a course of action vis-a-vis Drago's mother, or visa-vis the lady in black who called on you the other day, or even vis-a-vis Mrs McCord, whom you never mention in my hearing, but most likely vis-a-vis Drago's mother, since she seems to be the light of your life – the sooner you settle on a course of action and commit yourself to it, the sooner you and I, to our mutual relief, will be able to part. What that course of action should consist in I cannot advise, that must come from you. If I knew what came next there 'would be no need for me to be here, I could go back to my own life, which is a great deal more comfortable, I assure you, and more satisfying, than what I have to put up with here. But until you choose to act I must wait upon you. You are, as the saying has it, your own man.'
He shakes his head. 'I don't understand your meaning. You make no sense at all.'
'Of course you understand. And anyway, one does not need to understand before one takes action, not unless one is excessively philosophic. Let me remind you, there is such a thing as acting on impulse, and I would certainly urge it on you if I were only permitted. You say you are in love with Mrs Jokic, or at least when Drago is not around that is what you say. Well, do something with your love. And, by the way, a little more frankness in front of Drago would not hurt – would it, Drago?'
Drago gives a crooked smile.
'Part of a growing boy's education. Better than sending him off to that pretentious college in Canberra. Give him a glimpse of the wilder shores of love. Let him see how one navigates the passions, how one steers by the stars – the Great and Little Bear, the Archer, and so forth. The Southern Cross. He must have passions of his own by now, he is old enough for passions. You do have passions, don't you, Drago?'
Drago is silent, but the smile does not leave his lips. Something is on the go between the woman and the boy. But what?
'Let me ask you, Drago: What would you do if you were in Mr Rayment's shoes, if you were Mr Rayment?'
'What would I do?'
'Yes. Imagine: you are sixty years old and suddenly one morning you wake up head over heels in love with a woman who is not only younger than you by a quarter of a century but also married, happily married, more or less. What would you do?'
Slowly Drago shakes his head. 'That's not a fair question. If I'm sixteen, how do I know what it is like to be sixty? It's different if you're sixty – then you can remember. But… It's Mr Rayment we are talking about, right? How can I be Mr Rayment if I can't get inside him?'
They are silent, waiting for more. But that seems to be as far as the boy, who despite his hangover still has the looks of an angel of God, will venture into the hypothetical.
'Then let us rephrase the question,' says Mrs Costello. 'Some people say that love makes us youthful again. Makes the heart beat faster. Makes the juices run. Puts a lilt in our voice and a spring in our walk. Let us agree that it is so, for argument's sake, and let us look back over Mr Rayment's case. Mr Rayment has an accident as a result of which he loses a leg. He engages a nurse to look after him, and in no time has fallen in love with her. He has intimations that a miraculous, love-born reflorescence of his youth might be around the corner; he even dreams of engendering a son (yes, it is true, a little half-brother to you). But can he trust these intimations? Are they not perhaps a dotard's fantasies? So the question to ponder, given the situation as I have described it, is: What does Mr Rayment, or someone like Mr Rayment, do next? Does he blindly follow the promptings of his desire as his desire strives to bring itself to fruition; or, having weighed up the pros and cons, does he conclude that throwing himself heart and soul into a love affair with a married woman would be imprudent, and creep back into his shell?'
'I don't know. I don't know what he does. What do you think?'
'I too don't know what he does, Drago, not yet. But let us tackle the question methodically. Let us hypothesise. First, let us presume that Mr Rayment does not act. For whatever reason, he decides to rein in his passion. What consequences do you think will follow?'
'If he doesn't do anything?'
'Yes, if he sits here in his flat and does nothing.'
'Then everything will be like it was before. Boring. He will go on being like he was before.'
'Except-?'
'Except what?'
'Except that soon enough regret will start creeping in. His days will be cast over with a grey monotone. By night he will wake with a start, gnashing his teeth and muttering to himself If only, if only! Memory will eat away at him like an acid, the memory of his pusillanimity. Ah, Marijana! he will grieve. If only I had not let my Marijana get away! A man of sorrow, a shadow of himself, that is what he will become. To his dying day.'
'OK, he will regret it.'
'So what should he do in order not to die full of regret?'
He has had enough. Before Drago can make up an answer he intervenes. 'Stop dragging the boy into your games, Elizabeth. And stop talking about me as if I were not in the room. How I conduct my life is my own business, it is not for strangers to say.'
'Strangers?' says Elizabeth Costello, raising an eyebrow.
'Yes, strangers. You in particular. You are a stranger to me, one on whom I wish I had never laid eyes.'
'Likewise, Paul, likewise. How you and I became coupled God alone knows, for we were certainly not meant for each other. But here we are. You want to be with Marijana but are saddled with me instead. I would prefer a more interesting subject but am saddled with you, the one-legged man who cannot make up his mind. A right mess, wouldn't you agree, Drago? Come on, help us, advise us. What should we do?'
'I reckon you should split up. If you don't like each other. Say goodbye.'
'And Paul and your mother? Should they split up too?'
'I don't know about Mr Rayment. But how come no one asks my mother what she wants? Maybe she wishes she had never taken a job with Mr Rayment. I don't know. Maybe she just wants everything to be like it was before, when we were… a family.'
'So you are an enemy of passion, extra-marital passion.'
'No, I didn't say that. I am not like you say, an enemy of passion. But-'
'But your mother is a good-looking woman. When she goes out, glances get cast at her, feelings get felt towards her, desire buds in the stranger's heart, and before you can say Jiminy Cricket unforeseen passions have sprung up that you have to contend with. Consider the situation from your mother's viewpoint. Easy enough to resist these passion-filled strangers once they have declared themselves, but less easy to ignore them. For that you need ice in your veins. Given the fact of strange men and their desires, how would you like your mother to behave? Shut herself away at home? Wear a veil?'
Drago gives a strange, barking laugh of delight. 'No, but maybe she doesn't feel like having an affair' – he snorts as he utters the phrase, as though it belonged to some curious, probably barbarian, foreign tongue – 'with every man that gives her – you know – the eye. That is why I say, why does no one ask her?'
'I would ask her right now if I could,' says Elizabeth Costello. 'But she is not available. She is not on stage, so to speak. We can only guess. But giving in and having an affair with a sixty-year-old man whom she is contracted to see six times a week, come rain or hail or snow, is, I would expect, pretty far from her thoughts. What would you say, Paul?'
'Far from her thoughts indeed. As far as far could be.'
'So there we are. We are all unhappy, it seems. You are unhappy, Drago, because the ructions at home have forced you to pitch your tent on Victoria Square among the winos. Your mother is unhappy because she must take shelter among relatives who disapprove of her. Your father is unhappy because he thinks people are laughing at him. Paul here is unhappy because unhappiness is second nature to him but more particularly because he has not the faintest idea of how to bring about his heart's desire. And I am unhappy because nothing is happening. Four people in four corners, moping, like tramps in Beckett, and myself in the middle, wasting time, being wasted by time.'
They are silent, all of them. Being wasted by time: it is a plea of a kind that the woman is uttering. Why then is he so signally unmoved?
'Mrs Costello,' he says, 'please open your ears to what I am saying. What is going on between myself and Drago's family is none of your business. You do not belong here. This is not your place, not your sphere. I feel for Marijana. I feel for Drago, in a different way, and for his sisters too. I can even feel for Drago's father. But I cannot feel for you. None of us is able to feel for you. You are the one outsider among us. Your involvement, however well-meaning it may be, does not help us, merely confuses us. Can you understand that? Can I not persuade you to leave us alone to work out our own salvation in our own way?'
There is a long, uncomfortable silence. 'I've got to go,' says Drago.
'No,' he says. 'You may not go back to the park, if that is what you have in mind. I don't approve. It is dangerous; your parents would be horrified if they knew. Let me give you a key. There is food in the fridge, there is a bed in my study. You can come and go as you wish. Within reason.'
Drago seems about to say something, then changes his mind. 'Thanks,' he says.
'And me?' says Elizabeth Costello. 'Am I to be turned out of doors to suffer the heat of the sun and the furious winter's raging, while young Drago is lodged like a prince?'
'You are a grown woman. You can look after yourself