THERE IS A car parked across the street from his flat, a weathered red Commodore station-wagon. It has been there since noon. The figure behind the wheel is indistinct, but it can only be Miroslav Jokic. What is less certain is what Miroslav is up to. Is he spying on his wife? Is he trying to intimidate the guilty couple?
On his crutches it takes him a full ten minutes to navigate the stairs and entranceway, and almost as long to cross the street. As he approaches the car, the man inside winds down the window and lets out a cloud of stale cigarette smoke.
'Mr Jokic?' he says.
Jokic is not the burly, shambling creature he had imagined. On the contrary, he is tall and wiry, with a dark, narrow face and an aquiline nose.
'I am Paul Rayment. Can we talk? Can I buy you a beer? There is a pub just around the corner.'
Jokic gets out of the car. He is wearing work boots, blue jeans, a black T-shirt, a black leather jacket. His hips are so narrow that he barely seems to have buttocks. A body like a whip, he thinks. Unwilled, a vision comes to him of that body atop Marijana, covering her, pressing itself into her.
Hopping as fast as he can, he leads the way.
The pub is half empty. He slides into a booth and Jokic, tight-lipped, follows. He glances at Jokic's hands. Long fingers with tufts of black hair, clipped fingernails. Hair at his collar too. Does Marijana like all that hair, that bear's pelt?
Of confrontations with aggrieved husbands he has no experience to call on. Is he supposed to feel pity for the man? He feels none.
'May I come to the point? You want to know why I am offering to help with your son's education. I am not a wealthy man, Mr Jokic, but I am comfortably off and I have no children. I offered your son a loan because I would like to see him do well. I am impressed with Drago. He shows great promise. As for the college he has chosen, I have not heard of it before, but he tells me it has a good reputation and I accept that.
'I am sorry my offer has caused an upset in your household. I should have spoken to you as well as to your wife, I now realise.
'Regarding your wife, let me simply say that my relations with her have always been correct.' He hesitates. The man's eyes are like gun-muzzles trained on him. He returns the gaze as directly as he can. 'I do not get involved with women, Mr Jokic, not any more. That part of my life is behind me. If I still practise love, I practise it in a different way. When you know me better you will understand.'
Is he lying? He might be, but it does not feel that way. Despite her calves, which he has not forgotten, despite her breasts, which he would give anything to bury his face in, he loves Marijana at this moment with a pure and benevolent heart, as God must love her; it is preposterous that he should be hated in return, by this man or by anyone else.
'I and my wife are married since '82,' says Jokic. A deep voice, a bear's voice, at least he has that. 'Eighteen years. She was student in Academy Fine Arts Dubrovnik when I meet her. First I was in federal army, then I get a job in Academy, as welder. Welder and craftsman, but mostly welder. That's where we meet. Then we go to Germany, we work hard, we save our money, live poor – you know what I mean? – and apply to come to Australia. My sister too. Four together. Drago still a kid then. First we live in Melbourne, I work in welding shop. Then I go to Coober Pedy with some mates, try our luck with opals. You know Coober Pedy?'
'I know Coober Pedy.'
'Very hot place. Later on Marijana come. Three years we stay in Coober Pedy. Very hard for a woman. Opals, you got to be lucky. Me – no luck, you know what I mean? But my mates, they help me, we help each other.'
'Yes.'
'Very hard for a woman with children. So then I get a job with Holden and we come to Elizabeth. Good job, nice house.' He sets down his empty glass. Silence. End of recital. That's my story, he seems to be saying, as if laying his cards out on the table. Beat that, Mr Coniston Terrace!
'Do you happen to know a woman named Elizabeth Costello, an elderly woman, a professional writer?'
Jokic shakes his head.
'Because she seems to know you. She told me some of the same history you have just been telling me – how you and Marijana met, what the two of you did in Dubrovnik, and so forth. Nothing about Melbourne or Coober Pedy. Anyway, Elizabeth Costello is at work on a new book, and seems to be using me in it as a character, so to speak. Her interest in me has led her to an interest in Marijana and in you. Evidently she has been ferreting around in your past.'
Jokic waits for him to complete the paragraph, but he cannot as yet, it would sound too preposterous. What he hesitates to say is: This imbroglio in which you and I are caught is Elizabeth Costello's doing. If you want to blame anyone, blame her. She is behind it all. Elizabeth Costello is a mischief-maker.
'If you don't mind my saying so,' he continues instead, 'you should make your peace with Marijana. Also, for Drago's sake, please accept the loan. Drago has set his heart on Wellington College, anyone can see that. We can make the loan as formal or informal as you like. There can be papers or we can dispense with papers, it makes no difference to me.'
He ought at this point to offer Jokic another beer. He ought to make it as easy as possible for Jokic to swallow his pride, to become, however reluctantly, a chum. But he does not. He has said enough; now it is Jokic's turn – Jokic's turn to pay for drinks, Jokic's turn to have his say. After which, he hopes, this meeting, this scene, to which he has lent himself so reluctantly, will be over with. Though this man has fathered on Marijana two angelic children, perhaps even three, he can find in himself no curiosity about him. His interest is in Marijana: Marijana and whatever of Marijana has found its way into her children. Is his interest in Marijana an interested or a disinterested interest? Is the God with whose love for Marijana he compares his own an interested or a disinterested God? He does not know. The question is too abstract for his present mood. Jokic breaks into his thoughts. 'You have nice apartment.'
A question? A statement? It must be a question, since Jokic has never been into the flat. He nods.
'Comfortable. You say you are comfortable. You are comfortable in your apartment.'
'Comfortably off, that's what I said. It has nothing to do with my apartment. "Comfortably off" is an expression used by people who find money embarrassing to talk about. In my case it means that I have a comfortable income. It means that I have sufficient for my needs and some left over. I can give to charity if I choose, or I can do a good deed like sending your son to college.'
'My son go to a fancy college, he get fancy friends, he want all kind of fancy things, you know what I mean?'
'Yes. A fancy college might teach him to look down on his origins. I cannot deny that. Do not mistake me, Mr Jokic, I am not an enthusiast of fancy colleges. It was not I who came up with the name of Wellington. But if that is where Drago wants to go, I will back him. My guess is that Wellington is not as fancy as it pretends to be. A truly fancy college does not need to advertise.'
Jokic ponders. 'Maybe,' he says, 'maybe we can make a trust fund for Drago. Then it is not so, you know, personal like.'
A trust fund? Not a bad idea, though an expensive solution to a simple problem. But what does this refugee from state socialism know about trust funds?
'We could think about that,' he says. 'If you wanted to be very legal, very legally watertight. We could speak to a solicitor.'
'Or the bank,' says Jokic. 'We can make an account for Drago, trust account. You can put money in a trust account. Then it is safe. In case… you know.'
In case of what? In case he, Paul Rayment, should change his mind, leaving Drago in the lurch? In case he should die? In case he should fall out of love with Miroslav Jokic's wife?
'Yes, we can do that,' he says, though with growing misgiving. Is the fiction of a trust fund all that will be needed to salve Jokic's pride?
'And Marijana.'
'Yes, Marijana. What do you want to say about Marijana?'
'Marijana is tired all the time, from the nursing. Two jobs she's got, two assignments, you and this other old lady, Mrs Aiello. Not proper nursing, professional like, more housework. You add it up, fifty hours a week, sixty hours, and the driving, every day driving. A cultured person. It's not good, this housework, for a cultured person. She come home tired all the time. So we think, maybe she give up nursing, find another kind of work.'
'I am sorry. I didn't realise Marijana had two jobs. She didn't mention a second job to me.'
Jokic is gazing at him pointedly. Is there something he is failing to grasp?
'I will miss her if she moves on,' he says. 'She is a very capable woman.'
'Yes,' says Jokic. 'Me, I'm just mechanic, you know. Mechanic is nothing, not in Croatia, not in Australia. But Marijana is cultured person. Diploma in restoration – she tell you that? No restoration work in Australia, but still. In Munno Para, who she can talk to? OK, Drago is interested in lot of things, she can talk to him. Then she meet Mr Rayment.'
'My own conversations with Marijana have been limited,' he replies cautiously. 'Like the rest of my relationship with her. Very limited. I found out about her background in art only recently, from Mrs Costello, the woman I mentioned.'
Slowly it is beginning to dawn on him why Jokic, having thrashed his wife and driven her from their home, is prepared to take a day off from work and spend it sitting in a car on Coniston Terrace. Jokic must believe that his wife, whether or not she has fallen in the absolute sense, is in the process of being lured from hearth and home by a client with plenty of money and an easy familiarity with the world of art and artists; also that the elegant environment of Coniston Terrace is teaching her to look down on working-class Munno. Jokic is making an appeal, an appeal to his better nature. And if that appeal fails – what? Is Jokic planning to thrash him too?
Look at me, your hated rival! he would like to protest. You still have the limbs that God gave you, while I have this obscene monstrosity to drag around with me! Half the time I pee, I pee on the floor! I could not seduce your wife away from you if I tried, not in any sense of the word!
Yet at the same moment memory throws up again the image of Marijana stretching to dust the top shelves, Marijana with her strong, shapely legs. If his love for Marijana is indeed pure, why did it wait to take up residence in his heart until the instant she flashed him her legs? Why does love, even such love as he claims to practise, need the spectacle of beauty to bring it to life? What, in the abstract, do shapely legs have to do with love, or for that matter with desire? Or is that just the nature of nature, about which one does not ask questions? How does love work among the animals? Among foxes? Among spiders? Are there such things as shapely legs among lady spiders, and does their attractive force puzzle the male spider even as it draws him in? He wonders whether Jokic has an opinion on the subject. But he is certainly not going to ask. He has had enough of Jokic for one day, and Jokic, he suspects, has had enough of him.
'Will you have another beer?' he asks, pro forma.
'No, I must go.'
Jokic must go. He must go. Where must they go, the two of them? The one, to an empty bed in Munno Para; the other, to an empty bed on Coniston Terrace, where he can lie awake all night, if he likes, listening to the ticking of the clock from the living-room. They might as well set up house together. Mutt and Jeff.