Illywhacker

But even then, as they contented themselves with the progress of a tugboat pushing its way back to Pyrmont, a man came up to them and asked them for money. His eyes were downcast and he had cardboard tied to the bottom of his shoes. He was a young man too, no more than thirty. Rosa gave him the money and he went away.

They watched him trudge around the path beside the seawall.

"I am suddenly struck," Rosa said, her smile quite collapsed, "by how evil we are." She looked down at the empty prawn shells, the broken heads, the long thin feelers and something -perhaps it was only the flies crawling on them – made her shudder.

16

Secrets sheltered within secrets, boxes within boxes, and in the heart of this secret world, in the ultimate box, sweet as sandalwood, Leah Goldstein danced, felt her heart pump, her glands secrete, savoured the sweet ache of unused muscles and knew herself – beneath the eye of her stern-faced but contented teacher – to grow beautiful.

In this final box, the stories had no moral. They were dancing stories set in country halls, flapping tents. Here Rosalind danced for miners. There Leonard bent his iron bar and swallowed fire to wild applause, while the man he had become drove his trucks through the Sydney streets unaware that, in his own house, his wife was romancing about their difficult past, turning those country halls into theatres as glittering as the fortune they had never found.

It was months before they were sprung and by then it was too late. The women, both of them, were addicted. So when Le

There was a silence then. The gramophone clicked noisily. Le

"Show me", he said to his wife, "where you keep dry matches."

"You know where," she said, not wishing to be alone with him.

"Show me," he said.

Rosa laughed, a high scratchy laugh, and followed him out of the room. Leah lifted the arm from the gramophone and wound it up again.

She could hear Le

17

Rosa gave him his matches, holding the box at arm's length, and watched him light his cigarette. He looked around for an ashtray and, obedient as any wife in a woman's magazine, she found one amongst the unwashed dishes in the sink, rinsed it beneath the tap and dried it. Ash smeared the tea-towel, and she thought, defensively, so what?

"Why?" he said. He did not sit at the table when she sat down. He leaned against the kitchen door and folded his arms across his chest. She took a dirty casserole off the chair so there would be somewhere he could sit, but he watched her silently and did not move.

"Why?" he repeated.

"Why what?"

"Why? For what use? A dancing doctor?"

Rosa shrugged.

"What would her people say to you, filling her head with rubbish?"

She would have liked to say that it was not rubbish, that it was wrong to call her new happiness rubbish.

"What would her mother and father say? She is meant to be studying. What will you feel if she fails her studies?"

"She wanted to…" Rosa began, but she could not meet her husband's eyes. She wished she had the kitchen tidier. She stacked two plates inside the greasy frying pan.

"Is that what you want?" Le

Rosa shrugged again.

"You force her to do things. She doesn't know how to say no. It is like the Passover."

"It is not like the Passover," Rosa said. "The Passover was not my idea." She was begi

"She wanted, she wanted."

"She did want."

"She wanted so much, she ran away. That's how much she wanted."

Of course the Passover had been a mistake, but who was to know it? None of them. Not until it was done. The girl had been so alight, so eager. On the eve they had swept the house together and thrown out all the bread. Leah had been full of questions. Why this? Why that? They had made the charoset together. They had boiled the eggs. Rosa had shown her how the tray was set. They had starched the white tablecloth and set the table.

On Passover she had arrived in a new dress. It was almost a real Passover. Le

It had happened at the very begi

She had found Leah weeping, hunched over and hugging herself behind the lavatory and she took the shuddering body in her arms and held her.

"What is it, little Leah? What is it?"

Leah wept and wept. "I am a fraud," she said. "I am a fake, a fake, a fake. I ca

"You are the sky," Rosa said, trying to find medicine in words. She held the girl's head to her breast. "You are the sky." She meant that big sky, that vast clear cobalt sky without history, clean, full of light, free of sombre clouds.

But she did not explain herself and neither the sky nor her arms could give Leah Goldstein any comfort.

Now, in that kitchen, her husband came to sit next to her in the vacant chair. He put the back of his dirty hand against her cheek, gently. "She is very young," he said, softly, "and you will damage her."

"All right," she said, but she promised nothing.

"You have plenty of other things to amuse you," he said, looking around the kitchen, the open cupboards, the spilt flour, the stacks of yellowing newspapers.

"Yes," she said. She found some cheese and pickles then and saw him to his truck. She admired the load of roofing lead he had bought from the old Turramurra Seminary and promised him meat and pudding for his di