David Malouf - The Great World

The mugs were local now, boys in from the suburbs, football teams from interstate; or they were tourists like the Japs who wanted to see what it was the country produced other than wheat, wool, minerals and a few natural phenomena that were sacred sites to one part of the population and to the rest, if they thought of them at all, a kind of geological Disneyland.

The war was over but the Silver Dollar and the Texas Tavern were still there. So were the strip-joints, the skin-flick movie houses, the pinball arcades, the fast-food shops, the fortune tellers with their little velvet-covered tables and Tarot packs; and at every corner the loungers, the lookers, the dealers in this drug and that — and round behind, in an alley full of garbage, only some of it crammed into plastic bags, the bloody syringes and other evidence, with the bodies themselves on occasion. And on the streets here, in broad daylight, the walking wounded, girls in boots and tights, some of whom were no longer girls either, and some of them not quite girls, and in the park around the fountain, or in the bar at the Rex, the boys in T-shirts and parachute pants.

It was all more squalid than it used to be. The big men who lived off it were out of sight. They were, if the newspapers were right, some of Vic’s business acquaintances — they did not show up here. But their agents were about, moving their shoulders in the sun, and the whole place had a showy half-innocent, half-corrupt air, as if even the corruption might be a fraud, meant only to deceive and titillate, though that too was a deception.

There was corruption all right. Something of what had been in the heads of those boys who had been shipped down here to get free, for a few days, of terror and carnage, had seeped out and infected everything, so that the proximity of death could, if you had a nose for it, be felt more strongly here than in any other part of the city. It was cheap here, commonplace: and that too, whether they knew it or not, drew people.

The crowds came to stare for a bit at a freakshow, to put their hands, just for a moment or two, and at a price, on something forbidden or dangerous; to watch deals being done while pinballs bounced and set small lights flashing and numbers coming up; to listen to the hot-gospellers promising punishment or immediate cleansing and cure, and watch a lamb kebab turn in its own fat on a spit and boys with floury forearms, in dirty white caps behind steamy windows, knead pizza dough.

They settled at an outside table and ordered coffee. The visitors’ eyes were everywhere.

A little way down the street there was a commotion. A ragged looking young man with his head shaved up round the ears and peaks of feathery hair, in heavy boots and a T-shirt and braces and with a little black-and-white terrier at his heels, was clod-hopping about on the pavement playing a mouth-organ. The little dog danced round his heels and yipped. His girl, with her legs sprawled out in front of her on the dirty pavement, sat with her head against the wall.

Three young fellows in leather jackets were tormenting them. The little dog snapped at their heels and one after another they kicked at it. The fellow with the mouth-organ, who had fingerless mittens on his hands, was turning his head away like a child, on the principle that if he did not look at his tormentors they could not be there.

On the pavement was a cap with a few coins on it, and one of the louts leaned down now, took a handful of coins from the cap, stood turning them over in his hand, then distributed them, laughing, to his mates.

The girl swore at them, and when the young man with the mouth-organ did nothing, but kept playing, she began to pummel his legs with her fists. The youths, who had begun to walk off, stopped then and turned back to enjoy the scene, the mouth-organ player playing, the girl punching at him. They laughed. The little dog went after them, but stopped when they threatened, and stood there, barking.

The youth and the girl argued for a moment, then she rolled back against the wall again and he began to dance in his heavy boots, playing a jig now, very wild and shrill, and making little nodding and beckoning signs to the passers-by, who shied away. Finally he stopped playing altogether, leaned down, took up the cap, which he emptied into one hand and set anyhow on his head, and gave a call to the dog, which came running. The girl, scrabbling her legs about on the dirty pavement, got herself up and they moved up the street together to where Vic and the others were.

Vic saw then who it was.

He had not seen him for more than seven years. He looked battered. His hair was bleached, he had an earring. The braces and boots, but something too in the nervous set of his shoulders, made him look like a six-year-old who had suffered at the hands of a crazed or brutal adult. When he came up level with their table he stopped dead, and after a moment, grinned in an inane, rather mischievous way, and Vic saw that his front teeth had been knocked out. He came right up to them and thrust out his cap.

The hand in the fingerless mitten was filthy. The flesh of his forearm, which was bare, was like a fish’s belly, bluish-white. Behind him the girl weaved about with her head rolling and her eyes closed. The little black-and-white terrier pranced.

The visitors began to feel in their pockets for change. The Swede, who was very aristocratic and fastidious, was trying to ignore this manifestation of local squalor. He was disgusted, you could see that, and a little scared as well. He could not see what the rules were in this place where begging, he had thought, was unknown.

The Japanese were grinning. They were amused. One of them dropped a five-dollar note into the cap, and Greg raised a finger to his temple in scornful salute.

Vic had not moved. He did not feel humiliated or ashamed before these men. They meant nothing to him. What he felt was a blazing anger, and most of all at the Swede. At the clean-fingered distaste with which he dropped a coin into the cap, as if it, and the arm behind it, had materialised out of nowhere, and what might lie beyond was beneath his notice.

The boy was unabashed. He appeared, with his absent-minded grin and the childish little jerking movements he kept making with his head, to accept no responsibility at all for what was happening, and to have no resistance to it either. The moment sat so lightly upon him that he seemed weightless, and Vic had again a vision of him dancing, clod-hopping about on the pavement like a puppet, but one that was not attached to anything.

‘But he is attached to me ,’ he thought, and was struck suddenly with the impulse to stand up and say it aloud, to say it right out, just like that, with whatever dignity he could muster, but if there was none to be had, that would not matter either. To say quite openly, with a heart too bewildered any longer to take refuge in pride, what he was saying already to himself: ‘This is the thing I was in panic about, that I knew was on the way and knew I had no power to prevent. Now it is here.’

Bright sunlight played on the table-top and round the mouths of glasses, touched the corners of buildings, swam in windows, lit the highest leaves of the surrounding trees. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. It was not a dream.

He said nothing. Without looking up he began to take out his wallet, and the others watched uncomprehending as before he could open it, the beggar or busker or whatever he was reached out and with a silly little laugh plucked it from him: flipped it open, extracted two, three notes — twenties they might have been, no, fifties! — then, with another laugh, tossed it back.

There was a police station not fifty yards away. It was amazing.

Vic did not once look up. What he could not face, but could see clearly enough, was the look on the boy’s face. The boy — but he was past thirty. Defiant it would be, but in an indeterminate, rabbity way, as if he was himself being dared by a fellow inside there that he had to watch out for — the one who was high on whatever it was that made his eyes so icy-blue but inward-looking and put the smile at the corner of his mouth.