A Woman of the Inner Sea (41 page)

She walks out toward the Jaguar with her hand in her open bag and around the pistol. She wants to resemble a woman fumbling for makeup in her purse, her posture credible and nothing to cause alarm. From behind, from the darker shadows of the trees, she feels someone tug at her left elbow. The tugger is a large man about her own age. By the street lighting she can see that he wears an ordinary suit and a blue tie and has a preventive look in his eye. Looking from him to the Jaguar, she can see that Paul Kozinski’s
smooth electronic persuasion has made his garage door slide right up. But two other large men in suits have moved in on the car and are hammering with casual power on its window. Faced with them, even Paul would feel compelled to wind the thing down.

The man at her elbow introduced himself. He was a Commonwealth police inspector named Winter. Whereas the two speaking to Paul were from the New South Wales Fraud Squad. Or so he told her. So that Paul had sinned against at least two jurisdictions, state and federal. And domestic too, she could have reminded them.

They let Paul drive in under his door, and they entered the garage, attendant on either side of the car.

The inspector of Commonwealth police told her, We have a search warrant. It’ll be messy, Mrs. Kozinski. Why don’t you let me get you a taxi?

She brought forth Uncle Frank’s revolver. The man closed one eye.

—I was going to shoot him with this thing.

He took it gently from her hands. After unhinging it, he looked in the chambers and then at the wall against which the revolving mechanism clicked into place. He pointed at this wall, though she could not see anything in particular.

—You would have scared him, Mrs. Kozinski, though I think we’ve done a better job. The firing pin’s been taken out of commission. By a professional gunsmith too. Where did you get this?

—I borrowed it from a friend, said Kate.

He returned it directly into her handbag.

—Too much bureaucracy if I took it from you.

She liked the man. He had a gentle manner. By various movements of his eyebrows, he implied that they had a secret. He might be hell to know if he were forcing a confession from you.

As she closed her bag, she felt thwarted, and yet re-enamored of Uncle Frank. She felt no crippling disappointment though. Angels had descended from Canberra and Macquarie Street to take over the punishing of Paul Kozinski. Winter was mere chorus when he spoke.

—Listen, Mrs. Kozinski. He’ll get enough shit from us. Okay?

He stepped into the street and raised his hand and a cab stopped. Behind her the door in the ocher wall opened, and half a dozen uniform policemen had appeared around the corner and were entering. Perdita Krinkovich was wailing somewhere inside.

I
T IS TIME to relinquish our grip on Paul Kozinski. Perhaps Kate is in part appeased by this degree of vengeance. Perhaps we are.

But if not we might want to forecast that she will write to Perdita. Perdita, soon maybe to be Kozinski. She still lives in the ocher house, even though it is now in the hands of a receiver and in fact belongs more to a merchant bank and to the Australian Taxation Office than to Paul. She writes the letter not from meanness of vision perhaps so much as from the necessity of separating Paul from all life’s staples. In the text of the letter Kate commiserates with Perdita. For Paul Kozinski had complained to the press of police brutality at the time they searched his house. And the proof is that his wife-to-be miscarried with the shock and fear of it all. There are grounds for compassion there.

Kate has coffee with wan Perdita in the cappuccino place across the road from Paul’s—or the Commonwealth of Australia’s—villa. Paul, though still living at home, goes to court daily. At first Perdita has gone every day with him, but now he has asked her to stay away for her own sake and for his. The court—as Paul understands—is not a place for those who want to show love. It pains him, he tells her, to see her looking so stricken in the visitors’ gallery.

So she drinks cappuccino with his truest enemy other than himself.

He stands trial for bribing a cabinet minister, for a series of violations of the Local Government Act, and for contravention of the Land and Environment Act. What was worst for him, Perdita tells Kate, was that he knew it was all just beginning. After the state of New South Wales had finished with him, he would need to appear in a succession of federal courts.

It is on record that Paul gets five years from the state, and old Mr. Kozinski four years.

Mrs. Kozinski comforts herself with a novena and tells friends that the Nazis are everywhere and that their spirit lives on. Kozinski Constructions remains in receivership but hopes to trade out.

The ocher villa is sold for thirty percent less than market value, and Perdita moves to an apartment supplied by Mrs. Kozinski.

Without telling Mrs. Kozinski, Perdita begins also to attend meals at Murray and Kate’s. Murray praises Kate for her generosity toward her betrayer, though there is a trace of doubt in his eyes as he says it. Wisely he cannot quite believe this is routine kindness, average sisterhood. The doubt becomes more marked when Kate invites Murray’s most outgoing friend, a banker named Ferris, to join them in suppers for four. Perdita, an honest woman, fights Peter Ferris bravely off for some months but succumbs at last. For Ferris is pleasant and untormented, he has earned his money in accredited ways, and no curse of lost children lies over him. Perdita plans to tell Paul only when he has left prison and is in business for himself again.

Kate visits her uncle at the Central Industrial Prison and talks with him and hears from him the news that she is Queen of Sorrows. Later, in the exercise yard, maybe the not-so-Reverend Frank mentions the matter of Mr. Ferris to Paul Kozinski. Kozinski assaults him with a cricket bat—which happens to be Murray’s weapon of excellence as well. Paul receives another two years for assault. The judge tells him that if he had thought of himself up to now as a white collar criminal, his assault on an older and well-behaved prisoner should shatter his self-delusion.

That should just about bring this narrative to the rainy night from which the tale began. It is obvious from the poster in the newsagent’s window that Uncle Frank has not passed up the chance for notoriety even from his prison hospital bed. He hopes to be out in a year with good behavior.

And at least Murray waits at home for Kate, beyond the rain. Kate has reached that illusorily static point appropriate to the closure of a tale.

We all wish her nothing but well.

One of Australia’s leading literary figures, Thomas Keneally has won international acclaim with his novels
Schindler’s List
(winner of the Booker Prize),
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Confederates
, and
Gossip from the Forest
, among others. His most recent works include the novels
The Playmaker
(which was adapted for the stage and ran on Broadway),
To Asmara
, and
Flying Hero Class
, and two travel books:
Now and in Time to Come
, about Ireland, and
The Place Where Souls Are Born
, about the American Southwest. He has served on numerous government councils and commissions in Australia and has taught at universities there and in the United States. Currently he is a Distinguished Professor in the English Department at the University of California, Irvine. Thomas Keneally is married and has two daughters. He divides his time between California and Sydney.