Himmelfarb went on the Monday. He took his lunch with him in a brown fibre case, together with one or two articles of value he would not have liked to leave at home; a fire could have broken out. He caught the bus to Barranugli, and was put down before reaching the town, at Rosetree's, on the river bank. They sat him at a drill, with which he was expected to bore a hole in a circular steel plate, over, and over, and over. Ernie Theobalds, the foreman, showed him how, and made one or two accommodating jokes. They gave him his union card, and that was that. Each morning Himmelfarb took the bus to Barranugli, until the Sabbath, when the factory did not open-as on Sunday, of course. He became quite skilful at his unskilled job; there was a certain way of whipping off the steel plate. As he sat endlessly at his drill, it pained him to recall certain attitudes and episodes of his former life, which hitherto he had accepted as natural. There was, for instance, the arrogance of opinion and style of the monograph on an obscure English novelist, indeed, of his critical works in general. Many phrases of many prayers that he had mumbled down in his presumptuous youth, came to life at last upon his tongue. Most often he remembered those people he had failed: his wife Reha, the dreadful dyer, the Lady from Czernowitz, to name a few. Sometimes as he bored the hole, the drill grazed his flesh, and he accepted it. A few of his workmates might have joked with him, offering some of the worn remarks that were currency on the floor, but refrained on perceiving something strange. Nothing like his face had ever been seen by many of them. To enter in search of what it might contain, was an expedition nobody cared to undertake. If sometimes the foreigner found it necessary to speak, it was as though something preposterous had taken place: as though a fish had opened its mouth the other side of a glass wall, and brought forth faintly intelligible words instead of normally transparent bubbles. So the plastic ladies and the pursy men bent their heads above their benches. Toothless lads hawked up a mirthless laughter, while the faces of the girls let it be understood that nobody would take advantage of them. Once or twice the blackfellow paused in his rounds of sweeping, on coming level with the Jew's drill. Then Himmelfarb decided: Eventually, perhaps, I shall speak, but it is not yet the appropriate occasion. Not that there was reason to suspect affinity of any kind, except that the black would establish a certain warmth of presence before moving on. After one such _rapprochement__, a blue-haired granny left off assembling Brighta Lamps. She threw up her hands, and had to shout to the foreigner, "Dirty! Dirty!" As the machinery belted away. "No good blackfeller! Sick!" she shrieked. Even if the object of her contempt had missed hearing, or had closed his ears permanently to censure, Himmelfarb was made uncomfortable, when he should have returned some suitable joke. Mistaking embarrassment for failure to understand, a bloke approached, and whispered in the foreigner's ear, "She means he has every disease a man can get. From the bollocks up." As Himmelfarb still did not answer, his workmate went away. Foreigners, in any case, filled the latter with disgust. And the machinery belted on. Sometimes Mr Rosetree's shoes trod along the gangway, and appeared to hesitate beside the drill, but only hesitate, before continuing. Himmelfarb did not take it amiss that his employer had not spoken since the morning of the interview. It was only to be expected in a businessman of some importance, a husband, and a father, with a lovely home. For the ladies at the benches would often openly discuss their boss. Without having been there themselves, they seemed to know by heart the desirable contents of the rooms. Nor did they envy, except intermittently, perhaps when having a monthly, or payment on the washing-machine was overdue. On the whole, they admired the signs of material wealth in others. So, Mr Rosetree shone. Sometimes he would come out of his office, and stand upon a ramp, and scrutinize the rows of workers, and rackety, spasmodic machines. Then the ladies would tilt their heads, looking personally involved, and even those of the men who were the worst grumblers would aim shafts of such harmlessly blunt brutality as to cause only superficial wounds if they had ever reached their target. Good money had made the most sardonic amongst them sentimentally possessive of that harmless poor coot, their boss. As for Himmelfarb seated at his drill, he would at once grow conscious of his employer's presence on the ramp, though he had not raised his eyes to look in that direction.
Rosetrees lived at 15 Persimmon Street, Paradise East, in a texture-brick home-city water, no sewerage, but their own septic. Telephone, of course. Who could get through the morning without the telephone? It was already quite a good address, and would improve, but then Rosetrees would probably move on, to realize on the land. Because, what was land-such nasty, sandy, scrubby stuff-if not an investment? All around the texture-brick home, Mrs Rosetree listened mornings to the gumtrees thudding down. And all around, the homes were going up. The brick homes. Harry Rosetree was very proud of his own setting. Sundays he would stand outside his apricot, texture-brick home, amongst all the advanced shrubs he had planted, the labels still round them so as you could read the fancy names if a neighbour should inquire. Who wouldn't feel satisfied? And with the Ford Customline, one of the first imported since the war? Then there were the kids. He was an indulgent father, but had every reason to be proud of Steve and Rosie, who learned so much so fast: they had learnt to speak worse Australian than any of the Australian kids, they had learnt to crave for ice cream, and potato chips and could shoot tomato sauce out of the bottle even when the old black sauce was blocking the hole. So the admiration oozed out of Harry Rosetree, and for Mrs Rosetree too, who had learnt more than anyone. With greater authority, Mrs Rosetree could say: that is not Australian. She had a kind of gift for assimilation. Better than anyone she had learnt the language. She spoke it with a copper edge; the words fell out of her like old pennies. Of course it was really Shirl Rosetree who owned the texture-brick home, the streamlined glass car, the advanced shrubs, the grandfather clock with the Westminster chimes, the walnut-veneer radiogram, the washing-machine, and the Mixmaster. Everybody knew that, because when she asked the neighbours in to morning tea and scones, she would refer to: _my__ home, _my__ children, _my__ Pord Customline. There was a fur coat, too, still only one, but she was out to get a second while the going was good. Who could blame her? Shirl Rosetree had been forced to move on more than once. Put it into gold, she would have said, normally; you can hide that. And had bought the little gold Cross, before leaving, in the Rotenturmstrasse, which she wore still. Whenever she got excited it bumped about and hit her breasts, but it was comforting to wear a Cross. Except. Marge Pendlebury had said early on, "I would never ever of suspected you Rosetrees of being tykes. Only the civil servants are Roman Catholics here, and the politicians, if they are anything at all." Shirl's ears stood up straight for what she had still to assimilate. Marge said, "Arch and me are Methoes, except we don't go; life is too short." Then the little Cross from the Rotenturmstrasse bumped less gaily on Shirl's breasts. She said, "Do you know what, Harry? Arch and Marge are Methoes." "So what?" asked her husband. "That is what people are, it seems." He patted her. She was a plumpy thing, but not always comfortable. Her frown would get black. She could shout, "_Um Gottes Willen, du Trottel, du Wasserkopf! Muss ich immer Sechel für zwei haben__?" But would grow complaisant, while refusing to let him mess her perm. "There is all the rest," she insisted. And at times Rosetrees would cling together with almost fearful passion. There in the dark of their texture-brick shell, surrounded by the mechanical objects of value, Shirl and Harry Rosetree were changed mercilessly back into Shulamith and Haïm Rosenbaum. _Oÿ-yoÿ__, how brutally the Westminster chimes resounded then in the hall. A mouse could have severed the lifeline with one Lilliputian snap. While the seekers continued to lunge together along the dunes of darkness, arriving nowhere, except into the past, and would excuse themselves in favour of sleep, that other deceiver. For Haïm would again be peddling _Eisenwaren__, and as frequently compelled to take to his heels through the villages of sleep; and Shulamith, for all the dreamy validity of her little Cross, would suffer her grandmother, that gaunt, yellow woman, to call her home down the potholed street, announcing that the stars were out, and the Bride had already come. If daylight had not licked quickly into shape, this kind of nighttime persecution might have become unbearable. But morning arrived in Paradise East with a clatter of Venetian blinds. And there stood the classy homes in their entirety of brick. There were the rotary clotheslines, and the galvanized garbage-bins. By daylight Rosenbaums would sometimes even dare indulge a nostalgia for _Beinfleisch__, say, _mit Krensosse__. They would stuff it in, as though it might be taken from them. Their lips grew shiny from the fat meat, their cheeks tumid from an excess of _Nockerl__. Then Haïm Rosenbaum might ask, "Why you don't eat your meat, Steve?" "Mum said it was gunna be chops." "Shoot some of this tomato sauce onto the _Beinfleisch__. Then you can pretend it is chops," advised the father. But Steve Rosetree hated deviation. "Who wants bloody foreign food!" "I will not have you swear, Steve!" said the mother, with pride. She loved to sit after _Beinfleisch__, and pick out the last splinters, with a perfect, crimson fingernail. And dwell on past pleasures. Once Shirl Rosetree thought to inquire, "What about that old Jew, Harry, you told us about, down at the factory?" "What about this old Jew?" "What is he up to?" "For Chrisake! Who am I to know what is up to every no-hope Jew that comes to the country?" "But this one seemed, well, sort of educated, from what you said." "He talks good. He talks so good nobody can understand." Harry Rosetree had to belch. "You can smell the Orthodox," he said, "on some Jews." It made his wife laugh. "Times change, eh? When you have to _smell__ the Orthodox!" But she would have loved still to watch the hands lighting the Chanukah candles. The Scrolls themselves were not more closely written than the faces of some old waxen Jews. "Times change all right," her husband agreed. "But I do not understand why am I to keep a day-book of the doings of every Jew that comes!" "Let it pass!" his wife said. She manipulated her jaws to release a noise, half yawn, half laughter, punctuated by a gold tooth. But came out with a remark she immediately regretted: "You can't get away from it, Harry, the blood draws you." "The blood draws, the blood will run!" her husband said, through ugly mouth. "Have we seen, and not learnt?" "What blood?" asked the little girl. There were often things in her parents' conversation that made her tingle with suspicion. "Nothing, dear," said the mother. "Mum and Dad were having a discussion." "At the convent," Rosie Rosetree said, "there is a statue of our Saviour, and the blood looks like it's still wet." She made her mouth into the little funnel through which she would allow commendable sentiments to escape. "It was that real, it made me cry at Easter, and the nuns had to comfort me. Gee, the nuns are lovely. I'm gunna be a nun, Mum. I'm gunna be a saint, and have visions of roses and things." "There, you see, Shirl, Rosie has the right ideas." The father smiled. "And as she is her old dad's sensible girl, her visions will become more realistic. No one ever got far on the smell of roses." Shirl Rosetree sighed. She frowned. It was true, of course. But the truth was always only half the truth. It was that that made her act sort of _nervös__. And all these family situations, as breakable as Bakelite. Sometimes she was afraid she might be starting a heart, and would have liked to consult a good European doctor, only they all rooked you so. Or priest. Only you always came away knowing you had not quite told. And, in any case, what could a priest know to tell? Nothing. She never came away from the confessional without she had the heartburn. Some old smelly man in a box. Now she had got the heartburn real bad. It was after all that _Beinfleisch__, with the good _Krensosse__. She knew it must be turning her yellow. So Shirl Rosetree breathed rather hard, and fiddled with the little gold Cross in the shadow between her breasts, and said, "I think we had enough of this silly conversation. It's the kind that don't lead anywhere. I'm gunna lay down, and have a read of some nice magazine."