the date of his arrival, a political exile, or so one of the younger police had observed.
Later that same night it had occurred to Daniel that if the man had made an appointment to meet the woman when they had been in Paris, that agreement had to have been made more than fifty years ago; the man would only have been thirty-five. That was the moment when it struck him that the woman might be dead. After all, if she had been thirty when the meeting had been agreed to, she would be eighty now.
The following week, when he had gone into town to sign his deposition, a policeman told him of the ticket found in the man’s coat. The destination was Paris, and the date of departure was July 5, two days before the date upon which the dead man had claimed he was to meet the woman. The ticket was proof that his story had not been delirium.
He had asked the man if the woman he was to meet was German too, assuming that was the man’s nationality, but instead of answering, the man closed his eyes and died. It seemed to Daniel that he had witnessed that death a thousand times since it happened. It had affected him profoundly, though he did not truly grieve for the dead man. It was the fact that the man had been a stranger, yet witnessing his death had felt so intimate. Perhaps that was why he contacted the police to find out when and where the funeral would take place, wondering if a friend or acquaintance would attend to whom he might confide the dead man’s last wish. But no one came other than a policeman who was there for the same reason. The policeman told him the man had left money enough for his funeral. The remainder of his property was bequeathed to a charity that cared for children. It seemed that he had not worked at all, having come to Australia with a collection of antique family jewellery he had sold, investing and living off the proceeds.
‘It seems impossible that a man could have lived so long without making any sort of connections,’ Daniel had murmured.
‘You would be surprised how many people live that way,’ the policeman had responded.
It was as he stood and watched the earth shovelled onto the coffin that Daniel had pictured a woman coming to a café to sit and wait for a man who would never arrive. In the imagining, she was very frail, a female version of his father, emanating patience and gentleness. She was a woman who you could see would wait out the day, hope slowly fading, until she understood that the man she was expecting would not come.
Another thing that the dying man had muttered floated though his mind. ‘There is no greater intimacy than truth, boy. Remember that.’
He woke to broad daylight and showered again, thinking of Mick, who was the stocky Irish owner of the small boxing gym which Daniel had joined when he was fifteen. His father had not understood that the attraction was not the violence or the fact that one man triumphed over another. Daniel had liked the gallantry of a sport where two men could drink and slap one another on the back between bouts. Mick symbolised all that was best about boxing, and their relationship, which had begun with respect and admiration, had become, though the word would never be spoken between them, love. Daniel knew he had disappointed Mick when he decided not to go professional, and it was love for Mick that had kept him sparring with young newcomers, trying to teach aggressive young cocks the need to be smart fighters rather than street sluggers. But few of them had the deep gallantry that Daniel considered to be the secret of greatness.
After Daniel’s parents died, Mick tried to talk him into working for the gym, but Daniel refused and started drifting from one seasonal job to the next and from property to property. He hadn’t seen much of Mick the last couple of years, but he had told the older man of his decision to go to Paris, and why, and asked if he would take care of his quarter horse, Snowy.
‘It’s like . . . like I picked up a stone when that man died, Mick, and I have to find the place to put it down,’ he’d said.
‘It’s a deep thing to watch a person die,’ Mick had