IT 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.