Dear Miroslav, he writes.

I tried to break up your home, so no doubt you feel I ought to shut up and accept whatever punishment the gods visit on me. Well, I will not shut up. A rare photograph belonging to me has disappeared and I would like it back. (Let me add that Drago will not be able to sell it, it is too well known in the trade.)

If you don't know what I am talking about, ask your son, ask your wife.

But that is not why I am writing. I am writing to make a proposal.

You suspect me of having designs upon your wife. You are right. But do not jump to conclusions about what kind of designs they are.

It is not just money that I offer. I offer certain intangibles too, human intangibles, by which I mean principally love. I employed the word godfather, if not to you then to Marijana. Or perhaps I did not utter the word, merely thought it. My proposal is as follows. In return for a substantial loan of indefinite term, to cover the education of Drago and perhaps other of your children, can you find a place in your hearth and in your home, in your heart and home, for a godfather?

I do not know whether in Catholic Croatia you have the institution of the godfather. Perhaps yes, perhaps no. The books I have consulted do not say. But you must be familiar with the concept. The godfather is the man who stands by the side of the father at the baptismal font, or hovers over his head, giving his blessing to the child and swearing his lifelong support. As the priest in the ritual of baptism is the personification of the Son and intercessor, and the father is of course the Father, so the godfather is the personification of the Holy Ghost. At least that is how I conceive of it. A figure without substance, ghostly, beyond anger and desire.

You live in Munno Para, some distance from the city. It is no easy matter for me, in my present reduced state, to come visiting. Nevertheless, will you in principle open your home to me? I want nothing in return, nothing tangible, beyond perhaps a key to the back door. I certainly harbour no plan to take your wife and children away from you. I ask merely to hover, to open my breast, at times when you are elsewhere occupied, and pour out my heart's blessings upon your family.

Drago should have no trouble, by now, in comprehending what place I aspire to in the household. The younger children may find it more difficult. If you choose to say nothing to them for the present, I will understand.

I know a proposal of this kind was not what you expected when you began to read this letter. I mentioned to an acquaintance of mine what has been going on in my flat – the disappearance of the item from my photograph collection and so forth – and she suggested that I call in the police. But nothing could be further from my mind. No, I am just using the opening created by this unpleasant incident to let my pen run and my heart speak (besides, how many letters does one have a chance to write nowadays?).

I don't know how you yourself feel about letters. Given that you come from an older and in some respects better world, perhaps you will not find it strange to take up the pen in turn. If on the other hand letters are alien to you, there is always the telephone (8332 1445). Or Marijana can bear a message, or Drago. (I have not turned my back on Drago, far from it: tell him that.) Or Blanka. And finally there is always silence. Silence can be full of meaning.

I am going to seal and stamp this missive now, and before I have second thoughts make the trek to the nearest mailbox. I used to have lots of second thoughts, I had second thoughts all the time, but now I abhor them.

Yours most sincerely,

Paul Rayment.

'DON'T YOU THINK you should see a doctor?' he says to the Costello woman.

She shakes her head. 'It's nothing, just a chill. It will pass.'

It does not sound like a chill at all. It is a cough, and it has a soggy quality, as if the lungs are trying to expel, a fistful at a time, a layer of deeply settled mucus.

'You must have picked it up under the bushes,' he says. She looks back uncomprehendingly.

'Didn't you say you were sleeping under the bushes in the park?'

'Ah yes.'

'I can recommend eucalyptus oil,' he says. 'A teaspoon of eucalyptus oil in a pan of boiling water. You inhale the steam. It does wonders for the bronchial passages.'

'Eucalyptus oil!' she says. 'I haven't heard of eucalyptus oil in ages. People use inhalers nowadays. I have one in my bag. Quite useless. My standby used to be Friar's Balsam, but I can't find it in the shops any more.'

'You can get it in country stores. You can get it in Adelaide.'

'Can you. As our American friends say, that figures.'

He will get the eucalyptus oil out for her. He will boil a pan of water. He will even hunt in the medicine cabinet to see whether he has Friar's Balsam. She has only to ask. But she does not ask.

They are sitting on the balcony with a bottle of wine between them. It is dark, there is a strong breeze blowing. If she really is ill she would be better off indoors. But she does nothing to hide her distaste for the flat – 'your Bavarian funeral parlour,' she called it yesterday – and he is not her keeper.

'No word from Drago? No news from the Jokics?' she inquires.

'No word. I have written a letter, which I have yet to mail.'

'A letter! Another letter! What is this, a game of postal chess? Two days for your word to reach Marijana, two days for her word to come back: we will all expire of boredom before we have a resolution. This is not the age of the epistolary novel, Paul. Go and see her! Confront her! Have a proper scene! Stamp your foot (I speak metaphorically)! Shout! Say, "I will not be treated like this!" That is how normal people behave, people like Marijana and Miroslav. Life is not an exchange of diplomatic notes. Au contraire, life is drama, life is action, action and passion! Surely you, with your French background, know that. Be polite if you wish, no harm in politeness, but not at the expense of the passions. Think of French theatre. Think of Racine. You can't be more French than Racine. Racine is not about people sitting hunched up in corners plotting and calculating. Racine is about confrontation, one huge tirade pitted against another.'

Is she feverish? What has brought on this outburst?

'If there is a place in the world for Friar's Balsam,' he says, 'there is a place for old-fashioned letters. At least, if a letter does not sound right, you can tear it up and start again. Unlike speeches. Unlike outbursts of passion, which are irrevocable. You of all people ought to appreciate that.'

'I?'

'Yes, you. Surely you don't scribble down the first thing that comes into your head and mail it off to your publisher. Surely you wait for second thoughts. Surely you revise. Isn't the whole of writing a matter of second thoughts – second thoughts and third thoughts and further thoughts?'

'Indeed it is. That is what writing is: second thoughts to the power of n. But who are you to preach second thoughts to me? If you had only been true to your tortoise character, if you had waited for the coming of second thoughts, if you had not so foolishly and irrevocably declared your passion to your cleaning lady, we would not be in our present pickle, you and I. You could be happily set up in your nice flat, waiting for visits from the lady with the dark glasses, and I could be back in Melbourne. But it is too late for that now. Nothing left for us but to hold on tight and see where the black horse takes us.'

'Why do you call me a tortoise?'

'Because you sniff the air for ages before you stick your head out. Because every blessed step costs such an effort. I am not asking you to become a hare, Paul. I merely plead that you look into your heart and see whether you cannot find means within your tortoise character, within your tortoise variety of passion, of accelerating your wooing of Marijana – if it is indeed your intention to go on wooing her.