He only left his room for dinner. His hands were smeared black, the lines on his face not wrinkles but the stains of a child.

I finally entered his room, which was from that moment to become his sanctuary. A huge circuit, something like a branching computer algorithm, illuminated by a sixty-watt bulb (the chandelier had been bought by the neighbours) stared at me from the walls. Circles, squares, arrows, and dotted lines webbed across two walls and crept toward a third. Dad’s wizened, creaking figure moved rapidly, extending and lowering to reach the baseboard as he scrawled the marker over the worn wallpaper.

“What is this?”

He stopped, came closer, took the red marker, and stuffed it into a cigarette pack. The pack went into the pocket of his sweatpants. He grinned.

“Thank you, girl.” He raised his thumbs. “This here isn’t just a novel. This is something altogether more grand!”

“On the wall though? Grand. I would have bought you paper if you’d asked.”

He laughed squeakily and pulled me into the centre of the room. It had been a long time since I’d seen him so happy and excited.

He sat me down, tripped over an ashtray, scattering butts across the floor, giggled, coughed, lit a cigarette, and loomed over me impatiently. I tried to make myself bigger to make sure he didn’t touch me.

“Look, every wall is a storyline. The circles, those are the characters. The squares are settings. Those arrows coming out of them point to events, the triangles. Dashed lines for cross-references, references to parallel storylines. Dot-dashes are cultural references: the Bible, Buddhist metaphors, Aboriginal myths.”

“Ok, Dad, this is all very interesting, but I need to go home. It’s ten already and I’ll be walking alone.”

I tried to get up, but he pushed me back down into my seat.

“Stay. Watch!”

“Where am I supposed to sleep? There’s only one bed here.”

“Fine,” he grunted. “I’ll walk you there. I can take a look at where you’re living. It’s been a few days since I last left the house.”

“No, what are you talking about? I can go on my own.”

He had already gone into the corridor and removed his rumpled hat and jacket from the coat stand. I protested, but he was insistent.

The city was quiet, humid and cool. We walked in silence, just as we did on those evenings when, after my mother’s death, we went out after midnight for groceries. He only dared to go out after Grandma had gone to sleep.

As we approached the dormitory, he stopped in his tracks, looked up at the narrow block—all the lights were out—and clutched his hat to his chest.

“This is where your mother stayed when I was looking after her?”

“It was her that was looking after you,” I said without stopping. He hobbled after me.

“It’s not true. Wait, don’t walk so fast,” he pleaded, short of breath. “She invited me to her place when your Grandma forbade us from seeing one another. I used to come sometimes.”