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decided to get up.
    Sophie called out from her room. Seated naked in a small chair she was removing her nail polish; her body, exaggeratedly soft and pale, overwhelmed the chair. It made Erica consider the smallness of her own body. ‘What is a comparison?’ had been the subject of one of her earliest papers (took an early things-in-themselves line; well-received).
    â€˜And you are feeling?’ Without looking up Sophie went on, ‘I’m not sure I enjoy staying in someone else’s house. What to make of that woman? I’m talking about Lindsey. She cultivates a sort of privacy, which I assume encourages us to try to look at her. Do you know what I mean? I’m not sure what she thinks of the two of us. What do you think?’
    Finished with her nails, she smiled at Erica.
    Sophie wanted always to understand the other person, every person she met. She liked nothing better than trying to fathom a person’s behaviour. She waded in. It was what she was good at. Unable to stop, she would first try to establish the source of the behaviour, and by so doing she could for a moment put her own self to one side; at least it seemed that way to her.
    â€˜Guess what? The brother didn’t turn up. You don’t suppose he’s run away from us and is out there hiding behind a tree?’
    Erica smiled. If anyone should be running away it was her. Through the window she saw a tall pale-grey eucalypt surrounded by a darker cluster of pines, elms, cedars. It pronounced a solitary, take-it-or-leave-it way of being. The simple strength of the tree: stand it alongside the lack of statement, on her part. For a moment – before looking away – Erica saw herself as resolute only in a few minor things.
    Sophie, she professed a low opinion of nature. ‘Basically, it is merely visual,’ she had been heard to say. ‘It just happens to be there, and that’s it.’

8
    TRAVELLERS AND strangers to all parts of Australia, especially away from the coast, can expect wonderful hospitality. The country has its faults, as any country does, but lack of hospitality is certainly not one of them. Only when hospitality is little more than an excessive informality, when an entire nation breaks into premature smiling and all-teeth, small-talk mode – which betrays an absence of philosophical foundations – does it appear as nothing more than an awkward type of lightness.
    The more isolated and hostile the terrain, the more authentic the hospitality. In their falsity the travellers are made to feel at home. Desert people are renowned for sharing with strangers their last handful of dates and puddle of used coffee, often without saying a word. There is a courtesy here – without naivety. The world is inhospitable; the cold earth. Assist another person if encountered on its surface. The instinct is a basic one. In modern times it can be as minor as changing someone’s flat tyre by the side of the road. In a poor farm or village in Spain or somewhere it is common for a crust of bread and a lump of cheese to be wrapped in cloth and given to the traveller about to continue the journey. It is unsmiling hospitality. Other places are known to share their women with travellers.
    At first glance you would think that the psychoanalytical person would understand hospitality, and be hospitable, whilst the philosophical person would remain distant to the point of turning away. The opposite happens to be the case. The psychoanalytical person plumps up the pillows and leaves it at that. To extend hospitality to another person subdivides aspects of their difficult, hidden self. And any suggestions of a food offering acting as a language is brushed aside: for it could only reduce the amount of language available to describe their own attention-requiring state of mind.
    But then it could hardly be said the philosophers have set a cracking pace in generosity to strangers either. Almost to a man they practise