An Eye For An Eye. Arthur Klepfisz
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meant to her personally. She recalled how at school she was mocked and called “goody two shoes” by the other children who were irritated by how excessively virtuous she appeared to be. Only in adult years did she come to understand that their reactions arose from a belief that she saw herself being better than them. She felt that the do-gooder description was partly out of envy, but not totally unwarranted, as she herself had probably believed back then that if one was very good, rewards would automatically follow – a variation of the Cinderella story.
She came to appreciate the inherent dangers of this philosophy, and how it could be turned inside out—namely, if something bad happened to a person, that it must have been because they had been bad in some way. She despised this approach of blaming the victim for whatever catastrophe befell them—whether a woman being raped had brought it on herself or Holocaust victims contributed to the disasters that they suffered.
As she matured, Karen became aware that she valued being good as the moral thing to do, rather than seeking a reward for it. She felt one had a choice of being good or bad and she had chosen to be good. Somewhat rigidly, she did not allow for shades of grey in between.
Karen described to Andrew how initially Tony searched for explanations of why his life had been derailed and not progressed in the manner he had hoped for. He would joke that it must have been an aberrant gene on his wife's side of the family casting a spell over his life, and it annoyed his wife and others who sensed that contained in the joke was a grain of belief.
Tony refused to ever consider that he might have contributed to his own failure, for that was how he perceived his achievements in life. He certainly attributed some blame to his wife for the problems the children had over the years, as well as for his own lack of work success. The fact that his wife, Violet, had been adopted made it impossible to test his theory about her introducing aberrant genes into the family, unless they commenced with her.
Andrew learnt that Tony’s parents had migrated from Georgia, a Caucasian province of the Russian Empire since 1801, enjoying only four years of complete autonomy after the Russian Revolution in 1917, before it was occupied in 1921 and absorbed into the Soviet Union. Tony’s parents struggled to extract a living from the small parcel of land they farmed and escaped in the early 1920s, migrating to Australia, hoping to rise above the dull, excruciating battle that had been their existence in the past, but leaving the remainder of their family behind.
In Australia they had two children – a daughter, and after a five year interval, Tony. He was essentially an only child as his sister died from congenital heart problems before he was born. His parents adapted their name to their new home, hoping in time to merge with the local community and altered their name from Dumbadze to Duncan. Tony was eternally grateful for this adjustment as he imagined what the other schoolkids would have done with the original name – starting with labelling him “Dumbo” and who knew what else. His parents told him that in Georgia he would have been Tamar Dumbadze, but they realised that Tony Duncan was a more sensible title for this new environment.
Andrew learnt how Tony’s parents encouraged him to study, wanting him to enter the professions and enjoy a life different to their own life, which although financially more rewarding than their farming in Georgia, demanded they perform long hours of factory work. They were proud that he won a place at university where he studied towards a law degree. In the days before Commonwealth Scholarships, almost all students had to pay full fees for tuition; Tony knew that his parents could not afford to pay for his education and throughout the four years of his course he worked as a part-time labourer for builders and brickies.
After graduating, he gained professional experience in a number of city and suburban legal practices before purchasing a rundown practice in Broadmeadows, an area on the verge of rapid growth that he hoped would generate a steady flow of conveyance work, to underpin his earnings. The firm carried the solidly Anglo-Celtic name of O’Hearn, Billings & Ramsay, and although none of the original partners was still associated with the office, Tony had kept the name because he felt it had a solid British sound to it, which bestowed an element of prestige on the firm.
Tony had acquired the practice for a token sum of money, purchasing what was euphemistically referred to as “goodwill”. The modest practice kept Tony and his family in a comfortable, middleclass lifestyle in Camberwell, where the children attended nearby public primary and high schools.
By the time Karen had completed her six years in public primary school, Tony had identified her as his hope for the future and enrolled her in the highly thought of Methodist Ladies College in Hawthorn, for her secondary school years. That decision generated long-lasting tensions in the family, as none of Karen’s three older siblings had been offered such an opportunity; thereafter they resented Karen for having opportunities denied to them, and felt some bitterness toward their father.
Karen described to Andrew in more recent times that she had remained fond of her father and responded positively to his belief in her. She performed well academically without achieving great heights and subsequently went to Melbourne University where she studied for a law degree. Again, she performed above the average but not at the top of her class, so leading law firms did not seek her out or try to entice her for her year of Articles.
Tony had been keen for her to join him in his practice, but she decided wisely that she should go to another office for at least one year and it surprised Tony that she was prepared to act against his wishes, but he suppressed his irritation, knowing there was little he could do to persuade her.
Karen did not have unrealistic expectations of her year of Articles but nevertheless found that she hated the work she was called on to do, as it was mainly hackwork of filing and communicating messages, with minimal tuition offered to her. Initially, she found herself working 65 to 70 hours a week with little prospect of promotion in the foreseeable future, and resented making what she saw as indecent amounts of money for the senior partners of the city law firm employing her.
After three years of experience, Karen felt ready to join her father in his law practice in Broadmeadows, where he was a sole practitioner employing two part-time secretaries and one paralegal. Karen described how she commenced work in her father's law firm in early 1970.
On her second day, having been given her own key, she arrived early before the others and examined the office closely without her father present. The practice was housed on the first floor, with three rooms above a busy coffee shop in the main shopping strip. The second floor, above the Law office, housed many tenants over the years, but for the past twelve months had been occupied by an import–export business, though no one seemed to know just what they were importing or exporting. As she mounted the stairs, Karen gazed sadly at the mild decay and disorganisation of the space that represented her father’s Law offices. A musty smell pervaded the stairway and wafted through the nearby rooms, where the windows were stained with bird droppings. The windowsills were caked with dust and rain spots, initially drawing attention away from the flaking paintwork on the ceilings and walls. With some mounting concern, she wondered if her father was gradually decaying like the building around him. She decided to arrange for the windows to be cleaned as soon as possible, and started preparing a mental checklist of things to be done. To this list she added magazines for the waiting room, as none of the tattered magazines there was less than two years old.
She wondered how her father could generate enthusiasm for his work in these surroundings and then asked herself why her father had tolerated these surroundings for so long. She chose not to ask him the very same question, knowing the pain it was likely to cause him.
When Tony commenced practice in Broadmeadows he needed only three rooms – an office for himself, a small conference room and a waiting area for his clients. Later, a space for the secretary had been partitioned off from his room and Karen’s new office was carved from the waiting area. Apart from her father and herself, the practice had two part time secretaries and a paralegal, the latter doing a lot of her work from home. If the paralegal came in to work in the office, she was placed in the conference room. The contrast staggered Karen, as she felt Tony was always neat and tidy at home and meticulous about his appearance and surroundings.
Karen had arrived at 8.30 a.m., expecting to be joined by her father and then his secretary close to 9.30