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50 A Bit of Luck My wife and I were waiting for the bus in Canberra one Saturday afternoon. It was a sunny day in winter and we were on holiday. Soon I noticed that a woman sitting next to us was attempting eye-contact and was on the verge of a smile. The clement weather brings out the sociable in people, I suppose. Beautiful day, I said. It transpired that she managed to buy the handbag she was cuddling at a very low price that morning. It was the only one left, and she was clearly very pleased with herself. The bag was ghastly, faded plastic and lopsided. That was lucky of you, put in my wife trying to say something nice. She smiled, drew on her cigarette and said, one always needs a bit of luck in this world. Mildly eccentric. But that wasn’t it, there was something inexplicable about her. She was clearly older than she seemed, she also had a battered look about her, also there was an underlying bubbliness which was almost manic. She chatted on merrily in her very German voice occasionally flattened by the Australian vowel. At one point her sleeve fell back and there was a number etched on her forearm. We tried not to react. She smiled and explained that she was Aryan, not Jewish, she was thrown into the camps because she was a communist, but she managed to escape and came to Australia as a refugee. That was a long time ago, a long time ago, she said, reassuringly. ...

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