Riders in the Chariot

h store, Alf, by what is unimportant. But as I promised." She seemed to have the wind that morning. It made a little pffff against the soft hair on her upper lip. So he got out the paints. He had found an old tea-chest on a rubbish dump, and had hammered it apart, and extracted the nails, and kept the sides in the feed shed. The ply boards were immaculate. He brought them to the back veranda. After sharing with him such technical points as she could remember, his teacher went away. She would not look. Anything might emerge now. So Alf Dubbo began to squeeze the tubes. Regardful of some vow, he dedicated the first board with a coat of flat white. He began moodily to dabble in the blue. He moulded the glistening gobs into arbitrary forms, to demolish them almost at once with voluptuous authority. He mixed the blue with white, until it had quite paled. And was moved to lay it at last upon the board in long, smooth tongues, which, he hoped, might convey his still rather nebulous intention. Sometimes he worked with the brushes he had prepared, more often with his trembling fingers. But he could not, in fact, he could not. A white mist continued to creep up and obscure what should have been a vision of blue. So he took the brush with the sharpest end, and with the point he described an unhappy O. From this cipher, the paint was dripping down in stalactites of bluish white. He took the blood-red, and thinned it, and threw it on in drops. It dripped miserably down. He recognized his failure, and turned the board away from him. He kept on returning, however, to the opaque masses of his paint. He was clogged with it. As he thought about his failure, and wondered how he might penetrate what remained a thick white mist in his mind, he scratched his own face in one of the lower corners of the board. The concave shape, something like that of a banana, was held as if waiting to receive. But he sensed he would never improve on an idea which had come to him in a moment of deceit. For some time he mooned around, until realizing he had, at least, observed a promise. To a certain extent, he had earned his freedom. He felt better then, and thought how he would put into his next picture all that he had ever known. The brown dust. His mother's tits, black and gravelly, hanging down. The figure of the quarter-caste, Joe Mullens, striking again and again with his thighs as though he meant to kill. And the distance, which was sometimes a blue wire tautened round his own throat, and which at others dissolved into terrible listlessness. There would be the white people, of course, perpetually naked inside their flash clothes. And the cup of wine held in the air by the Reverend Tim. That was, again, most important. Even through the dented sides you could see the blood tremble in it. And the white worm stirring and fainting in the reverend pants. And love, very sad. He would paint love as a skeleton from which they had picked the flesh-an old goanna-and could not find more, however much they wanted, and hard they looked. Himself with them. He would have liked to discover whether it really existed, how it tasted. Alf Dubbo was painting at his picture all the morning. Some of it even Mrs Pask and the rector might have understood, but some was so secret, so tender, he could not have borne their getting clumsy with it. Parts of it walked on four legs, but others flowed from his hand in dreams that only he, or some inconceivable stranger, might recognize and interpret. A little while before it was time to set the pickled onions on the table, Mrs Pask came, and stood behind him. "Well, I never!" she called. "That is a funny sort of picture. After all I have taught you! What is it called?" "That is called 'My Life,' " the boy answered. "And this?" she asked, pointing with her toe. "That," he said-he almost could not-"that is the picture of Jesus. It is no good, though, Mrs Pask. You must not look. I don't understand yet." She too, did not know exactly what to say. She had turned her deepest purple. She was munching on her lips. She said, "It all comes of my being so foolish. Things are not like this," she said. "It is downright madness. You must not think this way. My brother must speak to you," she said. "Oh, dear! It is dirty! When there is so much that is beautiful and holy!" She went away nearly crying. And he called after her, "Mrs Pask! It is beautiful! It is all, really, beautiful. It is only me. I am learning to show it. How it is. In me. I'll show you something that you didn't know. You'll see. And get a surprise." But she went away towards the kitchen. And his lips were spilling over with the bubbles of anguish. That dinner, which Alf did not share, the rector and his sister had a slap-up row. "But you have not seen!" she kept on harping, and drumming on the tablecloth. "I do not wish to see," he repeated. "I have confidence in the boy. It is his way of expressing himself." "You are weak, Timothy. If you were not, you would take the matter in hand. But you are weak." He could not answer that one straight, but said, "Our Lord recognized that all human beings are weak. And what did He prescribe? Love! That is what you forget, Emily. Or is it that you choose to ignore?" The window-panes were dancing. "Oh, love!" she said, real loud. She began to cry then. For a while the windows rattled, but they did at last subside, and become again flat glass. After that Alf Dubbo went away, because he was sick from listening. He put his paintings in the shed, behind the bran bin, which had just fallen empty, and which usually stayed that way for some time after it happened. There was no painting or drawing in the following weeks. Mrs Pask said that he must learn to darn, and sew on buttons, in case he should become a soldier. She gave him many other little jobs, like weeding, and errands, and addressing envelopes or the parish news-it was so good for his hand-while she sat and rested her ankles. Nor did she live aloud any more the incidents of her past life. But she thought them instead. Or remembered sick people who needed visiting. She went about much more than before, as if, by staying at home, she might have discovered something she did not want to, just by going into a room. Mrs Pask went her own way, and the Reverend Timothy Calderon and Alf Dubbo went theirs, all separately. It had always been that way more or less, only now it was as though they had been made to see it. In the case of the rector and his sister, at least they had their purposes, but for Alf Dubbo it was terrible, who walked amongst the furniture, and broken flower-pots, and cowpats. Once he squelched his hand in a new turd that old Possy had let drop, and his eyes immediately began to water, as the comforting smell shot up, and because at the same time the fresh cow-dung was so lifeless in texture compared with that of the oil paints. Only twice he looked at the paintings he had hidden in the shed. On the first occasion he could not bear it. On the second it might have been the same: if the rector had not suddenly appeared, looking for something, and said, "I am the only one, Alf, who has not seen the works of art." So Alf Dubbo showed. Mr Calderon stood holding the boards, one in either hand, looking from one to the other of the pictures. His lips were moving. Then the boy realized his guardian was not looking at the paintings, but somewhere into his own thoughts, at the pictures in his mind. Alf did not blame, because, after all, that was mostly the way people did behave. "So these are they," the rector was saying; the veins were old in the backs of his hands. "Well, well." Looking, and not, from one to the other. "I can remember, when I was a boy, before I became aware of my vocation, I had every intention of being an actor. I would learn parts-Shakespeare, you know-just for the fun of it, and even make up characters, the most extraordinary individuals, out of my own rather luxuriant imagination. People told me I had a fine declamatory voice, which, admittedly, I had. I took the part of a Venetian in, I believe it was _The Merchant__. And once"-he giggled-"I played a lady! I wore a pair of rose stockings. Silk. And on my chest a cameo, which had been lent me by some acquaintance of my aunts." The Reverend Timothy Calderon had grown cheerful by now. He stood the painted plywood against the empty bin, and went outside. "One day, Alf, you must explain your paintings to me," he said. "Because I believe, however clearly any artist, or man, for that matter, conveys, there must always remain a hidden half which will need to be explained. And perhaps that is not possible unless implicit trust exists. Between. Between the artist and his audience." It was a limpid morning, in which smoke ascended, and Mrs Pask had discovered a reason for paying a call. As he followed the rector between the rows of bolting lettuces, Alf Dubbo was puzzled to feel that perhaps he was the one who led, for Mr Calderon had turned so very spongy and dependent. The boy walked noticeably well. Upright. He appeared to have grown, too. He was suddenly a young man in whom the scars had healed, of the wounds they had made in his flesh. His nostrils awaited experience. At one point, at a bend in the path, the rector turned, and seemed in particular need of the youth's attention and understanding. "One summer, before we came to this country," he said, "I made a pilgrimage to Stratford-on-Avon-the home of the Bard-with my brother-in-law, Arthur Pask. It was very delightful. We had both already decided to take orders, although Arthur had not yet been directed to follow a different path. We slept in a shed, in a tea-garden. We would come in after the plays, and talk," he said, "half the night. All that week it was moonlight, I remember. Poor Arthur, you know, was a god. That is, as well as being an extremely saintly man, he was most personable." The young blackfellow trod warily, stiffly, through the narrative, and kicked aside the sickly stalks of one or two uprooted cabbages. He was not so much hearing as seeing, and was not altogether convinced by the figure of the second parson, whom moonlight made whiter. He remembered the wooden figure of the god in the chariot, in the French painting. Quite lifeless. Either he could not understand, or gods were perhaps dummies in men's imaginations. When, somewhat to Alf Dubbo's surprise, Mr Calderon took him by the hand, the better to lead him, it seemed, along paths they already knew, under the clothesline, with its loops of heavy-hanging wet linen, and past the ungovernable bushes of lemon-scented geranium. Yet, although the two figures were joined together at the hand, and were crowding through the doorway abreast, bumping at the doorposts with their awkward formation, as if to widen the hole, each could only feel that the other was probably entering a different tunnel. Mr Calderon had turned a bluish, milky white, and would have liked to appear pitiful, to justify his being led. "I am leaning on you," he suggested, "when you are the one who must need support and guidance. If only on account of your age." Then he gave a kind of gasp. "Sometimes I wonder," he added, "what will become of me." "What, are you sick?" asked the boy, in a tone of brutal indifference. Because his teeth were almost chattering, he had to aim his words like stones. "Not exactly," Mr Calderon replied, and added, "That is, there are some to whom I would not admit it. Their efforts to sympathize would be too painful to witness." He continued to act rather sick, or old, because by now the boy was learning to guide him along the passages. It was becoming gently agreeable. But the boy himself was behaving automatically. Guiding under guidance, he was no longer the initiated youth. There were pockets of puppy-fat concealed about his body, and his mind shivered behind the veil which still separated him from life. On normal occasions, delivering a message, or returning a pair of cleaned shoes, he would not have lingered in the rector's room; its personal mystery was too much for him. Now, on arrival at their destination, his movements were ticking painfully. Halted on the carpet from which the pattern had disappeared, Mr Calderon said formally, and somehow differently, "Thank you, dear fellow. I am grateful to you in my infirmity." In which neither of them believed. But Mr Calderon was pleased to have invented it. Then, again surprisingly, he opened Alf Dubbo's shirt, and put in his hand. "It is warmth for which one craves," he explained, older and more trembly than before. The boy feared his heart, which was leaping like a river fish, might be scooped up and held by that cold hand. But he did not resist physically. At no time in his life was Alf Dubbo able to resist what must happen. He had, at least, to let it begin, for he was hypnotized by the many mysteries which his instinct sensed. Mr Calderon was mopping his forehead. "Are you charitable?" he asked. "Or just another human being?" Alf did not know, so he only grunted. As his guardian seemed to ordain it, they were pretty soon divesting themselves of anything that might possibly serve as a refuge for their personalities. The parson's pace became reckless, with the boy following suit, because it would have been worse to have got left behind. They were revolving in the slightly shabby room, their ridiculous shirt-tails flapping like wings. Their shoes were thunderous in coming off. Mr Calderon stubbed his toe on one of the castors of the bedstead, but it was not the moment at which to complain. Time was too short. The past, the future, the appearances of things, his faith, even his desire, could have been escaping from him. Certainly, after the whirlwind of preparation, he was left with his nakedness, always so foolish, and rather bent at the knee. But decided to embrace his intention. It was a warm-cold morning in autumn. It was a morning devoted to regret rather than fulfilment. They lay together on the honeycomb quilt. Pleasure was brief, fearful, and only grudgingly recognized. Very soon the boy was immersed in the surge of words with which his lover lamented his own downfall. In between, Mr Calderon revived his trance of touch. "A kind of dark metal," he pondered, and would have liked to remember poetry, even to have composed some of his own, to write with his finger. "But metal does not feel." So they returned perpetually to where they had left off. "That is what makes it desirable." Metal submitted, however. They lay upon the lumpy bed of words. From under his eyelashes. the boy was fascinated for always by a mound of grey stomach. Mr Calderon resumed quoting from the narrative of his life, and Alf Dubbo snoozed. When he awoke, his guardian was sneezing, overtaken by catarrh, if not an honest-to-God cold. "We should put our things on," he announced irritably, and then: "I wonder what you will think of me, Alf." The boy, who had been dreaming happily, looked contented, all considered. But the man was too obsessed to notice. Groping for his trousers, for his handkerchief, from where he lay, keys, money fell in an ominous cascade. "How I must appear to you," he persisted. The boy began to laugh, showing his broad teeth. "Well?" asked the man. Suspicious. "How you look?" The boy was practically bound with laughter. Then, with an expression which was rather sheepish, but which might have turned to malice if he had been dealing with an equal, he reached out, and seized a handful of the grey belly, and twisted it round, tight, as if it had been stuff. "Hhehhyyy?" Mr Calderon whinged. He did not like the turn affairs had taken. But made himself laugh a little. "You look to me"-the boy laughed-"like you was made out of old wichetty grubs." And twisted the flesh tighter in support. It was a situation which Mr Calderon might have handled badly, if the door had not opened and introduced his sister Mrs Pask. Emily Pask was standing there. On two legs. That was the general impression. In a purple hat. Everybody was looking. Nobody was in any way assisted. They had, in fact, stuck. Until Mrs Pask's throat began to thaw. The blood was again moving in her, till it matched her hat. Her eyes were sewn to her face, otherwise they might have fallen, and even so, despite the stitches, almost did. "You boy!" She began to try her tongue. "You! You devil! What have you done to my brother?" She began to totter at a chair. And fell upon it without mercy. "I never allowed myself to suspect," she rasped. "But knew. Something. Oh, you devil! Sooner or later." The others remained fastened to that bed, the honeycomb pattern eating into their buttocks. In spite of the shock, Alf Dubbo realized pretty soon that he must dress himself. It took a long tim