‘You will go direct to Jildra,’ said the German, but making it a generous command.
‘Orright, Jildra,’ laughed the old man.
‘You will not loiter, and waste time.’
But the old man could only laugh, because time did not exist.
The arches of the German’s feet were exasperated in the stirrup-irons.
‘You will give those letters to Mr Boyle. You understand?’
‘Orright,’ Dugald laughed.
‘Letters safe?’ asked the man in bursting veins.
‘Safe. Safe,’ echoed the scarecrow.
He put them in a pocket of his swallowtail coat. They were looking very white there.
‘Well,’ cried the writer of them, ‘was stehst du noch da? Los!’
The black mounted. Kicking his bare heels into the sides of the skinny horse, he persuaded it to stumble away.
Then Voss turned and rode in the direction of the others. Always at that hour he was a thin man juggling impotently with hopes. Those great, empty mornings were terrible until the ball of the sun was tossed skyward.
*
Dugald continued to ride. Several days he spent jogging on the back of the old horse, which sighed frequently, and no longer swished its tail at flies.
The old man, who was contented at last, sang to himself as he rode along:
‘Water is good,
Water is good….’
The truth of this filtered fitfully through the blazing land.
Sometimes the old man would jump down at the butt of certain trees, and dig until he reached the roots, and break them open, and suck out the water. Sometimes he would cut sections of these precious pipes, and shake the moisture into the cup of his hand, for the old horse to sup. The hairs of the drawn muzzle tickled his withered skin most agreeably.
The old man killed and ate goannas. He ate a small, dun-coloured rat. As he had reached an age when it was permissible for him to eat almost all foods, it was a pity so little offered itself.
He experienced great longings, and often trembled at night, and thrust his skin against the protecting fire.
When the horse lay down and died, one afternoon in the bed of a dry creek, the black was not unduly concerned. If anything, his responsibilities were less. Before abandoning the dead horse, he cut out the tongue and ate it. Then he tore a stirrup-leather off the saddle, and went forward swinging it, so that the iron at the end described great, lovely arcs against the sky.
The veins of the old, rusty man were gradually filling with marvellous life, as his numbness of recent weeks relented; and in time he arrived at good country of grass and water. He came to a lake in which black women were diving for lily roots. In the dreamlike state he had entered, it seemed natural that these women should be members of his own tribe, and that they should be laughing and chattering with him as he squatted by the water’s edge, watching their hair tangle with the stalks of lilies, and black breasts jostle the white cups. Nor was it unnatural that the strong young huntsmen of the tribe, when they burst through the wiry trees, clattering with spears and nullas, should show contempt, until they realized this was a man full of the wisdom and dignity that is derived from long and important journeys. Then they listened to him.
Only his swallowtail coat, by now a thing of several strips, was no longer dignified enough, with the result that the tallest huntsman solemnly tore off one of the strips, followed by a pocket.
Remembering the white man’s letters, Dugald retrieved the pocket, and took them out. The shreds of his coat fell, and he was standing in his wrinkles and his bark-cloth. If the coat was no longer essential, then how much less was the conscience he had worn in the days of the whites? One young woman, of flashing teeth, had come very close, and was tasting a fragment of sealing-wax. She shrieked, and spat it out.
With great dignity and some sadness, Dugald broke the remaining seals, and shook out the papers until the black writing was exposed. There were some who were disappointed to see but the picture of fern roots. A warrior hit the paper with his spear. People were growing impatient and annoyed, as they waited for the old man to tell.
These papers contained the thoughts of which the whites wished to be rid, explained the traveller, by inspiration: the sad thoughts, the bad, the thoughts that were too heavy, or in any way hurtful. These came out through the white man’s writing-stick, down upon paper, and were sent away.
Away, away, the crowd began to menace and call.
The old man folded the papers. With the solemnity of one who has interpreted a mystery, he tore them into little pieces.
How they fluttered.
The women were screaming, and escaping from the white man’s bad thoughts.
Some of the men were laughing.
Only Dugald was sad and still, as the pieces of paper fluttered round him and settled on the grass, like a mob of cockatoos.
Then the men took their weapons, and the women their nets, and their dillybags, and children, and they all trooped away to the north, where at that season of the year there was much wild life and a plentiful supply of yams. The old man went with them, of course, because they were his people, and they were going in that direction. They went walking through the good grass, and the present absorbed them utterly.
9
MRS BONNER had come out in a rash, due to the particularly humid summer, or to the shortage of green vegetables at Sydney (neither would she be robbed), or sometimes she would attribute her physical distress — privately, in case any of her family should laugh — attribute it to the impossible situation in which she had been placed by the pregnancy of her servant, Rose Portion. For Rose was still with them, very heavy, very shameful. Mrs Bonner would refer to her maid’s condition as Rose’s illness. It was intolerable, as was her own helplessness.
‘I understood,’ said Mrs Bonner to her friend, Mrs Pringle, ‘that there was this institution of Mrs Lauderdale’s for fallen women, but I find, on making inquiries, it is not for those who exhibit, shall we say, material proof of having fallen.’
Mrs Bonner dabbed her lip.
‘I really do not know what to suggest,’ sighed Mrs Pringle, who was herself legitimately pregnant, and who could take no serious interest in a convict woman’s fall.
‘In a normal family,’ complained Mrs Bonner, ‘responsibility for such matters would not be left entirely on one’s hands.’
‘Oh, but Mrs Bonner, no family is normal,’ Mrs Pringle cried.
‘Is it not?’
This did not comfort as it should have.
‘Children are little animals that begin to think by thinking of themselves. A spaniel is more satisfactory.’
Mrs Bonner looked shocked.
‘I will not deny that children are dear little things,’ conceded Mrs Pringle, who had a lot of them.
‘Nobody would expect a tender child to offer mature advice,’ Mrs Bonner pursued, ‘but a husband should and does think.’
‘A husband does think,’ Mrs Pringle agreed, ‘but that, again, is a different kind of thinking. I believe, between ourselves, Mrs Bonner, that these machines of which all the talk is at Home would never have been invented, if men were not in sympathy, so to speak, to a great extent. I believe that many men, even respectable ones, are themselves machines.’
‘Really, Mrs Pringle?’ Mrs Bonner exclaimed. ‘I would not suspect Mr Bonner of this, though he does not think my way; nor will he offer suggestions.’
Mrs Bonner was again unhappy.
‘It is I who must bear the burden of Rose.’
Ah, Rose, Rose, always Rose, sighed Mrs Pringle. Mrs Bonner had become quite tedious.