Belomor

by Nicolas Rothwell

  He jumped into the driver’s seat, then turned back, as if an idea had just struck him. He smiled his most engaging smile.

  ‘Why not ride along with me—for a short while. Come for the drive. I only stop at the best roadhouses.’

  ‘You want me, after five days of uninterrupted travelling, jet-lagged into oblivion, to keep moving, keep going—to take a trip out to some unknown destination, in the hottest season of the year, in the middle of the storm time—to drive out into the Aboriginal bush without a permit, in the company of Australia’s most notorious carpetbagger?’

  ‘Well—carpetbagger! There’s a judgemental term,’ said Aster: ‘And we were getting on so well.’

  I made a waving, goodbye sign in his direction, and looked round to the glass-fronted airport building and the sky.

  ‘But why not?’ called out Aster. ‘No one’s going to see. After all, one man’s carpetbagger is another’s nurturing and prudent market maker. Put yourself in my hands. Jump in. The desert beckons. Or is there really somewhere you have to be, in the days ahead? Some vital thing you have to do? Some crucial, life-defining thing?’

  ‘Nothing’—the word hung between us in the air—‘No. And there’s nowhere I have to be.’

  ‘So—live dangerously. You won’t regret it. Climb in.’

  ‘Put like that,’ I said, and laughed, ‘who could possibly refuse?’

  We set off, at speed; the highway took us; the talk ran on, breaking, resuming, forming itself into patterns and recurring themes: the art bazaar, the charms of desert language, its rhythms and reduplications, the intricacies of its grammar, and that grammar’s lurking presence in the newer painting styles: the bush around us, too—its variations, the difference in mood and tone between the mulga scrub round Yuendumu and the gidgee landscapes of the eastern Plenty; swags, their design, the philosophy they embodied; the star-filled night sky’s consoling scale. We swept past a bunched-up fleet of trucks and road trains: the sun was falling, the shadows were lengthening, the red haze deepened in the air. A turn-off flashed by.

  ‘Didn’t you see?’ I said: ‘That was the Victory Downs road we just passed. The way in to Ernabella and the ranges; the best access road into the lands.’

  ‘Not the only one, though,’ said Aster: ‘And certainly not the one for somebody interested in life’s unmarked paths and obscurities.’

  He sped up. Side tracks came and went: the short-cut to Kenmore Park; the De Rose Hill entrance gate; the turn for Indulkana. Then he braked—hard. There was a dusty, unsigned road running off towards the west, almost invisible against the sunset’s glare. He turned.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I said. ‘This is the back way in to Mintabie, of all places.’

  ‘I know where it goes,’ he said.

  ‘What—you need a quick resupply of hydroponic grass or something? Go slower! Marla cops are always sneaking and gliding up and down this track.’

  ‘I doubt anyone glides down it,’ said Aster, and he did slow—he had to: the road was all corrugations; he switched to four-wheel drive. ‘Anyhow—what have you got against Mintabie? It’s a nice peaceful community.’

  ‘Are you serious? Have you spent much time there? Every single deal bag of drugs and every cask of wine and whisky bottle that gets into the desert lands goes through that charming gateway.’

  ‘Old prejudices! Stereotypes. You just don’t like opal miners and their kind.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Of course: I admire that world. It’s straight, unvarnished; full of men and women who can think for themselves, who talk things through. I’ve always loved those places at the end of the line: where the future’s at a discount, where it’s all a constant flashing now—where people live for risk, and profit; for adventure, and nothing else.’

  I glanced across at him.

  ‘Truthfully,’ he said. ‘They’re my kind of crew.’

  ‘Look out!’ I called: ‘Be careful.’

  We were coming in sight of Mintabie: a low-slung, old-model car full of young desert men was idling on the road.

  ‘Just a group of casual travellers taking in the scenery,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be like that,’ said Aster: ‘Don’t judge all the time. Let life come to you—let the atmosphere around you reach you: let it all sink in.’

  We passed fencelines, a maze of tracks, a generator shed: there were caravans, aerials, water towers. The sun was down below the mullock hills. The township loomed in front of us. Aster pulled up before a brick-fronted building screened by a row of dust-stained palms.

  ‘My God,’ I said: ‘I haven’t been here for years—and nothing’s changed.’

  ‘The hotel? Why should it? How about a pit stop? The Goanna Grill. You hungry?’

  ‘What for—a perentie steak?’

  ‘Come on—try your luck. You’ll know someone or other here. There’s always a sweet delight in catching people up when you call in to places like this—in seeing people you’ve been meeting on and off for years.’

  We walked in, and Aster went up to the bar and fetched the drinks. Soon the room was full. A road crew sat beside us.

  One turned. ‘You know me,’ he said to Aster. ‘We met out west. You gave me a tow—on the way in to Mount Davies, in the winter, a year back. You were with that Aboriginal friend of yours. He was something!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Aster, in a low voice, and paused a moment: ‘Yes, he was.’

  ‘He’s not with you—no? How’s life treating you now? Still doing battle with the chaos of the world? Still seeking immortality in art?’

  The man then turned to look my way: ‘That’s the only way you’ll ever find an afterlife. I’m a strict materialist, you see.’

  I absorbed this piece of news, and nodded.

  ‘You too? That’s the way. Soon enough all superstition in the bush will be stamped out: it’ll be a rational world.’

  ‘Like Mintabie?’

  ‘Exactly. A place of perfect harmony, give or take a feud or two. We’ve got everything we need. We’re happy enough mining rock and being left alone. God’s like the state government—always interfering.’

  The faces round the table focused in.

  ‘See,’ said Aster, and looked at me.

  ‘Some people think opal mining’s got an otherworldly edge to it,’ I said: ‘Something like a religious quest.’

  ‘Why?’ said one of the men round the table: ‘Why think that—the truth is it’s the devil’s stone. Just look into an opal: look closely; you’ll see—it’s the clouded, mocking echo of the first creation. Remember that chapter in Karamazov: when Ivan gets a visit from the Devil—and the Devil’s a shabby young man, a little down on his luck, wearing an opal ring, or was it an opal tie pin?’

  ‘Was it actually Karamazov?’ said Aster.

  ‘Well, you ought to know: you’re Russian, aren’t you—or something like that.’

  ‘Something,’ replied Aster. ‘But I see this corner of the desert as a more Chekhovian kind of space: brief, humdrum joys, oblique sadnesses that stretch on for years.’

  ‘Not at all, brother—it’s epic! This is epic country. Mintabie is, anyway. And the only thing that’s Chekhovian on the lands is the dogs.’

  ‘The dogs?’

  ‘The lapdogs—haven’t you noticed there’s a new fashion in the communities? They’ve all got little lapdogs now. No Borzoi or mastiffs or greyhound crosses in these parts any more.’

  ‘True?’

  ‘Absolutely—the chihuahua’s the thing: there are tiny chihuahua camp-dog mongrels, across the lands, everywhere, yapping away. It started off at Nyapari, that little outstation at the far end of the Mann Ranges—now there’s mobs of them everywhere running round.’

  ‘Inspiring Chekhovian sentiments?’

  ‘You may laugh—but those communities on the lands could work as Chekhovian stage sets—they’re just waiting for their melancholic literary master and chronicler to appear on the scene.’

  The talk flowed
on; the night wound down. Our companions rose: they turned to go. The last of them paused in the doorway, and looked back: ‘We’re headed out tomorrow—track work—Oak Valley. Ever been that way? Good art hunting there? Should we be looking out for unconsidered trifles?’

  ‘There’s some promise,’ said Aster, ‘in the raw.’ And he made a so-so sign with his hand. ‘But heavy country. You’d know the stories.’

  ‘Only surface ones,’ said the road worker. ‘We just go in and out: and not often. I remember the first time I went in there from the north: what a drive it was! Gibber stretches; washaways; red sand dunes as high as hills—you can imagine trying to pull the kind of heavy equipment we have; there were rainstorms; we were travelling for two days. We got there round dusk; we weren’t expecting much: there were no staff stationed in the community. The people seemed very shy: they wouldn’t come and talk to us. Back then the ground there was still poisoned, from the nuclear days: they didn’t even light fires and burn their wood, not that there’s much around—they just used to eat out of tins, and the water tanks were all up high on stilts. Everything was quiet: I thought it was the quietest settlement I’d ever seen. We had the feeling we should keep our distance: we camped well away; then, at night, once the full moon came up, we heard voices, hundreds of voices—there was a ceremony going on: singing, chanting, dancing, right through to the dawn. What a place! Who knows why they set up there.’

  ‘You know,’ said Aster: ‘You know very well. They were shifted: after the tests, down in their own land, at Maralinga.’

  ‘Someone had a sense of humour,’ said one of the road crew: ‘Putting the test site down there, in that sector, so remote—it’s tiger country.’

  ‘It was for convenience,’ said Aster: ‘It was near the transcontinental railway line, and Ooldea siding; they could get in easily enough; all around was saltbush country—gentle, manageable. There were wells nearby, dug by explorers; there were grave markers too: spears and woomeras set up in the ground. It was a perfect spot, idyllic: even when you go there now, after everything that’s happened, you can’t help thinking how soft that landscape is. They built a town, an airfield—it was a whole world on its own—a closed world—strange, and foreign—it still is: as closed as the nuclear science cities in the old Soviet Union used to be.’

  Aster looked across at me.

  ‘Shall we drift on?’

  ‘You’re not stopping?’ said the road crewman: ‘Stay. Change your plans. You could ride with us.’

  ‘Tempting,’ said Aster—’but we’re on a mission.’

  ‘We’re sorry,’ said the crewman then: ‘Very sorry—for your friend.’

  The two of us drove out, away from Mintabie, on the track north-west, under the gleaming stars.

  ‘What was that about?’ I asked him after a few quiet minutes.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, then: ‘There’s something I should tell you: I’d like to. And perhaps that’s why I brought you out here: perhaps I was meaning to tell you all the time. It’s the story of that figurine—in a way. In a way it’s the story of the whole desert. I’ll set the scene. We’ve got a few kilometres to run.’

  ‘Go on,’ I prompted: ‘You know what you said: dark’s the time for telling—dark, when there’s a low moon in the sky, and the night air’s still warm, like now.’

  ‘It would be five years,’ he said: ‘Five years since I crossed his path—when I was first going out into the desert, into the communities: I was scouring them, back then, looking for new artists to take on. I went everywhere, and I had nothing; they were the days when I built my new world up: painters, collectors; and in all those comings and goings there was one man who stood out for me: maybe you’d remember him, from the morning when you came in to my gallery; he was there then; I think I even introduced you—Mr Kilmain, I would have said; but Tjampa, that was what people called him. He didn’t ever say too much, when he made his trips in to town—out in the bush with him, though, things went differently. I met a lot of desert people, in those years, men and women; I came to see their characters: how they’d present themselves, what they’d show and what they’d hide. You do, when you speak language—you pick up more of what’s going on. He wasn’t like them: he was harder; he was a bedrock person. He wanted the truth of things. He didn’t have any interest in being fooled or played along by the outside world.’

  ‘He painted for you?’

  ‘Never—we never worked together. No—he was a friend to me, and that was it: the deepest kind of friend.’

  ‘What kind is that?’

  ‘The kind that comforts you: tells you all your failings—sees your darknesses, and still has kindness and forgiveness for you in his heart.’

  ‘And you for him?’

  ‘Of course. From the very first time I met him: it was at a native title handover, at Mantamaru, in the west: there were hundreds of bush people from all round gathered for the day. He stood out; he was at ease, there, everywhere, in both worlds—you could feel it in him: he was a speaker—but in signs, in expressions, in looks. You know that old saying: man of high degree—it could have been made for him. We talked: he burned right through me with his words; after that, whenever I set out to see him there was a quickening in me: when I was with him, I became my best and truest self.’

  The road forked: a light showed far ahead. Aster turned the wheel. ‘Our destination,’ he announced: ‘Unusual place. And an unusual man who runs it: you can tell it’s the last stop before the lands.’

  ‘Unusual in what way?’

  ‘He sees—but in another way from us.’

  ‘You mean he’s blind.’

  ‘Wait—don’t jump on, always—things have their own way of unfolding—you’ll find out in good time.’

  Some minutes later we pulled up. It was a roadhouse, or it had been, once, years before, and retained the traces of its origins. The frontage was low; before it was a wide verandah screened by mesh with gaping holes. A sign was stretched above the entrance—faint, weathered lettering. There was a pale gleam coming through the doorway: inside, a table or two, empty; a work desk, an iron stove, something resembling a bar. I took in these new surrounds: concrete flooring, stone walls, and on them old photographs, a series, framed, black and white, from station times—Aboriginal stockmen droving cattle; young men in the saddle, staring into the camera; a neat, white-painted homestead; a desert landscape with a sandstorm bearing down. Aster went to the verandah table, and pulled out two chairs.

  ‘A good place to look out from,’ he said. ‘See that glow—over there, over the ranges, to the south?’

  I followed his eyes.

  ‘Bushfires—far off, burning through the night.’

  ‘There’s no one here,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, there is.’

  Aster nodded. In the doorway, looking at us, was a man, white-haired, arms folded, eyes unmoving, with a composed expression on his face.

  ‘Aster,’ he said: ‘Good to see you!’

  ‘Snow—you too,’ said Aster.

  ‘You brought someone?’

  Aster began explaining; the man broke in.

  ‘Where’s Tjampa? Not with you? But I feel him, somehow, still—around…You’re right, about those fires—they’ve been burning all week long in the sand-dune country, and beyond, in the conservation park—when the wind’s up you can smell them, and the black shards of scorched bark blow in.’

  They spoke on for some minutes; the man made to go.

  ‘Wait—sit with us,’ said Aster: ‘I’m just talking about him: you might want to hear’—and at that, as I watched him, the man, with studied, practised movements, came over, and reached for a chair, which Aster pushed in his direction. In the bush, nearby, a night bird was calling; the sand-brown stick insects clung to the verandah wire; moths flew and fluttered round the light, their orbits widening, then closing in.

  ‘What’s in your thoughts?’ said Aster to me.

  ‘Nothing,’ I answered: ‘My mind was very st
ill.’

  ‘It is peaceful,’ said the man: ‘But in the scrub, close by, all round us, the dingoes are hunting, prowling; the nightjars are on the wing. Quiet’s not rest—it’s stealth.’

  ‘You hear them?’

  ‘I hear everything: keep on. Tell your story, Aster—tell his story: he meant something to me. Tell it out.’

  And Aster did. If until then he had seemed a strained, imperfect narrator, jumping between events and time horizons, explaining, amplifying, plunging into pools of details, now suddenly he was the master of his tale: he caught his subject; he caught him through gestures, through inflections; he had the rhythms of his speaking; he built a portrait for me, there, on that dark verandah—his friend seemed present to us: a compact, broad-chested desert man, with a studied way of silent staring and a taste for cowboy hats and Western gear. The two of them had travelled together, all through Aster’s bush apprenticeship: they crossed the rangelands; they drove the desert highways—they made collecting trips from Wiluna to Watarru and back again; and on those journeys there were constantly repeated language lessons; there were ventures deep into empty country down half-vanished tracks.

  ‘How far we went,’ he said: ‘Out to his conception site in the Hickey Hills—out into ranges round Lake Carnegie no one had surveyed and put down on the maps. And those travels were enough to change me. I thought I knew a great deal before, from books, and writing; from looking at desert paintings, dealing them, describing them: I was good at cultivating an air of knowledge.’

  ‘Counterfeiting it?’ I put in.

  ‘The faker knows he’s faking; the art expert persuades himself he knows. I can still see one scene—I seem always to be seeing it: the pair of us together, near the end of an expedition; we’d been driving in an old Mazda ute with a smashed-up windscreen and nothing much for jack or spare; we were on the hunt for an old bush campsite, out near Mount Leisler, where he’d gone when he was a boy. We found it: we stopped beneath the ridgeline, with a view across the dune fields to the mesas in the west. It was early in the build-up season: there were spinifex fires burning; the sun was setting; there were dust flurries stained deep red by the light; thunder rolling, far off; lightning flashing in the sky. And he sat cross-legged beside me, and started singing: he sang all through the night: the country, its stories, the descent lines of the men and women he’d walked it with, who’d been with him there when he was young.’