‘Stop,’ said the roadhouse man then, and raised up his hand: ‘Quiet. Listen. Say nothing. Red-ochre men—on the way to ceremony—they’ll go past.’
I waited, and turned my head. Silence—for a minute, more—then there were the faint beginnings of a sound—low, on the edge of hearing, at a distance on the road. It gained a shape, a rhythm: it persisted—it was wheels, and engines, slow moving. Lights appeared—a pair of headlights, then another, and another: a procession of them. In front was a white trayback, mud-spattered: it passed us, bumping on the corrugations; behind it was an old truck missing a side panel, with a broken, trailing bullbar, then a series of Troop Carriers—all of them full of desert men, young, old; men wearing headbands, staring out, their expressions set. The last vehicle passed. The sound died away: the night was still again. Aster shifted in his seat. There was a slight smile on his face, as if he had just seen something rare and precious, private, beyond all capture in words.
‘Like a dream,’ he said, in a soft voice. He resumed—or tried to—but his tale was scattered, now, it was shards and fragments once again. He stumbled: I broke in.
‘Back up,’ I said: ‘Go back to where you were. The statuette—the carving. It’s been long enough: you brought us to the edge of things. Tell us. The time’s come.’
‘Yes,’ he said: ‘It’s true. But don’t you understand? I’m trying to tell—and not to tell you at the same time. To keep things in suspension. Not to lead the story to its end. It was a dark day: the day when I showed him the figurine. I’d just collected it from the auction gallery in Melbourne. How proud I was! Tjampa was flying in, for some conference: art and authenticity, that kind of thing. I met him at Tullamarine, and drove him in to town. We went straight to my studio. I had the statuette set up in the back room. I’d wanted it to be a surprise. I showed it to him. There was a long, hard silence. Then he looked down. He shielded his face. He started to cry: great, shaking, soundless sobs. That wasn’t what I’d expected. Why, I asked, and he began explaining to me. He’d known the carver; he’d known him well. Then he smiled at me—a smile from the pits of sadness. You’ve got yourself a piece of strong law here, he said, and in that instant I had a glimpse of something in him: something potent, looming there, as if a hawk or eagle were staring down. Very strong, he said again: You might want to be careful. I jumped up. I was going to move it, hide it. Wait, he said at once. And don’t be sorry like that. It’s not for you to be sorry—it’s for us. That pulled me up short. I fell quiet. I listened: the cars were driving past, in the rain, outside; I could hear the people out on High Street, hurrying by.
‘In early days, he told me, then, old men in the desert had power. Their blood had strength. They had power for the rain; power for the sun, the fire. When the rock holes had emptied out, they could call up the storms from blue sky; when the bushfires were racing, they could turn aside the flames. They could see into the future. They could travel back to the past. They could vanish right before your eyes. That was how it was, in those days. And still now? I asked him. Of course, he answered me: But things have changed. You know that. You know that very well. They cleared the desert out—or tried to—the patrol officers tried, in their white Land Rovers, in the rocket times. And there were the weapons tests, I said: At Totem, and at Maralinga. You know everything, he said to me then: It’s all there for you. It’s all written down.
‘How much, when I’d first known him, I’d wanted to go with him out to the old memorial sites: go out to Emu Junction, where the obelisks are set up to mark ground zero for the Totem tests. I’d never breathed a word to him—but I’d dreamed of sitting with him there, in that silent desert, beside those strange, weathered concrete shapes. I’d always felt there would be some point to that. Some circuit would be joined up. And even as I had that thought, even as it was taking wing inside me, I looked from Tjampa to the statuette—to its sightless eyes and the swirling bands like spreading shock waves on its chest, its tall head-dress and the rising circles on it, and the flashes shooting upwards—and I realised: I knew; I knew for certain—the figurine was the man of thunder; it was the atom cloud. Its maker must have been there, seen the blast, seen that pulsing light.’
Aster stopped.
‘And that was it?’ I asked: ‘So simple: the solution to your mystery.’
‘Not quite: I was on the verge of asking him—he swept on; he raced ahead of me; suddenly he began describing other stories to me, in great detail: how storms are brought to life; how the air breathes; how we endure after time’s end. And I remember thinking to myself in those moments that what was happening, right then, in that little room, was the most beautiful thing happening in all the world; it was like a candle’s flare; he was telling me things I could never have imagined—then he wheeled round; he looked straight at me: a kind look, in a way. You want to know the truth, he asked me, in a soft voice. The real truth? I was happy coming here, happy, on the plane, knowing I’d be here, with you—but now I see this—he picked up the statuette, and held it, and ran his fingers up and down its painted markings—and I understand: there are things I can’t show you. I can’t even find the words to say them. The world isn’t the way you think it is. It’s not the way you want it to be. It never will be. The more you look, the less you see.
‘It was a bad visit from then on. I cast my mind back, and it’s plain: his troubles began from that day. He went back to the Western Desert. Soon reports started reaching me: about disputes that he was caught up in, fights, feuds; there was a car accident, serious, police investigations dragging on. He’d disappear for months on end: he went on hunting trips, and he’d show up long afterwards, far away—in Newman, or Wiluna, or Jigalong.’
‘You never saw him again?’
‘I waited: I made plans to set out on his trail, and track him down. I’d heard he’d been down in Ceduna, and then in Mimili, heading through the lands. I decided the time had come to take a flight out to the west: I had a show just coming on in Perth. I stayed there a few days: then Kalgoorlie. Up and down its wide streets, where you feel the past so sharply pressing down. I looked through its drinking camps, and asked about. When I went back to my motel there was a message: he was in LA. You’d have been through there, hundreds of times—that little mining centre, next to where Poseidon used to be, great open-cut gold mines all around it still?’
‘You mean Laverton!’
I could see the scene. I had a dull sense of how the tale was about to end: I reached out a hand to him across the table, as if to shield him from the blow.
‘That’s right.’
‘My God!’ I said: ‘This isn’t a story that’s going to come out well!’
‘It’s not so much a story,’ went on Aster: ‘It’s something else. A set of tones, or moods. Do we know, in our lives, what we go through? Do lives really form themselves into stories? I felt myself more in a movie sequence as I drove in, all the way from the Leonora turn-off on that thin, straight, level road, with the colours all slightly out of key: the green of the bush almost blue-grey, the blue of the sky too white, the red of the sand more like fire than solid ground. I reached Laverton. I checked with the police, and the loan sharks: they knew nothing. I suppose you have to look on the bright side, though: they did want to sell me some art.’
‘Any good?’
‘Surely by now you’ve noticed that my romance with the idea of purity and quality in Aboriginal art has begun to flag? I looked around the camps. It was a scorching afternoon—no one had that much appetite for talk. I found a gang of boys waiting outside the service station shop. They told me. Past the dam, they sang out: that way—past the cemetery—the golden mine. We’ll take you. They jumped in—six, seven of them: my Toyota had been like a silent kingdom all the way from Kalgoorlie; suddenly it was transformed, it was full of energy and life. Out we went, into the bush, mining trucks and transports driving back towards us and kicking up thick trails of dirt. Here, said one: Put him in! He had a cassette to play: he searched
the dashboard. I explained to them that I didn’t think the car actually had a cassette deck: it might be just CDs, or even MP3s. They took that on board: He must be a proper poor man, they chorused. Soon the sun was sinking low in front of us. Are you all sure this is right? I asked them. We know our country, they said: That’s one thing we know. We hit the outstation track: we pulled up. A house or two, a shelter, nothing more—and in the shade of the shelter, all hooped corrugated iron and hessian, there he was: cross-legged, wearing a pair of jeans stained desert-red, a shirt the same colour, a black cowboy hat, broad-brimmed, brand new. The boys scattered. He glanced up at me. Sun’s going down, he said. For us all. You came to find me—but what for? Do you need me? Need me to be something for you?
‘There were camp dogs, scavenging around: voices, music, from the houses, a slow beat, pounding out. I laughed—but I felt a sadness stretching over me—perhaps I already had some half-conscious sense of what was happening. We all need each other, I said back: Like the notes in a song; like the colours that make up the sky. I was waiting for you, he said. For you to show up here. I knew you’d come. Cigarette? He lit one, and smoked it, slowly. I looked around. I took in the scene. What a place! Empty tins, torn mattresses, old jerrycans: it was the usual tapestry of dirt and rubbish—but turned soft and lovely by the light: the colours in harmony; the shapes, too.
‘Tjampa leaned across to me. He was talking, with urgency: telling adventures from long ago. They went flashing by. I thought to myself: how much do I really know him—then: is it really him? What do you believe happens to us, he asked me: Where do we go, when we leave this world? I’m not so sure in my mind, I told him: I have a picture where everything that’s been divided in life, separated and torn apart comes back together, and time and space no longer have any hold.
‘That’s not what we think, he said, and took my hand for a moment, then let it go. Not at all. We think there’s a white sea at the end of the world: I’ve even seen it, in pictures, in dreams, inside my head—it’s quiet, and cold, and there are clouds over it, clouds of ice; and you have to walk there, by yourself, across the sand. It’s a hard, long journey: but when you get there, then you see the sun breaking through the clouds, and that white lake gleams, and shines, and looks like fire.
‘He leaned back. I stared at him, and I had the strange thought that there was something blurred in his face, his skin, his eyes. I shrugged that thought off: I kept on talking. I looked again; it was true: he was losing his distinctness—he was becoming like a shadow, in that half-light, close in front of me, close enough to touch. My friend, he said—or his voice said, softly, as though it was the wind blowing—The time has come: it has to be. I must leave you. But you won’t be alone. I’ll still be with you—don’t you remember how I used to tell you: those who go are always still with us, if we have the eyes to see them by.
‘I looked up again, and now I could make out the rocks through him in the landscape; I could see the spinifex, the trees, the sand—red and shadow out to the horizon’s line. It can’t be, I thought, in one part of myself—and in the other: it is. I was looking at the desert, and the falling of the night. The dogs whimpered. There was no one there: a shelter, open to the winds; a tin cup, a swirl of patterned blankets and a swag.’
Belomor Page 21
