The Drover's Wife & Other Stories

by Murray Bail

‘Don’t be a pain in the arse, son. You’d better leave this minute. The engravers are waiting. I’ll show you how to get there.’

  There are three main characters, four or five hangers-on, and bystanders who try to help but are more of a hindrance. Terrific scenery from now on.

  78

  The actual bridge, or a reconstruction of it, where the phrase All That’s Water under the Bridge originated, was close to the cul-de-sac. Biv leaned over the parapet. Below ran an industrial conveyor belt; a ‘mechanical’ river. Flowing past were broken promises, yesterday’s newspapers, wine bottles, telephone messages, clear insults, broken vases and expired insurance policies. A few pedestrians were leaning over trying to retrieve some of these objects. But their fingertips could only caress the slow-moving items spaced at irregular intervals on the belt. A fur coat went past, an unwanted child, a pair of size 32 underpants. A woman stretching down wept. A solemn man (husband?) placed a restraining hand on her shoulder blade, looking grim.

  79

  Biv walking to the horizon. Stone buildings and streets closed in behind, the way large leaves, elastic vines, apparently do in jungles. Ahead: supposed to be the cul-de-sac. He glanced at his watch, the strap held together by a rubber band (Biv is quite a character). In his hip pocket he carried the standard cartographer’s compass. In the side pockets he’d fitted loaded rat traps in case of pickpockets. Just in case. Strapped to his left ankle was a pedometer, Made in Taiwan. Biv is the hero. He is walking smoothly, some would say striding, not far to go now. His Christian name, Roy. This is going to take more than two minutes.

  80

  There’s Biv, his boss (often referred to here as ‘Chief’), Grey next door, an optician with his eye on Biv, Grey’s eldest daughter, several world-famous men, some shady characters who begin following Biv, though Biv’s neighbour (Grey) doesn’t come into the story at all.

  81

  All going according to plan. Ahead the suburb in question. Immediate left the tall aluminium building without a roof. This would be the new Trampolene Factory, well-known landmark. In front of which the new canal, in front of which the Helmet and Cap factory, in front of which the new Sand Museum, left of which…

  Biv wrote in his notebook. ‘Everything going according to plan. Our popular maps are perfectly true. The weather is holding up. I see the suburb in question ahead. Amen.’

  82

  But what are his weaknesses? What sort of ‘character’ is he? (What are Biv’s ‘characteristics’?) Is this to be a tragedy? After all, Biv is approaching thirty-six.

  A note about his appearance.

  He has blue hands; something to do with circulation. He has red ears; ditto. He has orange hair; the iron in his blood? And like any topographer worth his salt he has worn elbows. When Biv bends his arm it is not a sharp angle, more a soft curve. He has measured the wear with set squares. However, don’t have the idea Biv is a methodical character.

  He is not a methodical character.

  Also ‘orange’ is the deposit of wax in both ears. Yellowy is some mucus up his nose; green socks.

  A bachelor.

  83

  He crouched between the brick wall and the palings. To see in, it was necessary to get himself caught in Grey’s passionfruit vine. He had to wait quite a while. Then the light went on. Grey’s eldest daughter moving around the dressing table slowly began undressing.

  Those young though fully fledged shapes fell out of their restraining apparatus causing Biv’s mouth to open. Some spittle ran down his chin. That always happens. She held her breasts in her hands and studied herself. Apparently satisfied she came over to the window, combing her hair, the sill slicing her at the knees, and faced Biv for a good thirty seconds: the blurred invitation between her legs like Tasmania. Biv, topographer, hopeful cartographer, thought of that afterwards.

  84

  Six or eight streets sloping down form an intersection, the streets like the legs of a spider. Biv was foolishly standing there working out the direction. Which street to take? He studied the compass. It was noon. Nobody around to ask the way. He heard a purring sound and something touched him. He turned. An empty pram had rolled down from one of the streets. Then he saw another coming to the left, then one straight ahead. Each one made a faint whirring sound. Prams attacked from all directions, from all the spider’s legs. Some collided and overturned. No sooner did Biv jump aside than another would make him jump back, and then one he hadn’t seen or heard cracked his shins. He fell. Prams surrounded him like animals. Prams banged into him. He shoved and kicked and ran swerving up one of the streets which proved to be empty. The optician watched him.

  85

  ‘A square is a reservoir; adjoining streets feed from it; streets and gutters are terrible parasites.’ He entered the square; about time. The streets on all sides were lawn, the main traffic consisted of mowers crawling like insects. The square itself was bitumen. This composition, black bordered by green, was further enhanced by five dying pine trees forming a quincunx. A gardener was watering the one in the centre with a transparent can. Biv noticed it held several goldfish. Then he noticed the tree’s shadow on the ground. It was green. He went over and lifted it. Naturally the shadow was cool, almost cold; and it was soft. There is nothing special about this, Biv should have told the gardener. Certain French artists employed green and even blue shadows back in the 1880s.

  Instead, he asked the direction of the cul-de-sac.

  ‘The feeling of space or the intuition of space is the most basic force of the mind,’ the gardener replied.

  I’ve heard that somewhere before, Biv thought to himself. ‘This cul-de-sac. Where is it?’

  He stamped his foot for added emphasis.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done.’

  The bitumen had cracked and four small rainbows seeped out. They held Biv’s ankles. The gardener poured water over Biv’s shoes. The rainbows subsided.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘The damage is done.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ll get a move on. I’ll go on.’

  86

  The blue Staedtler 4B (considered to be the most beautiful pencil in the world) firm against the bevelled perspex drew the line north to the edge of.……the cul-de-sac.

  Cul-de-sac?

  Slid the set square along to the width (proportional) of an ordinary street. Halted. One inch equals half a mile. Sharpened the pencil. Resumed. Repeated parallel towards the cul-de-sac. His hand stood out purple and soft against the cartridge paper.

  Road marked RD, or sometimes R.

  Avenue AVE., space permitting.

  Places of interest.

  Museums and Art Galleries.

  Parks and Police Stations.

  87

  Watching out of one eye while fitting a black horse with spectacles was the optician.

  ‘I’m trying to trace a cul-de-sac,’ Biv told him. He felt like talking to someone. His ankles and elbows were tired.

  ‘What’s that about you, Lazarus?’

  Biv stepped back. The eye chart was so large the letters looked like a vertical highway. Only by stepping back half a mile, and keeping it in sight, bumping into pedestrians and lamp posts, could he read: CUL-DE-SAC. By then he was positioned very near to it. Truly this was a functional sign—a semaphore of the first order! Biv scribbled in his notebook. It was an innovation his Chief was bound to be interested in.

  88

  ‘The feeling of space or the intuition of space is the most basic force of the mind.’

  ‘Rubbish. Absolute twaddle. Where have you been? Have I ever heard so much twaddle? Listen, my boy—’

  89

  Biv has a neighbour with ten fingers, two legs and three daughters, who doesn’t come into this story. Grey is his name. Born at two in the morning, 1934. Grey has that passionfruit (growing wild). His hobbies, however, are holding colour transparencies up to the light and running model trains. He hasn’t spoken to Biv for several years. His daughters whisper and laugh w
henever Roy walks past. They can make his ears redden and pound from a distance of thirty yards. Crouching at night he watches the eldest undressing. One night there she noticed him watching.

  90

  ‘If truth is measurable, the work we do here is untainted. Our lines never lie. They trace concrete facts. Geometry—and topography is a branch of geometry—follows the behaviour of real objects. Always remember that. Your pencil is outlining reality. Where a line stops there’s an intersection.’

  ‘Everything should have a name,’ Biv put in.

  ‘Not while I’m talking. Listen to an older man. Then you might learn something. This job of ours is one of the few harmless professions left in the world. Stand up straight. Be proud of yourself.’

  A strong point is Biv’s way of listening, giving the odd nod, even to his Chief who is inclined to ramble just a bit.

  ‘Besides,’ the Chief was saying, ‘consider the perfection of the straight line. Undeniable. And if the common right angle has a certain purity so too does the square. Besides,’ he added, murmuring the obvious, ‘the square is the only major shape that is man-made.’

  91

  On all fours inspectors holding large set squares check the angles of intersections, keeping the district ‘straight’. There had been a vocal move from certain quarters, and letters to the newspapers, to increase the right angle from 90°. But here were the inspectors. They wore white coats and were accorded respect by the pedestrians. Often you would come across one on his knees. It made them look diseased. Speaking of calluses, Biv has one on the side of one finger where hundred of pencils have pressed over the years.

  The residue of images. Shape and feel of precision instruments embed themselves in the mind.

  Things he wanted to say; things he never said.

  The things he never said to the Chief.

  92

  ‘There is a beauty in machinery and pipes. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  It was the optician standing beside him. He was wearing glasses with a false nose. ‘Of course, some people don’t agree,’ he went on, admiring the view. ‘They get their kicks out of natural spectacles. Personally, I think nature is over-rated. For one thing it is too dirty to be revered automatically. Look at the way mud isn’t clean. And every other day I see dirty clouds in the shape of pudenda or testicles, et cetera.’

  Biv hadn’t looked at it that way before. Further spectacles unfolded before him.

  A yard away crankshafts and pistons traced ephemeral crescents. Steam here was as beautiful as trees. Tubing and conduits! The various rivets! Hypnotic coils! Gauges flickered like the fingers of expensive women. All the metal hidden therein. Mild steel mainly, but a good deal of cast iron. Copper for proven qualities of insulation; copper conduits. Rubber though not a metal must be there, if hidden from view. Silver linings. Titanium in the paint. Magnesium in pistons—35 per cent lighter and two and a half times stronger than aluminium. Molybdenum? And the sides of all nuts were tightened to face the same angle.

  The optician removed his glasses and began weeping. ‘Christ, it’s beautiful,’ he said. He stumbled over to a chrome-plated bucket close to the machinery. It was there to collect onlookers’ tears.

  ‘This machinery,’ he explained, ‘drives the city’s fountains. Our fountains run on tears, but happy moisture not sadness,’

  Biv also felt moved. Really, exhilarated. Then he glanced at his watch.

  93

  ‘Sit down,’ his Chief told him. ‘What do you eat for lunch?’

  ‘A pie.’

  ‘A pie every twenty-four hours?’

  Biv nodded.

  The Chief scribbled figures beside the T square. Biv watched his neck, fascinated. Like the others his boss had patches sewn on his elbows and cuffs.

  ‘Last year,’ he declared, sitting back, ‘you ate 198 pies. I estimate each weighs three-quarters of a pound. You’ve eaten over a hundredweight of pies, you greedy pig. I’m telling you this, Biv, for your own good. Quantities have a way of creeping up on us. Quantities affect a man’s stamina.’

  Biv was tired. He could feel it already.

  94

  Eminent citizens served time as statues. Granite plinths were distributed in prominent sites for this purpose. Geniuses, manufacturers, soldiers, encyclopaedists, the occasional explorer, climbed into position, usually in time for the morning rush hour. One would have thought that to be looked up to, to ‘stand as an example’, would be considered an honour, and although there was no shortage of candidates most put on bored, even bad-tempered expressions as they climbed into position. The job was tiring, especially for the older ones, under a blazing sun in summer, soaked to the marrow in winter, and they were busy men, still quite active in mind and body. Furthermore, an outstretched arm attracts pigeons. It was not uncommon to see a great poet step down, his head, shoulders and one arm covered in pigeon droppings. Perhaps for this reason the two-hour stint, or ‘roster’, had been devised.

  They were not all geniuses though. Recently the list had been broadened, and the figures made to be more functional. It was agreed that writers while standing should also point to the library. Then a coalminer who had a savings account out of all proportion to his miserable earnings was allowed to stand and point to the bank. A woman who kept a spotless house balanced a vacuum cleaner on her head for the two hours. A celebrated meteorologist pointed up at the sky, though there was immediate confusion when a religious thinker insisted on doing the same. Athletes and weightlifters in flimsy shorts aimed a warning finger at the old people’s home.

  A person could go up and talk to these eminent figures. If you were lucky they would hand down valuable ‘guidelines’, or advice, based more often than not on a lifetime’s experience.

  Biv spoke to a middle-aged man who leaned forward slightly, one hand shading his eyes, squinting at the horizon.

  ‘May I ask, what are your achievements?’

  ‘Oh, I discovered some of the laws of perspective,’ he said out of the corner of his mouth.

  Biv cleared his throat. His Chief would give anything to meet him. He made a note.

  ‘Then you’d know where the blessed cul-de-sac—’

  ‘The locus in question is over yonder. I step down from here in a few minutes. I can take you.’

  His place was taken by a gaunt figure wearing a yellow helmet who had perhaps the most arduous pose of all. The problem with the rest was to remain rigid. He, as an eminent seismologist, was expected to shake and vibrate for the full two hours. His name was Parkinson.

  ‘He fell off not long ago,’ said Biv’s new friend. ‘Broke an ankle.’

  In keeping with the mysterious laws of perspective he and Biv were walking towards the horizon, gradually diminishing.

  95

  Find Biv before it is too late.

  Stop him now.

  If you can.

  96

  The slow movements of Grey’s daughter. Hand moves in a series of pale arcs performing tasks. To trace (Biv, the draughtsman), would show interlocking trajectories expressed in volume, space, like a line drawing of overlapping motor tyres, pipes, parabola. The way, in a word, the mouth forms the slow crescent; cross-sections of her arms and thighs further circles; her breasts, floating oval circles; the navel, circular labyrinth; ohhs and ahhhhs; flexible, pulsating inner circle.

  97

  Biv asked, ‘I’ve heard it said that God exists just below vanishing point. Have you come across that? Second, is the sky really a dome or sort of arched?’

  ‘Ah, I don’t know about your second question,’ came the reply as they walked, ‘and we’re still working on the first.’

  ‘I see. How far have you got? And, are we about near the cul-de-sac?’

  ‘Ah, you’ve raised two separate questions there, but oddly enough they are related. We begin with a tree. Or take one of those telegraph poles. Now that one beside you is the same height as that one yonder. But it doesn’t look it.’

  98

 
His legs were tired. He wanted to rest.

  Biv put up with a lot, but that is his way. It has its advantages. He was the one the Chief liked to confide in. Really, this Biv is quite a likeable character.

  The Chief whacked him on the omoplates.

  ‘There are many more enigmas in the shadow of a man who walks in the sun than all the religions of the past, present and future. Ah, straight from the great Giorgio de Chirico.’ He was half drunk. Roy could see the man suffered from envy; had not got rid of it although he was now in his fifties. And he repeated himself. ‘Before I forget, I have a tricky little job for you tomorrow. What a life. You and I are misunderstood.’

  His beard was full of minestrone soup. He went outside and vomited. A minestrone mess with bitterness. He came back.

  ‘You’re all right, Roy. You’ll do.’

  99

  To gauge temperature. In strategic locations volunteers in heavy fur coats stand barefoot in glass trays, the sides of the trays graduated like thermometers. By measuring the sweat level in the tray even someone ignorant of figures could tell at a glance if the climate was too hot or too cold. Without labouring the point, if it was freezing the tray of even the most heavily dressed volunteer would remain bone-dry. Students could do it for pocket money; ideal. Young pores are generally more mobile, extra sensitive! Yet the job would undoubtedly be dominated by large women or jockeys, quick to see they could be of some use to the community during their relentless efforts to reduce.

  100

  ‘There is no “country” as such,’ the Chief liked to explain. ‘“Country”, or crust, is nothing more than an undulating base into which are screwed factories and other artificial protuberances, and’—the Chief waxing lyrical; no wonder he stood at the pinnacle of his profession—’laced over with bridges and wandering strips of cement we happen to call “highways”, “country” is merely a bedrock, a base, which supports an economy. We place and arrange things on the surface, including ourselves. Have you got that?’