A veil of cumulus drifted over the moon.
After a while the dingo crept out of the bush and on to the ledge of sandstone; warily he nosed through the ashes for bones; but he found none. A pair of flying foxes flip-flapped down to the billabong. Little folds of mist moved softly round the hill-that-had-fallen-out-of-the-moon. And the children slept.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE girl woke early: in the whiteness and stillness of the false dawn: in the hour before sunrise when the light is very clear and the earth peculiarly still. She lay on her back, watching the stars die and the sky pale. Was heaven there, she wondered; somewhere beyond the stars and sky? If it hadn’t been for the bush boy she’d probably know by now. She rolled on to her side and looked at the naked Aboriginal, then looked quickly away. If only she, too, had been a boy!
She tried to think calmly, logically. One thing she was certain of: the bush boy had saved their lives. He was used to living in the desert. That was obvious. So long as they stayed with him they’d probably keep alive. But they’d still be lost. Could they, she wondered, persuade him to take them all the way to Adelaide? But perhaps he didn’t know where Adelaide was… She wondered what he was doing, wandering the desert alone, far from family or tribe. It was all very puzzling.
A few weeks ago she’d have known what to do; known what was best. But here in the desert most of the old rules and the old values seemed strangely meaningless. Uncertain, unsure, she fell back on a woman’s oldest line-of-action: passivity. She’d simply wait and see.
The decision brought immediate relief. Now she’d relinquished her leadership and all its implied responsibility, much of her keyed-up tension ebbed away. Rolling on to her back she closed her eyes and fell almost at once into a deep refreshing sleep.
She woke, a couple of hours later, to the sound of laughter and splashing water. Sitting up, she saw her brother and the black boy bathing in the billabong. They were ducking each other beneath a miniature waterfall that cascaded down from the rock.
‘Come on, Mary,’ her brother shouted. ‘In with us.’
‘Come on, Mary,’ the rocks re-echoed. ‘In with us. In with us.’
She waved cheerfully.
‘Later,’ she shouted. ‘When it’s warmer.’
Peter opened his mouth to remonstrate; but his mouth filled suddenly with water; the bush boy had ducked him again. Peter flailed his arms. Like a miniature waterspout he rushed his assailant. The bush boy feigned defeat; in mock terror he fled across the billabong; splashing through the shallows, still pursued by Peter, he clambered on to the farther bank. There he paused. Even in play, part of his attention had been subconsciously focused on the ever-present problem of survival, the never satisfied search for food. Now, close to the billabong, he started to probe at a cluster of bulb-shaped protuberances in the sand. With his long prehensile toes he scratched away the top soil, uncovering a soft, brown-skinned ball, about the size of a coconut.
‘Worwora!’ his voice was excited.
Peter came scrambling out of the water. Doubtfully, he looked at the ball; hopefully, he touched it
‘Yeemara?’ he asked.
The bush boy nodded, and together they started to unearth the strange coconut ball. It was one of nature’s paradoxes: a plant growing upside-down: a leaf and flower-bearing liana whose foliage grew entirely under the ground. Close to the surface was the tuber-like yam; spread out around and beneath it were its flowers and leaves, drawing from the soil that sustenance which the air of the desert denied. It was a plant as rare as it was strange, and as tasty as it looked unpalatable.
The bush boy broke off the yam; then, following another skein of underground foliage, he tracked down a second. Fascinated, Peter watched. He got the idea quickly. Soon he too had sought out and pulled up a third worwora. The bush boy grinned in appreciation. The little one was quick to learn. Following the lines of underground foliage, the two boys worked gradually away from the billabong. Soon, side by side, they disappeared into the desert.
When they were out of sight Mary came down to the chain of pools. Soon she too was laughing and splashing under the waterfall. But she listened carefully for sound of the boys’ return. As soon as she heard their voices, she scrambled out of the water, and quickly pulled on her dress.
The boys’ arms were full: full of worworas. They were carrying at least a dozen each; and they were, Mary suddenly noticed, both of them quite naked. She picked up her brother’s shorts from beside the edge of the billabong.
‘Peter,’ she said, ‘come here.’
He came reluctantly across.
‘Gee! I don’t need no clothes, Mary. It’s too hot.’
‘Put them on,’ she said.
He recognized her strict governess’s voice.
A week ago he wouldn’t have dreamt of arguing. But somehow he felt different here in the desert. He looked at his sister defiantly, weighing the odds of revolt.
‘O.K.,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll wear the shorts. But nothing else.’
A week ago the girl wouldn’t have stood for conditions. But somehow, for her too, things were different now. She accepted the compromise without complaint.
They cooked the yam-like plants in the reheated ash of last night’s hearth. They tasted good: sweet and pulpy: a cross between potato, artichoke, and parsnip.
During the meal Mary watched the black boy. They owed him their lives. His behaviour was impeccable. He was healthy and scrupulously clean. All this she admitted. Yet his nakedness still appalled her. She felt guilty every time she looked at him. If only he, like Peter, would wear a pair of shorts ! She told herself it wasn’t his fault that he was naked: told herself that he must be one of those unfortunate people one prayed for in church - ‘the people who knew not Thy word’: the people the missionaries still hadn’t caught. Missionaries, she knew, were people who put black boys into trousers. Her father had said so - ‘trousers for the boys,’ he’d said, ‘and shimmy-shirts for the girls.’ But the missionaries, alas, evidently hadn’t got round to Australia yet. Perhaps that’s why it was called the lost continent. Suddenly an idea came to her. A flash of inspiration. She’d be the first Australian missionary.
Missionaries, she knew, were people who made sacrifices for others. While the boys were scattering ash from the fire, she moved to the far side of the cairn, hitched up her dress, and slipped out of her panties.
Then she walked across to the bush boy, and touched him on the shoulder.
She felt compassionate: charitable: virtuous. Like a dignitary bestowing some supremely precious gift, she handed her panties to the naked Aboriginal.
He took them shyly: wonderingly: not knowing what they were for. He put the worwora down, and examined the gift more closely. His fingers explored the elastic top. Its flick-back was something he didn’t understand. (Bark thread and liana vine didn’t behave like this.) He stretched the elastic taut; tested it; experimented with it, was trying to unravel it when Peter came to his aid.
‘Hey, don’t undo ’em, darkie! Put ’em on. One foot in here, one foot in there. Then pull ’em up.’
The words were meaningless to the bush boy, but the small one’s miming was clear enough. He was cautious at first: suspicious of letting himself be hobbled. Yet his instinct told him that the strangers meant him no harm; that their soft, bark-like offering was a gift, a token of gratitude. It would be impolite to refuse. Helped by Peter, he climbed carefully into the panties.
Mary sighed with relief. Decency had been restored. Her missionary zeal had been blessed with its just reward.
But Peter looked at the bush boy critically. There was something wrong: something incongruous. He couldn’t spot the trouble at first. Then, quite suddenly, he saw it: the lace-edge to the panties. He tried his hardest not to laugh – his sister, he knew, wouldn’t approve of his laughing. He clapped a hand to his mouth; but it was no good; it had to come. Like a baby kookaburra he suddenly exploded into a shrill and unmelodious cackle. Then, giving way
to uninhibited delight, he started to caper round and round the bush boy. His finger shot out.
‘Look! Look! He’s got lacy panties on. Sissy girl! Sissy girl! Sissy girl!’
Faster and faster he whirled his mocking fandango.
Mary was horrified. But for the bush boy, Peter’s antics supplied the half-expected cue. He knew for certain now why the strange gift had been made, knew what it signified: the prelude to a jamboree, the dressing-up that heralded the start of a ritual dance. The little one had started the dancing; now it was up to him to keep it going. He did so with wholehearted zest.
The joyful caperings of Peter were nothing compared to the contortions the bush boy now went into. He leapt and bounded around the billabong with the abandon of a dervish run amok. It was a symbolic combat he danced; a combat in which he was both victor and vanquished; a combat between life and death. He had no emu feathers in his hair, no moistened ochre streaking his face and chest; but he snatched up a stem of yacca-yacca for spear and a splinter of ironbark for club, and jabbing, dodging, feinting and parrying he fought his pantomime self to exhaustion. It was the only dance he knew: the war dance; the natural and inevitable sequel to dressing-up.
Brother and sister watched his act, first in amazement, then in unrestrained delight.
‘Kup, kup, yurr-rr-rr-a! Kup, kup, kurr-rr-rra!’
The bush boy’s war cry started like the yap of an attacking dingo and ended in the bush-dog’s throat-shaking growl. He became utterly lost in his battle; the pantomime became reality. First he was the triumphant attacker; in and out the yacca-yacca darted like the jab of a fish-barbed spear; round and about the ironbark flailed, battering, parrying, crushing. Then he transferred himself to the receiving end. He clutched at his chest, wrenching out the imagined fish-barbs; he smote his forehead, smashing himself to the sand; dazedly he staggered up. But with an ear-splitting howl of victory his assailant was on him. The spear stabbed through his heart. With a choking cry the defeated warrior toppled from the crest of a sand-dune; in a grotesque, stiff-limbed somersault, he slid to the desert floor. Then he lay still. The battle was over; but the victory parade was still to come.
Like a phoenix rising, the victor sprang from the vanquished’s body. His fists he clenched and knotted above his head – like a boxer self-acknowledging his prowess. His feet he pulled proudly up in a high-kicking march of victory – an ebullient, primitive goose-step. And after every so many paces he leapt high into the air and brought both heels up from behind, to strike himself on the buttocks with a resounding, flesh-tingling slap. At first the tempo of the victory dance was slow and measured: stylized. But gradually it quickened. The goose-stepping became higher, faster; the leaping more frenzied, more abandoned. The bush boy’s body glistened with sweat. His breathing quickened. His nostrils dilated. His eyes rolled. Yet still the dance went on: ever faster, ever wilder. He was swaying now to a drumbeat that couldn’t be heard, caught up in a ritual that couldn’t be broken. On and on and on; though his muscles were aching, his lungs bursting, his heart pounding, and his mind empty as the cloudless sky. Then suddenly the climax: somersault after somersault, victory-roll after victory-roll, till he was standing, stock still and in sudden silence, face to face with the children.
And once again he was naked; for at the moment of climax the elastic of the panties had snapped, and the gift – symbol of civilization – lay under his feet, trampled into the desert sand.
White girl and black boy, a couple of yards apart, stood staring one at another.
The girl’s eyes grew wider and wider.
The bush boy’s eyes widened too. He realized, quite suddenly, that the larger of the strangers wasn’t a male: she was a lubra, a budding gin.
He took a half-pace forward. Then he drew back. Appalled. For into the girl’s eyes there came a terror such as he’d seen only a couple of times before: a terror that could for him have only one meaning, one tragic and inevitable cause. He began to tremble then, in great, uncontrolled, nerve-jerking spasms. For, to him, the girl’s terror could only mean one thing: that she had seen in his eyes an image: the image of the Spirit of Death.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TO the bush boy everything had its appointed time. There was a time to be weaned, a time to be carried in arms: a time to walk with the tribe, a time to walk alone: a time for the proving-of-manhood, a time for the taking of gins. A time for hunting, and a time to die. These times were preordained. They never overlapped. A boy couldn’t walk before he’d been weaned; couldn’t take a gin before his manhood had been proved. These things were done in order.
This was why the question of the girl’s sex had never interested the bush boy. Didn’t interest him now. For in his tribal timetable he had only arrived at the stage of walking alone: the stage immediately preceding the proving-of-manhood: the stage of the walkabout.
In the bush boy’s tribe every male who reached the age of thirteen or fourteen had to perform a walkabout – a selective test which weeded out and exterminated the weaker members of the tribe, and ensured that only the fittest survived to father children. This custom is not common to all Aboriginal tribes, but is confined to the Bindaboo, the most primitive and least-known of the Aboriginal groups who live among the water-holes of the Central and North Australian desert. The test consisted of journeying from one group of water-holes to another; a journey which invariably took some six to eight months and was made entirely unaided and alone. It was a test of mental and physical toughness far fairer – but no less stringent – than the Spartan exposure of new-born babies.
It was this test that the bush boy was now engaged on. He had been doing well: had covered the most difficult part of the journey. Yet he wasn’t, it seemed, to be allowed to finish it. For the lubra had looked into his eyes and seen the Spirit of Death.
Death was the Aboriginal’s only enemy, his only fear. There was for him no future life: no Avalon, no Valhalla, no Islands of the Blest. That perhaps was why he watched death with such unrelaxing vigilance; that certainly was why he feared it with a terror beyond all ‘civilized’ comprehension. That was why he now stood in the middle of the Sturt Plain, trembling and ice-cold, his body beaded in little globules of sweat.
Peter looked in amazement, first at the bush boy then at his sister. He couldn’t grasp what was happening; couldn’t understand how things had gone so suddenly and terribly wrong. Afraid, his recently-acquired confidence quite drained away, he reached for his sister’s hand. Then, unexpectedly, he started to cry.
To the bush boy the little one’s tears were confirmation: confirmation of what the lubra had seen.He turned away. He left the worwora at the edge of the billabong; he left the lace-edged panties by the ashes of last night’s hearth. Slowly he walked away into the desert.
CHAPTER NINE
THE children watched him. The girl was very pale and breathing quickly. The boy was whimpering; shocked; frightened; caught up in a cross-fire of emotions he couldn’t begin to understand. But one fact did penetrate the haze of his bewilderment. The bush boy, for the second time since their meeting him, was deserting them: their life-line, once again, was drifting away.
Suddenly, violently, he flung off his sister’s hand and rushed stumbling into the desert.
‘Hey, darkie!’ His voice was frightened. ‘Come back. Come back.’
The bush boy walked on: unheeding, apparently unhearing: like a sleep-walker. But Peter wouldn’t be denied. Blindly he launched himself at the bush boy’s legs, clutching him round the knees.
‘You’re not to go,’ he panted.
And he hung on, like a leech.
The bush boy was jerked to a halt: was shaken out of his trance. He put his hands on the white boy’s shoulders, pushing him gently away. But Peter wouldn’t release his grip.
‘You’re not to go’ – he repeated it over and over again. ‘Not to go. Not to go. Not to go.’
The bush boy squatted down; so that his face was close to the little one’s; so that the
little one could look into his eyes and see the terrible thing that was there. With their faces less than eighteen inches apart the two boys stared into each other’s eyes.
But to the bush boy’s astonishment, the little one didn’t draw back; gave no exclamation of terror; seemed to see nothing wrong. He got to his feet. Puzzled. For a moment hope came surging back. Perhaps the lubra had been mistaken: perhaps the Spirit of Death had been only passing through him, resting awhile as he passed from one tribe to another: perhaps he had left him now.
He retraced his steps, back towards the girl.
But as soon as he neared her, all hope drained away. For at his approach the lubra again shrank back; in her eyes all the former terror came welling up.
The bush boy knew then that he was going to die. Not perhaps today, nor tomorrow, nor even the next day. But soon. Before the coming of the rains and the smoking of spirits out of the tribal caves. This knowledge numbed his mind, but didn’t paralyse it. He was still able to think of other things. Of the queer strangers, for example – the lubra and the little one – of what would happen to them. When he died, they would die too. That was certain, for they were such helpless creatures. So there’d be not one victim for the Spirit of Death but three. Unless he could somehow save them?
Then in a moment of clarity he saw what he must do. He must lead the strangers to safety: to the final goal of his walkabout: to the valley-of-waters-under-the-earth. And they must waste no time. For who knew how much time they would have.
He gathered up the worwora, and smoothed out the ash of the fire.
‘Kurura,’ he said. And struck out across the desert. The little one followed him at once. But the lubra didn’t move. He thought for a long time that she had decided to stay by the billabongs, but in the end she too started to follow, but keeping a long way behind.
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