Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  ‘I came home from the War to find Rhoda in full command . . . and by some stroke of good luck also to find Clem Eaton at the homestead. There was nothing between them, I’m sure . . . so don’t go jumping to conclusions. He’s an English gentleman, titled connexions, related to the Vaiseys. She liked him, of course, as she would even if only for that. But he’s also a very pleasant fellow. He was there when I found them together, purely as Vaiseys General Manager . . . and just as pleased to see me as she was . . . and surprised, because I’d come home unannounced. It was just that the fact of his presence gave me something to make my stand on, make my declaration of war. He’d been in the British Army, a Major of Cavalry, too . . . had fought the Uhlans, no less, and been wounded and invalided out. I was full to the crop of the stink of the War and made no bones about it . . . nor about officers and gentlemen and the English and Vaiseys . . . and, well just about everything offensive I could throw at him. He stalked out in a very English fashion . . . with Rhoda and the two boys at his heels . . . because she’d been just as offended as he, as I’d intended. I remember eternally how they chugged away in a huge old Daimler car he used to get about in, thinking to myself as they went through the gate: “I wonder what I’ve done?”’ Jeremy sighed again.

  ‘It was only then they found out about the mining lease the homestead stood on. When I’d arrived in Palmeston, the first thing I’d done was to go on to the Mines Office and look up the Mining Warden, always a friend of mine, regarding me more as the chemist than the squatter. He disliked squatters as a true mining man always does. We soon established the legality of my tenure. It wasn’t long before Eaton was back again, swallowing the English pride for the sake of his master, Lord Alfred, trying to persuade me to give it up . . . for my family’s sake, as he put it. Rhoda also tried a bit of persuasion in the same line . . . but she did it by letter. She never came back to Lily Lagoons . . . nor did the boys. How it would have worked out but for my discovery of what she’d done to Nanago I don’t know. I did feel responsible for the boys. Of course I’d have had her and them back only on my own terms . . . which, perhaps, would have been impossible for her. But I did find out about Nanago. More than that, I found the girl herself, living in a blacks’ camp down the Beatrice, sick to the point of death, with a blind baby, begotten by God knows whom, dying in her arms, and young Darcy all set for septicaemia through terrible burns to his face, sustained by falling into the fire in a fit. They’d all been in the Native Compound in Palmeston, supposed to be under medical care . . . but had absconded for the very lack of it, to save their lives. Christ!’ Jeremy was heaving with feeling. It took him a moment to get control of himself.

  He went on quietly enough: ‘It’s my philosophy that a man should excuse a woman for just about anything. She’s the female of the species and should be indulged in everything that may be considered female . . . but . . .’ His voice suddenly became harsh again ‘. . . unkindness, cruelty, isn’t one of these. Apart from driving out the inoffensive creature Nanago, and her baby, to live like what she’d call animals, when Rhoda heard that she, Nanago, was back at the homestead . . . and not merely at the homestead but living in the Big House, the house that was built for her . . . as she probably heard from Clem Eaton, who was here and saw Nanago working as my housekeeper . . . she wrote to me saying that I was deliberately humiliating her and that if I didn’t give her immediate assurance that I’d turned the creature out, she would lay a charge against me for cohabitating with an Aboriginal female, which in this land of liberty is a legal offence. I ignored the letter. Next thing I have the Beatrice policeman out investigating . . . rather apologetically, because he had a couple of halfcaste bastards himself. Nothing happened as regards the charge. Oh, what a scene there would have been in the Port Palmeston Court if I’d been arraigned! There was nothing for it but to sue me for divorce, naming Nanago as co-respondent. I ignored that, too. I got my revenge by marrying Nanago as soon as the decree was issued . . . with the kind permission of the Protector, of course, her legal and so-kindly guardian. Soon afterwards Rhoda married Eaton. I doubt if she regrets it, whatever you imply about her sexual life. I certainly don’t regret what I did in the matter. Nanago to me is the perfect wife. I guess I should have married a yellow girl to begin with . . .’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘I thought I’d made that clear?’

  ‘The explanation might stand for other men . . . but not for you.’

  ‘There’s no time for that now. The Sun’s just right. Come on up the wall.’

  He led the way up a steep path formed by the oblique cracking of the sheer rock face and the forward slipping of the mass. Thus up some twenty feet to a wide horizontal shelf formed by detritus fallen from above supported by great slabs below that had once been the part of the cliff-face. They were now heading for a perpendicular point beyond which seemed nothing but the violet sky. When she remarked on the intensity of the colouring of the sky he replied, ‘It’s but the true blue of heaven . . . untainted by the dust and smoke of man . . . particularly by that man Vaisey.’

  She asked, ‘Does he own this?’

  ‘No . . . this wall’s his northern boundary. But if it and what lies North of here was worth two bob to him, I guess he’d have it too.’

  They reached the point, rounded it, to see the wall blazing in the slightly westerned Sun and that it reared above concavities made by vertical slipping of the face. He said, ‘The galleries are in those overhangs.’ He asked her if she knew anything of graphic art. She said she thought she did, that she had studied if for a while with the illusion that she had talent, and had seen all the great art galleries of the world and lots of exhibitions. He said that he also had seen some of the great art works, without much understanding of them through ignorance, but that since becoming interested in what he called, this sort of stuff, had as much study of the subject of art generally as was possible through books. He added, ‘It’s not easily understood. I’ve had lots of discerning people here to see them and give me an opinion on Aboriginal art that’ll satisfy me . . . because I’ve never been able to form one . . . and all I’ve got is something either different from everybody else’s or the conventional stuff of the Anthropologists . . . symbolic equivalence, ethnographic parallels, and the like, which I think’s all academic humbug. I’ll be very interested in the effect it has on you.’

  There was no decoration in any of the overhangs they passed under to begin with, except Nature’s, in the form of streaks of all possible shades of red from palest pink to puce over the general terracotta, due to the chemical action of seepage. Then suddenly they were in a deep concavity that stretched back some fifteen feet from bottom lip to base of wall, the roof curving up from base to the top lip, which would be twenty feet above the bottom at its outer brush-grown and broken-toothed extremity, the whole about fifty feet in length, with a flat sandy floor marked recently only by the tracks of tiny animals and reptiles. That the curvature was a mass of decoration was evident on sight; but Jeremy halted the girl before she could give more than a glance to them, making her sit down and accustom her eyes to the shade after the glare from the wall. He got her to look out on the view that stretched to infinity southwestward, olive green, with here and there, like islets in a sea, bits of blue that were the few prominences thereabout. He said with a sigh, ‘Well, there it is . . . Terra Australis. You couldn’t get a more typical view of it. How does it greet your alien eye?’

  Lydia stared for a while before answering, ‘Monotony . . . awful monotony.’

  ‘Yet you saw the teeming variety as we came along . . . or I hope you did. No place on earth has natural variety in any way comparable with Australia . . . in vegetation, animal, reptilian, insect life. You have to think of it like that to truly see it. That’s the way the blackfellow sees it, I think . . . with a kind of intellectual telescope and X-ray apparatus functioning along with his normal vision . . . knowing what’s in there, and there, and there . . . he sees it, even though
so many miles away. What colour is it to you?’

  ‘Grey . . . no, green-grey . . . a drab green-grey. Does that offend you?’

  ‘Not a bit. It’s the way most people see it . . . people born for generations in it . . . not truly native, of course. To me it’s filled with colour.’ For once he indicated with his hand, sweeping it over the whole scene. ‘To start with, it has a blue iridescence over it. It’s always like that in bright sunshine from about eleven to two. Then there are the bits of deeper blue and the quality of their depth. See!’ He pointed with his finger. ‘There . . . there . . . there! And the browns . . . see . . . and shades of green . . . and all meaning something. You can mark the watercourses if you concentrate, see where the sandstone ends and the limestone begins, by the change in colour. There it’s schist. That litmus blue streak is the ridge where we saw the old blacks. The green that seems to be in the sky marks the lagoons . . . the billabongs. That yellowish patch . . . that’s the Rainbow Pool.’

  But she was paying more attention to his animation. She said, ‘You truly love it, don’t you!’

  He looked into the searching blue eyes: ‘How terrible it’d be if I didn’t.’

  ‘Why terrible?’

  ‘Because my heart would be empty.’

  ‘If you had a woman to love?’

  ‘A man’s love of woman should be a passing thing. Only stupid men remain enthralled by women. But this . . .’ His sweeping hand seemed to caress the scene. Then he turned suddenly to her: ‘But come . . . let’s see what must prove surely the strangest of all the art shows you’ve ever seen.’

  Not a square inch of the roof, from where it started in the sand to where at its outer extremity the roughness of weathering made it impossible, but was painted, by how many artists in how many designs for how many ages would surely never be known even with the use of the most expert devices of detection. Picture had been painted over picture. What had been coarse rock as elsewhere was here silky smooth with uncountable layers of pigment, the colours of this earth, the innumerable reds, the yellows, pipe-clay white, fixed with saliva, plant-juice, blood drawn from the painters’ own arms. Figures of all shapes, from spidery fine to gross. Animals recognisable as local creatures, kangaroos, emus, goannas, echidna, fish . . . and humans . . . but all so different from reality. Some of the animals were depicted with entrails shown, and always their genitals. Curiously the entrails of the human figures were not shown, but again always the genitals, and in proportions ranging from mere indications of sex to monstrosities that had character of their own and might be said to have human-like figures appended rather than to be appendages. There were mere faces, round or elliptical, but never square, with ears that hung down or stuck out or up, animals’ ears, or had no ears at all — with eyes and noses but no mouths — with rays like the Sun rising from craniums or growths like trees sprouting from brains — with necks as long as bodies, or no necks at all — arms and legs as thick as bodies or the whole figure thin as sticks — hands with five fingers or six — feet with as many toes — all with genitals — and all, all with latent force beyond description.

  Lady Lydia’s interest was even intense. She swung from here to there in the soft red sand. Jeremy followed her, watching. She looked at every bit of it, touched some with a long white finger. Not a word said, till at last she swung to him, met his questing eyes, held them for a moment, then asked, ‘What do you want me to say?’

  He looked at a loss.

  ‘I can’t say anything without prompting.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that be dishonest?’

  ‘I don’t know. If you asked me if I liked them, I’d say no. If you asked me how they affected me, I’d say they only bewildered me. If you asked me if it’s art, I’d say, perhaps the art of children . . . but not done by children, nor for children’s purposes . . .’ She stopped, swung away from him.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No . . . only take me out of here. I feel as if I don’t belong in here . . . nor am wanted in here . . . by anything . . . the spirit of the place, or . . . or . . .’ her voice rose hysterically ‘. . . or even by you!’ She rushed back to the point of entry, stopped there, staring out upon the wilderness.

  He watched her for a while, then went out to her. She met him with a face hard and haughty. He said they’d better be getting down. They spoke little as they went, and nothing about the paintings. She complained of thirst. He got her a pebble to suck. He told her of native methods of getting water in dry places, of how animals in such places subsisted on dew. Thus back to the waterhole, the shed, the utility.

  While she went to the hole to drink, he cupped his hands and called to Prindy.

  No sight or sound of the boy. Jeremy got out a vacuum flask and poured tea. He was sitting with Lydia, sipping tea, when suddenly he rose and went to the utility and looked in the back. The rations for Bobwirridirridi were gone. He looked about for tracks. None but his own. Seeing him frown, Lydia called, ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘That old Snake Man’s been here . . . and it looks as if the boy’s gone off with him.’ He cupped his hands again, and this time called mightily: ‘Kuuuuu . . . Prindy!’

  The red cliffs flung the echo back . . . oo . . . oo . . . indy . . . indy!

  He waited. He called again. Nothing but the echoes. He swore: ‘Godammit!’

  He turned northward, to where the bight ended, beyond which, as he had told Lydia earlier, the Snake Caves lay. He called: ‘Kuuuuu . . . old-man . . . Wirri . . . dirrid . . . dee!’

  Only the echoes in reply.

  He tried again: ‘Old-man . . . you . . . been . . . promised . . . me . . . no . . . trouble!’

  As the echoes died, a voice called from the cliff about where they had just come from, faint but clear: ‘Ko . . . Mullaka!’ Jeremy called back: ‘Kuuuuu . . . old-man!’

  ‘No-more . . . trouble . . . Mullaka!’

  ‘Bring . . . that . . . boy . . . back . . . here!’

  ‘By’n’by . . . Mullaka!’

  ‘I . . . want . . . him . . . now!’

  ‘Me . . . two . . . feller . . . go . . . walkabout . . . mummuk . . . Mullaka!’

  ‘You . . . make trouble . . . long . . . o’ . . . me . . . bring back boy now!’

  ‘No more trouble . . . Mullaka . . . mummuk . . . yawarra!’

  This last came from a point at least ninety degrees North of the last. Involuntarily Jeremy swung to it. ‘Listen . . . old-man!’

  The answer came from yet another direction: ‘Mummuk . . . yawarra!’ And yet another: ‘Mummuk . . . yawarra!’ Too many times and too clear to be merely echoes.

  When Lydia looked at Jeremy with surprise in her eyes he said in a ragged voice, ‘Ventriloquism . . . one of a koornung’s tricks.’

  He called again: ‘Old-man!’ Again. Only the echoes now. He stood a moment, staring helplessly round the ring of cliff-face, at length said, ‘What’s the use? God knows where they are.’

  ‘Will he do the boy harm?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. They’re friends. Old blackfellows do get attached to boys like that . . . often adopt ’em. Nothing sinister about it. They’re not paederasts. The boy probably wanted to go with him.’

  ‘What’s there to worry about, then?’

  Worry was plain in Jeremy’s face: ‘It’s going to upset everybody.’

  ‘The blacks?’

  ‘Yes. His mother for a start. She hates him having anything to do with blacks. And they’re going to regard him as tulli-tulli . . . and shun him.’

  ‘But you said old blackfellows adopt young boys . . .’

  ‘The fact that this one’s a koornung’ll make all the difference. I’ll get the blame. I brought the old fellow here. What little trust they had in me I’ll lose now. A man’s a fool for monkeying in their business . . .’

  ‘I’m glad you see that at last . . . wasting your great substance on Stone Age savages, when the real world’s in turmoil!’

  He looked at her: ‘I didn’t mean it
like that. I value their trust more than anything. I meant I’m a fool for blundering into something to alienate me, like any other fool whiteman.’

  She shrugged: ‘I suppose you blame me?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For making you bring me out here.’

  ‘You didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do. Come on, let’s pack up. We’ve got a long run home . . . and trouble ahead.’

  They didn’t speak again until they were in the car and on the move, now taking the better and more direct route towards home. It was she who broke the silence: ‘You said I didn’t make you bring me. Does that mean you really wanted to?’

  He answered shortly, ‘I was pleased enough to take you once it was fixed.’