Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  In fact, said Barbu, time in which to do those other things was pressing. In only about a month the Beatrice River Races would be on; and since the business he did during that festival constituted the best part of his livelihood, they must be back there on time. There was no question about Prindy’s going along with the Barbus. Surely the arrangement had been made in advance by such forces as Mother Shasti, Chandarma Devta (Igulgul) and the Ol’Goomun-Ol’Goomun, hence was unarguable. Nevertheless, there was some questioning. Aboriginal logic might accept a magical result simply as an accomplished fact; but the Indian mind, contaminated for so long, from Ghengis Khan to Queen Victoria, must at least have the facts of the accomplishment. Where had Prindy come from and how? The boy would not say. It wasn’t that he maintained utter silence as in the early association. By next day his tongue was loosened. But to that pressing question he simply said, ‘I don’ know. I been lose-him-head.’ The latter expression was Murringlitch for I have forgotten. Barbu soon enough saw the logic in it that he needed. Naturally one would not remember dealings with gods, who would be much too subtle to be blatant about their acts. But little Savitra, so much a product of a culture of which the panaceas were RACEHORSES and BEER, was not so easily convinced. As far as she was concerned he had simply Runned Away from Compound, the logical conclusion of which she, the daughter and sister of several inmates of that institution of non-liberty, probably saw as keeping your mouth shut about it till such times as assured of your freedom. Even that rather crude interpretation didn’t offend Barbu, who sighed and said he only wished those ladies of his might have sense and opportunity to do the same.

  Those other things to do, were to be done while the turn-out travelled through three or four cattle properties (actually all with one proprietor, the Absentee Baron Landlord) on their homeward way. They would be calling at each of the homesteads, at once to make obeisance to His Lordship’s underlords, who demanded it of itinerants, and to receive the conventional baronial hand-out. There would also be a bit of trading to do at homesteads and mustering-camps in the well-known Ali Barba lines, in the matter of goods, such as curries and condiments, especially the Mango Chutney, Indian silks, Indian fly-proof sunglasses (a type with tiny screens of gauze to keep out the pests), sandals and slippers, the chorry, or fly-whisks, medicines for those who wished to keep their ailments secret, like white stockriders with the clap they’d caught from riding the black stockriders’ wives who’d got it from the white riders’ mates, fat reducers and hair restorers (the bony Barbu was a great advertisement for the one but scarcely for the other, but sold each equally), Rung, those magic Indian hair-dyes that could change your personality in a moment, depending just what you wanted of the magician, anything from inky basma to sun-blazing henna; and in the matter of service, a discreet bit of fortune-telling with the crystal ball to the squatters’ ladies, and even cutting the squatters’ hair while amusing them by chuckling over their crude jokes about the morals of those black harlots of his.

  Another line of trade with the stations was in something the station people could have collected quite easily themselves, but were evidently too proud or finicky to do so, namely horse-hair, used for stuffing saddlery. This came from dead horses, murdered horses, one might say, since this was a land of horsemen and the horse regarded as more than an equal to man if he had any value, because most of these beasts had been shot to save feed and water for animals that paid their way. Some of the horses had had their day as friends of man; but most were brumbies, creatures of the wild, largely runtish, which came in to the waterholes and the bores when things dried up where freedom lived. A preliminary to the end-of-season pleasures culminating with the Beatrice River Races was the slaughter of these nags. Usually it was done of Sundays as kind of recreation. Everybody turned out in a utility truck or two, armed with high-powered rifles. Bets were made on the kills. You dropped ’em on the run from the car — bang, bang, bang! Great sport. The Australians are a Nation of Sports. They used to shoot the blacks like that. The pity was that the blacks hadn’t been able to breed like brumbies.

  The chorry, the cow-tail whisks, were likewise taken from dead beasts. Most of these also had been shot, because diseased or maimed during mustering, and in odd cases for daring to turn on a man on horseback flogging them whither they had no inclination to go. A grisly business — no, not the slaughter and the flogging, because those who did this were considered the very flower of the manhood of the land, but the collection of tails and manes from things blown up like bladders and crawling with maggots and stinking to the high heavens where flew the kites for the sheer joy of the effluvium. Barbu did it himself. Prindy would have helped, but was refused. Savitra only wrinkled up her pretty little chocolate nose, so much broader than her father’s, and said, ‘Oh, pooh!’ The stuff had to have the stink smoked out of it.

  There was always a place for low-class itinerants to camp at the homesteads, somewhere down on the creek or lagoon that served as water-supply. The Barbus had their spot, used for years on circuits like this. No one troubled them. The whites regarded them as blacks; and the blacks had no kin with them. Barbu told Prindy he must keep away from the blacks’ camps. Most likely Prindy didn’t need to be told. The children stopped in their own camps while Barbu visited the homesteads. At Khartoum Station (so-named because its founder had served in Africa with the British General, Kitchener) they saw that a policeman was visiting the place. Prindy slipped away into the bush. He need not have. When he returned to the camp at night, Barbu told him that when the officer had asked him who was with him, he had said what they had spoken of doing in case of inquisitiveness, namely that he had his daughter Savitra and the son of a certain Indian who lived down in the Centre and who was his daughter’s betrothed. The policeman had said he would take a look at the captive birds, in order to see if there were any prohibited by the Fauna Protection Law; but Barbu had overheard the man say to the Boss that he didn’t know one small bird from another himself, to which the Boss replied that he shared the ignorance; and as they were sharing a bottle of rum, Barbu reckoned it didn’t matter. Still, he said, they must be prepared. He’d had policemen pounce on him and free all of his birdies, apparently just for the fun of it; which might be fun for the policeman, but not for the poor birdies, which would quickly perish freed in a strange environment. That night, Prindy’s hair was dyed with basma. Barbu said that now, with black hair and grey eyes, he looked like a high-caste Parsee. Savrita declared that he looked like a halfcaste Afghan, and that she wouldn’t marry one of those if they gave her golden bangles for her ankles, because they treated their camels better than their wives. For several days she refused to speak to Prindy because he said he liked his hair black and was going to keep it like that. He spent a lot of time staring at himself in the mirror, often with a pair of fly-goggles on to hide his grey eyes from himself, too. Barbu, tickled about it, being something of a tailor as well as all else, while they were joggling along with the old horses, made him a pair of jodhpurs and a turban and dubbed him Shah Jahan, King of the World.

  Prindy wasn’t a bit troubled by being ignored by his bride. The contrary, she had been rather possessive and demanding and interfered with his practice of the flute and Barbu’s story-telling. During the long days of jogging northeastward towards home, Barbu related the Hindu Myths and Legends, to the boy’s evident fascination. And during the dark nights of Igulgul’s utter decline, sitting about their camp-fire he made up little songs about such deities as Ratri, one of the Goddesses of Night, who drove away the utter blackness with the shining of her eyes, the stars; of Apsarsis, the nymph, who lived in the Celestial Waters, and was the wife of Gandharva, who guarded the special grog they kept up there for the gods to drink, Soma, which is moonlight; of Ushas, Goddess of the Dawn, who roused everybody in the morning with light and beauty and the joy to live the day before them. Sometimes Savitra joined in, but often got sulky, talked of Jitty Indian Bijnitch, wanted him to make up songs for her or listen to her singing. S
ometimes he called her Manthara, the Jealous One, and she went to bed and wept.

  Thus it went, while they jogged homeward. There was Igulgul, or Chandra Devta, again, reborn to make more mischief, and plenty of opportunity for it this season, with all the chances for Wrong Side Bijnitch that would be offering through the Races, Igulgul hanging winking in the trees just after sundown. Yes — and there again were the familiar trees of Beatrice River, the glinting, murmuring river itself, with its tribe of cockies still arguing whose tree was whose to perch the night in. There were the couple of lights at the Toohey place. Then the House of Ah Loy, ancestral no longer to him who had become Shah Jahan. Then the goats ganged up in the red road, down which could be seen the Irish prodigality of Finnucane’s lights and the Scottish meanness of McDodds’s. The goats could be beaten off the road with the horsewhip; but their effluvium had to be suffered through. ‘Oh pooh!’ cried the fastidious bride.

  And there, with rickety little shop-front verandah just visible in the bit of moonlight-twilight, looking so tiny and ramshackle against the great mango trees behind, was the House of Barbu. The weary old horses whickered with delight in the long journey’s end. Barbu cried: ‘Mai ap key leay tuffa laia hoon!’ which he explained to his son-in-law meant that the house was being told it was being brought a great gift, the Hindu custom in bringing home a newly married member to dwell therein.

  The son-in-law dropped down to open the rickety gate, then shut it against the goats. Barbu drove under the mangoes, into the leaning coach-house. Prindy unharnessed the horses, which with renewed vigour went trotting out to their old familiar stamping ground. Barbu led the way to the back of the jerry-built huddle of iron structures that constituted his premises, carrying a lighted hurricane lantern, which he swung to Prindy’s fluting and Savitra’s singing:

  Tana nana nana, tana nana nana . . .

  Other pipples wear cotton clothes.

  Me and my ’usband wear silk from Palghat

  Tana nana nana . . . tomorrow wit’ de flower I go . . .

  With much unlocking and unbolting Barbu opened up, led the way in, through blackened kitchen, into the little shop, with its counter and shelves of multifarious wares, including snakes in bottles, herbs in bundles, astrology and palmists’ charts on walls, nothing that anyone was likely to purloin while the master was away. He lit a glass-shaded lamp from the lantern. Prindy looked about with interest. Savitra snatched up the lantern and went out, through the passage behind, and into a room, the door of which she slammed hard behind her. As the others came out, she called shrilly from behind the door, ‘I don’ care he is my ’usband . . . dis my room, and nobody else!’

  Barbu looked at Prindy and shrugged, saying, ‘Princess Draupadi vos proud, too, vos not she, my son . . . yet did no she go vit Arjun to live in ’umble cottage in forest? T’ey all-same, vomen. Like young ’orse . . . t’ey got to play-up. You camp vit me for now eh?’

  Prindy said, ‘I like camp in van. I can play musics dere all night.’

  ‘As you vish, my son . . . as you vish.’

  Next morning soon after breakfast, all three of the Barbu household were in the coach-house, which was also the bird-house, putting the birdies into cages of many sorts, some to be sold locally by Barbu himself, others for trading to those who bought them for export — when Prindy breathed suddenly, ‘Somebody come!’ He was still in the jodhpurs of the Afghan outfit, but without the glasses, which were in the van. He just had time to leap into it. With badges and buttons flashing in the sunlight, Constable Stunke appeared in the doorway. He nodded to Barbu, saying, ‘Goodday, Ali . . . seen your horses . . . take a look at your birdies.’

  Cringing, bowing, smirking, Barbu cackled, ‘Ho, yis Mist’ Stunke, certainly yis . . . but no illegal ketching, my verd!’

  ‘We’ll see about that.’ Stunke looked at Savitra, watching from under lowered brows. ‘How you doin’, young Satty . . . behavin’ yourself?’

  She said demurely, ‘Oh, yas, Mist’ Stunke.’

  ‘Well see you keep it up . . . or you’ll go along with your sisters.’

  There was no hiding in the van, with its mere canvas flap falling to tail-board level and the tail-board down. Directing his attention to the skinny jodhpured legs and small yellow-brown feet plainly to be seen, the policeman asked, ‘Who’s that in there?’

  Barbu hopped about like one of his birdies in fright: ‘T’at is . . . t’at is . . . my son-in-law, Sir.’

  Stunke stared now at Barbu: ‘Your what?’

  Barbu’s voice quavered: ‘T’e ’usband of my lil girl, ’ere . . . son of cousin relation of Centre, Sir . . . t’e Indian fashion, you know.’

  Stunke said shortly, ‘Let me see him.’

  There was tense silence. Stunke broke it by calling harshly to the legs, ‘Come out here, boy!’

  Prindy didn’t move. Stunke was stepping towards the van with a look as if to rip the flap down when he reached it. Barbu said sharply, ‘Bahar ao, bahadar, puttar.’

  Stunke swung on Barbu: ‘What’d you say to him?’

  Barbu cringed: ‘I honly tell him to hobey you, Sir.’

  ‘Well, don’t go speakin’ any lingo with me . . . I told you before with your wife and daughter business.’

  Barbu bowed: ‘Yas, Sir . . . I am sorry, Sir . . . but poy is shy, and not spik so much Henglish.’

  ‘Well, he ought ’o be speakin’ English . . . it’s an English country, ain’t it, not bloody India?’

  Prindy was lifting the flap, to look out, wearing the dark goggles. Stunke stared at him: ‘Take those glasses off.’

  Prindy looked poised as if to leap out and run. Barbu said quickly, ‘He haf sore heye, Mist’ Stunke . . . it is prevalentic in Centre, you know . . .’

  ‘Tell him to take ’em off.’

  Barbu gasped at Prindy, ‘Apnian akhan band rakho.’

  Prindy had learnt a lot of Hindustani during the month; but it must have been a shot in the dark, by the look of panic in Barbu’s face. However, Prindy removed the glasses to show his eyes all squinty and blinky as of one with sore eyes having to expose them to bright light.

  Stunke quizzed him cloosely, asking, ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Shah Jahan!’

  ‘Got a bit of Abo in him, eh?’

  ‘Might be just lil bits, Mist’ Stunke.’

  ‘Your son-in-law, eh?’

  ‘It is Indian custom to marry as children, Sir . . .’

  ‘I know . . . and for dirty old men to marry bits of kids, too. But it’s a good idea in this case . . . stop that kid of yours goin’ the way of her mother and sisters.’

  ‘Yes, Sir . . . t’ank you, Sir.’

  ‘Well, let’s look at the birds. I want a few for myself this time. Relatives coming to the Races.’ He turned from Prindy towards the cages. Prindy promptly donned the glasses, and as the others moved further into the shed, jumped down silently, and seen only by Satriva, went sidling towards the house.

  Half an hour later Constable Stunke was bowed out of Barbu’s by the head of the household, carrying a brand-new gilded cage containing the pick of the finches, half a dozen or so, all of which began to twitter merrily, surely because they saw the bright world about them again, even if through bars, not because they felt better in the company of one whose calling it was to cage even his fellow men. Coming to McDodds’s store, he entered, and by the bony square and ruddy-faced tight-expressioned Angus himself was given a parcel of goods he’d evidently already ordered. In showing the birds to McDodds he ignored the dry question. ‘Hoo mooch did ye pay for ’em, mon?’ Another admirer of the birds, but more discreet in respect of comment was another customer just then buying tobacco, Ozzie Burrows, the railway porter. But Oz was indiscreet in another way. When Stunke spoke of the new son-in-law and there was some small discussion of the barbarous customs of India and Stunke said that at least it would stop Barbu from selling this daughter in prostitution Oz remarked that it would also stop, as he put it, the Old Bastard Pokin’ th
e Poor Kid Himself. That roused McDodds: ‘For God’s seek, wha’ are ye sayin’, mon?’

  Oz said, ‘Course ’e pokes that kid o’ ’is . . . poked all the others, too.’

  Stunke asked Oz coldly, ‘You got any evidence o’ these allegations?’

  ‘Course, everybody knows it!’

  ‘I’m askin’ you for evidence.’

  Oz shrugged: ‘Well . . . it’s only what people say.’

  ‘What people?’

  ‘Aw, ’ow the ’ell do I know . . . Race Time mobs . . .’cause ’e’s an Injun . . . and everybody knows what Injuns’re like with kids.’

  Stunke said in a voice still colder, ‘I’d be careful what I say, if I were you, Oz. As far as I know, and I know a lot more than you do, Ali Barba’s been a good father to his kids . . . it was the mother . . .’

  McDodds interrupted, with square red jaw out-thrust: ‘And I’d be muir than ceerful about sayin’ things like that, Ozzie Burrows . . . I’d be damned well asheemed!’

  Ozzie flamed: ‘You can go and get stuffed, McDodds!’ He flung the tobacco back on the counter.

  McDodds grated: ‘That meeks two of us, then!’

  ‘’Ere,’ snapped Stunke. ‘Cut it out.’

  ‘Gi’ me me money back!’ snapped Oz.

  McDodds turned his back, snapping, ‘Once a thing’s purchased in this store it’s purchased. Teek your purchase and get oot.’

  ‘I don’ wan’ yo’ stinkin’ tobacco . . . I wan’ me money back!’

  McDodds looked at Stunke: ‘Constable, weell you kindly remove that man from my premises?’

  Stunke said, ‘Come on, Oz . . . get. Take your tobacco and get.’