The walks usually lasted about an hour, perhaps as long as perfection can last. They would return to the others sitting in the lounge — Nanago, Prindy, Kurt, sometimes Darcy and Water Lily, who would look at them as at people who had been to some secret place and might have some strange and lovely tale to tell. But although they came in always looking radiant, they acted always matter-of-factly, just seemed to drop each other for the rest. Then Jeremy might ask Kurt what was happening in mad Europe, or listen to Prindy talking about something he had been reading or answer his questions. Rifkah might start talking cooking with Nanago, or take up some sewing, mending, at which she was very painstaking and so expert as to be able to make a rag of a garment last for a long while yet, a skill she said she had picked up from her old bubbeh and perfected as a mind-saving device while in prison. Jeremy would not stay so long, but in accordance with long-established custom take himself off to his own quarters, to read or to work at something in his scientific line of research. He would kiss both women, his wife lightly on the mouth, Rifkah as lightly on the brow, while the girl kissed him somewhat more ardently on the cheek, clinging for a moment.
What tales the gossips would have made of it had they known — about his doubling back later to sneak up the side stairs, or her to come sneaking down them and across the yard to jump into bed with him! Perhaps he might have wished it, the way he often sighed and tossed before going off to sleep alone — even without realising it. But there were certainly no tracks to look for in the early morning, except those he had made in crossing from the Big House in the night and his early morning going to the race track to run with his horses.
Rifkah was always up at dawn, too, along with Nanago, to get things going in the kitchen. Soon they were sharing the kitchen. Rifkah confessed to a passion for cooking, instilled into her by her bubbeh and for so long stifled by circumstances. As if delighted to indulge her, Nan stood by most of the time, taught what she could, in the way of bread and brownie making and dealing with large chunks of meat and local fish and fowl, but didn’t intrude on the innovating, the tsymmis, the kugels, the bagels, the schnitzels, the pfannküchen and the rest of it, as if realising that here was something more in the nature of ritual than domestic economy.
It was in between these culinary rites that mastery of the horse proceeded; or what was surely more correct, mastery of the self in respect of horses, since with all her expressed and evident delight in horses as creatures, Rifkah was admittedly afraid of them. In fact she was scared of all strange creatures, even of the crippled things and the blacks. There was much giggling on account of it at first. She made no pretence, giggled at herself. She was simply not venturesome in a strange environment, just as those who giggled at her would have been themselves for the most part out of theirs. Her preliminary dealings with the horses were made to please Prindy, who wanted a certain possession of her, and found this the only way he could get it. She would go with him to the race track with bread to feed the horses, the donkey, the camel, perched on the rail for safety, and watch him showing off on various mounts. His urging her to get onto something herself met only with laughter: ‘I moost only fall off and brek mein neck!’ Jeremy was moved to tell the boy not to worry her with his urging, saying that it was not in some people’s nature to do certain things. But plainly Prindy was disappointed. There were so many places he wanted to take her — alone, apparently.
Then suddenly there she was seen sitting astride of old Betsy, bareback, hanging on so hard to the old mare’s mane that it was a wonder she didn’t object, while Prindy led the old thing round with a mere finger hooked in her lip. How Rifkah got on no one quite knew. It seemed that the mare was pestering her for bread while she sat on the fence and that while trying to escape she had more or less fallen on her back. Once on Bay Rum Betsy’s back it was pretty well impossible to fall off, so broad was it and so great the protuberance beneath. Prindy slipped the halter on and led them to the homestead, for everyone to see. So great was the delight of everyone that it could not be gainsaid with cowardice. Although it was with the sweat of fear on her lovely lip, since certainly there was terror in her great hazel eyes, Rifkah climbed off the fence onto Betsy next day, with a bridle to cling to instead of pulling out poor Betsy’s hair, and was made to learn to use it. Next day the saddle, and Jeremy there to hoist her into it. So on, day after day, learning to trot; no cantering yet or change of mount, no matter how Prindy pressed. Prindy wanted to take her to so many lovely places where the utility couldn’t go and where Betsy in her retirement wouldn’t.
The equestrian accomplishment made no difference to the ritual in the kitchen. Smiling Nanago kept things going till the inspired one got back. There was also more than ritualistic cooking going on in the kitchen. Nan, product of a mission, knew about the ancient people called the Jews, of whom Jesus was one, and wanted to know more about them. As if starved for the faith of her fathers as well as for the spicy diet that was part of it, Rifkah took to telling stories in full that had been only touched on by the missionaries in their haste to get on with the Jesus Bijnitch. Sarah and Abraham and Jacob and Rachel and Rebecca and Isaac, Queen Esther, King David, all came alive as she told their stories while she cut and sliced and salted and peppered and sugared and cinnamoned and spiced and broiled and baked and fried. Like the Dream Time heroes of the Old People’s yarns, during the enactment of the rituals of the bush: Prindy wanted to hear them. The school kids, too. Jeremy objected, to be roundly rated by Rifkah for confusing religion with legend. He gave in. He discussed it with Kurt, only to find him as hostile to Judaism as religion as he himself was to Christianity. ‘Religion’s got to be got rid of,’ said Kurt. ‘Zere can be no real progress of ze human race while superstition it is permitted!’
Kurt was not interested in the horses, nor in anything much but the statistics of the productivity of the land as set forth in a great pile of official reports, gazettes, and the like, along with maps, that Jeremy produced for him. The visitors had been run around the region in the utility, but for little better than glimpses, because that was all Kurt wanted: a photo here, a photo there, but with a mass of statistics to attach to them for eventual sending to those he called his Principals. Jeremy went on with his life seemingly as usual, the only obvious difference being in his mien.
But how different everything had become here in this place that for so long had been a very stronghold against change was suddenly and even drastically revealed after something like a fortnight of this idyllic condition, this little girl’s play in the kitchen, fooling about with kids on horses, walking at night playing a game with love, while the outside world was climaxing to madness under the influence of the greatest set of madmen that had even lived. It was during that period that the Munich Agreement was signed, giving the blessing of half the world’s lunatics to Hitler to indulge his frankly mooted wholesale homicide, while the other half cursed and spat upon the first and declared its intention to double the slaughter. It was there every night, issuing forth from the radio in subdued screaming in a dozen different languages, all of which the only one who really listened seemed to understand, the grey-faced Kurt: Fascist swine — Communist dogs!
One evening while Jeremy and Rifkah were walking, she remarked on the great good nature of Nanago, expressed especially in her own case by giving her the run of the kitchen: ‘Jewish voman vood sooner share her ’usband zan her kitchen.’ Laughingly she went on to tell how her old bubbeh had always said the trouble between Sarah, wife of Abraham, and Hagar, Abraham’s concubine, really started in Sarah’s kitchen. She was referring to the biblical story (Genesis 21) of the expulsion of Hagar by Sarah, traditionally because of the girl’s overweening pride of having borne a son to Abraham before Sarah. ‘Sabbath fry-fish . . . zat vas ze real trouble, mein Bubbeh say. Zat fry-fish is Jewish voman’s special pride and secret, don’t you know. Ze angels gif zat secret to Sarah. She moost not tell to ozzer voman . . . shickseh, strange voman, not Jewess . . . I tell you before. Zat Hagah vo
s Egyptian. She vont zat secret. So she got to go. She go mitt Ishmael, her son, start Mahomedan religion, to get . . . vot you call it . . . s’kvair . . . no, square . . . get square mitt, vit . . . I get goot accent yet . . . to get square vit Jews . . . hahahaaah!’
This was the sort of Bible Story that was causing so much delight to the simpler ones of the household, and even by now to Jeremy, who declared it so much more human than the namby-pamby Christian versions.
Rifkah went on with her comical tale, telling it just as if talking about known relations, about how Sarah had passed on the secret to Rebecca, wife of her son Ishmael, and Rebecca to her own son Jacob’s wife, Rachel, and so on down the generations, as if it had happened a few years back, not all of five thousand.
Jeremy asked, ‘Is that why you don’t fry fish here . . . because a shickseh will learn your secret?’
‘No, no! Nan isht not like shickseh to me. I loff her . . . like mein tante, what you call ’em . . . auntie.’
‘Then why don’t we have some of this marvellous fry-fish?’
‘Ze catfish ist not kosher.’
‘What’s wrong with the poor old catfish . . . because it’s got whiskers?’
‘You are laughingk at me!
‘No . . . you know I like you to do all the things you’ve been prevented from doing by those German dogs.’
She leaned to him. ‘I know . . . dear Jeremy.’
‘Well, why aren’t catfish kosher?’
‘No schale.’
‘No scales? What difference does that make?’
She shrugged. ‘I not know . . . only ist Jewish law. Fish got no . . . no skell . . . isht treife . . . not clean . . . verboten.’
‘Just old-man-been talk, eh?’
‘Vos ment?’
‘That’s what the blacks say when you ask ’em why they practise some old custom. Means that’s what the men of old decreed . . . not to be questioned . . . tradition. But there’re plenty of fish to be had with scales . . . bream, barramundi, cod. Barramundi’s a very tasty fish . . . best in the whole country . . . and got scales as big as shillings.’
‘Vy not ve haf to eat?’
‘Catfish team in the lagoons, and are easy netted. The others, in the creek, have to be hooked or speared . . . and barramundis, in the big holes, are particularly wary. There are some beauties, though . . . barras . . . twenty, twenty-five pound . . . up to fifty, even.’
‘Vill you tek me vere zis vonderful fish?’
‘Not much good my taking you. I’m no sort of fisherman. But get young Prindy. He’s a marvel with a fish-spear . . . and the magic, too, of course.’
‘Magic?’
‘Can’t do anything without magic in the hunting line. Why don’t you go out riding with Prindy. It’s time you got on a better mount than poor old Betsy and took a longish ride. It’s only about five miles to the barramundi holes. Ride old Snowball. He’s a big powerful animal, but very gentle-natured . . . why, you could go to sleep on him and he’d take you where you want to go by just telling first . . . yes, truly!’
‘All right . . . I ride Snowball. Tomorrow . . . so ve haf fry-fish for Friday night. I vill gif you proper Oneg Shabbat, ze vay I haf tell . . . told you . . . about. Kurt vill ze Blessingk gif. Haha! I see his face ven I ask him. Pliss . . . don’t you tell him. If you tell him he vill angry mitt me and not do. I surprise him. You do not mind, I do zis Jewish religious zing?’
‘So long as it pleases you, my dear, I’m happy.’
‘Dear, dear Jeremy!’ She quickly kissed his cheek.
The fishing expedition eventuated as a horseback picnic, with Water Lily and her two tan children going along, as well as visitors they’d had with them since the Races; a blackish half-sister of Lil’s known variously as Kujalinga, or Turtle, who also had two kids, chocolate-cream. Prindy was leader, despite the fact that Turtle’s boy Tijit was older. There must be a leader for successful dealings with barramundi, one to enjoin strict silence, shadowless approach, to enact the procedure of enticement. Even the Singing must be done under the breath. The barramundi had but two enemies, the crocodile and man. The great size so many attained showed how successfully they dealt with both. Mostly they could be taken only when the water was murky from the early rains. Here and now the big limestone pools were clear almost as the sparkling air. From where they lurked down in the weedy caverns, the big fish saw everything seeable that was going on, heard every hearable sound. Smaller species lived in constant terror of them, dodging amongst the weed masses nearer the surface, hiding also from fishing birds and their bigger brethren, while striving to make a living from whatever was to be picked up.
Prindy got out onto a projection of rock nicely shaded by an overhanging tree, stripped to the golden buff. His equipment was a magic fishing headband of woven hair, just a tiny strap of a thing, a tobacco tin of insects of various kinds somewhat maimed to render handling them easy, and a fish-spear. Similarly unclad but accoutred with only a spear, Tijit stood on another rock about ten feet away under the same shade. The rest, carefully placed, watched, scarcely breathing.
With an almost imperceptible movement, Prindy scattered a pinch of insects on the water. A moment, while the creatures broke the mirror surface slightly with their tiny struggling. Then a little translucent cloud of reckless fishy mites, followed by flanking slips of silver. The water boiled minutely to what went on below the surface and below again. Then below it all a shadow, black, silver, flickering. The surface heaved to the commotion of self-preservation. Grey eyes were fixed. The spear was poised: Zip! The spear-haft wobbled, leaned, ripped the surface for half a dozen feet, popped down, vanished. That was the sign that the spear held, the moment of release from tension. Pent breaths were freed in a subdued cheer: Yakkarai! No need for silence now, since you could get but one barramundi in one hole in one day — maybe one week, depending on the others’ memories. Still, there were other holes, hence some restraint needed. The two naked boys slipped into the water. The others proceeded to strip with haste. The old barra might have to be hauled out of a cave; and how many caves might there be down there? Soon they were all in the water — tan and chocolate and chocolate-cream bottoms up in diving, faces of the same hues with red mouths wide and white teeth gleaming in coming up again for one gulp of air — all, that is, except Rifkah, who’d gone so far in stripping only to remove elastic sides and roll her grey moleskins halfway up her ivory-white claves.
It didn’t take long to find the fish. Soon there it was shooting up out of the water, struggling feebly on the end of the spear, with Tijit-Tijit on the other end. The dark boy, all gleaming teeth and sparkling eyes, swam to plop the fish right at the white feet waiting in the shallow. It was a big enough catch to please anyone, a good ten pounds. Rifkah bent over it beaming with delight. She looked up, to see the others in a semi-circle, treading water, watching her cloosely. She said, ‘Ist beautiful fish.’
Tijit came ashore, pulled out the spear, tossed the dying fish up onto the grass. It was intended that they should eat this first one for lunch, cooked in clay in the native style, along with bread and butter and a large cake Rifkah had made with cinnamon flavour.
Still the others watched Rifkah. Prindy said to her, ‘Plenty mussel here. We cook with fish, eh?’ Then he added: ‘You swim, eh?’
Rifkah only smiled. Turtle said something in lingo. The others giggled, except Prindy, who replied shortly. Then the gigglers upended and went down after mussels. Rifkah asked Prindy, ‘Vot zey say?’ But he also showed his bottom in a dive.
Rifkah watched them, went to each one as he or she came up with cupped hands full of mussels. Thus till they had enough for lunch. Then the males went on down the creek to more fishing, leaving the cooking to the females. They returned in an hour or so with three fine fish, the biggest some fifteen pounds, over which Rifkah cooed for joy.
The cooking was done. The fish in its baked clay casing looked like a mummy in a sarcophagus, but smelt very different. That savoury steam issu
ing from the several blow-holes! Rifkah sniffed with appreciation. However, when the case was cracked open, to reveal fins, scales, guts as the offering, she showed no such gusto in pouncing on it as the others, but had to have nice clean pieces forked out for her to be eaten wrapped in bread. Still, she pronounced the firm dark-streaked flesh Loffly, perfect for fry-fish. She would not eat the mussels, baked in their shells, declaring them treife. The others understood readily. Water Lily told of how you must not eat turtle while your nose was healing after the ceremony of septum-boring, else your nose would rot and drop off. Turtle herself, who could not eat turtle at all because it was her totem, told of how, amongst her people of the coast, a pregnant woman who ate jungle-fowl or its eggs would have her baby stolen by such a bird at birth and taken and put into its huge mound nest to hatch out as a jungle-fowl.
They swapped yarns while they lazed with full bellies in the shade, each eventually telling the story of his or her own traditional ancestry, those too young to do so having it done by someone older. For instance, Water Lily told of her youngest’s connexion with Widwidda, the Blue Kingfisher, and the story of how the little bird was always quarrelling with his big brother, Wadwadda, the Blue Kookaburra, about the places they camped in. Wadwadda, who was lazy, left it to Widwidda to build the camps, which the little fellow did to suit his size, causing Wadwadda to have to smash his way in with the nulla-nulla that became his powerful beak. So Widwidda grew wings and took to making his camps in the nests of tree-termites. Lazy Wadwadda also grew wings, and to this day goes about bursting open his little brother’s nests. Tijit-Tijit told of how the little bird of that name will lead you to sugar-bag if you belong to his clan. Rifkah’s contribution was in like vein, telling of how her Biblical namesake had tricked her aged and pur-blind husband, Yitzchak, into leaving his property, a station where they ran mainly goats and camels, to her favourite son Ya’acov, instead of to Ya’acov’s hairy twin brother, Esau, the elder by an hour or so and hence the true heir, but disliked by his mother because he’d given her a bad time having him. It seemed that it was this Esau, the Hairy One, who, to get even went off and started Araby Bijnitch. Rifkah began by telling the tale seriously, as though somewhat ashamed of the original Rifkah, but soon got caught up in the mirth it caused her audience, especially the bit about old Rifkah’s getting Ya’acov to disguise himself with goat’s hair. Prindy put the cap on it by declaring that old Yitzchak must have been a mungus not to have smelt that he was being had: ‘Hair from billy-goat . . . ohaheeeee!’ They were rendered helpless with laughter.
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