Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  He was interrupted by Denzil Dickey, whipping out a large notebook and with pencil poised, piping, since that was the way his voice, being much nearer the ceiling, sounded, ‘I say, Fabers, old chap . . . mind saying that again?’

  Fabers, setting up his gear, took his time about it. When Denzil asked, timid as a child in class, what the term Parietals meant, he answered shortly, absently, out of the back of his head while writing on the blackboard, as it were, ‘Wall paintings . . . from paries, the Latin, a wall.’

  Fergus asked, ‘Ever think of doing a paper on the parietals of the Sydney public lavatories, Cootsey?’

  Squinting through his sectioning frame, the Coot ignored him. It was as the complete professional that he went about his preparations for photographing, with frame and light-meter, apparently as little concerned with what he was about to photograph as a true professional in that art would be with the bride and groom posing for him at a wedding, his only interest a good picture. At least that’s the way it seemed from the scant attention he gave the paintings. Nevertheless he was able to deliver a lecture of sorts on them to Denzil, who stood at his elbow, snapping it up in short-hand: ‘The concept is magico-religious, of course. You see in anthropomorphic form what constitutes the hegemony of Paleolithic Man, his occult background. Note the fact that some figures have six digits to the hands, others the normal five, some only three. Why, do you suppose? It isn’t adventitious. You’ll find the rubric repeated throughout the total art corpus of the region. It is patent, therefore, that you’re dealing with a methodology, a mimesis, which is strictly controlled. Study the control. You’ll find it’s religious in its stringency. No matter the size of the figure, or its position, vertical, horizontal, slanted, ten metres tall or ten centimetres . . . all are exactly alike. That’s methodology. Watch for it always. It is the clue to whether the depiction is sacred or profane. Take these male and female figures at the end here. Sexual differentiation is made with the finest simplism and partiality possible. Compare these with the crude dichotomy of sex depicted on the lavatory walls of our cities . . .’

  Fergus burst in with a guffaw: ‘He has been studying shit-houses!’

  Jeremy and the General looked at each other, reddening, evidently with the effort to control their mirth. Prindy giggled, surely only sensing the joke. The Professor frowned. He had been smiling, no doubt with the pleasure of drinking the old familiar juice of scholarship, after being dragged into a wilderness of self-doubting by an ignoramus. Fabers himself faltered by just a word or two in his dissertation: ‘Er — what may be termed the cloacinean art of our cities . . .’

  Fergus shouted, ‘Bravo, Cootsey!’

  Fabian turned on him, snapping, ‘Do you mind? This is important to our young friend.’

  ‘I was congratulating you . . . The Cloacinean Art of Woolloomooloo. My thesis for my doctorate, Professor!’

  St Clair joined the chuckling of the others, but with a shake of the head at Fergus.

  Fabers finished what he was trying to say almost with a shout: ‘To understand the difference between that sort of thing and this is funda . . . er . . . is primary in understanding Paleolithic Art. Whereas the former is mere unskilled, well, impressionism, if you like, and wholly individualistic, what plainly is sought here is presentation of the symbolic equivalence of sex as part of magico-religious existence, control of which is presumed to be gained thereby . . . not for the individual, but for the sect, the tribe, the clan . . .’

  This last bit made the Professor fairly beam and turn from his star pupil to Jeremy, the unlettered iconoclast, with full self-confidence, saying, ‘You wanted to know my reaction to it . . . primarily, I’m sure, to gauge how it would affect my attitude to our problem. On consideration, I’d say that, even if the work is essentially primitive man’s cohibitive expression in service to the tribal ethos, the deliberateness of stylisation, the controlled methodology as Fabian aptly put it, surely shows the self-discipline of the individual . . . and with that to work on, these people can be advanced to any degree of culture Homo Sapiens is capable of . . . with careful tutelage of course . . . the most careful tutelage. I hope you’ll agree?’

  The faded eyes pleaded so desperately for agreement that it would have been hard not to give it — and surely useless, too. Jeremy nodded slowly. Again the Professor beamed, looked even as if he were going to thrust out his hand to make a pact of it, but was diverted by tittering from Fabers and squealing from Denzil, as they came to the orgy scene, in which pudenda were depicted very realistically and in size to equal that of the figures to which they were attached. Fabers said, ‘So that’s what upset her! Jewesses, I’m told, are terrible prudes. Moses, of course, was the world’s first wowser . . . ahaaaaaeeeee!’

  Meanwhile, Rifkah had quickly recovered from whatever had upset her in the cave, and went along back to the camp with Prindy even gaily. She offered no explanation of her behaviour, nor was asked for it, as if what she had done was expected of her. Perhaps their gaiety during the descent, their constant hand-clasping and half-embracing expressed something of this, as if they had been brought still closer together.

  They found the four blackboys and Darcy amusing themselves with that somewhat childish and womanish game of faking animal tracks. Rifkah and Prindy joined them eagerly. With expert assistance, Rifkah was perfecting what she already knew of the combination of piccaninny tracks with those of a couple of shepherding kweeluks. Prindy did an intricate one of a dingo’s foraging about the camp, which culminated in the imaginary dog’s rearing up to sniff at that pack-bag containing Cootes’s dainties. This tickled the others greatly.

  Then suddenly Rifkah sniffed the air, swung toward the fireplace, crying, ‘Ze damper!’ Prindy joined her in the rush, snatched up a stick and cleared the mound away and raised the lid. He would have hooked the damper out with the stick, too, into the ashes. She stopped him, grabbed the kneading sack hanging folded in military style with other regimented commissarial equipment, and lifted it out. It was but slightly burnt, charred only about the little crater in the middle that showed how nicely it was done. When she set it down on a stone, they squatted about murmuring their admiration, the blackboys and Prindy salivating in theirs. She was rising to get a knife to scrape off the char, when Prindy suddenly got an idea for playing a joke on ‘Ol’ Cootsey’, as he called him. There was concern for a moment on the part of the others as they heard what he had in mind, but soon laughter when he spoke of him as a Silly Bugger with a Big Head, evidently quoting Fergus. Then chuckling they set about doing what was necessary.

  When the party from the Galleries came back into camp they found the place deserted. Nobody remarked on the fact till Fabers discovered that the lid was off the camp-oven, apparently shoved off, and that it was empty and no sign of what had been in it. He almost screamed, ‘My damper . . . where’s everybody?’

  The others came to the fire. ‘They’ve taken my damper!’ cried Fabers, a look of incredulity on his face.

  From over in the rocks and scrub not far to eastward there sounded a howl as of a dog suddenly hurt. All looked in that direction. The staring eyes swung southward, as a yelping apparently travelled that way. ‘A dog,’ murmured several. They swung back again to where the howl had come from when a babble of human sound was heard from there.

  Jeremy, who had been looking at the ground, said, ‘By the tracks it looks as if a dingo sneaked in and pinched your damper, Doctor.’

  ‘What . . . out of a hot camp-oven?’ demanded Fabers.

  ‘They’ll snatch a bit of meat grilling on the fire, if you’re not watching. Surely you’ve had experience of them?’

  ‘Of course I have. I had my boots stolen from beside my swag one night.’

  ‘Anyway . . . it sounds like the others caught him.’

  ‘Caught him?’ cried Fabers. ‘Didn’t you hear him running away? I’m going after him.’ He turned towards the fly exercise-rigged for stowing bedding and such gear. A rifle lay ready for instant use on the ne
atly packed swags. As he grabbed up the rifle, Jeremy called to him, ‘No shooting, please.’

  The Coot swung on him: ‘It’s a dingo!’

  ‘According to our reckoning here, dingoes’ve got more right to the place than we have.’

  Fabers pouted, looking quite Napoleonic as he did, and snapped back, ‘That one’s got no right to my damper.’

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ said Jeremy. ‘I don’t have shooting on the place.’

  The Coot looked belligerent. General Esk saved the situation by calling, ‘I say . . . heah they come . . . and with your damper, old boy, by the look of it.’

  Fabers put the gun down. As he came out of the fly he met Fergus coming from the tree where the tucker-bag hung, who said to him, ‘Lucky he didn’t take your tucker-bag, too, Cootsey. Look at the track.’

  Fabers took a look. ‘By jove . . . yes. Cheeky bugger!’ He looked at those he would be leading on the expedition. ‘Now, there’s a lesson for you. Never leave anything lying about a camp. Everything to be packed away, or hung high.’

  Fergus said, ‘Maybe what stopped him taking your patent tucker-bag, Cootsey, was the citronella. If you citronellaed everything, you wouldn’t have to go to all the trouble of stowing things away by numbers.’

  Fabers ignored him, going to meet those coming to the fireplace, foremost of them Prindy, carrying the damper in both hands, like an offering. Fabers took it without thanks, looked it over, asking, ‘Did he damage it?’ Prindy pointed to what might have been marks of canine teeth. Perhaps one less relieved than an old woman by recovery of a lost culinary masterpiece would have paid more attention to the slightness of the damage. Instead, Fabers held it up for all to see. ‘A beauty, isn’t it?’

  Said Fergus, ‘You don’t expect us to eat it after it’s been chewed by a dingo, do you?’

  ‘Chewed be blowed . . . it’s hardly touched.’

  ‘That dog might have rabies.’

  ‘Nonsense. We don’t have rabies in Australia . . . do we Jeremy?’

  Fergus winked at Jeremy, who replied gravely, ‘No . . . but there is hydatids, of course . . . and dingoes carry it.’

  Fabers looked at him quickly, he tittered, ‘Go on . . . you’re trying to pull my leg. We’ll have it with raspberry jam.’

  He went and got another tiny can of jam, oblivious of an exess of citronella till he came to opening it, when he sniffed it. He glanced round. No one was watching him, at least as far as he could see. Fergus and Prindy were behind him. Somewhat stealthily, he rubbed the top of it with a corner of the canvas ground-sheet spread for eating off, sniffed again, gave the top a rub in the sand and wiped again, then sniffed his fingers, and after another glance at those busy with making tea and laying cutlery, dealt with them likewise — to the silent delight of Fergus and Prindy.

  The jam went nicely with the damper, or vice versa, without a hint of citronella nor a word about it from Fergus. The Coot was very proud, saying that this was nothing — he could actually make pastry, make a perfect meat or fruit pie — but his men needn’t think they would be getting anything like that during the expedition: ‘We’ve got to be tough,’ he declared, ‘This’s an exercise in toughness . . . every ounce counts . . . only now and again a nibble from the special tucker-bag.’ Fergus and Prindy looked at each other and dropped their heads and quivered.

  As he had implied he would, Professor St Clair asked Rifkah, before all the others, what it was about the pictures in the gallery that had upset her. Jeremy looked annoyed and as if about to voice a protest, when she answered simply and smilingly, ‘I vos frightened, because . . . vell, it vos so strange . . . so simple like children do . . . but so strong vit’ magic . . . and meaning I do not understand. I must know zat meaning . . . because . . .’ She reached towards Prindy, who came to her. She put an arm about his shoulders. ‘Because zey are my children . . . and I must know.’ She looked a little alarmed then, perhaps scared by the intensity of the staring.

  Fergus said, ‘Daisy Bates!’

  She got a split grin when she looked at him, then looked at Jeremy, who explained, ‘Daisy Bates is a famous old lady who lives with the blacks down in the Western Desert country.’

  Cootes said, ‘And what an old frump! When I saw her, she positively filled me with revulsion.’

  Rifkah looked interested. ‘She go naked wit’ blacks?’

  That got a laugh from the Anthropologists. Cootes said, ‘Just the opposite. She dresses up like a mid-Victorian spinster . . . stays and all.’ More laughter.

  ‘Vot does she do for zese pipple?’

  ‘No one ever found that out . . . but a book by her is said to be coming out before this Christmas.’

  ‘A book . . . she is Anthropologist?’

  ‘Ethnologist, I think is the word she uses,’ said the Professor, with a hint of snicker.

  Jeremy said: ‘She started really as a journalist, writing about the ill-treatment of blacks for some English newspaper . . . way back, early in the century. She’s been wandering about amongst them ever since. I’ve never heard or read anything she had to say about their ill-treatment.’

  Rifkah said, ‘I must read her book.’

  Doubtless because of the bawdy joke the Coot had made of the incident of Rifkah’s sudden withdrawal from the gallery-viewing, Professor St Clair didn’t question her about it as he said he was going to do, or anyone else mention it, at least in company. It was General Esk who broached the subject, privily, while he and she, he having requested the pleasure, were riding home together. She answered readily enough, saying simply that the power she’d felt in the paintings seemed somehow to make her feel helpless. He pressed: ‘Not rejected?’

  ‘No. It is only I vont to help zese people. Like children zey seem to need help. Zen suddenly you see zey haf somezing you cannot understand. Ze painting is so much like zey are. It is like children do, you zink at first. Zen you feel somezing so strong and old . . . like Nature.’ She laughed, adding: ‘Like Jewish Ethos ze Professor and Doctor talking so mooch about. Zey spik of it as simple zing of past, kept as habit. But you know it is not. Ze ritual of ze synagogue, ze household . . . it bring Gott to you . . . ze Infinite . . . ze same Gott zat spik to Moses from ze Burning Bush.’ Then she sighed. ‘I moost learn to feel like zat for Aboriginal zing, or my feeling is not true. So I get fright’ lil bits ven I see zat strong Aboriginal-gott-zing staring down at me.’ She laughed again. ‘You see, General, I am changing my religion. So far I am Proselyte of Gate, as Jews say, still outside. So . . . zat Burning Bush up zere . . . I moost go to it vit’ my face cover up, and barefoot.’ She ended with a giggle.

  ‘Hmm!’ Esk mused. ‘I hadn’t any idea you took it so seriously.’

  ‘Now it is my life.’

  They were silent for a while. The General Esk said, ‘From what I understand, proselytising isn’t encouraged in the Jewish faith . . . for the reason that it’s mostly suspect as a means of overcoming the prohibition of marrying out . . . in short, that the motive isn’t religious, but sexual.’ When she looked at him quizzically, he smiled. ‘I just can’t see a lovely gal like you becoming like this old Daisy Bates they were speaking of.’

  ‘Vy not?’

  ‘Well . . . with a background like yours, where comfort is religious even, where intellectualism is revered . . . to aspire to live in conditions that, with all due respect to the Aborigine and his Ethos, are semi-animal!’

  ‘I moost learn.’

  ‘To what purpose . . . tell me truly?’

  She looked at him again, raising her fine brows: ‘Vood I tell you not truly?’

  ‘Ah . . . the old Jewish trick of dodging an embarrassing question by asking another!’ As she turned from him, ignoring the remark, he added: ‘You spoke of proselytising and didn’t deny what I said about its being suspect.’ When she still ignored him, he went on: ‘I’m suggesting that you are proselytising not to the religion of the Aborigines, but to that of Jeremy Delacy.’

  The great jewels of eyes sw
ung on him. He smiled again. ‘Please don’t take offence at it. I’m sure your relationship’s perfectly innocent. But it’s obvious that you love each other.’

  With face burning now, she could only swallow. It was he now looked away. ‘Jeremy Delacy is quite a man. All women are attracted by him. My own daughter fell in love with him. The difference in your case is that the love’s returned. He’s never loved before. There’re several reasons why you should be the first in his life . . . but, primarily, of course, it’s yourself. Any man must be attracted to you . . . by your beauty, your essential goodness, your gaiety. Then you’re Jewish. That’s the chief quality. To have all those attributes and be Jewish is to have everything . . . the Yiddishe Chein . . . there’s no other expression but your own that fits it. Next you have, in spite of youth, the maturity you’ve gained through intense suffering. On top of all that you have a certain air of helplessness. You are a refugee. That means you are looking for refuge. But you’re a Regugee Jew, which is something different. You’re not in flight through sheer fear, but through having the courage to be unable to come to terms with the persecutor. Helplessness in a woman has a special attraction for men. I don’t know why . . . because in some men it brings out the knight errant, in others the brute. Perhaps it’s because helplessness makes a woman accessible . . . and it depends on what a man wants access to in her. Anyway, with all these attractions, you come into the life of a man at the point of utter disillusionment. He’s a man with a great capacity for love. Hence his deep disillusionment. This has bred in him a set of subtle hatreds. He’s come to hate his country . . . through too demanding a love of it. He’s long hated the countries of his origins, because he expected something of them they couldn’t give. He would probably have come even to hating the Aborigines, to whom he’s given so much for so little return, only everybody else hates them. He’s perverse, you know. That mixture of Welsh and Irish. His last disillusionment, as I see it, was the boy Prindy. He speaks as if the boy is doing everything he expects and wants of him . . . which is probably intellectually true. But I’m sure he wanted the boy to accept him as his grandsire, to love him as belonging to him. The boy lives in a different world, of course. If he loves any individual at all, it’s yourself, by the way I see him clinging to you and looking at you. Nanago loves Jeremy . . . in her own way . . . which to my way of thinking is as a slave-girl loves her kind all-powerful master.’