‘Not der Jewish?’
‘Well . . . I mean . . .’
‘I know what you mean . . . zat you haf taught him only atheism . . . but zat his longingk for God has first turn him to Blackfellow Business, and zen to Judaism. Der boy is ripe for conversion.’
Again a deep breath from Jeremy. Again the glowing eyes turned to the blaze of Eternity, to which the old voice spoke wheezily: ‘I haf der bait. I understand he is ver’ mooch attach to der Jewish girl and she to him. First I vill ask him if he vish to go to join her at Leopold Mission. Zen I vill tell him of McCusky. Finally I vill name der price. I zink zat only your influence vood prevent him from accepting.’ The old man turned to look at the effect of his words.
Jeremy answered, rather weakly, ‘Don’ overestimate my influence on the boy. I’ve said he’s strong-willed.’
The old man’s voice became suddenly harsh: ‘Vood you do anyzingk to interfere mit any influence I might establish?’
Again Jeremy took a moment to answer, ‘No.’
‘Ver’ vell. Ve vill talk to him. First ve vill talk of Rifkah. I intend to sail to Leopold next Sunday for der citizenship. I am Justice of Peace. I haf only to get der form from Immigration Office in Port Palmeston and tek for her to sign. You know, of course, she haf been grant citizenship? Zat was zrough der goot office of der Church.’ He met Jeremy’s stare, resuming: ‘Ve haf our man at Head of Government zen. It vos easy. But zing haf change. I understand zat der most likely vun to become new leader of Government is zis Attorney-General who gafe order for arrest of der girl. A vain and arrogant man, I am told, alzough capable of cleffer diplomacy. He could not gainsay der request of der late Prime Minister. But he did try. Zat he do by callingk in Military Security. Fortunately der matter was referred to General Esk, who actually start der investigation, but not on account of der girl. He is friendt of der girl zrough you. Who is to say vot zis Attorney-General, become his own Prime Minister, and oppose to General Esk, I am told, vill not do in der vindictiveness of power? At present he is preoccupy mit der scramble for power over der corpse. No time must be lost to haf zat paper sign and seal. So I go next Sunday. Vot better zan zat I tek my little acolyte mit me . . . mit his grandfader’s blessingk . . . mit his grandfader goingk along, too, if he vish?’
It was Jeremy who studied the stars now, while the old priest studied him.
At length Monsignor Maryzic asked, ‘Yes?’
Jeremy nodded, breathing, ‘Yes.’
‘Goot! Can ve haf him out? First I vill talk music to him, and haf him play for me.’ As Jeremy rose the old man added, ‘May I haf a drink. I am ver’ zirsty from so much talk. But no alcohol . . . because I haf religious task to do.’ As Jeremy went inside, the Slav face turned back to contemplate the alien stars, the Crux and Corona Australis. He sighed deeply.
The old priest proved himself very clever in handling Prindy. To begin with, he could play the clarinet, and pleased the boy with some gypsy-like pieces of his origins, and surely gratified him by his genuine praise of his own skill. Then there was talk of Rifkah, implying that she was now under this fatherly wing and that there was room there for more who might be in trouble. How would it be if they all went in the magic ship St Francis Xavier to look her up at the Mission? Getting onto the subject of the opposition they might expect to their happy ideas was a simple matter: hadn’t Old Mick Cusky always opposed any form of natural enjoyment of life, and outwitting him been a prime factor of existence? As to the idea of taking part in the Bijnitch of laying the Shade of Coon-Coon according to what sounded very interesting rites, even if kuttabah’s, what could be more alluring to the one who had parted the spirit from the flesh? Would he wear the lace and scarlet and swing the censer? Prindy, about to become Prendegastus, in Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, nodded right readily.
Within a couple of hours of the beginning of the Jesuitical talk, they were back in the sitting-room, Monsignor Maryzic now wearing a violet stole and biretta, and with the salt and the oil and the holy water out of his black bag, and that Free-zinker, Thomas Toohey, standing by as godfather. The name Prendegastus was hardly in keeping with the canons of the Church, His Very Reverence had to admit. But, as he said, there was so much latitude in Baptism, so many forms of Baptism, for that matter, that you needed an almanac to do the proper thing, and this occasion was hardly formal. Besides, who knew but what there had been one Prendegast amongst the early British Martyrs to the Faith who had been overlooked in canonisation?
‘Prendegastus, quid petis ab Ecclesia Dei?’
Tom Toohey answered rather as if the words were choked out of him, ‘Faith.’
‘Fides quid tibi praestat?’
Again the strangled response, ‘Life everlasting.’
Three slightly whisky-blessed breaths upon the golden face to form the Sign, while the deep voice Latinised like the notes of an organ: ‘Exi ab eo, immunde spiritus . . . et da locum Spiritui Sancto Paraclito.’
So Old Tchamala was hunted out.
A touch of oil with the thumb to broad brow and bared breast: ‘Accipe signum Crucis . . . sume fidem caelestium praeceptorum . . . ut templum Dei jam esse possis.’
A little salt on the red tip of tongue to cause relish to ingested grace and at once to preserve it: ‘Prendegastus . . . accipe sal sapientiae . . . propitiatio sit tibi in vitam aeternam.’
A sharp glance shot over glasses at Godfather Tom, who gasped, ‘Amen.’
A touch of priestly spit on ears and nose, to open them to divine knowledge and the breath of Faith — all such good stuff in the way of Bijnitch as to cause the grey eyes to be wide with interest. Then a change of purple stole to one of white and gold. The holy water poured to form the Crucis, while the priestly throat gave forth its deepest notes: ‘Prendegastus, Ego te baptizo . . . in nomine Patris . . . et Filii . . . et Spiritus Sancti . . . Tom!’
‘Amen.’
Then a little lighted candle put into a small yellow hand. The voice changed its tune: ‘See zou guard der grace of zy baptism mittout blame . . . keep der commandments of Gott, so zat thou may meet him in der Heavenly courts, and zere liff for effer and effer . . . Vade in pace, et Dominus sit tecum.’
Tom sighed with relief this time, ‘Ah-men!’
Now was the time for the non-ecclesiastical ceremony of Head wetting. Tom got the whisky out. While the others sat about the table drinking, slowly the fair head on which Grace had been set drooped, till it was right down. His new mentor asked the privilege of putting him to bed. Jeremy thought it wouldn’t work. But it did, simply. A start when hands were laid on him, then a sleepy smile to see whose they were. Monsignor Maryzic carried him out to his bed on the verandah stripped him, bent to kiss the blur of gold on the white of sheet, made the Sign of the Cross over it, sighed, pulled the mosquito net.
The Monsignor himself also spent the night at Toohey’s, despite the fact that he had been given the best room at Finnucane’s. Reason was that he liked his Sleep, as he said, and as Tom said, ‘They’re wakin’ Dinny already. They’ll be at it all night . . . and for a week.’
The venue of the Coroner’s Court was, as usual on the rare occasions when judicial issues were dealt with out of Town, the Police Station: the underneath part where normally the utility and other gear was kept. However, such was the attendance that Dicky Doscas remarked to his official assistants that they should have hired the Hall. Of course he was joking. Everybody knew that the Hall had been rigged out for Dinny’s Requiem this afternoon. The crowd consisted largely of up-line passengers who ought to have gone on with the morning train, but, bearing out Tom Toohey’s prediction about waking Dinny for a week, had let it go without them. It wasn’t that Dinny had become any more endeared to the community generally through having ceased to be of it. As it was put in endless boozy repetition: ‘Yeah, he was a bastard, all right . . . but he’s dead.’ Even Finnucane, with ear ever cocked and brows ready for any desecration of the Wake’s uncoffined corpse, could not object to that.
Thus the verdicts in both cases were as generally predicted. Likewise, Monsignor Maryzic acted according to his Jesuitical predication, and with such success that he was applauded even by those he had left red-faced by outpointing them, when he told the Court that it was his hope to make a priest of him he was so easily able to go up to and put his arm about in unassailable possession. It lasted till noon. It ended in rush to the pub, a rush all the more headlong for having Monsignor Maryzic’s blessing go with it: ‘Savages! Anyvun who come drunk to my Mass vill be forcibly enjected. Savages . . . and no reflexion on der blackman!’
It was just as well that most took heed of the forthright old priest, if that was what kept the majority away from the Requiem, since the couple of drunks, whose excess of faith or lack of savvy caused them to defy him, made such a hullabaloo in sympathy with the utterly distraught Cahoon Sisters, that a pack of them would have made it a bedlam. Prindy was there, but well out of their line of vision, they being up front beside the black gold-fringed pall lying on the floor to represent a non-existent coffin containing a vanished corpse, while he was right at the back with his grandfather and godfather. No doubt about the interest in the ritual the way those grey eyes stared and darted. There were two black acolytes. He would be wearing the colourful outfit of one in taking part later in the simpler ceremonial of the Funeral. The Burial Service was to be conducted above the river just outside the Cemetery, at a spot on which, so it was being said, eventually the Sisters would have erected a life-size Crucifix in bronze.
Everybody went to the Funeral, as they were calling the hearseless, coffinless, corpseless procession to the Cemetery. Included were those just off the train back from the Head of the Road, too dry to cry. Amongst these latter was Billy Brew. He walked at the rear with Jeremy and Toohey, surely a subtle mark of disrespect. Fetching up right behind were the goats, but only because they had been denied presumption to lead. Leading was Monsignor Maryzic with black stole and wooden cross, attended by his fair-haired acolyte in scarlet and lace and bearing the golden holy water bowl and aspergillum. Behind them came the Finnucanes, supporting the Sisters and singing the Processional to the accompaniment of their sobs. The singing, augmented by several other of the more Faithful, was ragged, but perhaps even more to the pathetic purpose for being so:
May the Angels lead you into Paradise
May the Martyrs await your coming
And bring you into the Holy City
The Heavenly Jerusalem.
Only the McDoddses were missing. Still, they made concession by closing their door, but whether out of respect for the dead or disrespect of Irish Popery would be known only to their Presbyterian selves.
Thus to the spot that for ever was to be sanctified in the name of Dennis Aloisius Cahoon. It sounded as if the racing Shade of Old Tchamala roared with laughter as Monsignor Maryzic boomed out the Burial Service above it:
Absolve quaesumus, Domine, animam famuli tui Dennis Aloisius Cahoon ut defunctus saeculo tibi vivat . . . Dead to the world . . . atque per flagilatem carnis humanum commisit . . . per Christum Dominum Nostrum.
A sweet boy’s soprano responded so that all lowered eyes were raised: Oh, Deus cujus miseratione animae fidelium requiescant, hunc aqueum tumulum benedicere dignare.
A slight signal, and the golden brush was passed to the white lace-fringed hand. The holy silver droplets flew — Pater noster secreto usque ad.
The soprano almost perfect in its echo: Sed libera nos a malo.
Requiescat in pace.
Amen.
‘Eternal Rest grant him, Oh, Lord.’
Those who knew how to joined the response: ‘And let perpetual light shine upon him.’
Requiescat in pace.
Amen.
‘May his soul and der souls of all der faithful departed, tru der mercy of Gott, rest in peace.’
‘Ahhh-men!’
So it was over — for Eternity. Most of the living who thought themselves immortal, and perhaps really were so until reality caught up with them, galloped back to the pub to deliver their panagyric: he was a bastard, but he’s dead.
Monsignor Maryzic moved out of the Hotel permanently, with the cringing apologies of the host. Doubtless he could not have stood another night of Waking. However, it was not for that reason he left, although he did not help Finnucane by telling him the truth, which was that he was going out to Lily Lagoons, with Jeremy and Prindy, who wanted to collect things for taking to Leopold Mission. They would be back to catch tomorrow morning’s train to Town.
V
To depart hand-in-hand with one so personable as Monsignor Maryzic was surely enough to attract the attention of most people to a little coloured boy, no matter how attractive in himself. However, it was pretty evident that the interest taken in Prindy on his departure from Beatrice that return-train-day was largely on his own account. To people like the blacks and halfcastes, the Ah Loys, Billy Brew, who crowded round him for a last touch, the Monsignor was only a Missionary Man, a kind of policeman. Not all these simple ones could touch the boy, some not even look at him, and others again who despite the right preferred not to exercise it. Who could not but have some fear of one invested with the power to rid them of the worst blight of their so-blighted recent history, Coon-Coon and Jinbul? Some awe of one who despite his immaturity could take a leading part in the kuttabah’s laying of the Shades? The air was sibilant with indrawn comment on him. Even old Shame-on-us came to take his hand. Billy Brew wept a little. That made it seem like a long farewell. Such a farewelling of one renowned for popping up at any time from anywhere!
The grey eyes took it all in with customary calm, the last of it from the moving window of the coach, with the grey heads of those who had presumed to his guardianship, old guardian and new, on either side of him. Then Beatrice township was swallowed by the girders of the bridge, as if by the jaws of the Shade winking beneath. A last look at the Shade. A last wink back. Then there were those police horses, back from the Limestone, where they had seen so much. They saw him from across the Racecourse fence, flung up heads and tails, and did a furlong of their best beside the train. Then the familiar wilderness again — the autumnal russet of seeding grasses tipping the limitlessness of new greenery — lilies purpling still waters — far hills blue-blue — the milky blue of cloudless horizons.
Familiar sounds, too — song of wheels to minga-minga click of rails, and the deep didjeridoo of the engine, with an occasional shrilling of ecstacy: Yai, yai, yai, yakkarai!
Familiar places. Granite Springs and Bamboo Creek. The Alice River siding, deserted now by southward-pressing roadmen, peopled now only by the railwaymen, their black slaves, and memories. The torn country of the Caroline, with much of its destruction hidden for the nonce under Whiteman’s and Chinaman’s weeds.
Prindy ate with his Monsignor and grandfather at a special table in the hotel at Caroline River. Everybody stared. Outside they stared, the brindles and the blacks, with that wonder-whispering. He did not return to the coach with his guardians, because just as they were about to leave, Pat Hannaford came loping along, first asking him personally if he would like to ride with him, next more or less challen
ging the guardians to say No. It was only the Monsignor who could object, anyway. He did not, merely saying that he presumed Pat had an Ulterior Motive. Pat snapped back at him, ‘Course you ain’t!’
Pat’s immediate motive was to congratulate Prindy on what was the wonder and joy of everybody else who had no cause or inclination to hold authority in respect: ‘Christ . . . the way you cleaned up that mob o’ coppers . . . four in a bloody row! Son, you’re goin’ ’o be a great asset, Comes de Revolutions, as they say. Tell me ’bout it?’ He tried hard to pump Prindy, bawling in his ear above the mechanical din, so as to make him wince. Prindy kept his eyes on the twin silver ribbons rushing at them from ahead. Even that drew a compliment from Pat: ‘You sure know how to keep the trap shut. ‘Nother great asset. You were born to be a Comm.’
Pat told Prindy at the top of his voice, how within five years everybody left standing would be a Communist, by which time he, Prindy, should be ready to take his place in organising the Aborigines for the Workers’ Millennium. He told how he had taken Rifkah to Town on this very engine, sitting in that very seat, where he hoped to have her again someday, in fact the two of them together, as he’d had before. He waxed confident in the wincing ear: ‘If only I can track down that yeller moll of a wife o’ mine and get shot of her, I’ll marry Rifkah, and adopt you as my son. How’d you like that, eh?’ Prindy nodded readily, perhaps in the hope of stopping the torture of those sensitive ears.
When in late afternoon they were approaching Helena River, Pat came out with what must have been the ulterior of his motives. He took from the pocket of his black shirt a grubby but otherwise unmarked envelope, which he explained to Prindy was a letter to Rifkah, which he wanted him to deliver secretly. He buttoned it into a pocket of Prindy’s beautiful tailor-made shirt, grubbying the material a little in the process. ‘I know I can trust you,’ he shouted, and gave his hard hand on it. Grey eyes met green. Then Pat patted the fair head, and turned away to give his attention to bringing the train into Helena siding.
Poor Fellow My Country Page 172
