Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  The old priest muttered, ‘Pater noster.’ He rose, only to sink to knees and lean on the bed and pray.

  Kyrie eleison . . . Lord have Mercy!

  The singing ceased. The old man climbed back into bed, soon was snoring steadily.

  Igulgul, close to full, climbed the sky, looked down on this den of sleeping magicians, winking, went over, and in westerning peeped in at the prentice. Prindy stirred, turned from the stare, only to have to turn back to it, to open eyes and meet it. For a while the two stared at each other. Then Prindy drew a deep breath, lifted the net, slipped out. He went to the verandah’s edge, and clasping a post, stared fully at Igulgul. He wore only pyjama shorts, glowed satinly golden in the blaze of light. The world was asleep, except for some flying foxes squabbling over the first ripening mangoes in trees by the Convent, and the distant bellow of the Shade of the Old One away out on the harbour waters. A minute or so of such staring. Again Prindy breathed deeply, but this time on a whisper, ‘All right, old-man.’ He turned and headed for the open door of the Monsignor’s bedroom. He stopped. Inside was dimly bright with moonglow. The old man’s netted bed was a tall ghost in a corner. The rumbling roar that came therefrom was a miniature of that other voice across the water. Prindy’s clothes were folded on the back of a chair. Silent as a shadow cast from the brilliance outside he entered, took the clothes, faded out with them. Back at his bed he dressed.

  Barefoot now, in contrast with his gentlemanly getting-about during the day and evening, he slipped off the verandah, headed noiselessly up the gravel path to the street-gate, out into the street. No one about, except a couple of flying foxes who came flapping softly over to see what the bright apparition was. The long yellow gravel road, the old familiar road to the Old Compound, stretched away through its line of silver-topped trees, into moonmist. That was the way he headed, in the middle of the road, past the dark houses of the sleeping kuttabah. Not even their dogs sensed him. Thus should a koornung, old or young, be able to travel.

  At length he came to the old familiar site of that Home officialdom in its kindness had found for him and bound him to with barbed wire. Now the brand-new kuttabah hospital stood there. A few lights shone in its many otherwise glittering windows. How the kuttabah must have sterilised that ground of the taint of the boong to make it fit for his kind to walk on! But he hadn’t got rid of the Shades of those dead unclean who had been brought too far away from their country ever to find their way back again. Koodooks were scolding everywhere. Some swooped on the diminutive traveller, probably thinking him too bright of colouring to be any but one of the Enemy, but saw the features upturned to them, wheeled away.

  Northward now, with a glint of the sea. Familiar sites changed hands about here, too. The Shell Oil Tanks, aluminium-painted, glowed like bits spat down upon the earth by Igulgul. They were enclosed by barbed wire now, in which was a gate with a lighted sentry-box in which the sentry, nursing his bayoneted rifle, slept.

  So on, and up the hill past the Meatworks, out onto the flat back of Blue Mud Bay, with sudden blazing revelation of the limitless sea. There further back, like another lump of Igulgul’s spittal, stood the Jail, lightless of itself. Prindy paused, to look back towards Rainbow Reef, now at the height of uproar. Igulgul winked — at Reef, at Jail, at Boy. Prindy went on towards the Jail. Kweeluks in the moonmist, cried as in alarm: Kweeluk, kweeluk . . . that is the place of the lost!

  He went through the line of sleeping guards’ residences, following the driveway to the entrance. The great iron door in the high iron wall was a white square in the moonlight. He reached it, pushed on its rigidity, then tried the handle of the wicket. Locked. He looked aloft. Climbing here was a job for a gecko. He pushed against the great door again, as if hoping that the ability of the complete koornung to pass through things might have come to him. It hadn’t. With a sigh he sank down, to squat with back against the door. He yawned. With Igulgul watching him, he fell asleep.

  He slept for hours. He woke with a start at sound of steps. Igulgul was gone. Clouds in the West were silvered with dawn. The steps were inside. He jumped up. Jingle of keys. Rattle of lock. The wicket opened. A head in a peaked cap appeared, and shoulders, and a flash light. The light found Prindy. A gasp. Then a gruff voice, as a form stepped right out, ‘What the hell you doin’ here?’

  Prindy blinked against the nearing light, answered under indrawn breath, ‘I come look him old-man.’

  ‘Eh?’ asked the guard, leaning towards him. ‘Ah! I know you now. Delacy, ain’t you? Yeah . . . I remember the Judge bringin’ you. But where’ the Judge now?’

  ‘He sleep, I reckon.’

  ‘I reckon, too. What . . . you come here on your own?’

  ‘Old-one send me.’

  ‘What old one?’

  Prindy jerked his lips skyward. ‘Old God.’

  The guard stared at him for a moment. ‘Well . . . you just can’t come in here like that, sonny.’ He added, ‘The old feller’s pretty sick.’ Then, after another pause, he said, ‘Wait a bit. I got to get things goin’ here.’ He gave his attention to the big gate, pulled a lever, opened it. The inner courtyard was revealed, with stores and offices about, one lighted, the light glinting on the bars of the inner door. The guard turned to go back in, beckoning to Prindy to follow.

  They went to the lighted office. The guard dropped behind a desk, waving Prindy to a form along the wall. He opened a big ledger and wrote in it. Then he looked at Prindy again, and after a moment’s contemplation, reached for the telephone. After a while a voice answered, plain to anyone of good hearing, ‘Hello?’

  ‘Baxter, Major. I got a kid here . . . that Delacy kid . . . you know, came with the Judge to see old Cock-Eye Bob. Wants to see the old feller again. Remember him . . . creamy kid . . . Cahoon, some say.’

  ‘Yeah. Judge not with him, though?’

  ‘Oh, no. Matter o’ fact, he said God sent him.’

  ‘Eh . . . God? Hell!’

  ‘What’ll I do . . . hunt him? I hung on to him, because I thought it might do the old feller good to see him . . . seein’ he’s been singin’ out for him . . . Mekullikulli.’

  The guard looked at Prindy. ‘That’s you, isn’t it, sonny?’

  Prindy nodded.

  The Major said, ‘Yeah . . . might be a good idea, too. The Judge’d approve it, I’m sure. Can’t very well ring him this hour, though. Better send him over here to wait . . . No, hang on to him there. I’ll come over.’

  Guard Baxter went about his duties, leaving Prindy. A big bell tolled. Soon the place was astir inside. Prindy craned out to peep through the barred gate.

  The Sun was up by the time Major O’Dowdy came, smelling of soap and coffee. He was hearty: ‘Goodday, young feller. Come to see the old Doctor, eh? What’s this about God sending you? You want to convert him . . . aheeeah! You Missionary man now, aren’t you. My Missus tells me she saw you take your First Communion yesterday. Really come on, haven’t you, eh? And going to be a priest, too, they tell me. Well, well!’

  The Major regarded the small figure approvingly for a while, then went on: ‘The old feller’s been pretty sick. Hasn’t eaten anything for a couple of weeks. No matter brandy in his bre’milk, as he calls it . . . or even the brandy raw. He’s sendin’ his Shade home, I’m afraid. I wouldn’t like him to die on my hands . . . not with him being the pet of the Judge he is. They won’t have him in the big hospital, of course. They don’t want him in the hospital out the New Compound. The doctor reckons there’s nothing more wrong with him than there ever was. But he’s been singin’ out Poor Feller My Country, and wanting you . . . so we worked out. You’re his special little mate, aren’t you?’ Prindy nodded.

  ‘Right . . . then maybe you might be able to get him to take his bre’milk and brandy. Come on . . . we’ll give it a go.’

  As they went on their way, through the barred gate and along whitewashed phenyle-reeking corridors, the Major explained that the old man was in what he called Solitary, for the reason
that his spells of howling were disturbing to the other prisoners. They reached the cell, a mere concrete box, bare of furniture save for a wooden bench on which lay huddled what, at first glimpse with the opening of the door by the accompanying guard, looked like a heap of dead black flying foxes. Bobwirridirridi himself might have been dead for all the movement or sound he made. He made no response to the guard’s sharp calling him, ‘Up, Bob . . . someone to see you!’

  The old man, completely naked, was curled up to face the wall. When the guard laid a rough hand on a skeleton shoulder and jerked him round, he came as supinely as any dried-out black corpse and almost with the same dull rasping sound as might be expected. The death’s head simply flopped. The shrivelled lids closing the caverns of the eyes did not flicker, until the guard slapped the face lightly. Then the flicker revealed no light of life behind.

  Major O’Dowdy said to Prindy, ‘You talk him, sonny.’

  Prindy said, ‘Pookarakka, n’gangah.’

  A slight quiver of the fleshless skin. Prindy added, ‘Ajat, guga mugugari.’

  A glint in the caverns. Then a sudden blaze of that deep fire. A moment. Then a rasping feeble cry: ‘Mekullikulli!’ A claw came reaching. Prindy took it. The claw ran up the golden forearm. The skeleton strove to sit. The guard jerked it up. The skin-and-bone arms sought to embrace the golden vision. Prindy moved into them. The claws grasped and smoothed, smoothed and grasped. The clipped grey skull fell against the golden hair. The skeleton shook with sobs. The whitemen stood staring blankly.

  A full minute. Then O’Dowdy spoke: ‘Old-man.’ When Bobwirridirridi took no notice, the Major added sharply, ‘I talk you, old-man . . . listen!’ He pulled Prindy away from the clinging claws. ‘This young-feller been come for make him you good-feller again. Spone you want him stop talk-talk long o’ you, first-time must you tucker something.’ When the red eyes met his, he asked, ‘You savvy?’

  The Pookarakka nodded.

  ‘All right . . . we gitchim you bre’milk-plendy, eh?’

  The Wise One swallowed with a jerk, nodded.

  ‘Okay . . . then come out and sit in the Sun.’

  The Major and the guard took hold of the old man, pulled him to his feet. He could not stand unaided. They supported him between them as they led him out, remarking on the smell of him. O’Dowdy said to him, but in an amiable tone, ‘You old bugger, when you get better, we goin’ to put the hose of you . . . Pooh!’

  Bobwirridirridi cackled weakly, cast a gap-toothed grin back at Prindy at his heels. The eyes were red-hot coals again, even though the old feet dragged with weakness.

  The Sun was peeping over the wall of the exercise yard. The yard was empty. They sat him down against the wall where the Sun could bathe his dingy hide. Prindy dropped down with him. The others went off.

  To begin with, little was said between the pair. The Pookarakka wanted only to continue the interrupted embrace, the stroking that is so important in Aboriginal affection, to which now was added tears that streamed down the grey-black parchment of the cheeks into the grey bristle of beard.

  Then the guard came with the bowl of bre’milk-and-plendy and a spoon, and stood by while Prindy fed it to the old man. Old Bob had difficulty in getting it down at first, belching and griping. But when the brandy took hold, he took the spoonfuls eagerly, at last seizing the bowl and finishing it off with greed. The guard laughed, told Prindy he was better than a doctor, rumpled his hair, took the bowl, departed.

  From then on the Pookarakka was even animated. What he talked about so eagerly might not be known even to one who could understand the mixture of lingoes and signs since these were of a kind whose signs were secret, as was evident several times, when Prindy responded to some sign-language with the Murringlitch word Wha’nam and after whispered explanation repeated it a couple of times till he got a nod of approval. But some hint might be got from the import by the old man’s gesticulating in a way to suggest the obliteration of what restrained him when it suited him at some time in the future and his going hence, a lo — ong way, judging by the backward throwing of his cropped skull and projection of his lips to the utmost, along with his Mekullikulli, as shown by that gasping him about the slender shoulders.

  Thus for a good hour without interruption. Then Major O’Dowdy himself came, to say that Prindy must come, because the Monsignor was there to fetch him, that he would be flying back to the Mission that morning. But O’Dowdy also tarried to congratulate them both on the transformation of the Pookarakka, whom he assured that he would not go off his food again and told that he would have another bowl of bre’milk sent him. The pair embraced and parted. At the gateway to the yard, when Prindy looked back, the Pookarakka made a sign to him not unlike that in which the Bishop had blessed his future as one of his cloth last night, a flourish with two fingers of the right hand.

  Monsignor Maryzic was in the O’Dowdys’ quarters, for the moment trapped by Dotty, to judge by the sound of her incessant chatter and his dead silence and his sudden seizing relief on the appearance of the Major and Prindy. He hailed the latter loudly: ‘Vell, vell . . . you are truly der Christian Zealot . . . to start your Missionary vork so early . . . First Communion vun day, and der next out mittout breakfast to convert der heathen!’

  Prindy only blinked. The Major guffawed. Dotty took it seriously, also addressing Prindy: ‘You haven’t got a hope of making a Christian out of old Cock-Eye Bob. You might as well try catching the Devil and baptising him.’

  The old priest chuckled: ‘I guess der Devil haf many times been baptise’ . . . and mittout anyvun hafingk to catch him.’

  The irony was lost on Dotty, who asked, ‘You really think so, Monsignor?’

  He was saved elucidation by the appearance of the current prisoner-serving-maid, who was none other than Wilhelmina Whitehead, fellow inmate of the old Halfcaste Home, who in a roundabout way had contributed so much to Prindy’s fortunes. They exchanged a secret sign of recognition. Wilhelmina brought tea and fresh-baked biscuits and also a plate of sandwiches, which last Dotty passed to Prindy, saying, ‘Seeing you missed breakfast for your missionary work and you’ve got a long journey before you, I had them make you these. Aren’t you a lucky boy, now . . . with everybody looking after you! I saw you Confirmed yesterday. And the Bishop autographed your Missal for you, eh? My, my! Now, eat those up . . . and I’ll give you a nice cup of tea to wash them down.’

  Prindy looked right ready to eat the sandwiches. But the one he took up so eagerly got no further than his nose. He sniffed it, put it back. Dotty saw, gaped, then turning pink, demanded, ‘And what’s wrong with it?’

  The grey eyes met the popping blue. He answered simply, ‘I can’t eat.’

  ‘Indeed! Isn’t it good enough for you?’

  ‘Not kosher.’

  ‘Not what?’

  ‘Not clean.’

  Dotty flamed: ‘How dare you say my food’s not clean!’ Nevertheless she grabbed the sandwich, opened it, sniffed, then turned her pop-eyed glare on him. ‘It’s perfectly all right. It’s the same pork I donated for the Communion Breakfast. You dare to sniff my food, you . . . you . . .’

  Monsignor Maryzic stopped it with a guffaw. She swung on him indignantly. His belly was shaking with much greater mirth than he was expressing vocally. She stiffened, said with a duchess’s dignity and accent, ‘Reahlly, Monsignor!’

  He spluttered, ‘Mein apologies, dear lady . . . but ist not insultingk der boy refusingk. Ist matter of food prohibition . . .’

  ‘Blackfellow business? I thought he was supposed to be a Christian? I’ve never known his kind to refuse pork before, anyway. We always give it to them at Christmas . . . and . . . and . . .’ Tears were now starting in the pop eyes. She ended in a sob. ‘. . . I’ve never been so insulted at my own table . . . ooooooo!’ She fled.

  The Major was turkey-red, his white military moustache bristling. The priest said to him, ‘I am sorry, Major. Actually, der boy is following der precepts of der Bible in refusing pork .
. .’

  The Major burst out: ‘Refusing the hospitality of my house . . . the likes of him!’

  The old priest made a clucking sound, and rising, signalled to Prindy to do likewise. Turning towards the front door, he said, ‘I refer you to der Old Testament, Major . . . Leviticus. Dank you for lookingk after der boy. Goot-tay to you.’ He slipped an arm about Prindy’s shoulders, led him out and down the steps. A taxi was awaiting them.

  As they drove away, the old man gave himself up to laughter so hearty that it involved Prindy and the Chinese driver. Recovered, he asked Prindy, ‘You keep Jewish food-law, yes?’

  ‘Yas.’

  ‘You keep at Mission?’

  ‘Yas.’

  ‘Vot does your religious instructor say to zat?’

  ‘Father Glascock keep de law, too.’

  The old man stared. ‘Vot do you say?’

  ‘We study Bible together. He is reading in Hebrew. To help me wit’ English it help him wit’ Hebrew. He say de old law is for Christian same as Jew.’

  ‘So! And Rifkah . . . she is in zis study, too?’

  ‘No. Hebrew is language of Jewish man . . . to read de holy books. Woman’s language is Yiddish . . . Mumma-loshen, you call. Rifkah keep away from us. It is like I am learning de Law in Beth Hamidrash.’

  ‘Vot is zat?’

  ‘De place of Jewish religious study. Only man can do.’

  ‘So! Moost I come out to see zis new Shtettel.’

  ‘What is Shtettel, Monsignor?’

  ‘Ah . . . I haf catch you on Judische vord! It is Jewish settlement . . . in East Europe.’

  They were nearing the aerodrome, where the Junkers could be seen with a group of people standing by. The old priest said, ‘Last night you tell me you vont to come to see der Bishop off on mail plane zis morningk. But I get up to find you are gone. Vy so?’

  ‘I go see dat old-man.’

  ‘Zat I know. But you tell zem Gott send you.’