Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  ‘Yes . . . I’ve read that. It struck me as significant, too . . . as having something to do with sexual development. But I didn’t think much about it at the time.’ Jeremy paused, to go on after a moment with increased eagerness: ‘Now it strikes me as highly significant . . . I mean this sexual maturity idea. It’s a fact that animals are easiest to train before sexual maturity, in most cases impossible afterwards. Blacks are similar . . . I mean in the matter of educating them in our ways. It’s generally accepted that their capacity for schooling collapses utterly at puberty. Generally it’s put down to natural stupidity . . . even though that’s obviously gainsaid by the fact that they start off learning our ways easily . . . and, of course, in their own ways can be so astute as to leave a whiteman marvelling. My idea for a long while has been that what interferes with black kids at puberty is the pull of the Aboriginal ways . . . because that’s the age when education in the so-called primitive style begins. Now . . .’ He swung on Fergus with eyes ashine.

  Fergus took a quick interested glance. As he turned back to his driving, Jeremy said, ‘In Aboriginal life, the sexual taboos are introduced with cultural education . . . Initiation. I’m speaking of males, of course. Women must be left out of it, because their part in cultural activity is only background . . . which I suppose you could say of most women in all societies, anyway. Women are the true keepers of sex. It’s their business to see that it’s kept to rules. That’s particularly so in Aboriginal society. But we’re speaking of the male. With a male Aboriginal . . . that is a mature one and one living in the true Aboriginal way . . . continence in sexual matters is paramount . . . or rather, the strength to be continent. Sexual desire is considered due to woman’s magic. To withstand it shows strength. No ceremony of any importance is conducted without strictly enforced periods of continence . . . even if some end in a veritable sexual orgy. A blackfellow’s life, indeed, is ruled by this continence factor . . . beginning with the long one of Initiation, which can last two or three years in the period of a youth’s greatest sexual potency . . . ending with the permanent one of the top-class cult-man, the Pookarakka, who, properly, is a celibate. Whereas entry into manhood is proclaimed with the Circumcision, a symbol of castration and so a drastic introduction to control of sexual behaviour, Subincision, a still more drastic symbol of castration, declares full manhood. The price of inability to pass through these ordeals was death . . . and now rejection as Rubbitch. Probably that’s the reason for the female mourning ceremony when a boy’s taken away for Initiation . . . originally there was a very good chance that they would never see him again.’

  When Jeremy paused, Fergus cut in: ‘Not all tribes practise circumcision . . . and few subincision.’

  ‘That’s right . . . but from what I can judge, these were practices in process of becoming general when the whiteman came . . . in fact, there’s even increased adoption of it since, amongst those still able to follow the old ways, while having the closer contact with each other forced on them by us. The practices seem to have spread from the northwest. It isn’t uncommon for some blackboy out of an uncircumcised area who’s gone, say droving, into regions where it’s practised, to come back cut . . . and with special kudos for being so . . . and even set himself up cutting the others. That old Bobwirridirridi used to go round circumcising and subincising. You’ll find that the tribes who practise it are those with the more disciplined . . . and richest . . . cult-life. But I’m not concerned with blackfellow business . . . except to exemplify this idea that’s struck me regarding the root cause of differences between ourselves that the blackman doesn’t suffer.’

  After another pause, Jeremy continued: ‘The impact of puberty on all fully hung men must be tremendous. I’m sure I’m not much different from the rest of my fellows physically . . . and I know how it hit me . . .’

  ‘Me too,’ said Fergus to the road.

  ‘You’re the first man I ever heard admit it. Perhaps even the prurience of concealing it indicates an almost instinctive urge in human beings to exercise control. There are even crude forms of initiation into manhood practised by civilised boys . . . as jokes, ostensibly, but I’m sure with this urge behind it. Of course it would have to be conducted by mature men to be effective, and all idea of dirty pranks removed from it. Such serious initiation as there is is left to namby-pamby institutions like Boy Scouts and YMCA, who really only make repression worse by preaching guilt and fear.’

  Jeremy collected his thoughts again: ‘What I’m getting at is this . . . Couldn’t it be that at this time of his life the mind of the average youth . . . civilised, I mean, becomes fixed on sex . . . that it becomes his permanent preoccupation, underlying all he learns thereafter, in effect cancelling out all the value of what he learns . . . except the superficial . . . except, say, what indirectly serves his sexual ends . . . hence this sixteen-years-of-age mental fixation? Freud says that men strive only for Power and the Love of Women. He was preoccupied with sexual neurosis. What he meant were those not intellectually developed beyond puberty . . . don’t you think?’

  ‘Maybe . . . but how does all this apply to Cootsey? He doesn’t appear to have any sex at all. In fact he doesn’t seem to have much in the way of cods. Have you ever seen him stripped? He’s hard to catch . . . ashamed of that little boy’s dicky of his, I guess. He’s also not a bit interested in the female of the species.’

  ‘An example of the same thing . . . differently. No doubt he’s sexually underdeveloped. In a primitive society, he’d either be killed, or rejected as a runt from male society. In our own, with present medical knowledge, he could be treated for the lack. Not unlikely his sexual development’s been retarded by non-descent of the testes through ceoliac malformation . . . not an uncommon condition, in animals as well as men. It can be treated surgically and with the use of hormones to effect normality. As he is, he probably yearns for proper manhood.’

  Fergus chuckled: ‘It would be interesting to see him become a bull . . . following his cock around . . . aaaaaaahaha!’

  Jeremy wasn’t amused. He went on: ‘In puberty . . . or, rather, in the prepubital stage, probably the most sensitive period of life, as exemplified by young Prindy’s behaviour up to just now and his sprouting whiskers . . . he dreamt of himself . . . I’m talking of the Coot . . . as a great soldier. His father was a soldier . . . and especially through being deprived of him, would make a soldier symbolic of complete manhood. This isn’t uncommon. The traditional officer type is a fop. Even the traditional courage of the type . . . the sissy young subaltern . . . is some vain-glorious personal drama. Cootes wanted to be a soldier. Unable to be, for reasons he’s stated frankly . . . couldn’t pass the physical test . . . he decided on what he saw as a life of high adventure, but what to a drover, a sailor, a man like yourself who took to the air, seems just sissy. Even some of the great explorers, like Leichhardt, Burke, weren’t in the true sense men of action. I guess the Hitlers, the Mussolinis, the Stalins, the Churchills, are much like Cootes . . . preoccupied with sexual inadequacy . . . or, better, lack of proper masculine adequacy . . . and so have to get power over men to compensate. Even the well-hung male can have it . . . through having his natural adequacy distorted . . . like a priest, say . . . or a Dinny Cahoon. Poor old Dinny was brought up in an atmosphere thick with sexual repression, although quite a man in his way. Maladjusted as he was, he became a man-hunter. So it could apply to all those who seek power over their fellows . . . could be the key to all this lunacy we see in the midst of sanity, this stupidity in the face of fine intelligence, which has been puzzling me for years. Sexual aberration . . . distortion . . . oddity of some kind, sexually . . . in the male . . . the civilised male. What do you think?’

  Fergus grinned: ‘I’m afraid I bear out much of what you say by thinking mostly of the female of the species . . . and what about her, anyway, in the scheme of things . . . isn’t she distorted, too?’

  ‘I think mainly only in so far as the male distorts her. She’d be all right b
ut for the brutal weakness of the average male. She trades on it. She has to.’

  ‘Why don’t you come South and start lecturing on it . . . that war’s due to boys whose balls haven’t descended . . . you might stop the bloody thing.’

  ‘Don’t you think I’ve been in enough strife already blowing my bags? Why don’t you do it?’

  ‘Me? Lecture on the glorious rewards of sexual continence! Half the whores in Sydney would turn up to laugh.’

  Jeremy laughed. They were approaching the turn-off to the Pool. Slowing down to make the turn, Fergus said, ‘It’s good to see you laughing, in the circumstances.’

  ‘I’m feeling better now about the whole business . . . less bitter about harassment, feeling I know it can’t be helped . . . or rather, perhaps can be helped — someday.’

  ‘How . . . through seeing that all little boys’ balls come down in time to stop them becoming tyrants?’

  Jeremy chuckled, then said seriously, ‘Through intelligent direction of the most marvellous thing in the Universe . . . human intelligence.’

  They reached the Pool. The place was looking its best in strange brooding beauty, as usual at this time of year, freshened by recent rain, yet not roused thereby to hint of the violence of which it was capable. Jeremy expressed concern about what the coming soldiery might do to it. Fergus remarked that it was more to the point what it would do to them, considering the lives it had claimed of foolhardy miners. Jeremy said he had asked the Coot, as an Anthropologist, to guard the sacred places hereabout from the natural spoliation of the civilised lout, had got his assurance readily, but doubted it, seeing how callous he had been about the dispossession that he’d appeared not even to hear when Jeremy had talked of the effect of it on old natives who’d been here for years. Fergus said, ‘He might put a ban on this place, though, because he’s scared of it.’

  ‘Don’t tell me he’s superstitious!’

  ‘No. He’d heard about the drownings here. He’s scared of water . . . deep water. I tried to get him in . . . but, the champion bullshit artist, he pretended it was desecration of a place sacred to other people. He just can’t swim, of course . . . but won’t own up to it, naturally.’

  ‘I don’t see anything natural about it. That’s the odd thing I’m talking about . . . that intelligent people can be so childishly dishonest about trifling things.’ Jeremy looked about for sticks to make a fire to boil the billy. He added: ‘Anyway, if there’s anything in the superstition that anyone who bogeys here must die in the country, we’re safe from a Japanese invasion.’

  ‘How come?’

  Jeremy told how the Coot was convinced he would die in battle, hence his glorious death could not take place in these parts.

  Fergus commented: ‘Poor old Cootsey! Makes you feel sorry for him . . . bastard and all that he is.’

  ‘Yes . . . I felt that way about him. But later, when I was walking round the place and thinking of the misery he and his like visit on other people with their pathetic silliness, I wondered where the compassion should start, and how.’

  Fergus said suddenly, ‘Let me stay with you . . . and we’ll work it out together . . . and write a book about it.’

  ‘No, son. We’ll each work it out in his own way. And it’s you who’ll have to write the book. Come and have a dip while the billy boils . . . to make sure you’ll be coming back someday. Maybe you can write the book at Lily Lagoons . . . if it’s till there.’

  After breakfast they went on. At Beatrice they went straight to the Police Station. Stunke received them amiably, wishing them a Happy New Year, taking the document Jeremy had prepared on his dispossession, and promising to pass it on to the Proper Authority. He even gave them his hand, wishing to see them back someday.

  Tom Toohey was working with his gang in the railway yards. Jeremy went to him alone. It was a very different Tom from the mate of old. He did commiserate thinly on Jeremy’s dispossession, but let it be known that he knew he could have stayed on by the grace of Martin but for his perverseness. Jeremy didn’t argue, didn’t prolong the parting. Back with Fergus in the utility, he said, ‘Poor old Tom! I don’t know whether the life was kicked and batoned out of him, by the Jerusalem Screws along with poor Brumby’s, or only some silly pride I didn’t know he had, by the bastards here. It’s strange that he hated Cahoon for hounding Brumby . . . yet now, I think, hates poor Brumby for doing the same thing in a uniform as before he did in rags . . . simply defied an oppressive authority. The things war does to people!’

  They went on their way. The township was deserted now, save for goats camped on the hitherto prohibited areas, the verandahs of pub and store. Barbu’s shop was shuttered, but to no purpose, because the door had been knocked down. A convoy of troops was bivouacked in the hall, its members sitting about eating breakfast from mess-tins. Toohey’s was deserted. Horses were gobbling up the Ah Loys’ garden. Goodbye to Old Beatrice!

  Then they were on the new straight road that ran between lanes of drooping dust-suffocated bush to red haze in the distance. Even though their own wheels were the first to churn the dust since yesterday, the acrid taste of yesterday still hung in the air. When, about a mile and half beyond the township, Jeremy called on Fergus to stop, he suggested the young man make the rest of the journey wearing a cloth over his face like a drover. He wouldn’t let Fergus get out with him, saying that one pair of footprints were enough to have to erase. He hauled out his swag, gave his hand. ‘Goodbye and good luck, son.’

  Fergus’s greenish eyes blinked on tears. Teeth seized his bunny lip. His brown head drooped in shame, till the lips touched Jeremy’s hand — and kissed it. For a moment Jeremy stood, troubled. Then he bent and kissed the head, muttering, ‘Mummuk, Igeiyu.’

  As he withdrew his hand, Fergus’s tearful face came up to answer huskily, ‘Mummuk, yawarra, Mullaka.’ A weak smile. Jeremy smiled in return, backed away, erasing his tracks with the side of a boot. At the edge of the scrub he smiled again, waved, heaved swag onto shoulder, turned and marched off into the red bush. It was a good couple of minutes before he heard the truck start up and go on its way.

  It took half a mile of walking to get clear of the blight of the road dust. Then the subtle colours of the bush came into their own again. Soon ahead was the greener line of the river timber topping all, itself topped by a cloud of white cockatoos.

  He reached the river bank so close to that magic mangan plum tree of Christmas Day that he swung towards it. It must have been out of sheer sentiment, since he could not have an inkling at the distance of what was going on there. First indication was a flutter of russet and blue above it, as on that day — then a flash of two tints of brown, golden and chocolate, as two slight figures, hands clutching clothes, dashed from under it, to vanish over the bank — the little wrens of Charada — and Prindy and Savitra!

  He stopped dead, staring. No sound, save those cockies, who had spotted intrusion. He went on his way towards the mangoes. The cockies were announcing his coming. They came to escort him the last of the way. He put hand to mouth, called, ‘Ku-i . . . Rif-kah!’

  There she was — at first a flash of copper in the sunlight. She was running to him, dressed in her stockrider’s outfit, minus hat. She flung herself into his arms.

  When able to disengage himself, he asked, ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Yes . . . only waiting for Prindy bring in horses. He go ven he hear you coming. He hear you cross ze river.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he murmured.

  She noted his tone, his look, asked, ‘Vot is?’

  ‘I saw him . . . with young Savitra.’ When she blinked, he asked, ‘What’s she doing here?’

  She caught his free hand. ‘Come . . . I gif you smoke-o. I tell you zen.’

  ‘Her family aren’t here, are they?’

  ‘No, no. All haf gone. But come . . . sit down. You are sveating and tired.’

  Under a mango was a heap of packed dunnage and saddlery and a fire with a steaming billy. She saw him seated on his swa
g, back to the tree trunk, then, while making the tea, told him what had happened to encumber them with Savitra. Not that she spoke of the girl as encumbrance. Jeremy showed his feeling about it by his set expression, causing her to say, ‘Please, Jeremy . . . don’t be koolah. It is ver’ loffly zing. It is Nature. You cannot stop it.’

  She told him the others had left for the Centre on the morning of the second day after Christmas Day. On Boxing Day, Prindy had sneaked off, to go down the river, alone, to see what horses were available at the Russian Settlement. The tale he told her was that, at the Settlement, he had been lured by a pair of biaiuk wrens to a mangan plum, where he had found Savitra. Charada, of course. He hadn’t told Savitra about his staying behind. Right to the last minute she had supposed that he would be going with her and the party. When, according to plan, Rifkah had announced that she and Prindy would be waiting to travel in the utility, Savitra promptly had declared she would wait, too. In the argument that ensued to try to get her away, in which the other Barbus had supported Rifkah, it came out that the young couple had become husband and wife in fact. That settled it. Barbu immediately changed his tune, declaring that under no circumstances must those blessed by Kamadeva be separated in the flower of their love. Only bad luck could result. Either Savitra stayed with her lover or he came. Rifkah said, ‘Ze old man become all vork up, dancing about and singing out, to mek me fright’ Sergeant Stunke vill find out. So, moost I say, all right, she can stay.’

  Jeremy still looked disapproving. She begged him, ‘Pliss, Mullaka . . . it is true loff . . . it is magic. Zey are like leetle bird . . . so ’appy, and singing togezher. Zey are ver’ shy about it. I haf to sneak up listen to him playing on his flute to her . . . Indian loff music . . . and sometime singing his rown song . . . “My sveet’eart haf titty like mangan plum . . . kumara like hot honey” . . . so beautiful, it mek me, for first time in my life, vont loff. Pliss don’t be koolah vit’ zem.’