Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  The grey eye appeared once more, so close as fairly to stare into the soul of the other seer. It went straight down. A hammer-head shark, more renowned for the curiosity that had caused Nature to endow it so monstrously than for savagery.

  While the grey silvered — the rain became mist — the sea turned jade.

  Still she was alone, alone. She cried to the invisible sky, ‘Lieber Gott!’

  Watery Sun in her eyes. She blinked. She sat on bare haunches, still with elbow fastened. The Sun glinted on her wet hair, on the ivory of her breasts. Glimpse of an island, emerald glimpses above the heaving jade. But alone — alone. She cried again to glimpses of blue above, ‘Lieber Gott . . . Lieber Gott!’

  The island came close — within quarter of a mile — in glimpses of greenery and snowy sand — then fell away. Her head sank on the thwart. Her shoulders shook to her lonely misery.

  A bump. She looked up quickly, gasped, ‘Gevalt!’

  Peering at her were blue eyes under a shock of dark hair, above a spray-sparkling wind-parted fuzz of bronzy beard. An oar gripped in a strong brown hairy hand was clamping the submerged canoe to a high-riding dinghy. She hove up out of the wash, freeing her arm. Both vessels rose on a wave, looked like being wrenched apart. The hairy hand let go the oar, and with another grabbed at her, caught her under the armpits. The vessels bumped again, the gunnel of the dinghy to force that of the canoe down. She grabbed his shoulders as the canoe went under. He drew back to balance the tipping dinghy, heaved mightily, dragged her in, slopping and floundering, with half a wave. She fell on her knees between his hairy shanks, seized him round the waist, pressed the tangled wet copper of her head into his singlet clad belly, sobbing wildly. He placed hands on the trembling slender shoulders, crying against whip of wind and slap of sea, ‘Easy now, easy . . . you’re all right now.’ The blue eyes rolled at the sight of the spreading perfection of the ivory back to the cleft of buttocks. Catching his breath he released her, to grab the trailing oars.

  The dinghy rose high on a comber. The copper head came back, with face lifting to his. A glimpse of hazel eyes, parted red lips, ivory breasts brown-tipped. Again the blue eyes rolled. He tried to look away. But she rose, clasping him high, crying, ‘Oh, Stephen!’ and buried her mouth in the beard. Groaning, he let go the oars, flung arms about her, giving her his lips, all of himself.

  A broaching wave flung them apart. He grabbed oars again, dipped, pulled, eyes on the sea. She sank back to haunches, arms round his calves. Having righted the boat, he looked back, eyes ashine — but in a moment to assume an expression of agony at the wondrous sight, to turn from it, bawling hoarsely at the sea, ‘Let go of me!’

  But she only let go his legs to put arms back about his hips and force herself in further to prevent him from forcing her away, pressing her bosom against the obvious bulge in his pants.

  He fairly screamed, ‘I want to turn my back on you!’

  She drew herself closer screaming back, ‘I loff you, Stephen!’

  Still with head averted, he gasped, ‘For God’s sake!’

  ‘For Gott sake I loff you!’

  He strained on the oars. ‘Best get you ashore . . .’

  She looked under his arm. ‘Vere ve are?’

  Pulling till his sinews cracked, he panted, ‘North of Mission . . . bit of beach . . . put you ashore.’

  So for a minute or so — when suddenly he dropped the oars again, and still without looking, dropped hands to grab at his singlet above her hands and haul it up, hauled it up over his head, exposing his hairy torso, but with anything but urge to share her nakedness — dropping the garment to her without looking, crying, ‘Here . . . cover yourself!’

  She dropped back to haunches. Instantly he closed his thighs. She used the singlet to dry her hair. He glanced — then away with rolling eyes. A moment of fighting with the oars, then he roared above sea and wind, ‘What happened.’ He bent an ear, but not an eye, to hear her short explanation. She finished, saying she thought Prindy and Savitra were safe.

  Then, rising to knees again and clutching his waist-band and pressing against the resistant hairy knees, she cried, ‘Gott send me to you.’

  He would not look, but heaving, answered, ‘The blacks thought it was Tchamala.’ He paused, added: ‘They saw the canoe passing . . . saw your hair . . . knew it was you . . . but said it was Snake Business . . . so wouldn’t come out with me in the big boat to get you.’ He glanced.

  She smiled. ‘Might-be Tchamala is Gott.’

  He swung away flaming. She cried. ‘I haf offend’ you?’

  ‘No, no!’ he shouted. ‘No . . . you might be right.’ He pulled madly.

  ‘I loff you, Stephen!’

  He raised eyes to the sky, howled, ‘Oh, God!’

  The oars fell from his hands. His arms swept in to embrace her, to draw her in to him, up to his mouth.

  A wave broke over them. He released her to grab the oars again, to look wildly round. They were close to shore. The tide was running out now from the badly eroded beach, while still the wind flung the waves high up the glistening slope. A wall had been cut in the beach at the very roots of the casuarinas. He fought to get a wave to run them in. They hit bottom, slewed. He leapt out, hauled her out, shouted at her as another wave came rushing in knee-deep, ‘Run!’

  She struggled up in the sinking sand to the wall. The wave rushed out. He heeled the boat to empty it, shouted, half-turned to her, ‘Stay here, while I go and get you clothes.’ Another wave swept in, whirling the empty boat up further. He leapt after it, had to look at her, as she stood facing him, unashamed in her ivory copper-touched loveliness. He goggled at her.

  She called, ‘Do not leaf me, Stephen.’

  His eyes rolled to her feet. The feet moved towards him. He looked up, groaning, ‘But clothes . . .’

  ‘You haf see me no clothes before.’ She extended her hand.

  ‘Oh!’ it was a croak, as he took the hand. The other hand came round him. He seized her, buried her face again in his beard, bending her backward so that she would have fallen, only he let go her right arm, to lift her from her feet to leap with her to the three-foot wall, drop her on the silky sand above. He was climbing the wall on a casuarina root, when he saw the boat spinning away. He rushed after it, hauled it back, snatched out the anchor, came running to hook it in the roots.

  She was sitting on haunches as he leapt up. He stopped dead, staring as if in unbelief. She smiled that smile at him, extending a slender hand. Breathless, he came and took it. His own hand was shaking. She drew him down to her. He clumped awkwardly on his behind beside her. She put a slender arm about him, drew him to her, to her mouth, to her breasts. He panted and slobbered, got to knees. She herself undid his buttons, got under him as he kicked off his pants, took the wildly pulsing rigidity of him in her own hand, and enveloped him with all her being while he bucked and sobbed.

  It was too soon over. He lay panting in her ear, ‘My darling . . . oh, my darling.’

  She stroked his tangled wet hair.

  ‘Did I hurt you, my darling?’

  ‘You cannot hurt me if I loff you.’

  ‘So rough and clumsy . . . I . . . I’ve never done it . . . before.’

  ‘I have nefer done like ziz . . . in happiness.’

  ‘You are happy?’

  ‘Oy, oy, oy!’

  ‘My Jewish angel . . . my Rebecca at the Well . . . I love you!’

  ‘I loff you, too.’

  ‘I’ve loved you always . . . since I first saw you at the Mission House in Town . . . and then when I saw you that day . . . on the beacon . . . and always . . . it has seemed like . . . like the Will of God.’

  ‘Not of Tchamala?’

  ‘Might-be they’re the same.’

  She giggled. Then she kissed his eyes, and said, ‘Zat is Jewish blessing.’

  ‘Let me give you my blessing . . . pagan blessing!’ He bent and kissed her breasts.

  ‘Oh!’ she cried. Then, ‘Suck my titty!’
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  She tousled his head while he did so. He went lower, slobbered over her navel — down to the gleaming copper mons. She cried out in delight, seized his renewed rigidity, wrapped herself about him, strove with him, kissing and moaning, this time in long ecstasy. They tossed in spasm — fell limp, quivering — to lie cheek to cheek again.

  At length he murmured, ‘That was more wonderful than anything I could ever dream of.’

  ‘It was Mechaieh.’

  ‘What’s Mechaieh?’

  ‘Ze moost great ’appiness . . . like Paradise.’

  He kissed her, sighed, ‘My angel from Paradise . . . my darling, oh, my darling darling!’

  She slapped her thigh, exclaiming, ‘Mosquito in Paradise.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, and reached to slap his own hairy bare behind. Then he rose on his elbow, saying, ‘I’d better get along and get those clothes for you. It’ll soon be dark . . . and the mozzies . . .’

  She pulled him back on top of her. ‘So vot is mozzies to us? Ve vill slap zem on vun anozzer. Ve vill go togezzer ven it is dark. Loff me, Stephen. I am ’ungry for loff.’

  ‘Oh, my darling . . . and how hungry for love am I!’

  24

  I

  As there is no idyllic state known to Australian Aborigines (except perhaps that in which the Shade languishes in its Dreaming Place awaiting reincarnation) no indigenous legend provides comparison with the idyll established at Leopold Island Mission with the violent onset of Wet Season of 1942. Or perhaps the religious designation of the place now should be eschewed and it be called simply Leopold Island, since religion had fled it with those of its religieux compelled to abandon their ministrations, the dispersal of its communicants, and its Prior’s having cast his curacy literally to the winds. In fact the very heart of the place as a religious institution, its Chapel, its House of God, was still, because there was no Man of God to keep it beating with faith.

  What is a church without a priest?

  What is a priest without faith?

  However, so idyllic was the situation there during those weeks of rain, rain, rain, with nothing much else to do but love, love, love, that it might be said the place fairly cried out for comparison with some Happy Land of Legend. Yet where, in all legendry, was ever such a place of undiminishing love-enchantment? Even Avalon, that Ocean Island of mediaeval romance, said to be located, Not Far This Side of Paradise, suffered disillusion, bitterly. Did not the Idyll of a King begin to fade with Fay Morgana’s whispering to her brother Arthur of hanky-panky ’twixt Guenevere his Queen and his beloved Sir Lancelot, and vanish with the tragedy of the Lily Maid, Elaine?

  Thus it would seem that Amour, for all people of all times, is, as for those who come nearest to being Arcadians, the Australian Aborigines, surely a magical business, but for all practical purposes a nuisance and therefore to be declared Wrong Side and discouraged except in that sphere in which it can do no harm, Legend, Romance.

  Certainly, those languishing in Love Idyll on the Ocean Island of Leopold were Wrong Side. Since they were in love and in no apparent danger therefrom, it would not worry them. Still, there was someone to do the worrying for them; at least to begin with. The Nark in Arcady was Brother David. The Reverend Father, holy keeper of the Confessional in which the unanointed must bend their backs to the rod of Penance for Unchastity — boldly bedding down with an unbelieving Jewess in the Presbytery! The pet Acolyte and Novice Priest Prindy shacked up in the Convent with a black minx known to be still a Heathen Hindu, for all the Blessings the Church had laid upon her pretty head — and just as bad, by Aboriginal Observance, the censer-swinging sinner’s tribal sister! Merely Wrong Side Bijnitch? Surely worse than that. Hadn’t His Reverence, when properly entitled to be called so, often likened Old Tchamala to Old Lucifer? Eh, look out! In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti . . . Amen!

  Exactly how Brother David was affected was beyond knowing from his behaviour, beyond guessing, indeed, so odd was it. Anyway, those he would have embarrassed with his muddled disapproval were too far gone in rapture with each other to bother about him and, despite the lengths he went to, dismissed him with chuckles and shrugs.

  Naturally, Stephen Glascock bore the brunt of it. David, from primary hesitancy in charging his former Father Confessor with sinfulness, soon became a righteous pest. Obviously, Glascock did not want to shake the poor fellow’s faith by defending his own disavowal too stoutly. He excused himself as being too weak to maintain his vocation. His own happiness in weakness should have given the lie direct to that. But the effect of his kindness in the matter was only to rouse David to a sense of responsibility for the morality and religious fidelity of the community. He took over the pulpit of the Chapel himself, when the priest himself failed to turn up the first Sunday. In fact Glascock hadn’t been into the place since that night he came home with his naked bride. He raised no objection when he heard from Prindy what had happened. After all, rations for the blacks were issued after the general Sunday service; and it was David’s job to conduct the hand-out. David wore his acolyte’s outfit to officiate. He tried to get Prindy to wear his, too, and to dance attendance on him. However, Prindy would do no more than play the organ for him and sing with Savitra the hymns dictated. Most of the service was taken up with David’s ranting against sin in much the same manner as his former pastor, the Reverend Mr Tasker, would have done. In fact, David may have reverted towards Protestantism somewhat through Stephen Glascock’s telling him, in answer to his insistent questioning about his lapse from Chastity, that perhaps the Protestants were right in rejecting sacerdotal celibacy, that as he saw it now, one did not have to repress natural desires to be chaste. Anyway, the following Sunday David put on the full priestly regalia, and even tried to bully Prindy and Savitra into taking Communion at his hands. When Glascock heard of this, he said nothing to David, but quietly went to the Chapel and locked away the vestments and such other of the furnishings the unauthorised handling of which might be considered sacrilegious.

  Glascock found it no easy matter to explain this matter even to himself. While declaring, at least to Rifkah, complete disrespect now for the Church, here he was concerned to prevent what amounted to a good joke on what he called its Hocus-pocus. In fact, he joked to Rifkah about it, saying that it showed how mad Catholicism was when its trappings had the same sanctity as the magically invested things blackfellows hid in hollow logs, while the custodians of these objects must hold a certificate of competency issued by a properly constituted institution of learning — in fact how mad all Christendom was, even that part of it which didn’t believe in trappings and diplomas, but leapt about like lunatics when, as they put it, The Spirit Moved Them. For her part she didn’t see it as a joke, but rather showed evidence of being glad he could still show some degree of respect for what he wanted only to mock at now. Indeed, by the way she talked, it would seem she would have been pleased even to see him continue with his sacerdotal duties; going to show how little she understood them, as he himself remarked.

  He couldn’t talk like that to David, when that righteous one descended on him in high indignation over being deprived of what probably the blackfellow in him suggested was now his by right of cult-succession. Glascock had to say that he was afraid the Church authorities might make trouble over use of property they might even go to court to prove was theirs. Then he talked of the austerity of the form of worship of the Early Christians, how it had been superseded by elaborate ritual actually adapted from the pagan polytheism of Ancient Rome. David’s lay preaching, he said, would bring him no less credit in Heaven than all the ceremonial of an ordained priest, and perhaps even more. The matter of celibacy came up again. Evidently the fornication that was going on around him was upsetting David. He spoke of getting himself a wife, but of the difficulty of finding a suitable one now that only black girls were available. Glascock went so far to appease him as to suggest that he would do no wrong in a tribal way by going over to the mainland and getting a girl
he was entitled to, and offered him use of a dinghy and a bride-price in stores to facilitate matters.

  With the state of the weather, it was small wonder David chose his own alternative. A couple of days after that talk with him he still called His Reverence, he came to him again, with a proposal that left the reverend gentleman speechless for a while. It was that he, David, marry Rifkah, seeing that His Reverence was prevented from doing so by reason of his vows, and also because David actually had proposed marriage to her first. It could be made quite regular with a proper ceremony. But that wouldn’t mean David would claim exclusive right to her. With Father’s new attitude to Chastity, a bit of tchinekin on his part could be winked at. Glascock nearly choked over it, but got out of it gently enough by saying that he intended to resign his priesthood and marry the girl himself, and sharing women wasn’t whiteman’s way. He urged David more strongly to get himself a black girl. Still the weather was against it.

  David did the next best thing. He approached Prindy on the same terms as he had His Reverence, although much more forthrightly. He told Prindy that by fornicating with Savitra, not only was he committing a Mortal Sin as a Catholic, but outraging Tribal Law. He himself, who stood in tribal relationship to Savitra as cudjin, had some right to her. He could simply take her, but being a Good Christian was bound to marry her with the Blessing of the Church. He would get Father to marry them. If Prindy came tchinekin now and then, he wouldn’t mind. A bit of Wrong Side Bijnitch in the blackfellow way was nothing like this wanton wickedness.

  How Prindy took it at the start was as difficult to judge as any state of the odd boy’s mind. He simply stared with those grey eyes into the almond eyes before him. He didn’t have to give the answer. Savitra did so, when poor unwitting David turned those Oriental eyes amorously upon her and reached to touch her as his. She shrilled, ‘You bloody black-Japanee bastard . . . you try puggin me, I cut you cock off!’ A carving knife was handy. She snatched it up. David fled. The pair fell into each other’s arms to giggle over it for hours afterwards.