Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  Those Spirits of the Mangroves, with their secret click-click-clicking, how urgently they spread the word — Koornungs! And the koornungs, the young one leading, the old one as rear-guard, mocked them — Clickety-click! Igulgul, peeping through the tips of the mangroves, looking in daylight like a white-ochred face in profile, got into the game, scaring spirits and gobies and one-armed crabs by tossing his Shade into pools where it shook with laughter. Blue and black butcher birds, blue kingfishers and red robins, protested melodiously over the intrusion. It was hard going, with the tide half in, but no taking it easy, when the only one who dared call a halt was, for all his skinny ancientness, indefatigable.

  Muddied to the ears, they reached the beach with still a lot of daylight to spare. Still, no time was wasted, even though they found a turtle’s nest and the women were for cooking a meal. The men left the women to dig the eggs while they prepared the canoe. The eggs were loaded for eating raw. The canoe was launched. The Pookarakka now was in the lead, sitting in the bow, singing softly to Igulgul smirking out of a gilding sky while working his magics on wind and tide. Prindy handled the sail in the stern. The women sat amidships bailing.

  Thus through the islets, purpling in the failing daylight, through channels of flowing gold and silver, till Igulgul had the sky to himself and flung them a shiny tow-line to haul them, so that the islets parted to let them through — and there in no time were they in view of the little lights of the Mission, a few camp-fires on the beach, the presbytery winking through the casuarinas, and then in the back creek, still on the silver line, even though the haulier now could be seen only winking Goodnight to them through the mangroves. They ran up onto the corduroyed landing, to the skirl of the hordes of blood-suckers joyously piping them in.

  The women were left to the welcoming party, while the men went on to reconnoitre, up out of the mangroves, along the darkening street with its humps of deserted buildings, to the blaze of the presbytery.

  Stephen Glascock appeared to be alone, on his east-side verandah, reading as usual by the light of the pressure lamp, sprawled in a deck-chair.

  Prindy, just out of the ring of light, signalled, ‘Pst!’

  Glascock looked up at once, searched the grey gloom of the casuarinas, till he caught faint movement. ‘Who’s that?’

  Prindy let himself be seen. Glascock gaped, breathed, ‘Prindy!’

  The boy came warily, eyes darting, asking on indrawn breath as he came up, ‘Anybody stop with you, Father?’

  Glascock rose and grasped the boy’s shoulders. ‘No . . . only me. But where’d you spring from.’ Prindy made a vague movement of the head. ‘Who’s with you?’

  ‘Rifkah there.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Leave behind at creek and come look-about. Where David?’

  ‘I don’t know. We had a bit of a row and he cleared out again. But we must get Rifkah.’ Glascock started off up the verandah. ‘Tell me how you got here. I heard you got off the Melville before she was sunk . . . but nothing after that.’

  Prindy panted his tale, so fast was the pace the man set. Yet, for all the preliminary haste, as they were coming up to the mangroves, Glascock slackened pace, interrupting Prindy, to say, ‘You all must be pretty hungry, eh?’

  ‘Yas . . . pretty t’usty, too . . . like drink o’ tea.’

  Glascock stopped suddenly. ‘Look . . . you go on and get Rifkah. I’ll go back and light the fire and get supper going . . . eh?’

  Prindy stared at him as he stood bulked against the starry sky. But the man waited for no answer, wheeled about, went off now at a lope.

  That Glascock, from simple eagerness, had been thrown into a state of perturbation, was obvious enough in his not coming from the kitchen at sound of the arrival of her he had on impulse gone rushing to meet. In fact, he didn’t even turn from the flaming stove till she called him from the doorway: ‘Stephen!’

  It was to be expected that he should turn red-faced and blink, but not that when she ran to him with open arms he caught her hands, and although smiling, held her off. Certainly she was a messy bundle to embrace, clad only in shorts and shift, still grubby with mud and stained with egg-yolk. Still, it was only at her face he looked. His breast was heaving, his voice strained, as he spoke, ‘Well . . . this is a surprise!’

  This time she breathed his name, and in evident protest: ‘Stephen!’ She tried to free her hands. When he clung she asked, with eagerness changing to anxiety, ‘Vot is ze matter?’

  He gasped, ‘Nothing . . . oh, nothing . . . only . . .’ When she strove against his grip again, he bent and kissed her hands. Then she buried her face in his mop of hair.

  He looked up, releasing her. She stood staring, asked, ‘You are not ’appy to see me?’

  Still finding speech difficult, but still smiling, he said, ‘Do I really see you . . . or are you a dream?’

  She caught his hand, drew him to her suddenly, but only kissed his cheek, released him, stood back to stare again.

  Flaming, avoiding looking at her now, he muttered, ‘I’ve dreamt of you so much . . . too much.’ Then he swung away back towards the stove, vociferating now, ‘I’m getting you something to eat . . . you must be starving . . . what’d you like?’ He began to leap about. ‘I’ve got all sorts of tucker. The boats . . . the Yanks . . . bring me everything you can think of. Look . . . I’ve got a kerosene fridge now. Can you beat it? All mod. cons. What about steak and eggs and onions?’

  She watched him, a little smile on her lips, but puzzlement in her eyes.

  Then he looked at her. ‘But you can’t sit down to a slap-up supper like that! Have to shower and change. Still got your clothes. Come on . . . I’ll rig the shower for you.’

  He dodged round her, ran out ahead, came back with a hurricane lamp and a towel and a fold of clothes, went racing to the outside bathroom. He waited only long enough to fill the shower-bucket and haul it up on its pulley, then bolted.

  Such was his swift concentration on the task that he had the cooking well under way before Rifkah returned and tried to take a hand in it. He let her set the kitchen table for four and make a bowl of bread and milk and whisky for Bobwirridirridi to take away somewhere. Otherwise he insisted on her keeping out of his way and confining her effort to giving him a detailed account of her experiences. She complied docilely enough. Soon the youngsters were there to help him divert two-thirds of the bit of attention he’d been compelled to give to the company. Over the meal, he gave them nearly all of it.

  It was a great meal, with fresh bread and hard butter and odds and ends the like of which it had taken a world war to bring to these parts: like canned sauerkraut, pickled cucumbers, stuffed olives, maple syrup. While the kids only picked at the oddities, Rifkah ate so heartily as to confess herself sleepy when the host said she must be, as a preliminary to declaring the guests too weary to help with the washing-up and hunting them off to bed. The youngsters went off to their former bridal bower in the convent.

  Where Rifkah retired to was not disclosed, until, when after about an hour with all chores done, he returned with the pressure lamp to his lounging post on the eastern verandah. There in a canvas chair drawn up beside his own she sat, or rather by the utter relaxation of her posture, lay suspended, sound asleep. He almost blundered up to her, perhaps dazzled by the light, or maybe by the sight. No doubt she was truly sleeping. Her head hung to one side as if too weary to hold erect. Her lips were open like a child’s, just visible, because a great hank of gleaming hair hung over that side. The rest of her hair, dragged as her head had fallen, and spread upon the canvas, blazed like the radii of a monstrance in altar candlelight, the glimpse of beauty it encompassed the holiness within, to a holy man, as this one looked to be as he stood staring, the consecrated flesh and blood. He had come silently on bare feet, with the lamp, needing pumping, barely hissing. One sleeping so soundly should not have been wakened by his very careful turning away. Perhaps it was some subtle thing like that which caused his blue eyes to roll as
if in agony while he was watching her. He had only turned his back, when she called to him sharply, ‘Stephen!’

  He stood like a rock before turning back. Then he was frowning, and his voice was a growl: ‘You’re supposed to be in bed.’

  She smiled naughtily. ‘You haf mek convent bedtime rule again . . . like Reverend Mudder?’

  The frown became darker with darkening of the skin above the beard. ‘You’re tired out.’

  She yawned luxuriously, raising arms in a stretch that revealed a glint of axillary hair and tight-fitted the print convent dress over her young torso. The blue eyes rolled again. She sighed, still smiling, ‘I am all right now . . . I haf loffly sleep . . . ahhh!’ She yawned again, showing the pearl and coral of her mouth.

  His growl was tremulous now: ‘Anyway . . . you’ve got to go to bed.’

  The smile became naughty again, as she extended a slim hand towards him and said, ‘I vill go to bed ven you go to bed . . . vit’ . . . you.’

  The shock made the lamp leap in his hand so that it almost flicked out.

  The naughtiness changed to a look of concern. Dropping her hand, she asked, ‘Vot is matter, Stephen . . . you go back to sacerdotal vow?’

  He tried to speak, but failed, hung his head. She extended her hand again. ‘Come sit vit’ me.’

  He came blundering, not to the chair, but to the table, to set down the lamp and pump and pump it, till she reached and caught at his belt and drew him. Looking dazed, he slumped into his chair. She sought his hand and held it, looking at his set profile, as he stared into the starry sky above the grey rags of casuarina. She asked softly, ‘Now you are sorry for vot ve do . . . for our loffing?’

  He swallowed, took a long time to answer: ‘Only as one who has lived in paradise must feel to find himself in hell.’ Still he regarded the stars.

  Her brows rumpled. She gave a little tug at his drooping hand. ‘Explain to me, Stephen.’

  Now he licked his lips, breathed deeply as if to make a great effort, began hesitantly: ‘I understand . . . now . . . now I know what celibacy means . . . the vow unbroken . . . what you never have you never miss.’

  ‘You vish to be celibate again?’

  ‘How can a drone bee that’s flown the nuptial flight do anything but die . . . only I didn’t die . . . I just fell and fell and fell from the heights . . . into hell . . .’

  As his voice trailed off in a sigh, she raised his hand to touch her cheek, murmuring, ‘My poor Stephen . . . you haf been too much alone.’

  He looked at her quickly. ‘I told you I had those damn Yanks here all the time.’

  ‘Too mooch alone to dream.’

  Now his eyes devoured her, only to turn suddenly away again.

  She went on: ‘You are not alone now. You are not dreaming. I am vit’ you . . . to loff you again.’

  His breast heaved. He panted to the stars, ‘Then to leave me in hell again.’

  ‘I vill not leaf you.’

  Still to the stars he declared, ‘Then I’ll only make you hate me with my importuning.’

  ‘Vot is Importunink?’

  He swallowed. ‘It is following you around . . . only wanting your love . . . because it’s become the meaning and purpose of my life.’

  ‘Is zat ver’ bad zing?’

  ‘We said before that our love was a gift of God . . . or Tchamala or something . . . and we used to say it was too wonderful to last for ever, but we didn’t care because we would die together like Romeo and Juliet when it ceased. But you were snatched away from me. When I realised the loss of you I tried to die. I went swimming in the sea that had thrown us into each other’s arms . . . so far out that I was too exhausted to come back . . .’

  ‘Oh, Stephen!’

  ‘But the sea wouldn’t let me die. It brought me back. Three times it brought me back . . . and left me on the beach . . . to cry in misery . . . once on that beach of ours . . . where I thought I saw you, all golden in the sunlight . . . but it was only the salt water in my eyes . . . and the tears.’

  She slipped over to his knee, knelt before him, breathing up at him, ‘Oh my darling . . . oh, my Stephen . . . my dear, dear loffer!’

  But he sat rigid, his audience the eternal stars, his breast heaving, his voice hoarse: ‘It is too hard, my love, to go back. I have come so far now in self-discipline. I couldn’t go through it again.’

  ‘Zrough loffing me?’

  ‘Through the agony of losing you.’

  For a moment she stared up at the set bearded face. Then she said, ‘Stephen . . . you haf become ze priest again!’

  He dropped his eyes to her, wide with protest: ‘I haven’t! I rowed with that fool David over it, when I found how lost I was . . . and he tried to flagellate me . . .’

  ‘Flagellate?’

  ‘Whip . . . for penance . . . fool had been reading something and only half-understood it. No . . . the vow I took with myself . . . for my manhood . . . that you should be a lovely dream.’

  ‘But I am real, Stephen!’

  His eyes were rolling again as he looked down at her. ‘The sea gave you to me. The sea took you away. Only the sea can give you back . . . and I must die in the sea for it.’

  For long moments they stared at each other.

  At last she said in a quivering whisper, ‘You are fright’ of such vonder . . . and I am fright’ too.’

  He swallowed, nodded, blinked on what looked like the beginning of tears.

  She went on in the same tone: ‘Spone ve go back to sea . . . go back to zat beach . . .’

  ‘Oh!’ With a hoarse cry he seized her, drew her up, smothered her expectant mouth with his own.

  Both wept as they clung and kissed — wept, wept, till they were laughing, embracing wildly.

  ‘Oh, my darling!’

  ‘Oh, my dollink!’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Oh!’

  He had her on his knees in his arms when at last he was able to say, ‘We’ll take blankets and things . . . all mod. cons this time.’

  She laughed and kissed him, and withdrawing her mouth, laughed, ‘And citronella.’

  ‘No . . . the Yanks’ve got something better than that . . . and no stink . . . I’ve got a big pot.’

  ‘Vell . . . come on . . . ve go . . . to the sea . . . and our beach.’

  And so they went, in the row-boat, through the phosphorescent waters of the magic Island of Avalon, said to be on the Edge of Paradise and to have a Castle of Lodestone on its shores so that hearts magnetised by love were drawn to it inevitably. A billion stars went with them aloft — below a myriad denizens of the deep like herding comets. The beach — the nuptial bower, all chased with the cool fire of breaking wavelets. Silver cased their legs as they stepped ashore, as they stood for a moment in embrace, as he lifted her and bore her up to the faintly glowing bridal couch.

  But love is always Wrong Side in Avalon — and the price of Wrong Side Love is Death. Or is it that Death is the Price of Right Side Love, like that which takes the King of the Bees to Heaven to fertilise his Queen, and that Wrong Side Love is really that stodgy semblance of the real thing which by obeying all the rules lasts until it becomes a dirty joke?

  It was piccaninny daylight, and they were rolled tight together in a blanket, when the blue and the black butcher birds woke them: Lulla-lull-la-la, lulla-lull-la! Glascock roused first, raised dark head and looked about, looked down at the other head with a strange gleam in its darkness turned from him on the pillow, and bent and kissed it lightly. Again he looked further, at the sea, which was a ghostly blur hidden under a thin wad of mist the whispy top of which could be seen drifting as purple smoke against the faint gleam of the opening oyster of dawn.

  Carefully he withdrew from the blanket, palely naked, and getting to his feet, stole over the little tide-lip down onto the wet sand. He stood straddle-legged, piddling and yawning. The boat was afloat, dimly rocking, pulling on the kedge. He turned back, was about to leap up the tide-lip, when he halted. Fain
t luminiferous movement in the gloom. Then sound of swift soft gushing. He smiled, drew a deep breath. Again the movement. When it ceased, he jumped up onto the dry sand, loped to the bed, crawled under the blanket, whispering. Whispering, gasping, a last wild flight to the dazzling Edge of Paradise.

  When they came back, and sat up, and flung off the blanket, it was comparatively quite light. They laughed at each other. He rummaged amongst a heap of things, produced a towel. Holding it between them, they jumped up and ran to the sea. They dipped and danced, scattering silver and grey smoke. Then out on the wet sand he towelled her. He did it as a sort of religious rite, from tip to toe and back again; while she stood as if receiving it as such, only with an occasional movement of her hands when he bent low, to touch his head as if blessing him. Twice he murmured, ‘I love you.’ Twice she answered softly. Then the butcher birds took it up and kept it going while they dressed, while they got into the boat, as they went sweeping away in sharp silhouette against the morning: Lull-lull-lull-luv-yu!

  As he rowed with joyous strength and she played with the little waves he made as if he made them for her, they talked matter-of-factly about Fergus and Alfie and how to dissuade them from their dangerous escapade. He said, ‘If it’s the Yankee take-over that’s driven them crazy, they could do no better than to stop here and fight it . . . because it’s here that the great grab’s going to be made.’

  He went on to talk of his American visitors, whom he described as quite unlike officers one would expect to find in other navies and armies: ‘Seems like those in powerful social positions . . . I don’t mean mere snobbish social grading, but position in business and profession . . . simply walk into high rank in their services, and judging by their talk and their activities, remain exactly as they were, except that they’re in uniform. Their first interest here isn’t military, but rather commercial. They talk as if they’ve won the war already. And it isn’t just based on their boundless self-assurance. To us it looked as if the Pearl Harbour business knocked the US Navy right out of existence. That’s far from fact. They have their large Asiatic Fleet intact, and their Atlantic Fleet . . . and the capacity to turn out other ships like Ford turns out his motor cars. They regard the Jap Navy with contempt, and frankly say their strategy is to force it into a great sea-battle as soon as possible and cripple it and deal a death-blow to what is the very heart of Japanese pride. The Japs will face it in their pride, they reckon, even though their lines of communication are stretched to the point of snapping. While the Japs haven’t got one substantial base or ally to fall back on, the Yanks have them all round the globe. They’re only waiting for this battle, the Yanks. They say it’ll take place in the Western Pacific any day. Meantime, those round here are seeing what this place is worth to them. All the ships that come this way put parties ashore. That’s reasonable enough, seeing they’re here to defend it. Still, they come back with bags and boxes of stuff they frankly gloat over. They say there’s aluminium and iron and manganese and what-not round about here to supply the world for a century. They say there’s oil under the swamps and rare metals in the beaches. As one of ’em said to me, “Mairn, what’s wrahng with you guys? You bin sittin’ on a billion bucks for a hundred years . . . and only gaht corns on your butts to show for it.”’