The Oldest Song in the World

by Sue Woolfe

  But the ladies sat, heads down, gazing at the dust.

  ‘Don’t you agree?’ he asked them at last. He’d been the darling of ladies’ lunches and ladies’ afternoon teas, many of whom had opened their purses to his party because of his engaging smile.

  Again I heard the muttered ‘grader’. I could only think that there must be a word in Djemiranga like it. The politician, listening for any reaction at all, heard the word too.

  ‘You saying that it could be greater?’ he asked, a little desperately. ‘Your effort? Your involvement?’

  I thought I make out in Djemiranga: ‘He’s stopping. You.’

  ‘It could indeed be greater! If grandmothers get more involved, that’ll change the lives of our children! The futures of our children depend on grandmothers!’

  But no one spoke.

  ‘Tell me, so I can leave here with my heart high – tell me that from now on you’ll be like my grandmother!’

  So Dora spoke.

  ‘Can we have a grader?’

  Chapter 14

  The next day, I worked on my recordings. Between the understanding of Djemiranga’s grammar that Toolbox was giving me, and my fieldwork, as E.E. Albert would call it, I was beginning to guess at the meanings of words even when they occurred in the middle of sentences. Eat, sleep, sit, drink, sing, cook, come. Yesterday as a child pointed to chocolates at the shop, I’d made out there, here. I repeated the recordings again and again to correct my pronunciation. I wrote a column of the words I could decipher so far and was proud that the column stretched all the way down the page.

  Gillian rang, startling me. I hadn’t thought the electricity was on. I wanted to tell her how many words I’d discovered, but her voice was like a wounded bird dragging its wings along the ground.

  ‘He broke it off,’ she said.

  ‘Your man?’

  ‘His kids told him they don’t like me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But you didn’t like them.’

  ‘They’re spoiled brats!’

  ‘Want a cuppa?’ I asked.

  There was a pause.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about your song,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve worked out who’s the singer?’ I cried.

  ‘About what’s going to happen when you take it back,’ she said. ‘Men will hear it. Whites won’t care!’

  ‘Some would – I could ask if it could be protected –’ I began.

  ‘I know I sound like Adrian, but maybe you shouldn’t give it to the university. Maybe you shouldn’t even record it. Maybe it’s a natural thing, the song dying out. Maybe change is natural. I mean, if the next generation doesn’t want to learn it, maybe they have their reasons.’

  ‘But – you’re connected with these people!’

  ‘That’s why I’m saying this.’

  ‘But I’ve promised it to my supervisor. I owe it to her. Protocols are in place. I’m sure she’ll look after it.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re sure?’

  My voice, my mind faltered. I thought of the darkness in Dean’s face, his bloodless knuckles on E.E. Albert’s door, his disapproval of our laughter, of how she smiled at him too much. I thought of how I’d been invisible to him.

  If I’d been invisible to him, what else was?

  I imagined the demands of a life of competitive research, the requirements at conferences to say something no one had said before, the pressure for constant publication of articles with new findings. I thought of E.E. Albert and the photos on her desk, and I thought of the compromises that loneliness and fear create.

  ‘Can you be sure?’ Gillian was asking. ‘What’s she going to use it for? Won’t they want to publish it? Won’t they write articles about it?’

  Assertions about the integrity of human nature dried on my tongue, as if they were trudging wearily across a dry desert. The world of E.E. Albert and the university and my studies was beginning to feel like a dream I was waking up from.

  ‘I’d be burning my bridges,’ I said sadly.

  ‘We’d better have that cuppa,’ she said.

  We sipped our cuppa that evening, sitting in the dark of her verandah, the side that looked out into the desert, with just a candle to light our thoughts.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t, either,’ she said.

  Coming home in the dark, I almost tripped over several trays of seedlings, newly unloaded from the troopie.

  ‘Our vegetable garden!’ I cried joyfully.

  Some were spinach and capsicum and mint, but there were tiny flowers as well. Daniel, in the candlelit living room, told me that Mandy, grower of the little carpet of green outside the clinic, wanted to start a garden. Mandy came to the clinic every day to sweep and clean, and to hose her square of grass. She was the only black person to work at the clinic. Adrian didn’t want to employ Aboriginal health workers.

  ‘I’ve been asked to, by white office clerks, but they don’t know what they’re talking about,’ he’d said.

  ‘It’d please them. Consolidate your position,’ I’d said, while Daniel, sitting at the table, nodded quietly.

  ‘My position is hard, dedicated work.’

  ‘It’d please everyone.’

  ‘Not the mob here and they’re my bosses.’

  ‘How can you know what everyone here thinks?’

  He’d showed me a charter entitled Aboriginal Workers’ Rights. The last rule was that a nurse wasn’t obliged to help someone of the wrong skin.

  ‘What if there’s a car accident?’ I’d asked. ‘What if it’s life-threatening?’

  ‘Exactly my point,’ he’d said.

  ‘They’re compassionate people,’ I’d argued. ‘Surely it only means they’re not compelled to do something routine, like giving someone of the wrong skin a needle. They’d rescue someone suffering, whoever they are.’

  ‘You’d know, of course.’

  The lights in the living room leaped on, and Adrian left to check something at the clinic.

  I sat alone outside on the plastic chairs, watching the night.

  ‘Mandy asked for pink and purple flowers,’ said Daniel, coming out to the verandah. His black feathery charcoal eyebrows were arched, his sweet face lit up with the thought of happy colours. ‘Pink and purple. “Pretty flowers,” she said.’

  He was following Adrian to the clinic, just in case he was needed.

  ‘I’ll help her,’ I said, but I was thinking, perhaps Mandy would tell me who the singer was.

  Just before midnight I woke to hear shouts and the sound of running feet. I wrapped a sheet around me and went out to the living room, where Adrian stood in his makeshift dressing gown, holding a lit candle, his head tipped on one side, listening.

  ‘Another grog-runner,’ he said. ‘I suspect I know who she is.’

  ‘A woman!’ I gasped.

  ‘There might be violence. I’m worried now we’re without a doctor. The injuries might be beyond Sister and Gillian.’

  He put down the candle, went to the sink to get a drink of water, and offered me one.

  ‘What about the Flying Service?’ I asked, sipping in unison with him.

  ‘The landing strip’s got overgrown with all the rain we’ve had. I went out there yesterday for the mail plane. I should’ve hacked back the weeds then I suppose – even the flares to light the runway are hard to find – but it’s an all-day job and I hadn’t time.’

  ‘Who normally does it?’

  ‘Bruce.’

  I’d learned to sigh at the mention of his name.

  ‘I reminded him, and he said if the pilot wanted it done, he could cut the weeds himself!’

  ‘But he’d have to land first!’

  ‘Landing’s OK during the day. It’s seeing the flares at night, that’s the problem.’ He put down his glass on the sink. ‘I think I’d better go and fix it up. Don’t want a death on my conscience.’ He headed towards the bathroom with his candle, where, since he still had no bedroo
m with a wardrobe, he’d taken to keeping a pile of clothes on the floor.

  ‘You’re going to cut grass at this hour?’

  ‘At least clear the flares. By the headlights.’ He was pulling on clothes with the bathroom door open. ‘I heard Wendy, Dora’s granddaughter, walking by a few minutes ago,’ he continued, planning aloud. ‘She’s always sober, and she was with two strapping young fellows. Might ask their help. Want to come?’

  This last was flung over his shoulder as he strode, now fully dressed, to the door.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Take the candle to get dressed. Blow it out afterwards – don’t want a fire to add to our troubles. And bring torches,’ he said.

  ‘And Daniel?’ I asked.

  ‘Let him sleep.’

  By the time I’d dressed, he’d returned in the troopie with three young people all laughing and horsing around with giant clippers.

  I joined them in the back, trying to make out what the young people were saying, for many sounds were familiar, but my tired mind protested. We drove through deserted and dark streets. At the airstrip, Adrian discovered that the fuel for the flares was low. He swore about Bruce, but drove off for more fuel, while the young people and I, holding torches, scoured through the long weeds for hidden flares. Because the sky was black with further rain and our torches were weak, we found them at first by tripping over them and banging our shins, though after a while we could predict their whereabouts within the range of a metre or two, because someone – I hoped Bruce – had spaced them evenly apart. Then we worked in pairs, one holding the torch while the other hacked down a circle of weeds around each flare. I worked with Wendy, and longed to find some Djemiranga to exchange with her, but she had little English and all I could muster was ‘bravo’.

  But at least I learned to shout ‘Here’s one!’ in Djemiranga, because we said it about sixty times.

  I knew that for the rest of my life I’d never utter those words without recalling this night: the glancing torchlight, Wendy’s laughter, the vast sky arching over us black with rain, and the soft, rich Djemiranga syllables.

  When Adrian returned in the troopie with fuel, he too said, ‘Bravo.’ He squeezed my hand as I climbed into the cabin.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, to us all, but he seemed especially to smile at me. We drove the young people to Dora’s house, then went home. He leaned over and opened my passenger door.

  ‘I couldn’t speak Djemiranga!’ I said in frustration. ‘All I could understand was when one of the boys said “I’m tired”.’

  I repeated it to him, enjoying the sensation of it in my mouth.

  ‘Body language,’ he said, his face near mine. ‘That’s what counts.’

  His closeness became a kiss on my lips, but a dry kiss, that of a brother to a sister.

  ‘Go to bed,’ he said, as if once again I was the little girl from round the corner.

  ‘Aren’t you coming in?’ I asked, for he hadn’t turned off the engine.

  ‘I’ll do the rounds of the streets,’ he said. ‘Checking for casualties, like a matron.’

  I was asleep long before he came back.

  In the morning, we planted the vegetable seedlings in Daniel’s new garden. But as I walked past the clinic, I saw that its front yard had been dug up as well, and fenced off to keep the donkey out. Mandy was already planting her pink and purple flowers, and Adrian had come out of his office to pass them to her one by one.

  ‘Any casualties last night?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing, thank God,’ he said. His face seemed to glow just for me. He saw me watching Mandy.

  ‘Come over and help,’ he said. He assumed I knew about gardening because I was a white woman – or did he remember Diana teaching me how to garden?

  I thought, I’ll find out who the singer is today. I’ll wait till Mandy and I are both busy and then I’ll ask the question. Then I can leave.

  Mandy and I crouched together, our knees out like frogs, to press the seedlings into the rust-coloured, warm, gritty earth. Adrian, satisfied, went back inside the clinic.

  ‘Pretty flowers,’ she said from time to time.

  I found myself repeating it.

  ‘Pretty flowers.’

  Calmed by the rhythm of the work, I let peace wash over and take me away from my thoughts. At first it came because I was intent on being helpful, but slowly, I found myself not wanting to chat. Occasionally I said, ‘What about here?’ and dug a hole with my fingers. And again ‘Here?’

  I thought, I’ll ask her about the singer by the end of the next row. Then I put off asking to the next row, and the next.

  We were coming to the last tray of seedlings, and still I hadn’t asked her.

  We stood up, wiping the red dirt off our hands and onto our skirts. I found the hose coiled up inside a shed full of office furniture, screwed it on to the tap at a tank, brought it to her, and went back to turn on the tap.

  We stood watching the sparkling arc of water.

  Suddenly Mandy confided: ‘So boring, at the camp.’

  She was telling me that home was boring! I was astounded, but I was learning not to say unnecessary things. I just nodded.

  ‘Gardening is fun,’ I said.

  ‘It’s fun,’ she repeated.

  I felt I was beginning to understand consensus.

  One of her grandchildren called her, and my chance to ask was over. I should’ve been angry with myself that I hadn’t popped the question, but I was curiously satisfied.

  I stood gazing at our work. Adrian came out and joined me.

  ‘You’re learning,’ he said, beaming again.

  ‘I’m learning gardening?’ I was about to refute that, but it would mean mentioning Diana.

  ‘I’ve been eavesdropping,’ he said. ‘You’re learning silent communing. They have a lot that feels like conversation. Certain silences and glances, certain patterns of breathing. The word sounds like jirriku. Very big here, jirriku.’

  ‘You’re speaking Djemiranga!’ I exclaimed, and repeated it after him.

  At dawn the next morning, Adrian left the settlement again with a troopie full of patients. His lips from the kiss the other night still seemed imprinted on mine.

  I was getting used to his frequent absences. On the washing machine lid, two of his pale blue shirts waited for him. He bought them six at a time, always blue linen, amply cut so they billowed luxuriously when he tucked them into tight jeans. ‘They wear out,’ I’d heard him tell Gillian, ‘always within weeks of each other – figure that!’ Then when he’d go to town, he’d buy another six. On the machine lid they were dust streaked, vulnerable, childish, like cowering animals. From the jagged streaks on the back of one shirt, it seemed he’d stretched out under a broken-down troopie on the road. From the back of another shirt, I saw he’d leaned against a burnt tree, a moment memorialised in a diamond of black soot. I threw a load of my own dusty clothes into the water. I hesitated, then picked up his shirts to throw them in as well. But I stood fingering them, to touch him. Here were his skin cells powdering my hands. Here was the grime from his sunburnt, muscular neck. Even the tufted weave of the shirts smelled of his life, of cooking smoke and oil, the smell of a troopie, of him. Two unwrapped squares of chocolate, grit covered, distorted the shape of a pocket he hadn’t scissored off. I took them out, and popped them both in my mouth at once, grit and all. Then I feared he’d divine what I’d done, and he’d think I was in love with him.

  Perhaps I was. I could fill a room, a street, a whole settlement with thoughts of him. But between us was an ancient grief.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ I told Daniel a few days later. ‘I’ve been here nearly three weeks and I still haven’t found my singer.’ We were walking in the evening when he came back from the clinic. Daniel and I seemed to be moving in a silence that came with us, in a hush that began in our minds and spread beyond us. We stopped at a grey-leafed bush which had suddenly sprouted lime green leaves, a colour so unlikely it was as if a c
hild had chosen the wrong crayon for colouring in.

  ‘Why don’t you insist on Adrian helping you?’ he asked.

  It came to me that Daniel seemed more relaxed when Adrian was in town. Perhaps, I thought, he felt torn between Adrian and me.

  ‘How? As Gillian says, he’s a law unto himself.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about your bedroom.’

  He laughed uncertainly. Creak. Creak.

  ‘My bedroom?’ I laughed with him. I couldn’t think why I’d found his laughter strange at first.

  ‘The cupboard I warned you not to open. We’re missing a whole lot of paperwork. Medicare claims. It’d give us a lot of money, and the clinic needs it. And you know what I’m thinking? Remember I told you that just before you came, I saw him stuffing papers up there?’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘So he didn’t have to think about them. I wonder what happened to him,’ he groaned.

  ‘Happened? Has something happened to him?’ I asked. I was surprised at how high my voice was with worry.

  ‘In his childhood,’ said Daniel. ‘Something must’ve gone really wrong.’

  We passed a white gum tree. I touched its bark and white powder like talcum came off on my hands. The tree was like a woman in a slender white evening dress. Where the boughs joined on to the trunk there were creases, like ripples of satin.

  ‘Look,’ I said to Daniel. I stood like the tree.

  He laughed. Creak. Creak.

  ‘Make me a neat martini,’ I joked.

  ‘Even miming trees is funny here,’ he said.

  I brushed his hand accidentally as he swung it by his side. I would’ve liked to have caught and held it, to have asked what went wrong for him in his childhood, that gave him such a wistful air. How little I knew about him, how little I’d ever known about anyone. I wondered if all the whites who came to the desert hoped that the desert would be kind to us, that it would in some way heal us.