The Oldest Song in the World

by Sue Woolfe

  ‘No wonder they like shop-bought flour,’ she said. ‘You just pay money for it, without all that work! I wonder if that’s why men needed more than one wife? Because the daily damper took so long?’

  Then, eager to be part of the excitement, an idea came to me. I remembered Beth mentioning the visit of the old Aboriginal man to her childhood school.

  ‘Why don’t we invite the ladies to the school to show these skills to the children?’ I suggested. ‘Perhaps it’s the very thing the school needs to entice the children back.’

  And so it was agreed.

  ‘Afterwards, I’m sure the ladies will help you find your singer,’ Vanessa said.

  And then, amongst the colour and noise and happiness, and my heart churning about Adrian, a group of little children called to me. ‘Play planes with us.’ It was the first time they had treated me with the ease they treated Adrian. So I dashed my tears away, and picked them up one by one, becoming the big person who turned their world upside down, but kindly. They watched me with eyes as pale and pearly against their black skin as seashells, and nestled their little hands trustingly into mine. On the drive back, they took turns to sit on my knee, and the ones too young to get a turn leaned against my seat from behind. At home, we found the electricity on, and I was able to make early dinner for everyone – the local favourite, mashed potatoes and bacon which I rushed to the shop for.

  ‘Did you hear?’ the white woman in the shop had said. ‘They’ve fixed the electricity! We’ll have dinner at home tonight!’ She’d been cooking food in the shop every night.

  As I cleared the plates, Vanessa told me that everyone knew about a precious old grinding stone by our water tank. It had belonged to Libby’s great-grandmother and great-great-aunts. I blushed. I’d made another mistake. Because it was a large and unusually flat stone, I’d sat pots of herbs on it. ‘I didn’t know,’ I said sheepishly, removing the herbs.

  Vanessa explained that heavy grinding stones were always left by women in the same places on their route around their homeland, their walkabout, as whites called it. My front yard with its grinding stone was on the route Libby’s ancestors walked. They’d time their arrival at the bean trees just at ripening season, they’d harvest and winnow the seeds, and they’d bring their cache to the grinding stone in what was now my yard to make flour. The stone had been in place as far back as anyone could remember.

  ‘It’s as if you’ve commandeered a family’s kitchen appliance, inherited from mother to daughter for generations,’ Vanessa said. ‘For maybe 60,000 years.’

  She laughed at my red face.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she comforted me. ‘They understand you don’t know Aboriginal ways. Who would’ve guessed? It’d just have seemed like any old rock.’

  ‘It’s probably from here, with spiritual powers,’ I said, telling her of my conversation with Daniel.

  Vanessa looked at my herbs. ‘The basil’s doing really well,’ she smiled.

  I tried to make amends by carrying it to the ladies in the shade of the verandah, but it was too heavy to even shove.

  ‘It’s as if it’s a fridge I’d commandeered,’ I said.

  She tried to lift it with me, but we collapsed on the ground.

  ‘That’s why they left it there,’ she laughed.

  The women laughed with us.

  ‘Good little farm.’ Dora laughed about my herbs, and Vanessa and I exchanged a glance.

  There was such comfort in their smiles, their sympathy, their understanding. They sat cross-legged on the earth in the sun next to the grinding stone and, twisting a smaller stone into the big one, they took turns to grind the seeds. It was a long job, requiring all their strength, and the sun had gone down by the time there was a little hill of powder.

  Vanessa had to write up the women’s accounts of what they’d done. She estimated that they’d be finished by tomorrow after lunch.

  ‘Ask if we can take the women elders to the school then,’ she said.

  As I got ready for bed that night, I was appalled that I hadn’t spoken to Adrian honestly. The words I’d found to tell him were, after all, small, weightless pebbles.

  I came to find out who you are.

  But when I’d unbuttoned my shirt, I decided that the words were boulders that would sink my connection with him. When I took off my bra I was appalled I kept silent, when I took off my pants, I was relieved I’d kept silent. I lay in the air conditioning, the spy, the pretender, the liar. And then the images of the day filled my mind, the yellow ribbons of bean pods, the black smiling faces of the women, the red and endless desert, and I fell asleep, comforted.

  The next morning, as I walked past Libby’s house, the women and children were gathered as usual around the cooking fire, and one of the women was making a damper with shop-bought flour for breakfast, piling ashes on its top to cook it through. Libby was nowhere in sight, but I guessed she knew I was there, and I lingered with downcast eyes. Soon, sure enough, she emerged from the house and came over.

  We stood slightly turned away from each other, facing the blue smoke, as if we were watching the damper.

  I told her about the flour-making yesterday, though I was sure she already knew.

  ‘After lunch, the ladies could come to the school to show the children who didn’t come the old ways with bean pods,’ I said. ‘But would the children want that?’

  ‘If the ladies come,’ she said, ‘the children will come.’

  There was a pause and I waited silently, as I was learning to. Waiting always seemed to pay off.

  ‘Craig will be cranky,’ she said after a while.

  ‘I’ll get his permission,’ I assured her.

  ‘The cheeky teacher too?’ she asked.

  ‘Her permission too. But she’ll love it!’ I said. ‘It will remind her of something wonderful that happened in her childhood – you’ll see!’

  She stared at the fire, then looked up at me.

  ‘The ladies are elders,’ she said. It was a warning.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘The school will know they are elders, and honour them as elders.’

  I said to myself: Then the women will lead me to the singer.

  I passed the shop on the way to the school, with its usual crowd of people waiting outside. I was so glad I didn’t give in to my impulse on that first day to encourage them to go inside. Perhaps I’d learned my lesson, perhaps I’d make no more mistakes, I thought. And when I go back to university, I’ll no longer be the worst student.

  But unexpectedly the thought of leaving here tore into me, almost punching a hole in me and filling it with sadness.

  As usual, the playground was empty. I found Craig at his computer, checking a literacy table. Apparently the school had one of the lowest scores for literacy in the country. I looked over his shoulder. It seemed like the highest score was achieved by one child who could spell only one word – ‘it’.

  ‘I’m being blamed,’ he groaned.

  I told him that I’d invited the women to explain some traditions.

  ‘The ladies are elders,’ I said. ‘We must honour them.’

  ‘The kids won’t honour them,’ he said. ‘You can see how many kids are here. It’s useless to bring visitors to an empty school. Are you trying to shame us?’

  ‘The school won’t be empty after lunch,’ I said. ‘The kids will follow the elders.’

  ‘You know how to bring the kids to school?’ he asked in surprise.

  ‘The elders do,’ I said.

  He put his head in his hands, then looked up at me, one eye almost shrouded by despair.

  ‘I told you: the world’s most degraded culture,’ he said.

  I found Beth talking to Kana, a newly arrived student teacher, a fresh-faced Japanese girl, and explained the plan. Unexpectedly, Beth pulled a face. ‘It’s not what school is for,’ she said. ‘The kids can’t read and write. This isn’t reading and writing, is it, this event?’

  I tried to conjure up the softness I’d glimpsed i
n her face before.

  ‘You inspired it, with your story of the old Aboriginal man at your school,’ I said.

  ‘Indigenous,’ she corrected. ‘You must get the word right or you’ll insult people! At my school,’ she continued, ‘we’d learned to read and write. That old man’s visit was just icing on the cake.’

  ‘Craig said it’s OK,’ I said, to avoid her indignation.

  ‘If Craig approves this nonsense, well, then it’s OK, I suppose,’ she said sulkily. ‘He keeps changing the rules. I don’t know how to keep up with him.’

  She turned to Kana. ‘It’s your practice lesson after lunch,’ she told Kana. ‘Are you happy with this intrusion?’

  Kana’s black shining eyes were full of light.

  ‘It’s exciting. I’ll learn so much.’

  ‘It’s not you who’s supposed to be learning,’ said Beth. ‘It’s them.’ Her face had become a severe, jagged oval.

  On the way home for lunch, Kana came part of the way with me so she could go to the shop, she told me. But as soon as we were out of sight of the school, she stopped.

  ‘Will you show me the desert?’ she asked, to my astonishment.

  ‘Why, it’s all around us,’ I said.

  ‘I grew up in Tokyo,’ she said, as if that explained her request. ‘This place is so strange.’

  So I took her to the path where Daniel and I had walked a couple of days before I went to the outstation, the path photographed in the books I’d found. The desert quivered with heat like a vast animal.

  ‘So empty, this desert,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing out there.’

  ‘For them, it’s a pantry!’ I said.

  She looked at me, her almond eyes wide.

  ‘And a cathedral. It’s filled with the spirits of their ancestors. That rock might be an uncle, that tree might be a great-grandfather, it’s filled with their relatives and their stories,’ I added, and for the first time, I found it moving, to know this.

  ‘Australia is not like Tokyo,’ she said.

  Daniel was at home, with the fridge door open. I felt a rush of relief that he was there, so that I could talk what I’d arranged over with him. He was making a bulging tomato and ham sandwich, with spinach leaves.

  ‘That looks delicious,’ I said.

  He cut the sandwich in half and put my half on a plate.

  ‘Olive paste?’ he asked. In the supermarket in Alice Springs he fossicked for delicacies if he had to wait for patients to bring home. When I nodded, he lifted the tops of both our sandwiches and clumped the paste on.

  I told him my forebodings about the school. ‘Do you think I should take the ladies there?’ I asked.

  ‘It’d be good for the kids,’ he said, manoeuvring an escaping young spinach leaf back into the sandwich.

  ‘But I might be making another mistake,’ I wailed.

  ‘You can only try,’ he said.

  I left the house before Adrian came in, and dropped into Gillian’s house. I told her not to make me a cup of tea.

  ‘You have a rest,’ I said. The clinic always closed briefly for lunch. ‘But tell me what you think.’

  ‘If it brings the kids to school, it’s good,’ she said. ‘Do it.’

  ‘But what if it turns sour?’ I cried.

  Chapter 18

  In the desert, all time schedules were provisional, as Adrian had explained right at the start. Vanessa rang to tell me that the ladies would be half an hour late.

  I rang Kana to tell her.

  ‘Fine,’ she said.

  I was sitting under the tree in the schoolyard when Vanessa drove up with Rosa, Dawnie, Mary and Fanny. Craig stood at his door, watching. He didn’t come over to greet the ladies, who didn’t seem to notice, but just downcast their eyes.

  Then, along the road came a clamour, and we all craned our necks to see its cause. We didn’t have to wait long. In through the school gates, came a procession, perhaps two dozen children, older girls and boys carrying young ones, laughing and shouting at first, and then, at a look from Dawnie, silencing each other. Craig didn’t notice them either. He still didn’t notice when there was more noise in the street, and through the school gates burst a larger crowd of children, at least another dozen of them, the oldest about eighteen and the youngest about two, the teenagers piggy-backing toddlers. There were now about fifty of them all shouting and calling, then, when they saw Craig at his door, dropping into silence.

  I feared he’d shout at them but he retreated. I knocked on the door of Kana’s classroom. Through the windows I was astounded to see the room packed with little children. There were only a few chairs free.

  ‘You’re late.’ Beth came to the door and spoke in a caustic, headmistressy voice of the sort I remembered from my schooldays, so that I felt ten years old, accused of making a mess. I was ashamed that the ladies would hear her unpleasant tone. Or the children, who by now must’ve numbered a hundred or so. ‘You’ll just have to wait. The pupils who came at the right time are listening to a story and can’t be interrupted.’

  ‘But I rang Kana and explained we’d be late,’ I said. My voice had shrunk almost to a whisper.

  ‘You’ll still have to wait,’ she said. ‘And even then we can give you only half an hour.’

  ‘May we sit inside? The women are hot and tired,’ I said, struggling to regain my composure.

  ‘You’ll sit out there,’ she ordered. Not only had the frivolity and prettiness gone from her hair, but she was hollow cheeked and shadowy under the eyes, as if she’d aged by decades within a few days. I wanted to find out what had happened between her and Craig, but now wasn’t the time.

  ‘And send that rabble home.’

  She shut the door in my face.

  I looked around at the women, and at the mass of children, who even now, were growing more numerous. Other children were still swarming through the gates. They stood quietly, copying the example of their elders. The women said nothing, but sat down as a group under the tree again. Vanessa pulled a face at me.

  ‘I don’t know how to apologise to them,’ I said. She murmured agreement.

  ‘The kids have come to school today. Must be because it’s not hot,’ said Mary, the oldest of the ladies. I could’ve hugged her for her diplomacy.

  We sat, watching the afternoon shadows creep over the playground. The crowd of children waited in silence, some sitting on the ground, some standing on one leg then the other. I tried to keep at bay the premonition that something terrible was about to happen.

  ‘Do you think we should leave?’ I whispered to Vanessa.

  ‘But the ladies were so pleased to be asked,’ she said. ‘And the children all want to hear what the ladies have to say.’

  Half an hour went by. I was astonished at how demure the children were. A few younger ones went to climb the trees, but were called back by the older ones.

  At last, Beth opened the door.

  ‘You can come in now. Just the women. No one else.’ Her voice was almost a growl. ‘Kana is finishing her lesson. She wasn’t to be interrupted. She was teaching reading.’

  Kana was standing in front of the class and Libby was sitting up the back. Beth took a seat behind the teacher’s desk out the front, and busied herself writing on little bits of paper. We all trooped down the back, with the children in the class turning around and smiling at us. Surely, I thought, Craig would be impressed by such attendance.

  There was a subdued murmur outside, and I turned to see that the irrepressible children were crowding at every single window. The room was surrounded by verandahs on four sides, and every window framed children’s faces: perhaps directed by the older ones amongst them, the littlest stood at the front, faces almost inside the room, and the tallest stood at the back, with other little ones perched high on their shoulders. They were all silent, waiting. Beth, with an exasperated sigh, marched loudly over to the windows and, one by one, slammed them shut, making the rows of children jump out of harm’s reach. But they crowded back to
breathe on the glass.

  Inside the room, Beth turned to face us all.

  ‘Continue your lesson,’ she barked at Kana.

  So Kana, voice trembling a little, in front of her huge audience, both inside and outside, went on with her lesson.

  ‘Write down your name,’ she told the children.

  Not a child picked up a pen.

  ‘Go on. Write it down. You can all write your names, surely.’

  She was met with a profound stillness.

  She glanced uneasily at the audience outside the glass windows, worrying how to exert authority, as she’d been taught in her city training. But no city training had prepared her for this. So she threw a look over to Beth, but Beth’s head was bowed, writing.

  ‘Well, talk to me then,’ Kana found to say. She turned to one little boy. ‘What’s your name, your English name?’ she asked him.

  He turned to confer with his friends.

  ‘Tony,’ they told him, giggling. Kana thought they were laughing at her, but she was determined to be good-tempered.

  ‘Don’t play with me,’ she said in a patient, kind voice. ‘School is serious.’

  ‘He’s forgotten, miss,’ said one of his friends.

  ‘Forgotten his own name?’

  ‘Not his name, miss. His English name.’

  She paused, puzzled, but she had to carry on. Then came a further puzzle, when she asked if any of the children were related to each other.

  ‘She’s my mother,’ one of the little girls told Kana, pointing to a little girl sitting beside her.

  ‘Not mother,’ said Kana again in her carefully kind voice. ‘Another word. You know any other words for relatives? How about cousin? Cousin. She’s your cousin.’

  ‘No,’ all the kids called. ‘She’s her mother.’

  Kana wheeled around to Beth.

  ‘Don’t they know what the word “mother” means?’

  Beth continued to bend her head to her writing.

  ‘She’s her mother, she’s her mother,’ the children were calling.

  So Vanessa explained.