Finally, declaring him spiritually ready, they gave him a spear and a kangaroo fur blanket, and nothing else. Thumimburee said that if he did not come after the cycle of one moon, they would search for him, and bury him, for his long absence could only mean that he was dead.
Neal watched them tear down their shelters and tie the stick-bundles to their backs. They kicked out the fires and erased all traces of human habitation, as they had done in every camp since leaving the billabong, and then, without a backward glance at Neal, the clan struck off toward the west.
He watched them for a long time, observing the way the shimmering waves of desert heat distorted their figures and finally swallowed them. He knew they were only a few miles away, and yet he felt as if he were the last man on earth. The wind, without the flavoring of children's laughter and women's chatter, was empty and unsettling. It whistled through his long hair and beard as if to say: We have you alone at last.
Neal turned in a slow circle, looking at a landscape he had once thought bleak. He saw it now through different eyes. It was a land of colors. Ochre plains dotted with clumps of green spinifex were framed by dramatic red rocks, lavender mountains and brilliant blue skies. "We call this the Nullarbor," he had told Jallara one day.
"Why?"
"Because there is nothing here."
She had not understood, and at the time Neal had not known why. Couldn't she see the wasteland, the lack of striking topography, just blowing wind and dust? But now he understood. As they had trekked, Jallara had pointed out areas that held sacred meaning to her people: Anthill Dreaming, Dingo Songline, the place where Lizard-Spirit Ancestor created the first thulan. Neal was still not adept at distinguishing the features that identified such places, but he grasped the significance of what she was telling him: that this vast plain of twisted rock formations and buried water and stunted trees was criss-crossed with ancient ancestral tracks, and dotted with spots of religious and historical significance to the people who had lived here for thousands of years.
It was not an empty wasteland.
"Follow songlines," Jallara had said. "Look for places of Dreaming." But as hard as he looked now, Neal could not find these things, he had no idea of where to start even. Still, he decided as he hefted his spear and struck off in a direction opposite from the way the clan had gone, there was plenty for him to see here, and he might as well get started and not waste time. While serving on the HMV Borealis Neal had read books written by naturalists who had been among the early explorers to the continent, and so in the course of his first morning of walkabout he was proud of himself for being able identify much of the fauna he encountered. This desert was a naturalist's dream, and he wondered—dared hope, even—if he might stumble upon a species never before seen by white man and which he would have the honor of naming.
At noon, his stomach growled and he looked toward the cluster of boulders that had been the clan's home for the past few days. No one had said he could not remain there, as there was water and small game. But then it wouldn't be "walkabout." Neal presumed that the purpose of the ritual was to cover ground and wait for the spiritual revelations to come.
Nonetheless, hunger and rationalizing drove him to the old camp, where he drank from the artesian well and roasted a fat gecko. He slept through the hot afternoon, deciding he would take up wandering after sundown.
But when he awoke after sunset, he decided it would be best to stay here for the night and strike off in the morning. And so he sat with his back against the trunk of the lone acacia and looked up at the sky.
He was used to the stars by now, an astonishing brilliant canopy that one never saw above cities. As he listened for sounds of predatory creatures, Neal thought of his life up to this moment. He recalled his twelfth birthday when Josiah Scott had sat him down and said he was old enough to be told the truth, saying, "I am your adoptive father," showing Neal the cradle, the blanket, the emerald glass bottle he had thought once held perfume. Neal would never forget the tears that swam in Josiah's eyes that day, as if in telling the boy the truth, he was losing the son he had had for twelve years.
Neal thought about Hannah, as she had held onto him during the storm off the island of St. Helena, and again as she had clung to him on the dusty road in front of the Australia Hotel.
He turned his gaze to the monolithic mountain that burned red by day but turned a saturnine purple at night, and he drew the fur more tightly about himself. He knew it was October, but had no idea of the date. Strangely, he didn't care. There was a time when Neal had kept date and day and hour in his mind, the scientist conditioned to live by facts and external data. But his sojourn with the Aborigines had shown him a different way to mark the passage of time, through the stars, the length of shadows, even his own internal rhythms.
And he had learned so much more. As Jallara's recollection of English had come back, and as Neal had become adept at understanding her gestures and inflections, and even a smattering of Aboriginal words, he had discovered an intricate religious belief system. In the Aboriginal world view, every meaningful activity, event, or life process that occurred at a particular place left behind a vibrational residue in the earth. The land, its mountains, rocks, riverbeds, and waterholes, all echoed with vibrations from the events that had brought each place into creation.
It made Neal think of the rust-red mountain, now looming dark and sinister against the stars, and he wondered if the vibrations he had imagined emanating from it had begun long ago by the very cataclysmic geologic event that had created it.
Jallara also spoke of the Dreamtime which she said was the "time before time," when Ancestor Spirits came to Earth in human and other forms, to give the land, animals, people their form and life as it was known today. Which was why, Jallara explained, the Ancestor Spirits and their powers were not gone but were present in the Dreamings seen all around.
It didn't make much sense to Neal who had had little religious training. Josiah Scott had taken him to church on Sundays, but Neal had barely listened to the sermon from the pulpit. But one thing did make sense. With each day spent among Jallara's people, Neal came more and more to understand their close ties with the earth and with nature. He learned that the clan didn't feel separate from the scheme of things, that they didn't regard themselves as superior to animals or to water or rocks, but believed that they were all part of the complex web that had been spun at the beginning of creation, in the Dreamtime.
As he listened to rustling in the overhead branches of the mulga tree, wondering what kinds of birds or rodents were up there, Neal thought again of his gratitude to Jallara and her people for saving his life, and his desire to repay them somehow. He had abandoned the idea of showing them how to build sturdier shelters when he realized they needed light collapsible dwellings for their nomadic way of life. That was when he had hit upon the idea of reading and writing. Jallara's people possessed phenomenal memories. To listen to Thumimburee recite the clan's history was spellbinding. "We walk, we walk, we camp at Emu Songline. Hunt kangaroo. Three sleeps. We walk, we walk . . ." Some stories took hours in the telling, or days. Impressive, Neal thought, but it would still be better if they had a permanent record.
As he rolled himself up in the kangaroo pelt, wishing he had a few more as the cold was severe, he decided that once he reached Perth he would find a way to bring the alphabet back to Jallara's clan, and the tools of reading and writing.
He tossed and turned in fitful sleep. The silence was eerie. Neal had gotten used to hearing human sounds at night—snores, sighs, coughs—even the sounds of copulating, which had unsettled him at first but which had become as natural a sound in the night as a baby's cry. Finally he drifted into dreams. Hannah was there, in quick flashes that he tried to grasp but could not. He dreamed that the clan had returned for him and he was awash with relief. There was even a brief scenario with Sir Reginald in which Neal accused him of murder.
He awoke to bright sun slicing through the mulga branches. He drank his fill o
f the artesian water and then struck off. He wished he had a container to carry extra water with him, but he had learned where to find sources in this seemingly arid plain. When Kangaroos needed water, they dug wells for themselves, sometimes as deep as three or four feet. Kangaroos were not in abundance in this area, but there were a few, and Jallara had shown Neal how to find these "kangaroo wells." For food he would do what the clan had done, hunt for roots and seeds, or bring down an animal with his spear. If he was lucky, he would find emu eggs which were green-shelled and ten times as big as a chicken's egg.
He turned his face into the hot wind and took one step away from the camp.
And then he stopped.
He felt it behind him, felt its heat and uncanny vibrations.
The mountain.
Neal turned and, as he looked at the monolith glowing golden in the morning sun, he finally faced a truth about himself: his decision to undergo initiation had nothing at all to do with scientific curiosity, or the desire to write a paper about the experience. It was an excuse, he realized now, to send him out there, on his own, so that he could come to terms with the mountain that, even now, continued to beckon.
Taboo or not, he had to uncover the mystery of the red mountain.
29
A
LL THROUGH THE MORNING AND INTO THE AFTERNOON, Neal moved under a strange compulsion, his feet treading the sand as if under a spell of their own, drawing him closer to the monolith that had turned from golden to red. Even so, Neal could not accept that there were supernatural forces at work.
It is scientific curiosity, he told himself when he arrived at the base of the sheer cliff, and to prove his point he examined the rockface with an analytical eye, making mental notes: it is composed of a coarse-grained sandstone rich in quartz and feldspar. Uplifting and folding has resulted in vertical strata. The surface has been eroded. Weathering of iron-bearing minerals by the process of oxidation has given the outer surface a rusty color.
He wanted to reach out and touch the wall, but was suddenly afraid. I have a university degree in geology. I am a scientist.
Yet he stood transfixed at the base of the towering mountain and felt the power of the red rock that was blinding in the sunlight. Was the mountain magnetic in some way?
No, Neal thought at last, feeling something inside himself capitulate to powers greater than he. There is no magnetism. No subterranean streams or seismic disturbance. There is nothing geological going on here, nothing that belongs to the physical world.
And suddenly he knew: that at some point in the past few days, unbeknownst to himself, Neal had changed from an objective scientist to a spiritually hungry man yearning for a message from the unseen world.
And if the spirits did send me a secret message, what would it be?
Although his brain reminded him that he had promised to respect the laws and taboos of Jallara's people, his heart heard the call of the spirits within the mountain. Once again, as if driven by a will other than his own, Neal's feet began walking, following the sandy base of the smooth cliff like a man searching for a doorway. He stepped over pebbles and cobbles, debris that had been washed down the rusty surface for millennia, and followed the jagged footprint of the monolith, the late afternoon sun blinding him, the heat pressing down on him. Sweating profusely, he removed his kangaroo fur loincloth and dropped it to the ground along with the fur blanket. He continued his exploration of the base of the mountain. Sweat dripped into his eyes. He ran a hand over his forehead and it came away soaked. Jallara's people always slept during the worst heat of the day. Neal knew he should be doing the same.
He lost his grip on the spear. It fell to the ground and he kept walking, the sun now behind him, so that he knew was going in a circle and that eventually he would arrive back at the place where he had started. Why was he doing this? What did he hope to find?
He had his answer when, glancing at the ground, he saw the thorny lizard in his path.
It seemed to pause, look up at him, and then it skittered on. Neal followed until the thulan appeared to suddenly vanish into the rock. But when Neal examined the surface, he was surprised to find space there. Eons ago, rock had broken away from the main body of the mountain, creating a narrow defile.
Neal slipped inside and what he saw took his breath away. The slanting sun illuminated a cliff wall that rose smooth and majestic from the desert floor, curving at the top to form a queer overhang. It resembled an ocean breaker about to crash on shore, petrified in a forever cresting wave. His scientist's mind tried to identify the rock and its immense age, how it had been thrust up through the earth. But all he could think of was how beautiful the stone wave was with radiant orange and yellow strata in the red. It looked unreal.
And then he saw them.
People. Men and women. Children and animals. Symbols forming clouds and sun and moon. An endless parade of them, executed by different hands in different pigments, red, white, yellow and black. They marched across the face of the rock with long limbs and haloed heads, spears in their hands. Kangaroos in retreat. Babies nursing at breasts. A white-haired elder being laid on a burial mound. The chronology baffled him. Neal had learned that in Jallara's language there were no words for yesterday, today or tomorrow. They never spoke of a future, although they did understand that a past lay behind them. They seemed to have no need for the concept of time, as they lived in the constant now. So how did that explain this chronicle? And then he knew. Each generation came to this rock wall and recorded their now, making this a string of "nows."
All these figures, walking, running or lying down, killing kangaroos or plucking up spinifex grass, were generations of one family. Jallara's clan. Neal imagined Thumimburee reciting the lengthy narrative as the family saw depictions of those who came before them. Here was the permanent record of people who Neal had thought needed an alphabet and writing tools.
As he continued to follow the mural, he saw fathers and sons, down through the ages. He reached out to a man leading a boy by the hand, both carrying boomerangs. A father teaching his son to hunt. Tears pricked Neal's eyes.
And suddenly he was reminded of other tears. A memory from his boyhood, long forgotten. Nine-year-old Neal had come home early from school one day and had walked in on Josiah Scott, sitting in his study, weeping. Neal realized he must have suppressed the memory because it had embarrassed him—for a little boy to come upon the man he worshipped, and find him crying like a woman—but now the scene flashed back into his mind in vivid detail—Josiah Scott sitting at his desk clutching Neal's baby clothes and blanket and emerald-green tear catcher, and sobbing with all his heart.
For eighteen years, Neal had kept the shocking scene buried. He must have run from the house, although he had no recollection of that. It had frightened him to see his father sobbing so. Josiah Scott, who had been such a tower of strength to the boy, who knew everything and was a rock of such stability that the son had not known a moment of insecurity. Neal never brought it up, Josiah never knew that the boy had witnessed his moment of weakness, and Neal had never thought about it again.
Until now. It was strange that primitive stick figures painted on an ancient wall should dredge up that memory now. To what purpose?
With a lump in his throat, Neal resumed walking between the two walls of rock, the sun no longer beating down on him but continuing to illuminate figures that gradually became fantastical in appearance. He placed his hand on the wall and could have sworn he felt the mountain vibrate.
The air grew heavy, he heard a buzzing sound. The wall seemed to go on forever. The illustrations grew more primitive, less identifiable. Neal deduced by the alluvial erosion of the wall that these paintings were very old, perhaps thousands of years old. He was going back in time.
Jallara had explained about her ancestors, the First Ones, who came from the Rainbow Serpent, and she had pointed to the sky. Seeing the eonsold paintings overwhelmed him. The men became less human in appearance until, near the end, they reached eno
rmous proportions and appeared to have round transparent bowls covering their heads and looked as if they were coming down from the sky. At the top edge of the mural, there were stars and what looked like flames. What were these beings? Creators, Jallara had called them.
Staring at the figures, Neal felt the air shift and change around him, as if the air pressure were dropping and rising.
And then, before his disbelieving eyes, the figures on the wall started to move.
Neal gave a cry and fell back. His mouth stretched in terror as he saw spindly black arms and legs move on the rocky surface, as one-dimensional creatures stretched and breathed and fleshed out. Neal stood frozen with horror as he watched the figures walk before his eyes, as if in some grotesque shadow play, and then suddenly arms shot out, seizing him, pulling him into the wall.
He screamed. He couldn't breathe. He was smothered in rock. Black figures with arms and legs like sticks danced around him. Flames came down from the sky. Neal saw impossibly tall men walking toward him, glass globes encasing their heads. He screamed again, but no sound came out. He was immobilized in the rock as the animals came to life, kangaroos with misshapen bodies and hawks swooping down with sharp talons. All around him, in the red atmosphere that was suffocating him, he saw frightening creatures swimming in the strata. Long-fingered hands reaching for him.
He ran. It was dream-like. His legs were sluggish. He felt hands holding him back. He fought to get away, to escape from the rock.
Help! screamed his silent voice. Somebody help me!
Suddenly, in the dense sediment and rock strata that imprisoned him, Neal saw a light coming toward him, glowing brighter as it drew near, and as it reached him, he saw that it was a beautiful woman—not a black-ink stick figure, but a flesh and blood woman with blond hair and white skin and a flowing white gown. She smiled at him for a moment, as her hair floated about her head, then she leaned forward and whispered something in his ear. As Neal felt the dark figures begin to recede into the rock, the woman covered her face with her hands and when she brought them away, Neal saw that they were filled with diamonds. Raising her arms, she let the diamonds rain down on Neal's upturned face, and where they touched his skin he felt pinprick sparks of life and joy.
This Golden Land Page 29
