The World Beneath

by Cate Kennedy

  She woke up with her head under the white laundered sheet, like something laid out in those coroner shows Sophie always watched. The dream still hovered and receded, a blur of lost hope, of ridiculous rage. On the bedside table, her new books lay in a stack, like homework. Is this crap, she thought, or is it just me?

  So, OK, it was a waterfall. A beautiful spot made impossible to enjoy by other hikers there, quacking about turnaround times from the moment they arrived. Nothing like a gang of people walking into frame, thought Rich bitterly, to wreck a good shot. You’d wait for them to notice and move on, to show a bit of respect for you, then another mob would turn up rustling in their blue and red Goretex jackets, meander straight in front of you and stand there staring at you like bloody sheep even though they could see you were trying to set something up. Whoever invented Goretex, he thought, must be relaxing in his Jacuzzi right now.

  The sunlight shone fitfully onto the shining, rain-streaked rocks, and mist rose like a vapour through the cascade. But what was the point of a wilderness photo if it looked like a bus stop?

  ‘This place would be great,’ he muttered to Sophie, recapping his camera, ‘if only it wasn’t full of rubbernecker buffoons.’

  She shrugged. ‘Well, come back really early in the morning, then. When nobody else is around.’

  ‘The light would be totally different then.’

  ‘Yeah, well, excuse me for making a suggestion.’

  ‘We’ll be walking further on in the morning anyway.’ He leaned over towards her to whisper. ‘Somewhere away from these nutters, anyway.’

  No smile. She looked away, back to the falls, watching the complicated manoeuvring as everyone there who held a digital camera waited their turn politely. They all wanted exactly the same thing, he saw with rising, scathing annoyance: the illusion of emptiness, the myth that they were there alone. Nothing he could take here would ever be fresh or distinctive; it was all trampled by ten thousand pairs of boots, uploaded onto hundreds of travel blogs, stored in phones, restlessly sifted over a million times.

  ‘Can I take one?’ she said suddenly, startling him.

  ‘Sure. I guess.’

  He took the Olympus out of its case, suddenly protective.

  ‘Before you even start, wrap that strap around your wrist,’ he instructed.

  ‘So there’s no auto-focus on these old ones, right? I have to adjust ...’

  ‘Wrap the strap around your wrist. I mean it.’ The command came out more sharply than he intended. Strangled, almost.

  She gave him a surprised look. ‘OK, OK, calm down. I’m not going to drop it, just going to take a simple shot. I have used cameras before, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, digital cameras that are worth nothing. When you use a good SLR it should be an automatic reflex. Wrap it twice just to make sure.’

  She gave an exasperated sigh and lowered the camera. ‘Forget it.’

  ‘No, sorry. Go ahead. Just ...’

  ‘Here. If it’s such a drama.’ She handed the camera back, glowering, and walked off.

  Well. If she couldn’t handle a few essentials, that was her problem. He’d had a fleeting thought, yesterday when she’d been watching him — a quick daydream — that he could teach her a few things about photography. He could get her interested, and then maybe have a reason to catch up with her sometime in the city. Introduce her to how a darkroom worked, and all the expertise you needed to make an image emerge slowly in a bath of developer instead of having it zap onto a screen within seconds. He saw their two heads together, bent close over the tray. Could he make her appreciate that? Or would she just roll her eyes and sulk, shrug and screw up her nose with that infuriating, apathetic disdain?

  They’d left their backpacks with a pile of others leaning against a tree a kilometre away, and when they’d walked back to them again, Rich swore.

  ‘I don’t believe it. We’ve been rolled. Look at that.’

  Their packs lay unzipped and the remains of ransacked biscuits and dried fruit lay scattered over the grass, torn from their ziplock bags and prised-open plastic containers.

  ‘It’s not people,’ said Sophie. ‘It’s those birds. Wait and see.’

  She pointed to a few flapping black birds perched on a tree nearby and as he waited, watching, they wheeled down confidently, landing with a little jounce, and went back to tearing into their food supplies. Those crows again — they were everywhere.

  ‘You’re trying to tell me birds can open zips with their beaks?’

  ‘Well, just watch them.’ In a few moments one capered over to a packet of crackers and stabbed at it with its beak, eating the contents in a series of jabbing, furious pecks. He gaped as he watched two others jump on his pack and one hold a corner steady while the other tugged at a zip. Bloody co-operating. How many packs had it taken them, how many thousands of humans dumping their belongings here day after day, for the penny to drop? He looked down at the ground again beneath his feet, the silted dust marked with patterns of soles. Talk about the beaten track. A deep slow wash of pointlessness tipped over him, a weighty exhaustion. She was waiting for him to speak, though. To keep enthused. And there was his pack, demanding to be shouldered, the pain kept a blurry black smudge by the tablets but constant as breathing. He’d been insane, planning this. Out of his mind.

  ‘Are they ordinary crows, or something else?’ he asked.

  ‘I dunno. Ravens or something. Currawongs.’

  ‘Right out here, though? How have they learned, to open zips like that?’

  ‘Hey, don’t ask me. They’ve evolved. Like foxes in the city.’

  The birds spread glossy wings so black they looked blue, like oil. Their small hard eyes were the coldest things you’d ever seen, watching and constantly gauging the distance between the humans and themselves. They stropped their beaks and bided their time. It gave him the creeps.

  ‘Let’s pick this stuff up and see what can be salvaged,’ he said. Maybe he could set up a shot tonight, lay out some sultanas or scraps on a rock somewhere at sunset, get the crows flapping in silhouette against a red sky.

  ‘How do crows teach each other what velcro and zips are?’ he wondered aloud.

  ‘Is that a joke?’

  ‘No, I’m just trying to imagine. It must be like the Hundred Monkeys Theory. Have you ever come across that? There were these monkey colonies on various Japanese islands and researchers gave one group potatoes, but not the other colonies —’

  ‘We did that in Science,’ she cut in flatly. ‘It’s been totally disproved.’

  Rich picked up an almond from his scattered supply, and chewed on it. She was pushing small plastic containers back into her pack, methodically rolling socks and t-shirts back into tight little bundles and jamming them down into all the corners. He watched the crows squabbling over the strewn crackers, picked another nut off the ground, and tried again.

  ‘You know one time,’ he said, keeping his voice determinedly conversational now, ‘I was in Bombay —’

  ‘Mumbai,’ she muttered.

  ‘Right. Yeah, OK. I was in Mumbai and I heard about this amazing place called the Tower of Silence. It’s where they lay out their dead bodies to be picked clean by vultures. You can go there and see it.’

  She swung around, mouth twisted into a grimace of distaste. ‘How totally disgusting.’

  ‘They don’t bury them, you see. Contamination, or not enough vacant ground, or something. So the vultures come swooping in and devour them. It’s not disgusting, it’s actually really interesting, because ...’

  ‘No, I mean how disgusting that you went there. Like it was some kind of tourist attraction. Did you all go on a bus and buy postcards?’

  He concentrated on snapping the lid back on the container he was holding. He remembered buying that container, in the supermarket, before he even met her. Optimistically imagining them sharing trail mix out of it, in a ferny dell somewhere. A ferny dell! More like Jurassic fucking Park.

  ‘OK, fine. Let�
�s just repack this stuff and push on,’ he said, still keeping resolutely pleasant. ‘Because I don’t know about you but I’m not sleeping on one of those bunk platforms again tonight, I’m setting up the tent as far away from the hut as I can.’

  ‘You’re changing the subject.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You did, didn’t you? Take photos of it? The vultures eating someone?’

  How did they do it, these kids, manage to sneer and snicker at the same time?

  It was as though they all trained themselves just to get you riled; putting that abject, scowling defensiveness into their slump, finding that perfect infuriating balance between hostility and lethargy. Speak UP, he wanted to snap at her, like he did to all of them. Sit up STRAIGHT, why can’t you? Look people in the EYE when you speak to them! The irritation peaked in him, like water reaching the boil, fractious pain and weariness pounding in his temples.

  ‘Can I ask you something? How come you never say a bloody word until there’s a chance you can have a go at me about something?’

  He was expecting her to withdraw, cowed and contrite and apologetic. Her curling lip, the ferocious black spark of her eyes, came as a complete shock.

  ‘That is absolute crap.’

  He recovered indignantly, feeling it fraying. ‘No, you do. I’m telling you. It’s the only time your face lights up, do you realise that? When there’s a chance to scoff at me.’

  He saw a little tremor of shock cross her features, a little knock like a ripple moves a boat.

  ‘That’s bullshit.’

  ‘No, it’s not. Here I am, stupid enough to try to tell you something, share something with you, about this place, the Tower of Silence ...’

  Another sneer. ‘It sounds like a name they pulled out of Lord of the Rings. Something they made up for the tourists.’

  ‘You know what? I don’t care if it was. You’re a bloody Tower of Silence, yourself. You’re a monument to fucking silence. Why have you got to be so cynical about everything?’

  He was shocked at the pleasure his meanness brought him, the way he saw it wound her.

  ‘You’re the cynical one, not me,’ she flashed back defiantly, her eyes as dark as the birds, just as mistrustful. ‘You hate everybody on this walk — you said so.’

  ‘I ...’ Fatal hesitation. ‘OK, forget it,’ he snapped. ‘I’ll just remember from now on not to tell you anything, alright? No stories, no observations, no jokes, nothing. Maybe that will make you happy. Then you can walk around confident that everyone in the whole wide world is inferior to you.’

  He stopped, taken aback at himself. She’s fifteen, he thought. I’m attacking my fifteen-year-old daughter. Pull yourself together, you sorry arsehole.

  ‘We’re both tired,’ he said hastily, making an effort again to neutralise things. ‘I didn’t mean to snap at you. I just ... thought you’d be interested.’

  Lame. Weak. Conciliatory. He’d dreaded this. She’d smell the need on him, he thought. Hear that pathetic wheedle in his voice. Or else it was already snapped, and over. Irreparable.

  ‘Yeah, about vultures eating dead bodies,’ she muttered.

  ‘Yeah, well. They do it everywhere. Even in wonderful magical Buddhist Tibet. They call it sky burial there.’

  She actually was listening, he told himself, as she sorted through the unwrapped food and picked up litter. Underneath, she was interested.

  ‘That’s one place Mum’s always talked about going to, Tibet.’

  He jumped eagerly, too grateful. ‘Yeah, I know. Even when I knew her she did, a long time before you were born. Of course it would have been much better to go back then, before it got really commercialised and ruined by so much tourism.’

  She straightened up, looking at him with guarded, cool amusement.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Is that when you went? Before it got ruined?’ She repeated the word delicately, archly, pushing a finger sideways against her teeth to gnaw on a nail.

  (Take your hand out of your mouth!) He worked hard not to rise to the bait this time.

  ‘I did, actually, yeah. I was extremely lucky to get to witness an actual sky burial there, hardly anyone from the outside world ever sees one. It was a real privilege.’

  That much was true — there’d only been three other tourists in the little town he’d gone to, and they all whispered about the ritual to be held the next day, in hushed tones.

  Early the following morning, walking up to the desolate, windswept hillside where the ceremony was rumoured to be taking place, he’d felt a thumping, squeamish, nervy excitement.

  Until a monk stepped into his path and coolly sold him a ticket.

  He still had that ticket, and it was one of the weirdest souvenirs in his collection — a blurry photo of vultures clustered on a carcass. Birds eating a corpse. That’s not your average tourist attraction. Not something everyone has the fortitude for.

  What he’d been shocked by in the end, though, was not the dead body. It was the leisurely way the workers there had cut up the body and broken up the bones, throwing the pieces to the vultures like fishermen throwing scraps to seagulls. They’d chatted as they worked. It was so casual it was horrible and he couldn’t take his eyes off them, waving the hobbling, eager vultures away with a stick until they were ready to step back.

  ‘So did you take a photo that time?’ Sophie was saying.

  He hesitated. ‘I was ready not to, to tell you the truth, because they said, you know, that the locals wouldn’t like it and it was disrespectful and all that — but while I was there watching, a Tibetan guy next to me asked to borrow my camera and he took a couple of shots himself. So yeah, somewhere in my files I do have a photo. Imagine what a rare image that must be.’

  She picked up the last barbecue shape and crumbled it in her hands for the birds.

  ‘Don’t get too excited,’ she said, slapping her palms together dismissively. ‘I bet you ten bucks there’s a video of it on YouTube by now.’

  ‘Forest ravens,’ said Russell when they told him they’d been robbed by birds. ‘Or it could have been black currawongs.’

  ‘For a hundred thousand dollars,’ said Rich, ‘what are their Latin names?’

  But Russell, it seemed, had endless trumps up his sleeve.

  ‘Corvus tasmanicus, that’s the little raven. And Strepera versicolor.’

  He glanced at them and grinned apologetically. ‘I don’t know all of them. I’m not that much of a twitcher. I just know the common ones.’

  ‘Give us a break,’ Rich whispered to Sophie after Russell had left to boil the billy for lunch. ‘He’ll be handing out scarves and woggles next.’

  She looked at him mystified, as if he was the weird one. ‘What’s a woggle?’

  When they’d climbed the dense forested track to Du Cane Gap (1070 metres rising over two kilometres, and Rich feeling every burning inch of it) he stood panting, gripping the Olympus, getting some breath in his burning lungs before deciding which direction to photograph first. The views weren’t as spectacular as Pelion Gap, but it was good to just look back to see how far they’d come since then. He could see all the way until it vanished into cloud cover like a delicate Japanese painting, the rocky rises and summits with their tree-frilled silhouettes disappearing and reappearing fitfully through the watercolour wash of white silk.

  A long way, he congratulated himself. Bloody tough country. He’d walked nearly forty-seven kilometres with this pack, but they were nearly there. And it was all downhill now to Windy Ridge Hut, and if he could just ration out his painkillers to take tomorrow morning, he’d have the thing in the bag and be at Narcissus in a few hours, then a whole day to rest at the hut there; a whole incredible, feet-up, boots-off day. Then catch the ferry the following morning, time to sit and talk about the trip with Sophie, patch up those few altercations and misunderstandings. Not burned bridges. Singed bridges, if anything. Understandable.

  There was a suspension bridge he’d seen in photos
of the Overland Track, hung high over a creek somewhere; he must remember to get a photo of her crossing it. He’d do an enlargement and mount it for her, write a note. Or even a letter. Here’s to many more bridges to cross together, he could put. Or a quote: The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, or You can’t step in the same river twice or Let each person march to the beat of their own drummer, or

  ‘Here come the Roaring Forties.’

  Christ, bloody Russell again, bobbing up beside him on the summit, making him just about jump out of his skin.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The winds — can’t you feel them? Straight off the Antarctic ice shelf — Tassie’s right in the way. That’s why a blizzard can come over in about five seconds flat. I was over in the South-West once — and boy! One minute we were walking along in the sunshine and the next we were getting knocked over by horizontal sleet and the temperature dropped fifteen degrees in fifteen seconds.’

  ‘Is that right.’

  Nothing Rich said or did seemed to get rid of this guy. He was like some incessantly cheerful office dork in his big sneakers and the baggy-arsed Target jeans no self-respecting single guy would be seen dead in. He nodded to himself now, digging in his daypack for a pair of gloves, saying with a kind of relish, ‘There could really be some bad weather blowing in, now.’

  How could he tell — by watching ants? ‘What makes you say that?’ Rich asked reluctantly.

  Russell turned and gave him a puzzled look, then raised a hand to point at the horizon, banked with slate-grey cloud.

  He barked a little self-deprecating laugh. ‘Oh, right. I see what you mean.’ Smart-arse. He stared out assessingly at the clouds building over the stony peaks. ‘Yeah.’