The Conversations At Curlew Creek

by David Malouf

  But to return to my own case, which means to you, my dearest, always to you. What you have that I do not is that flamey quality, that fierce determination to burn and burn up, that I have had so often to shield my eyes from; I fear it, my soul fears it. I have known this for as long as I can remember. As a boy of six or seven, when I was dazzled, then afraid, what I saw always when I lowered my eyes was the round toes of my boots, and I thought, there is dirt under my feet, and I longed to be outside in the fields where the sky was cast down in sheets in the furrows, hiding its light between them, or in the bog with its buried secrets, old spongy tree-trunks, deep-sunken and secret, which was the world I felt closest to and which would not deny me. But I knew that the moment I was there I would miss the fire, as if all the warmth my body contained was in you. I cannot live without her, I cannot endure – that is what I would tell myself. Well, I have lived without you but I would not have chosen to do so, and I do not now. We must be able at last to look at one another; I to endure the fierceness of your flame, you to endure the dull earth. My dear, my dearest, I say this now because I feel very close tonight to the fact of extinction – not my own, not yet – that will have its hour and I will face that too – but the fact of extinction itself, as real and palpable, as much a part of things, as a drop of moisture on a damp wall, a button, a bowl of porridge. I feel very close to the cold edge of it, because I am close to him. No, not Fergus after all, whom I had hoped in one form or another to find here, but this stranger whose animal presence comes near to stifling me, I can smell so strongly the fearsome stink of his body, have in my ear his groans, the wet snuffling of the mucus in his nose, and in a bucket just feet away the foul voiding of his bowels. – There is nothing shameful in this, and little, after so long, that I find offensive.

  I had hoped to find some shadow or breath of Fergus here – that is what I came for. But he has been forced into second place in my mind by this other, who has no part in my life but does, after all, mean something to me. Were I to follow my own inclinations I would have him escape, and, because I know already that I shall not, feel a kind of shame, though he has of course no expectation of it, and why should he? – men do not do such things. But why? I ask myself – a childish question – why don’t we do them? Are we not free? We are not, but why aren’t we? – I know you cannot answer this question, but since you are here I ask it of you just the same and long for your reply. It is the kind of question, when I was a child, I used to put to Eamon. ‘I cannot answer these things,’ he would tell me. ‘I am not God. Ask the priest,’ and his voice would take on that mocking tone he always used when he spoke of the Faith, and which made me at times so uncomfortable, ‘when you go trotting off next Sunday to Mass.’ I think sometimes that he was a spoiled priest, Eamon, but of a religion we have not yet conceived or dared to imagine, and that you, my dear, my dearest, are its priestess and keeper of its flame. Are they too fierce, the truths of that religion, for us to bear? Can they be more savage than the ones we live with already? I ask this, and though you are here, do not expect an answer . . .

  He was drawn back into the hut by a closer voice.

  ‘I reckon, sir, it must be about time.’ Little points of light were showing where moisture gathered in the cracks between the slabs.

  With lumbering difficulty, Carney began to get to his feet and for the first time Adair saw him upright. He was taller than he had thought, heavier too when he loomed over him, but what Adair was chiefly aware of was not the man’s weight or bulk but the grace that had saved him from having to announce the moment himself. He too got to his feet, and lifting the door aside, swung it open on cold air and the wash of first light over the frosty earth.

  10

  * * *

  * * *

  IN THE SILVERY gleam of six o’clock, Kersey, on a bank above the stream, boots off, jacket unbuttoned, was all set for a spot of fishing.

  He had been out earlier and picked a dozen pint-sized grasshoppers from the drenched bushes. They were easy to catch. He talked to each one of them personally; it was a way, out here, of keeping at a distance the sense you got that if you didn’t make each thing you had to deal with – a bit of fishing line, a cricket, the pan you were scrubbing, the cinch you had to buckle – a thing you could draw in on the line of your breath, then the loneliness and vast spaces and silence would simply swallow you. ‘Com’ on, now,’ he whispered, peering in where a fat little hopper, sticky with dew, sat asleep on a twig. ‘You’re a lucky feller. You’re in for a big adventure. Sit still, now.’

  He reached his hand in, pinched the wings between thumb and forefinger and slipped the panicky creature into his bag.

  Silver perch, that’s what he was after. Four he would need, three if they were fat enough. He had already prepared a bed of wet brush where they would lie till it was time for cooking.

  When it was over at last, this paddy business, they would sit quiet for an hour or so and have a good feed before leaving.

  Long trails of mist swathed the trees, there was a dampness on the air. But the sun was coming and would soon burn it off, it was already lighting the highest leaves. Squatting, he dabbled the tips of his fingers in the creek, shook the cold drops off, and just wetted his mouth and eyes. From that position, almost on a level with the surface of it, he surveyed the stream.

  There were three channels. The nearest was shallow and still, a chalky colour, the middle one running; not fast exactly, but enough to ruffle the grey-blue light upon it. The far channel, wider, deeper, was also moving but in a sluggish way. That’s where the fish would be. It was overhung by thin-leaved, drooping boughs and was mud-coloured.

  He waded out into the middle channel till the water was almost to his knees, steadied himself on the pebbly bottom, and quickly, deftly, at home in a competence, sent the line lancing out.

  ‘Here goes,’ he thought.

  It fell just where he had intended. ‘Com’ on, Number One,’ he said aloud. ‘It’s bloody freezing in here, don’t keep me waitin’.’ His mind went still. A part of him out there under the brownish surface was hanging, waiting. This is more like it, he thought.

  He wasn’t happy in this outfit, it wasn’t what he had expected, it disappointed him. Too old for it, maybe. You needed to be young and not plagued, as he was, by physical troubles that in order to keep up with the others he had to hide, keep to himself.

  What irked him was that he wasn’t appreciated. He did things for them – Langhurst, for instance. Took extra trouble, put himself out. Did they notice? And the rot they talked! Always going at one another, all so full of chatter and the need to make a test of everything, push, push, push. What pleased him about his present occupation, aside from the fact that you could be on your own for a bit, was that you couldn’t push. It was out of your hands. You stayed still. You waited on his time, Number One, the old-man perch out there, somewhere in the murky water under the trees, that was hanging, watching, considering, approaching the bait. Responding to the slightest jerking of your forefinger on the line, where you and the breeze just slightly moved it as if it was a live thing. The creature, its gills working, its tail just slightly in motion, hovering out there.

  A strike! The force of it, as close and taut as the muscle of his forearm. His mind stopped drifting – it too tensed and plunged. His toes gripped the pebbles underfoot. The fish broke surface, flashed its scales at the sun.

  Beautiful, he thought. Swiftly now he began to haul it in.

  ‘You’re a real beauty,’ he said aloud as his hand closed upon it and with the fingers of the other, he detached the hook, the fish all this while, its power alive and single all down the backbone, jerking in his hand.

  ‘There you are, my beauty,’ he said.

  He laid it tenderly on the bed of brush. Its rounded eye, still clear, stared straight up into the sky.

  ‘I hoped it’d be you,’ he whispered. ‘Just you lie there now, don’t be nervous. You won’t be lonely, I promise. Not for long.’

&nb
sp; He stood regarding it with deep satisfaction. It made up for a great deal. It had been just a shadow in his mind, hanging, feeding, a hope; and now here it was out in the open, plump and beautiful, two and a half pounds maybe, its pretty scales all silvery, throwing colours in the sun. His blood beat with the beating of its gills. His raw heart lifted.

  A good sign, a good day’s beginning.

  Number One.

  Not far off, under some sparsely foliaged gums away from the creek, Langhurst and Garrety, stripped of their vests and already sweating, were at work on a grave. They had only one shovel between them, so one dug, grunting as he chopped at the loose soil, which immediately sifted back into the hole, while the other, hunkered down on the heel of his boot, complained, offered advice, gave mild instructions.

  The sun was up. The feathery leaves overhead moved and flickered, cast a net of shadows over the sandy ground, kept up a continuous shushing sound against the chop chop of the shovel going in and the charged explosions of air as the digger put all the force of shoulders, arm, wrist into getting the thing done as soon as possible.

  Langhurst, who for the moment was in the observing position, watched his companion go at it with short sharp strokes, tossing each shovelful over his right arm – he was left-handed – the sinews knotting in his shoulders and his lean neck. Drew his hand across his brow, which was dripping. Blew sweat from his upper lip.

  ‘At least four feet ’e said,’ Langhurst told him. ‘You still got a way to go.’

  ‘I know that!’

  Garrety, fiercely, went back to digging, his eyes hard. As if, Langhurst decided, he was digging his way out of something and his life depended on it. He does everything like that, he thought.

  ‘The blacks ’a got the right idea,’ he said. ‘You don’t catch them workin’ their guts out diggin’ holes. They wrap ’em up and stow ’em in a tree where the dogs can’t get ’em. Less effort all round.’

  Garrety grunted and dug. The sand flew.

  ‘I reckon that’ll about do,’ he said after a time. He panted, rested long-bodied on the handle of the shovel.

  Langhurst got to his feet.

  ‘Y’ reckon? He’s a big bugger. Is it long enough?’

  Garrety threw the shovel out and to Langhurst’s amazement laid his long frame on the sandy earth down there, stretched right out with his arms extended, his eyes closed and said, ‘See?’

  Langhurst, standing just at the lip of the hole, had a dizzy sense of looking down at him from a great height, as if he had shot up higher, much higher, than his five foot ten, or the hole had got deeper. Garrety lay with his eyes closed, hands extended, every bone in his rib-cage visible above the concave belly. The toes of his boots pointed upwards. His cheekbones stuck out where the flesh below them hollowed in the beginnings of a smile.

  Langhurst giggled, sat back down on his heels. But when, after a little, Garrety still did not stir but just lay there as if he had dozed off and intended to rest like that for as long as it pleased him, he stood again and noisily cleared his throat.

  He felt a little chill at the base of his spine.

  Once you stopped moving about and the sweat cooled on your skin it was cold.

  He reached for his vest and pulled it over his head. Still Garrety lay.

  He couldn’t have lain there like that, he felt. So relaxed. In another man’s grave.

  The light foliage overhead stirred and shifted. The sunlight shifted on Garrety’s face. His skin gleamed. There was a shine to it.

  A fly settled at the corner of his mouth, and without opening his eyes he brought a hand up and brushed it off. The fly, drunk on sweat, persisted. Suddenly, the long body flexed, shot up, and he was out.

  Langhurst found he had been holding his breath. He hadn’t noticed it. Kicking the shovel out of the way, Garrety reached down and scooped up his vest. When he raised his arms and drew it over his head, Langhurst could smell him. All his movements, Langhurst thought, had an extra swing to them. As if that moment of complete relaxation down there had replenished something in him. As if, by lying four feet below ground like that and giving himself up to whatever force it was that held you to the earth, he had discovered a source of refreshment, the power to spring to his feet and shoot straight upwards, to stride about filling the place with his musky scent, all easy and light.

  He himself felt a sudden heaviness on him that their work here had failed to sweat off, the lingering shadow of a place he had gone to in his dreamless sleep and could not recall, though his belly did.

  We’re so different, he thought. Me and him.

  ‘God,’ Garrety said, turning his face in profile, and from the tenseness of it you might have thought he was in pain. You could see the bunched muscle in his lean jaw, the adam’s apple raised then falling, the tendons at work in his neck. ‘I can’t wait t’ get back to town. I’m that randy I could fuck a knot-hole in a bloody wall.’

  Four years later, on a clear summer evening two hundred miles to the east of here, Ben Langhurst, with his eighteen-month-old daughter on his arm, behind him a stretch of cleared scrub planted with waist-high apple trees, and his wife, in front of their hut, taking in a line of washing and looking anxiously towards the mounted stranger who had called him to the fence, would hear that his one-time friend, Tom Garrety, after a spell of running in the Ranges with a gang very like the one they had just hunted down, had been shot and killed. The stranger would sit there, watching a little too closely his reaction to the news.

  What could he say? With the child still in his arms he would be back at this moment in the shifting light of the gums – four years is not a long step – and the scratching of their bark as the long strips rubbed in the breeze.

  He would come again to the lip of the grave they had dug together, though it was Garrety who had done most of the work, and see him laid out down there, the gleam of sweat and sunlight in the hollow of his chest and on the prominent cheekbones, his eyelids lowered, at the corner of his mouth a little smile as at a joke known only to himself; and would watch him once again spring to his feet, hanging there on his elongated frame, then rising.

  Looking back, he would believe when he went over it again, sitting up alone at a table in the dark and pondering the mystery of their lives, Garrety’s, his own which was tied so intimately to the anxious face of the woman in the bed behind him, the rising and falling of a little girl’s breath, that what he had seen at that moment was an image out of Garrety’s afterlife, and that Garrety in their time together had already had foreknowledge of it, as he had so often, in his uncanny way, known the country up ahead that they were riding into – had known of the reversal his life contained, the crossing he would make, had maybe already made, from one side to the other of the law, and it was that that had all along been his secret and the source of his ironic humour. ‘You look,’ the newsbearer had said, ‘as if it didn’t too much surprise you.’ But he had turned away. He would not answer that.

  Meanwhile they began the short walk back to the camp-fire, Garrety a little ahead and sauntering. Suddenly he stopped and turned.

  ‘Where’s the shovel?’ he said.

  He stood shaking his head in a gesture of exasperation and looked away towards the camp, taking it for granted, Langhurst understood, that the shovel was his responsibility, though there had been no agreement on it, and that he was the one who should double back and get it.

  He hesitated a moment. But something in him had shifted. The weight he had felt was gone. The freshness and sweet air as the sun came up more strongly and birds chattered and shrilled, the easiness, among the surrounding trunks, with which his body fitted around him made contention for the moment a tedious and unnecessary thing. ‘Dammit,’ he said, but set off.

  The shovel lay across a pile of dirt to one side of the hole. It looked out of place in the quietness, the remoteness of the clearing. He reached down and retrieved it, and when he stood again was struck, though his lightness of spirit did not desert him, by a strange
ness, now that he was alone with the shivering of the leaves, a sense of spaces, beyond the trees, that he could not see into, opening into further spaces that even his mind might not reach; but he was not disturbed, did not feel in any way oppressed or threatened.

  He looked at the hole they had dug. It did not change anything. Neither did the fact that he was here observing it. It made no gap in the stillness.

  It was as if he and Garrety had never expended all that effort and sweat in digging it. They had only imagined that. Or so he might have believed if it wasn’t for the weight of the shovel in his hand. Or if they had, the earth over long seasons had already covered it, and what it had been dug to contain.

  The feeling was strange but not scary and made no difference to his mood or his consciousness of his own breath coming and going here among the breathing trees, or of the minute movement of leaves and of bark against bark, or a scurrying he was aware of, which must be bush mice or other unseen creatures, off in the brush. He heard Garrety striding back through the trees. But could scarcely be bothered to disguise the feeling of pleasurable, almost joyful but indifferent power he felt in belonging so completely to the morning and to his own skin.