Eucalyptus

by Murray Bail

  ‘I left some toast on the table for him, I hope it goes cold.’

  Always in the old dressing-gown, isn’t she? You’d think she’d look at herself in the mirror.’

  Each waited impatiently for the other’s death; in the meantime they each did their best to win over the dog, a slow-moving kelpie, patting and feeding it the choicest scraps from their plates, all the time talking to and through it. As the kelpie grew even more slow-moving they became afraid of how they would address each other if it died.

  The woman was the first to go. Busy with the crossword the husband had not noticed anything different. She was discovered on the bedroom floor around lunchtime; the man heard the dog making a faint noise.

  From that day on the kelpie stayed close to the man.

  The house felt more than half-empty.

  Every Tuesday and Friday he went to her grave, the slow-moving dog following, and complained to her about the dog, while it lay at his feet: what the dog did; what it didn’t do; the mess it made in the laundry; its fleas; how it didn’t respond to his whistle any more.

  And then after a few months, in what could only be described as the worst possible result, the man woke in the morning to find the acquiescent dog too had died.

  Agreed, it was an unhappy story. Ellen wanted to tell him and at the same time ask if he liked dogs. She had suddenly many questions; but he had moved to another tree, seemingly at random, a Grey Gum (E. punctata), which is called Leather Jacket on account of its bark, and eased into virtually an identical story—except for one crucial difference.

  As follows: a shoemaker in Leichhardt (I should tell you it’s a suburb in Sydney of telegraph poles and telegraph wires and red telephones) every evening goes to the grave of his wife, often forgetting to take off his leather apron, and tells her the news of the day, and asks her advice, ‘Mrs Cudlipp’s heels have gone again, those green shoes. She should take off weight. I forgot to water the flowers. We’re running out of laces again. You know the Farini girl, the one whose boyfriend picks her up on the motorbike? He came a cropper, and tore his leather jacket. “I only do shoes,” I told her. I took a look, I can patch it up. What do I charge? The usual? The postman, Reg, he’s back again. Of course his tips keep falling off. I’ve told him a thousand times, rubber, switch to rubber, as you always said. But he’s the old school. He likes his cup of tea! Two women are going to the same wedding, you know them. My memory’s going. Both high heels, reinforcement of the straps. The one with the loud voice, you said her mother was deaf. Man came in for change for a parking meter. Did I tell you the lease is up in November? I did, yes. We’ll have to nut that one out, I’ve got a few thoughts. They say it’s going to rain tomorrow.’

  He also wanted to know what to do with all her shoes, sensible shoes, with affectionate wrinkles, which remained in rows at the bottom of their wardrobe.

  This story which had rolled off his tongue was supposed to be an antidote to the one about the stagnation of a marriage, the bitter canine catastrophe, as he put it; but Ellen found it sad, far sadder, almost too sad to contemplate. As she pondered the strengths and weaknesses of a long companionship, the trees around her went out of focus; it was all verging on a dream. The subject of course was as vast and as varied as a forest, the different aspects coming in from different angles in different shades.

  Glancing, she wondered how he’d look in a leather jacket.

  To cheer her up, he spotted a small tree from Queensland, E. beaniana, and in a thoughtful tone told her that not long ago he’d overheard an oldish woman on a Manly ferry comment to a woman who may have been her daughter, ‘That’s a terrible name! It’s going to be a millstone around her neck.’

  He turned to Ellen, ‘Ah-ha, she smiles.’

  Speaking of millstones, what about the technical sales manager of an industrial ceramics firm, Sydney again, who for some reason always ended up losing authority in the workplace?

  He had the name Been—Peter Been.

  Obviously whenever a person in a jovial tone enquired, ‘Been all right?’ it seemed to be casting aspersions on this man, wherever he happened to be. Even the habit of his innocent salesmen to begin a message ‘has been today’ pointed a finger at his declining abilities. In the rapidly changing, low-margin world of industrial ceramics the slightest suggestion of someone being a ‘has-been’ is… unfortunately it’s the kiss of death.

  Ellen was still pondering the power of companionship, the story of the poor cobbler.

  Really, puns are invariably a nuisance—and of no consequence. They’re seen as a way to shift to one side of the true essence of things, an evasion which doesn’t get anyone anywhere. At least they have made very little headway in the traditional method of naming trees, and that includes the eucalypts.

  ‘Do you know my name?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course. But don’t ask me now.’

  They had stopped before another eucalypt, a gaudy one, miraculously transplanted from Melville Island, its maroon flowers hovering on a green-brown sea, a shawl from Kashmir without the fancy borders. And as Ellen saw him thinking on his feet she leaned against the trunk, and waited.

  ‘From now on, I won’t mention a single pun. Nup,’ he put his hand on his heart, ‘nothing artificial.’

  As they went from tree to tree and he told other stories, Ellen allowed them slowly to circle and enter her. Over time his voice vibrated along with the familiar heat, through the trees. She liked the sound of his voice. In the heat of the day she felt like closing her eyes. Instead she surveyed him, as she listened. She didn’t even know his name. What if someone asked?

  By the time Ellen had to return to the house this man had told her another six or seven—she didn’t count them—stories.

  • 20 •

  Desertorum

  YES YES yes yes: in Zurich, in Dublin, in a motor mechanic’s garage in Paris many a story begins and ends with this most pleasing of words, still more pleasing to the ear, if not to the mind’s eye, than eucalyptus. And, yes, every man in town, women also, mothers first and foremost, had been coming out with ‘yes’ to Holland before he had opened his mouth—if not the actual word it was in their expressions—anything to keep on the good side of the canny possessor of all those rolling acres, prime river-frontage going to waste, and his beautiful daughter. She certainly was beautiful; and with each day she was growing more beautiful, a speckled pigeon-egg that far exceeded anything in the district. The more travelled men, such as those who’d been to the war, as well as almost every suitor, could not recall a more beautiful woman, not in the nearest large town, or over the mountains, in Sydney. The new manager of the corrugated-iron bank let it be known he had not seen a finer beauty in the entire city of London, where he’d spent three weeks after the war.

  And the landscape, it too had a speckled beauty which seeped in geologically from all directions, and remained.

  Holland was satisfied with its steady appearance—its slow rise and fall, the wear and tear which showed as mere scratching of the surface. The trees, the trees. In all it had taken many years for Holland to accept the pale strength of the land. It had crept into his body, as it were, and settled, always there. He would forget all about it then—a gift, a natural advantage, which is to be envied.

  Whereas Ellen’s thoughts returned to Sydney, often to the school and her earnest friends, or to a nondescript street corner: manufactured foundations. There was always a seawall and the heavy slop and glitter of the harbour, and the city streets, its shops and crowds of people heading in different directions. Often while standing in a paddock Ellen pictured herself somewhere else; and how could that ever happen? It was given form in her journal, and by the direction of her thoughts as they drifted from the tower and in the hot dirt among the trees, or when she herself drifted in the warm current of the river—a form of double-drift. Without harshness Ellen could separate herself from the property of trees and her father she loved.

  Superimposed on landscape is art. And what a
hectic, apparently essential endeavour it is!

  Art is imperfect, unlike nature which is casually ‘perfect’. To try to repeat or even convey by hand some corner of nature is forever doomed. And yet the strange power of art lies in our recognition of this attempt.

  The artist, yes, humanises the wonder of nature by doing a faulty version of it; and so nature—landscape, the figure—is brought closer to us, putting it faintly within our grasp. See the human versions of waterlilies, the mountain outside Aix, the yellow flat earth of the Wimmera; sunflowers, bathers too, not to mention the oak tree with dog running in from the right, which presumably represents all trees on earth. The brush-marks, the insects stuck in the paint, thumb prints, the signature and so on are signs of human effort. When these are not there, as in photography, the result remains parallel to nature, opportunistic.

  Otherwise, a given landscape such as Holland’s continues to cry out for conversion into human terms.

  Both Holland and Mr Cave had little time for mirrors. If it were not for shaving they probably would not have one in the house, or anywhere else for that matter. For the same reason—if there’s any poetic logic in the world—they were uncomfortable with the act of giving or receiving.

  On the morning of the ninth day Mr Cave got around these difficult feelings by sliding a brown paper bag across the table, explanations thereby unnecessary. Holland acknowledged the gesture by over-ignoring it, taking his time to finish his cup of tea. Ellen almost felt sorry for them. Eventually, Holland got around to tilting the bag: out slid the definitive edition of a common subject, Dust by S. Cyril Blacktin (Chapman & Hall, 1934).

  ‘It’s my birthday,’ Mr Cave explained. ‘I’m feeling generous.’

  ‘Happy birthday,’ said Holland. He turned a few pages. ‘Where are the pictures?’

  ‘Will you read it?’ his daughter asked.

  ‘Who knows?’

  He’d add it to his shelf of anthographies and field guides, the stacks of Illustrated London News and Walkabout. There was a dog-eared copy of Kaleski’s classic, Australian Barkers and Biters, and ledgers with suede spines he’d never opened.

  Instead of putting everybody in a good mood the unexpected gift subdued them, Ellen too. It reminded them all that the contest was coming to an end.

  Mr Cave saw it in different colours, which meant going over old ground.

  ‘Shallow roots,’ Ellen heard him saying. ‘They haven’t really taken in this place. And the soil, there’s thinness in the soil. I’d say we haven’t been here long enough, we don’t go in deep. I often think about it. In my family there’s failure. You know the type of thing: drunks, no-hopers among the men, a lot of that. My ancestors arrived, yes, and we’ve continued and grown, but that’s about it. Nothing more than that…’

  ‘I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it, if I were you,’ said Holland.

  As soon as they were out of sight Ellen decided to ‘lose herself, if that was ever possible, not in the rectilinear formations along the river, but among the clusters of dishevelled mallees below the homestead, past the windbreak. On pleasant whim she wore the pale red shoes with high-ish heels she’d bought in Sydney. These were designed for traversing short distances of carpet, little more. Ellen had worn them only in her bedroom. Now on the cracked earth between the trees Ellen skirted a vast ant nest, and lurching a little enjoyed holding her elbows out in an exaggerated manner as the tapering heels kept spearing into the clutter of barks. The impracticality of the little shoes actually pleased her: it drew her own thoughts down to her ankles, from where they somehow represented her feelings in general—of being both free and spectacularly vulnerable.

  She was still allowing her body to sway and angle, because she could imagine herself, when she saw him.

  ‘You’ve been watching,’ she protested.

  Taking off the shoes she put them under her arm.

  ‘Haven’t you?’

  ‘Put them on again,’ he said. He was frowning at the shoes.

  But she would be exposed in front of him; and he would reach out to steady her, with his eyes at least. She wondered why he was there. He was nothing like a suitor, not really. Wherever she went he appeared, near a tree.

  He must have been watching her.

  He shook his head. ‘Not necessarily,’ he said.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. He was pale.

  Any one of the suitors first vetted by her father would have by then blurted out with a tight face the name of the tree he now squatted under, a Hooked Mallee (E. desertorum).

  He didn’t say anything for a while.

  ‘I’ve a suggestion.’ He smoothed a space at arm’s length. ‘Take the weight off your feet.’

  Looking down, Ellen could see a portion of his neck.

  ‘But I don’t mind if you keep standing. What I can tell you is this…it’s a bare statement I once heard. At least put your shoes down, or give them to me! In Lebanon, on the fringe of the desert is a place called Valley-of-Saints. Here, it is said, lived three holy men who practised miracles.

  ‘Ah, she’s sitting down. That’s good.

  ‘One holy man could cure things like rheumatism; one, they claim, could raise a dead person to life; and the third one, the one we are concerned with here, had given children many times to barren wives. He had more visits than the other two put together.

  ‘Deserts,’ he went on, as if he’d spent a lot of time wandering across them, ‘are places of unearthly cleanliness. They say it produces clarity in a person.’

  If he had wandered in faraway places and was now here, Ellen believed she would like him more. The way he behaved, what he said, and even his appearance interested her; and yet she was uncertain. As always he was both near and far. He assumed she would be interested in his stories. Several times as she glanced at him she caught him looking away.

  He continued the story. ‘A woman made the long journey across the desert to visit the holy man. More than anything else she wanted a child, but she had been unable to have a child. She was poor. To save leather she walked barefoot, carrying her shoes. And on her return, within a year, she had a son. But then as she made the long journey barefoot back to the holy man, carrying her baby for him to baptise, the child died. In the desert she became aware of its limbs growing cold in her arms. That was in Lebanon.’

  In the silence Ellen was assaulted with the desert panorama, the single shawled figure reduced to shuffling, and questions going begging. She turned to him. And there he was. Leaning back with both elbows on the ground and knees raised, gazing across at another tree.

  ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘It’s a desert story I think there are many like it. It must be an old story.’

  Before she could ask, ‘Why tell it to me?’ he’d narrowed his eyes like Major Lawrence in the film. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, correct me if I’m wrong…isn’t that what’s called a Boranup Mallee?’

  And while Ellen still saw the poor woman with the empty arms the stranger (who was no longer a complete stranger), after a pause for thought, took from the slender tree with the pinkish grey trunk another story, in another desert. On the dirt road south of Darwin, he said, there is a motel café with Shell petrol pumps. It was hot, and I can still see the strange tension between the Latvian who ran the place, and the plump woman who served meals, including breakfast, for the passing travellers. She wore a scarf knotted at the top of her head. He had small eyes, a smooth forehead, and short hair. First thing in the morning the Latvian opened a bottle of beer, and drank during the day. Outside was a huge mountain of bottles. I noticed busloads of tourists lining up to photograph it. There were chooks and some goats on long chains. There was also a White Russian, who lived in a caravan out the back fitted with an air-conditioner.

  He looked at Ellen and appeared to nod significantly.

  The White Russian was actually the husband of the woman, but had been displaced by the Latvian, a younger man, who’d allowed the husband to stay in the caravan, wh
ere I was told he spent his spare time painting snow scenes on emu eggs. Did I say she was plump, good-natured, untidy? The White Russian was willing to work for nothing in the garage, just to be near his wife. He was careful with the Latvian only to protect her, still his wife. Some mornings she appeared with her face swollen and bruised. I can tell you the husband’s name: Turczaninov.

  This small settlement of two men and a woman was in the middle of nowhere and surrounded in all directions by red earth. Their water came from a bore, sunk a hundred years ago, lined with ironbark. One morning in February the Latvian complained of a splitting headache. By evening he had some sort of fever. The next day he could no longer speak. He was thrashing about on his bed. He sweated buckets. He was muttering words not even the woman, another Latvian, knew.

  The woman no longer served customers food as she tried putting ice on the sick man’s forehead, and the White Russian remained in his caravan, not bothering to serve petrol, or replace the broken windscreens on the cars of passing travellers. On the third day the man went very quiet. The woman left his bed and hammered on the door of the caravan. After a while the White Russian came out and followed his wife into what had once been their bedroom. Telling her not to worry he lifted the man from his sick bed and with a set expression that could only have come from the steppes carried him out to the bore.

  Gently he placed him in the metal bucket, and made him secure with ropes. Then he lowered the sick man far down, to the end of the line, drenching him in the cold water. Three times he did it.

  The sick man opened his eyes, and as he slowly came up he passed through his life, the evenly spaced horizontal slabs of ironbark as regular as the months and years. He saw his parents seated at the metal table under a tree in Riga; snow and lights at night; going back through paths with other children to see the dead soldier in the forest for over a year as it decomposed, without ever telling anyone; he passed his sister’s mouth who spoke slowly otherwise she’d get ‘dizzy’; thin schoolteacher blind in one eye; aunt’s teeth and pale swaying breasts; ‘Shut up!’; the rusted hinge on the front gate; after the three broken ribs he noticed more wax in one ear; wanted to grasp the passing geometry of a fern’s leaf; pissed himself; took huge bite out of an apple and another; smooth-skinned young woman turned into the lines of his mother; sudden complete disappearance of their father; he passed the nothing between his sister’s legs; the way he looked up to older men; blackheads on that policeman’s nose; mother again, loose dress; during war, afternoons suddenly smelt like a butcher’s shop; a woman’s contempt; dirty ankles of the girl; uniforms and general overall dullness; streets of mud; passing huge gaps in his life, huge gaps; ferns, wet earth, large black birds; I’ve got to laugh; roaring water; she’s opening her thighs; the look on Turczaninov’s face the day he jailed Turczaninov for twenty years and how the very same day he went and helped himself to the man’s wife; the idea in silhouette of New York; he can’t get close enough, he could never get close enough; took the rifle the first week in Australia and shot the eagle—hit the ground with a thump; lack of any idea in his head but he didn’t mind; thirsty; two trees against a sky; a given life consists of the right amount of time, he saw; a glass filling to the top with water; it passes slowly; white light. These were the sorts of things he would have seen. The point was he reached the surface in the desert south of Darwin, the White Russian Turczaninov lifted him gently under the dripping shoulders, and he was dead.