Owen Marshall Selected Stories

by Vincent O'Sullivan

  Supplication for Position

  The Staff Clerk

  Department of Standard Punitive Levies and Assessable Arrears

  Private Bag

  Wellington 1.

  Dear Staff Clerk,

  Supplication For Position 735/A86 As Advertised In Metropolitan

  Newspapers

  I have decided, Staff Clerk, to take a fresh approach in regard to this position and in respect of our relationship. For this reason I have ignored form PSI7a, which has failed me in the past, and which is difficult to obtain here in any case. I have discarded also the professional detachment and predictability of those former applications to the tribe of Staff Clerk who are Janus at the portal of the Civil Service. I’m weary of shaping myself for the minds of others, attempting to be tailormade for a position as I must imagine it; to be tested by you, Staff Clerk, as a child’s block is tested in the shaped vacancies, to see if I pass through to the inside. Fain would I be seen as individual, capable of growth. There is an element of ploy in this novelty, I must confess, but message there as well.

  From my hut, Staff Clerk, overlooking the Te Tarehi lagoon, I can hear the ocean in lazy play behind the bar, and on the other hand see thick bush of wonderfully contrasted greens along the estuary, and crowded back inland. What do you see I wonder, on your left hand and your right, within your typical New Zealand. There is a sort of Spanish moss hangs from the trees here, Staff Clerk, along the river banks. I’ve not seen it elsewhere. And sometimes at first light the condensation drips from filigrees and branches through the river mist which smokes from the smooth water, and beards up to match the drooping moss.

  You see that I have a sincere intention to present myself to you candidly. Let us be truthful, you and I. I am a conventional age for an applicant, 35, and received an education in Auckland, city of my birth. I was in the academic stream in Sledgeham High. In my U. E. year I was not accredited because of a personality clash with the Headmaster (since retired), but in the external exams I achieved marks of 63 in Chemistry and 74 in History. I failed U. E. that year however, because I thought the English exam was in the afternoon, but it was in the morning. Even now, Staff Clerk, the thought of it brings the copper taste of terror to my throat. My conversion to Islam has given me a bulwark against such dependence on worldly things ever again. I completed my U. E. in a second sixth form year at Sledgeham, during which I was canteen monitor and considered unlucky not to be a prefect (the Headmaster had not then yet retired).

  As I write this, rain has begun here at Te Tarehi, Staff Clerk. The sky and estuary are fused by the flux of it, the noise drowns the play of the sea. The rain cloud is moving round me from the hills. I am a sort of Crowhurst, drifting here, able to create my own record of the world, for there’s no other human observer. The leak by the fireplace has begun again, into the pan I’ve positioned there. This is a prodigal part of the world, Staff Clerk.

  I attended the University of Auckland for two years, and passed Maths and Classics. In addition I took an active part in student affairs, being nominated for the position of student sexual harassment officer, and narrowly missing out at the Vote because of feminist lobbying. Allah meant men to excel: good women are obedient said the Prophet. In 1977 I decided to interrupt university studies on the understanding that I had the inside running for the post of assistant meteorological officer on the New Zealand Antarctic Wintering Over Party of 1978. Unfortunately my landlord’s efforts on my behalf were undermined by political favouritism, and despite passing a three week voluntary snow survival course at Mount Cook, I wasn’t offered the post. I had also strengthened my professional background by correspondence courses in meteorological methodology. But what do such disappointments matter in the end, Staff Clerk. Our poet Ma’arri said this world resembles a corpse, and we around it dogs that bark.

  Today, Staff Clerk, I shall have whitebait for both meals: whitebait fried in egg and dashed with vinegar. Whitebait heaped up on my enamel plate in defiance of conventional poverty. And for one of these meals I’ll have a second course as well, my steam pudding recipe with golden syrup sauce. The Prophet taught that occasional physical indulgence is the means to rid ourselves of bitterness.

  After meteorology was closed to me, I spent several years in pest eradication. Do you know the Basin at all, Staff Clerk? It is country difficult to forget. It was my living to kill a great many creatures of the Basin. Rabbits, hares, wallabies and the rest of them, but do you know of the vast flocks of Canada Goose in such places, Staff Clerk? And how they’re thinned as flappers, or when moulting. Though it should not, the scale of death has always increased its impact. A magnificent and wily bird, the Canada Goose, who has succeeded as a pioneer here. I began reading poetry in the Basin, Irish mainly, and Australian. Down from the tussock ridge-line, out of the direct wind, I would have my lunch beside the issue Yamaha, and feed on words.

  I left the Basin to become co-founder of Aorangi Fitch Breeders Ltd. My partner in this venture was Wally Volper, with whom I had much metaphysical discussion. Wally was temperamentally drawn to existentialist thinking. Our philosophical stock increased, but unfortunately the fitch breeding business received a fatal check when lightning struck our shed in October ’83 and destroyed nearly 100 on-heat fitch females. Yet all is as Allah wills it, and I had become gradually aware of a fundamental incongruity between my killing occupations and my beliefs. Killing needs to be better paid than I found it, and in more than cash.

  Here at Te Tarehi, Staff Clerk, the air is always cooler after rain, and you can hear the water long afterwards still dripping, trickling, running in the bush; evened out so that the last of one day’s rain is joined by the first of the next. There are peat and moss bogs here, Staff Clerk, as you would read of in Old Ireland, but no stone fences and no bombs. The fern fronds are brown arms as if from chimpanzees, and there are fantails who pine to be admired like chorus girls stumbled on in exile. Also a plague of evening sandflies to prevent a paradise. At night the moon is a bright bone on the water of the lagoon, and the sea shovels the stones endlessly on the other side of the bar: perpetual navy navvy. In those nights are ancient, indistinct New Zealand shapes and sounds along the estuary.

  I joined the Islamic commune at Colenso in 1984, after a spell on the oyster boats from Bluff. Comparative religion fascinates us, Staff Clerk, don’t you think, once we begin the reflective phase of our lives. We define ourselves by our beliefs, and only the most wise and most stupid never change. I was in charge of hydroponic vegetable growing at the commune, and had a regular correspondence with the DSIR on the subject. I had success with succulents, but was never able to reach the target of self-sufficiency. That wasn’t the reason that I left however. Ideological considerations have always been my priority. I was opposed to the move away from collectivism towards an insidious form of charismatic leadership which was undermining the commune. No one would listen to me. I have remained a Moslem, but grown suspicious of institutional links. More and more, Staff Clerk, it is the mystical tradition of Sufism which appeals to me. Of the five pillars of Islam only the pilgrimage has not been followed by me, but I have time to achieve it.

  So I am here at Te Tarehi beside the lagoon: antipodean Walden’s Pond for scrutiny both outward and internal. A white heron was in the estuary last week, Staff Clerk, it stood in Japanese simplicity against the dark background of the trees. There are still wild cattle from generations back, small and shaggy. I’ve seen them burst from the flats into the bush when they’re disturbed.

  You won’t dismiss the general nature of this supplication I hope, Staff Clerk. I want to present a curriculum vitae of attitude as well as mere event you see. In my new approach perhaps the hem of bureaucracy can be lifted to let in the Indian summer of Te Tarehi: wasps curled in ecstasy upon the fallen fruits, and recollection of sky broken into blue and golden darts by the partial masking of the leaves above. Don’t assume either, that it requires no courage to live calmly and alone and listen to your life passing
.

  Call for me, Staff Clerk, and I will shave my face and hood my eyes, will place a tie around my neck, will break the days and nights to hours again, will learn whatever sub-paras and subsections apply in each case, will be punctilious as well as punctual in all the Department may require. I will combine with you to serve the quaestor of Standard Punitive Levies and Arrears, keeping all criticism to professional confines.

  The estuary is mottled, Staff Clerk, with the shadows of the trees, but my fresh whitebait on the bench are still transparent as if of ice. I feel a sense of incipient competence in the tasks you may assign.

  Staff Clerk, I wait for your reply.

  Bruce Vancelea

  (now Harun)

  The Wold Jar Hut

  Te Tarehi Lagoon

  Summer of ’86

  A View of Our Country

  Simon Palliser had spoken to the Blenheim Rotary Club on his experiences as a noted traveller, and I agreed to drive him down to Christchurch so he could see something of the country on the way before flying out to Paris via Singapore. I was going on business anyway, and the President thought that I could do our scenery justice, so Palliser would have an impression of the place to take with him.

  As we crossed the high bridge close to Seddon, Simon Palliser looked down to the blue, wild flowers and the pooled water. He asked me if I’d ever been to the Ivory Coast. ‘I flew in to Abidjan,’ he said. ‘Some fifteen years or so I suppose after they got their independence from the French. The heat was killing, and after a few days I decided to move into the hinterland. I hired a car and drove to Yamoussoukro where the President had his palace. I’m telling you this because crossing that river reminded me of the crocodiles of Yamoussoukro. I drove 240 kilometres to get there, through Ouossou and Tomumodi, along a road more and more enclosed by jungle and the red soil the jungle fed on. But at Yamoussoukro itself the jungle had been cleared and a modern city built alongside the President’s family village. Great plantations had been laid out too, of mangoes, pineapples and avocados. Down one side of the President’s palace an artificial lake had been created and stocked with turtles, catfish and crocodiles. There had been no crocodiles in that district before, I was told.

  ‘The crocodiles were fed late in the afternoon, and the hotel hired a driver from the Baoule tribe to take me to view them. The driver met me on the broad boulevard in front of the foyer entrance. He was a cheerful and talkative man with fair English. He began to tell me about his country as we walked to the carpark.

  It was a little cooler than the coast, and a mist gathered in the city of Yamoussoukro; at once such a modern place, yet the site of chiefly power for hundreds of years.

  ‘There was a causeway across the lake to the palace gates lined with coconut palms and iron railings, and at the gate the Presidential Guard stood sentry. The crocodiles waited with their mouths agape, on a shelf of sand between the embankment and the lake, and the feeder came in a pick-up truck and took buckets of meat to feed them. He called lovingly in French as he threw pieces down to the crocodiles who seemed short-sighted and inefficient eaters. It began to rain heavily, and colours came up on the backs of the crocodiles, and more crocodiles and a few turtles came out of the lake. The mist crept closer and the rain dimpled the surface of the lake. The feeder then took a chicken from his truck, and swung it back and forth in the rain above the railings, all the time appealing in French to the crocodiles. Then he tossed the chicken into the air.

  ‘The chicken gained courage from being free in the air and rain. It flapped stoutly and landed over the heads of the crocodiles and in the lake. As it landed a turtle surfaced, as if it had duplicated the flight beneath the water, and the chicken was seized. It was an auspicious thing to happen. The feeder was alarmed and angry; my Baoule driver was glum. The feeder climbed the fence and ran towards the water across the sand to frighten the turtle. Instead one of the largest crocodiles jumped forward like an ungainly rabbit and had the keeper’s leg in its mouth. There were perhaps twenty or thirty people watching, and the feeling of all seemed not one of horror, or even active concern, but a deep hopelessness. The crocodile backed into the lake, giving several gulping changes of grip which drew the feeder more firmly to him. The feeder called out once in French, then was silent, and his long robe trailed behind him. One of the guards fired into the air, and the keeper’s wide eyes were fixed on us, his audience, even as he disappeared.

  ‘The rain dimpled the lake surface just the same; turtle and chicken, crocodile and man were gone, leaving us powerless in the wet. “Quickly come away with me now,” my driver said. I was thinking that there had been no crocodiles at all at Yamoussoukro until the lake had been dug for the President’s palace.’

  It was a dry year in Marlborough. When we stopped a little past Ward for a thermos of tea, the hills were very brown and the heat confused their outlines. Palliser said it reminded him of Spain. ‘Emotionally, Spain was a turning point for me,’ he said. ‘A woman I was very much in love with, left me to take up a United Nations job in the Mato Grosso, and I drifted south into Andalusia and was very drunk, for several weeks. You know Andalusia I suppose? Of the several weeks I can remember nothing, a blank in my life, then I sobered up in the little town of Baeza in the hills above the Guadalquivir. I can feel the very evening, the air heavy with jasmine and orange blossom, the soil red as a heart. There were prickly pears at the roadside and within some of them the torreo bird had picked out small nests, and their heads watched at the entrances as I passed. My friend took me to the café to hear the gypsies sing the cante jondo, and all through it the more stolid locals sat at the back tables and continued with their dominoes. I didn’t drink, and watched the gypsies under the influence of wine move from the plaintive cante jondo to a wild flamenco, all castanets and exclamation. In the midst of it a farmer brought in a lynx he had killed in his fields, and hung it from a beam by the door for his friends to admire, or to attract a buyer for the skin perhaps.

  ‘As the gypsies danced and sang, as the domino players became steadily more absorbed in their own purpose, I sat with the scent of jasmine and orange blossom through the café door, and the Persian gleam of fur upon the lynx. It turned slowly on the cord, first one way then the other, as if its tufted ears still sought some magnetic north of freedom.’

  The seaward Kaikouras crowd the main road to the ocean’s edge south of the Clarence river and rise abruptly to over 3,000 metres. Simon Palliser had a love of mountains. ‘Of course Switzerland has been something of a second home to me,’ he said. ‘Several times between expeditions I rested at Brunnen on the shores of Lake Luzern. Do you know it? A town of solid, unpretentious houses on a flat strip of land, while beyond it the steep, glaciated slopes descend into the lake like the sides of a fiord. I made a base at the guest-house of the Gotthardt’s usually, and from my upstairs room I had a view of the small steamer berths, and the many trees of that part of the town. I remember on one of their election days taking the rack and pinion railway from Brunnen to Axenstein, a high resort with magnificent views across the lake. Because of the elections and the season there were few people travelling, and in my compartment only one other person; a Swedish woman, beautifully dressed, who spoke excellent German. She told me in a gentle, quite unselfconscious way that she had been travelling to overcome her grief at the recent death of her husband, and that her main difficulty was coping with the loss of sexual satisfaction brought about by the abrupt end of her marriage. She had found no opportunity for solace not repugnant to her she said, until seeing me who bore a singular resemblance to her husband.

  ‘It was all so natural, so kind, so tinged with inevitability. We stood close in the corner of the rack and pinion carriage, with her lovely skirt folded up. Her tears were wet on my cheeks, perhaps I cried myself. She clasped her hands at the small of my back and pulled strongly. Past the blonde hair fastened back from her smooth face, the lake seemed quite calm from such a height and pine forests rose up to the snow line on the mountains ab
ove the water. She murmured her husband’s name through her tears, I recall. Have you travelled to Sweden? Sven is a common Christian name there.’

  As we drove down the coast close to Kaikoura, Palliser thought he saw a seal on the rocky shore. He was interested because of the heavy swell also, and the scene reminded him of British Columbia. ‘I had a temporary job in conservation there,’ he said. ‘I was camped in the magnificently unspoiled Pacific Rim National Park on Vancouver Island. My main task was checking on the sea lions which lived in groups on rocky islets off the coast. On the one day in three or four the swell allowed, I would circle the outcrops in the small boat provided, count the sea lions and record the colour of any tags recognised through the binoculars. Most days I couldn’t go out, and I would walk through the stands of Sitka spruce which fringed the beaches, or I would push into the rain forest further inland. The garter snakes would sidle under salmonberry bushes as I approached, and in the cathedral quiet of the rainforest could be heard just the organ music echo of the great Pacific rollers breaking on the first American coast to obstruct them.

  ‘It was cool rain forest, without many birds, and often difficult to walk through because of the swampy places and fallen trees. Ferns and mosses thrived on the decay, as did puff balls, stallion heads and frilled fungi which added the only vivid colours: visceral gleams of red, yellow and spotted black orange, powdered horns like those of a myriad snails sprouting electric blue from the cancerous side of a log.

  ‘After storms I would walk the grey sand of the Pacific beach, see the heaped driftwood, whole trees sometimes, and piles of rotting seaweed which were alive with jumpers. Some of the driftwood still had soil and stones in its roots and gum on its branches, other pieces had been fully digested by the sea and were worn and pale like old soap. On one morning I was amazed to see the vast horns of a caribou caught in the cleft of a tree close to the water line. The tips of the tines were four metres apart, and the antlers would make an arch that two men could march through without stooping. I couldn’t dislodge it from the driftwood, and overnight everything was carried away again by the tide and the storm. So are opportunities lost and nothing can be done. I’ve often thought that the only explanation of such size is that the horns and skull that held them must have been a prehistoric find, carried down to the sea at last from Alaska or the Yukon where some great bull died ten thousand years ago.’