The Water Diviner

by Andrew Anastasios

  Connor pauses and lets the feelers settle, then veers in an arc to his right. His thick-tailed sheepdog shadows him cautiously; he has long since learned to keep a reasonable distance. Any sudden change in Connor’s direction could earn him a kick in the ribs. Their boot and paw prints snake through the red soil behind them like plaits, tracing this strange ritual right across the paddock.

  The man points to a lonely cluster of Mallee trees, bloated at the base with thirst like dead sheep in a drought. He talks to his dog as he would to a smart child.

  ‘It’s here somewhere. Those buggers don’t survive on air alone.’

  The dog sits patiently in the dust as the sun scales higher above the horizon, the first sting of its rays burning the dawn chill from the air. Connor wipes a bead of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. You don’t need any special gifts to know today is going to be a scorcher.

  ‘Let’s get this over and done with, mate.’

  Connor studies the wires as they slowly rotate, swinging one way and then the other. They settle, pointing along parallel paths to an outcrop of rocks.

  ‘See, soil’s different over there. Rocks close to the surface.’ He heads in the direction the wires indicate, adjusting his path as they sway to and fro. Now he takes smaller steps, barely shuffling, until the wires swivelling in the brass tubes converge and settle in a cross. Funny, he thinks to himself, how a cross can mean treasure, salvation or death – it just depends.

  Connor marks the spot with his heel, digging into the earth four times – one for each point of the compass.

  ‘Right there, boy. Stay.’

  The dog settles down on his haunches. He’s in for a wait.

  Connor begins the punishing walk back to his horse and cart, squinting his blue eyes against the caustic morning light. There is nothing easy about this land. As the ground warms, a raucous insect orchestra strikes up; Connor strides out in time to its beat as the piercing trills cut through the air.

  The mare stands patiently in the shade of a ghost gum, stamping her hooves and flicking her ears to ward off the black tide of flies that rises and falls around her. She knows the routine; it’s been a long time since Connor last had to tie her to a hitching rail. She’s not one to wander off. Wander where, anyway?

  Dry as a temperance meeting, Connor sips from a canteen, jumps onto the seat and takes up the reins.

  ‘Time to earn your keep, you old nag.’ He pats her rump affectionately and flicks the reins. As the horse begins to move Connor turns her, swivelling the cart around to face the distant spot where the dog stands guard.

  The mare picks up pace, casting a red wake of dust into the clear morning air. Connor enjoys the speed, the cool rush of wind against his face. He looks back – the airborne dust, thick as smoke, obscures their path. The cart clatters and jolts as the contents shift – gnarled branches tied in bundles, heavy ropes, a block and tackle, a square canvas bucket, shovels and a pick.

  The dog sees them approaching, shifts nervously. It wouldn’t be the first time he ended up under one of the mare’s hooves.

  ‘Steady, girl.’ Connor draws the reins up, bringing the cart to a halt. He jumps down and bends to scratch the dog roughly behind the ears.

  ‘Good boy. No one’ll get past you, will they?’

  Connor unloads the cart, carefully placing his equipment in neat piles, stalling. He straddles the marker in the dust and lifts the pickaxe above his head.

  ‘Let’s hope it’s not too deep this time, eh?’

  The dog shifts quickly to the side. Connor brings the iron crashing down into the unyielding ground. The impact jolts him, reverberates up his arms, making his teeth clack together.

  Connor lifts the pick again, smashes it down. And again. Begrudgingly the brick-hard earth begins to give; small red clumps shift aside as he drives the pick deeper. Enough loose soil now for the shovel. Connor plunges the spade into the dirt, ropey muscles along his arms and back tensing as he clears the first bucket of what he knows will be many more.

  He peers down into the bottom of the shallow hole, anticipating the telltale darkening of the soil, the gradual seep of water into the dust, which he knows will tell him when he’s close.

  Connor glances at the dog, who sits transfixed as always by his master’s every move.

  ‘A man can hope, can’t he?’

  The sun lifts higher above the endless horizon. Connor feels the rising heat against his skin and the first trail of perspiration running between his shoulder blades, down his back and under his belt.

  He bends and lifts the pick again.

  ‘Best make yourself comfortable. It’s going to be a fight today, mate.’

  For Connor the day disappears like a mirage through eyes that sting with salty sweat. Down the hole, he reckons the hours in buckets of dirt, blisters and feet below the surface. One, two, three . . . Each time he emerges from the dark, damp well, blinking like a boobook owl, he tracks the shimmering sun across the sky, sees the shadows lengthening. Fourteen, fifteen . . . Gone is the midday cacophony of parrots and cockatoos as they swoop and soar across the plains. As dusk approaches, Connor is serenaded by the buzz of crickets and the mocking call of a kookaburra perched on a gnarled tree nearby. Night is on the counterattack.

  The dog peers down at his master, at work deep beneath the surface now in a neatly excavated hole. The walls of the well are reinforced with a scaffolding of Mallee-scrub branches, interlocked and methodically lashed with rope to hold back the brittle, crumbling earth.

  Aching and spent, Connor bends, his large frame restricted by the confines of the well. He winces as he lifts the canvas bucket full of muddy red soil, attaching it to the block and tackle. He climbs up the bracing timbers to the surface and lifts the bucket, hoisting the rope hand over hand, calloused palms raw. Connor empties the cool, damp earth onto the hot dust that still holds the warmth of the sun’s rays.

  He pauses, hands on hips, bone tired. Looks down at the dog, now lying on his side, snapping at flies.

  ‘Don’t want to take over for a spell, do you?’

  Connor breathes deeply, clambers back down into the pit. He crouches, feeling the soil between his fingers. It’s wet. No doubt about it. Can’t be far off now. She’s a tease.

  ‘Time to show it who’s boss,’ he mumbles.

  He grabs a long shaft of steel leaning against the wall behind him – almost as long as Connor is tall, and flattened at one end to a chisel-like point. He lifts it above his head and slams it into the mud.

  The earth yields. A vein of red stone cracks, and water belches out like a busted fountain. Connor raises the steel and strikes again, letting out a conqueror’s roar that is lost on a dog, a horse and a barren and empty landscape.

  Distracted for a moment, his mind baked, Connor doesn’t notice how quickly the water is rising. Up to his knees already. It never comes this fast.

  He grabs for his tools, blind hands fumbling beneath the water. He reaches for the ladder, tossing the shovel, bucket and pick up to the surface.

  Not far enough – the pick catches on a protruding branch and tumbles back down the shaft into the swirling red water.

  Could leave it. Should leave it. But how am I going to replace a pick out here in the middle of nowhere?

  Connor curses and scrambles back down the well. He ducks into the water to retrieve the pick.

  As he surfaces again, his eyes stinging with water and silt, Connor stretches, fingers searching for a beam. It doesn’t seem fair that this has happened at the dead end of the day when he is spent. His weary hand grasps a branch and he levers himself upwards. Suddenly the branch shoots clear of the wall, slamming into Connor’s forehead and dazing him. He falls back, grappling desperately for a handhold as the rising water undercuts the scaffolding and the branches tug at him with sirens’ claws.

  The dog yaps madly around the collapsing hole. Connor struggles to keep his head above the surging water. White stars exploding in his eyes from the clout to his
head, he fights the grey fog that threatens to descend on him. He looks up at a perfect circle of sky, fringed by a ring of twisted branches. As the blood runs from his gouged scalp all he sees is a crown of thorns.

  He feels the water cleanse the day’s sweat and dust from his skin. He lets go, a soporific detachment washing over him.

  He is done fighting.

  Surrender.

  He shuts his eyes, accepting the inevitable. And yet. There. The water, rising to the surface, places salvation within reach; the lip of the well is now just above his head.

  Connor’s survival instinct kicks in. Submission, whether to fate, chance or a higher power, has never come naturally to him. Connor brawls with this mean landscape every day. He reaches out and grabs the edge, hauling himself to safety. He collapses on solid ground with a wet whack. The dog licks his bloodied face, whining, and Connor shoves him away.

  ‘Thanks for all your help back there, mate.’

  In the early evening light, Connor stands under a makeshift shower in his long johns. From a corrugated-iron tank perched on a stand, a stream of clear, restorative water pours over him. He peels back his sodden underwear and the sun-warmed water turns red as it sluices the dust from his chest and back. He rubs his hair, wincing as his fingers find the jagged wound on his scalp. He picks the dried blood from his hair, not wanting to alarm Eliza.

  Behind him a windmill, cobbled together from a cartwheel and flattened kero tins, clanks and murmurs as it pumps water from the deep well below.

  Connor looks across the yard towards their unassuming home. He built it with the same hands that now struggle to hold a cake of soap and push it round his underarm. He had paced it out, carted the red brick and iron sheeting from Horsham, dug the postholes, split the shingles and papered the walls. He recalls riding all the way to Adelaide to pick out the wood-fired stove. He laboured by day and slept under the stars by night to build this home – all for the family that he had hoped was to come.

  The home faces north to catch the sun in the depths of winter when chilling winds blow across the plains from the south, and is shielded from the summer sun by a deep verandah.

  How many times had Eliza told the boys about the day their father stood back, hands on hips, and judged his work done? He had dressed in his Sunday best, ridden into town and pledged his troth to Eliza, his childhood sweetheart. When she’d seen what he had built her out here in the middle of nowhere, she’d understood how much this hard, bashful man cared for her, and wept.

  ‘Who . . . Dad?’ the boys laughed.

  Connor glances towards the bay window. Eliza stands silhouetted against the lace curtains, backlit by the flickering light of the kerosene lantern, absently picking at tendrils of hair falling around her temples.

  Connor turns off the showerhead, dries himself, and passes along the concrete path past a row of well-tended yellow and red roses. A tyre swing hangs from an ancient peppercorn tree. A colony of boys’ clothing swings in the evening breeze, pegged neatly on the washing line like fruit bats. Shorts, overalls, shirts and socks – some so small it’s impossible to imagine them fitting a human being.

  Connor tosses his sodden clothes into a copper washtub, grabs a dry outfit off a hook near the flywire door at the back of the house and dresses – slowly and deliberately. He grabs a comb from a chipped enamel mug sitting on the back stoop and runs it through his hair.

  There’s a moment of quiet as the day gives way to night, and the water diviner drops his shoulders and exhales for what feels like the first time today.

  The screen door swings, screeches and slams.

  ‘Sounds like that hinge could do with some oil. I’ll get onto it tomorrow morning.’

  Eliza sits at the table, hunched over and immersed in the job at hand. She tilts her head towards Connor and gives a papery smile. Although she still has the fine complexion and clear green eyes he first fell in love with, the grey streaks in her hair belie her relative youth and signal an advancing frailty. She seems to be disappearing; folding in on herself. The sharp line of her fine nose and dark hollows beneath her jawline become more prominent every day. Where once she had filled her pin-tucked, tightly waisted dresses with womanly curves and soft skin, now she stitches new seams into her clothes to disguise her diminishing frame. When Connor has occasion to embrace her, she feels as insubstantial as an armful of chicken bones.

  The day is not over for her. She works with brush and cloth to polish a line of schoolboys’ boots to a mirror-like shine, her knuckles stained nugget-brown.

  ‘Lizzie. . .? Everything all right?’

  She doesn’t glance up, trying to avoid his gaze. ‘Dinner’s waiting.’

  Connor looks towards the table where a solitary, uninviting meal sits; cold pressed ox tongue, mustard pickles and some slices of bread. Next to the plate sits a small brown paper–wrapped parcel, opened but face down.

  He moves towards the table. ‘Lizzie – what’s this? Who’s it from?’

  Eliza rubs at one small boot and holds it up to the lantern light.

  ‘For goodness’ sake. Arthur’s worn through the toe of his boot again. What on earth does he do to them?’ Her face softens as she looks up at Connor. ‘The boys are all in bed. They’re waiting for you to read to them.’

  ‘I’m bone tired, Lizzie.’

  ‘You mustn’t disappoint them, Joshua. It’s their favourite part of the day. They waited up specially.’

  Connor concedes with a resigned nod and drags his waterlogged body down the hall towards the bedroom door.

  Connor lowers himself carefully onto the end of one of the three single beds. He smiles and takes a small blue leather-bound volume from a bedside table. He opens it and begins to read The Arabian Nights, the boys’ favourite.

  Prince Hussein called to the man and asked him why the carpet he wished to sell was so expensive, saying, ‘It must be made from something quite extraordinary.’

  The Merchant replied, ‘My Prince, your amazement will be all the greater when I tell you that it is enchanted.’

  Connor’s voice, honeyed and sure, drifts through the room and down the hall.

  ‘Whoever sits on this magic carpet and closes his eyes may be transported through the air in an instant to wherever his heart desires to be.’

  Connor closes the book and rests his hand on the hollow place in the mattress where his son should lie.

  Moonlight shines in the window and illuminates the three empty beds, cold and unjumped-on, the white pillows missing sleep-tousled heads, the neatly made starched sheets unrumpled by sweaty slumber.

  He is alone.

  After he composes himself Connor slips out of the bedroom, closes the door and makes the desolate walk back to the kitchen table. Eliza sits, arms crossed, her heart burnished raw like the shoes lined up before her. Connor takes the seat opposite, with the small, brown parcel and years of arrested grief perched between them. His dinner sits, untouched, at the other end of the table.

  Connor has been reading to empty beds now for four years, ever since the first telegram arrived from the army telling them that ‘regrettably’ Henry was missing, presumed dead.

  ‘Read to him,’ Lizzie beseeched. ‘I’ll close my eyes and imagine him back here safely. He’s just lost. Not dead.’

  Connor read to comfort her. It seemed to be the only thing he could do to help. Within a fortnight the second telegram arrived; young Edward had gone missing on the same day as his brother. The message had been lost, sent to a Connor family in Queensland. Connor imagined the relief that family felt when they realised the telegram was not for them. He wanted dearly, desperately to be that Mr Connor of Brisbane.

  When Lizzie saw the postmaster arriving at the front of the house with a third piece of pink paper clutched solemnly in his hand, she ran out the back door, pulling at Connor’s arm and begging him to hide too.

  ‘Don’t let him deliver it. If he can’t deliver it it can’t be true.’

  All three boys had been lost on
the same day. Connor is certain that it was the cruelty of the disjointed arrival of the letters that began to unhinge Lizzie. Each time the couple held one another on the bed. Lizzie wailed until she was hoarse and her eyes were too bruised to cry. He shook uncontrollably; swallowing his grief and feeling it ricochet through his chest bruising his ribcage from the inside. By the third telegram he was too shell-shocked to grieve properly. He read Arthur’s name with grim resignation, gave one involuntary guttural cry and waited for the flood of emotion. It did not come. He was cauterised from the inside out.

  For the next year Lizzie lived in sleepless limbo.

  ‘I’m presuming they are not dead. That’s what the letters say. Missing. Not dead,’ she would declare whenever he made the mistake of speaking about any of the boys in the past tense.

  Initially Connor read to an empty room to offer Lizzie some peace. When he tried to give it away she shrieked at him and accused him of wanting the boys dead. He realised that for her the storytelling had transcended comfort and was now a liturgy, in the same way the shoe polishing had become a ritual. Long after Connor surrendered hope that their sons were still alive, Lizzie maintained her belief. In her troubled mind, to read was a declaration of faith.

  Connor reaches out, feels the crackle of the wrapping paper and coarse twine and the unmistakable form of a book hidden within. He turns it, glances down and sees the opened end and the all too familiar mark of the Australian Imperial Forces. No. How? Why now after so long?

  He places it back down on the table, avoiding the subject.

  ‘So, I hit water at fifteen feet. Bit brackish, but good pressure . . . a bit too much pressure, actually . . .’ Connor looks up, sees tears welling in Eliza’s eyes as she stares at the package.