by Murray Bail
HOMESICKNESS
Born in Adelaide in 1941, Murray Bail now lives in Sydney. Homesickness won the National Book Council Award for Australian Literature and the Age Book of the Year Award. His subsequent novel Holden’s Performance won the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Drover’s Wife and Other Stories
Holden’s Performance
Eucalyptus
The Faber Book of Contemporary Australian Short Stories (ed.)
NON-FICTION
Ian Fairweather
Longhand: A Writer’s Notebook
HOMESICKNESS
MURRAY BAIL
TEXT PUBLISHING
MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA
www.textpublishing.com.au
The Text Publishing Company
Swann House, 22 William St
Melbourne Victoria 3000
Australia
Copyright © Murray Bail 1980
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
First published by Macmillan 1980
This edition published 1998, reprinted 2002
Printed and bound by Griffin Press
Designed by Chong Wengho
Typeset in 11.5/15 Baskerville Monotype by Midland Typesetters
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Bail, Murray, 1941– .
Homesickness.
ISBN 1 875847 64 2.
I. Title.
A823.3
Cover painting: René Magritte, Le Mals du Pays
© René Magritte 1941/ADAGP
Reproduced by permission of VI$COPY Ltd, Sydney 1998
Sicily, if I ever can go there, presents two advantages: human nature there is as distinctive and curious to see as the nature of plants and stones.
—Stendhal
To Margaret
Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
1
Strange sensation then (August 26). To finally have the turbines cut, metallic whistle dying in the ear, and that drumming of the horizontal holding them to their seats like a hand, replaced by solid upright pressure, relative silence, of earth. They sat becalmed, benumbed. The hum and vibration remained within them, and would for some hours. For the time being they felt more like gazing than looking. Chins rested on hands.
Out there all around was concrete, colour of tarpaulins, stained with fuel. This canary-yellow tractor of obscene squatness came crawling towards them. It had a canvas canopy. The local people were going about their work; they took their time. The driver wore khaki and drove one hand.
Chins rested on hands. A majority of the party had flown long distance before; but it was always strange. The immediate end result was strange. Out there lay the beginnings of the foreign country known through hearsay (heresy) and photography, its name and persistent shape on the map. There was plenty to see; any minute now. Yet each one felt unable or reluctant to grasp the first impressions. It was as if their bodies had arrived—vaguely they were aware of that—but feelings for time and place were still back at the point of departure or at some point along their flight path; and who can say whether these ever catch up?
Strips of turf and grey, those browns: several dozen browns out there. Oblong cream patch to the left and the obligatory silver roof, and another, hooped. Blurred purple undulating beyond, creased, folded like dropped cloth, and tunnelling cumuli just above it. It’s a clear day. Yet the fragments, static and commonplace, are stationed far apart. It’s a mosaic—slabs broken, separated. Soon it would become a slowly moving fresco, clarifying, but with certain parts vague or completely missing; always be missing. Several pets, cats and a planter’s dalmatian, and someone’s tortoise in the tail of the jet recorded similar sensations.
The Kaddoks, the couple in their fifties, sat near the back of the group. Here she drew in her breath: it shows the difficulty.
‘It’s a typical ordinary aerodrome,’ she told him. ‘Not very large. Some propeller-driven planes over there—hangar—some men coming here; native-looking—I can’t see their faces—a dog—another dog.’
‘Dogs?’ said Kaddok, looking straight ahead. ‘They shouldn’t be here. What sort of dogs?’
These were cattle dogs with sandpaper noses, with dry skins, eczema (itching papules and vesicles) and the fleas; always jogging: in vast arcs like foxes.
‘Brown grass to the right,’ she went on, ignoring him. ‘I don’t see the airport lounge. Yes, I can.’
Behind them Dr Phillip North closed his book. During the flight he had looked up several times as Kaddok, a pale heavy man, felt his way down to the plane’s lavatories, blessing each seat with his hand and occasionally someone’s startled head. Kaddok wore dark glasses, an open-necked shirt, and a suit of some black thin linen material. Strapped across his chest in bandolier style a Pentax and a spare 75mm lens together looked like some ingenious directional-finding device, a magic eye; and the camera was enclosed in a black leather hood with button, the same as Kaddok’s wristwatch and his eyes. The V of his shirt showed a hive of silver hair bursting forth, yet he was thin on top.
Most of the long flight had been over water. About the only other time North looked up was when they had met land again, and then he followed the hypnotic doodles left by animals, the paths to water, and occasionally a straight yellow road, all part of the earth crust with the eroded beds and lengthy fissures, outcrops, lodes; old, old statements. Thorn trees spotted the land: blackheads on its jaundiced face. North recognised the Longonot volcano, that ancient sore, as the plane’s shadow skated and fell into the crater’s inkwell. In a dreamy state he waited for it to emerge—half anxious. It had. He still remembers ‘where’.
Now Mrs Kaddok smiled at North.
‘We made it, touch wood’—her way of introducing herself. The others too began standing, slowly looking around, and put on expressions of unconcern and anticipation.
‘No, he’s all right,’ Mrs Kaddok said, as North offered to help. ‘Get a move on, Leon.’
Down on the tarmac the air was colder than the clear sky and the land had led them to believe. An aerodrome breeze, inevitable and international, scribbled at their faces; whiff of kerosene there seemed to be produced by distant artificial trees. With trousers and skirts rattling the group walked to the terminal, more or less duplicating the fuselage shape of their seat positions, even maintaining the aisle—though perhaps without knowing it—with the Kaddoks and Dr Phillip North taking up the rear.
The airport like any other was still neutral territory. Only outside the gates and heading towards the capital did they begin to spark up. The British-built bus had sliding windows and an incredibly long gear lever. Lining the road were typical airport trees resistant to the winds, obviously planted recently, but then the road turned sharply left into the foreign country itself, all exposed now, open for inspection. It was like a curtain pulled back on a foreign-produced film and they were driving into the scenery. It offered no resistance. The bent figures of women scratching at the earth didn’t even look up. Occasionally a car passed. These were small English sedans, postwar, and crowded with joint families. In the bus some twisted in their seats to see, staring and switching from side to side, anxious not to miss anything.
From the front a young man assumed the role of lookout.
‘A baobab tree, see, over ther
e!’
He was right.
‘The Traveller’s Friend,’ someone told them. ‘You find tons of them up in our north.’
Dozens of the bloated baobab: bursting out, scattered like magnified pineapples.
‘A bit of the old wattle there. Fancy. I would never have thought…’
Someone nodded: ‘So it is, look!’
Behind the bus an elderly native had fallen from his bike, but no one noticed.
‘Acacia,’ a man told them. There is always one who knows the names of things.
Acacia melanoxylon. And to Leon Kaddok the landscape became coloured and jagged with their exclamations and he had to lean towards his wife, Gwen, to catch her running commentary.
The baobab tree (Adansonia digitata). Wattle. Then the lookout leaning forward down the front appeared to mutter to himself and blink before he swung around, pointing hoarsely, ‘Gum Trees!’ True: at a bend in the road, like the one at Rapallo, a superb specimen with the peeling trunk, the usual mess on the ground.
‘Have we left home?’ a wag called out. ‘Everybody please check their tickets.’
They had to laugh.
And they saw others at mid-distance, solitary old wool clippers under sail, and other eucalypts clustered on the grassy slopes, grazing gums.
‘Eucalyptus globulus,’ the man said, raising horse laughter. But he was being serious. It was Kaddok. He said it again, louder.
Eucalyptus globulus.
It could almost have been their own country: these sections with the gums briefly framed like a traditional oil painting by the slowly passing window. The colours were as brown and parched; that chaff-coloured grass. Ah, this dun-coloured realism. Any minute now the cry of a crow or a cockatoo; but no.
A tall figure in an ochre robe crossed ahead, sauntering, or rather floated among some cattle, and the cows were scruffy, with pre-historic pouch throats: drifting apparently aimless across the ground, kicking up dust. He was only a few yards from the bulky bus but ignored it, heading out into the stones and emptiness. They noticed his head partly shorn. His face was clay-dyed: jewellery glittered from his forehead. His gait had adapted to the jingling drift of cattle. Perhaps that had endowed him with the ancient stateliness. At any rate he silenced them; and they swung in their seats. The women sighed.
They noticed then other details.
This was an old, tangled land. It was complex, far more than they had realised. For there were thorn trees and oceans of swaying foreign grass, seeds flying off like spray, and at intervals the protruding thatched cone of a storage hut. And what was that species of tree, its blurred foliage isosceles triangle in shape, flat on top, unlike anything they had seen—growing everywhere here? (Acacia senegal.) Increasingly, the gums became incongruous. These were transplanted, surely: something from their past, their own country, and yet for that very reason worth mentioning on their postcards. Entering the capital the streets gradually became dense with rusty velocipedes, mechanical insects whirring, and early motorcycles British again, many fitted with chairs, Velocettes and Ariels, even a Panther, and silver scooters and hissing buses too were honking and dispersing the pedestrians, beggars on wooden skateboards. It was a scattered, low-skyline city. Their hotel was the tallest building, in pride of place.
Doug (‘Howdy’) Cathcart paddled backwards and forwards alone doing his own private breaststroke: appearing/disappearing, his metronomic head giving the impression he was treading on springs. Actually more decibels were produced by his wife in the deckchair, slapping oil into her thighs which shuddered something terrible: stubby woman of principle. On the lawn close by, Louisa Hofmann carelessly offered a comparison. She was slender, well-exercised, late in her thirties. Facing the sun, her head resolutely held to one side declared she wouldn’t be going for a dip. Her husband sat up reading the latest Time and every now and then looked at the water. There were cane tables, and waiters in white jackets came around with colourful drinks. The pool area was protected from the elements by the L shape of the hotel, and on the two open sides by a powerful thorn hedge and a concrete wall; jutting from the wall a pergola converted into an aviary held tiny shivering black-and-white birds, though no one, not even Phillip North, had gone over to inspect them. They could hear over the wall the cries of fruit sellers and the blindmen.
Cathcart climbed or rather crawled out and fumbled red-eyed in a Qantas bag for his towel. He found his sunglasses and sank in the chair beside his wife. How many lengths had he done? It must have been a good seven.
‘Did nine lengths, dear.’
A thud-bang and a spoilt double somersault/jack-knife: the way the board kept going like a tuning fork could easily get on some people’s nerves.
Who kept doing that? The show-off in Hawaiian shorts.
At that point Sheila Standish came into the lawn at a half-trot, one hand shielding her eyes, but relaxed when she recognised the group. It had taken her several seconds. Strange how people alter when they shed their clothes. The men: it must be like them in a room just in their underpants, although here the thing wasn’t hanging loose. Upstairs Sheila had a floral costume, a one-piece with bones. She’d brought it as always just in case. Sheila knew the longer she didn’t put it on the more difficult it would be later. And yet she carried a cardigan and postcards to write. She chose a place next to the Cathcarts.
In the shade by the pergola someone plomped himself in the chair next to Phillip North. It was the diver patterned in tropical flowers. North had all along intended going for a walk, a stroll, to look around, and was dressed for it in an open shirt, cotton trousers and sandals, but the long flight and probably the events before it had made him tired.
‘How’s it going? Garry Atlas.’
Dr North shook the outstretched hand. It was dripping wet.
‘This is the life, aye?’ said Atlas, looking around. ‘I’d say this is what it was all about. What do you reckon?’
Transparent globules hung all over his chest, caught the sunlight, and suddenly merged to piddle down between his legs. He was purple-lipped, shivering a bit. The silver watch on his wrist, of large diameter and sporting a black dial, leaked water. Staring at this North showed concern at the tiny white cloud forming under the glass. North noticed other signs of his ostentatious indifference to water. It seemed to be deliberate; it could be an affectation. A silver ring on one finger; and there jammed between his hip and saturated elastic he’d shoved his cigarettes and a box of matches! North began smiling, almost laughing.
‘What are you reading?’ Garry reached over.
And smiling North watched as he held the book in his wet hands.
‘Shit!’ said Garry, turning the pages: Goddard’s Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. It was the 1919 edition.
‘I haven’t read this one,’ he said, glancing at the pool. ‘Was this what you were reading on the old plane?’
‘Some light reading,’ North nodded, seeing the joke.
But Atlas wasn’t interested. He leaned forward and spoke out of the corner of his mouth.
‘Listen, if you get browned off here, come over to us. There’s a spare chair. You can meet some of the women. There’s three of them.’
Dr North, who had a grey beard, gave a tired smile.
‘No, I tell a lie,’ said Garry putting his hand across his heart and looking up at the sky. ‘There’s only two-and-a-half. They’re all dogs. But what the hell?’
Bending over, the neck and ears redden. Intestines appear in the forehead. Gazing at the young Adam’s Apple, the neck of the racehorse, North saw a tremendous even suntan which wasn’t coloured by blood-pressure: solar energy, solar myth. And as in his neck, veins ran wild on the back of his hand. Cigarettes were on his breath (non-filters).
‘Have you tried that local brew they’ve got here yet?’
Before North could answer (‘No’) Atlas was on his feet.
‘Jump!’ he shouted. ‘Now!’ Grinning, nodding he made mock charges towards the girl on the diving boar
d. ‘Excuse me,’ he said to North.
He sat down, shaking his head.
‘There’s one for you. She’s a character.’ The girl sat on the end of the board and turned her back on him. ‘Did you see one of her tits fall out before?’
‘No,’ said North.
He immediately regretted saying it. He wasn’t interested.
‘Only one,’ Atlas explained. ‘Her top slipped off. Phew, it almost knocked my eye out. Ver-ee nice! Sasha is her name. Sasha-somebody. She has a friend, an actress if you don’t mind! And I thought it was her bloody mother.’
Only one swimmer now travelled the pool. It took a lap to see who this was: Hofmann, Kenneth Hofmann, without the glasses. And he was further altered by the Australian crawl. It requires the mouth to regularly twist sideways for breathing, giving the swimmer the appearance of a sergeant shouting to men behind him. Hofmann’s etherised wife still lay facing the sun, her mouth pulled slightly to one side (similar to her swimming husband’s).
About then Kaddok came shuffling in, holding onto his wife. A number of people stopped in mid-sentence or lowered their voices. He had one hand slightly outstretched and his black suit was dusty. They’d been outside. As they passed she bowed slightly at North and smiled—energetic teeth! Kaddok’s suit was buttoned up and one hand cupped his camera. Alongside the blue transparent pool he looked out of place.
Thud-bang again. Garry Atlas showed them how it was done. Most looked up: a reflex action. And sure enough he held them by staying under for an inordinate length of time, finally standing up ankle-deep with a gasp and swaying, blowing his nose.
In the midst of such activity Sheila Standish had put on her cardigan and dated only one postcard. Doug had said ‘Howdy’ and commented briefly on the climate, the exchange rate he had managed to get at the hotel, and their holiday last year, a caravan tour around Tasmania. Nothing of course compared to this trip which he called the Big-Un.
Hello? Louisa Hofmann had sat up and leaned back on her elbows. Other eyes had turned to the glass door.
