A Far Country

by John Fletcher

  FOUR

  Jason awoke suddenly. For a moment he thought he was still dreaming. Nothing he could see made any sense; then memories came flooding back; their despairing struggle through the bush, the sudden appearance of the black warriors.

  He remembered the last words he had heard.

  We’re all dead.

  Perhaps Lew Bone had been right. Perhaps they were indeed dead, killed on the steep slope of the gully where the spear-carrying black men had surprised them, and he had woken in the next world.

  Cautiously, Jason flexed his arms, then his legs. He didn’t feel dead. His ankle was sore but even that was better than it had been. Everything seemed in working order. He had a ferocious headache and was desperately thirsty but nothing else seemed wrong with him. He looked around, trying to understand his surroundings. He was lying on his back beneath a latticework of branches that formed a roof a few inches above his head. His hand went to the sheath at his waist but it was empty: his knife was gone.

  There was something between his body and the ground. His fingers explored. It felt soft: fur. He twisted his head to look beneath him. He was lying on a rug, made apparently from kangaroo skin.

  As soon as he moved Jason was ambushed by weariness. He could barely stir. He turned his head again, looking about him. The hutch in which he was lying was very small, little more than a box of plaited branches six feet in length with one end open to the daylight. Light also came through the interlaced branches; if it was intended as a shelter, Jason thought, it wasn’t much of one.

  On the other hand, if he had fallen into the hands of the natives, and it seemed more and more certain that he had, they couldn’t be planning to kill him or they would have done it already.

  Thirst ravaged him. His eye lit on what looked like a gourd standing by the entrance of the shelter. His parched tongue flickered over dry lips. He was so frightened it might be empty that for a few seconds he didn’t move; then he summoned up his courage, crawled across on his belly and looked inside. He let out his breath in a deep sigh. It was full of liquid. But what kind of liquid? It could be poison, for all he knew, but after a moment’s reflection he realised that made no sense. Why should the blacks have brought him here just to kill him? They could have done that in the gully, if that was what they had wanted.

  He sniffed warily, tested the contents with his tongue. Water. His eyes closed and his throat convulsed in ecstasy. Trembling, terrified of spilling even a drop, he raised the gourd to his lips and drank the contents down.

  When the gourd was empty he let it fall to the ground and struggled back to collapse once again upon the sleeping rug. Now the torment of thirst was eased he was ready to faint with weariness. He wondered briefly what had happened to the others but before he could even begin to think about that or anything else his eyes closed and he fell asleep.

  When he next awoke it was dark. For a while he lay still, trying again to work out where he was. The ruddy glow of a fire flickered just beyond the opening of his strange shelter and he heard voices and occasional laughter. He went to stand before he remembered that the shelter was too low to do that. He crawled to the opening and peered out.

  Shadowed forms huddled about the leaping flames of a large fire. Firelight gleamed on black skin, the shine of eyes and teeth. He salivated as the smell of scorched meat came to him; it seemed a lifetime since he had eaten.

  Jason did not know whether or not to go and join the people around the fire. They had not killed him although they could have done. They had not tied him up or imprisoned him. They had even given him shelter and some of their precious water. It didn’t seem that they intended to harm him. He decided it would be safe to go out, or perhaps it was the smell of the cooking meat that drew him irresistibly into the firelight.

  He walked forward two or three paces and stopped, casting his eyes about him, alert for trouble. No-one seemed to have noticed him. Another three paces; still nothing. The firelight reflected in the tangled branches of the trees. It shone on the faces and bodies of the natives. There were both men and women; children, too: a family group, then, not a war party. He smelt no hint of danger here.

  The people about the fire became aware of his presence. The voices died. In the stillness Jason could hear only the crackle of flames, trees rustling in the wind.

  He stood motionless, waiting to see how they would react. Eyes watched him. There was a low murmur. In response to the murmur, or so it seemed, there was a shift among the seated group and a figure came out to face him. It was a youth of about his own age, several inches shorter than Jason. In the dim light he looked as black as night. He stood motionless, his back to the fire and the people silently watching. He was absolutely naked. The two youths stared at each other across a gap that had little to do with physical distance and much to do with culture and comprehension, then the black boy’s face broke in a smile. He reached out and took Jason’s hand in his own, coaxing him forward into the group by the fire. His hand was warm, surprisingly soft. Disliking having his hand held by another male, Jason at first resisted but after a few seconds yielded and allowed himself to be drawn forward: he couldn’t afford to offend these people.

  The group made room for them. Following the black boy’s lead, Jason sat on the bare earth a few paces from the fire. He glanced nervously about him. Grown men of all ages were sitting together, some with paint on their bodies, others without. Women were gathered about the fire attending to the cooking meat whose smell had enticed him out of the shelter. A handful of children was scattered through the group. Jason could see no-one of his own age apart from the boy who had drawn him forward.

  There were about thirty people here. He could see no sign of his brother or Lew Bone but without one word of a common language there was no way he could ask about them.

  For a while nothing happened. The watchful eyes, gleaming white in the firelight, targeted him. No-one spoke. Soon, however, the low murmur of conversation resumed. In a few minutes the adults seemed to have forgotten him and talked and laughed as though he were not there at all.

  Some of the smaller children, fascinated by the white-skinned stranger, were slower to lose their curiosity. Jason found himself the centre of a group of wide-eyed faces staring wonderingly up at him. He tried to ignore them but it wasn’t easy. One small girl plucked up courage to touch him, the black fingers exploring the white arm as though seeking an explanation for the strange colour. The first time it happened Jason jerked instinctively away. The sudden movement froze the children, but within no time, when he did nothing else, the wondering fingers were back again, the air around him bright with childish laughter.

  Perhaps they had never seen a white person before.

  There had been a few blacks in Van Diemen’s Land. Jason had heard that when the whites first came to the country there had been many more of them but that had been long before he was born. The ones who remained wore cast-off European clothes and lived around the edges of the European settlement, scrounging what they could get. He, who thought of himself as having nothing, had been brought up to despise people who had even less, neither land nor wealth, no pride, no hope, no future.

  These people he found himself among now were different. They were free and untamed yet seemed no wilder than many white people he had known. They were strange, though. Take the way they spoke, the sound flowing like water. As for their appearance: it was not only their colour that set them apart from whites. The shapes of their faces, their noses, lips were different. Their arms and legs were longer and thinner than the limbs of white people. The way they walked about with nothing on startled and embarrassed him. He remembered the spear-carrying men coming after them in the bush. The confident way they had moved and handled their weapons, everything about them, had said that here was a people to be reckoned with yet now they had him in their power they ignored him.

  He did not understand what was going on; was not even sure that anything was going on at all. If he got up and walked away into the
darkness, would they let him go? Was he a prisoner or free to do what he wanted? For a moment he was tempted to find out but stopped himself. It was too soon for experiments.

  The youth who had brought him into the group sat at his side, paying no more attention to him than the rest. Apart from the gaggle of children, their wide eyes, questing fingers, laughing mouths, he might have been invisible.

  The small girl who had first touched him was now sitting in his lap exploring his shirt. The others stood close. Staring. None of the adults took any notice of them. Embarrassed by the girl’s curiosity Jason would have pushed her away but did not, afraid of angering the rest. He sat still, fidgeting under her exploring fingers, pretending that nothing was happening.

  A loud exclamation, laughter bright behind outstretched fingers, as she found the opening in his shirt and pushed her hand on to the skin beneath.

  ‘Give over,’ he muttered. He pushed her hand away but she ignored the hint. She turned her head and spoke rapidly to the rest of her companions. Their eyes grew even rounder and they edged closer to him. She pulled his shirt aside while the rest of them peered, necks craning.

  ‘Can’t you tell ’em to stop it?’ Jason appealed to the boy at his side whom in this gathering of strangers he already thought of as his friend. The boy smiled cheerfully but did nothing. The curiosity of children was obviously nothing to get excited about.

  The child was pulling at his shirt now, exposing more of the skin beneath. She had probably never seen anyone wearing clothes, either. Perhaps she had only just realised that his shirt and breeches were clothes, something apart from his actual body. Quite likely she had thought that they were attached to him, like skin. Not that he was planning to let her take off his clothes to satisfy her curiosity.

  For the moment there was food. The meat that had been cooking on the fire was now ready. The youth at his side eeled away and returned in a few minutes with two chunks of meat, one of which he offered to Jason.

  ‘Kambandi paru,’ he said.

  Jason was famished, his stomach growling; even so, he regarded the hunk of meat with apprehension.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Kambandi paru,’ the youth repeated helpfully. ‘Wauwe.’

  ‘Don’t know what you’re on about, mate,’ Jason said. Dubiously, he took the meat and inspected it. The fur had been burnt off and the skin seared but the meat itself seemed hardly cooked at all. Blood ran over his hands as he held it. The black boy sank large white teeth into his own piece of meat, nodding to Jason to do likewise. Hunger overcoming caution, Jason followed suit. The meat was almost raw, tough, too, but at least it was food. Soon he was tearing at it with his teeth, gulping it down into his empty stomach. All too soon it was gone.

  He wiped his hands on his breeches and looked about him once more. Still no sign of Tom or Lew. He wondered if the blacks had killed them or if they had escaped. Even if they had got away he did not think they would get far. Neither possibility explained why the blacks were treating him as one of themselves, giving him food and water, permitting him to sit with them.

  There was another thing. He must be as strange to them as they were to him yet they showed no sign of it. Apart from the inability to speak to each other they might have known him all their lives.

  It was scary to realise how little he understood what was going on.

  The food was finished. There was a stir and everyone stood. Jason looked around him. Now what?

  The men with painted bodies separated from the rest. They picked up spears and shields and walked out into the clearing on the far side of the fire. Once again the black youth seized Jason’s hand and tugged it, indicating that he should follow. They stood at the edge of the clearing, the rest of the people gathered about them.

  The painted figures formed up in two lines and stood facing each other.

  Jason turned to his companion. ‘Is there going to be a fight?’

  The youth stared back at him, face blank with incomprehension. He jabbered sibilantly for a moment and fell silent.

  To one side of the painted men an older man, tangled grey hair hanging almost to his waist, held what looked like a piece of wood at the end of a six foot line. As Jason watched he began to swing it with increasing force and speed round and round his head. The piece of wood whirling through the air emitted a low drone that increased steadily in pitch and volume until the clearing resonated with sound. Halfway between a groan and a screech, it assaulted the eardrums and raised the hairs along Jason’s arms. At the far end of the lines of painted men another figure whirled a similar device. The two sounds mingled, the watchers shifted, murmuring, and the lines of painted men began to move.

  The line nearer the fire swayed rhythmically to and fro for a few minutes before breaking into a sideways shuffling movement, quite fast, the other group following suit.

  Comprehension dawned. ‘They’re dancing,’ Jason said aloud.

  His companion smiled quickly up at him but his eyes returned at once to the dancers.

  After a few minutes the two lines changed direction and began to follow each other in single file round and round the clearing while the bellow of the whirling wooden instruments rose and fell about the bobbing, firelit figures. The sound was like a bird, flying, fluttering, soaring, enclosing dancers and spectators alike in wings of reverberating sound.

  As one the men turned inwards and marched towards each other, stamping heavily on the ground at each step and clashing their spears and shields together with great force as they did so. Dust puffed about their naked feet and the air was full of the smell of sweat.

  Jason had an idea. Other members of the audience were talking; perhaps it would be all right if he did, too. He put his hand on his companion’s shoulder. The black youth looked up at him. Jason pointed at himself. ‘Jason Hallam,’ he said, enunciating the words slowly and carefully. He pointed a second time. ‘Jason Hallam,’ he repeated. He pointed at the black youth. ‘What … is … your … name?’

  The dark eyes watched him expressionlessly.

  Jason went through the procedure again. ‘Ja … son Hal … lam,’ he repeated. ‘Jason Hallam.’ Again he reversed his finger. ‘What is your name?’

  Silence. We are getting nowhere, he thought. Then the black face cleared. The youth pointed at himself. ‘Mura,’ he said. He put his hand on Jason’s chest and looked at him enquiringly.

  Both names are too much, Jason thought. ‘Ja … son,’ he said aloud. ‘Ja … son.’

  ‘Jayser?’ Speaking slowly, the heavy lips writhing over the large white teeth as he tried to form the word. ‘Jay-e-son?’

  Near enough, Jason thought. ‘Jason,’ he said, laying his hand on his own breast. He pointed. ‘Mura,’ he said, hoping he had the pronunciation right.

  ‘Jay-e-son,’ the boy said happily. ‘Mura.’

  They smiled at each other, proud that they had made contact despite their shared incomprehension.

  ‘Jay-e-son,’ the black boy chanted, laughing. ‘Mura.’

  The dancers uttered grunting cries as they moved to and fro. As their excitement grew the audience started to echo the sound, the women keeping time by beating their naked thighs and buttocks rhythmically with the palms of their hands.

  Jason was more interested in information than the dance. ‘What have you done with my mates?’

  Mura stared at him without comprehension.

  ‘Look,’ Jason said. He squatted in the dust and picked up a piece of stick. In the dust he drew a crowd of small stick figures, waving spears. Mura watched over his shoulder, breathing audibly through his nose, forehead wrinkled as he tried to understand what Jason was doing.

  Jason pointed at one of the figures, then at Mura. ‘Mura,’ he said. He pointed at the rest of the figures, then at the people around them. ‘And that’s the rest of you.’

  Mura’s face cleared. ‘Mura,’ he repeated with emphasis, then pointed around him, uttering a word Jason could not grasp. It slipped away from him amid the so
unds of the dance, the flickering firelight reflecting from the low-hanging branches of the trees.

  ‘What did you say?’

  Mura stared at him.

  This will take forever, Jason thought.

  He drew three figures, a little apart from the rest. Again he went through the procedure. He pointed at one figure, then at himself. ‘Ja … son.’ He pointed at the others. ‘Where are they?’

  Mura stared.

  Jason went through the whole procedure again, pointing first at the drawing, then at Mura himself and the rest of the black group, then at himself and the drawing of himself, finally at the figures of his two missing companions. He looked about him, miming bewilderment. ‘Where … are … they?’

  Mura’s eyes lit up and he spoke in a swift flow of sound, jabbing his extended finger repeatedly into the darkness. There, he seemed to be saying. There.

  ‘Where? Take me to them. Please?’

  It was no use. Tired of the game, Mura turned his attention back to the dance. Jason watched. As far as he could make out, the men were now miming a hunt, possibly of an emu or kangaroo, who could tell?

  He was filled with determination. He must find out what had happened to Tom and Lew Bone.

  Getting away would be the first step. Slowly, he moved a step or two backwards; paused. Mura felt the movement and turned to look at him. Jason smiled brightly at him. Mura’s attention returned to the dance. Two of the dancers leapt high in the air, limbs cartwheeling as they sprang, firelight glinting on skins shining with sweat, on the spears and shields they waved vigorously about their heads. A low shout of approval rumbled through the audience.

  Jason took another step backwards. Paused. Mura did not look at him again. No-one was paying him any attention. At the edge of the crowd three young women were dancing together, long limbs prancing, bodies swaying as they joined the palms of their hands above their heads, jerking out their legs repeatedly from the knee. They saw this strange white being watching the movement of their breasts against their ribs as they danced and laughed at him white-mouthed, not hesitating or losing a step.