Corroboree

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Ssh,’ said Eyre. ‘He’s answering.’

  Now, the leading tribesman was saying something to Joolonga. The language sounded to Eyre like Wirangu, although he couldn’t be certain. There was a distinctive guttural clacking about Wirangu which Eyre recognised from the way in which Yanluga used to talk to his horses. The tribesman seemed to feel very vehemently about what he was saying, because he kept rapping his throwing-stick against the shaft of his spear, and ducking and nodding his head. Sometimes his voice was a breathy murmur; at other times he was shouting as if he were apoplectically furious that they had arrived here without asking his permission. All the time Joolonga remained impassive, his hat set very straight on his head, one arm tucked into his impressive coat like Napoleon, but trouserless, with his scrotum and his penis elaborately wound up with twine.

  At last the tribesman’s haranguing appeared to be over. He stepped back two or three paces, and stood quite still, the wind ruffling his feather head-dress. Joolonga made two or three quick gestures in sign-language, and then walked back to Eyre. To Eyre’s surprise, Joolonga’s forehead and cheekbones were shining with sweat, and he was shivering.

  ‘What was all that about?’ asked Eyre.

  ‘He says that we must follow him, but that he expects us to observe certain proprieties.

  ‘What proprieties?’

  ‘We must leave all of our clothing here; and our weapons.’

  ‘What?’ demanded Dogger. ‘You expect me to walk baby-bum-naked into a camp full of mad Aborigines, without even a rifle to guard my particulars. Come on, Eyre. This is ridiculous.’

  Eyre looked towards the tribesman who had spoken to Joolonga. ‘Ask him what his name is,’ he said.

  ‘Joolonga turned around and called out to the tribesman, who lifted his spear and said, ‘Parilla.’

  Joolonga translated, ‘That is his familiar name, not his family name. It means “cold”, or “the cold one”.’

  ‘Well, you can call me the cold one if I have to go down and meet those blackfellows without my clothes on,’ put in Dogger.

  But Eyre called out to Parilla, in a challenging voice. ‘Parilla! You go without clothes! But what man would ever go without his weapons? Not you! Well, nor will we!’

  Anxiously, gabbling sometimes, Joolonga translated. Parilla listened seriously, occasionally nodding his head; and then he turned and spoke to his two lieutenants. Joolonga murmured to Eyre, ‘This could mean some trouble, Mr Walker-sir. Parilla is a fierce tribal warrior; he does not like to be ridiculed, especially by a white man. It seems to me that he does not believe that you are the djanga; or even if he does, he feels enmity towards you.’

  Without any warning at all, Parilla stooped, picked up a stone, and hurled it straight at Eyre’s face. Eyre didn’t even have time to think about dodging away; but the stone was thrown so accurately that it did nothing more than graze his cheekbone, and flick an instant line of bright red blood across his skin.

  There was a clockspring silence between them. Joolonga backed away a little. Christopher raised his rifle now, and aimed it directly at the second tribesman. Even Dogger kept quiet, except for a spasmodic sniff, and warily flicked his eyes from one warrior to another.

  Below them, off to the right, where the cooking-smoke was coming from, they heard the first cry of a great chant. To Eyre, the sound was completely electrifying; because it must have come from the throats of a hundred Aborigines; and it made the entire evening vibrate, as if the limestone bedrock of the Flinders mountains themselves were humming like a tuning-fork. A flock of fairy martins, hunting insects in the dusk, swooped and turned as if the sound of human voices had deflected them in flight.

  Eyre lifted his rifle again and pointed it at Parilla’s head. the Aborigine remained motionless, his expression unreadable beneath the thick pipe-clay and ochre that striped his cheeks and his forehead. The rifle was heavy and Eyre knew that he would have to be quick before his aim started to waver. He was no marksman; and although the distance between them was only fifteen paces, it was so gloomy now that it would be easy to make a fatal mistake.

  Dogger said, ‘We’d be well advised to walk quietly away now, Eyre. I’m not funning with you.’

  Eyre said, ‘If we walk away now, they’ll never let us go. And besides, we still have our duty.’

  ‘I rather think our prime duty is to stay alive,’ said Christopher, with deep unhappiness.

  Eyre ignored him. He had been challenged by Parilla; only a glancing, childish blow with a stone; the kind of blow with which the tribesman would have teased an uninitiated youth. But he had done it to see whether Eyre really was the djanga he proclaimed himself to be, or just another scavenging white man. Eyre had no way of knowing it for certain, but he sensed that if they tried to retreat without accepting Parilla’s challenge, they would be speared where they stood, like Weeip’s writhing bandicoot.

  Joolonga blurted, ‘Mr Walker-sir—’ But Eyre squeezed the rifle’s trigger, and there was an abrupt loud report, as if two boomerangs had been slapped together right next to his ears, and a spurt of bright orange fire from the pan; and then a cloud of brown smoke.

  Everybody turned to stare at Parilla in shock. But the Aborigine warrior was still standing, although he was swaying slightly in delayed reaction to being fired at. The most remarkable sight, however, was his head-dress of emu feathers. The shot had blown it completely to pieces, leaving his thickly-greased hair standing on end in a parody of utter fright, and the air around his head full of whirling, floating feathers.

  The echo of the shot came back from the distant mountains, and far away there was a flurry of birds. But then came the laughter: first from Midgegooroo, then from Dogger and Christopher, and finally from Parilla’s own tribesmen. The laughter subsided for a moment, but then Parilla himself reached up gingerly and patted his hair; and he began to laugh, too, an odd clacking high-pitched chuckle.

  ‘By God I think you’ve rediscovered your sense of humour,’ said Dogger, wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve. ‘Look at the poor bastard. He looks as if he’s seen a devil-devil.’

  Only Joolonga remained unsmiling. Eyre had taken on the challenge of Parilla against his advice, and won it; without bloodshed, and without any loss of dignity on either side. Joolonga stood to one side, his hands crossed behind his back so that they lifted up his coat-tails, and flapped them up and down like a cockerel’s tail, intermittently baring his stringy brown buttocks.

  The shot attracted more Aborigines, painted and feathered just as Parilla and his companions were. Parilla spoke to them in a harsh, imperative voice, and they stayed back in a respectful circle, waiting to see what would happen next. The chanting from the encampment continued, however, deep and melodious; so deep sometimes that it seemed below the range of human hearing. Two or three of the tribesmen who had tome to join them on the ridge shouted back their responses towards the camp-fires, and there was whooping and rapping of sticks and boomerangs, until the night echoed and clattered and screeched.

  ‘What are we supposed to do now?’ asked Christopher, apprehensively.

  ‘Now we do what they asked us,’ said Eyre. ‘We take off our clothes, and we follow them down to the encampment. But we don’t let go of our rifles; and Midgegooroo can still bring his satchel of ammunition. Here, Midgegooroo, you might as well reload this one while we’re undressing.’

  ‘I’m damned purple if I’m going to undress,’ said Dogger, ferociously.’

  ‘In that case, you can go back to the horses and wait with Weeip.’

  ‘What, and miss the fan-dancing?’

  Joolonga came over and said, ‘You were lucky with this one man, Mr Walker-sir. He can laugh at himself. But there are many others who do not have the same facility.’

  ‘Like you, for instance, my dear Joolonga,’ said Eyre, unbuttoning his cuffs.

  Joolonga gave a bitter little smile, and shook his head. ‘I can laugh when the occasion warrants it, Mr Walker-sir. But tonight we must
go warily, and treat our new acquaintances with respectfulness.’

  Eyre stepped out of his britches, and unfastened his long cotton underwear, already stained and marked from days of sweaty riding, and from being washed out in nothing but muddy pools of stagnant water. He shook his shirt over his head, and then he was naked, very thin now, with protuberant ribs and a slightly curving stomach, and reddened thighs from the constant chafing of the saddle. Dogger, once he had struggled out of his combination underwear (A.L. Elder’s finest), looked like a displeased Mr Punch. Christopher slowly took off his britches; but kept his shirt on. Parilla said something angrily to Joolonga, pointing and waving at Christopher, but Christopher said: Tell him I’m sick. Tell him I’ve got a rash. If I get the sun on my back, it’ll kill me.’

  ‘Come,’ said Joolonga; and they followed Parilla and the other tribesmen down the sloping side of the limestone ridge, towards a second, less prominent outcropping.

  Eyre felt curiously light-headed, walking through the night stark naked with these fierce and primitive-looking tribesmen escorting him on either side. But on the other hand he felt there was a naturalness to being naked in these surroundings; a oneness with the warm air and the raw rocks and the spiny grasses that stung his bare ankles. There was an ancient eroticism to it; the same blatant and unashamed sexuality that had first struck him when he landed in Adelaide last year. His penis half-stiffened as he walked, but it neither upset him nor embarrassed him.

  During his days of isolation from Christopher and Dogger as they had crossed the salt lake, he had come to the understanding not so much that he should be more mistrustful of others, but that he should invest more trust in himself. That was why he had been able to turn to his companions at last and embrace them. That was why he had been able to face up to Parilla so confidently. And that was why he could walk naked through the mountainous night with all the confidence of a warrior. Christopher had sensed the change in him, without even realising that it was his own betrayal of Eyre that had brought it about.

  They reached the prink of the second outcropping; and Parilla said, in Wirangu, ‘Behold.’ And what they saw beneath them was so breathtaking and so moving that Eyre could only turn to Christopher and shake his head in astonishment.

  The ground dropped steeply away below their feet into a deep layered gorge, scoured out of the limestone over thousands and thousands of years by a rushing array of waterfalls. The reddish crags on either side were in darkness now that night had fallen; but their terraces and balconies and water-hewn pulpits were sparkling with hundreds of cooking-fires and torches, so that the gorge had taken on the appearance of the grandest of civilised theatres, La Scala in the middle of the Australian outback, with chandeliers and footlights and carriage-lamps. Among these lights, shadowy primitive figures came and went, scores of them, and it was these figures who sang so resonantly as they roasted their meats or fed their dingo-pups or prepared their children for the night’s sleep. It was the greatest gathering of Aboriginal tribes that any of them had ever seen; or even heard about. And the warmth of these people’s humanity, the power of their family closeness, were overwhelming, rising from the glittering depths of the gorge as distinctly and as strongly as the smoke from the cooking-fires, or the vibrant harmony of the ancient songs. They were innocent feelings, yet proud; and under these skies on this most timeless of nights, they brought Eyre for the first time to an emotional rather than an intellectual understanding of the people who had lived in Australia for three million years.

  ‘If all the centuries during which Australia has been inhabited were condensed to a single hour,’ Captain Sturt had told Eyre, the night before they had set out, ‘then the Aborigines would have lived here alone for fifty-nine minutes and twenty seconds; and the remainder of the time would represent the white occupation.’

  There had been Aborigines here in the Pleistocene age. There had been Aborigines here when the deserts were thick with trees, and giant kangaroo roamed the grasslands. There had been Aborigines here when the lakes of South Australia were vast sheets of water, teeming with fish, instead of crusted salt flats. And there were still Aborigines here, gathered together on this warm spring night to celebrate the coming-alive of one of their oldest legends.

  Eyre found that there were tears in his eyes. ‘Smoke,’ he told Dogger, but Dogger understood, too, in his rough-and-ready way.

  Parilla called to Joolonga; and Joolonga said, ‘This way. There is a path down the side of the hill.’ As the chanting swelled from the gorge below them, they climbed their way down through the rocks; at one point crossing a narrow waterfall, their fingers slipping on the lichen-covered rocks, the cold water splattering their naked bodies.

  ‘I could murder a beer,’ said Dogger, longingly. His belly was raw and scratched from scraping against the rocks as he shuffled from ledge to ledge. Eyre couldn’t help glancing at his genitals: they looked like a mallee fowl sitting on her nest of gingery-brown vegetation, waiting for her eggs to hatch.

  When they reached the floor of the gorge, they were immediately surrounded by a crowd of curious Aborigine men and women and children. The fires flickered and smoked, the chanting and the boomerang-banging continued as loudly as before; and all around them was chattering and laughing and scuttling; and a constant carnival of white-painted faces, scarred and decorated shoulders and chests, beads and feathers and shining teeth, wide eyes and wildly decorated hair, bare breasts and dancing feet. Dazed and dazzled, they followed Parilla to the centre of the ravine, where the greatest fire of all was burning, a huge stack of dried gums and emu bushes, spitting and sparking and roaring, and there, tied with twenty or thirty wallaby skulls and stuck with hundreds of emu feathers, stood a large shelter, or tantanoorla, of branches and brushwood.

  ‘Parilla says that this is the shelter of Yonguldye the medicine-man,’ said Joolonga.

  ‘Well, then,’ replied Eyre, ‘I think you can announce us, don’t you?’

  There is one thing to remember,’ said Joolonga. ‘When Yonguldye asks you where you have come from, you must answer “Goondooloo”.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It is a name in the legend, that is all. But he must believe that you have come from there; otherwise our lives may be in danger.’

  Joolonga told Parilla to call Yonguldye. Parilla shook his head, and launched into another of his long clacking lectures; but then knocked the end of his spear two or three times on the rock, and nodded, and went inside the shelter.

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Eyre.

  ‘He said that Yonguldye is the greatest of all medicinemen, and that he must be treated with great respect because his revenge is very terrible and we will all have our heads cut off and our bones broken and be fed to the dogs.’

  ‘That’s reassuring,’ said Christopher. He glanced beside him at a particularly inquisitive black girl, who was staring unashamedly at his nakedness. He crossed his hands over his genitals and the girl giggled at him.

  Yonguldye kept them waiting for almost five minutes. They scarcely spoke to each other at all as they stood there; their faces and chests scorched by the raging fire, their backs chilled by the cool night air which was now beginning to flow into the valley. Eyre glanced at Christopher, but Christopher had his head bowed as if he were thinking deeply, or praying.

  At last, however, there was a sharp clamour of sticks and boomerangs, and Parilla reappeared from the tantanoorla, raising his spear high into the air. A shout rose up from all the blackfellows clustering around them, and a chant of ‘Yonguldye! Yonguldye!’

  Yonguldye appeared before them with massive ritual dignity. He was a very tall, old Aborigine with a gigantic head-dress of fur and feathers and wallaby teeth that looked like some monstrous mythical creature which had decided to perch on top of him, and remain there to keep watch on his enemies. His face was painted grey with pipe-clay, with a broad ochre band across his forehead, and his withered chest was covered in curving and twisting ngora, or decor
ative scars. His penis was contained in a rolled-up piece of ghost-gum bark, tied around his waist with twine, which gave his protuberant belly the appearance of a brandy-barrel, complete with spigot. He was almost completely toothless, except for the stumps of his two top canines, which gave his face an even more devilish appearance.

  Joolonga raised his hand and greeted Yonguldye in sign-language. Then he spoke to the medicine-man in a tone which Eyre had never heard him use before, low and quick and muttering, with none of his usual posturing or arrogance. Now and then he wiped sweat away from his upper lip with his hand. Eyre caught the words ‘djanga’ and ‘tyinyeri’, which meant child; and ‘milang’; but Joolonga was speaking so quietly and so rapidly that it was impossible for him to follow the meaning.

  Eventually, Yonguldye stepped forward, and stood before Eyre with half-closed eyes, scrutinising him in the firelight. He had a strange smell about him, Yonguldye, like herbs and sweat and lemon-grass.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘You are the djanga.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eyre, as firmly as he could.

  Yonguldye raised his hand and touched Eyre’s shoulder. ‘You feel like man.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I am the djanga. I come from Goondooloo.’ Eyre hoped that he had remembered the correct pronunciation.

  Yonguldye lifted his head towards the sky, and peered up at the stars. ‘You speak like man,’ he said. ‘You speak like white man.’

  ‘All men speak like white men in Goondooloo,’ Eyre smiled, with as much confidence as he could manage.

  ‘Hm,’ said Yonguldye. He lowered his head again, and stared at Eyre with renewed ferocity. ‘Why does djanga carry—’ he was lost for the right word for a moment, and then he said, ‘—oodlawirra?’

  ‘Weapon,’ whispered Joolonga.

  Eyre lifted up the rifle. ‘For hunting.’

  ‘Djanga no eat.’

  ‘Ah, but sometimes the djanga wants to shoot a wallaby or two just for the sport of it; and give it to his friends and relatives. A kind of a gift, if you understand me. The dead nourishing the living.’