The Kwinkan

by Mudrooroo

  SESSION SEVEN

  ‘Now, where was I in this, this continuing story of betrayal? Just about to disembark from the schooner? Yes, that’s it. I went to my cabin and finished packing my suitcase, then checked around to make sure that I had not left anything behind. Only an old Bulletin, but I had no use for that. I hefted my case and made for the gangplank. Since the incident of my cabin being searched and my revolver misappropriated, I had decided to keep my possessions in my hands. I didn’t want any of those thieving Lascars running off with my things ... Lascar, you don’t know the term? What, mate, you haven’t read Sax Roehmer and his books on the devious Fu Manchu? You missed more than a good read. He was the one who introduced me to the devious Lascar. Who, or what is he? Well, how would I know? I didn’t live in Victorian times, some sort of villainous oriental, I expect. What, an East Indian seaman? Well does it matter, after all they do look all alike, don’t you think? You don’t? Well I do, mate, and I’ve had the experience. Anyway, enough of Lascars, they have very little to do, to do with my narrative, that’s what this is, a narrative, isn’t it? No, I don’t want to get into any discussion on what constitutes a narrative. Who cares about such theories, except persons such as yourself?

  ‘I hefted my suitcase to the gangplank, put one foot on it, then the other, and suddenly I found myself falling. The bloody thing had given away. Down, I went, and before I knew it I was in the water between the side of the boat and the wharf, another solid wall. All it took was a bit of a swing and I would’ve been crushed in between them. In fact, I saw the vessel coming in towards me. The gap narrowed. This was it, I thought, then there were shouts and the schooner was pushed away. A rope was flung down to me and a very wet and angry me was dragged out to confront the calm face of the skipper, who took the stem of his pipe from out his mouth (God, the nerve of him) and said: “Dash it, laddy, you should take more care.”

  ‘ “How could I when the bloody thing collapsed under my feet?” I shouted.

  ‘I was about to give him a piece of my mind when a giggle made me look to where Carla and that infernal Miss Tamada stood trying to keep the grins off their faces. It wasn’t funny. No it wasn’t, and the carelessness of one of those Lascars, for who else could it have been, had almost caused my death.

  ‘ “Oh you do get into the most dreadful scrapes,” Carla exclaimed, trying to control her mirth.

  ‘ “He is a very wet one, that one,” exclaimed Miss Tamada.

  ‘I stood there dripping in front of them. At least, the weight of my suitcase told me that water had not filled it.

  ‘ “You better come along with us to the Residency,” Carla told me. “You can have a shower there, and if you haven’t got dry clothing, I’m sure that Uncle will lend you some ... Boy, it sure was funny. There one moment, oops gone the next,” and she broke into peals of laughter which spread among the onlookers. I was the centre of wild guffaws. It didn’t help things to learn that the natives had a sense of humour, especially when it was directed at me.

  ‘We shoved off in a little convoy of mirth. We were followed by a crowd who pointed me out to those who had not been there. I tried to put the best face on things. It could have been worse, for the heat was torrid, and my little dip had been a godsend. The town wasn’t anything to write home about either. A collection of tin shacks and a few construction sites about a bank, a post office and a large store—soon to be a shopping centre—all owned by Carla, or her family. In my uneasy state, I smiled cynically as I thought about the future independent nation. From what I could see of the inhabitants, they seemed to have nothing to do, except to marvel at us as we passed along like scraps of European culture and artifacts which had come ashore. We drifted past what Carla told me was the pride of the town, a large cinema hall which also contained a radio station which she informed me gave out only local news. She said that apart from that it broadcast only the most insipid of island music interspersed with hymns of the Christian sect which, she again told me, a great-grandfather of hers had introduced into the islands. The inhabitants quickly accepted it as their own and produced their own ministers to ensure the purity of transmission. I shrugged; but still she went on, and with a straight face.

  ‘She said that the great-grandfather had acquired the status of a saint and that in the main church and the chapels scattered over the islands, prayers of thanksgiving were offered to him who had first brought the light to them. What had their religious beliefs to do with me? Let them believe what they like as long as it did not concern me. To get away from such absurdities, I asked her about her uncle, the Resident of this isolated colony of an empire decayed to a few such dreary places. It appeared that London had long since ceased to care about the island chain and was content to the point of inertia to accept an official who did not demand a salary, or pass on demands for development funds. The British were relieved, that is if they had occasion to notice, or even to recall (remember the lost file?), that, and this is what Carla assured me, no vocal independence movement had arisen to demand compensation and aid. I shrugged and accepted her words, for when I thought about this island chain, which wasn’t very often in these first few days, the notion that Australia (or Japan for that matter, what on earth was the Kitsune Corporation doing there?) was interested in the place appeared ludicrous. In fact, just being there made me fall into moods of despondency (one occasioned by discovering a huge scorpion in my bed, though the island was supposed not to harbour such monsters) during which I cursed the Prime Minister for sending me there to rot. What made it worse was that the town was unbearably hot, and it didn’t help my mood to be told by the uncle, who once upon a time had been a true-blue Brit, that the island quickly killed off any Europeans foolhardy enough to make it their home. I did not ask though, that if that was the case, why it had not happened to the old creep himself. He would have smiled and waffled on about genes and things. He was that sort of bore.

  ‘He had the gift of the gab and all that I had to do was listen. I learnt too much about my posting, the field of my endeavours as it were, Christ! There were a number of plantations fun by obsequious Fijian Indians, or dubious persons of mixed blood. The uncle, who had the only air-conditioned coolness in town, also had a well-oiled system of information in which the original inhabitants were the links. The Indians were, the word had long since degenerated into a signifier of terror, pagans, and in fact they were deliberately kept so and a temple had been constructed in which they could worship their strange multi-armed gods. This led the inhabitants into some absurd beliefs, even to the extent that they saw themselves as good Christians groaning in slavery under a harsh pagan tyranny supported and kept in place by Rome. How Rome and India came to be identified together, is for the ethnologist to fathom. And another of their beliefs, which kept things quiet so that I suspected it as a piece of propaganda invented by Carla’s family past or present, was that they would suffer this for a thousand years before a Christ hero would arrive with fire and brimstone from the suddenly awakened volcano to elevate his followers and to send the heathens to the bottom of the social pile where they would remain as slaves for all eternity. The uncle told me all this with many a chuckle. “We’ll be long gone before then,” he would repeat, for he was in the habit of repeating and repeating and repeating things, and then he would repeat his chuckles until they threatened to choke him. Oh God, what a hole I had fallen into.

  ‘Well, you can see that I had settled in at the Residency and that after my first undignified appearance, things had gone well enough for me, except Carla was hardly to be seen. Miss Tamada dragged her here and there about the town along with that awful computer. Big plans were afoot, but the heat outside was too much to bear and I preferred to rest in the coolness, though this meant I had to endure the repetitions. Once, after another long-winded conversation, spiced with chuckles, about the religious beliefs of the natives (who if they had had any sense would have forgotten about the poor Indians and tossed this old fool into the drink and then made sure that
he never came up) I said to him: “But what part does Carla play in this rigmarole?”

  ‘ “Carla, Carla, Carla,” he iterated. “Natural, natural, only natural that you ask. Ask and you shall receive, eh what? But in this case, asking is not receiving, for to be precise, though with hesitations, and with a greater or lesser degree of honesty, I must answer you to the extent that I am able, which is to be unable. I, for one, do not know. The islanders, the natives, the people here, the indigenes who have told me that they derive, or have their origins from the last eruption of that volcano, the date undetermined, but alluded to in Genesis in Carla’s great-grandfather’s, on the maternal side, translation and as eternally quoted by their ministers, or parsons, or preceptors as: ‘The rock laboured, fire issued and brought forth men.’ Well, now, I feel I should answer your question, what was it?”

  ‘I repeated the question and then drank down the rest of my gin and lime, for there was no beer on the island and I had had to resort to spirits. Oh, damn, even now, long after the event, his enunciation still enters my head. It was often unendurable, but I endured it until I found myself formulating the same sentences.

  ‘ “Ah, yes, yes, the ministers and their, their flock, or should it be flocks, perhaps congregations, but it does not fit, well, although they are already to inform us, to tell us, to detail at great and often wearisome length, the alleged doings, though more often misdoings of the pagans, the heathen to be precise; well, they, the ministers and their flock, should it be singular or plural, seldom, yes, rarely refer to us, and by us, I mean myself, Carla and other members of our family, even to the extent that they pretend to, or be in ignorance of , or prevaricate about the place our enlightened ancestor holds in their theology, and how this affects his progeny and affiliates like myself. Perhaps, to be imprecise, or to, using a colloquialism, hazard a guess, we are of the elect, seeing, or as it happens we are descended, myself indirectly and Carla directly from He who was responsible for bringing them the Gift of Light. Ah, sir, such a noble gift, a rare gift, you can’t buy that at Harrods, not even in those days, and as for these days, well Carla tells me, worse days, worse days ... Perhaps, to end it, to finish it, to gloss over it, we are seen as part of that Godhead and thus beyond their comprehension—perhaps, for I don’t know.”

  ‘I muttered under my breath “codswallop”, for no one, and surely not any of the locals could believe such, such drivel. On a foray out into the wilderness of the streets, I had been accosted by one of these so-called natives who had sold me of all things an Australian Aboriginal boomerang. He claimed that his people had invented it, and on returning to my air-conditioned shelter I turned it over to find a cryptic stamp which revealed that it had been made by Boonah Enterprises, Cairns, Queensland. I doubt that such a villain could have accepted this old dodderer as part of some such absurdity labelled “Godhead”.

  ‘But, but what was this baloney to me? I strove to push away my uncharitable thoughts as he pressed on me the excellent gin and lime which he again assured me was the drink for the tropics. After a few, I could not but agree with him and we were happily ensconced in the coolness mumbling obscurities and repetitions at each other as we downed the drinks ...

  ‘Solid land beneath my feet, the relief from the heat and my pleasant time indoors, not forgetting the numberless gin and limes which eventually made me see the Resident through a blue alcoholic daze, made me recover my good spirits, though I did not feel the urge for action of any kind. Still, when I was not with the Resident, with gin and lime in hand, I reclined in a cane lounger and went over my old coups and thus began to rebuild my confidence. Hermansburg from the shelter of the Residency appeared a city of opportunities. Going over and over this in my mind, how repetition grows on one, I decided to stroll the length of the main street and being the tourist stared at the people, some of whom in skin colouring and bodily structure reminded me of gingerbread men. Later on, I was to learn the reason for their appearance, but not then. I met and bought my island artifact, the boomerang, from an affable merchant, who told me he was refining his skills for the soon-to-be coming hordes of tourists and thanked me for allowing him to practise on me. He even insisted that I sign his visitors book. I scrawled an obscenity and escaped his dismal shop, to duck down two or three drab little lanes ostensibly in order to make for a beach, but really in search of those golden voluptuous women skilled in the practices of love which that painter fellow, Gangrene or some such name, had painted, and which I saw in an exhibition in the Queensland Cultural Centre when I was trying to do a deal with a most boring bloke who insisted on pointing out the features of the pictures as art when all I was interested in were the women depicted in them.

  ‘So much for fancy and so much for art. The few women I came across were like women the world over. We had better and prettier specimens in Surfers’. I was so put out by the lack of the nubile females I had imagined that on one remembered evening when Carla and Miss Tamada joined us for dinner, I tried a few coarse jests on the matter.

  ‘'Miss Tamada wrinkled her nose in that disgusting habit of hers and Carla raised her eyebrows. Such was the reception of my bon-mots that I quickly dropped the subject, having no wish to wound either of the women’s feelings, or to be thought vulgar, so instead I began a discreet lampooning of the Resident.

  ‘Carla looked at me thoughtfully, then inquired: “Why are you so cheerful? You used to be so, so—how shall I put it without hurting your feelings—morbid, but now you are the very life of the party. Perhaps you should make gin and lime your drink, for certainly it has a better effect on you than beer.”

  ‘ “Perhaps, he should try poison,” muttered Miss Tamada, “for his wit certainly needs putting to death.”

  ‘ “You little old grouch,” I gently mocked her. “You know what they say about oriental women?”

  ‘ “Yes, that we make excellent businesswomen and make the most of opportunities unlike some men ...”

  ‘ “Riyoko, Riyoko,” laughed Carla, “and you know what they say about girls who work all the time and never play?”

  ‘ “No, what do they say?”

  ‘ “They become bad lays.”

  ‘ “Oh, do you think that?” and the two women exchanged secretive smiles that I found disconcerting.

  ‘Now something occurred which I had been dreading. Carla had urged me to carry on my pretence of being a scientist. I demurred and she asked me again. I refused, then she said that her uncle would grow suspicious if I could not convince him that I had a legitimate purpose for being on the island. “He after all is the sole person for determining who is or is not allowed to stay, and as he is somewhat cantankerous and inclined towards suspicion of Australians, he might very well order you to leave on the Tui-tui.” I agreed with some trepidation, for the uncle, at least according to Carla, had been a scientist of some renown before he came to the island, and this made me wonder how I could successfully carry off my imposture when he most likely had all the facts at his fingertips so to say. I breathed a little easier when she assured me that Sir Joseph had forgotten everything as he had pickled his brain in gin.

  ‘'Now the time had come. “I believe, I declare, or rather I have heard that you are an embryologist,” he said. I waited believing I was in for it. A mild relief came as Carla turned to Miss Tamada and whispered: “They certainly are a strange pair.”

  ‘ “What?” I said.

  ‘ “An embryologist?” he repeated in wonder.

  ‘ “What do you get when you put one pair with another pair?” Miss Tamada whispered to Carla.

  ‘ “Odd balls,” Carla suggested.

  ‘ “Pairpair, which means in ...”

  ‘But I was looking at Sir Joseph as I nodded. He certainly was a weird one. He was short and stout, so different from my long and lean look. His face was sallow and dried out with a few strands of hair dangling from his chin. It was a face which made others swear off growing beards, and I never shaved as closely as I did when I was staying there. Sir Jo
seph also had long gone troppo and eschewed the proper tropic dress as worn in Queensland of open-neck shirt, shorts and long socks and shoes, or if not this a safari suit. These were the acceptable canons of dress and I kept to them. But this man who was an official of the British Government and supposedly ruled the island, wore a sarong draped loosely over his paunch and a once-white singlet over his sunken chest. He really was a sight to be endured only with liberal effusions of gin and lime. In looking at him, it was difficult to avoid conclusions being drawn about the beauty or lack of it in the human race.

  ‘Well, I was sitting with the two giggling women in a low cane chair conscious of how his knees pushed like cucumbers, giant zucchinis, marrows, or something like that against the sarong cloth, when he had potted the question, to which I had nodded.

  ‘He repeated: “An embryologist, eh?” Then he swished the ice cubes around in the bottom of his glass and called to the boy who looked after him to come and replenish his drink ... and mine. While this was being done, he declared with some satisfaction: “An embryologist, eh?”

  ‘Not only the “eh”, question or statement, but the tone of satisfaction struck me. He had been waiting for such an expert to show up, had he some sort of project requiring such a scientist? Thus I asked myself, though I should have asked: what was the reason for the satisfaction? But that is not my way, I always jump to conclusions, and this time I jumped the wrong way.