Part Two

 

ABORIGINAL CHARTER OF RIGHTS   We want hope, not racialism, Brotherhood, not ostracism, Black advance, not white ascendance: Make us equals, not dependants. We need help, not exploitation, We want freedom, not frustration; Not control, but self-reliance, Independence, not compliance, Not rebuff, but education, Self-respect, not resignation. Free us from a mean subjection, From a bureaucratic Protection. Let’s forget the old-time slavers: Give us fellowship, not favours; Encouragement, not prohibitions, Homes, not settlements and missions. We need love, not overlordship, Grip of hand, not whip-hand wardship; Opportunity that places White and black on equal basis. You dishearten, not defend us, Circumscribe, who should befriend us. Give us welcome, not aversion, Give us choice, not cold coercion, Status, not discrimination, Human rights, not segregation. You the law, like Roman Pontius, Make us proud, not colour-conscious; Give the deal you still deny us, Give goodwill, not bigot bias; Give ambition, not prevention, Confidence, not condescension; Give incentive, not restriction, Give us Christ, not crucifixion. Though baptised, blessed and Bibled We are still tabooed and libelled. You devout Salvation-sellers, Make us neighbours, not fringe-dwellers; Make us mates, not poor relations, Citizens, not serfs on stations. Must we native Old Australians In our own land rank as aliens? Banish bans and conquer caste, Then we’ll win our own at last.

From: We Are Going By: Oodgeroo of the tribe Noonuccal (formerly known as Kath Walker) Published by Jacaranda Press

 

11: Where no Birds Fly

Ribcott Street is an ugly varicose vein between two suburban arteries of the city. It has been cut by the railway line at one end and sealed off from the river by the wall of the tile factory. There are zigzag cracks in the roadway, pavement slabs are broken, dog-legged picket fences are propped up by pale sickly weeds. The factory wall shuts off the sun for all but three hours of the day. The few scraggly gardens which manage to survive the rain of soot have stunted shrubs with weird flowers, looking as if they were grown under rocks.

Most of the houses are tin sheds with four windows, two doors and a warped wooden veranda front and rear. Yet Ribcott Street is not bleak or barren enough to be free from smell. The stink of the backyards is caused by soapy water from sinks and wash-troughs flowing into so-called drywells, hidden just below the surface of the festering earth. Illuta said this was the odour very old people get before they die. It might have been a lot worse if the local council had not made the landlords connect the toilets to deep sewerage.

I was sitting on the front veranda, picking at a dry crust of blood on top of my head, when I first met Helen. She was a do-gooder. All of the West Stuart neighbourhood receives more than its fair share of lady-bountifuls and Ribcott Street is a favourite route. It isn’t because the west side has any monopoly on poverty or the slums are much bigger or better than half a dozen other places in the city. Ribcott happens to be the shortest route between the district hospital and the leading golf club. For those heading back to the posh suburbs on the other side of town, the railway crossing saves time by missing the traffic lights of the main city block.

I watched the two women working their way along the street. Both carried expensive leather satchels. I speculated on whether it was biscuits and bully beef or bibles and brotherly love they were dishing out. The tap of high heels on the pavement brisk and sure; knocks on the front doors firm and resolute. It would be about ten thirty; the time when the sun hits the front verandas of Ribcott Street, also the hour when the ‘Friends of Stuart Hospital’ are given the bum-rush by anxious nurses and belligerent matrons, eager to be shot of them before doctors’ rounds.

Even before meeting Helen I knew exactly what the ‘Friends’ said to one another. My next door neighbour spent each morning sitting on the bench outside the hospital, waiting for the day’s crop of alcoholics to be discharged. The alcohs usually had two or even three weeks’ back pension to come; depending on the length of time they had spent in hospital drying out. Bessie helped them drink it. For some reason most of the Wahbuta tribe are exceptionally good mimics. Bessie would stand at the wash-troughs on her back veranda singing Wahbuta songs, then break off and say in flawless English: “Those gladioli of yours, Gwen, were simply divine; such wonderful colours. I think flowers make so much difference to the sick ...” Bessie didn’t have the faintest idea what gladioli were; yet wasn’t trying to be funny. She just liked the sound of the words and the voices.

The women had now worked their way along the street and were pounding industriously on my neighbour’s door. Bessie was the first black woman to rent a house in West Stuart. The landlord couldn’t get a white tenant, because the roof not only leaked water, but also exuded a sticky grey fluid composed of clay dust and soot from the smokestacks of the tile factory. Bessie said the fluid came from the dead people on the roof. In the Wahbuta tribe the dead are placed on a platform in a tree and allowed to decompose before the bones are inserted in hollow logs. I don’t know if Bessie really believed there were bodies on her roof or not; in either case it didn’t seem to worry her at all. Naturally after Bessie moved in the white families on both sides moved out; this left a couple more houses vacant. I got one and Jess Willard the other.

Bessie’s front door was only about forty feet away and the constant knocking echoed in my head. The sound began to drive jagged splinters of thought into the carefully numbed brain. As the older woman was looking at me and impatiently jiggling her satchel, I thought I had better say something.

‘Woman belonga dat place, no dere, missus,’ I called.

‘WeIl!’ The old girl sniffed and stalked across the veranda. ‘You might have said so before.’

I also might have mentioned that the occupant was out in the backyard digging up the sewer pipe. But I didn’t think Bessie would like the information spread around.

I must have grown careless about keeping the brain blank, for suddenly I was back in the courtroom. The lawyer said: ‘What was your wife and this man doing when you entered the tile factory?’

‘Dancing your honour.’

‘Is that all they were doing?’

‘Yes!’

‘Had you any reason to suppose your conjugal rights had been violated?’

‘No.’

‘Isn’t it true your wife was naked at the time in question?’

‘She wore no clothes. It was a tribal dance ...’

Helen brought me back to the present by trying to close Bessie’s gate behind her. The rusty iron frame had no hinges; it teetered and fell across the path, missing her ankles by the thickness of nylon. As she bent down and struggled to lift it, I really saw her for the first time. This was no ladylike little finger act; Helen took a good grip and the sinews stood out on the backs of her legs with the strain. The rust and dirt didn’t seem to bother her.

‘Leave it, Helen,’ the other woman snapped. ‘Don’t mind the wretched thing.’

But Helen, with a surprising burst of strength for her slight figure, stood the heavy gate up against the fence post. She saw me watching her and grinned.

I felt the performance deserved something. ‘Him bim proper cheeky fella, missus,’ I said, ‘all falla down alonga track allatime.’

She smiled in reply and wiped her hands on a handkerchief.

‘Come along, Helen,’ the old girl snapped. ‘I have to pick Bertram up during the lunch hour and have him fitted for a school blazer.’

‘You run along, Mrs Mackecknie,’ the girl answered with complete assurance. ‘I should like to visit a few more of these people.’

‘That might not be wise, dear,’ Mrs Mackecknie said flatly. ‘Don’t you think you had better come along with me.’ It was an order.

‘I shall be perfectly all right, dear.’ Helen dimpled and smiled with her mouth; her eyes had the blank cold stare women reserve for one another.

Mrs Mackecknie returned the look and snarled. ‘If you are sure you will be all right, dear.’ She was already walking away.

They called a few, ‘bye-bye dears’, and then it was my turn. I couldn’t think of any way to get out of it; besides it is always easier to take the gifts than go through the long rigmarole of why you don’t need bibles or biscuits.

Helen finished making a mess of her lace edged hanky and picked up the leather satchel. She smiled. ‘Well at least I won’t have any trouble with your gate. Will I now?’

I worked up a deep southern chuckle that would have done credit to Paul Robeson. ‘Him bim proper easy gate, missus. Some cheeky fella bim takeum allaway.’

I remembered the landlord had been rather voluble on the subject of the missing gate. He went into a lot of detail about renting good houses to thieving boongs and ended with the familiar theme: ‘The more a man tries to do for you thieving black bastards ...’

Helen was laughing as she carefully selected a footing for her spiked heels among the broken bricks of the path. She had ankles like wrists and walked with a quick birdlike step that set her pleated skirt swinging.

I stood up and looked at my feet; adopting the correct posture for receiving a handout. ‘You bim mission lady, missus?’ I muttered in encouragement. Bending my neck was a mistake.

‘Oh! You poor thing!’ she exclaimed. ‘Whatever happened to the top of your head?’

‘Mebim proper clumsy fella, missus,’ I apologised.

‘Well we will have to get something on those cuts,’ she said with brisk efficiency. ‘Come inside and let me bathe them for you.’

I was still looking at my feet and missed the initial movement. Before I could stop her, Helen had taken three rapid steps across the veranda and flicked the front door open. I snarled and jumped to close it, but she was already inside and looking around with open mouthed amazement.

‘Good heavens! Why it’s beautiful’ she exclaimed in incredulous disbelief. ‘However did you ... I can hardly believe it!’

I made a grab for her arm, but in a flutter of excitement she had darted across the room and alighted near the bookshelves. I stalked around the carpet, itching to get within throttling distance; the small hands and tapered fingers stopped racing across the gold lettering of the calf-bound books and she was off again. To touch the copper plate on the mantel; the Dresden figurines. She danced around the imitation leather chairs and glided from painting to mural with little squeals of joy; unconsciously posing straight blond hair and milky whiteness against the darker patterned scroll of the wallpaper. Her skirt brushed the fake tapestry screen and it slid open on well-oiled rollers. For a few seconds the uninvited guest stood with her back to me peeping into the bedroom; bottom stuck out in a cheeky flaunting of my privacy. Then turned in a swirl of petticoats and stood perfectly still; lips parted in a breathless question, I glared at her, my hands twitching at my sides.

With a trace of a smile, Helen mocked me in fluent pidgin. ‘Camp belonga you bim plenty alright sit-down, comealonga sundown.’

I grinned in spite of myself. ‘Now you have admired the modest comforts of my home, would you mind getting to hell out of it?’

She chuckled. ‘Not until I have fixed those cuts on your head.’

I had a sudden impulse to tear the complacency away; to get through to the raw meat of her neat little soul and see how white and shiny it really was. ‘How long have you been in the handout business?’ I probed.

She smiled and extracted a small first aid kit from the satchel. ‘Ever since I left finishing school. About three years.’

‘Found any rank depravity yet?’

Helen bent over me and began snipping the hair away from the cuts. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she answered absent-mindedly. ‘Did you get in a fight?’

‘No, I did it with a razor.’ There was just enough disinterest in the question not to make a lie worthwhile.

‘You mean to tell me after three years of crawling around the cesspools you haven’t struck one patch of vile foulness? Maybe just a little satanic loathsomeness?’ She shook her head. ‘Not even a bit of unnatural practice to clutch icy fingers around your sweet pure heart; to send vicarious thrills up your unbent spine?’

‘I haven’t found that sort of thing,’ Helen answered primly, ‘because I don’t look for it. However did you manage to slash the top of your head with a razor? There are four or five cuts and they’re quite deep.’

‘I did it deliberately. It’s the standard tribal procedure for counteracting loss.’

‘Does it work?’ she calmly enquired.

‘No. As a student of scum you might be interested to know pain does not increase or decrease mental anguish. It merely transfers a balance of physical sensation to the other side of the scale.’

‘The self-pity side?’

‘Exactly.’

She walked around the curved breakfast-bar and rummaged in a kitchen cupboard for a suitable bowl. ‘You get your philosophy the hard way, don’t you?’

‘How did you get yours?’

Helen filled the bowl with water and added disinfectant. ‘Mostly from books, I suppose.’ She came back and sat on the side of the chair, dabbing at my skull with a piece of cotton wool. Her skirt was hiked up over one knee.

I got tired of the sanctimonious act. ‘Ah come off it,’ I snarled. ‘You leave your golf club and cocktail parties to climb down into the pit, reeking of faith, hope and charity. If you don’t descend for a little roll in the slime, what do you come for?’

She stood up and walked to the back door to empty the bowl; stopped in the doorway with the sun on her blond hair and smiled at me over her shoulder. ‘Mummy always said, virtue was its own reward.’

‘And apart from that,’ I sneered, ‘there is always a chance a black man might rape you. It never happens, but it might.’

She raised pale gold eyebrows and walked out. After about five minutes I followed to see what was keeping her. For some time I hadn’t done much laughing, but now the cap came off and it roared out of me. ‘I thought you didn’t look at depravity,’ I bellowed.

Helen didn’t answer. She stood on the back veranda watching Bessie Trotter; the fence had collapsed in a couple of places and we had an unrestricted view. Bessie was standing in a hole about four feet deep, shovelling furiously with a long handled shovel; stripped to the waist, the top of her dress rolled around her flabby belly. Every time Bessie threw a shovelful of dirt onto the mound behind her head, the long pendulous breasts would slap against the side of her neck.

‘It’s a pity Bessie’s breasts aren’t just a bit longer,’ I chortled. ‘Then she could toss them over her shoulders out of the way.’

Helen had turned pink with embarrassment. I followed her back inside. ‘The lady with the shovel is Mrs Trotter,’ I informed her. ‘She is digging up the sewer pipe. You can tell your society friends all about it.’

Helen dropped the first aid kit while putting it back in the satchel; her composure had also slipped a little.

‘The sewer pipe?’ she asked in pretended indifference; trying not to look lost and out of her depth.

‘Yes! With the toilet blocked and the health inspector due tomorrow, Bessie has no time to waste. She must get it cleared before he comes and has the job done for her.’

‘It seems to me like the landlord’s responsibility.’

‘Not in this case,’ I hastened to explain. ‘In Bessie’s trade accidents happen and it seemed to her the best place to dispose of this mishap was down the toilet. As you saw, she was mistaken and if the health inspector ...’

‘You seem to enjoy your neighbour’s troubles,’ Helen interrupted as she picked up the leather bag and prepared to leave.

I walked over to the cocktail cabinet and unlocked it. ‘Would you join me in a drink before you go?’

She frowned in baffled annoyance, but put the bag down. ‘I thought you were anxious to get rid of me?’

The malicious satisfaction of watching her wriggle abated a little. ‘I feel like talking to someone for five minutes. What do you drink?’

Helen sat demurely on the edge of the chair. ‘I don’t mind. A small brandy; whatever you’re having.’

My hands were shaking as I poured the drinks. I hadn’t slept or eaten anything for the last three days. Not since the police woman came for Illuta’s clothes and I finally got it through my head she wouldn’t be coming back.

I became convinced if I stopped talking and sat perfectly still, then either tears or something desperate would result; it wasn’t quite that vague. The something had more than an outline of violence and I knew it would be directed at Helen and all she stood for. Probably rape; the utmost expression of anger and contempt.

I said: ‘By the way, I don’t enjoy Bessie’s troubles. If I thought she wouldn’t be able to clear the pipe in time I would help her.’

‘I am sure you would. The poor woman certainly looks as though she could use a friend.’

The rape thing was still there; I didn’t want her approval. ‘Nuts! Bessie has plenty of friends; she’s a prostitute. It’s a never-ending source of amazement to a Wahbuta lubra that white men will pay to sleep with her. In Bessie’s tribe the husband might occasionally lend his wife to a visiting friend, but there would certainly be no question of payment. However, when in Rome ...’

Helen was watching me over the top of her glass and taking little sips. ‘Are there many other coloured families in this street? I have only recently returned from the Eastern States and most of the people I knew here seem to have gone.’ She seemed to recognise the necessity for me to keep talking.

‘There are only two white houses left in Ribcot,’ I raved on. ‘One belongs to Mr Tollman and his old wife; they are both active members of the Salvation Army. The other is rented by Fred Hambly; he’s an alcoholic. When sober enough, Fred tells anyone who will listen alcoholism is a disease; he reads passages out of books to prove it. Mrs Hambly is a prostitute; she says prostitution isn’t a disease, it’s a bloody necessity with a drunken bastard like Fred for a husband.’

My spring unwound and I sat watching the effect of the midday sun, coming down the chimney and reflecting off the brass firescreen onto Helen’s legs. She saw me watching her and held out the empty glass.

‘Thank you for the drink.’ She made a half-hearted attempt to get up, then relaxed as I refilled her glass.

‘Thank you for the first aid and the fraternising. You must realise all of us boongs are fanatically colour conscious.’

‘I suppose you would be.’ She smiled. ‘I understood about the pidgin English if that’s what you mean.’

‘No it isn’t. All I meant was, you’re incredibly white, aren’t you? Damn near Snow White! No wonder the boongs thought the first white settlers were the ghosts of their ancestors.’

‘I imagined I still had some of my summer tan left.’ She pulled her skirt down an inch and changed the subject. ‘This is a really lovely room; you must be very proud of your home.’

‘Copied from a picture in a magazine,’ I informed her. ‘Everything duplicated, faked or imitated, right down to the china doll and the copper plate. The dividing wall had to be torn out to make enough space. Some day the landlord is going to find out about the missing wall, but up to date I have managed to keep him and the neighbours out of the house.’

‘You copied it from a picture! Then there is no woman’s influence in all this?’

‘Do you imagine any man would go to so much trouble just for himself?’

She pursed her lips and looked around. ‘No, I suppose not. I was just trying to visualise the woman who would fit this room.’

‘What type do you have in mind?’

Helen frowned and tugged at her ear. ‘Someone not unlike me I suspect, but more precise and exacting in her ways.’ She grinned. ‘How am I doing?’

‘You are going quite well. Perhaps the slight uncompromising stiffness you notice belongs to me; still you qualify for the jackpot question.’

‘And that is?’

‘The woman you picture in this room. What colour is her skin?’

Helen blushed, even the tips of her ears went red; yet without the slightest hesitation, she answered: ‘White.’

I emptied the glass of brandy I had poured for myself into the fireplace and watched the liquor soak the bark of the logs. It was at this moment I reached a decision; knew exactly what had to be done.

Helen laughed a bit shakily. ‘I’m sorry, but that was an unfair question; no offence intended.’

‘None taken; you just helped me make up my mind.’

‘Is that why you threw your drink away? Or don’t you like old brandy?’

I told her the truth. ‘I have never tasted brandy or any other alcoholic drink. Abunda dissolve in alcohol.’

‘Yet you keep a cocktail cabinet full of expensive liquor?’

‘Yes. The availability gave me a certain amount of morbid satisfaction.’

As I stood up and carefully replaced the glasses on the cabinet, I felt curiously light and relaxed, as though a heavy weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

I said to Helen: ‘At the risk of seeming rude I should like to thank you for the first aid and wish you good afternoon. There is something I have to do.’

She gave a little bob curtsy and laughed. ‘As we are getting all formal and priggish, I also thank you, Mr Ahaa, for your excellent brandy and doubtful hospitality.’

‘Tribesmen have no surnames,’ I mocked her, ‘but you could call me Mr Abunda.’

She smiled and held out her hand. ‘Helen of the Reeves tribe, Mr Abunda.’

I recognised genuine friendliness and at the same time realised how great the gulf was between us. Helen was close to the end product of her race; the thousand years of mastery culminating in small-boned easy tolerance. Serene composure; almost total lack of prejudice.

I took her hand. ‘Irritcha is my tribal name, I am called Chalky.’

In all the tribes, after an exchange of names, the former stranger is given a precise place in the group and an exact relationship with all its members; even to the point of what portion of the food may be eaten and from which totem a marriage could be arranged. I didn’t know what my relationship with Helen might be. I wish I had.

I walked with her to the front gate. She said: ‘Goodbye, Irritcha. Can I come and treat those cuts again?’

I grinned. ‘Well I can’t say you know where I live because tonight this place is going to burn to the ground.’

Helen thought I was joking.

 

About five o’clock I saw Jess Willard coming home from work and ducked around to the back veranda. Bessie had cleared the pipe and for a while there was a continual splashing sound as she filled in the now flooded hole. The whistle blew at the tile factory for the change of shift.

For a long time I sat on the back steps listening to the night noises; the bitterness fogging up my brain, a rolling in and out in waves of disgust. Hours after Bessie had finished with the shovel, stones and little clods of earth plopped into the water from the edge of the crater she had left behind ...

... Like the sound of fish jumping in a rock pool ... Half a day spent in making a fishing line from palm fibre and thorns ... Four hours more for me to catch three small fish ... It took Illuta ten minutes to extract the sap from a special root and tip the juice into the water; two or three more minutes before every fish in the pool came floating to the surface belly up. I told her I didn’t want to eat poisoned fish. She said they were only sleeping; gave me a patronising smile as she selected half a dozen of the largest and let the other swim away ... So as a tribesman I’m a flop ... It proves she knows more about catching fish than I do ... What of it! ... With the money I earned we could have had fish and chips every night of the week, cooked in batter, wrapped in news paper, sprinkled with salt and vinegar ...

Further up the street it sounded as if at least three women were all getting murdered at once. The high pitch of the voices held part of the tone; the one cry Illuta gave as the policewoman pulled her arms from the veranda post and took her away. It was probably only Lulu screaming at her old man, the pink snakes or both.

Then Ribcott Street was cemetery quiet. A street light at the back of the lane accentuated the darkness. Like the honeymoon fires in the centre of the great plain ... wells of light with two tiny figures crouched at the bottom and all of the shining dead of the Abunda looking down on us ... Let them look! ... So it was Illuta who fed me for two months ... Illuta who could twirl the fires sticks and produce a flame while I developed nothing but blisters ... Illuta whose whizzing nulla-nulla dropped kangaroos in their tracks while my spears shattered on rocks ... What of it! ... Rip the roof off No. 36 and let the stars see what I did provide for my wife ... For what? ... So an ignorant savage could have me testifying in court ... ‘Isn’t it true your wife was naked at the time in question?’ ... Of course it was true! How else would you expect to find a creature one link away from the Inapatua?

I went into the house, turned on the lights; threw half a gallon of kerosene and two bottles of methylated spirits on the walls. This had to be a good fire; it was essential to clear away the mess of our existence and leave a fallow ash. I emptied the contents of the cocktail cabinet over the double bed. Nomad tribes always fire the grass of the country they have passed through; so it will be fresh and green when they return. I told this to the policeman who arrested me – he was not amused.

When it was ready to go I spent another quarter of an hour tidying up. Washed the glasses Helen and I had used and put them back; vacuumed the carpet and ran a polishing rag over the furniture until the wood reflected the light. Maybe a man values his sweat more than his life; sees his essence dripping from his body and seeping into the earth. He says in effect: My own sweat and not the juice of others built this monument. No matter how futile or useless; this thing proves I lived.

Two years of sweat and aching muscle went into that room; there had to be some justification. It was beautiful both in the planning and the burning.

When the mattress and the walls were well alight I locked the doors and threw the key under the house; stood on the back veranda and watched. There were moving shapes in the room; rolling white fleecy clouds and black thunderheads. Tongues of bright fire licked at the glass of the windows and flickered like sheet lightning in a gathering storm. The flames had form and symmetry separate from the things they consumed; a greedy all devouring fire. Until the windows broke there wasn’t much of a roar.

By the time my neighbours awoke and the fire brigade arrived the roof had started to fall in and it was all over. I had shifted up near the back fence; partly to escape the heat and partly the crowd.

Col Parker, the landlord, was overjoyed with the fire. He cursed me in a jovial fashion for about ten minutes; kept saying: ‘Lucky for me it’s insured.’ I gathered the place was covered for a good deal more than it was worth; which still wouldn’t have to be much. Jess Willard wanted me to come home to his place, but I said I wanted to rake through the ashes when they cooled down a bit.

After Col and Jess left I squatted between the back fence and the toilet; where I couldn’t be seen by the rubbernecks who still hung around the smouldering embers. It was full daylight now and I was watching a little river of watery ash go trickling past into the lane.

In stunned awareness I suddenly realised I crouched at an altar. Here! Illuta had knelt to pray! In instant humility lanced with shame and self-contempt I saw the tarnished figure I had created become a consecrated child of God. The slovenly housewife I had abused and defiled with a filthy cloak of civilisation had knelt here heavenly-minded to worship and adore. Every screaming attack about unmade beds and uncooked meals had been countered with reverence. For every debasing act of convention forced upon her Illuta in genuflexion venerated her God; repaid slur with homage.

 

I felt as though I had received a violent electric shock. I must have seen; my eyes had looked even though my brain turned away. It was right at my feet. I drove stiffened fingers hard into the ground and felt the stones tearing back the nails as I scrabbled for severed roots. An epic poem was written here! Perhaps the blood dripping from my fingers gave me brief contact with the Earth Mother – I saw only a blinding truth. Not an excuse for Illuta’s failure to adjust; nothing to do with the pitiful shabby mantle I had forced her to live under. This was the altar of a pure and holy being. It showed not only affinity with the earth but a true oneness with everything-on-above-below.

I squatted at the edge of a shallow pit; a flat square where the earth had been scraped away, about eight foot square and four inches deep. The horror of the crime I had committed mounted with an ever-increasing intensity. It came first from sight, then when this was saturated seemed to soak in through a million pores. As a tree breathes so did the appalling truth enter my mind and body; primitive, long-closed cells opened hungry starving mouths and sucked at the polluted air. My feet ached to burst through their leather coverings and wriggle deep into the dirt; an agony for the sap and sustenance of my people wracked me. I cried out with the unbearable pain of a separation from the earth – from Illuta.

The floor of the pit was of soft red clay in which could be graphically seen the footprints of hundreds of birds. It seemed as though all the birds of Australia had at one time strutted about in this one place. Every winged thing; from the almost invisible marks of the sandpiper; to crested pigeons, cockatoos, ibis and the heavily indented tread of the cassowary. Each toe and claw mark exactly as deep as the weight of the feathered body would sink it in the clay; every line of every joint faithfully reproduced. Those who knew the tracks of birds could say without doubt: A plover walked here, a quail there; an emu walked across this yard ... Crossed the gaping jaws of hell and flew through the deathly grey smog to walk the festering earth ... of this frightful place where no birds fly.

Here Illuta knelt to pray. She didn’t say the words, she drew the symbols – the feet of birds. While I was at work she crouched behind the toilet and spent the lonely hours and days in prayer:

“I, Illuta, recognise no victory over nature; neither wall nor roof nor covering shall hide me from thine eyes of mercy. Dearly beloved rain, sun, root and sap to thee do I send up my sighs, mourning and weeping in this pollenless air. I beseech all living things, large and small, to open their jaws and beaks and mouths to pray for me. Numbukulla reach down and pluck your daughter from the jangaga; from those who plan the everlasting destruction or enslavement of everything unlike their own twisted seed. To the whispering worship of wing and tree; to the rivers throaty praise; to the silent homage of the rocks and mountains I add my desperate plea ...!”

I can remember rocking on my heels and howling like a dog; tearing a picket off the fence and beating myself across the head until I lost consciousness. When I came to I did it again. I was still there when the police arrived. As I said, the landlord was delighted with the fire; but the insurance company was not. I got six months for arson.

---

 

12: Red Feathers

Every week, while I was in prison, Jock McEwan sent me four packets of cigarettes and a small tin of coffee. I have no idea why. The only thing we had in common was that we both worked for Markostein. Jock still does. Probably if Markostein had been less of a caricature, more subtle in feeding his voracious appetite for possessions, I might never have fully understood why Illuta began to die the minute she crossed the tribal boundaries.

Julius Markostein holds a long-term lease on a raised concrete platform owned by the Stuart Market Trust. There are one hundred and twenty-three similar rostrums under the sprawling roof of the S.M.T.

In the early hours of the morning, before the giant gates are rolled back, the great stone desert is as clean and barren as a prison. Arc lights in the roof shine down on a wasteland of cement; the wooden office buildings in the centre of each bare stage add to the dreary, unaltering monotony. In itself the S.M.T. is nothing; like the prison its sterile space is tenanted by productive men.

Only after the gates are opened and the milling sea of trucks have unloaded their mountains of produce do the markets become a reality. The sweating dago unloading his crates of cauliflowers and cabbages; mumma with a black shawl covering her head and bare muscular arms handing the cases of oranges to her husband, or dragging the bags of pumpkins across the battered deck of the truck. They are the essential; the presence in space; the real, actual, positive, absolute. Watermelons, radishes, carrots, apples, pears, everything growing, emerging, coming forth, compliments the grower. Nothing can be added or subtracted by the ratlike cunning of the negative figures who stand between grower and buyer. Illuta knew the strength in the thrusting seed; knew when certain green shoots of desert plants broke the earth, when water lily bulbs would be ripe and ready in lagoons far to the north. Knew the talk of trees and what one plant said about another; heard the whispered secrets of ants and beetles concerning rain or storm. IIluta would not understand the dealers in the market place who traded in nix, nihility, ether. Neither did I until I sat on a prison bunk rubbing the bumps and cuts on my head and thinking of the claws of birds.

No outside influence penetrates a prison cell; separated from present and future there only remain the stark facts of what was.

Markostein was a pair of fat clutching paws, forever extended towards other people’s possessions. Almost every item, both in his office and home, is a bargain; a mute record of some personal tragedy. It was all good stuff, he bought cheap and second-hand, but not shoddy. Julius read the death notices before he turned to the ‘For Sale’ columns and could remember the death of a complete stranger occurring weeks before his effects came up for auction. By this method he obtained two or three cars a year and always sold them for more than he paid. One time he bought a Humber Snipe from a recent widow for three hundred pounds and sold it two weeks later for eight fifty. Cars were his hobby.

The carpets, lounge suite, typewriters, beds, filing cabinets, furniture, everything Markostein owned had a little history of misfortune attached to it. His constantly changing possessions came through receivers’ hands; had been offered at deceased estate sales. Most of the electrical appliances had been repossessed by a hire-purchase company and resold by ‘public auction’. Only Markostein and the manager of this company knew when the auctions were to take place and the bidding was not brisk. I suppose it is merely coincidence, but Markostein’s wife is a divorcee. There are three children, all by the first marriage.

About three o’clock in the mornings the big fridge motor, outside the back wall of the cell block, plays its nightly fanfare for horsepower ... If it hadn’t been for the five ton Ford I might have worked as offsider for another six months on Jock McEwan’s truck and then gone back to Table-Tops and Illuta ... Maybe I wouldn’t have ... I don’t know.

Markostein bought the Ford from a bankrupt mining company; it was supposed to be a used vehicle, but was in fact brand new. The little tits of rubber still stuck out from the tyre treads and the footplates weren’t even scratched. When I first saw her she was roped down to a flattop railway truck; I only had my licence about a week. Markostein said he liked the offsiders to have a licence in case the driver was away sick.

‘Better get her off,’ Jock grumbled. ‘If I don’t get another load of spuds before dinner, it means three trips this arvo.’

I kept looking at the Ford and wondering what her new driver would be like. ‘When’s the new bloke starting, Jock?’

‘I don’t know.’ If you ask him something Jock has to straighten up and think about it. ‘Tomorrow I suppose.’ The locomotion centre of his brain must be connected to the voice box. ‘Shud up and get a fuggin move on, Chalky. I told you I gotta get them spuds.’

McEwen looks a bit like a gorilla. The mat of hair on the chest spreads up over the top of a black singlet and thins out across the lumpy shoulders. Dark curly hair on the thick arms grows right down the wrists and across the back of stubby fingers; there are little tufts of hair growing out of his ears. Jock can sink a hook into a bag of spuds and toss it to the top of a six high stack without effort; can back a loaded semitrailer into a bay with less than a quarter inch of spare room. And he makes up little one-line songs about traffic lights and girls and eating lunch. .Jock sings them to himself below the level of the engine roar. ‘Stop and go and eat my crib yo ho ho ho.’ ‘See her little bum wobble, twiddle twaddle twiddle twaddle.’

I kept wondering about the Ford and couldn’t get my tongue to leave it alone. ‘Marko had a big queue outside his office this morning. There must be a lot of truck drivers out of work?’

Jock fought with a stubborn knot but the fingers stopped tugging at it the instant his mouth opened. ‘Half them bludgers aren’t looking for work. They hang around the labour exchange picking up the dole.’ He remembered the rope and got lousy about stopping. ‘That’s what you’ll be doin’ if you don’t get a fuggin move on.’

All the ropes are off except the one you’re buggerising about with. Why do they apply for the jobs if they don’t want work?’

‘Because they fuggin well have to or the dole cuts out. Get in the cab and see if the bastard’ll start. Check the oil and ignition.’

I suppose I caught the horse hallucination off Jock, although Illuta also invests inanimate objects with personality. Jock taught me to feel the pull as well as listen to the engine; talked of horse power as though it was the living flesh of horses; said a perfect change down was like lightly flicking the team across the rump and feeling them surge into the harness. During the early part of the depression Jock did some contract dam sinking with an eight-horse team of Clydesdales. If I let the revs falloff and the vibration started in the cab, the shuddering grief of it would be in his eyes. While learning to drive I would feel the team stumble and bellow in hideous agony if the tortured metal of the gear cogs refused to mesh. I learnt to listen and get the change down in at the exact moment the revs began to falloff. If Jock’s old Chev went into a steep pinch in too high a gear, I would see the sinew standing out on his throat and arms; my own neck and shoulders would start to ache from the pull. Jock loves the wonderful horses under cylinder heads and hates to see them belted to their knees.

I switched on the ignition and the amp needle swung to discharge. There is no sewing machine purr about a five tonner; she sings the fanfare of a hundred horse. I eased her into compound low and took the tension off Jock’s rope.

‘That’s fixed the poxed up bastard of a thing!’ He yelled at me and threw the coiled rope over a pin. ‘What are ya waitin’ for, Chalky? It’s no good hangin’ around for an offsider, the new bloke will be coming with me.’

I felt a jump in my guts as though a rabbit was loose. ‘I’m your offsider! What are you raving about, Jock?’

‘She’s all yours, Chalky. Marko said to get her registered before you come back; pick up the new licence plates from the cop shop.’

I sat high up in the cab staring down at him. ‘You mean this is going to be my truck?’

‘Ah shit!’ Jock snarled. ‘What do ya want, a written guarantee?’

The roar of the engine was a high pitched song in my head as she gingerly rolled off the flattop and down the side of the loading ramp. I pulled up alongside Jock’s Chev. ‘Throw me crib over will you, Jock?’ It came out fairly casual. ‘And chuck us that spare hook. Your offsider can get a new one from Marko.’

He grinned and passed the paper bag and curved steel prong through the window. ‘You probably won’t need the hook much. Marko has a couple of new contracts; he’s going to put you onto cartin’ tomatoes and bananas.’

Jock started his engine and yelled at me. ‘How does it feel, Chalky?’

I laughed. ‘Fine! Hope you get a good offsider.’

‘Yer!’ He started to move off. ‘Another useless bastard to drink my coffee thermos dry.’

Cars and people look small and vulnerable from the cab of a heavy truck. At city crosswalks the team grumble and champ at the bit; the leashed power is a lusty potent force of physical energy. Truck drivers feel obliged to wave and whistle at girls.

It was the big deal with the boong-makes-good angle thrown in. I didn’t knock it; I liked slaving my guts out for Markostein – I really did. Atua-kurka no longer meant much to me, except I had to go into a cubicle instead of lining up with the other truck drivers in the railway-yards toilet. Most nights I had a peculiar dream which would begin with me being pressed against the Nurtunja pole or the Jarandalba cross; it would end with Manala slapping me across the face and saying, ‘drink this’, only instead of a frog’s belly full of water he would be holding out a shield brimming with blood. I put it down to eating pastry before going to bed and sent Bob Tipper a letter and some money. I asked him to put Illuta on the boat.

 

“And two baboons got out bassoons and played here comes the bride ...” I didn’t actually tell a lot of lies about Illuta. Jock knew I was married to a woman of my own tribe. I told him she was due to arrive on the Sunday morning. The impression he gained of red feathers and hula-hula skirt was not of my making; although I did nothing to correct the curve away from the truth. On pay-day he insisted I go up to the pub with him and his new offsider: ‘and down a few for the blushing bride.’

The missionaries never sold me on the evils of booze; it was probably just cowardice stopped me hanging around pubs. A solitary black skin in a horde of white acts as a negative plate; in constant exposure to an ominous risk. The peril exists in shops, streets, milk bars, cafes. It is a soundless stare in these places; but near the boozers the thin intangible veil thickens like a rolling bank of a fog. A drunk might say the words: “Get lost nigger ... What’s this black bastard doing here?” Like the flare of a match in the mist the danger assumes a form ... of losing more than a fist fight ... of a casual encounter exploding into horrible screaming violence. It has never happened to me. As the entire aboriginal population of Stuart would not amount to more than two or three hundred almost total security is provided by lack of numbers. Blacks constitute more of a rarity than a minority group and therefore suffer less from persecution than protection. It doesn’t prove anything except the murderous efficiency of the early settlers.

The barman made the usual fuss about inspecting my citizenship papers; holding the card well up to the light, his lips moved spelling out the unfamiliar words. The smell of alcohol bothered me more than the check-up. Three stone flagons of O.P. rum always stood against the far wall of Fred’s shack; they had tapering wooden bungs driven into the necks. I learnt to tell whether the jars were full or empty by the slight difference in the colour of the wood.

Jock said: ‘Right oh, fella! You’ve seen it. Give us some beers.’ The barman in addition to being a slow reader was evidently not accustomed to making racial decisions.

Matt Hulse, Jock’s offsider, was looking at me and the adjudicator in frowning perplexity. If there were Ku-Klux-Klan or “Strange fruit hanging on southern trees” in Australia, there might be some point to these ridiculous situations.

Matt beckoned the judge to come closer. ‘How vood you like a smack in the ear?’ he asked conversationally.

The barman handed my card back. ‘Got my job to do,’ he said with a touch of pride. ‘If a black fella’s got his papers he gets a drink. If he ain’t he don’t. The law ...’

‘Ah shut up and give us three pots,’ Jock snarled. ‘Two pots and a lemon squash,’ I corrected him.

‘Your papers are OK,’ the barman said confidentially. ‘You can have a beer if you wanta.’

‘I don’t wanta.’

‘He wants a lemon squash!’ Jock said it as though this drink had some particular virtue not shared by any others.

Matt lifted his pot. ‘Here’s to the blushing bride.’

We drank to Illuta. ‘Did you get a house, Chalky?’ Jock enquired.

‘Rented a joint in Ribcott Street,’ I casually answered. ‘It’s not much of a place, but will do until I can look around.’

In a couple of weeks of solid searching, this two-roomed shed was the only dwelling where I had even come close to striking the combination of being able to afford the rent and a landlord who would accept it off me. There is no colour bar in Stuart; a black millionaire could live anywhere he liked. I tried the Stuart Housing Commission, the form they gave me to fill in contained the clause: ‘marriage certificate must be attached to this form before consideration will be given to placing applicants on the waiting list.’ Explaining the Abunda marriage ritual to a government clerk seemed fraught with endless possibilities of despair; besides the only proof of my status was a lacerated organ, which I had no intention of pinning to an application form.

‘What did they slug ya for the rent?’ the practical Matt enquired.

‘Fifty bob a week,’ I told him. ‘The landlord said I could keep the first week’s rent and buy a bit of paint.’

‘Typical of the hungry bastards,’ Jock commented. ‘Too bloody lousy to have the joint painted by a tradesman. Any furniture in it?’

‘There an old bed, a table and a couple of chairs.’ As fine a collection of gifts as was ever assembled to win the fairy tale King’s daughter; no horses with wings or magic rings but practical everyday useful things: A wobbly legged pine table with a bit of greasy lino on top; two straight backed chairs with perforated plywood seats and a squeaky iron bed, complete with loose brass knobs. With this dazzling collection of junk, plus the privilege of driving a truck, how could I lose? The funny part about it is I really could have won a Princess. All I had to do was go down to the boat on the Sunday morning and say the magic words: ‘Stay aboard – don’t join me, I’ll join you.’

‘And the missus never seen a city before!’ Jock said for the tenth time, with the same tone of delighted interest.

‘Never lived in a house either,’ I skited.

‘She wears red feathers and a hula-hula, skirt,’ Matt began crooning.

Half a dozen or more drinks later, Jock was still reciting a litany in praise of women: ‘The good uns are all a bloody sight better people than men. They don’t go out on the tiles with anythin’ that comes along; get up all hours of the night to a sick kid, whether the little bastard’s sick or not ...’

‘Like dogs,’ Matt interrupted. He indicated the door with the toe of his boot. ‘What’s that old mong waiting outside for me for? I don’t even feed him – my missus does. I just kick his arse for lying in my chair or rootin’ up the flowers; yet every Friday night I come down here and he waits outside the door for me to walk him home.’

‘Never seen a city before!’ Jock was shaking his head and looking owlishly into his beer. ‘That’s bloody wonerful, Chalky!’

‘Bet you that old dog of mine’s out there right now,’ Matt insisted.

Some time later the three of us went outside to see if Matt’s dog was really there and the barman locked the door. We walked down the street bellowing at top pitch:

“An elephant brought her in, and though it may sound silly, she’s here with me and you should see us walk down Piccadilly ...”

I don’t need to drink beer; I get just as drunk on squash.

Matt’s boxer dog walked by his side. ‘Don’t forget,’ he said earnestly. ‘Soon as you and the missus get settled in, Chalky, come around and meet my brood. You don’t need a bloody permit to get into my joint, mate.’

‘Chalky’s all right!’ Jock slapped me on the back in confirmation. ‘He’s not a bad sort of prawn – buys in his turn. Stick his boots under my table any time he likes.’

‘We’ll do that, Matt,’ I promised. ‘You too, Jock.’ But we never did. Illuta lacked the right costume for visiting; the red feathers and the grass skirt.

 

The harbour is built on the mouth of the river. I suppose it’s the mouth; although a giant sewer pipe enters the water from the north shore and raises some doubt. The dreaming of the harbour is in the quay of C, like in seagulls. The thin plaintive cry of the gulls is also the voice of Illuta ... The prison is not far from the harbour and all day the gulls fly overhead ... At nights the fridge motor takes up the sighing and a sobbing ...

Linked with the cry in the sky there is an absurd tragicomic series of events. I had a telegram from Fred Tipper saying which boat to meet; I think he was a bit lousy with me for not coming up to the homestead, either before or after the walkabout; it was an ignorant way to behave. Fred sent me a Christmas present every year while I was at school; nothing much but always something ...

The great flocks wheel in flight above the harbour ... bolts of feathered steel drop from the eye of the sun ... From immaculate blue they descend into filth. Streamlined perfection of tendon and pinion debased by diving on the rubbish floating in the harbour ... Ether hunters turned scavengers. Soggy bread and orange peel are not the worst of it; there is the flotsam from the sewer and the lavatories of the ships. Because it resembles a small, stubby, grey fish, the wharfies jokingly call this pollution ‘blind-mullet’.

There were about forty or fifty people with me on the docks. All semi-excited and shuffling about. Calling out: “Look there’s Mildred! ... Wave to Aunty Joyce! ... Look! ... She’s seen us!” ... A solitary boong is forced to become a functioning part of a group; has to wave to bloody aunty.

The dreaming of the harbour also has a higher pitch; just below the true key of C. Fork lifts like angry long-horned bulls charge around inside the goods sheds ... Up one end of the docks the Kyitzu Maru takes on a cargo of bulk wheat from a giant overhead hose. It’s running at full bore, this yellow satin river – a haze of golden dust hangs over the ship.

I began to wave like mad the second I spotted IIluta; my arm strained over my head and the wrist flicking away as though trying to shake the fingers off. She was dressed in some sort of loose fitting floral frock. Standing at the rail between two frantically waving, middle aged women. IIluta remained utterly still. With lack of response my wildly flapping hand slowed down and fell to my side. I realised there was no need to do this sort of thing any more; Abunda see no reason to poke their arms out and wobble wrists at one another.

The first shock came when I was still yards away. IIluta was not only standing at the rail, but riveted to it by the strength of some fantastic fear. I felt the feverish quivering of the flesh as I put my hand on her arm; hair hung in a tangled mess and there were little ridges of dirt and grease across the back of her neck. Satiny skin had turned the grey muddy colour of approaching death. Both hands were clenched tight around the rail; the eyes rolled back and her face screwed up in a half insane grimace of pathetic dread ...

Giant travelling cranes look over the tops of toy ships; they grumble and squeal as though tired of standing in the one place ... On the other side of the harbour, way up the far end, is a patch of reedy foreshore ... The entire Bibbulmun tribe are gathered here, waiting for the first white men to land – at the spot where the sewer pipe comes in ... The tribe begin wading through the oil-coated scum of the reedy water; all are smiling in anticipation of greeting long dead relatives and friends among the jangaga. The Bibbulmun owned this section of country. They thought the first white settlers to land were the spirits of dead tribesmen come back to visit. Jang is the word for spirit, gaga, dead; the spirits of the dead ...

I called out softly to IIluta as though she slept. Her head jerked up but she made no effort to turn around.

‘Illuta, it is Irritcha who stands behind you,’ I whispered in Abunda. A queasy feeling of shame and disgust kept my voice down. Twice I had to call her name before she would look away from the wharf; the eyes were not properly focused, her throat worked but nothing came out. I watched in revolted fascination as Illuta struggled to release cramped fingers from the rail; tendons stood out on soiled wrists with the effort of letting go. A strangled sob burst from her throat as she half fell and grabbed me by the arm ...

The Bibbulmun ignore the thick oil coating their legs and the odd sheets of sodden newspaper floating against them ... Illuta is with the women of the Bibbulmun ... Then the sky darkens with a hundred million wings and the cry of the gulls is a fantastic crescendo of sobbing sound ... A thousand birds fold their wings, drop into the harbour and rise with the ghastly catch dripping from stained beaks ... Illuta is everywhere! ... Her dreaming, sorrowing eyes are staring up at the gulls ... She is part of the cry in the sky ...

‘Irritcha! We leave this debil-debil,’ she gabbled with slack mouth and straining throat. I felt as though I was going to be sick.

A thin-faced white woman, with hair pulled back in a tight bun, stared into my eyes. ‘Are you related to this poor woman?’ she enquired.

I ignored her. The dress hung in a shapeless mass from Illuta’s shoulders; it was at least three sizes too large. She smelt of vomit. Shabby spike-heeled shoes threw her body out of balance, adding to the horrible cringing effect as she clung to my arm.

‘I don’t think he speaks English,’ a fat grey haired woman said to the one with the bun. ‘You wonder what’s to become of the poor things.’

 

Once I explained the circumstances the driver helped me get Illuta into the taxi. He stretched over the front seat and pulled on one arm while I shoved from behind; fortunately, by the time I had half dragged her to the taxi rank, the dockyards were almost deserted and there were few witnesses to my humiliation. When we had the passively resisting creature bundled in and the door closed, I had an interesting chat with the driver. Our conversation was all about the wonders of the city in store for primitives; particularly those who had never ridden in a car before.

‘Think she’s liable to try and jump out?’ the driver asked with some concern.

We both took a critical, appraising glance at the sick and sorry figure in the back seat. Illuta sat hunched forward, head on chest and dirty, stringy hair almost covering her face.

‘Nah! She wouldn’t know how to work the door,’ I assured him. Just to be on the safe side I lent over and pushed the locking pin down; a stale, acrid smell hit me in the face and I started to worry about her fogging up the cab. Illuta gave a little convulsive jump as the engine started, but I was too busy cranking the windows down and nursing my wounded pride to offer a word of consolation. A one-second drama started in my head. It ended with the driver’s tolerance strained to the limit and him suddenly stopping the cab and snarling: ‘You stinking boongs can get out and walk ...’

What he actually did say was: ‘Ribcott Street? That’s in West Stuart, isn’t it?’

‘On the Clodale border,’ I corrected him with relief. ‘It goes over the Clodale crossing and down the side of the tile factory.’

‘Oh yer! I know where it is. Did you both come down on the Cygnet?’

I was going to say, ‘my wife did’, but changed it to: ‘The woman came alone. I work at the markets.’ To make sure my driver colleague realised he talked to a man of substance, I added: ‘I’m truck driving for Markostein.’

Having cleared up the little matter of status I started to feel a lot better; I even leant over, patted Illuta on the shoulder and wound her window down a little more. She didn’t move but her chest pressed against my arm as I cranked the window. I thought of a soap ad on the wireless and elaborated it into an hysterical comedy of dropping Illuta into a tub of soapy water ... Faintly, in the background, I could occasionally hear the spiral climb of the horn; I suppose it spoke of man and wife ... there is this thin iron staircase going straight up into the sky and from the top a single note climbs into cold space ... It didn’t occur to me to release Illuta’s fingers from their frantic grip of the seat and hold her hand.

‘They tell me there’s some pretty good jobs at the markets,’ the taxi driver amiably remarked.

‘The money’s good,’ I boasted. ‘It’s bloody hard work shoving those five tonners around, but we get plenty of overtime. I work most Sundays and that’s all double pay.’

... In the half world where Illuta found herself, the air had a queer burnt smell, as though it had been sucked through raging swamp fires. The fumes stung her nose and throat. Broad, sensitive nostrils told her there was little or no pollen in the rank and stinking air she breathed. Real people could not live in the gas choked atmosphere of the jangaga for any length of time ...

‘How come? The markets don’t open Sundays, do they?’

‘Christ, no! But we gotta get the stuff off the trains from the Eastern States and store it in the cold rooms.’

‘What sort of stuff? I thought only passenger trains came in on Sundays.’

‘The banana vans are always hooked onto the passenger trains.’

... Illuta shivered with the degree of the evil. Horror mounted on horror in the full awareness of pollen less air. She knew life is dependent upon life. Unless a bond of sympathy exists between the forms, then it becomes parasitic and mutually destructive. In this tomb of glass and stone there could be no fellow feeling, no tender vibrant compassion for the dying tree, the drying river. Here, savage forces of evil had severed the connecting link between themselves and the life purpose. Seed and animal withered and died unmourned in this wasteland of parasites. No pollen in the air! ...

‘Bananas, eh?’

‘Well sometimes we get a rush haul on apricots or tomatoes that are getting a bit ripe on it. But it’s mostly bananas. Most of the other junk can wait ‘til Monday. Not bananas! They ripen fuggin fast in the trains and we gotta get them off.’

‘I thought tomatoes were your main headache?’

‘Some of the early season stuff, coming down from the north, is a bit touchy,’ I admitted. ‘But nothing ripens quicker than a banana. Specially when it’s a bit hot.’

‘Still I don’t suppose you blokes mind the double time. How is the little woman getting along?’

‘Ah, she’ll be right. Just take her a couple of weeks to get used to the city.’

‘Sure! Must be quite a change coming straight from the bush. What’s the number of your house?’

‘Thirty-six. That’s it! The second weatherboard from the corner.’

... Illuta stood with the heel of her shoe caught in the veranda boards. It didn’t occur to her to take her foot from the shoe or make any attempt to get free. In nightmares the whole sequence of events is predetermined; directed by an outside source that cannot be altered or controlled by the victim. She had lost track of time but not of the direction. The tribe had always known, south was evil ...

I waved to the taxi driver before bending down to pull Illuta’s shoe free. He made some joking remark about coming down to the markets for a case of cheap fruit. I just laughed and called: ‘See you around.’

---

 

13: Requiem for Vacuum Cleaners

We had been invited to attend a Kunappipi ceremony and walked northward into the land of the Myall. Three days and nights we danced. In the flame-lit final dawn, milk given by nursing mothers was mixed with the arm blood of warriors and poured upon the earth. The ceremonies ended in a wild climax as frenzied dancers threw themselves on the hard packed ground and copulated with ravenous joy. Smell of semen was in the air as the weary, gently smiling children of Kunappipi walked through the dawn.

And Kunappipi accepted the homage of her people. Dingoes whelped and blind, woolly puppies sought brimming dugs; miniature heads poked from pouches of kangaroos; a super abundance of striped chicks scuttled into bushes as free striding emus led the hunters away from their broods. Bud and blossom covered the land and fruit weighed the branches down in a time of frantic production.

In the palm of Kunappipi, the brother-sister relationship between tribe and animal is not lessened by the competitive need for survival. Higher forms complement the lower. All have compassion for the others’ struggle to live; joy in the new seedlings. None could imagine the horror of pollenless air.

 

‘This is your gunya, Illuta,’ I stated with pride. ‘Yours and mine.’

Her nostrils flared a little but there was no other reaction. The way I dreamt it, this moment should have been taken up with Illuta wide eyed in admiration and gratitude. She kept looking at the fireplace; seeking the vague familiarity of fire blackened bricks.

... Even within the tribal boundaries there is always a host of the recent dead, to make the night beyond the protective fires, hideous with their revengeful prowling. But here! In this land of the dead! A myriad of outraged ghosts, maniacal in their ferocious malice, surrounded Illuta. She shuddered and the first word to come from her lips since entering the house was barely audible.

‘Fire,’ she whispered.

‘We don’t need a fire yet,’ I scoffed. ‘It’s too hot! I’ll run the bath.’

Above the sound of the running water, I heard the door open; Illuta stood on the back veranda looking across poisoned earth, divided into squares by doglegged picket fences. Her shoulders sagged until arms dangled on level with knees. I watched from the bathroom window as she edged her way down the rickety steps; stumbled into the yard, made a little circle and came back again. Three times she did this. Dogs make the same turning movement before they lie down; new animals in the zoo walk in tight circles. Illuta crouched by the back steps and wet on the ground.

The bath was postponed, although I didn’t pull the plug out and let either the water or the idea, of a sweet smelling, demure, civilised woman, go down the drain. I suppose the missionaries convinced me heathen beliefs could be dissolved by soap suds.

I lit the fire. Tongues of flame crept up from the bottom of the grate. Illuta crouched with her head thrust forward, lips parted as she drank from the fluttering forms. Dark eyes grew soft and misty with adoration. She fed from the essence of the leaping, unquiet thing. Drew thin, sympathetic threads from the flickering flames and wove them into a glowing, incandescent cloak; a protective mantle against evil.

I threw a cigarette butt into the fireplace and Illuta snatched it out. The heat of the fire was making her sweat and the smell of the cattle camps was strong in the house as I held out a packet of cigarettes.

‘You smokem,’ she said gravely shaking her head. ‘Leavum little bit alonga me.’

In mocking irony I hummed a few bars of ‘Red Feathers’.

‘Your gunya, Irritcha?’ Illuta asked quietly in Abunda.

‘Yours and mine,’ I repeated with slightly less enthusiasm in the project.

‘You have plenty of wood for the fire, Irritcha?’

‘Plenty,’ I irritably assured her. ‘Why don’t you take those silly shoes off?’ Illuta gave the impression of not really wearing either shoes or dress but standing awkwardly in them.

‘You do not like these shoes, Irritcha?’

‘You look like a brolga standing in jam tins,’ I answered cynically.

As the fire was getting low and the mere sight of it seemed to be doing her some good, I opened the back door to get more wood from under the house. Illuta sprang and grabbed me by the arm. She kicked the shoes off and her figure automatically returned to balance and some semblance of life.

‘Now the dress,’ I said half teasing.

‘No likum?’ Illuta looked down at the frock with the bewildered dismay of a small child.

‘Too big,’ I explained, releasing her fingers from my arm.

‘Takum off!’ She babbled in the horrible, bastard English.

‘It’s all right,’ I murmured in disgust. ‘Just wait here while I get more wood.’

When I came back Illuta was crouched near the fire with the dress a crumpled ball at her feet. She was crying. For about five minutes I managed to act like a human being; held a lost and frightened child in my arms and spoke the Abunda mothers’ litany: ‘You are safe jim-bim and nothing will hurt you. All things will be as kind and gentle to you as they were in jim-bim land ...’

She pressed against me and the dam of horror began to break. ‘In the belly of the ship,’ she murmured, ‘the cold breath blows all the time. It does not like people to walk in its guts and groans and wriggles like its cousin the sea-snake.’

I couldn’t begin to explain air-conditioning or the normal motion of a boat to Illuta. Besides the ship itself was not the main cause of her fear; although seasick and homesick, she could have endured this and much more if allowed to build a fire. Without its protection: “They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, Nor spoke nor moved their eyes ...”

I took Illuta into the bathroom and thoroughly scrubbed her and washed her hair. She didn’t object or struggle; just looked at me ... “It would have been strange even in a dream, to have seen those dead men rise ...”

It was a small cast-iron bath that had been painted with white enamel about five million times. At the high water mark thick layers of paint and rust had chipped right back to the metal, leaving a serrated edge like the teeth of a gigantic band-saw. The cold-water tap stuck out over the plug end on a two-foot surplus of rusty pipe; copper tubing from the chip-heater wandered in crazy coils before it entered the bath about half way down the side. Any sexual maniac would recognise the set up for a wildly erotic scene. A chance to recapture the joy of Kunappipi; to awaken Illuta from her deathlike trance.

All I succeeded in doing was to cut her arm on the paint chips; bash my head on the pipe and burn my backside on the heater. I was disgusted with her for not co-operating; for being an ignorant, superstitious savage; for not wearing a hula-hula and swinging by her heels from the bath-heater.

Illuta begged not to be made to sleep on the rickety iron bed behind the plywood partition. She lay down in front of the fire. Paid for the privilege of burning my wood; with closed eyes and little lines of pain forming around the corners of her mouth. I left her and went to bed, but was kept awake by a low groaning whimper that seemed to whisper through the whole house. I had to start work at four o’clock in the morning; in desperation I dragged the mattress out and threw it on the floor.

She murmured in lament: ‘The ship passed into the country of the Bibbulmun and in its guts I came uninvited. The spirits of the dead Bibbulmun women were jealous and they poisoned me. I was very sick, Irritcha, from the magic of the Bibbulmun.’

‘You were seasick,’ I mumbled.

‘In the nights,’ Illuta whispered in my ear, ‘I lay on the floor and could hear the angry muttering of the dead. Their voices were many and all were angry:

‘It was the engines of the ship,’ I snarled. ‘For Christ sake go to sleep, Illuta!’

She curled up tight against me. ‘It is wrong-side, Irritcha; why do the Bibbulmun invite you to their tribal grounds, then tell their spirits to poison your woman?’

‘There are no Bibbulmun,’ I muttered in sleepy indifference. ‘The jangaga killed them all.’

The information kept Illuta rigidly quiet for a long time. In between sleeps I saw her reaching out and putting more wood on the fire; it was hot as hell in the house and the mattress was soaked with sweat.

 

After I left for work in the mornings, Illuta crept out of the house and sat under the back veranda, chopping wood with a hatchet. When the night’s supply was cut and stacked she carved pieces of soft wood into clubs, digging sticks, toy boomerangs and pitchis. These items were added to the woodpile and burnt on the evening fire as an obscure act of faith. On top of the kindling wood, crossed digging sticks usually supported a water dish or soft wood cradle and in the bowl would be one or two toy boomerangs.

For a time I tactfully ignored both the carvings and the lack of prepared meals; while I concentrated on teaching the fundamental requirements of suburbia. Illuta listened in respectful silence to repeated lectures on basic personal hygiene, the correct dress and manner when answering door knocks, the use of kitchen utensils and the method of cooking meals in pots on a stove. She listened only to the tone and paid not the slightest attention to anything else unless shouted in anger. In the middle of an involved lecture on the functioning of the Metropolitan Water Supply and the advisability of turning taps off, Illuta would start listing the rock holes and soaks in the Snake River country, with asides on beehives and goanna holes. Her body was present in the land of the Bibbulmun but her mind never ceased to wander the spinifex-clad hills and gorges of the Abunda.

In the mornings the sun came over the wall of the tile factory and crept across the front veranda. Illuta ignored the calls of the baker and the iceman. When thirsty she would crawl under the house from the wood heap to the crack below the front door and drink from the melting ice block. Before the sun had travelled up the blistered paintwork to the bedroom window the day’s supply of ice would be all gone. It took a good deal of patience and screamed abuse before Illuta could be persuaded to put the cold stone in the icebox. Even then she was inclined to leave it until after the baker called and make one flying dash do for both jobs.

She never answered door knocks. The more observant types would probably notice smoke coming from the chimney and suspect someone was at home. When they grew tired of banging on the front door and came around the back, Illuta crouched behind the wood stack and watched their feet through the cracks in the veranda; she spoke of the callers in the abstract. We were visited by men with worn shoes, rubber soles, new squeaky boots and all manner of footwear. Some knocked loudly, odd types muttered to themselves or gave the door a little kick before going away. Once we had a lady visitor with flat heels and blue panties; she knocked softly, Illuta said the woman was fidgety and uncomfortable. I kept wondering what the fidgety lady with the blue panties was selling; but I never found out.

After six months the constant threats and nagging began to have some effect. Every night we went through the same routine:

‘Why didn’t you make the bed, Illuta?’

‘You lightum fire, Irritcha?’

‘No.’

‘Makeum now.’

‘Say it properly.’

‘Make bed now.’

‘It is to be made in the mornings, like I told you. No bed made, no fire.’

‘Cookum meat in pot alonga quatcha.’

‘You what?’

‘Cook water in pot with meat. You light the fire, Irritcha?’

‘No! How many bloody times do I have to tell you the quilt goes on top of the sheets and not underneath them?’

Markostein sold me a second-hand vacuum cleaner. This thing had about the same effect on Illuta as bringing home another woman – a white woman that is – she would have welcomed a tribal sister with open arms. Apart from being terrified of the noise, she immediately classified the vacuum cleaner in the semi-human group. I yelled, shouted and pulled it to bits in front of her; but proving it could be taken apart and reassembled only confirmed the spirit category. In Illuta’s mind there was no mystery about the snakelike neck and sucking mouth filling the belly with dust and fluff. She said this evil demon of the Bibbulmun must once have occupied the body of a platypus, because it still retained some of that animal’s shape and habits. Its greed for the fluff from our mattress was proof of malignant intent. All know the easiest method of invoking a voodoo hex is to possess your enemy’s sweat; then name the curse as you burn his substance.

‘This fella grow into plenty big debil-debil,’ she concluded in the despised pidgin.

When I left for work Illuta used every ounce of courage to pull out the plug and separate the young devil from its parent in the wall. She knew it would die once the umbilical cord was broken. The muffled death throb of a didgeridoo played a requiem for vacuum cleaners as Illuta dug its grave. Three times she buried the greedy-mouthed monster in the backyard.

As the man said: ‘It’s the little things that bug you.’ Like coming home tired from a heavy day on the truck, then having to do something as stupid as digging up a vacuum cleaner. Even the bloody gas stove I bought off Markostein had some sort of evil attached to it. Illuta said the pipes went down into the earth and were fed by the dead of the jangaga and Bibbulmun who were buried there. It is asking for trouble to bury people in the ground, then use their decomposing bodies to cook your meals. Illuta said she had smelt the dead and they had the same sickly smell as gas.

Jock and Matt invited us to visit them several times; but I kept making excuses until they stopped asking. Illuta was not yet up to visiting standard. By coaxing her to come for walks through the back streets and lengthening the area covered, block-by-block, the fear slowly began to abate. She seemed to timidly enjoy window-shopping; though haunted with distrust for the unfamiliar. The time I tried to get her on a trolley bus turned into a real circus act. However, I hoped the big break through would come with a visit to the local cinema and spent hours preparing Illuta for the wonders of talking pictures. She was fascinated by the sounds coming from the theatre a few streets away and would sit on the back veranda until they closed, listening to the faint sound of music and machine guns.

As Illuta was less nervous before sundown I intended to take her to a matinee for our first visit to the flicks; but the opportunity never occurred. Markostein had a little racket going for beating the Potato and Onion Board and there was quite a bit of overtime available. Jock and I drove our trucks into the country on the weekends and picked up loads of spuds and onions from unlicensed growers or those who had exceeded their quota. Marko was nervous about storing the stuff and we often worked well into the night delivering to greengrocers and fish and chip shops. We were well paid.

I spent a small fortune on furniture and bought Illuta a lot of new clothes; she liked the underwear but could see no point in covering these fine things with a dress. Two or three expensive frocks were ruined before I worked out rules of when to wear what; also pointing out the distinct advantages gained by washing the hair instead of rubbing butter in it. We had trouble keeping the stockings up, as like the chicken and the egg, I couldn’t figure out which came first, the pants or the suspender belt. I asked Jock in which order his wife donned these garments, and put up with the ribald comments for the rest of the day. We were knocking off by the time he decided I was serious; scratched his head and said: ‘Buggered if I know, Chalky. Tell you tomorrow.’

There were now occasional evenings when walking into my house was like stepping between the pages of the ‘Home Beautiful’; once or twice Illuta was even sitting in an armchair with the table partly set for dinner and a clean frock on. Most of the time she wore either underclothes or a dress, but seldom both; I had nightmares of her opening the door dressed in stockings and suspender belt and nothing else. However this eccentric fashion was trivial to the problems already overcome. We had settled for cooking all the meals on the stove and not chucking the meat into the lounge room fire to cook itself; sleeping on the bed and avoiding crawling under the house with a good frock on; speaking standard English or Abunda and eliminating pidgin. Keeping the latter rule was not difficult as Illuta seldom spoke at all except to dreamily talk of the Snake River or the dog Apmaura. She said the dog jumped from the truck and howled at the wharf while the boat was pulling out. If I tried to steer the conversation to local topics, Illuta would go blank on me or stare silently into the fire. She seemed to gain some morbid satisfaction from talking about Apmaura but would not let me buy her another dog. I imagined if I could get her to come to the pictures and meet a few people she would find other things to talk about; something to give interest and meaning to the new life.

I asked Jock and Matt to bring their families over for tea as soon as the work slackened off a bit. Both said they would, but the only house warming party I ever gave was too hot for company. The guests would have needed asbestos suits.

---

 

14: Dance on the Tiles

As a prelude to rain, the smoke from the tall stack of the tile factory compresses and gathers weight. It spreads out like a bucket of scum thrown across the sky and comes down in a grey, greasy blanket, almost level with the top of the factory wall. Above the smog the gathering storm rumbles and sits on the chimney as it prepares to clean the polluting filth from the air.

In the slummy houses opposite the tile factory, low barometric pressure hollows out gaunt heads and fills them with the silent scream. It scoops out guts and endurance and crams half empty bellies with the queasy fog. With the yearning for the flood; for great jagged bolts of lightning and sheeting rain.

In No. 36 Ribcott Street a brooding savage sat in a lounge chair; the chair that was paid for in honest sweat and which she had a moral obligation to sit in. Illuta of the Abunda who had never owned a chair before in all her seventeen years – she sat! Waiting for the storm to break; staring at the brass screen covering the unlit fireplace, the matching coal scuttle and tongs – items bought by Markostein for a handful of silver – sold to his employee for two days of time and sweat. So Illuta might stare at her reflection in the cold brass as she sat through storms, waiting for her lord and master to come home and give permission for the fire to be lit.

Two thousand miles to the north other Abunda women might crouch naked in the dust – Illuta wore a frock of pale pink silk. ... Up there! ... wildly stamping feet of plumed and painted rainmakers would be keeping time to the throbbing drone of a didgeridoo ... The women adding their high-pitched, plaintive chorus of intercession to the God of rain. Hour after hour it would go on; days and nights if necessary ... Until the fat bellies of the storm clouds were finally torn open by the curved fangs of the Rainbow Serpent ... Then would come a torrent of soft warm rain and a delirious squealing joy as women and children held their dripping faces to the sky ...

Illuta went out onto the front veranda; the double gates of the tile factory were directly opposite and never closed. Across a wasteland of broken tile and mounds of earthenware pipe, she could occasionally see flaring tongues of flame as the kiln doors were opened and closed.

High up, beyond the smokestack, Burimba – the evening star- tried to catch a glimpse of the earth through the sullen, brooding mass of smog and storm. Illuta knew a good deal about Burimba. He was an Abunda warrior of the dreamtime who had climbed into the sky; mainly to escape the nagging tongues of his wives. Illuta knew how desperately lonely it is, not to be able to see the fires of your people and her heart ached with sympathy for the slightly dull-witted star.

Ingmar Svenson was the stoker on night shift. A young man with the face of a girl; a beautifully proportioned body and a hollow ache in his guts. A blue eyed, blond haired, weak mouthed youth, who tended the hungry coal-eating ovens of the tile factory. The kilns were enclosed only on three sides. High in the smoke blackened beams a single electric light bulb, emphasised by shadow, the sprawling roof, the vastness of the building. It did not add to the light below. The white-hot glow of the kilns was light enough and heat in extravagant abundance; the essence of the sun had been distilled and imprisoned here. Feathery fingers with claws of molten gold explored the cracks in the doors of the twin kilns. In fourteen hundred degrees centigrade, the roofing tiles baked behind those glowing doors.

Ingmar walked between black mountains of coal and looked up at the storm clouds. The sweat dried on his face and chest. He knew the North Star; knew ice and fiords and shining mountains. A Swede from snow-girt tribal grounds; sucked into the vacuum above the graves of the Bibbulmun; from perpetual twilight into the maw of the blazing sun. Mind and body ached for release; he hungered for cold and the thunderous crack of glacial ice ...

Ingmar came to work as the day shift were leaving. The kilns had been freshly stacked with raw tiles and the red clay dust still hung in the air. The setting sun, the dust, the gathering storm created a queer soft light in the vast shed; shafts of clay filled light rose from the floor of the building and lanced upward to a darkening sky and a dying sun. Ingmar knew the music of the scene. It was written for a single golden trumpet; a pre-atom prelude on a theme without variation or change. The high note held the plaintive honk of the snow-goose flying south ... Flying high in a cold and darkening sky ... Ingmar had said: ‘Dis place sometime remind me of home.’ He knew it was the wrong thing to say before the words were out of his mouth. ‘Like mist across the fiords,’ he added in a hopeless attempt at explanation.

‘More like a bloody brothel in a dust storm,’ someone had answered. ‘See ya, Ingmar.’ ‘Keep the home fires burning.’ The cynical laughter still rang in his ears.

Now Ingmar walked back to the kilns, talking to himself while he shovelled. Spoke of saving the money and going home. He kept up the stream of muttered words to the short rapid strokes of the shovel. For over two hours he fed the roaring ovens in a vain attempt to translate loneliness into the tangible reality of heat. In this time he fed in more coal than would normally be burnt in an entire night. The bricks of the ovens turned cherry red and the steel fire doors glared with a hard white light, blinding in its frightful intensity.

A glow like the rising sun drew IIIuta from the dark veranda. She crossed the road and the yard of the tile factory; stood in the shadows of the great doors and watched the fires and the man. Little rivulets of sweat cut snow-white paths through the coal dust coating on his skin. After a while Ingmar put the shovel down and sat on a box at the foot of a coal heap; he wore heavy boots and a dirty pair of shorts, his wide shoulders tapered to a small waist. IIIuta could see the dejected hang of the head; see his lips moving – she knew.

The lubra wore an expensive silk dress, but no underclothes and no shoes. Abunda civilised slowly; soft clay and coal dust between her toes felt like the powdery earth of a cave. As she edged closer to the kilns the heat caressing her skin might have come from sun blistered Abunda rocks. Illuta was not frightened; she was entranced by the glimpse of the blazing tropic sun peeping through cracks in the now-closed fire doors.

She was no more than ten feet away when Ingmar saw the swaying movement of her frock. He jumped up with a reflex of fright and the wooden box clattered over on its side. Both he and Illuta froze in startled dread; ready to run. When nothing happened they began to relax; each produced a tentative smile, but did not speak. The vivid contrast in appearance made it seem unlikely they could share a common language. Nothing was said either then or at any other time – there was nothing to say.

Ingmar watched the aboriginal woman staring fascinated at the kiln doors. Saw the full lips parted and the flare of the wide nostrils; sensed she was also a long way from home. He knocked the steel bar across the doors with the blade of the shovel; the ring of steel still hovered in the air as the fire doors swung open. Everything was totally different now someone was there to share the magic. They both stared enraptured by the midnight sun.

He began to throw coal through the gaping door. Illuta first swayed to the rhythm of the shovel then she began to jerk her head each time the coal left the blade. Ingmar accompanied the movement with an exaggerated bend of leg and swing of shoulder; it was the beginning of a dance. Heat, the only stark and solid reality. His figure washed ghostly white by sweat; her’s the moist warm shadow of the flames. They danced with and were almost touched by the fingers of the sun; but had no other contact with each other. Coal dust in his blond hair picked up pinpoints of light; her dark eyes were gold flecked with fire.

The dance took on the swirling rhythm, the boiling turbulence of the flames. Sweat poured from their bodies. Illuta, hampered by the clinging folds of the dress, pulled it over her head and threw the wet rag into the white-hot core of the kiln. She offered her body to the Sun God. She danced for a fellow exile.

 

Or perhaps the little slut was bored. Wandered over to the tile factory and stripped off for the ape with the shovel; just to break the monotony. In line with a ditty written on a dunny wall at the markets:
“Cats on the rooftops, cats on the tiles,
And the tomcat’s arse all wreathed in smiles,
As he revelled in the joys of fornication.”

I came home about ten. Jock and I carted spuds and onions all day, then we had to clear the special before the whole consignment went rotten. The train was two days overdue. We put twenty-five tons of overripe bananas into the cold rooms. Some poor bastard of a grower was going to curse the railways when he received his price for that crop. Jock said he would be lucky if he made enough to clear the freight charges.

Twenty-five tons is a lot of bananas; all I could think of was a hot bath and flopping into bed. The weight still lay across my shoulders and hung in my arms as I walked through the empty house. After being in ballast all day, I couldn’t seem to put the burden away. The cumbersome mass weighed me down and drove my feet into the ground with every step; the right arm hung half bent, with the fingers clenched, as though they still gripped a case or a steel bag hook.

I searched the house and even crawled underneath it; a few heavy drops of rain plopped on the tin roof of the front veranda. I could see the glow of the kilns. Knowing Illuta’s hunger for fire made me think she might be over the road in the tile factory. There was nothing much to go on; she had always been either in or under the house when I came home from work.

While shambling through the factory gates there was a flash of lightning and the rain started to pelt down. I couldn’t run to escape the soaking coldness; only walk stooped and bandy, the edge of a banana crate biting into my chest; sloshing through instant puddles, water running from my face and hair tasting of salt. As I came closer the light from the kilns played on a silvery, wire curtain of rain, hanging across the front of the building. Near puddles turned into pink splashing pools like fountains of watery blood.

... The watcher inside my head never gets angry. Even when I’m yelling and screaming abuse, I am aware the thing behind the red curtain of malice and hate is a little shocked. It stands at the back of mean, narrowed eyes and sadly assesses the situation; a thin, dirty grey living camera, with large compassionate eyes.

The big-eyed bug wasn’t even offended at seeing my wife dancing naked for another man. Its thought pictures are all time-exposures and sometimes take months to develop; all the aspects have to collect and filter in through a half closed lens. The light of truth, after penetrating the layers of understanding, shines on a blank and negative plate – entirely devoid of preconceived opinions. The pictures seldom develop at all; there is too much bloody insipid tolerance.

Standing under the eaves of the kiln shed, I took a quick snapshot of copper-tipped breasts and blunt hair covered femaleness belonging to me by rite. The picture showed a dirty, fornicating little slut. I picked up an old fire-bar that was leaning against the wall, a solid chunk of iron about four feet long and five inches in breadth and depth; a ridiculous weapon, weighing eighty or ninety pounds.

I walked bandy-legged down the path between the two coal heaps with the fire-bar held out in front like a crate of bananas. I think they both saw me at the same time. Each froze in mid- prance and then slowly came back to a jerky, awkward life. Illuta tried to fold both arms across her breasts and at the same time hold her hand between her legs; the gesture made her horribly naked. She backed away in a crouch and half fell against the coal pile in front of the second kiln; lay on her side staring at me with a sort of gaping frown, as though not sure how either of us happened to be there.

The blond Swede also backed off; with the shovel held in both hands and extended towards me like a peace offering. I expected him to fall against the opposite coal heap. He looked white and shaky; his mouth gaped open, lips loose and turned down at the corners, seeming ready to cry. He didn’t fall. Ingmar kept his pale blue eyes fixed on my chest, lifted his feet high and began to back up the coal slope.

I went up after him. Felt as though I had stepped onto a treadmill; plodding up and sinking down into a low black mountain. Took two steps up and slid back one and a half, buried almost to the knees in coal; dropping the fire-bar stopped my legs plunging so deep. I started to catch up on Ingmar and he half turned and began scuttling up sideways like a crab. None of it seemed real; the whole chase had the quality and form of a bad dream.

The heap was about twenty feet high, perhaps a little less. On the lower slope all I could hear was the roar of the kilns; higher up the drumming of the rain on the vast roof drowned out the noise of the fires. The air grew moist and steamy; near the top, it had none of the dry heat of floor level. At close quarters the huge, smoke-blackened rafters looked as thick as tree trunks. I had no idea what I was going to do when I caught up with Ingmar.

He stopped right on the peak and turned his head a little sideways, as if listening to the rain. It had a peculiar dreary sound, like it was going to go on falling forever. I made a grab for the shovel and touched the handle with the ends of my fingers; Ingmar snatched it away but lost balance with the sudden jerk. His heavy boots were buried in the coal and he fell back in slow motion; still facing me, a look of mild astonishment on his face as he went sliding backwards down the hill. Picking up speed he dropped the shovel. Both legs came up over his head until the iron-studded boots pointed towards the roof. He started to backward somersault, then half way down managed to go into a roll.

I don’t think Ingmar intended to stand up; but near the bottom his legs seemed to become jammed under him and he was thrown to his feet. He went the rest of the way in a tilted run. There was no hope of stopping in time; arms stretched full out as the blast of heat hit him. Ingmar knew what was going to happen – he screamed. The sound came up and hung in the damp air before being swallowed by the rain.

It was like watching a horror film from high in a gallery. Ingmar hit the white-hot fire doors of number one kiln with the palms of both hands; his body jerked three times as he tried to push himself away from the searing heat. There should have been a sharp, sizzling, spitting sound before he crumpled into a ball in front of the kiln. My ears were strained, listening for the crackle of burning flesh; but heard only the melancholy beat of rain.

Sliding down the slope the smell of charred meat came up to meet me. I dragged Ingmar clear and propped him in the pathway with his back against the coal; he was semiconscious until he looked at his hands.

From the back they were just bearable. The nails of the fingers were still there, but blackened and slightly opaque; hinting at lack of flesh on the other side. He was looking over to where Illuta crouched by the opposite coal heap; staring at us through a fringe of hair. Ingmar tried to say something to me; as the words formed he looked down at his hands and slowly turned them over. Lips and eyes closed as he shuddered and passed out. The one barely audible whisper to pass his lips sounded like: ‘Sorry.’

On a white paper backing, charcoal bones were struck together in the shape of hands. I vomited on the coal. The burnt skeletal mass was only held by the transparent layer of skin on the wrists and backs of the fingers. The judge called it: ‘Causing grievous bodily harm.’

Illuta crawled across to me; saw what was left of Ingmar’s hands and put an arm around my leg to steady herself. Eyes were dilated and rolled back in her head. I don’t know why I had to have my leg free – I just did. Illuta’s clutching arm and bare body pressed against the calf of my leg seemed intolerably gross and obscene; I kicked out and sent her sprawling. She lay whimpering like a hurt dog before getting back to her knees. A thin wailing cry echoed in the building as she crawled down the pathway.

Then the night watchman and the police stepped through the curtain of rain.

 

There was a trial. Not mine! Illuta’s! Once I had proved the extra money I earned came from overtime and not by procuring IIluta for stokers in the tile factory, a lot of sympathy came my way. Obviously the blame rested with the bit of ‘black-velvet’, which had strayed from across the road.

I only had to answer a lot of questions: ‘The accused is not your wife, is she?’

‘Yes! She is!’

‘How long have you been married to Illuta?’

‘Seventeen years.’

‘Tell the court how old you are.’ ‘Twenty.’

‘You claim to have been married at three years of age?’

There is no rapport; no connection at all – the phone’s off the hook ... Down below the floorboards of the courthouse; under the foundations of the city of Stuart are the bones of the Bibbulmun. The skeletons haven’t had time to turn to dust; the last of the Bibbulmun died of measles in 1879. Fifty years after the first white man put his foot on the shores of their territory, an entire tribe was wiped out; by mumps and measles, rifles, clothing, syphilis and sugar, flour and flu. They stood the bullets better than the lethal kindness. So would Illuta.

There is no bridge across the thousand years between the Stone Age and civilisation. How do I tell them? I was allotted a mother-in-law a few days after I was born. “Seventeen years ago my mother-in-law gave birth to a female child!” “Illuta was married to me before she was born.”

The judge said: ‘You must answer the questions put to you.’

‘The woman, Illuta, has always belonged to me.’

‘Belong, related? Or belong, property?’

‘Both.’

‘You claim to own this woman as another man might possess a dog?’

Illuta’s counsel objected to the question. The judge sustained the objection.

I wondered about the other judge. Not the prig in the wig – the guy in the sky. Has he any objections? ... This was a heavily wooded land; packed with game, edible seed, broad rivers. Birds, bees, honey stored in hollow trees ... Under the courthouse is a great horde of Adams and Eves. And their dogs and kids and the seed of the Bibbulmun tribe is buried with them – under the city of Stuart ... But listen, Judge! Don’t send your son to right the wrong this time! The jangaga no longer make wooden crosses; they cast them in bronze or iron and will pin your son’s effigy on with a rivet-gun. There is a giant bronze cross set in cement outside the central cathedral; no body on it – blank and waiting. This death size cross looks as though it has been prepared for the second coming ...

‘You attended high school for three years?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yet twelve months ago you returned to the North and claimed a tribal wife?’

‘Yes.’

‘If you believed this woman to be your wife, why didn’t you claim citizenship on her behalf?’

The conceit! The arrogance of these bloody convicts! We don’t need a paper to say we are citizens of this country. You do! Apply to the rightful owners. CONVICTS GO HOME!

The Abunda warrior in the pin stripe suit leant against the polished rail and answered respectfully:

‘My wife didn’t want to become a citizen.’

‘She wished to return to her tribe?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you prevented her?’

‘I made a home for her here.’

Half the time the judge, the Native Welfare Officers, the lawyers were not trying Illuta; they were judging themselves. The guilt has nothing to do with the Bibbulmun under the floor. It’s called ‘The White Australia Policy’. This awareness of the cloven hoof treading the primrose path, fans out into a ring of white bodies encircling an ancient continent. A bad dream, in which white arms hit mythical Chinamen on the head as they crawl out of the sea; black women with babies in their arms stagger exhausted across the beaches and are thrown back into the ocean. It’s not the whole truth; but is part of the mystic guilt of ‘White Australia.’ A semi-tangible sin; not composed of real guilt – just a faint unease. It did not affect the verdict.

The judge said Illuta had indirectly been responsible for causing grievous bodily harm. And, ‘although claiming to be married, was in fact a ward of the State; as were all Aboriginals without citizenship papers’. He directed she be found suitable employment in an institution and held there until twenty-one years of age.

Illuta finished up in the ‘Haven of the Poor’ – in the laundry. The place is run by ‘The Sisters of Mercy’. Mercy!

---

 

15: Helen of the Reeves Tribe

Helen’s charitable enterprises were extensive. Apart from being a ‘Friend of Stuart Hospital’ she was also a ‘Friend of the Prisoners’. Twice a week for four months Helen visited the prison; then I was released on parole and went to live with her – just like that.

We developed a lot of fancy theories to lay at the door of lust. The thousand-year vault; the magnetic force uniting the primitive with the decadent, and many more saddles slapped on the wrong horses. It was less than skin deep. A mixture of stardust and bulldust sufficed for the nights; but in the mornings we both suspected this attraction of opposites had been carried to the obscene.

An explanation can be produced for anything if an uneasy brain slogs away at it long enough. My reasons for living with Helen make even less sense than a ditty carved into the washroom wall of the prison. I don’t know why – bad nerves I suppose – but around this time I seemed to get hysterical amusement from ribald rhyme:
“The sexual ways of a camel
Are stranger than anyone thinks,
He cools off his animal passions
By attempting a rape on the Sphinx:
But the Sphinx’s posterior passage
Is blocked by the sands of the Nile,
Which accounts for the hump on the camel
And the Sphinx’s inscrutable smile.”

Helen and I did have one thing in common; I was living partly in one world and partly in another and Helen thought of herself as exactly half a woman. One half of her body is perfect but the other is badly scarred. It doesn’t show when she is dressed because one brassiere cup is filled with sponge rubber and the steel pin through the left hip functions almost as well as the original joint.

In my case, Charles Carson performed just as inefficiently as Irritcha, ‘the doubtful warrior’. A shadow filled cubicle in my belfry had a faulty lock and the door kept on slamming back and forth; little zephyrs of recollection chased around the flat. A parallel of opposites existed. From the top of her shiny hair to her delicate ankles, Helen was all butterfly grace; a decorative, composed elegance, complemented by faultless taste in frothy, feminine clothes. Only the comparison of absurd extremes reminded me of Illuta. We never left the flat without Helen making a quick bird like check of stocking seams; always the shade of Illuta would accompany us out the door, with a wrinkled mass of silk clinging to her legs. Helen, fussily and efficiently stowing the vacuum cleaner in its cupboard was totally unaware of Illuta, standing silently by her side and pointing tearfully at a mound of earth. Whenever Helen sat at the dressing table, putting on nail polish or taking it off, the hands of Illuta would be mirrored in the polished wood. The fingernails of Abunda women are miniature horns, often more than a quarter of an inch thick; scrabbling for lizards, digging roots, unearthing yams and ants turns the nails into blunt steel prongs, with the shape and strength of cold-chisels.

Helen doesn’t have to work; the brittle, painted, carefully tended half-moon crescents on the ends of her fingers never touched the earth. She was awarded £22,000 when she was injured, and her father killed, in an automobile smash. The insurance money is invested in Government bonds; Helen draws about twenty pounds a week. Presents also arrive on Christmas and birthdays, from ‘Mummy’ and frequently consist of a substantial cheque.

I suppose my knowledge of Helen was intimate enough; but it was never the kind of hand and glove familiarity that entwines one life and mind with another. I knew more about Helen’s history than her moods; we relied on words rather than frowns or smiles.

The family wealth came originally from sheep. Grandfather Reeves deserted a sailing ship, after knifing one of the petty officers; he then worked industriously as a jackeroo on ‘Glenwin Downs’ sheep station for fifteen years. When the squatter died, William S. Reeves married the spinster daughter; which meant instead of going to town and getting drunk every second Saturday, he could now get gloriously drunk every night of the week. Luckily for the family fortune, this state of affairs did not last much longer than it took to get his middle-aged wife with child. After a drunken argument and a good deal of boasting, Grandfather died; he broke his neck trying to splice a rope to the top of a flagpole. Helen went to a great deal of trouble to trace her family history; mainly to spite her father.

William S. Reeves, the second, referred to his father: ‘The retired sea captain who turned squatter,’ as having some vague connection with royalty. It was vague indeed! In fact the closest Bill Reeves ever came to sovereignty was the royal-yard-arm of the barque Speedwell. If the authorities had caught him, he would have swung from it on the end of a rope.

Helen’s father, under the fussy, doting, dithering stupidity of his aged mother, grew up with the cold, calculating, bad-tempered disposition of a cobra. Unfortunately for the reptile race, William met and married a kind and gentle woman who had no snakelike qualities at all. Mary Reeves sublimated intelligence to an incredible capacity for love; she adored her worthless husband all his life. For twenty years, Mary patiently withstood the dreary succession of infidelities, lies, constant nagging and shouted abuse. Her love stood like a wall of steel under the vicious shell fire of petty meanness, cheating and filthy temper. Not that William hated his wife – he didn’t. Helen knew in his own twisted way her father gave all the love he was capable of giving.

Helen hated and feared him; mainly for the grief he caused her mother. She was delighted when Daddy was killed and counted the blessing as part compensation for her injuries; in fact, William’s daughter would have gladly sacrificed a breast, at any time, to be rid of him. Of course Helen was totally unable to share in the mourning for her ‘Poor dead father’ and decided to leave home before ‘Mummy’ became aware that she wept alone.

It’s a great pity Helen didn’t find a city requiring a Joan of Arc; she could have summoned from her mother’s teaching and example all the steadfast faith and courage necessary for the war against injustice. The sword-swinging maid being obsolete, Helen was forced to crusade in the slums. She found it more like wading through slime than a clean fight against ignorance or disease; the battle became boring when she finally learnt her chief adversaries were not vice or sickness, but poverty. Poor people cannot afford the really juicy depravity that would make a crusader’s life more exciting. Anyone of the slum dwellers could have told Helen, poverty is the deadliest crushing bore man can endure; there isn’t much wrong with any fringe inhabitant a thousand pounds wouldn’t temporarily cure. The maid found tedium can become almost as bad for those who fight it as those who live with it. Almost – but not quite.

Helen dropped all her social welfare work from the moment I moved into the flat. The need disappeared. She took a cause home with her; even slept with it.

I tried not to think about Illuta and was moderately successful during the days. It was mainly at nights, in the interval between turning over and going to sleep, when the door in the upper storey would creak open and little pictures form of Illuta and I on our honeymoon. Helen is a dead loss in bed. Its seems strange for anyone so generous and open handed in every other way to be completely selfish with sex. During the couple of hours prelim, both hands have to be kept in the middle of her back and ears whispered into at regular intervals; otherwise she goes to sleep. Helen doesn’t give at all. Providing the mechanical routine is adhered to, she submits. Illuta doesn’t give either – she takes ...

 

In the late afternoon, on our first day out from the Alchilpa, I hadn’t spoken a word to my bride and was still striding along out front, wondering where the hell I was supposed to be going. Manala and his woman had turned in another direction hours ago; I cursed myself for not following them. Eventually we came to a small sandy place at the foot of a crumbling cliff. I promptly squatted down as though arriving at a satisfactory destination. My heart pounded like a frightened rabbit.

‘We will sit down here, woman,’ I said in a commanding gruff tone of voice. ‘We stay until the morning.’ I was too busy examining a spear to deliver the oration to her face. Illuta didn’t answer.

As usual I was thirsty; but the dry, hot feel of the sand underfoot made digging for water seem unlikely to meet with any success. Besides, having tied myself up in so many knots of dignity, even making the attempt was impossible unless certain water would be there. I tried casually working the point of the spear down into the sand and then pulling it out to see if it was damp; the blade hit a stone and snapped off. Dying of thirst seemed easier than turning around and looking at my bride, let alone asking her questions about water. The dog circled me sniffing suspiciously; when I put out a friendly hand it growled and backed away.

A snake broke the embarrassing situation. A nulla-nulla whizzed past my ear and thudded into the rocks at the base of the cliff; the snake’s tail was just disappearing into a shallow vertical rock face. As Illuta grabbed her knob-headed throwing stick and started up the cliff the big rock python doubled back; it was a good eight feet long and fat as a man’s arm. I threw a rock that hit too close to the tail to do much harm; it slithered into another crack and disappeared again. We both yelled as the thick body appeared on a narrow ledge. Illuta was half way up the cliff and balanced on one foot when she threw the club; it was a perfect shot and smashed the snake’s head flat, but the throw upset Illuta’s precarious balance. She came sliding down the cliff in a cascade of little stones and fell on top of me.

We rolled over and over in the sand laughing with the excitement of the chase; Apmaura running around us in circles and barking her head off. It was the funniest thing ever to happen on earth. The touch of flesh, the feel of weight and size quickened, flushed to a fever thrill. Giggles slipped down our throats into belly rumbling chuckles, slowly died away into a low continuous murmur. There was no love or prissy sentiment, but a fierce jab and clutch. Illuta took with a snarl on her lips and pain and ecstasy chasing across her face. There was no turning back, either we swung from a star or sunk the teeth in and drank each other’s blood. The savage pride of real womanhood knows nothing of submission. Illuta’s full lips were pulled back from her teeth; the low sound coming from deep in her throat was part of the feline fever – the fierce female puma snarling defiance as it takes the seed of life.

So it isn’t nice! What a pity Illuta missed the slow drip of the poison; never learnt words like: indelicate-suggestive-loose- indecent-bestial-licentious; the vocabulary of the delicate fornicator. Unlike Helen, Illuta attended no finishing school for modest virgins and missed the advance course with its dogma of opposites – purity and impurity. Chaste lust is what Helen seemed to be striving for; continent carnality; virtuous voluptuousness. The ideal not quite an immaculate conception, but a striving for the same type of spontaneous combustion. Dear daughter, try to live in decent, delicate, decorous debauchery! Dear son, something has to despoil the white flower of womanhood! There aren’t enough swans to go around ... Turn the light out daughters, lie stiff and unbending, tell him you have a headache ... Be ashamed you Rabelesian rip, you lecherous, goatish, erotic, salacious, blackman ...

Helen did the shopping and for a short time I was the best-dressed boong in Australia. Probably the bark-string armlets, Manala and I made; the rabbit tails in the anklets, the bone through the nose, spoilt me for a tuxedo. I felt like a boong every time we went out together. Nobody paid a great deal of obvious attention; just about the same as if I had no legs, but a good deal less than if I had two heads. In theatres some people turned around in their seats and then turned back again. Waiters and shop assistants were polite and slightly puzzled; it wasn’t anything that worried them. About the same effect as a public display of a modern painting; some people smiled or frowned, but the average saw something in the picture of the blonde and the boong they neither understood nor cared about one way or the other.

There were exceptions, of course. Not many, but enough to make Helen’s cause seem worth while and satisfy her flair for martyrdom, I remember asking with weary resignation:

‘Who is insulting you now?’

‘Do you think I don’t notice the smirks and stares wherever we go!’ She sobbed.

‘Don’t cry, Helen,’ I said, adding fuel to the flames. ‘They probably wouldn’t stare so much if you didn’t glare around the restaurant or the pub before you sat down. The average are curious but not insulting.’

‘How can you say that! What about that despicable pig of a steward last night?’

‘What about him? You were half full of gin, he was rushed off his feet and you kept calling him “boy”. So he told you he wasn’t a bloody nigger.’

‘Oh, darling! If only other people possessed your wonderful tolerance.’

‘For Christ sake come off it, Helen! What are you trying to prove?’

After a while Helen dried her eyes and wrote another long letter, beginning as usual, ‘Dear Mummy ...’.

In time she began to suspect nobody was interested in making our hides into snappy black and white handbags. Not a single stone was thrown at us and the only poison-pen letter we received was not stamped. It came from the poor old bat in the flat downstairs, who disliked Helen for complaining about her pet parrots to the landlord.

While the summer lasted we swam and surfed like berserk porpoises. Lying on an immense white towel next to the oiled and now golden Helen, I had no great desire to change my environment. If I had I would have done so. Who could doubt this beautiful white-sanded beach, with its backdrop of green lawns and pavilions, was in every way superior to a stretch of tidal mud flats. Like the place where Illuta and I spent part of our honeymoon: a pebbled shoreline with mangrove trees; their stilt-like legs buried in slimy mud. We couldn’t swim; the long trailing stings of northern jellyfish paralyse and kill; shark, eel and sea-snake are always ready to support their shore-based cousins, the crocodiles. Keen eyes cannot avoid microscopic coral growths. A tiny animal becomes an itch in the swimmer’s ear; it eats through the eardrum and the victim goes mad with the pain. Only a lunatic would want to swap City Beach for the Riviera of the Abunda.

I fought against Illuta and the tribe with every memory and argument I could find; probably protested overmuch ... The mosquito-ridden swamps and t