Chapter 25 - Desert and Crocodile Families
After Belle was gone and he had got part of his mind back, Mark flew to Thailand for a couple weeks, spending time with a succession of girls in the hope that the sex act would fill the emptiness he felt inside. He tried a lot of varieties over two weeks. Even though his body performed its part with mechanical precision, no loss of potency and climactic pleasure, it was as if these joinings were soulless encounters.
A few of the pretty girls tried to talk to him, wanting to practice their English, and he tried to humour them. But he found he did not want to talk to strangers, what he wanted was friendship and companionship, a place to unwrap and leave his aching heart. He wondered if he should travel on to France, he knew he could locate Belle’s parents from her passport, to tell them the awful story, he knew they would grieve with her vanishing and that she would have wished to spare them this.
But he could not bear the thought of facing them and telling them how he had failed their daughter, how she had entrusted herself to his care and he had entrusted himself to mind her in this place of wildness. He had known he needed to be more careful after what had happened to his Elfin. Yet in the passion of love his caution had got lost.
He could not bear to tell them this, it was not an admission he could bear to make to himself, the words in the diary which told of it were enough, he could not bear it be relived in his mind. Yet the pull to see those who were of her, to see faces of which she spoke with affection, was very strong.
For two days he sat in Bangkok airport, watching the flights to Paris come and go, wanting to buy a ticket and with it some closure, but he could not. Finally, tired of his unusual indecision, he returned to Darwin and drove on down the highway, passing through Katherine and heading on, not able to bear the thought of even a night in that empty place. He had no plan to go anywhere in particular; he would drive on and allow the empty space of the land open before him.
Mark had known Vic for a few years and had met his mother, sisters and brothers at various times when he had worked in the Alice. He would not say the rest of the family were close, but Vic was like a brother. He had not seen Vic for months; he knew only he was working on the Barkly at the moment as the last of the cattle season was in full swing.
As he came to the desert he found a small healing in its emptiness. Each day he would find a place in the afternoon where he could sit on a ridge, nursing his OP rum bottle. As the sun fell low he let his spirit travel to a remembered place with Belle, until his friend, OP, brought darkness.
A week passed until one day he found himself sitting on a McDonnell ridge, looking west from the town of Alice. He was unwashed and unshaven, but he still had this friend, OP, for company, at least OP did not answer back when he did not feel like talking.
Into this mist a voice called his name, “Dat you Mark, what for you sit here, just with drink. You stink, you need wash, you need proper tucker, you come with me.”
The face of Vic’s mother penetrated the mist. She took OP and tipped him neck down, so OP wet a small patch of baked earth. Then she took Mark by the hand and led him back to her house where she gave him a towel and fresh clothes and pushed him into the shower.
For five days Mark stayed with her, each day she made him get up in the morning, walk with her to the town to shop, and then help with the preparation of the day’s meal for the rest of the family. It was simple mechanical work that he found satisfying. In the spaces between she talked to him as she would a child, telling stories of Vic and her other children, their successes and their failures, her pride and heartbreak.
Slowly he began to tell her of himself, not of Elfin or Belle, but of the mother he once had and other small parts of his life. He even told her of being a mercenary in Africa and of a woman he had loved there. And he told her of his crocodile totem and his other family like hers, in Gove, how they too had brought him in.
She also taught him how to cook, until then his menu was limited to steak and sausages, but she enjoyed the cooking and creating and made him learn as she worked. She brought him with her gathering bush tucker and taught him how to find those things that were good to eat in this land. It was what she was doing when she found him.
It was a week of simple companionship. Mark began to get his mind back, to see the world beyond again and bear to be in it. After a week she said to him, “I have helped you as much as I can, now you must go and sit with those old men of your crocodile totem, perhaps they too can help, it is like there is a bad and unhappy part of your totem, you must find some special medicine that makes it quiet again, or it will eat you up.”
So he went to that place and sat in the dirt with his totem elders. Together they watched the coming and going of the crocodiles, he held the carved object of his totem, and brought it away with him. It did not heal him, but when he held it in his hand, it was as if his spirit and it were joined, and it gave him a measure of peace.
Lost Girl Diary Page 27