The Songlines

by Bruce Chatwin

  ‘The Bomb!’ I suggested.

  ‘The Bomb,’ said Arkady, grimly. ‘Some of my friends knew a lot about the Bomb. After it went off.’

  Before the British H-Bomb test at Maralinga, the Army posted ‘Keep Out!’ signs, in English, for Aboriginals to read. Not everyone saw them or could read English.

  ‘They went through it,’ he said.

  ‘The Cloud?’

  ‘The Cloud.’

  ‘How many died?’

  ‘No one knows,’ he said. ‘It was all hushed up. You could try asking Jim Hanlon.’

  16

  AN HOUR OR so later we passed the Glen Armond Pub, turned left off the tarmac, bumped along a dirt track, and stopped by a disused stockyard.

  Nearby, behind a screen of tamarisks, there was an old, unpainted tin bungalow, grey going over into rust, with a brick chimney standing up the middle. This was Hanlon’s house.

  In the yard out front there were a stack of empty oil-drums and another stack of ex-Army surplus. At the back, under a squeaky wind-pump, there was a dead Chevrolet with silver-grass growing up through it. A faded poster, pasted to the front door, read ‘Workers of the World Unite’.

  The door scraped open six inches. Hanlon was standing behind it.

  ‘Whatzamattawithya?’ he crackled. ‘Never seen a man naked before? Come on in, boys!’

  For a man in his seventies, Hanlon looked in good shape. He was skinny and taut-muscled, with a short flat head and a craning neck. His hair was crew-cropped and white, and he would pat down the bristles with his hand. He had a broken nose, wore steel-framed spectacles, and spoke in a loud nasal voice.

  We sat and he stood. He stared earnestly at his privates, scratched his crotch and bragged about a lady pharmacist he’d tupped in Tennant Creek.

  ‘Not bad for seventy-three!’ he looked down at himself. ‘Serviceable knackers! Reasonable set of teeth! What more would an old man need?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Arkady.

  ‘You’re right,’ Hanlon smirked.

  He tied a towel round his tummy and got out three bottles of beer. I noticed that his right hand was withered.

  It was baking hot inside the house. The heat pressed down from the roof and our shirts were soaked with sweat. The outer room was an L-shaped corridor, with an old enamel bath up one end. Then there was a kitchen, then a group of table and chairs.

  He showed us the clippings on the walls: a strike in Kalgoorlie, Lenin’s skull, Uncle Joe’s moustache, and pin-ups from Playboy. He had settled here, thirty years back, with a woman who had left him. He had sold off the land, and now lived on welfare.

  On the table there was a scarlet oilcloth, and a tabby cat licking off a plate.

  ‘Git, yer bastard!’ He raised his fist and the cat flew off. ‘So what are you boys up to?’

  ‘Going up to Kaititj country,’ Arkady answered. ‘With Alan Nakumurra’s Mob.’

  ‘Survey, eh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sacred sites, eh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sacred bloody baloney! What those boys need is Organisation!’

  He flipped off the beer caps, then blew his nose into his hand and smeared the snot carefully on the underside of his chair. He caught me looking at him. He looked at me.

  He reminisced about his days at Kalgoorlie, as a paid-up Party member, before the Second World War.

  ‘Ask him!’ he pointed at Arkady. ‘Ask the boy for my curriculum vitae!’

  He pottered off into the inside room, where his bed was, and, after rummaging about among old newspapers, found a book with a dull red buckram binding. He sat down again, adjusted his spectacles and flattened his spine against the chair-back.

  ‘And now,’ he announced, pretending to open the book at random, ‘now we will read the Gospel according to Our Father Marx. Forgive an old man’s blasphemies! For today – what the fuck is today? Thursday . . . thought so! the date is immaterial . . . page 256 . . . And what do we have –?’

  What, then, constitutes the alienation of labour? First, the fact that labour is external to the worker, i.e. it does not belong to his essential being; that in his work he does not affirm himself but denies himself; does not feel content but unhappy; does not develop his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind . . .

  ‘Nothing like a few lines of Marx before food,’ he beamed. ‘For bracing the intellect and strengthening the digestion! Have you boys eaten?’

  ‘We have,’ said Arkady.

  ‘Well, you’re eating here with me.’

  ‘No, honestly, Jim. We can’t.’

  ‘You bloody can.’

  ‘We’d be late.’

  ‘Late? What’s late and what’s early? An important philosophical question!’

  ‘We’d be late for a lady called Marian.’

  ‘Not a philosophical question!’ he said. ‘Who the hell’s Marian?’

  ‘Old friend of mine,’ Arkady said. ‘Works for the Land Council. She’s gone to fetch the Kaititj women. We’re meeting her at Middle Bore.’

  ‘Marian! Maid Marian!’ Hanlon smacked his lips. ‘Descending to Middle Bore with her train of fair damsels. I tell you they can wait. Go and get the steaks, boy!’

  ‘Only if it’s quick, Jim,’ Arkady relented. ‘We’ve got an hour, and that’s it.’

  ‘Give me . . . give me . . . one hour . . . one hour . . . with you . . .’

  Hanlon still possessed the relics of a passable baritone. He looked at me. ‘Don’t you look at me like that!’ he snapped. ‘I’ve sung in choirs.’

  Arkady went out to fetch the steaks from the car.

  ‘So you’re a writer, eh?’ Hanlon said to me.

  ‘Of sorts.’

  ‘Ever do an honest day’s work in your life?’

  His blue eyes were watering. His eyeballs were suspended in nets of red wires.

  ‘Try to,’ I said.

  The withered hand shot forward. It was purplish and waxy. The little finger was off. He held the hand to my face, like a claw.

  ‘Know what this is?’ he taunted.

  ‘A hand.’

  ‘A working man’s hand.’

  ‘I’ve done farm-work,’ I said. ‘And timber-work.’

  ‘Timber? Where?’

  ‘Scotland.’

  ‘What kind of timber?’

  ‘Spruce . . . larch . . .’

  ‘Very convincing! What kind of saw?’

  ‘Power-saw.’

  ‘What make, you fool?’

  ‘Can’t remember.’

  ‘Very unconvincing,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t sound right to me.’

  Arkady pushed through the door with the steaks. There were drops of blood on the white plastic bag. Hanlon took the bag, opened it, and inhaled.

  ‘Ah, ha! That’s better!’ he grinned. ‘Nice red meat for a change.’

  He got up, lit the gas-ring, poured fat from an old paint can and laid out three steaks in the skillet.

  ‘Here you!’ he called to me. ‘You come and talk to the cook.’

  The fat began to splutter and he took a spatula to stop the meat from sticking.

  ‘So you’re writing a book?’

  ‘Trying to,’ I said.

  ‘Why don’t you write your book right here? You and me could have uplifting conversations.’

  ‘We could,’ I said, hesitantly.

  ‘Ark!’ Hanlon called. ‘Watch these steaks a minute, will you, boy? I’m going to show the bookie his billet. Here! You come with me!’

  He dropped the towel to the floor, pulled on a pair of shorts and slipped his feet into thongs. I followed him into the sunlight. The wind had freshened and was kicking up clouds of red dust along the track. We went through the tamarisks to a creaking gum tree with a caravan underneath it.

  He opened the door. There was the smell of something dead. The windows were wrapped in spiders’ webs. The bedding was stained and torn. Someone had spilled tomato sauce over the table-top, and the an
ts were swarming over it.

  ‘Nice little hidey-hole!’ Hanlon said chirpily. ‘Reasonable rent! And yer could oil the tree if the creaking gets you down.’

  ‘Very nice,’ I said.

  ‘But not quite nice enough, eh?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘But meant it,’ he hissed. ‘Of course, we could fumigate the place. Might fumigate you in the process!’

  He banged the door to, and stalked off back to the house.

  I hung about the yard for a while, and when I went in the steaks were done. Hanlon had fried six eggs and was ready to carve.

  ‘Serve His Lordship first!’ he said to Arkady.

  He cut three hunks of bread and set a sauce bottle on the table. I waited for him to sit down. It was unbearably hot. I looked at the steak and the egg yolks.

  Hanlon looked at me for what seemed a full minute and said, ‘Get your fucking fangs into that steak!’

  We ate without speaking.

  Hanlon steadied his steak with his withered hand, and cut it into cubes with the good one. His knife had a serrated blade and a pair of curled-up prongs on the end of it.

  ‘Who the hell does he think he is?’ he turned to Arkady. ‘Who asked him to poke his upper-snotty-class nose in here?’

  ‘You did,’ said Arkady.

  ‘Did I? Well, I made a mistake.’

  ‘I’m not upper class,’ I said.

  ‘But a touch too classy for my little luncheon party! Luncheon! That’s what they call it in Pongleterre! Luncheon with the Queen! What?’

  ‘Cut it out, Jim,’ Arkady said. He was very embarrassed.

  ‘None of it meant personally,’ said Hanlon.

  ‘That’s something,’ I said.

  ‘It is,’ he agreed.

  ‘Tell him about Maralinga,’ said Arkady, in an effort to turn the conversation. ‘Tell him about the Cloud.’

  Hanlon raised his good hand and clicked his fingers like castanets.

  ‘The Cloud! Aye, aye, Sir! The Cloud! Her Majesty’s Cloud. Sir Anthony-stuck-up-in-Eden’s Cloud! Poor Sir Anthony! Wanted his Cloud so badly! So he could say to the Rooskie in Geneva, “Look, old boy, we also have the Cloud!” Forgetting, of course, that there are such things as variables in climate . . . ! Even in Australia! Forgetting the wind might be blowing in the wrong direction! So he calls up Bob Menzies and says, “Bob, I want my Cloud now! Today!” “But the wind . . .” says Sir Bob. “Don’t you give me wind,” says Sir Anthony. “I said now!” So they let off the device – how I love that word “device”! – and the Cloud, instead of sailing out to sea to contaminate the fishes, sailed inland to contaminate us! Where they lost it! Lost the bugger over Queensland! All so Sir Anthony could have a nice cosy Cloud talk with Comrade Nikita! “Yes, Comrade, it’s true. We do, too, have the Cloud. Not that my men over there didn’t lose it for a while! Vaporised a few Abos on the way . . .”’

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Arkady, firmly.

  Hanlon hung his head.

  ‘Aw, shit!’ he said, and then prodded another steak cube and put it in his mouth.

  No one spoke until Hanlon burped and said, ‘Beg pardon!’

  He pushed his plate away.

  ‘Can’t eat the bugger,’ he said.

  His face had turned putty colour. His hand was shaky.

  ‘Anything the matter?’ asked Arkady.

  ‘I got a crook gut, Ark.’

  ‘You should go to a doctor.’

  ‘I been to the doctor. They want to cut me up, Ark.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘I won’t let them cut me. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ said Arkady. ‘Maybe you should go.’

  ‘Well, maybe I will,’ he sniffed miserably.

  At the end of another five minutes Arkady got up and laid his arm protectively around the old man’s shoulders.

  ‘Jim,’ he said in a soft voice, ‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid we’ve got to go. Can we take you anywhere?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay.’

  We made a move to go.

  ‘Stay a bit longer,’ Hanlon said.

  ‘No, really, we have to go.’

  ‘I wish you boys’d stay a bit longer. We could have a good time.’

  ‘We’ll come again,’ I said.

  ‘Will you?’ Hanlon held his breath. ‘When?’

  ‘Couple of days,’ said Arkady. ‘We’ll be done by then. Then we’re heading out to Cullen.’

  ‘Sorry I flew at you,’ he said to me. His lip was quivering. ‘Always fly at Poms!’

  ‘No worries,’ I said.

  It was hotter than ever outside, and the wind was dying. In the front paddock a wedge-tailed eagle was skimming down the line of the fence-posts. It was a lovely, gleaming, bronze-feathered bird and it sheered away when it saw us.

  I tried to shake Hanlon’s hand. He was holding it over his abdomen. We got into the Land Cruiser.

  ‘You might have said thank you for the steaks,’ he called out after us.

  He was trying to resume his abrasive manner, but he looked scared. His cheeks were wet with tears. He turned his back. He could not bear to watch us going.

  17

  AT THE GATE to Skull Creek Camp, there was a signboard announcing a fine of $2,000 for anyone bringing liquor on to an Aboriginal settlement, over which someone had scrawled in white chalk, ‘Bullshit!’ We had come here to pick up a Kaititj Elder called Timmy. He was a relative of Alan Nakumurra, on his mother’s side, and knew the Dreamings around Middle Bore Station.

  I unchained the gate and we drove towards a scatter of shiny tin roofs, half-seen through the bleached grass. On the edge of the settlement, some boys were bouncing on a trampoline and, nearby, there was a big brown windowless metal box which, Arkady said, was the clinic.

  ‘Someone then called it the “Death Machine”,’ he said. ‘Now no one’ll ever go near it.’

  We parked under a pair of ghost-gums, alongside a small whitewashed house. Songbirds were chattering in the branches. Two full-bosomed women, one in a loose green smock, lay asleep on the porch.

  ‘Mavis,’ Arkady called.

  Neither of the snoring fat creatures stirred.

  Beyond the gums, set down in a circle around an expanse of red dirt, were about twenty humpies: half-cylinders of corrugated sheet, open-ended like pig-shelters, with people lying or squatting in the shade.

  Paper cartons and bits of sheet plastic were flying in the wind, and over the whole settlement there was a glint of glass. Glossy black crows hopped here and there, blinking their jaundice-coloured eyes and pecking at old bully-beef cans, until driven off by the dogs.

  A small boy, recognising Arkady, shouted, ‘Ark! Ark!’ and, within seconds, we were surrounded by a mob of naked children clamouring, ‘Ark! Ark! Ark!’ Their fair hair looked like stubble in a field of black soil. Flies were feeding from the corners of their eyes.

  Arkady held two in his arms. A third rode piggyback, and the others pawed at his legs. He patted their heads, squeezed their outstretched palms; then, opening the back of the Land Cruiser, he began distributing drinks and lollies.

  One of the fat women sat up, pushed aside her tangle of hair, yawned, rubbed her eyes and said, ‘S’that you, Ark?’

  ‘Hello, Mavis!’ he said. ‘How’s you today?’

  ‘M’right,’ she yawned again, and shook herself.

  ‘Where’s Timmy?’

  ‘’Sleep.’

  ‘I want to take him out bush.’

  ‘Today?’

  ‘Now, Mavis. Now!’

  Mavis heaved herself to her feet and went off lumpily to wake her husband. She needn’t have bothered. Timmy had heard the kerfuffle outside and was standing in the doorway.

  He was a pale, skinny, impish-looking old man with a wispy beard and one eye clouded with trachoma. He wore a brown felt hat at an angle and a red handkerchief knotted at his neck. He was so skinny he kept having to hitch up his pants. He waggled
a finger at Arkady, and sniggered.

  Arkady shed the children and fetched from the car a photo album, with snapshots from an earlier expedition. He then sat on the steps with Timmy and Timmy turned the pages with the furious concentration of a child absorbed in a story-book.

  I sat behind them, looking on. An insistent white bitch with mastitis kept ramming her snout up my crotch.

  Arkady hugged the old man and said, ‘Are you coming with us today, then?’

  ‘Got the tucker?’ asked Timmy.

  ‘Got the tucker.’

  ‘Good.’

  Mavis sat slumped alongside us. She had pulled her hair over her face again and all you saw of her was a cracked and pouting lower lip.

  Arkady leaned round and said, ‘Are you coming too, Mavis? We’ve got Topsy and Gladys from Curtis Springs.’

  ‘Nah!’ she growled, bitterly. ‘I never go no place now. Sit down here all the time.’

  ‘No holiday or nothing?’

  She sniffed. ‘Sometimes we go up Tennant Creek. I got people there. My mother come from that country. She come from the big bore by the creek. You know that place?’

  ‘I think so,’ Arkady said, uncertainly.

  ‘Billy Boy Mob’s country,’ said Mavis, rousing herself with exhausted dignity, as though defining her right to exist. ‘Right up to McCluhan Station.’

  ‘And you won’t come with us to Middle Bore?’

  ‘Can’t,’ she snorted.

  ‘What’s stopping you?’

  ‘No thongs.’ She stretched out her foot and invited Arkady to inspect her split and calloused sole. ‘Can’t go no place without thongs. Got to get myself some thongs.’

  ‘Have mine!’ I volunteered. ‘I’ve got a spare.’

  I went to the car, undid my rucksack and pulled out my one and only pair of green rubber thongs. Mavis grabbed them from my hand as if it were I who had stolen them from her. She put them on, tossed her head, and shuffled off to fetch Timmy’s billy and blanket. ‘Goodonya, Sir Walter!’ said Arkady, and grinned.