He was wakened by the gecko, standing on hind legs close to him and most likely telling him to be on his way. He drank deeply and went out. It was well past noon. Whether he did so aimlessly or because the sunlight was fierce and best turned full away from and the wind was fresh in his face, or from some deeper urge than any but the like of him would know, now he headed eastward. Night caught him still on the flaggy rocks. He got into a hollow, and watching Igulgul watching him, fell asleep.
He woke in the morning to find the Ol’Goomun beckoning from the eastern horizon. He gathered up his things and went obediently.
9
I
What turned Prindy from those courses that might be considered obvious in his predicament, namely, to go back whence he had come or whither it had been so well arranged for him to go? It might be expected that he would be averse to returning to civilisation, although it could hold no great fears for him. Fears lay more in the other direction, but surely not such as to intimidate one so well equipped in experience and inclination and actual talismanic safe-conduct as he. He had certainly started off in that second direction, perhaps not simply in compliance with discipline previously accepted, but on definite orders that could be classed as almost occult, since his mentor, George, made them in the act of dying, presuming the old fellow’s final gesture had some such peremptory meaning. Yet it was evident that his ultimate choice was made with a degree of renunciation, since it followed his belated expression of grief. His mode of expression was the conventional one of the Aboriginal, which displays much less sorrow in loss of a loved one in the flesh than fear of gaining an adversary in the spirit. All the howling and head-cutting and hair-pulling conventionally indulged in is largely demonstration to prove non-involvement. As all death to such primitives is considered murder in some degree, the Shade of the victim is naturally vengeful in taking departure and must be appeased by those, who as it is put, Didn’t Done It. Love amongst such people is a collective thing, ordered by rote. Somebody dies. He or she has died ten thousand times since the Beginning, and will be back.
Prindy’s tardiness in honouring the convention was understandable in one so young and in such a predicament. But then, doing it as he did could be most significant. He was known for his tendency to solitariness, an odd thing in any child, but even preternatural in an Aboriginal, who is born not as an individual with his own destiny to meet, but reborn time and again as an unchanging part of Nature. That tendency of his was probably due to at least a degree of realisation that he was not truly Aboriginal, while yet his being yearned for Aboriginal community with his environment, rejecting the patent empty alienness of the non-indigenous. Suddenly he found himself utterly alone, as perhaps he had always wanted to be, alone with a Nature not in entirety explained and ordered as for a fully Aboriginal child, but by reason of his difference of origin largely a thing of his own secret perception, although no less rich in mystery for that; hence his making his own songs, singing of his Rown Road. Yet blackman’s rote had limited the expression of his spirit, especially of late. His mother had always mauled his freedom of spirit, because ultimately she must possess him as surrogate in her tragic love. Queeny Peg-leg surely could not have represented for him, beyond the conventional relationship, anything but the lunacy of blackman-whiteman involvement. Even poor yapping little Mungus must mostly have irritated an ear so sensitive. Then suddenly he was bereft of them, but with only momentary bereavement. At last he was free to follow his Rown Road. That could be in no direction but his own choosing, or rather the choice of the forces primarily dominating such a life as his — those of Nature. The seasonal wind was from the southeast, bringing the sounds and scents on which as a creature of the wilderness now his well-being would depend, as well as advantage over other creatures to windward of him. The Ol’Goomun-Ol’Goomun made her first beckoning appearance in the southeast. Even Igulgul, by the angle of his sinking, would be making his rising for this season South of East. The very birds seemed to be heading that way.
Indeed, the heading of the birds his way may have been more in the way of collaboration than coincidence, the way they came to take a look at him, in flocks, in pairs, in families, or alone, according to their natures, surely struck by the sight of the small lone figure whose hairless skin glowed in the sunlight and wind blown topknot glinted, and who could speak their language, joining them in the carolling, twittering, chattering, cawing, whistling, croaking to each other about him. Where was he going? How could he find succour in that blasted land? Someone must show him. The parrots showed him the kapok trees he would otherwise have had to hunt for. The crested bell-birds showed him where the grasshoppers were lurking, ringing their tiny bells of voices. Crested wedgebills, delighting in his mimicry of their sweet song, and especially when they tried to trick him with a bit of ventriloquism and found he could do the same, showed him pods opening to shed seeds that made good nutty munching. Red quandong cherries were the spotted bower-birds’ offering. The red-breasted babblers only wanted to talk about him, flying from bush to bush ahead and hanging upside down to get a different aspect of him to babble about. He got even with them when a prindy came scuttling along to take a look, nodded when given the sign that they were Mates, and led him to a clump of bushes where the babblers had a community of nests, and while those sitting the eggs chased him away, gave his young two-legged mate the chance to do a nice bit of thieving. Night parrots led him to water in the gekko-holes while he was still in the rocky wastes of the devastated land of the Frog Men. When he came out of that into the grey gijia, the finches, in their multitudinous breeds and multifarious hues, and the budgerigars in their singing myriads, took him to their little gilgais. Once when he hadn’t been doing so well through the generosity of his new-found friends because of a bit of unbountiful country, he was about to commit the unforgivable by sneaking with his boomerang on a bower-bird he heard going through its repertoire in its bower, to be saved getting the reputation of Wanjin the Dingo by a black-breasted buzzard who, circling above, gave the warning, then called the would-be treacherous one away to show him a much more honest and satisfying meal in the shape of a clutch of emu’s eggs in a patch of trampled grass with no one in attendance. There were a baker’s dozen of them. The buzzard took one for himself, just hooked it up with his talons and flew a few yards to where some stones lay, and in leisurely style that surely meant he knew that Old Daddy Emu, who would be the custodian of the nest, was far enough away to make things safe, in that extraordinary manner of his kind, took up a stone and proceeded to hammer the thick shell of the great blue-grey egg till it broke, causing Prindy, who wouldn’t have seen the like done in his part of the country, to stare. The buzzard, mopping up the tasty contents, stared back, with that boldness which is also a manner of his kind, as if to say: So what? Prindy could carry only four; but that meant four big baked meals. He shoved them in his gunny-sack and fled, leaving it to the buzzard to get the awful kick in the bum that someone was sure to get if Old Man Wallan got back to the nest and found anyone near it.
As if that bit of near-treachery had been noised abroad, after that his feathered friends dealt with him warily, or so it seemed; but it could have been the company he began to keep, which in itself could have resulted from his being taken for a kindred spirit by his new-found friend, a descendant of Wanjin’s, one of those rare ones of his kind, an albino. Now dingoes like to attach themselves to solitary humans, and apparently without ulterior motive, since it has never been recorded that one has broken such a truce. It is always in the nature of a truce, because the dog’s approach is very wary; and no doubt about it, he can read people’s minds. He stayed with Prindy for quite a while, actually up to Igulgul’s reaching his fullness; that is he stayed within sight of him, just out of the range the clever pink-eyed fellow reckoned those short skinny arms were capable of hurling one of those small weapons; while yet they were truly together. They shared the bustards and wallabies that one or the other brought down, this being better country
. They shared their watering, which White Wanjin found. They camped together. At night Prindy would see the red eyes glowing like coals, reflecting the light of his fire. He would talk to him, sing to him. Wanjin never answered. Perhaps he expected Prindy to read his mind, too. Legend had it that the original Wanjin learnt to read others’ minds from the Ol’Goomun, whose dog he was, of course. It was supposed that’s why his descendants are prone to accompany lone travellers is through that early association. Wanjin always wanted to be somebody’s dog; only he just couldn’t take the servitude that goes with it. Prindy asked him, ‘Wha’ ’bout you be my properly dog, eh? You number-one hunter . . . me too. You quiet dog. I like dat. Wha’ ’bout it, eh, Wanjin?’
It may have been that pressing; or Full Moon and a gathering of his clan for one of those dismal concerts they so love to indulge in when Igulgul is at his fullness; or the simple fact that he had done his bit in bringing this golden child who seemed to be specially favoured by Ol’Goomun Nature through the wilderness for delivery of his destiny; but the night of the Full Moon he slipped away. At no great distance he howled for the first time in his association with the boy. Prindy answered him, in lovely boy-soprano discords: Oo-ee-ow-ooooo-ai-ee-ooooo! Next morning in the red dawn he was not standing all shiny white as usual. Prindy called him. No answer. Prindy called him all day: ‘Wanjin . . . Wanjin, where you been go?’
Perhaps the change of country had something to do with it. Soon after setting out that morning, Prindy came out of the flat red scrubby sandy region through which Wanjin had accompanied him, into one of chocolate loam so stony as to look as if it had been ripped up by rock-eating pigs or kuttabahs gone mad with machines, so that the very trees on it, stout little ghost gums and wattles and beefwoods, all had a twist or a lean to them. A rich place for growth when there was water, but not one for holding it, so that the profusion of grass was lank and dead. There were traces of stock, of cattle and unshod horses, but made months before, following the brief fertility after what hereabout would be a very light Wet Season, and probably made by scrub cattle and brumbies, since there was no sign of a shod horse having come in with someone to herd them. A wild place; actually a region of transition between desert and fertile downs. It had to it the quality of downland in that although it was not really hilly you could not see far because of constantly rising and falling ground ahead. No sign of water. Yet water must be near because of the multitude of tiny birds of type that would never fly far from it: bright little creatures, robins in all their Australoid variety, chats, thornbills, Java sparrows, so-called, finches; all too busy with their little business amongst the twisted foliage of the distorted trees to take more than passing notice of something that, bright as he might be in comparison with others of his mostly unattractive species, was not in one wit arrayed so brilliantly as the dowdiest of themselves. Where was that water?
A little red-backed kingfisher, skimming just above the ground, led him to it just on sundown. There was no usual indication of water at the spot, no extra foliage; in fact none at all, the small trees of the vicinity being back from it some little distance, at what, to judge by the avenue of soil-less small stones leading to it, was the edge of the bed of a shallow creek that ran only during heavy rain, the setting one of those slight depressions between imperceptible rises. The little bird, fairly flaming in the ruddy light, sped like a flash over the stony stretch, more heard by his scolding scream of annoyance over intrusion than seen, so swift his going, to vanish suddenly. Prindy, heading for the rise, swung off course to see what had happened to him. It was a small reddish pool somehow scooped out of the stony bed and with enough clay about it to have retained the last of the water that had flowed that way. The kingfisher’s home was a tiny tunnel dug in the clayey bank. When Prindy arrived he was peeping out of it. He gave another nasty little scream, then backed inside. Prindy was more interested in the water.
Having drunk, the boy retired to the further edge of the stony waterway where a spiny wattle made a fair shelter from the sou’easter still blowing fitfully over the rise. He cast away what stones he could, made up a little fire, then settled down to watch day die in its glory, while gnawing on the hambone of a wallaby and nibbling the thin rosy flesh of quondongs and spitting out their great pitted seeds. Night fell. It was suddenly so dark that, having recently lived in company and in moonlight, he must have felt lonely, because he rose to knees and cupping mouth with hands, flung back his head and howled: Ooee-ow-ooooo-ai-ee-ooooooo! He cocked his head to listen. No answer. He cupped and called again. Still no answer. He sank back with a sigh.
But within a short while there was his other friend of the long nights, Igulgul; or at least to begin with the Shade of him, gilding the higher tree-tops beyond the waterhole. Prindy sighed again, watched the gilding turn to silver, saw more and more of the trees, and then the stony way light up as a stage for the dancing black shadows of the wind blown bushes on the rise. Prindy, naked as he was born, cuddled into the dusty warmth of his Mother Earth.
Was it from dreaming of that all-abiding preoccupation of his that suddenly he sat up, and with head now gleaming in the moonlight, cocked to listen? He breathed, ‘Musics!’
He turned towards Igulgul winking at him through the bushes.
For sure there was a tiny piping, rising and falling on the wind. He came out on knees, stared up at the sky, at the pale outline of the Scorpion, as if he thought it came from there. The wind died away. He sank to haunches, staring at the Moon. The wind waxed. Again the Musics.
He rose, went slowly up the rise, head cocked. Far enough up the rise to see beyond it, suddenly he stopped. A point of light on earth, distant about quarter of a mile, just about where the next rise began. He surveyed the scene. It was somewhat different here, less stony, more grassy, and with taller straighter trees; or so it appeared in the brilliance of the Moon. Against that brilliance, striking fairly in his eyes, which he shaded in his scrutiny, it was hard to see anything plainly where the ground rose again and the shadows were long; but there did seem a small black bulk where the light was. A camp-fire that light, for certain. But from what camp-fire would come such a sound as this tiny plaintive piping?
He went on warily, topped the rise, stopped to survey again. There was water some little distance away along the flat, a thin silver pool of it. Dark forms were near it. Prindy sniffed the dying wind. Horses. A kuttabah’s camp, hence to be avoided. But the Musics!
He cocked his head more. Only ears such as his could have heard the continuance of it as the wind dropped away. He was listening as he came on down the rise heading for the fire — listening, listening, repeating with his lips. Magic in the notes that drew him, surely to draw such as he.
Still he was wary, moving from bush to bush. He reached the grassed flat. Horse-dung and shod hoof-prints. Now he was within a couple of hundred yards of the camp and could see crouched beside the fire a dark figure. There was a vehicle of some sort covered with a dark tarpaulin. He got down in the grass to lean on elbows and stare, surely with hair glinting in the moonlight as the bleached grass of the Inland never could.
The music played on, so sweet, so sad. It stopped. A faint voice, hard to say whether male or female, sang, in the same minor key as the music, a whisp of words on the wind: ‘Gnara, genca nara . . nara maka naragela . . .’
Not whiteman’s words — not blackman’s chanting.
The piped music began again. The boy crept closer, down in the grass now like a true prindy. The grass was longish where there was a depression in the middle of the flat, probably a Wet Season extension of that pool. More than grass, there were several thin sticks stuck in the ground, not vertically, but leaning towards Prindy, which perhaps was why, with the blaze of moonlight in his eyes, he did not see them till amongst them and suddenly aware that they were somehow strung together and hence constituted some kind of trap. The music had stopped and the voice, a male alto, was singing, again: ‘Genka kara, genka narela . . . nara maka maka naragela . . .’
>
Just like a goanna turning tail at a hint of danger ahead, Prindy swung on his belly, at the same time raising his head for a glance back, struck something, pliable yet taut, from the strange pressure of which he dropped his head swiftly.
Then he felt a net fall over him, and heard a tinny jangling in the direction of the camp. He lay still. The voice had stopped. He waited a moment, then essayed again to wriggle away. But the net was pressing on him now, and the jangling renewed. Again he stopped. A high-pitched voice cried out from the camp, ‘Ho, permeshwar . . . kia hea ether?’
What lingo that?
Prindy crawled carefully, inch by inch. Now the voice was closer, crying in English, ‘Ho . . . What dere in my net?’
Prindy glanced back. An approaching figure. Nothing for it but to up and run. But the net was pressing. He grasped it to lift it. The jangling broke out again. The high voice shouted. The net was being hauled on, boy being rolled into a ball. He fought furiously, felt the mesh give, but as quickly more of it about him. Completely meshed and immobilised, he found a thin dark form dancing over him, while the high voice wailed, ‘Ho tu . . . mera jal alia krah dala!’ It was a skinny blackman, slight of build, clad in a long-tailed khaki shirt and white loin-cloth; or dhoti rather, since it was not an Aboriginal blackman, but one with a long sharp nose and tall and narrow brow, whom Prindy must have recognised at once, since he had seen him often enough elsewhere; he who was known generally as Ali Barba, Barbu the Indian hawker, of Beatrice River.
Poor Fellow My Country Page 81