Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  The reconnoitring pair reached the convent to hear harsh voices raised in the direction of the church. They got their arms, and under cover of the various buildings, made their way to the kitchen. Still the vociferation continued as they slipped through to the front to peep. Prindy breathed, ‘Eh, look out!’

  A group of men struggling, amongst them several old acquaintances. Stephen Glascock was in the grip of two Japanese sailors, while shouting in his face was Captain Okada clad in naval whites with gold braid: ‘You talk me riar . . . you pray me trick.’ He slapped the priest’s face.

  Glascock, struggling violently, gasped something.

  The Captain’s henchman, Sakamura, was there, too, also in officer’s uniform. And there was Brother David, clad as a common sailor, and but for his height looking very much like the others in white duck, with quaint-looking knee-breeches and a flat cap from which long black ribbons fluttered.

  Okada roared, ‘You Cristo man-o’-peace . . . you gammon me!’

  As he swung his hand at Glascock again, the priest shot out a leg and tripped the man who held him on the right. All three came down. Okada leapt into the struggling group, struck Stephen on the neck, knocked him senseless.

  Okada rasped at his men. They picked the priest up, pulling his arms over their shoulders, started off down the debris-littered road with him hanging between them head lolling forward, feet dragging in the dust because of the difference in his height and theirs. Okada, talking loudly in Japanese, followed with his Lieutenant. The other two sailors followed, David fetching up the rear. They came down past the ruins of what had been the Boys’ School and radio house, then swung off the road into the track that led through the casuarinas to the beach.

  David stopped, looked down the road, looked into the very eyes of the watchers, had he known it, looked over the tracks left by Prindy and Rifkah in taking leave of the priest, which he must have spotted if he had come on. But perhaps it was only a fleeting sentiment that halted him. He turned after the others, disappeared.

  Still the watchers stayed where they were, eyeing every visible point, listening. Okada’s voice could be heard all the way to the sea. In fact it was drowned out only by the starting of a motor: Pop, pop, brrrrup, brrrrrup!

  Soon could be heard the steady drone of a motor-boat under way.

  ‘Must be him clear out, eh?’ said Prindy.

  The old man nodded, said, ‘Ngangula, porrunna.’

  They emerged warily, slipped across the road, into the casuarinas, through to the beach. No one on the beach. Even the few old blacks had gone, with their canoes, fled like the birds from the savagery of civilised men.

  The launch was now well down the main passage and out of hearing, heading for what looked like a black rock, a mile and a half away. It was evidently the rock-like object that the Pookarakka referred to when he asked, ‘Gurruk?’

  ‘Call-yim su’marine, I t’ink. Boat him go down-below burrulka.’

  ‘Properlee!’

  There was no other expression in either face than intense interest as they watched — seeing the launch dock with the submarine, and soon the rock vanish. Bobwirridirridi clicked his tongue in appreciation, no doubt of another way for a koornung to get about.

  They returned to the road, inspected the ruin done by the explosion, over which again the Pookarakka clucked with pleasure. They also examined the tracks thereabout. Evidently Glascock had got to his radio unmolested and also into the church and out by the back of it, to be seized in the casuarinas and dragged back to the road.

  They returned to the convent, there to talk for a while. As there was now no haste about leaving the island, Prindy said they should get more tucker and use the row-boat. Then he went off alone to the mangroves. At the landing he found the girls plastered with mud and slashing at the still-avid blood-suckers, but wide-eyed with wariness, looking their surprise at his leisurely approach. He greeted them casually: ‘No-more fright’. Dat-lot been clear out.’

  ‘Zey vos Japanee?’ asked Rifkah.

  ‘Yu-ai. He been here before, diver-diver . . . what-you-call-yim, Okada. Dat-one David bring him.’

  ‘Where Stephen?’

  ‘Japanee been gitchim . . . take him ’way.’

  Rifkah gaped, to blink hard as Prindy, in the same casual tone, told briefly what had happened. That old bubbeh look as never before. As he began to tell of the new arrangements, she uttered a low cry, flung past him, to go running back up the track. The cry stayed in her hard breathing.

  She came out onto the road by that little house of hers, called the Synagogue, stopped there, but not even to look at it. Her haggard eyes were fixed on the presbytery, looking so deserted. The cry in her breath grew louder. She looked up the road, all the more deserted-looking for the litter up there. She started towards it, walking now. She saw the tracks left in parting, her own bare prints toe to toe with the beloved ones, paused over them, incredulity in her expression now. Then she went on, faster now. She came to where the party had turned to the sea, studied the tracks again, then swung that way, and now with eyes on the sea, again broke into a run.

  The empty sea. Still, she ran to it, crying on her breath, crying. The tide had receded from the point of embarkation. She halted in the last of the tracks, looking wildly from islet to islet, then at last straight down the passage, staring as if projecting her being that way.

  She turned at a sound. Prindy was coming, running hard. She only glanced, turned back to the sea, but now withdrew eyes from it, to look at the trampled sand, at the ruts cut by the dragging feet. She sank to knees, and with a groan, took a handful of sand that had had contract with the beloved feet, raised it to her mouth.

  Prindy came up panting, ‘Aeroplane come!’

  She raised bubbek’s eyes to him.

  ‘Big mob aeroplane. We better clear out.’ He reached for her arm.

  She raised the sand above her shining head, let it fall, crying, ‘Lamah Sabakhtani.’

  She rose to the urging, and now weeping, went blindly to his leading her by a hand. He headed towards the presbytery. The drone of the aircraft could be heard distinctly now. He hurried her. They were in the casuarinas when the flight passed over — half a dozen machines at height. They reached the shelter of the presbytery verandah as the flight came back, now down to a couple of thousand feet, making the iron building ring to their passing.

  Prindy was peeping out. She went on faltering steps to the doorway of Glascock’s bedroom. The aircraft were swinging round the island. Prindy called, ‘He going to land, I t’ink.’

  For a moment she hung in the doorway, then rushed in, dropped to her knees before the prie-dieu, dropped hands and head to the polished wood, hands clutching blindly at the breviary still in its place, sobbing, ‘Stephen . . . Stephen!’

  Prindy came, slipped a hand under her arm. She rose, still clutching the book, went with him blindly, weeping.

  25

  I

  The journey back to the mainland was comparatively slow. First there were hunting aircraft to hide from, and next the pinnaces of a couple of warships, none of them Japanee, by what the hidden watchers could make of the faces of the crews. Then came the spring tides and the consequent blustering sou’easter.

  But perhaps tide and wind behaved as the leader of the expedition, the Pookarakka, wanted. Certainly he made no complaint, but rather good use of the dawdling progress to acquaint himself with the reality of places he would have known previously only in legend. He sang the legend stuff, and had Prindy put it to flute music. That the magic of the legends still lingered was shown by the old man’s coming back to camp one day with what he claimed to be a Mawnyinga, or Mosquito Shade, tied up in a sugar-sack. He said he had caught it and now held it through the magic of that wondrous new insect repellant of the Yankees, Dimethyl Phthalate Cream. Bobwirridirridi had been greatly interested in the stuff from the start of seeing its efficacy. Capture of the Mawnyinga so far enhanced the value of the cream to the old fellow that forthwi
th he commandeered the whole lot, and no doubt because he considered it deserved better treatment than to be housed in a kuttabah’s tin can that was already rusting, made for it a container from a length of giant bamboo found as flotsam, which he inscribed with the motif of the Mosquito Dreaming. Thereafter he wore the container slung about his neck with other magical appurtenances, doling it out to the others on request.

  Although Bobwirridirridi held the Mawnyinga captive for three days, during which the party was camped in the one place, none of the others actually saw it. This was during the height of the springs, when it would have been senseless to go battling sea and wind. They were camped on a cosy islet with its own bit of mud flat beyond the jungle. In the camp, where as always the Pookarakka placed himself well apart from the others, he kept the sack up a tree. When he went wandering he took it with him. Undoubtedly the sack contained something, because it could be seen to move sometimes. Also it made sounds, squeaks and squawks, as if in answer to conversations he held with it in lingo. However, since he was known to be a ventriloquist, this hardly proved anything. The movements of the thing were slow and spreading, just as might be expected of a mosquito about a foot across cramped in such a way. Evidently having learnt all he wanted from the creature, one day he came back without it, and the sack palpating vigorously with, instead, mud crabs. That night he got Prindy to help him rig himself up for the Mosquito Dance, which he did on the beach for all to see, by the light of rising Igulgul.

  The girls might have been black lubras for all the share they had in anything but the chores, and apparently were content enough to be left alone together. Obviously Savitra was too scared of the spidery old man to try to assert her marital rights as usual, and doubtless also was still somewhat subdued by the shock of recent experience. She talked much of her family to Rifkah, giving the impression that she would be glad to be back with them as soon as possible. Rifkah herself was much as usual again, calm and mostly smiling, even though her eyes retained the old bubbeh look for some time. Not a sign of the wild grief since leaving the Mission. Not a word about the lost ones from anyone.

  Thus did they dawdle their way for somewhat more than a week before coming into sight of the mainland. One fairly easy leg would finish the voyage. However, it was more than just a journey to him in command. As they were about to set off on that leg before the rising of the sou’easter, the Pookarakka told Prindy that the Mawnyinga had told him of a camp along the coast westward, where he would find men with whom to do the Mosquito Dance as it should be done. He gave the direction with lips. Nothing to be seen across the green sea that way except sepia haze, whereas southeastward there were the mangroves of the Leopold River estuary floating in islands of mirage seemingly just across the way. Prindy, the captain, set his sail and plied his steering paddle as directed.

  It could have been a fearful journey for a crew not used to rough passages and without faith in their league with the forces responsible. Soon the wind was up, and the sea, clear of the lee of the islets, became a chaos of snowy-ridged mountains tumbling into their own valleys of pellucid green. On the ridges they flew like the silver scud itself, to fall into the valleys and see their own pale images staring out at them like corpses in glass-walled graves. They had to use some sail to beat the pull of the tide, East then West, hence suffer continual capsizing. When they went under, the only way to bail was in the blackfellow way of rolling their vessel sideways down a wave, then getting her half-afloat, leave the rest to the flying cupped hands of the lubras. Their bailing tin, like everything else they had been unable to lash down, was soon lost.

  They were still a long way from the point to which, it must be in those conditions, a magic compass was leading them, when the slow-slow rising land turned from blue to grey — to gold, crimson, violet — disappeared. The wind fell. Still the sea tossed them, now to the stars. Then there was Igulgul, somewhat misshapen, popping up out of the pool of gold he’d prepared for his appearance, and seeming for a spell to do a Mosquito Dance thereupon. After that he got behind them, and fairly shoved them on their way, so that in no time sandbanks were rising like white whales, and they were in a tideway that swept them through high banks — until suddenly the magician pilot cackled, ‘Yakkarai! There on the moon-side of a bank lay two canoes. Prindy swung the bow in. Their own canoe beached with a sound like a heavy sigh.

  The pilot went up first, took a look around, signalled the others.

  No sign of life on top — that is discounting the teeming existence of tiny crustaceans. No sign of human beings other than the canoes; and the reason soon forthcoming — Mosquitoes! Small wonder the region was noted for its specialists in Mosquito Dancing. Within half an hour the place was fairly howling with them. But, of course, they had the magic to beat them. The Pookarakka had lost none of his gear. He handed out dabs of cream, those to the girls through the hand of his ’prentice. He had matches, and soon had a fire going on the edge of the jungle. The meal was that poorest known to maritime blacks, hermit crabs roasted in the shell, and brackish water dug for on the edge of the jungle where the tide-arm entered it, and drunk along with slimy sand from a rusty bailing tin taken from a canoe. After the meal the old man went off with a fire-stick to set up camp on his own. The others settled down where they were, dug into burrows in the sand. They were soon asleep watched over throughout the night by Igulgul.

  First light saw them up and out. In fact it would have been impossible for any but the stone deaf to sleep through the din arising from the expanse of silver that the tide-arm was become. In progress was one of those piscine internecions only to be seen in remote waterways such as this, when a run of smallest fry starts a rush of fish of all sizes and species bent, it would seem from the indescribable havoc, on exterminating all but the very largest and most voracious sharks, which themselves stopped short of suicide only through utter repletion. The water was boiling, lilac-streaked already, although there was no colour in the sky. Prindy leapt up to take a look. The water was almost up to the high-beached canoes. Fish in their extremes were even landing themselves, only to be snatched back by others big enough to handle themselves better in both mediums. Prindy ran to rouse the Pookarakka.

  But no Pookarakka, nor smallest trace of him. Prindy looked about warily, went to where a track led into the jungle. There a fish-spear stood erect in the sand. Prindy took it, went racing to the fray.

  They breakfasted hugely on the sweetest of the catch, grilled on the coals and eaten off tea-tree bark. Now the mosquitoes had to be kept off with smoke. Savitra waxed bitter because they had been left no cream, and, convinced that the old man had deserted them completely, wanted to get into the canoe and make eastward for the Leopold country. Prindy, as certain that the Pookarakka would be back, explained that he had taken all his gear simply because it was all too mahraghi to be left lying about. Savitra yelled at that, ‘Dat mosquito cream nutching magic. Dat belong whiteman. Dat belong we!’

  He solaced his bride somewhat by building a separate shelter for her and himself and letting her accompany him on the fishing and crabbing and ibis-nest robbing expeditions with which he filled the four days of waiting. Rifkah spent the time making dilly-bags of shredded hybiscus bark, and in gazing sometimes northeastward across the jade sea with haggard old eyes.

  They were lying off in siesta when the signal sounded from the jungle. Prindy was up in a moment. He found the Pookarakka well inside on the pad, fully decorated and accoutred. They embraced. They dropped down to the sand to talk; or rather the Master to talk and ’prentice mostly to listen. Most of the weapons the old man had were for Prindy, to take him and his companions across country to the Mullaka’s camp. There was a spot along this track, marked, where he should turn off eastward to head for good camping for tonight. The Pookarakka would follow at some unspecified time. Prindy should wait with the Mullaka until he came for him. The talk didn’t last long.

  The old man ordered his Mekullikulli on his way, then vanished into the jungle. Prindy returned
at once to the girls. They were only too glad to break camp.

  As Bobwirridirridi had predicted, or ordained, they were soon in pleasant open forest country, and reached a big billabong with plenty of time left for Prindy to go out and bag a wallaby and the girls to get lily tuckout and mussels and to be cooking before darkness fell.

  Next day’s leg brought them to the Leopold. From then on for several days they followed the river up, taking their time, enjoying its bounty, and having it all to themselves, because the tribes-people, as the smoke of distant fires showed, were still taking the seasonal offerings of the plains while it lasted. Sometimes the fires were not so far away and too small and temporary to be those used by hunting parties. Hence it was likely that their passing was known and noted. Yet in all the way to where, within plain sight of the Plateau, they cut away, heading for Jeremy’s camp, they met no human being.

  That Jeremy was at home was signalled by the starry flag. Still, they approached warily, Prindy first to make a reconnaisance, then all of them to call at distance — Ku!

  It was a strange reunion, at first a mixture of merriment and shyness. Jeremy was the shy one to begin with, because, as he said, he hadn’t spoken to another human since they’d left and must find his tongue. That made the others awkward. Then it all changed suddenly with Jeremy’s asking how things had gone with them. The change in Rifkah’s expression caused him to ask in his rusty voice, ‘Why . . . something bad?’

  Rifkah’s lovely eyes, from sparkling, had turned blank and haggard. She blinked hard. But the flood burst. She flung herself on his breast howling her grief again. At first he showed astonishment, trying to hold her off, asking what was wrong. She only clung and howled and wept. He sat down with her, taking her onto his knee, to soothe her like the heartbroken child she seemed.