Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  When at last exhaustion silenced her and she shook her head at his invitation to talk about it, he suggested that she go lie down in her bed, and sent Savitra and Prindy up to prepare it for her. She went clinging to him to the cave, dropped from his arms into her bed to bury her face in the pillow and give way to the storm again. He bent and kissed her neck, motioned to the others, left her alone.

  The youngsters told Jeremy what had happened, making much more of the fate of Fergus and Alfie, since having little comprehension of that of Stephen Glascock. Again they made no mention of Rifkah’s relations with the priest. Thus Jeremy must presume that it was the whole frightful affair had shocked her, as suggested by his saying, ‘After all she’s been through, that had to happen in the place she chose finally as her refuge.’

  Rifkah kept to her bed for the rest of the day, unintruded on. In the evening Jeremy visited her to ask if she wanted anything, refusing to accept her whispered negative, and gave her a barbiturate with brandy and milk. She was sound asleep when the others retired.

  Next morning, when they gathered at sunrise for the early cup of tea, Rifkah was much as always, a little heavy-eyed, but no less cheerful. When Jeremy told her he had heard the story and understood how deeply she was shocked, she only looked at him. Holding the lovely eyes for a moment, he asked, ‘You don’t want to talk about it?’ She shook her head, and when he nodded, surprised him by taking his hand and kissing it.

  He asked her if she would not rather now go back to civilisation. She answered promptly, ‘Oh, no!’

  He said, ‘But if the Japs come even only raiding, how do you know you won’t run into them again somewhere . . . I mean if you still intend to work with the blacks?’

  ‘I zink zey are too fright’ to go to blackfeller camp. I see at Mission zey are fright’. I hear zat before, from . . .’ She stopped, with eyes clouding. Perhaps she had been going to say something that Glascock had told her.

  ‘Yes, I think you’re right there. They do fear the Binghai, as they call him. The blacks have killed a lot of pearlers over the years . . . Japs . . . A lot more than is known officially, I guess. Rather strange, that. There’s an analogy to it in New Guinea. According to the news, they’re frightened to go into the jungles because of the natives . . . which has meant a lot of whites have got away and are able to hang on keeping tab on their activities.’

  He went on to say that the news these days mainly concerned manoeuvring of Japanese and American naval forces for evident confrontation in what was being called the South Western Pacific, although actually it was Mid-Western: ‘It looks as if the showdown’s at hand . . . and it’s going to be naval . . . as the other one, the Battle of Britain, was aerial. The Japs are boasting that they have command of the region as far south as Sydney. Certainly they got a midget submarine into Sydney Harbour and shelled Sydney from the sea for a few minutes and sunk a hospital ship off Brisbane. But that could all have been done by one big marauding submarine. The Yanks undoubtedly have a considerable fleet deployed off our northeastern coast. Their naval chief, Admiral Nimitz, boasts that he’ll have the Jap fleet at the bottom of the sea within six months of Pearl Harbour. That’s really shooting off your mouth, as the Yanks themselves say, seeing there’s only about a month to go. And then, says Nimitz, he’ll ride a white horse through the streets of Tokyo. Can you beat a Yank?’

  Can you beat a Yank? That was the big question of the times.

  It was soon answered.

  Just a week after the reunion at the caves, the Battle of the Coral Sea was joined. It was easy enough to anticipate it, with both sides as vocal as they were in telling the world. Jeremy declared it the first time he had yet heard the Japs really boasting, adding that it might suggest that for the first time they were unsure of themselves. The Movement of a great task force southward from their main base in the Carolines might have been a peace-time manoeuvre, so frankly did they report on it. Not that such a vast movement of ships could easily be kept secret. On Our Side, the general opinion expressed in news was that the enemy intended to invade Southern New Guinea and so be in a position to dominate Australia. The Japs themselves declared that they would add Port Moresby to the many cities of the New Japanese Empire before the month of May was out. Jeremy, now listening to the news by the hour, as at the time of the Battle of Britain, expressed doubt about what the Japs were up to. Why, he asked, make so much effort at so much risk, namely, passage of the archipelago constituting the southern tip of New Guinea, perhaps the most hazardous in the world, when he had command of all other parts of the great island and need only send a force of his as yet unbeaten jungle warriors over the Owen Stanley Ranges to get what he wanted practically without opposition?’ He soon had the answer: ‘Why . . . the Coons, as they call them there . . . the natives!’

  He went on to talk to Rifkah about this strange fear of black savages seemingly felt by all Asiatics: ‘It was that definitely kept the Malay types out of this country over the centuries. The Chinaman was similarly scared. The blacks used to give them hell round here in the early mining days. On the northeast coast during the gold rushes the Chows were fairly massacred . . . and eaten, too! Comparatively, the killing of whites was a rare thing . . . and I never heard of them eating a kuttabah. Strange, isn’t it!’

  But the trend of the news supported what Stephen Glascock had learnt from his Yankee associates, namely, that the wily Yank, trading on the Jap’s conceit in naval prowess, was luring him on to stretch his lines to breaking point. The news of the actual Battle of the Coral Sea was as confused as the engagement itself proved to be, being as much aerial as naval in eventuality and fought in such a crazy place and in such mad weather. Both sides immediately claimed the victory, and not without right when it came to counting losses. However, the great weakness in the Japanese claim was the fact that those who survived turned back. It was the first retreat in Japanese military history. How they justified it to themselves was not disclosed. But what soon became obvious was that they were now confused. Their broadcasters talked stupidly of leaving the next onslaught until July, while still claiming that the US Fleet was at the bottom of the sea, and having to admit the bombing of Tokyo by aircraft of the same non-existent force. Then they took to declaring that they were about to take the war to the North American Continent itself.

  All the newsmongers of the world got onto this line of a final confrontation on the western seaboard of the USA, to begin in the region of the Aleutian Archipelago. The rest of the month of May was taken up with prediction concerning it. The Japs were as frank about it as the Yanks. Admiral Yamamoto declared that he would repay violation of the Sacred Soil of Nippon by laying waste the land of the Hairy Barbarians. The Hairy Ones stated grimly that they were concentrating all their forces to defend their homeland from a race of hairless apes. Jeremy suggested that there was rather too much frankness in it. Still, the Japanese had surely betrayed their naïveté to the world by broadcasting as truth President Roosevelt’s jocular naming of the base from which Tokyo was bombed as Shangri-la. Also, the Yankee’s frankness about defending his native hearth sounded honest enough, even to anyone inclined to doubt a Yankee’s veracity in anything.

  Then suddenly, at the beginning of June, there they were at it full blast — right in the middle of the Pacific. The Battle of Midway Island. Where the proud Yamamoto was at the time was not stated. Sufficient was it to confess that his deputy, Admiral Nemura, had to abandon his fine flagship, in which he had scourged five of the Seven Seas for half a year, and run for home in a humble little destroyer — surely to effect the Happy Despatch to be expected of any Nipponjin no o kata Gata in the circumstances. If Admiral Nimitz went home after that conclusive battle, it was probably to procure the white horse with which to make a Yankee Wild West Show out of the humbling of a proud people for the second time.

  So the Second World War was over — that is, but for the wholesale slaughter, mayhem, destruction of vast collections of the works of Creative Man and wide stretc
hes of the beauty and bounty of Nature, the inevitable climax to the periodic madness of war. Convinced as Jeremy was that the so-called enemy was beaten on all fronts, he had no illusions about early peace. He told Rifkah, ‘Apart from the Military War Lords, who have to justify their cry of havoc, till it’s taken to the extreme where they begin to fear it will turn on themselves, there are the Merchant Lords, who’ve Geared the Economy to War, as they put it, and won’t pull it out of gear till they’ve got their maximum return in dividends.’

  Again he suggested that Rifkah might like to return to civilisation, at least to get some legitimate place before the lifting of restrictions on movement in the district, which he predicted soon. An added reason was that it was evident, now, that Savitra was pregnant, and hence would be easier got rid of if they went about it wisely. Jeremy’s idea was that they cross the Plateau again as before, but travel as far South as possible without being seen. They should be able to make Charlotte Springs if they set out before the country got too dry. Then, if questioned about their movements, they could say they were hunting for blood-stock lost in the early exodus.

  Savitra was ready enough to go and have her baby with her people, provided Prindy went along with her. Prindy was agreeable to go, and to sneak back with Rifkah when the opportunity offered — provided he first spoke with the Pookarakka, as arranged.

  Now the time dragged. Jeremy, with the preoccupation of the war past, evidently wanted to be alone again for the solitary communion he had got used to. Often he went walking alone, leaving Rifkah to study of the medical matter he had instructed her in, and the youngsters to their devices. He was frank in saying that he must prepare himself for a solitary end to his life, since he could see nothing but what would make him mostly unhappy back in the society of his fellows. He said, ‘I haven’t lost my hope that the wonder that is Human Consciousness will ultimately prevail, and am pretty sure I’ll not die in contempt of the ideal of mankind . . . but to maintain hope and ideal I must keep clear of the common herd, especially what I’m afraid is the commonest of the herd, those who call themselves Australians.’

  Rifkah was also irked, filling herself with knowledge she couldn’t use, because those who might benefit by it would not come near. The hunting fires on the plains and then along the line of the river were a taunt to her, the way she watched them — approaching, approaching, only always to recede again.

  Prindy also watched the fires eagerly, but evidently without impatience. His spare time went into hunting for the camp and music. He helped Jeremy with a lot of jobs, including the baling of dry grass for hay and the construction of a hay-loft. Savitra fretted frankly, sick of following her man about, yet being loth to leave him out of her sight. She wanted to be with her people. Thus while Dry Season asserted itself in harshness they must all feel irksome from not being used to living through such conditions so close to nature. The sou’easter, at full blast now the winter solstice was passed, blew cold and dust-tasting from the Interior. The lush land as they had known it wilted visibly. Still the fires kept their distance.

  One day Prindy was on the way out to hunt, with weapons hooked over the left shoulder with arm clear so as to have both hands free for tootling on his bamboo flute. He was clad only in the red naga. A little distance behind him, scowling her displeasure, came his bride. She wore a dress of green and brown printed calico, and carried the lubra’s dunnage: a sugar-sack in which were tommy-axe and knife and cut lunch. They were about half a mile from the camp, well clear of the rocks and heavier growth below the escarpment. They were entering dense tea-tree scrub, when suddenly a startled exclamation from Savitra: ‘Oh!’ Then a shriek.

  Prindy swung round, to see leaping upon her from the scrub on both sides, what, on the instant, looked like a mob of striped stick-insects, tall as men. Painted blacks, of course. But no sign of black could be seen in any of them. Their heads were hooded with conical caps of grass. All the more did they look like attacking insects, multi-membered, because wielding thin saplings stripped of leaves.

  As the boy turned, he was himself pounced on from behind by two hooded figures. They snatched away his weapons, immobilised his arms. He rolled grey eyes at them. Then as a din of whooping arose whither he had been looking, he looked again, to see the hooded pack belabouring screaming Savitra with their switches, driving her back and back, till with a piercing shriek she turned and ran for home — with the whoops and whistling sticks in pursuit.

  Savitra’s terror and the din of the assault made her outrun her pursuers a goodly distance before she realised that no longer was she pursued. Still running, she glanced back. She slowed down, stopped and turned, heaving for breath, wild-black-eyed, dark face wet with sweat and tears. She bent to listen. No other sound than the rising wind in the trees. She gasped, ‘Prindy!’ She tried again, with more strength, and again and again, till she reached a cracked screech of despair: ‘Prind-eeee . . . where you . . . Prindeeeee!’

  Then she dropped her face to blubber. A lizard running over her feet startled her. Small birds were peeping at her out of bushes. She stared miserably back into the thicket she had come through, then blubbering again, swung away as she had been going, towards the camp, began to run again, whimpering, ‘Black bastard . . . I tell Mullaka . . . Mullaka gitchim rifle . . . shoot ’em daid . . . black bastard . . . black bastard . . . taken him ’way, my Prindy . . . oh, ah!’

  Jeremy and Rifkah were at the table under the shade, working on some pharmaceutical concoction, probably for dosing Bay Rum Betsy, who was in the horse-yard, evidently sick. When Savitra rushed up to them babbling incoherently, they looked at her rather with indifference, no doubt thinking she was only reporting one of her increasing rows with her man. Then, as the import dawned on them, after an exchange of glances, they took hold of her, sat her down, soothed her as they questioned her. ‘You shoot dem black bastard!’ she sobbed and sobbed. ‘Dey kill him daid . . . I know! For Wrong Side.’

  When her fear and rage had subsided to mere misery, Jeremy talked to her gently: ‘Now, you’ve got to be sensible. It’s only blackfeller business . . . now, now, you know that he likes business. If they were going to kill him, they’d’ve killed you, too.’

  ‘I runned away.’

  ‘They hunted you. Women can’t be in business.’

  ‘Dey stop him come back, for Wrong Side.’

  ‘You’re too young yet. Later on it’ll all be fixed up . . . and he’ll be able to come back to you.’

  She cried fiercely, ‘He got ’o come back now . . . cos I got him wid Charada. Spone you no more gitchim back for me, I gitchim long o’ Charada.’

  ‘Now you’re being really silly. You’re going to have a baby. We’ll take you to your family. Then when business finished, Prindy can go to you.’

  She howled, ‘He got ’o go wid me . . . you got to go gitchim!’

  ‘I can’t do that, girl.’

  ‘Course! You whiteman . . . boss. Dey fright’ you.’ When the grey head shook, she leapt up and began to pound him with dark little fists, shrieking, ‘You tek him rifle shoot dat bugger . . .’

  Rifkah drew her away, taking the thumping and the tears that went with her. Jeremy fixed things by getting her brandy and water, and when she sipped, slipped a barbiturate between her lips. At length, when she was crying herself to sleep, Rifkah took her gently and led her to her bed.

  The girls had no sooner disappeared, when Jeremy, back at the dispensing, was arrested by a slight cough, looked towards the fireplace, to see standing there, in grubby khakis, leaning on his womera, Bobwirridirridi. Jeremy stared for a moment, perhaps not sure of his vision, because above the khaki the death’s head was freshly white-ochred and the hair tied up in ceremonial style. The cavernous eyes showed no glimmer of recognition, until Jeremy called greeting, ‘Goodday, Pookarakka!’

  The coals glowed momentarily. The topknot nodded. A wide grin. ‘Goottay, Mullaka!’

  Jeremy went to greet him, offered his hand. As the old man took it, Jerem
y asked, ‘You want him something . . . bre’millik, brandy?’

  The lips smacked. Jeremy went back to the shade, got the requirements from the kerosene case cupboards. The old man stayed where he was. Mixing, Jeremy talked across the little distance, talking of what he had heard of the Pookarakka’s adventures since last meeting and asking what he’d been doing since last hearing of him. The answers were chiefly in nods and grins and gestures. Jeremy brought the bowl, along with brandy and water for himself.

  Bobwirridirridi snatched the bowl, muttering, ‘Tahng you, Mullaka.’ He seated himself on a case and at once fell to with fingers. Jeremy also seated himself, to sip from his pannikin.

  Nothing was said till bowl and fingers were licked clean. Belching his satisfaction, the old man declined more. Jeremy took the bowl, came back with another pannikin of brandy and water. The Pookarakka sipped and sighed. Still silence, till Jeremy asked, ‘What you do now, Pookarakka? You been walkabout too much. Now you spell little bits, eh?’

  The red coals fixed the grey quizzing eyes. The cackling voice spoke deliberately: ‘No-more spell. Too-muchee bijnitch.’

  ‘Ah!’

  A long holding of eyes. Then: ‘You give it prejent, Mullaka?’

  ‘Present, eh? Long o’ you?’

  ‘Long o’ bijnitch.’

  ‘Ah!’ Jeremy swigged off his brandy.

  Tradition demanded that those formally responsible for a boy about to be initiated must pay those who gave their time and talent to it. Jeremy asked, ‘What you want?’

  The black claws rose to count off on fingers. The cackle changed to something more like the drone of the calculating blackfellow: ‘Plour, drydea, tchugar, tobacco, pipe, metchitch, tom’yawk . . . millik belong o’ meselfmeself.’

  ‘All right. How much you want?’

  The counting began: ‘T’ree bag plour . . . one bag tchugar . . . one bockis tobacca . . .’

  When it was concluded, Jeremy asked, ‘When you want him?’