“No, Michael is not here,” said Fulke.
“Don’t think you can fool me,” said Blount. “Now you three be seated. Come on in out of the passage,” and leaning out of his chair, he pushed forward the chair beside him where his reader usually sat.
“He is not here,” said Marion.
“He will soon be here. All the afternoon I have thought about him and am sure he is coming. It is always the way: I know by telepathy.”
“How that dog howls,” said Marion.
“It has been howling for a week,” said Mrs Blount; “it makes my blood curdle. Since Tuesday, imagine that!” She cast a significant eye on the Folliots.
“Since Sunday, it’s a spoilt little tyke,” said Kol Blount. “The owners have gone to Cronulla for a couple of weeks. The butcher’s boy feeds it every morning and evening. When it hears a step its moans are simply desperate. I’d go in and bring it here if I had a leg, but Mother won’t touch any one else’s property, will you, Mother?”
He laughed.
“I’ll risk it,” said Fulke. “I’ll bring it in to you. It doesn’t bite, does it?”
“No.”
“Come and show me the way, Mrs Blount.”
“If you’ll take the responsibility, I’ll be glad. I’m a neighbour, I have to be careful.”
When they had gone, Blount moved his head nervously from side to side and squirmed as if trying to throw off a serpentine oppressor. He began to speak quickly and hotly, like a person talking in his sleep:
“Marion, I’m glad you came; what a dream I had last night! Was I too rough on the people last Sunday? Milt came to see me on Monday night with Fayre Brant and told me they were engaged. Tuesday, the night of the storm, no one came. I knew you were in Melbourne, so didn’t worry: besides, the weather was so bad. But about four o’clock in the morning I had terrible nightmares, waking dreams rather, had to call Mother to sit by me, and I heard Michael’s voice distinctly, calling ‘Kol!’ through the storm. But only once or twice. It is very hard for me to shake off dreams with my way of living. Last night I dreamed two great gondolas paddled by rival boatmen ran side by side down a wide turbulent river, with a few stars and low clouds above. Above rose giant pillars of cloud into the evening air. On one of the boats was I. On the prow of the other lay a gallant with white hair, bleeding and gasping his last. Round a body trailing in the water, several people bent and mourned: not yet a body, however, it still breathed. I embraced the dying man, half lifting him from the flowing water over the side of the vessel; the gondoliers leaned on their poles and had forgotten to strive. As I embraced the man in the water, a stately phantom rose over the body of the gallant and cast its hands upwards. With the same movement one of the women, Catherine she was like, rose on her knees and lamented bitterly; then the phantom, it was Grief, flung its arm out, and the second black-haired woman, who was like you, Marion, rose up and flung out her arms, lamenting. But both were unconscious of the phantom that mounted into the air and mingled with the pillars of vapour from the clouds. At the same moment the gondolier pushed the other ship angrily forward, the wounded gallant sat up laughing, the drowned man at our prow fell into the depths of the canal. We rushed on into the dark but he had long outdistanced us. Underneath in the canal, now become clear, I saw Michael smiling at me. I told Mother that, I was so impressed, and she burst out crying.”
Kol Blount looked at Marion, waiting for a word. Marion was much disquieted by this dream and looked out of the window for Fulke. Yet she was a little relieved that he had been prepared for it by dreams.
“And why not?” she said to herself. “Their life was nothing but a dream, the whole world, their fever, their failures, their love was nothing but a dream and incoherent when told. He was a man who could attach no one solidly to him.”
Kol’s long arm tugged her skirt, from his chair.
“What are you thinking of? You have such a profound look!”
“Nothing much.”
“Have you seen Michael?”
“No. Kol, tell me, what do you expect to be the end of Michael?”
He looked intently at her.
“I don’t know.”
He would not help her. She had rehearsed the opening of the confession for days. The clock struck four. She heard Mrs Blount making tea in the kitchen.
“No one has seen Michael for days.”
He said nothing. She had expected alarm, questions, and they would have helped her along. He malignantly disappointed her, and brooded, caressing his cheek and chin with their two days’ growth of stubble. He thought Michael was dead drunk, and they had come to clatter about it. A bitter hard expression was leveled at her, saying, “You like to see a man downed, don’t you?” Marion listened impatiently for Fulke’s step.
“What has happened, Marion?”
“Michael will not come here any more.”
“He has gone abroad. Don’t say it!”
“No, he is . . .”
“He is what?”
“He is—listen, Kol, give me your hand—he is dead.” Before she had finished speaking he put up his hand quickly to ward off the stroke.
“Michael!”
He let his hands fall on to the arm of the chair, his face fearfully convulsed; then he sat still. She put her hand on his knee, for he did not wish to hear a word. He patted it gently, but in a few minutes he began to shiver, long convulsions from the depths of the Cimmerian cave; beasts howled on the remote rim of the world; the planets went whirling over the edge; horrible forests, black, mountain-perched, mossy, cloud-soaked at the end of existence, began to toss. All the time he sat shivering, shivering in a Chinese contortion of black and white, white face and limbs and black eyes. She heard Fulke, thank Heaven! coming up the path.
“Fulke, Fulke!”
Fulke looked, and rushed across the room.
“It’s all right,” said Kol Blount, “but I didn’t expect it. At least, not so soon. Wait a little while in the kitchen with Mother, will you?”
“Let’s go now,” said Catherine, when the washing-up was finished, to Joseph. The two old people were sleeping. The Bay was full of rowing-boats, people in light clothes walked all over the roads, green Vaucluse, with its white palace and rich bungalows, sparkled beside the blue water.
“It’s a lovely day,” said Catherine. “We’ll take the boat in. I want you to come and visit Baruch with me: we’ll have tea somewhere in town. I want to go on the spree a bit; I’m going into an asylum tomorrow. You’ll think I’m crazy, perhaps, but it’s the best thing for me, the way I feel.”
“An asylum? What for?”
“I want to rest, and I can only rest where people are allowed to be queer. You wouldn’t understand how upset I am over Michael: I’m supposed to be without much family affection. But I want you to understand. You’re not a bad fellow, Jo, and you take people at their own estimation, that’s why you have faithful friends: there’s no spite in you. But those others, half of them are stuffed with spleen, spite or gall. Every one in the asylum pities the insanity of the others. And they teach handicrafts there. They are kind people, the insane, easy to live amongst, easy to humour, and if cranky, no worse than plain men.”
“Oh, I couldn’t. But can any one get in?”
“No, I have a friend; a doctor who will certify me unbalanced. And I am.”
“Do it if you want to. I don’t think it crazy; you know best what you want. I’ll come and see you.”
When they reached Baruch’s bachelor room in Woolloomooloo, they found him absorbed in books. He seemed annoyed to see them; then he sprang up.
“Catherine, I’m delighted to see you. How do you feel?”
“Rotten, thanks.”
“You must; did any one know Michael so well as you?”
“No, I don’t think so; I am sure not.”
“Do you know why he died?”
“For want of breath.”
He gave her a shocked glance.
“That’s a funny
thing to say; you know I’m your friend. Did it concern the Folliots?”
“You will never know that.”
“I know it already. But I don’t press you. Only, I had a real affection for Michael. It was entirely unexpected to most of us. Perhaps not to—some woman.”
He gave her an inquisitive glance, half theatrical, to force her secret. He thought, she dislikes Marion; what is the real basis of the jealousy? Catherine laughed aloud.
“Baruch, you’re cunning, you’re devious; but you wouldn’t know my tale if I hadn’t come to tell it. I’m going into Forestville tomorrow, to rest and for psycho-analytic treatment, and I want to begin to unburden my soul now.”
“I’m sorry to hear it; I don’t believe in that treatment.”
“I do.”
“Good.”
There was a silence. Baruch fingered the pages of his book, reading a line or two. Catherine turned towards him impetuously.
“Would you be interested to hear the private history of Michael?”
“Very much.”
“I warn you it is strange and long.”
“All the better; most lives are stale and short.”
“He was Mother’s illegitimate son, and knew it quite early. Our money came partly from his father, an eccentric surveyor, mathematician and astrologer.”
“Whose mind was so much in the stars that he didn’t know what he was doing when he walked amongst men.”
“Yes, Michael arrived in one of those off moments. He was intended to go to the University because Mother had a romantic feeling about him, the bastard son of an eccentric man, quite evidently a genius . . .”
“One of the great race of mahmzers.”
“What? Well, Michael was emotional and sensual; he was first attracted to the Church, you probably can’t imagine why in this country which doesn’t exactly favour cloistral gloom and where every one thinks of the price of wool. His mind was lost in antique Celtic fogs: he drew designs in his odd hours, and had a very sweet imagination, mittel-Europäischer, mittel-alter. He used to dream about colonies of angels and vast buildings whose columns had scaly winged feet. He told me every morning when he waked what he dreamed. I used to lie back, shut my eyes and see it too. He collected prints of Dürer and mediaeval artists, but he didn’t like anything modern. He bought a wooden replica of a peasant Christ found in the Tyrol, a most grotesque thing, to have in his bedroom, which he had painted white. But it wasn’t to pray, it was the grotesquerie, the bizarre monastic flavour, a shock in a suburban bungalow. He met a girl in the Bay called Mae Graham, a teaser, and he could not tear himself away from her even when she married. I imagine he committed adultery with her. He met Withers before that, and Withers liked to tote him around; he was the same then as now.
“He would always go out walking with me to tell me his dreams. He insisted on having a photograph of me, and said he walked with me in dreams. He left it at some friends.”
She looked at Joseph.
“I broke the frame the other night by accident and put it in a drawer. I did not think it was of any use.”
“You were very close to each other?” said Baruch. Catherine was silent for a while. Her powerful tragic sense changed the small room, even in their eyes, to a theatre. Baruch remembered her scenes as if he had seen them stereoscopically. And this, hardly believing, he called Catherine’s narrative.
Catherine’s Narrative
We were hearts united—before the war.
Before the war. But I thought it was finished when he returned from the war, until a holiday we spent in the country. Once we went to Tuggerah Lakes during a vacation. We used to walk along the beach about seven miles to Norah Head where the lighthouse is, and back, over the soggy sand. The mouth of the lakes is always filling up. There is a sand-bank in the centre of the entrance lake, the tide runs out fast through thick mud channels on either side. It is very treacherous at the ebb. The sand-banks, too, at the mouth of the lakes often drop off sheer into the water. The water is like an aquarium underneath, and you can see the fish ten to twenty feet down.
Behind the bungalow is low dense scrub, eucalypts, bottlebrushes, she oaks, and in the back-yard a tree with large white trumpet flowers of the nightshade family, I don’t know the name. In the bush we sat every day before lunch and tea and Michael read me his poems. The place is damp, mournful, magnificently lac-coloured morning and evening.
One day we rowed to the island, which is covered with trees and dripping with damp. We got out, tied the boat to a stump, and went in amongst the trees one behind the other. Michael walked in front, because I can’t bear to have anyone behind me—so I could not see his face. We continued to walk along over the leafy mud. It was quiet except for the ring-necked doves roucoucouing right up in the tree-tops and some curlews on the opposite shore—they have a dismal human cry.
I said nothing. I was thinking about the meeting I was organising out at Double Bay. Laverty, the local secretary, was rather rocky and indifferent because I was a girl. Michael kept on walking in front of me. The island became silent except for the squelching mud. Michael’s dark raincoat, gawky saunter and black hair seemed to stretch out into the undergrowth. He pointed out things with a bit of stick, without speaking, but he kept on, starting to speak on some subject which he was revolving in his head, without ever making anything but a coughing sound, as if he had changed his mind and started off on a new track. A sea-fog had drifted in; the rolling vapour fell on the island. We plodded along aimlessly in the wet, cloaked in our ideas—it got darkish, blobs of water dropped from the foliage to the earth. I began to think about Michael, that if he walked long enough he would miss the path, and walk off the island into the water, struggle in the mud four feet thick, be drowned and so end his unhappy, useless life. I wished he would. He was so dark and cold, like the moon; I felt the fire in me by contrast. If I had had a true brother, I thought, I would have had a companion; he always failed me. I thought, I will never get anywhere while he is a drag on me. He spoke to me,
“Do you think it is auspicious that my dearest friend is the paralytic, Kol Blount? What do you think of that?”
“I think it’s a mistake,” said I.
“If Blount could walk, he would despise me tomorrow. No one, you all think, could have a true affection for me.”
“Everyone is loved,” said I.
“Even Blount and even me. But they flatter themselves. If he were free he would leave them all. He is a better man than all.”
“He is a brilliant man, but whether he’s better than any one of us—it’s difficult to prove. He gains by his immobility. You overrate him. I prefer an active man as a companion.”
“Even you despise me. It’s strange, isn’t it? For a long time I endeavoured to be human. What is the solitude of a man? Not that he is a unit, but that he is a fraction. In my solitude, as a boy, I migrated people to the sky, peopled the dark spaces with bodies. I talked to the stones and the sea, the stones in the house answered me. I spoke familiarly to the furniture in my room and everywhere in nature and in the building materials of the city, in cast nails and puddles of lime, and underfoot, I saw a movement, a breathing, upwrenching, freeings and unhappy motion: I felt the trees had the souls of men prisoned, nature was full of gagged voices. Isn’t Kol exactly like that?”
“Yes, I understand now.”
“No. I lay on my back watching a shining, futile ant fussing through green thickets of grass and climbing gigantic stalks to surmount them, instead of going round the roots—immense energy for nothing; next day he died and was tugged back to the ant-hill to be eaten. But the grass thicket and the ant-hill themselves were alive, creaking tremendously in my ears; I never heard, except in a storm, such a roaring in the air. There is a blasting like that in the uneasy silence of Kol’s sick-room.”
“Is that it?”
“No; there is more. I went at night in the Inner Domain where it overlooks Garden Island. The tramps were there rolled in their caves, their fire
s were extinguished, and they were like dead leaves, or bad fruit fallen out of the trees. No, they were shadowy emanations from the ground, abortions. They were not alive, but the trees were alive. Awfully they began to move and bend over me; they crowded together in their congregations and unholy intercourse began. I was as invisible to their senses as their speech inaudible to my outward ear.
“When the wind comes off the bay, as it often does at nightfall, when a scurrying and rushing of feet, a series of flurries and cat’s-paws comes off the hills, then they burst their cataleptic dream, with what horrible memories and unspeakable ideas drunk up out of the earth with the dead encysted in its flesh, I do not know, but I was always afraid at that hour. Yet the trees were more alive than the men. Woe to the man who has the soul of a tree: such I am!
“At last I could no more persuade myself I was human. I ran out into the country at night, on to the fire-scorched and blackened hills, where splintered boles and spaded burrows of little animals trip one up at every step. There are snakes in the long grass. I passed by sleeping farms and orchards where the roosting hens clucked and the dog shook his chains and barked. I looked for a stray sundowner or homegoer late at night on the road, a man going early to work to hoe the turnips, put in the potatoes or pluck the hairy caterpillars off the grape-vines, or a country boy, coming home late from a country dance, overcoat on shoulder, drunk and whistling; but none I ever found, or if I found them they passed by with only a word.
“I thought I might fall in with a beggar or a thief, either is a human relationship, but I met no one. In the street, in the evening, the women only looked at me over their shoulders and trotted on. What is the mark that puts everyone on their guard? A child sees me and looks at me solemnly and reflectively: ‘Look, Mamma, look at the funny man!’ But there’s really nothing funny about me, is there?”
“Nothing at all,” I said, without looking at him. As you know, though, he had an absorbed, fanatic look, with his thin cheeks and eyes too close together. In Naples they would have said he had the evil eye.
Seven Poor Men of Sydney Page 31