The Oldest Song in the World

by Sue Woolfe

  When I said nothing, he prompted again: ‘What’s the word for “leg”?’

  I still paused.

  ‘You won’t help out a blind man?’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said at last. ‘I don’t know how to say it. I don’t even know the word for “leg”. However, I do know how to say “not”. As in “not this direction”. You put the “not” in the middle of the verb,’ I explained, pathetically relieved to at least know that much. I hoped it made me sound like I knew my stuff.

  I made the sound of ‘not’ in Djemiranga.

  He was unimpressed.

  ‘I can’t believe it!’ he scoffed. ‘You’d learn parts of the body first off, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Language isn’t just a list of words,’ I said.

  ‘Isn’t that what linguists do? Talk in a language’s words?’

  His voice was ringing with suspicion. Then his high-pitched laugh of incredulity came again. My Ian never laughed like that, or never at me. He never laughed at me. Only sometimes. Some moments make the certainties of the past, the ones you depend on, sway like weed under water, so that you can’t quite touch their strands. You think, maybe it’s there, no, maybe it’s there …

  Suddenly it was this that filled my mind, the way I was trying to impress you, the way I was always trying to impress you, claiming to have caught dozens of tiny crabs, claiming to have dashed to death hundreds of mosquitoes, claiming I’d rowed further than I actually could, anything to make you notice me. Hadn’t that always been the way with me and men? Hadn’t I always been trying to impress them? I had to be the sexiest woman they’d ever seen, the most willing, the most compliant, anything but the most beautiful because Diana was that – and did it make me happy? Never. With you, in our childhood, I learned to be an appeaser.

  ‘Linguists study languages,’ I said. ‘How they work.’

  ‘But after all your study you only know “not”?’

  And he repeated ‘not’, gesturing to the sky, and the ridiculous excuse for a river in front of the café. He mispronounced it, making it sound like ‘onion’.

  ‘Onion – onion – onion,’ he mocked. Then he dropped into silence, and looked down, as if he was suddenly bored with me, so that all I could see of his eyes were his eyelids with their horizontal folds.

  I must harden myself against him, I told myself, or I’d be lost in him. Something about the grandeur of his energy made my concerns puny.

  ‘The reason is –’ I took a breath so I could reproduce E.E. Albert adequately. With her firm, clear voice in my head, suddenly I was making sense of what I’d heard all semester but only then seemed to be taking in. ‘People think in other languages in different ways from ours. It’s not just a matter of swapping one word in your language for a word in another language.’

  He was still looking down, his whole body contracted with impatience, as if at any moment he’d spring up much larger. Something about him – the energy flaring off his skin, my uncertainty, his mockery, the damned heat – he was one of those people who enticed – no, forced – people to perform, or he would draw away, leaving them crumpled, like a blanket thrown aside, less than human. I became nothing when he looked down, it was like the ocean sucking the tide out, the water rushing out across the mudflats, little black crabs poking out fearfully and scuttling into their neighbour’s hole. When he’d left, that was how I’d felt, that was how I’d lived my life after him.

  Whether they were Ian’s eyes or not, I found myself prepared to do anything to make them rest again on me.

  ‘It’s like this,’ I began. Now even the waiter was peering out through his window, listening. Suddenly, I – of all people! – felt I had to uphold linguists, especially E.E. Albert, though never the Dean. I put the palms of both hands together, though I wasn’t sure Ian – if it was Ian – was watching me from his downcast silver eyes.

  ‘European languages match each other, more or less, like this.’

  I turned my hands sideways so he could see my matched palms fitting onto each other exactly. ‘But for desert people, their experience doesn’t match ours, and their language doesn’t match ours. We call it mapping. The way languages map each other. The language of these people doesn’t map ours.’

  I let one palm slip down lower than the other, and was rewarded by his eyes following my hands.

  ‘So, for instance,’ I went on, encouraged, ‘there isn’t a word in their language for “democracy”. It’s a concept that doesn’t match their way of thinking. You’d have to use a lot of words to try to explain it, and even then there’d be a lot of meaning lost.’

  I let my palm slip further down.

  ‘What’s more, the words that do seem to match, why, even then a whole lot of other meanings and people and places crowd in.’

  He looked up with that flash of silver I knew so well – didn’t I?

  ‘It’s like the word “land”,’ he said. ‘You misunderstood that woman when she said “my land”.’ You thought she was talking about owning real estate.’

  So he had been listening! And it was true, how easily I’d been caught out, with such scant knowledge, so recently acquired. In linguistics, I was only a few pages ahead of him.

  ‘That’s true,’ I said encouragingly.

  ‘Language is a way of thinking!’ he repeated, interested.

  ‘Yes!’ I said again, delighted with his interest and remembering what had first intrigued me about E.E. Albert’s book. ‘That’s why I was sent here.’

  He was gazing at me, and for a moment I allowed myself to believe that he’d been carried away by my words.

  ‘I’m here to record the song – the “Poor Thing” song – because it might have fossilised inside it a –’

  I wasn’t up to it, I couldn’t keep pretending I was. But his eyes were forcing me to keep going.

  ‘Some grammar they used to use, they still use it, to specify exactly where they are if they’re going anywhere –’ I petered out because it didn’t sound like the sort of thing that anyone in their right mind could possibly be interested in. I needed E.E. Albert beaming at me, I needed her, her desk, her photos, my fingers walking between her photos. I needed to explain about the creek and the man who touched me –

  ‘So what’s the poor thing?’ he asked. ‘Maybe it’s their country. They worry over their country as if it’s a relative.’

  I didn’t want to be deflected: after all, E.E. Albert hadn’t been.

  I tried again – this was my first test and I had to pass it.

  ‘I’m looking for the remains of the most ancient form of their language, to see if it’s stayed the same or if it’s changed, if it was once, say, a language only women could use, or if it reveals a particular thing they did, or even its antiquity …’

  He wasn’t looking at me. He was no longer interested. His energy had left me. I wound down. I made one last try to impress him.

  ‘There seem to be five patterns for other world languages, and the song might show if Djemiranga conforms to them. After all, our own ancestors might have spoken in the same way when we were hunter-gatherers. The song might tell us who we once were,’ I said. ‘The way we used to think.’

  But wafts of doubt were coming over me, as if doubt was part and parcel of being near this man. I felt absurd, vainglorious, to be struggling to impress a man who wasn’t my Ian, after all.

  ‘So you’re of no use to us,’ he said.

  ‘Use?’ My voice was a cry.

  He shrugged.

  ‘Academics are worse than useless.’

  Then it’s lucky I’m not a proper one, I wanted to assure him, but I didn’t have time before he said: ‘We’ve got to leave town soon.’ He was changing the subject, as if all I’d said was completely irrelevant. ‘I’ve got a troopie full of patients anxious to get home.’

  ‘Sorry, I –’

  ‘Let’s get going.’

  He glanced at my bag.

  ‘Have you brought food for your month? No? You’d better g
o and buy yourself a boxful of food. There’s a shop out there in the settlement, only one, and it won’t stock fancy food, the sort you’d want. Spices, sauces. Your globalised cuisine.’

  This he almost spat out, as if he’d turned his back on the globalised world.

  As I reached for my belongings, he said: ‘Don’t worry about your bag.’ He’d grabbed its handle. ‘I’ll load it on the troop carrier. And that little bag as well.’

  ‘Is it you who’s taking me out to the settlement?’ I asked.

  ‘Who else? There’s no bus. No train.’

  ‘How do people out there get in and out?’

  ‘Their car – if it’s working. Usually it isn’t. They have old bombs, at best. Most of the time, there’s only me.’

  He grabbed the handles of my workbag and threw it effortlessly over his shoulder.

  ‘The supermarket’s down there,’ he said. He waved his hand in the direction I was to go. ‘I’ll meet you in front on the footpath in one hour. I brought in patients from the settlement this morning, early, in the troopie – it doubles up as an ambulance. Many of them are sick. They need to get back home. They won’t want to wait around for you.’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘I’ll be there. In one hour.’

  He began to wheel my suitcase, and in that act he became a gentleman, suddenly deferential, it was as if he was the student trying to please his teacher by carrying her books. The switch confused me, as if his acting a part now, the part of a gentleman, made him alter inside.

  But he was pointing to a large jeep parked nearby, its once-cream duco barely showing through a powdering of dust so that the duco was pink and orange, with yellow ochre forged by the wind into the shape of waves. I was to wonder about this again and again: that so much of the desert reminded me, ironically, of the sea.

  ‘That’s our troopie. If I have time, I’ll join you in the supermarket.’

  He downcast his eyes again, and when he looked up, his thoughts had returned to me.

  ‘I know I told your boss that Collin Collins would be there, but it’s turned out he’s had to visit his family in Perth.’

  Alarmed, I stopped walking.

  ‘He’s not out there? But I was assured he would be!’ I cried out.

  It was my turn to be agitated. Collins was the reason that E.E. Albert believed I could do the work. If he wasn’t here, I might not be able to. In fact, I would barely know where to start. I’d have to go back with nothing. And that would ruin everything.

  Adrian kept walking.

  ‘He’ll be back soon. Soonish,’ he threw over his shoulder. ‘He had family to attend to. It’s the way out here. Everything is provisional. Not like your city timetables.’

  By now, he was ahead of me. I almost stumbled in my distress.

  ‘Collins was going to explain all sorts of things,’ I said. ‘For a start, do you know which old woman sings the song?’

  ‘What song?’

  ‘The one you invited me here to record!’

  ‘Lots of ladies sing, don’t worry,’ he said.

  ‘But there’s one old lady who’s dying! The only one who knows this song. Your letter said so. You signed the letter!’

  ‘Collins was humbugged by the relatives about it and he humbugged me. To get them all off my back, I signed it. But to tell the truth, the women are quite healthy. Because of my work.’

  He saw my face.

  ‘Don’t worry, Collins will come back, sooner or later.’

  ‘But I only have a month.’

  ‘I said, “soon”.’

  I tried to calm down. Adrian, who was too self-engrossed to be my Ian, walked beside me. Though he said he was a busy man, he came with me all the way to the supermarket.

  ‘You seemed a little lost,’ he said in explanation.

  ‘I’m getting over your news,’ I said. I was ruing my time as a student, ruing how I didn’t spend the hours working that I should have, didn’t read the books that would’ve paved my way, a pathway of stepping stones. The books I’d ignored were lining up in the bookshelf of my mind, spine out, thin, upright and accusing. I didn’t learn enough about Aboriginal languages, I hadn’t found out if there were experts in Alice Springs who could give me advice – I’d been too busy worrying about what I looked like.

  But we’d arrived at the supermarket. He stopped in front of two young black women with beautiful, deeply set eyes, high cheekbones and glossy skin. They were holding babies in their arms, and speaking what I assumed was Djemiranga. They fell silent as soon as they saw him.

  ‘You can shop, but only for an hour,’ he told them.

  He showed them on his watch.

  ‘An hour, then you are here. Understand? An hour,’ he repeated. ‘Here.’

  He was pointing down at the very bit of cement footpath we all must stand on in one hour. He pointed so fiercely that I glanced at my watch anxiously, and checked exactly what square of cement we were to stand on, and looked for help at the shop window nearby, and memorised its display of cherry-flavoured cough mixtures. I said to myself like a child: I must stand exactly in front of the cough mixtures. The young women nodded obediently, but I noticed even then they didn’t wear watches. However, I would keep assiduously to his timetable, and be standing near the cough mixtures in one hour, however provisional things were.

  He walked off, back to the troopie emblazoned with the ocean-like desert. He was one of those men with a high, rounded bottom so his tight jeans stretched flauntingly across it, and his wide chest and shoulders sat upright and strong on his hips. He didn’t look back at any of us. I wondered how he could bear not to peek, to see our admiration.

  In the supermarket, I worked it out: I could leave, for that man clearly wasn’t my Ian; or I could make the best of a bad situation until Collin Collins turned up – and hope that he would come. Then I thought of E.E. Albert, and the warm feeling crept over me; I was in thrall to that feeling. I must keep her thinking I was an interesting person.

  Meanwhile I was pulling goods down from shelves unthinkingly. Then I rebuked myself. I must be prepared for whatever happened, I must not daydream, and at the moment that meant I must put all my attention into my choice of oil, pasta, spices and vegetables.

  He was suddenly beside me, eyes flashing angrily.

  ‘They’re all outside waiting for you.’

  ‘You said an hour! It’s only –’ I consulted my watch, ‘fifteen minutes!’

  ‘I told you, here, everything’s provisional.’

  He grabbed my cart and pushed it through the aisle in a speedy, muscular way as if he was in a wheelbarrow race and determined to win. With his eyes on my shopping, I selected healthy toothpaste, unperfumed soap and whole-grain cereal self-consciously and then ran to catch up with him. In case he was the boy of a quarter of a century ago, I wanted his approval.

  ‘They’re eating dinner,’ he said, amused at my contrition. ‘I’ve parked out the front and bought them Kentucky Fried Chicken.’

  When he held up a bottle of balsamic vinegar, I tried to judge his expression. Should I want it, or not? We might as well be children again. Does he want me to throw this fish that’s too small back into the river? Though of course, he wasn’t Ian.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, though I could have just as easily said no.

  ‘How long is our journey out there?’ I asked, walking fast but always behind him. Would I always be stumbling behind him?

  ‘We drive up the highway, and turn left,’ he threw at me over his shoulder. ‘Back towards where you’ve flown from. The tar’s fast, the rest is slow. There’s been rain and the roads are bad.’

  ‘So how long?’

  ‘Seven hours if we’re lucky.’

  He made time to greet acquaintances, looking down during conversations, and I wondered if the looking down was a deliberate mannerism, or if he was shy. There was a sweetness about the way he looked down and then his eyes came looping up to rest on mine for a little, then further beyond my shoulder. The Ia
n of my memory was never shy.

  Or was he?

  Perception’s a strange thing.

  ‘You’ve done a unique job,’ I heard him say twice, but to different people, one near the meat section, another far away near the vegetables.

  I hoped they’d done different jobs.

  He came across another acquaintance, a dark-haired, open-faced woman with a Spanish accent, a marvellous artist he told me as he introduced us. She greeted me politely but turned away to say to him in an intense voice: ‘Eduardo is leaving me in a few days. Will you come in to his farewell lunch?’

  ‘Of course.’ He took her hand. ‘You poor thing. Are you all right?’

  She tipped her head in a pleading way.

  ‘I’ll get through it if my friends help me.’

  He pressed her arm. ‘Whatever’s happening out there, this time I’ll definitely come in.’

  He was introducing me – the linguist from the university who doesn’t speak the language, isn’t that funny! – and I was shaking hands with her, belittled by his description but trying for a confident air. Then words dried in my mouth.

  I was staring at his hand on her arm, his fingers so long and slender, even his fingernails that seemed the fingernails of a woman, just as Ian’s used to. His pointing finger was scarred.

  You save my boat, against the huge waves my slow-sliding river has suddenly become, but your hand catches in my rope, your hand is suddenly not a hand at all but a red mess of blood, you’re squealing in pain and your hand’s a red pool.

  ‘You had an accident?’ I asked. ‘Your finger?’

  They both looked startled. He examined his hand.

  ‘I had a rollover in a troopie, happened on our treacherous road, but I only needed stitches.’

  We were all gazing at Ian’s finger.

  ‘You were lucky,’ I said lamely.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  I held onto the handle of the shopping trolley for support.

  He disappeared when I waited in the checkout queue, but I made sure I was standing outside near the display of cough mixtures, still within his hour.