Riders In the Chariot

by Patrick White

  “Remember,” Ernie Theobalds continued, “we have a sense of humour, and when the boys start to horse around, it is that that is gettin’ the better of ’em. They can’t resist a joke. Even when a man is full of beer, you will find the old sense of humour hard at work underneath. It has to play a joke. See? No offence can be taken where a joke is intended.”

  So the foreman spoke, and everyone believed. If Blue had gone into the plating-shop, and was holding his semblance of a head, it was because he felt real crook. It was the beer. It was the beer. It was the fount of blue and crimson sparks. It was the blood that had not touched his lips, in driest memory, or now. But would, in fact, have turned him up. So that, between longing and revulsion, not to mention the hiccups, he went into a corner, and vomited.

  When Ernie Theobalds had delivered his kind and reasonable speech, he squeezed the elbow of the one to whom it had been addressed.

  “You oughta get along now,” he said. “I will mention it to the boss that you have gone off sick.”

  Himmelfarb agreed that he was feeling far from well. But the pulses of his body expressed gratitude for the resolved situation in which he found himself so simply and so naturally placed.

  And his property returned.

  For, Alf Dubbo the blackfellow had brought the shawl and the phylacteries which had burst from the small fibre case during the hilarious scrimmage, and got somewhat trampled on. The leather cylinder of one phylactery was crushed, there was blood, besides, on the fringes of the shawl.

  Which the blackfellow handed back. The latter did not speak, though. He would not speak, now, or ever. His mouth could never offer passage to all that he knew to be inside him.

  “There we are!” the foreman shouted above the noise of the machinery. “There is your old gadgets!”

  But did frown slightly, and would not have cared to touch. Only when the dubious objects were safely inside the case, Ernie Theobalds fastened the surviving catch, as the Jew seemed unable to.

  The machinery was working and working.

  The blackfellow would have done something, but was not told what.

  The Jew was going, he saw, with the gentle, uncertain motion of an eggshell tossed by flowing water.

  The blackfellow would have run after him to tell what he had seen and understood. But could not. Unless it burst from his fingertips. Never from his mouth.

  Very quietly Himmelfarb left the factory in which it had not been accorded to him to expiate the sins of the world.

  Although nobody watched, everybody saw.

  XIV

  When Mrs Flack returned to the back garden, her friend Mrs Jolley was still watching the glow from the fire. It was the hour of green, when the acid light that summer has distilled from foliage eats the copper plate of evening. Mrs Jolley, standing with her arms beneath her apron, had given herself a pregnant look. But Mrs Flack was never impressed by the pregnancies of others.

  “I do like a fire,” Mrs Jolley remarked, out of her girl’s face, for the rather peculiar light had swilled away the dross of wrinkles. “I mean,” she said, “a good fire. That is not, I mean to say, that I do not sympathize with those concerned. I do. But do like a fire.”

  “If you are in need of it,” Mrs Flack pronounced, “then it is beneficial.”

  “Eh?” Mrs Jolley asked.

  Mrs Flack did not reply, nor did Mrs Jolley bother, for she was able to stand and watch the fire, and knew, besides, that answers would not cure her permanent uneasiness, her only really chronic illness.

  The greenish light of evening had formed a cool cup in which the orange potion would sometimes seethe up into a head of blonde sparks. The fire was not so far away, but far enough, for anyone who needed it.

  “Some people, though,” Mrs Flack murmured, and not necessarily for her friend, “some people need to be given a taste of what is coming to them, but will not burn, most likely, not even then.”

  At which point she looked behind her.

  “Not,” she said, “if they was born of fire.”

  Mrs Jolley would have liked to descend from the heights of prophecy, but as she did not dare, she continued staring at the conflagration. This she did with such intensity, her head began to wobble gently. So Mrs Flack noticed. Often she could have pushed her friend, and risked damage to the mechanism.

  Mrs Jolley, in her innocence, ventured finally to remark:

  “I would give anything to know whose fire that is.”

  Mrs Flack cleared her throat.

  “But surely I told you?” she said, so flat. “I told, and always tell.”

  Mrs Jolley did not answer.

  Mrs Flack drew hard on the surrounding air, the better to expel a reply.

  “It is his fire,” she said. “That man’s. It is the Jew, so they tell me, in Montebello Avenue.”

  “Not that man!” Mrs Jolley cried, now quite light and girlish; she held one corner of her apron between a thumb and a finger, and crooked her little finger.

  “It is the insurance, no doubt,” Mrs Jolley cried, and tittered.

  She could have danced, twitching her apron like a girl.

  “I doubt,” said Mrs Flack, “in fact, I know the insurance does not enter into it.”

  She looked around, at the darkness which was clotting under the few tailored shrubs.

  “Mrs Jolley,” she said, “this is nothing,” she said, “if not strickly between ourselves.”

  “Oh, yes!” said Mrs Jolley.

  Mrs Flack tore off an evergreen leaf which a bird had spattered.

  “It is a bunch of young fellers,” she said, “whose sense of decency was outraged by a certain person. So I am told, mind you. Who come up. Only to give warning, they say. They was flicking little balls of paper, soaked in somethink, into the Jew’s place, to put the wind up him like. When matters got out of hand. In a weatherboard home.”

  Mrs Flack sucked her teeth to appease convention.

  In the last light Mrs Jolley glowed with fire.

  “It is terrible,” Mrs Jolley said.

  “It is terrible all right,” Mrs Flack agreed, “but it is not for us to decide who will burn for it.”

  Which was strange, Mrs Jolley found – that Mrs Flack should feel unable to decide.

  From Xanadu, Miss Hare caught sight of the light of fire. It was too jubilant to ignore, blaring out, trumpet-shaped, from amongst the deciduous exotics and shabbier native trees. The complexion of the firelight might have conveyed a ruddy, boisterous, country beauty in other less personal circumstances, although all fire is personal to all animals, as they watch, listen, sniff, from their lair of bushes; fire is the last warning. Of course, Miss Hare, in her equal relationship with air and earth, and responding as she did to the motion of leaves, had known about the fire some little time before she saw it, just as, when placed right at the core of her great house, she would sense mist climbing up out of the gullies – she would feel it behind her knees – or she would usually learn of the approach of strangers, partly by collaboration of the elements, partly by a contraction of her own confidence.

  On that evening of fire, she had known. Rootling after what she could not remember, in a drawer somewhere in the inner gloom, amongst old letters, hanks of yellow string, bent nails, and pumpkin seeds, her head had suddenly gone up. Very slowly at first she had begun to negotiate the cells and corridors of Xanadu, together with the spiral of her own skull, gathering impetus as the gusts of fear and hatred played upon her out of the remaining shreds of curtains. So that she was soon compelled to run, and by the time she tumbled out on the terrace, her skin was tingling with all the implications of fire, the little hairs were standing up along the line of her jaw-bone, almost preparing to be singed.

  There, above the normal spectacle of trees, was the brassy thing, clapping and vibrating as she had expected. Even at a distance the smoke confused her.

  Miss Hare began to mumble. She ran this way and that. The air was furry with indecision.

  And all the tim
e the fire-thing, singing in the exhausted evening, dared her to reject her complete association with that place, or to forget that her spirit might be called upon to take part in some painful, last rite.

  Then her foot crunched the little bone. It was the thigh-bone, she saw, of a rabbit. Lying on the terrace, amongst dandelion and grit, the bone had been weathered to a whiteness that disturbed the memory as orange fire seared the present. In search of a clue to her distress, Miss Hare’s toe stirred the bone. She even picked the sharp white reminder up.

  Because, of course, she remembered at once: the attitude in which he had been standing, and how she had led him in, and held his hands, as if it had been some curious object she had found, bone, or leaf, of which she had to learn the shape and history.

  It was the Jew who was concerned, she now knew for certain, the Jew for whom the fire had been lit. And at once the air was palpitating with dangers past and present. Faced with the illogic of fire, birds had fallen silent. For the moment it was quite still, except that a solitary church-bell had begun to call believers into the Gothic thicket of prayer.

  Miss Hare did not waste time – she who always wore a hat did not have to put one on – but set out along the most direct of several tracks that she and animals had flattened through the long grass. Always she knew where to squeeze most easily, or crawl. All around, her kingdom was quivering in agreement. Her skin was not submitted to pricking, rather, to a confirmation of existence. Leaves, which would have whipped at other intruders, made dashing love-play. The waters of a little creek consoled her ankles. The structure of her world might have risen vaster, soaring with her breath out of the merely incidental cage of ribs, if it had not been reduced finally by anguish. In the circumstances, the spirit returned, wounded and doubtful, into the dumb, trundling body of the beast.

  At one point Miss Hare put her foot in a rabbit burrow, and fell. She was terrified by a blue breathlessness. Which passed. She continued. Moaning from time to time. Not for her present situation, but because she was trying to remember the name of an old servant – Meg? – whose strength had become desirable. The old Meg – Peg, was it? Peg! Peg!-appeared to see the truth quite clearly from behind steel-rimmed spectacles. Of course, truth took many forms, Miss Hare suspected. Or was couched in the formlessness that she herself best knew: of wind and rain, the falling of a leaf, the whirling of the white sky. Whereas Peg’s truth was a perfect statue. Miss Hare would have liked to touch her servant’s skirt, as she had in girlhood, to be comforted. She would have liked to take the Jew’s hand, and shut it up in her withered bosom, together with all those images which could only be preserved in love, as Peg the immemorial had bottled plums. There Miss Hare almost fell again, remembering her lack of skill in the methods of love, and that her own experience had taught her disintegration was the only permanent, perhaps the only desirable state. In the end, if not always, truth was a stillness and a light. So she continued, lumbering, scurrying wherever an absence of obstacles allowed, licking her gelatinous lips, more from habit, than in hopes of restoring shape, chafing through the immensity of the kingdom which separated her from the fire.

  When this being burst at last out of the scrub, she found a fairly respectable blaze in Montebello Avenue. It was, as she had known, the brown house in which her friend lived, which she had seen, but never entered.

  But must now. That was clear. In order to love and honour the more, she had invested the Jew with a goodness so pure as to render the possessor practically powerless against the consummate forms of evil. Already she saw the dead-seeming face lying upon its pillow of fire, upturned in its indifference to the canopy of golden stalactites.

  A number of persons had come down to watch, or trail hoses for which taps had never been provided. The fire brigade, they assured themselves, must have either failed, or gone away for the holidays. Even so, some of the spectators kept watch, over a shoulder, while continuing to enjoy the progress of the fire.

  “But if there is a man inside!” Miss Hare protested.

  Although that was not known for certain, there were those who would have dearly loved to know.

  Only Miss Hare was shaggy love itself.

  She was walking at the fiery house with her hands outstretched to trap its rather dangerous spiders. She had never experienced fear of insects, and only momentarily of fire, because, after all, the elemental must come to terms with the elements.

  So that those who were watching saw the most inhuman behaviour develop in one they had taken to be human until now.

  “Miss Hare!” they called. “Are you mad?”

  Almost as though they had always thought her to be sane.

  And now were overwhelmed by ugliness and terror, as the woman in her great, wicker hat walked into the burning house.

  By this time the framework had become quite a little temple of fire, with lovely dionysiac frieze writhing on its pediment. Similarly, all its golden columns danced. But Miss Hare, who was involved in the inner tragedy, did not notice any of that.

  The fire came at her first to push her out, but returned as quickly to suck her in. And she was drawn, drawn, stumblingly, inside. The agony might have been more intense if she herself had not been molten. The molten stream of her passion ran down the skin of her cheeks and her outstretched hands, the tears ran out of her eyes to burn fire.

  So she stood in the everlasting moment. A revelation should have been made to one possessed of her especial powers, and indeed, a more rational curtain of flame was almost twitched back for her to see. She did almost, from under her by now transparent eyelids. The sparks were halted. She almost saw the body of her friend, a rather frail old man, or at most, inflammable prophet, his ribs burning like the joists of a house. But it was not possible, she moaned, to go to him as she would have chosen. Or not yet. She was, after all, crinkling up. Under threat of burning, the sticks of her arms were becoming distorted. Her singed trunk was presented to the shimmering, rushing, revolving teeth of fire.

  Then, mercifully, she was returned to her animal self. She began to scream. The smell of burning fur or feathers had always terrified her.

  Nobody who saw would ever forget how Miss Hare had emerged from the burning house. She was a blackened thing, yet awful. Her wicker hat was turned to a fizzy Catherine wheel, wings of flame were sprouting from the shoulders of her cardigan, her worsted heels were spurred with fire. Most alarming was the swollen throat from which the terror, or more probable, the spectators felt, the orders and the accusations would not immediately pour. Moving forward, she halted those who might have come to meet her. Then one or two more responsible men did get possession of themselves, ran towards her, and began to beat at the avenging angel with their coats. Until she was at least materially extinguished.

  All the time this monster of truth was struggling to give vent to her feelings, and did finally bring out:

  “You have killed him!”

  “Who?” they asked.

  “There is no reason to suppose there is anyone,” they said, “inside.”

  And continued to belt at her, now with their dislike and their consciences, in addition to their coats.

  Miss Hare was crying and choking. She hated those who were saving her.

  “You have burnt my dearest friend!” she bellowed. “I am going to report to the police.”

  Parrying the blows of hateful coats.

  “I will take the matter, if necessary, to court. By raising funds. By some means. My cousin in Jersey.”

  Just then two ladies, who had come down in second-best hats to enjoy the spectacle, happened to reach the brink of the fire. They realized at once how things stood, though too late, alas, to choose a better moment.

  Miss Hare saw, too, and advanced.

  “You,” she cried, “are the devils!”

  More she could not.

  Mrs Jolley retreated a few paces, and might have escaped altogether if she had not been chained to her protector. The latter stood, pointing a toe at their accuser
. She was thinner, yellow perhaps, but retained considerable faith in her oblique powers.

  Mrs Flack said:

  “For your own sake, I would not care to hear you repeat that, madam. Accusations are very often confessions.”

  The crowd grew murmurous in appreciation.

  But Miss Hare, perhaps because of her powerlessness, did dare once again.

  “The devils!” she repeated, certainly aiming more at random, through the bubbles and the blisters.

  Then she began to walk away, trailing ribbons of smoke, and of course, crying mad.

  Longer than any other witness would Constable McFaggott remember that night, and the object which presented itself in the station doorway.

  “You have done nothing,” it cried, “to protect my friend from persecution and arson.”

  “Himmelfarb,” Miss Hare at last succeeded in wrenching out the name, “Himmelfarb has been burnt to death”

  McFaggott, a personable man, of pretty teeth, strong legs, and white eyeballs, was somewhat in dishabille considering the importance of the evening. Now he touched the holy medal which he wore in the hair of his chest, and which had accompanied him in the past through the most unlikely circumstances.

  “I will hold you responsible!” the mad thing was shouting.

  “Steady on!” called the constable, in the high, soft tenor that they liked. “There is such a thing as libel, my lady!”

  “There is such a thing as truth,” replied Miss Hare. “Until it gets into the mouth of the Law. Where it seems to fork.”

  It was fortunate for McFaggott that, on the evening of the fire, a difference of opinion with his wife had delayed his going on duty as usual at Mrs Khalil’s. Thanks to his wife’s contemptuous behaviour, he was available to investigate facts, not to mention face the press. Now he was tired, but amiable. He even touched the crazy creature as she stood in front of him, touched her with gentle, though manly authority, in the way that made normal ladies thrill inside their blouses.

  McFaggott said:

  “It is all fate, you know, Miss Hare.”