And Belinda did. Instantly. Alistair closed his eyes and grasped the bridge of his nose. Once, twice, he inhaled great, calming gulps of air. He rubbed at his forehead, gradually erasing all but the subtlest signs of chagrin.
“One step at a time.” His twitch gave way to a thin, lop-sided smile and, “All that lies ahead,” he assured her with fatherly condescension. “Everything comes. Surprises abound. I promise you.”
As always, his voice enfolded her, sedated her, lulled her into acquiescence. How, she wondered, could she, addled and undisciplined as she was, ever hope to match his wisdom or his patience?
“In the meantime,” he finished softly, “Mine is the only voice. So let me tell you of my plans.”
* * *
Borneo is an island in the imagination as well as in fact – dangerous, unforgiving and malarial. But there was, Alistair told brightly, life and research in Tanjung Puting National Park. Stunning successes in the study of simian society. Orang-outangs – the people of the forest! Three quarters tame, of course! Shy and gentle creatures. They come and they go at will, he enthused, under the watchful eyes of Birute Bohap, a woman of impeccable credentials and authority.
How lyrically Alistair waxed. How easily he put out of his mind the preparatory jottings in his personal diary: jottings from which a finished script for the episode would eventually emerge. Depending on outcomes.
* * *
In the fastnesses of Borneo (he had written) we find creatures so powerful, so dangerous, so unpredictable that humankind can only marvel at their malign brutishness. Orang-outang – greatest of the great apes!
And here, beyond the furthermost fringes of belief, beyond the last outposts of civilisation, beyond the boundaries of sanity itself, there roams a solitary and infamous beast. It is a creature entirely submerged in and blinded by its own sinister obsessions. Alone, dangerous and unpredictable – known to the natives as ‘man stealer’ – this huge bull ape has instituted its own private reign of terror.
* * *
Barely a week later, their equipment – food, clothing and cameras – was being transferred from a battered four-wheel drive into a long, unstable-looking canoe. They were miles from any recognisable track and the canoe, clearly, would be at capacity with Alistair, Belinda, the two guides and the gear.
“What about Ms Bohap, Alistair?” asked Adventure Girl.
“Been called away, my angel. To Europe. Raising funds to carry on the research, don’t you see! Not to worry though. These men know what’s wanted.”
For half an hour, the canoe’s outboard motor roared them down the narrow, winding highway of the river. Until, at a point, an unspoken signal passed between the two guides and the motor was cut. Its reverberations fled away amongst the density of trees and were gradually replaced by the curious screeches, caws and yammerings of unseen creatures. Then there was the murmur of the guides, equally as soft and urgent and foreign, as they took up their paddles.
“Why have they stopped using the motor, Alistair?”
“Don’t want to frighten the animals, I expect. Don’t fret, my dear. Believe me, these men have been hand picked. Now sit back and look fascinated while I do some filming.”
Fully half an hour passed until the craft was manoeuvred alongside a massive tree root, so broad and low that it resembled a small jetty. The passengers were nudged out quickly and one guide threw their supplies ashore while the other, peering intently into the jungle, clutched his rifle. At the last, scant gestures assured them that the permanent camp they sought lay only metres above the stream’s flow and that, after two nights, the canoe would return. Then the outboard motor roared into life and the boat catapulted away amidst, it seemed to Belinda, a faint reverberation of laughter.
“Yeaks, Alistair! We’re here in the jungle by ourselves! Stranded! You didn’t tell me this was going to happen!”
“Sometimes, my beauty,” crowed the effervescent Alistair, “you have to get lost to truly find yourself. But you mustn’t worry. We have food. We have the camera. And we have a very large gun. I expect not to have to use it, of course, but we have it. And . . .” he finished happily, “we have expectations of some particularly magical moments for the beast, haven’t we, Adventure Girl!”
The trek to the hut was indeed short and, in Belinda’s mind, that was the only good thing about it. It proved to be a ramshackle arrangement, consisting of a pole floor, a thatch roof and two walls made of flattened jerry cans. Belinda was horrified. Alistair fidgeted and fumed with a strange sort of anticipatory glee.
The plan, he explained when he had calmed her down, was largely one of passivity. This was a regularly used station, he said, from which local orangs were frequently monitored. The procedure was simply to lay out bags of fruit, set up the camera and await the arrival of simian guests. They would come. They would eat. They would go again, in their gentle, vegetarian fashion. Adventure Girl need only show staunch courage and good cheer as an observer.
“You’ve seen ‘Gorillas in the Mist’,” he reminded her. “These creatures are even gentler and more timid. Be yourself, my dove. Relax. Stay near the shelter. Tomorrow I’ll secrete myself on the edge of the clearing with the camera and the gun. Belinda, my lamb, you must trust me! I know what is best. And I promise you, this exploit will make you the most famous, the most loved, the best remembered Adventure Girl that ever there was!”
* * *
What makes a creature revel in the violent destruction of others (Alistair had pondered in his private notes). Whence come the impulses for ferocity and terror? Does every seemingly docile and gentle creature on God’s earth have within it a depth of pitilessness? Or are the weak merely the weak and the strong merely the strong?
Observe our timid Adventure Girl, in her ‘never ending quest for truth and understanding’. Can she delve any deeper into these mysteries than she can into her own pathetic illusory existence? Left in the deep forest by men of questionable background, will her sincerity, her innate sense of trust, enable her to win through? Or will the unknowable beast destroy her? Perhaps even now – perhaps even beyond this forbidding place – she is stalked and threatened.
* * *
Night comes quickly and totally to the jungle. Creatures that slither and slide and creep come whispering out of their holes, sighing for the cool, still blackness. Insects take to the air, drawn by pheromonic signals or the warm lure of mammalian blood. Eyes that are blind in the full light of day blink, flicker and see clearly in a world as deep and dark as a hole in the heart of a tree.
“Those men weren’t simply guides, were they, Alistair?” demanded Belinda in the ebbing firelight. “Why haven’t they stayed with us?”
“Belinda,” he sighed through a ghastly smile, “they are not your concern.” His eyes were gaunt, dark hollows, tracing the paths of fitful sparks as they rose into the canopy. “You shall learn what you shall learn. But this I tell you again: the beast makes demands on all who deal with it. We must be ready, always, to take our destinies in hand.”
* * *
As it happened, not too far away, in a platform of leaves and branches in the high fork of a tree, lay a destiny that Alistair had only imperfectly imagined. An arm dangled, as long and heavy as man’s leg, powerfully muscled and furred over with long, wispy red hair. The creature twitched fretfully as it slept and dreamed, its long fingers closing on air and its teeth grinding. The smell of rotting fruit marched around him. He would be hungry when he awoke.
* * *
Belinda, when her own restless night had passed, was by turns hungry, frightened, angry, lonely and excited. In the new light of day it was easier to convince herself that, even in this alien world, she could cope. For a day and one more night. But clearly, she must take fuller stock, in future, of Alistair’s plans for Adventure Girl!
She bent at the edge of the stream to daintily wash. When she returned, Alistair placed his notes, over which he’d been poring intently, in a half-concealed position in
a bag in the ragged hut and went himself to the stream. It was then that Belinda found and read the wicked scenario.
Words like ‘malign brutishness’ and ‘sinister obsessions’ leapt to her attention. ‘Man-stealer’, it said; ‘dangerous and unpredictable’! What did it mean? Her trust, her willingness, her faith in the protection of her mentors! Had it all been misplaced?
Realisation and indignation forced her to her feet but, sorrowfully, it was all too late. A guttural cough sounded off to her left. And there, at the edge of the clearing, amidst the swollen fruit, its body an entire landscape of bulging muscles, squatted one of Alistair’s ‘people of the forest’! In fact, it seemed most probable, the person of the forest, so newly discovered in those vile meanderings.
The creature squatted on his heels, rooted to the ground like the blasted trunk of a tree, his shoulders rising above his head like a stony ridge. His eyes were small, black pits in a face framed by raw, textured flaps, the colour of old chops. And, unmistakeably, the object of his unwavering gaze was the frail splendour of Adventure Girl.
The eyes, in fact, never left Belinda’s, even while an arm like a hawser uncoiled to reach amongst the fruit on the ground. A pineapple disappeared into the black fist. Belinda noted with skipping heart how his lips peeled back. Broad, yellow teeth, he showed, in a grotesque parody of a smile.
Adventure Girl opened her mouth to call Alistair but, as always on the screen, she had no voice. Even when she heard the director’s whistling, tramping return, she could not sing out. She watched in silence as the creature replaced the fruit on the ground and leaned forward on its knuckles.
And it was all, then, suddenly too quick to measure. As Alistair entered the clearing, the ape once again bared its teeth in a terrifying leer and began to lope toward her. It was all she could do to utter a silent prayer. Please God! Let it be quick! Let the first blow from those stupendous fists be enough. Penultimately, she closed her eyes and braced herself.
The beast passed within arm’s reach. Had Belinda been watching, she could have reached out and touched the coarse, matted hair as surely as she smelled the pungently sour staleness of animal sweat. But she was not watching and she did not reach out. Neither did the orang.
It jigged by and was on Alistair before the astonished network giant had time to raise his head. The animal pinned him to the ground, holding him easily. It spun to left and right, scanning the clearing, testing with all its senses to discover how many more men there might be.
In those scant moments, Belinda’s eyes fluttered open. How surprising to be alive, her senses whispered! How greenly and softly the light pulsed down into the morning glade! It was as though daylight and life were newly invented and she was Eve, alive in the first dawn. She turned slowly, careful not to startle away this dream, if that’s what it was.
Alistair lay on his back, spreadeagled, pinned by the great, dark hand of ‘the man-stealer’. He lay as stilly as only a man whose life hung by a thread could lie, frozen in disbelief. Unmistakably, as Belinda watched, the beast stroked Alistair’s face with consummate tenderness. It flicked at his hair and chucked him under his trembling chin. It grunted in a low, satisfied tone and began gently to gather Alistair’s rigid form into its arms. Alistair’s mouth opened, but his golden voice was gone.
In an instant, he found himself bundled over the orang’s shoulder. As well to beat on a marble cliff with a twig as to strike that back with his fist! They passed Belinda again, the creature again ignoring her, Alistair appealing with eyes and hands and lips. The unspoken words came slowly into her consciousness.
“Shoot!” he was mouthing. “For God’s sake, shoot!”
In the minute that followed, Belinda blinked completely and finally out of existence and the eyes of Adventure Girl narrowed with real resolution. She knew what to do. She knew what Alistair would want. She swung behind the camera, flicked on the warm-up button and watched the grey image resolve itself in the eye-piece. She touched the zoom and record buttons simultaneously, with ample time to catch Alistair’s despairing face outlined against the great, red back of the beast that carried him.
As they disappeared into the jungle, Adventure Girl looked for the rifle. It was there, safe and dry, beside Alistair’s despicable scenario. In her mind, she was counting seconds since his and the ape’s disappearance. Eight, nine, ten – the numbers ticked by. At fifteen, she raised the rifle and stepped in front of the camera. Elation flooded her entire being and the words came easily, strongly, confidently – just as they had always seemed to for Alistair.
* * *
Self-delusions cannot survive here in the endless jungles of Borneo. Here, Nature lifts us out of ourselves and recreates us. She shows us a face of danger and makes us cunning. She shows us a face of adversity and makes us hard. She shows us a face of indifference and we become, at last, pitiless. It is then that the beast within comes forth to meet the beast without.
* * *
Adventure Girl turned and headed resolutely for the jungle. Just out of the clearing, she stopped and checked her watch. Ten seconds would allow editing time on the tape. She mussed her hair, tore away the front of her blouse and staggered back into the shot. Just gather the camera and be off, she was thinking. She had never felt so close to – so in control of – so much in love with the beast as she did at that moment.
The Bunyip (first published ‘Australian Short Stories’, No. 27, 1989)
Dark beneath the gabbling moon they sat. Heat bled from the spendthrift earth and night drank it away. They sat low and still, hunkered down, pressed together by the vast weight of stars; a sky hideously indifferent, gloriously alluring, rang like bells, rattled like bones, whispered like women. They did not look up.
Instead, they saw their dusty feet curled like dead things before them. They saw their hands flick tiny gestures across the gulf between them. They saw the whites of their eyes flash and disappear like fish in the dense air around them. Softly grumbling drums, their voices, were, far off and muted, with rhythms as old as the heart of man.
Stories, memories and reminiscences danced amongst them; words to keep the ancient fears at bay; words to grow from; words to cajole the courage and anger that might revive them.
“I nearly done it once,” says one. “I would have, but the others held me back.”
“That’s true,” says another. “We stopped him. I was there.”
“Lucky for him,” says a third. “Lucky you were there.”
“You don’t think I would have?” queries the first. “”I’da done it alright! No worries. I was set for it that night!”
“Pass the bottle,” says a fourth. “Got little lizards scrabblin’ ‘round in me.”
“Bin sittin’ still too long, brother. They thought you was a hollow log.”
* * *
Laughter is blue and quick as a kingfisher and soft as a snake’s belly. Friends can say anything.
* * *
“Ol’ black hollow log, tha’s you. One end stuck inna ground, d’other stuck inna bottle.”
“Stick you in a bottle, my smart friend.”
* * *
No harm. Five boys sitting on the ground, in the dark, drinking and talking their way through the great hollowness of time. They make each other alive. Each, without the recognition of the others, would be an unheard sound in a damp forest, quickly dissipated and lost.
* * *
“We could do it tonight, couldn’t we? All of us together,” says one. “If we wanted.”
The eyes leap again, sparkling like phosphorous on the sea at night. There is a challenge.
“Supposin’ we did. What then, brother? Ain’ like we done somethin’ good, is it now?”
“Dunno ‘bout that. Dunno ‘bout good. “S jus’ sump’m to do. You scared?”
“Yeah, I’m a little bit scared. “N’ you a little bit stupid.”
“What’s it gonna get us?” squeaks another. “Tell me that!”
“Might get u
s feelin’ better,” comes the answer. “Tha’s what. Why we sittin’ out here inna dark, huh? Five no ‘count niggers, sittin’ inna dark. Wha’ for?”
A bunyip grinds its teeth. Come with me, it whispers. I am a man, like you. A poor man who hurts. Just like you. We will give our pain away to others who deserve it more. Come with me.
He is a clever bunyip, because he knows their love of him, of his mystery and his danger. They would all be bunyips too, with sharp teeth and great appetites and no fear under the gleeful moon. But they remember also that he is cruel and deceitful and might lure them into unspeakable places.
* * *
“Who’s a no ‘count nigger, brother? Them lizards musta got into your brain; scrabbled all your sense away!”
“Maybe so, maybe no. All I say is, the place never done nothin’ for any of us.”
“How so, friend?”
“How so? Like this, friend. You put everythin’ you got in a sack an’ all the rest of us add what we got an’ we take it down to the bank manager. That man, he gon’ open up that sack an’ he gon’ say, ‘This sucker’s empty as a harlot’s laugh, boys!’”
“You pretty near right, my man. Pretty near right about that, least ways.”
“You pretty damn right I’m right! An’ I say, le’s do it! Le’s trash it! Le’s do a little breakin’! Le’s show ‘em what we think o’ their school!”
* * *
You can’t argue with poverty or pain or humiliation, the bunyip is saying. It’s not your fulfilment to bear those things.
So they go to do battle in the garden, some with relish, while the bunyip laughs. Pound the poinsettias, brothers. Hammer them hibiscus. Laughter is black and slow as earth change and hard as a dead man’s knuckle. They smash and they crack and they break; until one comes, in the roaring light of moon, to thick, opaque glass, inlaid with tiny wires, because breakers have been here before.
In the glass, this one sees the cruel bunyip. Liar’s mouth agape, eyes hissing pleasure where none exists; its racing breath is foully close to one’s own nostrils. What is there to do? There is no ‘feeling better’. There is no better feeling. Bunyip’s face changes to mirror sudden hatred, and a fist comes up.
Connections Page 7