Refuge

by Richard Rossiter

  She thought about this as she drove: Clive’s belief in vengeance, how both he and his friend Steve took the bits out of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, that suited them. Fire and brimstone and punishment. They were men who liked control, who would do anything to achieve it. In all probability, they were not stupid people, but blind to their motives, men who blanked out the obvious. But what was behind their lust for power, their need to dominate, their aggression or hatred towards women? This was what she couldn’t fathom. The popular explanations didn’t satisfy her. It wasn’t just fear, their own weakness and vulnerability, their perception that women received favourable treatment in society—against all the evidence to the contrary—their idiosyncratic, impoverished childhoods, their sexual inadequacies. These were men who had their wires crossed. She wasn’t hopeful, but just maybe talking to Clive would do something. For her. She thought he was irredeemable.

  He sat there, behind the screen. Not merely calm. Serene, she would say. It must be the antidepressants. Neither happy, nor sad. Just there. Being.

  ‘I understand now, where there is true light and salvation,’ he said.

  ‘Oh. Where is that, Clive—or don’t I need to ask?’

  ‘Now I have nothing to fear.’

  ‘But fear itself, I suppose. What I would like to know is: what did you fear before? Why did you do such terrible things, to me?’

  ‘I was going along the wrong path, and I stayed on it. I couldn’t seem to get off, except by dying.’ His voice was calm and clear. ‘Now I understand. There are other paths; you just have to step sideways. Sometimes you need help to do so.’

  ‘Okay, paths. But what were you frightened of that made you violent?’

  He looked down at his hands, his fingers clasped. He did not speak.

  ‘Is that too difficult? Can’t you think about that?’

  ‘It was everything,’ he said. ‘All the things that happened. People who died. My mother and father, even. They weren’t happy. It all kept happening and I couldn’t do anything. They let me see a counsellor in here. So that, when I get out, I don’t do the same things. But I couldn’t anyway. I have nothing to fear, not anymore. You accept there is a reason, there is a plan.’

  ‘That would be God’s plan, and you’re happy with it?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether I’m happy with it.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Because what happens here doesn’t matter. Not really.’

  ‘So you, and all the others who do unspeakable things, can trust in the next life?’

  ‘It’s more than that. It’s the light, the way, that guides us here and now. Let me tell you.’ Now he looked at her directly, his eyes a little more alive.

  She thought he looked smug, the tone of his voice patronising. Let me tell you—as if he had some insight granted only to the elect by who knows what god that he had created. She couldn’t listen to this.

  She rose to leave. ‘Good luck, Clive. For now, and the next life. But I wouldn’t bet on it if I were you.’ She paused. ‘There is one last question. When you do get out of here, will you still think the same way—will you still see the light?’

  He looked at her, blankly, as if he couldn’t see her, or did not know where he was. Not exactly puzzled. Just—nothing.

  She left, feeling angry and frustrated, and as she drove away two ideas kept circulating through her mind. One was that, however conveniently, Clive believed in what he was saying. Maybe he had no option, but it wasn’t just a strategy to help him get out earlier, although it might help. The other: that she, too, liked control.

  Greta arrived at work at midday. She’d arranged for the morning off. Her new job provided an office in town and the share of a receptionist. The decision to apply for the position was the result of sitting on her deck and reading the local paper—along with a series of small steps where the thinking part of herself caught up with the emotional. There was uncertainty about the direction of her life and insecurity about who she was—and fear that she, too, might become a storyteller. The job did not solve the questions she asked herself, but she did feel stronger as a consequence of getting out of bed each weekday with a sense of purpose.

  She’d been surprised at the phone call that told her she had the job. That was three months ago. Now she spent more time than ever before in a car on secondary roads throughout the shire. She met all sorts of people, when they were at home, mostly during the summer holidays. Otherwise it was locked gates and special permission to enter their properties. One of her tasks was to check that owners of rural blocks were honouring the covenants on their land, to look after the flora and fauna as best they could. They were to keep out invasive plants and people on trail bikes and four-wheel drives. They would look after the water, keep no more than two dogs, restrained within the building envelope. They would ensure that no earthmoving equipment came onto the land unless it had been cleaned offsite, to reduce the risk of introducing weeds and phytophthora disease. In other words, she needed to check that they carried out the promises they’d made in exchange for approval of a subdivision, or an extra dwelling, or the upgrade of a road. It seemed like a job worth doing, and she was pleased to get it.

  Already she’d spent many hours sitting on verandahs drinking cups of tea. She would have preferred coffee. The most common topic of conversation was fire, the lack of rain and whether it was possible to make themselves safe. She would nod and say to them, ‘That’s a big question.’

  When she described her job to Tinny, he’d muttered something about ‘country life’ and ‘country pleasures’. Then she went on to relate how she had met up with an Indigenous ecological group, and now two of the women, elders, had agreed to accompany her on visits to the mostly well-intentioned owners of small and large rural blocks.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that is a sign of progress. Talking to each other.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Greta, ‘but on our most recent visit, the younger of the two women said to me, “You know, we’re refugees in our own country. Where’s our asylum?” I didn’t know what to say, and then she laughed, but not because she thought it was funny. At least, I don’t think so.’

  Greta hoped that, one day in the future, she might belong to this old country along with all the other newcomers. She would never be Marvyn, but she wondered what it could mean, this belonging. Maybe the word itself told you—that it should really be two words, not one. Was it inevitable that one longed, always, forever, to be? To be something, or simply to exist? Did longing cease only with your last breath? And even then. But that was not something she believed in. There would be no return to this world, no other world to which you departed to live, gloriously suspended, in a constant happiness of being. Such fond, foolish ideas: heaven, an unending desireless state. So strange, to desire a lack of desire. It was true such ideas had form: year on year, prescriptions for drugs that eroded all feeling increased exponentially. Dealing with the supposedly faulty neurotransmitters of happiness and unhappiness was now the biggest business of all for the drug companies. One hundred and twenty million prescriptions each year, give or take a few. Her head was full of facts and figures about a world that she knew little about from experience. She didn’t know what to do with such information.

  Finding a parking spot was never a problem. She sat there for a while, feeling the warmth of the sunshine through the windscreen. Clive continued to puzzle her. It was almost certain that he was on drugs that made him listless and probably harmless to himself and others. For now. She knew she didn’t hate him; fear, yes. But what would happen when he was released? Would his rediscovered religious fervour keep him from the rage that he felt because of what had happened to him? Would he stay on his drugs? Would some other event trigger his need, again, for revenge that was violent? She wanted him to continue to believe in an afterlife that would right the wrongs of this one, to remain passive. But he had no right to that superior tone. She wondered whether she could ever reclaim the ground that he had taken fro
m her.

  When she got out of the car, Greta closed the door with unnecessary vigour and then looked around, hoping no one had noticed.

  Sixty-four

  Tinny watched himself get out of bed and, slowly, put on his day clothes. He could hear, carried on the air, the squawks of the red-tailed black cockatoos. Different from the white-tailed black cockatoos, which were frequent visitors. When the naso cockatoos were about, you felt honoured. And not just with their beaks. He could hear the waa-waa-waa of the male, hoping through monotonous repetition to attract a female. It surprised Tinny: how could it think that such squawky dullness would work as seduction? He knew that the Aborigines called it Karrak after the kraarky sound that it made. And that it puffs itself up, flashing red at the female. He thought of Greta and her comment about family resemblances. Maybe he should paint himself red.

  He was slow this morning—everything was an effort. He decided to skip breakfast and walk to the coast; maybe that would clear his head, invigorate his limbs, put some life into him.

  By the time he arrived, the light wind from the east had dropped. Soon the sea breeze would ruffle the surface of the water, disturb the calm that prevailed on the ocean and the land. For now, there was stillness. There was smoke in the air. The swell was low and the pale blue of the sea merged with the sky. It was time, Tinny thought, for a whale to breach near the shoreline and take his breath away. He edged into the water and his body tensed with the unexpected cold, the sharpness, which belonged to winter currents, not summer. He held his breath and kept walking, the water creeping up his legs, shrinking his balls, to his waist, his shoulders; then he sank below the surface, rose up and began swimming away from the shore. He could see himself, already further out than he was in reality. This other self didn’t bother him in the least. He was confident that when he arrived all would be well. He would know this person who had gone before him: they would be familiar with each other, both happy at the reunion. He swam on until he was a dot on the horizon.

  Tinny breaststroked his way back to the shore. His arms and legs were tired, but he breathed easily: at this slow pace he could swim forever. He walked out of the water and then his knees gave way and he knelt down on the gritty sand, fell forward onto his belly; he placed his head on his hands, keeping the sand out of his mouth and eyes. Now he drew deep breaths and his heart was racing. He would lie there and rest for a while, wait until the sun warmed his body, until the shivering stopped. His balls ached. If he had the energy, he would stand up and run along the beach, make sure the blood was circulating to the tips of his fingers, which he now noticed were white and had lost all feeling.

  When his back was dry, he turned over, closing his eyes tightly against the glare of the sun. He breathed evenly and focused on the in and out of the air in his lungs; he could see the blood pumping through his arteries and veins. He opened his eyes and watched the grey clouds fringed with white moving slowly across the sky. He thought he would see an eagle, drifting in the blue, and then he did, so high it looked tiny, and then another, its mate, drifting, circling, with intent or the pleasure of it, he couldn’t tell. He put his hands on his belly and was surprised at the warmth of his skin. He thought of Greta, appearing out of nowhere, from the sky, but not like an eagle: an angel with wings. Of course they had wings—how else could they fly? He remembered the fit he’d had in hospital, the way in which he could lie in bed and at the same time travel beyond it, and he couldn’t tell the difference between where he was and where he imagined himself to be. You could, after all, be in two places at once.

  He stood up slowly, blinded for a moment, and waited until the fluids in his body settled into their right places, resumed a steady rhythm, and then he began to walk home. ‘Tinny, Tinny,’ he muttered, ‘you are saved.’ But if anyone had asked him what he was saved from, he wouldn’t have known the answer. He knew that by now Skel should be out of bed.

  Sixty-five

  It was a Saturday in early summer when Greta finally registered that the slow, repetitive racket in the nearby marri trees was caused by the arrival of a flock of red-tailed black cockatoos. Somewhere between a squawk and a squeak, she thought. With the occasional flutter of wings as they moved to another branch, or flew to a tree close by to continue their busy gnawing at gumnuts and nipping off the new growth at the tips of branches. They would be there for hours, this gregarious flock, whose sometimes crimson, sometimes orange, tails caught the sunlight in wondrous flashes, red and black against the endless blue of the sky.

  This is what she came for, she thought, sitting and listening, absorbing; warmed by the sun and the stillness, reading, drinking coffee. Walking. Fishing. Swimming. Now that she was working a day job, these moments were to be savoured. With the move to the world beyond her dwelling and the coast, there were other changes. The world, or a version of it, had also come to her. A trench digger had arrived and cut through the sandy soil with ease, down the gully and over the hill behind Tinny’s place. It linked up to the telephone line that he’d had put in some months earlier. Later, the power line, with the last section placed underground, so she didn’t have to stare at the wires. At moments she could still pretend she was in the middle of nowhere. And yet her computer was plugged in to the internet and rarely turned off. There was a black dish on the roof and she could access dozens of television stations.

  In the time before, if you opened the door of the shed, inside and outside merged in the rain and the wind, in the heat of the day and the smell of the bush. Now, Greta felt that the outside world that came into her shed was no longer natural. It was as slippery as overthrown dictators or dishonest politicians, as loud as rebels who knew what they didn’t want. It was as empty as the hearts of those who demanded a strong leader, a man of their dreams and someone else’s nightmare. In the disrupted world of the tin shed were men and women—children, even—in search of a life with a purpose that would bind them together. There would be unity, brotherhood and sisterhood. There would be bonds between one person and another. Love, even. She could only hope.

  This morning, hearing the birds, she wondered about this new network, so familiar to that city self which no longer seemed to belong to her. Who was this person who’d learned to live without the distractions—for her, the falsity—of technologies that were assumed to be essential for life in the modern world? She had gathered wood, collected rainwater, lit her kerosene lamps, foraged on the coast. She had felt the warm earth beneath her bare feet. For a while, especially with Marvyn, she had believed you could live like that. She supposed you would call it a pre-modern life. Up there she was so far removed, so far away, that there were few traces of that other self, that other life, with all its contrary strains, which left her feeling she was scuttling away on the surface of living.

  It was what she and Tinny had talked about. How to unpick the strands of the times in which you lived, to find where the self has disappeared to, if it ever existed apart?

  Now, she knew more of the ways of being Greta; she had made choices. And she had chosen to engage again in a world that was professional—and a different social and intellectual self was in process. She felt it was not merely a return, a repetition, but a remaking. With luck and energy and insight, she believed, it would be possible to live in a modern world still tied to an ancient land.

  Sixty-six

  There had been a knock at the shed door: unexpectedly, it was Skyler, come to visit. It was windy and she hadn’t heard the car pull up.

  ‘Skyler,’ she’d said, ‘come in before this wind blows everything apart. Or what little there is in here to destroy.’

  He’d kissed her on the cheek and told her he was leaving for the city, but he didn’t know how long he’d last and when he might turn around and come back. He’d talked at length about his plans, about his new teaching position, which wasn’t really a promotion. He’d put into words something that troubled her own heart: that for people like themselves it was possible they would always feel like aliens in this co
untry. For others, too, except they would not know it. Would not see it.

  That deep down there would be a sense of something not quite right—it would be like a shadow. It was called the past. And she’d replied that it was one of the reasons she would stay put, for now. To see if it was possible to find a way to shift that unease.

  ‘When you’ve gone,’ she’d said, ‘I know I can talk to you on the phone, and really it should be no different if you’re ten kilometres away or a thousand. But it is, and I’ll miss you.’

  They’d hugged each other and Greta was fearful that she would start to cry, even though she knew Skyler would understand, without any embarrassment.

  After Skyler had left, Greta could not settle. She’d paced, drank more wine than she should have, felt caught up in a world that was moving fast, and of which she was part. It was exciting and disturbing. There was something she had to do—something she should have done a long time ago. There would be no more postponements. She would do it tonight, and hope to become flattened out and exhausted. She would write to Eve. A proper letter, not a flighty email.

  Dear Sisterheart,

  This is a story I’ve told no one, least of all myself, not properly, not for a long time. It may help explain a few things about me.

  I have often wondered how much you know about my reasons for leaving Hamburg sooner than I’d planned. Suddenly. Word travels, especially if sex is involved (but then you seem safe enough!). Perhaps if the distances are great the message becomes muted. I don’t know.

  It started when I finished my Australian fiction course with Professor Markus Wolf. This is, truly, his name. Although Patrick White’s Voss was also to blame. We talked—or, rather, he did—about the special relationship between Voss and Laura, two of the main characters: a deep connection, spiritual, transcendental, extrasensory. Bodies were not really necessary. That’s where our conversation started, but not where it ended. He talked endlessly about Australia and his year at Sydney University, and I found it enchanting, inspiring even. And he spoke of his special friendship with the professor there, a woman; it seemed to describe precisely the intellectual intimacy that I craved. On reflection, I don’t think I was particularly calculating, but I knew I had some power over him, that he found me attractive and I could use that. Because he was a professor and I was a student we could not meet at his place, but my little hidden-away flat was perfect. I could not blame him, not entirely. I imagined that what Markus and I shared was a unique connection. But it would not be too strong to say that his account of travelling in the footsteps of the explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, the historical figure lurking behind Voss, was overwhelming. I was astonished. I remember saying something like, ‘You made that journey, out through the station country, to the edge of the desert! Did you have Aboriginal guides?’ No doubt my eyes were shining. He said no, they didn’t, and nor did they get all the way to Western Australia.