Orphaned Leaves

by Christopher Holt

  Hitler had not minced his words:

  ‘The weak must be chiselled away. I want young men who can suffer pain. A young German must be as swift as a greyhound, as tough as leather, and as hard as Krupp’s steel.’

  Now Brandt watches Alan struggling to drag a sack of saltpetre away from the barn wall to clear a space for the dinghy. Finally, the boy has to straighten up to take a breath and removes his glasses to wipe the sweat from his face. No, Alan would not have passed any of the leadership test grades in the Deutsches Jungvolk. In fact, he would have been bullied to death, if not by the other boys, then by their instructors.

  And what of himself? When he was in the Hitler Youth, what would he have made of a man like Milo Hudson – Beck, the rich landowner, and yet a kind man who hated killing and did as much physical work as his paid labourers, a man who befriended a former enemy and championed the ambitions of Aubergine Coetzee, one of South Africa’s own Untermenschen?

  Alan has finished in the barn. He ambles up to the house, wipes his feet on the veranda mat, comes inside and engulfs himself in one of Milo’s Malacca armchairs. Chaucer stretches out beside him.

  “You were doing a great job out there,” says Milo hoarsely. He waves to Aubergine as she drives past. “I wonder where Aubergine is off to.”

  “Probably going back to her school,” says Alan.

  “On a Saturday?” Milo starts coughing.

  “She says a teacher’s work is never done.”

  “Don’t talk, Milo,” says Peggy. “You’ve had a bash on the head and you’re suffering from exposure, and you too, Otto, you’re not in such good shape either. Both of you should be resting.”

  “I’m getting old,” says Milo, “and resting will only make me feel older.” He starts coughing and wheezing. “I should have been alert to that willow branch and ducked in time. As it was, I had my job cut out just to keep my balance. Five years ago, I could’ve done it like a tightrope walker. Then there was that business last week in Cooma after the cattle market.”

  “What happened, Milo?” asks Alan.

  “Don’t encourage him, Alan,” says Peggy. “He shouldn’t be using his voice at all.” Brandt leans forwards to light her cigarette.

  Alan speaks up. “Do you know what? I don’t think Milo’s getting old at all. I think he’s a bit like Toad in Wind in the Willows. After all, Milo likes to drive expensive cars and go on adventures by the river, and even Tumbledown is a bit like Toad Hall.”

  “But, unlike Mr Toad, he also flies dangerous little aeroplanes,” adds Peggy.

  “Toad didn’t have a plane, Peggy, but he—”

  “Anyway, as I was saying,” continued Milo, and to everyone’s relief his voice was no longer slurred, “I’d had a good morning at the market and there I was striding down Sharpe Street, when suddenly I was overtaken by some young bloke – he was about seventeen. I’ve always had a good stride and I’ve never been overtaken before, except, of course, when I was a kid, but, my oath, it got to me. For the first time, I felt my mortality, and then, to add insult to injury, the insolent cove looked back at me and shouted, ‘step on it, Grandad.’” Milo convulses into another series of coughs, Peggy pours him water from a glass jug and he leans back in his chair.

  Peggy goes over and kisses him. “So let yourself be overtaken,” she says. “There’s nothing wrong with that, dear Milo, nothing at all.” She kisses him again and looking at them both, Brandt feels a rush of envy, though seeing him in this state makes him wonder if Milo is already too old to ever be Alan’s future guardian.

  26

  A summer of pitiless heat with a white sun and no rain for three months. Lingering virgas taunt the parched ground and around the water tanks the cracked mud is hardening like iron. In the stony paddocks, the dead thistles stand like thorny minarets. Five dusty wallabies are crouched in the weak shade of a dappled gum, their short front legs folded down on their joints and their ears askew, but the only sound from the bush is the metronomic tick of a single cricket.

  Brandt’s perennial creek is dry, not because the spring is empty but because its waters are still penned up behind the sluice gate. Today, he is forced to take time off from the Snowy Scheme because of a union strike, so he rides with Milo to the chalet for a quick check before the building inspector comes around next week.

  “We might be in the worst drought for twenty years, but our chalet still looks a winner,” says Milo as they dismount. “At this rate, she’ll be finished by the new year. Congratulations, Otto. You’re a pretty clever bloke when you want to be.”

  Brandt shakes his head. “I wouldn’t say that. The foundations were there already, and your men did all the heavy work. I just put in the fancy touches.”

  “False modesty – and you know it,” says Milo. His voice is hushed. “Just look at that; it’s a bloody marvel.” He waves his hand across the entire vista of the new Fuller’s Chalet standing against the Snowy Mountains in the full blaze of the morning sun. “My word, isn’t she a humdinger? Just look at her, Otto. Look at the roof line, worthy of a photo in the National Geographic.”

  Brandt would have to agree. The chalet is capped with a lofty roof of neo-Gothic gables and stained-glass windows oriented to catch maximum light. The skyline is dominated by two bright-copper orbs, like observatory domes, designed to camouflage the water tanks. A short spiral staircase leads to the first-floor balcony, where french windows open straight into the six bright and airy guest rooms.

  As they go inside, the rustic grandeur still smells of the original hearth, though a new cavernous fireplace has superseded it. Built of rough-hewn granite, it blends perfectly with the hardwood rafters above the mezzanine. The stained glass in the pointed windows brings shards of bright colour to illuminate the naked contours, knots and whorls of the timber, giving it a façade of agelessness.

  After inspecting for termites and snakes, Milo and Brandt mount up again, but remain for a moment to admire the chalet one more time.

  “We should have a grand opening and get the local press out for some photos,” says Milo. “She’s worth it.”

  “Do you mind if I check the stockyards, while we’re up here?” asks Brandt. “They’re just down the creek.”

  “A creek without water,” says Milo, “is like a pub with no beer – you know the song? You should open that bloody sluice again, Otto; in fact, you should’ve done it a month ago.”

  When they reach the stockyards, Brandt’s store cattle are snorting in the shade. “I’ll grant you they’re happy,” says Milo.

  “Happy? In this heat?”

  “Believe me, they really are. When you’ve been around cattle as long as I have, you can pick up their mood straight away.”

  “Everything’s so arid,” says Brandt looking at the brittle, dead gum leaves around them. He feels uneasy. There is no sound in the valley except for the wind sighing through the gums, a lone bird call and the fat store cattle bumping against their steel rails, yet, in spite of the heat, Brandt shivers. Please no. Not her damned presence again. Furtively, he turns around, but she is not there and the only presence here is Milo.

  His eyes follow the creek bed where splashes of shadow turn the boulders into a herd of piebald pigs. From the high bank, the depleted water holes look sunken, like the eye sockets of a skull. The dead algae draping their sides is greenish black and crawling with flies. Brandt now regrets that he dammed the creek. If it hadn’t been for his obsession with gold it would still be flowing, gently descending towards Aubergine’s school barely a quarter of a mile downstream. Yes, he must get that water running again.

  “It’s arid all right,” says Milo, “but don’t you feel it, the humidity? I reckon we might get a storm. As I said before, you’d better get your creek going again. Make it pronto, bugger the gold, it’ll keep. Where’s your retainer dam?”

  Brandt points up the valley. “On the other side of thos
e cliffs near Fuller’s Ridge. Plenty of deep water by now, pity I can’t use it for irrigation – it’s too far from the arable zone. But you’re right about the creek, I’ll open the big sluice gates on Saturday when Alan’s here. I want him to watch what happens.”

  “All that water raging down, that’ll be something worth looking at.” says Milo. “Would you mind if I bring Peggy?”

  “No, bring her along. Good idea.”

  They ride up to Fullers Ridge and Milo dismounts to admire the old Chevrolet. Brandt has recently been working on this too. The interior has been cleaned out, the dashboard polished, and the doors open and shut smoothly, now that the hinges have been cleaned and greased.

  “When I start to restore it properly, I’ll have to get it down to one of the barns,” he says. “I want Alan to work with me on it too. It’s going to be his in a few years.”

  *

  Milo leaves Garigo through the alpine gate and Brandt rides back to the homestead alone. Solitude has one obvious advantage, he doesn’t have to pretend that he’s not terrified of his own subconscious. There is no ghost, it has to be psychological and he must eliminate the idea of the supernatural altogether. He’ll make an appointment with a Cooma doctor, tell him some story about war trauma and get himself referred to a psychiatrist in Sydney – not Canberra, it’s too close to home. Even in Sydney, he’ll need to be vigilant. Psychiatrists demand to know too much, worming their way into the soul of a man. By using subtlety instead of torture, they’re probably more effective than the Gestapo, so he’ll need to be careful.

  In the stable, he brushes Phantom down, checks the underside of his saddle for burs and stray grass seeds, mixes him a feed, gives him a rub behind the ears and goes over to the house. On his way from the stables, still bothered by the wisdom of seeing a psychiatrist, he is surprised that he has walked straight past the billabong without seeing it. Ashamed of his inattention, he returns to watch the coots foraging among the water lilies.

  The heat is making him dizzy, so he sits down on the edge of the bank, pulls off his boots and socks, and lowers his feet in the cooling water. Strange that the frogs are silent today. The whole billabong is altogether too quiet. Where is the ponderous trumpeting of the bull frogs and the sweet call of the reed warbler? There’s not much life moving about in the water either. He used to love observing the lazy bronze fish scouring the bottom as though they were searching for some meaning in their existence, without realising that if there is any meaning at all, it must surely lie beyond the billabong; yet how can that be, when they would think that their billabong is all there is?

  The water looks bottomless. As Brandt loses himself in its bluish-black depths, the images rise to engulf him.

  *

  It’s winter, in the Wild East. The platform is windy and cold, grey as the soldiers’ overcoats mirrored in the spotty windows of the waiting room. He won’t go in because there’s too much glass in the waiting room and he will have to confront his reflected face on every wall. It’s not a place to hang about in either because introspection is more abrasive than this gritty snow smarting his cheeks and stinging his eyes. The wind rattles the window and he stares once more into the waiting room.

  He must have been mistaken about the soldiers’ overcoats, as there are no soldiers.

  Beyond the platform the land is drab, every tree has been felled and every shrub cleared to guard against partisans. We have created a nothing, he decides. But can you create a nothing? Of course, there will be a time in high summer when there will be no birds, no red poppies or corn flowers, and no butterflies. Look at the mountains of ash we have made, our only creation, so much ash to be stirred up by the gales and to descend on the land like the outpourings of Vesuvius.

  Excuse me, I see you have missed the last train. I am so sorry. Ah, but I should not have apologised.

  Never apologise. Hans Frank apologised. Perhaps he was sincere, but it is never a good thing to apologise. If you kill thousands, don’t apologise. Even if you bring your country crashing about you in shame and ruin, never, ever apologise.

  You ask me about the train again? You’re in luck. Happily, you haven’t missed it after all. It was because of the air attack, you know, that they had to abandon it. The passengers? Are you serious? You wouldn’t really be interested in the passengers. Only worn out Untermenschen – sacks of bone and dried grey skin, and with big eyes. But then you would know all about that. Surely you remember all those eyes?

  And voices too: “Sturmbannführer, please will you do this for me… there was someone I know; I’m sure he was on that train.”

  “I shall look into it.”

  “Please Sturmbannführer, it is very important.”

  “I said I will look into it. I told you before that I would look into it. I shall definitely look into it… but don’t go away. Don’t turn your back on me. Please don’t leave me here on this empty platform. I promise you I shall look into it. I really will look into it. I will truly, immediately. I shall write to Eichmann.”

  *

  Brandt’s stares into the depths between the lilies until a dingo howling in the pines startles him. He assumes it’s a dingo, but he’s never ever seen one. Let it be a dingo, anything but a fox. He gets up quickly, pulls on his boots and socks, and moves on towards the house, but stops abruptly and looks around as he hears thunder behind him. Over Tumbledown, the sky is bruise black and the lightning trickles over Fuller’s Ridge; will it be rain – or just another false promise? “Keep on going,” he whispers to himself. “Keep on going, finish the race.”

  He ducks to avoid a pair of strafing magpies and, with his head still bowed, he watches the trudge of his boots in the dust. They’re well worn, but they’ve worn well, says the cobbler in the bill board for Kiwi Shoe Polish. He first saw that billboard on Cooma Railway Station the day he first arrived on the Snowy Scheme. It stuck in his mind.

  Why do you obsess over railway stations?

  Brandt buries his thoughts by watching his feet, one boot plodding along after the other as though they were independent of his legs. “Keep on going,” he whispers to himself. “Finish the race.”

  Like a fool, he’s left the back door open, and when he enters the house its interior stinks of the blood and bone fertiliser blowing across from the big sacks in the barn. He wishes Alan were here; the farm is never so well run without Alan. The boy loves Garigo, and he would definitely have made sure the door was closed. Another crack of thunder and the flashes of lightning show up the dust particles hanging in the air like a galaxy of tiny worlds.

  Not more dust, just more light.

  Towards evening, Brandt pours himself a beer out on the veranda and watches the froth rise like a mushroom cloud over the rim of his schooner glass. He’s heard the British are testing atom bombs in the Australian desert. The settlers have a beautiful country like this and what do they use it for? Setting off atom bombs. And now he thinks of the Aborigines for whom the land is sacred; the nomads who make no distinction between the natural and the numinous, that mysterious place over the rim of the cosmic billabong.

  He wonders if Magdalena had a hand in making those atom bombs and he wishes he hadn’t been so hasty in judging her. Perhaps there are other uses for heavy water; there must be. He’ll ask Peggy to look it up for him in the library.

  Magdalena had liked the thought of him having the farm. She said as much to him in Canberra; she thought she would like the farm too. He wishes she were still in Canberra. It only takes two-and-a-half hours to drive to Canberra. God how he wishes she were still there.

  She has written him five letters. They lie unopened on the top shelf of his bookcase. He tells himself he doesn’t want to hear any more lies about what she is doing in America, but what he fears most is that she has written to tell him that she’s met someone else and is asking him to hurry up with the divorce.

  Magdalena’s torturers ar
e both dead. He had seen their photos on the front page of the Monaro Express on the counter at Tom’s store. “Drunk driving,” said Tom. “It’s the scourge of this country. They were driving some big American Studebaker and lost control on a steep run this side of Lob’s Hole. They left the road and ended up in the quarry. Too bad really.”

  Brandt would like to tell Magdalena, but decides against it and he swallows down the dregs of his beer. Another bottle would be in order.

  There’s a red glint in his empty glass. Brandt leaps up, stares beyond the trees and rubs his eyes. It’s a fire. Christ, it’s a fire, – and it’s just beyond Fuller’s Ridge.

  Where’s that bloody rain?

  Hatless and cursing, Brandt sprints to the stable yard, straps on Phantom’s saddle and wildly gallops up to Fuller’s Ridge, where he finds, to his dismay, that the source of the smoke is the chalet itself.

  It’s all too late, the timbers are cracking as the flames lick the underside of the balcony. Brandt cannot believe what he is seeing. All those months of planning and hard labour for nothing. Something inside the building explodes – probably a gas canister. More explosions – now the whole bush is ablaze, and the air moans and roars.

  The school! With this wind direction, Aubergine and the children will be in the path of a runaway wall of fire. It will be on them in twenty minutes unless he forces open the sluice in the retainer dam.

  He hears a prolonged bellowing, the store cattle, corralled in the stockyard; they’ll be trapped as well. Phantom’s ears have flattened and he whinnies in terror as Brandt leaps back in the saddle and canters up the creek bed, but his way is blocked by the flames and smoke. He can only get to the sluice by riding back onto the ridge and descending the scree on the other side.