by Ed Hillyer
Well before noon yet, and she sensed that the air temperature outside was the highest it had been since the start of the week. The incessant wind was a scirocco, hot and heavy as breath. Sarah rose, washed, and began to dress.
Tidying the parlour, she discovered a trail of minute stains marking the carpet, from window, to fireplace, to table. Scrubbing at them, the cloth and her hands showed up fresh scarlet. They were traces of blood.
Brippoki has made an open secret of his sacred shame. And been rejected. His manhood still appears that of a boy. Seeking out a means with which to smother his boyhood self, he raids the wash lines across the backyard walls of Whitechapel for a ‘shammy leather’.
Travelling through this far country, conjuring up the landscape in His wake, an Ancestor Spirit has left behind a trail – a narrow causeway made from scattered words and musical notes. Even as they shape the earth, these Songlines form a map. Only by taking the right path could Brippoki have hoped to meet others who share in his Dreaming, from whom he might have expected hospitality. But he has lost his way. He has strayed from the path…
Brippoki touches the bruises on his face, only now healing. He still feels the ache in his sides. These clay people, many cannot be understood at all, with their growling and their bits and spits of words. From their stone and wood chambers piled high in a heap they arise, bird-shrieking, dog-howling, the flesh of their faces, stripped red and raw, burst like lizard guts on the fire.
He has entered into hostile territory, at risk of losing more than his life.
During their travels, Ancestor Spirits scatter guruwari, shards of Dreaming. Seeds of life, these forms persist, withstanding all ravages of time, death and decay. Anything so imbued with the power of Truth is a tjurunga, a most sacred object.
The tjurunga is as one with the Ancestor, the house of his Spirit, to be cherished and hidden away. If not, strangers may be tempted to come and steal away the very essence of life. Their campfire tales are filled with such stories of robbery and revenge.
To speak of one’s Truth in the presence of any female is against the living Law, but showing a tjurunga? That is blasphemy. A blasphemer’s life is forfeit. They must be killed, or at the very least savagely beaten. If they do not accept their punishment, and flee, as fugitives from divine justice they will be mercilessly hunted down. Either way, their souls are sure to be damned for all eternity.
But if it is a woman, a white woman showing a tjurunga? Brippoki’s head hurts.
The impossibly hot day presented Sarah with a quandary. However much her father’s bedroom needed an airing, the window could not be opened because the wind was too violent, whipping all of his papers around. She opened other windows in their part of the house. The fresh air forced through them might eventually circulate. She could attend to any damage later.
Sarah read aloud from the Sunday papers, coverage of the match at Lord’s, relieved, if slighted, that Lambert should prefer the official version of events to any of her own observations.
‘“Saturday’s play”,’ she reported, ‘“was in marked contrast to the Friday, when the Blacks had been adjudged to have begun indifferently, only to improve until the point where their performance was agreed the superior.”’
‘So they were in the lead?’ said Lambert. ‘Well, well! A rum do.’
‘“Misfortune, however, seemed to attend the steps of the second movement of the Blacks”,’ continued Sarah, ‘“at the very outset of their second innings. Dick-a-Dick was clean bowled, and Tiger was doomed to a speedy retirement. Lawrence made but one hit that counted. Cuzens came in and by vigorous but not always wise hitting got up the score to 28.”’
‘Twenty-eight? Ha-hah!’ His enjoyment of their collapse brought much-needed colour to her father’s cheek. ‘Continue!’ he ordered.
‘“Mullagh – ”’
‘Johnny Mullagh!’ cried Lambert. He clapped his great hands together in anticipation of grand doings.
‘“ – the greatest card,”’ she read, ‘“was then played, but not with the spirit and style of the day previous. He seemed to hit anyhow. At the fall of the sixth wicket for 40 runs it required no prophet to foretell the issue of the match. Bullocky was absent without sufficient reason being assigned, and, to make short work of what may be called a travestie upon cricketing at Lord’s, the Blacks were defeated by 55 runs.”’
‘Dear, dear. A travesty?’ Lambert gloated. ‘I knew they were getting ahead of themselves.’
‘I thought cricket allowed the peasant to play the prince.’
That was impertinent: Lambert was shocked, but not so much as Sarah. She had betrayed her partisan feelings.
He looked a little stormy.
‘The lamb may lie down with the lion, but that does not make them equal,’ he said. ‘You misunderstand me, my girl.’
Sarah felt her bonds tighten, but was equally convinced that no apology was necessary.
‘“Marylebone”,’ she read on, ‘“were the eventual winners, but not without facing a sterling piece of bowling from Johnny Cuzens, who took six for 65 runs of a second innings total of 121.”’
She refused to look at her father’s face.
‘“At the close of the first day’s play”,’ Sarah read, ‘“Dick-a-Dick caused a sensation by inviting members to pay up to a shilling to try to hit him with a cricket ball from 10 paces. Cuzens is showing more batting form, but the Blacks are not doing much, and bid fair to be only a fleeting attraction.”’
‘Whatever happened, I wonder,’ mused Lambert, ‘to Johnny Bullocky?’
Sarah continued her reading, and not purely for Lambert’s benefit. Among the related news articles there appeared a curious sort of commentary, journalist responding to journalist between their respective papers. Making mischief, she chose to share it.
‘“To those”,’ she read out, ‘“who have any doubts as to the identity of the manhood in the white-and black-skinned races, it may be satisfactory to learn that the same hopes and fears, the same zeal for the honour of the Institution, the same pride in the cricketing uniform and colours, the same complacent vanity in looking ‘the thing’, animated on this occasion the quondam denizens of the wilderness – ”’
‘Is this to be one of those sentences without an end?’ interrupted Lambert.
‘It is,’ admitted Sarah. ‘The emphases are theirs. “ – the cricket match at Lord’s proving incontestably that the Anglican aristocracy of England and the ‘noble savage’ who ran wild in the Australian woods are linked together in one brotherhood of blood – moved by the same passions, desires, and affections – ”’
‘Tcha!’ scoffed Lambert.
‘“ – differing only because in His wisdom God had ordained that His revealed truth should travel westward from the hills and valleys of Canaan, until at the appointed time the stream of Divine knowledge should turn eastward, and cover the whole earth ‘as the waters cover the sea’.”’
‘What on earth…?’ he spluttered.
She was perhaps being unnecessarily provocative; still, there it was, in black and white.
‘Let me see that!’ Lambert snatched the paper. He merely checked for himself – as if she could have made it up – and then threw the pages down.
‘Pshaw!’ he complained. ‘A savage is not so simply turned citizen.’
Patiently, Sarah gathered what had scattered and slid to the floor.
‘You can take a horse to the water,’ said Lambert, ‘but you cannot make him drink. We are finding, as a general rule, that the dumb beast has to be coerced.’
‘You are cruel,’ Sarah observed.
‘In order that we may be kind,’ smiled Lambert. ‘It is often necessary.’
‘An influence amounting to the same as authority might be arrived at through a system of kindness,’ Sarah asserted. She looked her father over, coolly. ‘A person might accept almost anything,’ she said, ‘from one to whom they were suitably attached.’
Lambert considered for a moment.
‘We must take direction from our Father,’ he stressed the words unkindly, ‘the Almighty Disposer of Events. The pious Israelites could not build the walls of Jerusalem without holding the trowel in one hand…and a sword in the other.’
Brippoki knows he has strayed from the correct path. It is not enough to follow the way that is already there – that is the wrong way. It is necessary to sing, and to send the landscape and the road out of oneself. This is Bugaragara, the Way of the Law.
During his first nights’ fast travelling in a city of the dead, he forgot the importance of this distinction. He fooled himself into thinking that he forged a path, when, all along, he has been following one – his course somehow directed.
He might as well have worn a ring through his nose.
He has not followed in the footsteps of any Ancestor; instead, a devil.
And now the devil is following after him.
CHAPTER XLI
Sunday the 14th of June, 1868
IDYLS OF THE KING
‘Days and nights of fervid life, of communion with angels of darkness and of light have engraved their shadowy characters on that tear-stained book. He suspects the intelligence or the heart of his friend. Is there then no friend?’
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘Nature’
Inland from the coal jetties, dockside, heads the Regent’s Canal. Tracing the borderline between Stepney and Limehouse, it passes beneath the London and Blackwall Railway, then in swift succession bustling Commercial-road and quieter Salmon’s-lane. Above Stonebridge Wharf is the Salmon’s-lane Lock. A stone’s throw beyond, opposite the towpath, stretches waste ground. Marshland overgrown with reed and tall swamp grasses, it is effectively cut off by the brick-span arches of a viaduct.
Tucked away well out of sight, behind this retired spot, a semi-circle of branches has been arranged: fallen from the surrounding, sickly trees, they are struck into the ground against the prevailing wind. Constructed from materials to hand, the rudimentary shelter blends entirely with the landscape, invisible to within a matter of feet.
Brippoki keeps his bare head to the leeward end. He does not sleep, but rarely moves, except, whenever the sun makes an appearance, to roll forward and bask, like a reptile warming his blood. Every now and then he wafts a switch of goose feathers tied with gut, to brush away the flies. All comes from that same bird whose fat and plumage have furnished the basis of his ritual ‘hero’ costume. The rest he has eaten raw.
After many days of running in a blind panic, the simple pleasures of staying still cannot be overestimated. In a city so filled, empty of life, finding any suitable place to rest has been almost impossible. The small mud creek in which he first settled turned out to be a tidal inlet, his encampment washed away. Without a source of fresh water, his every effort at digging a well was frustrated by the thick and cloying muck. His second choice, the Serpent’s lair, was no better. Milling children had disturbed him. Too many bodies, too close for comfort – even there they had come intruding.
No more streets. No more people. He’s staying put.
Happy elbows, here is better, balla-duik. He’s lying here quietly.
High ground would make for a better outlook, but low ground scrub, this secluded grove, is best for hiding out. In such a high wind, a natural hollow beside a water-course is the choicest option.
Not that this place, eora, is without its faults. The water flows unnaturally straight, as if bewitched. A hillside pocked with caves overlooks from the opposite shore. And there is the willow tree. Yet a small brook weaves through the banks of tall reed, there is sand as well as clay underfoot, and, to alleviate his crowding miseries, the bliss of being able to sit, at long last, skin to the bare earth.
‘What would you say, if you were to meet with one of the Aboriginal cricketers?’ asked Sarah.
‘I should say nothing,’ Lambert replied, ‘unless they were willing to visit me in my bed.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I don’t deny they have a pleasant, a sympathetic sort of a face. It is not, however, a look of great intelligence.’
Sarah moved to speak, but Lambert cut her off.
‘Meeting one on the street,’ he said, ‘I would raise my hat. I might even challenge him at the wicket, yes. But invite one to supper? Dine at the same table? No, daughter, I think not. Wisdom allows that a man may recognise his opposite. In association, there is none.’
The lion lay down with the Lamb. Imperfect sympathy indeed!
‘From all that I have read of our missionary efforts,’ he went on, ‘the Black races seem incapable of being brought out of darkness into light. And by darkness I mean the power of Satan. All is vain.’
‘All is vain?’ repeated Sarah, unsure of his meaning.
‘In vain.’ Lambert threw up his hands. ‘The animal’s thirst may be quenched, but, be sure, it remains a horse.’
The insistent rattle of the window, closed against the battering winds, caused their heads to turn in unison. Lambert barely paused in his speech.
‘The savage is an infant,’ he said. ‘Incapable of self-control, innocent of the knowledge of good and evil – ’
‘Not – ’ Sarah tried and failed to interrupt him.
‘ – destitute alike of foresight and experience. What might be learned from them?’
Nothing, if our mouths were perennially open and our ears shut.
‘As a child,’ he continued, ‘he is helpless. And if not properly attended, his moral state does not elevate in and of itself. He rather becomes degenerate. In this respect, Messrs Hayman and Lawrence are heroes. The performance of their native cricketers, on and off the field, does them credit. Would that I could say the same for their countrymen, that “Colony of Disgracefuls”, convicts, escapees, and emancipists…’
He evoked men like Druce. Sarah, who had begun to tidy the room, turned.
‘…and now that detestable term, “squatters”. By their behaviours, they put to shame their men of light and leading. How eagerly they abandon their mother country. Men of all classes, wilfully, demoralising themselves. Grubbing, for gold…
‘Here is the descent of the species!’
Sitting up higher in the bed, Lambert Larkin paused to wipe away the phlegm gathered on his lips.
‘God gave man dominion over all other creatures,’ he said. ‘Why, then, sink below the level of brute creation? Through folly, intemperance, the indulgence of his evil lusts… The seething mass of humanity, drawn together by the love of gold! Is this progress? Have we evolved?’
‘Father – ’
‘Victory, the golden crown…goes to the man least mindful of clambering atop the heads of his fellows, in order that he might gain it for himself. Be sure, it is the only way and the only time that he will ascend.
‘Have we learnt nothing from that dreadful spectre of Civil War?’ Lambert asked. ‘As if war,’ he said, ‘could ever be “civil”! Shall the strongest survive this struggle for existence? Or will it be the most foolhardy, the most greedy, the most ruthless, the most venal who alone succeed? There,’ he snarled, ‘in the land of the lazy Doasyoulike.’
Eighty degrees. Brippoki keeps to his gunya, waddy close at hand. He sits and soaks up the heat, replenishing his energies, remaining invisible. Waterholes are dangerous for the same reason they are delightful – all living things congregate there. The dead, he hopes, will stay away.
Through half-lidded eyes he relishes the liquid sparkle of sunlight, at the same time keeping watch; glad to the brink of fear.
Deadman, Dreaming, got speared in the foot, numb in the side. Laid him out on the old tree. Mind the crows don’t pluck him.
Brippoki’s head droops. He is so tired. But no sleep! Sense and knowledge – Deadman comes for him when he is sleeping. Shadows claim him. No catching him sleeping. He’s still got his spirit. Keepin’ it.
The surface of the waters glitters.
Despite his equitable feelings, Thara cannot be entirely trusted. She may not deliberately seek to mislead him,
but…
Brippoki’s jaw works in a chewing motion. He chews at length, then spits, chews, and spits. He makes a pause to examine the results. Each sample in his lap is of a different sort of bark, which he has begun breaking down into fibres with his teeth. Having selected the best, he places it into his coolamon, his dilly bag. Noting the type, he knows where to find more.
He has made the dilly bag from his skins, the leggings torn into strips, looped and tied at the waist. He uses the string-pull there to seal it.
Brippoki settles back on his haunches and looks deep into the sky. He fingers the golden guinea Unaarrimin has gifted him. In trade, the practice whitefellows so much enjoy, such glittering objects are highly respected. More coins in a man’s pocket means better treatment from the walypela.
All of his adult life, back in the World, he has worked the sheep stations, in what is now called ‘Western District’. He never saw so many of these valued tokens as he has since joining the team. They pick them up regular, following feats of hunting prowess and showing their skill with weapons, mimes played out at the end of each public game of cricket. Even when at play it is to earn, doing it over and again as necessary, for ‘prize money’. Play without pure joy or laughter.
He turns the pretty coin over and over in the sunlight. Brippoki likes the way it shines, but is otherwise indifferent. What shall he buy with it?
‘An inferior creature knows its place and abides by nature’s laws. Man was created a superior being…and yet he continually abuses that divine potential, choosing to sink instead. He wars with himself…thieves, commits adultery… and other crimes too horrible to mention.’
Lambert became misty-eyed.
‘Blood-letting,’ he said, his voice breaking, ‘more shameful and sinful, because committed by men who profess to know better!’
Some reflection beyond his words appeared to rip him to the core.