The Clay Dreaming

by Ed Hillyer

  Bripumyarrimin throws his head back and roars out his anguish. Shame runs down his cheeks – his short breaths puffing out, then in.

  His yudna finally removed, the worst of his fears is confirmed, his non-status revealed for all to see. The sacred cutting has been denied him. Uncircumcised, he remains a child, and condemned as such. In outrage, in bitterness, many times he vows to do the necessary himself, but his trembling hands shake too much. Self-mutilation, he knows, will not make him any more acceptable in the eyes of his people.

  The other children and his erstwhile peers laugh to see him. Among the adults, it is worse – they will not look at him. He is the Murrumbidgee Biam, a supernatural being who has taken the form of a guli, a black man, but one whose lower extremities are deformed. Such a one may compose ritual songs and corroboree dances, but is also reckoned to carry diseases, especially those leaving telltale marks on the face.

  Brippoki, forever since, makes a point of never sitting cross-legged on the ground, as is that foul creature’s custom.

  Sarah lay in her bed, unwilling to greet the new day. She shivered with a chill rage all the more bitter for its impotence.

  Coming away from St James’s Hall the night before, she had lain in the bath for over an hour, beyond midnight even. As with the clay whose ghost still clung to her shoes, she feared she might never think herself clean again.

  In disparaging the Australian Aborigines, the buccaneer William Dampier had set a dangerous precedent: lethal, in fact, precisely because it had persisted. Through decades of hearsay, reportage and gossip posing as official record, it had become horrifically bloated, out of all proportion with the real, human dimension. Ludwig Leichhardt, in his Journals, described his party being received as ‘pale-faced anthropophagi’ – refreshing insight and honesty, given the circumstances. In quest of exploration they had perpetrated evil. What evils, Sarah wondered, might yet arise, through the dogged pursuits of those self-appointed men of science, the Piccadilly Misanthropes.

  Men might talk, but that was no guarantee they knew their subject, not even first-hand; to that extent, her experience might in fact be the greater. The twist of the Society Fellows’ ‘logic’, their outrageous justifications, resembled nothing so much in her mind as the smooth-talking language of professional murder. Far from being in denial, perhaps they simply didn’t know any better.

  Worst of all, nor could she.

  Science itself was not necessarily evil, but much evil might be done in its name, when allowed to be so inexact. Turning in the bed, away from the light, Sarah thought it a wicked irony: that a greater truth could be found in the world of myth.

  The Golden Age, as according to Ovid, was a period when the earth itself produced all things spontaneously. Men were content with the foods that grew without cultivation, and to know only their own shores. Once Saturn was consigned to the darkness of Tartarus, however, the world passed under the rule of Jove, bringing a definitive end to such halcyon days. The Golden Age was replaced by one of Silver, inferior to it in every way: only Gold did not tarnish.

  Leichhardt, Mitchell, and men like them, were the heralds of that new age of Silver.

  Then, according to that same legend, other metals would come on in swift succession, increasingly base. In an age of hard Iron, modesty, truth and loyalty would flee before deceit, violence and criminal greed, and sailors spread their canvas to the winds.

  That age was already here.

  Australia, once the fabled land of milk and honey, had itself passed into myth, undergoing its metamorphosis into a land of mutton and corn.

  Mr Gilbert’s ghost, invisibly speared through the clavicle, would haunt Sarah for evermore: with his death, any ideas she entertained of a peaceful resolution between black fellow and white had been dashed. She knew then that bloody conflict was inevitable, was occurring, had occurred – the retribution harsh. Gentle Gold could not help but give way to weapons forged in the age of Iron. Hands would be bloodstained, and the virgin earth blood-soaked.

  ‘RRuhhHr!’

  Refusing all offers of help, Lambert struggled to gain a sitting position. The best Sarah could do was to dart forward occasionally and adjust the bedding behind him, to provide more support.

  ‘Hrrugh! Hkcough!’

  Eventually she was able to present him breakfast, although it had already gone cold. He munched, slowly.

  ‘Look,’ he murmured, ‘at what your old father is reduced to…an old slugabed.’

  ‘You have not eaten your egg,’ she said, flatly.

  ‘It is very good of you…to treat me to eggs,’ he said, still chewing at his last mouthful, ‘but if I have another this week, I’ll be bound. More…than I am already.’ Lambert mopped his lips and any dribbles from his moustaches. ‘I sleep very fitful,’ he said, ‘and wake with a lingering fever. My joints ache, my teeth are rattling loose, and to top it all, I cannot even enjoy a good motion any more. You eat the egg!’

  He shoved his plate away.

  Sarah did not react. Lambert eyed her.

  ‘“Life itself is a disease,”’ he declared, ‘“a working incited by suffering.”’

  Sarah half-smiled: self-consciousness, effacement even, from him was a rare thing. He acknowledged that his ability to complain was itself a sign of life.

  ‘Carlyle?’ she asked, removing the tray. ‘Or Novalis?’

  ‘Either,’ said Lambert. He gave a little belch, hand balanced across his mouth. ‘Both.’

  He still wore his nightcap.

  Lambert knew that she had been out for some hours the evening before, come home late, taken a bath. He knew that she lately kept secrets under his roof – kept them from him. He strongly suspected there was a man involved: there usually was, where a woman’s secrets were concerned. He could not begrudge her that. His darling girl was a woman now. It was good, for the best, if someone could be there for her when he was gone.

  She seemed very distant, and her mood was not bright. Lambert donned the aspect of good cheer.

  ‘“As Time and Hours passeth awaye,

  So doeth the Life of Man decaye.

  As Time can be Redeemed with no cost,

  Bestow It well…and let no Houre be Lost.”’

  Sarah stared at him blankly: sat up in the bed, propped on a bank of pillows, Lambert looked more gnomic than ever.

  ‘Don’t stand there staring, girl!’ he shouted, but playfully. ‘“Behold and begone about your business!”’

  Sarah took up the breakfast tray and turned out of the doorway. The second she was out of sight she scooped up the egg with her fingers and swallowed it. Ugh. He had sprinkled too much salt.

  Lambert sat, patiently aware that she lingered just outside. Her head popped back around the doorjamb. ‘I shall sit with you this afternoon,’ she said, with seriousness of purpose.

  Lambert merely nodded, and in a trice she was gone. Life…the very image of the woman who was life to him, and she was gone. Life might only be understood backwards, yet must be lived forwards. He must look forward.

  Looking forward, Lambert saw the tip of his nightcap, dangling.

  Taking two pieces at a time from his coolamon, Brippoki adds fresh fibres to his kaargerum, the string as it grows under the steady movement of his other palm. Hands working, his mind drifts. Unwilling thoughts, helpless to stop themselves, turn to his lost years as a youth – when he is no longer a boy, yet not a man.

  Ngamadjidj, the whitefellow, comes in numbers far more than the guli can count. Ngamadjidj come, kangaroo go…blackfellows famish away.

  With every passing day their anguish grows. Walypela keeps on coming, deeper and deeper up country, driving them further into the Bush. The land that has been theirs for countless generations is lost to them. Their birthrights are denied. Is it nothing, for them to receive nothing in return? But what can be given that is of equal value?

  The forests and plains disappear, squatter settlements spreading over the whole of the country. There are more of the whit
e man’s gunyas than stars in the sky. Nothing else remains, as far as the eye can see.

  Through soot and smoke, Brippoki looks out over London.

  The days do not grow straight, as spears of grass. They are strands of spider web. He lives as his people came to live – hiding in the back country, deep in the territory of their enemies. It is country unfit to live in, offering little means of support, a place where, unless canny, a man might starve.

  Deftly, he draws the two ends of the string back along his thigh, exerting a firm pressure to twist them tightly under, then rolling them with a swift motion down towards his knee.

  The walypela problem is, they have no concept of fair exchange – only taking, never giving. Out of respect for the dead, and as a duty to those unborn, between the living there must be payback. This is the only correct way to conduct one’s life – to acknowledge oneself as part of a continuum.

  In the Reading-room at the British Museum, Sarah suffered hot flushes and felt her mind wandering. The day promised to be another hot one – bright, and hot. The library’s ventilation was quite inadequate, too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer, and in England all four seasons often came the same day. It was not good for people. It could not be good for the books.

  She turned over the brittle pages of Druce’s manuscript, ready to resume her transcript. The new section began with a list headed ‘The Names of the Ships’.‘

  ‘First, King George, Captain Aflahen.

  2. The Inspector, Captain Poole.

  3. The Betsy, Captain Walker.

  4. The brig Venus, Captain Steward.

  5. The schooner Governor Bligh, Captain Grownns.

  6. The Ferret, Captain Skelton.

  7. The 3 Brothers, Captain Worth.

  8. The George & Vulture, Captain Brown.

  9. The King George, Captain Moody, to whom I presented the said jewellery.’

  Sarah didn’t know what jewellery he meant. Nothing else was said of it.

  ‘10. The General Wellesley, Captain Dalrymple, which ship

  I completed with a valuable cargo after been done.’

  The material went on to repeat that period of his life covered in his 1810 Memoirs, with several notable additions. No mention of the quest for gold dust, made so much of elsewhere.

  The penmanship of the manuscript shifted; the curlicue of each letter ‘d’, significantly developed, indicated the presence of yet another new scribe – Dalrymple’s identity abbreviated, with suitable flourish, to ‘Capt. D.’

  As the steady hours passed, the heat only increased. From somewhere across the Reading-room’s vast circumference resounded a loud clatter, the fainting collapse of some other poor soul. James Hornblower, junior assistant to the Department of Printed Books, delivered to her designated seat the latest volume Miss Sarah Larkin had requested.

  She looked up: he handed her the book – the compilation of Tracts containing the Memoirs of Mr. George Bruce from 1810; lost to them for a fortnight and at long last successfully re-ordered.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Hornblower,’ she mumbled thickly.

  ‘Are you all right, miss?’ enquired the fair-haired clerk.

  He heard the break in her voice, and readily perceived that she was in some distress. When she looked up again, he saw the dark circles under her eyes.

  ‘I-I’m…yes. Please,’ she requested, ‘leave me be.’ She waved a weak hand and averted her face. ‘I’ll be all right.’

  Events within the compared texts more than normally upset her, shortly bringing Sarah’s work to an abrupt close.

  Retreating back to the house, she lingered by their own bookshelves, over a section generally avoided: only a few titles, kept on one particular shelf – a chapbook, some poetry and plays for children, but mostly popular travel books, voyages of discovery, strange new lands and stranger people. Travellers’ tales best expressed her mother’s love of the exotic – a complement to her father’s natural histories, Sarah supposed, but a curious collection for someone who, so far as she knew, had never been anywhere in her life except for Norfolk, Kent, and London.

  How the spines had faded. Some titles Sarah remembered, others not at all. She couldn’t find the one she had vaguely felt she wanted. Perhaps it wasn’t a book after all.

  The touch and feel of every object brought with it unwanted associations, emotions tender and exposed. These were among her mother’s favourite things. Modern Voyages by the Reverend John Adams, another slim volume next to it; she picked it up.

  The Shipwrecked Orphans.

  Sarah felt unbearable heat, and a pressure behind the eyes. She fumbled to slide the book back into place, a thickness of mucus welling in her throat.

  The guli belonging to the scrubs are strangers in their own country, the land no longer their own. Life having no meaning, violence, whoring, begging and theft become their new ways. The only escape from the misery of their days is in the bottle. No good blackfellows, all same like croppy, convicts and drunken sailors. Many times he is witness to the use of the flogging triangle, sees his clan brothers led away, linked in chains – brothers, father.

  In his twentieth summer, the time comes for the man-child to receive the marks of adulthood. His back, shoulders, arms and chest scarred, he may yet enter into the fourth stage of his life cycle, Wilyaru.

  ‘KARRO karro wimmari,

  Karra yernka makkitia…’

  As he works, Brippoki sings the cutting song. He feels the traces of the knife glow hot across his upper arms, his chest and shoulders, aware and proud of the emblems of his clan – the complex arrangement of dots, circles and long, livid lines that distinguish them from their neighbours

  ‘Karro karro kauwemukka…’

  As he endures the pain of his transformation, that same ancient skin-song fills the air. The words help to soothe his pain, guard his life against deadly dangers.

  ‘Makkitia mulyeria,

  Karro karro makkitia…’

  His boyhood name, which is only shame to him, shall disappear in a sandstorm of new titles. During the cutting, he is called ngulte. The incisions made, until they begin to scab over, he is yellambambettu. After the sores have first healed, tarkange; when the skin rises, mangkauitya; and when the scars are at their glorious height, he will be bartamu.

  The wounds are made very deep, and, to ensure they heal over in suitably elevated fashion, impacted with a mixture of sacred herbs and clay. His body becomes one with the land – their ritual homeland, lost to them since the incursions of Ngamadjidj.

  As the scars criss-crossing his body prove, Brippoki has undergone the agonies of man-making.

  The pain is almost too much. He sings louder.

  With the change in appearance he will become a new and more powerful being, unrelated to that man-child he once was. His great pain is the pain of becoming, to be suffered in stoical silence, sufficient for him to earn full rank.

  Finally accepted, cut in Wilyaru, his manhood, he stands to gain his new name, one that will reflect his new and adult status, come at last.

  Only it never happens. A party of settlers armed with rifles interrupts the initiation at its most crucial point. Unceremoniously scattered, they flee for their worthless lives into the depths of arid scrubland. Without meaning, their lives are worth less.

  Brippoki falls silent.

  ‘All things,’ Lambert insisted, ‘living or no, come from the hands of the Creator, and retain the same distinctive characteristics they were blessed with.’

  Sarah sat with her father because she had said she would. She made no mention of her night-time excursion to Piccadilly; it could serve no purpose. Instead, Sarah had made the very great mistake of telling him of her probable intent, to attend Sir John Lubbock on the occasion of his Thursday afternoon lecture to the Royal Institution. Lubbock was an evolutionist of the first order, a literal neighbour to Charles Darwin. This immediately set Lambert on his back foot.

  ‘From the very beginning,’ he said, ‘the image of man ri
ses before us noble and pure.’

  Sarah was supremely tired of being lectured at, without resort to her own questions or opinions.

  ‘As far back as we can trace the footsteps of man?’ she asked.

  Lambert was genuinely taken aback.

  ‘Who have you been talking to,’ he demanded, ‘that you make the empirical demands of science?’

  Sarah fell stubbornly silent. Nothing could be further from her mind, except her heart. Excluding itself, science found the whole world mad; and in that it shared much with religion.

  ‘“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him. Male and female created He them.”’ Lambert laid a cool hand against her hot cheek. ‘“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth…”’ he paused for breath ‘“…and subdue it.”’

  Sarah’s face was a picture.

  Lambert relented a little. He knew of her sympathies.

  ‘Yet, rather than convert by the holy sword,’ he said, smiling, ‘is it not preferable we use a bat? And may the best man win!’

  If he was spoiling for a fight then she would give him one.

  ‘You mean,’ she said, ‘survival of the fittest?’

  ‘Evolution?’ A flash of lightning. ‘EVOLUTION?’ A bolt of thunder. ‘You dare speak to me of evolution?’ Lambert railed. ‘In this house?’

  Sarah’s mouth was working. She did not see the problem: Herbert Spencer had coined the phrase, although it had taken Darwin’s Origin of Species to make it common currency – and they counted the works of both men under their roof.