by Murray Bail
But that’s another story.
• 13 •
Microtheca
ELLEN WATCHED as Mr Cave stumbled. For a moment he looked finished; but as befitting a monarch he remained calm. Idly he looked away from the tree in question, a maddeningly nondescript mallee, obstinately modest, one barely surviving—the shrubby E. fruticosa, it’s easily confused with E. foecunda.
He began talking about something altogether different, namely how to fix the problem in this driest of continents of the rivers that flow as quickly as they possibly can into the sea, an oversight in nature that has produced a vast dead centre, an area of absurd emptiness, useless for just about everything, except to encourage millions of poor quality photographs and to exercise the imaginations of politicians, journalists and other lateral thinkers. Ellen, who had just delivered a thermos of tea, noticed his sentences were trailing, and that he was stealing glances at the foliage.
Then he stopped talking. For Mr Cave—and for Ellen waiting—it extended into a crucial minute or more.
It was Ellen who began to fret. She wanted to close her eyes, anything to encourage the possibility of release.
He pulled off a leaf.
‘A eucalypt with no common name,’ his back still turned. And in a voice of suppressed eagerness, which has its source in the national quiz shows, he gave the correct name, in Latin.
After that Ellen couldn’t watch any more, and without a word went down to the river. In and out ran her thoughts, as if she was actually running through the trees: marriage by arrangement; more her father’s than hers; marriage at arm’s length; without-her-consent marriage, without her participation; her entire self given to him, from Adelaide; a blank marriage; nothing more. And her father, it seemed, always spoke to her in a deliberately light, often bantering way.
The stillness of the trees had a calming effect. Yet she almost let out an animal cry of some kind, in despair.
And as the evenly spaced trunks multiplied on both sides and behind, she felt vague pleasure at the notion she was ‘running away’ from them, the two men.
Silver light slanted into the motionless trunks, as if coming from narrow windows. The cathedral has taken its cue from the forest. The vaulted roof soaring to the heavens, pillars in smooth imitation of trees, even the obligatory echo, are calculated to make a person feel small, and so trigger feelings of obscure wonder. In cathedral and forest making even a scraping noise would trample soft feelings. For this reason, Ellen unconsciously continued on tiptoe.
Where the mathematics ended and opened into light and space Ellen decided to turn, when something on the ground under a tree caught her eye. For a moment she thought it was a bundle of clothing her father had left there. Soft contours of flesh come forward in bush, the trees and undergrowth suddenly act as backdrops.
It was a man, lying in the shade; a foreign body, on their property.
She thought: another suitor!
On the point of marching back to the house she took instead another two steps. For a few minutes she remained very still, and nothing around her moved. What if he was dead? She took a few steps more. If he was asleep she would see who he was. She wanted to see his face.
But his head was half-buried in one elbow. Both were drenched in shade. To see his face Ellen hesitated, then squatted.
She was close enough to touch him.
He hadn’t shaved. A tanned jaw. He’d been out in the weather. A wanderer. What appeared to be a swag alongside was hard and narrow, a worn black case, the kind used to hold scientific instruments, not musical. In these parts his hair would be considered long. To Ellen it was Sydney hair. His clothes too were carelessly worn, of good quality.
As Ellen watched, his lips moved. ‘He must be dreaming.’ And, ‘What would a man out here, under a tree, dream about, or someone like him be thinking about?’
Concerning the bodies of men, the visible areas: they have the scars. Men tend to accumulate them. Scars are worn by men, almost as women wear jewellery. To carry a scar is to carry a story. The very suggestion can extend a person. Beneath every scar, then—a story, unfortunately.
Ellen was looking at the short transparent mark below the eye, a completely straight tear, when the eye itself opened, and considered her.
Green-khaki was the eye. Under the circumstances, riddled as they were with chance—and harsh light and filtered shade—it was the eye colour Ellen expected.
Yet he remained not moving, not even shifting the elbow. It was as if—on their land—he was lying in bed.
To her surprise she spoke first. ‘What is it you want?’
‘Who might you be?’
‘That doesn’t matter!’ Ellen stood up. He was being smart. Brushing imaginary twigs and leaves off her loose cotton dress she thought about going. Now he sat up. He was older than she was, though nothing like as old as her father or Mr Cave. He may have been thirty-three, no more.
‘I opened my eyes just then, and instead of stars I saw…spots before me.’
Ellen wasn’t sure what he was talking about. She made as if to go. ‘You were talking in your sleep.’
‘That’s not as interesting as it sounds. What did I say?’
‘It was someone’s name.’
He laughed: and remained that way, angled up at the overhead branches, the drooping leaves. ‘What is this tragic-looking tree? I should have chosen a better one. Unless I’m mistaken, it’s a—’
As it happens E. microtheca, well known as Coolibah, was one of the very few eucalypts Ellen recognised, only because her father had often poked fun at its shocking historical significance, the ‘history of shallow graves’, as he put it.
But the stranger never actually named the tree.
Perhaps he wasn’t another suitor on the loose after all. Frowning, she recalled her father every other day warning about men and the way they used words. So far this one had hardly said a thing. When she stole a glance he wasn’t even looking in her direction. He had his carved head turned, absorbed in something else.
It was too much that he should sit there as he pleased! At the same time Ellen felt a faintly spreading comfort at the way they each allowed without difficulty a silence to open between them. No sooner had this registered than she felt annoyed, and wanted it to show, without quite knowing why.
‘Why not sit down? Either that or I’ll get to my feet. I can’t have you towering over me. It doesn’t make sense.’
Without waiting he stood up anyway, which encouraged from Ellen a faint smile.
Again he looked away.
‘Do you know…’ He moved about, hands in pockets; for no apparent reason, he gave a sort of Irish jig which almost had Ellen laughing as if he, complete stranger, was pleased to see her.
It was enough to make her want to leave, except he was telling her something, even though he had his back turned.
There he was pulling off a strip of bark. When he turned shadows fluttered and flowed over his face like feathers or water.
‘Do you know…’ he began, ‘there is a woman who lives in Melbourne, not far from the River Yarra. For many years she worked for a firm of solicitors in Bourke Street, specialising in wills.’
Clearing his throat he glanced at Ellen, a few paces away.
‘She was born in Eastern Europe, in a city of many bridges. Her father had a dark moustache and hair very crinkled and grey. His hair must have been like a creek or your river here in flood. He wore his coat over his shoulders, as the men in his city still do… That’s an odd habit, almost feminine, don’t you think? This woman first realised her father was a tenor of renown when he took her as a child on a picnic and sang in a pine forest. Her mother was a singer, too. She came from a prosperous old merchant family.
‘Yes, in that country there was the repressive political system. It’s government by cement. No one could leave this country without permission. And even if they did manage to get permission they couldn’t take money out. It was worthless. To get around this people trie
d all kinds of creative methods.
‘Under a tree in the garden the woman’s parents had buried a valuable stamp collection of the nineteenth-century classics, rare items from Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius and Tasmania. It had been inherited from someone on the mother’s side. Every year or so the tenor with the moustache would go to the tree, dig out the enamelled tin wrapped in oilcloth and, with a pair of tweezers’—here he fixed one eye on Ellen—‘remove a single precious stamp which they would then easily slip into an envelope and sell in Geneva for hard currency. It was how they continued their singing tours in Europe.
‘The father always spoiled his daughter. He always returned with extravagant presents for her. When he went to cafés with his men friends he sometimes took her. With them he was boisterous. Sometimes she fell asleep with her hand in his pocket. A few times he introduced her to beautifully dressed women who never seemed to stop laughing—some wearing hats with veils, and who left lipstick on white cakes and glasses.
‘By now she had grown into a young woman. Yes, we would have to say she had a melancholy beauty. A red-haired law student had no doubts at all. But they could only whisper to each other in the street or at the café. Her father wouldn’t have him near the house, or let him see her. At the mention of his name he’d fly into a rage. As far as her father was concerned he didn’t have a single thing going for him. To make matters worse the student was under surveillance for certain political activity.
‘He was told not to bother writing any letters. Anything he wrote would be intercepted by the father and burnt.’
Half in sunlight, Ellen was searching his face to see if he was making it up as he went along.
He continued the story, taking his time.
‘There were a few stamps left. To take her mind off the student who, he discovered, was meeting his daughter in secret he took her away on a trip, just the two of them. They went first to Switzerland—to cash a stamp. In Geneva he met an Italian diva. What a prima donna—straight out of the textbooks! The daughter looked on as her father fell for her. He wouldn’t give up till she was his. The daughter was with her father as he followed the diva across Europe. At last, in a five-star hotel in Madrid, he succeeded. Almost at the same time he ran out of money! They had to return home. Weeping and resting his head on his daughter’s breast he sang mournful songs in the train.
‘His stout wife was waiting for them with her arms folded. One look at him was enough. It was the same story all over again. There was always another woman somewhere. This time she decided to do nothing.
‘But there was little now he had to say to his wife. He had thoughts only for the Italian prima donna. He lost his appetite. He couldn’t sleep. He decided to leave again for Switzerland, this time alone. The wife suddenly tried to intervene. She struggled, she wept. She begged her daughter to help. The daughter, who now lives in Melbourne—he always listened to what she said. And they were so alike. Meanwhile the red-haired student had been arrested. It was jail, he was told, or leave the country.
‘The daughter struck a bargain with her father: they would share the remaining stamps. She would leave with the student, while he could join the prima donna.
‘The father readily agreed.’
While talking, this stranger appeared to notice something in the sky. He narrowed his eyes.
‘Together they chose a day to leave.’ His voice sounded interested in the heat. ‘The daughter went out of her way to be nice to her mother, but the mother wouldn’t have it. Those enclosed countries, naturally they produce distortions. At the Dig-Tree she joined her father on his knees as he felt around for the tin containing the stamps. There was something child-like about his optimism—he was humming a hopeful aria. To think that a few images on perforated paper in the palm of a hand could hold the solution to their lives.
‘She remembered the wink he gave. It was necessary to keep quiet.
‘Only an hour before she’d been using the philatelic tweezers to pluck her eyebrows. Now she held them ready as he opened the enamelled tin. The coat fell off his shoulders.
‘The stamps had all been burnt. Nothing remained in the tin but ashes.
‘Years later she managed to leave the country, choosing a place as faraway as possible. The others in this story, including the student, remained behind, occasionally recognising each other.’
Poor, poor woman, Ellen thought. And Ellen tried to picture her, the daughter, now a woman living in Melbourne—a long, long way from her own country. How could the father have continued? Together in the house with the mother? A story never ends, she could see. In any life the neat finish cannot be. It is only the beginning.
She wanted to know more. But the stranger, he wasn’t interested. Evidently now he was thinking about something else. The way he had turned away, leaving her there as if she was merely a tree, nothing more…it was incredibly rude. There was no one else within a mile of them. Now even his noticeably long hair and, for that matter, his settled eyes, were quite out of place, in the glare.
Ready to let him know by walking off she saw to her amazement he seemed to be wandering away, or half-wandering, leaving her under the Coolibah. They each left the tree. Ellen had no interest in seeing him again.
• 14 •
Camaldulensis
SO COMMON were some eucalypts they hardly deserved Mr Cave’s attention. Now and then Holland had to call him back and repeat the ground rules, which had been carefully explained in the beginning—the way a referee calls the contenders in a heavyweight title fight to the centre of the ring, looking up at one man then the other, the trainers joining in with vacant expressions as they massage the necks of their fighters—and the rules were that every single eucalypt had to be named if he, or anybody else for that matter, was to win the hand of his daughter. Now let’s get moving.
Still, it can be admitted that almost anything can be taken for granted. And it is true that certain eucalypts pass before the eyes in such lavish quantities they undergo a sort of optical browning, and actually become invisible with ordinariness, as is the fate of weeds and telegraph poles.
Ellen had been told to watch out for the unexpected behind the ordinary. Each and every object in the world has its own history, it goes without saying, which is a result of some other history, and so on; forever continuing. It can be triggered, Ellen was told, by a name. And the unexpected can appear in small and large lumps.
The most common eucalypt in the world is the Red Gum. Hundreds on Holland’s property alone followed the river. And yet—small example of the unexpected—for all its widespread distribution, it has not been found in Tasmania.
Over time the River Red Gum (E. camaldulensis) has become barnacled with legends. This is only to be expected. By sheer numbers there’s always a bulky Red Gum here or somewhere else in the wide world, muscling into the eye, as it were; and by following the course of rivers in our particular continent they don’t merely imprint their fuzzy shape but actually worm their way greenly into the mind, giving some hope against the collective crow-croaking dryness. And if that’s not enough the massive individual squatness of these trees, ancient, stained and warty, has a grandfatherly aspect; that is, a long life of incidents, seasons, stories.
Curiously, for all its wide distribution in Australia, the River Red Gum was first described in the literature from a cultivated tree in the walled garden of the Camalduli religious order in Naples. How did this happen?
Ellen was given a few parts of the story (almost like the keel of an unfinished ship); enough for her to inhabit, to give voices and faces. In her journal she scribbled possible explanations.
Late in the nineteenth century a paddle-steamer captain—Irish, a widower, based in Wentworth—vowed to kill his own daughter!
This man was much sought after in the river trade. He had an uncanny knack of navigating the Darling River, long into the summer months. He was a familiar sight at the wheel, unsmiling, his daughter alongside, smiling and waving. One day it was noticed she was
no longer there. Almost immediately his times slowed, and he began running aground, once loaded with wool bales. As he continued piloting the river it wasn’t the loss of business that troubled him, but suspicions of his daughter’s behaviour, suspicions which were always aggravated by the sight at Wentworth of the Darling River flowing into and becoming one with the stronger Murray River. Unless he was mistaken his daughter’s appearance had subtly altered.
As it happened his suspicions were justified. Not yet twenty his daughter was seeing a local grazier’s son. The whole town knew. She had become pregnant. The couple fled the day before he returned from his weekly river trip. He set out to follow. He was not even interested in bringing her back.
Years later and now with a large ginger moustache he traced her to the Camaldulensians in Naples, a contemplative order that practises silence, fasting and manual labour.
He was directed to a broad woman scratching with a hoe. After travelling across the world the poor man stood rubbing his eyes. It was her coarse garment, and placid expression; she seemed to be in a dream. The child had been taken away.
He began questioning her.
What happened then is almost too fleeting to record. Either in anger or relief or to get a word out of her—nobody knows—he took her by the shoulders. They struggled in the garden, kicking up dust; swaying and locked together, Ellen heard it told.
It was then, the story goes, a Red Gum seed dormant in the river man’s trouser cuff spilled onto the ground.
It could even be in fact, it would appear to be the only explanation—that the ceremonial struggle between the father and daughter on that particular spot on the earth foot-scuffed and kicked the seed into the barren soil. For soon after he left, shaking and exhausted, a green shoot appeared.
The daughter tended it until it grew into a healthy sapling, and she lived with the Camalduli order long enough to see the sapling become a tree, then a full-grown River Red Gum, a tree of great girth, dominating the garden, its water-seeking roots cracking walls and sucking dry the vegetable plots, the same tree that lined for hour after hour the Darling River, which she would never again see.