The frenzied dancers twirled to the ever-increasing rhythm of stick and bone. Their stage the Never-Never Land of Murrundi, above them, Prolggi – the one-star galaxy of the Clouds of Magellan.
Soon Ngurunderi began to mourn his wives and it was time for him to enter into Waieruwar – the spirit world. To prepare his spirit, he dived into the depths of the ocean at the far end of Kangaroo Island – Karta, the Island of the Dead. Out of the depths, he arose again, flashing fierily through the southern sky, homewards to the firmament from whence he had come. Then was Ngurunderi at peace, whitest and brightest star within the Milky Way.
The dancers stopped, the music stopped, as heavenwards every eye was cast to where Ngurunderi sailed in the great waters of the night sky.
Ellen, too, carried along by the music and dance, had floated away, borne upwards and outwards in the Dreaming, absent to herself but present in some other-world where she wanted to stay.
‘Annieanikke, come quickly!’ Kalinga tugged at her arm.
It took Ellen a moment to recover herself. The next words Kalinga uttered made her forget all the mystery that a moment previously had been hers – frightened her to the quick of her being.
‘Come! Annie wiwim – sickness!’ Kalinga, too, was frightened as she pulled at Ellen. ‘Wiwirremalde come too!’ Kalinga summoned the tribal doctor.
Ellen then knew in her heart that she would not yet leave this place. The spirit of Ngurunderi filled her senses wanting to tell her something, but she pushed it away, unwilling to listen, closing herself to everything as she rushed to her sick child.
37
For three days and three nights, Ellen and Wiwirremalde sat with Annie. Ellen watched helplessly as her child, her special, long-awaited child, drifted in and out of consciousness, the fever taking her to places where neither Ellen’s love and comforting, nor all the ancient skills of Wiwirremalde, could reach her.
Annie, her black curls limp with fever-sweat, her beautiful, dark eyes glassed over, just lay there. Sometimes she whimpered and responded to the cooling touch as Ellen mopped her brow, trying to dampen the heat of her child’s rising temperature.
‘A Mhamaí … a Mhamaí …’ she would say faintly, and Ellen would bend even closer to her face.
‘Ssshhh, a stóirín, I’m here beside you. Ssshhh now … Sleep, my little one!’
And sometimes, for a moment, the glassy look in Annie’s eyes would retreat, to be replaced by the tiniest spark of a smile. Then hope would rise in Ellen, and she would fight the tiredness and the heaviness, and cronaun to her sick child in low soothing sounds. As she did this, on the edge between speaking and singing, Ellen unconsciously rocked forwards and backwards over Annie, as if her own body’s life-energy sought to transfer itself once again to the child which had been delivered of it not two years ago.
Into the night she would sit, and gently rock, and sing, like the Ancestral Beings who sang shape into life, forming the rocks and the lakes and the sacred places. Or knelt, singing to her dying child – some force within compelling her song to bridge the chasm between life and death; to reach the fading life-spark, and sustain it; to re-ignite it.
Lavelle came and went silently, bringing fresh water to replenish the two limestone bowls. The larger one was for dipping the cloth with which Ellen mopped Annie’s brow. From the other bowl, Ellen would sip the cold water and then tenderly, slowly let it spill from her own lips into the child’s parched mouth.
As the night closed in and the camp fires were lit around them, Ellen’s mind went back to the night Annie was born, and the fire flickering on the wall of the cabin while Sheela-na-Sheeoga worked tirelessly to bring Annie into the world. Annie the child of whom she had foretold, ‘When the whitest flower blooms, so too will you bloom, Ellen Rua.’ The old woman had anointed her tongue and womb with herbs when she had made that prophecy. Sheela had again used the extracts of plants to mould her body into shape for Annie’s delivery, probably saving both her own life and Annie’s in the process.
Now Wiwirremalde, black old man of an ancient race, made his potions from the plants and berries of this exotic land brought to him by Kalinga. He administered them, sometimes anointing – tyetyin – sometimes in a poultice to Annie’s body, all the time chanting, as Sheela-na-Sheeoga had done. Now, he with hands and herbs and sounds of healing, was trying to preserve the life that, twelve thousand miles away, the old woman had brought into the world with the same ancient skills. He rarely looked at Annieanikke; all his energy and spirit-force being concentrated on Annie herself. As Ellen watched him work she wondered whether Sheela-na-Sheeoga, were she here, would be able to save the child.
A dark thought entered Ellen’s mind. The Slám! The lifeswapping ritual of herb casting. She looked at Wiwirremalde leaning over Annie, not a foot or two away from her. Did he know of the Slám? Not that these people would call it by that name. They would have their own word for the sorcery.
She recalled how she had agonized over the decision before finally rejecting Sheela-na-Sheeoga’s offer to make a Slám for Michael – to let Death claim some other poor soul in his stead. She couldn’t bring herself to do it then. No, not even for Michael, her dark, lovely Michael. But now – here – for Annie?
Why should yet another of her loved ones be taken from her? Hadn’t she suffered enough already? Now the one she thought she was sure of, thought she had saved by bringing to Australia, was slipping away from her, and she couldn’t stop it. She should have known that Annie wouldn’t have been able to make this long, hard journey – shouldn’t have let Lavelle and her own foolishness talk her into it.
She reached out, fingers trembling, and touched the shoulder of Wiwirremalde. The doctor of the Ngarrindjeri turned and looked at her, momentarily stopping his ministrations.
‘Wiwirremalde …?’ she began. His impassive eyes looked directly into her, seeing the terrible thought she held there. ‘Is there … is there anybody here …’ the words came out slowly, tortured between grief and guilt at the thing they asked, ‘… who is very old, very sick?’
‘Ngarrindjeri people plenty wiwim. Whitefella bring white queen wiwim allem time blackfella die,’ Wiwirremalde said, his eyes not moving from hers.
‘I … I know, Wiwirremalde.’ Ellen forced herself to go on. ‘But now … tonight, in the lakalinyeri, is there anybody …?’ She stopped and looked down at the child lying between them, washed paler in the moonlight, her eyes now closed. ‘I don’t want Annie to die! She hasn’t even lived. Wiwirremalde, help me, help me!’ She grabbed the medicine man by both shoulders.
‘Alinta, Annieanikke!’ the old man addressed her, a sad look coming into his eyes. ‘Ngurunderi takem Annie child in yuke canoe sailem down Murrundi to Karta.’ He looked far out beyond the peninsula of the Coorong to where the mighty river opened into the sea, and Karta, the Land of the Dead. ‘Listen, Annieanikke.. Wiwirremalde broke off his story of Annie’s spirit journey with Ngurunderi. ‘Listen!’
Ellen listened, her senses alert. From far away across the wetlands of Murrundi’s lower lakes it came. It was not the same sounds of the Coorong she had heard earlier as the night world of the bushland came to life. This sound was different – this cut through it all. With a start she looked at the old Aborigine. It couldn’t be, she thought – not out here, in this wild place! ‘No! No! No!’ she shrieked. She wouldn’t listen to it! She drew back her hands from Wiwirremalde’s shoulders and clasped them to her ears in an effort to keep out the sound. But it was useless.
The noise grew louder and louder – high-pitched, intense in its beckoning – until her head felt as if it would burst. At last she dared to look towards its source, expecting to see the translucent form of the Banshee floating over the Coorong’s flat, marshy lands towards her. But she saw nothing. No form from which the sound emitted.
Terrified, she looked again at the tribal medicine man. What had she started? Had he read her thoughts? Was it that her asking for the Slám had conjured up what she recognized as th
e death-warning?
Wiwirremalde spoke: ‘It is the cry of the Mingka bird, Annieanikke. Him first to know allem time. Mingka bird live in big cave holy place Mount Barker. Only leavem sacred mountain before Ngarrindjeri make spirit journey with Ngurunderi. Mingka fly in sky make big cry. Tell Ngarrindjeri people be ready.’ He stopped and looked down at Annie. Slowly, sadly, he said, ‘Tell Annieanikke be ready.’
‘No, Wiwirremalde, no!’ She didn’t want to hear this as if it were all over for Annie – she didn’t want to hear this mumbo jumbo talk of Mingka birds and Ngurunderi. Annie was still alive, still breathing. She could see the soft puff of her little rounded cheeks rise and fall.
‘No, she’s not going to die – I want you to save her!’ Ellen beat the old man’s shoulders with her fists. ‘I don’t care! The Mingka can cry for someone else, not her – not her. I know you can do it – I can tell!’ she screamed at Wiwirremalde. ‘Do it – do the Slám!’
The old man caught her flailing fists.
‘Alinta, Annieanikke – do not ask me do this thing – Ngarrindjeri will be finished – all brokem up – very bad!’
She fought against him.
‘I don’t care!’ she spat in his face. ‘Christ or the devil – I don’t care!’
By now Lavelle had run to them. He wrapped his arms round Ellen, holding her together, saying over and over: ‘Ellen, Ellen – don’t!’
When she had subsided apart from the sobbing, the old Aborigine put one of his hands against her stomach. Through her grief she heard him say from somewhere far off, from wherever the cave of the Mingka bird was: ‘Annieanikke, you have good mewe. Other thing you ask bad mewe. Not askem Wiwirremalde,’ he said gently, pressing her womb, as Sheela-na-Sheeoga had done.
The sound of the old man’s voice had a relaxing effect on Ellen. Her body, deprived of sleep and nourishment, could endure no more. She was defeated – wanting to sink into her sorrow, to let herself collapse within the tight comfort of Lavelle’s hold on her. All she had to do was allow herself to drift off as the kulduke spoke to her of Annie sailing with Ngurunderi across the skies to his home in the Milky Way.
No. She wouldn’t give in – be comforted out of what she had to do while Annie was still alive. Annie was the one needing to be comforted.
‘Let me go,’ she said quietly to Lavelle. ‘I’m all right now.’
She reached down and, with exquisite tenderness, gently encircled Annie within her arms, drawing the child to her bosom. As she snuggled Annie within the white swaddling cloth, the child’s eyes flickered for a moment, then opened, and looked up into her own.
Ellen heard the faintest little whisper.
‘A Mhamaí!’
It said everything to her.
She walked away from the two men, walked out into the wilderness with her child. Then she sat under a giant she-oak tree, its leaves drooping downwards – the tears of Ngurunderi. There, in a final act of love and intimacy, she bared both her breasts and cradled Annie against them; talking to her, singing the old suantraithe, caressing the soft rise of her baby’s cheek with her fingers.
The sun began to break over the Coorong. The new dawn unveiling the middens – giant stores of fish shells accumulated by the Ngarrindjeri over many centuries. Middens which were now places of mystery and sacredness.
With the rise of the new day, Annie opened her eyes, making a small murmuring sound. Ellen felt her forehead – it wasn’t hot. Her eyes were brighter too – gone the glasslike look. For a moment Ellen’s heart surged. Then she realized that, instead of a raging temperature, Annie’s forehead was cold and clammy. The bright look in those dark and beautiful Spanish eyes with the hint of green, was not the sparkle of life, but the cold hard glint of a battle lost. It was the sign of a little body no longer able to hold back the ravages of a consumptive fever.
The tiny hand somehow reached up to Ellen’s lips, and Ellen took the fingers between them, blowing gently, giving them some warmth. Annie always liked this little touch game they had. Now the child lifted her head a mite and made a small broken sound instead of her usual gurgle of laughter. ‘A Mhamaí … a Mhamaí,’ she whispered weakly. ‘Annie cold.’
As Ellen bent now to kiss once more her darling child – she noticed how the colour of Annie’s lips had changed.
Where once there was rosebud red, now a blue whiteness had appeared around the edges pushing back the bright colours of life.
How unusually cold to the kiss they were too.
At the touch of her mother’s lips, Annie closed her eyes against the cold that was enveloping her.
Ellen, filled with inestimable grief, knew her child would never open them again.
38
Out of the morning she came: wild-headed, her face gaunt and streaked, bare-breasted, unashamed of her nakedness. But she walked, head high, carrying her dead child. Lavelle ran to her, but she did not see him. Then Kalinga and the women came. Then the men, and what few children there were left in the lakalinyeri, then Wiwirremalde and Rupulle. The cry went up: ‘Annie meralde! Annie meralde!’ – Annie is dead! And the wailing and ochóning of the women of the Ngarrindjeri filled the air.
Ellen walked, as if unseeing, unhearing, until she reached Wiwirremalde and Rupulle. She stood before them.
‘I am sorry,’ she said in a vacant voice to the medicine man. ‘I ask your forgiveness and that of your people.’
Then the women came around her, embracing her, keening the great loss of Alinta, Annieartikke – Ellen, the mother of Annie.
Later that day, Kalinga and the women took Ellen with them to the sacred place where women’s business was conducted, to which no man could go.
Many hours later, when Lavelle saw Ellen again, he could scarce believe his eyes. Had she not been the centre of attention of the women who returned with her, and taller than the rest, he would not have recognized her at all.
The women, he knew, had taken her to prepare for mourning. Now he stared in disbelief at the transition. Naked to the waist, Ellen’s bare body was covered with the white paste of bulpuli – pipeclay paint. On her breasts, finger-painted with great precision, were close concentric circles. Her arms too were adorned with the white Aboriginal mourning colour.
And on her shoulders … Lavelle tried to make out what it was. The colour was something like the red ochre paint the young men – initiates of the tribe – wore. But as she passed him, flanked by the women, he could see it was not paint but blood. Congealed blood, on wounds about three inches long, running from the top of Ellen’s shoulders to her upper arms.
Lavelle was shocked beyond belief. He knew the Ngarrin-djeri women would not have taken it on themselves to do this to her. Ellen must have decided to mutilate herself.
With a quartzite knife-blade, she had inflicted on herself the traditional ‘sorry cuts’ of the Ngarrindjeri. She had sliced into her own flesh to give physical expression to the agony of her great loss.
But the greatest shock was yet to come for Lavelle. Ellen’s face, except her eyes and lips, was completely covered in white, and on her head was a casing of thicker, heavier white paste. He tried to see how they had managed to fit all that wild red tangle of hair he’d seen on her this morning under the shell of paste on her head. It was impossible.
Lavelle strained to get nearer, to see her better. He got behind the group of women. He could see the back of her head. The wisps of rich red hair running down the nape of her neck that he loved to look at when she pulled her hair forward of a morning – where were they? As he jostled to get closer to her, he stumbled and fell against Kalinga, knocking from her hands the large covered bowl she carried. As he steadied himself, he saw her grab for it, but she was too late – the contents spilled out. Lavelle reeled back from the sight. Strewn over the ground before him were long rich tresses of human hair. Ellen’s hair. All of her hair, Lavelle realized, as she turned at the commotion behind her.
The wild mane of red hair that had earned her the name Ellen Rua, was gone,
completely shaven off.
Ellen Rua was kunkundi – bald.
Earlier, when Annie had so gently gone into the new morning of the Coorong, Ellen had sat a while in the shade of the giant she-oak. On the ground, amidst the fallen apples of the she-oak, she sat nestling her dead child to the breasts that not so long ago had nourished her.
She reached down, finding her nipple, rolling it between her fingers until it hardened. Then she pressed it against the blue-white lips, and bruised it between them. She waited for the warming tug, but there was none. No pleasuring, comforting flow of life-juice between them. Then, rocking gently, holding her unhungry child’s head against her, Annieanikke, sang to and for her dead child. As she sang, the tears of Ngurunderi tumbled down about her from the drooping branches of the she-oak. And in the nearby billabong, she saw the bark canoe held by the beak of the giant Mingka bird. Boat and bird waited to receive Annie, waited to sail away with her across the heavens to live forever with Ngurunderi in the Dreaming.
She had risen then and, still singing, danced with Annie. Danced around the base of the she-oak; danced to the edge of the Billabong; danced until her body was numb.
Danced because she couldn’t cry.
When exhaustion set in and she could dance no more, she left, leaving behind her Ngurunderi’s canoe, and the Mingka bird, still awaiting their kringkri passenger.
Now she must bury Annie. She would bury her according to the customs of these people. She had offended them deeply by asking what she had asked of Wiwirremalde. She must seek their forgiveness, by accepting their ancient ways. Hadn’t they lost enough already? Yet these people had such dignity, such spirit. She would respect that. It had been wrong of her to seek to interfere, breaking their laws, no matter how desperate her own needs were.
The Whitest Flower Page 36