Oyster

by Janette Turner Hospital

  There is light. Lanterns dangle from a thick black cord that snakes overhead, and the lanterns sway and dip so that the light shifts itself about in great golden discs. The walls are the colour of whipped cream. They are washed down in honeyed fog. Here and there vents are visible – long cylinders of nothing, with circles of blue sky at their tips.

  Ant colony, Mercy thinks, because young people, a constant stream of them, like dark kernels within the clouds of ferrous dust and golden light, move along the tunnels with hand-held electric drills. They jab at the walls, jarring themselves and vibrating, and scoring the curved rock with long wounds. Someone follows each driller, tapping with a mallet. Someone follows the hammerers with a bucket.

  It is impossible to talk, but Oyster moves on, often touching people as he passes. He and Mercy leave the drillers behind. They enter a large chamber where women, kerchiefs on their heads, peel vegetables at trestle tables. Others bend over steaming cauldrons on the electric plates of great stoves. These stoves must have been brought down the shafts in pieces, Mercy thinks, and then reassembled. The faces of the women gleam with sweat. They do not talk. They look at Mercy briefly and guardedly then lower their eyes.

  Oyster moves on until the kitchen noises and the roar of the drills are background surf. It is as though they have reached a new country: the Tunnel of Quietness. Here, suddenly, their voices have an unnatural clarity and richness.

  ‘Well,’ Oyster whispers, close to her ear, and each word is like a small silver bell. ‘Here we are, my little bird. You are at nest in my gilded cage.’ And his voice comes back from the curved walls as a carillion, as a bell-ringers’ chorus, rich and mellow.

  ‘Where is Brian?’ Mercy asks.

  ‘In fact, you must begin to think differently now,’ Oyster tells her. ‘There is no Brian here. Here, we shed the Old Self the way a snake sheds its skin. We die in Christ. We descend into the womb of the earth, and then we are born again. We rise in newness of life and we take on new names.’

  ‘What is Brian’s new name?’ she asks.

  ‘If you become pure,’ Oyster says, ‘he will tell you himself, but I will give you a clue. It means God is with us. He does not wish to speak to you until you purify yourself. Until you have been baptised. Are you ready for baptism?’

  ‘All right,’ she says, because whatever she has to do to see Brian, she will do.

  ‘Gideon will bring you when I am ready,’ Oyster says. ‘This is where you wait.’

  There is a small bulge, like the inside of a gourd, like a monk’s cell, in the wall of the tunnel. There is a mat on the floor and a cushion.

  ‘You must kneel there and pray,’ Oyster says. ‘You must not move. If you do not continue to kneel and pray until I am ready, you will be punished. Gideon will come for you when I want you.’

  Mercy kneels on the cushion. There is a lantern hanging in the tunnel just outside the cell, and it throws shadows and tongues of light around her. The light braids her into the cell and plaits thick coils of shadows all around. It is like being inside an eggshell, Mercy thinks. It is very peaceful, very quiet, very beautiful. She closes her eyes and bows her head. She prays. She prays for Brian and for Miss Rover and for her parents. Her mind wanders to Jess. Her mind wanders to Donny Becker, to the lizards, to the time in prayer meeting when he put his hand on her leg, to the time just a few days ago when he came into Ma Beresford’s store.

  ‘G’day, Mercy,’ he said. He looked around and then he dropped his voice. ‘You heard from Brian?’

  ‘No,’ she said sadly. ‘Not since he left.’

  Donny looked around again, furtively. ‘Is anyone here?’ he whispered.

  ‘Only me.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. Nevertheless he continued to whisper. ‘I drive the truck out there now, did you know? At the Reef, I mean. I bring the stones in to Bernie.’

  ‘I didn’t know. Did you see Brian?’ she asked eagerly.

  ‘No. But I . . . but I heard something. I got some news. From one of the kids out there. The ones who load the trucks.’

  ‘What? What news?’

  ‘They didn’t call him Brian, it was some other name, I forget what it is. They’ve all got Bible names. But I knew they meant him.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘Well,’ he said awkwardly, blushing. ‘I heard he’s . . . uh . . .’ – he began playing with one of the elastic bands in a little tray beside the cash register; he began twisting it round his fingers – ‘I heard he’s one of Oyster’s favourites.’

  ‘I know,’ Mercy said. ‘We know that. From the first day. That’s why Brian went. Mum says –’

  ‘No, I mean . . . I don’t mean like that. I mean . . .’

  ‘What?’ she asked, impatient. ‘What?’

  ‘I mean . . . Oyster . . . Oyster, you know . . . he likes girls and boys.’

  ‘I know,’ Mercy said. ‘I know that.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Donny said. ‘You don’t know what I mean. I don’t mean like that.’

  Mercy was puzzled. ‘Well what do you mean then?’

  Donny looked at her, desperate, then looked away. ‘I can’t tell you,’ he said. ‘But I reckon I had to tell you what that kid said, that’s all. He said it meant Brian wouldn’t last long.’

  A rash was spreading up from Donny’s neck, across his cheeks. Mercy stared at him across the counter, her lips slightly parted. She could feel Donny’s nervousness seeping into her. It made her feel as though she were catching a cold. ‘What do you mean, not last long? You mean he’ll come home again?’

  ‘No,’ Donny said. ‘No, I . . . I don’t think anyone’s allowed to leave. I reckon you’d better pray for him, Mercy.’

  ‘We do,’ she said. She had something caught in her throat, a bone-splinter of anxiety. ‘We do. We pray for him every night.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well, yes . . . but I mean . . . you should pray . . .’ He suddenly leaned across the counter and kissed her full on the lips. ‘I don’t know what you should do. I just had to tell you, that’s all.’ He was breathless. Mercy could feel a burning on her lips. They stared at each other.

  Then he bolted.

  Mercy, kneeling on her cushion in Oyster’s Reef, prays for Donny Becker and for Brian.

  Her knees are beginning to hurt. It seems a long time since Oyster left her. She is probably imagining it, but the lantern in the tunnel seems dimmer now, and the shadows longer. She prays for Brian who is one of Oyster’s favourites and whom she will see again soon if she does as she is told.

  I will see Brian soon, she whispers, and her voice comes bouncing back as thick and shussy as opals that the hand scrunches and plays with in a sack, a sibilant crescendo rising softly from susurration to full crashing surf. She experiments, whispering: soon I will see Brian, I will soon see, will I see him soon? Brian soon I will see, will I see? and the soons come sooning back, the Brians boomerang, the sees seesaw like a hissing sea of swooning lightheadedness.

  She feels giddy. She puts out a hand to steady herself.

  We will see, she says to herself, and starts to giggle.

  The light in the tunnel goes out. It is pitch dark.

  She says to herself: The light in the tunnel has gone out. It is pitch dark.

  . . . and piiiitch, the echoes bell and caw, they call and beck, and darkdarkdark they say, and hark how the bevelled angles sing, the Ps popping plosively against the wall like soap bubbles and the Ks kickkickkicking and hopping and pocking off the walls like kangaroos.

  Pitch dark, she thinks. Pitch. High and low. She hums two notes and listens to them skirmishing. Pitch is also the thick black paste that is used for mending rust holes in rainwater tanks, though too many drought years have come and gone for anyone to notice whether or not the tanks have holes. She imagines the bottom of a full tank is like this, sludge, muck, or the bottom of the ocean perhaps: the sheer weight of darkness pressing down, the sheer weight of terror. The darkness touches everywhere like water.

&nb
sp; Mercy can feel her panic rising. It is rising like steam. It is rising like the steam in her mother’s pressure cooker, it is going to blow.

  ‘Halloo!’ she calls, her heart thumping. She gropes for the opening. ‘Halloo!’ she calls down the tunnel, and her voice comes back like a rattle of hailstones in a well. Pieces of word bounce and ricochet and multiply themselves, then gradually sink back into the thick silence.

  The darkness is like something crawling on her skin.

  Her breath is choppy now and full of needles. Miss Rover come over, she whispers, and the whisper overandunders her and underovers and rovers the tunnel with ropy breath. She makes herself breathe slowly.

  She tells herself: I will feel my way back along the tunnel to the kitchen.

  And then.

  And then there is a hand on the back of her neck.

  Mercy screams.

  ‘The scream is the cry of the soul in sin,’ Oyster whispers in her ear. ‘I’m afraid you must be punished. I told you not to move. I told you to wait until Gideon came to get you.’

  Mercy has seen a kangaroo shot in the arc of its leap. That is how she feels. She is tailspinning down, she is in the bottomless pit of the Book of Revelation. She has nothing to lose. Something flashes itself across the black funnel of her freefall: an image of Miss Rover on the day she was transferred, an image of the menace on Bernie’s verandah and of Miss Rover’s clear and steady voice.

  Mercy twists away from the hand on her neck. ‘I don’t like you,’ she says to Oyster, and her voice comes out steady. ‘I don’t like the way you do things. I don’t like the way you quote the Bible either. It makes me want to be sick.’

  She can feel him close, like something feral, in the dark. Her back is against the tunnel wall and she is conscious of the imprint of the long grooves and welts left by the drills. The blackness could be molasses.

  There is a small scurrying sound, a rat perhaps, or a snake.

  A shiver passes across the surface of Mercy’s skin, and she can feel goosebumps careening across the landscape of her body, up its hills and down its valleys and into its shafts.

  She can hear Oyster’s breath. She can feel the light mist of it on her cheek.

  ‘It is Brian who asked me to put you to the test,’ Oyster says.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘You are free to go,’ he says sweetly, and Mercy thinks that she finds his voice more sinister when it smiles. ‘If you don’t wish to see your brother. It’s up to you.’

  Mercy imagines Oyster’s gaze in the dark. She imagines that even if there were light, and they were still standing there eye to eye, nothing at all would be reflected in the milky blue.

  ‘I want to see Brian now,’ Mercy says. ‘Right now.’

  Oyster puts his hand on her arm and then slides it up to her shoulder, and then to the back of her neck. He propels her ahead of himself in the darkness, deeper into the tunnels and into the womb of the earth. Perhaps he can see in the dark, Mercy thinks. Like a bat. Like a devil. Like someone not yet born. Not human.

  Something soft touches her face: a curtain, heavy, made of satin brocade, she thinks.

  Oyster lifts it aside and pushes her through. ‘Wait,’ he says. She can hear him moving about. She hears the soft sound of cloth, then of a match being struck.

  There is a candle. There is a hurricane lamp.

  By its light, she sees that Oyster is on some sort of throne of scarlet cushions. He has wrapped himself in a scarlet robe.

  ‘Approach,’ he says.

  Mercy does not move.

  ‘If you want to see your brother,’ Oyster says, ‘you must kneel, and move forward on your knees.’

  Mercy kneels. The rock floor presses and cuts.

  When she has reached the cushions, Oyster opens his robe, and she sees his white naked flesh. His sex stands up like a pulpit.

  ‘Kiss the sceptre of power,’ he says, and then he pushes her head down, he pushes the sceptre into her mouth, he grabs her hair by the handful and he pushes and pulls, he pushes and pulls, she is gasping, she is sobbing, she is gagging, and Oyster is laughing and moving and shouting something, ‘the Tree of Knowledge,’ she hears, ‘except ye eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge,’ and he is pushing and pulling and she cannot breathe, ‘and ye shall be as gods,’ she hears, ‘and ye shall know all things, and all your desires shall be given unto you,’ and everything is purple and black and red and smells of fish, smells of frozen fish melting in Ma’s storage room, smells of oysters, smells of mouldy bread gone ripe, gone to fermentation, gone to yeast, and Mercy’s ears are ringing and bursting and ‘your brother,’ she hears, ‘whatever you want to know and if you eat of the fruit . . . and if you eat of the fruit . . . and when the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge . . . and when the seed . . . and it will ripen in your belly, little oysterling, and you will bear fruit, you will bring forth a pearl and will be as a goddess and everything you ever wanted to know, it shall all be revealed, and time shall end,’ and now time has ended and she is being rolled over and over to eternity and a drill is jabbing and ramming and she can see something like sunflash opal, like a meteor, like a pulsing star, like something exploding, and then there is black.

  Black.

  Silence.

  A moving light, possibly a candle.

  A voice.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ it says. ‘Drink this.’ There is an undernote to its accent; it is Australian, but with something else underneath. It hands her a tin mug and when she puts it to her lips she is filled with something warm and sweet that turns the air into waves. She sways in them. ‘It’ll help,’ the voice says.

  She can see a face, not Oyster’s.

  ‘I’m Gideon,’ he says. ‘I have to take you up to the meeting now.’

  ‘Where are you from?’ she asks.

  ‘It’s the Campfire Meeting,’ he says. ‘We have one every night, and everyone has to go. It’s above ground. Can you walk?’

  The question surprises Mercy. Of course she can walk. She stands and the air tips itself crazily in all directions at once. There is a terrible pain between her legs. She feels as though a boulder has been tied there and the weight of it is dragging at her. She reaches down, puzzled, and her hand comes away warm and wet. She blinks at her fingers in the candlelight. They are smeared with blood.

  She holds her hand out to Gideon, as question or offering or confusing evidence, she is not sure which.

  Gideon bites his lip. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I know. It’s . . . I know it must . . . I’m sorry. But you’ve been on cattle stations, right? On Jimjimba and Dirran-Dirran? You’ve seen brumbies?’ He rushes into his words now, like a wild horse on the gallop. ‘You’ve seen the brumbies broken? It’s good for ’em, right?’ His phrases lift themselves in odd places, like the tails of brumbies in the breakaways. ‘Gotta be done. I mean, we don’t always understand, but His ways are not our ways. Gotta trust Him, you know. Gotta accept.’

  She stares at him. She lifts her hand slowly, as though she is asleep, and rests it against his cheek and strokes it. She stares at the lines of blood on his face.

  Gideon swallows and wipes his cheek nervously with the back of his arm. He is wearing a loose white tunic and the violent smear of red on the sleeve agitates him. ‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,’ he says, as though he is being given rapid-fire questions in a test. ‘As it is written: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.’

  Mercy feels extremely calm now because she is in a dream. She knows this because she can feel the darkness all around her like warm water and she is swimming in it, floating, coasting, treading water languidly. She knows this kind of thing only happens in dreams. ‘Where are you from?’ she asks Gideon.

  He frowns. ‘Whaddya mean?’

  ‘Your accent.’

  He looks annoyed. ‘Me dad’s Greek. Used to talk Greek at home. I was born in Melbourne.’ He seems to feel he has failed something under interrogation. ‘But that’s an old
life,’ he says irritably. ‘I’m done with that. I’ve been born again and my country is Oyster. As it is written: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for we are all one in Christ, and we are all one in Oyster’s Reef.’

  ‘St Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, chapter 3, verse 28,’ Mercy says. She can see her words floating in front of her. She is sliding on the skin of something like sleep. ‘I can say all the books of the Bible off by heart, can you?’ She begins: ‘Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Josh . . .’ The waves of air are getting higher and deeper again, they are lifting her up on their crests and then sliding her down into their troughs, she is feeling giddy, she is feeling all at sea. ‘Joshua, Judges, Ruth,’ she says, but then First and Second Samuel slam into her like wrecked ships and she is going under, she is drowning, she curls into herself like a shellfish so that she will float and sees with sleepy interest that a great deal of blood is running down her legs.

  ‘I’ll carry you,’ Gideon says. ‘We have to go to the meeting. We’ll be late. Oh, shit,’ he says, frightened. ‘Shit!’ because the blood is very messy and is covering his white tunic and white trousers and Mercy supposes that he is a tidy person who likes to keep his clothes clean and uncrushed. It is very strange, she thinks, to go up a ladder this way, with her head hanging down. This is how a sack of potatoes feels, she realises. She thinks about the wild horses being broken, which is good for them, it must be done. She wonders if the brumbies think so too. A girl is above her, reaching down towards the ladder, taking her hand, and Mercy says to her, ‘Some brumbies can’t be broken, they break loose again,’ and the girl stares at her with wide eyes.

  And now the meeting is all around them, everyone sitting cross-legged on the red dust and Oyster is up there on a box or something, with the moon behind him like a plate against his head, like the paintings of saints in Miss Rover’s book, and he is preaching and preaching and reading the Bible and explaining and everyone is saying Amen, amen and sometimes lifting their arms and waving them and then everyone is singing and swaying and some are laughing and some are rolling over on the ground, it is just like prayer meeting in the Living Word, except that it is outside under the moon and it seems to go on and on and on and Mercy realises that everyone is very tired, that everyone is exhausted, that the skin on everyone’s face is stretched very tight and shines as though a bulb was switched on under the bone, and they all just want to sleep to sleep to sleep as Mercy does and the blackness is coming up to get her again and then Gideon is carrying her back down the ladder and the meeting seems to be over and she has to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge again and there is more blackness and then there is Gideon’s face again and he is taking her up the ladder again and it is twilight, early morning twilight, and Gideon is saying something, ‘Your brother is not here any more,’ he is saying, ‘I shouldn’t be telling you,’ and then she thinks she sees Donny Becker and she is being put under the front seat of his truck and there is a blanket and ‘Just go, go, go!’ Gideon is saying urgently, and they are bumping and driving and she can hardly breathe for dust and the blackness comes again.